‘Zak,’ he said, picking out the one person he could rely on to be sensible, ‘do you have a minute to give me a hand here?’
‘You’re going to tidy up today?’ said Zak incredulously.
‘No, not tidy up... The police might want to see things just as they are. Although I suppose this isn’t really a crime scene.’
‘It isn’t a crime scene in any sense,’ said Amaryllis, trying not to feel miffed that he had addressed Zak and not her. ‘You can tidy it up whenever you like.’
‘We’ll have to wait here to let the fruit and vegetable people back in,’ said Christopher wearily. ‘Then after they’ve got changed we’d better clear up in the library and get the books back in ready for tomorrow.’
‘They’ll be a while yet,’ said Jemima. ‘There’s a fight going on up in the High Street.’
‘The press might come round here,’ said Amaryllis. ‘You’d be better to go away and come back again.’
‘I’ll wait here,’ he said firmly. ‘They won’t be able to get in otherwise – and I don’t want another fight to break out in front of the building here. There could be broken windows.’
‘I’ll go and get you both a coffee from that new place near the harbour,’ Amaryllis offered.
The new place was a converted shelter in which many a Pitkirtly teenager had experimented with various illicit delights. It still had an air of disreputability which Christopher knew appealed to Amaryllis.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll just sit here for a bit. I can get coffee in the staff tea-room if I want.’
His tired eyes found Penelope. ‘Do you want to go back to my house and wait for Zak? Are you staying over in Pitkirtly tonight?’
‘We were going to stay with Tricia Laidlaw,’ said Penelope, ‘but I don’t think we can now.’
‘Just make yourselves at home at mine,’ said Christopher. ‘I’ll be back later.’
He watched as Penelope walked off across the car park, followed by Jemima and Dave, who got back into the pick-up truck and drove away with the usual screeching lurch.
‘What’s happened to Jock?’ said Amaryllis. ‘I haven’t seen him all day. Is he all right?’
Christopher sighed. ‘He was round at Tricia’s. He and Darren were under the kitchen table all the time.’ When she looked as if she was going to ask for more details, he held up his hand. ‘Just don’t ask. You don’t want to know... I suppose I’d better get on.’
‘I could stay here and help,’ said Amaryllis.
He shook his head. ‘No, you’d better go now. It’s just something I’ve got to do myself. Zak and I know where everything goes.’
Amaryllis turned and flounced off without another word.
He vaguely wondered what was the matter with her, but he didn’t even have the energy to feel guilty about some imaginary slight she thought she had suffered. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt so completely exhausted.
‘Are you all right, Mr Wilson?’ said Zak. ‘Just you sit down in the office and I’ll make some coffee in the staff-room... We could call in one of the librarians to help clear up if you like.’
‘No, we mustn’t bother them on a Sunday,’ said Christopher.
Zak went off down the corridor, while Christopher wandered into the office and sat behind the desk where Deirdre and Oscar had sat. It didn’t feel like his own office any more, what with the array of cameras, the sound deck balanced between two filing cabinets and the complete rearrangement of the furniture. He was an intruder in this strange world of sound bites and voiceovers and presenters presenting other presenters who interviewed yet more presenters who explained what real people had said to them.
His mind as near blank as it had ever been, he stared at the desk surface. Deirdre had left her notes there. She had unusual handwriting for a woman – no loops or slants, just a decisive upright line and an almost mathematical curve.
Zak came back more quickly than he had expected, balancing two mugs of coffee and a plate of biscuits which, on closer inspection, only contained two pink wafers.
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Zak hastily, perhaps seeing Christopher’s stare of mild accusation. ‘They must have been in there – they’ve eaten all the chocolate digestives.’
‘That’s TV people for you,’ said Christopher, accepting a mug of coffee.
At least Zak wouldn’t talk about anything deep or meaningful. He began to realise, through the fog of tiredness, why he was relieved that Amaryllis had gone. It was much more stressful than he had ever imagined, having to manage his relationship with her – which was so out of the ordinary that he couldn’t even give it a name – while his old relationship with Deirdre had re-surfaced in his mind as if it were something dead fished out of a lake by a police diver.
He frowned. It wasn’t like him to use such a morbid metaphor, even in his own head where nobody could see it. That was assuming the government spying agencies, or indeed some ruthless internet company, hadn’t yet found a way of tapping into his brain. Good luck to them. To continue the diving metaphor, it would be like dragging a stagnant muddy pond.
To stop himself from thinking these complicated and depressing thoughts, he said to Zak, ‘Did you see the whole thing on television?’
‘Yes. Right up to when they switched off the signal. It didn’t seem real – except that Darren’s Mum was there.’
‘And Darren. And Jock McLean,’ said Christopher. He crunched up one of the pink wafers. It was too dry. He washed it down with a mouthful of coffee, which was too hot. He had an uneasy feeling that nothing was going to go right today. Not that you could really compare having your mouth burnt by coffee to dying on Tricia Laidlaw’s kitchen floor. ‘Eric was at my house before he went to Tricia’s, wasn’t he?’ he said to Zak. ‘Did he have anything to eat there?’
‘Why, did you have something poisonous lying around in the kitchen?’ said Zak.
‘No, of course not! I just wondered if he was in the habit of sneaking a taste as he went round the kitchens.’
Zak frowned. ‘I’m not sure... Wait a minute! Yes, he asked Mum for a bite of rhubarb, then he dipped it in sugar and ate it. Weird.’ Zak shuddered.
‘I wonder if he ate something at Jemima’s,’ said Christopher. He became aware Zak was looking at him oddly. ‘I’m not really playing at being a detective – I leave that kind of thing to Amaryllis. I was just trying to picture what happened.’
‘He could’ve eaten in the car in between kitchens,’ said Zak.
‘Yes, of course... Was he on his own in the car?’
‘Apart from the driver, yes, I suppose. Ken and Charlotte brought their stuff in one of their vans.’
The interlude with Zak turned out to be the eye of the storm. Almost as soon as they had finished their coffee the Cultural Centre filled up with children in fruit and vegetable outfits which were in various states of disrepair. The children concerned were wild-eyed and uncontrollable but fortunately Christopher and Zak didn’t have to deal with that. They had brought their parents with them, and the parents, mostly looking either harassed or mortified by their offsprings’ behaviour, rushed them through the process of getting out of their procession outfits and back into normal clothes as quickly as was humanly possible. They were all in and out again within ten minutes.
Unfortunately a delegation from one of the local churches came close on their heels.
They advertised their affiliation by holding placards decorated with various slogans. One said ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and another ‘Keep the Sabbath Holy’.
Fortunately they weren’t singing by the time they came into the office.
Christopher had decided if there was to be any hope of opening the Cultural Centre to the public the following day he would have to make a start by clearing a space in his office. He had his back to the door when the church delegation arrived. Zak announced them, saying, ‘Some people to see you, Mr Wilson.’
‘Are you in charge here?’ said a man in a big black coa
t. Three women clustered together behind him, holding the placards amongst them.
‘I’m the director, yes,’ said Christopher.
They all stared at him disbelievingly. He remembered his new look. Presumably it made him appear even less like the head of a cultural organisation than he had done before.
‘So you’re responsible for this whole shambles, are you?’ said the man, and continued without waiting for a reply. ‘We’re all shocked by the disrespect. Everybody knows we always hold our harvest celebrations on the third Sunday in September... I really don’t see why we should have our services disrupted by a rabble of unruly children. One of them climbed on the church wall, you know.’
‘And one of the cameramen was very rude,’ added one of the women, peering out from behind the man. ‘So disrespectful... He stood on a gravestone. He said it was to get a better shot.’
‘It practically amounts to religious discrimination,’ said the man. ‘We need an apology. God needs an apology. You’ve desecrated his holy day. You and your colleagues.’
Christopher’s first thought was that he was profoundly glad Jock McLean wasn’t there to make him laugh inappropriately, which would no doubt have disappointed God in yet another way. His second thought was to wish he had, like Jock, gone straight home when they were released from Tricia’s by the police.
‘I’m very sorry you feel like that,’ he said, borrowing a phrase from a half-remembered and not fully implemented assertiveness course he had once been made to go on for work.
Unfortunately the man took this as an admission of guilt.
He was in the middle of a full-scale rant about sinners, the Sabbath and seeing the light when Deirdre and Oscar walked in.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Oscar, and turned to walk out again.
‘Exactly,’ said the man in the black coat. ‘It’s for His sake that I’m expressing my disappointment and anger. I never thought the day would come when I was ashamed to be a Pitkirtlian.’
Christopher had never thought the day would come when anybody would describe himself as a Pitkirtlian. He doubted if that was the official term in any case.
‘Just go now!’ said Oscar, walking round in front of the small group and raising his voice a little. ‘This lady has been widowed today. Show some respect! Get out before I throw you out.’
The appropriate response to that, since Oscar was about half the size of the man in the black coat and a lot less militant, might have been ‘You and whose army?’ but there must have been an air of authority about Oscar, at least in some people’s eyes, for the small band of believers took a collective step back.
‘You may throw us out today,’ said their leader, ‘but we’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll be stronger than ever. You can cut us down but we’ll grow back up again. That’s the way of the faith.’
They left with dignity.
‘What was all that about?’ said Oscar. ‘Were they Church of Scotland?’
‘It’s the Church of the Lost Sheep,’ said Zak, who was holding a leaflet.
‘Church of the Serendipitous Weirdos,’ said Oscar disrespectfully. ‘Deirdre, have a seat, for goodness’ sake.’
Deirdre was pacing up and down restlessly.
‘Would you like any coffee?’ asked Zak. He threw the leaflet in the waste-paper bin.
‘Maybe you should go and lie down,’ suggested Christopher.
‘I can’t,’ said Deirdre. ‘The police might come round any minute to ask more questions... I’ve told them everything I know. Oscar and I were here the whole time. We were on air. We’ve both got cast-iron alibis.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Oscar, sounding alarmed. ‘The ones with cast-iron alibis always turn out to have done it.’
‘Was it definitely murder, then?’ said Zak.
Oscar and Deirdre both glared at him.
‘That was only a figure of speech,’ said Deirdre. ‘We won’t really need alibis. They’ll find out it was a stroke or something.’
She sounded very much as if she was trying to convince herself.
Christopher for one was not at all convinced.
Chapter 15 The Day after Yesterday
Jock had nightmares about being trapped under a very small table which suddenly turned soft and fluffy like a cloud – and which, as he woke up, turned out to be his duvet. He had always mistrusted the things, but there was no doubt they were warmer and more comfortable than the traditional threadbare blankets that had been handed down in his family for several generations. He had given the last of the blankets to Charlie Smith for the dog, only a few weeks before.
It was too early to go to the Queen of Scots, so he set off for a healthy walk in the autumnal breeze, which had turned into a gale by the time he reached the harbour. There was a new coffee shop in the old shelter nearby. He saw the young man who ran it just outside, standing up the sign that had fallen over. As he approached, he found to his surprise that the man was Giancarlo Petrelli, a former pupil and member of a family of restaurateurs and convicted criminals.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you had to sell coffee for a living,’ said Jock once he was near enough not to have his words whisked away by the wind.
Giancarlo shrugged. ‘It’s my mother’s idea. Part of the family business.’
Jock didn’t ask him about others in the family. There was no point in dragging all that up again.
‘I’ve only agreed to do it until after the Christmas Fair’s finished,’ added Giancarlo. ‘I’m going to America in the New Year.’
‘What Christmas Fair?’ enquired Jock. He was aware that his tone was somewhat sharper than it should have been during a casual conversation, but he found the prospect of a fair extremely alarming.
Giancarlo waved his arms to include the harbour, the Queen of Scots and the road leading to his family restaurant. ‘It’s going to take over this whole area. There’ll be some rides, and there was talk of flooding the road to make a skating rink... I think somebody’s trying to attract market traders from France and Germany.’
‘Madness,’ said Jock. He decided he might just hang around here for a little while. He got out his pipe and filled it, taking his time over the task. The sun had come out and the wind was a bit warmer than it had been even moments before. He could even have a coffee if Giancarlo had it ready.
Charlie Smith and the dog emerged from the pub and came along the river front while Jock was still trying to decide between cappuccino and latte.
‘I hear you were in the thick of it yesterday,’ said Charlie to Jock.
Jock frowned. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Amaryllis. She was in last night drowning her sorrows.’
‘That isn’t like her,’ said Jock thoughtfully, paying Giancarlo for the cappuccino and wandering over to the bench to have a seat. He didn’t approve of people drinking coffee as they walked along.
‘I thought I was going to have to throw her out in the end,’ Charlie admitted. The dog sat down with a heavy sigh next to Jock. ‘She was a bit miffed at Christopher.’
‘Ah,’ said Jock. ‘Deirdre.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
They were silent for a few moments.
Amaryllis came running along. She was dressed all in black, in what Jock McLean couldn’t help thinking of as her secret agent outfit. There might have been a knife or a gun, or both, in the black leather waistcoat that she wore above a plain black jumper and black leggings. She even had on a black woolly hat and matching gloves.
She stopped by the bench.
‘Do you want a coffee?’ said Jock. ‘Giancarlo’s quite an expert with that monstrous machine.’
‘I can’t stop,’ she said, but without moving on. ‘I’ll seize up.’
‘I’ll tell you the whole story of what happened at Tricia Laidlaw’s,’ said Jock.
She gave him a look. ‘You’re an agent of Satan,’ she said, and went to ask Giancarlo for a double espresso.
‘This is the most business I’ve ha
d for weeks,’ Jock heard him say to her before his voice dropped to a murmur and she giggled as if he had said something outrageous but amusing.
‘So what were you doing under the table?’ she asked Jock, bringing the espresso back to the bench. ‘It was a bit early in the day to be as drunk as that.’
‘There was no drink involved,’ growled Jock. He explained again about Darren’s cunning plan and how badly it had gone wrong. The words sounded even more ridiculous than they had when he had said them to the police – twice. But Amaryllis listened intently.
‘Did you see it all from under there?’ she enquired.
‘Not really,’ Jock admitted. ‘But we could hear everything.’
‘We were watching on television in the Queen of Scots. Charlie and Jan and me. Was it all over as quickly as it looked?’
‘More or less,’ said Jock. ‘There was a sort of practice run, when he came in and went out again. After that he just opened the door and said this stupid line about Buttons and Cinderella, and then he came in and Tricia offered him a bit of apple and he took it and fell on the floor. He struggled a bit. You could hear his feet kicking on the vinyl tiles.’
‘A poisoned apple,’ she said. ‘Poetic justice, I suppose. Do you think he’d ever been in Snow White?’
‘Maybe,’ said Jock doubtfully. ‘But nobody knows if it was the apple or something else he’d already eaten – or natural causes, I suppose.’
‘The police are bound to find out one way or the other,’ said Amaryllis, looking at Charlie Smith, who hadn’t offered an opinion.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I haven’t asked you for anything yet,’ she said.
‘No, I can’t get any information out of Keith Burnet. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘I suppose it is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Maybe if we got him drunk...’ she added hopefully.
‘No. Not in my pub, anyway.’
‘We’ll find out sooner or later,’ said Jock.
‘But I want to find out before I read it in the papers,’ said Amaryllis. ‘If it was the apple, that puts Tricia in the frame.’
7 A Tasteful Crime Page 9
