7 A Tasteful Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

It wasn’t the right shape for a dog.

  He heard a very faint groan, and he imagined it moved slightly. He remembered the time he and Amaryllis had found a body in the snow. Maybe it was time to make up for their failure to save that one.

  He ran into the road and looked more closely before putting out a hand and touching it where he thought the shoulder might be. There was another groan, louder this time.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said stupidly, in an echo of the words Charlie had used only fifteen minutes before.

  The groan seemed to be mingled with a kind of strangled laugh this time.

  ‘Does it hurt to move?’ he said. He thought he should try and move whoever it was off the road. Although not many cars came round this way, as it didn’t really lead anywhere except to the harbour, there was still the odd one, and if this person was still alive it wouldn’t be very nice for them to be run over as well as everything else. He couldn’t see any blood on the road, but then it was dark and wet, so it might have been invisible.

  He re-phrased his question. ‘Is it all right if I try and move you to the side of the road?’

  There was a grunt. Taking it as assent, he went round to the far side and attempted to roll the person over. At least if he could get him or her to the side of the road he could pause and call an ambulance.

  There was an anguished yelp. He re-considered his plan. If he stood nearby, in the middle of the road, he could stop any car that came along – if it didn’t knock him down – and he could call for help on his mobile phone at the same time.

  He was pleased to find his phone was both in his pocket and exhibiting some signs of life. Amaryllis would have been proud of him.

  Where was Amaryllis when he needed her? He realised one reason he was so clueless when it came to dealing with this kind of thing was that he had come to rely on her to do the right thing in unusual situations. He felt guilty that he had gone off to the Queen of Scots with Deirdre while ignoring Amaryllis’s attempts to chase the refuse truck.

  This was no time to mull over things, he told himself sternly, taking up a position right in the middle of the road and navigating to the right place on his phone. It would be helpful if somebody else happened to come along just at this moment, but it wasn’t essential. He could do everything that needed to be done.

  After he had rung for an ambulance – surely they could make a case for having one permanently stationed in Pitkirtly – his fingers, apparently operating without being connected in any meaningful way to his brain, made their way to Amaryllis’s number and pressed the right spot on the screen.

  ‘You have reached the number for Amaryllis Peebles. Please identify yourself with the agreed sequence of code words.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ he said.

  ‘Correct,’ said Amaryllis, laughing.

  ‘What’s the point in pretending to be your own answering machine?’

  ‘I do it for fun, Christopher. You should try it some time. What’s wrong?’

  ‘There’s somebody lying in the road. Between the Queen of Scots and the harbour.’ He glanced round. ‘Quite near the new coffee place.’

  There was a pause. ‘Giancarlo’s coffee kiosk?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one.’

  ‘I’m on my way. Be careful.’

  He replaced the phone in his pocket, wondering what there was to be careful about. Deciding he would almost certainly hear a car coming round the corner before he saw it, he returned to the huddled shape in the road.

  This time there was a coughing sound, and words spoken in a low, hoarse voice. ‘Help me up.’

  ‘Do you think...?’

  ‘I can walk. Get me off the road.’

  The shape got to its knees, then, unsteadily, to its feet. At last he saw the face.

  ‘Giancarlo!’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Giancarlo. ‘Let me lean on you – no, not that side.’

  They stumbled to the side of the road.

  ‘Let’s see if I can make it to the bench,’ said Giancarlo.

  They staggered a bit further.

  ‘Now – help me sit down.’

  ‘I’ve called an ambulance. It might have been better not to move you.’

  Giancarlo sat very still on the bench. It looked as if it was hurting him even to breathe, but he was bolt upright, long legs curled under him.

  ‘Broken ribs,’ he wheezed, shivering.

  It seemed like an age until Amaryllis arrived, jogging along, dressed all in black. The ambulance people had called back by then to say they were in the middle of a three-mile tailback on the motorway.

  ‘Go and get some blankets and coats from Charlie,’ she said to Christopher. ‘I’ll wait with him.’

  It wasn’t until he was on his way back with two blankets, one of which seemed to have been used by the dog, that Christopher realised she had quite likely wanted him out of the way while she interrogated the boy.

  Chapter 27 Amaryllis On the Case

  Giancarlo refused to go with the paramedics, so they strapped up his ribs, told him to take painkillers and advised him strongly to go to his own doctor as soon as possible. Amaryllis took him home with her. She had wanted to take him round to the Petrelli family home which was above their restaurant, but he refused to go there too. He said his mother would scream and yell at him for waking her up in the middle of the night and then fuss around until he went out of his mind. This argument seemed irrefutable.

  Christopher had then offered to take Giancarlo home with him. She reminded him sharply that he already had two house-guests he was hoping to get rid of soon.

  Amaryllis didn’t want to make it seem as if she wanted to hang on to the young man for herself, but she was genuinely worried for his safety, and she thought the easiest way to look after him would be to stick by him night and day.

  ‘Oh, what a sacrifice!’ she told herself sarcastically as she and Giancarlo said good night to Christopher and walked at about a third of her normal speed down the hill that led to Merchantman Wynd, where her flat was. She had previously entertained both Zak and Stewie there, so the least she could do was to offer hospitality and refuge to their tall, dark, handsome friend.

  ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ said Christopher, looming up behind them. He must have run to catch up again, for he was out of breath, ‘Jock McLean.’

  ‘What about Jock McLean?’ said Amaryllis crossly.

  ‘He would have let Giancarlo use his spare room if we went round and asked him nicely.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Really. I don’t mind in the least.’

  She carried on down the road, Giancarlo limping at her side. She could almost feel Christopher’s eyes on her all the way to the turning, but Amaryllis wasn’t easily discomfited by someone gazing at her back view.

  ‘Thanks, Amaryllis,’ said Giancarlo as they went upstairs to her flat. ‘It’s nice of you to do this. I don’t think I’ll be able to go home until the bruising goes down a bit. My mum would have a fit. She’d probably call my uncle and get him to deal with it. Our family doesn’t need any more of that.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. She too had experienced Giulia Petrelli’s anger in the past.

  In the light of her white austere sitting-room, the bruising on his face stood out like a stain. The paramedics had suggested arnica, but she didn’t have any. She knew they had given him pain-killers.

  ‘Do you want to get straight to bed, or will I get you a drink?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know if I want to lie down flat just yet,’ he said. ‘Can I sit here at the table? Tea would be nice.’

  ‘I’ll put some extra pillows in your room,’ she said. ‘Just normal tea or do you want something fancy?’

  He tried to shrug his shoulders, winced and sat down on one of the hard chairs. ‘Anything, thanks.’

  ‘So,’ she said to him once they were facing each other over the table, almost like adversaries or interrogator and suspect, ‘you said the apple knocked you
down. Are you sure you don’t have any idea who was driving it?’

  ‘I didn’t see his face,’ said Giancarlo evasively.

  Ha! He still hadn’t learned there was no point in trying to evade her questions. She was a highly skilled interrogator – the best there was.

  ‘His face? So it was a man, then?’

  ‘It might have been. I was just using the word in a kind of unisex way.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He closed his mouth firmly. He closed his eyes too. There was an angry-looking bruise down the side of his face, a cut across his forehead and a graze on his nose. It almost looked as if he had been beaten up, but then he might have fallen on his face on the road for that matter. Amaryllis tried hard to keep an open mind.

  ‘Do you have any enemies that you know of?’ she said.

  He smiled lop-sidedly. ‘No more than usual.’

  She thought of something she had been wondering about.

  ‘What is it about Charlotte?’ she said. ‘Do you fancy her?’

  ‘Why, are you jealous?’ he said, opening his eyes suddenly.

  ‘Let’s begin again,’ said Amaryllis. She thought she had probably controlled the blush that threatened to spread on to her face. It was somewhere under the polo neck of her black jumper at the moment. ‘Why were you watching Charlotte earlier when she and Ken walked towards the harbour?’

  ‘I thought I remembered seeing her somewhere before,’ said Giancarlo.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He took a sip of tea from the mug Christopher had bought her not long ago with the legend ‘I don’t believe a word of it’ written right round it. He turned the mug in his hands to read it. ‘Very appropriate,’ he commented.

  ‘It isn’t that I don’t believe you,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It’s that I don’t think you’re telling me all you know.’

  ‘All I know,’ he said slowly. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  She was conscious of a feeling of gratitude that she had never had to deal with him in a professional capacity, and at the same time a wish that she were twenty or even ten years younger. At the moment she felt as if she might as well have been his granny.

  ‘Charlotte. Was she the one who was threatening Eric when you saw him down near the harbour that night?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said slowly. He suddenly winced again. ‘I think I’d better go and lie down now.’

  ‘Giancarlo,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Be careful.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and got up from the table, leaning on it hard. She could see his knuckles whiten as he gripped the edge, and she knew the wave of pain that ran across his face couldn’t have been faked. But she also thought he knew more than he was telling her.

  Broken ribs or not, he was up in good time the following morning, forcing himself to eat some toast and saying he didn’t need to go to the doctor.

  Amaryllis admired his fortitude, but rang up and made an appointment for him, then ordered a taxi to take him to the surgery.

  ‘You should really report this to the police.’

  She would have been very surprised if he had agreed to this, but she had to suggest it. It was what Christopher would have said, and in this case she knew he would have been right.

  He crunched the last crust of toast and smiled. She hoped he wasn’t planning to deal with it all on his own. His mother had already been through enough without having to bury a son.

  At the last minute, when the taxi had arrived and was waiting downstairs, he turned to her and said, ‘She said something strange.’

  ‘Charlotte?’

  He nodded. ‘It was when I saw her the first time. When she was talking to Eric. She said: I won’t let anybody destroy my father’s work.’

  ‘My father’s work,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I wonder what that meant.’

  He tried to shrug, and almost yelped in pain.

  ‘You can come back here if you want,’ she said. ‘After you’ve seen the doctor. Is there anywhere else you can go?’

  He grimaced, not in pain this time but, she thought, in annoyance. ‘I’d better go home now after all. My mother will want to look after me. I have to let her do that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Amaryllis, trying to smile and look positive. ‘Don’t forget to be careful though.’

  ‘Whoever it is, they won’t get past my mother,’ he said, and left.

  ‘My father’s work,’ she said to herself in the empty flat. ‘What could that possibly mean?’

  Chapter 28 Yet another telephone call

  Jock knew even as it unfolded that it was only a dream, but he was scared all the same. He was being chased down Pitkirtly High Street by a gigantic apple, which was going to roll right over him if he stopped. The only thing for it was to keep going, but he was getting out of breath, and there were school kids in the way all dressed up as sprouts, and he was afraid of knocking them over...

  Then the school bell rang out stridently, and he panicked briefly about being late. The headmaster didn’t look kindly on teachers under his command who weren’t in school before the bell rang so that they were mentally prepared to deal with all the day’s trials and tribulations.

  He opened his eyes. The bell was still going. It was the telephone.

  He flung on his dressing-gown and galloped down the stairs, stumbling on the final step and stubbing his toes against the cupboard in the hall. It had better be something important. After all it was too early in the morning for the parasites who worked for bloodsucking financial companies to have begun the daily task of tormenting anyone who had ever used a bank with their offers to help them reclaim money they didn’t know they had even handed over in the first place.

  ‘Yes!’ he barked into the receiver, in the mood for telling unwanted callers to go and do something anatomically impossible with their computer databases.

  ‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘You – you – I hope this is urgent.’

  ‘It’s past nine o’clock,’ she said reprovingly. ‘It is quite important, though.’

  ‘All right.’ He slumped against the wall.

  ‘Giancarlo Petrelli. Somebody attacked him yesterday – about mid-evening. In the road by his coffee kiosk. He said he had gone back there to collect the day’s takings because he’d forgotten earlier. Christopher found him lying in the road.’

  ‘Is he – OK? Alive?’ Giancarlo had once been a pupil of Jock’s, and he still felt a certain fatherly protectiveness towards the boy, even though he hadn’t been the easiest child to teach, and had apparently distracted all the girls in the class just by his presence.

  ‘Yes, he’s alive. Cracked ribs and bruising. He says someone drove the apple at him.’

  ‘And you suspect Dave?’

  ‘No, of course not! If Dave had driven the apple at him he’d have missed by a mile. No, it’s someone with a motive. They want to silence him.’

  ‘Why? Is it his – um – family again?’

  ‘Family as in family?’ She gave the word significant emphasis. ‘No, not this time. I think it was Charlotte. One of the television crowd.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Why should it be Charlotte?’ Jock thought this over for a moment and added, ‘No, don’t tell me – I know. You already had your suspicions of her, didn’t you?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘You were talking to her on the way up to the hotel. It sounded as if you were trying to get something out of her.’

  ‘It’s different now. I need to find out something more specific about her. And I thought you could help.’

  ‘Me? What made you think of me?’ On the one hand, Jock was slightly flattered. In normal circumstances he was the last person Amaryllis would ask for help. On the other hand, he had an uneasy feeling that when Amaryllis said ‘you could help’ what she really meant was ‘you could put your life in danger’.

  ‘Well, I need to do some surveillance today. And
Christopher will probably be at work. You were the only person I could think of who might have time.’

  ‘Oh great, I was the last person you thought of, then.’

  ‘Not really – I did wonder about Jemima, but I know Dave would kill me if anything happened to her.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jock, understanding it all now. ‘So I was the only disposable person you could think of.’

  ‘No! I know you can take care of yourself. Even if it’s only by taking cover until everything’s OK. There might be a certain element of danger in this.’ She paused, and then added, ‘But if it goes according to plan, I should be watching your back all the time.’

  ‘All right, all right, you’ve persuaded me.’

  ‘I need to find out about Charlotte’s father.’

  ‘Her father? Why?’

  ‘Never mind that for now. I want you to do some research. Start by asking Deirdre or Ken – even Oscar, if you can catch him. He’s left the hotel in a police car. Deirdre’s still in her room. Ken’s having breakfast.’

  ‘Where are you? At the hotel?’

  ‘I’m behind a newspaper in the foyer,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?’

  ‘Cliché or not, it works.’

  ‘So you want me to ask Deirdre and Ken about Charlotte’s father? Do we even know her last name?’

  ‘No. But one of them will know. Start with that, and then see if you can find anything online. Do you know how to use the internet yet, or will I have to get Jemima to help after all?’

  ‘I’ve taken a class,’ Jock muttered. ‘But I haven’t got the internet at home. Just the phone.’

  ‘After you’ve found out her last name, go down to the Cultural Centre and borrow a computer there. Maybe Zak can give you a hand with it – but don’t tell him why. And for goodness’ sake don’t tell Christopher, or he’ll try and stop us. This is all on a need to know basis.’

  When Amaryllis reverted to worn-out phrases from spy novels, he knew she must be serious.

  ‘So will you be watching Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes. But don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Anything else, now you’ve got me out of bed?’ he enquired.