Requiem

by Clare Francis

  ‘Mrs McKay? Aye, that’s me – for my sins. Only one McKay round here.’ She laughed as if it were a great joke and, scrabbling deep in her bag, came out empty-handed and threw up her hands in a theatrical gesture of despair. She reached under the frayed door mat and pulled out a key. ‘I’ve no idea why I bother,’ she exclaimed, her eyes dancing. ‘The whole place knows where I keep it.’

  Parking her trolley in the hall, she waved Daisy into the house with great sweeping movements, like a policeman directing traffic. The hall, dark with ancient furniture and elaborate wallpaper, smelled strongly of lavender polish.

  ‘Now what can I do for you?’ asked Mrs McKay, fighting her plump arms out of her voluminous plastic raincoat to reveal a tent-like floral dress that flowed over her bosom like water over a dam.

  Daisy explained that she was trying to trace Peter Duggan, and invented an acquaintance who was anxious to find him.

  ‘Come.’ The great sweeping movements led Daisy to a parlour with four circular tables laid for breakfast, with overturned cups sitting neatly in their saucers, marmalade and honey jars and solid stainless-steel cruet sets.

  ‘You’ll be taking a cup of tea?’ Mrs McKay sang gaily, waving Daisy to a table and disappearing into the adjoining kitchen. ‘Peter Duggan – aye, he stayed here quite a wee while,’ she called through the open door. ‘A bit of a rascal if you ask me.’ She gave a chortle. ‘Not that I’ve the evidence for that statement, you understand.’ She popped her head round the door and winked heavily. ‘Just ma canny old instincts.’

  ‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’

  ‘No, no – not that one. Travel light, travel free, no questions asked. They’re all the same.’

  ‘Did he ever say where he came from?’

  She pulled a thoughtful face and disappeared again, returning with a tray of tea things which she plonked noisily on the table. ‘Now that you come to ask, I’m not sure he ever said.’ She poured out the tea and sat down, exhaling noisily. ‘That’s strange, is it not?’ she declared, affecting a look of cheerful puzzlement. ‘I usually get the entire story, you understand – the entire story.’ She giggled girlishly, raising a shoulder to her plump cheek.

  ‘You must have some tales to tell, Mrs McKay.’

  ‘Indeed. But I’m careful who I tell them to,’ she said, her eyes darting up to Daisy’s.

  Daisy wasn’t sure if this was an announcement or a warning. ‘Did he say where he used to work?’ she asked. ‘The name of a company, an airline?’

  Mrs McKay shook her head vigorously, so that her bun wobbled precariously on her head.

  ‘Nothing like that?’

  ‘I regret not.’ She drained her cup and, under cover of her habitual smile, gave Daisy a long and careful look. ‘This acquaintance of his,’ she said drawing the words out like beads on a string, ‘he just wants to get in touch, does he? Or might it be a she?’ She wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘The friend simply wants to contact Peter,’ Daisy confirmed. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Many would find that an unlikely story,’ she crowed. ‘Many would suspect that this friend might be a woman from his past, or mebbe someone in a wee dispute about money …’

  ‘Nothing like that, really.’

  ‘Many would not believe you,’ she echoed, ‘but then I’ve always gone where angels fear to tread.’ She leaned across the table and tapped Daisy’s hand. ‘I always go by instinct. It’s not let me down yet.’

  Daisy ventured: ‘So, Duggan – you might have some idea where …?’

  But the ebullient hands were making flamboyant hushing gestures, the eyes closing, the face, absorbed with sudden concentration, tilting towards the ceiling. A moment of silence then, with a sudden flash of the eyes she announced: ‘He had family – ’ Her hands described windmills in the air. ‘Somewhere in Surrey. Began with a D. Do-Doo-Da – ’

  ‘Datchet?’

  ‘Dorking!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘A sister. In Dorking. His only family, he said. I got the impression he was fond of her. The sister was on her own. She’d married a free spirit.’ She lowered her voice waggishly. ‘That is, a man who felt free to go off and leave her with three children. Peter played the uncle. He liked that. Fond of the kiddie-winks, he was. Bought them presents.’

  ‘Her name – did he ever mention it?’

  ‘No, no … He never told me that.’ She tapped her temple. ‘Or else it’s clean gone oot ma head, which is entirely possible. But Dorking’s not so large, is it? The way Peter talked about it I got the impression it was just a wee place. You could ask about, could you not?’

  ‘Well …’ Daisy didn’t know much about Dorking, except that it was one of the larger towns within commuter distance of London.

  Her disappointment must have shown in her face because Mrs McKay added brightly: ‘Try the pubs. You’ll be sure to find him supporting a bar or two. I tell you, I wheeled him to his bed more times than I care to mention.’ And she chuckled at the memory, the gleam of old desires in her eyes.

  Daisy left her phone number, and as an afterthought Campbell’s too, in case Mrs McKay’s memory should undergo a sudden improvement.

  ‘Sorry I was not more help,’ said Mrs McKay swaying vigorously through the hall.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ said Daisy.

  ‘You’ll give him my warm regards?’ she asked, opening the door and leaning coquettishly against it.

  ‘Of course.’

  She called down the path. ‘I wish you luck.’

  Campbell was asleep when Daisy opened the car door. Stretching and unrolling his great frame from the seat, he shot her a bleary glance. ‘Anythin’?’ he asked.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Daisy replied. ‘Just Dorking.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Daisy shook her head. ‘Come on!’ she cried, making gee-up-and-go gestures. ‘The Stirling road.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘We’re going to see Jeannie Buchanan at work. It’s off the Stirling road.’

  Campbell started the engine in silence though she could see all sorts of questions forming behind the lowering brows and narrow lips.

  Leaving Balinteith, they drove eastwards through the flat farmlands of the Forth valley, between fields flecked with sheep and young lambs and the occasional white-blossoming tree. Everything was touched with the sharp yellow-green of early summer. To the north, in the far distance, the horizon was broken by soft grey hills that merged into a sky of milky radiance.

  ‘The summer,’ Daisy murmured.

  Campbell peered through the windscreen as if noticing his surroundings for the first time. ‘More colour in the Highlands.’

  She smiled. ‘Tell me, Campbell, what do Highlanders think of people like Nick Mackenzie, people who buy up the big estates?’

  He waved a hand philosophically. ‘We’ve been invaded by the English so many times once more is neither here nor there.’

  ‘But there’s resentment?’

  ‘There’s always resentment,’ he grunted. ‘We’re still smartin’ over the Clearances an’ that was two hundred year’ ago. The estates would not exist at all if the Scots had not been driven from the land.’ He waved a hand. ‘But Mr Mackenzie – och, he’s all right.’

  ‘No problems with people along the loch? No difficulties?’

  Campbell shifted in his seat. ‘No,’ he said carefully. ‘No. Why should you think that?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said.

  It was one by the time they reached the village where Jeannie had said she worked. The Bonaccord Savings Bank was a modest stone building occupying a prominent position next to the grocery store. Campbell offered to come in with Daisy, but retreated, looking hurt, when she said: ‘No, it would only frighten her.’ Taking pity on him, she declared: ‘You’re too big, Campbell! You’d frighten anybody!’

  The counter clerk looked disconcerted by the nature of her request, but, after ceremoniously locking his cash drawer, left his window to summon Jeannie. A minute later s
he appeared through a side door. Her child-like eyes rounded at the sight of Daisy.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Daisy said. ‘There was just one more thing.’

  ‘More?’ she whispered, glancing over her shoulder.

  ‘Last night, there was something else, wasn’t there?’ Daisy suggested. ‘Something you couldn’t tell me?’

  Jeannie’s eyes grew, she seemed to undergo an inner struggle, then, with a sigh that was almost a moan, she began in a sudden and breathless rush: ‘Aye, aye. It was the notifications – there was not always the time to amend them. It was not my fault, it was Mr Keen – always sending new instructions, pushing us, changing things, altering dates. There wasn’t the time …’ She paused, misgivings in her face, as if she realized she might already have said too much.

  ‘Amend them – in what way?’

  ‘When the spraying date was changed, when the weather was bad, to tell everyone who should have been told.’

  ‘So you’d send out one set of notifications and then when the date had to be cancelled you were meant to send out another lot with a new date on them?’

  ‘Aye. But there was not the time. It was Mr Keen. Always changing everything. I did my best, I always tried to do my best …’

  ‘Not your fault.’

  But Jeannie was not to be reassured. ‘It was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but what could I do?

  ‘But were there mishaps, Jeannie – things that happened as a result?’

  ‘Aye.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Sometimes I heard Mr Duggan joking about cattle and sheep and how he’d given them a dusting. That’s what he used to call it, giving them a dusting. I knew what he meant. He meant he’d sprayed them. It didn’t bother him. In fact, he used to laugh.’ There was a glint of tears in her eyes.

  ‘Not your fault,’ Daisy repeated.

  ‘I should have said something! I should have told someone!’

  ‘How often did it happen – the notifications not getting amended?’

  ‘Four times. Maybe five.’

  ‘On jobs by Loch Fyne?’

  The doors sounded and someone came into the bank. They both waited for the customer to approach the counter and begin to speak.

  Daisy repeated her question in an undertone.

  Jeannie looked imploringly at her, as if she would have given anything not to answer. Finally she whispered miserably: ‘Aye. Up there, by Loch Fyne. Once …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Once … I had no time at all.’

  ‘No time to amend the notification, you mean?’

  Her lower lip buckled, a tear plopped onto her blouse. Daisy fumbled in her bag and found a tissue.

  ‘No time to send it,’ Jeannie said, pressing the tissue to her eyes. ‘Nothing was ever sent, nothing at all …’ Her voice was almost inaudible.

  ‘And where exactly was it, this forest? Do you remember the name?’

  She shook her head firmly.

  ‘It wasn’t the Fincharn Estate, was it?’

  But try as she might Jeannie was past further remembrance. She thought it was on the north side of the loch, then the south and then maybe up towards Loch Awe.

  ‘I didn’t sleep last night for thinking of it,’ Jeannie moaned, blowing her nose. ‘I knew it would come out. I knew I should have told you.’

  ‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ Daisy squeezed her hand. ‘Thanks.’ She started for the door and turned back. ‘By the way – did Duggan ever mention anything about Dorking?’

  ‘Dorking?’ Jeannie echoed. ‘Dorking?’ She touched her head, as if touching her memory. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

  ‘Or a sister?’

  ‘A sister … Oh, aye. Aye, he talked of her.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He talked about getting down to see her. He said he might take her on holiday. At least I think it was a holiday …’

  ‘Did she have a name?’

  ‘I never heard it.’

  The clerk was pressing his face hard against the counter window in an attempt to get a look at them. ‘You’ll call me?’ Daisy said. ‘If there’s anything else?’

  She nodded effusively.

  Daisy was almost through the door when Jeannie called: ‘Wait – ’ and hurried after her. ‘His sister … I believe he said she had a wee shop. Clothes, I think it was. Aye, clothes. He said she went to London to purchase things for it. Perhaps it’s there, the shop, in that place you said?’

  Perhaps it was. But then again, perhaps it wasn’t.

  Jeannie held open the door and hovered, reluctant to let her go. ‘The notifications,’ she said. ‘I knew it was wrong at the time. But it was the job, you see – there were no other jobs to be found. I was frightened of losing it.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Daisy said, remembering a phone conversation she’d had with Alan that morning.

  Heading west again, Daisy and Campbell took the first road south and spent the rest of the day in Glasgow attempting to trace the elusive Mr Keen. The address of Acorn Flying Systems turned out to be a converted stable at the back of an old house on the northern outskirts of the city. The windows were dirty but not so thickly covered that one couldn’t peer through and see that the two interconnecting rooms were empty. There was a patch of hastily applied paint on the part of the door where a company name would have been positioned. The main house had also been converted into offices and was currently occupied by a firm of chartered surveyors who expressed an enthusiastic but resigned interest in tracing Mr Keen over the small matter of six months’ rent.

  Three aircraft supply and maintenance companies based in and around Glasgow Airport were also anxious to see Mr Keen again. As one manager put it, you could string Acorn’s unpaid bills round the passenger terminal and still have enough to paper a house. Out of habit rather than expectation, Daisy called in on the Glasgow CID to discover that Keen’s fame knew no bounds and that they too were interested in locating him, this time over a complaint of false accounting and embezzlement brought by an erstwhile co-director of Keen’s in another defunct venture, a time-share company.

  No one knew where Keen was now, but the police thought he’d moved to the Costa Blanca.

  Chapter 18

  THE COURT OFFICIALS hadn’t allowed enough room for the press. The four seats they had placed behind a single table were already occupied by the local boys, and a group of three journalists stood waiting for the ushers to bring more chairs. The officials hadn’t made the same mistake with the public seating however and there was room enough for the eighty or so spectators.

  Through the high-set windows the sky was very dark and the rain that had threatened since dawn was already beginning to spill down the glass. The photographers encamped outside would be getting wet, a thought that did not upset Daisy too much. Inside, the overhead lighting was poor and badly spaced, throwing deep shadows which added to the aura of gloom that seemed to pervade the room.

  There was a raised top bench where the judge – by Scottish law, entitled sheriff – would sit, and to the right the oddly named procurator fiscal. Daisy had checked her Scottish law: the sheriff would decide the verdict, while the procurator fiscal, a full-time law officer who variously fulfilled the tasks of prosecutor, investigator and coroner, would lead the evidence. Interested parties could be represented by their own counsel. There was no jury. The clerk and a shorthand writer sat to one side of the bench while the witnesses, including Campbell, sat in the hall outside.

  Everyone was waiting, and everyone knew what they were waiting for. It was only a minute before ten when a sudden movement of heads marked Nick Mackenzie’s entrance. He strode quickly up the aisle, flanked by three men, and took a seat in the front row. He was wearing a well-cut charcoal suit with a white shirt. Only his hair was a little on the wild side. Once seated, he kept his head rigidly towards the front and Daisy could not see his face. The plump dark man sitting on his left turned to whisper in his ear, and she recognized David Weinberg. The man to
his right stood up and went to speak to the procurator fiscal; this had to be his lawyer. As the lawyer returned to his seat the usher handed him a note. Daisy knew it was a note because she had written it. As she watched for the lawyer’s reaction some people in an intervening row stood up and obscured her view. By the time they sat down again the lawyer was back in his seat and she could no longer see his face. But she noticed that Nick’s head was bent forward, as if he were reading the note. When his head came up again, the lawyer inclined towards him and they had a discussion. It was very short.

  Then – nothing.

  They didn’t need her then. In a way she was relieved: her evidence wouldn’t have added a great deal, and unsupported guesswork never went down well in court.

  The sheriff entered. They all stood. The proceedings were under way.

  First to give evidence were the police. It was the standard stuff, delivered in the flat monotone affected by police officers everywhere. The alarm being raised, the layout of the estate, the search for the missing woman, the call to the upper glen, the finding of the body beside the pool.

  Nick’s lawyer asked some ancilliary questions which were clearly intended to establish that a well-planned search had already been under way when the police arrived.

  Next came the police surgeon, who had examined the body on the night of the death. He estimated that death had occurred some time during the day in question. It was impossible to be more precise because of the temperature of the water in which the body had lain. Questioned by the procurator fiscal, he expanded on the methods used to estimate the time of death, and how they were complicated by temperature.