by Caro Ramsay
As the car drives along the dirt track Billy whistles the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
He stops the car in a space marked ‘visitors’, and we get out. Each chalet has space to park one vehicle. Billy indicates that we should go round the back of the chalets.
‘Are you James Bond Secret Squirrel after all? Walking down the main drag will look a damn sight less conspicuous than you coughing and spluttering your way through the undergrowth like some kind of asthmatic pervert.’
‘OK.’ But he is rattled.
‘Look, you’re an old git out for a wee donner – a quiet stroll in an old gits’ paradise. Look as if you’re thinking about buying a chalet. Keep in plain sight. I’m going to skulk about the way us fit young things can.’
And I do.
It takes me forty-five minutes, moving high on the hill, stopping every now and again to look through the trees at who’s about. There aren’t any people here of working age. They’re all older. It’s nearly four pm on a Saturday. I might recognize Eddie from the time he’s been up at Ardno.
The site straddles a small river, and there’s a rather shaky wooden bridge. None of the mobile homes can come across here, so there must be another way in. I look back up the main drag to see Billy chatting away to someone with a similarly well-nourished beer belly. A cigarette is offered from one to the other. Billy seems to be asking about the site, the man is waving his hands about. I move on down to the road to cross the bridge. Then I see the last chalet; the lie of the road means that it is much closer to the sea than the rest. Its front window is almost on the road, making it very difficult for anybody to see in.
Easy for them to see out.
The door is on the far side. It has the same little veranda arrangement the others have. Then I notice the patchwork of wood, due to recent restaining. I walk past the chalet into the field beyond where there is a wall where I can sit. From here I can see any movement from the corner of my eye.
My phone bleeps. It is Billy texting me. I see you, I’ll keep going down to beach to look in front window.
I stay put for ten minutes. Then I see him, a daft fat figure on the beach skimming stones in the water, old enough to know better.
My phone bleeps again. 2 people, 1 sitting, 1 moving about.
I wait for another few minutes, looking around as if I’m waiting for somebody. I see a man put his head out cautiously. A small dark-haired man. He starts whistling something badly –‘It’s Now or Never’. I’ve heard that before. At Ardno, while he was fixing the wall. His fat mate has the limp. This is the wee skinny one. And that wall never got fixed. He knew the house was vulnerable; he had his way in and out.
His back is to me, I can take him easily. I climb off the wall, stretch my quads, my eyes fixed on him. I give him a slow count of ten. He looks up and down, and leans back in to open the door a bit wider. A slim female steps out, dressed in black, dark hair, her hand bandaged.
Mary.
I work out the line of attack. The eyes, the balls, the knees. But I don’t. I retreat, trying to make sense of it. She looks well, even though she’s walking with a slight limp. He grips her elbow, but I’m too far away to see how tight that grip is. He brings her down the steps with his arm locked on hers, keeping her close. A holiday park, this is a good place to have her. No one would think of looking here.
My phone beeps. Is it her?
Yes.
Is she OK?
Think so.
I’ll call Costello.
I turn away, keeping my eyes on the sea, the bright, bright sea, and away from the road above me. I am confused. I think I could get her right now, but what would that mean for the others? This could lead us to them. I take a deep breath and wait. We have Mary. I know there’s another caravan park at the bottom of the Rest and Be Thankful. Is that where they are? Or are they around here? Does he move them about? Or has he moved them since Lorna nearly got away? Then I do turn round, some instinct telling me that what I am seeing is not what I want to see. Mary has big dark glasses on, to protect those blue eyes so sensitive to the sun. Then I realize that it is not what I see, but what I hear.
She is laughing.
She sounds happy.
Two hours later Eddie Underhay is in the back of a police car. One team of police are interviewing the residents while the other is searching for any sign of the other women. Mary has been taken away by two female police officers. I tried to read the look she gave me from the back of the car. Betrayal? Pity?
I am still sitting on the wall, Billy is beside me. Costello doesn’t know what to do with us so we are stuck here like two naughty gnomes.
‘Why was she being so nice to him? She was laughing with him.’
‘Stockholm syndrome?’ suggests Billy.
‘Or have we have misjudged this from the start?’
‘They’ve found the ransom money in that wee hut that houses the electric meter, so the guy was half a million up on this. That’s all the evidence you need. Remember Mary’s diary – you said yourself. She has an A-level in compliance, that woman. She’ll do anything that makes other people happy,’ Billy argues. It all adds up to him.
‘And never try to get back to Charlie?’
‘Do you buy the fact that she left her kid to run off with her fancy man? I buy that one even less.’
‘But the way she was laughing …’
‘Stockholm syndrome, I tell you. Oh shit, here’s the main man.’
Anderson is walking over, carrying a plastic envelope containing a big Jiffy envelope. He raised it as he approaches us.
‘Before you start, there was a farmer down in the field in a blue tractor. He said two guys in a loud car were asking for directions to this place last week. Might be something or nothing, but don’t accuse us of not telling you everything. Those guys were nothing to do with us.’
‘Have you found any trace of anyone else? Of Sophie?’
‘We’re going through the place forensically, inch by inch. If there is something there, Elvie, we’ll find it.’
I catch his look up into the hills. ‘They could be anywhere up there and nobody would ever find them.’
‘Who is he? This Eddie person?’ asks Billy.
‘Eddie Underhay. He’s worked for Parnell Engineering for two years, no previous that we can find. But he’s had access to Parnell’s building sites, to Mary, and I’m sure if we look close enough we’ll find that he had access to the other women as well.’
‘Gillian Porter’s mum had an extension put in,’ I say. ‘It has Eric’s signature porthole window. The Parkes’ neighbours …’
‘Who?’
‘Neil Parke. The boy with the hair? Their neighbours were having work done in the house, you recall the skip? Well, he might have been working there and seen the Parke girl coming and going.’
‘Oh.’
‘And Lorna had had a training pool installed.’
‘You should check if one of Parnell’s building companies did that,’ Billy adds. ‘Or sub-contracted it.’
‘Fuck,’ said Anderson quietly. He pulls out his mobile and starts chattering down it.
‘Right,’ he ends the call, ‘Mary is in hospital. Can you come round to Partickhill for a statement this evening? Any more of this and you two will get your own parking space.’
‘Is Edward Underhay the Night Hunter?’
‘Who knows?’ says Costello. ‘He’s saying nothing, absolutely nothing. Lips as tight as a cat’s arse.’
We are sitting in the nice interview room at Partickhill. It has comfy foam seats that are so low and deep that Billy has to sit forward or his feet don’t touch the ground. It makes him feel slightly vulnerable.
‘Parnell has gone on record as saying that he gave the original ransom demand to the lab,’ Anderson tells us. ‘The DNA result flagged up on our system. He also paid the ransom money. So you are with us up to that point. He claims he knows nothing about the two guys in the loud car. The theory is that Eddie or a
friend of his picked the money up and then brought it down to the chalet, where we found it in the wooden shed that houses the electricity meter. Bloody stupid place to leave it. It was locked at the front but there was an unsecured panel underneath. He obviously thought that nobody would look there.’
‘So that’s all it was? The kidnap of a rich woman for ransom?’
‘Yes, and he nearly got away with it.’
I notice that they are all looking at me.
‘What they’re saying, Elvie,’ Billy says softly, ‘is that this has nothing to do with the abductions of any of the other women.’
‘But he must have known them. Maybe that’s why he’s saying nothing, he doesn’t want to incriminate himself.’
‘No ransom was asked for any of them,’ Anderson points out. ‘You said yourself that the MO was totally different. The timing, the way she was taken from the house. He wasn’t stalking her the way the Night Hunter stalked the others. He simply took his chance when he knew the wall was down. He chatted to Mary, he had it all set up.’
‘Half a million’s not a lot of money. And what was he going to do once he set her free? She knew him!’
‘Maybe he was going to kill her?’
‘Big step for a brickie.’
‘Agreed, and he wasn’t that bright. Parnell thinks that Underhay was disgruntled at being passed over for promotion and the credit crunch wage cut he suffered, so he took the law into his own hands. He maybe sensed Mary might see his point, and she is certainly not reading the riot at him.’
‘Could be a case of Lima syndrome, where the kidnapper falls for the victim, or Stockholm syndrome which is the other way round,’ Costello chips in. ‘They were stuck in that wee log cabin for long periods of time together. Mary is a clever woman and she would have talked to him, agreed with him, tried to keep herself safe. But she’s saying nothing to us. Traumatised. PTSD. Must have been a picnic after living with Parnell.’
‘So Underhay is saying nothing and she’s saying nothing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So how do you know what was going on? Has she seen Parnell?’
Costello gives me a hard, flinty look. She is trying to tell me something she cannot voice.
‘She hasn’t seen him yet, and she says she doesn’t want to.’
I sit there, less than convinced. Costello’s theory does not fit well with me, but then how well do I know Mary? The way she was laughing with her kidnapper, the way she shuts up whenever Parnell raises his voice. Maybe I don’t know her at all. Where did she go when she was supposed to be at book group? The compliant Mary would not have kept that diary; she had already grown into someone else.
‘And Mr Parnell for his part has taken Charlie to the hospital but has agreed not to see his wife. She will stay at the private hospital until she is better. She’s been offered counselling, but so far she is refusing it. We have done everything we can.’
‘Does she have an injury to the back of her leg?’
‘No, she does not. Elvie, stop it. This has nothing to do with Sophie.’
Billy touches my arm on the way out.
‘You can’t just do nothing, not now.’
I look at Billy and his look tells me that nothing is exactly what he is going to do.
SUNDAY, 17 JUNE
Sunday is a day of rest, which is very easy when there is no real work to do. Ardno looks empty and insulted, robbed of its grace by police searches and memories. Areas of the house are still taped off but the phone calls have ceased. To use police parlance, the situation is not being advanced. Charlie is away with his dad. Alex Parnell has paid Billy and me handsomely.
Mary is in the private hospital, still saying nothing. I chinned Costello about what happens now. Paperwork, was all she said. She promised me she hasn’t forgotten about Sophie, my sister has not been sidelined. The investigation is regrouping and refocusing.
‘Is that bullshit?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
At least she was being honest.
‘All is as it was before.’
But that is not true. The team are having a rest, they are taking a breather. Costello and Anderson are being called in to explain themselves to someone high in authority. Costello said having afternoon tea with the Spanish Inquisition would be preferable.
I go for a run, I need to clear my head of all the confusion and rid myself of the feeling that I have not done right by Mary.
My days here are numbered. Parnell hasn’t told me to pack my bags yet but it can’t be far away. I can’t go back to Mum’s house. She blames me for Rod moving out; I took the computer, I questioned the photographs. My mum has always shot the messenger. Grant has locked himself in his room. He wants Sophie back and has now decided that lying in his bed all day crying will achieve this. Rod has been a gentleman; he phoned me earlier today to say that he thinks Grant will refuse to go to the psychiatrist. Can I do anything? The boy is suffering.
I hung up. I am fed up being my family’s keeper.
So I will go back to the flat in Glasgow, which is tainted with memories of Sophie in the bath, bleeding. They have not started running the tests at the lab yet. She is being sidelined, and that is making me angry.
I head up Cruach nam Mult, running swiftly and steadily through the bracken and the fern, taking a path that does not exist. It’s still raining, it has been all day. It’s slippy and marshy underfoot. The wee burns that scar the hillside are full of water; I have to run through those I usually jump easily.
That single sad footprint of Lorna. The rain has got me thinking.
It’s got me thinking about that dog again. It must be huge. Not like Eric’s wee collie Rosie. Her food bowls? No, not that. I am trying to think about something before the food bowls. When Charlie rang us on Mary’s phone. Rain, rain and more rain filling Eric’s basement. Grandpa Cop had said something about him needing to get it pumped out. But Eric lives right on top of a hill. Water drains away. Up here it is running down the slope in sheets. I reset my mind. After the water clock, after the call, putting my jacket on … I feel my arteries start to tingle, it’s coming through. I quicken my stride. Concentrating. Eric knocked a file to the floor, papers spread out on the dirty carpet. I picked them up. Drawings, estimates, columns of figures, a plan for an indoor swimming pool, a training pool. Lorna had a training pool. My mind flicks back to Eric looking out the window of his Land Rover and telling me that people do disappear up here. His farm had been searched, he had told me that, he had been making coffee for the cops.
I turn round and head back down the hill. I need to ask Billy if he really wants to earn his money.
‘It’s a Sunday. He’s never here on a Sunday, is he?’ I slide out of the car, leaving Billy behind. At times like this I feel invincible. I can face anything that Eric Mason can throw at me. Sophie could be here somewhere.
I scan the horizon and the old croft. I feel another spit of rain on my face. The great wheels of the garden clock are moving slowly. I take that movement as a good omen: we are setting something in motion here. A deep grinding sound like a drawbridge being hoisted slowly over a moat rumbles through the ground, coming from somewhere under my feet.
Billy rolls down the window of his Vectra and listens. ‘You feeling the earth move?’
I look down at my trainers, thinking. The generator, Eric had said.
‘That was a joke, hen,’ says Billy, lighting up.
I ignore him. Something makes me look down the hill to the old part of the wood that belongs to the croft. There is a collection of ramshackle old buildings, and wire fences full of gaps. I wonder how far the police took their search. I hear Billy peep the horn. He puts his finger in the curled fingers of his other hand and jerks them apart. Get the finger out.
I look out across the moor; the wind is getting up. There is a smell in the air, something feral and dangerous. I follow the worn strip of grass up to the front door and knock. No answer. I put my hands in my jacket pockets and smile inane
ly as I look around. Anybody looking would think I’m doing exactly what I appear to be doing – waiting for someone to answer the door. But nobody comes and there’s no sound of anybody moving around inside. I knock again and wait a little longer. The rain is starting to come down hard now and the wind is catching at my breath. I tug at the handle on the weather-beaten front door, but it’s locked. There are cobwebs over the panes of glass that cover the top half. I cannot see through them. I go back down the path and signal to Billy that I am going to have a look round the back. I walk round the perimeter of the outhouse ruins and the old sheep steadings crumbled to rubble a long time ago, then look across at the buildings in the cover of the trees; they are even more decrepit. I check the remains of a window, smashed, brutally sharp jagged edges. This is a hundred yards away from the main house, deep in the cover of long grass and bracken.
Looking back, the rear of the main croft has had a lot of work done to it. A row of conifers has been planted to provide some shelter from the wind. A new wicker fence breaks up the land at the back; someone is trying to domesticate this.
A scent drifts towards me. A smell of animal life, like a fox lair. I walk back into the open land, point at Billy and then to the ruins. He responds with a nod and points at his watch. I trot back over, my trainers making a comforting thud as they hit the pillow of damp conifer needles on the floor of the wood. It is immediately warmer in here, protected from the wind. I stand still for a minute, not sure if I’m hearing something or not. The hairs on the back of my neck start to prickle. The trees are close, oppressive. Or is it more than that? I hear another noise, a gentle rustling, like the sound of a light chain being dragged. The noise is more definite this time, but there’s nothing to see apart from piles of wood, and an old hut with half a roof and only three walls. I feel that there is someone standing behind me, hidden in the trees. I turn round. Nobody there, just the shadows of the trees and the wind whistling in the high branches. My heart stops. I stay stock-still. I know I am being watched. And whoever is watching me is invisible.
