She shone her torch on a crumpled mound of men’s clothes, which, as they looked, began to stir. There was another groan. Christopher leaned down to investigate, sniffing the air for the tell-tale smell of alcohol. But the only scent that he could identify was that of some sort of middle-of-the-range after-shave. He looked more closely, squatting down beside the man, who was lying on his front with his head turned round to one side. Amaryllis lowered herself gingerly to her knees, turning the torch so that it shone on the man’s head. Christopher gasped as he saw the tangles of brownish hair, the unevenness of the scalp, and something that, when he tentatively touched it, was warm and sticky.
‘His eyes are flickering,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Call an ambulance. And I suppose we’d better get the police too.’
As Christopher stood up and fished out his mobile phone, he reflected that it was a long time since he had used it so much. He hoped it wouldn’t wear out under the strain. He made the call; in the background, Amaryllis talked to the man in a soft voice, asking him who he was and what had happened. He didn’t know whether her main motive was keeping the man conscious for his own good or simply trying to gather all possible information.
When he turned back to the scene, having convinced the emergency services that yes, it was a genuine call from Pitkirtly again and he wasn’t a teenage hoax caller jumping on the bandwagon, Amaryllis was shining the torch in the man’s eyes.
‘What’s that for?’ he asked, afraid the man had died while he was still arguing with the emergency operator.
‘I’m looking to see if he’s got mud-coloured eyes,’ said Amaryllis. ‘He fits the description apart from that, and I’ve never seen him before.’
‘That doesn’t mean he hasn’t lived all his life in Pitkirtly,’ said Christopher. ‘He maybe just doesn’t frequent the same places as you.’
‘Well, we've both frequented this lane all right,’ said Amaryllis, shining the torch all up and down the man. The jacket looked darkish – not necessarily brown, but it was hard to tell in the torchlight. What were the other things Maisie Sue had mentioned?
‘Black shoes, well polished,’ said Amaryllis, shining the torch on them as she spoke. ‘He’s not answering any questions – I think he’s slipping in and out of consciousness. It’s a bit of a pain – we won’t find out anything extra before the police come along. I thought we might get ahead of them.’
‘Why do we want to get ahead of them?’ said Christopher. ‘Can’t we just sit back and let them solve all this?’
‘It’s in case anything goes wrong before they do anything,’ said Amaryllis, sounding exasperated. ‘They’re all tied up in red tape – we’re not.’
‘They’ve got the whole power of all their computer systems, resources, people will tell them things because they have to,’ said Christopher. ‘We don’t have any of that.’
‘Do you want to help Jemima or not?’
‘Of course I want to help Jemima, but this isn’t really about her, is it?’
‘I’m afraid it might be – that’s why I think it would help to be one jump ahead,’ said Amaryllis. ‘There are just too many coincidences. Why would somebody start wiping out all her cousins if they didn’t intend to get to her sooner or later?’
‘But there could be some other completely different link between Lorelei McAndrew and Jim Halloran that we can’t even begin to guess at!’ argued Christopher.
The man groaned again, and Amaryllis used it as an excuse to turn her back on Christopher and keep an eye on the victim. He thought she would have gone through the man’s pockets looking for identification if he hadn’t been around. But he watched her like a hawk – or more appropriately an owl, now that it was so dark – and there was no sign that she had done anything untoward.
At last the paramedics arrived, closely followed by the police.
‘I can’t believe we’ve had to come to Pitkirtly again!’ said one of the paramedics to Christopher. ‘Third time in two days – fourth if you count the body at Kincardine.’
‘This one isn’t a body,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Yet. So hadn’t you better get a move on taking him to hospital?’
‘Ooh, she’s got a way with words, hasn’t she?’ said the paramedic to Christopher, who muttered something non-committal.
‘I think he fancied you,’ commented Amaryllis as they watched the ambulance speed off down the hill.
He stared at her. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘He kept brushing past you accidentally on purpose. Didn’t you notice?’
‘No. Don’t be silly!’
The police arrived. They were slightly indignant to find the victim had already been spirited away from the scene, and they seemed resigned to find Amaryllis and Christopher there.
‘The Chief’s not going to like this,’ said one of them. ‘He’s had enough of you already.’
‘I don’t know why that should be,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’re exceptionally helpful members of the public.’
‘Who seem to be involved in everything bad that happens around here,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Smith, emerging from his car at the other side of the loading bay.
‘Through no fault of our own,’ said Amaryllis. Christopher wasn’t sure whether to envy her easy manner with the police, or to deplore it. He had the feeling that it might get her into serious trouble sooner or later. Unfortunately he also had the feeling that she wouldn’t care.
‘So, what are you two doing here?’ asked Mr Smith. ‘It’s not exactly a salubrious place to hang out, is it?’
‘We were looking for somebody,’ muttered Christopher.
‘Oh, yes? And who might that be?’
‘The man with the mud-coloured eyes,’ said Christopher, aware that he sounded ridiculous but incapable of doing anything about it.
‘Mud-coloured eyes? Oh dear, oh dear. Would you both please come and sit in the car for a few moments until we get this straight.’
While they were sheepishly getting into the car like teenagers who had been caught shoplifting from Accessorize, Christopher heard Mr Smith despatching two of his police officers to the hospital to monitor the progress of the mystery man and write down anything he said. He thought he heard the words ‘brown eyes’ but he decided he was imagining things.
In the car, Amaryllis did the talking. He was relieved to find that she came clean about their quest for the man with the mud-coloured eyes, and the fact that they suspected the victim in the lane was the same person. She was also surprisingly honest about their fears for Mrs Stevenson.
‘Anything to add, Mr Wilson?’ said Mr Smith at the end of her account, turning to Christopher.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘You don’t have any idea of who this man might be and what he’s doing in Pitkirtly? You aren't aware of any links to the deaths of Lorelei McAndrew or Jim Halloran? Or any other relevant information?’
Christopher wasn’t sure whether his feeling that Mrs Stevenson had probably returned to the computer to do more genealogical research as soon as the police had left was relevant or not. He pictured himself in court having to testify on the subject, and the defence lawyer ranting about idle speculation. He might even be locked up for contempt of court.
‘Could this be another of Mrs Stevenson’s long-lost cousins?’ asked the chief inspector.
‘Your guess is as good as ours, Mr Smith,’ said Amaryllis, smiling brightly.
Christopher suddenly thought of something he could ask the police.
‘When can Mrs Stevenson go back to her house?’
‘Not tonight,’ said Mr Smith. ‘We’ve still got some forensics to do. I’ve sent the team home for the night – they’ve done all they can with the garden, and we can’t work in the dark without floodlights. And overtime,’ he added gloomily.
‘A policeman’s lot,’ said Amaryllis.
‘Exactly. Well, it looks as if that’s all you two can tell me for the moment. Just don’t leave town. And if you think of an
ything else that could have a bearing on this case – any of these cases – you know what to do.’
‘We check it out ourselves before bothering you,’ said Amaryllis cheekily as she got out of the car.
‘You do nothing of the kind!’ he shouted after her.
‘It’s too easy, winding him up,’ said Amaryllis to Christopher as they made their way back out of the lane to the High Street. ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel is meant to be – not that I've ever tried that myself.’
‘What are you planning to do now?’ he asked her. Their steps seemed to be heading back towards Merchantman Wynd and Amaryllis’s flat.
‘I’d better check on the kids,’ she said. ‘And Jock McLean. I hope he hasn’t led them astray.’
‘A bit of a faint hope, isn’t it?’ said Christopher.
Chapter 24
The road to the Golden Peach
Jemima felt as if her brain had been turned inside out. The police had been very thorough, leading her carefully through every minute of what she had done that day from getting up to opening the front door and seeing Jim Halloran’s body tumbling down on to the beige hall carpet. She could hardly think straight by the time they left. She wondered if she was quite as sharp as she had once been. She could still remember who the Prime Minister was, so she couldn’t be getting Alzheimers, but perhaps she was sinking slowly and gently into a kind of insulated bubble where she wouldn’t really care any more what was going on in the big world outside.
David asked if she wanted to go out for a drink, but it was getting very dark, and it wasn’t her usual day for a drink. Normally at this time she would be getting herself some tea and then looking to see what was on television that evening. Or doing some more of her scrapbook or research. She didn’t have the right things with her to make a new scrapbook page, and she felt as if she had done more than enough research for one day.
‘You just go on out if you want,’ she said to him. Poor David, he had been stuck in here with her for hours, and hadn’t even minded when she had spent most of her time on the computer instead of playing Scrabble with him. He deserved a break.
‘I’m not leaving you on your own,’ he said stubbornly, opening a book he had found on Christopher’s kitchen shelf and pretending to read it. She noticed it was called ‘Imaginative Cooking for One’, but he was holding it upside down. She didn’t think much of the title: cooking wasn’t something imaginative in her opinion, but a necessary chore that had to be done every day.
She wondered if she should think about making something for everybody’s tea. But that would mean rummaging through the cupboards and fridge to see what Christopher had in stock, and she didn’t think it was a very polite thing to do. What if he only had half a pint of milk and a lump of stale cheese? Better to wait until Christopher got home, and then she could suggest that David went and got a take-away for all of them.
She was browsing her scrapbook again for something to do, admiring the way she had set out the page with her parents’ wedding picture on it, and wondering for the tenth time whether she should add a decorative border to the old photo of Pitkirtly which she had downloaded from the internet, when the door-bell rang again.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, not the police again,’ said David. ‘You’d think they’d have found somebody else to bother by now.’
‘We’ll have to let them in,’ said Jemima as the bell rang again.
David got to his feet. ‘I can always tell them we’re in the middle of a meal, then maybe they’d give us a break... All right, all right, I’m on my way!’ he called as he made his way to the front door.
Jemima heard his voice and a lower, deeper one in the hall, and then he returned, followed by Grumpy Graham from the Cultural Centre, who came into the kitchen and stood there, apparently not knowing what to do with himself.
‘You’d better sit down,’ said David, indicating the kitchen table with its set of hard chairs. Jemima was still sitting at the computer, although it wasn’t switched on. She had her scrapbook beside it on the desk, open at the page with the photo-copy of the family Bible’s list of people.
‘I was looking for Chris,’ said Graham, standing awkwardly between the table and the desk. He glanced down at the open scrapbook. ‘Hey – that looks great! What is it?’
Jemima didn’t altogether welcome this overture from Grumpy Graham, especially after some of the rude comments she had heard him making about various aspects of the Homecoming Project, and the way he had behaved sometimes when she had been just a few minutes late in getting her things together and leaving the Cultural Centre for the night a month or so ago after a particularly intense day of research. But, she told herself, she should be pleased to have the chance to recruit somebody else into the wonderful world of family history research.
‘This is my family history scrapbook,’ she said, torn between pride and secretiveness. ‘Here's a copy of the front page from the family Bible I found in my Auntie Mima’s house after she died. They used to list people’s names inside it. It’s my granny’s family.’
He peered closer. ‘Hmm. Good. It must be great to have something like that to get you started.’
‘Have you ever done any family research, Graham?’ said Jemima politely, although she thought she already knew what the answer would be.
He shook his head. ‘Not really. Of course my mum told me some family stories, that kind of thing. But I haven’t really worked on it like you have.’
‘You know that woman who was murdered in the fire exit corridor?’ said Jemima. ‘She was my first cousin.’
‘Oh, God, no!’ said Graham. ‘That must have been a terrible shock.’
‘A bit,’ said Jemima. ‘But I didn’t know her at all. Her mother and my mum were sisters, but her mum emigrated to the States a long time ago, and mine stayed here in Pitkirtly.’
‘So your family goes way back in Pitkirtly?’ said Graham, still peering at the scrapbook.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Jemima. ‘But don’t ask me about Lachlan Farquharson though.’
‘Lachlan Farquharson? Who’s he?’
‘My great-great-uncle. I met some woman at the family history day who said he’d swindled her great-great-grannie or something. But that’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course not,’ said Graham. He straightened. ‘I suppose I might as well go, if Chris isn’t coming back any time soon. I just wanted to check with him about next week’s shifts. I'd like to keep in step with the tide times. For fishing.’
He glanced at David and said, ‘Maybe if you’re still here when he comes back, you could get him to give me a call on my mobile.’
‘Aye, I’ll be here all right,’ said David equably. But when he returned from showing Graham out, he said, ‘I don’t trust that one as far as I can throw him.’
‘He’s harmless enough,’ said Jemima, turning the pages of the scrapbook again. ‘It’s just his manner that’s a bit abrupt.’
‘Yes, well,’ muttered David. He got up again and paced up and down. ‘Do you fancy something to eat?’
‘Yes – but shouldn’t we wait for Christopher?’
‘He’ll have gone off somewhere with Amaryllis and lost all track of time,’ said David. ‘I could nip out for something – or do you want to go and eat out somewhere?’
‘Don’t go out!’ said Jemima, surprising herself at the note of alarm in her voice.
‘OK, OK,’ said David. He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Hey – you’re not worrying about being next, are you?’
‘It’s come very close to me now,’ said Jemima.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said David. ‘Not without you anyway. We could both go and get something and bring it back – or eat out.’
‘You choose.’
‘I don’t like choosing,’ grumbled David. Luckily, before either of them had to choose, they heard Christopher’s key in the lock.
‘Everything all right here?’ he called.
‘We’re fine,’
said Jemima.
She recognised the look on his face before she even noticed the blood on his hands.
‘Has something else happened?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ he said, then glanced down at his hands. ‘Well, I’d better get rid of the evidence, I suppose.’
He washed his hands with one of those new-fangled biological hand wash sprays that everybody seemed to be buying, and then turned back towards them. The look on his face was still the same.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ he told them. ‘Not quite as bad, anyway. We found – Amaryllis and I – somebody who had been attacked in the lane behind that glitzy furniture shop. It looks as if it might have been the man with the mud-coloured eyes, but we can’t be sure. Head wound, just like the others. He’s gone to hospital.’
‘Is he able to talk?’ said Jemima, taking in the news with more equanimity than she felt was reasonable.
‘Not when we saw him,’ said Christopher. ‘The police will be there when he comes round.’
‘If he comes round,’ said David.
‘I’ve never understood what people found to buy in that furniture shop,’ said Jemima. ‘I went in once to have a look, and it was all mirrored chests of drawers, and dried flower arrangements and chandeliers. Not the kind of thing you'd want in a real house... I didn’t know there was a lane behind it.’
‘Oh, yes, it’s a loading bay,’ said Christopher. ‘That was where the Tibetans were living.’
‘Graham was here,’ said David. ‘He wanted to talk to you about next week’s shifts.’
Christopher frowned.
‘I don’t see why. They’ve all been agreed for months. Right up to Christmas... Unless maybe he wants to swap or something. I don’t know that the Centre will be able to open up anyway.’
‘I hope it does,’ Jemima sighed. ‘It’s always somewhere nice and warm to go at this time of year. And I might still be homeless by then.’
‘You’ll never be homeless while I’m around, hen,’ said David.
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