‘We’ll see about that. Did you know there’s a whole department for computer forensics now? And another one for mobile phones?’
‘You’ll have to find my computer first.’
He looked so smug that Amaryllis relished her next sentence. ‘Oh, we have, Neil. We’ve tracked it down, thanks to Christopher’s memory for apparently irrelevant detail. The police are working on it now.’
He made a quick recovery from the shock that flashed over his face. ‘They won’t get anything off it. The hard disc’s been wiped clean.’
‘That may be what Mr Fitzgerald of Fitz and Chips Computers of Dunfermline told you, but I think the police will beg to differ,’ said Amaryllis. ‘By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a stupid name for a computer shop. Do you know Mr Fitzgerald personally? Is that why Jackie Whitmore took the computer there to be wiped?’
Neil had fallen unexpectedly silent.
Amaryllis leaned over him and spoke quietly. ‘I bet they can get evidence from Liam Johnstone’s phone too. And from yours. Call records linking the two of you. And fingerprints.’
‘Of course my fingerprints are all over the cellar,’ said Neil, recoiling from her as far as he could while trapped in the bed. ‘I was the only one who went down there most of the time. They’re bound to be. Prints, DNA, everything. All perfectly legitimate.’
Amaryllis stood up and shrugged. ‘Well, it isn’t up to me to prove anything, of course. I thought you might feel happier if you explained to me how clever you’ve been, before you get taken away to the police station again and locked up for good.’
‘For good? You must be joking! I’m off to Spain as soon as I get out of here. And nobody’s going to stop me.’
‘So will you kill everyone who gets in your way, just as you killed Liam?’
‘I didn’t kill him!’ shouted Neil, evidently summoning up all his strength. ‘It was an accident. Everybody knows that. Jackie can tell you that too.’
‘But you knew what would happen if you left him in the cellar with a leaking canister of CO2, didn’t you? You knew he would be asphyxiated. It wasn’t a very nice thing to do to anyone, even if it was only Liam Johnstone. And it hasn’t been very nice for Penelope and Zak to go through all this either. I really thought you were a better person than that, Neil.’
Amaryllis paused, rewound in her mind what she had said, and decided abruptly not to go on. She was starting to sound like someone’s mother. She had very nearly claimed to be terribly disappointed in him. Whereas in Amaryllis’s world, she was never disappointed in anyone. It was the other way round: when someone did something good, she was pleasantly surprised. It was better that way.
Christopher and Charlie came into the room as she was leaving.
‘You sound like my mother!’ Neil shouted at her.
Christopher blinked in mild surprise as he often did. Amaryllis grabbed him by the arm and tried to swing him round towards the door again.
‘Come on, we might as well go straight to the police with this after all,’ she said.
‘Sssh,’ said Charlie in a conspiratorial whisper. The door swung open again and Inspector Armstrong stood on the threshold.
‘Good, you’re all here,’ he said. He glanced at Charlie. ‘Thanks, Mr Smith, for your assistance. I’d like to commend you for acting in a thoroughly professional manner throughout.’
Amaryllis stared at him in amazement. She couldn’t remember Charlie having knowingly acted in a professional manner during this case at all.
‘In the face of great adversity,’ added the inspector, looking straight at her. It sounded very much like a personal insult, had she chosen to take it that way. She hadn’t made up her mind yet.
‘What is this, a team meeting?’ said Neil from the bed. ‘Can you go and hold it somewhere else? There’s an invalid here, remember.’
‘Hmph,’ said Amaryllis.
‘An invalid who will very soon be in custody, if things go according to plan,’ observed Inspector Armstrong. ‘Now I must ask all of you to leave, to make room for Sergeant Whiteside. It’s only two visitors at a time, I believe.’
Amaryllis turned to look back at Neil. She was tempted to stick her tongue out at him, but it didn’t seem fair somehow. He was already trapped in the hospital bed, and now he was to have the doubtful privilege of a conversation with Inspector Armstrong. She wondered vaguely if she should invoke the European Convention on Human Rights. It did seem particularly unfair that someone who had performed what was essentially a valuable social service by ridding the world of Liam Johnstone should suffer like this. Then she reminded herself of Penelope and Zak, and hardened her heart. They were no doubt better off without Liam, but they would probably have preferred him to go off into the sunset somewhere and get out of their lives, than to disappear from the planet permanently.
She walked back out to the car park with Christopher and Charlie.
‘So, are you confident about getting your suspension lifted, now that you’ve got a personal commendation from Inspector Armstrong?’ she said to Charlie.
‘Don’t know if I want it lifted now,’ he said grumpily, scuffing his feet along in a way that almost made Amaryllis want to scold him – except that being accused of being like someone’s mother twice in one day would be a mortal insult.
Christopher sighed. ‘You’re not still thinking of taking over the Queen of Scots,’ he said.
‘If you re-phrase that as a question, I might answer it,’ said Charlie.
‘What would the answer be?’ said Amaryllis.
‘That would be telling.’
Chapter 32 New Directions
It was almost like old times.
Their favourite table was still there and they headed straight for it. The floor looked a bit different. Christopher wondered if it had been replaced or just cleaned.
‘I hope there’s plenty of Old Pictish Brew,’ said Jock McLean, staring hard at the bar.
‘There you are,’ said Christopher, pointing to the tap with the luminous green broch logo on it. ‘And there are some bottles. I helped him go and get them from the cash and carry last weekend.’
‘Does he still get a delivery from Aberdour?’ said Jock anxiously. ‘They’re the only ones who do it.’
‘Calm down, Jock,’ said Jemima, settling herself into her favourite chair and taking a piece of knitting out of her bag. ‘Mine’s a Dubonnet and lemonade, when you’ve all finished admiring the view.’
‘I’ll get the first round in,’ said Dave. ‘Everybody want their usual?’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Christopher. They made their way to the bar.
It was the same, but different, Christopher mused. Water had flowed under the bridge; boats had been burnt. Neil Macrae was on remand awaiting trial for culpable homicide. Jackie Whitmore was out on bail for some associated charge. Charlie Smith had been offered his old job in the police force back, but he had decided to resign. He had bought the Queen of Scots from Neil, the transaction going through with amazing speed because of the circumstances; the transfer of the licence had been approved in record time, as the leaders of the local council had evidently been afraid the citizens of Pitkirtly would engage in all sorts of mayhem if not pacified by regular infusions of Old Pictish Brew. Perhaps they even knew of a secret ingredient in the beer that acted as a tranquiliser. Sometimes Christopher wondered.
He smiled to himself as he accepted his pint from Dave. All’s well that ends well, he thought. We need Amaryllis to come in and explain everything to the assembled throng and everything will be right with the world again.
‘Where’s Amaryllis tonight, then?’ said Charlie. He looked completely at home behind the bar, almost as if he had always been there and Neil Macrae’s tenure was only a temporary blip in the scheme of things.
‘I don’t know – she said she’d see us here.’
‘Hope she hasn’t got kidnapped again,’ said Dave, chortling in a particularly annoying way.
; ‘I don’t think she’ll fall for that more than once,’ said Christopher, crossing the fingers of the hand that wasn’t holding the pint glass.
‘Have you seen Penelope Johnstone lately?’ said Charlie.
‘Why? Should I have?’
‘I wondered how she was, that’s all.’
‘All right, I think,’ said Christopher. ‘Zak’s settled back into the fossil collection anyway.’
‘What’s he doing in there?’ enquired Dave, picking up Jemima’s glass from the bar.
‘Cataloguing. He’s got quite a flair for it. He’s going to make a fossil app too, while he’s at it. People can collect fossils when they’re out and about – but virtually. So they don’t disturb any of the sites.’
‘You’ve lost me there,’ said Dave, shaking his head.
‘It’s a young people’s thing,’ said Christopher. ‘It only makes sense if you’re under twenty-five.’
‘So not for old fossils, then,’ said Dave, chortling again. What had he got to be so cheerful about?
When they got back to the table, Jemima was fiddling with her mobile phone. It was a new one which looked far too complicated for her. Christopher half-expected her to ask him to fix something for her: change the time setting, find her text messages, or check for missed calls. Instead she glanced up and said, ‘I’m just tweeting about the Queen of Scots re-opening.’
Dave put her drink in front of her. ‘I don’t know why you’re bothering with that. Will anybody read it?’
She gave him a hard stare. ‘I’ve got ten thousand followers. I’m sure somebody will… Yes! Look.’
She held out the phone to show them the tweet that had flashed up.
‘Pitkirtly-Jem - way cool news – have a drink for me,’ Dave read out loud. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, my Twitter name’s Pitkirtly-Jem,’ she explained without even blushing. ‘And it’s a message from – let me see – Bill Clinton I think.’
‘Bill Clinton, the former president of the USA?’ said Christopher. He was almost prepared to believe it.
Jemima laughed. ‘Of course not. Bill Clinton’s one of my distant cousins in Colorado.’
‘Tell Jemima about what Zak’s doing, then,’ said Dave to Christopher. ‘She’ll know what you’re talking about.’
Christopher was about to launch into as much explanation as he could manage when there was a disturbance at the door, and three women burst in. They were giggling and pushing each other about like teenagers, and at first he didn’t recognise them and thought they would get into trouble and perhaps even be thrown out by Charlie Smith. Then he realised there was something horribly familiar about the dark red hair and sparkling blue eyes of the rowdiest of the group. She had done something to flatten out the spikes of hair a bit, so instead of standing up on end it was curling wildly around her face, which gave her a surprisingly different, though no less scary, appearance. He couldn’t work out who the other two were until they came over to the table and stood there, still giggling.
‘Evening all,’ said Amaryllis. What was the matter with her? Christopher had never heard her giggling before, not even when Dave had run over one of Jemima’s favourite woolly hats, the one with the multiplicity of bobbles sewn round it. He had claimed it was accidental, but they all suspected otherwise.
‘Why don’t you introduce us to your friends?’ said Dave.
The three of them giggled again, more or less in unison. Jemima seemed to be checking Twitter again.
‘He says there are ten foot snowdrifts where he lives, and he’s had a bear on his deck looking in the windows,’ she told them.
‘I read in the paper that some people want to introduce bears to the Highlands,’ said Dave, diverted from his ogling of Amaryllis and the other women.
‘We don’t need them in Pitkirtly – there are enough wild animals around here,’ said one of the women. Christopher stared at her. She had sounded like Tricia Laidlaw, and yet…
‘Haven’t you worked it out yet?’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’ve all had makeovers.’
‘Makeovers? What on earth for?’ asked Christopher, genuinely baffled.
‘That’s the nearest thing to a compliment that any of us will get,’ said Amaryllis to the others. ‘Make the most of it.’
They all giggled again. Christopher began to notice other things about them. They were all completely overdressed for Pitkirtly, with big necklaces that could have been made of plastic, and big matching bracelets that rattled up and down their arms. He didn’t think he had ever seen Amaryllis wearing any jewellery before, apart from a special watch that she had always claimed had a secret compartment for poison in it, and that told the time in various other time zones including, she swore, zones outside the earth’s atmosphere. They had debated at length about whether places outside earth had time in any real sense of the word, he recalled.
They were all wearing very similar outfits but each in a different colour scheme. Amaryllis wore all black, apart from a necklace and matching bracelet made apparently out of silver coloured door hinges, and shiny silver shoes. The one who sounded like Tricia Laidlaw but who had on a thick layer of glittery eye shadow and a hairstyle that trailed down one side of her face, wore a colour he thought might be called electric blue and the third one, who hadn’t spoken yet and was lurking slightly behind the other two and not giggling with quite the same genuine amusement, wore a purple top with a sparkly pattern down the front, and black leggings. He stared at her more closely. Her blonde hair was cut quite short so that it lay almost flat against her head. She was of a slightly matronly build which wasn’t in his opinion all that suited to wearing leggings, but he thought she carried it off reasonably well.
‘So what can I get you ladies to drink?’ said Jock McLean, standing up courteously and advancing on them. They giggled again.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in a group of ladies before,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We should probably have some sort of ladylike drink.’
‘Dubonnet and lemonade all round then?’ said Jock.
‘Don’t you dare!’ said Amaryllis.
‘You’d better sit down,’ said Christopher, looking around for more chairs. He wasn’t sure that he wanted them to join the group, but better that they sat down and made themselves less conspicuous than that they attracted the wrong sort of attention. Already some of the old Queen of Scots regulars had come in and now some of them were clustered round the bar making comments and gestures.
‘Thank you, Christopher,’ said the blonde one in the leggings as Christopher fetched a chair and practically shoved her into it.
She sounded like… Christopher peered at her more closely. ‘Penelope?’ he said, not really believing the evidence of his eyes and ears. He glanced across at the one in the electric blue. ‘Tricia?’
‘Damn,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I thought we could at least keep Christopher wondering for a bit longer than this.’
‘Christopher notices more than you think he does,’ said Penelope. Her middle-aged middle-class tones were quite at odds with the purple top and particularly with the leggings, but now that he looked at her again, he noticed the same blue eyes and the same general shape as he had been aware of before.
Tricia fluttered her eyelashes at Jock McLean, who hastily took drinks orders and fled to the safety of the bar.
‘Why didn’t you take Jan from the wool-shop with you?’ said Dave in an innocent tone. ‘She looks as if she could do with a make-over.’
Jemima glared at her husband. ‘I can’t believe you’re being so insensitive, David,’ she said. ‘Jan’s not been herself since the arrests.’
‘She doesn’t need a make-over any more than these three do, anyway,’ said Christopher.
Amaryllis flung herself into a chair and sulked for a few moments, but then Jemima showed her a message on Twitter that made them both laugh, and then Jock came back with the drinks.
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ he said to Amaryllis.
; ‘That’s nice,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Why? Did you miss my dazzling wit and repartee? Or did you need a fourth for dominoes?’
‘No, none of these,’ said Jock, moving his chair further away from Tricia’s. ‘We were waiting for you to tell us the whole story.’
‘The whole story?’
‘About Neil Macrae and his evil deeds.’
‘I’m not sure I know absolutely the whole story,’ said Amaryllis. ‘But if I’m going to tell you what I know, we’d better get Charlie over. And fetch the dog down from the flat too. They both deserve to hear it. Although I suspect Charlie of being told it already by his ex-colleagues. They’re not known for their ability to keep secrets. Especially Keith Burnet.’
‘I thought you were the only one who could worm secrets out of Keith Burnet,’ said Dave. ‘Using your special little ways.’
Amaryllis ignored this. ‘I’ll go and see if Charlie can leave the bar now.’
‘He’s got help,’ said Penelope.
Christopher glanced over towards the bar, which was as busy as he had expected considering that this was the first night for weeks that the pub had been open. He was surprised to see two young men he recognised. ‘Zak. What’s he doing here? And isn’t that your friend, Amaryllis?’
‘My friend? Oh, yes, Stewie.’
Amaryllis got up again and went over to the boys. He noticed them recoil as she rattled her door-hinges at them, and then laugh. She made her way over to Charlie Smith.
‘Zak’s come along to help out in case it’s busy,’ said Penelope with a certain amount of maternal pride. ‘Of course his real vocation is museum work, isn’t it, Christopher?’
‘Um – maybe,’ said Christopher, who wasn’t sure that he believed in vocations, and particularly in those related to his own line of work. Still, it was nice that Penelope believed in her son. With a bit of luck he wouldn’t turn out like his father.
Once Charlie had fetched the dog and settled him under the table, they all leaned in to hear what Amaryllis had to say and to find out if Charlie had indeed been party to confidential information from his former colleagues.
6 The Queen of Scots Mystery Page 19
