Criminals

by Margot Livesey

  Now, thought Ewan, events had vindicated her cynicism. What else but another woman could explain the way Mollie ducked his questions about Chae?

  Next morning, Leo inveigled Sam into cashing a cheque for fifty pounds and promised to phone her when he returned to Edinburgh. He continued to his destination, which—although it had been moved thirty miles south, to outside Perth, and renamed Larch House—Ewan instantly recognised as Mill of Fortune. There were the gateposts, the duck pond, the apple trees, the sheep. And inside the house was Mollie, known as Maudie, married to Roman, who happened to be Leo’s brother. So far Ewan had been reading slowly; as the book entered familiar territory, his attention quickened. Leo had hitchhiked from Perth and arrived late in the morning.

  • • •

  Ever since Roman’s weird phone call, I’d been imagining Larch House in a state of emergency. “Come at once,” he’d whispered hoarsely, and the only thing I could think was that he was about to kick the bucket. Now I was here and everything seemed the same as usual: quiet, boring, rainy.

  As I waited for someone to answer the door, I remembered our last meeting. Roman was down in London on business and invited me for a drink at the Russell Square Hotel. That afternoon I’d dropped in on my friend Josie. She brought out some mushrooms she’d gathered at Glastonbury last summer, and I ended up nibbling a few, just to keep her company. We sat on the sofa watching Coronation Street and I felt fine. As soon as I left her flat, though, the mushrooms kicked in, and by the time I reached Russell Square I was well away. I’d happily have spent the evening in the revolving door of the hotel if the porter hadn’t stepped forward and said, “Are you coming or going, sir?”

  No surprise that Roman was already at the bar, he was always super-punctual. What I hadn’t expected was the couple of colleagues he had in tow. Given my condition, I think I behaved astonishingly well with the old farts. Roman introduced me as an actor and there were the usual questions. I told them about famous people I knew and did my John Cleese imitation. I felt like a plastic bag, flapping in the breeze. Sometimes I was filled to overflowing and words spilled out of me, other times speech was impossible. At the end of the evening, Roman walked me round the corner to the tube station and gave me a pound twenty for my ticket home rather than the generous taxi fare I’d been angling for.

  Remembering Roman’s face as he watched me disappear into the station, I started to laugh. Then I heard him whispering on the phone and my glee faded. I knocked again, louder, and a brown and white dog appeared from behind the dustbin and trotted towards me, wagging her tail. “You’re no watchdog,” I scolded, sliding away from her eager nose. “What if I was a murderer or a thief?”

  The dog gave a snort and that was all the encouragement I needed. I tried the door. It swung open and I stepped into the kitchen. I’d forgotten how large the room was and how shabby. The sofa looked as if an army of cats had used it as a scratching post and around the table stood six unmatched chairs. On one side of the room was the stove with a saucepan simmering away. I lifted the lid to discover spinach soup. Not bad. Some cream would help. A dash of nutmeg.

  Could Roman be ill in bed upstairs? I imagined him, pale and skeletal, trying to smile at the sight of me, his darling little brother. I moved across the room, through the far door and up the creaking stairs. On the first-floor landing several doors stood open, including the master bedroom.

  Like the other rooms, it was empty. I wandered over to the well-made bed and glanced through the books on Roman’s bedside table; they were mostly about trains. On Maudie’s side were a couple of novels and a box of Kleenex. I opened the drawer of her table.

  “Holy moly,” I exclaimed, taking in the pack of fancy condoms and the bottle of vanilla-flavored massage oil. What a slyboots. I hurried back round the bed. Roman’s drawer yielded a well-thumbed copy of The Joy of Sex.

  I shook my head in amazement. When we were growing up, Roman had always been the opposite of me: great at exams, hopeless at girls. And even now, deep in his second marriage, with two kids from the first, I found it hard to imagine him doing anything more than holding hands. I opened the book at random to a series of helpful diagrams. “Be sure to allow plenty of time for this one,” the note said. Maybe it wasn’t so out of character after all. Whatever Roman was up to, he was still doing it by the book.

  I picked up the johnnies, not a kind I used, but for a moment I was tempted to pocket them. The idea of Roman discovering the theft weeks, or months, from now gave me a kick. He would suspect the children, who sometimes came for weekends. Then again, what if the old stick really was in trouble? I tossed the condoms back in the drawer and went to check out the bathroom. I was searching the medicine cabinet—the usual dull prescriptions—when from downstairs I heard a door open and close.

  Maudie was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water. As I came through the door, she stiffened with alarm. “Maudie,” I said quickly, “it’s me, Leo. I knocked but no one answered. I was just looking upstairs.”

  “Leo, what a surprise.” She did not sound as if it were an entirely pleasant one. “Does Roman know you’re here?”

  Clearly he was not on his deathbed. I repeated the story I’d told Sam, that I had an audition in Edinburgh. “When I spoke to Roman on the phone he said I couldn’t come all this way and not see you. Perhaps he was joking? Anyway I jumped on a bus and then one of your neighbours, a tall woman with stringy hair, gave me a lift.”

  “I’m sure he wasn’t joking. That must have been Margaret.” Maudie put the glass down, came across and kissed my cheek. I caught a whiff of her herbal shampoo. That she didn’t know about my visit only made it more intriguing; I was Roman’s sole confidant.

  Maudie offered coffee. “Great,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “Out in my pottery. You haven’t been here for ages, have you? We converted the milkshed two years ago. I’m waiting for the kiln to heat up so I can glaze a batch of bowls.”

  I watched her as she walked to the stove. She wore a faded red shirt and black leggings, but the contents of the bedside drawers had educated me. Beneath her baggy clothes and business-like manner, my sister-in-law was sexy.

  • • •

  Sexy, repeated Ewan, and felt a twinge of discomfort. Then he thought he was just being his usual fuddy-duddy self. Mollie was probably flattered. In the next chapter, Roman came home from work—he was head of marketing for a distillery—and the three of them had dinner. Only after Maudie had gone to bed did Roman begin to reveal his reasons for the urgent phone call. Far away in Boston, Aunt Helen, their father’s sister, claimed to be dying.

  • • •

  “She’s made me her heir,” Roman announced. “Actually heir apparent.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Do you mean I’ve come five hundred miles to hear that you’re going to inherit more dosh? Roman, I thought you were dying. All that mystery on the phone. I was sure you had the big C.” At that instant I really did hate him: his pudgy, comfortable job, his nice little wifey. “I didn’t even have the money for the train,” I told him.

  Roman clapped his hand to his forehead. He ought to have been the actor in the family. “Why didn’t you ask?”

  “I told you. I thought it was a crisis. You phone for the first time in a year, whispering can I come at once. What am I going to say? I’m too sodding broke?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a thoughtless idiot.” He started to laugh. In the candlelight his face glowed. I had never seen him look healthier.

  “What’s so funny?” I said at last.

  “Us. You and me. As a matter of fact I’m tickled that you worried about me.”

  “Why don’t you buy me a train ticket tomorrow and I’ll get out of here?” I said crossly. “I know by your standards I’m wasting my life, but there’s plenty of places I’d rather waste it.” I finished my whisky and prepared to stand up.

  “No, no, wait. I’m making a hash of this but I do have a good reason for inviting you—much better than what yo
u so delicately call the big C. Here.” He pushed the Glen Turret in my direction. “Have another drink.”

  Roman has always been a line-on-the-bottle kind of guy, so letting me loose on his best Scotch signalled something pretty serious. I poured myself a hefty measure and waited.

  “Let me start again,” he said. “Aunt Helen is eighty-seven. She’s a wealthy woman, and out of some kind of sentiment and having no children of her own, she’s made me her heir. I checked with her lawyer—you know how everyone in the States has a lawyer—and it’s all aboveboard. Except for a couple of small bequests to charity, she’s leaving everything to me.”

  “How much is everything?”

  “Somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million dollars. It depends on house prices, stock prices. More than enough to take trouble over.”

  “And trouble, I suppose, signals my entrance.”

  “As a matter of fact it does. Unfortunately this turns out to be yet another example of the no free lunch philosophy. Helen has her price, and her price is—”

  “A visit from the devoted heir.”

  “Not just a visit, a generous visit, demonstrating a proper desire to spend time in her company before the grim reaper shows up.”

  I gave up trying to guess ahead. I sipped my whisky and imagined what it would be like to sit in this kitchen night after night, drinking and talking, and then go upstairs to Maudie and the bedside drawers. It didn’t seem so bad.

  “So,” said Roman, “how do you feel about a fortnight’s holiday in Boston, all expenses paid?”

  I set down my glass and gaped at him.

  Now that he’d let the cat out of the bag, he couldn’t shut up. He would pay my expenses, plus five hundred quid, to impersonate him. And when the inheritance came through, I’d get a cut. Finally I recovered sufficiently to interrupt. “Roman, have you gone starkers? Why would Helen think I was you for a second?”

  “Because you’ll say you are. She hasn’t seen me in a dozen years and she’s blind as a bat. We’ve sent her a few family photos but nothing recent, no close-ups. All you need to do is shave your beard, borrow my clothes and we’re in business. You’re an actor, right?” He smiled. “This role is tailor-made for you.”

  I asked why he didn’t go himself and he explained if it was just a long weekend he’d go like a shot, but a fortnight off work was out of the question. The distillery was in the midst of a major reshuffle. Several senior managers had already been axed and he was afraid, if he gave them the slightest excuse, he’d be next. Of course only Roman would fret over his boring job after winning the pools. “I tried to tell Helen I’d come in April,” he said. “She launched into a dirge about not lasting the winter. But according to her lawyer she’s in excellent health; she might live another ten years.”

  He went on to list the airline reservations he’d made for me. I listened in amazement. It was a crazy scheme and the craziest part was that Roman, my pompous, proper brother, had dreamed it up. The Joy of Sex was just the start. “What on earth gave you this idea?” I asked.

  Roman grinned. “Maudie and I saw a film on TV in which one brother impersonates another. When I said you and I could never do that, she said, nonsense, we were as alike as two peas in a pod, we just presented ourselves differently. That got me thinking. I realised maybe I didn’t have to choose between my job and half a million dollars.” Poor old Roman, what a heartbreaking choice.

  He picked up the bottle of Glen Turret and spun it like you do in children’s games. The neck of the bottle swung towards me. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” he said.

  • • •

  A creaking sound made Ewan glance up from the page. Someone was going downstairs; the kitchen door opened and closed. He lay listening, trying to guess from the faint noises what Mollie was doing. Having a stiff drink, perhaps? No, in that respect she was like him, too much of a puritan to turn to drink in times of disaster. Then he remembered the baby and the Dunkirk humour of colleagues, joking about the sleepless nights of new parenthood. He wondered if he should offer assistance, but the prospect of leaving the warmth he had, at last, generated beneath the covers was not appealing. To justify his decision, he closed The Dark Forest and turned out the light.

  The baby had been a distraction, he thought; still, he was glad he had rescued her. Tomorrow, first thing, they would return to Perth and hand her over to the police or the social services. Time enough then to figure out what to do about Mollie. The room was very dark. He stretched out his arm and could not see his hand. In London, even at three a.m. a reassuring twilight seeped through the curtains. What had Mollie said in her letter? That the darkness was like gas. More like water, Ewan pondered: a cold, black, saltless sea.

  Chapter 4

  As soon as she opened her eyes, Mollie knew it was still raining. She was murmuring her thanks to the gods of Scottish weather, when from the far side of the bed came a whimper. “Good morning,” she whispered. She reached out her hand to stroke the small head. “Did you sleep well? What did you dream about?” The baby was quick to answer. “Baaa,” she said. “Grrh.” Before she could become committed to crying, Mollie slipped out of bed and carried her downstairs.

  While waiting for the kettle to boil, she drew the grey curtains. Not only was it raining steadily, but the sky had the pitiless quality of steel wool that usually betokened rain until late in the day. When she opened the door to let Sadie out, the collie barely raised her head above the rim of her basket. Chae used to say that Sadie had weather announcers in her dreams, so surely could she divine bad weather without leaving her bed. Mollie let her be and settled into the armchair beside the stove, with the baby and a bottle. “We must give you a name,” she said. “This business of your not having one is just too inconvenient.”

  The baby fluttered her dark eyelashes. Mollie stared down at the coppery face. “Robin,” she said, “Daphne, Diana, Gretel, Jane, Hannah, Louise, Emma, Sally, Merril, Veronica.” They all seemed wrong, because they were the names of people she knew. There were families, even entire religions, in which children were named after other people, living or dead, but to ask this baby, who already had so little, to share a name was intolerable.

  The baby broke off feeding and calmly dribbled a stream of milk onto Mollie’s shoulder. Olivia, thought Mollie. Something about the milky O of the tiny lips made the name spring to mind. She wiped her chin and perched her on the edge of the table so they were looking into each other’s eyes.

  “Olivia,” she said. “What do you think of your name?”

  Olivia smiled and reached out to pat Mollie’s cheek.

  Mollie had come downstairs shortly after six. Now several millennia passed as she waited for Ewan to appear. His lateness fitted perfectly with her plans, but with every decade of delay her frustration rose. She wanted matters settled, at least for today, and they couldn’t be until she had dealt with Ewan. At ten-fifteen he opened the door, still in pyjamas, to ask if there was enough hot water for a bath. Plenty, said Mollie. Another half hour elapsed before he returned, wearing the same clothes as the day before.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t slept this late in years.”

  “Not to worry. I’m glad you got some rest. If people from the States really do call at one in the morning, it must be hard to get a good night’s sleep. Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Only once he had helped himself to coffee and was seated at the table did Ewan take notice of Olivia. “How is she? I hope she didn’t keep you awake. I heard you come downstairs in the middle of the night.”

  Mollie ran her hand through her hair and felt the reassuring tug of the follicles. “Those damn stairs,” she said. “I had to get her a bottle and change her. Afterwards she slept right through until six.” She longed to try out Olivia’s name on Ewan but managed to contain herself. What was the point of a name if they were taking her to Perth today? Careful, she said to herself, and then, aloud, “Cereal? Toast?
”

  “Cereal’s fine.” He went to the cupboard and, after a moment’s deliberation, selected Chae’s favourite muesli; Mollie felt vindicated in her parsimonious decision not to throw it out. The morning Chae left, she’d been tempted to eliminate everything he had touched or laid eyes on, a scorched-earth policy that would have meant her living, naked, in an empty house.

  Ewan sat down at the table. A leaflet protesting a nearby bauxite mine lay against the salt and pepper. He picked it up. Mollie poured herself more coffee and took the chair opposite. As she watched him reading the leaflet and briskly spooning up cereal, she thought no one within a hundred miles would mistake her brother for anything other than a bachelor.

  “I don’t understand this,” he said. “Why are people opposed to the mine? It sounds as if it’s way up in the hills.”

  Hell’s bells, thought Mollie. In an effort to conceal her impatience, she stood up and went over to the sink. She stared at the lilac bushes outside the window and explained that the mine lacked an access road. “They’d have to build one, and they estimate thirty lorries a day in the first year. No farmer wants that kind of traffic across his land.”

  “How strange that access wasn’t part of the original mining rights.”

  “I suppose.” Eat, she silently commanded. “It’s an American company, so there wouldn’t even be local jobs.”

  “You know, someone in the City was telling me that they’ve found gold on the west coast. They’re digging a mine near Ullapool.”

  “A gold mine!” Mollie turned from the window. For a moment she was genuinely captivated. She pictured galleries veined with gold, leading to some dark chamber where the Picts had piled a gleaming hoard of cups and necklaces.

  “I was amazed too,” Ewan said. “Mining gold seems like growing oranges, something you oughtn’t to be able to do in a cold climate. Do you remember that Easter holiday when we went to the gardens at Inverewe and saw the palm trees and pineapples?”