3 A Reformed Character

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘Have you got Amaryllis and Christopher in there?’ said Jock to the paramedic. There was no reply immediately so he peered into the back of the ambulance. A shape that was barely recognisable as Amaryllis, wearing an oxygen mask, lay on a stretcher while Christopher sat in a chair beside her.

  ‘Is Christopher all right?’ said Jock. He could see Amaryllis probably wasn’t all right, and he really didn’t want to know more than that at the moment, but Christopher looked as if something had sucked all the colour out of his skin. Of course he was on the peely-wally side at the best of times, but still… ‘He’s gone very grey in the face.’

  The paramedic broke off from his conversation with the police. ‘He seems to be a bit out of it. We think he might be a heart attack risk, so we’re taking him with us just in case. He doesn't look like he's planning to leave her side anyway.’

  This was all said in hushed tones. Jock hoped Christopher hadn’t heard any of it. He wouldn’t want to be thought of as a heart attack risk.

  ‘Do you know anything about the shooting, sir?’ said one of the policemen. It wasn’t anyone Jock had encountered before. Presumably they had drafted in officers from elsewhere to cope with the sudden crime wave in and around Pitkirtly.

  'I don't think so,' said Jock, 'but you can ask me anyway, if you want.... Maybe better have a word with Mr Smith first. He knows all about this.'

  'Mr Smith? Detective Chief Inspector Smith?'

  'That's right,' nodded Jock. 'If he wants to make Superintendent he'd better get to grips with this case before it finishes off his career.'

  'We'll have a word with him,' said another officer. 'Here he comes now.'

  The ambulance suddenly drove off. After crossing the railway line, it seemed to have put its siren on; he could hear it receding into the distance. He wondered which hospital they would take Amaryllis to. Did they have one nearby that specialised in gunshot wounds? Or maybe you didn't need to specialise in them to be able to treat them. Maybe the injuries were generic and could be dealt with by the nearest surgeon.

  Jock suddenly felt as if he needed to sit down after thinking about Amaryllis and her injuries. One of the policemen supported him as he swayed slightly.

  'Not another patient, I hope?' said Mr Smith, arriving on the scene.

  'No, sir,' said one of the police officers. 'He's just gone a bit wobbly at the knees.'

  'I'll take him back to the station with me in a while for a chat,' said Mr Smith. Jock couldn't help finding the words ominous, even if they weren't meant like that. Mr Smith didn't seem to be in a very good mood. Maybe somebody higher up was holding him personally responsible for the local crime wave.

  Half an hour later, they faced each other across the table in one of the interview rooms.

  'It's time to stop all the games, and just tell it like it is,' said Mr Smith. Jock winced at the sloppy grammar. 'I can see that the idea of telling the truth causes you some pain,' Mr Smith continued, 'but I urge you to forget any pointless loyalties and give me a sensible statement.' He reached out and switched on a tape recorder. Beside him at the table, a junior officer opened his notebook and prepared to record everything in a more old-fashioned way.

  'I don't know if I can provide anything you'd consider sensible,' said Jock. 'And by the way, people of my generation don't consider any of our loyalties to be entirely pointless.'

  Mr Smith sighed, and interlaced his fingers on the table in front of him. Jock added, 'On the other hand, there's only one thing I want at the moment. For Amaryllis to get better and to catch the person or persons responsible.'

  Mr Smith, charitably, didn't point out that Jock had mentioned two things, but said calmly, 'Carry on, please, Mr McLean.'

  'Well, here's what I know,' said Jock. 'The only problem is that it might not seem very sensible to you, so just suspend your disbelief until I've finished. You'll find it starts to make sense if you just listen for a bit.'

  Jock told the story as he understood it, from the point where Darren had come to them at the caravan for help, to the last thing Amaryllis had said to him before flinging herself into the firing line. He wasn't yet ready to mention the fact that he had helped Darren on his second spell on the run, although his conscience had been nagging at him about that for some time now.

  'So she said, wait here. And we did wait until we heard the shot, then Christopher ran through to the yard on his own.'

  'So you can give Mr Wilson an alibi for the time of the shooting.'

  'An alibi? What are you talking about? Christopher would never have done anything to hurt Amaryllis.'

  'I wonder if you can explain something in that case,' said Mr Smith.

  'What's that then?'

  'Why was Mr Wilson found to have a gun in his pocket when he got to the hospital?'

  'A gun?' Jock was perplexed. 'Maybe he picked it up somewhere.'

  'I suppose that's possible. Anyway, it's been taken away for tests. He did seem to have forgotten he had it. You're sure he didn't slip away from you during the time you were waiting?'

  'No. We were together the whole time.'

  'And the only people to run out of the railway yard were the two youths you caught? Zak Johnstone and Stewie Hamilton.'

  'The talking ham, that's right.'

  'Talking ham? Ah, Hamilton! I see.'

  Jock didn't think Mr Smith saw at all, but he wasn't going to start explaining that just now.

  'So do you think it was one of them who did the shooting?' Jock asked.

  'It seems like a reasonable explanation. In fact, in some ways the only possible explanation... Although I must admit to you, Mr McLean, that I'm not entirely happy with it. Those two are very troubled youths, there's no doubt about that. And Mrs Viewforth has just made a statement to the effect that she caught them breaking into her cat boarding kennels a couple of nights ago.'

  'Is that so?' murmured Jock. He had been about to make a different comment but remembered at the last minute that he wasn't supposed to have been anywhere near the cattery that night.

  'But there's something wrong,' mused Mr Smith. 'I don't see either of them acting without leadership from somebody much cleverer and more ruthless than they are. It's a puzzle. And if this is linked with the murders of young Alan Johnstone and Old Mrs Petrelli then we may be looking at a dangerous serial killer.'

  'Do you think there's anything in the protection racket aspect?' said Jock.

  'I'd better not say any more,' said Mr Smith. 'I've said too much already.... By the way, thanks for catching the two of them anyway. There's no doubt they need a sharp shock from the justice system. I can't say whether that will set them on the right road but it's the only thing to be done at this point.'

  'What about Darren?' said Jock. 'Will you be letting him go now?'

  'I'm afraid he's still under suspicion of the two murders, Mr McLean,' said the chief inspector blandly. 'Until we arrest somebody else for these, we can't let him go... Unless he turns out to have an unshakeable alibi, that is.'

  His stare may not have been meant to be penetrating and meaningful, but Jock's conscience at last overcame him in any case, and he blurted out, 'He does have an alibi for Old Mrs Petrelli.'

  'Oh, really?' said Mr Smith. 'In that case we'd better add something to your statement.' He switched the tape recorder back on with a long-suffering air.

  After Jock had told him about Darren appearing at his house again, the escape through the garden, the gunshots in the woods and the flight to the cattery, Mr Smith put his head in his hands.

  'How could all this be going on in Pitkirtly?' he complained. 'And without us knowing about any of it?'

  'Maybe you weren't looking in the right place at the right time,' suggested Jock.

  Mr Smith took his hands away from his face and let them crash down on to the table. 'How was I supposed to know I should have had a tail on a bunch of interfering pensioners who took it on themselves to pervert the course of justice in more ways than the people who wrote the law imagin
ed?'

  'We're not all pensioners,' said Jock.

  'OK, a bunch of interfering amateurs!'

  'Amaryllis isn't an amateur,' Jock pointed out. 'She's been in the security services and now she's working as a private investigator.'

  'That didn't stop her getting shot, did it?' Mr Smith snapped.

  'Have you heard how she is?' Jock said.

  Mr Smith looked at his watch. 'Hmm. They should know by now, one way or the other.' He sent the junior officer out to make enquiries.

  One way or the other? Jock didn't want to think about what the other way was, but he couldn't help it.

  'This is quite serious,' said Mr Smith. 'Are you sure you've told me everything you know?'

  Jock nodded.

  Mr Smith sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a while. The junior officer came back and whispered to him. Jock wished his hearing was still as acute as it had once been, in the days when he could effortlessly listen to one teenager reading from Shakespeare while detecting a faint giggle from someone else in the back row of the classroom.

  'Well,' said Mr Smith at last. 'You'll be pleased to hear that both your friends now look as if they'll pull through - not that they deserve it, but don't quote me on that. We'll be waiting to interview Ms Peebles, of course. She probably knows the person who shot her. Unless this whole thing is even more complex than we thought and some other previously unknown person has entered the picture.'

  Jock relaxed for the first time, he realised, since hearing the gunshot. 'Will you put a police guard on her in the hospital?' he asked.

  'I doubt if we'll need one, to be honest. Mr Wilson's so angry he'll be a far better guard than any of my officers. But yes, we probably will... The real question is, what are we going to do with you?'

  'Me?' said Jock in surprise. 'What were you thinking of doing?'

  'By rights I should lock you up too, Mr McLean, but we're running short of holding cells around here,' said Mr Smith. Jock couldn't work out whether he was serious or not. Best to assume he was. 'So I've decided to release you into the custody of one of your friends - for now. If you get mixed up in anything else, then there's a cell here with your name on it, even if we get the Hole in the Wall gang in over the next few days.'

  'What about Darren?' said Jock.

  'He's safer in custody than outside,' said Mr Smith. 'Anyway, he's still the prime suspect in the Alan Donaldson case.'

  'But surely,' said Jock, really pushing his luck this time, 'it's a bit far-fetched to have more than one killer at a time in a place the size of Pitkirtly?'

  'Everything that's happened in the last couple of weeks is far-fetched,' said Mr Smith. 'Now go before I change my mind. And forget most of what I've said to you.'

  Jock scurried out of the room and was escorted along the corridor by the junior police officer, who seemed to find the whole thing quite amusing. They encountered Karen Whitefield in the corridor and she shook her head at him.

  In the reception area by the desk, Jemima Stevenson was waiting for him.

  'I'm your new minder,' she said.

  'Good luck with that,' said the desk sergeant, waving them on their way.

  Chapter 25 Awakening

  Christopher had been assured he wasn't having a heart attack. He hadn't really thought he was, but it was nice to be told that by the experts anyway. They tried to get him to go home but he said he would prefer to stay until Amaryllis was out of danger. He didn't particularly like hospitals, although he hadn't had much experience of them in his life. Someone found the gun and took it away from him. Nobody commented on it or accused him of anything. It was as if he was in a place where normal rules didn't apply, and time itself had warped so that things that would usually happen quickly took ages, and vice versa.

  He was quite prepared to sit in some cavernous impersonal waiting area for hours if necessary but, perhaps because of the heart attack scare, they gave him a comfortable chair and let him sit by Amaryllis's bedside when she was brought back from the operating theatre and put in a small room on her own. She was attached to some machinery, which made little noises every so often, but once he got used to the rhythm it was quite restful. They didn't seem too worried about her.

  He just sat there for a long time. Nurses popped in and out and took Amaryllis's temperature and blood pressure and checked the machines, and once a policeman put his head round the door, stared at Christopher and then withdrew again.

  During the waiting hours, he mulled over everything that had happened, turning events round and round in his mind and trying to look at them from different angles. He wasn't altogether surprised that Giancarlo Petrelli seemed to have been the one who had shot Amaryllis, although it was odd that he had then surrendered the gun so easily. Unless one of the others had left him holding the gun before they ran off. Somehow Christopher found it hard to take either Zak Johnstone or Stewie seriously as a killer, although he knew very little about either youth. He remembered talking to Penelope Johnstone, Zak's mother, who seemed like a pillar of the community. Of course there was no knowing what the offspring of pillars of the community got up to behind their parents' backs. It might even be that living with someone like Penelope would be enough to drive a teenage child to crime, thought Christopher darkly. Or having an absentee parent whose only interaction with his son was at a gun club. Stewie, on the other hand - well, someone with so little self-esteem that he was prepared to dress up as a talking ham could probably be discounted, perhaps unfairly.

  But could Zak or Giancarlo also be the criminal mastermind behind all the other things? Christopher had the feeling they were both too young and inexperienced to take a leading role in a serious gang that demanded protection money and reinforced their demands with violence if necessary. There should be a larger figure behind it all - a Mr Big. How about the father of the family, Roberto Petrelli, for this role? Christopher knew next to nothing about him. Well, there was the fact that he wouldn't let Victoria go away to university as her brother had done, but had persuaded - or forced - her to stay at home and join the family business.

  The family business... What if Giulia, or even Old Mrs Petrelli, had been the leader? Christopher wasn't sure if women ever played this kind of part in Mafia projects. He had the feeling it was mostly a male preserve. But even the Mafia couldn't be completely immune from the feminist revolution, surely?

  Who had decided to kill Old Mrs Petrelli, and why? Maybe if she was the leader, one of the younger ones had made a bid for power, thinking it was time for a new generation. But would Roberto Petrelli kill his own mother for this reason? On the other hand, if it had been him, the fact that Roberto himself had been shot in the woods made a lot of sense. Giancarlo could have been avenging his grandmother's death. And Giancarlo had the gun in the railway yard, after all, and it looked as if he had been the one to fire the shot. There wasn't any other possible explanation.

  He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes for a moment. Of course he couldn't possibly sleep until he knew Amaryllis was going to be all right, but....

  He woke up with a start to find Detective Chief Inspector Smith peering at him.

  'Are you all right?'

  'Yes,' he croaked. 'Is Amaryllis - ?'

  What he wanted to say was, what are you doing here and are you a figment of my imagination?

  A woman police officer peered round Mr Smith. She smiled at Christopher. 'Everything's going well so far.'

  'We just need to ask you a few questions, Mr Wilson' said Mr Smith, trying not to look threatening and failing miserably. 'Can we go outside for a couple of minutes?'

  They stood in the corridor outside the room. Mr Smith had asked the policewoman, whose name was Karen Whitefield, to stay in the room 'in case of developments'. Christopher took that to mean in case Amaryllis woke up suddenly and started talking. He was surprised the policeman who had been outside the door earlier hadn't been sent in with a notebook already. Or maybe he had been there earlier recording all Christopher's snor
es and the funny little sounds from Amaryllis's machines in his notes.

  'So tell me,' said Mr Smith in a conversational tone, 'where did you get the gun?'

  'The gun?' Christopher was baffled: was he indeed dreaming? Or had everything that had ever happened to him up to now been a dream from which he had just wakened up?

  'The gun that was in your pocket when you got to the hospital,' said Mr Smith.

  'It wasn't my gun,' said Christopher. 'But I suppose that's what they all say.'

  'In this case we believe you,' said Mr Smith.

  'Giancarlo gave it to me,' said Christopher. He didn't like to incriminate the boy, but he sensed that at this point even Amaryllis herself might have given in and told the whole truth. 'I looked up and he was standing there. He looked confused - I wondered if he was on drugs. I told him to put the gun down and he did, so I picked it up and put it in my pocket out of the way.'

  'It would have been better to leave it there for the police,' said Mr Smith with an attempt at severity. He sighed. 'But in the circumstances I don't really blame you. It was more important to have it out of harm's way.'

  'Does that mean Giancarlo shot her?' said Christopher. He was still oddly reluctant to believe in Giancarlo as criminal mastermind. He didn't know much about the boy, but he seemed a perfectly normal teenager in most ways. Not that it was exactly normal to be carrying a gun around just after someone had been shot.

  'That's one possibility,' said Mr Smith. 'We haven't ruled out others.'

  'Zak and Stewie?' said Christopher.

  Mr Smith sighed again. 'They all seem a little too lightweight to me, But you never know what people will do if they're desperate.'

  'So did whoever it was shoot Amaryllis because she was hot on their trail?' said Christopher.

  'I'm guessing so. It was a panicky kind of attack though - at that range it was almost impossible not to inflict a much worse injury, and yet they went for the shoulder. But the two murders bear the hallmarks of a professional killer. We may be looking for more than one perpetrator.'