“You wrote it down?”
“I wrote that I recognised the sound of BJ’s car. Then, when you didn’t read the notes, it felt like I’d been let off the hook. It took me till tonight to face up to telling you again. Come on, Gloria, that’s only two days. It takes time to face up to someone you love being a sick fuck.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’m going to go to the police,” said Stig. “I just need to get everything straight, make a load of notes and then I’ll go and turn myself in. They’ll arrest me, I know that, but as long as they listen, in the end it’ll be okay.”
“They’ll arrest Duggie too, won’t they?”
“Probably,” he said. “For a while anyway. Is that okay?”
“It’s fine by me,” I said. “He’s up to his neck in this. Making up stories and hiding things. I still don’t understand why he wasn’t straight about what happened with Moped.”
Stig thought for a while. “Me neither,” he said. “Some people just aren’t straight. Just not made that way.”
Then we sat in silence waiting for the dawn, listening to Walter Scott’s breathing get shallower and shallower and slower and slower until it was no more than a ragged gasp and the pauses in between the breaths were long enough to let us doze. By the time they stopped completely we were both asleep and, when we woke, his stillness was so perfect that even if I could have changed it and made it not true, I would have kept things how they were. I looked down at him and thought something I had never thought before: Maybe I can do this. Maybe if it happens this way round, then by the third time I’ll be ready.
Thirty
Saturday
“He never laid a finger on me, mind,” Stig said. He had edged round the bathroom door and was watching me brushing my teeth.
“Of course not,” I said. I damped my hands and pressed them over my hair. One good thing about my hairdo is that it never gets messy. No problem sitting up all night.
“Or Wee J,” he went on. “I mean, not that I ever asked, but Weej brings the kids round to Mum and Dad’s all the time and leaves them there overnight sometimes.”
“When are you going to go to the police?” I said. “I could knock off about twelve and come with you.”
He nodded. “I want to bury Walter anyway,” he said. “I wouldn’t have got through the last week without him. No offence.”
“And I want to go and see Nicky,” I said. “I still think it’s weird that the home didn’t call me when I never showed up last night. They know I live alone. I could be lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck for all they know.”
“But if you’ve never not shown up before then you don’t know what they do when someone doesn’t show up, do you?” Stig said.
“Can’t fault your logic,” I said, smiling. Then we both remembered where Stig’s logic had led us, and the smiles were gone.
Lynne was at work before me.
“Well?” she said. “Any developments?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Where would I begin? There was so much of it. For some reason, though, it was Duggie who was bothering me.
“Am I going to have something to hold over my mum’s head for the rest of our lives?” Lynne said.
“Definitely. So was there any walk-in business on Thursday? It seems a bit too good to be true that I can just swan off from my job and nobody missed me.”
“A birth,” she said, “but I batted it back again.”
I started up the computer and pulled my mail tray towards me. Duggie could wait; I owed him nothing. “What do you mean ‘batted it back’?”
“Ocht, it was the dad on his own with the big brother. Mum and baby still in their goonies at home and he’d forgotten the marriage lines. So I told him he’d have to come back when he’d found them.”
“That was a close call then,” I said, wondering what would have happened to me if my bosses had found out I was AWOL.
“They’re coming back today, first thing,” said Lynne. “It was Leo McGill. I know fine and well him and Theresa are married because I was at their evening do, but he didn’t argue. I think he was worn out from getting the wee boy up and dressed and out with his breakfast inside him. No Hand of Woman there, I’m telling you.”
I laughed, but only briefly.
“What is it, Gloria?” said Lynne. “You suddenly got a really funny look on your face.”
“Something,” I said, vaguely. Then I shook my head. “I’m too soft for my own good, but I need to make a quick call.”
Duggie was at the shop already. He always started early, a matter of pride to be in before his dad got there and long before the paid assistant-manager who ran the kitchen side.
“How are you doing?”
“What’s happening?” His voice was ragged. “I’m going spare here, Gloria.”
“It’s BJ Tarrant,” I said. “And we can prove it. Just sit tight.”
“Easier said than done.” Stig had had six days of this and Duggie was strung out already.
“Your computer’s off, eh? And no one else can get into your email from the other stations?”
“My dad wouldn’t know an email if it bit him.”
“What about the other manager?”
“Zöe’s called in sick.”
I hadn’t known she was a manager—I thought she was his assistant in the flooring side, from the way she was right there with him instead of in her own department along the street—but it made no difference.
“Probably just as well,” I said, trying not to wonder what it was that was wrong with her and if she’d been incubating it when she went in to see Nicky. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Who was that?” said Lynne when I had hung up. “And what about BJ Tarrant? Glo, you really don’t look too good, you know.”
“I didn’t get much sleep last night. We sat up with Walter.”
“Who’s this?” said Lynne.
“The dog, Walter Scott. He died in the early hours. So, as well as everything else, I need to get ready to tell Miss Drumm about that when I see her.”
“No, I mean who sat up?” said Lynne. I closed my mouth very firmly. I was so tired, my thoughts weren’t making any sense and my mouth was running away with me.
“You know, it’ll all be out by the end of the day anyway,” I said. “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you now.”
But I didn’t get the chance because the door opened and in came the McGills, all four of them today. Theresa, still slow and tired, was dressed in grey sweats like Stig, but the little boy—Adam, if I remembered right—was dressed in smart new blue corduroys and a wee checked shirt in blue and yellow with a yellow tee-shirt peeking out at the neck. The baby, a girl, was like a collection of marshmallows, palest pink and pure white, with swansdown round the hood of her hat.
“Aww, Tess, she’s lovely,” said Lynne, flashing her eyes at me. Hand of Woman, they were signalling. Again something flipped inside me as if I’d eaten a live fish.
“Congratulations, both of you,” I managed to get out, but the young McGills and Lynne and the little boy and the baby disappeared, and I felt as if I was floating up out of my body and looking down. I could see the home and the woods, the bridge and the huttie, Rough House and the Rocking Stone, Stig in the garden and Walter covered with a sack, waiting until the hole was dug. I could see Mrs. Best and Duggie in town, both sitting alone and worrying; Angie and BJ in the hotel, locked together and hating each other; Rain and Sun Irving up at Borgue, locked together and loving each other still; Sally Jameson and her sister in the big white house in Moniaive tending to their mother; Scarlet in Perth, waiting for Rosie; those poor McAllisters wherever they were, and the car park overlooking the prison and the Hermitage up at Dunkeld; and April Cowan, who had started it all.
I could
see all of them, except one. I had known all along someone was missing. But who was it? And where were they?
“Earth to Gloria,” Lynne was saying.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry!” I said. “Miles away. What’s the name?”
“Huh, well,” said Theresa McGill. “Just as well this one forgot the forms yesterday because we changed our minds overnight. We were on Morgan yesterday, but then last night we started looking up meanings as well and we’ve settled on Zöe.”
“What does Zöe mean, like?” asked Lynne.
“It’s Greek,” said Theresa. “It means Eve. So we’ve got Adam. And Eve!”
“We like the sound of it too,” said Leo. “We wouldn’t give her a minging name just because it matched.”
“Eve,” I repeated. Lynne gave me a careful look. The McGills couldn’t see what I was doing from where they sat. No doubt they thought I was firing up the system to take their details, but really I was Googling. BABY NAME MEANING, I typed. And when I got to the site, I entered GIRL and then FRONIA and then stared at what it told me. There it was in dark pink letters on a pale pink screen and everything fell into place.
TEACHER, it said. An ugly name chosen for its meaning alone.
Somehow I registered little Zöe Morgan McGill and got the happy family out of the office again.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” said Lynne, as the door was closing behind them. I shook my head, dialling as I did so.
The phone rang out again and again until the answering machine kicked in.
“Stig?” I said.
“Who?” said Lynne.
“Pick up,” I said. “It’s Gloria. Oh my God, please God, tell me you haven’t gone to the cops already.” And then I heard the blessed sound of the handset being lifted and felt the tone change from the hissing tape to the warmth of a real connection.
“Glo?” he said. “Of course not. I’m still writing notes. I haven’t even started with Walter. Why?”
“Well, rip them all up,” I said. “And listen.”
I told him, and Lynne because she was hovering. I told him how much I was kicking myself for not seeing it before. The hand of woman was everywhere, although the woman was missing. Jo-jo’s wife Fronia who met the family only once and disappeared forever once he was dead, not leaving a single photograph behind her. The concerned stranger who brought Scarlet’s baby home again after snatching the pram for the third time. The secretary who was the Irving girls’ only contact with that wholly fictitious agency. Alan Best’s girlfriend who supposedly let her daughter be groomed and then spoke out in gossip and rumour instead of police reports and legal action. The fake April Cowan sending Stig the texts, calling him Stephen. The business partner supposedly helping the real April set up in herbal therapies. And last but not least, Duggie’s new girlfriend, so out of his league, so forgiving of all his failings, so willing to work late and use his computer, so happy to meet his son.
There, I lost control of my voice and had to breathe in and out for a minute or two, trying to swallow the bile rising in me. She had met Nicky. She had kissed him and touched his hair.
“And what about the McAllisters?” said Stig.
“We’ll never know,” I told him. “But we can be sure that she got her hooks in them, one and then the other. And she killed them. I bet she was put on remand. I bet she spent at least one night in Cornton Vale prison and that’s why Nod died there.”
“But how could Miss Naismith be Duggie’s new girlfriend?” said Stig. “He’d recognise her. We all would.”
“What?” I said. “Like you recognised me with different clothes and hair? You said she was a tie-dyed hippie. Hairy legs and no make-up. And it was nearly thirty years ago. A nose job, hair dye, different style. Think, Stig. Zöe—is it possible?”
“But she’d be too old.”
“No,” I said. “You’re wrong. We always thought our teachers were old, but if she was just out of college twenty-eight years ago, she’d only be nudging fifty now. Zöe could be fifty any day.”
“But how could she do it?” said Stig. “A flat in London and all the drugs and a honeymoon in France. Year after year. How could she … ” He spoke slower and slower and then stopped talking completely.
“What is it?” I said. I could hear papers rustling on the other end of the line.
“I’m looking at the dates, Glo. I was setting it out for the cops when we thought that my dad—My God, if I’d gone to the cops and said that about my own father!”
“What about the dates?”
“They’re spaced out,” said Stig. “It starts with Scarlet’s baby in 1989. That took care of both Scarlets, really. The weather girls’ modelling-turned-drug-habits and Cloud’s ‘therapy’ took up the early ’90s. Nod was ’95, Ned that same year. Bezzo’s troubles started around 2000, but they dragged on. Jo-jo’s whirlwind romance with Fronia was in 2005. I think you’re right. They’re spaced out like that because it’s one person doing it. And she needed time for the campaigns. After Jo-jo she moved on to April, and through April she was going to start on me. I was supposed to be hauled in for April’s murder.”
“Except you threw a spanner in the works,” I said. “She must have been seething about you going to ground. I can’t believe she held it together when you showed up at Duggie’s last night. I mean, she got out pretty quick, but she was calm.”
“And finally Duggie,” said Stig.
“I wonder why he was last.”
“That’s a really good question, Glo. Do you think she had something different planned for him before you started sticking your oar in? But then she had to fall back on a re-run of the Alan Best routine, because you were right there, getting in her way?”
“Me?” I said.
“You went to the shop the day after April was in the huttie,” he said. “You asked her about it. Of course you were getting under her skin. I mean, for God’s sake, Gloria. She came round to the house in the night and left those footprints around the stone, didn’t she? She must have been wearing borrowed shoes—maybe Duggie’s—but it was her.”
“You think she’s targeting me?” I said, and I knew my voice was tiny. I couldn’t seem to get any breath behind it. “What would she do to hurt me?” The question hung between us until the silence was deafening.
“I’m on my way,” said Stig and crashed down the phone.
Thirty-One
“Glo?” said Lynne. “You’ve gone pure white.”
I didn’t answer. I was dialling again. Iveta answered.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re not well. Is it the stomach bug?”
“Who said I wasn’t well?” I whispered. “Iveta, listen. It’s about Duggie’s girlfriend, Zöe. If she comes, you’re not to let her in.”
“Oh, Gloria,” Iveta said. “Don’t be like that.”
“Iveta, listen to m—”
“Everyone likes her. Except for you-know-who. She seems to have a problem, but then she has a problem with everything in this world.”
“Iveta!”
“But Zöe doesn’t even mind Miss Drumm. She stayed for an hour last night and she’s been here for an hour this morning alread—”
Nicky!
I was up out of my seat, out into the street, into the car and away, leaving Lynne spinning behind me. Never had the miles from work to the home seemed so long, the roads so humped and twisting, the corners so many and so very tight.
Nicky!
I rounded the last corner before the drive and slammed on the brakes to keep from running into Stig, who was pounding up the middle of the lane, his arms pumping and legs going like pistons. I screeched to a halt and flung open the passenger door, taking off again before he was fully inside.
“She’s there,” I said. “I phoned. She’s there now.”
I drove the car up as close as I cou
ld get to the home’s door, hit the brakes, pulled the hand brake, and left it there, flying into the home with Stig behind me.
“Call the p—” I shouted, then saw Deirdre sitting there. I swallowed the shout and looked around. Donna was hurrying towards me along the passageway.
“Gloria?” she said. “I thought you were ill.”
“Dial 999, Donna,” I said, keeping my voice quiet but making it very firm. “The woman who’s with Nicky is here to harm him.”
Then I grabbed Stig’s arm and dragged him along the corridor the other way, heading to Miss Drumm and Nicky and saying prayers under my breath that I hadn’t said for years.
“She came with his dad!” Donna called after us. “He’s on as next of kin after you!”
I ignored her.
The door to Nicky’s room was locked, but Miss Drumm’s was open and the connecting door stood open too. I glanced at her bed as I passed it and hoped against hope that it wasn’t the way it looked, that it meant something else the way she was lying there with her eyes open and her mouth wide, not moving.
I stopped in the doorway and grabbed Stig to stop him too. Zöe was sitting in the chair beyond the bed, with one hand on Nicky’s IV line and the other holding open the book.
“I wondered if you might be joining us,” she said. “I half expected you last night. I had an hour last night, Gloria, once that old bag next door had finally shut up and gone to sleep. A whole hour, just me and Nicky. I could have done anything. Where were you?”
“Don’t hurt him,” I said. “Nicky, don’t worry, darling, Mummy’s here.”
Zöe rose and put her mouth very close to Nicky’s ear and then she bellowed at the top of her voice. “Don’t worry, Nicky! Mummy’s here!” She shouted so loud that when she sat down again her face was red and she was panting. “I’m not sure he can hear you, Gloria,” she said.
“You bitch,” said Stig.
“But look on the bright side,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I’m not sure I can hurt him.”
The Child Garden Page 26
