Jamie laughs contemptuously. “Like you’d have a fucking clue. If you know so much about what’s coming, how have I been playing you for years? You cannae even tell what day it is tomorrow.” He nudges me with the gun, and my stomach feels extraordinarily, unforgivably vulnerable. Surely evolution should have put an armor plate there. How can there only be skin and muscle to protect my insides from a shotgun blast? “We’re in the back of beyond. I could shoot all three of you and hide your bodies and nobody would be any the wiser. There’s thousands of acres right outside; I could dump you just about anywhere. They didnae find our dad, did they, Ailsa?”
“We’d be missed,” Carrie says. She looks very young. Under her smudged eyeliner, she could be fifteen. “People would look for us.”
Missed. Carrie and Fiona would be missed, by the future they should have had, by each other most of all. I am not certain I would be missed.
“Or I could set it up like Fiona went nuts and killed the pair of you, then turned the gun on herself.” I look at him, trying to gauge how serious he is. Very, I think. He likes this plan. It tickles him. “Aye, that story everybody would buy. Maybe that’s the way to do it.”
The light in the center of the ceiling flickers. Fiona glances up at it thoughtfully. “You want to be careful, Jamie. I dinnae think it likes what you’re doing.” She looks at me with meaning. I don’t know what she’s trying to tell me.
“What?” he says irritably.
“The Manse,” she says. “You cannae feel it? It’s furious with you.”
“For Christ’s sake.” His face twists in disgust. “It’s a fucking house! It cannae feel! It cannae speak!”
“Oh, but it can,” I say, suddenly catching on to Fiona’s plan. She gives a small nod. “It’s been speaking, but I haven’t been listening carefully enough. It’s been trying to tell me that you’ve been coming in through the bathroom window. It’s been trying to tell me that you stole the picture of your mum from the album in the attic.” The light flickers again as thuds come from upstairs. There must be three or four doors slamming now. The shotgun is still trained at my stomach. His hand is still clamped round my upper arm, so tightly that I will have bruise marks. If I’m alive to have them.
“The bathroom window?” asks Carrie faintly.
“There must be a ladder hidden somewhere. He’s hardly Spider-Man. I’m guessing he used to have a key, from when he worked at the estate agent’s, but then I rather unhelpfully got the locks changed. He’s been coming in with my father’s bones. He likes to lay them out and have a cigarette. Sometimes he’s not so careful about collecting up all the little bits.”
Jamie’s jaw clenches at the revulsion that crosses Carrie’s face. “Our father’s bones, mind.” A gust of wind strong enough to rattle the kitchen windowpanes blows for a few seconds, accompanied by flickers of the light overhead and a string of thuds and bangs.
“How would our father feel about you pointing a shotgun at me?” It’s a misstep. For the briefest of moments, I see how much he wants me to believe in a fantasy future of the three of us living here, Norman Bates style. But I’m not the actress Carrie is. And he’s not stupid. “Stop trying to play me, you cunt,” he says brutally. “Dinnae think I willnae end you just cos you’re my sister. I will. I’m gonna.”
Carrie’s gray eyes leap to mine. I can see her horror and there is nothing I can do. I’m all too aware of the metallic barrel at my stomach. I’m helpless. I’m sorry, I say soundlessly. The kitchen door starts to swing farther ajar with a loud creak behind Jamie. He glances round quickly, then lifts his foot and boots it firmly closed behind him, like a horse kicking out.
“Sister,” says Fiona suddenly. “Based on what?”
“I told you,” says Jamie impatiently. “DNA testing.”
“You gave him a sample?” Fiona asks me, frowning.
I shake my head, but very carefully, given the proximity of the shotgun. “He took one anyway.”
“Hairbrush,” Jamie says, almost gloating. Too easy, I can see him thinking. “From your bathroom,” he says to me.
“What color?” Fiona asks. There’s something about her manner, a sudden excitement. It catches Carrie’s attention too.
“What the fuck does that have to do with the price of fish?” Jamie asks irritably.
“A blue one, right? A blue one? From the master en suite?”
“Aye.” Inexplicably Fiona starts to laugh. “What?” he says. Then louder. “What?”
“Ailsa isnae sleeping in the master bedroom. Carrie is.”
“But . . .” He looks at me, bewildered. “But Carrie and me cannae be related.”
“Carrie couldnae find her hairbrush the other day. I lent her mine. It was blue.” Fiona is laughing again, doubled over with it, crowing. “You took my hairbrush; my DNA. You’ve just proved we’re the half siblings: you and me. You’ve just proved yourself wrong.”
“No. I dinnae believe you.” The words scrape his throat on the way out. He’s almost white with fury and disbelief. Outside the wind is rising to another crescendo.
“Everything you thought is wrong. You’re not Martin Calder’s child. You’re not Ailsa’s brother. You’re the product of a suicidal mother and the man who found himself in her bed when he was grieving for his wife.” She’s not laughing anymore. “And you thought you were so smart.” She stands up squarely and faces him, and I finally see the full extent of her disgust laid bare on her face. “Fucking eejit. The Manse won’t stand for it.” And she hawks up a globule of saliva and spits at him.
It’s too much for Jamie—he swings the shotgun toward her, and in the same instant the lights flicker and die and a wind begins to blow, so fiercely that I can hear it screaming through the eaves, only it sounds like it’s coming from inside the Manse rather than outside. I’m conscious of moving toward the barrel that is now mercifully not pointing at my stomach, but I want to knock it away from Carrie—and Fiona, too. There’s a pressure in my ears as I’m moving, as if they need to pop, and then they do pop, as the kitchen door blasts open with astonishing force, whacking Jamie on the side of the head as I ram him from the other side. The shotgun discharges with an enormous bang as he goes down, and my full weight follows through the space he was in only milliseconds before, so that I crash shoulder first into the wall, then tumble on top of Jamie. Carrie, I think desperately. There is shouting. I’m not sure if some of it is coming from me. My elbow connects with a thump against some part of Jamie’s head, but he doesn’t make a sound.
There’s no light whatsoever in the kitchen. The wind has dropped; the Manse is silent and dark.
“Carrie, are you okay?” I call.
“Ailsa?” asks Carrie. She sounds like half of herself. Not even half, not nearly as substantial as that. “I’m okay, I’m okay—are you okay? Fi? Fi?”
“Here,” comes Fiona’s voice, reassuringly steady.
My eyes are adjusting to the dark now. Fiona is standing beside me, but she has three legs—and then I realize one of them is the barrel of the shotgun, and it’s in contact with Jamie’s head as he lies crumpled, half on his side. I look at Fiona. I can’t see much except her glittering eyes, staring unflinchingly down at Jamie. “Um. Fiona . . .” I struggle to get upright, but one shoulder isn’t working at all. There was a crack and a wave of heat around my collarbone when I connected with the wall. I can’t imagine that was a good sign.
“We don’t shoot him. That’s not how this ends,” she mutters. Then more loudly, “Carrie, can you find something to tie him up with?”
Carrie has activated the torch function on her phone and is playing the light over us all. “Is he . . . is he unconscious?” she asks. She’s found a little more of herself.
“Aye. The Manse gave him a fair old smack.”
“The . . . the Manse?” says Carrie hesitantly, but neither Fiona nor I answer her. Part of me believes it.
A much bigger part than before. I’ve shuffled myself into a position where I’m seated on the floor, my back against one of the kitchen units, my bad arm cradled awkwardly in front of me. It aches enormously in an oddly muffled way, as if my body knows the damage is too severe for me to cope with. Carrie’s torchlight slides over my face. “You’re hurt!” she exclaims.
“Collarbone,” I say briefly. I must have hit my head, too; I feel as if my brain is still ricocheting inside. The wind is still howling without, but we seem cocooned inside now. There’s no banging. The Manse has said its piece. “I’ll live. Find something to tie him up.” Her light slides off me as she turns for the drawers.
“Nothing here—oh, but I’ve found some candles!” Carrie says. “I wonder if the power is out everywhere. Matches, matches, where are matches?”
“Fiona, don’t you have a lighter?” I ask.
“Nope. Dinnae smoke,” she replies. “Not for years.”
“But I saw you . . .” It’s an effort to speak. “With a cigarette. Outside the Quaich.”
I sense rather than see her shrug. “I must have been holding it for someone else. I dinnae smoke. Not even when drunk.”
“She doesn’t,” says Carrie, still rummaging through drawers, and I start to laugh, though it hurts so much I could cry at the same time. Jamie. She must have been holding it for Jamie. I can see him now, leaning on the bonnet of his jeep, the glow of a cigarette in his cupped hand. Then he went to help Carrie get her jacket—he must have passed it to Fiona. Fiona doesn’t smoke.
“I bet you’re not on any medication, either.”
“I take an antihistamine for hay fever, if that counts.”
I find I’m laughing again. Carrie sweeps her phone light over me anxiously. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.” No. Trust the people, Fiona said, not the story. She was right; I’ve been building a false narrative. I’ve probably been doing it all my life. “Light the candles off the hob.”
In a minute or two she has three lit candles held more or less upright in a pint glass, like some kind of abstract art version of a vase of flowers. The yellow light forms a glowing sphere by the table but deepens the shadows elsewhere. On the floor, mere feet away from me, Jamie groans. Carrie’s hands cease moving as she looks across at him anxiously, then at Fiona, then she resumes the search more frenetically. “Try the boot room,” I suggest. My voice sounds as if it comes from a place very far from me.
“Yes. Right. Good thinking.”
Carrie steps into the boot room, and I turn my head very slowly toward Fiona, maintaining contact between the back of my skull and the cabinet unit. She’s chewing her lip, the gun still trained on her brother. “How does this end?” I ask her quietly.
“We dinnae shoot him,” she says, just as quietly. “But—”
“Got it!” Carrie returns, holding aloft a roll of garden twine, which she puts on the table. She’s very pale, but it’s obviously helping her to focus on tasks. “I’ll call the police now. And an ambulance.” She frowns at her phone. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—no reception. I’ll have to go upstairs.”
“Call my dad first, will you?” asks Fiona. “See if he’s found Callum. But dinnae tell him about . . . all this. I need him focused on Callum.”
“Yes. Okay. Yes.” She eyes Jamie dubiously, then mutters, “Right, here goes,” and picks her way gingerly past his supine figure on her way out of the kitchen.
I start getting to my feet, which is more of a struggle than anticipated with one working arm. I have to grab at a drawer handle to get enough purchase to lever myself up. Jamie groans. Fiona glances wordlessly at me.
“I’m on it,” I say, reaching for a knife from the wooden knife block. It has a black handle and long blade. Something about it catches at my brain, but I don’t have time to follow the thought. I cut some lengths of the twine, expecting it to be an awkward exercise with my arm, but the wickedly sharp blade slices through the twine as if it offers no resistance. What is awkward is trying to tie his hands. I don’t even want to touch him, but I force myself to reach out, to lift each hand in turn to loop the twine around it. I’m scared of him, even though we have the gun and he’s only half conscious. I hate that I’m scared. It belittles me in my own eyes.
“Should we swap? Can you hold the gun?” asks Fiona.
I shake my head. “It’s my right arm.” And I have no idea how to fire a gun. But it’s taking me too long; he’s starting to stir, faint movements at first. I just manage to tie a secure knot as he jerks against the bonds. I glance at his face, lit in macabre fashion from the pint glass of candles. I see the situation dawning on him, as Fiona places the barrel of the gun very deliberately at his throat. Slowly he breaks out in a grin that’s chillingly manic. His teeth are smeared with black. It takes me a second to realize that it’s actually deep scarlet blood suspended in his own saliva—at some point he has cut his mouth, presumably in the fall. Perhaps my elbow was to blame.
“You willnae shoot me,” says Jamie to Fiona. I wonder how he can be so sure of his words. Ignoring the barrel at his throat, he turns his head and spits out a spray of scarlet. I see a tooth in it and I think of the teeth in my father’s skull upstairs. “If you shoot me, you’ll go to jail,” he says.
“I willnae,” she says steadily, but there’s a flicker in her face.
“You will. Disproportionate response. It’s murder.” An icy leaden mass starts to form in my belly. This is what I was afraid of. How can it be that we have the weapon but he’s in charge? “The police will be all too ready to believe it with your record.”
“So what do you think is going to happen, wee brother?” she asks. The stress on wee brother makes him grin once again.
“You’ll let me go.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. Why on earth would I do that?” says Fiona, at the same time as I say, “The police are already on their way.” I really hope I’m telling the truth.
“Because you’ve got no choice. Kill me, and you go to jail, and leave that lad of yours without a mammy. You cannae even have me arrested because I’ll tell them about Callum.”
I look at Fiona. Her face is utterly still. “Tell them what?” I ask. “Fiona, what will he tell them?”
Jamie starts to laugh, his teeth scarlet where the candlelight touches and black otherwise. “I’ll tell them Callum isnae yours.”
“Don’t be . . .” I start, but I trail off as I catch sight of Fiona’s face. He isn’t being ridiculous, I realize. He’s not being ridiculous at all. I can’t even begin to process that right now. “We can’t let him free,” I say urgently to Fiona. “He’s just trying to play you.”
“Of course he is,” she says, her eyes still on Jamie. Her jaw is set. “He’s always played me. I’m never able to defend myself—how can you defend yourself when you cannae sequence events? Who would believe me in a trial? He’s always played me. I’m done with it.”
Jamie’s smile fades. He spits again, another scarlet-streaked stream of saliva. “So. You’re willing to lose Callum.”
“Ailsa, go check if Carrie has any news on Callum.” I look uncertainly from one to the other. Their eyes are locked. She glances at me when I don’t move. “Please?”
“Okay.” I turn for the door, but something isn’t right; I can feel something isn’t right, as if I’ve been here before and I know that something’s coming, something bad . . . I get through the hallway and put one hand on the staircase banister, and then I hear a faint shout and a hard thwack, and I have to turn back. I walk as soundlessly as I can. Through the half-open door I can see Fiona crouched over the prone figure, doing something to his hand. I reach the doorway in time to see her move toward his head, a flash of silver in her own hand, and then . . .
“Fiona!” I gasp, but it’s too late. She has stabbed into his neck. A pool of blood flows out unevenly as I watch.
She
looks up at me. Her hand is black with blood from the knife. “He got free and knocked the gun away from me,” she says. “He was going ballistic.” I’m leaning against the doorframe, too stunned to move. “He had a knife,” she adds, gesturing at his hand. A silver steak knife is in it. The twine I tied is still looped round his wrist, but it’s been cut through. “Look. There.”
There’s so much wrong with what she has said that I don’t know where to start. Jamie’s throat is spurting, but his eyes are closed. She must have knocked him out with the butt of the gun first. Fiona is getting to her feet, the black-handled knife in her hand, the blade extending down her side, glinting silver against her black jeans. I’ve seen this before. “The knife . . .”
“He must have brought it from home. I recognize it,” she says, but I meant the other knife that she’s holding, the one I used to cut the twine. I’ve seen her before, holding it. When she came to the door of my bedroom. Her face is calm; her voice is quiet. “He was going to hurt me. He was going ballistic.”
“No.” My words are quiet. “No, he wasn’t.”
She considers that. “But he was going to hurt me.”
“I . . .” It’s true. Any way this played out, Jamie was going to hurt her. “Yes.” I should be trying to stop the blood. I move quickly to grab a couple of tea towels. “Is this how it ends?”
“Now you believe me?” The irony in her question doesn’t escape me.
“Maybe.” I’m on my knees, awkwardly pressing the tea towel to the gash in Jamie’s throat.
“There’s no point.”
“I know.” I’m already too late to save him. It was always too late to save him; Fiona did a remarkably effective job. But it has to look like we tried.
“What will you tell the police? And Carrie?” she asks, kneeling to help me press the tea towels. She’s blocking the candlelight and Jamie is in darkness now. Not that he’s Jamie anymore. Maybe he was never the Jamie I thought he was.
The Missing Years Page 31
