Dead in the Water Read online

  ‘I’m Kevin Docherty,’ he was saying. ‘Kev to my friends – like you’re going to be.’ A wink and a nudge to one of his pals produced a fresh burst of sniggering.

  She swept him from head to foot with a contemptuous glance, then said, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ and turned her back.

  His hand shot out and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her round. ‘Don’t do that. I don’t like it.’

  His eyes had narrowed to malevolent slits, and she felt a lurch of fear. Then he was smiling again. ‘Come on, doll – you be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you. Very nice, later. Norrie!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘A drink for the lady!’

  In Jaki’s neighbourhood you got feisty or you got scared, and she’d never fancied scared. Anyway, they were in a crowded bar.

  She struck his hand away. ‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ she said fiercely. ‘Now get lost.’

  ‘Oh, too posh, are we?’ Suddenly he flared into violent rage. He began a tirade and Jaki, accustomed to casual swearing among colleagues, found herself shocked at the force of the same words used in malice.

  Marcus, who had had his back to this, heard the raised voice and turned. ‘What’s going on? Is there a problem, Jaki?’ He put his arm round her, and Barrie and Tony too moved forward to her side.

  She managed to sound angry, not scared. ‘This pond-scum seemed to think I might want to talk to him. I’ve explained I don’t, and he’s going to leave me alone now.’ She turned her back.

  Marcus said quietly, ‘So that’s it, right? We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘You think?’ Kevin sneered. He pushed Marcus hard, catching him off balance, and then laughed. ‘Oh, you’re not on sodding Playfair’s Patch now. This is my patch.’

  Marcus’s face turned dark and Jaki saw that he was struggling not to gratify Kevin by reacting to his provocation. The other drinkers were beginning to notice and behind the bar Norrie turned pale and went to the telephone.

  ‘We like trouble, don’t we, lads?’ Kevin went on, to growls of agreement from the grinning youths beside him. ‘Outside, though – not much space in here for what we’re planning to do.’

  The drinkers nearby were moving back to be out of range while still ensuring a ringside seat, but Tony Laidlaw, dark and saturnine, came forward. ‘Cool it, OK? No one’s fighting anyone. And if they were, you’d get stuffed.’ He looked past Kevin and nodded. ‘Deal with him, guys.’

  Before Kevin could move, two of the production team appeared, one on either side, separating him from his friends and neatly penning him up against the bar. They were both big men, and by now others from the cast and crew had joined them.

  Outnumbered, Kevin could only deliver another volley of obscene abuse, directed at Marcus. Then he turned away, as if it were he who had seen them off, and shouted, ‘Nip and a chaser, Norrie!’ at the sweating barman.

  A collective sigh ran through the company, either of relief or disappointment, and the noise rose again, louder than ever.

  A few minutes later, the landlord appeared in the doorway. He was a large man, with considerable presence, and he had thrown the door open with force. A hush fell as he shouldered his way through the crowd to where Kevin and his mates stood in an uneasy grouping.

  ‘You’d better get out of here, Docherty. I’ve called the police. And don’t come back, any of you. You’re banned.’

  He listened impassively to the vituperative response, then said, ‘You’re still banned. Get out.’

  For a moment, no one moved. Then Kevin, his face black with anger, walked out with his acolytes, a path opening before them through the crowd, and slammed the door hard.

  ‘Good riddance,’ the landlord said. ‘Nasty character, Docherty – should have banned him years ago. Sorry about that. Now, what can I get you, sir? I’m a great fan of Playfair’s Patch.’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘That’s kind, but I’ll take a rain check if I may – we’ve an early start tomorrow. What about you, Jaki?’

  She was more shaken than she cared to admit. ‘Yes, I’m coming back too.’

  ‘But aren’t you going to wait for the police?’ the landlord protested. ‘It’ll take them a wee while to get here, but—’

  ‘Much as I would like to nail the little bastard, I don’t want to make matters worse,’ Marcus said. ‘Let’s just say he’d had a bit too much to drink and you’ve dealt with it already.’

  ‘If you’re sure. But he’s only out of prison now on condition he behaves himself, and it might be a good thing if he went back there.’

  Marcus was dismayed. ‘Oh, that’s all we need! Look – it’s bad enough that he’s banned from his local. I don’t want a knife in my back next time I come down here for the weekend.’

  A lugubrious man, sitting on a bar-stool which had been a good vantage point, chipped in. ‘You’d better watch it, then – that’s what he was in for in the first place.’

  With this comforting information, Jaki and Marcus left. The rain was pelting down and it was very dark, with only one feeble street-light nearby illuminating little more than the pavement in front of the pub. Marcus had parked at the end of the car park, beyond the dark bulk of the Winnebago, and they both peered anxiously into the shadows as they dashed for the safety of the car.

  It was almost nine o’clock when Rafael Cizek got back from his work on the farm, looking depressed and very wet. One of the sheep had fallen sick and the vet had been unable to save it.

  ‘I failed, that’s the thing,’ he said miserably.

  ‘But Rafael, Bill will understand! I’ve heard him say sheep die deliberately, just to be a nuisance.’

  ‘I know, but with Bill away it was my responsibility. I feel bad about it – I will hate to tell him.’

  That was Rafael all over, taking his responsibilities almost too seriously. It might make him foolishly sensitive about Karolina working, but it made him a good husband and father as well as a good worker, and she loved him for it.

  As she heated up Rafael’s supper, there was a knock on the door. Rafael frowned. ‘It must be someone from the house – not another problem, I hope,’ he was saying as he went to the door, then, in blank astonishment, ‘Kasper! What are you doing here?’

  Rafael had been wet; Kasper was soaked to the skin. He had no raincoat and his short navy wool jacket was sodden. His teeth were chattering.

  ‘Can I – can I come in?’ he said.

  ‘Of course, of course! Come in out of the rain. But – what has happened to you? You have been fighting again?’

  With his thick dark hair plastered to his white face, the blackened bruising stood out luridly and his eye was a rainbow of murky colour.

  ‘I was attacked this morning.’ Pathetic as a half-drowned cat, he looked from one to the other.

  ‘Well, don’t stand there dripping on my clean floor,’ Karolina snapped. ‘Take your boots off and I’ll put down some newspaper.’

  Rafael stared in astonishment at his sweet-natured wife. He picked up the towel which had been drying by the fire, and handed it to Kasper.

  ‘Here, dry yourself off a bit. I’ll get something to warm you up. I’d say sit down, but—’ He glanced apologetically towards Karolina, fussing crossly with newspapers to put under Kasper’s wet stockinged feet.

  She caught the look, which said that she was behaving very strangely, and that hospitality was hospitality, after all. She was too angry at being manipulated to care.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Rafael asked, pouring vodka into two shot glasses. Karolina had refused a drink and was now standing with her arms folded.

  ‘I walked. Then I caught a bus, and then walked again. For hours.’ Kasper downed the vodka with a practised flick of the wrist. Rafael, still holding the bottle, filled it again.

  ‘Walked? In that rain? Where from?’

  ‘Ardhill. I was living in a house there, with a building gang. It was the boss who attacked me—’

  ‘Tell him why,’ Karolina said acidly, then before he could
speak, went on, with a contemptuous gesture at Kasper, ‘He walked out to take a job in the film canteen because it paid better. Let the others down. Small wonder the boss was angry!’

  ‘The canteen – where you are working?’ Rafael said slowly.

  ‘Er – yes.’ In her indignation, Karolina had forgotten where this would lead. ‘He heard me talking about it after Mass – and then turned up looking like this! I had said he was respectable, and he made me look a fool – or dishonest, which is worse.’

  For a moment Rafael had looked suspicious, but his wife’s uncharacteristic hostility was reassuring. He asked Kasper, ‘So, what happened then?’

  ‘After work, I went to the house, but he locked me out. The others did nothing, but when Jozef went into his bedroom I knocked on the window.

  ‘I told him the man is mad, me today, him tomorrow, but he – wasn’t helpful. I said, “He’s not one of us, he exploits us – he is a monster! We must fight him together!” But Jozef is a coward, only interested in the money he gets.’

  ‘So unlike you!’ Karolina sniped. ‘And when the film people leave, what will you do then?’

  ‘I don’t know! I need help, that is why I’ve come to you, my old friends.’

  ‘I told you—’ she began, but Rafael interrupted her sternly.

  ‘Karolina, he is our guest. Kasper, I have clothes you can wear. They will perhaps be a little short, but they will be dry.

  ‘Come with me. Karolina will make you something to eat, then we can talk.’ He gave his wife a meaningful look.

  There were always eggs in the house, courtesy of Marjory’s hens, and Karolina broke them into a bowl for an omelette, but with a bad grace. She was slicing one of her own loaves when Rafael came back with Kasper’s wet clothes.

  ‘He’s having a shower,’ he said.

  ‘He’d better not wake Janek, that’s all.’ Karolina took the bundle from him and dumped it on the table while she let down the pulley.

  ‘I know you’re angry with him,’ Rafael said tentatively. ‘But you know we can’t turn him out on a night like this.’

  She picked up a pair of trousers and hung them up. ‘He planned this,’ she said fiercely. ‘He said, could he stay here and I told him he couldn’t. Twice. So he just put us into a position where we couldn’t refuse. That’s why I’m angry.’ She wrung out a sock in a way which suggested there was something else she would happily wring instead.

  Rafael grimaced. ‘He was no friend of mine, even before he took up with you. He was never entirely honest. But it is hard here, where we are all strangers together. We have to—’

  ‘Rafael,’ she said, in a strange voice, ‘Look.’

  In one hand she held the navy jacket, in the other a razor-edged knife with a horn handle with brass studs.

  Sylvia Lascelles heard them returning from the pub and glanced at the travel clock on the table beside her. Only half past ten! It couldn’t have been a very good evening.

  She had said she was going to bed, but preparations took painful effort and she had been too tired even to try. She had dozed in her wheelchair, and now she was looking out into the rainy darkness.

  The sound of the steady downpour was soothing. She had loved to listen to the rain long, long ago as she lay awake in the big bedroom upstairs, with Laddie asleep at her side, indulging the fantasy that she was mistress of Flora’s beautiful house as well as her husband.

  Laddie would never discuss divorce and Sylvia knew that the house, not his wife, was her rival. If Flora could just have died quietly, and painlessly of course – Sylvia was a compassionate woman – it would have solved everything.

  But Laddie had died first, a prisoner latterly in this very room. The time for discretion had passed; Sylvia had begged Flora to let her see him, and in a two-minute phone call had been scornfully refused. She had heard the delight in power in the other woman’s voice, and knew herself for once powerless. It was a bitter blow for someone accustomed – even, perhaps, addicted – to the ruthless exercise of charm in imposing her will.

  Tears came to her eyes thinking of Laddie, old and wretched, alone with this cold, dreary woman. Admittedly, Flora had provided his creature comforts: this was a pleasant room, better heated than anywhere else, with its own little bathroom adapted for the infirm. He would have hated that necessity, as she did.

  It was a wonder his bored, unhappy ghost didn’t linger still, but it didn’t. She couldn’t sense him here at all. Elsewhere, in the conservatory in particular, his presence was so real she almost thought if she turned she would see him – not old, but young again, and with that extraordinary aura which the World War II pilots seemed to retain, as if winning their duel with death in the air had left them with more of the life force than earthbound mortals.

  Marcus was like Laddie in many ways, but set in a lower key. Laddie could be an utter bastard, completely without shame; Marcus didn’t have that ruthless streak. A darling boy, Marcus.

  Though he denied it, Sylvia suspected that pity had prompted Marcus to get her the offer of the part. She knew he believed she’d been tempted by the promise of a last, brief flicker of the candle of fame – as if she didn’t understand that her bright day was done and she was for the dark! She was a curiosity, a live fossil, and extravagant admiration for the woman she had long ceased to be left her merely impatient (‘Homage, Miss Lascelles’ – silly little man!).

  It was Laddie who had brought her back here, still drawing her from beyond the grave to the house he had loved. And she had found him here; she could even hear his voice in the gallant, teasing things Marcus said.

  She saw so little of Marcus these days! He was busy and successful, and when he came to London it was for professional reasons and the most she could expect was a brief visit or even just a phone call. Sylvia wondered jealously how often he had come to see Flora.

  In her fantasy, she would have lived in this house and Marcus would have been her son. But theirs was only a bond of love, not duty, and the house—

  She hated the thought of him selling it. She hadn’t money to give him herself; she’d been flush at one stage, but the cruel onset of her illness had brought an end to high earnings just when older women – Judi Dench, Maggie Smith – seemed to be more in demand than ever. She’d been more famous than either of them, once, but all she could hope was that she would die before the money for carers ran out.

  Marcus must marry money – that was the only answer. Laddie had done it and had never let it cramp his style. With Marcus’s charm, it shouldn’t be difficult.

  At least Jaki – ‘Jaki’, for heaven’s sake! – was history now. He must become more serious, and find some suitable young woman. If it wasn’t a love match, they could come to the sort of arrangement Flora and Laddie had; being ‘understanding’ would be the price she had to pay to keep Marcus – and Marcus could charm any woman he chose.

  Then, as if a cold hand had touched her, she remembered the visit from the police. She wasn’t a fool: the police didn’t turn up after twenty years to question someone who’d had a teenage romance long before the girl had died. Marcus had said it was routine, unimportant – but why, then, had he been so defensive and edgy?

  Why would it have mattered if he’d fathered her child? He couldn’t be forced to marry her and Laddie, who doted on Marcus, would have found the money to pay her off. There would be no need to kill her, and knowing Marcus she would stake her life on it that he hadn’t – or bet her dwindling bank account, a gamble she would be much less ready to take.

  Sylvia could see that quite clearly, but would the police? The magicians on Playfair’s Patch, delivering justice within the hour every week, bore no resemblance to their real-life counterparts.

  A sudden, savage twinge reminded her she must take her medication and once it had taken effect begin the ordeal of putting herself to bed. She swallowed the tablets and sat staring out a little longer.

  She was feeling melancholy now. After this, what had she to look forward to? A qu
iet life was preferable perhaps to having allowances made for her by pitying colleagues – she, Sylvia Lascelles, who had been famed for her utter professionalism! But she would be alone with her rage against the dying of the light as twilight gathered.

  ‘The police came today.’ Jean Grant put down a plate with greyish chops, dried out from the oven, boiled potatoes and damp cabbage in front of her son.

  Stuart went still. ‘What were they wanting?’

  ‘Just one of them. A woman. Asking questions about Ailsa all over again.’

  ‘Ailsa – opening up the case?’

  ‘Yes. Won’t bring her back, though, will it? And they’re going to ignore what I told them just like the last lot did.’

  He began to eat. ‘So – doesn’t make any difference, then.’

  ‘They’ll be wanting to talk to you.’

  ‘They can if they like. Talking’s cheap.’

  ‘You’ll need to watch what you say.’ Jean’s eyes were fixed on her son but, chewing methodically, he wouldn’t look at her. ‘I told her Ailsa had problems with your father – they knew that already anyway.’

  His temper was as fiery as his hair. ‘Problems? That’s what you call it? Between you, you made her life hell. Oh, you always say you and she were close, but the way you treated her, she’d have said nothing just out of spite. You couldn’t break her, even going on about her bringing another mouth to feed—’

  The slap across his face took him completely by surprise, rattling his teeth in his head.

  ‘Wash your mouth out, Stuart Grant! That’s lies, all lies.’ She swept the plate off the table and it smashed on the floor. ‘Say one word of that to the police, and I sell the farm and give the money to charity. Not a day goes by – barely an hour – when I’m not thinking about her. I’d only her good at heart. She could have been decently married by now, and me with grandchildren to make up for a lazy, fushionless lump of a son.