Carrion Comfort Page 5

  ‘Couldn’t say. Sometimes things that look complicated turn out to be simple enough.’

  ‘Right.’ Her voice had gone flat again. ‘Be careful, anyway. No heroics, like the last time, OK? Give me a buzz when you get back.’

  Finella rang off, leaving him uneasy. There was definitely something wrong. Things had been going well for her in the last year, he’d thought; money had been a bit tight when Fin was a stay-at-home mum, but she’d gone back to work part-time with her old law firm now Betsy was established at nursery. Her partner, Mark, had given up the management job at Tesco that his father-in-law so despised and was writing wills and conveyancing property in a firm in Linlithgow, working towards a partnership, so it ought to be easier now. They’d moved to a nice flat in Morningside recently, and last year they’d even had a holiday in Greece, so money obviously wasn’t the problem.

  Marriage, he wondered suddenly. Could that be it? Mark obviously had a problem with what he called ‘the M word’ in jokey conversation, and Fin had seemed happy enough with their present arrangement – though maybe resigned was a better way to put it? Perhaps that was starting to cause friction; she was a dutiful child, uncomfortable with disapproval from her conventional parents in a way he never had been.

  Kelso hadn’t married Alexa from any sense of duty. He’d joked to her that he wanted to tie her down as securely as possible, so he could never lose his precious girl. The ring on her finger hadn’t given any protection, though, against a juggernaut crashing through a motorway barrier. Unconsciously he fingered the scar that ran from cheekbone to jawline on the right side of his face. It had healed completely now but touching the puckered line triggered a sharp stab of memory.

  But he’d things to do and he’d better get on with them. Like phoning his mother, now he’d been reminded.

  It would be fresher up on the moor. Gabrielle Ross turned off the main road into an old farm track and parked at the end of it. She didn’t take the route Paddy had always taken, up from the house right along the edge of the bogland to what he called his secret loch – oh no, not that way, not that way.

  Paddy had loved walking through the boggy ground, roaring with laughter when the tussock he had stood on sagged under his weight and his boots filled with water. From her earliest years she’d tagged along after him, hating the way the greedy ground grabbed at her feet, sucking and pulling so that sometimes she lost her wellies, hating the squelching of her feet in the wet boots, terrified that the bog would suck them both down. She knew all the stories about cows that disappeared, and she had nightmares afterwards, but it was worth it for an afternoon with Paddy all to herself and perhaps a share of a brown trout or two for tea as a reward.

  But Paddy had a passion for the Flow Country. He had seen it at first as an enemy to be vanquished in his quest to make money out of the drained land, but then its weird beauty had somehow bewitched him – the birds, the strange insects and the stranger plants. Even after the dream came to nothing he had felt a paradoxical delight that the bog remained wild and untamed and when he came up from Aberdeen the first thing he did was find the rods and creel and set off.

  Gabrielle jumped out, undoing her ponytail and pushing her hands through her hair to loosen it as she walked across the springy turf. She could smell wild thyme as it was crushed beneath her feet and hear the contented mumbling of the wild bees as they made the most of this time of plenty.

  Mindfulness should be easier here. When she sat at home trying to listen to her breathing and relax into her heartbeat, there was still too much space for thinking and then the breathing got uneven and the pulse ragged. Now she could focus on the myriad shades of green of grasses and bushes, on the shimmering silver blue of the Pentland Firth in the heat haze away on the edge of the horizon, on the white flags of bog cotton fluttering gently in the light breezes; she could strain her ears to catch the trickle of song from the lark she could see spiralling up in the distance. There was a curlew somewhere; she could hear the mournful ‘Whaup! Whaup!’ that gave it its Scottish name. She gave a deep sigh and felt her tense muscles softening.

  Gabrielle felt nearer to Paddy up here. The ‘secret loch’ lay ahead, its peaty depths navy blue under the summer skies. She could almost feel he was there, right at her side; he was much too vital a person to be just … snuffed out. She gave a small, involuntary sob. There was another ghost walking beside him too – the vital, optimistic girl she had once been. That girl had been snuffed out, certainly.

  She’d let him down so badly. He should have had a thriving grandchild by now, even if he hadn’t been there to see it, and she should have been nurturing his other baby too, the firm he was so proud of, his legacy. She hadn’t even the strength to do that for him now: too much grief, too much pain, too much fear.

  All she had to cling to was David’s steadfast confidence that she could, given rest and the blunting of memories through time, get back one day to that ghost self. If that had really gone forever, there would only be despair and the voice in her head whispering quietly, ‘Why go on?’

  Her mind, so briefly quieted, began the old circuit of frantic, hamster-like scrabbling. The peace spell broken, she walked back to the car.

  Her phone pinged with a text just as she got back to the house – David, to say they’d landed at the Aberdeen heliport. By the time he caught the plane to Wick and drove home it would probably be four hours and he’d be hungry. She’d better make a casserole that could wait in the oven.

  She unpacked the shopping bags, selected onions and carrots and went to get a knife from the wooden knife box that stood on the surface. There was an empty slot; the small vegetable knife was missing. She frowned. She must have put it in the kitchen drawer by mistake. That was unusual; she and David both enjoyed cooking, and these were expensive knives that would lose their edge, tumbled in with the other utensils.

  She looked, but it wasn’t there. Gabrielle paused to think. When had she had it last? Yesterday, of course; she’d made a salad for her supper – coleslaw, tomatoes, cucumber. Could it have got thrown out with the cabbage leaves? The compost bin was fairly full. She tipped out the smelly debris onto a sheet of newspaper and raked through it. No knife.

  She was shaking now. She must have had another of these terrible blanks. She’d put it in some totally crazy place and now she had no idea where that might be. If David found it first … He didn’t need evidence that she was getting worse, on top of everything else. Abandoning her preparation, she went through the house frantically opening every drawer, every cupboard. She couldn’t find it. With tears of frustration in her eyes, she took a bigger knife and went on chopping.

  It was only when she went to the cloakroom later that she saw it as she washed her hands – carefully placed near the basin. She picked it up slowly, feeling a chill down her spine. It was very shiny, very sharp. Very … attractive. Experimentally, she laid it against her wrist.

  Was that what she’d been thinking? They said that cutting yourself gave you relief from stress; she’d read that somewhere. And she really needed relief from stress—

  She increased the pressure just a little, until it was painful. Just a tiny slit, to see …

  David would notice, would notice at once. She drew a shuddering breath, dropped the knife into the basin as if it had some toxic power of its own. She must stop this, calm down, control herself. Her hands were sweating so that they were slipping on the cold tap as she turned it on. She splashed her face, her neck, again and again, forcing herself to breathe deeply and regularly.

  At last her hands were steady enough to pick it up and go back to the kitchen. That never happened, she told herself. You’re making a drama out of a careless mistake – you forgot you had it in your hand when you went through to the cloakroom and laid it down. A simple oversight.

  But as she put the knife back in its place her eyes went again to the blade. It had felt so neat, so cool against her skin …

  At five o’clock sharp Morven Gunn made a productio
n out of locking the door of the Lemon Tree cafe, a signal as pointed as calling, ‘Time, gentlemen, please,’ in a pub. She backed it up with a glare at the tables where a couple of groups were still lingering over their tea.

  She was a big woman, lean and bony, with harsh features and a thin-lipped mouth that had an embittered downward slant at the corners, famous locally for her aggressive approach to the art of table service. Her scones, though, were equally famous and the lunches were good too; since there was no competition within the village, the cafe was seldom quiet and today she had been run off her feet.

  She hovered round the occupied tables, pouncing from time to time on any empty plates and clashing them down loudly in the kitchen.

  ‘She’s in a right ill mood today,’ one woman said in an undertone. ‘What’s eating her?’

  ‘Doesn’t need to be anything, with Morven. She’s always in a right mood,’ her friend said. ‘Has been for years.’

  ‘Worse than usual, I’d say. We’d probably better go before she lays hands on us and throws us out.’

  ‘It’s been known.’ The group at the other table were leaving hastily, psyched out, and they gathered up their bags and stood up too. ‘My turn to pay. But she’s not getting a tip, mind.’

  Morven rang up the bill and took the money with a cold nod, then ushered them out and locked the door again with a sigh that was almost a groan. She was tired to her very bones. The din made by customers high on the local scandal just hadn’t stopped, her head was splitting, and it was all she needed that Kirstie had been in a silly mood too; she’d been clumsy and careless, and pert with it when Morven bawled her out. She’d sent her home early and told her she’d dock her wages. She’d been more bother than she was worth today.

  It left her with a lot of clearing to do so it was late before she could lock up and set off wearily for home. It was getting on for seven now, but it was still hot and humid in the evening calm. It felt uncomfortable − unnatural, even − but that was in keeping with the weird, febrile atmosphere.

  The main street was still busy even though the shops were shut, and a police car came slowly along, heading to Mowat’s farm, no doubt. They said there was lots of activity there today, with yellow ‘Crime Scene Do Not Cross’ tapes everywhere; half her customers seemed to have walked out there to take a look – probably the most exercise they’d taken in weeks, from the looks of them. She kept her head down and didn’t even turn to look as it passed.

  Her small rented flat was next door to the Crown Bar, the only pub in the village, and it opened directly onto the pavement. It was in full sun and she knew what it would be like when she opened the door: unaired, with a hot, foetid smell. It backed onto another property, so she couldn’t open a window on the other side to get a through draught and there would be no respite until the shadow of the buildings opposite lengthened to reach across the road. Tired as Morven was, she couldn’t face sitting in the stuffy front room, sweltering, hearing the chatter in the street outside as people gathered at the pub.

  A terrible weariness came over her. She hated this, she hated it! The bitter unfairness of life with its multiple injustices brought the tears to her eyes. By rights on a day like this she should be sitting in the pretty garden under the shade of the apple tree with money in the bank and a future to look forward to.

  All this was doing her head in: she wanted peace, solitude – though perhaps what she really wanted was respite from the demons inside her own head. She hesitated for a moment, then turned along one of the side streets that led to the old Free Church, deconsecrated and empty now.

  Gary was there, in the graveyard – all that was left of him, her bright hope. They wouldn’t let her put ‘Murdered’ on the headstone, as she’d wanted to, so all that was carved on the polished granite was his name, dates, and ‘Beloved son of Morven Gunn’ with plenty of space for her name below when she joined him in her own lair under the turf. She often came here and even the illusion of Gary’s presence always made her feel calmer.

  She left the path and as she picked her way between the graves it occurred to her that she should have brought a watering can for the row of dwarf rose bushes she had planted in front of the headstone. There was dampness in the air, certainly, but they hadn’t had proper rain for a fortnight.

  But when she reached the grave, she saw that there were flowers laid on it beside the bushes – a big bunch of tight yellow rosebuds with a card with the initials ‘G. R’. She stopped short as if the sight of them had been a slap in the face. She knew who would have put them there and she could feel the rage building in her.

  The shriek burst from her in a demented spasm of purest fury. The tears poured down her cheeks as she picked the bunch of flowers up and with frantic fingers broke and tore at the blooms, scattering petals and greenery all about her. Then she stamped on them, grinding them into the earth, just as she had been ground down by Pat Curran and his devil’s spawn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rhona Mowat bent over her iPhone, trying not to let her daughter see that she was studying her across the breakfast table on Monday morning. Unusually, Kirstie was out of bed early enough to have breakfast before she went to the cafe, but she didn’t seem to want anything except coffee. The piece of toast her mother had insisted on lay on her plate with a single bite taken out of it.

  The girl was pale under her make-up – plastered even thicker than usual this morning – and her eyes were heavy, as if she hadn’t slept well. She’d come home from work early on Saturday looking as if she’d been crying, but when Rhona had asked her what was wrong all Kirstie would mutter was that Morven Gunn was a cow and she hated her.

  She’d been subdued all Sunday, but she seemed to be planning to go to work this morning. Morven’s bark was worse than her bite and if she hadn’t actually sacked Kirstie, the storm, whatever it was, would probably have blown over.

  She said, very casually, ‘You going in today, Kirstie?’

  Kirstie’s chin came up in her usual defiant gesture. ‘Course. Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I thought you had a bit of a run-in with Morven on Saturday?’

  ‘So?’ She shrugged. ‘She’s like that.’

  ‘You’re looking tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She got up, tipped her uneaten toast into the bin and left her plate and mug on the draining board. As her mother opened her mouth to say, ‘Dishwasher!’ a police car drew up in the yard and Kirstie jumped and gave a little gasp.

  Rhona looked at her sharply. She should have thought about it sooner; Kirstie might look fifteen going on twenty-five, but she was still just a child and it would hardly be surprising if a body found on her own doorstep had spooked her a bit. They hadn’t told her about the ravens but there was little doubt she’d have been furnished with all the gruesome details by the gossip in the cafe. The sinister white-clad figures that went to and fro up the track to the cottage were a constant reminder and Rhona hadn’t been sleeping very well herself, thinking about it.

  She got up as the policeman came to the door. ‘Oh, it’s Jack,’ she said to Kirstie. ‘He’ll be looking for a cup of coffee, probably.’ They had got to know the lads working around the cottage quite well over the last few days.

  ‘I’m just going.’ Kirstie picked up her backpack from the corner, opened the door and said hello to the officer, then went quickly off across the yard.

  PS Jack Lothian watched her go. ‘She looks keen to get to her work,’ he said.

  ‘Makes a change,’ Rhona said dryly. ‘Coffee? There’s some in the pot.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. There’s a lot on today. Fergus about?’

  She gestured vaguely. ‘Somewhere around. I can give him a message when he gets in.’

  ‘I was wanting to speak to both of you. There’s a DI coming up from Edinburgh – inquiry’s being scaled up. Apparently it’s a murder investigation now.’

  ‘Murder? But I thought it was just—’

  ‘Yes,’ Lothian said heavi
ly. ‘We all did.’ He didn’t look happy.

  It was proving to be a busy morning in the Curran Services office. An order hadn’t appeared for urgent delivery to a West Franklin rig and now Ailie Johnston was hanging on the phone trying to find out why. Then she’d have to try to find another supplier who could step in at short notice and that wasn’t going to be easy.

  She’d been planning to check up on Niall Aitchison first thing – she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind all weekend – but by the time she’d found a solution to the problems that seemed to multiply with every fresh call she made, it was late morning.

  Had he appeared today? He certainly hadn’t come to see her as he did most days, usually when he wanted to have a bitch about his latest problem with Bruce Michie. While she was too professional to join in, she was quite prepared to make sympathetic noises, and given that according to Michie they’d had a set-to when last Niall was in, she’d have expected a visit.

  Oh, she really hoped he was just stuck at his desk dealing with what had piled up last week. If not, whatever Michie said, she’d feel she had to give up her lunch break and trail away round to Niall’s flat to find out what the problem was.

  He wasn’t. His office was empty and when Ailie went along to the main office to ask the secretary who most regularly worked for him if she knew where he was, the girl looked blank.

  ‘Is he on holiday?’ she said without much interest.

  ‘I don’t know, Donna,’ Ailie said sharply. ‘Is he? When did you last see him?’

  Donna gazed into the middle distance. ‘Couldn’t really say. Maybe last week sometime.’

  ‘He wasn’t in last week. Did he say anything about going away?’

  She shrugged. ‘Could’ve, I suppose. Don’t remember.’

  ‘Thanks, Donna. That’s a great help,’ Ailie said with heavy sarcasm. She really was a useless quine, that one. But even when she asked other, less vacuous staff there was no more information.