Bad Blood Page 6
She’d chosen the Glendale bed and breakfast in Kirkluce for its cheapness not its decor but even so the dingy wallpaper and the random vases of dusty plastic flowers had a lowering effect on Marnie Bruce when she returned chilled from sitting in a bus in her damp clothes. Passing cars had proved unsympathetic and she was footsore as well after the long walk until the bus appeared.
The dismal room with its beige tufted bedspread and brown carpet was cold. The two small electric bars set into the blocked-up fireplace weren’t promising but she switched them both on and held her hands out to the grudging glow, shivering. She picked up the one thin towel that was provided and vigorously rubbed her hair, then realised that had made it so damp that she’d have to dry it before she went for the bath she craved. She spread it over a chair and set it in front of the fire while she unpacked her bag.
She’d wanted to stay in Kirkluce because she’d thought she would be going to and fro to the Galloway Police headquarters. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the policewoman who had talked to her had just been professionally cautious but she had a nasty feeling that she was going to be choked off without any answers at all.
Her trip out to Clatteringshaws had been completely pointless too – in fact this whole thing was starting to seem a really dumb idea. She could have stayed in London where you never had to walk miles in the rain without shelter, and she could have spent the week’s holiday she’d taken from her job looking for somewhere cheap to live near her work. That reminded her of her lovely flat and Gary and misery lapped round her again.
Was there any sense in this attempt to find out what had happened to her mother, after all these years? It wasn’t as if she had golden memories of her childhood; the scenes that repeated in her head mainly showed rows or neglect, but if the person who had left her for dead had gone on to kill, her mother deserved justice. And even if she wasn’t the perfect mum, the word had a sort of glow about it, as if it could warm the cold loneliness in her heart.
Anyway, she couldn’t bear not knowing. She who remembered everything, even things she would much have preferred to forget, had nothing but an echoing silence when it came to the most significant event of her life. She had to find out what lay on the other side of that silence.
A long-submerged anger was driving her now too. The authorities should be held to account for rubbing out this section of her childhood so ruthlessly that all these years she had obligingly blanked it out of her own mind. The memories were back now, though, crowding everything else out, demanding her attention.
They would no doubt prefer her to give up and go back to London with her questions unanswered, so she wouldn’t. She had a stubborn streak and she wasn’t going to be pushed around. If she didn’t hear back from them in the next couple of days, she would camp on the doorstep until Inspector Fleming would see her.
But what was she going to do meantime? The landlady had already made it clear to Marnie that she couldn’t expect to stay in her room all day.
She was still considering it as she lay in her bath. The tub had brownish stains under the hot tap and the water wasn’t as deep as she would have liked, since the hot started running out when it was only half-full, but at least it was warming her up.
Her visit to the broch had reminded her of Gemma, her only real school friend. Was she still around? The Morrisons had lived in Newton Stewart so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them. Gemma was unlikely to know what had happened after Marnie disappeared but her parents might remember, and making contact with them would give her something to do tomorrow.
The only other person she remembered was her mother’s friend Anita. She had visited quite often; she and Karen would talk for hours in the sitting room with the door shut, drinking and smoking. Interruptions from Marnie weren’t welcomed.
She looks at her watch. It’s eight o’clock and she’s starving. There’s sausages in the fridge but if Mum didn’t plan to have them tonight she’ll be in trouble.
It’s not fair. She’s got a right to her supper. She’s feeling cross now and she flings open the sitting-room door and hears her mother saying, ‘And then he just—’
She breaks off. She’s been crying but now she turns angry. ‘What the hell do you want?’
There’s an empty bottle of wine on the table and another one half-full and the air’s thick and smoky. Anita has turned to look at her too. She’s slim and small and very smart in a cream trouser suit, with long blonde hair and bright-red fingernails and beside her Mum looks sort of faded with her jet-black hair and grey tracky bottoms and black sweatshirt.
She swallows. ‘When’s supper?’
‘For God’s sake, you’re ten! You’re old enough to get something for yourself.’
Anita smiles at her but doesn’t speak. Anita often does that but she hasn’t worked out whether it means anything.
‘Can I have sausages?’ she says.
‘You can have champagne and caviar, as far as I’m concerned.’ Mum gives a sort of nasty laugh. ‘If you can find any.’
It’s a stupid thing to say. They never have anything like that. Probably it means she can have the sausages, though, and she retreats.
Anita gives her another smile as she goes. Before she closes the door she hears her saying, ‘I should be getting back to Dunmore, anyway.’
That was really all she knew about Anita. She didn’t know her surname and she’d never been to her house and she didn’t know where Dunmore was. Even if she did, she could hardly go to a strange place and wander round asking for Anita.
It wasn’t a common name, though. She’d nothing to lose by trying to find her mother’s best and indeed only friend as far as Marnie knew.
The bath water was no more than tepid now, and though she turned on the hot tap again hopefully only a trickle of hot came out and then went cold again. She got out of the bath and rubbed herself as dry as the inadequate towel would allow. At least, though, she had a plan for tomorrow and she went back to her room feeling a little more purposeful.
DC Hepburn had only just come on shift when the summons to DI Fleming’s office came, and she had barely entered the room before Fleming, waving her to a chair, demanded, ‘Well? What does Marnie Bruce want?’
Hepburn sat down with severe misgivings. Fleming was clearly on edge about this and she wasn’t going to like what Hepburn had to tell her. It was just her luck that MacNee was off today; normally she would have filtered it through him. Taking the flak direct from Big Marge was definitely above her pay grade.
She began cautiously. ‘I have to say first that she seems a bit flaky. It’s hard to put a finger on it but she often seems distracted when she’s talking to you and if she’s reporting on something that happened it’s – well, it just seems too detailed.’
Fleming raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m struggling to explain. It’s almost as if she’s describing something she’s looking at – sometimes she even uses the present tense.’
‘Mmm.’ Fleming considered that. ‘Anyway, what’s the general drift?’
Hepburn gave a nervous cough. ‘What she says is that she was taken into care when she was eleven after her mother disappeared and she wants to know what happened to her mother, whether she’s alive or dead and whether she chose to vanish or – or somebody killed her. And, er, why she never heard about any inquiry.’
‘I see.’
Judging by the grim expression on Fleming’s face, what she was seeing didn’t please her one little bit.
Hepburn hurried on, ‘I’m sure there would have been and it’s just that perhaps being a child she wouldn’t have heard about it or she doesn’t remember, or something.’
That was Fleming’s cue to say, ‘Oh yes, of course there was.’ She didn’t say it. There was just an awkward silence, and feeling required to fill it Hepburn blundered on.
‘Were you involved in it, ma’am? Marnie had a very clear recollection of you. You had a ponytail at the time, she said.’
Hepburn was sure that was the truth – apart from anything else, it squared with what Marnie had said – but she was equally sure that it wasn’t the whole truth, or anything near. She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.
‘Did you get any impression of what she is expecting?’ Fleming asked.
‘Not really. Just – well, some answers, I suppose.’
‘What was her attitude – cooperative or aggressive?’
Hepburn hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. Tense, certainly. And she seemed very determined not to be fobbed off.’
‘Right.’ Fleming thought for a moment. ‘OK, Louise. Have you written up your report?’
‘Yes. I can forward it to you immediately, if you want.’
‘Fine. Is there anything else came out of the interview that you want to tell me?’
Hepburn thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘I said I’d get back to her once I’d spoken to you, ma’am.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Fleming said quickly. ‘Have you got a mobile number for her? Good. Leave it with me – I’ll contact her myself. Thanks, Louise.’
Hepburn recognised dismissal. As she walked back down the stairs she was feeling – yes, shocked. The words ‘cover-up’ were beating insistently in her head.
There was no Morrison at the Newton Stewart address Marnie remembered when she leafed through the local telephone directory her landlady grudgingly produced for her. That was a blow; it was the only definite contact she had.
She could go to Newton Stewart, find the house and see if the new owners knew where the Morrisons had gone, but that meant bus journeys and her experience with the unhelpful woman at Clatteringshaws wasn’t encouraging.
She ran her eye down the list of Morrisons. What had Gemma’s father been called? Obligingly, the scene popped into her head.
‘Michael! Where are you?’ Gemma’s mum is saying as she comes into the sitting room where they’re watching TV. ‘Oh, hello, Marnie – you again! I didn’t know you were here.’
It isn’t said nastily – Gemma’s mum’s lovely, the sort of mum she wishes hers was – but she sort of curls up inside. Gemma never comes out to Clatteringshaws unless Mum isn’t there.
Gemma’s mum goes out again. ‘Michael!’ she calls. They go back to watching Grange Hill. Tucker’s in trouble again.
Michael, Michael. She pushed the scene away and went back to the directory. There are quite a lot of M. Morrisons but only two Michaels, one in Wigtown and one strangely enough in Dunmore, the place she associated with Anita.
That was a sign. She could find the information centre in town and ask where Dunmore was and how she could get to it.
The landlady was making pointed clattering noises with a hoover outside her door, obviously trying to dislodge her from her room. Marnie grabbed her tote bag and went out. It was chilly with a brisk wind blowing but at least the sun was shining and the air was so clear and fresh she felt an exhilaration that was close to optimism. This could be the day when she started getting answers.
There was no alternative, and she couldn’t put it off any longer. Bracing herself, Fleming went downstairs and tapped on Rowley’s door, cherishing the childish hope that she wouldn’t be in – as if that would solve anything.
When there was, indeed, no answer, she realised how foolish that hope had been. It only gave her longer to agonise over what lay ahead.
Shelley Crichton’s eyes were still red this morning and her head was aching, a hangover from two days of immersive grief. She always felt like this after Halloween: drained and depressed as if it had all happened yesterday and not forty years before. Indeed, it seemed to get worse as she got older, not better.
If Grant was more sensitive, she wouldn’t make that punishing phone call every year. She didn’t hate him or anything, but after he remarried he seemed able just to put it all behind him as if he didn’t want his shiny new life with a shiny new wife to be cluttered up with reminders, not just of her, but of Tommy too. It felt as if he wanted to wipe out the memory that was all that was left now of his son.
He swore he didn’t, of course. She knew how angry that accusation made him, so she took care to claim that he’d forgotten, that he no longer cared about Tommy being killed – murdered, though even saying the word made her throat close, her eyes fill.
If he cared, she always said, he’d come with her on her pilgrimage today, the pilgrimage she always made on the morning they’d found Tommy after a whole day of agonised searching for him. Grant had resisted right from the start. Morbid, unhealthy, he’d called it, and her unflinching determination had been yet another nail in the coffin for a marriage that had been dead on its feet even before Tommy was killed. By the time Grant moved out, Shelley had long stopped caring.
All she wanted from him now was recognition for the child they had shared. She might not be his wife any more, but she was still his son’s mother and Grant’s refusal to engage with her remembrance always made her feel vindictive. She knew her Halloween call always upset him, and Shelley relished her power to make him suffer, at least once a year. It was the only time he couldn’t make excuses not to speak to her.
Even thinking about it made her headache worse. She swallowed a couple of paracetamols then went downstairs, made herself a cup of strong black coffee and took it to the chair beside the phone.
The voice that answered her call was cheerful, buoyant. ‘Hello!’
‘Janette? It’s Shelley here.’
Janette’s voice flattened. ‘Oh, hello Shelley. I was wondering if you would phone.’
Shelley bridled a little. ‘Of course! You know what day it is, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Are you going to the park?’
‘Naturally.’ She was starting to feel annoyed; Janette was her best, her oldest friend. Janette, above all, should remember.
‘Do you think you should go on doing this? It doesn’t do you any good, Shelley. You’re depressed for weeks afterwards. Why not give it a miss this year, and see how you feel?’
‘This year? When it was forty years ago today we found him?’ Shelley couldn’t believe Janette was so insensitive.
There was a silence at the other end of the phone, then, ‘Oh. Sorry. I hadn’t realised.’
‘Yes, forty years. And I remember, even if everyone else has forgotten. It’s still as real to me as it was the day it happened. But I won’t bother you. I’ll just make my pilgrimage myself.’ The tears were starting again.
‘Oh Shelley, don’t be silly. If you want to go, I’ll come with you, of course I will. I always have. He was my godson too, remember?’
She could tell that Janette was welling up, and softened. She was the friend who had searched all day, the friend who had made the dreadful discovery of Tommy’s pathetic, battered little body in the pirate outfit he’d been wearing for Halloween, the friend who had broken the news, then sat with Shelley through the terrible days and even worse nights. All these years later Shelley couldn’t expect her, with her own children and grandchildren round about her, to understand that it still felt like yesterday when all you had was memories.
‘Thanks, Janette. I’ll come to the house then, shall I? I’ll be round in half an hour.’
Janette Ritchie put down the phone with a grimace. Shelley Crichton’s visit on the anniversary of the day Tommy was found was a fixture in her calendar but someone from her Pilates class in Stranraer was having a birthday lunch. She wouldn’t be able to go now.
Forty years! Could it really be that long? Yes, of course it could. Her own Jennifer wasn’t that far short of fifty and kept moaning about getting old. Poor wee Tommy hadn’t had the chance to do that. She felt a pang of conscience that she hadn’t remembered.
She should really phone round and get a few people together for Shelley’s sake. To start with there had been quite
a crowd at the site each year, feeling a sort of collective guilt that this could happen here, with their own bairns. As time passed, though, the crowd had dwindled and for years now it had only been Janette and Shelley, with any of the older locals who happened to pass the play park at the time looking uncomfortable and pretending not to notice.
There was even a sort of unspoken irritation about what it had done to the reputation of the village. ‘Cradle of Evil’, one of the newspapers had called it, and the name had stuck.
Maybe some bad things had gone on, unnoticed or perhaps just ignored, but till the tragedy Dunmore had mostly been a quiet, respectable, inward-looking community, minding its own business – perhaps too much so.
It certainly hadn’t been the sort of place that featured in the media, except maybe a photo in the Galloway Globe when someone had raised money to present to a charity. What happened had put a strain on everyone, with the film crews fighting for space in the narrow streets and reporters pushing microphones under your nose and the flashes and machine-gun fire of cameras when all you were doing was going out to the shop. It had been horrible, frightening, really, and the resentment grew every time something prompted another media influx.
What if they turned up today, because of the anniversary? It wasn’t very likely; the road from Glasgow to Dunmore was fortunately long and slow, but just in case, she’d have to make sure there wouldn’t be a ‘Cradle of Evil Village Forgets’ story in some rag tomorrow.
Janette picked up the phone again. ‘Sheila? Can you spare five minutes this morning?’
The address for the Michael Morrison who lived in Dunmore was a very smart-looking farmhouse surrounded by fields. It was on a slope above the village looking out across Loch Ryan towards the Cairnryan ferry terminal.
As Marnie walked up the steep rise towards it, she could see that the farmhouse wasn’t attached to a working farm; the only building beside it was a large garage. The small, ugly, modern box a couple of fields over, with a huddle of dilapidated sheds and a barn beside it, was presumably where the farmer lived now.