Cradle to Grave Read online

  He looked around for inspiration, then realised that with the angle it was at, the open door of the car formed a sort of angled shelf. He wedged it firmly into the bank, which actually stabilised the car too. He should have thought of that sooner.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Rest on that and I’ll scramble up there.’

  Sitting down thankfully, Fleming eyed the bank above them. ‘Give me a minute, Tam, then I could give you a leg-up.’

  She didn’t look as if she could stand up herself, far less take his weight. ‘Och, no,’ he said. ‘Just give me a wee clap when I get to the top, eh?’

  MacNee was eyeing it up without enthusiasm, looking for possible footholds, when a voice hailed them from above, an amused voice.

  ‘Having fun down there, you guys?’

  It was the man Fleming had called Joss. MacNee saw her look up sharply, but he couldn’t quite make out her expression. It certainly didn’t mirror the intense relief he was feeling himself.

  Jan Forbes, sitting up in bed in a side-ward with one of her sturdy legs in plaster and wearing a hospital nightgown, was looking remarkably chipper, DC Kershaw thought. She was certainly impressively calm by comparison to her fellow victims, with her iron-grey hair neatly brushed and her eyes bright with interest behind her spectacles.

  Kershaw took her details. Jan was, she told her, Dr Forbes, ‘but of course I’m not a medic. PhD in botany, specialising in heaths and heathers mainly, so don’t start telling me about your bad back!’ She laughed merrily.

  She was a lecturer at Glasgow University and the cottage, it seemed, was mainly a study centre for her, bought some years before but inhabited only sporadically during vacations or when working on a project.

  ‘Wonderful place, Rosscarron. So quiet, no phone, no TV and of course virgin territory for academic study, though I daresay that’s not what you’re interested in.

  ‘Now, what can I tell you? Not much about last night, really. It wasn’t that late – seven o’clock, perhaps, but with the weather it was very dark already and I’d had to put the lights on. Then there was this terrible crash, almost like an explosion, and a rumbling that went on and on and on, and of course the lights went out. I couldn’t see much, just a torrent of water and mud pouring through, but I’d have been safe enough if I’d kept my head. I did in my leg by leaping to my feet and taking a header over the coffee table. Serves me right – I should have had more sense than to panic. Then, of course, that poor young couple had this old fool to deal with as well as a crying baby – and they’re barely more than children themselves when all’s said and done. I do trust they’re all right?’

  She looked an enquiry and Kershaw attempted to seize the initiative. ‘Yes, fine. Dr Forbes—’

  She was corrected. ‘Jan. “Dr Forbes” makes me think of my father. Now, he was a medical doctor.’

  Ruthlessness was called for. ‘Jan, I have to ask you about the couple in the cottage on the other side. We don’t know anything about them as yet. Can you help me?’

  ‘I knew them hardly at all. I only came down here last week, you know. Bumped into her a couple of times and she was perfectly pleasant, but she wasn’t disposed to be chatty. I didn’t know their names or whether they were living there or just on holiday.’

  ‘Can I press you further on this? What were they like? What was their relationship?’

  Jan’s nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘Are you asking me for gossip? I don’t like it. I talk, but I don’t gossip – I’ve seen the havoc it can wreak in university departments.’

  ‘It would be very helpful – give us a fuller picture.’

  ‘I see. Very well, then.’ For the first time Jan paused, clearly ordering her thoughts. ‘The girl had a very pale skin and very dark hair – tinted, I would guess – and she was around my own height, five foot four or five. Aged twenty, perhaps. I couldn’t tell you about the man. With the weather we’ve had, we all just rush to our cars with our hoods over our heads.

  ‘I saw her once on the single sunny afternoon we’ve had in this last week, sitting on the seat on the top of the cliff – when it was a cliff.’ Alarm showed suddenly in Jan’s face. ‘Oh my goodness! Do you know where she is? She wasn’t up there when it happened, was she? I saw her going past my door, out along the headland, but my desk is in the window and I was working there all afternoon. I’d definitely have seen her coming back, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t at home. But I never thought . . . Oh dear!’

  ‘Is there no other way round?’ Kershaw asked.

  ‘Across the moors, then on to the road on the Rosscarron estate. She could have done that, I suppose, but with the weather . . .’

  ‘She may well have been located by now. There’s certainly absolutely no reason to think she’s been caught up in this,’ Kershaw said soothingly. ‘But tell me about him. You said he was out too?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I did. I saw him leaving earlier in the day.’ Jan fell uncharacteristically silent.

  ‘You mentioned gossip,’ Kershaw prompted at last. ‘What you’ve told me couldn’t be classed as gossip and I think there’s something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ Jan sighed again. ‘Is it really necessary to muck-rake? I can’t see what it can achieve.’

  In the face of such determined reluctance, Kershaw could see that disclosure was the only way forward. ‘I think perhaps you may not know that his body was found in the house next door to yours.’

  She encountered a very sharp look. ‘And you couldn’t have told me that at the outset, Constable Kershaw?’

  Feeling uncomfortable, Kershaw considered saying she thought Jan knew. Under that stern gaze, though, honesty seemed wiser. ‘Sometimes withholding information is a tactical decision.’

  ‘Indeed?’ There was a chilly pause. Then Jan said heavily, ‘Poor young man. Oh well! There was a quarrel, you know, and she threw him out. There was a lot of screaming – he seemed to be refusing to go at one point. I suppose it was around three o’clock or thereabouts. Eventually he appeared outside wearing a parka and carrying a suitcase, heading for the car park. I couldn’t see her, but the door slammed afterwards so she must have been watching him go.’

  ‘And was it then she walked past your window?’

  Jan thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I think so – or was it a little later? I certainly couldn’t swear to it. I was absorbed in my work, and I try anyway not to pry.’

  ‘But he must have returned. Did you hear nothing?’

  ‘The houses are – were quite solidly built. I only heard their row because they were having it at the front door. I put on some music after that, I remember, quite loud music – I’m a Wagner buff. Good gracious, I believe I was listening to Götterdämmerung! Quite sinisterly appropriate! But—’ Jan stopped, struck by an unpleasant thought. ‘If I hadn’t assumed he was out . . .’

  ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference.’ Kershaw was beginning to believe her own assertion. ‘Were they in the habit of quarrelling?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. When I saw her, she looked . . . glum, I suppose is the word. If they were on holiday, she didn’t look as if she was enjoying it much.’

  ‘Who did the house belong to?’

  ‘I don’t know that either – oh dear, I’m not much use, am I? It was empty when I bought number three, but a while ago there was a woman living there when I came for a break. I spoke to her a couple of times, but she was clearly very ill and I heard she had died. I guess the house was sold – it was empty any other time I was here.’

  Kershaw closed her notebook. ‘Right. I think that’s all I wanted to ask at the moment. If there’s anything you think of, here’s the number to call.’ She gave Jan a card. ‘Thanks – I appreciate your help. How long will you be in here?’

  ‘Oh, they’re turfing me out today. I’m going to friends who run a little hotel just on the coast beyond Gatehouse-of-Fleet. They’re prepared to take on the halt and the lame, so I’ll be well looked after till I can pick up speed on my crutches.’ />
  As Kershaw left, Jan called after her, ‘I keep thinking about the girl. I do trust she’s all right – but if that’s where she was living, has she somewhere to go? I’m sure they’d have her at Rowantrees, and of course, if money’s a problem, I can take care of that. Let me know if I can help.’

  A good Samaritan, Kershaw thought, returning to her car. Sometimes, in this job, you needed reminding that the world wasn’t entirely populated by ratbags.

  When Alick Buchan came downstairs again, he was quite obviously drunk. His wife was sitting at the kitchen table, which was set for lunch, with three places.

  He looked around. ‘Where is she?’

  Maidie, her face troubled, said, ‘She’s gone out again. I told her the dinner was ready, but she wouldn’t wait. I made her a sandwich.’ She got up and went over to the stove. ‘Sit down and I’ll call your mother.’

  ‘Has the girl left for good?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, Alick. I told you, she’s got nowhere to go.’

  ‘Aye, has she! She’ll go to the big house, and that’s flat. He’s plenty rooms and plenty food – about time he did his share. Puts everything on me – bastard! Bodies, even – he’d no right! I’m not taking it from him, I tell you that.’ Alick lurched to the door. ‘I’m away there now. Tell her . . . tell her it’s where she’s to go if she comes back.’

  ‘Alick, you’re not driving—’ Maidie put her hand on his arm to restrain him, but he pushed her away so violently that she knocked against the wall.

  ‘Mind the house, woman!’

  Rubbing her bruised shoulder, Maidie looked helplessly after him as he walked unsteadily towards the jeep, climbed in and drove away.

  There was a sudden yell from Calum in the other room and a moment later the kitchen door opened and Ina Buchan appeared with the purple-faced, screaming child in her arms. She thrust him at his mother.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter? What happened?’ Maidie asked in alarm.

  There were spots of colour in Ina’s cheeks. ‘He got a good skelp from me, that’s what’s the matter. He’s a naughty boy and you can look after him yourself in future. Now, where’s my dinner?’

  Beth was walking, walking. She had taken the tarmac track this time, tired of struggling with uneven footing, but she had kept her hood up even though the rain had gone off and there were actually one or two breaks in the clouds. She was alone in the wild, silent landscape, but even so she kept looking about her with what was almost a nervous twitch. She was angry with herself for feeling nervous – and deeply, permanently angry with the man who had made fear her familiar companion.

  She was so happy, happier than she’d ever been in her life, really, those first days after Lee moved in with her. Love, companionship, laughter – there hadn’t been a lot of that in her life. He made her brave, unafraid to return to normality as they played house in the little flat. She even lost her feeling of being followed.

  She knew about Crozier’s threat, of course. Pay in blood, he had said. The newspapers had made much of it and she had been really scared, but when she talked about it with Lee and he told her it didn’t mean anything except that the man was hurting, she began to believe him and put it out of her mind.

  So when she switched on her mobile one morning and found the text message, it shattered her cosy idyll. She screamed; Lee, pouring boiling water into mugs for coffee, splashed himself and swore.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ he demanded.

  Tears sprang to her eyes at his tone. ‘See for yourself!’ she said, holding out her phone in a hand that trembled.

  ‘You think I’ve forgotten? Never. You’re alive, she’s dead.’ The message was stark.

  Lee took it, frowning. ‘Oh great! What a sod! They must have kept your number. But it doesn’t matter. It’s just bluster. Look – it’s gone. We’ll get you another phone. He doesn’t know where you are.’

  But he did know. The note on the mat a few days later told her that. ‘Murderess,’ it said. ‘I’m watching you all the time, until I’m ready.’

  She began sleeping badly again and having flashbacks when she did sleep – the tiny body, white and cold as stone . . .

  ‘We have to move, now,’ Lee said. ‘The sale’s gone through – we’d be moving in a couple of weeks anyway. You’ve got that house your granny left you.’

  She had been happy here, briefly, and there was no way she was going to her granny’s cottage – full of memories, right on Gillis Crozier’s doorstep, if he was at Rosscarron House. But she agreed to move. What else could she do? There was no point in going to the police with the note; they’d made it clear enough where their sympathies lay.

  So they moved away – and moved again, and again. But always, before long, he found her once more. She changed mobiles too, but always there would be a text message, a note – once, even, a little package on the doorstep containing a grotesque, grinning plastic skull.

  ‘He’s employing the best in the business, isn’t he,’ Lee said grimly.

  Her nerves were shot to pieces. She tried not to irritate him, but he was getting impatient.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said one night when, yet again, a note had found them. ‘You said he went a lot to a house near your granny’s? Let’s go there and confront him.’

  Kenna had died not long after the trial. Thinking of her grandmother still hurt, and she felt guilty as well: she had been too afraid to travel to Scotland to say a proper goodbye. She tried one last protest.

  ‘I don’t want to go there. It’ll make me sad, and I’d be scared to be so near him. He could easily get me up there, make it look like an accident.’

  ‘So we carry on like this, with you going steadily mental? I don’t think so,’ he snarled.

  Lee had been getting less and less understanding, and then she would lose her temper. They weren’t happy now, like they had been, and sometimes she wondered why he stayed.

  Worse, sometimes she thought she knew why. He’d given up whatever it was he did, and if it hadn’t been for the money from the sale of the flat and her mum’s insurance, they’d have real problems. It was disappearing at a frightening rate and when it was all gone, he’d probably be gone too. By then, anyway, she might be dead. Sometimes she thought she would just die of a heart attack, when one of the messages arrived.

  Now, he was controlling his irritation with difficulty. ‘We have to get real. He most likely doesn’t want to kill you anyway or he’d have done it by now. It’s like what he wants is to do in your head. So let’s eyeball him. Your granny’s house – Crozier would never think to look there. Once he’s arrived, we’ll go together, surprise him, just walk in and tell him it has to stop. Then we’ve got the rest of our lives together for happy ever after. All right?’

  It wasn’t all right. It made her feel sick just to think about it. But she’d been broken down by the endless, relentless pursuit, and when Lee said unpleasantly, ‘If you’ve got a better idea, like moving house every five minutes and screaming in your sleep and twitching all the time, count me out,’ the combination of carrot and stick – eternal bliss or the hell of loneliness – was enough to make her agree.

  All this walking and the troubled thoughts that came to her in the silence were exhausting when she was so shattered anyway, but it was preferable to being in that little house, the atmosphere rank with undercurrents of unhappiness. She didn’t know which was hardest to deal with, the old bat’s hostility, Alick’s resentment or Maidie’s bewildered kindness.

  And she was scared, very scared. She had nowhere to go, but the longer she stayed here, the more dangerous it would be and the greater, too, would be the chance of exposure. Since it all happened, she hadn’t spent time in the company of other people, except Lee. She didn’t want to go back to thinking about Lee – Lee, dead. It was easier to think about the practicalities.

  She had to get out of here. Alick was her best bet. He was as keen to get rid of her as she was to go – she could tell from
the way he looked at her. She could ask him to drive her into Kirkcudbright; there was a bank there and she could find out if she’d any money left. At least she had a credit card in the purse in her pocket.

  Anyway, she was the victim of a disaster. She could go to the social services, and they’d have to find her somewhere to stay, wouldn’t they? But that would mean the police. No, not the police.

  But if she stayed here . . . She was between a rock and a hard place. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, as her granny would have said.

  If Granny Kenna wasn’t dead . . . Beth’s eyes brimmed. Granny would have helped her, seen her through this crisis, as she’d seen her through the last. Now there was no one. No one at all.

  She had been walking for a long time – aimlessly at first, then with purpose, almost as if she felt inexorably drawn. And there, as she rounded a corner, she could see a house – his house. It was crazy to go closer, and yet . . . The predator could never imagine being stalked by its prey.

  There was no one about. With her hood pulled forward and her head down, she went off the track and climbed up to where, from the shelter of some scrubby bushes, she looked down at his house, hatred in her eyes.

  6

  ‘What the . . . ?’ The driver’s jaw dropped as his green Ka turned a bend in the road and he saw the bridge ahead, leaning at a drunken angle amid shattered spars and debris. He swore, braking sharply.

  His front-seat passenger gasped, and one of the girls in the back seat screamed.

  ‘It’s only frigging collapsed!’ the man next to him said, stating the obvious. ‘And hey, there’s a car!’

  They stared, appalled. ‘Do you suppose there’s, like, people inside?’ one of the girls asked with a shudder.

  ‘Have to take a look, don’t we?’ The driver released his seat belt. ‘Come on, mate. You girls stay here.’

  Clutching one another’s hands, the girls waited. ‘Oh, I can’t watch!’ one cried dramatically. ‘Tell me it’s OK!’

  The two men turned, one giving the thumbs-up as they came back to the car. ‘No panic. It’s empty, and one of the doors is open. Scared, not hurt, I reckon – didn’t have far to fall. But we’d better call the police.’