Old Sins, page 10
So that was what Hattie decided to believe. She wouldn’t provoke any storms, would play a waiting game and hope that it would pass eventually, like the storm that was rattling the windowpanes right now.
Danni was the other worry. She hadn’t returned, hadn’t phoned, and Hattie didn’t have her number to call. Where could she be, on a night like this? She had no idea what other friends Danni might have, but there was that boy she’d been quarrelling with in the pub – had they maybe made up and she was with him?
There was nothing Hattie could do, anyway. At last the programme finished, she switched off the TV, got up and let the dogs out. They didn’t linger – just shot out and came straight back. She peered out into the swirling rain and darkness; unless Danni was going to get a lift from someone, she wouldn’t be coming back tonight. But she put the outside light on and didn’t lock the door, then left the light on in the kitchen as well.
Ranald must have come up to bed quietly. Now he was asleep, lying on his back and snoring and she nudged him to turn over. She didn’t fall asleep immediately herself, trying to listen for a noise that would tell her Danni had returned, but it was hard to tell; the old house was creaking and muttering and the storm was so noisy, rising to the sort of howling peak that should mean it would have blown itself out by the morning.
At last Hattie drifted off. But the storm raged on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The storm hadn’t blown itself out. When Kelso Strang went down to breakfast next morning the wind was still howling and the roaring sea was high with breakers that built up then came crashing onto the shore. The road in front of the guest house had a covering of blown sand and was strewn with stones and great olive-brown roots of seaweed, thick as a man’s arm.
There was only one table set for breakfast and as he sat down, Mrs Munro hurried in. She seemed to feel a personal responsibility for the weather. ‘Oh, I’m awful sorry about this! It’s no sort of welcome for a visitor. I hope it won’t give you a scunner to the place.’
Kelso laughed. ‘No, no. I’ve been up this way often enough. Went up Suilven last week, in fact – though I have to admit the weather wasn’t great then, either.’
He realised he had made a mistake and piqued her interest. ‘Oh really?’
‘Yes,’ he said, going on quickly, ‘I was about to ask you – would it be all right to use the sitting room after this? I’ve got someone coming to see me at half-past eight.’
‘Oh, of course. I’d better get my skates on, then. I could do you smoked haddock with a poached egg if you could fancy that – by the looks of things it’ll be the last fish we’ll be getting for a while.’ She bustled off.
Angus Mackenzie was prompt. Strang saw his car pull up outside just as he finished his toast with Mrs Munro’s home-made marmalade, but he punctiliously waited until exactly eight-thirty before ringing the doorbell, by which time Strang had moved through to the sitting room where his hostess had already laid out a tray with coffee and biscuits.
He heard her greet Angus warmly as he came in. He hadn’t bargained for that; round here everyone knew everyone else, so it wouldn’t be long before it got out who he was and what he might be doing – not that it mattered, particularly, since he’d be back in Edinburgh tonight.
Angus shook his hand with meaningful warmth and, ‘Thank you again’, was the first thing he said.
As Strang handed him a mug of coffee, he said firmly, ‘Let’s get this straight. It isn’t an official visit, just a chat. As of now, I see no prospect of reopening the case. Yours were the only witness accounts that cast doubt on the accident theory, and they were no more than a statement of what you believed – not evidence. The investigation was done by the book and there was nothing there to justify pursuing it further.’
‘I can see that,’ Angus said, ‘But—’
Strang held up his hand. ‘Wait a minute. When we talked on Saturday night, and I asked the obvious question – why on earth would someone want to murder your friend? – you didn’t give me a straight answer. I think you said you thought she’d had an “interesting life” but you didn’t know. That wasn’t true, was it?’
Not a man accustomed to lying, Strang had thought then, and now a red flush came into Angus’s cheeks. ‘No. I’m sorry – I’m ashamed of that. I just couldn’t …’ His voice trailed off.
‘Would I be right in saying that you knew something – or some things, even – about Flora that you considered were shameful, and that you baulked at exposing her to others’ scorn?’
His head was bowed. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Yes, just that.’
‘There didn’t seem much point in pressing you that night, but circumstances have changed.’
Angus looked up. ‘Something’s happened?’
‘I’m not at liberty to go into that. But I need you to tell me now whatever you know about Flora. Her married name, Reith – is her husband still around?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘No. Driving a high-speed smuggling boat, trying to get away from the coastguards, thirty years ago. Flipped it over. Body never recovered. He got what he deserved.’ There was vicious satisfaction in his voice.
Forget the husband; follow up on that reaction. Strang changed tack. ‘How did you get to know Flora?’
‘Oh, the girl next door. I still work the croft where I grew up. She was a tomboy, funny, cheeky, rebellious, brave. I was six years younger. I trailed around after her when she’d let me, which wasn’t always. Sometimes she’d dare me to do some daft thing she’d done herself and I did. When I broke my collarbone falling off the roof of the hayshed I was forbidden to see her. I didn’t pay any attention – that just made it more exciting.
‘But of course she grew up and lost interest in that sort of thing. She was never exactly a raving beauty but she had what used to be called “It” and now she’d discovered boys she’d no use at all for some gawky kid who still wanted to do the sort of things that would ruin her nail varnish.
‘She started looking ten years older than me, not six. And the local boys she’d been fooling around with were dumped when that sleekit bastard Piers Reith took an interest.’
‘He was … ?’
‘His father owned Auchinglass House at that time. Didn’t live there much, but that last summer Piers was there all the time and they were an item. She didn’t want to know me any more. I tried telling her what they said about him – he wasn’t to be trusted, he was doing some bad things. That went down about as well as you would expect.’
Angus gave a sigh. ‘She went off to London with him. He was nineteen, she was eighteen. I heard later they were married, and I heard too she’d got arrested for smuggling – her mother was black burning ashamed about that. Then I heard about him drowning while he was being chased by the law – it was in the papers.’
Strang digested that. ‘So – you never saw her after that?’
‘I moved on myself. Got married, but somehow it didn’t really work – I suppose she could never match up to Flora. I worked in the Department of Ag and Fish in Edinburgh with a tenant here after my father died, but when I got an early pension I came back, about five years ago. And when Flora retired here …’
He paused, looking down at his hands. ‘I … I suppose it was the happiest day of my life. Not that she was any more interested in me as a partner than she had been all those years ago, but at last she was the girl next door again and we’d sit late over a bottle talking for hours.’
He stopped. Strang let the silence develop, but that trick didn’t work this time. At last he said, ‘We’ve reached the problem now, haven’t we?’
‘Yes. But I suppose – what harm can it do? Flora’s gone and I don’t care if her family’s upset – her brother believed she was trash and the niece she thought the world of didn’t even try to find out what really happened. And if it means she gets justice—’
‘Wait,’ Strang said. ‘I won’t mislead you. Whatever you tell me, they won’t reopen it. The Crown Office would assess the likelihood of a conviction and I can’t see a chance here – even if a suspect’s been seen standing on the cliff beside a victim, actual proof is problematic. But if they’d reason to think her death was in someone’s interest, they might investigate that.’
‘I see. Well, thanks for being honest. I don’t know what Flora would want. I do know she was permanently afraid – she hid herself away here, didn’t go about much, just to the pub and the shops. And I know there were things she had done that she deeply regretted.’
‘Did she say what they were?’ Strang tried not to sound too interested.
‘She talked about getting involved in smuggling right from the start – through Piers, of course. He was the love of her life – and it hurts even now that he still was, all these years later. It never bothered her being on the wrong side of the law – she said once that bringing in ciggies and booze was the same as running in brandy when Robert Burns was an exciseman.
‘There was other stuff too, she said, but by then the money had got her – it always does, I suppose. She was working for a big firm and they paid her well. She liked the expensive things in life and she didn’t let her conscience trouble her too much – it was only the taxman you were cheating.’
‘The “other stuff”?’ Strang prompted.
Angus shook his head. ‘Didn’t say. But then they started doing things that did bother her. Again, she never exactly told me in so many words, but it would be my guess that the smuggling might have moved on to include people too. And there was one particular event – something went wrong, someone got into trouble. I don’t know what it was, but she said to me more than once, “That’s what keeps me awake at night, more than anything else.”
‘It was after that she decided she had to get out. Somehow she managed it, but I know she was always afraid her old sins would catch up with her.’ Angus’s head dropped again. ‘And they did,’ he said gruffly.
‘Thank you,’ Strang said. ‘I know that wasn’t easy for you. Can I ask you to search your mind for any detail you haven’t told me – anything specific?’
He thought for a long time, then shook his head. ‘We talked a lot about how she felt, but not much about what she did.’ Then he straightened his shoulders and met Strang’s eyes squarely. ‘I don’t care what she did. I always loved her, and I still do.’ For a man of his age and background, it was a dramatically emotional statement.
‘I can see that,’ Strang said gently.
After Angus Mackenzie had gone, Strang reflected that open as he had been, difficult as it had obviously been for him, his information had proved disappointing. It just confirmed what he knew already and had been an interesting insight into Flora’s character and frame of mind, but there wasn’t anything concrete to feed to the Met.
Unless the lawyer was hoarding a treasure trove of incriminating evidence, he’d had a wasted journey up here, and Flora’s family in Glasgow sounded unlikely to have been her confidants. Still, at least he’d be able to get back to Edinburgh tonight.
Ishbel Duncan put two mugs of coffee and a plate of biscuits on a tray and carried it through to the sitting room at Auchinglass House where she knew Shirley Reagan would be waiting in eager anticipation.
One of the mugs was for her. She and Shirley got on fine and it was a pleasant habit that when she’d cleared the breakfast things and tidied up the kitchen, she’d go in to give her all the craic. The poor woman never got anything out of her family and she did love to know what was going on in the parish now she couldn’t get about very easily – and Ishbel did love being the one with a story to tell. It was annoying that she hadn’t actually heard about the car fire before she came in yesterday and by now it wouldn’t be news to Shirley, but she’d probably know more than the locals did, what with Sean arriving right on the spot when it happened.
‘Here we are, Shirley!’ she said. ‘Chocolate digestives today – they’re your favourites, aren’t they?’
With the plate on the table by her elbow, Shirley said hopefully, ‘Well, what’s the news today?’
Ishbel settled in the chair opposite. ‘Oh, they’re all talking about the fire, of course.’
‘Fire?’ Shirley looked an inquiry.
‘Gracious me! Did you not hear about it? The explosion on Sunday night? Around midnight?’
‘On Sunday? Oh, now you mention it, I think I did hear a bang. I was just going to sleep – yes, that’s right. I sat up, but I didn’t hear anything else and to tell you the truth I thought I might have dreamed it. What was it?’
‘You know that girl Maitland – her that inherited the croft from Flora?’
‘Danni? Well, I don’t know her but I’ve heard all about her.’
‘Aye, you would. She’s that sort of lassie. She’d this wee car – yellow, bit of a daft colour – and it suddenly went on fire and exploded with this great big bang. But I’m surprised you don’t know about it because your Sean was nearly the first to get there and rescue her. She’d been hurt, seemingly, and he drove her down to the fish farm to stay with the Sinclairs. Did he not say anything about it?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ Shirley said. ‘Was she badly hurt?’
She could reassure her about that, and add consolingly that Sean was maybe embarrassed about being a hero, but she didn’t seem to want to discuss it much. So, disappointingly, there wasn’t anything new Ishbel would be able to add to what everyone knew already. Shirley seemed more interested in the row that two of the committee had been having over the community hall coffee morning and when Ishbel finished her coffee and got up, she was feeling that this had been one of their less satisfactory chats. A shame, when she’d thought she had such good material to chat over today. They hadn’t even got on to the finer points of how the fire might have happened and how anyone’s car could just blow up at any moment.
Just as she reached the door, Shirley suddenly said, ‘Ishbel, have you heard any talk around the place about Sean’s rewilding project?’
Ishbel stopped, struck with embarrassment. Of course there was talk; everyone was saying that Sean had a wolf running free out in the wilds of the estate and there were several farmers claiming they’d had sheep mauled – one said he’d even scared a wolf away and had to put down his poor beast – and they were all furious about it. She couldn’t exactly say that to his mother.
‘Well,’ she said, playing for time, ‘most people think more trees would help with the climate and of course it’s brought jobs – that’s a big thing around here.’
She was dreading the next question. Shirley looked as if she was getting ready to ask it, but then she didn’t, just said, ‘Oh, that’s good. Thanks, Ishbel.’
Ishbel whisked herself out of the door before Shirley could change her mind.
She’d bottled it. Oh, Shirley could read between the lines as well as anyone, and she was particularly shrewd when it came to knowing what her son was thinking. She’d marked the slight shiftiness when he’d talked that time about no one even knowing if a wolf was out there, and she could see Ishbel was stalling just now. But she still couldn’t bring herself to ask if there were any rumours that would confirm her fear.
The car fire – that was something new to worry about. She’d seen Sean at breakfast yesterday and he’d been preoccupied, definitely, and eaten quickly, gulping his coffee and finishing just as Maia had come downstairs. He’d said he was in a hurry; they were expecting a shipload of tree slips that had been delayed by the storm and he’d have to postpone the planned operation to bring them down for planting and find something else to keep the volunteers busy. He was certainly fretting about it being well into autumn when there could be a frost and it was important to get them bedded in before that happened.
It was true that while he often talked his problems through with his mother, it never occurred to him that she might like to be kept up to date with local gossip. He wasn’t remotely interested, himself; he was so exclusively focused on his mission. The worry about the planting being delayed might have meant that the car fire slipped his mind.
It was odd, though. Certainly, cars did go on fire; you saw them every so often by the side of the motorway. But did they go on fire when they were just outside your house, sitting quietly, minding their own business? Maybe they did – she didn’t know. It would be nice to think so.
But Shirley was ever a realist. Sean had been talking to her just the other day about ways of trying to get Danni Maitland to move on. Was it possible that he had decided to scare her out? She was of course sure he wouldn’t deliberately harm anyone, and she would like to believe he wouldn’t do this either, but the cold feeling in her gut was evidence that she was thinking it just might be possible.
Of course, Sean wasn’t the only person with an interest in winkling Danni out. Ranald Sinclair was fighting Sean every inch of the way to persuade the girl to sell the croft to him. It would probably come down to money in the end – most things did – in which case Sean was in a good position, unless Ranald had a lot more stashed away than she reckoned he did.
Shirley knew the Sinclairs quite well. They’d often come round for a drink or a meal, especially at the time when Sean thought he was going to be able to persuade Ranald to sell up. It was like that famous review of A Star is Born – ‘Loved him, hated her’ – only it was the other way about. Hattie was the kind of person you couldn’t help liking – a bit scatty, carrying an extra pound or two but good fun and kind-hearted. She’d always made a point of coming to talk to Shirley when there was a crowd in and most of them had better things to do that sit down beside an old lady and risk getting trapped. Ranald, on the other hand …
He was good-looking enough, the clean-cut type with a soldier’s bearing, and he looked as if he took pride in never gaining weight. Shirley distrusted that in a man; vain, that said to her, and it was a bit too obvious that the jokes he made about his wife had a nasty edge, even if she always seemed ready to think they were funny. He’d never had a one-to-one conversation with Shirley herself and of course she knew why – she was old, so she was boring.
