3 A Reformed Character (15 page)

The alarm at last stopped ringing, although it seemed to echo in Jock’s ears for some time longer.

Darren still hadn’t said anything. It would be annoying if this had set him back in some way – for Jock realised he was thinking of the boy as a convalescent invalid. Which he was, in a way.

They made their way back indoors. Rosie stood in the office waiting for them.

Jock told her what they had done with the fence and the gate, and she seemed to approve, although she didn’t say much. It was as if she was plucking up the courage to speak to them about something important. What could it be? Had she recognised the intruders, or their modus operandi? Had something happened to one of the cats?

‘Are Burke and Hare all right?’ asked Jock. He had become quite fond of them – or at least, he had grown to admire their spirit. Being fond of them wasn’t a concept either of the cats would have recognised.

‘Yes, all the cats are fine,’ said Rosie. She paused. Now for the hammer-blow, thought Jock. He wanted to step in front of Darren to shield him from it.

They waited.

‘I’m going to have to call the police,’ said Rosie at last.

Chapter 17  Cops and robbers

They sat round the kitchen table with cups of cocoa. Nobody wanted to go back to bed, so they had decided to have an early breakfast, and because it was still cold and dark, Rosie had insisted on making them a warming, comforting drink. Jock thought Darren didn’t seem to have drunk cocoa before; he tasted it in tiny sips, with a puzzled look on his face as if he was trying to compare it with something else but didn’t know what.

Rosie was going to wait until daylight to call the police, so they had a few hours’ grace to make their plans. Jock was terribly disappointed that this idyll had been cut short. He was more upset on Darren’s behalf than on his own. He knew there was no realistic possibility that he himself would ever get a job in a cattery, and indeed he had known he would miss his friends and his life in Pitkirtly before long, but Darren hadn’t really had any life there, or at least not a life he would want to return to, and Rosie might have found a way of keeping him at the cattery. It might have been an insane dream, but at least it was a dream.

Darren walked round the room once, and put his cocoa mug down on the table.

‘Going to give myself up,’ he muttered.

‘What?’ said Jock.

‘To the police.’

'The police?' said Jock, feeling stupid.

'I've put you and Mrs Viewforth in danger!' Darren shouted at him. 'Just by being here. And the cats. It's not fair.'

For once, Jock deduced, the lack of fairness wasn't a complaint against an unjust world treating Darren badly, but a clumsy expression of Darren's feeling that he had treated the others badly. It must be some kind of progress.

'Don't worry about me,' said Jock. 'I'll be fine.'

'I'm fed up with all this running away, and being chased about,' said Darren. 'I never wanted to escape in the first place - it was -'

'It was what?'

'It was somebody else who made me do it,' said Darren sullenly.

'Somebody else?' said Jock, not sure if this was progress or not. They were entering deep waters. 'Who was it then? And why?'

'It's a secret,' said Darren. 'I can't tell anybody.'

'Why not, Darren?' asked Rosie.

'They might come after me with guns again,' said Darren. He raised his voice. 'What if the next cat rustlers have guns? What if they're not even cat rustlers - what if they're the same people who were chasing us down in the town?'

'So what do you think, Darren?' said Rosie quietly. 'Are you planning to give yourself up while the police are here?'

'I'll tell them you had nothing to do with it,' said Darren.

'That won't work for me,' said Jock. 'They know I hid you the first time. They'll drag me in for questioning again... I'll probably die in prison, at this rate.'

'No!' said Darren. 'You were only trying to help.'

'We'll hide you when the police come,' Rosie suggested. He couldn't help feeling there was a smile lurking below the surface of her calm expression.

'What if they search?' countered Jock.

'Aha,' said Rosie. 'They won't search in the place I'm thinking of.'

He definitely didn't trust her now. She was planning something devilish.

Half an hour later, he knew just how devilish, as he crouched in a confined space trying not to sneeze in case someone heard him. Burke was studiously ignoring him but Hare kept coming to the door of the cats' little house and glaring at him. Jock just hoped the animal wouldn't decide to attack, because he certainly wouldn't be able to keep quiet then. He could hear Burke washing herself on the roof - a rhythmic sound that would perhaps have been soothing under other circumstances but which at the moment was the drumbeat of approaching disaster.

A cat hair had got into his eye, and he desperately wanted to rub at it, but above the cat washing noises came the sound of people talking outside the enclosure.

'What's the point of this?' said one man's voice.

'Aye, he'll be long gone by now,' said another.

'If he was ever here in the first place,' said the first. 'The boy swears -'

'That boy would swear black was white if it suits him... Come on, we'll have to go through the motions.'

Footsteps coming closer. Jock froze.

'That wee house looks like it might be big enough...'

'Don't be daft! He'd need his head examined.'

A scuffling sound, cats hissing, and Jock imagined two men jumping hastily back.

'Jesus!' said one of them. 'Those cats - I'm glad there's a fence in between them and us.'

'Did you see that cat on you-tube chasing a bear up a tree?'

The voices were receding now: evidently Burke and Hare must have convinced them not to bother with a fingertip search of the cats' enclosures.

Jock waited. He felt as if he might need to sneeze soon. Hare came to the doorway and growled at him. He decided to stay still a bit longer.

Eventually, about ten hours later, Rosie came to his rescue. She was laughing as she took the roof off the cat house and looked down at him.

'Oh, very funny,' said Jock, easing himself upright. All his joints were complaining again. This was no life for a retired school teacher.

Rosie actually picked up Burke and Hare, one in each hand, as Jock clambered out. He stared at her in amazement.

'Don't they bite you when you do that?'

'Oh, no, Hare's just a big old softie,' said Rosie. 'Burke can catch you with her claws if she thinks you're not looking, but Hare wouldn't hurt a fly.'

Jock reserved judgement on that. He got out of the enclosure as quickly as he could, not looking back until he was safely on the other side of the fence.

'You didn't get into trouble over Darren, did you? They were here a long time.'

'It was only half an hour,' she said, deftly slipping out of Burke and Hare's enclosure and locking the outer gate behind her. She sighed. 'I'd better get somebody up here to fix the fence now.'

'Did the police have anything useful to say about who might have done it?'

'No.' She looked him right in the eye. 'It could be some gang over from Edinburgh. We might never know.'

They went into the house. Jock felt sad for Darren, now heading back to Pitkirtly and destined to be locked up and the key thrown away - at least for now. He still hoped the real killer would be found quickly so that the boy could be released. He had been sceptical about Darren's chances of redemption when they had met at the caravan, but having got to know the boy better he realised there were some good qualities lurking under the surface. He said as much to Rosie.

'You're right there, Jock. I hope he'll get out soon.... We'd better get you back home too. I'll give Uncle Dave a ring and see when he can come up for you.'

'No rush,' said Jock, sitting back in the chair and drinking a mouthful of hot tea. He reached for a chocolate digestive. 'No rush at all.'

Chapter 18  Career move

Amaryllis paced up and down. She had been pacing such a lot lately that one evening she knelt down and examined her living-room carpet for signs of wear, since she almost always paced in front of the sliding doors that gave access to the little balcony.

She felt hemmed in, confined, frustrated in her efforts to throw light on what had been happening in the little town she had chosen to settle in. It was all right for Christopher; he could go to work and forget about it all. Even worse, she hadn't seen him for a few days, so she hadn't been able to pick his brains, talk things through with him or persuade him into more semi-legal activity than he had already engaged in.

For the first time since she had retired from spying, she considered whether retirement was really enough for someone like her who had spent her working life in such a risk-riddled, high-pressure environment. She had already given up on her plan to live a calmer, more 'normal' life. Events persisted in working against her and it seemed impossible to achieve this ambition.

Amaryllis had found no trace of Darren and Jock, and that was only the latest of her worries and frustrations. She had been unable to find out how the police investigations into the two murders were going. Did they still favour Darren as a suspect, or had they moved on from him to someone she hadn't even thought of yet? She couldn't even rant at Jemima and Dave, since they had chosen to spend time this week in the caravan, and much though she would have liked to talk things over with them, she didn't want to leave town, not because the police had told her not to but because she didn't want to miss anything.

In the end, after going round to Jock's house to tidy up, in the hope he would sense that this had happened and it would speed his return, she had been reduced to conducting a couple of stake-outs to see if anything untoward was going on under cover of darkness. Prowling about town during the night came as second nature to Amaryllis. Even when things appeared normal on the surface, she liked to carry out a series of checks for herself just to make sure. It was tricky, not to mention chilly at this time of year, doing a stake-out without a car to shelter in, and that was one reason for needing to speak to Dave. She coped by wearing several layers of clothing and lurking in suitable doorways. In a larger town where she wasn’t known, she might have got away with pretending to be homeless and sleeping in a doorway, but there was no doubt she would be moved on by the police very quickly if she tried that on here. And if they had recognised her she would probably have been arrested too.

The first stake-out had been at the Donaldsons' house. Because Darren and Jock had disappeared from the back garden, Amaryllis had a nagging suspicion that the couple might have something to do with the disappearance. Perhaps they had even kidnapped the two fugitives and were holding them somewhere in their house. The Donaldsons seemed normal enough by local standards, apart from the mysterious comment Mr Donaldson had made about not knowing what they were getting themselves into, but, as Amaryllis knew only too well, weird people could crop up in any environment. They might have taken Darren as a kind of inadequate substitute for their son Alan, for all she knew... Or they might easily have harmed him in an act of revenge. She couldn't imagine what they would do with Jock McLean, but maybe he was just an inconvenient accessory to Darren.

In any case, that particular stake-out proved to be extremely boring and a complete waste of time, just as she had expected.

The following night she loitered just down the street from the Petrellis' restaurant, still closed up. She found this closure suspicious in itself: it looked like more than respect for Old Mrs Petrelli, and she suspected it was a sign of some other problem.

The only interesting thing that happened was that an elderly man left the restaurant, or more likely the family home in the flat above, at one o'clock in the morning. She didn't see who opened the door for him to leave, because she had to duck back behind a wall at that point to avoid being seen herself. She followed the elderly man, but he just went round the corner, got into an ordinary-looking car and drove off into the night, so that didn't get her anywhere.

On one of her night-time outings she almost bumped into Zak Johnstone and his friend Stewie, who were getting into a car halfway down the High Street as she walked up from the harbour. She flattened herself quickly into the doorway of the Pitkirtly Yarn Store and hoped they wouldn't spot her, and by the time she emerged the car had gone. Hmm. Where were they off to at this time of night? She wondered now if she had been right to dismiss it as some teenage thing, or whether she should have taken it more seriously. Or maybe it had been Penelope Johnstone giving them a lift home from a young people's event.

It was like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. Instead of pacing round the living-room, she went out for a walk. It was still daylight, but there was no law that she could only prowl around during the hours of darkness: that was just her usual preference. Going out in daylight meant she risked bumping into Maisie Sue, Detective Chief Inspector Smith and other people she could really do without meeting today. But if she saw them in the distance she would just have to go the other way.

Going the other way was how she ended up walking in at the main entrance of the Cultural Centre with an irresistible urge to pick the lock on Christopher's office door. She blamed him, of course, for not being around to talk sense into her.

Once inside the office, she didn't bother to disturb the layers of papers and letters on his desk. She just sat in his chair for a few minutes. Seeing things the way Christopher did. Maybe that was a way of breaking through the invisible barrier between herself and the real world?

Amaryllis swivelled round in the chair and looked out the window, although even as she did it she knew it wasn't the sort of thing Christopher would do. The view wasn't great anyway: the car park just outside and the supermarket beyond.

'Can I help you?'

Someone else had come into the office. It was Andrew, the curator of the Folk Museum. When she swivelled to face him, he jumped back as if she had shot him. No, that wasn't the best simile to use. It brought back too many memories.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't know it was you.'

'No, it's my fault,' said Amaryllis. She pushed herself up off the chair. He backed away another few steps. 'I shouldn't have broken in,' she added. 'But I haven't done any damage.'

'I don't think I'll bother calling the police then,' he said, smiling. 'Christopher wouldn't mind you being here anyway.'

'Hmm,' she said. 'I'm not sure about that... Where is he, anyway?'

'He's away on a course this week,' said Andrew.

'What kind of a course?' She watched him carefully, trying to detect a trace of resentment about Christopher being appointed over his head to run the Cultural Centre. But he seemed contented enough. She thought Christopher probably let him do what he liked with the folk museum, and that small empire was enough for him.

He shrugged. 'Some management thing. It'll be all group hugs. And mind-maps. And blue sky thinking.'

'Better that than drizzly day syndrome,' said Amaryllis solemnly. 'Thanks, Andrew.'

'Thanks - what for? And what's drizzly day syndrome?'

She left him to ponder it on his own. It was cruel to tease him, but then again, his mouse-like demeanour always did bring out the cat in her.

The mention of drizzly days came back to bite her in the foot; it started drizzling as she walked back up the High Street. Just as the misty rain seemed to be turning into what the weathermen on television would have called a persistent heavy shower, Amaryllis found herself passing the Pitkirtly Yarn Store. She hesitated for a moment just outside, knowing she couldn't justify buying any of the rainbow-coloured cashmere-mix sock yarns on display in the window, and yet strangely drawn to go in. She peered at the sock wool and then focussed further back on the interior of the shop. The counter, from which Jan dispensed almost as much advice as she did designer yarns, was just visible.

Giulia Petrelli stood there, apparently deep in conversation with Jan.

That settled it. Amaryllis pushed open the door and entered the shop. She couldn't help noticing Giulia's startled glance round at her, and the speed with which she gathered up the balls of wool from the counter and shoved them into her shopping bag.

'Don't you want them in this?' Jan held up a small carrier bag with the shop logo on it.

'No. Thank you.' Giulia turned to leave.

'That'll be seven pounds fifty, then, please,' said Jan. She smiled a welcome at Amaryllis.

Giulia flushed and turned back to Jan.

'I'm sorry, Jan. Roberto isn't well and I can't concentrate on anything.'

She poked about in her handbag, picked out a little purse decorated with flowers, and produced the money.

'Maybe knitting will help,' Amaryllis suggested. 'With your concentration, I mean.'

Not that it had helped her much up to now. But it seemed like a harmless conversational gambit. It didn't make sense that Giulia's hand froze in the act of handling over the money to Jan. She stared at Amaryllis out of large brown eyes that were suddenly too large for her face. Amaryllis noted the dark circles beneath the eyes, and the greyness that underlay the olive tones of the skin. The woman was right on the edge.

'Thanks Giulia,' prompted Jan.

Giulia gave the money to Jan, tried to leave without waiting for her change, dropped her shopping-bag and stood there helplessly as if she didn't have the strength to pick it up. Amaryllis did that for her, retrieving a ball of wool that had escaped as she did so.

'Here we are,' she said, holding up the wool and looking at it. Grey sock wool. Old Mrs Petrelli's colour.

The shop door opened behind them.

'Well, hello there!' said a familiar voice. 'I didn't think we had a Cosy Clicks session scheduled. But here we all are!'

'Hello, Maisie Sue,' said Jan, smiling. Amaryllis, giving Giulia back the ball of sock yarn, understood for the first time why she could never serve in a shop. It would be impossible to keep on being nice to people day after gruelling day. Amaryllis estimated she might be able to be nice to her fellow human beings for maybe an hour at the most, before her smile wore out. How did Jan do it? It wasn't natural.

Thinking of things that weren't natural reminded her to see what Maisie Sue's hair was like, since it had proved to be a reliable indicator of her emotional state... Oh, dear.

Maisie Sue had a woolly hat on.

All that could be said in its favour was that it wasn't knitted in a Fair Isle pattern. But it was in a shade of teal that contrived to clash horribly with the forest green quilted coat Maisie Sue had on. The hat sat right up on top of her sculpted hair as if uncertain if it really belonged there.

Amaryllis's fascinated gaze travelled down over Maisie Sue's face. Pink puffy eyes - check. Unbecoming red cheeks - check. Downturned mouth - check. Pearson must have run off again.

'Hello, Giulia,' Maisie Sue said in a woe-begone voice. 'I was so sorry to hear about Mrs Petrelli. How are the rest of the family?'

'Roberto isn't - very well at all,' said Giulia. 'I thought I might knit him some socks. His mother always knitted him a new pair every month so I thought...'

'Well, that's a very lovely thought, Giulia,' said Maisie Sue. 'And of course, you've got the children to comfort you both too.'

Giulia's face twitched uncontrollably.

'I've got to go now,' she said.

For a moment Amaryllis had the fanciful idea that if she could see right into Giulia Petrelli's heart she would find a dark family secret at its centre, something that would eventually eat away at the woman and destroy her from within.

'Thank you, Jan,' said Giulia, and walked stiffly to the door. The bang as it closed behind her snapped Amaryllis out of her unaccustomed and unwelcome fantasy.