3 A Reformed Character (17 page)

'But can people ever really change?' said Tricia.

After showing Tricia Laidlaw out, Amaryllis paced up and down a bit more. Zak Johnstone and the raid on the cattery - Mr Donaldson's final words to her and Christopher - the man who visited the Petrellis in the night - they were all part of the puzzle. Where was Christopher when she needed him? He was the one person she knew who could play Watson to her Holmes - Hastings to her Poirot - and did Miss Marple have somebody to bounce ideas off?

She went out for a walk. There was always the risk, of course, of running into Maisie Sue or one of the many other people she didn’t want to run into, but she needed the air. When she got to the High Street, she paused to look in the window of the Pitkirtly Yarn Store. Maybe if she bought a different kind of wool…

Something made her turn away from the window at that point.

Stewie was walking down the other side of the street. He carried a large bag of shopping in each hand, and looked as miserable as any young man might be expected to look in the circumstances. Beside him walked a sweet-looking elderly lady with a pink scarf and fluffy white hair. She smiled beatifically, casting sweetness all around her like some sort of metaphorical sugar shaker. Amaryllis distrusted her on sight.

Stewie glanced round suddenly and caught Amaryllis's eye. He looked wildly from side to side like a cornered animal, and then took off, diving down a side street, still clutching the carrier bags. He didn't seem to realise they would probably slow him down.

Amaryllis gave chase.

As she sprinted away, she heard the old lady burst shockingly into speech, each word more horrible than the previous one. Christopher wouldn't like that, thought Amaryllis fleetingly as she ran after Stewie.

The side street was one of the cobbled ones that led, between former fishermen's cottages, to the harbour.

She thought it would be a pushover, but Stewie's desperation had him halfway along the harbour wall by the time she came out of the last cobbled lane.

Fortunately his mental prowess didn't match his speed. Unless he threw himself in the water, she had him trapped. Slowing her pace, she crossed the road and strolled along the wall. Stewie stood at the end, at bay. He was next to the steps that led only to the waters of the River Forth. Amaryllis hadn't actually tested the temperature of the grey unwelcoming waves herself, but she guessed they were unpleasantly cold at this time of year.  Even on dry land he seemed to be shivering in the thin jacket, and she saw a hole in the toe of his cheap plimsolls.

'I think your gran wants her shopping back,' she said pleasantly.

Stewie glanced down at his hands and seemed surprised to find he was still carrying the supermarket bags. 'It wasn't me,' he said.

'I don't really care if it was you or Santa Claus,' she told him. 'I just want to find out if you know anything you shouldn't... About cats, for instance.'

He shook his head. 'Cats - no. I don't like cats.'

'Really? So you didn't break into a cattery the other night just to admire a particularly beautiful Persian, then?'

Too late she realised Stewie had probably endured sarcasm all his life and was immune to it by now.

'Persian what?' he said.

It had started to rain, only lightly but it was wet enough to flatten his wispy fair hair against his head and to make him look about ten years old. A small vulnerable boy looked out of the grey-blue eyes. Amaryllis experienced an unfamiliar sensation somewhere inside her. She couldn't work out what it was at first, but after a moment she identified it: pity.

'Come on,' she said, holding out her hand as if she thought he might take it, 'let's get the shopping back to your gran.'

He came along meekly enough. Scared of retribution from his gran, she thought, remembering the tirade of abuse.

Five minutes later, with Stewie and the shopping dispatched towards home, his granny graciously accepted an invitation from Amaryllis to have a cup of tea in the nearest café, a small and dingy place.

Amaryllis had issued the invitation not because she wanted to spend time with the woman, but so that she could glean all remaining grains of information about Stewie. She knew that getting anything out of the boy himself would be as tortuous and unrewarding as trying to steal his soul.

'Do they let you smoke in here?' hissed the old lady as they sat down.

'I think it's against the law now,' said Amaryllis.

Stewie's gran snorted inelegantly. As far as Amaryllis could tell she did everything else inelegantly too.

They ordered two teas, and Stewie's gran sneaked in an order for scones just as the scruffy waitress was leaving their table. Now that the old lady had removed her coat, Amaryllis could see she had the build of someone who was partial to a good scone, or three. The kind of person who might even go into a museum if the café there did the best scones in the neighbourhood. Fortunately the Cultural Centre didn't have a café, so it was safe from a visit.

After they had each eaten one scone with blackcurrant jam, and Stewie's gran was eyeing a second, Amaryllis judged that it was time to start asking questions. The woman had to pay for her treat, after all.

'So, Mrs - Hamilton, is it?'

'No.' The old lady shook her head. 'I'm not on his side of the family - bunch of thieving toerags. I'm Cathy Patterson... You're a retired spy, aren't you?'

She closed her mouth tightly at the end of this last sentence as if to let Amaryllis know she wasn't to be interrogated.

'Your Stewie's a quiet boy, isn't he?' Amaryllis chose to start with Stewie's only redeeming feature.

'Stewie's a good boy,' said Mrs Patterson. She had apparently forgotten all the names she had called him when he ran off with the shopping. She leaned forward, and scooped up another scone in passing. 'His Dad, though - that's another story.'

'Is it?' said Amaryllis hopefully.

'In prison,' Mrs Patterson mouthed, and sat back looking smug. She crammed half a scone into her mouth and munched on it, apparently oblivious to the steady trickle of crumbs that escaped from the corners of her mouth and dribbled down on to her chest.

'What about Stewie's Mum?' said Amaryllis, risking a direct question again.

'Do you want that last scone?'

'No - you have it.'

Mrs Patterson grabbed the scone and transferred it to her own plate. She took her time ladling out more blackcurrant jam. She hadn't even quite finished the previous scone. 'His Mum's got her own troubles. Four more kids, mostly by different fathers. But I don't mind him staying with me. He's not difficult. I don't see that much of him - he's got a wee job now,' she added proudly. 'He goes out with his friends a lot.'

'Do you know what they do when they're all out together?' said Amaryllis. 'Does he ever talk about - anything? Where do they go?'

'Are you a social worker, dear?' said Mrs Patterson, suddenly fierce.

Amaryllis laughed. 'Certainly not!'

'What do you want? You didn't bring me here and ply me with tea and scones just because you liked my company, did you? I've answered enough of your questions. Go and pick on somebody else.'

Amaryllis sat there, stunned into stillness, as Mrs Patterson left, pausing to speak to the waitress and to explain, no doubt, that someone else was paying.

The strange feeling of pity for Stewie that she had felt earlier returned. Or maybe it was just the after-effects of the scone. Or of being accused of being a social worker. That was enough to make anyone feel funny.

She went home, walking slowly this time, because there was nothing to get home for. She climbed the stairs to her flat heavily, as if there was something, possibly the pity, weighing her down. She wasn’t sure what to do to get rid of it. Would it help to do some knitting?

Amaryllis rummaged in a bag and brought out the needles, wool and beginnings of the scarf. Grimly, she set to work. Knit one, slip one, pass slipped stitch over...She wasn't going to let a simple piece of knitting defeat her.

Chapter 20 Return of the Jedi

Christopher decided it was time to go round to see Amaryllis. He had been in Pontefract for most of the week on a course which was meant to teach him how to run a folk museum, then he had been at work trying to run a folk museum, which involved learning that his new ideas would never work. Although he had thought about Amaryllis a lot, as he always did, he hadn't yet translated that into action. In some ways he was glad he had been away from Pitkirtly for a few days. It was a long time since he had attended a course. He had enjoyed the illusion of bouncing around serenely in a bubble which insulated him from day to day problems such as what to have for tea, and who had murdered Old Mrs Petrelli. But now it was time to get back to reality.

He supposed he should have been fretting all the time about Jock McLean's whereabouts and wellbeing - after all, the man was supposed to be one of his closest friends - but in reality he thought Jock was well able to take care of himself and would have felt patronised by Christopher's worrying.

All things considered, it took a considerable mental effort to ring Amaryllis's doorbell even once he had got himself round to the small apartment block and stood on the doorstep.

'Christopher! I'll buzz you in,' she said. There was an odd note in her voice: was it relief? Was she actually pleased to see him?

She gave him a wide, natural-looking smile when she opened her own door at the top of the stairs and ushered him into the flat. He noticed that the carpet in front of the sliding doors that led to the balcony was starting to look worn where she often paced. He wondered if she could measure the complexity of a case in carpet wear as Sherlock Holmes measured in pipes.

'Sorry I haven't been in touch,' said Christopher. 'Is there any word of Jock and Darren?'

She nodded. He couldn't work out from her expression whether it was good or bad news.

'Darren's surfaced. He's back in custody. I haven't seen Jock but I think he's ok. They were at a cattery.'

'A cattery?'

He sat down on the nearest chair with a bump.

'Is Jock still there?' he added. It might even be worth visiting the cattery just to see Jock in action, he thought.

'I'm not sure. But that's where Darren last saw him. He could be home by now... I got his window fixed just in case.'

'But we didn't have the keys to get in and do that.'

''I phoned his son. The one in Milngavie. One of the neighbours had a set. I've tidied up in the front room. Broken glass and so on. It was a brick, not a bullet or anything.'

'It doesn't make any sense,' said Christopher. 'A cattery!'

'It does make sense,' said Amaryllis. 'We just have to put the pieces together in the right order.'

'Shouldn't the police be doing that?' He knew he must sound as if he had abdicated responsibility, but with his revived career to consider, he really couldn't go around playing at detectives, or at least not on weekdays.

'I've been hired to investigate,' said Amaryllis with a somewhat smug expression on her face.

'Hired? By the police?'

'Oh God, no. By Tricia Laidlaw. As a private eye.'

'To prove Darren innocent?'

'The last I heard,' said Amaryllis, 'it was up to the police to prove him guilty. And he certainly wasn't guilty of the Petrelli murder. He was round at Jock's house keeping a low profile.'

'The Petrelli murder. It sounds like some sort of Mafia thing,' said Christopher absently.

Amaryllis started to pace. She would need a new carpet by midsummer at this rate. Christopher watched her in silence for a few minutes.

'Some sort of Mafia thing!' she exclaimed suddenly. 'Christopher, you are definitely Dr Watson and Captain Hastings rolled into one.'

'Oh dear,' he said, feeling inadequate.

'Mafia thing - of course. That's what it is!'

'The Mafia in Pitkirtly?' said Christopher. 'That's ridiculous!'

'It's all a protection racket!' said Amaryllis. 'The Donaldsons - they said we didn't know what we were getting into. The attack on the cattery. The gunman in the woods. Jock McLean's window. It all fits! Even Maisie Sue said it reminded her of Chicago, only of course we weren't listening.'

'So you think the Petrellis are running it,' said Christopher. He pictured Victoria with her melting brown eyes and dark curly hair and stylish appearance, Giancarlo, masculine to the core and yet so like his sister. Giulia Petrelli and Old Mrs Petrelli at Cosy Clicks. What was the father's name? He wasn't sure if he'd ever heard it.

'I'm not sure - it might just be local gangsters who've been inspired by the Mafia,' said Amaryllis, still pacing. 'It could be coincidence that there's a family of Italians in town.'

'Yes,' said Christopher, cheering up a bit. 'Local gangsters - that's a lot more likely when you think about it.'

'Maybe it's just the kids doing it all,' Amaryllis said. 'But I'm guessing there's somebody else behind them - someone who can afford cars and guns. A sponsor.'

'Mr Big,' said Christopher. 'Not Dave, obviously. A criminal mastermind.'

He wondered if there was a big white fluffy cat in the picture too. Or maybe that was a step too far.

'So what if the gangsters - we'd better not call them the Mafia, it would probably infringe equalities legislation - demanded protection money from the Donaldsons in return for not vandalising their building work, and the Donaldsons refused to pay?' said Amaryllis, excited. 'So they killed Alan Donaldson as a reprisal and a warning.'

'That's a bit drastic, isn't it?' said Christopher.

'Of course it's drastic, but they don't want their credibility going down the drain, do they? They can't afford not to do something serious.'

'Why didn't the Donaldsons tell the police all this?'

'There must have been something dodgy going on as part of their business,' said Amaryllis. 'Something they didn't want the police to know about.'

'But their son's life! It must have been more important than their business.'

'Maybe not,' said Amaryllis. 'It depends what they were up to.'

'What about the attack on the cattery? How does that fit in?'

Right on cue, the doorbell rang again. With inaccurate mutterings about her flat being like King's Cross station, Amaryllis left the room. He heard her opening the door and running downstairs. It must be someone important at the door. She usually just buzzed people in. Or maybe it was someone she didn't know.

Several minutes later he heard several sets of feet on the stairs, accompanied by various exclamations in different voices, and then Jemima Stevenson appeared, followed closely by Dave, a woman he had never seen before, Jock McLean and finally Amaryllis. The minimalist room, usually so uncluttered, seemed to shrink as they all spread out in it. Jemima sat down next to Christopher.

'Well, this is some stramash you've got yourself mixed up in!' she said accusingly.

He started to deny being mixed up in it, but that was when he saw Jock McLean, smiling at him in a particularly irritating way.

'It's Jock,' he said, pointing. 'He's the one who's mixed up in things. I'm just an innocent bystander.'

'Hmph! Innocent! That'll be the day!' said Jock.

Christopher felt relieved at this sign that things were back to normal. To all intents and purposes, the exchange of vague insults had been their equivalent of the modern manly hug, which certainly neither of them would have felt comfortable with.

'Christopher, this is Rosie,' said Amaryllis, introducing the strange woman. 'She's Dave's niece. It's funny, we were just talking about the cattery.'

'I prefer to think of it as a cats' holiday home,' said Rosie, shaking hands with Christopher. She was built on the same scale as her uncle but in a more feminine, curvy style. But he didn't think she would be easily intimidated, and she certainly didn't look like the fragile victim type.

‘So, what did they threaten you with?’ said Amaryllis. ‘Or was it the cats they threatened?’

Rosie sat down and put her head in her hands. Christopher didn’t think she was crying, she just needed to hide her face for a while. He could sympathise with that, having experienced times in his life when he wished he could crawl into a hole and hide.

‘It was the cats,’ she said in a muffled voice. ‘The story I told Jock and Darren about cat rustlers was a lot of nonsense. I made up the story about the Russian Blue and everything.’

‘You certainly had me fooled,’ said Jock looking at Rosie with what seemed to be admiration.

‘It started just before Christmas,’ she continued. ‘I had a visit from a man who pretended he wanted a look round before booking in his cats. I was on my own that day, which of course was a mistake. He just went straight to one of the cat enclosures, opened the gates and let two of the cats out. I was frantic. I’ve never lost a cat yet. I managed to catch them both – it was Spider and Earwig, Mrs Macdonald’s tabbies – why she had to give them such awful names I don’t know. He stood there and watched me chasing them. Then he said something like, it would be a shame if anything happened to any of the cats, wouldn’t it? And I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then he said two hundred pounds a month and I would be safe.’

‘Daylight robbery,’ said Jock McLean, looking fierce.

‘That’s exactly it,’ said Amaryllis. She seemed to have come to life now that she had started to understand what was going on.

‘I laughed and said two pounds a month would be more like it,’ said Rosie. ‘It isn’t a big business, you see. The overheads are enormous, especially when you provide heating in the chalets in winter, and special diets and so on. And I don’t like to charge so much that people can’t afford it – they need to know their cats are being looked after properly, otherwise they won’t enjoy their holidays…. Where was I?’

Dave, who had been watching from near the windows, sighed. ‘Just like her mother – any excuse to ramble on. You were telling us about this man asking for protection money.’

‘He didn’t like me laughing,’ continued Rosie. ‘And by the way, Uncle Dave, sometimes you need to ramble on a bit to get to where you want to be. He said I’d be laughing the other side of my face if anything went wrong. And he said he’d be back.’

‘And was he?’ said Amaryllis.

‘Yes, but by that time I had the fence up, and some of my security systems. The man from the security company was just there that day as it happened, getting the cctv working. I tried to get the other man to repeat his threats in front of him, but he wouldn’t. Too clever, I suppose… Anyway, they had a go one evening in January – I suppose they were just testing out the fences and everything, but they didn’t get through. And then they came up the other night. Only it wasn’t the man who had been round in the first place – it was some younger lads.’

‘Did you see anybody you recognised?’ said Amaryllis. 'Anyone from around here?'

Rosie shrugged. ‘I don’t see many people in the average week. I’m hardly ever down in Pitkirtly. If I have to buy a lot of cat supplies I either get them delivered or go into Dunfermline. I wouldn’t recognise local people even if I saw them. And it was dark, and they seemed to be wearing balaclavas.’

‘How about you, Jock?’ said Amaryllis.

Jock was leaning on the back of Rosie’s chair. Christopher wondered about his interest in her. She was just about young enough to be his daughter.

‘No,’ said Jock. ‘I’m not very good with faces though. Especially the young ones – they all look much the same to me.’ He frowned. ‘I wouldn’t swear to young Darren not recognising them though. He went very quiet. And one of them lost his balaclava so Darren could’ve seen his face.’