6 The Queen of Scots Mystery (9 page)

Chapter 15 Old Pictish Brew

‘Toast isn’t enough for this sort of thing,’ said Jock McLean as he and Neil walked away from Christopher’s house later that evening. ‘What we really need to get the brain cells going is Old Pictish Brew.’

They had talked round the case for ages, not getting anywhere.

If
Jock hadn’t been desperate, he wouldn’t even have thought about doing it. But now that he had the idea in his head – and could almost taste the Old Pictish Brew on his tongue – he had become determined to follow it through.

Neil tried to talk him out of it, but not very convincingly. It was almost as if his heart wasn’t in it.

‘The police are still meant to be keeping an eye on the place,’ he said. ‘You might get caught.’

‘But they’re only patrolling the area once every so often,’ said Jock, who had heard about Amaryllis’s efforts. ‘I’d have to be really unlucky to break in at the same time as they came along. And anyway, they won’t be looking inside. They’ll just swing past in a patrol car. Or on a bike, depending on how much they’ve cut back lately. And if it’s local men, they won’t bother me.’

‘You’d need a torch,’ said Neil. ‘You won’t be able to put the lights on.’

‘Ha!’ said Jock, taking a torch out of his pocket. ‘I keep telling people they should always have a torch with them, but nobody ever listens. Maybe they will now.’

‘All right, you’ve convinced me,’ said Neil. ‘You’ll be needing these, then.’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

‘I thought you’d have had to give those to the police,’ said Jock, taking them.

‘The big old-fashioned one’s for the back door,’ said Neil. ‘The small one’s for the burglar alarm. You’ll need to switch that off – it goes straight through to the police station. There’s a code.’

He narrated a meaningless string of numbers. Jock had to find a piece of paper to write them down on.

‘You should really memorise and destroy,’ said Neil reproachfully. ‘Anyway, once you’ve turned the alarm off, go through to the bar. There’s some bottled Pictish under the counter. I keep it for emergencies.’

‘Yes, that’s what my stash in the cupboard under the stairs was for,’ said Jock. ‘Rainy days come too soon around here.’

Neil pulled him into the shadows as a police patrol car swooped down the High Street and down towards the railway line.

‘That was a close one,’ said Jock. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them to stop us for no reason. They’re a nuisance like that. Anybody would think we were up to no good. We might as well have a curfew.’

He went on in this vein all the way down to the Queen of Scots. Neil pulled him into the shadows again when they saw the police car parked outside.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ hissed Jock. ‘It’s almost as if Fate’s working against us, to stop us getting hold of any decent beer.’

But a few minutes later the car pulled away again. They waited another few moments to make sure it had gone. Even Jock knew that made sense.

They ducked under the police tape and made their way round to the back of the building, deep in shadow.

‘I can’t come in with you,’ said Neil. ‘Bail conditions. You’re on your own.’

‘Yes, you’ve told me that already, Neil.’ Jock sighed. It was inconsiderate of Neil to have got himself arrested – but at least he had thought of getting Jock to help him out with somewhere to stay, and that had led directly to this little adventure. ‘I’d better get going. It should be a while before the police come back again, though.’

Everything worked as it was meant to. The key fitted the lock, the smaller key plus the long rambling code silenced the bleeping alarm before it went off, and there were bottles of Old Pictish Brew under the counter. Jock had to do everything by torchlight; he didn’t dare to put on the lights, which he knew could be seen from the road.

Operation Pictish Brew was going extremely well until he heard the noise. It was only a tiny noise at first, either a very small person’s footstep or someone brushing past a wall or a table. He stayed where he was, crouching down behind the bar. He didn’t switch off the torch but he jammed its beam against the side of the fridge, hoping they hadn’t already seen the light – whoever they were. He didn’t know if it was one person or two, or a cat that had wandered into the building behind him. He was going to feel really stupid if it was a cat. But better stupid than sorry, he told himself.

There were a few other small noises. Someone was tiptoeing around. Then there was a much louder bang. The door slamming. And then a man’s voice.

‘Andrea? Where the hell are you? I can’t see a thing!’

‘I’m in here, Bill,’ said a woman’s voice that sounded as if she was standing right next to him. Jock willed himself not to jump. He was also getting an almost irresistible urge to stand up and say something to make himself known. It was the kind of feeling he only vaguely recalled from childhood games of hide and seek, which he had always hated.
And after all, Neil knew he was in here. But then, they didn’t know Neil knew he was here. So they wouldn’t think twice about hitting him on the head with a bottle, or worse. Jock bent his head and ignored the sharp pains that were now starting to shoot through his knee joints. He was definitely too old for these games.

The man’s footsteps advanced. ‘Where’s the door then?’

‘It’s over here,’ said Andrea.

Hang on a minute, thought Jock. Wasn’t Neil’s ex-wife called Andrea?

The footsteps stopped somewhere behind him.

‘Have you got your gloves on?’ asked the man.

‘Yes,’ said the woman in a small, tremulous voice.

‘Where does he keep the key?’

‘It’s usually in the lock.’

‘It isn’t there now.’ The man swore.

‘Maybe it’s on the hook by the back door,’ said Andrea.

That was a relief to Jock, who had been waiting to hear the key – to the cellar, it must be that – was kept in the fridge behind the bar, or on the shelf where Neil’s range of recommended whiskies had stood since time immemorial.

The man’s footsteps receded and then returned. ‘Got it.’

Something jingled and then there was a click.

‘We can’t go down there,’ said Andrea, even more tremulously.

‘It isn’t haunted, you daft cow,’ said the man. ‘Come on. We’ve got to try and find it.’

‘The police will have it already, I keep telling you,’ said Andrea, but there were footsteps on stone now, going away from Jock. Should he make a run for it now and call the police from outside? It was tempting, but on the other hand, he wanted to see what these two were up to. He hesitated, almost fatally.

He had stood up and lifted the torch to guide him back to the door when he heard them coming back up the steps. He sprang forward to slam the cellar door in their faces, but he had reckoned without his dodgy knee. Instead of slamming the door and then running off laughing at their misfortune, he found one knee giving way under him and he ended up sprawling at their feet as they came up the last few steps into the bar.

He pulled himself into a sitting position, which was marginally less undignified than lying down. The man reached down and lifted him off the ground in an apparently effortless movement.

‘What have we here?’ he said slowly. ‘Are you with that cop that was sniffing around the brewery earlier?’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ stammered Jock.

‘Put him down, Bill, he’s only a looter, that’s all,’ said the woman, Andrea.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Jock. ‘Neil knows I’m here.’

‘Aha!’ said Bill, replacing him on his feet at last.
‘So Neil’s in on this too, is he? I might have known. He’s going to try and pull the wool over the cops’ eyes and cast suspicion on some other poor innocent… That’s you, babe.’

‘I only came in here for some bottled beer,’ said Jock hopefully.

The man called Bill laughed loudly. ‘Oh, yes, I believe that all right. You and Neil have been spying on us, haven’t you? Or you’re in cahoots with the cops. Isn’t there one that comes into the Queen regularly? I’m surprised at him needing help from a pensioner, though. They must be desperate these days. I blame the spending cuts. What a shame.’

‘Leave him alone, Bill,’ said Andrea, tugging at his sleeve. ‘There’s no sign of
- what we came for. We might as well go. Let him take the beer. Neil can afford to lose a few.’

Jock held his hands up, open in a gesture of surrender
based on something he had seen in films. ‘He would have come in for the beer himself, only it’s against his bail conditions.’

‘And sending a trained monkey in to do it isn’t?’ said Bill. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, it’s nothing to do with me. Just take the blinking bottles and go.’

Jock turned and leaned down towards the coveted Old Pictish Brew bottles, and as he did so, he felt a crushing pain in the back of his head, and then nothing more.

Chapter 16 To the rescue

‘We should really get him to hospital,’ said Amaryllis, staring at Jock McLean as he lay,
apparently drifting in and out of consciousness, on Christopher’s settee. After Neil had phoned they had persuaded Charlie to go and fetch his car from its place up near the police station so that they could all go down to the Queen of Scots to retrieve Jock.

‘We’d better do something,’ said Christopher, regarding his friend anxiously.

‘I’ll call it in now,’ said Charlie, who seemed to be remembering he was a policeman now that this had become serious. Amaryllis, watching as he wandered into the front hall with his mobile phone, wondered if he would ever grow out of it. She had tried her best, but it didn’t seem to be good enough.

Jock stirred, clutched a cushion to him and murmured, ‘
Another five minutes.’

‘Jock,’ said Amaryllis softly.

‘…not going to school today,’ said Jock. ‘Don’t make me!’ He sat up and looked around, an alarmingly glazed look in his eyes. ‘Get out of here. It’s Christmas Day… waiting for Santa…’

He slumped back down again.

‘They want us to take him into A and E,’ said Charlie, coming back into the room.

‘What do you have to do to get an ambulance round here?’ said Amaryllis.

‘We had one at Christmas,’ Christopher reminded her. 'It's not impossible.'

‘
There’s an hour’s delay getting an ambulance today because of a multiple pile-up on the M90. I’ll take him,’ said Charlie. ‘One of you had better come with me. In case anything goes wrong on the way.’

He didn’t spell out what might go wrong, but they all seemed to understand. Christopher went and put on his coat. Nobody argued that he was the one who should go. Amaryllis had always
known that he was fonder of Jock than he wanted anyone to suspect. Normally she might have volunteered to go too, but she had Neil on hand and she wanted to interrogate him about what had happened. That would be more fun than hanging around a hospital in the middle of the night, and might lead to a significant breakthrough in what she regarded as her latest case.

‘Ideally,’ said Charlie in a cautious tone, ‘we should call it in to the police too. But I’m guessing Neil wouldn’t be too happy about that.’

‘Neither would Jock,’ said Christopher. ‘He likes to stay below the radar.’

They got on their way after that. Amaryllis hoped the nosey neighbours were tucked up safely in bed and didn’t think of calling the police themselves about the two men carrying a dead weight first into the house and then out again.

‘Do you want some toast?’ she asked Neil.

‘Won’t Christopher mind?’

‘His house is practically Toast Central,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I’ll put the kettle on too – you could probably do with something for the shock.’

‘I wasn’t the one who got a shock,’ he said, but he followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table.

After putting the bread in the toaster she glanced round at him. ‘I think you did, though. Didn’t you see the people who attacked Jock?’

‘What if I did?’ he asked, after a pause.

‘Who were they, Neil?’ she said, handing him the plate of toast. ‘There’s some butter in the fridge. Or it might be Surely This Must Be Butter, It’s Like We Used To have in the 50s. I’ll have a look.’

He laughed, but cut himself off abruptly. ‘It was Andrea. And Bill.’

‘Bill Lawson?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Amaryllis, handing him the butter substitute and a knife. ‘I don’t know if he’s got any marmalade,’ she muttered half to herself, opening cupboards and closing them again.

‘They
more or less walked right past me. I ducked down behind the bench. Of course I’m sure! I was married to the woman for years.’

‘So Andrea’s current husband is one of the delivery drivers for Aberdour Breweries?’

‘There’s no need to make it sound so sinister!’ he protested. ‘It’s a perfectly respectable job. A man’s got to earn a living somehow.’

‘But if she was carrying on with Liam Johnstone…’

‘I don’t see that’s got anything to do with anything though.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Amaryllis.
‘But if Jock’s badly hurt,’ she added after a moment, hoping that wasn’t the case, ‘we’ll have to involve the police officially. They shouldn’t get away with it.’

She persuaded Neil to tell her more about Andrea, and all that he knew about Bill Lawson, and they were mulling it over together when the doorbell rang.

‘Hope it isn’t the police!’ said Neil. It sounded as if he was trying to joke, but she saw the fear in his eyes. He evidently wasn’t sure if rescuing the victim of an attack was reason enough to breach his bail conditions. Amaryllis thought it might be, but she was wary all the same. What if someone had seen the other two and thought they were disposing of a body or something?

She told Neil to stay where he was, and opened the door herself.

‘Amaryllis!’ said Penelope Johnstone in surprise. ‘I thought – is Christopher in?’

Penelope looked terrible, and even worse when Amaryllis stood back to let her enter the house and she stepped into the light of the front hall. Her hair, usually smooth and immaculate, hung in disheveled strands, while her jacket was buttoned up unevenly and her shoes looked as if she had recently trudged across a freshly ploughed field.

‘Christopher had to go out somewhere,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Come in and have some toast.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t. I just wanted to speak to him – but that was silly. It’s much too late in the evening. I wasn’t thinking.’

Penelope turned to leave, but Amaryllis closed the front door firmly.

‘It’s all right, Penelope.
Christopher would want us to look after you. Come into the kitchen. Neil Macrae’s in there anyway. You might as well join the party.’

‘I’m not really in the mood for a party, exactly,’ said Penelope nervously, but she allowed herself to be cajoled into sitting down at the kitchen table and accepting the offer of tea and toast.
‘Have you been away on holiday, Amaryllis? I’m sure Christopher told me… Was it Monte Carlo? I’ve always wanted to go there. Not for the casino, of course, I don’t do that sort of thing, but the scenery…’

‘I wasn’t there for very long,’ said Amaryllis hastily. By some evil chance Penelope had hit on the one topic Amaryllis wanted to talk about least
of all – less even than the case of Liam’s death. ‘I was called away… How’s Zak getting on? I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Oh,’ said Penelope, and, unbelievably, tears sprang to her eyes. She sniffed. ‘Oh, dear,
I’m sorry.’

‘Here’s your tea,’ said Neil, putting a mug on the table in front of her. ‘Toast’s coming up in a minute.’

Penelope placed her hands carefully round the mug, as if she needed to hold on to something. Amaryllis hadn’t thought Zak would be too difficult to talk about. She tried again.

‘
Have you done any knitting lately, Penelope?’

‘I’ve always got some knitting on the go,’ said Penelope, her voice trembling but still somehow reproachful. ‘I’m trying a Fair Isle hat at the moment.’

‘Very nice,’ said Amaryllis.

‘But I had to leave it at home when – when the police came for me
this afternoon,’ said Penelope, and took her hands away from the mug to cover her face. She sobbed for a few minutes. Neil raised his eyebrows at Amaryllis; she guessed he was asking permission to escape, so she shook her head very slightly, and he nodded in reply, turning his attention to buttering the toast.

‘But they let you go again,’ said Amaryllis, sitting down next to her and steeling herself to pat the woman on the shoulder in an uncharacteristic gesture of comfort.
‘They didn’t seriously think you would have done any harm to Liam, did they? He isn’t – wasn’t – even your husband any more.’

Penelope looked up at her with red eyes. ‘I don’t know what they thought. They asked me why I was there
in the Queen of Scots on Friday night. Somebody had seen me.’

‘Jackie Whitmore.’

‘Who?’ said Penelope and Amaryllis almost at the same time.

‘The barmaid,’ said Neil shortly
, and went back to watching the toaster..

‘I told them the truth – that I’d come to warn Neil that Liam might be violent, but they didn’t seem to believe me at first. They kept asking me the same questions again and again. Then they suddenly let me go.’

Neil
put the toast on a plate and brought it over. He busied himself at the sink, doing something that probably didn’t need doing. Amaryllis wished he would sit still and do nothing. She had noticed this with men before: if they felt helpless or awkward, and yet thought they would look like a waste of space if they did nothing, they would do something pointless and perhaps even dangerous or annoying to fill the gap.

She ground her teeth.

‘Did you miss the last bus home just now, Penelope?’ she asked.

‘No,’ said Penelope. ‘The police were going to take me home, but I asked them to drop me off at Tricia’s. But I’d forgotten this is her book club night.’

‘Oh, yes, book clubs,’ said Amaryllis, unable to keep the doom out of her voice. She was highly suspicious of book clubs, and had been wrestling with her urge to infiltrate this one ever since it started up in the library at the Cultural Centre. ‘So then you walked over here?’

‘No, I walked over to the wool shop first. I thought Jan might be there.
But she wasn’t. And then I went up to Jemima’s to see if I could catch her. Last week when I met her she offered to show me how to make a proper pease brose some time, and I thought she might… But I couldn’t get any reply. That was when I wondered if I should have a word with Christopher about it.’

‘About what?’ said Amaryllis in genuine bafflement. Then she remembered
. ‘Is it something to do with Zak?’

Amaryllis’s mobile buzzed at that moment, on the table. She glared at it, but picked it up anyway.
When she clicked to accept the call, the tortoise that represented Christopher on her phone appeared.

‘It’s me,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘I wanted to let you know – Jock’s come round. The doctor says he should be fine but they’re keeping him in overnight because of his age.’

He said the last word in a paranoid whisper, but she could still here a noisy protest in the background.

‘That’s good,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Has he said anything?’

‘Said anything? He hasn’t stopped! We’re leaving to come home any minute now. Don’t wait for us though. Go home if you want.’

She interpreted that to mean that he would like her to stay there but didn’t want to ask.

‘We’ve got Penelope here,’ she told him.

‘Have you?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, better go now.’

Zak. She must ask Penelope again about Zak.

‘I won’t be able to get into Jock’s house,’ said Neil. ‘I haven’t got a key.’ He glanced at the two women. ‘I’ve had to give his address to the police as part of the bail conditions.’

‘Christopher won’t mind you staying here,’ said Amaryllis. ‘He’s got plenty of room.’

‘I don’t know where I’m going to go,’ Penelope sniffed. ‘And – oh dear – I don’t know where Zak is.’

‘Have the police spoken to him?’ enquired Amaryllis.

‘There’s no reason why they should!’ said Penelope, indignant on her son’s behalf. ‘He’s always got on perfectly well with Liam. I tried to make sure of that. He never knew what I went through with his father.
He had no reason to do him any harm.’

Do you want to bet? thought Amaryllis
, recalling occasions in the past when Zak had seemed to her to be fully aware of the situation between his parents. She caught Neil’s eye and saw the cynicism on his face. She wondered where Zak had got to. On occasion he had come to her for sanctuary, as had some of his friends.

‘Well, I’d better be going then,’ she said. She looked at Neil and Penelope. They were adults: she could leave them alone together. ‘I’m sure Christopher wouldn’t mind one of you sleeping on the settee. You can sort something else out in the morning.’

Her steps speeded up as she reached the slope that led down towards her apartment block in the little cul-de-sac called Merchantman’s Wynd. She hoped he wasn’t – well, he wasn’t hanging around at the main door anyway. And he wasn’t –

‘Hey, Amaryllis!’ came a low voice in the darkness. From somewhere above her. She glanced up. He was on her little balcony. Two thoughts crossed her mind simultaneously. How had he got up there? And, more worrying, if Penelope ever found out her son had come to
Amaryllis, she would kill both of them.