Blood, Salt, Water (4 page)

He looked at Susan. ‘Sheila had brain damage?’

She nodded. She seemed to understand that he didn’t know. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

Did they? Her reluctance to talk and angry-for-no-reason moods. No one ever told him. Did they tell him? He might have been told in a couched way, in a kind way, and misunderstood.

Miss Grierson talked on about Sheila at school and what a good sailor she was and the dances they went to, in all the great houses, when they were girls.

They were walking along by a tall hedge when she arrived at Sheila having Iain: ‘. . .
young
when she had you. I never had children.’ She gave him a glancing blow of a look, a demand for pity.

It wasn’t a pity. She wouldn’t have thought it was if she had stayed and knew what Iain had put Sheila through. The shame and the worry. Prison visits and court dates. Little ‘hiya’ waves to her from the dock.

He looked at Susan, saw the self-pity in her eyes and found her disgusting. He felt a scaly tail flick inside his chest wall.

‘Look.’ He stopped suddenly. She overshot him, had to turn back to listen. ‘Eh, Susan, I’m just going home.’

‘Please! No!’ Her hand flew out, reaching for his forearm. The plea was too intense. She held his eye. ‘I can’t go home alone.’

‘How? Is there somebody in the house?’

‘I don’t know.’ She looked around the pavement, blinking hard.

Not a boyfriend who wanted to hit her. She would have told him if it was that. What wouldn’t she tell him? The figure of her mother? A voice in her head? She couldn’t say but she was begging him not to leave her. Her need was craven. He knew that feeling. He didn’t have the strength to leave her now.

Stepping towards her, he draped his arm over her shoulders, telling her that she wouldn’t have to beg again, that he understood. She melted towards him for a moment, grateful, and then drew away.

‘’S OK,’ he said softly, as if she was Sheila. ‘It’s all right. I’m coming with you.’

Susan Grierson smiled at the pavement, nodded them uphill and they walked on together towards her house.

7

Morrow sat with her back against the wall, calm observer in a blizzard of clammy panic. Three of the most highly paid, powerful men in Police Scotland had been called in. Heavy personnel. As if to justify their places, each took turns monologuing about mistakes others should avoid, things they should be afraid of. A day’s wage from each of them would have paid to keep one of the rural stations they were shutting open for a week. The power differential between Morrow and the rest of the room was so steep she felt that she could be sitting in her pants and no one would notice. Most DIs would give half their pensions to be here. Morrow was astute enough to know that she barely was.

She kept her own counsel, as she watched Deputy Chief Constable Hughes ask questions of Nolly Dent, her chief inspector. Nolly had a silly name but was a good guy, handsome, small and smart. She saw Hughes half listening to Nolly’s answers, half imagining his chief constable’s reaction. She watched him conduct the meeting calmly, lay out his jurisdictional argument for Police Scotland getting a slice of the seven million when it was found. It was a Scottish case. The investigation predated the move here but the takeover of the firm was a cut-off, a fresh start for a criminal action. It wasn’t his argument. It was the chief constable’s and it was really smart. She had thought of him as vain and petty because of PINAD, but her conviction wavered now.

When her turn came to speak, Morrow insisted that they should not be blinded by the proceeds money but follow normal protocol in the circumstances. By far the most likely explanation was that Fuentecilla had been killed by her partner during a domestic argument. However, they could use this as an opportunity to access the firm’s files and find out more about what was going on.

Fuentecilla was argumentative, she told them. She argued with everyone. It was unlikely that her domestic set-up was peaceful. Plus the caller seemed to be her kid. If she had run away she would have taken the children with her.

Chief Superintendent Saunders smirked at her. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a bit soft on her? What is this, the mother’s union?’

Morrow wished she had a Victoria sponge cake with her. She didn’t speak but her face was saying something very eloquent.

DCC Hughes moved the meeting on. The perils of Roxanna Fuentecilla were obliterated by stats and jurisdictional issues, by suggested strategies for questioning hostile witnesses and legal issues over the proceeds. Morrow would never have noticed, normally. Their job was to police the city, not save the damsel, but she was listening like a member of the victim’s family. The more she thought about it, the more she knew that it was all about her brother. Roxanna was Danny without the shame and resentment. Her defences were down because Danny and Roxanna were so unalike: Roxanna was female, Spanish, wealthy, but she had Danny’s audacity, his same shameless sense of entitlement. Secretly, Morrow realised, she admired that.

The pointless meeting burbled on. Even the DCC seemed to think the monologues were too long. He got up to leave before the meeting was concluded, nodding at his PA to shepherd them through that last boring bit. He didn’t need to stay because the course of action had been decided: Morrow and a hand-picked DC would attend the missing woman’s domicile, posing as everyday cops on a Missing Persons call.

They would follow normal procedure, voice record everything for transcript. They would insist on access to the insurance firm’s offices on the pretext of hidden debts. They would get all the info on the firm that they could.

Three of the most highly paid men in Police Scotland had gathered together to arrive at this complex strategic decision: go and see.

The energy went out of the meeting after Hughes left. The final statement was rounded up as everyone packed away their papers. The meeting ended in jig time.

Out on the landing, waiting for the lift down, Morrow stood with CS Saunders. He was a fat man, an important man, but she didn’t really know him. He knew he had offended her and was sorry. He stood next to her, catching her eye, nodding, smiling, seemed to want her to say something. Morrow would have said whatever he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t guess what it was. She smiled back. She nodded back. She was on the brink of giving a thumbs up when he said,

‘It’s been chaos out there since your brother went away.’

Morrow dropped her smile. The lift arrived and they got in. The door shut behind them.

‘Yep. He kept it all quiet,’ CS Saunders told her, ‘is what I’m saying, while he was running things. These people . . .’

He smiled at her, saw it was going down badly and awkwardly turned his bared teeth to the door. Morrow felt herself go very stiff, as if a spider, too big to swat, was running across her back. Accommodation. No one in the force ever vocalised it but they all knew that the black economy was essential. Men like Danny were responsible for twenty per cent of global GDP. If justice was done and they were all imprisoned, the world economy would collapse. Civilisations would fall.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said, hoping that sounding agreeable might be an end to it.

‘Yes, indeed.’ He took that as encouragement. ‘They’re tearing each other to bits over territories now. Little more than a few streets, most of them. The stab stats for last quarter read as if a civil war has broken out.’

The lift alighted and the doors opened. She should have let him go first, out of respect, but she slipped past him.

‘Been quiet for years because of your brother . . .’ he called after her.

‘He’s my half-brother,’ said Morrow quietly. ‘Just my half-brother, sir.’ She walked away without being dismissed: an underling’s revenge.

McGrain was waiting for her in the lobby. They walked to the car park in silence. McGrain was wary of her mood. As they got into the car, he asked what the chief was really like. He was guessing she’d been shouted at. Morrow said the chief was professional and climbed into the passenger seat. McGrain got in and started the car.

Danny was carrying on his business vicariously from prison. Not much had changed for him but he had stopped power-broking between factions in the city. It meant chaos on the streets. Keeping the peace was in his interests as much as anyone else’s, but Danny wouldn’t do it any more, just to show them what they had brought on themselves. People were dying because Danny McGrath was in a huff.

8

Iain and Susan stepped carefully on the overgrown path to the pale green front door. The garden was wild and smelled mulchy. The house itself looked well preserved. It was a miniature villa with windows on either side. Little pillars and an open porch over shallow steps.

Susan stepped up to the door. She turned the key in the lock but waited until Iain was flanking her before she pushed it open. The heavy old door swung into a wide hall, carpeted and papered in faded blue and yellow. Light filtered in from the far kitchen at the end of the corridor. It looked misty but Iain realised that it was a fog of dust, stirred up by the suck of the front door opening.

Susan looking around as if she’d never been there before. She stepped in and waved Iain over the threshold, shut the front door quietly and tiptoed through an open door on the left, into what seemed to be a dining room.

The house was incredibly fusty. A dresser just inside the door had a thick layer of dust on it, so thick it looked sticky, as if time had compressed it.

Iain followed her in. A dirty whisky glass was sitting on the varnished dining-room table in a clear smear in the dust coating. It must have been Susan’s, from earlier, because she didn’t look at it twice. Iain noticed she was tiptoeing.

‘Is there someone in here, Susan?’

She ignored him, checked the hall again and then turned to whisper to him, ‘I need to see Mark Barratt.’

Iain looked at her mouth.
Mark Barratt?
How could she know about Mark Barratt? ‘Mark’s in Barcelona.’

‘Will you call him?’

‘Can’t.’

She clearly didn’t know Mark. He never took calls when he was away. Everyone who knew him knew that. Left the mobile at home when he was in Barcelona. Sometimes, when he came back he had to go away again almost immediately.

Iain suddenly wondered if Susan was a cop. She looked like a cop. She was fit and slim, but she was emotional and she was bringing him home, which was not-cop.

‘Why d’you want to see Mark?’

‘D’you know who would have his number?’ She began walking down the corridor to the kitchen, careful scanning for someone as she went.

Iain followed. He was about to ask if she had been broken into, what was going on, but he was startled by the state of the kitchen.

The kitchen was massive and almost derelict. Big windows to the garden were netted with ragged cobwebs. Part of the ceiling had fallen in and lay crumbled on the worktop. At the far end of the room an archway opened onto a filthy windowed conservatory, filling the room with reproachful sunlight.

She went into a pantry cupboard, checking it out.

‘Have you been living in here, Susan?’

‘No. Just got back a day or so ago. My mum died.’

Iain thought old Mrs Grierson had died two years ago. He thought he’d heard about it on a day release. The house was messy enough to have been left for years. But Susan had just come back now. She stepped back into the kitchen, saw him again and seemed relieved.

‘Tea!’ she announced, her mood abruptly lighter. Looking through cupboards, she found an electric kettle under the sink and took it out. She blew the dust off. Iain was not a fastidious man but he didn’t think he’d be drinking anything out of that. She filled it with water from rattly pipes and plugged it in, watching with surprise as it went on.

‘I’ll go and find some cups,’ she said, and left the room.

Iain couldn’t fathom what was going on. He wanted a smoke. That was all he wanted and then he’d leave. He dropped down into an armchair and a puff of dust rose around him. The chair was in the mouth of the archway to the conservatory, draughty because a hole had been dug in the conservatory floor under the outside wall, but at least it was blowing the dust away from him.

He took out a cigarette paper, opened the tobacco pouch and teased out a pinch. Engulfed by the scent of chocolate, he laid it along the paper valley. It was harder to do than he remembered, his fingertips clumsy, but the smell and sounds, the cleanness of it filled his eye, batting away memories of his midnight qualms and the bloody dock and sailing with Susan. His mouth watered with anticipation as he licked the gum. Even though it had been a long time since he smoked, he remembered everything about the ritual of this. He remembered too all that it used to mean to him: a mood change, a cogent plan, a reward or compensation. Now he wasn’t hoping for any of those things. He just wanted to flood his lungs and smother her breath in him.

Sitting the cigarette between his lips, he felt in his pocket and took out a sand-yellow lighter. He lit it, heard the crackle of the paper, tasted the warm toxins flood his mouth.

He inhaled. A sharp, pebbled wave scratched down his throat. The tide of nicotine coursed across his inward ocean. Up it foamed, on, up estuaries and rivers, burns and rivulets, until every inland shore and bank was tainted and trilling.

The smoke kick-started his heart in an irregular bossa nova rhythm. It throbbed in his throat, as if the fat fist of an organ had shifted to make room for the squatter in his chest.

He felt her ebb. It was working. He tried to hold the breath but his diaphragm convulsed, expelled the smoke in wild, wet, spluttered coughs.

‘Here we go,’ sing-songed Susan as she came back and sat a tray of tea things on a dusty side table. She pulled a kitchen chair over and sat down next to him.

Side by side, Iain and Susan looked out into the conservatory. Light filtering through dirty green glass. It wasn’t a modern conservatory full of sofas or anything, but an old greenhouse attached to the back of the house. A crack on one of the panels was mended with time-yellowed masking tape. Empty glass shelves lined the walls. A seedlings table, the wood bleached grey with light exposure, had been shoved to the side of the room, making way for the hole dug next to the ventilation grate.

‘Shall I pour?’ Susan Grierson smiled fondly at him. The tea things were tacky with dirt.

‘OK,’ he said, because she was holding the teapot and waiting for an answer. Iain wondered if she could see the dirt.

He hadn’t heard the kettle boil. He wanted to ask her what was going on but she didn’t seem much more together than he was. It was a mistake, coming here. They weren’t going to help each other. He’d leave in a minute.

She poured two small, prissy cups of weak tea and added a sprinkle of powdered milk. Iain said he took three sugars and she put them in as well, stirred with a little spoon and handed him a cup and saucer. He took it and put it on the arm of his chair.

‘What happened in there, then?’ He pointed to the freshly dug dirt floor on the conservatory.

‘Lead pipes,’ she said. ‘Had to be replaced. They replaced all the piping in the house years ago but that offshoot serviced the garden and the conservatory. Worrying, actually, because Mother was growing her own tomatoes and lettuce and watering them with leaded water.’

‘Worrying, actually,’ he echoed, glad they were talking normally.

‘Lead poisoning is cumulative. I mean, she didn’t die of lead poisoning, she had a heart attack. But it’s terribly bad for you.’

The shape of the hole, long and deep and tucked away in a corner, it made him think of bad things.

‘The pipes were right deep down there . . .’ She touched her hair and looked harried. ‘There’s so much to do to this house. A lot of it fundamental.’

‘Dusty.’

‘Hmm, it is dusty. There are damp spots in all the bathrooms, leaky pipes, and the decoration – dreadful. So old-fashioned. Oh – biscuits!’ She leapt up and went back to the counter again.

Iain heard her moving about behind him. He was hoping she wouldn’t bring a dead rat over and say it was biscuits, she was a bit Baby Jane, but suddenly something sharp stabbed him in the back, from the inside. She was feeling for a way out.

He took another tremulous draw on his cigarette. The pain cowered deep. He held his breath, held it, held it, his eyes shut, concentrating. He held fast, though his lungs were begging and his eyes throbbed.

He felt her wither. He felt her gone.

Iain let his breath out and found he couldn’t stop. He began to cry. He hadn’t cried properly for a long time. His tear ducts yawned, aching, as salt water dropped from his cheeks down the front of his top.

‘Jaffa cakes?’

Eyes flicked open. Susan was holding a blue freezer bag inches from his nose. It had Jaffa biscuits in it, most of them broken. Iain slapped it away just as she let go and the bag slithered into his lap. He picked it up and shoved it at her. ‘GET
THE
FUCK—’

But Susan didn’t mean any harm, he reminded himself, and she was in a state too. ‘Look, no thanks, OK? I just . . . I don’t like biscuits.’

The blurred bag retreated. She walked away.

Iain wilted forwards over his lap, his hands in his hair. He heard the cigarette singe, smelled the sulphurous tang of burning.

‘. . . upset?’ She was saying something, he wasn’t sure what she was saying, but she was saying something new. Now she had stopped talking. She was sitting. A warm palm came out and drew a circle on his back.

The paralysing sadness was lifting. He wiped the wet from his face, pinched drips off his nose. He dried his hand on his trouser leg. The cigarette had burned out. Another cigarette maybe.

‘More tea? Oh, you haven’t drunk that one yet.’

Iain glanced over. Her hands were folded in her lap. She smiled, politely, determined to keep to the script of tea, whatever he did. It was annoying how fucking insistent she was about the tea and biscuits and a fucking saucer. For all she knew his best friend might have died. He might not be crying because he was guilty of a terrible thing. She didn’t know. He was angry at her and he looked at the hole in the conservatory floor again.

Susan was smiling, an awkward moment at a minister’s tea party. They looked out into the smoke swirling in the empty conservatory.

‘Why did you ask me to come here? How d’you know Mark?’

‘Well, Iain,’ she spoke confidingly, ‘frankly, I wanted to ask a small favour. I don’t know anyone here, but I’d like a pinch and I heard Mark Barratt is the person to see about that?’

‘You want a what?’

‘A deal. Of white. Coke. Charlie. Prince? I want to buy. Can you help me?’