Dead Secret (17 page)

I got off with one of my hotel managers once. Little more than that. Some heavy flirting, a quick snog over the filing cabinet in his room. I suppose I was a bit flattered he picked me out, and anyway, I fancied a quiet season. It was one of the perks of being the boss’s bird in a hotel. Fewer early shifts.

It didn’t last long. On one of our first dates he took me out with some mate of his and his lady friend. Couldn’t stand her. She was a smug little puss, delicate and dainty as a kitten when she was with her man, always preening and purring. She’d hang on his arm, and rub her leg quietly against his under the table, and smile like there was cream dripping off her whiskers. It was a different story when there were no men about.

Anyway, he was called Craig, my hotel manager, and he was unimportant, completely unimportant. But after I leave Terry Simons, a mental picture suddenly drops into place. The ring. Terry Simons’ ring. That’s where I remember it from. Craig used to wear one. And this long-forgotten conversation drifts back into mind.

We were in the pub, the four of us, and he and his mate started talking about some guy from a nearby town. He had done well for himself in cash and carry and had just opened up another outlet, moving into some new premises locally.

Craig’s pal said he’d met him at a local Chamber of
Commerce
meeting. And then Craig, thinking me and the puss weren’t listening, says quietly, “Is he on the square?” Oh yeah. “A regular attender,” his mate says, and it was like the two of them were talking in some kind of code. I caught Craig’s eye and looked at him quizzically, but he just looked a bit discomfited and changed the subject.

“What was all that about?” I asked him later.

“What?”

“That ‘on the square’ stuff. What does that mean?”

He shook his head dismissively, tried to sound light.

“It’s nothing. It’s… just an expression. It means being in the Masons.”

His late father was a Freemason. In fact, the ring Craig wore was originally his dad’s. And the ‘G’? Stood for God, apparently.

“But you’re not a Mason are you?”

“It’s just a business thing,” said Craig, a bit defensively I thought.

I burst out laughing. “Oooh,” I said, sidling up to him on the couch and running my hand lightly along his leg. “I bet you’ve got the knees for the rolled-up trouser legs, brother Craig.”

I don’t remember what he said. But I do remember he didn’t laugh back.

I turn on the radio as I head across the Kessock bridge toward Lochglas. There is a pop track on the radio, with a classical piano and soaring strings. I like the combination, turn up the volume as I cross the bridge. The early evening light is fantastic out across the water, the sunshine dulled with a touch of haar. I turn the volume up and up and up, the piano notes filling the small space of the car, the heavy bass thumping like a heartbeat, until it feels that there is so much energy in here it will explode, and the car will lift from the road.

Across the water, the hills and the sky and the shore are washed with a transparent grey-blue light and the effect is so
eerie
, so magical, that I think of Da and how much he would have loved it. I don’t know what it is, but there is something in that combination of piano and strings and light that makes my heart swell, and right in this minute I think Da is everywhere here. He is in the mute grey hills, and in the drifting sea of cloud, and in the rays of sunshine that filter through the mist and streak like lightning bolts across the water. He is in the earth and in the sky and in the water. He is in the low, languorous flight of the sea bird across the surface and into the blue horizon. He still exists. He is all around me. Everywhere.

I remember them then, the words we sang in church as
children
about our Heavenly Father, as they called him. Words we
sang sweetly but without comprehension.

Da.

I feel euphoric. And then suddenly the music fades and the feeling inside drifts away with the notes, ethereal as the sea haar, and its going leaves me empty. The faith, the belief, the certainty, evaporate. The blue light doesn’t seem warm any longer, but thin and mean and cold. He is gone.

The unbearable bit of those first days after Da died was not just the shock but the confusion. The certainty one minute that something remained of him, and the certainty the next that he was quite gone. Of thinking there was a soul and then thinking there was none. Of thinking there was a future and then being certain there was only a past. But what was it Da had said to Khadim? There is always a future whether you want it or not.

By the time I reach Lochglas, I feel subdued and tired, but driven. There are no options here, no side roads, no diversions. There is only straight on. I stop at Spar and look in. Yes, Marion is there in her pink overall, laughing with a customer. I pick up a paper and wait to pay.

“Hello again,” she says. “Still here?”

“For another day or two.”

“The forecast’s still good. Such an amazing spell we’ve had.”

I nod and hand over the money for the paper.

“Remember you told me about the couple who owned the house? I was wondering if the murdered woman, Kath
Connaghan
, still had relatives here?”

“Well her parents are both dead now but her sister, Kirstin is still here. But if it’s the house you want to enquire about, I don’t think Kirstin will know where Joseph Connaghan is. I don’t think they’re in touch.”

“Probably not,” I say, carelessly as I can, “but I just thought I’d ask.” I smile. “It’s such a fantastic place.”

“Fancy being a local then?” laughs Marion. “You’d soon get fed up in the winter, a young lassie like you.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Where does Kirstin live? She’s my only shot.”

“Second house past the Post Office,” says Marion, handing me the change. “But I know she’s out this evening because it’s WRI night. You’d maybe get her in the morning.”

Bored in the winter? With WRI on offer? Maybe I’d even learn how to peel a star fruit.

A bottle of vodka; an old friend. I buy it in the supermarket round the corner from the B & B. It is nearing 10 p.m. but still light, the day refusing to give way, the air still and warm and scented by hanging baskets fixed to the lampposts outside. There is an empty space next to the supermarket car park, rough waste ground with a bulldozer standing in one corner, piles of stone blocks, scaffolding. Wire fencing encircles the ground, and it is only on the way back that I realise I have passed the signs
several
times without noticing the words that are plastered every few yards on the fencing. ‘Cory Construction’ the notice says. ‘A
Highland Council project in partnership with Cory
Construction
’.

Back in the room, I undress and sit in my underwear on top of the bed. Even a sheet is too much in these airless nights. I sit with the pillows propped behind me, my knees drawn up to
cradle
the bottle, pouring two doubles in quick succession, waiting for the alcohol to flood my system. Tonight, it feels as if I could drink the whole bottle and nothing would counteract the
adrenalin
. It’s only when the third double is being poured that I begin to feel that familiar numbing, the soothing effects flooding into my limbs and relaxing them. It is a relief and I reach over for the lemonade bottle, humming under my breath to the music from the radio clock on the bedside table. From the depths of my handbag, which is discarded on the floor and tucked halfway under the bed, comes a muffled beep.

I glance at my watch. 11 p.m. Sarah? I lean over the edge of the bed, reaching for the bag, giggling slightly as I grab hold of the base to stop myself falling. Close! I heave myself up, chucking out items from the bag until the sheets are covered with discarded papers, a cheque book, a pen and lipstick, and then impatiently I tip the whole thing upside down until a purse and phone fall out in a flurry of crumbs and dust. A text. Withheld number. Click. I stare at the short message, frowning. ‘Go home.’ Who the…? Then I shrug, chucking it on the bed and reaching for the bottle.

The message comes three times in the next hour. Go home. It is only when the phone beeps a fourth time that I realise I am alert, waiting. The sound makes me jump. ‘Go home, bitch.’ There is only a bedside light on but I suddenly become aware that across the room, the curtains are not closed. Night has fallen now and a thin sliver of moon falls into the room. I throw a wrap
over my underwear and stumble across to close the curtains, shutting out the world, the sudden malevolence that darkness has brought. I cross the room and pull the additional snib across the door, then climb back into bed and pour another measure from the rapidly dwindling bottle. From somewhere inside the rumpled duvet, another beep sounds insistently.

Things seem different in the morning. Less threatening. They always do when the darkness is replaced with light, and as the morning sunshine streams through my bedroom windows, the strange uneasiness I felt receiving those texts in the night fades slightly. Da always accused me of being a bit foolhardy and I prove him right by suppressing any instinctive sense of danger. Lochglas is a small place and I am an outsider asking questions about a dark spot in its history. My phone calls… my questions in the Spar… it’s probably all public
knowledge
by now. I’ve left my number in lots of places already. It intrigues me that all these years after my mother was
murdered
, someone still cares enough to text abuse to me, but there was no specific threat in the texts, just an instruction to go home and leave things alone. Small places don’t like outsiders. Incomers. In a couple of days I will be gone and it is unlikely I will ever be back.

I am tired, though, and a bit hungover, and barely hear the landlady as she chats at breakfast. She suggests a nice walk along the river, a visit to what she calls the Islands. I am only half
taking
in what she says. Tourists like it along there, she says. I nod politely, ask a question or two, but I know I won’t be walking there this morning. I will be driving to Lochglas, to the house two doors down from the Post Office.

Outside the house, I sit in the car for a few minutes, trying to compose myself. The experience with Terry Simons has
unnerved
me. I am scared of this woman too. Scared that she, too, could destroy the last vestiges of my faith in Da. You think you want to know things until you get to know them. If I hadn’t come on this journey, if I hadn’t wanted to know, I’d have a very different picture of Da and Mother right now. But I know too much now not to try to find out the rest. I can’t un-know.

My aunt’s house is a small whitewashed cottage with a grey slate roof and a bright green painted door with a glass panel. I can see a shape moving towards me through the glass when I ring the bell. The pressure builds in my chest as the shape looms closer. A woman in her mid fifties answers. Short, cropped dark hair. Beige trousers, lemon shirt. Small pearl earrings. She doesn’t look anything like the pictures of mother, but then I don’t know how mother would have looked in her mid fifties.

“Kirstin?” I say.

I, on the other hand, look so like the pictures of my
mother
that I think she might guess right away, but she looks at me without recognition. Funny how some people see resemblances straight off and other just don’t get it.

“Hello,” she says, looking enquiringly at me.

My heat beats loudly, steadily. “Look, I’m really sorry to call on you unannounced,” I begin in a rush, “and I hope you don’t mind me disturbing you, but my name is Rebecca Connaghan. I think we might be related…?” If I was disappointed in her initial reaction, she makes up for it now. She blanches and gives a little gasp, an awkward, inward inhalation, and says, “oh” at the same time, so the word comes out strangled and muffled. Her hand grasps for the door.

“I’m sorry. I’ve startled you.”

“No, you’re all right,” she says, but she is shaken. “Come in.”

She leads me into a quiet sitting room overlooking the road. Passers-by walk inches from her window and she has Venetian blinds fitted, the light coming in waves through the slats. The room has a neat, old-fashioned feel with lace antimacassars on the arms and the backs of chairs, and a vase of pink
chrysanthemums
sitting on the table near the window.

“Take a seat,” she motions and we sit down in awkward
silence
.

Kirstin seems genuinely sad when I tell her about Da. She is a thin, precise woman, rather anxious. Her skin is pale, almost bloodless, except for a few tiny broken veins in her cheeks, fine as red thread.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m very sorry.”

“Why,” I ask, “did the two of you not keep in touch?”

She says nothing for a minute.

“How much do you know?” she asks finally.

I tell her about the house and the library cuttings and she listens intently.

“You know about Cory then?”

“Yeah. I know about Cory.”

She hesitates.

“Do you want tea? Coffee?”

“No, I’m fine thanks.”

I wait for her to speak but she doesn’t. I suppose it is hard for her. I have, after all, literally turned up on her doorstep. Apart from Peggy and Charlie, she is the only relative I have ever met and my eyes are fixed on her face with a sense of curiosity.
Trying
to see Mother. Trying to see me, maybe. Her skin is so pale.
She’s dyeing her hair the wrong colour, I think, the thought popping into my head from nowhere. Her hair is too dark. She should be honey, not black. Funny how, even in the face of the serious, the banal never quite backs off.

“Was there some kind of… I don’t know… feud between Da and you?” I ask eventually.

She shakes her head. “When it happened, when Kath
disappeared
, your father and I supported each other at first. But I didn’t know about Cory. Joe never told me; Kath never told me. And when that came out…” Her voice trailed away.

“What?”

She looks uncomfortable.

“I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if Joe had lost control with Kath or not.”

“You mean murdered her.”

“You have to understand what that time was like,” she says, a little defensively. “It was the most awful, awful time of our lives. The day she disappeared I got a call from Doreen, the lassie that ran the play group. Kath hadn’t turned up to pick you up. I had Sarah and I was worried right away. Kath was always running, always late, but not by an hour. Not when she was picking you up. And the hour turned to two and the two to three and then to a day… two days… a week. We were all just trying to hold it together. We weren’t sleeping. We weren’t eating. If her body had been found we might have been able to come to terms with it, but while she was missing it was just like living in limbo. We couldn’t function. Well, I couldn’t.”

Kirstin reaches into a handbag, takes out a packet of
cigarettes
, offers me one. I shake my head.

“Every time the phone rang, I jumped. I kept thinking it was Kath. And every time I cried because it wasn’t. I was crying
myself
to sleep at night and crying when I woke up. My husband Donald was having to force me out of bed in the morning. I’d stand in the shower and howl and he’d have to come back and turn off the water to make me get out.”

“And Da…?”

“Joe was on the brink of breakdown. It was only having to look after you and Sarah that kept him sane. His sister came up from Glasgow to help him…”

“Peggy?”

“Yes, Peggy.” Kirstin flicks a lighter and the flame shoots up. Her hand shakes slightly as she lights the cigarette. “But he kept in close contact with me. And as the days turned into weeks and Kath was still missing, he knew some people were beginning to suspect him.” She hesitates, throwing the lighter onto a small
table
beside her chair. “All the talk gets to you. After a while, even I began to suspect him. Joe loved her; he loved her so much. We all knew that.”

I think she was saying love was more powerful than hate. That it made you do more destructive things. She takes a tissue out of the box beside her and blows her nose.

“There was an article in the paper one day and the headline was, ‘The Husband or the Lover?’”

“I saw it in the library.”

She nods. “Joe came round that morning with the paper. Peggy had taken you to play group but he had Sarah with him, asleep in a carry cot. He was upset and shaking. Really, really agitated. He threw the paper down on my kitchen table and said what were people going to think? I knew he needed some
support
but I just couldn’t give it to him. All I could think when I looked at him was, did you do it? Did you kill my sister?”

She takes a drag of her cigarette and neither of us speaks for a minute, our own thoughts floating out into the silence with Kirstin’s cigarette smoke. Out in the street, there is movement. Through the Venetian blinds I can see a couple. I watch them pass by the low sitting-room window; no heads, just two waists, two pairs of jeans-clad legs, two sets of sturdy shoes.

“Did Da know what you were thinking?” I ask.

She nods. “After a minute or two ranting, he suddenly realised I wasn’t saying anything. I’ll never forget the look he gave me… A kind of… angry… a cold, cold look. And then he said, so quietly it frightened me, ‘Some people think I murdered Kath, Kirstin. What do you think?’”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I said absolutely nothing. Joe stared at me and then he just shook his head and said, ‘I see.’ I remember he put his hands on the table and bowed his head, as if thinking what to do next. I began to panic then. It was silly. But I just… I began to think… you know… what if he
had
killed Kath.”

She is talking almost as if she can still taste that moment in her mouth. I wasn’t even there but all I can taste is Da’s betrayal.

“Donald wasn’t in. I was on my own and I really began to sweat. I’d known Joe for years but suddenly I felt as if I was locked in my kitchen with a stranger. What if he turned on me? What if he thought he had to get rid of me too? I was terrified and when he looked up I think he could see the fear. He knew what I was thinking. I said to him, ‘Maybe you’d better just go now, Joe.’ He didn’t answer for a minute and then he said, ‘Yeah, maybe I better had.’ And he picked up Sarah and walked out without another word. When I heard the front door click shut I ran out and turned the lock after him.”

She takes another puff of the cigarette, stubs out the rest in an ashtray though it is only half smoked. There is pity in her eyes when she looks at me.

“I’m sorry,” she says gently. “This is your dad I am talking about.”

“What happened when you next saw him?” I ask quietly. I feel hurt for Da listening to this. There is a tightness, a soreness in my chest. But how can I blame her for wondering what I’d wondered myself?

“I didn’t,” she says, and for a second I don’t understand. “I never saw him again,” she explains. “He took you and Sarah and he left late that night and he never came back. He packed some cases and simply left the house as it was. When I realised he was gone, I went to the police. I thought it proved he did it and
certainly
that was the story Cory was putting about. But the police said he’d left a forwarding address with them, that they knew where he was.”

“But everyone thought it was Da, that he’d run away?”

“For a while. I let it be known that the police knew where Joe was, that he hadn’t simply run off.” She looks at me. “I didn’t hate him,” she says and her eyes appeal for understanding. “But I knew both those men. Joe Connaghan, James Cory. I knew both and I would have said neither of them was capable of murder. You know? And that shakes your judgement. Either way, you got it wrong. In the end you just don’t know what to think, who to trust.”

She picks up another cigarette, lights it. “I still think about her, still miss her. You never get over it.” Her voice breaks
completely
for the first time. She reaches for another tissue. “Sure you don’t want tea?”

I hesitate. She needs something to focus on.

“Just if you’re having one.”

She nods.

“Come on through.”

“What was my mother like?” I ask as she leads me through to the kitchen.

Kirstin fills the kettle without taking off the lid, the water gushing in and spraying off the spout, spattering small water marks onto her pale lemon short-sleeved shirt.

“She was flighty and funny and capable of great kindness. But she was also selfish and immature and…” She flicks the switch on the kettle and sits down at the table. “And she was just my sister,” she says, as if nothing else need be said. “I started out my life with a big sister and then suddenly I just didn’t have one any more. When my parents died there was no one to share that with, to grieve with. For large parts of my life since she died, I have felt very alone. Of course there’s Donald, and my daughter Jen but… it’s hard to explain. It’s just a loneliness.”

“You were close then?”

“That’s the strange thing. Not really. Not close the way she was to some of her friends. She didn’t tell me about what was going on in her life, about Cory, but there was a tie there that couldn’t be broken. We grew up together. In those days we fought and we argued and we fell out, but we also laughed and told each other secrets and backed one another up when Mum and Dad were trying to keep too tight a rein on us.”

“Blood ties,” I say.

“Yes, I suppose so. We were different characters. But we
always
knew we were sisters if we needed someone.” Kirstin gets up from the table and takes two mugs from the cupboard.

“Is Sarah up here with you?”

“She doesn’t know I am here.”

“Are the two of you close?”

“Yes and no,” I say noncommittally. “Like you and Mum, probably.”

“Nothing round here was big enough for Kath whereas I… I was quite content, you know? Kath was the one who got caught smoking and sneaking out when she was meant to be doing homework. She was the one who went off with people she wasn’t meant to be with, to places she wasn’t meant to be going to.
Boring
Bertha she called me.” Her laugh turns into a hard, chesty cough. She hands me a mug.

“Is that why she went for Cory?”

Kirstin nods. “Probably.”

“But didn’t she realise that she was just a fling to him, that he wasn’t the kind of man who was going to always be around?”

“But Kath wasn’t the kind of woman who was always going to be around either. Anyway, she made that fatal mistake women always make. She thought she was different. She thought she could change him.” She takes a sip from her mug.

“You don’t know Cory, but he was a big man round these parts. He was successful. He had money and position and
power
. Whereas Joe…” She smiles. “Don’t get me wrong. Joe was a good-looking man when he was young. Kath wouldn’t have fallen for him otherwise. She thought he was older and
sophisticated
and a catch. But he wasn’t… he wasn’t… a wordly man. No, not a worldly man,” she repeats thoughtfully. “And as Kath got older he didn’t seem sophisticated any more. Just… Just safe and dull…” She breaks off and looked at me with a pang. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about your dad like this.”