Dead Secret (22 page)

The search does not take long. It was, as you might imagine, front-page news.
COUNCIL CHIEFS CLEARED OF CORRUPTION
ALLEGATIONS.
I skim the story quickly. There is no mention of Masonic links as the reason for the allegations. And of course people were under no official obligation to declare themselves Masons. As I run down the story, my eyes catch sight of a familiar name and I backtrack to a quote.

“Allegations that the chief executive and chief planning
officer
of the council were involved in irregular procedures with regard to the awarding of council building contracts are entirely without foundation,” said the man heading the investigation. My head sinks into my arms. His name? Chief Superintendent Terry Simons.

Moonlight is falling through the B & B window, lighting the room. In my head I can hear the haunting opening notes of one of Da’s favourite pieces of music, Beethoven’s
Moonlight Sonata
. Softly, softly it fills the space in my head, the darkness in my heart, as delicately as the shaft of light fills the room through the window. My throat tightens, as if there is too narrow a space to swallow. Each note sounds inside my head as clearly as if the piano is in this room.

I slip my feet into my shoes and lift a cardigan. It is the
early
hours but I know it will be a long time before I can sleep. Tiptoeing to the front door, I close it soundlessly behind me and walk along the river towards the bridge. There are plenty of people still, distant shouts from dark streets, laughter from pub doorways. Benign. Safe compared to Glasgow, I think. It is so picturesque by the river that it seems almost kitsch to a city dweller like me, the bridges lit by twinkling necklaces of light that glitter lightly in the black skirt of water below. I walk
towards
the main bridge across town, following the road onwards past the restaurant lights and hotels, down towards the town’s theatre. I think this is where the Ness Islands are, the riverside walk the landlady mentioned. There are little bridges,
apparently
, crossing from the road to the miniature islands in the middle of the river.

The road gets gradually quieter as I walk towards the Islands but I can see a bridge in the distance. The walk has helped calm me. The sound of the water running in the darkness is soothing. I will not cross to the Islands, of course – I’ll leave that for
daylight
– but I will walk to the bridge before turning back. There are no houses here and the streetlamps have ended but it is close to the bustle of town still.

The feeling of unease is gradual, hard to define. An instinct. A sudden awareness. I stop. Listen. Take a few steps forward. Listen again. I turn my head, staring into the black night. A crackle, like a twig being snapped. Or was it? Silence. My phone beeps and makes me physically jump. My hand shakes as I grab it out of my bag. A text: ‘I can see you.’ I look round, though I can see little in the darkness, scanning the shadows for movement.

I turn sharply to go back the way I have come, then hesitate. Where is he? What if he is not further on into the blackness ahead but behind me, somewhere in the belt of darkness
between
me and the town lights? He. Surely it must be a he? What if I walk straight back into him before I reach the town again? I start one way, then turn the other, but I cannot go on into the darkness where there is no light. I look all round, heart
thumping
. There is only straight on, or back. I turn sharply back and walk quickly, stifling the urge to run.

Beep. Beep. Beep. I almost drop the phone as it vibrates in my hand. I don’t stop, keep moving, my trembling fingers opening the text as I walk. ‘Race you?’ I start to run, not fast but a steady trot. Is this how my mother felt? This overwhelming fear? The trapdoor closing. Who is it? Has Terry Simon alerted the
brethren
? The Masonic mafia who drove Jackie Sandford out? Has
Cory hired another hitman? Are they just trying to scare me? Or am I to meet the same fate as my mother?

My breath is coming in short gasps. Beep. Beep. Beep. I glance down at the screen. ‘Run. But you can’t win.’ I run fast now, run towards the distant light, until my lungs are bursting. The phone beeps constantly but I no longer read it. Can’t turn round. Can’t look back. Where is he? The lights of the first hotel are coming closer, the lit windows of a seafood restaurant burning brightly. The road curves and I run, run, run, but before I can reach the light, it’s over. I run slap into him in the darkness. I open my mouth and scream with the passion of a woman who suddenly knows how much she wants to live. Hands in the darkness
grabbing
my arms. I flail out at him.

“Jesus!” says a voice. “It’s okay!”

I continue to scream; the only thing filtering into my
consciousness
is that the voice is male. I do not hear the words.

“It’s okay!”

Jumping back, I am about to turn the other way, run again, when I realise there are actually two shapes, two men. Two men walking home from the pub.

“Are you okay?”

I am shaking, unable to answer.

“What’s happened? Has somebody hurt you?”

“Sorry,” I mutter. “Sorry. I was startled… I…” I back off, head down, then move sharply past them without looking either of them in the eye. “Sorry…” I repeat.

“Fuck’s sake, what was that about?” one of them says as I shoot off.

“She gave me a bloody heart attack,” says the other. “Drama queen!”

My legs can barely carry me as I walk back across the main bridge towards the B & B. The streets are busy again, people milling outside fast-food shops, a few drunken screeches.

“Want a chip, darlin’?” someone says drunkenly as I pass.

I’d normally have a barbed quip but I don’t even look up.

“Don’t be shy!” he shouts at my retreating figure.

At the guest house, my trembling fingers can barely get the key in the lock. I close the door behind me and snib it. Then snib my own bedroom door and block the moonlight with the curtains. Beep. Beep. Beep. Another text. I take a deep breath and try to make my fingers function sufficiently to press read. ‘I let you win. This time.’

For a few minutes tonight, I thought I was going to join you, Da. I thought the secrets of the grave were about to be shown to me. What is it the Bible says about mysteries being revealed to mere children? I felt like a child out there, stumbling in the darkness, overcome by fear and helplessness. Death does that to you. No, that’s not quite right. Life does that to you. Life is just a long
process
of wandering in the night, looking for daylight, waiting in vain for dawn. Occasionally, you get to admire a sunset.

Am I any closer to the truth, Da? Am I? I no longer think I am going to uncover it completely. If tonight taught me anything, it is that I have to leave this place. I will be glad to go because the truth is, I am too frightened to stay. We all have our limits. My limbs tremble still, and my hands shake as if they have a life of their own, separate from me. Worse, my resolve is broken. My
cowardice
disappoints me, but I learnt out there that I want to live. I cannot die for old, undiscovered secrets. Especially old secrets that, once they are uncovered, might destroy me.

You did the right thing in leaving your old life. I understand now the need you had to simply walk away from here and take nothing with you. This place, with its pretty façade and ugly
underbelly
, it invades you, seeps through your pores until you turn from it in disgust. Who is it who wants me gone? Do I know too much? And if I know too much, what do I know too much about?
The corruption? The Masons? The murder?

Who texts me? Who follows me? Cory must know I am here by now. Or is there some other anonymous enemy that I don’t even recognise yet? Can I trust Jackie Sandford and what she told me? Or David Carruthers? Or even my aunt Kirstin? I no longer know what is real and what is not, who is friend and who is foe. And what of you, Da? Are you in a place where you know it all, or a place where all has ended?

I want to go home, Da. Tomorrow. I am even fighting the urge to go now, to jump in the car and go right this minute. Go
spontaneously
, the way I came. I want to feel safe. I want to see Sarah and Peggy and Charlie. But I have to wait until morning because there are two more things I have to do. If I don’t, I will live with regrets. Two more things. One small thing for Mother. One big one for you.

“Did you get to the Islands yet?” the landlady asks as she puts a pot of coffee down in front of me on the breakfast table.

“What?”

I look up sharply. Why is she asking that? What does she know?

“The Islands,” she says. She is busying herself lifting dirty dishes from the next table but her hands have stilled and she looks up in surprise at my tone. “The walk I mentioned down at the river?”

“Oh, yes. No. Well… yes, I went part of the way. I didn’t cross the bridge.”

I reach for the coffee pot to busy myself, using one hand to steady the nervous tremor in the other. I feel embarrassed: I can tell she has clocked the tremble.

“Well,” she says, glancing away deliberately and busying
herself
wiping the table clean, “there’s not really that much to see. They’re tiny, but visitors find them quaint and like using them to cross to the other side of the river.”

I slowly stir a spoonful of sugar into my coffee cup. So
whoever
was texting might not have followed me back to town. He might have escaped across the bridge and then over to the other side of the river. I look at the landlady speculatively. How do you know who to trust in life? For all I know, she’s part of it. Maybe her husband’s a Mason in this town.

“Some toast?” she says kindly.

“Please.”

I try to keep it casual but even to me, my next question sounds odd.

“Does your husband help you with the business?”

“My husband?”

“Yes.” I smile thinly. “I was just thinking… in the summer… all the breakfasts. It’s a lot.”

“Oh, I have someone come in to help when we’re busy but mostly I can manage myself. Paul works shifts so he’s not always around.”

“Shifts?”

“Aye. He’s a policeman.”

Shit. Does he know Terry Simons?

“I hope I didn’t disturb you last night.”

“Last night?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk late on. I hope I didn’t
disturb
you coming back in.”

The landlady pauses a moment, resting the dirty plates she has gathered on the back of a chair.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You come and go as you please.” She laughs lightly. “There’s not much can wake Paul – and not much that wakes me apart from Paul snoring!” She looks keenly at me. “It’s so hot even late on, isn’t it? Hard to sleep. And it’s bonny down by the river at night.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes it is.”

I smile at her, more naturally this time. I am being
ridiculous
. This whole thing is making me crazy, making me imagine conspiracies and twisted motivations. But places like this… they seem a reasonable size until you spend some time in them. And then they just keep on getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

“Can I help you?” The doors of Cory Construction have barely closed behind me before the receptionist leaps on me like an
underfed
guard dog. She takes off a pair of poncy-looking glasses, looking upwards through a flutter of mascara-heavy eyelashes.

“I’d like to see Mr Cory, please.”

Her smile is fixed. She catches a strand of loose hair with a pink polished nail and tucks it smoothly behind her ear.

“Do you have an appointment?”

She knows I don’t, silly cow.

“No, but if you tell him Rebecca Connaghan is in reception I’m sure he’ll see me.” Confidence confuses people. I say it
authoritatively
but there is sweat on my back.

“I’m sorry,” she begins, “Mr Cory has a full diary this
morning
.”

I don’t bother waiting for the rest. I don’t have time. I see a door across the reception that has a name tag on it and I head for it. If it isn’t his, I am in trouble. I’ll be thrown out before I find the right one. The receptionist jumps from behind her desk.

“I’m sorry, you can’t go in there,” she says, almost running across the offices. She moves so quickly, she twists suddenly on her high heel. I knock briefly on the door but don’t wait for an answer. She comes running in behind me.

“I’m sorry, Mr Cory,” she says, “This woman refused to wait.”

James Cory looks up in surprise when his door bursts open but it is the second look that passes through his eyes that really registers shock. Kirstin might not have recognised me but Cory certainly does. I know what he is thinking. I’ve seen that look before. That haunted look. I saw it in Pa’s eyes, the night I wore my green dress to Peggy’s.

“Rebecca Connaghan,” I say, holding out my hand to shake hands. He says nothing, does not stand to take my proffered hand. He simply stares.

“What’s the matter? Seen a ghost?”

He recovers quickly, I’ll give him that.

“It’s all right Shellie,” he says, looking at his receptionist and smiling. “I’ll give Miss Connaghan a couple of minutes. I heard she was in town.”

I could have been a rep on a sales call, the unflustered way he spoke.

Cory must be pushing sixty by now but I’d have placed him younger, maybe early fifties. Whatever burden he’s carried over the years, it isn’t showing. You expect it to show. Like grief showed on Nazima. But there is nothing to suggest James Cory’s sins worm inside him.

Even sitting at a desk, I can see he’s tall. His hair is well cut and still quite dark, though sprinkled with silver at the temples. He is wearing a white shirt and blue patterned tie, small, tightly packed royal blue diamonds against a navy background. The jacket of his navy suit hangs on a coat stand beside his desk. It has not been dumped over the stand. The hoop on the jacket collar has been placed over the iron curl. Just so.

When I think of James Cory in future it will not be one solid presence that I remember, but a series of flashing impressions, of
inconsequential details that I drink in now as I look. Golf-club tie pin, gold cuff links, gold signet ring on his wedding finger, expensive black leather shoes with a gleaming buckle at the side. Flashes of light sparkling on gold. Tiny gap in his front teeth. Brown eyes. I can see why she went for him. He is handsome in the way Sarah’s Des is handsome. Broad shoulders, trim frame with maybe just a slight thickening round the executive middle. Smooth bastard. Hate whiplashes inside me like the sudden flick of a fish fin. I wondered how I would feel and now I know. Smooth, smooth bastard.

“Miss Connaghan,” he says. “I heard you were in town.”

As I thought, there is little that is not passed on in this town.

“What can I do for you?” he says, and I can see immediately the way he wants to play it. Conflict avoidance. Talk like he is simply a stranger, a man who knows nothing about me. Not like the man who screwed my mother while she was married to my father. Not like the prime suspect in her murder.

“You knew my mother, Kathleen.”

“A long time ago.”

“I want to know what happened to her.”

He gives a hint of a laugh as if I’ve said something ridiculously childish. He pulls his chair in closer to his desk.

“A lot of people would like to know what happened to her.”

“Including you?”

“Including me.”

He doesn’t ask me to sit down but I sit anyway, looking him in the eye across the desk.

“You were the last to see her alive.”

“I don’t think you’ll find you can prove that. Always assuming she’s dead, of course.”

“What?” I look at him incredulously.

“Always assuming she didn’t take herself off to some exotic place and build a new life for herself.”

I despise him for that.

“Twenty-three years and no postcard?”

I look at his tanned skin and wonder how many sunshine holidays he’s been on in the last twenty-three years. Skin gently warmed by shafts of sunshine, the cold trickle of guilt warmed to blood temperature. How many years did it take for the thoughts to stop, the intrusion to end, his head to come back under his own control? Mother’s bones in the stiffening earth.

A pulse beats in Cory’s neck.

“You don’t believe she’s alive. You don’t believe that.”

He shrugs. “Some people did.”

“The police treated it as a murder inquiry. It has never been closed.”

“Yes, but they never found a body, did they?”

“No, very difficult to have a prosecution if you don’t have a body.”

He tilts his head to one side, like he’s considering an object: a painting perhaps, or a vase.

“You are very like her,” he says suddenly and smiles. Cold
affability
, bleak as winter moorland.

“I know. My father told me.”

“How is Joe?” he says smoothly.

“Less well than you. Dead.”

He looks startled. “I didn’t… When?”

“Last Friday.”

“I see.” I think he knows better than to say he is sorry. He sits very, very still. It is hard to fathom what is going on inside his
head but I guess he is relieved. “You haven’t said you’re sorry yet. About my father.”

“I don’t think I can win in this conversation, do you?”

I shrug. “Seems to me you make a habit of winning in
everything
.”

He was alive wasn’t he? On that score alone he was winning. Da never even got his three score and ten. And as for Mother…

The phone on his desk rings. He glances at it with irritation before picking it up.

“No calls just now please, Shellie.” He breaks off, listens. “I see. Yes, put him through.” I lean forward to his desk, pick up a photograph. His two daughters, I assume. His eyes catch mine. A warning.

“Nice,” I say, the sarcasm a thin filling in a thick sandwich of sincerity.

“Hello, David,” he says. His eyes flick away. “Yes, I know. She’s here.”

David Carruthers? Bastard. He believed in me last night. I know he did. But some time after he left me, when I was no longer there to remind him of who I was, he stopped believing and now he’s warning Cory. Who did he
know
– Rebecca
Connaghan
or James Cory? He
knew
James Cory. The corruption of familiarity. Well, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

“Okay, I will. Thank you David. Regards to your mother. Yes. Yes. Bye.”

“Son of an old friend,” he says pointedly.

“Important to have friends you can trust, people in your life who you know are
on the level.
”

A blink, a slight hesitation, but no verbal response.

“My father was never very good at all that networking stuff.
But he was a friend of yours wasn’t he, Mr Cory?”

Cory shifts slightly in his seat.

“He was an employee of a friend of mine.”

“But you socialised sometimes.”

“The odd occasion. I didn’t know him well.”

“No, I don’t suppose you did. You were too busy getting to know his wife.”

“Look,” he says politely, without the slightest hint of anger, “is there something specific I can help you with? If not, I really do have a lot to do. I have an appointment in just a few minutes.”

“Did you kill my mother?” The question hangs unanswered in the air for a second. I hold my breath. His eyes barely flicker.

“No,” he says, “of course I didn’t.”

“Where’s she buried?”

He says nothing.

“If she was murdered, who would your money be on?”

“I’m not a betting man.”

“My father?”

He shrugs.

“Your father’s dead. It’s not for me…” He looks at me
shrewdly
. “But I’d say he had rather more motive than me, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t me your mother was leaving.”

“No, but you didn’t want her to leave him, did you? You just wanted to carry on with a bit on the side and not rock your cosy life. What did you talk about that last day?”

“It’s a long time ago.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t remember!”

“We talked about the future.”

He must have been over this territory a hundred times with the police. But not for many years. Not with the daughter of his
mistress. It doesn’t seem to matter. James Cory looks completely in control.

“So what was the future?”

“We hadn’t resolved it. We didn’t know.”

“You mean you didn’t know. She was making it difficult for you, wasn’t she?” I say, leaning across his desk. I cannot get to him, cannot get inside his head. Instead I want to physically
enter
his space now, invade his comfort zone. “Suddenly your bit on the side was getting complicated because she wanted more. Your wife didn’t know about my mother, did she? You didn’t want her to know.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” He runs a finger softly round the inside of his shirt collar. But his voice betrays nothing.

“Did you love my mother?”

He ignores the question.

“Did you love her?”

He sighs impatiently. “I cared about her. I wished things could have been different. But that was a long time ago. Now, I really am sorry to hear about your father and I know that you must be upset… But I don’t think I can be of any further help to you.”

“Do you wish it was Sarah who had come to see you?”

“Who?” he says. He looks genuinely puzzled. The bastard
really
has forgotten her name.

“My sister.”

He sits back in his chair, trying to stare me out, but I meet his gaze.

“I’m sure your sister is charming,” he says, “but I cannot see what possible interest she can be of to me. Now, as I said, I don’t think I can help you any more.” He stands up, walks to the door and opens it.

I swing round in my chair and look at him. I am in no hurry. I will not be hurried. Cory waits. I look at him and suddenly I cannot believe it. I cannot believe how easily my faith was
shaken
. How can I explain this moment to you, the significance of it, the way everything changed afterwards. It was an epiphany. It was St Paul on the road to Damascus, an upsurge of faith, of belief, in the absence of any tangible proof that I can hand to others. You will accept me or dismiss me as you will.

When I look at Cory I realise that I do not know this man, and yet in some primitive place I know every signal he sends to me. Just like I knew every signal of Da’s. I knew things about Da in my heart that I couldn’t see with my eyes. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t real things. Did I know the colour of Da’s guts when they spilled out? I think I did. It’s just that I did what David Carruthers did. I forgot that I knew.

I knew his dark and his light. His simplicity and his
complexity
. The only thing I am not sure I knew was his dreams. Perhaps a daughter can never fully know her father’s dreams. I think now that Mother took them with her when she died. I’m not
surprised
about the days he spent enveloped in that grey mist inside his own head; I’m surprised that there weren’t more of them.

I walk up to Cory slowly, and things feel clearer than they have since Da left. I put my face right next to his, the way I’d watched the neds on the bus do to Khadim.

Instinctively he moves back but I move forward again,
bringing
my face to within an inch of his. I can smell his expensive aftershave; it masks nothing for me. I know the real stench of him. I see the bead of sweat on his top lip. There is a picture in my head of the saliva trickling down Khadim’s face, and I can’t help thinking how it’s the wrong people who get spat on in life.
And then I smile at him, and I whisper so close to him that he must feel my breath on his face like the gentlest summer breeze. “I
know
,” I whisper softly.

Triumph. It does not matter that it is won and lost in a blink. The momentary flicker of fear that flits across his eyes in that fraction of a second is more satisfying than any gobful of saliva trickling down his smooth bastard face.