Does Your Mother Know? (33 page)

“How much further is it?”

“About ten minutes. Can you drive faster?”

It had begun to rain again and the road was slick.

“No. We can see her. Go on with what you were saying.”

“Lynnie was afraid our negotiations might be in jeopardy because the final papers weren’t yet signed and you have to watch out in Scotland.”

The infamous
gazump.

“It was quite soon after I’d telephoned when Mrs. MacDonald came dashing out of the house. The other lady was right behind her. Mrs. MacDonald tried to get into the car and the other lady tried to stop her. The next thing I saw was Mrs. MacDonald had shoved her away and got into the car. The lady ran around to the
passenger side and just managed to get in as Mrs. MacDonald drove off.”

I couldn’t help but let out a sigh myself. Vindication for Joan.

Andy rubbed at his shin. He was looking white around the gills, and I knew his ankle must be getting very painful.

“Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. I stayed in the shed until Lynnie arrived shortly after. I told her what had happened, and we went in to see what was going on. Grandda was beside himself, and he looked dreadfully ill. He just burst out at us, ‘I’m not selling the house any more. All plans are cancelled.’ Lynnie asked him why, and he said, ‘I’ve got to put things right.’ If he said that once, he said it ten times. ‘What things?’ Lynnie asked. He just wouldn’t say. Then he insisted we leave. There wasn’t anything we could do.” Andy’s thoughts turned inward and I knew he was coming to the meat of the story. I concentrated on driving. One of the windshield wipers wasn’t working properly and the wind-shield was smeared.

“We left. We had no choice. We were heading for Shawbost, where Lynnie is staying, but we hadn’t gone too far when we saw the accident site. You know where it was... just before you get to the Dail Beag sign. I mightn’t have noticed, because the car had rolled down the hill, but Lynnie saw it. So we stopped, of course. Mrs. MacDonald was lying across one of the rocks and it was obvious to anyone that she had broken her neck and she was dead. The other blonde lady was still in the car, pinned by her seatbelt. Lynnie went to see to her. She made me stay where I was.”

His voice lowered as he bent his head, full of shame at the memory of his own cowardice. “I faint at the sight of blood, you see. She came back and said that both of the women were dead. She was sort of odd... almost exhilarated, actually. She had a briefcase in her hand, and she said we’d soon know what Grandda was up to.” His face had turned even more red and his voice was strangled. “I wanted to ring the police right away, I really did, but Lynnie said, ‘No. We can’t help the women now.’ She looked in the case and found papers that said that Grandda had... changed his mind, and was planning to sell the house to some Norwegians at
a much better price.” He glanced over at me. “You can do that here. Change your mind that is. We call it gazumping.”

I nodded. “It’s okay, you don’t need to explain. I know what it means.”

“I’ve never seen Lynnie so angry. She said she’d sue him, but that would be awful. Technically, Grandda hadn’t done anything illegal, but Lynnie was so concerned about disappointing her father... ”

He shuddered. I imagined her wrath had been fierce indeed. “She was angry with me too, because she said I was... I was being weak.”

I thought she had probably used a less polite word, but I didn’t press him. I got the picture.

“What could I have done though? It was up to Grandda.”

I shrugged. Andy was the kind of guy who always hooked up with a domineering woman, then drove her crazy with his lack of spine. I was amazed he’d got up the nerve to break off with Coral-Lyn.

He rubbed at his neck. “I think she was a little hysterical. But she said it was obviously God’s will that the religious centre be built. He’d led us to the papers and He would not tolerate any interference.”

“Hey, that’s a pretty high authority you’ve got there.”

I won’t go into how many people I’ve heard spout that sort of line. Including people on opposite sides of a war. Name any war.

We had a straight stretch of road ahead of us now, so I stepped on the gas. The Nissan had vanished from sight. Andy kept talking, fast and agitated.

“You can imagine how shocked I was when I heard that the other lady in the accident wasn’t dead and that she had disappeared. What if she had been lying there injured and we could have saved her?”

“What indeed.”

“But you said she’s all right?”

“Yes. You must have felt awful when I told you Coral-Lyn probably caused the accident in the first place on her way to pick you up?”

“Oh, I did.”

And from his expression, I gathered he’d probably wondered exactly what he’d got himself hooked up with. I was starting to suspect there was worse to come.

“So, after you checked out the accident, what did you do?”

“We turned around and drove back to my house.”

“Did you stay together for the weekend?”

“No. She was too disappointed, in me... and Grandda. She left me at my lodgings, and I didn’t see her until Saturday. But by then she was as nice as could be. She came and got me and we went to her house until Sunday.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I did try to talk her into going to the police, but she said we were in God’s hands and what would be, would be. She was very different, very sweet... ”

Never mind God’s hands, I’m sure Coral-Lyn had used something else to keep him in line.

“Did you talk to Tormod? Or go back there?”

“No, we tried his phone but nobody answered.”

“Didn’t you worry that he might have got ill?”

“Not really. I never spoke to him on weekends, and we thought that Lisa MacKenzie was with him. We decided to wait until Monday and then see what we could do. But then we got the call while we were demonstrating at the airport that Grandda had died. Lynnie insisted this was another message from God. She said nobody need ever know that he’d changed his mind about selling the house. I would inherit it and we could have the centre as we’d planned. She burned the papers that she found in Mrs. MacDonald’s briefcase. She said it was better if we didn’t say anything at all about being there on Friday. It would only complicate matters. I was so upset I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I just went along with everything she said.”

I’d gained on the Nissan and could see it now. It turned off the main road onto a side road.

“Is that the way?”

“Yes, please hurry.”

I roared around the turn and up a bumpy gravel road. A sign said TO THE BUTT and, hardly more than two minutes later, I
saw the lighthouse and a small parking lot to the right of it. Coral-Lyn had her head down on the dashboard in prayer position but as soon as she saw us pulling in, she jumped out of her car, made some frantic “leave me alone” gestures, and set off at the run up the slope towards the cliffs. Andy scrambled out of my car but despite all the best will in the world, he couldn’t walk, and he yelped with pain. He literally dropped to his hands and knees and tried to crawl after her.

There wasn’t another soul in the parking lot. “Try to get to the lighthouse and get help,” I ordered him.

I sprinted after Coral-Lyn. There was a flat grassy shelf at the top of the cliffs and she was heading straight for the edge. I knew that I didn’t stand a chance of grabbing her, so I tacked off to the left, running hard but trying to approach her obliquely.

At the edge of the cliff, she dropped into a half-crouch and scuttled out onto a narrow projection. There were sheer drops all around her. At the tip, she turned around to face me and sat down, hugging her knees. I immediately slowed to a walk. I was struggling for breath and I tried to suck in air as deeply as I could. I too, went into a crouch, and still approaching from the side, I stopped at the end of the projectory. I squatted. I’d be able to move quickly if necessary, although she was tantalizingly out of reach. In spite of the wind, which was blowing fiercely, we could just about hear each other.

“You’ve come for me, haven’t you?”

I didn’t answer that. “Why don’t you come back to the car and we can talk properly.”

She actually giggled. “What you mean is you’re going to arrest me.”

“Why would I do that?’ “Because I killed Grandda, of course.”

“Did you, Coral-Lyn? How did you do that?”

“He was a wicked man, you know, even if he was Andy’s grandda. We had made an arrangement, and he wasn’t going to go through with it.”

“I heard about the centre for religious studies you are planning. It sounds like a very worthwhile project.”

Yes, I was trying to keep her talking.

“It would have changed the life of the entire island. But he wouldn’t listen to me.”

She leaned her chin on her knees, and she looked about five years old. I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off her, but I didn’t get the sense anybody else was in the vicinity, which in this case was probably a good thing. Unless they had a lasso, she was unassailable.

“You went over to Tormod’s house on Friday, did you, after you left Andy?”

My voice was as conversational as you can get when you’re sitting on the edge of a high cliff being buffeted by wind.

“Yes, and it was a good thing I did. All of his wickedness was pouring out of his mouth. I could have left him, but I prayed for guidance and God said to help him.” Like her posture, her voice, high and thin, was that of a child. “I felt so sorry for him, even though he’d been so very wicked. God said it was only kind to put him out of his misery. So I did. It didn’t hurt him. He actually thanked me afterward when he was lying there. He looked so peaceful at last, and I knew he was grateful.”

She smiled at me in an “aren’t I a good girl” way that made my blood run cold.

“Did you use the pillow?”

“That’s right.”

Even trying to suffocate somebody as weak as Tormod probably was a needed determination and strength of conviction that no soft words of
it didn’t hurt
could justify. She was a frightening woman.

She brushed at her coat in a matter-of-fact manner, then suddenly stood up and raised her arms sideward. “If God wants me, He will take me.”

A fierce gust of wind caught her. She staggered, lost her balance, and with a shriek, she fell over backwards. There was nothing I could do. I dropped on my belly and scrabbled to the edge of the cliff, holding onto the sides as best I could. I was in time to see her hit the sea. Her coat billowed around her but, after a momentary thrashing with her arms, she didn’t struggle. Either
she was stunned by the impact or she was intent on death. A wave came and slammed her into the rocks, then pulled her out on the ebb, and then slammed her again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It was more than four hours later before I could leave the scene. The cliff was too steep for the lighthouse attendants to climb down safely, and they had to send for a boat to come around the headland and collect the body, which was drifting out to sea. There was nothing we could do. Andy was distraught, and I sat with him while he sobbed and went over and over what had happened between them. He was consumed with guilt for going along with the deceptions of Friday night. I didn’t tell him about Coral-Lyn confessing to the murder of his grandfather. That would have to come from the officer who would be in charge of the case. The local constable arrived, then reinforcements from Stornoway, because there started to be a buildup of onlookers. Gillies came with them and good old Dr. MacBeth, who immediately shot Andy full of tranquillizers and took him off somewhere. I was very glad to see Gill. The local constable was tense and inexperienced, and he seemed to be blaming me for precipitating the suicide.

“You chased her?” he’d asked in an incredulous tone of voice. I didn’t need that. Would it have made a difference if I hadn’t run after her? Rationally, I knew it wouldn’t, but in the same way as Andy, I kept playing the last scene over and over again in my mind. What if I’d said something else? If I’d steered her away from talking about the murder? I poured all this out to Gill, who just let
me talk it through, including my feeling that Coral-Lyn had created her own primitive justice and, in a weird way, I admired her for it. Together we checked the trunk of the Nissan and found, unwrapped, a green tweed cushion, heavily stained. There was a small possibility that Coral-Lyn was delusional and that Tormod had coughed blood into the pillow, but from what I’d seen in the bedroom, I accepted her version. She must have cleaned everything up in an attempt to erase all traces of her presence. An interesting mix of sanity and insanity. Gill impounded the car and said he’d have Tormod’s body exhumed immediately. The forensic evidence would show conclusively what had happened.

Finally, it was all over. Coral-Lyn’s body was recovered and the boat disappeared. The sea was rough, and they had a hard time getting out of the cove. The lighthouse attendants and the few tourists who had come to see the scenery started to move away, all of them subdued by the tragedy.

“What are you going to do now?” Gill asked me.

“I’m going to Duncan MacKenzie’s.” I thought I owed it to Joan to tell her what had transpired. She didn’t know that a whisper of suspicion about her had fluttered across my mind, but I knew. And to tell the truth, I wanted to be with her.

The wind was pulling at my face. I was cold and dead tired — an aftermath of adrenaline outpouring. Gill pulled me close to him, and for a moment I was warm in his arms.

“I already know better than to tell you not to drive by yourself, but you’ve got my mobile number. Ring me later, will you?”

“Of course.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“
Tapadh leat
,
”
I answered in my best Gaelic.

He let go.

The drive back to Carloway was at a much saner speed. I had the windows wide open for a long time. I tuned the radio to a Gaelic station and distracted myself by trying to see if I understood what the announcer was saying. I didn’t.

Finally, I turned into Duncan’s farm and the dogs came racing over, barking. As soon as they recognized me, they each gave me
a perfunctory tail wag, then ran off again to take care of business, which seemed to be hanging out in front of the barn. I pulled over into a parking space just as Duncan came out of the shop.