The Child Garden (5 page)

“Anonymously and a woman's voice,” I said. “It's best that way. They'll probably want to ask me if I heard anything or saw anything, but they'll get me at work tomorrow. They won't come round here. There's no reason for them to connect me with April.”

He nodded. I held out my hand.

“I'll put your car away while I'm out.”

He nodded again and fished his car keys out of the sweatpants pocket. I was almost out the door when he stopped me.

“Glo?” he said. “You know earlier, when you were freaking out about them closing the home? Thinking someone who works there might be mixed up in this?” I nodded. “Why would you want them looking after your boy if you reckon that's possible? Why wouldn't you want the place closed down if there's someone there who might harm him?”

I took a long time deciding what to say, but in the end I was as straight with him as he'd been with me. “What's the worst they could do?” I asked.

“I don't want to say it.”

“Say it.”

“They could kill him.”

“And his troubles would be over. Don't look at me like that.”

“Or they could hurt him.”

“No, they couldn't,” I said. “Wait here.” I walked along the corridor to the big bedroom at the other end and lifted Nicky's picture from my bedside table.

“Oh,” said Stig, when I came back and handed it to him. “What's caused that then?”

That's a fair enough question, and so I answered him. “Pantothenate Kinase-Associated Neurodegeneration,” I said, taking the picture back and polishing the frame with my cuff. “PKAN, for short.” I kissed the glass over Nicky's face “My little PKAN pie. Nothing hurts him, nothing helps him, nothing ever will. I'd best be off.”

“Of course, if you're going to tell them that Stephen Tarrant drove a woman to suicide and you've got him locked in your house without his car keys, there's nothing I could do to stop you,” Stig said. He was smiling at me.

“You could overpower me now before I start,” I said, smiling back. “If you're going to leave one woman's body behind you, why not two?”

We considered one another for a long minute. I'm not sure who broke eye contact first. Probably me since I'm not much of a hard nut.

“Drive safely,” he said.

“Sleep tight,” I said back.

Seven

I practised what to
say all the way on the back lane to the Shawhead phone box. Just as I had imagined, I didn't pass another car and I drew off the road before the start of the houses, made my way to the kiosk on foot with no torch. It was lit up, but there was no one to see me as I slipped inside and fumbled the buttons with my gloved fingers. I had never dialled 999 before and my pulse started racing as I waited for the call to go through.

“What service?” asked a bored voice.

“Police,” I said, trying to make my voice sound gruff.

“Are you in a safe place, madam?” asked the exchange. Obviously I sounded like exactly what I was: a scared woman.

“Police,” I said again. “There's been a death.”

When I got through to them, I didn't chance the gruff voice again. I whispered.

“There's a body,” I said.

Then I froze. I felt a sick swirling in my head and my vision blurred. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it until that moment, couldn't believe I had got that close to blurting out the words that would wreck everything. I crashed the receiver down, burst out of the phone box, ran to my car, and drove away.

He didn't come to meet me at the door and I wondered if he was sleeping. It was hard to imagine that sleep would have come to him, but then shock does strange things to you. When the doctors told us about Nicky—finally told us straight, laid it all out, stopped spinning fairy tales—I slept for thirty-six hours. I've never been so ashamed of anything in my life. Just when he needed his mother most of all, when he was trying to deal with such bad news, I abandoned him and slept. I even remember what I dreamt of. A childhood summer, a room with floating white curtains and a shining wooden floor and me sitting up in bed with a nightcap on, eating soup from a cup and playing with tiny little wooden soldiers that turned into chessmen and then marbles and rolled away. I've never been in a room like that in my life. More's the pity.

I turned off the kitchen lamps, rubbed Walter's head, and said a prayer to keep the Rayburn lit until morning, then slipped out into the hallway. That was when I heard him snoring. I put the light on and looked down at him, sitting at the bottom of the stairs with his head against the banisters, his mouth open and his hands hanging down between his knees. A scrap of paper had dropped from his grasp and lay on the floor.

I bent and lifted it, seeing that it was a clipping from a newspaper. A tiny thing; it hardly took a moment to read it.

McAllister, 1 May 1995
. It said
. By his own hand, Nathan McAllister. Private funeral. No flowers.

I hadn't had any dinner, beyond the bit of gingerbread and chocolate biscuit they'd brought me at the home with my cup of tea. They're good to me there since I'm in every day. So I was lightheaded by this time. Never mind the whisky that I'm not used to. And the newspaper clipping was one thing too much.
By his own hand
.

The words danced on the page and all I could see was April's hands, curled round the handle of the knife with the dark blood in the creases of her fingers. And then Nicky's hands, curled round the rolled flannels they give him to stop them spasming up so tight I can't wash them. I wash them every night. Well, boys his age get mucky. I wash them and rub lotion into them and once a week I trim his nails and take off his friendship bracelets, rub his wrists underneath in case they're itchy. April wore no jewelry. Her sleeves were pushed back up her arms as far as they would go and there was nothing.

“It was in the bottom of her bag,” said Stig. I hadn't noticed him waking. “It's Nod, from our class. If that's real, and it looks real, he's dead.”

“Since 1995.”

“First of May, 1995. The tenth anniversary of the night Moped died. Gloria, what the fuck's going on?”

I took a deep breath to answer, but I had no idea what to say.

“Let me sleep on it,” I went for in the end. “It might look different in the morning.”

Then I went to the bathroom to undress for bed. I peed, washed my face, and undid my hair to brush it, but as the cistern finished filling and quieted, I thought I heard something. Yes! There was a car bumping along the track. I switched off the bathroom light and crept through the hall in the darkness just in time to hear two car doors.

“Glo!” Stig's voice, a fierce whisper, came from upstairs.

“Ssh,” I whispered back.

“Be careful!” He probably meant
don't open up in case it's a madman
. But I had heard the radios and I knew I had to be careful in very different way. I didn't understand. Had they traced the call? Had someone seen me?

The knock, when it came, was loud enough to set my heart hammering, but they probably meant it to wake someone sleeping upstairs. I clicked on the porch light and opened the door. Policemen don't like to look surprised, but their eyes were wide and one of them moved his feet.

“I heard you coming,” I said. “Is it Nicky?”

“Mrs. Morrison?” said one of them. The rain was dripping off the peak of his hat.

“Harkness,” I said. “I went back to my maiden name. Is it Nicky? Is something wrong?”

“Can we come in, Ms. Harkness?”

My mind flashed to the kitchen. The two chairs by the stove, Stig's clothes drying on the pulley, April's bag wherever he had left it.

“Of course,” I said, “but please, I'm begging you, tell me what's wrong.” I ushered them in and steered them to the right, along the hall to the living room, cold as the grave, the fire full of ash from last weekend. They didn't sit and neither did I. We just stood there in a ring, our breath pluming.

“We've had a report of suspicious behaviour,” said the one who hadn't spoken before. My stomach dropped and then bounced back up all the way to my throat.

“Have you been out tonight?” said the other.

“I went to see my son, at the home,” I said. “Is it nothing to do with Nicky, then?” How could someone have seen my car? There wasn't a single house between me and the huttie the way we had gone. There hadn't been a single set of headlights either. And the road to the Shawhead phone box was deserted too. Who had seen me?

“A red Skoda,” said the older of the two policemen. Stig's car, in the byre now with the door padlocked. “Did you see a vehicle answering that description?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “There were cars parked at the home—the backshift staff, you know—but I don't think I saw a red Skoda. I can't be sure, I kept my head down. This weather, you know. Should I be worried?”

“The driver's not a very pleasant chap, Ms. Harkness. Given to stalking. We had a report that he was prowling these back roads tonight. Scared a young woman enough that she called us.”

“When?” I said. “Now? He's out there now? Did you tell them up at the home? There's a lot of vulnerable people there. My son, Nicky, and lots of others.”

“We've just come from the home,” said the older cop. The young one had lost interest. He was rubbing his hands together, blowing on them, ready to be away from this cold house and this hysterical old bag who kept on about her son. I could tell what he thought from the way he had stopped looking at me.

“Probably long gone,” said the other one. “The call came in at eight.”

“And yo
u waited until now?” I said, after only a second's pause. “Too bad if he
was
here. He's had three hours to chop me into pieces and drive away again.”

They didn't like that, but they were too well-trained to show it much.

“He's only accused of prowling. So far.”

“Well, I didn't see him or his car,” I told them.

“And so we'll leave you to get on with your evening,” said the copper.

The young one looked at me again now, my face shiny with cream and my feet in my yeti slippers that should be white but pick up all the dust going and Walter Scott's hair too and have always got a border of grey around the bottom.

I shut the door behind them and bolted it.

“—uck's sake,” I heard the younger one say as they splashed back to their car. “She's as bad as the freak show up at the loony bin.”

I waited for his boss to scold him, but all I heard was a snort of laughter, so I clicked off the porch light. Let them find the rest of their way in the dark.

We waited, me in the hall and Stig up on the landing, until the sound of the car had faded into the hissing rain. Then I switched the light on and went up.

“Did you hear that?” I said.

“Every word,” said Stig. He breathed in and out very fast four times and rubbed his face hard with the palms of his hands. “I didn't stalk April Cowan,” he said. “That was a pack of lies. I can show you my phone and her phone and the call history. Jesus fucking Christ.” He had started pacing up and down the hall, in and out of the bedroom. I'd never seen anyone pace before. “She really had it in for me.”

“No sugar, Sherlock,” I said.

“Jesus, Glo, if they
had
come right up here as soon as they got the call they'd have found us parked up in the lane and mucking about in the huttie.” Then he fell silent, stopped pacing, and stared.

“Yes,” I said. “Well spotted. April Cowan wasn't on the road at eight. She was bled out and stone cold by nine. Telling the cops you were chasing her was just about the last thing she did. She must have called them right before she—” I stopped, frowning.

“Yeah,” said Stig. “We've got her phone.”

But I thought of a way to explain that. “We've got
a
phone.”

“But you said there was no signal.”

“Maybe the huttie's a hotspot.” It was all I had, but it didn't seem likely.

Stig thought it over. “Do you think they'll come back when they get radioed through about the body?”

“They won't get radioed,” I said. “I didn't tell them. I hung up. Thank God, as it turned out.”

“Why not?” said Stig. “Why thank God?” He was watching me very carefully.

“Because it suddenly occurred to me that if she tried to get you to the huttie and she planted her bag at your flat, what do you think she's left behind at her place? I bet if there's a suicide note, your name'll be mentioned.”

His face, I was sure of it, turned pale. “But we've got to tell them, Glo. We can't just leave her there.”

I shook my head. “We've got to help April, that's true. But we don't need to tell
them
anything. They are not good people.”

I was rummaging in the deep bottom drawer of the dressing table in the spare room.

“What are you doing?”

I hadn't taken down the little eyes from either side of all the windows and I had kept the elastic wires coiled up in a drawer. The net curtains themselves I had dipped in Glo-white, just like my mum did, and then folded them away when they were dry.

“And how do you know they're worse people than me? Why did you cover for me when they said I stalked her?”

“I asked them five times if Nicky was all right,” I said. “Five times. You heard me.”

Eight

Tuesday

It was strange the
next morning, waking up with the windows muffled in net, like being inside a cocoon that turned the weak wintry daylight drab and grey. I missed the sight of the hill from my bedroom when I opened my eyes and the view of the garden laid out like a tapestry as I passed the landing window. Stig opened his door when I got to the top of the stairs.

“I've been awake for hours,” he said. “Nod
and
April. I can't believe it.” He shivered.

“Let's get into the warm,” I said, and together we hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The cats were out, must have disappeared off through the flap as soon as the rain stopped, but Walter Scott was there, standing with his nose practically against the back door, waiting. I opened the door and he plodded down the steps to the yard and squatted.

“Oh great, Walter,” I said. “Lovely.” When I first came he used to burst out of the back door like a whippet and race twice round before he could even stop long enough to sniff. Then he'd mark every downpipe and doorjamb all over the farmyard and bucket off across the field to do his business somewhere far off down the hill. I hadn't had to put my hand in one of those bags and scrape up his mess until just earlier this year. “What if I get germs from this and give them to Nicky?” I had asked, turning the bag inside out and tying it. “Nicky can't fight infection like you and me, you know. One morning bundle of yours could carry him off. Think I'd stick around here cleaning up after you if I didn't need to be close by?” Walter Scott had just leaned against my legs and looked up at me, sneezing and snuffling that way he does when he's trying to say I love you. “Yes, I love you too,” I'd told him. “And yes, I'd stay.”

“I'll get that,” said Stig behind me. “Where's the bags?”

“I've been thinking, Glo,” he said, when he was back inside and had scrubbed his hands and then warmed them on the Rayburn. His voice had that defeated sound again, so I cut him off.

“I've been thinking too. Tonight, after work, I'm going to go back to the huttie and check that she's got no ID on her anywhere. That'll buy time. And then tomorrow—”

“You can't be serious,” he said. “You're going to go back and rummage around in her pockets.” His face was so white that his stubble stood out like iron filings on his cheeks. Then he shook his head. “Gloria, you're doing it again,” he said. “This isn't one of your books. This is the real world. Large as life. Plain as day.”

I get sick of the way people patronise me. I don't know what it is about me, but everywhere I go people pat me on the head and chuck me under the chin. Not literally, but everyone from my mother and my sister if they're in the right mood, to Lynne at work and people in the village. They're
kind
to me, patient with me, like they've got to be kind and patient to poor Gloria. The only place it doesn't happen is the home. There I'm Nicky's mum and Miss Drumm's friend and I fit right in. Deirdre's mum and I can have a nice chat like two women at the school gate, and for once no one's pitying either of us.

Stig must have wondered why I sounded so angry when I answered him, because what he'd said was pretty mild. But it was the last move in a long game.
This isn't one of your books, Gloria. That's a lovely cardi, Gloria. How's that handsome son of yours?
I slammed the microwave door and turned to face him.

“I'm not a fool, Stig,” I said. “I'm being completely realistic, and books are nothing to do with it. Tonight I check her body and tomorrow I go to her house or flat or whatever and get rid of anything there that could harm you.”

“You can't,” he said. “I don't know where she lives. I looked through her stuff and there's no address anywhere.”

“Which is odd, right?” I said. “Where's her driving licence? Why isn't it in her purse where it should be?”

“Maybe she hasn't got one. Maybe she doesn't drive.”

“But how else would she get way out here?” I said. “The buses—” The thought hit both of us at the same time, but it was Stig who spoke.

“Where's her car? I know there's no buses, practically. A taxi?”

“Pretty memorable, once someone reports her missing,” I said. “I need to check her pockets and her flat.”

“We don't know her address, remember?” said Stig. “We're stuffed.”

“No, we're not,” I said. “Because you told me she was divorced. Married and divorced? Her address'll be in the system. On the FER. Forward Electronic Register,” I added before he asked me.

“You can just look everything up from your office?”

“Everyone can,” I said. “Birth, marriage, divorce, and death. The FER is public record. Only, the public have to log in and it leaves a trace. And anyone looking up April Cowan's address today would be really interesting to the cops, wouldn't they? But I can look things up and no one will ever know.”

“Birth, marriage … ” he said. It had dawned on him.

“Exactly. If Nathan McAllister really committed suicide in 1995, I'll find the record. Meanwhile,” I said, popping open the microwave door, “I want you to write down everything you can remember about that night and everything before it and after it. Anything at all. Just like remembering April had crimped hair and bad acne. Anything you can get out of your brain. Write it down. Okay? Any questions?”

“Just one. Are you going near any shops today?”

“I could do,” I said. “But only in the village, so don't ask me for men's things.”

“Pinhead oatmeal and full-fat milk,” said Stig. “And real salt instead of this crap. Why do you make quick oats in a nuker when you've got a Rayburn stove?”

I poured the porridge into two bowls and banged them down on the table beside the semi-skimmed milk and Lo-Salt.

“Sorry,” he said. “Ungrateful.”

“I'll be back at about ten past five,” I told him, “and then out again to the home and when I'm back for keeps, we can discuss everything.”

“Sorry,” he said again. “Do you usually stop in here first? Because if not, then don't. You should stick to your usual routine.”

“I don't want to leave you that long,” I said. “I'll blame Walter. Say he needs checking in on. He nearly does anyway.”

Stig stirred his spoon round staring into his bowl. “It doesn't feel real,” he said. “It's like we're at one of those parties where you get a card: murderer, victim, detective.”

“Detective,” I said. “And listen, speaking of routines, what's going to happen when you don't show up for your work?”

“Nothing,” he said. “They'll change the combination on my locker and have someone else in by next week. Won't be the first time.”

I wondered then. That didn't sound like the sort of job BJ Tarrant's son would have. They were business people, the Tarrants. Bought adverts in gala programmes and donated prizes to raffles.
Flash Harry
, my mum said,
and that leg of mutton he's married to.
I thought Stig would be the boss, unsackable.

“You've not had it easy, have you?”

He said nothing, just turned away from me and went to stand at the front kitchen window now, resting his head against the net curtain, staring out. “There's plenty had it worse,” he said. “But honestly, I don't think I'm up to this. April dead and trying to take me down as she goes? Why? Why did Nod kill himself ? Why did she have his obituary with her? There's too much and it's too complicated.” His breathing was starting to sound panicky again, like the night before when he was pacing.

I didn't tell him to slow it down, but I breathed slowly myself, hoping he would follow. Modelling. I learned it in the conflict resolution bit of my induction training. All registrars get it, I think, but you only need it in big cities where weddings can get raucous and when there's two lads wanting on the birth certificate and a girl that won't give a glance to either. That doesn't happen very much in a place like Dalry.

“What's that thing?” said Stig, still with his head against the window.

I knew what he was talking about, of course. It's hidden from the lane and the gate and the path. The only view of it is from the kitchen.

“That's the only possible problem with you lying low,” I said. I joined him and looked out at it. Six feet tall, six feet round, mossy and lichened on its shady side and bleached pale grey where the sun hit it, it sat basking in the dawn, enjoying the dew rising from it for the day. “That's the Stone of Milharay. It's the reason I'm here. Well, that and Walter.”

“But what is it?” said Stig.

“Come and see,” I said. “What size are your feet? You can jam on my crocs and shuffle out there.”

It was cold, of course, but with that fresh, keen wind that makes me think of hares streaking across the fields, so different from the bellowing storm last night. Over by the stone we could hear the wind whistling.

“It's a rocking stone,” I said. “Push it. Gently!”

He set one hand against its shady side and pressed. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa!” he said, jumping back. “That felt really weird.”

“I'm pretty sure it wouldn't pass health and safety.”

“It felt like it was going to roll on top of me,” he said, putting his fingertips against it again.

“It doesn't matter where you push, it always does that.”

“Why would you ever push it?”

“Old wives' tales,” I said. “Twelve pushes for luck.”

Even more gently, he rocked it again, not even hard enough to whiten the skin around his fingernails. He was so restrained—not like my brother-in-law shoving it with the side of his arm as if he was trying to break down a door and then just laughing when it threatened to topple.

“I'd have been homeless,” I'd screamed at him. “And thousands of years of history gone because you're such a He-Man.”

“Who says He-Man?” Scott sneered. “You're a throwback, Gloria.”

“Fishwife, more like,” said my sister. “Don't screech like that. You'll upset the baby.” She rubbed her stomach that way she was always doing.

“What about
my
baby?” I'd roared at her. I knew I shouldn't be raising my voice, but their visit had made me scared of what they were up to, why all of a sudden they wanted to be coming to see me. “Eh?” I demanded. “What about how upset Nicky would be if I didn't live here any more and couldn't get to see him every day?”

“Nicky,” Scott had said, “would be as upset as this bloody rock.” And my sister, Marilyn, actually smirked. She had the decency to turn away, but she was smiling. So I never met my niece, or the nephew that followed, and Nicky hadn't seen his auntie and uncle since he was six.

“Hardly any of them still move,” I told Stig. “They get choked up with leaf litter or tufts of grass or people try to clear them and go too far and they roll off. Miss Drumm's been looking after this one since she was twelve and her dad trained her. Then when she got too frail, she trained me.”

“And how exactly could this thing scupper me hiding?”

“Because the only time in ten years anyone has ever turned up here unannounced is once when some archeology or history buffs—not sure who they were—came to ask about a stone. But you can't see it over the wall and they came to the back door, so I said I didn't know what they were talking about.”

I hadn't told Miss Drumm in case she burst a blood vessel. The Stone of Milharay wasn't on Wikipedia and it wasn't on Historic Scotland and that was purely because—as she explained to me, gripping my arm hard with her callused old hand until her yellow nails nearly dug into my flesh—that was purely because the estate had been in her family for four hundred years and even though they lost more and more of it until she, the last of the Drumms, was forced to live in a shepherd's hovel, the fact that Rough House and its grounds had never passed through the office of an estate agent kept the secret safe.

“Why does she care so much?” said Stig, when I'd explained to him.

“Well, standing stones and circles and menhirs, you know,” I said. I didn't want to tell him, because Miss Drumm is my friend and there's no way to say it without making her sound like a lunatic.

“I really don't, Glo.”

“Druids, Wiccans, Pagans, all that lot. A standing stone—I'm quoting Miss Drumm now—‘is like catnip, and a rocking stone that still rocks would be like catnip rolled in cocaine.' The place would be overrun with them, she reckons.”

“And she likes her peace and quiet, eh?” said Stig.

“That's it,” I lied. And changed the subject. “So I'm here guarding the stone and feeding Walter Scott. Miss Drumm would shut the place up if it weren't for Walter, but as long as he's here, I'm here, and as long as someone's here they can … guard the stone.”
Rock
the stone, I had almost said, but I stopped myself before he got the chance to laugh at me. “And because I don't pay any rent I can afford to keep Nicky in the home, which I couldn't otherwise, because being a registrar doesn't pull in much of a wage really. But as long as Miss Drumm lasts long enough, everything will be okay. So I spend just about as much time making sure they take good care of her as I do making sure they take good care of Nicky, and that does her no harm either.”

“Lasts long enough for what?” said Stig. I tried to answer him. I opened my mouth and closed it enough times to feel like a fish, and God knows what I looked like, but I've never said the worst even to myself and certainly not out loud. I wouldn't know where to begin.

“Poor wee guy,” said Stig, showing that I didn't need to.

“And speaking of my job, I need to go and do it,” I said. I only cried a little bit while the bath taps were going and, anyway, even if you're doing a wedding, I always think people will just assume that a registrar with red eyes has just recorded a death.