The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8) (4 page)

Chapter 5 Field trip

Jason Penrose was preparing to lead a field trip to Pitkirtly Island.

‘You’d think he was going up the Amazon or something,’ muttered Zak, watching him with a jaundiced eye.

What was the matter with the boy? Zak was usually a calm presence in the midst of chaos. Christopher couldn’t think what had happened to make him so surly. Then he noticed Jason had co-opted Harriet, a library assistant, to go along with the group. Christopher deliberately didn’t take much notice of the private lives of the Cultural Centre staff, but he had managed to absorb the fact that Zak and Harriet had been seeing something of each other, though he hadn’t been tempted to try and find out more.

‘Harriet!’ he called over to her. ‘Did Mollie say it was all right for you to go on the field trip?’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Wilson,’ said Harriet earnestly. ‘She wants me to take some pictures we can put up as a display later on.’

‘Good, good,’ said Christopher, trying not to sound like the girl’s uncle listening to a list of her favourite Christmas presents.

‘It’s a waste of time,’ mumbled Zak, at his left elbow.

‘I know,’ said Christopher in a low voice, ‘but we’re meant to be giving Jason Penrose every possible assistance.’

‘That doesn’t have to include making Harriet wait on him hand and foot,’ said Zak, glaring at the little group.

Christopher saw that Harriet had taken charge of the huge satchel Jason Penrose had just filled with books and maps abstracted, no doubt, from the local history section of the library. Couldn’t he even bring his own books with him? What if they got lost out there? The librarian wouldn’t be so keen to let the staff go out on trips if she found her stocks depleted afterwards.

‘You’re in charge,’ Zak reminded him. ‘Why don’t you do something?’

This was ridiculous. What on earth did the boy expect him to do?

‘Would you like to go with them?’

Christopher himself was surprised by his question, and Zak’s expression must have mirrored his own.

‘What?’

‘Do you want to go on the field trip too? You can if you like. It’s only fair.’

‘Only fair,’ repeated Zak, still looking blank.

‘At least you’d be out from under my feet for a few hours,’ said Christopher, trying to turn the situation into a joke despite not finding it at all amusing.

‘But what do you want me to do when we get there?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll think of something. Keep a record of what’s going on. Report back.’

‘You mean you want me to spy for you?’ said Zak.

‘I’m not Amaryllis!’ snapped Christopher. ‘Of course it’s not spying – there won’t be anything underhand about it. I’ll tell Jason you’re going along too.’

Jason was annoyingly positive about the idea. ‘Excellent!’ he told Zak. ‘You can keep track of Harriet’s pictures too. Make sure we know what’s what. I think you’ll enjoy the outing. Bit of fresh air – some history – couldn’t be better.’

‘Have you got a warm jacket with you?’ said Christopher to Zak.

‘You’re not my mother!’ snapped Zak. ‘Sorry, Mr Wilson. It’s just that she always makes such a fuss about everything. I come to work to get away from all that.’

Knowing Penelope Johnstone, Christopher could well believe this.

‘Perhaps you should come along too, Mr Wilson,’ said Jason. His eyes actually twinkled. Christopher hadn’t believed people’s eyes could do this, despite having seen the phenomenon described in numerous stories. ‘The fresh air would do you good.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Christopher. ‘Lots of paperwork to get on with. But – have a good time.’

He hoped the last few words didn’t sound too grudging.

The people from FOOP had a selection of satchels and rucksacks with them, ranging from the patchwork effect bag wielded by Tamara, which clashed horribly with the ethnic print on her long skirt, to Bruce’s khaki knapsack that looked as if its original purpose might have been to carry a gas-mask around. The man had put his anorak back on. It looked ridiculous with the formal shirt and tie he always wore. Between them they almost made Jason Penrose appear sensibly dressed. There were two others with them this time: Karen, the mature student, and a young man whose name Christopher hadn’t yet memorised, mainly because he hadn’t been nearly as irritating as Bruce and Tamara.

‘Can I take a computer?’ said Zak.

‘How on earth are you going to lug a computer out to Pitkirtly Island?’ said Christopher.

Jason Penrose took a slim thing that looked like a large mobile phone out of his pocket and waved it at them. ‘You can use my tablet, Zak. There’s a little app on there you might find useful.’

Christopher hadn’t yet caught up with tablets and apps. He knew he would probably end up asking Jemima for a lesson at some point, but he had been putting off the evil moment for as long as possible. It was of course ludicrous that Jason Penrose should make him feel like some sort of prehistoric technophobe, not to mention casting doubt on his ideas on appropriate outfits to wear to work, a topic he had previously had no opinions on whatsoever.

They left at last, after carrying out further equipment checks, borrowing a couple of woolly hats from the ‘lost and found’ box and humorously telling Christopher to send out a search party if they didn’t come back. He slumped into the chair behind his desk and put his head in his hands.

Fortunately he hadn’t got as far as moaning out loud by the time Mollie, currently overseeing the Folk Museum as well as the library, came to find him. Apparently Maisie Sue had flown into a rage because Tamara, whiling away the time before going out, had criticised her latest creation and it was up to Christopher to adjudicate on whether it was genuinely Celtic or not.

After that, but before he had time to settle down to some quiet cataloguing of the letters of a long-dead owner of Old Pitkirtlyhill House, somebody telephoned from West Fife Council to apologise for the delay in the annual inspection of the guttering, and after he had dealt with that Jemima and Dave arrived to ask about another family history event Jemima wanted to organise.

‘Not for my own family this time,’ she hastened to add, in case he thought the same sort of mayhem might ensue as had happened the last time. ‘It’s to do with the old mining families. I want to find out how many of their descendants still live around here.’

‘None, if they have any sense,’ guffawed Dave.

‘Now, now, David,’ she said primly. ‘Some people like to stay on in the places where their ancestors lived and died.’

‘What gave you the idea, Jemima?’ enquired Christopher. ‘It sounds very interesting,’ he added tactfully.

‘I was talking to Tricia Laidlaw about family history and she said she thought her great-granddad was a coal miner, and I knew David’s family had been in that line too. It made me wonder how many more there were.’

‘How did you know that? About my family?’ said Dave suspiciously.

‘Oh, I looked them up online while I was doing some other research. I could only get back a few generations, though. There was illegitimacy and I couldn’t trace the father’s line....’

‘I don’t think I want to know any more,’ said Dave, going red in the face.

‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,’ Jemima assured him. ‘There are bastards everywhere.’

‘You can say that again,’ said Dave. ‘I nearly knocked another one off his bike this morning.’

Jemima tutted. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I wondered if that nice Mr Penrose would be interested in doing a piece on miners and their families. For his blog.’

‘His blog?’ said Dave. ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Oh, you know, David,’ said Jemima sounding as close to being cross as she ever sounded when speaking to her husband. ‘I’ve got one too. You just write things about what you’re doing and so on, and lots of people follow you. I’ve got over ten thousand followers now.’

‘Here,’ said Dave. ‘You haven’t been writing about me on this blog, have you?’

Jemima laughed. ‘Of course I have.’

Christopher intervened at this point to pre-empt a family argument. ‘I can’t speak for Jason, of course, but he might well be interested in your idea. Coal mining was an important part of our heritage. I don’t think that’s received enough recognition.’ For heaven’s sake, he was starting to talk like someone from the Council. Was it time to retire again? Some days that seemed like a really good idea. ‘I could speak to him about it, if you like. He’s gone out just now on a field trip with the FOOP people, but I expect I’ll see him later... Or you could come back in the afternoon or tomorrow and see if you can catch him.’

‘Maybe you could just let him know we’re looking for him,’ said Jemima. ‘We’ve got to go down to the Queen of Scots this afternoon, for the launch.’

‘The launch?’ said Christopher.

‘The launch of this Christmas extravaganza,’ said Dave. ‘I fancy having a go on the ice myself.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ said Jemima. ‘I don’t want to have to pick up the pieces.’

They departed again, Dave still teasing, Jemima still pretending to disapprove. Sometimes their mutual devotion was so obvious that it made Christopher feel nauseous. At other times he envied them tremendously. What would happen to him when he got older and really did retire from work? Would he adopt a dog and take it for long walks along the path by the railway line? Would he eventually just collapse where he stood and be taken away, alone and unloved, by the ambulance that he had often thought should be on permanent stand-by to deal with all Pitkirtly’s fatalities?

Fortunately Amaryllis burst in on him before he was reduced to tears by these morbid imaginings. She was no longer dressed as an elf, but in her habitual skin-tight black leather, with a black balaclava to tame the red spikes of her hair.

‘Have they gone yet?’ she asked.

‘Who? Jemima and Dave? Just this minute. You might catch them up if you’re lucky. They usually pop into the fish shop around this time to see if there’s any lemon sole.’

‘No, the FOOPs. And Jason Penrose. I heard they were off to Pitkirtly Island on a field trip.’

‘How on earth did you find that out?’

‘Mollie texted me. She knows everything.’

Christopher didn’t even bother to ask how a Cultural Centre employee had become one of Amaryllis’s informers. For all he knew, there was a whole network of them stretching from Pitkirtly to West Fife Council headquarters, to London and beyond. He couldn’t fathom Amaryllis’s interest in FOOP, or was it in Jason Penrose? He sighed heavily.

‘I just want to keep tabs on them,’ said Amaryllis, seeing his expression and possibly even reading thoughts into it that he hadn’t even realised were in his head in the first place. ‘I need to find out more about this FOOP thing before it destroys us all… And anyway, I need to make a start on searching for Jackie Whitmore, and if she’s wandered off she could be there.’

‘I don’t know why anybody would wander off to Pitkirtly Island if they had the choice,’ said Christopher, shuddering slightly. ‘Especially at this time of year. She could just as well have got the bus to Dunfermline and gone on from there.’

‘But perhaps she didn’t have the choice,’ said Amaryllis darkly. ‘See you when I see you.’

She left again, only a bit less abruptly than she had arrived.

Chapter 6 The island that wasn’t an island

Amaryllis had only been to Pitkirtly Island on a few occasions before. She still didn’t entirely understand the geography of the place. She knew it wasn’t an island, of course. When she had first arrived in Pitkirtly it was one of the first things people mentioned to her, usually in a sort of mock-apologetic tone which didn’t entirely disguise their pride in the silliness of it.

She also knew, from having once looked at a detailed map of coal mines in the area, that a coal seam ran right out under it and into the Forth. There was no sign now of a mine shaft, but there were some corrugated iron huts at one side of the island that seemed to have been air-raid shelters. There was no knowing whether Pitkirtly had ever been in real danger of attack from the air, but she supposed that at some point the authorities must have thought it might be. She wondered why the FOOP people were interested. With their varying areas of expertise, there could be several reasons. And what was Jason Penrose’s role going to be? Would he find anything blog-worthy on the island, or indeed anywhere else in the town?

Strolling along the river front towards the place where you could cross the railway line and set foot on what had arbitrarily been decided was an island, not just a bit of the mainland that stuck out into the Forth, she contemplated the view without much enthusiasm. There was a lot of scrubland, desolate and bleak at this time of year. The few stunted trees were bare of leaves and reached out with their gnarled, wind-swept branches like groups of ancient people begging for alms. The tide was out and the mud flats looked even less enticing than usual. As had often been the case in her previous line of work, she was glad to be clothed mostly in leather. It certainly kept the draughts out.

She didn’t see any of the FOOP people at first. Perhaps they had gone round the corner behind the slight bump in the ground that was sometimes known as Hermit Hill. Amaryllis vaguely remembered reading somewhere – or had Christopher explained it, in one of his attempts to educate her in local history and myth? – that the name probably referred to the hollow at the far side of the mound, where a hermit might once have lived if he didn’t mind the biting winter gales and the ever-present danger that the tide would come that little bit too close. Apparently there was no evidence that a hermit ever had actually lived there, and Amaryllis wasn’t surprised by that. Even walking towards Hermit Hill she imagined there was damp rising from the river and chilling her to the bone.

She was passing the cluster of huts, now rusting quietly away, when a dog barked somewhere close by.

‘Come away, Hamish,’ said a man’s voice.

It wasn’t Charlie Smith, then. Amaryllis had so far avoided getting to know any other dog owners in the town, although she knew there were dogs of all shapes and sizes about, having fallen over plenty of the smaller variety and having been chased by the larger ones as she ran along the river front late at night or early in the morning.

She ducked round the side of one of the huts and then came to a sudden halt. She had almost fallen over a man who was crouched on the ground contemplating a large hole, about two metres deep and a metre across.

‘Morning,’ said Jason Penrose, twisting his head and shoulders to look up at her. ‘Mind your step. We don’t want to lose anyone else in there.’

‘Anyone else?’ Amaryllis stepped round him and stared at the hole. ‘Oh. I see.’

Someone lay at the bottom of the hole. It was clear from the unnatural position and lack of movement that he or she wasn’t going to be going anywhere without assistance.

He or she? For some reason Amaryllis at once formed the opinion that the body in the hole was that of a woman. Her mind jumped to Jackie Whitmore.

‘Has anyone gone down there to have a closer look?’ she enquired.

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea, do you?’ said Jason Penrose, heaving himself up and looming over her.

‘We should find out if there’s anything we can do,’ said Amaryllis firmly.

‘That’s not very likely, is it?’

‘Possible, though... I’ll go first.’

‘You won’t be able to get down safely and get back out again,’ he warned her.

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ said another voice. She glanced round. The man with the dog had appeared, and the rest of the FOOPs lurked in the doorway of one of the huts, all wearing similar expressions of anxiety and trepidation. Zak was at the back of the group, holding some sort of electronic device in one hand and being clutched on his other side by a girl Amaryllis vaguely recognised as having seen around the Cultural Centre. Hilda? Hermione? Harriet! That was it. Zak frowned at Amaryllis, but didn’t say anything. She noticed Harriet was holding a camera.

‘Have you taken any pictures?’ enquired Amaryllis.

Harriet shook her head nervously. ‘I didn’t like to look...’

‘It’d be good to record the scene as it is at the moment,’ said Amaryllis as patiently as she could manage.

‘Harriet doesn’t want to look,’ said Zak.

‘Give me the camera, then, and I’ll take some.’

Harriet glanced at Zak for his approval but handed over the camera. Amaryllis tutted to herself. She didn’t have time for a feminist rant, but she would have to remember to corner Harriet on some other occasion and have a word with her about the proper place of women in the 21
st
century. She advanced towards the hole and began taking pictures from all possible angles. It would be better to get right down into it, though.

The dog, which was of the small white hairy kind sometimes featured on old postcards of Scotland, yapped again and made a dive for her ankles.

‘Now, now, Hamish,’ said the man soothingly.

‘Have you called the police yet?’ said Amaryllis to Jason, who appeared to be in charge of things, or at least not as freaked out as the others were by the discovery. You would almost think he stumbled across death every day. Perhaps, living in the past as he did for some of the time, that was true enough.

‘Just about to do that very thing,’ he murmured, reaching into his jacket pocket and bringing out a phone.

‘I still think someone should go down,’ said Amaryllis. She glanced around and saw blank faces, and Zak’s disapproving scowl. The boy had been spending too much time with Christopher. She made a mental note to force him to do something unpredictable and slightly dangerous before too long. He needed to make the most of his youth before he sunk into respectable smugness.

‘The dog won’t like it,’ said the dog’s owner. ‘He’s been trying to get into that hole himself. If he sees you doing it, he’ll go mad.’

‘I can’t help that,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to keep him under control. Isn’t that what dog owners do?’

The man made a huffy noise and withdrew into the comparative shelter of the hut overhang, dragging the dog with him.

Amaryllis tried to work out the best way of getting down to the victim – if it was indeed a victim and not some sort of a dummy – and back up again. Ideally she would have a rope or, failing that, a couple of willing helpers strong enough to lift her up and then heave themselves up.

‘There isn’t any rope lying about in those huts, is there?’ she said.

‘I’ll have a look,’ announced one of the FOOP hangers-on, as she thought of them. It was a middle-aged woman with a permanently sweet expression. They were the worst, in Amaryllis’s opinion.  It took ages to work out when they were insulting you because of the disconnect between words and appearances. However, the woman deserved the benefit of the doubt. At least she was willing to do something and not just stand there, staring blankly. Were the rest of them brainwashed or something? She noticed Bruce and Tamara in a huddle, whispering. The last of the four was a youngish man who was shuffling his feet awkwardly.

‘I can’t go into that hole,’ he whimpered. ‘I get terrible claustrophobia. Somebody would have to rescue me.’

The FOOP woman came back in triumph with a frayed remnant of rope. This hardly deserved a ‘Well done, Karen!’ from Jason Penrose, but it made her glow with evident pride.

Amaryllis knew the bit of rope would be about as much use as a liquorice shoelace, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t at least establish that the person in the hole was definitely dead. She sighed, and said to Karen wearily, ‘I’ll put it round my waist. When I’m ready to come up, I’ll throw it up to you, and Jason can help you pull me out.’

It sounded like a plan, but Amaryllis fully expected to end up stuck in the hole for hours with only a dead body for company. She must surely have been in worse situations in her professional career, she told herself as she started the descent, grabbing at the only visible tree root to make things just fractionally easier.

Ignoring the shouts of ‘What do you think you’re doing?’, ‘Stop that!’, ‘The police are on their way!’ and ‘Be careful!’ from various people above her, she jumped the last few feet and slithered to a halt. The person in the hole was definitely not breathing. She didn’t need a mirror or any medical equipment to tell her that. The head was face down in mud. She took a quick picture and then, on the off-chance that breathing had stopped not very long ago and could be restarted, she turned it gently to one side so that the body lay in an approximation of the recovery position. The mouth and nose were blocked up with mud and there was no sign of life whatsoever. In spite of all that, she felt for a pulse. Of course there was none. The skin was cold and greyish. Although it went against the grain to do it, she took another couple of pictures.

It was not unknown for Amaryllis to be first on the scene at a death, but she hadn’t entirely become hardened to it. Knowing the victim always made it worse. As she stared at the mud-splattered face she was angry that Jackie Whitmore had ended up here. It wasn’t that she had liked the girl, but after all Jackie had been young. There was still some faint hope that she might have improved with age. Now there was no hope.

She slumped against the side of the hole, defeated. A small river of sandy earth ran down next to her. She stared at it without really seeing it.

Jason’s head appeared at the top. ‘Any sign of life?’

‘No. Can you help me back up? I think the sides might be going to cave in.’

She said it almost mechanically, having spotted another trickle of sandy soil coming down a little further away. Her eyes and sub-conscious seemed to be working together on auto-pilot.

‘Throw me that rope,’ he snapped.

It was so much like an order that she found she had tossed the rope up towards him without a quibble.

He just missed catching it.

‘It’s all right,’ she said as it fell back into the hole. ‘I can grab on to this root at the side here. Then maybe you can reach down and...’

As she spoke, she was assessing the distance between her and the tree root. If she stretched her arm up and caught it, she could use it to pull herself halfway, and then perhaps Jason’s arms were long enough to reach her.

Amaryllis began to stretch up. The trickle of sand and earth had become a small landslide. Jackie Whitmore could be dug out afterwards if the whole thing caved in. It would be more work for the police but it wouldn’t harm her. Trying not to picture the scene, she made a grab for the tree root – and it was only when it came right away from the earth that she began to panic. It wasn’t a root at all. As she fell over backwards, still clutching at it, she knew it was a bone.

She was swept off her feet and landed on her back on top of Jackie Whitmore, with earth cascading down round them.

Somewhere above, a small dog began to bark again.