When The Devil Drives (45 page)

‘Fighters too, we heard.’

She gave a sad smile, knowing but not regretful.

‘It was very overwrought, what went on between us. We’d never have worked out together, even in better circumstances. Both too passionate about everything: about our work, about ourselves, just turned up to eleven all the time. We argued over trivia and we argued over the biggest things too.

‘I confessed to Hamish what had happened in London. I only told him by way of letting him know I was going to have to leave, to go abroad. He wasn’t having it; thought it could all be sorted. His father knew great lawyers, contacts in the police, et cetera et cetera. Hamish was used to everything being fixable. He wasn’t the one looking at a murder charge, though. I just felt I had to run, and run a lot further than Balnavon. Hamish begged me to stay, made me all kinds of promises and assurances, which was when I played the trump card of reminding him he was married.’

She took a long look into the distance, towards the loch. Jasmine could seldom remember ever being anywhere quite so still. She heard
the call of a bird that could have been just outside or quarter of a mile away.

‘I said no goodbyes, except to Hamish. No farewells meant no need for explanations to anyone. We all knew the production was falling apart, so my leaving wouldn’t be a total bolt from the blue. I planned just to slip away while everybody was … otherwise engaged, and catch the last bus to Inverness. I think I told Hamish I was taking the sleeper south overnight, but that was so that he’d think I was gone by the morning. I intended to get a bed for the night and catch a flight to Heathrow the next day from Inverness airport, then take the first stand-by I could get to the continent.’

‘So Saffron
did
see you getting on that bus?’ Jasmine asked, puzzled by the timeline.

‘No.’

Tessa sat very still for a few moments, and Jasmine thought she detected a couple of false starts before she finally brought herself to speak once more.

‘I slipped away as quietly as I could, as I didn’t want to bump into anybody. But as I made my way through the grounds, I heard someone moving among the trees. I don’t know if you’ve been to Kildrachan—’

‘Not inside the estate, no.’

‘Well, the road winds through some dense woods, very mature, much older than the house. I could hear somebody breathing heavily, from effort. I came off the track and approached very cautiously. As I said, I didn’t want to bump into anybody and I certainly didn’t want to bump into a stranger in the woods at night, but I wanted to see who was there. With the straining and heavy breathing, I was concerned someone might be trapped, or having a heart attack or God knows.’

She took a sip of water, swirling the glass and gazing down into the clear liquid.

‘I saw Saffron. She was only a few yards away, lying on the ground. I thought she saw me, because she seemed to be staring right back, but she wasn’t. Her eyes were wide open, but she was dead. There was someone standing close by, wearing a hooded robe. He didn’t see me and I never saw his face. He had his back to me, bent over,
like he was getting his breath back. He was like that for a few seconds, during which I was just frozen; frozen in fear and almost frozen in time. Then he took hold of Saffron by the feet and began – or I should say resumed – dragging her body.

‘I stayed where I was, perfectly still, barely breathing, and I watched him take her away, slow and laborious, every yard an effort. Saffron always seemed to me like she would weigh nothing: she was so effervescent, so light on her feet. But this wasn’t Saffron any more, just a dead weight, a broken vessel. I knew where he was going, too. There was a well in the grounds, an ancient thing. It was all roped off because part of the upper wall had collapsed and they were afraid someone might fall down it. Hamish had shown it to us so we would know to avoid it, and said his family were planning to have it filled in once they returned from their travels. I knew that was where he was taking her, and I knew she’d never be found.’

‘Unless you told someone,’ said Jasmine.

Tessa nodded numbly.

‘I thought I was undone. I would have to come forward with what I’d seen, and by doing so I would deliver my own fate into the hands of the police. And that’s when I realised I had a choice.’

Tessa’s eyes were glazing, staring without focus. She wasn’t looking at anything in the room or through the window. She was looking at a dead body in a moonlit wood thirty years ago.

‘I took her life,’ she said. ‘I cannot deny it, never have done, at least not to myself … I took her life. I saw an opportunity before me, a chance to escape. I became her. I knew I still had to run, but I could run as someone else.’

‘So the next day, when Finlay came to Saffron’s house and she wouldn’t answer the door, that was you?’

‘Yes. I went straight to her place and let myself in. I’d been there before and I knew she didn’t lock the back door. Nobody locked anything much around there. I was able to sneak into the church hall and take a wig. I put on her clothes, looked out her passport and all the documentation I could find. She had been travelling for years so she had all sorts of official stuff she might need for visas and the like. Even a copy of her birth certificate.’

‘Identity theft for the analogue age,’ said Fallan.

‘Finlay came around the next day, to say Tessa had left and to ask Saffron if she’d take over her part. I can’t remember what I said, but I told him to go away, said I needed some time alone. I faked Saffron’s accent, speaking to him through the door. I had intended to pack up and leave right away, but having spoken to Finlay, albeit briefly, I realised that it would cover my tracks better if more people encountered who they thought was Saffron, to give the impression she was still here for at least a couple of days after Tessa was gone.

‘I phoned up the hotel and quit, said I couldn’t do that day’s shift. I think I said it was a family emergency or something. I found her rent book and called her landlord too, though I waited and did it the following morning, so that was one more witness, on still another day, that Saffron was still alive. I was planning to leave later that day. I had a taxi booked, partly so that it was another witness, but mainly so that I wasn’t out there standing at the bus stop when someone I knew walked past.’

‘The bus stop being close to the main gates of the Kildrachan estate,’ said Jasmine.

‘Exactly. So when the doorbell rang I thought it was the taxi driver come early, but when I opened it, it was a policeman, a young guy. I thought I was ruined, so it was the performance of my life to conceal how scared I was just for those first few seconds until it became apparent that he assumed I was Saffron. He was there to ask about Tessa’s disappearance, as he’d been told Saffron was involved with the theatre troupe.’

‘And that’s when you, as Saffron, told Callum Ross that you saw Tessa get on the last bus to Inverness.’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t the end of it. Obviously I was rather disturbed to learn that my own leaving was being investigated as suspicious, so I asked him why all the fuss. I learned two things. The good news was that the name Tessa Garrion meant nothing to the local cops beyond this current inquiry, but the bad was that they had reason to suspect something bad had happened and they were holding Hamish for it.

‘I took the taxi, as planned, and spent the night in Inverness. I
was too late for the last shuttle. I think there were only two a day back then. I got booked on to the later of the next day’s flights; the earlier one was full. I was concerned about Hamish though, as he was obviously keeping quiet to protect me, and if there was suspicion surrounding my disappearance, then it was only a matter of time before police beyond Balnavon started looking for Tessa Garrion. So the morning of my flight, I phoned the police station in Balnavon and spoke to the officer in charge.’

‘Sergeant Dougal Strang,’ said Jasmine.

‘That was him, yes. I told him I knew where he could find Tessa Garrion, but that I would only tell him in person, alone, and that I needed absolute, guaranteed confidentiality. He drove straight to Inverness to meet me. We spoke at the hotel. I ditched the wig and showed him my own passport to prove I was Tessa Garrion, safe and sound, and I told him I was pregnant by Hamish.’

‘You were pregnant? How could you know so soon?’

‘I wasn’t pregnant. I told Sergeant Strang I was so that he’d agree not to tell anybody he’d seen me. I said Hamish didn’t know about the baby. I wanted to go it alone, and if Hamish found out he’d try to do the right thing by me, and I didn’t want him suffering all the shame and scandal that would come with it.

‘The sergeant was as good as his word. As far as the police were aware, both Tessa Garrion and Saffron Simpson were alive and well. I flew to London that day, then on to Brussels.’

‘Why Brussels?’

‘It was the first flight with stand-by seats available when I reached Heathrow. I flew out on my own passport as I looked nothing like the photo in Saffron’s, but after I got there I became Veronica Jane Simpson for keeps.’

‘Until you became Veejay Khan,’ Jasmine said.

‘That was my husband’s name for me. I met him in Brussels a few months after I arrived. I got an office job. I spoke French and had decent secretarial skills from part-time work in my drama-student days. Jaffir was a lawyer. He was from Edinburgh originally, though his family hailed from Sri Lanka. He was based in Brussels but he worked for a British firm. We got married in 1982.’

‘Making you officially V. J. Khan, and a British citizen. Where is your husband now? Are you still married?’

Tessa nodded.

‘He’s in Amsterdam. Phoned me about half an hour before you arrived. It’s the first time he’s been away overnight since what happened to Hamish, so he was checking I was holding up all right.’

‘How did you end up here?’

‘We lived in Brussels until 2000, when our son, Michael, went off to university. He did law, like his father, and he chose Glasgow. We’d talked about coming back to Scotland and decided it was the right time to do it. Jaffir travelled a lot on his job and could increasingly do the rest of it from home, so we relocated. We had actually rented this place for a holiday a few years before, and it came on the market at just the right time.’

‘When did you get back in touch with Hamish?’

‘I ran into him in Brussels, in about 1995, at the theatre, unsurprisingly. I was there to see a production of
Woe From Wit
and he was there to check out the venue itself ahead of exporting one of his musicals. He was already doing very well and I was pleased for him. Not so well on the marriage front, but that was always Hamish’s problem. I told him my married name and how I’d already ceased being Tessa Garrion as part of my disappearing act. We kept in touch.’

‘Did you act again?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Not until I got involved with the Loch Shiel Players. There were possibilities in Brussels, but … I saw it as kind of a penance for what I’d done. Then once I had become a mother, it all got too complicated, and you’d be amazed how fast the years passed after that. I missed it terribly, but I knew it was a small price to pay for the life I had, compared to the one I’d have ended up with. I had Jaffir and I had Michael, and I had my freedom.

‘But when we moved here I saw this amateur dramatics group performing down in Fort William and I decided to dip my toe again. Or more like the recovering alcoholic’s first sip: he can’t have just one sip, and I couldn’t just dip my toe. I got very heavily involved, and then when funding became really tight I asked Hamish to sponsor
us, which he kindly and generously did. He was the most loyal of friends, in every way.’

A tear ran down her face as she stared into the distance again, this wound still very raw. Jasmine felt Tessa’s pain all the more keenly due to her growing awareness that it was her investigation that had set the dominoes falling.

‘Did Hamish call you recently?’ Jasmine asked. She had to lay her cards on the table here.

‘Yes,’ Tessa replied, her tone indicating that she was only now reminded of this. ‘He called to warn me that a private investigator had been asking about Tessa Garrion. It was only a few days before he was killed.’

‘We don’t believe these two events were coincidental. Hamish didn’t just call you, he phoned everybody who was in the Glass Shoe Company to warn them about me.’

‘He didn’t want them to talk. He was still trying to protect me.’

‘They all had their own reasons not to talk. One more than the rest. Whoever killed Saffron knew you were still alive, knew that you had taken her identity, but also knew you’d never say anything because you would incriminate yourself. But when I started digging into what happened at Kildrachan the stakes changed.’

‘But how would the killer know I’d taken Saffron’s identity? Are you saying it was someone from the company? I had always thought it was some local weirdo. Who else would be going around in a robe like that in the dark?’

Jasmine told her all that they’d learned about that night, the sum of all her recent efforts still lacking its final answer.

‘Jesus,’ Tessa reeled. ‘Talk about sex, lies and videotape.’

‘So despite the snuff movie being fake,’ Jasmine said, ‘Darius or Murray could still have been the killer. Maybe something happened as one of them walked her back to her house.’

‘Murray told us he was with Julian in the kitchen, drinking whisky,’ Fallan said. ‘We now know for sure that part was a lie. So maybe there’s another reason why he drove down to the Lake District in a desperate attempt to destroy the tape.’

Tessa shook her head.

‘It couldn’t have been Murray. The person I saw wasn’t tall enough. Murray could probably have carried Saffron over his shoulder. He wouldn’t have needed to drag her along the ground.’

‘Then it had to have been Darius after all.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Tessa argued.

‘But there’s no one else it could have been,’ Jasmine replied, exasperated. ‘I’ve seen the tape myself, and it was Murray and Darius in those robes.’

‘On the tape, yes,’ agreed Tessa. ‘But who was holding the camera?’