Lamb to the Slaughter (2 page)

Cammie was looking anxious as he took the burger. ‘What if I’m still hungry?’ he demanded.

‘There’s times when you aren’t?’ his mother said caustically, then relented. ‘OK, I brought the Tin back from Granny. She was baking today, and she filled it up for us.’

‘Oh good,’ Cammie said indistinctly and, still chewing, headed for the kitchen and the Tin, whose contents over the years had compensated for the inability of his culinarily challenged mother to bake so much as an edible scone.

Marjory grinned at Bill, then leaned back and shut her eyes, enjoying the lingering warmth. For once she’d had a Saturday off from police work when the weather was kind, and Bill had been persuaded to leave the evening chores on the sheep farm to Rafael Cisek who, with his wife Karolina and their toddler son, had come from Poland to Scotland as soon as it became legally possible. The family was happily installed now in the farm-worker’s cottage just below the Mains of Craigie farmhouse. Rafael was a good man, son of a tenant farmer himself and experienced with the young cattle Bill was now buying in to fatten for the market. Better still, Karolina, who was sweet and shy, was delighted to have a little job helping in the house while Janek, aged two, tumbled about the place after her like a puppy. Marjory could hear them now in the cottage garden, Janek shouting with glee and his parents laughing. She smiled herself at the happy sounds.

At last Marjory’s personal life was running more smoothly, easing the domestic pressure on her as she coped with the professional demands of her challenging job as detective inspector with the Galloway Constabulary. Even Marjory’s father, Angus Laird, now in the long twilight of dementia, was settled in a pleasant, comfortable nursing home, and his wife Janet, relieved of the stress of caring for him, was more like her old self again.

Marjory’s main concern at the moment was Tam MacNee, her detective sergeant, mentor and friend, who was taking a long time to recover from the head injury he’d sustained in a vicious attack a few months before. He’d been a bad patient – ‘patient’ wasn’t a word she’d ever associated with Tam – and he was still suffering from cruel headaches and tiredness. He had lost weight, too, and with his thin, wiry build he didn’t have it to lose. The doctor had so far refused to pass him as fit for work and though Tam was all for ignoring this, she’d had to tell him that for insurance reasons he couldn’t be allowed to return to his duties. She’d made the mistake of trying to console him by saying if he took it easy he’d get better quicker: Tam had always been possessed of an acid tongue and Marjory got the full benefit. He was definitely improving now, though, and she thought it was probably only a matter of a week or two more.

She was missing her friend Laura, too. Laura Harvey, a psychotherapist whose perspective on some of Marjory’s problems, both personal and professional, had been invaluable in the past, had gone to London to record a TV programme based on her popular column in a Sunday broadsheet. It had been for a fortnight, originally. She had been away now for three months and Marjory had an unhappy feeling that she was unlikely ever to return. She sighed, unconsciously.

‘You do realise Cammie’s in there alone with the Tin?’ Catriona’s voice broke in on her mother’s thoughts. She was curled up on a sun-lounger, idly flicking through a teen ­magazine, and Marjory opened her eyes again to look at her fourteen-year-old daughter. She was growing up fast and, her mother recognised with a pang, was hardly a child any longer. She had the happy combination of Bill’s fair hair and blue eyes and Marjory’s own long legs, quite a lot of them now exposed in skimpy shorts, but she was slightly built and looked like remaining the smallest in the family.

This evening she was wearing make-up and had changed into a bright pink crop top – a little elaborate for a family barbecue, but then she was still at the stage when she changed her clothes three times a day and of course never wore anything again after she’d had it on, however briefly. Still, it didn’t matter too much now that Karolina had a firm grip on the laundry. God bless Karolina!

‘Good thinking,’ Bill said. ‘You’d better go and prise it away from him. Bring it out here – there was a rumour of brownies.’

Cat unfolded herself and was on her way to the kitchen when the evening peace was shattered by the roar of motorbike engines, close and getting closer. Meg the collie, lying asleep on the lawn, raised her head with a growl, then jumped up and loosed a volley of barks. Cat turned and went to look over the old orchard below the house, where Marjory’s hens had started cackling in fright, to the track which wound up to the farm from the main road.

‘What on earth—?’ Marjory exclaimed, sitting up, and Bill, who was still on his feet, went over too to peer down at the two approaching motorbikes, with their denim-clad and helmeted riders.

Cat turned pink. ‘It’s all right,’ she said hastily. ‘It’s just some boys from school.’

They had pulled up by the farm gateway, taking off their helmets to reveal one close-cropped dark head and one with bleached shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail. The engine noise stopped and petrol fumes drifted up to mingle with the lingering smell of char-grilled meat.

‘What’s all this about?’ Bill, eyebrows raised, turned to his wife.

‘It explains the make-up and the smart top. She must have been expecting them.’

‘Was she, indeed!’ Bill came back and sat down heavily on the vacated lounger. ‘What age do you have to be to ride a motorbike?’

‘Seventeen,’ Marjory said grimly.

‘And she’s fourteen.’

‘I had noticed.’

‘Well, she’s not going on the back of one of those things, and that’s flat.’

‘You tell her. If I do it’ll start World War Three.’

‘Oh, I’ll tell her. And I want to know a lot more about them, too.’ He got up purposefully.

‘Give her ten minutes, then go down and ask them up for coffee. Nicely,’ Marjory suggested.

‘Five.’ Bill sat down again, looking at his watch.

Cat was doing a lot of laughing. They could hear the distinctive teenage giggling, high-pitched with nervous excitement, and Marjory looked at her husband with a wry smile. ‘You have to face it, Bill – your little girl is growing up, and she’s bonnie. We’re going to have to get used to boyfriends.’

‘Not seventeen-year-old bikers. She’s far too young.’ He consulted his watch again.

‘That’s three minutes. Barely.’

‘I know.’ Bill got up restlessly and started collecting the ketchup-smeared plates. ‘It’s not going to be easy, this next stage, is it?’

‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’ Marjory sighed. ‘And I was just thinking how good it was to have things sorted out – Dad settled, and Mum so much better, and with Rafael and Karolina...’

‘So it’s your fault, is it? You ought to know better than to tempt providence like that.

‘Well, that’s five minutes. Seven, in fact. I’m going down.’

But just as he spoke the bikes’ engines started up again and when he looked they were on their way down the drive and Cat was walking back up the slope, still smiling. Without looking at her parents, she headed for the house.

‘Cat!’ Bill called and the girl turned, but made no move towards him.

‘Come here!’

She obeyed with obvious reluctance, the smile disappearing.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘Just a couple of the guys from school.’

‘Do they have names?’ Marjory asked.

‘Oh, so it’s police questioning now, is it? Do I have a right to remain silent?’

Marjory counted to ten. Bill said mildly, ‘Is there some reason why you shouldn’t tell us your friends’ names? Are you ashamed of them?’

The colour rose in Cat’s face. ‘’Course not. Just, it’s, like, my business, isn’t it? All they did was look in to say hello. So shoot me!’

‘If we had friends visiting and we spoke like that to you, you would have a right to be annoyed. Don’t be rude, Cat.’

There was an edge to Bill’s voice and Cat’s eyes filled. ‘Oh, if it’s so important – just Dylan Burnett and Barney Kyle. So now can I go – or did you want to grill me some more?’

‘Go if you want to.’ Recognising a losing situation, Bill shrugged in his turn and his daughter didn’t give him time to change his mind. They could hear her crying as she went back to the house.

‘Hormones,’ Marjory said. ‘That’s her going to phone her friend Jenny to tell her she’s got, like, the world’s cruellest parents.’

‘How many years before she leaves home?’ Bill was saying as Cammie emerged from the house eating a brownie.

‘What was with the bikes?’ he asked.

‘Friends of Cat’s,’ Marjory said. ‘Dylan Burnett and Barney Kyle.’

Cammie’s eyes widened. ‘They came to see Cat? Wow! They’re seriously cool.’

‘Oh, are they,’ Bill said drily. ‘What does being “seriously cool” involve?’

‘Well, they’ve got the bikes. And they do crazy things.’

‘Like what?’ his mother asked him, but he didn’t seem to know. Just ‘everyone said’ they did crazy things.

Later, as they were putting away the garden furniture, Bill said to Marjory, ‘I suppose it would be unethical for you to see if there’s anything on them in the files?’

Marjory laughed. ‘I’m sure it is. And in answer to the ­question you haven’t asked yet, first thing in the morning.’

Romy Kyle had arrived early at St Cerf’s Church Hall in Kirkluce High Street, hired for the public meeting about the superstore which Councillor Norman Gloag had arranged – not that she was even remotely inclined to cooperate with the nasty little man. But he’d have managed to get people together and she was going to see to it that they heard the other side.

There was a lot of unease, even anger, in Kirkluce. To the traditionalists, its atmosphere was unique and precious: an old-fashioned town centre, where greengrocers and bakers and butchers served the population in the way they always had since Kirkluce had been a village, where each day you ‘went for the messages’ and met your friends in the High Street. A superstore would drive most of the local shops out of business.

Ranged on the other side were the working mums, who found the little Spar supermarket inadequate for their needs, allied to those for whom tradition was a dirty word and the young who longed for the excitement of change and the ready availability of seventy-five different flavours of crisps as opposed to the half-dozen on offer at the moment.

The battle-lines were drawn and the plans were being made for committees and pressure groups, but it was early days yet. It was common knowledge that Colonel Carmichael could refuse to sell the land that was needed and it would all come to nothing. Only those most directly affected, whose immediate livelihood was threatened, were ready to make trouble.

The Church Hall was a clever choice of venue. In the sober atmosphere, with the hall’s dark cream and brown gloss-painted walls and splintery floor, strong passions would seem out of place. Well, Romy Kyle was prepared to do a bit of rabble-rousing, if that was what was needed.

A stocky figure in jeans and a burgundy cotton fisherman’s smock, she walked down the aisle between the rows of stacking chairs, her square jaw set as she made her way purposefully towards the table where Gloag and the representative from the superstore would sit. She nodded, unsmiling, at a couple of people who had arrived even earlier and took her seat right in the middle of the front row, where Gloag couldn’t pretend not to see her when she wanted to speak.

She set her well-worn leather tote bag down on the chair next to her to save it for Pete, her partner – and where the hell was he? She’d reminded him about the meeting this morning but when she got home from the Fauldburn Craft Centre he wasn’t there. She and Barney had eaten alone and there was still no sign of Pete when she left. Gone to the pub, no doubt. He’d claim he hadn’t noticed the time, like he always did. Romy suspected that he never wore a watch just so he had that excuse.

Why on earth had she put up with him all these years? Eight of them, last time she counted, including two when he’d been behind bars and at least wasn’t giving trouble then. If she had the sense of a dim-witted amoeba, she’d have thrown the useless bugger out years ago, with his ‘deals’ and his ‘projects’ which never seemed to work out. God knew she’d thought of it often enough, yet he’d only to look at her with those dark, dark blue eyes and that crooked smile, and her resolve would crumble. Her artistic soul loved beauty, and he was beautiful.

He was also a professional conman, with the record to prove it, and Romy was his most consistent victim. She had no illusions. He didn’t fool her – yet always she chose to swallow the latest lie. The only way she’d ever get rid of him was if he decided to go, and then she’d die of grief.

There were more people coming in, a steady trickle, and she half-turned in her chair to assess the strength of the opposition. There was MacLaren the butcher, with his wife and a posse of friends: he’d be happy enough to trouser what he could get and retire. And Senga Blair – her fancy goods shop had been struggling for years, and when she caught Romy’s eye she quickly looked away again. That was a bad sign. It was becoming clear that Gloag had managed to pack the hall with his supporters.

Andrew Carmichael hadn’t arrived yet. She hoped he wouldn’t be late: she was wanting a word with him to discuss tactics. If he told them outright he wasn’t prepared to sell, things could get ugly.