Bad Blood (6 page)

The landlady was making pointed clattering noises with a hoover outside her door, obviously trying to dislodge her from her room. Marnie grabbed her tote bag and went out. It was chilly with a brisk wind blowing but at least the sun was shining and the air was so clear and fresh she felt an exhilaration that was close to optimism. This could be the day when she started getting answers.

There was no alternative, and she couldn’t put it off any longer. Bracing herself, Fleming went downstairs and tapped on Rowley’s door, cherishing the childish hope that she wouldn’t be in – as if that would solve anything.

When there was, indeed, no answer, she realised how foolish that hope had been. It only gave her longer to agonise over what lay ahead.

Shelley Crichton’s eyes were still red this morning and her head was aching, a hangover from two days of immersive grief. She always felt like this after Halloween: drained and depressed as if it had all happened yesterday and not forty years before. Indeed, it seemed to get worse as she got older, not better.

If Grant was more sensitive, she wouldn’t make that punishing phone call every year. She didn’t hate him or anything, but after he remarried he seemed able just to put it all behind him as if he didn’t want his shiny new life with a shiny new wife to be cluttered up with reminders, not just of her, but of Tommy too. It felt as if he wanted to wipe out the memory that was all that was left now of his son.

He swore he didn’t, of course. She knew how angry that accusation made him, so she took care to claim that he’d forgotten, that he no
longer cared about Tommy being killed – murdered, though even saying the word made her throat close, her eyes fill.

If he cared, she always said, he’d come with her on her pilgrimage today, the pilgrimage she always made on the morning they’d found Tommy after a whole day of agonised searching for him. Grant had resisted right from the start. Morbid, unhealthy, he’d called it, and her unflinching determination had been yet another nail in the coffin for a marriage that had been dead on its feet even before Tommy was killed. By the time Grant moved out, Shelley had long stopped caring.

All she wanted from him now was recognition for the child they had shared. She might not be his wife any more, but she was still his son’s mother and Grant’s refusal to engage with her remembrance always made her feel vindictive. She knew her Halloween call always upset him, and Shelley relished her power to make him suffer, at least once a year. It was the only time he couldn’t make excuses not to speak to her.

Even thinking about it made her headache worse. She swallowed a couple of paracetamols then went downstairs, made herself a cup of strong black coffee and took it to the chair beside the phone.

The voice that answered her call was cheerful, buoyant. ‘Hello!’

‘Janette? It’s Shelley here.’

Janette’s voice flattened. ‘Oh, hello Shelley. I was wondering if you would phone.’

Shelley bridled a little. ‘Of course! You know what day it is, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Are you going to the park?’

‘Naturally.’ She was starting to feel annoyed; Janette was her best, her oldest friend. Janette, above all, should remember.

‘Do you think you should go on doing this? It doesn’t do you any good, Shelley. You’re depressed for weeks afterwards. Why not give it a miss this year, and see how you feel?’

‘
This
year? When it was forty years ago today we found him?’ Shelley couldn’t believe Janette was so insensitive.

There was a silence at the other end of the phone, then, ‘Oh. Sorry. I hadn’t realised.’

‘Yes, forty years. And
I
remember, even if everyone else has forgotten. It’s still as real to me as it was the day it happened. But I won’t bother you. I’ll just make my pilgrimage myself.’ The tears were starting again.

‘Oh Shelley, don’t be silly. If you want to go, I’ll come with you, of course I will. I always have. He was my godson too, remember?’

She could tell that Janette was welling up, and softened. She was the friend who had searched all day, the friend who had made the dreadful discovery of Tommy’s pathetic, battered little body in the pirate outfit he’d been wearing for Halloween, the friend who had broken the news, then sat with Shelley through the terrible days and even worse nights. All these years later Shelley couldn’t expect her, with her own children and grandchildren round about her, to understand that it still felt like yesterday when all you had was memories.

‘Thanks, Janette. I’ll come to the house then, shall I? I’ll be round in half an hour.’

Janette Ritchie put down the phone with a grimace. Shelley Crichton’s visit on the anniversary of the day Tommy was found was a fixture in her calendar but someone from her Pilates class in Stranraer was having a birthday lunch. She wouldn’t be able to go now.

Forty years! Could it really be that long? Yes, of course it could. Her own Jennifer wasn’t that far short of fifty and kept moaning about getting old. Poor wee Tommy hadn’t had the chance to do that. She felt a pang of conscience that she hadn’t remembered.

She should really phone round and get a few people together for Shelley’s sake. To start with there had been quite a crowd at the site each year, feeling a sort of collective guilt that this could happen here, with their own bairns. As time passed, though, the crowd had dwindled and for years now it had only been Janette and Shelley, with
any of the older locals who happened to pass the play park at the time looking uncomfortable and pretending not to notice.

There was even a sort of unspoken irritation about what it had done to the reputation of the village. ‘Cradle of Evil’, one of the newspapers had called it, and the name had stuck.

Maybe some bad things had gone on, unnoticed or perhaps just ignored, but till the tragedy Dunmore had mostly been a quiet, respectable, inward-looking community, minding its own business – perhaps too much so.

It certainly hadn’t been the sort of place that featured in the media, except maybe a photo in the
Galloway Globe
when someone had raised money to present to a charity. What happened had put a strain on everyone, with the film crews fighting for space in the narrow streets and reporters pushing microphones under your nose and the flashes and machine-gun fire of cameras when all you were doing was going out to the shop. It had been horrible, frightening, really, and the resentment grew every time something prompted another media influx.

What if they turned up today, because of the anniversary? It wasn’t very likely; the road from Glasgow to Dunmore was fortunately long and slow, but just in case, she’d have to make sure there wouldn’t be a ‘Cradle of Evil Village Forgets’ story in some rag tomorrow.

Janette picked up the phone again. ‘Sheila? Can you spare five minutes this morning?’

The address for the Michael Morrison who lived in Dunmore was a very smart-looking farmhouse surrounded by fields. It was on a slope above the village looking out across Loch Ryan towards the Cairnryan ferry terminal.

As Marnie walked up the steep rise towards it, she could see that the farmhouse wasn’t attached to a working farm; the only building beside it was a large garage. The small, ugly, modern box a couple of
fields over, with a huddle of dilapidated sheds and a barn beside it, was presumably where the farmer lived now.

She was prepared for disappointment and another wasted day, but when she walked up the long drive and rang the bell it was, to her surprise, Gemma herself who appeared. She’d have recognised her anywhere, though her mousy fair hair was blonde now and she’d grown up rather glamorous, with the sort of gleaming look that only a lot of money gives you. She had a toddler clamped to her hip, a rosy-cheeked little boy who gave the stranger a shy smile and then buried his face in his mother’s neck.

‘Gemma, I don’t know if you remember me—’ she began, but after a puzzled moment recognition had shown on Gemma’s face.

‘Oh my God! You’re Marnie Bruce! I don’t believe it! Goodness, you haven’t changed a bit!’

Marnie was struggling with the flashbacks the sight of her friend had prompted. ‘Well …’ was all she managed, but it didn’t matter. Gemma was talking enough for both of them.

‘Don’t just stand there – come on in! It’s wonderful to see you. Where have you been all these years? You just disappeared so suddenly, and no one seemed to know where you’d gone. I made Mum drive me out to the house, you know, but it was all shut up. What happened?’

Without giving her time for a reply, she led her across the hall. A small, dark-haired woman – Asian, Marnie thought – appeared on the stairs behind her carrying a vacuum cleaner, but as Marnie looked up she shrank back into the shadows at the top as if she were startled, or even afraid.

Gemma opened a door into a huge farmhouse kitchen, all glossy surfaces and sparkling glass-fronted cupboards, and went to a flashy coffee machine, pressing buttons as she chattered on.

‘This is Mikey, by the way – don’t ask about his father. Fergus Napier was another one who did your trick of vanishing out of my
life so I came back to stay with my parents – they’ve been wonderful. Mikey’s spoilt to bits.’

Gemma ruffled the child’s hair and then set him on his feet. ‘You go and play, sweetie, while I chat to Marnie.’

He eyed her fetching down a tin. ‘I want a biscuit,’ he demanded, in the tones of one setting out a negotiating position.

His mother smiled at Marnie. ‘Doesn’t take them long to work things out, does it? All right, Mikey, but just one or you’ll spoil your lunch.’

Marnie was relieved when Gemma turned her back to fetch coffee mugs. She was afraid that the spasm of envy that was twisting her insides would leave its ugly mark on her face. Here was someone who had everything; she had nothing and just at the moment it felt as if Gemma had taken all the luck she’d never had.

With Mikey placated and settled in a corner of the room with a small mountain of brightly coloured toys, Gemma brought the coffee over and sat down at the table opposite Marnie.

‘Well, that’s my life story: finished school, worked in Dad’s office, got married, screwed it up, came home with Mikey. What about yours? I bet it’s a lot more exciting. You were much the most interesting of my mates – it was really dull after you left.

‘Oh, can you still do that crazy thing of remembering absolutely everything? It made you sort of a woman of mystery!’ Gemma gave an easy laugh.

Marnie echoed her, but with difficulty. ‘Yes,’ she said, struggling to keep the two scenes straight in her head: Gemma, aged ten, the centre of a group of chattering girls while Marnie watched from the edge; Gemma now, looking at her with hopeful grey eyes, waiting for her life story.

She wasn’t ready yet. ‘When did you move away from Newton Stewart?’ she asked.

Gemma frowned in thought. ‘Can’t have been long after you went.
Dad’s business was mainly in Stranraer and I suppose when this came on the market he just thought it would be better to be nearby. The construction business was doing well then, though of course, just now …’ She shrugged.

‘Anyway, what about you? Why did you leave so suddenly? You never said a word to me.’

‘I didn’t know myself,’ Marnie said stiffly, but then, as if the hot coffee and the warmth of the room with the sun making patterns on the flagged floor had melted something, she began to talk.

Gemma listened in silence, only making the occasional sympathetic noise, and when at last Marnie finished said, ‘That’s awful,’ with obvious sincerity. ‘You poor thing! Look, my parents might know what happened afterwards. I’ll ask them when they get back home and let you know. Where are you staying?’

It would be humiliating to have Gemma turn up at the squalid little bed and breakfast. ‘I’ll give you my mobile number,’ Marnie said hastily.

‘Fine. I’ll be in touch. And promise you won’t vanish again.’

They had reached the front door when Marnie remembered her other quest. ‘I don’t suppose you know someone called Anita who lives here in Dunmore, do you?’

‘Anita Loudon?’ Gemma asked. ‘She’s the only Anita I know.’

Surely it couldn’t be as easy as that. ‘The Anita who was my mum’s friend was blonde, quite attractive – at least, she was then.’

Gemma nodded. ‘That’s her. She’s local – knows everyone. She works in my mum’s dress shop, actually, but I think this is her day off so you might find her at home. The house is a semi-detached on Lennox Street. Can’t remember the number but it’s got a bright-red door.

‘So you just go back along this road till you reach the one you came up on from the shore. You pass the play park and then it’s the next road on the right – or is it the one after that? You’ll see it, anyway.’

Marnie thanked her and set off. As she walked down the drive, she noticed the cleaning woman ahead of her on the road below, scurrying as if she were late for something. She wasn’t heading towards the town; she must live at the farm next door, that was the only other building in sight – unless she was planning on a long walk. Marnie thought idly.

She was still feeling a little dazed that today everything had fallen into place so neatly. It was encouraging, even if she still hadn’t heard from the police.

Janette stood in respectful silence along with three other women as Shelley, mopping her eyes, walked round the little play park. She hated coming here like this, though it had been just a small rough field when, in that frantic hunt after Tommy had gone missing, she had caught a glimpse of something pale against the darker grass over at the farther edge. Where his body had lain, a slide stood now along with a climbing frame, swings and a see-saw – Tommy’s memorial.

They waited awkwardly by the gate. Shelley’s act of remembrance seemed to take longer each year, as if she was making the point that her grief only grew as time passed. At last she got up, kissed the bouquet of white roses she had brought and laid them on a bench that had a discreet memorial plaque.

Shelley came back towards them. She was stooped today like an old woman, and with a foolish sense of shock, Janette realised that was just what she was. They all were, this group of friends, though Janette liked to think she looked younger than her years. She certainly hadn’t been aged by sorrow as Shelley had, and superstitiously she touched the wood of the fence as she opened the gate for her friend. They all filed through behind her.