Sewing the Shadows Together (20 page)

The doorbell rang. At first she ignored it but when it became more insistent Sarah’s patience snapped. She answered the intercom prepared to vent her anger on whoever was there. ‘Hiya, Sarah. It’s me, Patsy. I tried to get through on the phone but it was always engaged. Are you all right?’

Sarah hesitated. ‘Is there anyone else out there, Patsy? Reporters or photographers?’

‘I can’t see anyone.’

‘All right, come up, but please don’t let anyone slip into the stairwell.’

Patsy hurried up the stairs and came dramatically through the door, stretching her arms out towards Sarah. ‘My poor dear girl, are you all right? As soon as I saw that dreadful story in the newspaper, I just had to come. How are you?’

Sarah looked at the concern in Patsy’s small pointed features and wondered how genuine it was. Then she was annoyed with herself – she mustn’t see evil everywhere. Patsy was good-hearted and, awful thought, her ‘best’ friend. ‘I’m fine, really.’

Patsy went into the drawing room and sat on the Chesterfield. She patted the space next to her and Sarah obediently sat down. Patsy’s voice oozed empathy. ‘It must have been terrible. You said the funeral was for family only, but I didn’t realise that his family was quite so large.’ Patsy stifled a giggle and then put on her serious concerned expression. ‘I knew about Babs Barrowfield, of course. We used to have quite a laugh at school, saying that she would have to sign Rory’s absence notes! But all those others! How could you have borne it? How could you have stayed with Rory when he was having children all over the place?’

‘I didn’t know,’ Sarah said and instantly regretted it as horror spread over Patsy’s face.

‘You didn’t… know? Did they all just turn up at the funeral?’

Sarah decided as she’d gone so far she might as well explain. ‘I did get a little warning. Babs seems to have been very well-informed and her daughter, who’s a lawyer, acts as a sort of shop steward for the young ones.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Patsy lowered her voice confidentially, ‘I mean, I did suspect Rory might play away a little, but I never dreamed… I thought you must know and just accept it.’

Sarah sighed. ‘I was happy when the children were at home and I did accept that Rory had to work long hours. I thought that it was just part of his job. But anyway, none of that seems very important now, compared to the fact that Rory is…’ Sarah hesitated. She couldn’t bring herself to say dead. But she would have to get used to saying it, to telling people. She changed tack to avoid the word. ‘All this, and Logan Baird getting out, has made me think of Shona so much.’

‘And Tom coming back?’ said Patsy with an inquisitive look.

Sarah ignored the remark and tried to find out if Patsy had any useful information about Kidd. ‘I’ve been thinking alot about Shona. Were you in the After School Writing Club?’

‘Oh yes,’ Patsy’s face lit up. ‘We all were – it was with Captain Kidd after all.’

‘Do you remember meeting round at his house the day Shona disappeared?’

‘I do remember being in his house, very vividly. Was it the same day?’

‘What can you remember about that meeting? What was said?’

‘Sarah, it’s nearly forty years ago. I can remember being there, but I can’t think of anything that happened. Why are you asking? Is it something important?’

Sarah sighed. ‘Not really. I’ve been thinking about that day and some memories are coming back. I keep going over things, wondering what happened to Shona.’

Patsy glanced at her watch, and stretched over to give Sarah an awkward hug. ‘I think you should try and move on. We’ll never find out what happened now. It’s so long ago. It really doesn’t do any good mulling over things that can’t be changed.’ She pursed her thin lips reflectively. ‘You’re really very strong. I don’t think I’d ever be able to cope if anything like that happened to me.’ She paused. ‘Not that anything like that would happen to me, not with Gavin…’ Sarah arranged her face in a deliberate grim smile and Patsy stood up hurriedly. ‘Well, I just wanted to know that you are all right.’

‘As you can see, I’m fine.’

Patsy pulled her jacket round her shoulders. ‘Yes, well, just let me know if there’s anything, anything at all that I can do.’

Sarah thanked her for visiting with as much politeness as she could muster and watched Patsy beetling down the stairs. Sarah was certain that the story would very quickly be doing the rounds on the jungle drums of Patsy’s school reunion pals.

As she closed the door, her mobile rang. It was Tom. ‘Listen, Sarah. I’m with HJ, he wants to talk to you. Can we come round and speak to you now?’

Sarah hesitated. She didn’t want HJ Kidd in her house. ‘Are you at the centre? I’ll come over and talk to you there.’

‘That’s fine, and you can look round my new home. I’ve got the job.’

Sarah put the phone down, feeling annoyed with Tom. He was totally taken in by HJ. Could he not see that he was being used by him? She collected her coat and car keys and set off for the Cowgate, her mind racing with the thought that was gathering ever more substance in her mind – that HJ Kidd was responsible for two deaths.

*

Although the sky was bright, the sun did not penetrate the Cowgate where the gloomy hulk of the Canongate Centre loomed in the shadows far beneath the George 1V
^th
Bridge. HJ and Tom were waiting as Sarah went into the interior of the church, still shadowy despite the pale daylight struggling though the grimy windows.

Tom came towards her and they looked at each other, wondering whether to embrace. In the end they didn’t and turned towards HJ. He was sitting on the edge of the makeshift podium.

He stood up and smiled. ‘Sarah, I wanted to talk to you because I feel I owe you an explanation.’

Sarah steeled herself inside. She wasn’t going to be won over by his charm, even if Tom seemed to be unable to resist it. She nodded her head and they all sat down at a dusty table.

‘Firstly, Tom told me that you found that silly poem.’

Sarah nodded. ‘That’s what you came round to collect in such a hurry, the day after Rory died.’ She emphasised the final word, imbuing it with some of the revulsion that she’d begun to feel towards him.

HJ looked sheepish. ‘I must admit I did. I’d forgotten all about it until Rory mentioned it to me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I wrote it forty years ago. It was a joke. It doesn’t seem like a very good one now, but at the time it was just to tease a young colleague of mine. Once when we were out having a pint he admitted that he had this fantasy of being licked all over by the girls in his first year class.’ His face clouded. ‘It’s hard to imagine now, but things were so different then. We all thought it was funny. I wrote him that poem to make fun of him. Nothing more.’

Sarah couldn’t imagine on which parallel universe a poem like that could be a ‘joke’ and pressed on further. ‘But there are other things. Rory found out something about your family, why you fell out with them. Something about a young maid.’

HJ laughed. ‘Rory mentioned that too – he’d heard this garbled story and leapt to the wrong conclusions. There was indeed a falling out, but it wasn’t because of a young girl. On the contrary, the old mater and pater were upset when they found out that my nanny, their faithful old family retainer, had been giving me a rather special kind of care and attention. She had to leave – after twenty years.’

HJ cleared his throat, his eyes far away in memory. ‘I tried to defend her, saying it was the best thing that could happen to a young boy, but they took it as a breach of trust. The fact that it had started when I was fourteen and had gone on for years particularly annoyed them, I recall. Anyway, I stood there and said, ‘If she goes, I go.’

‘In the end we both went. Nanny got another position up north somewhere, I met dear Hannah, but the family never forgave me for the things that had been said. And I didn’t want anything more to do with them – their values and attitudes were not mine.’

Sarah and Tom exchanged glances as Kidd carried on.

‘I told Rory that and we had a good laugh about it, actually, especially after I admitted to still having a thing for large knickers and white flannel nighties.’

Sarah looked into his blue eyes and felt his charm. She hardened herself against it. ‘But, at the After School Writing Club, you picked Shona out particularly.’

HJ’s eyes saddened. ‘It’s true, I did see something special in Shona. As a teacher you want to develop all your pupils, to enable them to do the best they can. But there are some that touch you especially, with that extra spark of creativity, that freshness of perception, that indication of genius that makes you think this is someone who will outstrip you.’ His eyes moistened. ‘Rory was another one.’

‘But Shona said she had a secret that night she ran away from me.’ Sarah decided to say everything. ‘She came to
you
, didn’t she?’

HJ’s face drooped. ‘The police have contacted me about the reopened case and when they interview me again I’m going to tell them the truth. There was something I kept hidden from them at the time of the original investigation. Shona
did
come round. I had submitted some stories from the writing group to an international competition. Shona received a certificate ‘Highly Commended’. I wanted to give it to her, but I didn’t want to make a big thing of it. She hadn’t won a prize, after all, and none of the others had been mentioned, but I wanted to encourage her. She came round, she collected it, and I never saw her again.’

Sarah looked at him and saw that his eyes were glassy with tears. It was so easy to believe his version of events but she still couldn’t forget that poem.

‘I should have told the police then. I didn’t mention it the first time they interviewed me, before she was found, and after that I couldn’t. Not after failing to mention it earlier. It would make me look so suspicious, as if I had something to hide. I may well have been the last person to see her alive.’

‘The last person to see her alive was her murderer,’ Sarah said grimly. ‘It certainly seems that a lot of evidence points towards you.’

‘Sarah…’ HJ looked from her to Tom, who’d been watching silently. ‘Tom, believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Hannah was there all the time. She was furious I hadn’t told the police and it was her that insisted I had nothing more to do with the After School Writing Club, or teach any junior classes after that. From then on I specialised in the seniors and exam classes. I was far better suited to those anyway.’

Sarah was still unconvinced. ‘Did Rory confront you with all this?’

‘Some of it,’ admitted HJ. ‘He was primarily interested in the family stuff, didn’t really mention Shona. He wanted his programme.’

Sarah felt her voice very calm. ‘You were alone with him, alone on Salisbury Crags, and he told you about his findings. You realised that the net was tightening.’

HJ looked shocked. ‘Sarah, what are you suggesting? You couldn’t believe that I had anything to do with…’

Sarah felt cold, tight. HJ was convincing but he was a showman. He’d always been an actor, which was what made him such an effective teacher. He’d admitted that Shona had come round to his house that night; Sarah had seen the poem, had seen how he was with young girls… All that stuff about the nanny was irrelevant, a red herring. And he’d been alone on the Crags with Rory.

She could see it in her mind’s eye. Rory challenging him, HJ coming towards him, Rory falling back…

‘Did you push him or did he just fall?’

Tom moved beside her and put her arm round her shoulders. Sarah shrugged him off and looked at her old teacher with disgust.

Kidd blustered. ‘It wasn’t like that at all! I wish I could prove it. Everything was being filmed, but unfortunately Rory’s camera was damaged in the fall.’

‘How very convenient.’

‘Sarah, you’re overwrought. This is ridiculous. You could equally well suspect Rory.’ He paused. ‘When I was reading
The Seagull
he did admit to me that he’d done something terrible in the past and that he was haunted by the memory.’

Sarah felt rage welling up in her. Kidd pressed on. ‘You must admit that Rory, brilliant as he was, was not completely normal. In fact, I’m convinced that he suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. You can see it in his charm, his philandering, his total refusal to accept the consequences of his actions, his appalling treatment of you…’

Sarah stood up and stopped Kidd’s flow of words. ‘How dare you? How dare you try to deflect attention from your guilt by slandering his name! I’m going to the police and I’m going to tell them everything, everything about Shona’s murder and how
you
murdered Rory!’

*

Tom made Sarah a cup of coffee and brought it to her as she sat at the kitchen table. She was still shaking.

‘That man,’ she brought her hand down firmly on the table, ‘trying to implicate Rory, who isn’t here to defend himself. With everything he says Kidd just digs a deeper hole for himself. I’m more certain than ever he was involved in Shona’s death, and then he murdered Rory when he challenged him with the truth. Can’t you see it?’ She looked defiantly at Tom. ‘And when I speak to the police I’m going to tell them everything.’

Tom felt confused. Kidd was a good guy; he couldn’t believe he was a murderer. In some ways he could understand the poem. He’d heard enough jokes about the delights of young girls from people who were in no way paedophiles. He thought back to some of the girls he’d been with in South Africa, their long blonde hair and slender brown limbs. Some of them were still teenagers, and he felt ashamed when he realised how little he’d thought about them as people. They were just a bit of fun.

And there were those pictures in his father’s chest. They were far worse than HJ’s poem. He’d wasted so much energy worrying about his father – and then he’d turned out to be innocent. He didn’t want to make the same mistake with HJ.

*

The next morning Tom went out to buy rolls and came back with a bundle of newspapers. He laid them on the kitchen table. ‘Archie sent me a text and said I should look at these before you saw them. Here they are – they’re pathetic.’