When The Devil Drives (20 page)

‘No,’ Jasmine confessed.

‘Do you know where you are, Miss Sharp?’

That edge to his voice was hardening, like he was aware of a threat and not from her.

‘I mean, do you understand why we’re filming Kirsteen here?’

She nodded, and realised she knew also what he was alluding to regarding the crossroads myth.

‘“A winnock-bunker in the east,”’ she quoted, casting her eyes to the very spot. ‘“There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast.”’

Sanquhar nodded approvingly, though his expression didn’t brighten any.

‘Are you suggesting there was some kind of ritualism going on?’ she asked, trying to keep incredulity from sounding like outright scorn.

‘I was once less circumspect than I ought to have been regarding certain of my views,’ he replied, demonstrating that she’d failed. ‘What I was trying to convey is not something that is easy for people to understand. It’s far easier to caricature what I was alluding to, because then it can be more easily dismissed: a cloven-hoofed devil with horns and a pitchfork is clearly absurd, so we don’t need to be afraid of it. But it was what I witnessed at Kildrachan House that made me believe there is something that feeds off the worst in men and further emboldens them. When there is a wanton will in man to seek the darkness, then there is something out there that listens, and it whispers back.’

Sanquhar’s voice was low and dry, his eyes unblinking in the intensity of their stare. She recalled the unsensational tone of the
Sunday Times
article, the interviewer not sharing Sanquhar’s belief but in no doubt about his conviction. Then, as now, he was said to seem genuinely afraid of whatever had inspired it.

‘Tessa left because she was disgusted – and not a little scared, I should imagine. It’s small wonder she never got back in touch with any of us.’

‘But what actually happened? What kind of things are you talking about?’

He shook his head once, the gesture all the more final for its brevity.

‘These are not memories I care to revisit. And you should understand that nobody else will either.’

Jasmine let out a small, measured sigh of frustration, less than she felt but precisely as much as she wished to convey.

‘Do you at least recall the names of the people you’re talking about, or are you going to lie to me like Hamish Queen did?’

‘No,’ he replied, sounding slightly impugned. ‘I won’t lie. How could I forget? But the names wouldn’t do you much good. Hamish didn’t only phone me after your visit, he called the others too. They know about you. They’re not going to return your calls.’

‘You did,’ she pointed out.

‘I considered it a matter of conscience.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I have a daughter not much older than you, and the thought of her doing what you are right now made me shudder.’

‘I’m just asking people questions, Mr Sanquhar.’

‘People with lives and reputations. People who will not forgive you for opening Pandora’s Box. I don’t know where Tessa Garrion went after she bailed out, but trust me on this: you won’t find her by raking through the rubble of the Glass Shoe Company. You will only succeed in disturbing a great deal of long-buried hurt and shame, but what worries me is that you might awaken something worse.’

‘I don’t believe in the devil, Mr Sanquhar.’

‘Nor did I, before the summer of eighty-one.’

‘I’ll take my chances. Give me the names. Who was in the company, apart from Tessa, Hamish and Adam Nolan?’

Sanquhar sighed with bad grace.

‘Finlay Weir. He didn’t have much of an acting career after that. I think he’s a schoolteacher now. Maybe even a headmaster.’

Sanquhar paused, as though hoping his silence might be misinterpreted as the end of a very short list.

‘Who else?’

He frowned.

‘Murray Maxwell.’

Jasmine’s eyes widened involuntarily.

‘Murray Maxwell? As in
Darroch Glen
? As in
Raintown Blue
?’

‘And as in currently head of drama at Scotia Television, yes.’

‘Well, I can really see why that one slipped Hamish’s mind. Any more?’

‘Just one.’

Sanquhar swallowed, as if his mouth had gone dry. When he spoke, it was clear that if the words ‘wee dawdle’ had been savoured as a treat, then these were shrivelling his lips like gall.

‘Russell Darius.’

Jasmine concealed her reaction behind a further, redundant inquiry.

‘No other women?’

‘There aren’t many female parts in
Macbeth
, and Tessa was very versatile. We didn’t need anyone else.’

‘So you’re not superstitious?’ she asked, as he hadn’t substituted the name of the play.

‘I told you, I’m not some religious nutcase. In my experience, the supposed curse around
Macbeth
is largely a self-fulfilling prophecy. One I fear we fell victim to. People fixate upon it when they have a self-destructive wish, seeking out darkness within themselves, perhaps hoping to confront it, to defeat it. Instead, it consumes them.’

Sir Angus McCready, head of his clan and laird of Cragruthes Castle, didn’t look to Catherine like a man big enough or right then strong enough to bear so much nomenclature. He was huddled in an armchair in his private study, looking for all the world like a lost wee boy. The chair itself seemed too big for him, his feet not touching the carpet, but that was because he was withdrawn into it as far as he would fit.

Catherine was unsure whether this body language indicated merely his state of shock or his revulsion from her as the head of the police investigation. He had looked like his mammy was leaving him with a cold stranger when Sergeant Jim Wheaton, the local officer Laura had mentioned, had withdrawn at Catherine’s request.

He enjoyed the brief reassurance of a familiar face as his housekeeper brought them both tea and a couple of scones. She urged the laird to take one and chided him for not having eaten anything at all today, like he was just being stubborn. Catherine guessed he wouldn’t be hungry for a good while yet.

The study was a rectangular space tucked away behind a more modest door than any of the big public rooms: definitely Sir Angus’s personal hidey-hole, though still a good deal more grand than the average den. No dartboard, retro arcade games or pinball machines (and no need for a pool table when there was a slate-bed twelve-footer in a dedicated billiards room elsewhere in the castle). The only modern touch was a micro hi-fi system next to a stack of largely classical CDs. Other than that, his personal pleasures ran mostly to the literary. There were large walnut bookcases on two of the walls, and an antique writing desk tucked in a corner. The shelves were not lined with leather-bound reference tomes or collector’s editions, but well-thumbed and spine-broken volumes:
books read and re-read. Many of them, she noticed, were about theatre.

It looked like it ought to be cosy but Catherine felt cold, and there was a fusty smell about the place. There was only one tiny window in the room and just one little radiator which she guessed wasn’t switched on. It was probably warmer outdoors, where the sun was burning through the morning’s misty clouds. It made her think of the house where she grew up, her parents refusing to turn on the heating if the sun was in the sky, their decisions governed by the calendar rather than the thermostat. Sir Angus looked better dressed for it, swaddled in an ancient tweed jacket, its material so thick it probably bent the coat-hook if you hung it up wet.

Where the study’s walls were not lined with books they were decorated with framed photographs, again a sign of this being the laird’s retreat: these were mementos for personal regard, unlike the paintings adorning so many of the castle’s other interior walls. A cluster to Catherine’s left showed black-and-white images from plays: individuals captured in expressive postures that identified them as stage shots, as opposed to movie stills or family snaps. It took her a few seconds to realise that they all showed her host as a wiry adolescent, handsome and vivacious in youth, all limbs and energy.

A caption mentioned Oxford. It had been a long, long time ago.

Another row of far more recent frames bore colour images of Sir Angus posing with an assembled theatre cast, his tartan trews distinguishing him from their Shakespearean garb. Once she had scanned a few Catherine saw through the make-up and costumes to recognise that he was standing with largely the same people, the same cast, and in most he was grinning alongside the same non-performer: the one whose final act had been to pose for just such a photo the night before.

She wondered what was the connection that would make someone from the highest echelons of the arts come back over and over to watch some group of teuchter am-drams.

‘I gather he was your guest last night,’ she said, indicating one of the colour stills. She reckoned it a delicate way to broach the
subject: hark back to happier times, avoid mentioning the name too soon. ‘As opposed to the bank’s.’

He glanced across at the photos and visibly winced. Maybe not that delicate, then.

‘Yes,’ he managed, swallowing. ‘Partly, at least. He was my guest, but he was also the guest of the players, in acknowledgment of his efforts in keeping them funded over the years. Not so much patron as patron saint.’

‘So they’re a professional company?’

He looked at her for a moment as though she had asked him the question in a foreign language, or that he was baffled as to the relevance. She recognised the condition: he was baffled as to the relevance of
anything
, given the way his world had just been turned inside out. She was about to reiterate when he seemed to gather himself and managed to answer.

‘Ehm, no,’ he began distractedly, like he couldn’t believe he was talking about it, couldn’t believe he was talking about anything. Then he began to expand, as though finding unexpected solace in doing so. After that kind of shock Catherine had often seen people put themselves together again only very slowly, and sometimes it appeared as though they were surprised to discover each function that still worked. ‘More accomplished than your average amateur-dramatics society – mostly down to Eric and Veejay, I think – but not professionals.’

‘But presumably you pay them for their performances here?’

Again that look: ‘what the hell does this have to do with anything?’ and again as he answered he found something in the distraction.

‘I do, yes. Eight hundred pounds per show this year. That’s a lot more than when it all started, but given what it brings in I don’t quibble.’

‘Yes, I heard you charge five hundred pounds a head. Thirty-six seats minus you and your guest. That’s what, seventeen grand? Must help pay the bills.’

He nodded blankly, thoughts somewhere else again.

‘Cragruthes has been in my family for close to four hundred years,’ he said, his voice so quiet it seemed to be coming from far inside
him. ‘Posterity carries with it a burden of duty. A place like this can’t be preserved in aspic, but preserved it must be, so it has to pay for itself, which is not always easy. I inherited when I was just twenty-three, when my father died.’

He glanced at the black-and-whites with an apologetic sadness.

‘Managing an estate was a far cry from what I imagined myself doing, but when it comes to duty I appreciate I got off lighter than most. There have been a few ill-starred attempts to bring in revenue over the years, but you’ve got to try new things because you just never know what’s going to work. Or rather,
I
never know what’s going to work.’

He managed a self-deprecatory smile, but it only lasted a moment before being enveloped in sadness again.

Catherine looked away, giving him respite from her gaze, taking another scan of her surroundings. Up close everything looked a little tatty, care-worn and frayed at the edges. As he shifted in the armchair she caught another waft of fustiness and deduced that his jacket was the source of the smell. It probably cost a fortune twenty years ago, and may not have been dry-cleaned since. Surely he had others, though. Perhaps it was his favourite, a garment he wore for physical reassurance. He certainly looked in need of comfort.

‘They approached me with the idea for the moonlit plays back in 2003. Did you meet Veejay Khan and Eric Watt?’

Catherine had seen the still-shaken troupe of performers sitting together in one of the public rooms but hadn’t spoken to any of them individually or caught any names. There was an Indian-looking woman among them, but Catherine had thought Veejay was a male name.

‘Not yet, but I will. We’ll be speaking to everyone in time. Are they in charge of the company?’

‘In so far as anyone is in charge. They’re not terribly official about anything; that’s theatre for you. Eric cooks the books but Veejay is the one who whips the cast into shape. They came to me about ten years ago with the notion of staging
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in the grounds. They knew I was an enthusiast as I had come along to a few of their plays at the Ardnabruich village hall,
and I’d often caught further performances of the same pieces up in Fort William.

‘Of course, I thought it was a lovely idea. Initially they put on just the three shows for local audiences, plus a coachload one night from Fort William. But then towards the end of the same week, I had a corporate booking for what was supposed to be a seminar followed by dinner. I thought to myself, why don’t we have dinner and a play?’

He glanced towards the shots of him with the players, then closed his eyes and shook his head. Catherine could see what was going through his mind. He had loved the plays, and not just for the money, but evidently what he was contemplating was that had it never been set in motion, then what happened last night would never have come to pass. Or maybe he was wondering if he’d ever see such performances again.

Either way, it seemed an appropriate juncture to steer the conversation around to the subject of who was really to blame.

‘Sir Angus, as you may be aware, we have told the media that we have not ruled out the possibility that this was an accident.’