Evil for Evil (9 page)

For a moment Christie paused. She’d rather stay awake all night than sit with Lissa at the kitchen table – but maybe she was going to the sitting room or something, and Christie could sneak past unseen. She was getting fixated on the idea of tea now, and the Hobnobs were calling her.

She opened the door again and tiptoed across the landing to look over the banisters. She could hear the wheezy ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall below, and also stealthy footsteps padding down the stairs.

But it wasn’t Lissa. It was Kerr Brodie in his dressing gown, and he’d come from Lissa’s room.

Stifling a gasp of shock, Christie shrank back hastily in case he should feel her eyes upon him. She was a little afraid of him already and he’d take it badly. She retreated, waiting until she could be sure he was out of earshot before she risked closing her door.

What the hell was going on? Did Matt know about this? And if he did, did he care?

She went back to her seat, oblivious to the stars and the night sounds, struggling with this unwelcome knowledge. She felt protective anger thinking of Matt being hurt, Matt who was the soul of honour and decency in her eyes. Lissa was his wife, after all; sure, their relationship was rocky, but that didn’t give Kerr the right to take advantage. What a bastard! Matt had given him a job, a life, even, and this was his repayment. She’d always been wary of Kerr – not wrong there!

But maybe Matt knew. She’d heard of open marriages, of course, though she always wondered how you dealt with possessiveness and jealousy. She was damn sure she couldn’t do it.

Either way, it changed things. If Matt accepted it, he was free to enjoy sauce for the gander. And if he didn’t, he’d suffer less if there was someone to hold his hand when he found out. Her, for example.

She thought about it as she walked back after her awkward meeting with Andy. Actually, she’d been thinking about it all day. She’d rather not have known, and facing Kerr over breakfast hadn’t been easy, especially when Lissa came in.

‘Sleep well?’ he’d asked her.

‘Very well, by my standards,’ Lissa had said, giving him that faint, weary smile that always made Christie want to slap her.

So Christie had no scruples. She’d worked out her strategy; now she only needed campaign tactics that wouldn’t utterly humiliate her if Matt wasn’t interested.

Take it gently, she decided. First objective – get him along to the
pub, where they could get to know each other better over a beer or two. Lissa wouldn’t come and if Kerr came he’d get talking to the locals as he always did.

Yes, that was it – a series of small strategic objectives. Not tonight – Andy would still be around tonight, and that could scupper her plans. Tomorrow night, then. Her stomach gave a little nervous jump at the thought.

Catriona Fleming looked round the bleak double room. The furniture – two beds, two wardrobes, two desks, two chests of drawers, two chairs with sagging webbing and wooden arms – was way past its best and the walls, an indeterminate shade of grey, were daubed with abandoned Blu-tack, the surface lifted in places by illicit Sellotape. Her room-mate hadn’t arrived yet – just as well, since all the floor space was taken up by Cat’s belongings, dumped by her father and brother before they left.

She’d a hollow feeling inside, thinking of her comfortable room at home, of her family, irritating but always there when she needed them – but she mustn’t start feeling homesick already! She’d been counting the days to the start of Life with a capital
L
. She was nervous about the room-mate, but then Cat got along with most people OK.

She was disappointed Will wasn’t here to meet her. She’d texted him, but his hours at the hospital were so irregular, he could be sleeping. His phone had been off the last couple of days.

Without much hope Cat phoned him and her spirits soared when his voice, not his voicemail, answered.

‘Will!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m here, at the residence. Where are you? Can you come round?’

‘Hi, Cat,’ he said. ‘Right, right. Er … tell you what, I’ll be there in twenty minutes. OK?’

‘Brilliant. See you.’

With renewed vigour, Cat set about unpacking, shoving everything into the wardrobe to be sorted out later. The older residence was a lot cheaper than the newer, smarter ones, and once she’d a few posters up and her own things round her, the room would be fine. It just needed TLC, and indeed was looking better already with the floor cleared and the bed made up.

She was spreading a brightly coloured rug over it when Will’s knock came at the door. She flung it open.

‘Ta-ra! Get me – Catriona Fleming, real, genuine student! At last!’ She flung herself into his arms, holding up her face to be kissed.

Will fielded her awkwardly, planting a kiss somewhere near her mouth, then moved her aside to survey the room.

‘God! A bit dismal, isn’t it?’

Feeling deflated, Cat shut the door. ‘It’ll be fine once I’m settled in.’ She linked her arm through his. ‘Now, Will Irvine, there’s work to be done. That case has to go on top of the wardrobe—’

‘Cat, we need to talk,’ he said, and something in his look and voice turned her heart to stone.

She sat down on the bed abruptly, and listened while he told her about the other medical student who had been working at the hospital with him. She listened in silence, afraid that if she opened her mouth she might start screaming, or be sick, or something equally humiliating.

Will, her lovely Will, was saying, ‘We’ve always been straight with each other and I knew you’d prefer not to get stuff like, you know, “I think we need a bit of space.” Then you’d hear about Elaine and it would be worse that I hadn’t told you face-to-face …’

He seemed to be patting himself on the back for heroism. ‘Oh, you think?’ Cat muttered. Her throat felt so tight she could hardly get the words out and her lips were oddly numb.

Will looked sheepish. ‘Well, it was just a boy-girl thing, Cat. You can’t have expected it to last.’

A boy-girl thing?
This from Will, the love of her life, who had always talked about ‘for ever’? She found her voice.

‘Get out! Get out right now. I never want to see you or speak to you again.’ She jumped up and seized her mobile from the desk with trembling hands. ‘See? There’s your number – I’ve deleted it. If you phone me, I won’t answer. I’m deleting you from my life as well.’ She flung the phone down on the bed.

It was a good line. She was rather proud of it, as Will, murmuring some crap about having hoped they could be friends, departed.

‘Good riddance!’ she shouted down the corridor after him, and slammed the door. But then the tears came.

Ten minutes later, Cat was still crying. Her nose was blocked, her eyes were swollen and her chest was aching as if her heart, indeed, had broken. And there was no one to go to for comfort. Will had been her only friend in Glasgow, and now she had no one at all. She had never felt so lonely, so utterly wretched. She wanted her mother.

Mum had always been great when bad things happened – when Jenny had said she didn’t want to be best friends any more, when the boy she really, really fancied in Year Ten told her he didn’t fancy her because she had spots. Mum could make you see it wasn’t the end of the world, and then she’d say something acidly funny about them that made you laugh. She badly needed a laugh at the moment. Cat reached for her mobile again.

But what was the point? Mum was in the middle of a murder inquiry and that took precedence over everything – like Cammie almost crippling himself that time or her daughter feeling suicidal now.

She didn’t, quite, of course. Cat wasn’t about to give Will Irvine
the satisfaction of knowing how he’d hurt her. And it did hurt – how it hurt! She flung herself down on the bed and buried her face in the pillow.

When the door opened, Cat sat up, blinking and sniffing. The girl in the doorway was very skinny, all in black with her face so pale that her eyes, dramatic with jet-black eyeliner and mascara and iridescent eyeshadow, looked like dark holes above her purple mouth. There was a stud in her nose and half a dozen metal rings down one ear, and another through her brow. She was trailing a huge black canvas bag on wheels, which she parked beside the other bed, and looked in some surprise at her room-mate.

‘Got a problem?’

Licking her dry lips, Cat said, ‘I’ve just been dumped.’ Forming the words for the first time made her feel worse and the tears started again.

‘Bummer,’ her Goth companion said, not unkindly. ‘Boy next door?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Better without him.’ She was looking round the room. ‘Jeez, what a hellhole. Still, don’t plan on hanging out here much.’

There was something bracing about such breezy indifference. Cat found a tissue and blew her nose hard. ‘I’m Catriona Fleming – Cat,’ she said.

‘Lily.’ She sketched a salute with one finger. She kicked at her bag. ‘This can wait. Fancy checking out the scene?’

Cat put a hand to her blubbered face. ‘Not sure I’m up to it.’

Lily gave her a long look then went to the wash-hand basin in one corner of the room and ran it full of cold water. ‘Stick your head in that. And then I’ve got something that’ll make you feel better.’

Cat did as she was told, but said hesitantly, ‘I-I don’t do drugs.’ Will had been really against them, and as for Mum …!

‘This isn’t “drugs”.’ Lily sketched quotation marks. ‘Strictly legal. Bubbles, it’s called. Or miaow-miaow. Give you a bit of a lift.’

Cat, lifting a dripping face and groping in a drawer for a towel, was under no illusions. But what did she care now what Will thought? Or Mum, for that matter. Doing something Mum would disapprove of was a sort of revenge.

Cat drew a deep breath. ‘OK, Lily, I’m cool with that.’

It was six o’clock by the time DI Fleming had detailed uniforms to start on house-to-house enquiries and liaised with teams arriving. The pathologist, muttering about work conditions, had performed the official bit and the photographer, also muttering, had done what he could from a bobbing boat. The scene-of-crime officers were out there now doing what was possible at the cave before it got dark, trying to get the remains removed by tonight if the tide allowed. She could only hope they’d better sea legs than Tam.

She’d given a statement to the media, warning them that little would emerge over the next few days, but she knew they’d be hopefully trailing her officers round the houses – if they could tear themselves away from the Smugglers Inn, now doing a roaring trade.

There wasn’t anything else for Fleming to do here, but there would be plenty back at the headquarters in Kirkluce, and the sooner she got there the sooner it would be done. She headed back to the car.

She’d thought about Cat on and off all day, and before Fleming drove off she took out her mobile to give her a call – luckily there was a signal here. There was no answer so she left an affectionate message on voicemail. Out on the town, doubtless. She smiled as she thought, with just a touch of envy, of Cat and Will, celebrating the first night of Cat’s student career.

If she’d been more sensible herself when she was young, she’d have gone to university too, and it was a permanent regret that she hadn’t. Lucky, lucky Cat!

She hadn’t realised how tough it would be, how difficult even on a physical level. In her hired Peugeot, on the roughly gravelled parking area outside the hired chalet, Elena Tindall sat wondering if her body would obey her when she tried to get out of the car. She was taking shallow breaths, her chest hurt and her legs felt weak and useless.

She didn’t have to do this. There was nothing to stop her turning the car and heading off to a decent hotel, then going back to an ecstatic welcome from Eddie tomorrow. She must be mad, not just to accept his generous love and the life he offered her and be grateful.

But Elena was going mad anyway, silently but steadily, more and more trapped in the prison of her past, spiralling slowly down until one day she would take the little silver penknife and slit her wrists in earnest. So what was a risk fraught with danger – more, even, than she had thought there would be – when set against a certainty?

She was panicking, hyperventilating. Elena put her face in her cupped hands, breathing steadily until her heartbeat slowed. When she opened the car door the air was unexpectedly still and warm, almost oppressive; it felt somehow unhealthy, like a lusciously ripe fruit on the point of rotting. She told herself not to be fanciful as she steadied herself against the car until she was sure her legs wouldn’t buckle.

The chalet was one of perhaps twenty or thirty, set in the hillside up behind Innellan and straggling along the curve of the bay. Wooden structures weathered to silver-grey, they had picture windows looking out over Fleet Bay and the islands, and on this golden evening, as light slowly drained from the sky, the view was incomparable. Elena did not turn to admire it.

She brought in her bags from the car and looked disparagingly around her. This was IKEA-chic, she supposed – family-friendly accommodation, clean and well maintained, but hardly what she was used to. But then, once upon a time having a place like this all to herself would have seemed like paradise.

She had driven from Salford without a meal stop and she was hungry and tired and grubby. What she needed first was a hot shower, letting the force of the water wash away the stresses of the day. Without unpacking, she went through to the spartan bathroom.

The shower was hot, admittedly, but a feeble apology compared with the power showers she took for granted now, and the towels provided had synthetics in with the cotton which made them slippery and too soft instead of absorbent.

How quickly luxury became essential! Damp and irritable, Elena dressed again and went through to the kitchen.

It was fairly basic, but she wasn’t planning on cooking much; for tonight at least she had food she’d bought in Waitrose before she left. It was soothing to have prosciutto crudo, manzanilla olives and good bread with Normandy butter to set on the clumsy white plates.