The Child Garden Page 6

“Since 1995.”

  “First of May, 1995. The tenth anniversary of the night Moped died. Gloria, what the fuck’s going on?”

  I took a deep breath to answer, but I had no idea what to say.

  “Let me sleep on it,” I went for in the end. “It might look different in the morning.”

  Then I went to the bathroom to undress for bed. I peed, washed my face, and undid my hair to brush it, but as the cistern finished filling and quieted, I thought I heard something. Yes! There was a car bumping along the track. I switched off the bathroom light and crept through the hall in the darkness just in time to hear two car doors.

  “Glo!” Stig’s voice, a fierce whisper, came from upstairs.

  “Ssh,” I whispered back.

  “Be careful!” He probably meant don’t open up in case it’s a madman. But I had heard the radios and I knew I had to be careful in very different way. I didn’t understand. Had they traced the call? Had someone seen me?

  The knock, when it came, was loud enough to set my heart hammering, but they probably meant it to wake someone sleeping upstairs. I clicked on the porch light and opened the door. Policemen don’t like to look surprised, but their eyes were wide and one of them moved his feet.

  “I heard you coming,” I said. “Is it Nicky?”

  “Mrs. Morrison?” said one of them. The rain was dripping off the peak of his hat.

  “Harkness,” I said. “I went back to my maiden name. Is it Nicky? Is something wrong?”

  “Can we come in, Ms. Harkness?”

  My mind flashed to the kitchen. The two chairs by the stove, Stig’s clothes drying on the pulley, April’s bag wherever he had left it.

  “Of course,” I said, “but please, I’m begging you, tell me what’s wrong.” I ushered them in and steered them to the right, along the hall to the living room, cold as the grave, the fire full of ash from last weekend. They didn’t sit and neither did I. We just stood there in a ring, our breath pluming.

  “We’ve had a report of suspicious behaviour,” said the one who hadn’t spoken before. My stomach dropped and then bounced back up all the way to my throat.

  “Have you been out tonight?” said the other.

  “I went to see my son, at the home,” I said. “Is it nothing to do with Nicky, then?” How could someone have seen my car? There wasn’t a single house between me and the huttie the way we had gone. There hadn’t been a single set of headlights either. And the road to the Shawhead phone box was deserted too. Who had seen me?

  “A red Skoda,” said the older of the two policemen. Stig’s car, in the byre now with the door padlocked. “Did you see a vehicle answering that description?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “There were cars parked at the home—the backshift staff, you know—but I don’t think I saw a red Skoda. I can’t be sure, I kept my head down. This weather, you know. Should I be worried?”

  “The driver’s not a very pleasant chap, Ms. Harkness. Given to stalking. We had a report that he was prowling these back roads tonight. Scared a young woman enough that she called us.”

  “When?” I said. “Now? He’s out there now? Did you tell them up at the home? There’s a lot of vulnerable people there. My son, Nicky, and lots of others.”

  “We’ve just come from the home,” said the older cop. The young one had lost interest. He was rubbing his hands together, blowing on them, ready to be away from this cold house and this hysterical old bag who kept on about her son. I could tell what he thought from the way he had stopped looking at me.

  “Probably long gone,” said the other one. “The call came in at eight.”

  “And you waited until now?” I said, after only a second’s pause. “Too bad if he was here. He’s had three hours to chop me into pieces and drive away again.”

  They didn’t like that, but they were too well-trained to show it much.

  “He’s only accused of prowling. So far.”

  “Well, I didn’t see him or his car,” I told them.

  “And so we’ll leave you to get on with your evening,” said the copper.

  The young one looked at me again now, my face shiny with cream and my feet in my yeti slippers that should be white but pick up all the dust going and Walter Scott’s hair too and have always got a border of grey around the bottom.

  I shut the door behind them and bolted it.

  “—uck’s sake,” I heard the younger one say as they splashed back to their car. “She’s as bad as the freak show up at the loony bin.”

  I waited for his boss to scold him, but all I heard was a snort of laughter, so I clicked off the porch light. Let them find the rest of their way in the dark.

  We waited, me in the hall and Stig up on the landing, until the sound of the car had faded into the hissing rain. Then I switched the light on and went up.

  “Did you hear that?” I said.

  “Every word,” said Stig. He breathed in and out very fast four times and rubbed his face hard with the palms of his hands. “I didn’t stalk April Cowan,” he said. “That was a pack of lies. I can show you my phone and her phone and the call history. Jesus fucking Christ.” He had started pacing up and down the hall, in and out of the bedroom. I’d never seen anyone pace before. “She really had it in for me.”

  “No sugar, Sherlock,” I said.

  “Jesus, Glo, if they had come right up here as soon as they got the call they’d have found us parked up in the lane and mucking about in the huttie.” Then he fell silent, stopped pacing, and stared.

  “Yes,” I said. “Well spotted. April Cowan wasn’t on the road at eight. She was bled out and stone cold by nine. Telling the cops you were chasing her was just about the last thing she did. She must have called them right before she—” I stopped, frowning.

  “Yeah,” said Stig. “We’ve got her phone.”

  But I thought of a way to explain that. “We’ve got a phone.”

  “But you said there was no signal.”

  “Maybe the huttie’s a hotspot.” It was all I had, but it didn’t seem likely.

  Stig thought it over. “Do you think they’ll come back when they get radioed through about the body?”

  “They won’t get radioed,” I said. “I didn’t tell them. I hung up. Thank God, as it turned out.”

  “Why not?” said Stig. “Why thank God?” He was watching me very carefully.

  “Because it suddenly occurred to me that if she tried to get you to the huttie and she planted her bag at your flat, what do you think she’s left behind at her place? I bet if there’s a suicide note, your name’ll be mentioned.”

  His face, I was sure of it, turned pale. “But we’ve got to tell them, Glo. We can’t just leave her there.”

  I shook my head. “We’ve got to help April, that’s true. But we don’t need to tell them anything. They are not good people.”

  I was rummaging in the deep bottom drawer of the dressing table in the spare room.

  “What are you doing?”

  I hadn’t taken down the little eyes from either side of all the windows and I had kept the elastic wires coiled up in a drawer. The net curtains themselves I had dipped in Glo-white, just like my mum did, and then folded them away when they were dry.

  “And how do you know they’re worse people than me? Why did you cover for me when they said I stalked her?”

  “I asked them five times if Nicky was all right,” I said. “Five times. You heard me.”

  Eight

  Tuesday

  It was strange the next morning, waking up with the windows muffled in net, like being inside a cocoon that turned the weak wintry daylight drab and grey. I missed the sight of the hill from my bedroom when I opened my eyes and the view of the garden laid out like a tapestry as I passed the landing window. Stig opened his door when I got to the top of the stairs.

 
“I’ve been awake for hours,” he said. “Nod and April. I can’t believe it.” He shivered.

  “Let’s get into the warm,” I said, and together we hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The cats were out, must have disappeared off through the flap as soon as the rain stopped, but Walter Scott was there, standing with his nose practically against the back door, waiting. I opened the door and he plodded down the steps to the yard and squatted.

  “Oh great, Walter,” I said. “Lovely.” When I first came he used to burst out of the back door like a whippet and race twice round before he could even stop long enough to sniff. Then he’d mark every downpipe and doorjamb all over the farmyard and bucket off across the field to do his business somewhere far off down the hill. I hadn’t had to put my hand in one of those bags and scrape up his mess until just earlier this year. “What if I get germs from this and give them to Nicky?” I had asked, turning the bag inside out and tying it. “Nicky can’t fight infection like you and me, you know. One morning bundle of yours could carry him off. Think I’d stick around here cleaning up after you if I didn’t need to be close by?” Walter Scott had just leaned against my legs and looked up at me, sneezing and snuffling that way he does when he’s trying to say I love you. “Yes, I love you too,” I’d told him. “And yes, I’d stay.”

  “I’ll get that,” said Stig behind me. “Where’s the bags?”

  “I’ve been thinking, Glo,” he said, when he was back inside and had scrubbed his hands and then warmed them on the Rayburn. His voice had that defeated sound again, so I cut him off.

  “I’ve been thinking too. Tonight, after work, I’m going to go back to the huttie and check that she’s got no ID on her anywhere. That’ll buy time. And then tomorrow—”

  “You can’t be serious,” he said. “You’re going to go back and rummage around in her pockets.” His face was so white that his stubble stood out like iron filings on his cheeks. Then he shook his head. “Gloria, you’re doing it again,” he said. “This isn’t one of your books. This is the real world. Large as life. Plain as day.”

  I get sick of the way people patronise me. I don’t know what it is about me, but everywhere I go people pat me on the head and chuck me under the chin. Not literally, but everyone from my mother and my sister if they’re in the right mood, to Lynne at work and people in the village. They’re kind to me, patient with me, like they’ve got to be kind and patient to poor Gloria. The only place it doesn’t happen is the home. There I’m Nicky’s mum and Miss Drumm’s friend and I fit right in. Deirdre’s mum and I can have a nice chat like two women at the school gate, and for once no one’s pitying either of us.

  Stig must have wondered why I sounded so angry when I answered him, because what he’d said was pretty mild. But it was the last move in a long game. This isn’t one of your books, Gloria. That’s a lovely cardi, Gloria. How’s that handsome son of yours? I slammed the microwave door and turned to face him.

  “I’m not a fool, Stig,” I said. “I’m being completely realistic, and books are nothing to do with it. Tonight I check her body and tomorrow I go to her house or flat or whatever and get rid of anything there that could harm you.”

  “You can’t,” he said. “I don’t know where she lives. I looked through her stuff and there’s no address anywhere.”

  “Which is odd, right?” I said. “Where’s her driving licence? Why isn’t it in her purse where it should be?”

  “Maybe she hasn’t got one. Maybe she doesn’t drive.”

  “But how else would she get way out here?” I said. “The buses—” The thought hit both of us at the same time, but it was Stig who spoke.

  “Where’s her car? I know there’s no buses, practically. A taxi?”

  “Pretty memorable, once someone reports her missing,” I said. “I need to check her pockets and her flat.”

  “We don’t know her address, remember?” said Stig. “We’re stuffed.”

  “No, we’re not,” I said. “Because you told me she was divorced. Married and divorced? Her address’ll be in the system. On the FER. Forward Electronic Register,” I added before he asked me.

  “You can just look everything up from your office?”

  “Everyone can,” I said. “Birth, marriage, divorce, and death. The FER is public record. Only, the public have to log in and it leaves a trace. And anyone looking up April Cowan’s address today would be really interesting to the cops, wouldn’t they? But I can look things up and no one will ever know.”

  “Birth, marriage … ” he said. It had dawned on him.

  “Exactly. If Nathan McAllister really committed suicide in 1995, I’ll find the record. Meanwhile,” I said, popping open the microwave door, “I want you to write down everything you can remember about that night and everything before it and after it. Anything at all. Just like remembering April had crimped hair and bad acne. Anything you can get out of your brain. Write it down. Okay? Any questions?”

  “Just one. Are you going near any shops today?”

  “I could do,” I said. “But only in the village, so don’t ask me for men’s things.”

  “Pinhead oatmeal and full-fat milk,” said Stig. “And real salt instead of this crap. Why do you make quick oats in a nuker when you’ve got a Rayburn stove?”

  I poured the porridge into two bowls and banged them down on the table beside the semi-skimmed milk and Lo-Salt.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Ungrateful.”

  “I’ll be back at about ten past five,” I told him, “and then out again to the home and when I’m back for keeps, we can discuss everything.”

  “Sorry,” he said again. “Do you usually stop in here first? Because if not, then don’t. You should stick to your usual routine.”

  “I don’t want to leave you that long,” I said. “I’ll blame Walter. Say he needs checking in on. He nearly does anyway.”

  Stig stirred his spoon round staring into his bowl. “It doesn’t feel real,” he said. “It’s like we’re at one of those parties where you get a card: murderer, victim, detective.”

  “Detective,” I said. “And listen, speaking of routines, what’s going to happen when you don’t show up for your work?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “They’ll change the combination on my locker and have someone else in by next week. Won’t be the first time.”

  I wondered then. That didn’t sound like the sort of job BJ Tarrant’s son would have. They were business people, the Tarrants. Bought adverts in gala programmes and donated prizes to raffles. Flash Harry, my mum said, and that leg of mutton he’s married to. I thought Stig would be the boss, unsackable.

  “You’ve not had it easy, have you?”

  He said nothing, just turned away from me and went to stand at the front kitchen window now, resting his head against the net curtain, staring out. “There’s plenty had it worse,” he said. “But honestly, I don’t think I’m up to this. April dead and trying to take me down as she goes? Why? Why did Nod kill himself ? Why did she have his obituary with her? There’s too much and it’s too complicated.” His breathing was starting to sound panicky again, like the night before when he was pacing.

  I didn’t tell him to slow it down, but I breathed slowly myself, hoping he would follow. Modelling. I learned it in the conflict resolution bit of my induction training. All registrars get it, I think, but you only need it in big cities where weddings can get raucous and when there’s two lads wanting on the birth certificate and a girl that won’t give a glance to either. That doesn’t happen very much in a place like Dalry.

  “What’s that thing?” said Stig, still with his head against the window.

  I knew what he was talking about, of course. It’s hidden from the lane and the gate and the path. The only view of it is from the kitchen.

  “That’s the only possible problem with you lying low,” I said. I joined him and looked out at it. Six feet
tall, six feet round, mossy and lichened on its shady side and bleached pale grey where the sun hit it, it sat basking in the dawn, enjoying the dew rising from it for the day. “That’s the Stone of Milharay. It’s the reason I’m here. Well, that and Walter.”

  “But what is it?” said Stig.

  “Come and see,” I said. “What size are your feet? You can jam on my crocs and shuffle out there.”

  It was cold, of course, but with that fresh, keen wind that makes me think of hares streaking across the fields, so different from the bellowing storm last night. Over by the stone we could hear the wind whistling.

  “It’s a rocking stone,” I said. “Push it. Gently!”

  He set one hand against its shady side and pressed. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa!” he said, jumping back. “That felt really weird.”

  “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t pass health and safety.”

  “It felt like it was going to roll on top of me,” he said, putting his fingertips against it again.

  “It doesn’t matter where you push, it always does that.”

  “Why would you ever push it?”

  “Old wives’ tales,” I said. “Twelve pushes for luck.”

  Even more gently, he rocked it again, not even hard enough to whiten the skin around his fingernails. He was so restrained—not like my brother-in-law shoving it with the side of his arm as if he was trying to break down a door and then just laughing when it threatened to topple.

  “I’d have been homeless,” I’d screamed at him. “And thousands of years of history gone because you’re such a He-Man.”

  “Who says He-Man?” Scott sneered. “You’re a throwback, Gloria.”

  “Fishwife, more like,” said my sister. “Don’t screech like that. You’ll upset the baby.” She rubbed her stomach that way she was always doing.

  “What about my baby?” I’d roared at her. I knew I shouldn’t be raising my voice, but their visit had made me scared of what they were up to, why all of a sudden they wanted to be coming to see me. “Eh?” I demanded. “What about how upset Nicky would be if I didn’t live here any more and couldn’t get to see him every day?”