Strangers at the Gate Page 8

  Abby stepped in. ‘But perhaps we should let Lovatt decide what he tells Finnie and when.’ She gave me a brief smile. ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but if he hasn’t told Paddy maybe he doesn’t want—’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he’s decided to move on,’ said Julie. Her voice throbbed with empathy. ‘That would be wonderful. Imagine that, Finnie, if you and Paddy are the new start that lets poor Lovatt turn the corner at last and walk into a bright future.’

  I nodded. I knew I should be nosier about whatever the hell she meant, but the picture was back behind my eyes again: Lovatt on the floor with the knife sticking up out of the seam of his jacket and the black stain, like a butterfly, spreading out over his shoulders. New start. Bright future.

  ‘Well, I better be getting on,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you again, I’m sure. Weren’t we supposed to be having a bit of a thing on Friday? Or will you wait? Until.’ I took a breath. ‘The Dudgeons are back?’

  ‘No chance!’ said Julie. ‘They can’t troll off to a tropical paradise and expect us not to have a pie and a pint till they get back. Five o’clock on Friday, Finnie. Welcome to Simmerton. Ink it in. And forget what I said. Abby’s right. I’m not one to pass on tales, anyway.’

  The little flash in Abby’s eyes told me exactly how true that was. I made my goodbyes and went out, flicking a glance up the street while I got back into the car.

  I wasn’t due at work until nine o’clock the next morning, for a welcome and orientation session with the minister, the elders and the chair of the fundraising committee. The chair of the fundraising committee who had allegedly swanned off on a tropical holiday without warning. If Simmerton was like every other parish I’d ever known, the delight and disgust over all that extravagance would be impossible to contain. Not even a new deacon to impress could plug their mouths. So I didn’t need to wait for crumbs to fall from Julie’s table. I’d find out Lovatt’s sad story before the biscuits hit the tea tray.

  Unless … I thought, sitting with the engine running, staring up at the steps leading to the church door, where two toddlers were jumping about and two mums stood chatting and ignoring them. Unless the whole place was buzzing with it all today and they’d be finished by the time I got there, back to a united front again.

  I’d just have to risk that. There was no reason for me to go in early and I didn’t want that little kink in my behaviour to lodge in someone’s mind. Anyway, I wasn’t sure I could take any more questions right now. When my own colleagues asked if I’d ever met Tuft Dudgeon I needed to do a better job than I’d just managed for Paddy, so that when the bodies were found and people were picking over every detail, sucking every last shred of meat off the bones, the word wouldn’t be going round Simmerton that something was up with me.

  And something really was up with me. The two friendly women in the office, those two chatty mums at the church, even the two little girls running up the steps and jumping with their hair flying out behind them: everything was behind a kind of gauze that had fallen over my eyes. All I could see was Tuft’s face and Lovatt’s back. And all I could hear was the sound I imagined that drop of blood would have made if I’d crouched down close to listen.

  Chapter 10

  Paddy was deeply asleep when I got back to the gate lodge. His brow had smoothed, as far as I could tell above his mask, and the colour had come back to his cheeks and lips. I sat and watched him for a while, thinking, compiling a list of questions I needed to ask when he woke up. Had we gone up to Widdershins last night or not? Had I met Tuft Dudgeon? What time were the papers faxed through?

  Maybe nine o’clock was ‘late at night’ here in the sticks. Life was pretty different in every other way I could think of. Especially the silence. When he was laid out in the flat, I would happily get on with making dinner or watching telly in another room. The walls were thick and the doors were good solid Victorian pine. But it wasn’t that so much as the traffic, the neighbours’ feet on the stairs, the slam of the street door. Paddy would never know if a noise worming its way past his noise-cancellers was down to me. Now I was stranded, shushing around the rooms in my socks, slowly turning the pages of a book, scared even to fill the kettle for a cup of tea in case the noise of the pipes woke him.

  If there was something to do outside, I would happily have gone out and done it, even in the cheerless damp cold of this morning as it slid towards the murky afternoon.

  I lifted the latch on the kitchen door and opened it silently. I put my wellies down on the slabs outside and stepped into them, then pulled the door over behind me. I took a few imaginary puffs of a non-existent cigarette, watching my breath plume out, like smoke, and trying to remember the surge of nicotine that had flooded me when Tuft handed over her fag the night before. Then I cast an eye around the few feet of garden, wondering what it would take to turn this dank patch into something like the terrace up at the big house. They had light. All we had was the dim barcode of tree trunks all around. But I remembered a courtyard garden in Andalucía with coloured bottles and painted bells hung from ropes in the dark corners. I stepped over the spongy grass – maybe it was moss – and stepped up onto the start of the bank towards the closest tree. I tugged at one of the bottom twigs to see if it was strong enough to dangle a painted— It snapped off and I lost my footing, scuffing up the top layer of fallen needles. It let out a strong smell of mould, like mushrooms, as the dark rot underneath came to the surface. I stood back on the moss with the twig in my hand, staring at the churned mess of my footsteps and trying not to think the thoughts that were crashing around in my brain. Mould. Rot. Stink.

  I threw the twig onto the bank, but looking at it lying there just started another round. Dry. Brittle. Broken.

  So I picked it up again and went round the side of the house to where the bin sat waiting. We had filled it to the brim last night but there was room for a twig. Lifting the lid raised my spirits too. There was a rash of Babybel rinds and a crumpled sweetie wrapper shoved in on top of all our stuff. I imagined the skateboarder kids from the middle cottage putting them in there as they mooched along the lane on their way to school. Or maybe Mr Sloan had found litter in the verge and picked it up, tutting. Either way, it was a sign of life. I turned back with a smile on my face and saw Paddy, his eye mask pushed up, standing at the bedroom window, watching me.

  He opened the front door and wrapped his arms round me, kissing my neck.

  ‘Thank God you’re awake,’ I said. ‘I’ve been going kind of mental.’

  ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about. I can’t believe I sent you in there without telling you what to say. I didn’t tell them in the office that we’d been to dinner.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I managed not to say for definite one way or another, but I gave the impression I’d never met Tuft.’

  ‘Right, right,’ said Paddy.

  We were in the living room now. ‘I walked up there this morning and smooshed our footprints round that big puddle.’

  His eyes opened very wide. He really had got rid of the migraine. He’d never be able to do that if it was still hanging around him. ‘And I – don’t kill me for this – but I went up round the house and looked in the kitchen window. The little one above the sink? You can’t see them from there, but you know what you can see? That bloody cactus we took.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Paddy. ‘I bought it in the shop three doors down from the office. And they knew who I was. The girl behind the counter definitely did.’

  ‘Will she remember that in three weeks?’

  ‘Three weeks?’ Paddy whispered. He swallowed and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking: what three weeks would do to both of them, lying there.

  ‘I like your workmates,’ I said, trying for cheerful. ‘Julie’s a laugh and Abby seems nice.’ Too late, I realised saying that would put the thought of his other workmate – his partner – back into the middle of his brain.

  ‘I’ve been trying to think it all through,’ he
said.

  ‘Did you get anywhere?’

  ‘First, I thought the internet might have been down so the messages didn’t get through straight away. That would account for the “late” of “late last night”.’

  ‘So it would!’

  ‘But they’ve got fantastic WiFi. Julie told me. So then I started trying to work out if the Brazil trip is significant.’

  ‘Like how?’ I said.

  ‘Well, if one of them sprang it on the other and it started a fight.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ I said. ‘If – look, let’s say Lovatt, for the sake of argument – if he had mental-health issues or some kind of degenerative condition, right, Tuft would know not to spring things on him.’

  ‘Or if he booked the holiday in a manic phase, she’d know not to argue.’

  ‘But the Brazil trip can’t be real,’ I said. ‘We’re being stupid, Paddy. Brazil’s a blind. It’s to stop people checking up on them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe … in case they took a long time to die,’ I said.

  Paddy’s migraine hadn’t got better enough for him to deal with that. He was turning green again.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You think they planned to do that to themselves? To each other?’

  ‘Maybe they planned a more peaceful end,’ I said, ‘and one backed out. And that sparked the violence.’

  ‘They must have,’ Paddy said. ‘No one would – no one could – plan that death for themselves. Could they? And, anyway, why would they want to die at all?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be “they”,’ I said. ‘It only had to be one of them. And Julie in your office did hint at some trouble in Lovatt’s past. Abby shut it down pretty quickly but there’s something.’

  ‘But if you don’t know what it is,’ Paddy said, ‘it could be anything.’

  I nodded. ‘And it’s probably nothing. I just don’t know which version is more insane, that’s all. They went from lovey-dovey to bloodbath in minutes flat – no matter who started the stabbing. Or—’

  ‘They planned it, set me up as partner to keep the firm going, sent an email about a holiday and then—’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘What would the firm matter if they were going to be dead?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I wish to God I’d just phoned the police when we were standing up there in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘This is unbearable.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t left your bag behind you,’ Paddy said. ‘Or you’d just picked it up from the vestibule when we went back for it.’

  ‘I wish we’d said we were too busy to go for dinner last night,’ I said. ‘I wish I’d never met either of them.’

  ‘Do you wish we’d never come?’ said Paddy. ‘Never taken the jobs? Never moved to this gate lodge?’

  He sounded as if he was teasing me, mad as that would be. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course I wish that. Don’t you?’

  ‘So you still want to leave? After it all dies down?’

  ‘Of course,’ I repeated. ‘It’s insane to think we’ll weather this. Even if we don’t slip up and get done for not reporting it, it’s over, Paddy. Why can’t you see that?’

  Before he could answer, the landline rang out. It was too soon for junk calls, which meant it was either Paddy’s mum or my dad, ringing up to see how our first few days were going.

  ‘I can’t,’ Paddy said.

  So I stretched over and lifted the whole thing off the sofa table, setting it in my lap. For one horrible moment, because we’d been talking about their phone line, their WiFi, I was convinced it was Lovatt on the other end. I shook that madness out of my head, sent up a quick prayer – ‘God, give me strength’ – and lifted it.

  ‘Hiya!’ I sang out. ‘Lamb’s House of Flattened Boxes. How can I help you?’

  ‘If you’re finished unpacking, I might bob down for a visit.’ It was my dad. The sound of his voice made me want to sob. ‘Unless you’ve started painting, that is.’

  ‘Nah, you’re good.’ I managed to sound like my normal self somehow. ‘We won’t be doing any DIY yet awhile. We’re both in at the deep end at work.’

  ‘Bollocks you are!’ My dad’s voice pealed out with a deep chuckle behind it. ‘You’ve landed a couple of cushy numbers down there, girl. Don’t try coming the busy-busy with your mam and me any more.’

  ‘Shows what you know,’ I said. ‘Paddy’s partner’s only buggered off on holiday for three weeks as soon as the ink’s dry on his—’ Paddy was making frantic hand signals. I frowned at him and turned away. ‘How is Mam?’

  The sigh whistled down the line. ‘Eh, she’s sleeping a bit better. A run down to Simmerton would do her a power, Finnie.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the smoking seats all set up in the garden. Solid teak with cushions. Saturday or Sunday. Take your pick.’ Paddy was semaphoring ‘No’ at me. I turned further away.

  ‘Sunday?’ said my dad. ‘You can’t take Sunday off when you’re still on the old one-day week, girl.’

  ‘Call it Saturday, then,’ I said. ‘Come down for lunch.’

  He cackled. He would never get used to me calling dinner ‘lunch’, like he’d never get used to me kicking the Pope in the nuts.

  ‘Finnie, you’ve got to be joking,’ Paddy said, when I’d put the phone down and rested my head against the back of the couch to calm my breathing. Performing for my dad had nearly done for me. I felt sick and faint again. ‘Your parents? What if they find the bodies while your mum’s here? It would wreck her for weeks.’

  ‘Dad says she’s been better. Sleeping well.’ It was the insomnia that set her off on the wrong path again every time. She’d stay up on the internet and read things she shouldn’t be reading. Then she’d be skipping pills. Then the writing started. Notebooks full of tiny scribbled lines. Then hospital. And then, eventually, it started all over again. ‘Anyway,’ I went on, ‘if we’re sitting tight until someone finds the bodies we need to do what we would do. That’s what we would do. In fact…’ I lifted the handset again.

  ‘Finnie, no!’

  ‘Elayne?’ I said. She had answered after one ring as usual. ‘How are you fixed this weekend? We were wondering if you wanted to come down for a little house-warmer. Just family. Saturday lunch?’

  ‘What does Paddy say?’ Elayne asked.

  I knew she would. ‘She wants to clear it with you,’ I said, handing the phone over. Then I went into the kitchen to splash my face with cold water.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about buses,’ Paddy was saying. ‘Eric and Mary are coming right past your door. They’ll pick you up … They know that, Mum. They don’t mind you sitting in the front seat. Mary’s fine in the back. You’re the only one that thinks that’s a real thing.’ There was a pause. ‘We wouldn’t have asked you if we didn’t want you. We want to show you the house. And the office.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And the church.’

  I was becalmed at the sink now, thinking. Elayne didn’t actually go to church. But what Paddy had called ‘fear’ of my job had always come off like resentment. As if I’d laid claim to something I didn’t deserve and made her look bad while I was at it. Because Elayne Lamb, abandoned wife, loving mother, beautiful knitter, sitting there in her neat little semi in her neat little suburb, was much more the sort of woman you’d expect to be ‘churchy’ than Finnie Lamb from the big flats, with her funny mum and her unemployed dad. Except it was a mum and a dad, still married. And somehow Elayne managed to resent that too.

  ‘They don’t smoke in the car,’ Paddy was saying. ‘No, I’m not coming up and driving back down again when Eric’s going right past. Or the bus. It’s up to you.’

  I went back through and clicked my fingers at Paddy, asking for the phone.

  ‘Elayne?’ I said. ‘Please come. If you’re not busy. It won’t feel like we’ve properly moved in till you’ve seen us here. I mean, my dad’s great, but you know how my mum is and I want another woman to look at my cu
pboard space and that.’

  She was silent.

  ‘And I haven’t got a bloody clue about the garden! We need a guiding hand there.’

  ‘What a nice person you are,’ Paddy said, when I had hung up. ‘Have I told you that today?’

  ‘I haven’t deserved it today,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for sniping.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘And don’t worry about my mum. They won’t find the bodies on a Saturday. It’ll be a cleaner or an ironing lady when it happens. It’ll be a weekday.’

  That night, I dreamed it. Me in an overall with a big mop bucket on wheels, trundling it up the potholed drive, in at that round red porch, like a mouth, and through the vestibule door. Only I couldn’t hold the mop-handle because it was a knife, so I shoved it, my shoulder against the flat of the blade, whimpering as I felt it cut into the seam of my overall arm, bisecting it, the dark stain spreading. As I curled my fingers around it to pull it free, at last I woke.

  Wednesday

  Chapter 11

  To look at, Simmerton Parish Church was pretty typical early Victorian. Short steeple, double doors, stained glass. There’s one in every town, left over from when the Church of Scotland was the biggest cheese around. Back in those days, the only competition was some wee St Joe’s or Our Lady, half the size and none of the swagger. These days, Joe and Mary are doing fine, Muhammad too, peace be upon Him, and all those Protestant churches are feeling the chill. They hang on as places of worship in towns like this, or get turned into climbing gyms where gentrification sweeps through, carpet shops where it doesn’t.

  Sometime in the seventies, at a guess, Simmerton had bought up the plot next door and added an ugly brick hall. Then, within the last decade from the look of it, they had bought the plot on the other side and built a glass and steel extension for a charity shop and café.

  When I came down for my interview the place had been deserted, shop and café closed, hall empty. Too late for Brownies and too early for AA. But it was humming with life this morning. It soothed me. I could hear voices in the vestry, the familiar sound of the minister talking someone down from misery or outrage. Music seeped out from the hall, loud and simple, made for babies to clap-a-handies to. And, in the café, there was my rich seam, at the table nearest the service area, with folders open and sheets of notebook paper ripped out and crumpled up. There was no mistaking a church committee. It was so ordinary and so familiar ‒ so much part of life where things make sense and elderly devoted couples don’t hack each other to shreds with knives ‒ that my throat ached with swallowed howls.