6 The Queen of Scots Mystery (18 page)

Chapter 30
Up, up and away

Neil shifted uneasily in his hospital bed. His hand was starting to twinge again, feeling raw as he supposed it still was. They had talked about skin grafts but apparently it was too early to do anything like that. He didn't look forward to a long string of hospital visits. That hadn't been part of the plan.

Someone knocked on the door of his room. Why had he been given his own room? No wonder there was over-spending in the NHS. He hope they weren't going to present him with a huge bill at the end of his stay. That hadn't been part of the plan either.

'Hello,' said Jackie, putting her head in first as if she was afraid to bring herself fully into the room until she had assessed the state of his health - or temper - from a safe distance.

'He grunted. 'What are you doing here? Did anybody see you? It isn’t visiting time yet.'

'Course not,' she said, and came right in. 'I'm sorry about this.' Her gesture took in the bed, his hand in its layer of bandages, the whole room, the hospital.

'So you should be. This wasn't part of the deal.'

'I know. But they were following us. I had to do something.'

'It didn't have to be as drastic as that. I could be scarred for life.'

'Isn't it worth it? To be able to get away from here and make a new start?'

New start! Neil often forgot how young she was; if she had seen all the things he had seen in his life, she wouldn't be dreaming about a new start. There was no such thing. But this wasn't the time to disillusion her. Neil was a strong believer in people finding things out for themselves. He knew they wouldn't take any notice otherwise. Just as he hadn't taken any notice at school for all these years. It was only getting out into the real world and making mistakes that had taught him.

Perhaps sensing they had nothing to say to each other, s
he moved around the room, looking at the water-jug, the chart at the end of the bed, looking out the window at the blank concrete wall that was his only view. It was early days for him to be getting flowers and get-well cards, he reflected, and she certainly hadn't brought any with her.

'Does Jock McLean know I'm in here?'

She shrugged. 'Should he?'

'I was staying with him - he could be worried if I don't come back.' Surely that wasn't his conscience nagging at him? This was an unfamiliar feeling for Neil. But it was more likely a reaction to the food in the hospital. Even the tea they brought with monotonous regularity didn't taste of anything.

‘They’ll be coming after me soon,’ said Jackie, still staring at the concrete wall. ‘I’m sure she knew it was me.’

‘Who knew it was you?
Was it Amaryllis Peebles?’

‘Is that her name?’

‘Haven’t you learned anything from hanging about the pub in the evenings?’

‘I suppose it was her.’

‘You should have been more careful. She’s a spy. She was always going to find out what you were up to.’

‘I was careful,’ said Jackie. ‘I don’t know why she suddenly turned up in the yard like that.’

He sighed. ‘She’d have been following you for hours. She does things like that for fun, you know. Just to keep her skills up to date.’

‘She’s mad,’ said Jackie. She turned away from the window and glared at him. ‘How are we going to get away to Spain now?’

‘I’ll get away as soon as they let me out of here,’ said Neil. ‘It’s up to you what you do next.’

‘Up to me? But – we’re in this together!’ she said, an unpleasant whining note creeping into her voice. He wondered why he had never noticed before that when her mouth formed a straight line, the way it
did at the moment, her whole face looked instantly ten years older. What had possessed him to get involved with her in the first place? He could have carried out the whole thing on his own and not had any of these problems. And still had two hands in working order as well.

He tried to shrug his shoulders, and found one of them wouldn’t shrug. It was because there was a drip going into that arm. He wriggled a bit to get into a more comfortable position.

‘It was only ever going to be temporary, Jackie,’ he told her. ‘We both wanted the same thing for a while, that’s all.’

‘But we still both want to go to Spain, where it’s warm!’ she said. ‘And run a pub together there.’

‘I don’t feel like running a pub any more. I thought I might try something else instead. On my own.’

He was fortunate in that when she attacked him again, she accidentally pressed the bell that summoned a nurse from the nurse’s station. Otherwise there would have been nobody to re-attach the drip that fell out of his arm, or to tend to the scratches on his face. She had gone by the time someone came running into the room to see to all of it.

‘What’s been going on here?’ said the male nurse who answered the call. ‘Will I call security?’

‘No, don’t do that,’ said Neil. ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble.’

The nurse gave him a hard look. ‘Who was it? Girl-friend?’

‘Sort of.’

The nurse looked thoughtful as he fixed the drip, but he didn’t say any more until he had finished with that and cleaned up Neil’s face. ‘I’d better take your blood pressure now I’m here. You look a bit grey in the face – underneath all the scratches, that is. I hope you weren’t thinking of going in for a beauty contest any time soon.’

This is all I need, thought Neil. They’re all comedians now. He forced a half-smile on to his face. He needed the staff to be on his side.

‘Is there any way you can keep visitors out?’ he enquired.

‘Sure… apart from the police. They don’t like to be kept out. I’m thinking maybe we should put in a call to them. You don’t want your girl-friend going off attacking anybody else.’

Personally Neil didn’t care if Jackie attacked someone else. He didn’t want her to have another go at him, certainly. But on the other hand, he didn’t want the police questioning her at this particular point. There was no knowing what sort of trouble she would get him into. He wouldn’t put it past her to go to them on her own initiative this time, out of spite.

When the nurse had gone, he lay there for a while, planning his escape. He would have to get as far away from Pitk
irtly as he could, as soon as they let him out of this place. He wouldn’t go back for any of his belongings – he didn’t care about them. He had a very tiny twinge of conscience about disappearing without letting Jock McLean know he was going, but this was only temporary. He didn’t owe Jock anything. Or any of the rest of them. Pitkirtly had done nothing for him, except to land him in the biggest mess he had ever been in. It was time to see what Spain could do for him. So it was goodbye to the Queen of Scots, and hola!
España
. He smiled to himself.

Chapter 31 Time up

Amaryllis didn't bother to take any flowers with her. She wasn't that hypocritical. She marched into the ward like the representative of an invading army and not at all like someone who had come to nurture the sick and spread cheer and optimism in the face of illness and death.

She decided more people should behave like her. Surely patients must get fed up with the relentless procession of calm, quiet, cheerful, sweet people who came to see them? Wouldn't they prefer the bracing breeze of rough normality?

One of the nurses looked up from the desk and said something, perhaps to tell her not to go on, but she marched on as if she were perfectly entitled to come storming in when it wasn't even visiting time yet. Experience of barging into various other situations had taught her that this was the approach that worked best. She didn't even need to wear a stethoscope to convince them. Her attitude and bearing would do the trick.

Neil Macrae was in a side ward and the door was closed, but again Amaryllis didn't flinch at the idea of barging in. She was aware of a slight disturbance somewhere in the corridor behind her. She was confident, though, that she would achieve her goal before anyone interrupted. She certainly hoped she would manage it before Christopher and Charlie, who were attempting to park Charlie’s car, caught up with her. Neither of them knew what she was planning, and they wouldn’t have let her come here at all if they had known.

He didn’t look all that well, lying there in the institutional bed with one hand bandaged up and a line in one arm. Amaryllis hadn’t realised, either, that he had injured his face somehow. It was almost as if – she looked at him closely – something or someone had scratched him.

She had an idea about who might have done that.

His eyes widened with surprise, and something less easily identifiable.

‘How did you…?’

‘I just walked in,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Wasn’t I meant to?’

‘It isn’t visiting time yet,’ he growled.

‘I’m not exactly a visitor,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘No. Think of me as an avenging Greek god.’

‘Goddess,’ he said.

‘I don’t think you’ve ever paid me a compliment before. Thanks.’

‘It wasn’t a compliment, I was correcting your grammar,’ he said.

‘Vocabulary,’ she said. ‘Not grammar.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘You,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Or rather, your confession.’

‘What?’

‘Well, maybe not a confession, Neil. I already know what you’ve done. An explanation would be nice, though.’

He was silent. They stared at each other.

‘I could make you tell me,’ she said at last. ‘I know all the techniques.’

‘Believe me, nothing you can do to intimidate me can compare with sticking my hand in the fire,’ he said.

‘Why did Jackie do
that? When you were partners in crime?’

‘It was your fault,’ he said. ‘You were following her.
You spooked her.’

‘And Christopher was following you.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know that. Why?’

‘I suppose he’s been hanging around with me too long and picked up some of my methods,’ said Amaryllis lightly.
‘Anyway, he had to walk the dog somewhere.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re such amateurs. You won’t be able to prove anything, you know.’

‘We’ll see about that. Did you know there’s a whole department for computer forensics now? And another one for mobile phones?’

‘You’ll have to find my computer first.’

He looked so smug that Amaryllis relished her next sentence. ‘Oh, we have, Neil. We’ve tracked it down, thanks to Christopher’s memory for apparently irrelevant detail. The police are working on it now.’

He made a quick recovery from the shock that flashed over his face. ‘They won’t get anything off it. The hard disc’s been wiped clean.’

‘That may be what Mr Fitzgerald of Fitz and Chips Computers of Dunfermline told you, but I think the police will beg to differ,’ said Amaryllis. ‘By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a stupid name for a computer shop. Do you know Mr Fitzgerald personally? Is that why Jackie Whitmore took the computer there to be wiped?’

Neil had fallen unexpectedly silent.

Amaryllis leaned over him and spoke quietly. ‘I bet they can get evidence from Liam Johnstone’s phone too. And from yours. Call records linking the two of you. And fingerprints.’

‘Of course my fingerprints are all over the cellar,’ said Neil, recoiling from her as far as he could while trapped in the bed. ‘I was the only one who went down there most of the time. They’re bound to be. Prints, DNA, everything. All perfectly legitimate.’

Amaryllis stood up and shrugged. ‘Well, it isn’t up to me to prove anything, of course. I thought you might feel happier if you explained to me how clever you’ve been, before you get taken away to the police station again and locked up for good.’

‘For good? You must be joking! I’m off to Spain as soon as I get out of here. And nobody’s going to stop me.’

‘So will you kill everyone who gets in your way, just as you killed Liam?’

‘I didn’t kill him!’ shouted Neil, evidently summoning up all his strength. ‘It was an accident.
Everybody knows that. Jackie can tell you that too.’

‘But you knew what would happen if you left him in the cellar with a leaking canister of CO2, didn’t you? You knew he would be asphyxiated. It wasn’t a very nice thing to do to anyone, even if it was only Liam Johnstone. And it hasn’t been very nice for Penelope and Zak to go through all this either. I really thought you were a
better person than that, Neil.’

Amaryllis paused, rewound in her mind what she had said, and decided abruptly not to go on. She was starting to sound like someone’s mother. She had very nearly claimed to be terribly disappointed in him. Whereas in Amaryllis’s world, she was never disappointed in anyone. It was the other way round: when someone did something good, she was pleasantly surprised. It was better that way.

Christopher and Charlie came into the room as she was leaving.

‘You sound like my mother!’ Neil shouted at her.

Christopher blinked in mild surprise as he often did. Amaryllis grabbed him by the arm and tried to swing him round towards the door again.

‘Come on, we might as well go straight to the police with this after all,’ she said.

‘Sssh,’ said Charlie in a conspiratorial whisper. The door swung open again and Inspector Armstrong stood on the threshold.

‘Good, you’re all here,’ he said. He glanced at Charlie. ‘Thanks, Mr Smith, for your assistance. I’d like to commend you for acting in a thoroughly professional manner throughout.’

Amaryllis stared at him in amazement. She couldn’t remember Charlie having knowingly acted in a professional manner during this case at all.

‘In the face of great adversity,’ added the inspector, looking straight at her.
It sounded very much like a personal insult, had she chosen to take it that way. She hadn’t made up her mind yet.

‘What is this, a team meeting?’ said Neil from the bed. ‘Can you go and hold it somewhere else? There’s an invalid here, remember.’

‘Hmph,’ said Amaryllis.

‘An invalid who will very soon be in custody, if things go according to plan,’ observed Inspector
Armstrong. ‘Now I must ask all of you to leave, to make room for Sergeant Whiteside. It’s only two visitors at a time, I believe.’

Amaryllis turned to look back at Neil. She was tempted to stick her tongue out at him, but it didn’t seem fair somehow. He was already trapped in the hospital bed, and now he was to have the doubtful privilege of a conversation with Inspector
Armstrong. She wondered vaguely if she should invoke the European Convention on Human Rights. It did seem particularly unfair that someone who had performed what was essentially a valuable social service by ridding the world of Liam Johnstone should suffer like this. Then she reminded herself of Penelope and Zak, and hardened her heart. They were no doubt better off without Liam, but they would probably have preferred him to go off into the sunset somewhere and get out of their lives, than to disappear from the planet permanently.

She walked back out to the car park with Christopher and Charlie.

‘So, are you confident about getting your suspension lifted, now that you’ve got a personal commendation from Inspector Armstrong?’ she said to Charlie.

‘Don’t know if I want i
t lifted now,’ he said grumpily, scuffing his feet along in a way that almost made Amaryllis want to scold him – except that being accused of being like someone’s mother twice in one day would be a mortal insult.

Christopher sighed. ‘You’re not still thinking of taking over the Queen of Scots,’ he said.

‘If you re-phrase that as a question, I might answer it,’ said Charlie.

‘What would the answer be?’ said Amaryllis.

‘That would be telling.’