Evil for Evil (2 page)

The inn, once the Innellan Arms, had been rechristened by a romantic previous owner to reflect the time when excisemen like Robert Burns – that champion of freedom and whisky – policed the Solway Firth where the free traders brought in goods from the Isle of Man.

The little village of Innellan, looking out over Fleet Bay towards the islands, was at the end of a narrow road: no more than a couple of dozen houses, some outlying farms and cottages, an abandoned church and a graveyard. Georgia Stanley, the licensee, claimed the Smugglers was a local where the dead outnumbered the living by ten to one.

She was here because she’d fallen in love. She and Barry both had, seduced by Innellan’s beauty. Each year after their fortnight in
a caravan it became harder to go back to Walsall until they started asking themselves why they should. Then the Smugglers came up for sale with a price that made them burst out laughing, and they couldn’t wait to begin the adventure.

Then Barry had died. Who dies, without warning, at forty? It was hardly his fault, but in some complicated way Georgia sort of blamed him that here she was, alone, five years older and in an unsaleable property, with the shadows lengthening towards another long winter. They’d never seen winter here, from their caravan.

Not that she’d go back to Walsall – never! But Kirkcudbright, now – with its pretty houses and the bustle of its shops and friendly folk who smiled and said hello; unlike this weird, secretive little place with its mysterious alliances and feuds going back generations, so as an incomer you kept putting your foot in it because no one would tell you who was on speaking terms and who wasn’t. She’d learnt tact the hard way, and she was tolerated now – though of course you couldn’t expect to be accepted until you’d had your own fifty-year feud.

Not that it would be hard to start one. It would be a luxury not to have to be pleasant to some people, but luxuries had no place in Georgia’s life now. She sometimes thought her tongue must be scarred from keeping it between her teeth, but she always managed to smile. As long as the pub was a going concern, there might be a bedazzled summer visitor who was as naive as they had been, and then she’d be out of here. That dream kept her going when each night she came through from the adjoining house to open up.

Georgia took a pride in polishing the mahogany bar counter and brass fittings and the wooden floor, hollowed with the traffic of years. She kept a fire burning in the cast-iron fireplace, even in summer, since the white building with thick walls and small windows was
always cool. Soon she’d be drawing the red curtains and switching on red-shaded lamps; the pub looked at its cosy best during the dreary winter months, though six customers then was a busy evening. Once the nights drew in and everyone retreated into their houses, she barely saw her neighbours. It was, well, creepy.

Tonight, though, it was cheerful enough, with low sun streaming in and the back door open to the view and the soft sea air. Georgia was polishing glasses and watching the
Six O’Clock News
on the TV at the end of the bar. They’d all been agog when the film team arrived at Lovatt’s Farm and she was expecting a gossiping influx later. At the moment, though, there were only two regulars sitting up at the bar and a couple wearing shorts and hiking boots drinking lager at a table.

Derek Sorley made small, explosive noises all through the item, like a kettle that might blow its lid off once it built up steam. He was one of Georgia’s leading feud candidates: rat-faced, bald at the front with straggling grey hair at the back caught into a ponytail, an unfortunate style suggesting the whole lot was gradually sliding off backwards.

Sometimes she could almost see a miasma of spite and envy around him. He had a grudge against anyone with ‘advantages’, which seemed to mean anyone who hadn’t lost several jobs through rudeness and idleness as he had, to her certain knowledge. Still, he was good for a couple of pints every evening, and Georgia couldn’t afford to be choosy.

When the report finished, Sorley burst out, ‘Oh, great! And how did St Matt arrange that little piece of PR? Our wounded hero, healing “our boys” – and girls too, you notice. Could be on to a good thing there! Wonder how Mrs Matt feels about his brave little soldier?’ He gave an unpleasant snigger. ‘And what chance now of an enforcement order for access to the island? He’s only to say they need peace and
quiet to recover and he’ll have everyone sobbing. Oh, I never said he was stupid!

‘Right to Roam – that’s a joke! Bloody government promises access all over Scotland, but they just roll over for the landlords.’

Georgia had no special brief for Matt Lovatt. Bit of a moody sod, and she could count the number of times he’d come in here on one hand – but then, the locals had hardly made him welcome after he’d refused Steve Donaldson a tenancy agreement so he could farm himself. Pub etiquette meant a non-committal response, but she heard herself saying, ‘Well – he’s got fallow deer there. They’re shyer than the red deer – maybe they’d panic if tourists went tramping around.’

The man at the other end of the bar had watched without comment. Cal Findlay had a prawn boat working out of Kirkcudbright, but lived here with his mother in an isolated croft house on the hill behind the village. He came in most evenings, but sat mainly in silence, his eyes – so dark that they looked almost black – watching with what looked like a cynical contempt for more sociable beings. She rather fancied him, actually, but he’d never shown any interest.

Now Findlay said coldly, ‘You’ve got it in for him because he caught you with a metal detector and threw you off his island.’

Sorley bridled, his face turning red. ‘You’re a liar!’

Findlay, infuriatingly, did not answer, only raising one eyebrow and taking another sip of his whisky.

Sorley began to swear at him, but Georgia cut in crisply. ‘I don’t have language like that in my pub, Derek. There’s the lifeboat box – that’ll be two pounds.’

He opened his mouth to argue, but a steely look from her changed his mind. He put the money in the box with a bad grace, getting to his feet and downing the rest of his pint.

‘You could ask
him
,’ Sorley pointed a shaking finger, ‘who tipped Lovatt off when I was just taking a wee walk on land that by rights belongs to every Scot?’

Findlay didn’t respond. He went back to watching the news impassively as Sorley stormed out, though Georgia could swear he wasn’t hearing a word of it.

The small TV in the corner of the Mains of Craigie kitchen was tuned to the news, but neither Janet Laird nor Catriona Fleming was watching it.

Janet was making skirlie, gently cooking onions and oatmeal to go with the chicken already roasting in the Aga – one of their own plump birds. In her basket beside it, Meg the collie was giving small sighing whines, tormented by the delicious smell.

Cat was peeling potatoes. She was eighteen now, strikingly attractive with fair hair and blue eyes like her father and her mother’s long, slim legs. She looked dubiously at what she had prepared.

‘Do you think that’ll be enough, Gran?’

Janet Laird was in her seventies, but she was still active and cheerful even if her brown eyes were a little faded and her shoulders more stooped. She was as busy as ever with her good causes, one of which was ensuring her daughter Marjory’s culinary inadequacies did not deprive her family of good Scots home cooking. Together with Karolina, the wife of Rafael who worked the farm with Bill, she saw to it that household chores didn’t add more stress to her daughter’s already stressful job.

Janet assessed the pile of potatoes. ‘You’d better do a few more, pet. You know Cammie’s just a wee terror when it comes to roast tatties.’

‘Only you could describe Cammie as a “wee” anything,’ Cat protested. Her brother Cameron, at sixteen, had reached six foot two and showed no signs of stopping. ‘He’s just a greedy pig.’

‘Och, he needs to keep his strength up with all that rugby training. What time’s he back tonight?’

‘About seven. And Mum said she wouldn’t be late – if you can believe her.’

Going back to her task Cat sighed. It was somehow terribly important that all the family should be together tonight. She’d chosen her favourite supper – creamy cauliflower soup, roast chicken and Gran’s special lemon meringue pie – because tomorrow she was leaving home. Her stomach gave a nervous jump at the thought.

Oh, she was up for it, excited about her place at Glasgow Uni to read veterinary science, and her boyfriend Will Irvine was there already in his second year studying medicine. They’d be together in the same place at last – she’d hardly seen him this summer, when he’d been working as a hospital porter in Glasgow.

Oh, it would be great! Living in the big city instead of a boring backwater would be brilliant.

But this evening Cat felt shaky. She couldn’t imagine opening her eyes in the morning in a room without any of the evidence of her life so far – stuffed animals she couldn’t quite bear to give to the church jumble sale, children’s books she still reread sometimes, the wall of photos of everything from her thirteenth birthday party to the school prom in June. Without her past, among strangers, she could become someone totally, excitingly different – or be utterly overwhelmed and lost. Tonight she was favouring lost.

The phone rang and was answered before Cat could dry her hands to pick it up. Her voice was flat as she said, ‘I bet you anything that’s Mum, saying she’s held up.’

‘Not necessarily, dear,’ Janet said, but without conviction, and a couple of minutes later Bill Fleming appeared.

He was a big, solidly built man, fresh-complexioned, with fair hair imperceptibly going grey and thinning as his waistline expanded, but his eyes were still as blue as his daughter’s.

As the women turned questioning looks on him, he pulled a face. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so. That was Mum.’

‘Oh, don’t tell me. She’s delayed. As usual.’

‘She’s really upset, Cat,’ Bill defended his wife. ‘She says just to go ahead without her.’

Cat looked at him sharply. ‘Go ahead without her? You mean she won’t be back for supper?’

‘Seems unlikely, apparently. You know how it is, love – she’s no option. It’s just the job.’

‘Oh, I know all right! The rotten job – the rotten, rotten job!’ Cat felt humiliating tears springing to her eyes. ‘I’m … I’m just going to do some more packing.’

She hurried out and up the stairs. Big Ted, her comfort in childhood miseries, still sat on a chair beside her bed; she grabbed him, burying her face in his worn pile, and flung herself down to sob.

The bar, in one of Glasgow’s seedier backstreets, was run-down and unappealing. The paintwork bore the scars of pub brawls and the frosted glass of the dirty windows still had the name of a long-forgotten brewer etched into it. Smoke wafted in from banished drinkers clustered round the open door and its clientele was almost entirely male. It was doing good business this evening and already there were pools of spilt beer on the floor.

The TV on the wall, ignored except for football, was showing the news, barely audible above the raucous voices. The only person
looking at it even idly was a gaunt young man on his own, ill-shaven and in scruffy clothes that looked as if he might have slept in them. He was taking sips of the cheapest lager on the slate as if seeing how long he could spin it out.

When the item from Galloway came on he suddenly sat up, stared, then got off his stool and pushed through to the end of the bar where he could hear. He listened with painful attention and when it finished turned to the barman.

‘Hey, pal! Got a pen?’

The barman glanced round, then found one by the till. ‘There you are, mate. OK?’

‘Cheers.’

The young man drained his glass in two gulps, wrote something on the palm of his hand, put the pen back and hurried out.

The sun was going down now, meeting the golden path it had made across the still waters of Wigtown Bay. As the little boat with its outboard motor chugged across on the seaward side of the Isles of Fleet, ripples shivered the reflection into splinters of light, but the glories of the autumn sunset were wasted on its occupants.

The boy steering was a tow-headed lad of thirteen, his frame bulking up into adolescence already. The glow on his face came only partly from an afternoon of sun and sea; there was also satisfaction at the blue-silver mackerel in the bottom of the boat beside the fishing tackle. Reluctant to see the day end, he throttled back the engine and called to his companion.

‘Here, Jamie! How about we check out the cave there? The tide’s right.’

They were passing near the western shore of Lovatt Island and he was pointing towards a small sea cave, halfway down its length.
There was warm light still on the cliff, just, but it was fading fast and the cave mouth looked black and forbidding.

Jamie, younger, slighter, dark and with a sensitive face, covered his shiver with a look at his watch. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘Dad said to be back at seven or he’d kill me. It’s near enough eight already.’

‘So he’ll kill you anyway,’ Craig pointed out with pitiless logic. ‘It’ll only take a minute. There were smugglers used these caves.’ He leant forward to open the throttle.

Suddenly, the sun was gone. The cliffs were grey not gold and shadows were gathering in the rock clefts.

Jamie couldn’t conceal a shudder this time. ‘It’s … it’s too dark,’ he muttered. ‘We’d not see anything.’

Craig eyed him with contempt. ‘There’s a torch in the locker. You’re just feart!’

‘No, I’m not. Well … it’s haunted. You shouldn’t go on the island at night.’

Unimpressed, Craig said, ‘Oh aye – ghosts! That’ll be right. Oooooh!’ He waved his hands, waggling his fingers.

But Jamie was stubborn. ‘There is. My mum told me – crying and wailing. Heard it herself, years ago. She wouldn’t go near it if you paid her.’

It suddenly seemed much colder. The boat rocked on a rippling wave, and Craig, unsettled by his friend’s nervousness, glanced at the cave, a gaping darkness now.

‘Trying to wind you up, that’s all,’ he said, but he sounded uncertain.