Evil for Evil (40 page)

The funny side of it suddenly struck her, and she began to laugh, weakly at first, then with a sort of hysteria. After a moment he joined in.

Wiping her eyes, Marjory said, ‘Oh dear! If the kids hear us, they’ll think we don’t care.’

‘Good,’ Bill said firmly. ‘We need to keep a calm sough, as your mother would say. If we get drawn into their dramas it’s only going to make things worse. Of course they’ve got their own lives to lead, but if we back off they won’t make stupid decisions just to annoy their parents. If Cammie decides he’s a veggie, that’s his choice and I’ll keep my mouth shut.’

‘Of course,’ Marjory agreed. ‘But maybe – sausages for breakfast, do you think?’ That set them off again.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m off. Can you lock up?’

‘Of course, love. I’ll try not to wake you when I come up.’ He kissed her. ‘Sleep well.’

At the door she turned. ‘Don’t forget to take the sausages out of the freezer,’ she said, and went upstairs. From Cammie’s bedroom, she could hear the low hum of voices – no doubt their parents’ ears should be burning.

Perhaps, even if they chose to enact dramas when the last thing you needed was more stress, having a family was therapeutic. It gave you something else to think about, blotted out the hideous images from the day job.

But those put the family stuff into context too. Cat and Cammie, loved, treasured and fundamentally happy children, would be all
right, one way or another. Even as Marjory climbed gratefully into bed, she was haunted by the thought of that poor little girl, alone on that strange island, wailing her terror out across the dark waters, the little girl who had vanished, to be replaced by Elena Tindall, cold-blooded killer. Helen Smith had been murdered by her father, as surely as if he had held a knife to her throat.

Tomorrow, though, it would be all about routine: further investigations, more reports, more statements, piles of paper as she did her duty, compiling the strongest possible evidence of the case against Elena Tindall for the procurator fiscal to present to the attorney general. As Marjory Fleming drifted into sleep, she breathed a prayer of gratitude that the decision on how to proceed wasn’t hers to make.

Marianne Price scowled at herself in the mirror in the staff toilet. Black had never been her colour, and accessorised with eyes rimmed with crimson that clashed with her ginger hair wasn’t a good look. She’d cried ever since she got the news about poor bloody Eddie – a good man wasted on that evil bitch. How often had he choked her off when she had tried to warn him the woman was poison? Even if she hadn’t meant it literally at the time, she wasn’t surprised. If he’d only listened …

Well, he hadn’t, and that was that. She took out her make-up bag and set to with the Touche Éclat. Eddie’s son was due this morning to take his place at his father’s desk, running Tindall’s. There’d been no love lost between Eddie and his son these last ten years, thanks to That Woman, and if Marianne was to keep her job, she had to look like she was professional, not going sogging around the place. Jobs were hard to come by these days.

With a final blow of her nose and a dusting of powder, she went
through to Eddie’s office to empty his desk. Mercifully, the firm should be all right, even if That Woman got off; at least Eddie hadn’t been so blind to his family duties that he’d left it all to his wife.

Her photograph, a glamour shot in soft focus, was sitting on Eddie’s desk, where he would see it every time he glanced up. In a sudden passion of rage, Marianne threw it to the floor and stamped on it with her stiletto heel, smashing the glass and gouging into the serene, superior face.

Then she picked it up and put it into the bin, feeling at least a little better. Rubbish where it belonged.

As suddenly as the police presence had arrived in Innellan, it departed. The church was locked up and abandoned again; all the deer had gone and Lovatt’s farm was on the market. The first of the winter storms came whipping in up the Solway Firth, taking down branches and one big tree, while the villagers huddled in their houses, listening to the shutters rattle.

By the morning, it had passed over, like many another storm before it. There was damage, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired and then forgotten about. Innellan was good at forgetting.

In the troubled dawn, under a purple and orange sky, the island seemed a brooding presence out there in the bay, with angry waves lashing its shores. But once the sky cleared with the day and the roar of the sea sank to a mutter, it would be ethereal in the sunlight, a symphony of greens and greys.

A prison, a grave, an idyll, a dream. All of these – or none at all, merely the stage where human tragedy had been enacted. A passing show, nothing more, set against the eternal rocks and the sea and the ever-changing sky.

My most grateful thanks go to Dr John Fletcher of Fletchers of Auchtermuchty, the first deer farm in Europe; to Major Anna Fraser, RLC; to Captain Jamie Fraser, Royal Welsh; and to Dr Nick Goldfinch, Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh. They were very generous in sharing their expert knowledge and such mistakes as there may be are mine alone.

A
LINE
T
EMPLETON
grew up in the fishing village of Anstruther, in the East Neuk of Fife. She has worked in education and broadcasting and was a Justice of the Peace for ten years. Married with two grown-up children and three grandchildren, she now lives in a house with a view of Edinburgh Castle. When not writing she enjoys cooking, choral singing, and travelling the back roads of France.

www.alinetempleton.co.uk