Lemonade and Lies (19 page)

I let the phone ring until it disconnected. Double checked that I had the right number for my parents and phoned again, but still no one answered. And there was no answer phone to leave a message on. I’d suggested they sort it. It would have been useful, but the fact they hadn’t wasn’t a surprise. They used cups instead of mugs.

Each failed attempt to get through to my father made me even more uptight. It was wasting time, when time could be crucial. I spent another valuable ten minutes trying to find a human being to talk to at the phone company. And when they eventually checked the number I was told that my party’s phone was definitely in working order. The young man, sensing my desperation, suggested that whoever I was trying to contact had probably just gone out. What? All of them?

I checked the time. Two o’clock. Not school pick-up time. Thursday. I tried to remember if anything special happened on a Thursday. They didn’t do the weekly shop (that was Friday night) but maybe my mother had changed the routine. Or my father had a hospital check-up.

It could be any number of things that kept them away from the phone, but when you’re over five hundred miles away and have recently attacked a man with a bottle of cheap plonk, the worst scenario comes to mind.

Even so, I made myself think rationally. It was likely they’d just gone for a walk and that Millie and Tom were safely in school. I put the kettle on. Made an extra-strong cup of instant coffee. Took it black. Then I started in on the planning.

1.              Phone train station

2.              Phone parents again

3.              Phone Alice and David

4.              Pack (no problem, haven’t unpacked suitcase yet!)

The next available train for Ayr left at 16. 41 (that was almost a quarter to five on any normal person’s clock). But I doubted I would make it in time with all the stuff I still had to do. You had to change three times and it took sixteen hours and seventeen minutes. I could run there as fast. A road-trip was looking more likely by the minute, for the train after that one was even worse.

The AA Routefinder promised me a journey of five hundred and thirty-eight-point-three miles that would take nine hours and twenty-seven minutes. Presumably this was for people who didn’t need to stop to eat or drink and had bladders the consistency of sponge. Still, it was a lot quicker.

I drew a thick black line through my first bullet point. Which was fairly satisfying. And added another one to the bottom of the list. (You win some, you lose some). Number 5 - Car!

The next call to my parents brought the same result as before. No one picked up the phone and I grew more frustrated and worried. Put a line through their bullet point and added yet another one to the bottom of my list.

Number 6 - phone Sergeant Andy Patterson.

Next: Phone Alice and David. I did, and only got their answering service, which at least was one up on my parents. I presumed Alice would be working, but what would a surf instructor stranded miles from the nearest coast be doing in the middle of the day? I guess he had a life. I left a message telling them I was driving up to Scotland. I felt better knowing they knew where I’d gone. Belt and braces in action. Now all I needed was a car.

*

“I can’t raise them and I’m getting worried.”

“Och, not to fear. I expect they’ve gone to the wee school.”

It was reassuring to hear the man’s voice again. And although you might have called Sergeant Patterson a little on the parochial side, the man was nobody’s fool.

“But it’s too early for that,” I said, and my desperation must have made its way down the phone line.

“Is something wrong, Miss?”

“No. But it’s important I speak to my father.”

“Anything I should know?”

What could I tell him? I didn’t know anything for sure. It was just a general feeling of unease. I left the question unanswered. Maybe he’d fill in the dots by himself.

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with that other business, would it?” he asked.

“I’m probably being silly, Sergeant. Over dramatic.”

“Aye, folks can get like that at times.” He sighed. “But you don’t strike me as one of those. If anything, I’d say the opposite.”

I guess he was thinking about the way I attracted bruises and didn’t talk about them. He should have seen me with a couple of miles of bandages wound around my hands. I’d replaced them with a few plasters here and there, still not an attractive look, but less like something that had made its getaway from a sarcophagus in the British Museum.

“So, you don’t know where my parents are? Have you seen them lately? Are they okay?”

“They’re both fine and those bonny wee bairns of yours. There’s something on at the Primary School this afternoon. One of those Christmas concerts. The folks will have gone to that no doubt.”

“Brilliant! So, everything’s all right?”

“Well now. If you’re thinking about that ex-husband of yours . . .”

“I wasn’t. He’s the last person I’d be thinking about.”

“They took him back to London.”

“Not in a handcart, then?”

The policeman laughed. “No, but it was an awful fuss they made. Him and that high-and-mighty mother of his. Insisted on a private ambulance, she did, but the policemen who came to bring him back weren’t having any of it. He left in an NHS job. Same as the rest of us would.”

I thought about Judith Murdock and the disgrace she would feel. A moment of empathy, mother-to-mother, took hold of me. But then I came to my senses. If she hadn’t treated him so much like a mummy’s boy, spoilt the guy rotten, then maybe he would have turned out a different man.

“So, he’s okay then?”

“Only the good die young. He’s better than he deserves to be. And threatening to take old Harry to court. Sue him for damages.”

“God Almighty.”

“Your father acted in self-defence. Defending his family. His home. But you try telling some jumped-up QC that.”

“The law’s a bloody ass,” I said.

“Aye. That it is at times,” agreed Andy Patterson. “That it is. Makes it hard to be a victim.” He sighed. “
And
a policeman.”

“Yes.” It was a sobering thought. And it made me think of someone else who found the struggle to be a policeman hard. It made me think of Jamie. When I’d been trying to forget him.

Nearly there! And it felt good to be actually doing stuff. Ticking things off my list. For a non-believer, I was doing well. Maybe I should try this list thing more often. It implied control.

I’d kept my head and only once got rattled. When the garage had complained that I’d ignored their phone call and hadn’t paid my bill. Pure bollocks. My phone had been disconnected, so that was a lie. The money they’d asked for could have bought me a new car, but I didn’t argue. Just handed over the cheque. Which was refused.
Some new policy.

I passed across my debit card. The guy gave me a garage-mechanic-shrug and asked for cash. He stared pointedly at the plasters on my hands. “Cash,” he repeated and looked away embarrassed.

I’d sent his own shrug back to him and raised him one – when what I really wanted to do was grab hold of his overalls and drag him over the counter. But I saw this as ultimately counter-productive (take it away pun!) Why did people have to be so judgemental?

Still, it hadn’t been worth getting riled up about. So I dashed around to two different ATMs until I’d managed to take out enough cash for the job.

I asked the guy if the car would get me as far as Scotland and he’d plastered an injured look on his face. Like
I
was insulting
his
integrity. Life’s a hoot.

I’d left the packing to the last minute. The suitcase was already sitting on the floor of my bedroom untouched from its last outing, so I intended throwing some fresh underwear in and a couple of extra pairs of thermals for the Scottish winter. It wouldn’t take long (like I said – nearly there).

That’s about the time the sky fell in. I was getting pretty good at this sudden intake of breath stuff. But right then anyone would have done the same, so I can hardly be blamed. Nestling in my suitcase, wrapped up in my heavy, blue winter sweater was the Norwegian carving.

Had my father put it there? And why? So that I could carry on looking for its secret? He was convinced that the thing was made up of two separate pieces of wood. But we’d been through all that. There was no join.

I took the Mangle Board from my case. Turned it over and over. Squinted at it close up. My father was wrong when he’d suggested that this was a very special piece, for the workmanship was rough and raw and you could see where the chisel had slipped in several places. Where the carver’s attempts to include intricate details had failed.

It was heavy, a solid block, and the peculiar handle affair carved in the shape of a wild horse in full gallop, its wooden mane flowing out behind, infused the thing with a mystical energy.

I moved my fingers along the line of Acanthus leaves. Yes, the carving was definitely amateurish and uneven, because one leaf was raised higher than the others. I pulled on it. It moved. Jesus! I tried the same thing with the leaf on the other side of the carving. It moved. I pulled them both at the same time and something strange happened. A section of wood slid out of the side of the carving. And stopped. As if something had blocked it.

I ran to the bathroom for a nail file. My hands were stiff. They wouldn’t work properly. Not long ago they’d had shards of glass embedded in them. But after a couple of frustrating attempts to hook onto the wood I heard a small splintering noise and it flew out the rest of the way. Like one of those CD/DVD trays on a laptop.

This small section had been engineered. It was no random happening. Someone had designed and made it to carry secrets. It was no bigger than the size of a matchbox. I remembered to breathe and lifted the contents out, stared at the thing in disbelief. It was a computer flashdrive.

*

“You’re there. Thank God!”

“Jill. Is something wrong?”

“No. Something’s right, for a change.” I couldn’t keep the excitement from my voice.

“And what’s that?”

“Show you when I get there.”

“You’re coming? That’s great.”

“You and mother all right – and the kids?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Nothing. I tried to get you before, but the phone kept ringing.”

“Went to an end-of-term thing. Kids were singing. You’d have been proud.”

“Yes I would,” I said. And tried to keep the tremor from my voice. I’d missed it. Something that would never come again. “If it’s all right, I’d like to stay over.”

“You know it’s all right. We’d love to have you. And Christmas?” he asked.

“Christmas too.” I said.

“I’ll tell mother and the children. They’ll be thrilled. When should we expect you?”

“I’m leaving now.” I needed to get there as quickly as I could.

“Jilly?”

“Yes?”

“Go carefully – and I don’t just mean the driving. You know?”

“I will.” And I knew what he meant. But neither of us wanted to say it.

*

I revised the ETA in my head. At this rate I’d be lucky to get to Maidens by seven in the morning. Traffic had been light and I should have made good time, arriving in the village around three-thirty a.m. But the AA estimate probably figured on a car that didn’t vibrate dramatically when you pushed it past fifty.

I made a mental note to go back to the garage the first chance I got, and this time haul the mechanic over the counter like I’d been tempted to. I could hear the guy laughing all the way to the bank with my five hundred pounds in his pocket. Poor old Jemima. She suffered the humiliation of having to keep to the slow lane on both motorways.

If somebody was following me, they’d be pissed off. But nobody was. Then again, maybe they didn’t need to, if they already knew where my father lived. A shiver shot through me. And I automatically put my foot down, but pulled back to a sedate fifty again when an alarming grinding noise joined the vibration.

Half an hour later, I pulled into the motorway services and looked under Jemima’s elderly bonnet. But it was a foreign land to me. Unless one of the strange pieces of engineering actually waved a placard saying
it’s me on the blink
I had no way of knowing what was wrong.

I grabbed a massive mug of coffee from the catering outlet. They were all the same these places. Synthetic coffee. Plastic food. The coffee was scalding hot with the consistency of soot and scorched my taste buds. Exactly what I needed to jolt me awake.

I stared at my mobile for a long time. Deciding what to do. Who to phone. It was the middle of the night, not many people would appreciate a call. I wanted to phone my family. Speak to my father, my kids. But I didn’t want to scare them. They were expecting me, and the front door key was under the flat rock.
Things would work out.

But I still couldn’t shake the gloomy feeling that was dogging me. It had niggled its way through to the important bit of my brain. The bit that won’t let you ignore it. So I made the call.

The man was remarkably understanding and sociable for someone who’s been dragged away from a night’s sleep. But then maybe he was an insomniac. Maybe he’d been up making himself cocoa or doing a crossword. Older people need less sleep. (That’s what I’d heard).

“I’ll pop by tomorrow if that’ll ease your mind, Miss.”

“It would, Sergeant. Thanks. I’d push on through from here, but my car’s giving me trouble. God knows when I’ll finally get there and my father’s expecting me. I don’t want him to worry. You know after . . .”

The line went quiet for some time. Maybe it was the mention of God that did it. Maybe the man was a member of the Kirk and I’d offended him.

“It might be an idea for me to get on over to Ayr. Get some reinforcements. They understand the situation.” His tone was sombre. I was glad he took my fears seriously, but then again if he turned up with the whole of the Constabulary at his back and nothing happened, we’d all look like prats. Better than my kids getting hurt, though.

I thought about Jamie and his conviction that Viktor Kabak would not come. Would never bother me again. It had been a strange thing to say, and I hadn’t believed it. He was saying it to make me feel better. Wasn’t he? But the thing was that he seemed to believe it himself, and he wasn’t naïve. Not that it mattered now, not with him an ordinary civilian, no longer a policeman. On his way to becoming a vet! The image of him with his hand up a cow’s backside made me smile. Obviously it was a non-runner.

I got back on the road, checked my mirrors, but no one was following me. There wasn’t much traffic, just a small sprinkling of cars making overnight journeys and a few lorries. I got wedged in between a couple of them. It felt claustrophobic, but I ignored the temptation to put my foot down. For I had the feeling that Jemima was tearing her guts out to get me there. Like a racehorse who gives the jockey its all, even when its heart is about to burst. Blimey! What was with the gruesome images? Too much time alone. Too much introspection. My friend Alice was right. I should get out more. Mix with people.

The heater packed up. But that could be a good thing, right? At least I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel. I thought about stopping again for another mug of coffee, but the thought died at birth. I wanted to get to my kids. For the words that were stuck at the back of my head suddenly became dislodged and sung out like a mantra.
This is a friendly warning for I know how much you value your children
.

It didn’t matter what Jamie had said to try and comfort me. Viktor Kabak had threatened my children, and the radar they fit you with when your kids take their first breath outside the womb was on full alert.

I thought about caving in and phoning Jamie; even though he’d disappointed me, he was like a burr under my skin. I got as far as picking my phone up, but it had run out of battery and I’d never got around to buying a charger for the car. I saw that as fate. Fate had decided for me. I put my foot down to the floorboard blocking my ears to the sounds that came back in reply. I loved Jemima, but I loved my kids more. The car would just have to take its chances.