Troubled Waters (30 page)

The prolonged blast of a horn made him jink back suddenly onto his own side of the road, abruptly aware of the excessive narrowness of the Dean Bridge. Shaken by the near miss, he determined to concentrate on his driving, slowing down and deliberately watching the cars around him, expelling everything from his mind bar the traffic and the road ahead.

Vigilant once more, he passed through the Barnton roundabout, the derelict hotel on his right with its pagoda tower and boarded-up windows. A string of green lights greeted him as if fate was favouring him, sending him a fair wind for his journey. No, it was not fate. As ever, the Good Lord was looking after his own, levelling the very roads for him. And now he, too, understood where he was going, had at some deep level known from the start where he was headed but had not cared, or been able, to acknowledge it. He had a mission to carry out, and had come prepared for it. To reassure himself, he glanced down at the side-pocket of the car door, at the butcher’s knife tucked away in it, its ebony handle poking out. On the straight road once more, he allowed his eyes to wander back to the rear-view mirror. Unaware of his scrutiny, his daughter was looking out of the window, her face vacant as they travelled through the bleak winter landscape. In those long days away from home, what horrors had she seen, what had she been feeling, thinking about? While her mother suffered, wore herself to the very bone, cried
a lake of tears, what went through that strange, unreachable mind? Had she missed them at all?

The corridor of drab, grey-harled houses at the west end of South Queensferry seemed to go on interminably, the wheels of his Mazda rattling into the potholes of extensively patched tarmac time after time, making him wonder for a moment if he had taken a wrong turning. Then, just as he had begun to doubt himself, they emerged onto the coastal road, the water bright beside them with the tide in, the mouth of the river merging with the open sea. The long wall of Hopetoun House estate, a forest of black, leafless tree-trunks rising high above it, comforted him, cradled him, told him that there was not much further to go. And no one, no one was about, not even the ubiquitous walkers in their red socks who used to patrol the roads like pilgrims of old. Just before the sign for Society House, he turned right onto the dusty track leading to the knoll of trees, their picnic place, and slowly brought the car to a halt. He would try one last time.

‘Diana, do you know where your sister Miranda is?’

There it was. Unmistakeable, that look of sheer terror, directed at him, telling him all he needed to know. She had forgotten nothing. Her eyes still on him, she started picking her lips, distracting herself, soothing herself in the only way she knew how. In the silence he looked at her sorrowfully, unable to get over her radiance. She was as beautiful, no, more beautiful, than her mother had ever been, but they had the same delicate features. And that same ethereal quality, more spirit than flesh, more fairy than woman. Miranda had had it too when she was little, not as she got older and more lumpish, teenage and difficult.

In life, he mused, his eyes never leaving her face, choices had to be made. But they were not free choices. He had not chosen that Miranda should die, that the boy should come looking for her, hounding him, threatening him. If she had not snatched Diana, none of this would ever have happened and life could have gone on as before. But no, she could not keep quiet, had to ‘rescue’ her sister from her own parents, her own father, and involve a stranger in all their affairs. As if he, a Worldly, would, could possibly, understand anything of their lives.

Anger at the thought of all he had endured now coursing through his veins, he rose, left the car and walked through a glade of bare trees towards the sea, feasting his eyes on its immensity, calmed, momentarily, by its peacefulness, the perfection of the straight lines made by the horizon and the two bridges superimposed across it. This was a tranquil, a blessed place. How many times had they brought the girls here, watched them paddle on the warm sands, searching for empty razor-clam shells, cockles, cowries and other treasures.

Seeing for a moment in his mind’s eye Diana in her first, red-and-white striped swimsuit, bucket and spade in hand, toddling towards the water, tears came to his eyes. But she must go. Otherwise, he would have nothing. Lambie would understand about Miranda. A fall is a fall. No one is to blame for that. But the boy? No. That would be too much for her, even though he had had no alternative. It had
not
been a free choice. The boy would have told her, everyone, about . . . it, the so-called sexual abuse. As if she had not asked for it. As if any of it was any of his business.

With Diana gone, it could all be an accident and nothing else need ever trouble Lambie. Or, by any means,
could Diana disappear again somewhere into their closed world, never to surface again? No. Not with this new gift of hers: words. Today there were only three or so, but how many tomorrow? ‘Nothing must trouble Lambie,’ he repeated to himself, walking back towards his car, his resolve renewed. As Abraham had been prepared to slay Isaac, he would be doing what was required of him. Doing it not for himself but out of love for her, and for the Lord.

Inside the car he could see the silhouette of his daughter, now in the front passenger seat, her head slightly bowed. He pulled on the door handle. Nothing happened. The door did not move. He pulled again. Again, nothing happened. Inside, he saw Diana’s face staring back at him, her eyes only inches from his own. Peering into the interior, he noticed her leaning over, her hand tickling the key fob dangling from the ignition. The stupid little vixen must have pressed it, locking herself inside, him outside.

‘Diana, dear,’ he said, watching as she looked up at him, ‘unlock the car door, please.’ She was not deaf, and would understand his words perfectly.

In response, she shook her head mulishly.

‘Diana,’ he repeated, louder this time, ‘I said unlock the car door, please. Now. And I mean
now
!’

Again she shook her head. This time he squatted on his haunches down beside her so that their eyes would be exactly on the same level, ensuring that she would look into his. But like a dog, she hung her head, choosing to stare instead at the dashboard, studiously avoiding his gaze.

‘Diana, missy, open the door now. I said
now
!’

Looking straight ahead, she raised her head and, for the third time, shook it, her lips compressed in her
resolve. It was as if she wanted him to appreciate that she was defying him and his orders. He watched her, unable to believe that she would treat him in this way. This was not his child of old. Surely, in a matter of seconds, she would weaken, relent, press the key fob and allow him to yank the door open. But, no, her hands remained on her lap, her profile presented to him.

Maybe, he mused, this was her fear at work. Maybe she was too frightened to open the door. Deliberately moving away, he strolled to the front of the car and leaned over the bonnet. From his new vantage point he forced his mouth into a warm smile, and waved both his hands simultaneously at her. That got her attention. Despite the rain beginning to fall, and determined to keep her attention, he blew her a kiss and then waited, playfully, as if she might reciprocate. She did not do so and in a comical manner, as if to tease her, he thumbed his nose. Then, still smiling, blinking away the raindrops running into his eyes, he said in what he believed was a jovial tone, ‘Diana, lovey, open the door would you? It’s pouring! Your old dad’s getting soaked out here.’

Impassive as a log, she kept her gaze on him but made no movement to obey.

He held up his hands in a dumb show, letting the drops bounce off the palms, then shaking himself, rubbing his shoulders to let her know that he was not just wet but cold.

‘Please, darling. Open the door for daddy, eh?’

She remained still as a statue as if he was not there, immune to him, ignoring the fact that he, a man, was begging her and demeaning himself in the process. Suddenly, something inside him snapped. Enraged by her disobedience, her blatant refusal to bend to his will, he raced
round to her window and banged hard against it with his fist, watching her start in her seat. Fleeing him, she slid across into the driver’s seat. As he continued battering the window, she bowed her head, clamping her hands over her ears and rocking to and fro in her distress.

‘
Open the door, you stupid little cow!
’ he roared, beside himself with rage, hammering on the window with both his fists, then aiming a furious kick at the car door. Bending further forward as if to escape him, her face almost flat against the steering wheel, the girl began to tremble uncontrollably.

She would not defy him. If need be he would smash the car window to get at her, come up with an explanation to satisfy Lambie about that later. Despite the rain now hammering down, he saw a few metres away a ring of soot-blackened boulders used by some past picnic-maker for a barbecue. Pushing a straggle of wet hair to one side, he strode over to them, already hearing in his head the satisfying noise of window glass shattering.

As he picked the largest one up, the Escort with his wife and the two policewomen drew up behind a straggle of trees, unseen by him. While they fumbled with their seatbelts, desperate to get out as quickly as possible, he brought the rock down onto the driver’s side-window of his car, turning it momentarily opaque, into a mosaic of a million pieces, before shattering. His wife, the first one out of the police car, shouted, ‘Jimmy!’

He turned instinctively towards her voice, smithereens of glass falling all around him like drops of water. Immediately, the child in the car rose up through the shattered window and plunged the ebony-handled knife into his chest. Seconds later, a flicker of a smile transforming her features, she withdrew the blade.

Slowly, the man swivelled back towards his daughter, a look of amazement on his rain-spattered face. The boulder in his hand thudded to the ground and, gradually, he began to sink, his legs no longer made of flesh and bone, collapsing as if shaped out of sand. A fountain of blood jetted in all directions, and as it sprayed over the girl’s face she began to scream, a high-pitched river of sound flowing endlessly from her open mouth.

Mrs Stimms raced towards the car, looking frantically first at her fallen husband, then at the screaming child. Carefully stepping over the man’s still shuddering body, she opened the door of the vehicle and bent inwards, immediately cradling the child’s head against her breast, murmuring softly, ‘There, there . . . everything’s going to be alright, Diana, my darling! Everything’s going to be fine.’

Silent, body-racking sobs replaced the piercing scream and in the ensuing quiet all that could be heard above the pitter-patter of the rain was the cry of the gulls as they circled overhead, blowing around like flakes of ash in the storm-darkened sky. Gently, the woman manoeuvred her child out of the car, over the prostrate body of her father and into the shelter of the trees.

Once they were away, Alice Rice knelt down beside the man on the wet grass and took his hand in her own. DC Cairns approached them, her head bare and her hair drenched in the downpour.

‘Is the ambulance coming?’ Alice asked, fumbling urgently on the man’s slippery wrist in search of a pulse.

‘It’s on its way – I gave them instructions on how to find us.’

‘The forensic team for the car?’

The constable nodded, then seeing that the door of
the Mazda was still hanging open, she carefully pushed it closed with her elbow.

‘Have we anything in the car to put over him in the meanwhile?’

‘No.’

‘Can you take Mrs Stimms and the child to the station? I’ll wait here with him until the medics and back-up arrive. We’ll need to go over the house in Starbank as soon as possible, although between his cleaning and her cleaning God knows if any traces will be left.’

Elaine Bell was shaking her pedometer when Alice entered her office. The device seemed to have stuck, recording nothing of her return journey from the ladies as if she had travelled on a cushion of air like a hovercraft, or flown. ‘Cheap tat!’ she muttered crossly, dropping it in her drawer and transferring some of her attention to her subordinate. Something radical would have to be tried, as despite sticking to a diet of air, ounces were being gained not lost. Sport of some kind might be the answer.

‘Is he still alive?’ she asked.

‘He is. He lost a lot of blood, she nicked an artery. The ambulance crew saved his life, the doctors reckon. He was well enough to confess – only too keen once he understood it might have an effect on his sentence.’

‘And the child? How’s she?’

‘Alright now. She was terrified when we picked her up, wouldn’t let go of her mother, moaning incessantly. The medics checked her out, and she’s with her now, at the granny’s house. Everyone accepts it’s for the best, for the moment at least. A counsellor’s on hand.’

‘Why didn’t the child’s school report her missing?’

‘It was run by the Elect, one of their schools, and Mrs Stimms told them she was off ill, appendicitis or something.’