Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10) (11 page)

Chapter 18 Identity crisis

Jemima had an idea early on Sunday morning before Dave was awake. She lay there for a while debating with herself whether to get out of bed to make a note of it in case she had forgotten by breakfast time, which was only too likely, whether to wake him up to tell him, or whether to lie there telling it to herself over and over again in the hope that this would make her remember it later.

She glanced at the corner of the window, where the glimpse of daylight visible round the corner of the curtains showed that it was about five o’clock, or maybe even earlier if the day was bright and sunny. On the other hand, it was August in Pitkirtly, and the days were only rarely bright and sunny. Even if they were like that at five in the morning, they had usually clouded over by breakfast time.

What had she been trying to remember again? She dredged the idea out of the deeper part of her mind to which it was already starting to sink.

Maybe she should go and tell the police. But would they just laugh indulgently at the ramblings of a silly old woman? It might be better to run it past one of their friends first, to see if they laughed. Well, she knew Jock McLean would laugh anyway, so there was no point in even considering him.

She turned over, pulled a blanket back over her that Dave had managed to steal, and carried on thinking of ways to remember. Maybe she should have kept a notebook and pencil by the bed to record flashes of inspiration, the way she had heard of writers doing. But this didn’t really happen often enough to justify a separate notebook.

‘What if the woman was pretending to be somebody else?’ she said to Dave, suddenly remembering it again just as Dave was getting their second round of toast out of the toaster.

He jumped, dropped a piece of toast in the sink and swore under his breath.

‘David Douglas! What’s the matter with you?’

‘It burnt my fingers,’ said Dave. ‘Sorry.’ He got one of Jemima’s best plates out of the cupboard, placed the other piece of toast on it, carried it ceremonially over to the table and presented it to her with a flourish. ‘Your toast, milady.’

He got out the bread again and put another slice in the toaster.

‘Mind you put that other bit in the recycling.’

He saluted. ‘Message understood.’

Jemima couldn’t help laughing at him. He didn’t seem to know whether he was a royal footman or a humble army private. For her part she would have to decide, presumably, between being a queen and turning into a regimental sergeant-major.

She decided she would have to be a queen. She didn’t have the power in her voice to bark orders at people.

‘Now, what was that you were you saying?’ he asked, sitting down at the table to wait for his toast. ‘Somebody or other pretending to be somebody else?’

For a moment Jemima thought he was talking about her putting on airs and pretending to be like royalty. She got ready to take offence, and then remembered her idea.

‘You know how that patient pretended to be a nurse in the hospital and I thought he was a nurse because he was wearing a nurse’s uniform and he was in the right place and trying to hand out medicine?’

‘Yes,’ said Dave, after a short pause while he looked as if he seemed to be working out what she was talking about. ‘Easy enough to make that mistake.’

‘Well, what if the woman we saw chasing the alpaca was in the right place wearing the right outfit and we didn’t even think she might not be the right person?’

A slightly longer pause this time. Then Dave said, cautiously, ‘I think I see what you mean.’

‘Well, do you think I should tell the police?’

Dave wrinkled his forehead in a way that reminded her of how he used to look sometimes when she was holding forth about some exciting new family history discovery or scrapbooking technique. ‘I don’t know, dear. It isn’t exactly evidence, is it?’

‘But it might point them in the right direction,’ said Jemima. ‘They might not have thought of it themselves.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Dave again. ‘That Chief Inspector Ramsay’s a clever woman. She’s probably thought of all the angles.’

Jemima felt frustrated by his lack of understanding that, no matter how clever Sarah Ramsay was, she hadn’t had the same hospital experience and the idea of somebody deliberately pretending to be somebody else might not be so fresh in her mind.

Luckily the door-bell rang, so she didn’t have the chance to get cross with Dave. While he went to answer it, she told herself it wasn’t his fault she hadn’t explained her theory properly. Maybe she could think of another way of putting it. And this was good practice for the moment when she had to try and convince the police, after all.

She didn’t feel quite so lucky when Dave led Jock McLean into the kitchen.

‘Do you want some tea – or coffee? Toast? A wee biscuit? You’d better sit down. Jemima’s got a bee in her bonnet.’

Jemima hadn’t necessarily wanted to try and explain her idea to Jock McLean, who presumably also suffered from all the disadvantages of his gender when it came to appreciating female intuition and lateral thinking. But she started at the beginning with the body in the woods, and persevered, and to her surprise Jock was a little more understanding than Dave on this occasion.

‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘It’s like the time I thought the man dressed up as a clown was really selling tickets for the Edinburgh Tattoo, when it turned out they were fake all along. Just as well I found out in time,’ he added mournfully. ‘I might have gone along to it expecting to get in. There was a terrible downpour that night, too. Thunder, lightning, the works. I was quite grateful to him in the end.’

‘What did you want to go to the Edinburgh Tatttoo for anyway?’ said Dave.

Jock shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just one of those things I thought I should do at least once.’

‘I don’t know why,’ said Dave. ‘Lot of men in kilts playing bad tunes on so-called instruments. The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.’

‘Isn’t that fox-hunting?’ said Jemima.

Dave and Jock ignored her.

‘You’re quite right,’ said Jock. ‘I had a lucky escape there.’

‘What if,’ said Dave after a gulp of tea, ‘the woman we saw was different from the one Christopher saw later on? And different again from the one who’s been found dead?’

‘That would make three women altogether,’ said Jemima. ‘Who are they all?’

‘Maybe one of them was a neighbour, or a friend of the first one,’ Dave suggested.

‘You and Christopher should get together and do some of those artists’ impressions,’ said Jock. ‘Then you might be able to work it out.’

‘That’s no good,’ said Jemima. ‘We’re all useless at drawing.’

‘There must be somebody around here who isn’t,’ said Jock. ‘Maisie Sue’s quite arty, isn’t she?’

‘She’s away on holiday,’ said Jemima. ‘She left us her house keys in case anything happens.’

‘Where’s she gone?’ said Jock.

‘Oh, just up north,’ said Jemima. ‘Skye, or somewhere. She told me she’s looking for quilting inspiration.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Dave. ‘Isn’t there anybody else we know who could do it?’

‘Oh, I know!’ said Jemima. ‘The wee girl from Rosyth. You know the one. She’s a real artist.’

‘She might not want to do it,’ Jock objected. ‘Last I heard, she wasn’t going out much. Had a bit of a breakdown at the end of all that to-do in the spring. She’s still staying with Mrs Petrelli, though.’

Well, finding the girl and persuading her to help would give them something useful to do for the rest of the day, Jemima thought happily, folding her hands demurely in her lap. It should keep Dave and Jock out of mischief for a while, if nothing else.

Chapter 19 Baffled, of Pitkirtly

Amaryllis was also awake at five on Sunday morning, but in her case she recognised the futility of lying awake thinking about things. Instead she decided to get up and get on with the day.

She hadn’t even planned it, but somehow by five-thirty, after a strong coffee and a power bar she found her footsteps taking her up to the road junction where you could either turn down towards the shops, the Cultural Centre and eventually the Queen of Scots, or up the hill if you were heading for the derelict hotel, the garden centre and one of the routes out of town.

She hesitated at this point. She didn’t want to risk being pulled in for questioning again, mainly because it would be such a waste of time. They might even keep her for longer the next time out of pure irritation that she had got under their feet twice in one weekend. On the other hand, she sensed that there was more to discover around the two scenes of crime, and no guarantee that the police would discover it all. She could go back down to Penelope’s and make a nuisance of herself there until the woman woke up, but the thought of the twitching net curtains put her off a bit.

Amaryllis gave herself a little shake. All this hesitation was a sign she had become too cosy and comfortable in Pitkirtly. Perhaps she should contact the people she had once worked for to beg them for one last mission, if only to give her an incentive to get back the edge she knew she had been renowned for.

She was only encouraged by the certainty that Christopher would be utterly horrified if she did anything of the kind.

It was definitely time to confront her misgivings – Amaryllis wasn’t going to call them fears – and go up the hill again to revisit the gardens on the edge of town, preferably without being seen this time. This would have to act as a pale substitute for a new mission in terms of keeping her senses well honed.

She got almost as far as the hotel before coming to a ‘road closed’ sign and seeing a lonely police car parked on the verge up ahead. Surely the police hadn’t been there all night? That would have been a very unusual event in the annals of Pitkirtly crime-fighting. She hoped nothing more had happened to cause this. But perhaps two suspicious deaths in the same neighbourhood within a few days had caused them to be on high alert.

She ducked into the hotel grounds through a gap in the perimeter wall. She was almost confident she hadn’t been seen. Even if two police officers had been in the car all night, at least one of them was probably having a nap by now, and the other reading inspirational literature or something on his tablet.

There was a shout from somewhere up ahead. Surely to goodness that annoying man from the house at the back hadn’t spotted her already. She broke into a run, hunching herself over by instinct to avoid enemy fire as she went, darting round obstacles and eventually flinging herself flat against the front wall of the hotel, near the old entrance, now boarded up.

The sounds of at least two different voices, both raised in anger, reached her.  She worked her way along the wall in the direction of all the noise. And came to a sudden halt as two men came round the corner.

One was in police uniform and the other wasn’t. The policeman was marching the other one, a young man, along, but not without protest.

‘...pipe down, you wee scumbag, or you’ll be in worse trouble...’

‘...take your hands off me, police pig!’

‘Who are you calling a pig, you wee slimeball? Get a move on – we’re taking you in and that’s that.’

‘Who’s that over there?’

‘Don’t even try it, sunshine, I know all the tricks of your trade.’

‘No, really, who is that?’

Of course the policeman had to look in her direction eventually, and even although Amaryllis tried hard to blend into the fabric of the building, she knew he would see her. He took one hand off his captive’s shoulder for a second to activate his radio, and she heard fragments of his report to his colleague.

‘... another one. Backup... urgently... Just get in here!’

The captive took the opportunity to wriggle free, and darted away, back round the corner of the building.

‘Don’t go away! We’re coming back for you!’ the policeman yelled over in Amaryllis’s direction as he headed after the boy.

A second police officer was just entering the hotel grounds as she dashed back in the direction she had come and headed round to the far side of the hotel. She didn’t know the layout as well here, but anything was better than being caught and marched away ignominiously like the young man. It would be such a waste of everyone’s time if she had to go to the police station and sit through another lecture from Sarah Ramsay. She was really saving the police force a lot of trouble by escaping.

The hotel building went almost right up to the boundary wall of the property at this side, but there was room to squeeze through into a small bramble-filled yard outside a side entrance, and then out to the long-deserted parking area at the back. Amaryllis wished it wasn’t quite so deserted. How was she supposed to stay out of sight with nothing to shelter behind?

She took a deep breath and ran across the empty space as fast as she could, heading for the place where she had crossed the fence a day or two ago into that annoying man’s back garden. By now he had probably had it electrified, but she couldn’t afford to let herself be slowed down by worrying about that.

A shout from somewhere behind told her that she hadn’t shaken off the second police officer’s pursuit. Why on earth was he bothering?

She dived over the rustic wood fence and dodged in amongst the trees. They were artistically arranged, quite sparsely, but Amaryllis was slim enough to hide among the denser ones at the back, whatever they were called. Perhaps she should study the different types of vegetation in a bit more detail. You never knew when it might be useful to know which shrubs and trees lost their leaves in winter, for instance.

There was a final splutter of static from the policeman’s radio not far away. Then a rustling in the undergrowth, and for a moment the young man emerged quietly beside her, grinned widely in a conspiratorial manner and rushed away again, running faster than even she could have managed, sliding round trees and bushes as he came to them. Now that she saw him properly, there was something vaguely familiar about him and his ready smile. Of course, it might just be that she was getting to the age at which all young men began to look familiar.

It seemed to make sense that he would go right round to the front of the house and made a speedy exit to the street and away, but she stayed where she was and listened for a few moments more. No footsteps rustling through the undergrowth, no heavy breathing just behind her, no hand on her shoulder.

Nothing except the agitated barking of two large dogs as they rushed through the trees and bushes towards her.

This time Sarah Ramsay didn’t even bother to ask any questions. She just sighed in the same long-suffering way that Amaryllis remembered Charlie Smith using in the bad old days when he had worked in the police force, and opened the door of the police station wide.

‘Just go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got plenty of other fish to fry. I don’t want to see you again this lifetime.’

‘That’s a bit harsh,’ Amaryllis complained, and then glanced at her old hockey team-mate’s face and felt a tiny twinge, in an infrequently-visited part of her mind, of what even she recognised as remorse. Sarah didn’t look older than her years, or more haggard or anything. She just looked extremely tired, as if she had been on a treadmill all night and didn’t expect to be released from it any time soon. The way Amaryllis had felt that time in Tibet after she had been swept down a river, battered by the current and bumped against rocks every few metres. ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘I was only trying to help.’

‘Don’t even...’

‘All right. I won’t do it again.’

A half-smile broke through Sarah’s exhaustion. ‘I know you won’t. Until the next time. I’m only asking you to give it a rest. Don’t go rampaging through that man’s garden again. Don’t go anywhere near the hotel grounds. Don’t go anywhere near a street where there’s a Neighbourhood Watch. Don’t interfere. Think of this as a final warning.’

Amaryllis was tempted to say something about Sarah needing her help sooner or later, but she decided at the last moment to leave well alone. She lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave and headed away decisively.

Charlie Smith, into whose unofficial custody she had been released, and to whom she was lucky not to have been handcuffed, followed her down the road with his dog.