Four

“I didn’t do it.”

That was the first thing he said when we were back in the car, crawling along the track to the gap in the fence. I would have driven like a bat out of hell if I could have, but my limbs had turned leaden on me, my feet sludgy on the pedals and my arms so heavy I thought they might drop from the steering wheel and just lie in my lap like sandbags.

“So if you’re protecting me for some mad reason, you don’t have to. I didn’t do that. I could never … ”

I believed him. I knew without a flicker of doubt, right from the off that Stig Tarrant hadn’t killed April Cowan. It wasn’t sentiment. It wasn’t old times. It was the way he had called out her name, so hopeful, and the way he had said she wasn’t there, so torn between relief and disappointment, and the way he had said those terrible words: Oh Jesus fuck. He wasn’t acting.

I can smell insincerity at fifty paces. I can hear the lie under the kind word every time. Lynne at work calls it a certain kind of detector, and though I don’t like the sound of having one of them inside me, I suppose it’s true. One of the orderlies is always saying Nicky’s a lovely boy and I’m a lucky mummy or he’s a lucky boy and I’m lovely mummy, and she might as well shout at the top of her lungs that she despises me and Nicky gives her the creeps. But then there’s this old Irish orderly, Donna, and she says, “Ah, the poor soul, but he’s still your blessing.” And she means every word.

“I know you didn’t,” I said to Stig. “She did it herself.”

“But I mean I didn’t drive her to it,” Stig said. “I don’t know why she picked on me and set me up for this. I don’t understand anything that’s happening.”

“I know.”

“So why aren’t we dialling 999?”

“Listen,” I said, “and I’ll tell you.”

Back in the kitchen the Rayburn was teetering. When the wind gets up in the north it sometimes just snuffs it out, and then Rough House is a miserable place to be. I usually light a fire in the living room if it looks likely, but tonight I didn’t have the energy to strike a match, never mind lay the paper and twigs and nurse it. The chimney’s as bad as the stove when the wind blows.

“Tea?” I said.

“Whisky?” said Stig. I went through to the living room to get the bottle from the press. When I got back he had dragged two chairs from the table, set them close to the oven, and opened the door.

“I know it’ll cool your hot water, but needs must.” His teeth were chattering.

I turned and left again, went upstairs to my bedroom, got a tee-shirt and a sweat suit—a plain one in pale grey with no sparkles—thick socks and a fleece hat.

“Here,” I said, when I got back to the kitchen again. “Strip off and get into these. I’m going to change too. Shout when you’re ready.”

I managed not to laugh at the sight of him, bundled in my clothes with the hat flaps pulled over his ears. I just sat down beside him, kicked off my slippers, and put my feet on Walter Scott’s back. He thumped his tail once but didn’t open his eyes.

“Think my size nines would flatten him?” said Stig, his voice sounding rough from a big swallow of whisky.

“Not Walter,” I said. “Sometimes at night he burrows under me so I’m right on top of him, and he stays there till morning.”

I blushed then, but who knows if it was from admitting I slept with a dog, alluding to my figure, or just the whisky.

“Okay,” I said. Stig wouldn’t know I was blushing. Only the lamps were on, not the big light, and the green distemper makes everyone look like a vampire. “Why I live here. It’s not my house. It belongs to a friend who’s not in good enough health to stay here alone anymore. So I’m long-term house-sitting.”

“Glo,” he said. “That’s all very—We’ve got more impor—”

“Wait,” I said. “Just listen. It’s Nicky.”

Nicky! I thought when I swerved to avoid Stig on the road. I can’t have a car crash because who’ll be there for Nicky?

Nicky! I thought when the knock came at the door. I can’t be attacked in my home by a crazed madman because Nicky needs me.

And crouching in the huttie looking down at the curled shell of April Cowan’s body, my only thought was Nicky!

“My son, Nicky, lives at the home,” I said. “I go every night after work. I’ve never missed a day in ten years and if they were to close it off—for an investigation—and I couldn’t go … Well, it maybe doesn’t make much sense now, but that’s why I wiped the prints.”

“What’s wrong with him?” said Stig.

“That’s why I wiped the prints,” I said again, ignoring the question. Nothing is wrong with Nicky. “For Nicky. Because never mind an investigation. They might have to close the home.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“I can’t chance it.”

“We can’t just leave her there!” said Stig. “We have to phone and tell someone. People will be worried about her. Her family.”

“If they close the home … ”

“They won’t. Things happen, Gloria. Bad things happen. People die. Very unhappy people kill themselves. There’s a pub in Edinburgh where a girl was murdered and it’s still open. It’s only a pub and that was a murder. They won’t close a care home.”

“But what if someone who works there is mixed up in it somehow? If there’s a scandal and they lose their license?”

“They won’t,” he said again.

“How can you say that!” I said. “It happened before. It happened when the home was a school. It happened at Eden.”

“Exactly,” said Stig and drained his glass. “What happened tonight is nothing to do with the home. What happened here tonight started with Eden.”

“You know that for a fact?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Phone them.”

But he shook his head and laughed very softly.

“No,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”

Dorothy had been sitting on the floor looking up at us and now she finally made her choice. She sprang up into Stig’s lap, kneaded the grey sweatpants for a moment and then curled into a ball, purring. He stroked her back in slow gentle movements. I noticed because he had patted Walter Scott before and usually someone who knows how to pat a dog is too rough with a cat, ruffling them up and confusing them. Stig smoothed Dorothy’s fur from just behind her head all the way to the tip of her tail, and she uncurled and stretched along the length of his legs to let him make a proper job of it.

“What is it you need to say?” I asked. But he just kept stroking the cat, not looking at me. His head was sunk down onto his chest. The cat purring, the aftershock, the whisky. His breathing sounded halfway to snores, but then some heavy men do breathe that way.

I tried again.

“Earlier you said you knew April was talking about Moped. Was that because she said more then you’ve told me? Because just from what you’ve told me, it could have been anything.”

He roused himself at last. “You’re sharp,” he said. “You always were even though you never looked it.” He was staring down into his empty glass, but he didn’t reach out to the bottle for more. “I would have guessed if she’d said even less,” he went on quietly. “It was my first thought when the first message came. Before I even read it. I saw April Cowan’s name and thought, Moped! Just like that.

“One time years ago I passed another girl from Eden in the street in Glasgow. Rain Irving. I recognised her and I thought, Moped! And she recognised me and thought the same. Her lips moved, saying his name. I bet that sounds crazy.”

“Not to me.” It sounded like my life. “Except that a tragic accident years ago … you’d think it would have faded by now.”

“It would have,” Stig said. He stroked Dorothy. “It wasn’t a tragic accident,” he said at last, and the low light, the cat, and the whisky made the words seem gentle. I nodded when I heard them.

“Is that what you needed to say?”

“Not really,” said Stig, “but we can start there. Have some more whisky. I feel as if once I start talking, I’ll never stop.”

“Okay,” I said, “but—”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Stig said. “And they’ll not get wired into the crime scene till daylight and the rain stops.”

“I suppose not,” I said, “but that’s not what I wanted to say.” I knew I was blushing this time. “Can we swap sides?” Because in primary seven, in Mrs. Hill’s class, I was on the left and he was on the right, and if I was going to look beside me for Stig Tarrant it seemed that, even all these years later, I should look that way. Maybe it was the whisky, but in that moment it almost seemed like all these years I’d been looking that way, wondering where he’d got to, and now at last things felt right again. Right! Even after what we’d seen.

Stig moved carefully, keeping Dorothy as still as he could. She stopped purring, but she didn’t jump down.

“Eden had just opened up in the September,” he said, when he was settled again. “We were the first ones there.”

“I remember,” I said. “It was in the news. I remember my mum and dad talking about it.”

“Hippies running wild, trouble waiting to happen?”

“Like Lord of the Flies,” I said. Only this time, when I explained it, he spoke too.

“Book,” we both said, and then we both started laughing.

“It’s not like I know your family that well,” I went on, after a bit, “but I’m surprised you went there.”

Stig laughed again. I thought about the Tarrants, what I knew of them. Five years in Saudi. That marked them out from most of the people round here, who had to psych themselves up for an hour-long drive to Carlisle. They were certainly different enough when they came back—Big Jacky, Wee Jacky, Angie, and Stig—and from the things my mum said, I took it they’d changed while they were away. Look at her! Dressed like that to nip out to the shops. I remember wondering why someone in nice clothes would make my mother angry. She’s freezing cold and won’t admit it. That was another one. Angie Tarrant had a sunbed and she wore bare legs and short sleeves from early spring till late autumn, again at night at Christmas, showing off her tan. All my dad said was, Good luck to them. I hope it works out. That was when the Tarrants bought a big chunk of land at the old station yard, talking about a leisure complex, a pool and a gym and flats for the sort of people who’d want to live in them.

“You don’t know the half of it, Glo,” said Stig. “I don’t suppose Wee J would have been packed off to live in the woods if Eden was still going when he left primary, but BJ reckoned it would do for me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. A lot of kids think they’re not the favourite and hardly any kids think they are. Even my sister moans about my mum and dad favouring me. “The right can do no wrong,” she said when she found out I was getting divorced and Mum hadn’t told her. Truth was my mother didn’t mention the divorce because she was ashamed, was still campaigning to stop it.

“There’s never been a divorce in this family,” she’d said. “Never. Your grandma gritted her teeth and stuck it out and so can you.” There was no use telling her it wasn’t my decision. All she said was, “Well, whatever it is he wants from you, give it to him. You made vows, Gloria, and you should keep them.” She had looked me all over, as if whatever had disappointed Duggie would be there for her to see. “At least you could take more care of yourself,” she said. “Tart yourself up a bit. He’s a red-blooded male.”

I could have pointed out to my sister that a doting mother doesn’t say things like that to her favourite child, but my sister agreed with every word of it and she’d only chip in with her tuppenceworth. I’d heard it before: Cut your hair, Gloria. Lose some weight, Gloria. Get new clothes, shoes, nails, teeth.

“So what happened to Moped?” I asked Stig.