I was waiting in Shannon’s cottage when my dad’s car slowed at her gate. She came trotting up the path through a fresh shower of rain and let herself in. It was four o’clock and black as hate outside. I was sitting in the shadows and I spoke before she saw me.
‘How did he persuade you?’
She started and, when she turned, she was trembling.
‘How did Lovatt Dudgeon persuade you to hide the bodies in here until the police were finished searching?’ I said.
‘He didn’t,’ Shannon said. She came and sat in the opposite armchair, the other side of the cold fireplace. Rain was dropping on the ash in the grate, and the air was rank with the smell of it. ‘Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t have. I would never.’
‘Shannon, I know it was you. Jesus, I accused Paddy! I suspected my own husband. But I know it was you.’
‘Wait,’ said Shannon. ‘Yes, that’s not what I mean. I’m not denying it. I’m saying I couldn’t have been leaned on to hide bodies,’ she said. ‘Bodies plural. I thought I was agreeing to one body. Tuft’s body. I was going to keep it here until the cops had found her suicide note and then he was going to take it away.’
‘Lovatt.’
‘Who else?’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because she killed his wife and daughter. That’s what he said to me. She masterminded it. He didn’t know. That’s what he told me. He didn’t work out what had happened until I contacted him and asked about Sean. And he wanted revenge on her.’
‘He … What? He heard you out and then he suddenly had this incredible revelation about his current wife killing his first wife?’
‘And daughter. And stealing his son. It sounds mad now, but I believed him.’
‘Why wouldn’t Tuft just kill both children?’ I said. ‘Why keep Simon alive and turn him into Paddy and give him to Elayne?’
‘Insurance,’ said Shannon. ‘So if Lovatt ever busted her she’d have a hold over him.’
‘But he organised the adoption,’ I said.
‘Unless she could forge his signature.’
‘And he gave Paddy a job.’
‘Unless she persuaded him.’
‘And why was it important for the body to be hidden for a while? Why move it here and then move it on?’
‘He said the murder would be harder to solve if it wasn’t found straight away. And also if it turned up somewhere the police thought they’d checked, they’d be on the defensive and less likely to make trouble.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right. So … what happened? What went wrong?’
‘I peeked,’ Shannon said. ‘I opened the door.’
‘Jesus. When?’
‘Monday night. Because one of their phones rang. I thought her phone was ringing – because I thought she was alone in there. So I went in. And there were two of them. Tuft and … I thought it was Lovatt. I thought he’d pulled a double-cross on me. Landing me with two bodies so I’d go to jail for murdering them.’
‘But that’s crazy,’ I said.
Shannon held up a hand and went on. ‘The phone was in Lovatt’s pocket. I stopped it ringing – it was just a junk call – and I used it to email the office and tell them the story about Brazil. That’s where he’d told me he was going. I was so scared, Finnie. I didn’t know what to do. So I bought some time, sending that email so no one would look for them. Then I went up and faxed the papers. Like Lovatt had told me to.’
‘How long did it take you to realise?’
‘I woke up in the middle of Monday night and it was like someone had whispered it in my ear,’ Shannon said. ‘If that’s Lovatt…?’
‘Who moved the corpses.’
‘Exactly. I realised the old man – his face, Finnie!’
‘I’ve seen it.’
‘I realised he was a decoy. Lovatt had lied about the plan. The story was never “Tuft killed herself because her husband left her”. The story was “Two old people killed themselves”.’
‘And that got you thinking?’
‘Slowly. Very slowly, I pieced it together. You helped. Telling me Paddy had been enticed down here, had been given a partnership, was Lovatt’s heir. He was the right age.’
‘And you worked out that Lovatt’s plan was to install Paddy, fake his own death and hook it?’
‘You’re quick,’ said Shannon. ‘It took me days to get there. But eventually I got there.’
‘By Friday,’ I said. ‘That’s why you went to Simon Dudgeon’s grave.’
‘To see Sean at last after all these years,’ she said. ‘Yes. And while I was there, he moved them again. Two more bodies in Jerusalem House.’
‘He was taking a hell of a chance,’ I said.
‘Not really. Paddy wouldn’t open his gob, would he? Mr Sloan would hardly. I couldn’t.’
‘What about the family in the other house?’ I said. ‘What are they called? McGann?’
‘Mann,’ said Shannon. ‘That house has been empty for years. Those bikes never move. There’s weeds in the sandpit and dead leaves in the trampoline. Didn’t you notice?’
I shuddered. ‘That’s beyond creepy,’ I said. ‘What’s the point of that, then?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they kept it in case they needed to buy off someone else, like they bought off Mr Sloan and you two. And me.’
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘he must know we saw the bodies. He must have been in Widdershins on Monday night when we went back. It was minutes later. He must have realised we might crack.’
‘He’s pretty good at judging what people will hide,’ Shannon said. ‘He’s never called it wrong before now.’
‘But why?’ I said. ‘Where did it all start? Was Denise Dudgeon even ill? Did she actually have Huntington’s? Was little Vanessa really tested? Or did Lovatt just want rid of them? Was he just a monster? A monster who met another monster.’
‘He is a monster,’ Shannon said. ‘He might have tricked Tuft the same way he tricked me. Maybe she found out on Monday night that her life was a lie. Maybe she had a split-second as the knife went in.’
We had been ignoring the sirens. Two police cars had flashed past, headed for the gate lodge and Widdershins’ drive. Now one came back the other way and stopped outside.
‘They’ve probably come for poor old Mr Sloan,’ said Shannon, but I didn’t think so and something about her saying it bothered me.
‘Why would Lovatt think I’d keep the secret?’ I asked her, as the police-car door slammed shut outside.
‘Didn’t you?’
‘But how did he know? It was such a fluke. Yes, Paddy and I were in too deep before we’d taken a single step, but how did he know? And why didn’t he lock the door?’
‘Ninety-nine people out of a hundred finding their bag in the vestibule nice and handy would have left it at that. But you had to go and be the one.’
‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘Hang on, though. How did you know where my handbag was?’
‘You told us all yesterday.’
I nodded. She was probably right and, anyway, that wasn’t what was bothering me. ‘I think the cops are coming here,’ I said. ‘Not to the Sloans. The Sloans,’ I repeated. Was that it?
Right enough, a plain-clothes cop was walking up Shannon’s path, talking into his phone.
‘I can’t face them,’ Shannon said. ‘Go and let him in, Finnie. I just can’t face it.’
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘I knew something was wrong when my dad told me how long she’d been dead. Shannon, you said you’d met Mrs Sloan.’
But she was hurrying into the kitchen and didn’t answer me. I went to the door.
‘Miss Mack?’ the cop said. He had a plastic folder held over his head to keep the rain off him.
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s in the—’ My voice died in my throat as, at the same split second I saw down the path into the back of the cop car and Paddy sitting there, I heard Shannon’s kitchen door bang.
‘She’s getting away!’ I pulled myself out of the way of the cop, fitter than he looked as he raced through the house and out again, yelling for his partner.
The passenger side of the police car flew open and another man in plain clothes skidded and scrambled up the path and round the side of the cottage.
I walked down, slowly, in the rain, and bent to look in at him. He was handcuffed to a bar that ran along the back of the front seats.
We stared at each other a good while. We said plenty in that silence, as the rain washed my head, cleared my mind.
‘You said you saw Mrs Sloan putting her bins out,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t true. None of it’s true.’
‘He did offer me a partnership,’ Paddy said. ‘That’s true. Only I said I wouldn’t take on St Angela’s so he started winding it down.’
‘St Angela’s is legit?’
‘Of course it’s legit! This isn’t the Wild West. How could someone fake an adoption agency?’
I took a step to steady myself. ‘Did Shannon have a brother?’
‘Shannon’s got two brothers. They live near her parents.’
‘But neither one of them is poor Sean, with his bad eyes and his clicking barrels.’
‘No.’
‘So the whole thing about her twin and the adoption … nothing’s true? Her Scandinavian mum and the poetry. None of it?
‘I don’t know if her mum writes poetry,’ Paddy said. ‘Could do. They’re not close.’
‘Did Lovatt kill his family?’ I said. I had to put a hand against the car for support.
‘Don’t be stupid. Denise killed herself and the kids. Because of the Huntington’s.’
‘And what about what your mum said? About the clinic and the little boy?’
‘She’d say anything for me.’
‘But she said she’d met Myna Sloan too!’
‘Shannon worked everything in,’ said Paddy.
‘And she fainted! Your mum did. Yesterday.’
‘She bottled it when Shannon walked in. You think she’s scared of you, Finnie? She’s petrified of Shannon.’
‘She’s right to be,’ I said. ‘And I don’t really scare her, do I? Lying to me scared her. The thought of me seeing through her scared her.’
He was barely listening. He had a dreamy look on his face, thinking about Shannon. It was a look I knew. I’d just never known what put it there.
‘You didn’t act as if you’d just met her, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘On Wednesday. At lunchtime. When you started talking about our rent and your partnership in front of her.’
‘You didn’t twig,’ he said.
‘So what’s the truth? How did you get the job? Why did he make you a partner? And what about my job?’
‘Oh, I am his kid,’ Paddy said. ‘That’s true. My mum used to work in his office in Edinburgh.’
‘So she’s really your mum?’
‘Yep.’
‘She took your baby pictures?’
‘Yep. One of them’s in the same living room, Finnie.’
‘So,’ I said. I was feeling a bit steadier now. I stood up straight again. ‘You and your girlfriend, Shannon, killed your boss and his wife so that you’d inherit his firm and his estate? And you cooked up a story so … insane that no one would question it? Is that it?’
‘You bought it, didn’t you? A deacon of the kirk, no less. You swallowed it whole.’
‘I thought I’d caught them out,’ I said. ‘Tuft and Lovatt. I thought I’d caught them lying about when they met.’
Paddy’s head jerked up.
‘She said twenty-five years ago when Berwick station went automatic,’ I said. ‘But that was over thirty years back. Shannon checked it.’
‘Oh, Shannon checked?’ said Paddy.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Idiot. She must have been lying. Only … why would she lie about that?’
‘For fun,’ Paddy said. ‘For the hell of it. Or maybe he did meet Tuft before Denise and the kids died. Maybe he did dump his family for wifie-poo number two. Tuft didn’t have to live in a semi, knitting for cash, did she?’
I nodded. ‘I’m still trying to get my head round it,’ I said. ‘Brazil? Sean Mack? Simon Dudgeon? St Angela’s? It was all … a dust storm?’
‘And the papers I doctored to show to Abby and the signed documents I left behind so we’d have a reason to go back up there. Then you left your bag, which was even better.’
‘You’re a good actor,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that about you, but you fooled me over the fax and the email.’ His face showed a flicker. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Weren’t you acting?’
‘She kept changing things. The papers were supposed to be there. The bodies weren’t supposed to move. She wasn’t even supposed to be on the drive on Monday night. In the trees. All that planning and then she kept changing things.’
‘Why?’ I said.
Paddy shrugged, his face drawn up in the creases and puckers that were bound to bring on a migraine. Then he laughed again. ‘For the joy of it,’ he said. ‘Same as how she added all the mad extras, like that barrel video. Mind you, she was right – she showed it to you. And you bought it.’
‘Why did she move the bodies?’ I said.
‘I don’t know!’ That had rattled him, but he recovered. ‘She’ll have had a good reason. She always does.’
‘Because no one would do that for fun, would they?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Maybe,’ I went on, ‘she made all the changes so you’d make mistakes. So you’d end up where you are.’
‘What?’ said Paddy. Even now, sitting in the back of a police car, he couldn’t see past her. ‘No, this wasn’t part of the plan, Finn. And we really did plan. We planned longer than you’d believe.’
‘Try me,’ I said. ‘Tell me how long. You knew about me, didn’t you? About the car crash, the jail time. And me a deacon.’
‘Of course I did. And I knew how ashamed of it you were.’
‘I was selected? I was a stooge?’
‘Well, put it this way. I thought it would come in handy. And it did.’
‘And I take it the oil rig and all that was a load of crap? The old lady client who died? The loan?’
Paddy’s face snapped shut. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That was true. I went to my father – my own bloody father – to help me straighten it out and he did. He gave me the loan and then he told me I had to pay it back. The rig was his idea. It was quick money and it sure as hell felt like prison. He didn’t need the cash, you know. He just wanted me to learn a lesson. So I decided I’d teach him one instead. I had already started planning it that night I met you.’
‘And then you were going to offload me?’
‘Except I didn’t have to,’ Paddy said. ‘You were just about to leave me of your own accord, weren’t you?’
‘Clever,’ I said.
‘Shannon’s a genius,’ said Paddy. ‘Sloan’s secret gave us part of the idea too. Creepy necro Mr Sloan. Shannon just folded it into everything else.’
‘But I don’t understand why Lovatt and Tuft covered for Mr Sloan if he had nothing on them,’ I said.
‘They didn’t!’ said Paddy. ‘They didn’t know Mrs Sloan was lying up there. Only Shannon knew that.’
‘But they said they played mah jongg with her. Sonsie told me they were there on Sunday night.’ I screwed my face up with the effort of remembering. We were sitting in the back pew of the church, Sonsie and me. ‘No!’ I said. ‘I told her. But who told me?’ Paddy said it in chorus with me as I remembered.
‘Shannon.’
Then he went on, ‘If you just say things straight out to people who trust you, nine times out of ten they’ll swallow it. She taught me that.’
‘Oh, Paddy,’ I said. ‘She didn’t half.’
‘What?’ he asked me, still not seeing.
‘Why did they give her a cottage?’ I said.
‘They didn’t! She paid the going rate. Of course, Lovatt regretted it when she started tightening the screws.’
‘Why did they pretend she didn’t exist?’
‘What?’
‘They said there were two houses when there’s three. What do you mean “screws”?’
‘She pretended she suspected him of killing his children. He was terrified of her.’
‘He was right as well,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who got her wrong, Paddy. You’re handcuffed in a cop car and she’s on the run. Do you really think she’ll stick with you, back up your version, if they catch her?’
‘Course she will,’ he said.
‘You still think you’re in this with her?’
He was shaking but it might have been the cold. I was shaking too. ‘We’re a team. I’m the money and she’s the brains. Some of it went right over your head, you know.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘If you mean the butterfly?’
‘What butterfly?’
‘The black butterfly on Lovatt’s back. The blood should have been red. All the blood should have been red. The black stain on his back was supposed to make me think that blood was old, right? Make me think that old man was longer dead than Lovatt Dudgeon could have been. Then we’d “work out” that the old man wasn’t Lovatt after all.’
‘Oh, you caught that, did you? Why did you never ask what I was saying? In my sleep.’
‘Too dark?’
‘You were supposed to ask me. And I would “think about it a while” and “realise”.’
‘And I’d be convinced because it would explain why I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. The black butterfly.’
‘Too dark!’ said Paddy. ‘She’s a genius. She can act, forge handwriting and signatures, spin so many different tales no one even knows where to start unravelling them.’
‘She’s very resourceful,’ I said. As I watched, a pale blue people carrier came along the road and pulled in at the Manns’ house. A woman stepped down and looked back along the lane to where the cop car sat with its doors open, and a girl in a dog-collar stood by it in the pouring rain. Then she opened the back doors and shooed a gaggle of teenagers into the house ahead of her. I raised a hand to wave but, as you would, she ignored me.
‘Trouble is, Paddy,’ I added, ‘she’s completely insane. And she’s ruined your life. Too dark is about right.’
I could hear my dad’s car coming. I saw his headlamps picking out raindrops as he came swinging round the corner. I left Paddy sitting there and walked towards the light.