30

Rebecca had suspected that Chaz was flirting with her a little that day and there was a part of her that had responded. He was a couple of years younger but he was easy on the eye, talented and good company. She had also learned he was compassionate and cared about his adopted island home, although he wasn’t blind to its failings. What she had gone through in the past year—the baby, Simon—meant she wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship but she found she was not averse to spending more time with him. As she rattled out a report on the public meeting and emailed it to Barry, she found she was looking forward to seeing him again. That meant there was more than a twinge of disappointment when she arrived in the dining room to see him sitting at the table with his friend Alan. She kept her smile in place, though. She’d become adept at that in recent months.

Chaz stood up as she approached and gestured towards his slim, sallow-faced companion. ‘Alan’s joining us, hope that’s okay.’

‘I hope I’m not some kind of third wheel on this little bicycle built for you two,’ said Alan, his eyes smiling.

Chaz blushed and flicked his napkin at his friend. ‘Behave.’

Rebecca could feel her own face warming up, so she covered it by studying the menu. ‘So what do you do at the big house, Alan?’

‘Oh, as little as possible,’ he said, with a languid wave of his hand.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ said Chaz. ‘He practically runs the place.’

‘I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate, Chazer. I’m an administrator, that’s all.’

‘And what does an administrator on an estate like that do, exactly?’

‘Paperwork, mostly. Show me a pile of paperwork and I’ll administrate the utter hell out of it.’

She could tell he really didn’t want to talk about his role in the estate. ‘So you work with Carl Marsh?’

Alan’s lips pursed. ‘Mmm, indeed I do. Lovely man. Somewhere there’s a party wondering just what the hell happened to its life and soul.’

Ash wheeled over to them and took their order. Chaz and Alan both ordered chicken, Rebecca went for the fish. As she watched Ash glide effortlessly towards the kitchen, she said, ‘Does anyone know why Ash is in a wheelchair?’

‘Car accident is what I heard,’ said Chaz. ‘Back in Glasgow.’

‘Not as simple as that,’ said Alan.

‘We don’t know that’s true,’ said Chaz, giving his friend a warning look.

‘I got it from Lee-Anne.’

Chaz’s face wrinkled dismissively. ‘Lee-Anne’s a fantasist.’

Rebecca asked, ‘Who’s Lee-Anne?’

‘Seasonal worker,’ said Chaz. ‘She lives over on the mainland but comes to the island during the summer, works as a waitress in the hotel and up at the big house when there’s a need.’

‘And what did she say happened?’

‘That Ash and his friends in Glasgow went up against some racist thugs,’ said Alan. ‘Ash came off worst. One of them drove his car right at him, pinned him to a wall. His family moved up here as soon as he was able to travel.’

‘No racists on Stoirm then?’

‘Oh yes, there are racists everywhere. Hatred is universal. There are no geographical barriers to narrow, bitter little minds.’

Rebecca sensed that he was speaking from personal experience. He had kept his voice light but there was an acidity to the words.

Chaz was still unconvinced. ‘Lee-Anne also said that George Clooney once gave her a lift from Inverness to Wick.’

Alan gave the younger man the kind of look a schoolteacher gives an unruly pupil. ‘Who’s to say that gorgeous George didn’t offer a young lady a lift?’ He looked back at the menu, even though he had already ordered. ‘Anyway, just because she tells the occasional story doesn’t mean everything she says is a lie, Chaz.’ He smiled at Rebecca. ‘But that’s Stoirm for you. Stories and lies, with the truth hiding somewhere in between.’

Alan’s words made her think about Mhairi and Roddie. She’d learned a lot since her arrival on the island and, coupled with what she’d researched beforehand, she was having difficulty separating fact from fiction.

‘Speaking of which,’ began Chaz, ‘what did you get out of Molly Sinclair?’

Rebecca hesitated, and Chaz correctly guessed why. ‘I trust Alan. He’s on our side. He’s a gossip but that comes in handy sometimes.’

Alan slapped Chaz’s arm with the back of his hand. ‘Hey!’

Chaz smiled, waiting for Rebecca to talk. So she did. She told them what Molly had said, she outlined her conversation with Sawyer. She threw in details from Donnie Kerr’s interview. She filled in what blanks she could from the research she had done. They listened, occasionally dropping in a question or asking for clarification. They paused when Ash brought the food, but if he noticed he didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he was used to it. As she talked, more diners filtered in. Hotel guests, an elderly couple who Rebecca thought she’d seen at the public meeting, a group of four people in casual clothes who talked about their boat in loud voices, saying they had heard there was weather moving in and they’d need to get back to the mainland in the morning, making her assume they had docked at the harbour for the night. And all the while, in addition to their questions, Chaz and Alan kept up their own banter, joking with each other, occasionally launching playful slaps and punches.

Rebecca ate her food as if she hadn’t eaten for days, which is how she felt. It had been a long time since breakfast and a packet of peanuts and some crisps only went so far. If she hadn’t been talking so much she would’ve had her plate clear before her dinner companions had unfolded their napkins. She told Ash to put the food on her bill, shushed the protestations from the two men, and they all retreated to the bar. Two of Carl Marsh’s moron squad were there, manspreading around a couple of the small round tables while watching football on the TV. They stared at the three of them as they entered and Rebecca heard Alan tut loudly.

‘Speaking of small, bitter minds . . .’ he said.

Chaz eagerly volunteered to get the drinks in, so Rebecca and Alan moved into the lounge area, which was empty. Once they had made themselves comfortable, and to fill in the awkward gap left by the absence of the one person that linked them, Rebecca asked, ‘So, how did you end up on Stoirm, Alan?’

‘Shipwreck,’ he said. ‘Washed ashore like David Balfour in Kidnapped.’ He smiled. ‘My parents finagled the job for me. Perhaps you can tell I’m not from these here parts. My father is one of those legendary figures—“something big in the city”—and when I left university, neither Oxford nor Cambridge, to his eternal chagrin, he feared I would wander aimlessly like a gypsy and get myself into all sorts of trouble. And he was probably spot on. So he prevailed upon Lord Henry to give me a position up here shuffling paper around. And it turns out I have an aptitude for it.’

‘It’s more than just shuffling paper around, surely?’

‘Oh yes, there’s email, too. I’m a secretary, Rebecca, a noble profession, to be sure, but still little more than a serf at the beck and call of my superiors.’

‘You don’t enjoy it?’

‘I hate it. But it brings in a modest stipend. I have a nice little flat above a nice little garage that was once a nice little stable. It’s far enough away from the big house to give me the illusion of independence. And as superiors go, Lord Henry isn’t bad.’ He looked up as Chaz appeared from the bar with three glasses perched precariously in a triangle in his hands. ‘And, of course, the island does have its compensations . . .’

Compensations. That would be Chaz. She had picked up the signals during dinner, now she knew for certain. Alan and Chaz were involved. So much for Chaz chatting her up—and it explained his curious comment about being a boy scout. Not in the way you think. For her part, there was disappointment but also relief. She really wasn’t ready. She didn’t know when she would be, but she knew it was too soon.

Alan’s disdain for the moron squad suggested that he had experienced their bitter little minds in action, for they would be far too manly to accept a homosexual in their midst. As Chaz carefully laid the drinks on the small table and they each took their own, she wondered if he had suffered at their hands, too.

‘So, Jessica Fletcher,’ said Alan, ‘where exactly are we with the case?’

Rebecca thought about it. ‘The only thing we can say for certain is that Mhairi Sinclair was murdered. The only person in the frame at the time was Roddie Drummond. He said he found her badly beaten and tried to help. Donnie had seen her earlier that night and she told him she was in trouble. That trouble was that she thought she was pregnant and Henry Stuart was the father . . .’

‘No surprise there,’ said Alan, his voice low. ‘Let me tell you, he’s had more women wafting through the corridors of that house than draughts. And there are a lot of draughts.’

‘Does his wife know?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Of course she knows, but she ignores it.’ He dropped his voice even further. ‘Apparently she’s prone to a little bit of extra-marital herself. Very fond of a sausage supper, if you know what I mean? Can’t say I blame her.’

That earned another flick of Chaz’s fingers, but there was a laugh in his voice as he said, ‘Behave yourself.’

‘Where was Roddie Drummond that night?’ Alan asked.

‘Working on the estate, fixing a flood. Sawyer said they checked his alibi and it was substantiated, from Henry on down.’

Alan’s eyebrows raised. ‘Henry was with him?’

‘Apparently. The police spoke to him and he said he was with Roddie and the others doing the repairs. Donnie said he was there, too; he was supposed to help but he was too wasted. Why?’

He wiggled his fingers. ‘I’ve never known his lordship to get his hands dirty, is all.’

‘It was fifteen years ago. He wasn’t lord of the manor back then. People change.’

Alan was unconvinced but he didn’t argue the point.

‘That doesn’t mean Roddie didn’t kill Mhairi when he got home,’ Chaz said.

‘Whose side are you on?’ Alan asked.

‘Just playing devil’s advocate.’

‘Chaz is right,’ said Rebecca. ‘We’ve got to be open to everything. But there’s no tangible evidence that he did kill her, despite Sawyer’s best efforts to the contrary.’

Rebecca was aware of movement at the doorway and she saw two more of the moron squad peering at them as they passed. One nudged the other and said something, nodding in their direction as he did so. The other laughed and said in a loud voice, ‘Hope they disinfect they glasses. Wouldn’t want to catch something off them.’

Chaz tensed and looked about to rise, but Alan laid a hand on his arm to keep him in place. His face was expressionless, as if he had heard such taunts so often before and was well used to them. Without even turning round to see if the two idiots were still there, he leaned on the table, his chin propped up on the heel of his hand. ‘So, what other suspects do we have?’

Rebecca sat back, gathering her thoughts. ‘Carl Marsh, to begin with. He was angry at Roddie. And he was supposedly out that night, God knows where.’

‘Probably off killing something, but Mhairi? Bit of a stretch,’ said Chaz.

‘Perhaps he didn’t mean to kill her. He’s got a temper, we know that, so maybe he just got carried away. Then there’s Deirdre, of course.’

‘Ah, a woman scorned,’ said Alan, obviously enjoying playing amateur detective.

‘Exactly. She was at home alone, according to reports. She might’ve decided to go and have it out with Mhairi for stealing her toy boy. Again, maybe things got out of hand. I don’t think this was a premeditated murder. I think it just happened.’

Chaz and Alan both nodded in agreement. Then Chaz said, ‘Then there’s Henry.’

Alan held up a hand. ‘Now, hang on. Henry may be many things—although I’m still unsure he would be out there in dead of night with his sleeves rolled up—but he’s not a killer.’

Chaz shrugged. ‘She thought she was expecting. Her mum thought Henry could be the father. His dad was still around back then and there was no way he’d want that kind of scandal. From what I hear he was a decent old codger, though a bit of a snob. The last thing he’d want is to have his boy liaising with a village girl.’

‘Liaising,’ Alan said, hiding a laugh behind his hand. ‘He’s liaised with a lot worse, let me tell you.’

Chaz looked at Rebecca, inclining his head towards his friend. ‘See what I mean about being a gossip?’

Alan began to protest, but then shrugged. ‘No, I can’t make any sort of denial work. I do like a bit of scandal.’

Rebecca smiled, enjoying their banter. ‘We don’t know if Mhairi had told Henry, though. And we can’t rule out Donnie Kerr either. He was out of his head on drugs back then. Mhairi had been his girl, then she went off with Roddie. Who knows what was going on in his mind?’

Chaz and Alan fell silent and Rebecca wondered if they were pondering, for the first time, the notion that a murderer had been living among them all these years. She threw them another thought. ‘But then there’s the good old-fashioned opportunist. A stranger, a visitor, who broke in and things turned nasty.’

They nodded but she knew they weren’t buying that theory. The killer was an islander. If it wasn’t Roddie, it was someone they knew. Perhaps someone they liked.

It was an uncomfortable thought.