The Party House, page 7
Snyder stood up and, taking the number Greg had given him, stepped outside.
Greg strained to listen to what was being said, but it was obvious Snyder had gone far enough away for that not to be possible.
Eventually he re-entered and, resuming his seat, said, ‘The ceilidh’s moved to the pub. We’ll require the full use of the village hall until further notice for the murder inquiry.’
There it was, the word they’d all been avoiding, himself included.
His heart pounding, Greg nodded without comment.
‘So, when did you become aware of damage to the hot tub?’
‘When Colin, my assistant, called me early this morning. He was worried because visitors for the Party House were arriving on the Caledonian Sleeper shortly.’
‘Is that the property’s name?’
‘Sorry, no. It’s actual name is Ard Choille—’ He was about to explain that the locals called it the Party House when Snyder interrupted him.
‘Ard Choille meaning “high wood” in Gaelic, an apt name for it.’
‘You speak Gaelic?’ Greg said, surprised.
‘My family are from Barra. So, I take it the locals have christened it otherwise because?’
‘Folk come here to party. Sometimes annoyingly so.’
‘So there’s ill will towards the place?’
Greg wondered just how much the detective already knew from Harry, and decided to keep it simple.
‘They’re not keen on it since the new owners took over,’ he admitted.
‘PC McGowan said there was trouble at the hall last night, which Mr Webster confirmed. You were there, I believe?’
Greg indicated he had been.
‘Would you like to give me your version of events?’
‘Locals were angry at the Party House opening up again. Global Investment Holdings had folk from London staying there against lockdown rules. One of them brought the new variant of the virus. The one that killed kids. Five children from Blackrig caught it and died.’
Snyder was silent for a while, before he said, ‘It must be difficult for you, seeing as you work for the estate.’
‘I’m also a local born and bred. They know I can’t change things.’
‘Though you might want to?’
When Greg didn’t respond, Snyder said, ‘When was the hot tub installed?’
‘When the new owners took over. Before that there had just been a paved area next to the beach.’
Greg could almost see the timeline being written in Snyder’s head.
‘When Colin called you this morning, what did you do?’
Slightly thrown by the sudden change of direction, Greg had to think for a second before replying. ‘I told him to cover it with a tarpaulin, then call Harry – PC McGowan. I said I’d call our employers.’
‘What was their response?’
‘An answering machine. I left a message about the damage, and the expected visitors.’
Throughout the interview, Greg had been conscious of the detective taking notes. He was wondering whether Colin’s version of events would match his own when Snyder changed tack again.
Looking up, he suddenly said, ‘Were you resident in Blackrig when Ailsa Cummings went missing?’
‘You think it’s Ailsa?’ Greg said, trying to sound shocked.
When Snyder simply repeated the question, Greg said, ‘Yes, I was living in Blackrig when she disappeared.’
‘You knew her personally, then?’
‘It’s not a big village, so yes.’
‘A girlfriend?’
He almost blurted out that she was too young for him, but caught himself in time. ‘I knew Ailsa, that’s all.’
‘Were you DNA tested back then?’
‘All the men in the village gave a DNA sample, me included.’
Snyder nodded. ‘So, who do you think damaged the hot tub?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Greg said, hoping the lie wasn’t too obvious to such a seasoned detective.
He was spared any more switching of topics by a call to Snyder’s mobile. The detective listened, said ‘right’ and rang off.
Thanking Greg for his help, he then dismissed him, adding, ‘I’ll need to speak to you again. I’ll let you know when.’
He didn’t say that it would be in reference to the murder inquiry and not the damaged hot tub, but then again he didn’t have to.
Greg could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stir as he exited the incident van, and knew that Snyder’s eyes were upon him. All he could hope was that the astute detective wasn’t able to read his blackened soul.
As he passed the roped-off area around the forensic tent, he noted the suited figures minutely examining the area and thought of all the ways he and Colin might have left their mark. As for Josh and his gang, they’d left plenty of forensic evidence with the piss and fingerprints they’d decorated their work with.
Beyond, in the woods, he could see the team fanned out among the trees. He’d been there too, alone, and in the company of Joanne. Left his own mark against the tree.
As head keeper, he could go wherever he pleased on the estate, but that didn’t mean that his lies wouldn’t follow him.
The most recent ones, and those he’d hoped he’d left in the past.
Joanne
Kath had been right. Forrigan couldn’t be seen from the track to Beanach. It was tucked in a hollow, its back against an outcrop of grey rock, its front facing slightly east of Blackrig towards the neighbouring hills.
Traditionally stone-built, long and low, with two small attic windows, it had a walled garden out front. Glancing through the gate, Joanne saw beds of flowers surrounding an overgrown patch of grass, with a wooden seat looking out over the nearby hills.
A sunny sheltered spot, where even now she could hear the lazy buzz of bees among the flowers.
She wondered what she would have thought had her parents scooped her teenage self out of London only to deposit her on some remote hillside near a village the size of Blackrig.
She would have definitely run away. Of that she had little doubt.
Why then had Ailsa’s parents brought her here? Kath hadn’t spelled out the reason for the family’s move, but Joanne had picked up a sense that something had gone wrong in Glasgow and they’d wanted to remove Ailsa from it. Had she been seeing a boy they didn’t like? Or been mixing with a bad crowd?
Who hadn’t at that age? She certainly had.
As an only child of aging parents, she’d always felt like a late mistake. One they regretted. The years between fifteen and seventeen, before she’d finally left for university, had been hell, for her and her parents. She still blamed them for it, or at least their inflexible view of the world and her place in it.
And once away, she’d never gone back for longer than a weekend. She suspected that suited them as much as it did her.
More recently, she’d begun to question whether they’d been right all along and that she was incapable of knowing bad from good in the people she allowed into her life, especially the males of the species.
But what of Ailsa? Would there be anything left at Forrigan to help her understand what the girl had been really like?
Peering in at one of the front windows, she could make out a kitchen that closely resembled the one at Beanach. Greg’s place, she suspected, hadn’t seen much change since he’d lived there as a small boy. She’d found it endearingly quaint on first view. The kitchen range, with a couple of chairs alongside. The big table that looked as though it had been fashioned at least a half-century before.
Forrigan, it appeared, wasn’t that different.
Walking round, peering in at the windows, she had a sense that Ailsa’s parents had simply left, just as Kath had suggested, not taking anything of their life here with them. Perhaps because the memory would be too painful.
Keen to enter now for a proper look, she finally discovered that the scullery window at the back might be opened with a little effort on her part, which she set about doing.
Scrambling inside, she dropped down from the draining board and entered the kitchen proper. Now behind thick stone walls, most outside sounds masked, she breathed in the stale air and sense of abandonment, aptly symbolized by the two mugs left on the table, as though Mr and Mrs Cummings, having eventually accepted that their daughter was never coming back, had simply risen and left themselves.
The feeling of Ailsa’s late presence grew even stronger when, on climbing the narrow staircase, she discovered the girl’s bedroom.
The made-up bed, her chosen photos remaining on the walls, her make-up on the small dressing table. A photograph of Ailsa, she assumed, pouting at the camera, with what looked like the carving of the green woman in the background.
Assuming the police had searched this room after her disappearance, then her parents had made certain to restore it afterwards.
Clearing out people’s belongings after they’d died must be one of the hardest jobs ever, she thought, and the Cummings didn’t even know if their daughter was alive or dead. Maybe, by not stripping the room, they’d been committed to believing that Ailsa was still alive somewhere.
A hope that was about to be shattered, it seemed.
Joanne thought of her old bedroom at home and how quickly her parents had removed all evidence of her from it. In all honesty, she’d been grateful for that, because, on the odd night she did stay there, she wasn’t required to stare at memories of her teenage self again.
Studying the collage of photographs, she noted one in particular.
In it, a laughing Ailsa was standing on what looked like a nearby hill, the wind blowing strands of her blonde hair across her face, her hand reaching up to remove them.
This looked like the real Ailsa. Full of life, and perhaps even a little in love with whoever had taken the shot.
Unpinning the photo, and slipping it in her pocket, Joanne made for the stairs.
It was on reaching the bottom that she felt an unexpected wave of nausea break over her. Sitting down on the bottom step, she waited for it to subside. When it didn’t do so, she found herself sprinting to the nearby bathroom, grateful it was on this level rather than upstairs.
As she kneeled to vomit, her first thought was that she’d caught the virus or a mutated version of it. Her second and more frightening thought was that she’d brought it from London to Blackrig, just like the folk who’d visited the Party House had done.
Wiping her mouth, she sat on the bathroom floor, her logical self fighting back.
The infection rate of the remaining virus was much lower than catching a cold. The double vaccination programme had covered over ninety per cent of the population. She’d even had a booster jab. So she couldn’t be a pariah bringing death back to Blackrig.
So why the nausea?
She wasn’t exactly a vegetarian, but she rarely ate meat or fish, and she’d been eating mostly venison since she’d arrived. Maybe her stomach had merely rebelled?
Even as she considered such an explanation, she knew it wasn’t the reason.
Which left one possibility to consider.
Sitting with her back against the bowl, her face cold with sweat, she tried to focus on how she might check whether she was right or wrong.
Blackrig was miles from anywhere, with only one shop, where Caroline ruled supreme. She hadn’t seen much of a pharmacy in there anyway. She could ask Greg to take her to the nearest chemist. He would, of course, ask her why, and whether she was okay.
Alternatively, she could order what she needed online, which is what they’d all been doing during the long series of lockdowns.
She decided that was what she would do.
She then had another question to answer.
A flashback reminded her, in all its garish detail, of when she’d last had sex with him. She couldn’t bear to use his name. Even think it. Sex she hadn’t wanted. Then how she’d singled out Greg from the list of attendees at the Highland Game event, knowing she had only three weeks to escape before he arrived back from his business trip.
She’d chosen Blackrig and Greg to be her hiding place.
She laid her face against the cool bowl. She’d come here to feel safe. And she had for the most part. Until now.
Pulling up her knees, she placed her head between them.
She’d been lying for so long, the truth was something she no longer recognized.
She also suspected Greg might be doing the same. That’s why they’d spent most of their time together having sex. As though that expunged everything that had gone before, for both of them.
Eventually rising, she climbed back out of the window, shutting it behind her. From her vantage point, she had a good view of the moorland above Blackrig. Thinking she spotted figures up there, she took a look through her spyglass, wondering if Greg might be among them, but found he wasn’t. Although it definitely looked like a stalking party.
Then she caught a glimpse of what they might be after. A magnificent stag, bristling with antlers, standing on the brow of the hill.
Of course. It was July, red stag stalking season. Despite writing articles for various country and game magazines, she’d never embraced the desire to kill deer, or any other animal for that matter.
Even as she thought this, she heard the report of the shot and watched as the stag bounded away only to swiftly stagger and crumple to the ground.
She turned from the kill and began to trek across the moorland in the direction of the Beanach track.
Greg
Knowing he had to get away from the Party House and the police presence, he’d come to watch the grazing garrons, hoping that would settle his nerves. He and Colin had brought down the three sturdy wee Highland ponies, together with their two new foals, from their winter grazing in preparation for the start of the red stag stalking season.
Releasing Cal and Sasha from the back of the Land Rover, he whistled to the ponies, encouraging them to come his way.
Colin had taken one of the seasoned garrons on the hill with the shooting party. Greg wandered among the remaining shaggy-haired ponies, rubbing their heads, whispering Gaelic endearments, all the time reminding himself that Stratton and his party would depart and life on the estate would go back to normal.
It was a comforting thought, if only it were true.
Stratton would leave soon, but the police weren’t likely to, judging by how long they’d stayed in the vicinity when Ailsa disappeared.
Greg realized that despite the soothing nature of the grazing garrons, he was still rattled by his first meeting with DI Snyder. The way in which the detective had conducted the initial interview, the switches in topic throwing him off guard, had been impressive. Snyder was a pro and, Greg suspected, the man was well versed in sniffing out a lie.
And he had definitely lied.
What if he’d told the truth and revealed his nocturnal trip to the Party House? Said he’d witnessed the gang attack on the hot tub? No doubt he would then have been asked if he’d recognized any of the men involved and would have said no, because they were wearing balaclavas.
Snyder would then have immediately questioned him regarding the voices. Blackrig was a small village, where everyone knew everyone else. How could he not recognize if the voices were local?
No, Greg decided. It was better this way. At least he hadn’t grassed on Josh. In fact, he’d almost cheered when he’d seen him attack the hot tub, because he hadn’t had the guts to express his own anger in that way.
Even as he’d contemplated his alternative version of the interview, he was aware that he was ignoring the real horror of that night. The moment when he’d caught a glimpse of blonde hair and knew with sickening certainty that it had to be Ailsa.
At that point, he was startled by the echo of a gunshot coming from the hill. He waited, hoping it was a clean shot to the heart and Colin wouldn’t have to finish the beast off. Stratton fancied himself good with a rifle. Greg didn’t agree.
The second one came minutes later, suggesting Colin had indeed had to finish the job himself. They would load it on the garron now and bring it down via the pony path to the larder.
Stratton never bothered with the beast after he’d shot it. Colin would be the one to dress and tag it.
Greg contemplated heading for the estate larder, the round stone building with its wooden slatted windows that sat next to the bothy where Colin stayed. Colin would be full of the hill story and eager to offload it, no doubt.
Not wanting to hear any more about Stratton today, or share his own police tale, he decided to head home to Beanach instead.
He sent Colin a text message to that effect, and with a final affectionate pat for each of the ponies, he took himself down to his Land Rover.
He had a fresh salmon in his own outside larder that he was planning for tonight’s meal, and he found himself looking forward to seeing Joanne again, aware he would have to make things up to her after his earlier anger in the woods.
As he reached the vehicle, the sky clouded over, but he knew by the smell and the forecast that it wasn’t set to rain yet. The closeness of the air had brought out swarms of midges. In general the tiny biters weren’t attracted to his blood, although he’d seen grown men so tortured while on a hunt that they were eventually forced to give up. A rifle was of no use against an army of midges determined to suck your blood.
He drove home with the window down, enjoying what little movement of air that brought, aware that tonight the folk at Ard Choille would have to do their partying inside rather than on the balcony if they wanted to avoid being eaten alive.
Drawing up in front of Beanach, he made for the larder where he already had hanging the deer carcass from the day of Joanne’s arrival. Taking the salmon from the fridge, he headed to the kitchen.
Joanne had been in here and recently. He could still catch her scent on the air. Her laptop was on the table, lid down. He imagined her sitting there, the look she would wear when deep in concentration.
