Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10) (9 page)

Chapter 14 Hell to pay

Christopher woke up with an uneasy feeling. It was almost as if he had to take a test that day, or handle some hideous staff crisis at the Cultural Centre, or...

He sat up in bed, suddenly remembering.

Amaryllis! She would probably never forgive him for abandoning her overnight in a police cell, at the tender mercies of whoever was on duty. She might even have expected him to organise some sort of extremely dangerous rescue mission. Although she should know him better than that by this time. It was far more likely that Charlie and Jock would get together to do that kind of thing. Or Jemima and Dave. Or almost anybody else, if he were to be painfully honest with himself.

Then there was the fact that he had promised to speak to Ashley, despite his serious misgivings about what would happen if Keith found out. For some reason he had even minuted it as an action point. Why on earth had he even taken notes on the meeting at the Queen of Scots? He would have to destroy them this morning before doing anything that might land him in police custody, in case they were found and produced in evidence.

Just as he was going downstairs, the doorbell rang.

He had no doubt about who he would find on the doorstep. It didn’t give him very much pleasure to discover he had been right in his supposition.

‘Hello, Christopher,’ said Jemima, beaming. ‘Are we too early for you?’

‘I told you he wouldn’t be up and about at this time on a Saturday,’ boomed Dave, next to her. His voice was reassuringly back to its normal default volume.

Christopher looked down at himself to make sure he wasn’t still in his pyjamas. He vaguely remembered getting dressed, but that might have been yesterday. ‘I’m up and about,’ he said. ‘Haven’t had my breakfast yet, though. Do you want to come in for some toast?’

‘I expect it isn’t the same without Amaryllis breaking in to make it,’ said Jemima sympathetically.

‘She doesn’t do that every morning,’ said Christopher. ‘Only on special occasions.’

‘Is she still safely locked up?’ said Dave.

Christopher put the kettle on and rummaged for enough slices of bread. He had bought a larger toaster the previous year to cater for all the people who seemed to like to crowd into his kitchen in the mornings.

‘Unless somebody’s gone and got her out in the middle of the night,’ he told them.

‘Who would have done that?’ said Jemima, wide-eyed and innocent.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Jock McLean. Charlie Smith.’

Dave’s laugh rumbled round the kitchen like a roll of thunder. ‘They’re all talk, those two. You need Jemima and me to get things done. That’s why we’ve come along – we’ll help you to find Ashley and speak to her.’

‘Are you sure you’re both fit to be wandering about the town?’ said Christopher. He got out the butter and marmalade while he was waiting for the toast to pop up.

‘We’re fine,’ said Jemima. ‘I’m not letting Dave drive yet, so we’ve got to wander about a bit to pass the time.’

Once they had all temporarily had enough toast, they phoned Charlie to see if he wanted to come with them to look for Ashley. He said he was busy and he knew the garden centre wasn’t open again yet but that if he had time he would run up there in his people-carrier during the morning to see if the staff were in. He also told them where Ashley lived, but warned them not simply to go up to the front door and ask if she was in, because her mother was a nosy old dragon – Charlie’s own description – and although she disapproved of Keith, she would undoubtedly tell him they had been round,  just to make trouble.

Christopher, Jemima and Dave talked it through while they had another round of toast, and decided to divide their resources, so that Christopher would be the one to hang around at the end of Ashley’s street waiting for her to come out of her house, and Jemima and Dave would be the ones to spend the morning at the window table in the café in the High Street, watching for her to walk past, and ready to dash out and lure her into conversation.

Christopher couldn’t help feeling he had drawn the short straw.

This feeling intensified about an hour after he had taken up position, when he saw Keith Burnet and Ashley coming along the road together. He used a half-formed plan to pretend to be tying his shoelace, followed up by a start of surprise as he straightened and saw them. The surprise wasn’t entirely artificial as he had remembered, too late, that his shoes didn’t have laces.

Keith gave him an odd look, a nod and a rather formal ‘Good morning.’

Ashley said brightly, ‘Hello, Christopher! I haven’t seen you up here before.’

‘Oh, I sometimes walk around a bit on a Saturday morning,’ said Christopher, falling into step with them and hoping this looked casual enough.

‘I’m just chumming Keith down to the police station,’ said Ashley. ‘He doesn’t usually have to work at weekends, but he’s got to help with – um – an interview today.’

Her voice tailed off a little towards the end of the sentence, presumably when she realised who Keith might be interviewing.

‘So is the garden centre still closed, then?’ said Christopher with a smile.

Keith glared at him.

‘Neither of us can discuss the case with you,’ he said sternly.

‘Of course not,’ said Christopher. ‘But I was just thinking it must be quite inconvenient not knowing when it can open up again.’

‘It’ll be whenever we’re ready,’ said Keith.

‘I wonder if the manager’s had customers ringing him to complain,’ said Christopher.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Ashley. ‘Some of them are really persistent, too. He’s had one woman on the phone about ten times wanting to know when she can collect her antirrhinums. She’s worried they’re going to have finished flowering before she gets them bedded in.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Christopher.

He noticed Keith trying to steer Ashley into position ready to cross the road. Maybe it was time to give it a rest. He might be able to follow her once she’d left Keith at the police station and corner her on her own then.

Keith turned to him just before he and Ashley stepped off the kerb and said, ‘I don’t want you thinking you can ask her questions behind my back. Just go on down the road and leave us to get to the police station. Otherwise there’s an empty cell waiting right next-door to your friend.’

‘All right, fine,’ said Christopher, raising his hand in what might have been a conciliatory gesture or a goodbye wave.

If Keith was so keen to see the back of him, there must be some secret Ashley could give away. Christopher wondered if getting Jemima and Dave to ask a few questions would count as asking them himself. He headed on down to the café as quickly as he could. Surely Keith wouldn’t arrest two elderly people who were just out of hospital – would he?

Chapter 15 Questions and answers

Jemima ordered another scone to pass the time.

‘We might as well give up on this,’ said Dave.

‘Oh, don’t be silly, we’ve only been here an hour. Christopher’s had to wait in the street all this time. It isn’t very warm for August, either. And the weather forecast said there might be scattered showers later.’

‘All right, but I’m not going to be able to drink any more tea just now,’ grumbled Dave. ‘Can we go down to the Queen of Scots for a pint when we’ve finished?’

‘Not for a pint,’ said Jemima firmly. Fond though she was of Dave, there were times when she thought he acted like a whining toddler. But then, at the end of the day men were all a bit like that. She was just lucky to have somebody to share the trials of old age with, she supposed.

Dave sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better see if they’ll toast me a tea-cake, in that case.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Jemima whispered. ‘It’s the grumpy one on today.’

‘Here’s your scone,’ said somebody, slamming a plate down in front of her. ‘And by the way, that table’s reserved from eleven o’clock onwards.’

‘Thank you!’ Jemima called after the woman. ‘Do you think she heard me?’ she asked Dave.

He rolled his eyes.

At that moment the bell jingled on the café door and Christopher came in. He smiled at them, and went to the counter to place his order. They saw the grumpy woman point at their table and tell him something.

‘Apparently this table’s reserved from eleven,’ he said as he came up to the table in the window.

‘We know that,’ said Jemima. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can easily move before then. We only sat here in case Ashley came past.’

‘She might still do,’ said Christopher.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘Keith warned me off talking to her, so I won’t be able to ask any questions.’

‘Oh, we can do that,’ said Jemima confidently. ‘He wouldn’t do anything to us.’

‘She might not say anything, though,’ said Christopher.

‘It all depends on how you ask,’ said Jemima with a nod. ‘Just you wait and see.’

They didn’t have long to wait. Just as the grumpy waitress was putting Christopher’s coffee and scone down – with a great deal more care than she had handled Jemima’s scone – the bell jingled again and Ashley came into the café.

Well, at least they hadn’t had to dash out and accost her, Jemima thought. But there was something unsettling about the way the girl’s eyes scanned over them. It was almost as if...

‘So this is where you’re all hiding,’ said Ashley, coming across to them. ‘I thought I might find you all together like this.’

‘We’re not hiding exactly...’ Christopher’s attempt at denial fizzled out in the face of her steady gaze.

‘Keith warned me about you,’ said Ashley. ‘He said you’d try to trick me into telling you something I shouldn’t. Well, I’m just not going to speak to you at all, so you might as well not bother.’

The girl almost lost her usual pallor when she was angry. And her eyes sparkled, or maybe that was just the ray of sunlight that had unexpectedly shone in through the window right at that moment, illuminating the dust on the cake shelf as well. For the first time Jemima realised what Keith Burnet saw in her.

‘Can I just ask you one thing about the garden centre?’ said Jemima. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

Ashley hesitated. ‘I can’t really say anything.’

‘It’s nothing to do with the – what happened. It’s just to settle an argument. Dave and I were talking about it the other night. He said he thought he’d heard music in the background when we were up there that day – just before he was taken ill. I said maybe it was angelic harps playing...’ At this point Dave nudged at her foot with his under the table. She couldn’t look at him in case it made her laugh. She carried on regardless. ‘But he thought maybe you had recorded music playing in there. You know – that background music they play in shops... The worst thing is when they start the Christmas songs up in August...’

Ashley looked bemused. Maybe she had forgotten the question. Jemima worried for a moment that she had overdone the rambling. She opened her mouth to try again, but Ashley spoke at last.

‘We’ve got a customer announcements system and we sometimes play music over it, but I don’t think we would have had it switched on at the time you were up there...’

‘It’s all right – maybe it was angels and harps after all,’ said Jemima hastily.

‘Oh dear, I hope I haven’t given anything away,’ said Ashley. ‘Keith did say I wasn’t meant to speak to you at all. He said you have ways of getting answers out of people.’

Jemima forced herself to laugh airily. ‘Don’t worry. It was only us being nosy.’

‘I’d better go now, anyway. Don’t tell him I even spoke to you.’

Ashley cast one worried, suspicious glance at them over her shoulder as she left. Jemima only felt slightly guilty. It was all in a good cause, after all.

They gave her time to get well clear, and then left the café together. They wandered back up the road. Jemima had decreed that Dave should have a rest, because she had relented about letting him drive, and that afternoon they were planning to go for a run along towards the new road bridge to see how the construction was progressing.

‘Well, that answers the question, then,’ said Christopher. ‘If only we knew more about how the sound thing worked, we might get a bit further.’

‘Maybe Charlie Smith will know,’ Jemima suggested.

They were approaching the police station. There was a flurry of activity in the doorway, and Amaryllis burst out.

‘Thanks, Kenny!’ she called back over her shoulder.

‘You haven’t escaped, have you?’ said Christopher. ‘Who’s Kenny?’

‘No. Not exactly... It’s Sergeant Macdonald. Don’t you think he looks like a Kenny?’

‘How did you get out, then? Have they put one of those tracking bug things on you so that you can lead them to some vital evidence?’

‘No. Guess again.’

‘There’s been another death,’ said Jemima sombrely.

They all turned to look at her.

‘How did you know?’ said Amaryllis.

Jemima gasped and put one hand to her throat. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she said, not really making sense even to herself. ‘I never wanted this to happen.’