3 A Reformed Character Page 4

  'Giancarlo Petrelli?' she said, still swinging the baseball bat.

  'Who's asking?'

  'I am. And what sort of way is that to behave towards somebody old enough to be your mother? Somebody who knows your mother. And your sister.'

  He lay still now, mouth curving in a smile.

  'They said you were something else,' he said. 'Can I get up now?'

  'Not yet. Who said?' she countered. 'How do you know who I am?'

  'Darren told me all about you,' he said, and started to get up off the ground, keeping his big brown eyes fixed on her the whole time. 'You and your boy-friend - '

  'He's not my boy-friend!' she snapped.

  He spread his hands in a placatory gesture as he straightened. 'That's what Darren said. But it's cool if you don't have a boy-friend.'

  The look he gave her, cheeky admiration mingled with respect, should have been an arrestable offence in itself. She knew she shouldn't bandy words with him but get straight to the point. But she also knew he knew some things she didn't.

  'Want a cigarette?' he said, taking a packet out of his jeans pocket.

  'I don't smoke, thanks. Want some gum?'

  'I don't - chew, I mean.' He lit up a cigarette. 'What's this for?' she said, walking towards one of the concrete bays, which, she now saw, had been covered in a makeshift way with a few planks of wood which might keep out some of the worst excesses of the elements but which wouldn't be the ideal place to spend the night, especially in March. She could see why Victoria had been concerned about Darren being left there until morning.

  She unwrapped a piece of gum and put it in her mouth.

  He followed her towards the hideout. 'We keep stuff in there.' He smiled. 'Just for kids, what do you think?'

  'It could be time to move on,' she said. 'Especially now.'

  'With what happened to Alan. I guess so.'

  'Do you think Darren's a killer?'

  He thought about that. 'I didn't think he was. But how can you tell?'

  Amaryllis smiled. 'You can't. Until it's too late... So - were you around that night?'

  He shrugged his shoulders. 'Helping in the restaurant.'

  'I wondered if you might know something.'

  He stared at her, widening his eyes to look innocent - or maybe he was innocent. He just had that look of a fallen cherub, the look that meant he could get away with anything as far as women were concerned, and he knew that. She wondered if his mother was under his spell. From what she knew of Giulia Petrelli, that seemed unlikely. But the grandmother might be different.

  Amaryllis knew her next port of call had to be the Cosy Clicks meeting. She wasn't going to get any further with Giancarlo for the moment. She started to walk away, trying to ignore the shooting pain in her elbow and the dull ache in her back, and willing herself not to display any weakness. Whether Giancarlo was innocent in this particular case or not, she had no doubt that he was a dangerous young man.

  He caught up with her halfway across the railway yard. 'Can I carry your shopping?'

  She laughed. 'No, thanks. I'm sure you've got better things to do.'

  He turned away and she walked on, not really wanting to turn her back on him but already looking forward to her reconnaissance of the building site. She wondered if there would be police tape.

  There was.

  Amaryllis stood half-hidden by the wall of a neighbouring house, this one almost finished, and watched for a while. She couldn't see any police presence, but there might still be a forensic team at work inside. She wondered if she should push her luck again and at last, reluctantly, decided against it. She, Jock and Christopher had been lucky to get away with harbouring the two fugitives. She didn't relish the thought of being in a police cell when she could be out investigating. And Christopher would be so embarrassed if he had to visit her in prison. She smiled to herself. That alone was almost enough to push her into action, but then she realised that he might feel bound to go to the police station himself and confess everything as he saw it. Amaryllis herself didn't buy the 'perverting the course of justice' thing. After all, she considered they were actually facilitating the course of justice by preventing the police from making silly mistakes and letting the real culprit get away, perhaps to kill again.

  Her conscience satisfied and her mind made up, she left the building site as unobtrusively as she had arrived, and went round by the supermarket instead on her way to the knitting group.

  She was the first one to arrive at Cosy Clicks. It was held in the claustrophobic surroundings of the Pitkirtly Yarn Store, which had until the year before been a traditional wool-shop selling grey 4-ply for socks and cream Aran and grey marl chunky for men's rugged winter jumpers. Now its shelves were filled with expensive cashmere blends in colours with names that sounded like nail varnish or fruit, such as 'Pearl Pink' and 'Pomegranate'. Old Mrs Petrelli, grandmother of Giancarlo and Victoria, was possibly the only group member still to be knitting men's socks in shades of grey, although she alternated these with something red and sparkly that made her smile to herself as she knitted. Amaryllis herself, not an expert knitter by any means, had embarked on a striped scarf. Originally it had been meant for Christopher's birthday, but that date had come and gone, and it was still only a foot long and a hole had appeared inexplicably in between two of the stripes. Every so often Giulia Petrelli would unravel part of it for her, tutting away, and Amaryllis would meekly knit it up again until she got to the next hole. Amaryllis had really only joined the group to infiltrate what she thought of as the knitting Mafia of the town. She knew she didn't really understand them, and would never be one of them in any other way, so Cosy Clicks was her only way of finding common ground. It was just one of the ways in which she felt she would never really retire from her old life in the security services.

  'Why Amaryllis!' Of course Maisie Sue McPherson would have to be next to arrive. 'You're an early bird today?'

  'Yes,' said Amaryllis, knitting two together by mistake and cursing under her breath as she un-knitted the stitches.

  'How are you doing?' said the wool-shop owner, Jan, coming in with a tray of tea cups which she placed on a stack of boxes. Amaryllis knew she had tried her best to make the store-room into a cosy meeting-place but there was no getting away from the fact that wool had to be stored in it. Boxes doubled as side tables all round the room, and she had squeezed in a few armchairs which were always grabbed by the first people there. She had a set of folding chairs too, and now she started to set them up.

  'About the same as usual,' said Amaryllis with a rueful laugh. She held up the scarf. For some reason it looked lopsided, although she was sure she had been knitting in a straight line. Maisie Sue and Jan stared at it.

  'Hmm,' said Jan. 'Better just keep going and hope it straightens out.'

  'I'm not sure if Giulia will let me. She'll want to unravel it and make me get it right.'

  'I don't think Giulia will come tonight,' said Jan. 'She popped into the shop this afternoon and said she was having some sort of trouble at home and she might not make it.'

  Amaryllis tried to dampen down her disappointment. She dropped a stitch and tried to pick it up. The wool turned itself into a tangle. She started to grind her teeth.

  'Here, let me help,' said Maisie Sue. She unfolded a chair from Jan's stack and set it near Amaryllis's big leather arnchair. She sat down and tried to grab Amaryllis's knitting, but Amaryllis contrived to hold it only just out of her reach.

  'I'd rather work it out myself,' said Amaryllis.

  'We all need a bit of help sometimes,' said Maisie Sue reprovingly. Amaryllis noticed something odd about the woman's hair. It had lost its sculptured curves and the artificial golden sheen that had always made it look like a not very good wig. It was starting to look like - oh God! Maisie Sue had been absorbed into the culture of Pitkirtly! She had started going to the hairdresser in that awful frilly shop just off the High Street. Now that Amaryllis looked more closely, she saw that Maisie Sue was now almost in
distinguishable in appearance from a certain type of native West Fife women of her age, who, it seemed, prided themselves on being aggressively plain, eschewing make-up apart from the odd random dash of ill-chosen lipstick, wearing thick stockings at all times, actually going out shopping in full length quilted coats in a range of subdued colours, and wearing woolly hats outdoors and in. Maisie Sue hadn't quite got to the woolly hat stage yet. Maybe you had to be Pitkirtly born and bred to be entitled to wear the hat. But the hair - the lipstick - the quilted coat - all these lent credence to Amaryllis's theory. She wondered how Maisie Sue's husband Pearson felt about it all. Or maybe CIA men didn't notice what their wives looked like.

  'How is Pearson?' she asked idly.

  Maisie Sue looked directly at her for the first time. She had a suspicious pink puffiness around the eyes which wasn't caused by make-up. 'How would I know?' she said. Before Amaryllis could reply, Maisie Sue's eyes filled with tears, which started to spill over. 'Pearson - Pearson... Oh, dear God, I never thought this would happen to me....'

  Amaryllis recoiled instinctively. This was exactly why she had never had any close women friends in the first place, or very many friends at all - in fact until she walked into the lounge bar of the Queen of Scots in Pitkirtly the previous spring she had never let herself get close to anyone at all. Friendships, relationships with people of either gender could and generally did get very messy quite quickly. It was only because she had kept Christopher at arm's length that she had managed to stay even acquainted with him this long.

  But now that this had happened, Amaryllis couldn't just get up and walk away. For one thing, logic dictated otherwise. All those months - well, two months - of attending Cosy Clicks meetings while pretending to Christopher she was at the gym; the tortuous process of learning to knit; all that would be wasted if she walked away now. And it was just starting to get interesting too. She had the chance now to prove to herself that her immersion in a Pitkirtly activity was worthwhile. She steeled herself.

  'What's happened, Maisie Sue? Can I do anything?'

  She willed the woman to say No, of course you can't do anything. I can cope on my own. I'll be better off without him.

  Maisie Sue sniffed unattractively.

  'That's real neighbourly of you, Amaryllis. But I don't think there's anything to be done.'

  'It might help to talk,' said Amaryllis. She noticed Jan had finished setting up the chairs and was listening to them with a sceptical look about her. She turned her armchair to a different angle so that she and Maisie Sue formed a twosome, huddled together. 'Just tell me about it.'

  It was a sad little story, although Amaryllis was more or less immune to emotion so she wasn't unduly upset by it, although she could see Maisie Sue had found it very distressing. Pearson McPherson had left his wife a couple of weeks before to run off, Maisie Sue thought, with an Eastern European lap dancer. His CIA paymasters had somehow managed not to notice him leaving his posting in the UK, and had sent a couple of hatchet-faced hitmen - or so Amaryllis thought of them, although that wasn't Maisie Sue's exact description - to check out why he hadn't reported in for some time. They had been very rude to Maisie Sue in the process. They had said she would now have to return to the USA herself as she would be persona non grata in Scotland.

  '... and just when I thought I was at home in Pitkirtly?' Maisie Sue sobbed. 'I thought we could maybe stay on here after he retired... I don't want to go back home now this has happened. Everybody's going to think it's all my fault.'

  The others started to arrive. Jan delayed them on their way through the shop for as long as was humanly possible, chattering inconsequentially and pointing out new batches of wool that had just come in, but Amaryllis gathered from her frequent glances at Maisie Sue that she wanted to get on and start the knitting session. Penelope Johnstone was one of the people there: Amaryllis had planned to corner her and ask a few incisive questions about Zak, but she could see it would be difficult in the circumstances. She encouraged Maisie Sue to stop talking, to dry her eyes and to demonstrate how to use a cable needle - not that Amaryllis had any intention of using one.

  Everyone else had already settled down and started to work on their projects when Giulia Petrelli arrived, out of breath and flustered. Her big brown eyes held a panicky look. She hadn't brought her mother-in-law this time.

  'Sorry I'm late,' she said to Jan. 'Family crisis - but we sorted something out.'

  'It's just one family crisis after another here,' muttered Maisie Sue. She and Amaryllis were still sitting rather closer together than Amaryllis found comfortable, and she doubted if anyone else had heard. At first she presumed Maisie Sue was referring to her own matrimonial problems, but the American woman tutted and said,

  'There's Penelope Johnstone and that husband of hers - always away in London, never at home.'

  'I didn't know Penelope Johnstone was married,' said Amaryllis, trying and failing to pass a slipped stitch over. She had never thought about Penelope Johnstone's marital status, to be honest. There were more important things to clutter up your brain with.

  'Why wouldn't she be?' said Maisie Sue. It was as if, despite years of feminism and the problems she was having with Pearson, she still considered the matrimonial state to be the natural one, the norm.

  'So does her husband have much to do with Zak?' said Amaryllis.

  She noticed Penelope glance round; maybe she had heard her son's name. Amaryllis waited until she had turned back to the baby cardigan she was knitting for orphans in Zimbabwe, then added, 'Or does he just run wild?'

  'Oh, I don't think he runs wild,' said Maisie Sue. She measured one knitted sleeve against another. 'His father takes him to the gun club some weekends.'

  'To the gun club?' Amaryllis couldn't avoid raising her voice, but fortunately this coincided with Jan dropping a box of knitting needles, and various people crawling around the floor picking them up, so she didn't think Penelope had heard.

  'Yes, of course the gun club.' Maisie Sue stared at her with narrowed, rather critical eyes. 'I guess in your profession you've heard of gun clubs.'

  'Yes, but I didn't think - in Pitkirtly?'

  'It isn't in Pitkirtly as such. It calls itself a country sports club and there's a place up on the moors. Pearson goes - used to go - there. That's how I know about it. He met Ben Johnstone there a couple times. Zak was with him once.'

  Amaryllis was about to query the name Ben Johnstone but just in time she thought it might be the kind of thing Christopher would question. She must have been spending too much time in his company again. It was the caravan holiday that had done it. She stored away the information about the Johnstone family for later.

  In the tea break, Amaryllis tried to get close to Giulia and find out what kind of crisis had happened in the Petrelli household, but Penelope got there first, and the two of them went into a huddle.

  It had been an unsatisfactory day in many ways, Amaryllis reflected as they came out into the night at the end of the session, Jan closing the door behind them with an audible sigh of relief or exhaustion. It was no use being cross with Maisie Sue about it, but it was obvious that this oblique style of investigating would take much longer than her usual methods.

  Maybe it was time to get physical.

  Chapter 6 A bedraggled stray

  Jock McLean liked to take his wheelie-bin out last thing at night, so that nobody could see him doing it. He believed firmly in the ill-will of his neighbours, and thought they would seize the opportunity to poke about looking at his leftovers and working out what he had eaten for tea, given half a chance. He wasn't bothered about the risk of anyone going through his bank statements, even although he didn't believe in shredding documents before discarding them. Life was too short to be paranoid about money matters.

  So it was quite late, almost midnight, when he went round to the back of the house to drag the bin out. It was a cold night, but at least the rain had stopped, so the task wasn't too unpleasant. In the darkness by the hedge someth
ing moved. He paused. At one time there had been a cat who liked to hunt around there, but he hadn't seen it for a while. A fox? A hedgehog? He didn't think any hedgehog worth its salt would have come out of hibernation yet, but maybe with global warming...

  'Mr McLean?'

  He jumped, his heart racing, his hand frozen as it reached for the handle of the wheelie bin.

  A mysterious hooded shape emerged from the dark space between the bin and the hedge, head bowed slightly like a sinister penitent monk.

  As the light from the street lamp outside Jock's front door fell on the face under the hood, Jock recognised the boy and took a step backwards in surprise. 'Darren?'

  'Um,' said Darren. He looked like a rabbit that had been run over, limp, crumpled and defeated.

  'What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?' said Jock crossly. 'Let me get this bin out and then we'll go into the house.'

  'Thanks, Mr McLean.'

  'Don't thank me yet. I haven't done anything.'

  They walked round to the front; Darren waited while Jock placed the wheelie-bin carefully on the pavement; they went inside the house. Darren looked even worse in the light of Jock's sitting-room. He seemed to have slept in his clothes, which was probably the case, Jock reflected, since he had been in the murder house one night and ever since then on the run. His face was dirty, with streaks that might be tear-stains running down vertically. There was a hole in one knee of his jeans and one of his trainers was caked in mud.

  'I got stuck in the mud crossing the bay,' he said.

  'What have you done with your friend?' said Jock.

  'She's fine... She went home. It was her night to help in the restaurant. Her mum was going to the knitting club. Vic wanted to get back.'

  This was as much as Jock had ever heard the boy say. His resistance was evidently low.

  'What have you come round here for? What do you want?'

  'Victoria said,' Darren began, paused and then began again. 'Vic said - you might help me.'