A Darker Domain Read online

  Mary continued piecing her fabric and smiled. ‘You did, Brodie. And I’m very proud of you for it.’

  ‘And now look where it’s got us. Look what’s really going on.’

  ‘Brodie, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Do you think you could explain? And with due consideration for your blood pressure?’ She’d always had the gift of gently teasing him out of his extreme positions. But today, it wasn’t working well. Brodie’s dander was up, and it was going to take more than an application of sweet reason to restore him to his normal humour.

  ‘I’ve been out with Sinclair. Checking the drives for the shoot on Friday.’

  ‘And how were the drives?’

  ‘Perfectly fine. They’re always fine. He’s a good keeper. But that’s not the point, Mary.’ His voice rose again, incongruous in the cosy room with its stacked riot of fabrics on the shelves.

  ‘No, Brodie. I realize that. What is the point, exactly?’

  ‘Fergus bloody Sinclair, that’s what. I told Sinclair. Back in the summer, when his bloody son was sniffing round Cat. I told him to keep the boy away from my daughter, and I thought he’d listened to me. But now this.’ He waved his hands as if he was throwing a pile of hay in the air.

  Mary finally put down her work. ‘What’s the matter, Brodie? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s what’s going to happen. You know how we breathed a sigh of relief when he signed up for his bloody estate management degree at Edinburgh? Well, it turns out that wasn’t the only iron in his bloody fire. He’s only gone and accepted a place at London University. He’s going to be in the same bloody city as our daughter. He’ll be all over her like a rash. Bloody gold-digging peasant.’ He scowled and smacked his fist down on the chair again. ‘I’m going to settle his hash, you see if I don’t.’

  To his astonishment, Mary was laughing, rocking back and forward at her piecing table, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. ‘Oh, Brodie,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t tell you how funny this is.’

  ‘Funny?’ he howled. ‘That bloody boy’s going to ruin Cat and you think it’s funny?’

  Mary jumped to her feet and crossed the room to her husband. Ignoring his protests, she sat on his lap and ran her fingers through his thick hair. ‘It’s all right, Brodie. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’ He jerked away from her hand.

  ‘Me and Cat, we’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you for the past week.’

  ‘Tell me what, woman?’

  ‘She’s not going to London, Brodie.’

  He straightened up, almost toppling Mary on to the floor. ‘What do you mean, not going to London? Is she giving up this daftness? Is she coming to work with me?’

  Mary sighed. ‘Don’t be silly. You know in your heart she’s doing what she should be doing. No, she’s been offered a scholarship. It’s a combination of academic study and working in a designer glass factory. Brodie, it’s absolutely the best training in the world. And they want our Catriona.’

  For a long moment, he allowed himself to be torn between pride and fear. ‘Where about?’ he said at last.

  ‘It’s not so far, Brodie.’ Mary ran the back of her hand down his cheek. ‘It’s only Sweden.’

  ‘Sweden? Bloody Sweden? Jesus Christ, Mary. Sweden?’

  ‘You make it sound like the ends of the earth. You can fly there from Edinburgh, you know. It takes less than two hours. Honestly, Brodie. Listen to yourself. This is wonderful. It’s the best possible start for her. And you won’t have to worry about Fergus being in the same place. He’s not likely to turn up in a small town between Stockholm and Upsala, is he?’

  Grant put his arms round his wife and rested his chin on her head. ‘Trust you to find the silver lining.’ His mouth curled in a cruel smile. ‘It’s certainly going to put Fergus bloody Sinclair’s gas at a peep.’

  Thursday 28th June 2007; Rotheswell Castle

  ‘So you argued with Cat about boyfriends as well?’ Bel said.

  ‘Was it all of them, or just Fergus Sinclair in particular?’

  ‘She didn’t have that many boyfriends. She was too focused on her work. She went out for a few months with one of the sculptors at the glass factory. I met him a couple of times. Swedish, but a sensible enough lad all the same. I could see she wasn’t serious, though, so there was no need to argue about him. But Fergus Sinclair was a different kettle of fish.’ He paced the perimeter of the table, the anger obvious. ‘The police never took him seriously as a suspect, but I wondered at the time whether he might have been behind what happened to Cat and Adam. He certainly couldn’t accept it when she finally cut the ties between them. And he couldn’t accept that she wouldn’t acknowledge him as Adam’s father. At the time, I thought it was possible he took the law into his own hands. Though it’s hard to see him having the wit to put something that complicated together.’

  ‘But Cat continued her relationship with Fergus after she went to Sweden?’

  Tiredness seemed suddenly to hit Grant and he dropped back into the chair opposite Bel. ‘They were very close. They’d run about together when they were kids. I should have put a stop to it but it never crossed my mind that it would ever come to anything. They were so different. Cat with her art and Sinclair with no more ambition than to follow his father into keepering. Different class, different aspirations. The only thing that I could see pulling them together was that life had landed them in the same place. So yes, when she came back in the holidays and he was around, they got back together again. She made no secret of it, even though she knew how I felt about Sinclair. I kept hoping she’d meet someone she deserved but it never happened. She kept going back to Sinclair.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t sack his father? Move him off the estate?’

  Grant looked shocked. ‘Good God, no. Have you any idea how hard it is to find a keeper as good as Willie Sinclair? You could interview a hundred men before you’d find one with his instincts for the birds and the land. A decent man, too. He knew his son wasn’t in Cat’s league. He was ashamed that he couldn’t stop Fergus chasing Cat. He wanted to bar him from the family home, but his wife wouldn’t have it.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t say I blame her. Women are always soft with their sons.’

  Bel tried to hide her surprise. She’d assumed Grant would stop at nothing to have his own way where his daughter was concerned. He was apparently more complex than she’d given him credit for. ‘What happened after she came back from Sweden?’

  Grant rubbed his face with his hands. ‘It wasn’t pretty. She wanted to move out. Set up a studio where she could work and sell things from, somewhere with living quarters attached. She had her eye on a couple of properties on the estate. I said the price of my support was that she stop seeing Sinclair.’ For the first time, Bel saw sadness seeping round the edges of the simmering anger. ‘It was stupid of me. Mary said so at the time, and she was right. They were both furious with me, but I wouldn’t give in. So Cat went her own way. She spoke to the Wemyss estate and rented a property from them. An old gatehouse with what had been a logging shed, set back from the main road. Perfect for attracting customers. A parking area in front of the old gates, studio and display space, and living quarters tucked away behind the walls. All the privacy you could want. And everybody knew. Catriona Maclennan Grant had gone to the Wemyss estate to spite her old man.’

  ‘If she needed your support, how did she pay for it all?’ Bel asked.

  ‘Her mother equipped the studio, paid the first year’s rent and stocked the kitchen till Cat started selling pieces.’ He couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Which didn’t take long. She was good, you know. Very good. And her mother saw to it that all her friends went there for wedding presents and birthday gifts. I was never angrier with Mary than I was then. I was outraged. I felt thwarted and disrespected and it really did not help when bloody Sinclair came back from university and picked up where he’d left off.’

  ‘Were they living together?’

>   ‘No. Cat had more sense than that. I look back at it now and I sometimes think she only went on seeing him to spite me. It didn’t last that long after she’d set the studio up. It was pretty much over about eighteen months before…before she died.’

  Bel did her mental arithmetic and came up with the wrong answer. ‘But Adam was only six months old when they were kidnapped. So how could Fergus Sinclair be his father if he split up with Cat eighteen months earlier?’

  Grant sighed. ‘According to Mary, it wasn’t a clean break. Cat kept telling Sinclair it was over but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. These days, you’d call it harassment. Apparently he kept turning up with a pathetic puppy face and Cat didn’t always have the strength to send him away. And then she got pregnant.’ He stared at the floor. ‘I’d always imagined what it would be like to be a grandfather. To see the family line continue. But when Cat told us, all I felt was anger. That bastard Sinclair had wrecked her future. Saddled her with his child, ruined her chances of the career she’d dreamed of. The one good thing she did was refuse to have anything more to do with him. She wouldn’t acknowledge him as the father, she wouldn’t see him or talk to him. She made it plain that, this time, it really was over and done.’

  ‘How did he take that?’

  ‘Again, I got it second-hand. This time from Willie Sinclair. He said the boy was devastated. But all I cared about was that he’d finally got the message that he was never going to be part of this family. Willie advised the boy to put some distance between himself and Cat, and for once, he listened. Within a few weeks, he’d got a job in Austria, working on some hunting estate near Salzburg. And he’s worked in Europe ever since.’

  ‘And now? You still think he might have been responsible for what happened?’

  Grant made a face. ‘If I’m honest, no. Not really. I don’t think he had the brains to come up with such a complicated plot. I’m sure he’d have loved to get his hands on his son and take his revenge on Cat at the same time, but it’s much more likely that it was some politically motivated bastards who thought it would be clever to get me to fund their revolution.’ Wearily, he got to his feet. ‘I’m tired now. The police are coming tomorrow morning and we’ll be going through all the other stuff then. We’ll see you at dinner, Miss Richmond.’ He walked out of the room, leaving Bel with plenty to ponder. And to transcribe. When Brodie Grant had said he would talk to her, she hadn’t imagined for a moment he would provide her with this rich seam of information. She was going to have to consider very carefully how to present him to the world’s media. One foot wrong and she knew the mine would be closed down. And now she’d had a taste of what lay within, that was definitely the last thing she wanted.

  Glenrothes

  The Mint was staring at the computer screen as if it was an artefact from outer space when Karen got back to her office. ‘What have you got for me?’ she asked. ‘Have you tracked down the five scabs yet?’

  ‘None of them’s got a criminal record,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure where else to look.’

  Karen rolled her eyes. Her conviction that the Mint had been dumped on her as a form of sabotage by the Macaroon intensified daily. ‘Google. Electoral rolls. 192.com. Vehicle licensing. Make a start there, Jason. And then fix me up a site meeting with the cave preservation person. Better leave tomorrow clear, see if you can get him to meet me on Saturday morning.’

  ‘We don’t work Saturdays usually,’ the Mint said.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Karen muttered, making a note to herself to ask Phil to come with her. Scots law’s insistence on corroboration for all evidence made it hard to be a complete maverick.

  She woke her computer from hibernation and tracked down the contact details of her opposite number in Nottingham. To her relief, DCI Des Mottram was at his desk, receptive to her request. ‘I think it’s probably a dead end, but it’s one that needs to be checked out,’ she said.

  ‘And you don’t fancy a trip down to the Costa del Trent,’ he said, amused resignation in his voice.

  ‘It’s not that. I’ve just had a major case reopen today and there’s no way I can spare a couple of bodies on something that probably won’t take us any further forward except in a negative way.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I know how it goes. It’s your lucky day, though, Karen. We got two new CID aides on Monday and this is exactly the kind of thing I can use to break them in. Nothing too complicated, nothing too dodgy.’

  Karen gave him the names of the men. ‘I’ve got one of my lads looking for last known addresses. Soon as he’s got anything, I’ll get him to email you.’ A few more details, and she was done. Right on cue, Phil Parhatka walked back into the room, a bacon roll transmitting a message straight to the pleasure centres of Karen’s brain. ‘Mmm,’ she groaned. ‘Christ, that smells glorious.’

  ‘If I’d known you were back, I’d have got you one. Here, we’ll go halves.’ He took a knife out of his drawer and cut the roll in half, tomato sauce squirting over his fingers. He handed over her share then licked his fingers. What more, Karen wondered, could a woman ask for in a man?

  ‘What did the Macaroon want?’ Phil said.

  Karen bit into the roll and spoke through a mouthful of soft sweet dough and salty bacon. ‘New development in the Catriona Maclennan Grant case.’

  ‘Really? What’s happened?’

  Karen grinned. ‘I don’t know. King Brodie didn’t bother to tell the Macaroon. He just told him to send me round tomorrow morning. So I need to get myself up to speed smartish. I’ve already sent for the records, but I’m going to check it out online first. Listen…’ She drew him to one side. ‘The Mick Prentice business. I need to talk to somebody on Saturday and obviously the Mint doesn’t do Saturdays. Any chance I can talk you into coming along with me?’

  ‘Coming along where?’

  ‘The Wemyss caves.’

  ‘Really?’ Phil perked up. ‘We get to go behind the railings?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Karen said. ‘I didn’t know you were into the caves.’

  ‘Karen, I used to be a wee boy.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Right enough.’

  ‘Besides, the caves have got really cool stuff. Pictish inscriptions and drawings. Iron Age carvings. I like the idea of being a secret squirrel and taking a look at the things you don’t usually get to see. Sure, I’ll come with you. Have you logged the case yet?’

  Karen looked embarrassed. ‘I want to see where it goes. It was a hard time round here. If something bad happened to Mick Prentice, I want to get to the bottom of it. And you know how the media are always poking around in what we’re doing in CCRT. I’ve a feeling this is one where we’ve got a better chance of finding out what happened if we can keep the lid on it a bit.’

  Phil finished his roll and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Fair enough. You’re the boss. Just make sure the Macaroon can’t use it as a stick to beat you with.’

  ‘I’ll watch my back. Listen, are you busy right now?’

  He tossed the empty paper bag in the bin with an overhead action, preening himself when it landed right in the middle. ‘Nothing I can’t put to one side.’

  ‘See what you can dig up on a guy called Andy Kerr. He was an NUM official during the strike. Lived in a cottage in the middle of the Wemyss woods. He was on the sick with depression around the time Mick went missing. Supposedly topped himself, but the body was never recovered.’

  Phil nodded. ‘I’ll see what I can dig up.’

  As he returned to his own desk, Karen was Googling Catriona Maclennan Grant. The first hit took her to a two-year-old broadsheet newspaper feature published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the young sculptor’s death. Three paragraphs in, Karen felt a physical jolt in the middle of her chest. ‘It’s amazing how few people are available to talk about this case,’ she read. ‘Cat Grant’s father has never spoken to the press about what happened. Her mother killed herself two years afte
r the death of her daughter. Her ex-boy friend, Fergus Sinclair, refuses to be interviewed. And the officer in charge of the case is also beyond our reach - he is himself serving life for murder.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she groaned. She hadn’t even seen the case file but already this was turning into the assignment from hell.

  Kirkcaldy

  It was after ten when Karen walked through her front door with a bundle of files and a fish supper. The notion that she was playing at keeping house had never deserted her. Maybe it was something to do with the house itself, an identikit box on a 1960s warren development to the north of Kirkcaldy. The sort of place people started out in, clinging to the hope it wasn’t going to be where they ended up. Low crime suburbia, a place where you could let kids play out in the street so long as you didn’t live on one of the through roads. Traffic accidents, not abductions, were what parents feared here. Karen could never quite remember why she’d bought it, though it had seemed like a good idea at the time. She suspected the appeal had been that it came completely refurbished, probably by somebody who’d got the idea from a TV property development programme. She’d bought the furniture with the house, right down to the pictures on the walls. She didn’t care that she hadn’t chosen the stuff she lived among. It was the kind of thing she’d probably have picked anyway and it had saved her the hassle of a Sunday in IKEA. And nobody could deny that it was a million times nicer than the faded floral clutter her parents inhabited. Her mother kept waiting for her to revert to type, but it wasn’t going to happen. When she had a weekend off, Karen wanted nothing more than a curry with her pals and a significant amount of time on the sofa watching football and old films. Not home-making.