The Woman on the Cliff Read online

  THE WOMAN

  ON THE CLIFF

  An addictive crime thriller full of twists

  JANICE FROST

  First published 2019

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

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  ©Janice Frost

  THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF BRITISH TERMS IN THE BACK

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

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  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  To my husband and sons.

  Chapter One

  Suddenly, the car is all packed. At the last minute, Izzy runs back into the house to grab Sebastian, her favourite teddy bear. I’m pleased she’s decided to bring him after all. He’s a cheerful, traditional sort of bear, with a red bow tie and blue-and-white striped dungarees. My mother gave him to Izzy on the day she was born. When she brought him to the hospital, he was plush, new as Izzy, his fur still soft and silky. Now he’s battered by years of love and misuse.

  I wait in the car. I’m in no hurry to leave, even though we have a long journey ahead of us. The next four years will be full of moments like this. Partings. Of course, there will be happy reunions too. Visits to St Andrews for me, visits home for Izzy. Long holidays and the odd long weekend. It will be different, that’s all. I’ve told myself this over and over in the past few weeks, but I still have a lump in my throat every time I think of Izzy embarking on this new phase of her life, without me.

  Not least because of Moira.

  Izzy appears at the front door, tucking Sebastian under her arm as she locks up.

  I catch the old bear’s eye. He seems to mock: I’m going with her, and you’re not. I don’t resent him for it. He’s known Izzy as long as I have.

  ‘Just make sure you look after her,’ I mouth back.

  “Got him,” Izzy says, tossing Sebastian carelessly onto the back seat. It seems no time at all since she spent ages carefully securing Sebastian in his own little car seat before we could set off on the shortest of journeys.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about my own student days since my daughter was accepted to study at my old alma mater. I suppose it’s not so surprising that she put St Andrews at the top of her list, given that she’s grown up hearing stories about my time there. Not just from me, but from Elspeth and even Shona on her occasional visits.

  There is one story about those days that Izzy hasn’t heard. Not because it’s a secret, exactly. But stories need endings, and Moira’s never had one.

  I start the engine. Izzy falls silent. I sneak a look at her and see that she’s gazing in the side-view mirror at our house as it disappears into the distance. This is it, I think, with a stab of poignancy. One of those moments that you hold in your heart forever. An end, and a beginning for both of us.

  Chapter Two

  No one realised that Moira was missing. Lucy claimed she was the first to notice, but only because she was looking to borrow Moira’s hair dryer. She’d been calling up to Moira’s room. When no one answered she’d gone in and, finding no one there, helped herself. Moira wouldn’t have minded. She’d have been pleased to know that she’d done one last favour for her friend.

  Of all of us, Shona might have been the one to wonder where Moira was hiding herself away, but Shona was on a geography field trip that weekend, somewhere in the Outer Hebrides.

  So it was me who saw the police car draw up outside our house on North Street. It was Sunday. Tea-time. I was in the kitchen, scraping days-old gunk off the bottom of a pan that Lucy had abandoned on the worktop. I’d just popped a tape into my cassette player and was singing along to Bruce Springsteen when I heard the engine. I looked out of the window just as two men emerged from the car. One was in uniform, the other was dressed in a grey suit under an open raincoat, which also looked grey in the fading light of the early evening.

  I’d like to say that I had an intuition that they had come about Moira. But I didn’t. On catching the flash of the vehicle’s orange-on-white markings, my first thought was of the little block of cannabis resin hidden in the top drawer of my bedside table. Other possibilities then flashed through my mind. By the time I opened the door and took in the grave faces of the two men outside, I’d guessed it must be bad news.

  The uniformed officer was very young, not much older than me. He looked at me hesitantly and cleared his throat. His colleague stood by, fingering a packet of ‘Player’s No 6’ and looking impatient.

  “We’re here about Moira Mackie. This is her address,” the young PC said, in a broad Fife accent.

  It didn’t sound like a question. I thought of calling Elspeth down from her room, but there was no need. She was already leaning over the banister of the upstairs landing, asking what was going on.

  “It’s the police,” I called up the stairs.

  “I can see that. What do they want?”

  “They’re looking for Moira.”

  “She’s not here.” She was halfway down the stairs now, peering over my shoulder at the two men still waiting on the pavement.

  “We know she’s not here,” the older man said ominously. “Look, can we come in? It’s a bit of a . . . delicate matter.”

  Elspeth, standing directly behind me now, asked, “Is Moira in some kind of trouble?”

  It was worrying to hear the hint of pleasure in her tone, given what had happened only two weeks previously. Still, I reasoned, people need time to change.

  “Let’s go inside first. Then I’ll explain,” the older man insisted. Still we made no move to let them in, so he brushed past his colleague and, with a sort of domino effect, somehow we all ended up in the sitting room.

  “My name is DI John Menzies. This is PC Innes Nevin. I’m sorry, but I have some bad news about Moira Mackie.”

  By then, it was obvious what he was going to say. Elspeth beat him to it. “Oh God. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “I’m sorry, but yes.” Menzies suggested we all sit down. Elspeth and I sat together on the couch. My fingers gripped the patchwork crocheted blanket that Shona had thrown over it to hide the threadbare seat covers. The policemen looked blurry and I realised there were tears in my eyes. I glanced at Elspeth. She seemed calm enough, but she was never one for histrionics.
/>   “I’m sorry,” Menzies said again, sounding sincere enough, though this was probably routine for him. I glanced at his companion, PC Nevin. His head was bowed and his hands were tucked under his armpits. He looked troubled. Perhaps this was his first experience of being a harbinger of death.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes. Her parents have been informed.”

  “What happened?” Elspeth asked.

  Now Menzies seemed ill at ease. Whatever happened to Moira, it must have been something very bad. He cleared his throat. “It’s looking like the poor wee lassie was murdered.”

  After a respectful pause, during which I cried unashamedly while Elspeth patted me on the arm, Menzies asked, “Who else lives here? Just the three of you, was it?”

  “Four.”

  “Five.”

  Elspeth and I spoke simultaneously. I was the one who forgot to discount Moira. Elspeth clarified. “Besides Ros and I, there’s Shona and Lucy. Shona’s on a field trip on the Isle of Lewis this weekend.”

  “Ah, archaeologist, is she?”

  “No, geographer.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Right. Well, we’ll need to talk to all of you. Where’s . . .?”

  “Lucy?” Elspeth prompted. “She’s at the library. She’ll be back any minute.”

  Menzies looked around the room and, finding no clock, consulted his wristwatch. “I suppose it won’t do any harm to ask some questions in the meantime. Do you two lassies feel up to it?”

  I couldn’t speak for Elspeth, but personally I’d never felt less like talking. I marvelled at Elspeth’s calm. There’d been no love lost between her and Moira, but still . . .

  “Did Moira have a boyfriend?” I’d almost forgotten PC Nevin was there until he asked the question.

  “No.” Elspeth.

  “Yes.” Me.

  We answered simultaneously again.. “Well, which is it?” Menzies asked.

  “Sort of both. Moira was going out with a local boy,” Elspeth said.

  This seemed to spike their interest. I knew what they were thinking. St Andrews isn’t a big place. Chances were the name would mean something to one of them.

  “His name was Stuart Brogan,” Elspeth said.

  A knowing nod from Menzies. “Eddie Brogan’s laddie. I know his father.”

  “But they split up,” I added.

  While PC Nevin was scribbling away in his notebook, the front door banged shut. From the hallway came the tuneless sound of Lucy singing a Michael Jackson song. Her jaw dropped when she entered the room and saw us all sitting there, Elspeth and I huddled together on the couch. The two strangers. I suspect her first thought on catching sight of a police uniform was, as mine had been, of the illegal substance she had in her bedroom.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Something’s happened to Moira,” Elspeth said. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Lucy removed the khaki army bag she carried everywhere and slung it on the nearest chair. It slipped off and landed on the carpet with a dull thud. Menzies used the word ‘murder’ again, which seemed somehow indecent in the same sentence as Moira’s name.

  Like me, Lucy was disbelieving at first. Maybe she thought it was a hoax. But as the moments passed and no one smiled, the truth dawned on her, and she sat in a heavy silence, chewing on her knuckles, a picture of misery.

  “Was it quick?” she asked at last. I felt a stab of shame for not having considered this before. Maybe it was the shock. Lucy was really asking if Moira had suffered. After the fact of her death, it was the only thing that really mattered.

  “We believe so,” Menzies said, but I had the impression he would have told us that whatever.

  “How did she die?” Lucy pushed damp strands of mousy brown hair away from her face, revealing eyes glistening with fearful anticipation.

  Menzies retreated behind stilted police speak. “Er . . . I’m not at liberty to release any details.”

  “Why?” Her tone was confrontational. I cringed. Lucy was in an anti-establishment phase in those days. Everything was black and white. The government was fascist, the police pigs. No doubt she saw Menzies and Nevin as the enemy. In the weeks following Moira’s death, Lucy became convinced that ‘they’ had done away with her friend as part of some wider conspiracy.

  One afternoon, irritated by her senseless paranoia, I finally challenged her. “Who are ‘they’ exactly, Lucy? A person killed Moira. A deranged, sick, evil individual. There’s no ‘they.’”

  When she only stared at me, I added, “And just tell me, why ‘they’ would be interested in Moira anyway? She was a nobody. An ordinary working-class girl like you and me.”

  Still, Lucy was unshakeable in her beliefs. Her distress over Moira only fuelled her existing fears. Blaming some nameless and faceless entity was her way of processing her grief. It provided distance. I think it was too much for her to face the bleak truth that Moira’s killer could have been someone she knew, someone who was as ordinary as the rest of us.

  Now Elspeth came to Menzies’s rescue. “Because if they give out too much information, it might hinder their investigation. They keep things back, so they know when people are lying to them.” She looked to him for confirmation and was rewarded with a nod.

  “It’ll all be in the papers soon anyway, won’t it?” I said. “All the grisly details. Poor Moira.”

  “Poor Moira’s parents, you mean,” Elspeth corrected. “Moira won’t know anything about it.”

  It must have been awkward for Elspeth. She’d hated Moira from the start. I worried that she sounded unsympathetic, that the police might judge her heartless. Elspeth possessed an analytical brain and a direct way of talking that could sometimes come across as cold.

  “Can you at least tell us where she was found?” I asked.

  “Out on the cliff path, near the rock and spindle,” Menzies said.

  We all nodded. The rock and spindle was a well-known local landmark, and an interesting geological feature in its own right. A vertical pillar rising out of a circular slab, it was believed to have once formed part of a volcanic vent system. There was a black-and-white photograph pinned to the corkboard on Moira’s bedroom wall, showing her leaning against the rock formation, her skin silvery in the moonlight, the sea a black abyss behind her. Andrew Kelso had taken the picture. Oh God, Andrew. Someone was going to have to tell Andrew that Moira was dead.

  I glanced at Elspeth, mouthed his name. I’d been about to mention him to Menzies earlier, when he’d asked about boyfriends, but Lucy arrived and it slipped my mind. Elspeth narrowed her eyes and gave a slight shake of her head. Menzies didn’t notice but Nevin, looking up from his notebook, saw the brief communication between us and frowned.

  “What can you tell us about Moira?” Menzies asked.

  Lucy shuddered, still too upset to gather her thoughts. Elspeth frowned. She’d never had a good word to say about Moira.

  “That’s too big a question,” I said at last. “Can you break it down?”

  “You’re right,” Menzies agreed. “For now, I’m just after something general.”

  “She was . . .” I faltered, searching for the right words. My mind went blank.

  “She was a good friend. Loyal. Trustworthy. The sort of person you can depend on,” Lucy said, suddenly articulate. I nodded, though I didn’t necessarily associate any of those qualities with Moira. Not because she didn’t possess them but because I’d never thought to define her before now.

  Nervous excitement was making Lucy say whatever popped into her head. “She was bubbly. Full of life. Always up for a challenge.” Some of that might be true. Menzies had asked for general, and that’s what he was getting. I nodded along. Elspeth was probably just grateful that the focus wasn’t on her.

  PC Nevin seemed to be writing a lot in his notebook. I wondered how the scraps we were offering could possibly help in their investigation.

  Menzi
es asked us some more questions. About Moira’s friends, her comings and goings. I thought that they would leave after that and was surprised when Menzies announced that he and Nevin needed to search Moira’s room. Lucy and I exchanged panicked glances.

  But they weren’t interested in anyone else’s room. Moira’s bedroom was next to mine. The walls in the house were thin and left nothing to the imagination when one of us had a boyfriend around for the night. Even so, I couldn’t make out any of the hushed conversation between Menzies and Nevin while they were searching through her things.

  I wondered if they’d notice the photograph of Moira at the rock and spindle and wonder who had taken it. I thought of Innes Nevin catching the look that had passed between Elspeth and me. I’d realised almost immediately that he was sharper than Menzies. He had the sort of eyes that books always describe as ‘piercing.’ Maybe he wasn’t allowed to ask too many questions or take the lead. They probably had roles assigned by their rank.

  After they had gone, Lucy said, “Do you think we should have mentioned Andrew?”

  “No,” Elspeth said decisively. “You know that would probably get him into trouble. He has a wife and a child, remember?”

  “But . . .” Lucy’s comment died on her lips. It wasn’t hard to guess what she had been about to say. The police would surely regard him as a suspect.

  Andrew Kelso was a lecturer in the history department at the university. He had been having an on-off affair with Moira for the best part of a year. His wife had given birth to their first child during the summer holidays, and at the end of the previous year he’d written to Moira to say that their affair had to end, but before his daughter was a month old, they’d resumed their relationship.

  “Andrew is no angel, but can you really see him harming anyone?” When it came to Andrew Kelso, Elspeth could hardly be regarded as impartial. Even though she was seeing a man called Piers Thornton, a postgraduate student at Edinburgh University, she was hopelessly in love with Andrew. It was one of the reasons why she’d hated Moira.