The Woman on the Cliff Read online

  There are five or six postcards inside, all with pictures of Australian scenes: the opera house at Sydney Harbour, Ayres Rock, Alice Springs. At some point, the cards must have been pinned to a board, for there’s a tiny hole in each, and the circular indentation left by a drawing pin. I turn the cards over and can’t help smiling when I see Lucy’s familiar handwriting and her name squeezed in at the bottom under the address.

  “She sent me these just after she went back to Australia after the accident. She spent some time travelling before settling in Adelaide. Lucy’s fine,” Cathy assures me. “You’ll be somewhat surprised to hear that she’s back in the country and has been living in St Andrews for the past four years.”

  Cathy’s right. I am surprised. I ask why she didn’t just tell me this on the phone. She apologises. “I’m afraid I’m a bit protective of Lucy. She went through a lot back then, and she’s been so well for so many years now that I’m just a bit hesitant about people who might stir up old memories.”

  I feel as though I’ve passed some sort of test. “I won’t do that,” I say, though I’m a little afraid that even seeing me might set Lucy off again. It will be necessary to tread carefully.

  Cathy studies me for a moment or two. Finally, she agrees to contact Lucy and pass on my details. “If she’s happy for me to give her details to you, I’ll do so.”

  Innes Nevin could probably locate Lucy easily enough. I could probably locate her myself without too much trouble, but I agree to wait.

  On my drive back to Chiswick, I imagine how it will be seeing Lucy again after all these years, and realise that I am looking forward to our reunion.

  Chapter Twelve

  Much to Elspeth’s annoyance, Moira was full of herself after her weekend in Aviemore with Andrew Kelso. She returned around eight on Sunday evening and straightaway began telling us all about it. I expected Elspeth to make a show of leaving the room as soon as Moira began to hold forth about her trip but she sat, stony-faced, on the sofa throughout, punctuating Moira’s story with a series of disapproving or disbelieving noises.

  “Start from the beginning,” Lucy insisted. “What happened after he picked you up on Friday evening?”

  “Well, not a lot to begin with. It was a pretty boring journey, and it rained all the way. After we’d booked into our hotel room and,” Moira lowered her voice conspiratorially, “indulged in a little lovemaking . . .”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Elspeth said, while the rest of us smiled.

  “Which, for the record, was orgasmic.” Grins from Shona, Lucy and I, rolling eyes from Elspeth. “We had the most gorgeous meal in the hotel restaurant. Andrew ordered champagne, which was exquisite.”

  I’d never tasted champagne. I was pretty sure Shona and Lucy hadn’t either. Elspeth, who eschewed alcohol on most occasions, remarked that champagne was very overrated.

  “After dinner we went upstairs and, well, the rest of the evening is too X-rated to describe. And most of Saturday morning. Sunday afternoon was a real anti-climax. Andrew met up with his cousin, Hans, so I had to amuse myself.”

  “What was Hans like?” Lucy asked.

  “Middle-aged. Intense. Stern. Very serious. I don’t know . . . German?” Hans, it seemed, had failed to leave a positive lasting impression on Moira. “I didn’t really talk to him much. Andrew sort of hinted he’d prefer to talk with him alone. They don’t get together very often and there was a lot of catching up to do. I think Andrew was trying to save me the boredom of spending more than a few minutes in Hans’s company.” Moira paused, examined her fingernails. “Actually, I got the impression that Hans rather disapproved of me.”

  “He’d rather Andrew had brought his wife instead?” Shona said.

  “Maybe. But it didn’t seem like disapproval on moral grounds. Maybe it was just his manner. Whenever I came within earshot, he’d stop talking abruptly. Bloody rude, if you ask me.” She shrugged dismissively. “As if I’d be interested in anything a boring old fart like Hans had to say anyway. God, he must have been about forty.”

  “You’re just miffed that he didn’t fancy you,” Shona teased. “You’re so used to men worshipping you.”

  Elspeth grunted, and Moira turned to her with a flash of mischief in her eyes. “You’d have got on well with him, Elspeth. Ooh, by the way, Andrew told me a little bit of gossip about you while we were away.”

  I looked at Elspeth. I couldn’t think of anything she’d told me recently that would evoke the sudden fury in her expression. “What gossip?”

  “About you and a certain Piers Thornton?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Moira said. “Andrew said Piers is seriously sexy. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Who’s this Piers then, Elspeth? Spill the beans,” Shona said. I shot Elspeth a look that I hoped conveyed my disappointment that she hadn’t told me about her lover. And maybe a smidgeon of sympathy for her being put on the spot like this by Moira.

  “He’s a PhD student at Edinburgh University. Andrew Kelso was one of his tutors when he was doing his degree at St Andrews.” Elspeth spoke in a monotone, but with a dangerous edge. Her eyes were fixed on Moira.

  Moira’s tone was contrastingly jaunty. “Andrew is good friends with Piers. They have a lot in common. They both specialise in boring stuff about Eastern Europe, particularly the GDR.” She turned her sweetest smile on Elspeth. “Next time Piers is over we should double up. I’ll talk to Andrew about it.” Moira yawned and, with a playful wink, announced she was exhausted.

  After she’d left the room, Shona said, “Well, you’re a bit of a dark horse, aren’t you, Elspeth Blair?” She looked at me. “You didn’t know, Ros?” I glanced at Elspeth, feeling nervous.

  Moira’s remark about a double date had left her ablaze with anger. “I hate that spiteful bitch,” she spat. “I don’t believe Andrew blabbed to her about Piers and me. Moira must have found out about him and decided to wind me up by saying Andrew told her.” No one commented. It was blindingly obvious that Andrew Kelso must have told Moira about his former student.

  It was obvious no more information on Elspeth’s relationship with the mysterious Piers would be forthcoming that evening. Her ill humour drove Shona and Lucy from the room. I sat for a while longer, not really hoping for an apology for being left out of her confidence, but still harbouring some hope that she’d throw a titbit of information my way. After all, I’d told her about all my pathetic — and infrequent — sexual encounters. Eventually, I understood that Elspeth couldn’t have spoken even if she’d wanted to. She was literally speechless with rage.

  The following morning, I was surprised to find that Elspeth had already left the house by the time I got up. My morning lecture had been cancelled, so I stayed at home and attempted to do some revision. Around noon, I heard the door slam, and after ten minutes or so, I went downstairs where I found her in the kitchen, warming a tin of soup on the cooker. A loaf of wholemeal bread lay, uncut, on the table, atop a white paper bag bearing the name of the baker’s shop in town whose doughnuts were popular with students. “Want some?” Elspeth asked, without turning from the cooker.

  “Yes, please. I’ll slice the loaf.” I extracted a bread knife from a drawer and began cutting the loaf into doorsteps. Elspeth poured the soup into bowls and we sat, dunking and eating companionably, our lunch unspoilt by any hint of lingering acrimony from the evening before.

  “That’s warmed me up,” I said. The bedrooms in the house on North Street all had electric bar fires which demanded to be fed twenty pence pieces on an alarmingly regular basis. Downstairs, the only heat source was another electric fire in the sitting room. I’d been studying all morning in a chilly room, with a duvet wrapped around my shoulders and a hot water bottle stuffed up my jumper to save money on the electricity. Even after the warming soup, my feet were still freezing. “Let’s put the fire on in the sitting room. There’s plenty of money in the kitty.”

 
Elspeth looked on in disapproval as I dropped coin after coin from the kitty — an old tea caddy — into the meter. “We’re only meant to use this fire when we’re all in the room,” she reminded me. Everyone contributed to the kitty, so everyone should benefit.

  It was one of her house rules which was frequently flouted.

  “I’ve got some twenties in my room. I’ll put them in the kitty later.”

  For ten minutes or so, we talked about how our academic work was going, then Elspeth said, “I suppose you’re bursting to ask me about Piers?”

  There was no point in denying it. I was still feeling aggrieved. I wanted to know why it was such a big deal if people knew she had a boyfriend. “We’re supposed to be best mates. I don’t have any secrets from you,” I whined.

  “Fine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him. Satisfied?”

  I gave a grudging nod. “I suppose.”

  “I met him at a lecture I attended back in December. Andrew Kelso introduced us.”

  “And Moira wasn’t there that time?”

  “No. Andrew’s wife was with him.”

  Poor Elspeth, I thought. She’d fancied Andrew from the first moment she heard him open his mouth at a lecture. Before Moira, there had been only the obstacle of a wife standing between her and happiness with the man she adored. A married man was off limits, but she could dare to dream.

  “Maybe Annie Kelso will get pregnant and die in childbirth, and Andrew will turn to me in his grief and discover that I’m the one he was meant to love,” Elspeth had said to me once, sounding like a character in a nineteenth-century novel.

  Finding out about Moira’s relationship with Andrew had taught Elspeth a crude life lesson. “I should have seduced him first and bugger the consequences,” she lamented when she heard.

  “So you’ve been seeing this Piers since December?” I asked.

  “Yes. We had a drink with Andrew and his wife, then they went home. Piers and I had another couple of drinks before he caught a taxi to Leuchars to get the Edinburgh train. He gave me his number and made me promise to call him the next day.”

  “Wow. He must have been pretty smitten.”

  “I think he was.” Elspeth blushed, reminding me of one of her more endearing qualities. She was mostly without vanity.

  “I’m so pleased for you, Elspeth. But why all the secrecy?”

  “No real reason. It’s just . . . I didn’t want to jinx it.” She looked at me shyly. “Are we still friends?”

  “Of course. But promise me one thing.” Elspeth raised an eyebrow. “Make a bit more effort to get on with Moira. It’s the Easter holidays soon, and then we’ll be into our last term of the year. You’re going to Germany next year, aren’t you? So you only have to put up with her for one more term after this one.”

  Elspeth seemed to consider this for a moment or two. Then she shook her head. “Sorry, Ros. I can’t promise to get on with her. There’s no way that bitch and I are ever going to see eye to eye.”

  Exasperated, I got up and stuck another couple of twenties in the coin box. “Well, at least try not to kill her,” I said.

  “Can’t guarantee that either.”

  I turned around. Elspeth’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Kidding,” she said. I smiled. I recalled her fantasising about Annie Kelso dying in childbirth, and wondered what horrible fate Elspeth’s imagination was conjuring up for Moira.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So, Lucy’s actually living in St Andrews now. Small world, isn’t it?” Innes Nevin says. I’m speaking on the phone with him a couple of days after my visit to Cathy Sharp’s house.

  “Could Lucy have known something about Moira’s death? Maybe that’s why she disappeared?” I ask.

  Nevin is polite. “Hmm. I doubt that had anything to do with it.”

  I wish I could see his face. I want to know if he’s rolling his eyes, or pondering, or merely bored with my chatter.

  I tell him about my plans to return to St Andrews. “It’s half term next week. Izzy doesn’t have time to come home. It’s a reading week for her, but she’s happy to spare me some time if I come up for a visit. I just have a few things to sort out down here first.”

  Like getting a set of keys cut for the estate agent, who can’t wait to start showing people around my house. There’s a silence, so I add, “If you think that I could do anything to help, that is.”

  The silence stretches. Finally, he clears his throat, speaks gruffly. “Cost you a fortune to book accommodation here. You could stay at my place. I have extra bedrooms. That’s if you wouldn’t consider it awkward.”

  “Oh!” The suggestion takes me completely off guard. “Er . . . That would be . . . nice . . . I mean, convenient.” I feel like an idiot. What gets into me when I talk to this man? I sound like a tongue-tied schoolgirl.

  “Good. Let me know when to expect you.” He gives me his address, and asks me to call him when I’m on my way.

  “Of course. Speak to you soon. Goodbye, er, Innes.”

  “Goodbye, Roslyn.”

  After the call, I start to have doubts about what I have just agreed to. I remind myself that we’re both adults. Innes is sort of a friend, isn’t he? And friends often invite their friends to their homes.

  A little voice inside my head bleats, You’ve only just met him. Another says, You’ve known him for years. Finally, I reconcile the two by deciding it’s a sort of business arrangement. If I’m going to help him solve the mystery surrounding Moira’s murder, it makes sense for me to be close to him. Oh? How close? the first voice mocks.

  I’ll have to think of something to tell Izzy. She’s going to think it weird when I say I’m going to stay with a man I hardly know. Perhaps I’ll tell her we are old acquaintances. That I’m going to do a portrait of Innes Nevin’s dog, and that instead of just sending me photographs, he’s invited me to stay and meet my subject. I might even throw in a wife. Might as well complicate things properly.

  Innes and I haven’t discussed how long I will be staying at his house, so I decide to take things as they come. If I’m away for longer than a week, there’s a possibility that someone might view my house in my absence and put an offer in before my return. Do things move that quickly with the housing market? The estate agent assured me there would be plenty of interest, and that I can expect a quick sale at or near my asking price. It’s a little scary to think that I might be homeless in a few short weeks.

  I haven’t told anyone of my plans. I don’t have many friends in London nowadays. The people I’ve connected with over the years have mostly moved on. The reason I lingered here so long after Doug’s death — the belief I clung to for years, that he was coming back and if Izzy and I just stayed put, he would be able to find us — is long buried. I know Doug is never going to stand on the doorstep of this or any other house to fulfil the promise he made on parting: “I’ll be back in time for Izzy’s birthday.”

  Doug’s body was never recovered. For years, I told myself that this meant he wasn’t dead. A lot of people tried to convince me that there was incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, but I clung to my belief. Even after a visit from Mike Anning, a friend and fellow journalist who brought me Doug’s broken spectacles and the photograph of Izzy and me that he carried with him always, now dog-eared, torn at the edges and smudged where Mike had tried to wipe off the traces of Doug’s blood. He’d been in a jeep with Doug when they were attacked. Doug was the one made to kneel by the roadside and take a shot to the head while Mike was spared. One life or another. It’s all arbitrary.

  After seven years, coincidentally the length of time that needs to elapse before a marriage can be annulled when one spouse goes missing, I began to let go of Doug. The thing that bothered me most, after I accepted the fact of his death, was that the people responsible for the atrocity were never brought to justice.

  My thoughts turn back to Moira and the possibility that her killer might similarly have evaded justice. Who really killed her? It is legitimate
to ask this question again now, given what Menzies told his Canadian wife about Brogan’s potential innocence. But how does a person begin to investigate such a thing after so many years?

  Was Moira abducted by her killer? Or did she go with him — or her — willingly? Andrew Kelso had only his wife’s word as an alibi. Surely that must mean he could now be regarded as a major suspect? I wish I possessed the brain of a trained detective. I can’t see Andrew as a murderer, but who else had the motive — or the opportunity — to kill Moira?

  There is an obvious candidate. Her name pops into my head, and I can’t dismiss it immediately, although Elspeth was with me most of the weekend that Moira was killed. Still, I can’t stop myself calling to mind a deeply unpleasant incident that occurred just two weeks prior to Moira’s murder. Elspeth had come disturbingly close to causing Moira actual harm.

  That incident had shocked Elspeth, scared her half to death. Which was enough to convince me that she wouldn’t really have hurt Moira. It had even prompted her to seek help for her issues. She’d broken down in tears when she told me how, after several sessions of therapy, she’d uncovered the true source of her hatred of Moira.

  Who then? If I’m to be of any help to Innes, I will need to reimagine the past, look closely at people and events, and try to interpret them differently.

  But first, there is the present to consider. The following day, I hand in a set of keys to the estate agent and learn that three viewings have already been arranged.

  Back at home, I go over what I’ve packed. The usual mix of jeans and tops, but I’ve also thrown in a couple of nice dresses and some heels. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of being prepared for all eventualities, or if I’m hoping to impress Innes. I add some books and some art materials. Now my suitcase stands, zipped up, in the hallway. I pull my winter coat out of the cupboard and root around for some warmer gloves and a hat. It’s a long time since I’ve experienced a Scottish winter, and I’m taking no chances.