“Still, you must think I’m wicked. How could I stand by and let you get close to him? I’ll never forgive myself. But Tash was years ago and Murray was fine, seemed fine, ever since. And I knew, I thought-”
Tears were spilling from Malcolm’s eyes again, faster and faster, the dark spots where they fell on his chest joining up into splotches. Now he sobbed.
“Son?” said Mrs. Poole.
“What were you thinking?” he said. “I don’t mean about Keiko. I mean tonight.”
His mother only shook her head.
“What about tonight, Malcolm?” said Keiko.
“Don’t you see?” he said. “If someone knows-the blackmailer-then Jimmy and Fancy are down there for nothing.”
Keiko stared at him, feeling her blood drain away.
“It’s got to stop now,” he went on. “I’ll go and get them back before it’s too late and then we are going to call it a day. Maybe the police will keep things quiet as much they can. And maybe they’ll be able to find the blackmailer for you, eh?” He was almost crooning, like a parent trying to coax a sulking child into smiles.
Mrs. Poole did smile, and again there was that air of calm, almost serenity, that made Keiko briefly wonder if she really had lost her mind.
“I sent two hundred pounds off at the weekend,” she said. “And I put a note in saying that it was the last. There would be no more. Tonight when I looked in Byers’s wallet, there was a hundred and sixty left.”
They were silent then and so they all flinched at the sudden sound of the door. Fancy stood in the doorway, her hair plastered with sweat to the sides of her grey-white face. She raised one arm straight out from the shoulder holding a black plastic sack in her fist. She was trembling so much that it seemed she was shaking the bag in their faces like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. Both Keiko and Mrs. Poole rose to draw her towards them.
“I’m not coming any closer,” said Fancy. “I stink. I’m sorry but I was sick quite a lot and it’s on your stuff, Mrs. Poole.”
“I’m going to come home with you,” said Keiko, but Fancy shook her head.
“Can you keep Vi till tomorrow and I’ll come and get her?” she said.
“Well, at least I’ll walk home with you, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Poole, reaching out again.
Fancy retreated a step. “No, you’ve got to wait for Mr. McKendrick. He said I was to call him Uncle Jimmy and he’ll be here very soon to take you home.”
She walked backwards along the passageway to the front door, like a ceremonial page-boy, keeping eye contact with Keiko as she fumbled behind her for the handle and then stepped backwards onto the landing as the door closed on her.
“What’s she doing?” asked Malcolm. “Is she all right?”
Keiko nodded. “I think she’s trying to be.”
thirty-five
Mr. McKendrick arrived just after 3 a.m. and joined Keiko and Malcolm in the unlit living room, dropping into a chair and resting his head against the back of it. He smelled of oil and faintly of smoke, causing a jolt like an extra stair in the dark, reminding them of what was going to happen-what was already happening, while they sat here in the stillness. Keiko spoke first.
“Fancy’s gone home and Mrs. Poole is downstairs with the washing. Did everything-”
“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “The less you know the better, in case you’re questioned.”
“And did you really not know any of this, Mr. McKendrick?” said Keiko. “I was so sure that you had a secret.”
“Me?” said Mr. McKendrick.
“The committee,” Keiko said. “I was convinced that something was going on and that everyone on the committee knew.”
“Aye well, you were right enough there,” Mr. McKendrick said. “But I can’t blame the committee. It was me pushing it all the way. Hand-in-hand with the redevelopment, you know.”
“What was it?” said Malcolm.
Mr. McKendrick shifted about a little before he spoke. “A grand idea,” he said. “Etta tipped us off. She got wind of it from a pal of hers at Holyrood and she let us get ahead of the pack here in Painchton, so we’d win the bidding.”
“Win the bidding for what?” said Keiko.
Mr. McKendrick laughed, but it was a dry and ugly sound. “Oh, a high honour,” he said. “Lots of publicity, lots of press, good for business. We were going to be Scotland’s Food Town.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Malcolm.
“Ah,” said Keiko. “That’s why I was so important then. A scholar of food.”
“Studying our traditions and writing about them,” said Mr. McKendrick.
“Jesus,” said Malcolm again.
Mr. McKendrick’s jaw worked for a while, then he sniffed deeply, clapped his hands onto his knees and pulled himself forward until he was sitting up straight. “Now, I don’t think anyone saw us, but still we’d all better get gone. Malcolm?”
“I’m going to stay here,” said Malcolm. “I don’t want Keiko to be on her own with Viola when the sirens start.”
“Keiko can manage,” said Mr. McKendrick. “Your mother shouldn’t be alone.”
“You stay with Mum,” said Malcolm. “My place is here.”
And that was the start of it; Malcolm saying straight out what he wanted to do. Typical though, that what he wanted to do was take care of someone.
And perhaps that was all there was to it, but she didn’t think so. She lay in bed beside Viola listening to her breathing and remembered. Malcolm, saying if aliens came he would talk to them. Malcolm, making suet pudding and yakitori, making sure people on the budget option didn’t feel their poverty. Malcolm, dancing in the streaming gutters when it rained. She slid out of bed and went to stand outside the spare bedroom door, talking herself in and out of it twice before knocking. There was no reply and she wondered if he was sleeping, but when she went in he was standing in the middle of the floor as close as he could get to the window without his shadow cutting into the block of moonlight. He had wrapped himself in a blanket and his silhouette was mountainous. When she walked up and leaned against him, letting her whole tired weight fade into his, it was as if he had taken root there; it was like resting against an oak tree.
She put one arm across the middle of his back and clutched the blanket in a fist to hold it there, remembering their collision and struggle, Craig McKendrick’s hoots of laughter rising behind them, their swift embrace cluttered with wineglasses, how she had backed away.
In a moment, she heard or felt him shift to look down at her, taking his gaze away at last from the window. One side of his face was in deep shadow, and where the moonlight hit the other it made pale, lava-lamp shapes of his features. His breathing was laboured, his mouth hanging slightly open as usual, and the breaths warming her face were sweet, as clear and clean as Viola’s breath when she was sleeping.
He turned to look out of the window again, forcing a draft of cool air between them with his movement, making Keiko shiver.
“Cold?” he asked. She nodded and he opened his arms, making a space for her in the roll of blanket, releasing a trace of that rosemary-scented warmth. Keiko stepped in and his arms engulfed her, spreading so that she felt swaddled from her neck to her waist and she let him take her full weight. She couldn’t make her arms reach around him, so instead she threaded them under his armpits and hooked them over his shoulders, squeezing as hard as she could, trying to make something big and strong out of her small body to comfort him. She rested her face against the middle of his chest where his shirt was open. And it didn’t feel clammy after all, but fur-covered, solid and warm, with the thump of his heart in her ear like a club beating on bark. He cupped the back of her head in one hand and she looked up at him, put her hands to the sides of his face and found that his hair was not oily as she had always imagined, but so soft and fine that she could draw her fingers through it from the roots to the tips and let it fall back like hanks of silk. He bent and kissed her head before pulling her against him again and, although her heart was racing, his remained slow and steady against her cheek until the first shout came from outside.