He turns at the sound of a key turning in a lock. She’s standing in the doorway, one eye closed, the e-cig still wedged between her lips. She looks a bit like Popeye. She looks her age too. Beneath her jumper she’s soft and plump: clementines in a hessian bag. The lines in her face are an Ordnance Survey map of a mountain range – tight contours marking impossible peaks. When she talks, it’s clear the vaping is a recent compromise. Her throat rasps with the tell-tale roughness of a lifelong smoker.
“Before you start, I’ll be having none of it,” says Ms Cater, raising a small, plump, ringless hand.
“I’m sorry?” asks Rowan, his rehearsed opening gambit fading on his tongue. “None of what?”
“Whatever it is you’re selling,” she snaps. “If it’s pegs, I’m up to my eyeballs. If it’s insurance, I’ve got nowt valuable. I can’t have double glazing because it’s a listed building and I don’t have a clue what PPI is, although it sounds like a dirty thing to me.”
Rowan finds himself grinning. He likes her at once. “None of the above,” he says, standing on the path by the door. From behind her he can catch the smell of stale cigarettes and damp. Something else. A scent like burnt jam; acrid and sweet.
She disappears for a moment, the door swinging open invitingly. He wonders if she’s extended an invitation. Before he can move she’s back, thick bi-focal glasses sitting uncomfortably on her nose. She glares at him before her mouth twists into a harsh grimace. “I’m reading your book,” says Ms Cater, and she does not sound like a fan.
“It’s a new service,” says Rowan, trying for charm. “We’re going door to door, visiting readers, filing in any gaps in the narrative and checking you’re happy with your purchase …,”
She doesn’t smile. Lets him talk until he stops. “I wondered if we might have a chat,” he says, weakly. She has a way of leaving silences, or making him feel awkward, that he has always associated with a certain type of police officer. He has no doubt that if she pulled him over for speeding he would confess to having three bodies in the boot.
“A chat?” she asks, removing the e-cig. “Now why would you be wondering that?” Her lips smack as she talks, a sibilant shushing sound. She’s toothless, and isn’t wearing dentures.
Rowan gestures around him at the cold and the rain. “Could we maybe talk inside?” he asks. He raises his gloved hands. “I’m hiding a multitude of injuries here. I need to take my painkillers and a glass of water would be very much appreciated.”
She snorts, scornfully. “Don’t try that bollocks, lad,” she says, disappointed in him. “I’ve seen your sort in action enough times to be on my guard. Saw some prick from The Mirror rip his own trousers just so he could knock on the door of a grieving wife and ask for a needle and thread to help him cover his dignity. Stole a photo off the wall while he was alone in the doorway. It was in the paper the next day. I’d have ripped more than his trousers if it impacted on the case.”
Rowan tries to exude an air of apology – heartfelt regret at what some of his unscrupulous competitors were willing to do. Makes a mental note to stop wearing jeans and to invest in cheap polyester trousers with a rippable seam, just in case. He weighs up the likelihood of Ms Cater falling for any of his bullshit and decides to drop any pretence.
“If you’re reading my book, you’ll know a little ab out me,” he says, closing one eye to mirror her expression. “You’ll know what I do.”
“Aye,” she confirms, a tiny smile twisting her lips. “You’re good at talking to people, I’ll give you that. You got more out of Gary King than the copper who took him down, but then, all the copper could offer was a shorter life sentence. You were offering fame and fortune.”
“No fortune,” says Rowan. “He didn’t make any money.”
“But you did,” she says, and he sees her reaching for the door.
“A little,” he admits. “Not enough to compensate me for the hours spent in the company of somebody who made my flesh crawl.”
“Sounded like you got on, from what I read,” says Ms Cater.
“Rowan shrugs. “That’s the job, isn’t it? You were a copper more than thirty years. You’re telling me you’ve never been nice to a killer to get them on-side?”
Ms Cater removes her glasses, as if she’s seen enough. “Serendipity’s brother, aren’t you? Thought so. You comfortable in the Byre, are you? Christ, it comes to something when that’s where you choose to convalesce.”
“You know a lot,” says Rowan, as somewhere overhead a gull screams as if on fire. “Reading up on me, were you?”
Ms Cater nods, almost imperceptibly. She seems to be having a conversation with herself. “I’m only guessing,” she says, “but I reckon you’re here to ask me about Violet.”
Rowan chews his lip, unsure how to proceed. The recording device in his pocket is only picking up the sounds of the gale and the faintest muffle of conversation. He wants to get inside and get comfortable. He’s good at getting older ladies on-side. A few compliments, a few variations on the theme of ‘you’re never really 75 are you?” and usually it’s less than half an hour before they’re giving him everything he wants over fruit scones and loose leaf tea. Evelyn Cater doesn’t seem like a standard OAP. She looks as though she’s cracked a few kneecaps with a hammer and isn’t above doing it again. He has a vision of some crook-backed East European peasant woman, carrying twice her bodyweight in hay: a cast-iron will and bloody-minded refusal to succumb to age.
“You have her post, apparently,” says Rowan. “Rosie says you’ve been picking it up for the past few months.”
“Does she now?” replies Ms Cater.
“I’d hoped to have a chat with Violet myself,” says Rowan, keeping his eyes upon hers, even as he feels the urge to look away. “Apparently she’s been gone a good long while. Finding herself, is that right?”
She looks at him for a long moment. He feels as though he’s being weighed on a scale.
“I’mn writing a book,” :he says. “There are unanswered questions.”
“About Violet?” asks Ms Cater, suddenly scornful. “Who’s asking questions?”
“I am,” he says, and it sounds absurd to his own ears. “About what happened in 1991. When they went missing.”
Ms Cater’s face sets like concrete. She glares through him. “Fuck all happened in 1991, son,” she growls. “She and two of her mates got drunk and spent a weekend living large. Then they came home.”
“It really would be better to talk inside,” says Rowan, moving towards the door. He sees Ms Cater stiffen where she stands, and he suddenly realises that the left side of her body has remained concealed behind the wooden door since she opened it. He wonders what she’s holding. He’s been on enough rural properties to be painfully aware how easy it is to obtain a shotgun licence. Easier still for a decorated ex-cop.
“I think I’d like you to go,” says Ms Cater, flatly. “It’s not how it’s done, you see. Not here. You don’t just turn up and expect people to dance to your tune. I’ve got things to do.”
From behind her, he hears a second voice; brighter, younger. Somebody is shouting her name. Ms Cater gives a jerk with her chin. “Violet’s none of your business. There’s no story here. You’d be as well to fuck off before you get properly hurt.”
Rowan gives a bark of laughter, holding up his hands. “Carl Jung said there can be no coming to consciousness without pain.”
“Did he? Well he sounds like a prick as well.”
Rowan stands still, weighing his options. He wants her onside. He doesn’t know whether he’s played this wrong or whether she would have greeted him the same even if he’d turned up carrying flowers and cash. He feels his temper stirring, partly at the mean old bitch in the doorway but mostly at his own feckless self.