The experiments, or whatever they were supposed to be, hadn’t worked. Were they his attempt at ‘finding’ her in the landscape? As though she was still somehow residually there? Even now he didn’t want to believe that deluded hope had been the reason he’d asked for the summer transfer to the Cairngorms police station in the first place.
He was a good Special Constable with a proven track record of being calm, observing protocol, and keeping out of trouble. He’d been free to take his volunteering anywhere.
‘I really did come here to help out an understaffed force,’ he told Holiday the cow, wanting to believe his motivation hadn’t been born from delusional curiosity and hope. ‘What do you mean, you’re not buying it?’
Shaking his head, he slotted Holiday between the tightly tucked covers of his bed, patting her skinny body – she’d lost a lot of stuffing over the years.
He didn’t like feeling maudlin, like his dad was. He wouldn’t let himself slip into sadness. Making his way round his flat, he poured a glass of water at the kitchen sink and downed it, then he brushed his teeth, before telling his reflection in the bathroom mirror to go to bed.
The noise from the TV caught his attention. He’d left it on, talking away incomprehensibly to itself. The evening news, which was mercifully mostly in English, came from a studio somewhere north of here, and was just winding down to the weather forecast.
There was Morag Füssli, who he’d observed Edwyn talking to that very morning, on-screen now, reminding viewers of the special edition of Highland Spotlight where they’d celebrated the dedicated, community-minded Charlie McIntyre. The screen showed stills of the stolen jewellery in his hands over Füssli’s appeal for anyone with information about the Hogmanay robbery, along with a description of the woman in the Afghan coat who was ‘of interest to police’. The reporter signed off by saying, ‘This mishap may spell an uncertain future for the Cairn Dhu Community Repair Shop and Café who can ill afford to be associated with organised crime in the Cairngorms. Can they regain the trust of their community?’
Jamie ran a hand through his still damp hair, picturing Ally McIntyre watching this at home. ‘Oh naw,’ he said. ‘She’s going to be furious.’
That night Jamie Beaton lay awake, listening to true crime podcasts. Usually he was asleep by the end of the second episode but tonight, as he curled up on his side, duvet over his head – a childhood habit – he couldn’t help imagining himself back at that cosy, bright repair shop with the smells of coffee and baking, sawdust, oil and rust heavy in the air, and with a fierce redhead standing before him, looking for all the world like she was ready to jab at him, her frustration and fear crackling behind her green eyes.
He told himself to forget her, consign her to the blank region of his brain where his mum also resided, more a feeling than a memory these days; but try as he might, the enchanting vision of beautiful, wounded, fiery-hearted Ally McIntyre would not go away.
5
McIntyre family cautioned by police over fenced jewellery scam
The headline held the whole family transfixed as they gathered around the breakfast table a week after the policemen’s visit, chewing toast they had no appetite for.
‘Why did you buy the weekend paper?’ Roz asked her husband. ‘We haven’t taken the papers since you finished at the factory.’
‘Ach, it’ll come in handy for moppin’ up spilt oil,’ McIntyre tried to joke.
‘We weren’t cautioned!’ Ally objected. ‘It was a casual ticking off, if anything.’
‘It’s the online news you’ve got to worry about,’ added Murray from the doorway, where he was scrolling on his phone. The fact his dad had made the TV news again (and for all the wrong reasons this time) had been enough to bring Ally’s twin brother home from Zurich. ‘Side bars, click bait, comment sections.’
Charlie McIntyre pulled his own phone from the pocket of his overalls.
‘I wouldn’t look if I were you,’ Murray tolled ominously. ‘Why aren’t the police trying to find the burglars?’
‘I’m sure they are, but until they’ve actually caught them, the reporters have to find a local angle for the story, and for now that’s us,’ said Roz, sipping her tea and refusing to read any of this stuff. ‘Anyway, I’m just glad to have the both of you home.’
This drew distracted smiles from the twins as they scrolled.
Roz McIntyre didn’t play favourites. She had always treated her children exactly the same. If one had got a Beano, the other got The Dandy. If one had fallen off their bike on the gravel and skint their knee, the other would receive a hug and kisses just as soon as the injured twin was off running and smiling again after being rocked on their mum’s lap.
‘I had a bit of leave saved up,’ said Murray, with a small shrug.
He hadn’t actually sat down since he got in from the airport two hours ago, Ally noticed. He’d stood by the door, leaning on the fridge. Maybe he had a car waiting? He was becoming the sort of eco-business dude who always had an (electric) car waiting.
Ally had no excuse for being a teensy bit envious of her successful, jet-setter, probably-raking-it-in brother, even if they had shared a womb, and every classroom they ever sat in, and a degree course and a graduation ceremony. She was still hugely proud of him. She didn’t mind too much that he’d outstripped her in the achievement stakes.
And yes, everyone at college had made a big fuss of the fact they were twins. They’d been asked a hundred times, ‘Didn’t you want to study different subjects?’ and ‘Aren’t you a bit sick of each other by now?’
The truth was they were pretty similar, academically, although Ally was more practical, more of a fixer, than her brother, and she’d always enjoyed taking things apart to see how they worked; while Murray had more of a talent for understanding how people worked. He was popular, cheery and confident in ways Ally mostly only pretended to be.
Even though they’d applied for the same jobs straight out of college, it was Murray whose career had somehow gone interstellar.
She was happy for him, truly, although his promotion to the Switzerland HQ of the Future Proof Planet global charity had come at a hard time for Ally, straight after lockdown when she’d been consigned to spending her weekday mornings at a laptop in her jammies and wearing a headset, asking confused customers if they could turn their computer off and on again, while he’d been flown business class to his own place with a mountain lake view, its own spa and a steam room, chauffeur, cleaning team and free health care.
Not that she grudged him any of those things. Much.
