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Gerry had his camera on his shoulder and Kristie was wide-eyed. She looked almost shocked. A wave of anger swept over him. ‘Put that away. It’s hardly appropriate.’
Gerry pulled the camera to one side. Kristie seemed frozen to the spot. She lifted one shaking hand towards the body on the floor. ‘Is...is that it? There’s...nothing you can do?’ It was the first time her voice hadn’t been assured and full of confidence.
‘Of course there’s nothing I can do,’ he snapped. ‘John’s been dead for the last few hours.’
He didn’t add the thoughts that were currently streaming through his brain. If she hadn’t delayed him at the hospital, maybe he could have been here earlier. If she hadn’t distracted him at the doctor’s surgery, maybe he would have made John’s visit before he went to the hospital.
He knew this was all irrational. But that didn’t make it go away.
Gerry’s voice broke through his thoughts. ‘Do you have to wait for the police?’
Rhuaridh nodded. ‘They’ll be here in a few minutes, and the undertaker will probably arrive at the same time.’
He turned his attention back to John and knelt down beside him again, resting his hand on John’s chest. He felt odd about all of this. They’d stopped filming but it still felt like they were...intruding. And it was he who had brought them here.
Gerry seemed to have a knack of fading into the shadows, but Kristie? She stood out like a sore thumb. Or something else entirely. He’d been around plenty of beautiful, confident women in his life. What was so different about this one? She felt like a permanent itch that had got under his skin. Probably not the nicest description in the world but certainly the most accurate.
She stood to the side with her eyes fixed on the floor at first as his police colleague arrived then Craig, the undertaker. The unfortunate part of being a GP was that for he, and his two colleagues, this was semi-familiar territory.
When at last things were sorted and John’s body was ready to be loaded into the undertaker’s car, it was almost like the others knew and stepped back for a few seconds.
‘What about Mac?’ asked Donald, the police officer.
‘Right.’ For a few seconds Rhuaridh looked around. There was no one to take care of Mac, and they probably all knew that.
He looked over at the dog lying dolefully on the rug, his head on his paws. It didn’t matter how impractical. How ridiculous. ‘Give me a second.’ He moved back over to John’s body and slid his hand in to find the keys for the house in John’s trouser pocket. Someone would need to lock up.
He stepped back to allow them to take John’s body out to the hearse, then moved through to the kitchen and grabbed a bag, stuffing into it the dog’s bowl and a few tins of dog food from the cupboard.
Kristie and Gerry were still hanging around in the hallway, Gerry still with the camera resting carelessly on his shoulder.
‘You good?’ Donald asked as Rhuaridh appeared back out of the kitchen.
He nodded and walked through to the main room. It was almost as if Mac knew because he jumped up and walked over, tail giving a few wags as he wound his body around Rhuaridh’s legs.
‘Come on then, old guy,’ Rhuaridh said as he patted Mac’s head. ‘Looks like it’s you and me.’ He bent down and paused for a few seconds, his head next to Mac’s. Mac had lived on a farm his whole life. How would he like living in a cottage by the beach? A wave of sympathy and affection flooded through him as he looked at Mac’s big brown eyes. Of course he had to take this guy home.
It only took a few moments to put out the fire, flick the lights switches and lock the main door. Mac jumped into the back seat next to Gerry, who seemed quite happy to pat Mac on the drive back.
He dropped them at their rental and sped off into the dark as quickly as he could. His first day of filming couldn’t have been worse. ‘Please don’t let them all be like this,’ he murmured to Mac.
* * *
Kristie watched the car speed away. Her feet seemed frozen and she didn’t even care about the brisk wind blowing around her. After a few seconds, Gerry slung his arm around her shoulders. She’d just seen her second dead body. And she couldn’t work out how she felt about that—except numb. It was evoking memories that she just didn’t want to recall. The little old man’s house had been so...real. A few hours earlier he’d been there, and then he was just...gone.
