A Darker Domain - Val McDermid Detective Karen Pirie

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from my daughter, and I thought he’d listened to me. But now this.’ He waved his hands as if he was throwing a pile of hay in the air.

      Mary finally put down her work. ‘What’s the matter, Brodie? What’s happened?’

      ‘It’s what’s going to happen. You know how we breathed a sigh of relief when he signed up for his bloody estate management degree at Edinburgh? Well, it turns out that wasn’t the only iron in his bloody fire. He’s only gone and accepted a place at London University. He’s going to be in the same bloody city as our daughter. He’ll be all over her like a rash. Bloody gold-digging peasant.’ He scowled and smacked his fist down on the chair again. ‘I’m going to settle his hash, you see if I don’t.’

      To his astonishment, Mary was laughing, rocking back and forward at her piecing table, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. ‘Oh, Brodie,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t tell you how funny this is.’

      ‘Funny?’ he howled. ‘That bloody boy’s going to ruin Cat and you think it’s funny?’

      Mary jumped to her feet and crossed the room to her husband. Ignoring his protests, she sat on his lap and ran her fingers through his thick hair. ‘It’s all right, Brodie. Everything’s going to be fine.’

      ‘I don’t see how.’ He jerked away from her hand.

      ‘Me and Cat, we’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you for the past week.’

      ‘Tell me what, woman?’

      ‘She’s not going to London, Brodie.’

      He straightened up, almost toppling Mary on to the floor. ‘What do you mean, not going to London? Is she giving up this daftness? Is she coming to work with me?’

      Mary sighed. ‘Don’t be silly. You know in your heart she’s doing what she should be doing. No, she’s been offered a scholarship. It’s a combination of academic study and working in a designer glass factory. Brodie, it’s absolutely the best training in the world. And they want our Catriona.’

      For a long moment, he allowed himself to be torn between pride and fear. ‘Where about?’ he said at last.

      ‘It’s not so far, Brodie.’ Mary ran the back of her hand down his cheek. ‘It’s only Sweden.’

      ‘Sweden? Bloody Sweden? Jesus Christ, Mary. Sweden?’

      ‘You make it sound like the ends of the earth. You can fly there from Edinburgh, you know. It takes less than two hours. Honestly, Brodie. Listen to yourself. This is wonderful. It’s the best possible start for her. And you won’t have to worry about Fergus being in the same place. He’s not likely to turn up in a small town between Stockholm and Upsala, is he?’

      Grant put his arms round his wife and rested his chin on her head. ‘Trust you to find the silver lining.’ His mouth curled in a cruel smile. ‘It’s certainly going to put Fergus bloody Sinclair’s gas at a peep.’

      ‘So you argued with Cat about boyfriends as well?’ Bel said.

      ‘Was it all of them, or just Fergus Sinclair in particular?’

      ‘She didn’t have that many boyfriends. She was too focused on her work. She went out for a few months with one of the sculptors at the glass factory. I met him a couple of times. Swedish, but a sensible enough lad all the same. I could see she wasn’t serious, though, so there was no need to argue about him. But Fergus Sinclair was a different kettle of fish.’ He paced the perimeter of the table, the anger obvious. ‘The police never took him seriously as a suspect, but I wondered at the time whether he might have been behind what happened to Cat and Adam. He certainly couldn’t accept it when she finally cut the ties between them. And he couldn’t accept that she wouldn’t acknowledge him as Adam’s father. At the time, I thought it was possible he took the law into his own hands. Though it’s hard to see him having the wit to put something that complicated together.’

      ‘But Cat continued her relationship with Fergus after she went to Sweden?’

      Tiredness seemed suddenly to hit Grant and he dropped back into the chair opposite Bel. ‘They were very close. They’d run about together when they were kids. I should have put a stop to it but it never crossed my mind that it would ever come to anything. They were so different. Cat with her art and Sinclair with no more ambition than to follow his father into keepering. Different class, different aspirations. The only thing that I could see pulling them together was that life had landed them in the same place. So yes, when she came back in the holidays and he was around, they got back together again. She made no secret of it, even though she knew how I felt about Sinclair. I kept hoping she’d meet someone she deserved but it never happened. She kept going back to Sinclair.’

      ‘And yet you didn’t sack his father? Move him off the estate?’

      Grant looked shocked. ‘Good God, no. Have you any idea how hard it is to find a keeper as good as Willie Sinclair? You could interview a hundred men before you’d find one with his instincts for the birds and the land. A decent man, too. He knew his son wasn’t in Cat’s league. He was ashamed that he couldn’t stop Fergus chasing Cat. He wanted to bar him from the family home, but his wife wouldn’t have it.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t say I blame her. Women are always soft with their sons.’

      Bel tried to hide her surprise. She’d assumed Grant would stop at nothing to have his own way where his daughter was concerned. He was apparently more complex than she’d given him credit for. ‘What happened after she came back from Sweden?’

      Grant rubbed his face with his hands. ‘It wasn’t pretty. She wanted to move out. Set up a studio where she could work and sell things from, somewhere with living quarters attached. She had her eye on a couple of properties on the estate. I said the price of my support was that she stop seeing Sinclair.’ For the first time, Bel saw sadness seeping round the edges of the simmering anger. ‘It was stupid of me. Mary said so at the time, and she was right. They were both furious with me, but I wouldn’t give in. So Cat went her own way. She spoke to the Wemyss estate and rented a property from them. An old gatehouse with what had been a logging shed, set back from the main road. Perfect for attracting customers. A parking area in front of the old gates, studio and display space, and living quarters tucked away behind the walls. All the privacy you could want. And everybody knew. Catriona Maclennan Grant had gone to the Wemyss estate to spite her old man.’

      ‘If she needed your support, how did she pay for it all?’ Bel asked.

      ‘Her mother equipped the studio, paid the first year’s rent and stocked the kitchen till Cat started selling pieces.’ He couldn’t suppress a smile. ‘Which didn’t take long. She was good, you know. Very good. And her mother saw to it that all her friends went there for wedding presents and birthday gifts. I was never angrier with Mary than I was then. I was outraged. I felt thwarted and disrespected and it really did not help when bloody Sinclair came back from university and picked up where he’d left off.’

      ‘Were they living together?’

      ‘No. Cat had more sense than that. I look back at it now and I sometimes think she only went on seeing him to spite me. It didn’t last that long after she’d set the studio up. It was pretty much over about eighteen months before…before she died.’

      Bel did her mental arithmetic and came up with the wrong answer. ‘But Adam was only six months old when they were kidnapped. So how could Fergus Sinclair be his father if he split up with Cat eighteen months earlier?’

      Grant sighed. ‘According to Mary, it wasn’t a clean break. Cat kept telling Sinclair it was over but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. These days, you’d call it harassment. Apparently he kept turning up with a pathetic puppy face and Cat didn’t always have the strength to send him away. And then she got pregnant.’ He stared at the floor. ‘I’d always imagined what it would be like to be a grandfather. To see the family line continue. But when Cat told us, all I felt was anger. That bastard

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