Chapter 9
FIFE
Art McKenzie had called ahead to make sure that Daisy McRae was home. It was coming up for lunchtime and he was starting to feel hungry. Maybe Daisy would be in the mood to rustle up some sandwiches. No, probably not.
It never failed to amaze him just how alike Alan and Daisy were, like twins without being twins.
Their eyes, their mouths, their laugh. Alan had once told him that they were seventeen months apart – Daisy had popped out of their mother’s birth canal first, a story that made Art gag every time Alan felt like repeating it.
‘Thompson Twins or Duran Duran?’ Art asked as Cameron got back in behind the wheel.
Cameron started the engine and squinted his eyes, as if giving this question a really good go, like he was taking a spelling test in school and hoping the bell would go soon as he knew he was fucked. ‘Duran Duran.’
‘What?’ Art said, tugging his seat belt just a little bit harder than was necessary. ‘Away you go.’
‘Aye. And the Wedding Album… album, from 1993. “Come Undone”, though. I prefer that to “Ordinary World”.’
‘That’s it, it’s official: Cameron Reid talks pish.’
Cameron laughed and pulled away from the bowling club car park. ‘Let’s hear it for the Thompson Twins. All three of them.’ He turned left. ‘Shouldn’t it have been the Thompson Triplets?’
‘They were named after the Twins in the Tintin series, as you bloody well know. Don’t be winding me up now.’
Cameron laughed again. ‘What’s your favourite Thompson Twins track?’
Art thought about it. ‘“Nothing in Common”.’
Cameron nodded. They were both eighties aficionados, and their conversations would sometimes turn to that subject.
Art told his younger colleague that they regularly had an eighties night at the club where the DJ would give it laldy with the records, especially after a few beers.
One night he was so pished, he fell over onto his turntables, everything crashing to the floor.
Although Art thought they might just be for show and the DJ was using a streaming service to play the music. It was hilarious nonetheless.
‘Good choice,’ Cameron said. ‘Why that song?’
‘It was on the soundtrack to a Tom Hanks movie way back in 1986.’
‘What was the movie called?’
‘Nothing in Common.’ Art rolled his eyes and looked at his colleague like he should have known that.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s probably in somebody’s VHS collection.’
Daisy was wringing her hands, like she was an unscrupulous medium about to take them to the cleaners. The house was a two-minute drive from the bowling club. It was a one-storey detached modern bungalow with a driveway at one side, big enough for two cars.
One car was there, a little red hatchback, but Alan’s VW Golf was missing.
‘Come away in, Art,’ she said to them as they walked up the pathway to the front door. ‘You too, Cameron,’ she said to the younger detective, as if he had been going to hover about outside.
The sun was overhead and the air felt sticky now. Inside, it was much cooler, and Daisy led them into the living room, which was at the back of the house.
‘Have you found him?’ she asked, dispensing with any niceties.
They stood around in the living room, Art once again looking at the prints of the countryside and horses and trees hanging on the wall, anything so he didn’t have to look Daisy in the eyes. Then he plucked up the courage.
He sucked in a breath and his answer came out like a sigh. ‘No. But he was spotted somewhere unusual before he went on holiday.’
‘Where? It wasn’t in that lingerie shop again, was it? ’Cause I told him about that.’
Art could feel his cheeks starting to burn.
Daisy was in her late fifties, but Alan had told him that his sister had never married.
She was a civil servant, drank at the bowling club and had taken her brother in when he got divorced three years ago.
Alan had got his feet under the table, as it were, and was in no hurry to move out, and Daisy hadn’t been in any hurry to get him to leave.
‘No, nothing like that. I’m sure he was just in there buying a Christmas present,’ Art said.
‘Not for me!’ Daisy said, clutching an imaginary string of pearls on her chest.
‘No, no, I meant for a girlfriend, or something.’ Shite. Art admonished himself. What would the or something be? A mannequin he secretly kept in his wardrobe?
‘He was seen up at the trail, outside Cupar, before he left for Tenerife,’ Cameron said, jumping in.
Daisy looked puzzled. ‘Up there? Alan doesn’t go hiking.’
‘We think he was meeting somebody, Daisy. Somebody who owns a little Volvo XC40. A blue one. Do you know anybody who owns such a car?’ Art asked.
Daisy was silent for a moment as they all stood in her living room, waiting for the mother ship to beam them up. Then she looked at Art. ‘Yes, I do.’