Stonemouth

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know: before we knew each other? I don’t know. Maybe when you started coming to the house, coming to see Grandpa.’

I can’t help smiling. ‘I’d already fallen for you by then. At the Lido, years earlier. Hook, line and sinker, kid.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she says, smiling too. ‘You have told me that.’ She nods. ‘Hook, line and stinker.’

‘Stinker?’

‘A Grierism. From when she was a kid. Thought that was the phrase.’

‘Aha.’

She looks at me, serious again. ‘I’ll always be part of this family, Stewart.’

‘I know.’

There’s a pause, then she says, ‘The thing about Callum?’

‘What?’

‘He might have been pushed,’ she says, her voice flat. I just look at her. El shrugs. ‘And he might have deserved it.’

I think about this. ‘Uh-huh. Okay. So who did the pushing?’

‘The boys. Don, possibly.’

I can’t really take this in. ‘Hold on, wait a minute.’ I put one hand flat on my brow. ‘We are talking about your brother Callum, and the bridge, and your dad—’

El nods once. ‘We are,’ she says calmly.

‘Then—’

‘First thing I thought when I heard Callum was dead was that Grier had actioned her plan about accusing him — or threatening to accuse him — of raping her that night in his bed when she was still a kid. But it had gone wrong because he reacted by jumping off the bridge.’ She shakes her head. ‘Unless that was what she wanted, of course, though that may be taking the principle of not putting anything past the girl a bit too far.’

There’s a pause here, and I could say something, but I’m not going to.

‘Anyway,’ she says, in a measured voice, almost tired-sounding voice. ‘As it turns out, Callum…Callum might have been in talks with one of the businesses from Glasgow, the same people who tried expanding into Stonemouth a few years ago, and were …sent homeward to think again,’ Ellie tells me, turning her upper body and looking at me. ‘Maybe. Only maybe, from what I’ve heard, and I’m sure I haven’t heard everything.’ She looks away, back up the slope to the hotel. ‘Seemingly there was some circumstantial evidence, stuff passed on by somebody helpful inside the local police. Connected Callum with one of the firms who thought they’d have a second try, taking over, up here.’ She crosses her arms, hugs herself. ‘The idea seems to have been that Dad and Murdo would be persuaded to retire and Callum would be left in charge, running a sort of franchise operation for the Glasgow boys. Callum was negotiating on that basis over that last year or so and only pulled out when he started to realise neither Don nor Murdo would go quietly and what he was really getting involved with was a deal that would mean killing his dad and his elder brother. At least. And him doing the setting up to make sure this happened. So he broke off the talks.’ Ellie shrugs. ‘Too late, though.’

I’m staring at her. My mouth is open, and dry. I close it, swallow and say, ‘Fuck,’ which is about all I’m capable of.

El shrugs. ‘Just rumour,’ she says. ‘Speculation. Stuff I’ve put together, a few drunken asides, guilty looks, one or two hints people have dropped…Including something Grandpa said, in hospital, a few days before he died.’

I’m still not getting this. ‘But Don…he fucking doted on Callum. Didn’t he?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘I mean, it’s like he still does: keeping the pick-up and the portrait by the door …’

‘Hard to know what’s love and what’s…a cover.’

‘You still think he might have—’

‘Oh yeah,’ Ellie says, looking down at the path of beaten earth beneath her feet.

I blow out a breath, stare at the great stony façade of the hotel at the top of the tiers of steps and terraces. ‘So…Just…business?’

She laughs. Not loud or long, but it’s still a laugh. Bitter sounding. ‘No, not that,’ she says with a sigh, turning and looking back into my eyes again. ‘Broken trust, Stewart. Betrayal, love scorned. That would easily be enough.’

My turn to look down at the path.

She waits for a few moments, then flicks me on my knee with the back of her hand. ‘But I could be wrong. It could all be wrong.’ She flexes, using her backside to push herself away from the wall. ‘Come on; well past time I had a proper drink.’

I push away too. ‘Amen to that.’

It’s as we’re walking back up to the hotel that I remember the cute girl with the short black hair who was sitting at the table I visited just before I went to the bar and Donald started talking to me, maybe twenty minutes ago. Maybe it’s all this talk of conspiracy and plotting, but I suddenly remember where that nagging feeling of…whatever it was, came from.