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    The Pitkirtly Triangle
    The Pitkirtly Triangle
    The Pitkirtly Triangle
    Ebook274 pages4 hours

    The Pitkirtly Triangle

    By Cecilia Peartree

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    About this ebook

    The Pitkirtly Triangle is the 11th novel in the Pitkirtly Mystery series, set in a small town on the coast of Fife, in Scotland.
    Amaryllis is puzzled when the people she has been hired to track keep vanishing without trace. Is there a connection with the new café at the top of the hill and the increase in Empire biscuit consumption in the locality?
    Meanwhile Christopher manages to lose a very important donation to the Cultural Centre, Jock McLean gets on the wrong side of a garage owner and Jan from the wool shop panics about whether certain herbs are culinary or not.
    Everything becomes more complicated just as Amaryllis is put out of action for the first time in her life by the onset of a nasty cold virus.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCecilia Peartree
    Release dateMay 16, 2016
    ISBN9781310633119
    The Pitkirtly Triangle
    Author

    Cecilia Peartree

    Cecilia Peartree is the pen name of a writer from Edinburgh. She has dabbled in various genres so far, including science fiction and humour, but she keeps returning to a series of 'cosy' mysteries set in a small town in Fife.The first full length novel in the series, 'Crime in the Community', and the fifth 'Frozen in Crime are 'perma-free' on all outlets.The Quest series is set in the different Britain of the 1950s. The sixth novel in this series, 'Quest for a Father' was published in March 2017..As befits a cosy mystery writer, Cecilia Peartree lives in the leafy suburbs with her cats.

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      Book preview

      The Pitkirtly Triangle - Cecilia Peartree

      The Pitkirtly Triangle

      Cecilia Peartree

      Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2016

      Smashwords edition

      All rights reserved

      For James and Laura, May 2016

      Contents

      Chapter 1 Out There

      Chapter 2 Missing out on the Empire Biscuits

      Chapter 3 Scone Wars

      Chapter 4 The Nine to Five

      Chapter 5 What, in My Café?

      Chapter 6 Portrait of a President

      Chapter 7 Aftermath

      Chapter 8 Jock on the Trail

      Chapter 9 Visitations

      Chapter 10 Jan Tells All

      Chapter 11 Returning to the Scene

      Chapter 12 Jock Talks Round in Circles

      Chapter 13 Waking Up

      Chapter 14 Jock is Surprised

      Chapter 15 Christopher gets Involved

      Chapter 16 An Amazing Recovery

      Chapter 17 Mr Greenwood Keeps to Himself

      Chapter 18 When Will There Be Biscuits?

      Chapter 19 Explanation and Revelation

      Chapter 20 Jock Wakes Up

      Chapter 21 Monday Morning and All’s Well – or is it?

      Chapter 22 Up the Hill

      Chapter 23 Evidence of What?

      Chapter 24 The Return of El Presidente

      Chapter 25 Loose Ends

      Chapter 26 Surrounded

      Chapter 27 Passport to Trouble

      Chapter 28 Making Sense

      Chapter 29 The End of the Empire (biscuits)

      Chapter 30 Meeting Point

      Other novels in the series

      Chapter 1 Out There

      Amaryllis ran up to the road junction and looked around her. There was no sign of life on any of the nearby streets.

      Where had he gone?

      She ventured down each of the roads in turn, glancing from side to side as she went. She saw gardens, the rough grass of a little park and the open fields further up the hill. There was a cluster of council houses set back a little from one of the streets – or perhaps they were now former council houses. They seemed to be stranded on the edge of a field, like random rocks left behind by a prehistoric glacier. Goodness knows what the idea had been of building them on the outskirts of town like this, a long way from the shops and the High Street. If Amaryllis had been curious about local history for its own sake she might have thought about going round to the Cultural Centre later on to pester Christopher for some old maps of the area, but she knew he would guess there was something sinister behind her sudden interest in history.

      He might have disappeared into one of the houses, although there had hardly been time... In any case Amaryllis had been warned that if anything went wrong, she was on her own. She wouldn’t be able to get hold of a search warrant, or ask the local police for help, or to burst into private houses and hold people at gun-point until they told her what she wanted to know.

      She felt as if she were operating with both hands tied behind her back.

      It wouldn’t have been as bad if this hadn’t been the second time it had happened within two weeks. To lose one man was understandable, to lose two counted as carelessness... Was that how the saying went? Where did it come from anyway?

      She shook her head to try and dislodge these random thoughts. It was clear that associating with Christopher hadn’t done her powers of reasoning any good.

      Back at the junction, she glanced round again, sizing up the situation. One of the roads, she knew, led right out of Pitkirtly and joined the main road somewhere near the turning for Old Pitkirktlyhill House. If she had been a fugitive from justice, she wouldn’t have chosen to make a bid for freedom up that way. There were fields on either side, with nowhere to hide for miles. Another road wound its way round the back of Pitkirtly and ended up dipping down to the coastal route that was so busy in the summer and when the Forth Road Bridge was closed, and so pleasantly quiet the rest of the time. She knew there were some houses further along in that direction, but they were mostly large detached places set in their own extensive gardens. In Amaryllis’s experience the owners hated intruders almost as much as they hated everyone else, and their fences tended to be either electrified or topped with razor wire, which was as sharp as their dogs’ teeth. No sensible fugitive would try and find sanctuary there. Even if they didn’t know the area at all, which most of them didn’t, they would see the razor wire and hear the sound of rabid dogs snarling before they even set foot in a garden. Amaryllis had a feeling that El Presidente lived in one of these houses. She could imagine him going after intruders with a shot-gun, ice-axe or golf-club, any or all of which he probably had in his house.

      If the man she was looking for had ducked into a garden along the way she had just come she would have seen where he had gone, so that left the street with the incongruous group of council houses at one side and the little park at the other. Was he lurking behind some equipment in the children’s play area? Had he run right through the park and out at the other side, to the street beyond it?

      This was the most likely route, she realised, annoyed with herself for not working it out at first glance.

      She began to run again.

      She was so focussed on finding a way out at the far side of the play area that at first she failed to notice the man working on the stretch of patchy grass. Even when he started shouting at her she was reluctant to stop and bandy words with him.

      ‘Get off there! I’ve just been raking it over! Come back! You can’t go that way.’

      She realised at last that her favourite boots were becoming weighed down with a layer of mud that had attached itself to the soles. As well as the mud, which was working its way over the black leather uppers, there were odd little pale specks.

      It was at that point that she noticed the CCTV camera on a nearby pole. Damn! She would probably be arrested in the near future for infringing some sort of Council regulations about running over earth that had just been raked.

      But the camera, she thought in the next moment, might also show where the man she was pursuing had got to.

      She discarded this idea almost as soon as it had crossed her mind. Even if she could persuade the Council to release the CCTV footage to her – there must surely be some bureaucratic reason why they couldn’t – she knew the process of obtaining it would take forever. By that time her quarry would have reached a safe house and would remain underground until he had had plastic surgery, or until his hair had turned white or he had grown a beard to confuse everyone.

      Amaryllis had slowed down while pondering all these possibilities, and now she saw that there was a wall ahead of her which blocked the possible exit from the park. It wasn’t just one of these ornamental garden walls that might harbour vicious attack dogs behind it, either. It was a proper industrial scale wall, at least ten feet tall and without an obvious weak spot or way through. It extended for some way in each direction.

      Was there a factory or something behind it? As far as Amaryllis knew, there weren’t any factories as such in Pitkirtly. When the mining industry had gone, leaving some potentially dangerous tunnels and so on behind it, nothing much had moved in to take its place. There were some smaller operations, of course – joiners and mechanics and plumbers and a couple of builders. But nothing big enough to justify a wall like this.

      It was rather suspicious in itself, she mused, turning away and walking back across the park, still heedless of the gardener’s continuing shouts. But, suspicious or not, unless there had been a rope ladder or something already in place for him, the man she was after wouldn’t have had time to scale the wall. And why should the local builder or whatever be inclined to help a fugitive from the law?

      Someone stepped into her path.

      He was wielding a large spade, but that didn’t worry her unduly. She had taken out people with far worse weapons than that.

      ‘Did you just run over that patch of newly sown grass for the sake of it?’ he enquired. She looked the gardener up and down. He was large, but again she didn’t really need to worry about that.

      ‘I was looking for someone,’ she said calmly.

      ‘Where did you think you were going to find him? Did you think he’d made himself small enough to hide behind a blade of grass? Or he’d burrowed into the ground like a wee mole?’

      Just use the spade, for goodness’ sake, thought Amaryllis gloomily. By this time she was more in the mood for a physical fight than for exchanging banter.

      The gardener waved his arm around to indicate wide-open spaces. ‘There’s nowhere to hide as much as a garden gnome. Or did you think a space-ship beamed him up? I’ve heard talk of aliens.’

      Amaryllis recovered her wit. ‘That’s just the pub quiz team from Limekilns,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, ha ha,’ said the gardener. ‘Now I’m going to have to rake over that whole section again... And would you look at that!’ He stared down at her boots. ‘You’re taking away half the grass seed on your boots.’ He sighed, and leaned on the spade. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bother.’

      ‘Join the club,’ said Amaryllis.

      Her feet dragging, she made her way out of the little park. The gardener went back to his work, apparently having lost the will to harangue her any further.

      She wasn’t looking forward to admitting that she had let another of her quarries get away. But there wasn’t very much they could do about it now that she was working on a freelance basis. They could refuse to offer her another case. But she wasn’t sure if that would be such a bad thing. It was a bit of a tie, having to spend whole days at a time following people about, and it wasn’t as if she needed the money. If she were to be honest with herself, she might just confess to enjoying the link with her old life and the memory of adrenalin flowing through her, keeping her reactions sharp and stopping her mind from deteriorating.

      She sighed – and came to a sudden standstill as something ran over her toes.

      ‘Ow!’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘I should.... Tricia! What’s that?’ Amaryllis pointed down at the occupant of the baby buggy, trying not to sound as horrified as she felt.

      Tricia Laidlaw blushed. ‘It’s a baby.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I don’t know much about very young people, but I can see that. I mean, what are you doing with it?’

      ‘She’s my grand-daughter,’ said Tricia. ‘Adele. I’m taking her to the play-park.’

      Tricia’s grand-daughter... Amaryllis had to stop herself from yelping as the implications of the word percolated through to her brain. Surely to goodness the Fates hadn’t allowed Darren Laidlaw to reproduce! Admittedly he had turned out not to be a murderer, after all, and he was reputed to be very good with cats, but never in her worst nightmares had Amaryllis imagined him being a father.

      ‘Darren’s...?’

      Tricia nodded happily. ‘I never thought he’d do this at his age, but there it is.’

      ‘Is he – married?’

      ‘Oh, no, that isn’t how it works these days,’ said Tricia. ‘I expect they’ll get married one day, but they need to save up for it first. You’ve no idea how expensive weddings are.’

      Amaryllis, although slightly surprised at Tricia’s casual attitude – she had seemed such a conventional woman in most respects – had to admit she had no idea about weddings at all, apart from having once been caught in the middle of a gathering she assumed was a hen party in Torryburn. She had had nightmares for weeks afterwards about being suffocated by pink marabou.

      Jemima and Dave’s wedding, now – that was the way weddings should be organised. Taking everyone by surprise, especially Christopher. Amaryllis smiled at the memory.

      ‘Oh, well, I must get on,’ she said. ‘You didn’t happen to see a man in a grey tracksuit when you were coming along the road, did you?’

      Tricia thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember seeing anybody back that way. But then, I’m always so taken up with watching the baby. A herd of elephants could go past and I probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid.’

      Sad to see a previously intelligent person reduced to such a mental wreck. Amaryllis had another thought. ‘Haven’t you got the dog with you today? He might enjoy a run round the park.’

      ‘Oh, dogs aren’t allowed in the park. Anyway, he lives with Jock McLean now. I can’t cope with him and mind the baby as well.’

      And Tricia certainly wouldn’t be able to cope with any romantic entanglements, Amaryllis guessed, but she had more sense than to say anything. As they parted, she heaved a sigh on Jock McLean’s behalf. He had fancied Tricia for a while, but he hadn’t done anything about it, as far as she knew. Now he had been supplanted in her affections by a baby, and all he had to show for it was the wee white dog with the annoying bark.

      Chapter 2 Missing out on the Empire Biscuits

      Jock McLean certainly hadn’t intended to follow Maisie Sue up the road. It wasn’t until his eyes inadvertently strayed downwards and he recognised the shape of her ankles that he knew he was doing it. There were several disturbing aspects to this. For one thing, he hadn’t imagined for a minute that he could have described Maisie Sue’s ankles, even if he were to be interrogated by Amaryllis on the subject, which seemed very unlikely. For another, he had very nearly caught up with her. If she turned her head even slightly she was bound to catch sight of him and...

      She had gone into the shop right at the top of the High Street, just before it separated out into two other streets, one of which curved down the hill towards Amaryllis’s flat.

      Jock, tugging on the wee white dog’s lead to encourage him to walk a bit faster, walked on past the shop entrance, ducked down the lane two doors along and peered back to try and see what the shop was for and work out where it had come from.

      ‘It’s the new scone shop,’ said Amaryllis from just behind him. He jumped as she emerged from a hedge, brushing greenery off her black outfit as she did so.

      Hamish, the dog, started back and began to bark.

      ‘Ssh, Hamish, it’s only her... You could give somebody heart failure doing that,’ he grumbled at Amaryllis.

      ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘What were you doing skulking in here?’

      ‘You don’t have a monopoly on skulking,’ he told her. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t. I was looking to see where Maisie Sue had gone... What were you doing in the hedge?’ he asked as an afterthought.

      She shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

      Jock McLean knew that if his mother had been present at the scene – although even if she had still been alive she would have been over a hundred by now, quite likely confined to a wheelchair, which would have made it hard work pushing her up the hill, and definitely too infirm to skulk anywhere, especially in the cold, damp weather that was typical of Pitkirtly in February – she would have said, ‘What sort of nothing?’

      But he wasn’t his mother, he reminded himself. ‘A rival bakery? That’s going to put some noses out of joint at the other end of the High Street.’

      ‘That woman was born with her nose out of joint,’ said Amaryllis darkly. ‘Do you want to go in for a coffee?’

      ‘Is it a café as well?’

      ‘There are a couple of tables. Come on.’

      ‘I don’t want to take you away from whatever you were doing.’

      Amaryllis shrugged. ‘I was just watching to see if anyone went in.’

      ‘And did they?’

      ‘No-one except the delivery man with a couple of boxes.’

      ‘I’d better tie Hamish up outside,’ said Jock. ‘I don’t suppose they like dogs in there.’

      ‘It isn’t fair, is it?’ mused Amaryllis, glancing down at the dog. ‘He’s probably cleaner than most people.’

      Jock wasn’t too sure about that, but he was quite pleased with the compliment. He had brushed the dog only the day before.

      Once they were inside, he blinked at the sight of Maisie Sue in a bright pink overall and a funny little hat he hadn’t noticed her wearing when she went into the shop. She smiled broadly as they approached the counter.

      ‘Good morning – how may I help you?’

      ‘Do you have scones?’ said Jock, feeling ridiculous for some reason. Maisie Sue indicated the impressive display of cakes, scones and biscuits in the glass cabinet.

      ‘Do we have scones?’ she laughed. ‘Chocolate and lavender, Brie and parsley, celery and cinnamon. Genuine Scotch soda scones. Drop scones. If there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that we have scones.’

      ‘There’s plain ones too,’ said another woman of approximately the same age as Maisie Sue and wearing a similar outfit, who had emerged from somewhere behind the scenes. She had an anxious, harassed look about her. Jock warmed to that.

      ‘Plain for me, thanks,’ he said, hoping his order would cheer her up.

      They ordered coffee as well, and sat at one of the spindly little tables. It didn’t seem as if they were expected to stay very long. The discomfort would see them on their way well before they had managed to ingest a cup of coffee.

      ‘What were you really doing there?’ said Jock. He realised, too late, that his words echoed round the sparsely furnished shop interior. If Amaryllis were indeed up to no good – it wasn’t unheard-of – she probably wouldn’t want Maisie Sue and the other woman to know about it.

      Amaryllis gave a secretive little smile, leaned forward and whispered, ‘I told you. Nothing. For now.’

      In a little while Maisie Sue

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