Bitter End Part 2

'Aye, it is that,' said the closer of the two; a thin chap with the beginnings of a beer belly. He put up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. 'Although the ground's still a bit soft for mowing the gra.s.s after all that rain through the week.'

His neighbour's darkling stare swept over them both, taking particular notice of Buchanan's tan leather jacket and Armani slacks. He didn't appear overly impressed by what he saw so Fizz gave him a hundred-watt smile and said, 'I hope we're not intruding, but we're from Buchanan and Stewart, the people who've handling the sale of the estate, and we were--'

'Aye, I thought that's who ye were, either that or some toffs come to look at it.'

Fizz added a pinch of wistfulness to her smile and tipped her head a little to one side. 'You don't seem too happy to see us.' 12. Too d.a.m.n right, missy. You'll not find many around

here that'll be spreading the welcome mat for you.' 'Naw, naw Geordie, it's no' these folks' fault,' the thin guy muttered, frowning with embarra.s.sment. 'It's that Niall Menzies you should be complainin' to, like, no' his lawyers.'

'Not at all,' Buchanan said quickly. 'If you have any worries about the sale, now's the time to let me hear them.

Better that than raising objections once the deal has gone through.'

The two guys exchanged looks, then the thin guy said, 'Seven years we've been in this house and Geordie here's been twelve years in his. And you should talk to Mrs Pearson, second from the end. She was born in that cottage and her father came to it in nineteen forty-five, when he was thirty.'

'You mean, you've received notice to quit?' Fizz asked, not entirely surprised. In her experience, top dogs were almost invariably sons of b.i.t.c.hes.

'Aye, a month ago.' Geordie had clearly expected them to be aware of that little detail. He waved his gardening shears in a sweep that encompa.s.sed the length of the terrace. 'Paid off and told to get out. The whole row. You saying you didn't know?'

Buchanan evidently judged it best to say nothing that could be quoted in evidence. He followed Geordie's gesture with his eyes. All of you? You're all estate workers then?'

'We were. Up till the end of last month.'

Buchanan very rarely looked angry. In fact, he very rarely looked anything. Fizz was fairly sure he had taken a postgraduate course in Hiding Emotions. Right now, however, he was looking suspiciously red across the forehead, which Fizz usually took as a warning to be elsewhere.

'So we're talking about. . . eight families, right?' he said quietly.

'Aye, but there's more than us involved,' Geordie growled. He had an unnerving habit of flashing his shears 13. about as he talked and now swung them round to point

down the road. 'The whole village will know the difference.

There's seven kids in these cottages. If they all have to

move away -and they will -the school will have to close.

In a wee village like Lammerburn even eight families can

make a big difference -to the shop, for instance, and the

local pub, and the church. We only get a minister once a

month as it is. My dad owns his own house -all his

money's tied up in it. You think he'll be able to sell it? No

chance. Not in a ghost town.' 'And there's folk in these houses that's important to the village too,' put in his pal. 'See Olive Pearson, along there?

She used to be a nursing sister and she would turn out at all hours for women in labour, like, or if there was an emergency. She was great with our Tamsin when we were waiting for the doctor to come from Chirnside.'

Fizz was horrified to hear that a landowner could get away with this kind of thing in the twenty-first century but she was somewhat gratified to realise that, had she not used the sale of the estate as a lure to get Buchanan down to this neck of the woods, the Menzies family could have had the whole business signed and sealed before anyone -noticed. It was still quite possible that the deal could go through as planned but now at least both she and Buchanan would be pressing for some sort of rethink on the vendors' part.

Buchanan took his leave of the two guys, managing to do so without making any promises, yet leaving behind the implication that he was concerned and would be taking the matter further. Both Geordie and his thin friend smiled and waved to them as they drove away.

This is a shocking state of affairs,' Fizz burst out, thoroughly incensed. 'You'll have to do something about it.'

'You don't have to nag me,' Buchanan retorted with what struck Fizz as unnecessary crispness. 'It's not my business to question my client's morals. All I can do is 14. advise him that he might be biting off more than he can chew. I'll have a quiet word with Menzies and find out what he thinks he's doing. Right now I want a second look at Lammerburn so that I know what the extent of the problem is going to be.'

'It's going to be vast,' Fizz told him, counting the houses between the terrace of cottages and the edge of the village.

The population can't be more than a couple of hundred and there's no way people are going to find new jobs around here. You'd probably have to travel all the way to Berwick to find work, and travelling that distance in winter would be horrendous on these narrow roads. Three or four inches of snow and you'd never get up the hills.'

They drove slowly through Lammerburn, a higgletypigglety collection of rose-red sandstone villas, a white painted hotel, a general store-c.u.m-post-office, a garage, a sawmill and a small stretch of mowed gra.s.s with some swings and a see-saw in the middle. Pretty enough in the summertime, when there was good hillwalking and trout fishing all around, but too small to sustain any clubs or winter activities other than drinking and going to church.

Fizz, having grown up in just such a remote spot, was anything but envious of the locals.

Small communities like that around her grandfather's farm in Am Bealach were still, even after all the legislation that had been pa.s.sed to prevent it, at the mercy of large estate owners. Anyone with enough money to buy up huge tracts of land -and there were plenty of billionaires nowadays -could allow cottages to fall into disrepair and refuse to renew the tenancy of rented farms.

Ever since the Highland Clearances in the nineteenth century, the people who belonged to the land had come a poor second to the wishes of those few fat cats who wanted to divide up the surface of the planet amongst themselves and make the rest of humanity stick to corridors.

It was one of the few things that got Fizz really p.i.s.sed off. 15. 'You'd think the local people would have tried to fight back or something,' she said as they left the village behind and headed towards the junction with the main road in the valley below. There's been nothing about it in the newspapers, no demonstrations -nothing!

If it were happening to me, I don't mind telling you, I'd make sure the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds wouldn't try it again in a hurry!'

Buchanan made no reply but his sigh was a comment on the concept of the direct approach. Fizz knew it was a waste of time nagging him to get tough and could only hope that he would at least give the Menzies family the business end of a ball-point. She had known him perform miracles in the past but he moved in mysterious ways to do so.

She waited until they were almost at the main road before she said, 'I don't know about you but I could eat a small branch of McDonald's.'

Buchanan's answering grunt was not an unmitigated reb.u.t.tal so she murmured, 'I seem to remember rather a nice little pub in Chirnside, just the other side of those woods. Maybe we could get a pie and a pint.'

'Mmm-hmm,' said Buchanan non-committally, but he turned the car in that direction all the same and, a few minutes later, the chimneys of Chirnside came into view.

But before they reached the village proper, at the end of a short spur road on their left, Fizz spotted the burned-out sh.e.l.l of what must once have been Vanessa Gra.s.sick's weekend retreat.

There wasn't much of it still standing. The lower half of one gable wall was still there, and you could just about make out the line of the other outside walls, but within that boundary there was nothing but a black pit. What remained of the garden was splattered with rubble and bits of charred wood and sc.r.a.ps of household rubbish, reminding Fizz of images of bomb damage she'd seen on TV. On the ornate wrought iron gate was a now obsolete sign that announced Brora Lodge. 16. Just as she was about to suggest they stop for a closer look she saw Buchanan lift his foot from the accelerator.

He pulled on to the verge and sat staring past her at the ruin as though he knew that's why they were there. This left Fizz with a choice: either she could ask him why he was stopping, thus implying that she knew nothing about the incident, or she could just shut up and admit, by implication, that she had suckered him again. The trouble was, she was fairly sure he already had her sussed, so trying to lie her way out of it would only make matters worse. Ah, she thought, and not for the first time, what a tangled web we weave! Buchanan had been quite clear in his mind, from the

moment he saw that the suspect right of way was nowhere

near Lammerburn Estate, that Fizz was pulling his strings.

The fact that there did, after all, appear to be a problem

pending with the cottages tended to alleviate his chagrin,

but he had a strong suspicion that Fizz had been as

surprised about that as had he himself. The question was:

should he slap her down for it and spoil what was actually

quite a pleasant afternoon drive or should he save face by

pretending he had known what she was up to all along?

The outcome would, of course, be the same whatever he