Evil for Evil Read Free Page A

croft house on the hill behind the village. He came in most evenings, but sat mainly in silence, his eyes – so dark that they looked almost black – watching with what looked like a cynical contempt for more sociable beings. She rather fancied him, actually, but he’d never shown any interest.
    Now Findlay said coldly, ‘You’ve got it in for him because he caught you with a metal detector and threw you off his island.’
    Sorley bridled, his face turning red. ‘You’re a liar!’
    Findlay, infuriatingly, did not answer, only raising one eyebrow and taking another sip of his whisky.
    Sorley began to swear at him, but Georgia cut in crisply. ‘I don’t have language like that in my pub, Derek. There’s the lifeboat box – that’ll be two pounds.’
    He opened his mouth to argue, but a steely look from her changed his mind. He put the money in the box with a bad grace, getting to his feet and downing the rest of his pint.
    ‘You could ask
him
,’ Sorley pointed a shaking finger, ‘who tipped Lovatt off when I was just taking a wee walk on land that by rights belongs to every Scot?’
    Findlay didn’t respond. He went back to watching the news impassively as Sorley stormed out, though Georgia could swear he wasn’t hearing a word of it.
     
    The small TV in the corner of the Mains of Craigie kitchen was tuned to the news, but neither Janet Laird nor Catriona Fleming was watching it.
    Janet was making skirlie, gently cooking onions and oatmeal to go with the chicken already roasting in the Aga – one of their own plump birds. In her basket beside it, Meg the collie was giving small sighing whines, tormented by the delicious smell.
    Cat was peeling potatoes. She was eighteen now, strikingly attractive with fair hair and blue eyes like her father and her mother’s long, slim legs. She looked dubiously at what she had prepared.
    ‘Do you think that’ll be enough, Gran?’
    Janet Laird was in her seventies, but she was still active and cheerful even if her brown eyes were a little faded and her shoulders more stooped. She was as busy as ever with her good causes, one of which was ensuring her daughter Marjory’s culinary inadequacies did not deprive her family of good Scots home cooking. Together with Karolina, the wife of Rafael who worked the farm with Bill, she saw to it that household chores didn’t add more stress to her daughter’s already stressful job.
    Janet assessed the pile of potatoes. ‘You’d better do a few more, pet. You know Cammie’s just a wee terror when it comes to roast tatties.’
    ‘Only you could describe Cammie as a “wee” anything,’ Cat protested. Her brother Cameron, at sixteen, had reached six foot two and showed no signs of stopping. ‘He’s just a greedy pig.’
    ‘Och, he needs to keep his strength up with all that rugby training. What time’s he back tonight?’
    ‘About seven. And Mum said she wouldn’t be late – if you can believe her.’
    Going back to her task Cat sighed. It was somehow terribly important that all the family should be together tonight. She’d chosen her favourite supper – creamy cauliflower soup, roast chicken and Gran’s special lemon meringue pie – because tomorrow she was leaving home. Her stomach gave a nervous jump at the thought.
    Oh, she was up for it, excited about her place at Glasgow Uni to read veterinary science, and her boyfriend Will Irvine was there already in his second year studying medicine. They’d be together in the same place at last – she’d hardly seen him this summer, when he’d been working as a hospital porter in Glasgow.
    Oh, it would be great! Living in the big city instead of a boring backwater would be brilliant.
    But this evening Cat felt shaky. She couldn’t imagine opening her eyes in the morning in a room without any of the evidence of her life so far – stuffed animals she couldn’t quite bear to give to the church jumble sale, children’s books she still reread sometimes, the wall of photos