Dhapinder threw me a vicious look and then righted herself. Clearly fuming. “This isn’t over, Arden,” she whispered and then got in her SUV.
With Katrina’s car behind her, she had no option but to go forward, and I managed to haul Kenny to the side of the road as she sped off in a squeal of tyres.
“So, it’s true,” Katrina said once the sound of Dhapinder’s vehicle was long gone. “You really do attract trouble like it’s going out of fashion.”
I collapsed on the grass.
Katrina hadn’t redecorated since she’d bought the house from the Sweets.
As I sat in the kitchen of the TARDIS-style cottage, I noted this with surprise. In fact, it was less that she hadn’t redecorated and more the absence of any decoration.
The house looked like a small two-or three-bedroom home from the street. But in reality, it was a labyrinth-style warren of rooms on the ground floor with more of the same upstairs and an attic on top of that. There were about five living rooms and endless doors to spaces that probably had no use, and cupboards, and priest-holes, and Christ only knows what else.
There was also a distinct lack of furniture. When Arabella lived here, it had been full of tasteful-slightly-not-quite-shabby-enough-to-be-convincingly-authentic-shabby-chic furniture and knick-knacks. Huge ornate lamps, overstuffed sofas, east Asian ornaments, antique Persian rugs, and umbrella stands that probably cost thesame as the rent on a flat in a Glaswegian tower block for a year.
Katrina’s limited décor was much more British. Middle class. Little old lady. She had a few plants, some books. A couple of plain tables.
“Still moving in?” I asked as she busied herself, back and forth, checking her first aid kits.
She glanced around. “Oh, aye. Did a clear-out before I left. It’s all up in the air. Can’t decide what to do with it. My late husband took control of decorating our old house. It was all very … military.”
“He was in the army?” I asked.
She nodded. “Forty years.” She went to a different room and brought back a silver-framed photo. A man and a much-younger Katrina on their wedding day.
Her husband was a ramrod-straight-backed man with a small moustache and a barrel chest. He didn’t exactly look like an easy-going, joyous kind of bloke. “That’s my Andrew.”
“You look happy together,” I said, which seemed the most innocuous thing to offer up.
She smiled tightly.
“You must miss him terribly?”
She nodded a little. And then came towards me. “Right, you’ve a wee gash on your head, oh and a horrible scar, goodness, what’s that from?”
I jerked away. “Ah, an old accident.”
“Looks recent— oh. Gosh, my apologies. I just realised.”
It was my turn to smile tightly. “I have these kinds of run-ins semi-regularly,” I said, trying for a joke.
“I hope not,” she said. “Right, I’ll get the antiseptic. This is going to sting.”
I gripped the chair underneath as she went to work. From the spot he’d taken at the doorway, Kenny panted at me happily.
“He’s a lovely dog,” Katrina offered breezily as she poured acid onto my head and dug about with a blunt ice-pick.
I winced and clenched my teeth. “Yup,” I said, trying to open my jaw so I could form words. “Ghhhhh” was about as much as I could do. After Dhapinder had driven off, Katrina had taken one look at me and demanded I get in her car, and she’d driven me to hers for a check-up.
“I have a full first aid cupboard,” she’d said when I demurred. “No, you need to have those grazes looked at.”
So, we bundled in because Katrina wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Do I want to know what that was really about?” she’d asked as we’d driven back to the village.
“Um, once I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
“Will you go to the police?” she asked. I hadn’t given her an answer.
