The quirky old course, spread out on its three fields, unfolded itself for us in the afternoon sun. Our golf was pure mince but we didn’t care. It was a nice afternoon, if a bit windy, and Prim and my Dad got on like a house on fire. Eventually, like many an Elie golfer, we decided to skip the eighteenth hole and go straight to the nineteenth. The old Golf Tavern has changed less, probably than any pub I know. My Dad still calls it ‘Elrick’s’, although that licensee has been gone from it since I was a child.

  I got them in, and we sat at a table in the window, crunching crisps and playing dominoes.

  ‘So what’s this story,’ said my Dad, slamming down the double five, ‘that you were going to tell me? What brought you up here?’

  I looked at Prim. She nodded.

  ‘Okay, but we better finish the dominoes, ’cause it’ll put you right off your game.’

  ‘Nonsense. You could poke me in both eyes with a sharp stick and you still couldn’t beat me at Doms. Come on, tell me your story.’

  ‘If you insist. After you’ve got them in.’

  He shook his head. ‘My God! Does everything have a price?’ He stood up and took the single step across to the high bar counter. He was no sooner back with two pints of Deuchars and a small whisky for him than the door creaked open. The Golf Tavern is a great place for old bodgers. This one had a dog, a great, fat, slavering labrador. It was the sort of dog you find at one time or another in every country pub, its function being to see its master home in time for supper.

  The old bodger turned out to be a patient. ‘Hello Mac,’ he hailed, the red capillaries standing out on his nose. ‘Don’t see you along here very often. Glad I bumped into you. Had this terrible bloody ache for a week now.’ He hauled his loose lips wide apart to reveal a yellow canine of which the lab would have been ashamed. Half an hour and two more dog walkers later, we made it back to Dad’s elderly Jag, parked outside the clubhouse. ‘Jesus!’ he spluttered, as he eased himself behind the big dish of the steering wheel. ‘No wonder I don’t come along here too often. One of them in there actually asked me to look at his fucking dog! Did you hear him?’

  He shoved the lever into Drive and eased smoothly out of the car park, up through Elie, past the grey church, and out of the village. ‘Right,’ he said as Prim, in the back seat, pointed to the jagged shape of the Lady’s Tower, ‘let’s have your story.’

  And so I told him. Everything. From the moment when I found the late Willie Kane, to the time when we interrupted his coitus. The only part that I left out was my flash of insight about the identity of the killer. I didn’t think Prim was ready for that.

  I was about eight when I found out what ‘phlegmatic’ meant. ‘It’s what your father is,’ said my Mum, and I understood. The Jag only looked like swerving off the road once, when I told him about meeting Miles Grayson in the Falls of Lora. ‘Did you get his autograph?’ asked the old movie buff.

  ‘As a matter of fact I did.’ I smiled at Prim. ‘Bet you thought I was kidding when I said it was for my Dad.’

  He was silent for the rest of the drive home. I knew better than to interrupt him. Mac the Dentist is a great ponderer. When he’s come to a view he’ll share it with the world, but while it’s hatching in his brain, best to leave him alone.

  We didn’t go back into the house at once. Instead Dad motioned us over to his long green garden seat, positioned at the top of the lawn. We sat down, Prim between us. There was a big black tanker making its way out to sea, riding low in the water with its cargo of oil. He pointed to it. ‘See that thing? When I was a young man, if anyone had told me that one day we’d be exporting oil from this river, I’d have told him he was off his fucking head. Now we take it for granted. But when it’s all gone, we’ll miss it.’ He sat silent for a minute or so longer, then dug Prim in the ribs. ‘You still got that fiver then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you, boy. You don’t trust this man Archer, do you?’ I hadn’t told him that.

  ‘If I were you, I’d go back to see him one more time. Tell him you think Prim’s sister has the fiver, and that you’re looking for her. See how he reacts, then decide what to do.’

  ‘What are my choices?’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Say “Bugger it”, give up on the reward, go to the police, tell them the whole story and give them the fiver. That’s what a sensible man would have done by now. Or, come clean with Archer, go and collect his dough, and take your cut. Or, and daftest of all, keep it to yourself, and once you’ve found Prim’s sister and covered her backside, go to Switzerland, pick up the money and then make up your mind what to do with it.’

  ‘And what would you do?’

  ‘I, oh Mighty Oz? What would I do?’ His face creased into a sly grin. ‘I’ve never been accused of being too sensible, have I!’

  He jumped to his feet. ‘Come on, you two. The day presses on, and we have a date. Mary phoned this morning while you were still out of it, and bade us all to dinner at her place.’

  In which Mac the Dentist gives us some good advice, and I become a lighthouse keeper

  It had been years since I’d dined at Auntie Mary’s, and then I’d been too much of an airhead to appreciate what a wonderful cook she is. We ate salmon terrine that she’d made herself, braised venison from an estate a few miles away, garnished with peas straight from the pod, carrots and new potatoes, all home-grown, and a huge pineapple, quartered and soaked in Benedictine. Fortunately we’d taken a couple of decent bottles of wine with us, not Dad’s usual supermarket crap. That would have tasted like vinegar alongside Mary’s gourmet meal.

  The table talk avoided relationships. Instead Prim told us tales of Africa, I told us tales of accidental comedy among my witness interviews, and Dad told us tales of dental dereliction. I watched him as the evening went on. The old bugger had his feet under the table, no doubt about that.

  Auntie Mary brought out the port with the coffee and truffles. Damn good stuff it was too. Dad took to it, for sure. After his second glass he was clearly on his way. I wasn’t worried about a slide back to the bottle. Before Mum died, he had always enjoyed a good bevvy as a form of fellowship. He had been a happy drunk, one who used alcohol to enhance enjoyment rather than drive away worries. It was funny, but looking at him across the table, I was actually pleased to see him getting pleasantly pissed. It was just like old times. Mary might as well have been my Mum, except, although I feel disloyal in admitting this, she’s a better cook.

  At last the port bottle was down to only the dregs. Dad toyed with the idea of finishing it, but thought better of it. He muttered something about the eye of a needle at thirty paces and put the bottle down. Suddenly he leaned across the table and took Prim’s hand. ‘Tell me, my dear,’ he said, heavy-lidded. ‘What are you going to do t’morrow?’

  Prim looked at him, smiling lightly, her cheeks slightly red from the port. ‘What do you think I should do, Mac?’

  ‘I think you should go and see your Mum.’

  The smile left her lips. She frowned uncertainly.

  ‘Listen, love,’ said my wise old father. ‘You owe it to her. It’s her right to worry about her daughter; goes with the position of parent. If there’s cause for her to be anxious, she won’t thank you for keeping it from her. Most of us old yins are capable of facing up to life, you know, whatever it throws at us.’

  She looked at him for a while, and the smile came back. ‘You’re right, aren’t you. I was treating her as if she was in her dotage. Okay, tomorrow we’re off to Auchterarder. Apart from anything else, it’s time she found out what her older daughter’s up to!’

  Dad nodded, and rattled the port bottle again. I took my cue, and stood up. ‘Mary, that was wonderful, but it’s time we were off.’ Prim stood up and took my hand as I stepped round the table.

  ‘Coming, Dad?’ I said.

  ‘No, no. Think I’ll hang on here for a wee while.’ He glanced across at Auntie Mary. She answered his slightly raised eyebrow with a nod.

  The door was almost closed when he called after me. ‘Tell you what, Oz. Be a good lad and put my bedroom light on for a wee while. Just to keep the neighbours happy, you understand.’

  It might have been no more than the creaking of a chair, but as I closed the door, I was sure that I heard him fart.

  In which we find she who wasn’t lost at all, in which I experience the full glory of a Scottish Sabbath, from which we make an escape, and in which something very unpleasant happens

  To me, Auchterarder isn’t a place at all. It’s a stagecoach halt that’s managed somehow to carry itself over into the twentieth century. It’s something of a dormitory town, I suppose, but its main purpose today seems to be to meet the needs of Gleneagles Hotel, the fat cat up the road; to keep its kitchens filled; to make sure that its golf courses are all in the mint condition that its American and Japanese patrons have been told to expect; to ensure that there’s always a taxi available to run same to and from Glasgow and Edinburgh Airports. Other than that, there isn’t a logical reason for its existence.

  Except of course that it’s where Primavera Phillips was raised to womanhood. That makes it special.

  We drove up the motorway in midmorning — having left a ‘Thanks and see you later,’ note on the kitchen table for my still-absent Dad and took the fast road down from Perth.

  ‘Our house is on the edge of the town,’ said Prim as we took the turnoff from the A9. ‘It’s a big barn of a place up on the right.’

  That was far short of a reasonable description. It struck me at first when I saw it that if it had had the Bates Motel at the foot of the garden, it could have been lifted straight out of Psycho. Closer to, I realised that I should have been thinking of the Addams Family. The Phillips homestead is a big spacious villa, with two high storeys and an attic, and a steep roof that must have been a slater’s nightmare when it was built.

  ‘There you are. Semple House. What d’you think?’ said Prim, smiling, biting her lip, as the Nissan’s tyres scrunched up the red gravel path.

  ‘You don’t have a butler called Lurch, do you?’

  ‘Swine!’ she shouted, laughing, and punched my arm. We eased ourselves out of the car and trotted up the six steps to the front door. Prim fumbled in her handbag for her keys. Eventually she found the bunch and fiddled through it for the right one.

  She needn’t have bothered. The door swung open … with an authentic Addams Mansion creak, I was glad to note. Prim looked up, and gasped.

  They aren’t instantly alike. They’re both gorgeous, but in very different ways. Dawn Phillips is dark, while Prim is authentically blonde, even when her hair isn’t bleached by the sun. Dawn’s natural expression, the one with which right there and then I guessed she opens every door, is one of apprehension, while Prim’s is one of total confidence, welcoming whatever challenge the world has to offer. But there is something about their eyes, about the tilt of the nose, which marks them out as sisters, beyond a shadow of doubt.

  They stood there like statues, on their parents’ doorstep, staring at each other, their mouths hanging open. It struck me that it was like watching someone looking in a distorted mirror.

  Dawn cracked first. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Prim! Oh God, you’re safe. We’ve been so worried about you, out there with all that trouble going on. When did you get back?’ She stepped out from the doorway and hugged her sister.

  ‘Hey, girl,’ said Prim, disengaging and holding her at arm’s length. ‘Didn’t I write? Didn’t I phone when I could? Didn’t I call Mum on Friday to say I was home?’

  Dawn shook her head. ‘I didn’t know. I went up to Perth on Friday to chill out with Jenny Brown and get pissed. I’ve been so screwed up lately. I only got back half an hour ago.’

  ‘Before Friday, how long had you been here?’

  Dawn jumped when I spoke. She was edgy, and no mistake. Prim smiled, and took my arm. ‘Sorry, I should have done the introductions first. This is Oz; Oz Blackstone, my new friend.’

  The young Miss Phillips looked me up and down. My jeans had seen better days, but haven’t everyone’s, and at least my white tee-shirt was clean and my trainers didn’t smell. Eventually she held out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Oz. Did she bring you back from Africa?’

  I shook my head, and her hand. ‘No. Anstruther, in fact. And before that, from Connell. We’ve been looking all around Scotland for you.’

  She frowned, looking genuinely puzzled. ‘But…’

  Prim cut her off, shooeing her inside the house and pulling me in after her. ‘We’ll get to that in a minute, Dawn,’ she said, carefully. ‘First of all let’s get the kettle on. Where are Mum and Dad?’

  ‘It’s Sunday. They’ve gone to church.’ ‘Mmm,’ I thought. ‘People still do that, do they!’

  It was a nice old house on the inside. Full of character. It seemed that the Phillips family hadn’t thrown anything away for about three generations. As I looked around the hall, I had a funny feeling that I couldn’t pin down for a moment or two. Eventually it came to me. ‘It’s like stepping back into my Granny Blackstone’s house.’ I spoke the thought aloud.

  ‘Yes, sort of old-fashioned comfy, isn’t it,’ said Prim. ‘My Dad likes old things.’ She pointed me into a big living room, off the hall, and disappeared with Dawn in another direction. I looked around the room. It was dominated by a huge brown three-piece suite in leather and velvet, and the pleasant smell of the hide hung in the air. Everything else — curtains, rugs, furniture, huge wooden-framed radio — was of the same 1930s vintage. A telly would have seemed obscene in there.

  ‘It’s a museum, isn’t it,’ said Prim, from the doorway, behind me. ‘Lovely to visit, but not to live in. Not for me, anyway.

  ‘Sit down,’ she ordered. ‘Dawn’s making the tea.’ She flopped on to the big sofa, pulling me down beside her. The big velvet cushions whooshed up around me with my weight. I’ve never laid on a feather-bed, but when I do, I imagine it’ll feel like the Phillips family settee. Prim curled up on her cushion, sitting with her legs pulled up like she does in the car. She was wearing a white sleeveless wool top and pale blue shorts. The way she was sitting I could see her knickers. Suddenly my jeans felt tighter as old Mr Stiffy began to make his presence felt. I reached out for her, but she jumped up, a smile on her delicious lips. ‘Oz! It’s Sunday. My folks are Sabbatarians. No radio on Sunday, no playing cards, and absolutely no nooky on the living-room carpet!

  ‘Besides, this is serious. What are we going to tell Dawn?’

  Dragged back to reality, I shook my head. ‘We’re going to ask her a few things first. She …’

  ‘Ask me?’ Dawn was in the doorway carrying teapot, cups and saucers on a big tray with folding legs. ‘Ask me what?’

  ‘How you came to be in a movie, for a start,’ said Prim, quickly.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dawn. ‘All that hasn’t really sunk in yet. It was pure luck. There was a part for an actress and Miles wanted someone Scottish. He came to the Lyceum one night when I was on and saw me. Next day, I had a note from the director asking me to come for a test.’

  ‘That’s great. How’s it going?’

  ‘Terrific, so far. I was supposed to be ravished and killed by the Redcoats quite early on, but Miles has given me a reprieve. They’ve written some more scenes for me and I’m getting supporting billing. A bit more money too.’

  ‘You seem to be doing all right in other ways,’ I chipped in. ‘We met Miles. He fancies you, and no mistake.’

  Dawn glanced at me as she poured the tea and smiled self-consciously, nervily. I could see that, temperamentally, she was her sister’s opposite.

  ‘So,’ said Prim, ‘with all that’s going for you, how come you’re screwed up. What’s with the Prozac?’

  ‘Oh it’s lots of things, but mostly, as usual, it’s men. I’ve got myself trapped in a sort of, situation, and I was having trouble finding a way out.’ ‘Christ,’ I thought, ‘if that was her solution I found in Prim’s flat it was a bit drastic.’

  ‘I was having stage fright, quite badly. The Prozac sorted it out, but it didn’t do anything for the root cause of the trouble.’ ‘No?’ I thought again. ‘Maybe it took the kitchen knife to sort that out.’

  ‘Remember the guy I told you about in a letter?’

  ‘Danny deVito meets Nijinski?’ said Prim.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. His name’s William Kane. He’s a regular at the theatre. His firm are corporate sponsors. I met him at our theatre club one night. We got talking, and I thought he was sort of funny, but sad at the same time. He was carrying a burden, I could tell.’

  Prim sighed. ‘Aah. Another bloody bird with a broken wing! I thought you’d grown out of that.’

  ‘You don’t though, do you. At least I don’t. Anyway Willie isn’t like that. He isn’t helpless or anything. He phoned me a couple of days after the reception and asked me out. He came to the play, then took me to dinner, and it was fun. We did it again, and soon it was a regular thing.’

  ‘He’s married of course, Dawn, isn’t he?’ There was an edge of disapproval in Prim’s voice. Her sister’s cheeks flushed, quickly. She nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Look, I know this’ll sound awful, but his marriage is a sham. He and his wife are around forty; they’ve been married unhappily for years. She’s unfaithful to him, and she doesn’t hide it. In fact she rubs Willie’s nose in it. She has a relationship with someone she was at school with.’ Prim shot me a raised-eyebrow glance. ‘They were boy and girl school captains at the same time, but afterwards they went their separate ways, until they met up again a couple of years ago.

  ‘The way things were, I didn’t feel uncomfortable about sleeping with Willie.’ She grinned, suddenly with a strange, mischievous look in her eyes. ‘Except…’ She flushed again and glanced at me.

  ‘Yes?’ said Prim.