Blood Torment

by T F Muir

  Copestake stood helpless, face drained of blood, shocked into silence by the turn of events. ‘You should be careful how you answer this,’ Gilchrist said to him. ‘But I’ll ask you one more time. Why are you here?’

  Copestake looked at Novo, held her gaze for a long moment, then lowered his head and walked from the room before her eyes could turn him to stone.

  Gilchrist followed him into the hall, up the stairs to the upper floor where he opened a door and entered what appeared to be a home office. The room had a warm feel to it, like the leftover heat from a party. A table – complete with two opened laptops, phone set, printer and an assortment of office bric-a-brac – faced a wall covered in framed photographs of properties; presumably the late Rutherford’s pictorial portfolio. A two-seater sofa backed against the opposite wall, fronted by a coffee table of engraved wood.

  Copestake sat on the sofa. ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ he said.

  Gilchrist slipped his mobile from his pocket, switched it to video mode, and placed it screen-up on the table. Not the best sound recorder, but it would do.

  ‘I’m going to record this. Okay?’

  Copestake’s gaze shimmied to the phone. ‘Sure. Go ahead.’

  Gilchrist gave a brief introduction for the record, then stood back and waited.

  Copestake wrung his hands. ‘I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake and rued the day I ever set eyes on the Davis family.’ He looked up at Gilchrist. ‘I can’t represent Rachel. I can’t represent any of the family any more. I won’t allow myself to be dragged any deeper into this . . . this . . . ’

  ‘Illegal mess?’ Gilchrist offered.

  Copestake grimaced, shook his head. ‘No. No. Not illegal. I would never knowingly be involved in anything illegal.’ He dry-washed his hands. ‘Never.’

  ‘But you suspected something wasn’t right,’ Gilchrist nudged.

  ‘Yes, I did, yes.’ Copestake seemed relieved. ‘But I couldn’t be sure. The whole thing with Rachel . . . ’ Another shake of his head. ‘It’s just . . . it’s . . . it’s difficult.’

  Gilchrist thought he saw the problem – well, maybe just one of them. ‘Are you in love with her?’ he asked.

  ‘God,’ Copestake said, as if surprised. ‘I’m head over heels for her. Who wouldn’t?’

  Gilchrist nodded in fake agreement. ‘But you didn’t drag me upstairs to tell me all about your wedding plans.’

  ‘No. No. You’re right. Yes.’

  ‘Tell me about Tangier,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Tangier?’ Copestake ran his tongue over his lips. ‘I was there.’

  ‘I know you were.’

  ‘I mean, not with Rachel. Not then. Later.’

  ‘After her husband died?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and stared at the floor, then out through the window, as if searching the far distance. Whatever he focused on seemed to help, for he steepled his fingers to his chin, looked up at Gilchrist, resolution settling behind his eyes – the moment of truth, the clearing of the lies, the legal mind back in control. ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.

  ‘About?’

  ‘About Rachel,’ Copestake said. ‘And her . . . her history.’

  Gilchrist felt as if he was swimming around in the dark. But

  Copestake sounded as if he were probing. Why? So he could manipulate his response; feed Gilchrist only as much as he deemed safe? So Gilchrist decided to proceed with caution.

  ‘I’d be lying if I said we know it all,’ he ventured. ‘Not yet, anyway. But experience tells me it will only be a matter of time until we do.’

  Copestake nodded, as if at Gilchrist’s sage advice, then said, ‘I’d always had my suspicions. But that’s all they were. You understand? Only suspicions.’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Of Rachel’s involvement in her husband’s death.’

  Gilchrist narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’

  ‘The way she behaved. It wasn’t normal. She was . . . how do I say it . . .? Relieved. I would even go so far as to say she was happy that he’d died.’

  ‘You need to do better than that,’ Gilchrist told him.

  Copestake nodded. ‘They’d been arguing. Rachel was upset. She’d been crying most of the afternoon. That’s when she first came on to me.’

  ‘As in – tried to pick you up?’ Gilchrist asked, just to be sure.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’d had a few drinks the night before. In the bar. Just the two of us. Dimitri had gone to his room early. Rachel told me she wanted to leave him, and wished he would die.’

  ‘Who were you there with?’

  ‘Someone I’d been dating for a few months. She’d gone to our room, too. It was late. After midnight. Closer to one, I think.’

  Gilchrist didn’t press for a name. That could come later. ‘You’re not married?’

  Copestake shook his head. ‘Separated. Two kids.’

  ‘So you were up for it, then? Having an affair with a married woman.’

  ‘I was besotted with her. I still am. But . . . ’

  After a couple of beats, Gilchrist said, ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  Copestake wrung his hands again. ‘I think I saw her do something to Dimitri’s drink.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the beach.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘In my hotel room. I was watching her.’

  ‘Good eyesight.’

  ‘Through binoculars.’

  Well, there he had it. Copestake a Peeping Tom. ‘This is the day after you had a few drinks with her in the bar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone what you’d seen?’

  Copestake’s lips pursed white. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Copestake tried to return Gilchrist’s stare with a determined look of his own, but his resolve failed, and he lowered his head. ‘I couldn’t be sure. I had my doubts. I started questioning myself until I didn’t know whether I’d really seen it, or just made it up.’

  Gilchrist suspected that it wasn’t doubts Copestake had back then, but his eye on the prize. With Dimitri out of the way, all he had to do was keep quiet and he could collect the prize any time – a month later, to be exact, on a trip to Spain.

  ‘Are you prepared to testify to that?’ Gilchrist asked.

  Copestake pressed his lips tight, shook his head. ‘I couldn’t.

  I’m just not sure.’

  ‘And what about Katie?’ Gilchrist said, keen to keep the ball rolling. ‘Did Rachel ever confess to you that Katie was her daughter and not Andrea’s?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not once.’

  ‘So you knew nothing about her blackmailing Rutherford to kidnap Katie?’ he asked, just throwing the question out there, even though he needed evidence to confirm that.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is – why did Rachel have Katie kidnapped at all?’

  Copestake rose to his feet, as if to reinstate authority in the matter. ‘Because Andrea’s bipolar and her condition is worsening. She’s now a danger to herself. She self-harms. Simply put, Rachel was worried for Katie’s welfare.’

  ‘And in your opinion, do you think Katie’s life was in danger?’

  ‘I’ve been Dougal Davis’s solicitor and friend for over fifteen years now. I’ve seen him at his worst, and his best.’ He squeezed his hands. ‘Regrettably, most of what the press say about him is true, and the damage he’s done to his family is unforgiveable. But I tell you this, I wouldn’t wish his daughters on anyone.’

  ‘I thought you were besotted with Rachel.’

  ‘I am, I mean . . . I was.’ He stared hard at Gilchrist. ‘But she suffers from bouts of depression. Not as bad as Andrea,’ he rushed, as if that explained all. ‘When Rachel’s in the right mood I’ve never met anyone like her. But catch her on the other side, and the Devil himself would run.’ He turned and stared out the window, but even f
rom the upper level the view was restricted by the leylandii. ‘I was going to tell her this weekend that it was over.’

  The doorbell ringing from downstairs brought Copestake back with a jerk.

  The police support vehicle had arrived.

  Copestake said, ‘I’ve never spent any time with Sandy Rutherford, so I don’t know the man. But despite Dougal Davis’s reputation, I’ve found him to be an excellent judge of character. He never took to Sandy. Called him a thieving gypsy.’

  Gilchrist nodded to the laptops. ‘Are these Rutherford’s?’

  Copestake shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You don’t recognise them as Rachel’s, then?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll confiscate these,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Rachel must know the password.’

  ‘What do you hope to find?’

  It was a direct enough question, but the answer seemed more obscure. ‘Something that might tell me how she blackmailed Rutherford into kidnapping Katie for her.’

  Copestake gave a tight-lipped grimace.

  Gilchrist eyed both laptops, then switched off his mobile.

  CHAPTER 38

  Despite Gilchrist having his hopes raised, Rutherford’s laptops turned up nothing incriminating. What folders and files they managed to access contained nothing more than property surveys, maintenance reports, construction quotes, subcontractor correspondence – plumbers, electricians, brickies, roofers. He instructed the IT Section to dig deeper.

  Tom Paton, head of IT, suggested the laptops had been used only for Internet access, or for drafting correspondence and reports for copying on to memory sticks. But Gilchrist’s memory of Novo not answering the door, the latent warmth of the upstairs home office, told him she’d been taking care of something important.

  ‘I suspect Novo’s deleted them,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘We’re scouring the drives for shadow copies, sir. If any files have been deleted, we’ll recover them.’

  A search of Novo’s personal effects turned up her memory stick, which he handed over to the IT team.

  ‘I presume it’s password-protected,’ Paton said.

  ‘It is,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But she’s saying she can’t remember what it is.’

  ‘Not to worry, sir. It’ll just take us a bit longer.’

  The following morning, Gilchrist received a call from Paton. ‘Still working on it, sir, but we’ve found a number of shadow files that were deleted yesterday. Not sure if they would be of any interest to you, but I can email them to you.’

  ‘As soon as.’

  ‘Doing that right now, sir.’

  By the time Gilchrist accessed his email account, three messages had come in from Paton, each with an attachment. He opened the first, which contained nothing but images of property interiors, many of the same rooms shot from different angles. Gleaming kitchens, granite worktops, tiled flooring, man-sized fridge-freezers, cabinets of every material and shade that hid integrated dishwashers, tumble driers, fridges and freezers, all competed with bathrooms big enough to hold parties in – fully tiled shower cubicles, glass-walled wet rooms, claw-feet baths, roman blinds. On and on the images went, until Gilchrist wondered what he was missing.

  He opened the next emailed attachment, and grunted a curse when he saw it contained similar images. He tried the next – more of the same. Image after image flickered past: each house, room by room, then another, and another, repeating in what seemed like an endless stream. Why Novo had interest in deleting these from Rutherford’s laptops was beyond him.

  He glanced at the time, his stomach reminding him that he’d skipped breakfast. He stretched his arms, rolled his head, all of a sudden exhausted by the meaningless waste of criminality. Why had Novo attacked Jessie? What had she hoped to achieve? His and Jessie’s appearance at the Blackford property had shocked her to the core. Had that been the nudge that finally tipped her over the edge? But for someone who, until her attack on Jessie, had shown such controlled restraint, it almost seemed out of character.

  Copestake had said that Andrea was bipolar, but Novo suffered from bouts of depression. What if they were both bipolar? Was that what they’d witnessed? Or had Copestake lied to save his own hide? Or was there some other reason? Had he really intended to break off his relationship with Novo that weekend? Was he only an innocent party whose professional expertise had inadvertently pulled him into the heart of a dysfunctional family?

  Gilchrist’s mind was crackling with ideas – too many, too fast, and all too confusing, particularly on an empty stomach. The thought of a creamy pint had him forwarding Paton’s emails to Jackie, with a message asking her to find out why Novo might be interested in Rutherford’s properties.

  Then he called Jessie. ‘Thirsty?’ he asked her.

  ‘Can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised to take Robert out for lunch.’

  The mention of Jessie’s son jerked Gilchrist’s mind back to Novo’s attack. Jessie could so easily have been killed. ‘I should’ve been there,’ he said to her. ‘In the kitchen. When Novo went for you.’

  ‘I was ready for her. I caught the look in her eyes as she pushed past you.’

  ‘I should never have let her leave the room like that.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us had a choice.’

  ‘You handled it well,’ he said.

  ‘Does that mean I can ask for a pay rise?’

  ‘Don’t push it, or next time I won’t help you.’

  She chuckled, a throaty rasp that somehow reminded him of how loving a mother she was to her son. ‘Go and take Robert for lunch,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  No sooner had he ended the call than his mobile rang again – ID Tosh.

  ‘What the fuck’re you at, Gilchrist? You send me a text asking me to call—’

  ‘I sent you a text telling you to call.’

  A moment’s silence, then, ‘Oh, I get it. Trying to throw your weight about, you skinny runt—’

  ‘You need to watch that tongue of yours, Tosh—’

  ‘I’m in town. And you and me need to talk. Where do you want to—’

  ‘The Central Bar. Five minutes.’

  Gilchrist killed the call, disconnected his laptop, and spent the next ten minutes trying to settle his nerves – Tosh had that effect on him – before striding from his office.

  The Central was buzzing with a weekend rush.

  Tosh was seated in a corner booth with a short tumbler in front of him, which glowed with a golden liquid as inviting as whisky. Without a word, Gilchrist took the seat opposite and opened his laptop.

  ‘Going to show me some porn?’ Tosh said, and took a sip from his glass.

  ‘You wish.’ Gilchrist turned his laptop so that the screen faced Tosh. Tosh frowned, flickered a grimace at Gilchrist as the image on the screen danced and shuddered in silence, before settling into the silhouette of Grange Mansion. Then it adjusted in focus until two people filled the screen – Tosh and Gilchrist; Tosh facing the camera at an angle, Gilchrist with his back to it.

  A woman’s voice cut in, clear and sharp, the volume turned up loud enough for a group of students seated at the nearby table to look up in surprise . . .

  Touch me once more, you smarmy bastard, and I’ll fucking have you . . .

  A female student at the next table pressed her hand to her mouth, while her friend looked on in puzzled amusement. Others, too, turned in the direction of the vocal argument, as if anticipating a fight breaking out.

  Gilchrist was aware of a general silencing in the bar.

  Tosh glanced at him, then back at the laptop. ‘What the fuck . . .?’

  You know your problem, Gilchrist? You fancy yourself. You think shit doesn’t stick to your shoes. But you’re a loose cannon. You’re reckless. If it wasn’t for you, Stan the man would still be around . . .

  ‘It’s coming to the good bit,’ Gilchrist told him.

  Fuck you, Gilchrist. I’m your worst fucking n
ightmare. You’d better believe it. I’ll get you, I fucking promise. But you won’t know when it’s coming, or where. Just that it will be fucking coming. And it’ll be lights out. Period . . .

  The woman’s voice died.

  Silence hit the bar like a thunderclap. Then someone laughed, a glass chinked, a stool scraped the floor, and the general hubbub eased up in volume to full flow again.

  ‘She’s a professional lip reader,’ Gilchrist explained. ‘And threatening a senior officer with deadly intent is a sackable offence.’

  Tosh’s fingers crushed his tumbler with a grip that looked strong enough to shatter the glass. His lips pressed white, and his puffy eyes shrank to beads that danced with madness, as if trying to work out where exactly on Gilchrist’s face he should smash the tumbler.

  ‘Don’t make matters any worse, Tosh. You can still keep your job and your pension. Just not in Fife Constabulary.’ Gilchrist retrieved his laptop, turned it to him, and closed it. ‘I’ve made two copies and filed them in a safe place.’ He jerked a half-smile across the table. ‘I haven’t shown this to anyone yet.’ Then he glared into Tosh’s fuming gaze. ‘But if you’re still sitting here by the time I come back with my pint, I will.’

  Gilchrist pushed away from the table and walked to the far end of the bar.

  He ordered fish and chips and a pint of Deuchars. From the corner of his eye he saw Tosh stomp on to Market Street, and felt a sudden release of nervous energy so strong that his legs began to shake. He’d been concerned about how Tosh might react – blow a gasket, start a fight; but even though his ploy appeared to have worked, something warned him that he had not seen the last of the lunatic. Rather than have Tosh fired from the Constabulary – his earlier thoughts – he came to see that his hold could be much stronger if he kept the CD as a perpetual threat over the man.