For a moment she thought Hayley was just going to shrug but after a moment she said, ‘Yeah. Course I do. I’m not a goldfish, whatever Jeff says.’
‘Didn’t think you were. Michie, Morrison, Brady – are those the names?’
This time she did shrug. ‘I just call them the boring old farts. They come up every wee while. They’re pals with Jeff.’
‘Who would you say is the big man, of the three?’
She actually looked interested. ‘There’s a ginger. He’s the one they all listen to. The wee fat one sucks up to him.’ Then she hesitated. ‘Jeff wouldn’t like me saying anything. Look, I’ve to go, or I’ll be late.’
‘Just one more thing. Jeff rubbished what you said about a man who came later. What was he like?’
Hayley looked blank. ‘Don’t remember. Just, he came in late when I was finishing up and I told him service was over, but Jeff told chef to make something for him.’
‘Dark, fair? Tall, short? Young, old?’
‘Didn’t notice. Old, though.’
For the first time, Strang put in a question. ‘Old like me, or old like your grandad?’
‘Old like you, I suppose. If he was young, I’d’ve noticed.’
Murray had to turn a laugh at the unthinking brutality into a cough. ‘Were they pleased to see him?’
‘The ginger was. Got up and clapped him on the back. Look, that’s all I know. I’m going.’ She went to the door and held it open for them.
‘Thanks, Hayley,’ Murray said. ‘Don’t let Jeff put you down – and have another think about the boyfriend, OK?’
Back in the car, Strang said, ‘Respect! Well done, Livvy.’
She glowed, but all she said was, ‘Didn’t tell us much, did it?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ Strang said. ‘The ginger one – we’ll get a look at him tomorrow. The “wee fat one” was a pretty fair description of Bruce Michie too. Can you write all this up today, Livvy?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Sometime, you must tell me about your chequered past,’ he said.
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ she said cheekily. As she drove off she asked, ‘Is it Aitchison’s cottage now?’
‘That’s right. Not sure how much it will tell us when it’s been searched already, but we don’t know much about the man and it can be a revelation of someone’s character.’
But Niall Aitchison was an exception. When they let themselves into the house Murray had looked at before from the outside, it was obvious that the character they were being offered insight into wasn’t Aitchison’s, it was his mother’s.
Apart from papers spread out on a small repro desk in walnut veneer there was no sign of the ‘sorting things out’ that Francesca had claimed he was doing. The sitting room was relentlessly old-fashioned with its reproduction dark wood furniture, beige sculpted carpet and gold velvet curtains. In the hearth there was a fan of paper to cover up the grate and on the mantelpiece beside the brass candlesticks and the oak clock were a few photos of successively a toddler, a schoolboy and a rather blurred one of a youth in a V-necked Shetland pullover with his arm round a middle-aged woman.
They both looked at them with interest.
‘Looks the kind of boy who’d be good to his mother. See how neat his hair is in that one,’ she said with obvious scorn, pointing. ‘Can’t be much more than eighteen or nineteen but he’s middle-aged already.’
‘Not much sign of teenage rebellion,’ Strang agreed. ‘Seems to have been very loyal to Curran too, despite the way he was left to take the flak. Loyalty instilled at an early age, perhaps?’
‘He’s kept the house clean too,’ Murray pointed out as they walked through the hall opening the doors on a couple of rooms with suites of bedroom furniture and beds still made up with candlewick covers and satin quilts. The third bedroom was obviously Niall’s: smaller, and its single bed had a dark-green cover and a tartan rug folded across the foot. It too was neatly impersonal, apart from a bookcase that held a collection of books made up of boyhood favourites and more recent purchases that were mainly non-fiction.
Murray took out The Compleat Angler by Izaac Walton. ‘This one’s about fishing – but look, it’s got a misprint, right in the title.’
‘I think it wasn’t a misprint at the time,’ Strang said, scanning the rest of the shelf. ‘They all seem to be on what they call “country pursuits”. Hmm.’
He walked off and headed through to the back of the cottage. The kitchen was fitted with Formica cabinets and work surfaces and against one wall there was a small table with a plastic tablecloth printed with flowers. On the draining board beside the stainless steel sink an upturned mug propped up a plate.
There was something very pathetic about that, Murray thought; the poor sod doing the washing-up after his breakfast, just like he’d always been taught to do, then going out to meet his death in a bog.
Strang had opened a door that led onto a small lobby by the back door. She heard him say, ‘Ah!’
When she went through, he was holding a fishing rod. There were three or four others in a rack beside a row of hooks with weatherproof kit and a couple of tweed hats with fishing flies stuck into the hatbands. Green waders stood on the floor beside a couple of wicker fishing creels.
‘I thought I might find this through here,’ Strang was saying but Murray was eyeing a neat steel cabinet in one corner.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ she said.
Strang looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Shotgun cabinet. He’s on record as having a licence. A lot of people do round here – switch from fishing to shooting once the weather turns.’
He put the rod back then bent down. ‘I wondered if this would still be here,’ he said and took down a scarf from one of the hooks to cover his hand to pick something up carefully. It was about twenty centimetres long and had a shiny metal handle and a thick, blunt rubber top, a murderous-looking thing.
Murray gaped. ‘Whatever is it?’
Strang was weighing it in his hands. ‘It’s a priest – so-called because after a fish is caught this is used to deliver the last rites.’
‘Is that—’
‘I doubt it. We’ll get it tested, of course, but I doubt if the murderer would have risked coming to put it back here,’ he said, putting it into an evidence bag. ‘But you never know – I wonder if anyone in the fishing party has inexplicably managed to lose his?’
He was very quiet on the drive back. Murray could almost hear him thinking but she couldn’t work out what he’d made of the morning’s work. Still, as far as she could tell he’d been pleased with her interview with Hayley. Maybe he’d start seeing her as an asset rather than a liability if she didn’t screw up again. And, of course, she wasn’t going to.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was half past three when Ailie’s buzzer went. It was Bruce Michie, his voice high with nerves.
‘It’s that fool Sadie. She buzzed me to say that Mrs Gunn has arrived instead of telling you,’ he raged.
‘Usually if people say they’ve an appointment that’s what she does and then she just brings them up,’ Ailie pointed out.
‘I’ve told her to wait for a minute, but the woman must’ve heard my voice! She’ll know I’m in. You’ll have to go down and tell her I can’t see her, that I’m with someone for the rest of the afternoon.’
Ailie held her ground. ‘When am I to say you’re available, then? She’s come all the way here because you said you wanted to see her. She’s not just going to say, “Dearie me, that’s a pity,” and go all the way back again. You better speak to her and get it over with.’
But Bruce stood his ground. ‘You’re my secretary. It’s your job to deal with things like this.’
She looked mutinous, but it wasn’t an argument she was going to win. As she walked down the stairs to reception she was framing her letter of resignation in her head.
The woman who had been sitting in one of the chairs by a small coffee table got up
when Ailie appeared. She marched over to her and, ignoring the receptionist who was trying to introduce them, said, ‘Right. You can take me up to see him now. I’ve no time for mucking about. It’s a long drive back.’
She was a big woman with heavy features, an ill-tempered expression and such aggressive body language that Ailie, not large herself, felt like a child again confronted by the playground bully. As firmly as she could she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gunn, I’m afraid he’s not available this afternoon. I didn’t have your phone number to warn you—’
Morven gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘Don’t be daft. I heard his voice on the phone. He’s up there – if there’s someone with him they’ll have to wait. Not me.’
It hadn’t worked with the bully either back then. To avoid physical contact Ailie stepped aside as Morven swept past her and up the stairs. Ailie followed and when the woman turned at the top and said, ‘Where is he?’ she had no alternative but to indicate Michie’s office.
It was possible that he might fire her, but she knew he wouldn’t actually beat her up and she wasn’t at all as confident about Mrs Gunn. She retreated into the safety of her own office and shut the door, wondering how a man as gentle and peaceable as Niall could have a sister like this. Maybe she’d knocked all the fight out of him at an early age.
She sat at her desk nervously eying the buzzer in case Michie wanted – what, help? Protection? There was no doubt in her mind that it had to do with Niall’s shares in the business – something about his will, perhaps? She did wonder what was going on there in his office.
Did she dare just creep along and listen outside? She could pretend she was on the way to one of the other rooms further down the passage if the door opened suddenly. But Ailie had only just stepped out of her room when she heard it – a scream of what was unmistakably violent rage. She shot back in, closing over the door but leaving a crack she could peer through.
She heard the door of Michie’s office open, and then a torrent of abuse. A moment later Mrs Gunn stormed past, her face a twisted mask of fury. Behind her Michie appeared, looking pale and shaken and Ailie opened the door wider to let him in.
He sank into a chair. ‘Oh my God, what a terrible woman! I really thought she was going to attack me. It wasn’t my fault that Niall had made a will when she’d thought his shares would come to her as his next of kin.’
And you had, too, Ailie thought. ‘So, who’s got them?’ she asked, as if she couldn’t guess.
‘That’s the worst of it.’ Michie was sunk in gloom. ‘You might as well know – he’s left them to Gabrielle, and now there’s nothing I can do to stop someone who’s lost the plot having full control of our future. Mind you, I really wouldn’t like to be her when that woman finds out.’
‘She’ll have David to protect her,’ Ailie said, but she felt uneasy even so. Morven Gunn had looked as if she was capable of doing anything – and the last person who’d owned those shares had ended up dead.
Kelso Strang had spent the afternoon working in his office while Livvy Murray wrote up her reports along at the incident room. He finished up, then went downstairs. He’d suggested they meet in the hotel bar for a drink after work, but it was a dismal place, dark and gloomy with a beery smell, probably emanating from the brown-and-amber patterned carpet that looked as if it had been specifically designed to conceal any spillage. There was no one behind the counter and even after Strang had pressed the buzzer there was no response.
Originally, he’d been dismayed to find Livvy Murray allocated to the investigation but after today he was feeling more optimistic and he’d surprised himself by suggesting a drink tonight on impulse. As JB had pointed out, she was a bright young woman and she was enthusiastic too. What she’d done on her own initiative – with the notable exception of interviewing Gabrielle Ross – had been useful stuff and she’d conducted her interview with Hayley with some skill. With Taylor now out of the way, this might be a good chance to persuade her to renounce the temptation to go for ‘Ta-dah!’ moments, with their attendant risks.
Still no barman appeared. He pressed the buzzer again irritably. The hotel really was depressing, which did nothing for morale.
This was also, if he was honest, the most isolated he had felt on an SRCS case. JB was getting twitchy; she seemed to be expecting the sort of progress that just couldn’t be made immediately. She was pushing him to get things wrapped up in the next couple of days, so he could hand over the legwork to the local force and mastermind the rest from a computer in his Edinburgh office – a cheap solution, but he’d no confidence that it would work. In previous investigations he’d worked closely with the people on the ground, but DI Hay’s hostility had made that impossible. Any handover would be fraught and good cooperation afterwards was unlikely.
In Skye, JB had been around too. Now he was in sole charge, they were under the cosh and he’d have to rely on Murray to an uncomfortable degree. He’d have to spell out to her what needed to be done and stress the importance of doing what she was told.
When she came in she cast a disparaging look around the bar. She drew her hand across one of the tables as she passed, looked at it and pulled a face. ‘Sticky. They obviously don’t even wipe up.’
‘They probably don’t wash the glasses properly either. Anyway, it’s too nice an evening to spend inside. I heard someone saying something about a good place down on the beach. Let’s go.’
They found a low, white-painted building wrapped around with a veranda and they were able to sit with their drinks looking north-west over the tranquil sea, its shot-silk surface hardly rippling as lazy waves rolled in. It was still broad daylight and a glorious evening, the sky hazy gold with pink streaks, with only a few blue-purple clouds low on the horizon.
‘I got kind of scunnered with scenery when I was in Skye,’ Murray said, ‘but this is awesome. Is the sky bigger here, or something? You never see anything like this in Edinburgh.’
‘It’s just that there’s nothing to see between us and – well, Iceland, I suppose it would be. Better make the most of it, anyway. See those clouds there – that’s a change in the weather coming.’
‘I won’t mind much. It’s fine here by the sea but when you’re in beside the bogs with the insects and everything it’s not. Look at poor Kevin.’
‘Don’t forget the Jungle Formula next time, Livvy. Now – tomorrow. I’ve decided to go to Aberdeen by myself.’ He saw the disappointment on her face and went on hastily, ‘We can’t spare the time to have both of us tied up. Believe me, you’ll be busy enough while I’m away.
‘The lads in Aberdeen have done a good job with the preliminaries so I’m set up for the interviews with Hayley’s boring old farts.’
Murray, looking a little happier, laughed. ‘Hope she dumps the boyfriend.’
Strang gave her a quizzical look. ‘That’s a good career move, is it?’
She wasn’t to be drawn. ‘Definitely,’ she said primly. ‘Anyway, what do they reckon to Ginger?’
‘Seems to be the Big Man, like Hayley said. Definitely something to probe there. And I’d an email from Ailie Johnston just before I came out with some interesting stuff. It all seems to relate to Niall Aitchison’s shares in Curran Services. Pat Curran arranged it so that Gabrielle was the majority shareholder, though if Aitchison teamed up with Michie they could outvote her.’
‘Must have trusted him.’
Strang thought about that for a moment. ‘Or distrusted her – or maybe just felt she would need advice and support? But in any case, if Michie got his hands on those shares he could outvote Gabrielle and take over the company and Ailie claims that at first he and his pals thought that Morven Gunn would inherit as next of kin.’
Murray turned to look at him. ‘But she didn’t?’
‘No, and judging by his attempts to avoid meeting her, Michie only found out later, according to Ailie. Mrs Gunn barged her way in, then left in a furious temper.’
‘So, who did he leave them to, then?’
> ‘Gabrielle, it seems – the shares, anyway. Don’t know about the property.’
‘If Fran’s not in the will it’ll be a right punch in the mouth, especially after her carry-on about their relationship. And if it all goes to Gabrielle – well, she’ll be fit to murder her!’
Strang winced. ‘Don’t even joke about that! We’re looking for confirmation from the lawyers, but it does seem more likely, you’d have to say. Of course, it would leave Gabrielle with full control of the firm, which wouldn’t exactly please Michie.
‘Anyway, it gives me an angle for the interviews tomorrow.’
Murray nodded eagerly. ‘If the other guy who arrived later was Niall, that could have been what the fishing weekend was all about – some kind of business deal.’
‘Or of course it could just have been a fishing weekend and some other guy just happened to arrive late. Open mind, remember, Livvy?’
‘Oh, sure,’ she said meekly, if not quite convincingly.
‘I’ll be triangulating the evidence, focusing on inconsistencies. Ailie Johnston thinks Michie’s been phoning round so I’ll be looking out for that – it’s very difficult to avoid using the same words when a story’s been agreed beforehand. After I get back I want to see Gabrielle, if at all possible, or her husband at least – he should be back from the rig later on. I want another look at the drainage works too.
‘But tomorrow morning I want you to try for an interview with Morven Gunn again. Find out where she was that Saturday afternoon.’
‘Do I get danger money?’
‘Use your charm and you won’t need it. Then I’d like you to have a talk to Fergus Mowat at the farm. You’ll have seen his formal statement and it didn’t offer us anything so I’m not looking for an interview, just a chat, all right? I want you to focus on his movements around the farm during the twenty-four hours when the body could have been placed in the cottage. Did he see anything, hear anything out of the ordinary?
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