Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  ‘It’s Morven.’ She sniffed.

  Her parents exchanged glances. ‘Aye, I thought it might be,’ Fergus said.

  ‘I honestly think she’s going mental. She was just really, really weird today.’

  ‘Losing her temper?’ Rhona suggested.

  ‘Like that would be weird! That’s just standard – happens all the time so it doesn’t faze me. No, she wasn’t like she usually is. If I was a wee bit late, like I was this morning, I’d get a mega bawling-out but today it was like she just hadn’t noticed. So that was OK, sort of, but then it got really strange. She was going around just as if she wasn’t really there, like she was a zombie. Even when a policewoman came in to talk to her she didn’t flip, like she did the last time.’

  ‘The last time?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘Oh – oh yes.’ Kirstie took refuge in a bout of nose-blowing. ‘It was just a policeman came in wanting to ask questions and she told him to get lost. That was all.’

  Rhona, nobody’s fool, said, ‘Funny you never mentioned it.’

  ‘I just forgot. It was no big deal. Anyway, this time she went off with her, to her flat, I guess, and then just came back and went on the same way. But I could see she was sort of holding herself in and it was bit scary, so I tried to do everything really well – not doing any of the things to wind her up, like talking to a customer when she was wanting me to clear a table.

  ‘Then she suddenly decided she was going to shut up early. It seemed – well, it was like she couldn’t stand it much longer. She started muttering at the customers, trying to hurry them up – she often does, a bit, but not out loud like this. Folk were gulping their tea just to get out. So, then she started clearing everything like a whirlwind – I’ve never seen her move so fast. And I was hurrying too, and I dropped a plate on the floor. It didn’t even break but she just went absolutely crazy, screaming at me, and then she took me by the shoulders and shook me. My neck still hurts. So, then I just grabbed my coat and left.’

  ‘And you’re not going back,’ Rhona said firmly. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Fergus said. ‘That woman assaults my daughter, and you say, “That’s it?” I’m going to phone the police. She’s a public danger! Remember what the constable was saying this morning.’

  Kirstie looked up. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oh, just a discussion,’ Rhona said. ‘Fergie, it wasn’t Livvy who said anything about Morven, it was us, and I feel bad about that. She’s a woman under a lot of strain and you know I told you what they were saying in the village about Niall having left everything to Gabrielle Ross. In the face of all that, no wonder she’s in a state. Kirstie wasn’t really hurt, just scared, isn’t that right, Kirstie?’

  With a certain reluctance, Kirstie agreed, and Fergus compromised. ‘I’m going to make a point of going along to the incident room to have a chat with Livvy tomorrow, though. She ought to know.’

  When Kirstie Mowat had gone, in floods of tears, Morven locked the door and put up the CLOSED sign. Then, as the red tide of irrational rage ebbed, she slumped exhausted against the wall. She was stupid to have lost it like that, when she’d tried so hard all day not to give way to the anger boiling inside. Even when the policewoman came asking her daft questions she’d managed not to show how stressed she was, to seem quite cool and relaxed. If it hadn’t been for that silly, hashy girl – she could feel the irritation mounting again.

  She fought it down. Now, above all, she needed to remain perfectly calm. She sat down on one of the cafe chairs, shut her eyes, drew deep, soothing breaths. Then she forced herself to work methodically through the rest of the clearing-up; she didn’t even react when two customers, hopeful of tea and ignoring the sign, rattled the handle and tapped on the door. She just very firmly ignored them.

  At quarter to five Morven left, locked up and went across to her flat to fetch her car. She drove, deliberately slowly, out of the village along the road past the Mowats’ farm. When she reached Gabrielle Ross’s house she parked and got out. The car outside told her she was in. It was the only car, which told her that she was alone.

  She rang the bell. There was no immediate reply; she rang again. When Gabrielle came to the door, she hardly recognised her at first in this pale, gaunt, strained-looking woman – Gabrielle, who had always been so offensively glossy and unassailable. She looked very, very tired too – worn out. Perhaps now, at last, she was suffering for her sins and Morven felt a surge of unholy joy.

  ‘Gabrielle, we need to talk,’ she said, quietly and confidently.

  Gabrielle had opened the door little more than a crack. She started closing it as she said, ‘You and I have nothing to say to each other, Morven.’

  Morven stuck her foot in the opening. ‘Oh, I think we do,’ she said, and pushed.

  The other woman made only token resistance and Morven stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. ‘Let’s sit down and be civilised.’ She pointed to the sitting room and Gabrielle obediently went in and collapsed onto a chair, shaking her head as if to wake herself up.

  She was looking scared. Good! It made Morven feel confident, powerful. She sat down herself opposite, in a small chair with wooden arms. ‘What we have to talk about is what you owe me for the death of my son.’

  It was as if she had touched a nerve. Gabrielle suddenly sat up straighter. ‘I owe you nothing,’ she said with something of her old arrogance. ‘If you’ve come here to try to blackmail me, you’re wasting your time. I’ve said I’m sorry a dozen times about what happened to Gary—’

  ‘Don’t! Don’t dare mention his name with your filthy lips, you with your black, evil heart!’ Morven hissed at her.

  Her loss of control seemed to give Gabrielle energy. She stood up. ‘I said we had nothing to talk about, and we don’t. I know what you did before – that disgusting message you left on my doorstep. I’m not having you sit in my own house and abuse me. I want you to leave, now.’

  Morven subsided, clenching her fists in frustration. God, what a fool she was! She had vowed to have a civilised discussion about natural justice and she’d failed. Could she master herself long enough to retrieve the situation? The words almost stuck in her throat but she managed, ‘Sorry. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just – well, I suppose I’m not really rational when it comes to my loss.’

  Gabrielle was hesitating. Then she sat down again and said, a little awkwardly, ‘I can understand that. All right, what is all this about?’

  Oh, as if she didn’t know! And she was on her guard now. Morven said, watching her carefully, ‘It’s about Niall’s will.’

  ‘What – what about it?’

  She’d been right; she could read it in Gabrielle’s face. The bastard had left it all to her. To them that hath, shall be given – it said that in the Bible, didn’t it? And Gabrielle had everything before and had more now.

  ‘You must see that it’s just not right. The house, my mother’s house, the house we grew up in – he should have left it to me, not you. And the shares in the company – that would have been at least some restitution for what your father did—’

  It was a bad mistake. ‘What my father did? What my father did was to try to bring employment and prosperity to this godforsaken little place and it wasn’t his fault that government policy changed. No one made you invest in his business and if you lost your house through greed, that wasn’t his fault either. And can I remind you that what your son was doing when he had his accident,’ she laid heavy stress on the word, ‘was trying to steal property that didn’t belong to him.’

  And from them that hath not, shall be taken away even that which they had. That was in the Bible too. Morven felt as if something had burst in her head, like a volcano erupting. She could hear her own breath becoming ragged as Gabrielle went on, ‘Curran Services is my father’s memorial and if you think I’m going to give you a chance to destroy it, you can think again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to go on f
ighting, but by God, I am now! Thank you for that, at least. And that’s it, Morven. I’ll show you out.’

  Calmness, control: Morven had known she needed them because at heart she was afraid of what she might otherwise do. And they had vanished now. She sprang up, making some incoherent sound of fury, and as she launched herself on Gabrielle she heard the other woman’s terrified scream as they fell to the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Feeling much the same emotions as he had experienced when he had been summoned to the headmaster to account for some misdemeanour at school, DCI Kelso Strang tapped on the door of DCS Jane Borthwick’s office.

  She looked up from the file, which was the only thing on her otherwise pristine desk. He never understood how anyone managed that; it felt like a form of intimidation, and he wouldn’t put it past JB to know that and do it on purpose.

  ‘Ah, Kelso. Good,’ she said. ‘No problem getting here, then?’

  ‘No ma’am, none.’ He sat down opposite her.

  ‘Brief me on this. I’ve got the latest reports – you’ve seen them?’

  He nodded. He’d accessed them on the way down and Murray had performed quite an effective bricks-without-straw job.

  ‘Read between the lines for me on the direction of the investigation. We can’t afford to give the media any more ammunition right at the moment – we’ve got to get this one right.’

  She was, he noticed, looking uncharacteristically stressed. The line between her brows looked deeper than it had been when last he saw her. No wonder, given the long-running problems with Police Scotland, but it wasn’t reassuring. She’d given him solid backup on the last murder case but this time he sensed that he was in a situation where he might become the sacrifice on the altar of public opinion, if it proved necessary.

  ‘It’s a complex case,’ he began.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Defensive, Kelso?’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s true. As you’ll have seen, we’re on pretty firm ground with what looks like a convincing time frame for the murder and we have solid proof of the time slot within which Aitchison’s body could have been placed in the shed. But I’ll be honest – we have no link between the two. We can speculate on the rationale for moving it, but I can’t say any of the theories I’ve come up with are convincing.

  ‘You know the Pat Curran background. Plenty of people had a motive to hate Aitchison because of that connection but it was all a long time ago – why now? He had very few social interactions with the village in the recent past and it’s made sense to me to focus on the ones he had.’

  Strang glanced at her to see how this was going down but her expression gave nothing away. He went on, ‘I’ve established four definite areas: his work at Curran Services; his social life in Forsich, which seems to be mainly with the Sinclair family; his relationship with Gabrielle Ross – and then there’s his sister.’

  Borthwick picked up his tone. ‘The sister?’

  ‘Plenty of motive there, as you’ll have seen. She’s a difficult character, very volatile. Livvy Murray thinks she’s right on the edge.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that. Doing all right, isn’t she, Kelso?’

  That was a little dig at him; Murray had been something of a protégée of Borthwick’s. ‘Shaping up,’ he said. ‘The situation at Curran Services – since you asked me to read between the lines, I’d put good money on a takeover bid being cooked up there. As far as I can make out, Aitchison seems to have been against it and may have gone to the fishing hotel to make his point. Chris Brady’s the driving force and he’s a hard man. Wouldn’t put anything past him, if it came right down to it.’

  She looked at him keenly. ‘You’re not putting all your money on him, though, are you?’

  ‘Not yet, anyway – don’t know why. There’s something niggling at me.’

  ‘Just male intuition?’ she said blandly.

  He grinned. ‘Something like that. Gabrielle Ross, now. She’s key, but I haven’t managed to speak to her yet. There are strong implications that she’s either on the verge of a breakdown or having one already, and her sister thinks she could have Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Alzheimer’s? At that age?’

  ‘Granny had early onset, apparently. Francesca didn’t seem too bothered, unless she gets it too.’

  ‘Very sisterly!’

  ‘Yes. Their father played favourites and set them against each other.’ Then he paused. ‘It sounds – well, fanciful to say this, but while Pat Curran’s dead, he’s not quite dead enough. He seems to have had an extraordinarily poisonous effect on the relationships in that place and it’s still going on. Old sins cast a long shadow, as they say.’

  She grimaced. ‘Indeed they do. All right, you seem to be covering the bases.’

  That sounded as if she approved. He was just allowing himself to relax when she went on, ‘What I’m not happy about is your use of local resources.’

  They were always being nagged to watch the budget and he was moved to protest. ‘But I’ve hardly used them at all! Uniforms, of course, for the legwork, PS Lothian took me round for a bit at first, but that’s it. Latterly it’s only been Livvy Murray and me.’ He was tempted to add, ‘Since you didn’t replace Kevin Taylor,’ but was wise enough to resist.

  ‘That’s the point. The DI in Wick – what’s his name, Hay. He seems to be making waves about that. You know we have to rely on local goodwill for this kind of operation to succeed, Kelso. You can’t be a one-man band.’

  Strang felt a burning sense of injustice. ‘I saw DI Hay the first morning I was in Forsich. He told me in no uncertain terms that he was far too busy to take any part in my investigation – apparently Thurso is a positive hotbed of crime, contrary to what one might imagine. He obstructed any further use of Lothian. When I asked if I could draw on him for manpower he said he knew I had the authority, but he would give priority to his own patch.’ Would it sound too much like clyping if he added, ‘whatever the high heid yins said’? What the hell. He said it anyway.

  Borthwick assimilated that. ‘Ah, I see. Well, you’re in charge. It’s up to you how you handle his complaints to the media, but it might be as well to neutralise the situation by drawing him in. He’s setting you up to take the flak for anything that might go wrong. We’re very exposed.’

  At least she’d said ‘we’, not ‘you’. Strang said hollowly, ‘I can see that. Any suggestions, boss?’

  The frown between her brows grew deeper. Then she said, ‘We’ve got to work out this press statement. I think, if I were you, I’d invite him along for that. Make a big thing out of how much you have appreciated the support you’ve had from the local force – talk about all the hours of door-knocking, that sort of thing. Stress how helpful the background information has been—No, Kelso,’ as he opened his mouth to speak, ‘surely there’s been something, and anyway, can I remind you yet again that press statements aren’t delivered under oath? You need to make sure his fingerprints are all over this.’

  She saw the distaste on Strang’s face and shook her head. ‘Oh dear. You really are a purist. Should DI Hay be allowed to get away with telling blatant lies? Oh, of course you could simply call him out on it but in the first place they wouldn’t believe you and in the second place it would descend into a slanging match that wouldn’t do Police Scotland any good.’

  Strang felt trapped. Of course she was right, but it was underhand, and he didn’t like it. And the worst thing was, he knew that however uncomfortable he might feel, he’d end up doing it anyway.

  She was going on, ‘Now, this statement. How do we present what we have so far?’

  Present – she meant ‘spin’, he thought in silent disapproval. But then, hadn’t he done exactly the same when he asked Murray to tart up her reports to Borthwick? His principles were more flexible than he would have liked to think they were.

  ‘We’ve got a lot of good forensic stuff,’ he said. ‘We could major on that to begin with.’

  Kelso Strang left Borthwick’s office
feeling somewhat mauled but reassured that she was onside – so far, at least. He went back downstairs to his own basement office and checked that nothing new had come in, then sat for a moment, thinking.

  One remark of JB’s had particularly stung – the remark about the one-man band. Unfair criticism is hard to take, sure, but in fact fair criticism hits much harder. He could see how possessive he had become about his cases. It wasn’t surprising; with the vacuum at the centre of his life that Alexa had left, the job had expanded to fill it. It constantly occupied his mind.

  There wasn’t much else. He had his family, of course – and he must phone Finella today. Friends had been loyal, but their well-meant invitations always left him feeling more lonely, not less. Being absorbed in a case quietened the insistent pain of loss.

  Looking at it objectively, he could see control-freak tendencies coming out. It was partly because for one reason or another he felt such support as he had was unreliable: the result of Livvy Murray using her initiative in Skye made him shudder every time he thought of it. This time he’d been nervously directing her every move, which meant that he was getting no fresh input. JB had been closely involved in the last murder investigation and there had been good backup on the ground too but this time he was indeed trying to do the whole thing himself – and God help him if it all went pear-shaped.

  As JB had pointed out, this time Livvy was doing all right – more than that, she’d been doing very well. Maybe he needed to tell her a bit less and listen to her a bit more. He still wasn’t happy that he’d been called away; it was putting a lot on her shoulders and he could only hope that there were no new developments before he got back tomorrow morning.

  There wasn’t anything he could do about that, so he might as well call Finella now. Of course, at this time his niece wouldn’t be at nursery, so he’d probably have to schlep over to Morningside.

  To his surprise Fin didn’t welcome that suggestion. Yes, Betsy was at home, but she could dump her on a friend for a bit. ‘If she’s around, her Unkie won’t get a moment’s peace,’ she said but for some reason it rang false.