The DCI David Fyfe Mysteries

by William Paul

  The talk stopped and most heads turned as he entered. Jill and Number Five sat on either side of him facing outwards like book-ends or bodyguards. McIsaac pushed past him and made a general introduction. The fat man behind the bar declared himself the owner and offered to shake hands from a ridiculous distance. He waved an arm at the room indicating estate workers and guests and a little covey of drafted-in police in blue overalls gathered round a table crowded with pint glasses of orange squash. At another table were four young men in wet suits and bare feet. McIsaac said he would go and announce Fyfe’s arrival to Moya McBain.

  ‘Can I get you a drink Chief Inspector?’ Joe Hallett asked.

  ‘Why not,’ Fyfe said. ‘It was a dusty journey up here. I need something to clear my throat. I’ll take a pint of lager.’

  Hallett started to pour it. ‘We would never have thought it of our Robert. He was always a bit strange. I’ll give you that. But I never thought he had the killing of somebody in him.’

  ‘He did it, did he?’

  ‘Looks that way. Broke down and confessed the moment DI McBain skewered him with her beautiful baby blues. Crime of passion, it was. Apparently there had been secret meetings in the woods. Our Robert? Who would have thought it of him?’

  ‘Is that him?’

  Fyfe nodded at the row of half a dozen framed photographs on the canopy above the bar. They were all of groups of grinning men holding big fish. Underneath each was a caption giving the names. Robert M. Ross appeared in four of them. Hallett must have seen them a million times before but he leaned forward and craned his neck back awkwardly to confirm their existence.

  ‘That’s him. Guy with the woolly hat. The best likeness is the end photograph there with General Aitchison and the twenty-six pounder.’

  Fyfe went up on his tiptoes and looked more closely. His mind started ticking over, uncovering a memory that had been neatly filed away. It wasn’t hard to find. The twinge of regret he had felt on hearing the case was solved vanished. He tried not to look too smug as he lifted the pint glass of lager and drank half of it straight away. Hallett was twitching behind the bar, just about managing to hide the shock he must have felt at the supposed discovery of a murderer among his workers.

  ‘Nice dogs,’ Hallett said. ‘Do they go everywhere with you?’

  ‘I wanted bloodhounds but these were all they had in the shop. This guy Ross? He a local?’

  ‘He’s been working here on the estate for about six or seven years now. I don’t know where he came from originally. Edinburgh, I think. He never stops talking but, come to think about it, he wasn’t keen on talking about himself a lot.’

  ‘And he’s the murderer, is he?’

  ‘Damned out of his own mouth.’

  ‘Tell me. What does the initial M in his name stand for?’

  Hallett blew out his cheeks and sniggered. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret. He’s really embarrassed about it. Swore me to secrecy because it so embarrassed him.’

  ‘Go on then, embarrass him.’

  ‘He tells the nobs it’s for Malcolm but that’s not the truth.’

  ‘What is then?’

  ‘Marion,’ Hallett confided with an explosive snort of derision. ‘I know it’s a lassie’s name but his father was a John Wayne fanatic. John Wayne’s real name was Marion and Bob was landed with it.’

  ‘Nasty trick to play on a boy,’ Fyfe said. ‘Can my dogs have a packet of crisps? Cheese and onion flavour is their favourite.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Hallett said. He poured crisps into a clean ashtray. ‘There’s your boss now.’

  Fyfe got a glimpse of her in the mirror, all long legs and wide shoulders rippling over the bottles. He turned as she approached and saw that she was even more attractive than he had imagined. Her hand was held out in greeting and her eyes were shining triumphantly. He too would confess anything to those lovely baby blues. Her pleasure in having supposedly wrapped up the case was obvious. The smile on her face was designed to show Fyfe that he wasn’t required after all. She thought she was in control and she was loving it.

  ‘DCI Fyfe, I presume,’ she said. ‘Your reputation precedes you.’

  ‘Nothing bad I hope.’

  ‘On the contrary, but it looks as if you’ve had a wasted journey this time.’

  He took her hand, squeezed it in sympathy and wondered briefly if it would be kinder to keep the truth from her and let her find out in due course. Her hand withdrew and he half-expected her to stick out her tongue.

  He shouldn’t delay, Fyfe decided sadly. Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind. Better for her to find out now. The connections were made, the odds were shortened to almost negligible proportions. It was a small world, a smaller country. How many Robert Marion Rosses could there be hanging around the scenes of murders?

  It was a shame but he was not going to be popular in the baby-blue eyes of Moya McBain. She was not after all going to instantly tumble into bed with him for some rest and recreation after a hard day’s investigating. She was probably going to hate him. It was not a good start to their relationship. But what could he do?

  ‘Nice to meet you, DI McBain,’ he said.

  ‘Likewise.’

  He took her by the arm and attempted to lead her towards the door. He could feel the resentment in the tightening of her muscles, the digging in of her heels. This was her moment. She was calling the shots. It was her inquiry. She would determine whether she moved or not. He did his best not to sound too patronizing.

  ‘Sorry about this, darling,’ he said softly so no one else in the bar could hear. ‘I don’t mean to interfere but Robert Ross isn’t your murderer.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Trust me. You’ve got the wrong man.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Thursday 16.15

  It had sounded so convincing to Moya. Robert Ross had told of clandestine meetings by moonlight with his secret lover, Marianne. She was the daughter of one of the rich estate owners at Torridon. He didn’t know which one. He didn’t know her second name. All he knew was that there had been a potent sexual chemistry between them and they had conducted their furtive affair against moss-covered trees or beds of fragrant, fallen pine needles.

  It was hopeless, of course, a Lady Chatterley-style relationship doomed to fail from the first kiss. When Marianne tried to break it off last night, Ross’s only answer was an inarticulate violence that ended in her death.

  Moya empathized with the broken man as he bowed his head and wept, explaining between heavy sobs how he had lashed out with his keeper’s crook. A single blow had felled her, killed her. There was no heart beat for his searching fingers to find. No reaction when he grabbed her by the neck and tried to shake her awake. No retreat from his terrible act. No life in the body he had loved so intensely.

  Ross had looked up at Moya then and she had to bite the inside of her lip to stop her own tears. Why did love have to be so cruel and why was she such a sucker for a hard-luck story, she was thinking.

  He was not thinking clearly, Ross explained. He needed to perform some form of burial ceremony but Marianne was too beautiful to be buried in the ground at the mercy of worms and wild animals. So he rowed out to Parliament Rock and laid her on the platform there, a sacrifice for the gods. He knew she would soon be discovered. He wanted it to happen. He told how he knelt beside Marianne and recited a prayer as the dark waters of the loch moved restlessly around him and the cold of the night sucked the last of the warmth from her lifeless form.

  It had all sounded so convincing, so utterly convincing. She had believed every word of it. The name wasn’t right, but there would be an explanation for that, she was sure. A pet name. Lovers’ name. She had visualized the crime of passion and seen tangible evidence of his emotional torment in the cuts the fishing-hooks had ripped in Ross’s hands as he explained. It brought tears to her eyes.

  She appreciated the romance, abhorred the violence. She patted the murderer on the back and told him she underst
ood. She had wanted to question him more. Find out about the note stuffed into the victim’s hand. The corroboration that made the story even more believable. Laura and Bobby, the tragic lovers. But David Fyfe had arrived and she had gone out to face the high-flying city cop sent to watch over her, and she had been confident she could rub the newcomer’s nose in her instant success. The case was all wrapped up. She relished the opportunity to tell him she didn’t need his help after all.

  She told him. Politely, naturally, but she told him. And he had called her darling and abruptly kicked the feet from under her by telling her she was wrong.

  Ross was a pathological liar apparently. Everything he had said had been lies, pure fantasy, pure invention. Fyfe knew it before he even heard him speak. Ross, it turned out, had used to make an unendearing habit out of wasting police time. He made up a story, picking details out of newspaper reports, and confessed to any murder that was available. Fyfe had had dealings with him ten years before in Edinburgh.

  ‘He convinced me totally then,’ Fyfe explained, and she knew he was just saying it to make her feel better. ‘I bought everything he told me at first. Never for a moment suspected it was made up. He’s a brilliant story-teller, relies on the suspension of disbelief factor. He likes looking you in the eye and seeing that you believe him. That’s how he gets his kicks.’

  Moya didn’t know what to think, except that Fyfe was a patronizing bastard. She was embarrassed and angry. The niggling inconsistencies in Ross’s tale now seemed glaringly obvious. She would have checked, of course. Bobby was a common enough name. Marianne was simply the wrong name. She would have found out it was all lies in the fullness of time. But she had been caught with her credibility round her ankles and she was ashamed of her own gullibility and foolishness.

  Now she followed Fyfe into the hotel office where Ross was seated on a chair at the table. He was rolling a cigarette between stiff fingers covered in sticking plasters. He was wearing the fly-flecked woollen hat. Charlie Simpson was standing over him, smoking one of his roll-ups. Simpson too had said to her that the story had sounded a bit far-fetched but she hadn’t been willing to listen.

  Ross turned and looked blankly at Fyfe. Moya could see him thinking, frowning as he searched his memory to put a name to the new face. She saw realization dawn and the slight slump in his shoulders followed by the downcast eyes. He licked the Rizla paper and didn’t look up.

  Fyfe positioned himself on the edge of the desk so close to Ross his knee would have hit him on the jaw if he had moved it upwards. Simpson looked across to Moya, silently seeking an introduction.

  ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector David Fyfe,’ she said mechanically. ‘He’s come to keep us right on the investigation of murder cases.’

  Fyfe pouted a little, and Moya wished she could act more professionally. It wasn’t Fyfe’s fault that she had screwed up, but it was his fault he had been sent to watch over her. The thought of her boss Ryder back at headquarters hearing about her naivety was making her break out in a cold sweat. Fyfe had said Ryder was an old friend. The bastards would be sniggering together behind her back.

  Maybe she should be nicer to Fyfe, persuade him to gloss over her early failings. In the late-afternoon light from the French windows overlooking one corner of the ornamental garden he even seemed to convey a rough boyish charm. Those dogs of his were lovely animals. He couldn’t be all bad if his dogs liked him, bastard that he was. Animals had a sixth sense about people.

  ‘How you doing, Bobby old pal. Remember me?’

  Ross raised his head slowly and reluctantly. ‘No,’ he said finally.

  ‘I remember you. Robert Marion Ross. How could I forget a name like that?’

  Ross did not react.

  ‘Great story you came up with for me, Bob. The one about the old man in his flat down the docks. How many years ago was that now? I still have a hard time believing it’s not true sometimes.’

  Ross lit his roll-up. The constant movement of the adam’s apple in his throat betrayed his nervousness. He sucked on the cigarette and chewed on a plaster on his finger. He looked shifty and untrustworthy. Moya could not believe how she had been so easily taken in by him.

  ‘Remember yet?’ Fyfe asked. ‘The old guy Moloney? Supposed to be an IRA informer set up in a safe house by the Gardai for his protection? You? You were a hit man hired to get him. And according to you, you did. Knifed him to death because the gun the IRA promised you got lost in the post.’

  Ross shifted uncomfortably on his chair. Simpson’s face above him was a picture as he began to realize what was going on. A smile spread like the sun coming up. He looked directly at Moya. She looked down at the floor.

  ‘Oh yes, it was a great story. Certainly had me going. For a whole day I was convinced. Then our colleagues in Dublin set the alarm bells ringing. No Moloney on their files. And you got the colour of the old man’s shirt wrong. Didn’t even know the number of his flat, or how many rooms, or what floor it was on. And the one big flaw I should have realized all along. Why should a professional assassin walk into the police station and give himself up. You remember your answer to that, Bob? Do you?’

  Ross kept his head down. No reaction except another quick puff at his cigarette. Simpson was grinning from ear to ear. The tips of Moya’s ears were burning. She bit her lip and avoided eye contact.

  ‘You said you’d undergone a Born Again experience and had been converted to Christianity. There on the threshold of the murder scene, the bloody knife in your hand, you said you had found God. And so you had to confess your guilt and suffer the punishment.’

  Fyfe sighed theatrically. He cocked his head to one side and gestured over to Moya as if to say ‘you would never have believed a cock and bull story like that’. That he could have been so stupid did make her feel a little better, just a little. Behind her McIsaac coughed. She didn’t turn round but she just knew he would be grinning as well. His time record for solving local murders looked safe again.

  ‘Remember Bob? It’s hard to credit that a man of my cynical nature could believe all that crap. But you’re a brilliant liar. You’re so fucking good you should have been a politician. And it looks like old habits die hard. You’ve been doing it again, haven’t you Bob, with this tale of the lady in the loch? Back then I wanted the fiscal to lock you up for wasting police time. The fiscal declined to waste the court’s time. I wasn’t happy with that. I wanted you to learn your lesson. So what happened, Bob? Do you remember now?’

  Ross stubbed out the cigarette and looked up for the first time since Fyfe had started speaking. His lip curled into a sneer. ‘You kicked the shit out of me, Mr Fyfe.’

  Fyfe smiled down benignly. ‘Now is that the truth, Bobby, or is that just another one of your fantasies?’

  Moya didn’t have time to make a judgement. As the sentence finished Ross stood up, picked up the chair in one flowing movement and brought it crashing down on Fyfe’s head. Fyfe went back over the side of the desk and landed heavily on the floor. Simpson made a grab at Ross and yelped when he got the chair over the knuckles. Ross threw it down and ran for the French windows, shouldering them open. The windows flapped back into a closed position and clicked shut. A delayed-shock effect made the glass turn opaque, shatter and begin to fall out in seeming slow motion. Rooted to the spot with shards of glass bouncing round her feet, Moya stood with her mouth hanging open watching Ross sprinting away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thursday, 16.17

  Three guests out front tonight, and one waiting his turn in the back shop. Mr Beaumont. An elderly man. Heart failure while washing his car. Slight grazing on the left cheek where he had fallen, simply fixed with the application of a little smear of foundation cream.

  In the rooms behind the main funeral parlour, Douglas Lambert watched as his young apprentice Robbie did the necessary and went on to trim the man’s copious nostril hair without being told. It was hard to find youngsters willing to train as morticians. They usually ran a mile
from the idea of handling dead bodies. Robbie was different. He was keen. He read The Embalmer from cover to cover and after six months in the public side of the job was shaping up nicely in his first week with the bodies behind the scenes.

  ‘What is death but the natural consequence of living?’ Robbie had said at the interview, showing a maturity well beyond his acne-plagued youth.

  Lambert had been taken with that carefully rehearsed phrase. It summed up his own philosophy fairly accurately. A little humility went a long way in the undertaking trade, and attention to detail in advance preparation went that little bit further. Billy got the job despite his ear-ring and curious shaven-sides haircut. Lambert kept him working in the backshop out of sight of the relatives after a few complaints.

  ‘Is that you finished then, young Robbie?’

  ‘I think so, Mr Lambert.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Robbie held his chin and looked down on the mortal remains of Mr Beaumont. There had been a post-mortem. His internal organs had been removed, examined and then stuffed back, wrapped in newspaper. The chest cavity had been closed and clumsily stapled. All that didn’t matter because he was now wearing his best shirt, tie and suit. His hands and face were the only parts visible. Robbie had cut his nails and painted out the nicotine stains on his fingers. He had combed his hair back and tidied his bushy eyebrows. The foundation cream hiding the graze could not be distinguished from real skin. Mr Beaumont looked fine, yet there was something wrong. Robbie stared and frowned.