The Darkness and the Deep

by Aline Templeton

  There seemed to be a public meeting going on when DC Kingsley arrived at the Knockhaven Medical Centre, a little after half-past two. The entrance was open-plan, with a waiting area lined with blue padded benches and a table untidily strewn with dog-eared magazines, while a corridor at the farther end led to the consulting rooms. A basket of children’s toys occupied one corner and the whole of the back was office space, separated from the public by a reception desk round which half a dozen women were clustered, their backs to the door, apparently being addressed by the bulky woman on the business side. She was in late middle age with tightly permed hair, protuberant eyes and a thin-lipped mouth a little enlarged by plum-coloured lipstick. The contours of her bosom suggested corsetry of the most architectural sort and, taken in conjunction with the gun-metal grey of her acrylic jersey, reminded Kingsley irresistibly of the prow of a battleship. The name-badge she wore said ‘Muriel Henderson’.

  ‘And now he’s been taken away to the police station in Kirkluce. Is that not awful for the poor soul – her own son under suspicion?’

  There was a communal intake of breath and a few shocked murmurs, though no one had the temerity to interrupt while Muriel held the floor. She was going on, ‘Mind you, I was speaking to someone who’d been speaking to Jackie Duncan and she said Jackie said Willie said—’

  As Kingsley approached the desk, she broke off. Six heads swivelled as one, looking accusingly at the intruder who had interrupted this gossip fest just as a particularly savoury morsel was about to be served up.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’ From Muriel’s tone, he might have come bursting into her private sitting room.

  He flashed his warrant-card and an insinuating smile. It was, he hoped, only the card which had the effect of dispersing the group; like bath bubbles brought into contact with a bar of soap, they melted away as if uncomfortable at having their gluttony exposed to official scrutiny. It was a fine sight: six not insubstantial ladies trying to become invisible.

  The smile, however, did seem to be having its intended effect. Muriel Henderson’s manner became almost gracious.

  ‘You’ll be here because of – the tragedy, no doubt.’ She delivered this in suitably mournful tones, with downcast eyes, the effect being only slightly spoiled by the anticipatory way in which she licked her lips.

  ‘I was hoping to have a word with Dr Randall, when he’s free. I understand he came into work today.’

  ‘Indeed yes. Poor Dr Lewis! But you can be sure he’ll always put his patients first, above everything else. We’re just doing our best to make things as easy as possible for him.’ She raised her voice. ‘Aren’t we, Enid?’

  Kingsley hadn’t noticed the other woman who was quietly working at a computer screen in the corner of the office area beside another younger woman who was putting letters into envelopes. She looked up at her name. ‘Oh – oh yes. We’re all so sorry for him. I’m just going to take him in some tea when he’s finished with this patient.’

  ‘That’s right, dear. You do that. And you’ve made some of your rock cakes for him, haven’t you?’ Then, turning back to Kingsley, she lowered her voice and said, ‘Went back specially to do it in her lunch hour, after she heard what had happened. Just between you and me, got a bit of a crush on Dr Lewis, poor Enid. Not that he’d ever have thought of looking at anyone but that wife of his.’

  Alert to her tone of voice, Kingsley prompted, ‘And was Dr Ashley perhaps not quite as dedicated as he was?’

  ‘Dedicated!’ Licensed to spit poison, Muriel reared up like a cobra. ‘It was just self, self, self with that woman! I know she’s dead, but I speak as I find.’

  He’d heard enough about Ashley from her mother-in-law and he hadn’t time to encourage Muriel along those lines when he needed to get back to Kirkluce to meet up with Tansy Kerr to interview Kylie MacEwan before the end of the school day. He moved her on deftly.

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing as I came in – you were saying something about Willie Duncan?’

  For the first time she looked flustered. ‘Oh dearie me, that was just some story that’s going round the town.’

  ‘It’s always useful to us to know what people are saying, even if it’s not true.’

  ‘Oh, it’s true, right enough!’ She bridled at the suggestion of flawed intelligence. ‘It was Willie’s wife Jackie said it – she says he’s been scared stiff ever since last night, says it should have been him, and they’ll get him somehow. There!’

  Playing the daft laddie, Kingsley said, ‘They—?’

  He got a very old-fashioned look. ‘Oh, maybe the police don’t know, but everyone else does. Those drugs people he’s got himself mixed up with, whoever they are – scum, anyway. You mark my words, it’s nothing to do with that wee toe-rag you’ve arrested. Nat Rettie hasn’t the brains for something like this. You’ll see who’s responsible right enough when Willie’s found in the harbour with a stone tied round his feet.’

  Kingsley’s face remained impassive, but his mind was racing. It was incredible how much this woman – and presumably therefore the whole town – knew about what was going on. Could she be right? Could this be tied up with the drugs scene that was his particular brief? It could be his chance for a second major coup.

  He was opening his mouth to ask another question when a door opened and an elderly man came out saying, ‘Thanks, Dr Lewis.’ Enid looked up from her computer and jumped to her feet, a hint of colour in her pale skin.

  ‘I’ll just make his tea and take it in. If you’d like to go in now, Constable –’

  He might as well. There probably wasn’t anything more of use Muriel could tell him. ‘Thanks so much, Mrs Henderson. You’ve been most helpful,’ he said, and she beamed on him as he went to tap on the door.

  The man sitting at the desk was very good-looking, but in a curiously bland way. The blue eyes, the smooth dark hair, the classic profile ticked all the boxes but somehow suggested that if character was not actually lacking it was somehow withheld from the observer.

  He rose courteously to shake hands with Kingsley, waving him to a chair. He was looking tired and strained, though there were no other visible signs of grief, and the questions Kingsley asked, taking him through the events of the previous night, were answered readily and calmly enough. He had expected his wife to be going out to a meeting, had eaten an early supper with her then gone to work in his study on a report he needed to write up. He’d had an uninterrupted evening, no visitors, no phone calls, until the one telling him of the disaster. He hadn’t been aware of the lifeboat call-out, he said.

  ‘I gather they still fire maroons here – you didn’t hear them go off?’ Kingsley pressed him. ‘Is your house within earshot?’

  ‘Normally, yes. But with the storm last night . . .’ He shrugged. ‘My room is at the back, and I had music playing. I was concentrating, too – I might simply not have registered the sound.’ Then, as the door opened, ‘Ah, Enid! Is that tea – and are those your rock buns? You spoil me, you know.’

  The glowing smile the woman gave him left Kingsley in no doubt that Muriel had been right about her colleague’s feelings, and about her boss’s too. Enid was a pleasant-looking woman, and when animated as she was just now, even pretty in her quiet way, but it was obvious that Randall had more interest in the buns than in their maker, and even so was doing no more than toying with the one on his plate.

  Kingsley put down his notebook and bit into his own. They were good, certainly, and judging by the glimpse he had got this morning, Randall would have a much more comfortable home-life with this one. Maybe she’d run him down in the end, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

  He still hadn’t tackled the most contentious question. It wasn’t the easiest thing to put to a man who had just lost his wife, but it had to be done.

  ‘I’m sorry, I do have to ask you this, sir. There are rumours that your wife was having a relationship with the Secretary of the lifeboat, Mr Elder. Was this true?’

  ‘Oh dear.’ He loo
ked wearier than ever. ‘You’ve been talking to Muriel, have you? She told my mother that, I’m sure. It was all very difficult.

  ‘Ashley and I had a happy and fulfilling marriage. She had a good working relationship with Ritchie, who was in some sense her boss, and we saw him and his wife socially – I knew him from way back – and that was enough to set people talking. It doesn’t take much in a place like this.

  ‘I’m afraid Muriel never really got on with Ashley and perhaps you’ve gathered what she’s like – she has a wicked tongue, together with a prurient mind. I wish I could sack her, but the collateral damage would be too extensive.’

  Was it what the man genuinely believed to be the case? Or what he had decided to believe? Or what he knew to be false? It was impossible to tell.

  ‘Did you ever tackle your wife about it?’

  For the first time the man smiled. ‘You didn’t know my wife, Constable Kingsley. To ask Ashley to deny one of Muriel Henderson’s rumours would be like taking the pin out of a grenade, and I like a quiet life.’

  There was nothing more to ask. Kingsley thanked him and left, little wiser about Ashley Randall’s husband than he had been when he went in.

  The women were back around the desk again, their heads together as Muriel talked to them with her voice discreetly lowered this time. Behind them, a man holding a form stood ignored, but as Kingsley passed Muriel looked up to give him a ‘favoured friend’ smile and told him not to hesitate to come back if there was anything else she could help any of the officers with.

  He smiled back. This was a source he wasn’t about to share with anyone.

  ‘How are you on video nasties?’ Tam MacNee came into DI Fleming’s fourth-floor office and put a cassette on the desk. ‘I’ve brought you a copy of the official tape.’

  Fleming looked up from the paperwork she was trying to clear from her already over-burdened desk before the avalanche of information from the new case descended on it.

  ‘Listen, when you’ve watched Donald Bailey react to being told that no, the wreck of the lifeboat couldn’t have been an accident, yes, three people have died, yes, the Press will be seriously interested, yes, it’s complicated and no, we can’t just charge Nat Rettie without further proof and have done with it, The Texas Chain-saw Massacre would seem like Mary Poppins. Is this the Rettie interview?’

  ‘Tansy and I had a go at him earlier this afternoon.’ MacNee put the cassette into the small combination TV/VCR which stood on a shelf in the corner of the room and clicked the remote control.

  ‘And?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  MacNee had spooled past the formal identification procedure at the beginning of the tape; it began with Tansy Kerr’s question, ‘So what were you doing last night, Nat?’

  It was always a curious experience, watching a video taken by a fixed camera in black-and-white. It confounded an expectation built on sophisticated colour and lighting and zoom and close-up, so that the film took on the unreal aspect of a theatrical performance. Here, under flat fluorescent light, the props were a table, chairs, a bottle of water and glasses; the actors were an unprepossessing youth in what might loosely be described as school uniform on one side of the table facing a young woman wearing jeans and a hooded sweater, and a man in a black leather jacket and white T-shirt leaning back in his chair with a darkly sardonic expression.

  The boy’s eyes went anxiously towards him before he answered the woman’s question with a sullen, ‘Nothing.’

  Kerr laughed with apparently genuine amusement, then jerked her head towards her colleague. ‘I bet him that’s what you’d say. He said you’d say, “None of your business.”’ She turned to MacNee, holding out her hand; he silently reached into a pocket and took out 10p which he gave to her expressionlessly. ‘Had to be one or the other. So let’s cut the crap and start again.

  ‘What were you doing last night, Nat?’

  This had visibly thrown him, but he was still truculent. ‘I was just out. What’s wrong with that? Got a right to go out if I want to.’

  ‘Not when you’re driving your mother’s car without licence or insurance.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Never touched it.’

  ‘Oh, I think you did, Nat. We all think you did, don’t we, Tam?’

  MacNee didn’t speak. Again, Rettie’s eyes flickered towards him and Fleming, watching, realised that her own eyes were being constantly drawn to the silent, withdrawn figure which somehow managed to emit menace.

  The youth shifted in his chair. In the harsh light Fleming could see his brow had begun to glisten with sweat. ‘Look, it was my mum.’ His tone was ingratiating now. ‘Gets sort of confused. She’d gone and parked it somewhere then forgot and next thing, she’s, like, blaming me. See?’

  ‘And why would she think of blaming you, Nat?’ Kerr asked innocently. ‘You’re not old enough to drive, are you?’

  His eyes narrowed in concentration, signalling calculation as clearly as if he had written it on a board and held it above his head. After a prolonged pause he said, ‘OK, I’m not saying I didn’t maybe once take a shot at driving her car, just for a bet. Just, like, round the block. She gave me grief so I packed it in.’

  ‘Not what we heard, is it, Tam? We heard she shopped you because she got sick fed up of you doing it.’

  He scowled. ‘Silly cow!’

  ‘So you were out in the car last night, Nat. Right?’ Kerr’s voice was persuasive.

  ‘No! I sodding told you I wasn’t. She parked it somewhere—’

  ‘So how’d it get back in the garage this morning, then?’ MacNee, still lounging in his chair, cut in, his voice harsh.

  Rettie put up a hand to wipe his forehead. ‘Dunno. She remembered and fetched it—’

  ‘Don’t – play – silly – buggers – with – me!’ Separating his words for emphasis, MacNee leaned across the table suddenly, then thumped down his fist, making Rettie, and the glasses, jump. ‘We know you took that car. Think about it – if that isn’t beyond you. Yours’ll be the top fingerprints on the key, the steering wheel, the door handle.

  ‘Anyway, do you think the CID gives a monkey’s about some moronic juvenile joyriding? You’re here under suspicion of engineering the wreck of the lifeboat with the loss of three lives – especially your stepfather’s. No love lost there, eh? We’re talking about triple murder, laddie.’ He smiled, terribly, then leaned back in his seat again.

  Nat had been alarmed before; now he was visibly afraid. Fleming could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he gulped. ‘Here – you’re trying to stitch me up! I never – I’ve got my rights! I want a lawyer—’

  Again MacNee smiled. ‘Dear me, you’ve been watching too many episodes of The Bill. You’re in Scotland now. The rules say we’ve hours yet for a nice cosy chat before we have to bring outsiders into it. And if you want a pal’s advice, you’ll tell us everything instead of having it dragged out of you. I always thought I should maybe have been a dentist – I’d have been rare at pulling teeth.’

  Rettie was ashen now. ‘I never,’ he insisted. ‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that!’

  ‘All right.’ Kerr took over again. ‘You never. You wouldn’t. OK, Nat. Do yourself a favour and tell us what you did do.’

  This time he didn’t look towards MacNee before he answered, as if he was frightened of what he would see in his face. ‘I – I – OK, I took the sodding car. Just got fed up, ken, stuck in that house all the time by myself. Didn’t do any harm, just went a wee drive round—’

  ‘Who with, Nat?’ Kerr positively cooed the alibi request, but that set him off again.

  ‘No one. Just by myself, OK?’ He grabbed for a glass and the water and his hands were shaking as he poured it out.

  Kerr and MacNee exchanged glances. ‘By yourself, Nat?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘Look, you don’t have to cover up. Anyone who was with you isn’t in trouble.’

  MacNee cut across her. ‘
You’re lying, Rettie. My constable here, she’s a nice person and she thinks you’re protecting someone. I don’t. You’re looking after number one, aren’t you? What were you after – spot of breaking and entering, maybe? Better tell us that than taking the rap for murder.’

  ‘I never! Look, I – I had my girlfriend with me—’

  ‘Girlfriend? Doing the dirty on someone, is she? Scared of her bloke?’ MacNee was pushing him. Then he stopped. ‘Hang about,’ he said slowly. ‘I wonder what put it into your head to call Luke Smith a paedophile, eh? What age is your girlfriend, Rettie?’

  The picture Fleming was looking at seemed to go into freeze-frame: Rettie, gaping; MacNee, staring at Rettie’s face as if he could bore a hole into his mind; Kerr, startled. Then it started to move again.

  ‘Thirteen,’ Rettie blurted out. ‘But we weren’t, like, doing anything. She was just there. She’ll tell you—’

  MacNee snapped off the machine. ‘And that was it. Under-age sex, and he’s over sixteen. An adult.’

  ‘Kylie MacEwan,’ Fleming said heavily.

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Friend of Cat’s, I’m sorry to say.’ She sighed. ‘That’s my problem. But you were good.’

  ‘Can’t get used to this kind of stuff.’ Disgust was plain in MacNee’s face. ‘In my day, it was your pals’ mums you fancied, not their kid sisters. But I wanted you to see Tansy doing her stuff. She’s good, isn’t she? A wee cracker!’

  ‘You’re a classic team – nice cop, nasty cop. Maybe you could do it the other way round sometime?’ Fleming suggested innocently, then grinned at his reaction. ‘Did you really have a bet about what he’d say?’

  ‘Would I be that daft? That was a wee bit of improvisation. I got the 10p back, mind. In fact, now I think of it –’ He drew it out with a flourish and dropped it in the box on her desk marked ‘Burns fines’. ‘For when I need another quote.’

  She groaned. ‘Oh God, it’ll be like waiting for the other shoe to drop!’ Then she said soberly, ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if it was him, does it?’

  ‘Nuh. So where does that leave us?’