The Darkness and the Deep

by Aline Templeton

  Tansy frowned. ‘Don’t think so. Apparently he went on a bit about the lights and feeling guilty and that he loved her, that sort of thing. He wasn’t really making sense – muttering about three lights when there were only two, weren’t there?’

  Fleming nodded. ‘Yes, two. But hardly surprising that he was confused. And Tam – the Randalls. Have you done a report, Jon?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve filed the Kylie MacEwan/Nat Rettie school stuff but I haven’t had time to write up my notes on the Randall interviews.’

  ‘Fine. Hand your notes over to Tam, and he can take them forward.’

  Kingsley would have to learn not to show his emotions quite so clearly; she read resistance in the young face even as he said smoothly, ‘Sure, I’ll get something on paper for him.’

  He needed a lesson. Now. ‘Watch my lips, Jon. Hand over your notes to Tam. As they stand. Neither of you has time to waste faffing about and as you said yourself, you’re not in competition.’

  He looked as startled as if the chair he was sitting on had suddenly bitten his bottom. ‘But,’ he said, then as he encountered the look from her which had turned better men than he to stone, turned bright red and muttered, ‘Sorry, ma’am. I’ll do that.’

  Fleming allowed the pause to lengthen long enough to make sure he was acutely uncomfortable, then said sweetly, ‘Oh yes, I think you will.

  ‘Now, what I really want you to look for is anything that doesn’t feel right. Behaviour that’s inappropriate, whether overreactive or underreactive. Don’t be afraid to follow your noses. And my nose tells me there’s something about Ritchie Elder. You’re going to be talking to the Randalls, Tam – try and see what you can suss out about Ashley and Elder. Get Lewis Randall out of the surgery, as Jon suggests. Then you just might try for a little chat with Elder’s wife – after all, she can’t have been too happy about it either.

  ‘The other thing to keep at the back of your mind is that there could be some link beyond the lifeboat. Does anything suggest Ashley was involved in the drugs business with Willie, say? Was she having an affair with Rob as well? My gut feeling is that it’s unlikely, but be alert for any pointers.

  ‘Thanks, everyone. Report back to me directly if there’s anything you think offers a lead.’

  Kingsley left with some alacrity, not waiting this time for Tansy Kerr to precede him. She too left looking as if she couldn’t get out fast enough. MacNee, on the other hand, lowered himself from the table with dignity and no undue haste.

  ‘Stop smirking, Tam.’

  MacNee turned a bland face to her. ‘I’m not smirking! How am I smirking?’

  ‘You’re smirking inside,’ she accused him, and he grinned, then followed the others out.

  The notes MacNee found himself holding – set down on his desk with a bad grace and ‘I’ll want them back tonight’ – were in two sets, torn from a constable’s page-numbered notebook. That was probably a disciplinary offence in itself.

  Pages 23–26 had a few lines relating to the visit to Kirkluce Academy, then went on to jottings about an interview with Dorothy Randall which concluded, with suspicious abruptness, on the bottom of page 26. There were then three pages missing: page 33 started mid-phrase, ‘wife to go to meeting’, then continued noting what Dr Lewis Randall had said. It finished half-way down page 36, which went on to dealing with Kylie MacEwan.

  So what was Kingsley keeping to himself? A strong lead, presumably, but what was it? It could be something that Dorothy Randall had said. From the tone of the notes, the interview had been coming to an end, but often enough the best stuff came when you were on your way to the door and they’d relaxed.

  Against that was the fact that Kingsley had pretty much handed the Randalls to MacNee on a plate and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t thought he’d gnawed all the meat off the bones already. So had something Dorothy said pointed him in another direction altogether?

  Or had it been nothing to do with her? Was it some other source Kingsley was so jealously protecting, some info which had suggested that this was all about drugs, which would explain why he was so keen to follow up that line? Tam could, of course, use his superior rank to order Kingsley to hand over the missing pages; if he refused, as most likely he would, MacNee would be within his rights to refer it up. But the distaste for telling tales to teacher was deeply ingrained. In the school he’d gone to – Glasgow, inner-city, run-down and demoralised – more people carried knives than carried pencils and only folk with a death-wish clyped. You just made it your business to screw the bastard next time round. He’d learned that from his English teacher, the only recognisably human member of staff, who had also somehow managed to instil in his scruffy, undersized pupil his own passion for Scotland’s Bard. On both counts, Tam felt he owed him a debt of gratitude.

  So for the moment he could only settle for what he’d been given and he applied himself to reading the sketchy notes carefully, with particular attention to what lay between the lines. They were competent, certainly. In fact, if he was to be fair, they were more than competent. Despite their brevity they conveyed not only information but assessment; he had, for instance, emphasised Dorothy Randall’s sensitivity to alibi-style questions and MacNee made a mental note to press that button when he saw her and see if it gave a skirl.

  What came across from the notes on Lewis Randall was a certain frustration. You had to take a long, hard look at the husband of any murdered woman but Kingsley clearly hadn’t decided by the end of the interview whether he was more or less suspicious. He was, to use the hoary old newspaper term, baffled. MacNee liked that. Gave him something to aim at.

  It was a rare day for the twenty-five-minute run down the coast anyway. Was there anywhere bonnier than Galloway on a fine, cold, clear autumn morning, and the sea with its rafts of orange seaweed glinting so bright it made your eyes water? The caravan sites weren’t so bonny, maybe: ugly metal townships down near the shore, deserted now the summer families had gone.

  As he drove along the low-lying road which skirted the bay towards Port William, he saw, pulling out from the sheltering stone arms of harbour walls, a small boat laden with pots for lobsters and crabs. He watched its progress with a jaundiced eye; he’d long had his suspicions that what came up when the pots were lifted again wasn’t always waving its claws, but despite a few Customs raids they’d never struck lucky. Too many mobile phones, too many helpful watchers on shore.

  His mind went to Willie Duncan. The boss had been right, little as he had liked her decision. His approach, which he still reckoned would over time have worn the man down into unburdening himself to his Uncle Tam, had been undermined by what had happened, and maybe Kingsley would have better luck. It would be worth the dunt to his pride if something useful emerged – always supposing Kingsley could be persuaded to share it with what the boss had so optimistically described as the team.

  Tansy Kerr didn’t know Knockhaven very well. She’d been in the Anchor a couple of times for a drink with friends but she’d never come in daylight and she hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings at the time. She looked about her now. Behind her, on the upper side of the main road which bisected the town, there were the pompous Victorian villas which held themselves aloof from the smaller, older houses huddled irregularly below it, but whose neighbours now were a modern development and a small council estate. It was a typical small Scottish town of perhaps two and a half thousand, three thousand souls, a nice wee place, with quaint little streets and wynds going up from the exposed Shore Street, which had shops on one side and a low sea wall on the other. The sluice holes at regular intervals showed how often the demarcation line between land and sea was breached: there were actually pebbles, sand and drying strands of seaweed lying in the road, and beside one or two doors damp sandbags were still out.

  Growing up in an inland town where a storm meant no more than a nasty day and possibly, at worst, a slate off your roof, Tansy had never considered what an intimate relationship you’d have
with the sea, living in a place like this. It’d be your friend and your enemy, giving with one hand, taking away with the other. Beautiful and deadly. Irresistible, compelling.

  She could feel the tug of its compulsion herself. Though she should be seeking out scraps to make the patchwork story of Rob Anderson’s life, she swung her legs over the wall and let herself down on to the sloping concrete apron shoring it up, and from there on to the shale shore with its patches of rough, dark sand. The sea was calm enough today; teasing waves made darts at her feet and ahead the blank horizon faded into a haze of dusty gold. To her right, the long blue headland of the Mull of Galloway, curved at the end like a beckoning finger, marked the farther limit of Luce Bay.

  Tansy picked up a flat stone and tried to send it skimming across the water. It made two brave skips then sank feebly in a swirl of bubbles. A bit like any ideas she’d had so far about the investigation she was engaged on at the moment. She wasn’t happy.

  It wasn’t exactly Jon Kingsley’s fault. Tam was being a right pain and you couldn’t expect Jon to go round working out what might put Tam’s back up before he opened his mouth. But somehow she just had a feeling Jon was trying to set him up, make him look bad in the boss’s eyes, though personally she reckoned he’d have more chance of convincing David Beckham he’d look better with a short back-and-sides, cords and a cardigan. And though she had more years of service than Jon did, she felt with slight resentment that he was behaving as if he had seniority.

  Jon had done his best to muscle in on the drugs scene, which made it kind of obvious he was backing that as the motive. He could even be right, in which case her enquiries, and Tam’s, were only filling in time till he made his spectacular arrest to the applause of the dazzled plods of the Galloway Constabulary. Not.

  Anyway, she ought to be getting on with it. She’d given up smoking a couple of weeks back and her vital supply of chewing-gum was running out; she could home in on the most promising-looking shop and get into conversation on the back of her purchase. Local shops always knew what was going on.

  Just as she turned to go, she saw something glinting at her feet: an iridescent shell, flat and round, with a neat, tiny hole near its centre. Was that what they called a silver dollar? She picked it up and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans, just for luck.

  The Hollies, the Victorian villa belonging to Dorothy Randall, stood in a substantial garden in one of the quieter streets up at the back of Knockhaven. MacNee paused for a moment at its entrance, two old grey stone pillars guarding a short gravel drive which led to the main door at the side of the building and to the garage beyond.

  To the left, on the other side of a low brick wall of much more recent date, was a bungalow which looked as if it might have been built on ground sold off from the larger property. It had side windows overlooking The Hollies’ front drive and MacNee eyed it thoughtfully. Chances were the owners would be out at work, but it was worth a try. The indirect approach often paid dividends.

  He was in luck. A minute after he rang the bell, he heard halting footsteps and then the door was opened by an elderly woman. She was leaning on a stick but her eyes were bright and, once he had shown ID, full of curiosity. She waved him in eagerly and he followed, suppressing a smile. The challenge with this one wasn’t going to be persuading her to talk, it would be framing his questions so that the rumour wasn’t sent racing round that the doctor and his mother were prime suspects.

  When he emerged ten minutes later, he was still trying to suppress a smile, this time of satisfaction. He had, he reckoned, managed to convince her that he was asking about any strange vehicles that might have been hanging about on Thursday, and more importantly he had some useful information to carry forward to his interview with Dorothy Randall.

  It was very gratifying for DC Kingsley to find himself being greeted at the lifeboat station by a relaxed and cooperative Willie Duncan and invited to take a seat in the crew room. Never a talkative man, Duncan was still perfectly happy to express the revulsion of the whole community and the wickedness of the person who had done such a thing, or, as he put it, ‘Scunnered, we all were. He’s a limb of Satan, that one.’

  It was less gratifying to find that he was flatly denying that he could be considered a target.

  ‘Och no! Who’s been telling you havers like that?’ His tone was genial.

  ‘I understood that you were heard to say you were very worried.’

  The man’s weather-beaten face reddened slightly, but he said only, ‘With all yon going on, I maybe said something daft.’

  ‘And why would you do that?’

  Willie shrugged. ‘I was upset. Rob and Ashley – we’d been out there all weathers. And that young teacher laddie—’

  ‘Oh yes. Luke Smith. Died because of you, really, didn’t he?’ Kingsley spoke with calculated brutality. ‘If you hadn’t been out of it, he wouldn’t have been there at all, would he?’

  The colour in Willie’s face deepened but he said only, ‘Black lies. I’d a sore head – one of those migraine things—’

  ‘Not what I heard.’

  All trace of geniality had vanished. ‘Well, you can stuff it, then.’

  ‘The fact is, this whole thing’s about drugs, isn’t it, Duncan? They were after you, for some reason. What were you trying to do – set up in business for yourself, or something?’

  The man got up from his chair and walked to the door. ‘I’m not needing this,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ve said my piece. That’s all.’

  Kingsley followed him. ‘Had a word with them, Duncan, have you? They’ve told you that you got it wrong, that they’d no hand in this.’

  Willie stopped dead, then without turning round walked out into the main hall. Two ladies, standing beside the souvenir stall, looked up with interest as the two men appeared.

  Kingsley walked past Willie, then turned to stand in his way. ‘That’s what they’ve told you. But speaking as a friend, I tell you what you’ve got to ask yourself, Willie – do you believe them?’

  He turned on his heel and left, but not before he had noted, with satisfaction, that the other man’s hands were trembling.

  12

  Dorothy Randall looked at the warrant-card held out for her inspection, then at the man in the leather jacket and jeans who was holding it, in horrified disbelief. ‘Detective Sergeant MacNee?’ she repeated. She didn’t add, ‘You! A policeman?’ but the thought-bubble was all but visible.

  ‘Yes, madam. Sorry to trouble you – just one or two wee queries you could maybe help us with.’ He knew the type: middle-class, brought up to believe the police are our friends, on their high horse the minute a copper starts doing his job anywhere near them.

  ‘I cooperated fully with the officer yesterday. I have nothing further to add to what I said to him.’

  ‘Oh, he was just one of our junior constables.’ MacNee enjoyed saying that. ‘My inspector felt you should be allocated a more senior officer.’ These ‘high, exalted, virtuous dames’ always fell for the idea of preferential treatment.

  She didn’t. Dorothy’s blue eyes were shrewd and cold, and the way the thin lips, under the pastel-pink lipstick, tightened showed that she was under no illusion as to the significance of a second visit.

  ‘I suppose you had better come in.’ Her back poker-rigid, she led the way to the lounge, a large, bay-windowed room at the front of the house.

  It looked just as he would have predicted from its owner’s tweedy-smart appearance – a gold dralon three-piece suite with deep, silky fringes, matching velvet drapes and twee figurines of dainty ladies with billowing skirts on the mantelpiece reflected in the mirror behind – but on one side of the door there was also a large, well-filled bookcase. MacNee wasn’t much of a reader himself but these were clearly a cut above the Mills and Boon romances Bunty favoured. He’d have to see and not underestimate this one.

  Without waiting to be asked, he took a seat on the sofa and got out his notebook. ‘Yes, do sit down,’ she said
acidly as she positioned herself in an elaborate wooden carver with a tapestry seat. The fireplace held only an ornamental brass firescreen in the shape of a fan but the room was still uncomfortably hot.

  MacNee began mildly enough. ‘No doubt you’ll have heard by now that we are treating the wreck of the lifeboat as suspicious.’

  Dorothy inclined her head. ‘That seems to be what they’re saying in the village. Not that those of us most intimately affected have been officially informed.’

  Hoity-toity, eh? But MacNee had a habit of watching hands – often less well controlled than faces – and Dorothy Randall’s hands, the nails well-manicured and coated with clear varnish, were gripping the edge of the chair arms.

  Time to cut the cackle. ‘You didn’t get on with your daughter-in-law, did you?’

  He’d expected a defensive reaction. Instead she said, ‘No, I didn’t.’

  MacNee blinked. It was a bit like heading the ball towards the goal and finding the other side didn’t plan to defend it. He lined up another shot. ‘What did you quarrel about?’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Never?’

  Her response to his incredulity was flat. ‘Never.’

  From Kingsley’s notes, she’d not been so backward in coming forward about this yesterday. If she was reacting so differently today, she’d been thinking about it, preparing herself for another visit, maybe.

  ‘Did it not make you angry, her cheating on your son with Ritchie Elder?’

  Her hands were curling like claws on the chair arm now but she said scornfully, ‘I don’t pay any attention to gossip.’

  ‘You’d heard it, though?’

  ‘It was widespread.’

  ‘So your son would have heard it, believed it, maybe. That’s not a bad motive for killing your wife, especially if you’d planned it to look like an accident—’

  ‘No!’ The word was forced out of her. ‘He would never – he didn’t believe it, anyway. This is ridiculous!’

  She was getting her dander up. Good. ‘And then there’s you, Mrs Randall. Did you believe it? Did you think she was making a fool of you all? You told DC Kingsley you fancied being a granny, and while she was around there weren’t going to be any kids, were there? And was she maybe getting between you and your son, too? You must have been very close, the two of you, him coming back to work here and all . . .’