The Darkness and the Deep

by Aline Templeton

  The provocation strategy didn’t work. Dorothy compressed her lips so tightly that they all but disappeared, as if she were afraid of what might emerge from them. Then, though her voice was taut with anger, she said only, ‘This is entirely absurd – a complete farrago of nonsense. If this is some sort of stupid police technique—’

  ‘No, no. Just giving you a keek at the way we’re thinking.’ At least he’d managed to shake her; he was beginning to make the weather now. He went on, ‘And what did you do, when you went out that evening? Take a wee trip up to Fuill’s Inlat, to set up the lanterns once you knew there was a call-out?’

  ‘Lanterns? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t go out until my son and I went to the scene of the tragedy.’

  ‘So you were here in the house all evening.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes, alone.’

  ‘Your son wasn’t here, then?’

  After a barely perceptible pause she said, ‘No.’

  ‘And you’d no visitors? No phone calls?’

  ‘Not as far as I remember.’

  Dorothy had made her replies firmly. He could see from her face that she thought she was being believed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘So you couldn’t possibly have been at Fuill’s Inlat, being in all evening like you were?’

  ‘No.’ The response came straight back.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I told you, no!’ She was more uncertain now, watching him from under those hooded lids.

  MacNee said, conversationally, ‘You’re lying, Mrs Randall.’

  ‘L-lying?’ He had her on the run now. She had turned pale; her hands were twisting the ends of the chair arms as if they were door handles. ‘How dare you—’

  ‘Och, it’s not hard to be brave when you’ve got someone by the short hairs,’ he drawled. ‘Tell me about you going out.’

  ‘I – I,’ she licked her dry lips, ‘I don’t know why you should think I was out.’

  ‘Eyewitness.’ He was fairly enjoying this; he’d better watch and not get carried away with himself.

  ‘If someone told you that, they were mistaken, that’s all.’

  MacNee made a pantomime of consulting his notebook. ‘Just after the maroons went off, you drove out in your car.’

  ‘That old witch next door – she spends her life spying on me!’ Dorothy’s face clouded over with fury, but she hadn’t lost the place. ‘Of course, she gets very confused, you know—’

  ‘Funny, she didn’t sound confused about this. She’d make a good witness. Very clear.’

  Dorothy paused, breathing fast, calculation showing in her face. Then she said, carefully, ‘I did go out, very briefly. I’d forgotten all about it at first – that was why I didn’t mention it. Then, when you started making all these wild accusations, I thought I would be foolish to admit to it. I knew it was totally innocent, but you were clearly planning to make something of it. Just as you are now. And I would point out I wasn’t making this statement under oath.’

  She was good. Oh, she was good. With a certain reluctant admiration MacNee went on, ‘So where did you go, on this brief expedition that wasn’t to Fuill’s Inlat – unless, of course, we find another eyewitness and you mind that you went there after all?’

  ‘All I did,’ she said with dignity, ‘was pop down to Lewis’s house. I do that so often, you see, I barely think of it as going out. When I heard the maroons, I thought I’d go round to see if he wanted to come up for a meal or something.’

  ‘Could you not have phoned?’ He’d read Kingsley’s notes: Lewis Randall had denied having any visitors or phone calls. She was, he hoped, walking into a trap she had made for herself.

  ‘I didn’t want to interrupt if he was working. He might have felt obliged to accept – he’s always been such a caring son.’ Dorothy was definitely warming to her story now. ‘This way I wouldn’t disturb him. I drove down to the house then walked round the back to his study, where the lights were on. He was very busy at his desk so I just got back into the car and drove home.’

  Damn, damn, damn! MacNee’s own lips compressed with irritation; he hated being outflanked and he wasn’t giving up. ‘So you would have been away for – what? Five minutes?’

  ‘I should think so, more or less.’

  ‘So if someone said it was longer than that, they’d be lying?’ In fact, the helpful neighbour had unhelpfully become engrossed in her favourite soap and had been unable to say when the car returned.

  ‘Confused, anyway, as I said before.’

  MacNee got up, putting his notebook away, and she too rose. Her tone was gracious as she said, ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, it was foolish of me not to be entirely open with you once I remembered my little expedition.’ It was clear she thought the worst was over.

  ‘Oh, worse than foolish, Mrs Randall.’ Tam smiled, and her face changed. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘us lot have nasty suspicious minds. When someone tells us black lies we wonder why and start sniffing around because, you see, innocent folk tell the truth even when no one asks them to swear on the Bible. I think we’re going to be getting to know each other quite a lot better.’

  ‘Is that a threat, Sergeant?’ The thin lips were quivering now.

  ‘Och, not at all! Think of it as a promise.’ He went to the door, still smiling, and as he did so his eye was caught by a book in the big bookcase.

  ‘Tide tables, Mrs Randall? You a sailor?’

  ‘I – I used to crew for my husband and son, a few years ago.’

  ‘But you’ve never thrown them away, though they’re no use to you now?’

  She wasn’t slow to recognise the significance of his query. ‘There are dozens of books there that I haven’t looked at for years! I don’t throw books away!’ she protested wildly.

  ‘Very wise. You never know when they may come in handy.’ MacNee walked away from her agitated protests and let himself out, shutting the front door behind him with self-satisfied delicacy.

  Pondering on his interview with Willie Duncan, Jon Kingsley walked back from the lifeboat shed along Shore Street. His suggestion that someone had told Willie he wasn’t the intended victim had hit the nail on the head – the man’s reaction proved it. But it didn’t prove that reassurance was true.

  Jon didn’t want it to be true. He badly wanted to believe that this was all part of the drugs scene he knew and understood. If it weren’t, he was in unknown – he had almost said enemy – territory where MacNee and Kerr had the advantage because of their familiarity with the slow, boring process of getting people to talk, then talking to more people, then sifting what they said, swirling it all around like a panhandler hoping for a gold nugget among the dross. He was a young man in a hurry; he liked the dangerous buzz of undercover work and the fireworks of the police raid once you had suckered them in. He’d been lucky in that last operation but there were too many other bright young men doing much the same thing in the big cities and he was going to have to stand in line for promotion, so he’d taken the gamble that in a small local force he could make rank quickly then ask for a transfer back. But if this wasn’t about drugs . . .

  Deep in his thoughts and scowling moodily, Jon didn’t notice the woman coming along the pavement towards him until she said, ‘Cheer up! It may never happen!’

  ‘Tansy! Any joy?’ He switched on a smile instantly.

  Kerr wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m on my third cup of weak supermarket instant coffee, and all anyone’s said is that Rob Anderson was a diamond geezer who adored his wife, and the only person who got across him was his ratbag stepson. His wife – still in shock, poor thing – speaks to a blameless life.

  ‘Oh, there was this wifie told me some bloke he chucked out of the pub a couple of weeks ago said he’d get him, then just when I thought I’d a lead she goes, “Aye, but he was a wee thing fou’ at the time. He’s really a douce enough laddie.” I’ll have to check him out, but I’m not exactly hopeful. If everyone bounced for being lairy
committed multiple murder we’d be knee-deep in bodies every Sunday morning.’

  Kingsley grinned. ‘So I needn’t expect a call to help you make a dramatic arrest, then?’

  ‘You could say. Just more foot-slogging. What about you?’

  ‘Oh, Duncan was happy enough to talk to me. Just not about anything remotely useful.’

  ‘Story of my life. I’d better away and get on with it. Where are you headed?’

  ‘Not sure. Probably back to HQ, to record my non-existent progress. I’ve yesterday’s report on the Randalls to write up as well, when Tam deigns to give me back my notes.’

  Kerr either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the bitterness in his tone, unwrapping a stick of chewing-gum as she went on her way.

  Kingsley glanced at his watch. It was nearly half-past twelve; the doctors’ surgery probably closed around then on a Saturday. Was there any chance he might catch Muriel Henderson leaving for home? She might not be on duty but it was worth a try. He hurried back to his car.

  Tam MacNee, eating the pie and crisps he had bought from the ‘8 ’til Late’, was heading towards the Elders’ desirable residence on the coast road south of Knockhaven. He wasn’t sure who he might find there – Elder alone, Mrs alone, the two of them together, or frustratingly, no one at all.

  As he turned in at the entrance to Bayview House, he pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Elder must be doing all right: the porch with its massive pillars alone must have cost about the same as the MacNees’ three-bedroom villa. A powder-blue Mercedes coupé was parked outside and through the huge windows of the wing to the left he could see tables and loungers round a swimming pool that looked bigger than the public one in Kirkluce, not that he was intimately acquainted with it. In MacNee’s view water’s place was in a bath with a wee rubber duck on top.

  The woman who answered the door was a surprise. He’d expected someone glamorous enough to match these surroundings but she was short and a bit overweight, wearing black trousers and a green top with the ‘Cotton Traders’ logo.

  ‘Mrs Elder?’ He held up his ID card and the woman snorted with laughter.

  ‘You think! No, she’s through the house. I just get to clean it. You’d better come in.’

  ‘Big job you’ve got.’ MacNee followed her across a spacious hall, its main feature a curving staircase with an elaborate wrought-iron balustrade at one side.

  ‘There’s the three of us, mornings. It’s not bad – there’s a bit of company and the money’s good. She expects things done right but she’s not for ever on your back. And she’ll sit and have a cup of coffee and a blether like anyone else.’

  ‘Is Mr Elder in?’

  She paused, not averse to a bit of the gab. Carefully lowering her voice, she said, ‘We’ve barely seen him since all this happened. It’s maybe just lifeboat stuff – you know he’s kind of in charge? – but he’s been in a rare state. We all think—’ She stopped. ‘But maybe I shouldn’t—’

  ‘Ashley Randall?’ he prompted.

  ‘Aye. And her a doctor, too! We’ve all been fair scandalised.’ There was pleasurable horror in her tone.

  ‘Did you ever see any evidence? Her coming to the house, maybe, when Mrs Elder wasn’t there?’

  All he got was a scornful ‘Naw! Far too canny, that pair, to let anyone catch them at it.’

  ‘So how did you know what was going on?’

  This time, there was a pitying look. ‘Everyone knew. I’d better take you in.’ She knocked on a door at the back of the hall. ‘Mrs Elder? That’s the polis to see you.’

  So yet again, all that Tam had was evidence that there had been gossip, which in a place like this was like saying there was a bit of traffic in London. Was it at all possible that the ‘affair’ had been based on rumour and nothing else?

  The reception he got on this visit was in marked contrast to his earlier assignment. As he came into the light, airy, modern room with its pale wood floors, huge cream leather sofas and big windows on to a patio with tubs full of winter pansies, a woman got up and came towards him, her hand outstretched. She was too skinny for MacNee’s taste – he liked a bit of an armful – but you’d have to say she was pretty enough, with that kind of glossy look you can buy if you’re rich enough. She was a bit like the china ladies on Dorothy Randall’s mantelpiece with her neat features and a wee rosebud mouth; she had highlighted blonde hair and she was making good use of the sweeping lashes round her big grey eyes as she looked up at MacNee.

  ‘You’ll have come about this awful lifeboat thing. I’m afraid Ritchie’s not here but if I can be of any help—’

  ‘It was really you I came to see, Mrs Elder.’

  It didn’t faze her. ‘I’m flattered. Come and sit down and I’ll get Rhona to bring us some coffee. And those muffins Davina made this morning – unless you greedy lot finished them, Rhona?’

  Rhona denied the accusation demurely enough but MacNee noticed a repressed smile. He wasn’t sure how a muffin would sit on top of pie and crisps, but in the interests of a cosy atmosphere he’d maybe have to force himself.

  Joanna Elder was chattering on. ‘It’s been terrible for my husband. I didn’t know Rob or Luke but I know Ritchie really valued them both. And Lewis and Ashley Randall were such good friends of ours, dedicated doctors, too – it’s a serious blow to the community. Then there’s been the Press – we’ve had to switch off the phone – and of course the police enquiry on top of that. I still can’t get my head round the idea that it wasn’t an accident. I suppose you’re absolutely sure?’

  After Dorothy Randall’s reticence, this avalanche of information left MacNee feeling almost battered. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he murmured.

  ‘I can’t imagine how anyone could do this. Vandals, possibly – but I hear that you think it’s something to do with drugs? My ladies here always keep me up to date with what’s going on. Oh, Rhona, thank you so much.’

  Rhona set down a tray with a cafetière and a plate piled with chocolate muffins. MacNee accepted one, then was surprised when Joanna took one herself. From the look of her, he wouldn’t have guessed she was into chocolate muffins. But she ate it greedily and then to his astonishment helped herself to another one before he’d even peeled off the paper case on his. At least it stopped her talking long enough to let him put in a question.

  ‘It must have been kind of a difficult night. When did you hear what was happening? Did you know there’d been a call-out?’

  ‘The coastguard phoned here first so I told them to contact Ritchie’s mobile. He’d had to go to the new houses because they were having a special open night for prospective buyers and he’d left earlier. Then later one of the reserve crew phoned explaining Ritchie would be late.’

  MacNee jotted that down. ‘You didn’t speak directly to Mr Elder?’

  Joanna shook her head. ‘I knew he’d be very involved in the rescue – he didn’t need me interrupting.’

  ‘And you didn’t go along to Fuill’s Inlat yourself? Offer your support?’ MacNee persisted.

  ‘Do you think I’d have been welcome? They’re serious pros, these guys, and the last thing they need is useless bystanders wringing their hands and getting in the way. No, I had a quiet night in, in front of the telly, until my husband came home and then, of course, we were up till the wee small hours – he was much too upset to go to bed, as you can imagine.’ Her eyes were wide and innocent.

  He decided to go straight to the point. ‘Mrs Elder—’

  ‘Oh, Joanna, please.’

  He ignored her. ‘Were you aware of the rumour that Ashley Randall and your husband were having an affair?’

  ‘No! Is that what they’re saying?’ She sounded amused. ‘Not that it surprises me. Ashley was a bit of a flirt, and in this place that’s all it would take. No, I assure you Ritchie and I have a very happy marriage. In fact,’ she indicated a pile of coloured brochures on the table at her side, ‘we’ve been discussing a holiday when this is all over. Ritchie’s going to need a break
– he’s been so stressed that I’m positively worried about him.’ Her voice was level, but she was folding one of the discarded paper cases on her plate smaller and smaller.

  MacNee’s instinct as a street-fighter was to go head-to-head, but Marjory had told him often enough that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. She’d have been proud of him so far and he didn’t want to put Joanna on the defensive before he had more to go on. He got up.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Elder. You’ve been very helpful. And the muffins were great.’

  ‘I’ll pass that on to Davina. I can’t resist them, myself.’ She led the way to the door.

  ‘So just to recap. Your husband left at – what? Half-past six or so?’ She nodded. ‘And he arrived back—?’

  ‘Oh, well after midnight, poor man.’

  ‘And you were here all evening?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ The grey eyes were guileless, as they had been throughout the conversation. You’d swear she couldn’t utter an untruth, what with all those lumps of butter unmelted in her mouth. And it might be the truth, at that. But there was still something about her flawless presentation that had MacNee’s antennae not so much twitching as doing a Highland fling.

  Out in the hall, Rhona was busy with some dusting and looked up as they came out. ‘Do you want me to show the sergeant out, Mrs Elder?’

  Joanna shrugged. ‘Fine. Thanks, Rhona. And goodbye, Sergeant. I hope I told you everything you wanted?’

  ‘And more,’ MacNee assured her gravely. She went back into her sitting room as Rhona escorted him to the front door. Her presence in the hall hadn’t looked like coincidence to him and he waited with interest to see what was on her mind.

  Sure enough, she looked over her shoulder to make sure her boss was safely out of the way, then said, ‘We were just having a chat in the kitchen – you know you asked me about Mr Elder? None of us ever saw anything, but I tell you what’s weird. She’s barely been eating a morsel for weeks now and spending half the day working out, but since all this happened she’s been stuffing her face and never looked near the gym. We were wondering if she’s maybe pregnant – eating for two, ken? – but it’s a funny thing even so.’