‘So – next step?’
She groaned. ‘Lewis Randall’s in the clear, anyway. But he’s such a strange man, Bill! It’s almost as if something had been missed out of his personality. Why on earth would someone like that – good-looking, successful – be so thrown by uncertainty and the unfamiliar?’
‘From the sound of his mother, he’s probably always been scared of failing her. Do what you know and it won’t go wrong.’
‘Sometimes you sound almost intelligent. So – where would you go from here?’
‘That’s your job.’ Provokingly, Bill didn’t rise to the dangled bait. ‘You talk, I listen.’
Marjory took a sip of her whisky and brooded for a moment. ‘This time I haven’t a gut feeling for it at all. Lewis was my strongest candidate and he’s off the list. The only thing that struck me, talking to him, was that he was very naive not to have noticed that his mother giving him an alibi was a two-way process. She lied to Tam about not being out when the lifeboat went down and the story she gave him even then was pretty unlikely. She’s been ready to lie about last Saturday too. I saw her at the funeral tea – a formidable woman. You’d cross her at your peril, and Ashley must have been a real thorn in her flesh. She’s not young, of course, and you wouldn’t think scrambling over rocks would be her scene, but Tam seemed to think fitness wouldn’t be an issue. I think I’ll sick Tansy on to her this time, and Tam wants another go at Nat Rettie – there’s a straw in the wind he thinks is significant.
‘The other two in the frame are Joanna Elder and Enid Davis. Joanna – well, killing three people seems kind of extreme. I mean, what do you do for an encore if your husband takes up a new fancy-piece? There’d be such a trail of bodies that even us plods would smell a rat.
‘Enid—’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d go on oath Randall’s never looked at her twice, and you’d have to be clean daft to think getting rid of his wife would mean you could take her place. Added to that, as far as we can make out the rumour about them isn’t widespread and the woman who fed it to Jon is the most poisonous besom imaginable.’
‘She’s probably the one who’s done it, then,’ Bill offered.
Marjory blanched. ‘Don’t even joke about it! What’s haunting me is that we may manage to eliminate all our current suspects – and then what do we do? That’s the stage when they call in another Force to see where you’ve gone wrong – the ultimate humiliation, if they find something obvious you’ve somehow missed.
‘What I really need is time – just to go steadily right through every scrap of information we have and analyse it properly with a clear mind, with no phone calls or meetings or briefings or pressure from Donald and the Press. Like I can see it happening.’
‘Put someone on to it. Your bright young what’s-his-name, maybe?’
‘I suppose I could. It’s not the same as getting a handle on it myself. Still, needs must when the devil drives.’
The logs she had put on the fire were burning through, and Bill gave a huge yawn. ‘Are you determined to boogie on till dawn?’ he asked. ‘In which case, of course, I’m your man, but—’
She got up, laughing, then yawning herself. ‘We’ve struck our blow for youth and freedom. At least, all the blow we’re going to strike. If you’re going to do your rounds, don’t lock up till I’m in. I could smell a fox when I went to shut up the hens so I’m going to take a shotgun and see if I can scare him off, if he’s hanging around.’
Bill looked at her with amusement. ‘You won’t shoot him though, will you, even though you’re a better shot than I am and the beast’s vermin?’
Marjory went pink. ‘Well, I know it’s feeble. I’ll cheer on the hunt and I’ll eat any pheasant anyone’s kind enough to put my way. But I just don’t like something that was alive being dead a minute later because of me.’
‘And you a farmer’s wife!’ Bill teased her. ‘Come on, Meg! You wouldn’t have any scruples about sorting out a fox, would you?’
Marjory made a face at him, then went to the study to fetch the keys to the gun cupboard from the safe.
Bill was at the farther end of the farmyard when he heard a shot, and grinned. There was a long silence, then, just as he reached the house again, another one.
‘Oh, she’s a wild woman, your mistress,’ he told Meg as they went back into the house. He pulled off his boots, then, after waiting a moment or two for Marjory to appear, went through to the kitchen to settle Meg down.
It was only when he had done that and there was still no sign of his wife that he went to the back door and looked out.
‘Marjory!’ he called, then, with mounting unease, ‘Marjory!’
20
‘Here, is this right – Big Marge has shot herself?’ From behind the reception desk, Sergeant Naismith hailed Tam MacNee as he crossed the hall on his way out of the Kirkluce HQ at eight-thirty, carrying a laptop and a bundle of files.
MacNee gave him a scathing look. ‘It’s small wonder we can’t get our convictions in court, with the folk here who can’t get a story straight. Sprained ankle is all.’
Naismith looked disappointed. ‘Andy Macdonald swore a gun came into it somewhere.’
For the third time that morning, MacNee explained. ‘She took out a shotgun, just to scare the daylights out of a fox that was lurking round her hens. She fired once, then jinked around to see where it had gone and fell over a big stone, OK?’
‘I heard that. But did she not shoot herself in the foot as well?’
MacNee sighed. ‘No, she never. She fired again, after, so Bill wouldn’t think she was still waiting round to give the fox the other barrel and go off to his bed. Sound sleeper, Bill, apparently.’
Fleming, on the phone to him at seven-thirty this morning, had been eloquent about the unpleasantness of being unable to walk and afraid crawling would do irreparable damage to an ankle that could be broken, on a clear night with the temperature dropping like a stone and the prospect of no one looking for you till the alarm went at six-thirty next morning. She hadn’t appreciated his comment that at least the fox would be getting a good laugh.
‘She’s working from home for today. She’s wanting Kingsley and Kerr to report to her there – tell them when you see them, will you? And maybe you could remember which story’s the right one when you catch everyone on their way in?’
Naismith was unabashed. ‘Och, I liked the other one better. Kind of dull, just a sprained ankle.’
MacNee contented himself with another withering glance as he left. He dumped his burdens in the back of the car, then headed off on the road to Mains of Craigie. The gritters had been out but on this frosty morning the road surface still glinted white except where other cars had passed already and MacNee, with his early experience in Traffic, drove with suitable respect for the conditions. The sun was no more than a yellowish gleam behind a veil of cloud; it would be a good while before the temperature got above freezing today.
Mains of Craigie was about five miles out of Kirkluce, heading towards Stranraer. He turned in to the rutted farm track by the wrought-iron name sign and bumped up the hill. It was good to see the white dots of sheep back on the low hills round about: not as many as before, but time would take care of that, and at least enough of Bill’s hill flock had been spared to teach the young ones where they belonged.
He parked at the back of the house as usual. As he got out he could hear the sound of a tractor; Bill must be doing whatever it was farmers did at this time of year. MacNee had never concerned himself overmuch with the finer points of agriculture.
He let himself in at the mudroom door, stopped off in the kitchen to look after his own interests by putting on a kettle, then opened the door to the hall and called.
‘Sitting room!’ Fleming’s voice called back.
She was on a couch by the fire with her feet up and a rug over them; she was looking pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and it was obvious she was still in some pain. MacNee had been all ready with a burst of Burns invol
ving mice, men and schemes that gang aft agley, but he was taken aback by her appearance – Marjory, who was normally the picture of robust good health and famously never took a day off sick.
‘Here! Have they not given you something to take for it?’ he said roughly, putting down the laptop and files on a table beside her. ‘You look as if you should be in your bed.’
Fleming smiled wearily. ‘Oh, they have. But if I take it it’ll put me out cold – by the time A&E was finished with me it was two in the morning and I can’t say I got much sleep after.
‘But Tam, this is my chance. I was saying to Bill last night what I needed was a day’s peace to get a grip on the case – and as my mother always said, “Be gey careful what you say you want because you’ll maybe get it.” I’ve got it now and I want to go through everything. We’ve missed something somewhere, Tam – we must have!’
‘It’ll keep till you’re feeling better.’
‘But will it?’ She sat up in her eagerness to make the point, then yelped with pain. ‘I’d my chat with Laura yesterday. She pointed out that this is someone who reacted with deathly violence to what was no more than a low-level threat of suspicion. Once it’s all round the place that Ritchie Elder’s in the clear for the murders, is the Wrecker going to panic? And then what will happen?’
MacNee digested that. ‘So—?’
‘Maybe we’re on the wrong track. Maybe we’ve boxed ourselves in, defined it all too tightly. But for the moment, until I’ve reviewed the evidence, I can’t see any other lines open. We just have to plug away at the suspects we have, try to establish them in a time and place frame, see if there are any cracks—’ She broke off. ‘Is that the others arriving?’
MacNee went to the window. ‘That’s Tansy anyway. Can we go and brew up a cuppa? I wouldn’t think Jon’ll be far behind.’
She’d done it. At least, she probably had. She’d told Nat, anyway, first thing in the morning when at least he wouldn’t be drunk or – or anything. Katy slid over the ‘anything’ in her mind as she’d done before now.
He’d been angry that she still refused to sell the pub, so angry that she could see his neck muscles bulging. But then she’d said about him going to Glasgow, and money, and he’d calmed down. ‘How much?’ had been his immediate question and ‘Not enough’ his prompt response to her answer. It suggested, though, that there might be a way forward, and it certainly showed she’d been daft to imagine even for a minute that he might not want to leave her. That hurt, a bit.
He’d asked for what he called a ‘down-payment’; Katy had nearly £50 in her purse but she meekly gave it all to him. He left, saying he’d be back later ‘to talk some more’ as he put it. She knew what that meant, but she’d find whatever it took. Worth it, to feel safe in her own home.
Katy felt drained already, though, and it was only ten o’clock. Her programme, neatly written out, lay on the kitchen table, though it was tempting to tell herself she was too tired, too sad still, to cope – but then, she’d gone public just so she wouldn’t take the easy way out.
The first item on it was to go to the Cash and Carry. It might be a chore but there’d be people around and she didn’t fancy solitude just at the moment. It would be better than sitting going through all those memories that would get her crying again and she was feeling low anyway; she’d been more upset than she had expected to be by Nat’s making it plain that his only use for her was as a source of cash. She’d need to do a check on the stocks first; with all these people in and out helping they would be getting low.
Picking up a notebook and her keys, she went downstairs to the little hallway where a door led into the back premises of the pub. The store was a small room with metal shelves floor to ceiling and opposite the door a narrow window looking out to the quiet street at the back.
Notebook in hand, Katy bent down to check on cleaning supplies. They’d gone through a lot of Barman’s Friend and washing-up liquid; she was just making a note when she had a sudden thought. She hadn’t been aware of looking out of the window, but she must have glanced out automatically as she came in and now it occurred to her that there had been something strange.
She straightened up and looked again. No, she’d been right: her car was missing. She could see Rob’s, there in the garage where she’d asked her neighbours to put it when they brought it back from the hospital, but of her own small Peugeot there was no sign.
Katy felt sick. She knew what had happened; Nat had taken it again. She’d assumed he’d gone off to school as usual, but he wouldn’t have turned up at school in a car. And why had he wanted that money this morning?
She tried to banish the thought, but it wormed its poisoned way into her mind, to fester there. It had been all round the town yesterday that they weren’t going to be charging Ritchie Elder with murder and they’d be looking elsewhere now. Had Nat taken the car away to have it properly cleaned, somewhere far enough away from Kirkluce not to arouse suspicion?
You don’t know that, she told herself. Of course you don’t. He’s taken the car to go joyriding before. And you’re such a bad mother you don’t even know what’s happened about reporting him the last time; if you tell the police now you could get him put in jail for a second offence. And if that’s all he’s done . . .
Her carefully planned programme forgotten, she stumbled back upstairs to the kitchen and made herself tea with a shaking hand.
‘Is Mrs Elder at home, please?’
It was Ritchie Elder who had opened the door to Jonathan Kingsley, though if he hadn’t been in his own home Kingsley doubted if he would have recognised him. He was wearing jeans and a shirt that looked as if he’d slept in it, the greying stubble on his chin was well past the designer stage and his eyes were bloodshot and bleary. He’d lost weight and the flesh around his chin was sagging into jowls.
‘How would I know?’ he snarled. ‘You don’t think she tells me what she’s doing, do you?’
He turned and walked – no, shambled away, disappearing down a corridor to the right of the hall, leaving Kingsley standing uncertainly on the doorstep.
He was feeling uncomfortable in his skin this morning anyway. Being made to feel a failure was a new experience and he didn’t like it. He was suffering from a burning sense of injustice; he’d brought Operation Songbird to a brilliant conclusion for them, after all, but that seemed to have been forgotten because he’d gone out on a limb about Elder being the Wrecker and had been proved wrong, which could happen to anyone. And MacNee’s patronising kindness last night had made it worse. As it was probably meant to, Kingsley reflected sourly.
And today, when they’d all had to have their briefing in a shabby farmhouse sitting room – and how professional was that? – he’d made a play for doing the interview with Dorothy Randall. He’d read a lot of stuff yesterday afternoon when he’d been sitting in the CID room trying to ignore the sideways looks, and his money was on her. If they were looking for someone with tunnel vision, no scruples and steely determination, she was your woman, and what he badly needed now was to be associated with a successful outcome.
But oh no, Big Marge wasn’t having that. He and Tam had both spoken to Mrs Randall before and she was looking for a fresh take on it, so Tansy was to have a crack at her after she’d spoken to the receptionist woman. Tam had been banging on about Rettie for days and he was welcome to him, as far as Kingsley was concerned. He was a lot less happy about his own assignment, interviewing Joanna Elder; it hadn’t seemed to occur to anyone that it could put him in an unpleasant, even dangerous position if Elder had discovered who was behind his arrest. He hadn’t wanted to mention it himself; he could just imagine MacNee’s curled lip at this evidence that Kingsley was, in his native patois, ‘feart’.
Still, it didn’t look as if Elder had even recognised him as one of the officers present at his interrogation. And he’d left the front door open, too; that must constitute permission to enter.
Kingsley felt a right idiot, though, wandering around th
e huge entrance hall, feeling he ought to tiptoe because his footsteps echoed so loudly. He stopped in the middle, listening. There was the faint sound of women’s voices coming from somewhere towards the back of the house, then a burst of laughter which seemed incongruous in this troubled place. He was just heading towards a door under the staircase when he heard a loud splash from somewhere to his left where, as he drove up, he had noticed there was a swimming pool. He tapped on the door on that side, then opened it.
Outside the long windows there was still frost lingering where the shadows fell on the drive and the lawn outside, but the sun was just breaking through; with its rays touching the blue of the water and the warmth inside, the Elders’ tropical paradise seemed particularly exotic and inviting.
Kingsley glanced appreciatively at his luxurious surroundings – yup, if he became a drugs baron he’d definitely want something like this – then saw the small figure in the pool, powering away from him at a fast racing crawl. He wasn’t a bad swimmer himself but even so he reckoned she could beat him over the first length or two. He went forward to stand by the edge of the pool.
She didn’t notice him, even after her kick-turn, until she drew almost level, then, turning her head to breathe caught sight of him, gasped, took in a mouthful of water and came up, spluttering and coughing.
‘Who the hell are you? What are you doing here?’ Joanna demanded when she could speak again, treading water.
He flipped out his warrant-card. ‘DC Kingsley. Your husband let me in.’
He saw her mouth tighten. ‘Did he?’ was all she said, then swam with long, economical strokes to the steps at the end. She was wearing a dark pink one-piece, the same colour as the varnish on her toenails, and there was a pale pink robe lying nearby which she fetched and belted round her. Her hair was plastered to her head and she was, by his reckoning, a bit too skinny, but she had grey eyes with long lashes still spiky with moisture which, after an assessing look at him, she was now employing to great effect. The mouth which had been a tight line was now smiling widely, exposing a row of cosmetically perfect and very white teeth.
The Darkness and the Deep Page 30
