Dorothy was wearing a raspberry-coloured polo-neck that looked like cashmere; it almost seemed as if the dye was seeping out of it, up her neck and into her face.
‘I can’t imagine what you think you mean.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you do, if you think about it.’ Surely the woman had to have prepared herself for this line of questioning! Big Marge had called her son’s bluff last night and by now he must have tipped her off.
‘I’m sorry, Constable, you’ll have to be rather less cryptic.’
‘OK, if you like. Could you tell me what you were doing on the night of October twentieth, when Mr Duncan was killed, please?’
This was Dorothy’s opportunity to play her ‘senior moment’ card. ‘Oh, of course, I’m terribly sorry, I’m afraid I got it confused with another night – silly me!’ Kerr could have written the script for her. Instead, she said, ‘I’ve made a statement about that already.’
With unholy joy, Kerr realised she didn’t know, after all. Had Lewis been afraid to tell Mummy he’d failed to convince?
‘Maybe you could repeat it to me,’ she suggested. ‘Just briefly.’
Dorothy sat straighter in her chair and repeated, in a firmer voice now, the account her son had given. It was, as far as Kerr could remember of what the boss had said, almost word for word the same. She let the woman finish, then contrived a lengthy pause, with her own head bent over the notebook she was holding as if in contemplation.
Then she looked up. ‘I’ve got a wee problem with that. Your son told DI Fleming that same story, and then had to admit there wasn’t a word of truth in it.’
The flush of colour drained so rapidly from Dorothy’s face that Kerr thought for a moment she would faint. ‘My – my son said that?’
‘Yes. And you see, there was a record of him working on his computer so he couldn’t have been here. Or down in the town murdering Willie Duncan either.’
‘Oh God! He told me you said he was clear, but I thought . . .’ She was visibly shaken.
‘You thought he meant we’d swallowed your story? The thing is, your son seemed to think it was all designed just to deflect any suspicion from him—’
‘It was, it was! The moment you found out that – that creature was betraying him, you’d have made up your mind that he killed her! And after that, you wouldn’t bother to look for another solution. The police never do – oh, we’ve had experience of this in the past! That’s why I wanted him to say he was with me. I’m his mother – I had to protect him!’
‘Yes, we always look a bit sideways at the alibis mothers give their sons. But in your case there’s another way of looking at it that didn’t seem to occur to him. His story was protecting you just as much as yours was protecting him.’
‘But I swear to you—’
Kerr laughed. ‘Now, if I had a fiver for every time some villain’s said that to me I’d be having smoked salmon and champagne for my lunch every day. We’re not daft enough to think that the words “I swear” mean you’re going to tell us the truth.
‘So can I take it you are stating you were here on your own that evening? And that no one can confirm it?’
Dorothy nodded as if speech was almost beyond her, but she was making a visible effort to regain control. Tam had warned Tansy this wasn’t a stupid woman; despite her agitation that brain was working furiously. It would be a mistake to lose momentum.
‘Let’s move on now to the night the boat was wrecked. You were out of the house in your car, down at your son’s house, you said. But you see, we think that’s kind of a fishy story. It’s not where you were, is it?’
‘I – I was only trying to give my son an alibi for that night too. For the same reason – because of Elder and Ashley.’ She spat out her daughter-in-law’s name.
‘That’s all very well. But you didn’t come up with this great alibi till DS MacNee told you he knew you’d been out in the car that night. I’m not dumb, Mrs Randall. Come on, what did you really do that night? Take a wee trip out to Fuill’s Inlat, to get rid of the daughter-in-law you couldn’t stand?’
Dorothy got up and began to pace the room. Perhaps it was anxiety that drove her, perhaps it was to give her time to think up her cover story, away from Kerr’s direct scrutiny.
‘I didn’t go to Fuill’s Inlat – of course I didn’t. That’s a most ridiculous insinuation. But I admit that I didn’t go to my son’s house either. I went down to watch the boat being launched.’
Oh, sure! ‘The last time I checked, that was still legal,’ Kerr said acidly. ‘Why wouldn’t you just have said that at the start?’
‘Because I was spying!’ The woman spun round and snarled the word. ‘I’m not a sensation-seeker, for God’s sake! I went down and mixed with the crowd in the darkness because I wanted to see Elder and Ashley together – you can always tell when something’s going on. Muriel Henderson told me it was but she has a wicked tongue and Lewis had warned me off – he was always defensive about his marriage – but if I saw it for myself, I’d have risked telling him outright to stop him looking a fool.’
If she’d made that up on the spot, it was quite good going. There was a glaring flaw, though. ‘I can see you’d maybe not want your son knowing that. But why wouldn’t you tell DS MacNee – an innocent wee trip down to see the boat launched?’
‘And have him mention it to Lewis? When I’ve never done that in my life? He’d have known immediately, and what would it have done to our relationship – with his wife just newly dead he finds out I’d been spying on her? Anyway, why should I tell anyone? – I hadn’t done anything wrong.’ Her confidence was returning. ‘And then, when I was challenged about it, it struck me I could safeguard Lewis by saying I had seen him at home, which was all I wanted.’
It hung together, in that messy sort of way the truth often did. But Kerr reminded herself that this was the woman who on being caught in a lie by Tam had been quick enough to use it to provide an alibi for her son. ‘What did you do after the boat went out?’ she asked, knowing already what reply she would get, and yes, Dorothy claimed she had come straight home, and it didn’t seem likely anyone could prove she hadn’t. They could ask around, too, to see whether anyone could confirm her story about being at the launch, but even if no one had, it didn’t prove she wasn’t. The enquiry seemed to have been bogged down with this sort of problem right from the start.
There were the other two questions they’d been told to ask; she posed the first of them.
‘Citric acid?’ Dorothy looked surprised. ‘Yes, I should think there’s probably some in the kitchen cabinet. I sometimes make elderflower wine, for instance—’ She broke off. ‘But what is all this about?’
Without answering, Kerr went on to ask about the glass paint.
This time Dorothy was much more cautious. Her eyes narrowed; she said flatly, ‘I can’t think what you imagine I might use it for. Perhaps you could be a little more specific?’
Kerr declined that invitation too, but chancing her arm, asked if she could take the packet of citric acid. It had occurred to her that chemical analysis might be able to match it with the trace they had found on the lamps.
There was a long pause, then Dorothy Randall said with a return to her former hauteur, ‘No, I don’t think so. One is always anxious to help the police, of course, but proper procedures are there to protect the public from over-zealous officers with a case to make.’
Banging her head against a brick wall didn’t appeal. Kerr left, warning Dorothy that she might be summoned to police HQ to make a formal statement and cautioning her not to destroy the packet of citric acid. She didn’t know what she thought herself; quite a lot of that had sounded convincing, but the woman had proved already that she was an unscrupulous and fluent liar. And if there was one thing that wasn’t in doubt, it was that Dorothy Randall would consider that no one’s interests mattered except her son’s, which were clearly, by extension, her own.
Still, she’d love to be a fly on the wall the next tim
e Dorothy spoke to her son. Smacked bottom and straight to bed with no supper for Lewis, having dropped his mother in it like that, she reckoned. She was grinning as she got into her car to drive back to Kirkluce.
The MacEwans’ house was on a small council estate on the southern edge of Knockhaven, a decent enough area compared to places Tam MacNee had known in Glasgow, but they seemed to be doing their best to lower the tone. As he drew up outside, he realised he had been here before. He recognised the rusting motorbike on the side path and the patch of what might loosely be termed a garden, which seemed to produce only a handsome crop of empty bottles, crisp packets, cans and a particularly colourful selection of polystyrene fast-food cartons. The front door still bore the marks made by one of the MacEwan boys when he was resisting arrest.
It was Gladys MacEwan, the matriarch, who opened the door to his knock, her brick-red face taking on a belligerent look when she saw who stood there. From the house came the sound of waves of laughter and applause from a TV on its highest volume setting.
‘What are you after now?’ she demanded, adding, ‘Scum!’ as an afterthought.
‘Well, Gladys, maybe we could have a wee guessing game? You think what the boys have been up to and then you could jalouse which one I might have come for.’ MacNee was smiling broadly; this was where he felt at home, not pussyfooting about in drawing rooms with china ladies on the mantelpiece.
A volley of obscenities was the only response. ‘Don’t fash yourself, Gladys!’ he said soothingly. ‘That was just my wee joke. I’m needing to have a word with Kylie – is she here?’
A younger woman appeared at Gladys’s shoulder, a cigarette in her hand and bright green baffies on her feet. Her hair was metallic blonde, with the dark roots showing, and she was wearing a grubby-looking lycra tracksuit.
‘What are you wanting with my daughter? Kylie’s at the school anyway,’ she said sullenly.
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’
Gladys said, ‘Oh, the wee besom. I’ll give her laldie when she gets back,’ but not in any way which suggested that the promised punishment would have much effect.
‘Do you know where she is?’ MacNee asked, though not hopefully.
‘How would I know? Can’t blame the bairns, can you? It’s that boring at the school – waste of time, mostly. I blame the teachers.’
‘Funny, that. They blame the parents. Maybe it’s time you got together and blamed the kids when they bunk off?’
The two women stared at him blankly; he shrugged and left. Now what? He tried phoning Marjory but she’d switched off, so he left her an encouraging message. Just as well if she got some peace, probably; they needed some really sharp thinking on this one. The local paper he’d picked up this morning was pretty inflammatory stuff that was going to stoke the flames of local anger about their lack of progress.
He might as well go back to HQ and try to get some thinking done himself. Two heads were better than one.
Bill brought them both soup and sandwiches at lunch and ate his quickly before going back to lifting neeps for winter feeding. Marjory had rather expected a clucking visit from her mother, but when she’d phoned to tell her what had happened Janet had seemed preoccupied; she’d been sympathetic but hadn’t immediately offered to rush to the patient’s couch of suffering, leaving her daughter with a faint, unreasonable sense of hurt. It was just as well she hadn’t come, really; it would have been easy to be tempted to a long chat, in time she could ill afford.
Doggedly she went back to her task, trying to stifle the whispers of self-doubt. Her ex-policeman father had always told her scornfully that she wasn’t up to the job he was still determined could only properly belong to a man; she knew it wasn’t true, but only intellectually. Her less rational self, while accepting that she was giving it her best shot, always feared that best still wasn’t good enough. And the first crime in particular, the wrecking of the lifeboat, had struck right to the heart of her own community; failure would be bitter and extremely personal.
Her tiredness was becoming a problem now too. She could only hope it wasn’t making her miss something important. What she was reading seemed, as it had when she’d read it before, uninformative, unhelpful . . .
Suddenly she stopped, stopped and went through again what she had just read. She circled it with her pen. It was a trivial inconsistency, but suddenly she felt that shiver of recognition, that sixth sense she had always had when she was on to something.
It might mean absolutely nothing, but even if it did, it had prompted her towards a whole new angle of enquiry. She should have thought of this sooner, much sooner. She grabbed the phone and switched it on, ignoring the sugary voice that told her she had seven messages.
When she had given her instructions, she lay back on her cushions, frowning. If there was something there, there was a whole other dimension to this which might mean the past two weeks had been totally wasted time looking in the wrong place. Discounting some massive coincidence, it would eliminate almost all of their present suspects. Almost, but not quite. There was one who would suddenly be in prime position.
With her mind racing on, she thought of a remark made by Laura, and something Bill had said too, both of which did suggest a sort of warped rationale. She searched for the sheet of paper where she had scribbled her mind-map; she added to it, drew arrows and loops, and at last encircled a name.
It could be a false dawn. This could be quite as trivial as it appeared to be. But she didn’t think it was. Maybe the little silvery shell there on the table had brought her luck after all.
Tam MacNee hurried out of the Kirkluce HQ, grim-faced, dialling Fleming’s number on his mobile. If she was still switched off, he’d better get out to the farm to brief her on the 999 call which had brought the news of the latest disaster.
The line was engaged. That was a step forward, at least. She was most likely picking up her messages. He’d try again in another couple of minutes.
Fleming cut short Jon Kingsley’s message urging his suspicions of Joanna Elder. She was getting tired of all his geese being swans, and what had clearly emerged from her own researches was that it was pretty unlikely that Joanna could have driven back to the scene of the wreck at three in the morning, when she’d still have been coping with a husband who had arrived home, distraught, well after midnight. It was one of the things she had down on a sheet of paper headed ‘Mistakes’, which was going to form part of a debriefing paper when all this was over.
There were a few messages from HQ, which she also checked briefly, to make sure there was nothing demanding immediate action; she smiled as she listened to Tam’s message saying he hoped all this peace was proving useful and was she getting fish for her lunch to help her brains? She’d contact him shortly, but she was waiting anxiously for a call which just might confirm her new theory. It couldn’t take that long to check up on, surely.
When the phone rang, she snatched it up eagerly, but it wasn’t the call she’d been hoping for.
Tam MacNee was at the other end, and when she heard what he had to say her face stiffened.
‘Come and get me, Tam. No, I’ll manage somehow.’
She switched off, then, wincing with pain, swung her feet on to the floor and reached for her crutches.
22
‘Aaah, it’s so cute!’
‘Isn’t it sweet? What’s its name?’
‘Daisy.’ Laura, waiting at the gates of Kirkluce Academy, smiled at the group gathered round the puppy, which was making a gallant effort to lick the faces of all these new friends simultaneously. There was nothing like a puppy for breaking the ice; she had, with calculation, come to meet Cat taking Daisy as bait and the girls were rising like trout to a tempting fly.
There was Cat coming now, walking alone and a little apart from the noisy, chattering groups of youngsters. There was no sign of anyone with her fitting Marjory’s description of Cat’s undesirable friend Kylie.
Cat’s face lit up when she saw Laura. ‘Hi, Laura! O
h Daisy, haven’t you grown!’ She dropped her bag and crouched down to pat her.
‘Pick her up, if you like,’ Laura urged, and as Cat straightened up with Daisy in her arms the girls clustered round, crooning.
‘Is this one of Meg’s puppies, Cat?’ she heard one plump, cheerful-faced lass say. ‘Dad’s sheepdog’s old now but he’s going to buy one that’s trained instead of a pup – it’s so mean! I love them when they’re puppies.’
One of the other farmers’ daughters, presumably. ‘Another day,’ Laura suggested cunningly, ‘why don’t you see if Cat would bring you for tea, and you could play with Daisy?’
‘Would you, Cat?’ the girl asked hopefully, and another said, ‘Oh, me too!’
‘Sure.’ Cat gave the assurance casually but there was a flush of pleasure in her pale cheeks. Marjory was right, Laura thought; the girl was looking peaky and definitely thinner.
Marjory had phoned that morning to tell her about the accident, and on a suggestion from her Laura had bought home-made meringues from the Copper Kettle in the High Street, caramel-tinged, cream-filled, delectable. While Cat played a squeaky-toy game with Daisy, she fetched them out from the kitchen with a pot of tea for herself and a can of Pepsi, Cat’s favourite tipple.
‘Do you want a glass, or will you drink it straight from the can?’
It was clear that the girl’s mind had been on seeing the puppy, and that the other implications of ‘going to tea’ hadn’t struck her. Her face took on a hunted expression. ‘The can’s fine. But have you any Diet Pepsi?’ she asked awkwardly.
‘Heavens, no!’ Laura said cheerfully. ‘Can’t stand that sort of stuff.’ She opened the can and handed it to her guest. Cat touched it to her lips and set it down on the table beside her. ‘And now – ta-ra!’ Laura presented the plate of meringues with a flourish.
It was instructive to see the child’s reaction. Her tongue came out and licked her lips, then her eyes slid away from the plateful. ‘I’m not really hungry, thanks – I had a big lunch.’
The Darkness and the Deep Page 32
