‘Suppose I see what you mean,’ he said gruffly. ‘But I’m still not convinced.’
That was the opening. A rat on its way up a drainpipe would have been left standing by the speed of her response. ‘Nor am I, Donald. But we can’t be seen to be ignoring leads in a murder case, can we? The sister’s up here writing an article on foot-and-mouth for the Sunday Tribune and I don’t want the Galloway Constabulary’s failure to investigate properly to be the subject of her next in-depth feature.’
Bailey shuddered visibly. ‘Certainly not. All right, Marjory, carry on. But there has to be a limit on this thing – if it doesn’t turn up something a bit more concrete in the next couple of days, we go back to the original theory. All right?’
Pleased with the effectiveness of her advocacy, Fleming was walking down the corridor before she remembered that she hadn’t even thought about her request for leave, let alone mentioned it.
Tomorrow. She’d do it tomorrow.
It wouldn’t turn! Stiff with disuse, the key resisted Laura’s attempts to lock the door to the guest suite. Her hands were shaking too, which didn’t help. She made herself stop for a deep, calming breath, then took the key out and jiggled it delicately back in again. This time it locked; with a half-sob of relief she went through to the sitting-room and sat down heavily on a sofa. The images she had seen on the screen still tumbled horribly through her mind: the crazed eyes, the fangs, the claws and the hair, the savaged victims . . .
After the first site, she’d checked back through the computer record: four other therianthropy sites had recently been accessed, all bizarre, all unhealthy. With her ears straining for the sound of footsteps in the hall, she’d taken the risk of running a Google check on the word and found thousands of entries; the ones you stumbled on easily came into the ‘wacky but normal’ category. The four which someone in this house had sought out last night most definitely did not.
She’d realised instantly what she knew about the word. It was the broader term, derived from the Greek for ‘wild beast’, for the condition known to psychiatrists as lycanthropy.
Were-wolves. These had been the images displayed, but the text had reminded her that there were many forms of were-creatures: were-bears, were-leopards, were-bats . . . Were-bulls?
Laura wasn’t superstitious. Certainly not! These were pitiable, delusional people and she was a rational scientist – but it was easier to be rational when you weren’t imprisoned by the elements in the wilds of Scotland in a house with a dysfunctional family, one of whom might have killed your sister.
The huge sash windows gaped at her blackly, great sheets of glass which a tap with a stone would shatter. And she had locked herself in; it had occurred to her at the time that unlocking the door again might prove even harder than locking it had. It wasn’t paranoid to try to work out a strategy for security, she told herself; it was purely common sense.
Then Laura noticed the shutters – solid, Victorian shutters on either side of the window. They didn’t look as if they had been painted since the pine had been varnished when the house was built and sure enough when she pulled them they creaked open. The backs were thick with dust and cobwebs but for once she didn’t care about spiders as she unhooked the solid iron bar and swung it into position to secure them. She breathed a quick prayer that the bedroom was similarly untouched.
She was lucky. It too had working shutters, so here in her self-constructed fortress no one could reach her. She even felt secure enough to feel ashamed that she’d allowed the power of myth to spook her. Especially since the psychological reality was probably more scary still.
That story the Mason cousins had told her, about Dizzy’s death being a terrible accident, covered up by Max’s father – the Minotaur, as Max called him – didn’t ring true. Who would take a risk like that for the sake of a bull – unless, of course, he believed himself to be that bull, believed rightly or wrongly that in his altered shape he had committed murder?
Shape-shifters – that was another term for them, a name that ran through the history and mythology of a dozen different cultures. And from the evidence she had seen this afternoon there were still plenty of people out there who believed an animal spirit to be an integral part of their being. For some it was an affectation, for others a sort of spiritual, New Age-style identification with the favoured beast.
For others, like the originators of the sites which had so recently been accessed, it was a darker belief altogether. These were people who believed they changed physically, who externalised violent internal conflict by projecting the guilt for their actions on to the animal which ‘took over’ their personality. Three of the sites that Laura had seen celebrated savage crime allegedly committed while in a state of metamorphosis; the fourth, sad and sick, talked of a struggle against an irresistible compulsion.
It wasn’t Jake Mason who’d been looking at these last night. And, she thought suddenly, it wasn’t Jake who had been bellowing and trampling the snow outside her window last night, either. What would have happened if she’d gone outside to investigate? Was that what had happened to Dizzy?
Conrad had definitely said that the pathologist’s verdict was that she had been gored by a bull’s horn. But surely there were other things which could make that sort of wound? Or a horn could be taken from a carcase, perhaps, and used as a weapon in a lycanthropic frenzy?
According to both Max and Conrad, Dizzy had been maddening in her desirability. She’d provoked a frenzy of rivalry and tension; Laura, after her own experience, could readily believe that day in, day out, that sort of atmosphere in this claustrophobic setting might produce the sort of internal stress which could only find relief in an outburst. Jealousy is a powerfully destructive emotion in any of its forms: it wasn’t hard to construct scenarios leading to murder.
‘If I can’t have you, no one else will.’
‘If I kill you, he will suffer.’
‘If my son chooses you, I will lose him.’
She could hear them saying it, could almost imagine one of them saying it now . . . She went very cold. This wasn’t speculation about something that had happened fifteen years ago. The same pressures were present, the same people were within these four walls.
Except the Minotaur. Max’s monster had been trapped, if not slain, but somehow the maze of human relationships and emotions here at Chapelton seemed as dark and as dangerous as ever.
20
It was the grinding sound of heavy machinery that woke her, followed a moment later by the loud and persistent ringing of a doorbell. Laura opened her eyes to total blackness; with a sense of panic she sat bolt upright, unable to work out where she was or what time it was, aware only of the pounding of her heart and some unspecific fear.
She had been very deeply asleep. Last night, she had refused to leave her rooms on the pretext of having a headache; she had gone to bed hungry after a supper of black instant coffee and a bar of chocolate she found in her handbag, prepared for a sleepless and fearful night.
The exhaustion of strain and grief over the past few days had proved her friend, though. Sleep had come with the force of a jack-hammer and as she groped now for the light-switch she realised that she had no idea whether or not there had been bellowing in the night or even whether any attempt had been made to breach her shuttered stronghold. She became aware, too, of a fast, steady drip-drip-dripping from outside, and then of the sound of raised voices in the hall. She got out of bed, went to the window, unlatched the shutters and opening one side a careful few inches, peered round it.
Yesterday’s fluffy piles of snow had collapsed like a fallen soufflé in a spectacular thaw. Underfoot was a grey, greasy soup of ice and water and as Laura watched, a huge slab of snow slid down the roof with a sound like distant thunder to explode with a noisy splash on the ground below. Snowmelt was dripping from the eaves above so fast that it was like looking out through a waterfall.
In front of the house there were three police cars parked; the front door wa
s open and two uniformed men were standing talking at the top of the steps. A police Land Rover had just driven up and Laura recognised Detective Inspector Fleming at the wheel.
The machinery noise was coming from a yellow digger which was rumbling up the track towards her from the direction of the fields. It stopped beside a straggling hedge then, extraordinarily, made a 90-degree turn and drove straight through it. Seconds later DI Fleming came past the window in a sheepskin jacket, with her trousers tucked into wellington boots, kicking up spray as she hurried after the digger.
Trying to make sense of what she had seen, Laura closed over the shutter again. There had obviously been some major new development and as she bathed and dressed she tried to work out what it might be, without any real success. It was unlikely that the police would have made the discovery Laura herself had made yesterday, but if there was other evidence which had made them doubt the Masons’ favoured explanation, hers could only reinforce it – as long as she could persuade them to take it seriously and not dismiss it as fanciful. She’d have to try to get hold of DI Fleming, who seemed an impressive and intelligent woman.
Certainly her own problems were at an end. She could safely emerge for some breakfast and ask to be taken back to Kirkluce after she’d spoken to the inspector.
Her misgivings about the stiffness of the key proved unfounded; it turned easily enough and she emerged cautiously into an empty hall. A draught of damp air swept in from the open front door and through it she caught a glimpse of the police cars outside. There was the sound of men’s angry voices coming from the study.
Laura hesitated, but only for a moment. She was ravenous, and she knew where the kitchen was. With any luck, she would have it to herself.
Marjory Fleming looked on watchfully as the digger flattened a broad track into the maze, leaving a trail of debris in its wake as the uprooted bushes were crushed into the muddy slush.
The driver leaned out of his cab. ‘This far enough?’
‘Five feet more,’ she called back to him. He gave her a thumbs-up, obliged, then clanked back out the way he had come.
A white van nosed in as the digger cleared the space, carrying the men in white paper suits and the pegs and tape and spades and plastic bags they would need for their operation. They jumped out to join Fleming as she stood looking at what was left of the blind alley near the gate; only the back hedge and a few feet of the side hedges remained.
She indicated the area to be dug out by hand and stayed to supervise the pegs being put into place, then she left them to it. She wasn’t expecting dramatic discoveries; the soil they dug up would be sent to the lab for analysis and if this was, indeed, where the killing had taken place it might have a story to tell. Blood traces remained in the earth for a lot longer than fifteen years.
It all seemed pretty flimsy in the cold, grey light of the wet, dreich winter’s day as Fleming plodded back towards the house. Tam MacNee had gone off to lift Scott Thomson and give him the third degree, in so far as police regulations allowed; perhaps something might come out of that. She was in a pessimistic mood this morning, though – pessimistic about everything, in fact. Bill was still acting like a zombie and Marjory had been forced to endure a phone call from a neighbouring farmer, giving her his opinion of a woman who wasn’t there for her husband when he needed her.
She’d wondered bitterly if he’d have thought a man should stay home from his work to hold his wife’s hand if she had a problem, but she managed not to say it. This was someone who was concerned about Bill, so they were on the same side, at heart; she’d explained calmly that the murder investigation she was responsible for had reached a crucial stage but would soon be over, when she could take leave.
Did she believe it, though? The picture seemed to be becoming murkier and murkier, the evidence more and more contradictory. She was convinced that the accident theory was pointing them in the wrong direction, but how could she ever prove it? The only person who might know the truth was silent in a hospital bed.
She’d felt very nervous at the start of this, her first real murder enquiry. As it went on, when her planning and organisation proved well up to the task, she’d gained confidence but now again she was being battered by doubt. Torn between her professional and her domestic duties, had she allowed herself to be distracted? Was there something she was missing, something another officer – a male officer – would have picked up?
Her father had told her often enough how a man would always outthink a woman. He’d come across the technological term ‘fuzzy logic’ somewhere and gleefully misused it to describe what he believed to be the state of the female brain. Tiredly, Marjory thought that this morning she could hardly argue with him.
She’d certainly never heard a male officer agonise over his responsibilities or wonder whether he was doing the right thing. It wasn’t the culture, of course, and who, after all, had heard Marjory express her fears either? Indeed, suggesting to her subordinates that Big Marge was crippled by self-doubt would be a good way of getting a horse laugh.
The thought cheered her a little. Anyway, there was nothing to be gained by picking over this while there was work to do. She quickened her pace.
As she went up the steps into the house she could hear a woman’s voice from upstairs, high-pitched and hysterical. An officer was coming down the stairs; when he saw Fleming he jerked his head upwards and rolled his eyes.
‘We’ve had a right stramash here! Her upstairs is throwing a fit – we’ve had to send for the doctor – and the men are making a stushie too. The Sarge was saying maybe you could have a word with DS Mason, boss?’
She sighed. ‘What’s his problem?’
‘Seems a wee bittie upset the case is being opened up again. And he’s not happy about their precious maze being ruined – talking about family heritage and stuff. And the other one’s the same, though from what I saw of it they weren’t bothering their backsides about it before.’
‘Hmm. Not sure I see the point of talking to him at this stage. I’ll think about it.’ Fleming glanced round the hall. ‘Where is everyone else?’
‘The Masons took the sergeant into the study to bend his ear. They’re still giving him laldy, from what I can hear.’
‘So they invited us in, technically?’
‘Pretty much dragged us in, when they saw the warrant for digging up the maze.’
‘Excellent. I hadn’t enough to petition for a warrant for the house but they’d be on shaky ground for a complaint if I have a look around now.’
The first door she opened led to an old-fashioned sitting-room with a bedroom beyond which showed signs of temporary rather than permanent occupation. Another door, however, opened into a surprisingly modern and attractive flat, where the heavy woodwork and panelling were painted white and the rooms were decorated with a clever sense of style, mixing handsome antiques and modern furniture with classic lines. Remembering Rosamond Mason’s quiet elegance, Fleming thought she detected her hand at work.
It would have been interesting to see what Brett Mason had done with her territory upstairs (judging by the rest of the house, not much, was Fleming’s guess) but as she came out into the hall a man carrying a medical bag came in at the front door, so she turned her attention to the basement instead.
Here, in what would have been the service quarter of the house, little attempt had been made at updating. Exposed pipes ran along the walls, which were painted shiny dark green to waist level and shiny dark cream above. There was a tide-mark of greasy dust which presumably showed where the reach of the cleaning woman stopped. Fleming opened the first door she came to, then stopped on the threshold.
It was hard to say who was the more surprised, Fleming or the woman sitting at an oilcloth-covered table by the window, a piece of toast half-way to her mouth, but it was Laura who spoke first.
‘Inspector Fleming! Oh, you startled me. I was afraid it was Mrs Mason – I’ve just raided her kitchen for something to eat and I don’t think she’s incli
ned to be hospitable.’
‘Ms Harvey – what on earth are you doing here?’ She was startled and annoyed; the girl had agreed to keep the police informed of her whereabouts and finding her in unofficial residence here made Fleming wonder if what she had said about her relationship with Max Mason had been less than wholly truthful after all.
‘It’s a complicated story. How long have you got? Sorry, that sounded flippant but I do mean exactly that. There’s something very strange I need to tell you about.’
Fleming looked at her sharply, saw her grave expression, and experienced a feeling familiar to her from previous investigations, some serious, some trivial, but always the same instinctive reaction, as if some sixth sense were telling her that this was a defining moment, a turning point.
Irritation forgotten, she sat down at the table. ‘I’ve got as long as it takes.’
This time, Tam MacNee noted with satisfaction, Scott Thomson wasn’t lounging in his seat. In the clinical atmosphere of the interview room, with the formal identification of the subject, Scott Thomson, and the interviewers, DC Nisbet and DS MacNee, completed, he was sitting on the edge of his chair ready to sing like a canary if someone would just whistle the tune, as MacNee described it to DI Fleming later.
The man was hungover, his bright red hair in vivid contrast to the greasy pallor of his pasty complexion. The quality of their mercy had strained to a couple of paracetamol and a carafe of water, but that was as far as it went. When he made an attempt to justify his previous conviction MacNee was brutal in brushing it aside.
‘Cut the cackle. All we want to hear about is what you did to Diana Warwick. Up to your old tricks, were you – following her, pestering her?’
‘I – I never.’ Thomson licked dry lips. ‘Look, I learned my lesson—’
‘You told me yourself you watched her out your window.’
‘Aye, I told you! Would I of done that if I’d done anything more?’
‘Well, that’s an interesting question. I think that’s an interesting question, don’t you, Constable Nisbet?’
Cold in the Earth Page 26
