It was dank and cold, the ground damp and covered with fallen stones, rank grass and nettles. His spirits sinking, he did his best to clear the most sheltered corner, then took off his waterproof jacket and spread it out. Shivering in his shirt sleeves, he piled on layers of clothes and wrapped the blanket round him, then, using his rucksack for a pillow, lay down and shut his eyes. It would be light not much after four, and he could get on his way then. With luck, he’d reach the ferry by lunchtime.
He couldn’t sleep, though. His legs twitched and his mind seemed to twitch too, in spasms of fear. Cold and wretched, he huddled in his corner waiting for daybreak.
Chapter 11
It was raining this morning, with that fine silvery rain which feels soft on your face but can soak you to the skin in minutes. Thick cloud was hanging low over the hills opposite the Mains of Craigie farmhouse and Marjory Fleming, huddled in her hooded waterproof jacket as she fed her hens, was feeling low too.
The hens didn’t like it any more than she did, stumping round unhappily with wet feathers. There had been a major squabble at the feeding trough when Cherie, the alpha hen, launched an unprovoked attack on one of her meeker sisters, and even Tony, the rooster, wasn’t strutting around as smugly as usual.
Marjory wasn’t tempted to linger. She checked for eggs, then collected up her pail and plodded up through the orchard to the farmhouse. She didn’t glance at the Stevensons’ cottage but as she crossed the yard she saw Findlay on his way to one of the steadings, a young collie at his heels. She called a greeting, which he returned. Fin wasn’t the problem.
He didn’t look happy though. Well, Marjory probably wasn’t looking too cheerful herself. She’d stayed at work late last night hoping for a breakthrough, but despite all the hours of police time nothing useful had emerged. Ingles had vanished, and though the usual alerts had gone out to ferries and airports, she was all too aware that if he just had the sense to lie low until the heat was off, they would have a problem. And his house, on the initial search, had given them no leads. It almost seemed to be deliberately impersonal: no diary, no address books, no letters, no photographs. The forensic team would be gutting the place later today: if Davina had been there, they’d find the evidence, but that wasn’t a lot if the killer remained at large.
Showing Davina’s photo around had turned up several people who’d known her years ago – which had at least produced the information that her parents were dead and she was an only child – but they still hadn’t found anyone who had seen her recently. Still, formal identification had been done by a solicitor colleague of Ingles’s and one of the secretaries from the Wigtown office, and the photo would appear in the Scottish Sun today so the calls would start. Perhaps there would even be one or two that were in some sense useful.
As she reached the back door Marjory could hear their own phone ringing and, kicking off her rubber boots in the mud-room, she hurried along to the kichen just as Bill, with a piece of toast in one hand, was putting the receiver down.
‘That was Donald. He wants you to call him back.’
Marjory collapsed on to a chair. ‘What now?’
‘The Chief Constable disturbed Donald’s breakfast and he seems to be working on the pay-it-forward principle. Apparently the Scottish Sun is favoured reading in the Menzies household and he was tweaking Donald’s tail.’
‘That’s all I need.’ Marjory’s gloom deepened. ‘There isn’t any good news and today will mainly be a waiting game, whereas what Donald will want is Action. Lots of Action! Action even if it means chasing our tails until we’re dizzy, just so we look as if we’re doing something. Still, I suppose I’d better phone.’
‘Good luck!’ Bill said, finishing his toast and heading out to get on with the day that had started at six.
He was looking for binder twine in a drawer in the mud-room when she came looking for him. He turned round and saw the look on her face. ‘Oh dear! What’s he said now?’
‘The man,’ Marjory said tautly, ‘is unbelievable. I had to tell him that until we had reports and preferably picked up Ingles, there wouldn’t be much to announce at the Press briefing today. Then, like a fool, I told him that Carter in Manchester was dragging his feet, and he went ballistic. Tam and I, if you please, are to go right now to Manchester for a couple of days, while Bailey contacts his oppo and pulls strings, so that when we arrive we’ll be about as welcome as a heavy cold. And meanwhile Greg Allan is to take charge of developments here. And we all know what that means.’
‘Don’t worry about this end anyway. We’ll cope. It’s a lot easier now I have Fin, and Cat’s a dab hand with the frozen peas. Even Cammie’s mastered the art of putting things in the oven.’
‘Thanks, love. I’ll have to phone Tam right away.’
She tried, but the line was engaged – probably Bunty checking on the livestock. She took the phone with her as she went upstairs to throw some clothes into a suitcase and change into her posh trouser suit. She didn’t want to have people pointing and staring at the bits of straw when she reached the big city.
Laura Harvey was just stripping off her outer layers after taking Daisy for a damp morning run when her own phone rang.
‘Hello? Oh, Jon – you’re an early bird this morning.’
She was pleased; he hadn’t contacted her since their sailing day and she had more or less decided that this had been a test which she, with her land-lubber tendencies, had failed.
‘Just wanted to touch base before I went on duty. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to Marjory, but there have been big developments in the murder case and there have been a couple of other local problems I’ve been involved in too, so it’s going to be a busy spell. I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you.’
‘No, no, of course not!’ she protested, crossing her fingers.
‘I’m not sure how I’ll be placed over the next bit, but would it be very cheeky to ask if I could drop in when I have time, and pick your brains? I know you’ve given Marjory good advice in the past on motivation and so on, and it could be a great help to me.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She was a little taken aback; this wasn’t what she had expected him to say.
‘Thanks. I’ll have to go now. Our prime suspect’s done a runner so we’re going to be spending the day trying to catch up with him.’
‘Good hunting!’ Laura put the phone down, then, in response to increasingly frantic prancing, went to give the dog her breakfast with a furrowed brow.
She wasn’t entirely comfortable. It was odd, surely, that one of Marjory’s constables would want to consult her like that when presumably it was his boss who was in charge of the direction the case would take. She’d picked up vibes from both Marjory and Tam which suggested that neither of them was Jon Kingsley’s biggest fan, but she’d chosen to ignore that. Now she couldn’t help wondering if he was trying to steal a march on them, and if this was part of some sort of undermining operation, she wanted no part of it.
On an impulse, she picked up the phone again and dialled Tam’s number. It rang for a long time and she was just on the point of hanging up, thinking he’d left for work, when Tam’s harassed voice snapped, ‘MacNee.’
She could hear a dog yapping in the background. ‘Sorry, Tam, it’s Laura. Sounds like a bad time. Shall I call again?’
His voice warmed immediately. ‘No, no, Laura. It’s just the bloody dog’s eaten the cat’s food and – but never mind. What can I do for you?’
‘Would you be prepared to tell me what you think about Jon Kingsley?’
There was a silence at the other end. Then Tam said, ‘Not without using words you shouldn’t even know.’
‘What’s the problem?’
She knew Tam would be honest. Now he said, very fairly, ‘He’s a good officer. He’s clever, and he’s got a feel for it. He should have stayed in the big city, probably. He wants to get ahead quickly, and he’s got every right to. It’s just that in a place like this it doesn’t all happen
like that, and he’s frustrated.
‘So what he’s doing is trying to show the rest of us up, Marjory and me in particular. If we look bad, he looks even better. He goes over Marjory’s head to the Super, who’s not savvy enough to realize what he’s up to. And what’s happening is that he’s splitting the CID team. Marjory’s going to have to tackle it soon; if we’re not working well together in a big case like this, it’s going to go pear-shaped. And it’s not exactly difficult to work out who gets the blame.’
‘Oh dear.’ Laura’s heart had been sinking at this recital. ‘I don’t quite know what to do. He was asking if he could consult me, but if he’s trying to use me to get one up on Marjory, he can forget it. I’m her friend, first and foremost.’
‘You’re a wee stotter!’ High praise, indeed, from Tam! ‘Here – you don’t think you could just tell him a load of rubbish and then we could watch him fall on his face and have a good laugh? Oh, maybe not – but it’s a nice idea.’
Laura laughed. ‘I can certainly make it clear that anything I tell him I’m going to pass on to Marjory, and tell her that he’s asked me. That way it’s out in the open.’
‘Yes. But could you maybe not lead him on a wee bit, find out what he’s planning, first?’
‘We-e-ell, I’ll think about it.’
She did think about it, a little sadly. She’d really fancied the bloke; when he’d kissed her goodbye on Sunday she’d been more than happy to respond. It was lowering to suspect that his chatting her up was only because he thought she might be useful to him later.
The headline ‘Cops’ Blunder’ hit Keith Ingles with the force of a blow. He was buying a sandwich in a filling-station on the outskirts of Stranraer; when he saw it, with Davina’s photo underneath, on the front page of one of the newspapers in the rack by the door, it was all he could do not to run blindly out of the place. But it was her photo, not his; it could have been worse, he told himself, and soon it will be. He forced himself to pick it up and pay for his purchases calmly, then, with the paper tucked under his arm, walked on until he saw a low wall in a side street where he could sit and read it.
There wasn’t much in the report. But they had established who she was, which made it a foregone conclusion that they would be looking for him. They had his mugshot readily to hand, and they would have alerted the ports, particularly this, the nearest one. He had missed his chance.
Perhaps he should have gone sooner, when the nightmare began. But he had no reason to suppose the body would be found for another twenty years, more, even. And by then, who could have identified her? Leaving his work suddenly would have raised questions, which was the last thing he needed. Or not quite, as it turned out. The very last thing Keith needed was to be the focus of a nationwide manhunt.
He found another cash machine, and with a useful amount of money now in his wallet walked, more or less aimlessly, towards the ferry. And yes, he had been expecting them, but the sight of the two police cars at the entrance to the terminal brought on a lurch of panic. Again, there was the guilty urge to run; instead, he turned into a quieter street and headed back.
What was he to do now? He couldn’t get anywhere quickly, on foot. He needed either a boat or a car. It would be too obvious to try to hire a boat here, but if he hired a car then drove to the Lake District it wouldn’t be difficult to get one from a marina there. He’d sailed across to Ireland more than once in his yacht club days.
He definitely couldn’t hang about the place. Even if the papers didn’t have a photo yet, the patrol cars would – and there was one, turning the corner ahead. He ducked swiftly into the nearest shop.
There were no other customers; the man behind the counter was happy to tell him where he could find a car hire firm and thanking him, Keith headed off. The police car had disappeared and he hadn’t far to go, just a few hundred yards in the direction of the port. Looking towards it, Keith could see another police car joining the two already stationed there. He gave a twisted smile. They must think he was very stupid.
‘There he is,’ Jon Kingsley said suddenly. ‘Look, that’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Too right,’ Allan said, unbuckling his seat-belt. ‘He’s nicked!’
‘Hang on a minute.’ Kingsley, at the wheel, put out a hand to restrain him. ‘Let’s trail him, see where he’s going.’
The unmarked car nosed out. It wasn’t difficult, in this busy street, to edge along, keeping Ingles in view. After about ten minutes he turned into a garage yard where there was a hire cars sign.
‘He’s realized we’ve got the ferry staked out.’ Kingsley parked the car a little further along the road. ‘But we’ve got him nicely now. Less chance of him making a run for it. And I tell you, if we can get him arrested and charged before Fleming and MacNee get back tomorrow, it’ll show who does the real work in the CID, won’t it?’
Allan’s heavy face brightened. ‘About time too. Good thinking. Let’s go!’
The two men walked briskly down the street and into the little office where the girl behind the desk was asking questions indifferently as she filled in a form. The man, not small but slimly built, with greying fair hair, wearing a waterproof jacket, jeans and hiker’s boots and with a rucksack at his feet, didn’t turn his head to look at them as they came in.
‘Keith Ingles?’ Kingsley said. ‘I am detaining you on suspicion of the murder of Davina Watts. You do not have to say anything . . .’ He recited the caution.
Even now Ingles didn’t turn. The girl was gaping and shocked, but he stood as if the words had turned him to stone.
Susie Stevenson kept eying the clock nervously as she emptied yet another of the boxes from the removal. Findlay always looked in to grab a mug of coffee and a sandwich around ten, and the bank hadn’t rung with their answer to his application for a loan. Perhaps they would say no, but if not, and if Findlay got a chance to speak to them . . .
She bit her lip, looking from the clock to the phone as if will-power could persuade the loan manager to call. But there was Fin now!
He usually fended for himself but today Susie, willing the phone not to ring now, had his snack ready for him. No, she said, they hadn’t phoned. She took an unusual interest, too, in what he was doing today – cleaning out the steading – and emphasizing how keen Bill must be to get on with buying the new stock. He didn’t linger, and she saw him out with a sigh of relief.
It wasn’t a moment too soon. She snatched the phone up at the first ring, afraid he might hear it as he crossed the yard. The loan manager announced himself and asked to speak to Mr Stevenson.
‘I’m afraid he’s out. But I take it this is about the loan he wanted to arrange through our joint account?’
The man hesitated. ‘My assistant who took the message when I was out yesterday said I’d be dealing with Mr Stevenson. But since the account is in joint names, I think it will be all right to tell you that his application has been approved.’
‘That’s very kind. But in fact, we’ve decided not to go ahead with it just at the moment.’
The man was taken aback. ‘Oh? I understood Mr Stevenson was very keen—’
‘We’ve discussed it, naturally, and we’ve decided that we don’t need a loan quite yet, but perhaps we may come back to you at some later date?’
‘Of course. So I should simply destroy the application form?’
‘I’m sorry if this has put you to extra trouble,’ Susie said graciously, ‘but that would be best. Thank you so much.’
She set down the receiver, then, with another nervous glance out of the window – Fin was so anxious that he might look in at any time to see if there was news – she picked it up again.
‘Niall? Susie Stevenson.’
She hated the way he laughed, really hated it. ‘Findlay come up with the money after all, has he?’
‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘No, he hasn’t. In fact, he’s decided to withdraw his previous offer. You can do whatever you like with the dog.’
That surprised him
. ‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Fine. Then I shall. You can tell him I’ve made an appointment at the vet’s tomorrow.’
When Findlay came in at twelve o’clock for lunch, Susie met him with a very grave face.
‘I’m so sorry, dear – two pieces of bad news. The bank said no, and Niall rang to say that even if you do come up with the full amount, he’s not interested. He’s not prepared even to discuss it any more.’
Fleming and MacNee made the eleven o’clock train to Manchester with only minutes to spare. It was a good service; they would be in Manchester at around quarter past one and Tam had checked, with due circumspection, that they would at least be expected if not welcomed at the North Manchester Divisional HQ in Bootle Street in the afternoon, once they’d dropped off their cases at the nearby Thistle Hotel where rooms had been booked.
They’d done their moaning in the car on the way to Carlisle.
‘I’ve had to phone Bunty’s sister in Newton Stewart,’ Tam grumbled. ‘Her that’s married to the bank manager, and treats me like sweepings off the street. Sticks in my throat to have to ask a favour, specially since it’s not me wants the house full of the minging things. And she’ll report back to Bunty that I’ve not done the dusting and there’s too many bottles in the bin.’
‘I’ve had to give up my week’s egg money to get Cat to look after the hens. She used to do it for fun but she’s got very grasping lately. Still, I drove a hard bargain – she can clean the henhouse at the weekend for that.’
Afterwards they had taken turns to cast aspersions on the character, acuity and general effectiveness of their superior officer so, with grievances thoroughly aired, they didn’t talk much on the train. Fleming had her laptop and MacNee, who still felt that thought travelled from brain down his arm to pencil to paper, had a notepad, a small bundle of police notebooks and a couple of files. They were lucky enough to get a table to themselves and they worked fairly steadily, with only occasional glances at the countryside as they whirled past.
Lying Dead Page 16
