‘That’s almost certainly him,’ Fleming said, ‘but it doesn’t get us any further.’
An operator turned round. ‘That’s a message from Car 28. They’ve spoken to the Aitchesons, but they didn’t see anything.’
‘Right. We’ll need to talk to them properly,’ Fleming added to Jon. ‘They may be able to shed some light on what he’d been asking them. I suppose it can wait till the morning.’
‘I could do that, before I come in,’ Kingsley offered. ‘Driving down to Wigtown isn’t a problem.’
‘Thanks, Jon – that would be very helpful. I’ll have the briefing early tomorrow. It’s my guess everyone will have heard the news by then. I’ll contact the hospital again first thing.’
‘What is the situation with poor old Tam?’ Kingsley sounded genuinely concerned.
‘I haven’t by any means got a full picture, but I think they’re trying to stabilize him with a view to operating tomorrow. All we can do now is pray – and pull out all the stops to get the sod who did this.’
Kingsley nodded gravely as Fleming went on, ‘I’m just going to phone the Super now – I only hope I get to him before he hears a news broadcast.
‘You may as well go home, Jon – but thanks for coming in.’
‘Least I could do. I’ll just hang on a little longer, till they’ve finished the house-to-house.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything fresh. Goodnight.’
There was more or less a full complement of officers, uniformed and plain-clothes, on duty and off, crammed into the incident room by nine o’clock next morning. As Fleming approached she could hear only low-voiced conversation, which subsided to total silence when she came in.
‘First of all, Tam got through the night. He’s in Dumfries – they’re going to operate this morning.’
There was a buzz of relief and one or two clapped; a voice from somewhere in the middle said, quoting the old Scots motto, ‘Wha daur meddle wi’ Tam, eh?’ and the applause grew.
‘Yeah, right,’ Fleming said, clearing her throat. ‘So – strategy for today.
‘The eye-witness’s statement was videoed last night – you’ll be shown the relevant part of that later. From the house-to-house interviews last night, we did get an indication of timing: the attack, we know, happened at seven-fifteen, more or less, and at seven o’clock a man matching the description walked up Duntruin Place, which is a cul-de-sac. No one saw him hanging about and he wouldn’t want to be conspicuous. There’s an empty house with a For Sale notice about three doors along from the Aitchesons’ and it’s a reasonable bet he hid in the garden there. A team will be going in to check it out – you don’t need me to tell you what you’re looking for.
‘Apart from that, we’ll be tracing Tam’s footsteps, trying to work out what lead he was following. It tweaked a nerve, obviously. Someone will be checking out the Glasgow end – he was there yesterday, and we need to know what came of that. And the Aitchesons – Kingsley, did you manage to see them this morning?’
Kingsley pulled a face. ‘For what it was worth. Brian Aitcheson said it was mainly about his night watchman shift when Murdoch was murdered – going over it to see if there was anything he’d remembered since he made his statement. Which he said he hadn’t. That’s about the size of it.’
‘Hmm. Not very helpful,’ Fleming was saying, when Tansy Kerr spoke up. Her eyes were red; Fleming had noticed her struggling during the bulletin about Tam.
‘But he said it was Euphie Aitcheson he was going to see,’ she protested. ‘What did she say?’
Kingsley shot her a look of annoyance. ‘Not much. Just agreed with her husband. Oh, and she complained that I’d called so early in the morning.’
But Kerr was not to be brushed aside so easily. ‘He must have been there for ages! He left here in such a hurry that he almost knocked me over and that was around five o’clock. He only left the house at seven-fifteen, and it takes half an hour or so to drive to Wigtown. It wouldn’t take two hours to hear that Brian Aitcheson had nothing to add to his original statement.’
Kingsley snapped, ‘Well, I don’t know, Tansy. Maybe they got to yarning about old times in the police force. I can only repeat what they told me.’
‘That’s enough!’ Fleming said sharply. ‘I can understand that everyone’s on edge, but that doesn’t help.
‘We’re getting numerous calls from the public, which will have to be sifted to find those that need a follow-up. There will also be intense interest from the Press and the Press Officer will handle all queries. Superintendent Bailey will be making a televised statement later.
‘That’s about it, unless anyone has anything – yes, Macdonald?’
Andy Macdonald rubbed his hand over his close-cropped head, a habit he had. ‘I don’t know if this is out of order, but if Tam was asking Aitcheson what he saw on the night of the murder, could this link in with Findlay Stevenson? We began wondering last night after he made the statement incriminating his wife whether that could just be a blind for his own activities – if Tam was on to some definite link, and Stevenson somehow got wind of it—’
Fleming’s eyes narrowed. ‘What time did the interview finish last night?’
‘Eighteen-eighteen,’ Langlands said promptly. ‘I recorded the time at the end of the interview.’
‘Bring him in again. We’ve got his temporary address?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sergeant Naismith said. ‘Small hotel in the town here. I’ll arrange that.’
‘Thanks, Jock. And can you set up the witness video? Have a look at it, everyone. It’s not long – he didn’t have a lot to tell us, unfortunately. OK, that’s it. Good luck.’
She was leaving the room when Tansy Kerr stopped her just by the door. ‘Greg Allan was with Tam after he got back from Glasgow. Tam might have said something to him.’
‘Where is he?’ Fleming scanned the room.
‘Not in yet. I think he’s not on duty till eleven.’
‘I see.’ Fleming made her voice as neutral as she could. He must be about the only officer who wasn’t here, and that included those who’d been on duty all night.
The short video clip finished. Kingsley raised his voice as people started to move. ‘Just a minute!’
Fleming and Kerr turned to listen.
‘Before everyone goes, I think we should have a whip-round. Just to show old Tam we’re thinking about him.’
There was a murmur of agreement, which covered the sound of Kerr making a sick noise.
‘A plant for while he’s in hospital, do you reckon?’ Kingsley was going on. ‘And a large bottle of Scotch, to give him the incentive to get well enough to drink it! I’ll put a box for contributions on the table here.’
Kerr and Fleming left together. Fighting back tears, Kerr said, ‘He can’t stand Tam. I’m not giving him a penny – I’ll buy my own present for Tam. If he – if he doesn’t . . .’ She bit her lip.
‘Don’t despair. As he’d tell you himself, a dunt on the head’s nothing to a Glasgow hard man.’
But as she mounted the stairs to her office, it was a quotation from Tam’s beloved Burns that was ringing through her brain:
‘An forward, tho I canna see,
I guess, an fear!’
‘Did you not hear the news about Tam this morning, Greg?’ Tansy Kerr’s question was pointed when Allan appeared at eleven o’clock.
He looked shifty. ‘Not – not till later on,’ he said, then gave himself away by adding, ‘Anyway, I thought there’d be plenty people here. You don’t look that busy yourself.’
‘I’m checking information received to see what needs following up,’ Kerr said stiffly, though in fact it was true; considering how little there was to go on, they now had saturation coverage. She was also frustrated that it was Andy Macdonald at the sharp end, while she processed useless information from members of the public who were no doubt well-intentioned, those of them who weren’t several cards short of the full deck.
She’
d decided unilaterally that she’d go through everything of Tam’s that she could find, every notebook, every scrap of paper. Not that she was hopeful that it would yield much since Tam did a lot more thinking than writing, but at least she could tell herself she was contributing.
‘Did Tam say anything to you yesterday afternoon, about a lead he had? Before he went to the Aitchesons’?’ she demanded.
Allan, busying himself with trying to look busy, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not so’s you’d notice. I think he deigned to say hello when he came in, but that was as far as it went.’
Kerr swallowed hard. She really couldn’t afford to lash out at everyone and she was saving herself for the blistering row she was planning to have with that slimy, hypocritical reptile Kingsley. She had almost worked through the pile of messages when the door opened and a custody officer put his head round it.
‘Is there an evidence bag here with a needle in it? We took it off a junkie last night. It was downstairs waiting for printing and it’s disappeared. I thought one of you guys might have been detailed to follow it up.’
‘Oh no. No one’s been detailed to do anything, except chase their tails trying to find out who had a crack at MacNee last night,’ Allan said with venom. ‘Murder, mainlining, carry on, why don’t you? We haven’t time to worry about that sort of stuff.
‘But don’t let me stop you having a look around. Be my guest.’
It was only the other officer’s embarrassed presence that stopped Tansy Kerr gouging his eyes out there and then.
If Findlay Stevenson had looked bad yesterday, he looked worse today. He hadn’t shaved, and the checked shirt he was wearing looked as if he had slept in it. As perhaps he had, Andy Macdonald thought as he once again followed Superintendent Bailey into the interview room, with PC Langlands bringing up the rear.
He’d come from a session with Fleming, when she had forced him to be blunt about the Super’s interviewing technique yesterday. She had then been equally blunt about what he had to do today.
‘You’ve got to push Stevenson. It’s vital. We could be talking about two murders and one attempted murder here. I’m haunted by the thought that if I’d been grilling him yesterday, Tam might not be in theatre as we speak.
‘Maybe I flatter myself. But when you come out of there you’ve got to be able to tell me you know you’ve wrung him dry. OK?’
Though Fleming’s black eye had faded to sickly yellow and the scratches on her face were less angry-looking, she was so strung-up that he could see her neck cords standing out. He’d never seen her like this before, never known her less than professional about her superiors. But everyone knew that she and Tam went back to the dawn of time, and he promised to steam-roller the man who had police promotion in his gift, feeling that not to promise would leave him in danger of grievous bodily harm.
Bailey, in his turn, cautioned him as they walked to the interview room. ‘What you must keep at the forefront of your mind, Macdonald, is that this man could be a serial killer. There are two murders we are investigating, as well as this attack on MacNee. It would never do for the public to gain the impression that we are more concerned about the latter. I intend to emphasize that in my broadcast.’
‘Then you’d better not let the lads hear you.’ He didn’t say it of course, but one of the things that kept you doing the dangerous job was that any attack on you would mean a fuss out of all proportion to the equivalent attack on Joe Public.
Bailey led off. ‘Now, Mr Stevenson, we were very grateful for your co-operation yesterday.’
He paused for breath, and Macdonald cut in, ‘Where were you last night, Stevenson? Because I have to tell you we weren’t much impressed with what you told us yesterday.’
Stevenson looked shocked, but hardly more shocked than Bailey, whose mouth was half-open, staring at his subordinate.
Taking advantage of that, Macdonald pressed on, ‘You see, we’ve only your word for it, haven’t we, that you found the bag among your wife’s belongings. And we’ve such nasty suspicious minds that it occurred to us that this might be quite a clever way of shifting the blame. Comment?’
Stevenson struggled for words. ‘I – I – last night,’ he seized on the concrete question, ‘I left here and went back to the Balmoral Guest House, where I have a room.’
‘Straight there?’ Macdonald refused to catch Bailey’s eye.
‘Yes. Straight there.’
‘And what did you do after that? Go out to eat?’
‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘So you claim you didn’t leave your room after – what – seven o’clock?’
‘Earlier, probably. I didn’t check.’ Stevenson was looking at him with dislike. ‘I don’t understand – what is this about?’
‘Can anyone verify that for us?’
‘No, of course not. I hadn’t anyone in my room.’
That was good; he was getting angry, always useful. Anger meant loss of control. Oblivious now to Bailey, sulking with his arms folded, Macdonald went on, ‘And what is the set-up at the Balmoral? If you leave your room, do you have to pass a reception desk with someone in attendance?’
‘It’s a guest house, for God’s sake!’ Stevenson burst out. ‘Of course not! You have to ring a bell to get attention.’
‘But you wouldn’t ring a bell, would you, if you didn’t want anyone to know you were going out?’
‘Why the hell should I care?’ Anger, tinged now with uncertainty. Excellent!
Macdonald switched tack. ‘Do you own a dark rain jacket with a hood?’
‘A rain jacket? I’ve got a green oiled jacket, but that’s all.’
‘Can we check your room and your car?’
‘If you want – I’ve nothing to hide, but I would like to know what this is all about.’
‘Had you any dealings with DS Tam MacNee?’
‘MacNee – no.’ It took a second for Stevenson to make the connection. ‘Oh my God! That’s the one who was attacked? You think I did it!
‘I didn’t. I promise you that I don’t even know what the man looks like. I had no contact with him at any time. I’m simply bemused by what you’re asking me.’
Macdonald gulped. In this game, the common currency was distortions, evasions, half-truths and downright lies. Your professional skill was in sifting them for the tiny nuggets of fact which might be, with a certain amount of luck, concealed within them.
Simple, straightforward truth was different. Contrary to popular belief, when it came your way – which wasn’t often – it was unmistakable.
‘Right,’ he mumbled, as Bailey said ominously, ‘Shall I take over, constable?
‘Now, Stevenson, we will have to go through your movements on each of the days in question. It will help if you can think of anyone who might be in a position to corroborate any statement you make, and we will of course be instituting a very thorough investigation to see whether accepting your account is contra-indicated.’
As they went back to the Thursday of Davina Watt’s death, Macdonald was left to his own bitter reflections. Thanks, boss – it could be years before he made sergeant, after this performance.
‘He’s not our man, Marjory.’
The wait had been interminable, and to get this news at the end of it was another blow. She’d been kept busy with progress reports – or rather, lack of progress reports – but the one useful piece of information that had come in had left her pinning her hopes on this.
‘Young Macdonald gave him a bruising, but what emerged was an honest man. No alibis, but no attempt to pretend he did. No sensitivity about Davina Watt – it was patent that he felt he’d had a narrow escape, though from the sound of things it was from the frying pan into the fire. No quarrel with Murdoch either, once he’d retrieved the dog. And before you ask, Marjory – Macdonald agreed.’
Fleming had never thought him as much of a fool as others did, and she coloured at his knowing look. It was only then that it occurred to her what her demand to Macdonald that
he override the boss might have done to his chances of promotion when a sergeant’s job came up – which, please God, it wouldn’t this very day.
‘So I think we’re back to considering the wife, don’t you?’
‘I’ve had bad news on that, Don. They’ve fingerprinted the bag, and they’ve found Davina’s fingerprints there, and Findlay’s – as of course they would be, by his own account – but there’s no sign of Susie’s. And while she’s not small, I doubt if even in a concealing jacket she’d be mistaken for a man by several people.’
He hadn’t considered that. ‘No, I don’t suppose she would. I suppose, too, that the fingerprints would point to Findlay again – no knowing when they got there . . . but as I said, Marjory, he struck us all as a transparently honest man.
‘Maybe you should rope in Kingsley again. See what he thinks, on the basis of what we have. He’s done well before.’
‘He and Greg Allan were responsible for charging Keith Ingles,’ she pointed out sharply.
‘True enough. But that was a young man’s mistake – over-eagerness, compounded by his sergeant’s incompetence. I still see Kingsley as a very able fellow.’
Poor Andy! Fleming agreed hollowly, then, as so often, Bailey surprised her by saying, ‘But young Macdonald, there – good chap, too. Stood his ground, much as you do yourself, Marjory.
‘Any more word from the hospital?’
‘Not since we heard they were operating. The odds are in his favour for a full recovery.’
Bailey studied her face. ‘Good odds?’
‘Not – brilliant. Two-thirds, one-third.’
He got up. ‘Better than the other way round. But where do we go from here?’
The only truthful answer she could think of was, ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ She didn’t think that was tactful.
‘Usual lines of inquiry,’ she said, which was code for the same thing.
It was only after he had left that she remembered she had wanted to question Greg Allan, but by that time he had gone to lunch.
‘Are you remembering about taking Janet to see your father this afternoon, Marjory?’
Lying Dead Page 38
