Their Final Act

by Alex Walters

  McKay nodded. 'Was his roster exclusively female?'

  'Not exclusively, but largely. Think the blokes were just there to provide cover for his real motives.'

  'And in your own case?'

  'I was making a decent living for myself on the country circuit. Slowly building a reputation, you know? I'd done a fair few gigs down south and was beginning to get noticed. It's a limited circuit but not that small. I was playing festivals here and even one in the US, had the odd appearance on BBC Alba. Anyway, after one of my gigs up here Young approached me and asked me if I'd thought about trying to cross over into more mainstream pop stuff. Sort of a Barbara Dickson deal. I told him I wasn't interested. I reckon the music world's moved on and the future probably lies more in the niche stuff anyway. I'm not even sure mainstream pop even exists in the way it did in the seventies or eighties.'

  'So what happened?'

  'He kept pestering me, reckoned I was missing out on a real opportunity. At the time I didn't have a manager, just looked after myself. In the end I said I'd give him a trial, see what he could come up with for me.' She smiled. 'I'm not sure that was what he was expecting. Usually he was the one who gave the artist a trial. I think at that point he realised he was up against someone a bit different from his usual innocents.'

  'I'm taking it the trial wasn't successful.'

  'Not so's you'd notice, no. I said I'd give him six months. We made some demos. Those were okay, and actually served me quite usefully later, which is just as well as I'd stumped up most of the cash for them. He still had the nerve to try to claim them as his property when we split. I told him to fuck off and walked out with them. Other than that, he got me a few gigs around the north which frankly weren't right for me. Lots of promises of record company interest which always came to nothing. And lots of attempts to try it on whenever we found ourselves alone together.'

  'You accused him of attempted rape?' McKay said, deciding there was no point in skating round the issue.

  She nodded. 'That came towards the end of our delightful time together. By then it was evident it was going nowhere. He knew I was going to bring things to an end and kept trying to persuade me to give it a bit longer. Lots of crap about how the big deal was just around the corner. I'd had enough by then. I thought if anything he was holding back my career because he was trying to present me as something I wasn't. I wasn't getting the right exposure. I wasn't playing the right venues. So I'd made it clear I was ending it.'

  'He didn't like that presumably,' Horton said.

  'It wasn't what he was used to. Normally, he was the one making the running. Offering little girlies the moon and kicking them out when he got tired of them. He definitely wasn't happy with me taking the lead. Anyway, he turned up at my flat one night – I had a small place in Inverness in those days. Didn't even try to ingratiate himself in the creepy way he usually did. Just barged his way in, grabbed me, threw me on the bed and tried to rape me. I'd been doing some self-defence training so he got a bit more than he bargained for. I ended up beating him round the head with a bloody bedside lamp. Christ, he was full of shit. Anyway, in the end he just walked out. I wasn't even upset at the time. I was just shell-shocked. I wished I'd done more – believe me, if he'd stayed a moment longer I'd have found some way of surgically removing his bollocks. It was only after he'd gone and I was sitting here that it really hit me, that I really understood what had just happened. What he'd tried to do. Does that sound crazy?'

  'Not at all,' Horton said. 'I think it's a fairly common response. It's as if the brain shuts down, refuses to acknowledge what's happening. I guess it's a sort of psychological safety device. It's one of the factors that sometimes makes it even harder to prosecute rape. Because the victim can't even recall the detail of what happened.'

  Dowling nodded. 'That was one of the difficulties I faced. I sat here for what must have been hours afterwards. It was only the next day that I decided to contact the police.'

  'And how were we?' McKay asked.

  'You were okay, actually. Better than I'd feared. Very sympathetic. Helpful. Took my story seriously. I had the sense that I might not have been the first to complain about Young, although no one ever said it in so many words. On the whole I think the police did everything they could.'

  'That's something,' McKay said, thinking how often he'd heard the opposite. 'But it never came to court.'

  'Young denied it, of course. Didn't deny he'd come round that night. Said it was just a business meeting, and that he'd come to break the news that he was going to sack me from his roster.' She laughed. 'He reckoned I'd taken it badly. He claimed I'd attacked him – and of course he was able to show the bruises to prove it – and that I'd promised to get revenge on him.'

  'So it became your word against his?' Horton said.

  'There was no physical evidence he'd assaulted me. I had no real proof. And there were some inconsistencies in my story. Just minor things on timing, which I think were the result of that shutting down that we talked about. I thought it must have happened later than it did, for example, so the account I gave to the police didn't tie in with CCTV evidence about when Young's car was in the area. It was all explicable, given the circumstances, but you could imagine a smart lawyer ripping it apart.'

  'So the Procurator decided not to proceed?'

  'Didn't even get that far. It was looking more promising to start with. The police did a great job of tracking down a couple of other victims who'd had similar experiences with Young. As I say, I think there'd already been other complaints that hadn't gone anywhere because of lack of evidence. The police were hoping that, if they could find enough parallel cases with victims who could independently corroborate Young's behaviour, they might have a chance of pulling it off.'

  'But that didn't happen?'

  'I'm not sure exactly what happened. Maybe the other victims got cold feet. Maybe they were warned off. Young still had quite a lot of influence in the business locally, and I imagine he wouldn't be averse to calling in a few favours to help protect his arse. Remember that these other victims would have been young wannabes who still believed they could make a career in the industry. They wouldn't have wanted to get on the wrong side of local promoters. Whatever the reason, the other accusations melted away and I was left as the only woman standing. At that point, I was persuaded to drop it.'

  'By the police?' McKay asked.

  She shrugged. 'By this point, it was looking likely that the prosecution wouldn't proceed. But it was really family and friends who talked me out of taking it further. They thought I was unlikely to succeed and that the trial would harm my career more than Young's. They were probably right. Young was slippery as a greased weasel. Christ knows what kind of crap he'd have come up with if it had come to court. In the end, everyone seemed content to let it drop.'

  'Have you had any contact with Young since then?'

  'What do you think?'

  There was something in Dowling's tone that caught McKay's attention. He had the sense there was something she wasn't saying. 'So what happened after all this? In terms of your business relationship with Young.'

  'There wasn't one. Simple as that. I'd taken care of all that at the start. That it was up to me to renew the arrangement at the end of the six months. If I didn't do that then by default everything reverted to me. I didn't want to get into any protracted legal wrangles. I walked away. There were a couple of outstanding gigs, which I honoured. But I didn't have any more contact with Young.'

  'He didn't try to contact you?'

  'Not at all. Once I made the complaint to the police he was presumably advised not to try. But after it was all dropped, I wondered whether there'd be something, if only to taunt me. But nothing.'

  McKay nodded, still feeling there was something missing. 'You said there'd be dozens of potential suspects for Young's death. Did you mean that?'

  'I was joking. But not much. Young made more enemies than friends. He was a ruthless bastard. He enjoyed screwing people o
ver, I think. Not just the young women he took advantage of, but people he ripped off in business deals. Artists who never got paid. You name it. Probably even his dealers.'

  'Drugs?'

  'Oh, Christ, yes. Cocaine, mainly. The drug that deludes you into thinking you've got talent. From what I picked up on the grapevine, that had got worse in recent years.'

  'Since he moved into producing?'

  'Exactly. In fairness to him, that was where his real talents lay. He was a decent producer. He knew how to take whatever you were doing and make the best of it in a studio. Nothing very sophisticated and he talked a load of pretentious bollocks while he was doing it, but there was a gift there all right. He liked working with all these young bands. Reckoned he had to throw himself fully into it. Take on their lifestyle, really get on board with them. Which as far as I can see just meant he locked himself in a studio with piles of drink and drugs and got everybody shit-faced while they recorded.'

  'And that worked?' McKay asked.

  'Young saw it as an excuse to relive his youth. I remember chatting to the lead singer of a band he'd worked with. The kid just thought Young was an embarrassment. Like having your granddad getting down with the kids. But Young never twigged that they were mostly laughing at him rather than with him. Christ, if I carry on like this, I'll end up feeling sorry for the old bastard.' She shook her head. 'But, yeah, the whole producing thing looked to me like a high-profile midlife crisis, but he was successful enough at it. Not A-list, maybe, but not far down the B-list.'

  McKay glanced at Horton. 'That's been very helpful, Ms Dowling.' He gestured towards an acoustic guitar propped up in one corner of the room. 'Do you still perform? I'm sorry, that's probably an insulting question. I ought to know the answer, but country music isn't really my scene.'

  'Not sure I blame you. I've mixed feelings about it myself, and I've spent most of my working life in it. No, I've pretty much given up the performing. In public anyway. I focus on building guitars these days. Only play them when I have to demonstrate how brilliant they are to prospective customers.'

  McKay pushed himself to his feet. 'We still don't have a confirmed time of death for Mr Young. But we'll probably need to double-check your movements at the relevant times. Just routine.'

  'Yeah, just routine for suspects. Shouldn't be difficult. Here, mostly, for the last couple of weeks, mainly sitting in my workshop next door. Downside of which is that I don't have much of an alibi for most of it. But not much I can do about that.'

  Dowling led McKay and Horton back to the front door. 'Seriously, I've no time for Young and there's no point in pretending I have after what he did. I might even be prepared to offer a gentle round of applause to whoever did top the bugger. But it wasn't me. I'm happy to co-operate with you in any way I can to prove that.'

  'That's much appreciated, Ms Dowling. I suspect we may well need to talk to you again.'

  They walked back to the car, McKay looking back in silence to where Dowling was still standing watching them. As Horton reversed out of the drive, McKay said, 'What did you make of that?'

  'Not sure. In some respects, she seemed very straightforward. Maybe too much so for her own good. On the other hand…' Horton slowed as they approached the junction with the main road.

  'Aye?'

  'I'm not sure. She seemed to know an awful lot about Young for someone who claimed to have no interest in him.'

  'I noticed that. Though maybe not so surprising given the history. But, aye, interesting. Maybe the blunt speaking was just a double-bluff. And I had the sense that there were things she wasn't telling us.'

  'You reckon she's a suspect?'

  'Who knows? Sounds as if half of Scotland might be on that list. But worth keeping an eye on. There's something there. I'm just not sure what it is.'

  'The other question,' Horton added thoughtfully, 'is who her visitor is.'

  'Visitor?' McKay had managed to extract a strip of gum from somewhere deep in his jacket pocket and was painstakingly unwrapping it.

  'As far as we know she's single, right?'

  'Found nothing to suggest the contrary.' McKay slipped the strip of gum into his mouth and carefully folded the foil wrapping for reuse.

  'So she has a male visitor.'

  'I'm not aware there's any law against it,' McKay observed.

  'Not at all, and it's none of our business.'

  'Unless it turns out it is, of course.' McKay was chewing steadily. 'Anyway, how do you know she had a male visitor?'

  'Has,' Horton corrected.

  'Go on, Sherlock. You're about to tell me he's a six foot tall sailor with a pronounced limp and a deep suntan from his years spent working in the South Seas.'

  'Size eleven shoes anyway. Or something like that.'

  McKay was silent for a moment. 'The boots in the hallway.'

  'You noticed them then?'

  'Can't say I did, but I'm assuming it was something like that.'

  'Smart arse. But, yes, a pair of male shoes in the hall.'

  'Could have been there for ages.'

  'Might well have been. But they'd been worn this morning.'

  'You reckon?'

  'Definitely. They were damp and had traces of grass on them. Someone had obviously worn them to walk on a wet lawn or a field. So either the visitor was still there, or they'd left that pair of shoes there earlier this morning.'

  McKay was gazing out of the window, watching the sun flickering through the trees as they pulled onto the A9. 'Like I say, no law against having visitors. Might even explain why she was still in bed at this time of the day. But there's definitely something interesting about Henrietta Dowling. I've a feeling she may be worth a little more attention.'

  36

  Netty Munro's prediction proved accurate. Shortly after she'd begun to fry bacon on the top of the Aga, the kitchen door opened and Alicia walked in, rubbing her eyes. 'Sorry if I'm late,' she said, glancing nervously around the room. 'I must have overslept.'

  'No worries, dear,' Munro said. 'It's still early. We're making bacon sandwiches. Help yourself to tea or coffee. There's tea in the pot and the kettle's just boiled.'

  'Sounds good.' Alicia crossed the kitchen and spooned coffee into a mug. 'Did I hear Elizabeth come back in the night? I thought I heard her bedroom door opening.'

  'Yes, she's back,' Munro said. 'I don't know if she'll join us for breakfast. I imagine she's rather tired.'

  It occurred to Jane that there was something remarkable about Munro's patience with Elizabeth. After just one day here, and despite Munro's hospitality, Elizabeth had disappeared without warning. She'd returned in the middle of the night without any explanation. She'd shown no gratitude for the generosity she'd received but seemed happy to continue accepting it. Jane had always seen herself as a tolerant individual – far too tolerant through those years with Iain – but she felt she'd have lost patience with Elizabeth by now. Somehow Munro seemed as serene as ever.

  There was something odd about that, Jane thought. Admirable, certainly, but also strange. It was as if either Elizabeth had some hold over the older woman or, perhaps more likely, Munro had some ulterior motive for wanting Elizabeth to stay there.

  Jane was increasingly feeling that there was a great deal about the set up there she did not understand. Her initial inclination was simply to take it at face value. She'd been offered a gift horse, and there was little to be gained from peering between its jaws. But the sheer strangeness of the set-up was beginning to nag at her. Why was Munro so keen to offer such hospitality to a group of women she'd never previously met?

  As if to illustrate the thoughts running through Jane's head, the door opened and Elizabeth entered the kitchen. 'Something smells good. Any bacon going?'

  Munro looked up momentarily from the pan. 'Bacon sandwich for everyone. Jane, can you slice some bread please?'

  Jane rose, relieved to avoid Elizabeth's eye. She finished slicing the sourdough bread that Munro hand-baked freshly every day. Jane couldn't i
magine why or how you'd do that, but Munro seemed to derive pleasure from the process. Jane had watched her kneading the dough the previous day, noticing how the rhythm seemed to take the older woman almost into a kind of trance. There was the same expression on her face when she was playing the guitar.

  Elizabeth had made herself an instant coffee and sat back at the table, watching the other two young women with something close to amusement. 'Made yourselves useful yesterday, I hope?'

  'We were here,' Alicia said pointedly. 'Where did you get to?'

  Elizabeth shrugged. 'I had some business. Things to attend to.'

  Netty Munro carried the cast iron frying pan over to the table and set it down on a trivet in the centre. 'Help yourselves to bacon,' she said. 'Couple of rashers each. There's butter and ketchup in the fridge for those who want them.'

  Jane took the opportunity to fetch the items from the fridge, content for Alicia and Elizabeth to continue without her contribution. Behind her, she heard Munro say: 'You're free to go wherever you want to, dear. It's none of our business. Next time, it might be courteous to let me know though, eh? Just for catering purposes and suchlike, you understand.'

  Jane turned to see Elizabeth's expression. She clearly was not happy at being challenged and looked, at least for a moment, as if about to respond aggressively. Finally she said, 'Yes, I'm sorry. It was all a bit short notice. Something I wasn't expecting.'

  'Apart from anything else,' Munro went on, 'if you want to go somewhere, just let me know. I'm happy to give you a lift to the station in Dingwall or even into Inverness if I've nothing else on. I'm glad you managed to make it back okay.'

  'It was fine,' Elizabeth said.

  Jane returned to the table and helped herself to the last two slices of bread and rashers of bacon. The bacon was locally reared, Munro told them. Not here on the farm, but elsewhere in the village. Jane assumed this was a good thing even if she was unclear why. It tasted good though.

  'What are you planning to do today, Elizabeth?' Munro asked.