by Jane Renshaw
‘Give it to the cops,’ Gavin had suggested, repressing a discreditable feeling of glee. It wasn’t often you got Damian Forbes admitting he was missing anything.
‘Well of course I’m going to give it to the cops. After we’ve made a copy.’
But Campbell Stewart, perhaps predictably, had not fallen into line. He’d accepted the USB stick only after Damian had threatened to go over his head and let his boss know that he was refusing to look at vital evidence.
‘He just shoved the USB stick into his pocket,’ Damian said now. ‘God knows when he’ll get round to looking at it. And if he does, all that might happen is that he sends someone to Kinty to do a cursory search for drugs.’
‘There must be a drugs angle to Chimp’s death, eh?’ said Mick. ‘That anonymous tip-off about drugs in the boat house...’
Damian shrugged. ‘There’s no point in aimless speculation. We need to get to Kinty, get Karen out of there, and do a proper search of the place. Squeeze the hippies. I can probably accomplish the first of those things on my own, although I’m not a hundred per cent confident. For the rest, I’d need some help.’
Mick stood. ‘Aye, fair enough, like, but the Boss would string us up if we let you come along for the ride.’
‘Particularly after yesterday’s stunt,’ muttered Gavin.
‘Chris, Gav and me’ll ging,’ said Mick. ‘It’s nae a job for a halflin loon.’ Mick always had been the only one of them able to stand up to Damian in any meaningful sense.
◆◆◆
‘Okay,’ said Damian. ‘I should make the first approach. They’re not going to see me as a threat.’
They were up to their ankles in slushy mud behind the byre nearest the house. They’d left the vehicles at Mains of Kinty with the Marshalls, who had been only too happy to help out. In fact, the Marshalls’ lad Fraser had come with them. He was a hulking brute who looked like he could do a bit of damage.
‘They’re not going to do anything to me,’ Damian pre-empted any objections. ‘And it makes sense to get Karen out of there before anything kicks off.’
As Damian made his way gingerly across the filthy yard to the back door, Fraser Marshall shook his head wordlessly. That trek across the fields obviously hadn’t done Damian’s bad leg any favours, not after yesterday, and he was putting a lot of weight on the hiking poles. But Gavin wouldn’t want to be on the other end of those poles if anything did ‘kick off’.
A droopy woman answered the door, and Damian made a show of wiping his feet on the mat before disappearing inside.
Mick sucked his teeth.
And then Damian was at the door waving them on.
In the kitchen, the droopy woman, another younger, very pregnant one and a man with a half-shaved, half-dreadlocked head sat at the table, watching them apprehensively. Gavin and Chris checked the rest of the house, but there was no one else there.
‘We’re no gonnae touch you,’ said Chris in his Glaswegian monotone as he came back into the kitchen.
Understandably, none of them seemed particularly reassured.
‘You need to tell us where Karen is,’ said Damian, taking a seat opposite the droopy woman, angled away from the table, his right leg stuck out straight. ‘If she’s not here, where is she? And where are Ade and Jagdeep and Baz and Gwennie?’
‘Karen left a couple of days ago, on Christmas Eve,’ said the man in a whispery voice. ‘You can’t just barge your way in here and –’
‘So where did she go?’ interrupted Damian.
The guy shrugged.
‘Where’s Ade?’
Another shrug.
‘Did Karen take her stuff?’
‘What?’
‘Which is her room?’
‘Uh... Upstairs on the right?’
He turned to Gavin. ‘Could you have a look up there?’
The room was furnished with cheap knotty pine. In the chest of drawers there were leggings and jeans and short skirts and T-shirts and sweatshirts and long woolly jumpers, the kinds of clothes his teenage cousins wore. And in the wardrobe, a jumble of boots and shoes.
‘Seems like she’s left most of her stuff,’ Gavin reported back.
Damian leant forward across the table. ‘Where is she?’ he asked the droopy woman, gently. ‘If you know, please tell me.’ And he signalled to the rest of them to be quiet.
The silence dragged on.
‘Has she gone somewhere with Ade?’ Damian said, finally.
The woman finally looked at him.
And that was her first mistake.
48
‘It’s a crime scene,’ panted Claire, hurrying after him up a rise in the ground, her feet slipping on the wet snow. ‘They’ll be going over the place with a fine-toothed comb. They’re going to have found that room.’
‘I wish I could say I hope they have.’
‘Right. So your theory is that it’s a cop, and if they find the camera, they’ll destroy what’s on there.’
‘It’s a risk I’d rather not take.’
‘You’re hoping whoever killed him went in there?’ She stopped, hanging on to a dripping branch to get her breath. The snow was thawing fast, and everything was sodden wet. ‘Wait – you’re thinking Weber was murdered in the secret room? But how can he have been? Hardly anyone knows about it.’
He turned. ‘I found him in there. When you interrupted me, I was moving him.’
‘Oh my God.’ She let go the branch. ‘So that means... Okay, who knows about the room? The Jarvies. You and your henchmen. Who else?’
‘That’s the question.’
He started moving again. When they were nearing the edge of the wood where the hatch was, he dropped to the ground and she crouched next to him. Through the branches she could see police vehicles; blue and white crime scene tape.
‘We’re going to get caught.’
‘Ah, but I have a cunning plan.’ From the rucksack at his feet, he removed two white SOCO suits, two pairs of Latex gloves, two pairs of blue shoe protectors and two masks.
‘Where –?’ And then the penny dropped. ‘Right after you found the body... When you got Gavin to meet us with the skis and food... You told him to bring all this? You were intending coming back here all along?’
‘Of course.’
They put on the SOCO stuff in the little chamber under the hatch. Hector raised the hood of his suit to cover his head and put on the mask, and she did the same.
‘Hold on,’ he said, turning her to him. Gently, he tucked the hair at the sides of her face inside the hood. ‘It is rather distinctive,’ he said, and from his eyes she knew he was smiling.
She followed him through the hidden opening in the cupboard, through the cellars and up the stone stairs to the door that led into the hall.
‘Ready?’
She nodded.
He opened the door.
She kept close behind him, conscious of people moving near the front door, talking, someone barking a laugh, immediately cut off. But she didn’t look over. She kept walking. For once Hector did not hang back politely for her to precede him. She followed him up the wide spiral stair, the suit crackling as she walked, uncomfortably hot – she was wearing thermals and layers and had just trekked here from where they’d left Perdita’s four-by-four up a track.
In the long gallery where Max Weber’s body had been, there were two women in SOCO suits, one with a pair of tweezers picking something off a chair, and one just standing looking out of a window. Even in the pale winter daylight, the place retained a sense of menace, and Claire didn’t blame the woman for wanting to avert her gaze for a while.
Hector muttered, ‘Wait here,’ and walked towards them. ‘Enjoying the view?’
The woman at the window bristled, indicating the powder she was dusting on the frame. ‘I wish.’
‘Briefing in the hall in two minutes.’
The other woman straightened. ‘About what?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ He came back to where Claire was w
aiting, and they retreated back down the stairs to the first floor, where they waited in yet another gloomy passage, the door pushed to, until the two women had descended.
Then they ran up to the gallery and past where the women had been working. Hector worked his fingers along the dark bog-oak panelling and pushed at a section of moulding, which swivelled to reveal a tiny metal disk, coloured black to match the wood and barely visible.
And now he had picks in the lock it concealed, probing like a surgeon.
There was a click, and the section of panelling opened smoothly inwards.
‘Quite clever,’ murmured Hector, pulling down his mask. ‘The edges of the door are covered by the mouldings – you’d think it was just another section of panelling unless you knew better. Secret passages, secret doors to secret torture chambers... You can’t say you’re not seeing life.’
This time, he stood back to let her go first into the dark space, but she hesitated.
He laughed, and flicked a switch.
And oh wow! Claire stepped inside and slowly revolved, gasping, all thoughts of Black John chased away by the treasures illuminated in the soft pools of light. ‘That – is that a Monet?’
‘One of the haystacks series.’ He closed the door behind him.
It was a simple, beautiful little painting of two squat haystacks, orange and pink and yellow evening light throwing their shadows across a field.
‘And – Renoir?’ A rosy-faced young woman smiled out at them from a long-ago Parisian summer, wearing a high-necked, tight-bodiced blue dress, her hair piled on top of her head under a jaunty little straw boater.
‘Indeed. The camera won’t be in the frames of any of these. We’re looking for something that’s only here to serve a purpose, that’s of no value...’ He walked slowly around the room, studying the pictures on the walls.
As well as the pictures there were three square-sectioned modern white plinths positioned in a row down the middle of the room. Two supported small bronze dancers, the third a rearing horse.
Had this really been a secret torture chamber?
The walls and ceiling were lined in something smooth and white – painted plasterboard? And the subtle spotlighting – Weber would have needed a carpenter, a plasterer, an electrician, a locksmith to work in here. Perdita had said he’d imported the tradesmen from London, but could one of them have come back, curious to know what this room was to contain? And Weber found them in here, and there was an altercation?
Maybe the murder itself hadn’t been premeditated?
The electricity supply had been cut off, but maybe only because they didn’t want to be caught on camera snooping around? The tradesmen might have been given keys...
‘Could it have been one of the tradesmen?’ she said aloud.
‘I doubt it, but hopefully we’re about to find out.’ Hector had stopped opposite a large oil painting of cattle in a pool of water. It was very well painted, but Claire recognised it as typical of Victorian paintings that sold at the auctions she attended with Grannie for hundreds or thousands rather than millions. Its frame was a huge gilded monster, all scrolls and curlicues. Hector brought out a small torch and examined it minutely.
‘So what were you after? The Renoir?’ It was the painting her eye kept being drawn back to.
‘Nope.’ He lifted the picture down and turned it over. ‘Here we are.’
She crossed the room to look. There was a small black plastic box set into the back of the deep frame. Hector removed it and turned the picture back over, poking his finger under the overhanging curl of a scroll. ‘You’d never see the lens unless you were looking for it.’
‘Okay, let’s go.’
But the truth was, she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay and look at these pictures, at that little ballet dancer standing flat on her feet but so gracefully.
‘He was lying over there, in case you’re interested,’ said Hector.
‘Oh. Right, yes. So the camera should have caught the perp.’
‘Should have, provided the Twat was conscientious about replacing the battery.’ He pocketed something, presumably the SD card, and replaced the painting on the wall. They had left Perdita’s tablet in the four-by-four so would have to wait until they were back there to read whatever was on the card.
Now Hector had gone to the wall opposite and was standing contemplating a smallish painting of a striking dark-haired woman in a black dress. She was leaning against a doorway, her chin slightly lifted. Flooding the room with light from the left was a very tall window, the kind you got in flats in European cities which opened like shutters. To the right, vivid green wallpaper behind a vase of lilies on a sideboard, its lines simple and angular – Art Deco?
It was impressionistic and vivid and atmospheric – a moment in time, caught in quick, sure brushstrokes. You could almost smell those lilies, hear the distant parping of horns from the street below, feel the sun hot on the patterned rug as you walked across the room to greet her.
Hector reached up with gloved hands and took the painting from the wall.
‘This lady is coming with us.’
‘Oh no. No, absolutely not. I’ll not be a party to theft.’
‘All right, I’ll rephrase that – she’s coming with me.’ He tucked the painting under his arm. ‘As I’m sure you know, the trick to this sort of thing is confidence. Let me do any talking required.’
‘Hector. Put that back.’
But he had already pulled his mask back over his face and was opening the concealed door.
49
The woman called Prim stopped in the middle of the field and pointed at a shipping container that had been dumped in one of the marshy fields on the lower slopes of the hill.
‘Christ,’ said Gavin. ‘You mean Karen’s in there?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
It was the first time she had spoken. She had led them, wordlessly, out of the farmhouse and across the yard. The guy Doffy had tried to grab her at that point, whining, ‘Prim! No!’ and the Marshall lad had pulled him off her and slammed him down in the slushy mud.
‘Dinna let him out your sight,’ Mick had instructed.
‘And no phone calls,’ Damian had added.
Fraser Marshall had nodded with grim satisfaction, grinding the man’s face into the mud as he tried to remonstrate. There was obviously history there.
Now Prim bowed her head as if in prayer, and Chris let out a string of expletives.
The door was only bolted shut, not locked. Gavin got there first, and flung the door open, dreading what he was going to find. That girl, that feisty young girl who used to yell at him for traipsing into the kitchen in his clarty boots –
The door opened on a strong whiff of bleach.
There was no one in here, just a pile of hay.
The floor had been mopped down.
He ran back across the field to Prim. ‘Where’ve they taken her?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, eyes darting to the container and away again. She didn’t meet Gavin’s gaze.
‘The rescue phone,’ said Damian. ‘Ade must have found out about it. He must know that Karen gave it to the police but didn’t tell them where she found it – didn’t tell anyone –’
‘Hud on, hud on,’ said Mick. ‘We’ve only this daft quine’s word Karen was ever in there.’
But Damian was already limping away from them across the melting snow. Inside the container, he started poking at the hay with the hiking poles. Then he bent and picked something up.
It was the clockwork mouse they called Wilkins. He stared at it for a second, then pushed it into his pocket. ‘She was here. How long did he keep her here?’ he asked Prim.
‘Since – Christmas Eve,’ she whispered, head bent.
‘Why? Why would he not just...’
‘Dee awa’ wi’ her?’ Mick supplied.
Damian came right up to Prim, and eventually she lifted her head. ‘Where has he taken her? Where are the others? Are the
y with Ade?’
‘I don’t know. Ade – he pretended – he pretended she had run off. He said he was afraid she would hurt herself. He pretended to go out looking for her. He doesn’t know I saw her. He doesn’t know.’
‘When did Ade leave? And the others? Did they say anything that might suggest where they’ve gone?’
‘They all – This morning. An hour, maybe, before you arrived. I don’t know where they’ve gone.’ She was looking around the container as if she’d never seen it before.
‘Right.’ Damian turned to Gavin, then to Mick and Chris, his eyes wide with shock, obviously hoping that one of them would have the answer, one of the adults would take control and sort this out like the Boss would have done.
Gavin lifted his shoulders helplessly.
‘Fit wye,’ said Mick, ‘did ye nae let her oot o’ here?’ And he grabbed Prim.
‘Nutter,’ said Chris, and spat on the floor.
‘He’s been saying he’s worried she’ll harm herself.’ The words seemed to be dragged out of Gavin’s mouth. ‘Making out like he thinks she’s gone off to...’
‘Top herself,’ supplied Chris.
Gavin swallowed. ‘He’s going to make it look like suicide.’
Damian had set a restraining hand on Mick’s arm, but now he moved to the door of the container and stood, watching the meltwater from the snow on the roof dripping onto the grass.
‘The thaw,’ he said. ‘That’s why he had to wait. For the thaw. If he’s going to make it look like a suicide, he had to wait for the ice to melt. The ice on the pond.’
‘Oh fuck,’ said Gavin. ‘Yes. It’s where she’d do it. If she was going to kill herself, she’d do it at the pond.’
◆◆◆
Claire had no choice but to follow Hector out into the gallery. There was only one SOCO-suited woman there now, shining a torch on the floor near the staircase. As they emerged she looked round, and did a double take.
