Evil for Evil

by Aline Templeton

  Taking pity on her victim, Fleming rang off. But what on earth had MacNee been up to during the hours of darkness that meant he was asleep now? She could only hope that whatever it was wouldn’t draw undesirable attention again and bring Bailey’s wrath down on her already bludgeoned head.

  Maybe he was on to something, some change of direction. That was what they needed at the moment. They were allowing themselves to get bogged down in the inquiry about the fire-raising, and the original crime, sadistic murder, was in danger of being sidelined.

  Where the fire-raising was concerned, she might just have to accept that even though the Donaldsons and Sorley were prime suspects – there was a good fit with their previous activities and they had the classic means, motive and opportunity – the lack of direct proof could mean there’d be no prosecution. A crime that consumed all the evidence was close to the perfect crime.

  What had emerged, though, was that both Macdonald and Campbell believed that they genuinely didn’t know Andrew Smith. So …?

  Unconsciously, Fleming was tapping on her front teeth with her fingernail. So perhaps they were looking in the wrong direction, drawing a blank with all those interviews in the village. If the Manchester force would just come through with some more information on Andrew Smith, it would help – she’d requested interviews with known associates but of course they felt no sense of urgency about another force’s years-old murder.

  So where were the gaps in her own investigation? Matt Lovatt was the target of all the recent problems. What had caused this dramatic escalation, after years of petty nastinesses? It was hard to see how discovering Andrew Smith’s body could have provoked it; it made no sort of sense. It simply didn’t feel right, and over the years Fleming had come to trust that sort of gut feeling. It often indicated a subconscious observation that hadn’t yet surfaced in the conscious mind.

  Lovatt, though, was an enigmatic figure, which made her even more angry with the jumped-up constable who had denied her the opportunity of a killer interview. Maybe the man hadn’t been there at the time of the murder, but his grandmother certainly had been. Fleming wanted to know more about his grandmother, at the edge of the picture so far.

  Fleming could still go and question him herself, of course, but Hepburn had almost certainly sprung the Andrew Smith question, as they had all been instructed to do. If she asked Lovatt again, he would have had time, if necessary, to armour himself against it. She’d wanted to see his reaction for herself. Oh, she had a word or two to say to young Hepburn, when she appeared.

  What alarmed Fleming most was the sense she had of – what? She struggled to define it. That it wasn’t over – that was it. That something was happening, but to a quite terrifying degree, she couldn’t say what – or where, or why, or who was doing it. All Fleming’s professional instincts were signalling danger, but she had no idea which direction it was coming from.

  Sitting panicking wasn’t going to help. She went back to her sifting, unrewarding as it might be. She had reached the stage where she reckoned she would scream if she read one more report reading, ‘I proceeded to 23 High Street’ – did no one in the police force just go places any more? – there was a knock on the door and DS Macdonald appeared, a little ahead of her ‘Come!’ He was clearly in a state of barely suppressed rage.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you, boss, but I’ve had a complaint of harassment from Georgia Stanley at the Smugglers Inn. About DC Hepburn.’

  Obviously Hepburn made friends everywhere she went. She was startled, nonetheless. ‘She’s been harassing Georgia?’

  Macdonald hesitated. ‘Well, not Georgia. She was complaining on behalf of Christie Jack. It was outrageous—’

  ‘Ah,’ Fleming said. ‘I think you need to sit down, Andy.’

  She could almost see him deflating as he obeyed her, and she went on, ‘Right, let’s start at the beginning. I saw for myself that you’re interested in Christie Jack. No, don’t interrupt me,’ as he made a move to speak. ‘You must not have anything more to do with her, in the context of this investigation. You are not to contact her, directly or indirectly. That’s an order.

  ‘I shall speak to Georgia myself, but if you think you can present the complaint she made in a professional way, I’ll listen to you.’

  Fleming could see him struggling. He was a decent, uncomplicated young man, Andy, and for some reason he had fallen with a crash you could hear across in Ireland for Christie, who was taking him well out of his emotional depth. From all reports, Matt Lovatt was the big thing in the girl’s life and that would be hard for Andy to accept, especially since it put Christie on the suspect list.

  ‘Georgia says Hepburn was all chummy with Christie, then suddenly accused her of setting the fire to murder Melissa Lovatt. We’d taken her over all that before, and the tone she took sent Christie hysterical. I’ve advised Georgia to take it up with the super.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ If looks could kill, he would have been a small, fizzing patch on the floor.

  That got through to him. ‘Well, she said she’d like to speak to you first,’ he conceded.

  ‘I’ve got a big problem with this, Sergeant. I thought I could deal with your attitude to Christie, who is obviously a suspect—’

  Macdonald opened his mouth to protest and Fleming snarled, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, of course she is – Melissa Lovatt’s accused her. I thought I could just see to it that other people dealt with her. But I’m beginning to wonder whether I can keep you on this case at all.

  ‘No, I don’t want a discussion. I’m going to think it over, and I’ll let you know of my decision.’

  When he left, Fleming put her head in her hands. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. MacNee off pursuing some – probably maverick – idea of his own. Macdonald, with his brain totally in thrall to his hormones. Which left her with Campbell, who hoarded his words as if they were bawbees and many a mickle could make a muckle.

  And Hepburn, who was, as far as she could see, the pick of the bunch among the other detectives, and whom she was planning to blow out of the water pretty much as she stepped over the threshold of her office.

  Doggedly, she went back to the reports. And then, at last, something caught her eye. Trivial, probably, but it was something that had been missed. How often had a serial killer been free to carry on because of a box that hadn’t been ticked? She was clutching at straws here, perhaps, but it wasn’t as if there were convenient logs floating by.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was late afternoon by the time the Lovatts returned to Innellan and the sun was dropping low in the sky, hinting at the onset of the long, dark northern winter. Matt dropped Lissa outside the caravan with a key and a carrier bag of basic supplies. She had flatly refused to take any of her clothes.

  ‘They would stink the place out. I don’t feel up to washing them. Maybe your little friend Christie could do that in her spare time,’ she had said unwisely, then flinched at the anger in her husband’s face.

  He had been angry anyway, when he’d demanded to see the credit card slip from the dress shop, and admittedly Lissa had gone a bit over the top. She’d been feeling both angry and defiant – she hadn’t bought clothes for years and that was just what decent jeans and a good coat cost these days. He hadn’t said anything, but he had crumpled the slip in his hand and there was a white line around his lips. He’d been annoyed, too, when she’d refused to go to the Smugglers for meals, and made him stop to let her buy groceries.

  Now Matt had dumped her here, and just driven off as if he couldn’t bear to be a moment longer in her company.

  The caravan wasn’t one of the big, smart family ones with huge windows. It was old-fashioned, small and shabby, with skimpy curtains drawn across the meagre windows, a bolt-hole for the owner of a picturesque home down on the shore during the profitable holiday rental season. It was huddled sideways into the hill behind to give shelter when the wind blew but tonight, with the shadows lengthening, it looked dar
k and unwelcoming.

  There was a real autumn chill in the air, and even huddled into the expensive coat, Lissa was cold – and tired too, and her throat was still raw from the after-effects of the smoke. She needed warmth, a cup of tea, a rest. Her hands were icy and it took her a moment or two of fumbling to work the awkward lock.

  The door opened on a dim, shadowy cavern, with a stale, unaired smell. She stepped inside uncertainly, leaving the door open, and could make out a galley of sorts, and a bed with a thin mattress, covered by a worn candlewick bedspread in an ugly shade of orange. She felt for a light switch, but couldn’t find one. Surely, on a permanent site like this, it must be connected up to electricity, and plumbing, too? But there was a large empty water container on the floor in the galley; her heart sank when she turned the tap above the chipped enamel sink and no water came out, and sank further when she opened a little door at the back and found a cramped chemical toilet. As she looked around despairingly, she noticed a big camping gas light sitting on a table at the back. No plumbing, no electricity – and even the two burners in the galley were Calor gas. She hadn’t thought to get matches.

  She sat down on the tatty bedcover and burst into tears. It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair! But that brought an echo of what her mother had always said, coldly, when she complained: ‘Whoever told you life was going to be fair? It certainly wasn’t me. And you should know that by now.’

  Lissa knew it, all right, but a sense of grievance had haunted her all her life except for that brief, early time with Matt when she had thought that with all he had been through he would understand, would make everything right for her. Now she felt, as she had sometimes felt in the past, that she was quivering on the brink of total disintegration, with everyone in the world against her.

  Kerr had rescued her before, but she didn’t want to think about him now. He had done his best to humiliate her, and she still had her pride. The very next time she saw him she would make it icily plain that she loathed and despised him. That seemed to be what he wanted, so she wasn’t afraid of his silly threat.

  So that left only Matt, who was so angry with her that he hadn’t looked directly at her once today. Christie seemed to have turned him into Lissa’s enemy now, and for the first time she wondered if they could have been acting together – Christie’s daring rescue a sham, done with Matt’s cooperation? Surely not – he wouldn’t burn down his own house!

  Yet the ugly thoughts kept going round and round inside her head, and it was a refinement of cruelty that she didn’t even have the most basic comforts in this disgusting, sordid place.

  Restless in her misery, she got up and went to let in such light as there was, drawing back the curtain on the window opposite the bed. Across the bay she could see the island, starting to grow shadowy in the fading light – the island, where what remained of her fractured heart was buried with her son.

  She could go and sit by his grave, talk to him. She didn’t think of him as the small, still thing he had been – in her mind he grew steadily and she saw him as the toddler he would be now, a sturdy little dark-haired boy, with blue eyes like her own, trotting around laughing. He never cried, of course, and was starting to babble baby talk that would make her laugh. He would never betray her, never grow away from her. Never learn to hate her. He was all she had left. Lissa needed to be there, with him.

  She’d have to find Matt, though, to get the key to the boat. He and Christie were probably sitting, snug and warm in the bar, laughing together and grateful that Lissa was out of the way for the moment at least – if not permanently. She wasn’t sure she felt strong enough to face them.

  Lissa pressed her face against the glass to cool her cheeks, hot now with tears. Below on the shore the tide was on its way out and she saw that the causeway was almost clear. She could walk across that way and satisfy her yearning without ever going near Matt. It would be passable for hours now and perhaps when she got back she would feel heartened enough to ask someone for matches and find a standpipe to fill the water bottle.

  Just for tonight. She could cope with one night, but no more. Tomorrow things would have to be different. In her expensive coat, cream-coloured and impractical, she set off on the track past the chalets and down to the village.

  Louise Hepburn’s jaunty step as she came back into the CID room reflected her satisfaction. For the first time since she joined she’d had the chance to conduct a major interview, and she reckoned she’d made some sort of breakthrough. Admittedly, she hadn’t got an admission out of Lovatt and he obviously hadn’t known who the skeleton was, but she had no doubt that the ‘Andrew Smith’ he’d first thought of wasn’t either the butcher in Kirkcudbright or his brother-in-arms. What was more, she’d an idea that she wanted to chase up that just might produce a line to follow.

  She was totally taken aback when DS Macdonald, who seemed to be lying in wait for her, launched into a tirade about bullying and harassment that called into question her judgement, her competence, her professionalism, her ethics – indeed, everything, only just stopping short of her personal freshness.

  The sergeant had always seemed kind of a laid-back guy who never stood on his dignity. ‘Hey, Sarge,’ Hepburn protested, ‘what’s this about? Give me a break!’

  Mistakenly. Macdonald’s fury changed to icy rage. ‘Don’t be impertinent, Constable. I want to know why you reduced a very vulnerable woman to a state of hysteria.’

  Feeling the first prickle of nervous sweat, Hepburn’s hand went up to rub the back of her neck. ‘If you mean Christie Jack, all I did was put to her the allegation that Melissa Lovatt had made.’

  ‘We’d covered that yesterday, which you knew. Georgia Stanley told you. She says that you began by trying to lure Christie into making some sort of admission, then when she didn’t produce what you wanted, you started bullying her.’

  Hepburn opened her mouth to protest, but Macdonald swept on, ‘In any case, an official complaint has been made and DI Fleming wants to see you ASAP. And I have to tell you that she’s not very pleased that you sneaked in to interview Lovatt before she did, either.’

  There was malice in his smile as he said that. Hepburn left the room, feeling faintly sick. She’d better go straight there and get it over with; Big Marge’s reputation was that she didn’t do a lot of barking, but when she bit she went straight for the jugular.

  That image was to haunt her when she heard the news the following day.

  The knock on DI Fleming’s door was a very tentative one, and she had no problem guessing who it was. ‘Come!’ she said, and DC Hepburn inserted herself into the room.

  Fleming’s sense of the ridiculous had always been a handicap to the expression of righteous wrath. Hepburn was perhaps twenty-four, twenty-five, but she looked exactly like a schoolgirl summoned to the head teacher.

  ‘You’d better sit down, Hepburn,’ she said. ‘You’re in trouble.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.’

  She sat down, but Fleming had made a practice of studying body language, and when Hepburn came in she’d been – yes, more scared than she was now. If she’d been sharp enough to pick up on Fleming’s faint amusement, she could be valuable.

  Not that she was letting her off the hook. ‘As someone will probably have told you – DS Macdonald, perhaps? – an official complaint has been made about your handling of the interview with Christie Jack this morning. I’ve been told you were bullying her. This is your window of opportunity to put your side of the story.’

  It was interesting to watch her reaction. Two ways to go – deny it, or accept it and apologise. It was even more interesting that she found a middle way.

  ‘I don’t see it like that. I asked her if she had started the fire because Melissa Lovatt had said that she did. Yes, I tried to put pressure on her to see if she would admit it, after getting her confidence first, but I stopped when she became distressed and I didn’t mislead her at any stage. It was a routine interview.’

  ‘You should know
enough to understand that our job is to collect admissible evidence. Supposing you had broken her down – supposing she had admitted that she had set fire to the house? No corroboration – no case to answer.’

  She saw her swallow, saw her run her hand through her untidy mop of hair to massage the back of her neck in a sort of helpless gesture. This was a crucial one: would she bluster, or …

  ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought of that.’

  Another smart response. Fleming hadn’t finished, though, by any means. ‘No, it’s fairly obvious you hadn’t. Which is why we don’t send inexperienced officers out to do major interviews on their own.’

  Hepburn took that like a sword thrust. ‘Lovatt,’ she said, her voice flat.

  ‘Lovatt.’

  She swallowed. ‘Look, we’d arranged that would happen. They told me you wouldn’t be in, and I thought you were anxious to have it done anyway …’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I–I … Oh well, all right. I was just pissed off – sorry, ma’am, disappointed, that it wasn’t going ahead. I’d read all the background stuff, and it seemed to me he was the most interesting assignment going. None of the stuff that has been done had led anywhere, and Lovatt—’ She stopped.

  Fleming’s interest quickened. ‘And …?’

  Hepburn hesitated. ‘There’s stuff that I want to check on first—’

  Her patience snapped. ‘Look, Hepburn, I think you have an interesting approach. I have a strong feeling that you’re keen to impress me. But if you think that the clever way to do it is by assembling your case and then laying your cards on the table and saying ‘Gin’, let me disabuse you. Gin rummy is one thing, a police investigation is quite another. What – did – Lovatt – say?’

  Hepburn didn’t seem intimidated. ‘Just didn’t want to waste your time, ma’am. There was nothing that would stand up in court. But there were two things – I don’t think he’s totally confident that Christie Jack hadn’t set the house on fire – whatever DS Macdonald may think about it.’