Evil for Evil

by Aline Templeton

  MacNee looked at her quizzically. ‘And doesn’t that go for Elena Tindall as well? She’d choices too.’

  She turned her head to glance at him. ‘Elena was fighting with monsters. You know – Nietzsche.’

  ‘Bless you,’ he said politely.

  Hepburn made a face at him. ‘Very funny. German philosopher: he warned about fighting with monsters, in case you became one. And then there was the part about an abyss – “If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It swallowed her up – the abyss. That’s where she is now.’

  MacNee was more prosaic. ‘Aye, she’s in a mess right enough. Strong woman, though. Runs in the family – strong women, weak men. Her granny was a right old battleaxe, apparently. Wouldn’t even let her poor wee henpecked husband keep his own name. According to the locals, he was so happy at getting away, he died with a smile on his face. Matt and Cal obviously favour their father’s side.’

  ‘Funny to think of them as brothers,’ Hepburn said. ‘Certainly deal with their problems the same way – don’t look at them hard enough, and maybe they’ll go away. Do you think they realise what damage their feeble cowardice has caused?’

  ‘Prefer Elena’s more robust approach, do you?’ MacNee said sardonically. ‘Tough cookie. I wonder how the boss has got on with her?’

  As they walked back along the corridor after the abortive interview with Elena Tindall, Fleming said bitterly to Campbell, ‘She’s terrifying, that woman. We’d better hope that forensics can find something in the chalet to tie her to Melissa Lovatt’s murder. If not, all we’ve really got against the woman for Andrew Smith at the moment is the evidence from Lovatt of the oblique confession she made, and the fact that she had the lethal dart for the attempt on her brother – fortunately we can testify to that too. I can tell you, with the sob story she’s got to tell, her brief just could get an acquittal – and then where are we?’

  Campbell grinned. ‘Corroboration’ll be out the window by the time this calls in court.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The new rules. It’ll just be about credibility – and a disfigured soldier’s about the best witness you could get.’

  ‘You’ve got a nasty habit of being right, Ewan,’ Fleming conceded. But she still regretted that one person’s word against another, instead of one person’s word backed up by evidence, could put someone behind bars.

  And she’d always thought, anyway, that if you could talk to someone accused of a crime, without a lawyer telling them that if they didn’t say anything they might get off with it, it delivered something closer to justice for victims.

  But then she would think that, wouldn’t she?

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Stop the car!’ DS MacNee erupted suddenly.

  They were nearing Kirkluce. Giving him a startled glance, Hepburn pulled in to the side and MacNee, swearing, was out of the car before the wheels stopped rolling. The rain was coming on; he plunged across the road, dodging the oncoming traffic.

  Hepburn watched, puzzled. He had gone up to an elderly man, well-dressed but with, she thought, a drinker’s complexion, who was walking along by the verge on the other side, hitch-hiking.

  MacNee had grabbed his arm, and was shaking it. He was shouting, and she lowered the window to hear what he was saying.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’ll get yourself killed, walking along here. If you want to go somewhere, tell Bunty and she’ll take you.’

  ‘Aye – to one of her bloody coffee mornings,’ the old man said sourly. ‘Och Tam, for any favour, leave me alone.’

  MacNee ignored him, watching for a gap in the traffic. Still keeping tight hold on his arm, he steered him across the road and held open the back passenger door. ‘Get in,’ he said, and muttering under his breath the man complied.

  MacNee got back in. ‘My father Davie, Louise. Do us a favour – drop him off at home, will you?’

  ‘Sure.’ Hepburn drove off, suppressing a smile. MacNee’s colourful father had been the subject of quite a bit of station gossip.

  MacNee was still raging. ‘What did you think you were doing, Dad?’

  ‘Getting back to Glasgow. Might have made it too if you’d not come along.’ He sounded like a Colditz prisoner recaptured by the Gestapo.

  MacNee turned in his seat, hurt. ‘Dad, you were on the streets in Glasgow! You were killing yourself with the drink. A chest infection could have finished you off—’

  ‘Aye, well, maybe it’d be better than dying of boredom. I’m not taking it, Tam. You’re maybe my son but you’re not my keeper.’

  ‘Can’t you see you’re better now?’ MacNee demanded. ‘You’re healthier, your drinking’s well-controlled—’

  ‘It is that,’ Davie said with feeling. ‘Och, I’ve no doubt you mean well, you and Bunty, but unless you lock me up I’ll be away back to my pals.’

  As the car drew up outside his house, MacNee sighed deeply. ‘OK, Dad, I’ll talk to you later when I get in, all right? And don’t do anything daft meantime.’

  Davie got out. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘As long’s you don’t think you’ll talk me out of it.’

  As they drove away, MacNee said, ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘No problem.’ Hepburn hesitated, then said, ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘He’s going to do it for me, isn’t he? I knew he was getting kinna fed up. It’s the drink, though – he’ll kill himself if he goes back to it.’

  ‘You can’t stop him, though, can you? Like he said, he’s all grown up. Is there nowhere he could go where they’d keep an eye – a hostel, say …’

  MacNee shook his head. ‘They can’t monitor the inmates one-to-one – there’s too many of them. They just make rules, and he’ll break them and be back on the streets. Unless—’ He broke off, thinking.

  ‘There’s one of our old neighbours, a decent wifie, who takes in lodgers. She still sends us a Christmas card, and she’d always a soft spot for my father. I could see if she’d maybe take him on, and I could tell him that if I don’t get a good report from her I’ll fetch him back.’

  ‘And make him go to coffee mornings,’ Hepburn suggested.

  ‘That’d do it. Given the choice, I’d rather be on the streets myself.’

  From his chalet above the bay, Derek Sorley looked out through the sheets of driving rain towards the island. Tascadan – treasure, in the Gaelic. He hadn’t done much homework for his classes the last few days; it looked as if he might not be needing to tap into the growing market for publicly funded Gaelic speakers, after all. The police had finished their investigations there and the place was deserted. It certainly looked as if Lovatt would have more on his mind than people taking an innocent walk across his property. Even with a metal detector.

  Another ten minutes, and he’d be able to walk across the causeway, so he might as well set off now. He’d only to pick up the machine, and a spade, and he’d be there.

  Sorley was in an unusually cheerful frame of mind anyway. He’d suggested to Steve that if anyone pursued them – which they maybe wouldn’t, with all that was going on – he’d retract his confession and say that it was Hugh who let the stag out. He’d said to Steve, ‘It’s what Hugh would have wanted,’ and though Steve had looked a bit doubtful, he’d agreed.

  The rain was teeming down, coming in on a northwester, and he huddled into his cagoule as he left the chalet. Further down the track a large van was parked and figures in white hooded overalls were going to and fro from Spindrift, but they paid no attention as he walked past them and down to the shore. Even in the bay, the sea was being whipped up into a froth of whitecaps and the spume stung his face as he went down to the causeway. It should be clear by now, but there were rogue waves still breaking across it.

  He couldn’t bear to wait any longer. What was a little water when the gold was there, so near, almost within reach? He hardly noticed that he was soaked, or even when he slipped and landed painfully on a jagged rock. He’d have bruise
s to show for it tomorrow, but that hardly mattered.

  It wasn’t easy, either, to keep his feet on the slippery turf when he reached the island. He lost count of the number of times he fell forward, but making prostration to the gods seemed somehow appropriate.

  There were the graves now, grey in the fog of mist and spray. He remembered perfectly where he had been, the moment when the machine signalled ‘Gold’, the moment just before the wolf-dog had appeared. He went back there now and switched it on, with a murmured prayer. What if, in his alarm, he’d been mistaken?

  But no, there it was, the clicking that proved to him that dreams, after all, really did come true. He set it down and began to dig.

  A tinfoil package came up first, just a couple of inches below the surface. It seemed to have some mouldy bones – chicken, they looked like to him, probably from some picnicker who’d buried the debris rather than carrying it home. He chucked it impatiently aside, and dug on, dug and dug and dug.

  He was soaked through and wind-battered, but he was sweating with the effort he was making, getting increasingly frantic. Perhaps he’d got the angle slightly wrong? He stood up and picked up the machine again, swung it over his excavations.

  Nothing. Silence. He checked that it was on properly, swung again wildly in his impatience. As the metal detector swung across the discarded package, the clicking he had been so desperate to hear sounded again.

  It felt as if his stomach had fallen into his boots. In disbelief, he looked at what it was telling him. There it was – gold!

  He’d got the machine second-hand, without a book of instructions. Now, an uneasy flicker of a half-forgotten something he’d heard once crept into his mind: something about metal detectors having the same response to tinfoil as to gold.

  No riches, no glorious future. The rain was trickling down the back of his neck, his shoes were waterlogged and he had a blister on his muddy hand. He looked down at the yawning hole in front of him and saw the grave of all his dreams.

  They were sitting having supper in the farmhouse kitchen when Marjory got home, light-headed with exhaustion. After the horror and intensity of the past hours, there was something almost surreal about the familiar, peaceful domestic scene.

  Bill jumped up as she came in. ‘Marjory! That’s good. Didn’t think we’d see you till much later.’

  She rubbed a tired hand across her face. ‘Wasn’t doing any good there. Too tired to concentrate. Food then bed, I think – though not necessarily in that order.’

  Her husband laughed as she slumped into her chair. ‘Fortunately Cammie hasn’t got round to seconds yet. There’s still some supper in the oven.’

  The savoury smell wafted across and she realised she was ravenously hungry. Bill put down a plate of something chickeny in front of her, along with a glass of white wine. ‘You look as if you need that.’

  ‘You could say.’ The hot food, the cold wine – she might feel almost human shortly.

  ‘Got them all banged up, have you, Mum?’ Cammie asked with cheerful insensitivity.

  Trying not to wince, she said, ‘Not exactly. How are you all – had a good day?’

  Cat, who, Marjory noticed, had ostentatiously moved nearer to her father’s end of the table, said nothing. Cammie said, ‘Fine,’ and Bill said, ‘Just the usual. Got quite a good price for some stirks at Kelso.’

  Cammie looked at him, then shifted in his seat. ‘Dad, have you ever thought of switching to arable farming?’

  Marjory, who had been fighting to keep her eyes open long enough to finish her food, stretched them wide in astonishment, and Bill stared at his son.

  ‘Arable on a hill farm? Laddie, have you gone daft?’

  Cam’s face, marked with acne, flushed a deep, adolescent red and he knocked over his empty water glass. He was growing so fast that he never knew where his extremities were and was a danger to any small object not firmly fixed in place. ‘I–I just thought …’ he mumbled.

  His sister said sarcastically, ‘You see, Cam, the up-and-down bits – we call them “hills” – make ploughing just a bit difficult.’

  ‘It’s just – well, it’s not very nice to kill things for a living,’ Cam blurted out.

  Bill seemed lost for words. Marjory, seeing her son’s tortured expression, suddenly understood: this was all about the power of a pair of big brown eyes.

  ‘You know it’s not quite like that, Cammie,’ she said mildly. ‘There’s all the caring and nurturing as well—’

  ‘And then you kill them.’ His jaw stuck out, in an almost comic imitation of his father’s ‘stubborn’ face.

  ‘Enjoy your chicken?’ Cat put in unhelpfully.

  Bill recovered his voice. ‘For heaven’s sake, Cammie, you’ve lived on a farm all your life. You know how we look after the beasts, how we give them a good life. And yes, of course they go for slaughter in the end, but people eat meat. We’re carnivores.’

  Marjory could hear the hurt in his voice, but Cammie wasn’t listening.

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have to be,’ he argued. ‘We could all be vegetarian. Animals wouldn’t have to die and it would be better for us. Better for the planet, too, you know. We can’t go on like this.’

  Cat looked at him mockingly. ‘Well, well, this from the guy who likes six slices of bacon on his butty! Who have you been talking to, then?’

  Bill sank back in his chair. ‘That girl – what’s-her-name. It’s her, isn’t it?’

  Cammie jumped up. ‘She’s not “that girl”. She’s Zoë, and what she says makes total sense. I hoped I’d be able to find a way round it, but if there isn’t one, that’s it. I’m sorry, Dad, I know the whole idea was that I should go into farming with you, but I’ve got my own life to lead. I’ve made my decision and I’m not going to let you coerce me. I don’t want to be a farmer. OK?’

  He left the kitchen, slamming the door and leaving a stunned silence behind him. Bill looked devastated, and Marjory said urgently, ‘Cat, can you go after your brother and try to talk some sense into him?’

  Her daughter looked at her coolly. ‘Not sure I can, really. He’s realised that he’s not just your puppet, that he’s entitled to make up his own mind. Maybe if I’d realised when I was his age I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now.’

  She walked out too, leaving her parents staring at each other across the table in dismay. Marjory was the first to find her voice.

  ‘It’s so bloody unjust! I’ve never wanted Cat to be a vet – I couldn’t care less! She’s said that was all she wanted ever since the first time the yard cat had kittens.’

  Bill was scowling. ‘So I’ve been pressuring Cammie, have I? Funny that I’ve never been able to keep him away from the farm. It’s just some stupid fad, because of that girl. I’m furious with the boy.’

  This was the last thing Marjory needed on top of everything else. ‘This is all so stupid and unnecessary,’ she said wearily. ‘Last night I had to watch a man die, Bill, and there was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Want to talk about it?’

  ‘Not really. I’d prefer not to think about it, if I could.’ She finished her wine, then picked up her empty plate and glass and took them across to the dishwasher.

  ‘I’ll stack it, if you like,’ Bill said, clearing the table. ‘How’s the rest of it going?’

  Marjory sighed. ‘Oh well, Elena Tindall and Cal Findlay have been charged so now we’ll be under judges’ rules and the media will have to lay off, which is always something. He’s made a formal confession now. She certainly won’t, but they’ve got fingerprint evidence from the staples in the cave, so if they match we’re in business anyway. And the SOCOs have found blood in the trap below the drain from the bath and again, if it’s Melissa Lovatt’s we’ve got her on that too.’

  ‘Won’t they go for whatever it is you call it when someone’s got mental problems?’

  ‘Diminished responsibility? Almost certainly, I should think.’ Marjory scrubbed out the casserole and set it upside down on the
draining board.

  ‘And she’ll get a sympathetic jury, after all that happened to her,’ Bill said.

  ‘Ye-es.’ Marjory wasn’t entirely sure. ‘If she’d just killed her father, and hadn’t killed Melissa Lovatt as well, probably. But with the level of sadism, and the planning for thirty years for her revenge on her terrified nine-year-old twin, I’m not sure how indulgent they’ll feel.’

  ‘Do you think she was just so damaged that she can’t be held responsible?’

  ‘To some degree, of course I do. It was psychopathic behaviour, and what happened to her meant she’d had to learn to deaden her feelings, just to survive. But did she realise how terrible her crimes were? I think she did. I think she was quite coldly and clinically aware. The only thing that makes me think “psychopath” doesn’t apply was her utter devastation when she accidentally killed her husband. So perhaps there was human emotion in there somewhere, even if she was cold and ruthless in every other direction.’

  Bill started the dishwasher. ‘Was she capable of choosing not to do those hideous things? That’s what I’d want to know if I was on a jury.’

  Considering it, Fleming dried the casserole and put it into the cupboard. ‘I simply don’t know. The amount of choice any of us have is debatable, and there could be a genetic angle there. According to Tam, her grandmother victimised her husband, and Andrew Smith’s decision to sell his daughter to pay gambling debts was sick beyond belief. Perhaps it’s the usual mixture of what you are and what situation you find yourself in.’

  She gave an enormous yawn. ‘I must get to bed. I’m out on my feet. Tomorrow’s going to be stressful at work and at home. Cat’s barely speaking to me, and now Cammie probably won’t be speaking to you.’ She paused. ‘Could make for some interesting mealtimes.’

  The funny side of it suddenly struck her, and she began to laugh, weakly at first, then with a sort of hysteria. After a moment he joined in.