‘No, dunderhead. Put it out, it’s against the law, duh?’
She shook her head in disbelief as Lowe, now flushed, dunked it in his mug of cold tea. Surreptitiously, she inhaled its fast-fading fumes before resuming her pacing, watching out of the corner of her eye as Lowe read the instructions on his nicotine gum paper before cramming a strip into his mouth. Alistair Watt’s arrival was preceded by a murmur of jazz before, still swaying to the rhythm, he unplugged himself from his MP3 and sat down, looking expectantly at his boss as if she was about to speak. By nine o’clock all were present except for DI Manson, who could be heard shuffling up the stairs in his tartan slippers, tapping each step with a newly acquired stick. When he appeared his complexion was uncharacteristically sallow, yellowish, as if he had recently fainted.
‘Go home, Eric, you look awful!’ DCI Bell said instinctively, panicking for a second that his condition might be infectious and her squad fall like flies, and then remembering the likely cause of his malady.
‘I am fine, ma’am. I saw the doctor yesterday, got some new painkillers from her. The last ones went for my guts. I’d rather stay on the job, if it’s all right with you.’
His mind was still churning over the previous night’s events. An evening of near continuous weeping and wailing, interspersed with threats to leave him. Terminating with exile to the spare room to sleep in an unmade bed, covered only by a candlewick bedspread. And all because of that siren from the tabloids. She certainly owed him now. In spades. It had begun peacefully enough, his wife’s armchair close to his own, his foot placed solicitously on a stool by her. But then their viewing had been interrupted by the sound of the telephone. He had known immediately from the very first ring that trouble was on the other end of the receiver. And had it not been for his fucking foot he would have handled the emergency like a professional. Just another dratted wrong number, dear, and then back to Coronation Street. Instead his wife had jammed her ear to the phone, neutral expression gradually changing into that of a rabbit transfixed by a stoat, and then, hands shaking, had handed the instrument over to him. Every word of the conversation he had with the siren was now branded onto his mind.
‘Er… hello,’ he had begun tentatively, paralysed by his predicament.
‘C’mon Eric, it’s only me. She’ll never know. So, how are things?’
‘Fine.’ Nothing had been given away.
‘Not seen you at the Balmoral lately. Not out of sorts?’
As if she cared. ‘No, no. I’ve been very busy.’
‘Eric… Eric, it’s me, remember? I’ve missed you. I was wondering how things have been going on the Freeman murder?’
Her real concern had been flushed out quickly enough. ‘Fine.’ Cheeky cow.
‘Don’t be like that… talk to me, lover!’
‘Well, I’ll see you in the office first thing tomorrow, Constable.’
Frowning hard as if impatient with a subordinate, he had put the phone down, limped back to his seat and resumed watching the television, but Enid had not been fooled. A squawk as unique as that one could not be explained away. And the subsequent interrogation, using the female weapons of choice, tears and tantrums, had forced an admission from him. Indeed, all contact with the woman had not ceased but, he had explained weakly, it was only for his work. Well, mainly. The thought of further recrimination, more pained disappointment, would have been intolerable even if his foot had not been throbbing fit to burst. The office promised respite. A sanctuary.
‘Okay, people,’ the Chief Inspector began ‘…we’ve got the forensic result. It seems that the paint flakes from the locus don’t match those taken from Norris’s car, and it looks like it wasn’t his DNA in Moray Place either. We know he’s got no alibi and he has admitted writing the letters but… well, I’m not sure. We’ll keep him in our sights, but not hold our breaths. Torphichen Place has passed on information about two back-street garages, worked exclusively by moonlighters. One’s in Newhaven and the other’s along the canal, so I want DC Lowe and…’
‘Yes,’ Lowe piped up, interrupting her flow, suddenly alert to his own name.
‘and DC McDonald,’ she glared at him, ‘to go along and see if either of them has had a white car in since the hit-and-run. Alistair, I need you to help out with Holmes this morning, and Eric… well, let’s see. You could prepare the report for the Assistant Chief Constable. Have you made any progress with Christopher Freeman yet, Alice?’
DS Rice shook her head. ‘I’m going to see him now, Ma’am; they’ve been away. But I have discovered that, somehow, he learnt that his brother had changed his mind about the wind farm. And I intend to find out how, precisely, he made that discovery.’
Sandra Freeman let her in, grasping the poodles’ diamante collars to prevent her dogs from tearing off into the road and then, on closing the door, releasing them to jump all over her visitor. Alice was assaulted on all sides by them, pink tongues emerging from their dark heads to lick her, untrimmed claws laddering her tights. In the kitchen an open bottle of nail varnish sat on the table, and Mrs Freeman immediately busied herself removing black curls from her wet nails before, sighing, she collected a paper hankie and began wiping off all the polish, ready to start her task afresh.
‘Could I speak to your husband, please, Mrs Freeman?’
It was as if she had said nothing. The woman continued attending to her nails, brows furrowed with concentration, tongue protruding, intent on producing a flawless surface. Just as Alice was steeling herself to repeat the question a response arrived, flat in tone.
‘No. He’s still in bed.’
‘When is he likely to get up?’
‘Mmmm-’ the woman buffed the nail on her ring finger furiously, ‘well, he’s probably…’
Her sentence remained unfinished, hanging in the air, as the man waddled into the room, unshaven, Paisley-patterned dressing gown flapping open to reveal stained, striped pyjamas. Spying an open packet of cigarettes on the dresser, a hairy hand emerged and scooped them up, and in seconds he was drawing deeply on one, sucking in his cheeks as if taking in the first life-giving oxygen of the day. A smoky kiss was bestowed on his wife.
‘Coffee, darling?’ she enquired, still preoccupied with her manicure.
‘Of course, my love.’
‘I’ll just let this dry and then put it on for you. She wants to talk to you again, sweetie,’ Sandra Freeman said, uncapping a Nescafe jar cautiously as if her nails might stick to the lid.
‘Does she indeed…’ her husband replied. ‘Well, she’ll just have to wait until after my bath.’
Smelling of Imperial Leather, and clad now in a viyella shirt and patched cavalry twill trousers, hair slicked down with water, Christopher Freeman showed his unwanted guest into his sitting room. It was small, bedecked with cheap ornaments, and cold. The fireplace had a dusty bowl of potpourri in it and the only two armchairs present were each draped with an antimacassar.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to tell me who killed my brother or his “partner” by any chance?’ the man began.
‘No, sir, I’m afraid not. I’d like to ask you some questions though, to help us with our continuing enquiries.’
‘Fat lot of use I’ll be, I’m sure, but on you go.’
He extracted a flask from his pocket and poured a tot of whisky into his milky coffee, sniffing the unappetising mix before taking a loud gulp from it.
‘I was wondering, sir, when did you get your new car?’
The major looked deeply affronted. ‘I really don’t see what that has to do with anything, Sergeant. I’m more than happy to assist you but I don’t want our time wasted. Sandra needs to hoover in here, you know, it’s her invariable routine.’
It struck Alice, not for the first time, that the man seemed unnaturally detached from the murder investigation being pursued round about him. His own brother was the victim, but, for all the concern he showed, it could have been a tadpole killed rather than his own flesh and blood. The man’s co
-operation, she decided, was no longer optional.
‘If you would prefer it, sir, we could easily move this talk to St Leonards? No problem there with housework,’ she smiled, with her mouth only, not her eyes.
‘No, no. Carry on…’ he shifted in his chair uneasily. ‘Just thinking of the wife, you understand.’
‘The new car?’ she reminded him.
‘I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago, probably.’
‘And what did you do with the old one?’
‘Sold it.’ He nodded his head sagely.
‘Which garage did you sell it to?’
‘Er… no garage, actually.’
‘No? How did you sell it then?’ Not that old chestnut, surely. A sale over a pint in a pub to a stranger.
‘On the street. You know, with a sign in the back. Car for sale, telephone number, etc.’
‘And were you paid by cheque?’
‘No, of course not! From a complete stranger? Wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on.’
‘Cash, then. I expect you put it in the bank.’ The Major shook his head emphatically. ‘Hardly worth it, we only got a couple of hundred anyway.’
‘Presumably, you got the buyer’s name, you know, for registration purposes?’ He shook his head again.
‘Scrap. No names, no pack drill.’
‘Well, perhaps you could give me its registration number?’
‘’Fraid I never remember that kind of thing… a type of dyslexia, I expect. Gave them all the papers too.’
‘Could you remind me, sir, of the make of the car and its colour?’
‘Naturally. It was a Volkswagen. A Volkswagen Polo, whitish, cream-coloured. More my wife’s toy really.’
Mrs Freeman came into the room, Hoover trailing behind her, and sat on the padded arm of her husband’s chair, smiled encouragingly at him and casually rested an arm around his neck. They fitted well together; both past their prime, ordinary, comfortable, leaning thigh against shoulder, touching each other. Seeing a loose hair on her husband’s collar she picked it off, tossing it into the empty fireplace.
Alice’s phone went and she was relieved. The call would, whatever its actual content, provide a pretext for her to leave. She did not intend to interview the Major in the company of his wife. She wanted them kept apart when spoken to in order to minimise the leakage of information from one to the other. In fact, DCI Bell was calling to bring her back to the station, and she was pleased that she could leave with an honest excuse.
Having asked to use their loo, she was shown into a cramped, windowless cubby hole off the kitchen, the noise from the over-size fan deafening any occupant, obscuring any unwanted sound effects. The place had been done up as a gentleman’s convenience to Mrs Freeman’s specification, cream paint, smutty prints on the wall and a few ancient copies of the Shooting Times cobwebbed onto the cistern. Passing her hosts’ bedroom and seeing the major’s ivory hair brushes on a dressing-table, on impulse, she dashed in and speedily combed through one of them with her fingers, gathering together a good crop of grey hair from its bristles.
‘I said there was some kind of gay connection in all this, didn’t I?’ DC Lowe said excitedly, slamming down the telephone receiver.
‘Yes, you did,’ Alice conceded.
‘Well, the boss says we’re to go to see that Georgie boy again, Sarge. Great, eh?’
‘What are you going on about, Kevin?’
Her patience was at a low ebb, weeks of overwork taking its toll.
‘Sarge, we’ve to go back to the bookstore or whatever. We’ve to find that guy. He’s been at it again, bragging in the pub and all. Only this time he’s talking about Mr Lyon, like he knew him too or something. He’s been mouthing off about the big house and the man’s sister. Stuff he couldn’t know unless he’d been seeing Lyon himself.’
‘Fine,’ Alice said and, briefly, closed her eyes. For days the squad had been treated to an intermittent dialogue between Eric Manson and Kevin Lowe, speculating, piling one shaky supposition on another, all founded on the simple premise that two gays could never be monogamous, faithful, like good, old married heterosexuals. Sex would hold the key to this case. Georgie would be implicated in it one way or another. Sometimes their conversation centred on the investigation, often it roamed free, covering subjects as diverse, and complex, as human nature and normality, usually wrapped up in a few heated minutes.
On this matter, an unexpected meeting of minds had occurred. One, Alice thought ruefully, informed by inexperience and the other by prejudice. And all the vilified ‘political correctness’ courses in the world could not make up for their lack of grey matter. Only yesterday she had listened as Alistair Watt, exasperated into participation, challenged their joint conclusion that a side effect of ‘gayness’ was promiscuity. Casanova, Don Juan, Alan Clark, Hugh Hefner had not all been gay, he had suggested-promiscuity incarnate tended if anything to be resolutely heterosexual. Yes, Eric Manson had countered, undeterred, but they have a choice. Gays don’t. They are constitutionally incapable of fidelity. Undisguised laughter had greeted this new thesis, and Alice having dismissed it, enquired whether her two colleagues would then condemn, as they appeared to do, other unchangeable genetic traits such as left-handedness and whether, perhaps, having a choice and still being unfaithful could be viewed as more culpable. DC Lowe had asked her to repeat that one, then observed that his girlfriend’s cousin was a gayboy and actually seemed quite nice. Good at football, too.
A mousy assistant in the bookshop re-directed the Police officers to Georgie’s lair in Cumberland Street, a basement flat on the humbler, east side of the street. Having descended the stone steps to the front door they entered, finding themselves serenaded by Dusty Springfield’s smoky tones, belting out ‘Preacher Man’.
The kitchen table was covered in punnets of loganberries, and the man pulled out chairs for them, all the while explaining that he was having a dinner party that evening and had a mass of de-husking to do. Favouring them with one of his brightest smiles, he declared that he would continue with his task while they spoke, if that was all right with them. They both nodded, dazzled by the smile’s warmth into immediate, unthinking assent.
‘Mr De Thuy…’ Alice began, but she was instantly corrected.
‘Georgie, please. I’m always known as Georgie, by everyone. Everyone. I prefer it.’
‘Well, Georgie,’ she tried again, accustoming herself to its informality and feeling, unaccountably, that her professional status was diminished by its use, ‘I hear that you’ve been saying, at the Boar’s Head, that you knew Nicholas Lyon.’
Georgie, now biting into a loganberry, shook his head. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, Sergeant, I’ve never said I knew him. I wouldn’t have claimed that. Your informant, whoever he, or she, is, has got it wrong.’
‘OK,’ Alice persisted, ‘but you were talking about Geanbank, and about Mr Lyon?’
‘I may have done.’
‘So can you explain…’ the question remained unfinished on her lips as the kitchen door opened, and a figure, face and body hidden by vast armfuls of flowers, barged in, dropping his cargo at one end of the table.
It was Ivan McKellar. And he seemed every bit as surprised to see DS Rice as she was to encounter him once more.
‘Mr McKellar… I didn’t realise that you knew Mr De… er… Georgie.’
‘No,’ he hesitated before continuing. ‘Well… Edinburgh’s a small place, eh?’
‘But how d’you know Mr De Tea?’ DC Lowe butted in, unable to contain his curiosity, ‘How come you know him?’
Georgie took control, smiling beatifically at the company and displaying, once more, his even white teeth. ‘We met, officers, in the “Grape and Grain”, you know, on the High Street. We’d both gone there for a bite to eat and, well, Ivan was on his own. It was after his uncle’s funeral, actually. Not so very odd, really… to make a new friend.’
As he was speaking, two young women, both hauling carri
er bags and talking noisily to each other, drifted in, deposited their burdens on the floor and continued nattering together until they became aware that their conversation was being listened to by all the others present in the room.
‘Lorna and Eileen, meet DC Lowe and DS Rice,’ said Georgie brightly, breaking the tense silence that had replaced the girls’ chat.
Emerging back onto the street and before they were out of their host’s earshot, Kevin Lowe began to talk.
‘Sarge, I think I’ve got it. Really. See, that Nicholas guy was… well, gay, eh, and so’s his nephew. Maybe they, him and that “Georgie” fellow, killed the two of them… he’s Nicholas’s only living relative. He’ll cop the lot.’
‘What about his mum?’
‘Yeah, but they’d fallen out and all… they didn’t get on, but a gay nephew, that’s quite different. There’d be a lot in common. And you can’t deny it’s odd, I mean Georgie sleeping with the uncle and then, coincidentally, meeting the man’s nephew! And the smiler’s got no alibi either. We should really check them out.’
‘If Georgie did sleep with the uncle…’ Alice mused.
‘Well, he said he did… he admitted it. Why should you doubt it?’
‘I just do. And, if Georgie was involved, he’s far too intelligent to drop himself in it. So, you’d expect him to deny any relationship with the Sheriff, not boast about it and then repeat the same story to me. Unless he’s a positively pathological exhibitionist, of course.’
‘A what?’
15
Three pages; one, two and four. She searched her desk in case the missing sheet was hidden beneath the patchwork of paperwork that covered its entire surface, temporarily losing page two under newly disturbed documents in the process. No page three and nothing on the computer either. She shouted across to DC Littlewood, now busy tending a pot plant.
‘Tom, there’s a page missing.’
‘Sorry, Sarge. I’ll check the fax in case I overlooked one.’
Where The Shadow Falls Page 17
