“No pence. Pounds only, I’m thinking. And her investors are thinking as well, according to the one I spoke with.”
“Money’s a fine motive for murder. One of the best, Alasdair would say. Cui bono—who benefits? Who benefits from getting rid of Angus? And of Helen and Wallace, for that matter?” Jean found herself back at the window with no memory of standing up. There was Derek, slumped on one of the park benches, a constable hovering nearby. Valerie had disappeared into the inquisition chamber. The wooden pallet rested against the wall of the shop.
“No need to be listening in whilst your mills grind exceedingly fine,” said Miranda. “I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”
“You’ll have to, I’m afraid. I promise I’ll report in the minute I figure anything out. We figure anything out. Thanks. I think.”
“You’re welcome. Rear echelon, over and out.”
Dazed, still clutching her phone, Jean wandered toward the bedroom. Through the Lug she could hear people moving around in the Laigh Hall, maybe searching the boxes after all. Had Delaney gotten permission from Minty? He had to have stopped by Glebe House last night—you didn’t just let the widow sit and, well, chill. Although Logan would have gotten there first.
Delaney. Alasdair. We. She was going to have to poke Alasdair on his Ciara-sized bruise. Just when he thought he’d finally gotten a grasp of the situation, too. At least she’d have the courtesy not to start off with I told you so.
Although she had to start off with something. Back in the kitchen, Jean reached into the cupboard for a second cup. There were those plastic containers again. She heard Alasdair’s voice saying, “Everyone dies when their heart stops. It’s why the heart stops, that’s the question.”
Drug overdose. Poison.
Did Wallace ever cook for himself? Did anyone besides Helen bring him food? Did she get these containers from Minty? Helen couldn’t have brought him what turned out to be his last meal—by then, she was dead. But then, both Wallace and Helen could have died of natural causes. So could Angus. But then again, that would put the sequence of deaths into Valerie and Zoe’s curse territory.
Jean filled the second cup with coffee and headed for the door. If she had to play the helpmeet, she would do it to the hilt. Just as long as she could stand by her man, not three paces behind him.
She threw open the door to find the constable she’d come to think of as Officious Hawick mounting the steps.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jean jerked back, but O. Hawick’s hatchet face registered no startlement. With a nod toward the female constable following him by three paces, he said, “The flat needs searching.”
“Feel free.” Jean waved them through the doorway.
“W.P.C. Anne Blackhall. Sorry to disturb you.” The woman’s bright, black gaze moved from Jean to her colleague’s posterior, so stiff you could bounce a coin off of it, and back again, making a clear editorial remark.
Jean grinned, acknowledging sisterhood, then balanced the coffee cup across the courtyard to the incident room. Crow-calls sounded like harsh laughter. On his bench, Derek went from a huddle of miserable resentment to a bundle of resentful misery. The constable-warden looked around at Jean. “Here, you cannot—”
“No worries,” Kallinikos told him from the open doorway, and stepped aside so Jean could enter. “Mind the cables.”
“Thanks. Whoa, that was fast.” In little more than an hour, the room had been transformed into a nerve center, with everything from computers to charts on easels to a steaming tea kettle. The place could have been a car-rental office or widget factory, except for the unforgiving photos of Angus’s body tacked to a bulletin board. Jean averted her eyes to the far corner.
Alasdair stood guard behind Delaney, who was sitting across a small table from Valerie. She was frozen in the act of inserting a cigarette between her red lips, staring over her shoulder at Jean—I’ve seen you before, where was it? Then, with a shrug, she groped around in a fanny pack lying on the chair beside her, produced a lighter, and applied flame to cigarette. Smoke billowed. Taking a deep drag, she adjusted the cardigan wrapping her narrow shoulders and concealing the Celtic tattoo. . . . Jean’s visual memory clicked. That tattoo, she realized, was in the shape of a harp.
Valerie propped her elbow on the back of the chair, and held the cigarette aloft like a miniature torch of liberty. The gesture was intended to be casual, Jean assumed, but what it revealed was that Valerie’s muscles were so tight they shook with an occasional tremor.
Through the acrid haze, Alasdair’s gaze met Jean’s. A slight tilt of his head and she remembered the crime-scene technician bagging a cigarette butt smeared with lipstick. Well, Valerie had been here yesterday, that was no secret. She’d been asking questions. So had Wallace, apparently, according to the cryptic message on the answerphone tape. If asking questions was a punishable offense, Jean herself was in for a long, long sentence.
She was still holding the cup of coffee. It had worked as a ticket of admittance, but wasn’t needed—Alasdair was holding a mug dangling the tag of a tea bag, and Delaney and Valerie were equipped with the same. In the interests of conviviality, Jean took a swig of the black brew herself.
But as far as Delaney was concerned, she was invisible. Either Alasdair had given her a glowing reference, or she was simply beneath Delaney’s notice. Fine. If he didn’t recognize her presence, he couldn’t ask her to leave. When Kallinikos pushed forward a plastic chair, she sank quietly into it, while the sergeant himself sat down on the edge of a table and turned a page in his notebook.
“Once again, from the top,” Delaney said to Valerie. “Ciara Macquarrie rang this morning, before dawn, to blether about Angus’s death.”
Ciara? Jean glanced at Alasdair, but he had assumed his great stone face.
“It’s news, isn’t it?” asked Valerie. “Dirty great news for the likes of Stanelaw. It’s always been a Rutherford town.”
“Where did you meet Ciara?”
Alasdair would have called her Ms. Macquarrie. Jean set her cup on the table. How could anybody drink the bitter brew without the buffering of milk? Bitter almonds—that was a poison.
“Ciara’s known well enough in these parts,” Valerie answered.
“But you’ve just returned to these parts,” said Alasdair. “When?”
Delaney looked up at him, his mouth thinning just far enough to indicate that he was less than thrilled working as the first among equals.
“First of August. Moved house soon as Derek’s school term ended.”
“Why have you returned?” Alasdair asked.
“I’ve told you. Ma man gave me the elbow, didn’t he? All these years, you think they’d count for something, but no. Packed his things and left with never a by-your-leave.” Her voice was a whine with an edge, like a band saw. “I’ve got a bairn to support, and jobs are scarce as hen’s teeth in Middlesbrough. Ma uncle, he said there’d be jobs here with Ciara’s spa and all, and we could stop in his holiday home ’til we get our feet on the ground.”
“Your husband left you,” said Delaney.
Valerie’s laugh sounded like Jean’s coffee tasted. “Aye. Said marriage is no more than a piece of paper. Means nothing.”
Jean begged to differ, but her opinion was irrelevant. So was Alasdair’s, although she could tell by the quick twitch of his cheek that he had one similar to hers.
“Your uncle’s name?” asked Kallinikos.
“Bill Trotter,” Valerie said from the corner of her mouth.
“He’s a resident of Stanelaw?”
“Aye. Owns the shop on the High Street. I’m helping him out there, for now.”
“He introduced you to Ciara, did he?” Delaney queried.
She considered a moment. “Aye, he did that.”
Alasdair asked, “Did you keep your maiden name when you married? Or did you go back to it after the divorce?”
“We’re not divorced. Not yet. He’s still ma significant other, isn’t he? Signif
icant prat.”
Delaney smiled at that. Alasdair did not. Kallinikos asked, “His name?”
“Harry Spivey.”
“Where did you meet him?” asked Delaney
“Here.”
“Here in Stanelaw?”
“Here at Ferniebank. He was on the dig team, little more than a navvy. Thought he was a scientist, though, ’cause he had himself a term at university. Then he ran out of money, ran out of energy, found himself lumbered with a wife and child. Reverted to his true colors, then. Layabout. Chav. I paid for the flat in Middlesbrough, didn’t I, whilst he and his brothers spent their giros at the betting shop and the local.”
Spent their welfare checks gambling and drinking, Jean translated. Hearing stories like Valerie’s made her realize that no matter how sour her job and her marriage had gone, she’d had it easy.
“Trotter,” Alasdair said consideringly.
“It’s ma name,” said Valerie. “It’s a good name. Good as Rutherford, any road.”
Delaney leaned back in his chair, folded his hands across his waistcoat, and asked with ponderous nonchalance, “You have a grudge against the Rutherfords?”
Her hand dived toward the table. With a hiss the cigarette drowned in the dregs of her tea. Viciously she ground it about in the mug. “No, I’ve got nothing against the Rutherfords.”
Again Jean met Alasdair’s glance. Right. What had Minty said about wishing Valerie and her child well when she left the area, adding it was a shame she’d come back? No love lost, there.
“And did Ciara promise you a job at the new spa, then?” asked Delaney.
“Food service. I had me a bakery, but it went bust and closed down. Scones, buns, seed cakes, focaccia with herbs and oil—whatever you fancy. ”
Alasdair took a half-step forward, anything but nonchalant. “You’re after working here at the castle, even though the place has a curse on it?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Valerie demanded.
“A wee birdie told me.”
She rested her elbows on the table, shoulders sagging, head hanging. Her whine revved to a shriller note. “Things happen at Ferniebank. Isabel, her spirit’s after revenge. When I was a kid we’d dare each other to poke about the grounds and slip into the castle, play hide and seek with Roddy when he tried turfing us out. Dead spooky it was, all overgrown and falling down. Then the Rutherfords thought to make it a paying proposition, and had the archaeologists, and me and Harry . . .” After a pause that Jean hated to think of as pregnant, Valerie went on, “Now Ferniebank’s sold, for a right packet, I reckon. Polly’s mum, and good old Wallace, and Angus, they’re all gone. Ciara will have the place gutted and tarted up and that’ll change everything.”
No one replied. In the silence Jean heard the gravel outside shifting beneath various feet, voices shouting, a dog barking. She looked again at the 8 x 10 glossies of Angus’s ghastly face and wondered if it wasn’t too late for Ferniebank to change.
Valerie reached for another cigarette, lit it, and exhaled so gustily that Alasdair and Delaney both coughed. “Aye, the place has a curse on it. Everyone dealing with the place is cursed. But I’d work for the devil himself if I had to, all right? I’m a single mum. I was a single mum even when Harry was about. I’ve got me a bairn to support. They slag you off for taking the dole, and they slag you off for working and leaving the bairn. Maybe here I can work and keep an eye on the kid both, eh? I meant to go to university myself, but no, Derek came along, and now I mean to do right by him. Though there are those who think otherwise. Am I right, Inspector Delaney?”
“Derek looks to be a bit of a problem here, Val,” Delaney returned.
“He’s fifteen years old. I can’t stop him coming and going. I can’t stop him from trying to impress Zoe or fit in with her and the local kids—they’re after daring each other to come in here, same as me and ma mates, save that now there’s rules, and officers about. Derek’ll be away to school in Kelso tomorrow, like I was at his age. That’ll keep him out of trouble.”
“It may be too late for that,” Delaney told her. “He’s known to the police now.”
Valerie flinched at that, but Jean couldn’t see her face.
“Ms. Trotter,” said Alasdair, “Derek’s not been as forthcoming with us as we’d like. Mind you, we’re not suspecting him of anything criminal. But he knows more about recent events here at Ferniebank than he’s owning, and it would be in his best interests to tell us everything.”
Jean waited for her to insist that Derek had nothing to do with Angus’s death, that their business was their own and not the police’s, but all she said was, “Ma uncle’s shop needs seeing to. Can I go now?”
Delaney inhaled to speak, but Alasdair’s voice sounded first. “If Trotter’s your maiden name, then why’s Derek Trotter as well, and not Spivey like his dad?”
Valerie went very still, like a cornered animal. “We weren’t married ’til after Derek was born. Harry went on and on about him not being the real father ’til I paid good money for a DNA test just to shut him up. Now that he’s walked out, I’m glad Derek’s got ma name and not his. Can I go?”
“You’re away into town to make a statement,” said Delaney, “you and the lad both. After that, you’re free to go. Don’t leave the area.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go, do I now?” With an emphatic scrape, Valerie shoved her chair back and broke for the door.
Thinking that there was a marriage made in purgatory, Jean, too, rose, and watched as Kallinikos, towering over Valerie, followed her into the courtyard. In the cheery gleam of sunshine, Derek looked even more like something that had crawled out from beneath a rock. Only a mother could love a youngling that pathetic, and she wasn’t looking at him with a loving gaze, not right now.
Kallinikos gestured the hovering constable to one of the police cars and opened the door. Valerie cast a frantic gaze toward the gate, which was now covered with a tarpaulin to shut out the inquisitive cameras, and crawled into the car. Her long, lean arm dragged Derek in behind her.
Alasdair stepped up beside Jean, standing silent as the car inched onto the road and cut a swathe through the clamoring reporters. P.C. Hawick and W.P.C. Blackhall emerged from the flat. The former went to direct traffic at the gate, the latter looked in through the doorway. “Nothing of interest,” she announced to Delaney, and to Jean she whispered, “Nice wee moggie.”
“And he knows it, too,” replied Jean.
With a half-smile, she turned back into the incident room and gazed levelly at Alasdair, who gazed levelly back . . . No, he wasn’t quite focused on her face, he was just resting his eyes on a familiar scene while his brain whirred away like the finely tuned machine it was.
“Jean,” called Delaney from his alpha-male table-barricade, “you didn’t mention that you’re a reporter.”
“You didn’t ask me what I did,” she answered.
“Cameron’s telling me you’re not like that lot outwith the gate.”
“I write historical pieces. Contemporary crime isn’t my beat. I intended to write something about Isabel Sinclair’s death back in 1569, but then, that wasn’t a crime, not legally, anyway.”
“And who’s Isabel Sinclair when she’s at home?” demanded Delaney. “The Isabel Val Trotter was rabbiting on about?”
“Does one mention make a rabbit?”
Alasdair’s even gaze took on a subtle sparkle. “I’ll look out one of Wallace’s brochures for you,” he told Delaney. “Did you take note of how Valerie called him ‘good old Wallace’?”
“To cover up her animosity toward the Rutherfords, I expect.”
“And her defensiveness on the topic of Derek’s father?”
“That’s easily enough explained,” Delaney said with a hee and a haw. When Kallinikos stepped back through the doorway, Delaney went on, “Get onto Middlesbrough. Find this Spivey chap. And you, Cameron, Logan’s taking statements. You and the little lady here, away to Stanelaw with you.”
Jean drew herself up to her full height, such as it was, although Delaney hadn’t meant physically little. “I have an interview with Ciara at the pub at two. Have you talked to her yet?”
“When we stopped by Glebe House to speak with Mrs. Rutherford,” Kallinikos answered, “Ms. Macquarrie was with her.”
“She’s two bob short of a quid, that one is,” added Delaney. “Mental.”
“How did Minty take the news about Angus?” Jean persisted. “What about Ciara? Did you ask her about coming out here with Angus yesterday morning? Did you ask Minty whether she knew Angus was back—or if she knew where he went, for that matter?”
Delaney’s eyes shifted from her face to Alasdair’s. With a grin he asked, “You’ve got a taste for the gumptious girls, do you, Cameron? Maybe I should be sending over a pair of trousers.”
Alasdair grasped Jean’s upper arm and pulled, gently but firmly, as though trying to remove a piece of chewing gum from his shoe. “Let’s be getting ourselves into town. Later, Delaney. Sergeant.”
Yeah, Jean thought, run away, live to fight again another day. She let him pilot her into the courtyard while Kallinikos shut the door, his classic features awry with what she hoped was stifled disgust, not amusement, not with Delaney’s hearty guffaw ringing out behind him.
When they reached the flat she wrenched her arm away from Alasdair’s guiding hand. “And here I thought I was making points by keeping my mouth shut while y’all talked to Valerie.”
“You did that. Best if in the future you keep quiet the rest of the time as well.”
“So yesterday I’m supposed to report suspicious lights but today I’m supposed to keep my biscuits in the oven and my buns in the bed? I’m not going to cater to Delaney’s Neanderthal sense of humor.”
“He’s in charge here. If he thinks you’re interfering in the case, then he might cut me out of it.”
“You’re not responsible for my actions!” She realized her voice was rising.
Alasdair’s was falling, into the soft rasp of a blade drawn from its sheath. “This is no time for consciousness-raising, Jean. There’re bigger issues at stake than your pride.”
The Burning Glass Page 21
