Still Life - Karen Pirie Series 06 (2020)

by McDermid, Val

  Karen refused him a direct response. ‘And then Jamie discovered you were still alive. What happened, Iain? Did he contact Daniel Connolly, the executor of David Greig’s estate, looking for you? That must have freaked out the pair of you. After ten years, you must have been feeling absolutely secure in your gilded lives. Then out of the blue, your brother finds you. He must have been raging after what you’d done to him and Mary. But still, he agreed to meet you, didn’t he? Because deep in his heart, Jamie still loved you.’

  ‘Can I get a drink of water?’

  Clever move, Karen thought. Break up the rhythm of her relentless attack. ‘Sergeant, get Mr Auld some water, would you?’

  Daisy stood up as Nugent leaned in and said, ‘DS Mortimer is leaving the room.’

  ‘Jamie loved you. So it never crossed his mind that agreeing to meet you was a dangerous thing. He came over from France – did he tell you anything about his life in Paris, by the way? He played saxophone in a well-respected jazz quintet. If you’re ever in a position to listen to Spotify again, you can check them out. Comme des Etrangers, they were called. They’re gutted at losing him. Oh, and he had a girlfriend too. We met her. Pascale. Lovely woman. She owns a jazz club in Caen. She’s devastated. She really loved him. She doesn’t understand why he was murdered. To be honest, I don’t understand either. The very fact that he’d agreed to meet you says to me he was a long way down the road of forgiveness. So what happened, Iain? How did it all go wrong? How did it end up with David whacking him round the head with a crowbar?’

  Shock flashed across Auld’s face. He tried to cover it with a cough, but Karen was no stranger to the bombshell moment. He’d had no idea. He hadn’t been there and, whatever story David Greig had concocted, it hadn’t involved a crowbar.

  Daisy couldn’t have picked a worse moment to return with a paper cup of water. ‘DS Mortimer has entered the room,’ Nugent sighed. She put the water on the table in front of Auld and sat down, her expression puzzled.

  Auld seized the water and drained the cup. By the time he put it down, he had almost recovered his composure.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Iain. You’re thinking I’m making it up. You’re sitting there clinging to the hope that I’m making it up. You don’t want to believe that the man you love, the man you tore up your life for, the man you committed all these crimes for – you can’t bring yourself to believe he caved Jamie’s head in. That David could ever do that to your lovely brother. But it’s true. I’m not making it up. Sergeant, show Iain the DNA analyses.’

  Daisy opened the folder she’d brought to the table and took out three sheets of paper. Karen took the first and showed it to Auld. ‘Look at this. It’s a lab report from the Police Scotland lab at Gartcosh. See what it says? “DNA profiles extracted from Exhibit 73, Case 5/13022020.” See the labels? The top one, that’s your brother’s DNA, the victim. That’s the DNA we’ll be comparing to yours. But see the other one? “Unknown” it says.’

  She placed the page that showed David Greig’s certified DNA next to the Police Scotland report. ‘They match, don’t they?’ Her voice sharpened. ‘Don’t they, Iain?’

  ‘If you say so.’ His voice was so soft she could hardly hear him.

  ‘Could you say that more loudly, for the tape?’

  ‘If you say so.’ This time it was almost a shout.

  ‘You know what this piece of paper is, don’t you, Iain? It’s the piece of paper that confirms the identity of the unknown assailant who brutally beat your brother to death.’ She dropped in front of him the final piece of the jigsaw. The legal confirmation of David Greig’s DNA.

  Auld stared bleakly at the papers in front of him. He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He looked up at Karen, a plea in his eyes. ‘How do I know that piece of paper’ – he flicked the legal document with a fingernail – ‘refers to this? It could be anybody’s DNA. This is entrapment.’

  ‘Why are you even trying this? I took the original from Francis Flaxner Geary yesterday. Right before he texted you to come to Dublin for an important meeting. I didn’t bring the original into this interview in case you decided to rip it up. Geary’s not on your side any longer, Iain. He’s all about saving his own skin now. I bet he’s closeted with his lawyer right now, concocting a version of events that covers his back. That’ll be why he wasn’t answering his phone when you tried to call him from the police car on the way here.’ She took Geary’s phone from her pocket and tossed it on the table. ‘Three missed calls from Daniel Connolly.’

  There was a long silence. Karen could hear Nugent breathing. She leaned forward, forearms on the table, hands clasped. ‘All you’ve done over the years, you’ve done for David. All the hazards you’ve faced, all the laws you’ve broken, you did that for David. You were never the one in love with risk. That was David. Iain, the man you live with killed your brother. In cold blood. There’s nowhere for you to hide from that. How safe do you feel now?’

  52

  When Iain Auld broke, he shattered into pieces. It was as if Karen had taken a crowbar to the shell he’d been hiding inside since the interview had begun. He threw off his glasses and buried his face in his hands, weeping like an inconsolable child. The dam had burst, yet Karen felt no satisfaction. It was grief and not guilt that possessed him; to her that was obvious. Grief for his brother, but also grief for the lives he would never recover.

  Karen cast a quick look over her shoulder at Nugent. He gave her an approving nod. Auld continued to weep, great shuddering sobs that shook his whole body. It felt like an unconscionable time before the tears subsided but it was probably only a couple of minutes. He sat with his head bowed, panting as if he’d run a hard race. Daisy took some tissues from her bag and passed them across to him. He looked up then, his eyes swollen and red, his face strangely mottled.

  ‘This wasn’t where you expected it to end up when you fell in love with David,’ Karen said gently, transforming herself into the caring face of interrogation.

  He shook his head and blew his nose. ‘Nobody was supposed to get hurt.’ His mouth twisted up at one corner in a bitter smile. ‘I thought it was a moment of madness. Something that would be over in a matter of weeks, months at the most. I thought he’d get tired of somebody as dull as me.’

  ‘I understand, Iain. Now you need to help us. You need to make sure your side of the story gets out there first. Because I have a sense that David will not hesitate to throw shade on you.’ She reached out and put a hand over one of his. It was hot to the touch, as if he’d suddenly developed a fever.

  ‘We met at a Tate Gallery party in 2007.’ He gave her a piteous look. ‘He’s so charismatic. Charming, dangerous, funny, clever. I couldn’t understand why he was talking to me for so long. I’ve never been exciting.’

  ‘But there was some sort of chemistry between you?’

  He frowned, baffled. ‘I still don’t get it. I’d never had a relationship with a man before. Hell, since I met Mary, I’d never slept with anybody else, man or woman. But I felt as if David had cast a spell on me. We were like magnetic poles, drawn irresistibly to each other.’

  That had the feel of a well-worn line, Karen thought. ‘So you started having an affair?’

  ‘So we fell in love,’ he corrected her. ‘We saw as much of each other as we could. When I was working down in London, Mary was mostly back in Scotland. And although David travelled a lot – giving lectures, appearing at gallery events all over the world, going to other people’s openings – we managed to spend a lot of time together. But we never went out in public.’ He smiled. ‘Oddly enough, it never felt like a restriction. We loved being at home together. Cooking, eating, talking, watching movies, making love.’

  ‘Why were you so obsessed with keeping it private? In 2007, even in Scotland, even in the upper echelons of the Civil Service, being gay wasn’t going to destroy your career.’ There was nothing aggressive in Karen’s tone; she gave the impression of genuine curiosity and nothing more.r />
  Auld sighed. He took his hand away from Karen’s and linked his fingers together, almost wringing his hands. ‘Admitting to a relationship with David would have stopped my career in its tracks. He’s not just any old artist. He was one of the bad boys of BritArt. Drugs, partying, drinking, outraging the establishment with his pronouncements about anything and everything that caught his attention. It would have been like saying a giant “Fuck you!” to my bosses.

  ‘And then there was Mary.’ His shoulders slumped. ‘I didn’t stop loving Mary when I fell in love with David. But we’d been married a long time, it wasn’t an overwhelming passion. If I’m honest, it never was, I was probably in denial about my sexuality for years. But I loved her, truly I did. I knew that it would be devastating for her if I told her about David. And as I say, I was convinced for a very long time that it would fizzle out. That he’d get bored and move on. It seemed crazy to destroy my life for what would almost certainly be nothing more than a fling.’

  He gave a wistful smile. ‘And he was – he is so much fun.’

  ‘Was that how the thing with the Dover House paintings came about? A bit of fun? Thumbing your noses at the dull old establishment.’

  Auld studied the tabletop. ‘Exactly that. It was a joke. David is a brilliant copyist. You’ll know that already if you’ve done your homework. The first time I took him to see my office, he spent half the time examining the art and telling me how easy it would be to copy. He took a few photos and I thought nothing of it. Then the next time we met, he presented me with a perfect replica of the Joan Eardley painting in my office. I was genuinely astonished. Then he proposed swapping it for the genuine article.’

  ‘And you agreed?’

  He shrugged. ‘It felt like a game. And it was easy enough to get away with. I had keys and access to the building 24/7, so it was easy to do. It was like taking the self-important down a peg or two. Ministers always make a thing about choosing paintings, but they generally go for what makes a statement rather than ones they love. David thought it would be funny to see how long it took to dawn on them that what they were looking at were fakes.’

  ‘Only it never did dawn on them, did it? So when did it dawn on you that the joke had gone too far?’

  He darted a quick look at her and she saw a flash of the intelligence that had helped him rise so far so fast. ‘You may remember that there was a lot of talk in late 2009 that Gordon Brown was about to call a General Election?’

  She recalled it perfectly. Brown had had a following wind but he’d bottled it. Ultimately opening the door for David Cameron and Boris Johnson and ten years of austerity politics dealt out by people whose only experience of poverty lay in their lack of imagination and compassion. ‘I remember,’ was all she said.

  ‘The very prospect was enough to worry me. Whatever the outcome, I knew a change of government would likely mean a change of personnel in the Scotland Office and that in its turn would mean a change-around in the artwork on the walls. I told David we needed to swap the originals back before the artworks were sent back to the National Galleries of Scotland. He gave me the strangest look. A mixture of amusement and shamefacedness. “That’s not going to be possible,” he said. I asked why and he said, “Because I’ve already sold the originals.”’

  ‘That was the first you’d heard of this?’

  ‘It had never even crossed my mind.’ He scoffed. ‘Why would it? I told you I was dull. I didn’t know anybody who would even contemplate a scheme like that. I didn’t even know how such a thing was possible. How could you sell paintings when two minutes on the internet would tell you the work in question was part of a national collection?’ A bitter laugh. ‘God, I was naïve. I knew nothing about private collectors with zero scruples, I had no notion of the way art is used to launder organised crime proceeds. I was an innocent abroad.’

  ‘But sadly not for long.’

  ‘What could I do? I was in it up to my neck. And then David came up with a proposal. He’d used the money to buy a property in Donegal, so he hadn’t lost it in the financial crash. He said he wanted to live there with me. He’d grown fed up of the life he’d been living. Since we’d been together, he’d tried to escape the constant attention, the parties, the travel. He wanted to be somewhere he could just paint. But people wouldn’t leave him alone. They were always pestering him. Making demands. He’d obviously been thinking about how to escape from it all for a while. He had all the details worked out.’

  ‘What about the passports? How did you come by those?’

  ‘An artist David knew. He’d been using the concept of identity theft in his work. He put us on to a man who created a whole false ID for us both. I was scared shitless the first time I used my passport, but it’s never been questioned.’

  ‘So you made your plans. And you set up a very loud row with your brother and made sure the neighbours heard?’

  For the first time, Auld looked ashamed. ‘Yes. That was David’s idea.’

  ‘What was the row about?’ Karen pushed back.

  Auld bit his lip. ‘I told Jamie I had fallen in love with someone else. A man. And that I was planning to leave Mary. He was outraged, exactly like I knew he would be. Not because it was a man. He’d have been equally angry if it had been a woman. No, he was furious that I could even contemplate leaving Mary and all we’d built together. He called it a shitty little fling, and that gave me an excuse to lose my temper in return. I hated it, but it had to be done if our plan was going to work.’

  ‘That makes more sense. The only thing Mary could imagine the two of you almost coming to blows over was Scottish independence, but I never thought it was enough of a provocation for a murderous row. But were you not afraid that Jamie would tell Mary the truth? Especially when he came under suspicion?’

  He met her eyes. ‘Why would he do that, when the sole reason for his anger was how much pain my betrayal would cause Mary? I was never comfortable about taking advantage of the care he felt towards Mary. But I truly assumed Jamie would have an alibi for later in the evening, after our row. He was always very sociable, always hanging out with musicians in bars and clubs.’

  ‘And was it also David’s idea to stuff your bloodstained T-shirt into the bin in the basement of Jamie’s flat?’ She couldn’t keep an edge out of her voice this time.

  His head came up and she saw that moment of shock again. Had he not taken in what she’d said earlier? ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘A crime scene officer found a bloodstained T-shirt in one of the bins in the basement of Jamie’s block of flats. It was your blood.’

  He stared at her, shaking his head. ‘How?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking. Your blood, in your brother’s bin. How?’

  He gripped the sides of his face with his hands, so hard he left white fingermarks when he stopped. ‘I can’t … No, wait. The week before. I was at David’s, he’s got these sharp Japanese knives, I took a chunk out of my thumb when I was cooking. It bled like crazy. David binned my T-shirt and gave me one of his. Are you seriously telling me he kept it to incriminate Jamie?’

  ‘What do you think? If you’ve got another explanation, I’d love to hear it.’

  He looked ready to burst into tears again. ‘Jamie was only supposed to be a distraction, a diversion. Not a serious suspect.’

  ‘And what about Mary in all of this? You say you loved her but you left her in limbo. Grieving your loss but never knowing whether you were alive or dead. How did you justify that to yourself?’ Again, she fought to sound merely curious rather than judgemental. Sometimes it was almost a physical struggle to turn away from what often felt like her default state.

  ‘I thought she’d be better off without me. I’d turned our marriage into second best and I thought she deserved the chance to find happiness with someone else.’ He couldn’t meet her eye now.

  Self-serving, selfish, self-indulgent bawbag. ‘That’s a big ask when she didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Ho
w could she embark on a new relationship when she had no idea whether you were going to walk back through the door like the first episode of a TV drama?’

  ‘She had me declared dead,’ he said, defensive. ‘She decided there was no room for me in her life.’

  ‘She had you declared dead because her life had been on hold for more than seven years. Have you any idea the hoops she had to jump through to conduct her financial affairs? How she couldn’t even sell the car that was registered to you because you were still officially alive and unaccounted for?’ Karen let one hand drop below the tabletop and pressed her fingernails into her palm to contain her anger.

  ‘I’m sorry for all of that. But what use would I have been to her if I’d said no to David’s plan? I’d have been languishing in jail, my career in ruins. Living with the disgrace and the humiliation would have been worse for her, surely?’

  You think? Karen took a deep breath. ‘What happened the night you disappeared?’

  ‘Simple. It was a summer evening, lots of people around. I walked up to Soho and David picked me up in his car. We drove through the night to Holyhead and crossed to Ireland. Nobody gave my new passport a second glance. We took the long way round to Donegal so we wouldn’t have to cross the border, and David left me at Hill House with a fridge full of food and a cupboard full of booze. Three weeks later, he faked his own death and joined me in Ramelton. It’s a nice town, people are friendly without being too nosy.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of completion. ‘We’ve been there ever since.’

  Karen turned to Daisy. ‘Is that what we think, Sergeant?’

  ‘More or less. Apart from a side trip to Brighton in 2017.’

  Karen smiled. ‘Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten about the arson. There’s a lovely picture of you among the rubberneckers at an art gallery fire. Sadly the Goldman Gallery lost three – or was it four? – of David Greig’s paintings. What was the problem, Iain? Was your lovely lifestyle working out more expensive than you’d planned? Was the bottom dropping out of his market? Did you need to up the scarcity value of the work he was still churning out?’