by John Burke
‘Movements?’ Rutherford allowed himself a coarse snigger. ‘Body movements? All right, Les, let your imagination run riot.’
‘It’s on, then?’
‘As long as you don’t claim overtime for enjoying yourself.’
‘I might be able to wangle a seat for you as well, if you like.’
He grimaced. ‘Thanks a million. I’m prepared to leave pleasures like that to you. In the meantime, can we consider the possibility of other murderers?’
‘Such as?’
‘Mr Enoch Buchanan, for one. He seems to have gone around uttering some pretty hefty threats. And he might well have been the one to stir up that crowd you told me about on Erskine’s heels.’
‘You want me to go and see him?’
‘I think that’s one pleasure I can cope with personally. I’ll take young Elliot along. But you and Constable Blair here could spend a few hours on the phone trying to find out where that numpty who smashed Erskine’s hands went when he got out of chokey. There must have been a probationary follow-up, some employment centre somewhere, a rehabilitation course or something. And anything about his wife.’
Lesley and the young woman at the switchboard spent a fruitless afternoon chasing a man who, so far as anyone could recall, had never returned to Kilstane after serving his sentence. Not that any of those who remembered him thought any the worse of him for his crippling attack on Daniel Erskine. He would have faced no public shame if he had come home. But neither he nor his wife had ever been seen in the neighbourhood again.
*
The early evening was mercifully cooler than the day. Lesley had brought no great choice of clothes with her, but picked out a grey skirt and pale blue blouse with a high collar, and a darker blue jacket with silver braid woven into the lapels. It was just mild enough for her to walk at a leisurely pace through the town, accompanied by the sounds of some pseudo-Caribbean jangle from an open window. Even the Pheasant, as she passed it, had capitulated to the presence of a fairly restrained jazz trio. Leaning against the door of the public bar was Zak Runcorn, wearing a baseball cap backwards and letting his left arm droop nonchalantly to display the tattoo of an Aztec head.
As she crossed the haugh towards Black Knowe, the sun was far from setting, but had sunk just far enough behind the clump of Scots pine along the crest of the crag to make skeletal patterns against the flush of the sky. The platform for tomorrow’s final Folk Revel threw a long shadow up the slope.
Nick was greeting arrivals at the foot of the tower stairway, and trying to persuade Mrs Scott-Fraser that he could cope perfectly well without her assuming the persona of a regimental sergeant-major. When Lesley came through, he touched her arm in greeting. She was glad not to be wearing a short-sleeved blouse or shirt. The touch of his fingers on her flesh would have taken her mind off what lay ahead.
Carpets and furniture had been removed from the first-floor hall, and a number of seats brought in from the Academy. Galbraith was scurrying around taking photographs of the assembling audience from various angles. Finally he reached the curtained opening into the ante-room from which the performers would appear. As they emerged, he took two flash shots and then nodded obediently as Nick waved him away.
‘Not during the performance.’
‘Of course not, Sir Nicholas.’
There was a spattering of applause as Adam Lowther seated himself at the piano and Mairi McLeod bowed towards the front row of seats. Adam looked uncomfortable in a dark suit that did not quite succeed in being formal dress, and his black bow tie was way out of character. Mairi had shed her mourning black in favour of a flaming red dress with a low-cut neckline and bare arms. She looked both haughty and sensual.
A last-minute tuning up was followed by the ritual pause while the players took a deep breath, looked at each other, and waited for someone in the audience to stop coughing.
Once the two of them had started, they ceased to be two separate people. Lesley had difficulty restraining a gasp as the violin plunged into its strident opening phrase, while Adam Lowther at the piano piled up a rush of chords from low in the bass, urging his partner on, sustaining her until ready to push her upwards yet again, ever upwards. Mairi McLeod swayed in a rhythm coming not just from the music but from deep inside her. Her wide hips, too strong for any Sunday newspaper fashion supplement, started a conflicting syncopation of their own.
Through the clashing harmonies and discords, and a fierce passage of double-stopping, Lesley was sure she could detect a voice calling from far across Europe. She tried to shake herself out of what could only be a self-induced fantasy, dragging her eyes away from the two instrumentalists and glancing from side to side to regain her balance.
Her gaze met Nick’s. He was staring at her with an intensity which matched the lust from the woman savaging her violin strings.
It doesn’t worry you that your old flame has been having it off with Lowther, maybe even under your own roof?
Afraid of what he might read in her eyes, Lesley looked away.
During the interval some of the audience clattered downstairs to a makeshift bar, or for a few minutes out in the fresh air. Lesley stayed where she was. She was in no mood to talk to anyone or listen to anyone — not even Nick Torrance.
The second half began in more subdued mood, as if the fire between the two had been tamped down. But as the cross-rhythms of Variations in a Dorian Mode began to wrestle, the embers burned up again. And, like someone sitting in front of a fire and watching the flames dance, Lesley saw the flicker of repetitive phrases which became more and more transparent as each bar swirled by.
Applause at the end was half admiring, half relieved that it was all over. Nobody would have welcomed an encore. After a respectful pause, chairs were scraped back or sideways, and the audience made for the staircase.
Lesley summoned up her courage and walked towards the group at the piano: Nick, Adam Lowther, and Mairi McLeod.
‘Well, Inspector Gunn,’ said Nick. ‘Detect any counterfeit notes?’
‘Far from it. A superb performance.’ She was looking at Mairi. ‘But when it comes to detection, I was fascinated by some themes within both pieces. Particularly the last one. There was a lot of Moravian influence in the third and fourth variations, wasn’t there?’
Mairi’s stillness was in complete contrast to the swinging passion with which she had been playing. ‘I’d no idea you were so interested in musical theory.’
‘I’m quite fascinated by the use of motto themes. You know, like Shostakovitch’s personal motto of D, E-flat, C and B.’
‘Yes, I do know.’
Adam Lowther was staring from one woman to the other, puzzled. ‘Moravian?’
‘Just a minute.’ Nick’s expression had changed to one of disapproval. ‘These two have just finished a gruelling performance. A splendid one. But damned exhausting. I don’t think this is quite the moment to —’
He was interrupted by the effusive falsetto of the critic, Colin Baird. A most intoxicating performance, Miss McLeod. Mr — um — Lowther.’ He gave Lesley a perfunctory nod. His pushy enthusiasm was remote from the sneers he had communicated to her at the orchestral concert. ‘True bravura.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mairi indifferently.
‘How interesting those false relations in the fifth variation! Such daring polyphony on the composer’s part, juxtaposing the diatonic notes with such a sequence of chromatics. Not at all what I had hitherto associated with the late lamented Erskine.’
Lesley made ready to move away, pausing for a moment close to Mairi McLeod. ‘We’d be grateful for your help with some more questions, Miss McLeod. Perhaps I might call here tomorrow morning? You’ll still be here?’
‘Sooner or later I’ll have to go back home to tidy up Daniel’s papers, and my own. And decide what to do . . . now that he’s gone.’
Lesley had the impression that she was carefully not looking at Adam Lowther. But when he headed for the stairs, Mairi followed as if still at
tached to him by the thread of their music, not wanting to break the spell yet.
‘You will let me know before you leave the district?’ Lesley called after her.
Neither of them even glanced back.
‘Take it easy,’ said Nick. ‘Don’t rush it and alarm her.’
‘Tactics I’ve learned from DCI Rutherford, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s not as though we know anything definite yet.’
‘Oh, but I think we do. What was it that pontificating poseur called it in musical terms?’
‘Hm? Oh, you mean false relations. Or cross relations.’
‘Yes, false relations. So very appropriate. Let’s try and disentangle those relationships tomorrow morning. Say nine o’clock?’
‘Have a heart. Let her lie in until nearer ten.’
The music was still reverberating in her own head. She trembled with it as Nick went to the door and turned the key in the lock.
‘No,’ she said, in such a whisper that she wasn’t even sure herself of what she meant.
He put his left hand on her shoulder to draw her closer, and kissed her. Her lips opened to his. His right hand began an impatient exploration down from the high collar of her blouse, down demandingly to the waistband of her skirt. Of its own shameless accord her hand, too, wandered until he gasped, and laughed, and their mouths were laughing into each other. When their clothes had been tossed at random on to the chairs where the audience had so recently sat, his hands became fiercer, clasping her bottom and pressing it closer as if he wanted to drive straight through her.
‘Lesley.’ He cried it as if it were a burst of agony rather than a name. And in the end, when they were curled up on the cold floor, it was just a last, drained gasp. ‘Lesley.’
The music in her head faded gently, drifting far away until only the faintest lilting beat of it remained.
Chapter Eleven
A piercing screech set a flurry of rooks up out of the wind-break of larches and echoed off the stones of Black Knowe. One of the men setting up equipment for the final folk rave of the festival on the open-air platform dashed across the stage to the controls and reduced the noise down a long sliding wail to extinction.
Nick Torrance moved away from the window and automatically looked towards the longcase clock left behind by his grandfather. Only of course it had been removed like so many other features of the hall, before the previous evening’s recital.
He glanced at his watch. Half past nine, and still no sign of Mairi. Sleeping off the emotional strain of that inflammatory performance of hers. But he had no doubt that Lesley Gunn would arrive on the very dot of ten. As if nothing had happened last night, she would be herself, punctual and impersonal.
But that was impossible. After last night, after today, everything had to change. Get all this business out of the way, and then there had to be a future, a real future.
If Mairi had not shown up by a quarter to ten, he would have to go to her room, which he had not done in the time she had been here. Once or twice her raised eyebrow had suggested what it had frequently suggested in years gone by and been suitably acknowledged in those years, but even for old times’ sake he hadn’t felt tempted. When she had taunted him about Lesley Gunn, she had been too painfully close to the mark. Now Lesley was real, and nothing else was.
Mrs Robson tapped on the door and came in with the post and the morning paper. Another howl blasted in through the window and then was choked off.
‘Good morning, sir. It’s a fine day the day. And it’ll be gey finer when we have an end to that skreiching, would ye no’ say?’
‘It brings in the punters, Mrs Robson.’ He flipped through the envelopes and found nothing interesting. ‘Oh, I wonder if you’d go and knock on Miss McLeod’s door. We’re expecting a visitor at ten.’
Mrs Robson hurried off with that fussy little shuffle of hers. Nick opened a few envelopes and looked round for somewhere to throw them and their useless contents. The waste paper basket with its embroidered tapestry surround, inherited from his mother, was another item not yet restored to its proper place.
Mrs Robson came back at an even more agitated pace. ‘Sir Nicholas, she’s nae there.’
‘She’s been down for breakfast and gone out for a walk?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed, sir. And ye ken well I’d have noticed.’
He did ken that very well.
‘And her bed’s nae been slept in.’ She was half alarmed, half eager for scandal about a guest she had never approved of in the first place. ‘I’d be thinking she’s awa’.’
Nick felt a chill in spite of the warm breeze from the open window. She hadn’t been stupid enough to do a bunk? Maybe Lesley had spoken too soon, too clumsily, and set her off. He didn’t want to fuel his housekeeper’s speculations by asking whether the car in which Erskine and Mairi had arrived was still in the barmekin. After she had gone, her appetite still unsatisfied, he went downstairs at as leisurely a pace as possible, and did a slow stroll round his premises.
The Volvo was still there.
He wondered whether to phone Adam Lowther, but what exactly could he ask? Unlikely that she would have gone round to his place, still ablaze with a lust which Nick had every reason to remember in that music. Nora Lowther would have been unlikely to make her welcome and offer her a bed — least of all her own husband’s bed.
He hoped Mairi had not had too devastating an effect on Lowther. Early middle-aged he might be, but Adam was still not quite grown up. Idealistic, naive, as passionate about music and particularly Erskine’s music as some kids might be about model railways, he might too easily be shaken out of the stodginess of his everyday life with a dutiful, dull wife by the delights which Mairi could provide.
He heard the swish of wheels on the hard standing beside the tower, and hurried round to show the police upstairs. Lesley Gunn was not alone. DCI Rutherford had come with her. Nick was unsure whether to feel relieved or frustrated. One thing was sure: whichever way the inquisition went today, it was unlikely to be a discreet, low key operation if Rutherford was in charge. But without a target, what would the inquisitors be able to solve?
‘Do sit down.’
‘Thank you, Sir Nicholas.’
Nick realized that the only comfortable chair in the room was his own. The others had been removed, and the remnants of the recital were stacked one on top of the other against the north wall. Mrs Robson must have organized that first thing this morning, before he was awake. He dragged a couple off the top of a stack and nudged them forward. ‘Sorry about this. Back to normal soon, I hope.’
‘We all hope that, Sir Nicholas. Though in our profession, normality doesn’t come high on the list. Now, I gather that you know a fair amount about the background of this inquiry.’
‘Inspector Gunn and I did come across some interesting correlations, as I’m sure she’s told you.’
‘Aye. And we’d like to think that Miss McLeod can sort a few of them out for us. She knows we’re here?’
There was no point in stalling. ‘Miss McLeod doesn’t appear to be here.’
Nick saw Lesley’s eyes widen. Her lips moved faintly. She might have been saying ‘Oh, no’ to herself — just as she had whispered, disbelievingly, last night.
Rutherford’s already craggy face had hardened. ‘Not here?’
‘She may have gone out for a stroll, or —’
‘She knew what time we were due?’
‘Not exactly. I’ — he avoided Lesley’s gaze — ‘didn’t have the opportunity to settle anything definite. After the exertions of her recital last night, she may have wanted to relax.’
‘She’s done a runner, hasn’t she?’
‘Not so far as I’m aware. Her car is still outside. I think you’re jumping to conclusions, Chief Inspector.’
‘Then prove me wrong. Where is she?’
Lesley said: ‘She spent the night here?’
It was a question Nick had been dreading. ‘My housekeeper thinks that
possibly her bed hasn’t been slept in.’
‘Possibly?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t be responsible for all my guests’ movements. This is a home, not a gaol.’
‘Of course, sir. Of course.’ Rutherford sounded far from respectful. ‘But since she was a guest in your home’ — he laid sarcastic emphasis on the word — ‘and, I gather, an old friend, you might have some idea of her way of life, her likely behaviour in a crisis?’ When Nick could find no immediate answer, Rutherford suddenly rasped: ‘Sir Nicholas, this is serious. This is a murder inquiry. Where is she?’ He turned to Lesley. ‘Looks as if there could be something in what that sneaking little tart was telling us.’
A babble of voices floated up from the platform on the haugh below. It could have been a rehearsal of some cataclysmic number with the volume turned up full. But it wasn’t. They were hollering blue murder — which was exactly what it was.
On the grass under the stage was the naked, crumpled body of Mairi McLeod.
Part 3
DEADLY DISCORD
Chapter One
Detective Inspector Lesley Gunn was relieved that this time it was Detective Chief Inspector Jack Rutherford who had to deal with the phone call to Superintendent Maitland. Three murders, and two of them within the last ten days: it was not a sequence likely to please the Super.
Lesley tactfully stayed out of the caravan while Rutherford made the call, but fled back inside when she spotted Galbraith heading eagerly towards her with his reporter’s notebook at the ready. From the top step she said, ‘We’ll be issuing a statement shortly,’ and closed the door.
Rutherford was just putting the phone down. ‘We’re not in what you’d call good odour with the heidyins right now.’ He mopped his brow and breathed in shakily through his teeth. ‘Forensics ought to be nearly finished by now. Let’s go take another look at her ladyship.’
The familiar van was drawn up as it had been drawn up near Erskine’s corpse, this time with its open doors pinned back against the edge of the platform.
