The Third Sin

by Aline Templeton

  Fleming sensed that there was an atmosphere from the moment they stepped into the house. Jen Wilson greeted their request to see Ms Falconer with nothing more than a nod, then opened the door on the left of the hall, gesturing them into a sitting room where a fire was burning, and called up the stairs, ‘Skye! It’s the police to speak to you.’ She went through to the back of the house.

  ‘Do I maybe jalouse they’re not such great pals any more?’ MacNee said.

  ‘You certainly might guess it would put any friendship under a strain if the pal kept being arrested.’ She heard slow footsteps coming downstairs and turned to face the door.

  Skye came in with her head held high and Fleming could see that the muscles of her jaw were clenched. ‘Yes? What now?’

  More to please Tam who had a touching belief in her powers of persuasion than because she thought it would do any good, she said gently, ‘Skye, you really need to talk to us.’

  ‘I did. This morning. I said “No comment” and that’s all I’m going to say now.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what your lawyer would tell you to do, but even so I don’t think it will be in your best interests. Let me explain. Why don’t we sit down?’

  Skye shrugged and sat on the sofa. Fleming took the chair nearest her and leant forward. ‘You’re in serious trouble, Skye. We’ve recorded your fingerprints in the car where Connell Kane’s body was found.’

  A quiver of shock went over Skye’s face but she said nothing, and Fleming went on, ‘And we can place you in Eleanor Margrave’s house, just a short distance away from where the car went in to the water on the night we believe he died. It’s enough for us to charge you with killing Connell Kane. I’m going to be open with you: I have doubts about your guilt. I haven’t evidence to back them up, though, so I’m obliged to proceed on the evidence we do have.

  ‘But I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Talk to me, Skye. If you didn’t kill Connell, tell me what happened. I believe in the principle that you’re innocent till proved guilty. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I can’t give you any guarantees, but if you can give me something to back up the doubts I have already, I can promise that I’ll do my best to make sure the truth comes out.’

  She had made her voice as persuasive as she could but for all the reaction she got Skye’s face could have been carved out of marble. ‘Skye?’ she prompted.

  ‘No comment.’

  MacNee gave an impatient, ‘Tchah!’ and looked meaningfully at Fleming. She sighed, and got up. ‘I’m sorry about that. Very sorry.’

  MacNee was already out of the door and beckoning to the officers in the car. Skye got up and walked after him, like a French aristocrat heading for the tumbrel.

  Fleming stood warming her hands by the fire, her face sombre as she heard Skye being cautioned and charged, then went to find Jen Wilson. There would need to be an interview in depth later, but she couldn’t afford the time now – there was too much to do back at the station, not least bringing the super and the procurator fiscal up to speed with developments.

  She did, however, want to test Skye’s claim that she had only arrived in Ballinbreck ten days before, and when she stepped into the hall Jen was standing at the open kitchen door watching Skye being taken away. Her eyes were narrowed and there was an expression of such venom on her face that Fleming was taken aback.

  ‘Ms Wilson, could I have just a minute?’ she said. ‘Someone will be round later to take a further statement from you, but could I just briefly check – you confirmed yesterday that Ms Falconer had only been staying with you for about ten days. Is that right?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jen said, her tone almost gleeful. ‘I’m sorry I misled you last time but I was bounced into it. She lied about that, like she’s lied about a lot of things. She came here the day after the one your officers asked me about – April 14th, wasn’t it? And she had a bruise on her face that looked as if she might have been in a fight.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ Try as she might, Kendra Stewart couldn’t stop herself from sounding accusatory.

  Will, who had just come into their private sitting room, was looking tired and drained and he didn’t take it well. ‘Whoa, Kendra!’ he said. ‘That sounded almost like you thought you had a right to know. Back off!’

  Kendra gave a little, false laugh. ‘Oh, of course I didn’t mean that, silly! It’s just that the police were asking and I didn’t know what to tell them.’

  ‘The truth is usually safest.’

  ‘Oh, I know. It’s always so tiresome to have to remember what you said if it wasn’t true. But the trouble is – well, we didn’t really exactly tell the truth last time, did we?’

  ‘And what, exactly, do you mean by that?’

  She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. ‘Well,’ she said again, ‘you know how we said we could all vouch for each other, all that afternoon when Eleanor Margrave died? But we couldn’t, really, could we?’

  Will went very still. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing!’ she protested. ‘Just … when the police asked me if I could be absolutely sure that you hadn’t popped out for a bit – to see your little friend Skye, maybe …’ She invested the phrase with malevolence, glaring at him.

  ‘Get on with it.’

  She bridled. ‘No need to be rude. You said yourself it was better to tell them the truth.’

  ‘And?’

  His eyes were glittering in a way that frightened her, but Logie was just through the wall and she would scream if he touched her. ‘I didn’t say you’d gone out or anything. I just said I was in the kitchen with Logie a lot of the time and I didn’t know.’

  ‘Oh God!’ he said. ‘You stupid, stupid little bitch! They arrested Skye this morning but of course they’d no evidence so they had to let her go. They’re flailing, and you know what that means? They’re going to cast around for someone else to arrest. We’re all suspects and you don’t seem to realise that if I don’t have an alibi, then neither do you.’

  ‘That’s just silly,’ she protested, though her heart was beating faster. ‘Anyway, you know I couldn’t have gone out. A lot of the time I was with Logie.’

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘A lot, perhaps. But there was quite a time when you weren’t.’

  ‘But I was in the bar all the time you were upstairs in the restaurant!’

  ‘And I would know that – how?’

  ‘Because – because if you came down and I wasn’t here or in the kitchen you’d wonder where I was. And you didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t I? I did, actually, to collect some cutlery, and you weren’t there.’

  ‘I was, I was – or perhaps I was in the loo. It would only have been for a few minutes, that’s all.’

  ‘So you say. But if the police ask me, I’ll have to say that I’m afraid I can’t vouch for you either.’

  She was shaking as he left the room, not only with anger. He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t! Her only satisfaction was that Skye was in big trouble, obviously, and it served her right.

  Charles Lindsay had, as usual, retreated to his study, the only old-fashioned room in the house, with leather chairs and bookshelves its most striking features. When his wife came to find him, he looked up from the book he was reading.

  ‘Did the police get hold of you? They came here looking for you and Randall.’

  ‘Did they?’ Philippa sounded weary. ‘No, I’ve only just got back. Have you heard the news? They’ve arrested Skye Falconer.’

  He looked up in genuine dismay. ‘Oh no! They did ask me about her but they didn’t give me any idea that they were going to do that.’

  ‘They were talking to you?’

  Charles shifted in his seat. ‘Just a short chat.’

  ‘And what did you say, in this “short chat”?’

  ‘Nothing much. Probably nothing they didn’t know already.’

  She sat down. ‘Could you be a bit more specific?’

  Irritated, he said, ‘Since you ask, I told
them it was a bloody silly idea of yours to have the party in the first place.’

  ‘I daresay I might even agree with you about that. What else?’

  He could tell her what he’d told them about her obsession with Will Stewart – well, he could if he wanted a full-scale row. ‘Don’t think there was much else, really. I couldn’t tell them anything about last night, obviously.’

  ‘Well, all I can tell them is that Randall and Will set about each other – Randall was totally out of his skull and I was afraid someone would call the police there and then. So humiliating!’

  Charles hated being told about problems. ‘Oh you know, young men,’ he said vaguely. He hesitated before adding, with some reluctance, ‘Is there anything else about last night that I absolutely need to know?’

  ‘Just that it’s over, thank God,’ Philippa said. ‘We need to have a talk about Randall, sometime, though.’

  ‘Sometime,’ Charles agreed. ‘Where is he, anyway?’

  ‘No idea. Drunk in a pub somewhere, I daresay. Seems to be all he’s good for, these days.’ She didn’t seem to want to discuss it further.

  ‘Where were you today, anyway?’ he said idly.

  ‘Oh, there were still a few people to see after last night. That’s it pretty much wrapped up now.’

  She was, he noticed, looking very tired and she’d been subdued in the morning too. He suspected that the rapturous reunion with Will Stewart that she’d spent so much time and energy in engineering hadn’t quite worked out as she had hoped. He could almost bring himself to feel sorry for her – almost, but not quite.

  Fleming had been foolish enough to mention some of her reservations about Skye Falconer’s guilt to Detective Superintendent Christine Rowley and was subjected to a tirade.

  Rowley’s voice, shrill at the best of times, had gone up a couple of octaves when Fleming had talked about logistical problems.

  ‘We’ve got this cleared up in nine days – less, in the case of Eleanor Margrave – when the Dumfries division has spent weeks going round in circles, and your clever idea is to drag your feet until some stupid little details have been ironed out! It’s a triumph for me, for us, and I’m not going to let you spoil it. We have all the evidence we need—’

  ‘Not in the Margrave case,’ Fleming said unwisely. ‘We haven’t been able to charge her.’

  ‘And whose fault is that? I’m expecting you to concentrate on nailing that one too, Marjory, instead of wasting time trying to undermine the solid case we do have.’

  ‘There is the question of motivation—’

  Rowley’s eyes bulged with temper. ‘Not our problem. Once the case preparation starts the procurator fiscal will be able to come up with something, I have no doubt.’

  Gloomily, Fleming had to accept that she was right there. Sometimes she felt that like most lawyers the fiscal saw the process as something of a game with esoteric rules and winners and losers and he was always quite clear which he wanted to be.

  She got out of Rowley’s office as soon as she could. She went down to see how MacNee was getting on with Skye and her brief, but the situation was unchanged: she had said, ‘No comment’, and nothing else. After ten minutes she terminated the interview.

  There wasn’t much more that she could do tonight and she tied up a few loose ends, then headed home. It was just after six, too late to say goodbye to Cat and her guest, who had been planning to leave about four. She wasn’t sorry to have an excuse for avoiding the warm farewells and pressing invitations to return that she might have been obliged to offer Nick.

  Not having to rush back would give her time to pop in to see her mother too – always supposing she was in. She was certainly frailer than she had been but she still kept busy and drove her little car, with her doctor’s blessing.

  The front door wasn’t locked, though, and there was a warm smell of baking when she opened it. Janet was taking a perfectly risen sponge out of the oven when Marjory went into the kitchen, calling, ‘That smells wonderful!’

  ‘Och, dearie, is that you?’ Janet set the sponge down as her daughter bent to kiss her. ‘You weren’t needing to be coming to see me today. I’ve been hearing the news – you’ll be run off your feet.’

  ‘Difficult day,’ Marjory said briefly. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think I had to. I wanted to. Something I needed to ask you.’

  Janet’s face brightened and Marjory felt a pang; her mother so loved to be needed – didn’t everyone? And at her age, all too often you had to accept graciously that not only weren’t you needed, you needed other people. Not easy.

  ‘I’ll just put the kettle on,’ Janet said. ‘I can’t give you the sponge – it’s for the Guild tomorrow night – but you’ll find something if you look in the tins there.’

  ‘Oh good. I missed lunch.’ Janet tut-tutted as Marjory went scavenging. ‘Mum, I wanted to ask you what you thought about Cat’s Nick.’

  Her mother didn’t say anything for a moment, swilling water round the teapot to warm it and emptying it into the sink. When she turned round her gentle face was uncharacteristically stern but she was, as always, reluctant to say a bad word about anyone.

  ‘I’m sure he’s a very clever young man.’

  Marjory was unburdened by such scruples. ‘Oh yes, clever and arrogant and nasty. He spends his time making a fool of Bill and Bill just doesn’t see it.’

  Janet sighed. ‘Bill wouldn’t, bless him. He’s too decent a man to understand that sort of thing.’

  Marjory was well aware that her mother believed her son-in-law to be little less than a saint, not least because of what he had to put up with from her only daughter. ‘But that’s what’s so irritating,’ she cried. ‘Maybe if he made it clear to Cat that he didn’t like Nick, she’d realise what he is.’

  Her mother didn’t say anything, just put down a mug of tea in front of her with a pitying smile.

  ‘Oh, I know! We should have called her Mary – Cat’s the most contrary person I’ve ever met. And before you say that you should have called me Mary too, I just want to say that I know how difficult I was. I struck it lucky with Bill but it could all have gone horribly wrong. I don’t want that to happen to Cat.’

  ‘We all want to protect our bairns – it’s human nature. When I see you looking worn out and worried, I wish I could still just kiss it better and give you a sweetie like I used to. I can’t, though, and you can’t for Cat either.’

  Marjory’s eyes prickled. ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you do. But our Cat’s not daft. I’ve no doubt that like her mother she’ll put a few through her hands before she finds the right one.’

  She directed a meaningful look at her daughter and Marjory felt a positively teenage blush rise to her cheeks as Janet went on, ‘And do you not think she was smart enough to notice what the lad was doing? I’ll be quite surprised if we see him again.’

  Marjory stared at her. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘You wait and see. And if I were you, I’d not say a word against him.’

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ Marjory took out her mobile. ‘I tell you what – I’ll just send her a text saying I was sorry not to see them to say goodbye and I’ll be looking forward to seeing Nick again. I won’t add, “and maybe next time you’ll realise what an unpleasant little creep he is.”’

  Smiling, her mother shook her head at her as Marjory texted. ‘I seem to have a gey manipulative daughter.’

  ‘And I can’t think who I took it from,’ Marjory said dryly.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Louise Hepburn woke feeling confused, uncertain for a moment where she was, even. When she got back to her flat she had made herself some coffee and sat down on the sofa to drink it; it was there now on the coffee table, stone cold, and she straightened up painfully, rubbing at the crick in her neck.

  She looked at her watch: nearly six o’clock. She must have crashed out for almost five hours, for heaven’s sake, but it hadn’t refreshed her; in fact, she felt worse than she had
in the morning and her throat was dry and aching.

  Andy’s mum had popped a packet of paracetamol into her bag and she rooted for it now and went into the kitchen for water. She really, really wished that she hadn’t thrown away the last of her Gitanes – but it wouldn’t have done her throat any good, anyway. More coffee? Somehow she didn’t want that either.

  She ran a bath instead. Her back muscles felt stiff and strained and she tipped in a handful of Radox. She submerged, then lay back with her head on the bath pillow. It would be a good place to sort out the ideas that were buzzing in her head.

  She was trying not to stress about her personal safety. The attack on her had been an attempt to stop her reporting something she had learnt – she only wished she knew what the ‘something’ had been – and now she had done that the threat would be removed. The only other worry was that her assailant might be afraid that she could make an identification – but then again, she told herself, when there was no immediate police investigation whoever did it would realise that she hadn’t. At least, she hoped so.

  It was intensely frustrating that she didn’t know what had been going on at headquarters today. Probably Skye Falconer was under arrest for Eleanor Margrave’s murder, but that wasn’t really what that Louise had most on her mind. She didn’t believe that it was Skye who’d tried to strangle her last night; the way she had resisted, she’d have had someone as slight as that off their feet.

  So if not her, who? The why could come later, but she was highly trained in observation – surely she must have noticed something that would give her a clue.

  Perhaps that was the trouble. She’d noticed so much that she couldn’t separate the wheat from the chaff – the report she’d written this morning ran to several pages. So, ignore the detail. What, in terms of gut reaction, had seemed most significant?

  There was no doubt about that. The fist fight had been a bit of drama but it was the meeting between Skye and Will Stewart that sprang immediately to mind. Why should it have seemed so important?