He was sound asleep, though, of course. She gave a little sigh then dropped a gentle kiss on the top of his head before she got into bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Louise Hepburn, a glass of white wine in front of her, watched as Ewan Campbell set about a pie and chips.
‘I don’t know how you’re not obese,’ she said, torn between admiration and revulsion. ‘You had a bridie for lunch – if I ate like that I’d be the size of a house.’
Ewan, thin and wiry still, if starting to show a paunch ignored her but Andy Macdonald, eating crisps along with his pint, grinned. ‘And he’ll be away off home to his tea in a minute.’
Ewan paused long enough to say, with some bitterness, ‘Aye, but what’ll it be? Salad!’ Then he turned his attention back to his plate.
Louise and Andy both laughed. It gave her a warm feeling; it was the first time she’d ever been asked to join them for a drink after work. She’d made a virtue out of her independence, prided herself on her mates being outside the Force, but it was undeniably good to be part of the gang.
‘So – what’s Big Marge going to do now?’ Andy said. ‘She was a bit antsy at the briefing. Unless they pick up Randall tonight there’s going to be a big media stushie tomorrow.’
‘No wonder. A serial murderer on the loose is enough to get any sub with a headline to write to start drooling,’ Louise said. ‘And no one seems to have seen him for a couple of days – could be anywhere by now.’
‘If he’s taken his car abroad it’ll be on a ferry list,’ Andy pointed out. ‘And my guess is he wouldn’t go without it.’
‘You’d feel sort of vulnerable, escaping on foot,’ Louise agreed. ‘It’s not logical – you’re actually more anonymous on public transport. But I can understand it.’
Ewan cleared his plate, set down his knife and fork and said, ‘Why’s he gone?’
The others stared at him. ‘Because he knows we’re on to him,’ Andy said patiently.
‘How?’ Ewan said. Then he got up. ‘Better get home.’ He walked out.
Louise looked at Andy. ‘Is he always like that?’
‘Yup. Always.’
‘I don’t feel I know him at all, really. I’ve never been partnered with him and he says so little in meetings that the only impression I have of him is from isolated remarks like that.’
‘Not sure I know him either. We go around the place in silence, mostly, or with me doing a sort of stream-of-consciousness monologue in the hope he’ll come out with one of his remarks to shed a new light. If he actually says something it’s always worth hearing, I can tell you that.’
‘So what do we make of that last remark?’
They were both silent for a minute, then Andy said, ‘He’s got a point, you know. How would Randall know we were out to get him? He’d be far smarter to carry on as normal.’ He drained his pint then said, ‘Fancy the other half? My shout.’
‘Thanks,’ Louise said. ‘You get them in and I’ll think about that.’
When Andy came back, she had developed a theory. ‘Randall hasn’t actually been around since just after the party, has he? He could think we’d be on to him after his attack on me – I could have realised, you could have seen him. He’d issued threats.’
‘But he must have been in touch with Will Stewart or he couldn’t have killed him. And we know Will and Skye were both in the car with Connell Kane – are we assuming that Randall was there too?’
‘We won’t know till we get a search warrant and can find his prints to check against the records from the car. But if Kane’s murder was some sort of follow-up from Julia’s – and I can’t imagine there’s not a connection – Randall only had to know that Will had been summoned to the station yesterday afternoon to need to get rid of him.
‘And it wasn’t premeditated.’ Louise was warming to her theory. ‘He met him to check that he’d keep schtum, then found out he wasn’t planning to – wasn’t prepared to leave Skye to carry the can, say – and he picked up a handy stone.’
‘That works for me. It looks like a panicky impulse – and once he realised what he’d done, that Skye couldn’t be blamed this time, he took off. We’re a good team – you know that?’ Andy held his glass across to clink with hers. ‘Cheers!’
‘Will you tell the boss tomorrow, or will I?’
‘You can,’ Andy said graciously. ‘Provided, of course, that you give full acknowledgement to the brilliance of my input.’
‘Naturally. And Ewan’s, of course. Wonder how he’s enjoying his salad?’
There was something very comforting about hens, Marjory Fleming thought, as she watched her little flock mill around her, waiting for her to fill the feeding trough, shoving and jostling. Cherie the alpha hen was there in the forefront, having trampled right over Sam Cam, a new arrival who was hanging back with what Marjory would like to think was well-bred politeness but was presumably terror.
It gave you a sense of perspective: whatever unpleasantness lay ahead of her in the world outside today, tomorrow the chookies would still be here, scratching and pecking and squabbling and making that soothing crooning sound when they were happy.
Marjory allowed herself just a few moments to watch them as she ate a slice of toast, then with some reluctance went back to the house. She hadn’t time to check for eggs today; she’d have to leave a note for Bill. Unfortunately she’d overslept and he’d gone up the hill before she woke.
The drive into Kirkluce gave her time to collect her thoughts for the morning briefing. She wasn’t quite ready yet to share generally what she’d been considering last night, not before she’d had a chance to kick the idea around with her team. It felt right, but there were still too many pieces that didn’t fit into the jigsaw.
So today she would make time for review and meticulous examination of the evidence they had. Not exciting, but this was the stuff real police work was made of. So unless some other disaster happened – she winced at the thought – she would just have to resign herself to a very dull day ahead.
‘The informal report we have, that Will Stewart was killed with a blow from a large stone, suggests that this wasn’t premeditated,’ Fleming told the morning briefing. ‘There was mud in the wound so it was probably snatched up from the ground at the time – the result of an argument, perhaps, or even because the killer discovered that Stewart was to attend here for questioning yesterday afternoon and there was something incriminating that he could tell us.
‘Two obvious questions: what might he have been going to say, and who was he going to say it about? So far we don’t have the answer to either of these so keep them in mind as you go about your interviews today.
‘His hire car isn’t at The Albatross and the number’s been circulated locally but we haven’t found it yet. Randall Lindsay’s car licence number has been circulated too and Border Force has been alerted, though there’s a danger he may have left the country already. We want to know of any sightings of him since Sunday morning and there’s a dedicated phone number being broadcast for information from the public. It’s possible – just! – that there may be gold in the avalanche of dross.’
That got a polite ripple of amusement. She went on, ‘So it’s pretty much routine legwork today. Don’t despise it – that’s where the dramatic breakthroughs come from.
‘Right. Questions?’
A hand was raised. ‘Is Skye Falconer still our prime suspect for Connell Kane’s murder?’
It was an entirely legitimate, not to say obvious, question, but it was one Fleming had hoped wouldn’t be asked directly. ‘For the moment, yes,’ she said. ‘Anyone else?’
The rest only needed routine responses and she gave them with brusque efficiency, then went up to her room to wait for her team to join her.
DC Hepburn was first and when DS Macdonald appeared he took the chair next to her, to Fleming’s quiet amusement. Could peace really have been declared at last?
MacNee came next, leaving Campbell to pull forward one of
the chairs by the table and Hepburn moved hers to widen the circle. A nice, cooperative grouping, Fleming thought with satisfaction.
She launched straight in. ‘I want to look at connections. Four acts of violence: Kane’s murder; Eleanor Margrave’s murder; the attack on Louise after the party; Will Stewart’s murder yesterday.
‘Weapons: a cosh, almost certainly; a ligature twice; a random rock, probably, though we’re waiting for further tests. Comments?’
There was a brief silence, then Hepburn said, ‘The attack on me had to be unpremeditated, at least to the extent that no one knew until quite late in the evening that I was there. It would be easy enough to find something and head out after me, like a belt or a scarf, say, or even a thin rope – there were lots of tents and things in the garden.’
‘And even if you’d gone to Sea House with the intention of killing Eleanor Margrave, you could easily conceal any of these,’ Macdonald offered.
‘The cosh,’ Campbell said. ‘Odd one out.’
Fleming nodded. ‘Precisely. There is no innocent reason for acquiring a cosh. You might, I suppose, carry it for protection but that too sheds a light on your activities. The fingerprints of Kane, Stewart and Falconer were all in the car. It’s possible there may have been someone else – Randall, say – but the unidentified fingerprints there are could be perfectly innocent, relating to a previous owner, say. So that’s the assembled cast.’
Hepburn was thoughtful. ‘You wouldn’t be likely to have a cosh, would you, unless you were a professional, so to speak.’
‘Or a cop,’ Campbell said.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Fleming admitted, ‘but it’s true, of course. Will Stewart could easily have had access to confiscated weapons.’
‘But if he had it,’ Hepburn argued, ‘why wouldn’t he use it on Eleanor Margrave? I think it’s far more likely it belonged to Kane.’
Macdonald was the only one who hadn’t spoken. ‘I agree with Louise. Stewart was unlikely still to have had it to hand, after two years.’
This came under the heading of ‘remarks least likely for Andy Macdonald to make’ and Fleming sensed, rather than saw, MacNee’s quiet smile. However, she said only, ‘So – are we talking self-defence? For some reason, Kane goes for Stewart and Skye gets caught up in it somehow?’
Hepburn went on, ‘And then either she or Stewart or possibly even Randall throws the cosh away, into the Solway probably, to get rid of the evidence. They don’t know they’re going to need to kill Eleanor Margrave, so—’
‘Or they didn’t do it.’ That was Campbell.
Fleming pounced on the remark. ‘That’s what I was mulling over last night. There are two very different MOs. The blow to Kane’s head worked, so why change to strangulation?’
‘Circumstances.’ MacNee was unconvinced. ‘Stewart’s murder – blow to the head too, but unplanned. The murderer just lost it for some reason and grabbed what came to hand. But like Andy said, if you’d a surprise attack in mind you could easy hide a ligature.
‘Say Randall goes out from the party to nobble Louise here, if he was carrying a hammer or something he could be noticed and he couldn’t rely on finding a handy stone. Scarf in his pocket and then – aargh!’ His hand went to his throat in a pantomime of strangulation.
Fleming saw Hepburn go pale and Macdonald protested, ‘For goodness’ sake, Tam!’
‘Oh, sorry, sorry, lass.’ MacNee was immediately penitent. ‘Got a wee bit carried away there. But I still don’t think we need to complicate things. Find Randall and squeeze him till the pips squeak.’
Fleming glanced at the clock. ‘This has been useful, and it’s opened up the discussion but that’s about as far as we can go for the moment.
‘There’s going to be a lot of stuff coming in today and I’m going to be stuck at the desk. Tam, I want you and Louise to interview Jen Wilson again. Try to get the truth this time – I have a gut feeling that there’s something there that we need to know.
‘Andy, could you and Ewan go to The Albatross and lean on the Stewarts again? I reckon Logie’s alibi is solid for Eleanor Margrave’s murder but it might be as well to check up on what he was doing yesterday. He can’t have felt a lot of brotherly love towards Will if he was carrying on with Kendra. I wouldn’t put money on him but the MO’s different this time so we have to take that into account.
‘I’m more interested in Kendra. Her alibi is shaky for that afternoon and she would know that Will was coming in to talk to us.’
‘And the way she was looking yesterday, she’d be ready to take a knife to anyone who happened to be passing,’ MacNee said. ‘You might need body armour.’
‘Anyway, that’s it,’ Fleming said, ‘except that you could touch base with the uniforms – they should be all over the place like a rash. And be sure you’re up to date with the reports of all the interviews before you go. Tam, you filed the Will Stewart one, didn’t you?’
MacNee nodded, and she finished, ‘And spare a thought for me stuck here all day, ploughing through paper.’
‘I felt as if I were going round in a tumble dryer in that meeting,’ Hepburn grumbled as she drove with Tam down the now overfamiliar road to Ballinbreck. ‘Whenever I thought I had something straight in my mind and was following a line, something else came up to confuse me all over again.’
‘Aye, it’s kind of a mess, this one,’ MacNee agreed. ‘But I think the boss is getting there. She’s a lot more upbeat this morning than she was last night.’
‘I wish I was. If Randall really has managed to vanish, it could be tied up for weeks. Months, even.’
‘Oh, we’ll get him. It’s what we’re best at, picking people up, unless they’ve got professional help to cover their tracks. He’s an amateur.’
‘Why’s the boss so set on Jen Wilson, anyway? She’s got thirty kids as an alibi for the Margrave murder.’
MacNee thought for a moment. ‘Has she, though? She told us she was in school but we didn’t check. Teachers have free periods, don’t they – pop out for a bit of shopping, maybe. And she was definitely in the area on the night Kane was killed.
‘I tell you something else – she was ducking and diving when we questioned her, and hell-bent on dumping her pal Skye right in it. But she still wasn’t prepared to give us the full story.’
‘Mmm.’
Hepburn fell silent and after a moment MacNee glanced at her. ‘You’re doing that thinking thing again. Want to share it?’
‘It was just what the boss said about MO. Suppose there are two people involved, Killer A who bashed Connell Kane and Will Stewart over the head, and Killer B who strangled Eleanor Margrave and tried to strangle me?’
MacNee nodded. ‘I think the boss is playing with that idea. But I’m not just sure you’d say using a stone was the same as using a cosh – you couldn’t carry a bloody great boulder in your hip pocket ready for use.’
‘You might be more inclined to think that way if you’d done it before, though,’ Hepburn argued. ‘We know Skye didn’t kill Will Stewart and if we find who has a solid alibi for yesterday afternoon, we could at least establish they weren’t Killer A and concentrate on finding Killer B.’
‘It’d be fine and handy, right enough. But you’ve been in the job long enough to know by now that unless someone’s locked up or standing in full view of an audience of independent witnesses, preferably including a couple of justices and a minister from the Free Kirk, there’s no such thing as a solid alibi.’
Deflated, Hepburn sank down in her seat and looked at her watch impatiently. ‘You know something – you can get really sick of driving down this road. Are we nearly there yet?’
Kendra Stewart came into the bar where DS Macdonald and DC Campbell were waiting, wearing a pair of dark glasses. Her face was pale, though that could just be because she’d left off her make-up, Macdonald thought cynically.
She sat down on the banquette at one of the tables and waved them to the seats opposite. Her voice, when she spoke
after receiving their formal condolences, was soft and shaky.
‘It’s hard for me to even think about this, let alone talk about it, but to bring Will’s – killer,’ she faltered on the word, ‘to justice, I’ll do anything – anything!’
Repressing the urge to say, ‘Just tell the truth and ditch the histrionics,’ Macdonald said gravely, ‘I appreciate that. It must be very hard for you.’
‘It is, it is!’ She took out a tissue and dabbed at the corner of her eyes under the glasses. ‘He was – well, he was my brother, quite simply.’
Which raised all sorts of interesting questions about incest and if she went on like this sooner or later Campbell was going to pose them. Macdonald hurried on, ‘I don’t want to make this any more difficult than it is already, so if I can just ask you a few routine questions first. Where were you yesterday afternoon?’
Kendra bridled. ‘I don’t believe this!’ she said, her voice suddenly much stronger. ‘You can’t possibly think that I – I would have— Oh, it’s too ridiculous.’
‘No, no,’ Macdonald said soothingly. ‘This is purely a matter of routine. You and your husband were probably the last people to see your brother-in-law alive so we have to ask these questions.’
‘Where were you?’ Campbell said.
Kendra shifted in her seat. ‘When do you mean? It’s difficult to tell you just like that – I don’t wear a watch. Though I probably would have if I’d known there was going to be this sort of fuss.’
‘So you weren’t here, then?’ Macdonald asked.
‘I’m not tied to the place, you know – my husband does let me out sometimes.’ Kendra was visibly recovering her energy, with bitterness replacing the hushed tones of grief. ‘Occasionally I’m even allowed to spend money, you know.’
‘Shopping spree, was it?’ Campbell said.
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