The Unkindest Cut

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Ahhh yes, back to the nitty gritty.’ Honeypot almost looked disappointed having to get back to police work. ‘Well, my hard-working cadet managed to find out for us that a certain Miss Maple took a taxi to the bus depot in St Andrews Square and caught the last coach to Aberdeen. We then found the coach driver – we were lucky, the driver had brought the same coach back to Edinburgh this morning and was about to go home. My wonderful cadet had managed to get hold of this photograph of your witness Helen Maple taken at your wedding, Jane.’ Again, Honeypot had the beginnings of a teasing smile playing around her mouth as she showed them the photograph.

  Jane was horrified to recognize herself in the background of the picture, skimpy dress and all.

  ‘Anyway, our coach driver remembered Helen and, indeed, my cadet suspected that he had rather fancied her, which is wonderfully helpful as he then remembers her disembarking at the Kinross Services. And that, I’m afraid, is as far as my information goes.’ Honeypot finished with a flourish, aware that she’d gone above the call of duty – and probably friendship too – in taking so much time to pass on the information herself.

  Jane told her as much when she thanked her again for coming to see her personally.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Honeypot replied. ‘I had to see the blushing bride in person at some point, now didn’t I? And to wish you another congratulations, I’ve just noticed …’

  This time Jane didn’t begrudge Honeypot her teasing smile and they embraced before saying a final goodbye.

  Back in the car, Marie exhaled and exclaimed a mere, ‘Wow!’ She collected herself before adding, ‘When Honeypot, sorry Superintendent Potterton, shook my hand goodbye she asked me if you’d told me about the well incident yet …? What does she mean?’ Marie was genuinely confused, thinking there was some important fact that she was meant to have picked up about the case but failed to do so.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Jane exclaimed, annoyed again by Honeypot’s persistent teasing. ‘When I was young my sister’s boyfriend fell into a well. I was the only person small enough to be lowered down to attach a rope to him. Big deal!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Marie said as recognition dawned. ‘I remember the fuss on the tele now. It was a big deal.’

  To change the subject, Jane brought them back to their current situation. ‘I can do Kinross in an hour,’ she said. ‘Shall we go for it?’

  ‘We’d be going off our patch. I’ll speak to the DI.’ Marie, back in work mode, made a call and this time was lucky and got through to Ian.

  ‘You’ve done very well,’ Ian said, ‘with a little help from Honeypot. Yes, go to Kinross and then phone me again. I’ll speak to Fife and make sure that it’s all right.’

  ‘Protocol, protocol,’ Marie sighed as she put away her phone. The word sat oddly on her Highland lilt. ‘Tell me more about going down the well.’

  Jane raised her eyebrows and realized that as they were about to embark on a fairly long car journey her refusal to go into detail of that historic event would have to be rather short-lived if they were to have a remotely pleasant expedition.

  SIXTEEN

  Traffic remained light. Once they were clear of Edinburgh they devoured the motorway in good style and paused at Kinross Services for Marie to use the official credit card to fill Jane’s tank. She then phoned Ian Fellowes again. Jane had two cups of coffee waiting. ‘We’re to wait here,’ Marie said. ‘Somebody from the Fifers will come and join us.’

  They chatted over their coffee – not very good coffee as Jane remarked – and watched the traffic come and go. Most vehicles entering the services filled up with fuel and they had small bets as to which ones would park and come inside for a snack and, at long odds, which would be their contact. They had each been wrong several times when a man finally brought another coffee to their table. He was, he said, Detective Sergeant Lovelace. He was small for a policeman and old for a sergeant but he had a ready smile.

  ‘How did you recognize us?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Lothian and Borders faxed a photograph through.’

  ‘Head and shoulders, I hope,’ said Jane. As far as she was aware there were very few recent photographs of her in circulation other than those from her recent wedding.

  The sergeant produced his smile. ‘The full monty,’ he said. Jane’s face felt hot. The sergeant sensed her discomfort and tactfully got back to the business at hand. ‘It only took three phone calls. Your witness booked into a bed and breakfast in Kinross. But that landlady can’t be doing with her overnighters hanging around all day, so by ten o’clock out they go and after six they can come back in again. Your witness probably has friends or relations in the town that she plans to spend the day with. Your best course of action would be to give us the facts and then get back to Newton Lauder and leave us to get a statement from her.’

  Jane was getting tired of the sergeant who was revealing a rather patronizing manner. ‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t do,’ she said. She seemed to be saying what everybody had been telling each other for days. ‘The witness is very nervous and has already had a severe shock, which is why she upped and ran. I’m not police, but I was the first victim of Knifeman and I rescued her when she was the latest. She trusts me, so I was sent along for reassurance. There’s something worrying her; we don’t know what it is but she’ll have to be coaxed, and not by strange cops.’

  ‘I’m not really all that strange.’ Lovelace tried to sound hurt. ‘but point taken. If you follow me I’ll point out the bed and breakfast and then you’re on your own for the day. If you have a problem … Give me your mobile.’

  He programmed his own number into Marie’s mobile and led them into the car park. His car was a large but old Jaguar that they had noticed but dismissed on its arrival. They followed the big boot across the motorway and down into Kinross. The sun had come out and the old town was looking its best. The Jaguar paused outside a stone house with a glaring bed and breakfast sign at the gate while an arm emerged and pointed; then the big car accelerated away.

  ‘I think we can trust them to have made sure that she isn’t still hiding inside,’ Marie said. ‘Or might she have told the landlady a sob story?’

  Jane weighed up her judgement of Helen’s character. ‘She might, but it’s unlikely. If we go in asking questions we could do more harm than good. It’s not a big town. Let’s start looking in the sort of places where a single girl might pass the time.’

  Three cafes and a souvenir shop later Jane said, ‘Thar she blows!’ The expression might be unfamiliar to a Western Highlander so she added, ‘There she is, in the red coat. We need somewhere private to talk so I’ll fetch the car. You keep an eye on her.’ She fetched the car from where it had been parked outside the Premier hotel. She could imagine returning to find both ladies vanished, but when she stopped at the kerb she received a nod and an upraised thumb from Marie, who was backed round from the shop door and leaning comfortably against a railing. Jane gave Marie the car keys and entered the shop.

  Helen was browsing through a rack of magazines. When Jane tapped her arm she jumped and turned white. ‘We need to talk,’ Jane said. ‘But not here. Come out.’ Helen followed on rubber knees.

  Marie had established herself in the front passenger seat of Jane’s car. Jane and Helen settled in the cramped rear seats. Jane was well aware that she had only been sent along for reassurance but Marie seemed uncertain how to open the questioning, so Jane took charge.

  ‘Why did you run away?’ Jane asked.

  Helen shook her head and pinched her lips together, then opened them to whisper, ‘I can’t tell you.’

  That seemed to be a pretty comprehensive refusal to speak out. ‘Can’t or won’t?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Both.’

  Marie had produced one of the small recorders beloved of the modern, high-tech officer and stood it on the dashboard. She opened her mouth but closed it again without speaking. Jane had already slipped her own microwave reader out of a deep pocket, switched it on and swipe
d it over Helen’s back. She also passed it over Marie’s back for luck and then wondered what she would have done if it had registered positive.

  Jane took a deep breath. ‘Helen, I’ve dug you out of trouble once but I don’t want to have to do it again. In fact, I won’t do it again. I have things to do, a business to run and –’ she remembered suddenly – ‘a husband to look after. You’re heading straight back into trouble but this time you’re doing it on purpose and if that’s the way you want it …’

  Helen was shaking her head so that tears hopped down her cheeks. ‘I never wanted any of this.’

  Jane had to keep talking but she decided that her words were unimportant compared to a soothing tone of voice. ‘But you’re digging yourself deep into it. Can’t you see what you’re doing? I think I know for a fact that you’re not Knifeman – never mind how I know – so you’ve got to be messing around on behalf of somebody else. Who is it? Relative? Boyfriend?’ Helen’s head-shaking was becoming frantic but Jane went on mercilessly. ‘Can’t you see how it’s going to look? If a court doesn’t think that you were Knifeman, probably with an accessory for days when you were known to be elsewhere, it will certainly believe that you’re covering up for your nearest and dearest. When the police get hold of Knifeman, as they certainly will, the fact that you tried to avoid incriminating him or her will look very bad.’ Jane was close to running out of arguments. ‘Flight is evidence of guilt so by running away—’

  To Jane’s great relief, Helen broke down. ‘I never wanted to be involved and I didn’t want him to do it at all. We c-could have been happy as we were. I told him and told him that I couldn’t do more for him than I was already doing even if we were set up together but he wanted us to be properly married with our own house, and he couldn’t face the time it would take saving for a deposit as a first-time buyer. And it was all my fault because I said, joking, that if he’d give me that necklace out of the window I’d marry him straight away and he took me seriously and started picking up on the joke and saying that we could do it if he pretended to be Knifeman and I was horrified …’ Helen paused to draw a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I told him not to be so damn silly and I said that there was nowhere I could wear it if we came by it that way but he was talking less and less as if it was a joke and more as if it was a real plan. And then he walked into the shop with a knife and a length of clothesline and he said that he’d rather have me dead than walking around not his and he put the knife to my throat and made me lie down behind the counter.’ Helen’s voice was racked by distress but a note of pride was creeping in. It was not given to every woman to be so much desired …

  ‘I think we know what came next,’ Marie said, suddenly finding her voice. ‘He left you tied up and you were angry because he didn’t seem to care if you were stuck there until morning. So why are you trying so hard to protect him now?’

  ‘Because …’ Helen’s voice died away.

  ‘Because you still love him?’ Jane suggested. Silence dragged slowly along.

  Reluctantly, Helen nodded.

  ‘Are you going to tell us who he is?’ Jane persisted.

  Helen shook her head.

  ‘We can find out easily enough,’ said Marie. ‘We only have to ask around the town about who she has been keeping company with. Somebody who knows both of them will tell us.’

  ‘At least it won’t have been me,’ Helen said. ‘And I won’t be confessing to being an accomplice.’

  ‘There’s no such thing or person as an accomplice in Scots law,’ Marie said. ‘Now, what became of the necklace? Does he still have it?’

  Helen sat up straight. ‘Would it make a difference if he was to give it back, voluntarily?’

  ‘A big difference,’ Jane said. ‘Provided that he hadn’t stolen anything else.’ Once again she hoped she knew what she was talking about. It seemed logical and there was sometimes a streak of common sense threaded through the law. Not often but sometimes.

  Helen produced her mobile phone. ‘May I ring him?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Helen kept the small screen out of Jane’s view while she selected a name and keyed for a connection. A male voice answered. It took Jane a few seconds of visualizing faces and testing the voice on them, but she identified it at the third or fourth try. Helen quickly warned the other that his identity would be known. ‘Go and return that thing to Mr Golspie,’ she said, ‘and they’ll go easy on you. No, not to the police, to Mr Golspie hisself. Apologize. Say that you got carried away. Blame me if you like – say that I pushed you into it. If you do that, I’ll do whatever you want but I’d most rather just get married even if it means a council rental. Yes, I mean it. I promise.’ She disconnected.

  ‘Who was the original Knifeman if you’re saying your man just copied him?’ Marie asked suddenly.

  Helen paled. ‘Honest to God, I’ve no idea. If I knew, I’d tell you.’

  Jane got out of the car and took her seat behind the steering wheel. ‘We may as well be getting back to Newton Lauder,’ she said. ‘Do we have to collect your overnight things from the landlady?’

  Helen feebly nodded her head and they set off. Perhaps the reality of the situation was finally settling in around her ears as she contemplated the part she’d played in the stealing of the necklace. She just hoped that giving it back would help matters, but she wasn’t so sure …

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Well, young lady,’ said Ian Fellowes at his most paternal. ‘You’ve led us quite a dance. We’ve asked around among the young people of the town and it seems that you have been seen in the company of more than one of the male contingent. Many more. From what Mrs Fox tells us you still have a special relationship with the young man who raided the jeweller’s shop and left you tied up.’

  ‘But he hadn’t done any of the other thefts,’ Helen said firmly. The air in Ian Fellowes’s office seemed to be vibrating with discord. Marie remained there as of right, having escorted Helen there. Jane was still there because nobody had told her to get out and she was curious. DS Bright was taking a record as usual. The little room was packed.

  ‘You don’t know that for sure – how could you?’

  ‘I could, because he was spending all his spare time with me. He talked about the robberies once or twice. Then he began to say that it would be a good idea to do something similar and let the other whoever-it-is take the blame so that we’d have the money to get married. Anyway, I’m not telling you who he is and I won’t give evidence against him.’

  ‘You realize that the law can force you to give evidence against him – you’re not protected by marriage or anything – and more importantly he might attack again with more serious consequences?’

  Helen shook her head so violently that her curls danced. ‘I can make sure that he doesn’t. He owed some money because he’d lost a bet and he wanted enough to pay it, but I’ve been saving up and I can give him enough.’

  ‘Bad move!’ said Ian, looking very serious. ‘Just let him get the idea that if he loses money gambling you’ll make his losses good and he’ll never stop. Never. It’s happened over and over again.’

  Helen’s hands became fists. ‘That’s for me to worry about. As long as he keeps his nose clean it’s no concern of yours.’

  ‘It is very much a concern of mine as long as there’s any likelihood of him trying it on again.’

  ‘Which he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Which he certainly would. People get hurt that way. It’s happened before. It happens all the time. Anyone can see it except for folk like you.’ Ian pointed a finger into her face. ‘He promises never to gamble again. He thinks he can win this time so breaks his promise. He loses. He can’t bear to admit it to you. So he has another try at recouping his losses. And this time the victim tries to fight him off and serious blood gets spilled. So where does your boyfriend finish up?’

  Helen got to her feet. ‘I don’t have to stay here and listen to this. You can’t make me.’

  ‘I could. D
on’t make me make you.’

  ‘It’s Alistair Ledbetter,’ Jane said suddenly. For lack of seats she was standing with her back against the door.

  Helen’s knees gave way and she sat down with a thump on the hard chair. ‘No!’ she said. ‘What’s she doing here anyway? She’s no right.’

  Ian looked as though he had been on the point of saying the same, but he waved away the objection. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked Jane.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Jane said. ‘I was sure that the man I’d seen pass my window was somebody I knew and when … when you mentioned gambling losses I remembered Alistair trying to borrow money off me and insisting that his father mustn’t know. I’ve been thinking it over and over and it would fit with my attack too. He could have had time to leave the limo behind the shops and get to my surgery in the time taken by Knifeman. And the same when I called him to pick me up. And I did think that his driving was a little shakier than usual.’

  ‘But that doesn’t prove anything,’ Helen said desperately.

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t,’ Ian said. ‘But it tells us who to make enquiries about. When we start asking people whether you and young Ledbetter are a couple, what answer will we get?’

  ‘They may say that we’re a couple, but what does that prove? All right, Alistair tied me up. I’ll complain to him all right but I’m not making any complaint to you and if you bring him into court I’ll deny it. Perfectly loving couples do tie each other up sometimes.’ She blushed scarlet. ‘It’s all part of the fun.’

  ‘You didn’t seem to be finding it fun when I found you,’ Jane said.

  ‘Either he has or he hasn’t returned the necklace to Mr Golspie,’ said Marie. She was standing beside Ian Fellowes. ‘The mobile phone company can trace the call that she made. If that was to Alistair …’ She broke off when Ian held up a restraining hand.

  Ian picked up the phone. ‘See if you can connect me with Mr Golspie the jeweller, either at home or in his shop.’