Autographs in the Rain

by Quintin Jardine

  one thing is not negotiable. She is also going to have to be someone Olive

  would like, because she's going to be very close to her.'

  Abruptly, a violent shiver seemed to pass through him. 'Hey, come on,'

  he exclaimed. 'Let's get moving or we'll freeze to the ground.'

  He steered her forward down the track. 'One more hill,' he said, 'then

  we'll turnback.'

  They trudged on together, down then up another crest, the steepest of

  the three they had tackled. Louise was breathing hard by the time they

  reached the top. Neil took a hip-flask from another of his pockets and handed

  it to her.

  'What's this?' she gasped. 'Whisky?'

  'Irn Bru,' he grinned. 'I don't drink, remember .. . especially not when

  I'm driving.'

  He watched her as she drank, deeply from the flask, not daintily from its

  cup.

  'So what about you?' he asked, as she handed it back to him. 'Do you

  have a soulmate?'

  She shot him a quick, almost furtive glance. 'I think so, but his is taken.'

  Neil was silent for a moment. 'You might be surprised. He has a special

  soul; dark and mysterious, I suspect, but there's a lot of it to go around.

  There's more than one of him: that's as well as I can put it.'

  He drew a great breath. 'Did you mean all that stuff yesterday, about

  giving up men for good?'

  'Sure I did. I've been married twice and both times were disasters; my

  other relationships were no better, culminating in the episode with Warren.

  I've known other women with similar track records, and for a while, I thought

  like most of them that all those guys were to blame for not loving us enough.

  'Then after the last one, I tried to put myself in the shoes of all those

  partners, and for the first time, it occurred to me that in most cases, the bulk

  °f the fault had been mine. Since I was a young girl I have been obsessed

  with acting, not out of ego ... at least I don't think so ... but because I was

  addicted to it as strongly as an addict is to crack cocaine.

  'I have been impossible to live with for any length of time. Short-term,

  that was fine. People tell me that I'm good-looking, successful, rich, and

  some have even added that I'm very good in bed, any man's dream. But as

  every relationship developed, I became more and more remote, as my

  partners, quite justifiably I see now, wanted more of me than I was prepared,

  or able, to give.

  'So... and when young Mr Silver, who's as sexually interchangeable as

  anyone I've ever met, came on to me, it really was the last straw ... I

  decided to withdraw from that world.'

  She gave her deep throaty laugh. That I would have no more of men,'

  she murmured, 'that I would live the rest of my days as a Garboesque

  figure, alone, independent and unto myself. That was my clear vision of

  my declining years.'

  'Was?'

  She nodded.

  'Until when?'

  This time Louise was standing slightly below him on the hill. She looked

  up at him; at his dark hair, flecked with grey, at his soft blue eyes, and the

  web of lines around them, at his once-broken nose, at his expression which

  to some suggested stolidity, but which in fact he had fashioned over the

  years to mask a developing intellect.

  She took hold of the front of his jacket, drew his face down to hers, and

  kissed him, lightly, on the lips.

  'Until very recently,' she whispered.

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  Pringle and McGurk had said nothing at all to Raymond Anders, from the

  time they had collected him from his holding cell in the West Yorkshire

  police headquarters building in Leeds until they had installed him in similar

  accommodation in Galashiels.

  They had watched him squirm anxiously, seated beside the sergeant in

  the back of the car; they had listened to his occasional pleading question

  about where they were going and how long the journey would take. Yet

  deliberately, they had said nothing; not one single word.

  Now, on Sunday afternoon, refreshed, and having gone over the

  assembled evidence, they were ready to begin. Anders had been formally

  cautioned by Chief Superintendent Charlie Harrison, the uniformed

  divisional commander, and advised that he was being held on suspicion of

  murder; he had been advised to call a solicitor and had chosen Geoff Lesser,

  a formidable High Court practitioner from Glasgow.

  Suspect and solicitor were together when the two policemen walked

  into the interview room.

  'Are you two ready to talk to me now?' asked Anders plaintively as they

  sat down opposite him and loaded the tape recorder. Pringle made the formal

  identifications for the record.

  'Thanks for confirming, Mr Anders,' he continued, with a glance at

  Lesser, 'that we've had no informal discussions with you prior to this

  interview of the matters under investigation. Would you just repeat that for

  the tape; that we've said nothing to you until now.'

  'Not a fucking word,' exclaimed Raymond Anders. He was a tall man

  but he sat hunched at the table, fair hair dull and needing shampoo, dandruff

  on the shoulders of his dark jacket, stubble on his long sharp chin.

  'Thanks, that's sufficient,' said Pringle, pleasantly. 'Do you know why

  you're here?'

  They told me in Leeds; something to do with the murder of a girl on a

  trout farm.'

  'Who said anything to you about a trout farm? I thought our colleagues

  in Leeds simply detained you in connection with a murder investigation.'

  The superintendent caught the quick glance from client to solicitor. 'No

  point looking at Mr Lesser,' he said. 'We haven't discussed the case with

  him either, and he's not going to lie to the tape for you.

  'So. How did you know about the trout farm?'

  'I guessed. I heard it on the car radio; that was it.'

  'Which station?' asked McGurk.

  'Radio Borders.'

  'Hold on a minute. Does that mean that your sister was lying to the

  police when she said that you arrived at her place at just after five on

  Thursday night?'

  'No! I did. She was telling the truth.'

  'In that case,' said the sergeant, 'prepare to lose your driving licence.

  The news of Miss Adey's murder wasn't broadcast on Radio Borders until

  four thirty. It's a very local FM station, so to hear it you couldn't have been

  further south than Alnwick.

  'You must have been doing around two hundred miles an hour to get to

  your sister's when you did, yet still hear that broadcast.'

  'Maybe it was Radio Scotland, then.'

  'They didn't broadcast the news until just after five, and you can't pick

  them up in Leeds.'

  'Congratulations,' said Pringle. That's maybe no' the fastest opening

  lie I've ever heard in a formal interview, but it's up there with the best.

  Would you not agree, Mr Lesser?' The lawyer scowled at him.

  'Okay,' the superintendent continued. 'Let's cut away the fat and get to

  the meat of this. I'm going to accept that you got to your sister's when you

  both say you did. Where did you leave from?'

  'Hawick; that's where my office is.'

  'Right, that's a tw
o-and-a-half-hour drive to Leeds, minimum, in good

  traffic conditions; so you must have been on the road by quarter to three.

  Correct?' Anders nodded vigorously, starting a small white dandruff storm

  falling towards the table.

  'But you had an appointment with Miss Adey, in her diary, in her

  handwriting, timed for four o'clock on Thursday afternoon. More than that,

  you'd a date with your girlfriend on Thursday night. Actually, son,' he

  whispered, confidentially, 'I think she's your ex-girlfriend now.

  'As far as I gather from the boys in Leeds your sister and her kids looked

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  in perfect health. So, what made you up stakes, just like that, and bomb off

  south? Could it be that after the robbery at Country Fresh Trout went horribly

  wrong, after instead of being blindfolded and tied up in the dark Miss Adey

  wound up with her skull smashed in? Could it be that you panicked and ran

  for it?'

  'I don't know anything about her getting killed,' Anders protested. 'I

  don't know anything about the robberies.'

  'Robberies?' Pringle exclaimed. 'Since when have we been talking about

  more than one robbery? No, son, I'm interviewing you, no' the other way

  around. I'll get to the others later, and then you can get to telling me how

  you connected them.'

  'In the meantime,' Jack McGurk broke in, opening the briefcase which

  he had brought into the room, 'we want you to tell us about this.' He took

  out a clear plastic bag and laid it on the table. It contained a thick wooden

  baton, around fifteen inches long, with a large lead weight set in one end. It

  was blackened and scorched, but still clearly identifiable.

  'This was found by detective officers, when they searched your house in

  Hawick under warrant on Friday morning. They found it in an old oil drum

  in your garden shed.' The sergeant fixed the suspect with an icy look. 'It

  had been in a fire, but forensic examination identified hair, blood, tissue

  and bone fragments which were sticking to it, as coming from the murder

  victim.'

  'McGurk's an angler,' the superintendent offered. 'He reckons the thing

  was probably used to kill fish. We found the bones of a small trout in a

  plate in Miss Adey's kitchen. The lassie probably helped herself every so

  often, for her supper.'

  'Her Last Supper,' said McGurk, grimly.

  'Don't be dramatic, Jack,' Pringle chided. He looked at the solicitor. 'In

  the drum,' he told him, quietly, 'we found the remnants of a large hooded

  waxed cotton jacket which had been soaked in petrol and set on fire. This

  club, which was the murder weapon for sure, had been wrapped in it.

  'We've got a video tape which we can show you. It was taken at night

  and you can't identify the people in it, but we know that one was a tall man

  in a jacket very like the one which was burned, and that the other was Miss

  Adey, because it shows her murder. She tried to defend her employer's

  property with that thing. It was taken from her and her skull was bashed in

  with it.

  'That's bad enough in itself for your client. Now I'll get to the other

  robberies. This was the third inside two weeks from a trout farm in the

  area; the total value of the stock stolen being around thirty-five thousand

  pounds, give or take a few.

  'We know that all three thefts were committed by the same gang. There

  are two other linking factors; all three farms had very poor security, and all

  three had been visited by your client in failed attempts to sell them video

  surveillance systems.

  'There's one other odd wee fact too. The second robbery happened after

  the resident manager... the very large resident manager... had been lured

  away by a bogus call telling him that his father, who's recognised as one of

  Hawick's top bevvy merchants, had been severely injured on his way home

  from the pub. Our man here just happens to drink in the same boozer as Mr

  Symonds senior; but the licensee told us that he wasn't there that night. His

  girlfriend was, but he wasn't.

  'I don't think you're going to argue with me if I suggest that the Fiscal

  will support charges of murder and theft against Mr Anders, on the basis of

  what I've shown and told you.'

  'No,' Geoff Lesser agreed, with a heavy sigh. 'I'm not. In fact, I propose

  that you do just that, to put Mr Anders' detention on a proper legal footing,

  and to enable me to consult with him properly and at length about his

  defence.'

  Ten minutes later, the two detectives were back in Pringle's office; Anders

  had been charged formally, and left alone with the lawyer.

  'That was easier than I'd thought,' McGurk mused, aloud. 'I didn't expect

  that Lesser would just roll over like that, and let us charge him.'

  The neither,' said the superintendent, 'but I know why he did. Suppose

  he'd pulled out all the stops, and we'd bailed Anders, pro tern. The rest of

  the gang must be feeling pretty insecure right now. The boy's probably

  safer in the jail; that's what his lawyer's thinking.'

  'Maybe,' McGurk agreed. He was staring at the window, absently.

  'What's up?' asked Pringle. He reached into a compartment of his desk

  and produced a bottle of whisky and two glasses. 'Come on. Let's have a

  nip to celebrate.' He poured two small measures, and handed one to the

  sergeant.

  'You still worrying about your wife?' he asked.

  'Yes. But that wasn't what I was thinking about.'

  'Oh aye?'

  'Yeah. I didn't mention this before the interview, not just because it

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  would have muddied the water, but because I wanted to be certain. Now I

  am.

  'That boy Anders ... I've seen him before.'

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  62

  'He's dead sure of that?' the Head of CID asked.

  'He says he's "Under oath" sure, and big Jack's not a fanciful lad. He

  says that on the afternoon after the Howdengate robbery he went to Raeburn

  Place on a whim, to watch Lander and Symonds play for Jed Seconds ...'

  'Yes, I know; Karen and I met him in the bar afterwards.'

  'Well,' Dan Pringle continued, 'when he was walking across to the

  pavilion after the game, he saw someone go up to Lander and speak to him.

  Lander answered him, then he saw Jack, broke off his conversation with

  the other guy straight away and came across to talk to him.

  'That other bloke was Raymond Anders.'

  'Hmm,' Andy Martin murmured. 'That's interesting, I'll grant you. I'm

  not sure what it tells us, if anything, but it's interesting. Why should Anders

  show up at Raeburn Place? Guys from Ha wick are not likely to go up to

  Edinburgh to watch Jedforest seconds. That's like a parish priest having a

  season ticket at Ibrox.'

  'Whatever the reason is, it wants checking into.'

  'What was Lander doing on the night of the robbery?'