Dead Cold Mystery Box Set 3

by Blake Banner

  SIX

  We didn’t have duck or pheasant because they were not in season and it just didn’t feel right, so we had steak and kidney pie instead. It was home made and superb. So while Dehan continued with her Oscar winning performance as a vivacious, lovable bad girl from the Bronx, soul sister to her Orkney Isles counterpart, I concentrated on my luncheon and listened. It started with an innocent question. Dehan speared a roast potato, paused and shook her head.

  “I love this place, Pam. When you work cold cases, homicides in the Bronx, this is like paradise. But I have to ask you, don’t you get bored? I mean, too much paradise is like too much of anything. There are only so many times you can go and marvel at the standing stones.”

  Pam heaved a huge sigh. “You have no idea.” She turned and gazed out the window, ignoring the food in front of her. When she next spoke, her accent had slipped slightly and there was more than a hint of her brogue trying to get through.

  “Can I be really honest with you? I know this is kind of crazy, and maybe it’s because I’ve had a couple of G&Ts already, but I feel you’ll understand.”

  Dehan reached across the table again and covered her hand. “Hey, Pam, a couple of weeks and we’ll be gone. What you tell us, stays right here, with us.”

  It didn’t make a lot of sense, but it sounded good and it was what Pam wanted to hear. She squeezed Dehan’s hand and let the gin do the talking.

  “When I met Charles—I mean, I wouldn’t say a word against him, he’s my husband—but when I met him it was totally different. We were just having a laugh, you know? He’d come over from America for a holiday, and straight away he’d come to the pub, sometimes he’d even have his luggage with him, you know? Like, it was on his way to the house, he had to pass by, so he’d stop. And before you knew it, we was gassing and hooting and he was a right laugh, so he was.”

  She paused, looking at Dehan, studying her face. When she spoke again, her expression was almost apologetic.

  “I didn’t talk like this back then. I had the local accent. He didn’t care. He liked it. He said it was sexy. It was funny.” She glanced at me, then back at Dehan. “Happy days. But be careful what you wish for, right?”

  She paused again. I ate and waited.

  Dehan said, “What did you wish for?”

  She sighed. “The stupid thing is, I wasn’t in love with him. He was a gas. He was real good fun. But I would not have dreamt in a million years of marrying him.” She sat up, wide-eyed, and spread her hands. “But then the daft git went and proposed! He was a fucking millionaire, for fuck’s sake! A multi-multi-multi millionaire! And I didn’t even own the house I was living in! What was I supposed to do?”

  She slumped back in her chair. “At first I was going to tell him no. It was crazy. It was too much. I was actually scared of what would happen, of how much things would change. But my dad got really angry with me, and some of my friends. They were all thinking, you know, how it would benefit them. And in the end I was weak and I kidded myself it was a dream come true. When really what it was, was the beginning of a fucking nightmare.”

  Dehan took a long pull on her beer and smacked her lips. “How come? I mean, I get he’s a bit eccentric.” She grinned. “Maybe a bit of a drama queen. But a nightmare? You’re rich, you can do whatever you like, can’t you?”

  She shook her head. “The first thing he had me do, as soon as we were married, was change everything about myself: the way I dressed, the way I talked, the way I behaved, all my friends, I had to stop seeing my family so often. In exchange, they were shipped off to the mainland and put up in a big house with a monthly allowance, but I got to see them only once a year, in the week before Christmas. He completely isolated me and he completely erased the woman he said he had fallen in love with, to replace her with…” She gestured at herself. “This!” She shrugged. “Now, how does that make any sense? Why? Why did he marry me in the first place, if he wanted a different woman?”

  Dehan shook her head. “People can be weird like that. Was it a power thing? Was he proving that he owned you?”

  I couldn’t stop myself. I said, “Was he punishing his father?”

  She sighed and shrugged. “Probably all of the above. I wasn’t a Gordon. We were originally from the mainland. My mum and dad came over when I was a wee baby, to run the pub. So as far as Old Man Gordon was concerned, I didn’t even exist. Well, he may as well have been right, because his son set about systematically erasing me.”

  Dehan grunted. “That sucks, Pam. I can see why you’re mad at him.”

  Pam snorted. “That was just the start of it. We got married just a week after his father died. It was like he couldn’t wait. He went kind of crazy. And where before he was wild, after his father was killed he became kind of eccentric, you know? He became arrogant and all kind of superior, where he had never been like that before. It was as though, now that his dad was dead, he had to take over from him. He insisted I had to be the ‘Laird’s wife’ and behave and speak appropriately. He even kind of anglicized his own accent.” She paused, staring at the tabletop, ignoring her untouched food in front of her. “But the worst thing of all, after I had done all that, after all the sacrifices I had made for him, the worst thing was when he started having his affairs.”

  Dehan froze, like she hadn’t known all along. “Oh,” she said, and then, “Bee?”

  Pam nodded. “Among many others. But Bee was special. It’s complicated.” She sighed, rubbed her eyes and suddenly the not-quite-perfect cut glass accent was back. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. I am intruding on your honeymoon and it’s unforgivable of me.”

  “Hey, come on. You think I didn’t notice?” Dehan leaned her elbows on the table and looked her in the eye. “Us girls have to look out for each other.” She glanced at me and grinned. “No offence, Stone, man. But you understand, right?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her that said she was overdoing the act. “Hey, I’m just sittin’ here groovin’ with my pie, sista.”

  She told me with a wink that she didn’t give a damn, she was having fun. I kept on eating and she turned back to Pam. “It was pretty damn clear last night that CG Sr. was being a pain in the ass, and you’d had enough.”

  Pam nodded. There was something tragic about the way she did it. “Sally is his latest. Women seem to find him fascinating for some reason. It must be the combination of his wealth, his power and his total lack of inhibitions.” She sighed, picked up her fork and prodded her food. “He was engaged to Bee’s sister, you know. She died a few months after he broke it off with her. Most of her friends and family suspected suicide, but nothing was ever proved. You’d think Bee would hate him, wouldn’t you? But instead she stepped right into her sister’s shoes and became his long-term lover.”

  Her eyes drifted toward the window and for a moment she looked as though she was going to make a move to leave again. Dehan preempted her.

  “So what was the old man like? You must have known him quite well. Did you get on?”

  She kept looking at the window, but she smiled. “Oddly enough, we did got on. He was all right.” She blinked and turned to look at Dehan. “He was what he was. D’you know what I mean? He didn’t pretend to be anything but the arrogant, ruthless, obsessed bastard that he was.”

  “So you did know him well?”

  “Oh, aye.” Her accent was slipping again. “He used to come to the inn, often on a Sunday for a Sunday roast. Part of his act as the Laird, you know, mixing with the riff-raff, staying connected with ‘his subjects’. I used to tease him. I was a shameless flirt back then. I’d make him laugh and more than once he bought me a drink. Aye, we got on OK.

  “When his son proposed to me, he came out straight and told me. You’re not right for him, and he’ll not make you happy. And he was right, God bless him. I wish I’d listened.”

  I said, “Did you resent him for saying that?”

  She shook her head. Then she hesitated and made a face. “Not at first.
I agreed. But then, as everybody started pressuring me, and forcing me to change my mind, then I did, a bit.”

  Dehan pointed to her glass. “One for the road?”

  “Ah, go on then. It’s good to get all this crap off my chest, I can tell you. I’ve never spoken to anyone about it. You should be a fucking psychologist. I tell you, you have a gift.” She smiled at me. “Hasn’t she?”

  “She has that, Pam. No question.”

  Dehan smiled. “So, come on, level with me. Your husband is convinced that his father was murdered. You hinted at that last night. So what do you really think?”

  She shook her head. “Nah, that’s nonsense. I was just winding him up. It is so typical of him, shifting the blame. He killed his father, with his arrogance, with his ruthlessness. The old man had a dream, let him have his dream! We could have been lovers. He was not in love with me, and I was not in love with him. We could have just had the occasional shag and let it run its course. He could have married Bee’s sister, or some rich Gordon from Scotland or America, who would have suited him better. But he had to stick it to his dad, hurt him, humiliate him. And also, he wanted a woman he could control and shape and possess!” She shook her head. “No, he killed his dad the same way he killed Margaret. He broke their hearts, but rather than admit it and take responsibility for what he’s done, he says it was murder. Who? Who would murder the old man? And what for?”

  I had finished the pie. I laid down my knife and fork and drained my pint of bitter, then suggested, “A jilted lover?”

  She looked surprised. Len appeared smiling at Dehan’s side.

  “Everything OK? Are we happy?”

  I made a face of contentment. “I’m happy, Len, but you know what would make me delirious? Some Stilton cheese and the best local single malt you have.”

  He made a face that was conspiratorial. “Ooh,” he said. “We have some fine whuskeys in the Orkneys. No doot aboot that. I’ve a ten year old Highland Park there that’ll have yiz singin’ your heart oot afore the afternoon’s done. Ut’s the northernmost distillery in the world, so it is, and one of the oldest and the finest. Started as an illegal still in Orkney by one Magnus Eunson in 1790. A priest by day and a smuggler by night, God bless his heart.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Who do I have to kill to get some?”

  He laughed. “Nerry a soul. I’ll bring yiz a dram right away.”

  Dehan raised a hand. “Make it two.” She pointed at Pam, who shook her head and Len went away with our plates. I was wondering how I could subtly reintroduce the question without sounding as though I was prying, but Pam didn’t need reminding.

  “He wasn’t like his son in that way. He had a lover, but he didn’t cheat, he was in love with his castle, his family, his fantasy.”

  Len returned with a slab of Stilton, a bottle of Highland Park single malt and two shot glasses. He winked at me. “I’ll leave yiz the bottle, save mah legs havin’ ta keep runnin’ back an’ forth!”

  He left again and Dehan poured while I helped myself to some cheese. While I cut, I asked Pam, “Who was his lover? Was she a Gordon too?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’ think so...”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “And you? Are you from one of the clans?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I mean, you’d think he’d have been concerned about interbreeding. I mean, I know clan is not the same as family. It’s not exactly genetic, but even so, it’s got to be healthy to mix, at least with other clans, don’t you think?”

  She had been sipping steadily at her G&T on an empty stomach, and suddenly she looked as though gin might be mixing with all the emotions Dehan was stirring up, and going to her head. But something in what she’d said made me curious.

  I frowned. “Did he have plans to marry again?”

  She stood suddenly. “I don’t know. Look, I had better go. I think I need to lie down.” She smiled at Dehan and gripped her arm. “Thank you. See you at dinner.” And she walked out on unsteady legs. Dehan got up and moved around to sit facing me in the chair Pam had just vacated. She was quiet for a moment, looking out the window. I saw her narrow her eyes, I heard a car start up and move away up the hill, and then Dehan looked at me and made a face.

  “You touched a nerve, partner.”

  I nodded. “This is damn fine whiskey and damn fine cheese.”

  She nodded. “Agreed.” She cut a slice and sat eating it. Then she drained her glass. “Man, that is good.” She refilled us both and pointed at me. “You have a theory, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I have a theory that we are on our honeymoon and outside our jurisdiction.”

  She started a little singsong, like a school kid, with a silly grin on her face, holding her glass. “You have a theory, you have a theory.”

  “Shut up, Dehan.”

  “Not till you tell me your theory.”

  I drained my shot and cut more cheese while she refilled it. Finally I smiled.

  “Fine, but it is only preliminary, OK?”

  “Cool…”

  I took a deep breath.

  SEVEN

  An hour later I asked Len to get us a cab to take us up to the castle and he told us Bobby had a car he sometimes used as an unofficial taxi service, there being no actual taxis on the island. We paid up, he went to make a call and we went to wait outside. There was a wooden bench beside a couple of troughs brimming over with flowers and we sat there, feeling sleepy in the afternoon sun. It was probably only in the high sixties or low seventies, but the humidity was high and it made the afternoon sultry and sleepy. Dehan rested her head on my shoulder and as I yawned, I noticed two people outside the post office.

  It was Dr. Cameron and his wife, Sally, standing beside a new Volvo having what was turning from a heated conversation in harsh whispers to an out and out row. Suddenly she turned away from him, moved to the back of her car and opened the trunk, obscuring him from my view. Then she marched into the grocery store beside the post office and I heard him shout, “Don’t you walk away from me when I’m talking to you!”

  He came into view moving toward the door just as Sally emerged again, carrying two boxes, one on top of another, loaded with groceries. He spoke to her savagely, but too quiet to hear what he was saying. She ignored him and put the stuff in the trunk, then turned and went back into the shop. He went after her and I wondered whether I should go over and make sure she was OK. But a few seconds later, she reemerged carrying four plastic bags filled with more groceries, and him still trailing behind her, still speaking savagely, but now stabbing the air with his finger for emphasis, even though she couldn’t see him.

  She dumped the stuff in the trunk and closed it, then turned to face him. She cut him dead and spoke loud enough for me to hear.

  “Leave me alone, Ian! Maybe ten, maybe eleven, maybe tomorrow. The answer is, I don’t know! Do you understand that? Can you understand that? I-don’t-know! Now leave me alone!”

  She walked around the car to the driver’s side and opened the door. He went after her at a run, pulling at her shoulder, speaking louder now, “Ye can’t do this! It’s wrong, fer God’s sake! Sally!”

  She spun and her face was flushed. She half yelled at him, “Leave me alone, Ian! Or so help me God, I’ll…”

  She didn’t finish telling him what she’d do. She climbed in the car and drove away at speed, toward the castle. He shouted after her, but she couldn’t have heard him. After that, he turned and stormed into the post office, slamming the door behind him.

  A moment later an old Ford Mondeo rolled up and a man in his fifties with a face like a granite cliff and eyes like a couple of icebergs climbed out and looked at me. “Yous the Americans gone up’t Castle?”

  I said, “Yup,” and gave Dehan a shake.

  She sat up yawning and we climbed in the back, where she crawled under my arm and said, “Wake me when we get there.”

  I saw h
im glance in the mirror as he slammed the door.

  “I’ll no take ye past the gate.”

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  He pulled away and we moved at a sedate twenty miles an hour up through the woods. I saw his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Tha’ there castle, friend? By rights tha’ should be mine. But tha’ bastard—excuse mah language in front o’ yer missus—tha’ bastard Gordon stole it from uz.”

  I was surprised. “Charles Gordon stole that castle from you?”

  “Ay, tha’ he dud.”

  “I thought his father bought it.”

  He nodded, still watching me in the glass as we moved slowly through the tunnel of whispering pines. “Aye, he dud. But while his son were away in America, I…” He tapped his chest with his finger. “I was here, helpin’ the old man fix the place. An’ he says ta’ me, ‘Bobby, yer moore like a bairn to me than my own boy,’ so he did. I were wi’ him every day, workin’ talkin’ plannin’, dreaming! He were an American, but his blood was Scottish, more’n many I ken. An’ he promised me tha’ castle. He said, ‘Bobby, when I die, thus castle is fer thee. Fer thee’s more mah bairn than mah own kith and blood.’ God is mah witness. So I’ll no go into those grounds until ut’s to claim it as mah own, see?”

  I made a face and nodded. “I understand, the gate will be fine.” I thought for a moment and then said, “So you must be Robert Armstrong.”

  “Aye.”

  “I believe the old man had a great deal of affection for you and your family. You are related to the Gordon clan, is that right?”

  “Aye, tha’s correct. On mah mother’s side. Mah father, God rest his soul, was an Armstrong, James Armstrong. A good man till he died. An’ after he died, we had a fierce struggle t’ survive…” He nodded toward the castle that had just come into view across the flat expanse of grassland. “Until Old Man Gordon come along, an’ promised to take care of uz. Then we had hope, so we did, fer a while. Till his bastard son come back from America.”