Neill sighed. ‘Yes. And David Blue looked as if he wanted to kill me. He thought it was my fault. According to him I should have warned her about the jellyfish even though they arrived in the night and she went for a swim at dawn before I even knew they were there. Then he thought I should have had all the paraphernalia of stuff on hand to deal with the anaphylaxis.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Gilchrist murmured.
‘As I said, nobody did in those days except in hospitals.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘So you’re saying all these deaths could be David Blue’s doing,’ Heap said. ‘Out for revenge for something that happened six years ago.’
‘I’m just filling you in on a background that may be significant because it links all the people who have been killed.’
‘Why did he wait so long?’ Gilchrist said.
Neill shrugged. ‘That’s for you to find out, isn’t it?’
‘Who else was on that trip?’ Watts asked. ‘You said friends of friends came and went.’
Neill rubbed his eye for a moment. ‘I don’t really remember. Somebody called Genevra? She only stayed a couple of days. We met her in the other tavern. She did a moonlight flit with her boyfriend. I don’t remember his name. I remember he was stuck up. We took the piss out of him a lot.’
‘But you’ll have records?’ Watts said.
‘Not from that trip – that was a kind of test run.’
‘When was the last time you saw David Blue?’ Heap said.
‘Lesley’s funeral. But he didn’t let it go. He tried to sue me for negligence but everyone had signed waivers and what happened to Lesley was kind of an act of God.’ He looked away. ‘Which doesn’t mean I don’t blame myself.’
EIGHTEEN
‘We might have been focusing too much on the Bromley family squabbles as motive,’ Gilchrist said to Heap when they were back in the car.
Heap nodded. ‘It does seem to be shifting to this stuff in Crete. Are we assuming Derek Neill beat up Bernard Bromley?’
Gilchrist didn’t speak for a moment. ‘I think we are – because he found out that Bernard raped his half-sister? But I think that is off at a tangent now too.’
Heap nodded again. ‘I agree, ma’am. What do you think about this David Blue and his blaming Neill for the death of his girlfriend? Is that enough to go on a killing spree? And, if so, why now? What took him so long?’
‘Living abroad?’ Gilchrist said. ‘In prison? In a mental institution?’
Back at the station Heap had the answer within ten minutes, courtesy of the research he could do so adroitly on his laptop.
‘Prison. Released two months ago.’
‘Around the time the threats to Neill started,’ Gilchrist said. ‘What was he in for?’
‘Manslaughter. Hit-and-run, though he handed himself in twenty-four hours later. May have been drunk though no way of being certain by then.’
‘Who did he kill?’
‘Woman in her fifties. On a zebra crossing.’
Gilchrist nodded. ‘Sounds like this was just after Lesley died. If Neill was accurate about David Blue’s feelings, then Blue would have been in a pretty bad way. Do we know where he is?’
‘Edinburgh,’ Heap said. ‘Morningside.’
‘That’s a posh bit, isn’t it?’
‘It used to be. Not sure about these days.’
‘Are we going to see him?’
‘I’ve spoken to Police Scotland,’ Heap said.
‘It’s easier than it would have been if Scotland had voted for independence, but we still need to be politeness personified up there. They can be a prickly lot.’
Heap nodded.
‘Is Blue working?’ Gilchrist said.
‘That I don’t know.’
They flew from Gatwick and were descending pretty much the minute they ascended. Gilchrist was half expecting there to be an official car waiting but there was no apparent sign. They had a choice of tram, bus or taxi at Edinburgh airport. They opted for the taxi.
‘Nobody with any sense takes the tram,’ the driver, a chunky man in a thick jumper said in a soft burr of an accent. ‘It’s more expensive and slower than the bus.’
‘It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?’ Heap said.
‘Too long – it’s a national disgrace.’
‘Has it affected your business?’ Heap said.
‘Not one iota,’ the cabbie said as he pulled up on a side road in Morningside. ‘Simple reason: they don’t go anywhere anybody wants to go. Or if they do, people can get there cheaper and more efficiently by other means.’
All Gilchrist knew about Morningside was that Miss Jean Brodie lived there in the novel she’d studied at GCSE. It was a pleasant enough part of the city and Blue lived on an attractive terrace.
There was a policeman at the front door.
‘DI Gilchrist and DS Bellamy, I take it?’ he said affably. ‘Constable Jardine. The chief suggested we ensure Mr Blue was home for you.’
‘He’s inside?’
Jardine, a slender man with a crinkly grin, said: ‘We haven’t chained him up or anything, but he is expecting you.’ He turned and rapped on the door. ‘Mr Blue? Your visitors.’
Blue came to the door, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Music blared and a phone was ringing.
‘Mr Blue?’ Gilchrist said. ‘A word if you would.’
Blue closed the door behind them and started to shoot a bolt.
‘Don’t do that, please, sir.’
There were four heavy locks on the door. He saw them looking. ‘I was burgled and I hate the neighbours. They spy on me with binoculars and they burgle me.’
‘I think you’re quite safe for the moment, sir,’ Heap said.
Blue led them up a narrow flight of stairs made narrower by piles of yellowing newspapers and magazines down one side. He led the way into a cramped, crowded room and leaned down to turn the volume of the music down. Gilchrist and Heap exchanged glances. He had no paunch.
The curtains were closed but a bare light bulb provided garish illumination.
‘I don’t like net curtains so I keep the curtains closed all the time.’
There were no ornaments in the clutter; nothing on the walls except photos of celebrities torn out of magazines.
‘Monica, can you get the phone,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll get back to them later.’ He turned to Gilchrist and Heap. ‘Monica is lying down in the bedroom in the dark. She has a bad back.’
Gilchrist didn’t know who Monica was or why a bad back would require dark, but simply waited for the phone to stop ringing, which it eventually did.
She looked round the room. It was chaos. Piles everywhere. A couple of dozen boxes were stacked in tottering towers. A huge photocopier stood in front of the window, which was curtained off.
Blue saw her look.
‘Sorry for the state. I hate this place. Haven’t had time to make it my own since I got out.’ He indicated the sofa. ‘My dad gave me that sofa. Please, sit.’
Heap was looking at a three-foot-high pile of copies of a tabloid. Blue saw his look.
‘I get a bit compulsive about buying magazines and newspapers,’ he said sheepishly.
‘Do you read them?’ Heap said.
Blue thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. ‘I flick through.’ He looked pained. ‘I must get into reading.’
‘Since you got out,’ Gilchrist said. ‘When was that?’
‘Couple of months ago,’ Blue said.
‘Have you been in touch with Derek Neill since you got out?’
‘That killer? I never want to be in touch with him ever again.’
‘What about Roland Gulliver or Christine Bromley or Philip Coates?’
‘Just names to me, man.’
‘Do you use recreational drugs, Mr Blue?’ Heap said.
‘I’m going to tell a policeman the answer to that?’
‘You’d be wise to,’ Gilchrist said.
&n
bsp; ‘A little dope every now and then but who doesn’t?’
‘Ketamine?’
‘Don’t know what that is, so I’m going to say no.’
‘Have you been to Brighton lately?’
‘Couple of months ago. Is this about Lesley’s grave?’
‘What about it?’
‘That inscription – the Gatsby quote.’
‘You arranged for that to be inscribed?’
‘No, but I wish I’d thought of it. I assumed it was Neill out of guilt. I see it as a permanent reminder to him of how he killed the woman I loved.’
‘It was surely an accident?’
‘Neill was responsible. He’d been shagging her the night before.’
Gilchrist waited a moment as she digested that. ‘That may well be so,’ she said cautiously. ‘But how does that make him responsible?’
Blue looked at his clasped hands. ‘That night, I’d gone to the telephone box by the other taverna. Warm night. Still. Wood smoke just hanging in the air. Like fog. When I came back I saw her with a man standing outside a blue door. Lesley held the man’s hand.’ Blue sniffed. ‘My stomach churned. The man opened the door and moved aside to let her pass. She had a little smile at the corners of her mouth.’
‘This was Neill?’ Gilchrist said.
‘I couldn’t see his face but he looked about the same size.’
‘You could see a little smile at the corners of her mouth but not this man’s face?’ Heap said.
Blue’s knuckles were white. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to see his face. When they went in I moved across to the window but they closed the shutters just as I got there. I peered through the gap between the shutters. I could see a small sliver of the room.
‘The man excused himself and went into the bathroom. I saw my wife take off her cardigan and shoes. She had on a blouse, a red skirt. She wasn’t wearing her bra. She crossed her arms over her breasts and waited until the man came back into the room. He put his nose near her hair and inhaled. She walked over to the bed, sat on its edge, looked up at him. He went and sat next to her. She leaned in and whispered in his ear. He moved his head to kiss her on her mouth and she put her arms round him and drew him back onto the bed.’
‘Mr Blue, I’m not sure we need to hear all this,’ Gilchrist said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps you can move on to what happened next.’
‘What do you think bloody happened?’
‘I mean over the next few hours.’
He grimaced. ‘All I know is that’s why I hit her. And that’s why we slept apart that night and that’s why I didn’t know she’d gone out early in the morning.’
Gilchrist and Heap glanced at each other.
‘You hit her,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Boyfriend and girlfriend stuff. Just a cuff. She’d just been screwing someone else for Christ’s sake.’
‘And that man was Derek Neill?’
‘I assumed so.’
‘Did you actually see his face?’
‘Not really but it had to be him.’
‘Did she come straight back to your room after that someone else?’ Gilchrist said.
‘I don’t know. I went off for a wander. When I came back to our room she was sitting on the rug by the fire. Staring into it, her wet hair clinging to her shoulders. “I saw you with him,” I said. She must not have heard me come in because she started. She looked up but not at me. Somewhere to the side of me. Her voice was low and toneless and at first I didn’t realize she was speaking as her lips didn’t seem to move. “I’m wondering why I don’t want you like I used to. And wishing I did.” I started to touch her cheek but she flinched. I started to cry. Not noisily but my face contorted and I felt the tears gush. She still wasn’t looking at me but she must have realized because she looked back at the fire, chewing her lip. “Don’t you think you’ve overplayed that one a bit lately,” she said harshly.
‘I was disconnected from the open hand that hit her across the face. Disconnected from the person who started to punch her, raining blows on her as she cowered then crumpled. I could hear someone bellowing incoherently but didn’t realize until afterwards that the voice was mine.’
Blue looked off to one side then directly at Gilchrist.
‘It took three of them to get me off her,’ he said.
‘Who were the three?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘How was Lesley?’
‘Not as bad as she should have been. Although I was punching her and I pulled half her hair out trying to drag her across the floor. I didn’t know how to punch so I’d mostly been hitting bone. I broke two knuckles on the back of her head and my big toe from kicking her barefoot.’
Blue rubbed his chin. Gilchrist couldn’t help but look at the two knuckles that were misaligned.
‘And that was your last night together,’ Gilchrist said.
‘The last time I saw her until I saw her dead.’
‘Where did she stay that night? With Neill?’
‘I have no idea. Somebody stayed with me but I have no idea who that was either. I wasn’t in very good shape.’
Gilchrist and Heap exchanged a look.
‘Did you decide to take revenge on everyone involved with that trip?’ Heap said.
‘What do you mean?’ Blue looked puzzled.
‘Roland Gulliver, Philip Coates, Rasa Lewis and Christine Bromley are all dead.’
‘Who?’
‘Other people on that trip,’ Heap said quietly.
‘Don’t recall the other people. But you mentioned revenge. Early on I was all about revenge, especially when I couldn’t get anywhere suing Neill. Not that it was about the money – it was about making him accountable. That period is a bit of a blur for me.’ He gestured to the bedroom next door. ‘If Monica hadn’t come along I don’t know what I’d be like …’
‘May we have a word with Monica?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Why?’ Blue said, something shifting in his expression.
‘See if she can shed any light on what’s been going on.’
‘She can’t,’ Blue said flatly. ‘She doesn’t know any of these people.’
‘Maybe she took a call when you weren’t around.’
‘I’m always around,’ Blue said shortly. He had a smile on his face but it was as if he was struggling to keep it there, as if it was going to slide away at any moment. His eyes were burning.
‘Perhaps if she could confirm that?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Well, as I said, she’s resting right now …’
‘You were saying about wanting revenge,’ Heap said.
‘Yes, but not killing-people kind of revenge. I’m just an ordinary Joe.’
‘Who beats up women,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Have you and Derek Neill been in contact after you added the inscription to headstone?’
‘I told you that I never added that inscription. I wish I had. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him and he certainly has no idea where I am.’
‘And you maintain you have never been to Brighton or Coniston in the past two months?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Coniston?’
‘You have?’
‘No, of course not. Why would I go to Coniston, nice as I’m sure it is? If I wanted to see a lake, you may have heard there’s the odd loch here in Scotland.’
‘And you have someone to confirm your whereabouts on certain specific days,’ Heap said. ‘Monica perhaps?’
Heap took a step towards a closed door.
‘There’s nothing in there,’ Blue said quickly.
‘Not Monica?’
‘She’s in the bedroom, lying down. That’s just a cupboard.’
‘May I see?’ Heap said.
‘It’s locked and I don’t have the key. I guess the landlord keeps some stuff in there.’
Gilchrist watched him. Heap stepped forward and held out a card.
‘Get her to call me when she’s up and about. It will only take a couple of minutes.’
Blue looked blankly at Heap for a moment then took the card and nodded.
‘Absolutely, sir. Later today, I expect.’ He tucked the card carefully into his shirt pocket then looked from Heap to Gilchrist. That odd fire had gone out of his eyes. ‘Is there anything else? Only I have a lot to do.’
Heap glanced at Gilchrist.
‘That’s all for now, thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘Once we’ve done a DNA swab.’
‘What do you think, Bellamy?’ Gilchrist said as Jardine drove them back out to the airport.
‘I think we’re still not much nearer finding our killer or killers.’
‘But at least we’re whittling down our suspects.’
‘Blue not your man, then, ma’am?’ Jardine called from the front seat.
‘Unlikely,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Though you might want to get someone around to check on his girlfriend, Monica. She might be suffering a bit of domestic.’
‘Despite the clichés about the Scots, you might be pleasantly surprised to know we’re hot on that stuff these days. The days of our Greatest Living Tax Exile, Big Tam, saying that sometimes women need a slap are long gone.’ Jardine made the call.
‘Glad to hear it. Whatever happened to him?’
‘Retired, ma’am,’ Jardine said. ‘As did Gene Hackman.’
‘Is that so,’ Gilchrist said.
‘I was thinking about Big Tam the other day when the wife and I watched on some cable channel a remake of the Murder on the Orient Express. That Kenneth Branagh with a ridiculous moustache. Big Tam was in the first, of course.’ Jardine chuckled. ‘Always thought it was a bit of a cheat, that story – Agatha Christie having everyone committing the crime. Usually, with books like hers, you expect the guilty person to be the least likely person.’
Gilchrist nodded and the rest of the journey went off mostly in silence and general chit-chat. Jardine dropped them off and as they watched the car pull away Gilchrist and Heap, simultaneously thinking of least likely suspects, said: ‘Tamsin Stanhope.’
Tamsin Stanhope was looking haggard when Heap and Gilchrist arrived.
‘I’ve not been sleeping,’ she said. ‘It’s getting worse rather than better.’
‘There is a lot going on,’ Gilchrist agreed. Heap had been to the local coffee shop and bought three take-outs. He handed one to Stanhope and put milk and sugar on the table.
Swimming with the Dead Page 20
