Shelley Crichton’s house was a little way out of the village to the north, an attractive white cottage in a well-kept garden with a view out over Loch Ryan. In the chilly sunshine it looked positively idyllic.
The woman who opened the door to DI Fleming and DS MacNee didn’t look in any mood to enjoy it. She was quite tall and solidly built, with frizzy grey hair and strongly marked brows; the jersey two-piece she was wearing was an unflattering shade of green. She looked heavy-eyed, as if she had slept badly.
With the memories this crime must have rekindled, Fleming had been braced for dealing with another weeping woman, but there was no sign of tears and she greeted them sullenly.
‘Yes, I heard you were going round the doors. I suppose you’d better come in, then.’
Fleming raised her eyebrows and MacNee pulled a face behind her back as they were taken through the lounge to a large conservatory on the other side. The air was heavy with the smell of damp earth and vegetation and it was teeming with plants, small shrubs and bushes with fleshy leaves and exotic blooms. With the sun streaming into the overheated room it felt positively tropical and when Fleming took her seat on one of the wicker peacock chairs a nearby plant with waxy white flowers gave out a scent that made her feel slightly sick.
Shelley went on the attack instantly. ‘I suppose you’ve got me on the suspect list because of where Anita Loudon’s body was found. Oh yes, I know all about it. Janette Ritchie phoned me first thing, and I’ve had ten other phone calls since.’
Right on cue, a phone rang somewhere in the house. ‘Ignore it,’ she said crisply. ‘Shall I tell you why they all phoned? Oh, they said they were concerned about me – “Such a horrible thing to happen, poor Shelley, you must be feeling dreadful – oh, and by the way, did you beat her head in?” Not in so many words, of course, but that was the message.’
‘And did you?’ Fleming was unmoved by the display of passionate indignation.
Shelley gasped. Her eyes, slightly prominent anyway, positively bulged with temper and she snapped, ‘No, of course I didn’t. Satisfied?’
‘Not entirely,’ Fleming said. Perhaps it was the nauseating perfume that was making her tetchy; she had come prepared to take it gently but Shelley Crichton was no distressed old lady.
‘Let me explain,’ she went on. ‘We are at the very beginning of our enquiries. At the moment, we’re trying to establish the relationships and recent contact people had with the victim rather than setting up any list of suspects.
‘So perhaps we could start again. Was Anita Loudon a friend of yours?’
Pause for calculation, Fleming thought cynically as Shelley hesitated.
‘Well, in a way,’ she said at last. ‘I knew who she was, of course. If I saw her in the street I would say hello but I’ve had very little to do with her, really.’
‘And of course she was a pal of Kirstie Burnside’s as well, wasn’t she?’ MacNee put in. ‘Hard to forget that, eh?’
‘It was a long time ago. She was just a child.’ Shelley’s face was impassive but Fleming noticed that her hands were so tightly clasped together that the knuckles were showing white.
‘When was the last time you saw her, Mrs Crichton?’
‘Oh, I forget. A little while ago, I think.’
‘Last Tuesday, maybe?’ MacNee suggested innocently. ‘When you and Janette and some pals went round there to challenge her about someone you thought was Kirstie Burnside’s daughter?’
‘Oh, that’s right. Of course,’ she said, though the set of her mouth suggested that Janette’s friend status was likely to be reviewed. ‘I’d forgotten that was when it was. It was all a mistake, anyway. It was just a girl with similar colouring who’d been doing a survey. I felt a bit of a fool, actually.’ She gave a little, artificial laugh.
‘So you haven’t had any contact with her since?’
Shelley shrugged. ‘Why would I?’
‘You tell me, Mrs Crichton,’ MacNee said and was rewarded with a glare.
‘There’s no reason why I would. That’s what I meant.’
‘Aye, but did you?’
‘No – I – did – not! Right – is that all?’ She got up.
‘Very nearly, for the moment anyway,’ Fleming said, without moving. ‘Can you tell me what your movements were last night?’
Under the inspector’s scrutiny, Shelley’s gaze slid off to the left. ‘I didn’t have any “movements”, as you call it. I was at home all day, I had supper, I watched television and I went to bed. Just a typical sort of day for an elderly divorcee who lost her only child.’ She gave an acid smile. ‘So there’s no one can confirm it but that doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.’ She was standing with her arms folded, waiting for them to leave.
‘Of course not.’ Fleming, with a glance at MacNee, stood up. ‘I think that’s all for the moment. Thank you for your cooperation, madam.’
As she passed Shelley, she knocked a gardening magazine off a small table with uncharacteristic clumsiness. ‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ she exclaimed, stooping down to pick it up and handing it back to its owner.
Shelley took it without thanks, walking behind them as they made their way out, like a sheepdog determined to make sure there were no stragglers.
Just at the front door Fleming turned back. ‘Just one more thing. When you went round to Ms Loudon’s house, if you had found that her visitor really was Kirstie Burnside’s daughter, what would you have done?’
It was a standard ploy. Shelley, holding the front door ready to shut it behind them, had relaxed her guard.
For a second her light-brown eyes blazed and she stammered, ‘I … don’t—’ Suddenly the magazine she was holding dropped from her hand and when she’d retrieved it and straightened up her expression was bland. ‘Like I said, I don’t know. I would have been wounded to think the daughter of the woman who killed my son had been spying on what is for me a sacred moment. But what could I do? Ask her nicely not to do it again?’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘I’m just a victim. People like you see to it that we have no rights.’ The shutting door almost clipped Fleming’s heels.
‘She’s not wrong there,’ MacNee said gruffly. ‘But anyway, what was all the stooshie with the magazine?’
Fleming smiled. ‘Hers or mine?’
‘Oh, hers was plain enough. What about yours?’
‘It’s nothing like conclusive, of course, but there’s some evidence that lying involves a kind of visualisation that means your eyes move to the left, if you’re right-handed. And hers did when she said she was in all evening, and she is.’
MacNee snorted. ‘Needed evidence, did you? I could have tellt you that.’
The incident room had been opened up and already the boards round the walls were filling up with photos and sketches. The room was crowded; teams were working overtime and uniformed officers and detectives were perching on the edges of tables and bunching at the back behind the two rows of chairs.
Fleming was feeling harassed as she came in. She had impressed on Rowley that she must not hint to the press that there was any sort of connection with the Kirstie Burnside case and the superintendent, whose motto had always been ‘what the press wants, the press gets’, even if it meant dropping her officers right in it, had ended by appearing shifty. The press, needless to say, picked up on it at once and she’d had a bit of a mauling, for which she had naturally blamed Fleming.
‘I dread to think what the media will make of that,’ she said bitterly. ‘You can take the next conference yourself instead of setting me up for a fall.’
When Fleming left the office Rowley was phoning the chief constable, officially to get urgent clarification about the situation but unofficially to make sure that if a head were to roll it wouldn’t be hers. There were no prizes for guessing whose would be bouncing along in the gutter.
Fleming had been braced for ructions when she pointed out that the cover-the-back exercise on illegal immigration would have to be suspended, but they didn’t happen. Rowley had been surprisingly relaxed, saying that the lads at Cairnryan, clearly flavour-of-the-month, were treating it with appropriate seriousness, so she was at least off the hook on that one.
It was the only small consolation. Yet another failed attempt to contact Marnie Bruce had deepened Fleming’s gloom. She’d had to work out, too, what she could and couldn’t say to the assembled officers, while giving them enough information to do their jobs. This was a briefing she was determined would be brief indeed.
She spoke from the notes she had on such information as had come in. Anita Loudon had been battered to death in her own home; the body had then been moved to a play park a few hundred yards away. No weapon had been found. The approximate time of death was now estimated to be between 20.00 and 01.00 hours, with an hour’s leeway on either side. There were no eyewitnesses. There were unsubstantiated accounts of visitors to the house earlier in the evening, but as yet no names or descriptions.
‘Priority on that. We’re looking for confirmation and identities. We want to trace vehicle movements near the play park from 20.00 hours on – no CCTV, unfortunately. We’ll be interviewing a number of known recent contacts – more on that as information comes in.
‘The SOCOs will be finished by tonight so there will be fingertip searches around the crime scenes at first light tomorrow – and not a great forecast either. Sorry, lads, but someone’s got to do it. And if you’ve recently annoyed Sergeant Naismith, you’re probably on the list.
‘Jock, more specific interviews and background searches – have you got the details for CID?’ Sergeant Naismith nodded and she went on, ‘I’ll meet with my team in my office after this – ten minutes. Now, I’ll take questions, but be sure it’s one you need to ask. None of us has time to waste.’
That would, she hoped, discourage fishing expeditions by inquisitive officers. There were too many answers she couldn’t give them at the moment, but choking off questions wouldn’t send the right message.
She had no problem with the first two: Anita Loudon had been small and slight so no exceptional strength would be needed to move the body; she was local to the area, having grown up there and moved back after the death of her parents.
That was fringing on the area she was keen to avoid and in the brief pause that followed Fleming swiftly gathered up her notes and half-turned away.
She turned back, her heart sinking when she saw her questioner. It was Brian Todd, one of the awkward squad, who had a grudge because he’d applied to CID and been turned down. Ever since he’d tried to show them what they were missing.
‘Yes, Brian?’ she said warily.
‘Is it right the body was found exactly where Tommy Crichton’s body was found forty years ago, with similar injuries?’
There was a surprised reaction from a number of officers, but by no means all. So the story was out there already, and if Todd knew so would the press by now – and guess who would be taking the next conference with them howling for raw meat?
‘Yes,’ Fleming said then without elaborating made her exit. The decibel level rose as soon as she was out of the door.
‘Boss! Could I have a word before the meeting?’ Louise Hepburn’s voice spoke behind her.
Oh, she could really do without that! Fleming turned, managing to smile. ‘Oh, Louise. Yes, of course.’
‘I just wanted to say Andy and I know who Marnie Bruce is.’
Fleming looked at her sharply. ‘How did you find out?’
‘We saw the photo of her mother in the reports about Tommy Crichton. She’s the spitting image.’
Simple as that. ‘So who else saw it?’
‘Only us, I think. You’d have to have seen Marnie to know and we’re the only ones who’ve talked to her, except maybe the uniforms that went round to Bridge Street the other night.’
And, of course, Shelley Crichton and Janette Ritchie and any of the other ladies who’d been around with them. It was presumably all over Dunmore and the media would have the full story by tomorrow, if not tonight. She could only hope that by then they’d have got clearance to be more open with the press.
Hepburn went on, ‘I was wondering – does Marnie know about her mother? If she does, it would be quite brave to go back to Dunmore to ask questions.’
‘I think I’d say callous, if she did. But my guess would be that she was never told. It’s going to be quite a thing for her to cope with when it comes out. For that reason alone I’m keen to find her, apart from the investigation altogether.’
‘I don’t believe she killed Anita Loudon.’ Hepburn’s square, stubborn chin was definitely jutting. ‘She walked into a difficult situation, that’s all, and—’
Fleming interrupted her. ‘Louise, I haven’t time for a discussion just at the moment. We have the meeting in ten minutes to explore our ideas. But taking up a position beforehand isn’t constructive and I’ll be looking to you to keep an open mind. Understood?’
‘Yes of course. But—’
‘No buts.’ Fleming took the stairs to her office two at a time, fired by her irritation. Hepburn was often a trial but she’d earned her place on the team in their last big case with her sharp, enquiring mind. Macdonald, for all his competence, lacked the spark that could fire up a new direction in an investigation, and Campbell – well, admittedly if he said something it was usually incisive. If.
It would be good to have him back from leave, though. She could only hope Andy Mac didn’t succumb to a coronary before that.
Marnie had never liked the idea of nightclubs. Loud music always seemed to pump out aggression and a mob of sweating dancers sounded wild and threatening. The time Gary had persuaded her to go with him hadn’t been a success – more a disaster, really. Even though this great barn of a place was empty and silent, the memory surged back.
She is screaming, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!’ She’d been wanting to scream that ever since they came in but now that she’s right at the back of this horrible noisy hell with people pressing up against her she can’t keep it in any more.
Gary’s looking embarrassed and people around her are staring. He’s bellowing, ‘Calm down!’ in her ear but she can’t, she’s hysterical, she doesn’t know what to do and people are nudging and pointing now.
Blindly she starts to push her way through and a man stands deliberately in her way, grinning. ‘In a hurry, sweetheart?’ He makes a grab at her but she pushes past and he dodges in front again.
She knees him in the groin and pushes on without a backward glance and there’s a space opening up in front of her and the bouncer holds the door open for her and she’s outside gasping the fresh cool air.
The air in here wasn’t fresh. It felt stale and sickly as she stood wrestling with the images. There was something creepy about the atmosphere, with no windows and minimal lighting and chipped patches showing white against the matt-black walls. The bench seating was ripped in places with stuffing showing, and the wooden floor was scuffed to bare boards and pitted with the prints of countless stiletto heels. Once the lights and lasers were weaving their hypnotic patterns no one would notice but the sleaziness disgusted her.
Marnie looked round uncertainly. Someone must be here, but there were several doors and she had no idea which one to try. The one she tapped on first led into a storeroom; the second to a small empty office. She was just shutting the door again when she realised that she wasn’t alone.
In the shadows by the bar there was a slight figure in black, a woman wearing a headscarf. She was staring at Marnie with huge dark eyes, as if she was afraid of her. There was a pail and a mop at her feet.
Marnie went over to her and saw her shrink away. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m just here to see Daniel Lee. Where would I find him?’
The girl couldn’t be more than twenty. She dropped her eyes and muttered something, looking helpless.
A language problem. Marnie repeated the question, more slowly, but the only response was a helpless fluttering of hands.
She turned her own hands outward in a questioning gesture. ‘Dan-i-el Lee. Drax?’
It seemed at last that the girl understood. She hesitated, then with a tiny jerk of her head indicated a door at the other end, beside the dais where the DJ’s equipment was, then bit her lip as if she was terrified she had done the wrong thing.
It wasn’t reassuring. If Drax’s cleaner was so scared, did Marnie really want to allow him back into her life? She paused for a long moment, studying the black-painted flat panel door as if it might have the answer.
Last chance, that was what it said to her. This is your last chance to find out if your mother is dead or alive. It’s the only trail you have left to follow. It may not lead anywhere but you’ve gone through so much, got yourself in so deep, that it would be unbearable to leave it unexplored. Last chance. And afterwards you can just walk out, drive away and disappear again.
Marnie took a deep breath and tapped on the door. There was no answer. She tapped again, then opened it. It led to a staircase that spiralled up into darkness at the top. With her heart thumping, she began to climb.
‘The way into my parlour is up a winding stair …’
‘Let’s assume for the moment that Marnie Bruce is genuine in her attempt to find out what happened to her mother,’ Fleming said. ‘Of course it’s possible that she may have returned here with the intention of murdering Loudon to get her inheritance but it would be remarkably naive timing, after setting up a sophisticated cover story.’
‘Could she just have lost her temper?’ Macdonald suggested. ‘Suddenly lashed out for some reason, then found herself with an inconvenient body and parked it to try and shift the blame to someone with an interest in Tommy Crichton’s murder?’
Hepburn gave him a sharp look but it was MacNee who spoke. ‘From what I saw of the corpse—’
‘From a distance,’ Fleming said pointedly.
‘From a few yards away, it didn’t look like someone lashing out. Right, boss?’
In all the pressure of an investigation, you somehow pushed the sickening reality to the back of your mind. It came back vividly now. ‘Yes. This wasn’t someone who lashed out then was appalled at what had happened. It was savage. This was someone who killed in anger, then went on being angry. Shelley Crichton is certainly angry.’
‘Or it could be someone who wanted to suggest that,’ Hepburn put in. ‘Would someone who wanted revenge for Tommy really invite suspicion by putting the body there?’
Fleming nodded. ‘I think we have to consider cold-blooded cynicism. But remember, too, there were people in the village who were angry enough about what happened to form a lynch mob for Marnie, and there is such a thing as vigilante justice, though I have to admit it’s hard to see why this would be aimed at Anita Loudon rather than at Marnie herself.
‘I couldn’t send the lads round the doors to find out who organised all that until there was confirmation that Marnie wasn’t still protected but the super phoned a few minutes ago to say she can be identified, so that can go ahead.’
‘And put out an alert to pick her up, I suppose,’ MacNee said.
Hepburn looked horrified. ‘Are you going to do that right now? Can’t we see if we can get her to answer the phone first?’
‘You’ve been trying all day,’ Macdonald pointed out and got a death stare in response.
Fleming said hastily, ‘I can get someone on to tracing the phone if necessary, though it may depend whether she’s switched it off or just isn’t answering. We’ll give them a chance to do that before we go in with the bells and whistles. A general alert means circulating a photograph and the media won’t be any slower than you two in realising who she is. It’s another reason why I’d like to find her – if she doesn’t know about her mother it wouldn’t be a good way to find out, and if the press get to her first they’ll crucify her.
‘Anyway, we can’t ignore our other lines of enquiry. Grant Crichton – as far as we know, he hasn’t any connection with Anita but as Tommy’s father he has to be considered. You could do that on your own, Andy.’
She ignored his involuntary grin. ‘The other person we need to talk to as a priority is Daniel Lee. We noticed that a photo seemed to be missing from among a group on a table at her house, and now we know he was her lover it’s likely it was one of him and he removed it – that could be significant. I can’t take the time to go up to Glasgow myself, but you could take Louise, Tam.’ She ignored Hepburn’s pleased expression too. ‘How long will it take you to get there?’
‘Couple of hours? Thereabouts.’
‘His business address is a nightclub, Zombies. That’s all we have. Here it is – they dug that out for me.’ She flicked through papers on her desk. ‘Here.
‘Now – anything else? No? That’s fine, then.’
MacNee hung back as the others left. ‘How far back are we going to have to go on this one, Marjory?’
Fleming sighed. ‘Back to Tommy, certainly. But that was all meticulously gone into at the time so there probably aren’t too many surprises.
‘Kirstie Burnside’s disappearance – that’s something else. You and I both know that good old Jakie McNally swept everything under the carpet and then trampled it flat.’
‘We certainly can’t say anything about her. Unless she’s dead.’
‘And we don’t know whether she is or not. Unless Marnie’s managed to find out something.’
‘Something that Anita told her? Say she confessed that she’d killed Kirstie …’
‘Leaving everything to Marnie by way of redress?’ Fleming was struck with the idea. ‘It’s a more possible scenario than anything else we’ve come up with.
‘On the other hand, Shelley Crichton – I wouldn’t put anything past her.’
‘Oh yes,’ MacNee said. ‘The plant I was sitting beside was one of thae kind that eats wee flies and stuff. Not nice.
‘Well, I’m away. Here – I’m glad Andy didn’t have to take Louise with him to Stranraer. We’re not needing another murder to investigate and that would be pushing our luck.’
The upper floor of the building seemed to have been created in the roof space of the old warehouse, a corridor running its length under the steel roof beams with doors on either side, dimly lit so that it vanished into shadows at the end. As Marnie reached the top of the spiral staircase she hesitated, looking about her uncertainly. She thought she could hear faint soft sounds, whisperings, perhaps, but perhaps that was imagination working overtime.
A man’s voice speaking suddenly quite close to her made her jump. It came from behind the door just opposite the top of the stairs and it sounded as if he was on the phone.
‘No problem,’ he was saying smoothly. ‘Just send someone round and I’ll have all the paperwork ready for you. All right?’ There was a pause, then, ‘Yes, of course. Not a problem, as I said. Just give me a call to make sure I’m here, all right? Wouldn’t like you to have a wasted journey if I was out.’
She heard him say goodbye. A moment later there was a crash as if something had been thrown across the room. Then he started swearing.
Marnie froze. That was Drax – she recognised his voice – and he was in a temper. She knew what his tempers could be like.
‘Go into your room and shut the door,’ her mother’s saying to her. ‘Keep out of the way till I tell you to come out.’
She doesn’t argue, even though her bedroom at Clatteringshaws hasn’t any heating and there’s a hard October frost. She hears Drax’s car arriving with a squeal of brakes, then her mother’s voice in the hall as she opens the door. She hates the way Mum sounds – sort of feeble and pleading and pathetic. She hears Drax yelling at her, hears her mother starting to cry and then she puts her fingers in her ears so she can’t hear any more. Except a crash so loud that she hears it anyway and she feels her heart pounding. What if he’s killed her?
But then she hears Mum’s voice and she’s not screaming so she must be all right. It’s a long time, though, before the door opens and she can come out. Drax has gone and Mum doesn’t even have any bruises that she can see, so that’s good. She’s looking funny, though, sort of blank and looking through her daughter as if she isn’t there.
That had been not long before it all happened, before her mother disappeared and the world went upside down. It struck her with a sudden chill: the man on the other side of that door could be her mother’s killer – and she was going to go in and challenge him about it? Challenge Drax, in a bad mood – she’d have to be mad. She turned, ready to tiptoe down the stairs.
Suddenly, the door was flung open and there was Drax, his face black with temper. He almost bumped into her.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Marnie bleated, sounding feeble and pleading, like her mum.
‘Who the hell—’ he began, then stopped. A slow smile came over his face. ‘Well, well, if it isn’t my little friend Marnie, all grown up! I’ve been expecting you. Looking for a chat, were you? You’d better come in.’
He was always at his most dangerous when he was angry underneath but switched on the charm. What else could she do, though, except follow him in?