She heard the pounding of boots on the spiral stairs as she sat in her office, the little room that felt to her like the shell to a snail, with a sick sense of inevitability. Even so, she jumped to her feet and dashed out to protect him from intrusion, just as she always did.
One of the officers, invading aliens in their black gear and helmets, peeled off from the squad and came towards her menacingly. ‘Daniel Lee. Where?’
It was no use. She nodded towards the door of Drax’s office. She hadn’t seen him all afternoon; she’d tapped on the door around seven but either he wasn’t there or he didn’t want to be disturbed and she knew better than to open it.
The police had no such scruples. The burly man in front opened the door, following through with his shoulder as if he expected it to be locked and didn’t care if he smashed it. He staggered slightly as the door swung back, shouting, ‘Police!’
The others, following through behind him, came up short and one bumped into him. He had stopped on the threshold.
It seemed as if an action movie had gone into freeze-frame and after that everything seemed to move weirdly slowly. The officer in the door frame turned with a gesture. ‘Keep her back!’ he ordered, and then she knew. It couldn’t be – yet she somehow had always known that here was where it would all end.
With a sudden movement she jinked past the officer who came towards her and she was looking through the doorway at Drax, lying across his desk in a pool of blood, already turning rust-red.
Someone was screaming now, agonised, piercing screams like some animal in pain. It was a moment before she realised who it was, and then she couldn’t stop.
Marjory Fleming had just come upstairs to bed in the spare room when her phone rang a little after eleven. She answered it feeling glad that she had followed her instinct and Bill’s much-needed rest wasn’t being disturbed.
The FCA on the night shift was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but there is an urgent message from DCI Alexander at Cairnryan. He asked for you to be alerted at once to make sure that Marnie Burnside’s protection is properly in place. He said Daniel Lee had been shot dead in Glasgow and it might have implications. That was the message.’
Feeling as if the floor had given way under her feet, Fleming managed to say, ‘OK. Thanks. I’ll be coming right in, if anyone else wants me,’ and taking time only to scribble a note to leave on the kitchen table she ran out to her car.
Her mind was whirring. Had they been looking in the wrong direction all this time? She had described Lee and Morrison equally as vermin, but she’d let herself be convinced by Marnie’s belief that it was Lee who had her followed.
Of course, she told herself, with the company that Lee kept there might well be others with reason to want to put a bullet in him; guns were easy to come by when you had the right contacts. All that would be in the hands of the Strathclyde police, though, and her job was simply to protect Marnie if this was, as she suspected, a case of thieves falling out.
She had no idea where she might be, though. And Marnie had naively placed herself in danger twice already – once in giving Lee the opportunity, at least, to have her tailed, and once by failing to realise that her being taken to the police station after the petrol bomb would be common knowledge – and she feared that Marnie’s confidence that she could look after herself was misplaced.
When she arrived at headquarters she was surprised to find MacNee waiting for her.
‘Did Alexander contact you too?’
He shook his head. ‘Caught the late-night news after the football tonight. Said there’d been a shooting at a nightclub in Glasgow and I called one of my pals up there. Shot our fox, like you’d probably say.’
Fleming made a face. ‘If the fox gets shot it means the hens are safe. Not quite the same. Come up to my office. I’m going to call Nick and see what he can tell us.’
‘The big question is, where’s Marnie?’ he said as she picked up the phone.
‘The big question is, how am I going to tell Nick we don’t know?’ Fleming said. ‘I’m not looking forward to this.’
Alexander was predictably both annoyed and worried, and able to add very little more detail to what she knew already. She put the phone down feeling profound irritation herself with the stubborn Marnie.
‘So – what next?’ MacNee said. ‘Get someone checking hotels?’
Fleming had a sudden thought. ‘No. Play the man instead of the ball. Let’s find out where Morrison is first.’ She picked up the phone again.
It was Gemma Morrison who answered, sounding sleepy and, when she heard who it was, indignant. ‘Is phoning at this time really necessary? You’ve wakened me and that’s my son awake now.’
Fleming could hear the sounds of a child wailing in the background.
‘What do you want, anyway?’
‘I am anxious to speak to Mr Morrison. Is he there, please?’
Gemma sighed loudly. ‘I wouldn’t know – it’s a big house and he could be in his study. I suppose I can go and check, but I’m not even sure that he’s back yet. He’s been working late.’
Drumming her fingers on the desk, Fleming waited. When Gemma returned to the phone she sounded worried.
‘He isn’t back, no. Has something happened to him? Is that why you’re phoning?’
‘No, no,’ Fleming said. ‘We just need to speak to him, that’s all. Could you please leave a message for him to that effect?’
‘If that’s all, I think you could have left it until the morning and not upset people at this time of night.’ She put the phone down abruptly.
‘Not there. I don’t like it,’ Fleming said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Killed Lee then done a runner?’ MacNee suggested.
‘If I thought that I’d be a happy woman – it would mean he wasn’t out there gunning for Marnie. Where is the wretched girl?’
‘Ask Louise,’ MacNee suggested. ‘She maybe doesn’t know where Marnie is but she’s talked to her a lot. She’s in a better position than we are to guess.’
‘Good thought.’ Fleming dialled the number, then found herself engaged in a conversation with someone who spoke only minimal English. ‘I – need – to – speak – to – Louise – Hepburn,’ she said slowly, making a puzzled face at MacNee.
‘Probably her mum,’ he murmured. ‘French – you’re an expert, right?’
She gave him an acid glance, but when she scraped up some schoolgirl French it seemed to work. ‘She sounded disapproving but she’s gone to wake Louise.’
‘Here – fancy you remembering your Highers! Didn’t believe you could still speak it.’
‘Neither did I,’ Fleming said, then, ‘Louise? Sorry to disturb you. But we’re getting worried about Marnie. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, where she might be?’
Louise, like Gemma, sounded half-asleep, but at least cooperative. ‘Oh, I was thinking about that. I suddenly remembered that she was friendly with Gemma Morrison, so it’s quite likely she would ask her for a bed. And, of course, she’d be safe enough there because Morrison wouldn’t be very pleased if Lee burst into his house and killed one of his daughter’s guests, would he? If I’m right, I should think that’s the safest place she could be.’
Gemma was just turning away from the phone, calling, ‘It’s all right, Mikey, I’m just coming,’ when the front door opened and her father appeared.
‘Oh Dad!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was wondering—’ She caught sight of his face and stopped, looking horrified. ‘Is something wrong?’
He looked exhausted, his face pale, almost grey, and his eyes bloodshot. ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Just tired – very tired.’
He looked more ill than tired and it was with some alarm that she went over to him. Then she smelt the taint of spirits on his breath and her face cleared.
‘Dad!’ she scolded him. ‘You’re far too old to go out on a bender. Get through to the kitchen before Mum sees you like this. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘Not since lunch.’
‘You’re lucky you got home without being breathalysed. Now, on you go, through to the kitchen.’ She listened at the foot of the stairs. ‘Good – sounds as if Mikey’s gone back to sleep. He got wakened by the phone just now – can you believe it, it was the police wanting to speak to you, at this time of night! I told them they could wait till the morning.
‘It’s just as well he didn’t hear you coming back or he’d have demanded to see you and I’m not sure how well you’d focus on the bedtime stories in that state, you wicked old man! Now, come on through. No arguments – I’m going to make you a bacon butty and a pot of black coffee. And take off your coat – you’ll be too hot.’
‘Louise is going to keep a watch on the house and she’s trying to get Marnie on the phone now,’ Fleming said as they hurried down the stairs. ‘If she’s right about where she is, we can just swoop in and pick her up as long as he’s not there.’
‘That’s if Gemma’s not in on it as well. Marnie could be dead by now,’ MacNee said gloomily.
‘Always the positive thinker. You arrange for a patrol car to stand by for support.’
Then they were in the car and Fleming fixed on the blue light as she turned out of the car park and accelerated off towards the Stranraer road.
DC Hepburn was shaking with nerves as she drove along to Dunmore. She’d tried ringing Marnie but the phone was switched off. She was most likely sound asleep, just as she had been herself. At least, she hoped that was why she wasn’t answering her phone.
It only took ten minutes. It would be quarter of an hour at least before Fleming could get here and Hepburn had her orders: she was to ring the doorbell, provided there was no sign of Michael Morrison. If his car was there – she’d been given the registration – she was under no circumstances to approach. She was to keep trying Marnie and liaise with the patrol car which would be told to wait somewhere further out along the road past the Morrisons’ farmhouse.
Hepburn stopped just short of the turn-off into the drive. She could see the house now; there was one light on upstairs and another downstairs and there was a large car parked below the lamp over the front door. It hadn’t been put away in the fancy garage with the electronic doors, but even so it looked like Morrison’s Mercedes.
She couldn’t see the number from where she was and she really ought to verify it. After all, it could be his wife’s, or even a visitor’s, and if Marnie really was there, and if she could get her out before he came back …
That was certainly what she would say if she was challenged about disobeying orders about approaching. Actually, she didn’t doubt it was Morrison’s car; she just wouldn’t be able to live with herself if the worst happened and she could have managed to save Marnie by being right on hand. Always assuming Marnie wasn’t dead already.
The house phone ringing had wakened Marnie too. She had turned over, wondering what time it was and was about to reach for her mobile to look at the time, but then realised Vivienne had thought of everything; there was a digital clock on the bedside table: 11.57. An anti-social hour for someone to be phoning, but perhaps the Morrisons were late birds.
Then she heard Mikey start to wail. Poor Gemma wouldn’t appreciate that, but it was nothing to do with her and Marnie turned over luxuriously in her comfortable bed and pulled the duvet up over her shoulders. She was just drifting off to sleep again when she heard the crunch of tyres on gravel.
She tried to tell herself that she had nothing to fear here, that being nervous was neurotic, but she couldn’t stop herself: she got out of bed and went to peer through the curtains.
There was a light on over the front door and a man was getting out of the car parked at an odd angle just beside it, and she noticed that he staggered slightly as he stepped out. She couldn’t really see his face but she guessed it must be Gemma’s father. He’d obviously had a few; perhaps he had drink problem. That would explain why Gemma’s mum looked so strained.
Just before he reached the front door he looked up suddenly, as if he was studying the house. Marnie shrank back behind the curtain – he would hardly appreciate being spied on – but not before she had seen the look of agony on his face. He looked like a man in torment and she could feel the hairs on the nape of her neck bristling.
Gingerly, she lifted a corner of the curtain again. He was still looking up at the house, not towards her window in the corner but at the others: Gemma’s room, the child’s room and the next, where presumably Gemma’s mother was sleeping. He studied each individually and then he put his hand up to cover his eyes. When he took it away, he wiped the back of his hand across as if to wipe away tears.
He went through the front door. Above Mikey’s wails, dwindling a little by now, she could hear Gemma talking to him. Marnie crept to her door and holding her breath opened it. Of course it made not a sound; there would be no creaking doors in Vivienne Morrison’s house.
The landing was in darkness but Gemma’s door was open, spilling light onto the landing, and there was a light on in the hall below, where she had gone to answer the phone. Marnie could hear the conversation quite clearly.
The police! Why would they have been phoning this respectable household at this time of night? Was it something to do with her? After all that had happened, she would be wise to be afraid, but somehow she felt this was something else.
She risked peeping over the banisters. As Gemma disappeared into the kitchen she saw her father wrap his arms round himself as if suffering some dreadful pain. He gave a strangled sob, then went through the kitchen door. He hadn’t taken off his coat.
Sick with foreboding, Marnie tiptoed downstairs in her bare feet. Gemma’s father hadn’t shut the door behind him; as she stood in the hall, poised to flee back upstairs again if necessary, she could hear Gemma chatting away in the kitchen, telling him some little story about what Mikey had done as she clattered pans.
He said nothing until he suddenly burst out, ‘Stop it, stop it! I can’t bear it. It’s all over, Gemma, it’s all over.’
And as Marnie listened outside, a chill of horror ran through her.
DC Hepburn was close enough now to read the number plate. Yes, that was Morrison’s. He was there, in the house. Was Marnie there too? She had no way of knowing. After a hopeful glance at her phone to see if by any chance she had missed a message from Marnie, she switched it to vibrate – it wouldn’t do to announce her presence with a ringing phone.
It was very, very silent. The sky had cleared, apart from a few ragged clouds, and a thumbnail of moon was rising over in the west. Avoiding the noisy gravel Hepburn worked her way round the edge of the flowerbeds.
All the windows on the ground floor were dark apart from the fanlight above the front door and the outside lamp. She looked about her; there was a path on the far side of the house leading round to the back garden, but she would have to cross gravel to reach it and there would more than likely be security lights.
On the side of the house she was on, there was only a flowerbed planted thickly with shrubs. At least that would be silent enough, but the bushes looked to have more than the usual number of thorns – for burglar deterrence, perhaps. Grimacing, she began to force her way through.
It was slow painful work and round here it was pitch-dark. As branches snatched at her she could hear the fabric of her jacket ripping; blood was trickling down her face from two vicious scratches and a thorn had embedded itself in her hand, but at last she could see dull patches of light being thrown onto the garden at the back a little distance ahead. From the kitchen windows, perhaps – and she could only hope that the blinds weren’t drawn. Hepburn battled on.
A trailing branch tripped her just as she reached the edge of the flowerbed and she fell heavily forward, winding herself. Had anyone heard that?
When she scrambled to her feet there was no sign of anyone coming to look out of the window. That was the good news. The bad news was that the windows were completely obscured by thin blinds.
‘Dad! What do you mean? You’re frightening me!’ Gemma dropped the packet of bacon she was holding, her eyes wide with alarm.
‘It’s all over,’ Michael said savagely. ‘We’re finished, my darling. All of us.’
‘All of us? Is it the business?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, the business and everything else. We’ve had the good times, though, haven’t we, sweetheart? I’ve looked after you – you and Vivienne and little Mikey. My boy.’ His voice softened as he said that. ‘You never wanted for anything, did you?’
Gemma shook her head dumbly.
‘I was here to protect you from everything that could harm you, to give you the perfect life. Now, it’s over.’
She sat down abruptly on one of the chairs by the table, feeling that her legs couldn’t support her any more. ‘What’s happened? For God’s sake, tell me.’
‘Drax betrayed me. After all these years, he turned against me. And like a fool I handed him the power to do it. I did what he told me, I trusted him. I thought I had protected myself against Grant – that his stupidity was the main threat. But I never thought that Drax would—’ He choked on a sob.
In her protected life, Gemma’s reaction to any problem had been to run to her father. Now he was the problem, her mother was upstairs in a drugged sleep as usual and there was no one to turn to. She was all alone, yet instead of panic all she felt was a sort of icy detachment.
She said, ‘Sit down, Dad. We need to talk this through. Explain to me! I’m a grown woman—’
But he was shaking his head. ‘You couldn’t cope with this. It’s too much. But I’ll take care of it, trust me. I won’t doom any of you to a life of poverty and shame. It’s because I love you, I love you all—’
Tears were pouring down his cheeks now. He slumped onto a chair and the coat he was still wearing swung forward. From the inside pocket a dark, dull metal cylinder poked up and from a hundred crime series she recognised it as the silencer of a gun.
She mustn’t faint. If she fainted she would die and Mikey – Mikey! – would die too. From somewhere she found a soothing voice. ‘I know you do, Dad.’ Her mind raced, searching out possibilities. She couldn’t get it away from him; even drunk, he was much stronger. Keep them talking – that’s what they always said hostages should do, and now, she realised, that shockingly she was a hostage to her own father, her beloved protector.
‘Dad, we both need a drink.’ She got up and went across to the cupboard in the kitchen where the drinks were kept, the cupboard by the kitchen door. It was ajar and beyond it she caught a glimpse of movement.
Marnie! He wouldn’t know she was there. Gemma stole a quick glance at her father but he was leaning on the table, his hands to his head. As she moved to where she was visible through the door Marnie materialised outside, making a ‘Shall I come in?’ gesture.
Gemma shook her head frantically. ‘Is Scotch all right?’ she said conversationally over her shoulder, then with a backwards tilt of her head mimed a gun, and then a baby. She saw Marnie nod and then silently disappear.
She could run, of course, race upstairs and snatch Mikey herself, try to make it to the car, but he would be after her a moment later. Marnie surely would be phoning the police, but how long would they take to get there?
No, her only hope was to sit down at the table again, try to talk him down or, failing that, get him drunk enough to pass out. She took the bottle over to the table and all but filled the glasses.
Swearing silently, DC Hepburn made her way back to the front of the house by the path this time, no wiser than she had been before about what was going on behind those blinds and considerably more worried. Since she had nothing to show for her insubordination she had better get back to her car before the boss arrived.
Fortunately the grass verge at the other side met the path so she was able to run down it after a quick glance back at the blank face of the front of the house to make sure no one was watching her. She saw the beam of a car’s headlamps appearing at the end of the road just as she slammed her own car door.
Hepburn was still slightly out of breath, though, when MacNee jumped out and came across to her. He was wearing body armour and he frowned when he saw her face.
‘What have you been up to?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing, Sarge.’ She was all innocence. ‘I just did a wee recce, that’s all, to check it was Morrison’s car. They’ve some nasty bushes around there.’
MacNee’s ‘Hmmph’, was sceptical, but he said only, ‘So he’s back, then?’
‘Yes, but I still don’t know if she’s inside.’
‘The boss is sending for armed response. We’ll have to wait till they get here – can’t go just ringing the doorbell when the man may be armed.’
‘That could be hours! Surely we can’t just leave it. If Marnie’s there she’s in danger every moment now he’s in the house.’
‘Louise, you’re not thinking straight. She may not be here. He maybe was just out working late and Lee got himself killed by some toerag in Glasgow. On the other hand, Gemma Morrison may have lied and he was there all along and Marnie’s dead already. OK?
‘What we do know is that it’s possible the man is a murderer and has a gun. I’m not volunteering to get my head blown off for ringing the doorbell and neither are you. Anyway, where’s your body armour?’
‘Sorry, Sarge, in the boot.’
‘Not much use there, is it? For God’s sake, Louise, get a grip.’ He went back to join Fleming.
Hepburn got out and obediently strapped herself into the bulky armour. She wasn’t starring, at the moment. That really had been stupid – she hated wearing it, and she just hadn’t thought it through. She was lucky to have come out of it with just a scratched face.
She spat on a tissue and did her best to wipe the blood off her cheeks and was just pulling at the thorn to remove it when the phone in her pocket vibrated.
Marnie was breathless as she whispered into the receiver. ‘Gemma’s father’s here and I think he’s going to kill them all. He’s got a gun.’
‘Where is he?’ Hepburn said.
‘In the kitchen. Gemma’s with him. I’m upstairs. I don’t think he knows I’m here but I’ve got to rescue her kid. I’m going into his room now.’
‘Where is that?’ It was Fleming’s voice this time.
‘Front of the house, above the front door. How soon can you get here?’
‘Walking up to the house just now. Can you reach him and get down to the door?’
‘As long as her dad doesn’t come out of the kitchen. The kid might start crying – he’s asleep now.’
‘Hand over his mouth, grab him and run,’ Fleming directed.
Marnie drew a deep breath and bent over the cot.
‘Here you are – drink up. It’s not the answer to everything, but sometimes it helps.’ Gemma tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite work. At least he took the glass and drank half of it in one swallow.
‘You and Mikey have had such good times together,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the Halloween party? You were both covered with treacle.’
‘Yes. Oh yes.’ Her father was slurring the ‘s’s just faintly. ‘The wee man.’
There was a snap that Vivienne particularly liked standing on the kitchen surface, a pose of Mikey on a visit to a play farm, intent on the day-old chick in his cupped hands. As Gemma went to fetch it, the innocent face of her son almost broke her and she knew her voice was unsteady as she said, ‘This was a fun day too.’
He didn’t seem to notice, though, just took the photo and stared at it hungrily. ‘I’d to stop him loving it to death, didn’t I? He’s always needed me. And I would always have been there for him, looked after him just the way I always did you.’
‘You’re a wonderful dad.’ And it was true; he had been. Then, without thinking, she said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
She realised her fatal mistake as the words left her lips. Michael Morrison’s face changed and he got up and pulled an ugly, snub-nosed handgun with a suppressor fitted out of his pocket.
‘My sweetheart, I can’t do it to you. Or Mikey. Or my poor, darling Vivienne. They won’t know a thing, I promise. I wish it had been the same for you, but I know you can be brave. Remember when I took you to hospital with your broken arm? Like that – chin up! Goodnight, my precious!’
He’s quite, quite mad, Gemma thought. He levelled the gun at her and fired.