Alex stared down into the moses basket. She was here, where she belonged. Their daughter, in their house. Loosely swaddled in a white blanket, her face scrunched up in sleep, Davina made his heart sing. She’d lost that pinched look that had frightened him so much in the first few days of her life. Now, she looked like other babies, her face growing more individual. He wanted to draw her every day of her life, so he’d never miss a single nuance of the changes she’d go through.
She filled his senses. If he leaned down close and held his breath, he could hear the faint susurration of her breathing. His nostrils trembled at the unmistakable smell of baby. Alex knew he loved Lynn; but he’d never felt this overwhelming protective passion in his heart before. Lynn was right; he had to do whatever he could to make sure he’d be there to see his daughter grow up. He decided to call Paul later, to share this momentous evening. He’d have done it if Ziggy had still been alive, and Paul deserved to know he was still part of their lives.
The distant sound of the doorbell interrupted his devotions. Alex gave his sleeping daughter the lightest of touches, then walked backward out of the room. He reached the front door seconds behind Lynn, who looked thunderstruck to see Jackie standing on the doorstep. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Didn’t Alex tell you?” Jackie drawled.
“Tell me what?” Lynn rounded on Alex.
“I asked Jackie to help me,” Alex said.
“That’s right.” Jackie seemed more amused than offended.
“You asked her?” Lynn made no attempt to disguise her contempt. “A woman who had a motive for murdering my brother and the kind of contacts to get it done? Alex, how could you?”
“Because she’s got something to gain, too. Which means I could trust her not to rat us out for the sake of a page lead,” he said, trying to calm Lynn down before Jackie took the huff and marched off into the night without revealing what she’d learned.
“I’m not having her in my house,” Lynn said categorically.
Alex held his hands up. “Fine. Just let me get my coat. We’ll go to the pub, if that’s all right with you, Jackie?”
She shrugged. “Whatever. But you’re buying.”
They walked down the gentle slope to the pub in silence. Alex didn’t feel inclined to apologize for Lynn’s hostility and Jackie couldn’t be bothered to make an issue of it. When they were settled with a couple of glasses of red wine, Alex raised his eyebrows interrogatively. “Well? Any joy?”
Jackie looked smug. “I have the name of the forensic scientist who carried out the work on the Rosie Duff case. And the beauty of it is that he’s still in the game. He’s a professor at Dundee. His name is David Soanes, and apparently he’s shit hot.”
“So when can you go and see him?” Alex asked.
“I’m not going to go and see him, Alex. That’s your job.”
“My job? I’m not a journalist. Why would he talk to me?”
“You’re the one with something at stake here. You throw yourself on his mercy and ask for any information he can give you that might help move the case forward.”
“I don’t know how to conduct an interview,” Alex protested. “And why would Soanes tell me anything? He’s not going to want it to look as if there were things he overlooked before.”
“Alex, you talked me into going out on a limb for you, and frankly I don’t like you or your offensive, small-minded wife. So I think you can probably talk David Soanes into telling you what you want to know. Especially since you’re not asking about things he overlooked. You’ll be asking about things that might not have been susceptible to analysis, things he justifiably didn’t include in his report. If he cares about his work, then he should want to help. He’s also a lot less likely to talk to a journalist who could make him look incompetent.” Jackie swallowed some wine, made a face and got to her feet. “Let me know when you’ve got something that gets me off the hook.”
Lynn sat in the conservatory, watching the lights on the estuary. They were faintly haloed with damp air, investing them with more mysteriousness than they merited. She heard the front door close and Alex’s cry of, “I’m back.” But before he could join her, the doorbell pealed out again. Whoever it was, she wasn’t in the mood.
Mumbled voices grew more distinct as they approached, but still she couldn’t tell who their latest visitor was. Then the door opened and Weird strode in. “Lynn,” he cried. “I hear you have a beautiful daughter to show me.”
“Weird,” Lynn exclaimed, astonishment on her face. “You’re the last person I expected to see.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s hope that’s how everybody else is thinking.” He looked down at her with concern. “How are you holding up?”
Lynn leaned into his hug. “I know it sounds stupid, given how little we saw of Mondo, but I miss him.”
“Of course you do. We all do. And we always will. He was part of us, and now he isn’t anymore. Knowing he’s with the Lord is a small consolation for what we’ve lost.” They were quiet for a moment, then Lynn moved away.
“But what are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you went straight back to America after the funeral?”
“I did. I packed my wife and kids off to the mountains, somewhere they’ll be safe from anybody who has an issue with me. And then I made myself disappear. I crossed the border into Mexico. Lynn, never go to Tijuana unless you have a cast-iron stomach. The food is the worst in the world, but what really gives the soul indigestion is the collision between the extravagant riches of America and the grinding poverty of those Mexicans. I was ashamed of my adopted countrymen and women. Do you know, the Mexicans even paint their donkeys in stripes, like zebras, so the tourists can have their pictures taken with them? That’s how far we’ve driven them.”
“Spare us the sermon, Weird. Cut to the chase,” Lynn complained.
Weird grinned. “I’d forgotten quite how forthright you can be, Lynn. Well, I felt pretty uneasy after Mondo’s funeral. So I hired a private eye in Seattle. I wanted to find out who sent that wreath to Ziggy’s funeral. And he came back with an answer. An answer that gave me good reason to come back here. Plus, I figured this was the last place that anybody looking for me would expect to find me. Way too near to home.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “You really have learned a few theatrical tricks over the years, haven’t you? Are you going to tell us what you found out?”
“The man who sent the wreath lives right here in Fife. St. Monans, to be precise. I don’t know who he is, or how he’s connected to Rosie Duff. But his name is Graham Macfadyen.”
Alex and Lynn exchanged a look of anxiety. “We know who he is,” Alex said. “Or we can at least make an educated guess.”
Now it was Weird’s turn to look puzzled and frustrated. “You do? How?”
“He’s Rosie Duff’s son,” Lynn said.
Weird’s eyes widened. “She had a son?”
“Nobody knew about him at the time. He was adopted at birth. He must have been three or four when she died,” Alex said.
“Oh my,” Weird said. “Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? I take it he only found out about his mother’s murder recently?”
“He went to see Lawson when the cold case review was launched. He’d only started trying to trace his birth mother a few months before that.”
“There’s your motive, if he thought you four were responsible for her murder,” Lynn said. “We need to find out more about this Macfadyen.”
“We need to find out if he was in the States the week Ziggy died,” Alex said.
“How do we do that?” Lynn said.
Weird raised a hand. “Atlanta is Delta’s hub. One of my flock has a pretty senior position there. I’d guess he can maybe get hold of passenger manifests. The airlines swap information like that all the time, apparently. And I have Macfadyen’s credit-card details, which might speed things up. I’ll call him later, if I may?”
“Of course,” Alex said. Then he cocked his head. “Is that Davina I can hear?” He headed for the door. “I’ll bring her through.”
“Well done, Weird,” Lynn said. “I’d never have put you down for the methodical researcher.”
“You forget, I was a mathematician and a damn good one. All the other stuff, that was just a desperate bid not to be my father. Which, thank the Lord, I managed to avoid.”
Alex returned, Davina whimpering in his arms. “I think she needs to be fed.”
Weird stood up and peered down at the tiny bundle. “Oh my,” he said, his voice soft as milk. “She is a beauty.” He looked up at Alex. “Now you understand why I’m so determined to come out of this alive.”
Out under the bridge, Macfadyen stared down at the scene below. It had been an eventful evening. First, the woman had turned up. He’d seen her at the funeral, watched the widow Kerr leave in her car. He’d followed them to a flat in the Merchant City, then, a couple of days later, he’d followed Gilbey to the same flat. He wondered what her connection was, where she fit into the complex pattern. Was she just a friend of the family? Or was she more than that?
Whatever she was, she hadn’t been made welcome. She and Gilbey had gone to the pub, but they’d barely been there long enough to have a single drink. Then, when Gilbey had gone back to the house, the real surprise had walked in. Mackie was back. He should have been safely ensconced in Georgia, ministering to his flock. But here he was, in Fife again, and in the company of his co-conspirator. You didn’t walk away from your life unless you had good reason.
It was proof. You could tell from the expressions on their faces. This was no cheerful reunion of friends. This was no blithe gathering to celebrate the return from the hospital of Gilbey’s daughter. These two had something to hide, something that drew them together in this time of crisis. Fear had brought them into each other’s orbit. They were terrified that whatever nemesis had caught up with their fellow killers was about to visit them. And they were huddling together for safety.
Macfadyen smiled grimly. The cold hand of the past was reaching inexorably for Gilbey and Mackie. They wouldn’t sleep easy in their beds tonight. And that was how it should be. He had plans for them. And the more afraid they were now, the better it would be when those plans came to fruition.
They’d had twenty-five years of peace, which was more, far more than his mother had enjoyed. Now, it was over.