IT WAS the first test of Maeve Campbell, Darian asking her if she had a key for Moses’ flat. They sat in her living room, and she nodded her head slowly.
“I do. I didn’t tell the police that I did because they had already started to hint I was a suspect by that point. I don’t know, I just thought it would be better if they assumed I didn’t have one.”
Darian said nothing. She hadn’t understood that Moses had been chased from outside his building, so her having access to the flat would have made her less of a suspect.
“I want to get in and have a look around, see if there’s anything the police might have missed, or that they might have seen but we don’t know about. Have you been in the flat since he was killed?”
“No, God no. I’ll get you the key.”
“Thanks.”
She handed it over to him and said, “Can I get this back when you’re finished with it?”
Darian said, “Sure.”
Sholto picked him up from Glendan Station and asked him about the key.
“She had it, says she hasn’t used it since before he died.”
“Police didn’t take it off her?”
“She didn’t tell them she had it.”
“She didn’t, did she not?”
“She did not.”
Sholto didn’t say anything else, but they both knew what that meant. She had kept the key because she intended to use it; there was no other good reason. At some point she would have made her way back into the flat. Neither Darian nor Sholto needed to say that it was a poor reflection on her, or that it was also understandable. Maeve would know where the money was buried, and there was no one else to claim whatever cash reserves Moses had hidden away and left behind.
As they drove toward Moses’ flat Darian said, “You’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re not going in the front. People with an unhealthy interest are more likely to be watching the front door because they can sit in the warmth of their car to do it.”
“Who?”
“If Corey has a pet watching the office then he might have another from his kennel watching the flats. We’ll go in the back, I know the way. We’ll go through the Lady in Gray flats and out across the garden behind them, in through the back of the flats on Seachran Drive.”
They parked and Sholto led the way. He knew the area like a man who had arrested a lot of people round there back in the day, and led Darian across the square of grass where a courtyard had once been and into the front of the U-shaped building. It was one of the few that had been set on fire by someone way back in the 1870s, and the suspect had been a woman seen fleeing the scene of a previous fire. It was always factories she’d targeted, and in this case flats owned by a factory owner and occupied by his staff. She’d killed a few people, if it was a she and if it was even a single person because many think it was a sequence of insurance scams during troubled economic times, but was never caught and may have died in the last fire she’d set. In the end she drifted off into legend and became the Lady in Gray, now shorthand for a fire-starter or just a madly dangerous person in these parts. It is rather typical that a woman with a place in our local cultural history is seen as something wicked, a mysterious killer who was presumably driven mad by something the factory owner had done to her. These days most people don’t remember the original story, the factories are long gone and the flats were now just a renovated modern block in an old shell.
Sholto led him in the front door, along the broad corridor, past the stairs and straight out the back. It was dark and it was raining but neither of them could spot a watcher as they walked across the narrow stretch of grass and in through the unlocked back door of Moses’ former residence. The stairwell was unlit and Sholto banged his elbow on the banister as they made their way up. He was still inhaling through his teeth and rubbing it when they got to the door. Darian let them in and they started to search, fast.
Sholto had said, “Anything that gives us a lead on who he was working with. Paperwork, receipts, anything. Let’s just try to get a picture of the man.”
Sholto had told Darian to look at pictures of Moses, as many as he could grab ahold of. It was one of his things, the parcels of wisdom he wanted to pass on to his young apprentice. You see a picture of a person and you can read a lot into it, how they stand, the expression they have, the difference between when they’re posing alone and when there are other people there. Sholto had decided from the few he’d seen that Moses put on a false face when others were there, being cheerful to fit in, and that he was quieter and more relaxed when it was just him and whoever took the photo, presumably Maeve. Darian had decided that Sholto’s theory was charming quackery. To Darian Moses looked like an awkward but likable fellow, light brown skin and a round face that made him look fat when he wasn’t.
They were in the bedroom of the flat, and they were two men not bound by the limits of great wisdom. Sholto said, “Just think, Maeve Campbell slept in that bed. Probably did a lot more besides.”
“Hard to picture her here.”
“Oh no it’s not, son. You need to get yourself a more potent imagination; it’ll see you through the cold nights of a long Challaid winter.”
“I mean it’s hard to picture them together, acting like a normal couple. Him seven years older than her and he wasn’t much of a looker. Plain and a bit podgy. Even if he was handling a lot of cash, it wasn’t his money. He wasn’t a rich man.”
“Ah, but she might not have known that when it started. Maybe she thought she was climbing into the bed of a millionaire.”
“No, she’s too smart for that; she knew what she was getting into. Girl like her, she would have looked at his life before she leapt into it.”
“Mm. Must have had talents that went beyond his much vaunted honesty, our Moses Guerra.”
They walked back through to the living room. The place was small but tidy, sterile. It was a boring flat, no flair for living on show. Nothing on the walls, a TV but no consoles, no sign of a tablet, no bookcase. If the flat was a reflection of its occupant then it was another mark against Moses.
Sholto said, “Never trust a man who doesn’t need to buy a bookcase. All this stuff is paid for, didn’t have a penny of debt so life wasn’t a struggle, even if he wasn’t drowning in luxury.”
Darian walked into the kitchen and opened a cupboard, looked at a full bottle of whisky and another of Coke. Three glasses stood beside them, and that was all the cupboard held.
Darian said, “He lived here eight years and you couldn’t guess at who he was by looking around. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Odd how?”
“Odd, like a man should leave a shadow behind in the place where he spent his life. You couldn’t describe this flat to a stranger, there’s nothing distinguishing here, no sense of who he was.”
“Some people don’t have a shadow to leave. Maybe Moses Guerra had nothing to distinguish him, no interests or personal touches. Some folk only have their shadow for entertainment, and they take it with them when they go; it’s why most people are soon forgotten. Plus, he was a youngish man living on his own, working and living in criminal circles. He had reason to hide the things other people could strip him of.”
“Maybe he was just really boring.”
“Maybe. Is your flat bursting with fun and games?”
Darian said, “You couldn’t fit fun and games into my flat.”
They spent another five minutes searching for signs of life in the dead man’s flat. No paperwork that told a person what Moses had done for his money, no personal items that hinted at friends or a girlfriend.
Sholto said, “So?”
“So I can’t get a picture of the guy in my head at all.”
“We’ve spent long enough looking for it. Let’s go before some busybody notices the lights on and knocks on the door. Key or not, we shouldn’t be here.”
Sholto drove them both to Sgàil Drive and Darian ran up to Maeve’s flat to put the key through the letterbox. It was deep into the night, no need to wake her up for the sake of returning the key. He ran back down and got into the car.
Sholto said, “She didn’t get rich in that relationship.”
Sgàil Drive was not populated by people who had married well. It was the sort of place that someone desperate might reside, and that was Sholto’s double-edged hint.