15

‘Is it urgent, John? As you can imagine . . .’ Fleming spoke into the phone, flapping her hand at her cluttered desk as if DI Purves, at the other end, could see it, then listened to what he had to say. ‘How extraordinary!’ she said at last. ‘I’ve no idea who that could be. Anyway, come on up.’

As she waited for her colleague, she mentally scanned her ‘Villains I Have Known’ file, but no one stood out. The principle of full disclosure of evidence to the defence might not be universally honoured by the police force, but since Fleming always tried to be scrupulous, the CHIS’s compliment didn’t narrow it down much. Perhaps John Purves could shed a bit more light.

Purves was a fairly recent addition to the Kirkluce CID, after the long-overdue retirement of a DI who, when it came to modern practice, had raised passive resistance to performance art. Fleming rated Purves highly: he had an impressive appetite for the administrative and organisational duties that to Fleming were the downside of the job, and he managed to be a stickler for compliance without nit-picking – not an easy balance to achieve. Though they regularly traded insults like ‘stuffed shirt’ and ‘adrenaline junkie’, it all worked very well.

Bouncing a few ideas off him when he was here anyway wouldn’t do any harm. Fleming always liked to clear her mind by talking things through, but she was short of a confidant, with MacNee in his present dour mood and Bill – well, she couldn’t see them sitting down for a chat over a cosy dram right at the moment.

The mysterious CHIS, however, was at the top of the agenda.

‘I don’t know who he is either, as yet,’ Purves told her, disappointingly. ‘You know the rules.’

‘Of course I do. Theoretically. And of course I’ve had the odd tip-off, sanitised through the system, but since the new regulations came in I’ve had nothing to do with that area, except to say thank you when a useful snippet comes through. I know the general principle, but I didn’t exactly study the fine print.’

‘Tut, tut,’ Purves said mildly. ‘I’m a controller for several handlers – Andy Macdonald, in this instance.’

‘Andy?’ Fleming was surprised. ‘I saw him earlier and he didn’t say anything.’

‘He wouldn’t. We try to keep the firewalls in place. I wouldn’t be telling you now if I hadn’t cleared it with the super, and he had to check it with the top brass. It isn’t to do with your present investigations or they’d have ruled it out completely. This does seem to be an exceptional case. The man appears to believe that if it gets out what he’s doing, he’d find himself sipping sewage in the Clyde.’

Fleming blanched. ‘Oh please! We’ve got enough problems already. Maybe he could be told not to risk it and we’ll just muddle along ourselves.’

Purves looked at her under his brows. ‘You know you don’t mean that.’

‘No, I suppose I don’t,’ Fleming said hollowly. ‘All right, where do we go from here?’

‘We have to talk about risk.’

‘Don’t we always? I know coppers who use “risk assessment” as a sweary word.’

Purves smiled. ‘You look as if your last assessment wasn’t that effective.’

Fleming put a hand to her face. ‘Oh, this? I’d forgotten about it. Looks much worse than it feels now. Anyway, risk to our CHIS, weighed up against value of information?’

‘And risk to you.’

‘To me?’ She was startled.

‘He was very specific that it had to be you. If someone wanted you out of the way, it could be a way of drawing you into a trap.’

‘That – that hadn’t struck me.’ It gave her a cold, nasty feeling inside.

‘That’s what procedure is for,’ Purves said in mild triumph. ‘So we can work round it.’

‘So how do we do that?’

‘I’ll tell you nearer the time. It won’t be immediately – there’s a lot to put in place. It’ll seem a bit elaborate, I’m afraid. You’ll think we’re being melodramatic, but if we’re dealing with bad guys from Glasgow, we won’t be playing nursery games – except, if we’re not careful, the one where we all fall down at the end.’

Fleming swallowed hard. ‘Suddenly, investigating three murders seems a simple, straightforward business.’

‘How’s it going? There’s conflicting stories whizzing around.’

‘We don’t have any other kind of stories at the moment. Do me a favour – be a stooge, John, would you? Ask the obvious questions, while I go through it.’

‘Born for the part,’ Purves said easily, settling back in his chair.

‘Where to start?’ Fleming pondered for a moment. ‘Jamieson, I suppose. He was the obvious suspect for Crozier, and he certainly sawed through the supports on the bridge and then waited for them to get destabilised. But he has an alibi for the first murder, the one at the cottages, and of course now . . .’ She shrugged.

‘What about the girl – the one who allegedly didn’t kill Crozier’s grandchild? The hot money in the canteen’s on her.’

‘Oh, she’s involved in this somehow – if that was the bet, I’d wager my hen-money without a qualm. She’s stonewalling, and she’s good at it. We don’t know why, and we can hardly pull her in just because she happened to be around. Maybe forensics will come up with something. If she’s scared but not guilty, as I could almost believe she is, it would be in her own interests to stop lying, trust us and open up.’

‘You think?’ Purves was inclined to be cynical. ‘Not something her brief would advise, if she had one.’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And certainly, flatly denying everything puts all the onus on us to get at the truth.’

‘Truth, Marjory, has nothing to do with us. It’s proof we’re after.’

‘With three bodies, one of them completely unidentified and another with false ID? Chance would be a fine thing!’

‘So, the girl’s out at – what? – thirty-three to one? All right – run me through the rest of the card.’

‘Take your pick. Cast of thousands, with contractors and security and pop fans – including, incidentally, the man found dead this morning. Then you have the dysfunctional family – the daughter’s a junkie, the grandchild’s a monster, the son-in-law, who fits the part perfectly, has an alibi for Crozier’s murder from Tam MacNee, of all people. There’s a Filipino houseman who seems to have been devoted to his employer but who definitely lied to me, and to add a little spice, Joshua, the pop star, who is also a stranger to the truth.’

‘It occurs to me to ask whether you’re sure the deaths are connected.’

‘Sure? I’m not sure of anything. I wish I was. I’m beating my brains out trying to establish the connections.’

‘Some common background that argued for taking them out one after another?’

‘One after another.’ Fleming picked up on the phrase. ‘It may simply be consequential, of course – after one death, the next for some reason became necessary, and the next . . . It would be a simpler way of looking at it, but we still need a plausible motive for the first one as a starting point, and I certainly can’t see it as yet.’

‘Not easy.’ Purves looked at his watch and got up. ‘Have to go. I’ve a lovely policy document to work on – excellent stuff. Fancy swapping?’

Fleming looked at him, then at her desk. ‘I’m snowed under, I’m confused, I’m stressed out, and I probably won’t get home before ten o’clock tonight. No. Not a chance.’

 

PC Sandy Langlands was doing door-to-doors along the streets by the Balmoral Guest House in the drizzling rain. He was in an uncharacteristically downbeat mood, bored and cold. Most people were out at work, which would mean he’d have to come back later, and even the people who happened to be at home had nothing useful to say but said it anyway.

Gloomily, he tramped along the street round the corner from where the guest house stood. There was, he noticed, rather a natty silver Lexus parked on a double yellow line. It wasn’t causing an obstruction, though, and he’d better things to do at the moment.

He’d had no luck so far in the terrace of small houses that opened directly on to the pavement. Four no answers, two don’t knows. He rang the bell of the house beside the parked car and waited.

The woman who opened it was more keen to bend his ear on the subject of the car – ‘About time you came to do something about it!’ – than to listen to his questions. She didn’t hold with having strangers coming round the place late at night. ‘Quarter to eleven, it was, when I heard him slamming the door. And it’s been there all night. That’s not right.’

There was more, quite a lot more. Eyes glazed, Langlands let it wash over him until at last she finished – ‘I just hope you’re going to get it towed away, right now’ – and paused for breath.

‘Indeed, madam,’ he said gravely. ‘Now, could I just ask you – we’re interested in the movements of a young man, medium height, spiked hair, wearing a dark green sweatshirt and jeans?’

He liked to think that if he hadn’t been bludgeoned with irrelevant information all morning, he’d have put two and two together before she squealed, ‘That’s him! That’s the very man!’

It took him some time to extricate himself, but with the car’s registration number written in his notebook, he walked back to the Kirkluce headquarters in triumph.

 

There were three or four detectives working at computers when DS MacNee got back to the CID room. One of them was Kim Kershaw, who glanced up briefly as he passed but didn’t speak.

The Balmoral Guest House was now empty and locked up. He had ushered Mrs Wishart firmly to her car, ignoring the longing looks she cast over her shoulder at the gathering journalists, and watched her drive away to make sure.

Lisa Stewart had been more problematic. MacNee wasn’t feeling charitably disposed towards her, but Big Marge had spelled it out that she wasn’t to be thrown to the wolves. Fellow feeling, that was – there had been a couple of jeering questions shouted by the press about her last case as Fleming herself drove out.

Anyway, Lisa had no transport, so he’d had to give her a lift to Tourist Information to ask about a bus to take her to Rowantrees Hotel. He heard her gasp of fright at the camera flashes as they drove past and her thanks, given along with a surprisingly attractive smile, when he dropped her off sounded heartfelt. He found himself wondering what lay beneath the hard shell – apart from the answers he needed. He’d no doubt that Lisa knew them.

But she wasn’t going to tell, was she? Back to square one, he thought grimly, and start again.

He found a terminal free and called up the Missing Persons Register. Presumably someone had checked that already, but he wanted to see it for himself. Maybe he could spot a connection they hadn’t.

It wasn’t a long list, and none of the names and descriptions triggered the blaze of insight he had been hoping for. If Mr X was a misper, he certainly didn’t come from around here. MacNee scowled. He needed inspiration.

He hadn’t been to the Rosscarron Cottages – or what was left of them. The SOCOs would have done their stuff by now, so the authorities could start clearing the site. It was all on film – he could conjure it up at the touch of a button – but he was unrepentantly old-fashioned. You couldn’t get the smell of a crime scene from a screen, couldn’t look around for the detail that would catch your eye or sense how people had moved about. If it was back to square one, that was where he should start – where it all began.

He should clear it with the boss, but they weren’t seeing eye to eye at the moment. Fair enough, he was maybe a wee bit edgy himself, but if she knew what he was going through . . . Suddenly it all swept over him again and he bent his head over the keyboard, biting his lip.

For just a moment he thought of telling Fleming. There might be relief in that – they’d been through a lot together – but Tam MacNee didn’t go around bleating about his problems, and there was a kind of shame attached to it too, somehow.

MacNee sniffed, picked his leather jacket off the back of the chair and went out.

 

It was raining again. Well, not raining, exactly, just drizzling on in a grey, depressing sort of way.

‘This dreich weather really gets to me,’ Macdonald complained to Campbell, as yet again they drove along the A75 heading for Kirkcudbright. ‘I’d rather have a downpour and clear the air.’

‘It’s like a kid whingeing,’ Campbell said with feeling. ‘Better if they just yell and get it over with.’

Macdonald agreed. ‘Though mind you, if you think of the last couple of weeks, there’s no guarantee that a downpour will stop it.’

‘No guarantee with kids either.’ Campbell lapsed into gloomy silence.

Thinking aloud, as was his habit when driving with Campbell, Macdonald said, ‘I wonder if the Ryans have heard about the fate of their former camper, or if we’ll be breaking the news? Always useful to get in first and see the reactions. They sound a weird lot anyway. The kid’s like something out of a horror movie, and Tam says the mother’s stoned most of the time.’

‘Probably explains the kid,’ Campbell suggested.

‘Right enough. You can’t blame him – no problem kids without problem parents.’

Campbell shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said with paternal defensiveness.

Macdonald, childfree, grinned. ‘Take a good look at Nico Ryan. He’s a horrible warning about what happens if you get it wrong. Look, that’s the turn-off. Rosscarron – fifteen minutes, say.’

 

‘Sandy!’ Coming back from a quick lunch in the canteen, Fleming hailed PC Langlands, walking ahead of her along the corridor. ‘Well done!’

Langlands turned, beaming. ‘Just luck,’ he said, with perfect truth. ‘Still, it’s good, eh? Have they got his name now?’

‘Yes. Alex Rencombe. It’s a company car, registered to some solicitor’s firm in London.’

‘Great. Thanks, boss.’ Langlands, still beaming, went on his way.

Fleming had no wish to rain on his parade, but it seemed far from certain that they had discovered the identity of the dead man. A company car, a solicitor – the spiky-haired twenty-something? It didn’t fit.

At least, though, it gave them a starting point. They had contacted the office and spoken to Mr Rencombe’s secretary, but purely on the basis of a traffic offence. The more important questions could wait.

Mr Rencombe, she said, was on a business trip to Scotland. With professional discretion, she was vague about where he might be but promised to try to contact him.

So was the Lexus a stolen car? It hadn’t been reported, but if someone told her that ‘Damien’ was into that sort of racket, she wouldn’t fall over backwards in surprise. They’d have his fingerprints before long anyway, and then it would be a matter of minutes to do a check for any previous.

Even if they did find out his real identity, it wouldn’t necessarily solve anything. This one, she thought uncomfortably, was going to run and run.

 

There was a ‘Road Closed’ sign on a metal barricade across the access to the cottages. A huge digger was parked just short of the landfall, with a Portakabin beside it as well as three skips. There was no one about.

DS MacNee parked the car, then stepped past the barrier and, skirting the huge pile of earth and rubble, walked round to the site.

It was eerie out here. The air was clammy with a grey mist and there was no view, except of a dark, sullen sea, no sound except the relentless lapping of the waves in front of the ruined houses. Even the workmen seemed to have fled: there were some spades stuck into a pile of earth and an empty wheelbarrow abandoned beside them.

MacNee felt a cold chill run down his spine. It was as if the greyness were closing in on him, trapping him in this unchancy place where a life as well as the cottages had been destroyed. He tried to shake himself out of it: the absence of activity was no more than another example of the Great British Workman not at work, and there would be no sense of urgency about any project that wouldn’t have votes in it for the councillors. It still felt creepy, though.

Number 2 Rosscarron Cottages – that was the one he was looking for, with the blue-and-white tape still round it, though a couple of strands had broken off and were hanging limp from the poles.

The house wasn’t as badly damaged as the first one, which was still almost completely buried, but from the look of it if Mr X hadn’t been dead before the cliff fall, it would have killed him.

Picking his way carefully, MacNee went in through the broken door, propped open with a rough plank, glancing nervously up at the hole in the roof and the huge boulder blocking the staircase. He wasn’t about to try going up, but he wanted to stand in the room where the body had been found and see if it had a story to tell him. There were metal supports propping up the doorway and the ceiling; it looked safe enough.

There were signs of the SOCOs everywhere. The room was bare now; everything in it would have been removed for testing, and underfoot there was only the rubble of fallen plaster and lathes of wood. But even when it was furnished, it could never have been anything other than dark and a bit bleak, with that small window and the old-fashioned cast-iron fireplace and grate.

The chalk marks on a cleared area of floor showed him exactly where the body had lain, underneath a roof beam, which was now propped up. MacNee had seen the photos on the board in the incident room, of course, but this told him a bit more. Mr X, felled by a blow from behind, had fallen quite near the door.

He hadn’t been on his guard, expecting it. He had turned his back – when he was leaving, perhaps? You didn’t, in normal conversation, turn your back on the person you were speaking to.

Had there been a row? Mr X turns to walk out; on the spur of the moment his assailant seizes something – something, with any luck, that the SOCOs would identify – and strikes the back of his head.

And then what? Clears out the man’s pockets, takes his car, then leaves in a panic? Hears later of the landfall with incredulous delight, hoping perhaps that no one will ever know how Mr X met his end? Then disappears completely, once the hunt is on?

Or stays around and brazens it out. Kershaw would be sure to point the finger at Lisa, especially in the light of later developments. Yet MacNee had believed the girl when she swore she hadn’t known Mr X.

Why had he been there at all? He was hardly likely to have wandered into a random cottage, thoughtfully bringing his murderer with him. So the boyfriend, the so-called Lee, he was fairly sure, must have . . . must have . . . what?

He had intended to leave, witness the suitcase Jan Forbes had seen; had Mr X, perhaps, arrived unexpectedly and been taken back to the house for a talk, which had developed into a quarrel, murder and subsequent panic?

In that case, could the death at the guest house be a revenge killing? And if so, who knew all about this but was lying low?

MacNee emerged from the cottage. He’d got plenty to think about and an idea or two to follow up, but he wasn’t ready to go back to headquarters yet. When he was in the area anyway, he’d go and pay another call on his old friends at Rosscarron House. There was no reason why they should have heard about the latest killing and he’d like to have the chance of judging whether it came as news to them. Or not.

 

Lisa Stewart got down from the bus, waving a thank-you to the driver, who had made an unscheduled stop for her.

The road ran close to the shore here, and on the opposite side a brilliantly whitewashed house stood on its own, looking out across Wigtown Bay and encircled by a grey stone wall. A sign in the well-kept garden read, ‘Rowantrees Hotel,’ and by the entrance there were indeed rowans, one on either side in the traditional position for protection against witches.

Lisa stood, her eyes half closed, and breathed deeply. The drizzling rain and mist had just cleared and the fresh breeze carried the tang of salt and seaweed. It felt so . . . so clean!

She walked across to a gap in the golden banks of whin lining the road and then over the springy turf, which gave way to coarse sand and stones, going to stand at the water’s edge. A flock of oyster-catchers further along the beach rose as one and swirled round with their piping cries, before settling back to run among the pebbles on their red, stilt-like legs.

The sea was quiet today, with only that slight breeze ruffling its surface and giving the waves white, feathery tops as they ran up almost to Lisa’s feet, then retreated with a soft fizzing of foam, which left a trail of bubbles on the hard sand. She had to take a hasty step back when a wave, bolder than the others, threatened to soak her feet.

Almost mesmerised by the rhythmic sounds, she stood for a long time, gazing out to sea. The sky was overcast, but suddenly a rift in the clouds appeared and a shaft of light gilded the farther side of the bay with its direct rays. A Bible sky, Lisa’s granny had called it, because it looked as if the heavens had opened. A good omen?

At last, reluctantly, she turned to go, then stopped. Reaching into her bag, Lisa took out the mobile she had hidden under the floor, then threw it as far as she could into the sea.

Walking back across the road, she felt lighter, freer already. Perhaps getting rid of the phone had begun the process of starting afresh, and at the gate of the Rowantrees Hotel she glanced up at the graceful trees as if they might, indeed, be guardians to protect her.

The lobby of the hotel was old-fashioned, with a gleaming wooden floor and dark furniture. A bowl of roses stood on the reception desk, their scent competing with the smell of furniture polish. It felt comfortable and reassuring. And safe. Lisa blinked away exhausted tears.

There was no one about. A little hesitantly, she pinged the glittering brass bell on the counter and a moment later a plump, cheerful-looking woman with greying hair and bright blue eyes popped out from the door under the stairs.

‘Oh, you must be Lisa! I’m Susan Telford. I’m so glad you caught that bus. With the service on Sundays you’d have had a long wait if you’d missed that one.’

‘I just made it. The driver let me off by the hotel.’

She nodded wisely. ‘Ah, that would be Doddie. You were lucky – if it’d been Rab, he’d have gone on to the official stop and you’d have had a mile to walk. Now, let me take you to your room.’

Still chatting, she led the way up a staircase, carpeted in turkey red, then opened the door to a light, spacious bedroom to the front of the house with a shower room off it.

‘I thought we’d give you a nice sea view. Jan said you were needing to be cosseted, after all that’s happened, so we’ll have to look after you.’ Susan smiled at Lisa with great warmth. ‘There’s a tray there for tea, and some of my biscuits in that wee tin there. Now, you just take your time, have a nice rest. When you’re ready, you’ll find Jan down in the sitting room. She’s looking forward to seeing you again. Anything more you’re needing?’

Lisa managed to say no and thank you. When the door closed, she sat down on the bed. The white bed linen smelled faintly of lavender fabric conditioner.

It was so quiet, so peaceful! It felt – that word again – safe.

It was dangerous to relax, to let her guard down. There were times when she’d thought she was safe before and he’d found her. But he was dead now, wasn’t he?