17

‘Big Marge is looking cheerful this evening,’ DC Kershaw said to DS Macdonald, taking the seat beside him at the afternoon briefing. ‘But what the hell is she doing with a frying pan?’

There was, indeed, a large frying pan on the table in front of her. Macdonald was intrigued. ‘Going to whip up bacon butties for us, maybe,’ he suggested. ‘You’re right, she’s not looking as hodden down as she was. Has to be good news – and look at Tam. He’s scented something.’

In the next row, MacNee was looking intently at Fleming as she shuffled her papers and his head was indeed up, like a dog testing the air. Officers were taking their seats and gradually the general hum of conversation died. As Fleming stepped forward, she was smiling broadly.

‘There’s good news tonight. We now know the identity of Mr X’s killer and are in a position to lay charges, but there is a problem with that.’

There was a buzz of surprise and the talk started again; she held up her hand. ‘Plenty of time to exclaim later. We’ve a lot to get through and I don’t expect you want to be kept any longer than necessary on a Sunday night.

‘We have good reason to believe Mr X’s body will tomorrow be identified as that of Alex Rencombe, Gillis Crozier’s solicitor. The SOCOs’ report has found very promising fingerprint evidence too.

‘The weapon used to kill him was a cast-iron frying pan. The handle had been wiped, but a thumbprint was overlooked and was found in a very interesting place. The canteen kindly lent me this to show you.’ She held up the pan, to a ripple of amusement.

‘If you are cooking with a frying pan, you hold it like this –’ she demonstrated – ‘and your thumb is on top of the handle. If, on the other hand, I got annoyed with Sergeant Naismith here – don’t panic, Jock, I only said, “If”!’

Naismith mimed alarm.

‘My, my, we are in a chirpy mood tonight,’ Macdonald murmured to Kershaw, as Fleming grinned and carried on.

‘Look.’ She swung the pan in an arc. ‘To get proper purchase on it, I would turn it over and my thumb would be here, on the underside of the handle. Which is exactly where the thumbprint was found – the thumbprint of Jason Williams from London who has previous. His fingerprints were all over the rooms in the cottage. He is also the man found dead this morning at the Balmoral Guest House.’

This time Fleming let the reaction go on for a little longer before calling them to order.

‘The bad news is, of course, that we can’t question him to find out what it was all about. We still don’t know who killed Crozier, or who killed Williams himself, and we’ve no idea of the motive behind any of these killings. So – don’t groan – we’re talking old-fashioned graft.

‘We know that Williams, calling himself Damien Gallagher, turned up at the campsite along with the earliest fans for the rave at Rosscarron House. We need every scrap of information we can get about him at that time, which means that everyone who was there has to be questioned again more specifically.

‘It would be useful to know where Williams has been since he left the campsite. Check out the hotels, guest houses and B & Bs. He could be calling himself Gallagher, Williams or even Lee Morrissey, though that’s less likely.

‘Sergeant Naismith will be tasking the teams, and my own team – MacNee, Macdonald, Campbell and Kershaw – will be following up on the family and others most directly involved.’ Fleming looked towards them. ‘My office, after this. Right – any questions?’

A hand was raised in the front row. ‘The female who was in the guest house lived in the cottage where Rencombe’s body was found, didn’t she? Has she identified Williams as her partner?’

‘Not as yet,’ Fleming said. ‘Anything else?’

A very careful reply, Kershaw thought, as Fleming dealt with a couple of other routine queries, then left the room.

‘I could have done without this tonight, I must say,’ she said to Macdonald with a grimace. ‘I’d planned to go and see my daughter before she goes to sleep.’

‘Your daughter? How do you think I feel? I have a hot date – well, I had a hot date.’

‘If she doesn’t understand about the job, it hasn’t got a future anyway.’ Kershaw was unsympathetic.

Macdonald looked alarmed. ‘Who said anything about the future? She’s not exactly the sort of girl you’d take home to Mum. The future I had in mind doesn’t stretch beyond tomorrow morning.’

He was texting gloomily as they went up the stairs to Fleming’s office.

 

‘We have to get Lisa Stewart to admit she was lying. That’s our first step,’ Fleming said.

MacNee, she was interested to note, was today sitting on one of the chairs by her desk. It was Macdonald who, coming in behind the others, found himself offered the edge of the table.

‘Shall I go and fetch another chair, boss?’ he had asked.

‘Just perch if you don’t mind, Andy,’ she said. ‘I don’t like getting the room too cluttered up with chairs.’

Fleming knew they thought it was odd that she was always one chair short, but she found it a useful indicator of the state of mind of her team. Deliberately choosing the table when a chair was vacant usually indicated detachment. Today, however, they were all interested and committed, and Macdonald looked quite irritated at being at one remove.

She went on, ‘I can’t see Lisa has any alternative. She can hardly claim not to have noticed someone whose prints were found all over her house. I’m open to suggestions here. I think I’m inclined to bring her in, do it formally, zap her with the evidence. The alternative would be to have Kim go to the hotel to talk to her there and see if she can persuade her to open up.’

‘Depends if she killed him or not.’ Campbell, uncharacteristic-ally, was the first to speak.

‘Killed Jason Williams, do you mean?’ Fleming asked.

‘Could be Crozier too. There or thereabouts each time.’

MacNee nodded. ‘Right enough. Bring her in – we tried having wee chats and where did it get us?’

‘I don’t agree.’

Predictably, Kershaw took up the opposite position and Fleming groaned inwardly. She really didn’t want to have to referee their silly squabbles, but it looked as if sooner or later she would have to.

Kershaw was saying, ‘I understand why Tam thinks that, and it could work better – I’m not saying it won’t. If I go and talk to her, though, and don’t get anywhere, we have a fall-back position but if we force her into a “helping with enquiries” position, there’s no way we can do the cosy-chat bit afterwards.’

That made sense, and Campbell and Macdonald were nodding. MacNee wasn’t. MacNee was scowling.

‘Looking for an opportunity to show that you can succeed where I failed?’ he said. ‘Well—’

Fleming cut him short. ‘Shut it, Tam. Right, Kim, you’ve convinced me. You have a go, and if nothing comes of it, we can move on to the formal stuff.

‘Now, I want to focus on what we know about links between our victims and the other people in the frame. Start with Lisa. Lisa knew Crozier, and she must have known Jason Williams – in her case, aka Lee Morrissey.’

‘Williams, Morrissey, Gallagher,’ Campbell interrupted. ‘I’ve just realised.’

Macdonald and Kershaw were there immediately. ‘Of course,’ Kershaw said, and then as MacNee looked from one to the other, Macdonald explained kindly, ‘All the surnames of stars from the world of popular music, Tam.’

‘So, as I was saying,’ Fleming said hastily, ‘Lisa has links with those two, but denies any with the other victim. Rencombe has links with the family, with Pilapil and with Hepburn, though not with Lisa. But Williams – I can’t find a link with either Rencombe or the family.’

‘Pop stars’ names as aliases? Music, that’s the common thread,’ MacNee said triumphantly. ‘Which means there’s someone else to think about whose name hasn’t really featured – Joss Hepburn.’ He looked very directly at Fleming.

With a sense of hurt, Fleming realised he was putting her on the spot. Punishment for having supported Kershaw? But she agreed coolly enough: ‘I certainly don’t trust him.’ She looked past MacNee to the others. ‘I knew him quite well many years ago, and I know what I’m talking about.’ She hurried on in the uncomfortable silence. ‘I think you’re probably right to say that’s how they all became involved. We need to press harder to find out the how, where, when – the standard questions.’

‘Maidie Buchan told me that Crozier met his business partners when they were in the army and formed a band,’ Kershaw offered. ‘It could be worth talking to Alick Buchan about that – he seems to have had quite a grudge against his boss.’

‘Right.’ Fleming thought for a moment. ‘Have you arranged for the identification of Rencombe’s body, Tam?’

‘Ryan and Hepburn, tomorrow morning.’

‘Good. Then afterwards you and Macdonald could see what you can do to rattle them.’

‘Maybe you should have a go at Hepburn,’ MacNee suggested, too innocently.

She didn’t even glance at him, saying flatly, ‘No – too much pressure on my time tomorrow already. Kim, talk to Lisa – do that on your own. You might get further with her one to one. And take time to read up the witness statements first. Ewan, go with her, and after she’s finished with Lisa, you can both go on to Rosscarron to interview Alick Buchan. He’s at the bottom of the suspect list after this latest development, but it might give us a new angle if we knew more about Crozier’s business interests – though if it’s all as dodgy as I think it is, that’ll be Fraud Squad business, not ours.

‘It’s getting late. We could go on discussing theories all night, but I’ve another couple of hours to do here and I’d like to get home before dawn. OK?’

Andy Macdonald took a quick look at his watch and was pulling out his mobile as they filed out.

Monday, 24 July

Lisa hadn’t slept as well on the lavender-scented linen as she had hoped she would. She had fallen straight into a deep sleep but woke, shuddering and gasping, from a nightmare in the early hours. And it was persistent: every time her heavy eyes closed it returned, in much the same form. It was dark and cold, with a chill rain falling, and she knew there was someone following her, following her so closely that she could even feel the breath on the back of her neck, though when she turned there was only empty darkness. But the breathing was still there, along with an overpowering sense of imminent disaster, and she would start awake again in a sweat of terror.

But the sun was actually shining this morning and there was a powerful shower in the little bathroom. She stood under it until she felt a bit more human, and as she went downstairs, she could smell bacon cooking.

Jan Forbes was in the cheerful dining room already and looked up with an expectant smile. Her heart sinking, Lisa realised that she would have to join her. She had always been shy, and at the moment her mind was too full of all the things she couldn’t say to welcome the idea of making conversation.

She needn’t have worried. Jan was happy to chatter on, with only a nod or a few words from Lisa to keep her going.

Two of the other tables were occupied by family groups: at one, middle-aged parents with a teenage daughter and son who looked as if they had been dragged out of bed unwillingly; at the other, a younger family with a girl of about five, a baby in a high chair and a toddler, who was squirming restlessly in her seat. At last, with an apologetic look around the room, the harassed young mother let her get down, with an admonition not to be a nuisance.

Watching her, Lisa’s face softened as the little blonde girl, wearing tiny jeans and a frilly pink top, trotted importantly around, taking a good look at the other occupants. When she got to Lisa, though, she stopped and gazed up at her.

‘Got dolly,’ she announced. She was holding a fabric doll, featureless from too much loving.

‘It’s a lovely dolly,’ Lisa said. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Dolly.’

Lisa caught the mother’s eye and smiled. ‘That’s a very good name for a dolly. Does she go to bed with you?’

The child nodded. Then she said hopefully, ‘Sto’y?’ and trotted across to fetch a book lying on her family’s table.

‘Rosie, you mustn’t bother the lady,’ her father said, but Lisa assured him she was unbothered, picked up the little girl and set her on her knee while she read a vapid tale about a rabbit. The soft, warm little body snuggled into her, and it was quite hard to keep her voice steady as she complied with two more ‘Again sto’y’ demands.

The family finished breakfast and Rosie’s mother came over. ‘Thank you so much! I don’t know how you can be so patient,’ she said, scooping up Rosie, who was now reluctant to be parted from her new friend.

‘I’ll see you later,’ Lisa promised, and Rosie waved over her mother’s shoulder as she was carried away.

Lisa looked down at her plate, knowing that her eyes were wet. Looking after small children was the only thing she had a gift for and she would never be able to do it again, never.

Jan had noticed, though. Her voice was very gentle as she said, ‘Children mean a lot to you, obviously.’

Lisa blinked hard. ‘They don’t lie, do they? Everyone else lies – oh, and they will too, when they get older, but before that, they’re so lovely.’ Then, to her horror, she heard herself saying, ‘I had a baby once, but he – he died.’

Jan reached out a hand to touch hers. ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry!’

Lisa hadn’t meant to say that. He’d only been days old when he died, that little helpless thing, and she’d gone back to school afterwards and never talked about it. And now she’d gone and blurted it out, to a woman she hardly knew, in a public dining room with the waitress coming to offer her more coffee. She mustn’t break down.

Lisa hardened her voice. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, then, ‘No, thank you,’ to the waitress. Saying, ‘I’ve got some things to sort out,’ she got up and left the dining room.

What was she to do? She’d known Jan Forbes was dangerous; what else might Lisa find herself giving away? She couldn’t just disappear when the police had told her to stay – and anyway, where would she go? She didn’t want to leave this quiet, ordinary place with these nice, normal people. And Rosie might want some more stories later on.

 

‘Wouldn’t mind staying here,’ Kim Kershaw said to Ewan Campbell, as he turned into the Rowantrees Hotel car park. ‘It all looks immaculate, and that’s a really great view out over Wigtown Bay.’

‘Mmm,’ Campbell said. He hadn’t said a lot else on the drive down, but Macdonald had warned Kershaw not to take it personally.

‘He doesn’t make conversation – only speaks when he’s actually got something to say. I just blether on, say whatever comes into my head, and it works all right.’

Kershaw had adopted Campbell’s attitude rather than Macdonald’s and had enjoyed the quiet drive, punctuated only by the standard radio messages. It was sunny too today, and though it might not last, at the moment the lush, vivid green of the fields and the singing blues of sky and sparkling sea were colours so fresh that they might have been invented that morning.

Leaving Campbell in the car, Kershaw went into the hotel. Susan Telford, if a little stiff in her manner, cooperated to the extent of offering their own private sitting room for the interview with Lisa Stewart, though she said warningly, ‘She’s very tired and shaken after all that’s happened, poor child. She’s been under a great deal of strain.’

‘I’m sure,’ Kershaw said noncommittally. She had every intention of going in hard, though she felt a certain misgiving when she saw how haggard Lisa was looking. Nevertheless she had a job to do, and lying to the police was a choice with consequences.

Susan hovered protectively for a moment, then left, saying, ‘I’m just next door if you need me, Lisa,’ clearly making sure that Kershaw knew she was within earshot of a cry for help if they started running needles under fingernails.

Lisa hadn’t spoken. She sat down, folded her hands in her lap and looked towards Kershaw with cold, expressionless eyes.

Kershaw didn’t waste time on preliminaries. ‘Lisa, you lied to us.’

‘Oh?’ She raised her brows.

‘You told us you didn’t recognise the body of the man found outside the guest house yesterday morning. We now know he was your partner. His fingerprints are all over your cottage, so unless you are going to tell us there was someone sharing your home whom you never noticed . . .’

She ignored Kershaw’s sarcastic tone. ‘You said it was someone called Damien Gallagher. My partner’s name was Lee Morrissey.’

Kershaw almost gasped at her effrontery. ‘But you saw the body!’

‘I didn’t want to look at it closely.’

Oh, she was good! Kershaw, however, had done her homework. ‘We have an eyewitness who describes it differently.’

In her most dramatic reaction so far, Lisa blinked. But she went on, ‘It may have looked like that. I was probably in shock. I thought at first it could have been Lee, but his head was . . . well, damaged, and when you said who it was, I thought I must be wrong.’

Kershaw had believed she held all the cards, but she wasn’t winning this round. ‘But you admit it was your partner?’

‘If you say so. I expect you’ll make me go to that place again to look at him.’

‘Perhaps. Did he come to the guest house to see you?’

‘If he did, I didn’t see him.’

‘It would be a bit of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t it? Especially since you sat up late in the sitting room after everyone else had gone to bed – almost as if you were waiting for someone.’

‘I – I wasn’t sleepy. I was reading magazines.’

The hesitation was a good sign. ‘But you heard nothing, saw nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

Kershaw shifted the ground. ‘There was a body found at your cottage too, Lisa. Just another coincidence?’

Lisa didn’t reply, only stared at her with those strange round eyes.

‘We have reason to believe that he was Alex Rencombe, Gillis Crozier’s lawyer. Did you know him?’

‘No. I told you.’

‘Did your partner know him?’

Lisa shrugged. ‘He might have, for all I know.’

‘The thing is, it looks as if your partner killed him. With a cast-iron frying pan.’

Bizarrely enough, that was what broke her calm. ‘Granny’s frying pan! But we didn’t use it – it just sat by the range. Kind of like decoration, you know?’

‘So your partner could just have picked it up from there on the spur of the moment?’

‘Yes, but Lee wasn’t there! He had gone. I saw him off. Maybe Lee met him at the car park and brought him back, to talk to him or something. How would I know? I’d gone out by then.’ Lisa was agitated now.

‘Did you? In that case,’ Kershaw said with deliberate malice, ‘Mr Rencombe would have been dead before you left the house. Was he, Lisa?’

‘No, no, of course he wasn’t!’ she cried frantically. ‘I’ve told you again and again, I never saw that man before in my life.’

Kershaw allowed a pause to develop. Then she said, ‘You see, Lisa, we can’t trust you. We both know you were lying about your partner, so why should I believe you now? But I tell you what. Let’s wipe the slate and start all over again. Did you know that was your partner when you saw the body yesterday?’

‘Yes.’ It was a whisper. ‘I knew it was Lee.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘Why do you think?’ That was a spark of anger. ‘Because I was afraid if you knew who he was you’d think it was something to do with me. And you have.’

‘And it wasn’t?’

‘No!’

‘You’re lying again.’ Kershaw’s tone was conversational. ‘Let’s go for another take. Was it something to do with you, Lisa?’

Lisa was shaking now. ‘Sort of.’

‘What was it about?’

‘I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘I got a text message from him, that was all. He said he had to see me about something important – he didn’t say what. And we arranged to meet in the garden round the back. Then . . .’ She stopped.

‘Go on, Lisa,’ Kershaw coaxed her. ‘You’re doing the right thing, I promise you.’

‘I went out at the time we said and – and he was – lying there. I – I didn’t know what to do.’

Next time, just call the police, Kershaw thought, but she said, ‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘No.’ Lisa stopped again. ‘But – but I thought I heard a noise, a rustle behind one of the bushes. I was really scared. I just ran back down the alleyway, into the house.’

Did she believe her? Kershaw wasn’t sure, but the formal, recorded interview would be the time to apply pressure. She went on to the next big question. ‘Mr Rencombe was apparently doing a job for Mr Crozier. So what was your partner’s connection with him?’

It was as if Crozier’s name had turned her to stone. Kershaw saw Lisa go physically rigid, and when she spoke again, it was in that cold, dispassionate voice. ‘I didn’t know he had one.’

Despite pushing every button she could think of, Kershaw couldn’t shift her. She had to leave it there, but going back to the evening of Williams’s death, she was able to tidy up some loose ends, and even came away with one particularly interesting piece of information.

Kershaw went back to the car and opened the door at the driver’s side. ‘Come on, out of there, Ewan. How do you fancy paddling?’

 

The identification this time was straightforward. Declan Ryan and Joss Hepburn confirmed that this was, indeed, Alex Rencombe and then, as agreed, were driven to the Galloway Constabulary Headquarters in Kirkluce and shown to a waiting room.

MacNee, when he appeared along with Macdonald, viewed them without enthusiasm. He had no doubt who had been given the plum interview to do this morning, and it wasn’t either of them.

‘Right,’ he said brusquely. ‘Who’s first?’

Hepburn, sitting back in a chair with his long legs stretched out, was all in black again today – black open-necked shirt, black expensive-looking jeans and a black leather jacket which, MacNee saw with resentment, was the soft, supple kind that cost thousands, unlike the one he was wearing himself, picked up at TK Maxx in Glasgow five years ago. Black made Hepburn seem taller than ever; MacNee didn’t like that either.

‘You go first, Declan,’ Hepburn said to his companion who, in pale chinos and a light grey zip-top sweater, looked somehow insignificant beside the other man and, MacNee noted with interest, nervous too. Maybe they might get somewhere this morning after all.

Hepburn, however, was saying, ‘I need to have a word with DI Fleming first. Perhaps that could be arranged before you talk to me?’

Macdonald glanced at MacNee. ‘I don’t think—’ he began, but MacNee cut across him.

‘Fine. I tell you what, you come with me and I’ll take you upstairs and see if she has time for a wee word with you.’

Macdonald registered alarm. ‘I really don’t think . . .’ but found he was addressing MacNee’s departing back.

Hepburn, following, turned at the door with a broad wink. ‘It’s all right – we’re old friends,’ he said.

As MacNee keyed in his security number, Hepburn said, ‘This is great – I thought I might have problems fixing this up.’

‘Aye,’ MacNee said, setting off at a brisk pace up the stairs, keeping a couple of steps ahead to gain height advantage: he hated being towered over. ‘I’m not guaranteeing anything, mind. She’s maybe busy, but it’s worth a shot.’

He knew he was heading for trouble. He was asking for it, almost as if looking for a legitimate reason for his present sense of grievance. Anyway, Fleming was letting the personal intrude on the professional, in his opinion. It should be her doing the interviews with him, not Macdonald. Her background knowledge of Hepburn might have given them some sort of edge. Even with all this rationalising, though, it was with belated misgivings that he knocked on Fleming’s door.

She was at her desk. ‘Tam! Come on in. I had something to ask you.’

He said, ‘Mr Hepburn needed a word with you,’ then stepped back to allow Hepburn to pass him.

‘I hope this isn’t inconvenient,’ he said, smiling at her.

Fleming looked at MacNee and he saw her look of hurt betrayal before it changed to one of glacial anger.

‘Since you’re here,’ she said to Hepburn, ‘I can spare you five minutes. You can go, Sergeant.’

Perhaps that hadn’t been such a good idea after all, MacNee reflected, as he went back downstairs. Fleming was dangerous when she was as angry as that, but what troubled him more was the thought of betrayal. Rabbie Burns had some hard words to say about traitors.

And he realised suddenly what Hepburn, in his ‘cool dude’ blacks had reminded him of: the bad guy in a western. He wondered uneasily how the gunfight was going.