The journey to St Andrews did not take long. In distance terms it is separated from Dundee by just a dozen miles. Culturally, and in practically every other way, the two towns could be on different planets. The home of golf and Scotland’s most ancient university is everything the city on the opposite side of the River Tay isn’t. Life is gentle and genteel. Women still use bicycles to go shopping, filling baskets on their handlebars with small pots of expensive marmalade and baguettes. Their menfolk potter in neat gardens, cutting hedges that are already too short and trimming lawns where weeds dare not grow. Sometimes man and wife come together in the family conservatory to struggle with the crossword puzzle in a quality newspaper. It is not the kind of town that ticks any of the deprivation boxes or is ever likely to have one of Britain’s largest bingo parlours.
Campbell McBride had not visited the place for over a decade but he marvelled at how little had changed. The office of the St Andrews Citizen was still in Greyfriars Gardens, in the middle of a mixed row of houses and other properties, squeezed between a coffee house and a charity shop. Only the window full of photographs marked it out as the headquarters of the town’s news organ and not another estate agent.
McBride knew without checking that at least one of their reporters would have been on the staff at the time of Ginny Williams’ murder. Two kinds of journalists work on small-town weeklies, ambitious trainees starting out and long-serving veterans who have settled for a secure, if poorly paid, existence in a place where they like to live. It was one of the latter who came from the back shop to the counter to answer the bell that rung above the door when McBride entered.
The journo was mid-forties and was dressed in a checked shirt with the sleeves turned back and dark-coloured chinos. His muscular arms were mahogany brown and McBride remembered the Citizen also attracted people who took the job because cheap golf on one of the world’s finest courses was a perk.
Douglas Wilson was undoubtedly such a man and, judging by the depth of his tan, he was probably a single handicapper. He bade his caller a cautious welcome. ‘Morning,’ he said, managing to make the word sound helpful and hostile at the same time. It was the traditional greeting of all newsmen, who start out by assuming that every stranger either wants a favour or is there to complain. Few people seek out reporters to be of assistance, unless they also desire money in return.
McBride knew the quickest way to remove the suspicion was to immediately identify himself as a fellow scribe. It opened doors at once. The Citizen’s deputy editor visibly relaxed, pushed the door to the back room and nodded for McBride to go through. Inside the cluttered office, the four desks were unoccupied, which explained why the paper’s second-top man was answering the bell.
They exchanged the usual routine small-talk pleasantries for a few minutes until McBride decided it was time to lie. ‘Actually, I’m having a bit of a sabbatical up here but, to help keep the wolf from the door, I’m knocking off the odd travel feature and the like,’ he said, almost convincing himself. ‘I recall hearing about a female from Australia – or maybe it was New Zealand – who was killed a little while back and was thinking I could do a potboiler on it for one of the Sundays Down Under. You know what they’re like out there – anything to do with Prince William and the home of golf goes down a treat, especially if you work it in with a murder. They’re all ex-convicts after all!’
Wilson appeared to accept McBride’s reason for calling. He gave something that passed for a laugh. ‘Tell me about it!’ he replied. ‘We’ve been flogging the story off and on since it happened. We’re just keeping our fingers crossed they don’t get the bastard responsible so we can keep churning it out.’
McBride laughed sardonically in return. ‘So, what can you tell me about it all? I’m looking for the stuff you couldn’t print. Was there any kind of suspect, for instance?’
For the next twenty minutes, the man with the strong brown arms gave chapter and verse on the life and death of Ginny Williams. He was so familiar with the circumstances of both that he never once referred to the files or clippings.
When he had finished, McBride said simply, ‘So, who killed her?’
‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,’ Wilson replied. ‘The general reckoning is that she had a boyfriend of some kind who had called round, shagged her and then strangled her. But God knows why. There doesn’t seem to have been any kind of motive, unless they’d fallen out about something. It certainly seems to have been someone she knew. The sex was consensual – you know, no sign of a forced entry – and nothing seemed to have been stolen from her house.’
McBride finally asked the question that had been on his lips since their conversation began. ‘What did he strangle her with? The police kept that back as usual,’ he asked, trying to sound only partially interested in the answer.
Wilson shrugged. ‘I don’t know for sure but, from what we heard on the grapevine, it seems he used a belt. Christ knows if it was the one off his trousers. That would have made it a bit tricky if he’d had to do a runner!’ This time Wilson laughed from his belly.
McBride barely took the joke in. The revelation that the Kiwi had died with a belt round her throat and not a tie took him aback. It was not what he had expected to hear.
‘A belt? Funny thing to use,’ he said, as much to himself as Wilson.
‘Why?’ Wilson responded at once. ‘By all accounts, she was a bit of a belter!’ He was enjoying himself now.
McBride ploughed on. ‘What about the DNA? Anything ever come back on that apart from it not being Prince William’s?’
Wilson chortled again. ‘That was a cracking turn up, eh? “Heir to Throne Tested in Murder Inquiry” and all that. Great stuff. But no, they tested half of the male population. Even a lot of the cops came forward to donate their samples but there wasn’t a single lead that we heard of. Not too surprising, I suppose. She was an upper-crust kind of bird and, if her murderous friend was the same, it’s not too likely that he’ll have found his way on to a database. No doubt he’s crapping himself that one day he might.’
They spoke for another ten minutes or so. When it was clear Wilson had run out of theories and gags, McBride, profusely offering his thanks, made to leave.
They went back through to the front counter and shook hands. ‘Be careful what you write, though,’ Douglas Wilson said absently. ‘Ginny Williams’ old man is – or was – a cop in New Zealand. He’ll shit on you from a great height if you make her out to be some kind of tart.’
From the Citizen office, McBride headed the Mondeo away from the town centre, steering an anxious course between the endless procession of golfers and tourists who pack St Andrews for most of the year. There were even some students, foreign ones mainly, who had stayed on rather than gone home for the holiday. Miraculously avoiding hitting any of them and only having to sound his horn at a dithering motorist once, he arrived, less than five minutes later, outside the house Ginny Williams had occupied at Clay Braes. He was not sure what he had expected to find – it had just seemed important to view the place where she had spent her last moments on earth.
As a murder scene, it was about as sinister as a kindergarten. He could just imagine the small garden in summertime, when it would be filled with brightly coloured bedding plants. The centrepiece on the postage-stamp lawn was a wooden bird table where two chaffinches were taking turns to extract nuts from a string bag. A stone path led from the street to the white-painted door. At the rear of the house, a privet hedge enclosed another garden about the same size as the one at the front. It was just as meticulously cared for and looked like it would be very productive in the vegetable department. McBride surveyed the bare earth and wondered what crop had been harvested from it in the summer and autumn months. It was a fruitless train of thought – with his limited knowledge of gardening, he was never going to cause Alan Titchmarsh to lose much sleep.
As he peered over the hedge towards what he imagined was the bedroom of the house, McBride became aware of a movement at the window of the house immediately next door, on the right. A middle-aged woman, who looked like she was one of those with a shopping bike, gazed unashamedly back at him. He smiled and did his best to nod in a friendly fashion. She gave no indication that she had seen either of his greetings but continued to stare back at him. McBride reasoned that there was probably very little she would not have known about the movements of Ginny Williams while she had lived in the neighbouring house. He entered the garden of the woman, pointlessly ringing her bell as she was already opening the door.
McBride smiled once more, this time endeavouring to appear relaxed but purposeful. ‘Good morning,’ he said in his best official voice. ‘My name’s McBride – I wonder if you can be of assistance to us.’ He used the plural pronoun to indicate he was on a joint mission. ‘It’s about Ginny Williams. Terrible business – but we’re still making enquiries.’ He hoped the scowling woman defensively holding the door open by only a foot would assume the ‘we’ meant the police.
She looked steadily back at him, her face expressionless. ‘You’re not the police,’ she said flatly. ‘Policemen wear ties. Who are you? What do you want?’
He tried to sound reassuring. ‘No, no – press.’ He pulled his National Union of Journalists card, with the photograph that made him look like a mortuary attendant, from his wallet and held it up towards her. ‘We haven’t given up on it either. Like everybody else we want to see someone caught for this. Maybe you can help?’
She said nothing but the door eased open by another six inches.
‘Were you at home when this awful business happened?’
The woman nodded.
‘Did you know any of her friends?’
She nodded again.
‘Were any of them there that night?’
This time she shook her head but also spoke, all suspicion leaving her. ‘She had quite a few friends. Nice people, like her – not yobs. They always waved to me or spoke if I was in the garden. None of them would have harmed her in any way.’
McBride inclined his head in agreement. ‘No, of course not. But was there anyone … not her sort … who was hanging around or looking suspicious?’
‘Not that I noticed. I didn’t see anyone arriving but, when I was in bed, I heard the back door closing late on. By the time I got to the window, whoever it was had vanished. It was dark anyway and late.’
‘How late?’
‘Eight minutes before midnight.’
‘Did you hear anything before that – shouting or loud noises of any kind?’
‘Not a cheep – Ginny was very nice, very quiet. She read a lot and used her computer all the time. She studied hard but always had time to speak to me. There was never any trouble.’
McBride chose his next words carefully. ‘Would anyone have got into her house without you seeing – you know, if you happened to be in the garden or at the window?’
She did not take any offence at indirectly being accused of being a busybody. ‘No – unless I was at the front and they came in the back way. If it was after dark and they used the rear path, practically no one would see a person arriving – or leaving.’
McBride had one other thing to ask. ‘Did Ginny have a boyfriend?’
The woman seemed surprised at the question. ‘Not in that way.’ She was almost indignant. ‘Well, not that I knew of – and she would have told me, I’m sure.’
McBride tried to soothe her as he departed. ‘Of course,’ he said gently. ‘You’ve been extremely helpful. Thank you so much.’
As he turned to leave, she suddenly became anxious. ‘I hope you’re not going to put any of this in the paper,’ she said, her voice brimming with apprehension. ‘We’re very private here. We mind our own business, keep ourselves to ourselves. You understand?’
‘Yes, yes. Don’t worry, nothing will appear. This was just between you and me.’
His fellow conspirator gave a relieved smile and retreated into the house. As he walked back down the short garden path, he knew without turning that she would be standing at the window watching.
Like most car journeys, McBride’s return trip through Fife was an opportunity for contemplation and he used the time to idly replay the two conversations he’d had in the tranquil university town. They hadn’t been the most productive, he reflected, but they had reopened a window on a serene way of life that he had almost forgotten existed. He smiled at his memory of the next-door neighbour in Clay Braes. She counted herself as someone who ‘kept herself to herself’ but still had a perfect mental chronicle of every movement Ginny Williams ever made. Douglas Wilson, the chunky golfing journalist, would have been astounded to learn that he probably represented the dream of half the scribes in London – only one deadline a week and the biggest problem in life being whether to go home for lunch or spend the time on the golf practice ground.
McBride remembered Wilson’s parting words to him and smiled once more at the warning he’d been given – ‘He’ll shit on you from a great height …’ Then he recalled what was said to be the occupation of the man who might carry out the arterial defecation – ‘a cop in New Zealand’. A cop? Just like the father of Alison Brown? McBride swore quietly. How did he miss that first time round? Much more importantly, was that coincidence or an essential part of the selection process?