Chapter 17

The house MacNee was looking for was one of half-a-dozen in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Wigtown. Duntruin Place had been cheaply built in the seventies; there were cracks now in some of the dreary beige pebble-dash walls and where plastic double-glazing hadn’t been installed the window-frames were rotting. There was one with a ‘For Sale’ sign which looked as if it had been standing empty for some considerable time.

    The Aitchesons’ house was well kept, though, and the small garden at the front had some kind of wee orange flowers – Tam was no gardener – on either side of the slab path. He pushed the bell beside the metal front door with its frosted glass panes and heard it chime.

    He wasn’t optimistic. This was a bad time for catching people in, and unless her injury had forced Euphemia into retirement – and certainly, with a name like that, she couldn’t be young – he’d probably have to call back later.

    But that was the sound of footsteps, and the door opened and he found himself looking at the burly figure of Brian Aitcheson.

    ‘Tam MacNee!’ he hailed him. ‘This is a surprise. Come away in, man – I’ve not set eyes on you these five years!’

    MacNee was taken aback. Aitcheson wasn’t an uncommon name in these parts, and with the assumption he’d made about Euphemia’s age, it had never occurred to him to connect her with Brian – in his fifties, retired from the Force a few years back. He’d never worked at the Kirkluce HQ, but MacNee had had dealings with him on occasion and found him a decent enough lad.

    ‘Good to see you again, Brian.’ MacNee shook hands and followed him inside. ‘It was really the wife I was wanting,’ he said, and saw the man’s shoulders stiffen.

    ‘She’s out cleaning. What were you wanting her for?’

    It suddenly came back to MacNee: Aitcheson had taken early retirement when his wife was caught shoplifting. Very embarrassing all round.

    He said hastily, ‘It’s about the attack on her during that robbery. You’ll have heard Keith Ingles has been charged with murder?’

    Relaxing visibly, Aitcheson led him through to the kitchen at the back of the house, an old-fashioned kitchen with beige Formica surfaces and oatmeal-coloured doors, clean and bare to the point of being uncomfortable. MacNee sat down at the matching Formica table while Aitcheson switched on the kettle and set out mugs.

    ‘Oh, we heard all right. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow.’

    ‘What happened that night, Brian?’ MacNee had read Euphemia’s statement, but it would be interesting to know her husband’s take on it.

    ‘Bastard all but killed her, that’s what. I tell you, if I’d not come in, he’d have finished her off.’

    ‘You saw him too?’

    Aitcheson shook his head. ‘Heard him leaving out the side door. I’d given herself a lift to the Yacht Club that evening – she usually went in the morning, but they’d had a hoolie the night before in Newton Stewart and she’d to clear up there. I was driving off when I saw she’d left her pinny, so I went back – lucky for her!

    ‘It was just a wee wooden building in those days, not posh like it is now. I went in the front and called to see where she was, but there was just that door slamming. I went in, Tam, and I tell you I damn near stepped on her – on the floor outside her cleaning cupboard, blood everywhere. Scared me out my wits – you can imagine.’

    ‘I can imagine.’ MacNee pictured Bunty lying in a pool of blood and felt sick. ‘So – so what was he like? Would you have said he was violent?’

    Aitcheson fished the teabags out of the mugs and brought them over, then fetched a milk carton, a bag of sugar and a couple of teaspoons.

    ‘Didn’t know the man myself, but he fairly had it in for Mrs A. Made all sorts of accusations – couldn’t prove one of them. All lies, of course,’ he hastened to add.

    ‘Of course.’ MacNee nodded gravely as he stirred his tea. ‘I’ll get a word with her later, maybe.’

    ‘It’s her night for the WRI – she’ll be going straight from her work, so you’d maybe be better to wait till tomorrow. It’s Friday, so she’ll be at the Laffertys’ for a couple of hours – Beach House, you know it? Biggest place on Drumbreck Bay?’

    ‘I can find it. But what are you at yourself these days, Brian? Dossing about?’

    ‘Hardly that! I’m on shifts – night watchman at the Drumbreck marina.’

    MacNee, who had been leaning back in his chair, sat up. ‘The marina? You’ll have heard about the boss, then?’

    ‘I’m not long out my bed. Which boss – bloody Lafferty or bloody Murdoch?’

    ‘They found Murdoch drowned this morning. Suspicious circumstances.’

    Aitcheson’s jaw dropped. ‘Murdoch – dead?’ Then he added, ‘Don’t know why I’m surprised, really. If ever a man had it coming to him, it was Murdoch.’

    ‘Someone had it in for him?’

    ‘Someone? I’ll tell you who didn’t have it in for him – that’ll be quicker.’

    ‘I have all the time in the world.’ MacNee settled back again as comfortably as he could in the flimsy chair.

 

‘Got a problem, old man?’

    Adrian McConnell jumped as the voice hailed him. A motor yacht, with a cargo of women, children and men showcasing varied interpretations of the nautical look, swept round in a curve and throttled back alongside.

    ‘No, no.’ He leaned forward to fiddle with the engine. ‘Cut out, that’s all.’ He turned the key and it obligingly caught. ‘That’s it now. Thanks all the same.’

    ‘My pleasure,’ called the man at the wheel, touched his hand to his white skipper’s cap, and roared away.

    Adrian looked down at the water again, foaming now in the wake of the motor yacht. The moment had passed.

    Feeling so weary that every bone in his body ached, he turned the boat and headed for the shore.

 

Fleming sat at her desk, her head in her hands. It was only six-thirty, but it had seemed a very long day.

    She was depressed as well as tired. She’d called the hospital from her mobile to get the latest on Angus’s condition, but the report wasn’t good. They still hadn’t got him stabilized; they were having to keep him mainly under sedation at the moment, the sister said, and suggested delicately that for his wife to come and see him at the moment might be distressing. With experience of psychiatric hospitals, Fleming had read between the lines: he would be being physically restrained, ill-shaven, unkempt – Angus, who had always had an almost military precision in his grooming – and the condition of his neighbours on the ward would be upsetting too.

    It hadn’t been easy to persuade Janet that she should leave it for a day or two until the news was a little better and she was stronger herself. When Marjory went in, she was in the sitting-room, dressed but looking egg-shell fragile, with the bruise on the side of her forehead now showing rainbow colours. She’d had a stream of people in to look after her all afternoon, she said, though Marjory wasn’t sure that having to make the effort to be sociable was the best thing for her.

    Janet brushed aside the notion that she should be in bed, though, and when her daughter sat down beside her, her first question was when they were going to see Angus; on being told that it wouldn’t be for a day or two yet, she burst into tears.

    Marjory had put her arms round her, of course, patting and soothing as she would have done with Cat or Cammie, but it felt unnatural, ineffectual. How could she comfort her mother, when comforting was a mother’s job? How could she console for a grief even she, in middle age, was still too young fully to understand?

    It was Janet who calmed herself down, found her hankie and tried to smile as she dabbed at her eyes. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to possess my soul in patience, won’t I? And maybe it’s all to the good if he’s getting a proper rest – he got awful trauchled, sometimes, you know, with the confusion in his mind.

    ‘And don’t you go fretting, dearie. We’ll get him home again when he’s more like his old self.’

    Sick at heart, Marjory had weakly agreed, lied about having had lunch, and allowed herself to be shooed away because she’d be needing to get finished up at her work and be away home to her man and the weans.

    So here she was at her desk, finishing up. Or at least, she ought to be, but there seemed to be so many aspects to these two investigations that she couldn’t sort them out. Was Tam right that they were linked? Or was Murdoch’s murder, as the strutting Sergeant Christie would have it, a drunken revenge attack? There was something about what he’d told her that was niggling at her, but every time she tried to focus on it, it seemed to slip away again and puzzling at it only made it worse.

    At least MacNee’s appearance at the door gave her an excuse for stopping. He seemed in high spirits.

    ‘Anything you want to know about Drumbreck, just ask. I’m the wee boy!’ he proclaimed, then, as she looked up wearily, he frowned. ‘Here – who’s stolen your scone? You’re looking about as cheerful as a wet weekend in Rothesay.’

    ‘Oh – long day, I suppose. And I’ve just been telling my mother that the news about Dad isn’t good.’

    ‘That’s a bummer.’ Tam sat down. ‘How is Janet?’

    ‘Looks as if she’d fall over if you breathed on her, but she’s doing her usual stoic bit. Chased me away after checking up to make sure I’d eaten.’

    ‘And had you?’

    ‘Well, not in that sense,’ Marjory admitted. ‘Not since breakfast.’

    ‘No wonder you’re looking so peely-wally. Come on, I’ll take you down the pub.’

    ‘I’ve stuff to do to be ready for tomorrow and I don’t want to be too late home, after being away.’

    ‘Canteen, then, even if you only take a sandwich.’

    She realized that she was, after all, very hungry and got up, sketching a salute. ‘Sir!’ She followed him downstairs.

    There were two people sitting in the big room, with at one end the canteen hatch with tables, and at the other some easy chairs and a TV, now broadcasting regional news. Jon Kingsley and Tansy Kerr were sitting watching at the same table, Fleming was glad to see; it looked as if the hostilities of the morning had been suspended at least.

    ‘That’s Drumbreck, look,’ Kingsley said as they came in.

    There were views of the marina, of a handful of people and of uniformed officers by the blue-and-white tape, followed by a shot of the burned-out shed.

    ‘A spate of vandalism in this quiet village has caused problems recently,’ an earnest young man was saying to camera, ‘and there is speculation that Niall Murdoch was killed during the arson attack which left this shed in ruins. A man is helping police with their inquiries.’

    Fleming, choosing a sandwich, turned. ‘That’s what was bothering me – of course! Christie was telling me he was fixing on a time between seven, when Murdoch phoned his wife, and nine, when the night watchman came on, but of course the shed wasn’t torched as early as that. If it’s the vandal he’s fingering, he’d have to be considering a much later time.’

    ‘Around midnight, according to the night watchman,’ MacNee, at the hatch, said over his shoulder. ‘Bridie and beans, thanks, Sally. Turns out he’s Euphemia Aitcheson’s husband, Brian – used to be in the Force, maybe you remember? Didn’t see a thing – quiet night, till the fire broke out, he said.

    ‘But I reckon we’re needing to take a wider look at it anyway. According to Brian, if you fancied taking out Murdoch you’d be told to form an orderly queue. His partner, Ronnie Lafferty—’

    Fleming and Kerr chorused in unison, ‘Oh, him!’

    MacNee looked surprised, and Fleming explained that the man himself was probably even now upstairs awaiting release on an undertaking to appear.

    ‘Serious bad news, Lafferty is. After what Brian said I gave a pal in Glasgow a call, and he says the man’s got some very nasty wee chums.’

    Kerr pitched in her account of the row between Lafferty and Murdoch, and the rumour of Murdoch’s affair with Lafferty’s wife.

    MacNee agreed. ‘Brian talked about that too. Said Murdoch was a brave man – that’s brave, like, stupid. He didn’t say so, but he seemed a wee thing embarrassed and if you ask me he’s been reporting to Lafferty about Gina’s activities.’

    ‘And the horse-faced woman I talked to said that Ingles had known stuff about Lafferty and tried to keep him out of the club,’ Kerr said.

    Fleming listened to it all, frowning. ‘You know,’ she said slowly at last, ‘it all does seem to keep coming back to the Ingles thing. We’ll need to keep a very open mind about this.

    ‘Incidentally, the pathologist says he drowned. The blow on the head, with something small and round and heavy, knocked him out, but he was alive when he hit the water. So there’ll be an argument there for the lawyers when we get our man.’

    ‘There’s always an argument for the lawyers,’ Tam said bitterly.

    Kingsley had been uncharacteristically quiet. Now he said, awkwardly, ‘Look, I just want to say sorry. I’ve apologized to Tansy for things I said this morning, and I know we screwed up. I’ve talked to Greg and he still thinks Ingles is guilty. I think he may be, but with this other killing – well, I’m scared we got it wrong. Listening just now, I had an idea  . . .’

    He hesitated.

    ‘Always ready to listen to ideas,’ Fleming said lightly.

    ‘We know Murdoch was still alive at seven. He must have been dead by the time of the fire, or surely he’d have come rushing. And why wasn’t he going home for supper? If we knew where he was, who he was with, that might tell us something.’

    ‘I bet the night watchman takes a break from time to time,’ Kerr said shrewdly. ‘And anyway, the body was out at the end of the pontoons and everyone in the place has a boat. If he was there to watch for vandals he wouldn’t look out to sea.’

    ‘All good points. There’s a lot to consider.’ Fleming got up. ‘I’m going back to finish up. I’d appreciate reports as soon as you can, and Tansy, I’d be grateful if you could chase up Christie if his doesn’t arrive tomorrow. Briefing in the morning.’

    As she went to the door, she turned to Kingsley. ‘I’ll detail you to do interviews in Drumbreck tomorrow,’ she said. ‘But just don’t make any sudden movements.’

    He grinned. ‘Thanks, boss.’ Then he added, ‘And if you see Laura, could you tell her I’m being a good boy?’

    ‘Laura? Oh – yes, if it comes up.’ Fleming left, with MacNee following her. She had forgotten all about Kingsley’s meeting with Laura at the dog trials, and this wasn’t entirely welcome news.

    She did try to make her voice as neutral as possible as she said to MacNee, ‘Are they an item, then?’

    ‘Not that I know of,’ MacNee said sourly. ‘Laura’s far too good for the likes of him.’

    ‘Laura’s too good for most people, but we mustn’t be selfish. He’s a bright lad – homed in on the question of where Niall was at suppertime.’

    MacNee sniffed. ‘Still wouldn’t let him or Allan anywhere near the Ingles case.’

    ‘I know, Tam. There’s always a temptation to want to be right, especially when it’s your career at stake, but at least for once he’s prepared to admit he’s been wrong.’ She laughed. ‘Laura’s influence, maybe.’

    But it wasn’t a happy thought. How could she, in future, talk to Laura as freely and confidentially as she always had done, when it would mean asking her to keep secrets from someone she was involved with?

 

Gina Lafferty heard the front door close with such a resounding bang that she winced, half-expecting it to be followed by the sound of its glass panel crashing to the floor. Ronnie had returned.

    Ronnie storming in could hardly be called a novelty, but this, from the sound of it, was going to be the kind of storm where you were advised to put up the shutters and leave town. She shivered. Ronnie’s rages were indiscriminate: you could be caught up just by being in the wrong place. Stay calm, stay calm, she told herself.

    She was opening the sitting-room door when he bellowed, ‘Gina! Oh – there you are. You heard? You heard what they did – to me?’

    She took a step back as he pushed past her, heading for the built-in cocktail cabinet. Taking a water tumbler, he filled it to the brim with Scotch. She noticed, inconsequentially, that the missing silver box had magically reappeared on its shelf.

    Ronnie’s face was a murky purple, an unhealthy colour. It crossed her mind to suggest he call a doctor – but why? It would only provoke him further, and anyway, what was wrong with being a wealthy widow?

    ‘Yes. Tony phoned and told me.’ Tony was Ronnie’s ‘fixer’ in Glasgow, the man whose job it was to see that things like this didn’t happen.

    From the torrent of obscenities which followed, she gathered that the Fixer of the Year title was unlikely to be coming Tony’s way. ‘I managed to put in a call, told him to see to it they dropped all charges, there and then.’ Ronnie gulped at his whisky, sat down, then got up again to pace the room; he stopped in front of the fireplace. ‘Told him to get Beltrami on to them – he’s a top Glasgow lawyer, knows the score – and all the moron could say was that the busies have six hours to do as they like first. Nazis, the police in this country – Nazis!

    ‘So surprise, surprise – they charged me – they sodding charged me!’

    ‘Tony said you’d get a slap on the wrist, that’s all,’ she offered soothingly.

    This had much the same effect as pouring oil into a blazing chip-pan. ‘A slap on the wrist!’ he yelled, smashing the glass in his hand down so hard on the marble mantelpiece that it broke. Whisky poured out along the surface, dripping on to the pale carpet, and shards of crystal fell to shatter on the hearth. He didn’t even glance down. ‘A slap on the wrist? Has the man gone doolally? Do you know what a “slap on the wrist” means? It means a criminal conviction. It means fingerprints and DNA on file. That’s what it means.’

    He glanced down impatiently at the debris at his feet, then walked back to the drinks cupboard to fetch another Scotch. He turned, his bullfrog eyes hot and red, glaring at her. ‘Well? Say something!’

    Frozen in uncertainty, Gina’s mind raced through responses. ‘Why does that matter?’ was out, as was, ‘Why did you throw your weight around in the first place, then?’ Her last attempt at calming him down had been disastrous; get it wrong, and the next whisky glass could break in her face.

    She changed the subject. ‘They’re asking questions about Niall’s death.’

    ‘Never!’ he sneered, but at least he hadn’t flared up again.

    ‘And you should know this.’ Gina edged backwards, nearer to the door, just in case. ‘I met Shirley Clark, shopping in Wigtown this afternoon. She’s told the police that you and Niall had a flaming row in the club last week. She said that it had been her duty to inform them. I think she enjoyed telling me that.’ She held her breath.

    He wasn’t going to hit her. He went very quiet, alarmingly quiet. ‘She did, did she?’ The hand that wasn’t clasped round the glass tightened into a fist, then slowly relaxed again. ‘I don’t like busybodies. Tell her that from me next time you see her.

    ‘And naturally, when the black bastards turn up here, asking questions, we can be totally open with them, can’t we, babe? I was with you all last night, and you were with me.’

    ‘Yes,’ Gina said. ‘Yes, of course.’

 

Jenna Murdoch made herself another cup of coffee. She’d lost count of how many cups she’d had today; probably enough to ensure that she wouldn’t sleep, despite having been up most of last night.

    She didn’t particularly want coffee, but it was something to do. Unless you were prostrate with grief, it was hard to know how to pass the time. After the police left, there had been the visits from neighbours, of course: people who had barely spoken to her in a year had come to her door to express their shock and sympathy, some using the fig-leaf of a ready-meal from their own freezers to cover their naked curiosity.

    It still left a lot of hours to be got through. There was plenty of work needing done in the flat upstairs but it wouldn’t do, exactly, for such a recent widow to appear with a paintbrush in her hand. And TV entertainment seemed callous when your husband was lying, presumably, on a mortuary slab. Jenna would, they had told her, be required to go and identify him tomorrow. She didn’t want to dwell on that. She’d picked up a book, but her thoughts kept drifting.

    At least the dog hadn’t burned to death. The investigators had been quite definite: either the fire-raiser had taken pity and let it go, or in its panic it had managed to slip its collar and bolt. She wondered what had happened to the poor thing – living rough somewhere, presumably. She hoped, in a general sort of way, that someone would find it and give it a good home.

    It was odd that Mirren hadn’t been more concerned about that. She’d told her, of course, when she heard the good news from the police, but the child’s reaction had been as muted as her reaction to the news of its horrible death had been in the first place. But then, shock affected people in very strange ways.

    And there had been a lot for Mirren to cope with today. She had lost her father; whatever their recent relationship might have been, that would knock any child off balance. The thing was, though, she couldn’t see any sign of it. Mirren had gone about everything quite calmly, watching the police activity, appearing at mealtimes to eat with good appetite. She had been silent, certainly, making only the briefest replies to Jenna’s anxious inquiries, but that wasn’t unusual.

    There had always been a curious detachment about Mirren. She had been her own, self-contained person from the time she was old enough to free herself from an unwanted embrace and toddle away to something which interested her more. She was passionate about animals, of course; had her father’s ill-treatment of the dog destroyed all the normal affection you would expect a daughter to have?

    Children were, in any case, less developed emotionally than adults liked to think. Oh, everything being well, they responded to love and tenderness by returning it. But there were enough cases in the newspapers, when you thought about it, to show that when things went wrong, there was something in children, some instinct for self-preservation, perhaps, which allowed them to be astonishingly callous.

    So perhaps Mirren, receiving so little affection from her father, had shut down her own response. It was logical enough; Jenna could perfectly understand it. Whether, in later years, Mirren would be lying on a couch somewhere, paying to have herself unscrambled, was a whole other question.

    It was more her reaction to the dog that baffled her mother. Perhaps the fury and despair Jenna would have expected had only been postponed, but Mirren hadn’t gone blank, hadn’t seemed anything other than – well, normal. After supper just now she’d asked if she could go and play computer games, which seemed fair enough. They couldn’t sit at the table staring at each other all evening.

    Her coffee was cooling. She sipped it, pulled a face, and had just got up to pour it away when she heard her daughter’s hurrying feet. She hadn’t played games for long, then – and when Mirren opened the door it was clear she was in distress. She was trying to conceal it, though, sniffing hard, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.

    It was almost a relief that the backlash had started. Jenna came towards her. ‘Mirren, dear—’

    ‘Can I go out?’

    Jenna glanced at the window, the lights inside making it a black square. ‘It’ll be dark soon! Of course not. Why do you want to go out anyway?’

    The tears fell faster. ‘It’s Moss,’ she wailed. ‘He’s out there somewhere. He must be lost and frightened. Something could happen to him – he might be run over, anything! I have to find him.’

    Her mother was bewildered. ‘Yes, I know. I told you he must have run away. The police know that too, and they’ll have been looking out for him. He’ll be miles away by now, probably. There wouldn’t be any point.’

    Mirren went to the door. ‘But he knows me! He could be hiding somewhere, afraid to come out. If I called he’d come, I know he would.’ She wrenched it open and ran out. Jenna could hear her calling, ‘Moss! Moss!’

    She hurried after her and caught her arm. ‘I tell you what. We’ll walk round together, along the bay, and then back the other way along the road for a bit, and you can call him. If he doesn’t come, we’ll see about putting up a notice and offering a reward tomorrow. All right?’

    Mirren barely seemed to hear her mother. Shaking herself free, still sobbing, she trotted down the road. ‘Moss! Moss! Oh, Moss!’

 

Marjory Fleming parked her car in the yard and got out, arching her aching back, glad to have reached the end of the long day. It wasn’t dark yet, quite: it was a fine, mild evening and the landscape was still bathed in the soft gloaming light as the sun slowly took its leave. The first star, low in the sky, was just visible and as usual she walked across to look out over the quiet hills, taking a deep breath of the cool air. Below her in the orchard, under the pink and white blossom on the trees, a few of the hens were still enjoying their freedom before darkness brought danger.

    The lights were on in the Stevensons’ cottage. It looks pretty, Marjory told herself. The fact that Susie could be at one of those windows, watching her now with ill-wishing eyes, was no reason for not relaxing, enjoying this precious, peaceful moment at the end of the day.

    And it didn’t spoil it, not really. The silence could still calm her mind; she stood a little longer before, with a deep sigh, she turned away, fetched her case from the car and went inside.

    ‘Bill!’ she called as she came out of the mud-room, but got no response, and when she opened the kitchen door, there was only Cat, sitting in the broken-springed armchair beside the Aga reading a book with a cover whose colour could only be described as fluffy pink.

    She looked up. ‘Oh, hi, Mum! Did you have a good time?’

    ‘Not quite how I’d put it.’ Marjory set down the case and went over to drop a kiss on the top of her daughter’s head. ‘But the bathroom in the hotel was sensational.

    ‘Where’s Dad?’

    ‘He and Fin went out with the dogs – some rambler phoned to say there was a sheep on its back in a burn.’ She went back to her book.

    ‘Where’s Cammie?’

    ‘Weight-lifting, need you ask?’

    ‘Well, he might have been doing press-ups. Better than doing nothing except playing computer games, anyway.’

    Marjory picked up the pile of mail on the dresser – catalogues and bills – then put it down again, and looked round the kitchen for indications as to what might have happened while she was away. The most obvious of these – apart from a number of pans ‘soaking’ in the sink – was a home-made chocolate cake, with thick icing, sitting on the kitchen table. Or, to be more precise, what was left of a chocolate cake; the raggedness of the remains suggested that Cammie had been allowed a free rein with a blunt knife.

    ‘Where did this come from?’ Marjory asked.

    With an almost audible plop, Cat detached her eyes from the page. ‘Oh – that was Susie. She brought it across when she heard you were away.’

    ‘That was nice of her,’ Marjory said, neutrally, she hoped, but her daughter wasn’t fooled. Cat’s eyes narrowed.

    ‘She said she was afraid you wouldn’t like it, but it was a shame we should miss out all the time because you were always too busy to do fun family things, like baking.’ Her voice had a reproachful note and Marjory, too tired to be sensible, reacted.

    ‘Oh, did she? Well, as a matter of fact some of us don’t think that baking cakes is vital to a happy family. There’s nothing wrong with the kind you can buy – and at least they don’t put the icing on with a trowel.’

    She knew it was childish, and Cat, as she put down her book and came over, had a long-suffering look on her face. ‘Look, Mum, Susie told me that you and she had a row. But she’d had really, like, a hard time with losing the farm? And of course having to live in the cottage, with you going, “I’m not going to forget about it” all the time—’

    There was a tone in her voice which reminded Marjory of one of her schoolteachers who had never delivered a rebuke without making it a sermon. And Cat was continuing.

    ‘You’re always saying to us “Can’t bear grudges, let bygones be bygones, have to understand the other person’s point of view,” right? So why don’t you do that? Susie’s nice, she could be a good friend if you let her—’

    Something snapped. ‘You know absolutely nothing about it! And when I need lessons in social conduct from my daughter, I’ll ask for them.’

    The crusading light in Cat’s eyes died. ‘Fine,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I was only trying to help.’ She picked up her book and walked to the door. ‘And you can shut up your stupid hens yourself.’

    ‘Cat – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

    The only response was the slamming of the door. Marjory sank miserably into the chair her daughter had vacated. Was she the worst mother in the world? Had her own mother ever said to her something she would have given anything to take back a moment later? Marjory couldn’t remember it, if she had. Probably not; her mother, like Bill, was a saint. She was surrounded by frigging saints, and it got trying, sometimes. Perhaps that was why she had got on so well with Chris Carter, who had no aspirations towards beatification.

    Susie Stevenson certainly was no saint. Susie was – but there was no point in letting this latest underhand attack get to her, and the hens needed shutting in.

    She was in the orchard when Bill, with Meg at his heels, came across the yard and spotted her. He leaned on the dry-stone dyke and called down to her.

    ‘Good to see you home, love. Tough day?’

    ‘You could say.’ But at the sight of him, her spirits lifted; it was a gift he had. ‘I won’t be a minute – just one chookie with suicidal leanings to round up, then I’m with you.’

    ‘Thought Cat was meant to be doing that. Anyway, I’ll get out the Bladnoch, shall I?’

    ‘Oh, what a good idea!’

    He laughed at her heartfelt tone, then disappeared. Marjory shooed the last hen safely home, then stuck her head into the henhouse to make sure they were all accounted for. Some were roosting already, some crooning drowsily, and she smiled as she bolted the door. Oh, Susie or no Susie, it was good to be home.

    There was a light on in one of the steadings as she went back across the yard and she could see Fin putting some rope away. His younger dog was trotting round him; the new one was lying on the threshold, watching.

    He was, as Bill had said, very like Moss, though Moss had had a white blaze on his nose, while this dog’s muzzle was black. But he had the same wide head, and one prick ear—

    Marjory stopped, a dreadful suspicion forming. Without attracting Fin’s attention, she altered her course to pass close behind the dog. ‘Moss!’ she said softly and the dog’s head immediately swivelled, eying her suspiciously. She walked away.

    Bill had put the lamps on in the sitting-room, which meant that the dust didn’t show, and with the summer fire screen concealing the ashes in the grate the room looked welcoming, even if Meg was making a loud silent protest about the lack of a fire. And the whisky Bill was holding out to her – that did look good. Marjory took the tumbler and sat down.

    ‘Bill,’ she said unhappily, ‘tell me about Fin’s new dog.’

    Bill, filling his own glass, didn’t turn. ‘Oh, Flossie! Shaping up very well.’

    ‘Flossie. Or Floss, as I expect he calls it when it’s working, Flossie being rather an odd name for a male dog.’

    He turned with the guilty expression of a schoolboy who knows rules have been broken but blames the rules not the perpetrator.

    ‘Look, I know he may have kidnapped the animal, but I’ve played along. I know it probably legally belongs to Murdoch, since I know Fin’s too short of money to buy it back. But you saw yourself what Murdoch had done to Moss; the man’s not fit to own a dog. And Fin told me a couple of days ago that Murdoch was going to have it destroyed if he didn’t get the money.

    ‘I know you have to uphold the law – of course you do – but can’t you just turn a blind eye? No one else knows it’s here. I bet the police don’t waste too much time on prosecuting people who remove unwanted stuff from skips, do they?’

    For the second time since she came home this evening, Marjory felt like an outsider. ‘No, of course we don’t,’ she managed to say levelly. ‘Have you watched the news this evening, Bill?’

    He looked at her sharply. ‘No. Did I miss something?’

    ‘Only that Niall Murdoch has been murdered. Fin is on a charge already for having attacked him, the shed where Moss was being kept has been burned down and Moss – curiously enough – seems to have disappeared.’

    Marjory took a certain bitter satisfaction in his stricken look. He sat down heavily in the chair opposite.

    ‘You’re not saying—’

    ‘No, of course I’m not!’ she said impatiently. ‘I’m not making any assumptions of any kind. This is the very start of a murder inquiry. There are, quite literally, thousands of questions to be asked. There are other suspects – one of whom is even now “helping with inquiries”, though I’m not convinced.

    ‘But perhaps you’ll understand if I say that I can’t treat this in quite the same way as if Fin had helped himself to a suite of wicker furniture for his conservatory.’

    Bill’s head was bent over his glass. ‘No. No, I see that.’

    She let a silence develop. It was a family joke that Bill’s mind, like the mills of God, ground slowly, but the finely processed result was often worth waiting for.

    This time, what he said was, ‘I understand what you feel you must do. But Marjory, please – can I ask that you aren’t the person to question him? It probably isn’t realistic to hope it can be presented in such a way that they don’t realize where the information came from, but if you could at least be distanced from it in some way . . . otherwise things here will become intolerable.’

    Marjory felt as if he had slapped her. Her voice was icy as she said, ‘I don’t normally go out on preliminary inquiries myself anyway. But you’re making it sound as if, because he’s living on my doorstep, I should somehow feel guilty because he’s a suspect in a murder inquiry. Of course the position is intolerable. It’s been intolerable all along, only you haven’t noticed.’ Her eyes were stinging as she took a gulp of whisky.

    ‘Of course I’ve noticed!’ Bill was impatient in his turn. ‘Susie’s a devious besom. I found her having a very cosy chat with Cat, which I didn’t think was at all healthy. There’s nothing I’d like better than to see Fin with a better job and them both off the premises. But I like the man, and he’s someone who’s had a very hard time that looks as if it’s about to get even worse.

    ‘Can I ask you – do you really think he’s a murderer? Honestly?’

    She wasn’t going to cry. ‘No, I don’t think he is. But whether I do or not, it doesn’t matter. I have a job to do – and there are times when it feels a bloody lonely job.’ She drained her glass and got up. ‘I’m sorry, I’m very tired. I’m going to bed. I’ll do my best to take a back seat on this, but I think you’ll find I’ll be blamed anyway. See you upstairs.’

    ‘Marjory—’

    She shut the door. No one understood the job, did they, except other cops – the hard, painful, demanding, isolating job which was, even so, the only one she had ever wanted to do.