Farrell caught up with Mhairi as she reached the car, breathing heavily. He hadn’t left his hiding place, until the person watching Mhairi had drawn the curtains.
‘Steady on, sir, you’ll have a heart attack,’ she scolded.
‘Wait until you hear what I’ve got to tell you,’ he puffed, opening the car door. Mhairi got in and they pulled out of the car park heading back to Dumfries.
‘In your own time,’ she grinned.
‘Penelope Spence and Paul Moretti are one and the same.’
Mhairi’s shock mirrored his own.
‘What? You can’t be serious?’
‘Oh, but I am. I saw her walking up the hill to Ivy House. She’d a hat on with a scarf wrapped round her face and it was dark, but then at the gate, she pulled it off and I got a clear view. Think about it, the painting of Hugo, the women’s underwear in the cottage, her slight build and height?’
‘All this time, she’s been running around right under our noses,’ said Mhairi.
‘We’ve been chasing a ghost all along.’
‘But why on earth has she created this other identity? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I think it makes perfect sense,’ said Farrell. ‘Remember those canvasses signed by Aaron Sewell? I’ve always wondered how that lot up at Ivy House manage to live the way they do. She muttered something about an inheritance, but I reckon if we scratch the surface that’ll turn out to be another whopper. Basically, she supports them by getting her hands dirty and being a grubby commercial artist,’ said Farrell.
‘Hell, if I could paint like that I’d be shouting it from the rooftops, not trying to hide it,’ said Mhairi.
‘There’s a lot of snobbery within the art world. She’d be despised by her peers for selling out and painting for the masses. Ridiculous really, but there you have it. Hugo would have a complete fit and no mistake,’ said Farrell.
‘And being a forger is somehow better?’
‘Perhaps in his mind it is. I think it panders to his ego, as well as boosts the coffers. How did you fare this evening?’
‘Patrick helped me get inside Hugo’s studio and bedroom. I got everything I could, but it was a close shave at the end.’
‘Patrick helped you? You told him?’
‘I did what I had to do to get the job done,’ she said, looking her boss square in the eye. ‘My instinct tells me he’s not involved with any of it.’
‘As long as you’re sure …?’
‘Completely. I took digital images of all the canvasses and work I could see in Hugo’s studio. I haven’t a clue what images I’ve got there, as I was working so fast I didn’t have time to process what I was seeing. I found his sketches of the missing Turner painting in a folder under the bed. I didn’t see anything sadistic though, nothing similar to the foal pictures. That would have jumped out at me.’
‘I don’t like Hugo Mortimer for the murder of Ailish,’ said Farrell. ‘I could see him being implicated in Monro Stevenson’s death, if he was threatening to blow the whistle on the whole forging operation or trying to disengage from it. But the murder of Ailish and those paintings of that animal are a whole other layer of evil.’
‘You’d think you would instinctively sense that you were in the presence of a psychopath, wouldn’t you?’ said Mhairi. ‘Like the primitive part of your brain should recognize evil and warn you somehow?’
‘Would that it were that easy? Real evil often hides behind the most affable of facades. Psychopaths can learn to mimic social norms.’
‘As if I wasn’t creeped out enough already,’ said Mhairi.
They drove the rest of the way in silence, each preoccupied with their own thoughts. Mhairi kept going over Patrick’s parting words to her about immortalizing her on canvas. He had been involved with Ailish right up until she disappeared. Could he have followed her after she stormed out and killed her in a fit of rage? If so, then maybe that tipped him over the edge and he tried to make sense of it all by turning her into a work of art? A way to render Ailish immortal in his eyes? She’d been so sure that he was innocent. Was she still?
‘Would you like to come in for a coffee?’ asked Mhairi as they turned into Primrose Street.
‘Just a quick one, then,’ said Farrell. It was going to be a long day tomorrow, so he didn’t want to be home late.
Once in her flat, he had to wait while Oscar was placated. Farrell wandered into the tiny but cosy kitchen and stuck the kettle on.
Mhairi arrived to take over a couple of minutes later.
Sitting on the couch, he took a sip of her offering and pulled a face.
‘What on earth is this?’
‘Camomile tea,’ she said with a smirk. ‘I reckoned if we both had coffee, we’d be pinging off the walls all night.’
She uploaded the images from her phone on to her work laptop and sat beside Farrell on the couch, so they could go through them. As she had previously indicated, there were no grisly ones whatsoever, which tended to back up their theory that Hugo wasn’t involved in Ailish’s murder.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Farrell. ‘Let’s see that ink drawing again. Does it remind you of anyone?’
Mhairi studied it closely. It was a tasteful nude of a young woman. Her expression was inscrutable. She started to shake her head, but paused.
‘She does look familiar. I feel like I’ve seen her before.’
‘You have,’ said Farrell. ‘It’s Nancy Quinn, Monro Stevenson’s girlfriend.’
‘But that makes no sense,’ said Mhairi. ‘They hadn’t been going out long. She completely denied knowing anyone from Ivy House, past or present, when she was interviewed.’
‘There’s more. Find that image of Hugo Mortimer that Paul Moretti, sorry, Penelope Spence, painted.’
‘Do I have to? It’s totally gross. He’s not exactly Daniel Craig.’
She pulled up the image.
‘Now look at it side by side with the ink drawing of Nancy Quinn. Concentrate on their faces,’ said Farrell.
‘Like I’d want to concentrate on anything else,’ muttered Mhairi. ‘Oh wait a minute …’
‘What do you see?’
‘She has his nose and eyes. Is it possible they could be related? God, my head is spinning at the implications. I mean, would you paint your daughter naked? Euch, don’t even answer that!’
‘It’s possible (a) they might not in fact be related (b) he might not know they are related (c) she might not know they are related or (d) neither might know they are related,’ said Farrell, ticking the options off on his fingers one by one.
‘I don’t buy “d” for an instant,’ said Mhairi.
‘Me neither. My money is on her having tracked him down. There’s no way to guess at her motives.’
‘This is going to send Penelope Spence into a meltdown if she ever finds out,’ said Mhairi.
‘Agreed. First thing in the morning can you write up a full report on your work tonight? DS Byers can action what information in it he can, while the rest of us head out to Kirkcudbright to support DC Thomson and try and crack open at least one of these damn cases.’
‘What should we do about Nancy Quinn?’ asked Mhairi.
‘Ask Byers to arrange to keep tabs on her informally. I don’t want her brought in until tomorrow’s op is safely concluded, in case she’s in cahoots with them.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Farrell, shifting in his seat.
‘Sophie Richardson was sniffing around The Smuggler’s. She appears to have become privy to some information about Poppy Black’s murder.’
‘How? The official line is that we’re treating it as an accidental death.’
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mhairi. I’m afraid that you’re the source of the leak.’
Stung, she jumped to her feet.
‘How can you say that? I would never …’
‘Ian is a journalist,’ said Farrell. ‘It’s true that he’s on a sabbatical to write a novel, but Moira Sharkey said that he’s been feeding Sophie Richardson information for a price. She, in turn, has a source in Sophie Richardson’s camp, which is how she found out.’
Mhairi sat down heavily.
‘I didn’t say a thing to him about work. I wouldn’t. I do remember one night I fell asleep in bed reading the preliminary post-mortem report on Poppy Black. He could have read it when he came through. How could he? I trusted him!’
‘I’m sorry, Mhairi. Her source did say that he’d followed you to Kirkcudbright one night and saw you with another man.’
‘Patrick Rafferty,’ she sighed.
‘Maybe that’s what made him decide to do this.’
‘I don’t care what his reasons were,’ she snapped. ‘I never want to see him again. I’m so sorry, Frank. I’ll talk to the Super in the morning.’
‘No one else needs to know,’ he said. ‘If I were you, I’d simply chalk it up to experience.’
She let him out, then slumped on the couch, still reeling. Picking up her phone she sent Ian a final text. Then deleted his number and blocked him. It was done. She’d been wrong about Ian. Could she have been wrong about Patrick too?