2007 - The Dead Pool (21 page)

But Morag was shaking her head, and squirming in the bed, almost kicking the sheets off. ‘I don’t want to be incarcerated
anywhere
ever again. I couldn’t stand it. Can you imagine what it’s like? No freedom, your every move watched, controlled. I want to go
home
. While I’ve still got one, that is.
Iwon’t be locked up!
’

Kirstin offered her the water again, hoping that any displacement activity would be a welcome distraction. It was. With relief she watched as, biddably, Morag took the plastic beaker from her and drank greedily, suddenly calm again.

She smiled. ‘You know, Kirstin, it was you…you and Bonnie who saved my life, one way or another. It’s funny. Last night wasn’t like when I was in prison. I planned that one down to the last. Checked out the sink and the plumbing, assured myself that the strips of clothing would be strong enough to strangle me. But…but yesterday, it was like I was some sort of automaton, sleepwalking through it all. Detached and, again, strangely numb, unfeeling. Certainly, I knew what I was doing. I didn’t take the pills you gave me. After you and Bonnie had gone I unearthed my secret stash. I even found time to write to you, believing that this was the end. But I didn’t take enough. And…and Dr Lockhart left me with this thought last night, and I think she’s right. Some part of me must have wanted to live. Otherwise, why didn’t I take the whole lot?’

She stopped, breaking her gaze from Kirstin and looking into the middle distance. The vulnerability was back. ‘The fact that I want to go home, be in my garden, see the trees, even the river again. That must be a good sign. A sign that I prefer life, any sort of life, over oblivion.’ Kirstin offered her a sympathetic half smile before Morag continued. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough for helping me. And I’ll never,
ever
be able to thank Jamie, except through you. I hope we can become friends, you and I. Somehow I think Jamie would approve, don’t you?’

Kirstin smiled her agreement, feeling the tears welling up. ‘Of course I do. And…maybe we need to start thinking about your new beginning, eh? Time I made a few phone calls, checked out the possibilities.’

That brought a matching smile from Morag. ‘Definitely. You know, I’ve always loved the sea.’

Kirstin felt the lurch in her stomach. Now was the time. There could be no escaping the moment. She leant forward, offering another reassuring squeeze to Morag’s hand.

‘Morag? I need to tell y—’

Suddenly, the curtain was drawn back and the friendly nurse from earlier popped her head round.

‘Ms Rutherford, can I have a word?

Kirstin moved into the middle of the ward as the nurse pulled the curtain across.

‘Morag’s therapist is here. Dr Mackeson. She wants to see you.’

A surprisingly young woman, dressed in jeans and casual shirt, stepped forward. She was slightly out of breath and unsmiling, her face grave as she offered her hand. ‘I’m Liz Mackeson. I got your message and have literally run round from visiting another patient. Tell me. About Bonnie Campbell. Have you told Morag?’

Kirstin shook her head. ‘No. But it’ll have to be done.’

Dr Mackeson laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, leave this to me. Are you going to be okay? I’ll call you later, if I may?’

With that, she stepped away and made for Morag’s bed. Kirstin stood, marooned in the middle of the busy ward, and then turned on her heel. It was as she shouldered her way through the swing doors that she heard it.

Morag’s agonized animal wail.

K
irstin reached across Jamie’s desk to switch on the lamp and paused, taking a final look through the bay windows down to the river. The rest of the day had left her tired and downcast. Dr Mackeson had rung. Morag had been persuaded to enter the clinic’s residential unit, just for a day or two. There they could help her deal with Bonnie’s death. As for Bonnie, the local news had eventually turned its attention to the fire. The reports had been scanty: a tragic accident probably caused by candles. They told of an incident the previous year, when the fire service had been called to Bonnie’s address to deal with curtains that had caught alight, again from candle flames. So that was that, then. A life snuffed out through carelessness.

After Dr Mackeson’s call, Kirstin had spent much of the afternoon in the garden, desperate for some space. She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to feel. She just wanted to relax. But she’d ended up falling asleep, dozing fitfully and unsatisfyingly. The study was nearly in darkness now. She remembered popping her head into this room countless times throughout her marriage to Ross. Cosy in winter, with a glowing hearth to sit by, watching the flames. Or, like now, enjoying a warm summer evening, the windows thrown open, sipping wine, listening to the sounds of nocturnal creatures emerging to face the night.

She clicked on the desk lamp, immediately extinguishing her view of the river, and looked around the familiar room. It was conventionally furnished for a man of Jamie’s age and background: all leather and wood panelling but with lighter, personal touches. Photos of Ross from boy to man, images of Jean throughout the years, and more recent additions of Jamie as a river volunteer and guide. She wondered who had taken those. Glen?

As she bent to start sorting the papers piled on the desk, the sound of a car horn from the front of the house made her jump. Ross was expected, but not yet. She trotted down the hallway and opened the front door. She recognized Glen’s Land Rover, its full-beam headlights momentarily dazzling her, and walked over to meet him as he cut the engine.

He gave a jaunty wave through the driver’s open window. ‘Thought you might like some company. I was passing and wondered if you fancied a bite out? I’ve been trying to call you all day. Your phone down?’

She stood at the driver’s door, looking up at him. Finding a smile of any sort was hard. ‘I’ve had it switched off. I’m very tired. Look, I’ve got a lot to do tonight. I need to settle myself in here. Start on Jamie’s papers. Ross reckons the whole clear-out should take me a few days. Oh, and by the way, I imagine there’ll be river association material that you want to have back.’

He’d leant out of the window to smile down at her. For a moment, she thought he was going to touch her face.

‘Eh…anything that you think relates to the association, just leave to one side. I can pick it up whenever. But, are you sure you’re up to the job? I mean, it might be a bit difficult. Upsetting. Ross should have asked me to go through it. I can come over again tonight, no matter how late…’

He leant further down to her, his hand dangling. Should she take it?

‘And I’d like to apologize. Properly. I shocked myself by lashing out at Sutherland. I’ve been thinking about little else since it happened. I used to be a bit of a hard nut, a real scrapper in my youth. But violence is so far from my life now. I guess I have a lot of underlying resentment and frustration towards him. The whole lot of them, in fact. One way or another they’d made my life, and Jamie’s, hell. Anyway, if you want me tonight, I’m here.’

She shook her head. ‘Thank you. Really. But not tonight. Ross will be here soon. He’s coming round to show me exactly what’s to be done.’ Then she’d remembered. ‘And…speaking of Ross…he told me that you knew each other. When you were kids? You didn’t mention it.’

He moved back into the driver’s cab and for a second she couldn’t see his face. Then she heard his laugh as he leant forward, smiling. ‘What? Oh, that. Well, we hardly knew each other. We inhabited rather different worlds, Ross and I, socially speaking. Me and my lot were, not quite from the wrong side of the tracks, but…eh, we thought everyone who lived round Ross’s part of the river were the posh lot. I guess they were, actually. I remember we had a fight once, me and Ross. But I was only staying nearby for a very short time. My parents rented a cottage for a while. Funnily enough, the one Bonnie Campbell lived in. It was a kind of stopgap when my dad was between jobs. Then we moved away.’

He leant backwards into the Land Rover again and started the engine, talking over its noise. ‘That was one of the main reasons I wanted this job. To be near the river I remembered from my childhood. Look, I’ll let you get on. Take care. I’ll miss you.’

Kirstin raised her hand in farewell and wandered back dirough the house into the study. She sipped at her wine, surveying the endless piles of paper and notebooks on the desk and floor, alongside various cardboard boxes marked in Ross’s scrawl, ‘Dad’s river work’. She readied herself for work, but Glen’s visit stayed in her mind. He had been too good to be true after all. Now she knew at least one of his faults.
Please let that be the worst
.

But, as she bent over Jamie’s desk, ready for her task, the niggling doubts refused to melt away.

S
he’d
still not
made a start on Jamie’s study. Instead, for the last hour, she’d allowed herself to be waylaid by some photos of Jamie, taken early last summer before the awful events at the Cauldron. Glen had given them to her, along with Jamie’s baseball cap, during their first evening together. The memory of that recent generosity lifted her doubtful mood, and she felt more optimistic about him again.

She heard a car door slam. Ross.

‘Kirstin!’

She scrabbled to hide the photos under a pile of papers.
Shit
. She should keep them in the car, away from Ross’s prying eyes. The last thing she wanted was him asking any questions. Where are they from? Who gave them to you? She certainly wasn’t up for anything tonight. Just a quick guide through Jamie’s study and what had to be done.

Ten minutes later, they were sitting looking out at the darkened garden and river. Ross had picked up on her downcast mood and they’d abandoned the work in the study to open a welcome second bottle of wine.

He was being genuinely sympathetic. ‘The thing is, Kirsty, I’m sorry to hear Morag Ramsay’s taken an overdose, but she’s clearly a very troubled woman. Leave her to the professionals. There’s nothing you can do.’

She shook her head at him. ‘I don’t agree. I’m going to be her voluntary helper, carer, if you like, for the next week or two. Until her therapist gets back from the States. I’m also going to ask my friends on the Devon coast if they can help her out with work. She’s going to relocate somewhere. Why not the south-west? It’s beautiful, and far enough away from here.’ She paused before making her final point hit home. ‘Your dad would have approved.’

Without warning, he stood up. The action was abrupt, unexpected. She stared up at him. ‘Ross?’

He walked the length of the room in silence and then returned to sit down again, his hand raised in appeasement. ‘I want you to hear me out on something. Please.’

He looked at her for consent. She gave an almost imperceptible nod and began to feel the tug of anxiety.

Ross seemed relieved. ‘Good. Okay.’ He took a deep breath before going on. ‘When Dad began to get what I considered to be over-involved with Morag Ramsay, her case and all that, I wanted to do something. I was worried about him for a number of reasons that we both know about. But this murder, or rather manslaughter, thing was just about the limit.’

He broke off to refill their wine glasses. Kirstin sensed he was reluctant to go on. ‘To be frank, I didn’t trust this woman. Look, I’m no naive fool. I know the police get things wrong and their investigation of the Cauldron killings was a joke, by all accounts. On the other hand, they’d looked at all the victims’ contacts and eventually locked on to her. It wasn’t some arbitrary decision on their part. I’m sure they thought they had the right person. I gave all this careful thought as I witnessed Dad being sucked further into it. And, I was suspicious. In short, I thought Morag Ramsay might be using Dad. So I began my own investigation into her.’

Kirstin felt her stomach muscles tighten. Where the hell was this conversation going? What d’you mean, ‘investigation’?’

‘I
mean
, I wanted to know a bit more about the woman whom my elderly father was going out on a limb for. As it happens, I didn’t get very far. He died soon after visiting her on remand and…I had other things to think about then.’

Kirstin saw the hint of tears in his eyes. ‘But what did you do, what did you find out, before that?’

He brushed a hand down his face, as if tired, trying to hide his real emotion. ‘I went to see someone you should meet. I have an old law school acquaintance. Harry Kinnaird. He’s a corporate lawyer at the pharmaceutical firm that Craig Irvine worked for. Harry and Craig became friends. Saw a lot of each other socially. Until Morag Ramsay put a stop to that.’ Ross paused. He was finding it difficult to go on.

Kirstin prompted him. ‘Meaning?’

‘I mean, Harry tells a tale of an excessively jealous, unstable woman, who would fly off the handle at Craig with disturbing regularity. Break stuff up in the house and she certainly hit him on more than one occasion. In short, she was a bit of a bunny-boiler.’ Ross held up both hands. ‘Yes, you can say this was maybe just lads’ pub talk, slagging off women. But Harry’s not like that. I know he spoke to the police, he was so concerned after the killings. I would have got Dad to go and see him. Maybe that would have changed his mind. But…but he died before I could arrange that. I think you should go and see Harry, though. Please. I don’t want you…to be…adversely affected through being too kind to this woman. Yes, she may be innocent. Who knows? But I think you should find out more about her before you offer too much of yourself to her cause. I’m serious, Kirstin.’

He held out a pleading hand. ‘Let me put it another way. As a favour to me, will you please go and see him? Tomorrow.’

T
he east end of Princes Street gardens, down the slope from the Scott monument, was surprisingly quiet. The main throngs of tourists were elsewhere and it was still too early for the gangs of office workers, desperate to catch some lunchtime sunshine. Kirstin sat on a shaded bench, staring blankly at a couple of feuding pigeons ten feet away.

Harry Kinnaird had sounded surprisingly personable on the phone. She’d wanted to dislike him. Giving her prejudices free rein, she had him down as insufferable and arrogant, like all overpaid corporate, lawyers. But he’d seemed far from that. Rather, he’d been quietly spoken with a warmth to his voice.