Cold in the Earth (19 page)

‘I know. Speaking of which, I’d better get back to my desk. Thanks, Donald.’ She got up and he rose too and went to hold the door open for her in his old-fashioned way.

‘A final piece of advice,’ he said. ‘As SIO your primary task is coordinating and directing. And budgeting too, of course – our masters never let us forget that.

‘Your detectives are your eyes and ears on an investigation. It’s your job to be their brain.’

‘Will you tell them or shall I?’ Marjory’s response had been flippant but she took the advice to heart. She couldn’t waste her time flat-footing it around, but had to be sure of getting every scrap of relevant information from interviews, without being inundated with details about the witness’s mother’s maiden name. She’d called a briefing meeting for later this morning when she would spell it out and by then she hoped to have Max Mason’s identification of his mother’s pendant to give the direction of the enquiry some immediate legitimacy. Unless, of course, like most men he never noticed anything a woman was wearing.

DNA tests were the next step; she was just making a note to get one set up for Max Mason when MacNee came in and the whole thing went pear-shaped.

Fleming listened in stunned silence as MacNee recounted the morning’s events.

‘So then Max comes in just as the wifie’s taking Laura upstairs for a lie-down and she tells him what’s happened and then we have him going doolally too,’ he finished. ‘I tell you, it fair takes it out of you.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought yesterday there was something else about that girl being there besides the research, something she wasn’t mentioning. From what she said it sounded as if she and Max were an item but the way she reacted to him didn’t back that up.

‘Did you find out what the sister was doing at Chapelton?’

‘It was kinda vague. He said she was a Girl Friday or something for a few months, but we couldn’t question either of them, with Harvey looking as if she’d collapse again any minute and him glaring at us as if it was all our fault. We’d have had complaints of police brutality before you could say
skean dhu
.’

‘So it’s probably nothing to do with the mother’s disappearance at all. And what does that say about our chief suspect? There’s no more reason for it to be Jake than it is for it to be Max or Conrad, or anyone else who might have been around at the time, if it’s not his wife.’

‘Unless,’ MacNee volunteered helpfully, ‘she’s there too.’

Fleming stared at him in horror. ‘Oh, God. Serial murderer – that’s all we need. We’ll have to dig up the whole field, won’t we?’

‘Maybe she’s got family who know where she is.’

‘If she has we’d better find them right away before we blow the budget looking for non-existent bodies. Get the Press on to it – they love being offered a cloak of social responsibility as a cover for the usual muck-raking.’

‘Right, boss. I’m on my way.’

‘The girl.’ Fleming was tapping her teeth thoughtfully with a pen. ‘How soon is she going to be fit? If we could just get a DNA sample from her today and compare it to one from the body we could have the results within twenty-four hours – forty-eight at worst. It wouldn’t have to be anything fancy – they’d have enough material to run the standard test.’

‘I’ll find out. She’ll be as anxious as anyone to move things along. We’d better leave interviewing her till tomorrow though.’

‘Bring her in here. Nicely, of course, using your unique brand of persuasion – and I don’t mean the Glasgow Kiss.’

MacNee gave his gap-tooth grin, making a head-butting gesture. ‘You’re just a wee spoilsport, so you are.’

‘I want to sit in on this one,’ Fleming said more seriously. ‘I need to get a handle on the case. She was pretty economical with the truth when we spoke to her and I want to see to it we get the whole story this time. She’s a psychotherapist – she must have known what she was doing.’

MacNee snorted. ‘I think you’re reaching, there. Most of the ones I’ve come across have been raving nutters.’

She smiled. ‘Well – you know my views. Thanks, Tam.’

When he had gone she went back to her computer, highlighted all she’d written this morning and pressed delete. She’d have to start again from scratch with notes for the conference. And she’d have to see Conrad Mason.

If the victim was a young woman, that put both Mason cousins squarely in the frame along with Jake. She wanted to tell Conrad herself before he went to see his mother at the Glen Inn and heard what had happened; seeing a reaction was always useful. She was picking up the phone to arrange it when she remembered – Bill!

She’d tried to phone him yesterday to tell him what was going on and do her best to make her peace but she hadn’t got through and then with the demands of the day she’d forgotten about it until she was leaving the office at half-past eleven and it was much too late.

She dialled the number but when he answered he sounded totally unlike himself. For a moment she wondered if she’d got a wrong number.

‘Bill? Bill, is that you? Are you all right?’

Marjory heard him sigh. ‘They’re coming today. There’s nothing wrong with the sheep, nothing at all. But they’ve got it over at Windyedge and their boundary touches ours. So they’re going to kill dozens of healthy animals. And there’s nothing I can do to stop them.’

He spoke in a flat monotone, as if showing any emotion at all would make him fall apart.

‘Oh, Bill,’ she faltered. ‘That’s – that’s awful!’

‘Yes.’

She didn’t know what to say. What could she say – and what use were words, anyway? She should be beside him, to hold him, to give him the strength to cry if that was what he needed to do. ‘When will they let me back home?’ she asked.

‘Well . . .’ The heaviness in his voice lifted slightly. ‘You could come back now, Marjory. It doesn’t matter if you bring in infection – the poor beasts are doomed anyway. You’d have to stay until they gave you the all-clear, but it wouldn’t be more than two, three days maybe. They could spare you that long—’

She closed her eyes in despair. How could she tell him? And what would it do to their marriage, when she did?

‘Bill, you probably haven’t heard, but yesterday they found a body buried at Chapelton. It’s a murder enquiry and I’m Senior Investigating Officer. There’s no way I can get leave at the moment.’

His silence was long and eloquent. Then he said, ‘No. Of course not. Fine.’

‘Oh, darling—’

‘By the way, I’m sorry—’

Marjory wouldn’t let him finish. ‘About the other day? I should be apologising. I can’t think what made me put the phone down like that. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’ He sounded cold, indifferent. ‘I’m apologising because I forgot to shut up the hens last night and the fox got them. Sorry.’ The line went dead.

Her precious chookies! Marjory buried her face in her hands. She had seen before the wholesale slaughter which was the fox’s sickening trademark. It was all the more obscene because somehow there was something so innocent about hens, their squawking silliness and their crooning contentment, their simple needs and petty squabbles, and the thought of such savagery made her feel physically sick.

Her own happy, loving, secure and yes, in its way, innocent home life had been savaged too, by dislocation and misunderstanding and tragedy and cruel, ugly death.

And she still had a murder investigation to conduct and a briefing meeting in half an hour, and Conrad Mason to see before that. She swallowed hard, squared her shoulders and went back to her computer.

DS Mason had managed not to lose his temper yesterday when she had told him her decision, but only just. Today he looked completely self-possessed, upbeat, even, as he came into DI Fleming’s office. She suspected it was because he thought she had summoned him to put him back on duty; how, she wondered grimly, would he take the news not only of indefinite leave but the shortening of the odds on him in the suspect stakes? Well, she could only hit him with it and find out.

‘Sit down, Conrad. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news about your return to active duty.’

She saw his brow darken but when he leaned forward in his chair it was to make a sweetly reasonable appeal. ‘Look, you must see that this is ridiculous. We’re badly under strength at the moment and here I am going stir-crazy sitting in someone’s front room. Of course I can see I couldn’t have anything to do with investigating my aunt’s murder, but—’

‘It seems that it probably isn’t your aunt. We’re working at the moment on the likelihood that the body is that of Diana Warwick who was, I understand, employed for a time at Chapelton some years ago.’

Watching him closely, Fleming tried to read the flickers of reaction crossing his face. Shock, certainly, but that could be for all sorts of reasons. Alarm? Perhaps. Then he bowed his head, which could be emotion but could also be the calculation of an experienced interrogator who knew how easy it was for your expression to give you away.

When he looked up his face was blank. ‘Diana Warwick,’ he said soberly. ‘Di. I remember her quite clearly – she had the sort of personality you wouldn’t forget. Oddly enough, her sister’s staying at the Glen Inn at the moment – did you know that?’

‘She identified a necklace found with the body as being her sister’s.’

‘I see. Yes.’ He wasn’t about to elaborate.

Fleming glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got a meeting in five minutes. I’ll get someone to take a proper statement from you – everything you can remember, you know the form. And don’t decide to go and top up your sun-tan in the meantime.’

She tried to deliver the prohibition lightly but he had no illusions as to its implication. ‘I’m a major suspect for this one, inevitably. A real suspect, not just a theoretical one.’ He looked up to meet her eyes squarely. ‘I didn’t do it, of course.’

‘Can you think of anyone who would have had reason to?’

‘My mother!’ He gave a sharp crack of laughter, then added hastily, ‘I didn’t mean that. It was a joke. It’s just she was the only one who famously didn’t get on with Di. To be honest, my mother doesn’t really get on well with anyone.’

‘Why Di particularly?’

‘Oh, mostly house stuff. Di was a decent enough cook but she wasn’t so hot on the cleaning side. My mother doesn’t like to lift a finger but she has high standards and a Victorian attitude to staff. Di would give as good as she got when Mother yelled at her, which was
lèse-majesté
or something. And then of course . . .’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t want this to sound as if I’m boasting or anything, but Di did have a bit of a crush on me at the time and Mother’s always been very possessive.’

Recognising false modesty, Fleming made a non-committal sound. He went on hastily, ‘But we’re not really talking a motive for murder here. Anyway, you’ve met my mother – can you see her out in a field in the dead of night digging a shallow grave?’

Certainly, it conjured up an interesting picture. Fleming glanced again at her watch; she had to leave it there.

As she went along the corridors to her meeting, she tried to sort out her immediate impressions.

The news had undoubtedly shaken him, but that was to be expected. He had been almost immediately on his guard; again, any policeman would not be slow to understand what was at stake and she’d seen evidence before of a strong element of calculation in Conrad Mason’s make-up, except when he lost his temper.

That stuff about his mother – what was that about? She’d asked him what he would certainly recognise as a very standard ‘whodunit’ question; had he reckoned that turning it aside with a preposterous suggestion was a good way of playing for time while you considered who you could most plausibly finger to further your own interests?

Always supposing you were guilty, of course. Fleming found that she had no difficulty with that concept. But then, his cousin Max – there was something about him that rang wholly false too. This one could run and run.

12

Laura Harvey’s eyelids were thick and heavy, her nose was red and swollen and her eyes so sticky with tears that this time cold water had little effect. She had wept through the hours of darkness, as if the death of the sister she had still in her heart believed was alive had released grief for other deaths, insufficiently mourned: the death of her father, her mother, her marriage, her career. Her life.

The police had talked about counselling, had suggested that the ineffectual young policewoman who had taken down Laura’s statement should stay with her, but she had refused both offers. She didn’t want professional hand-holding, although later, alone in her room when she’d managed to get rid of Max, she had tried to think of someone she could talk to who would not be embarrassed by her extreme distress. Her friends in London? New York? There wasn’t one who wouldn’t be bewildered, lacking the explanations she was too distraught to give. Since her marriage ended, she couldn’t think of a single person with whom she had shared her innermost thoughts and fears.

You didn’t need a training in psychology to realise that it was unhealthy to have, among a host of pleasant acquaintances, not even one close friend, especially when you had no home or family. If she had been looking at her own case professionally, she would have concluded that the obsessive nature of her hunt for Dizzy had been less about finding the sister she hardly knew than about attempting to establish some focal point in the desolate emptiness of her life.

It was a weary night. She found herself longing for dawn with the atavistic instinct which associates a lightening sky with a lightening of sorrow or pain, and drew back her curtains hopefully, but the winter sun rises late in Scotland. It was only just up when there was a tap on the door and Lisa Thomson appeared with a tea-tray.

She looked at Laura’s ravaged face with sympathy but said only, ‘Here’s a wee cuppie for you. And you’d maybe like your breakfast up here? It’s not awful comfortable in the lounge anyway and there’s policemen all over the dining-room.’