Cold in the Earth (35 page)

Fleming listened to her account, torn between fascination and disbelief. ‘But what on earth would provoke something like that?’

‘Frustration? Anger, perhaps, in a context of personal instability?’

‘Thinking of the Masons, that doesn’t narrow the field a whole lot, does it?’

‘That’s the thing about psychology. It doesn’t give you the answers, only suggests questions it might be useful to ask.’

‘Like police work! How extraordinary! It’s only rarely that evidence hands you the solution on a plate, it just points you to an area you should take a look at.’ Fleming was much struck by this.

Laura smiled. ‘Psychology’s like most things, because it’s about life and observation. It can be useful if you use it properly, pointless if you don’t, and dangerous if you’re clever enough to exploit it for manipulation.’

Fleming smiled wryly. ‘You may not realise you’re doing a demolition job on a lifetime of scepticism about psychology and all its works?’

‘Oh, for goodness sake, don’t land me with that sort of guilt! You know how it goes, “I’m a reputable clinical psychologist, you’re alarmingly neurotic and he’s out of his tree”?’

Marjory Fleming burst out laughing. Then, suddenly serious, she said, ‘Laura, can you do anything about depression?’

‘Sorry, sir, no idea where she could be.’

It wasn’t often that Superintendent Bailey appeared in the CID room unless he had an official visitor he wanted to impress with his common touch. He was very anxious to see Big Marge; word was that he wasn’t best pleased about the return to Chapelton. There was another big foot-and-mouth protest going ahead which was stretching their manpower and he wasn’t the only officer on a short fuse at the moment.

‘Well, tell her I want to see her if she comes in here. I would have hoped that in these days of modern communications it shouldn’t be impossible for me to contact my Detective Inspector when I need to do so.’ He marched out.

The three detectives in the room waited decorously until he was out of earshot, then guffawed; one of them embarked on quite a plausible imitation of his pompous delivery and got a round of applause.

‘Gone AWOL, has she? That’s not like Big Marge – she’s the keen type. Wonder where she is?’

‘
I
know.’ The woman officer spoke smugly.

‘You told him you didn’t.’

‘I lied. The Boss drove off from Chapelton with Laura Harvey. The word was she was taking her back to stay at Mains of Craigie but she was being pretty cagey about it so I reckoned she wouldn’t want the Super to know.’

The two men looked at each other. ‘Well – kind of dodgy, wouldn’t you say, someone involved in a murder enquiry?’

‘Harvey was just a wee girl when it happened. There’s nothing wrong, as long as Bailey doesn’t hear about it and go daft – or the Press.’

‘You girls must stick together, eh? Well, I promise I won’t squeal to the Super or the
Sun
.’

‘And have you ever known me clype? Telling tales was a capital offence where I came from. Mind you,’ his colleague added warningly, ‘if they offer me a Page Three girl as a bribe the deal’s off.’

Acting like a hairdryer, the wind from the south had melted the snow and ice with astonishing speed. The roads were running rivers of water and it was a bleak, grey, miserable day, but Laura felt more at ease than she had been for days. Marjory Fleming had taken her concerns very seriously indeed, keeping quiet about where they were going so that the Masons would have no idea where to find her. Laura was grateful and, especially since the offer of hospitality clearly carried some professional risk for her hostess, she hoped she could pay back the kindness.

She listened sympathetically to Marjory’s emotional account of her husband’s condition as they drove to Mains of Craigie. In the course of her research she’d become very familiar with the torments farmers had gone through and felt she had quite a good understanding of the horrors which plagued their minds – better, even, than Bill’s wife could hope to do, seeing it as she did from the viewpoint of a police officer with a difficult and demanding job of her own.

When they turned on to the rough farm road and the farmhouse itself came into view, Laura could well understand Marjory’s feelings for her home, so apparent as she talked about it. Its very appearance, simple, four-square and unadorned, suggested security and cosiness.

‘How lovely!’ she exclaimed.

Marjory smiled, but the smile held a trace of bitterness. ‘I used to think of it as “The Last Homely House” – Tolkien, you know – when I came back from work late and tired and the lights were on. It seemed a sort of fortress against the awful things that happen in the world outside. But it wasn’t, was it? It’s turned into a sort of prison for Bill – and I’m scared I could come to see it that way too.’

Laura was silent for a moment, thinking of the prison of grief she had been living in herself, and when she spoke, she was almost thinking aloud. ‘We all live with comforting illusions. We need to allow ourselves to accept them because the people who strip life to its bleakest core and focus only on that become mentally sick. And of course, most of the time the comfort isn’t illusory: you’ve had years of security and happiness and a few weeks of wretchedness and misery. This will pass.’

‘Will it? I just can’t recognise the Bill I knew – so cheerful, uncomplaining, so – so
solid
.’ Her voice faltered.

Laura said again, ‘This will pass, I can promise you.’ She wasn’t only speaking to Marjory.

Ignoring the front door with its porch like a quizzically raised eyebrow, they went round to the back of the house, entering via a glass door what looked like a large cloakroom lined with a clutter of coats, shoes, boots and items of sports equipment, from a couple of mud-splattered mountain-bikes to a pile of tennis rackets of widely differing ages and styles. Marjory, with tension showing in every line of her body, led Laura through it and along a passage, then opened the door on a big, traditional farmhouse kitchen.

It had a red-tiled floor and a slightly chipped cream-coloured Aga at the far end. There was a dog lying on a brightly coloured rug in front of it and a man sitting in an old, sagging chair at one side. He was a big, burly man with blue eyes and cheeks reddened by wind and weather, but the eyes were sunken and the cheeks gaunt under a ragged growth of beard. The dog, a pretty black-and-white Border collie, got up to greet her politely; the man did not even turn his head.

‘Bill—’ Marjory said on a rising note of anxiety.

Laura put a hand on her arm. ‘Just leave us. You’ve got plenty to do. I’ll make a cup of tea – I’m good at strange kitchens – and we’ll get to know each other gradually.’

Marjory looked uncertain for a moment, then agreed. ‘I’d better switch my mobile back on. I’ve been pretending to be out of range.’

‘Say you were at Burnside Cottages – there’s definitely no signal there, as I know to my cost!’

Marjory left. Laura went quietly about the business of making tea, found some biscuits in a big tin, then went over to the man in the chair. ‘Tea?’ She held it out and he took it from her hand without looking up.

‘I’m Laura.’ She pulled over a kitchen chair so that she was sitting directly opposite him, but he made no response, staring straight ahead as if unseeing. The dog had settled down again at their feet; Laura leaned forward to stroke it then started to talk to it, murmuring soothingly, weaving a pattern of comforting sound. The dog, its head cocked and eyes bright with intelligence, listened as if monitoring a strange code for a recognisable instruction, and Laura thought its master might be half-listening now too.

She took a sip of her tea, then said very quietly, ‘Did the animals suffer dreadfully, Bill?’

For the first time, he raised his head and looked at her. He didn’t speak, but very slowly the tears gathered and began to spill down his unshaven cheeks.

21

‘Only the Chief Constable, Marjory, that’s all.’ Superintendent Donald Bailey’s colour was high, his mouth pursed into a prune of disapproval.

Fleming’s heart sank. ‘But the woman’s a hysteric, boss!’ she protested. ‘This shouldn’t have any effect on the investigation. Even if you have friends in high places it doesn’t mean you can literally get away with murder.’

Bailey bridled. ‘I trust you are not suggesting that either the Chief Constable or I myself would be a party to any sort of attempt to pervert the course of justice?’

Glacial pomposity was always a danger sign and this time it was iced, with a wee red cherry on top. Fleming knew she was handling it badly. She just couldn’t see how to handle it well.

‘Of course not, sir. But I’m becoming more and more convinced that we’d be making a serious mistake if we try to nail Jake Mason for this—’

‘Evidence?’ he barked, then, as she hesitated, continued, ‘I mean hard evidence, as opposed to the prejudice you’ve shown from the beginning against the solution Conrad Mason put forward?’

Fleming bit her lip. What new evidence did she actually have, besides the websites Laura Harvey had discovered? Not a lot, and she had a nasty feeling that Bailey wasn’t going to be receptive to the were-bull theory.

He wasn’t. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes almost popping with disbelief. ‘I can really hardly credit that I’m hearing this sort of fantasy from a senior police officer. I’m beginning to wonder if my belief in you has been misplaced, Fleming. There’s the Chief Constable waiting for me to tell him the reason for this hounding of the Mason family and I’m going to offer him horror fiction?

‘I don’t know what’s got into you, really I don’t. I can see you’ve been under a lot of personal stress, of course – perhaps I should have made greater allowances for your domestic situation. Given that you’re a wife and mother.’

Stung, Fleming retorted foolishly, ‘There are lots of husbands and fathers in the service too, sir.’

‘None of whom has ever come to me with a farrago of nonsense like this. There’s no doubt about it, I shall have to consider taking you off this case. At the very least.’ Leaning on the desk, he made a pyramid of his fingers and balanced his chins precariously on top. She could almost see the steam emerging from his ears.

She volunteered, ‘We shouldn’t need to do anything more at Chapelton until we get a report on the soil analysis. We’ve no one there now, in fact.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. And is the girl – Laura whatever her name is – still out there? If she is, she’d better not do any more snooping.’

Fleming swallowed. ‘No. No, she’s gone.’

Bailey was no fool. He looked at her sharply. ‘Gone? Where?’

There was no point in lying. Cursing her own inability to deliver a part-truth without drawing attention to the missing part, she braced herself. ‘She’s at Mains of Craigie. She was worried about her safety and it seemed the simplest thing to do.’

She’d expected him to be angry, had almost shrunk back in her seat as she told him. Instead, he seemed nonplussed.

‘You must have taken leave of your senses, Fleming. You know that having a personal involvement could compromise the integrity of the enquiry. What would the defence make of that particular entry in your policy book?’

She didn’t dare to suggest she should leave it out, as she had been planning to do. ‘Yes, sir. Sorry.’

‘I’ll have to give this some thought. I’ll send for you later. Meanwhile, I take it I can assure the Chief Constable that the disruption is at an end?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Like a coward, she didn’t add ‘for the time being’. She got up; he didn’t rise and go to open the door for her as he usually did. Feeling sick with apprehension, she opened it for herself and went out.

After she had gone, Bailey sat lost in thought for a few minutes, his brow furrowed. Then he gave a deep sigh and picked up the phone.

‘Could I speak to Mrs Mason, please? This is Superintendent Bailey. Ah, Conrad – that’s you, is it? Now, listen, lad . . .’

‘You’re aff your heid,’ Tam MacNee said bluntly, looking at his superior officer with some dismay.

He had realised when he came in that she was distracted, showing little interest in his account of the interview with Scott Thomson. When he’d finished, she’d only nodded then said, ‘Let me run something past you, Tam,’ before spouting a theory that sounded like something from the Hammer House of Horror Showcase. Which was why he didn’t beat about the bush in his assessment of her mental state.

‘Look,’ he went on, ‘just because someone thinks they’re a bull, it doesn’t make them a bull, right? Wouldn’t mean they could gore someone so a path lab says that’s what happened?’

She was stubborn. ‘They could have a weapon – even a horn from a dead bull, say, that they’d use. Or – wait a minute! Suppose they arranged it so the bull could gore her, sort of in tribute, maybe. Like the Minotaur thing . . .’

MacNee was on shaky ground with Greek mythology, but it was true he’d heard Thomson say if there was an accident with Satan, he reckoned it wasn’t one. Grudgingly, he told Fleming.

She liked that. ‘So suppose someone puts her in the bull’s field. She’s sleep-walking – Laura remembered her sister doing that – so he, or I suppose she if you include Brett? God, that woman is a nightmare! – anyway – I’m just thinking aloud here – someone finds her in the maze, leads her to Satan knowing she’d be killed, then digs a grave there in the field—’

MacNee pounced. ‘With the bull handing him the spade, I suppose? After three days of hard frost? Anyway, did we not more or less establish the cattle wouldn’t have been out?’

Deflated, she took his points. ‘So maybe she was put into the bull’s pen. Obviously it couldn’t have been in the field when she was buried. But that’s a thought – of course the ground would have had to be soft enough to dig. Do you know when the thaw came?’

‘I’d have to check. It was in the stats I got from the Met Office – off the top of my head I’d say it wasn’t long after that.’