Cold in the Earth (42 page)

Conrad had appeared in court this morning and pled guilty to the assault; he was on remand, pending reports. The chances were that when the case was called again in three weeks’ time the Sheriff would consider that, given he was a first offender and the actual assault was minor, Conrad had done enough time already and could be released on a deferred sentence, probably with the condition that he underwent psychiatric treatment. But unless Max could be brought to trial, it would always be assumed that he had killed Diana Warwick. Worse still, he would probably believe it himself.

The original accusation against Jake Mason (and it hadn’t been far from the truth, had it?) had offended Fleming’s sense of justice, even when she believed he would never know. Now, in the face of a much greater injustice, she owed Conrad restitution. She had been foremost in prosecuting the case against him and he was, after all, one of her own officers. She had failed to appreciate the scale of his mental problems and she would have it on her conscience for the rest of her life if Max escaped scot-free. She’d become one of those sad, retired police officers bleating in the Press whenever they did a retrospective – ‘Well, I knew who did it of course but I can’t say . . .’

Would she, hell! She’d grab it by the throat now.

They knew who they wanted. They knew where to look. They knew the questions to ask. Max might give himself away, might already have done so—

Laura!
Fleming thought suddenly. He’d talked a lot to Laura, told her about Diana at Chapelton. She needed to go through it all with Laura, as minutely as memory allowed, to see whether there was a chink in the armour through which they could slip a knife.

She was about half-way back to Kirkluce now. If she called Laura perhaps she could drive in to meet her at police HQ to make a recorded statement. That way, at least when she told Bailey what had happened – which constituted ‘let’s-not-go-there’ territory right now – at least she could show she was doing something.

She pulled into a lay-by and dialled the Mains of Craigie number. Bill answered; she was so caught up in her problems that she didn’t even notice that he sounded almost normal.

‘Bill, I need to speak to Laura. Is she there?’

‘No. It’s funny – said she’d be back for lunch but she didn’t come.’

‘Oh.’ Fleming frowned, deflated. Then belatedly she added, ‘How are you, love?’

‘OK.’ She could hear constraint in his voice now. ‘Laura was going to have another talk with me before lunch. She promised, but . . .’

His voice trailed off as if talking had tired him.

‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ she said gently. ‘That’s a shame. I’ll see you later – I shouldn’t be too late.’

She pulled back out into the traffic, busy now with people on their way home from work. She was disappointed, first that any questioning would have to wait until she saw Laura tonight, second that Laura would have had such a casual attitude to promises. She wouldn’t have read her that way.

It was nearly half-past five. She could drop in at HQ and write up her notes so that she was well prepared for what was going to be a very sticky interview with Bailey tomorrow, then pop in to see the kids before she headed for home.

‘I’m afraid we’re closing now,’ the waitress said politely.

Brett Mason was the only person left in the tea-room. The fire was dying down and they had switched off some of the lamps; it didn’t look so safe and cosy any more. She rose with a bad grace, took the chit the waitress had left and paid at the counter without leaving a tip.

She shivered as she stepped into the darkness outside. There was a bitter wind blowing and she pulled her coat closer round her and turned up the ocelot collar. Her spirits dropping with the temperature, she got into her car and headed off wretchedly towards Chapelton.

25

‘Thought you were going straight home tonight, boss?’

Tam MacNee was on his way off duty when Marjory Fleming came through the door of Police Headquarters. He changed his mind when she told him what had happened.

‘Tactics, Tam,’ she said as she preceded him into her office, switching on the lights. ‘Where do we go from here? How do we nail the bastard?’

Sitting down, he told her about Charlotte Nisbet’s latest piece of private enterprise. ‘So we’ve his prints on the mask, anyway. But it’d hardly take a genius to come up with “I only wanted a look at it” as a defence.’

Fleming agreed. ‘It could be corroboration, though. Circumstantial evidence is better than no evidence at all.’

‘Can’t see it going down well with the Super.’ MacNee was gloomy.

‘You think?’ Fleming groaned. ‘My neck’s on the block tomorrow. And all I’ve come up with is getting a formal statement from Laura, recorded so we can analyse it piece by piece to see if he let something slip to her, some discrepancy that would give us a lever . . .’

He wasn’t impressed. ‘You want a bet? No? Och well, it’s something, I suppose. High risk, mind – like giving a starving dog a dolly-mixture. Are you setting that up for tomorrow?’

‘I’d wanted to do it tonight, but I can’t get hold of her,’ Fleming complained. ‘She told Bill and my mother she’d be in for lunch, but she’s disappeared—’ She stopped, as if she had only just realised what she was saying.

MacNee, too, had gone very still. ‘Wonder where she might be?’ he said, carefully not sounding alarmist.

‘I don’t know. I’d like to know. Suddenly I’m feeling very uncomfortable.’

‘Did she say where she was away to?’

‘Burnside Cottages. She’d left stuff there – she was going to move it out to the farm. When my mother said she didn’t come for her lunch I just thought she’d taken the keys back to Jessie MacNab and been given it there.’

‘Do you want me to contact Jessie?’ He got up. ‘I could look in at the cottages too—’

‘No. I’ll get someone on to that. You come with me, and let’s approach it from the other end. Play the man not the ball, to quote the Thoughts of Chairman Bailey. I’ve changed my mind about bringing Max in tomorrow for questioning. Let’s go and get him tonight.’

It was a strange thing about being cold. At first it was painful, dreadfully painful, but then it wasn’t. In fact, Laura could hardly even feel the pain in her hands and shoulders now. She was beginning to feel drowsy, almost comfortable . . .

There was a name for it. She struggled to think what it was but her mind seemed reluctant to respond, sluggish. Hypo-something.

At last it came to her. Hypothermia. It made you sleepy, but you were meant to struggle against it. If you let yourself go to sleep, you wouldn’t wake up again.

That sounded good. She closed her tired, sore, swollen eyes.

Max had been sitting at the window of the restrained, elegant sitting-room, which so uncomfortably reminded him of his mother’s personality, for hours now. It was to the side of the house with a view down to the first corner of the drive; he watched as darkness stealthily soaked up the light and the wind began first to tease the needles of the pine-trees, then assault whole branches which were now bending and swaying. At first he had been in a mood of exhilaration, excitement, even, but he was beginning to feel coldly afraid, afraid and angry. His brilliance was no defence against the whims of a fat, silly bitch who had gone off somewhere and hadn’t returned yet.

And what if she didn’t? What if she’d decided that she couldn’t bear it here without Conrad and had gone to stay at the hotel? What would happen to his superb, meticulous plan?
And what would he do with Laura?

The sky was a black backdrop for the cold, sparkling pinpoints of the stars and a pale moon, almost at the full. With a wind too, the temperature outside would be dropping like a stone; he wasn’t at all sure she could survive a night’s exposure. And if she died – well, he’d read enough crime novels to know that you couldn’t fake the scenario he had in mind with a body that was dead already.

He could go and fetch her out, of course, bring her into the house. He’d been going to kill her inside anyway – for who would ever believe Brett would go out trotting round the policies on a winter night? – but to have her spend any time at all on the premises was high risk. She’d be missed soon, and the police had a search warrant for the place which they wouldn’t hesitate to use.

Chewing his lip, he looked out from the unlit room, scanning the skyline for any sign of headlamps in the distance. Nothing. He swore, and despite the warmth of the room he could feel beads of cold sweat on his brow. His whole future was on the line, thanks to that . . . He used every ugly word he could think of to describe her, but it didn’t change the fact that the sky remained obstinately dark.

Soon he’d have to make a decision. Let her die – just leave her there? They’d never find her. They’d never have found Di, if she’d been left there. Or even if he’d known where she was, it would have been easy enough to divert the dig elsewhere.

It would have been the Minotaur who moved her to a burial place, of course – the Minotaur driven by pathetic guilt. Max despised guilt. As if it could eliminate his father’s responsibility for Di’s death! Still, he was paying for it now, a living vegetable, probably not even living much longer. Sometime soon they’d come to ask Max for permission to switch him off. Unless, of course, they found his mother.

Hardly likely, by now. She might even be dead. Strangely, he didn’t want that. He’d been shocked to discover how much it had affected him when he’d believed Di’s body was hers. He wanted his mother to be alive, but to be as she was in his mind, as he remembered her when he was a little boy and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He didn’t want her disapproving, controlling, criticising, saying terrible things about him, her own son. At least his father hadn’t betrayed him – then. He scowled. Everyone let you down in the end. Everyone. You had to be your own person, supremely invulnerable.

He was vulnerable now. He felt sick, thinking about the terrifying decision he was going to have to make. He stood up, his hands to his temples as if pressure there would help the quality of his thought. Then he saw it.

A beam of light, from the direction of the drive, uplighting some low, thick cloud that was gathering over to the west. He stood very still, unconsciously holding his breath, watching it come closer and closer. Brett, or someone else – the police, even . . . ?

Brett. Her little car lurched round the last corner of the drive and he shrank back into the shadows as the headlamps’ beam crossed the darkened room. The car disappeared round the front of the house; he heard the engine stop, the car door slam, the outer front door open and close again, the inner front door do the same. He heard Brett’s footsteps cross the hall and click-click up the uncarpeted stair, then another door close, then silence. She was, he could safely assume, in the upstairs flat on the other side of the house. He must move quickly now, and quietly. Silently, in fact, because Brett herself was going to be his alibi.

He steadied himself. Think it through: there must be no mistake. Fetch Laura. Take her to the study. Kill her. Leave the house. The jeep, with its luggage – that was concealed round the side of the house so that Brett wouldn’t see it when she arrived, but not hidden, which would arouse suspicion. So far so good.

Walk down the drive. Walk up the Glen road to the field gate where he’d parked his hired Peugeot. Drive into Kirkluce, phone Brett from a pub to warn her to lock up because he’d decided not to come back that night. When the police questioned her, she’d be quite certain that he hadn’t been at Chapelton. From his observation of his aunt, innocence would make her indignantly honest and she was so stupidly arrogant it would never occur to her that she was incriminating herself.

His confidence soared. How many of that tiny elite, the killers too clever to be caught, had ever used the psychology of their fall guy to give them an alibi? Not many, he was willing to bet. Sadly, by definition he would never know who they were.

Smiling, he fingered the knife in his pocket in its plastic wrapping, then stepped noiselessly out of the room and into the silent hall.

‘She didn’t go to Jessie’s,’ MacNee reported as he switched off the phone. ‘And she’s not at the cottages. The jeep’s not there, but she hasn’t arrived back at the farm either.’

Unconsciously Fleming’s foot pressed down more heavily on the accelerator. ‘What’s gone wrong, Tam? Why would Max – do anything,’ she gulped, ‘to Laura, when as far as he knows Conrad’s our suspect and he’s safely locked up in jail?’

‘We don’t know he’s done anything,’ he pointed out, but without much conviction. There didn’t seem to be much else to say after that.

The house, as they approached it, seemed to be in darkness, the main front door shut. ‘Maybe there’s no one here,’ MacNee was saying as they reached the front, but as they got out they could see a light on the upper floor.

‘Brett’s flat. She must be in. Oh, great!’ Fleming said hollowly as MacNee rang the doorbell.

For a moment, the only response was its echo. Then, unexpectedly, the fanlight above the door lit up as the hall light was switched on. They heard locks being turned and the door swung open.

There was a pause during which you could have counted to ten. Then Max Mason said in an attempt at his usual offensive drawl, ‘Oh God, not the Fuzz again. Am I entitled to tell you to piss off, or will that mean you arrest me?’

That made it easy. ‘I think we just might, Mr Mason.’ Fleming stepped into the hall.

Under the light, she thought he looked very pale, his eyes darting uneasily from one to the other. ‘I should tell you,’ she said with calculation, ‘that I’ve been having a word with your father this afternoon.’

The result was gratifying. ‘My – my father?’ His jaw had gone slack; he was staring as if, like Hamlet, his father’s ghost had suddenly appeared in front of him.

‘Oh, and your mother. It’s all been very, very interesting, and I feel we have this and that to talk about. Just for a start, where’s Laura Harvey?’