Cradle to Grave (18 page)

She was obviously doomed to ignorance. Kershaw took a sausage herself, and tried again. ‘Where do you think that girl is, Ewan?’

Campbell considered for a moment. ‘On the headland somewhere. Has to be.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Kershaw said slowly. ‘The gamekeeper who raised the alarm – she would probably have taken shelter at his house. And Jamieson – if we can’t find a trace of him over here, he could well be over there too.’ She scowled. ‘Oh great – that’s where it’s all happening, isn’t it? MacNee and Big Marge aren’t cut off from the action – we are!’

‘Typical Tam.’

‘So when can we expect to get across?’ Kershaw had started fretting. ‘Are we just going to have to twiddle our thumbs until they come back and tell everyone they’ve got it wrapped up?’

‘Likely.’

Campbell really wasn’t much fun to talk to. ‘It’s a bit of a bummer, but what can we do?’

‘Be glad we don’t have to explain a wrecked car to the super.’

The joke surprised her into laughter just as the door opened and Macdonald appeared, shaking his head in answer to her enquiring look.

‘Went off to a meeting this afternoon and didn’t check back in,’ he said.

Kershaw got up. ‘I’m buying. Pint? I got you a sausage already.’

As she spoke, her mobile phone rang. She fished it out of her bag and glanced at the caller’s number. ‘I’ll have to take this.’

She moved a little bit away, but as she listened her face became sombre. ‘OK,’ she said tersely. ‘Be right there.’ Putting the phone back in her bag, she called, ‘Sorry, got to go,’ and hurried out, leaving the two men staring after her.

‘What’s that about?’ Macdonald said.

‘Her kid, probably. Think there are problems there.’

‘How do you know that? Oh, don’t tell me. You listen, right?’

‘Right.’ Campbell finished off his pint and accepted Macdonald’s offer of another.

When Macdonald came back from the bar, he looked down at the empty plate on the table in front of Campbell. ‘Here – thought Kim said she’d bought me a sausage?’

‘Ate it.’

Macdonald glared. ‘I’m trying to play the glad game, but I have to say I can’t see an upside to that one.’

‘It’s no loss what a friend gets?’ Campbell suggested, with a hopeful smile.

‘Mum’s awfully late tonight,’ Catriona Fleming said, coming into the kitchen of the Mains of Craigie farmhouse, where her father was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee, a newspaper and Meg the collie, blissfully asleep by the Aga, for company. ‘Her supper’s going to be completely dried out. What’s she doing?’

Bill Fleming looked up from the page of stock prices. He was a tall, solidly built man in his forties with fair hair, receding and greying a little now, blue eyes and an open, good-humoured face.

‘Don’t know – it’s a bit odd. Her office phone is on voicemail and her mobile’s been off all day, so I guess she’s somewhere out of range. I’m beginning to think I might phone the station to see if they know what’s going on.’

‘It’s probably the problems with the festival,’ Cat said morosely.

She had already bent her father’s ear about the unfairness of life at considerable length over supper, and he said hastily, ‘Yes, of course. She’ll have a lot on, with all that.’

‘I think you should phone, though,’ Cat said. ‘You could find out if maybe the festival will go ahead if they get it sorted out. That would be really cool.’

‘Why not?’ he said, fetching the phone. Anything that might lift the cloud of gloom that had enveloped the house since his disgruntled daughter and son had discovered their weekend plans were in ruins was worth a try.

He listened to the information the duty sergeant was able to give him, then put the phone down looking a little stunned.

‘They were a bit vague, but it seems she and Tam MacNee are over on the Rosscarron headland and the bridge has come down – that’ll explain the problem with the festival. The phone lines are down too, apparently, and no one’s sure when they’ll be back on. Not tonight, certainly.’

Cat’s blue eyes, so like her father’s, widened. ‘You mean, she’s over there, probably, like, marooned along with
Joshua
, for days maybe? And she doesn’t even like pop music! Oh, it’s so
unfair
!’

She flung herself out of the room and Bill, with a sigh and a shake of his head, went back to the stock prices.

In the meagre sitting room of Keeper’s Cottage, Maidie Buchan sat wrapped in her misery. Alick hadn’t come downstairs for his tea, but no doubt when he’d slept it off he would be demanding food, even if it was the middle of the night.

Not that he’d missed anything. There had been an unpleasant atmosphere, with Beth sitting silent at one side of the table and Ina making even more nasty sarcastic remarks about Maidie’s cooking than usual while staring at Beth in a way that was just plain rude.

Eventually, Ina said, ‘Your face is kind of familiar, with those funny eyes. I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before.’

Beth jumped up and left the room, without waiting for the rice pudding. Maidie had brought through a plate to the sitting room, where she’d taken refuge, but it had been refused.

Now Beth was huddled in one corner of the room, pretending to read a back issue of
People’s Friend
. Ina was watching a gruesome medical programme; she always enjoyed those, the gorier the better. Maidie hated close-ups of blood and guts, but tonight it hardly mattered since she wasn’t really seeing it anyway.

The only good thing was that when she’d got Alick into bed, she had found a wad of notes in his trouser pocket. She had no idea where it had come from, but there was a very good chance that when Alick woke he wouldn’t remember anything about it. She had stashed it away as a tiny nest egg in case she and Calum found themselves out on the street one day.

Calum had really taken to Beth. She’d given him his bath tonight, and hearing the sounds of gleeful splashing from upstairs, Maidie had found herself smiling too as she made the tea. When Beth brought Calum back, beaming and glowing from his bath, she was looking happy as well. Maidie had never seen her like that; when she was laughing and smiling, she looked quite pretty.

Beth wasn’t smiling now. Maidie noticed that she hadn’t turned a page for half an hour and she was tearing at her nails. A bead of bright blood appeared as she tore off a strip of skin, but she only sucked her finger and went on staring blankly.

There was something badly wrong there. Maidie had tentatively asked her when they were on their own if she was very upset about her partner’s death, but Beth hadn’t confided, only saying that she just wanted to get away from here.

Well, they all had their problems. Maidie went back to contemplating her own.

When the sitting-room door opened every face turned expectantly to Cris Pilapil – Cara, Nico, Ryan, Hepburn, MacNee and Fleming. They had been watching some mindless quiz game of Nico’s choosing, which was, at least, better than background pop music and a strained atmosphere. The air almost seemed thickened by tension; Fleming was starting to feel she needed extra-deep breaths to get enough oxygen.

It was Nico who spoke first. ‘Can we have supper now, then? I’m starving!’

The burger he had demanded half an hour earlier was sitting half eaten on a coffee table, and Fleming was afraid that MacNee would disgrace her by falling on the remains if they had to wait much longer for Crozier to return. Pilapil had said he was dealing with some problem with his keeper – but why should it take so long? And why was Pilapil now looking like that?

‘No,’ he said to Nico, his voice very flat. ‘Someone to see you, Sergeant. Or the inspector.’

MacNee jumped to his feet; Fleming followed more slowly. She had been feeling uneasy; his tone sent a shiver through her. She didn’t want to have to confront whatever was out there. ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes . . .’

Now she was being ridiculous. MacNee certainly wasn’t troubled. As the door shut behind them, he crowed, ‘The rescue party at last – about time too!’

‘Mmm.’ Fleming could only wish she shared his optimism. As MacNee preceded them down the corridor leading to the hall, she asked Pilapil if someone had come from across the river.

‘Not as far as I know.’ His face was drawn and anxious, and she was sure his mind, like hers, had gone to the absent Gillis Crozier.

The man who stood in the hall was the single man with dark hair and sideburns whom they had seen up at the campsite. He was quite tall and athletic-looking, with broad shoulders, and there was something about the way he was standing . . .

MacNee, recognising him too, stopped dead. ‘Oh – you.’ There was a wealth of disappointment in his tone.

Fleming stepped forward. ‘DI Fleming.’

‘Ma’am.’

So she was right. She turned to Pilapil. ‘Is there somewhere more private?’

‘Of course.’ He indicated one of the doors off the hall. Then he burst out, ‘Is this – is this bad news?’

The man looked uncomfortably towards Fleming and she nodded.

‘There’s a grey-haired male had an accident up there by the campsite. Around six foot, late fifties probably. He seems to have fallen and hit his head. I’m afraid he’s dead.’

The colour drained so quickly from Pilapil’s face that Fleming moved forward instinctively to catch him if he fainted, but he spun round and with his hand to his mouth half ran across the hall and disappeared through the below-stairs door.

Fleming, looking grave, crossed the hall and the others followed her into another white, soulless space with the obligatory abstract above the fireplace, set up as a conference room with a long table and chairs. As MacNee shut the door she looked towards the other man.

‘And you are . . . ?’

‘DS Pete Hay. Drug Squad. Glasgow.’

‘We might have guessed. What’s the position?’

‘Two girls found the man, lying on a path at the edge of that group of trees and bushes in the corner of the campsite near the toilets. Bashed his head on a big stone, as far as I could see. It’s pretty muddy underfoot – just got unlucky, by the looks of it. They didn’t know who it was and I haven’t seen him before.’

‘Gillis Crozier,’ Fleming said heavily. ‘He was expected back in the late afternoon and he didn’t appear. They seemed to think he might have gone to see his gamekeeper about something unspecified, but I was beginning to wonder.’

At least it was an accident. It was almost a relief, after her initial fears. She’d allowed the atmosphere to get to her, that was all.

‘What do we do now, ma’am?’ Hay asked. ‘Don’t suppose—’

‘No, the phone’s still out. We’d better get up there and take a look. Tam, can you find Cris and ask him for torches and the keys to the Discovery? Oh, and see if there’s a tarpaulin or something like that.’

MacNee had taken one of the chairs and was slumped forward over the table in an attitude of depression. He ran his hand down his face. ‘Right,’ he said dully, and went off.

Fleming and Hay went into the hall to wait for him. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what did you make of the older couple with the camper van who seemed to go to an improbable number of pop festivals?’

Hay pulled a face. ‘Oh, dealing without a doubt. There seemed to be some negotiation going on with the blond guy who came up from the house. But they were on to me. I’d expected to be able to disappear into the crowd, but with so few people I was a bit obvious.’

‘We noticed you too – a man on his own. They should have sent a woman officer as camouflage.’

‘She was meant to be coming tomorrow – trying to save on the overtime budget as usual.’

‘We all know about that,’ Fleming was saying as MacNee returned, carrying a couple of powerful searchlight torches and a set of car keys, with a thick plastic sheet over his arm. Pilapil appeared behind him, shaking and tear-stained, and clearly finding it hard to control his sobs.

‘Can I – can I come?’ he faltered.

‘I’m afraid not,’ Fleming said. ‘I’m so sorry. This is obviously very difficult for you, Cris. You’re clearly very shaken, but you know the family well – would it be best if you broke the news, or do you want me to do that?’

That seemed to steady him. ‘Oh, I’ll do it,’ Pilapil said, and there was bitterness in his voice. ‘They won’t care much. Cara would happily have sold him down the river to get her next fix, and Declan will find it hard not to smirk. I suppose you’re sure it was an accident?’

Breaking the news to the family was a duty any police officer was happy to relinquish, but Fleming almost stepped in. He had gone down the passage to the sitting room already, though, and she didn’t feel she could run after him and grab him to stop him. Anyway, her own observation of the family suggested that his assessment would prove hideously accurate.

It was still not entirely dark. The sky was a deep, velvety blue, almost cloudless, and the pale thumbnail of the new moon had appeared, along with the brighter stars. Cool, damp air rose from the grass as Fleming, MacNee and Hay got out of the Discovery and walked over to the Lawtons’ van. It looked as if all the campers had gathered there under the awning, in a pool of light from a couple of electric lanterns.