Cradle to Grave (32 page)

Purves was a fairly recent addition to the Kirkluce CID, after the long-overdue retirement of a DI who, when it came to modern practice, had raised passive resistance to performance art. Fleming rated Purves highly: he had an impressive appetite for the administrative and organisational duties that to Fleming were the downside of the job, and he managed to be a stickler for compliance without nit-picking – not an easy balance to achieve. Though they regularly traded insults like ‘stuffed shirt’ and ‘adrenaline junkie’, it all worked very well.

Bouncing a few ideas off him when he was here anyway wouldn’t do any harm. Fleming always liked to clear her mind by talking things through, but she was short of a confidant, with MacNee in his present dour mood and Bill – well, she couldn’t see them sitting down for a chat over a cosy dram right at the moment.

The mysterious CHIS, however, was at the top of the agenda.

‘I don’t know who he is either, as yet,’ Purves told her, disappointingly. ‘You know the rules.’

‘Of course I do. Theoretically. And of course I’ve had the odd tip-off, sanitised through the system, but since the new regulations came in I’ve had nothing to do with that area, except to say thank you when a useful snippet comes through. I know the general principle, but I didn’t exactly study the fine print.’

‘Tut, tut,’ Purves said mildly. ‘I’m a controller for several handlers – Andy Macdonald, in this instance.’

‘Andy?’ Fleming was surprised. ‘I saw him earlier and he didn’t say anything.’

‘He wouldn’t. We try to keep the firewalls in place. I wouldn’t be telling you now if I hadn’t cleared it with the super, and he had to check it with the top brass. It isn’t to do with your present investigations or they’d have ruled it out completely. This does seem to be an exceptional case. The man appears to believe that if it gets out what he’s doing, he’d find himself sipping sewage in the Clyde.’

Fleming blanched. ‘Oh
please
! We’ve got enough problems already. Maybe he could be told not to risk it and we’ll just muddle along ourselves.’

Purves looked at her under his brows. ‘You know you don’t mean that.’

‘No, I suppose I don’t,’ Fleming said hollowly. ‘All right, where do we go from here?’

‘We have to talk about risk.’

‘Don’t we always? I know coppers who use “risk assessment” as a sweary word.’

Purves smiled. ‘You look as if your last assessment wasn’t that effective.’

Fleming put a hand to her face. ‘Oh, this? I’d forgotten about it. Looks much worse than it feels now. Anyway, risk to our CHIS, weighed up against value of information?’

‘And risk to you.’

‘To me?’ She was startled.

‘He was very specific that it had to be you. If someone wanted you out of the way, it could be a way of drawing you into a trap.’

‘That – that hadn’t struck me.’ It gave her a cold, nasty feeling inside.

‘That’s what procedure is for,’ Purves said in mild triumph. ‘So we can work round it.’

‘So how do we do that?’

‘I’ll tell you nearer the time. It won’t be immediately – there’s a lot to put in place. It’ll seem a bit elaborate, I’m afraid. You’ll think we’re being melodramatic, but if we’re dealing with bad guys from Glasgow, we won’t be playing nursery games – except, if we’re not careful, the one where we all fall down at the end.’

Fleming swallowed hard. ‘Suddenly, investigating three murders seems a simple, straightforward business.’

‘How’s it going? There’s conflicting stories whizzing around.’

‘We don’t have any other kind of stories at the moment. Do me a favour – be a stooge, John, would you? Ask the obvious questions, while I go through it.’

‘Born for the part,’ Purves said easily, settling back in his chair.

‘Where to start?’ Fleming pondered for a moment. ‘Jamieson, I suppose. He was the obvious suspect for Crozier, and he certainly sawed through the supports on the bridge and then waited for them to get destabilised. But he has an alibi for the first murder, the one at the cottages, and of course now . . .’ She shrugged.

‘What about the girl – the one who allegedly didn’t kill Crozier’s grandchild? The hot money in the canteen’s on her.’

‘Oh, she’s involved in this somehow – if that was the bet, I’d wager my hen-money without a qualm. She’s stonewalling, and she’s good at it. We don’t know why, and we can hardly pull her in just because she happened to be around. Maybe forensics will come up with something. If she’s scared but not guilty, as I could almost believe she is, it would be in her own interests to stop lying, trust us and open up.’

‘You think?’ Purves was inclined to be cynical. ‘Not something her brief would advise, if she had one.’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘And certainly, flatly denying everything puts all the onus on us to get at the truth.’

‘Truth, Marjory, has nothing to do with us. It’s proof we’re after.’

‘With three bodies, one of them completely unidentified and another with false ID? Chance would be a fine thing!’

‘So, the girl’s out at – what? – thirty-three to one? All right – run me through the rest of the card.’

‘Take your pick. Cast of thousands, with contractors and security and pop fans – including, incidentally, the man found dead this morning. Then you have the dysfunctional family – the daughter’s a junkie, the grandchild’s a monster, the son-in-law, who fits the part perfectly, has an alibi for Crozier’s murder from Tam MacNee, of all people. There’s a Filipino houseman who seems to have been devoted to his employer but who definitely lied to me, and to add a little spice, Joshua, the pop star, who is also a stranger to the truth.’

‘It occurs to me to ask whether you’re sure the deaths are connected.’

‘Sure? I’m not sure of anything. I wish I was. I’m beating my brains out trying to establish the connections.’

‘Some common background that argued for taking them out one after another?’

‘One after another.’ Fleming picked up on the phrase. ‘It may simply be consequential, of course – after one death, the next for some reason became necessary, and the next . . . It would be a simpler way of looking at it, but we still need a plausible motive for the first one as a starting point, and I certainly can’t see it as yet.’

‘Not easy.’ Purves looked at his watch and got up. ‘Have to go. I’ve a lovely policy document to work on – excellent stuff. Fancy swapping?’

Fleming looked at him, then at her desk. ‘I’m snowed under, I’m confused, I’m stressed out, and I probably won’t get home before ten o’clock tonight. No. Not a chance.’

PC Sandy Langlands was doing door-to-doors along the streets by the Balmoral Guest House in the drizzling rain. He was in an uncharacteristically downbeat mood, bored and cold. Most people were out at work, which would mean he’d have to come back later, and even the people who happened to be at home had nothing useful to say but said it anyway.

Gloomily, he tramped along the street round the corner from where the guest house stood. There was, he noticed, rather a natty silver Lexus parked on a double yellow line. It wasn’t causing an obstruction, though, and he’d better things to do at the moment.

He’d had no luck so far in the terrace of small houses that opened directly on to the pavement. Four no answers, two don’t knows. He rang the bell of the house beside the parked car and waited.

The woman who opened it was more keen to bend his ear on the subject of the car – ‘About time you came to do something about it!’ – than to listen to his questions. She didn’t hold with having strangers coming round the place late at night. ‘Quarter to eleven, it was, when I heard him slamming the door. And it’s been there all night. That’s not right.’

There was more, quite a lot more. Eyes glazed, Langlands let it wash over him until at last she finished – ‘I just hope you’re going to get it towed away, right now’ – and paused for breath.

‘Indeed, madam,’ he said gravely. ‘Now, could I just ask you – we’re interested in the movements of a young man, medium height, spiked hair, wearing a dark green sweatshirt and jeans?’

He liked to think that if he hadn’t been bludgeoned with irrelevant information all morning, he’d have put two and two together before she squealed, ‘That’s him! That’s the very man!’

It took him some time to extricate himself, but with the car’s registration number written in his notebook, he walked back to the Kirkluce headquarters in triumph.

There were three or four detectives working at computers when DS MacNee got back to the CID room. One of them was Kim Kershaw, who glanced up briefly as he passed but didn’t speak.

The Balmoral Guest House was now empty and locked up. He had ushered Mrs Wishart firmly to her car, ignoring the longing looks she cast over her shoulder at the gathering journalists, and watched her drive away to make sure.

Lisa Stewart had been more problematic. MacNee wasn’t feeling charitably disposed towards her, but Big Marge had spelled it out that she wasn’t to be thrown to the wolves. Fellow feeling, that was – there had been a couple of jeering questions shouted by the press about her last case as Fleming herself drove out.

Anyway, Lisa had no transport, so he’d had to give her a lift to Tourist Information to ask about a bus to take her to Rowantrees Hotel. He heard her gasp of fright at the camera flashes as they drove past and her thanks, given along with a surprisingly attractive smile, when he dropped her off sounded heartfelt. He found himself wondering what lay beneath the hard shell – apart from the answers he needed. He’d no doubt that Lisa knew them.

But she wasn’t going to tell, was she? Back to square one, he thought grimly, and start again.

He found a terminal free and called up the Missing Persons Register. Presumably someone had checked that already, but he wanted to see it for himself. Maybe he could spot a connection they hadn’t.

It wasn’t a long list, and none of the names and descriptions triggered the blaze of insight he had been hoping for. If Mr X was a misper, he certainly didn’t come from around here. MacNee scowled. He needed inspiration.

He hadn’t been to the Rosscarron Cottages – or what was left of them. The SOCOs would have done their stuff by now, so the authorities could start clearing the site. It was all on film – he could conjure it up at the touch of a button – but he was unrepentantly old-fashioned. You couldn’t get the smell of a crime scene from a screen, couldn’t look around for the detail that would catch your eye or sense how people had moved about. If it was back to square one, that was where he should start – where it all began.

He should clear it with the boss, but they weren’t seeing eye to eye at the moment. Fair enough, he was maybe a wee bit edgy himself, but if she knew what he was going through . . . Suddenly it all swept over him again and he bent his head over the keyboard, biting his lip.

For just a moment he thought of telling Fleming. There might be relief in that – they’d been through a lot together – but Tam MacNee didn’t go around bleating about his problems, and there was a kind of shame attached to it too, somehow.

MacNee sniffed, picked his leather jacket off the back of the chair and went out.

It was raining again. Well, not raining, exactly, just drizzling on in a grey, depressing sort of way.

‘This dreich weather really gets to me,’ Macdonald complained to Campbell, as yet again they drove along the A75 heading for Kirkcudbright. ‘I’d rather have a downpour and clear the air.’

‘It’s like a kid whingeing,’ Campbell said with feeling. ‘Better if they just yell and get it over with.’

Macdonald agreed. ‘Though mind you, if you think of the last couple of weeks, there’s no guarantee that a downpour will stop it.’

‘No guarantee with kids either.’ Campbell lapsed into gloomy silence.

Thinking aloud, as was his habit when driving with Campbell, Macdonald said, ‘I wonder if the Ryans have heard about the fate of their former camper, or if we’ll be breaking the news? Always useful to get in first and see the reactions. They sound a weird lot anyway. The kid’s like something out of a horror movie, and Tam says the mother’s stoned most of the time.’

‘Probably explains the kid,’ Campbell suggested.

‘Right enough. You can’t blame him – no problem kids without problem parents.’

Campbell shifted uneasily in his seat. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said with paternal defensiveness.

Macdonald, childfree, grinned. ‘Take a good look at Nico Ryan. He’s a horrible warning about what happens if you get it wrong. Look, that’s the turn-off. Rosscarron – fifteen minutes, say.’

‘Sandy!’ Coming back from a quick lunch in the canteen, Fleming hailed PC Langlands, walking ahead of her along the corridor. ‘Well done!’

Langlands turned, beaming. ‘Just luck,’ he said, with perfect truth. ‘Still, it’s good, eh? Have they got his name now?’

‘Yes. Alex Rencombe. It’s a company car, registered to some solicitor’s firm in London.’

‘Great. Thanks, boss.’ Langlands, still beaming, went on his way.

Fleming had no wish to rain on his parade, but it seemed far from certain that they had discovered the identity of the dead man. A company car, a solicitor – the spiky-haired twenty-something? It didn’t fit.