Cradle to Grave (37 page)

18

‘Oh dear,’ Hepburn drawled, as the door closed behind MacNee, ‘is the poor guy in trouble?’

‘Very probably,’ Fleming said, tight-lipped. ‘So what’s this about, Joss? I really haven’t time for playing games.’

‘Of course not.’ His tone was offensively soothing. ‘I just have a couple of things I reckon we should talk about.’

Fleming ignored him. ‘Since you’re here, you can tell me what the “job” was that Rencombe was doing for Crozier.’

‘Ve ask zee qvestions, eh?’ he mocked her. ‘Babe, if I could! Not the slightest idea. Maybe he told Cara or Declan – or Cris, even, though he denies it.

‘Incidentally, Cara wanted to know if you’d figured out that her ex-nanny, the one who killed her baby, was calling herself Beth Brown and staying at the guest house where the camper’s body was found.’

‘How did she know?’

Hepburn laughed indulgently. ‘There you go again, my little
Obergruppenführer
! Local gossip, I guess – the gamekeeper was at the house yesterday. And apparently Nanny was staying along at the keeper’s cottage just at the time Gillis was killed. Kind of suggestive, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m always prepared to listen to opinion.’ Fleming half rose. ‘Thank you for yours. Now, I have a great deal to do . . .’

‘Sit down, Madge.’ There was a slight edge to his voice now. ‘I told Cara I would get an assurance from you direct. Can I take it that Lisa Stewart is about to be arrested for murder?’

‘No.’

He looked taken aback at the bluntness of her reply. ‘But at the very least she has to be prime suspect?’

‘She is obviously a suspect. Others are equally under suspicion. You, for instance.’

He gave a brief, humourless smile. ‘You were never one to pull your punches. So you wouldn’t be ready to agree we can all return to London?’

‘I can’t physically stop you, but just at present, that is my firm request.’ Fleming hesitated, then said, ‘I might be inclined to take a more favourable view if I felt you were all being open and truthful in your answers to questioning. For instance, what is the nature of Gillis Crozier’s business?’

‘Ah.’ Hepburn shifted in his seat uncomfortably. ‘That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Suddenly I’m interested. Go on.’

‘If I give you my word that his business has nothing to do with all this, will you drop that line of enquiry?’

‘
Your word!
’ Disappointed, she laughed in his face. ‘Joss, I’ve known you since you were in your twenties. Don’t be silly.’

‘Touché.’ He was looking acutely uneasy now. ‘Madge, I didn’t want to do it like this. But if you don’t stop snooping into what doesn’t concern either you or the cases you’re investigating, I’m going to go to the tabloids with some choice anecdotes about your past. You can most likely guess which these would be.’

Stricken, Fleming blanched, so that the sickly yellows and blues of the fading bruises stood out starkly.

‘My God, I knew you were a bastard, Joss, but this is something else! This is disgusting! You sicken me.’

Again the small, sour smile appeared. ‘Oh, I don’t like myself much either. But it’s been forced on me, and there it is. The choice is yours.’

‘Get out of my office.’ Fleming got up, walked to the door and held it open. ‘I’d like to think you knew before you said that what my reply would be. Attempted blackmail of a police officer is a serious offence and what you have succeeded in doing is convincing me that my gut reaction’s right – there’s something very wrong about Crozier’s business. And I’m going to find out what it is.’

‘Are you sure you won’t reconsider?’ Hepburn sounded almost pleading.

‘The receptionist will expect you at the door in two minutes. And don’t even try to pull a stunt like this again. You won’t be admitted. Goodbye.’

Hepburn got up. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you can’t see it my way.’ He walked to the door, then looked down at her. ‘But in another crazy way, I’m kind of glad. You’re a great lady, Madge.’

This time, he did kiss her hard on the lips. Then he was gone.

Fleming listened to his footsteps clattering down the stairs. She phoned reception, then took a tissue and scrubbed at her lips. She had never realised that moral nausea could make you feel physic-ally sick. Oh, fear was there too, but her overwhelming feeling was one of visceral revulsion.

It shouldn’t have surprised her. She herself had said to the team, only last night, that Joss Hepburn wasn’t to be trusted. Her head knew all about that, but in her heart of hearts . . .

He was her glamorous past. He was powerfully attractive and she had secretly found it both exciting and flattering that he still felt a spark was there. Or had he? Was that all just part of the dirty game he was playing? What was he saying about her behind her back? Her face turned hot and red at the thought.

In a way, she acknowledged, Tam was right. She had dodged another meeting with Joss because she found it so hard to restrict the conversation to entirely professional subjects. A part of her disgust was at her own contemptible ineffectiveness.

And she was afraid too. She had suffered ordeal by media once before, and until you had been through it, you didn’t understand what a terrifying experience it was. It had been unpleasant enough this week when they started rehashing the details of her last case, and she daren’t think what it would be like with ‘revelations’ being published in the tabloids. It would, quite simply, be the end of her career.

She couldn’t even charge Hepburn with the serious crime of attempting to blackmail a police officer and get an injunction. It was only her word against his, which in the Scottish legal system meant there was no case to answer. She was totally at his mercy.

Mercy? From the man she now knew Joss Hepburn to be?

It was perfectly clear what Fleming should do. She should draw a dotted line round her neck, find an axe and a block, and report to her superintendent to be officially terminated. It was a stark choice: warn Bailey what was going to happen and pull her life down in ruins on her own head, or wait for the tabloids to do it for her.

There was no one she could go to for advice. Bill, usually her first choice for support and wise counsel, would never be crass enough to show anything other than sympathy, but she couldn’t bear the humiliation of watching him trying not to think, I told you so, too loudly. Tam? Well, when she’d finished with him today, he’d be disinclined to speak to her, let alone to help sort out her problem. And she had no right to involve Purves in her messy professional life.

She was on her own for this one. She tapped a fingernail on her front teeth, trying to think it through.

Joss Hepburn was holding all the cards. On the other hand, he just might be bluffing. It was years since Fleming had played poker, but this was a no-brainer: follow the rule book to certain disaster, or take the gamble that his had been an empty threat.

She made up her mind: say nothing and tough it out. And damn your black soul to hell, Joss Hepburn!

It was only then that she realised it had not crossed her mind for a second that she might capitulate.

‘You’re a crazy man, MacNee,’ Andy Macdonald said, as they headed towards the canteen together after their interviews with Ryan and Hepburn. ‘A complete bampot!’

MacNee had had time for reflection. ‘Aye,’ he agreed hollowly. ‘You ken how it is – seemed like a good idea at the time.’

‘No, frankly, I don’t know how it is. I don’t know how anyone would think, even for a nanosecond, that it was a good idea to break every rule in the book and take a punter in to see Big Marge without an appointment. And I
really
don’t know why anyone would do it when the punter in question was an old boyfriend, unless they had a death wish.’

‘Maybe I do,’ MacNee grunted, and Macdonald looked at him sharply. But he was going on, ‘I thought perhaps we’d manage to get something out of that pair that I could take to her.’

‘Like a peace offering?’

‘Kind of.’

‘But there isn’t anything,’ Macdonald pointed out helpfully.

‘No need to rub it in.’

Ryan and Hepburn had, in their separate ways, taken up two hours of the detectives’ morning in adding absolutely nothing to the sum of their knowledge. Hepburn had been calm, urbane and anxious to be helpful in a totally unhelpful way. Ryan had snarled and sneered – he had taken delight in emphasising MacNee’s position as his alibi for the time of his father-in-law’s murder – but again had told them nothing they had not been told before.

At least this time the bridie, beans and chips were forthcoming, and MacNee and Macdonald went to sit at an empty table.

‘I had a thought,’ Macdonald said suddenly.

‘Had to happen sometime, I suppose.’

‘Very funny. Anyway, we know who killed Rencombe and we know someone else killed Williams, but all three murders were spur-of-the-moment jobs. Williams picked up the nearest thing to fell Rencombe, someone used a stone to hit Crozier, and with Williams the crowbar was presumably lying beside the car that was being repaired.’

‘No,’ MacNee said. ‘It wasn’t.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I questioned Lisa Stewart in that garden. I was looking right at the broken-down car for half an hour. There was a jack, yes, a wrench, yes, a couple of rusty spanners. But take it from me – a crowbar, no.’

‘Right.’ Macdonald didn’t argue: observation was the bedrock of police training and MacNee was famously hawk-eyed. ‘So you’re saying the murderer brought it with him?’

‘Aye. Unless someone took it out in the afternoon to work on the car. But if they did, they brought it out just to put it down. Nothing’s been done to that car for months, if not years. There’s grass growing up round the tools.’

‘So we were meant to think it was lying around?’

MacNee thought about it. ‘Maybe we’re being a bit elaborate. It could just be the weapon of choice – simple and deadly. But of course they could have done a wee quiet recce once Lisa had told Williams where she was staying.’

‘Tell Big Marge that,’ Macdonald suggested. ‘It’s a new thought.’

‘If you think I’m going to mention crowbars to Big Marge, you’re daft. I’m not going to go putting ideas into her head,’ MacNee said, with just a flicker of a smile.

Alick Buchan made no attempt to welcome his visitors. As Maidie, with Calum clinging shyly to her legs, made flustered offers of hospitality, he said, ‘You’ll not be staying long enough to drink a cup of tea. What are you after now?’

He didn’t offer Kershaw and Campbell a seat. Campbell unhesitatingly pulled out a chair and joined Alick at the table, where he was sitting with a mug of tea and a local newspaper open at the property pages.

Kershaw sat down too, ignoring his question. ‘Thinking of buying a house, Mr Buchan?’

He smirked. ‘We-ell, maybe not buying just at the moment. We’ll be renting meantime, to see what’s available.’

‘So you’ve found another job?’

‘Not exactly.’ Buchan was definitely looking pleased with himself. ‘I’ve been under a lot of strain lately. I’ll be taking a wee rest.’

‘That sounds good.’ Kershaw turned to smile over her shoulder at Maidie. She was holding Calum, who was looking at the strangers with his thumb in his mouth and wide, wondering eyes. Maidie smiled back uncertainly. The bruising on her cheek was just a yellow shadow now.

‘Mr Buchan,’ Kershaw went on, ‘today I wanted to ask you a little bit about your job here. You were in the army with Mr Crozier, and when he came back to the area, he employed you, right?’

‘Aye.’ The surly scowl had returned.

‘And you would run shoots, fishing and so on for his business colleagues who came here for meetings?’

Buchan grunted agreement.

‘Now, I believe some of these men were old friends of Mr Crozier from his army days – a Mr Lloyd and a Mr Driscoll?’

Buchan sat bolt upright. ‘Who the hell told you that?’

Kershaw heard Maidie’s tiny gasp of fright. ‘Company records,’ she said smoothly. ‘Can you tell me more about them?’

‘No.’

‘You won’t, or you don’t know?’ Campbell asked.

‘If I did, I wouldn’t. But I don’t.’

‘You didn’t get on with Mr Crozier, did you?’ Kershaw had a nasty feeling that they weren’t going to get anywhere on the basis of Buchan’s grudges, but it was worth a try.

Buchan snorted. ‘Look, I took a dram that day I had the row with him. I was out of order – said things I shouldn’t of. But he was all right.’

‘A good boss, then,’ Campbell said. ‘Looked after you pretty well, no doubt?’

For a moment Kershaw thought the fish had taken the bait. Buchan’s eye kindled. ‘Looked after me? Me in this hovel, him in his fine big house, nothing too good for him, nothing to do but give me orders?’ Then he seemed to collect himself. ‘Aye, but that was just the way of it. Gave me a roof over my head, anyway.’

‘And what about the Ryans?’ Kershaw asked, without much hope. ‘They’ll be your new bosses. Or are they selling the place?’