Cradle to Grave (46 page)

‘So now we hand over to the Fraud Squad? To be honest, I can’t see that this has a bearing on the murders. Indeed,’ Fleming said, thinking aloud, ‘with all this going on in the background, Williams killing Crozier’s solicitor and bringing the police down on them must have been a disaster.’

‘But the searches haven’t turned anything up?’ Purves asked.

‘Nothing on the office computer – they’ve been careful, naturally enough. And of course the only areas we were allowed to search were the ones that related directly to Crozier himself – bedroom, office. The sheriffs won’t grant warrants for anything that looks to them like a fishing expedition for evidence on suspects.

‘Incidentally, I don’t think I was here today. Even if it’s not related to my investigations, it might look as if it was.’

Purves gave her a sideways look. ‘Not only were you not here, I wasn’t here and nor was Dave. The information he gave us will be totally sanitised and passed on to the correct quarters.

‘What might become our business is the hitman he thinks is operating on our patch. That information will come through the proper channels shortly. But the big problem is, how the hell do we find out who he’s targeting?’

Fleming studied her hands, tightly clasped in her lap, for a moment. She was opening her mouth to say, ‘John, I think there’s something I should tell you,’ when her phone rang.

Parking his car at headquarters, MacNee had spotted that Fleming’s car was in her reserved space. Good! They could get things moving at once.

At the reception desk there were two of the civilian assistants talking in hushed tones, but he didn’t really notice as he punched in the security number and headed up to the fourth floor. There was no answer to his knock: she must be around the building somewhere. Then he remembered that she had said she had a ‘commitment’, so perhaps it was just round the corner and she’d walked. Or got a lift from someone; he’d noticed Purves’s car wasn’t there. Some sort of special training for DIs, maybe. Bloody stupid, all this training and conferring and setting targets instead of getting on with the job.

He looked at his watch. He was entitled to knock off now, but the thought of going home wasn’t very appealing. Andy Mac was on the second shift today; he might have a blether with him about the way things were shaping up.

When he went downstairs, the CID room was surprisingly full and surprisingly quiet. There were groups of detectives standing talking in low voices, and MacNee looked around with a furrowed brow.

‘Dearie me,’ he said to Macdonald, who was standing near the door, ‘you’re looking a bit glum. Who’s stolen your scone?’

Macdonald grimaced. ‘Tam, it’s very bad news. Kim Kershaw’s daughter, Debbie – she’s just died.’

MacNee stared at him blankly for a second, then a red mist of unreasoning rage grew in his mind. The neglected child, fobbed off on strangers! The waste, the terrible waste! If Bunty had had a child, it would never have been out of her sight; it would have been fairly
deaved
with love and care.

He said harshly, ‘I’m sorry for the woman, of course. But maybe if she’d kept her at home and looked after her instead of parcelling her off to boarding school—’

The shocked silence penetrated even his fury. He stopped.

Macdonald was looking at him with revulsion. ‘For God’s sake, Tam, Debbie was in a
home
! She was severely disabled and the staff told me Kim was the most devoted mother any child could have. You’re sick, Tam – at least I hope you are, because if you’re not, there’s no excuse for one of the nastiest remarks I’ve ever heard.’

The anger drained out of MacNee, leaving him white and shaken. Without meeting anyone’s eyes he left the room.

Fleming listened in dismay to Macdonald’s agitated voice. ‘Where is she now?’ she asked, then, as he went on, pulled a grimace of distress. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s got into MacNee. Leave it with me, Andy – I’m on my way back.’

‘About as bad as it could be,’ she said in answer to Purves’s concern. ‘Poor Kim Kershaw’s daughter has died.’

‘The handicapped one?’

‘Yes. Everyone knew she was handicapped except, apparently, Tam MacNee, who made such an unfeeling remark that if he goes back into the CID room, he’ll be lynched.’

23

The scene of the accident in Station Road had been cordoned off. The body had been removed, and uniforms from the Dumfries Force were directing traffic, taking measurements and interviewing passers-by.

‘The name on her bank card’s Lisa Stewart,’ a PC told the detective who had just arrived. ‘No address or phone or anything – nothing in here except clothes and stuff.’ He held up a blood-stained shoulder bag.

‘No one got the car’s number?’ the detective asked.

‘Not so far. Stolen anyway, most likely.’

‘Usually are. We’ll get her address from her bank. I take it she’s dead?’

The constable nodded. ‘Never had a chance, that poor lass.’

The dogs, at least, were pleased to see Tam MacNee when he returned, the two young rescue dogs leaping around him and the elderly white one, with a rakish brown patch over its eyes and a missing leg, wagged its tail furiously instead. He ignored them and after a moment they trotted past him into the garden.

A grey cat looked up from its cushion on a kitchen chair and surveyed him with cool amber eyes, but the other cats in favourite cosy nooks paid no attention. Tam sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.

The kitchen was where he could always find Bunty when he came home, cooking or fussing with the animals or gossiping with a pal. There was always the smell of good food and cleanliness, and it was a bright and cheerful room, with the farmhouse pine units, and the flower-print curtains at the window. There were always flowers on the table too. Bunty liked flowers.

There was no scent of flowers now, just a trace on the air of rotting food from the bin he’d forgotten to empty, and the body smell of the animals. Bunty had always kept everything too clean for them to smell.

He couldn’t believe what had happened to his life in these past few weeks, wouldn’t have believed it was possible. He’d managed, though, to hold it together at his work, more or less, though it had cost him sometimes to go on as if nothing had happened.

Until today. He couldn’t believe what he’d done today. How come he hadn’t known about Kim’s daughter? He knew the answer, though – he hadn’t had a chat down the pub with anyone since all this happened. And Kim had got up his nose with her snippy remarks about Glasgow, and then the ‘boarding school’ – why hadn’t she told him?

He didn’t like the answer to that either. It came far too close to home.

What was he to do now? He’d felt the full force of the anger of his colleagues. How on earth was he to work with them after that? But if he didn’t have the job . . .

Tam had always had a soft spot for down-and-outs. If you talked to them, they’d often a story that would get tears out a stone – the problems at home, the drinking, the loss of the job, then the house repossessed . . .

With a surge of angry despair, Tam got up and went to the cupboard where he kept a bottle of whisky. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d started drinking to get drunk, but if he was going to be out on the street, he might as well take the normal road to ruin.

Kim Kershaw was back in the little flat in Newton Stewart by the time Marjory Fleming rang the bell. The door was opened by Kim’s mother, Dawn, a thin, wispy-looking woman who seemed out of her depth in the face of tragedy.

‘Says she’s cold. I’ve made her a cup of tea, but she’s not drinking it,’ she confided in a whisper. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

Murmuring conventional condolences, Fleming went through the narrow hall into the sitting room. It was a small room, painted an unpromising shade of beige, with neutral furnishings – comfortable enough, but somewhere to live rather than a home. There were few personal touches apart from photographs of an unsmiling child, delicately pretty but with a blank look in the eyes that told its own story.

The electric fire was on and the room was uncomfortably hot. Kim was sitting close to it, staring straight ahead; she did not turn her head as Fleming came into the room. By her side, an untouched cup of tea had a slimy film on its surface. She gave no sign of having heard the well-worn phrases Fleming repeated, and her hands when the other woman patted them briefly were icy cold.

Fleming sat down, as Dawn drifted off to make more tea. What did you say – what could you say, when you were possessed with something like guilt about your own two healthy children who were at this moment, please God, safe and happy? An interview with a bereaved parent wasn’t a new experience, but this wasn’t an interview, where there were questions to be asked with a constructive purpose.

This was different. There was nothing to ask, nothing useful to say. With a friend, you would put your arms round her, cry along with her, but though Fleming knew little of Kim personally, she sensed that an emotional approach would be impertinent. Kim was a professional colleague, and this was, in a sense, a professional visit.

So keep it professional. ‘Is there anything you need, that we can do for you, Kim? Of course there will be compassionate leave for as long as you need—’

‘No!’ For the first time, she got a response. Kim looked directly at her with tortured eyes but said perfectly calmly, ‘There will be funeral arrangements, of course, but there’s very little to do otherwise. I don’t want to be off duty.’

Horrified, Fleming protested, ‘But, Kim, you’re in shock. You need time to recover—’

‘Recover!’ Kim gave a bitter laugh. ‘You don’t really think I’ll
recover
, do you? When you lose a child, you only learn to live with the pain, so the sooner I get on with doing it the better. Debbie was my purpose in life and the job is going to have to take that place. Otherwise, I’d just top myself now, wouldn’t I?’

She gave a bright, brittle smile and got up. ‘Thank you for your support,’ she said, and held out one of those cold, cold hands.

There was nothing Fleming could do but shake it and leave.

Dawn was in the hall, coming from the kitchen with yet another unwanted cup of tea. She set it down on a small table with a sigh. ‘Do her good to have a wee cry,’ she said, ‘but she won’t. I’d a bit of a cry at the home myself when I saw her, poor kiddie. But all for the best really, isn’t it?’

Not knowing what to say in response to such a supremely insensitive remark, Fleming muttered something indistinguishable and left, torn between her pity for Kim’s anguish and anxiety about the dreadful unwisdom of her speedy return to duty.

She had another professional problem to deal with, which she might as well tackle now.

‘It has to have been him!’ Declan Ryan said to his wife furiously. ‘Who else could have taken it from under our bed?’

The air in the white sitting room was thick with smoke and there was a pile of stubbed-out butts in the ashtray in front of Hepburn. Cara gave a little cough, sent him a reproachful glance, then looked at her husband with dull, unfriendly eyes. ‘I’m tired. You’ve asked him, I’ve asked him.’

‘I know, and it’s done no good. Where the hell is it? We’ve got to destroy it! The busies’ll be all over us like a rash, with warrants and everything now for the whole house, and then it’s—’

‘Should have dropped it in the sea, like I said.’

Ryan turned on his wife savagely. ‘And have the bosses sending messages we didn’t get, and wondering why? Get real!’

‘Well, they know now what’s been going on – some of it, anyway,’ Hepburn snapped. ‘And it’s getting seriously alarming.’

‘You could say. But tell me about your little friend Madge.’ There was an unpleasant edge to Ryan’s voice. ‘Has she backed off?’

There was a brief pause, then Hepburn said, ‘She’s thinking about it. I’ve given her the strongest possible warning.’

Ryan laughed. ‘I never thought it would work. So, when’s the news story coming out?’

Again, Hepburn hesitated. Then he said, ‘The threat was what it was about. Now’ – he shrugged his shoulders in a pantomime of indifference – ‘not worth the hassle.’ As Ryan began to protest, he went on, ‘Anyway, I’ve made up my mind. I’m getting out. I’ve stayed around so the police wouldn’t get too interested, but it’s way beyond that now. I’m on the next plane I can get, before they block my passport. If they want me, they can extradite me.’

‘Oh, nice,’ Ryan sneered. ‘You’re going to get out, leaving us to carry the can.’

Hepburn turned on him. ‘See here, my friend, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this place that I don’t get, and I’m not asking you to explain. It’s absolutely nothing to do with me and I really, majorly, do not want to know. But Alex’s murder brought the roof in, and somehow you’re involved. Your problem, not mine. I’m out of here.’

Roused, Cara said, ‘We – we have to stick together, Joss! Tell the same story! Please, Joss, I need you. I’m – I’m scared.’

Hepburn looked down at her from his considerable height. ‘No dice, Cara. Declan’s your husband – I guess you must have chosen him, though I might wonder why. Your choice, your life.’