Cradle to Grave (6 page)

Crozier jerked his head at Buchan. ‘Better make sure.’

The man plodded off through the mud as Crozier said, ‘I’ll come and speak to the lady. We’ve sent someone to alert the emergency services, so they’ll be here before long to get you out. Did you have a car?’

The lad pointed to the heap of earth. ‘That was the parking area. The cars are under all that.’ Whatever was there wasn’t going to be recognisable as a car when they got it out.

‘Hope everyone was insured,’ Crozier was saying when he realised that Buchan had come back and was standing looking at him meaningfully. Oh God! Since Ballymena, even the thought of a dead body turned him queasy.

‘You go back in,’ he urged the young pair. ‘Look out what you need to take with you. I’ll see you in a minute.’

As they walked across to their cottage, the other men, quick to pick up the significance, stood as if frozen in a live tableau. Once the couple were safely inside, Crozier walked towards number 2.

Through the damaged door he could see the stairs, and daylight above, where a huge stone had come through the roof. But Buchan was mutely indicating the left-hand window, surprisingly still intact, and with a gesture Crozier indicated that he should check out whatever was in there.

The inner door was wedged by mud. Buchan had to fetch a hatchet, and with a few blows broke through it and disappeared inside. Probably they didn’t all hold their breath until he came out again, but it felt as if they did.

Buchan reappeared and limped over to him. ‘There’s a body. Man lying under rubble in the sitting room, bad head injury.’

‘Definitely dead?’

Buchan gave a sour grimace. ‘Oh, aye. Definitely dead.’

3

Kim Kershaw arranged her face in an expression of intelligent interest as DI Fleming explained her general philosophy of policing in the community. There was nothing wrong with it: good, standard ethical stuff that she’d heard often enough before, but she’d had bosses who talked the talk quite eloquently while their gait in walking the walk was uneven to say the least. She didn’t have a trusting nature – not now – and what she’d seen of both the police and the criminal fraternity had only deepened her cynicism.

Fleming’s hazel eyes were penetrating, though, and Kershaw was careful not to let these thoughts register on her face. She answered the questions Fleming posed about her professional life fully, about her personal life briefly: she was divorced; she had one child; she was renting a perfectly satisfactory ground-floor flat in Newton Stewart.

Despite sex-discrimination rules, she had suffered interrogation in the past about her childcare arrangements, but this time, when she didn’t elaborate on her circumstances, Fleming didn’t probe. Kershaw did catch a look on the inspector’s face, though, which suggested that this reticence might have been filed away as interesting information.

Fleming was winding up the meeting now. ‘Sorry I can’t give you longer, Kim, but as you can imagine, I’m up to my eyes this morning. Looking forward to working with you, though.’

While you’d never describe Big Marge as good-looking, her smile lit up her face in a very engaging way and Kershaw found herself smiling back.

‘Thanks, boss. I’ll do my best.’

‘Good. That’s all from my point of view. Any questions?’

Kershaw had been hoping for an opportunity. ‘Not a question, ma’am, but may I say something?’

‘Of course.’

The tone was cordial enough, but she sensed that the other woman was on her guard. She took a deep breath.

‘DS MacNee has just apologised to me. I appreciate your concern for me as a newcomer, but I don’t need you to fight my battles. I’m perfectly able to deal with him myself and it won’t help to have an awkward relationship made worse by him getting grief from you.’

There was a pause, during which Kershaw remembered Andy Macdonald’s warning and began to wish she’d taken it to heart.

Then Fleming said calmly, ‘I admire your capacity to be direct – and I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way. I’m all for straight talking. On the other hand, I don’t think you quite appreciate what I was doing. Your relationship with MacNee is your own business. You’ll have to sort things out between you. My business is the good discipline of my officers. A divided team is an ineffective team, and I don’t tolerate any behaviour that affects our standards of professionalism. My intervention was on that basis. Do you understand now?’

Wrong-footed, Kershaw muttered that she did.

‘Good. I’m sure you’ll be a valuable addition. Thanks, Kim.’

Kershaw left, reflecting on the interview. There had been no aggression, no animosity; Fleming had merely been as blunt as she had been herself in spelling out her position. Why, then, did she feel like saying, ‘Phew!’ as she shut the door behind her?

‘And this blue one on top. Now, what shall we do? Oh dear, over it goes!’

Beth Brown laughed as the toddler gleefully knocked the tower of bricks to the floor.

‘Do it again? Here we are – green one, red one . . .’

From her seat in the corner of her son’s sitting room next to the mottled brown thirties fireplace, Ina McClintock Buchan watched Beth like a spider assessing the potential of an unfamiliar species of fly.

A lifelong habit of discontent had etched itself on Ina’s features, producing eyes narrowed by suspicion and harsh lines between her brows. Even when she smiled, usually in triumph at some barb that had found its mark, there was still a sour downturn to her thin-lipped mouth.

Now she said, ‘You’ll be wanting away, to get back to your family, no doubt.’

Beth, placing a yellow brick on top of the green and the red, didn’t look up. ‘Not really.’

Ina frowned. ‘ “Not really”? What kind of answer is that?’

Beth gave her a sidelong look, then shrugged.

The thin lips tightened. ‘If that’s your idea of manners, it’s no wonder if your family don’t want anything to do with you.’

Goaded, the girl retorted, ‘I never said that! I’ve none to go to, that’s all.’

‘Funny thing, that – no family,’ Ina mused artlessly.

‘I’m an only child and my mother’s dead, all right?’ Beth snapped. ‘If it’s any of your business.’

‘What about your partner, then? Maidie said you’d a partner – apparently that’s what you call it these days when you’re a bidie-in.’

‘He’s – he’s away.’

Beth was biting her lip and she put the brick in her hand on to the tower so clumsily that it collapsed. Calum crowed and clapped his hands.

‘Away where?’ Ina persisted. ‘You’ll be wanting to let him know what’s happened before he sees it on the telly and gets a fright.’

‘Well, I can’t, can I? Phone’s not working.’

With malevolent glee, Ina heard real anger there. The girl was glaring at her, and there was something curious about her eyes. What was it, now?

As Beth looked away to say something to the child, Ina realised there was a gap between the bottom of the iris and the lower lid. It made her eyes look as round as marbles and oddly staring.

‘Funny eyes you’ve got. Not natural, that, is it?’ Ina was saying when the door opened and her daughter-in-law came in with mugs and a plate of biscuits on a tray.

‘For goodness’ sake, Gran, you can’t go saying things like that!’ Maidie protested. ‘Beth, don’t pay any attention. You’ve got very pretty eyes – lovely colour, and quite unusual with your dark hair.’

Ina pursed her lips in annoyance. Maidie’s unrelenting cheerfulness and imperviousness to insult had always been a source of frustration.

‘I’ll say what I like and you’ll not stop me,’ she said, but the moment had passed. Her victim was on her feet, persuading Calum to help put the bricks in the box before he got his juice.

‘Good boy, Calum! Now sit down nicely so you don’t spill.’ Beth scooped up the child with practised ease and settled him beside her on the sofa.

‘You’re an absolute godsend!’ Maidie handed Beth a mug. ‘I’ve got a dozen things done this morning that I haven’t had time to do for weeks, and there’s a cake in the oven for tea. That’ll be nice, won’t it, Gran?’

Gran’s face indicated merely irritation at this attempt at good cheer, and Maidie went on, ‘Calum’s been a wee angel for you, Beth. I barely recognise him! You must have worked with children – or have you young brothers and sisters?’

It was an innocent remark. So why should Beth’s face have gone scarlet? Ina wondered. Something odd there. ‘She’s an only child,’ Ina put in – purely in a spirit of helpfulness, of course.

‘I’ve – I’ve never worked with children,’ Beth stammered. ‘I – I did other things.’

It was so clearly untrue that Maidie in her turn became flustered. ‘Sorry, I – I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘She’s lying, obviously,’ Ina said in a conversational tone. ‘What’s she lying for?’

Beth jumped to her feet, startling the toddler, who bawled in fright. She went to the door and wrenched it open.

‘I’m going out.’

‘Beth, it’s pouring!’ Maidie protested in distress. ‘There’s no need—’

The girl turned in the doorway. ‘Oh, yes, there is. I’m leaving before I do something I’ll regret to that evil old bat!’

The door slammed behind her.

‘Well! Nice manners, I
don’t
think!’ Ina tittered.

For once provoked beyond bearing, Maidie picked up the sobbing Calum and carried him out, saying over her shoulder, ‘She’s absolutely right. I should have called you that more often, instead of just thinking it.’

The door was slammed again, leaving Ina McClintock Buchan alone, with an unpleasant smirk of satisfaction on her face.

Beth felt sick, sick and frightened as she half-ran past the kennels. They hadn’t believed her; she’d never been a good liar.

‘You were angry, weren’t you, when you had to give up your evening out?’

The man in the wig hadn’t moved his eyes off her face since the questioning began. She felt as if he had flayed away the skin, as if now he was paring the flesh off her bones.

She hesitated. ‘I said I didn’t mind.’

She knew it sounded feeble. He let a pause develop. Then, ‘You
said
you didn’t mind.’ He gave the word intense significance. ‘Said it. But you didn’t mean it, did you?’

And she hadn’t known how to reply.

What was going to happen now? She didn’t dare to think.

‘The super’s right – Donaldson is a bit of an old woman,’ Fleming said, as she drove towards Kirkcudbright with MacNee. ‘But that isn’t to say he hasn’t got a point. After all, the Carron’s burst its banks already and this rain’s showing no sign of letting up. The bridge was still clear when he checked it yesterday, but the level wasn’t falling. And apart altogether from the question of the strain on the bridge with the river in spate, you have to consider that you could have hundreds of fans stranded if it rises any more. There’d be absolutely no way of getting them off the headland that wouldn’t involve helicopters or a flotilla of boats, and I’m not sure how much of the Dunkirk spirit survives in Kirkcudbright.’

MacNee grunted. ‘Good excuse to cancel the whole thing. A lot less hassle – traffic control, undercover drugs surveillance . . .’

Fleming gave him a look of exasperation. She’d been prepared for awkwardness, ready to work towards their old easy relationship, but he was just being bloody-minded. ‘For heaven’s sake, Tam, we were all young once! At least I certainly was, and I’m prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

‘If it’s cancelled, we’ll still get the morons arriving anyway, just ettling to cause trouble.’ MacNee was determinedly morose. ‘Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.’

‘You’re a right little ray of sunshine today, aren’t you? Maybe the rain will stop and the river will go down.’

She had hoped he might respond in kind, but MacNee only pointed through the windscreen where, beyond the frenetic wiper activity, all that could be seen were banks of purple-grey cloud.

For Fleming, patience had never been one of the easier virtues. Be like that, she thought and, switching to professional mode, said, ‘Anyway, do you have any background on Gillis Crozier?’

MacNee shrugged. ‘Not a lot. He comes and goes to London. We’ve certainly not got anything on file. I took a wee look after I’d a call from my pal Sheughie in the Glasgow Force a while back, saying the name Rosscarron had come up and asking if one of the big boys on his patch was hanging round here.’

Fleming raised her brows. ‘And was he?’

‘If he was, he wasn’t selling tickets. But there’s maybe more to Crozier than meets the eye. Suddenly he’s in the building trade – makes you wonder . . .’

‘Indeed it does. And this new pop festival too – it’s pretty low key, and he can’t be expecting to make big money from it. But that’s another perfect way to launder cash, with all the casual payments. Let’s put some feelers out. We’ve a few CHISes around who might know something, haven’t we?’

‘If we’re allowed to speak to them any more, with all these new regulations,’ MacNee said with some bitterness. ‘In the old days I could have picked my pub, bought one of the grasses a wee quiet bevvy and found out everything I needed to know.’