Death in a Cold Spring (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 9) (12 page)

‘He isn’t?’

The Sergeant shook his head sagely. ‘I didn’t want to say it before in case it worried you...’

Oh, God forbid you should worry me, thought Keith.

‘... but he’s finished. Burnt out. A hollow husk of a man... Charlie got out at the right time, you know.’

Sergeant Macdonald lumbered away. Keith went just as slowly back to his desk and called North Queensferry from the phone there.

‘Last night?’ said the voice of what sounded like a primary school child. ‘I don’t know anything about last night.’

‘They came over to Pitkirtly. Three cars and about nine men.’

‘We don’t have nine men, as far as I know... Wait a minute, I’ll see if they’ve left a note.’

Keith was beginning to wonder if he really had dreamed the events of the previous night. He cheered up very slightly as he remembered Amaryllis. She would tell him the truth, even if nobody else did. He could call her when he had finished this pointless conversation. But the voice returned with more reassuring news.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve found it. They weren’t all from Queensferry, though. Two of the cars were from Aberdour. Some of the men, too. They’re on their way back to you now. ETA nine a.m.’

‘Thanks. That’s great.’

‘Have a nice day,’ said the voice.

‘You too,’ he said without thinking. Putting the phone down, he couldn’t imagine why they were talking to each other like American shop assistants, but on this occasion he didn’t really mind. He hadn’t imagined it all. He wasn’t burnt out or a hollow husk.

He went through to the front desk, where Sergeant Macdonald was also just finishing a call.

‘Same to you with knobs on,’ he said as Keith appeared. Noticing Keith’s raised eyebrows, he added, ‘Bobby Fraser. I’ve known him for years. I don’t know why he wanted to go and work over there with the top brass. He was a perfectly good desk sergeant at Auchterderran.’

‘Did you have any luck?’ Keith enquired.

‘Don’t know yet. They’re going to get back to me later... What’s all this?’

There was a lot of noise outside, and somebody hammered on the door.

‘Oh, that’ll just be the imaginary back-up from North Queensferry,’ said Keith airily, going to open up for them.

Chapter 13 The disappearance of Maggie Munro

Christopher needed to get on with his work, having wasted almost the whole of the previous day trying to soothe Zak’s and Maisie Sue’s troubled sensibilities. They had talked round and round the topic of the missing quilt, approaching it from every possible angle, but always shying away from the horrible truth.

In the end he imagined he had convinced Maisie Sue that the police would have to hang on to the quilt more or less permanently as it would probably have to be used as a piece of evidence in the court case that would ensue once they had caught the perpetrators. He didn’t think – although he didn’t divulge this to her – that they were making very good progress yet. Apart from anything else, it seemed that the extent of the crime was still increasing day by day, and no end was in sight. Unless the police had made a big break-through overnight, of course. But he didn’t think that was a serious possibility, considering how under-staffed the Pitkirtly station was at the moment. Was Inspector Armstrong ever coming back? Surely there had to be a senior officer in charge of a case like this?

He dismissed these vague ramblings from his mind. After all, he wasn’t responsible for the running of the police force. Bad enough to have to manage the Cultural Centre. He felt as if he had done little enough of that over the past week or so.

He had switched on his computer with a sigh of inevitability, and was going through his emails to see if his masters at the Council had issued any new commandments lately when Amaryllis crashed through the office door.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to knock?’ he said.

For once in her life she looked apologetic. ‘I fell over a mop just outside.’

‘A mop?’

‘You know, long handle, slimy strands of wool on the end, you use it to clean floors.’

‘What was it doing there?’ Christopher didn’t expect her to answer. Instead he got to his feet and went out to have a look for himself. It was indeed a mop. Maggie Munro seemed to have abandoned her cleaning equipment and vanished. ‘That’s funny.’

He was frowning as he returned to his desk.

‘There’ve been too many funny things happening lately around here,’ said Amaryllis.

‘That’s just what I was going to say,’ he said with mild surprise.

‘But I suppose this doesn’t exactly fall into the same category as murder and mayhem.’

‘It never does to begin with. Maggie Munro could be just along the corridor or in the tea-room or she might have been abducted by aliens. But we won’t know that until she comes back.’

‘A sort of Schrödinger’s cat situation,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Only nothing to do with quantum mechanics. Or cats.’

‘Hmm,’ said Christopher, not sure he understood.

‘You don’t believe in alien abductions, do you?’

‘No. Did you really think I did?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know any more about how the police are getting on?’ he asked after a pause during which she wandered over to the window and gazed out across the car park.

‘Only a bit... There were extra officers around last night. Young Dave and some other man got themselves arrested.’

Christopher sighed. ‘I suppose it was only a matter of time.’

‘Keith threatened me with handcuffs, but I managed to get away.’

He frowned, uncertain about whether she was making it up or not.

‘There are some pictures of me in the Face of Pitkirtly thing – did you know?’ she added.

‘I don’t know anything about it – except what happened here, of course. And I know next to nothing about that.’

He didn’t really want to know any more about it, but Amaryllis evidently wanted to set out the information she had and talk it through, so he sat quietly while she paced the office and talked about the men in the van, and the missing girl, and what had happened at the church hall. It sounded as if even Jemima and Dave had been more aware of what was going on than he had. Of course that wasn’t entirely surprising, what with Jemima’s network of contacts around the town and Dave’s ability to be in a crowded pub or cafe taking in all that was going on without anybody really noticing him, despite his size.

‘So you think the girl might have been hiding in the coffee kiosk for a while, then?’

‘It’s close enough to the harbour, where I found the tablet, for her to have run and hidden in there. And there was the sandwich wrapper. But I haven’t a clue where she went after that.’

‘She isn’t hiding out at Charlie’s, is she?’

‘Charlie would have turned her in by now,’ said Amaryllis slowly, as if something had just tugged at the corner of her mind to try and attract her attention. She shook her head. ‘I almost had a thought then, but it’s gone.’

‘That happens as you get older.’

She scowled, and returned to the window.

‘Keith’s on his way to see you,’ she said after a while.

‘That’s all I need. Are you sure?’

‘He’s heading this way in a purposeful manner.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I ought to go and do some more leafleting.’

‘Is the novelty wearing off?’

‘I don’t know... I thought I wanted to do something to make a difference, but now it seems irrelevant. Anyway, Stewie’s gone off somewhere and I don’t want to do it on my own.’

‘I could help you at the weekend,’ Christopher offered without thinking.

He immediately wished he hadn’t, but fortunately Amaryllis said, ‘You can’t do that. You’ll infringe your neutrality.’

There was a subdued knock at the door.

‘That’s how you do it,’ said Christopher.

Amaryllis went over and opened the door. Keith Burnet came in.

‘What’s that mop doing in the corridor?’ he said.

‘You didn’t just come in here to ask us that, did you?’ said Amaryllis.

‘We were debating whether Maggie Munro had been abducted by aliens,’ said Christopher with dignity.

‘She doesn’t really need to be abducted to live with aliens,’ said Keith. ‘Have you seen her family?’

‘They seemed very nice,’ said Christopher.

‘Sorry. That isn’t what I wanted either... I’ve come to speak to you, Amaryllis. Is it all right to talk in front of Christopher?’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘That depends.’

‘I don’t have any time for games,’ Keith warned her.

There was something different about him today. Christopher couldn’t quite work out what it was. He looked older – no, that wasn’t it. He did have a firmer expression, especially around his mouth, as if he were gritting his teeth. But he still had that baby-faced innocence he would probably never grown out of, because it reflected a quality of inner goodness that not many people managed to survive in the real world with.

Inner goodness! What had got into him today? What with that and the aliens...

‘It’s fine,’ said Amaryllis to Keith. ‘As long as it isn’t too confidential. From your point of view.’

‘I just wondered if you’d noticed anything odd about the officers from Queensferry. Last night.’

‘Odd?’ She thought for a moment. ‘I hardly saw them – you hustled me past them almost as if you were ashamed of me... One of them came barrelling up the road just as we were leaving. I remember wondering what had kept him.’

‘That’ll be it!’ said Keith. ‘Now that you say that, I remember nearly bumping into him. That,’ he said in a significant tone, ‘was Murray Williamson.’

Amaryllis looked blank. Thank goodness. Christopher had expected to be the only one of the three of them who hadn’t heard of the renowned war hero, or retired footballer, or tiddlywinks champion of West Fife, whichever the man was.

Keith slumped into the nearest chair. ‘I don’t think he’s a real police officer. He offered to keep an eye on the prisoners last night when I – um – dropped off to sleep, and in the morning they were all gone.’

‘All? You mean – Young Dave and the other one...’

‘And this so-called Constable Murray Williamson,’ said Keith.

‘So they’re at large? And it’s just you and Sergeant Macdonald holding back the forces of evil?’ said Amaryllis. She sat in the chair next to Keith. It almost looked as if she wanted to hold his hand, or at least pat it.

‘Sergeant Macdonald’s ringing for reinforcements,’ said Keith gloomily.

‘You could swear us in as Special Constables,’ said Christopher. Where had that thought come from? Maybe Amaryllis had used psychic powers to plant it in his mind. ‘Or was that just in war-time?’ he added uncertainly.

‘It isn’t as simple as that nowadays,’ said Amaryllis. ‘You have to fill in application forms and provide cvs and references and things. I looked it up online once when I had nothing better to do.’

They both looked at Keith, who unexpectedly burst out laughing. ‘The day I have to resort to swearing you two in as Special Constables is the day I hang up my handcuffs for good.’

‘Anyway, do you want us to help?’ said Amaryllis eagerly.

‘You know I can’t do that. I only came round to interview you as a witness to the existence of Murray Williamson. In the unlikely event that we ever catch up with him, do you think you might be able to identify him?’

She nodded. ‘Lumbering man, small moustache, not much hair on top, little brown eyes.’

‘That’s him all right. We’ll have to try and gloss over what you were doing up at the church hall at that time of night in the first place, but it should be OK.’

‘In that case,’ said Amaryllis, ‘I’ve got something for you. I didn’t want to give it to you at first, and then I forgot about it...’

She went over to the window, where she had left a small backpack. Christopher had imagined she only used to cart around her election material, but she now drew out of it a flat smooth black thing.

‘A tablet?’ said Keith, getting to his feet.

‘It isn’t mine,’ Amaryllis told him. ‘I found it. I meant to hand it into the police station, but I lost track of the opening hours. It’s been out in the wet, so it may be damaged.’

‘Where was it?’

‘On the harbour wall. The day after the incident here. I remembered you saying they would need a device – the people who installed the camera in the Folk Museum, I mean. And then there was the sandwich wrapper.’

Keith took the tablet and tried to switch it on. ‘It won’t start up. I’ll need to get it to forensics... What was that about the sandwich wrapper?’

Amaryllis told him. He listened, but with a sceptical expression on his face. That was new as well. Christopher watched him closely. Maybe he should have a word with Charlie Smith about the boy. It seemed as if the police had been taking his energy and work ethic for granted.

‘I’d better get going, then,’ said Keith. ‘I’ll need to have this checked out as soon as possible. If it is the device I was looking for, and if we can recover any camera footage from it, we might understand a bit more about what happened in the Folk Museum... It’s hard to see how the whole thing fits together, though.’ Just before going out the office door, he turned and said suddenly, ‘Is there a problem with Maggie Munro as well?’

‘I don’t think there is really,’ said Christopher. ‘She doesn’t usually leave mops and stuff lying about though.’

‘Hmm,’ said Keith. ‘Let us know if you don’t see her by the end of the day... And no rushing into investigations of your own,’ he added sternly to Amaryllis.

‘Would I do a thing like that?’ she said, batting her eyelids.

‘Yes,’ he said and left, closing the door behind with a sharp click.

‘I don’t know why he has to be so annoying about it,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It isn’t as if we haven’t helped him in the past. And I found the tablet, after all. And the sandwich wrapper, but he didn’t seem all that interested in it. I thought he might have wanted to send it for forensic tests too.’ She pulled the wrapper out of her bag and stared at it mournfully. ‘I might as well throw it away.’

‘Feel free to use my bin if you want.’

‘Maybe I’d better hang on to it a bit longer in case he changes his mind.’

She wandered round the office for a while. He was just about to ask her if she didn’t have some leafleting to get on with, when she heaved a sigh and asked hopefully,

‘Would you like me to go round to Maggie’s house and see if she’s all right?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said after a pause for thought. ‘I’m sure she’s in the tea-room or chatting to the librarians. Or maybe she was in the tea-room and noticed we were short of something and she’s popped over to the supermarket to get more coffee or whatever.’

Christopher realised halfway through this little speech that he was actually a bit worried about Maggie Munro and her whereabouts. He didn’t want to encourage Amaryllis to go off and start poking her nose in, though, so he had tried to play it down.

‘Does Maggie usually have to go out and buy coffee?’ said Amaryllis, pouncing on the weak spot in his argument with all the vigour of a kitten following a trailing strand of wool. ‘Isn’t there someone else who takes care of that? And doesn’t she usually finish her morning cleaning before you open to the public?’

‘Her timing’s been all over the place this past week,’ said Christopher. ‘But it’s not her fault, of course.’