Fenton's Winter (25 page)

Fenton could not help but feel
that the police had orchestrated the whole thing and it had worked.
The pressure was off them for, to all public intents and purposes,
they had tracked down Neil Munro's killer and he was dead, better
than a conviction for the rate payers. As for Saxon's killer? They
would go through the motions, follow routine but there was very
little pressure on them this time. No one cared about Saxon or his
seedy society. At least this was what Fenton had concluded but he
had to change his mind when the police issued a description of two
men that they wanted to interview in connection with the New Town
murder.

Fenton held his breath as he
listened to the descriptions. Two men aged between twenty and
thirty, one six feet tall and dark, the other slightly shorter with
fair hair and broad shoulders. Both had been seen leaving the area
of the basement flat on the night in question

Fenton's first instinct was to
phone Steve Kelly but he talked himself out of it, deciding that it
was a panic reaction. Kelly phoned him. There was nothing really to
say.

Kelly phoned again in the
evening just after eight when Jenny was leaving for the hospital.
"We've got trouble," he said and Fenton's heart sank. Jenny, who
had been in the act of leaving, paused in the doorway and said,
"Should I wait?"

"No," said Fenton. "Just go,
see you in the morning."

Jenny threw him a kiss and
closed the door behind her.

"What trouble?" asked
Fenton.

"Fiona Duncan called me. She
pointed out that 'The White Horse' is very near Lymon Place and
I've got fair hair and broad shoulders."

"Just what we needed," muttered
Fenton, trying to think at the same time.

"I'm sorry about this," said
Kelly.

"I think we had better go to
the police before they come to us." said Fenton.

"Do you think if I strangled
Fiona I could ask for one other case to be taken into
consideration?"

"I'll come round to your
place," said Fenton.

Fenton apologised to Mary Kelly
for having got her husband into his present predicament but she was
in a less than forgiving mood and her look came straight from the
freezer. As they left Kelly gave his wife a peck on the cheek and
said, "See you later."

Don't bet on it, thought
Fenton.

"Good evening sir," said the
desk sergeant, expecting a lost dog story.

"I think you are looking for
us," said Fenton, feeling as if he were throwing away a key.

The sergeant stared at them
until he saw a six foot tall dark man accompanied by a shorter man
with fair hair. "Good God," he said and lifted the telephone.
Jamieson was summoned from home.

Fenton and Kelly were held
separately during the wait, each accompanied by a silent constable.
Fenton found his room oppressively quiet and free from distraction,
furnished only with a table and four chairs and painted in
institutional pastel green. At least the table creaked when he put
his elbows on it and, in this respect, it was more communicative
than the constable. There was a vaguely unpleasant smell of
disinfectant about the place, something that made Fenton wonder why
it had been necessary to use it in the first place. It conjured up
visions of lice and filth and vomit and generally added to his
feelings of unease.

"Any chance of a cup of tea?"
he asked.

The constable shook his head
mutely.

An awful thought struck Fenton.
As yet, no one had asked for his name or any other details.
Everything was being saved for Jamieson. It would be a surprise for
him when he walked through the door. He wondered what he would
say.

"Oh Christ! This is all I
needed," said Jamieson. "Mr smart-arse Fenton.

Fenton struggled to adopt the
right facial expression but couldn't find it. Aggression was out,
definitely out in the circumstances, but contriteness went against
the grain, especially with Jamieson. He settled for something along
the lines of a British tourist being harangued by a foreign
official in a language that he did not understand.

Jamieson finished his opening
salvo and settled down to enjoying his work. He was going to play
this particular fish for a while.

"Why did you do it Fenton?
Revenge? Was that it? He cooked your mate, you cooked him?"

Fenton spluttered out a denial
but the truth was that he had not seen the poetic justice angle.
Things were even worse than he thought.

"How long have you been a
practising homosexual Fenton?"

Fenton clenched his fists.

"Is that why you got beaten up
in that pub Fenton...in the toilets wasn't it?"

Fenton made for him. The
constable dived in to restrain him while Jamieson just smiled.

Jamieson was in his element, he
had not had so much fun for ages. He ran rings round Fenton,
laughing away denials, playing him out, reeling him in, digging the
hook in deeper until, at last, he saw the fight in Fenton begin to
subside. It was always the moment he enjoyed most. He brought his
face close to Fenton's and said threateningly, "Let me tell you
this laddie, it gets very boring being taken for a mug by every
half-arse who's seen The Pink Panther. You might just ponder on the
fact that Nigel Saxon would be alive today if you had contacted us
as soon as he called you. Fenton pondered the fact.

Fenton and Kelly were released
at a quarter past midnight, a sober and wiser pair. They exchanged
stories of their questioning as they walked down the High Street to
collect Kelly's car. "Do you know, he suggested I was queer,"
complained Kelly. Fenton managed to summon up a smile in the
darkness while a distant clap of thunder echoed over the roof tops.
"Bloody rain," he said.

Fenton went back to the Kellys'
flat where Mary Kelly was waiting up. She seemed much happier to
see Fenton this time and apologised for her earlier frostiness.
Fenton said that it had been understandable.

"So what happened?" asked Mary
Kelly.

"We got our bottoms smacked,"
replied Kelly.

"About sums it up," agreed
Fenton.

Mary Kelly went to bed leaving
Fenton and Kelly drinking whisky and mulling over the past two
days.

"Did Saxon kill Neil Munro or
didn't he?" asked Kelly.

Fenton tilted his glass slowly
from side to side, keeping the fluid level horizontal. "It pains me
to say it but I think he might have been innocent. I think he was
about to shop the real murderer when he got killed for his trouble.
The killer must have got wind of what he planned to do and turned
up early."

"The same man who called on
Sandra Murray?" suggested Kelly.

"He could have killed Saxon but
not Neil. The killer must have been in the lab when Neil discovered
the truth about Saxon plastic. It couldn't have been a
stranger.

"You do realise what you are
saying?" said Kelly softly.

Fenton nodded. "If the killer
wasn't Saxon it must be someone in the lab. Someone who primed the
fair haired man to ask the right questions. Someone who knew what
would happen when you added hydrochloric acid to potassium
cyanide..."

The thought put both men to
silence.

"But why?" asked Kelly.

Fenton shook his head.

"Did you tell the police about
Sandra Murray's visitor?" asked Kelly.

"No, did you?"

"No."

"Here we go again," said
Fenton.

Fenton got up and went over to
the window. "The rain's stopped." he said. He drained the contents
of his glass.

It was very late and the
streets were practically deserted as Fenton walked home. The
temperature had fallen with the clearing of the skies but the air
was still and the stars twinkled brightly above him as he rounded a
corner and saw the source of the eerie white light that lit up
chimneys on tenement roofs. A full moon hung in the sky like a
communion wafer. A cat fled from a dustbin and dissolved in
shadow.

Fenton fell into a troubled
sleep but kept waking at almost hourly intervals until at four
o'clock he got up and made coffee. He had gone through each member
of lab staff in turn at least three times and had still failed to
find any motive for killing Neil. It was safe to eliminate all the
females for Neil's murder had demanded physical strength but that
left all the men. The motive had to be linked to the Cavalier
organisation Fenton decided. That was the link between Saxon and
the fair haired man. It was reasonable to propose that that was the
connection between Saxon and the killer in the lab.

Charles Tyson? He had defended
Saxon plastic throughout and had done everything possible to
dissuade him from pursuing the faulty plastic angle. What was more
Jenny had noticed that he had known what Ross had been talking
about when he mentioned the 'Tree Mob.' He was also unmarried and
never spoke of his personal life. But what about Ross himself? Ross
had told him about the club in the first place but that might have
been cleverness on his part, a ploy to make himself the least
likely suspect...Fenton gave up. There was no way he was going to
guess who the killer was. The fair haired man was the key to the
puzzle. He must know who Neil's killer was. Fenton resolved to
contact Jamieson in the morning.

Fenton phoned Kelly when he got
into the lab and Kelly agreed to come too. They arranged to meet at
noon and adopted Fenton's suggestion that they should use the Honda
to avoid lunch time traffic and parking problems.

At a quarter to twelve Kelly
phoned to point out that, as it was blowing a gale and the rain was
almost horizontal the Honda might not be such a good idea. He would
come round for Fenton in the car.

Kelly cursed as he tried to
reverse the Capri into a small gap that they had found after
crawling up and down side streets near the police station and found
it particularly difficult because of the rain and condensation on
the windows. "Hell, that'll do," he decided, abandoning the effort
for neatness and leaving the car with its nose jutting out.

They ran up the hill, keeping
close to the wall in an effort to avoid most of the weather but
took it full in the face as they rounded the corner at the top with
fifty metres or so still to cover before reaching the shelter of
the police station.

"Do you think God has something
personal against Scotland?" asked Fenton, shaking the water from
his hair in the doorway.

"I think it's a character
building agreement he has with John Knox," said Kelly. "Let's face
it, if you were having a good time you'd only feel guilty."

Jamieson looked up from his
desk as Fenton and Kelly were shown in by a constable who seemed
strangely reluctant to let go of the door handle after opening the
door for them. Both had to enter sideways.

Jamieson clasped his hands
together under his chin and said, "Don't tell me. Let me guess. You
have a suspicion that the Queen Mother did the Brighton Trunk
Murders?"

Fenton grinned painfully and
conceded Jamieson's right to some come back over his behaviour in
the past. He told the policeman of their visit to the Murray house
and what Sandra Murray's brother had told them about what a man
pretending to be from the Blood Transfusion Service had asked at
the house.

Jamieson knew the name Sandra
Murray well enough. "Hit and run death, up the Braids way?"

Fenton nodded.

"And you are saying that she
knew about the Saxon Plastic problem?"

"Maybe not the details, but she
knew that Neil Munro thought that there was something wrong with
it."

"And that's what this fair
haired man wanted to find out?"

"It seems like it."

Jamieson sucked the end of his
pen in silence for a moment then said, "Did Murray tell you any
more about this man?"

Fenton told him about the ring
and watched Jamieson's expression change. The policeman put down
his pen and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands before
saying quietly, "That lot."

"You know them?" asked
Fenton.

"Oh yes, I know them all
right," sighed Jamieson. "We all know them. The force is now full
of senior officers who have tangled with that bunch and ended up
giving road safety lectures to five year olds."

"You are serious?" asked Fenton
in disbelief.

"I'm serious," said Jamieson
quietly.

Fenton looked at Kelly who
shrugged as if to say, I told you so.

"But you are the police. I
thought..."

"I know what you thought,"
interrupted Jamieson. "You thought I could nip up to Braidbank,
pick up Sandra Murray's brother, and get him to identify the
man?"

"Well, yes."

Jamieson shook his head and
said, "Let me tell you what would really happen. Assuming Sandra
Murray's brother was willing to co-operate, and if he knows
anything at all about this mob he wouldn't be, we would start
making enquiries. A few days later I would be directing traffic in
Princes Street and Murray would be running for his life."

"You can't be serious," Fenton
protested.

"I am," said Jamieson. "These
buggers have so much power it scares me shitless."

Fenton was shaken by the
admission. "So where does that leave us?" he asked.

Jamieson ran his finger round
the inside of his collar and said, "Now that you have told me this
I am obliged to go see Murray and ask him formally if he thinks he
could identify the man. Frankly, I hope he says no or there could
be another hit and run accident in Braidbank within the week."

Fenton was having difficulty in
coming to terms with the frankness of Jamieson's admissions but he
did have an idea and said so. Jamieson grimaced and Kelly smiled.
Fenton said, "Murray told me that his sister was the scientist in
the family and that he was an artist. If he really is an artist, a
brush and paint artist that is, he might be able to sketch the man
for you and no one would ever know how you got on to him?"