The Darkness and the Deep (19 page)

Kerr and MacNee exchanged glances. ‘By yourself, Nat?’ she said.

‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Look, you don’t have to cover up. Anyone who was with you isn’t in trouble.’

MacNee cut across her. ‘You’re lying, Rettie. My constable here, she’s a nice person and she thinks you’re protecting someone. I don’t. You’re looking after number one, aren’t you? What were you after – spot of breaking and entering, maybe? Better tell us that than taking the rap for murder.’

‘I never! Look, I – I had my girlfriend with me—’

‘Girlfriend? Doing the dirty on someone, is she? Scared of her bloke?’ MacNee was pushing him. Then he stopped. ‘Hang about,’ he said slowly. ‘I wonder what put it into your head to call Luke Smith a paedophile, eh? What age is your girlfriend, Rettie?’

The picture Fleming was looking at seemed to go into freeze-frame: Rettie, gaping; MacNee, staring at Rettie’s face as if he could bore a hole into his mind; Kerr, startled. Then it started to move again.

‘Thirteen,’ Rettie blurted out. ‘But we weren’t, like, doing anything. She was just there. She’ll tell you—’

MacNee snapped off the machine. ‘And that was it. Under-age sex, and he’s over sixteen. An adult.’

‘Kylie MacEwan,’ Fleming said heavily.

‘How did you know that?’

‘Friend of Cat’s, I’m sorry to say.’ She sighed. ‘That’s my problem. But you were good.’

‘Can’t get used to this kind of stuff.’ Disgust was plain in MacNee’s face. ‘In my day, it was your pals’ mums you fancied, not their kid sisters. But I wanted you to see Tansy doing her stuff. She’s good, isn’t she? A wee cracker!’

‘You’re a classic team – nice cop, nasty cop. Maybe you could do it the other way round sometime?’ Fleming suggested innocently, then grinned at his reaction. ‘Did you really have a bet about what he’d say?’

‘Would I be that daft? That was a wee bit of improvisation. I got the 10p back, mind. In fact, now I think of it –’ He drew it out with a flourish and dropped it in the box on her desk marked ‘Burns fines’. ‘For when I need another quote.’

She groaned. ‘Oh God, it’ll be like waiting for the other shoe to drop!’ Then she said soberly, ‘Well, it doesn’t look as if it was him, does it?’

‘Nuh. So where does that leave us?’

‘With a wide open field, that’s where. I keep thinking about the tales you hear on every harsh coastline about wreckers in the old days – you know, local people who would use lights to lure a ship on to the rocks in a storm so they could loot the cargo. But of course the only cargo a lifeboat carries is human.

‘Give it a bit of thought, Tam. I want a case conference tomorrow, so sort out your ideas. Jon Kingsley should have quite a bit of useful input – he’s been seeing a few of the main players today.’

‘I hope he’ll let us all have the benefit.’ The constraint was back. With a nod, MacNee went out, leaving Fleming to frown at the closed door before she went back to the report on her desk. She was going to be late tonight; she’d have to phone Bill and warn him, but she thought she might take half an hour off to go and see Laura. She wanted her ideas on the profile of the person who could do this, and ten minutes playing with Daisy would be light relief in a heavy day.

10

Muriel Henderson had taken her tea-break and Enid Davis was on the reception desk when Katy Anderson arrived, a little early for her four o’clock appointment. She drifted in like a ghost, oblivious to the sympathetic glances of other patients in the waiting room who recognised her, as if she had her being in a different dimension. The pallor of her face was in startling contrast to her fiercely red-rimmed eyes, which seemed to be having difficulty in focusing on Enid as she came up to the desk.

Enid recognised the stigmata of wretchedness. It was like seeing again a familiar domestic landscape which even today was clearly visible to her, though at a distance; now she was only an occasional visitor.

‘Dr Matthews is running a bit late, I’m afraid,’ she said gently. ‘Would you like to sit in the waiting room there?’

‘Yes. Yes of course.’ Katy turned, obedient as a zombie, as if, had she been asked to lie on the floor, she’d have done that too without question. A woman with a small child pulled it on to her knee to make room for Katy on one of the padded benches, then leaned across to pat her knee.

Enid saw Katy’s automatic, meaningless smile. These people offering their sympathy were looking for a connecting response of gratitude for their kind concern, when in fact most of them, you could tell, had either an unhealthy desire to be associated with sensation or a wish to bask in the sunshine of their own benevolence. All the time their greedy eyes were performing a sort of visual rape.

‘Is she here yet?’ Muriel’s voice, speaking in her ear, gave Enid a start. She wasn’t due back on duty for another quarter of an hour, and it wasn’t like Muriel to cut short her tea-break – on the contrary. The reason was clear enough, though: she was eagerly scanning the waiting room until she spotted Katy, her eyes blank and her hands folded in her lap.

‘Oh, there she is! Goodness me, Enid, how could you think of letting the poor soul sit out there in the waiting room with everyone staring!’ She was opening the door from the office area as she spoke, surging out and across to where Katy was sitting. The woman looked up in bewilderment as Muriel took both her hands.

‘Katy, my dear, you shouldn’t be out here, you in a state like this! Come away through the back – there’s tea made, and you can just wait there quiet for a bit till Dr Matthews can see you. He’s had a bit of a backlog to deal with – poor Dr Ashley’s surgery, you know.’

There were one or two meaningful looks exchanged by waiting patients as Muriel led her victim away, a lamb to the slaughter. Two minutes later, Cara Christie, another receptionist who had also been on her break, appeared at Enid’s side. ‘I’ll take over. You go and have your break now – I just can’t stand it. It’s like watching a cat bring in a mouse to play with and not being able to stop it.’

‘Oh dear,’ Enid said faintly, ‘I don’t suppose I can, either.’ But she yielded her place to Cara and went through a door at the back into the staff sitting room.

It was a small room with a coffee table and half a dozen chairs with wooden arms and multi-coloured cushioned seats. Coat pegs and lockers had been fitted behind the door and there was a sink, mini-fridge, microwave and kettle in one corner with cupboards above, but not much else except a tray of mugs and plates. Muriel had inserted a mug of tea into Katy’s hands, which she was holding as if it were nothing to do with her. Muriel was talking, with the air of one who as yet has been able to elicit little response.

‘You won’t be able to take it in yet, dear – it’s the shock, you see. But you know,’ she leaned forward confidentially, ‘you’ve got to think positive – isn’t that right, Enid? It all might be for the best, after what happened to Dr Ashley and that poor young teacher.’

Enid, pouring out her own tea, went rigid. Katy, her voice roughened by tears, croaked, ‘I don’t think he knew.’

‘Oh, take it from me, he did, dear! Bob MacNally – you know, he was in the rescue party – he said to me Rob asked as they were putting him in the ambulance, and they had to tell him. That would really take away your will to live, wouldn’t it? And of course he would know there would have to be an enquiry too . . .’

Katy closed her eyes. ‘Oh God,’ she breathed.

‘He wouldn’t have been strong enough to tell you how it happened, though, would he? No?’ As Katy made no reply, or indeed showed any sign that she had heard the question, Enid, sitting quietly down opposite with her own mug of tea, saw Muriel’s lips purse in irritation. But she wasn’t easily daunted.

Continuing her relentless pursuit, she said in a voice sugared with concern, ‘And what about your Nat? Have the police gone and charged him?’

‘Nat?’ Katy frowned, almost as if the name was unfamiliar to her. Then she said, ‘Oh, you mean with taking the car? I – I should never have told them, probably. I was angry – I suppose I’ll have to speak to them about it—’

Muriel oozed synthetic sympathy. ‘No, no, dear! You know – with rigging up the lights that wrecked the boat!’

If her object had been to provoke a response, she achieved it. Katy’s eyes shot wide open, as if she were a sleepwalker rudely awakened.

‘What are you saying?’ she cried wildly. ‘Are you saying that my son – that Nat murdered Rob? And – and the others . . . ? Is that what you’re telling me?’

Alarmed by her own success, Muriel said hastily, ‘That’s not what I was saying! I was just saying the police think that, but you know them – get everything wrong. If you ask me, Nat had nothing to do with it—’

Katy wasn’t listening. She had jumped to her feet. ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she kept saying distractedly, showing all the signs of incipient hysteria.

Muriel, with her eye on the clock, exclaimed, ‘Oh, for goodness sake! Dr Matthews’ll be ready to see her any minute! We’ll need to calm her down or she’ll go saying terrible things to him about us.’

‘Us?’ Enid was tempted to reply, but said instead, ‘You go back to the desk, Muriel. She’ll maybe be better just on her own with me.’

Muriel, her face flushed a mottled red, needed no second invitation; she escaped with only an anxious glance over her shoulder at Katy, who was pacing to and fro, wringing her hands and taking the short, shallow breaths that lead to hyperventilation.

Placing herself in her path, Enid took her shoulders in firm hands, almost forcing her back into her chair. ‘Put your hands to your face and breathe into them,’ she instructed with quiet authority. ‘Now, slower. Slower.’ She talked evenly and calmly until the gasping stopped, then sat down beside the trembling woman.

‘Listen to me. Don’t pay any attention to Muriel. She’s an evil woman. She knows perfectly well it wasn’t your son who did it. It’s all to do with the drugs business – Willie Duncan was a dealer and he’d only himself to blame if they were out to get him. Don’t let her upset you. You know your own son. Every mother does.’

‘That’s – that’s the problem. He’s turning out to be his father, all over again. And his father was a bad man.’ Her lips were quivering.

Taken aback, Enid said, ‘Sometimes, you know, youngsters go through bad patches, but he’s your own flesh and blood, after all. You can’t think straight at the moment – you’re in shock. So put what Muriel said out of your mind. She enjoys making people unhappy. I heard her myself telling the police that she knew it wasn’t Nat.’

‘You’re – you’re very kind. It’s – it’s bad enough already, but believing that—’ She shuddered.

There was a tap on the door and a worried-looking Muriel put her head round the door. ‘That’s Dr Matthews ready to see you now.’

Katy nodded, then got up. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she went out. ‘You’ve been very understanding.’

‘Well done, Enid!’ Muriel eyed her colleague with some respect. ‘Poor soul – I thought she was well away, there!’

Enid opened her mouth, then, with her usual caution, shut it again. She’d seen, all too often, what happened to people who got across Muriel Henderson.

The cottage which Laura Harvey had rented unfurnished was in a quiet street parallel to Kirkluce High Street, one of a terrace all painted in pastel colours, green and blue and pink and mauve – ‘Like a row of fondant fancies,’ as she had laughingly said to Marjory Fleming. The front door opened directly into a sitting room with a deep-set window to the front and a pine staircase rising at one side to two bedrooms and a bathroom; behind lay the kitchen with a door to an enclosed garden, ideal for a collie puppy with an enquiring mind and an adventurous spirit.

Laura had furnished it with a sure touch which Marjory hugely admired. She and Bill had never exactly furnished the farmhouse, it had just sort of happened, with bits and pieces handed down through the family or acquired, as necessary, over the years. But when she had said that ruefully to her friend, Laura had only laughed.

‘When I go to your house, I feel enfolded by it. You’ve got a home, Marjory – I’ve got furniture in a rented property.’

Even so, Marjory thought when she had greeted her friend and the exuberant Daisy – firmly in that order, to stress their respective hierarchical positions – it was a delightfully welcoming room. The walls were a pale buttery cream and the sofa, pushed against the back wall, was upholstered in teddy-bear brown plush with a blue cashmere throw which echoed the blue in curtains and cushions and another couple of chairs. One corner was arranged with a pine desk and a computer as an office area where Laura could work on her articles and the book arising out of them which she had been commissioned to write. On the stripped pine floor, an oriental rug in blue, brown, cream and terracotta lay in front of a fireplace which, while it might not be authentic Victorian, was doing its best. This evening a cheerful log fire was burning.

Daisy, in an ecstasy of recognition, was bouncing up and down at her one-time owner. ‘And how’s my grand-dog behaving?’ Marjory enquired.

‘Wonderful!’ Laura glowed with pride. ‘Practically house-trained, sits, lies down – briefly—’

Looking down at the eager little dog, Marjory said firmly, ‘Sit, Daisy!’ then, as the plump rear-end made contact with the floor, crouched down to fuss her with extravagant praise.

‘She’s a clever wee thing. Have you worked out who’s boss yet?’

‘I am – I think. But we’re definitely still in negotiation. Drink?’

Marjory shook her head. ‘I wish I could but I’ve got to go back in. I really came to pick your brains.’

Laura’s face sobered. ‘This tragic lifeboat business, I suppose? Was it really wrecked? You never know how much to believe of what you hear.’

‘Oh, it’s true enough, sadly. Someone deliberately rigged up lights in imitation of the leading lights at Knockhaven harbour in Fuill’s Inlat – that’s Fool’s Inlet to you, so-called because the entrance to it from the sea mimics the harbour’s contours. There were dreadful conditions, of course, and added to that the regular cox was too stoned to perform and the reserve tried to throw himself overboard on the way home.’