The Darkness and the Deep (20 page)

‘That’s what Mrs Moncrieff told me over the fence this afternoon. She’s got a sister in Knockhaven. But you’ve made an arrest, haven’t you?’

Marjory stared at her. ‘See villages! MI5 shouldn’t be doing its recruiting at Cambridge, you know. Get a few of the local wifies on the job and there wouldn’t be a terrorist whose mother’s maiden name they couldn’t tell you.’

‘I’m not convinced they’d be totally reliable when it came to compliance with the Official Secrets Act,’ Laura pointed out. ‘So what about this boy you’ve arrested?’

‘Nothing to do with it, as far as we can make out at this stage. He’d been joyriding in the car with an under-age girlfriend – friend of Cat’s, unfortunately – and we’re investigating. Not that I think we’ll have anything to go on – slap on the wrist for the car and that will be it.’

‘So?’

‘So. What sort of person would do such a foul thing? The
lifeboat
– well, I’m sure you know how people feel about the service round here.’

‘Mmm.’ Laura, curled up on the sofa, wound her finger in a strand of fair hair escaping from its clasp at the back and frowned as she considered the question. The fire crackled and there was a tiny snore from Daisy asleep on the rug, worn out by her duties as greeter. Marjory waited, watching her friend.

Laura was the antithesis of Marjory in appearance, small, blonde and neatly made, with grey-blue eyes. She was also clever with clothes; that pink and grey scarf she was wearing casually looked exactly right with her sweater. Marjory sighed quietly; when she put on a scarf, it always ended up looking like a neck poultice.

At last Laura said, ‘A vandal’s the obvious one – the usual wanton pleasure in destruction. Do I get the impression you’ve rejected that idea?’

‘It’s unlikely. Vandalism tends to be spur-of-the-moment, seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time when everyone’s drunk. It’s not often planned. But this was, quite elaborately. The lamps had been specially prepared with glass paint and they’d only a battery life of a few hours so there had to be a question of timing too. The other thing is, it was only by chance that the lights were discovered. The perpetrator would have hoped to have it written off as an accident – vandals want people to know it’s their handiwork.’

Laura absorbed that. ‘So you’re talking about planning to cause three deaths. You’d have to wonder about a grudge against the lifeboat service – was there someone they failed to save, perhaps? Or maybe someone who wanted to join the crew and got turned down?’

‘Easy enough to check. But Laura, you have to be talking local. This guy had to know about Fuill’s Inlat, had to be on hand to wait for a call-out on a night when the weather was bad enough to give it a chance of success – he couldn’t know their problem would be compounded by Willie Duncan and Luke Smith. And off the top of my head, I can’t think of any failed rescue in recent years and I’d be almost bound to know.

‘Suppose it isn’t a nutter with a grudge. Suppose we’re looking for someone with a personal motive. What’s he like? Or she, I suppose you have to say – why can’t the language have a neutral pronoun?’

‘Case-profiling is bad enough – don’t get me started on grammar! But you’re asking me what kind of person would kill three people, related only through the job they do, if it turns out to be not about the job? They could be directly connected in some other way – you’ll be looking into that?’

Fleming nodded.

‘And if not . . .’ Laura lapsed into thought again. Then she said, slowly, ‘There are the psychopaths, who kill for enjoyment. It doesn’t tend to be at arm’s length, though, like this – they want to see their victim suffer. Or at least show off their deadly skill and power, like the snipers in America. And again, it would be pointless if people didn’t know so weren’t afraid. Creating what looks like an accident is logical only if the idea is to get away with it.

‘But if this is a person who had a motive for killing one of the crew, and had no scruples about the innocents involved, then you’re looking for someone who, if they’re not actually psychopathic, has an abnormal degree of detachment. Most normal people who kill – if anyone who kills can be described as fully normal – either do it in a fit of rage, without calculation, or appoint themselves judge and jury and decide the victim deserves to die. To take two other lives as well, incidentally, for the sake of your hatred, vengeance, gain, whatever, means that you have, to say the least of it, an unnaturally solipsistic view of the world.’

‘Solipsistic? I know I should know—’

‘Selfish, to a pathological degree. A sort of tunnel vision which excludes everything except your wants, needs, desires.’

‘Male, female?’

Laura smiled wryly. ‘I know women who would tell you that solipsism comes with the genes where men are concerned. But no, I couldn’t say one was more likely than the other.’

Marjory sighed. ‘It was worth a try. If we could eliminate fifty per cent of our suspects it would be a good start. But thanks, Laura – you’re very good at setting things out so I can get them clear in my own mind. I’ll put someone on to sifting through the records of the local lifeboats and see if anything turns up – nice job for the uniforms!’

She glanced at her watch. ‘I really need to be getting back. Goodbye, Daisy!’

At the mention of her name, the little dog looked up drowsily, then dropped her head again as if the effort was simply too much. The two women laughed and Marjory got to her feet.

‘That’s cleared my mind for the briefing tomorrow. We really ought to have you on the strength.’

She was in her car with the engine running when her conscience smote her. It was two or three days since she had been to see her parents, and with the way things were going she wasn’t likely to have more spare time in the immediate future. Reaching the main road she turned right, out of town towards the Lairds’ pleasant retirement bungalow five miles away.

Janet Laird was, as usual, busy in the kitchen when Marjory Fleming arrived. She could hear the sound of the TV from behind the sitting-room door; when she looked in, her father Angus, long retired after many years as an institution in the Galloway Constabulary, was blankly watching a quiz show. He grunted without turning his head when she said, ‘Hello, Dad,’ and she retreated with a grimace of concern. It wasn’t good for him, this mindless viewing, and she’d told him that. She could almost hear the brain cells dying, but her father wasn’t the man to listen to the daughter who should have been a son and who could never, however hard she tried, gain recognition for her achievements in the career she had chosen, almost consciously, in the hope of pleasing him.

Her mother, when Marjory opened the kitchen door, was sitting at the table with a pen in her hand, frowning over a list she was making, but she looked up with a smile when she saw her daughter. She was a sweet-faced woman with plump cheeks and warm brown eyes under a halo of white curls; she greeted her with, ‘Hello, dearie! Well, what have you been doing today?’ just as she had when Marjory was coming in from school with her hair in pigtails. ‘It’s a terrible business, that, about the lifeboat.’

Marjory sat down opposite her mother and stole a biscuit from the batch that was cooling on a rack on the table. ‘What are you up to?’

Janet sighed. ‘It was to have been the Knockhaven lifeboat coffee morning next week and I was doing the baking stall. I’m trying to write down all the folk I need to contact to tell them we’re to do the catering at the funeral instead, when the word comes through that it can go ahead. You’d not really want the kind of frivolous things, like chocolate crispies and toffee apples, for a funeral.’

The macabre combination of ideas was darkly humorous but Marjory managed not to smile. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No. But Mum, do you know what they’ve decided about the funeral? Is it to be a joint service?’

Janet looked at her with surprise. ‘My goodness, are you asking me? I’d have thought the police would be the first to know.’

The jungle drums had been at it again. ‘Nobody ever tells me anything,’ Marjory said bitterly, then heard what she had said. Why was it that whenever she came home she reverted to being fifteen, and touchy with it?

Her mother said, in precisely the soothing tone she had used then, ‘I expect there’ll be a note coming through to your desk. No, they’d a meeting this morning at the lifeboat shed in Knockhaven and they contacted the families. They’ve all agreed on a service, with private interments later, and all the high heid yins are coming. So us on the Ladies’ Committee’ll need to make sure everything’s just right.’

Then her face crumpled. ‘But it’s awful sad we’re having to do it. Those poor, poor folks! But you’ll see that whoever did this is caught and punished, won’t you, Marjory?’

She looked at her daughter with the perfect confidence which only a loving and uncritical nature and an unshakeable belief in the inevitability of justice could bring to such a demand.

Marjory, with this added burden of maternal expectation, said hollowly, ‘That’s what I’m there to do! Actually, I just dropped in on my way back to HQ. There’ll be some reports I want to read before tomorrow.’

Janet registered distress. ‘Did you get a proper tea? No? Well, you’ll not leave this house till I’ve made you a nice sandwich. And you’d better take the Tin – I’ll just fill it while you’re eating that. The bairns always like these biscuits, and I’ve a bit of Bill’s favourite fruit cake . . .’

As Janet bustled about, cutting slices of bread and home-cooked ham, putting baking into the Tin, a battered receptacle which made its journeys out to Mains of Craigie full and came back empty, Marjory sat at the kitchen table, a child again, indulging herself in the foolish feeling that with her mother still there to see to it, nothing could go too badly wrong in her world.

As Lewis Randall wearily opened the front door of 8 Mayfield Grove, he was assailed by the unusual smell of cooking. He stopped dead, then closed the door behind him with a sigh.

It hadn’t been an easy day. Not that his patients had been difficult – far from it – but being on the receiving end of so much sympathy and kid-glove treatment was an exhausting business, and all that had kept him going was the promise of a silent house and a very stiff gin. He’d been expecting a call from his mother offering food and solace at The Hollies, which he had decided to refuse; he hadn’t expected to find her making herself at home in his kitchen, though perhaps he should have.

Like most sons, Lewis had an ambivalent relationship with his mother. They were close, undeniably; he had been the man of the house since his father’s death when Lewis was ten and she had lovingly supported him every step of the long way to a medical degree. Her total belief in him and her fierce devotion had always been there as a bulwark against a hostile world.

He’d come back to Knockhaven partly for her sake, mainly for his own. Here, on his own patch, he was uncritically accepted, and there was no doubt that, thanks perhaps to his upbringing, he was much more comfortable where he wasn’t constantly challenged to be more dynamic, more pro-active. He liked things the way they were; he was what he was.

There had never been a problem with his mother. Whatever he had wanted, even Ashley, was all right with her.

Ashley. Despite their years of marriage and their close working relationship, she had been a mystery to him since the day she had astonished him by accepting his proposal. But then, he hadn’t been looking for a wife who, in the clichéd phrase ‘understood’ him either. His mother’s understanding was quite enough – too much, sometimes. His mother—

‘Darling! There you are. Has it been an awful day? Why don’t you go into your study and have a drink? Let me know when you’re ready for supper.’ Dorothy Randall kissed him, then without another word went back into the kitchen.

He looked after her, a twisted smile on his lips. She had always had this talent for being undemanding, for knowing without his having to tell her what his feelings were. He could sit quietly in solitude with his drink for as long as he needed to, confident that there would be no reproaches that the food had been spoiled; almost against his will he felt a sense of comfort. Food and a mother’s care were so closely linked, it was almost as if the savoury fragrance coming from the kitchen was love made manifest.

Dorothy was very much on edge, though, he realised as they sat at the bleached oak table in the dining room, so seldom used in his married life. She fiddled restlessly with the cutlery and talked too much, about everything except the thing that was uppermost in both their minds, barely waiting for his responses. At last, when he had refused cheese and they were sitting over coffee, he said gently, ‘Mother, I don’t mind talking about it. We have to, in fact. There are all sorts of details—’

As if this permission had turned on a tap, it all came pouring out. ‘Oh, Lewis, I’m so frightened! Have they told you – they’ve discovered it wasn’t an accident! And this very morning I had a policeman here, oh, all very nice, very polite, but then I realised he was trying to find out what your movements were! He suspects you, Lewis! You’re the husband, you’re always the first person they suspect when someone’s – someone’s murdered! And when they find out about Ashley and that dreadful man—’

‘Mother!’ The steeliness in his tone brought her up short. ‘I wish you would stop being so friendly with Muriel Henderson. She runs to you with every piece of malicious gossip going. That is beneath contempt and I refuse to discuss it.’

It was a sign of her agitation that even his annoyance did not deter her. ‘But Lewis, you must! We must decide what to do when they come next time, asking these terrible questions. I’ve been thinking about it all day. We must say that we were together last night, that you came up to see me and were here from the time of the rockets going off to just before they phoned you at home. No one will know.’

He stared at her. ‘You’re not being serious, are you? Lying to the police – that’s madness! If you wanted to create suspicion in their minds, that’s the best way to do it.’