The Darkness and the Deep (34 page)

Her husband gloomily gave it as his opinion that if they did manage, it would be a first, but again was ignored.

Langlands took the book from her and started leafing through it, then stopped, drawing in his breath sharply. ‘May I take this, madam? It could be very useful.’

With a triumphant glance at her husband, Jeanie said, ‘See, Ron? And you telling me I was just wasting my time!’ She turned her beady gaze on Langlands. ‘Now, I’ll be needing it returned, mind!’

‘Of course. I’ll give you a receipt.’ He fished a pack of forms out of his pocket.

‘Could you not take her too?’ the melancholy voice said from the corner. ‘I wouldn’t be wanting her back.’

Repressing a shudder at the thought, Langlands went back to his car. He got in, then hesitated. He’d been given his orders, but there was no point in being in the Force if you didn’t use your initiative sometimes. He was going to head back to the nick to tell Big Marge. From what he’d seen, this could change everything.

It was the blaring of a car’s horn that shocked Ritchie Elder back to full awareness. He slammed on his brakes as, in a flurry of obscene gestures, the driver of a Renault Clio vented the adrenaline rush caused by Elder’s Mitsubishi pulling incautiously out of the side road which led to the cells under the Galloway Police Headquarters in Kirkluce.

Elder’s hand went to his brow and found that he was sweating. He wouldn’t have believed, if you’d told him beforehand, what the effect of a night in the cells could be. He’d have said he was a hard man, but when the door slammed behind him and he was alone in that bare, bleak, harshly lit space with its seatless lavatory and its uncompromising message about the power of the State – no belt, no tie, in case he should decide to string himself up from the bars on the tiny window – he knew the panic of helplessness for the first time in his life. He’d never before been in a situation where money couldn’t buy you, at the very least, the ordinary decencies of life.

The only other occupant last night had been a drunk brought in shortly before midnight, shouting and swearing and then being violently and noisily sick in the adjoining cell. Elder couldn’t sleep; he got up and through the observation window saw a policeman with a mop and bucket going to clean it up.

‘Bad luck!’ he said sympathetically.

The man turned. ‘Compared to you,’ he said, ‘he’s Mother Teresa.’

Elder had never before bothered to consider what anyone thought of his dirty trade. He’d been in denial, too, about his own responsibility for Willie’s condition on the night of the wreck; after all, he’d told the moron often enough that only a fool samples the wares, and he’d trusted the man not to let him down when it mattered. And of course he didn’t believe in the garbage about one day answering before the Throne of Justice. Yet here in this blank hell-on-earth, you did begin just to wonder . . .

Qualms of conscience had never bothered him much, easily quelled by the usual arguments: nobody makes them buy the stuff; if I don’t do it, someone else will . . . And there was a seedy glamour about it, too. At Kirkluce High he’d seen himself as an edgy sort of guy, lead singer in the predictably terrible rock band when Lewis Randall was a swot and Willie Duncan was a thicko with no ambition but to go to the fishing as the Duncans had done since someone first thought of putting a worm on a bent pin.

But now he was going down, no question. His lawyer, whom he employed because he knew every trick in the book, had been blunt. ‘The difficult, we do immediately. The impossible – well, there’s bugger all we can do about that.’ He thought he was funny. Whether he’d think it was so funny if Elder decided to take his custom – worth tens of thousands, in his present situation – elsewhere, was another matter.

He’d known the risks, of course he had – theoretically. He’d even worried a bit, initially, but the trade had been running like clockwork for so long now that in his mind it wasn’t a lot different from his legitimate business, which anyway wasn’t entirely above board when it came to compliance with health and safety and building regulations. What Elder had never believed was that they’d get him. There were hundreds of them in his game, thousands more likely, and how often did anyone other than the poor pathetic runners ever get caught?

He probably knew enough about the supply routes to bargain down his charge in exchange for cooperation, but as his lawyer had pointed out, it might be better to take the rap and not spend your life after you came out waiting for the bullet in the back. Though, he’d added helpfully, you probably wouldn’t have to wait that long. Newly sensitive, Elder realised that it wasn’t only the police who despised him.

The murder accusation was something else. Murder was different. Murder – and they were talking multiple murders – meant they locked you up and threw away the key until you might as well be dead. Probably better dead, at that.

And dead was what he would be, or someone else would be, if he didn’t pay attention to his driving. He headed for Bayview House at an uncharacteristically sober speed.

When he turned in, the drive was already being dug up. His beautiful, elegant house, the crowning glory of his career – no shabby corner-cutting here – was being reduced once again to a building site. There were men in white overalls with clipboards observing as a man with a pneumatic drill broke up the concreted area beside the garage where there was a stand-pipe and a drain, while a group of workmen with spades and pickaxes stood by. Sick and shaken, Elder let himself into the house.

It was unnaturally quiet inside. Every window was, naturally, triple-glazed and the sound of the drill outside was muted to little more than background noise. Inside, all he could hear was a faint thud-thud-thud coming from the pool area.

Elder was all too familiar with that sound, made by Joanna’s feet on the treadmill. He’d managed to blank her out of his mind. Slowly and reluctantly he crossed the pools of light that lay on the pale wood floor of his lofty hall and opened the door on to the artificial paradise he had created. It looked no more convincing than a stage set now.

Joanna, her delicate features contorted with effort, was running, but when she saw him flicked a switch, slowed down and got off. Red-faced and sweating, she confronted him. ‘You stupid, stupid bastard!’ she snarled, and slapped him.

Somehow, that helped. If she’d cried . . . ‘Did you enjoy that?’ he said. ‘Other side, to balance it up?’ He turned the other side of his face towards her.

She shook her head. ‘You really are something else,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You couldn’t be satisfied by what you cream off from your rubbish houses – you had to risk this whole thing—’ She waved her hand.

He sneered at her. ‘You don’t really think I paid for this from the business? The money that comes from the business covers the lifestyle, more or less. That’s it.’

Joanna’s eyes widened in shock. ‘You mean, all this . . .’

‘All this,’ he said with relish. ‘Yes, my sweetheart, when they freeze all the assets and then start unravelling the books there won’t be much to get your sticky little fingers on.’

‘My lawyer . . .’ she faltered.

‘Oh yes, your lawyer. Well, perhaps he’s familiar with the old saying, “You can’t take the breeks off a Highlandman.” You’d be better phoning your mother to see if she can find a job for you in the shop.’

It was only then she began to cry and he could view her tears now with total detachment. ‘There’s just one other thing. You didn’t confirm my alibi for the night Willie was killed.’

‘How – how could I? I – I didn’t set eyes on you, after seven o’clock,’ she sniffed.

‘Oh yes, of course. But then, that means I didn’t see you either, doesn’t it? You might have been tucked up in bed that night, or again you might not. And while I can still hope that they’ll find I really couldn’t have put the lanterns in place on the night the lifeboat was wrecked, I would question whether you can produce an alibi. What were
you
doing, Joanna, that night?’

Her tears forgotten, she spat, ‘Bastard!’

‘You said that already.’ He was almost enjoying himself. ‘And do you know what they’re doing out there? They’re digging up the drains to see if they can find traces of Willie Duncan’s blood left there, washed off a car. You know, just like they did with Dennis Nilsen house.’

Elder realised he had lost her attention. She was looking over his shoulder.

‘They’re not,’ she said. ‘They’re going away. What’s that about?’

He turned to look. Then he said, with sudden conviction, ‘They’ve written me out of the script.’ He laughed harshly. ‘And they haven’t written you in yet.’

Perhaps he only imagined that under the glow of exertion she had turned pale. The truth was, he didn’t really care any more.

18

It was clear, from the moment that PC Langlands opened the door to Fleming’s office, that he was pleased. His eyes were bright, his tail was wagging – no, no, of course it wasn’t.

She liked Sandy Langlands. His resemblance to a Labrador puppy might be so pronounced that you started looking for doggie treats, but enthusiasm was all too rare in a police officer and seldom lasted.

‘Sandy.’ She smiled at him. ‘What can I do for you?’

He beamed back. ‘Well – I think I’ve found something that’s really important, boss.’

Was she sure she didn’t have a Bonio somewhere? ‘Tell me about it.’ She waved him to a seat.

He was clutching a brown jotter, which he handed across the desk to her. ‘There was this woman,’ he said, ‘in the cottage at the top of the road to Fuill’s Inlat . . .’

She leafed through it while he gave her the back story, and suddenly she wasn’t feeling flippant any longer.

‘You think this is accurate?’ she said slowly.

‘I checked when she’d logged me in on my way down the road this morning, and it was spot-on. And you see, if you look at what she has marked, “Boss’s big car” on the night of the tenth—’

‘Went past at 7.19, with the comment, “Driving far too fast”—’

‘That’s right. And the girls in the office were absolutely definite that he went into their office at 7.20.’

Fleming ran her finger down the list, written in a firm if old-fashioned hand. ‘And then she has him coming back up at 7.22. It’s a pity she doesn’t appear to have known anything about cars – Elder’s is the only one she seems to identify apart from lorry, van – then big car, small car sometimes. And no numbers, of course, just the occasion rude comment about their driving. She’s logged fifteen cars coming down to the site that evening from 6.15 on – two close together at the earlier time, then the rest at intervals.’

‘That would be the two girls arriving to open up the houses,’ Langlands suggested eagerly. ‘There were eleven couples viewing, then Ritchie Elder. That’s . . .’ He paused to calculate.

‘Fourteen,’ Fleming supplied. ‘It isn’t news, of course. We know already that the Wrecker had to have driven down that lane. But we could get a time-fix on him from this.’ Tapping her pen on her teeth, Fleming considered. ‘Right, Sandy. Get back to the people who were there legitimately. Let’s hope they can remember when they arrived at the site.’

Langlands was on his feet already. ‘They were interviewed the day after it happened so they probably will. I’ll get right on to it, boss.’

As he left with a spring in his step, Fleming looked down at the flimsy notebook on her desk. Was she going to change the whole thrust of the enquiry on the evidence of a cantankerous elderly lady with a bee in her bonnet? When it chimed precisely with her own unease, and Tam’s, and considering the cost of the operation going on at this moment at Bayview House, you’re damn right she was.

The atmosphere in Galloway Police Headquarters was charged when Tam MacNee came in, so charged that he could hardly believe that there were actually members of the public sitting peacefully unaware in the waiting area. They must be brain-dead, or cyclists, maybe, reporting the theft of their push-bikes. Or one of their anoraks. MacNee was politically incorrect on the subject of cyclists.

‘Tam!’ Jock Naismith hailed him from behind the front desk. ‘What’s going on? Big Marge has pulled everyone back—’

‘I was hoping you could tell me.’ MacNee walked briskly through the hall, left his notes in the CID room, then took the stairs to the fourth floor two at a time.

Fleming glanced up when he came in, then said abstractedly, ‘Take a seat. Be with you in a second.’ She had a big sheet of paper in front of her and she was scribbling on it with a frown of concentration.

One of her ‘mind-maps’ – that was what she called them, something she’d picked up at one of the training courses he had always avoided when he could. His first sergeant, God rest his black soul, had warned them all to be careful of the sort of thing they might pick up on residential courses.

At last she looked up. ‘OK, Tam – what have you heard?’

‘All I know is that when I passed the CID room Jon Kingsley was sitting alone at a desk looking as if someone taken his Saturday penny. So whatever it is, it can’t be all bad.’

She gave him a quelling look. ‘I had to tell him before it became general knowledge. Take a look at this.’ She pushed a brown jotter across the desk and while he flipped through it went back to frowning over the scribbled sheet in front of her.

It didn’t take him long. ‘If this is accurate—’

‘I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be. And the Super agrees.’

‘He was jake with this?’

‘Not exactly. He – er – whimpered a little.’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘I think it helped that when he’d called Jon in for a pat on the back yesterday he’d felt patronised.’

‘Go on, what did he say?’

She wouldn’t be drawn. ‘He agreed, that’s all. You know, Tam, I should be feeling depressed – and after Don and the Chief Constable see tomorrow’s headlines I probably will be. After all this time the only progress we’ve made has been negative, but somehow I feel liberated.