The Darkness and the Deep (37 page)

She shook her head and Lewis escaped from the room. In the kitchen he ran the tap cold, then splashed his face. He filled a glass with water, drank it, then refilled the glass, noting clinically that his hand was trembling slightly. He took several deep, slow breaths before he went back to submit to inquisition.

Best to take this one head on. As he sat down he said, ‘I hope what I say to you is going to make sense. As you will have noticed, I’ve been drinking.’

‘You’re a doctor. I don’t need to tell you it’s not the best way to cope with problems. But it’s entirely understandable.’ She had a low, attractive voice and she spoke sympathetically. ‘You must be under a great deal of strain.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ Alarmingly, he felt tears prickle the backs of his eyes. He hadn’t cried, had hardly felt tempted to cry, but alcohol was notorious for loosening constraint. ‘Everything is just – I don’t know where I am. I’m not very good at uncertainty.’

‘Were you and your wife very close?’

Lewis knew the shutting-down answer to that question – ‘Yes, naturally’ – but his tongue wouldn’t frame the words. ‘Not exactly – close, no. I feel sort of at a loss without her – hence this, I suppose.’ He gestured to the bottle and glass. ‘We didn’t quarrel or anything, we worked together, had a lot in common—’ He stopped. ‘It’s not really much of a testimonial to our marriage, is it?’

‘Did you love each other?’

The chair the inspector sat in had lugs which cast a shadow on her face so that the quiet voice seemed disembodied, anonymous, like a priest’s in the confessional. He had never discussed his marriage; there was a delicious release in doing so now.

‘I guess we did, in a sort of way, though I’m not sure I ever understood exactly what that means – or that Ashley understood either. Perhaps that’s why it worked as well as it did. Oh, I know what you’re going to ask me next – was she having an affair with Ritchie Elder? Both of your colleagues asked me that.

‘I gave them the honest answer – I don’t know. I never saw any evidence of it, though I’d gathered from barely veiled hints that there was gossip.’ He rubbed at his forehead, as if that might help banish the lingering alcoholic fog. ‘But perhaps I didn’t go looking for it – didn’t, if I’m being absolutely honest, care enough to turn everything upside down for the sake of finding out that my wife was having what might be a temporary fling.’

‘And you? Did you go looking for love elsewhere, since you didn’t seem to have found it in marriage?’

‘It’s what most men would do, isn’t it? But – well, it’s never seemed worth it, somehow. What was lacking in our marriage was something I didn’t especially miss. I was quite content with our life here the way it was – comfortable, predictable . . .’ He trailed into silence, then as Fleming didn’t speak, went on, ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve wondered sometimes if I’m a latent gay, but I can’t see it. I’ve never been remotely attracted to another man and there was never anything wrong with Ashley’s and my sex-life.

‘There’s a vogue for describing people as asexual just now, and perhaps that’s me. I wouldn’t actually argue.’

Why was he telling her all this? Perhaps it was the drink talking, but it was a huge relief to give voice to the thoughts which had been chasing round and round in his head.

‘Did you ever consider divorce?’

‘Ashley might have, though she certainly never mentioned it to me. If she had, I wouldn’t have wanted to hold her to vows that had become meaningless.’

‘That sounds very level-headed. Where does Enid Davis come in?’

‘Enid Davis?’ He was startled by the question. ‘The receptionist – what do you mean?’

‘Is there anything between you?’

He didn’t know whether to be amused or uneasy at this change of direction. ‘Between us? I have a warm relationship with her rock cakes, but that’s the extent of it.’

‘Have you ever spent time alone with her?’

The warm, soothing voice had sharpened. He began to feel the first twinges of real concern. ‘No, never.’ He took a sip of water, feeling more sober by the minute.

‘Do you think she is in love with you?’

‘No, I don’t. She’s worked with us for a couple of years or so. I know she had an unhappy marriage and I suspect she is lonely, but she has never by word, look or deed suggested that she wanted to initiate a closer relationship.’

The inspector sat forward in her chair, and now the light from one of the lamps caught her face. It was a strong, intelligent face and again, the eyes . . . He wondered if she had moved deliberately so that he would feel impaled on her direct gaze.

‘Where were you on the night the lifeboat was wrecked, Dr Randall?’

He said flatly, ‘As I said in my statement, I was here. On my own, working, though I gather my mother came round and looked in to see if I was busy without disturbing me, so she can vouch for that.’

‘Is it a habit of hers?’

He avoided a direct answer. ‘She is very protective of me and very considerate about not intruding.’

‘And the night Willie Duncan was killed?’

He was dreading that question. He’d always been a useless liar; his mother was so adept at spotting a lie at a thousand paces that he’d seldom even bothered to try. He licked his lips, then looked up to meet her eyes squarely – it would never do to look shifty now.

‘I was at my mother’s. We had supper together, steak and kidney pie, then watched a film –
Lawrence of Arabia
. It was quite late when I got home – well after midnight.’

Fleming wasn’t smiling, but somehow he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was amused. ‘Can you remember what you had for pudding?’

‘Yes. Fruit salad.’

‘And the vegetables?’

‘Look, what is this?’ He was getting angry now. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

She smiled. ‘Do you know what people tend to do when they’re telling lies, Dr Randall?’ she asked conversationally.

He felt suddenly cold.

‘I’ll tell you, shall I? First of all, they often lick their lips. Someone would probably tell you it’s symbolic, so that the difficult words will slip out more easily. Then they meet your eyes very, very directly. Normally people look slightly to one side, since a stare tends to mean either a come-on or a challenge.

‘The next giveaway is the tendency to elaborate – back it up with a lot of needless detail. It’s rather well described in
The Mikado
, if you saw it when the Kirkluce Operatic put it on last year: this is “intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative”.

‘Are you with me so far?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid I am.’ He had never felt more sober in his life.

‘So let’s pretend you didn’t say all that, shall we? I’ll ask again. Dr Randall, where were you when Willie Duncan was murdered?’

He had his head in his hands, and he spoke without looking up to meet her eyes. ‘I was here, by myself, working late. I didn’t speak to anyone on the phone, or see anyone, and my mother was afraid that if I had no alibi I would be wrongfully accused, probably convicted and locked up for the rest of my life.

‘There was an incident at university, in the halls of residence, when the guy next door reported his camera had been stolen to claim the insurance. It was a scam, of course, but I was the chief suspect, which was pretty unpleasant. They dropped it eventually, but it’s made my mother very protective.

‘Anyway, since I knew I wasn’t guilty, it seemed a harmless enough lie – might even save your time, in trying to prove that I wasn’t where I said I was.’

‘Very public-spirited, I’m sure,’ Fleming said dryly, ‘but we prefer to do these things in our own bumbling way.

‘Where were you working that night?’

Lewis gestured to the desk under the window at the back of the house, a large birchwood desk with a computer on it as well as wire baskets piled with papers. ‘There, as usual.’

‘Using the computer?’

‘Yes, I should think so, probably.’

‘A touch of uncertainty – that’s much more convincing,’ she said approvingly. ‘Do you think you could find what you were working on that night for me?’

He frowned. ‘It was – what, three days ago? Oh yes, I remember, I was working on a report for a drug company about side-effects.’

‘Would you mind opening the computer to Documents and finding it for me?’

Puzzled, he went over to the desk. Fleming followed him across as he found it and indicated the file. She leaned over his shoulder, took the mouse from him and pointed it, without clicking. A box sprang into view, with lines of information. At the bottom an entry read, ‘Date modified: 20/10/02 23.40.’

‘There, you see – there’s your alibi. You couldn’t be at your desk, modifying a document, and lying in wait for Willie Duncan at the same time.’

‘Good God,’ he said blankly.

‘And if you’d like to track down the work you were doing on the night of the tenth, we could clear that up at the same time.’

When the inspector left at last and he shut the door behind her, Lewis slumped against the wall feeling totally drained. He’d always had, if he was honest, a faintly patronising attitude to the police, but she was good. God, she was good.

And she’d cleared him. His world was still disordered, but the fear at the back of his mind that his mother might have been right about British justice had gone. He must phone and tell her—

Then he stopped. Perhaps he’d just say they’d accepted he was in the clear. It seemed pathetic, to have been so easily caught out, and he wouldn’t have to lie to her – all she would want to know was that her son wasn’t under suspicion any longer.

Katy Anderson sat alone in her sitting room, listening to the noise and laughter coming up from the street below as the last of the drinkers left the pub. She should have been down there helping; the pub had been busy, and it wasn’t as if she was ill, even though it felt as if she was. She couldn’t rely for ever on the kindness of friends.

But she was scared. When she went back into the lovely wee pub she and Rob had created between them, his stocky, bearded ghost would be round every corner. She’d be listening for his hearty laugh, expecting his arm to come round her waist to give her a squeeze in passing.

The longer she left it, though, the worse it would be, and she’d have to take the plunge sometime, unless she gave in to Nat’s bullying and sold up. He’d gone on at her again today, even in the morning on the way to school, then aggressively in the evening over supper. He’d been very late coming in and he’d been drinking or something; she’d tried to ignore it, but it was scary. She’d stuck to what she’d said, but how long would it be before either she gave in or he lost the heid because she wouldn’t? She’d been there before, with the pressure and demands getting worse and worse until one day a fist came into the argument, and when they’d done it once they were never feart to do it again . . .

And then there was the other scary bit. She’d told herself Nat couldn’t have had anything to do with Rob’s death, he couldn’t – but how sure was she? And if she went down and looked at the cars – Rob’s in the garage, her own in the street – would one of them have traces of Willie’s blood? She was too afraid to look herself while Nat was around, but she couldn’t go to the police and accuse her own son with nothing to go on but what might just be a daft notion.

It couldn’t go on like this. She’d made up her mind even before he slammed out of the house half an hour ago. She didn’t know where he was away to, didn’t know when she’d see him back. Didn’t really want to see him. For now, they’d do better apart; she’d phone his grandmother in the morning, offer Nat enough money to persuade him to go. She didn’t think it would actually be difficult, if she promised him there would be more to come later.

Katy had done a lot of thinking in the last twenty-four hours. She knew she needed to keep busy; sitting here alone, leafing through her past, was just asking to be miserable. This morning, screwing up her courage, she’d ventured out to coffee with her friend Ellie, who’d drawn up a programme to keep her busy and get started in the pub again (‘And you’ve to tell everyone you’re doing it, so you can’t get cold feet and back out, OK?’). Then she’d gone along Shore Street for some messages for the first time since the disaster and every second person had stopped to speak as if welcoming her back from somewhere. Even Joanna Elder, coming out of the dry-cleaner’s, stopped to ask how she was getting on, and when she’d taken the casserole dish back to give Enid at the Medical Centre she’d managed to stay calm when Muriel Henderson, in her rude way, demanded to know what she was going to do now.

It had all been encouraging, and Ellie was right that talking about it up front to everyone meant she would have to stick to the plan: tomorrow, she was to check the stock and make a trip to the Cash and Carry, and when she came back she was to go through everything, ruthlessly throwing away what she didn’t want to keep, then go in to work in the evening. She’d told Nat all that as well, which was what had got him storming out; he’d taken it very badly that she was sticking to her decision not to sell the pub.

Today’s activities had been tiring, though, and tomorrow would be busier still. There was no point in waiting for Nat to return; if he’d been out drinking it certainly wasn’t the time to talk to him about Glasgow. She’d feel safer anyway, in her bedroom with the door locked. She was wishing already she hadn’t listened to Enid; if she’d followed her own instinct he’d have been gone by now.

At least there was a pill waiting for her upstairs. She had only half a dozen more; Dr Matthews had told her kindly but firmly that he wouldn’t give her any more after that and she knew he was right. In her situation, oblivion could become dangerously addictive.

‘Fancy a nightcap? I’ve been doing the accounts and I deserve a reward.’

Marjory, who had spent the evening tackling a pile of ironing which seemed to have ambitions to rival Ben Nevis for the title of highest mountain in Scotland, looked up wearily as her husband put his head round the kitchen door. There had been nothing on TV she could bear to watch; her mechanical occupation had left her with too much time to think about her problems, and the surge of optimism about the change of direction in the investigation which had buoyed her up this afternoon was long gone. They’d almost got out of the nightcap habit lately and she’d been thinking longingly of her bed.