The Darkness and the Deep (38 page)

‘The fire’s not on,’ she said. It sounded ungracious; aware of the still fragile state of their repaired relationship, she added hastily, ‘but we could make it a quick one. I don’t suppose either of us is looking for a late night.’

Bill nodded and vanished while Marjory put the iron away along with what was left of the laundry, reduced now to Ailsa Craig proportions.

The sitting room looked sadly uninviting when she opened the door. Bill had put on the overhead light instead of the lamps, which showed up a film of dust on the polished surfaces, and the ashes of the dead fire added to the bleak impression. Meg, expecting the usual comfortable blaze, stood on the hearthrug looking accusingly from one to the other, then curled up into a tight ball.

Impelled by guilt, Marjory adjusted the lighting so that her failures as a housewife weren’t so embarrassingly apparent, then, carrying the tumbler Bill held out to her, took her usual seat.

Bill, too, was out of sorts. The accounts were his bugbear; somehow invoices always disappeared, which demanded a lot of irritable scrabbing about in improbable places. Marjory sympathised, and in her turn deplored the state of modern broadcasting. They drifted on to the worrying situation with Cat and, with reference to her friendship with Kylie, the difficulties young people faced in their lives today.

But somehow, the warmth of the whisky and the peace of the room did its soothing work. Marjory, mid-grumble, looked up and saw Bill grinning at her.

‘Is it your turn to say, “I don’t know what the world is coming to?” or mine?’

She burst out laughing. ‘We didn’t believe we’d ever be like that, did we? And of course, we’re not – not really. We’re still young, still edgy, still risk-takers – and just to prove it, you can give me the sort of top-up which will make a mockery of government health guidelines while I endanger the planet by lighting the fire. And, as a final, reckless touch, I’m ready to stay up past my bedtime.’

‘And
that
will show anyone who says we’ve forgotten how to party!’ Bill topped up the glasses while Marjory, with the swift efficiency of long practice, got the logs blazing. Meg, with a sigh of satisfaction, stretched out to the warmth and Marjory relaxed back into her chair.

‘Bill, could you bear it if I talked through some stuff?’

She said it lightly, and Bill’s ‘Sure. Fire away’ response was casual too, but they were both aware how long it was since she had turned to him for advice in the old way.

‘I asked Laura for a psychological slant on it this afternoon.’ She was determined to be open about this, whatever Bill’s reaction, but he only nodded gravely. ‘She gave me a few pointers – helpful, though very indefinite, as always. But when I was thinking about it this evening – the person who did this near as dammit pulled off the perfect crime. That’s what we’re up against.’

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

‘The wreck of the lifeboat: but for Tam seeing the lamps, we’d never have known it was murder. And the lamps were bought in Argos, with a service system so impersonal there’s not a chance you’d be remembered. That’s clever. And even Willie’s death – opportunistic, without the same level of planning, obviously, but still we’ve no hard evidence except for a partial tyre tread. And they’ve probably been changed by now anyway.

‘Luck comes into it too, of course – you can’t be sure there isn’t an eyewitness somewhere, and if the lady at the top of the road who turned out to have been logging cars going down to Fuill’s Inlat had jotted down the numbers as well we’d be home and dry. But this one seems to have the luck of the devil as well as a really cool head.’

‘Cold heart, too. You might feel someone was so bad they deserved to die, but killing people you believed had done nothing – that’s something else.’

‘I’ve got a sort of sick feeling that the only way we’ll get him – or her – is if they strike again, but all we really have to work on at the moment is motive. If we find one of our principal suspects hasn’t got an alibi, we could probably clear them or nail them by digging up their drains and taking swabs from their parking area – as we started to do at Elder’s house today – but the chances of getting a warrant for what would blatantly be a fishing expedition are nil.’

‘You wouldn’t catch me volunteering to have the yard dug up.’

‘Quite. Always supposing Donald would authorise the expense, which he wouldn’t.’

‘So – next step?’

She groaned. ‘Lewis Randall’s in the clear, anyway. But he’s such a strange man, Bill! It’s almost as if something had been missed out of his personality. Why on earth would someone like that – good-looking, successful – be so thrown by uncertainty and the unfamiliar?’

‘From the sound of his mother, he’s probably always been scared of failing her. Do what you know and it won’t go wrong.’

‘Sometimes you sound almost intelligent. So – where would
you
go from here?’

‘That’s your job.’ Provokingly, Bill didn’t rise to the dangled bait. ‘You talk, I listen.’

Marjory took a sip of her whisky and brooded for a moment. ‘This time I haven’t a gut feeling for it at all. Lewis was my strongest candidate and he’s off the list. The only thing that struck me, talking to him, was that he was very naive not to have noticed that his mother giving him an alibi was a two-way process. She lied to Tam about not being out when the lifeboat went down and the story she gave him even then was pretty unlikely. She’s been ready to lie about last Saturday too. I saw her at the funeral tea – a formidable woman. You’d cross her at your peril, and Ashley must have been a real thorn in her flesh. She’s not young, of course, and you wouldn’t think scrambling over rocks would be her scene, but Tam seemed to think fitness wouldn’t be an issue. I think I’ll sick Tansy on to her this time, and Tam wants another go at Nat Rettie – there’s a straw in the wind he thinks is significant.

‘The other two in the frame are Joanna Elder and Enid Davis. Joanna – well, killing three people seems kind of extreme. I mean, what do you do for an encore if your husband takes up a new fancy-piece? There’d be such a trail of bodies that even us plods would smell a rat.

‘Enid—’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’d go on oath Randall’s never looked at her twice, and you’d have to be clean daft to think getting rid of his wife would mean you could take her place. Added to that, as far as we can make out the rumour about them isn’t widespread and the woman who fed it to Jon is the most poisonous besom imaginable.’

‘She’s probably the one who’s done it, then,’ Bill offered.

Marjory blanched. ‘Don’t even joke about it! What’s haunting me is that we may manage to eliminate all our current suspects – and then what do we do? That’s the stage when they call in another Force to see where you’ve gone wrong – the ultimate humiliation, if they find something obvious you’ve somehow missed.

‘What I really need is time – just to go steadily right through every scrap of information we have and analyse it properly with a clear mind, with no phone calls or meetings or briefings or pressure from Donald and the Press. Like I can see it happening.’

‘Put someone on to it. Your bright young what’s-his-name, maybe?’

‘I suppose I could. It’s not the same as getting a handle on it myself. Still, needs must when the devil drives.’

The logs she had put on the fire were burning through, and Bill gave a huge yawn. ‘Are you determined to boogie on till dawn?’ he asked. ‘In which case, of course, I’m your man, but—’

She got up, laughing, then yawning herself. ‘We’ve struck our blow for youth and freedom. At least, all the blow we’re going to strike. If you’re going to do your rounds, don’t lock up till I’m in. I could smell a fox when I went to shut up the hens so I’m going to take a shotgun and see if I can scare him off, if he’s hanging around.’

Bill looked at her with amusement. ‘You won’t shoot him though, will you, even though you’re a better shot than I am and the beast’s vermin?’

Marjory went pink. ‘Well, I know it’s feeble. I’ll cheer on the hunt and I’ll eat any pheasant anyone’s kind enough to put my way. But I just don’t like something that was alive being dead a minute later because of me.’

‘And you a farmer’s wife!’ Bill teased her. ‘Come on, Meg! You wouldn’t have any scruples about sorting out a fox, would you?’

Marjory made a face at him, then went to the study to fetch the keys to the gun cupboard from the safe.

Bill was at the farther end of the farmyard when he heard a shot, and grinned. There was a long silence, then, just as he reached the house again, another one.

‘Oh, she’s a wild woman, your mistress,’ he told Meg as they went back into the house. He pulled off his boots, then, after waiting a moment or two for Marjory to appear, went through to the kitchen to settle Meg down.

It was only when he had done that and there was still no sign of his wife that he went to the back door and looked out.

‘Marjory!’ he called, then, with mounting unease, ‘Marjory!’

20

‘Here, is this right – Big Marge has shot herself?’ From behind the reception desk, Sergeant Naismith hailed Tam MacNee as he crossed the hall on his way out of the Kirkluce HQ at eight-thirty, carrying a laptop and a bundle of files.

MacNee gave him a scathing look. ‘It’s small wonder we can’t get our convictions in court, with the folk here who can’t get a story straight. Sprained ankle is all.’

Naismith looked disappointed. ‘Andy Macdonald swore a gun came into it somewhere.’

For the third time that morning, MacNee explained. ‘She took out a shotgun, just to scare the daylights out of a fox that was lurking round her hens. She fired once, then jinked around to see where it had gone and fell over a big stone, OK?’

‘I heard that. But did she not shoot herself in the foot as well?’

MacNee sighed. ‘No, she never. She fired again, after, so Bill wouldn’t think she was still waiting round to give the fox the other barrel and go off to his bed. Sound sleeper, Bill, apparently.’

Fleming, on the phone to him at seven-thirty this morning, had been eloquent about the unpleasantness of being unable to walk and afraid crawling would do irreparable damage to an ankle that could be broken, on a clear night with the temperature dropping like a stone and the prospect of no one looking for you till the alarm went at six-thirty next morning. She hadn’t appreciated his comment that at least the fox would be getting a good laugh.

‘She’s working from home for today. She’s wanting Kingsley and Kerr to report to her there – tell them when you see them, will you? And maybe you could remember which story’s the right one when you catch everyone on their way in?’

Naismith was unabashed. ‘Och, I liked the other one better. Kind of dull, just a sprained ankle.’

MacNee contented himself with another withering glance as he left. He dumped his burdens in the back of the car, then headed off on the road to Mains of Craigie. The gritters had been out but on this frosty morning the road surface still glinted white except where other cars had passed already and MacNee, with his early experience in Traffic, drove with suitable respect for the conditions. The sun was no more than a yellowish gleam behind a veil of cloud; it would be a good while before the temperature got above freezing today.

Mains of Craigie was about five miles out of Kirkluce, heading towards Stranraer. He turned in to the rutted farm track by the wrought-iron name sign and bumped up the hill. It was good to see the white dots of sheep back on the low hills round about: not as many as before, but time would take care of that, and at least enough of Bill’s hill flock had been spared to teach the young ones where they belonged.

He parked at the back of the house as usual. As he got out he could hear the sound of a tractor; Bill must be doing whatever it was farmers did at this time of year. MacNee had never concerned himself overmuch with the finer points of agriculture.

He let himself in at the mudroom door, stopped off in the kitchen to look after his own interests by putting on a kettle, then opened the door to the hall and called.

‘Sitting room!’ Fleming’s voice called back.

She was on a couch by the fire with her feet up and a rug over them; she was looking pale, with dark circles under her eyes, and it was obvious she was still in some pain. MacNee had been all ready with a burst of Burns involving mice, men and schemes that gang aft agley, but he was taken aback by her appearance – Marjory, who was normally the picture of robust good health and famously never took a day off sick.

‘Here! Have they not given you something to take for it?’ he said roughly, putting down the laptop and files on a table beside her. ‘You look as if you should be in your bed.’

Fleming smiled wearily. ‘Oh, they have. But if I take it it’ll put me out cold – by the time A&E was finished with me it was two in the morning and I can’t say I got much sleep after.

‘But Tam, this is my chance. I was saying to Bill last night what I needed was a day’s peace to get a grip on the case – and as my mother always said, “Be gey careful what you say you want because you’ll maybe get it.” I’ve got it now and I want to go through everything. We’ve missed something somewhere, Tam – we must have!’

‘It’ll keep till you’re feeling better.’

‘But will it?’ She sat up in her eagerness to make the point, then yelped with pain. ‘I’d my chat with Laura yesterday. She pointed out that this is someone who reacted with deathly violence to what was no more than a low-level threat of suspicion. Once it’s all round the place that Ritchie Elder’s in the clear for the murders, is the Wrecker going to panic? And then what will happen?’

MacNee digested that. ‘So—?’

‘Maybe we’re on the wrong track. Maybe we’ve boxed ourselves in, defined it all too tightly. But for the moment, until I’ve reviewed the evidence, I can’t see any other lines open. We just have to plug away at the suspects we have, try to establish them in a time and place frame, see if there are any cracks—’ She broke off. ‘Is that the others arriving?’