The Darkness and the Deep (8 page)

The ringing of the phone on her desk made her jump and look at her watch. Was that really ten o’clock already? She hadn’t time to waste worrying about Tam’s wounded feelings. She’d just go on treating him as she always did and sooner or later he’d unbend. Surely.

Jon Kingsley settled down in a corner of the CID room, an untidy pile of files beside him. He’d taken off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair with his tie in the pocket, then unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. The natives seemed relatively friendly: Tansy Kerr had brought him a cup of coffee, looking a bit more cheerful now than she had immediately after her mauling from Big Marge.

Big Marge. It was the first time he’d had a woman boss and he wasn’t sure what that was going to be like. She had a formidable presence: that was partly her height – he had felt dwarfed beside her, though he was around average height for a man – but there was something about those shrewd hazel eyes too which made you feel as if she could look further into you than you would choose to have anyone do. Tough-minded and down-to-earth as well, he reckoned, unlike his previous DI, who prided himself on being a hard man who never missed a trick, but fell like timber for a well-chosen line. From what he had already gathered, playing games with DI Fleming would be a high-risk occupation, but there would be ways to handle her too, of course, once he’d sussed out what they were.

If he wanted to get off to a good start, he’d better get on with reading through this lot. He took a swig of coffee, then had a preliminary sift through the contents of the folders, most of which seemed to relate to the on-going drugs investigation, code-named Operation Songbird. His lips twitched appreciatively at the name; in this line of work the breakthrough seldom came if you couldn’t find a canary who was prepared to sing.

He picked up the most recent file of reports first. They seemed to be going on a theory that the stuff was coming in through fishing ports in the south of the area – presumably he’d find the evidence this was based on as he worked back through. The name Knockhaven featured, and one of the most recent additions was from DS Tam MacNee who’d been pursuing one Willie Duncan these last couple of days.

Tam MacNee – he’d met him. Short, stocky chap, thick Glasgow accent, pitted skin and a gap between his front teeth when he smiled, which he hadn’t, much, and certainly not at his new colleague. The perfectly balanced Scotsman, no doubt, with a chip on both shoulders where the English were concerned. The other detectives had been severally pleasant, inquisitive, offhand or preoccupied, with only MacNee giving off vibes of controlled hostility. He clearly carried a lot of clout round here too, more than the other DS he’d met, Greig Allan who seemed a rather colourless individual.

Well, usual new boy’s rules: keep your head below the parapet, speak when you’re spoken to and get on with your work. He addressed himself to the job, speed-reading the history of the investigation, until Tansy Kerr took pity on him and offered to take him down to the canteen for lunch.

Ashley Randall unwrapped the sandwiches it had been her turn to collect from the ‘8 ’til Late’, to be consumed at home during their usually brief lunch-hour. Lewis was back ahead of her and had already laid out the plates on the glass table in their sleek, minimalist kitchen with its state-of-the-art cooking appliances, though the only one which showed much evidence of use was the microwave.

He was pouring Badoit into two glasses. ‘I’m going to have to eat and run today. I’ve promised Martin a consultation before afternoon surgery.’

‘What is it this time – heart disease or cancer?’ Ashley had very little sympathy with Martin Matthews, their hypochondriac partner. ‘You should refer him to me. I’d prescribe a low-fat, no-alcohol, strict-exercise regime and he’d make a miraculous overnight recovery.’

Lewis glanced at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. ‘Oh, you’re probably right. On the other hand, you have to remember that he’s very popular with the patients and he’s a good colleague. You know how often he’s been happy to cover for you when you have lifeboat duty.’

Ashley was setting out the sandwiches; her hand hovered for a fraction of a second before she completed the action. Then, ‘That reminds me,’ she said, her voice casual, ‘I’ve got an extra meeting tonight. Willie phoned – some new regulations have come through and he wants to discuss them. To tell you the truth, I think what he means is he can’t understand them. He’s fine when he’s at the helm but his lips tend to move when he’s reading.’

Under her thick gold lashes she watched him narrowly. With his usual deliberateness he was addressing himself to a prawn sandwich with reduced-fat mayonnaise; he said only, ‘Really? We’d better have an early supper then.’

‘Fine. I’ll pick something up,’ she offered quickly. ‘I was planning to go for a run before my two-thirty clinic, but not in this weather.’ She glanced through the French windows which gave on to wooden decking, sheltered by the leg of their L-shaped ranch-style house, but even so being blasted by the gale. It was pouring now, great billowing squalls of rain which rattled on the windowpanes like hailstones.

‘You’d better hope it’s just a meeting tonight and not a call-out,’ Lewis observed. ‘I certainly wouldn’t fancy going out in that.’

His wife shuddered. ‘I’ve told you before – don’t say it! You only need to let the thought enter your mind and it prompts some dangerous lunatic somewhere to head for the rocks.’

‘Such superstition – and you a rational scientist!’ he mocked her, then added seriously, ‘But tell me about Willie – is he all right? I’d Jackie in today, complaining about headaches, and then it was the usual “By the way, doctor,” just as she was leaving. She’s very worried about him.’

Ashley’s smooth brow furrowed. ‘Yes, I’m worried too. It’s nothing stronger than cannabis, as far as I can tell, but I’ve a nasty feeling his usage has increased. I sense he’s under a lot of strain, for some reason, and I tried tackling him head on – he simply lied about it, of course. But I’m keeping a very watchful eye and so far he’s been OK when he’s been on call. Trust me – I wouldn’t go out with a hopped-up cox.’

‘I should hope not.’ Lewis, still with the last bit of his sandwich in his hand, stood up. ‘I’d better go. Supper at – what, half-past six?’

As the door shut behind him, Ashley sank back in her chair and closed her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. It was a nervous business, this lying. Lewis always seemed oblivious – but could she be sure? He was, as Ritchie had reminded her, no fool, and he had always been so self-contained that she had long ago given up the struggle to work out what he was thinking. She suspected that most of the time it wasn’t very interesting, at least to her. But what she didn’t want was the embarrassment of accidental discovery, and there was always the chance that Lewis might be talking to Willie, or Jackie even, and happen to mention a meeting which, of course, wasn’t taking place. They’d been careful up to now; she was pretty sure no one else knew, since if there was gossip in the village Jocasta would be the first to find out through Gossip Queen Muriel at the reception desk or her other little favourite, the mouse-like Enid, who had a crush on Lewis that was positively comical.

Still, there shouldn’t be too many more of these uncomfortable occasions. The showhouse had opened to the public now and there wasn’t even a corner of the site where she and Ritchie could meet safely, with buyers trampling round the finished houses – which had, gratifyingly, made Ritchie keener than ever.

Originally it had been the old ‘my-wife-doesn’t-understand-me’ line, but now it had reached the ‘if-I-have-to-watch-her-doing-that-once-more-I-shan’t-be-responsible-for-my-actions’ stage. A marriage was over in all but name by the time the husband could spend ten minutes describing the irritating way his wife brushed her teeth.

She’d begun the affair as – what? A hobby? A secret revenge on Lewis for bringing her to Knockhaven where, without the distraction of friends and city life, she had found herself living with a reserved, bloodless stranger in a claustrophobic society? Certainly, there had been nothing to stop her refusing to come with him, or even fleeing back to Edinburgh – nothing except the humiliation of admitting that her marriage had failed and suffering the sympathy of ‘friends’ who had envied her the charming, clever, good-looking doctor husband.

It was all so ragingly, hog-whimperingly
dull
! She wasn’t in love with Ritchie – but then, had she ever been in love with Lewis? She had never been convinced that love was anything more than a fig leaf to cover up some pretty basic human instincts – and certainly Ritchie satisfied most of those, where she was concerned.

Tonight they were actually risking meeting for a drink in a pub about three miles away; he was, she could tell, going to ask her point-blank if she would leave Lewis. She’d be interested, in an abstract sort of way, to see if he would be offering marriage. Probably, since he had a penchant for respectability and one’s place in the community.

So what was she going to say? Even if this was where he’d grown up, he’d have to agree to find another community to be respectable in, since Ashley could hardly go on working afterwards in the Knockhaven practice where Lewis had more or less created his own personal fiefdom. Ritchie had said to her there wasn’t the demand for more than another one or at most two developments in this area anyway; he’d started checking out the coast of Ireland, only an hour from Stranraer, where he had contacts and there were good prospects. So he could run his business just as easily from Glasgow where Ashley could get a hospital job again and where there were theatres and galleries and shops and easy access to airports for the sort of exotic holidays Lewis had never found time for them to take. She’d always appreciated the good things of life and having serious wealth would be a delicious new experience.

She would miss the lifeboat, of course: there was something in her that responded viscerally to the raw, elemental struggle between feeble man and the unbounded force of the sea, where it was only the skill to keep a cockleshell above the waves instead of below, the mastery of amazing technology and the courage to defy the terrifying gods of wind and water that could work, in combination, to snatch from them the victims of their anger. Oh God, yes, she would miss that.

Still, there would be many compensations. Apart from anything else, Ritchie’s mother was dead. She’d checked.

There really wasn’t any doubt. Her answer had to be yes.

Luke Smith, his head pounding, his heart racing, dived into the staffroom and shut the door. It was mercifully empty, non-pupil-contact-modules (free periods, as they used to be called) having all but disappeared from teachers’ timetables.

He collapsed into a chair and buried his face in his hands. He felt as if he had been flayed, very slowly, strip by strip, until he was standing in front of the class containing Nat Rettie and his friends not merely naked but without any skin to cover his shrinking, bleeding flesh.

What on earth had possessed him to confront them? He should know his place by now, know that the titular authority being a teacher gave him carried no clout in the bear-pit of the Year 12 classroom. You could only govern by consent unless you could dominate by the force of your personality, which he couldn’t – oh God, he couldn’t even begin! And what they had all consented to today was Nat’s flouting of Luke’s every instruction, baying him on, bolstering his defiance with their raucous laughter. Until the end.

That was when Nat, taking advantage of a break in the laughter, flung at Luke the word ‘paedophile’.

There was immediate, stunned silence. Among all the obscenities, all the crude, offensive language which was their daily currency, this was the one word left with the power to shock. The air became electric with tension.

Luke’s mouth went dry so that he had to lick his lips before he could speak. ‘What – what did you say?’ he stammered foolishly, as if he hadn’t heard the word which was now branded into his mind for ever.

‘Paedophile. Don’t act stupid – my girlfriend’s speaking to the Child Protection Officer this afternoon.’

Luke could barely frame the words. ‘Your girlfriend – who is she?’

‘You mean there’s others you’ve touched up as well?’

The response to that was totally unnerving, a sort of growling, hissing swell of anger from the class. Nat glanced round them, a smirking sneer on his face. ‘She’s Kylie MacEwan. But it sounds as if she’s not the only one. She’s thirteen, you dirty old man!’

Luke knew he should have stood his ground, defended himself, laughed at such a ridiculous charge. He knew the girl by sight, largely because there had been anxious discussions at staff meetings about the problems she was presenting – including her relationship with Nat – but he didn’t teach her, had never spoken to her, far less been alone with her. He should have declared that immediately. He didn’t. What every teacher most dreads had happened and he was frozen with the horror of it all.

He had fled the classroom, knowing from the rising decibel level that Nat had caused a sensation. The story would be circulated without even his denial to counter it.

The next thing he ought to do was see his union representative and Fiona Walker, the pleasant, sensible, middle-aged mother of three who combined teaching French with her role as Child Protection Officer. Fiona, surely, would understand the evil game Nat was playing. No one could possibly take such a ludicrous allegation seriously.

But she would have to
. They all knew that. They all knew what an allegation of this sort meant: immediate suspension, with the attendant publicity, which would only be lifted if the child could be persuaded to admit that it was a malicious fabrication, or a court cleared you, months later. One or the other happened in 95 per cent of cases, but your life was ruined anyway. He had seen the ordeal inflicted on a blameless colleague in Glasgow, who’d had a breakdown and never worked again.