The Going Down of the Sun (16 page)

“He thought she was going to leave him. He could have borne that philosophically enough, but if she went she'd take the child with her. If he tried for custody she'd tell the world the baby wasn't his—that he hadn't been able to father his own heir. He'd lose his wife and his dignity, but most of all he'd lose his son. I've seen him with that baby. I have no doubt he'd kilI to protect it.”

“But she wasn't leaving him,” objected Harry.

“No. Perhaps she'd only just decided. Perhaps she hadn't told him, or he hadn't believed her. She was setting off to meet Alex, and he was young and strong and undamaged and also the father of her child: perhaps McAllister couldn't believe that, given that choice, she'd stay with him. He's not inured to what happened to him, to the state it left him in. He's made a pretty good adjustment—being clever, ruthless and filthy rich may have helped—but he's very aware of the fact that he's a physical wreck. One of the reasons the baby means so much to him is that it's perfect.

“Because of what happened to him he was in his late forties before he married, turned fifty before she provided him with an heir. That's a lot of years he has invested in them. If Alison left he could lose a lot more looking for someone he'd care to marry who'd care to marry him, and even then he couldn't be sure of a child. If Alison died, at least he'd be left with his son.”

“Is that what you believe?” asked DCI Baker.

I don't know why he thought it mattered what I believed. “I think it's likely. It's consistent with what we know, and what we can guess. Yes, sitting here talking to you, it's what I believe. But if Frazer McAllister came through that door and sat down with us, I'd start doubting before he opened his mouth. He's an enormously powerful character; if you take him before a jury you'd better be sure you have him neatly packaged and all your facts sewn up, because he's a hard man to discredit, and he would be if he hadn't got a penny to his name.”

You know what they say about speaking of the devil. We heard doors bang, raised voices, then Frazer McAllister was looming monstrously over our table. I had thought the ravaged half of his face incapable of expression, but it could manage rage.

Baker got to his feet quickly, Harry slowly. I stayed where I was, the table between us.

McAllister bellowed, “You've no'let the wee shite go?”

I looked at him as calmly as a woman can when she's sitting behind a table and flanked by two strong men, and said, “The wee shite didn't kill her.”

His eyes and even his nostrils flared at me, but he heard what I was saying. “Then who did?” There was anger in the gravelly voice, and hubris, but also something like fear. It was unmistakably a challenge.

DCI Baker rose to it magnificently. He seemed to grow two inches. His moustache had never bristled so impressively. “I'm glad you came in, sir,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

I left then. Harry stayed.

I waited in reception for about half an hour, but when there were no signs of any of the three of them emerging I thought I'd go back to the hotel and freshen up before lunch. But as I got to my feet the phone rang, and the desk sergeant answered it and looked quickly at me and away again. So I made an excuse to hang around a little longer, routing through my bag for something I hadn't lost and was therefore in no danger of finding. Sure enough, when he put the phone down the sergeant came out from behind the desk and over to me.

“Mrs. Marsh, you know Alex Curragh, don't you?”

My heart sank. “I've got to know him in the last few days.”

“Only we sent him back to the hospital for an X-ray and he's gone AWOL. You wouldn't have any idea where he'd be?”

My God, I thought, for an innocent man he certainly does a good impression of a guilty one. It was the broken glass all over again. “No. But I could make an educated guess where he'll be heading—home, to Crinan. How would he do that—without a car?”

“Beats me,” said the sergeant feelingly. He found maps and timetables under the desk. “Well, he could take the train to Oban, though he'd see half the west of Scotland before he got there and he'd still be thirty-odd miles from Crinan. He can get there by bus, but it'll take him most of the day.” He folded away the sheets. “Well, I'd better get someone organised to watch the bus and train stations. We'll maybe pick him up soon enough.”

Actually I didn't think they would, because actually I didn't think he'd go anywhere near public transport. He was used to hitching, and even then there were two ways he could go.

But none of this was altogether relevant. I said, “Before you organise anything, get it approved by your chief. The last I heard, Alex Curragh was no longer a suspect in the murder of Alison McAllister, in which case he's free to go home any time he wants to, and though I don't think it would occur to him to sue for wrongful arrest, you never can tell.”

I left him worrying about that and went back to the hotel. I was still wondering what I should do next when Harry came in. He threw himself into the chair that had previously proved equal to the strain and stared glumly at his left knee for about a minute before speaking. Then he said lugubriously, “This is all your fault, you know.”

It was too preposterous even to take offence. “Mine?”

“Yes. Twenty-four hours ago we had one crime and a prime suspect who was going nowhere. Now we've got more theories than you could shake a stick at, two suspects—neither of whom is assisting noticeably in our enquiries—and now one of them has disappeared and the other is threatening me with his lawyer, his friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, and something called a Procurator-Fiscal, and I don't know whether I need a bullet-proof vest or a clove of garlic.”

At least he was hanging onto his sense of humour. Mind you, nobody but me would know. “Would it be helpful if you found Alex? Or would it be just as handy if he stayed out of sight for a few days?”

Harry was watching me, his grey eyes steady. “Do you know where he is?” He hadn't answered my question.

“He's hitching his way home. He may be going by road but I doubt it. The Clyde is still one of the great rivers of the world, and Glasgow one of the great ports. Alex has worked with boats since he was a kid, there's damn all else to do in Crinan. It's my guess he's on one now, watching Gare Loch and Loch Long and Holy Loch slide gently by to starboard.”

“When will he get to Crinan?”

“Depends what kind of boat he's on, and which way it's going, and whether it's making any calls along the way. He could be there tonight, it could be the middle of next week.”

Harry nodded slowly. He didn't seem altogether displeased. “There's one thing to be said for it. If we couldn't keep him in custody—and after today, bailing something new, we couldn't—a boat at sea is probably the safest place for him.” “Safest?”

They had been unable to find any grounds on which to detain Frazer McAllister. They had questioned him at length about his relationship with his wife and he had replied fully, frankly and with obvious resentment. His answers left no apparent gaps to be queried and quarried, they were unable to catch him out in either general or specific untruths, and in due course when they had asked all the questions they could think of they had to thank him for his time and show him to the door.

Yet Harry and Baker both, two experienced detectives, were left with the faint, persistent feeling that the full and frank answers had served only to cover up a deeper truth which they could suspect but not yet even glimpse. McAllister was hiding something, and doing it so well they couldn't see the cracks, let alone force them. They hadn't given up, of course, but for the moment and until they got more evidence or more ideas, they had gone as far as they could.

It would surprise no-one who knew him that Frazer McAllister had almost as many questions to ask as the police. Particularly he wanted to know why Alex Curragh had been returned to the hospital and left there without so much as a police guard when it was as obvious as sin that the man was a murderer.

Harry told him what Curragh had told us, which explained his improbable survival when the
Skara Sun
blew up and also the ill-considered lies he had told hoping to protect Alison's confidence. While he was talking he watched McAllister closely for a reaction that might cast light on his own role. But McAllister's expression barely flickered—not when he spoke of Peter's paternity, not when he said Alison had decided to end the affair.

When he finished, McAllister said only, “And you believed the wee shite?”

“I wasn't sure what he meant by that,” Harry observed reflectively to his left knee.

I didn't understand. “Isn't it obvious?”

“It wasn't. The way he said it—the inflection, the look in his eyes—I wasn't sure if he was telling me it was unbelievable, or asking me if I thought it was true.”

“What did he say about the baby?”

“Very little. The idea didn't seem to come as a shock; I think he must have considered it before now. He said it's a wise father that knows his own child and only Alison knew for sure. He really didn't seem that troubled. He was much more upset by the idea that Curragh had hoodwinked us.”

About then the news reached them that Alex had had his X-ray, that it had proved satisfactory, and that instead of returning to his room off Neil Burn's ward as agreed, he had climbed back into his borrowed shirt and walked out of the hospital into the anonymity of the city.

At that point Frazer McAllister's temper, just about under control throughout the interview thus far, hit the fan. He swore terrible oaths—against Harry, against Baker and his colleagues who couldn't solve their own crimes without involving foreigners, against me—absence failing to make the heart grow fonder—most of all against Alex Curragh.

He wouldn't accept that there wasn't evidence enough to arrest him twice over, and if there had been inadequate grounds for holding him before, he was adamant that the boy heading for the hills clinched the matter utterly. He wanted an APB issued; he wanted helicopters and tracker dogs; he wanted guns and stun grenades and lots of men on the ground, and he saw no reason why he shouldn't provide anything the police were short of.

That was why Harry considered Alex was safer at sea. “You think if you don't find him, McAllister will?”

He grimaced. “I think there's a serious danger he may try.”

`You warned him off, of course.”

“Of course. You can imagine how deeply impressed he was.”

Quite. The niceties of the law would seem a poor reason to McAllister for doing anything. Also, he had powerful reasons to deal with Curragh himself. If McAllister had murdered his wife he needed to dispose of the boy while he was still a credible scapegoat Alex had played right into his hands; the last thing he wanted was for the boy to come to his senses and turn himself in. If McAllister's people found Alex first, he'd be dead before anyone else got to him.

And if McAllister didn't murder his wife, he must feel sure that Curragh had. With the police apparently disinclined to arrest him, there was again the substantial prospect that McAllister would take the law into his own hands, extract his own vengeance. If Alex was never found we would probably never know for sure which of them had done it, if it was Alex and he had escaped or if McAllister had finished the job begun at the Fairy Isles.

Harry sighed and stretched his feet out to the hearth, though it was June and there was no fire burning there. “I'm going to fly up to Orkney this afternoon, talk to Alison's mother. As far as McAllister knows she's the last of the family still living there. I don't know if she can cast any light on this, but it might be useful to hear about Alison from someone other than the two men suspected of killing her. Do you want to come?”

`Yes, sure.” Whatever I thought of how it was turning out, this was likely to be the only holiday I'd get this year. Meeting a murdered woman's mother mightn't compare with breaking the bank at Monte Carlo, for instance, or wind-surfing in the Bahamas, but at least Orkney was somewhere I hadn't been before. “Didn't McAllister say there was a brother too?”

“He did, didn't he? Maybe he's moved away. The father died several years ago. Mrs. McKeag, that's the mother, lives in Stromness.”

… In a street of little houses that looked they had grown somehow organically out of the rock of the island, a narrow street of stone sets and cobbles, with barely room for the car we had hired in Kirkwall. The street flowed like a river over the contours of the shoreline and round the curves of the harbour, and a hundred yards in any direction started to take you out into the country again. Small green fields confined by stone walls hemmed in the little town, kept its face to the sea. The harbour with its long pier seemed almost larger than Stromness itself.

Mrs. McKeag might have been sixty, though she looked older. The wild North Sea winters had kept her indoors, or within the shelter of that maze of narrow streets which was the next best thing, for chunks of her life months long, and it showed in her skin: soft, almost white, with a surface texture like talcum powder. She was a pretty woman, prettier than Alison, with fine features instead of her daughter's broad ones, and delicacy where Alison had strength. I presumed Alison took after her father.

She was in the kind of mourning you seldom see in England now: black dress, black stockings and shoes, even jet pins to hold her silver hair. The room she showed us to was half in darkness, a linen blind drawn over the window. Black crêpe framed a photo of Alison she had on the little dresser.

Everything in the room was little. The notorious weather of the Pentland Firth had bred a race of troglodytes to survive and prosper through it, and the most effective way was to build houses like caves, with thick walk and low ceilings. The small rooms were easy to heat, but I imagine most of the furniture had to be specially made. The doors were low and the window behind the blind not much more than a porthole.