Lamb to the Slaughter (18 page)

As Wilson made the introductions, Kerr studied the pair with some interest. They were older than you might expect Ossian’s parents to be – had someone said this was a second marriage? – and hers were evidently the dominant genes when it came to their son. From the way her husband deferred to her, Kerr wondered whether she was the stronger character too, despite her delicate appearance.

Forbes-Graham was looking at her fondly. ‘It’s my wife who is the artistic one, obviously. I’m just a simple farmer.’

Deirdre looked up at him from under her lashes, smiling. ‘If it weren’t for the practical people, artists couldn’t flourish, could they?’

It was a flirtatious performance. She clearly had her husband wrapped round her little finger.

Wilson was taking the lead in questioning. Kerr didn’t mind; it seemed natural, somehow, and she took out her notebook and discreetly began scribbling.

‘We have obviously spoken to your son about the events of last Saturday, as one of Colonel Carmichael’s tenants—’

Forbes-Graham bristled immediately. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing at all, sir. Entirely routine. He was unable to recall precisely what his movements were on Saturday—’

‘This is a disgrace! Are you suggesting that my son has to account for his movements—?’

His wife put a thin, blue-veined hand on his knee. ‘Darling,’ she said so gently that he was immediately quelled, ‘you’re making it sound as if Ossian might have something to hide. Which of course he doesn’t.’

She turned a charming smile on the detectives and as her husband subsided, muttering, ‘Of course. Sorry,’ Kerr was suddenly reminded of something she’d read in a magazine once: ‘Any woman can manage a clever man, but it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.’ Deirdre Forbes-Graham might be a very clever woman.

Now she was saying to Wilson, ‘Tell me what it is that my son’s told you that you don’t believe.’ She made a charming joke of it, and Wilson smiled back.

‘No, no,’ he protested. ‘It’s nothing like that.’

Isn’t it? Kerr gave him a dagger look: Will was just a bit too susceptible to feminine charm – but perhaps she didn’t want to go there.

He didn’t notice. ‘It’s only that he didn’t remember his movements clearly on Saturday, after he left the Craft Centre. He thought he might have come home—’

‘Might have!’ Deirdre gave a silvery laugh. ‘That really is Ossian all over. Of course he did! I can’t tell you exactly when he left, but it was to go to the meeting about the superstore – those dreadful people!’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘When he came in, he popped his head round the door of my studio to say hello. I’m an artist too, but in a very small way.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Forbes-Graham protested, and she rewarded him with another smile.

‘I know, darling, but that’s because you’re very sweetly biased and a complete philistine.’

Oh, clever, Kerr thought. A pat on the head and a kick back into the gutter in a oner. She stepped in.

‘Mrs Forbes-Graham, we’re looking for a precise time,’ she said, earning herself a venomous look.

‘Artists are notoriously vague about time, I’m afraid. But I should think we could work it out if you give me the time Ossian left the studio.’

Sure she could! ‘The thing is,’ Kerr said quickly before Wilson had a chance to oblige with the information, ‘he wasn’t absolutely clear about that. We may find someone who saw him leave, but after that he mentioned taking a walk.’

‘I – see.’ Deirdre frowned. ‘So what is the time-frame you’re interested in?’

It was blatant enough even for Wilson to see what she was up to. ‘I’m afraid that’s not something we can tell you at this stage,’ he said stiffly. ‘It would help if you could give us your recollection, as precisely as possible.’

She thought for a moment. ‘It’s always hard to be sure one is thinking of the right day – Saturday, not Friday or Thursday. But I’m fairly sure it would have been somewhere around half-past four or five that he came back. Would that fit with the information you have?’

If not, I can always change it – that was the implication. Wilson ignored her. ‘Mr Forbes-Graham, did you see your son on Saturday, late afternoon?’

The man was visibly uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure I can recall, exactly—’

Deirdre gave another tinkling laugh. ‘Oh, my love, your memory! Of course you do! You were up checking the arrangements for the clay-pigeon shoot on Sunday and when you came back Ossian was just having a bite to eat in the kitchen before he went out to the meeting. Remember now?’

Her tone was playful but Kerr noticed that her hands were restlessly plucking at the fringe of one of her scarves.

‘Oh – oh yes, that’s right.’ Forbes-Graham gamely followed her lead. ‘The clay-pigeon shoot – had some chaps coming next day and there was a query about the stands.’ He was clearly on firmer ground now. ‘Young Simpson phoned. He couldn’t find Giles, so I had to pop up myself.’

‘And then you came back, when Ossian was just finishing his sandwich,’ Deirdre prompted him again.

‘I said that, didn’t I?’ He was starting to sound defensive.

Quit while you’re ahead, Kerr thought, and Deirdre seemed to have worked that out for herself. She got up. ‘If there isn’t anything else—?’

The officers rose too. Wilson said, ‘Thank you for your help, Mrs Forbes-Graham. All right, Tansy?’

She nodded, then, looking up at one of the paintings, said innocently, ‘Is your son working on something at the moment, Mr Forbes-Graham?’

He was clearly pleased that the conversation had turned. ‘He’s having a bit of a problem just now, for some reason. Very up and down, is Ossian – painting like a demon for a while, half the night, sometimes, and barely sleeping. Then of course he’s so worn out he gets depressed and can hardly get out of bed. Worries me a bit, to tell the truth.’

Deirdre intervened. ‘My husband finds it very hard to understand the artistic temperament. All we artists are volatile – never sure when inspiration will strike again. It’s perfectly normal.’

She stepped forward and somehow Kerr and Wilson found themselves wafted inexorably out of the front door.

‘No alibi,’ Kerr said quietly as they reached the car. ‘And she’s desperate to cover up for him, for some reason. Why? We’re just asking routine questions.’

Getting into the driver’s seat, Wilson agreed. ‘I tell you something. I read a book where someone had manic depression. Sounded like Forbes-Graham.’

‘Off his trolley?’

‘Tansy, using words like that gets you sent on a course. Don’t you know anything?’ But he was grinning as he drove away. ‘He’s not what you’d call a stable personality, that’s for sure.’

‘Hmm.’ Kerr digested that. ‘I think, if I was Ellie Burnett,’ she said slowly, ‘I’d be pretty careful about locking my door at night.’

Fleming was restless. She had read such reports as had reached her and summarised them for her report, she had attended the autopsy on the Colonel’s body, she had briefed the Procurator Fiscal, she had even started her policy book, recording her decisions and the rationale behind them, so that someone with the benefit of hindsight could go through them later and say how stupid they had been. She could, of course, make a start on assessing budgetary implications but that was so profoundly unappetising that it could wait.

She was suffering, as she sometimes did, from nostalgia for the days when she would have been out there, doing the tedious, boring job in the perpetual hope that the next routine interview would produce the breakthrough, whether it was petty crime you were talking about, or murder.

Nothing so far had emerged that would justify a personal follow-up from the Senior Investigating Officer, but sitting at her desk waiting patiently had never been Fleming’s style. If Tam had been around, she’d have called him in for a brain-storming session, but if she tried that with her present team, they’d be off like bloodhounds, following up on her random thoughts.

Was it something you had to adjust to as you got older – becoming the generation that should know all the answers, even if you didn’t? Learn to make pompous pronouncements, as Donald Bailey did, since they were less dangerous than off-the-cuff suggestions which wouldn’t be subjected to proper scrutiny? She wasn’t ready to do that, not for a long time yet.

OK, so she enjoyed power. If you looked at it closely, everyone did, from the two-year-old winding up his mother by refusing to open his mouth for the Brussels sprouts, to granny playing games about who would get the Clarice Cliff tea set once she was gone. Trouble came when the balance of power shifted – look at parents and teenagers. Take Cat, for example, starting to assert her independence – but she didn’t want to think about that.

Fleming’s problem at the moment, though, was not losing power, but finding herself with more than she wanted. It was fine to be able to direct operations, to decide when and where to take a hand, to reap the benefit of others doing the more boring parts of the job. But now it felt as if what she had was the power to fall flat on her face because no one would pose the awkward questions she hadn’t thought of herself.

Andy Macdonald would have to learn to challenge her, when necessary. He was no fool, and he wasn’t lacking in courage either. In that last, most painful murder enquiry, he’d dared to offend his Super, risking his own promotion.

Fleming suspected, though, that he was personally more in awe of her than he was of Bailey. She knew her reputation for having, as her mother would say, ‘a tongue that could clip cloots’, and there were several officers who could display the shredded rags of their self-esteem in support of the ­accuracy of that assessment.

To be realistic, she wasn’t going to change. That was how she ran her team and Andy would have to learn to be a big brave boy.

Restlessly, she shifted the papers on her desk. She’d be as well to tackle the budget now. She hadn’t any excuse, and wouldn’t have, at least until Macdonald, Kerr and Wilson reported back, which wouldn’t be until much later. She turned reluctantly to her computer and opened a new file.

When the phone rang, she picked it up with unusual enthusiasm. ‘Fleming.’

She listened, then said blankly, ‘
Who
did you say?’

9

‘It’s awful good of you to come, Tam,’ Annie Brown welcomed him as she took him through to the immaculately neat front room of her semi. ‘There’s not many people would think about how I’d feel, losing the Colonel, but it’s been twenty-five years I’ve worked for him – that’s longer than I had with my husband, God rest him!’

Tam MacNee followed sheepishly, making embarrassed noises. She insisted on fetching him tea and a slice of her fruit cake and sat down, ready to talk for as long as he would listen about the loss that was obviously a genuine bereavement. And her gratitude for his ‘kindness’ would make it harder for him to push the conversation the way he wanted it to go.

The Colonel’s devoted care of his arthritis-crippled wife was Annie’s starting-point, and she favoured MacNee with a rather more robust description of Mrs Carmichael than she had given Macdonald that morning: ‘Oh, the woman was a right besom! The man was a saint.’

MacNee was cynical about saints. In his experience, a man behaving that way likely had either a very wealthy wife or a guilty conscience, or both, but he knew better than to say it.

‘Have you had the police round?’ he asked instead, and was treated to a report on their activities more exhaustive than any that would reach Big Marge’s desk. He smiled inwardly. He might be out of the official loop, but he had his spies.

The photos of the foreigners she described seemed a mildly interesting irrelevance, but her description of Giles Farquharson’s odd behaviour left him feeling frustrated. That demanded follow-up, and no doubt Andy Mac was even now probing all the sore places, while MacNee didn’t even have a plan for how to get a word with the man. As Annie talked on about the shortcomings of the future owners of Fauldburn, MacNee found his mind wandering.

He’d spoken already to Senga Blair and George MacLaren. Senga was desperate to sell, right enough, but she was even frailer than MacNee had remembered, and she was a gentle soul anyway. George was a jolly, open-faced man in his late fifties, whose jokey asides made waiting in the often lengthy queue a positive entertainment. He was forthright in answer to MacNee’s innocent question, as he purchased three chump chops, which Bunty would be most surprised to receive.

‘It’s win-win, as far as I’m concerned. If it falls through I go on doing a job I like fine – I’m not past it yet. If it goes ahead, I can retire a few years early and start taking those Caribbean cruises the wife’s set her heart on. Don’t mind much either way – but I tell you, it’s as well that Herself doesn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other!’ He had roared with laughter and turned to his next customer. ‘There you are, my dear – this steak’s tender as a woman’s heart. So maybe you’d prefer a pound of sausages?’

It was hard to imagine George gunning someone down for the sake of an early start to the Caribbean cruises.

The ‘Highlights of the Colonel’s Virtuous Life Over the Last Twenty-five Years’ recital was still going on. MacNee was beginning to rehearse tactful escape techniques when Annie said something that did catch his attention.