Bad Blood (19 page)

‘I say, “Why should I? Just because your friends tried to drive me out?”

‘She says she doesn’t – didn’t know what I meant. I told her and she said she didn’t know anything about it. I don’t think that’s true.

‘Then she asks what I’d come back to her for, says there isn’t anything more she can tell me about my mother. I’m telling her I want to know how to find Drax.’

The mixture of tenses was intriguing, Fleming thought. Marnie seemed to be describing a current experience and having trouble expressing it as a report of a past event. As she had gone on with the story, she had stopped correcting herself.

‘She doesn’t want to tell me. I say to her if she doesn’t, I’ll come and tell the police you should talk to him about the night my mother disappeared and she’s getting scared about that.’

‘He was there?’ Fleming put in sharply.

Marnie’s eyes seemed to snap back into focus. ‘
I
don’t know what happened – I told you that already. Anyway, she said she’d give me the address for the nightclub, Zombies – you know? – provided I didn’t tell him that she had. So she went and wrote it down, handed it to me and shut the door. That was all. She didn’t say anything about a will. She didn’t seem to like me much – wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible.’

‘You weren’t surprised when I told you, though, were you?’

Marnie looked down, sideways. ‘Yes I was,’ she insisted.

It wasn’t convincing. Fleming filed that one away and went on, ‘So – you had Drax’s address. Are you going to see him?’

‘I went yesterday. It was a wasted journey. He said he hadn’t seen my mother for years. Until I got your message I was going to give up the whole idea, go back to London – just disappear, back into my old life. Now I wish I had.’

Fleming could sympathise with that but she said, ‘You’re forgetting that Anita Loudon is dead. We couldn’t have allowed you to do that. What time was it that you went to the house? You may have been the last person to see Anita alive.’

Marnie showed signs of alarm. ‘Around six, sometime. Look, she was alive when I left. I didn’t even step inside the house.’

‘I take it you saw no one else there? What sort of mood was she in?’

‘Apart from hostile, when she saw me? I don’t know.’ She put a hand to her head. ‘Is there much more of this? I’m very tired—’

‘Yes, of course you are. I’m sorry – you’ve been given a lot to cope with. Just finally, what did you do after you saw Anita?’

‘Just went back to … where I’m staying.’ Marnie got up.

‘Any witnesses?’

‘No. It’s not that sort of place.’

Fleming waited hopefully, but she didn’t elaborate. ‘We have to order you not to leave the immediate area for the next day or two. Since we have your phone number I won’t insist on an address but you must undertake to keep in touch. I’ll let you know when we’ve been able to arrange for the lawyer to see you.’

Marnie nodded. She said nothing more as Fleming escorted her to the front door then went back inside. She couldn’t imagine how Marnie must be feeling; she felt totally drained herself, but at least it was over and it was only quarter past eleven.

‘Right, Sarge,’ DC Hepburn said. ‘I’ll meet Andy in the car park by the harbour in half an hour.’

She rang off. She’d been hoping that MacNee would arrange for her to link up with one of the patrols to get back to the station but
of course, if she and Macdonald were tasked to do interviews around Stranraer this made sense. She just hoped that MacNee hadn’t told him she’d been wiped out yesterday. Macdonald would love to have evidence of her unfitness for the job.

She was fine today. She hadn’t been aware of any more problems during the night and in an attempt to reset her mother’s body clock she’d wakened her when she got up for breakfast herself, despite Fleur’s protests that it was too early and she was still tired.

The sea was blue and calm today, the only evidence of last night’s storm being the sand and stones on the pavement opposite the house and tangles of seaweed heaped up on the shore and the sharp tang of ozone in the air. Hepburn walked briskly, puffing at the first cigarette of the day – always the best one – and hoping that Macdonald would be there when she arrived. The sun might be shining but there was no warmth in it and she didn’t fancy standing freezing.

Fortunately he was prompt and MacNee didn’t seem to have shopped her, but he went through the usual routine of coughing and wrinkling his nose about the smell of smoke. She’d been seriously considering giving up but just thinking of Macdonald crowing made her start twitching for the next drag.

She achieved a little half-cough, half-sneeze as she put on her seat belt. ‘God, what on earth’s that aftershave? I think I’m allergic to it – or maybe I just have a more refined taste than the women you knock around with.’

Macdonald ignored that. ‘The detail today is that we go to see Vivienne Morrison first. Anita may have confided in her – seemed under quite a lot of strain when we questioned her at the shop – but she was too distraught yesterday to speak to the boss.’ He drove off.

‘Good. I’d like to know what was really going on. Anita was lying through her teeth, if you ask me.

‘Was there anything new at the morning briefing?’

‘Of course, you weren’t there. What happened – car break down?’

Hepburn shook her head. ‘Just we were late back from Glasgow and Tam dropped me off, knowing guys would be here today who could give me a lift back if necessary. Anyway – new stuff?’

‘Nothing dramatic. Still no weapon, still no witnesses to anything happening that night. With Anita’s house being just opposite the play park there isn’t much chance there would be. The boss didn’t say anything about your friend Drax in the meeting but Tam clued me in. Sounds as if you had an interesting time.’

She could hear the note of envy in his voice. ‘My money’s on him. Nasty bit of work. Fancies himself – thinks he’s only got to smile at a woman and she’ll fall at his feet. Repellent.’

Macdonald gave a crack of laughter. ‘Did he not realise he might as well try to cosy up to a rattlesnake? Crazy guy!’

For some reason, that stung her: a rattlesnake? ‘Well, I’m not a pushover, if that’s what you mean. Anyway I think he’s got business worries too – don’t know what, but he was on edge and I don’t believe it was just the usual nightclub owner’s reaction to a visit from the police, like he said.’

‘Now that’s interesting. His colleague Grant Crichton certainly has – was livid with his wife for showing me through to his study where he was snowed under with papers and he was pretty keen I wouldn’t get a glimpse of them.’

‘And Morrison’s the third member of the consortium. I checked it out on the Companies House register.’

The look Macdonald gave her almost suggested respect. She went on, ‘It’s a curious set of businesses to link up – haulage, construction, a nightclub. Their profits are fairly impressive, given the downturn, so they must be doing something right. Or else doing something wrong, that they’ve been pretty good at covering up.’

‘Can’t be exactly happy about all this happening on their patch, can they? Do you suppose Mr Morrison is as twitchy as the others?’

They had reached Dunmore. ‘That’s the street we need to take
now,’ Macdonald said, turning off the main road and up a steep hill, then making a left turn onto a smaller country road. ‘That must be the house there.’

‘Has to be doing all right,’ Hepburn said as they drove up between expensively landscaped gardens. ‘I could quite fancy a bit of that myself.’

They were just parking the car in the turning circle in front of the house when the front door opened and a pretty blonde girl came out with a toddler on her hip. She glanced across, smiled and then came to meet them.

‘Can I help you?’

They showed their warrant cards. ‘I understand Mrs Morrison was too distressed to talk yesterday,’ Macdonald said. ‘We were hoping to have a word with her today, if that’s possible.’

She looked rueful. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m Gemma Napier, Mrs Morrison’s daughter. She isn’t here. You’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘Oh – when will she be back?’

‘Not for a few days, I’m afraid. Mum was just in pieces about poor Anita, and she gets high blood pressure when she’s stressed so we were worried about her being here with all that’s going on. We’ve packed her off to stay with a friend in London. Total change of scene, a bit of shopping – you know?’

She smiled at Hepburn who didn’t smile back. ‘That’s very unfortunate. Can you give us the contact number in London, please?’

Gemma clearly wasn’t happy with the suggestion of pressure. ‘I wouldn’t be happy doing that. Sorry.’

Hepburn would have liked to insist but Macdonald stepped in. ‘Perhaps you could undertake to get a message to her that we would like her to return immediately? This is a murder investigation, and until we can talk to her we don’t know whether she has information that may be important.’

Gemma said stubbornly, ‘I don’t think she should. It’s a question of her health and, anyway, she told Dad everything. There wasn’t anything useful.’

‘That’s for us to judge,’ Macdonald said. ‘Perhaps we’d better have a word with your father, anyway. Is he here?’

‘No. He’s taken her to Glasgow to get the fast London train.’

The toddler, who had been regarding them suspiciously, started jiggling in his mother’s arms. ‘Mummy, Mummy – time to go to playschool.’

‘Yes, darling, we’re just going. If you’ve finished …?’ She raised her brows at the officer.

‘For the moment,’ Macdonald said.

As they walked back to the car Gemma went across to the huge garage which must once have been a barn for the farm, clicking a key that made the doors swing open.

In her designer jeans and fur gilet, with cute toddler accessory, she was the epitome of the yummy mummy. Hepburn struggled to keep an edge of bitterness out of her voice as she said, ‘Very convenient. Fully paid-up junior member of the rules-don’t-apply club, I’d say.’

‘Just worried about her mother, like a nice girl should be,’ Macdonald said, as he drove off, adding provocatively, ‘but you wouldn’t know about that.’

It got her on the raw. ‘Wouldn’t I?’ she said lightly, but she had to turn her head so he wouldn’t see the tears of self-pity.

Fleming was just finishing up at ten to twelve when the phone rang. She sighed impatiently and picked it up.

‘DCI Alexander from Cairnryan would like a word, ma’am. Shall I put him through?’

‘Yes, fine,’ she said, then, ‘Nick! What can I do for you?’

She’d always had a good relationship with him and she was taken aback when he said abruptly, ‘Marjory, what the hell are your lot doing trampling all over our patch?’

Marnie blundered past the reporters on her way out of the police station. One of them came towards her calling out a question but she didn’t even hear it and the man stepped back with a shrug.

She got into the car and drove away, not going anywhere: just driving, as if physical escape could distance her from mental torment. At the moment her mind felt blank and dead but it was the sort of numbness you felt before the anaesthetic wore off after a tooth extraction. Pain was waiting there on the edge of consciousness, red and raw.

Mother. The word started to spike through the blankness, bringing with it shafts of horror. What sort of woman would kill another child, all but kill her own daughter? What monster had been called up from the deeps by her questioning?

And what was she, herself? Bad blood, that was what they called it, coming down through the generations. At the thought of what had gone into the making of Marnie she was overcome by nausea. Drax, too? Stopping the car with dangerous abruptness she tumbled out
and vomited onto the verge, again and again, as if trying to purge herself of the poison of knowledge.

At last, shaking and shivering in the cold, she looked about her. She had no idea where she was; she had presumably been driving on autopilot since she hadn’t hit anything, but now she realised she was only a couple of miles from the Clatteringshaws cottage. With the instinct of a stricken animal she had headed for such home as she had. It would be bleak and cold but there was nowhere else she could think of to go.

Marnie got back into the car and when she reached the loch she slowed down and turned into the car park. It was empty and when she got out she felt as if she might be alone in the world.

It was all very beautiful today, glittering and icy, with the steel-blue sky cloudless overhead and the loch still as a mirror. The scrubby trees along its edge were leafless, the bare black branches like skinny arms with clutching skeletal fingers at the end.

There was a hum of traffic from the road behind her but Marnie didn’t hear it. The silence of the hills that encircled the loch seduced her with the promise of peace; the rippling water sang quietly at her feet.

She had longed to know what lay on the other side of the silence she had lived with for so long. Perhaps this was the only way to find out.

Shelley Crichton was in the conservatory using a leaf-shine spray and a soft cloth to clean the stiff, sharp leaves of the snake plant as tenderly as a mother wiping her child’s face. It was the most soothing occupation she could think of but today it wasn’t working; her nerves were still jangling like fire alarms going off in her head.

Shelley didn’t know what to make of last night’s phone call. The caller was a man, certainly, but she didn’t recognise his voice and he didn’t identify himself. He just gave her the information, then hung up.

How did he know she would want to know? And what else did he know about her – and what might he do with that knowledge? She felt sick at the thought.

Could it be a trap of some kind? If she was wise, she’d ignore it, pretend it had never happened, but she was tempted – so tempted! Anita Loudon’s death had felt like a sort of revenge but it didn’t satisfy her. The hatred, a constant low-burning flame, flared up until she felt consumed by it.

A leaf snapped off in her hand. Horrified, she realised her grip had unconsciously tightened; she bent over the mutilated plant to assess the damage, murmuring, ‘Poor baby, poor baby!’

‘Nick, I’m sorry,’ Fleming said in bewilderment, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Daniel Lee, that’s what I’m talking about.’ DCI Nick Alexander was definitely annoyed. ‘Look, I know your super is anxious about her precious reputation and thinks we’re not getting far enough quickly enough, but if she sends in your lot to trample all over this with hobnailed boots it will screw everything up just as we’re hoping to move in for the kill.

‘I could take this up with a higher authority but I thought a quiet word with you might be the quickest way to choke it off – if the damage hasn’t been done already.’

‘She did ask me, yes,’ Fleming admitted. ‘I told her to leave it in your hands but she made it an order. My plan was to drag my feet as best I could, and then Anita Loudon’s murder gave me the ideal excuse to put it on hold, indefinitely.

‘The reason we were “on your patch” as you put it, is that Daniel Lee was Anita Loudon’s lover and his business associates are at least tangentially involved as well.’

There was an appalled silence at the other end of the phone. Then Alexander said slowly, ‘Puts us in a spot of bother, then. We’ve been
watching them for some time but they’re smart and we’ve never caught them with the goods.’

‘The human goods, I take it,’ Fleming said.

‘Yes. Asians mainly, some Chinese. We think there may be a Liverpool-Irish connection. We’re liaising with Lancashire and the Garda but they haven’t had any luck either and we’re trying the Al Capone technique. The tax accounts they file are clean as a whistle – and trust me, we’ve checked. There’s no way we’d get warrants for a fishing expedition but our own experts say there must be a paper trail, so we’ve got HMRC on to calling in each individual company’s records to check them out for discrepancies.’

‘There’s no reason for them to suppose that our enquiries have anything to do with that,’ Fleming argued. ‘We might even happen on the sort of evidence you’re looking for.’

‘Might, perhaps.’ Alexander didn’t sound convinced. ‘But—’

‘Exactly,’ Fleming said, ‘but. Where do we go from here?’

There was a pause, then Alexander said, ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but we’ve had a tip-off about a shipment due in one of Crichton’s container lorries. I want you to lay off any action until I give the nod.’

‘I don’t see how I can, Nick. Murder, remember? The situation’s complicated and I still don’t know if they’re even directly involved, but until we can nail whoever did it, there’s someone very dangerous out there. How can I ignore legitimate lines of enquiry?’

He didn’t back down. ‘We’re talking lives at stake too. Just a few days, that’s all.’

‘Sorry,’ Fleming said.

‘I’m sorry too. I thought we could have done business without involving the big guns. But—’

‘You have to do what you think is best,’ Fleming said stiffly, ‘but so do I.’

Even so, when she had put down the phone she picked it up again. ‘Tam? If you’ve spoken to your friends in Glasgow about going round 
to check Daniel Lee’s alibi, get hold of them and call it off. The big boys are bullying us and that can wait for the moment.

‘Where are you, anyway?’

‘In Dunmore. I’ve a wee notion to find out who was outside Marnie Bruce’s window that night. Try out the patter on the locals, ken, and see what I can find out.’

‘Have you seen Andy and Louise? I’m wondering how they got on with Mrs Morrison.’

‘They didn’t. She’s done a runner to London.’

‘Has she, indeed. Done a runner – or been sent away?’

‘Like enough. He’s taken her to the Glasgow train so they couldn’t question him either.’

‘Find out when he’ll be back. I want him put over a slow flame before we’re called off.’

‘What’s going on, then?’

‘Need-to-know basis.’ Fleming was amused at the little ‘humph!’ of annoyance that came down the line. ‘If I told you I’d have to kill you afterwards, but you could maybe work it out if you think of our esteemed superintendent’s most recent preoccupation.’

‘Aah.’

The sound of satisfied curiosity. At least Tam was quick on the uptake. ‘Anyway, good luck. I hope the locals are susceptible to your very particular brand of Glasgow charm. Just a word of advice.’

‘Oh aye?’

‘Don’t smile too often. It tends to alarm the natives.’

Grant Crichton put his head down on the desk on top of the mountain of papers and groaned. He should have been more systematic; now he had no idea what he’d checked and what he’d hadn’t. His stomach was churning and he felt as if someone had put his brains through a blender.

He’d a good head for figures normally, he kept telling himself. He
oversaw everything that came in and went out, so he wouldn’t have put anything in the wrong file. Of course he wouldn’t.

But what if he had? What if he’d missed some small, insignificant entry – or what if one of the others had? It had run so smoothly for so many years, perhaps they’d got careless. Perhaps he had, even.

Now it was as if a whirlwind had struck. He was being assaulted from all directions at once and his life was spinning out of control. He couldn’t believe what he had done, what he had become.

Even if the records were as clean as he believed them to be, it wasn’t the worst of his problems. He might have seen off the sergeant who had come asking questions, but he wasn’t kidding himself that he would be the last.

It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. All right, what he’d done was wrong, but he could justify it. Most of it. He didn’t want to think about the rest.

He sat up and went back to his papers, rubbing his eyes as if that would clear his brain. The knock on the door was an unwelcome interruption.

‘Your lunch is ready,’ Denise said.

‘Lunch? Oh, I’m not hungry.’

Instead of retreating, Denise came further into the room. She held out something – one of the endless holiday brochures she was always looking at.

‘I really need you to decide about this now. If we’re going to do that Caribbean cruise we talked about, we have to book today. There’s only one superior cabin left and—’

‘Cruise!’ he roared. ‘You must be mad!’ He gestured at the laden desk. ‘If I can’t get this straight, there will be no more cruises, ever, or anything else! Get that into your dim little brain.’

Denise didn’t reply. She turned and walked out and he turned to the accounts again. It had relieved the tension to have a legitimate reason to explode and his mind seemed clearer. He hadn’t noticed
the mutinous expression on Denise’s face, or the look of loathing she gave him as she went out.

The relief was short-lived. Just as she shut the door, his mobile rang and when he picked it up Drax’s name was in the caller ID box. He looked at it with a mixture of fear and loathing and his stomach started to churn again.

The Cottage Bar, Dunmore’s only pub, where the detectives had arranged to meet at lunchtime, wasn’t enticing. It wasn’t a cottage either; it was a seventies single-storey building with metal-framed windows and an interior that suggested its designer’s brief had been to eradicate any vestige of character. If so, it was a
succès fou
, Hepburn suggested.

Getting the gist if not a precise translation, MacNee nodded. ‘You’re not wrong there,’ he said gloomily. He’d never enjoyed a pub lunch the same since having a pint with your pie, or even a half, became a mortal sin. And if his nose wasn’t deceiving him, there wasn’t going to be the pie either.

‘Just sandwiches. Ham, cheese, ham and cheese, cheese and pickle.’ Hepburn brought over the drinks on a tray and put a glass of a livid orange liquid in front of MacNee, wrinkling her nose. ‘Irn-Bru. And a Coke. I don’t know how you two can drink that sickly stuff.’ She set down her own lime and soda.

‘Oh, very French, very sophisticated,’ Macdonald sneered.

‘I’m meant to apologise?’

MacNee looked at them with some irritation. Sophisticated? The pair of them hadn’t got out of the playground. ‘Anyway, orders,’ he said. ‘Would they rise to cheese, ham
and
pickle, do you reckon?’

‘A bridge too far, would be my guess. The girl who served me looks as if remembering two ingredients at the same time will stretch her, but I’ll try.’

When she returned, Macdonald and MacNee were discussing the
sad situation of Rangers FC – at least Macdonald was talking about it while MacNee sat silent in a grief too deep for words.

‘It’s finished.’ Macdonald, a Hearts man himself, spoke with ill-disguised satisfaction. ‘By next season – no more Rangers. You’ll have to support a decent club after that, Tam.’ Then, seeing MacNee’s expression added hastily, ‘Just a wee joke.’

It was no joking matter. When it came to the Rangers’ plight MacNee felt, to quote Bill Shankly, that it wasn’t a matter of life and death, it was more important than that, a subject only to be treated with reverence. He greeted Hepburn’s return with surprising enthusiasm, given that she was saying cheese, ham and pickle wasn’t on the menu.

‘Did Marnie Bruce turn up today?’ Hepburn asked.

‘Couldn’t tell you,’ MacNee said. ‘I came straight down here after the interview with Daniel Lee.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘What happened?’ Macdonald and Hepburn spoke simultaneously.

MacNee pulled a face. ‘Claims he’s got an alibi for Wednesday night. We’ll have to test it sometime – don’t trust him an inch.’

‘Manipulative,’ Hepburn said. The two men looked at her quizzically.

‘His schtick is to draw you in, get you to see things with his eyes. He focused on me because I guess women tend to fall for that sort of humorous charm – you know how they always say the most important thing about a man is having a GSOH. Much more important than, say, previous for GBH.’

‘Right enough,’ MacNee said. ‘He tried it on with the boss too but he didn’t get very far.’

Macdonald gave a crack of laughter. ‘He’s a brave man! Did Big Marge tell him she’d have his guts for garters?’

Hepburn looked at him coldly. ‘I know you all say that’s her catchphrase but I’ve never heard her use it.’

‘Used to,’ MacNee said. ‘But she’s not daft – she found out what you were saying behind her back. She always does.

‘Anyway – this afternoon. We’ve to see Morrison as a priority, and—’

Macdonald’s mobile rang. He took the call, raising his eyebrows as he realised who was at the other end. ‘There’s an incident room at the village hall in Dunmore,’ he said, then, ‘No, fair enough. Right, I’ll be there. Two-thirty.’

He put the phone back in his pocket. ‘I have an assignation with a lady in a tea shop. She doesn’t want to see me at home and she feels the village hall would be too public. Denise Crichton has something to tell me and if it’s not about the alibi she gave her husband you can get me lime and soda the next time you’re in the chair.’