Cold in the Earth (34 page)

Marjory Fleming looked on watchfully as the digger flattened a broad track into the maze, leaving a trail of debris in its wake as the uprooted bushes were crushed into the muddy slush.

The driver leaned out of his cab. ‘This far enough?’

‘Five feet more,’ she called back to him. He gave her a thumbs-up, obliged, then clanked back out the way he had come.

A white van nosed in as the digger cleared the space, carrying the men in white paper suits and the pegs and tape and spades and plastic bags they would need for their operation. They jumped out to join Fleming as she stood looking at what was left of the blind alley near the gate; only the back hedge and a few feet of the side hedges remained.

She indicated the area to be dug out by hand and stayed to supervise the pegs being put into place, then she left them to it. She wasn’t expecting dramatic discoveries; the soil they dug up would be sent to the lab for analysis and if this was, indeed, where the killing had taken place it might have a story to tell. Blood traces remained in the earth for a lot longer than fifteen years.

It all seemed pretty flimsy in the cold, grey light of the wet, dreich winter’s day as Fleming plodded back towards the house. Tam MacNee had gone off to lift Scott Thomson and give him the third degree, in so far as police regulations allowed; perhaps something might come out of that. She was in a pessimistic mood this morning, though – pessimistic about everything, in fact. Bill was still acting like a zombie and Marjory had been forced to endure a phone call from a neighbouring farmer, giving her his opinion of a woman who wasn’t there for her husband when he needed her.

She’d wondered bitterly if he’d have thought a man should stay home from his work to hold his wife’s hand if she had a problem, but she managed not to say it. This was someone who was concerned about Bill, so they were on the same side, at heart; she’d explained calmly that the murder investigation she was responsible for had reached a crucial stage but would soon be over, when she could take leave.

Did she believe it, though? The picture seemed to be becoming murkier and murkier, the evidence more and more contradictory. She was convinced that the accident theory was pointing them in the wrong direction, but how could she ever prove it? The only person who might know the truth was silent in a hospital bed.

She’d felt very nervous at the start of this, her first real murder enquiry. As it went on, when her planning and organisation proved well up to the task, she’d gained confidence but now again she was being battered by doubt. Torn between her professional and her domestic duties, had she allowed herself to be distracted? Was there something she was missing, something another officer – a
male
officer – would have picked up?

Her father had told her often enough how a man would always outthink a woman. He’d come across the technological term ‘fuzzy logic’ somewhere and gleefully misused it to describe what he believed to be the state of the female brain. Tiredly, Marjory thought that this morning she could hardly argue with him.

She’d certainly never heard a male officer agonise over his responsibilities or wonder whether he was doing the right thing. It wasn’t the culture, of course, and who, after all, had heard Marjory express her fears either? Indeed, suggesting to her subordinates that Big Marge was crippled by self-doubt would be a good way of getting a horse laugh.

The thought cheered her a little. Anyway, there was nothing to be gained by picking over this while there was work to do. She quickened her pace.

As she went up the steps into the house she could hear a woman’s voice from upstairs, high-pitched and hysterical. An officer was coming down the stairs; when he saw Fleming he jerked his head upwards and rolled his eyes.

‘We’ve had a right stramash here! Her upstairs is throwing a fit – we’ve had to send for the doctor – and the men are making a stushie too. The Sarge was saying maybe you could have a word with DS Mason, boss?’

She sighed. ‘What’s his problem?’

‘Seems a wee bittie upset the case is being opened up again. And he’s not happy about their precious maze being ruined – talking about family heritage and stuff. And the other one’s the same, though from what I saw of it they weren’t bothering their backsides about it before.’

‘Hmm. Not sure I see the point of talking to him at this stage. I’ll think about it.’ Fleming glanced round the hall. ‘Where is everyone else?’

‘The Masons took the sergeant into the study to bend his ear. They’re still giving him laldy, from what I can hear.’

‘So they invited us in, technically?’

‘Pretty much dragged us in, when they saw the warrant for digging up the maze.’

‘Excellent. I hadn’t enough to petition for a warrant for the house but they’d be on shaky ground for a complaint if I have a look around now.’

The first door she opened led to an old-fashioned sitting-room with a bedroom beyond which showed signs of temporary rather than permanent occupation. Another door, however, opened into a surprisingly modern and attractive flat, where the heavy woodwork and panelling were painted white and the rooms were decorated with a clever sense of style, mixing handsome antiques and modern furniture with classic lines. Remembering Rosamond Mason’s quiet elegance, Fleming thought she detected her hand at work.

It would have been interesting to see what Brett Mason had done with her territory upstairs (judging by the rest of the house, not much, was Fleming’s guess) but as she came out into the hall a man carrying a medical bag came in at the front door, so she turned her attention to the basement instead.

Here, in what would have been the service quarter of the house, little attempt had been made at updating. Exposed pipes ran along the walls, which were painted shiny dark green to waist level and shiny dark cream above. There was a tide-mark of greasy dust which presumably showed where the reach of the cleaning woman stopped. Fleming opened the first door she came to, then stopped on the threshold.

It was hard to say who was the more surprised, Fleming or the woman sitting at an oilcloth-covered table by the window, a piece of toast half-way to her mouth, but it was Laura who spoke first.

‘Inspector Fleming! Oh, you startled me. I was afraid it was Mrs Mason – I’ve just raided her kitchen for something to eat and I don’t think she’s inclined to be hospitable.’

‘Ms Harvey – what on earth are you doing here?’ She was startled and annoyed; the girl had agreed to keep the police informed of her whereabouts and finding her in unofficial residence here made Fleming wonder if what she had said about her relationship with Max Mason had been less than wholly truthful after all.

‘It’s a complicated story. How long have you got? Sorry, that sounded flippant but I do mean exactly that. There’s something very strange I need to tell you about.’

Fleming looked at her sharply, saw her grave expression, and experienced a feeling familiar to her from previous investigations, some serious, some trivial, but always the same instinctive reaction, as if some sixth sense were telling her that this was a defining moment, a turning point.

Irritation forgotten, she sat down at the table. ‘I’ve got as long as it takes.’

This time, Tam MacNee noted with satisfaction, Scott Thomson wasn’t lounging in his seat. In the clinical atmosphere of the interview room, with the formal identification of the subject, Scott Thomson, and the interviewers, DC Nisbet and DS MacNee, completed, he was sitting on the edge of his chair ready to sing like a canary if someone would just whistle the tune, as MacNee described it to DI Fleming later.

The man was hungover, his bright red hair in vivid contrast to the greasy pallor of his pasty complexion. The quality of their mercy had strained to a couple of paracetamol and a carafe of water, but that was as far as it went. When he made an attempt to justify his previous conviction MacNee was brutal in brushing it aside.

‘Cut the cackle. All we want to hear about is what you did to Diana Warwick. Up to your old tricks, were you – following her, pestering her?’

‘I – I never.’ Thomson licked dry lips. ‘Look, I learned my lesson—’

‘You told me yourself you watched her out your window.’

‘Aye, I told you! Would I of done that if I’d done anything more?’

‘Well, that’s an interesting question. I think that’s an interesting question, don’t you, Constable Nisbet?’

Charlotte Nisbet leaned across the table, her eyes on Thomson, exuding sympathy. ‘It’s tough for you, Scott, I know that. Give a dog a bad name. But you can see where we’re coming from too. Here’s this girl, bit of a babe, come-on look in her eye—’ She turned over a photograph which had been lying in front of her and pushed it across the table. ‘They’re asking for it, girls like that . . .’

Diana Warwick, her head turned, her smile warming the blue eyes, looked up out of the print. It seemed to shock him. ‘Di,’ he murmured, staring down at it. ‘She was that bonny . . .’

The two detectives exchanged glances. MacNee, with a jerk of his head, indicated that Nisbet should take it on.

‘It’d be hard not to be tempted, really,’ she said softly. ‘Hard to be rejected, because you didn’t have money and a posh accent—’

‘No!’ he said vehemently, raising his head then wincing from the pain. His eyes were blazing. ‘She wasn’t like that. Di was the only one treated me decent. That other one –’ he pointed contemptuously at the print-out of his record which lay in front of MacNee – ‘was a bitch playing games.
She
was asking for it, if you like. Half she told the Fiscal was lies.

‘I’ve had hard luck, what with her and those bastards the Masons and now you lot – you’ve been trying to pin this on me right from the start.’ There was a self-pitying whine in his voice. ‘But get this. They’re all mad, the Masons, from the old man down. When Di was there it was like she got them into crazy stuff. If it was an accident with Satan they set it up. They were like I’d never seen them before.

‘She never fancied me. I wasn’t her kind – I could see that from the start. But I’ll be honest with you – I never fancied her exactly, except like maybe I’d fancy Britney Spears. And aye, I watched her. I saw her that first night and I kept wondering what she was at – away out in her pyjamas, then back a wee while later. If there’d been someone after her I’d have been down to see what was going on.’

‘Had you a night off?’ MacNee asked suddenly.

‘Saturday. I’d be away into Kirkluce on a Saturday for the disco at the Green Cat pub.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘Used to like a bit of action.’

‘So can you remember if she was out that night, after you came back?’ Nisbet asked.

‘Fifteen years ago? You’re joking. I’d have had a few bevvies then come back on my motorbike and crashed out. Oh, but officer, I’d be stone-cold sober, mind!’

MacNee barely noticed the gibe. Maybe the man was lying, but he was sounding good. A jury would lap that up. So all they had on him was a minimal record and he’d said nothing today they could use. They were wasting their time.

MacNee got up abruptly and looked at his watch. ‘Interview terminated, nine-thirty a.m.,’ he said for the benefit of the tape, and walked out.

‘
Were-bulls
?’ Fleming stared at Laura Harvey. She’d always thought psychologists were flaky but this was something else. Was her sixth sense, after all, as fallible as the other five? She said carefully, ‘Are you suggesting that someone turns into a bull? With
horns
?’

Laura waved her hands in frustration. ‘No, no! I’m obviously explaining myself very badly.’ She paused for a second in thought. ‘I’m trying to tell you too much, too quickly. Bear with me while I explain.

‘Lycanthropy seems always to have existed, to judge by folk-tales and legends. But even now no one’s quite sure exactly what it is. There are theories, of course, but no one definitive explanation – when you’re talking about the strange ways of the human mind it’s not surprising.

‘It could be a hysterical dissociative neurosis, provoked by a deep-rooted sense of inferiority and failure. Taking the persona of a strong, powerful and violent animal could be a form of compensation for the humiliations of ordinary life and even, if it was carried through into action, be a way of projecting guilt on to the animal character.

‘Another theory is that it’s some form of paranoid schizophrenia. Drug use quite often seems to be a catalyst which could explain the New Age tone of a lot of the websites I looked at.’

Fleming pricked up her ears. ‘Or absinthe?’

‘Absinthe? Yes, I suppose so, particularly in its old-fashioned formulation. They blamed Hemingway’s mental problems on that.’

‘And Edgar Mason’s.’

‘Really? Though of course you have to realise there were plenty of people in the Thirties who drank it and didn’t go mad. You’re probably talking about a genetic susceptibility.’

Fleming’s mind was racing. ‘I can believe that,’ she said grimly. ‘Go on.’

‘Either way, the subject often has a problem with relationships and sexuality. If these produced fears which overthrew the normal coping mechanisms, violence could erupt.’

‘Are we talking about a psychopath?’

Laura shook her head. ‘Almost specifically not. A psychopath by definition knows no guilt. The lycanthrope has to seek out the excuse of an irresistible compulsion to escape his.’

‘I see. At least I think I do. Give me a minute.’

It was all so extraordinary, Fleming felt as if someone had been birling her round and round so that she wasn’t sure which way she’d be facing when she stopped or more probably collapsed into a dizzy heap. Laura was waiting patiently.

‘But surely,’ Fleming said at last, ‘someone would notice, if every so often one of their family started behaving like a wild animal?’

‘Most of the time it wouldn’t arise. There are case histories of lycanthropes leading apparently normal lives until some huge personal stress forces their secret life into the open.’ She hesitated. ‘But a couple of nights ago, someone was bellowing outside my window. Oh, I know, I know it sounds weird, but I’d heard it before.’