Dead in the Water (29 page)

‘See – there.’ Pavany pointed to the final beam; it was slightly, but visibly, out of true.

It was nearing the end of the day; Franzik knew his mind had not been on the work in hand and he had done a shoddy job. But he shrugged and said stubbornly, ‘So? Put on the tiles and who will see?’

‘You put it right. Bad workmanship is no good to me.’

Franzik exploded in a volley of obscenities. The other man stood unmoved until he finished with, ‘OK, you don’t like my work – you sack me!’

Then Pavany smiled. ‘I sack you,’ he said softly, ‘then you forfeit your pay. You’re docked two days anyway and you owe rent for this week. You don’t pay it, I keep your passport and I lock the door. And where do you sleep tonight? Last time, you had to come crawling back.’

Franzik squared up to him, locking eyes. Behind them, the others stopped work, watching the confrontation warily but making no move to intervene.

Pavany, with that flicker of amused contempt around his mouth, didn’t move. Franzik wanted to smash the smile through the back of his head, but tormenting thoughts raged in his mind: he had no money and nowhere to go – Karolina had bluntly refused to help. The sun had gone in now and he could feel already the chill that would deepen as darkness came.

For a long, pointless moment he held the stare, then abruptly turned and went up the ladder, seething with helpless rage. If Pavany laughed, he would drop the mallet on his head.

Pavany did not laugh, or speak, even, just went back to the door frame he had been working on. The others, too, resumed their tasks. Kasper’s run-ins with Stefan were just another fact of life.

‘Hey, guys, you’ve really got a move on while I was away!’ Diane Hodge hailed them cheerfully as she got out of her Mini Cooper S. ‘Roof finished next week, eh, Stefan?’

Pavany glanced over his shoulder and nodded, but if he said anything, it was drowned out by the noise of hammering from the roof.

‘You’re getting all your aggressions out there, anyway, Kasper!’ Diane called up gaily, but getting no response from anyone, said lamely, ‘Well – that’s fine! Terrific! Hang in there,’ and went back to the car. She felt put out: it was all very well doing the mean, moody and magnificent act, but Stefan could at least show he appreciated her taking an interest.

She took her overnight case and several glossy carrier bags out of the car and carried them across the gravel. Gavin’s car was there, and if he was in he must have heard her arriving, but he didn’t appear to greet her. Not that she’d expected it – the best she could hope for was that he’d had time to get over their quarrel, which had been the main purpose of her bolt up to Glasgow. He was downright nasty to live with when he was in one of his moods, and she would only have got drawn in and found herself saying things that made the situation worse. Thank God, they were off on a cruise in a couple of weeks, with people to talk to and things to do instead of hanging around here with too much time on their hands. Once the house was finished she didn’t know what they’d do.

It was different when Russ was living at home, demanding attention and filling the house with his noisy friends – and, as always, she had a pang of sadness for her only son, so far away now and almost lost to them, she felt. But it was best for him, she knew that, best by a long way, and they were planning a trip to see him soon. But she missed her bad boy, and her mouth was drooping as she went into the house.

‘Hello!’ Diane called. Her voice echoed in the great empty space of the hall, but there was no reply. She set down her burdens and went anyway to look in the conservatory where Gavin usually sat, if he wasn’t watching the huge plasma screen in the TV room.

She found him there, just sitting staring straight ahead of him, not looking at a magazine or playing games on his BlackBerry. He looked odd, somehow.

‘Hi, Gavin – I’m home,’ she said, a little uncertainly.

He turned his head. ‘Evidently. Had a wild time?’ His words dripped sarcasm.

Oh God, she’d hoped he’d let it go by now – perhaps she should have stayed away longer. She decided to respond to the words not the tone. ‘Oh well, bit of shopping, lots of chat. You know how it is.’

‘Fortunately, I don’t. I’m happy to say I’ve been spared shopping trips with two gabbling women.’

She wasn’t taking this. Hands on her hips, Diane said, ‘Gavin, what the hell is wrong? I won’t be spoken to like that! I’ve just about had enough. OK?’

It was as if he had deliberately provoked a combative response to give legitimacy to his own anger. ‘
You
’ve had enough! Would you care to hear what I’ve been through today?’

Something in his voice – it couldn’t, surely, be fear? – stopped her replying in kind. ‘Tell me what’s happened, then,’ she said, and sat down. There was a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach and her legs seemed weak.

‘Your little friend, the wonderful, brilliant Marcus Lindsay, almost got himself bumped off last night. And because you were away, and I was on my own here, somehow I’m a suspect.’

Diane looked at his face, red with temper, and his furiously glaring eyes, and the question almost slipped out, ‘And did you do it?’ Instead, she said irritably, ‘So somehow it’s my fault? But Marcus – what happened? Is he all right?’

Gavin gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, the devil looks after his own! But someone told the police we didn’t get on, and they actually took me in to the police station. Can you believe it? And I can tell you, the tone they took wasn’t what you’d expect towards someone paying the sort of taxes I do. I walked out, in the end. It was quite ridiculous.’

‘If they let you walk out, they’d probably got all they wanted,’ she said shrewdly. ‘Tell me about Marcus, though.’

‘I might have known you’d be more concerned about him than about your own husband. Someone took a knife to him, but apparently he’s back home and recovering.’

‘Thank God for that! But who would do it – what for?’

‘For being a total prick, probably, and I wouldn’t blame them. But now the police are going back to that Ailsa Grant business too.’

‘Ailsa Grant?’ Diane said blankly. ‘Goodness, I haven’t thought about the girl for years! What on earth is that about? Her father killed her for getting herself pregnant – they just couldn’t prove it, that’s all. Everyone knew that.’

‘Everyone except the police, apparently.’ Gavin got up restlessly and went over to stare out at the garden. ‘I told them we hardly knew her, and we’d no contact with her after she went to Glasgow. It seemed the simplest thing. We don’t want to get drawn in.’

‘But Gavin—’ she protested.

He swung round. ‘No buts,’ he said savagely. ‘And they’re coming to talk to you too, so we have to say the same thing.’

‘I’m a rotten liar,’ she protested. ‘Always have been. I go red and look shifty. It’s really stupid to lie to the police. I can’t think why you did – you’ll just have to say they confused you, you didn’t understand what they meant.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh no. You listen to me – I’ve said that, and that’s what you’re going to say as well. You’d better. I mean it.’

Diane had been prepared for temper. She was used to that, but she wasn’t used to her blustering husband speaking to her in a quiet, cold, menacing voice. She found she was actually afraid.

‘I’ll – I’ll do my best,’ she said, feeling sick.

‘Ah, Marjory!’

Bailey sounded nervous as he half-rose to greet her, and as he sat down he leaned back, away from her – a classic indication that he would rather be elsewhere.

‘How are the investigations going?’ he asked, and she told him what little they had established.

‘The press secretary tells me interest has faded since they heard Lindsay was making a speedy recovery, so that’s good. If they don’t hear any fanciful theories about the Ailsa Grant case, they should lose interest completely.’ Bailey looked pointedly at Fleming.

‘Indeed. We’re checking that as discreetly as possible,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear. Then, since she had to put the question sometime, she asked with a sense of foreboding, ‘How did you get on with Ms Milne?’

‘Oh, impossible creature!’ he sputtered. ‘You won’t believe it, Marjory – she tried to turn it into a discussion of our investigation methods! Wants to go through it with me – and she’s not very keen on you, I can tell you that!’

‘That’s not exactly a surprise.’ Fleming’s worst fears were realized; he had clearly got nowhere and she blamed herself now for sending him. ‘What did she say about Lindsay, Donald?’

He was fidgeting nervously with his fingers. ‘Oh, she really wasn’t helpful. Claimed she hardly knew him and she hadn’t mentioned the connection because she didn’t like people who tried to claim friendship with celebrities when none existed.’

‘Did she, indeed,’ Fleming said grimly. ‘So how come they were having a joking conversation in which the complaint about police harassment was made?’

‘She was a bit vague, actually. I pinned her down, because I couldn’t see how he could have got her number. Then she claimed she’d just remembered that it was she who phoned him.’

‘Why, if she hardly knew him?’

Bailey looked awkward. ‘It – it wasn’t clear. Just saying hello, was the impression I got.’

‘But—’ Fleming bit her tongue. Labouring the point that he’d been there specifically to oblige her to be clear was futile: obviously Bailey had blown it.

‘I did ask if she had an alibi for last night.’ Bailey presented this as an achievement. ‘And she was at home all evening, alone.’

‘I’m not really at the stage of thinking she slipped down to Tulach and tried to take him out,’ Fleming said, trying to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice, ‘but it’s a loose end that it would have been nice to tie off.’

‘I know, I know. And we simply haven’t the resources to thrash out all the finer points of this, you know. She made it clear that since Lindsay only has minor injuries, we can’t waste too much police time on it.’

Did she, indeed! Fleming was startled, but Bailey was going on, ‘You simply have no idea how difficult the woman is to deal with. In her position she ought to realize how important it is to treat a police enquiry with suitable respect.’

Bailey sounded petulant now, but Fleming didn’t feel inclined to spend time indulging him. ‘She’s difficult, certainly,’ was the most she was prepared to concede, then made an excuse to leave.

She was angry with herself, more than with him. It had seemed diplomatic to send the senior officer but now there was no way she could go to Milne herself and put on the pressure Bailey had so clearly failed to apply, unless she had further evidence. And the Fiscal’s attempt at calling off the dogs, while suspicious, certainly wasn’t enough to justify that, especially since Fleming had to admit that what Milne had said was perfectly true.

When they got hold of Lindsay, of course, she could bring the subject up, but why, instead of sending Bailey into the lion’s den to be chewed up and spat out, hadn’t she just said to hell with diplomacy and gone along herself with Tam MacNee to put the woman through the mangle? She knew the uncomfortable answer to that one, though. She had cravenly ducked it to protect herself, and now she was reaping the coward’s reward.

‘What’s wrong with you tonight?’ Rafael Cisek said to his wife. ‘You’ve been up and down every five minutes.’

Karolina’s round face was very solemn. ‘Rafael, I am worried. Whatever you say, I think I have to tell Marjory.’

He didn’t ask, ‘Tell her what?’ He frowned. ‘Why? Why should you do this?’

‘I thought, today, that it was the man they were all talking about, the man from the pub, who had tried to kill Marcus Lindsay. But it is not him. It is someone else, and they don’t know who. So I think I should tell Marjory.’

‘You don’t know anything,’ Rafael argued. ‘You have an idea – but everyone has ideas. You could do so much harm with your “ideas”. To tell this to the police—’

‘To Marjory!’ Karolina insisted. ‘She would know if this is important. And she is a good person – she would not be unfair.’

‘The police are the police, wherever you are. And we are foreigners in this country, Karolina. Do not do this! I tell you, it would be wicked – wrong.’

Karolina frowned. ‘Wicked? Do you think so?’

He was swift to seize his advantage. ‘Wicked,’ he insisted. Everyone deserves another chance.’

‘Well—’ She weakened. ‘You are a good man to say this, because you don’t even like him. And because you are a good man, you don’t recognize a bad one. But I will wait a little. See what happens.’

15

‘Why the hell did we need such an early start?’ DC Kerr grumbled as DS Macdonald signalled the turn off the main A75 towards the Mull of Galloway. ‘I’m shattered.’

‘Your problem is you think you can go to bed at three and still function,’ Macdonald said. ‘You’re not twenty any more.’

‘Nor are you,’ Kerr snapped.

‘No, I’m in my thirties and I’ve got a job to do.’

‘Pompous prat!’

There was a silence, then Kerr muttered, ‘Sorry. I can’t function without coffee, and I hadn’t time. Can we stop somewhere?’

Macdonald glanced at his watch. ‘Eight o’clock – won’t be anything open. You’ll just have to suffer.’