The Third Sin (11 page)

‘Tomorrow’s no good, either,’ he lied. ‘I’m meeting up with an old chum – we’ll probably make a day of it.’

‘Oh.’ Philippa sounded put out. ‘That’s a shame. But you’ll be at the party, at night, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll see you there, then. Oh Will, it’s just so good to hear your voice. I couldn’t believe it when you just disappeared like that, without a word. Naughty man! I shan’t let you get away with that again.’

Philippa was too old to be kittenish. Much, much too old. She’d had a certain mature charm back then, but now she must be – what, fifty, fifty-five? He said hastily, ‘Looking forward to it. Sorry, have to go.’

He was feeling slightly sick as he picked up another napkin to fold over a knife and fork.

He wasn’t what she’d expected. Marjory Fleming had been sent on training courses that would, if they were any good, have eliminated any inclination towards stereotyping, yet when she was considering the ‘friend’ who was studying social sciences along with Cat she had been guilty of thinking in terms of long hair, a duffel coat and earnestness.

Nick Carlton’s dark curly hair was short and neat; his clothes were the sort of smart casual a girl’s parents might approve of, without looking old-fashioned to someone his own age. He was nice-looking, tall – always seen as an asset in the Fleming family – and he had a pleasant speaking voice. What wasn’t to like, for even the fondest mother?

Bill, having shared Marjory’s own reprehensible expectations, was both surprised and delighted. Nick listened politely, laughed in the right places, and said nothing to disagree with his host.

So why didn’t Marjory take to him? She didn’t like it that Cat, too, was letting Bill make comments that would normally have had her jumping down his throat. She didn’t like it that Cat was on edge, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

She couldn’t put her finger on it until Bill began enlarging on his view that if people would just get married and stay married, half the social problems would disappear. It was hardly a new topic of discussion around this dinner table; Cat’s opposing views had always been volubly presented.

She said nothing; Nick agreed, and suddenly Marjory understood.

He was laughing at Bill. He knew Cat’s opinions; he was now trying to lead Bill on to the point where he would look foolish in his daughter’s eyes. Marjory saw Cammie suddenly shoot a sharp look at Nick and then at her, his eyebrows slightly raised.

The young men had been getting on all right before they sat down. Nick was a rugby fan but, he admitted in self-deprecation, no use as a player. ‘I tended to stay out on the wing where I wouldn’t get my shirt so dirty,’ he had said and Cammie, from his position of natural superiority as a number eight, had remarked that wingers were all like that.

It was, Marjory thought, as if Nick was analysing them, working out just how to play it – definitely manipulative. He’d made no
attempt at engagement with her as yet beyond common politeness and Marjory had taken very little part in the conversation. It might be interesting to see what his tactics towards her would be.

It was. When he turned to her, it was with a question of such naked hostility that she almost gasped.

‘What about you, Marjory – what do you think about traditional marriage? With a job like yours, family would always have to take second place.’

So she wasn’t to get the charm treatment. What hurt was the realisation that while Bill and Cammie must be either undermined or brought on side to make him surer of Cat, her mother’s opinion didn’t matter. She glanced at Cat and saw her eyes fall.

She was used to hostility, though – thrived on it, professionally. ‘Depends what you mean by second place, Nick. Do you mean you don’t approve of women working, that you think a father can’t provide supportive care? That’s a very old-fashioned attitude, I would have thought?’

Nick coloured, and she saw his eyes narrow. ‘No, not at all. Of course women have the same rights to work as men.’

Marjory laughed. Time to take the gloves off. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘You’ve been talking to my daughter, obviously. The children were both at nursery when I started work again after Bill positively begged me to get a job instead of directing all my energies into organising him. I do admit I can never guarantee that an emergency won’t arise. But look at this pair’ – she gestured at Cammie and Cat – ‘fine, upstanding young people, I’m sure you’d agree, Nick, so I can’t have done everything wrong.

‘Now, anyone ready for pudding? It’s Karolina’s
szarlotka,
Nick. That’s her wonderful apple pie, specially in honour of our guest.’

Marjory went to fetch it. Perhaps she’d gone too far, but the sort of conversation where words and intentions were at odds left her feeling
deeply uncomfortable. Queasy, almost. And no one, but no one, was going to be allowed to patronise Bill.

Cammie got up to help her pass round. Under cover of the conversation that had started up again round the table, he muttered in her ear, ‘Go, Ma!’

As usual, given Bill’s early start, it wasn’t much after half past nine when they went up to bed, leaving the clearing up to the young. As they climbed the stairs, Bill said happily, ‘Nice young fellow, that! Seemed to have his values straight. Maybe he’ll knock some sense into Cat.’

‘Mmm,’ Marjory said. How do you tell your husband that someone is making a fool of him and he hasn’t noticed?

The Portling coastguard rescue boat from Colveig had been called out, though as they went upriver the chief rescue officer was sceptical. Even as he dutifully scanned the shores where the mudflats were gradually being exposed, he said, ‘This may be a wild goose chase. Apparently the woman who phoned in said the wifie who reported it was elderly and might be confused. She didn’t see anything to confirm it and apparently there wasn’t a bank or anything someone could have stumbled down. We’ll probably find the old girl’s pal is just out shopping or something.’

He glanced at the chart in front of him. ‘We should be coming up almost level now.’ He put the binoculars to his eyes again, then said sharply, ‘Hang on, what’s that?’ He pointed. ‘Over there, Sandy. Take her in closer.’

It was only a few hundred yards downstream from the reported site, stranded on a mudbank – a dark pile of sodden material, a mud-streaked, water-bloated face. With the tide still relatively high it was one of their easier retrievals.

‘Poor old dear,’ the chief said. ‘Just tripped, probably, and got swept away on the tide.’

Today, though, the waves were lapping the shore as gently and rhythmically as a mother rocking her baby to sleep and as the body was dragged on board one of the men said, ‘Not unless she’d tied something round her neck and tightened it first. Take a look at this, Chief.’

The blackened, indented line in the corpse’s swollen neck was eloquent evidence of a violent death.

‘Oh,’ the chief said uncomfortably. ‘See what you mean. Looks a nasty business. I’ll radio ahead – get them on to it right away.’

Skye had made a chicken pie for supper that night and she was making a lot of fuss about it – her first attempt at pastry, she said. She went on about whether it was crisp enough, and crumbly enough, until Jen, who had needed to find four different ways of saying it was delicious, realised this wasn’t really about the pie at all. There was something she was trying hard not to talk about and she could make a good guess at what that was.

Skye was in a funny mood, nervy and artificially bright. There was no mention of the police until Jen said, ‘How did the interview go this morning?’

‘Oh, the interview?’ Skye gave a little laugh. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. They were fine, just like you said. No problem.’

‘That’s good. Did they ask you why Connell had come back?’ she said. She kept her voice light, casual.

Skye got up to clear the plates. ‘Yes, but of course I said I didn’t know, that you could never tell why Connell did anything.’

‘That’s certainly true,’ Jen said, with a pang of pain. ‘Are they coming back to see you again?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Skye said, dumping the plates in the sink and running water over them. ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve decided to come to the Homecoming party after all.’

‘Really? Oh, that’s such a good idea, Skye! I’ve been worried about you, you know, shutting yourself away here.’ She paused. ‘Does … does Will know?’

‘I decided to give him a surprise. And after that I’m going to get myself sorted out – look for a job and get out of your hair.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Jen said. ‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. It will be a sore blow to have to go back to living with my own inadequacies, I tell you.’

But she was under strain herself, longing for peace just to sort herself out, not to have to keep up a constant front of calm and cheerfulness. She would be glad when Skye left. She couldn’t help but see her as the stormy petrel who had presaged the storm.

Bill had, as usual, fallen asleep whenever his head hit the pillow. Marjory, her mind active not only with her family concerns but with the case which seemed to be nothing but loose ends at the moment, was still awake when her phone rang at quarter past ten. She jumped out of bed and carried it on to the landing to answer it, though she thought it probable that nothing short of a bomb exploding directly overhead would wake Bill out of his first sleep.

It was Inspector Mike Wallace, from the Kirkcudbright police station. She listened intently as he explained the situation.

The police surgeon had pronounced a woman pulled from the Solway officially dead, and the pathologist had unhesitatingly assessed the cause of death as strangulation. She had been unofficially identified as Eleanor Margrave.

Marjory reacted with shock. ‘
Margrave?
’ Her mind started racing. Margrave – Julia – Connell Kane. Connections, connections.

‘DSI Rowley has agreed that you should be SIO,’ Wallace was saying. ‘Can you get down tonight, Marjory?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said mechanically. ‘With you shortly.’

She went back into her bedroom to collect her clothes, dressed speedily and went downstairs.

Cat, Cammie and Nick were still up, chatting in the sitting room. When she opened the door Meg, who had been sleeping in front of the fire, jumped up and came over to greet her.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Cat said with the edge in her voice that always made Marjory wince, ‘it’s going to screw up the whole weekend. As always.’

Nick looked up with a sardonic smile. ‘Are you going to say, “There’s been a
murder?
”.’ He rolled his r’s in imitation of Taggart.

‘An elderly woman has been strangled, if you think that’s funny,’ Marjory said. She didn’t care that her response had produced an awkward silence, or that she heard Nick say, after she’d shut the door, ‘That was a joke, for God’s sake. Needs to lighten up a bit, your mum.’

She lingered long enough to hear Cammie’s response. ‘Ever seen someone who’s been strangled? I haven’t either, but I know I wouldn’t like to. That’s what Mum’s just gone to deal with and I don’t think I’d be giggling about it either.’

She only just managed to whisk into the kitchen out of sight before Cammie opened the door on his way upstairs.

Laid out under the harsh lighting of the morgue Eleanor Margrave’s face was almost navy blue, the whites of her eyes suffused with leaked blood. Her small, elderly body was frail, thin and bony as a bird’s, the limbs looking fragile enough to snap.

She had probably once been a handsome woman, DI Fleming thought, looking at the high cheekbones and the straight, elegant nose. Her reddened eyes would once have been a bright blue, though they were hooded and faded now.

According to the pathologist, there were no signs that she had fought back, taken by surprise presumably by a much stronger assailant.

The helplessness of the old, their vulnerability – she thought of her own mother Janet, in her eighties now, and felt the same kind of protective anger that always seized her when there were injuries to children. Eleanor Margrave deserved justice and Fleming felt an odd little surge of pride that the job she did meant that the duty to deliver it was hers. She made a silent vow to Eleanor that if she failed it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.

‘Thanks,’ she said, gesturing to the mortuary assistant to cover the body again. ‘They’ve done the photographs?’

The woman assured her they had and Fleming left to drive back to the police station at Kirkcudbright. Inspector Mike Wallace was waiting for her with the photographs spread out on his desk.

Fleming winced as she looked at them. ‘It was brutal, Mike. She was a frail old lady – couldn’t even resist.’

‘Wouldn’t have left a mark on her assailant, the pathologist thinks. Surprised when she was standing with her back turned.’

‘Then dragged out to the river for disposal?’

‘Even carried, possibly – she didn’t weigh much. The light was failing so we couldn’t search for tracks – fingertip stuff tomorrow, I suppose?’

Fleming nodded. ‘So we’ve got at least a pointer to time, wouldn’t you say? The body must have been meant to be swept away downriver, maybe even out to sea, so we could very nearly assume that it would be at high tide – there wouldn’t be much point in laying a body out in full view on the shore below the house.’

‘I’ll get someone on to checking tide tables. And first thing tomorrow – local interviews, I suppose – see if anyone saw anything useful?’

‘Right. And I’ll get my team going back over the connections with her daughter’s death – you remember Julia Margrave?’

‘Oh, of course! I knew the name was familiar. Poor lady – it can’t have been easy if the girl was a druggie even before she OD’d. So – that body in the car at Newbie, the drug dealer – do you think there’s a connection with that?’

‘We’ve got nothing on him, as yet. I’ve been helping Tom Taylor in Dumfries. But let me say this – all the main characters in the drama of Julia Margrave’s death have recently come back to the neighbourhood. And I have a nasty, distrustful mind when it comes to coincidences.
The woman who found her – is she still around?’

‘We took her to a hotel for the night. Quite old and very shaken but she was determined to give her statement. Perfectly clear and coherent – she’s a feisty old bird.’

‘We can talk to her tomorrow. Anything else tonight?’

Wallace shook his head. ‘We’ve got security in place down there and a duty car on site. They’ve been round the neighbouring properties, and Mrs Margrave was seen in her garden around twelve-thirty. I’ll get some rotas worked out now and have teams in place at first light.’

Fleming got up. ‘I’ll do the same. I’ll be calling staff in and I’ll get down to the site whenever I’ve had the morning briefing.’

As she headed back to her office in Kirkluce, she tried to control the random ideas that kept sparking in her mind and focus on the central point. Julia Margrave’s death was the direct link between Connell Kane and Eleanor Margrave. Surely it must all stem from that?

She had been puzzling away at the question Campbell had raised again at the meeting – why would Kane have come back to the area? He might not have realised that there was a threat to his life but he would certainly have known that he was in danger of being recognised and arrested. Macdonald and Hepburn had talked about the Homecoming party, which might draw the Cyrenaics together again, but it was hard to believe that Kane would take the risk for the sake of a get-together fondly recalling old times.

Unfinished business. The words sprang to mind. Yes, it just could be that, and perhaps the Homecoming party might be key – and, now she thought of it, there was an inside track she might be able to persuade Hepburn to use.

But it was hard to understand why a blameless elderly widow should now be lying shrouded in a chilled steel box in a mortuary.

The evening, Louise Hepburn thought, had gone rather well. Her date was both attractive and amusing – there weren’t a lot of those around in Kirkluce – and they’d had dinner in a new little Italian restaurant, lingering so long over their meal that they had to be thrown out when it closed.

The pub they’d adjourned to had a late licence and they’d carried on the conversation, going on to their taste in films. There was one they both fancied showing in the Newton Stewart cinema that week and they’d just agreed to go together the next night when a ping from her phone signalled a text message.

It could be an emergency summons. With a sinking heart she said, ‘Sorry,’ and glanced at it. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, pulling a face. ‘I’ll have to make a call. My boss.’

She carried the phone through to the back. Murder was a priority, date or no date.

Fleming was surprised to get her response. ‘I thought you’d get this in the morning – we’re not doing anything more tonight. But since you’re there, Louise …’

Fleming gave her the background, then went on to outline her idea.

Hepburn listened in horror. ‘It’s awful about Mrs Margrave, of course. But I really can’t stand Randall – it would be absolute purgatory,’ she said, though she recognised that this was a feeble excuse. She listened as Fleming explained that of course this wasn’t an order and that she must make up her own mind, but …

She said glumly, ‘Yes, boss,’ and put the phone down.

She glanced at her watch – half past twelve. Too late to take up an invitation you had so rudely spurned the day before yesterday – and she wouldn’t have been so rude if she’d known she’d have to change her mind.

It was humiliating – but on the other hand, it would give her the
chance to be right at the heart of the investigation, with an ‘in’ that no one else would have, a temptation she couldn’t resist. She’d phone Randall in the morning.

Then she went back, with dragging feet, to explain to her date that the cinema tomorrow was definitely off.

DSI Taylor was whistling as he pressed the lift button to take him to his office in the Dumfries HQ first thing on Saturday morning. He was still looking uncharacteristically happy when DI Harris presented himself in response to an urgent summons.

Harris wasn’t happy. He was feeling deeply conflicted: on the one hand, it was a considerable relief to know that media attention would this morning be switched to the Kirkluce headquarters and not directed at the lack of progress at Dumfries; on the other hand, he’d definitely have to let Fleming take full charge now and go swanning around being the great detective.

‘Heard the news?’ Taylor was infuriatingly chirpy.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good, don’t you think? Takes the heat off us, anyway.’

‘I suppose so.’

Taylor looked suddenly more uncertain. ‘But Len, it seems as if the investigation coming our way was accidental – it obviously stems from this place in Galloway. Fleming will be dealing with it and we can shut down the operation at this end, rescue the budget – maybe even bill Galloway division for some of the work we’ve carried out. Don’t you think?’

Harris shrugged. ‘I’d have liked to show her up. She was riding for a fall with her attitude here – I was looking forward to a good laugh at her briefing on Monday, watching her trying to get my lads on side. It’s about time she was taken down a peg or two. But still, if it means we’re off the hook—’

‘All but, I should say. At least no one’s going to be interested in us for the next bit, anyway. Shame we can’t prove the car went into the Solway there as well – if someone had managed to place it on their patch we could wash our hands of the whole thing.’

It hit Harris like a punch to the jaw. ‘Surely – surely they’ll move on from us anyway,’ he managed.

‘We-ell, maybe. The danger is that they start digging back and suggesting that if we’d got Kane’s murder wrapped up all this wouldn’t have happened. But let’s look on the bright side and assume they won’t – I’m not going to let it depress me, anyway.’

Suppressing a terse rejoinder to little Pollyanna, beaming across the desk, Harris went back to his office brooding. He was seldom entirely honest with himself; a deep-seated sense of inferiority made him respond to any criticism with raw aggression and he flatly refused ever to admit to failure. In this case, though, he could see how vulnerable he was.

It was greatly in his own interests that the whole operation at this end should be forgotten. On the other hand, how could he go back to Weston and tell her that he had lied to her, and that her evidence had been not just relevant but very possibly crucial? The site she had named was, he now realised with a further sinking of his spirits, just two or three miles from Eleanor Margrave’s house.

The short answer was that he couldn’t. Not only would it be a totally unacceptable loss of face, it would leave him wide open to a charge of misconduct and Weston – nasty, weaselling little creature that she was – would be just the person to do it.

No, he would have to pretend it hadn’t happened and look on the bright side as sodding Pollyanna had suggested. It didn’t make him feel like beaming, though.

DI Fleming’s team had assembled in her Kirkluce office by eight o’clock. There was to be a general briefing at nine o’ clock, but after an update from Inspector Wallace she had decided to get them out on interviews immediately.

‘The first line of enquiry is obvious. We need to know exactly where all three Stewarts, both Lindsays, Jen Wilson and Skye Falconer were yesterday afternoon. Of course, we have to keep an open mind; there may be others involved that we don’t know about as yet or this could just have been the result of a break-in or a random attack. But taking Connell Kane’s murder into account, it’s a good working hypothesis that this is related until proved otherwise.

‘Now, timing. A neighbour reported seeing her in the garden as she drove past around twelve-thirty and Bridget James, who was coming to stay for the weekend, arrived just after four o’ clock. The pathologist can’t narrow it down much – assessing a body that’s been immersed is tricky – but the tide was at the full at about three-thirty. For the moment at least, I think we go with the theory that the body wouldn’t have been laid out on an open shore, so mid afternoon – say three to three forty-five looks like the crucial time.

‘I’ll take the briefing and then I’m going to Eleanor Margrave’s house. Tam, I want you and Louise to talk to Bridget James then join me there. Andy and Ewan – take the Lindsays and Skye Falconer and Jen Wilson. Wilson was probably at school though, of course, we need to check that she wasn’t off sick or something. Then report to me at the house and we’ll take it from there with the Stewarts. All right?’

‘Maybe they’ll feel they have to cancel the party,’ Hepburn said hopefully, and Fleming grinned.

‘Oh, I think we need to assure them that there’s no need. I think it could be extremely instructive. We’ll have our own spy in the camp,’ she explained to the others, indicating a grimacing Hepburn. ‘Louise has nobly agreed to go to it as Randall Lindsay’s guest.’

Macdonald and MacNee burst out laughing, earning themselves a death stare. ‘Was he pleased?’ Macdonald said provocatively.

‘Confused, mostly,’ Hepburn said. ‘I got him out of bed to tell him. And once he hears what’s happened and puts two and two together about why I wanted to come, it could get very sticky. I don’t suppose any of them will be very pleased.’

Fleming said sharply, ‘If you’re at all worried, forget it. I don’t want to put you in an awkward situation.’

‘I’m quite looking forward to it now, actually,’ Hepburn admitted. ‘There’ll be plenty of other people there and I can look after myself.’

‘If you’re comfortable with it, fine. But if you sense trouble, get out. And that’s an order. Right. Questions?’

‘I didn’t hear the early bulletin on the news,’ Macdonald said. ‘What did it say?’

‘No more than that the body of an elderly woman had been recovered from the Solway yesterday evening. No name or definite area, so the media interest will be low at first, but once the stringers get hold of it and the connection with Kane’s murder comes out, attention will certainly build.’

‘But it’s possible that it’s not general knowledge?’

‘Certainly possible. But of course the grapevine will be working overtime. I should think if anyone went into the local store in Ballinbreck this morning they’ll have heard all about it. Anything else? OK – good luck.’

After they had left Fleming turned to drafting instructions for the briefing. With the apparent link between the two murders, this was going to be a major investigation right from the start. For extra manpower they might have to use Dumfries but at the moment she hoped to run it using only the Galloway force. She didn’t trust Harris and it was entirely possible that he would be deliberately obstructive.

But even as she ran through the details of deployment, Hepburn’s
comment niggled at her. She’d suggested her going to the party without giving it enough thought; it had merely seemed a good inside track, a way of observing the interactions of their suspects. But if her theory that both murders had somehow sprung from poor, sad Julia Margrave’s death was right, the killer was likely to be present and unlikely to appreciate an ‘off-duty’ police officer among them.

It wasn’t likely she’d actually be threatened in the middle of a party. If there was some unpleasantness Hepburn was an experienced officer now, well able to look after herself. Even so …