The Third Sin (18 page)

‘That’s just silly,’ she protested, though her heart was beating faster. ‘Anyway, you know I couldn’t have gone out. A lot of the time I was with Logie.’

He smiled unpleasantly. ‘A lot, perhaps. But there was quite a time when you weren’t.’

‘But I was in the bar all the time you were upstairs in the restaurant!’

‘And I would know that – how?’

‘Because – because if you came down and I wasn’t here or in the kitchen you’d wonder where I was. And you didn’t.’

‘Didn’t I? I did, actually, to collect some cutlery, and you weren’t there.’

‘I was, I was – or perhaps I was in the loo. It would only have been for a few minutes, that’s all.’

‘So you say. But if the police ask me, I’ll have to say that I’m afraid I can’t vouch for you either.’

She was shaking as he left the room, not only with anger. He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t! Her only satisfaction was that Skye was in big trouble, obviously, and it served her right.

Charles Lindsay had, as usual, retreated to his study, the only old-fashioned room in the house, with leather chairs and bookshelves its most striking features. When his wife came to find him, he looked up from the book he was reading.

‘Did the police get hold of you? They came here looking for you and Randall.’

‘Did they?’ Philippa sounded weary. ‘No, I’ve only just got back. Have you heard the news? They’ve arrested Skye Falconer.’

He looked up in genuine dismay. ‘Oh no! They did ask me about her but they didn’t give me any idea that they were going to do that.’

‘They were talking to you?’

Charles shifted in his seat. ‘Just a short chat.’

‘And what did you say, in this “short chat”?’

‘Nothing much. Probably nothing they didn’t know already.’

She sat down. ‘Could you be a bit more specific?’

Irritated, he said, ‘Since you ask, I told them it was a bloody silly idea of yours to have the party in the first place.’

‘I daresay I might even agree with you about that. What else?’

He could tell her what he’d told them about her obsession with Will Stewart – well, he could if he wanted a full-scale row. ‘Don’t think there was much else, really. I couldn’t tell them anything about last night, obviously.’

‘Well, all I can tell them is that Randall and Will set about each other – Randall was totally out of his skull and I was afraid someone would call the police there and then. So humiliating!’

Charles hated being told about problems. ‘Oh you know, young men,’ he said vaguely. He hesitated before adding, with some reluctance, ‘Is there anything else about last night that I absolutely need to know?’

‘Just that it’s over, thank God,’ Philippa said. ‘We need to have a talk about Randall, sometime, though.’

‘Sometime,’ Charles agreed. ‘Where is he, anyway?’

‘No idea. Drunk in a pub somewhere, I daresay. Seems to be all he’s good for, these days.’ She didn’t seem to want to discuss it further.

‘Where were you today, anyway?’ he said idly.

‘Oh, there were still a few people to see after last night. That’s it pretty much wrapped up now.’

She was, he noticed, looking very tired and she’d been subdued in the morning too. He suspected that the rapturous reunion with Will Stewart that she’d spent so much time and energy in engineering hadn’t quite worked out as she had hoped. He could almost bring himself to feel sorry for her – almost, but not quite.

Fleming had been foolish enough to mention some of her reservations about Skye Falconer’s guilt to Detective Superintendent Christine Rowley and was subjected to a tirade.

Rowley’s voice, shrill at the best of times, had gone up a couple of octaves when Fleming had talked about logistical problems.

‘We’ve got this cleared up in nine days – less, in the case of Eleanor Margrave – when the Dumfries division has spent weeks going round in circles, and your clever idea is to drag your feet until some stupid little details have been ironed out! It’s a triumph for me, for us, and I’m not going to let you spoil it. We have all the evidence we need—’

‘Not in the Margrave case,’ Fleming said unwisely. ‘We haven’t been able to charge her.’

‘And whose fault is that? I’m expecting you to concentrate on
nailing that one too, Marjory, instead of wasting time trying to undermine the solid case we do have.’

‘There is the question of motivation—’

Rowley’s eyes bulged with temper. ‘Not our problem. Once the case preparation starts the procurator fiscal will be able to come up with something, I have no doubt.’

Gloomily, Fleming had to accept that she was right there. Sometimes she felt that like most lawyers the fiscal saw the process as something of a game with esoteric rules and winners and losers and he was always quite clear which he wanted to be.

She got out of Rowley’s office as soon as she could. She went down to see how MacNee was getting on with Skye and her brief, but the situation was unchanged: she had said, ‘No comment’, and nothing else. After ten minutes she terminated the interview.

There wasn’t much more that she could do tonight and she tied up a few loose ends, then headed home. It was just after six, too late to say goodbye to Cat and her guest, who had been planning to leave about four. She wasn’t sorry to have an excuse for avoiding the warm farewells and pressing invitations to return that she might have been obliged to offer Nick.

Not having to rush back would give her time to pop in to see her mother too – always supposing she was in. She was certainly frailer than she had been but she still kept busy and drove her little car, with her doctor’s blessing.

The front door wasn’t locked, though, and there was a warm smell of baking when she opened it. Janet was taking a perfectly risen sponge out of the oven when Marjory went into the kitchen, calling, ‘That smells wonderful!’

‘Och, dearie, is that you?’ Janet set the sponge down as her daughter bent to kiss her. ‘You weren’t needing to be coming to see me today. I’ve been hearing the news – you’ll be run off your feet.’

‘Difficult day,’ Marjory said briefly. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think I had to. I wanted to. Something I needed to ask you.’

Janet’s face brightened and Marjory felt a pang; her mother so loved to be needed – didn’t everyone? And at her age, all too often you had to accept graciously that not only weren’t you needed, you needed other people. Not easy.

‘I’ll just put the kettle on,’ Janet said. ‘I can’t give you the sponge – it’s for the Guild tomorrow night – but you’ll find something if you look in the tins there.’

‘Oh good. I missed lunch.’ Janet tut-tutted as Marjory went scavenging. ‘Mum, I wanted to ask you what you thought about Cat’s Nick.’

Her mother didn’t say anything for a moment, swilling water round the teapot to warm it and emptying it into the sink. When she turned round her gentle face was uncharacteristically stern but she was, as always, reluctant to say a bad word about anyone.

‘I’m sure he’s a very clever young man.’

Marjory was unburdened by such scruples. ‘Oh yes, clever and arrogant and nasty. He spends his time making a fool of Bill and Bill just doesn’t see it.’

Janet sighed. ‘Bill wouldn’t, bless him. He’s too decent a man to understand that sort of thing.’

Marjory was well aware that her mother believed her son-in-law to be little less than a saint, not least because of what he had to put up with from her only daughter. ‘But that’s what’s so irritating,’ she cried. ‘Maybe if he made it clear to Cat that he didn’t like Nick, she’d realise what he is.’

Her mother didn’t say anything, just put down a mug of tea in front of her with a pitying smile.

‘Oh, I know! We should have called her Mary – Cat’s the most contrary person I’ve ever met. And before you say that you should
have called me Mary too, I just want to say that I know how difficult I was. I struck it lucky with Bill but it could all have gone horribly wrong. I don’t want that to happen to Cat.’

‘We all want to protect our bairns – it’s human nature. When I see you looking worn out and worried, I wish I could still just kiss it better and give you a sweetie like I used to. I can’t, though, and you can’t for Cat either.’

Marjory’s eyes prickled. ‘I know.’

‘Of course you do. But our Cat’s not daft. I’ve no doubt that like her mother she’ll put a few through her hands before she finds the right one.’

She directed a meaningful look at her daughter and Marjory felt a positively teenage blush rise to her cheeks as Janet went on, ‘And do you not think she was smart enough to notice what the lad was doing? I’ll be quite surprised if we see him again.’

Marjory stared at her. ‘Do you think so?’

‘You wait and see. And if I were you, I’d not say a word against him.’

‘You’re right, of course.’ Marjory took out her mobile. ‘I tell you what – I’ll just send her a text saying I was sorry not to see them to say goodbye and I’ll be looking forward to seeing Nick again. I won’t add, “and maybe next time you’ll realise what an unpleasant little creep he is.”’

Smiling, her mother shook her head at her as Marjory texted. ‘I seem to have a gey manipulative daughter.’

‘And I can’t think who I took it from,’ Marjory said dryly.

Louise Hepburn woke feeling confused, uncertain for a moment where she was, even. When she got back to her flat she had made herself some coffee and sat down on the sofa to drink it; it was there now on the coffee table, stone cold, and she straightened up painfully, rubbing at the crick in her neck.

She looked at her watch: nearly six o’clock. She must have crashed out for almost five hours, for heaven’s sake, but it hadn’t refreshed her; in fact, she felt worse than she had in the morning and her throat was dry and aching.

Andy’s mum had popped a packet of paracetamol into her bag and she rooted for it now and went into the kitchen for water. She really, really wished that she hadn’t thrown away the last of her Gitanes – but it wouldn’t have done her throat any good, anyway. More coffee? Somehow she didn’t want that either.

She ran a bath instead. Her back muscles felt stiff and strained and she tipped in a handful of Radox. She submerged, then lay back with her head on the bath pillow. It would be a good place to sort out the ideas that were buzzing in her head.

She was trying not to stress about her personal safety. The attack on her had been an attempt to stop her reporting something she had learnt – she only wished she knew what the ‘something’ had been – and now she had done that the threat would be removed. The only other worry was that her assailant might be afraid that she could make an identification – but then again, she told herself, when there was no immediate police investigation whoever did it would realise that she hadn’t. At least, she hoped so.

It was intensely frustrating that she didn’t know what had been going on at headquarters today. Probably Skye Falconer was under arrest for Eleanor Margrave’s murder, but that wasn’t really what that Louise had most on her mind. She didn’t believe that it was Skye who’d tried to strangle her last night; the way she had resisted, she’d have had someone as slight as that off their feet.

So if not her, who? The why could come later, but she was highly trained in observation – surely she must have noticed something that would give her a clue.

Perhaps that was the trouble. She’d noticed so much that she couldn’t separate the wheat from the chaff – the report she’d written this morning ran to several pages. So, ignore the detail. What, in terms of gut reaction, had seemed most significant?

There was no doubt about that. The fist fight had been a bit of drama but it was the meeting between Skye and Will Stewart that sprang immediately to mind. Why should it have seemed so important?

This was a reunion. There were always swirling undercurrents when the past intruded on the present and she’d watched all the Cyrenaics picking up their friendships again, with different emotions. Randall had seemed both excited and surprised to see Skye after such a long time, Kendra had been jealous, Jen had been annoyed at being ignored, Logie had been – well, indifferent.

Will had been – the word ‘guarded’ came into her head. He was
throttling back his instinctive reaction. And what had that been? Skye’s reaction – Louise closed her eyes, trying to picture it again – looked almost like relief. She had gone to him as if she were coming home.

Had he, like Randall, been surprised when she appeared? She didn’t really know – and why would it matter that a police officer had seen their meeting? Given what had emerged at Julia Margrave’s inquest, it was hardly a secret that they’d had an intimate relationship. Perhaps she was placing too much emphasis on Skye’s intensity – it might be that she was just by nature a drama queen.

She sighed and ran in a little more hot water. The fight, then – what about that?

Straightforward enough – Randall was a prat, behaving prattishly. He obviously really fancied Skye and refused to accept that she just wasn’t into him. It was impossible to take Randall seriously.

That left the conversation between Will and Philippa Randall, before Louise’s cover had been blown. She went through it all in her mind but she couldn’t—

The entryphone buzzed. Swearing, Louise got out of the bath and pulled on her heavy bathrobe, remembering that Fleming had said Andy Macdonald would bring her up to speed with events.

‘Louise?’ his voice said. ‘Is it all right to come up?’

She could hardly turn him away. ‘Sure,’ she said, and buzzed the latch release.

When he saw her, he looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry – have I dragged you out of your bath?’

Putting her hand self-consciously to her hair, which was standing out like a bush round her head, she said, ‘Oh, it’s all right. Thanks for coming. I’ve been dying to know what’s going on.’

‘Oh, big stuff,’ he said, following her in. ‘How are you feeling, though?’

‘Fine. Look, there are beers in the fridge – help yourself. Just let me get dressed.’

She fled to her bedroom to throw on jeans and a sweater, then went to the mirror with her hairbrush. After a couple of attempts she decided it was a lost cause, slapped on some lippy and went back. Something major had obviously happened and she couldn’t wait to hear what it was, though she felt a jealous twinge that she hadn’t been in on the action.

Andy, ensconced in the little sitting room, brought her up to date. ‘But she’s saying nothing this time either,’ he finished. ‘So that’s where we are – looks as if we’ve got our man, or woman, rather.

‘If she hasn’t said anything by tomorrow morning, the boss will apply for an extension to hold her into Tuesday before she has to charge her. Maybe by the time Skye’s been questioned half a dozen times she’ll think of something to say apart from “no comment”.’

Louise frowned. ‘Do they really think that she did all that by herself? I just can’t buy her attacking me – I’d have had her off her feet, no bother.’

‘Yeah, I take the point. Don’t think Big Marge is very happy with it either. But she was in the car with Connell Kane so …’ He shrugged.

‘Will has to have been in this with her.’ Louise was very definite.

‘He wasn’t even in Britain at that time. Ewan checked. I reckon someone was, though – Randall?’

‘Can’t see it.’

‘Who else, then?’

‘I keep wondering what Will and Philippa Stewart were discussing—’

‘Ah, I can help you there. I read through your transcript, and it all fits with what her husband told us this morning. She was crazy about him, apparently – set up this whole party thing to try to lure him back. They talked about the police investigation – well, I guess
everyone was doing that on Saturday night – and it sounds as if she was trying to make an assignation and he was a bit reluctant.’

Louise gaped at him. ‘You mean all this – two murders – was because a middle-aged woman was lovelorn? You’re kidding.’

‘Scouts’ honour. That’s life, isn’t it – unintended consequences.’

‘Certainly explains most of what comes our way.’ Suddenly she gave an enormous yawn. ‘Sorry – can’t think why I did that. I slept all afternoon.’

Andy got up. ‘Time I was off, anyway. Are you fit for tomorrow?’

She was surprised. ‘Oh, are we still on to go to Edinburgh? Is there not backup we should be doing here?’

‘The other lads and the uniforms are on to that. Big Marge still wants to see what we can dig up about the whole banking background.’

Louise wrinkled her nose. ‘Waste of time. I’d far rather be here, where it’s all happening. Randall’s just a klutz – and why would he want to kill either Eleanor Margrave or Connell Kane?’

‘Don’t know why Skye Falconer would either,’ Andy pointed out.

‘I know, but ..’ Louise was slipping into contrary mode but she checked herself; how could she have a barney with him when he’d saved her life yesterday? It was going to cramp her style something rotten, she reflected as she showed him out.

The mood in the morning meeting had been buoyant and while DI Fleming didn’t want to dampen their enthusiasm, she warned them not to think the job was done.

‘I’m not optimistic that we’ll get anything out of Skye Falconer but we have an extension and we’ll be arranging sessions during the day when we can establish whether there’s any point in my questioning her again, but anyway I’ll be planning to charge her tomorrow.

‘We’re still at the stage where the defence can drive a coach and horses through our case, though. We’ve no chance of charging her
with Mrs Margrave’s murder unless we can place her in the area at the relevant time, so I want the neighbours near Sea House questioned and near Jen Wilson’s cottage too – did they see her around, did they see the car going out? You know the sort of thing.

‘I want all the main people in the frame interviewed again. Neighbours near them too – did they see them coming and going, was there anything they noticed. Try to pick up any rumours – you’ll get help there from the Kirkcudbright lads. Right – any questions?’

A young DC asked, ‘Do we think someone else was involved? I saw her yesterday and she looked kind of wee to go around murdering folk.’

It got a laugh and Fleming smiled. ‘Open mind, I think. Anything else?’

There were one or two minor queries but they were easily dealt with and she was finished by half past eight.

MacNee was waiting for her as she went out and she jerked her head. ‘Come on. I’m ducking out before the super calls me in to discuss the media coverage. Her picture was on the front page of the
Herald.’

He fell into step beside her. ‘You won’t get me stopping you. Where are we going?’

‘I want to see how the search is progressing at Jen Wilson’s. It’s kind of a delicate one, that, and I need to make sure they’re making a distinction between what’s Skye’s stuff and what’s Jen’s or we’ll be landed with a complaint – the sheriff was very particular about that when the warrant was sworn out.

‘And I really want to see the woman herself. She may have gone to the school but if she has they’ll have to do without her for a bit. I want an in-depth conversation with that young woman. I have a feeling that she could be key to the whole thing. She’s hard to read, with that quiet manner.’

‘Never trust those ones – “
grave, tideless-blooded, calm and cool
”,’ MacNee said. ‘And schoolteachers – I’ve never been overfond of them either, except my old English teacher – I’d never have heard of Rabbie Burns if it wasn’t for him.’

‘I wondered whose fault it was,’ Fleming said as they left the building and walked to her car. ‘That’s good – I was afraid I might get stopped on the way out. Now, we’ve got time to plan what we need to ask her. She and Skye are obviously good mates – or at least were. From the way she was speaking yesterday she’s gone off her a bit.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you? If one of my pals was arrested for murder it would make me just a wee bit cagey, to say the least.’

‘The priority for me is how much she knew about Skye in the last two years – where she was, who she was in contact with – not her father, certainly.’

‘The party,’ MacNee said. ‘I want her to talk us through that, see how it squares with Louise’s report. Here – I wonder how the pair of them are getting on? Squabbling all the way to Edinburgh?’

Fleming grinned. ‘Could be. On the other hand, maybe Louise will be inhibited by gratitude.’

MacNee snorted. ‘Won’t last long, if she is. She’s given up smoking so she’ll be tetchy anyway. Want to have a sweepstake? Twenty miles, that’s my bet.’

‘Mmm. A bit more than that, I reckon. But we’re not likely to find out.’

Presented with the search warrant, Jen Wilson felt sick. The calm, polite officers were behaving as if this was merest routine, which it presumably was for them, but to her it felt an intolerable intrusion, a sort of rape of her privacy.

‘But I haven’t anything to do with this,’ she protested.

‘Of course not, miss,’ one said reassuringly. ‘If you can identify
your computer, your phone and your personal papers we can mark them to make sure no one accesses them.’

‘But what about my bedroom? Skye was never in there – her things are all in the spare room.’

‘I’m afraid you don’t know that, miss.’ He was very firm. ‘She could have been anywhere while you were out. We have instructions to be very respectful of your property, though.’

‘So I should hope,’ she snarled, rudely. It wasn’t his fault, but she just felt so helpless, so angry about the unfairness of it all. And she knew whose fault it really was.

She was due at school. They assured her that she wasn’t needed at the cottage and she went, but not directly to her classroom. Wisdom dictated that she should tell the head teacher what was happening rather than leaving her to get an even more lurid version on the grapevine that was probably spreading its tendrils even now.

Mrs Pearson was horrified. ‘I’m aghast!’ she said. ‘You teach small children – how could you get mixed up in something like this?’

‘I’m not. One of my friends is, somehow, but it’s absolutely nothing to do with me. I don’t know anything about it.’

Mrs Pearson gave her a sharp look. ‘The woman who has been arrested – was she one of the group we all heard about two years ago?’

Jen could feel her cheeks turning red. ‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ Mrs Pearson fiddled with a pen on her desk. ‘I shall have to take advice about this, Jen. On the face of it, I don’t think it constitutes gross misconduct but for the moment, at least, it wouldn’t be acceptable to have you in the classroom – we will have to arrange for a supply teacher. I shall, of course, keep you fully informed of whatever discussions I have.’

Her cheeks still flaming, Jen walked back home. Her anger against Skye was building; she owed her nothing, nothing. She wasn’t going to cover for her any longer.

But as she got near to it she saw a car pull in and DI Fleming and DS MacNee get out and go into the house. She stopped.

Yes, she was angry with Skye, but she would need to keep her wits about her; she mustn’t get drawn into this any deeper. The police could turn anything to suit their theories.

Jen took a deep breath, then walked on to face her inquisitors.

There was a scarf round DC Hepburn’s neck but as she got into the car it slipped. The line of bruising had deepened to livid blacks and purples and DS Macdonald, reminded of what she had been through, decided he must tiptoe round any subject that seemed likely to be provocative. She didn’t look strong enough for the usual no-holds-barred approach.