The Third Sin (24 page)

Louise picked up her bag and rummaged for her phone. She scrolled through, found the message and pressed the call-back number.

There was, predictably, no response. When it went to voicemail she said carefully, ‘Randall, it’s Louise. Please listen to me. I want to help you. I guess you’ll have been scared because we’ve been hunting for you but there have been new developments that could let you off the hook, if you would just explain why you haven’t come forward. You’d be doing yourself a favour. And I promise if you talk to me I won’t bring out the handcuffs.’

He didn’t pick up and he didn’t ring back immediately. But perhaps, once he’d thought about it, he might. Always supposing he was as innocent as she believed him to be.

There was a wildlife programme on BBC4. It told Louise more than she wanted to know about invertebrates, but at least it would pass the time.

Jen Wilson was looking sullen. When she opened the door she stood in front of it, blocking the way in.

‘Yes? What do you want now?’

‘If we could have a word,’ Fleming said.

‘Go on.’

‘Inside, if you don’t mind.’

Jen sighed elaborately. ‘If you must, you must, I suppose. But I can’t think what more you imagine I could tell you.’

‘Oh, this and that,’ Fleming said silkily, walking into the sitting room and sitting down uninvited. MacNee followed her example and Jen, after standing for a minute with her arms folded, sat down herself with a bad grace.

‘You won’t mind if we record this? Saves DS MacNee having to decipher his own handwriting.’

Jen eyed the small machine he set down on the coffee table between them as someone might eye a poisonous spider, but she didn’t object.

Fleming took a deep breath. ‘Jen, tell us why you contacted Connell Kane to tell him it was Ecstasy that caused Julia Margrave’s death.’ She knew it was a high risk strategy. The calm, controlled Miss Wilson had only to keep her cool and deny it and there would be nowhere to go.

She didn’t. Jen’s face flared red and she stammered, ‘I-I—How could I? I thought he was dead.’

‘Oh, at first. When did you discover that he wasn’t?’

‘I-I didn’t—’

‘Of course you did. Skye told you. Quite recently.’ Fleming was careful not to say that Skye had told them, but Jen would assume that she had. She was biting her lip now.

‘You’re a bad liar, Jen,’ Fleming said conversationally. ‘A good liar doesn’t show relief when they’re asked a question they can answer truthfully and you did that last time. You told quite needless lies to
try to distance yourself from everything that happened, didn’t you? And I wonder whether that was as much for your benefit as ours – you were in love with Connell and you can’t bear to think that you caused his death.’

Would it work? There was a silence while Jen stared at her. Then she burst into tears and covered her face with her hands.

‘I didn’t, I didn’t,’ she sobbed. ‘Yes, I sent him a letter. Dear God, I wish I hadn’t now. But what happened wasn’t anything to do with me. You can’t make me feel guilty about it, you can’t! It wasn’t me that killed him – it was Skye.’

Fleming was pitiless. ‘No, we don’t believe it was. It seems that Connell tried to kill Will, Jen, and it was Will who killed him in self-defence.’

‘No, no!’ There was anguish in Jen’s voice. ‘He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t …’ But it was clear she didn’t believe what she was saying.

Fleming had her admission about the letter. Her gut feeling had been to focus on Jen and she’d been right. Now it was getting stronger; she felt a sudden surge of adrenalin.

‘You were in love with Connell.’ It was a flat statement, not a question and Jen didn’t deny it. She bowed her head, wiping her eyes and her nose with the back of her hand.

‘Did you send him the letter just so that he would come back to you?’

She looked up and her face told the truth, but she denied it. ‘No, no. It was just – Skye didn’t tell me until recently, just casually, in an email, as if it didn’t matter. It was so cruel of her, so cruel, when she knew I’d thought he was dead.’ She choked up again.

‘And then you sent the letter. So what happened – did he reply?’

Jen said nothing, only shook her head.

‘So there wasn’t much point in it, then?’

There was still no response but Fleming waited, like a cat watching
a mouse hole, until Jen went on haltingly. ‘It just seemed so wrong he should be haunted by guilt when—’ She stopped.

‘When it was someone else? Who, Jen?’ Fleming held her breath. She was getting close to it now.

‘I … I don’t know. How would I?’

‘Because you did it yourself? And it was worth taking the risk of telling him what had happened for the sake of seeing him again, perhaps making him look at you when he wasn’t dazzled by Julia any more?’

Jen was staring at her as if transfixed. Fleming sensed MacNee moving uneasily beside her but she ignored him.

‘But then Skye arrived. You knew it had all gone wrong, you heard that she had dropped the letter at Eleanor Margrave’s house and knew that she would report it, you knew that Will had given you the Ecstasy and that now, with Skye being charged with murder, he was going to tell us, so he had to die too.’

Fleming believed it as she said it. She was totally unprepared for Jen’s response.

She was patently amazed. ‘Me – do all that? You must be barking.’

The praying mantis was holding a transparent grub between its front legs, nibbling at it delicately as the victim squirmed and writhed. Revolted, Louise Hepburn switched channels to what looked like a reality show of some kind unless, of course, there was a directive about lookism that meant that the new TV stars had to be obese, ugly people, then switched back, hoping the mantis had finished its meal. It hadn’t. She switched off.

She couldn’t sit here all evening just trying not to yield to the temptation to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes. Surely one of her girlfriends would be up for an evening in the pub! She got up to fetch her phone, which gave a ‘ping’ just as she reached it.

A text message – probably one of her friends with a similar idea, she told herself, but her hands were shaking a little as she opened it.

‘Why would I trust you? R,’ was all it said.

Yes! Louise punched the air. She thought for a moment. Text back? But she’d rather talk to him and he was probably holding his phone right now. She dialled his number.

At least he picked up, but there was only silence at the other end. ‘Randall,’ she said, ‘listen to me. You can’t spend your life in hiding. Move, and you’ll be picked up – we’re good at that. And my boss actually said that it was disappearing that made you a prime suspect. Talk to me, and we can get it all cleared up. Where are you?’

There was another long silence but she waited it out. At last he said, ‘You’ll send someone to arrest me. Why should I believe you? You spied on me.’

‘Yes, I went to the party after you said you didn’t want me there, but I didn’t lie to you, Randall, and I’m not lying now. Tell me where you are.’

Again, there was the pause. ‘You’ll come yourself?’

So he was still in the area! Excitement bubbled through her. ‘I promise.’

‘If you send in the mob, I’ll just vanish again, believe me. I’ve got my escape worked out.’

He paused, and Louise held her breath.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll trust you. Come to my mother’s business – just off the main street in Ballinbreck. Wait till it’s dark – and park round the back.’

Louise agreed and rang off. She looked impatiently at her watch, then at the sky outside that was still provokingly bright. It would be ages yet.

Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette! The word was beating a sort of
tattoo in her brain. With a groan she broke out another stick of chewing gum and gloomily switched the TV back on.

It was showing the most enormous spider this time, trussing up its prey, in such vivid close-up that she sat mesmerised, almost able to feel the sticky strands tightening around her too, until with a shudder she killed the programme.

Fleming and MacNee didn’t speak as they went back to the car. Fleming held out her hand for the keys and MacNee handed them over.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so humiliated. She’d let herself get carried away by her pride in being instinctively right about Jen Wilson’s crucial role. She’d gone on what men unkindly called ‘female intuition’ instead of hard evidence, and she’d got what she deserved.

There was no doubt that Jen was innocent. Her comment, after her initial reaction – ‘Ask Skye! She’ll tell you that’s total rubbish’ – had left Fleming deflated and struggling to preserve some sort of dignity, with Jen sitting in self-righteous silence as she terminated the interview.

MacNee was tactfully saying nothing. At last she said, ‘Made a right fool of myself there. Rookie mistake. Sorry, Sarge.’

MacNee laughed. Back in the day, he’d been her sergeant when she arrived in the CID. ‘Maybe I should have pulled rank and stopped you, lass,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t like you.’

‘It just suddenly seemed to be falling into place. The admission
about the letter, the gap in her alibi for the time of Eleanor Margrave’s death – I suppose I had a rush of blood to the head.’

‘Happens to us all. I remember there was the once when I even did it myself – ooh, twenty years ago – or was it twenty-five?’

She smiled weakly. ‘I wouldn’t feel quite so bad if I hadn’t been hard on Louise for being impulsive. But Tam, the situation hasn’t changed. You know what I’m going to say – it’s highly likely that whoever killed Will and Eleanor – and possibly even Julia as well – knows now that Skye’s out on a reduced charge. The super drafted a statement so it would be on the evening news.’

‘There’s someone who’ll have been spooked by that. What’s likely to happen, if we seem to be closing in?’

MacNee gave her a cynical look. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Fleming winced. ‘Back to square one, I suppose.’

‘Och, come on, lass!’ His tone was bracing. ‘We’ve come a long way. We know who killed Connell Kane and we know it was the letter Jen Wilson sent that started it all and that likely Eleanor Margrave was killed because she saw it. And I’ll tell you the other thing we know.’

Fleming looked at him hopefully.

‘Folk don’t stop being jealous just because they talk about “free love”. Free? It’s had a pretty fancy price tag for them.’

Fleming’s face was sober. ‘What they used to call the wages of sin, I suppose.’ Then she smiled. ‘In spite of all your friend Rabbie Burns had to say in favour of it.’

‘Aye, well, that never did him any good neither.’

After they had gone, Jen Wilson was seized by a shaking fit. She collapsed into a chair as her knees failed her and her teeth began to chatter as if she was cold.

Shock, she told herself. There was some cheap brandy she’d bought
in a duty-free; she found it and poured out half a tumbler then sat down at the kitchen table.

She could have been in prison tonight. For a moment she’d thought she was going to be, when she’d done nothing. Nothing!

‘Apart from bringing the man you loved back to his death and causing an old lady, who’d suffered more than enough already, to be killed,’ murmured a small, ugly voice in her head. ‘It wasn’t about justice for Julia either – you just thought she’d persuaded Will to give her the extra stuff, and you hated her anyway. You were perfectly happy to cause mayhem if it gave you a chance to see him again – and you despised Philippa Lindsay for doing just that to get Will. He died too, remember? If it hadn’t been for you, he’d still be alive and so would Connell. And if you’d told the police the truth at the start—’

Jen swallowed half the brandy in one go. She choked and her eyes watered at the rough spirit, but she could feel its warmth spreading through her.

She
wasn’t
a bad person. She’d done what was right, told Connell a truth he had every right to know. What other people did then was their own affair; she wasn’t responsible. It was their fault, not hers.

She took a more cautious sip of her brandy. Yes, she was blameless. She had nothing to reproach herself with. Nothing at all.

But even so, Connell was still dead and she couldn’t even dream of the day when her steadfast love might miraculously be rewarded. She put her head down on the kitchen table and wept.

The evening service at The Albatross was in full swing. Logie Stewart was putting a basket of battered fish into the fryer when Kendra burst into the kitchen. Her face was flushed and she was in a state of agitation.

‘Logie, I need to speak to you right now.’

‘But—’ he protested.

‘Right now.’

She turned and walked through the door that led to their private flat. With a shrug, Logie summoned his sous chef to take over and followed her out. She had been very fragile since Will’s death; he hadn’t even been sure that she’d be up to running front of house tonight.

‘I can only take a minute, Kendra,’ he warned her. ‘We’re busy—’

She didn’t let him finish his sentence. ‘You know what they’ve done? They’ve let Skye out and even dropped the murder charge. There was someone who heard it on the news.’ She was very agitated, rubbing her hands together restlessly.

‘Well, she didn’t kill Will, did she?’ Logie pointed out. ‘Seems reasonable enough.’

‘But she was involved, of course she was! I don’t know, perhaps she got someone to do it for her. What happens now?’

‘I expect the police just carry on with the enquiry, like they’re doing now.’

‘It was so horrible, the questioning.’ She was beginning to cry. ‘And I know they didn’t believe my alibi. I can’t bear it if they start again. You know the reputation the police have for stitching up innocent people, just to improve their clean-up record!’

Controlling his impatience, Logie said, ‘No one thinks for a moment that you would kill anyone, let alone Will who you were so fond of. It’s routine, that’s all. Now make yourself a cup of tea, or something, while you calm down. I’ve got to get back.’

He could feel her glaring at him as he returned thankfully to the familiar frenzy of the evening service.

She had dropped MacNee off at home despite his protests.

‘Leave it for tonight,’ Fleming had said. ‘Get in promptly in the morning, though. We’ll have at least some of the evidence from Stewart’s car to follow up by then.’

‘Right enough – maybe fingerprints and DNA that tells us everything we need to know, with a name and address attached. And Santa’ll likely be dropping by with the presents later. But get back home yourself. Give my best to the
hardy son of rustic toil
.’

It was his favourite epithet for Bill and Fleming had nodded and waved as she drove off, though she had no intention of doing as she was told.

There were fences that needed mending where Bill was concerned and she didn’t feel strong enough for that, just at the moment. It was rarely that Bill took up a stand but when he did he dug in his toes like one of his own stirks refusing to get into a trailer. She knew from experience that putting things right would mean a concession from her and her pride had suffered enough today already.

She drove back to the headquarters, parked her car and switched off the engine, but she didn’t get out. Did she really want to spend another half hour, beating her brains out at her desk?

No, she didn’t. She needed a shot in the arm, something to give more focus to the investigation. At least she could set aside the Connell Kane case, at any rate until the procurator fiscal started demanding the file.

So take it a step at a time. Concentrate on Eleanor Margrave next; look at the small particulars of the case instead of trying to figure out the larger picture. Perhaps it was her obsession with connections that had led her so badly astray with Jen Wilson.

She could go down and take another look round Sea House, just to concentrate her mind. If she phoned ahead, Mike Wallace could arrange to have it opened up for her.

And by the time she got back, surely she’d feel ready to go home and say whatever it took to get back on good terms with Bill.

There was a uniformed constable waiting at the gate of Sea House when Fleming arrived. He didn’t look thrilled with his assignment; he
looked cold and bored but dutifully logged her visit and brightened visibly when she told him he could wait in the car and that she would only be taking a quick look round.

It didn’t take long for a house to take on the smell of abandonment – fusty, unaired and hushed so that Fleming almost felt she could hear the dust falling and settling. There were signs of intrusive police activity everywhere, an assault on its former order and elegance – drawers and cupboard doors standing open, greasy smears on the furniture, a small table upended having been checked for prints, a chair knocked over and left. Automatically Fleming set it back on its feet as she walked through to the hall to the drawing room.

She could hear the sound of the Solway now, murmuring gently tonight, and she went over to the big window to look out. It was bathed in the soft golden summer light that the Scots call the gloaming, after the sun has set and before the light has gone, beautiful and peaceful – and how strange to think that Eleanor and Connell Kane, who for all their differences had been united in love for Julia, were united again after death in the waters of the firth. She turned back to look at the room.

Eleanor’s ‘shrine’ to her daughter’s memory, which she had looked at before with deep pity, had been dismantled and the photographs of Julia were now piled randomly on a sofa, the snapshot of the toddler on top. Poor, poor woman, she thought, her life so marred by tragedy. It would be good to think that she had managed to take some comfort from the beauty that lay about her.

She had created beauty in the house too. Fleming’s eyes lingered with pleasure on the furnishings, the pictures, the ornaments Eleanor had chosen to harmonise with the elegance of the house itself. They would all be dispersed now, sent to a saleroom where they would fetch little: a couple of hundred pounds, perhaps, for the watercolours which would be nothing special out of their setting.

She sighed and turned to go, taking one last look before she went through to the kitchen where Eleanor had been struck down.

Then she stopped, her eyes narrowing and her pulse quickening. It was a little thing, a nothing, perhaps. But – connections, connections. Just maybe she hadn’t been wrong to let that shape her thinking after all.

This time, though, she wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions. She was going to go back and ferret through everything she could find on the files about Eleanor Margrave.

She signalled to the constable that she was finished, jumped into her car and set off back up the road to Kirkluce.

The sky was still provokingly bright. At this time of year it would be eleven o’clock before it was properly dark and Louise Hepburn had never known an evening pass so slowly.

She had been staring at the TV without really seeing it, checking her watch every ten minutes, her mind whizzing. At half past nine she could bear it no longer; it would take a good while to get down to Ballinbreck and she could always hang around there if she arrived too early. Anything would be better than sitting here trying not to think how much she wanted a smoke.

She got up, switched off the set and got ready to go. She was just taking her car keys out of her handbag when the reality hit her.

She knew Randall was harmless – of course he was. She could handle herself and the man was just a joke, always had been, with his silly pretensions and his attempts to look cool – but on the other hand, the dumb heroine walking in blind innocence into the dark house where the villain is waiting for her was a standard trope. Suddenly the memory of the ligature around her neck, tightening and tightening, and of her own helplessness and terror struck her, so forcibly that she put her hands up to her neck as if to loosen the circle of fading bruises that still marked it.

Perhaps she was being dumb. She certainly couldn’t rely on Andy happening to turn up just in time to rescue her. She needn’t go. She could just tip off the lads in Kirkcudbright to go round and bring Randall in – but he’d said he’d an escape plan ready to put into action in case she had shopped him. Then she wouldn’t get the kudos for finding him after the police force up and down the country had failed – and after all, the boss had pretty much dismissed him as a suspect.

Even so, she hesitated. She wasn’t a coward, but … Slowly, she reached for her phone.

May Macdonald’s birthday party was in full swing now. The cake had been cut some time ago but it was still mild enough for everyone to be lingering on around the barbecue and with seventies hits blaring out from a speaker by the French doors a singalong had developed.

‘The neighbours’ll be complaining,’ Andy warned his mother. ‘I’ll be dead embarrassed if the lads appear to tell you to turn it down.’

‘They won’t,’ May said airily. ‘The neighbours are all here.’ She flung herself into ‘Y.M.C.A.’, making up with enthusiasm for what she might lack in grace.

Andy groaned and went to find another beer. When his phone rang, he was positively hoping he was being called back on duty – though they’d need to come and fetch him. He certainly wasn’t about to drive anywhere.

Louise Hepburn sounded stiff. ‘Oh – sorry to have disturbed you. You’re obviously having a good time – it doesn’t matter.’

‘No, no!’ Andy said hastily before she could ring off. ‘It’s my mum’s birthday party and it’s getting more excruciating by the minute. Please tell me they need me down the station.’

‘Well, not exactly. The thing is—’

‘Hang on. I’ll just try to find somewhere quieter – though it
probably means walking half a mile to get out of earshot. They’re worse than teenagers.’

He went inside and shut every door he could find then went upstairs to a bedroom at the front. ‘I can more or less hear you now,’ he said.

As he listened his first thought was, thank God she called me; his second, she’s crazy!