Cradle to Grave (25 page)

She was definitely losing it now. The clerk’s neck was sticky with sweat; he undid his tie a little, and suddenly inspiration struck. ‘Your account allows money to be withdrawn on a single signature. You can’t close the account, but you can withdraw the money yourself, before he does. You have another small savings account with us – you could pay it in there.’

For a terrible moment, he thought she was going to kiss him.

Lisa was relieved she had got to the bank before Lee had. Finding her money was still there, and putting it safely out of his reach, was security. Far too much had gone already, but there was enough so that Lisa wouldn’t have to go to some well-meaning but interfering organisation for a hand-out. She’d had time to buy toilet things and a tote bag before the shops closed, and now she was in this cheap room in a small guest house in a Kirkluce backstreet.

It wasn’t great. The skimpy curtains, wavy around the hem, were a depressing oatmeal, the bedcover was brown with orange stripes and the carpet was thin, synthetic and stained. There was no en suite, and the washbasin had been installed by someone who had mastered only the most basic principles of plumbing and joinery, but there was a little tub chair to sit on and she could lock the door and be on her own. Compared to her recent accommodation alongside the feed sacks, with every breath of dusty air she took begrudged, it was luxury enough.

Lisa was still trapped, though – trapped and exposed and vulnerable. The police knew where she was and had told her to stay there; if she disappeared, it would look suspicious, but she wouldn’t feel safe until she could slip on her cloak of anonymity and vanish again. Though she’d always been traced before, now it was different. Gillis Crozier was dead. She only hoped that was enough to liberate her.

She sat down and took out the thought to have a look at it. She didn’t contemplate the reality of bloody death; she had a talent for withdrawing from unpleasantness, honed in her childhood. It had been developed for self-preservation when, aged six, she’d found out from a helpful neighbour that her estranged father hadn’t, as her mother had told her, died in a car accident, but in a brawl in prison. It came in handy later too, when her mother suffered her long, harrowing terminal illness. Lisa thought of it sometimes as having an armoured shell she could get inside, like a tortoise.

It hadn’t protected her from the poison of Crozier’s messages, but it had worked all right this morning, when she’d gone in to see the body. She’d been able to do what she had to do, untouched, and her thoughts now of Crozier, dead, were framed only in terms of her freedom. But she couldn’t be sure – there were others who hated her as well. Could she only stop being afraid after they too were dead?

Lisa could hardly remember not being afraid.

It had been all right at first when they arrived at Rosscarron Cottages. That night there had been a beautiful sunset over the Solway Firth and they’d brought a wine box with them and drunk too much and got giggly and made love. It had almost been like the first days all over again.

But in the morning they woke to rain and after that it never seemed to stop. The windows of the cottage were small and it was dark and depressing. Then there were people close by to be avoided, renting the holiday cottage at the farther end. One week there were small children, and as they played on the shore she’d watch from the window with tears in her eyes. She loved tiny kids. They didn’t judge you, reject you, lie to you.

She and Lee were getting on each other’s nerves. The dream was disintegrating into permanent bickering.

The only good thing was, there were no messages. Crozier hadn’t found her, hadn’t thought to look so close at hand, most likely. Maybe Lee was right – this was the way to handle it. And supposing Crozier managed to kill her here, without leaving a trace – it would be over then, wouldn’t it? Sometimes she thought that would be better than having to live in permanent fear.

Then Crozier at last arrived at Rosscarron House. There were posters everywhere for the Rosscarron Festival the following week.

She’d wanted to go and confront him immediately. Lee wouldn’t. She could tell he was making excuses; she didn’t know why, and he wouldn’t admit that he was. They had one of their worst ever rows, with her screaming and throwing things. If he hadn’t dodged her granny’s cast-iron frying pan, Lee would have been on a trolley in the mortuary too.

All he would say was that the guy would be busy, wouldn’t want to be bothered at the moment. ‘You want to get him in a good mood, don’t you? Talk him round?’ It sounded reasonable enough, but somehow she knew he’d some sort of plan he wouldn’t tell her about. He denied it and got angrier than ever when she asked.

He went off in the car most days – for a bit of personal space, he said. Which left nothing for her to do but walk, walk and think, and when it was even briefly dry, go up to the seat on the bluff above the cottages and try to tell herself that one day it would be all right.

She’d slept badly ever since Crozier arrived. Then came the night when she hardly slept at all, sitting downstairs in the little sitting room, wrapped in a comforter that had belonged to her grandmother.

What did Lee do when he drove away from the cottage? He wasn’t going to the pub – she would have smelled beer on his breath. He couldn’t be meeting anyone – he didn’t know anyone around here.

At last it came to her. You couldn’t email from here. She knew there was an Internet café in Kirkcudbright.

It was Thursday morning. Lee had gone off in the car, and when he came back, she was ready for him. ‘There’s a couple of things I need in town,’ she said, and used his own excuse about personal space when he offered to come with her, as he usually did when they went shopping.

It wasn’t hard to find out what was going on. He had an email account under the name Jazza, for some reason, and he didn’t know she’d happened to see him keying in the password once. She remembered it, and keyed it in now.

And there it was, the evidence of her own folly. She spooled back through all the emails sent to ‘Tanya’ – dozens of them, over these last few months – and opened some at random. He was working abroad, was he, but would be coming back soon? It hurt that Lee – Jazza! – was writing words of love he’d never used to her, but what stabbed her to the heart was his cruel description of the ‘colleague’ he was always complaining about, a stupid, ugly, neurotic woman, pop-eyed and overweight.

She opened the most recent one. ‘Not long now,’ it finished. What did that mean? Maybe it just meant once he had sorted out Lisa’s problem with Crozier, but somehow it didn’t sound like that. It sounded as if he had a job to do and it gave her a sick, terrified feeling inside.

She was so angry she didn’t bother to read Tanya’s responses, or any of the other emails, and she had worked herself up into a furious rage by the time she got back to Rosscarron. Better to rage than to give way to panic and despair.

But fear lurked, like a rat gnawing away in the corner of her mind. Why had he persuaded her to come here, and what was he going to do?

And Lisa still didn’t know the answer, still felt she was blundering about in the dark. And the text – what was that about? She fished out the phone, read it again and sat considering it for a long time. At last, very deliberately, she pressed ‘Delete’, followed by ‘Compose.’

Frowning at her computer screen in concentration and tapping her finger on her front teeth, Fleming was reading the reports that had come in when there was a knock on the door and DC Kershaw appeared, standing on the threshold as if uncertain of her welcome.

‘Sorry to bother you, boss, but I wanted a word ahead of the meeting, if that’s OK?’

‘Fine. Take a seat.’ Fleming shut down the program and swung her chair round to face Kershaw. ‘Was Lisa Stewart all right about making the identification?’

‘She didn’t, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh dear.’ Fleming pulled a face. ‘Still, can’t blame her for getting cold feet, I suppose. Not easy, to do that.’

‘Sorry, no. She didn’t get cold feet – just the opposite, in fact. She was so calm it was weird. She just went in, looked at the body and said it wasn’t her boyfriend.’

‘
Wasn’t?
Who was it, then?’

Kershaw shrugged. ‘No idea. She said she didn’t know, had never seen him before, couldn’t think why he should have been in her house. Absolutely flat – that was all there was to it. Nothing to do with her.’

‘I’m struggling to get a handle on this,’ Fleming said. ‘A completely unconnected man somehow found his way into her house and managed to get himself caught up in a landslide which killed him – that’s the story?’

‘As far as there is one. I talked to Lisa afterwards and she was adamant. She’d told us her boyfriend wasn’t there, that he’d been two-timing her and she’d thrown him out. He wasn’t there, just as she said, and because we didn’t believe her, we’d put her through an unnecessary ordeal – though I have to say she didn’t show much sign of being upset. Quite aggressive, to be honest. After the trial there were claims she had issues with anger management and I’d believe that.’

‘I don’t remember a lot about that case, except that when she was acquitted, there was a fuss because if it wasn’t her, it had to be the baby’s brother,’ Fleming said. ‘And to tell you the truth, having observed Nico Ryan at close quarters, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe.’

Kershaw was unconvinced. ‘There’s something weird about her,’ she insisted. ‘Very stand-offish. I asked her if she needed somewhere to stay, and told her Dr Forbes, her neighbour, had suggested she went to the hotel she’s staying in herself – even offered to pay for her, if that was a problem – but she turned that down flat. Didn’t even seem grateful. She’s booked herself into a guest house in Kirkluce.

‘Anyway, I told them at the mortuary that the autopsy should be high priority and I just wanted to clear that with you.’

‘Of course. We’ll need every scrap of information as soon as possible to try to establish identity. I wonder if there’s a report in on the clothes already? Hang on . . .’ Fleming turned to the computer again. ‘Here we are.’ She read the list, then looked up, frowning. ‘That’s an odd thing. He was wearing a casual shirt and trousers. Nothing in the pockets – nothing at all. If he wasn’t wearing a jacket, on a day when it was coming down stair-rods, he must have driven there. So where are his car keys?’

‘He could have put them down on a table when he came in,’ Kershaw suggested.

‘Yes, but no money, no wallet? You don’t go into someone’s house and empty out your pockets, even if you’re a regular visitor, which allegedly he wasn’t.’

‘His car would be there too, presumably,’ Kershaw pointed out.

‘Yes, but under a few tons of rubble from the cliff face. Remote rural areas are way down the priority list for the council, so it’ll probably be weeks before they get round to clearing it. I think I might give the mortuary a call, find out when we can expect a full report.’

Kershaw waited as Fleming was put through, then heard her say, ‘Oh, better still. I’ll hold.’ She mouthed, ‘The pathologist wants to speak to me himself. Hello? Yes, Marjory Fleming here.’

She listened intently, her face registering shock. Then she said, ‘I – I see. Yes, the report just as soon as you can. Thanks.’

She put the phone down and stared at it for a second. ‘I’m feeling a bit stunned. He did say after a cursory examination at the site that the fatal injury wasn’t from a falling beam and now he’s had a better look. He hasn’t had time to complete the autopsy, but the cause of death was definitely a blow to the base of the skull with some heavy object, about an inch and a half deep. Mr X was murdered.’

Kershaw’s eyes narrowed. ‘Was he indeed,’ she said slowly. ‘Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but . . . No jacket, no wallet, no keys. That would only be normal for someone living in the house.

‘It seemed really strange that when I asked Lisa Stewart for a contact to do the second ID, she said she couldn’t think of anyone – didn’t know his family, didn’t know his friends or where he worked, hadn’t any neighbours because they’d moved about. I’m just beginning to wonder about Lisa Stewart. Suppose she was lying. Suppose it had been her boyfriend, murdered – who would be our prime suspect?’

Fleming looked thoughtful. ‘When you put it like that . . . I was going to tell you all at the meeting that after the interview with Buchan I seriously doubt if he’s our man. And what was Lisa Stewart doing, hanging around in the vicinity of a family she would have had every reason to avoid?’

‘Gillis Crozier made a death threat after she was acquitted,’ Kershaw said. ‘The bereaved grandfather – no one thought a lot about it, really. But if she believed she was in danger, it wouldn’t be a bad motive for killing him.’

‘I think,’ Fleming said grimly, ‘we need to take a much closer look at Miss Lisa Stewart.’

12

Perched on the edge of the table at the back of DI Fleming’s office, behind the chairs where his three colleagues were seated, Tam MacNee listened to DC Kershaw expounding her theory, his lip curling but only inwardly. He’d no appetite for another run-in with Big Marge.

The others might be impressed, but he wasn’t. Kershaw had maybe shown that Stewart had a motive for killing Crozier, right enough, but in his view the rest of it was far-fetched, and not worth the effort of dragging it along to the party.