The girl needed to talk to someone, and it looked as if Jan was the only person around. As she wove in the grey wool for the elephant’s trunk, she puzzled over the problem.
Lisa was breathless when she reached her room and locked the door behind her; she had run up the stairs as fast as she could. It felt almost like needing to reach the bathroom before you were sick. If she had stayed there, without volition, it would all have come spewing out in a messy stream: all that had happened to her, all she had done, how scared she was, how scared!
She mustn’t. It was dangerous, this place: the comfort and the tranquil atmosphere made you feel that here nothing bad could happen to you. And Jan Forbes was dangerous too, with those wise eyes that seemed to see much more than you were telling her, and her lethal kindness.
Because being on your guard against aggression and cruelty and deception was easy – Lisa had learned that trick long ago. But putting up the barriers against goodness and generosity and warm concern, fighting the longing to have someone listen and care – that would be the hardest thing she had ever done.
Because she mustn’t tell anyone. If she told anyone, it would be the end.
DI Fleming had been waiting for the SOCOs’ report on the search at number 2 Rosscarron Cottages and she was getting impatient. She’d nudged them once already and been promised it today, but it was almost time for the afternoon briefing and there was still no sign of it. Irritably, she picked up the phone.
‘I’m glad to hear it’s on its way,’ she said tartly in response to the excuse from the other end. ‘I hope by “on its way” you mean the same as I mean.’
Muttering sceptically, she went back to preparing her briefing notes, but she was doing them an injustice. Five minutes later the report came through on her computer and she pounced on it eagerly. She would just have time to skim it before she left.
She scrolled rapidly through the background information, then coming to a paragraph headed ‘Significant finding’, stopped to read it more carefully. As she took in what it said, her eyebrows shot up. Breakthrough, at last!
17
‘Big Marge is looking cheerful this evening,’ DC Kershaw said to DS Macdonald, taking the seat beside him at the afternoon briefing. ‘But what the hell is she doing with a frying pan?’
There was, indeed, a large frying pan on the table in front of her. Macdonald was intrigued. ‘Going to whip up bacon butties for us, maybe,’ he suggested. ‘You’re right, she’s not looking as hodden down as she was. Has to be good news – and look at Tam. He’s scented something.’
In the next row, MacNee was looking intently at Fleming as she shuffled her papers and his head was indeed up, like a dog testing the air. Officers were taking their seats and gradually the general hum of conversation died. As Fleming stepped forward, she was smiling broadly.
‘There’s good news tonight. We now know the identity of Mr X’s killer and are in a position to lay charges, but there is a problem with that.’
There was a buzz of surprise and the talk started again; she held up her hand. ‘Plenty of time to exclaim later. We’ve a lot to get through and I don’t expect you want to be kept any longer than necessary on a Sunday night.
‘We have good reason to believe Mr X’s body will tomorrow be identified as that of Alex Rencombe, Gillis Crozier’s solicitor. The SOCOs’ report has found very promising fingerprint evidence too.
‘The weapon used to kill him was a cast-iron frying pan. The handle had been wiped, but a thumbprint was overlooked and was found in a very interesting place. The canteen kindly lent me this to show you.’ She held up the pan, to a ripple of amusement.
‘If you are cooking with a frying pan, you hold it like this –’ she demonstrated – ‘and your thumb is on top of the handle. If, on the other hand, I got annoyed with Sergeant Naismith here – don’t panic, Jock, I only said, “If”!’
Naismith mimed alarm.
‘My, my, we
are
in a chirpy mood tonight,’ Macdonald murmured to Kershaw, as Fleming grinned and carried on.
‘Look.’ She swung the pan in an arc. ‘To get proper purchase on it, I would turn it over and my thumb would be here, on the underside of the handle. Which is exactly where the thumbprint was found – the thumbprint of Jason Williams from London who has previous. His fingerprints were all over the rooms in the cottage. He is also the man found dead this morning at the Balmoral Guest House.’
This time Fleming let the reaction go on for a little longer before calling them to order.
‘The bad news is, of course, that we can’t question him to find out what it was all about. We still don’t know who killed Crozier, or who killed Williams himself, and we’ve no idea of the motive behind any of these killings. So – don’t groan – we’re talking old-fashioned graft.
‘We know that Williams, calling himself Damien Gallagher, turned up at the campsite along with the earliest fans for the rave at Rosscarron House. We need every scrap of information we can get about him at that time, which means that everyone who was there has to be questioned again more specifically.
‘It would be useful to know where Williams has been since he left the campsite. Check out the hotels, guest houses and B & Bs. He could be calling himself Gallagher, Williams or even Lee Morrissey, though that’s less likely.
‘Sergeant Naismith will be tasking the teams, and my own team – MacNee, Macdonald, Campbell and Kershaw – will be following up on the family and others most directly involved.’ Fleming looked towards them. ‘My office, after this. Right – any questions?’
A hand was raised in the front row. ‘The female who was in the guest house lived in the cottage where Rencombe’s body was found, didn’t she? Has she identified Williams as her partner?’
‘Not as yet,’ Fleming said. ‘Anything else?’
A very careful reply, Kershaw thought, as Fleming dealt with a couple of other routine queries, then left the room.
‘I could have done without this tonight, I must say,’ she said to Macdonald with a grimace. ‘I’d planned to go and see my daughter before she goes to sleep.’
‘Your daughter? How do you think I feel? I have a hot date – well, I
had
a hot date.’
‘If she doesn’t understand about the job, it hasn’t got a future anyway.’ Kershaw was unsympathetic.
Macdonald looked alarmed. ‘Who said anything about the future? She’s not exactly the sort of girl you’d take home to Mum. The future I had in mind doesn’t stretch beyond tomorrow morning.’
He was texting gloomily as they went up the stairs to Fleming’s office.
‘We have to get Lisa Stewart to admit she was lying. That’s our first step,’ Fleming said.
MacNee, she was interested to note, was today sitting on one of the chairs by her desk. It was Macdonald who, coming in behind the others, found himself offered the edge of the table.
‘Shall I go and fetch another chair, boss?’ he had asked.
‘Just perch if you don’t mind, Andy,’ she said. ‘I don’t like getting the room too cluttered up with chairs.’
Fleming knew they thought it was odd that she was always one chair short, but she found it a useful indicator of the state of mind of her team. Deliberately choosing the table when a chair was vacant usually indicated detachment. Today, however, they were all interested and committed, and Macdonald looked quite irritated at being at one remove.
She went on, ‘I can’t see Lisa has any alternative. She can hardly claim not to have noticed someone whose prints were found all over her house. I’m open to suggestions here. I think I’m inclined to bring her in, do it formally, zap her with the evidence. The alternative would be to have Kim go to the hotel to talk to her there and see if she can persuade her to open up.’
‘Depends if she killed him or not.’ Campbell, uncharacteristic-ally, was the first to speak.
‘Killed Jason Williams, do you mean?’ Fleming asked.
‘Could be Crozier too. There or thereabouts each time.’
MacNee nodded. ‘Right enough. Bring her in – we tried having wee chats and where did it get us?’
‘I don’t agree.’
Predictably, Kershaw took up the opposite position and Fleming groaned inwardly. She
really
didn’t want to have to referee their silly squabbles, but it looked as if sooner or later she would have to.
Kershaw was saying, ‘I understand why Tam thinks that, and it could work better – I’m not saying it won’t. If I go and talk to her, though, and don’t get anywhere, we have a fall-back position but if we force her into a “helping with enquiries” position, there’s no way we can do the cosy-chat bit afterwards.’
That made sense, and Campbell and Macdonald were nodding. MacNee wasn’t. MacNee was scowling.
‘Looking for an opportunity to show that you can succeed where I failed?’ he said. ‘Well—’
Fleming cut him short. ‘Shut it, Tam. Right, Kim, you’ve convinced me. You have a go, and if nothing comes of it, we can move on to the formal stuff.
‘Now, I want to focus on what we know about links between our victims and the other people in the frame. Start with Lisa. Lisa knew Crozier, and she must have known Jason Williams – in her case, aka Lee Morrissey.’
‘Williams, Morrissey, Gallagher,’ Campbell interrupted. ‘I’ve just realised.’
Macdonald and Kershaw were there immediately. ‘Of course,’ Kershaw said, and then as MacNee looked from one to the other, Macdonald explained kindly, ‘All the surnames of stars from the world of popular music, Tam.’
‘So, as I was saying,’ Fleming said hastily, ‘Lisa has links with those two, but denies any with the other victim. Rencombe has links with the family, with Pilapil and with Hepburn, though not with Lisa. But Williams – I can’t find a link with either Rencombe or the family.’
‘Pop stars’ names as aliases? Music, that’s the common thread,’ MacNee said triumphantly. ‘Which means there’s someone else to think about whose name hasn’t really featured – Joss Hepburn.’ He looked very directly at Fleming.
With a sense of hurt, Fleming realised he was putting her on the spot. Punishment for having supported Kershaw? But she agreed coolly enough: ‘I certainly don’t trust him.’ She looked past MacNee to the others. ‘I knew him quite well many years ago, and I know what I’m talking about.’ She hurried on in the uncomfortable silence. ‘I think you’re probably right to say that’s how they all became involved. We need to press harder to find out the how, where, when – the standard questions.’
‘Maidie Buchan told me that Crozier met his business partners when they were in the army and formed a band,’ Kershaw offered. ‘It could be worth talking to Alick Buchan about that – he seems to have had quite a grudge against his boss.’
‘Right.’ Fleming thought for a moment. ‘Have you arranged for the identification of Rencombe’s body, Tam?’
‘Ryan and Hepburn, tomorrow morning.’
‘Good. Then afterwards you and Macdonald could see what you can do to rattle them.’
‘Maybe you should have a go at Hepburn,’ MacNee suggested, too innocently.
She didn’t even glance at him, saying flatly, ‘No – too much pressure on my time tomorrow already. Kim, talk to Lisa – do that on your own. You might get further with her one to one. And take time to read up the witness statements first. Ewan, go with her, and after she’s finished with Lisa, you can both go on to Rosscarron to interview Alick Buchan. He’s at the bottom of the suspect list after this latest development, but it might give us a new angle if we knew more about Crozier’s business interests – though if it’s all as dodgy as I think it is, that’ll be Fraud Squad business, not ours.
‘It’s getting late. We could go on discussing theories all night, but I’ve another couple of hours to do here and I’d like to get home before dawn. OK?’
Andy Macdonald took a quick look at his watch and was pulling out his mobile as they filed out.
Monday, 24 July
Lisa hadn’t slept as well on the lavender-scented linen as she had hoped she would. She had fallen straight into a deep sleep but woke, shuddering and gasping, from a nightmare in the early hours. And it was persistent: every time her heavy eyes closed it returned, in much the same form. It was dark and cold, with a chill rain falling, and she knew there was someone following her, following her so closely that she could even feel the breath on the back of her neck, though when she turned there was only empty darkness. But the breathing was still there, along with an overpowering sense of imminent disaster, and she would start awake again in a sweat of terror.
But the sun was actually shining this morning and there was a powerful shower in the little bathroom. She stood under it until she felt a bit more human, and as she went downstairs, she could smell bacon cooking.
Jan Forbes was in the cheerful dining room already and looked up with an expectant smile. Her heart sinking, Lisa realised that she would have to join her. She had always been shy, and at the moment her mind was too full of all the things she couldn’t say to welcome the idea of making conversation.
She needn’t have worried. Jan was happy to chatter on, with only a nod or a few words from Lisa to keep her going.
Two of the other tables were occupied by family groups: at one, middle-aged parents with a teenage daughter and son who looked as if they had been dragged out of bed unwillingly; at the other, a younger family with a girl of about five, a baby in a high chair and a toddler, who was squirming restlessly in her seat. At last, with an apologetic look around the room, the harassed young mother let her get down, with an admonition not to be a nuisance.