‘I imagined you would. But I should have thought it self-explanatory.’ He spoke as if MacNee was a tiresome and unintelligent child.
‘Not just entirely, sir,’ MacNee said with, he felt, commendable patience. ‘You seemed to suggest you had an affair with Davina Watt?’
‘We had an affair, yes. Quite briefly, a bit over four years ago.’
MacNee might have been asking the man when was the last time he’d had his car serviced. ‘And why did it end?’
‘I covered this, I thought, quite adequately in my letter.’
‘You wouldn’t leave your wife and family for her, is that what you’re saying?’
‘I – hesitated. Yes. And then it was too late.’ For the first time, he was showing signs of emotion. He was pleating his fingers as he added, with real bitterness, ‘But I’ve paid for it since.’
‘Too late? You mean she was off as usual to find some other sucker when you wouldn’t play ball?’ MacNee was deliberately offensive.
A spark of anger appeared in the pale eyes behind the spectacles. ‘She was hurt,’ he corrected him. ‘She told me if I didn’t love her enough to want to be with her for ever, she couldn’t go on, risking more pain. “I’m ending it now,” she said, and walked out. Fool that I was, I didn’t go after her.
‘I keep asking myself, why not? Cowardice, I suppose. She was someone entitled to big gestures, not pathetic consideration of the practicality of this or that. I wasn’t man enough.’
He was talking fast now and colour began to appear in his cheeks. ‘But I knew what to do if I got a second chance. I didn’t think she’d ever come back to Drumbreck – after the unpleasantness with Ingles, you know – but I believed, somehow, that we’d meet. I was convinced that one day, fate would bring us together – on the tube in London, in an airport. I’ve run after half-a-dozen girls, thinking I recognized Davina – then they’ve turned, and I’ve had to apologize.
‘You can’t imagine my family life, getting worse and worse as my children become monsters of selfishness and ingratitude.’ He was oozing self-pity now. ‘What I had with Davina was – was unique, precious, and I threw it away. When they suggested I might run for parliament, do you know what I thought? I thought she’d know where I was and she might find it in her heart to give me a second chance.’
‘You were running your life round this – this fantasy?’ MacNee looked at him with incomprehension mingled with contempt.
McConnell had been animated; now it was as if all the life had drained out of him, and he sagged back against the pillows. ‘It was the only time I have ever felt properly alive. I go through life wretched, half-dead – I might as well be dead, now that lawyer bastard’s killed her.’
‘You believe it was Keith Ingles?’ It had fleetingly crossed MacNee’s mind that if he’d believed Niall Murdoch had killed his fantasy lover, vengeance would have come easily to this man.
McConnell stared at him. ‘Don’t you?’
There wasn’t an easy answer to that. ‘Did you know she’d come back?’
‘Not until I heard that – she was dead.’ He bowed his head.
‘She didn’t get in touch with you? Try to tap you for money? It seems to have been the only thing she cared about.’ It was intentionally brutal.
McConnell’s drooping posture changed. He sat up again, rigid with indignation. ‘That’s a filthy thing to say! Why would she, when I would have laid all I possess at her feet?’
‘Ah, but she’d have had to take you as well as the money, wouldn’t she?’ MacNee had taken a real scunner to this guy’s delusional self-indulgence. ‘Seems she was maybe doing a bit of blackmail on the side – and with you with your political career—’
McConnell pressed the bell at the side of his bed. ‘I’ll have the nurse escort you out. I would not have agreed to talk to you if I’d known you were going to try to sully Davina’s memory.’
MacNee didn’t get up. Nurses these days didn’t come running when you pressed a bell. He had one last try. ‘And you didn’t mind Niall Murdoch having it off with your wife?’
McConnell’s face twisted in an expression of disgust. ‘Not in itself, no. But it was all part of what informed my decision last night.’
That was one way of describing taking an overdose. Frankly, MacNee reckoned that if he’d been Kim McConnell he’d have waited a wee while before dialling 999.
But he had to believe the man had nothing to do with either death. As he left, he asked with genuine curiosity, ‘What will you do now?’
The prim little man was sitting as he had been when MacNee came in, hands folded on the smooth sheet. Behind the spectacles his eyes were blank. ‘Try again. And succeed, this time. Now mind your own business, and leave me alone.’
The drive to the forest along the Queen’s Way was slow today. On this sunny May morning, the tourist buses were out in force and overtaking one would only land you behind another. Or worse, a caravan.
It wasn’t a hardship to have time to look at the scenery, at the vast tracts of heather-purple moorland dropping away to the south, with the pylons Fleming always thought rather magnificent striding off towards a hazy horizon, at the greens and browns and greys of moss and bracken and stone, and the dense tapestry of trees rising on the left-hand side of the road. A pair of buzzards were soaring in lazy, sweeping circles, as if they too relished the warmth of the sun on their wings.
A police car parked at the foot of a broad Forestry Road alerted her to the turn-off and an officer in a white summer shirt waved her through. There was Commission land on both sides now: new plantations of young trees still in the tubes that protected them from nibbling deer and rabbits; mature trees, growing towards a harvest in ten or even twenty years’ time; great areas already untidily cleared, looking like a bone yard for trees with stumps of trunks and the whitened corpses of long-dead branches left where they fell. Firebreaks between them, with their rows of wire brooms, were a reminder that even in this climate a spell of sunny weather could have the place tinder-dry.
A makeshift sign on a stake directed her on to a smaller, rougher track and now the planted aisles of trees were crowded closer. Ahead of her Fleming could see a recovery truck, parked beside a side turning where there was a wide dead end, roughly cleared. She drove past it and stopped beside a police minibus and a white van, then walked back. There was no breeze up here; the air had a sultry feel and though the sky was still clear she thought there would be rain later.
They were just hoisting the blackened, windowless shell of the burned-out car on to the truck as she arrived. A scorched area of ground showed where it had stood; there were signs of smoke damage, too, to the nearest trees, but mercifully no more than that. Remembering how hot and dry it had been at the time, she winced.
Half-a-dozen officers in blue dungarees were working the area, two dragging and prodding at the undergrowth with long poles and four on their knees, moving backwards in parallel lines. They’d covered a lot of ground and without shade it was hot work; they were swiping constantly at the small flies attracted by the smell of their sweat. As Fleming appeared, they seized the opportunity to sit back on their heels, swigging at water bottles and wiping brows and cheeks with the backs of their hands, leaving grimy smears. The men with the poles too stopped for a breather.
‘Any joy?’ she asked, though not hopefully.
‘Couple of drinks cans, a plastic bag, KitKat wrapper – might prove the key to the whole thing, ma’am,’ one said.
‘You certainly never know, constable. Nothing that might have been the weapon?’
‘We-e-ell—’ He gestured round about. There were stones and small rocks everywhere, the sort of thing the pathology report had suggested could have been employed. ‘Plenty that could be used that way, but none we’ve checked seem to have been moved.’
‘Hmm.’ She bent down to look at a stone that looked as if it might comfortably fit the hand and lifted it experimentally. The earth below clung to it; as she forced it up, a dozen small creepy things scuttled away leaving a tiny writhing earthworm uncomfortably exposed. Taking pity on it, she dropped the stone again and stood up, dusting her hands. ‘I see what you mean. Never mind – you’ve nearly covered it. Good work.’
Two white-overalled SOCOs were supervising the loading of the wreck and one of them came over to speak to her. She recognized the man: he’d worked on the wreck of the lifeboat last October.
‘It’s just the two of us here today. We got the bulk of it done yesterday,’ he said.
‘And—?’
He pulled a face. ‘We’ve taken ground samples all round to check for evidence of blood, but if you ask me the car was driven here after the body had been dumped. We’ve gathered up bagfuls of glass fragments to take back and test for DNA – the windows, of course, would blow out with the heat – but the testing will take weeks, months, even.’
Fleming looked round ruefully. ‘Bit of a waste, really, getting them up here, but the boxes had to be ticked. Still, at least it’s a pretty small area and it shouldn’t take much longer. It’s all overtime, though.’
‘That’s what we all have to think about nowadays, isn’t it? But we’re just finished here, right, Alison?’ he called to the woman who was talking to the mechanic at the truck, now ready to drive off. She nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign.
Fleming drove back down slowly behind the truck. She hadn’t expected this to yield much – hoped, perhaps, but not expected. Macdonald’s expedition to check out the Murdochs’ computer – that was different.
When Kingsley came back into the CID room, Allan was there alone. He was reading a girlie magazine, which he swiftly slipped out of sight into a drawer. Kingsley grinned.
‘Relax, it’s only me. Any developments?’
‘MacNee’s gone haring off to Glasgow. McConnell – you know, him with the wife that puts it about?’
He nodded. ‘The one Tansy interviewed. What’s he done?’
‘Tried to end himself but they got him in time. There’s a copy of the suicide note in the file there but if you ask me it’s nothing to do with us.’
‘So it’s just a wild goose chase?’ Kingsley’s satisfaction was obvious. ‘I’ve been round asking to interview Susie Stevenson, but she’s to have psychiatric assessment. And if she’s not fit to plead—’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, we’re going to have to live with it. At least we can make a coded statement that’ll get the Press off our backs and keep the Chief Constable happy.’
‘Oh, it’s her that’s done it now, is it?’ Allan looked at him with dislike. ‘And where does that leave Ingles? You were as convinced as me, before.’
‘Look, Greg, of course I was, or I wouldn’t have gone along with it when you decided to charge him. But there’s other evidence now – and his house being totally clean—’
‘Oh yes, you’ll do whatever suits you, won’t you? Anyway, what do I care? I’ve had enough. My notice is going in next week – and don’t pretend you haven’t your eye on my job.
‘Still, you’d better hope Susie comes good, hadn’t you? There’s Andy Macdonald’ll be in for it too – and he’s popular with Big Marge, which is more than can be said for you. And he’s away down at Drumbreck doing clever things to the Murdoch kid’s computer.’
Kingsley was unmoved. ‘A kid?’ he sneered. ‘Oh, very likely. Not. I’ve got a fiver says it’s Stevenson. Are you on?’
It wasn’t hard to bypass the kid’s password; it was one of the first things DC Macdonald had been taught on the forensic technology course. And going back through her internet history, she’d been accessing some pretty strong stuff. News bulletins, with icons to click for arson, sabotage and vandalism. Graphic pictures of suffering animals which turned even Macdonald’s stomach. Chatrooms, where all the talk was of violence and its justification, and hate-filled calls for vengeance. Most of this, obviously, didn’t result in deaths – in this country, at least – but it wasn’t hard to imagine the effect on a child with a naive, black-and-white view of life.
As he worked through, getting closer to the date of Niall Murdoch’s death, the chatroom contact between Mirren and someone calling himself Cobra became more and more frequent. And eventually, there was Mirren giving him her e-mail address – exactly what they were all told not to do every time a community officer visited a school.
And now here were the e-mails, dozens of them, to and fro. His face became grimmer as he read them.
He had brought a printer with him. He installed it, printed off all relevant material, then uninstalled it again, closed down the files and made sure the computer was left in the same state as he found it. Then he gathered up the sheaf of paper and let himself out of the room.
DC Kerr was in the incident room, reading the memos on the whiteboard. The photos of Davina Watt and Niall Murdoch in life and, hugely blown-up, in death as well, dominated it and she stared at them for a long time, as if she could will the truth out of them.
Everyone was still out on their details and she had the place to herself, for the moment. She’d been meant to follow up on Susie Stevenson with Kingsley, but when she came back he’d gone already and only Greg Allan was in the CID room. She didn’t fancy being alone with him; he had an unpleasant habit of making leering, suggestive comments, and though she was perfectly capable of handling him, and would have no problem with giving him a direct and painful response if he ever progressed to trying to handle her, she didn’t need the aggro. She could have clocked out and gone home, since her shift had ended, but the thought of the chaos she had left this morning wasn’t tempting and anyway, she wanted to hear what Macdonald might have found on Mirren’s computer. She had a sort of feeling that today, at last, things were beginning to move.