He’d heard Drumbreck called Sodom-on-Sea before now, but even so Christie was taken aback by her offhand reaction. He retreated to safer ground. ‘So when was the last time you saw your husband?’
‘Let me think. He had breakfast here yesterday, but he didn’t come back for lunch. He phoned to tell me he wouldn’t be in for supper.’
There was no love lost between this pair, that was for sure. If it was foul play – and there was a nasty bash on the back of the man’s head – and if Christie hadn’t been quite sure that in the circumstances Rab McLeish was their man, he’d have wondered if it wasn’t the old story of the woman scorned.
‘Can you remember when that was, Mrs Murdoch?’ Neish asked.
‘I can, actually.’ She pointed to a portable TV in the corner of the kitchen. ‘The Channel 4 news was just starting.’
‘Seven o’clock,’ Christie nodded. ‘That’s very helpful. And—’
The kitchen door opened and Mirren Murdoch came in, looking suspiciously at the visitors. Christie directed a meaningful look at Neish, whose services had not so far been needed, and she nodded reassuringly, sitting forward a little on her chair in readiness.
For the first time, Jenna’s face softened. She crossed the room to put her arms round her daughter, who stood stiffly in her embrace.
‘Mirren, I’m afraid the police have come with some very bad news.’
The child’s face flushed and her eyes, over-large in her pinched face, went from one to the other in fright. ‘What – what?’
‘It’s Dad. I’m sorry – he’s dead. Drowned.’
Pushing her mother aside, Mirren sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I didn’t know he was dead,’ she said oddly.
Jenna sat down beside her and took her unresponsive hand. ‘No, dear. They’ve only just told me.’
It seemed that this one wasn’t going to have hysterics either. She sat at the table like a zombie, not even turning her head as her mother prattled on about being brave. ‘We’ll manage, don’t worry,’ Jenna kept saying.
Further questions would have to wait. Christie and Neish got up; Neish asked if there was anyone they would like contacted, but Jenna assured her, yet again, that they’d manage.
‘Well, takes all sorts,’ Neish said as they walked back across to the marina.
‘Couple of cold fish, if you ask me. Losing your husband, losing your father, and not a tear between them!’
‘I suppose, with him and his bits on the side, it’s understandable.’
‘It’s not so much her – it’s the daughter. Even if there was trouble between the two of them, you’d expect a child to show some natural feeling.’
It quite upset him. He would hate to think of his own daughters displaying such wounding indifference on being told of their father’s demise. But then, of course, they wouldn’t. They were decent, well-brought-up girls who could be relied on to feel just as they should and do whatever was proper. That was a great comfort.
‘There’s the police surgeon, look,’ Neish said, pointing to a man with rimless glasses and carrying a doctor’s bag, talking to one of the detectives.
‘I’d better have a word with him, since I’m the man on the spot.’ Christie bustled off, past the frontage of the Yacht Club and the marina office and the boat shed, through the crowd of gawpers and round the corner to where the blue-and-white tapes were fluttering along by the end pontoon.
‘But Marjory, I didn’t realize! This could be disastrous, disastrous!’ Bailey’s jowls wobbled in consternation.
‘I’m not going to give you an argument.’ Fleming stared glumly at the now blank screen.
‘That accusation – the suggestion that they were trying to force a confession—’
‘They probably were.’
‘Yes, I know, I know,’ he said tetchily. ‘But to try to bounce him into it in that crass way – whatever were they thinking about?’
‘A quick result. They were quite sure he did it – and I’m not saying they’re wrong – but they misread their man. As I told Tansy Kerr before she went in, remember he’s a lawyer. He’s not one of our usual clients.’
Bailey sat back in his chair. ‘You’re going to tell me this is all my fault, sending you and Tam away, aren’t you?’ He looked deflated, the balloon of his usual pomposity pricked.
It was an admission she hadn’t expected, and as always – on the rare occasions when it happened – his unexpected honesty disarmed her.
‘Now, how could you think I would say a thing like that?’ she wondered innocently. She had her pound of flesh; it was all that needed to be said.
‘Still, Manchester.’ He perked up a little. ‘Tell me you got something useful.’
He wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. ‘It could all have waited. I’d have been more useful here, but there were a couple of pointers. Tam picked up a hint that Davina had turned her talents to blackmail, so it’s just possible she thought she could get money out of Ingles – knew something about his dealings, maybe, that could get him into more trouble.
‘And I discovered someone had been in touch with her since she left, at least once. She had a cutting from the
Galloway Globe
about Ingles being released from prison. I’ve sent it for fingerprinting.’
Bailey looked disappointed. ‘Interesting, certainly, but does it get us anywhere?’
‘If she was blackmailing him, it might show up in his bank records,’ she offered, but he looked at her impatiently.
‘Unlikely, if she came to get it in person, and he killed her for asking.’
Fleming had to concede that. ‘It seems an odd thing for her to do, I have to say, when she could have contacted him by letter.’
‘Asking for trouble, you’d think. She must have been very confident.’
‘Over-confident, from the sound of it, certainly about her own effect on men. But our best hope has to be tracing the car she probably had to hire to come here. Ingles didn’t have a car, so unless he hired one, she may have picked him up in hers; he could have killed her, then used it to transport the body up to his house, where he’d be able to dispose of it in the expectation that it wouldn’t be found for years. Then he’d have to abandon the car, in which case it won’t be far away.’
‘Get on to that, Marjory. Throw everything you have at it – for once I won’t be nagging you about costs!’ Bailey was recovering.
‘Done it already.’
‘I knew I could rely on you. Now, anything else?’
Fleming got up. ‘I’ve taken Allan and Kingsley off the case. I’ll handle it myself, with MacNee and Kerr.’
‘Good, good.’
‘The only problem may be the Fiscal. Is he OK about this? Prosecuting’s his decision, after all.’
‘I spoke to him myself yesterday. Told him what we’d got – what I thought we’d got,’ he corrected himself, ‘and he was quite happy then. What he’ll say when he hears this—’
They were both silent for a minute, then Fleming said, ‘He won’t be dropping charges at the moment, obviously, since he couldn’t raise them again after that if more damning evidence emerged. Legally he’s allowed 110 days before he must proceed to indictment, and by then we may well have a case to present that he’ll feel can stand up in court. We’ve a lot of lines to pursue.
‘The downside is that I can’t talk to him now without jeopardizing the whole case. Kerr did a good job as far as it went, but I can think of a dozen things I’d have liked to ask him once he’d started talking.’
‘Yes, yes.’ One helping of humble pie was quite enough for one day. ‘Pity. Still, there it is. Just have to see—’
The mobile in Fleming’s pocket rang and he gave her permission to take it with a gesture.
‘Wilson, yes?’
She listened, her eyes widening. ‘He says
what
?’
Again, there was a long explanation at the other end, while Bailey watched her with increasing impatience. When at last she said, ‘Right, I’ll be there,’ he demanded, ‘Well, what was all that?’ before she had switched it off.
‘That was Wilson. He’s at Drumbreck – do you know it? Sailing place, just north of Wigtown on the Cree estuary. There’s been a man drowned – Niall Murdoch, used to be a farmer but part-owns the marina there now. The police surgeon’s just said he was bashed on the back of the head before he entered the water.’
The two police cars, lights flashing, drew up outside the yard which had ‘Dickson and Sons – Haulage’ on a board beside the gate.
Christie, with Neish, got out of the first one, then, flanked by the two men from the other car, strode across the yard between lorries and truncated cabs waiting to be hitched up and walked into the office.
The young woman at the desk, speaking on the phone, looked up, startled.
‘Dickson in?’ Christie demanded, gesturing towards the door on the other side of the room.
‘Yes, but – oh, wait a minute.’ She laid down the phone and jumped up. ‘You can’t—’
Christie ignored her. With a perfunctory tap, he opened the door and marched in.
Dickson, working at a computer with a cigarette in his mouth and his eyes screwed up against the smoke, was overweight and ill-shaven; he was no stranger to the police over the matter of tachographs and he eyed them sullenly.
‘What are you wanting this time? Everything’s in order. You’ve got nothing on me.’
‘Where’s Rab McLeish?’ Christie barked.
‘McLeish? Oh, he’s in trouble, is he?’ The lightening of his expression suggested that his statement had displayed optimism rather than confidence. ‘At home, probably. Sent him back this morning – came in with the sort of hangover that would send your breathalyser up in flames.’
‘Flames.’ Christie seized on the word. ‘Funny you should say that. Where was he last night?’
‘Down the pub, from the look of him.’
‘So he wasn’t away on a job?’
‘Got back yesterday afternoon.’
Christie turned. ‘Right, lads. On our way.’
As he went out, the receptionist said resentfully, ‘Rude sod!’
Following him, one of the uniforms winked. ‘Thinks he’s on
Taggart
– that’s his problem.’
Back in her office, Fleming sent for MacNee and Kerr. Her prospects of getting to grips with the Ingles case seemed doomed; she’d be forced once again to leave her subordinates to deal with it, even if this time they were the ones she trusted. She didn’t feel comfortable about that, but she couldn’t be in two places at once.
The irony of it all had not escaped her. She could hear her own voice saying to Chris Carter, ‘You’re going to have to deal with another death tomorrow. With us it will all settle down again.’
And as she thought of it, his name caught her eye, in the list of e-mails she had called up to check if any was urgent. She scrolled down and opened it.
It was very brief. ‘Great evening. Good hunting. Keep in touch. Chris.’
MacNee’s knock on the door came as she was still looking at it and she closed it with a guilty start, feeling idiotic and hoping she wasn’t looking flustered as he and Kerr came in.
It didn’t help that MacNee’s first words were, ‘Here! Manchester’s got nothing on us, eh, boss? Tell this to DCI Carter!’
‘You’ve heard about it, then?’ Fleming said quickly.
MacNee gave her a pitying look. ‘Well, what do you think?’ They took their seats.
‘I’ve got to get along there now, obviously,’ Fleming told them. ‘It sounds as if it should sort itself out fairly quickly. According to Wilson it’s pretty straightforward – local man, Rab McLeish, with a grudge against Murdoch. Been charged with vandalism already and was the prime suspect for arson on Murdoch’s property last night anyway. The body was floating face down with a smash on the back of the head – if it didn’t kill him, it would have knocked him out. Looks as if he confronted Murdoch, lost his temper, picked up whatever came to hand and let him have it. May not even have meant to kill him.’
‘Sounds OK,’ Kerr said, but MacNee snorted.
‘Going to be sorted in a couple of days, is it, just like the last one? Funny we’ve suddenly two murders in the area, both with a connection to Drumbreck.’
Fleming looked at him, aghast. ‘Don’t say that, Tam! This is straightforward stuff – McLeish has a grievance, probably takes a drink, gets into an argument and lashes out—’
‘Aye, likely.’ MacNee wasn’t convinced.
‘But if it wasn’t him, it certainly wasn’t Ingles,’ Kerr pointed out. ‘So what you’d be saying is that this would suggest Ingles didn’t kill Davina either.’
‘Yes, I noticed that too, funnily enough,’ Fleming said sarcastically. ‘You don’t think, Tam, that this could have anything to do with your belief that Allan and Kingsley couldn’t come up with the right answer to two plus two, when someone was holding up “Four” on a prompt card?’
‘“
If honest Nature made them fools
,”’ he quoted, unabashed. ‘And I’ll tell you the other thing – I wouldn’t trust them not to come up with new “evidence” that proved they were right all along.’