‘That’s great news. I tell you, back in Kirkluce it’s been like working in a funeral home today, all tiptoeing around speaking in hushed voices.
‘OK if I go in and put these by his bedside so he can see them when he opens his eyes? We thought seeing the Scotch would give him a real incentive. I won’t disturb him.’
‘I doubt if you could, right now. On you go – his wife’s with him, but that’s all right.’
Kingsley recoiled. ‘His wife?’
‘Oh aye, but she’s a real nice buddy. She’ll not mind. She’ll be pleased the lads think so much of him.’
‘Oh – oh, I couldn’t intrude. I’ll just wait for a bit, till she’s gone.’ He could feel sweat appearing on his upper lip.
The fool was oblivious to his reluctance. ‘Och, away you go! Don’t be daft – she’ll be glad of a wee chat, just sitting there and him not able to say a word to her. And she could be here for hours yet.’
‘Even so, she may want her privacy. I tell you what, I’ll go away and see if I can find a cup of coffee. Come back in a while when she’ll have gone home.’
‘Suit yourself. But it seems kind of daft, when he won’t know you’re there anyway. I could take it in for you later, if you want.’
Was that a note of suspicion in the man’s voice? Desperately, Kingsley said, ‘The thing is, later he’d maybe have come round, could say a word or two so I could tell the lads. I’ll stick around for a bit anyway.’
He suddenly became aware that the man was looking over his shoulder. ‘Well, pal, something tells me that maybe you won’t, after all.’
Kingsley couldn’t move. He’d blotted out the voice of uncertainty that had been screaming at him in the car, and there was nothing he could do. He stood stock-still as four uniformed police officers reached his side, and one said, ‘Jonathan Kingsley, I am detaining you on suspicion of attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, but anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.
‘And take off your shoes. We’ll be needing them, and all the others you’ve got at home, for comparison.’
She had never seen anything like the Press onslaught. Fleming collapsed behind her desk, feeling battered after running the gauntlet at the entrance to the Kirkluce HQ; the thumping on the roof and windows of the car, the machine-gun rattle of the cameras and the blinding flashlights as they were held against the windscreen. And it wasn’t just her car, it was everyone’s, from the Super down. They felt in a state of siege and intimidated women officers were arriving in tears after being mobbed and shouted at.
‘Can’t you do something?’ she had demanded of the Press Officer, a professionally calm and charming woman.
‘
You
bloody do something!’ she snarled. ‘Arrest the whole damn lot of them – I don’t care! I’ve bent over backwards to be helpful till I feel like a sock that’s been turned inside out, but it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference. I’d say they were reptiles if I weren’t afraid of being sued for defamation by pit vipers.’
That had, at least, made Fleming smile, but it didn’t last long. She had a meeting with Donald Bailey ahead, and she must calm herself first, since he would need no encouragement to go nuclear, with predictable results.
Checking her voice-mail and e-mail wasn’t exactly soothing, but among the e-mails was a name she recognized. She still hadn’t replied to Chris Carter’s last message: this one was labelled, ‘Sorry.’
It was quite long. It said just what needed to be said, about Tam and about the Jon Kingsley catastrophe. He showed the perfect understanding that was balm to the soul.
Marjory and Bill had talked long into the night last night, but for all his sympathy he kept reassuring her with, ‘But you and Tam got him in the end, remember. He was a policeman – OK, not good, but he’s not the first rotten apple and I don’t suppose he’ll be the last. These things happen.’
She couldn’t deny that, but nor could she find the words fully to explain her own feelings. It wasn’t just the terrible burden of guilt at having failed to see what was under her nose; it was that every time something like this happened, trust – the trust of the public, the vital trust among colleagues – was broken. Repairing it, like restoring fine china, would put it together again, even quite impressively, but evidence of the damage would still be there. She felt as if the shame was her shame, from belonging to the body Jon Kingsley had been part of as well.
There was always a glass wall between police and public: she and Chris Carter were on one side of it and Bill was on the other. And whatever the demands of the day, Chris’s message needed an immediate, and grateful, reply. But he had ended, half-joking, ‘I’m sure I could organize a fact-finding mission to study the investigation methods of the Galloway Force.’
He’d left it open for her to treat it as she wished, and the temptation was there – ‘Why not? And then a return visit to study yours?’ But playing with fire meant not just getting burned yourself; it started conflagrations that destroyed homes.
Ignoring the constantly ringing phone, she set herself to write a considered reply. There were many deletions, but in the end she felt it was the best she could do: not hurtful, but final. It ended, ‘I can’t think Manchester would have much to learn from us, sadly. Good luck in the future, and thanks for all your help. Marjory.’
She re-read it, hesitated, then pressed ‘Send’. It was done now.
‘It’s intolerable, Marjory, absolutely intolerable!’ Superintendent Bailey’s face was an alarming shade of puce. ‘We must apply to the Sheriff Court for an injunction, the High Court if need be. An exclusion zone for five hundred yards around the station.’
‘Let’s think it through, Don. What sort of headlines would we get after that? Police arrogance – public right to know . . .’
He glared at her as if Press persecution could be laid to her charge. ‘So what do you suggest?’
‘You have to accept that it’s a big story. A huge story. Two murders, one attempted murder – mercifully they haven’t made the connection with the attack on Mrs Aitcheson, though that will come. Throw in a bent copper, with one of his victims being another policeman, fighting for his life – if I sat down and thought for a fortnight, I don’t think I could come up with a bigger one, unless you could add a connection to Princess Diana’s accident in Paris.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said testily, ‘I know all that. And don’t go on to tell me they have a valuable job to do in the public interest. What I want to know is, how to stop them doing it?’
Fleming tried not to, but she began to smile. Bailey was affronted for a moment, then realized what he had said and smiled reluctantly. They began to laugh, disproportionate laughter which might be an effect of stress, but they both felt the better for it.
Dabbing his eyes with a blue silk handkerchief, Bailey said at last, ‘That’s all well and good, Marjory, but we still have the problem.’
‘I know we do. But I wonder if we should involve the Chief Constable – oh, I know, he’s been on to you already,’ as Bailey, with a pained expression, made to speak, ‘but he could perhaps contact the editors, or the proprietors if necessary. Explain that we’re anxious to work with the Press, we rely on them, blah, blah, blah – I’m sure he can write the script – but they are currently impeding the police in the ordinary execution of their duties. Civilian staff, who man emergency calls, are afraid to come in, and this is something we would have to explain to the public. He could even hint that we might put out one of our younger and prettier policewomen to cry on camera. I have one in mind – nice wee lass, probationer, who’s been in tears this morning already.’
Bailey looked at her with respect. ‘You may be wasted in the Force, Marjory. Have you ever thought of politics?’
‘Never. I’m a rotten liar.’
‘Glad to hear it. Not like some.’ He sighed. ‘What’s the state of play?’
Sighing seemed to be contagious. ‘His attack on Tam – no problem. The footprints in the garden matched the shoes he was wearing and they found the jack with –’ she gulped ‘– blood and tissue on it in his car.
‘Davina’s murder: I was going to brief you on that. The labs have fibres from her clothes, and now they have his for comparison, it’s likely they’ll get a match, though there’s always the danger that he may have destroyed the ones he was wearing. But they’re comparing the grit on the soles of her shoes with the grit on his, and that may well produce results.
‘We still don’t know where he killed her, though I’d guess it was in her car, so there’s nothing to hope for there. And we don’t know how she contacted him either – possibly even by a letter sent here, since she’s unlikely to have had another address and his number doesn’t appear in the list from her mobile, which they’ve checked through now. Murdoch’s does, though, which confirms what we knew already.’
‘She was a bit foolhardy, surely, agreeing to meet Kingsley face to face?’
‘I think she was probably foolhardy by nature. She’d tried it on with the men in the bar in Manchester and even if she wasn’t successful, she got away with it. And I’d guess she told Niall Murdoch what she was doing as a safeguard, but Kingsley’s attack was so sudden she hadn’t the chance to use it.’
‘And where are we on Murdoch?’
‘Ah. We may never get him on that one. There’s no evidence of contact between the two, though Murdoch made two or three calls to the station here, but with the vandalism problems that was hardly surprising and there’s no record of who he asked to speak to. We can no doubt prove from phone records that Kingsley made the call to Jenna Murdoch but the rest is guesswork. This may just be one of those cases where we know who did it and stop looking, but haven’t evidence that will stand up in court. Ironic, really – that’s exactly the outcome he had been working towards, only with someone else as the prime suspect.’
Bailey shook his head. ‘A sad business!’
‘As far as the attack on Mrs Aitcheson goes, Ingles’s lawyer will appeal his conviction and have it set aside as unsafe, no doubt, but Ingles will have to be charged with perverting the course of justice in any case. The only evidence against Kingsley is likely to come from tracing the money he used to buy his boat, but that’ll be hard to prove, after all this time. And he’s not about to confess.’
‘He’s said nothing?’
‘Nothing at all – sat throughout the six hours’ questioning in total silence. We kept him there the full time, working in relays. Perhaps we shouldn’t have allowed Tansy Kerr to give him his character quite so forcibly, but it was therapeutic for her and the tape’s never going to be evidence. A death stare can’t be shown in court to prove murderous intent.’
‘And what about you, Marjory – what did you say?’
Her eyes fell. ‘I didn’t say anything, except what was professionally necessary. I didn’t trust myself. Once I started, I don’t know where I would have stopped.’
He nodded gravely, ‘Understandable. ‘But you’d wonder how he ever thought he’d get away with it.’
‘According to Laura Harvey, supreme self-confidence is a psychopathic characteristic. Poor Laura – she’s taking it badly that she didn’t pick up on it.’
‘If my recollection of lectures in criminal psychology – dim, I grant you – serves me, they can be clever at covering up too. If it’s any consolation, tell her she wasn’t the only one who was fooled. I had Kingsley pencilled in for promotion when the next sergeant’s job came up.
‘And speaking of sergeants – any word on Tam today?’
‘Stable is the official verdict, but Bunty’s worried. They found there had been a haemorrhage putting pressure on the brain and though they’ve relieved it and he’s been able to speak to her, we won’t know for a while yet what the damage is. I’m going along to see him this afternoon.’
It wasn’t easy to talk about it. Fleming got up. ‘I’d better get back to my office. Working through the voice-mail alone looks like taking all day, and there’s a report to be written.’
‘Oh, incidentally, before you go, also on the subject of sergeants,’ Bailey rummaged among his papers to find a form, ‘Allan’s requested to leave the Force as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘Good riddance!’ Fleming said with feeling. ‘It’s been positively unpleasant of late with Allan and Kingsley trying to set up their own little private mafia. The CID room will be a much happier place without the two of them.’
Bailey gave her a sardonic look. ‘A CID room that’s all sweetness and light? Dear me, Marjory – I hadn’t realized you were quite so naive.’
Laura was waiting for Marjory to pick her up to go and see Tam. She was in her pleasant garden, with the sun shining and Daisy cheerfully rootling around among the bushes, but she wasn’t happy.
She was depressed first of all at being so credulous. She, of all people, should be able to recognize manipulation when she saw it, yet she’d accepted Jon’s account of his pushy father as a textbook case – which was probably where he’d got the idea. She’d suspected he was using her, certainly, but on the couple of occasions when he’d kissed her she’d found herself responding with enthusiasm. Sexual attraction notoriously blunted your perceptions.
Was she just another desperate woman, with a ticking biological clock, flattered by the attentions of a man five years younger? Thirty was looming; thirty, with a failed marriage behind you and no steady relationship since, was an added reason for depression. How she envied Marjory with her Bill, settled in a partnership that was steady as a rock!