To her further embarrassment, DC Kingsley was standing beside it, waiting for her. ‘Is this your car, madam?’ he said with mock severity.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ Laura cried, clicking her key to switch it off. The noise stopped, apart from Daisy’s excited barking. ‘Oh dear, I wish I could just click her off as well!’
He laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s the only bit of excitement we’ve had all afternoon. Tansy’s gone to warm up with a cup of coffee in the tent – she wasn’t really dressed for the weather.’
‘No, not exactly. Your turn next?’
‘Doubt if I’ll bother. There’s a steady trickle starting to leave now and once there are enough people around in the car park we can knock off. What I need is a hot bath and then I fancy finding something a bit stronger than coffee to warm me up. Care to join me?’
‘The drink, yes. Call me old-fashioned, but I think on such slight acquaintance I’ll go home for my hot bath.’
‘Don’t miss a trick, do you?’ he was saying, as Tansy appeared outside the tent, waving frantically.
‘Jon! Fight in the tent – get over here!’
He swore under his breath. ‘Phone number?’ he said urgently, and she gabbled it as he took off.
Laura got into her car wondering if this would have scuppered the plans for the evening. She was well aware of what the problems of going out with a policeman might be, but this was an excessively early start to them.
Perhaps that had been what Marjory’s phone call had been about too. She might give her a ring later tonight, if she hadn’t heard from Jon.
Or perhaps she wouldn’t. It hadn’t been lost on Laura that Marjory had been suspiciously quick to break up their conversation. She remembered when Jon – English, a graduate and with a reputation as a high-flier – had joined the Galloway Force from Edinburgh, Marjory had been worried about Tam MacNee’s reaction to him, and Laura had thought privately that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Marjory had felt threatened too. Since Jon joined her team she had been professionally loyal but somehow Laura had a feeling there wasn’t much love lost.
Still, Marjory needn’t know about what had been, when it came right down to it, the most casual of invitations.
‘Bill, I have to go,’ Marjory said urgently. ‘I’ll need the jeep. Do you think Fin and Susie would give you and the kids a lift home?’
‘Someone will. Here – take the keys.’
Blessing him, as always, for his unquestioning support, she hurried back to the car park and jumped into the old jeep. She was driving across to turn right on to the main way out when she realized there was a commotion going on back down to her left, around the beer tent. She stopped to look, then gave a gasp of dismay.
Findlay Stevenson, dishevelled and with a graze on one cheek, was being frogmarched towards a police car, there on crowd duty, between Jon Kingsley and a uniform, with Tansy Kerr bringing up the rear.
There was nothing she could do. This would never even reach her level and at the moment she had more important – much more important – matters to deal with. She drove on with a leaden heart. As if things weren’t bad enough already with Fin and Susie! And poor Bill would have to find someone else to give him a lift home.
Chapter 4
‘
How
far?’ Marjory Fleming said blankly.
‘About a mile, ma’am. Maybe a wee bit more. Uphill.’ The PC at the foot of the forest track where it emerged on to the A712 not far from Clatteringshaws Loch was trying not to look as if he enjoyed giving that answer. Standing in the rain logging visitors to the site might not be much fun but at least he could sneak into the car when there was no one around, which was definitely better than scrambling up a winding rocky track in rain and fading light.
Fleming looked ruefully at her rubber boots, ideal for ploughing through muddy fields but pretty much guaranteed to give you blisters if you were daft enough to go hiking in them. An unappetizing prospect, and with that leaden sky, it was getting dark already too, even if it was only just after six o’clock. She went back to the jeep to fetch a torch, saying bitterly to the constable, ‘All right for some!’
There were half-a-dozen badged vehicles of different types parked by the road, as well as a couple of ordinary cars, one of them Tam MacNee’s. If they were lucky, the other might be the police surgeon. However dead the body might obviously be, no one could do anything until he’d said it was.
Fleming set off up into the shadow of the trees. It was much darker here, with a sort of greenish, unearthly light, and very, very quiet. There must be all of a dozen people not that far away, but the trees muffled sound so effectively that she could have been the only person for miles around. There was something about forests, with the towering trees that almost seemed to be crowding you and the deadening hush, as if – something – was holding its breath. A childhood memory came to her: a so-called friend who had told her as they played in a wood one day, ‘Trees move, you know, when you’re not looking.’ She’d somehow never felt entirely comfortable alone in dense woodland since.
It was too dark to see clearly, but she found herself oddly reluctant to switch on her torch, as if the light might, well, draw attention or something – oh, for goodness’ sake! She wasn’t nine now. Annoyed with herself, she snapped on the torch and directed its light on to the path ahead. It might have the effect of further deepening the darkness round about but it did at least make it less likely she’d break her ankle tripping over a rock.
There was plenty of time to consider what lay ahead as she climbed. The report Fleming had been given was unspecific: the body was that of a female, but there was as yet no indication as to whether this had been natural, accidental or violent death, or how recently it had taken place. A body could lie undiscovered in a place like this for months – years, even.
The rain was going off now and in the light wind which had sprung up the trees were starting to sway and mutter. As she walked on through the shifting shadows, Fleming saw at last light shining through the trees, greeting the sight of it with a certain shamefaced relief which wasn’t entirely because she could feel a blister forming on her left heel.
As she got closer, she could see other lights too – torches like her own, bobbing about. They must have managed to heave a generator up, since the main light, which she could see now lighting up the sky, was so strong and steady. She could hear its low, electronic hum and then, when she was about a hundred yards away, the buzz of human voices.
She must have been spotted; one of the bobbing lights came down towards her and she heard Tam MacNee’s voice. ‘That you, boss? They said you were on the way up.’
‘Tam! You were quick off the mark.’
MacNee grunted as they walked up together. ‘Sitting duck, that was me. There in front of the telly, Rangers 2–1 down, and Bunty takes the message and says no problem, I’ll be right there.’
‘Bad luck. Maybe it saved you seeing them lose.’
He glared at her. ‘“
Your pity I will not implore, For pity you have none!
” ’
‘None at all,’ she agreed. ‘So what’s the situation?’
‘I’ll give you a clue. She didn’t bash herself over the head and wander up here looking for a quiet place to die.’
Fleming felt a jolt of shock which was part alarm, part excitement too. ‘She’s been killed? Recently?’
MacNee was leading the way off the path and down a slope towards a narrow, stony burn. ‘Recent enough. Carstairs is here, grumphing as usual.’
The police surgeon, whose most common duty was attesting to the proper treatment of drunks held in police cells, was Arthur Carstairs, a small, self-important man with rimless spectacles, a prim mouth and a decided preference for making the worst of even the best of circumstances. Since the wildest optimist would have to concede that this assignment, in damp darkness and rough terrain, was far from ideal, Fleming resigned herself to having to work to placate him. Police surgeons were hard to come by, what with doctors getting a huge increase recently – apparently to reward them for declining to work nights and weekends. She should be so lucky!
Lit by powerful lamps on either side, Carstairs, in a white protective suit, was on the farther side of the burn, crouching in front of what looked confusingly like a wall of ropes. It was only by shading her eyes and looking beyond the pool of light that Fleming could see the shadowy shapes of the fallen trees whose roots had tangled together to form this sheltering bank. Nodding an acknowledgement to the other officers grouped around, waiting for official confirmation of death, she splashed her way across the burn to stand beside him.
At her approach Carstairs straightened up, glaring at her as he stripped off his rubber gloves. ‘This really is the outside of enough! When I agreed to accept this post there was no indication that
mountaineering
would form part of my duties!’
‘Of course not,’ Fleming agreed soothingly as she reached him, resisting the temptation to add that they would, of course, issue an immediate directive that no one must die above sea level. ‘Very difficult, I know. Have you had time to come to any conclusions yet?’
‘Well, I can certify death. Obviously.’
Fleming looked down. The woman was lying on her back, her head turned to one side. She had been smartly, quite expensively dressed; she had a small diamond in her nose and a chunky gold earring in the ear that was visible. She was young, and the sickening injury under the matted mass of long dark hair was, indeed, eloquent proof.
‘And equally obviously,’ Carstairs went on, ‘the fatal injury was not self-inflicted. With the evidence of extensive bruising to the face and the absence of any possible agent of accident in the vicinity, I think we can risk assuming that we are talking about unlawful killing.’
Fleming jerked her head at MacNee, who had been a silent observer. He nodded, then, signalling to one of the uniformed officers who was holding a radio phone, retreated with him out of earshot. That gave them all they needed to summon the pathology team.
‘Any estimate of time?’ Fleming asked.
Carstairs pursed his mouth. ‘Not without a much more detailed examination than I am paid to do. But with the usual provisos about variations in temperature and so on, we might surmise from the absence of rigor mortis that death took place at least thirty-six hours ago.’
‘And at most?’
‘My good woman,’ he said witheringly, ‘if I could establish that, on the basis of the most cursory examination in semi-darkness, I would set up as a psychic.’
‘Mmm,’ Fleming said. When you were compressing your lips to prevent a tart response from escaping it was about all you could say.
‘What I can tell you, with a tolerable degree of certainty, is that the body was moved here after death. No sign of blood, for a start.
‘Now, perhaps I may be permitted to return home? We are having a dinner party tonight and my wife is relying on me to make my special dressing for the salad.’
‘See and give your hands a good wash first.’ MacNee had returned, earning himself a jab in the ribs as he muttered this in Fleming’s ear.
‘Of course, doctor,’ she said smoothly. ‘Thank you very much for dealing with this so promptly.’
Carstairs grunted ungraciously, packed up his bag and picked his way back across the burn, uttering an expletive as a stone shifted under his foot and his shoe filled with water.
Fleming turned to look again at the body. It had been protected from the worst of the rain by the overhanging roots, but even so the clothes were damp. She had been pretty, probably, before some brute beat her up and death slackened the skin of her face. She’d been young, anyway – late twenties, perhaps. Untimely death, however it came, always hit you hard, and now she felt horror, too, that someone’s rage – fuelled, more than likely, by drink or drugs or both – could reduce an attractive young woman to the sad remains lying before her now.
Behind her, she heard one of the officers laughing, and almost swung round with a reprimand. But that was how they worked – how they had to work, if they were not to be overwhelmed by the tragedies of life that were police business. She was guilty of callousness herself; they all were. It sounded better if you called it professionalism, but they were both names for the protective distance you had to keep if you wanted to sleep at night.
‘Cover her up meantime – those flies!’ With a grimace, Fleming turned away. ‘Poor creature!’ she said sombrely. ‘How do you suppose she came to this? Who found her, anyway?’
‘The lad up there.’ MacNee pointed.
Gavin Scott, swathed in a silver survival blanket, was sitting morosely on the ground further upstream, his arms clasped round his knees and his head bent. A woman officer was crouching beside him.
‘George Christie dealt with it – he’ll tell you all about it. George!’ MacNee raised his voice and beckoned to a uniformed sergeant who was giving instructions about taping off the site.
Fleming knew him slightly, a neat man with a dapper moustache based at Newton Stewart. He gave her an account of Scott’s 999 call, made on his victim’s mobile phone. ‘I’ve got it here,’ he said, unbuttoning his pocket to take it out in its plastic evidence bag. ‘It’s only the lad there who’s touched it directly – we’ll need his prints for elimination. But should we be using it now to try to establish identity?’