Scotch Mist (25 page)

Letting the man pour out his confession as if to two priests, Max and Tom heard facts that clarified many points concerning Eva's suicide. Some of them echoed what Jean had told Max. Hector's conversion to his parents' religious zeal had driven a wedge between the couple, and the gap had widened as Eva tried to regain his interest with imagined illnesses. Divorce was not an option, so they lived separate lives until the next blow fell.

‘Callan joined the Drumdorrans to fight alongside the brother he remembered as being so bold. He mocked me. Said I was no a soldier but a preacher.' The suggestion of shock in his eyes intensified. ‘He went to war and died with bad blood between us.'

Max recalled Jean saying this man blamed himself for his brother's death and, as a result, was trying to deny any responsibility for what Eva had done. Although he had not before encountered anyone with extreme religious beliefs, Max knew well enough the lengths to which such people could be driven in their zeal. He sensed Tom's impatience, but gave a slight shake of his head. McTavish was in full flow and best not interrupted.

‘The woman grieved for him more than was seemly in public, and the tongues began to wag. I chastised her for always being at the bottle for a dram, as any man would, and forbade her to touch a drop while I was away with the band.'

McTavish fell silent, looking at his questioners as if for vocal support. When their unflinching eye contact became too unnerving he said brokenly, ‘She sent letters every week reminding me of him, and how I'd let him go to his death with my curses in his ears. She . . . she even sent photographs of his grave. Every week. Cold earth on the dear brother of my youth.'

He took time to deal with that, and Max had again to signal Tom to remain silent. The volcano of this burdened man's emotions was slowly erupting.

‘I would'nae,
could'nae
face her when we came here last week. You can understand that.'

Getting no response, he appeared to shrink as his head drooped and his shoulders shook. ‘She committed the unforgivable sin to dishonour me. A McTavish, to be humbled in the eyes of a regiment of proud warriors. May the Lord forgive her, for I have no will to.'

Max now seized the moment. ‘You're saying your wife took her life deliberately? Committed suicide to punish you?'

‘Aye.'

‘Punish you for what?'

‘Taking Callan from her. So she wrote in the letter.'

Max gave Tom a grim smile of satisfaction. ‘The letter sent across to you on the morning after your wife's death
was
a suicide note?'

McTavish nodded.

‘Please voice your confirmation of that.'

‘Aye, it was.'

‘Where is that letter now?'

‘Burned. It was vile.'

Tom could keep quiet no longer. ‘What has all this to do with the abduction of the child Jenny Greene?'

This reversion to the charge he had been arrested for created a hiatus that lasted until McTavish had mastered his distress and got his mind around the new direction it had to follow.

‘Jenny Greene,' Tom prompted harshly, to break the silence.

‘Aye.' McTavish sighed. ‘I went to speak to Jean. I had the need d'ye see? An old friend. For one summer more than friends. Along with others. I was a wild boy. Jean knew how things were and has a kindness for me still.'

‘Oh?' said Tom. ‘Then why take away her daughter and fill her with anguish?'

Shaking his head, McTavish said, ‘That was nae in ma mind. The little lassie saw me and came over with smiles, and I knew she could have been mine if I'd no been denied the right to have the like. The wanting was so strong I took her away to hear my music and to show her the dancing. We were happy. She laughed and danced to the pipes. We had tea and bannocks and cakes, while I told her stories of the clans and Bonny Prince Charlie. I gave her a plaid to wear, and sang the auld songs from down the ages. She slept awhiles now and then, but wanted more music when she woke.'

He appealed to them with eyes bright with remembrance. ‘I knew how it would have been to have a bairn, so I took her to the place where that woman kilt herself.
See how it could have been
, I told her.
See what you denied me
.'

‘Why did you leave Jenny there alone?' demanded Tom roughly.

‘Och, the lassie was tired from the dancing; fell asleep as I held her. I sat with her awhiles until I heard voices calling her name nearby. I knew then the moment was over and slipped away.'

‘And if you hadn't heard the searchers calling her name?'

McTavish appeared unable to answer that, just gazed in puzzlement.

‘Was it your intention to return Jenny to her mother and explain why you had taken her?' asked Max to clarify the situation.

All McTavish said was, ‘Jean still has a kindness for me.'

Tom snapped off the tape recorder and turned on the Scot to say, ‘Which is more than you have for her, you bastard, putting her through eight hours of fear and anguish.'

Max could only imagine a parent's suffering over a missing child so, unlike Tom, he could distance himself from Jean Greene's trauma and consider the depth of emotional torment Eva had dealt out to Hector over the death of his brother in retaliation for the years of neglect she had suffered. If he had answered any one of her seventeen calls, what would have been said between them? No one would ever know if she was asking for his help or wanting to damn him further as her life slipped away.

Over a late lunchtime sandwich Max put forward to Tom his thoughts on that twisted relationship. ‘Being a member of a regiment gives a man comradeship, help in need and a sense of communal pride, but it also means that his failures and humiliations are common knowledge. For Hector, who had adopted those narrow beliefs he had rebelled at in his youth, his wife's suicide was the ultimate sin. What's more, in an élite regiment like the Drumdorrans, whose history boasts of clan giants performing Herculean deeds, weakness or failure of any kind isn't tolerated. Hence the fostering of the belief in Eva's accidental death at the Guy Fawkes evening. The Pipe Major's status was being protected, the way Keith Pinkney was preparing to do for me earlier today.

‘What I find difficult to equate is that kind of extreme religion with military life. How did he get around the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill?'

Tom was still looking aggressive. ‘Slaughtering the enemy isn't regarded as murder. Anyway, when he joined the Drumdorrans he was still a normal, high-spirited lad. It was his father claiming the death of a foetus was punishment for Hector's wild youth that did the damage.'

‘Mmm, if anyone pointed out that that claim had led to years of vindictiveness between a husband and wife, cruel estrangement of brothers, a suicide and public disgrace for his remaining son, the old man would never see the truth of it. Not in a hundred years.'

‘You omitted something. It also led to his remaining son becoming a paedo.'

Max shook his head. ‘No, he didn't mean any harm to Jenny. The balance of his mind was disturbed. That's what the psycho boys will say when the GC sends him to them.'

‘I'd send him to boys who smash men's balls with a sledgehammer,' Tom retorted vigorously. ‘Making the kid dance to his pipe music? Taking her to the sports stadium to show her to a woman who had killed herself there last week? If that isn't the behaviour of a pervert, what is it? And he avoided answering when I asked if he had intended taking Jenny home.

‘All that bloody bullshit about an élite regiment with a proud history you went on about a moment ago? A regiment is a regiment is a regiment. Each one has its past heroes and glorious victories. They also all have failures and losers. Take those four who put a straw effigy of their platoon commander on . . .' Tom broke off and put down his sandwich. ‘Christ, I forgot about Meacher.'

‘What about Meacher?' asked Max.

‘I found what you said had been overlooked the first time around, and I'm afraid it looks likely that the man we've been searching for is among our own ranks.'

TWELVE

C
orporal Douglas Meacher eyed Max and Tom warily across the table in an interview room. ‘Yes, I spent five years with REME when I enlisted. The details are on my service record. It was a straightforward transfer, at my request. Nothing dubious about it.'

‘And your reason for the transfer?' asked Tom.

‘Policing was what I'd always fancied doing.'

‘So why not join the Corps from the start?'

Meacher made no attempt to avoid Tom's direct gaze. ‘My father said I should learn a useful trade that would come in handy after I'd served my time.' He gave a faint smile. ‘Made it sound as if I was about to start a prison sentence rather than an army career.'

‘And you did learn a useful trade. One that gave you enough knowledge to show great interest in the evidence the bomb disposal boys found at the sports stadium after the explosion,' Tom pointed out. ‘I was impressed by the way you discussed the debris with the experts.'

Meacher's wariness deepened. ‘I was eager to learn what had created such havoc. We all were.'

Max had been reluctant to believe ill of a man he had known and trusted for more than two years, but a witness had remembered seeing a Redcap ‘fixing' a straw figure to the bonfire minutes before it was set alight. Knowing Corporal Naish had secured the effigy to his meticulously constructed cone when Dennis Mooney and Co had arrived with it earlier in the day, the witness could only have seen the MP
adding
something to the straw bundle.

That statement fully explained how the IED could have been inserted, and it made sense of why every person they had interviewed denied seeing anything suspicious during the two days they had worked on the bonfire and pyrotechnic display. Redcaps had been patrolling the area throughout, so this had been a case of the
usual
not being regarded as
unusual
.

According to the witness this had taken place during the firework display, when she was concerned about a distressed woman making repeated calls on her mobile. Her statement recorded that she had decided to approach the Redcap when the fireworks ended, but when she had looked for him he was nowhere to be seen. Doug Meacher had been on duty during that period, and he knew a lot about all manner of devices.

Before calling him for questioning, Tom had checked out George Maddox's duty roster and discovered that Meacher had been off duty on Friday evening. This meant he would have been free to set the fire outside the Officers' Mess. He now pursued that line.

‘There's been a deal of aggro from our Scottish lads over that exploding bonfire. Did you see much of it in town on Friday night?'

Meacher looked slightly happier at the change of direction. ‘I was off duty, unfortunately.'

‘Unfortunately?' queried Max.

‘No chance to give 'em some grief.' He grinned. ‘I made up for it on Saturday.'

‘So where did you spend Friday evening?' probed Tom.

It took less than thirty seconds for Meacher to realize where the questioning was heading, and he snapped out an aggressive reply. ‘Not setting a hedge alight, sir.'

Knowing it was pointless to tiptoe around the subject, Tom asked if Meacher could prove he was elsewhere.

‘At twenty fifteen when you, sir, saw flames rising from the hedge around the car park,' he said to Max, quoting the official report he would have been privy to, ‘I was working out in the gym with twenty or more others. I'd been there a good hour.'

Knowing then that this really was a wild goose, Max nevertheless followed up with the vital question. ‘During the firework display on Tuesday, where were you patrolling, Doug?'

‘I wasn't, sir. Some boys had been chasing each other around the vending stalls earlier and I told them to clear off. Shortly after that I heard screaming coming from the area beneath the stand and ran under it, closely followed by a St John Ambulance guy. A kid had crashed into one of the supports and knocked out a tooth. There was blood coming from his mouth and he thought he was dying. Where were the parents? Still in the tent guzzling
Gluhwein
! I'd only just tracked them down when the bonfire blew.'

When Meacher departed, Max gave Tom a pensive look. ‘Ralph Styles, who was on duty with Doug on Tuesday, has no technical skills so far as we know, so I'm expecting a negative report on him from Piercey and Beeny shortly. Ralph is also newly married, which surely makes him an unlikely candidate for the attacks.'

‘Unless pretty Betty has denied him the fruits of his seed,' responded Tom acidly. ‘That apparently allows a man to abduct a three-year-old to make her dance to his bagpipes, then expect no more than sympathetic understanding of his
need
.'

‘Leave it, Tom. McTavish is a sad, haunted man. He'll get his just desserts, never fear.'

‘From the Almighty?'

Max knew his friend found it hard to be impartial in this instance and moved on to his next point. ‘Now our task is to check out the rest of our uniformed colleagues. Including George himself, I'm afraid.'

Tom wagged his head. ‘I don't like it. I've known them a long time. Before you joined 26 Section. Why would any of them be driven to do something like this?'

‘We'll find out when we get him.'

‘The one person I don't know much about is Babs Turvey. She only came out here two months ago.'

‘We've ruled out a woman.' Max then shrugged. ‘The fire at the Mess? Possibly. But anything putting mothers and children at risk wouldn't be perpetrated by Babs.'