Bad Blood (17 page)

Drax was still staring at her. ‘You’re lying, aren’t you? Anita said you remembered everything. Absolutely everything.’

He got up abruptly and went round to the other side of the desk and sat down. ‘She’s dead, you know.’

Through stiffened lips Marnie said, ‘I was afraid it might be her.’

‘There are a lot of bad, nasty people around. I expect you’ve realised that by now.’

Oh she had, yes, she had. Marnie nodded.

‘You wouldn’t want to upset them now, would you?’ In the harsh light, his dark eyes seemed to glow.

Transfixed, she shook her head this time.

‘The question is, are you as good at forgetting as you are at remembering?’

She grasped at that. ‘No one’s going to ask me anything. Once you’ve told me what I want to know I’m going to disappear.’

‘Smart decision. That’s a useful talent, especially when the police have you as a suspect – which they will, of course, since you visited her. Where are you staying at the moment?’

Her stomach had lurched at the mention of the police, but she said only, ‘You can’t think I’m going to tell you.’ Did he imagine she was stupid?

‘Just testing.’ He sat up abruptly in his chair, his mood changing. ‘I’ve got too much to do to spend any longer with you.
Far
too much.’

There was something he was angry about, something that was nothing to do with her, and she wondered what it was.

‘So you’ve got two minutes to ask whatever it is you want to know.’

‘Where’s my mother?’

‘Karen? That’s easy. I don’t know. How would I? What is it – twenty years since I saw her? More? She could be anywhere. All right? Does that answer your question?’

‘Did you kill her?’

That amused him. ‘Kill her? Why should I? Disposing of a body is quite a hassle, they tell me. So …’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t, no.’

He got up, but Marnie didn’t. She’d come this far and got nothing; what had she to lose now if she asked the question she hadn’t had the courage to ask all these years ago.

‘Are you my father?’

His lip curled in a sneer. ‘Your father? Who knows? I shouldn’t think your mother knows either. She was such a little tramp you could have been anyone’s.’

The casual cruelty of the reply hit her hard. She got up, trying to master her tears, and stumbled to the door. His laughter followed her as she went downstairs.

The Asian woman she had seen before was standing in front of a cleaning cupboard, winding up the cord on the vacuum cleaner. There was a man standing at the DJ bench wearing headphones who glanced up incuriously as she passed.

When she reached the car park there was a young Asian man sitting in a small grey car with a dent in the wheel arch nearby, waiting patiently for his girlfriend, she guessed. She saw him answer his phone; that would be her, probably, saying she was just about ready to leave. It must be wonderful to be someone who had another person who cared enough to come and wait to take you home, instead of driving miles by yourself in the bleak darkness to a half-derelict house where all that waited for you was loneliness. She’d never know now what had happened to her mother. She’d have to live with the deafening silence, and tomorrow she might as well go back to London.

But as she drove out of the car park, she saw the little grey car was driving off too, so her romantic notion that he was waiting to take his girlfriend home was just that. Ah well.

DC Hepburn woke suddenly as the car braked for a traffic light. She had again had a very disturbed night and she’d fallen so deeply asleep
that for a moment she couldn’t think where she was. She sat up, rubbing the crick in her neck.

DS MacNee was at the wheel. He was looking at her quizzically. ‘Dearie me, lassie, you’re far too young to be needing a nap in the afternoon. Too many nights out on the razzle, I don’t doubt.’

Her eyes prickled with tears at the injustice, but she said only, ‘Oh well, you know how it is,’ as jauntily as she could.

‘I knew once, right enough,’ MacNee said, ‘but it’s so long ago I’ve almost forgotten. Anyway, you did the smart thing. The traffic was nose-to-tail all the way in – took an hour and a half longer than it should have. We’re nearly there, though.’

Yawning, Hepburn looked around. It was an unappealing area of Glasgow, industrial buildings and run-down tower blocks. ‘Funny place to have a nightclub,’ she said.

‘This is a major road with good bus services,’ MacNee pointed out. ‘And if you’re out here you don’t get grief because the neighbours complain. Quite a nice little business. That’s it there, look.’

He pointed to a display of flickering lights just ahead. It was evening now, very dark with drizzling rain falling and as they turned into the car park and got the full benefit of the sophisticated show of neon, Hepburn thought it looked quite inviting despite its bleak surroundings.

‘Very jazzy. And Zombies – it’s a good name.’

MacNee snorted. ‘If you say so. All I can say is, they’ve come a long way from the local Palais. Seemed exciting enough at the time.’

There were quite a lot of cars in the car park now and there was a man standing outside the entrance smoking, a bullet-headed young man of impressive physique with a fine collection of visible tattoos.

He looked curiously at MacNee and Hepburn as they came up. ‘We’re not open till ten, granddad. Anyway, not really your kinna place.’

Hepburn could only hope that the darkness concealed her grin as MacNee bridled.

‘Nae brains, just brawn, that’s your problem. We’re police. Your licence in order, is it?’

Alarm showed on his face. ‘Aye. Probably.’

‘OK, you can apply what brain you have to telling me where I’d find Daniel Lee.’

The man looked blank. It seemed to be, Hepburn thought, an expression he was comfortable with and used a lot.

‘Drax, then?’ MacNee said impatiently.

His face cleared. ‘Oh, aye. Be in his office, likely.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘Inside.’

‘I’d guessed that. Where inside?’

‘Up the stair. By the stage, ken?’

Not pausing to point out that if he knew he wouldn’t be asking, MacNee went inside, followed by Hepburn.

A number of people were milling around the huge space. None of them looked to be much over twenty, and there was music blaring out from loudspeakers by the DJ’s dais. Spotlights illuminated the dance floor and a burst of coloured lasers played briefly across the room then was switched off again as someone shouted comments. There was a lot of chat and laughter, and though one or two heads turned as they walked towards the door by the dais no one spoke to them.

As they reached the top of the spiral staircase a woman came towards them along the dark corridor. She glanced at them incuriously, then with a sudden sharpening of her gaze. She didn’t speak, only pursed her lips and disappeared through a nearby door.

MacNee grinned at Hepburn. ‘Always revealing, when they recognise CID at ten yards. She’ll be warning the boss right now.’

And sure enough, a mobile with a jazzy tune rang behind one of the doors facing them. Immediately MacNee went to it, knocked and opened it without allowing time for a response.

The man sitting at the desk in this aggressively white room, was
hunched over the phone, scowling. ‘Where are they now, then?’ he said, then spun round as MacNee said, ‘Here.’

For a moment he looked confused, then as MacNee made the formal introductions and said insincerely, ‘I’m sorry to startle you, sir. I did knock,’ a remarkable transformation took place.

The hunched figure relaxed and stretched out, the dark anger vanished and Daniel Lee looked up at them from his chair with a gently rueful expression. There was something very engaging about the winged brows and eyes that held a spark of amusement and invited his companions to share the joke. But in an almost panicky movement he gathered together the papers he had spread out on his desk without losing eye contact with them, as if that would stop them noticing. And, Hepburn noticed with keen interest, he turned them face down.

‘Do sit down. Yes, I’m afraid you did catch my secretary tipping me off. If you run a nightclub you get very nervous when the police come round, even if your conscience is totally clear. What am I up for today?’

He gave them both a charming smile, lingering a little longer on Hepburn, though her stony expression didn’t suggest it was having the desired effect.

‘Anita Loudon’s murder,’ MacNee said with deliberate clumsiness, watching Lee’s smile vanish before he said, ‘Oh, sorry, sir, I don’t mean that, of course. I just meant that’s what we’re here about.’

Lee had recognised it as deliberate. His dark eyes were hard as he said smoothly, ‘Anita’s been murdered? I’m sorry to hear that. What a terrible thing – how did it happen? We’re old friends, you know, though I haven’t seen her in ages.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Hepburn said.

‘I’d have to think hard about that one. Five years, more? I’ve got a business to run here, as you can see, so I’m afraid old friendships get neglected. You know how it is.’ He unwisely tried another rueful
smile in Hepburn’s direction. This time her lip visibly curled, and he turned hastily back to MacNee.

‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you, but of course I’m anxious to do anything that might help.’

‘When were you last in Dunmore?’ MacNee asked.

‘Dunmore? Oh, years and years! I couldn’t tell you exactly. Now I’m in Glasgow I don’t have any call to be back in the area, really.’

‘Despite being in a business consortium based at Cairnryan?’ Hepburn’s voice was cold. ‘Which has an AGM at Crichton’s offices there every year?’

MacNee looked at her with some respect. She’d done her homework on this and she’d got Lee rattled.

The smooth charm was fraying as he snapped, ‘Oh, yes, of course. I don’t think of Cairnryan as the same area, that’s all.’

‘And what is the business in this consortium?’ MacNee pressed him.

‘We all have different interests. It’s only that it suits us to double up on some services we all need – accountancy, business consultants, that sort of thing.’

He had started fiddling with a pen, avoiding direct eye contact. Hepburn was on to something there and MacNee nodded to her encouragingly.

‘I understand one of your partners is Grant Crichton, the father of the boy who was killed by Kirstie Burnside, one of your school friends when you were a child. Doesn’t that make for a tricky relationship?’

‘Not really. As you say, I was a child and a bystander – he was dead before I arrived on the scene. Grant’s a generous-minded man who wouldn’t bear a grudge for that all these years. I was very sorry for him and greatly admired the way he had borne his grief.’

‘You felt he had been greatly wronged?’

Lee shifted impatiently in his seat. ‘Well, yeah, obviously. Look, where are you going with all this?’

MacNee said, ‘Anita Loudon’s body was found in exactly the same place as Tommy Crichton’s was, suggesting that for some reason she had been killed in revenge for his death.’

‘And? What’s this about?’

‘You see,’ Hepburn explained kindly, ‘if you felt a great wrong had been done and that in some way Anita had been at the bottom of it, you might have felt you could put it right by killing her and putting her body in the same place.’

Lee jumped to his feet. ‘What sort of stupid game is this?’ he shouted. ‘You’re suggesting that as some sort of charitable act to Grant Crichton, I murdered an old friend? If it was revenge, you’d better look at him or his wife. How could you come up with the crazy idea that it’s something to do with me?’

‘Well, you see, sir,’ MacNee drawled, ‘it’s just that when we’re investigating a murder, if someone starts by telling us a lie – a great, stonking enormous lie – we kinna reckon it’s because he’s got something to hide.

‘We have a witness who has stated that you regularly visited Ms Loudon and the last time you did was the day before she was murdered.

‘I’m not arresting you as yet, but I’m inviting you to help the police with their enquiries by appearing at the Galloway Constabulary headquarters in Kirkluce first thing tomorrow morning. If you don’t appear by midday we’ll swear out a warrant.’

MacNee had thought him a good-looking man when first he saw him. Now the slim face with the eyes so dark that they were almost black seemed to have taken on a sharp, beady, rat-like cast.

When Marnie Bruce parked her car on the shore of Clatteringshaws Loch it was late in the afternoon. Banks of purple-black clouds pierced by a startling streak of pale turquoise above the pewter-coloured waters of the loch gave it an almost unearthly light and she shivered as she left the warmth of the car to walk along to the cottage.

The road was busy at this time of night and the sweeping beams of the headlights gave erratic illumination. After a blast from an alarmed motorist she took to the verge, stumbling over snagging roots and almost twisting her ankle in an unnoticed ditch. She was half-sobbing by the time she reached the safety of the garden. The last time, she vowed, the last time. By tomorrow she’d be in London.

Inside the house, it was pitch-dark. She groped her way to the kitchen, then had a fumbling search to find the matches for the camping light. She’d have to learn to keep them in the same place. If she was staying. Which of course she wasn’t.

Even once she got it lit, the pale gleam wasn’t comforting tonight. It just showed up the dismal, grubby hopelessness of everything about
her, in a sort of reflection of her own life. Her journey of discovery about her past had been an exercise in futility, and worse.

Drax had reminded her that the police would be looking for her. She knew that already – ‘as a matter of urgency’, Fleming’s message had said – but since she hadn’t had anything to do with Anita’s death, they probably wouldn’t look very hard.

Marnie lit the stove and filled the kettle with hands that were numb with cold. She filled a hot-water bottle to warm them while she heated up a tin of soup she’d bought, along with a sandwich and a bar of chocolate. The long night stretched grimly ahead of her but once she’d eaten she’d go to bed where she would be warmer and if she could get to sleep at once she would wake early and get on her way.

There was just one thing. Her phone. She’d switched it off this morning and hadn’t looked at it since but she couldn’t ignore it for ever. Look on the bright side, she told herself, there could be a message to say they’d arrested someone and didn’t need to talk to her after all. As if.

An envelope in the corner told her she had a new message – three, when she checked. The first two she recognised as coming from DI Fleming; the other number was unfamiliar. Marnie hesitated.

Get the worst over first. She opened the top one on the list, which was simply a repeat of the message she’d accessed this morning. She deleted it and her finger was poised to delete the next one too when it occurred to her that it might be worth checking.

‘I urge immediate contact. More info about your mother now available.’

Marnie was totally taken aback. She read it again, with a sense of disbelief. She had begun to feel as if there was a sort of conspiracy of silence to frustrate her at every turn. Was it possible that just when she had given up all hope this, at last, was real progress?

Or was it a trap? She’d read in the papers that criminals were
sometimes invited to some attractive event, simply so that they could be rounded up and arrested. Could she trust Fleming?

The only lie she was sure Fleming had told her was the social one about her mother’s character, a lie to soften a harsh opinion. But perhaps she had been clever enough to hide others.

The soup hissed up to the top of the pan and she had to grab it to stop it boiling over. She filled the mug and sat with her hands wrapped round it while she struggled with her thoughts.

There was still the other message. That was unexpected too.

It was from DC Hepburn, the young policewoman who’d talked to her first, and then come to take a statement after the Tuesday night horror. She’d seemed sympathetic, Marnie had thought at the time, but in a general, fairly pointless way.

The message read, ‘There’s something you need to know. Shouldn’t tell you but very important. Please – call me!’

She didn’t know what to make of that.

DC Hepburn fell asleep again on the way back. When she woke with a start the car was drawing up outside her house in Stranraer and DS MacNee was looking at her sternly.

‘I’m dropping you off here. You can get a lift back to Kirkluce tomorrow to fetch your car with one of the patrols but I don’t trust you to drive tonight.

‘You’re overdoing it, Louise. Being a young hell-raiser’s all fine and good – I was a wee bit of an expert myself – but you’ve a job to do and if you’re tired like that you’re not fit to do it.’

Still fuddled with sleep, Hepburn again had to fight back tears of exhaustion. ‘I wasn’t partying,’ she said defensively. ‘I just didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all.’

MacNee’s expression changed and his voice was gentle as he said, ‘Got a problem, hen?’

The longing to tell, to talk, almost overwhelmed her but exposing
her poor, confused mother would feel like betrayal. ‘Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t put right,’ she lied and saw in his face that he knew she had.

‘Louise—’ he began, but was interrupted by her phone ringing.

She glanced at it and recognised the number with a little frisson of excitement. She could hardly take this one in front of her sergeant. She switched it off, saying, ‘I’ll take it later,’ as she unbuckled her seat belt.

‘Thanks, Tam, it was kind of you to bring me back. I’ll get my head down really early, I promise.’

She was out of the car before he could reply, though she saw him give a suspicious look at her abrupt exit.

The house was completely dark. When she went in and started switching on lights, there was no sign of her mother downstairs. There was no sign, either, of the elaborate preparations for dinner she would normally be making at this time of day.

In bed, then? Louise climbed the stairs slowly, as if the burden of care and responsibility were physically bearing down on her, and quietly opened the door of her mother’s bedroom.

Graceful even in sleep, Fleur was wearing an eau de Nil silk nightgown, lying on her side with her cheek pillowed in her hand like a child. Wisps of hair that had escaped from the loose rope of hair she knotted at night framed her face.

It was a touching picture but Louise didn’t smile. Fleur had, of course, had a disturbed night too, but when she felt tired she had been able simply to put on her nightgown and go to bed – unlike some other people. And how long had she been asleep? Probably hours by now. She’d wake up quite sure it was morning, prepare breakfast and then come and wake Louise yet again in the middle of the night.

Oh, she was so, so tired! Every bit of her ached with exhaustion and if she didn’t get the proper night’s sleep she’d promised Tam she would, it would be even worse tomorrow.

Louise glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock. She could grab a quick sandwich and fall into bed to snatch whatever sleep she could before her mother woke up.

Not before she phoned Marnie Bruce though.

After the call from DC Hepburn Marnie took her hot-water bottle, picked up the camping lamp and went through to her bedroom. In a sort of daze she slipped off her outer clothing, put on a thick soft woolly and socks and climbed into her sleeping bag with a blanket over the top. She cuddled down, trying to restore feeling to her icy hands and feet, hoping the warmth might have an effect on her numbed brain too.

DC Hepburn had sounded both excited and nervous. ‘Marnie, thank you so much for agreeing to hear what I have to tell you. First of all, I need you to know that I want to help you.’

Marnie wasn’t sure if she wanted to be helped by DC Hepburn. ‘Oh?’

‘I know, I know, it’s what the police always say. But I really mean it. I believe in justice and I don’t believe you’ve had that.’

She was right there, but Marnie wasn’t interested in the discussion of abstract principles. ‘You said you had something to tell me.’

‘Yes …’ There was a pause, as if Hepburn was wondering whether to go on. ‘The thing is, if my bosses discovered I’d told you, my job would be on the line. I’m not saying you have to promise not to tell anyone before I give you the information, I’m just explaining so that you know what the result would be if you did.’

‘I … see.’ The woman was a fool, that was her problem.

‘I’m taking a big risk to persuade you to come to the police station and talk to us. It will be so, so much worse for you if we have to start looking. Do you see that?’

‘I think so.’ This was scaring her; Marnie felt like some small creature desperately snuffing at the air to sense the direction danger was coming from.

‘You know that Anita Loudon is dead – murdered?’

Marnie said nothing and Hepburn went on, ‘The reason they’re so anxious to see you is that she made a will leaving everything to you.’

‘
What?
’ She didn’t know why she said that; she’d heard perfectly clearly. It was just she couldn’t connect the words up to any sort of meaning.

Hepburn repeated it more slowly. Then she said, ‘You see, if you just disappear they’ll track you down. Your name and description will be circulated to every police force in the country and it’ll be all over the media. Sooner or later they’ll find you and until then you’ll be afraid all the time, waiting for the knock on the door that will come one day. It’s no sort of life, Marnie.

‘I don’t believe you killed Anita – it just doesn’t add up. But because of her will, if you don’t give us your version of what happened, it could easily be assumed that you did. So will you please, please come and see DI Fleming tomorrow?’

Marnie wasn’t going to be bounced into anything while she was still suffering from shock. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Then she said, ‘What is it Inspector Fleming’s going to tell me about my mother?’

The line went quiet. Then Hepburn said, ‘She’s been in touch about that, has she? I think I’d better leave that to her. But it’s another good reason for coming in, Marnie, I promise.’

‘I suppose so,’ Marnie had said, then switched off the phone without saying goodbye.

Now as she lay in bed huddled down in the sleeping bag with the extra blanket pulled up over her ears, she tried to think through what had happened. Why would Anita have left everything to someone she’d known only briefly as a child? It made no sense.

Unless … unless – guilt? Was this a sort of pay-off for some unknown injury? Was Fleming going to tell her tomorrow that Anita had left a confession that she killed Marnie’s mother – and if so, how long would it be before she brought out the handcuffs and charged Marnie with a revenge killing?

She’d told herself that no one knew where she was, that she could vanish without a trace – but not once the police really started looking for her. She had nowhere to run to.

The wind was getting up. The trees outside the window were starting to sway with a low, keening sound, casting shifting shadows across the room. Sick with worry, she lay curled in the foetal position willing sleep to come to her. Then it would be tomorrow and she would have the misery of the night behind her. She’d rather deal with the demons of the day than the demons of darkness.

Louise Hepburn woke suddenly. She had no idea how long she had been asleep or what it was that had wakened her but she sat up in bed.

It was a windy night. She could hear the roaring of waves breaking on the shore just across the road and she could feel, too, a powerful draught sweeping in through her open bedroom door. That must have been what roused her.

Alarmed, she jumped out of bed. Had her mother opened a window somewhere? The rain would come pouring in on a night like this. Shoving her feet into slippers she went out onto the landing.

Not a window. The wind was blowing up the stairs from the open front door. Oh God! Fleur must have got up and gone out – on a night like this! In a flimsy nightie she could be hypothermic in minutes. And how long had she been gone? Louise had no way of knowing and she was feeling panicky as she grabbed a dressing gown and sped downstairs.

She ran out into the garden, looking wildly about her. She was soaked through before she reached the front gate and looking up and down the street she couldn’t see her mother. Cars were driving past but with the waves breaking right over the farther pavement there was, unsurprisingly, no one out on foot that she could ask.

Could Fleur have wandered across the road onto the shore, been swept away? With a sob in her throat, Louise ran across to look helplessly at the heaving waters of the loch. What was she to do?

She turned back and there coming along the street towards her was her mother, dressed in the yellow oilskin and sou’wester that was her customary wet-weather gear, along with stylish floral Wellingtons. She was carrying an empty shopping basket and as she neared Louise she broke into a trot, exclaiming in horror.

‘Louise! My little one, what are you doing? You are soaked to the skin – what are you thinking about? Get inside at once and change out of these wet things while I make you a
tisane
so you don’t catch your death of cold.’

Struck dumb, Louise allowed herself to be scolded and chivvied back inside. When at last she got a chance to speak, she said, ‘What were you doing out anyway,
Maman
?’

Fleur’s face clouded. ‘I just went along to the shops, but I think it must be a holiday. They were all shut.’

‘Mmm.’ As her mother went through to the kitchen, Louise locked the door and put the key in her pocket. ‘Don’t worry about the
tisane
. I’ll just have a hot bath and go back to bed. I don’t need to be in early so I’ll have a bit of a lie-in, all right? Don’t wake me.’

‘That’s a good idea. You work too hard.’

Fleur went through to the kitchen – to do what? Louise wondered wearily as she ran her bath. Have breakfast? Lunch? This couldn’t go on. She’d been trying to pretend it was just temporary confusion, but now she’d have to call in the doctor.

During the day Fleur would be safe enough. She wasn’t in the habit of going very far – she’d never learnt to drive so it would just be into the town or along the shore for a walk, perhaps, and if she mixed up morning and afternoon it wouldn’t matter.

But the nights were the problem: Louise was terrified now that next time Fleur really would go out in her nightclothes. She could lock the doors, but if her mother was determined to get out she might climb out of a window and hurt herself that way.