Bad Blood (21 page)

She opened the door to the hall. The front of the house was lit up, by the headlights, presumably. Who—?

Marnie wasn’t going to wait to find out. She tiptoed through to the kitchen, leaving the door open so that she could see to find her handbag and the key. It grated in the lock as she turned it, wincing at the sound. As she opened the door, she could smell a heavy, sickly stench on the bitter air. Petrol!

She flung herself out of the house, her clenched knuckle in her mouth to stifle a scream of terror. There was a path down to the loch here at the back – where was it? Where was it?

In the light from the headlights she spotted the gap in the trees. The sagging wire of the boundary fence tripped her and sent her sprawling; she scrambled up, knees bruised and her breath rasping in her throat.

The path was overgrown and brambles snatched at her clothes as she fled, unnoticing, down it. She could see the shimmer of the water ahead but it was all she could see; behind her it was so dark, so dark – someone might already have heard her escape and be following stealthily behind.

Marnie had just reached the shore path when the whole world blew up. She couldn’t stifle the scream this time, but it was covered by the noise of the explosion and the roar of a fire.

Staring back through the trees, Marnie could see that where the cottage had stood with its old, dried-out wooden structure, there was nothing except a fireball of red, orange and yellow flames.

There was a wind blowing now, heralding a weather-change. As Marnie stood, still transfixed, she saw a tree take fire, and then another, the resinous pine prime for burning. The path she had only just left was engulfed a moment later.

She would be safe by the shore, protected by the concrete area where her car was parked. She could get into it, drive away – but what if he was waiting for her there?

Someone had meant to kill her. If he had realised she’d escaped, he’d be looking for her, hunting down his prey. She had to hide, away from the pines and the spreading flames, down by the loch side where there was only wet grass.

The broch! She could see its roof in the lurid light and in blind panic she scurried to it like some small, threatened forest creature going to ground. Feeling her legs give way, she slumped down onto the wooden bench that ran round the stone walls.

The smoke was billowing across now, but inside the familiar smell of damp earth triggered the memory.

‘Quick, quick,’ Gemma hisses. ‘He’s coming, he’s coming!’ She gives a little squeal of delighted terror as they dash into the broch. They clutch each other as they cower at the back, listening for the footsteps.

She says, ‘They’re getting closer!’ and Gemma mutters, ‘What if he comes in? What’ll we do?’ They’re both covering their heads with their hands, as if that makes them invisible.

She found she was covering her head now, putting it down on her knees and wrapping her arms round herself as if huddling into a smaller space would make her safer. She was listening for the footsteps on the path but now all she could hear was the roar and crackle of the flames. The pungent smoke was getting heavier now, tainting the air; she had to cough, she had to, no matter how she tried to stifle the sound. Her eyes were starting to stream too. Soon she would be forced to leave her refuge or suffocate; he was smoking her out.

Air became more important than concealment. Choking, wheezing, she emerged, looking fearfully about her.

There was no one to be seen on the path, but the rising wind was whipping sparks and small burning branches from the trees onto it. Before long one of the trees would fall. Marnie had to take the risk, now.

The melting frost sizzled and spat as the flames licked at the frozen grass by the side of the path. She tried to dodge the sparks, but the smell of frizzling hair told her she had failed and she beat at it frantically as she ran towards the car park, coughing till she retched.

But there it was – and as she reached the edge there was the sound of sirens and a moment later the glorious sight of flashing blue lights.

Marjory Fleming waited until first light to go out to feed the hens. Even for the sake of making sure they would be in plenty of time for the Scotland Under-20 international against a touring Samoan team, she wasn’t going to risk giving the fox that lurked around at dusk
and dawn a free feast. The hens, though, were slow to rouse on this cold, wet, windy morning and she muttered at them impatiently. They muttered back.

At least the weather should give the Scottish team an advantage over lads used to tropical warmth. Level playing field – pah! All she wanted was for Scotland to win – though, to be honest, if Scotland lost but Cammie played brilliantly and scored a try, she’d settle for that.

Bill was presiding over the fry-up when she got back and Cat, back for the weekend, was putting the coffee mugs down on the table as she padded in on her stocking soles. She gave her mother a cynical glance.

‘Well, what do you suppose the odds are against you actually making it to see your son play and not being called back to do something massively, frighteningly important that only you can do?’

Her father made an exasperated sound, but Marjory said calmly, ‘Very low, in fact.’ Her mobile was lying on the dresser; she picked it up and demonstrated that it was switched off.

‘See?’ She pulled a face at her daughter. ‘I’ve told Tam that I can’t be reached today.’

‘That’s something,’ Cat admitted. ‘You mean, it might be like being a real, normal family when we can look forward to us all going together to do something?’

‘Absolutely.’ Her daughter might be a pain in the neck but in the barbed remark Marjory could hear the echo of past disappointments and hurt. And at least it showed that whatever she might say, having her mother there still mattered.

They left the house just after eight for a twelve-thirty kick-off at Murrayfield.

Without hold-ups, it should leave them enough time to get the car parked, find their seats and savour the atmosphere before it started.

Bill was fussing. ‘I hope we’ve left enough time. You know
what parking’s like in Edinburgh and the official car park’s just extortionate.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ Marjory said. ‘You don’t get a huge turnout for a junior international.’

‘If we get held up you can always put on your flashing blue light,’ Cat said.

‘You think?’ Marjory said dryly. ‘We’ll be in plenty of time.’

As they reached the motorway, the car fell silent. Glancing in the mirror Marjory saw that Cat had plugged herself into her iPod and Bill, bless his heart, was sound asleep. He was absolutely exhausted these days; thank goodness Rafael’s ankle was better and Cammie too would be home much of the time. She’d have to see to it that Bill didn’t overdo it for the next bit.

She quite welcomed the thought of a long, silent drive. It was ideal for thinking, when there would be no distractions and she felt at the moment that she still hadn’t got a proper handle on the case. Perhaps the forensic evidence would clear the fog that surrounded it at the moment, but it would do her good to review what she had already and see if that led her to something she hadn’t thought of so far.

There was no doubt in her mind that Marnie’s arrival had been the catalyst for Anita’s murder. Perhaps it really was as straightforward as it looked on the face of it: one of Tommy Crichton’s grieving parents couldn’t forgive her for allowing Kirstie’s daughter to come back to spy on the fortieth anniversary and with Kirstie unreachable had taken vengeance on Anita instead. Putting the body in that telltale position might have been something psychologically necessary – or it could have been some sort of double bluff.

Grant Crichton had an alibi that looked shaky; Shelley had none at all. Fleming had no difficulty in believing that both could have found enough hatred in their hearts to justify what they had done, separately – or even together?

But then there was Daniel Lee. She thought back to her interview
with him: his manipulative charm, his sudden white-hot rage, only just controlled. Certainly a dangerous man, even an evil man. It wasn’t a word she often used; most people who killed were uncontrolled, damaged or frightened. Where Lee was concerned, she could believe he would act with cold-blooded enjoyment.

What was his background, she wondered suddenly? He had been at primary school in Dunmore; Marnie had known him as a friend of her mother’s. Then suddenly, here he was with a lucrative business – where had the money for a prosperous nightclub in Glasgow come from? That could be the key to the whole thing.

Morrison was in the mix somewhere. There was a lot going on there too, obviously; if she knew how the consortium had come about the picture might become clearer but approaching them right at this moment would risk jeopardising Nick Alexander’s operation.

She could only hope that the swoop he had talked about would come sooner rather than later. Rowley was getting extremely restive, even though Fleming had patiently spelt out that unless you had direct witness evidence you had nowhere to go until the lab reports came through – always supposing there was anything conclusive after that.

It was intensely frustrating. She would have to wait to try to find out what she wanted to know about Drax’s background …

Oh no, she wouldn’t. Marnie Bruce had known Lee as a friend of her mother’s and with her perfect recall she could repeat every conversation she had ever heard between her mother and Drax, as she called him.

The interviews with Marnie had all been about the present, even though the questions Marnie was asking had all been about what had happened to her mother in the past, questions that Fleming now realised she herself had dismissed as being unanswerable. Marnie could be a treasure trove of information about Drax’s past.

And with the thought, she felt a cold shiver down her spine. If she
knew that, Daniel Lee – and others – knew that too. If information locked in Marnie’s brain was dangerous, she was only safe as long as no one knew where she was.

Marnie Bruce was asleep in a corner of one of the waiting rooms when DS MacNee came on duty in the morning. She looked very vulnerable, still clutching a silver survival blanket round her though the room was warm, and there were smears of dirt and soot on her pale face. A frizzled patch of her red-gold hair showed what a narrow escape she’d had.

The woman PC who had been sitting with her got up and tiptoed to the door. ‘She’s only just dropped off, poor thing,’ she whispered. ‘Do you have to wake her?’

MacNee beckoned her outside. ‘What’s she been able to tell us?’

The constable shook her head. ‘Nothing much, Sarge. She was too shocked to make a lot of sense at first, and when we got her calmed down she could only tell us that she’d wakened and seen a car outside. The cottage has been abandoned for years and as far as we could make out she’s been squatting – said she’d lived there once – so maybe she was just scared it was the owner. Anyway it was lucky she got out.’

MacNee nodded. ‘Right enough. Molotov cocktail?’

‘Not official yet, but they think so. The noise woke the people in the nearby cottage and they got the emergency services but they didn’t see anything, like a suspicious car leaving the scene.’

‘There’s always occasional cars along the Queen’s Way even at three in the morning,’ MacNee said gloomily. He glanced back through the doorway. ‘Stay with her, let me know when she wakens up, OK?’

He went back to the CID room, glancing at his watch. Someone had tried to kill Marnie Bruce, and damn nearly succeeded. The boss needed to know about this but she’d told him she’d be incommunicado until after Cammie’s game was over. He couldn’t blame her: she
deserved to share in her boy’s moment of glory. If he’d had a son representing his country—

The old grief took him unexpectedly by the throat. His wife Bunty had cared more that there were no children, certainly, but he’d had his dreams too: a MacNee striker in the Rangers team. There would never be one, and now it didn’t even look as if there’d be a Rangers team either.

Louise Hepburn got up on Saturday morning feeling ever so slightly smug. The new regime was working: she’d insisted her mother went to bed when she did, and provided they got up at the same time, the natural need for sleep ought to do the rest. She’d brought what was, very probably, professionally inappropriate pressure to bear on Jimmy, the proprietor of a local security installation firm that got quite a lot of police business, and he’d installed a makeshift alarm on windows and doors so she’d been able to have a sound night’s sleep. If Fleur was seized with an ambition to go on a midnight ramble she’d know all about it.

She wasn’t due in at work today after all. With budgets tight, they weren’t going to draft in extra manpower if things had stalled, as they seemed to have for the moment. She was in her dressing gown, warming up croissants and roasting coffee beans – the smell was a sure-fire way of seeing to it that Fleur didn’t sneak back to bed – when the doorbell rang.

Louise frowned. Who would it be at ten o’clock on a Saturday? If it was work, they’d phone or text.

It wasn’t. It was Lintie, a kindly middle-aged neighbour whom Louise had known all her life. She was wearing an anxious frown which cleared when she saw Louise.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you this early, pet, but I know you work on Saturday sometimes and I was afraid you’d maybe be gone if I left it any later. Can I have a wee word?’

‘Yes, of course, come in. I’m through in the kitchen and I’m just going to put the coffee on. Mum’ll be down in a minute.’

Lintie hesitated. ‘It was just you, really,’ she said awkwardly.

Louise’s heart suddenly sank. ‘What’s wrong, Lintie?’

‘It’s Fleur, dear. When you’re out at work, she’s stravaiging all over the place, just wandering around. She doesn’t seem to know where she is, if you speak to her. Is there a problem?’

Louise felt sick. ‘She’s … she’s just a bit confused. She never quite seemed to get over Dad’s death, you know? I’m hoping with me living here now and able to keep an eye, you know, she’ll get back to normal, given time.’

‘You’re a good lassie, Louise. But I wonder if you should maybe make some more arrangements before she comes to harm? Just till she gets better, you know?’

She shrank from the kindly pity in the woman’s face. ‘That’s … that’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Could you possibly keep an eye out for her meantime?’

‘Of course I will, pet. There’s a few of us been worried and we’ll all do what we can, but it’s difficult when she can’t speak the language.’

Louise managed not to cry until Lintie had left but back in the kitchen, with the coffee making the friendly, familiar sound as it percolated, the tears came. Carers were hard to find anyway, and where could she find one who could speak French? Someone who didn’t might stand in temporarily but her mother would find it even more confusing and it couldn’t go on for ever.

She knew what that meant: she knew the duty of an unmarried only daughter and love came into it as well as duty. But give up the job she adored, abandon the dream career with all its interest and challenge to spend her life cooped up in the house here with a mother whose decline was inevitable but – and she hated herself for even thinking of it – whose general health was excellent.

She heard Fleur’s footsteps in the hall. She came in, immaculate as
always in a camel skirt and a cream silk shirt with a few gold chains round her neck and a camel cashmere cardigan round her shoulders.