Black Widow (49 page)

Maybe she was one of those misapprehending gold-diggers, and had married Peter for money he didn't have; or maybe Peter had married her because he thought the idea of becoming a husband and prospective father would soften Sir Hamish's position on sharing out the family fortune; and maybe neither of these things was true. But at some point, finding her route to the Elphinstone fortune was barred, Lang had come up with a new way of making Peter her golden ticket.

Parlabane sat in the reception area inside New Register House, sipping a large coffee to fend off the fatigue that was starting to catch up with him after his overnight endeavours. He had stopped off briefly at the flat to freshen up, then headed straight out so that he'd be here as soon as the place opened.

He was thinking about Sarah. It was unavoidable. Like so many locations in this city, he knew this one would always bring her to mind, even if he merely saw the address written down. She had once told him that physicians got patients to say the words ‘West Register Street' when they were checking for speech disorders.

He was waiting for one of the staff to come back with information: an old contact of his who had worked there for decades. Archie Cairnduff had proven both a useful and easy person to cultivate as an ally. He was a man who liked to talk, perhaps because he spent the rest of his time among the silence of records and documents. He liked a dram too, and Parlabane had bought him a few over the years next door at the Café Royal, back in the days when the
Saltire
newspaper offices were a short walk away on North Bridge.

New Register House hosted the national register of births, marriages and deaths. Parlabane had gone there in search of confirmation that Peter Elphinstone had once been married, however briefly, to Courtney Jean Lang. As he sat on a plastic chair, looking at the closed door beyond which Archie was searching, he thought of how his own marriage was recorded in this building somewhere, and wondered whether in here at least it still survived, waiting for the fatal update that would wipe it out.

He now understood that marriage itself could have its own birth and death. Dead marriages. Dead souls.

Parlabane allowed himself a wry smile. In the unfinished Gogol book of that name, the title referred to dead peasants. KEI, it turned out, was alternatively referred to as ‘dead peasant insurance'.

It reminded him that what he had discovered overnight meant even though Sarah was always going to creep into his thoughts from time to time, right now he had reason to look forward with hope, rather than only back with regret.

Lucy.

He could make this work, he was sure. He wasn't going to tell her until he had harder proof, but it would surely change things between them were Parlabane to be the one who delivered some kind of justice for herself and her brother. Much as he hated the term, he realised that what Lucy was looking for from this horrible mess was closure: she came to him with the suspicion that Peter had been the victim of something callous and underhand, and Parlabane would finally be able to offer her vindication, as well as binding answers. What comfort she might take from that remained to be seen, though it had to be better than the hollow void of not knowing, the state she was in when he first encountered her.

As these thoughts passed through his mind, it suddenly struck Parlabane to wonder why Lucy never said that Peter had been married before. In all those concerned conversations about what a vulnerable person he was, and how problematic some of his relationships had been, she had never mentioned that Diana was not his first wife.

Had he got this wrong after all? Maybe there had been no marriage, and Peter's relationship with Lang had been a secret from everybody. But if that was the case, it would be a hell of a coincidence if his sister happened to recruit her as a silent partner in his ostensibly grand venture.

Lucy told Parlabane that she had procured the investors in MTE. That made sense with regard to Finnegan, whom she had previously worked with, but she admitted she knew almost nothing about Courtney Jean Lang. They had never met, in fact: Lucy had got in touch via a friend of a friend.

For some reason Cecily flashed into his mind, that out-of-focus possibility he couldn't quite comprehend. Their families were close since they were children: the three of them went back decades. He recalled Lucy suggesting there was something going on behind the scenes between Cecily and Peter.

Courtney Jean Lang had blog posts and a Facebook page but there were no pictures of this woman on her profiles.

Courtney. Cecily.

Could it be? Jager had mentioned she wore Blackberry and Bay, the scent he had smelled on his business card, the same scent Peter had given his wife as a Christmas present. But Cecily was marrying Sir Hamish. He still couldn't see how it fitted.

‘Jack, this is mission control, come in.'

Parlabane snapped back to earth, wondering how many times Archie had already tried to get his attention. He climbed to his feet and approached the reception desk. From Archie's expression he could already tell he'd come up negative.

‘It was definitely
Peter
Elphinstone you wanted to know about?'

‘Yes. How come?'

‘Because it was his sister who had a short-lived marriage. Petronella Lucille. Married six years ago and annulled shortly after by mutual consent.'

‘Annulled? Why?'

Archie shook his head and gave him a strained look.

‘I'm not permitted to say.'

‘What if you accidentally left the document lying around while you were answering the phone and I just happened to catch a glimpse?'

‘Seriously, Jack, no. You can't ask me this.'

Parlabane shrugged. He understood, and he wasn't going to ask Archie to cross a line for him, even if he thought there was a chance he'd say yes.

‘Can you tell me who the guy was, at least?'

Archie smiled.

‘That much I can do.'

The Abbey View bar sat on the main road into Melrose, opposite the rugby ground. It was an unpretentious place, the kind of pub that had its own kind of elegance about the fittings and the furniture, but from which you'd probably get barred for describing any of it as ‘an aesthetic'. Parlabane found it comfortingly old-fashioned, and he was in need of a bit of comfort right then.

It was lunchtime by the time he had driven down from Edinburgh. He didn't have much of an appetite but he knew he ought to eat. He hadn't slept in about thirty hours, and if he added hypoglycaemia to the mix he would be too cranky to engage anyone in fruitful conversation. He ordered a burger and a pint of a local brew called Dark Horse.

‘Is Gordon Holman around?'

The barmaid was an attractive woman in her forties with a plummy accent that made Parlabane picture her in a riding helmet and jodhpurs.

She glanced at the clock.

‘He's usually in about half past one.'

‘How long has he had the place, do you know?'

She looked up, calculating, then seemed surprised at her own answer.

‘Must be six years. I'd have thought less, but it's six years sure enough. Where does the time go?'

Six years. That was about right.

Parlabane took his pint across to a table by the window. From the pub's stereo, he heard the military cadence and tinkling piano that comprised the first bars of a song by Augustines, entitled ‘Headlong Into the Abyss'.

No kidding.

He had been venturing deeper down the rabbit-hole with every step, and it kept getting darker and more labyrinthine. Since learning Peter definitely hadn't been married before, he was now convinced that it had been Cecily Greysham-Ellis who was in his flat that night, and that Sir Hamish had been alluding to Liz Miller after all when Diana overheard him on the phone. His scorn at an unsuitable fiancée might be about to prove ironic in a very costly way.

He recalled what Lucy said when they first talked about Cecily.

Just because you come from money doesn't mean you're not a gold-digger. In fact, wouldn't appearing to be uninterested in money be the perfect cover for a gold-digger?

If his fiancée turned out to have a double identity, Sir Hamish might be in for a nasty surprise: or worse, because if Cecily was also Courtney, then it was possible she was going to end up with not only the insurance payout, but the family inheritance too. For that to happen, Peter wouldn't be the only Elphinstone to meet with a tragic demise shortly after getting married.

To get to the bottom of this, and quite possibly to save the life of its ennobled head, Parlabane needed to find out more about this vastly wealthy but utterly dysfunctional family. Finding Lucy's ex-husband seemed the obvious place to start. He just couldn't bring himself to ask Lucy about this herself, because he'd have to tell her why, and he wasn't ready to do that yet.

Parlabane clocked Gordon Holman for the man he was searching for the second he came through the door, even before he made his way behind the bar. He looked about Parlabane's age, something of the veteran rock fan about him. He was wearing biker-style boots, black jeans and a Mogwai T-shirt. He guessed it was Holman's iPod feeding the hi-fi.

Parlabane approached the bar, bringing his empty plate as a helpful gesture.

‘Gordon Holman?'

‘Aye?'

An uncertain smile indicated curiosity rather than suspicion.

‘My name is Jack Parlabane. I'm a journalist. I need to talk to you about Lucy Elphinstone.'

Holman took a slight step back from the bar, stiffening.

‘That's not something I'm prepared to discuss.'

‘It would be off the record, I only—'

‘On or off the record, I'm not prepared to talk about that area of my life. Now, can I help you with anything else? A refill.'

He was keeping his tone polite, but the politeness itself sounded like a warning to back off. Parlabane had never been good at heeding such warnings.

‘Did you see what happened to Peter Elphinstone?'

‘Sure. Now they're saying his wife bumped him off.'

‘I think she's being set up. I'm trying to stop an innocent woman from going to jail. If there's anything you know…'

‘I've told you twice already. I won't tell you again.'

Parlabane did a quick calculation.

‘You bought this place six years ago, right? You got hush money, didn't you?'

Holman's expression turned grim and he put down the glass he had been drying.

‘I want you out of here right now. If you don't leave at once, I'm calling the police.'

That was as much of an answer as Parlabane was going to get: even admitting a confidentiality agreement existed would put the guy in violation of it. He raised his hands and backed out of the door.

Parlabane went for a slow walk around Melrose Abbey and then sought out the tranquillity of Harmony Garden across the road, finding a quiet spot to sit for a while despite the cold. He wanted space to think, and after downing a pint he had to kill some time before he could get behind the wheel again, especially running on so little sleep. Maybe all he needed was some proper kip, and after that he'd be able to see whatever he was missing.

Lucy's ex wasn't going to allow him an easy route into the murky depths of the Elphinstone family history; or rather, it was more likely Sir Hamish's deep pockets were barring the doors. But maybe he should be taking the more direct route. After all, it was Cecily who had blocked off Parlabane's access to her intended; and not, he suspected, in order to protect him.

He felt a vibration against his chest and pulled out his phone. It was a text from Buzzkill.

Necronimous just showed up in Calastria.

Parlabane spent a bleary moment reminding himself what Buzzkill was referring to, then endured a further, vertiginous few seconds as he came to realise what this meant. He was grateful he was sitting down.

‘You have got to be kidding me,' he said aloud, staring incredulously at the handset.

Necronimous was Peter Elphinstone's in-game character, a unique online identity to whom only he had the login details.

The fucker was still alive.

With a single line of text on his phone it was as though Buzzkill had typed in a code and simply decrypted the chaos of which he had spent so long trying to make sense. It suddenly resolved itself into a clear picture, utterly unrecognisable from what he had been looking at moments before.

Elphinstone's BMW had ended up at the bottom of the river not to frame Diana Jager for a murder she didn't commit, but to frame her for a murder that never took place. The fly bastard was planning to cash in on his own life insurance policy.

This hadn't been cooked up between Lang and Finnegan: it had been cooked up between Lang and Elphinstone, with Finnegan merely a backer. As Peter wasn't among the named policy holders, he would need to have absolute trust in one of his partners in order to get his share of the money, and that was never going to be a Glasgow drug dealer. It made sense then that his collaborator would be someone with whom he had been secretly in a relationship going back years, possibly decades. They may never have been married, but these clandestine lovers had cooked up a way to get rich and give themselves the lifestyle they wanted.

Now Parlabane understood where Liz Miller fitted into the bigger picture: she had been earmarked as the original candidate to take the fall for a non-existent killing. These conspirators had clearly been working on this for a long time. A couple of years back, Elphinstone had set about wooing a woman who already had a conviction for the attempted murder of her partner. This would have made her the perfect mark, but Miller bailed when she thought things were moving too fast. Things had moved pretty fast the second time too, when Elphinstone embarked upon a whirlwind romance with someone else who had shadows of death and vengeance looming ominously over her past.