Cradle to Grave (49 page)

The normality, after her crazy imaginings, left her laughing weakly. ‘It’s probably not the time, the middle of the night, when we’ve both to be up early, but I really do need to talk.’

A certain wariness came over Bill’s face. ‘If you’re going to talk about us, I don’t care how long it takes to sort things out. If you’ve work problems to talk through, frankly, you’d deal with them better after a night’s rest, and so would I.’

‘It’s only partly work. It’s mainly about Joss Hepburn.’

‘Then I’m all ears.’ Bill spoke lightly, but his face was grave.

‘It’s just – I’m going to draw the curtains before I put on the light.’ Marjory went across to the window.

The silent yard was empty under the lights – of course it was! She heard a sheep bleat from the lower field, then another echo it, but these were perfectly normal night sounds. She pulled the curtains across and switched the lights back on. The kitchen was homely and safe again, the threatening world of darkness and lurid imaginings banished outside.

‘That’s better,’ she said.

Her husband raised his eyebrows at her, but didn’t ask why. ‘More toast?’

Marjory shook her head and sat down. ‘Joss. It’s difficult.’

Bill went on with what he was doing, but she could sense his tension.

‘I hate getting old and boring, you know that?’ she said. ‘Perhaps we all see our adult selves as being clothes we put on for a marathon fancy-dress party, but underneath we’re still – what, nineteen?’

Bill sat down with his toast. ‘Twenty-five. Able to play a useful game of rugby, sink half-a-dozen pints and be bright-eyed for the sheep-round in the morning.’

‘Nineteen for me. Nineteen, and still thinking I could break all the rules because I was immortal and nothing could go wrong. I knew what Joss was even then, really, but bad was glamorous – bad was cool.’

‘I think a lot of people see it that way.’ Bill’s tone was dry.

‘I know. And I suppose I did still see him as glamorous even now. He has charm by the bucketload.’ Marjory stole an anxious glance at Bill, but he said nothing. ‘He applied that charm when we met again. And I was flattered that he still felt I was worth the trouble, even though I was in a professional position and that made it very awkward.

‘I wanted, I think, to believe he was still “bad” in the old, fun sense – daring, crazy, edgy, not overly concerned about breaking a few of the laws the young agree are self-evidently silly. But, Bill, he’s not. He’s ugly bad. I was completely wrong. There, I’ve said it. And if you say, “I told you so,” the conversation stops here.’ She half meant it.

‘I don’t need to.’

Marjory smiled, but she wasn’t sure it was meant to be a joke. She couldn’t read his expression, but she’d come this far; she had to go on. ‘I thought the business Crozier was running at Rosscarron House was suspect – and I was right, though I’m not going to go into details. Joss knew what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell me, and in the end he tried to blackmail me.’

That startled Bill. ‘Blackmail?’

‘If I wouldn’t stop asking questions about the business, everything he could think of dating back to our relationship would go to the gutter press. You can imagine . . .’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said heavily, ‘I can imagine.’

Marjory was struck with shame. She had thought about how it would affect her career and her marriage, but not how Bill would feel at having his friends read about his wife’s youthful misdemeanours, courtesy of the
Sun
. ‘Sorry,’ she said inadequately. ‘It may be bluff – it may never happen.’

Bill sighed. ‘It’s as well to know the worst.’

‘There’s something else.’ At the look on his face, she said hastily, ‘No, no, it’s different. It’s just – well, a Glasgow hitman’s been seen in the area. We’ve no idea who the target is, but it’s all linked to Crozier’s business, and the last time I saw Hepburn he warned me, very seriously, to think again about pursuing my enquiries.’

‘
What!
You mean that bastard’s taken out a contract on you?’ At Bill’s roar of rage Meg started awake once more.

From the look of fear she’d seen in Joss’s eyes, Marjory didn’t think so, but she wasn’t about to argue his cause. ‘I’m probably reading far too much into what he said. It’s highly unlikely that it’s anything to do with me, and I’m not taking it too seriously.’

‘Of course not. You’re just closing curtains you haven’t closed since they were put up, and screaming when I come into the room.’

‘I have an overactive imagination.’

‘So do I. If my wife’s in any danger, I’m downright paranoid. I want her properly protected. What’s being done about it?’

‘Nothing, at the moment, until we see more clearly what’s going on.’

Bill had his stubborn face on. ‘You mean like someone takes a pot shot at you? Better hope they miss.’

‘To be honest, I wouldn’t feel any safer with some poor guy detailed to trail around after me. If I’m going out, I won’t be out alone. And I won’t go into any dark alleyways, and I’ll make sure there isn’t a car following me.’ She felt braver as she said it, but as Bill still looked sceptical, she added, ‘Anyway, over the next twenty-four hours or so the investigation’s being opened up and it’s going to be obvious that taking me out won’t solve their problem. And dead police officers spell serious trouble.’

Marjory found she was yawning. ‘Look, it’s dreadfully late. We’ve got to get some sleep or we’ll be pulp in the morning.’

‘Fine.’ Bill collected up the plates and mugs, and put them in the sink. Marjory glanced at his back, still unsure how things stood between them, but as she went to the door, he came to put his arm round her and turned her to face him. ‘Be careful, Marjory. You’re precious.’

She put up her face to be kissed. ‘I will. And I love you too.’

As they went upstairs, the details she hadn’t shared about her odd encounters with Joss Hepburn were on her mind, but however much she might believe in full disclosure in a professional sense, she felt strongly that in personal life you could simply give too much information. Oh, Bill wasn’t a fool. He knew there were things she hadn’t said and there was still constraint between them, which couldn’t dissolve instantly, but at least they were on the way.

Cursing, the man stumbled down the farm track in the dark, sheep bleating as he passed, making what speed he could as he headed for the car he had parked down on the main road. It had looked like all his Christmases had come at once when she appeared in the kitchen while he was doing his recce. He could have been speeding back to Glasgow by now, but he’d missed his chance, and it had looked almost as if she knew he was there. She might even have made an alarm call and police cars could be screaming this way right now.

Shaking and breathless, he needed three attempts to get the key in the lock, but at last he was on his way without any sign of danger. It was a moonless, starless night; the road stretched empty ahead, the fields on either side pitch dark under the opaque lid of the cloudy sky, the occasional house by the road lightless and blank.

How could she have known? Perhaps she had felt his eyes upon her as he assessed his shot, and would even now be dismissing it as imagination, or at worst a prowler, he told himself, but he was arguing against the nagging pain in the pit of his stomach.

Wednesday, 26 July

Declan Ryan put down the phone. He was feeling sick, as if the shock of what he’d heard had been a physical blow. What was he to do now? He was fire-fighting on every side.

He went along to the kitchen, where Cara was breakfasting on black coffee, and Nico, with his elbows on the table, was gnawing on a pizza with both hands. It disgusted him.

‘Out!’ Ryan said to Nico, jerking his head, and for once his son obeyed without appealing to his mother, giving a frightened look over his shoulder as he left and still clutching his unorthodox breakfast.

‘That was the police in Kirkluce. They’ve picked up Cris for drink-driving. Traced us through the car.’

Cara gave a cry of horror. ‘Oh God! The laptop?’

‘I asked if there were any of our personal possessions in the car and they asked was anything missing. Couldn’t say the laptop, could I, so I just said I didn’t remember. They told me they hadn’t found anything, but they could be lying, of course. Then they asked if Cris was staying here and had permission for the car.’

‘I hope you said no.’ Cara’s unhealthy skin was even paler than usual and she started chewing at the loose skin on her dry lips.

Ryan felt angry frustration. Her stupid pronouncements had always irritated him, and things had gone too far now for him to defer to them. ‘What would be the point? They must know already. I said he’d taken the car, though.’

‘This is a disaster!’ Her voice rose. ‘What are we going to do? Lloyd’s phoning me later today.’

‘Say nothing about it,’ Ryan said. ‘I mean it, Cara – lie if necessary. It may blow over. We’d better hope it does. And that’s the damn phone again.’

As he went to the kitchen phone to answer it, he didn’t see that Cara’s expression was not dutifully submissive. She was frowning, still biting at her lip; it was bleeding now.

‘Yes, fine,’ he said into the phone. ‘Half past ten.’

As he put it down, he said to Cara with an effort at confidence, ‘Interview at the police station. Knew it would come. We just have to stick together, right?’

‘Right,’ she said.

‘Right.’ He went to make himself some coffee. At least she was behind him, not like the other rats who had left – though of course his ship wasn’t sinking, of course it wasn’t. It was just sometimes he thought he could hear the water lapping higher and higher on the sides.

Fleming wasn’t quite ready for the photograph that DS Macdonald produced when she arrived in the CID room in the morning. He had been on the early shift, and it had come in from Dumfries Constabulary in response to the APB for Lisa Stewart.

It showed a girl lying on the road, a great wound on the side of her head and those strange, round eyes wide open. Her dark hair was matted with blood; at its roots her real hair colour showed, flaming red.

Fleming gulped. This was someone she had seen, talked to, only three days ago. She had believed, rather against the run of the evidence, that she was a sad creature, a victim caught up in a web of someone else’s making. Lisa was certainly a victim now.

But the victim of an accident, or of a deliberate killing? It was being presented to the press as a drunk driver with a stolen car, as accidents like these mostly were, but Fleming knew what she believed.

When Dave had talked about a target for the hitman, she had jumped to the conclusion that she herself was under threat. If she had been less self-absorbed and more analytical, would she have thought who else it might be, got Lisa some sort of protection? She felt a sense of guilt, though it had probably been too late by then anyway.

But it pointed up the terrible danger of becoming personally involved in a case; she had lost her objectivity there, and she would be on her guard against that in future.

At least Fleming’s fevered imaginings had been just that, and it was a great relief to know she’d been wrong. She could really have made a fool of herself over this, and she was thankful that the only person she had told was Bill. Once she’d dealt with this, she’d phone him and put his mind at rest. He’d still been worried this morning, reminding her to be careful and kissing her goodbye less casually than usual.

Macdonald was reporting on the situation with the hit-and-run. The car had been found, stolen of course, but there were only smudges where they might have hoped for fingerprints. The driver had worn gloves.

‘That makes it unusual,’ Macdonald said. ‘Mostly it’s some lad on a bender who thinks it’s all a bit of a laugh till things go wrong. What do you make of it?’

‘Same as you, I guess. And I have information that there’s a Glasgow hitman who’s been seen in the area – there seems to be some likely association with Rosscarron. I’ll be giving his description at the briefing this morning, though I won’t say why as yet, just not to approach.’

‘I see.’

It was clear that he did; after all, he had been Dave’s handler. There was no need to discuss it.

‘We have to trace who’s employing him. But we’ll hold back on that until we see if we can pick him up, either here or from the Glasgow end, if he makes it home. I don’t want him tipped off that we’re on to him.

‘There’s something else come in this morning,’ she went on, pulling a list towards her. ‘Cris Pilapil was done last night for drink-driving, in what is technically a stolen car – the Ryans have apparently said he had no authorisation to use it. We’ve got Declan Ryan coming in for interview later, but I want to go and talk to Cara while he’s out of the way. Tam MacNee says she told him that a man – Jason Williams from the description – was in Rosscarron House just after Rencombe was killed, but she was too scared of Ryan to tell him any more.’

At the mention of Tam MacNee, Fleming saw Macdonald’s mouth set in a hard, unfriendly line, but she didn’t want to comment directly.

‘I’m going to brief you and Ewan on the interviews with Pilapil and Williams. Tam MacNee will be off for the next few days.’