Dead in the Water (22 page)

She had done the older woman an injustice. ‘That’s two.’ Sylvia, now much more composed, threw the bottles down to her. ‘I found four – the kettle’s just boiling for the other two.’ She turned and went off again.

Jaki was tucking in the bottles beside Marcus’s still body when she heard the blessed sound of sirens, and burst into tears.

Karolina Cisek had been on edge all evening. She’d told Rafael what had happened, of course. He’d been much less bothered than she was about the fight, but then men were like that. And, she suspected, he hadn’t been as shocked as she had been last night to find that Kasper carried a knife. He’d mumbled something about needing protection, and made her put it back without saying anything.

She didn’t trust Kasper. He had a temper and he’d been furious with the man he called Stefan. Money was everything to Kasper, and he was a – what was that English word she’d learned the other day?
Chancer
, that was it. You couldn’t trust him. He always had his own agenda.

She couldn’t settle to anything. Rafael, watching TV, said at last impatiently, ‘What’s the matter? He’s not coming now. You made it pretty clear he wasn’t welcome, anyway.’

‘As if he’d care!’ she said scornfully – but at least Rafael seemed finally convinced she wasn’t still secretly looking back over her shoulder at Kasper. She’d been a foolish girl at that time, very young and dazzled by the money he could flash about, until she realized a smooth tongue wasn’t the same as honesty and a good heart. Rafael had his faults – and who didn’t? – but he would never let her down.

It worried her that Kasper had followed them here. Why should he do that? He had not been a friend of Rafael’s, and he couldn’t possibly think that now she had a husband and child she would so much as look at him. But then, being Kasper, with his arrogance, he just might. And he might have reckoned they could be useful, too.

Karolina sighed, unconsciously, then looked at her watch. Half past ten – surely he would have appeared by now if he was going to? And that was late, when you had a six o’clock start.

‘Never mind the football,’ she said, getting up. ‘I can tell you – the Manchester United will win. It always does. Time we were in bed.’

Sylvia was waiting in the drawing room doing breathing exercises to try to control the whirling thoughts that were making her feel dizzy, as the paramedics did their work on Marcus, making professionally soothing noises. A woman constable had taken efficient control, sending her male colleague to make tea and bringing Jaki, wrapped in a blanket, shivering and tear-stained, back into the drawing room.

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ she was saying. ‘You did great. Are you all right?’

Jaki, shaking uncontrollably with reaction, looked down at her bloodied hands. ‘If I could just wash—’

Sylvia went to her side. ‘Darling, you were so brave!’ she said, her mouth trembling. ‘If – if Marcus pulls through, he’ll owe his life to you.’

Jaki nodded, biting her lip, then trailed off wearily.

Sylvia sat back in her chair, fighting fatigue herself. Her face was grey with shock and there were purple shadows round her eyes, but she was determined to show nothing more than dignified distress, if it took the last of whatever remained of her acting skills. She despised public displays of raw emotion.

When the doorbell had gone – it seemed as if hours had passed since then! – she had been sitting in her chair, looking out at the night and thinking her melancholy thoughts, as had become her habit before she began the long and complicated process of putting herself to bed. She’d seen the attack, but if she told the police that now there would be questioning, official statements, hours and hours of it, when she wanted –
needed
– to be with Laddie’s son, whom she so wished had been hers too. They’d stop her going with Marcus – and anyway, she was still too confused to sort out exactly what she’d seen.

With her most gracious manner, Sylvia turned to the constable. ‘My dear, I shall want to go to hospital with Marcus, obviously. Can you arrange for them to take me in the ambulance, or must I drive myself?’

Doubt showed on the woman’s face. ‘Are you his mother?’

‘Stepmother,’ Sylvia said unblushingly.

‘Oh, I see. But really, you could help him more by telling us anything you can about what happened. They’ll take care of him, you know, and there’s nothing else you could do for him.’

‘Of course. But quite honestly, I couldn’t tell you anything coherent. I’m feeling very muddled, and until I know about – Marcus, I can’t even bring myself to think about anything else.’ Her control had slipped for a moment here, but perhaps it was all to the good: even she could not have produced quite such an affecting sob deliberately.

It worked. ‘Don’t get upset, now,’ the woman said hastily. ‘I’ll have a word with the crew – it’s not regular, but I don’t think you should be driving—’

She gave her a worried look and Sylvia seized on this. ‘I would have to, for Marcus. To be there if –
when
he wakes up.’

‘That’s right, dear. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.’ The woman went out into the garden, where a stretcher on wheels was waiting for Marcus to be lifted on.

Sylvia closed her eyes with a sigh of relief. She’d promised Laddie she wouldn’t leave his boy, as she struggled and swore in her clumsy search for the hot-water bottles that just might save him from dying of cold. And would she ever have thought of looking in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, if Laddie hadn’t put the idea in her head?

She wished he could have helped her think clearly now, but close as she felt he had been to her, Laddie had remained silent on that point.

DI Fleming passed the ambulance on the road between Sandhead and the A75. She’d been told there had been a possibly fatal assault, but no more than that, so she noticed with interest that its lights were flashing but it wasn’t in a tremendous hurry. That could be a good or a bad sign for the victim inside, but at least it meant there wasn’t a corpse waiting for her at the other end.

When she reached Tulach House there were three badged cars outside, and a sergeant standing by the front door saluted. There was blue tape stretched across from the front of the house and she congratulated him on his efficiency.

He gave her a quick description of what seemed to have happened, then went on, ‘There’s only one lady here now. The other lady, Miss –’ he squinted at his notebook – ‘Lascelles – she’s disabled, so they took her with them in the ambulance rather than let her drive to the hospital. She’s the victim’s stepmother.’

Fleming’s brows rose. ‘Stepmother? Is she, indeed?’ That wasn’t her information, but perhaps Sylvia Lascelles had elevated her status to that of common-law wife – an old Scottish tradition. ‘So who is it that’s here?’

‘Miss Johnston – Jaki Johnston, her that’s in the series, you know?’

‘Right.’ Fleming went in, following the voices to the room on her right. The French windows were open and there was police activity outside. The room was icy cold, and a young constable was standing by the fireplace looking hopelessly at the dying embers in the grate.

‘Looking at it won’t help. Find a box of firelighters and shove in three or four – that should get it going again,’ Fleming instructed him with the voice of experience. ‘And for goodness’ sake shut that door. It’s freezing in here.’

He shut the windows and went out, looking helpless. The prospect of a fire in the immediate future did not look promising.

Fleming turned to the forlorn-looking girl sitting on the sofa beside a woman officer, her hands wrapped round a mug of something hot. She was wearing pyjama trousers and a sweater and was swamped by an ill-fitting man’s overcoat.

‘Miss Johnston – Jaki? I’m DI Fleming. I came here the other day—’

‘Yes. I remember.’

Jaki was alarmingly pale and still shivering spasmodically. Fleming could barely recognize her as the bright, pretty girl she had seen before. Was there any point in trying to question her at the moment? She was clearly in shock and a doctor would undoubtedly say she ought to be in bed, under sedation.

‘Jaki, I don’t want to push you if you don’t feel up to it, but the sooner I know what you can tell us the sooner we can get things moving. Can you help us?’

The girl’s response was unexpectedly fierce. ‘Of course. The sooner you go and pick the bastard up, the better.’

Startled, Fleming said, ‘You mean – you saw who did it?’

‘No, I didn’t actually see him. Sylvia might have. She’s gone to the hospital with Marcus.’

‘But—’

‘I didn’t need to see what happened. The doorbell rang – I thought it was the director, maybe, coming to talk about scheduling. Then a few minutes later there was a noise, a sort of cry outside my bedroom window, and then Sylvia started screaming.

‘But I know who it was. Kevin someone. He was in the pub last night, and he came on to me and then picked a fight with Marcus.’ There were two hectic spots of colour in Jaki’s cheeks now. ‘Nothing happened because there were all these guys from the film crew there and they moved in on him, but then he got banned from the pub and he was just spitting hatred. They told us afterwards he was out on probation or something for knifing someone else. So it’s not rocket science, is it?’

‘Kevin someone?’ Fleming asked, and the constable said, ‘That would be Docherty, ma’am. Comes from Ardhill, out on licence after early release.’

‘Oh yes, Docherty. Do you know where he lives?’

‘There’s a lad outside – he’s local, so he’ll know.’

‘Find out, and get someone there. Quietly – we don’t want to tell him we’re coming. Pick him up and bring him in.’

As the woman went out through the French windows, she turned back to Jaki. The animation the girl had shown had disappeared and Fleming thought she was even swaying slightly. ‘Look, you should be in bed. Is there—?’

She had been about to ask if there was someone who would come to be with her, but Jaki cried, ‘No, no! I couldn’t stay here! I hate this place! Can I phone Tony? – he’ll find somewhere in the village for me—’ She began to cry, wrenching, frantic sobs.

‘Yes, of course!’ Fleming said hastily. ‘We’ll get that fixed, don’t worry. Oh good, constable!’ she said, as the woman came back in again. ‘Jaki will give you the number of someone who’ll come and take her away – she doesn’t want to stay here. All right, Jaki?’

The girl was still crying, but suddenly she stopped on a gasp. It was hard to make out what she was saying, but what emerged was, ‘There’s – there’s just – just something, something I’ve remembered. The thing is – it sort of doesn’t fit.’

‘Yes?’ Fleming felt the prickle of nerves that told her this was significant, more significant, even, than what Jaki had said before.

With a visible effort, Jaki swallowed her sobs. ‘The second night I was here, Sunday night, I looked out of the bedroom window. There’s a shrubbery between the front of the house and the back, and I saw what looked like someone standing there, just watching the house. But I couldn’t be sure, and it just, like, seemed so crazy I didn’t tell anyone. It didn’t move, and I thought it was probably a shrub with a funny shape. Anyway, I couldn’t see why anyone would be doing that.

‘And next night when I looked out it was still there, in exactly the same place, so I was thankful I hadn’t made a fool of myself. But tonight—’ She gulped, and stopped.

Fleming knew what she was about to say. ‘It wasn’t there.’

‘No, it wasn’t. I told you it would be Kevin, after what happened last night. But before then, he wouldn’t have had any reason to be watching the house. And I’ve only just thought, if I’d told Marcus about it at the time, perhaps this would never have happened. If he dies, and it was because of that, I’ll never forgive myself, never!’

11

There was no reason to countermand the order to pull in Kevin Docherty. From the sound of his activities, he was breaching the terms of his licence anyway, but having thought at first that this was an open-and-shut case, Fleming now had to consider there might be more to it than that.

Jaki Johnston had held herself together long enough to point out where she had seen the figure in the shrubbery and give more details and times – ten to ten-thirty on both occasions – but when Tony Laidlaw appeared, his face dark with concern, she stumbled into his arms and her legs gave way. He was a fit man and she was small and slight; he picked her up, said only, ‘She needs to get out of here,’ and vanished again. A man of action, obviously.

Ordering the cars in front of the house to direct headlights on to the shrubbery, Fleming went out into the garden. The ground was hard with the night frost, but even so she made a wide circuit to approach the site from the side furthest away from the house. Footprint technology was very advanced now, and even in these conditions they might get something from the area round about, though evidence from the terrace would be hopelessly compromised already by the activities of the paramedics and others.

She paused by the edge of the shrubbery, studying the space between a sprawling rhododendron and a holly bush. For Jaki to have believed the figure was another bush, it must have been relatively bulky, and she had indicated that though lower than the others, it hadn’t been particularly small in comparison. The rhododendron was a good eight or nine inches taller than Fleming’s own five foot ten, and she reckoned whoever had stood there must be at least her height, or more.