Evil for Evil (31 page)

Christie sighed elaborately. ‘Oh, I’ll go over it again, if you want. Matt and I had supper with Georgia, then we all went up to bed. After Georgia had gone into her bedroom, I slipped across to sleep with Matt – we’re lovers, you know. I got back to my room shortly before I heard the sirens, and Matt seems to have decided to go back to the farmhouse then. All right?’

There was a stillness about Fleming, Georgia thought, as if she was taking her time to assess Christie with those shrewd hazel eyes. When Christie finished, she said quietly, ‘Well really, Christie, I was talking about you more than Matt. If he confirms it, you have an alibi for the
early hours of the morning. What did you do in the afternoon?’

Georgia saw Christie freeze, and felt her own throat constrict. The girl had been so stressed yesterday that she couldn’t keep still, and at last had gone out, muttering that she needed to walk. She’d been out for two or three hours. And clearly the police thought that was the crucial time, so Christie’s gallant lie to cover for Matt was pointless.

She was looking at her with great sympathy, when Christie said, ‘Oh, I was here all the time, wasn’t I, Georgia?’ Her blue eyes were flashing an urgent message.

Georgia felt hot colour flood her face. The hazel eyes were coolly fixed on her now too. She felt like a butterfly skewered to a board by two hatpins.

She had no choice, though. ‘Christie, I know you wouldn’t have killed Lissa, but I can’t lie to the police, and you shouldn’t either. It’s their job to find out who did this terrible thing, and we have to help them in any way we can.’

‘Traitor!’ Christie cried. ‘Traitor! I thought you were my friend.’

Georgia felt, this time, as if the hatpin had gone straight through her heart.

‘I help you, Mr Tindall?’ Standing in the doorway of the master bedroom of the Salford penthouse flat, Lola stood watching in puzzlement as her employer threw what looked like a random selection of clothes into a suitcase.

‘No thanks, Lola. I’m just going to be away for a few days. Not sure how long. All right?’

He snapped the case shut. He seemed very tense; she didn’t like to point out that though he’d packed shirts, underwear and sweaters, there seemed to be no trousers or socks. But he didn’t look as if he wanted advice and she wasn’t about to offer it. She wasn’t taking any
risks with her nice, well-paid housekeeper’s job – and now with pretty much a paid holiday too.

‘Going to see Mrs Tindall?’ she suggested, and was surprised when he shuddered.

‘I don’t know. I … I hope not,’ he said, mystifyingly, and then picked up his case and departed.

Fleming took Campbell with her to the interview room, where Lovatt was waiting for them already. He looked dreadful: eyes red-rimmed, his good cheek hollowed in, leaving the other looking oddly plump. His head was down and he didn’t even look up as Campbell went through the procedures for the recording, then came back to sit beside Fleming.

‘Mr Lovatt?’ she began.

At last he looked up. ‘Someone’s trying to destroy me.’ His voice was husky and strained. ‘I don’t know who it is, I don’t know why, but bit by bit they’re tearing my life apart. They tried to destroy my farming, then my house, and now my – my wife. And my dog. Has he – has he …?’ He broke down.

Fleming said hastily, ‘Mr Lovatt, let’s deal with that first. Nothing’s going to happen to the dog. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. It looked as if your wife had been attacked by an animal, but further investigation has shown that this wasn’t the case.’

Lovatt seemed unable to control his tears, but he looked at her with dawning hope. ‘You swear? That’s not just some sort of trick, is it?’

‘No, of course not. That is absolutely true.’

‘Oh thank you, thank you! You have no idea what that means to me.’

Campbell shifted uneasily in his seat and Fleming, too, was uncomfortable with this heartfelt gratitude.

‘I have to apologise that this happened at all,’ she said awkwardly.

He hardly seemed to hear her, going on, ‘You see, Lissa and I … well, we hadn’t been getting on for some time. And then, of course, she was having an affair with Kerr Brodie – not that I blamed her, after all that had happened. But recently I had the impression he was trying to end it, so there was nothing for her here, nothing. But she couldn’t just leave because—’ He broke off. ‘You know about the baby’s grave?’

Fleming nodded, reluctant to break the flow by speaking. She wondered, though, whether they had told him where his wife’s body had been found; she rather thought not, from the way he spoke.

Lovatt went on again. ‘At least I had the farm. I love the life, love the land. And I had Mika – such a great dog! You’re sure—’ He was suddenly anxious again.

‘Sure,’ Fleming said.

‘He’s been with me through so much – Bosnia, this …’ He touched his face. ‘When I was at my lowest ebb, when I thought a bullet would be the best way out, he was there, never leaving my side, watching me, reminding me that I had to stay alive, for him. He’s a one-man dog – if anything happened to me, they’d have to put him down.’

Then it struck him. ‘If I went to jail—’

His voice shook, and Fleming stepped in hastily. ‘Matt, we’re not going to charge you – certainly not at the moment. I don’t know whether you killed your wife, as yet—’

‘I didn’t, I swear it!’

She ignored the impassioned response. ‘Extensive enquiries are under way, and depending on what emerges we may bring you back here. You must stay in the area, but at the end of this interview you will be free to go and we’ll return your dog.

‘There’s just a couple more questions. What is your relationship with Christie Jack?’

Lovatt looked unhappy. ‘Lissa always said she had a crush on me. I didn’t believe her, but … Christie thinks she’s protecting me by saying we were together. We weren’t, of course.’

‘Could she have been hoping for that outcome if Lissa was out of the way?’

‘No!’ he protested. ‘She couldn’t – she wouldn’t! She’s just a child.’

‘She had very dreadful experiences in Afghanistan, I understand.’

‘She did, but …’

His voice trailed away. He was, Fleming thought, very uneasy. He didn’t think it was entirely impossible, but he certainly wasn’t going to say so.

‘Anyway, is there anyone, anyone at all, who would have reason to, as you put it, tear your life apart? Oh, I know you’ve talked of local problems before and of course we are looking into these, but this, to be honest, seems just too extreme.’

He was nodding agreement. ‘I know. I can’t see it. I’m positive they let the stag out, I would believe they might have set fire to the house, just to try to drive me away, but this …’

‘Who, then?’ she pressed him.

‘Done something bad in your past life?’

Campbell, who hadn’t spoken at all, shot out the question and Fleming saw Lovatt take it like a bullet.

‘N–no,’ he stammered. ‘Of course not. What could I have done?’

As usual, Campbell was on to something. She followed it up. ‘You were in a theatre of war. Was there something happened in Bosnia?’

She realised from his face that she had asked the wrong question. ‘War crimes, you mean? Certainly not.’ He spoke with all the authority of a clear conscience, and a touch of arrogant anger too at his honour being impugned.

‘Something else, though?’ she asked, but not very hopefully. He’d had that moment to collect himself.

‘Probably in the course of my life I’ve upset people – be surprising if I hadn’t. But there isn’t a living soul who would have a reason to hate me that much.’

‘Anyone who might hate you anyway, reasonably or not?’

Lovatt shrugged. ‘Unreasonably – how should I know?’

He had put up the barricades, and they had no legitimate reason to keep him here any longer. Fleming got up. ‘I am terminating the interview here,’ she said for the benefit of the recording. ‘You are free to go, Mr Lovatt. But I would urge you to be very careful. For whatever reason, you seem to have become a target, and until we know who and what is behind it, you aren’t safe.’

When he had gone, she turned to Campbell. ‘Well?’

‘Brave man,’ Campbell said. ‘Knows something. Rather get his throat slit than tell us.’

‘Foolhardy,’ Fleming corrected him. ‘Oh damn! I meant to ask him about Andrew Smith, but I forgot. Doesn’t matter – I doubt if we’ve seen the last of him. Let’s go and have a chat with his little friend Christie.’

Louise Hepburn had just finished her shift and by now should be going home for Sunday lunch. But she was too caught up in the case to want to leave, high on the adrenaline of the chase.

After the interview she and Campbell had done with Lovatt, she’d ruled him out as Lissa Lovatt’s killer, especially now that Tam MacNee’s conclusion had proved embarrassingly wrong. Lucky the poor dog hadn’t resisted arrest and been shot on the spot!

She tucked herself away in a corner of the CID room, hoping to avoid notice from other detectives who might feel unpaid overtime was letting the side down, and cosied up to a computer. There were two ideas she wanted to follow up.

The easy one was Lovatt’s grandmother’s will. Wills were a matter of public record, held at the General Register Office for Scotland, in Edinburgh. She got the full name from the voters’ roll, then keyed it in with an approximate date and clicked ‘Search’.

It wasn’t easy. There was no Elspeth Lovatt in the system, apparently. Hepburn swore. No doubt it was delayed in probate, or something – lawyers were famous for dragging their heels. That would mean discovering who her solicitor was, getting hold of him and persuading him to disclose the contents, which lawyers were notoriously reluctant to do. It would certainly take time, and she was a young woman in a hurry. What Big Marge had said about teamwork hadn’t stopped her wanting to be the team member who got the breakthrough.

Thwarted, she turned to her second quest. She wanted to dig up a bit of background on Lovatt’s army career. That, too, was more complicated than she had thought; information about the now disbanded King’s Own Scottish Borderers was held by the Army Personnel Office in Glasgow – closed on Sunday. With some inspired googling, she managed to track down the brigadier in command at the time and with liberal mentions of the CID and a murder investigation, persuaded him to disclose the names of officers serving with the regiment in Bosnia.

This time, she struck gold. She listened, gobsmacked, to the man at the other end. She asked another question. Then she thanked the man profusely, rang off, and returned to the General Register.

Lovatt’s grandmother’s will was there, right enough, and the first sentence, where it stated her name, was confirmation. Hepburn looked at it with widening eyes as she scrolled down the short document. There it was – under their noses all the time.

They weren’t getting anywhere. Lack of sleep was catching up with Fleming – she was feeling light-headed, her bones ached and there was a constant muzzy buzz in her head. Christie Jack, attending by invitation, was answering their questions with a mixture of shrugs, denials, and silence. Her eyes looked completely dead.

‘Christie,’ Fleming said, making her voice warm and persuasive with a considerable effort, ‘don’t make things harder for yourself. You’ve begun by lying to us. That’s a bad start. But I can think of reasons why you did that.

‘The lie you told us about being with Matt Lovatt—’

‘It wasn’t a lie.’ Her voice was flat. ‘He only denied it so I wouldn’t be involved.’

‘We’ve been there already, Christie, and we’re not going there again. I’ll concede that you’ve been feeling persecuted, so perhaps in asking Georgia to lie you were only trying to get us off your back,
and it’s in your favour that the “alibi” you constructed involving Matt was for the wrong time.

‘But I have to look at the other side. You may be quite smart enough to reckon we’d make that assumption, and you could also have thought Georgia would be too kind to drop you in it. You have to convince us the first scenario is the right one, not the second.’

‘What would make me think you would believe me?’

‘Try it and see.’ Fleming’s patience was wearing thin.

Christie gave her a bored, sulky look that was almost adolescent, and Fleming snapped. ‘Fine. It’s your choice. We request that you remain at the Smugglers Inn while investigations are under way.’

She terminated the interview and when she told Christie she was free to go, the girl got up and left without a word.

Fleming rubbed her hand tiredly down her face. ‘Is she just bolshie, or is she a killer?’

When Campbell only shrugged, she said crossly, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t you start. I want your considered opinion. And
don’t shrug
!’

Campbell duly considered. ‘Bolshie, probably.’

Giving him a dangerous look, Fleming went back to her office.

DS MacNee breezed into the CID room, radiating bonhomie. A phone call to customs had told him not only that Kerr Brodie had been charged with serious drugs offences, but that his companion, a lad on the run from the army, was cooperating fully. There was nothing like a spot of revenge for putting you in a good mood.

Revenge for the poor lassie he had found probably wasn’t on the cards, but he was now ready to devote his full attention to achieving justice for her, at least.

There were three detectives working at computers when he came
in. ‘Right, lads,’ he said briskly, ‘what’s happened? Have they brought Lovatt and the dog in?’

To his surprise, it provoked a laugh, and he frowned. ‘Come on, share the joke.’

There was an exchange of glances, and then one said, ‘Ah well, Tam, it’s not quite like that. You’ve surely been in Glasgow after an Old Firm match?’

MacNee, a lifelong Rangers fan, stiffened. ‘What are you on about?’

‘Thought you’d have recognised a glassing when you saw it. Broken bottle. Straight in the throat.’

He gaped. The picture of her lying there, which he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to put out of his mind, came back with sickening clarity.

‘It … it wasn’t the dog?’

‘Nope.’

He could feel cold sweat prickling on his forehead. ‘They haven’t … they haven’t …?’

‘Will we put him out of his misery, lads?’ one grinning officer said. ‘Och well, Tam, I’m in a good mood this morning. It’s away home with Lovatt now. It wasn’t amused, mind you. Gave the handler a nasty nip.’

MacNee wiped his brow. ‘Thank God it’s all right. Is the boss here? I daresay she’s not amused either. I’d better go and see her and get it over with.’

Someone whistled the ‘Dead March’ as he left and he went slowly up the stairs, feeling humiliated. He’d jumped to conclusions without proper evidence, and he knew why he hadn’t waited to get it – pure cowardice.

The knowledge fairly took the shine off his satisfaction.

Marianne, alerted by the aggrieved manager, dialled her boss’s mobile. He was expected back for a specially scheduled meeting
with an important client with a fleet of cars he replaced every year from Tindall’s ex-dealer stock. He was due in half an hour and she wanted to know what to say to him, and when to make another appointment.

Eddie’s tone, when he answered, was not encouraging, but Marianne was made of stern stuff.

‘What the hell’s going on, Eddie? Where are you?’

‘Carlisle. I’m on the hands-free.’

‘
Carlisle!
You’ve got Brian Miller going to toddle in here any minute. What am I to tell him?’

‘Fix up another appointment. I’ll be back in two or three days. Probably.’

He sounded strained, unnatural. What was going on? Then it dawned. Of course! That Woman.

‘Going up to Scotland, are you?’ She struggled to keep hostility out of her voice.

‘Yes. Kirkcudbright.’

Of course. She’d clicked her fingers and he’d jumped, just like that. Well, Eddie paid her to be his secretary, not his keeper – though heaven knew the dumb bastard needed one.

‘I’ll cancel your appointments till then, right? We’ll need to keep in touch, though. Where are you going to stay?’

‘Don’t know, yet.’

With a sigh, she suggested booking him into a hotel and he jumped at the offer. So he wasn’t joining That Woman somewhere, then? Did she know he was on his way – or had Clive done the detecting he was being paid for and come up with something that told Eddie where his wife was, so he’d gone up to spy on her?

That didn’t fit, though. The manager had said he didn’t get a phone call, just saw something on the news that had sent him off. There was
a TV downstairs in the showroom; Marianne couldn’t resist trying to satisfy her curiosity.

There was no one in the waiting area. She switched from the sports channel to News 24, and stood frowning, waiting for some item that made a connection. And at last, there it was – a woman found dead on an island in Scotland, somewhere near Kirkcudbright.

So of course Eddie, poor sod, had decided it was her. He’d been going on about not having spoken to her the last couple of days. It probably wasn’t anything to do with That Woman at all, and Marianne could only hope that he wouldn’t be in such a state about it that he went off the road.

If it did happen to be her, though, Marianne wouldn’t be feeling the need to lay in an extra box of tissues for herself.

There was no answer to MacNee’s knock on Fleming’s door, though they’d said downstairs that she was in. Maybe she was on the phone. He opened it, and glanced inside.

Fleming was asleep, her head down on her desk. She didn’t move when he cleared his throat, and remembering she’d been called at three in the morning, he turned to tiptoe out. He knocked the door with his foot, though, and this time she surfaced, raising her head groggily from the desk.

‘Oh – oh, for goodness’ sake! Sorry, Tam.’ Her voice was thick and she shook her head as if trying to clear it. ‘I must have crashed out. I haven’t had much sleep for the last couple of nights.’

From the look of her, he could well believe it. He said, ‘Can you not maybe go away home for an hour or two and get a proper rest?’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ll phone for coffee. Want some?’ She picked up the phone and while she ordered it MacNee tried to frame his apology.

When she turned back to him, he said with some awkwardness,
‘Marjory, I’m sorry. I screwed up and it’s just lucky it wasn’t a whole lot worse. When I thought that dog was loose on the island, I lost it completely. Broke the land speed record getting myself safe in the bothy. I’m black, burning ashamed.’

She gave a huge yawn. ‘Sorry, I’ll wake up in a minute. You weren’t the only one to think that, Tam. Bill had half a dozen sheep killed by stray dogs earlier this year, and they looked exactly like that. It’s how dogs attack – and frankly, I wouldn’t have hung around either. We’ve both seen Lovatt’s dog, and you wouldn’t stand a chance. I’m glad the poor beast didn’t have to be put down, though.’

‘You could say.’ MacNee’s agreement was heartfelt. ‘Took a bit of a nibble out of one of the handlers apparently. Couldn’t blame him.’

‘Lucky he stopped there. If something happened to the dog with Lovatt in his present mood I’d be seeking a warrant to confiscate his shotgun.

‘Ah, here’s the coffee! Thanks – I’m needing this. And biscuits – just realised I haven’t eaten all day.’ Fleming smiled at the FCA as she set down the tray.

MacNee watched her load her black coffee with sugar and set about a jaffa cake. ‘You’ll just get a sugar rush with that,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘You should go to the canteen and get some proper food.’

‘Never thought I’d live to see the day when Tam MacNee was lecturing me about junk food. Anyway, I’m fine after my power nap.’

‘Oh, that’s what it was, is it?’ he said sardonically.

‘Absolutely. Anyway, back to business. We’ve both agreed it appeared to be a dog attack. And I’ll tell you what the pathologist said: “It almost looks as if that was what it was meant to suggest.”’

‘Did he?’ MacNee was struck by the idea. ‘Right enough, I’ve seen plenty broken-bottle attacks, but I’ve never seen one where they 
went straight for the throat. Mostly it’s right in the face, and her face …’ He stopped, recalling the spattered blood. ‘Well, it hadn’t been mutilated, anyway.’

‘Did someone just think that the dog would be blamed and we wouldn’t look elsewhere? Or …’

They both spoke together. ‘Someone wanted the dog to be blamed.’

Fleming went on, ‘Wanted the dog put down. Something else to damage Lovatt. He says someone’s trying to tear his life apart, and maybe he’s right.’

‘Brodie,’ MacNee said, with sudden certainty. ‘He’s been on the spot each time. And he’d even a cat’s paw – a lad he was hiding from the military police on the island. He could have been involved as well.’

Fleming considered that. ‘He’s been having an affair with Lissa, admittedly. But according to Lovatt, he’d cooled on the idea and was trying to end it.’

‘Managed, then, didn’t he? It’s Brodie, I tell you,’ MacNee said. He was visibly gloating. ‘They’re holding him at Stranraer. I’ll get down there and—’

‘Tam.’

‘What?’ His tone was belligerent, but he knew what she was going to say.

‘It’s possible. It’s not a certainty. We’ve seen already where jumping to conclusions gets us.’

The ‘us’ was generous. ‘Fair enough,’ he said gruffly.

Fleming was tapping her front teeth with a fingernail. He waited, then she said slowly, ‘I just don’t see why the persecution should have started suddenly. Brodie’s been living here for three years. He’s had a nice little number going with the drugs – why do something like this, that was bound to have us all over them like a rash?’

‘Maybe Lovatt realised and was threatening to turn him in,’ MacNee was arguing, when there was a knock on the door and DC Hepburn bounced into the room, holding some papers.

‘I think we’ve got it right here, ma’am,’ she said.

A police officer, silent and, Matt Lovatt felt, shamefaced, drove him back to Lovatt’s Farm in a dog van with Mika whining unhappily in the back. Staying at the Smugglers Inn wasn’t going to work any more – the situation with Christie was too fraught, and he would rather sleep on the floor in his own home. The air would be a bit cleaner tonight, at least.

When they arrived, he got out without thanking the driver, just stood beside him as the man nervously opened the door to let the dog out, then scuttled back into his van.

Lovatt watched him drive off, then dropped to his knees to stroke the dog, burying his face for a moment in its ruff to hide the tears of relief and sheer exhaustion. Mika, unsettled by the strangeness of this, fidgeted uneasily, and once released pranced a few steps, looking back over his shoulder to invite a walk. At a gesture from Lovatt he raced off along the shore path, Lovatt following slowly.

Every bone in his body ached. Perhaps it was the result of his makeshift bed last night, but it felt as if the pain was a deeper malaise, the pain of the past. He was scared, too. He had lied to the police, and he intended to lie again. He was too afraid to tell the truth. A soldier, and a coward.

The series of shocks he had suffered over the last few days had affected him like increasingly powerful physical blows. He felt like a boxer in the ring, punch-drunk, unable to predict his invisible opponent’s next attack. Sooner or later, it would be a knockout, and by now he wasn’t sure he even cared. God knew he was living on borrowed, or perhaps stolen, time already.

He had told the police the truth when he said that he couldn’t think who could now hate him so much. Lovatt racked his brains as he walked, but he could only come back to the tired old theory of the Donaldsons and Sorley, and even he didn’t believe that any longer.

There was someone unseen, unknown, someone who, for reasons he could not understand, hated him so intensely that merely killing him wasn’t enough: he must be destroyed in agony first. His flesh was starting to creep and he found himself scanning the hill slopes and the shore as if there might be cruel and hostile eyes watching him even now.

Elena Tindall went to pick up her handbag from the ledge by the chalet’s big window. She was on her way to Kirkcudbright; she fancied a little browse round the shops, a visit to the deli to get something for supper, perhaps with a bottle of wine.

She was feeling so much better: her head felt light and airy, purged of all the dark thoughts of years, like an attic that had been swept clear of all the dust and spiders and the worse things that she’d never chosen to recognise, that lived in the secret, dirty corners. So free in her mind, so relaxed in her body. Everything was so straight and simple now.

A movement down below caught her eye: a van, drawing up outside the Lovatts’ farmhouse. Then a man was getting out; a tiny frown creased her smooth brow. Another man, releasing a dog from the back.