Evil for Evil (37 page)

They took Matt Lovatt to the Smugglers Inn. Georgia Stanley was waiting, watching the comings and goings at the farmhouse from the window of her little sitting room.

‘Matt!’ she exclaimed in distress. ‘Are you all right? What’s happened?’

He looked terrible, stooped and shaky as if in the last few hours he had become an old, old man. The police officers bringing him in, DI Fleming and DS MacNee, who’d gossiped with her across the bar, suddenly seemed remote, official, the embodiments of the law.

‘May we borrow the sitting room?’ Fleming said.

‘Of course, of course.’ She went to the door.

Lovatt spoke. ‘In answer to your question, Georgia, I seem to have been responsible for the deaths of my father, my wife, my half-brother and a thoroughly decent man I’d never seen before.’

Georgia gave a squeal of distress, but at a look from DS MacNee she scuttled out.

Lovatt collapsed into a chair, convulsively clasping and unclasping his hands. Haltingly, and with long pauses, he repeated what his sister had told him while Fleming and MacNee listened in silence.

He bowed his head when he had finished, then looked up again. ‘I sort of knew it was him, I suppose. But sort of not. He was there at breakfast.’

No one spoke, and he went on, ‘I don’t think you understand:
He was there at breakfast
. I was nine years old, and my father was sitting there, reassuring my mother: Helen had just got up early, gone out without telling anyone. Then they found a ladder and everyone believed it was a break-in. How could I say what I’d seen – or what

I’d thought I’d seen? ‘I’d wakened up, you see, presumably because I heard him coming through the window of our bedroom. We had a house that looked out to sea. I was half-asleep, and I always sort of thought he came out of it.’ He shuddered. ‘In my dreams, he always did. He was standing beside my sister’s bed, all in black, with a stocking mask over his face and his hand across her mouth. I–I saw her look at me, begging me to do something.

‘I still thought I was dreaming—’ He broke off. ‘No, that’s a lie. It’s a lie I’ve told myself so often that I’ve come almost to believe it. I knew I was awake. At first, though, I didn’t know who he was. But as he carried her out, kicking at him, trying to bite him – Helen was always brave, unlike me—’

‘You were a soldier,’ MacNee said.

‘A soldier! Comrades, training, support … That’s easy, in an odd way. You do what you have to do because you’re trained, conditioned. My—’ He choked. ‘The man said to me, “It will be you, the next night, or the next.” I was afraid, and the only way I could deal with it was by believing it hadn’t happened, that I’d dreamt it.

‘The dreams I believed were the wrong ones. I utterly believed that Helen was dead. I set out to try to make restitution for the evil I’d done, by helping people who’d suffered, like Christie—’ He stopped, then with an obvious effort, carried on, ‘It was the only thing I came up with that I was in a position to do. If I’d known Helen was alive, what she had suffered …’

His eyes were full of tears as he went on. ‘I only wish she had killed me. Her husband – he was a good man. I’m rubbish.’

Fleming fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘Mr Lovatt, don’t blame your nine-year-old self. It was an intolerable situation, and you have suffered too.

‘But let’s talk about more recent events. You’re not a fool. You know that if you’d been open with us from the start, it’s possible that the other deaths could have been prevented. I daresay you feel, right at the moment, that getting yourself a handful of pills would somehow pay for that.

‘I’m not in the business of handing down justice and nor are you. We can only look for truth, and to achieve justice under the law we have to rely on proof. You said you wanted to make restitution to your sister. The way you can do that now is to be there to explain how it happened, whatever it may cost you.’

Lovatt looked up. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice infinitely weary. ‘Of course I must. But you’ve no idea, no idea at all, how terribly, terribly tired of it all I am.’

He was near breaking point. Hastily, Fleming said, ‘One last thing. Do you know anything about your father’s murder?’

‘She couldn’t … couldn’t have done it herself.’ He was starting to slur his speech. ‘She … she sort of told me she did it, though, and implied that Cal Findlay helped her. Once she’d had her revenge on us all, she would be … all right, she thought. An eye for an eye …

‘She was always so much stronger than me, so much cleverer … My mother said at the time it should have been me that was taken. She wished it had been me. And afterwards she … she never hugged me again.’

As he wept, he was rocking to and fro with his arms wrapped round himself, as if hoping to find the comfort the child had been denied.

As Fleming dragged herself up the stairs back at the Kirkluce headquarters, she felt deathly tired herself. But there was work to do …

The door to her office was standing open and MacNee was lying in wait.

‘Away to your bed,’ he said.

Fleming had got past the point of tiredness. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got my second wind.’

‘You only think you have. I heard you tripping twice coming up the stairs.’

She glared at him. ‘I just stumbled, all right?’

‘And now you’re getting belligerent. That’s another sign. There’s a driver waiting for you.’

‘Ever think of a job as a nanny? I hear it pays better than police work, these days.’ But it was a feeble protest. Fleming knew perfectly well she needed to be on top of the job before she started trying to clear up the aftermath, and at the moment she most certainly was not.

‘I’ll be back at six,’ she said.

She was asleep before the driver reached the farmhouse. She woke up when the car stopped, sparing him the embarrassment of having to wake her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, a little thickly as she got out, trying to stay half asleep until she could get up the stairs and into bed. The light in the
kitchen was on; Bill must have left it so that she wouldn’t have to come home to darkness. She was feeling a surge of affection as she opened the kitchen door.

Her daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, cradling a mug. Meg the collie, in her basket by the Aga, opened an eye and ruffled her tail a fraction but didn’t raise her head.

Cat looked as startled as she felt. ‘Mum! I didn’t realise you were still out.’

Marjory looked at her without enthusiasm. ‘Yes. I’m just on my way to bed. What are you doing up at this hour?’

‘Couldn’t sleep. I can’t make up my mind what to do. Mum, do you think if I—’

Marjory cut her short. ‘I’m sorry, Cat. I’ve just watched a good, decent man die, and I want to get some sleep before I start wondering whether it was my fault. Everyone else certainly will be. I’ll be up again about six, so unless you’re still awake then, I probably won’t see you at breakfast.’

The wall of his bedroom seemed to be a sort of bluish-grey, which was odd because it had always had wallpaper in dreary brown and orange flowers. Strange. His head hurt too, and his mouth was painfully dry. Cal Findlay licked his lips; there was a metallic taste from caked blood round the rim, and when he explored with his tongue, there was a hole where one of his molars had been. He groaned.

A woman in green overalls was standing at the foot of his bed, writing something on a clipboard. A nurse. Hospital. Of course. He’d been taken there last night, he vaguely remembered.

His head was sore, and his cheek. Accident? Must have hit his head. He felt it, encountering a plaster, and pleased with the success of his reasoning struggled to sit up.

‘Waking up, are you?’ the nurse said. She came to help him, moving the pillows behind him. ‘All right?’

His tongue felt thick. ‘Water,’ he croaked.

She poured him some from a carafe on the table beside him. It was warm and tasted tinny, but he drank it eagerly. He put his hand to the bandage again. It was painful, but his mind was beginning to clear. ‘Did I hit my head?’ he asked.

‘As I understand it, somebody hit it for you. You’re lucky – just a bit of concussion and a lost tooth.’

He registered that her tone seemed brusque, but then of course, the ministering-angel style had gone out long ago. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. But we were told to inform you when you woke up properly that the police want to speak to you whenever you’re ready.’

Recollection hit him like the freak wave that had almost capsized his boat last year. For a moment, he couldn’t get his breath and the woman looked at him in alarm.

‘Here – are you all right?’

He managed to nod. ‘Just … just shocked. Give me a moment.’

‘I wouldn’t have said, only the doctor cleared it and they’re saying it’s urgent.’ She sounded defensive. ‘You can say you’re not well enough.’

‘No point. They’ll not go away, will they?’

The nurse didn’t respond.

‘I’ll speak to them,’ Cal said. The nausea and dizziness still lingered, but now that the moment had come he realised that it was almost a relief. It was his chance to tell his story at last, to explain how he had been a victim too.

DC Hepburn had come in to work, buoyed up by the boss’s positive response last night to her idea about the TV programme being the
catalyst for all that had happened, and was crushed to discover that events had overtaken her success.

At the morning briefing, Fleming looked as if she had been chewed up and spat out, and she seemed to have forgotten Hepburn’s contribution; she didn’t so much as mention her when it came to the follow-up.

Hepburn felt sick as she listened to the details. Like every modern child she’d been endlessly warned about paedophiles; it had given her recurring nightmares, but none even came close to the horrors Elena Tindall had suffered.

She felt seething anger at the men who had done this to a little girl, not only her evil father and his perverted friends, but the men who by their silence had allowed it all to happen. The sins of omission, she seemed to remember from her Catholic girlhood, could be mortal sins too.

She wanted to be in there, fighting for Elena, not tasked with some mundane job. They hadn’t charged her, just arrested her on suspicion of murder; Fleming, of course, would be doing the interview once Elena’s brief arrived from Glasgow, and Macdonald and Campbell were recording a formal statement from Matt Lovatt. MacNee was off to have what was described as a preliminary chat with Cal Findlay to glean as much information as possible, now that he’d be entitled to a lawyer whenever he was under arrest. It was a blow that Hepburn didn’t seem to be part of the inner circle any longer.

Hepburn slipped out of the briefing room before Sergeant Naismith could nobble her. All she could do for Elena was dig up everything the records had to offer about the Helen Smith case for a plea in mitigation. That wasn’t a job for the police, but she was going to do it anyway. She’d just sneak out for a smoke first. It had worked last time.

When DS MacNee appeared round the corner of the dustbins, saying, ‘Thought you’d be here,’ she had to repress an urge to hide her cigarette behind her back as if she’d been caught round the back of the bike sheds. She inhaled defiantly.

A mistake. When he said, ‘Want to come with me to chat to Cal Findlay?’ she choked.

He laughed, the bastard. ‘Sook, dinnae blaw!’ he said, and Hepburn couldn’t recall feeling so humiliated since the time the sexy history master at her school had caught her smoking and drawled, ‘It’s only cool if you’re a thirties’ movie star. And believe me, Lauren Bacall you’re not.’

Lovatt was looking drained and ill this morning, but he sounded emotionless as he repeated all that his sister had told him, along with his own recollections, for the benefit of the recording device they had placed in front of him on Georgia’s coffee table.

Letting him talk, Macdonald silently vowed to be professional, but if he even put aside his own feelings about Christie, it was hard not to view him with disgust and contempt. People had died because of Lovatt’s lies.

‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, when Lovatt reached the end of his recital. ‘Now tell me about Cal Findlay.’

‘I didn’t know about him, except as a local fisherman. Maybe he worked for my father?’ Lovatt said. ‘There was quite a little fleet of trawlers in Barrow, before they were gambled away. My mother was bitter about that, as she was about most things.’

He stopped. Neither Macdonald nor Campbell spoke and after a moment he went on, ‘I thought I’d seen Helen dead, but of course when she mocked the open coffin on the dining-table … It was obvious, I’d dreamt it. Why didn’t I see that? I could have looked up
what had happened, but … it was buried deep by then. Somehow, even thinking about it hurt too much.’ The pain showed on his face.

Macdonald’s resolution to be professional had been meant to stop him being prejudiced against Lovatt. Now he was actually beginning to feel sorry for the poor sod. Professional! Come on!

‘Let’s leave that there,’ he said. ‘You were told that someone called Andrew Smith had been sadistically murdered in a cave on your island. You told us you had never heard of him.’

Lovatt became more animated. ‘Could we rewind, please? Can I have that moment back, with all the advantage of 20/20 hindsight? I had nothing at all to do with my father’s death. I knew if I told you he was my father and that I had inherited all of the estate because he had not made any claim to it, you would make it your business to go after me. To be honest, I stopped buying into the middle-class idea that the police are our friends quite a long time ago.’

‘So you thought lying to us was the answer?’ Macdonald’s response was immediate and fierce. ‘Given the proper information, we would have discovered that your twin was alive. We had information on your father already which might have let us trace her, before there were two more deaths, and nearly one more—’

‘Cal.’ Lovatt spoke heavily. ‘I beg you to believe I didn’t know he was my half-brother. I guess he was waiting below when my father constructed his little scenario with the ladder, happy to carry Helen off, to be a jailer – here I’m using Helen’s exact words – on the island, until the fuss died down.