Lying Dead (14 page)

    ‘But that doesn’t mean you can just walk out on your husband!’ She recognized the signs: Susie was having one of her temper tantrums again. And she’d seemed to be more strung up than ever for the last couple of days. This was going to call for desperate measures.

    ‘Sit down, Susie.’ She took her daughter’s hand and led her to a chair by the little breakfast table where, in happier times, she and Derek used to have breakfast and read the
Daily Express
in companionable silence. ‘Now, first of all, is the offer of somewhere to live still there?’

    ‘Of course it is!’ Susie was scornful. ‘Findlay was just making a point.’

    ‘Then you must go with him,’ her mother said firmly. ‘You and Findlay have things you need to sort out between you, and that can’t be done at a distance. Remember, a child is entitled to a home with his mummy and daddy – we brought you up to believe that. You took a sacred vow, and marriage isn’t something to be tossed aside because you’ve had a tiff. You have to grow up, Susie, and accept that sometimes you have to work at it.’

    Susie stared at her in hurt disbelief. ‘You’re not saying – you don’t mean we
can’t
stay on with you?’

    ‘For your own good, dear, no, you can’t,’ Jennifer said piously. ‘It would be quite wrong for us to encourage you in any way.’

    Susie sprang up. ‘Let me get this straight. You’re throwing me, and your grandchild, out of this house?’

    Jennifer tittered. ‘Oh dear, that’s so like you, Susie – over-dramatic since the age of three! It may have got you your own way then – we used to laugh about you being such a headstrong little thing – but I’m not about to allow you to throw away your future. And little Josh’s too, don’t forget.’ The words had a fine moral ring to them. ‘Now, away you go back to your husband and say you were just upset. I’m sure he’ll be very sympathetic.’

    As an indication that this was her last word, she returned to stacking the dishwasher.

Casting a look of fury at her mother’s oblivious back, Susie went back to the dining-room where Findlay was still sitting at the table.

    ‘She won’t let me stay.’ Her whole frame was rigid with resentment. ‘We’ll have to come with you.’

    It was his chance to get up, take her in his arms and tell her how relieved he was. He didn’t.

    ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll phone Bill and check that it’s still on.’

    He went out, leaving Susie staring after him, her eyes narrowed and her hands clenching, unable to decide who she hated most: her husband, her mother, or Niall Murdoch, who had been the cause of this whole thing.

‘Arnold? Tam. Tam MacNee, DS.’

    Summoned by the duty officer, MacNee held out his hand to the man who had detached himself from the little group waiting in reception. With a warily professional eye, MacNee noted greying brown hair, a boxer’s nose and eyes that were now undoubtedly assessing him in much the same manner. Tucker was heavily built, with a look which suggested he had seen it all before, and dealt with it. He was short, though, very little taller than MacNee himself, which got him plus points: so often, in MacNee’s view, big blokes confused height with superiority. And the man probably hadn’t much say in what he’d been christened.

    Indeed, at the mention of his name, Tucker winced. ‘Make that Tommy,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘Nickname I’ve got. Can’t think why.’

    His deadpan delivery struck a chord too. ‘Random, these things are sometimes,’ MacNee said with matching solemnity, and, heartened by this exchange, walked across to the two civilians, waiting uncertainly with a policewoman. He greeted them with a formal expression of sympathy, made his inspector’s apologies and led them to a room where PC Langlands was waiting with a coffee tray.

    Mandy Preston, a plump woman, in her late thirties perhaps, had red hair with an unnatural purplish tinge and metallic silver nail polish. She looked a bit confused, but Jeff Brewer seemed to be still in shock. His eyes were red and he was shivering occasionally, though the hall was warm enough.

    Leaving Sandy Langlands to make soothing noises as he ushered them to their seats and poured out coffee, his normally cheerful face creased into sympathetic lines, MacNee withdrew with Tucker to the corridor outside.

    Tucker jerked his head approvingly. ‘Lovely little mover. See the way he’s being mother – real class, that.’

    ‘Know these PAT dogs, go around hospitals cheering up the patients? He’s ours. We’ve had to stop the punters giving him doggie treats.’

    Together they observed the little group through the open door. Mandy Preston was visibly brightening under Langlands’ solicitude, but Brewer’s movements seemed mechanical, as if he was hardly aware of raising the cup to his lips. He was wearing a cheap suit with an open-necked black shirt, which did nothing for his sallow skin. The pallor of exhaustion and strain had given it an almost greenish tinge.

    MacNee nodded towards him. ‘Prime suspect?’

    ‘My guvnor thinks so. But yours doesn’t, seemingly. Bit of a dragon, is she?’

    ‘Big Marge had a go at him, then?’ MacNee, remembering what Fleming had said, was amused. ‘She seemed to have taken a scunner to him, for some reason.’

    ‘If that means what I think it does, it was mutual. He’s not exactly noted for his tact. JCB, we call him – has the same effect as heavy machinery.’

    ‘Knowing Big Marge, I’d put my money on her. I’d like fine to see the two of them have a square go. Any chance you could get him up here?’

    Tucker pulled a face. ‘Not much. He’ll just want reports. He’s a lot on his plate – gangland killing a couple of weeks ago that’s given us a bit of bother. And we’re not expecting to get a lot here. The action’ll be in Manchester.’

    ‘Right enough. Bit of a doss, really, this end. We’re going through the motions, but once the reports are in it’ll be over to you.

    ‘Anyway, the mortuary knows to expect them. Langlands and your constable can handle that while I take you up to the crime scene. The boss has the autopsy this afternoon, then she wants to give Brewer a grilling and see what Preston can tell her, but I’d guess you’ll be heading south again tonight.’

    Tucker looked disappointed. ‘Couldn’t spin it out a bit longer, could you? I could do with a break and I can always tell Carter you do things slowly up here.’

    ‘Say that in front of Big Marge and you’re dead meat. We’re to show you lads what serious police work’s all about.’

    ‘Scary, is she?’

    ‘Has her moments. Still, she won’t be back till mid-afternoon. There’s this wee pub, near where we’re going – you’re not an arrows man, by any chance?’

    ‘Pound a game?’

    In perfect accord, they saw the others leave, then set off for the Queen’s Way, MacNee smugly contemplating his moral superiority to his boss in the ‘hands across the Tweed’ initiative.

Fleming returned from the autopsy in sombre mood, as she always did on these occasions. Despite the cold impersonality of the clinical surroundings – the stainless-steel tables, the harsh light, the antiseptic which didn’t quite mask the underlying smell but at least stopped you gagging – it was never easy to maintain professional detachment. The chilled body might have a waxen look, but the narrative of injuries, which told of a violent quarrel and a terrified woman overpowered and battered to death, made it all too vividly human.

    There had, John Brownlee the pathologist pointed out, been five separate blows to Wintour’s face, delivered open-handed but with some force.

    ‘Someone was very, very angry. A man, most likely – it usually is, given a situation like this – but it’s not impossible that a woman in a rage could do it. Wintour was small and slight, and we’ve seen a lot more woman-on-woman violence lately.’

    The aggressive ladette had certainly started featuring quite prominently on the charge sheet after drunken brawls. Fleming nodded. ‘Did she fight back?’

    Brownlee picked up first one limp hand, then the other, and studied the nails. ‘Doesn’t look like it, but we’ll check.’ He nodded to an assistant who, in a macabre parody of a manicurist, began taking samples.

    Fleming averted her eyes. ‘Could she have been knocked off her feet and accidentally hit her head as she fell?’

    After another careful examination, he was positive in his reply. ‘No. Oh, the first injury – yes, it’s just possible. But look’ – Fleming was again obliged to take a quick glance – ‘it’s clear she was struck again after that, twice, perhaps three times more. With something hard and heavy and roundish – something more like a rock, say, than a club. But you’ll have to wait for the tissue analysis before we can give you that sort of information.’

    Dutifully, Fleming had stayed for the rest of the ritual desecration which the interests of justice demanded, without any other significant information emerging. They might get some more useful pointers about where she had died once the analysis of clothes and shoes was complete, and the SOCO’s report from the scene of crime should be on Fleming’s desk today or tomorrow.

    Driving back, she planned out the rest of her day. Getting the interviews done and the Manchester contingent despatched back south came first: you never knew when Tam would be inspired to re-enact Bannockburn. Then she could see what was happening on the local front; she’d just have to take care to dodge the Super until she had. And somehow she must make time at the end of the day to call in to see her parents.

    But as she passed the desk, the duty officer hailed her. ‘DS Allan and DC Kingsley were wanting a word as soon as possible, ma’am.’

    ‘Right,’ she agreed hollowly. She’d have to see them; Bailey had spelled out that whatever her priorities might be, the local issues were his and she couldn’t afford to be seen quite openly ignoring them. Still, getting their report shouldn’t take that long, and she’d been going to the CID room anyway to find Tam to sit in on the interviews.

    The sound of laughter and cheerfully raised voices could be heard right down the corridor. Through the open door, Fleming could see that Allan and Kingsley, clearly in high good humour, were the centre of a small group which included Tam and a man she did not know – Tucker, presumably, his oppo from Manchester.

    Allan swung round at her approach. ‘Hey, boss! Great news! Jon’s done it again!’ Greg Allan, in his fifties, stockily built and balding, with small dark eyes in a wide, round face which had more than once been unkindly compared to a currant scone – and not to his advantage – was hugely impressed by his sharper subordinate.

    ‘Really?’ Fleming glanced at Kingsley, now composing his features in a modest smirk.
No
, she chided herself,
be fair. If it was someone else you’d call it a smile
.

    ‘The hold-up at the garage – well, you tell her, Jon.’

    Kingsley shrugged. ‘It wasn’t rocket science. It happened when the garage shop was empty, of course, and the boy behind the till gave us a description that could have fitted any man under the age of thirty. Claimed he’d been too scared to notice clearly, all that sort of stuff.

    ‘But we’d a female witness who’d seen him coming out, and the first thing she said was that he was wearing a red striped beanie hat, and you’d think that was something it would have been hard to miss, however scared you were. So we’d a chat with some of the uniforms and it turns out the one working in the shop has a pal who’s come to our notice once or twice before. And as luck would have it, when we went round he was even wearing the beanie hat. We’ve got him downstairs, and once we got the search warrant a fairly unconvincing toy gun and a remarkable amount of cash turned up under his bed.’

    ‘Congratulations, Jon – that’s good work,’ Fleming said with genuine admiration. It might not, as he said, be rocket science, but she was wondering unkindly whether Allan on his own would have put two and two together when the man said, ‘I’d never have worked that out, not until we’d started running background checks.’ She caught sight of MacNee’s sardonic smile, but pretended she hadn’t, turning instead to the man standing beside him.

    ‘You must be DS Tucker. I hope Tam’s been looking after you. Did you find it useful?’

    ‘Yes, ma’am.’ It was a very correct response; she couldn’t read from his expression what he was thinking, but it had occurred to her as she glanced at the two men that their body language suggested their association had been at least relatively harmonious.

    She looked back at Allan. ‘Any word on the woman in hospital?’

    ‘Good news there too, boss. Panic attack, rather than a heart attack, and she’s being discharged today. We’ve got a couple of SOCOs checking out the houses and Tansy’s off making inquiries.’

    ‘Excellent.’ That would keep Donald happy; heart attacks were news, mere house-breaking wasn’t. ‘Tam, I want to talk to Brewer and the woman – Preston, is it?’ Turning back to Tucker, she said, ‘That would let you and your constable take them back tonight, sergeant. You’ll be keen to get back, no doubt – I’m sure you don’t have manpower to spare in Manchester.’

    She had said it tongue in cheek, but he only said, ‘No, ma’am,’ sounding rather wooden, and she was surprised when MacNee said, ‘Maybe Tommy could sit in on the interviews, give us a different perspective?’