Set in Darkness (33 page)

Rebus looked to Lorna, who was shaking her head.

‘I want them cleaned and reframed, that’s all.’

‘She’ll sell them,’ Mrs Grieve warned. ‘I know that’s what she’s up to.’

‘Mother, for Christ’s sake. I don’t need money.’

‘Your husband needs it. He has debts and only the last vestige of anything resembling a career.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Lorna muttered.

‘Don’t you get cheeky with me, my girl!’ Mrs Grieve’s voice was trembling. Her fingers still held Rebus’s hand. They were talons; fleshless claws.

Lorna sighed. ‘What do you two want anyway? I hope you’re here to arrest me; anything would be better than this.’

‘You can always go home!’ her mother shrieked.

‘And leave you here to wallow in self-pity? Oh no, Mummy dearest, we can’t have that.’

‘Seona looks after me.’

‘Seona’s too busy with her political career,’ Lorna spat. ‘She doesn’t need you now. She’s found a more useful cause.’

‘You’re a monster.’

‘Which must make you Dr Frankenstein, I presume?’

‘Vile body.’

‘Yes, on you go. You’ll be telling us you knew him next.’ She turned to Rebus and Siobhan. ‘Evelyn Waugh,’ she explained. ‘
Vile Bodies
.’

‘Putrid. You threw yourself at every man you ever met.’

‘I still do,’ Lorna snarled. She didn’t so much as glance
at Rebus. ‘While you only ever threw yourself at Father, because you knew he’d be useful to you. And once your reputation was established, that was, in a phrase, the end of the affair.’

‘How dare you.’ Cold rage, the rage of a much younger woman.

Siobhan was touching Rebus’s sleeve, edging back towards the door. Lorna saw what she was doing. ‘Oh look, we’re frightening off the filth! Isn’t that precious, Mother? Did you realise we possessed such power?’ She started to laugh. A few moments later, Alicia Grieve joined her.

Rebus’s thought: it’s a fucking mad house. Then he realised that this was normal behaviour for mother and daughter: fighting and spitting the prelude to catharsis. They’d been in the public’s eye so long, they’d become actors in their own melodrama; played out their quarrels as though each one had measure and meaning.

Scenes from family life.

Bloody hell.

Lorna was wiping an imaginary tear from her eye, still cradling the paintings. ‘I’ll put these back,’ she said.

‘No,’ said her mother, ‘leave them in the hall with the others.’ She pointed to where a dozen or so framed paintings sat against the wall. ‘You’re right, we’ll have them looked at: cleaned up, maybe a few new frames.’

‘We should get an insurance quote while we’re at it.’ Her mother was about to interrupt, so Lorna went on quickly. ‘That’s not so I can sell them. But if they were stolen . . .’

Alicia seemed about to argue, but sucked in a deep breath and just nodded. The paintings were laid with the others. Lorna stood up again, brushing her hands free of dust.

‘Must be forty years since you painted some of these.’

‘You’re probably right. Maybe even longer.’ Alicia
nodded. ‘But they’ll survive long after I’m gone. It’s just that they won’t mean the same.’

‘How’s that?’ Siobhan felt compelled to ask.

Alicia looked at her. ‘They mean things to me which they never can to anyone else.’

‘That’s why they’re here,’ Lorna explained, ‘rather than on some collector’s walls.’

Alicia Grieve nodded. ‘Meaning is precious. The personal is all we have; without it, we’re animals, pure and simple.’ She suddenly perked up, her hand dropping from Rebus’s. ‘Tea,’ she barked, clapping her hands together. ‘We must all have some tea.’

Rebus was wondering if there was any chance of a tot of whisky on the side.

They sat in the sitting room, making small talk while Lorna coped in the kitchen. She brought in a tray, started pouring.

‘I’m bound to have forgotten something,’ she said. ‘Tea’s not my strong point.’ She looked at Rebus as she spoke, but he was focused on the fireplace. ‘Something stronger, Inspector? I seem to remember you enjoy a malt.’

‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ he felt compelled to say.

‘Sugar,’ Lorna said, studying the tray. ‘Told you.’ She made for the door, but Rebus and Siobhan announced that neither of them took it, so she returned to her seat. There were crumbly digestives on a plate. They turned down the offer, but Alicia took one, dunking it into her tea, where it broke into pieces. They ignored her as she fished the morsels out, popping them into her mouth.

‘So,’ Lorna said at last, ‘what brings you to Happy Acres?’

‘It might be something or nothing,’ Rebus said. ‘DC Clarke has been investigating the suicide of a homeless person. It looks like he was very interested in your family.’

‘Oh?’

‘And the fact of his suicide, so soon after the murder . . .’

Lorna sat forward in her chair. She was looking at Siobhan. ‘This wouldn’t be the millionaire tramp by any chance?’

Siobhan nodded. ‘Though he wasn’t quite a millionaire.’

Lorna turned to her mother. ‘You remember me telling you?’

Her mother nodded, but appeared not to have been listening. Lorna turned back to Siobhan. ‘But what’s it got to do with us?’

‘Maybe nothing,’ Siobhan conceded. ‘The deceased was calling himself Chris Mackie. Does that name mean anything?’

Lorna thought hard, then shook her head.

‘We have some photos,’ Siobhan said, handing them over. She glanced at Rebus.

Lorna studied the photos. ‘Grim-looking creature, isn’t he?’

Siobhan was still looking at Rebus, willing him to ask the question.

‘Mrs Cordover,’ he said, ‘there’s no easy way to ask this.’

She looked at him. ‘Ask what?’

Rebus took a deep breath. ‘He’s a lot older . . . been living rough.’ He dived in. ‘It couldn’t be Alasdair, could it?’

‘
Alasdair?
’ Lorna took another look at the top photo. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ She looked towards her mother, who seemed to have turned whiter than ever. ‘Alasdair’s got fair hair, nothing like this.’ Alicia’s hand was reaching out, but Lorna passed the photos back to Siobhan. ‘What are you trying to do? This man’s nothing like Alasdair, nothing like him at all.’

‘People can change in twenty years,’ Rebus said quietly.

‘People can change overnight,’ she retorted coldly, ‘but that’s not my brother. What made you think it was?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘A hunch.’

‘I’ll show you Alasdair,’ Alicia Grieve said, rising to her feet. She put her cup down on the table. ‘Come with me, and I’ll show you him.’

They followed her into the kitchen. The glass-fronted china cabinet was full, and piles of clean crockery covered the worktops, awaiting space that would never be there. The sink was full of dirty dishes. An ironing board was piled with clothes. A radio was playing softly: some classical station.

‘Bruckner,’ Alicia said, unlocking the back door. ‘They always seem to be playing Bruckner.’

‘Her studio,’ Lorna explained as they followed Alicia into the garden. It was overgrown now, untended, but the notion of the garden it had once been was still there. A free-standing swing, its pipework corroded. A stone urn, waiting to be put upright on its plinth. The leaves on the lawn had turned to mulch, making progress difficult. And at the far end of the garden, a stone outhouse.

‘The servants’ quarters?’ Rebus guessed.

‘I suppose so,’ Lorna said. ‘It was our secret place when we were kids. Then Mother turned it into a studio, and we were locked out.’ She was watching her mother lead the way, the old woman’s back stooped. ‘Time was, Father and she painted in the same room – his studio’s in the attic.’ She pointed back to two skylights in the roof. ‘Then Mother decided she needed her own space, her own light. She was locking him out of her life, too.’ She looked at Rebus. ‘It wasn’t easy, growing up a Grieve.’

He almost thought she’d said
growing up aggrieved
.

Alicia took a key from her cardigan pocket, unlocked the door to her studio. It was just one room inside, the stone walls whitewashed and spattered with paint. Paint on the floor, too. Three easels of different sizes. Threads of cobweb hanging from the ceiling. And against one wall, a
series of portraits, head and neck only, the canvasses of varying size. The same man, caught at different stages of his life.

‘Good God,’ Lorna gasped, ‘it’s Alasdair.’ She started sorting through the portraits; there were over a dozen.

‘I imagine him growing, ageing,’ Alicia said quietly. ‘I see him in my mind and then I paint him.’

Fair-haired, sad-eyed. A troubled man, despite the smiles the artist had given him. And nothing at all like Chris Mackie.

‘You never said anything.’ Lorna had picked up one of the paintings to study it more closely. Her finger brushed the shadowing of cheekbones.

‘You’d have been jealous,’ her mother said. ‘No good denying it.’ She turned to Rebus. ‘Alasdair was my favourite, you see. And when he ran away . . .’ She looked at her own work. ‘Maybe this was my way of explaining it.’ When she turned back, she saw that Siobhan was still holding the photographs. ‘May I?’ She took them, held them up to her face.

Recognition lit up her eyes. ‘Where is he?’

‘You know him?’ Siobhan asked.

‘I need to know where he is.’

Lorna had put down the portrait. ‘He killed himself, Mother. The tramp who left all the money.’

‘Who is he, Mrs Grieve?’ Rebus asked.

Alicia’s hands were shaking as she went through the photos again. ‘I’ve been so wanting to talk to him.’ There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them with her wrist. Rebus had taken a step forward.

‘Who is it, Alicia? Who’s the man in the photographs?’

She looked at him. ‘His name’s Frederick Hastings.’

‘Freddy?’ Lorna came over to look. She pried the police photo from her mother’s fingers.

‘Well?’ Rebus asked.

‘I suppose it could be. It’s twenty years since I last laid eyes on him.’

‘But who was he?’ Siobhan asked.

Suddenly Rebus remembered. ‘Alasdair’s business partner?’

Lorna was nodding.

Rebus turned to Siobhan. She looked puzzled.

‘You say he’s dead?’ Alicia asked. Rebus nodded. ‘He’d have known where Alasdair is. Those two were inseparable. Maybe there’s an address amongst his belongings.’

Lorna was looking at the other photos, the ones of ‘Chris Mackie’ at the hostel. ‘Freddy Hastings a tramp.’ Her laughter was a sudden explosion in the room.

‘I don’t think there was any address,’ Siobhan was telling Alicia Grieve. ‘I’ve been through his effects several times.’

‘Maybe we’d best go back to the house,’ Rebus announced. Suddenly, he had a lot more questions to ask.

Lorna made another pot of tea, but this time fixed herself a drink, half-and-half whisky and spring water. She’d made the offer, but Rebus had turned it down. Her eyes were on him as she took the first sip.

Siobhan had her notebook out, pen ready.

Lorna exhaled; the fumes wafted all the way to where Rebus was sitting. ‘We thought they’d gone off together,’ she began.

‘Utter nonsense,’ her mother interrupted.

‘Okay,
you
didn’t think they were gay.’

‘They disappeared at the same time?’ Siobhan asked.

‘Looked like. After Alasdair had been gone a few days, we tried contacting Freddy. No sign of him.’

‘Was he reported as a missing person?’

Lorna shrugged. ‘Not by me.’

‘Family?’

‘I don’t think he had any.’ She looked to her mother for confirmation.

‘He was an only child,’ Alicia said. ‘Parents died within a year of one another.’

‘Left him some money, most of which I thought he’d lost.’

‘They
both
lost money,’ Alicia added. ‘That’s why Alasdair ran off, Inspector. Bad debts. He was too proud to ask for help.’

‘But not too proud to clear off,’ Lorna couldn’t help saying. Her mother fixed her with a glare.

‘When was this?’ Rebus asked.

‘Some time in ’79.’ Lorna looked to her mother for confirmation.

‘Halfway through March,’ the old woman said.

Rebus and Siobhan locked eyes. March ’79: Skelly.

‘What sort of business did they have?’ Siobhan asked, keeping her voice under control.

‘Their last foray was into property.’ Lorna shrugged again. ‘I don’t know much more than that. Probably bought places they couldn’t sell on.’

‘Land development?’ Rebus guessed. ‘Would that be it?’

‘I don’t know.’

Rebus turned to Alicia, who shook her head. ‘Alasdair was very private in some ways. He wanted us to think he was so capable . . . so self-sufficient.’

Lorna got up to refill her glass. ‘My mother’s way of saying he was hopeless at most things.’

‘Unlike you, I suppose,’ Alicia snapped.

‘If they ran off because they were in debt,’ Siobhan said, ‘how come Mr Hastings had nearly half a million pounds in a briefcase a year or so on?’

‘You’re the detectives, you tell us.’ Lorna sat down again.

Rebus was thoughtful. ‘All this stuff about the two men’s business failings, is there anything to back it up, or is it another clan myth?’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘It’s just that we could do with a few solid facts in this case.’

‘What case?’ The alcohol was kicking in; Lorna’s voice
had turned combative, her cheeks tinged with red. ‘You’re supposed to be investigating Roddy’s murder, not Freddy’s suicide.’

‘The Inspector thinks they may be linked,’ Alicia said, nodding at her own deduction.

‘What makes you say that, Mrs Grieve?’ Rebus asked.

‘Freddy was interested in us, you say. Do you think he could have killed Roddy?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know. Something to do with the money, perhaps.’

‘Did Roddy and Freddy know one another?’

‘They met a few times, when Alasdair brought Freddy to the house. Maybe other times, too.’

‘So if Roddy met Freddy again after twenty years, you think he’d have recognised him?’

‘Probably.’

‘I didn’t,’ Lorna said, ‘when you showed me the photos.’

Rebus looked at her. ‘No, you didn’t.’ He was thinking:
or did you
? Why had she handed the photos back to Siobhan rather than passing them to her mother?