Shadows of Death (31 page)

‘They’ll find him,’ said Alan serenely. ‘Are you hungry enough for supper?’

‘Not really, but eating would be something to pass the time. Beats pacing the floor.’

‘Then how about a drink, and some cheese and biscuits? We can stretch that out for quite a while, if we put our minds to it.’

We had barely settled down with our drinks and our snack when Alan’s phone tootled. I put my drink down.

‘Nesbitt here. Ah, you did. Good. And … well done!’ He gave me a high sign. ‘And you’d like us … of course. When and where?’ He listened for a moment longer and clicked off. ‘You’ve gathered what that was about.’

‘They’ve found what they were looking for, and they’ve got Fairweather.’

‘And Baikie is kindly allowing us to be in at the kill. So to speak. I’d save that for later, love,’ he said, nodding at my bourbon. ‘Best, perhaps, to approach this in a godly, righteous, and sober state.’

The venue Baikie had chosen in a moment of brilliance was the Ancient Orkney Museum. All the lights were shining brightly when we arrived. Mr Norquist was absent, for which I was grateful. Mr Larsen was present, however, along with Baikie and Fairweather. Baikie sat in a Windsor chair, his voluminous and rather shabby raincoat draped over the back. I thought about Columbo.

Fairweather was inclined to be bellicose. ‘I demand to know why I have been brought here! Mr Nesbitt, I asked you to look out for my interests. I have to say you’ve done a damn poor job of it!’

‘On the contrary, sir, you asked me to investigate the murder of Henry Carter, which I have done, or rather which my wife and I have assisted Inspector Baikie in doing.’

‘Then why hasn’t someone arrested that fool Norquist? He’s nutty as a fruitcake, but he’s also a killer.’

‘I don’t believe so, sir,’ said Baikie calmly. ‘You are, I think, aware that he has emerged from hiding, and has told us a number of very interesting things.’

‘And you believed him. I thought better of your intelligence than that. He’s a raving lunatic, I tell you.’

‘So you do, sir, repeatedly. Everyone here will, I believe, concede that Mr Norquist has been severely disturbed, and is still in rather a fragile emotional state, but there is nothing whatever the matter with his memory. We believe his account of the night of the murder, an account which leaves you, sir, without anyone to verify your whereabouts.’

‘I’ve told you. How many times! I had a drink or two with Norquist, who has a remarkably low tolerance for alcohol, namby-pamby that he is. He became drunk and incapable. I took him home and put him to bed, and then went home to bed myself, after midnight.’

‘No, sir, you did not.’ Baikie’s manner had sharpened. ‘You left Mr Norquist before ten. You then went to High Sanday with Mr Carter, on some ruse or other, and killed him. It seems probable that you then took the time to bury his watch in Mr Andersen’s pasture, hoping to incriminate him, and then took Mr Carter’s boat back nearly to Kirkwall harbour, where you scuttled it and swam to shore.’

‘You should write fiction for a living, Baikie, but you need a little work on the plots. This one doesn’t quite hang together.’

‘Oh, I think it does, sir. When you realized Mr Andersen was not going to be charged with Mr Carter’s murder, you tried very hard to confuse the issue with several ploys that, while ingenious, were not well thought out. For example, you tried to incriminate Mr Norquist by stealing some of the museum’s artefacts, but you did that after his disappearance, and after the lock on the door here had been changed. Poor planning, Mr Fairweather.’

Larsen spoke. ‘I left my key in my office at the college, fool that I am. Of course I never lock my office door. He must have “borrowed” it and had a copy made.’

‘One moment, sir,’ said Baikie, as Fairweather began to speak. ‘You see, we found this in your room today.’ He pulled out a pottery beaker in the distinctive Unstan Ware style. ‘There were a good many other such items, as well. I’m happy that your scientific training would not allow you to destroy them, but it was a mistake from a criminal point of view.

‘Even before that,’ he went on, again riding over Fairweather’s attempt to speak, ‘you spread the tale of the sacrifice of a cat at the dig, and laid the blame at Mr Norquist’s door. Leaving aside the unlikelihood of such an action – Mr Norquist being deathly afraid of cats, and a cat being unsuitable as a sacrifice, from the point of view of the ancient Orcadians – how do you explain this?’

He opened the box under his chair, the box that had been hidden by his raincoat. With a hiss worthy of a Shakespearean actor responding to his cue, Roadkill leapt out of the box, straight for Fairweather’s face.

‘Did he scratch you badly, love?’ Alan and I were sitting with our belated drinks and a somewhat more sustaining snack, seeing as how it was now well past supper time.

‘I had taken the precaution of leaving my gloves on, anticipating such a scene,’ Alan said placidly. ‘The copper who was hidden in the corner had gauntlets, so between the two of us we managed to capture the cat without serious injury. To ourselves, at least. Fairweather’s face won’t be the same again for a while, but he’ll recover. An amazing memory that cat must have.’

‘An amazing capacity for holding a grudge,’ I amended. ‘He had every right, though. I suppose the fool man must have intended really to kill him, but Roadkill managed to get away. I must say he made an effective inducement to confession.’

‘I’d have confessed nearly anything, if that cat had been attacking me.’

‘And there’s the flaw in the whole thing, of course. Interesting, isn’t it, that it was fear, along with greed, which led to the murder, and in the end, fear prompted the confession. A good lawyer will work that for all it’s worth. The case is solid, though. I don’t think he’ll get off. What will happen about the inheritance? Does Fairweather’s guilt nullify that?’

‘That’s another thing the lawyers will have to work out, but I shouldn’t think it will make any difference. The bequest was to the organization, Friends of Ancient Orkney, not to Fairweather individually. Assuming he does not, in fact, manage to “get off”. And speaking of getting off. I did find time today to phone the garage in Edinburgh. The car is ready and waiting for us, and for something less than a king’s ransom. His brother’s plane is engaged for the next few days, but for a small additional fee MacTavish will drive the car to Aberdeen and meet us at the ferry. I said I’d phone and tell him when we’d be there.’

‘Not by the first ferry in the morning, Alan,’ I said sleepily. ‘There are people to say goodbye to.’

There were many people to say goodbye to next day, Nora Tredgold, and all the shopkeepers on The Street, and even Celia Freebody. I told her what had become of Sandy.

‘I hope you won’t mind too much,’ I said. ‘He and Chief Inspector Baikie just hit it off, and I think he’s found a good home.’

‘I’ll miss him,’ she said, ‘but if he’s happy, that’s the main thing. Mrs Martin, I’m sorry I suspected you of killing him. I’ve worried about him for a long time, and …’ She made a vague gesture.

‘I understand. It’s all right. I love cats, too.’

Then, on the drive to the car rental return, we stopped to say goodbye to Orkney. We took the longest way, with many detours, and even so we couldn’t see everything I wanted to see. The ferry didn’t leave until quite late, so we had plenty of time to stop and gaze at the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness. We watched the gulls quarrel over titbits, watched the sheep and cattle make their leisurely way across pastures. We looked at the great over-arching sky and felt the ever-present wind in our faces.

‘We’re coming back,’ I said firmly. ‘With no alarums and excursions next time. I never got to see Andrew’s pottery – his workshop, I mean – and you still haven’t shown me the castle, not properly.’

‘Ah, the castle,’ said Alan when we were aboard the ferry and settled in for the night journey. ‘I’ll tell you about the castle as you fall asleep. There’s an enchanted wood, you know, and a maze, and a formal garden with a pond …’

I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.