Still Life

by Val McDermid

  Daisy was actually bouncing in her chair. ‘Whereas, in 2010, the Tories would have loved to have yet another stick to beat Gordon Brown’s government with. It would have been all over the media and they’d have left no stone unturned to uncover the culprits.’

  ‘Auld was afraid the finger would point to him. And back in 2010, it might well have done. I imagine there might have been some CCTV coverage. Some record of who he’d brought into the building after hours. He wasn’t to know that it would be another five years before anyone would discover his and Greig’s little game.’ Karen unwrapped her flapjack and took a thoughtful bite.

  ‘That all makes perfect sense but it still doesn’t explain what happened to Auld. And why Greig killed himself,’ Daisy said, crestfallen.

  ‘I think whatever happened to Auld is the reason why Greig killed himself. If Auld panicked and ran, maybe he and Greig had a fight that turned bloody? Or maybe Auld finally saw himself for what he was – a liar and a thief who’d betrayed the trust of his wife and his country. And killed himself. Greig couldn’t live with the guilt and took the same way out?’ It felt more tentative to Karen than it had sounded when she said it. And then she found the flaw.

  ‘But that doesn’t fit either.’ She frowned, cross with herself. ‘According to the reports in the papers, Greig had been telling friends about a broken love affair well before Iain Auld disappeared.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it didn’t go the way you suggest. I was only a student back in 2010, but I remember nobody expected Gordon Brown’s Labour government to be re-elected, even before the election campaign started. The writing was on the wall, surely? What if they had split up, then the election came along and Iain Auld freaked out and told Greig they had to come clean? They could have got into a fight and it played out the way you suggested.’

  It was plausible, Karen thought. But was it plausible enough to build a case on? She needed to get to David Greig’s executor. Someone close enough to be responsible for administering his estate must have known the details of his private life. Except that she wasn’t factoring in Verity Foggo’s evidence. Was it possible she’d been mistaken? That the ‘discovery’ that had set the ball rolling was a misapprehension after all?

  Karen massaged her temples and sighed. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat. There’s a decent Thai and a good Indian up the street.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. Have I got time to put this new stuff into the timeline before we go?’

  ‘Sure. I need to try to get hold of the Mint.’

  Daisy looked up. ‘The Mint?’

  ‘You’ve not met Jason yet, have you? My wingman. DC Jason Murray, aka the Mint.’

  Daisy looked baffled. ‘The Mint?’

  ‘You’re too young, aren’t you? “Murray Mints, Murray Mints, too good to hurry mints.”’

  ‘Oh. OK.’ She shook her head. ‘Cop nicknames. They’re so convoluted.’ She turned her attention back to the screen. ‘Where is he?’ she added absently.

  ‘Good question, to which the answer seems to be AWOL.’ Karen scowled at her phone and put it to her ear. Straight to voicemail again. This was beyond a joke. She reached for her iPad and ran the Find My Phone app again. And there was Jason’s phone, still right in the middle of the Hartshead Moor service area. ‘I don’t like this,’ she muttered. Even if Jason had tracked Amanda McAndrew to the nearby golf course, it was already after six. It would be dark, and as far as Karen was aware, people didn’t play golf in the dark.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ If Amanda had been playing golf, she might have stopped for a drink after the game. But surely Jason would be in the golf course car park? Or even in the bar. She zoomed in and turned to satellite view. The service area was separated from the clubhouse by two lines of what looked like trees and dense shrubbery. Even Jason wouldn’t think that was a reasonable place for a stake-out. And why was his phone turned off? If he was in the car, he’d be able to charge it up, no problem. ‘Let’s get something to eat and worry about Jason later.’

  They settled on the Thai restaurant round the corner on Union Street. ‘Mmm, a pre-theatre menu,’ Daisy said. ‘I love a bargain.’ She made a wry face. ‘Must be all those years in Aberdeen.’

  ‘So it’s true, Aberdonians are tight?’

  ‘Just as true as what they say about you Fifers. “One generation away from the caves.”’

  Karen laughed. ‘Aye, but that’s true.’ She chose what she always had – crab in rice paper wrappers, then pad khing. She loved the crispy ginger that ran through the dish and woke up her taste buds. Daisy was more conservative, going with fish cakes and pad Thai. She was young, Karen thought. Give her time.

  They agreed not to talk about the case while they were eating. Instead they talked about holidays. Daisy, it turned out, was in love with the Greek islands. With her friend Tori, she was working her way round the smaller ones, avoiding the tourist trap seafronts lined with tavernas packed with holidaymakers determined to get wasted on beer and ouzo. ‘We love those villages where you rock up to a taverna that’s basically somebody’s patio and you go in the kitchen and choose your fish. And they throw it on the grill for you. Bliss.’

  Karen had never been to Greece. She’d heard stories of the plumbing and had decided to give it the body swerve. But what Daisy described sounded like her sort of place. Maybe she’d been too hasty. Maybe it could be a future compromise destination for her and Hamish.

  ‘Are you heading back to Fife?’ Karen asked as she waited for the bill.

  ‘Are we done?’

  ‘For tonight anyway. I can’t see anything much happening until we either get something from James’s computer or the copy of David’s will. And I’d like you to follow up the Artists’ Resale Register angle on Monday too.’ It was the kind of task Jason did well. But Jason wasn’t here and Daisy was.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘First I’m going to have one last attempt to get hold of the Mint.’ Karen tried her phone. Voicemail again. And the iPad’s Find My Phone was giving her the same location.

  Now she was seriously worried.

  Obviously concerned, Daisy said, ‘Still nothing?’

  ‘His phone’s been going to voicemail since late morning. I did Find My Phone right before you arrived at the office and it says he’s been at a motorway services in Yorkshire ever since. There’s something wrong. Jason never goes dark. He’s so anxious about getting it wrong, he’s the opposite of going freestyle.’ The waiter arrived with the bill and Karen paid with her card.

  ‘What’s he doing down there?’

  ‘It’s another case we’re working. We think a woman called Amanda McAndrew killed her girlfriend then stole her identity.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think it might be to muddy the waters. If you can pull it off, it’s a very good way to obscure the time of death. She knew her lover was estranged from her family, and she’d established that they were going on the road, so nobody was going to report the girlfriend missing. After enough time had gone by, McAndrew could re-emerge as herself, free and unencumbered.’

  ‘That makes sense, I suppose.’

  Karen’s smile was wry. ‘It’s the best I can come up with. We did a bit of fancy footwork and connected her to an address in Stockport. I sent Jason to track her down. I gave him explicit instructions not to make an approach. All he was supposed to do was find where she’s living or working and stake her out till I could join him. And now this. I’ve heard nothing from him since last night. And we think this woman is a killer.’ Karen’s face had taken on a pinched look.

  ‘Can’t you get the local boys to swing past the services and see whether they can spot him?’

  ‘They’ve got no skin in the game, it’s not going to be high on their priorities.’ Karen sighed deeply. ‘Why do I
always feel responsible for him? I’m not his bloody mother.’ Then she had a thought. She grabbed her phone and searched her contacts for Eilidh. ‘The girlfriend,’ she muttered in response to Daisy’s questioning look.

  Eilidh answered on the third ring. ‘Hello, DCI Pirie,’ she said. It didn’t matter how often Karen told the lassie to use her first name, she followed Jason’s example.

  ‘Hi, Eilidh. Sorry to bother you, but I think there might be a problem with Jason’s phone. I wondered if he’d been in touch with you today?’

  ‘Yeah, he spoke to me first thing this morning. He was fine, he was going off to some art studio or something. He’ll call me later on, we always speak at bedtime if we’re not together.’ She sounded unworried, which Karen was pleased about. She didn’t want to panic her.

  ‘OK, no worries. He’s maybe just in a black spot.’

  ‘Or else he’s out of juice. You know what he’s like, head in the clouds.’

  That was one way of putting it. Karen ended the call and stared glumly at her phone. There was nothing else for it. She was going to have to find her wayward wingman.

  Sitting on a cold stone step had been bearable earlier in the day. But the sun had gone down hours ago and whatever heating had been on in the hall had turned itself off too. A thin shirt and a pair of suit trousers were no match for the drop in temperature. Jason could barely feel his fingers. He was going to die here, he was convinced of it now. If the lack of water didn’t get him, the cold would.

  He kept having spasms of shivering that racked his body with more pain as his broken leg juddered. And then he remembered the pile of velvet curtains in the corner of the basement. The thought of them made him tearful all over again. What was worse? To stay up by the door where there was a chance he could make himself heard whenever people came back to the hall, always supposing he hadn’t frozen to death? Or drag himself through the agony of descending the stairs and wrapping himself in the curtains, too far from the stairs to be heard when he called for help?

  It was no choice. He scouted out the descent with his feeble torch and this time he spotted a handrail. If he pulled himself up on the handrail, he could move his good leg down step by step. It would still be agonising but hopefully it would take less time than working his way down on his backside.

  By the time he reached the bottom, he was drenched in cold sweat. Worse still, he needed to piss. He was determined not to wet himself. Not because it would be embarrassing when he was found, but because he knew it would only make him ever more cold. Balancing on one leg, gripping the banister with white knuckles, he undid his zip and direct the flow towards the stack of tables. He felt bad about it, but he didn’t have an alternative. Exhausted by the effort, he lowered himself to the floor and lay there for a few minutes until he’d gathered a little strength.

  More than ever, he craved the soft warmth of the curtains. He crossed the stone floor in a crippled commando crawl and, with an impressive stream of swearing, dragged himself on to the curtains and wrapped one of them round his suffering body. Whimpering quietly, he managed to find a position that was almost free from pain. If this was going to be his last night on earth, at least he’d be warm.

  41

  Daisy had refused to take no for an answer. Karen had protested that there was no need, that it wasn’t Daisy’s case, that the whole thing was crazy and that she’d be fine on her own. Though she owned to herself that she wouldn’t mind back-up. And to Karen’s secret relief, Daisy had simply insisted. ‘From everything you’ve said about Jason, I’m sure he’d do the same for me.’

  ‘Aye, if he thought of it. He sometimes needs a wee nudge but his heart’s in the right place.’

  And so they’d gone back to Gayfield Square and commandeered a marked police car. ‘That way we can put the blue lights on and hammer down the road. That should shave a fair bit of time off the journey,’ Karen explained as they set off. ‘Plus if we need to intimidate anybody, we look very bloody official.’

  They said little while Karen drove out of the city to join the A1 heading south. Once they were on the dual carriageway she put her foot down and soon they were doing over a hundred miles an hour, the blue lights washing the carriageway around them. The traffic was light, and Karen rarely had to touch the siren. She was in the zone, focused on handling the car at speed. But the dual carriageway ran out after thirty miles and she had to adjust her speed accordingly.

  ‘Wow, this is quite a drive,’ Daisy said.

  ‘There’ll be a lot more flashy-dashy driving to come. Can you read in the car?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t get car-sick, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘OK. Can you check something out online? The fire at the Goldman Gallery in Brighton four years ago? Can you see whether it was arson? What was the word at the time? And how many of David Greig’s paintings went up in smoke? I was planning to follow it up, but bloody Jason got in the way.’ Karen hit the siren to force her way past a couple of cars dawdling on the outskirts of Eyemouth.

  Daisy searched the web, her face illumined by the phone screen. Karen drove on regardless, concentrating on covering the miles at the maximum speed she felt was safe. Eventually, Daisy spoke. ‘The police and the fire service both believed the fire had been started deliberately. There’s a quite detailed piece in the local paper. They reckon somebody poured petrol through a delivery slot in the back door and set fire to it. The room where the blaze started was displaying four David Greig portraits plus landscapes, a conceptual piece by Tracey Emin, a series of Damien Hirst Spots paintings and half a dozen works by people I’ve never heard of.’

  ‘Any arrests?’

  ‘Nope. Not a one. Lots of speculation about the motive. Was it a spurned artist who was jealous of the ones on display? Was it a protest against contemporary art in general? Was it a firebug who wanted to see a good blaze? Or was it something personal against Simon Goldman? He’d recently closed down a factory in Kent, which didn’t go down well with the workers who’d lost their jobs.’

  ‘Plenty lines of inquiry there. But I suppose the insurance company coughed up and nobody was hurt, were they?’

  ‘No loss of life, no injuries reported. So that would have taken the pressure off, right?’

  ‘Right. The media don’t generally get overexcited about some rich bastard’s pet project getting torched once the first excitement’s over. So if that was Iain Auld standing in the crowd watching his lover’s paintings burn, maybe it was Iain Auld who started the fire?’ Karen sped up as they reached a short stretch of dual carriageway.

  ‘Why would he do that? I mean, if he was still alive, why would he want to destroy his lover’s art?’

  Karen zipped past a clutch of lorries lumbering along in the inside lane. Then she said, ‘What’s the first question we always look at when a case isn’t open and shut?’

  ‘Who benefits.’

  ‘And who benefited from this gallery fire?’

  ‘The gallery owner? He’d just closed a factory. What if he needed the insurance?’

  ‘He’s a billionaire, Daisy. He’d have plenty of ways to resolve a cashflow problem without burning down his art collection. He could have sold it, if he was that desperate.’

  Daisy sighed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think that through.’

  ‘The main beneficiary of that fire is whoever has the stash of uncatalogued David Greig portraits. And who’s most likely to have those?’

  ‘Iain Auld? He’s not dead? Verity Foggo was right?’

  ‘I’ve asked River Wilde – you know, the forensic anthropologist at Dundee – to compare the photographs with each other and with historic pix of Auld. If she confirms it, then yes, we have to work on that assumption.’

  Daisy frowned, pondering the implications. ‘So when David Greig killed himself, Iain Auld had access to a secret supply of his work?’

  ‘That’s one possibility. But t
here’s another one that I like a lot better. What if David Greig didn’t commit suicide? What if the uncatalogued paintings are ones that Greig completed after he was supposed to be dead? What if they’re both still alive?’

  It was Daisy who broke the silence. ‘How could they have got away with it? Why would you even think of a scam like that?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it, trying to make sense of it. Imagine you’re Iain Auld. You’re a highly respected senior civil servant and a supposedly happily married man. Nobody we’ve spoken to has suggested otherwise. And then you fall catastrophically in love with a man. Not just any man, but a notorious bad boy. He’s got a reputation for promiscuity, drug-taking – excess of all sorts. It’s not going to play well in your professional life. And it’s going to cause immense pain to your wife, who you still care for.’

  ‘And maybe the last thing David Greig wants is to be publicly linked with somebody who’s the soul of respectability. He’d have been a laughing stock among the YBA crowd, I bet,’ Daisy chipped in.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah. It’s not exactly avant-garde, is it? So they get together in absolute discretion. I imagine Iain wanting to show off Dover House to his lover – it’s an architectural gem, after all. And David, who is a brilliant copyist and a man who loves taking risks, checks out the paintings on the walls and comes up with the idea of replacing the originals with copies. I can imagine how he’d sell it – it’s subversive, disruptive. And it’s also the emperor’s new clothes – how long will it be before anybody notices what he’s done? And he talks Iain into this.’

  ‘As a sort of elaborate practical joke, you mean?’