“My face gets around,” I told him. “Oz Blackstone; I’m a friend of David Capperauld’s fiancee.”
“You’re also an actor; I saw your last film. Very good, very good; no way could I do that sort of thing.”
“I could say the same about your last tee-shot. I have this terrible bloody slice.”
Kennedy smiled. “Get your pro to work on your set-up,” he said, ‘but once you start slicing, it’s usually terminal.” He turned back to Ricky, as we joined him at his table. “So, Mr. Ross, you said you wanted to ask me about my poor friend David? I’m happy to talk to you, but what’s the nature of this investigation?”
“Informal,” he replied, pausing as the barman appeared and took our drinks orders; two diet cokes; Ross was driving and I’d gone off the idea of a pint. “The crown is convinced of the circumstances, and it looks as if they’ll proceed on a culpable homicide charge. Assuming the judge accepts a guilty plea, the sentence will be determined by the extent to which her counsel can persuade him she was provoked.”
“What? Are you trying to prove she was out of her mind with grief when she did it?”
“Not quite, but something along those lines.”
“You’ll have a problem, then. I know Alison, obviously; I knew them as a couple, although we didn’t see a lot of each other latterly, since I’m touring most of the time, and my family base is in the south. To be frank, I never thought they’d make it to the altar, although I never thought, obviously, that the relationship would end like this. I thought that they were committed to their business more than to each other, and that David in particular was in it for the money.”
The golfer leaned back in his seat. “They say you can pick your friends but not your relatives. I don’t believe that; I have cousins I haven’t seen since we were children, but I’m one of those guys who makes a friend for better or worse. I’ve known David Capperauld since first year at Edinburgh Academy juniors, and we’ve been chums since then. I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind; I know that he could be a cunning, ruthless little shit, and that he behaved very badly towards Alison; but he had his good side too. He was funny, he was devoted to his parents, and if you were close to him he’d always be there for you. I think part of the trouble was that he and Alison were never that close.”
I was only there as an observer, but I couldn’t stop myself from picking up on him. “You said he behaved badly towards her. Alison told me that he had broken off the engagement, or had told her as much, and that he wanted her to buy him out of the business at a value which was his estimate as much as anything else.”
Kennedy nodded. “That’s more or less the situation. The way he put it, she was trying to make him take less than market value, by threatening the stability of the company. I can see both sides of that one.”
So could I. I wondered whether Ricky and I should stop our investigation at that point, and let Alison settle for what she had.
“Do you know anything of the relationship between David and his famous cousin?” I asked.
“David hated him from way back; the whole town knew that. There were two stories about it; eventually he told me the true one. He couldn’t let himself make it up with Ewan, though. It was a macho thing with him, a pride thing; every time Ewan won an award or had a hit, he got more bitter.”
“What about the woman?” Ricky’s question cut right across him. “The one he was two-timing Alison with?”
“Again,” Kennedy replied, ‘that’s not how he would have put it. He’d have said that the relationship had run its course and that he had moved on.” He looked at Ross; I could read the shrewdness in his eyes. “This isn’t about a plea in mitigation, is it?” he murmured, then he glanced back at me. “You don’t think she did it, do you?”
“Let’s just say we’d like to be satisfied that she did,” I told him.
“But the police are, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes the police are too easily satisfied.”
“I’m with you on that one.”
“So, David’s other woman; who is she?”
Kennedy smiled and looked out of the window. “Nice little girl,” he mused. “David introduced us last time I was up in Edinburgh. She’s a receptionist with a big firm out on the west side. She’s a doctor’s daughter; Chinese descent. Her name’s Anna Chin.”
Thirty-Three.
“You know what, Ricky,” I said, as we drove away from the golf club, ‘there’s truth in the old song.”
“Eh?”
“Life is indeed just a bowl of cherries.”
“What the bloody hell are you talking about?”
“Anna Chin.”
“You know her?”
“I met her the other day. She’s the main hall receptionist at James Torrent’s new office building.”
“You never said. When Kennedy came out with the name, you should have said.”
“Why? What difference would it have made? Kennedy isn’t a suspect.”
Ross was silent for a moment or two. “How do you know that for sure?” he asked.
“He was playing in a pro-am event in Paris when Capperauld was killed. I checked the European Tour website on my laptop.”
“Clever bastard, eh.”
“Who, me or him? Anyway, I’m telling you now. Anna Chin works for Torrent, okay. Where does that take us?”
“Nowhere of itself,” said Ricky, as he took a right at the lights, past the Roseburn Bar, ‘but it’s a connection. It has a pattern of a sort; there’s Torrent giving Alison a hard time over Ewan Capperauld, and over money, and at the same time his receptionist’s having it off with Alison’s fiance, who’s also Capperauld’s cousin.
“It doesn’t fit right. It sticks out, a bit like that.” He took his right hand off the wheel and held it up. I looked at it and saw that his wrist was slightly deformed. “I broke it playing rugby, just after I left school. The bones weren’t fitted together properly, but no one knew until they took the plaster off. By that time it was too late, and a promising career was halted in its tracks.
“I’ve had that as a reminder ever since. It niggles me, and now, every time I see a set of facts that fit together like a badly healed fracture, I want to know more about them.”
“Maybe, but remember one thing. We’re after the person who killed David Capperauld.”
“If it wasn’t Alison… but what’s your point?”
“Let’s say it wasn’t. And my point is, I’m telling you it wasn’t Anna Chin either.”
“Why? Don’t tell me she was playing in the pro-am with Kennedy.”
“She might as well have been. She didn’t do it.”
“Let me guess. She’s a wee cracker with big doe eyes, and she couldn’t possibly have stuck an ice-pick in her boyfriend’s nut. If I’d given up on a suspect on that basis when I was in the force, there would be at least a dozen women walking around now, instead of doing time. Listen, whoever killed Capperauld either lashed out and got completely lucky… or unlucky if you want to see it that way… or they knew exactly what they were doing.” He paused, to take a left turn on to the Western Approach Road. “Didn’t Don Kennedy say that Anna Chin’s a doctor’s daughter?”
“She is,” I admitted. “She told me so herself. But she didn’t kill Capperauld.”
“There you go again.” Ricky laughed.
“Yes, and I’m right. I’ve known people who’ve killed, or had the potential to do it; this girl doesn’t.”
“You say; I’ll make up my own mind on that when I go to see her.”
“Go easy, then. Her boss is your client, remember.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll just have a gentle chat with the lass.” I tried to imagine him having a gentle chat with anyone, but I let it pass. I was tired, and I wanted to get on my way to Glasgow, so much so that I took out my mobile and called Susie, to let her know I was heading her way.
We were heading up Johnston Terrace, on the other side of the castle from my apartment, when the phone rang
in my pocket. I took a look at the readout before I accepted the call. The number was mine; I’d left it on divert.
“Yup,” I answered. Best not to give too much away too soon, I always say.
“Oz, is that you? Is that you?” It was Alison, unmistakeably. Equally unmistakeably, she was terrified.
“Yes; now calm down. What is it?”
“I’m at James Torrent’s office,” she wailed. “We had a meeting. Oz, there’s a girl here, and she’s dead.”
My brain seemed to shut down for a few seconds. I felt numb, and weary. Not again, Alison, not again, I thought. I realised that Ross was staring at me, and so I forced myself back to the present.
“Is there anyone else there?”
“Not as far as I can see. Oz, I’m scared.”
“If you’re on your own, how did you get in?”
“By the side door, it opens into the hall.”
“Have you touched anything?”
“No.”
“Then get out of there, now.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Get off your mark, as fast as you bloody can!”
As I ended the call, Ricky pulled the Alfa to a halt, just down from the Ensign Ewart pub. “What was all that about?” he asked.
I stared back at him, hard. “As far as you’re concerned, until I tell you different it was a hoax call. Now turn around and head for Torrent’s place.”
“Why?”
“You’re his head of security, right? Well, I’m reporting an incident. Now shift!”
Thirty-Four.
Ricky quizzed me all the way out to Edinburgh Park, but I told him nothing other than that I’d had a call from someone reporting an emergency at the Torrent group corporate headquarters.
“But why you?” he demanded.
“I don’t know!” I yelled at him. I don’t shout very often; when I do, it usually has an effect. He dropped the subject and drove, while I phoned Susie and told her that I’d been delayed.
What I did know from the start was that I didn’t want him, or anyone else, to find out any sooner than necessary that Alison had been there, not until we found out ourselves exactly what had happened and to whom… not that I was in any doubt about that. Ricky’s badly healed fracture was sticking out like an elbow in my mind.
The building was locked and unlit when we pulled up outside, but the big red T on its pole, was glowing. As I looked at it, it occurred to me that it was shaped, more or less, like a cherry.
Ross jumped out and ran up the steps to the main entrance. It was locked and brass gates had been locked across the glass doors. He knew his way around, though; he headed straight round the side of the building, with me at his heels, until he came to a fire exit.
“Open,” he muttered, then pushed it, sending it swinging violently on its hinges. I followed him into a short passageway, which ended with another door; we burst out into the main entrance hall.
It was just before eight-thirty and it was a bright evening, so there was still enough natural light coming down from the atrium for us to see what had brought us there.
No more than twelve feet from us, the body of a young woman was sprawled across the reception desk. She was on her back, gazing sightless at the glass roof above. On the floor, all around us, lay ripe red cherries spilled from the wooden bowl in which her head now rested. I saw that several of them were squashed flat.
Ricky tried to hold me back, but I shook his hand off and made my way through them carefully, up to the desk.
I looked down at the dead girl; she was still wearing her plastic name tag, but I knew who she was, anyway. I had guessed as soon as I had taken Alison’s frantic call. “Anna Chin,” I said, quietly, as if I was trying not to disturb her. She looked peaceful; the only odd thing about her was the angle of her broken neck. Apart from that there was not a mark on her.
I looked over my shoulder at Ricky and saw that he was brandishing his twisted wrist. “What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “That was Alison who called you, right?”
“Yes. Now tell me what else doesn’t fit.”
“What do you mean?”
The words had barely escaped his lips, when we heard the siren outside. “No, it’s okay,” I told him. “That’s what was missing. Listen, when they get in here, ask them when they got the call.”
He frowned at me. “Why?”
“Just do it.” I glanced at my watch. “It’s about twenty minutes since I had that phone call. I’ll bet you the police were delayed by about that length of time; I’ll bet they should have been here sooner, so they could catch her on the premises.”
Ricky isn’t at all dumb. He saw the same picture I was looking at. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t tell me any more.”
Just at that moment, two uniformed constables burst through the side door; one was a youngster, but the other was a veteran, grey hair showing at his temples.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Ross barked.
The older copper glared at him for about half a second, until he recognised him, then changed his expression, instantly. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “We’re the second car. The one that was supposed to respond was in an accident at the Barnton traffic lights; the driver went through on the red and a lorry smashed his side in. I got the call after that, and I’d to come from Granton.”
“Okay. Were the other guys hurt?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“The lorry driver?”
“No.”
“That’s a relief; if he was there’d have been hell to pay.”
The veteran nodded; he was only relieved that he hadn’t been in the other car. “What about CID?” Ricky asked him.
“I don’t know about that, sir.”
“Well, call them in pronto, and a doctor… not that there’s any helping this poor lass.”
“What’ll I call it, sir?”
Slowly and deliberately, Ross walked round the desk; he didn’t look down as far as I could see, but I heard more cherries squash under his feet as he walked. “Tell them it’s a suspicious death, and that they should send a full scene-of-crime team. You two wait here and don’t touch anything. We’ll be outside.”
I got the message and followed him along the corridor, to the fire exit. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were red marks on the floor that could have been made by the juice of crushed cherries. As he walked, outside and round to the main entrance, Ricky’s shoes, and mine by that time, made even more.
“You’re right,” he said as we stood waiting at the top of the steps, speaking quietly as if there was someone around who might have heard. “This was a set-up. Whoever killed that girl knew that Alison was coming here and arranged it so that she would find her.
“I guess they watched her then called the police, expecting them to arrive with her still at the scene.”
He took a deep breath, then looked at me. “You did the right thing, Oz, telling her to vanish. First she finds her fiance’s body, then she’s caught standing over the girl he’s been having it off with. It would have been all over for her; she’d have gone down for twenty years.”
“She might still. They’re bound to find out she was here.”
“I don’t know that; you never told me that.”
“What if they trace the call to my mobile?”
“What call? You never had a call, and you were with me all night.”
“Why did we turn up at the scene, then?”
“There’s a sign on the gate saying that these premises are protected by Ross Security; my phone number’s on it. I had an anonymous call at around the same time as the police, telling me that there had been an incident at Torrent. I came straight here, bringing you along for the ride since you were with me at the time.”
“What if they check to make sure there was a call to you?”
He gave me an offended look. “They won’t: most of the CID in this division used to be under my command. Their boss is my brother Mason, and so are
some of them.”
“If it’s that cut and dried, can I get out of here?”
“As soon as the CID arrive, yes; take my car and leave it at the Mound when you go to Glasgow. But before you do any of that, I want you to find Alison. Call her mobile, and tell her everything’s under control. If she isn’t waiting there already, tell her to go home, as normal. You meet her there, get her calmed down and settled in and, most important of all, take the shoes she was wearing and scrub the soles; make sure they’re spotless. Tell her to sit tight and wait for me; I’d better stay at her place tonight.”
“You think she’s actually in danger?”
He gave me a “Be patient, he’s an idiot’ look. “Someone’s tried to frame her for two murders, and failed twice. What will they do next? Of course she’s in fucking danger!”
Thirty-Five.
That’s how it went. The CID arrived… two detective sergeants. They both knew ex-Superintendent Ross, called him ‘sir’, and accepted his story without question. They didn’t even talk to me.
Ricky gave me his spare keys to the Alfa, and I headed off back into town; as soon as I was out of sight, I called Alison’s mobile number. She answered on the fifth ring, as if it had taken her that long to decide to take the call. She was at home, but she still sounded terrified.
I drove straight there. She was in her dressing gown when she let me in; her hair was wet, straight from the shower.
“That girl, Oz,” she whispered.
When I told her who Anna Chin was, and what they had in common, she slumped down into an armchair. After a few seconds she began to cry. “Someone’s got it in for me, Oz,” she moaned, ‘and I haven’t a clue why.”
“Maybe not, but you’ve got the good guys on your side. We’ll find out and put a stop to it.”
The soles of her shoes were still stained dark red with cherry juice. I went to work with bleach and a nailbrush, until they were spotless.
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