Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Mr Mowat? Yes. DC Murray.’ She fumbled for her card.

  ‘Och, don’t bother with that. I’ll trust you.’

  He beamed at her and she smiled back. ‘You seem cheerful, anyway, despite the rain.’

  ‘Not despite – because of! We’re not used to all that heat and I’d have been toiling up and down with water for the sheep in another day. What can I do for you?’

  He peered at her – he had very blue eyes – and before she could say anything he tutted, ‘Lassie, you’re perishing with cold. Come on ben the house and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  Murray followed him gratefully and as he shed his coat and hat she stationed herself beside the Aga, snuggling against its warmth as she thawed out her hands. ‘I know you’ve given a statement already, Mr Mowat—’

  ‘Fergus. And what’s your name? Seems daft to go calling you “constable”.’

  ‘Livvy. I didn’t want to go through the details again, just to focus on times when you could definitely say that no one had been up around the cottage. You can’t actually see it from here, can you?’ She walked over to look out of the kitchen window as he took the kettle off the hotplate and made their tea.

  ‘No, but we’d fairly see anyone who drove up that way. Jack Lothian said it would have been on the Thursday, right? You’d need to ask my wife Rhona as well – she’s a bookkeeper and that’s where she works.’ He pointed to an office table with a computer and a filing cabinet beside it in one corner of the big room. ‘Can’t say if she was here that day. I was out for quite a bit of it myself in Thurso for a meeting about the support payments the government promised but needless to say they’ve never delivered – but don’t get me started!’

  ‘Would you have gone up past the cottage at any stage that day?’ Murray asked, sitting down at the big wooden table and cupping her hands round the mug Mowat gave her.

  ‘Only in the morning. I did my usual walk round the sheep and came back at this sort of time, I suppose. I was late back, and I didn’t do an evening circuit, like I sometimes do. I’d have noticed the door then, but I hear it wouldn’t have made any difference to the poor bugger.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. She hadn’t really expected him to say, ‘Oh, now you mention it, I did notice …’ but it was a bit disappointing. Whatever Strang might say, she still hoped for a breakthrough moment. Just as she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why—’ She heard a car door slam.

  ‘That’ll be Rhona, I expect.’ Mowat got up and looked out. ‘Yes, that’s her. Now you can ask her as well.’

  Murray’s hopes rose again. Mrs Mowat hadn’t made a statement; perhaps they’d slipped up there and there was something she could tell them that would crack the whole thing wide open – well, a girl can dream.

  Rhona Mowat was more than willing to be helpful but unfortunately had nothing useful to add. She’d been out a lot of the time herself, she hadn’t walked up to where she would have seen the cottage, and her daughter Kirstie had been out all day working at the Lemon Tree cafe.

  Neither of them said anything about Kirstie finding the body; they obviously didn’t know, and it wasn’t Murray’s business to tell them. Instead, she went back to the question she’d been going to ask before. ‘You wouldn’t have any idea why the body should have been moved to there, would you?’

  They looked at each other, then Rhona said, ‘We’ve been talking about this. It’s totally bizarre. You’d have to know the cottage was there, in the first place. And Fergus said it didn’t really look as if it had been broken into. He’d nailed up the door himself when we noticed a couple of kids going in there ages ago and it was dangerous with the roof falling in and everything.’

  Mowat said, ‘The bars I put across were still in place, it was just that the nails weren’t properly holding. The little buggers must have carefully worked them loose, so you couldn’t tell – going by some of the rubbish in there they’d been using it for years without us happening to spot them.’

  Rhona chimed in, ‘So maybe it could be someone who’d mucked about there as a kid, or else who’d been told about it by someone who did, and knew the door was loose?’

  Murray was impressed. ‘That works. But it doesn’t explain why, really, does it? Fergus, does anyone have a grudge against you?’

  They looked startled. ‘I’d like to think not, Livvy,’ Mowat said slowly. ‘I suppose there’s always someone you could have offended without knowing you had.’

  ‘Did you have anything to do with Pat Curran’s drainage business?’

  They both shook their heads. ‘We’re lucky here,’ Rhona said. ‘Being out of the village we don’t get so involved. Pat Curran was a conman – you only had to look at him, but some folk still fell for it. If Niall’s murder was to do with that I can’t think anyone would see Fergus as a good person to try to blame.’

  Murray couldn’t either. It didn’t look as if there was anything more they could tell her, but she decided to take a punt. ‘Look, I shouldn’t really ask you this – my boss would have a fit – but you know this place and I don’t. Strictly off the record, who do you think killed Niall Aitchison?’

  They looked at each other and then at her, as if they were trying to decide whether to trust her. She said quickly, ‘I promise it won’t be used for any official purpose – cross my heart and hope to die.’

  It was Rhona who spoke. ‘I’m not going to say she did it, but I can’t think of anyone who has been more violent in their anger about what happened than Morven Gunn. She’d more reason than most to hate the Currans and Niall made himself an extension of the clan. She lost her home and her son, and her own mother didn’t support her. Niall was the baby and the boy, always her favourite, and he did well for himself when Morven couldn’t even keep her marriage going. She always seemed a difficult person to me, but then favouritism’s a rotten thing in a family.’

  ‘Just as well we only had the one or our Kirstie would have to shape up,’ Fergus said darkly. ‘Look, Livvy, I’m not accusing anyone. But she’s kind of the obvious one, isn’t she?’

  Murray thought of her interview with Morven, the violent hatred she clearly felt poorly concealed by the unconvincing mask of calm. Suddenly she blurted out, ‘If you put a body in there, could you be sure that the ravens would come?’

  They looked at her aghast and she could have bitten her tongue off. This was just the sort of thing that got her in trouble with Strang, and Rhona said stiffly, ‘No, of course you couldn’t.’

  But Fergus said slowly, ‘It was just carrion, I suppose. Looking for it – well, that’s what they do.’

  It gave Murray a lot to think about as she drove back to Forsich.

  There was no doubt that Chris Brady was Hayley’s ‘Ginger’. He was a powerfully built six-footer with hair that was the classic flaming orange-red, receding a little from his temples but curling wildly where his chest was exposed by his open-necked shirt; his skin was pale and freckled. He greeted DCI Strang with a smile, but the pale-blue eyes were watchful and cold as he ushered him into the open-plan kitchen and family room that ran right across the back of the sprawling, ranch-style house in an expensive residential area.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet me, sir,’ Strang said. ‘This is just an informal chat to get a few details clearer.’

  ‘Oh good, I’m so glad about that,’ Brady said with heavy sarcasm. ‘I’d hate to believe this was some sort of interrogation, Chief Inspector. Do take a seat.’

  He sat down himself in the seating area on a large cream leather chair on a dark wood, swivelling base with a footstool in front of it and waved Strang to its counterpart opposite. ‘Now, ask away. I have nothing to hide.’ He spread his hands wide as if to indicate openness. He had very large hands, with fine gold hairs across the backs.

  Strang said, ‘Do I understand that you know what this is about? I assume that Mr Michie will have told you about his business partner’s death.’

  ‘Yes, he did. But I don’t quite get how
it affects me.’

  ‘Did Mr Baxter warn you that we had been asking at the hotel about your fishing weekend?’

  Strang saw his eyes flicker as if he was weighing up the implications of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ before answering the question.

  ‘Yes, he did. It’s not just the normal thing for the polis to come calling and he was wondering what we’d been up to. “They’re onto you, Chris,” he said. I got a bit of ribbing about it.’

  ‘And what had you been up to?’ Strang asked politely.

  There was just a flash of temper. ‘You know perfectly well that we were on a fishing weekend. I don’t appreciate being mucked about.’

  ‘A fishing weekend in what sense? I understand you run a similar sort of operation to Curran Services, in which Bruce Michie is a minority shareholder though acting CEO at present. So, was it only the kind of fishing done in a body of water that was the object of the expedition?’

  Brady looked at him with narrowed eyes. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Are you in the market for a merger?’

  Strang thought the man was taken aback, though it was hard to tell. He didn’t reply, just looked back at Strang with a challenging gaze.

  ‘You see, Mr Brady, the reason we are taking an interest in your little fishing trip is that you and your friends were in the vicinity when Niall Aitchison was murdered. I know that Mr Aitchison and Mr Michie had a violent row in the office the day before. You and Mr Michie are long-standing friends and you might both see a merger as an extension of that friendship. With Mrs Ross, the majority shareholder, incapacitated you might have hoped that Mr Aitchison could be convinced to go along with that plan.

  ‘Someone joined your party late that Friday evening. Was that Niall Aitchison?’

  Brady had listened with careful attention. Now he gave a short laugh. ‘Flying a kite, Inspector. No one joined us.’

  Strang raised his brows. ‘Eyewitness account.’

  ‘Mistaken. Probably confused.’

  ‘Let’s go on to Saturday morning. Talk us through it.’

  ‘We all went fishing, obviously. That’s what we came to do.’

  Strang sat back in his chair and waited. Brady waited too, but his was a tense silence. Eventually he burst out, ‘Oh, for God’s sake! All right then: we had breakfast. I had bacon, sausage, fried eggs – two – and a double helping of black pudding. Oh, and toast – two slices with marmalade – no, I tell a lie, it was honey. Would you like me to try to remember what the others had too?’

  ‘That’s all right. We can ask them.’

  ‘Oh good,’ he said mockingly. ‘I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your time. I’m sure you’re a busy man.’

  Strang smiled. ‘I have all the time in the world, Mr Brady. Let’s move on to the fishing part. Did you fish together from a boat or fish from the shore?’

  Brady gave a thin smile. ‘If we’d known we were to be under some sort of suspicion we could have arranged to alibi each other all day. Since the thought never occurred to us, it was a perfectly ordinary fishing morning and we went our own way as usual, except when we decide to take a boat and fish on one of the lochs.’

  ‘Ah,’ Strang said. ‘That’s exactly what Mr Morrison said. Interestingly enough, in exactly those words.’

  That threw him. ‘Well – well, he would, because that’s exactly what we did,’ he blustered. ‘Anyway, we all have our favourites – I like Loch Calder but Tom, for instance, prefers Loch Watten. I left right after breakfast and no, I didn’t make a note of the time so that you could write it down in your notebook.’

  ‘What equipment did you take?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake! What does that have to do with anything? Oh, if you insist! A couple of rods, reel, line, bait. Waders, a fishing creel, a fly box, camping stool. Packed lunch. Have I forgotten anything?’

  Strang said, ‘A priest?’

  There was a frozen moment before Brady said slowly, ‘Oh yes, a priest. Am I to consider that significant?’

  ‘Do you still have it?’

  The man rose abruptly. ‘Follow me.’

  He walked the length of the room and opened a door leading from the kitchen into a large utility room. Besides the normal laundry machines there was a locked metal cabinet.

  ‘Guns?’ Strang said. ‘I take it you have a licence?’

  ‘Of course.’ Brady was opening a full-length cupboard, which held the fishing equipment he’d just detailed to Strang, neatly organised. He leant forward and unhesitatingly picked out a small but solid-looking priest made of some dark wood with a club-shaped head.

  He held it up with a triumphant smile. ‘Here it is. All right?’

  It was wiped off his face as Strang produced one of the plastic evidence bags he always kept available. ‘With your agreement, I’ll take this. I’ll give you a receipt, of course—’

  ‘What!’ Brady yelled. ‘I don’t believe this. Have you got a warrant?’

  ‘Certainly not – I would have told you that. But presumably you could have no objection to having it checked?’

  Brady paused, frowning. Then he said, ‘Should I be calling my lawyer?’ But he dropped the priest in the bag.

  Strang secured it, though he was fairly certain that it would be clean. ‘You’re perfectly entitled to, of course. But it will save us both a lot of time and trouble if we can talk this through now.’

  Again, Brady hesitated, but after a moment he said, ‘All right. Like I said, I’ve nothing to hide. Let’s get it over with.’

  They returned to their seats. Before Strang could ask another question, Brady said, ‘On that Saturday I drove straight from the hotel to Loch Calder, where I spent the entire day fishing. I arrived back at the hotel around five.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘For God’s sake! Why would I have witnesses? I saw a few people in the course of the day, yes, but I didn’t pay any attention to them and they probably didn’t notice me. All right?’

  ‘We can check if necessary. Did you catch anything?’

  Brady gave a put-upon sigh. ‘No, I didn’t, since you ask.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, given the weather. Not really the best time to arrange a fishing weekend. Unless you had some other reason. Or had arranged to meet somebody.’

  Brady only stared at him, stony-faced. ‘Right, I’m going to ask you again,’ Strang said. ‘Was Niall Aitchison the man who joined you? Think very carefully about your answer.’

  ‘No, he bloody wasn’t,’ he snapped, goaded, then added hastily, ‘Like I said before, there wasn’t any man. Or if there was, he wasn’t anything to do with us.’

  Strang took out a pad of paper and scribbled on it. ‘Your receipt,’ he said as he got up. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Brady. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I thought you’d be bringing out the hood and the bath for water torture any time now. You’ve built up a wonderful theory, Inspector. It’s just that it has no basis at all in reality and I can’t imagine why you think it should.’

  Strang looked up at him. ‘Something to do with the fact that you’re still lying about the man who joined you,’ he said. ‘But we’ll leave it there for the moment.’

  He went back to the car. He hadn’t made any great breakthrough though there was something niggling in his mind that he couldn’t quite pin down right now. Still, he had the Bruce Michie interview ahead. A weak man, he’d thought when he met him before; he was a lot more likely to crack under pressure than Brady, who was both tough and careful.

  Strang had just opened the car door when his phone buzzed, and it was JB’s number that appeared. He swore under his breath. He shouldn’t have taken the risk; it would have been better if he’d got his word in first. It was with some trepidation that he said, ‘Yes, boss?’

  Back at Westerfield House, Lilian Sinclair parked the car and then went in through the surgery entrance. The waiting room was busy, and a couple of people were queuing at the desk. Th
e receptionist was looking harassed and though she greeted her employer’s wife immediately, she had to break off to answer the phone, so Lilian had to wait.

  The two women ahead of her in the queue exchanged glances as Lilian leant forward whenever the receptionist came off the phone.

  ‘Could you just tell the doctor that I’m back before he sees his next patient, Cathy?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mrs Sinclair,’ the woman said. Then she added, ‘Is Fran going to be coming in today? We’re a bit stretched, you see.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. If I see her I’ll ask her,’ Lilian said and walked away through the door to the house as the receptionist sighed pointedly and got sympathetic smiles from the women waiting.

  When Lilian reached the hall the door to the sitting room was open and she could see Francesca sitting there on one of the sofas. The curtains were closed; she wasn’t doing anything except staring straight ahead and she was wearing the same black clothes that she’d had on the day before. At least they were a bit more appropriate today when it was so much colder, but it was still the sort of exhibitionism that was really irritating.

  ‘Goodness me, Fran, whatever are you doing here, sitting in the darkness?’ she said, going over to draw back the curtains and let the daylight in.

  Francesca shrugged her shoulders. ‘Just mourning, I suppose. I didn’t want people looking in and seeing me, but I thought you’d be back before long. I feel worse when I’m alone upstairs.’

  ‘What you need is something to take your mind off it,’ Lilian said briskly. ‘Why not go back to work? They’re busy today and Cathy’s struggling.’

  Her daughter looked at her in horror, tears springing to her eyes. ‘How can I?’ she cried. ‘It would be so humiliating if I broke down in public.’

  ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t when you had something to distract you. It might make you feel better.’

  ‘You’re not taking this seriously, are you? You just don’t accept that Niall and I had something special and now I have no future. I can’t just go on as if nothing had happened when we haven’t even had the funeral. When’s that going to be, anyway?’