Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  But she hadn’t even mentioned it to Strang and now he’d believe she’d been planning one of her solo efforts. She hadn’t been; she’d actually been looking forward to discussing it with him when they’d time, but this morning it had all been about practicalities not theories.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Morven said again, then, louder, ‘It’s not fair!’

  The tears had stopped. She seemed to be working herself up into a state. Strang, who was trying to arrange for a lawyer to attend, shot an anxious glance over his shoulder.

  ‘Tell me what isn’t fair, Morven?’ Murray said gently. She couldn’t help feeling moved by the woman’s distress, whatever she’d done.

  ‘My whole life. My whole life! Why should she have everything, everything, and me – nothing. Less than nothing. A hell on earth – and she’s the wicked one, the one who should be in hell. Along with my brother. Traitor!’

  The words ‘Did you kill him, Morven?’ were on her lips but she didn’t dare utter them. A confession without another witness to corroborate was no confession at all. ‘You can tell us all about him later,’ she said, and at that moment the entrance door opened, and DI Hay walked in with a uniformed sergeant at his heels.

  When he saw Strang, he stopped dead. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said rudely.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector,’ Strang said. He turned to the other man. ‘Can you act as duty sergeant? Take this woman down to the charge bar and book her in, please. I’ve arrested her on suspicion of attempted murder. DC Murray can assist, if necessary.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s some more officers coming back from the crime scene any minute, so I can get one of them.’

  Hay was staring at Morven. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘She’s under suspicion of attempting to murder Gabrielle Ross. I’ll want someone to take swabs from her fingernails, as well as prints, of course. And you have a photographer? I want to make sure we have a shot of the bruise on her cheek.’

  A group of officers, including DC Wilson and PS Lothian, had just arrived. DC Wilson came forward to say she could take charge of that and Lothian, who had been looking a bit hangdog, brightened up when he saw Strang, and brightened up further at what he heard.

  ‘That’s good news, sir,’ he said, and Murray scowled. His reappearance was badly timed for her; would Strang shut her out now after her most recent balls-up?

  Hay was gnawing at his lip. ‘Go on then, Lothian. And Wilson. You heard what the chief inspector said – what are you waiting for?’

  Morven shrank back a little as the two men and the detective advanced on her but made no direct protest as they urged her onto her feet and took her through to the charge bar. She was bewildered now, Murray thought, getting up and going to stand beside Strang.

  ‘I think we’d better have a chat about this, Inspector. Your office?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Hay said. ‘You, but not her. She was obstructive to me last night.’

  Murray was ready to sit back down again but Strang said smoothly, ‘Crossed wires, I think. My constable merely had information that she felt would be helpful and I prefer to have her with me.’

  With a face like fizz, Hay stalked ahead of them, Strang having to grab the doors as they swung back in his wake.

  It was a small office; Hay took his place behind the desk with Strang taking the chair opposite and Murray perching on a small chair in the further corner, happy enough to be out of the direct line of fire.

  ‘So perhaps you can bring me up to date,’ Strang said. ‘Has there been any work done at the crime scene?’

  Hay took it as a personal insult. ‘Well, of course. We’ve completed our investigation there.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Naturally. They’ll have to be compared before we jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘And the husband? I gather you brought him in last night?’

  Hay coughed. ‘Just helping with enquiries. Voluntarily. As a precaution.’

  Yeah, right, Murray thought, but said nothing. She’d get her turn at the inquiry when the guy complained.

  ‘But you were satisfied that he wasn’t involved?’

  ‘Absolutely. The man had an alibi.’

  ‘Right. So, he is out of the frame, then.’

  ‘Oh yes. Unless of course his wife tells us something different when she’s fit.’

  He was still clinging to his theory, Murray thought – one of these inadequates who could never bear to admit he was wrong. Despite everything, he was still suggesting there was a conspiracy against him that involved David Ross, Murray herself and of course Strang now too. She only hoped the head injury hadn’t left Gabrielle with memory loss or Hay would find some other way to prove he was right, even if it meant locking up an innocent man.

  ‘Do we have any indication of when that might be?’ Strang asked.

  ‘Having a scan this morning. I have a constable on duty ready to see her whenever he gets the word.’

  ‘Ah. Then could you please get the message through to him now that I will be coming to see her myself later and don’t want her spoken to before that?’

  ‘Suppose so,’ Hay said grudgingly, but didn’t move. Strang pointedly said nothing, only looking at the phone on his desk until Hay picked it up and gave the order.

  ‘Now,’ Strang said, ‘we have the press statement later. At least we have something positive to tell them.’

  Hay looked as if he’d bitten on a lemon. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I think it would be best if you make the announcement that Morven Gunn is under arrest here in Thurso, then I can go on to talk about the murder investigation and I can highlight our cooperation.’

  Murray gave him a surprised look – what cooperation was this? But he knew what he was doing; Hay, who had been looking surly, perked up and said, ‘Well, I suppose that would be appropriate, my having informed the press originally. And, of course, my officers have been much involved in supporting your operation.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Strang was saying as there was a knock on the door and DC Wilson came in.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I thought you might want to know that I’ve taken Mrs Gunn’s prints. They’ll have to go through the proper process of course, but purely on a visual comparison they look very similar to the marks on the chair and door at the Rosses’ home.’

  ‘Let me know when you get confirmation,’ Strang said. ‘And I’ll want a full report on the findings from the crime scene – can you manage by this afternoon?’

  Wilson drew a deep breath but agreed.

  Hay, having been given ownership of the case, was jubilant. ‘Excellent, excellent, looks like an open-and-shut case, then.’

  Strang said, ‘If she’s fit to plead. How is she now?’

  DC Wilson pulled a face. ‘Her brief’s arrived and I think he’ll be making representations.’

  Hay looked, Murray thought, as if someone had stolen his scone. Strang got up. ‘I’ll leave that in your hands, then, Inspector. We’ll meet at two to give the statement.’

  Murray held open the door for him and followed him out. ‘The hospital?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right. We can talk on the way.’

  She didn’t like the sound of that.

  The porter had come early to take Gabrielle down for the scan, a big, cheerful red-haired man with a strong Aberdeen accent.

  ‘Dearie me!’ he said, looking at her battered face. ‘That’s nae fine! Still, maybe I should see what you did to the other chiel, eh?’

  Gabrielle smiled wanly. ‘Not really, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Don’t you go getting yourself wrochit up, now. I’ve seen a lot worse on a Saturday night when the Dons have been playing the Rangers – you’ll be fine, from the look of you. Now you just get in this chair and I’ll give you a hurl down. See if I can maybe get away with a wheelie or two to cheer you up.’

  The casual kindness was her undoing. She started to cry, to her new friend’s dismay.

  ‘Thi
s’ll never do! You’re not fretting about the scan, are you? Piece of cake!’

  As he pushed her down the corridor she found herself saying, ‘Not the scan – just what they might find. I-I think I might have Alzheimer’s.’ It had been haunting her: the evidence might be there, in plain sight on the screen – the tangles and plaques that accumulated ahead of the disease. She would so much rather not know what was going on inside her skull.

  ‘Och, dinnae be daft, quine! You’ve had a wee dunt on the head, that’s all. And from what they were saying, they’ll have you back home before you’ve even time to get your fly cup at eleven.’

  That wasn’t as cheering as he had obviously meant it to be, but she managed to give a little laugh and when he said, ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll do you one of the tests they do on the auld yins. Who’s the prime minister?’ she was actually able to make a joke: ‘Well, it was Theresa May yesterday.’

  It was greeted with applause. ‘There you are! Nothing the matter with you,’ he said triumphantly as he handed her over to the nurse.

  The scan had been something of an ordeal, though, like being prematurely entombed. Gabrielle had never been claustrophobic but recently she had become uncomfortable in enclosed spaces; they would probably tell her it was a psychological reaction to feeling trapped. It wasn’t her friend who took her back either; on the silent journey back to her room she had time to think about what lay ahead.

  Francesca was there, with a magazine she must have got from the news-stand. She put it down as Gabrielle came in and was helped back into bed.

  ‘All right? Some people get a bit panicky when they shove you into that thing.’

  ‘No, I was fine.’

  ‘That’s good. You know, I was just thinking – surely the police will just go on and arrest Morven now for Niall’s murder as well? He told me himself that she hated him, really hated him – he was hurt about it, you know? And I can’t imagine anyone else killing him unless they were mad. He was a lovely man.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

  Gabrielle’s did too. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘So kind. And I’m glad she’s not still … out there, somewhere.’

  ‘Absolutely. Unless she gets bailed, or something.’

  Tact had never been Fran’s strong point. Gabrielle closed her eyes. ‘Do you mind if I have a nap? My head’s hurting a bit.’

  ‘Of course not. It’ll do you good.’ Francesca went back to her magazine.

  To Gabrielle’s surprise, she did fall asleep and woke up only when she heard David talking to Francesca. Whenever she opened her eyes he came over to her.

  ‘Oh, my sweetheart, what has she done to you?’ He kissed her very gently on her uninjured cheek and took her hand as he sat down on the bed.

  She shouldn’t feel irritated by his solicitude, but somehow, she was. ‘Still alive, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, we’ve all been thanking God for that, at least. I really thought you were dead, you know – I’m still a bit shaky from the shock. And Fran says you still remember exactly what happened – not a nice thing to have in your head.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Gabrielle sat up. ‘Do you know if they’ve got the results of the scan?’

  ‘I met the doctor on his way in, while you were asleep. He says you’re fine, so we can take you home whenever you’re ready. So that’s great.’

  He spoke heartily – too heartily? ‘Was that all he said?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘He said they were needing the bed, so I guess you’d better make a move. And here’s your mother now with clothes for you.’

  Her gut was churning. There was something about the way he was speaking – what had the doctor really said? She didn’t want to go home, go back to face all her problems again. She just wanted everything to stop.

  But it didn’t. Lilian was sweeping in, cooing maternal anxiety about the state of her daughter’s face, talking, talking. ‘And you actually remember that woman coming at you? You know, Malcolm will tell you that you should get psychiatric help now, before flashbacks become a problem.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Gabrielle said automatically, allowing herself to be helped.

  As David drove her home, she tried to think what she could say to him that would ward off questions she didn’t want to answer. Something had died in their marriage; a great gulf had opened up between them now.

  He spoke first. ‘Is it right that Niall left you everything, Gabrielle? It’s all over the town that he did.’

  Her throat closed over so that she could hardly speak. ‘Yes. He was … very kind.’

  ‘Have you decided—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘David, I’m feeling very tired. Do you mind if I close my eyes?’

  ‘Of course not, love. You just rest, and you can pop straight into bed when we get there. We’ll chat once you’re feeling better.’

  There was that funny, too hearty note in his voice again. Gabrielle tried not to think too much about it, or about returning to the house where the nightmare that was Morven Gunn had happened. She turned her head away as she walked across the hall and up the stairs to the bedroom. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her face a horror landscape of red and purple bruising, a black eye, hair sticking up jaggedly above the plaster on the back.

  ‘I won’t undress,’ she said. ‘Just lie down for a bit.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ David said. ‘Do you want anything – cup of tea, drink of water …?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sure? Well, let me know whenever you wake up – your obedient servant!’

  He still sounded odd. ‘David, what’s wrong? I know there’s something – what is it?’

  He looked at her dumbly for a moment. Then he said with a groan, ‘I was going to wait a bit till you were stronger. Are you sure—’

  Gabrielle sank onto the bed. ‘Yes,’ she said, though her head felt so light that it might float off her shoulders at any moment.

  David sat down beside her and took her hand. His eyes were moist. ‘It’s not good news, my darling. They’ll want you to go back for a chat soon. There are signs …’

  Her lips were almost too stiff to move. ‘Alzheimer’s?’

  He bowed his head, nodded. ‘But it’s at an early stage and they’re getting closer to a cure all the time. You mustn’t despair – I’m always here for you. We’re in this together. For better for worse, remember?’

  She couldn’t stand the platitudes. ‘Please – just leave me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go! Please!’

  Her voice had risen, and he got up. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes!’

  He went out and left her alone with her death sentence. Her despair was an almost physical presence, some dreadful monster at her shoulder that she would see if she turned her head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Strang had barely fastened his seat belt before Murray began her apology.

  ‘Sir, I’m really, really sorry. I know I did just what you always tell me not to do, but I just forgot. Sorry. I honestly hadn’t been trying to work up my own angle on it, it was just when she said about the ravens it fitted in and I got a wee bit carried way, I suppose …’

  Torn between irritation and amusement, he said, ‘Apology noted. Now slow down – where did the ravens come into it?’

  ‘I was going to run this past you when we’d time to talk but this morning you’d other things on your mind. What it was, was – well, you see, we haven’t been able to work out why the body should have been moved to the cottage when probably if it had been left in the bog it might never have been found at all.

  ‘Morven really, really hated her brother. She couldn’t hide it yesterday when she was talking to me, even though she was trying to let on she was OK about the will. She’s proved she’s violent. You can just see her losing the plot and killing him, and then I thought what with her being mental she might have felt that just killing him wasn’t enough. Maybe once she’d done that, when
it didn’t feel as good as she’d thought it would, she wanted to do something else, something worse.

  ‘She could have known about the cottage – like maybe they’d even played there when they were kids. And Fergus Mowat said that whenever there’s a dead sheep or something the ravens gather at once – they’ve got amazing eyesight. She could have got some kind of sick charge out of his body getting torn apart. And she knew about birds – she said that, about them gathering, twice over.

  ‘I just suddenly thought, if we could surprise her into admitting it … But I know I shouldn’t have jumped in like that. I’ve really been trying to think before I speak and I’m sorry I screwed up.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Strang said. ‘But more effort needed, as they used to put on my school reports.’

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and seemed to sense forgiveness. She said hesitantly, ‘But what I said … what do you think about it, boss?’

  Strang gave a heavy sigh. ‘Livvy, I hardly know where to start. You saw her car; it was parked outside the house this morning. It’s a Fiat 500. She couldn’t take that up across the bog to move the body, could she? And playing in the cottage – when she was a child, the cottage would still have been inhabited. She and Niall were quarrelling too, so it’s a bit hard to see how she’d have persuaded him to go with her for a walk in the Flows to give her an opportunity to hit him over the head, and even supposing she’d somehow managed all that I can’t come up with a reason for her to leave the cottage door open so that the body would be discovered. And her grudge against Niall – she’d been living with it for years. Even the quarrel over her mother’s will was several months ago, and she’s a woman who flies into a rage. Why would she wait?’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Murray said, but he saw her shoulders slump and then she gave a pitiful sniff. He felt a brute.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry—’

  She turned to glower at him. ‘Oh, I’m not feeble! Don’t think I’m crying because you’re mad at me. I’m crying with rage at myself for being so bloody stupid. Why didn’t I think that through? No, don’t tell me – I know. Fell in love with the idea, didn’t I? How dumb can you be?’