Anna was easy to direct, though, moving like a zombie as Murray persuaded her to her feet, drew her through to the kitchen and despised herself that the only thing she could think of to say was, ‘Sit down there and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’
Anna sat obediently, scrubbing at her eyes with a handful of tissues, still shaken by sobs. Murray filled up the state-of-the-art kettle – a more complicated procedure than she would have thought strictly necessary just to boil water – and then she baulked. She hadn’t joined the CID force to make cups of tea and she seriously doubted whether Anna wanted one anyway.
She sat down beside Anna at the table. ‘I don’t know what happened in there,’ she said. ‘But if you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.’ She wasn’t at all sure what would happen next, but Anna gave a ragged sigh and then it all started pouring out, as if she couldn’t see how to stop.
‘I didn’t know until the other day what Marta had done. I knew she hated him, I knew she hadn’t wanted his child, but I thought arranging a new life for her would be enough. And yes, I used her: if I’d had to tell Oliver I’d lost the baby he’d have stopped the payment that was letting me write the book I was possessed with, but it solved her problem as well. The bastard who got her pregnant didn’t want to know – her family called her a puttana and threw her out on the street. And our friendship began there, and—’ She broke off, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘What will happen to her now? I can’t imagine life without Marta.’
Murray made a non-committal noise; struggling to keep up with all this, she couldn’t think of anything reassuring she could possibly say.
Anna went on, ‘She liked to see herself as my dragon and she could be completely ruthless – whatever I wanted must happen. Sometimes I thought she went too far. That poor, silly young man, Jason – she poisoned any chance his pathetic book might have had because some local critic made a comparison, and he wasn’t the only one. I felt guilty about him, but mostly I didn’t give it much thought. She cleared the space for me to write and to be supremely selfish with my time and it was all I cared about. Until Felix.
‘It was only then I thought of myself as a failure. Oh, my husband had walked out on me, but I didn’t blame him and I didn’t miss him, and it never occurred to me that it would matter to children who otherwise had everything. They had my love – but it was in theory, I suppose. They didn’t have my time or attention. Cassie was strong enough to thrive, but Felix was … frail. I don’t think she will ever forgive me—’ She broke off. ‘She is all right, isn’t she?’
Murray managed to assure her she was, though her head was reeling.
‘Though she probably won’t even speak to me now. And the man, Marta’s son. I’m to blame for his death, too. He died at her hands because she was protecting me. I stole her love that ought to have been his, I sold him into the life that made him what he was.’ She leant forward on the table, burying her face in her hands.
The perfectly cut bob swung forward to cover her face, a huge aquamarine on her right hand glinted. How much, Murray wondered, had this all been about wanting money and fame? You’d never be able to disentangle that one; she doubted if Anna herself knew. She waited, but Anna didn’t say anything more and she didn’t feel inclined to mutter any of the platitudes that would be an insult to the woman’s painful confession.
When DCI Strang appeared at the door with a uniformed policewoman, Murray got up to let her take her place.
‘I think she needs a doctor,’ she murmured. ‘She’s in pieces.’
The woman nodded and Murray left with Strang. She wasn’t going to enjoy the next bit.
‘When I told you to stay in the car, I wasn’t making conversation,’ Strang said. ‘That was an order. Did you fail to understand that?’
‘No, sir. I mean, yes, sir,’ Murray stammered.
‘You put yourself in danger. You’d have been in the direct line of fire if Hammond had erupted out of the study. It is my responsibility to see that you don’t take reckless risks with your own safety.’
‘Yes, sir.’
She was hanging her head, but he wasn’t at all sure that her apparent penitence would make any difference. Acting on her own initiative still seemed to be an irresistible temptation. He couldn’t actually claim that what she had done had harmed the operation; he’d no confidence that he’d have had any success in trying to talk Hammond down and Murray’s report from the security terminal might have been helpful, even if in the event its effect had been neutral. He was irritated anyway, and they drove back to Halliburgh police station in silence.
As they reached the station, he said, ‘I’m not inclined to put you on a charge, because it would only open up another front for the media to rake over and I’ll be on the back foot anyway over Hammond’s death.’
‘But that’s outrageous!’ Murray protested. She could never stay subdued for long. ‘You couldn’t have done anything about Marta having a knife.’
‘No, nor about some of the other things we’ll be accused of failing to prevent. It’s pure chance that he didn’t get off the shot at Harper before Morelli knifed him, and they’ll make a big thing out of that. We might get some credit for finding Cassie, but it’ll be forgotten soon enough.’
The media pack was baying louder than ever. There were cameras now, and he got out of the car feeling depressed at what lay ahead of him – the phone call to JB, then the mountain of paperwork, deploying the task force on interviews, the liaising with the fiscal’s office about charges, the press statements – days of work lying ahead. This was a story that would run and run.
What was getting him on the raw, of course, was his own failure in observation, the most elementary and arguably the most important policing skill. It was haunting him now, that he’d allowed himself to be so caught up in the bizarre drama that had been unfolding in the study that he hadn’t noticed the story that was being told right in front of him in the kitchen by Kayleigh’s shaking hands. If he had, Hammond would right now be handcuffed in a police van, not lying on the floor of Anna Harper’s study waiting for the attentions of a photographer and a forensic pathologist. Whatever his sins, he didn’t deserve that.
Certainly, most of it would be done from Edinburgh. With the task force in place he would be going back to the more standard role of a DCI, reading reports on his computer and having strategic meetings. He could actually arrange to go back to talk to JB tonight and stay in his own home, but after a day like this he wasn’t sure he could take the bedtime stories for Betsy and the long explanations for Fin. He hated to think of another night at The Sun, but the chances were that by now the White Hart would have been booked out by journalists.
But whatever happened, he mustn’t accept any more hospitality from Kate Graham. He wasn’t presumptuous enough to assume that she was interested in him but he couldn’t bear to raise further the hopes of her father, a loving and decent man who thought he’d caught a glimpse of liberation from the guilt he felt about his daughter’s self-sacrifice.
Propped up on her pillows in a hospital side ward, Cassie Trentham was feeling so tired that she could hardly bring herself to open her eyes and yet she couldn’t sleep; when they were shut she had flashbacks and frightening images. They had assured her that her mother was safe, but had been curiously reluctant to say anything else. There was nothing really wrong with her, they said, but they were going to keep her under observation for another night and kept bringing her little snacks of tea and toast and porridge not to overtax her empty stomach, but she struggled to eat even though she felt hungry.
She heard someone coming in. Could she be bothered to make the effort to see who it was? Then she heard Kate Graham’s voice whispering, ‘Cassie? Are you awake?’ and her eyes shot open.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you came! I would have phoned you but I haven’t got my bag. Please will you tell me what’s been happening? No one will say anything, except that Anna’s all right. Have they caught Hammond?’
K
ate took a seat at the bedside. ‘Yes,’ she said gravely. ‘He’s been – stopped. Oh dear, you do look awful – your face is whiter than the pillows. It’s a long story – are you sure you’re strong enough and that you shouldn’t just rest?’
‘Too many things whirling round in my head to rest. Tell me, and if I flake out halfway through you can fill it in later.’
As she listened to Kate’s gentle voice telling the terrible story of the human cost of Stolen Fire, tears slipped down her cheeks. She didn’t quite know who she was crying for: for the child who became warped into a monster, for the brother he had killed, for the teenage victim of a cruel society who had finished by killing her own son, for her driven mother who was now paying the price for her obsession.
Kate had several times asked her if she was all right; now she asked anxiously, ‘How will you cope with all this? Can you forgive your mother for what she did?’
Cassie didn’t speak for a long, long moment. Then she said, ‘Hammond talked to me about revenge and I said to him that you had to let things go, and move on. Hatred destroys you as much − perhaps even more than the other person. Anna’s going to need me badly. I can’t think how she’ll manage, without Marta, and she’ll be in trouble herself, won’t she?’
‘It’s certainly possible. It’ll depend a bit how things play out as the evidence emerges.’ Kate got up. ‘Now I’m definitely going to leave you to rest. They said you’d be going home tomorrow – I’ll pop up to Burnside after my shift.’
‘Thanks, Kate. You’re a good friend.’
There was so much to think about, but now Cassie knew what had happened she felt more able to rest. As she lay down and shut her eyes, her last waking thought was relief that she did not, after all, share the bond of blood with her captor.
Kate Graham drove back from the hospital looking at her watch. Her shift had finished and she should really go straight home – her father would be looking for his snifter very soon. She wouldn’t be needed at the station; with the arrival of the task force the locals were only doing the routine things relating to mopping up after the Beast from the East, like opening up the roads that were still blocked and dealing with a bit of a flooding problem too from the sudden thaw.
She told herself she wanted to check in with Livvy to tell her she’d seen Cassie, but the idea at the back of her mind that she didn’t want to admit to was that she might bump into Strang and just casually ask if he’d like supper again. It had been such a good evening last night; her dad had been in great form and Kelso too seemed to be enjoying it. If he was going to be here for a while sorting things out, they might even manage to renew the casual friendship they’d had all these years ago. That was all – just friendship.
When she tracked Murray down sitting in a corner of the CID room, she was looking glum. ‘Problems?’ Kate asked.
‘You could say. I’ve done it again, and he’s mad at me.’
‘Kelso is? What did you do?’
‘The usual thing – I saw something I could do, and I did it when I was under orders to stay in the car. It’s because I always feel I have something to prove, and even though I know he’s more impressed when I’m just working with the team, it’s sort of as if I feel that, this time, he’s going to see that me taking the initiative was a brilliant thing to do.’
‘And was it, this time?’
‘Could have been. But as it turned out it was pretty much irrelevant.’
Graham made a sympathetic face. ‘Is he going to report you?’
‘Don’t think so. But he’s in a bad mood anyway because he’s blaming himself for not realising Hammond had got into the house. My fault too. Oh well, have to wait and see if he’s going to forgive me.’
‘You really like working with him, don’t you?’
‘I learn such a lot from him, that’s the thing. Maybe if he lets me go on working with him long enough, I’ll manage to behave like a proper grown-up detective.’
‘And you really like him too, don’t you?’ Graham said slyly.
Murray tried to sound offhand. ‘Of course I do. He’s a likeable man. You like him as well, don’t you?’ she said, turning the tables.
Graham went a faint shade of pink. ‘Well yes, he was a good mate. His wife was nice, too. I met her a couple of times.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t think he’s got over her, really, do you?’
‘Honestly, no,’ Murray said. ‘He doesn’t talk about her, but I’ve never heard that he’s taken an interest in anyone else.’
‘No, that’s what I thought. Changing the subject, I saw Cassie. She’s looking terribly frail, but they seem to think she’ll be fine. She’s certainly got a forgiving nature – she was talking about Anna needing her now, with all that’s happened. I think she was even sorry for Hammond.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you have to be. He hardly got a fair chance in life, poor soul. Cards stacked against him right from the start.’
The door opened behind them and DCI Strang came in. ‘I was looking for you, Kate. I haven’t thanked you for last night – splendid meal, and good to meet your father. What a great guy!’
‘He enjoyed meeting you too,’ Graham said. ‘You’re more than welcome to come tonight as well.’
‘Thanks very much, but I’m actually on my way back to Edinburgh. I wanted to see you to say goodbye and thanks. It takes a lot of guts to be a whistle-blower but if it hadn’t been for you, we’d never have realised what had been going on. I should warn you that Wilson’s being questioned at the moment, but we’re presenting it as an incidental finding after the SRCS got involved, so if you keep your head down it should be all right.’
‘I’m grateful for that,’ Graham said. ‘But are you really going back? I thought you’d have a lot to do here.’
‘That’s the task force’s work now. My hands-on stuff is finished and I’ll just be stuck behind a desk reviewing what the task force finds. Still, I’m glad to have seen you again, Kate. A reminder of some happy times – and some probably better forgotten!’
‘Nice to see you too, Kelso. Maybe see you around if there’s another conference.’
‘Absolutely. And my best to your dad.’ Then he turned to Murray, who was looking as if she didn’t want to be noticed. ‘Livvy, you exasperate me, you know that? You are such an asset except when you get the bit between your teeth and bolt. The security camera was a good idea; going into a house with an armed man at large was plain crazy.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Murray muttered without looking at him.
‘Consider yourself reprimanded and we’ll leave it there. I’ll see you at Fettes Avenue sometime later tomorrow, all right?’
After he left, Graham smiled at Murray. ‘I guess you’re forgiven.’
‘Fingers crossed. It’s a little on the basis that I don’t do it again, though, isn’t it? Anyway, could you bear to have me for one last night?’
‘Dad would be devastated if I let you go. He’s still got some stories you haven’t heard – at least he thinks you haven’t. And there’ll be a bed for you any time you want it.’
Murray was touched. ‘You’re a good person, Kate. And a good officer too. Right, I’ll just get my coat and come back with you now.’
She went out and Kate followed more slowly. It was really nice that Kelso had made a point of coming to see her to say goodbye. Shame that he wasn’t going to be around for a bit longer – but when she thought about it, maybe that was all for the best.
DCI Strang’s phone call to DCS Borthwick had been mainly about reporting the facts, but tomorrow’s conference would be all about damage limitation and presentational issues. She had decided it would be better to have the press statement issued in Edinburgh in the hope of drawing the media presence away from Halliburgh; there wouldn’t be much they could write, fortunately, once Marta Morelli was charged. It would all have to come out eventually, of course, but at least they had a breathing space.
JB had been fair-minded as usual but Hammond’s death was already ov
ershadowing the success of Cassandra Trentham’s release. He’d have some searching questions to answer tomorrow and he wasn’t looking forward to it.
After he came back from saying goodbye to Kate, he gathered together his papers. It made sense to get back home tonight, particularly now he’d said to Kate that he was going, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d have a lot of preparation to do and after all the publicity there had been there was no chance Fin wouldn’t interrogate him when he got back. As long as Betsy was in bed, and her predatory friend wasn’t there waiting too, he could manage it.
He’d better phone Fin anyway to tell her he was coming. He fished out his private mobile, which he hadn’t switched on since he arrived in Halliburgh, and saw that there had been several calls from Fin’s number. He was gritting his teeth slightly as he dialled.
She greeted him with, ‘For heaven’s sake, kid, what have you got involved in this time? Are you in one piece? The news has had nothing but stuff about armed response units and a cop running around with a gun.’
‘It’s been a bit hairy but the worst’s over. I’ll be getting back tonight.’
‘That’s good. But we won’t be in tonight, actually. Betsy wanted a sleepover with Michelle’s Niamh and I’m going to stay too. In fact, I’ve been trying to get hold of you to tell you – Michelle has an extra bedroom and she’s wanting me to flat-share. Would you mind very much if I accepted? I know how fond you are of Betsy and it’s been like having a proper family, but there’s a lot more space at Michelle’s and sometimes I’ve felt we’ve crowded you out a bit. You’ll see lots of us, anyway – Betsy will make sure of that.’
‘I’m sure she will,’ he said warmly. ‘No one does Daddy Pig like I do, for my sins. That makes a lot of sense, Fin. I’m away a lot and it’ll be nice for you to have more adult company. You go right ahead. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow, then.’
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