Keith drew his foot away. There was no need to tip Blackhouse over. Metaphorically, he was already down on his back. They watched him deflate.
*
When they had the room to themselves again, it seemed to be filled by a quivering silence. Munro broke it with a sigh. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I wish that I had gone in for something easy. Like brain surgery. I should not have enjoyed treating him like that, but I did.’
‘You did try to warn him,’ Keith pointed out. ‘And it’s not often that fate deals you a perfect hand, so you may as well enjoy it when it happens. Do you really have an airtight confession?’
‘Yes indeed. O’Sullivan –’
‘Who?’
‘That’s his name. You called him Tweedledee. O’Sullivan nearly tied a knot in his tongue, he was in that much hurry to tell his story. All that he wanted was to get safely inside and out of harm’s way.’
Keith was puzzled. ‘What sort of harm?’
‘You. You have a certain sort of reputation.’
‘I have?’
Munro nodded. ‘O’Sullivan’s quite convinced that you killed McSween and are coming after him when you get the chance. Ridiculous, of course, and I told him so.’
‘After he’d signed his confession?’
‘Certainly,’ Munro said blandly. ‘If he wanted to do the right thing for the wrong reason, why should I stop him?’
It was all very puzzling. Keith looked on himself as a benevolent soul who would not willingly hurt a fly. ‘Tell him to put his tiny mind at rest. Why should I bother? He didn’t carve Molly up, did he? Molly said that the man who attacked her was using a Chinese scarf as a mask, and McSween was wearing one of those up on the hill.’
‘O’Sullivan blames McSween for that. And for the killing of Douglas Cruikshank. I am inclined to believe him, although now that McSween is dead the others are laying everything that they can at his door. But O’Sullivan admits that he bought the knife and passed it on to McSween. He says that that is why he ran you off the road with Sir Peter’s Land Rover, for fear that you’d blame him for the knifing.’
‘I never knew who bought the knife. Molly couldn’t remember.’
‘Your wife didn’t sell it. You did.’
‘Oh!’ Keith pulled a face. ‘You might keep that under your hat. I’ve been blaming Molly. I wouldn’t want her to start wondering whether I might be fallible after all.’
‘I do not think that she is wondering.’ Munro smiled for an instant, and became serious again. ‘I should warn you that O’Sullivan is convinced that you will be waiting for him when he comes out. That being so, it is more than possible that he may make an attempt to get you first. You may have to be on your guard.’
‘That will not be tomorrow,’ Keith suggested.
‘No. As a confessed participant in the killing of George Frazer, and in view of all his other offences, even with maximum remission I cannot see him coming out before . . . shortly after my retirement date.’
‘You’ll come and say beannachd leat?’ Keith asked. Ever since Munro had made a disparaging remark about Keith in the Gaelic, Keith had made a habit of reminding the chief inspector that he had a smattering of the language.
Munro promised that he would indeed make his farewell. Keith nodded. Munro would warn him before Tweedledee saw freedom again. ‘One thing beats me,’ Keith said. ‘If Blackhouse thought that Derek Weatherby killed Frazer, and that I was covering up for him, who did he think attacked Molly and tried to burn the shop and the house?’
Munro looked away. ‘Let us just take it that the man was wrong, all along the line,’ he said.
Keith stared at him. ‘For Christ’s sake! You mean, he thought I’d connive at all that?’
‘Your house did not burn,’ Munro pointed out. ‘Your business was well insured. Later, my officers were under orders to report your comings and goings – orders from myself and from Superintendent Blackhouse. For my part, it was for your protection. But when you visited a certain house in Rowan Close, Mr Blackhouse began to think that you might be ready for a change.’
‘I was following Frazer’s tracks,’ Keith said.
The dark, sardonic gleam was back in Munro’s eye. The Hebridean, himself so moral, dearly loves to observe the frailty of the alien Scot. ‘When following them quite so closely,’ he said, ‘you would have been wise to draw the curtains. He was told, of course, that such conduct was entirely consistent with your normal behaviour, but –’
‘It isn’t,’ Keith said hotly. ‘It was an isolated event. And we’ll not discuss it further unless you want to make an enemy of me. You’ve already made one of Blackhouse.’
‘Because I . . . wiped his eye? Is that the shooting expression?’ Munro beamed. ‘Yes, in truth I think we can say that we have both made an enemy of him. But then, as far as my superiors are concerned, I am the man who did the wiping. In a wee while, I may be the same rank as himself. I can survive. But did you not wonder why the man took it so mildly?’
‘That was mild?’
‘For him, that was mild as a lamb. I may have beaten him to it over the canal murders, but he’s pulled off a small scoop of his own at the Glasgow end. The Home Office are pleased, and others.’
‘So he’s got egg on his face but a feather in his cap?’
Munro nodded happily. ‘That just puts in it a nutshell. Egg on his face, but a feather in his bonnet! He is not the man to hand out any bouquets, but he wants you to go into Glasgow and identify the Irishman.’
Keith jerked upright in his chair. ‘Irishman? You mean –’ He bit the words off.
Slowly, a big grin crept up Munro’s long face. ‘I see it now,’ he said. ‘You invented the Irishman for a diversion? And now you have to identify him?’ Munro began to laugh, for the first time since Keith had known him. He had a quick, high-pitched laugh like, Keith thought, the alarm-call of a blackbird with tonsillitis, and it grated on Keith. ‘May I be a fly on the wall when you tell Mr Blackhouse that!’ Munro gasped.
Keith looked at him with dislike. ‘If you’re developing a sense of humour after all these years,’ he said, ‘you’d better drown it in a bucket.’ But, for the moment, Keith had other matters on his mind. ‘Did you find any vintage guns in Tweedledee’s cottage?’
Munro stopped laughing and wiped his eyes. ‘Aye. Under a floorboard. The place was like a Victorian arsenal.’
‘What’ll happen to them?’
‘The lawyers are arguing over that already. It appears that a vintage gun is only a firearm while you are shooting it. He is not shooting any of them just now. Therefore they are just antiques. So far, we can only prove that one of them was ever stolen – and that,’ Munro said disgustedly, ‘was the murder weapon which would anyway have been forfeit. His solicitor even had the gall to suggest that I would be obliged to keep them safe and in good order for him when he came out. I shall personally see them both in the inferno before I do any such thing.’
Keith thought that his moment might have come. ‘I suppose,’ he said carefully, ‘that you wouldn’t care to suggest that if he gifted them to me I wouldn’t be waiting for him when he came out – except, perhaps, to slip a few crumpled banknotes into his sweaty palm?’
Munro stared at him. ‘You have the nerve of the very devil himself,’ he said at last. ‘Get you out of here! Go quickly, before I forget that you have helped me and start remembering certain things that you would prefer forgotten. And,’ Munro added just before the door closed, ‘I shall see what I can do.’
Chapter Eighteen
Keith stood in the front door of the New Hall and raised his voice. ‘Peter? Your Land Rover’s outside and I’ve brought your tykes back.’
Sir Peter, looking more than ever like a kilted scarecrow, appeared through the garden door. The two Labradors rushed to give their indulgent owner a violent welcome.
‘Get down, you blighters,’ Sir Peter shouted. ‘Good Lord!’ he added. ‘They did it!’
*
Andrew Gulliver was another man in a state of suppressed fury. The insurance investigator threw himself into the passenger seat of Keith’s car and flourished a wad of papers. ‘Just how much do you think you can get away with?’ he demanded.
Keith switched off his engine. ‘If that’s the insurance settlement,’ he said, ‘Cantley’s already signed it.’
‘I don’t care if God witnessed the signature, you want that sort of money from us and you can sue us. And we’ll cancel all your insurances for keeps. At a superficial glance I can see about seven attempts to defraud.’
‘I never told Cantley a word of a lie,’ Keith said.
Gulliver laughed without mirth. ‘Oh no! You were too subtle to tell a lie. I made him take me through everything that happened. You knew that he was a babe in arms about guns, and too proud to let on. So you offered him the first group with some of the most valuable but unornamented ones in it, and you put your own values on them, just a little below market price. When he jibbed, you got an independent valuer who set it higher. The second batch, you invited him to put the values on, and took him to independent valuation. Same result, and he’d ended up having to pay for both valuations. After you had him brainwashed, you gave him all the expensive-looking rubbish and invited him to put his own values on it. He should have smelled a rat as soon as you accepted his figures.’
‘Maybe he should,’ Keith said, ‘but, after all, they were his figures.’
‘There was an obligation on you to tell him that he was wrong. Look at that Holland and Holland. You never told him that it was a Royal, not in so many words, nor that the engraving had all been added later. You knew that he wouldn’t know a Royal from a punt gun. You just let him come across some literature about the Royal, and some old valuations, and he thought he’d shake you by being right for once.’
‘He shook me all right,’ Keith said.
‘I just bet he did!’ Gulliver smiled in spite of himself and quickly substituted his most ferocious frown. ‘He shook me, too. And your estimate for repairs looks like the national debt. Your hourly rate would be extravagant in a top class whore, and I know that if we pay for that number of hours you’ll finish in a quarter of the time and pocket the balance. Well, it’s not on, and we’re going over the list again together right now.’
Outside the windscreen, a very pretty girl was passing. Keith knew where he’d rather be. ‘Before we do,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a valuable piece of information to trade off.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s worth a lot of money. If it could save you a lot more than what you’re so het up about, will you let the settlement stand?’
Gulliver hesitated. ‘No promises,’ he said. ‘But you know I deal fairly.’
‘That’s good enough,’ Keith said. ‘You heard that the trouble up at the canal sprang from the written-off J.C.B. going back into service?’
‘I knew that.’
‘Cantley didn’t. I sounded him out. He was the loss adjuster on that one. He says he reported that it would be repairable, and he estimated four hundred pounds. You paid up for a new one. So there’s somebody in one of your offices who’s prepared to tamper with reports for a consideration.’
Andrew Gulliver breathed deeply for a few seconds. He looked older, and tired. ‘That’s worth something,’ he said. ‘I’d better get onto it right away, before he gets his hands on something really big.’
‘And my claim?’
‘That Holland and Holland sticks in my gullet. If you’ll agree to knock fifteen hundred off that, we’ll let the rest go.’
Keith kept his face impassive, but his toes were curling with pleasure.
*
‘All right,’ Keith said. ‘I was going to let you keep the job anyway. Now will you tell me what the hell was all that about somebody blowing your brains out?’
‘Oh, that,’ Wallace said. ‘I finally worked it out. N-nice to know that I was ahead of you for once. When Ronnie started fighting with Tweedledum, I put the office light out the quickest way I could, by punching the bulb. It broke. My face was all wet from that damned leaky roof, and the bare ends of the filaments must have swung against me.’
‘Simple as that,’ Keith said.
‘Simple as that. Now, Keith, about the stock in the shop. I’ve been doing a cash-flow analysis . . .’
Wallace began to spill papers onto the table. Keith backed silently towards the door.
*
Molly sat by the window in her room. Her new room. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown. There was a smaller dressing on her face now, and no bandages around her head. Her hair would grow back. ‘You can always say that you never saw the Irishman’s face,’ she said. ‘Then they couldn’t expect you to pick him out of a line-up.’
‘I don’t even know what size he is,’ Keith said. He was stretched out on the bed.
‘Say that he was sitting down when you saw him. Or you can say that you don’t think that the one you said you saw is there at all, and describe absolutely anybody.’
‘That’s true,’ Keith said. He brightened slightly, but only for a few seconds. ‘I didn’t mean to kill McSween,’ he said. ‘Not to kill him. I meant to give him the worst couple of hours of his life. I meant him to wake up screaming every time I appeared in his dreams, and if he dreamed of me every night that was all right with me. But I didn’t mean to kill him.’
The female of the human species often surprises us by taking the less sentimental view. ‘Well you should have meant to,’ she said sternly. ‘He tried to kill me with a knife. And he killed George Frazer and probably Dougie Cruikshank. And he kicked Tanya–’
‘I suppose so,’ Keith said. ‘Let’s just say that I wanted to kill him but I didn’t want him dead.’
‘– and he set fire to the shop,’ Molly finished.
‘I don’t mind so much about that. I’ll be showing a nice profit on the fire. Which I’ll need. Before we set up the dummy episode, I promised Munro I’d pay the damage next door. I didn’t know the windows were double-glazed, and they didn’t have to put the dummy up against the biggest pane. And they want me to pay for repairing the wall and two new pillows as well.’
‘Will it mop up the whole of your profit?’
‘Not by a hell of a long chalk.’ He snorted to himself.
‘Then you’re just annoyed because you don’t get to keep the whole profit to yourself.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d have left me much of it anyway,’ Keith said. He closed his eyes and felt himself sliding towards sleep.
‘You lost your daily woman, then,’ Molly said.
‘Yes. She’s out on bail now, but somehow she didn’t seem to fancy coming back to work for me much. Not that she ever did work for me much.’
‘I don’t suppose she would, much.’ Molly fluffed out her hair and straightened the dressing-gown. ‘Keith, they say I won’t get home for several weeks yet, what with cosmetic surgery and all that. Can you manage?’
‘Oh yes. Ronnie’s gone up north. I can pig it on my own and get somebody to spring-clean before you come back.’
‘That wasn’t exactly what I meant.’
‘Oh, that. You forget, I’m a changed man these days.’
‘But,’ Molly persisted, ‘if you can’t manage–’
‘I know. No more affiliation orders.’
‘That isn’t what I was going to say. I was going to say that if you really can’t last out, if you really feel you must – you know – please don’t let it be with anybody else but Jacinthe.’
Keith’s eyes snapped open. Suddenly, sleep was far away. ‘Cin?’ he said.
‘Yes. I wouldn’t mind quite so much if it was her. You see,’ Molly said reasonably, ‘she isn’t a threat. She couldn’t ever take you away. You two, you’re so much alike that you’d never stand for each other for more than about a day at a time. Then the fur would fly.’
Keith sat up and stared at his wife. ‘I’m sorry you said that.’ And, indeed, even the fantasy of adult
ery suddenly seemed to have lost its charm.
‘I know, dear,’ Molly said gently.
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