by William Paul
‘What haven’t I done right, Mr Lambert?’ he asked.
‘His face. Look at his face.’
Robbie looked, put his head right down until he was almost nose to nose with the corpse. Then he straightened up and shook his head.
‘What does he look like?’ Lambert prompted.
Robbie frowned more deeply. He shook his head again.
‘His expression. Look at his expression.’
Robbie looked. He narrowed his eyes, fiddled with his ear-ring, and looked very carefully. ‘He looks kind of frightened or something.’
‘Exactly. They’re often like that, Robbie. It’s the few seconds of remaining consciousness when they realize they’re going to die and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. You’d be frightened, wouldn’t you?’
‘I reckon.’
‘It’s usually sudden-death males who come in with fright frozen on. If they die ill in bed it’s usually a look of sadness. Don’t ask me why but females are much more likely to die smiling.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Well, Mr Beaumont here is to occupy our rest room over the weekend until his funeral on Monday. It’s to be an open coffin and we don’t want his grieving relatives staring down on somebody who looks as if he has seen a ghost, do we?’
‘No.’
‘So what do we do about it, Robbie?’
Robbie grinned. ‘We put a smile on his face.’
‘You’re a fast learner. But maybe not a full-blown smile. A hint of one is better. I prefer the vaguely amused expression. You’ll find that relatives are greatly comforted by it. Takes the edge off a solemn occasion.’
‘But how do we do it?’ Robbie asked eagerly.
‘Like this.’
Lambert flexed his fingers and placed them on either side of the corpse’s skull with the thumbs positioned below the cheek bones. He began to massage in small circular motions, feeling the stiffness of the flesh and the muscles below gradually give way under the steady pressure. He worked his way down over the cold surface until he reached the corners of the mouth. After a few minutes he stood back to admire his handiwork. Mr Beaumont’s expression had changed. The look of fear had gone. Subtle contentment had settled on him.
‘How does he look now?’ Lambert asked.
‘Much happier,’ Robbie confirmed.
‘Doesn’t he? He’s sleeping pretty now.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Thursday, 16.29
Moya ran for the shattered windows but McIsaac and Simpson went past her and barged through first. She turned back to see if Fyfe was all right. He was lying on his back with his legs up on the desk. There was a cut oozing blood beside his left eye. As she crouched down beside him, wishing her skirt was not so short, she saw the swelling was already closing the eye in an obscene pantomime wink.
‘Did you really kick the shit out of him?’ she asked.
Fyfe leaned on her arm as he climbed awkwardly to his feet. ‘Catch the bastard and I’ll show you a repeat performance.’
Moya held on to his arm as they went outside. Ross had already managed to reach the jetty and untie a boat. He pushed away from the side and floated out, standing in the stern priming the motor before trying to start it. A panting Charlie Simpson was next to board one of the boats, then a breathless Donald McIsaac, stepping inelegantly over the gap and falling into the bottom. A pair of navy divers came running after them, and another pair. One of the divers went straight into the water and began swimming towards Ross just as his outboard spluttered into life, churning the black water white and kicking the boat away from the shore.
Fyfe sat on the bench on the terrace of the ornamental gardens and let Moya hold a tissue against his bleeding eye. The swelling had closed it completely. He looked on in restricted mono-vision as the boat chase developed in front of them.
Ross was motoring now. Simpson and McIsaac were in pursuit. So was one of the navy boats. The other was delayed by having to pick his colleague out of the loch. Other policemen were untying some of the other boats. The occupants of the bar had poured outside, rounding the side of the hotel still carrying their drinks. Some went down to the jetty to shout encouragement. It wasn’t clear whom they were encouraging. Jill was lying on the ground at Fyfe’s feet with her head on her paws. Number Five was running up and down the path barking furiously.
‘Why are we bothering to go after him anyway?’ Fyfe asked. ‘He’s a loony. No fiscal is going to prosecute him for making up his daft stories.’
‘They might prosecute him for police assault,’ Moya suggested.
Fyfe patted his injured eye carefully. He winced a little to show her just how painful it was and enjoyed the look of concern on her face. The pain would hopefully deflect attention from his stupidity and slowness in allowing Ross to hit him over the head with the chair.
‘Good point,’ he agreed. ‘How could I forget? Let’s hope they don’t drown him before they bring him back.’
‘Oh no!’ Moya leapt up. ‘Look at that!’
‘What?’ Fyfe demanded to know. ‘What is it?’
Moya pointed to the convoy of three boats rounding the headland and beginning to curve towards the shore. Fyfe saw a tall, round-shouldered man kneeling in the front of the lead boat with one hand resting protectively on a horizontal black shape. It was the body bag containing the murder victim. Fifty yards away he saw Ross’s boat, riding a white bow-wave at the head of its own less sedate procession. Ross was looking back over his shoulder, concentrating on his pursuers. He didn’t realize he was on a collision course.
‘Talk about the Keystone Cops,’ Moya said.
Through his one good eye Fyfe watched her watching the loch. From his position she had a lovely profile framed against the blue-grey sky. A cute snub nose and generous bust. Jill had sat up on the bench beside her and Moya was stroking her head and rubbing an ear between her fingers. Number Five came galloping back and forced her head under the other hand for similar treatment. By pretending to look at the dogs he could admire Moya’s legs. A woman who appreciated his dogs, Fyfe thought, was his kind of woman.
‘He’s going to ram them,’ Moya almost shouted.
Fyfe stood up to witness the final coming together. Everybody was standing up in the boats shouting, except Ross. The crowd on the jetty added their voices to the hubbub. The outboard motors droned like competing bluebottles. Number Five went racing back down the path. Moya clutched Fyfe’s arm instinctively.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘He’s going to ram them! Look out, Dr Eames!’
The tall man, Dr Eames, abandoned his semaphore act and dived overboard rather gracefully. His companion at the rear copied him. The two boats collided a few seconds later. The sound of splintering wood carried across the water to match the confused scene on the surface. Ross was thrown into the loch. His boat vanished from sight almost immediately and he was left thrashing about. The other boat, with a big hole chewed out of one side, listed dramatically, tipping the black body bag over the side. It floated away as the other boats began circling to pick up survivors.
‘Don’t let it sink,’ Moya said. She spoke softly at first, then more loudly, more urgently. ‘Don’t let it sink. Don’t let it sink. Don’t let the bloody thing sink. Look at that. The fools are going to let it sink.’
She tugged at Fyfe’s sleeve anxiously, frustrated by her land-bound helplessness. She cupped her hands round her mouth and yelled: ‘Don’t let it sink.’
But nobody could hear her out on the loch. Ross and the other two men were hauled on board as the black shape sank lower and lower in the water like a submarine slowly submerging. No one out on the water seemed to notice until it was too late. The body bag slipped from sight.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Moya stormed, stamping her foot. ‘Keystone Cops did I say? Would you credit it? Have you ever seen anything like it?’
Fyfe shook his head in sympathy. He considered the idea of making some kind of joke about nobody being dead and at lea
st she wouldn’t drown, but decided against it. He didn’t want to provoke her. Moya turned to face him. This time her hands were on her hips and a few strands had broken loose from her tightly scraped-back hair. Still seated, Jill shuffled round so that she was facing the same way. Number Five came bounding back up the path.
‘I’m not doing too well, am I?’ she said. ‘Superintendent Ryder is going to love this. Not only did I lose my murderer but I go and lose my body as well.’
Moya laughed an instant before Fyfe did. They sat down on the bench again and she attended to his eye with the tissue. It might have been his imagination, but her touch seemed to be much gentler. They were bonding nicely after the false start.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The divers will get your body back soon enough. What does it matter that she went for a swim before her post-mortem.’
‘Fishermen would say it was the one that got away.’
‘We’ll get it back.’
They were interrupted by fat Joe Hallett. He stood at the back of the bench staring curiously down on Fyfe’s injured eye. His presence made Moya become less flippant. She visibly stiffened and began dabbing at Fyfe’s eye more firmly. Fyfe grunted, but exchanged a private smile with Moya that set them apart in their own little conspiracy against everyone else. On the loch the boats were returning to the jetty. Everybody was shouting at each other.
‘Phone call,’ Hallett said. ‘They have an identity for our lady in white.’
‘Who is she then?’ Fyfe asked. ‘The little mermaid?’
The joke fell flat. Moya stood up and headed inside to take the call. Jill and Number Five followed her. Fyfe walked behind at a distance, poking at the tender puffy skin round his injured eye.
‘Traitors,’ he said softly after the dogs so that nobody would hear. ‘A right pair of bitches. All three of you.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Thursday, 17.18
The lady in the loch was Laura Lambert. Resident of Edinburgh. Aged twenty-nine. Married. No children. Known to police records because of two convictions for possession of cannabis. Known to the rest of the world as a minor celebrity and fortuneteller. Her occupation was given as journalist and clairvoyant. A blurred mug shot was transmitted to the hotel by fax. In it she glowered furiously at the camera. Her hair was tied back. There was what appeared to be a bruise above her left eye but it might have been a smudge created in transmission. Fyfe brushed his own bruise in sympathy.
He had never heard of Laura Lambert but Moya remembered some kind of astrological game show that had graced the limbo of afternoon television a few years back. Star Charts it had been called and Laura Lambert had been the hostess; white teeth, plenty of leg, deep cleavage and embarrassing patter. She was sacked from the television after the second drugs case, a scandal that had briefly caught the interest of the tabloid papers before she had faded into spiritual obscurity. Until found semi-naked on a rock in the middle of Loch Maree with her head bashed in.
‘I wonder if she saw it coming?’ Fyfe asked.
‘No more than any of us will when it’s our turn,’ Moya said enigmatically. ‘I was into spiritualism once you know, after my mother died. It didn’t last.’
‘What does?’ Fyfe said, handing the fax picture to McIsaac. ‘Have you seen her around here before now, Donald?’
McIsaac studied the likeness on the piece of paper. He scratched his beard and shook his head. ‘Holiday homes, holiday people. They come and go in their big cars. We never see them.’
‘The husband’s name is Wright, Simon Wright,’ Moya said. ‘Mean anything?’
‘That name’s more familiar,’ McIsaac said doubtfully. ‘Let me have a look at the council tax register I brought over. I’m sure there’s a Wright in there somewhere.’
They waited while McIsaac went through the list on the bundle of continuous computer paper. It was in geographical not alphabetical order so it was a long job. Simon Wright was the next of kin. The address given was an up-market leafy part of Edinburgh. The machinery was already in progress to have him informed and questioned. Ryder was handling it from Inverness. He had also booked half a dozen hotel rooms for the troops in the front line.
‘I was just going to do that,’ Moya said.
‘Phone him up and tell him you approve,’ Fyfe told her.
‘Why should I bother?’
‘It’s your case. Keep a grip on it. Let him know who’s controlling it. It won’t make any difference now but it will make him think twice before he does anything else off his own bat.’
She hesitated and then she did it, speaking over the phone slowly and clearly like somebody determined to get the words right when making an after-dinner speech. She kept up eye contact with Fyfe while she spoke. He would have winked at her but one eye was closed and the swelling had stretched the skin around the other too much.
‘The body bag sank after the boat accident but we should be able to retrieve it soon,’ she was saying. ‘The guy who made the false confession is on the way to you now. Quite convincing he was but I soon saw through his story. He hit your friend Chief Inspector Fyfe over the head with a chair. Assault and resisting arrest should be the charge.’
Fyfe smiled encouragement and examined his injured eye in the window reflection. It was getting dark outside. The moon was hidden behind clouds, lightening the sky but making the darkness more intense at ground level. Ross was on his way back south, handcuffed in the back of a patrol car. The boats with the divers had formed a circle out on the loch. A couple of big spotlights run off car batteries had been rigged up and every winged insect from miles around was flocking to the phantom feast.
‘Yes. He’s here,’ Moya was saying on the phone. ‘No. No permanent damage as far as we can tell. Not a very warm welcome to our jurisdiction though, is it? We’ll have to make it up to him somehow.’
Hallett knocked on the door. He was still shaking his head in bemusement over his misjudgement of the character of Robert Ross, good-natured ghillie turned raving madman. He said that Dr Eames and the others who had gone over the side into the water were showering and changing into clothes that didn’t quite fit them. Oh, and the first newspaper reporters had arrived on the scene.
‘Tell them we’ll make a statement soon,’ Fyfe said.
‘Is that wise?’ Moya asked.
‘Get them on your side. They’re going to write the story whatever we do so we have to make sure we get our slant on it.’
Moya looked out at the circle of lights on the water. It would be visible from the picture window in the bar too, impossible to ignore. She could see one guy with a bulky camera bag down by the jetty already. The aftermath of the Keystone Cops water-chase. The headline writers would be sharpening their witticisms. Poor Moya, Fyfe thought, it wouldn’t look too good for her in the morning.
‘Feed them some drink, Joe. Run up the profits and keep them busy. We can get Charlie to stall them. No names until next of kin informed and that kind of stuff.’
Here it is,’ McIsaac interrupted suddenly, his index finger stabbing down on an entry on the list. ‘Wright, Simon Henry. Torridon Cottage, Swan Bay.’
‘That must be him,’ Moya said.
McIsaac nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s less than a mile from Parliament Rock as the swan swims.’
‘Promising, promising.’
It hadn’t taken the divers long to find the sunken body bag, Fyfe watched them struggle to haul the awkward black shape aboard. The boat rocked alarmingly and a beam of light flashed over the water, illuminating trees on the shore and the back of the hotel. The beam lit up the interior of the office momentarily and passed on. It picked out the sundial on its pedestal, casting a false time-telling shadow for less than a second before it was gone.
‘When can we go there?’ Moya asked.
Fyfe turned away from the window. He touched his chin and felt the light growth of stubble there beginning to spoil the smoothness of his skin.
‘No time like the present,’ he
said. ‘We’ll throw some scraps to the media wolves and then head off.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thursday, 18.24
The headlights of Fyfe’s car swiped across the rows of tree trunks on both sides of the rough track. They crowded in, shoulder to shoulder, right up to the edge, concealing what was behind them in the forest. Overhead the heavy branches leaned against each other, closing off the sky, completing the tunnel effect. Fyfe had a strong fatalistic sense of déjâ vu, of dead bodies waiting to be discovered at the end of darkened tunnels. Silently, he began to move his lips to the words of The Grand Old Duke of York.
The car lurched slowly through potholes and over sharp-edged rocks. Its lights swayed erratically, bouncing from side to side off the trees. Clouds of midges drifted through the beams like shoals of tiny fish. Number Five stood with her paws on the back of the passenger seat and her head jutting forward over McIsaac’s shoulder. Moya sat in the back with her arm round the dog. Jill sat beside her.
‘Spooky, isn’t it?’ Moya said.
They had kept the reporters happy by feeding them an approved version of the story so far. Moya took the lead, posed for her picture to be taken, generally had them eating out of the palm of her hand. She gave them the woman in white on Parliament Rock to exercise their imagination. Case definitely being treated as murder. Can’t go into details but I’m sure you can speculate imaginatively since nothing is ruled out. The boat collision was an unfortunate accident. Nobody hurt. Nothing to worry about. Nobody asked about the sinking and recovery of the body bag and she didn’t volunteer the information.
The reporters had more than enough information to begin composing their stories and phoning them over. A mysterious woman in white was found dead on a mist-shrouded Highland loch yesterday, Fyfe heard, listening in on one call being made from the public phone. He and Moya were able to sneak away unnoticed.