The DCI David Fyfe Mysteries

by William Paul

  Sapalski’s voice went up in volume again to describe Zena McElhose’s blameless life and her violent death. There was no evidence of forced entry to the house, raising the possibility that the killer was known to her, or perhaps she had simply forgotten to lock the door. He set out the calculated time scale and said that, again because it was Sunday, the post-mortem wouldn’t be done until the next day. Fyfe told Sapalski about Dr McInnes’s medical opinion. Everything inevitably came back full circle to John Doe lying on the bed beside them under his watchful electronic guardians.

  ‘Not really much point in looking any further, Inspector Sapalski, is there?’ Fyfe said. ‘We might as well sit here and wait for our pal to wake up and tell us the whole story. The problem with that is that the public would think we weren’t doing enough to earn our salaries.’

  ‘If the fingerprints are negative tomorrow we’ll do a mug-shot and hand it out to the media. Somebody somewhere’s got to know who he is.’

  ‘Okay. In the meantime, I’d like to see the scene of the crime in old Zena’s palace down by the seaside.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sapalski said. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I shot home for a couple of hours, would you, sir? I know I’m in charge of this inquiry and normally I wouldn’t ask but my wife’s pregnant and I’d just like to check that there’s nothing wrong.’

  ‘Check that everything’s all right.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Always think positively, John. Don’t worry yourself about something being wrong. You are going home to check that everything is all right.’

  ‘You don’t mind then?’

  ‘You’ve done the donkey work for the day. No point in putting in face time if it’s not going to be productive. I know how important it is to keep on the right side of the women in our lives. Besides, it’s better to ensure life than clear up after death, don’t you agree?’

  ‘It was just seeing that poor kid Lorna today and the effect it was having on her parents. It really got through to me.’

  ‘Go home, John.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sunday, 14.37

  She had only been in his house once before, a long time ago. She had gone to collect documents when he was laid up with a broken ankle after falling down the office steps. He had answered the door and taken her up to his study, limping so badly on the stairs in his plaster cast that he needed to hold on to her elbow for support. At one point she had thought he was going to put his arm right round her shoulder and she almost fainted at the prospect. But he didn’t. It was when his wife was still alive. They made it to the top of the stairs and he could walk more easily on the flat.

  The study was a big wood-panelled, book-lined room with a huge leather-topped desk in the centre. He always kept it scrupulously tidy with his word processing screen, keyboard and printer aligned with the edges. He had sat down at the desk and finished annotating the last few pages of a sheaf of papers with the platinum fountain pen the other partners in the law firm had presented him with to mark its twentieth anniversary. She stood deferentially by his shoulder waiting for him.

  When the paperwork was complete he lifted his ankle on to the desk and asked her to sign the cast. Then he had insisted she stay for coffee. Joan was away for some reason and she had to help him down the stairs to the kitchen. He chatted away happily, entertaining her with small talk and church gossip. She was her usual icily polite, taciturn self. Only later, once she was away and on her own, did her imagination begin to run wild on what might have been.

  Now Maureen Gilliland was back in that study once more, seated in that same chair at that same desk. The desk was, surprisingly, rather untidy with books and folders scattered haphazardly about its surface, and the keyboard disconnected from the screen. She cleared a space on the green leather and sorted it all out. The screen glowed green, blinking at her as if she had just woken it up. She typed in Val’s password. She wrote yesterday’s date in the top right-hand corner, putting the year first, then the month and then the day in her fantasy lover’s personal idiosyncratic style. She typed quickly, the content already composed inside her head, fascinated to see the idea created in front of her eyes.

  ‘I am going to see Zena. This must end,’ she wrote. ‘I must tell her our affair cannot continue. It was a mistake I now bitterly regret. If she will not accept it she must suffer the consequences. There is no alternative. The truth is I love Maureen. I cannot help myself. I have always loved Maureen. I love her passionately. How could I have been so foolish as to betray her? I will always love her. I hope she will forgive me.’

  It seemed so right to see it written down. There was a smile on Gilliland’s face as she took a sheet of notepaper with the distinctive Randolph and Runciman heading from a drawer and prepared the letter for printing. She fed the paper into the printer and the inkjet head began to whisper across the page. Val’s fountain pen was in another drawer. Its cap was stiff. Twice she tried to pry it off and failed. The third time it came away. She caught sight of her distorted reflection in the narrow rounded surface of the platinum. She looked tiny, insignificant, a million miles away. Her motivating sense of impatience was replaced with calm.

  She raised the letter to her mouth and kissed it. ‘I forgive you, Val my darling,’ she said softly.

  She signed the letter with a flourish, recreating the loops and curves of Valentine Randolph’s name and customary identifying mark. After all, with his connivance she had regularly forged his signature on a range of documents. No one had ever noticed.

  The smile faded quickly while she was admiring her handiwork. She put the pen in her handbag and tidied the desk so that the letter lay exactly in the centre of the green leather rectangle. She looked back at it from the doorway then went downstairs, moving with sudden haste and urgency. Impatience had overwhelmed her. She was glancing over her shoulder as though somebody was chasing her through the empty house. She went through the kitchen where they had shared coffee and into the adjoining garage. The red Mercedes, all washed and waxed, shone brilliantly under the harsh strip lights. Gilliland slipped into the white leather driving seat. She pulled down the sun visor and the ignition keys fell into her waiting hand. The car’s engine was so silent she thought at first it had not started but then she saw exhaust fumes ballooning up at the rear. She flicked the electronic remote and the wide up-and-over door began to open. She pushed the gear lever into place and the car jumped forward. Its aerial scraped the bottom of the still-rising door, but she was out and along the driveway and into the street with Valentine’s house falling away behind her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sunday, 16.02

  Fyfe liked to work alone, without distractions or interruptions. So he was glad that Sapalski had gone home to hold hands with his pregnant wife and leave him to get on with it. He knew enough of the details and the circumstances of old Zena’s murder. At first glance, the facts suggested he would have been better employed staying at Gleneagles for the afternoon round but, as Sir Duncan had pontificated, the most straightforward open and shut case sometimes turned up the most inconvenient lines of inquiry. Zena’s fate might yet produce a paradox for him to solve that would defeat the obvious logic of the situation.

  He drove across the city in the gathering gloom of early afternoon. The shape of an incoming plane slid across the sky on the horizon, reminding him that Angela would be arriving soon, perhaps on that very plane. And that turned his thoughts to Hilary. She hadn’t phoned him back because she didn’t know his number, not because she didn’t want to speak to him. He decided to try her again, pulling into the side of the road in a street overhung by trees that caused silent shadows to slash and whip across the grey and black atmosphere of the car. The wind had risen considerably. The rain was getting heavier. A big storm was brewing over the city. Fyfe rolled back his sleeve and read the fading number she had written there, although he knew it by heart anyway.

  ‘Hello,’ she answered.

&
nbsp; ‘Hilary. This is David from the party last night. Remember?’

  ‘Oh yes. Sorry I was so short with you earlier. I couldn’t talk then.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘My husband was in the house. In fact he was standing right beside me. I had an attack of confused guilt.’

  ‘Has it subsided yet?’

  ‘Totally. I was hoping you’d phone back, David. I hadn’t realised I didn’t know your number. You should have written it on my arm.’

  ‘I’d like to do that.’

  ‘I’d like you to do that too.’

  Fyfe had a deep sense of foreboding. He shouldn’t be doing this. He should walk away from Hilary and keep things simple. But she was a seductive bundle of trouble and he couldn’t stop himself. The truth was he didn’t want to stop himself. He even viewed her, in some strange way, as an antidote to Angela, both of them appearing to him as they had done in those short black dresses. It was a mystical link, as inexplicable as it was unavoidable. The time was right for the two of them, him and Hilary. It might never be right again if he let this chance pass by. He didn’t intend to.

  ‘I thought maybe you’d like to go for a drink tonight?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere quiet.’

  ‘It’s quiet here.’

  ‘Where? In your home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about your other half?’

  ‘He’s away on an overnight trip.’

  ‘So you’re all alone?’

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t like it when people are sad. I’ve just got a few things to do then I’ll probably be free in a couple of hours.’

  ‘I’m waiting. Bring a nice bottle of wine.’

  ‘Red or white?’

  ‘Red. Full-bodied.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘That’s about all we need.’

  ‘And you promise you won’t be sad any more?’

  ‘I promise if you come and see me.’

  ‘We can pretend we’re still at the party.’

  ‘If you like.’

  She told him her address and when she had gone Fyfe felt a flush of warmth spread outwards from the base of his neck. Here was another woman to complicate his life. How many times had he been down this road? Would he never learn? There was a touch of guilt too. Sally was waiting for him at home with the dogs. That was where, in a perfect world, he should go, but he knew he wouldn’t. Instead he phoned Sally from the shadow-whipped car and said he was stuck on a murder inquiry and might have to spend the night in the city. If Hilary kicked him out when the bottle of wine was finished he would drive home and say he had got finished earlier than anticipated. He liked to keep his options open.

  He drove on to Zena’s house. There were two uniforms at the gate, and another one sitting on his own in a car beside the big house. He asked for the odd-job man to be sent up in about fifteen minutes and went in past the lodge with its tightly closed curtains all but concealing the lights shining outside.

  The officer at the house got out of his car and offered to act as a guide but once he had shown Fyfe down the side path to the rear entrance he was sent back to his lonely sentry post. Beyond the blue and white tape that marked the entrance to the crime scene Fyfe could apply his full concentration to a mental reconstruction of events. One summer long ago, when he was a wet-behind-the-ears beat constable, he had read every Sherlock Holmes story ever written and dreamt of becoming the world’s greatest detective. It was far too late now to realise that ambition.

  The alarm system was switched off. A winking red light on a control panel like the Starship Enterprise showed that it was on stand-by. Fyfe passed quickly through the utility room and into the kitchen. The place where Zena’s body had been found was marked with red sticky tape because the floor was too smooth and shiny to take chalk marks. The kitchen was ordinary, banal, like a million other kitchens in a million other houses. It betrayed no hint of what had happened there. The floor had been scrubbed clean of blood.

  Fyfe followed Sapalski’s description and went out into the hallway. He saw himself in the huge wall mirror and was momentarily disorientated. Then the interior landscape sorted itself out; the wooden doorways on each side and the pieces of furniture and the elephant’s foot stuffed full of umbrellas and walking-sticks. The alcove door was standing open. There was more red tape in a crude body shape on the tiled floor where the mystery man’s body had been discovered between the solid front door and the glass-panelled inner door. If there had been any blood, it too had been cleaned up. Fyfe patted the porcelain Dalmatian on the head and waited for psychic intuition to give him an important insight. Nothing happened.

  He went into each room, walking round, studying the family pictures in the silver frames. He picked a person in the photographs he presumed to be Zena and followed her visible progress as she developed and matured and finally, upstairs in the main bedroom, grew old.

  ‘Why did you die, Zena?’ he asked her. ‘What’s the paradox here?’

  In the first-floor drawing-room with its huge break-front bookcase and mahogany dining-table there was an ornate carriage clock ticking loudly on the black marble mantelpiece of the fireplace. Two Chinese-style dog-lions with green gem-stone eyes sat on either side of it. Fyfe opened the french windows and stepped out on to the balcony that ran three-quarters the length of the front of the house. He leaned on the railing and looked out over the trees to the sea where it filled the wide estuary of the River Forth and the ill-defined land beyond where lights emerged and disappeared in the grey and drifting mist.

  ‘It’s called a widow’s walk,’ Ramensky said behind him. ‘A lot of the houses around here have them.’

  Fyfe turned, surprised by Ramensky’s presence and annoyed that he should have been allowed on to the crime scene by himself. Then he noticed the uniformed policeman hovering in the background and relaxed. He nodded to dismiss him and waved Ramensky out on to the balcony, shifting to one side to accommodate him. The big man had to duck below the lintel. When he straightened up his head reached the rain gutter on the edge of the sloping roof.

  ‘You must be Sandy Ramensky. A Polish name, isn’t it?’

  The newcomer nodded. ‘And you’re Chief Inspector Fyfe, the head man.’

  ‘The one that’s been around the longest anyway.’

  ‘More questions?’

  ‘We’ve all got our little empires to protect. If I rely on underlings, what’s the point of my existence? What did you say this balcony was called?’

  ‘Captains’ wives used to stand out on walks like these and look out for returning ships.’

  ‘How come they’re called widow’s walks then?’

  ‘Because so many captains and ships never came back.’

  ‘And the wives kept on walking.’

  ‘Exactly, because they could never know for certain what happened to the ships. They kept look-out for years on end sometimes.’

  ‘No radios in those days. No portable phones.’

  ‘No way to know if their men were dead or alive.’

  ‘Mrs McElhose was a widow,’ Fyfe said. ‘She would have all the proper certification though. Mr McElhose was a banker, I believe.’

  ‘I never knew him. She used to sit out here in the summer, taking tea. She brought out a chair and a table with a white cloth. You could see her from the lodge. Watching her, it could have been the eighteenth century.’

  ‘She was murdered in our century, however. If she had survived it would have been a much quainter crime.

  ‘Would it now?’

  ‘Hamesucken it would have been called, a term unique to Scots law. It means the crime of committing an assault on a person in his or her own dwelling house.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Isn’t it? But since old Zena succumbed it becomes plain murder, an ugly word with no redeeming quality or romance. Who do you think killed her then?’

  Ramensky went a littl
e way along the balcony and stood at the railing, looking outwards. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘You’ve done your statement?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve put down everything I know. I’m already late for work.’

  ‘Some of my colleagues think you should be a suspect.’

  Ramensky’s head turned on his massive shoulders. Fyfe regretted raising the subject. The man would easily overpower him in a fight, snap his neck like a used matchstick. He checked that the french windows were open if he had to make a dash for safety. Below them in the driveway the policeman walked over to his car, slid inside and pulled the door shut.

  ‘You know how people’s thought processes work,’ Fyfe went on. ‘We don’t have a butler to blame so the odd-job man must have done it. Big men are always the first to be associated with acts of violence.’

  ‘What about the guy inside the front door?’

  ‘An even better suspect but our highly intensive training warns us never to accept a situation at face value. After all, you could have put him there to divert attention.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘A diversion.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Your guilt.’

  ‘But why would I want to kill Mrs McElhose?’

  ‘So your daughter Lorna will live.’

  Ramensky’s reaction was slow and deliberate. He gripped the top of the rail, tilted his head back and laughed mirthlessly. Fyfe laughed too. There was a degree of empathy between them. He was safe. Ramensky was no murderer. He was a void of bottomless despair standing there with the sparse rain beginning to fall on his upturned face.