‘Tactics, Tam,’ she said as she preceded him into her office, switching on the lights. ‘Where do we go from here? How do we nail the bastard?’
Sitting down, he told her about Charlotte Nisbet’s latest piece of private enterprise. ‘So we’ve his prints on the mask, anyway. But it’d hardly take a genius to come up with “I only wanted a look at it” as a defence.’
Fleming agreed. ‘It could be corroboration, though. Circumstantial evidence is better than no evidence at all.’
‘Can’t see it going down well with the Super.’ MacNee was gloomy.
‘You think?’ Fleming groaned. ‘My neck’s on the block tomorrow. And all I’ve come up with is getting a formal statement from Laura, recorded so we can analyse it piece by piece to see if he let something slip to her, some discrepancy that would give us a lever . . .’
He wasn’t impressed. ‘You want a bet? No? Och well, it’s something, I suppose. High risk, mind – like giving a starving dog a dolly-mixture. Are you setting that up for tomorrow?’
‘I’d wanted to do it tonight, but I can’t get hold of her,’ Fleming complained. ‘She told Bill and my mother she’d be in for lunch, but she’s disappeared—’ She stopped, as if she had only just realised what she was saying.
MacNee, too, had gone very still. ‘Wonder where she might be?’ he said, carefully not sounding alarmist.
‘I don’t know. I’d like to know. Suddenly I’m feeling very uncomfortable.’
‘Did she say where she was away to?’
‘Burnside Cottages. She’d left stuff there – she was going to move it out to the farm. When my mother said she didn’t come for her lunch I just thought she’d taken the keys back to Jessie MacNab and been given it there.’
‘Do you want me to contact Jessie?’ He got up. ‘I could look in at the cottages too—’
‘No. I’ll get someone on to that. You come with me, and let’s approach it from the other end. Play the man not the ball, to quote the Thoughts of Chairman Bailey. I’ve changed my mind about bringing Max in tomorrow for questioning. Let’s go and get him tonight.’
It was a strange thing about being cold. At first it was painful, dreadfully painful, but then it wasn’t. In fact, Laura could hardly even feel the pain in her hands and shoulders now. She was beginning to feel drowsy, almost comfortable . . .
There was a name for it. She struggled to think what it was but her mind seemed reluctant to respond, sluggish. Hypo-something.
At last it came to her. Hypothermia. It made you sleepy, but you were meant to struggle against it. If you let yourself go to sleep, you wouldn’t wake up again.
That sounded good. She closed her tired, sore, swollen eyes.
Max had been sitting at the window of the restrained, elegant sitting-room, which so uncomfortably reminded him of his mother’s personality, for hours now. It was to the side of the house with a view down to the first corner of the drive; he watched as darkness stealthily soaked up the light and the wind began first to tease the needles of the pine-trees, then assault whole branches which were now bending and swaying. At first he had been in a mood of exhilaration, excitement, even, but he was beginning to feel coldly afraid, afraid and angry. His brilliance was no defence against the whims of a fat, silly bitch who had gone off somewhere and hadn’t returned yet.
And what if she didn’t? What if she’d decided that she couldn’t bear it here without Conrad and had gone to stay at the hotel? What would happen to his superb, meticulous plan? And what would he do with Laura?
The sky was a black backdrop for the cold, sparkling pinpoints of the stars and a pale moon, almost at the full. With a wind too, the temperature outside would be dropping like a stone; he wasn’t at all sure she could survive a night’s exposure. And if she died – well, he’d read enough crime novels to know that you couldn’t fake the scenario he had in mind with a body that was dead already.
He could go and fetch her out, of course, bring her into the house. He’d been going to kill her inside anyway – for who would ever believe Brett would go out trotting round the policies on a winter night? – but to have her spend any time at all on the premises was high risk. She’d be missed soon, and the police had a search warrant for the place which they wouldn’t hesitate to use.
Chewing his lip, he looked out from the unlit room, scanning the skyline for any sign of headlamps in the distance. Nothing. He swore, and despite the warmth of the room he could feel beads of cold sweat on his brow. His whole future was on the line, thanks to that . . . He used every ugly word he could think of to describe her, but it didn’t change the fact that the sky remained obstinately dark.
Soon he’d have to make a decision. Let her die – just leave her there? They’d never find her. They’d never have found Di, if she’d been left there. Or even if he’d known where she was, it would have been easy enough to divert the dig elsewhere.
It would have been the Minotaur who moved her to a burial place, of course – the Minotaur driven by pathetic guilt. Max despised guilt. As if it could eliminate his father’s responsibility for Di’s death! Still, he was paying for it now, a living vegetable, probably not even living much longer. Sometime soon they’d come to ask Max for permission to switch him off. Unless, of course, they found his mother.
Hardly likely, by now. She might even be dead. Strangely, he didn’t want that. He’d been shocked to discover how much it had affected him when he’d believed Di’s body was hers. He wanted his mother to be alive, but to be as she was in his mind, as he remembered her when he was a little boy and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He didn’t want her disapproving, controlling, criticising, saying terrible things about him, her own son. At least his father hadn’t betrayed him – then. He scowled. Everyone let you down in the end. Everyone. You had to be your own person, supremely invulnerable.
He was vulnerable now. He felt sick, thinking about the terrifying decision he was going to have to make. He stood up, his hands to his temples as if pressure there would help the quality of his thought. Then he saw it.
A beam of light, from the direction of the drive, uplighting some low, thick cloud that was gathering over to the west. He stood very still, unconsciously holding his breath, watching it come closer and closer. Brett, or someone else – the police, even . . . ?
Brett. Her little car lurched round the last corner of the drive and he shrank back into the shadows as the headlamps’ beam crossed the darkened room. The car disappeared round the front of the house; he heard the engine stop, the car door slam, the outer front door open and close again, the inner front door do the same. He heard Brett’s footsteps cross the hall and click-click up the uncarpeted stair, then another door close, then silence. She was, he could safely assume, in the upstairs flat on the other side of the house. He must move quickly now, and quietly. Silently, in fact, because Brett herself was going to be his alibi.
He steadied himself. Think it through: there must be no mistake. Fetch Laura. Take her to the study. Kill her. Leave the house. The jeep, with its luggage – that was concealed round the side of the house so that Brett wouldn’t see it when she arrived, but not hidden, which would arouse suspicion. So far so good.
Walk down the drive. Walk up the Glen road to the field gate where he’d parked his hired Peugeot. Drive into Kirkluce, phone Brett from a pub to warn her to lock up because he’d decided not to come back that night. When the police questioned her, she’d be quite certain that he hadn’t been at Chapelton. From his observation of his aunt, innocence would make her indignantly honest and she was so stupidly arrogant it would never occur to her that she was incriminating herself.
His confidence soared. How many of that tiny elite, the killers too clever to be caught, had ever used the psychology of their fall guy to give them an alibi? Not many, he was willing to bet. Sadly, by definition he would never know who they were.
Smiling, he fingered the knife in his pocket in its plastic wrapping, then stepped noiselessly out of th
e room and into the silent hall.
‘She didn’t go to Jessie’s,’ MacNee reported as he switched off the phone. ‘And she’s not at the cottages. The jeep’s not there, but she hasn’t arrived back at the farm either.’
Unconsciously Fleming’s foot pressed down more heavily on the accelerator. ‘What’s gone wrong, Tam? Why would Max – do anything,’ she gulped, ‘to Laura, when as far as he knows Conrad’s our suspect and he’s safely locked up in jail?’
‘We don’t know he’s done anything,’ he pointed out, but without much conviction. There didn’t seem to be much else to say after that.
The house, as they approached it, seemed to be in darkness, the main front door shut. ‘Maybe there’s no one here,’ MacNee was saying as they reached the front, but as they got out they could see a light on the upper floor.
‘Brett’s flat. She must be in. Oh, great!’ Fleming said hollowly as MacNee rang the doorbell.
For a moment, the only response was its echo. Then, unexpectedly, the fanlight above the door lit up as the hall light was switched on. They heard locks being turned and the door swung open.
There was a pause during which you could have counted to ten. Then Max Mason said in an attempt at his usual offensive drawl, ‘Oh God, not the Fuzz again. Am I entitled to tell you to piss off, or will that mean you arrest me?’
That made it easy. ‘I think we just might, Mr Mason.’ Fleming stepped into the hall.
Under the light, she thought he looked very pale, his eyes darting uneasily from one to the other. ‘I should tell you,’ she said with calculation, ‘that I’ve been having a word with your father this afternoon.’
The result was gratifying. ‘My – my father?’ His jaw had gone slack; he was staring as if, like Hamlet, his father’s ghost had suddenly appeared in front of him.
‘Oh, and your mother. It’s all been very, very interesting, and I feel we have this and that to talk about. Just for a start, where’s Laura Harvey?’
He was most evidently shocked and struggling not to show it. ‘Staying with you, as far as I know,’ he said with a ghastly attempt at jauntiness. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve mislaid her, Inspector?’
Absorbed in their confrontation, none of them had heard the movement on the upper landing until Brett Mason’s voice hailed them from the top of the stairs. ‘Oh, you’re there, Max. I didn’t see your car – I assumed you were out.’
Watching him minutely, Fleming noticed a curious half-smile cross Mason’s face as Brett turned her attention to the visitors. ‘And what, pray, are you doing here? Haven’t we suffered enough?’
Catching a histrionic tone in her voice, Fleming tried hastily to reassure her. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Mason. Our business is only with Max.’
It was an annoying distraction. Fleming had used her shock tactics to considerable effect; now that advantage was being lost as Max visibly recovered himself. Turning her back, she went to the door of the study and held it open. ‘In here?’ she said pointedly.
But Brett hadn’t finished. ‘Max!’ she called peremptorily. ‘Max, is there someone else here? There was a jeep parked round this side when I got back a few minutes ago and went to draw the curtains – a rather battered-looking vehicle. I think you should check – it could be anyone.’
Max couldn’t control an expression of pure rage but his voice was impressively level as he said, ‘In a moment, Auntie. In here, Inspector?’
Fleming and MacNee didn’t move. ‘A jeep?’ she said. ‘Tam—’
‘I’m on my way.’
Everything stopped, Fleming thought afterwards, as if you’d pressed the freeze-frame button on a video. Brett, oblivious, at the top of the stairs; herself, struck with horror; Max – well, Max had his back to the wood panelling of the hall and his expression was unreadable.
It all jerked into movement again as MacNee erupted through the front door. ‘Your jeep,’ he hurled at Fleming, then, ‘What have you done with her, you bastard?’ he snarled, advancing on the cringing Max.
‘I – I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. Really, officer,’ he tried to laugh, ‘I think you’d better ask my aunt.’
MacNee, his face two feet away from Mason’s, went very, very quiet. ‘Oh, playing games, are we? That’s good. We’ve a rare sense of fair play, in Glasgow. Heads I win, tails you lose.’
The menace of a thousand kilted ‘ladies from hell’, who had put the fear of God into the enemies of Empire, was in Tam MacNee’s voice. Max’s face, white before, turned grey. ‘Inspector—’
Normally, she would have let Tam have his bit of fun. She’d other things on her mind now. ‘Don’t waste your time, Tam. I know where she’ll be. Hold him and I’ll get back-up.’
Then she was running across the hall under Brett’s affronted gaze, talking into her radio phone, and was outside before Tam had said, ‘Against the wall, arms spread!’
The stars had vanished now, blotted out by the wind-driven clouds scudding across the sky. It was almost surreal, like time-delay camera-work, and Fleming took a moment to get her bearings as she came out of the shelter of the house and staggered in the force of the blast. There was a roaring in the trees like a high-running sea and a huge, ancient pine on the edge of the path groaned and creaked as she passed; she cast it a nervous glance.
There, beyond, was the entrance where the bulldozer had made its brutal assault, scooping away the ground so that the wrought-iron gate, almost off its hinges, was blowing violently to and fro with a rhythmic, metallic clang. She made no effort to find a path to the centre, shouldering her way through wherever she thought she saw a weakness in the hedge, ignoring the rips in her clothes.
Laura was here. Her mind was unclouded by doubt on that score. But Laura – in what shape? Laura still, by some unlikely chance, alive, terrified, and waiting for rescue? Or – and here the shadows were dark indeed – Laura dead, as she felt in her bones that she must be?
She had reached the still heart of the maze now. It was very sheltered here out of the onslaught of the wind, with only the mysterious, uneasy rustling and whispering of the hedges and the long grass and the distant clanking of the gate like a tolling bell to break its unnatural peace. The moon appeared suddenly from a rift torn in the clouds and glittered on the metal plaque, highlighting the etched figure with its horns, its gaping mouth a complicit sneer.
The moon vanished and it was dark again. ‘Laura!’ Fleming shouted desperately. ‘Laura, are you there?’
There was only wind sound, then faintly and still a long way off, the familiar, reassuring sound of sirens approaching. No voice, though, no sign of life from within the rough walls of the monument.
Pulling a torch from her shoulder-bag, Fleming shone it round – and there was the confirmation. Round the steps were chips of the mortar which, when last she had been here, had been securing the massive top stone into its place.
Her heart pounding, still calling Laura’s name, she seized the corner of the slab and tried to slide it across. She prided herself on having, if not quite masculine strength, certainly more physical power than most women, but this she couldn’t move. She swore, grabbing at it, breaking her nails; it was only when she heard the sirens stop close by, the flashing blue lights brilliant against the livid grey of the cloudy sky, that she gave up, running out to call for help.
It took three of them to shift it. At last the stone was off, toppling on to the paving below with an almighty smash. The dank smell of wet earth and masonry rose from the shadowy cavity within as the moon came out again, bathing it in cold, sickly light.
They lifted out the huddled body, bound and gagged, with infinite tenderness. She was limp, her eyes closed and her face in the moonlight a ghastly clay-white.
Fleming said stiffly, ‘Is she dead?’ but they couldn’t tell her. The officer who was wrapping her gently in his greatcoat couldn’t feel a pulse.
Another officer appeared behind them. ‘They’re sending a chopper. It’s on its way.’
; Numbly, Fleming followed the cortège back to the house. As she crossed the sea of mud by the entrance to the maze, the gate swung violently forward into her path. Giving vent to her feelings, she wrested it violently off its rusted hinges and flung it to the ground.
They were escorting Max Mason out, his hands handcuffed behind him, as Fleming reached the front steps. His head had been bowed; as she drew level with him he raised it to look her full in the face, arrogant and unrepentant.
Still in the grip of helpless, murderous rage, she thought suddenly, I want to spit in his face. Like Susie did to me. With sudden appreciation of the other woman’s depth of emotion, she watched as Max was pushed into the police car.
She could hear the helicopter now, going in to land in the field beyond the maze. Satan’s field, where Diana Warwick’s sad, disinterred remains had exposed the sins of pride and jealousy and unwise love.
Paramedics were running up to the house now. Fleming stood in the bitter cold, her hands in the pockets of her badly ripped jacket, and watched them go in, then followed, her head bowed.
But Tam MacNee, coming towards her, was beaming. ‘They’ve found a pulse. And now we’ve the paramedics to start working on her, she’ll be fine. They’re the wee boys!’
Laura was still looking very white and weak, propped up on pillows in her hospital bed when Marjory was allowed into the side-ward to see her two days later. She had developed pneumonia and been acutely ill; her hands were still bandaged but, she assured her visitor, she was on her way to recovery.
Marjory set down a huge bunch of pink lilies on the bed. ‘These are from Bill. Conscience-money. He’s feeling terrible because he told Max where you were.’
Laura looked stricken. ‘Oh no! I hope you told him it wasn’t his fault?’
‘Well – only sort of,’ Marjory confessed. ‘It seemed to be having quite a good effect – realising that his own problems weren’t the worst in the whole world.’
Laura smiled. ‘Poor Bill! It’s hard to keep a sense of perspective in a situation like that. If he’s able to recognise it, that’s a very good sign – in real clinical depression you can’t just choose to snap out of it. Even so, don’t expect too much too soon. He’ll take time to forgive himself for giving way.’
Cold in the Earth Page 33