by Val McDermid
His eyes widened. ‘We all have enemies in this business. But not the kind that kill you.’ He sounded affronted. ‘And if they had, I’m not the one they would have told.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Come on, Detective, you’re a woman. You know how you ladies share things you’d never dream of talking to a man about, even a gay man. There would be times when I’d walk into a bar where I was meeting the girls and they’d have their heads together with somebody from the theatre – Felicity Frye, or another one of the faces from gossip central – and as soon as I reached the table they’d sit back and pretend they were talking about shoes or handbags. I told you, we were close, but we were frivolous too. People were dying all around us. We didn’t want to spend all our time lost in grim reality. When I was with Caro and Ellie, it was about preserving what gaiety we could muster. But those girls were delightful, believe me. It’s unimaginable to think anyone would want to kill them. Unimaginable.’
27
Unimaginable was a word Karen didn’t acknowledge. As far as human behaviour was concerned, nothing was beyond imagination. What was harder to get used to was the number of things people did to each other that had never occurred to her to imagine. Sadly, what had been done to the four people who had boarded that Cessna Skylane on that May morning was horrible, but it wasn’t remarkable.
She’d hoped that Jack Ash would have given her something more tangible to chase. But he’d closed down on her as soon as she’d approached the serious business of motive. She’d given him her card as he’d stood up to leave, but he’d tossed it back on to the table in front of her. ‘I’ve told you everything I can,’ he’d said, his jaw set tight around his words. ‘There’s no reason for us to talk again.’
Karen had paid the bill, trying not to flinch. It was almost as much as dinner the night before, beers included. This private enterprise was an expensive business. She walked back out into the sunshine, glad to be out of Jack Ash’s self-absorbed ambit. As she walked back towards Regent’s Park, she considered what little she had learned. The most significant fact was that Caroline Abbott had told the world that her husband was dead in 1990. Taken at face value, that meant he couldn’t have killed her. But there was always the possibility that she had lied. He might still have been alive in 1994 and enraged to discover she had killed him off four years before. Far-fetched, Karen knew, but she’d fetched things from farther away before.
There was one thing that Jack Ash had let slip. He’d been in full flood on the subject of women and their exclusive conversations and he’d mentioned a name. Felicity Frye. Karen had recognised it, and not just because Felicity Frye was a popular actress with a long and lively career in film, TV and theatre. She specialised in the kind of roles where seriousness is leavened by a sprightly wit. She’d been part of Karen’s viewing landscape since childhood when she’d starred in one of those perennial sitcoms that was always being rerun on some digital channel.
But there was another reason why Felicity Frye’s name resonated with Karen. A few weeks before, the actress’s face and her rich contralto had been all over the media when she’d revealed she had inoperable terminal pancreatic cancer. She’d spoken of the few months at most she had left and revealed she intended to abandon public life and hoped to finish writing the memoir she’d been working on for some time. Felicity Frye was a woman with nothing left to lose. She might be the key that unlocked the lives of Caroline Abbott and Ellie MacKinnon.
Karen walked into the park and kept going till she found an empty bench in a secluded spot. What she needed right now was for Tamsin Martineau to be the duty digital forensics officer in the Police Scotland labs at Gartcosh. When it came to navigating the undercurrents of the digital world, there was nobody better. And Karen knew that the maverick Australian liked nothing better than a challenge. You only had to look at her platinum spiked hair and her nose stud to know she wasn’t going to be unduly bothered about sticking to the rules.
Karen speed-dialled the number and crossed her fingers. The gods were on her side for once; the phone was answered on the third ring and the accent provided unmistakable ID. ‘Digital forensics here,’ Tamsin said.
‘Tamsin? It’s DCI Pirie from the HCU.’
‘How’re you doing, Karen? We’ve not seen you round here in a while.’
‘I’ve been hiding. You still claiming the weekends and night shifts?’
‘You bet. I get more time off that way. So, what can I do for you? You don’t usually have stuff that’s urgent enough to need weekend working.’
‘It’s so straightforward I’m almost embarrassed to ask you. It’s just that I’m down in London on inquiries and I’ve got a lead on a new witness. I thought I might as well chase it down while I’m here.’ Shut up, she told herself. Tamsin’s a techie, you don’t have to explain yourself to her, that’s the opposite of casual.
‘Fire away. I’m ploughing through a routine batch of confiscated paedo hard drives. It’ll be nice to have a break from fucking with other people’s encryption.’
‘Thanks. I need an address and a phone number for Felicity Frye. The actress.’
‘Yeah, I know who Felicity Frye is. I may be a geek but I’ve not been living under a stone. No worries, Karen. I’ll get on to it right away. Call you back on this number, yeah?’
‘Thanks.’ Karen ended the call. Chances were she wasn’t going to make it back to Edinburgh tonight. Time to go and find a cheap hotel. Aye, right. A cheap hotel in central London. As if.
Jeremy Frye accepted the bouquet from the florist’s driver with his customary friendliness. They were almost becoming friends, him and the delivery woman. Pretty much every day she turned up with another floral offering from friends and fans who couldn’t think of another way to express their sorrow and sympathy. Patrizia, their daily help, was developing new skills in flower arrangement. She’d become adept at plucking out the blooms that were on their last legs and distributing the remainder among the other displays. Just as well Felicity loved flowers, for these days there were loaded vases in every room.
Jeremy was less delighted. He found them too potent a token of funerals. They were a constant reminder of the event that was hurtling towards him. One day soon, far sooner than he had ever dreamed, he would be adrift in a sea of funeral flowers. She was only sixty-four, for God’s sake. These days, that was no age. They had friends still hale and hearty in their eighties. Friends who had lived rackety, dangerous lives filled with booze and cigarettes and drugs and red meat and fast cars yet were still going strong. And his beloved Felicity, the love of his life, the mother of their children, who had shepherded her health with good food and fresh air and exercise, had been struck down with this horrible disease. Not for the first time, he felt a spurt of rage burn through him.
Rather than show it, he called out lightly. ‘Florist, darling. Carnations and irises. From the Buchans.’
‘How lovely,’ came the reply from the garden room, the warm chocolate and caramel tones undiminished by illness. ‘Are they lovely?’
Jeremy chuckled. ‘Six out of ten, I’d say.’ He continued to the kitchen, where he was making coffee for himself and a vile herbal brew for his wife when the doorbell rang. He dumped the flowers in the sink, added water then carried the drinks through on a bamboo tray with a plate of Felicity’s favourite spiced oat biscuits. ‘Here we are,’ he said, putting the tray on the table next to her, minimising the effort she had to make.
Felicity pushed herself more upright, and Jeremy was there, plumping cushions at her back. He’d always been solicitous. Uxorious, his sister always teased. Nothing was too much trouble now. He knew there would be years to come when he’d ache for the chance to do something, anything for Felicity. He watched her now like a hawk, alert for any sign of pain or discomfort. She had drugs, carefully calibrated to spare her, but she was reluctant sometimes to take them. And so he studied every lineament and movemen
t of her face, not least because he wanted to commit her beauty absolutely to his memory.
She reached for her cup and pulled a face as she sipped. ‘I think I’m going to give this stuff up,’ she said. ‘If I’ve only got a little time left, I want to enjoy what I put in my mouth. Next time, I’ll have a coffee, darling. To hell with bloody Chinese herbs.’
Before he could answer, her phone buzzed with a text message. Felicity carefully put her cup down and reached for her phone. Her movements, once so confident, were hesitant and much of her old strength had abandoned her limbs so everything now was measured. She propped her reading glasses on her nose and summoned the message. ‘How curious,’ she said, reading it.
‘Who is it?’
‘I’ll read it to you. “Good afternoon, Ms Frye. I’m sorry to intrude but I wonder if you might be able to make time to see me? I am Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland’s Historic Case Unit, and we are re-examining the plane crash in 1994 that killed your friends. It would be very helpful to me to be able to talk to you about Caroline Abbott and Ellie MacKinnon. I am in London today and tomorrow and I would very much appreciate the chance to talk with you. Thank you.” How remarkable,’ she said, the low thrill of her voice still as beautiful as ever.
‘But why?’
‘I imagine because we were close, darling.’
‘No, sorry, I didn’t mean why you, I meant, why now? Why are they re-examining a case that seemed entirely straightforward at the time? Irish terrorists blow up a plane piloted by a politician who’d served in the Northern Ireland Office. Perfectly dreadful, but perfectly clear. Wasn’t it?’
Felicity pushed a stray strand of hair from her face. ‘We all thought so. But perhaps we were wrong.’ She started tapping the screen of her phone. ‘Do we have anything planned for tomorrow? Shall I invite her to come round in the morning?’ She gave a wry smile. ‘While I still have energy enough to think and talk at the same time.’
Jeremy felt the instinctive kick of concern that always butted in these days when Felicity suggested something he was afraid might be too much for her. ‘Are you sure, my dear? I don’t want you to be upset, thinking about poor Caroline and Ellie.’
‘Oh, Jeremy, you’re so thoughtful. But it was a long time ago now. I grieved for them at the time, and heaven knows I missed their friendship over the years, but it’s scarcely traumatic to talk about them.’
‘You say that now, but I know your tender heart. And besides, you said yourself, you get easily tired.’
Felicity harrumphed softly. ‘I’m not at death’s door yet, Jeremy. If this police officer has taken the trouble to track me down, I think the least I can do is give her the benefit of my knowledge of Caroline and Ellie. If there’s any possibility at all of there having been a mistake made all those years ago, I owe it to them – and to those two boys; men, now – to provide whatever assistance I can to the police.’
Jeremy sighed. He knew there was no point in arguing with Felicity once she’d made her mind up, especially if she had summoned duty in support of her position. All he could do was make sure she was as well rested as possible ahead of the encounter. ‘If you say so, darling. Why don’t you ask her to come over around ten? That gives you time to have a bath and some tea before she gets here.’
‘I’ll do that very thing,’ Felicity said, continuing to compose her message. ‘An inspector calls. What terrible secrets will come to light, I wonder? Be a dear, would you, and take this horrible concoction away and bring me a coffee?’
Jeremy did as he was asked, as he had been doing for the previous thirty-five years of marriage. As he left the room, he heard his wife say softly, ‘I always knew the day would come when I’d have to tell the truth about those two.’
28
Karen stretched out on the bed and flicked through the channels on her laptop. BBC Alba was showing a Raith Rovers game with commentary in Gaelic, a language no one in the club’s home town had ever spoken. She’d had to endure the experience more than once when Phil had still been alive and he hadn’t been able to get to the game. She’d learned that sgiobair sounded very like ‘skipper’ and meant captain. She shuddered and kept going, finally settling for a black-and-white Ealing comedy she’d seen half a dozen times before. She could afford to relax a little. She had a meeting set up for the morning with Felicity Frye, she had a decent room in a small hotel round the corner from Euston, and she had stuffed the tiny fridge with the best that the station’s M&S food hall could provide.
The familiar classic lulled her to sleep and she was happily dozing, a line of drool heading for the pillow, when her phone buzzed her awake. ‘Ungh,’ she grunted, pushing herself upright and reaching for it. The screen said, ‘Jason’ and she groaned. ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s Saturday night,’ under her breath. She swiped the screen and said, ‘What’s the problem, Jason?’ Because there had to be one.
‘Hi, boss, Can I come round and see you?’
Karen was taken aback. They never socialised other than the occasional drink after work. She didn’t think Jason had even been inside her flat before. When he’d picked her up on the way to jobs, she’d always run downstairs to where he was waiting in the car. ‘There’s a slight problem with that, Jason,’ she said. ‘I’m in London.’
‘What? You having a weekend away? You never said.’
‘What are you? My mother?’ Karen knew as she spoke that she was being ridiculously grumpy, but she’d just been woken up.
‘Sorry, boss.’
He sounded on the verge of tears and she softened. ‘It was a last-minute thing.’ Karen crossed to the fridge and took out the bottle of Pinot Grigio she’d treated herself to. She unscrewed the cap and poured out a glass, waiting for Jason to continue. But he didn’t. ‘So what did you want to see me about?’
He cleared his throat. ‘See, it’s like this, boss. You know you set me on tracking down where the leak came from?’
‘Aye. Have you had any luck?’
‘Not really luck, as such. But I think I know where it came from.’
‘Good work. So who’s the guilty party?’
‘Eh . . . ’ A long silence. ‘I think it might be me.’
Now it was Karen’s turn to be stuck for words. She could hear his breath in her ear, heavy and ragged. ‘What do you mean, Jason? It might be you?’ She kept her voice gentle, the way she would if she was trying to coax a stray dog within reach. ‘Surely you must know whether you spoke to the media or not?’
‘It’s not that simple.’
That was a pity. Simple was within his range. ‘How not?’
‘I never spoke to a reporter. But, see, Monday nights we get pizza and have a few beers in the house, me and the guys I share with.’
‘The students?’
‘Right. And they like to hear about what I’m doing at my work. They think it’s cool, like.’
Oh, dear Christ, she could see where this was going. ‘And you told them about Ross Garvie?’
‘I never said his name,’ Jason said desperately. ‘I just told them about the familial DNA and the adoption, because it was interesting and out of the usual run of things. They’re all smart and full of stuff I don’t know anything about, I suppose I was showing off a bit.’ His voice died away. She could feel the shame from the other end of the country.
‘And you think one of them sold the story to a journalist?’
‘I don’t think. I know. We went down the pub today at lunchtime and Liam was buying drinks. Usually, we don’t buy rounds because they’re all skint all the time and it’s easier that way. So I was, like, “Liam, did you win the lottery?” And he’s, like, “Thanks to you, Jason, my man.” I didn’t get it. But Matt, he said, “Put him out of his misery,” and Liam told me he sold the story to a reporter that he knows.’
Karen let the silence hang while she thought of something to say th
at wasn’t a scream of, ‘You naïve fuckwit!’ Eventually she said, ‘Well, Jason, it is what it is. I’m going to have to think about this, see how we get you the fuck out of hot water. But here’s what I think you need to do in the meantime. You need to pack up your stuff and load it into the car and move back to your mum’s house in Kirkcaldy right now. Tonight. And you don’t go back. And you don’t pay a penny more rent.’
‘But I can’t leave them in the lurch. They’ll never get another tenant this time of year. I can’t do that. They’re my mates.’
‘No, Jason. They are not your mates. You’re a polis. The only people you can trust are other cops and sometimes your family. These toerags are not your mates. They abused your trust. They took the piss. They are not your friends. Pack up and leave.’
His voice quivered with tears she hoped were unshed. ‘What am I going to say to my mum?’
‘Tell her you miss her cooking. Tell her you found your flatmates smoking dope and you can’t live there now. Make something up, Jason. But go home.’
‘OK, boss.’ He sounded choked now.
‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose.
‘I’m sorry. I let you down.’
You did, Jason, you did. ‘We’ll figure something out.’ Karen took a long swallow of her wine. ‘Now away you go and pack your bags.’
‘OK. I’m sorry.’
‘And stop apologising. I know you’re sorry. Goodnight, Jason.’ She ended the call before he could abase himself further. Karen subsided on to the chair by the counter that passed for a desk. Really, it couldn’t have been worse. It explained how so many stories from her department had found their way into the press before they were ready to go public. And now Jilted John was going to be hot on the trail of, it turned out, Jason.