Lying Dead

by Aline Templeton

  Of course she wasn’t. Taken up with her worries about Tam and the hunt for his attacker, personal commitments had gone out of her mind. ‘Oh Bill, I don’t see how I can,’ she said, not allowing herself to consider that the machine could grind on without her to turn the handle, since she was unable to bear the notion of not being on hand for any new development.

  His immediate understanding shamed her. ‘Of course you can’t. I’ll take her – Janet won’t mind.’

  She would, of course, but only a little. Marjory accepted the offer with gratitude and guilt, then added, ‘Why don’t you phone Laura, see if she’d be able to go with you? That would help.’

  Bill’s voice warmed. ‘Of course it would. Actually, she’d probably be much more use than either of us in supporting Janet.’

  ‘Of course she would,’ Fleming agreed heartily. Her emotions, as she put down the phone, were so confused that she was glad when Allan’s knock on the door prevented her from having to examine them.

  ‘Greg, come in. I just wanted to ask you about Tam, yesterday afternoon,’ she greeted him. ‘Tansy said you were in the CID room when he came back from Glasgow.’

  ‘I told her.’ Allan looked positively resentful at having been summoned. She really was going to have to do something about the man, once the immediate crisis was over. ‘He said hello and that was it. Then later he left without saying anything, except to tell Tansy where he was going. Just about knocked her over in his hurry. He’d knocked over his chair already.’

  ‘Really? What was that about?’

  ‘No idea.’

  His bored tone annoyed her. ‘Allan, I shouldn’t have to ask you for maximum co-operation. I don’t feel you’re trying. What was he doing that might have prompted him to leave so hurriedly?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  This wasn’t merely verging on insolence. She got to her feet. ‘Stand up, sergeant. Stand to attention.’

  Startled, he did as he was told.

  It was a technique she had used before, though never on him. She had the height advantage; she moved round the desk to stand in uncomfortably close proximity. He shifted uneasily.

  ‘I said, attention!’

  His hands stiffened by his side. He wasn’t a brave man; she had scared him.

  ‘Let’s start again. You’re going to tell me every tiny detail you can remember of what happened after MacNee came in.’

  Allan licked his lips. ‘He came in, sat down – no, took his coat off and put it on the back of his chair. Then sat down. Looked at some papers. I was working too, of course,’ there was a whine in his voice, ‘so I wasn’t watching him, particularly. But then I saw him looking at that cutting with Ingles’s release in it. It was after that he went out.’

  She remembered the cutting. Was this the key they had been looking for? ‘Where is it?’

  ‘On one of the tables. I took it out to have a look at it but it didn’t mean anything to me. I just left it there.’

  ‘Go down and get it. At the double.’

  He needed no second invitation to leave, but before he reached the door, she added, ‘And sergeant, behave like that again and you’re on a charge for insubordination.’

  The news from the hospital was good, as far as it went. Tam was out of theatre, in the recovery room, and the policeman on guard duty had been told to expect him to return to a private room, rather than to intensive care. The trouble was, it wouldn’t be for some time that they would know whether or not there was brain damage, or even whether he would escape the danger of infection, ever-present in hospitals today and to which he would, as Bunty told Marjory in an emotional phone call, be particularly vulnerable.

  The news about the cutting Tam had been reading was not, however, good. Allan, looking frightened, had come back to report that he couldn’t find it, though the evidence bag was still there. Another, more exhaustive search failed to find it either. Allan confessed that he had left it lying on the desk; if it had found its way to the floor, a cleaner might easily have thrown it away.

  There was no note of the date. Fleming had questioned Allan, now all eagerness to oblige, about the other contents, but all he could remember was that it had something about the loss of the Knockhaven lifeboat, which didn’t narrow it down much: its shocking, deliberate wrecking and what followed had dominated the local Press for weeks on end.

  Fleming sent him to find out the precise date of Ingles’s release from prison, and the Galloway Globe had been alerted to look out back copies for the month of October.

  They would track it down before long, but what haunted her was the thought that she, like Allan, might look at it and find, like him, that it meant nothing to her.

  The afternoon briefing was, indeed, brief. Fleming talked up the news about Tam and the gloom lifted a little. There was also another encouraging development: officers searching the grounds of the empty house had found clear footprints in the damp soil of a flower-bed, behind a bush where anyone standing would be out of sight but still could keep an eye on the road outside.

  But there was little more that could be done that day and some of the off-duty officers had already drifted away. Kerr, too, was missing, but Kingsley had collected a gratifying amount; he was planning to drive with the gifts to Dumfries, and promised to pump the nurses for any further information.

  Allan had produced the date of Ingles’s release and, waiting impatiently for the fax from the Galloway Globe, Fleming had listened patiently to Bailey rehearsing his statement for TV. It was a comprehensive list of the usual clichés – ‘despicable attack’, ‘several promising lines of inquiry’, ‘wonderful public support’ – while saying absolutely nothing. ‘Perfect,’ she told him, and he went away happy.

  At last the fax was brought to her office. Fleming seized it and ran her eyes first over the second page with the outlined article, then turned it over.

  Chapter 26

  Jon Kingsley’s hands were shaking as he got into his car, which disturbed him. He made a fetish of total self-control and his talent for thinking on his feet amounted to genius, but this had been – challenging.

  Just one more big problem – the biggest, perhaps. But hey! Four times already it had looked like certain disaster. He’d faced it down. He’d come through. He was cool with this, of course he was. And his hands weren’t shaking, not when he gripped the wheel.

  Yet these last nightmare weeks! Like battling the mythical hydra – cut off one head, two grew in its place. The flashbacks too: mockery in Davina’s face as she turned to him in the parked car, then horror as his eyes flared and he lashed out at the little bitch; her helpless screams as he punished her. Then silence, until the thud of the stone on her head. Well, blackmail, for God’s sake, when she’d handed Jon the safe keys and planted the cheques in Ingles’s house herself to frame the man! But he’d no leverage; she’d another life, could vanish into it, he couldn’t. It had felt good, afterwards, and it had felt good again to line up Keith Ingles as fall guy, one more time.

  So near, so near! Calculating bastard! A normal man, finding the woman he loved dead – he’d have touched her, wept, held her close, called the police. It would all have worked. His hands curled tight round the steering wheel in remembered frustration. Oh yes, he’d screwed up there; Ingles was an ex-con now, not a respectable lawyer. And even the clincher, her handbag to be ‘discovered’ under a floorboard on a later visit – that had been thwarted by Fleming banning him and Greg Allan from the site.

  Don’t think about what hadn’t worked. Needed his mind clear and calm. Needed to think how brilliant he’d been. But somehow, it all kept playing in his mind like a disjointed film.

  Murdoch’s call coming in, right there in the police station, telling him he hadn’t finished. The man standing there on the pontoon, out of sight of the rest of the marina, not a boat in view, bending to check the holdall for the cash. Then his arms going up in shock, as the blow from the weighted sock – so simple, so clever! – caught him. The muffled s
plash as he went into the water; a tinier splash as the weight sank. And Jon’s own jaunty walk back – who would remember just another yachtie in a navy hooded sweatshirt, strolling past?

  Then the alibi, his masterstroke – that had worked. Oh yes! That was serious class!

  And Laura, lovely Laura – how useful she’d been! Gullible, of course. He’d basked in her sympathy for the pressure he’d to take from his father. That was the father who’d abandoned the family when Jon was three. Perhaps, when he’d finished this off, he could take her more seriously. She was attractive, clever, had money; what more could he want? Only that she could get him ahead in the job – the job he loved, with the power it put into his hands – and she could do that too.

  That was something he could think about, to take his mind off what lay ahead. Another meal at the Vine Leaf, perhaps – the food had been better than he expected. And she’d get used to sailing, get her sea legs in time . . .

  Fleming saw what Tam had seen; of course she did. The photograph on the front page, of Kingsley and Kerr leaving the Knockhaven town hall after the funeral tea, captioned ‘Detectives pay their respects to lifeboat victims’. DC Jonathan Kingsley was quoted in the article too, making some anodyne comment about the tragedy.

  So Davina had known that her old acquaintance, Jonathan, was back in the area, in the police force. So? Blackmail? But they’d established that Ingles had definitely done the robbery – was there some scandal in Kingsley’s past that might cause trouble for him now he was a policeman? It was hard to imagine what it could be, these days, when nothing in the sexual line was taboo and the police force was positively going out of its way to recruit gays and transsexuals.

  They’d need to question Jon about this, but she had a growing fear that it was another red herring. After all, now she thought about it, on the night Murdoch was killed, Laura had mentioned him being there having a drink, and she knew that he and Allan had worked till late, getting the reports and the admin on Ingles finished.

  So what was it that Tam knew and she didn’t, which had sent him off hotfoot to talk to the Aitchesons for hours?

  The hour of maximum danger lay ahead. Kingsley shuddered – but he mustn’t shudder. He must remain ice-cool, as he always did. He needed luck, but Lady Luck was his best girl at the moment. Planting the handbag in the cottage at the Flemings’ farm would have been seriously risky, but there he was, refused permission to question Susie, and hey, look – it’s the boot of her car, standing open! And then Macdonald this morning, with his suggestion of Findlay as the attacker – how lucky was that?

  And the luck of finding the cutting, too, lying in full view on MacNee’s desk. He’d known at once MacNee was on to him, and knew, too, why he’d gone to the Aitchesons’.

  Jon had to be unsuspected. Somewhere he’d have made the contact that left a trace, and if the trace was there, forensic tests would find it. If only that interfering fool hadn’t appeared before he could finish off the little sod!

  He would, though, given luck, and after that, he’d be safe. Luck, be a lady! Who would remark on the pinprick of a syringe on someone who had probably had a dozen injections? And who would be surprised at cardiac arrest, in the circumstances?

  And if MacNee got AIDS from the needle, it would hardly matter, would it? The sick joke pleased him; he started to laugh, then scared himself by finding it hard to stop.

  She’d checked. Kingsley and Allan hadn’t left till just after midnight on that Wednesday night. Fleming was still puzzling when her desk phone rang. ‘It’s DC Kerr. I have Mr Aitcheson here with me, ma’am. Is it all right if I bring him up?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She put down the phone, frowning. Kerr had been unhappy this morning about what the Aitchesons had said about Tam’s long visit, but it was perfectly possible he’d gone to check something first. And Kerr’s judgement could well be skewed, given how upset she was about Tam.

  When Kerr came in behind Brian Aitcheson, there were spots of high colour in her cheeks and her eyes were very bright. She began without formality. ‘This is something you have to hear urgently. Tell her, Mr Aitcheson.’

  The big man looked hangdog. ‘Tam came yesterday to persuade Mrs A to agree that she’d maybe kind of, well, exaggerated her evidence to the court. She didn’t want to admit it and I got sort of mad with him myself, for he just sat there and argued, or just sat there, really. She gave in, in the end.’

  Fleming was mystified. ‘But why should she – er, exaggerate? What do you mean?’

  ‘She was feart that swine Ingles would get off. He’d made her life hell, with his lies and insinuations about her, and she knew it was him, she’d heard his voice! So why shouldn’t she say she saw him, just to make sure no clever-clever lawyer could make something of it?’

  ‘So she just heard him, she didn’t see him. Why did Tam think that was so important?’

  Aitcheson shook his head. ‘Sorry. No idea.’

  ‘And did you tell DC Kingsley this, when he spoke to you this morning?’

  Kerr could bear it no longer. ‘He never went there at all. He lied to us. You see, if Mrs Aitcheson just heard a voice—’

  ‘What?’ Fleming heard what she was saying but it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible – Kingsley? Her eyes fell to the photograph in front of her, to the bright-faced young man, and suddenly she saw it all, with deadly clarity. Keith Ingles’s voice, Niall Murdoch’s phone call . . . ‘Oh God! He’s a brilliant mimic, isn’t he? I haven’t heard him, but rumour has it that he does a brilliant Big Marge.’

  It was all there. What was hard to accept was that throughout, as he tried to manoeuvre one suspect after another into the position where the police believed that they had found their murderer even if proof was lacking, she had considered him guilty only of overweening ambition.

  ‘So the night Murdoch was killed, when he had a complete alibi from the time of Murdoch’s phone call home—’

  She stopped. ‘Oh God! He’s on his way to the hospital in Dumfries right now, taking the present to Tam.’ Seeing Kerr’s face, she added, ‘Don’t worry, Tansy – there’s someone on duty, and anyway, Kingsley wouldn’t be dumb enough to try anything on, but I’d better alert them, even so.’ She was dialling as she spoke, and broke off to say, ‘Get me the number of the officer guarding Tam MacNee. Urgently.’

  ‘Och, he’ll be fine if you ask me,’ said the cheerful constable outside MacNee’s private room. ‘Tam’s a hard nut to crack, and like they say, it’s only his head.’

  Kingsley didn’t know him, but marked him down immediately as a bit of a clown, and his confidence grew. ‘You’re not wrong there, mate!’ he said chattily, setting down a pink azalea, which was in a fancy wrapper, and a large bottle of Scotch, which wasn’t, on the table beside the constable’s chair.

  ‘What state’s he in at the moment?’

  ‘Still unconscious. But according to one of the nurses – right wee cracker, she is – that’s maybe just still the anaesthetic. He came through it fine, according to her.’

  ‘That’s great news. I tell you, back in Kirkluce it’s been like working in a funeral home today, all tiptoeing around speaking in hushed voices.

  ‘OK if I go in and put these by his bedside so he can see them when he opens his eyes? We thought seeing the Scotch would give him a real incentive. I won’t disturb him.’

  ‘I doubt if you could, right now. On you go – his wife’s with him, but that’s all right.’

  Kingsley recoiled. ‘His wife?’

  ‘Oh aye, but she’s a real nice buddy. She’ll not mind. She’ll be pleased the lads think so much of him.’

  ‘Oh – oh, I couldn’t intrude. I’ll just wait for a bit, till she’s gone.’ He could feel sweat appearing on his upper lip.

  The fool was oblivious to his reluctance. ‘Och, away you go! Don’t be daft – she’ll be glad of a wee chat, just sitting there and him not able to say a word to her. And she could be here for hours yet.’

  ‘Even so,
she may want her privacy. I tell you what, I’ll go away and see if I can find a cup of coffee. Come back in a while when she’ll have gone home.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But it seems kind of daft, when he won’t know you’re there anyway. I could take it in for you later, if you want.’

  Was that a note of suspicion in the man’s voice? Desperately, Kingsley said, ‘The thing is, later he’d maybe have come round, could say a word or two so I could tell the lads. I’ll stick around for a bit anyway.’

  He suddenly became aware that the man was looking over his shoulder. ‘Well, pal, something tells me that maybe you won’t, after all.’

  Kingsley couldn’t move. He’d blotted out the voice of uncertainty that had been screaming at him in the car, and there was nothing he could do. He stood stock-still as four uniformed police officers reached his side, and one said, ‘Jonathan Kingsley, I am detaining you on suspicion of attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, but anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.

  ‘And take off your shoes. We’ll be needing them, and all the others you’ve got at home, for comparison.’

  She had never seen anything like the Press onslaught. Fleming collapsed behind her desk, feeling battered after running the gauntlet at the entrance to the Kirkluce HQ; the thumping on the roof and windows of the car, the machine-gun rattle of the cameras and the blinding flashlights as they were held against the windscreen. And it wasn’t just her car, it was everyone’s, from the Super down. They felt in a state of siege and intimidated women officers were arriving in tears after being mobbed and shouted at.

  ‘Can’t you do something?’ she had demanded of the Press Officer, a professionally calm and charming woman.

  ‘You bloody do something!’ she snarled. ‘Arrest the whole damn lot of them – I don’t care! I’ve bent over backwards to be helpful till I feel like a sock that’s been turned inside out, but it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference. I’d say they were reptiles if I weren’t afraid of being sued for defamation by pit vipers.’