The Merciless Dead

by John Burke

  ‘I don’t remember telling you any such thing.’

  ‘But you did tell Mrs Ferguson. Why? In order to gain access to the premises? Because of some hostility towards Mr Ferguson which you planned to sort out?’

  The response was a faintly derisive grimace. ‘It’s Colonel Ferguson, actually.’

  ‘So you really are quite familiar with the ins and outs of this family.’

  ‘When I have a commission to fulfil, I check background facts as far as possible.’

  ‘But you didn’t have any commission in this case.’

  Randal Grant sprawled back on his couch. Rutherford would have preferred to have him sitting upright in one of the calculatedly uncomfortable chairs in an interview room. Maybe that would be the next step. ‘All right, I was being a bit devious.’ Grant seemed to be airily addressing the ceiling rather than the detective. ‘I was angling for a contract with the Rosses. I wanted to have something to show them — a whole shoot that would convince them I was the one to handle things at their Achnachrain project.’

  ‘A bit complicated, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. I was pretty sure I could sell the Lockhart House feature to one of the glossies anyway.’

  ‘Except that Mr — ah, Colonel — Ferguson was opposed to any such idea. Very much so, according to Mrs Ferguson.’ Rutherford was determined to disturb the young slouch enough to bring him sitting up straight. ‘You must have run into him in a pretty foul mood when you got there.’

  Grant did sit up; and his flippancy was dropped. ‘I’ve told you. I found him dead.’

  ‘You’ve told some porkies about being commissioned to go to Lockhart House that first time. We have to be sure you’re not still telling them.’ He timed his pause the way he had practised it many times, calculated to plant unease in the mind of the interviewee, then added: ‘You won’t object to coming to the station so that we can take fingerprints and do a DNA test? Doesn’t take long.’

  He had half expected a flurry of indignation and self-justification. But Randal Grant said calmly: ‘If that will clear things up, of course I don’t object. Eliminate me, and get on doing the job properly. I’ll be very surprised if you find anything that connects me with that mess out there.’

  ‘Oh, and one more point. Who was the young woman with you?’

  He was glad to see that this had rattled the young man. ‘There was no young lady with me today.’

  ‘No. But on your earlier visit —’

  ‘On my earlier visit I had a part-time assistant. She wasn’t with me today when I discovered the corpse, and I wouldn’t want her upset by something that in no way concerns her.’

  ‘Some sensitive matter?’

  ‘She wasn’t there the day Ferguson got killed. And that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? No need to clutter it with irrelevant details.’

  That remained to be seen, thought Rutherford.

  On his way down the stairs, he remembered where he had seen that girl before — full length, smartly dressed, in the company of people he had recently had dealings with.

  12

  Beth hoped, as she came into the office and exchanged the usual good-mornings and platitudes about the weather, that everyone was too busy to detect any apprehensiveness in her manner. The inquiries into Sholto Ferguson’s death had so far passed her by, but the fact that she had been on the premises earlier with Randal Grant, who had discovered the body, must surely bring them round to her sooner or later. She had nothing to feel guilty about — not really, had she? But a dozen fidgety thoughts had plagued her during the night, and she had wondered whether to ring Randal, and longed to be near him, in his arms again — and then wondered whether to stay well away from him until things were clearer or, maybe preferably, not too clear.

  Right now she wanted to avoid meeting Luke’s gaze too directly. He knew her too well; could sense things that others would miss. Already she had caught a look in his eye, a few snide notes in his voice: he knew that she and Randal were lovers. Unlikely that he would ever come straight out with it, but it was there. Along with all her other waking worries during the night had been the nagging question of how she could explain to him what made Randal so different. She wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him. But he wouldn’t have been happy, or even philosophical, about her trying to explain Randal’s warmth. Certainly none of that post-coital tristesse stuff.

  Luke would certainly not ask outright. And what the hell, she didn’t actually owe him any explanations.

  Lesley Torrance said: ‘Good morning, Beth. Miles away — dreaming up some wild new ideas for the campaign?’

  ‘Still trying to fit the present ones into some sort of shape,’ Beth improvised hurriedly.

  ‘I’ve brought a few new things in for Morwenna to see. Like to have a look while we’re waiting?’

  She led the way into the library. Having her there made it easier for Beth to smile quickly and, she hoped, normally at Luke.

  Lesley’s finds consisted of a number of pencil sketches on unevenly sized scraps of paper, followed by a few prints taken from woodblocks, all protected within six plastic display folders. To Beth’s relief, any suspicions Luke might have had about her were immediately overridden by his interest in these transparent files laid on the table before him.

  ‘Bewick,’ he said eagerly. ‘Thomas Bewick woodcuts, surely?’

  ‘And original sketches for some of them,’ said Lesley.

  ‘But these …’ He pored over the scraps of crumpled paper which someone had tried to smooth out before inserting them in their covering. ‘That one of the croft — he must have got there just after the roof timbers had been pulled down. You can see where the turfs on the roof have collapsed in on themselves. It’s so intricate. And somehow it’s more real than a photograph.’

  ‘According to my friend in Newcastle who found them in the Cherryburn archives, they’re what’s left of material Bewick collected on his tour of Scotland in the late eighteen-hundreds. His woodblock of a Cheviot ram is famous; but at the same time he was horrified by the way that creature was already taking over the Highlands. Talked about the despotism of the early Clearances. And wherever he went he made sketches on any old scraps of paper he could get his hands on, and sorted them out when he got home.’

  ‘This is a gem,’ said Luke reverently, poring over a small drawing of a woman sitting by the doorway of a croft, bent over a spinning wheel. ‘But there’s no print from a finished block to go with it?’

  ‘A lot of the sketches were never used. Put on one side and dipped into only when he needed tailpieces for chapbooks, chapter headings, handbills, that sort of thing.’

  ‘The relevant ones here could be blown up and displayed in the museum. Look at this!’ It was a tiny yet vivid study of two women leaning on either side of a drystone wall. ‘You can almost hear the gossip about their neighbours.’ He was turning them over avidly, feasting on them. Beth felt a moment of absurd fondness for him: in such matters, at least, he could never restrain his enthusiasm. ‘What’s this old woman doing?’ The spindly figure was bent over what looked like a small wooden picture frame or an embroidery stretcher. ‘Oh, and this one … it’s almost too graphic. Beautifully symbolic, but I don’t believe it could have been sketched on the spot. He’d have been chased off by the factor.’

  This larger drawing was of a man raising a whip and a woman cowering before him, incongruously framed in a garland of the foliage Bewick was so fond of.

  Lesley leaned past Luke and turned the file over. A note on the back identified it as having been done for a Newcastle newspaper which had then decided not to print it.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Luke was almost purring. ‘He was up there only in the early stages, but the exploiters were already censoring what the world outside was going to be told.’

  The phone buzzed. Luke reached for it, said ‘Yes, she is,’ and looked across at Beth with the beginnings of a malicious grin. ‘There’s a Detective Chief Inspector in reception asking for
you. Been caught shoplifting, Beth?’

  *

  The senior officer in the hall was large and imposing — not fat, but disconcertingly solid. ‘Miss Elizabeth Crichton? I’ve got the name right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. How can I help you? Something to do with parking near Drovers Court?’ There had been a few problems there because of roadworks in a side street, but she had an awful feeling that this visit had nothing to do with those incidents.

  DCI Rutherford confirmed that. ‘Not my pigeon, miss. I’m here about the Ferguson case.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know how I can help you.’ Beth was aware that Shirley in reception was making a big effort not to look inquisitive, and failing. She waved towards the small conference room on their left. ‘Shall we talk in there? I’m not sure why you’re here, but …’ She was trying not to sound breathless.

  The room had a high ceiling and high windows looking out on Queen Street, but at the moment its walls were closing in more and more oppressively.

  She pulled one of the small, comfortable chairs away from the conference table and nodded to the sergeant to find himself another. ‘Please. Not quite up to the standard of one of your interrogation rooms, I suppose, but we do like to make visitors comfortable.’ She wished she could stop blethering on.

  The sergeant remained standing, impassive, occasionally bracing his thigh against the edge of the table.

  Rutherford sat down in the chair offered, and waited until Beth was seated a few feet away from him. Then he said: ‘Miss Crichton, why did you accompany Mr Randal Grant on his first visit to Lockhart House?’

  ‘I … I don’t understand. What visit?’

  ‘The visit he made to take photographs of the Ferguson residence.’

  Absurdly Beth wanted to giggle at the word ‘residence’: it was something out of the dialogue in a bad play. Butlers answering telephones uttered it solemnly. ‘Mrs Ponsonby’s residence.’ Surely nobody used it seriously nowadays?

  Rutherford looked very patient and in no mood to be amused. He sat waiting.

  She fumbled: ‘Who told you … I mean, did Mr Grant say something … or you mistook something …’

  ‘Miss Crichton, were you or were you not in Mr Grant’s company when he made what I believe is called a shoot of those premises?’

  ‘I … oh, dear, I don’t know why my name’s been dragged into it. But all right, yes, I was there. Just that once.’

  ‘Can you tell me why? In a private capacity, or a business one?’

  ‘Mr Grant has been keen on us engaging him as photographer to the Ross Foundation’s restoration work at Achnachrain. If he’s told you I was with him, he must have told you why he invited me along. He wanted to impress me with the way he worked, and the results he could get.’

  ‘Actually, Mr Grant didn’t tell me he’d invited you along.’

  ‘Then who … I mean, where did you get this from?’

  ‘We try to keep our sources confidential, miss. Just as this discussion today will be kept confidential. Unless circumstances eventually dictate otherwise.’

  There was a faint squeak, almost like the sound of a quickly repressed snigger, as the sergeant’s shoes scuffed the floor while he transferred his weight from one leg to the other.

  Beth had a momentary stab of fear. Was that lovemaking of Randal’s a direct consequence of his killing Ferguson — like a wartime victory running on into physical exaltation, the exuberant sexual aftermath of a killing? But no, that was all out of order. That first visit of theirs had been well before Ferguson’s death, and his second one, when he found Ferguson …

  But had the time of death been established?

  She wasn’t going to let herself dwell on crazy speculations. Leave that to the police.

  Rutherford was saying: ‘That was a purely professional matter, then? You haven’t seen Mr Grant since?’

  ‘I … er … well, I’ve seen him to go through the pictures he took. And sent copies to head office in Toronto so they could assess his work.’

  ‘You seem to be doing quite a lot on his behalf.’

  ‘I think his work is first-rate.’

  Rutherford smirked. ‘Yes, he’s pretty good at portraits too, isn’t he? I was very impressed.’

  He’d have been even more impressed, thought Beth dizzily, if Randal had actually got round to taking one of those nude studies he had joked about.

  ‘But,’ Rutherford persisted, ‘you didn’t accompany Mr Grant to Lockhart House on that later visit — the one he claims he made in order to show Mrs Ferguson those prints?’

  ‘No. That was of no further concern to us.’

  ‘‘Us’?’

  ‘The Ross Foundation. Where I work,’ said Beth with exaggerated emphasis. ‘Right here in this very building.’

  There was a rap on the door, and Lesley Torrance came in.

  ‘Finished the third degree?’

  Beth half expected Rutherford to protest at the interruption and insist on continuing with his inquisition. But there was an odd rapport between these two, and with a dour grin he said: ‘I don’t think I need detain Miss Crichton any longer.’

  ‘Just as well. She’s needed in the library. Beth, Morwenna wants us to go through that Bewick material in detail. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  *

  Lesley perched herself on the corner of the table and confronted Rutherford.

  ‘You can’t seriously think that girl’s involved in any way in your latest murder scene?’

  ‘No, I don’t think she is. But her and that Randal Grant character — don’t tell me there isn’t something going on between them.’

  ‘There may well be. But she’s not an accomplice to murder. She really is devoted to this firm and the work she does.’

  ‘You, too? I mean, how the hell did you come to get involved with these weirdos?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself every now and then,’ Lesley confessed.

  ‘All those museums, and awards, and endowments and whatnot. I can imagine you being interested in the arty side, but when it comes to all this stuff in the papers, and that weird woman on the telly raking up the past … I mean, isn’t it about time all that was forgotten, all the old feuds and whatever?’

  ‘Shame on you, Chief Inspector. None of your unfinished business is ever written off, is it? No inquiry is ever closed until the problem’s solved. At least, it wasn’t in my day.’

  Rutherford made a face at her. ‘All right, all right. But I still don’t see what hope you’ve got of any way of wrapping up all those old loose ends so everybody’s happy.’

  ‘Oh, there won’t be anything tidy, no. No single clear-cut verdict, neatly rounded off with a judicial sentence, and forget it. Old vendettas never die. Remember the old cattle wars in the Wild West, and families hating one another for generation after generation? Or our own Border reivers — the Armstrongs and Eliots forever at one another’s throats, so that even now they never have their reunions in Liddesdale in the same year. Clan wars … and still they’re at it. Blustering braggarts like that Ferguson creature.’

  ‘Speaking ill of the dead, are we? Against proper procedure, Detective Inspector Gunn.’

  ‘If you’d been there at Achnachrain. Listening to that lout sneering at my husband.’

  ‘Ah! So you’re one who hates his guts.’

  ‘I don’t care for pretentious loudmouths denigrating people finer than themselves.’

  ‘Least of all your husband.’

  ‘All right, yes.’

  ‘Must add you to our list of suspects. Motive, yes. Opportunity?’

  ‘Oh, come on, you can’t seriously believe —’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. A pity. Such a neat tie-in.’ Rutherford sighed. ‘But it’s not you, is it?’

  ‘You know damn well it’s not.’ Lesley thought for a moment, then asked: ‘How did you get on with that odd business down in Leith?’

  ‘Oh, what we expected. Coroner’s verdict,
death by misadventure. What else could it have been?’

  ‘And Morwenna Ross is off your list of suspects? Theories of lethal hypnosis abandoned?’

  Rutherford sighed. ‘If looks could kill, we’d have our hands full in every Grassmarket pub every Friday and Saturday night.’

  As the two of them walked to the front door, with the sergeant plodding behind like an obedient sheepdog waiting for the next command, Jacques Hunter strode across the foyer, staring straight ahead as if to confront some troublesome situation.

  ‘And who might that have been?’ asked Rutherford.

  ‘Name of Hunter. Jacques Hunter. Big shot from Toronto. Second in command to old Jamie himself.’

  ‘Seems to fancy himself, the way he strides out. Like he owns the whole joint.’

  ‘I fancy there’s a clash of personality here, somehow. Morwenna Ross has an executive position because of family. Our Mr Hunter’s got there by sheer force of personality. Or because of old man Jamie’s sentimental feelings towards the original Canadian natives.’

  ‘Certainly looks like a Red Indian on the warpath.’

  ‘Actually, I understand he’s the descendant of a Scottish settler and an Indian woman. Quite common. And the Rosses were well into it. One of them became a fully accepted chief of the Cherokee.’

  ‘Another oddball. That woman, and now this one.’ He sighed again. ‘But no reason to be killers, would you say?’

  ‘Not unless there was something getting in the way of their ambitions,’ said Lesley, mock earnest. ‘Promotion, or whatever. It’s only fanaticism of one kind or another that gets people into top jobs. And then they’re susceptible to every wind that blows, hot or cold.’

  ‘And you weren’t fanatical enough to go for promotion to DCI?’

  ‘I got distracted, remember?’

  ‘Yes. Bloody waste.’

  ‘Now you’re the one getting disrespectful towards my husband.’