The Second Strain

by John Burke

  Lesley said: ‘Mr Lowther, there are three of us. Even if you try letting that gas off, three of us will still be able to cope with you. And I don’t think you really want to set it off anyway. You’ve done enough damage already.’

  Adam stared at the canister as if it was the first time he had noticed it. With a sigh he put it on the coffee table, close to the coal shovel with which he must have knocked the police constable out.

  Lesley was implacable. ‘If Mairi McLeod wasn’t killed by your wife in a fit of jealousy, who else would want to kill her?’

  ‘All right. I killed her.’

  ‘You understand what you’re saying, Mr Lowther?’

  ‘Yes. I killed her. Isn’t that what you want?’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘Because she killed my father.’

  ‘Your father died years ago, Adam,’ said Nick, bewildered. ‘In Leeds.’

  ‘I’m talking about my real father.’

  ‘He means Daniel Erskine,’ said Lesley quietly.

  Nick stared at her. ‘There’s something you haven’t told me?’

  ‘Oh, why did he have to come back?’ Adam was close to tears. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve wondered that,’ said Lesley. ‘Why did he?’

  ‘She told me she thought that . . . oh, that he thought that the corpse — in the Academy — might have been . . . my mother. Only somehow when he got here and met me, and asked about my mother, he knew it couldn’t have been because we’d gone away and . . . oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ll never be able to ask him now. I think,’ said Lesley, ‘that you’d better tell us all the rest. About Mairi McLeod.’

  ‘I’ve told you. She killed my father. Killed him as far as I was concerned. And laughed at me. She laughed at me.’ He slumped down into one of the sagging leather armchairs, again staring at something or somebody not in this room. ‘She thought it was funny.’

  *

  She had laughed. At first with lust as she let him strip her clothes from her and toss them aside. And then with satisfaction as his weight thrust her naked body down in the darkness on the damp grass. And then she was laughing when she said she was getting cold, and it was his turn to get a dose of the night ague in his backside while she clambered on top of him.

  ‘This is how I usually had to do it for your father. Made it much easier for him.’

  He revelled in the rhythm of her dancing on him, but still he could gasp out: ‘What d’you mean, my father?’

  ‘Oh, hadn’t you realized by now? Why do you think Daniel was so prickly about everybody else but got so mellow towards you? He recognized you right away. Maybe you’ve got your mother’s eyes.’ She stopped, poised on her knees for a shuddering moment, then descended on him again. ‘Not that I can see your eyes right now.’

  When she had finished and rolled off him, dragging his arm around her damp shoulders, he said: ‘You can’t mean Daniel Erskine . . .?’

  ‘Of course. Quite the local stud, from all we’ve heard, right?’ And then she told him why Erskine had changed his mind, and come back to Kilstane thinking of that woman, and then found Adam’s mother had gone away with her husband and died a natural death. ‘I think he felt quite sentimental about that one. Your mother. Relieved everything had been . . . well, normal.’

  Adam thought of Jamie Lowther, the man he had thought of as his father, and remembered Jamie’s hatred of music. How he had tried to drag Adam away from anything connected with music, and snarled at all the things he most liked listening to. Barging into the room when he was listening to an Erskine Nocturne and switching the radio off. ‘Showing off.’ Sitting in a room alone, listening, to whom was he supposed to be showing off?

  ‘Is that why . . .’ In the dank darkness, close to her body yet feeling that she wasn’t in the same, ordinary world, he was at a loss. But he had to be sure of one thing: when all this was sorted out, and they were together somewhere, together permanently . . .

  ‘When we’ve gone through Erskine’s manuscripts — my father’s manuscripts,’ he said, letting his right hand stray on to her chill breast, ‘we’ll have to decide how I wrap things up with Nora.’

  ‘Wrap what things up?’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to get a divorce, and make reasonable arrangements for Nora. And then decide where we’re going to live. Maybe look for concert engagements together.’

  Then came the worst laughter.

  Her face was only a vague mask in the faintest of lights seeping in below the ends of the stage. But her teeth were startlingly white as she smiled and began a gurgling hiccup of a laugh.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Adam.’

  ‘What d’you mean, ridiculous?’

  ‘Once we’ve sorted out the manuscripts, I’m going to try my hand in Moravia. Take the music back where a lot of it belongs. You don’t think I’d want to be hanging around here, do you?’

  Her hand wandered idly over his body, more in consolation than in returning desire.

  ‘Moravia?’ he echoed, baffled.

  ‘You’ve heard of your father’s old buddy, Jan Strepka? Or Ian McCabe, as he was in his incarnation here.’

  ‘Oh, when I was a kid, there was some talk of the McCabes . . . but I don’t see . . .’

  ‘I’ve pleasured both fathers. And managed it with one son, agreed? May as well keep up the tradition.’

  ‘But I thought the family went back long before you —’

  ‘I met him in Hodonin when it was still behind the Iron Curtain.’ She snuggled closer, as if expecting him to be happy sharing her nostalgia. ‘He was my real love. They were great mates, Jan and your father. Rivals for the fun of it. Fighting over their women, and getting a hell of a kick out of it.’ She licked his shoulder, but it was not Adam she was really tasting. ‘And giving their women a hell of a kick, too. But I learned long ago that Daniel wasn’t going to let his old pal stand in his way. Your father never let anyone stand in the way of his career. Or his appetite.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What are you on about?’

  ‘Oh, I wormed it out of Daniel long ago. He was rather proud of it, vicious bastard that he was.’ She said it quite affectionately. ‘He more or less confessed that he’d leaked a few facts to the STB about Jan’s likely defection from Czechoslovakia. Jan was going to get out and claim his music for his own — and claim me as well.’

  ‘His music?’

  ‘Who do you think wrote the really great stuff attributed to poor Daniel? In the end I had to make do with Daniel. Though they did have a few shared talents.’ She was gnawing at his shoulder — or a remembered shoulder. ‘Interesting variations. But Jan’s music was the real thing.’

  ‘Until he died?’ Adam fought for a glimmer of understanding. ‘And then Erskine . . . my father . . . came into his own.’

  Her laugh was growing crueller.

  ‘You don’t really think Daniel was up to that? He’d covered for Jan all this time. Then disposed of him. But there wasn’t any more music coming out. You don’t think he was capable of following Strepka’s genius, do you?’

  ‘Then what —’

  ‘Who do you think went on composing in his name? He became the recluse, the great man shut away from the world with his amanuensis transcribing masterpieces. Not coming out too often in case he was rumbled.’ She pushed herself up on one elbow. ‘I wrote all that music. Every note of it. Nobody would have been interested in it under my own name. So I fed his vanity. And he . . . well, he fed me in other ways. He wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. Like you, Adam — not the greatest, but not at all bad.’

  ‘You killed him,’ he marvelled. ‘You were the one who killed my father.’

  ‘Rubbish. He was too useful to me.’

  ‘Like this . . . this Strepka . . . the time had come when you wanted the truth to come out. But he wasn’t going to wear it. So you killed him.’

  ‘Adam, don’t be ridiculous.’ He was tired of being called ridiculous, and he was heaving himself up and turni
ng so that his hands were on her neck, but she went on. ‘I don’t know who killed your father, but it wasn’t me.’

  But of course it had been Mairi. She had killed his father — killed the adoration Adam had felt, killed his love of music that had all been a fraud, nothing to do with the Daniel Erskine whose name and work had meant everything to him even before he realized that the man was his father.

  Killed him in every way.

  Killed the music and all it had meant. Mockingly destroyed all the foundations on which Adam Lowther had built his beliefs.

  And she was laughing again. Laughing at him, mocking him, discarding him.

  His fingers tightened around her neck. Her body began writhing, but not in the sensual delirium he had loved and now wanted only to destroy. She was trying to gasp out words that he refused to hear. His weight was on her body again, this time with the strength to bear her down and suffocate her.

  Her last strangled sobs of protest were music in his ears.

  *

  ‘I had to do it.’ He faced Nick and Lesley with his hands spread wide in apology. ‘I had to shut her up. She had destroyed everything, and I didn’t know what she was going to say next and I didn’t want to hear another word of it. Don’t you see, I had to shut her up.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lesley gently, ‘I do see.’

  Chapter Four

  There were two funerals in Kilstane in quick succession. Enoch Buchanan, remanded in custody, was offered a few hours’ liberty to attend his daughter’s funeral, accompanied by a policeman. Adam Lowther requested a similar privilege for Daniel Erskine’s cremation service, though without stating that in effect this would be the second father’s funeral he had attended. Mairi McLeod’s body was kept in the mortuary while attempts were made to trace any living relatives or anyone who would accept responsibility for her remains.

  Enoch Buchanan turned down the permission to attend his daughter’s final, hallowed burial. He would accept whatever sentence was imposed on him, and ask no favours of anyone other than the God whom he knew to be always on his side. His only message to his fellow worshippers enjoined them under no circumstances to allow their austere meeting house to be contaminated by a service implying forgiveness for such a wanton creature. He was overruled, though nobody came visiting to tell him this to his face. The presence of the laird, Sir Nicholas Torrance, was gratefully acknowledged with stiff formality by a middle-aged man with long, pale features which expressed pessimism about the human race but would never become as red and outraged as Buchanan’s.

  The service was short and bleak, in the presence of no more than a dozen men and women all dressed in musty black. As it was about to start, Nick noticed a stranger at the back, ruddy with drink and sporting a bright Donegal tweed. Towards the end, he was the only one showing any tears, wiping his eyes and murmuring something to himself which sounded like a more heartfelt prayer than the drab clichés droning across the bowed heads in front of him.

  When the sparse congregation moved out into the open air, the man strode briskly away without a word to anyone. Two women whispered together. ‘Would that not ha’ been . . . och, it was that Gaffney, was it not . . .? That Irishman who . . . only old Enoch would never have believed his daughter would . . .’ A hiss of agreement: ‘Och, aye, I did hear that was the way of it. He’d rather blame a man o’ some repute than one o’ his ain labourers.’

  The late Daniel Erskine’s memorial service in Kilstane’s parish church of St Finian and St Andrew attracted a much more substantial gathering, the pews packed with local folk dressed in their best. No descendants of the deceased were officially present, but there could well have been a number of them, knowing or unknowing, in the congregation. One, Adam Lowther, was flanked by a uniformed constable on one side and by his wife on the other.

  Captain Scott-Fraser was wearing his kilt and sporting two unidentifiable medals on his tartan jacket. His wife was resplendent in purple and hunting green, and before the service began stood up to inspect townsfolk already there and those who were arriving in twos and threes. Nick would not have been surprised if she had placed herself at the head of the aisle and marshalled them to left and right, like a self-important usher at a wedding.

  The minister had done his homework and was determined that everyone should know it. He spoke warmly of the contribution the Erskines had made to the community, from the days when Dr Kenneth Erskine, father of the deceased, had been the much loved rector of Kilstane Academy to the times when his son had built up an international reputation as a composer of genius, sadly cut down in his prime.

  The tributes went resonantly on and on, while some of the congregation nodded gravely, others silently consulted one another with raised eyebrows, and a few leaned forward devoutly in order to disguise the fact that they were dozing off.

  Ten or fifteen years from now, thought Nick, some pedant in need of a bursary or a grant from some literary fund would concoct all kinds of interpretations of Erskine’s music, perhaps by then knowing enough to dig into the Strepka connection, or even more profitably concocting a tale of sexual obsession with his amanuenis, and maybe tales of illegitimate children all along the valley from Kilstane, aimed at a sale of serial rights to some Sunday tabloid.

  Yet, really, what had Erskine been? A shell, inhabited by other people.

  His mind and his gaze wandered. Duncan and Deirdre Maxwell were sitting together, a decorous young couple going through the correct motions at one of the events of the year most likely to be talked about long afterwards. And under the British Legion flag in the north aisle, in a dark grey two-piece which was definitely not regulation issue, Lesley Gunn sat with her head bowed, either in reverence or in contemplation of her own future.

  Coming out at last, while the organ plodded through some mournful, unrelated chords, Nick took her arm.

  ‘Making sure the final loose ends are tied up?’

  ‘I’m not on duty.’

  ‘Your day off?’

  ‘Several days off. Two weeks’ suspension pending an official investigation.’

  ‘But shouldn’t you have another feather in your cap? Or another crown on your shoulder, or something? Cornering Buchanan, and then handing over murderer number two intact. What more do they want?’

  ‘I broke official procedure. Mitigating circumstances’ — she tried a rueful laugh — ‘but my future will have to be reviewed.’

  The Scott-Frasers bore down upon them.

  ‘Well, that’s that, then, Sir Nicholas, hey? Hm?’

  ‘A sad conclusion, yes.’

  ‘Always said you should have stuck to what we real Kilstane folk know in our bones is best. Ought to have had a pipe band and a military band contest. Have to think about it seriously next time, hey?’

  Cynthia Scott-Fraser’s head was turning to watch Adam Lowther being led away towards the unmarked police car. At least, thought Nick, they had had the decency not to park a Black Maria conspicuously by the church gates. And the decency to let Nora walk beside her husband, just as she had sat beside him in the church, upright and imperturbable. Out in the daylight, she was still looking almost proud of Adam and what he had done. Maybe Adam himself was tacitly admitting that Nora had been right after all: he ought never to have come back to Kilstane. Obviously she would go on believing this but would wait loyally for him to serve his sentence, and would visit regularly, and adjust her life to the new circumstances without flinching. The unchanging rhythm of it would allow no doubts and no further questions. It would all be quite cosy. Nora Lowther was that sort of wife.

  Nick tried to catch Lesley’s arm again as she took a few steps towards Adam.

  ‘Mr Lowther. I’m . . . so sorry.’

  The police escort was taken aback. ‘Inspector Gunn, I don’t think you ought to be —’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

  Adam stopped, polite and perfectly calm. ‘It’s all right. Really it is. I’ll cope. I’ll always be able to hear music in my head.’ And before
she could risk asking any more, he said: ‘No, not Daniel Erskine. I think I’ll learn to get over that.’ As the policeman urged him towards the car, he added over his shoulder: ‘There’s always Bach.’

  Lesley looked despairingly up into Nick’s face. ‘I feel so awful. So bloody lousy. The way I led him into confessing, the way . . . oh, the way everything had to be done. I hate the whole thing. Myself included.’

  *

  Rutherford said: ‘I’m tempted to put in an unfavourable report on you.’

  ‘Why haven’t you done that already, if that’s what they’re asking?’

  He had come out of Superintendent Maitland’s office and joined Lesley on the uncomfortable bench in the corridor. Like being back at school, she thought, waiting to be summoned into the headmistress’s study for some misdemeanour that would be blown up out of all proportion.

  ‘Nobody’s leaned on me or anything like that,’ said Rutherford. ‘It’s my own idea. To make sure you get it right this time. For your own good.’

  ‘My own good? So that I’ll be more respectful, and stop doing things off my own bat, and stick to doing everything according to the book, and count myself lucky I’m not back in uniform?’

  ‘No such thing, Les. I let you down once before. Persuaded you to stay on when you ought to have got out. I want you to make the right decision this time.’

  ‘Is it going to be left to me?’

  ‘I think so. But get it right this time.’

  The door opened. The superintendent’s secretary smiled frostily. ‘Inspector Gunn, Mr Maitland will see you now.’

  Rutherford patted Lesley’s bottom gently as she went on her way into the office.

  ‘Sit down, Gunn.’ Maitland wasted no words in courtesies. ‘This won’t do. You do realize that, don’t you? It’s clear you don’t take the job seriously.’

  ‘I took it seriously enough to work with DCI Rutherford on pinning Buchanan down, and then —’

  ‘And then going off on to another force’s patch on one of your own wild goose chases, without authorization.’