by John Burke
Lesley tried dredging up from memory the first interview she had had with Greg Dacre and with his ex-wife. Had neither of them let slip any reference whatsoever to a daughter? Halfway through her apologetic summary, Rutherford exploded again.
‘Not one single bloody mention of her by her father or her mother?’
‘You said yourself, only few minutes ago, that families today —’
‘All right, inspector, don’t quote me as a defence witness. Just where is this interesting female right now? And just what might the two of them be up to? This bloody place is overrun with some very weird families. And I want two of the members right here, just as fast as we can lay hands on them. And especially I want to meet this Ishbel Dacre.’
‘We could ring her father where you sent him — at the Tam Lin.’
‘And give him warning, and the chance to do a runner, or tip her off?’ He glared at Lesley. ‘Have you shifted your things out of there yet?’
‘You haven’t given me time,’ she protested.
‘Go and get them now. And get the girl’s address. And bring Dacre back here with you.’
It was only ten minutes’ drive. There was no other traffic on the road, and no movement on the hillsides. The stillness was threatening rather than peaceful. Although there was no wind, the surface of the loch was fretted by little ripples fidgeting, flattening out, and then bunching into wavelets which rose, fell back, and then waited for another thrust of energy. The light on the white-harled wall of the inn as she approached was ominously rusty rather than golden.
The landlord greeted her with his usual brief nod and a ‘There’ll be a regular smirr brewing up out there, miss.’
‘Mr Dacre’s booked in? We did ring through, and I understand you agreed he could have my room.’
‘Aye, but he’s nae showed up yet.’
Lesley’s first thought was of Rutherford’s fury when he heard this. Not showed up yet? When it was such a short drive, and he’d been gone for quite a time. And there had been no sign of an accident on the road — the only road which came in this direction.
She collected her things and piled them in the car, then nerved herself to ring Baldonald House on her mobile. To her cowardly relief, the DCI was outside in the grounds, supervising arrival of the mobile incident room. ‘We’re all geared up to shift everything out there,’ said the WPC resignedly.
It was only postponing the evil moment, but Lesley hurried to say: ‘I won’t disturb him. When you see him, tell him Dacre seems to have done a runner. And I’m on my way back.’
As she drove in through the gateway, a long trailer was being manoeuvred into position close to the wall of the refreshment room. Rutherford, not content to leave the operation to the seasoned driver and a uniformed constable signalling a hard left, back, right hand down, forward and line up here, was jerking his arms about and jabbing his right thumb first in the air, then downwards. The driver was glad to see Lesley approaching, to distract the DCI. Lesley was less happy.
‘Never showed up?’ Rutherford blew his top. ‘I knew from the start that we shouldn’t have turned our backs on any of them. Not for a minute. I’d like to have the whole shower of ’em in custody.’
‘We can put out a call —’
‘We’ll do more than that,’ raged Rutherford, without specifying what, ‘before the two of them get up to whatever it is they have in mind.’
‘They’re hardly likely to flee the country. Not with their inheritance coming up like that.’
Rutherford did not reply. His attention had been distracted by the sight of Caroline Crombie making her way down the path towards the chapel, with a large key dangling between her fingers. ‘Just a minute,’ he yelled. ‘Miss Crombie, just where are you off to?’
She did not disdain to answer, but disappeared round a sprawling copse, kicking aside a tangle of brambles.
Rutherford stormed after her. What he hoped to achieve, Lesley could not imagine. When he was like this, he would pick on the nearest possible victim and hammer away until he got what he wanted — or found he was getting nowhere near what he wanted, and so was plunged into an even worse temper.
Lesley followed him, taking care not to catch up.
Caroline had reached the abandoned hulk of the vault beside the chapel. It must once have been an imposing, heavily ornate tomb, with coats of arms at each corner and wrought iron initials in the grille strengthening the oak door. One felt the grille was there to prevent the inmates returning to this world rather than to keep intruders out. Finely chiselled stonework was largely obscured by tentacles of ivy winding round it. Lesley conjured up a vision of knights of old within, each with a stone head on a stone pillow, hands clasped across the breast, a faithful hound at his feet.
Probably eroded out of recognition by now. Maybe cremation was, after all, less demeaning in the end. Yet those symbols and formalities, no matter how cobwebbed, were more to her own taste.
Caroline was having trouble with the key.
She tried pushing it harder into the massive lock on the door of the vault, but it would not engage. She held it up to the light and shook her head.
Rutherford reached her. ‘Think some noble cadaver’s put a curse on the place, miss?’
‘It’s the right key. Always been kept by the cellar steps. I know it’s the right key. But it won’t fit the lock.’
‘Maybe your stepmother fitted a new one. She seems to have done a lot of shifting things around and altering them.’ He bent over the lock, patronising rather than helpful. But then Lesley, from where she was standing, saw his shoulders hunch. He fingered the heavy lock and inspected the end of his forefinger. ‘This is a newish lock. But it’s been deliberately covered with gunge. Anyone strolling casually down here —’
‘Which we don’t encourage,’ snapped Caroline.
‘To anyone not examining it close to,’ Rutherford finished complacently, ‘it wouldn’t be noticeable. But someone’s been here not so long ago.’
Caroline gripped the old key like a weapon. ‘I’ve got to get inside. We’ve got to open this place up.’
Rutherford took his phone out. ‘Sergeant, have you opened up the mobile room yet? Right, well there should be some bolt cutters in the kit under the end bench. Get them down here at the old chapel right away. And send them with somebody strong enough to use them.’
They waited in silence. Lesley was doing her own guesswork, and was sure the other two were doing the same, but she doubted if the outcome would prove to be the same.
The uniformed constable who had accompanied Lesley on her first encounter with Baldonald House arrived with the cutters.
He got one blade under the hasp of the door, bent over it, and gripped fiercely. His face went so red that Lesley was afraid he might have a stroke. Then, with a final squeeze and a savage twist, he wrenched the metal apart. When he reached for the edge of the door, it creaked and sagged ominously.
Inside there was fetid darkness, breathing a rank smell of years of neglect.
Caroline stepped impetuously towards the opening.
‘Hold it,’ commanded Rutherford. ‘Just stay there a minute. We wouldn’t want the roof coming in on top of you.’ He looked at the torch Caroline was carrying. ‘I see you came prepared. No electricity for the departed?’
‘Hasn’t been any in the chapel for ages, let alone the vault.’
‘Might I have that?’
For a moment Lesley thought that Caroline might refuse to hand the torch over; but she held it out, the way one would hand over a knife, with the handle towards Rutherford.
He stooped and went very slowly in, a step at a time. Lesley heard him curse as his feet scrabbled on fallen masonry. She saw the beam of the torch waver and describe a wild parabola along the far wall. Then it stopped, and turned in a slow, steady arc.
‘Well,’ said Rutherford. ‘Well, now. Lez, you’d better come and have a look at this. Mind where you tread.’
With unusual courtesy he trained
the light on the floor and sketched out a safe path for her. When she was well inside, he said: ‘Stop right there. Now tell me what you make of this.’
She was in darkness again as the beam made its way along the edge of a high stone tomb.
Propped against the stonework, obscuring most of the pious lettering, were a number of paintings. Herself framed in the doorway like a portrait against the daylight outside, Caroline let out a snarl of anguish.
‘What are they doing here? Our pictures. Father’s treasures … shoved in here to rot away. What the hell …?’
‘You’re the expert.’ Rutherford handed Lesley the torch. ‘Take a closer look.’
She played the light slowly across the surface of a portrait she recognised as undoubtedly one of the earlier Crombie ladies. Then there was a soldier who could almost have been Hector Crombie himself. And then a landscape. Caroline, edging in, cried: ‘The Grey Mare’s Tail! I’ve always loved that.’
Very carefully Lesley said: ‘I think you probably loved the original.’
‘What do you mean? That’s the picture I —’
‘Indoors, in not too good a light, you wouldn’t think of inspecting it detail by detail, every day you passed it. You were used to it being there, like all the others. Part of a familiar background. Once we get them out of here, I’ll have a closer look. But I’m already willing to bet that they’re all fakes.’
‘But who’d have put them here? And why?’
‘They certainly wouldn’t be any good to anybody anywhere else. Unlike the originals — wherever they may have got to by now.’
Rutherford waved them peremptorily out into the open air. ‘All right, inspector. This is what you came here for in the first place. I’ll leave you to it, while I concentrate on —’ He was cut short by the bleeping of his mobile. ‘Well,’ he said. And then: ‘Is that a fact, now?’ When he turned back to them he was clenching his fingers like a man warming up for a fight. ‘I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear this, inspector. Someone helping to bolster up your theories. On the day of Lady Crombie’s murder, Sir Michael Veitch was seen having lunch with her. And leaving with her. The waiter says they seemed to be having an argument. And there’s a suggestion of further sightings later that afternoon. I’ve asked them to hold their fire till I get to Edinburgh. I’ve just got to sit in on this.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And while I’m there, maybe I can set them on to finding out just where this Ishbel Dacre has got to.’
Lesley turned towards Caroline, waiting for bewilderment and anger at the discovery within the vault. But Caroline, who had been so staggered by the first glimpse of those pictures, was transfixed, her face paler than ever, staring after the DCI as he headed off towards his car.
16
The board stretching above the wide main entrance in Musselburgh framed the name of Ritchie’s Transport in large letters between sketches of a lorry and a minicab. In the cramped office behind a wide glass window, a screen was fidgeting with patterns of black and green. They were everywhere nowadays: Greg was distracted for a moment by a gloomy calculation as to how long he might survive before books disappeared altogether and gave way to these collections of circuitry and visual declamations.
James Ritchie was a podgy little man so anxious to give the impression of swift efficiency that he kept scuttling to and fro within that confined space, darting and dabbing in such non-stop attentiveness that he really ought to have shed a lot of that surplus weight.
‘Right, sir. What can we do for you?’
‘I was looking for Ishbel Dacre.’
For a moment Greg wondered if Ishbel had used another name — at any rate a different surname — but Ritchie replied at once. ‘Nae, she’s nae here. But nae hassle. Standby driver’s just back in.’ He bit off the end of every remark like a would-be sergeant-major. ‘So where’d ye be wanting to go?’
‘It was Miss Dacre I particularly wanted to see.’
Ritchie was studying him with a mixture of apprehensiveness and defiance. ‘I was wondering when somebody was going to show up.’
‘Show up? Why should anyone show up here?’
‘You the police? Or a reporter?’
‘Neither. Why should I be?’
‘Wi’ all that about her mother. Being murdered. I wondered when someone would come asking questions.’
‘So you knew her mother?’
‘Only on the phone. She’d ring up, ask to be driven somewhere. Very condescending. Doin’ a great favour, putting work the girl’s way.’ He stopped, still peering warily at Greg. ‘But what would it have to do with you?’
‘I’m her father.’
‘Her faither? Well, na …’
‘What exactly does she do here?’
‘She doesn’t. Nae more. She left a few weeks ago, wi’ precious little warning. A pity. Up till then she was a reliable lass.’
‘All right. What did she do while she was here?’
‘Regular minicab work. Valeting hire cars. Delivering them to Waverley Station or the airport. Collecting from wherever. Any hour of the day or night. Could handle the heavy stuff, too. Take a lorry to Inverness, deliver a new truck to a client in Carlisle. A tad too intense, if ye ken what I mean. But anything to keep the money coming in.’
‘And from time to time her mother would call on her?’
‘Aye. Rang and asked to be picked up and driven places, sometimes.’ Ritchie’s gaze became curious rather than apprehensive. ‘That’d be your wife, then?’
‘It would.’
‘But she called herself Lady Crombie. Made a gey big thing of it. Only ye wouldnae be Lord Crombie?’
‘No, I wouldn’t. We were divorced years ago. And Lord Crombie’s dead.’
‘I didna ken.’
‘So is she, now.’
‘Aye, shocking business. No’ that many miles from here.’
‘Did Ishbel hear about it here, before she left?’
‘I told you, she was awa’ some weeks back. I thought maybe that feller of hers had taken off somewhere else. Found himself a job somewhere else, maybe.’ But that last barked sentence had acquired a sceptical snarl.
‘What fellow would this have been?’ Greg had a prickling awareness that he almost certainly knew the answer.
‘Ach, I think ye’d no’ be wanting to know his sort.’ Ritchie turned away dismissively, but bobbed round again immediately. ‘Some lasses, they do pick the bad ’uns, don’t they?’
‘You knew his name?’
‘Nae. Just used to appear — come and pick her up here. But I know a skellum when I smell one. Reckon she took on all that work just to keep them going. She’d hand over money to him — he’d be asking for it the moment he got here. Times I thought she’d sooner he didnae show up here like that. But he was that type. Wasnae going to give her a chance of getting rid of any of her money before he got his hands on it. A lot older than her, and bossy. Bad as a pimp.’
‘Look, if you’re suggesting —’
‘Ach, that wasnae what I was saying about her. She was a fine lass. But him — couldnae keep his eyes to himself. Or his hands.’
‘He tried to rob the till?’
‘Nae, not that. Hands on the women, that’s what I’m saying. Tried to get himself in wi’ our office girl. Thought maybe she’d earn more for him than Ishbel. Marie wouldnae have him, Ishbel had had enough and decided to ditch him.’
The tiny office was overheated, but Greg felt very cold. Ditch him … He thought of Simon Pringle lying dead in the burn, well and truly ditched.
‘And where’s she gone to now?’ he demanded.
‘Used to have a place in a back street off the Portobello Road. But she seems to have left it once he was out of the scene.’
‘And now where is she? You must have some idea where she went to. She must have left a forwarding address.’
‘I don’t know that she’d want me to —’
‘Look, I’ve told you. I’m her father. I’ve got to get to her.’
�
��Before the police do?’
The chill intensified. Greg hadn’t put it to himself in quite such words. But yes, he did want to get to Ishbel, fast.
‘Right at this moment,’ he said shakily, ‘I think she needs me.’
‘Ach, weel.’ Ritchie still looked unsure, but said: ‘I did have some back pay to forward to her.’ He reached for a scrap pad and flicked fingers across the keyboard below the screen. ‘Aye, here we are.’ He scribbled, and tore the sheet off the pad. ‘Once you’re there, ye’ll have to find the street yoursel’.’
Greg looked down at the scrawled lettering. It was an address in Linlithgow. He had never seen the address before, but had a creepy suspicion that he knew whose it was.
*
Ishbel opened the door to the ground floor flat, and looked blankly at her visitor.
She was slender, just escaping thinness. Long blonde hair drifted across her face and down to gaunt shoulders. Her eyes were wide and questioning. You got the feeling she was always questioning.
‘Yes?’
‘You don’t remember me.’
‘Should I?’ Then she leaned forward, pushing her hair back in a way reminiscent of Caroline, but more wildly, shaking her head the moment she had done it so that the long strands fell back across her forehead again. ‘No,’ she breathed. ‘It’s … Daddy …’
‘So you do remember.’
He wanted to throw his arms round her, kiss her, but sensed her bracing herself against the possibility, ready to push him away.
‘What …?’ It was a whisper, fading away as she agitatedly ran her right hand down her left arm, then reached for the edge of the door as if to slam it against an unwelcome tradesman.
‘May I come in?’
‘I … don’t know. I don’t think I ought to —’
‘I do have to talk to you, Ishbel.’
‘After all this time?’
‘Please.’
She stood back and let him pass. Mutely she gestured towards a door on the left. He went into a room with a settee, two armchairs and a coffee table littered with magazines. The settee and chairs were drawn up in a huddle to face a large television set.