by John Burke
Ishbel waved him towards the nearest armchair, then stumbled past him and wavered in the middle of a dark woolly rug, like a stranger uncertain about her own choice of a seat.
Those wide eyes were very pale eyes, but he was sure that when she became interested in something the colour would flood into them just as it had done with her mother’s.
She said: ‘How did you find me? And why?’
‘I went through Mr Ritchie. But don’t blame him. I told him who I was, and he agreed that I really did have to get in touch with you.’
‘Why?’
‘You know that your mother’s dead?’
‘I read about it, yes.’ She shivered in a convulsion that shook her whole body. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘And you know about Simon’s death?’
‘I … yes, I … heard about that, too.’
‘But you didn’t show up — didn’t come to find out what had happened, or what questions people might be asking?’
She shook her head wildly to and fro, then let herself collapse on the settee. ‘I don’t know anything about them. Nothing to do with me, either of them.’
‘But they were something to do with you. In a big way, from all I hear.’
‘And where did you hear it?’
‘Your mother told me how Simon got up to his old games.’
The nails of her right hand scrabbled at the arm of the settee. Her lips were trembling, but not in any readiness to talk.
‘All this business with Simon.’ He got it out in a rush. ‘How could you ever have let yourself get involved with him?’
‘I thought you said that mother had filled you in on that.’
‘But when things started going wrong — really wrong. Your mother, Simon, and all the rest of it … God, I could have told you —’
‘Told me? Could you? When we’d never spoken a word to each other for years. Never even seen you.’ It had triggered her into a burst of retaliation. ‘Daddy, where were you? Mother would never tell me. I always got the impression you couldn’t be bothered, anyway.’
‘That was your mother’s story?’
‘Whenever I tried to ask about you, she’d tell me how … well, how … useless you were. Never cared about me, or you wouldn’t just have gone off and left me. Couldn’t have, if you’d cared tuppence.’
‘And you believed every word of that?’
‘What else is there to believe, when you’re a kid?’ She was holding back tears. ‘And when you weren’t there, just the way she said, what was I to believe? You never did get in touch.’
‘Because we agreed … she made me think it was better that way.’
‘And you went along with it, just because she said so.’
‘I’m sorry, Ishbel. Really I am. It was bloody ridiculous. But this business of Simon. If only I’d been around —’
‘But you weren’t. And now that you are, it’s a bit late.’
‘You hate me, don’t you?’
‘I used to wonder where you were.’ The tears had failed to come. She had stopped scratching the arm of the settee. She was quite calm and collected. ‘And then I learned to hate my mother.’
‘You can’t really feel that. I mean, she was there and I wasn’t. I wasn’t much use, I wasn’t there to —’
‘No,’ whispered Ishbel. ‘And that hurt, you don’t know how far down the misery went. But she was there, and she taught me to hate her. Building it up gradually. When I was old enough, she’d take me out to dinner — big treat, she made it sound — and I’d find there was some sleazy tycoon on the scene, giving me the eye. And I was supposed to be nice to him. ‘But you don’t have to keep it up,’ she told me. ‘Once we’ve hooked him, you can get out.’ She thought I’d find it amusing. But she wasn’t amused when I fell in love with Simon.’
‘Love? Simon wouldn’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘He was very plausible. About everything. As a stepfather, he was … oh, for a while he really did seem very kind. And somehow we … it built up into something different, and I hadn’t meant it to do that, but there it was.’
And how much of that had been a deep-seated urge to rebel against that hated mother? Who had then turned on the two of them and destroyed Simon’s job, and destroyed any hope of a high ranking appointment anywhere else. That much he had been told in no uncertain terms by Brigid. And then Ishbel couldn’t help herself: pride demanded that she go and live with him. She supported the two of them by working for the firm in Musselburgh, driving delivery vans, occasionally taking Simon for job interviews in the Borders, away from his usual haunts. Anything to keep them going.
‘And you were still living together until …?’
There was a long pause. Then Ishbel rushed on again. ‘He went off. Maybe because I’d told him I was getting fed up. He wasn’t ever going to get a job, was he? Wasn’t really trying. Just leaving it to me to keep him. So he said he’d … show me.’
‘Show you what?’
‘I don’t know. I think it was just one of his boastful remarks.’
Words stuck in his throat like vomit. ‘Some other woman? Next one in line?’
Ishbel gave a parched sigh. ‘Could have been. Maybe found someone with better prospects. So he just wasn’t around any more.’
Just not there. Like her father, just not there any more.
‘Not getting back in touch with your mother for some reason?’
‘What reason would he have for that?’
Anything to keep the money coming in, Ritchie had said. In spite of her story, could Ishbel and Simon Pringle have been together in the robbery? Simon either crawling back to Brigid … or deciding to rob her. Which way had it been? And could Ishbel, so good at handling any kind of vehicle, have been the getaway driver?
Unthinkable. Utter bloody rubbish.
As she began scraping the settee again, more slowly this time, he changed tack suddenly. ‘After all that sleazy two-timing, you don’t suppose your mother could have killed Simon? Could have met him in the Baldonald grounds before I came with her to Edinburgh, or came back without my noticing, and …?’ He left it dangling.
‘If my mother wanted to dispose of anybody, she certainly wouldn’t have done it herself. She’d have known exactly the top man in his field, and hired him to do the job for her.’ Without warning, Ishbel demonstrated that she too could change tack when it suited her. ‘Daddy, just what brought you into this part of the world?’
He told her. Her eyes widened. Instead of brimming with tears, they were filled with incredulous laughter.
‘Ghosting her memoirs?’
‘It seemed an interesting idea. Your mother was most insistent.’
‘Insistent. Oh, dear, yes. Daddy, how could you have let her exploit you all over again?’
So she had learned, over the years, that her mother had been the exploiting kind. He put out a hand towards her, wanting a contact, wanting her hand in his.
She dodged at once, got up again. ‘Would you like some coffee? Or we’ve got a bottle of white wine in the fridge. Would you like a glass?’ Without waiting for him to say yes or no to either offer, she went out.
Greg glanced at the VCR clock. Just about time for the early evening news. He found the remote control under one of the coffee table magazines, and flicked it on.
There were some lurching scenes of people running in a street somewhere in the Middle East, and men firing guns into the air, followed by a steadier picture of two men in dark suits shaking hands in the Foreign Office. Their faces gave way to those of DCI Rutherford and a uniformed superintendent seated beside him, facing a cluster of microphones on the table before them.
The superintendent spoke gravely of two brutal murders within such a short space of time — that of Simon Pringle, in the grounds of Baldonald House in the Borders, and then, so tragically soon after the death by natural causes of her husband Lord Crombie of Baldonald House, the murder of Lady Crombie in Leith. His summary was slowly and ponderously paced
, in rolling sentences which joined seamlessly on, one after the other, until the general sense was camouflaged.
Behind him, Greg heard a faint gasp. Ishbel had come in with the glasses, but instead of handing one of them to him she was focusing on the screen.
‘He was talking about mother, wasn’t he? Daddy, what’s going on?’
‘Press conference. The usual appeals for witnesses, I’d guess.’
He guessed right. The superintendent had handed over to Rutherford, who enjoyed such occasions. He was not one for obliquely framed subsidiary clauses and public relations pussy-footing. With a determined thrust of his chin he spoke masterfully to viewers, not so much soliciting their help as demanding it. There had been two brutal killings, and somebody must have seen something. It was their public duty to come forward. In confidence, of course.
‘Investigations into the Baldonald House killing are proceeding satisfactorily. New evidence this very day means we hope to make a public statement within the next couple of days.’ Rutherford sounded as confident as he always did when there were so many loose ends to be tied up. ‘But the police will still welcome any reports of Pringle’s movements between the 18th and 24th of this month, in or around Edinburgh and in the Selkirk and Baldonald region.’ The phone number came flashing up in large numerals across the bottom of the screen. A disembodied voice read it out slowly and heavily for the benefit of those more used to watching television pictures than reading.
And then, linked with the first murder on the Crombie estate, there was the matter of Lady Crombie’s murder in her Leith flat.
‘Anyone who can offer any sightings in Edinburgh should get in touch with the police at this number.’ Again a line of figures, and a background recitation. ‘We know that Lady Crombie visited the family solicitors, and that she returned to her flat in Leith, where she was murdered. Anybody who saw her in or around Thistle Street, or Heriot Row, or entering her flat, especially if she was accompanied at any stage, can help us settle this distressing case. We are already working towards an arrest, but confirmatory evidence would be a great help.’
What he meant, thought Greg, was that they did not yet have a really solid lead, but that Rutherford would be happy to accept anything that would build up his image.
‘At the same time’ — Rutherford had reserved his safe boast till the end — ‘I am happy to announce that we have solved the mystery which brought us to Baldonald House in the first place. Thanks to the skills of our specialist technical staff, we have recovered a large number of the artworks stolen from the house.’
Without taking her eyes off the screen, Ishbel handed Greg a glass of wine. ‘Is that true, Daddy?’
‘It’s news to me. Not a word about it before I left.’
Rutherford was lying: ‘An arrest is imminent. It now appears that the gang which broke into the house had hidden their loot in the disused family vault to be recovered later.’
‘No,’ said Greg softly. ‘Oh dear, no, I don’t think so.’ He glanced up at Ishbel as he sipped his wine. ‘I think your mother was behind it all. Stowed them away in the hope they never would be found, or not until she was ready to do with them whatever she had in mind.’
‘Why? Daddy, what are you on about?’
The DCI’s voice was going on about a possible linkage with the two murders and repeating his appeal for members of the public to come forward with what, he implied, would be the last nails in the coffin of certain villains. Over his bombastic tones. Greg said: ‘The only thing that makes sense is that she’d already sold the really valuable ones off, and replaced them with fakes. She was bound to know somebody who’d do that for her. But in any exhibition, someone would have spotted they were fakes. And an exhibition of several of the more historic pieces was coming up. So the lot had to be shifted. Fake a robbery of the fakes! Get the stuff out of the way …’
‘In the vault!’ breathed Ishbel. ‘If Hector had ever found out — oh, how could she?’
‘Collect the insurance,’ Greg went on, ‘thereby raking in the money twice over, allowing for the original sales, and later choose a moment to burn them, maybe.’ Telephone numbers were flashed on the screen again, before the pictures changed to those of a pile-up of two transits and an artic hit by sudden gusts of gale force on the A7, followed by a weather forecast of increasingly high winds and rain squalls over the next few days.
Ishbel gulped at her wine.
He looked around the room, at a few media magazines on the coffee table, and a painting of a waterfall. ‘This is Caroline’s flat, isn’t it?’
‘She invited me to stay. For as long as I like.’
‘Hiding you away?’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide from.’
‘In that case,’ Greg said with more conviction than he felt, ‘you’ll be perfectly safe if you come back and tell the police all you know.’
‘But I don’t know anything.’
‘Then tell them that, so that they can eliminate you from their enquiries. Unless …’
‘Unless what?’
‘Unless you want me to help you get away. Edinburgh airport, say. Got your passport?’
‘Daddy, you’re not thinking I could have murdered them? Both of them?’
‘I’m thinking of what they might think. I mean, if you were to tell them what you’ve told me — how much you’d grown to hate your mother, and hated Simon too. Both murdered. They could jump to the wrong conclusions. And they’ll give you a rough old time anyway.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘To the airport?’
‘No.’ She had put the glass down and was waving her arms, her hair flying. He got up and at last threw his arms round her, holding her until she stopped threshing to and fro. ‘Back to Baldonald,’ she sobbed. For a moment her head sank into the crook of his arm; then she was on her way to pile a few clothes into a holdall.
It took her a very short time: she gave the impression of having been travelling light over recent times.
‘And I must tell Caroline.’ Again she was shaking her hair impatiently, muttering quickly into the phone before slamming it down. ‘Her mobile’s switched off. Had to leave a message on it, saying I’m on my way.’
*
As they approached Baldonald House down the side road, gusts along the valley smacked hard against the side of the car. Along one bank of the loch below, in the shelter of the hills the water was ruffled by skittish ripples as if someone were blowing lazily along the surface. Further out the whidders were fiercer, whipped from above, an inland sea growing more boisterous by the minute. The sky was a sullen bronze, heavy behind the ridges.
The trees creaked and leaned over the path towards the chapel and vault. Caroline was standing at the end of the path, and DI Gunn was a few hundred yards behind her, talking to a uniformed constable.
Without warning a cock pheasant shot out of the rough grass like a jet fighter taking off at a steep angle. The thump of its body against the radiator jarred the car more fiercely than the wind. There was a flutter of wings and torn feathers. The bird hit the far side of the drive and twitched in a terrible ballet of convulsions.
Even before Greg had stopped, Ishbel was wrenching at the passenger door and stumbling out, just as Caroline strode across the drive and stooped over the pheasant.
‘No, Caro! No, you can’t!’
Caroline took the bird’s neck and wrung it in one expert twist.
‘Don’t be so sentimental, Ishbel. Kindest this way. No use to itself or anybody else in that state.’ She wiped her hands on her slacks, and stared an accusation. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you back. But you’d already left.’ Now the accusation was turned on Greg. ‘Just what the hell are you playing at?’
‘Caro …’
Ishbel took a step forward, and was all at once in Caroline’s arms. Stroking the tangle of blonde hair, Caroline said: ‘I told you to stay put until we knew exactly what was going on.’
‘Caro, Daddy’s right. I had to come.’<
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Caroline stared over Ishbel’s shoulder at Greg. ‘Couldn’t you have stayed out of this?’
‘Since I was able to find her,’ he pointed out, ‘the police would have done so as well, very soon.’
DI Lesley Gunn was picking her way over the unevenness of the path and brushing aside a windblown branch.
Caroline released Ishbel as Greg got out of the car. Close to his daughter, he said: ‘So that’s how it is. You and Caroline — what’s known, I believe, as an item?’
‘Yes,’ said Ishbel defiantly. ‘Does that disgust you?’
No, it didn’t disgust him. But he did wonder, dazedly, just how this fitted in with the Simon Pringle interlude; and who had found it expedient to dispose of Simon.
DI Gunn was saying: ‘I presume this is your daughter, Mr Dacre?’
‘It is.’
‘I’m glad she’s put in an appearance at last. Perhaps you could come into the cabin and answer a few questions, Miss Dacre.’
And that was something else to wonder about: had the detective also seen the two young women for a few moments in the same light as Greg had seen them, and begun asking herself the same questions?
17
Before DI Lesley Gunn could settle down to questioning Ishbel Dacre, there came a phone call concerning a stolen credit card. Police in Galashiels were holding a man attempting to use the card in a local supermarket. He was known to them for petty crimes, always on the coat-tails of heftier villains.
‘We’ve checked the dabs on the card against the National Index, and we think you’ll find they tally with some of those you collected in that rented cottage. Only we can’t hold him for long on a lowgrade charge like this without granting bail, unless we can make the charge more serious.’
‘It could be a whole lot more serious.’
‘You’d better get over here quick, inspector.’
Before leaving, she had to know where Ishbel Dacre was proposing to stay. No good pursuing one promising trail, if another prey slid off while your back was turned.
‘She stays here, of course,’ said Caroline Crombie.
‘Can I rely on that?’
‘I did come here of my own free will,’ Ishbel pointed out. ‘I’m hardly likely to flit off into that’ — she waved towards the door of the trailer as it vibrated and produced a strangled gulp in the wind.