by Alex Walters
‘How are you managing?’ McKay asked.
‘Ach, you know. Keeping busy,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit strange, having this place to myself. But I’m getting used to it.’
I bet you are, McKay thought. ‘Have you seen much of other people?’
‘The neighbours are very kind,’ she said. ‘There’s been a lot to do. I had to let the carer agency know, and the local council. And I’ve had to start thinking about the funeral.’
‘Have the police told you when you’ll be able to go ahead with that?’ McKay knew that Galloway’s body was being held pending the decision on the investigation.
‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me something about that,’ she said pointedly.
McKay shifted awkwardly. ‘I’m not working on the case, I’m afraid. I don’t really have any inside track.’
She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Oh, I’d assumed you were.’ Maybe that was why she’d invited him back here for tea. McKay suspected that Bridie Galloway wasn’t quite as guileless as her appearance might suggest.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘Not really sure why,’ he added vaguely. ‘Maybe they thought I was too close to it, having known your husband.’
‘They called me this morning. Said the Procurator had requested the investigation should be extended. So, I don’t know when it’s likely to be.’
‘I’m sure they’ll keep you informed as much as they possibly can.’
‘I’m sorry you’re not involved in the investigation, Alec,’ she said. ‘Jackie rated you. And it would have been helpful to have someone who knew Jackie and his background.’
Don’t you worry yourself, hen, McKay said to himself. Plenty of people knew about Jackie Galloway and his background. Out loud, he said, ‘They’ll have good people taking care of it, don’t you worry.’
‘Aye, I’m sure. There’s three deaths now, aren’t there? Three of Jackie’s old team. That can’t be coincidence.’
‘It looks strange, right enough,’ McKay said noncommittally. He could feel that Bridie Galloway was fishing for information. Fortunately, he had nothing he could have shared with her, even if he’d wanted to.
‘I get scared, sometimes,’ she said. ‘Thinking about it. Thinking about those letters. Someone wanted Jackie dead.’
‘It still might have just been an accident,’ McKay pointed out. ‘Coincidences happen.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ she said. ‘Not really.’
‘I don’t know what I think about it.’
‘Jackie made enemies. You all make enemies. It goes with the job.’ She paused. ‘And I know that Jackie – well, sometimes had his own way of doing things.’
That was one way of putting it, McKay thought. It was his turn to go fishing. ‘How do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean. He didn’t always play by the rules. He did what it took to get a result. He used to boast about it to me sometimes. Said it made him a real copper.’
‘Aye, well, it’s a point of view. But I wouldn’t know anything about any of that, Bridie. I was just a young rookie.’
‘Aye, no doubt,’ she said, sceptically. ‘But if I were you – or your colleagues – I’d start looking at some of those last cases of Jackie’s.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘That last one,’ she said. ‘The drugs raid. That was the one that got all the attention because it all went pear-shaped. That was the one that ended Jackie’s career.’
As well as ending some poor bugger’s life, McKay thought. ‘You think that’s relevant?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe not that one. Jackie had already changed by then –’
‘Changed?’
‘He was a different man in that last year at work. He was coming up to retirement, anyway – that was why he was so angry about what happened – and I thought that was probably the reason.’
‘How did he change?’
‘It wasn’t obvious. Well, it wouldn’t have been to anyone who knew him less well than I did. But he became … I don’t know … less brash, less cocky. Less sure of himself. Even slightly fearful, as if he was worried about something. Started taking a lot more care of security back home – this was when we were still living in Inverness.’
‘You think this was something to do with an investigation?’
‘That’s the way it felt to me. As if something had happened that had rattled him. He wasn’t someone who’d let that kind of thing show. But it was there, right enough.’
‘But you don’t have any idea what it might have been?’
‘He never brought his work home. Not in that sense. He never talked about any of the investigations. Maybe occasionally, once they were concluded, he’d give me the gist. But not while they were going on. It was nothing he said. Just the way he behaved.’
McKay was inclined to take this seriously. Bridie Galloway struck him as an astute woman, and for all her sins, she’d known her husband better than anyone else had. ‘And you think this was something to do with one of those last cases?’
‘That was my impression. Whatever else he was, Jackie was no coward. He wasn’t a nervous man, you know?’
‘Aye, I know,’ McKay agreed. That would have been the last word he’d have used to describe Jackie Galloway. The first one would probably have been an expletive. He sat drinking his tea, thinking. ‘Have you told the police any of this, Bridie?’
‘Not yet. It’s only now that the dust’s settled I’ve started thinking about it again. And it seems so – insubstantial. Do you think it’s worth mentioning?’
‘If Jackie’s death was more than accidental – and I’m guessing that’s still not entirely clear – they’ll need all the leads they can get. Anything might help.’
‘They?’
Aye, astute enough, McKay thought. He was already talking as if he was no longer part of all this. Maybe that was how he was feeling. As if, without realising, he’d already begun to put his career behind him. ‘Like I say, Bridie, I’m not involved in the investigation. I can pass on what you’ve said, but it might have more impact coming from you. They’ll be wanting to speak to you again, I’m sure.’
‘Aye, they said that. Said they’d be in touch.’
‘So, talk it through with them. Tell them what you felt. It may be nothing. But it may give them something to follow up.’
‘Do you think I should be worried?’
‘Worried?’
‘If something happened to Jackie – and those others, Billy and Rob – someone out there’s got a grudge. Should I be worried about my safety?’
In truth, McKay had no idea. None of this made much sense to him. But he could see little point in scaring an elderly widow. ‘I can’t see it, Bridie. The only victims so far – and that’s if they even are victims – were retired police officers. If this is about revenge, they’re the targets.’
She looked unconvinced. ‘I’ve been locking up carefully,’ she said. ‘Stopped leaving the key in the key safe. I might see if I can afford to get the locks changed.’
McKay gazed back her, this frail elderly woman. The only thing she’d had to celebrate in the last couple of decades had been, maybe, the unexpected death of her husband. And even that had just left her with a different set of anxieties. ‘Aye, Bridie,’ he said. ‘Better to be safe than sorry. And, while I’m up here, I’ll do my best to keep an eye out for you.’
‘Ach, you’re a decent man, Alec McKay.’
It had been a long time, McKay thought, since anyone had said that about him.
32
‘Weird,’ DC Josh Carlisle said.
Horton glanced across at him. ‘You must have been here before?’ Carlisle had matured in the last couple of years – mainly as a result of working for Alec McKay, she assumed – but still looked fresh out of school. He had swept-back ginger hair, already threatening to recede, and the kind of rosy-pink cheeks normally provided only by a healthy hike through the hills or an unhealthy
excess of alcohol. Neither, as far as Horton was aware, was high on Carlisle’s list of vices.
‘I suppose,’ Carlisle said. ‘As a child, maybe.’ He made it sound as if this period was lost somewhere in the mists of time.
They were parked on the waterfront in Cromarty, looking out over the firth towards the industrial units at Nigg. A place where oil platforms and similar equipment were brought to be repaired or dismantled. The overall effect was mildly surreal – a peaceful maritime idyll mixed with the product of heavy industry. Horton always found the combination oddly satisfying, as if the two worlds were complementary.
The weather was continuing to improve, with shafts of sunlight periodically breaking through the cloud. Horton had parked up to return the call she’d just received from Helena Grant.
She thumbed Grant’s number. ‘Helena? Ginny. Just arrived in Cromarty.’
‘Ally Donald? Doesn’t sound promising in the circumstances.’
‘No, we’re losing ex-coppers a bit too frequently at the moment.’
‘Tell me about it. I’ve just emerged from two hours with the Chief Super and the Head of Comms wanting to know what I’m doing about it. Everything I can, I told them, but oddly, they didn’t seem satisfied with that. Last thing we need’s another one.’
‘Maybe this one’s just a coincidence.’
‘Aye, maybe. And maybe the Chief Super’s really a sweetheart, but I’m not hopeful on either count. We’re going to go live with the story this afternoon.’
‘That’ll set some hares running.’
‘Right enough. But the word’s already starting to leak out to the local media. They’re not daft when it comes to putting two and two together. But given half a chance, they’ll come out with an answer much bigger than four. Comms think it best we give them whatever hand we can with their arithmetic.’
‘It’s going to be a big story, however it’s played.’
‘No way ‘round that. But we’re going to keep it low-key for the moment. Keep Galloway’s death out of the picture if we can – apart from the letters, we’ve still no evidence that wasn’t an accident – and say we’re pursuing various leads linked to Crawford and Graham’s time in the force. What we don’t want is for people to start thinking there’s some sort of indiscriminate killer out there.’
‘This one seems all too discriminating,’ Horton agreed.
‘We’re also going to make an appeal for witnesses,’ Grant went on. ‘Crawford and Graham both went missing relatively early in the evening. Someone might have seen something, maybe without realising the significance of what they were seeing. It’s a long shot, but we may hit lucky with a dog walker or a curtain twitcher. I thought you’d want the heads-up before the proverbial hits the fan.’
‘Thanks,’ Horton said. ‘We’ll let you know whether it looks like you’ve got another name to add to the list.’
The Donalds’ bungalow was a neat-looking place on a small estate at the edge of the village. The sort of development that Horton could imagine being occupied by a mix of retired couples and younger families with parents who commuted into Inverness for work. Not exactly prosperous, but not short of a bob or two either.
Mrs Donald answered the doorbell as if she’d been standing awaiting their arrival. ‘You’d best come in,’ she said, when they’d introduced themselves. ‘Would you like some tea?’
Horton would normally have declined the offer, but this time, with a brief glance at Carlisle, she accepted. She wanted time to get a sense of Mrs Donald, of the bungalow and, most of all, of what sort of marriage this had been. She’d been struck, on their arrival, by the apparent lightness of Mrs Donald’s manner. Not quite the anxious wife. That was beginning to feel like a pattern in this enquiry.
‘You reported your husband missing earlier this afternoon?’ Horton began, once they were seated back in the sitting room.
While they’d been waiting, she’d looked carefully around the room. Nothing obviously untoward. The room was, to Horton’s eyes, conspicuously tidy, nothing out of place. The only apparent blemish was an odd staining to the wallpaper by the fireplace. A good effort had been made to remove it, but the mark was still there and looked relatively fresh. It looked as if something had been spilled against it, but it was hard to see how that might have happened. There was, Horton thought, a faint smell of stale alcohol in the air.
Mrs Donald nodded nervously in response to Horton’s question, her expression suggesting some fear of being wrong-footed. ‘I wasn’t sure anyone would take it seriously before then.’
‘It always depends on the circumstances, Mrs Donald. I understand your husband hadn’t returned home last night. Were you expecting him to be away?’
There was an unexpectedly long silence. ‘He – sometimes stays away, yes. I wasn’t entirely surprised.’
‘He hadn’t told you he was expecting to be away overnight?’
‘No. Not as such. No.’
‘Not as such,’ Horton repeated. ‘Look, Mrs Donald, I’ve no desire to be intrusive. But, in the circumstances, I do need to ask you. Where did you understand your husband to be last night?’
Another silence. ‘He has a friend. I assumed he’d stayed with them.’
‘And have you spoken to your husband’s – friend?’
‘I – No, that’s not really possible.’
‘Mrs Donald?’
‘There’s – well, another woman,’ Mrs Donald said finally. ‘Ally never made much secret of it. He never said it in so many words, but in every other way he used to rub my nose in it. As if it was my fault. As if I’d driven him to –’ She stopped and took a mouthful of her tea. Her eyes, Horton noticed, were dry. There was plenty of emotion there, but little that looked like sorrow.
‘You think that’s where he spent last night?’
‘That’s what I thought. We’d had – words earlier. He stormed out. I imagined he was heading to the pub. When he didn’t come back, I thought he’d spent the night – well, you know.’
‘Did that sort of thing happen often?’
‘Often enough. He’s a difficult man. Difficult to please. If something made him unhappy –’
Horton could easily imagine. She’d spent the early part of her life under the influence of a man not unlike that. ‘Was he often unhappy?’
‘It didn’t take much.’
Horton gave a pointed glance towards the fireplace. ‘Can I ask –?’
‘Aye. Well spotted. He lost his temper last night and threw his supper at me. I did my best to clean it up this morning.’
Because if you hadn’t, Horton added silently to herself, the old bastard would complain about the mess. She remembered how her own mother had struggled with the same kinds of dilemma. ‘Talk me through yesterday evening. What exactly happened?’
‘Ally got in from work. That was about seven. He only works part time at the garden centre these days, so he’d have been finished long before that. I assumed he’d been to the pub.’
‘Did he often do that?’
‘Most days, unless some of them he went off to his fancy woman.’
‘Was he drunk when he came in?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Mrs Donald said. ‘He knew how to hold his booze. Took a lot before you saw Ally drunk. He just became more and more aggressive.’
‘He was aggressive last night?’
‘No more than usual. He was complaining I hadn’t got supper on the table, even though, as always, he’d given me no idea when to expect him. He complained I’d been drinking.’
‘Had you?’
‘A few glasses of wine. Not that it was any of his business.’ Or yours, was the unspoken implication.
‘Then what happened?’
‘I got him some supper. One of those ready meal things. A curry. Cooked it for him and served it to him in here. He complained it was cold. Ended up throwing the plate at me.’
Horton had lived through many of the same kind of scenes. The man who could never be satisfi
ed. Who always found fault with whatever was done for him. The man who could manipulate the women around him so they were always in the wrong. ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘Not this time. The plate missed me. He said he’d had enough and stormed out. I assumed he’d headed for the pub. That was his usual destination.’
‘Where did he drink?’
Mrs Donald gave them the name of a pub down by the harbour. Horton knew it slightly. A respectable place where she and Isla had once or twice enjoyed a decent pub lunch. Not a place that would tolerate a punter too long if he started causing trouble. But no doubt Ally Donald had been a different person with his mates. ‘You’ve not spoken to the pub?’
‘I didn’t bother. I thought that was where he’d gone, but I didn’t much care. My only worry was that he might return three sheets to the wind and take it out on me.’
‘Has that happened before?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘He’s been violent with you?’
‘Aye, you might say that.’
‘You should have reported it, Mrs Donald. We’d have taken action.’ Horton knew she was whistling into the wind, but it had to be said.
‘Aye, well, you might,’ Mrs Donald said pointedly. ‘I’m not sure about some of your colleagues. Ally was one of the lads, you know. Don’t tell me you lot wouldn’t have covered for him.’
Horton knew better than to argue the point. Things might have improved in the force, but there were still plenty of unreconstructed bastards in there. ‘But he didn’t come back. And you heard nothing from him?’
‘Can’t say I was sorry. I waited up as long as I could. He liked me to be there waiting for him. In the end, it was obvious he wasn’t coming, so I went to bed.’
‘Did you expect him to come back this morning?’
‘Maybe. That was his usual pattern. Turn up bold as brass. Shower. Change of clothes. Even get me to make him some breakfast. But when he didn’t, I assumed he’d gone straight to work.’
‘The garden centre?’
‘Aye, reckons he’s the head of security, but it sounds to me like he’s just a dogsbody. He likes being the centre of attention.’