He looked curiously at MacNee and Hepburn as they came up. ‘We’re not open till ten, granddad. Anyway, not really your kinna place.’
Hepburn could only hope that the darkness concealed her grin as MacNee bridled.
‘Nae brains, just brawn, that’s your problem. We’re police. Your licence in order, is it?’
Alarm showed on his face. ‘Aye. Probably.’
‘OK, you can apply what brain you have to telling me where I’d find Daniel Lee.’
The man looked blank. It seemed to be, Hepburn thought, an expression he was comfortable with and used a lot.
‘Drax, then?’ MacNee said impatiently.
His face cleared. ‘Oh, aye. Be in his office, likely.’
‘And where’s that?’
‘Inside.’
‘I’d guessed that. Where inside?’
‘Up the stair. By the stage, ken?’
Not pausing to point out that if he knew he wouldn’t be asking, MacNee went inside, followed by Hepburn.
A number of people were milling around the huge space. None of them looked to be much over twenty, and there was music blaring out from loudspeakers by the DJ’s dais. Spotlights illuminated the dance floor and a burst of coloured lasers played briefly across the room then was switched off again as someone shouted comments. There was a lot of chat and laughter, and though one or two heads turned as they walked towards the door by the dais no one spoke to them.
As they reached the top of the spiral staircase a woman came towards them along the dark corridor. She glanced at them incuriously, then with a sudden sharpening of her gaze. She didn’t speak, only pursed her lips and disappeared through a nearby door.
MacNee grinned at Hepburn. ‘Always revealing, when they recognise CID at ten yards. She’ll be warning the boss right now.’
And sure enough, a mobile with a jazzy tune rang behind one of the doors facing them. Immediately MacNee went to it, knocked and opened it without allowing time for a response.
The man sitting at the desk in this aggressively white room, was hunched over the phone, scowling. ‘Where are they now, then?’ he said, then spun round as MacNee said, ‘Here.’
For a moment he looked confused, then as MacNee made the formal introductions and said insincerely, ‘I’m sorry to startle you, sir. I did knock,’ a remarkable transformation took place.
The hunched figure relaxed and stretched out, the dark anger vanished and Daniel Lee looked up at them from his chair with a gently rueful expression. There was something very engaging about the winged brows and eyes that held a spark of amusement and invited his companions to share the joke. But in an almost panicky movement he gathered together the papers he had spread out on his desk without losing eye contact with them, as if that would stop them noticing. And, Hepburn noticed with keen interest, he turned them face down.
‘Do sit down. Yes, I’m afraid you did catch my secretary tipping me off. If you run a nightclub you get very nervous when the police come round, even if your conscience is totally clear. What am I up for today?’
He gave them both a charming smile, lingering a little longer on Hepburn, though her stony expression didn’t suggest it was having the desired effect.
‘Anita Loudon’s murder,’ MacNee said with deliberate clumsiness, watching Lee’s smile vanish before he said, ‘Oh, sorry, sir, I don’t mean that, of course. I just meant that’s what we’re here about.’
Lee had recognised it as deliberate. His dark eyes were hard as he said smoothly, ‘Anita’s been murdered? I’m sorry to hear that. What a terrible thing – how did it happen? We’re old friends, you know, though I haven’t seen her in ages.’
‘When was the last time you saw her?’ Hepburn said.
‘I’d have to think hard about that one. Five years, more? I’ve got a business to run here, as you can see, so I’m afraid old friendships get neglected. You know how it is.’ He unwisely tried another rueful smile in Hepburn’s direction. This time her lip visibly curled, and he turned hastily back to MacNee.
‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can tell you, but of course I’m anxious to do anything that might help.’
‘When were you last in Dunmore?’ MacNee asked.
‘Dunmore? Oh, years and years! I couldn’t tell you exactly. Now I’m in Glasgow I don’t have any call to be back in the area, really.’
‘Despite being in a business consortium based at Cairnryan?’ Hepburn’s voice was cold. ‘Which has an AGM at Crichton’s offices there every year?’
MacNee looked at her with some respect. She’d done her homework on this and she’d got Lee rattled.
The smooth charm was fraying as he snapped, ‘Oh, yes, of course. I don’t think of Cairnryan as the same area, that’s all.’
‘And what is the business in this consortium?’ MacNee pressed him.
‘We all have different interests. It’s only that it suits us to double up on some services we all need – accountancy, business consultants, that sort of thing.’
He had started fiddling with a pen, avoiding direct eye contact. Hepburn was on to something there and MacNee nodded to her encouragingly.
‘I understand one of your partners is Grant Crichton, the father of the boy who was killed by Kirstie Burnside, one of your school friends when you were a child. Doesn’t that make for a tricky relationship?’
‘Not really. As you say, I was a child and a bystander – he was dead before I arrived on the scene. Grant’s a generous-minded man who wouldn’t bear a grudge for that all these years. I was very sorry for him and greatly admired the way he had borne his grief.’
‘You felt he had been greatly wronged?’
Lee shifted impatiently in his seat. ‘Well, yeah, obviously. Look, where are you going with all this?’
MacNee said, ‘Anita Loudon’s body was found in exactly the same place as Tommy Crichton’s was, suggesting that for some reason she had been killed in revenge for his death.’
‘And? What’s this about?’
‘You see,’ Hepburn explained kindly, ‘if you felt a great wrong had been done and that in some way Anita had been at the bottom of it, you might have felt you could put it right by killing her and putting her body in the same place.’
Lee jumped to his feet. ‘What sort of stupid game is this?’ he shouted. ‘You’re suggesting that as some sort of charitable act to Grant Crichton, I murdered an old friend? If it was revenge, you’d better look at him or his wife. How could you come up with the crazy idea that it’s something to do with me?’
‘Well, you see, sir,’ MacNee drawled, ‘it’s just that when we’re investigating a murder, if someone starts by telling us a lie – a great, stonking enormous lie – we kinna reckon it’s because he’s got something to hide.
‘We have a witness who has stated that you regularly visited Ms Loudon and the last time you did was the day before she was murdered.
‘I’m not arresting you as yet, but I’m inviting you to help the police with their enquiries by appearing at the Galloway Constabulary headquarters in Kirkluce first thing tomorrow morning. If you don’t appear by midday we’ll swear out a warrant.’
MacNee had thought him a good-looking man when first he saw him. Now the slim face with the eyes so dark that they were almost black seemed to have taken on a sharp, beady, rat-like cast.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Marnie Bruce parked her car on the shore of Clatteringshaws Loch it was late in the afternoon. Banks of purple-black clouds pierced by a startling streak of pale turquoise above the pewter-coloured waters of the loch gave it an almost unearthly light and she shivered as she left the warmth of the car to walk along to the cottage.
The road was busy at this time of night and the sweeping beams of the headlights gave erratic illumination. After a blast from an alarmed motorist she took to the verge, stumbling over snagging roots and almost twisting her ankle in an unnoticed ditch. She was half-sobbing by the time she reached the safety of the garden. The last time,
she vowed, the last time. By tomorrow she’d be in London.
Inside the house, it was pitch-dark. She groped her way to the kitchen, then had a fumbling search to find the matches for the camping light. She’d have to learn to keep them in the same place. If she was staying. Which of course she wasn’t.
Even once she got it lit, the pale gleam wasn’t comforting tonight. It just showed up the dismal, grubby hopelessness of everything about her, in a sort of reflection of her own life. Her journey of discovery about her past had been an exercise in futility, and worse.
Drax had reminded her that the police would be looking for her. She knew that already – ‘as a matter of urgency’, Fleming’s message had said – but since she hadn’t had anything to do with Anita’s death, they probably wouldn’t look very hard.
Marnie lit the stove and filled the kettle with hands that were numb with cold. She filled a hot-water bottle to warm them while she heated up a tin of soup she’d bought, along with a sandwich and a bar of chocolate. The long night stretched grimly ahead of her but once she’d eaten she’d go to bed where she would be warmer and if she could get to sleep at once she would wake early and get on her way.
There was just one thing. Her phone. She’d switched it off this morning and hadn’t looked at it since but she couldn’t ignore it for ever. Look on the bright side, she told herself, there could be a message to say they’d arrested someone and didn’t need to talk to her after all. As if.
An envelope in the corner told her she had a new message – three, when she checked. The first two she recognised as coming from DI Fleming; the other number was unfamiliar. Marnie hesitated.
Get the worst over first. She opened the top one on the list, which was simply a repeat of the message she’d accessed this morning. She deleted it and her finger was poised to delete the next one too when it occurred to her that it might be worth checking.
‘I urge immediate contact. More info about your mother now available.’
Marnie was totally taken aback. She read it again, with a sense of disbelief. She had begun to feel as if there was a sort of conspiracy of silence to frustrate her at every turn. Was it possible that just when she had given up all hope this, at last, was real progress?
Or was it a trap? She’d read in the papers that criminals were sometimes invited to some attractive event, simply so that they could be rounded up and arrested. Could she trust Fleming?
The only lie she was sure Fleming had told her was the social one about her mother’s character, a lie to soften a harsh opinion. But perhaps she had been clever enough to hide others.
The soup hissed up to the top of the pan and she had to grab it to stop it boiling over. She filled the mug and sat with her hands wrapped round it while she struggled with her thoughts.
There was still the other message. That was unexpected too.
It was from DC Hepburn, the young policewoman who’d talked to her first, and then come to take a statement after the Tuesday night horror. She’d seemed sympathetic, Marnie had thought at the time, but in a general, fairly pointless way.
The message read, ‘There’s something you need to know. Shouldn’t tell you but very important. Please – call me!’
She didn’t know what to make of that.
DC Hepburn fell asleep again on the way back. When she woke with a start the car was drawing up outside her house in Stranraer and DS MacNee was looking at her sternly.
‘I’m dropping you off here. You can get a lift back to Kirkluce tomorrow to fetch your car with one of the patrols but I don’t trust you to drive tonight.
‘You’re overdoing it, Louise. Being a young hell-raiser’s all fine and good – I was a wee bit of an expert myself – but you’ve a job to do and if you’re tired like that you’re not fit to do it.’
Still fuddled with sleep, Hepburn again had to fight back tears of exhaustion. ‘I wasn’t partying,’ she said defensively. ‘I just didn’t sleep very well last night, that’s all.’
MacNee’s expression changed and his voice was gentle as he said, ‘Got a problem, hen?’
The longing to tell, to talk, almost overwhelmed her but exposing her poor, confused mother would feel like betrayal. ‘Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t put right,’ she lied and saw in his face that he knew she had.
‘Louise—’ he began, but was interrupted by her phone ringing.
She glanced at it and recognised the number with a little frisson of excitement. She could hardly take this one in front of her sergeant. She switched it off, saying, ‘I’ll take it later,’ as she unbuckled her seat belt.
‘Thanks, Tam, it was kind of you to bring me back. I’ll get my head down really early, I promise.’
She was out of the car before he could reply, though she saw him give a suspicious look at her abrupt exit.
The house was completely dark. When she went in and started switching on lights, there was no sign of her mother downstairs. There was no sign, either, of the elaborate preparations for dinner she would normally be making at this time of day.
In bed, then? Louise climbed the stairs slowly, as if the burden of care and responsibility were physically bearing down on her, and quietly opened the door of her mother’s bedroom.
Graceful even in sleep, Fleur was wearing an eau de Nil silk nightgown, lying on her side with her cheek pillowed in her hand like a child. Wisps of hair that had escaped from the loose rope of hair she knotted at night framed her face.
It was a touching picture but Louise didn’t smile. Fleur had, of course, had a disturbed night too, but when she felt tired she had been able simply to put on her nightgown and go to bed – unlike some other people. And how long had she been asleep? Probably hours by now. She’d wake up quite sure it was morning, prepare breakfast and then come and wake Louise yet again in the middle of the night.
Oh, she was so, so tired! Every bit of her ached with exhaustion and if she didn’t get the proper night’s sleep she’d promised Tam she would, it would be even worse tomorrow.
Louise glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock. She could grab a quick sandwich and fall into bed to snatch whatever sleep she could before her mother woke up.
Not before she phoned Marnie Bruce though.
After the call from DC Hepburn Marnie took her hot-water bottle, picked up the camping lamp and went through to her bedroom. In a sort of daze she slipped off her outer clothing, put on a thick soft woolly and socks and climbed into her sleeping bag with a blanket over the top. She cuddled down, trying to restore feeling to her icy hands and feet, hoping the warmth might have an effect on her numbed brain too.
DC Hepburn had sounded both excited and nervous. ‘Marnie, thank you so much for agreeing to hear what I have to tell you. First of all, I need you to know that I want to help you.’
Marnie wasn’t sure if she wanted to be helped by DC Hepburn. ‘Oh?’
‘I know, I know, it’s what the police always say. But I really mean it. I believe in justice and I don’t believe you’ve had that.’
She was right there, but Marnie wasn’t interested in the discussion of abstract principles. ‘You said you had something to tell me.’
‘Yes …’ There was a pause, as if Hepburn was wondering whether to go on. ‘The thing is, if my bosses discovered I’d told you, my job would be on the line. I’m not saying you have to promise not to tell anyone before I give you the information, I’m just explaining so that you know what the result would be if you did.’
‘I … see.’ The woman was a fool, that was her problem.
‘I’m taking a big risk to persuade you to come to the police station and talk to us. It will be so, so much worse for you if we have to start looking. Do you see that?’
‘I think so.’ This was scaring her; Marnie felt like some small creature desperately snuffing at the air to sense the direction danger was coming from.
‘You know that Anita Loudon is dead – murdered?’
Marnie said nothing and Hepburn went on, ‘The reason
they’re so anxious to see you is that she made a will leaving everything to you.’
‘What?’ She didn’t know why she said that; she’d heard perfectly clearly. It was just she couldn’t connect the words up to any sort of meaning.
Hepburn repeated it more slowly. Then she said, ‘You see, if you just disappear they’ll track you down. Your name and description will be circulated to every police force in the country and it’ll be all over the media. Sooner or later they’ll find you and until then you’ll be afraid all the time, waiting for the knock on the door that will come one day. It’s no sort of life, Marnie.
‘I don’t believe you killed Anita – it just doesn’t add up. But because of her will, if you don’t give us your version of what happened, it could easily be assumed that you did. So will you please, please come and see DI Fleming tomorrow?’
Marnie wasn’t going to be bounced into anything while she was still suffering from shock. ‘I’ll think about it.’ Then she said, ‘What is it Inspector Fleming’s going to tell me about my mother?’
The line went quiet. Then Hepburn said, ‘She’s been in touch about that, has she? I think I’d better leave that to her. But it’s another good reason for coming in, Marnie, I promise.’
‘I suppose so,’ Marnie had said, then switched off the phone without saying goodbye.
Now as she lay in bed huddled down in the sleeping bag with the extra blanket pulled up over her ears, she tried to think through what had happened. Why would Anita have left everything to someone she’d known only briefly as a child? It made no sense.
Unless … unless – guilt? Was this a sort of pay-off for some unknown injury? Was Fleming going to tell her tomorrow that Anita had left a confession that she killed Marnie’s mother – and if so, how long would it be before she brought out the handcuffs and charged Marnie with a revenge killing?
She’d told herself that no one knew where she was, that she could vanish without a trace – but not once the police really started looking for her. She had nowhere to run to.
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