Bad Blood

by Aline Templeton

  The fear struck her in overwhelming waves. Someone wants to kill me! I’m going to die!

  Then she’s running, falling, getting up again, being pulled back by things clutching at her clothes and her face is sore from a scratch and she puts her hand up – she’s bleeding and she starts to sob in sheer fright and it’s hot, too hot.

  The water! The water was too cold before for … something … but it needs to be cold now and she needs to hide, hide—’

  Her shoulder was being shaken and she gasped as she came back to the overheated, stuffy room.

  MacNee was looking alarmed. ‘I think I should get someone—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. I just get these sort of flashbacks when it’s all happening over again in my mind and I’m back there. It’s standard. I can’t stop them but they pass.’

  He was looking at her with sudden interest. ‘I’ve heard about this,’ he said. ‘You mean you can go back, remember what happened?’

  She took a long drink of water. ‘Yes. But there isn’t anything helpful. I went round it several times last night. Didn’t hear a noise, didn’t see a number plate – just ran.’

  Marnie could see the disappointment in his face. She’d seen that look before, on DI Fleming’s face when she’d asked about the night Marnie had been hit on the head, as if they thought she’d some sort of mystical ability.

  ‘I can only remember things I actually saw,’ she told him flatly.

  ‘Aye, of course – that would be right,’ he said. ‘OK, let’s leave that. Who knew where you were staying?’

  She could answer that. ‘DI Fleming. Not precisely, I just told her it was an old cottage – which wouldn’t be much help to anyone who might want to kill me, and I doubt if she would pass it on anyway.’

  Her tone was sarcastic and the sergeant smiled. ‘Likely not. Are you sure? No one?’

  She took time to think. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, it came: her romantic interpretation of the young Asian waiting in the car park in the little grey car with the dented wing. The car had pulled out behind her as she left. She’d driven through Glasgow after that, concentrating desperately on her route home, and by the time she got down to any smaller road the winter dusk had set in and all she would have seen in her rear-view mirror was headlights.

  ‘There was this car …’ she said.

  The crowd was roaring, baying him on. The Samoan defenders were huge, roadblocks each one of them, as the Scotland winger streaked up the pitch. There were too many – he couldn’t make it – ten yards, five yards, three, two—

  He jinked as the crunching tackle came. He went down, but not before he had flipped the ball back over his shoulder. And Cameron Fleming, her Cammie, was there to take it and in a blind charge for the line took it across and downed it.

  She was screaming, crying tears of pride, but luckily no one would notice because everyone round about her was yelling too. Bill had flung up his arms with a full-throated roar of triumph and Cat was shrieking at the top of her voice, dancing about. She turned to Marjory.

  ‘That’s my wee brother there!’ she shouted in her ear and grabbed her in an embrace.

  It was only as Marjory disengaged herself that she saw the look on Cat’s face. She was looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Oh God, Mum,’ she said. ‘Dad!’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They were all over the container lorry the moment it drove off the boat at Cairnryan. Watching the activity from his office window DCI Nick Alexander saw the driver escorted away between port authority officials, looking bewildered – whether genuinely or otherwise. One of his detectives climbed into the cab then jumped down again, clutching a file of documents as he nodded to an official to drive the lorry off into a hangar.

  Alexander was unconsciously rubbing his hands as he turned away from the window and waited for the evidence to start arriving.

  DS MacNee sat at a desk in the CID room, feeling intense frustration as he eyed the envelopes still lying there, unopened.

  He looked at his watch impatiently. He didn’t know anything about rugby, but surely a game couldn’t go on for more than three hours? It was half past two now, and he’d tried Fleming’s phone twice in the last half-hour without success.

  Marnie Bruce was getting restless. She’d been asking when she would be free to go and of course they’d no right to keep her if she decided to walk out. He’d gone down himself to apologise for the delay and say it wouldn’t be long now, if she could just bear with him, but he was beginning to feel irritated. Family pride was all very well but surely Fleming could take a minute to check her phone?

  He tried it again, heard the impersonal voice at the other end and switched it off, swearing.

  They sat in silence in the hospital waiting room. The cheerful curtains and pictures and the upholstered chairs were obviously a well-meant attempt at cosiness but somehow the effect was of an unconvincing sitting-room stage set ready for some cheesy drama to be played out, Fleming thought. Blank walls and hard surfaces would have felt more appropriate to tragedy.

  Cat, white-faced and shocked, was dry-eyed but every few minutes she would give a convulsive sob. Marjory herself felt strangely detached: her head seemed too light, as if it might float away from her body. They were sitting side by side, but after the first clinging together as Bill – so still, so grey – was removed with impressive efficiency they had withdrawn as if locking themselves into their own misery was the only way they could cope.

  As Marjory was driving out to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, forcing herself to concentrate on the road ahead, which seemed more like a film projected in front of her than reality, Cat had said, her teeth chattering, ‘At least it happened there, with paramedics on hand, not somewhere up on the sheep walks.’

  ‘Getting to him right away – that’s the important thing. He’ll be fine.’ Marjory managed to form the words but she couldn’t manage conviction. After that there was nothing more to say.

  Now they were waiting for Cammie. The game, of course, had gone on but by now they would have told him and the joy of his triumphant try would be for ever extinguished.

  He would take it badly. Cat and Marjory were alike, self-possessed and contained, but Cammie didn’t bottle up his emotions the same way. This would devastate him and Marjory was already summoning up her reserves to produce the comforting he would need. She would have to be very strong for him – and that was hurried footsteps in the corridor outside now. She stood up, ready.

  Cammie appeared in the doorway. He seemed to take up most of it; a towering figure in a tracksuit hastily thrown on over his filthy rugby strip. His face and hands were still caked with mud and there was a huge reddening bruise under his cheekbone.

  ‘Oh, Cammie,’ Marjory faltered, and felt tears start to her eyes for the first time.

  He looked down at her from his superior height, then swept her into an embrace. ‘Come on, Mum!’ he said. ‘Can’t have this – he’s going to be fine! Of course he is.’ He looked over her head at his sister, holding out one arm and Cat too, crying now, came and clung to him.

  After a moment he shifted. ‘Right, girls, that’s enough. There are tissues over there. You’ve got mud all over your face, Mum.’

  Shakily, Marjory laughed and did as she was told. It could have been Bill himself talking.

  ‘I’d a word with one of the paramedics at the stadium,’ Cammie said, ‘and he said he’d seen a lot worse and the crucial thing was prompt treatment – Dad certainly got that. No one’s giving out guarantees, but you can take this two ways. You can be upbeat or you can look on the black side – it won’t make any difference either way, but you’ll feel better on the way through.’

  Cat had recovered her composure. ‘My wee brother – the philosopher!’ she mocked him. ‘Played not a bad game of rugby as well, from the bit I saw.’

  Cammie grinned. ‘We won, too. I’m just telling you so that if we get called in to see Dad, you’ll be able to tell him because
it’s the first thing he’ll ask.’

  For just a moment, his voice shook and Marjory looked at him anxiously. But then he sat down and started telling them about coming off the pitch and being told what had happened.

  She’d been still thinking of him as a boy, but Cammie was all grown-up, ready to step in as the man of the family – temporarily, please God, but remembering what he had said she firmly suppressed the chilling thought that it might not be.

  There was a clock on the wall and suddenly Marjory noticed the time. She’d said to Tam she would check in later – she’d better call and tell him what had happened. She picked up her handbag, then felt Cat’s eyes upon her, cold and hard.

  ‘You’re going to phone the station,’ Cat said. ‘Right now, when we don’t know if Dad’s going to pull through, you’re thinking about the bloody job?’

  ‘Cat, I have to let Tam know what’s happened.’ She knew she was sounding defensive.

  ‘I’ll do that. If you do it, you’ll get involved in whatever’s going on. Give me the phone.’ She held out her hand.

  Marjory took the phone out of her bag slowly. ‘I won’t,’ she said, but she knew that if she spoke to Tam she wouldn’t be able to cut him off. ‘It would just be better if I explain—’

  ‘Choose,’ Cat said. ‘If you don’t give it to me, I’ll never forgive you, ever.’

  Cammie was sitting with his head bent. He didn’t look at her.

  Wordlessly, she held the phone out to her daughter.

  MacNee put the phone down and groaned. His first thought, of course, was for Bill, the hardy son of rustic toil, as he’d always called him – not so hardy, perhaps. These big men, reaching middle age carrying a bit of excess weight: not good. He looked down at his own spare, wiry frame for reassurance.

  Fleming must really be taking it hard. Cat had said she wasn’t even able to speak to him – though from her hostile tone he wouldn’t put it past her just to have confiscated her mother’s phone. He’d never had much time for Cat Fleming – a skelped bottom at an early age might have done her a lot of good.

  Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, this left him in a right mess. Cat had given no indication at all when her mother would be able to speak to him and investigations couldn’t just grind to a standstill meantime. There were the envelopes on his desk, just for a start.

  Running to the super about this would feel like telling tales and MacNee was no clype. But it didn’t sound as if Fleming would be leaping back into the job any time soon and Rowley would have to step in. The thought of answering directly to Hyacinth, without Fleming to act as a buffer, made his blood run cold but it had to be done. He picked up the phone.

  ‘Oh – MacNee! Well, what is it? This had better be important. I’m very busy.’

  It wasn’t a promising beginning. ‘Sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid it is,’ he said and explained the situation, without mentioning that Fleming had been unofficially in Edinburgh at the time.

  There was a silence at the other end of the phone, then Rowley said, ‘Oh, really! That’s too bad.’

  MacNee had a nasty feeling that she wasn’t talking about Bill’s heart attack.

  ‘Of course I’m sorry this should have happened, but it couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time. I’m just packing to go to an important meeting in London – with MI5, you know.’ She dropped the name with an almost audible clang. ‘They want a report from me about our progress up here so I can’t possibly cancel now.

  ‘You’ll just have to cope as best you can. No doubt Fleming will be back tomorrow – it’s her husband that’s ill, not her, and she’s responsible for a murder investigation, after all.’

  The easiest thing would be to agree, but MacNee was far from certain that she would – and if the worst happened, she certainly wouldn’t. ‘There’s another SIO, isn’t there? Perhaps we could draft him in meantime,’ he suggested.

  ‘No we can’t,’ Rowley snapped. ‘He’s up to his eyes in a case of racially aggravated assault – you can’t take someone off a racist investigation. Surely you can manage?’

  ‘Managing’ was one thing. Taking over an investigation, making the decisions that would be subject to scrutiny, risking disaster if they were the wrong ones – that was different. MacNee had opted to stay in the sergeant’s job because he had never fancied the responsibilities that ran Fleming ragged.

  He had another try. ‘Maybe the Dumfries force has someone they could spare for a few days—’

  ‘Dumfries?’ Rowley screeched. ‘Are you mad? What would that say about me – that I couldn’t manage to staff my own murder investigation? Are you saying that you’re incompetent, MacNee?’

  What could he say but no? Her voice was triumphant as she said, ‘That’s settled, then. You’re in charge until Fleming returns. I’ll be at the end of the phone if necessary, but only if necessary – I’ll be very busy.

  ‘Thank you very much, Tam. It will be good experience for you – professional development, you know?’

  MacNee didn’t actually slam the phone down on her immediately but his response before he did was brief. Disgusted by her lack of professionalism and feeling faintly sick, he reviewed the situation.

  Hyacinth’s behaviour broke every rule in the book. He could go over her head and cause trouble but any investigation would throw up Fleming’s absence from duty. Anyway, whistle-blowers seldom prospered.

  So he’d have to take it on, hoping that it would, indeed, only be for a day or so. He needed to plan for the worst, though.

  The lab results would come through soon and any evidence would have to be analysed, acted on and followed up. Grant Crichton would have to be interviewed in the light of his wife’s change of story but the budget decision had been not to bring officers in on overtime today, so that would have to wait until Monday. He’d been planning himself to go and turn the screws a wee bit on Shelley Crichton; he’d been struck by her friend’s unease about her response to Anita’s murder – and he mustn’t forget to arrange for uniforms to go and do a scare job on Lorna Baxter. It was possible that something might come of that.

  And then there were the letters. He looked down at them, lying on the desk in front of him. He had every right now to satisfy his curiosity; all he had to do was take them along to Marnie Bruce and ask her to open them.

  Then what? Fleming had flagged up the problem of her likely reaction and MacNee was well aware that his record for putting the frighteners on people was better than his record for comforting the distressed.

  Perhaps it needed a woman’s touch. If Louise wasn’t out partying again maybe she could come in. And if that meant blowing the budget without authorisation he’d be happy to discuss it with Hyacinth when she got back from her own preferred kind of partying.

  The young registrar who came at last to talk to the Flemings was almost as tall as Cammie, with dark hair and a cheerful expression. Marjory tried to still her thumping heart; surely he would look more sombre if the news was bad?

  He introduced himself, then said, ‘I’m pleased to say he’s doing very well.’

  Such beautiful words! She was struggling with tears again, of relief this time, and she heard Cammie give a sort of long sigh and his shoulders sagged, as if he had been squaring them rigid to hold himself together.

  Cat, still tense as a drawn bowstring, said sharply, ‘What exactly does that mean?’

  The young man turned to her. ‘He had a heart attack caused by a clot blocking one of the coronary arteries. The good news is there was no further damage since he got such immediate treatment. He was at Murrayfield when it happened, I gather.’

  He turned to Cammie. ‘I guess you were on the pitch? It was the Scotland Under 20s today, wasn’t it?’

  Cammie nodded. ‘My first game for them.’

  ‘I turn out for Edinburgh Accies Thirds when I can. How did it go?’

  ‘We won, 7–3.’

  ‘Great! Who scored?’

  ‘Well … I did.’ Cammie tried to s
ound modest and failed.

  Sensing that an explosion was building in Cat, Marjory stepped in hastily. ‘So what happens now, Doctor?’

  ‘We’ll be doing an angioplasty – fitting a stent to keep the artery open. It’s not a major op, just a local anaesthetic and then if all goes well we might keep him in just for a night.’

  Marjory only realised that her own shoulders had been hunched up around her ears as she felt them relax. ‘And after that?’

  ‘That should fix it. He’ll have some medication, at least to start with, and his GP will advise about statins but after that it’s mainly a question of diet and exercise, losing a bit of weight, maybe. Has he been in the habit of eating healthily?’

  Conscious of the fry-up only that morning, Marjory made a non-committal noise. ‘We’ll certainly see to it that he does now – and that he doesn’t overdo it. His farmworker’s been laid up and he was absolutely exhausted this last bit. He put it down to old age but he’ll have to take it easier now.’

  She wished she hadn’t said it when she saw a cloud pass over Cammie’s face. ‘Not that it’s a problem,’ she added hastily.

  ‘He’ll probably feel fitter than he has for years,’ the doctor said. ‘Worst thing he could do is start sitting around thinking of himself as an invalid. He’s been lucky enough to get this as a warning and if he makes the sensible changes we outline he’ll be absolutely fine.

  ‘You can look in to see him now, but then I suggest you go back home. We’ll want him to have a good rest before the operation tomorrow.’

  It was a shock to see Bill lying there, linked up to machines and drips and somehow looking smaller. Marjory heard Cat give a sharp little gasp of dismay and she found it hard herself to look suitably cheerful.

  Bill, though he looked very strained and shaken, was smiling bravely. ‘Sorry about that. Must have given you a hell of a fright,’ he said, then, ‘What happened?’ He wasn’t talking about his own dramatic collapse.