Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  Even so, it was again with some caution that he went to open the built-in wardrobes. They covered one wall and were quite big enough to provide a hiding place for someone who didn’t want to be found. One proved to be empty; the other held only a man’s clothes and shoes, including a pair of wellies caked in mud. But there was certainly no one hiding there, so it looked as if their quarry had fled, perhaps after seeing the results of his handiwork – if, indeed, it was his.

  Campbell went back downstairs, put on the waders again, wincing a little at the tight fit, and left the house. He cast a speculative glance at the garage, but without a warrant any evidence found would be inadmissible in court, so a search would be pointless, or even counterproductive.

  He ploughed through the mud back to Crozier’s Discovery, which Pilapil had suggested he should use. Kim would be at Keeper’s Cottage waiting for him to bring her, and with luck Alick Buchan too, back to Rosscarron House. He just hoped that she’d managed to sweet-talk him into coming quietly.

  As the sound of the car’s engine died away, the small man with thinning grey hair, crouched in darkness and nine inches of mud at the back of the cupboard under the stairs, let out the breath he seemed to have been holding since he heard the engine of the car he guessed must be from the police arriving. He was trembling uncontrollably, partly with cold and partly with fear.

  He groped his way to the door, fumbling for the handle, then tried to open it. It hadn’t been easy to close it in the first place, and now the pressure of the mud was holding it shut. For a panic-stricken moment he thought he was trapped, but another frantic shove got it open wide enough for him to wriggle through.

  He blinked in the daylight as his eyes adjusted. His lips tightened when he saw the damage to the door – but after all, what did it matter? The devastation round about him was only a reflection of the devastation of his own life.

  He waded to the stairs. He hadn’t even had time to put on his boots and now his socks and his trousers were filthy. He’d have to use some of the precious water remaining in the tank to clean his feet. He’d been sparing with it, but there couldn’t be much left by now, and anyway the man he had seen was just the vanguard: soon, others would follow. The neighbours would return to assess the damage; the clean-up operation would begin. What would he do then?

  He had no idea how it had come to this. After Margaret’s illness and death, it had been like a sort of madness, when the anger he’d felt about the unfairness of her suffering, and his own, had spilled over into rage directed first at the intrusion of noise and strangers on his quiet mourning, then the destruction caused by another man’s greed. And now his life was in terrifying chaos.

  He’d had an alcoholic friend once, a professional man who had lost job, home and family, and had eventually died on a cold night, sleeping wrapped in rags under an archway in a Glasgow backstreet. He and Margaret had marvelled sadly at how such a thing could happen. Yet here he was, in a worse position, even, than his friend, and he had been no more able to stop himself.

  There were still some of Margaret’s sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet and he had a bottle of whisky he’d salvaged from the cocktail cabinet. He was still too scared to take that way out, but perhaps as he became forced to accept that there was no other escape, he’d find the courage from somewhere.

  10

  Fleming held the phone a little away from her ear, pulling a face as, after the most perfunctory enquiry about her state of health, Bailey demanded to know what on earth was going on, in tones which suggested that in finding herself at the scene of a murder Fleming was in some sense culpable.

  The stickiest part came when they got on to actions taken last night after the discovery of the body.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Bailey said. ‘MacNee was policing the site, and Hay came to raise the alarm, but you haven’t told me what you were doing, Marjory.’

  She swallowed. ‘I’m afraid I had to go to bed.’

  There was an awful silence, then, ‘To bed?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I had concussion when the car crashed and I was quite simply unfit to continue.’

  Fleming could almost hear Bailey recalling the regulations about harassment. ‘I – see. But Marjory, the golden hour, when we have our best chance of good evidence, wasted!’

  ‘I agree, it was most unfortunate. But now I have officers in place . . .’

  She went on to describe the tasks she had allocated and her own activities – background checks to be made on Crozier, interviews to be done with family – and talked bullishly about Alick Buchan as the prime suspect.

  As always, Bailey liked the thought of a straightforward you’re-nicked-sunshine. ‘An early arrest and charge would certainly cover your back,’ he conceded, ‘but I have to say it’s looking a bit exposed at the moment.’

  Fleming didn’t need him to tell her that. She rang off feeling depressed and with a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She had let herself into Crozier’s study to have privacy for her phone call, and she looked around it now. There was a control deck for the house’s sound system, but apart from that the white, impersonal room told her almost nothing about the tastes of the man himself. It was clinically tidy, with a desk that had only a computer, a tray of pens and two wire baskets on its glass surface.

  Fleming wasn’t used to desks that looked like that. Though she could always find what she was looking for, her own could only be described as deep litter and in her heart of hearts she suspected that those who were always putting things away either hadn’t enough to do or had something to hide.

  With a pop festival meant to be going on right at this moment, Crozier would have had plenty to do, yet there was nothing in his out-tray, and his in-tray held half-a-dozen invoices and a couple of business letters.

  There was a huge cork board on one wall and here there were schedules, letters, lists and Post-it notes galore. Fleming squinted at a couple, one about a band called Zombie and the Living Dead with a technical specification that went over her head, another demanding plaintively what had happened to the running order for Saturday night. Certainly, they all related to the festival, but surely there should be more bumf than this?

  There was a bank of filing cabinets on another wall and Fleming went over to look. There were two marked, ‘Festival’; these were unlocked and she pulled them out, looking without much interest at files with labels like ‘Bands’, ‘Accommodation’ and ‘Lighting’.

  The drawers below were identified only by numbers and letters, and these, when she tugged experimentally at one or two, seemed to be locked. Pilapil, presumably, would have the keys, but she’d leave that until there was better-qualified manpower on hand to do an in-depth search. The computer would have to be checked out as well.

  Fleming was just turning away when she noticed that one drawer in the end stack was not fully closed. It was almost an invitation and she went back to pull it open.

  For a moment she stared at it, not quite understanding what she was seeing. Every file was empty, and the hangers had been put back so hurriedly that the drawer was unable to close properly. She pulled open others in that stack and the one next to it; they too were empty, though the sagging cardboard of the sides showed that they had not been unused.

  She felt sick and cold. Pilapil had, as requested, locked the study and given her the key last night, but she had been feeling too ill to think clearly. She should have demanded every key, and while she slept someone – or more than one person – had come in and cleared out – what?

  Something they didn’t want the police to see, that was for sure, but she didn’t know what it was, and now she couldn’t see how she was going to find out. There had been plenty of opportunity to destroy anything that needed destroying while she slept.

  Kershaw looked around the meagre kitchen of the Buchans’ cottage with a shock of pity. It was so bleak, so lacking in any sort of comfort! You were always hearing about poverty in the inner cities, but rural poverty was every
bit as wretched and often unsupported by charities and the ‘initiatives’ beloved of governments looking for the popular vote. There weren’t a lot of votes in country areas.

  Maidie Buchan certainly looked as if her life held no joy, or even hope. She took the keys of the jeep listlessly and said that her husband was out dealing with a blocked drain.

  That suited Kershaw perfectly. ‘Perhaps I could have a word with you while I’m waiting?’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Maidie looked flustered by the request. ‘You’d – you’d maybe better come through the house, then. Gran’s there, but . . .’

  In the sitting room, there was no sign of the missing girl, only an overweight elderly woman with a downturned mouth, squatting toad-like in a chair in the corner of the room.

  ‘Who’s this, then?’ she asked rudely, eyeing Kershaw as if she had brought a bad smell with her into the room.

  ‘It’s the police, Gran.’ She turned to Kershaw. ‘My mother-in-law, Ina Buchan.’

  She was immediately corrected. ‘Ina McClintock Buchan. I’m one of the Dundrennan McClintocks.’

  This conveyed nothing to Kershaw beyond the information that Ina was a snob – with, on the face of it, not much to be snobbish about. ‘Can you tell me—’

  Ina cut across her. ‘What are you wanting here, anyway?’

  Ignoring her, Kershaw said to Maidie, ‘Mrs Buchan, we’re looking for a girl who lived in the Rosscarron Cottages. Did she come here, the night of the landslip?’

  There was a snort from Mrs Buchan senior. ‘Oh aye, she came, all right. She’s still here. We can’t get rid of her.’

  Maidie went red. ‘We’ve been happy to give Beth shelter at a time like this,’ she said with some dignity, adding, in response to Kershaw’s raised eyebrows, ‘Beth Brown. She arrived in the middle of the night in a terrible state. She’d been out a walk and she was up above the cottages, sitting on the seat there just a wee minute before the ground collapsed and it went over. She was that shocked!’

  ‘And she’s still here?’

  ‘She’s away out with my wee boy – she’s awful good with him. She’ll likely be back soon.’

  ‘I’ll wait for her, if you don’t mind. Meanwhile, could I just ask you both what you were doing yesterday afternoon?’

  Ina’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you wanting to know that for?’

  Kershaw didn’t reply and Maidie said hastily, ‘We were both here all afternoon. Gran doesn’t get out much, and I’d a lot to do.’

  ‘And Beth was with you?’

  ‘Some of the time,’ Maidie was saying when Ina again interrupted.

  ‘She was out most of the afternoon. Sulking, most likely. She’s got quite a temper, that girl – walks out the room if you so much as look at her. And never said a word at tea last night – just glared. That’s not manners, is it? She was looking upset, mind you.’

  ‘Beth’s not wanting to stay here any more than you and Alick want to have her,’ Maidie retorted. ‘And it’s natural she’d be upset, after all that’s happened – her partner and everything.’

  ‘She knows about that?’ Kershaw asked.

  Maidie nodded. ‘It was Alick had to go into the house and he found the body. That was what set him off—’ She stopped, biting her lip, as Ina impaled her with a stare.

  Kershaw filed that away. ‘What time did he get back from Rosscarron House?’

  Maidie opened her mouth to speak, but Ina held up her hand imperiously. ‘Stop! You’re not saying another word till we’re told what all this is about.’

  They’d hear soon enough. Kershaw explained, and saw from Maidie’s stricken expression that not only did she now understand the thrust of the questioning, she was afraid that her husband might have killed his boss.

  Ina understood too. ‘Ridiculous!’ she snapped. ‘When my son comes back, you’ll talk to him yourself, no doubt, if you’ve no more sense than to think he might do a thing like that. But you’ll not get anything out of us to trap him with.’

  Kershaw was resigning herself to a silent wait when she heard someone coming into the house, and a child’s fractious wail.

  Maidie jumped to her feet. ‘That’ll be Beth with Calum,’ she said, heading for the kitchen. Through the open door, Kershaw could hear a woman’s voice saying, ‘He’s just miserable with his cold. Come on, Calum, I’ll wipe your nose for you and give you a cuddle.’

  The child’s wailing stopped. Maidie said, ‘There’s a policewoman here wants a word with you, Beth.’

  Beth’s voice, when she spoke after a silence of several seconds, sounded suddenly flat. ‘Right. I’ll go on through, then.’

  She appeared in the doorway, carrying a rosy-cheeked toddler with a pink nose and watering eyes, who was snuggling into her shoulder. She was a dark-haired girl who looked to be in her early twenties, with a sallow, rather pudgy face and light blue eyes – very round eyes, with a gap between the iris and the lower lid. Eyes as round as marbles . . .

  Taken by surprise, Kershaw blurted out, ‘I know you! You’re Lisa Stewart, aren’t you?’

  The girl who had called herself Beth Brown shrank back as if she had been struck. There was a cry of triumph from Ina.

  ‘I knew I recognised her! You know who this is, Maidie? You know who you’ve been trusting with my grandchild? She’s the one who put that baby out in the rain to die, then got off with it. Get your murdering hands off that child this minute!’

  Calum’s mother’s face registered shock and uncertainty. Kershaw could see Maidie fighting her immediate impulse to snatch her precious boy from the other woman’s arms.

  Beth – no, Lisa, saw it too. Blindly, she thrust Calum at Maidie and began to cry with great heaving sobs.

  ‘I didn’t do it – I would never hurt a child! Never, never!’

  Calum, looking bewildered, began to wail again. It was to Kershaw’s considerable relief that she saw through the window the Discovery drawing up outside.

  Declan Ryan was, without a doubt, a nasty piece of work.

  Fleming was working from the conference room, conducting the interviews she wanted to do before going back to headquarters.

  She had started with Cara. She would be a pretty woman, Fleming thought, with her fair hair and baby-blue eyes, if it weren’t for the bad skin – the result, no doubt, of whatever was cushioning her from reality.

  She was tearful, admittedly, but she spoke in a gentle, emotionless voice. ‘I can’t believe my father’s gone. And who would kill him? He was a lovely man.’

  The interview hadn’t taken long. Cara couldn’t think of an enemy he had in the world, and asking her about times proved equally futile: she vaguely thought that she and Nico had probably watched a film together and agreed to the suggestion that it might have been Harry Potter, but that apparently was the limit of her recollection. When Fleming said the sitting room had been empty when she came downstairs, Cara frowned for a moment, then said they might have gone upstairs, but she couldn’t really remember.

  Ryan, in contrast, was totally on the ball. Below the floppy blond hair, his eyes, which were the merest fraction too close together, were sharply watchful, reminding her of Pilapil’s description of him as a jackal. He came in wearing a cocky smirk, skinny jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘I was Keith Richards’s drug dealer.’ He was definitely waiting for her to notice it.

  Fleming looked at him coolly. ‘Wind-up-the-pigs time, is it, Mr Ryan? Wasted on me, I’m afraid.’

  With some satisfaction, she saw she had read his mind and it had thrown him. The smirk disappeared and his ‘First thing that came to hand, actually’ was definitely defensive.

  Not tough enough, then, to say, ‘Absolutely. So what?’ Was the cockiness a cover for weakness? She thought it showed in his face. Following up her advantage, Fleming said, ‘Since you’ve brought up the topic, where does your wife get her drug supply?’

  He was prepared for that with a smart answer. ‘From the pharmacy, actually. She suffers fro
m depression. And don’t worry about the “Mr Ryan” part. We were all chums together last night, Marjory.’ He gave her a false smile as he sat down opposite.

  She squirmed inwardly at the implication of intimacy; being a guest in the house had certainly diminished her effectiveness. She selected her next weapon with care.

  ‘I prefer to keep this official, Mr Ryan. I gather you and your father-in-law didn’t get on?’

  ‘Who told you that? There was nothing wrong with our relationship.’ Anger put an ugly twist on his mouth, but it gave way to petulance. ‘Oh, you got that from dear little Cris, I suppose. Jealous as a cat, you know, because I’m family and he isn’t. Always hoped his charms would persuade Gillis to make a will signing everything over to him, but my beloved pa-in-law wasn’t that way inclined. It’s a family business anyway.’

  ‘And what, exactly, is that business?’ Fleming waited for the reply with considerable interest.

  Ryan pushed his chair away from the table and leaned back in it, stretching out his crossed legs and putting his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Oh, promotion, mainly, but Gillis had a finger in lots of pies. The venture into property wasn’t his smartest move, though, and now the festival’s completely doomed. He was losing his touch, frankly. Better as a Mr Fix-It, putting people together, you know? That sort of thing.’

  Fleming didn’t know, really, but what she did know was that the ostentatious relaxation of Ryan’s position was completely at odds with the tension that came across in his voice, and the twitching of a muscle at his temple, too, suggested stress. The business would be checked out later, but meantime there was something else she wanted to know, if he would tell her – which was unlikely.