Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  Could that be the chilling indifference of the psychopath? It was possible, certainly, but observing the girl, Fleming was reminded of something she had read about detachment as a symptom of psychological distress – a learned defence against intolerable reality. Lisa’s calm seemed almost trance-like, and the harder MacNee pushed, the more remote she seemed to become.

  With faint stirrings of sympathy, Fleming leaned forward. She knew how to use her voice effectively and when she said, ‘Lisa, you’ve had some dreadful experiences lately,’ it was very soft and very warm. ‘You must be feeling shaken.’

  Lisa’s head whipped round. She met the inspector’s clear hazel eyes, and for a second her own filled with tears. She blinked them away, and it was as if a veil came down. ‘Naturally,’ was all she said, and she said it coldly, but it told Fleming that her assessment had been right.

  Joss Hepburn came downstairs late. Breakfast never featured in his life, but at a certain stage coffee became essential and he headed for the kitchen. As he passed the sitting room, he heard Declan Ryan’s raised voice. ‘I know, I know. But we have to wait.’ Hepburn went quietly on.

  In the kitchen, there was no sign of Cris Pilapil, but others had breakfasted and no one had cleared afterwards. There were plates, bowls and mugs on the table, along with a pack of butter still in its wrapper and a jar of jam with a sticky knife laid beside it. There were crumbs everywhere and someone had spilled milk without wiping it up. Hepburn wrinkled his nose; he abhorred messiness of all kinds, whether physical or emotional.

  Still, at least the room was empty. While the espresso machine sputtered and gurgled to produce his fix, he gathered up the debris and dumped it by the sink, then wiped the table.

  He needed out. Now. Every instinct was screaming flight, but there were other pressures. Till he was sure everything had calmed down, he mustn’t do anything to court attention. And Madge had been showing a thoroughly unhealthy interest in the business; until she could be distracted or diverted, they were all at risk.

  It was getting to him, though, making him feel stifled. It was just like old times, before he’d escaped to the wide skies and the sunshine and the promise of the New World. He had felt cramped by the smallness and sameness of everything, the little towns where nothing had changed for a hundred years, and where they liked it that way.

  And here he was back, an international star, which didn’t change anything when you were stuck with this – the dismal weather, the isolation, the weirdness of a house that felt like a hotel with no staff, the other inmates.

  Oh, yes, the other inmates. He had just poured his coffee into a satisfyingly thin white porcelain cup, found an ashtray and lit up a cigarette when the kitchen door opened and Nico Ryan appeared.

  Hepburn sat down, eyeing him with distaste. ‘Hi,’ he said, as discouragingly as he could.

  Nico marched over and stood in front of him, a little too close. It was a habit he had; Hepburn pushed his chair a few inches further back.

  ‘That’s going to kill you, you know.’ Nico pointed at the cigarette. ‘Your lungs are going black already and you’ll start coughing them up in little bloody bits until you can’t breathe any more. I saw a film.’

  ‘I’ll risk it. And I might even survive longer than you do, if you go around being fresh like that.’ Now it had been suggested, Hepburn could feel a tickle developing, but he wasn’t going to give the monster child the satisfaction of hearing him cough. He cleared his throat.

  Nico was gleeful. ‘There you are. It’s started already. It’s probably too late for you by now.’

  ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do than stand there annoying me?’ Hepburn exhaled, making no attempt to divert the smoke.

  ‘No.’

  The boy’s unflinching stare was becoming positively uncomfortable. ‘Why don’t you go and find your mum and dad? Or Cris?’

  Nico still didn’t move. ‘Mum’s going on at Dad. Dad’s shouting. They put me out. And I hate Cris. He won’t obey my orders, even now my granddad’s dead. Anyway, why are you staying in my house? I don’t like you.’

  ‘Is it your house?’ Hepburn enquired with mild interest.

  ‘It will be. It’s my mum’s now, but when she’s dead, it’ll be mine. I’ll like that.’

  Presumably he didn’t mean he’d like his mum being dead, though with Nico you couldn’t be entirely sure. ‘I promise I won’t come to stay when it belongs to you. And I shall be leaving the minute I can, I assure you.’

  Hepburn finished his coffee, stubbed out his cigarette and got up. Even his bedroom, which had begun to feel like a cell, would be better than this. Perhaps he could risk driving to Kirkluce and demanding to have his formal statement taken at once because he had business to do in London. That would sound reasonable enough. Indeed, it was true. He was worried about what might happen at the other end of the operation. Or at this end, come to that.

  ‘If you’re looking for something to do, you could always clear up the breakfast dishes,’ he said over his shoulder as he left the room, then winced as he heard a crash behind him. Nico’s favoured method of clearing up was apparently unorthodox.

  Kershaw was feeling low today. She had got up early so that she’d have time to look in and see Debbie on her way to work. Debbie was at her best first thing in the morning, more alert and sometimes smiling in what her mother could convince herself was recognition. You needed these small boosts to keep positive, but today the little girl had still been asleep after a restless night.

  And now, when the station was awash with stories that Lisa Stewart was involved in another murder, where was Kershaw? In front of a computer terminal, collating reports and reading through statements, that was where she was.

  Who was it who had alerted the boss to Lisa in the first place? Yeah, right. But who had she taken to the crime scene with her? MacNee. It wasn’t fair, but then, she couldn’t claim that anything in her own experience had suggested that life would be fair. Kershaw gave a deep sigh and went back to her task.

  The more she went into it, the clearer it became that Jamieson wasn’t a murderer. Casual about other people’s safety, yes: a report in this morning confirmed that his chainsaw had destroyed the bridge, and he’d probably severed the phone line as well, though they hadn’t as yet found the cutters he would have needed, or even a ladder. But a statement from a neighbour confirmed that he had been at home on the afternoon and evening of the landslip, not along at Rosscarron Cottages killing Mr X. So unless you reckoned the murders were unrelated, he was in the clear.

  Which, along with this latest development, put Lisa Stewart in the frame fair and square. When they brought her in, Kershaw decided she was going to ask Big Marge if she could be involved in the questioning. She reckoned she’d shown insight into the way the woman thought, and surely Fleming would agree it was only fair.

  Fair! There she went again, still a cock-eyed optimist in spite of everything.

  ‘Sir! Could I have a word?’ DS Macdonald stopped DI John Purves as they met in a corridor.

  Purves was in his forties, a dark, thin-faced man with heavy brows, who went about his administrative responsibilities with quiet efficiency, and covered for his colleague Fleming when her duties as a senior investigating officer took her away from deskwork.

  ‘Sure, Andy. What’s the problem?’

  Macdonald looked up and down the corridor. A Force civilian assistant was coming towards them and Macdonald jerked his head. ‘In private, maybe?’

  Purves raised his brows. ‘If you say so. My office?’

  As Purves shut the door and waved him to a seat, Macdonald said, ‘I’ve got an authorised CHIS with a story to tell. I’m reporting to you as my controller.’

  ‘Good man!’ Purves was pleased. The guidelines for dealing with covert human intelligence sources were tight nowadays, with designated handlers in contact with them, controllers to ensure the contact didn’t become too friendly, formal contracts, and firewalls everywhere. If there was th
e smallest infringement of the rules by an overenthusiastic handler, it could compromise any evidence obtained. ‘So what’s for sale?’

  ‘Won’t tell me. He wants to talk to DI Fleming.’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Purves shook his head. ‘We have to follow arm’s-length principles. It should be filtered through you, then me, so we have a sterile corridor and neither she nor I knows who he is. Source-protection rules.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. He says he won’t speak except to her. He was on a charge a while ago, and apparently she passed on to his brief something that got him off. He claims she’s the only honest copper he knows.’

  Purves sighed. ‘We’ll pass over the slur on you and me. How good is the material anyway? What level of payment will he be expecting?’

  Macdonald told him and he whistled. ‘That high up the scale, eh? Is he a realist?’

  ‘I’d say so. He’s got a lot of contacts with Glasgow, and he’s given us useful small stuff before, but nothing on the scale he’s suggesting now. And I tell you something else – he’s scared this time, really scared. He needs the money – in debt to someone with unsympathetic methods of getting it back, I’d reckon – but he wants to be sure that if he needs to disappear, we’ll look after him.’

  Purves’s beetling brows shot up. ‘As hot as that?’

  ‘He seems to think so. From his reaction there are big guys involved.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Purves thought for a moment. ‘Did he just come up with this out of the blue?’

  ‘Apparently he heard a whisper up in Glasgow that we’re interested in what’s been going on at Rosscarron House.’

  ‘Gillis Crozier’s place?’ The brows were working overtime. ‘So it’s about the murders?’

  ‘Apparently not. I asked him and what he said was that it wasn’t about murder – yet. He could just be bigging it up. But he defin-itely won’t tell anyone except DI Fleming, like I said. I don’t know how we arrange that.’

  ‘With extreme difficulty. Permissions, forms, risk assessments – you can imagine. But at least it’s easier if it’s about something else – if it was about these killings, as SIO she couldn’t be in contact. I’ll have to talk to the super.’

  As Macdonald got up to go, Purves added, ‘But just see you depress his expectations, Andy. We’re on a budget.’

  ‘I’m telling you this,’ Moira Wishart said theatrically, ‘you’re not keeping me here. I’m away to Paisley to stay with my sister. I’m not spending another night in this place until you have whoever did it under lock and key. I couldn’t sleep easy in my bed.’

  Moira was making the most of her fifteen minutes of fame, looking from one detective to the other to judge her effect. Her hand was permanently pressed to her heaving bosom, and she would clearly be in her element once the press arrived. That could be anytime now.

  ‘How very wise, Mrs Wishart,’ Fleming said warmly. ‘Indeed, provided you leave your sister’s number with us, I see no reason why you shouldn’t go immediately. How many guests are staying at the moment?’

  ‘Just Miss Brown. The other gentleman’s left already.’

  Fleming nodded. The gentleman in question, shaken already, had become almost tearful at the notion of having to stay longer. He was driving back to Leeds, so they had interviewed him first, taken his business card and allowed him to go, since his evidence was only that he had gone to bed early, closed the curtains without looking out and slept till morning.

  ‘We’ll find somewhere else for Miss Brown,’ Fleming assured her. ‘But you’re quite, quite certain that when you locked up at about ten o’clock last night, there was nothing in the garden?’ In deference to Moira’s sensibilities, she avoided the word ‘body’.

  ‘The body, you mean? Oh, no. Like I said, I went to put out some rubbish in the bin and walked right past where it would have been. But I’ll tell you something.’ Moira looked round conspiratorially, as if someone might have joined them in the little sitting room unnoticed. ‘That girl was in here last night after I went to bed. I couldn’t shift her to go to her own room so I could lock up and put off the fire – not that she was needing a fire in July. And this morning, with all that going on, she was as cool as a cucumber. Funny, I thought that was.’

  Lisa Stewart was lying on her bed with her face buried in her pillow. She wanted to scream, but all she dared do was groan out her despair and fear, trusting that it would be muffled.

  Still, she had got through it somehow. She had stuck to her story, she hadn’t cracked, and if she had come up here afterwards and been violently sick, they weren’t to know.

  She’d deleted her ‘Sent’ message. Could they find it again? She didn’t know. They hadn’t got Lee’s phone, anyway: she’d taken it from him and hidden it under a loose floorboard, in case they searched her.

  From somewhere she had got the strength to say steadily that she didn’t know him, again and again, without a tremor in her voice. Perhaps it had helped that it was, at least in one way, true.

  They’d spoken to the other guest first and he’d told Lisa when he came out that they said it was someone called Damien Gallagher. She didn’t know anyone called Damien Gallagher. She knew someone called Lee Morrissey. And also Jazza, apparently.

  There was a knock on her door. Lisa sat up, quivering. ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I come in?’ It was the inspector’s voice, and she turned the handle as she spoke.

  Lisa had taken the precaution of locking the door. ‘Just a minute,’ she said, and went to check herself in the mirror above the washbasin. Her face was ashen but showed no other signs of her emotional turmoil. Her hair was wild, though. She combed it, splashed her face and pinched her cheeks, swilled water round her mouth and then went to the door.

  DI Fleming was alone. ‘I’m sorry about this, but Mrs Wishart is closing the guest house. I’m afraid you’ll have to find somewhere else to stay.’

  That, at least, was good news. Lisa had been afraid they would insist on her remaining here.

  Fleming was going on, ‘There are a few other guest houses in Kirkluce, but I have to warn you that the press will be arriving in force anytime now and it wouldn’t take them long to find you. We will be asked for the names of the residents here and I’m afraid, since we know your real name, we won’t be able to give them an alias.’

  Without warning, it came back to Lisa: the rattle of cameras, the flickering flashes, the babble of shouted questions, the waves of hatred, which in themselves were like an assault. Her legs threatened to give way and she leaned against the doorway as she fought for control.

  ‘I – see.’ Her voice was strangled. ‘So what should I do?’

  That might even be pity in the inspector’s face. ‘Have you family you could go to? We would have to know exactly where you were.’

  Lisa shook her head helplessly. And then she remembered. ‘One of your officers gave me a card. It’s my neighbour from the cottages, Dr Forbes – she said I could go to the hotel where she’s staying if I’d nowhere else.’

  She had a sudden picture of Jan Forbes, solid, kindly, reassuring. She’d only said hello to her a couple of times, but she had a smile that made you feel she was a good, honest person. Honest – oh, how tired Lisa was of lies, lies, lies!

  Perhaps if no one knew where she was, she would feel safe. Perhaps she would be able to sleep if she wasn’t always frightened. She was tired, so tired.

  ‘DC Kershaw, was it? That sounds all right,’ the inspector said. Then, her voice hardening, she added, ‘But you must not move from that address without informing us. Is that clear?’

  ‘Right.’ Lisa nodded.

  As soon as the inspector left, she collected her few belongings and put them into her tote bag. She lifted the floorboard cautiously and picked up the mobile phone, holding it between thumb and forefinger as if to distance herself from it, then dropped it into her bag with a shudder.

  Once this is over, she promised herself, I shall find a hilltop where no one can hear me and scream and
scream and scream.

  15

  ‘Is it urgent, John? As you can imagine . . .’ Fleming spoke into the phone, flapping her hand at her cluttered desk as if DI Purves, at the other end, could see it, then listened to what he had to say. ‘How extraordinary!’ she said at last. ‘I’ve no idea who that could be. Anyway, come on up.’

  As she waited for her colleague, she mentally scanned her ‘Villains I Have Known’ file, but no one stood out. The principle of full disclosure of evidence to the defence might not be universally honoured by the police force, but since Fleming always tried to be scrupulous, the CHIS’s compliment didn’t narrow it down much. Perhaps John Purves could shed a bit more light.

  Purves was a fairly recent addition to the Kirkluce CID, after the long-overdue retirement of a DI who, when it came to modern practice, had raised passive resistance to performance art. Fleming rated Purves highly: he had an impressive appetite for the administrative and organisational duties that to Fleming were the downside of the job, and he managed to be a stickler for compliance without nit-picking – not an easy balance to achieve. Though they regularly traded insults like ‘stuffed shirt’ and ‘adrenaline junkie’, it all worked very well.

  Bouncing a few ideas off him when he was here anyway wouldn’t do any harm. Fleming always liked to clear her mind by talking things through, but she was short of a confidant, with MacNee in his present dour mood and Bill – well, she couldn’t see them sitting down for a chat over a cosy dram right at the moment.

  The mysterious CHIS, however, was at the top of the agenda.

  ‘I don’t know who he is either, as yet,’ Purves told her, disappointingly. ‘You know the rules.’

  ‘Of course I do. Theoretically. And of course I’ve had the odd tip-off, sanitised through the system, but since the new regulations came in I’ve had nothing to do with that area, except to say thank you when a useful snippet comes through. I know the general principle, but I didn’t exactly study the fine print.’