She was looking definitely jumpy. Starting to need another fix, or just nervous about something? Intrigued, Fleming sat down again. Kershaw hadn’t moved anyway.
He took back all he had said about Lady Luck. She was a bitch, after all. The moronic old bat who had pulled out from a side road straight into his path just might have buggered the whole thing.
The Vectra could be on the stolen-cars list by now, and he’d have been in even worse shtuck if she hadn’t taken so long to struggle out after the collision and get her addled brain round what had happened. By then he was three streets away, strolling along.
Now he had to find another car to nick. He’d have to rely on Cara to keep them there a bit longer, though he didn’t like it. She’d been nervy already and with the problems he’d been warned she had, she could go flaky on him at any time.
Grimly, he assessed the cars in the quiet side street. There was an old black Toyota Corolla, parked in front of an empty shop and opposite a blank wall – no prying eyes. That would do.
‘You see,’ Cara said, ‘I was scared. I found out that the woman who killed my baby was right here, on the headland.’
Suddenly Kershaw looked up. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You lost your child. I lost mine, my daughter. She died yesterday.’
Fleming closed her eyes in dismay. There was nothing she could do about it.
Kershaw was going on, ‘Debbie was her name. I’m trying to learn what you do, after your child dies. You need lessons, but they can’t tell you. Can you help me? What did you do?’
Naturally enough, Cara was taken aback. She ground her teeth on her lower lip. Then suddenly it started pouring out. ‘I – I was angry, very, very angry. That bitch of a nanny killed her. How do you cope with that? And she said my son – my little boy! – had done this terrible thing. And they believed her. She was evil, evil! She should fry in hell.’
Her voice had risen almost to a scream and there was spittle flecking the corner of her mouth. ‘And you know who I blame? I blame my father, that’s who! Him and his lover – her grandmother. He believed all she said, put a woman with a violent temper in my children’s nursery. I could never forgive him, never!’
Just how wrong could you be about a person’s reactions? Fleming asked herself. Cara hadn’t grieved for her father at all – on the contrary – but there wasn’t time to pursue that thought now. She had to calm the woman down: Kershaw seemed bewildered by what she had provoked.
‘It’s been hard for you, Cara, very hard,’ Fleming said. ‘And you haven’t been happy either about what has been going on in the house here, have you?’
Cara’s eyes had been looking almost unfocused, but she stopped and took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and said, ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
At the same time Fleming saw that silent tears were starting to spill down Kershaw’s cheeks. She needed to cry, but not here! Fleming picked up her shoulder bag and got to her feet again. ‘We really have to go. As you can see, my colleague is under a great deal of strain.’
Cara got up too. ‘No, no, just a minute.’
‘I don’t think—’ Fleming began, but when Cara said suddenly, ‘There’s a laptop,’ her ears pricked up. She had always been convinced there was one.
‘The laptop? One that belonged to your father?’
‘That’s – that’s right. I think Declan must have hidden it. I’ll show you where it is.’
Fleming gave Kershaw a doubtful look, but this was a lead she couldn’t afford to ignore. She put down her bag again and with Kershaw at her heels she followed Cara across the hall and into the passage that ran under the stairs.
Cara stopped and unlocked a door. As she opened it on to a deep, walk-in cupboard, Kershaw said in a voice thick with tears, ‘It was worse for you. Your baby didn’t have to die. Someone killed her.’
‘Below that shelf,’ Cara said to Fleming, switching on the light. Then, as Fleming bent to look, she heard Cara say, ‘But it’s all right. She’s paid for it now. She’s dead too,’ and froze.
Cara shouldn’t know that – and suddenly Kershaw was pushed on top of her and Fleming fell under her weight, hitting the injured side of her head on a stone shelf. She saw stars, cried out and then everything went black.
Declan Ryan walked back to the Memorial Square, still feeling shaky. He wasn’t sure how much harm he’d done by walking out, but he couldn’t have taken much more of it.
At least Macdonald had seemed to take some interest in what he said about Lisa Stewart. God knew they’d been given enough hints before to look in that direction, which they’d ignored. Now he’d spelled it out for them, maybe they’d go after her at last, no matter what Ginger thought.
Or maybe she’d escape yet again. Charmed life that woman led! If all had gone well, she’d have been dead by now. If!
If only they hadn’t all made such a shocking miscalculation about his father-in-law’s desire for vengeance, Jason would have done his pushing-off-a-cliff-to-order service by now, and with a hold like that over him, Gillis would have had no alternative but to let his son-in-law into proper partnership in the business. As was only fair – and Declan had no problem about the woman who’d murdered his daughter getting what she deserved.
Gillis had no right to the high moral tone he’d taken. Apart altogether from his business morals – or lack of them – he was the one who’d started it by issuing bloodthirsty threats.
He’d been beside himself that day, when they’d brought in the verdict. Oh, they’d all been angry, disbelieving, Cara hysterical, of course, but Declan had honestly thought Gillis would have a stroke. He’d been on every news bulletin in the country, eyes bulging, veins on his neck standing out, as he roared that she would pay in blood. He’d even been given a formal warning by the police.
For Jason, bumping into the girl in a corner shop had been like finding a pot of gold. All he’d wanted was a simple payoff for a favour done, but he couldn’t persuade Gillis to meet him to discuss it.
Declan was the obvious middleman. Jason was reluctant to cut anyone else in on the deal – he’d be doing the dirty work, taking the risks, after all – but he needed cash up front to make it work, and Declan had the money.
Or rather Cara did – the money, and the desire for revenge. Where Declan might have baulked, she had driven it on, with the scary ruthlessness she showed about anything she wanted.
But it was Declan who had added a bit of finesse, with the blackmail idea, and Cara had seized on it. She resented Gillis preaching to her about drugs anyway, and after Poppy died he had definitely become the enemy. Declan had been quite shaken by her glee at the thought of making her father squirm.
Only, of course, it had all gone hideously wrong. But how were they to know that Gillis hadn’t meant what he said? Mucking Jason about had just looked like distrust and the idea had been to engineer a meeting up here, so Declan could lay out the plan and assure his father-in-law that Jason was a man he could rely on.
Declan had felt sadistic enjoyment in sending the melodramatic texts. They’d worked too: the little bitch had really suffered. Hadn’t they all? And once they’d manipulated her into proximity with Gillis, the trap was ready to spring. There was no shortage of convenient rocky paths to push her off – tragic accident, a girl called Beth Brown with a sorrowing partner. And of course, once all the fuss was over, there would be the real, serious, permanent payoff – a dripping roast.
That was one thing. Killing the man in cold blood was another. Though he’d never liked Gillis, he was Cara’s father, for God’s sake! But Jason was hyperventilating in panic at having killed Alex, Cara was showing the sort of cold excitement he didn’t like to think about, and they were both insisting it was the only way out. He’d buckled under their certainty and now he was in it up to his neck. He’d set it up, even, telling Jason when Gillis would be coming up the path – and right under the nose of the snooping MacNee.
>
Declan felt just a faint flicker of pride at outwitting him. And after all, by bringing the police into it Gillis had signed his own death warrant – and Alex’s too, selfish bugger. Alex had been a great bloke, and Ryan felt sick all over again at the thought of what would happen when the police focused on the files he’d been holding.
Of course, they’d only found out who he was because that greedy bastard Jason had nicked Alex’s car, which should have been safely under a few tons of earth and rubble. He tried to tell himself that now they’d proof of Jason’s guilt, they wouldn’t bother with too much digging – they were always on about manpower shortages. Just as long as Fleming had been choked off before she brought in the serious fraud guys. If she hadn’t been . . .
He knew Hugh Lloyd and Paddy Driscoll blamed him already. And if they found out what by the law of unintended consequences had led to Alex’s death, God help him! Though admittedly there wasn’t much reason why He should.
Tam MacNee was restless. It would have helped to get out for a long walk, but with the weather bad and deteriorating, even the dogs were affected by the gloom, huddled in their beds and showing no enthusiasm.
He found his mind turning, yet again, to the case. Fleming should have finished her interview with Cara by now and he was consumed with curiosity to know what had emerged from it. He wished she would call him and tell him how it had gone – after all, he’d been the one Cara had talked to first – but it didn’t look as if she was going to. Part of his punishment, perhaps.
Cara was a strange woman. Perhaps it was the drugs, but he’d been struck by her lack of emotion when she heard about her father’s death. It could have been shock too, of course, but Pilapil had said bitterly that Cara didn’t care about him anyway. And according to Kershaw, who’d read all the trial reports, the nanny had been Crozier’s old girlfriend’s granddaughter. Maybe Cara blamed him for introducing her into the house. Maybe she saw her father’s death as rough justice.
So how aware was she of what had been going on? It was, MacNee remembered, Cara who had talked about the people staying in the guest house when they broke the news of Jason Williams’s death. Had she been part of an exercise to frame Lisa?
If so, why had she spoken to him yesterday? Ryan must have told her what MacNee had been asking him and she’d then made a point of seeking him out to drop her husband in it. In a situation like that, when you had cooperative evidence from an unexpected source, you always asked yourself what was in it for them.
Had she, he wondered, realised that the net around Ryan was closing tighter and tighter, and been sharp enough to seize the opportunity to put herself in the clear, innocent and ignorant? You tended to think of her as a junkie crippled by her habit, but many people who were heroin-dependent could live all but normal lives with careful management.
That gave him an excuse to phone Fleming. She couldn’t complain if he was alerting her to a new idea. He picked up his mobile and dialled. Still on answerphone.
He looked at the kitchen clock. It was almost one – she’d been there a long time. Maybe Cara was singing like a canary and they would be arresting Ryan even while he sat here, missing the fun.
When Fleming opened her eyes, everything was swimming in front of her and the light from the bare bulb overhead made her screw them up again. Her head was spinning so that she thought she might pass out again if she tried to lift it. She was lying on a flagged floor, and she could hear someone crying.
The waves of dizziness subsided a little and she risked turning her head. Kim Kershaw was sitting on the floor, slumped like a puppet whose strings have been cut, with her head on her knees, making sobbing wails.
‘Kim!’ Fleming croaked, but either she wasn’t speaking loudly enough or Kim was so lost in her anguish that she was unaware of anything else; certainly, there was no response.
Fleming put a hand to her head gingerly and it came away sticky with blood. Sticky – that meant a lapse of time. How long? She had no idea. She lifted her arm to look at her watch, but the face had smashed in her fall. Was it minutes? Hours?
Her mouth was parched, and the cold from the stone floor was seeping into her. Not good, if she’d been unconscious for any length of time, with another injury to her head. She could wiggle her fingers and toes – good. She pulled her dry tongue away from the roof of her mouth and licked at her cracking lips.
‘Kim!’ Fleming managed to speak more loudly and Kershaw raised her swollen, blubbered face and looked at Fleming on the floor with what seemed like surprise.
‘Boss,’ she said, frowning. Then, ‘Are you all right?’ Her speech was slow and she looked almost as if she was having difficulty focusing, but at least this was some sort of response.
‘I hit my head. Could you help me sit up?’
Fleming was lying half under a stone shelf; she hadn’t the strength to crawl out. For a moment Kershaw only looked at her with a dazed expression, then said uncertainly, ‘Yes, of course.’
The cramped space made it hard for her to get close enough, but at last she had a hold on Fleming’s arm and pulled her sideways. Wincing at the pain, Fleming forced herself into an upright position against the back wall. The room spun round her and her stomach heaved; she shut her eyes, which helped, and when she felt steadier, she opened them and took stock of her surroundings.
They were in an old-fashioned larder, much like the one in Mains of Craigie, with the stone shelves that kept things cool in the days before refrigerators. Now it was acting as a storeroom with stacks of tins and paper goods. What the hell were they doing here? Her brain still felt fuzzy and unclear.
Kershaw had said nothing else. She had stopped crying; she had sat down again and was looking straight ahead with a blank expression.
Delayed reaction – she’d gone into shock. With a sense of desperation, Fleming said, speaking slowly, as if to a child, ‘Kim! Kim, can you hear me? Can you tell me exactly what happened? I blacked out.’
Her head turned, and she frowned again. ‘I – I was crying. I don’t know. Perhaps I tripped, and then the door shut.’
It started coming back to Fleming. ‘Of course! I was in here, looking for the laptop Cara mentioned. Then you lurched on top of me and I fell.’
There was certainly no laptop here – and then Fleming remembered, with hideous clarity, the other thing. ‘Cara knew that Lisa Stewart was dead. She couldn’t know that unless . . .’
Unless whoever killed Lisa had told her. She didn’t say it aloud, but at last she had a terrifying insight into Cara’s reason for stopping them from leaving.
Joss Hepburn had tried to warn her, but she had convinced herself that it was another empty threat. And now they were being held until the man they called Badger Black arrived to carry out their execution.
‘Whose car is that out there?’ Ryan said as he came in.
Cara was waiting for him in the hall, an unusual act of wifely devotion, and he looked at her with some suspicion. There was usually only one reason why she sought him out, but she’d had enough this morning not to be desperate yet, unless she’d really overdone it.
Hiding the stuff and rationing it was the only way he had kept her functioning. She ordered him to restrain her but then resented it, and he was never sure that she wouldn’t do something spiteful like changing her will to cut him out – if there was anything to leave, but he couldn’t afford to think like that.
He was tired of the whole mess, so tired. He’d been kicked around by the woman for years, because he had let himself be bought and she was like her father when it came to getting value for money. Maybe he wasn’t a very strong character, but then Gillis too had been helpless against her iron will. Once all this was over and he had worked his way into the business, he decided, he wasn’t going to lift a finger to stop her killing herself with an overdose.
Whatever. Right now he was going to take a stand. Cara would have to listen to him for once, instead of giving him instructions, and he’d dope her to the eyeballs to get h
er to toe his line if necessary.
But Cara wasn’t twitching. Indeed, she looked as if she was on a high, and he said warily, ‘So, what have you been up to?’
It was only then he became aware of a banging sound, and a voice shouting, and frowned. ‘What’s that? Nico mucking about again?’
Cara smiled. ‘No, that’s Marjory Fleming and her constable. Poor sad creature – she’s just lost her daughter. I felt quite sorry for her.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘In the cupboard at the back. I’m keeping them until Badger Black arrives.’
Ryan gaped at her. ‘Have you lost it completely? Who’s Badger Black?’
‘Friend of Hugh and Paddy’s. Well, more an employee, really.’ Cara gave a little giggle.
Ryan felt he was losing his grip on reality. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me that you have locked up two police officers – two police officers! – because you’re waiting for someone Lloyd and Driscoll are sending? What’s he going to do?’
Cara giggled again. ‘Kill them. He’s a hitman. That’s his job. He’s good too. Hugh got him to do a little favour for me yesterday. He’s been like a father to me, you know, better than the one I had.’
‘What “favour”? No, don’t tell me – I need a drink.’
Ryan headed for the sitting room and Cara followed him. ‘I told you we should just have dealt with Lisa Stewart right at the start, but you wanted to do it differently and look what a mess you’ve got us all into! It was time someone sorted everything out, and that’s just what Hugh and Paddy have done. They’re real men.’
She looked contemptuously at her husband as he filled a tumbler with vodka, drank half of it, then sank down on one of the sofas.
‘I – I don’t know what to do,’ Ryan said helplessly. ‘You can’t get away with it.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly! But Badger’s a serious professional – the best in the business, Hugh says. He’ll take care of everything.’
Cradle to Grave Page 39