Death in a Cold Spring (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 9)

by Cecilia Peartree

  Keith hustled Amaryllis out of the church hall as quickly and as discreetly as he could. He closed his ears to her protests about needing to look for more information. As far as he was concerned, any further information she received that had anything to do with his case would have to come directly from him, since he wasn’t going to allow her to do any more investigating on her own. He was well aware that the police had been trying to cramp her style ever since she arrived in Pitkirtly, and he didn’t hold out a lot of hope of succeeding where Charlie Smith, Sergeant Macdonald and Inspector Armstrong had all failed, but if he didn’t at least start out with this aim in view, then he wasn’t much of a policeman, in his opinion.

  On the grounds that she might be a lot less trouble as part of the local establishment than she was outside it taking pot-shots at everyone in any kind of authority, he hoped she would get elected to the Council. She would hate it, of course, but that wasn’t the point. And in order to get elected, she needed to stay out of jail for the next few weeks at least.

  He got her past the policemen outside by simply saying, ‘There you go, madam, sorry to have got in your way’ as if she were a harmless old lady who just happened to be passing rather than a pestilential nuisance who caused chaos wherever she went. Fortunately the uniformed officers in the cars hadn’t encountered her before.

  Once that was accomplished, he took a deep breath and began to answer the questions posed by officers unfamiliar with the town. Yes, there’s a police station. Yes, we have holding cells. No, there won’t be a desk sergeant on duty unless we get him out of bed. Yes, we can get him out of bed if it’s an emergency that can’t be dealt with any other way, and if a senior officer can be got out of bed to authorise the overtime. No, there was nobody else involved in the break-in. No, I haven’t a clue why anybody should break into a church hall in the first place. No, I don’t know any more than you do about whether it’s connected with the case or not. Yes, we can all go now and reconvene at the station.

  The last thing Keith wanted to do was to reconvene with anybody. But he couldn’t leave the men from the other stations to their own devices. They might trash the staff tea-room or have rubber band fights up and down the corridor. Then the prisoners would start complaining that the noise was infringing their human rights, and then there would be a terrible stooshie. They might get a senior officer sent in who was even worse than Inspector Armstrong.

  He had to remind himself sternly that this was a murder enquiry and that he should be prepared to work all hours of the day and night until it was finished.

  But really, where did police investigation end and nannying begin, when one of the constables from North Queensferry asked him how to put the kettle on, and another one started to raid the fridge and kicked up a fuss when he couldn’t find the right kind of cheese in there.

  ‘This isn’t all about cheese sandwiches!’ he snapped in the end. The others all stared at him. He must have seemed like a mild-mannered guy up to then, right enough. ‘If you need a snack, maybe we can send somebody round to the fish and chip shop. It should just about be still open.’

  ‘Do they do kebabs?’ said the constable who had grumbled about the cheese.

  It took over an hour to get their catering requirements sorted out. Then they said they couldn’t drive back to North Queensferry because it was against the rules for them to drive any further within that twenty-four hour period, and was there anywhere they could sleep.

  ‘Sleep? You don’t need to do any of that, do you?’ said Keith. ‘It’s a murder enquiry. And there’s a missing person too. We’ve got to go on all night. Or until we solve it. Whichever is first.’

  They all laughed.

  Keith wondered if he could volunteer to be downgraded to constable again so that he wouldn’t have to do any more managing. He was exhausted already and it was only – he glanced at his watch – two o’clock in the morning!

  H swore as quietly as he could. ‘She’s going to kill me. Again.’

  His girl-friend, Ashley, had been expecting him to pick her up at about eight. He hoped fervently that she wasn’t still waiting at the bus stop near the Queen of Scots from where they had been planning to go into Dunfermline to the pictures.

  The man nearest him jostled his shoulder in a friendly way. ‘She’ll get over it.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Keith. ‘I hope she’s all right.’

  Out of the blue, one of the others took temporary charge.

  ‘Now we’re all here, we might as well get on and do some work,’ he said. ‘Make a plan for tomorrow.’

  They all agreed.

  After only another half hour they went their separate ways for the night, secure in the knowledge that there was a plan in place. Most of the men from North Queensferry had eventually agreed to stretch a point and drive home so that at least they would get a good sleep in their own beds. One had agreed to stay in Pitkirtly and help Keith to guard the two prisoners until morning.

  ‘Thank God they settled down in the end,’ said the other man as they checked all the locks before retiring to the tea-room. He held out his hand to Keith. ‘Murray Williamson. I work out of North Queensferry on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Limekilns the rest of the time.’

  ‘Are all the others full-time at North Queensferry, then?’

  ‘Oh, no. They all live around there, but some of them work at Aberdour and the rest at Kirkcaldy and Auchterderran. What we do at North Queensferry – well, it’s no service to the public.’

  ‘It’s the same here,’ Keith admitted.

  ‘But you’ve got more to deal with here. A murder a month, or thereabouts.’

  ‘Not quite as much as that. We’ve got a good clear-up rate too.’

  ‘Rumour has it you’ve had a bit of outside help with that.’

  Keith sighed. ‘That’s a matter of opinion. Whether it’s been a help or not, I mean.’

  ‘A retired agent with too much time on their hands, isn’t it?’

  Keith was disturbed to know that news of the unconventional way things operated had spread as far as North Queensferry. Before he knew where he was there would be some sort of official investigation going on, and he would be down at the Queen of Scots begging Charlie Smith to take him on as a casual bar-man.

  On the other hand, standing there pulling pints would be a much pleasanter life than this one in many ways. And his girl-friend wouldn’t have any reason to nag at him about his hours. She’d be able to come into the bar whenever she wanted to see him.

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ said Murray Williamson, ‘before you fall down. Here, have this cup of tea. Close your eyes. Have a wee snooze. I’ll listen out for any nonsense from those two back there.’

  The other man was older, reassuringly solid and seemed reliable enough, but Keith was reluctant to go to sleep with two villains in custody. He knew from Sergeant Macdonald that Young Dave at least was a slippery customer, who would probably find a way of wriggling out of the cell and right through their fingers, while the other was big and heavy enough to overpower either Keith or Murray if he got anywhere near them.

  The tea had cooled enough for him to take a big gulp of it.

  Their visit to the church hall must have something to do with the case. They couldn’t have been there to look for valuables. Keith knew local parish churches didn’t have much that was worth stealing, and if they did own anything like that the elders would insist on having it kept in a bank and not lying around in the building.

  They must have been there for much the same reason as Amaryllis. He didn’t for a minute believe her story about gaining access to the place to look at the pictures of herself. Ideally he would have kept her in custody until he had time to interrogate her properly. In practice he knew he couldn’t have detained her for any longer than she wanted him to.

  Those pictures, though – they were something, all right.

  Eyes closed, running through the sequence again in his mind, Keith dropped easily off to sleep.
/>   ‘What’s been going on here?’

  Keith woke up with a start. Sergeant Macdonald was standing over him, staring at the empty cups and fish and chip wrappers littering the table. It was very cold in the tea-room.

  ‘The prisoners – Constable Williamson...’

  ‘Prisoners? Are you on drugs or something? And who’s Constable Williamson when he’s at home?’

  Keith realised he was slumped in quite an uncomfortable position, and he tried to sit up straight before answering. He glanced round the room. ‘He was here just now... a while ago. Last night.’

  ‘I don’t know what sort of party you’ve been having in here, but it’s a disgrace,’ said Sergeant Macdonald, taking a bin bag out of a drawer and waving it around noisily to try and get it open. ‘Damn things – you’d think they didn’t want us to put out our rubbish.’

  ‘They probably don’t,’ mumbled Keith. He felt quite sorry he hadn’t been drinking and partying last night. It wasn’t worth being scolded like this over a police operation and a quick snooze. Where was Murray Williamson? Had he left early for his shift in – where was it? – Queensferry? Had he been a figment of Keith’s own imagination after all?

  Keith refused to believe he had imagined the two prisoners.

  ‘Have you been along to the cells?’

  ‘Cells – aye. How did they get in that state?’

  ‘What state?’

  ‘I don’t know – doors wide open, footprints, chairs turned over...’

  ‘What about the prisoners?’

  ‘I’ve told you, there weren’t any prisoners. Somebody had been in there, right enough, but...’

  Keith got to his feet with surprising speed, considering that three minutes beforehand he had felt as if he were glued to the chair, flung the tea-room door open and headed off down the corridor.

  He was staring incredulously at the holding cells when Sergeant Macdonald lumbered up behind him.

  ‘Have you never seen an empty cell before?’

  ‘Not since...’ Keith gulped. ‘That time the tramp did a runner. When Charlie Smith was here.’

  ‘So you’re telling me there were prisoners in here? And they’ve done a runner too?’

  ‘But he said he’d keep watch,’ said Keith helplessly.

  Another question was forming in his head about Murray Williamson, as well as where he had got to. Who the hell was he anyway?

  ‘Have you been working too hard or something?’ said Sergeant Macdonald.

  ‘I’d better give North Queensferry a call,’ said Keith. ‘See if they’ve ever heard of him. And maybe Limekilns as well.’

  ‘Limekilns?’ Sergeant Macdonald was staring at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘They haven’t got a station at Limekilns now, have they?’

  Keith rushed back down the corridor to retrieve his mobile from the tea-room table. Or at least that was what he intended to do. But the phone wasn’t on the table. Or anywhere else in the tea-room.

  ‘Damn, he’s gone off with it!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Sergeant Macdonald, who had been at his heels all the way along the corridor, tutting and grumbling.

  ‘There was a uniformed constable here. Murray Williamson. Said he was part-time at Queensferry and part-time at Limekilns. He was going to keep an eye on the prisoners while I had forty winks.’

  ‘An awful lot more than forty, by the look of you when I came in. And who were those prisoners you’ve been on about?’

  ‘They broke into the church hall last night. We arrested them.’

  ‘Oh yes. Who’s we?’

  ‘Me and the reinforcements from North Queensferry.’

  Sergeant Macdonald pushed Keith gently into a chair and crouched down beside him.

  ‘Have you been feeling all right, lad? You haven’t taken anything, have you?’

  ‘Taken... No! Of course not. I’m fine. Can I use the phone at the front desk to call Queensferry?’

  ‘You don’t have to ask, you know. Go ahead.’

  The Sergeant was speaking in the fatherly tone he had used when Keith was a complete novice, a raw recruit still wet behind the ears. There could have been no surer sign that he thought Keith had lost his grip. He would probably call the men in the white coats as soon as Keith’s back was turned.

  But until then, Keith was determined to follow up on this. If Murray Williamson wasn’t an officer from Queensferry, which it was beginning to look as if he wasn’t – he might not even be Murray Williamson, for all Keith knew – then he was on the side of the villains, and had let them out of the cells and they had all escaped together.

  Or, said a dissenting voice in Keith’s mind, the men in the cells had escaped under their own steam, overpowered Murray Williamson and abducted him. In which case the man was in serious danger at this very moment. Then there was still the double murder and the missing twin.

  He put his head in his hands. He should have realised sooner that he was completely out of his depth.

  ‘You need some help,’ said Sergeant Macdonald at that very moment as if reading his thoughts. ‘I’ll call headquarters and see if I can stir them up a bit. It’s their fault – they should have found us temporary cover for Inspector Armstrong weeks ago. It’s obvious he isn’t coming back.’

  ‘He isn’t?’

  The Sergeant shook his head sagely. ‘I didn’t want to say it before in case it worried you...’

  Oh, God forbid you should worry me, thought Keith.

  ‘... but he’s finished. Burnt out. A hollow husk of a man... Charlie got out at the right time, you know.’

  Sergeant Macdonald lumbered away. Keith went just as slowly back to his desk and called North Queensferry from the phone there.

  ‘Last night?’ said the voice of what sounded like a primary school child. ‘I don’t know anything about last night.’

  ‘They came over to Pitkirtly. Three cars and about nine men.’

  ‘We don’t have nine men, as far as I know... Wait a minute, I’ll see if they’ve left a note.’

  Keith was beginning to wonder if he really had dreamed the events of the previous night. He cheered up very slightly as he remembered Amaryllis. She would tell him the truth, even if nobody else did. He could call her when he had finished this pointless conversation. But the voice returned with more reassuring news.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve found it. They weren’t all from Queensferry, though. Two of the cars were from Aberdour. Some of the men, too. They’re on their way back to you now. ETA nine a.m.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s great.’

  ‘Have a nice day,’ said the voice.

  ‘You too,’ he said without thinking. Putting the phone down, he couldn’t imagine why they were talking to each other like American shop assistants, but on this occasion he didn’t really mind. He hadn’t imagined it all. He wasn’t burnt out or a hollow husk.

  He went through to the front desk, where Sergeant Macdonald was also just finishing a call.

  ‘Same to you with knobs on,’ he said as Keith appeared. Noticing Keith’s raised eyebrows, he added, ‘Bobby Fraser. I’ve known him for years. I don’t know why he wanted to go and work over there with the top brass. He was a perfectly good desk sergeant at Auchterderran.’

  ‘Did you have any luck?’ Keith enquired.

  ‘Don’t know yet. They’re going to get back to me later... What’s all this?’

  There was a lot of noise outside, and somebody hammered on the door.

  ‘Oh, that’ll just be the imaginary back-up from North Queensferry,’ said Keith airily, going to open up for them.

  Chapter 13 The disappearance of Maggie Munro

  Christopher needed to get on with his work, having wasted almost the whole of the previous day trying to soothe Zak’s and Maisie Sue’s troubled sensibilities. They had talked round and round the topic of the missing quilt, approaching it from every possible angle, but always shying away from the horrible truth.

  In the end he imagined
he had convinced Maisie Sue that the police would have to hang on to the quilt more or less permanently as it would probably have to be used as a piece of evidence in the court case that would ensue once they had caught the perpetrators. He didn’t think – although he didn’t divulge this to her – that they were making very good progress yet. Apart from anything else, it seemed that the extent of the crime was still increasing day by day, and no end was in sight. Unless the police had made a big break-through overnight, of course. But he didn’t think that was a serious possibility, considering how under-staffed the Pitkirtly station was at the moment. Was Inspector Armstrong ever coming back? Surely there had to be a senior officer in charge of a case like this?

  He dismissed these vague ramblings from his mind. After all, he wasn’t responsible for the running of the police force. Bad enough to have to manage the Cultural Centre. He felt as if he had done little enough of that over the past week or so.

  He had switched on his computer with a sigh of inevitability, and was going through his emails to see if his masters at the Council had issued any new commandments lately when Amaryllis crashed through the office door.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to knock?’ he said.

  For once in her life she looked apologetic. ‘I fell over a mop just outside.’

  ‘A mop?’

  ‘You know, long handle, slimy strands of wool on the end, you use it to clean floors.’

  ‘What was it doing there?’ Christopher didn’t expect her to answer. Instead he got to his feet and went out to have a look for himself. It was indeed a mop. Maggie Munro seemed to have abandoned her cleaning equipment and vanished. ‘That’s funny.’

  He was frowning as he returned to his desk.

  ‘There’ve been too many funny things happening lately around here,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘That’s just what I was going to say,’ he said with mild surprise.

  ‘But I suppose this doesn’t exactly fall into the same category as murder and mayhem.’

  ‘It never does to begin with. Maggie Munro could be just along the corridor or in the tea-room or she might have been abducted by aliens. But we won’t know that until she comes back.’