Dark Waters

by G. R. Halliday

  ‘You still haven’t told me what she wanted.’

  ‘She wanted her brother to stop being a problem.’ MacGregor let the words hang in the room. ‘She wanted advice on how to make that happen.’

  That word again. ‘You’re saying she wanted you to kill Sebastian Sinclair?’

  ‘She wasn’t that stupid. She just fished to see what I’d come back with. She was subtle. I never even noticed at the time, thought she genuinely wanted my business advice.’ He shook his head at the memory, still smiling. ‘It was only the other day, when I heard about Sebastian on the radio …’

  ‘Why did she want her brother out of the picture?’

  ‘He was angry about the situation, his baby sister getting the bulk of the business. He was always asking for more money, causing trouble with the business.’

  Monica nodded. This chimed with what she knew about Sebastian Sinclair from Heather. Although she still struggled to imagine the slick businesswoman attempting to set up a hit on her brother. Or understand where Annabelle Whittaker fitted into all this.

  ‘This still doesn’t explain why you end up buying the garage?’

  ‘She’s got a brain, the girl, knew how to cover herself. This was later, a month or so later. She calls me up again. Tells me about this garage. She knows I’m in the auto trade. Her brother’s got this garage out in Little Arklow. A piece of shit. Heather wants me to buy it for well over what it’s worth. Two hundred grand. I told her it wasn’t worth ten per cent of that; she said it was worth that and more.’ MacGregor shrugged. ‘You know the Beauly to Denny power line?’ Monica nodded. This was a famously contentious project, a line of huge pylons that ran from Beauly near Inverness to Denny in central Scotland, through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. It carried the electricity generated by the huge wind and hydro projects across the sparsely populated Highlands down to the cities in the Central Lowlands. ‘She told me she had inside information. A second line would run through Glen Turrit. The garage was right in the path of it. Could end up being worth a lot, lot more … I said, Yeah, yeah, whatever, not expecting anything to come from it, but two days later I get a call from Sebastian Sinclair – it’s all finalised. Heather transferred the money to me and I bought it from him.’

  This made very little sense to Monica and seemed to raise more questions than answers. ‘Why did you put the garage in your own name?’

  ‘Getting sloppy in my old age … Same reason men have been doing stupid things since the dawn of time, I suppose.’ His eyes lingering again for a moment on Khan. ‘And who doesn’t like money?’ He shook his head again. ‘I remember Heather from when she was a girl. Who’d have thought she’d grow up to be the kind of woman who would cheat her own brother then have him killed?’

  CHAPTER 67

  Through the plate glass Monica could see Heather Sinclair sitting alone at the head of the boardroom table leaning over a stack of papers. Behind her out of the windows the panorama of the Cairngorm Mountains was visible. The reds, browns and golds, the spring snow still frosting the plateau higher up.

  The receptionist gestured for them to wait and walked in ahead of her and Crawford. Monica watched the expression on Sinclair’s face change quickly from surprise to irritation, then back to a forced composure. In Monica’s opinion this was close to what you’d expect to see on the face of a psychopath who’d ordered the killing of an inconvenient brother. Maybe because Sebastian discovered Heather had cheated him out of a valuable piece of land?

  Heather Sinclair’s eyes landed on Monica. She straightened the papers, then strode round the side of the table. This time she was wearing a dark grey three-piece tweed suit over a white linen shirt. Unsurprisingly she looked much more composed than when they’d visited her on the day her brother’s body was identified.

  Monica shook her outstretched hand. ‘Why do you think we’re here?’ Heather tilted her head back slightly to look up at Monica but didn’t reply. Finally Monica went on: ‘Do you know a man called Francis MacGregor?’

  Recognition flickered across Heather’s face, and Monica could tell immediately that at least something of what MacGregor had told them two hours earlier in the interview room was true.

  ‘You gave him money to buy a garage at Little Arklow from Sebastian?’

  ‘To Francis?’ Heather Sinclair glanced quickly around the room as if the impulse to run was threatening to overwhelm her. Instead she turned away from Monica and Crawford, went to sit back at the head of the long table. She took a deep breath. ‘I told you my brother wanted money?’ Monica nodded. ‘It was more than that … There’s more to it than that.’

  Monica pulled out a seat and sat down facing her. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Look, Sebastian was a nightmare, OK? He had this fantasy about himself, that he was some great businessman. He’d try to set up deals that made no sense, practically commit fraud half the time. Spend money like it was water. Meanwhile we’re trying to maintain this facade … I’ve fired people before, but how do you fire your own brother?’

  ‘Was it easier to get rid of him?’ Monica whispered. ‘Easier to have someone kill him?’

  ‘No! I was looking for …’ She shook his head. ‘It was a mistake. My brother wouldn’t listen to me because I’m a woman. It’s that simple. I’m not his fantasy of an old-school Highland businessman. He respected Francis. I thought he might be able to frighten Sebastian or something.’

  ‘Francis doesn’t remember it like that.’

  ‘Have you actually met Francis MacGregor?’ She sighed. ‘Look, you probably think I’m some sort of corporate sociopath, but believe me I don’t care that much about this business. If my dad hadn’t asked me to come back I would’ve stayed far far away from this godforsaken place. I was happier when I was poor …’ Her voice faded away.

  ‘So you’re at the end of your tether with Sebastian,’ Monica said. ‘You speak to Francis for advice, then a few months later you give him the two hundred thousand to buy Sebastian’s garage, so you can make money out of the power line project?’

  Sinclair sighed again, ‘There’s no second power line. I told Francis MacGregor I had inside information so he’d go along with it.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling then pointed to the stack of papers by her elbow. ‘I’m in the process of trying to sell the business. Have I made it clear what Sebastian was like?’ Monica nodded and she could feel something of Heather Sinclair’s sense of desperation. Shackled to an out-of-control family member. ‘I’m trying to run the business with Sebastian like a millstone around my neck, continually interfering. Look, if I could have clicked my fingers and been rid of him I probably would have done it. But that’s a long way from killing him.’ She shook her head, glancing round the room with an expression on her face that Monica knew well: I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. I can’t believe I’m sharing this with these strangers, these detectives.

  ‘About a year ago Sebastian started talking about relocating to Vietnam, setting up a hotel and golf course out there. I assumed it was another one of his bullshit schemes, but he kept talking about it and even bought a place out there. Then he actually started putting his own businesses on the market. The garage was the first one.’

  ‘And you thought you’d buy them up through a third party so he didn’t know the money was coming from you? Brother out the way. Problem solved,’ Monica said. It actually sounded crazy enough to be true.

  ‘I don’t know many people up here, and my dad always trusted Francis MacGregor, more importantly I knew Sebastian would love the idea of doing business with him. I know it was a terrible idea, but I was desperate.’

  Monica tried to work out the implications. Even if what she was saying was true, it didn’t seem to bring them any closer to who killed Sinclair and Gall. Could there be someone else linked to the garage? Someone they were missing? And where did Annabelle fit in? Could she have turned up at the garage somehow? Stumbled onto something?

  ‘Do you know someone
called Annabelle? Annabelle Whittaker?’ Crawford interrupted Monica’s thoughts. Heather glanced at the detective, then at the ceiling, turning the name over in her mind. Finally she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I speak to so many people in this job, but …’

  As she was speaking, Monica’s mind flickered back to another woman. Sebastian Sinclair’s wife, Karen. Her perfect house high above Inverness. The one she was so concerned about losing. ‘What did Sebastian’s wife make of all this? Selling up and moving to east Asia?’ To Monica this looked a lot like a potential motive for murder.

  ‘Karen?’ Heather looked surprised. ‘You know, I don’t remember her saying very much about anything. Sebastian was the kind of man who took up enough space for both of them.’

  Monica nodded, remembered her sense of Karen’s helplessness. The fact she didn’t seem to know what a text message was, didn’t own a phone. And as the memory bubbled up Monica found her hand going to the little address book in the pocket of her coat. The dry, aged paper under her fingers. Locked in her dad’s cupboard. Why had he kept it locked away from her mum?

  ‘Was your brother controlling?’ Monica heard herself asking. ‘Did he try to prevent Karen from contacting her friends and family?’

  Heather Sinclair raised her eyebrows, then actually gave a little snorted laugh. ‘Sebastian? Control someone else? He couldn’t even control himself from minute to minute. Jesus, that would be … Karen was on a tight leash, but if someone else was holding the other end of it, it sure as hell wasn’t my brother.’

  Monica felt the address book in her pocket again, and a watery, long-suppressed memory surfaced for her. The phone ringing through their small house when she’d come back to visit from her first job down in Glasgow. Forgetting the rules, reaching to answer it. No, Monica, your father answers the phone. Looking down at her mother’s worried face. She was frightened of him, the way his colleagues at the prison had been frightened of him. Suddenly it seemed so obvious, something that been a family eccentricity, a little joke. Mum hates the phone; Dad always answers it. Her address book locked away, and Monica remembered now how the phonebook would vanish every year as soon as it was delivered. Of course she was frightened of him, of course she was controlled by him. He decided who she could see, he decided who she could speak to.

  Monica blinked and realised that Heather Sinclair and Crawford were both staring at her. How could she not have realised this, when she could so clearly remember how he’d tried to control her as a teenager? When she was a fucking detective and it was right there in front of her her whole life. She had seen her parents as a single indivisible unit right up until his death.

  ‘Do you know anything else about Karen?’ she heard Crawford ask. A clumsy question, obviously the first thing he could come up with since Monica had been struck dumb.

  ‘Who else was important in her life?’ Monica managed to say before Heather had a chance to reply.

  ‘I’m … not sure.’

  ‘What about her family? How did your brother meet Karen?’

  ‘Karen?’ Sinclair repeated her sister-in-law’s name as if she were so forgettable she had to remind himself who the woman was. ‘I don’t know exactly. We thought Sebastian was going to end up a bachelor … I think he met her at a disco – out in the sticks somewhere? I think Sebastian knew her brother?’

  ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘I want to say somewhere down Glen Affric way, though God knows how Sebastian ended up there. Little Arklow, that would have been the place.’ She gave a dry little laugh. ‘Where that bloody garage is.’

  ‘What was Karen’s maiden name?’

  ‘Her maiden name?’ Heather Sinclair ran her eyes over the ceiling. ‘Slate,’ she said finally. ‘I think she was a Slate.’

  CHAPTER 68

  Marcus repeated what he’d said: ‘Your arms need to be treated.’ Then he added, ‘The same way your leg was treated.’

  No! Annabelle realised that she should be screaming, but the room was silent. No! Still curled up in the foetal position, she was frozen with terror.

  ‘I knew you’d understand. The Doctor thought we’d have to use the mask to calm you down.’

  Not my arms, not my arms.

  ‘This’ll help you to sleep. Everything will feel better later.’ She watched from the corner of her eye, unable to move, as Marcus reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. Now! Scott’s knife. Grab it! This was her chance, what she’d planned for.

  He moved quickly though. She felt a dull pain, as if through a dream. The needle went into her shoulder; the cold liquid spread through her arm, and her vision began to blur. After a while she moved her cheek against the pillow. The skin brushed against a cold spot and it felt so fresh. She realised how cosy the room was, and it all began to make sense. The Doctor was right. Maybe she did need treatment? The Doctor knew exactly what she needed. A peaceful space, just like being held in the arms of the world, the arms of the perfect mother she’d never known. Of course he knew what was best for her.

  She felt her tongue, damp and sensuous in her damp mouth. ‘Hold me, Marcus.’ This time the words came out. ‘Hold me tight.’

  CHAPTER 69

  Back out in the car park the icy wind was coming down off the mountains, whipping through the wool of Monica’s coat and sapping the warmth from her body. At first she hardly noticed it as she reflected on the way something from the past could open like a trapdoor. Drop you into a strange new version of reality. She stopped beside the car, aware that Crawford was saying something to her but unable to take it in. As she searched for the Volvo’s keys the mountain wind chilled the skin on her wrist. How quickly heat, and life, could be spirited away. If Annabelle was out in the open she wouldn’t survive for long. Monica clenched the key in her hand, used the feeling of discomfort as the metal dug into her palm as an anchor to the present. Resolved to force the thoughts about her family out of her mind for now, to focus everything on the case. It had always worked as an escape route from reality in the past.

  ‘Monica?! Are you OK?’

  She glanced at Crawford, nodded, shivered and climbed into the car, pleased to be out of the cold. Hopefully Annabelle was somewhere warm, somewhere safe.

  ‘Can you call Khan for an update?’ she said as Crawford opened the car door to let in a fresh blast of freezing air. Monica was pleased to have Khan on the case, especially given everything with Fisher. He got in beside her as she started the car. Watched her for a moment then shrugged and nodded, reached into his pocket for his phone.

  Monica glanced at the time on the dash. Almost 3 p.m. She was supposed to collect Lucy from her play date on the other side of Inverness in half an hour. Right when she really needed to be focusing everything on this complex investigation. Karen Sinclair’s possible motive for wanting her husband dead was a new angle added to the mass of unanswered questions jostling in her brain. Wouldn’t Annabelle have made it to a road by now if she’d escaped? How did Annabelle connect with Sinclair and Gall? The only clear link seemed to be the matching cars.

  For a moment Monica felt the prickle of a new perspective on the case. It was mistaken identity. Someone looking for Sinclair’s car had gone after Annabelle by accident. Her excitement was short-lived though. Quickly she remembered that Sinclair and Gall were both already missing before Annabelle was even in Scotland.

  She sighed. ‘We need to find out more about Karen Sinclair.’ Crawford nodded, phone clamped to his face. ‘We should go and speak to her now,’ Monica whispered to herself this time.

  For a moment her thumb hovered over the Call button on her own phone as she contemplated ringing her mum. Asking her to take a taxi over and collect Lucy. Then she pictured her daughter’s face, disappointment more ingrained with every new let-down. She really needed to spend some time with her, especially after the latest sleepwalking episode the night before and the nagging sense it could have been triggered by Monica’s return to work on this demanding case.

  ‘The mountain
rescue volunteers have started looking for Annabelle,’ Crawford said to Monica, still with the phone to his ear. ‘Her car was badly damaged. We’re working on the basis that whatever happened to her began with a road collision of some kind.’

  Monica nodded as she felt the heat from the Volvo’s engine finally begin to warm her chilled hands.

  ‘The Glen Turrit road turns into a private track just after Little Arklow. It’s shut off by a gate, so they’ve ruled that out for now,’ Crawford went on. ‘She wouldn’t have been able to get down there. The teams are looking at Glen Affric first, then Glen Mullardoch. They’re going to keep the search going through the night, as long as the weather holds.’

  Monica felt an opposing little flash of guilt about Annabelle. How important was it really that she collect Lucy, rather than her mum doing it? When they were talking about a woman’s life possibly being at stake? She swallowed and ignored the unhelpful thought. There would always be something that felt vital associated with her work. It was her choice to do this job, not Lucy’s.

  ‘MacGregor’s story checks out,’ Crawford said, ‘about Beverly MacIntosh being there voluntarily. Her probation officer knew she was staying at that address, albeit not that she was in that state.’ He shook his head. Monica had almost forgotten about the woman in all the sudden drama around Annabelle. ‘They’re going to keep her in Raigmore until they can fully assess her, but she says she wants to go back with him.’ He put a hand over his ear, listening again, then he turned back to Monica. ‘Turns out the rifle he was carrying belongs to MacGregor’s son, so it might be difficult to make anything stick. Given that we were in plain clothes and in the house when he arrived, Hately wants to let him go.’