Wrong Turnings

by John Burke

  ‘Did he fall,’ she mused aloud, ‘or was he pushed? Or, rather, was he really attacked, or did he just fall?’

  ‘If I’m thinking what you’re thinking —’

  ‘I’m thinking we’d better ask the DCI to get Forensic down here.’

  ‘If I’m thinking what you’re thinking,’ Nick repeated, this time in little more than an awed whisper, ‘she isn’t going to like it.’

  ‘No, she isn’t.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Forensic confirmed that the minute traces of blood still encrusted on the metal matched Brunner’s admirably. Further examination of the ground behind Stables Cottage confirmed earlier theories. In spite of the downpour, marks of one pair of feet coming down the slope and two pairs going back up were distinguishable; and between the two tracks was still the flattened path of a body being dragged up.

  Sitting in the cottage and reluctantly accepting a cup of instant coffee, McAdam even more reluctantly agreed that the examination which had already tended to verify Ronnie and Martine Waterman’s story was now supplemented by the near certainty of Brunner having met an accidental death.

  ‘Brunner came down here that evening after he had heard Mrs Chisholm’s suspicions. Maybe he was going to confront Waterman. Simply bang on the front door and get shot in the guts? Or in the first place try peeking in one of the windows to check if it was really them. Either way, he slipped.’

  ‘He was a very heavy man,’ Lesley Torrance confirmed, ‘and a clumsy one. Always crashing into things.’

  McAdam had to agree that it all fitted. Heavy and clumsy, he had lost his footing on that uneven slope, and gone headfirst into the metal end of the crosspiece. It had driven into him, and then the impact could have set the carousel turning, wrenching him to one side and breaking his neck.

  Lesley Torrance opened her mouth, then seemed to have second thoughts. Her husband was less restrained. He said: ‘You’ll have to let the Watermans go, then. With profuse apologies.’

  ‘By no means. He’s broken his licence, which means he goes straight back inside. On top of that he’s been guilty of dangerous driving, carrying out a kidnapping’ — she nodded at Lesley — ‘and threatening violence. Also there’s a matter of wasting police time by running off instead of waiting to explain things.’

  ‘The Daily Mail isn’t going to find that story as exciting as the earlier one.’

  No, thought McAdam dourly, it wasn’t. And now she was faced with a fresh problem — or would it turn out that things were, after all, less complicated? At the outset there had been the easy supposition that Ronnie Waterman had murdered Brunner. Then the new problem of Morgan’s death, for which Waterman could not possibly have been responsible, raising the possibility of a double murder by, in official parlance, person or persons unknown. Now, with Brunner’s murder not a murder, there was a single killing to be dealt with.

  At least you could be sure of one thing: unlike Brunner, Stuart Morgan could not simply have fallen on to that lethal weapon.

  ‘At any rate,’ Lesley Torrance ventured, ‘in spite of his hatred of the man, this lets young Pitcairn off the hook regarding Brunner’s death.’

  ‘But not necessarily Morgan’s death. After all that fuss about forgeries, he could have gone round to drag the truth out of Morgan — lost his temper, especially when he saw that skean dhu lying there, and gone for him in a rage. Can’t be ruled out, but we’ll have to insist on some fingerprinting to compare with the batch we’ve now got from the workshop.’

  ‘And what about the Hagan bruiser?’

  ‘In that first case, I did wonder if he and that woman could have killed Brunner on their way back from Glasgow, before playing the innocents when the news was broken to them. Good reason for wanting him out of the way so she could inherit more quickly than expected — and before he changed his mind. They didn’t know at the time that he had already changed his mind. If he’d ever been minded in her direction anyway. She wasn’t going to get the lot. But they’re now in the clear, anyway.’

  ‘And this time?’ said Nick Torrance. ‘Hagan could be in with so many crooks that he might have established some contact with Morgan in prison, helped draw him into shady business afterwards, then found he was somehow being cheated.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one of those possibilities you juggle with. Until you find you can’t keep all the balls in the air, and the whole theory collapses. And this one’s a write-off, I think. I’ve double-checked on Hagan. At one stage in his murky career he was connected with shifting quality furniture from fire sales, having set the fires in the first place. Been inside twice. So he could have come across Morgan, and used him. But I’m not sure anything that complicated is his line. Mainly he was so stupid he couldn’t help getting caught. He’s a thick-ear type, not a smart operator. Even as a heavy, he’s a buffoon.’

  Lesley Torrance voiced the dilemma: ‘So where do we go from here?’

  McAdam did not want it taken for granted that the ex-DI was now a full-time member of the team, but before she could summon up a suitably dismissive reply there was a tap at the door. Sergeant Elliot came in to hand over further news from the morgue.

  Detailed examination had shown that the first blow of the skean dhu had penetrated Morgan’s jugular vein and gone through the neck muscles between the first and second cervical vertebrae. Morgan must have slumped back, and as he collapsed against the edge of the bench he was struck again at an angle from above the left shoulder down towards the heart.

  ‘The blade wasn’t long enough to reach the heart,’ McAdam read it out aloud, ‘but by then he was as good as dead anyway. Quite a cluster of fingerprints. Only Morgan’s own can be identified at this stage. Top priority must be specimens from the Pitcairns.’

  ‘Harry Pitcairn did say something about handling it during one of Brunner’s murder mysteries,’ Lesley reminded her.

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten that. But if there were prints over and above Morgan’s, that might be interesting.’ She stared at Sir Nicholas and his wife over the edge of her coffee mug. ‘You definitely didn’t touch it yourself, when you discovered the body?’

  ‘No, we did not.’

  ‘You’d never have forgotten procedure that quickly, would you, guv?’ Elliot was beaming with what McAdam considered inane affection at his one-time DI. ‘Oh, and another thing. An Inspector Percy from the Yard left a message to say that they’ve established a link between two of the brass thefts — is that right? — and the combine in Glasgow they’ve been after, and thanks very much and he’ll be in touch with you when you get home.’

  McAdam said: ‘Make yourself useful, sergeant. I noticed young Mrs Chisholm is out there in the yard cleaning her car. Go and keep her company, and sound her out about her relationship with the deceased, will you?’

  Lesley Torrance began protesting. ‘It’d be a bit distressing for her, quite so soon. Stuart Morgan was a close friend of her late husband and herself, and —’

  ‘Precisely. She can probably give us a much clearer picture of him than anybody else, and without realizing it may offer us just the lead we need.’

  The flick of her right hand left Elliot no choice.

  After he had gone, she pushed the empty mug away from her. ‘Lady Torrance, it’s quite improper for you as a civilian to be dealing direct with other police forces without going through the proper channels.’

  ‘Inspector Percy is an old and trusted colleague. I shall be keeping in touch with him as an independent adviser on arts and antiques matters —’

  ‘In the present inquiry, everything should be channelled through myself, as SIO.’

  With marked displeasure she cut the conversation short and skimmed down the rest of the report. Some of these specialists were just too meticulous, covering their own backs by including every tiny little speck of what might be evidence.

  She let out a snort. ‘Honestly, I’m all in favour of being thorough, but this is as bad as a surveyor’s report when you’re buying a hous
e. A whole paragraph listing all the sharp tools in the workshop, one with a smear of dried blood which turns out to be Morgan’s own. What did they expect? He must have cut himself quite frequently during his work. Then there’s a crack in the bench into which some instant coffee grains appear to have been spilt. Oh, and mention of a slight trace of animal blood on a shred of sacking on the floor near the door. You suppose Morgan was a poacher as well as a furniture faker?’ It was surprising, she thought, that they did not include the number of dead flies on the window-ledge, and whether the curtains would draw or not.

  It was only when Sir Nicholas Torrance gave a quiet, somehow ironic cough that it dawned on her that her strictures about people knowing their place applied to herself right now. She was using their private accommodation as an auxiliary incident room.

  ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you.’ She gathered up her papers. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. Once we’ve got you to sign your statements, I hope you’ll be able to drive home this time without further incident.’

  *

  Anna had been on her knees in the back of the Volvo with a portable vacuum cleaner, digging into a corner to suck out some sawdust and a few shreds of sacking, when something started knocking. At first she thought the machine was faltering, perhaps clogged with the gunge she was removing. Then she looked up and saw the face of Sergeant Elliot at the side window. She switched off, and backed out gingerly.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt.’ He had a nice, shy, non-officious smile that softened the implications of that battle scar on his cheek. ‘The guv’nor thought you might help us with a few details.’

  ‘Couldn’t we go inside?’ If she was going to be questioned, at least she wanted to get the grime off her face and hands, and make some sort of dab at her hair.

  ‘There’s three of them in that cottage going over some other bits and pieces. The idea was that I could have a word with you at the same time. Out here in the fresh air,’ he added as an inducement.

  Anna wiped her hands down her denims. ‘Sorry about the mess. I’ve allowed it to get really grotty in the back there.’

  ‘That’s what this sort of war-horse is for, isn’t it?’

  There was an awkward silence. She sensed that Elliot did not know where to begin, or how sensitive she might be about his questions.

  She said: ‘I can’t contribute much to this investigation, you know. I still haven’t got over the shock of the news.’ She leaned against the side of the Volvo, while he took a few steps to the left, a few to the right, as if on sentry duty.

  ‘Stuart Morgan was a close friend of yours, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He’d been a friend of my late husband. They were partners in a furniture restoration business. Chet Brunner used them quite a lot in the house, and my father-in-law . . . I mean, that is, Alec Chisholm . . . he helped us with these cottages and with the craft shop.’ She waited for him to ask about Brunner’s legacy to her, but either he had not been informed about this or was too shy to bring it up. ‘My husband,’ she went on, ‘died in an accident.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He looked at her in a sad, earnest way. She would almost have preferred some tough, unsympathetic questioning which she could have fought against. ‘It must have been hard, running this lot’ — he waved towards the cottages — ‘on your own. Though you did have help from this Morgan chap.’ Was he, after all, cunning rather than amiable?

  ‘Stuart was as devastated as I was. We sort of . . . well, clung together. He helped me at weekends with cleaning out the cottages ready for the next tenants, and did odd jobs, and we . . . well, we just got along.’

  ‘No question of anything more personal? Working so closely together, didn’t the question sometimes arise that you might as well —’

  ‘I don’t see what connection that has with this inquiry.’

  ‘Obviously you relied on him a lot, so you’d hardly be the one to kill him. But since you did work so closely together, did he never tell you anything that might have led you to suspect he might be in trouble? Some hint about his enemies, or financial problems he was having, or anything?’

  ‘None,’ she said curtly.

  ‘You must each have had a pretty regular routine. There wouldn’t be a lot of changes around here from one week to another, would there?’

  ‘Depending on Chet’s whims. Otherwise, yes, life’s been fairly predictable.’

  ‘Did he go away often? Working on some projects away from here? The odd contact in Glasgow, for instance?’

  ‘He was banned from driving for some years yet, so he didn’t go anywhere unless I drove him.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘We used to go shopping in Ayr. He bought a lot of materials there. And sometimes he spent quite a long time with one particular supplier,’ she recalled.

  ‘Could you give me the name?’

  ‘I’d have to think back. But I’d imagine there’d be plenty of receipts somewhere in the workshop.’

  ‘Unless it was the sort of business where you didn’t much go for receipts.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that sort of business. Certainly it’s not the way I run mine.’

  He gave her an apologetic grin, and extended his sentry-go into a saunter round the car. ‘How will you cope now he’s gone?’

  ‘I haven’t got round to thinking about that yet.’

  He glanced towards the farmhouse. ‘Have you got a hose?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I thought I might help you with cleaning this up. There’s more muck on the outside than inside.’ He stooped over the front bumper, and narrowed his eyes. ‘Hit any stray cats recently?’

  Anna came round to join him. The front bumper had encountered a few objects in its time, but was as sturdy and undamaged as ever. But there was a coating of mud along two-thirds of it; and at one end a small tuft of hair was stuck into the mud, with a few wiry strands curled over the top.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she breathed.

  Before he could ask what was worrying her, the door of the house opened and DCI McAdam came out.

  ‘Everything OK, sergeant? Hope you’ve been able to cope with him, Mrs Chisholm? Best be getting a move on.’

  Elliot gave Anna a warm smile as they headed towards the police car and drove off. Anna stood well back from the Volvo for an interminable minute, then forced herself to look more carefully at the bumper. Then she remembered some of the shreds that had been sucked up from the interior by the cleaner. Again she went on her knees into the back of the car, and prodded with a finger to see if there was anything left in the corner.

  There was still a stubborn shred of sacking which had resisted being gobbled up. The stain on it might have been rust, red earth, or dried paint. But she knew it wasn’t. It was blood.

  She edged her way out, slammed the hatchback shut, and hesitated for a moment, half wanting to go over to Stables Cottage and tell Nick and Lesley Torrance what she had just discovered. But wouldn’t it be better for the news to come from her rather than be spread among other people before Queenie was told?

  One way or the other, sooner or later, Queenie had to be told.

  Anna slept only fitfully that night. If she told Queenie first thing in the morning, that would ruin their holiday before they had even started.

  Or would it make sense to tell her then, so that she would have the holiday to get over it?

  Or to tell her afterwards, when she was refreshed from the holiday and better able to bear the news?

  Just before dawn, Anna found herself questioning her own interpretation of what she had found. Those fragments could have been any stray animal. There could be absolutely nothing to tell.

  Any stray animal, a bit of it smeared on the bumper. But that trace inside the car?

  In the morning she found herself blurting it all out to the Torrances.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lesley had begun hoovering the kitchen floor when Anna tapped at the door and was brought through by Nick. She at once uttered a prote
st and began easing the cleaner out of Lesley’s hands.

  ‘That’s my job. You’re on holiday.’

  ‘That’s not the way I’d put it,’ said Nick.

  ‘Leave it. I’ll do it when you’ve gone.’

  She was fussing from one surface to another, straightening a pot of flowers on the windowledge, moving the toast rack, peering suspiciously at a nearly empty jar of marmalade as if waiting for it to explode or play some silly trick on her. Yet Lesley was quite sure there was something else on her mind.

  At last she came out with it. ‘I don’t know what to tell Queenie. Whether to tell her before she goes on holiday, or afterwards. Or not to tell her at all. Only I think I have to.’ To Lesley she sounded not unlike Queenie herself in one of her scattier moods.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost us,’ said Nick soothingly.

  ‘Oh, sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just that I’m so confused about what to do for the best. You see, Queenie’s lost her dog, Cocky. Absolutely worshipped it. And now I think I know what happened to it.’

  Lesley pulled a kitchen chair out from under the table, and Anna sank into it, half in a trance.

  ‘You’ve found the dog?’

  ‘No, but I think it was run over. By my car. Only it wasn’t me driving the car. It was Stuart, on his way back with stuff he was removing from the Lodge. I found traces when I was cleaning the mess out of my car, and that nice young sergeant spotted blood and dirt on the bumper. Only how do I tell Queenie that? She never had any time for Stuart. And it was my car, and he ought not to have been driving it, but she’s bound to go on at me about it.’

  ‘You’re sure about this? In a police investigation,’ said Lesley gently, ‘we’re always wary of jumping to any conclusions if there isn’t an actual corpse.’

  ‘I think it’s been . . . oh, dear, I can’t make up my mind one way or the other, but I do think he must have ditched it well away from where he ran over it. In one of the lochans down the glen there, maybe. And she’ll never know where to find it now.’