Bareback

by John Burke

  Except that if the murder was swiftly wrapped up, the Ridings might go ahead, and he would find himself back on a horse.

  ‘Nick? If you can get here tomorrow morning, I’ll book the studio all day. And get Ike and Bert on standby.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’re aware,’ said Nick, ‘that at this very moment we’re investigating a murder here, right outside my door?’

  ‘I did read something in the papers. Don’t tell me you’re just about to be arrested?’

  ‘No, I am not a suspect, thanks a lot. But I don’t think the investigating officers would fancy me nipping off right now.’

  ‘Christ, Nick, that’s just some provincial sideshow. This is important, man.’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Nick, and hung up.

  Rutherford did not wait to be told what the phone call was about, but stormed on. ‘We’ve been thinking about Mrs Ferguson. First the quaich, and then the murder. We’re not happy about her evidence on either. She’s very vague about her husband’s movements. And about her own. And the daughter’s pretty jumpy. We do have to find out a bit more about them that night, and next day. And whether one of them’s covering for the other.’

  Nick began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Look, just to clear the girl, I think I ought to tell you that she was here all Friday night.’

  ‘Kirsty Ferguson?’

  ‘Kirsty Torrance,’ Lesley corrected him quietly.

  ‘The kid was here? Here in your house?’

  Lesley was looking at Nick as if wondering whether he was exercising his ancient feudal rights. He didn’t want her to guess that he had toyed with such a fantasy – but not in connection with Hannah’s daughter.

  ‘With her boyfriend in my cellar,’ he said. ‘A bit chill down there, but draughtproof. I’m sure they found ways of keeping warm.’ He risked a smile at Lesley. She looked away.

  ‘And she stayed on here the next day?’

  ‘No. I drove her into town.’

  ‘Drove her home?’

  ‘No. She wanted to be dropped by the video hire shop.’

  ‘So she might not have been home that night to notice what time her stepfather came back or went out.’

  ‘Or when her mother went out,’ Lesley added.

  ‘Exactly. If she did go out. Or even if she went out first thing next morning. And whether either of them took the car.’

  Nick, beginning to feel guilty about having cut Quentin off so sharply, and wondering why things which had once occupied so much of his time should so soon seem distant and of no consequence, said: ‘Look, if there’s nothing else I can contribute –’

  ‘I think,’ said Lesley Gunn, ‘that we ought not to trespass on your time any more at the moment, Sir Nicholas.’

  Rutherford glared; but could not think of any reasonable way of contradicting her.

  As they left, Nick noticed how very tight Lesley Gunn’s jeans were, and how delightfully her buttocks moved. Next time she wore a skirt he must pay more careful attention to her legs.

  This place was having a terrible effect on him.

  *

  A TV cameraman was waiting on the pavement outside the incident room as the two detectives arrived back in Kilstane. Two men and a young woman with notebooks at the ready jostled forward.

  ‘Any developments, sir?’

  ‘When will you be prepared to make a statement?’

  Rutherford waved confidently. ‘You’ll have a statement any time now. I promise you’ll hear when there’s something to hear.’

  Inside, he looked at a number of fax sheets and messages sorted by the WPCs on duty at the telephones. They might slot into a jigsaw of evidence sooner or later, but right now offered no new leads. He perched on the edge of the table. ‘Let’s get back to that bloody bowl. That’s where it all started. Les, how far did you dig into records for parallels with similar cases?’

  They had gone through all this at the beginning, but Lesley knew it was not a mere waste of time to tick off point after point again. One name, one remark, could trigger off a thought or a memory, just as it had done with Nick . . . with Sir Nicholas, she corrected herself, feeling her cheeks go suddenly hot.

  She had checked the list of guests at the Pipers’ Ball against the central registry of previous thefts from historic homes to find any slight resemblance between the modus operandi and the methods of known experts in the field. There had been no indication so far of a professional crook at work; and after the disclosures at Black Knowe today, she was even less inclined to believe in one.

  ‘At one stage,’ she said, ‘I did wonder about Jeremy Makepeace. Visiting his father, who’s an incomer. The young one swans around doing nothing much, but very cocky – volunteering right away to play the role of the English villain in the final Riding.’

  ‘This bloody Riding business. Why should it matter who the villain is, and whether he’s English or not?’

  ‘It matters here,’ Lesley assured him.

  ‘Hm. You’ve checked on this Jeremy’s background?’

  ‘Put in a routine enquiry with the Gloucestershire police. They knew of him only as a fast driver who’s been done twice for speeding on the M5. Seemed amused at the idea of him as a romantic robber. But no likely reason for him to be a killer.’

  ‘We don’t know which way that theft led.’

  ‘I still think that was done on impulse. Like someone seeing a car unattended with the keys still in the ignition. Just get in and drive it away. In this case, maybe just for the hell of it.’

  ‘And speaking of cars being driven away . . .’

  Rutherford made a decision. It might save them the random hassle of TV and press reporters bobbing up all over the place at awkward moments if they confronted them at a press conference and announced what little there was to announce. ‘And use it to put out an appeal for that sodding car.’

  Such an interview had to be cleared with the Chief Super. A possible danger was of him showing up personally. He was a great one for displaying himself in full splendour on screen. Fortunately he was committed to a conference with two visiting police chiefs from the United States, so had to leave it in Rutherford’s hands.

  Flanked by Lesley, Rutherford gave a brisk summary of current police operations to a battery of cameras and reporters. She had to admire his brash confidence. He made their lack of progress sound like one of the great successes of recent crime investigation. The public would be impressed by his air of dedication and determination. And he invited that public to share in his work. What they needed right now was the last link in the chain: a missing motor car. It had belonged to the dead man, but had vanished, presumably stolen. He gave the description of the blue Metro and its number; answered a few of the reporters’ questions, and then repeated the description and number.

  Rutherford had arranged to drive back home each evening. It saved having to find accommodation in the town. He left a phone number where he could be contacted. The way Rutherford drove, it took at most forty-five minutes either way, morning and evening. This afternoon, after making sure that Sir Nicholas Torrance’s latest comments had been logged and that a full report of the television interview was safely stored in their own equipment in case of later objections, he was ready to set off when the fax machine began churning out a sheet.

  A message had been passed to the Northumbrian police from a member of the public watching the interview, and relayed to Midlothian and Merse HQ. The man reported seeing a blue Metro in a back street in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The police had confirmed the number-plate and were putting a guard on it, and Forensic were on their way to dust it over and examine every inch for anything that might evoke the right echoes.

  ‘I’ll drive round there on my way home. Tomorrow,’ Rutherford crowed, ‘shows signs of being a lovely day.’

  Chapter Eleven

  It was a lovely morning. Nick sat in the window seat of the hall and surveyed his domain. The sun seemed to swirl in golden waves and whirlpools across the burn and over the moors;
only it wasn’t the sun moving, but skittish cloud shadows dulling the gold and green and then racing away towards the hills of the west.

  He thought of racing like one of those clouds across the fells, his own shadow converging on others, outpacing one of them and leaving himself with the most beautifully moulded one: insubstantial to start with, but putting on flesh as he drew closer and closer. Then two dark shadows swallowed up by the darkness of the cairn.

  Only it wasn’t going to happen.

  He looked around the hall. A few feet away, the clarsach stood mute. Nick stared at it for a full minute, then went across to turn it into position. He felt his fingers were trespassing as they began to pick out a melody, hearing and following Fiona’s remembered voice. But that was stupid. It was his own property, like everything else in this building.

  One of the strings twanged as he plucked too vigorously. For a while he had experimented with an electric bass guitar in a recording group, but had given it up in favour of the piano and harpsichord. Now he had to learn to adjust his fingering.

  Fiona’s voice said: ‘No, not like that. Please.’

  She was behind him, then beside him, gently removing the harp and settling herself over it with a glint of mischief in her face.

  Today she was wearing a dark blue skirt and a shirt as pale yet intense as her eyes. Her fingers were slim, pale, extraordinarily long as they plucked notes from the strings and tossed them languidly like dandelion clocks at Nick.

  It was a haunting tune, part of the fabric of Black Knowe, like all the other phantoms which had been here long before he arrived.

  She slowed the tempo, looking dreamily into infinity as if calculating how to draw him in there with her, and said: ‘Sir Nicholas, why should the Riding not go ahead?’

  He was jolted out of his waking dream. ‘But how could we? A man’s been killed.’

  ‘Men were killed along these lands over many a century. But the boundaries were never left unpatrolled.’

  ‘But that was for real. This is only a . . . well, a pageant.’

  ‘Just make-believe?’ she said softly. ‘None of it for real?’

  ‘Only in a symbolic sense. A pageant,’ he repeated.

  ‘You’re sorry I chose you as Callant?’

  ‘Fiona, I chose you in the first place. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, but now you’re rather relieved you don’t have to ride out and save me, and pretend to plight our troth?’

  ‘I wanted it to happen.’ He was surprised to realise that this was true.

  ‘Of course it would be no more than a pretence, would it?’

  ‘Obviously not.’ He tried to keep it lighthearted rather than be drawn into the depths of those eyes, and drawn closer to those slightly parted lips. ‘Though you could always punish me by putting that fabled curse on me.’

  Fiona played a few aimless chords which emerged into a minor cadence and a discordant leading note hanging on the air.

  ‘There are all kinds of spells. Not all of them curses.’

  ‘Now I shall never know.’

  ‘Men were killed at the Olympic Games,’ she said. ‘More than once. But the Games went on.’

  ‘Look, are you asking me to stick my neck out and –’

  ‘The decision is entirely yours, Sir Nicholas. Whatever you decide, I am sure that Kilstane will accept.’

  *

  The sun was still shining on Kilstane, but it was not turning out quite such an agreeable day as DCI Rutherford had hoped. Results from the discovery of the blue Metro had not led to any great breakthrough. No bloodstains. No sign of violence. Nothing out of the ordinary. A few clothing fibres from the seats and a door handle would be kept until there was something to compare them with, but there was nothing intrinsically suspicious about them. Quite a tidy interior, apart from a cigarette butt trodden into the mat on the driver’s side, and some more squashed into the ashtray.

  ‘A bit odd,’ commented the officer reporting to Rutherford, ‘because the dashboard had one of those No Smoking stickers.’

  That figured. Rutherford would have bet on Hannah Ferguson and, from what he’d heard of him, her husband being non-smokers.

  ‘And there was this ear-ring down between the seats.’

  It was a cheap paste effort, not the sort of thing you would associate with Hannah Ferguson.

  ‘The tyres?’ Rutherford demanded.

  ‘They don’t match up with the marks near the cairn, no.’

  ‘Shit. Could they have been replaced?’

  ‘Don’t look like it.’

  It fitted with the supposition that the car had been stolen by someone in a hurry to make a homeward journey – the way a soldier heading back to barracks late at night would pick up any handy vehicle and ditch it by the roadside when he was nearly there. Having one fag after another as he drove. Giving a lift to some bird, and dislodging one of her ear-rings while having it off in a lay-by?

  It wasn’t a scenario that suited Rutherford’s hunches.

  Time to see Hannah Ferguson again. Only this time bring her in to an interview room in the station. Most people found that more intimidating, and could be prodded into coming out with things they had hoped to keep quiet.

  Rutherford made the phone call personally. He started with a soupy friendliness. ‘I’ve got some excellent news, Mrs Ferguson. Your car’s been found.’

  There was a spit and crackle from the other end. It was enough to provoke a hardening in Rutherford’s tone. ‘There are one or two questions we’d like to ask before returning it to you.’ He sat back with a grin as the noise went on like interference in a portable radio, then broke in: ‘I wonder if you and your daughter could come down to the station and run over one or two things for us? Since you’re temporarily bereft of your car’ – now it was sardonic rather than silky – ‘I’ll see you’re provided with transport. Pick you both up, say, half an hour from now? Oh, and would you mind bringing that shawl you were wearing on the night of the Pipers’ Ball?’ Rutherford waited patiently for the renewed splutter of protest to subside. ‘Yes, it is a bit warm. But some fibres have been found in the car, and we want to check whether they belong to your shawl or to somebody else’s clothing.’

  Hannah Ferguson was still grumbling when she and Kirsty arrived. She flung her shawl defiantly over the back of a vacant chair. ‘Ridiculous, on a day like this.’

  The interview began like a conversation between friends trying to sort out nothing more serious than some minor misunderstanding. Rutherford sat on the edge of the table, swinging his legs and giving Kirsty an avuncular smile. He plucked a few shreds from the shawl with tweezers and dropped them with exaggerated care into a plastic envelope. The calculated slowness made Hannah shift uneasily on her chair.

  Suddenly he leaned towards her, propping himself at an angle with his right palm flat on the table. ‘Mrs Ferguson, do you have scented sachets in your wardrobe?’

  ‘Whatever . . . what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Do you? Hanging in between your clothes?’

  ‘There’s nothing unusual about that. Lots of folk have them.’

  ‘True. But it’s interesting that herb fragments of a particular type have been found in the cracks in the quaich.’

  He had got round to giving it its proper name, observed Lesley.

  ‘I’m not going to go on listening to this.’ Hannah made a move to get up, but there was no real resolve behind it.

  Rutherford went on: ‘Was that where your husband found it? He discovered it hidden in your wardrobe and set out to return it to its rightful owner. You lost your temper and –’

  ‘You can’t do this.’ For once Kirsty was surer of herself than her mother was. ‘Mither, you have to ask for a solicitor now.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many television serials, young lady.’ But Rutherford caught Lesley Gunn’s worried expression, and held his fire. ‘All right. Naturally we’ll go along with that. Mrs Ferguson, you do realise that you’re free to l
eave at any time. But at this stage do you know a solicitor you’d like to call?’

  Lesley winced. The only solicitor with whom Hannah had been familiar was most likely Archie Ferguson.

  It dawned on Rutherford at that same moment. ‘Och, yes. I’m sorry. Perhaps a partner of your late husband? Or we can call the duty solicitor, if that’s your wish.’

  ‘I don’t want any solicitor. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Good. Excellent. But please understand that you can change your mind at any time. Now, we don’t want to bore Kirsty with all this. Perhaps you’ll wait outside, Kirsty? I’ll get the duty sergeant to organise a cup of cocoa for you.’

  When the door had closed behind the girl, Rutherford went dreamily on. ‘We haven’t finished checking through your car, of course. But there was this.’ He opened his clenched fist suddenly on the ear-ring. ‘Would this be yours?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing anything so vulgar.’

  ‘I wonder whose it could be? Anyway, I expect there are some shreds of your shawl there. Quite naturally, if you used the car regularly. And if the quaich was in that car at any time, we may find traces of that too. You’d be surprised how things hardly visible to the naked eye can fit into a pattern, Mrs Ferguson.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the quaich, or anything that went on in that car.’

  ‘Now, let’s go over it again and see if we can jog your memory.’

  Lesley was beginning to feel downright allergic to Rutherford. He was in such a hurry to wrap something up: anything would do, provided he could get the wrapping to stick. Yet now he was back to his gentle act, easing round Hannah like a purring domestic cat rather than a predatory wild one hoping to find her vulnerable point. ‘Could we get back to that business of the papers?’

  ‘What papers?’

  ‘Miss Elliot said your husband had some papers with him when he left the office. Where are they?’

  ‘I told you before, I don’t know anything about any papers.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t have them with him when he got home?’