I confirmed that was indeed what I meant.
‘I thought we’d already discussed that.’ Paul hefted his holdall and walked with me along the corridor. ‘The Boyd boys both consulted me about the mausoleum case and although I cut Danny out to you, he was really my client to begin with.’
‘And so was Nathan,’ I reminded him. Would Paul act for one client accused of killing another? It wasn’t the sort of dilemma that would have kept me awake at nights, but Paul was the kind of guy who wrestled with such abstract concepts as professional ethics. He mulled it over as we walked out of the door at the end of the corridor, and onto the landing at the top of the stairs.
‘I suppose Nathan was my client, but only for a very short time. The case against him hasn't gone ahead. It can't. He's dead.’
‘Even then, you don’t think there might be a conflict of interest if you act for the person accused of his murder?’ I asked.
Paul smiled. ‘If there is, he’s unlikely to complain to the Law Society. You can keep the grave-robbing case, though.’
I shook my head. ‘I think you should have that as well.’
‘No, really, keep it. After all, I cut him out to you for that one. Fair’s fair.’
‘I’d rather not,’ I said.
By this time we had reached the foot of the stairs and the lobby of the Civic Centre. Paul looked at me. ‘You’re not in the huff about this are you?’
I assured him we weren’t going to fall out over it.
‘That’s fine then. So keep the mausoleum case. A fixed fee is a fixed fee.’
It was financial logic with which I could hardly disagree, still I had to refuse.
‘You definitely are in the cream-puff,’ Paul said.
‘I’m not. I don’t want Danny Boyd as a client—’
‘Robbie—’
‘Because,’ I pointed straight ahead to the Divisional Office of Lothian & Borders, scarcely twenty paces away. ‘If he’s my client, I can’t go over there right now and grass him off to the police.’
Chapter 39
‘You must like it here.’ The sergeant at the front desk was the same one who’d taken my details when I’d been detained the night before. He was just coming on duty again and getting himself organised, when I limped through the door. ‘Forget something?’ he asked.
I pointed at the bump on my head. ‘I slipped and fell when being interviewed by Inspector Fleming. Is he around?’
I could tell the sergeant wasn’t sure if I was joking or not. He lifted the phone and a minute or so later the florid features of Detective Inspector Dougie Fleming hove into view. ‘What do you want?’
‘To help the police with their enquiries,’ I said.
‘Please. Don’t make me laugh. I’ve got chapped lips and no lip-salve. What happened to your head?’
‘I slipped. That’s not what I’m here about, though. I want a word in private about a client... a former client of mine.’
Fleming looked at his watch as though he had a pressing engagement. Probably with a pie and a pint. ‘I can give you five minutes.’
‘It won’t take that long,’ I assured him, as he led me to one of the interview rooms. ‘It’s about Danny Boyd.’
‘Who?’ He held the door open for me.
I walked past him into the room and sat down. ‘The boy whose brother, Nathan, was murdered.’
‘Are you talking about the tinks from down by Philipstoun?’
‘I know where Danny is. He’s been hiding out in the Bathgate hills. You should find him somewhere in the woods up at Beecraigs.’
‘Fascinating.’ I noticed that Fleming hadn’t come into the room. He was still at the door, leaning on the handle. ‘Anything else?’
‘Is that not enough to be going on with?’
‘And why would I be interested in some boy holidaying in the woods?’
Because you’re scouring the country looking for him as a murder suspect, was what I was going to say, but didn’t. ‘Aren’t you looking for him?’
‘We were until we found out he'd been at the opening of the new farm shop up at Aberdovan from early doors. When someone has a dozen alibi witnesses, including the Provost, we tend to discontinue that line of enquiry.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Now, before you start getting all comfortable... I’m a busy man.’
‘But—’
‘Any more and I’ll do you for wasting the time of the police – again. Understand?’
I didn’t. But I left anyway.
Chapter 40
Mrs Boyd was a big, strong woman with red, raw hands and hair like a stook of wheat. She invited me into what she called the parlor; a small, spotlessly-clean room that smelled of home-baking. Roses on the wallpaper matched the furniture, and the cheap ornaments scattered here and there gave the place the appearance of a gypsy caravan. Mrs Boyd excused herself to go stir a pot of jam. She opened the door to the kitchen and a warm waft of air blew into the room.
I looked for somewhere to sit. The sofa was occupied by a dog of some indeterminate variety. Though it was old, it felt obliged to give me a brief but well-mannered wag of its wiry-haired tail. I didn’t disturb it, opting instead for an armchair next to the fireplace in which a beech log smouldered gently, and where I sat happily engulfed in the gloriously sweet smell of simmering jam.
Mrs Boyd returned in a few minutes, wiping her hands on her apron. She shoved the dog off the sofa and sat down, hands clasped between her knees. ‘You must think I'm terrible, Mr Munro. Me making jam and my own son, dead just a fortnight ago and not yet buried.’
I didn't know what to say, so I tried to rearrange my features into a non-judgemental, sympathetic sort of an expression.
‘I was in bed for a week after it. My sister came to stay for a few days. Sadie got me up and about. She lost her man last year and said the best way to get by was to try and keep yourself busy. If you stay in bed...’ She pulled a handkerchief out of the big front pocket of her apron and blew her nose. ‘All you do is lie there and think.’ The tears came in huge sobs. I was hopeless in those sort of situations. Should I go over and sit beside her? Put an arm around her? What could I say? So, I said nothing and just sat there until Mrs Boyd returned the hanky to her apron pocket, gave each eye a final wipe with the back of a hand and looked up at me with a crooked, strained smile.
‘I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘Why don't I come back later? It's too soon for you.’
She wouldn't hear of me leaving until I told her why I was there.
I wanted to ask her if she had any idea why Nathan was killed, but I couldn't launch straight into that, nor, in her present state, was it advisable to let her in on my theory that I believed the person who'd killed her older son was also after his brother.
‘Danny's safe,’ I told her. ‘I've met him a couple of times recently and he's fine.’
She got up, came over, pulled me from my seat and hugged me like a sack of spuds.
Once she'd released me, I pressed on with more good news. ‘I've also spoken to the police. Danny is no longer a suspect. At the time of the... at the time of Nathan's death he was at the Aberdovan farm shop. The police have checked that.’
Mrs Boyd's eyes filled with tears again. ‘Where is he? Did you not tell him to come home?’
‘I've been trying to. The problem is, he's living rough and moved on somewhere else.’ The woods around Beecraigs Country Park covered many hectares of West Lothian countryside. If that was where the remaining Boyd boy had gone, the chances of finding him, if he didn’t want to be found, weren’t really all that good, even if I spent all that drizzly Saturday looking. And did I want to find him right then? Somebody wanted to kill Danny. If the boy came home, he might very well end up like his brother. For the time being he was safer hiding out amongst the trees.
Mrs Boyd sat down again.
‘I never thought for a second that Danny would of hurt his brother,’ she said.
‘Do you know who might have?’ I asked tentatively.
‘I told the police that I thought Nathan must have been trying to stop someone breaking in here.’
In here? What for? To steal a few pots of jam or some home-baking?
Mrs Boyd's bottom lip began to tremble. ‘Me and Danny were both out. Maybe somebody thought the place was empty and...’
‘Mrs Boyd...’ On closer inspection she wasn’t much older than me. ‘What’s your first name?’ Unfortunately it was Hughina and I wished I’d never asked. Was that even a name?
‘My dad was called Hugh,’ she explained. ‘He wanted a boy. Folk just call me Ina.’
I was glad to hear it. ‘Were your sons into drugs or anything, Ina?’ Drugs were a chart-topping reason why people in Scotland were murdered. It seemed to me like a reasonable question, and though I tried to ask it as gently as possible, Mrs Boyd was outraged.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, after she’d calmed down slightly. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that—’
‘They’re both good boys.’ She snorted. ‘Drugs. As if.’
Not drugs then. ‘Can you think of any other possible reason someone would want to kill Nathan? Did Nathan owe anyone money?’
Apparently he didn’t.
‘Was there a woman involved? Maybe somebody else’s wife,’ I suggested cautiously.
Mrs Boyd bit her bottom lip and shook her head.
There had to be some reason why the Boyd boys should be targeted. I’d tried drugs, money and sex. What else was there?
‘I know that you'll think this a bit crazy,’ I said, when I'd run out of possible motives, ‘but Danny thinks he and Nathan were cursed when they tried to break into that mausoleum.’
Mrs Boyd's face tightened. ‘I warned them. I warned them both when they started going out looking for tombs. I told the pair of them they could explore if they wanted, but to touch nothing.’ She stood. ‘Mr Munro, I’ve never offered you a cup of tea.’
‘I’m fine.’ I was wasting my time. ‘I’d better go. Let you get back to your jam.’
‘Do you like jam?’
Everyone liked jam didn’t they?
She took me through to the kitchen, a much larger room than the parlor with an immense gas range on which two big jam pots burbled and blubbed, half a lemon partially submerged in the centre of each batch of molten strawberries. ‘What’s your favourite?’ Mrs Boyd pulled open the double doors of a cupboard on the far wall. It was stacked with row after row of jam jars, each with a plastic cover over the top, held on by a red rubber band. Homemade paper labels proudly proclaimed: Mrs Boyd’s Finest Preserves. A row of rhubarb and ginger caught my eye. My dad’s favourite. Might as well keep in with him. We’d yet to discuss the state of my forehead, and my planned walking into a door story was unlikely to meet with critical acclaim.
Mrs Boyd wrapped a jar in a brown paper bag. ‘I’m not a superstitious person, Mr Munro. I just know what is best for my boys. Nathan is... was... a clever boy. He did well at school. He kept all the books for the family business. He wrote all the letters and used to get much better deals than I could from the garden centres.’ Tears began to well once more. She took the hanky from her apron pocket and dabbed her eyes. ‘We’ve got a computer for printing labels and doing letters and stuff. Nathan wanted the internet. I didn’t like the sound of it, but we got it anyway and the two of them were never away from it. Have you got children, Mr Munro?’
I confirmed the absence of heirs.
‘Well, when you do have, you’ll be able to tell when something’s not right. Even though my boys never said nothing, I knew something was wrong. Then I found Danny was getting threats.’
This was more like it. ‘Who from?’
‘Other kids, making fun of him. Calling us gypo’s and pikey’s. Sending him emails and telling him to kill himself. The school called it cider-bullying. Said it was a big problem these days for kids. It wasn’t a problem for me and my boys much longer. I pulled the plug on that internet. Problem solved.’
Some playground taunting was hardly going to result in Nathan’s throat being slit and a contract being put out on his brother and his brother’s lawyer.
‘I didn’t like them doing all that tomb searching. Those people have been dead for years. Just because they’re forgotten doesn’t give anyone the right to go disturbing them.’
I had to ask. ‘What people?’
‘Nathan got a list off the internet. There are tombs all over Scotland. In places you’d never think. I told him... I told him... leave them alone.’
I could tell she was about to burst into tears again. I didn’t want to be there when it happened. The dog wandered through to see what all the fuss was about. Mrs Boyd shoo’d him out again.
‘Find Danny,’ she said.
I reached out for the brown paper bag. ‘Thanks for the jam. My dad will love it.’
Mrs Boyd kept a tight grip on it. ‘Don’t let anything happen to my boy.’
I didn’t intend to. Danny and I were inextricably linked by way of a contract out on our lives. I was certain that if something bad happened to him, it would happen to me.
Chapter 41
I took off my mud-caked boots and left them at the door. Six hours straight, traipsing around Beecraigs Country Park, trying to find someone who was doing his damnedest not to be found.
‘You’re back then?’ my dad said, without diverting his gaze from the TV. Sunday night; a divorced detective with a drink problem, whose wife still secretly loved him, was driving around in an interesting car, solving crimes to the astonishment of his colleagues who hated and yet secretly admired him. Given that he rubbed his superiors up the wrong way so often and continually flouted the rules, the only mystery for me was how he’d been made inspector. Clearly, unlike most other major organisations, sooking-up to the top brass counted for nothing in the Police Force.
‘Manage not to bump into any more doors on your travels?’ my dad asked, as I padded past him, through the livingroom to the kitchen.
I ignored the jibe. ‘I’m having a beer, do you want one?’ A question I should have asked before I opened the fridge door. ‘That was a six-pack when I left this morning,’ I said, sitting down beside my dad on the sofa, clutching the last bottle of beer.
‘Well your whisky ran out earlier today,’ he replied, as though somehow the bottle of Bowmore I’d bought just a few nights before had evaporated.
I took a swig of lager. ‘Can we watch something else? You don’t even like cop shows.’
‘I know, but I’ve got a theory about this series.’
My dad had a theory on most things. ‘You don’t mean to say that this disillusioned detective who goes about being gruff and horrible to everyone is really a diligent officer with a heart of gold?’
‘Actually, it’s not my theory, it’s Vince’s.’
Vince Green was not only the late father of my girlfriend, Jill, but former best friend of my dad. If he’d had a theory I’d better take it seriously.
‘Go on,’ I said.
I used to watch this show with Vince. He could guess the killer every week without fail. We used to have bets on it. I lost fortunes to him. I even told him once he should join the polis as a consultant.
‘You sure you weren’t watching repeats?’
‘No, he told me afterwards how they write the scripts for these things. He had an old army pal who went on to work on the telly. I think he was a stunt co-ordinator or something. Anyway, he told him all about it. You see, you can’t have the killer being somebody who suddenly appears at the end. That would be like cheating. You have to have seen them during the show sometime, understand?’
I was with him so far.
‘Well, you know how the detective goes about interviewing folk? It's always the third suspect who's done it. If it was the first it would be too obvious.’
‘What about the second?’
‘It’s always the third, all right?’
I took another mouthful of beer. ‘Is that it? That’s the theory? Seems simple enou
gh. Did you never catch on.’
‘Until someone tells you, it’s not that easy to work out. The first two suspects always have motives. The third doesn’t really have a motive until you find out what it was right at the end and it all becomes clear.’
‘So who did it?’ I tilted the neck of the bottle at the TV. ‘That guy with the cravat looks a bit dodgy. What is he? An antiques dealer?’
‘Auctioneer, but it’s not him. He’s only number two.’
The whole show was number two so far as I was concerned. I finished the beer in one more long gulp.
‘Did you not find him then?’ my dad asked.
With five beers in him as well as the rest of my whisky, he was in talkative mood. ‘I'll not disturb you. Watch your programme. I’m going for a shower to wash off the muck and midges.’
‘It’s okay, I don't mind having a wee chat.’ He pressed the mute button on the TV remote. ‘Number three’ll not be on until after the adverts. Tell me, what’s so important about this Boyd boy? If the polis aren’t hunting him, he’ll come home soon enough. You can call off the search. I mean it was a nice pot of jam, but that’s two days you’ve been looking for him. There wasn’t even that much ginger in it. It was mostly rhubarb.’
‘I think he's in danger.’
‘Because of what happened to his brother? You don't even know what that was all about. Could have been anything. A housebreaking gone wrong or something.’
‘There's nothing in the house to steal unless you're a jam thief. There has to be more to it. I spoke to his mum. She was going on about the Boyd boys being cyber-bullied.’
‘That's not real bullying,’ my dad said, after I'd enlightened him on the meaning. ‘When I moved to Linlithgow, early Sixties, there was a bully at our school, Big Dowzer. He used to take bottles of juice off his classmates, drink them, pee in the bottle and then make them buy them back with their dinner money. Now that's proper bullying. Not some kids on the computer slagging-off your trainers.’
I could never imagine my dad as a schoolboy. ‘Dowzer ever sell you a bottle?’ I asked.
Killer Contract (Best Defence series Book 4) Page 18