by Manda Scott
I looked down at the long, seamless channel of stone below the wheel, smooth and worn with the ages. I didn’t try to meet his eye. ‘Go on.’
‘I’m thinking perhaps we have three separate things. We have Eric killed in an accident. Then we have person or persons unknown who have it in for Joey and Martin Coutts in what looks like two sequential murders. And then we have a young woman, a highly intelligent, highly motivated, somewhat unstable young woman, with a life-long grudge, who sees her moment and takes it.’ He leant forward, one arm hooked over the casing, the water playing wilder games with the planes of his face. ‘It may not be the answer that either of us wants, but it’s the only thing I can come up with that makes sense of the facts.’
‘But this is Lee, Stewart. You know her. She wouldn’t do that. She may be strange, she may be driven, she may be way out there on the far edges of over-achievement, but she’s not mad.’
‘Did I say she was? You don’t have to be that far off normal to kill someone, Kellen. There are days in this job when I think the ones who kill are a great deal more sane than the rest of us who plan it all and don’t carry it through. Think about it. Think about the kind of woman she is. You said yourself that her work was her life, that all she wanted to be was a surgeon. Then she lost it overnight, all down to Hillary Murdoch. Smaller minds might have cracked at that. Not Lee. She picked herself up and she changed her focus. In her work, she took up pathology, but that wasn’t enough, she needed a new passion, a new meaning, something to do with all that energy. Cutting up the dead was hardly going to hit the spot, so she diverted into climbing. And she had Eric, a man who, without doubt, shared her loathing of Hillary Murdoch. For years, for half a lifetime, it was enough. Until one day he wasn’t there.’ He leant forward farther. His fingers whitened on the edge of the oak. ‘Eric’s dead, Kellen. Suddenly, without warning, he’s dead and who knows what promises you make in the dark of your soul while you’re cutting up the body of the man you shared your life with? When he was alive, he was an anchor, a stabiliser, a reason to stay out of trouble. But in death, is he not perhaps a trigger? Is she free now to do things she would not, could not have done while he was still alive?’
‘No.’ It came out hoarsely. I cleared my throat and said it again. ‘No. She couldn’t do it, Stewart. She wouldn’t. She’s got more to live for than that.’
‘Has she?’ He leant back on the casing, his eyes turned to the ceiling, and all of him was lost in the slow-spinning shadow of the wheel. His voice was softer than it had ever been and very thoughtful. ‘Were they lovers?’ he asked. ‘Lee and Eric?’
Of all things, I wasn’t expecting that. I stared. ‘You’d have to ask her that.’
‘I did.’
God. ‘So then why ask me?’
He shrugged and turned his face back into the half-light of the water. He smiled, open and friendly and with a sliding hint of apology. ‘Corroboration?’
‘What did she say?’
‘ “Not often enough to be relevant.” ’
‘So that’s it, then.’ He was sitting two feet away, watching me. His whole being was still, as if by stillness he could get what he needed. ‘Once. It was once and it was a very long time ago. Like she said, that’s not often enough to be relevant.’
‘Why just the once?’
‘Because they were neither of them the type to make the same mistake twice.’
‘But they were still good friends?’
‘As close as two people can get.’ I stood up and moved back to the table. Away from the softening slur of the water, the brighter light of the room aged us both. ‘Friendship’s an odd thing, Stewart, and sex can be so very, very complicated. Sometimes the closest friends are the ones you don’t sleep with.’ I turned round again so I could see him. ‘I thought perhaps you might know about that.’
He said nothing. The wheel creaked round. Water and gravity played on the stones. In time he said, ‘Aye, maybe I do.’
There was peace, a hiatus of quiet. The silence stretched on as if both of us had run out of things to say. He stood up eventually and stretched, snapping his fingers. His dog appeared in the doorway. She’s a pup, really, too young for all this hanging around. He ran his hand through the rough hair on her head. ‘I thought I’d take her out lamping tonight,’ he said. ‘If you’ve no objections?’
‘Fine by me.’ It’s my land, theoretically, but he knows what I think about folk who claim ownership over the land. ‘Come in for a coffee if the lights are still on when you’re done.’
‘I’ll do that.’ He walked with me to the door and stood with his hand on the lintel while I laced up my shoes. ‘Doug McKinnon’s a good lawyer,’ he said. ‘He’s got her well looked after.’
‘Pity she needs him, all the same.’
‘I don’t want her guilty, Kellen. You know that.’
‘You’d better find out who really did it then, hadn’t you?’
She didn’t come home that night. I went to bed after two and got up at six and there was still no sign. At seven, I called Doug McKinnon’s office and reached a machine that gave me his mobile number. His mobile offered to take a message. I left my name and hung up.
I made breakfast and didn’t eat it and drank too much coffee instead. Outside, the yard came slowly to life. Sandy was out first, checking the in-foal mares for signs of imminent parturition. Kirsty hauled back the doors to the barn, turned on the taps along the wall and started filling water buckets. Wee Jon slung a handful of head collars over one shoulder and set off down the field. I met him at the gate on the way back in. He stepped carefully through the gate and handed me a fistful of ropes: Echo and Balder in one hand, Friday and Teal in the other. He said nothing that mattered, and if I hadn’t seen Sandy talking to him when they first drove in, I would have believed he had nothing to say. He is good like that, Jon, not given to unnecessary conversation. And it was, in many ways, easier not to talk. We walked in tandem up to the barn. Kirsty had the right doors open. We looped lead ropes over necks and let the ponies find their own way in to breakfast. Jon reached up to a bracket and handed me another fistful of ropes. ‘We’d best make the most of the break in the weather,’ he said. ‘It’ll not last.’
‘Right.’ I learned a long time ago not to disagree with his views on the weather. ‘I’ll get the rest of them in and start skipping out the pond field.’
He looked at me sideways. ‘If you like.’
It’s a long time since I wandered round a field shovelling heaps of dung into a barrow. The school kids do it at weekends, normally, for free rides or extra pocket money. Even they get bored of it fairly fast. I scoured both of the fields opposite the house until there wasn’t a single ball of horse dung left in either of them. Still she didn’t come.
I finished about ten. By then, Sandy had the colt out in the paddock, lunging him in long-reined circles, letting him get the feel of a girth and a bit without feeling tied in by either. Nina and Kirsty were moving the mares and foals, a pair at a time, to a paddock farther down the burn. Jon had the ponies tacked up and ready and was chivvying the gaggle of kids and west-end matrons who made up his Sunday morning ride, hassling them as a sheep dog hassles late spring ewes: slow and steady and always heading in the same direction. I went inside to fill the feed bins, I think, or sort out the grooming kits, something similarly undemanding. Either way, I was right at the far end of the barn when the car pulled up in the yard. I heard the car door slam and then the kitchen door open and heard wee Jon suddenly snap his dawdling troupe to attention. He had fifteen of the fair, far and forties up on their horses and champing at the bit before I was past the last box and out into the yard. He spun Balder round on his heels to face me. His face was closed, unreadable. He nodded back towards the house. ‘You’ll be needed inside,’ he said; then he wheeled back to the top of the ride and was gone.
She was asleep in the kitchen, curled up on the hard wood of the window seat with her head lolling out towards the glass and her arms fall
ing limp at her sides. Her hair was dull and it clung to the side of her face as if she’d spent too long with her hand on one side of her head. The shadows under her eyes were brown, the colour of old tobacco stains. Her face was white as if they’d drained her of blood, and for the first time in years, the old, fine-stitched scars of the knife wounds showed up as two shining hair lines bisecting the length of her jugulars. The dog followed me in and pushed her nose on the back of one dangling hand. It swayed and was still. She never stirred.
A shadow moved at the far side of the room. I looked up. Doug McKinnon stood in the space behind the breakfast bar. His jacket hung over a stool. His tie hung out of a pocket and his shirt sleeves were creased over his elbows. ‘She needs sleep,’ he said. She was not, clearly, alone.
‘She’ll get it.’ I moved over and switched on the electric kettle. It makes less noise than the one on the Rayburn. ‘What happened?’
He took off a pair of blue-framed glasses. A livid red dent showed on either side of his nose, glistening in the light from the window. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘They couldn’t get her to change her story,’ he said. ‘A name on a pad isn’t enough for a charge. They had to let her go.’
‘They’ve been at her all night?’
He nodded. ‘The last one gave up half an hour ago. I think they’ve nailed down every movement she’s made in the last six weeks. She can tell you what bit of rock she climbed at four in the afternoon three weeks ago last Friday and it’s still the same when they come back to it eight hours later.’ He swept a hand through the thinning strands of his hair. ‘I’d like to see any one of them doing that.’
‘Was Stewart MacDonald there?’
‘He drove her in first thing yesterday, then went away and came back about eight last night. He stayed through till this morning.’
Did he indeed? Just at this moment, I can’t tell if that’s good or the worst possible thing he could have done. ‘So is that it? Is she free?’
‘That’s it for the moment.’ He took a coffee and spun in a spare sugar. ‘They still think that she did it but they can’t charge her without more proof. I think she might find she has a dark blue shadow for a while but that’s about as far as they can go.’
‘MacDonald said that?’
‘No. He didn’t have to. You get to know these things.’
Great. He hadn’t slept either and it showed as much in the lines of strain on his face as in the state of his clothes. In law, as in medicine, long nights go with the job and the ability to cope doesn’t necessarily get any better with practice. He leant back on the Rayburn and drank his coffee as if he hadn’t seen any for days. The cat muttered something coarse. He’s not fond of strangers leaning on his Rayburn. He stepped down slowly from his safe spot on the warm plate to the top of the window seat and from there, unsteadily, to the curve of Lee’s arm. She shifted sideways in her sleep to give him space. The grate of his purr rattled out through the room.
McKinnon finished his coffee, and dumped the dregs in the sink and picked up his jacket. I followed him out to his car. ‘She said she wanted to come here and pick up her car and then go straight home.’ He threw his jacket on to the passenger seat. ‘It’s none of my business but I really don’t think she should drive for a while.’
‘No. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t.’
‘She was fairly clear about not wanting to stay. I think you might need a touch of mechanical interference to stop her.’ He looked at her car and raised his brows. ‘If you follow?’
I followed. ‘We’ll sort it out.’ I leant on the door while he retied his tie, sorted his mobile and retrieved his clip-on sunglasses from the glove compartment. ‘Doug … ?’ They couldn’t get her to change her story. And if they could? ‘Do you think she did it?’
His eyes were hidden behind twin polarised lenses: not gone but difficult to read. ‘I’m her lawyer, Kellen. Of course I don’t think that she did it.’
‘But you were Eric’s friend before you were ever her lawyer.’ More than a friend. In the space after Andy, he was a lot more than a friend. It wasn’t that long ago.
‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘And I was her friend too, I think. I know how they were with each other.’ Pausing for a moment, he rested both forearms on the steering wheel and leant his forehead on to his thumbs as if he could find his way through the minefield better that way. ‘I’m absolutely certain that she didn’t kill Eric,’ he said, eventually. ‘If I thought for one moment she did, I wouldn’t have agreed to take her on. But the others …’ He lifted his glasses and rubbed his knuckles once again into his eyes. ‘There are a limited number of folk in the world who’d have the medical know-how to carry this off. She’s one of them. So far there’s only a name on a pad and a very well-publicised difference of opinion between her and Murdoch. As long as it stays like that, she’s fine. If they find anything at all to link her in to the other deaths then I think we’re in a deal of trouble. Of course, as her lawyer, I’m sure they won’t find it. As a friend’—he slid the glasses back on to his nose—‘the best I can do is to hope that they don’t. If you know any good gods it might be time to start praying. She’s holding together now, just about. I don’t want to think what would happen if they take her in and hold her for any serious length of time. Some folk can handle staring at the walls for twenty-three hours in a day. Lee Adams isn’t one of them.’
He reversed in an arc that left marks in the gravel of the drive. I held the gate open for him as he left and was still there five minutes later, staring at the dust of his tracks in the lane, when Nina and Kirsty came in from the barn.
Lee woke just after he’d gone, not completely but enough for me to move her upstairs to the spare room. I left the dog on the bed and the cat on his blanket beside it, the one for protection, the other for mutual comfort. Downstairs, Sunday morning carried on as every other Sunday morning, perhaps a little more quietly than you’d expect, but then we were getting used to shattered Sunday mornings. Two in a row is halfway to a habit. One more and we’ve reached a series.
Sometime just before the first ride came back, I remembered to find and then to hide the keys to her car.
‘Kellen, I couldn’t eat lunch if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.’
‘You have to eat something. You can’t drive as you are.’
‘Watch me.’
‘No.’
We stood squared off across the full length of the kitchen: me by the back door with my boots still on and bits of hay flaking out of my shirt, Lee standing with her back to the far wall, swamped in my jeans and my T-shirt, both of them at least one size too big. She looked every bit as bad as she had when I first came in. Certainly not fit to drive.
‘Just go back to bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you down when lunch is ready.’
She took a breath and I saw her count slowly to ten. Close enough, anyway. ‘Kellen, I want to go home and get washed and go to bed in my own bed. And I need to feed the cat. Unless you’ve been back to the flat to feed him in the last twenty-four hours?’
‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.’
‘So, if you’ll just give me the keys to the car?’ She was spelling each sentence out, slowly, precisely, with hard stops on the consonants. It irritated the hell out of me. God alone knows what it must have done to MacDonald.
Nina came in and looked at us both, then crossed through the firing line to the space behind the breakfast bar. I had all the makings of salad and sandwiches lined up along the counter by the sink. She hacked a slice off the loaf. ‘Lunch, anybody?’
‘Dr Adams doesn’t want to eat.’
‘Dr Adams doesn’t want to eat here.’
‘Sounds fair enough to me.’ Nina cut neat slices off the side of a tomato. ‘She’s a grown woman, Kells. She’s had a rough day and a rougher night. She wants to go home to her own bed. I’d say you should give the lass her keys and let her go.’
‘Whose side are you on?’
‘I’m not
on anyone’s side, I just don’t want to see either one of you hurt any more than you already are.’ She held out a plate. ‘Are you having some lunch?’
‘Not yet.’ I leant back on the edge of the window seat, pushed my hands in the pockets of my jeans, looked up and counted the fine cracks in the plaster on the ceiling. I don’t think I was being unreasonable. ‘Fine, if you want to go, then go. But for God’s sake, come back tonight, will you? You’re not safe on your own.’
‘Kellen, it’s really kind, but I need some space for a while. I need time to sort myself out and I don’t need folk feeding me or bathing me or wrapping me up in cotton wool while I do it. I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal, I’m just feeling really claustrophobic at the moment.’
Claustrophobic. It might have been that, but she looked desperate to me. Desperately angry. Desperately tired. Desperately hurt. And desperately, desperately vulnerable.
‘Lee, listen to me. Space is fine. Very new age. Very self-aware. But we’re not in the middle of a minor emotional crisis. It’s entirely possible that Hillary Murdoch or Joey Duncan or Dr Martin Invisible Coutts needed space. They were all, I have no doubt, very emotionally aware, self-contained human beings. They are also all dead.’
‘I’m not thinking of—’
‘No, you’re not. You’re not thinking at all. Two nights ago, you sat here and explained in real detail why you and Hillary Murdoch were the two folk left on some maniac’s hit list. Now there’s only one name left to go and that’s yours. Ten green bottles—only now we’re down to one. I don’t think “feeding the cat” is a good enough reason to let you be next.’
‘I’m not going to be—’
‘Two out of these four have been slaughtered in their own homes. Has it occurred to you that there could be someone waiting for you at the flat when you get back there?’
‘I’m not—’