by John Burke
The photographer was still prowling round the body, going down every now and then on his knees to get a close shot of Mairi’s neck or face twisted to one side. Lesley found it hard to be dispassionate, looking down at that beautiful but inert body. One of her arms was flung out in what could have been a last attempt to push herself up from the ground — or the abandonment of a woman greedy for her lover, impatient for him to add his weight to hers and press her into the damp grass until shreds of it clung to her head and shoulders and wide, flaunting hips. Only the head offered no welcome. It was wrenched aside, strangled and twisted. Clothes had been thrown aside, but not as if they had been ripped off. Hurriedly discarded, yes; but not torn brutally off in a struggle. She must have thrown them aside herself, opening herself, expectant.
When the photographer was finished, a man in a white overall stooped to examine the marks on Mairi’s neck.
‘You were at that recital last night,’ said Rutherford. ‘Supposed to be keeping your eyes and ears open. What do you make of it? What went on?’
‘They were playing, the two of them, like folk possessed. Carried away by the music.’
‘And ready to go on performing? Did she and Lowther go off together afterwards?’
‘I . . . don’t know.’
Rutherford fixed her with a beady stare. ‘Otherwise occupied, Les?’
She longed not to blush, but knew she was failing.
‘I left,’ she said as firmly as possible, ‘after I’d made the appointment for us to show up for our interview this morning.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to follow them?’
‘No, it didn’t. If they were going to . . . well . . .’
‘Have it off together? Quite a lot of that in the air last night, was there?’
‘There was nothing to suggest that anything like this —’
‘Strikes me we’d better go and see friend Lowther.’
‘I don’t see him as a suspect. He was obsessed with the woman.’
‘Love and hate? Not getting his own way with her?’
‘From what Deirdre Maxwell had to tell us,’ she reminded him, ‘he was undoubtedly getting his own way with her.’
A second man was examining the dead woman’s nails and carefully extracting minute flecks to see if there were traces of skin she might have clawed off her attacker, if she had put up a struggle. ‘I think we can get a more thorough inspection once we’ve carted it off to the morgue, sir.’
Mairi McLeod was now an ‘it’, no longer a ‘she’ or ‘her’.
‘I still think we have to start with Lowther. The way things were going, he could have been the last person to see her alive. We see him, find out what there is to find, and then play it by ear.’
A crowd was gathering, held back by two uniformed officers. There were whispers and nudges. Women who had been in the audience last night were looking back over their shoulders at friends who had not been so lucky, telling them what they had noticed about the way the violinist used her arms, and how you could see how tempestuous she was, and what strange suggestiveness there had been in some of the music. They could almost have predicted that something would happen.
Galbraith lunged towards Rutherford and Lesley Gunn. Rutherford raised an arm which looked threatening but was merely brushing the reporter away. ‘There has been an unfortunate occurrence. One of the festival performers has been found dead. When we have more details, you’ll be notified.’ Rutherford stamped on, with Lesley hurrying to catch up and not be intercepted by the reporter.
As they went into the town past the garage, Rutherford said: ‘The same killer, d’you think? First Erskine, then Erskine’s floozie?’
‘Which lets Lowther out, surely? He worshipped Erskine. And was besotted with Mairi McLeod.’
‘Who else, then? A serial killer? I mean, can we add that woman in the tower? Someone with a lasting grudge over more than one generation? Three in a row. Or perm any two from three.’ He stared at a coach that was loading up musical instruments and some bleary-eyed ravers. ‘Wonder if we ought to pull them in until we’ve completed our inquiries?’
‘It’s an internal thing,’ said Lesley. ‘Very local. Maybe a connection between one and two. Or two and three. But nothing to do with the visitors.’
‘If it’s one and two, then that lets Lowther out. Only a kid at the time that woman was done in. But running in the family? Father left in a bit of a hurry. Tied in with the murder? And somehow there’s been something inbred, something going on into the present.’
‘The killings could be related,’ Lesley agreed. ‘But not necessarily the same killer. An awful lot of the threads seem to be tangled up with one another, but not necessarily in a straight-forward pattern. Like a musical composition: you don’t simply repeat the first tune, or leave it to one soloist, you make a logical progression from one to —’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Les. You’ve put me off music for life.’
‘Who do we know was here at the time of any two of the three murders? Or the right age to cover all of them? And with a motive for each of them?’
Before she could pursue this, there was a shout of ‘Guv’ across the street. DS Elliot was waving from the opposite pavement, eyeing a gap between a brewer’s delivery lorry and an impatiently lurching, speeding and slowing Range Rover with an apoplectic Captain Scott-Fraser at the wheel. In the end Elliot opted for safety, and waited until the two vehicles had separated near the Tolbooth.
He was waving a green folder. ‘Some DNA results through at last. And some fingerprints and an interesting bloodstain. I think you ought to see them.’
‘Right now we’re on our way to see young Lowther about our latest cadaver.’
‘Guv, maybe there’s somebody you ought to see first. Catch him when he’s not expecting it.’
‘What the hell are you on about, Elliot?’
But Rutherford let the sergeant steer them towards the caravan and lay out the new details on the table. After less than five minutes he agreed that priorities had shifted.
‘Shall we bring him in?’ said Elliot.
‘No. I think the inspector and myself will go pay a call. Catch him when he’s not expecting it, as you so rightly put it, laddie.’
Chapter Two
The gates of the builder’s yard were pulled right back to allow a large delivery truck to back in from the street. As Jack Rutherford and Lesley Gunn edged their way round it, two men began unloading rolls of plastic sheeting. Glaring down from the murky window of his office on the unloading process, ready to be critical if anything was dropped or grazed, Enoch Buchanan looked even less amiable when he recognized the two detectives. As they climbed the rickety steps, he moved to the doorway as if to deny them entry.
‘Mr Buchanan.’ Rutherford was at his politest, most non-committal.
‘This is a busy morning for me.’
‘And for us.’ Rutherford mounted the last step so that Buchanan had either to make way for him or push him off. ‘You’ll have heard the news?’
Buchanan stood aside. ‘If ye’re meaning —’
‘I think you know what I mean, sir. We have a few questions on which you may be able to help us.’
‘That I doubt.’
Lesley followed Rutherford into the office with its smell of dust and something metallic, presumably from the battered kettle standing on a gas ring at the far end of the shack.
‘You’ll have heard, then, of another murder.’
‘Aye. The harlot has followed him into perdition.’
‘She didn’t exactly follow. Not of her own accord, anyway. She was the victim of a deliberate killer. Knowing your strong feelings on the matter, we were hoping you could throw some light on it.’
‘I’m no’ in the mood to listen to this sort of thing.’
‘We’ll be only too pleased to listen to you, sir.’
Buchanan glanced at the clerk hunched up at the bench, pretending not to hear a word. ‘Angus, get down there and keep
an eye on those gowks. Any shortages or any damage, and I’ll be wanting a report. You know what they’re like.’
When the young man had gone, Rutherford leaned against the bench and pushed the vacant chair towards Lesley with his foot.
‘Now, Mr Buchanan.’
‘All I know is what I’ve been told this very morning. And there’s nae doubt everyone else in the toon will hae heard it the noo. Why would the two of ye be coming to tell me, specially?’
‘Because there are one or two very special things. Very personal matters.’
‘Ye’d oblige me by not taking too long over this. My time is money.’
Lesley could see that Buchanan’s blustering attitude was exasperating the always quick-tempered Rutherford. Instead of leading up to things gradually, laying some subtle verbal traps, he came out with it: ‘Mr Buchanan, your fingerprints are on that guitar — the Daniel Erskine murder weapon.’
‘Man, you’re cracket.’
‘There were lots of other prints. The guitarist’s own, naturally. And those of one or two of his mates. Not surprising. But it was surprising to find yours there, Mr Buchanan.’
‘And how would ye be guessing they’re mine?’
‘No guesswork, sir. We made a comparison with those you left on the glass when we interviewed you.’
‘Snooping, is that the size of it? Nothing better to do.’
‘Fingerprints, and bloodstains.’
‘Erskine’s blood, nae doot.’ Buchanan relished the idea.
‘And a trace of your own. Did you cut yourself on one of the strings when you swung the guitar at him?’
‘And how would you be guessing at these other bloodstains?’
‘No guesswork,’ said Rutherford again. ‘DNA tests.’
‘And what would those be?’
Overriding Rutherford’s impatient snort, Lesley said in her best imitation of a schoolmarm: ‘The nucleus of living cells contains a genetic code unique to individual human beings. Even when they’ve been dead for many years — hundreds of years, even — family genes can be identified down through the generations. The faintest fragment of tissue, a hair follicle, cells from saliva . . . they’re an infallible guide.’
Rutherford shouldered his way back in. ‘You picked up that guitar and smashed it over Daniel Erskine’s head. You left your calling cards all over it.’
Buchanan stared out of the window. The prospect offered him no comfort. ‘Och, I’ll grant ye I picked the filthy thing up. But that’s all I did.’
‘You never got round to telling us that.’
‘Because I knew ye’d be making something twisted out of it.’
‘Why would you have picked up something you detested so much?’
‘There he was, that lout, that good-for-nothing. Drunk in the gutter. And that abominable thing beside him. So aye, I did pick it up. Gey stupid of me.’ A hint of a whine crept into Buchanan’s voice. ‘I’ll admit that, officer. I was no’ in my senses. I . . . I picked it up and . . . och aye, I threw it as far as I could. Somebody else must hae got their hands on it later.’
‘Somebody else?’
‘There’s plenty o’ folk in this toon who had good cause to want that spawn o’ Satan oot o’ this world.’
‘But you had a particular grudge, didn’t you? Your belief — or misapprehension — that Erskine had defiled your daughter.’
‘It was no misapprehension. It was him. Taking her away, and then throwing her back like a . . . like . . .’
‘You’re still sure it was him?’
‘Who else would it have been?’
‘We don’t know, but we know it wasn’t Erskine.’
‘Man, how could ye be knowing any such thing?’
Rutherford nodded to Lesley that it was her turn. ‘Again it’s a matter of DNA, Mr Buchanan,’ she said. ‘The baby your daughter was expecting was definitely not Erskine’s. We’ve made the comparisons between the two corpses, and what little remains of the unborn baby, and Erskine was not the father.’
Buchanan’s sagging face would have been a pitiable sight if a hardened police officer was ever in the mood to pity a killer. ‘My daughter . . .?’
Rutherford said: ‘Enoch Buchanan, I am charging you with the murder of Susanna Buchanan, Daniel Erskine, and Mairi McLeod.’
‘That harlot? That was nothing to do with me. I was never —’
‘You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
‘Cracket,’ said Buchanan again. ‘All of ye, cracket.’
‘We’d better continue this down at the station. Inspector, will you phone for a car?’
Buchanan was struggling to regain his dignity. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking.’
‘If you’re thinking of making a run for it —’
‘Have no fear, man. I’ll nae be one o’ your shilpit runaways. I’ll stand for what I believe, and the Good Lord will be my guide.’
Striding between them through the streets, he looked as he had looked that previous time — upright, offering the police mature advice rather than kowtowing before their questions.
*
In the interview room, Rutherford said: ‘May I remind you that you are still under caution. If you wish your solicitor to be present —’
‘I’ll no’ be seeing good money put into yon Wilson’s pocket.’
‘If you change your mind at any time, we’ll suspend the interview until you have arranged to be represented.’
‘Would you care for a drink of water?’ suggested Lesley.
‘So that ye can contrive further lees?’
She set the tape recorder, and Rutherford repeated the charge.
‘I’ve told ye, I know nothing about the McLeod whore.’
‘But the others? You do know something about both of them? Especially as one of them was your daughter?’
‘No daughter o’ mine.’
Lesley spread out a blueprint and two sheets of paper she had collected from the caravan.
‘Mr Buchanan, you will recollect that in 1979 you spoke out very strongly in the Community Council against the proposal to build a new housing estate on the Monigour Moss.’
‘What has that got to do with it? Why dig that up?’
Rutherford grinned. ‘Digging up has a lot to do with it.’
‘You opposed the idea on grounds of health, land subsidence, and other factors,’ Lesley went on. ‘Yet when you were overridden, you showed great determination in taking on the job of building contractor for the project. Double standards, Mr Buchanan?’
‘Certainly not. If something had to be done, better it was in the hands of somebody competent than have a puir job made worse.’
‘And you wanted to make sure you had control over the site. In a hurry to remove the body you had buried there. You’d buried it in a sack, and then had to dig it up again and find another way of disposing of it, hadn’t you?’
‘I dinna have to listen to this.’
‘No, but if you’re unwilling to answer questions here,’ said Rutherford, ‘I can keep you in custody while you consider the matter, and if necessary the superintendent will grant an extension and then consider applying to a magistrate for a further extension while our inquiries continue.’ He waited a few moments, then smiled at Lesley. ‘Inspector. I think we have permission to continue.’
She had the story at her fingertips. DS Elliot’s researches had confirmed so much background guesswork, and she could see that Rutherford was happy to defer to her because she knew all the people by now, knew every nuance, every possibility, and was best equipped to undermine the stony but crumbling Buchanan.
‘When your daughter came home and told you she was expecting a child, what did you do?’
‘What any decent parent would have done. I’d no’ hae disgrace brought on my house. I . . . I sent her away again, before she could flaunt her sham
e aboot the place.’
‘No, Mr Buchanan. You flew into a rage and murdered her.’
‘I’ll not deny I raised my hand to her. Chastising her, as every father has the right to do.’
‘Chastising? You call murder —’
‘I’ll answer to God, not to you.’
‘You struck her. Hard enough to kill her.’
‘That was never meant.’ He stopped, gulped, and the bluster ebbed away into a bubble of spittle.
‘You stripped her of her clothes — burned them, I suppose? — wrapped her in a sack, and buried her in the moss. Nobody would ever be likely to find her there. Then when there was a danger of the site being dug up, you desperately went for the building contract. And then’ — Lesley let a vibrant silence hang in the air for a moment — ‘you dug her up and moved her into another of your projects. Entombed her again, this time in the Academy flue. Clumsily smashing her hand in the rush.’
‘That’s too stupid to answer.’
‘Come to think of it,’ Lesley went on, ‘this would have been about the time that Jamie Lowther left the district. Very abruptly. And seems to have been quite well provided for. Was he trying to blackmail you?’
Buchanan came to life. ‘He was a reliable worker, Lowther. No reason to blackmail me. And I’m no’ the kind to be blackmailed by anybody. That sort of filth would never work with me, that I can tell ye.’
Lesley was sure that this, at any rate, was true.
‘Why did he go away so soon, then? So suspiciously close to the time you shoved your daughter into that flue casing?’
Instead of denying or trying to excuse the murder of his daughter, Buchanan shrugged, still anxious to show that he was and always had been the man in charge. ‘One thing I will tell ye,’ he condescended. ‘A good reason for Jamie Lowther being keen to get away was that young Adam was beginning to look more and more like his real father. I’d seen it all along. I’m a good judge, young lady. Sooner or later there’d have been others who’d notice.’
‘Notice that Daniel Erskine was Adam Lowther’s father?’
‘Spreading his foul seed everywhere.’
‘So you leaned on Jamie. Persuaded him to help you shift your daughter into that metal casing. You couldn’t have managed it on your own. In a way, you were the blackmailer. Got him to help you with your dirty work, drove him out of Kilstane because of the fear of being sneered at, and paid him well enough for his services. Making it clear, I suppose, that there’d no longer be a job for him if he stayed?’