Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  Also By The Same Author

  Death is my Neighbour

  Last Act of All

  Past Praying For

  The Trumpet Shall Sound

  Night and Silence

  Shades of Death

  NOVELS FEATURING DI FLEMING

  Cold in the Earth

  The Darkness and the Deep

  Lying Dead

  Lamb to the Slaughter

  Aline Templeton

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette Livre UK company

  Copyright © Aline Templeton 2008

  The right of Aline Templeton to be identified as the Author

  of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

  without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise

  circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 9781848942936

  Book ISBN 9780340922309

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW13BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Milena with fondest love

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  1

  ‘No,’ the woman said. She could feel the muscles in her neck tense into cords, and her nails dig into the palm of her hand in an effort to stop her voice from wavering. ‘Whatever you say, whatever you do – no.’

  She had to use both hands to set down the receiver and even then she was shaking so much that she knocked it off its stand again.

  ‘What do you do about a dead sheep?’ PC Sandy Langlands’s cheerful, cherubic face was creased into worried lines as he came into the CID room at the Kirkluce headquarters of the Galloway Constabulary.

  ‘I don’t know, what do you do about a dead sheep? Just get to the punchline, Sandy – I’m busy.’ DC Will Wilson was working on a tricky report at one of the computers and didn’t look up.

  ‘No, a real dead sheep.’ Langlands came across to perch on a nearby desk. ‘It’s not very nice – pretty messy. Looks as if someone shot it, then dumped it in the courtyard of the Craft Centre. Mrs Paterson, her that has the pottery there, found it when she came in this morning and about had a fit.’

  Reluctantly abandoning his report, Wilson grimaced. ‘I hate Mondays. The vandals all go on a spree at the weekend and we get to clear up the mess. Whose sheep was it – any mark on the fleece?’

  Langlands shook his head. ‘No. Cut away, probably. And I checked – there’s been no report from any of the farmers about a problem.’

  ‘Not a lot we can do about it then, is there? Take statements to make them feel we’ve taken this seriously and get someone to remove the beast before the story’s all round the town and everyone comes to take a look. There’ll be muttering about us not stopping vandalism, but at least we can look efficient at clearing it up.’

  Langlands thanked him and went away.

  If only everything was as straightforward as that! Going back, frowning, to his problems, Will Wilson dismissed it from his mind.

  On this windless Saturday evening, there were three swallows on the telephone wire which looped across Andrew Carmichael’s garden. Only three, but next week there would be more, then more, their twittering the knell for the passing of another summer.

  Sitting on the low wall that surrounded the rose garden, Andrew sighed. It seemed an alarmingly short time since he had sat here last year in the same elegiac mood, watching the swallows prepare for departure as August slipped into September.

  It was still warm, but over the low Galloway hills beyond the garden wall the weakening sun was a line of fire below a sky streaked with gold, pink, purple and lilac – a good show, tonight, in full technicolor. He was something of a connoisseur of sunsets from this vantage point. How old had he been when he had watched his first one? Four, perhaps.

  That was a lot of sunsets over seventy years – minus, of course, the years when he’d been posted to the Tropics. Korea, Malaya, Belize: when night fell there like a shutter coming down, feeling homesick and sometimes scared, he had hungered for the slow golden gloaming of a Scottish summer night and the sweet-pea perfume of the old blush rose which had always rambled along the wall.

  It was still and silent tonight, apart from the muffled croon of a wood pigeon in one of the silver birches. Andrew tipped his face back to the last of the sunshine and words by his beloved Browning came unbidden to mind:

  I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

  I regret little, I would change still less.

  That wasn’t true, though. He had much to regret, and old age was more of a burden than a benison when he would need so much energy for the meeting later. He was coming under pressure, severe pressure. How much easier it would be simply to give in to it! After all, it wasn’t as if there weren’t arguments in favour of doing just that.

  But supposing he did, what about lovely, vulnerable Ellie? And Pete too – a charming fellow, but he was heading for trouble again, sadly, and Romy’s job as the main breadwinner would be harder still without his own support for her studio. He knew he ought to stand firm. Ought to.

  He’d never had a problem when it was just bullets that were being fired at him. Physical courage was easy; moral courage in your personal life was different and he didn’t like to think about the times when he hadn’t had the guts to do what he knew was right. He’d paid the price today already for what had been cowardice, pure and simple. An ugly vice in an old soldier.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the wall, which seemed to have become harder over the past few minutes. The colours were fading now, turning muddy and dull, and Andrew rose a little stiffly.

  He still had a military bearing, straight-backed without the chin-poking stoop of old age. The twinges of creaking joints were no more than a nuisance; he’d been lucky compared to his poor Madeleine, who had found relief from the agony of her twisted, arthritic limbs only in death last year.

  He turned towards the house. Fauldburn House was a sprawling grey sandstone building, grown over the centuries from its austere Scottish Georgian beginnings to accommodate large Victorian and Edwardian families. It was far too big for him now: with no one coming to visit, there were too many rooms shut up and unused. He and Madeleine had talked about selling, but he shrank from the thought of seeing his household goods dispersed. All he wanted now was to be left in peace, which at the moment seemed a forlorn hope.

  The estate that went with the house was on the west
ern edge of the market town of Kirkluce. It had never been extensive, and land had been very advantageously sold off for housing over the years, but there was still some tenanted farmland and a courtyard with old stable buildings round about, converted now into shops as a Craft Centre.

  Andrew went down the stone-flagged steps, in at the back door and along the passage by the kitchen where Annie had said she’d left a salad for him on a covered plate in the fridge. He’d fetch it later, he decided, once he’d changed out of his gardening cords and the soft cotton twill shirt that was frayed round the collar. His King’s Own Scottish Borderers tie with grey flannel bags and his blazer would be more suitable to put steel into him, because no matter what he decided, battle lay ahead.

  He changed, then took the silver-backed hairbrushes from his dressing-table, one in each hand, and was applying them to the springy white hair which, thank the Lord, showed no sign of deserting its post, when the doorbell rang.

  He swore mildly. Someone coming round, no doubt, to bend his ear in advance of the meeting. Just as long as it wasn’t Norman Gloag: he’d been tried enough by that unspeakable man and he’d reached the point where he couldn’t guarantee to be civil.

  He went downstairs, across the cool darkness of the entrance hall and opened the door.

  ‘That’s the last burger, Cammie.’ Bill Fleming, his fair complexion flushed from the heat of the glowing charcoal, took it from the grid, stuffed it into a bun and handed it to his son Cameron.

  From an elderly deckchair with sagging canvas, Bill’s wife Marjory watched them lazily, putting her hand up to shield her eyes from the low sun. Cammie, at twelve, was growing fast now, so fast that she sometimes thought she could see the gap between his trainers and the hem of his jeans widen as she watched. He’d overtaken his older sister Catriona and looked set fair to top her own five foot ten by the end of the year. And she’d noticed a few more strands of grey in her chestnut crop lately – an unwelcome reminder of the passage of time.

  Cammie was looking anxious as he took the burger. ‘What if I’m still hungry?’ he demanded.

  ‘There’s times when you aren’t?’ his mother said caustically, then relented. ‘OK, I brought the Tin back from Granny. She was baking today, and she filled it up for us.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Cammie said indistinctly and, still chewing, headed for the kitchen and the Tin, whose contents over the years had compensated for the inability of his culinarily challenged mother to bake so much as an edible scone.

  Marjory grinned at Bill, then leaned back and shut her eyes, enjoying the lingering warmth. For once she’d had a Saturday off from police work when the weather was kind, and Bill had been persuaded to leave the evening chores on the sheep farm to Rafael Cisek who, with his wife Karolina and their toddler son, had come from Poland to Scotland as soon as it became legally possible. The family was happily installed now in the farm-worker’s cottage just below the Mains of Craigie farmhouse. Rafael was a good man, son of a tenant farmer himself and experienced with the young cattle Bill was now buying in to fatten for the market. Better still, Karolina, who was sweet and shy, was delighted to have a little job helping in the house while Janek, aged two, tumbled about the place after her like a puppy. Marjory could hear them now in the cottage garden, Janek shouting with glee and his parents laughing. She smiled herself at the happy sounds.

  At last Marjory’s personal life was running more smoothly, easing the domestic pressure on her as she coped with the professional demands of her challenging job as detective inspector with the Galloway Constabulary. Even Marjory’s father, Angus Laird, now in the long twilight of dementia, was settled in a pleasant, comfortable nursing home, and his wife Janet, relieved of the stress of caring for him, was more like her old self again.

  Marjory’s main concern at the moment was Tam MacNee, her detective sergeant, mentor and friend, who was taking a long time to recover from the head injury he’d sustained in a vicious attack a few months before. He’d been a bad patient – ‘patient’ wasn’t a word she’d ever associated with Tam – and he was still suffering from cruel headaches and tiredness. He had lost weight, too, and with his thin, wiry build he didn’t have it to lose. The doctor had so far refused to pass him as fit for work and though Tam was all for ignoring this, she’d had to tell him that for insurance reasons he couldn’t be allowed to return to his duties. She’d made the mistake of trying to console him by saying if he took it easy he’d get better quicker: Tam had always been possessed of an acid tongue and Marjory got the full benefit. He was definitely improving now, though, and she thought it was probably only a matter of a week or two more.

  She was missing her friend Laura, too. Laura Harvey, a psychotherapist whose perspective on some of Marjory’s problems, both personal and professional, had been invaluable in the past, had gone to London to record a TV programme based on her popular column in a Sunday broadsheet. It had been for a fortnight, originally. She had been away now for three months and Marjory had an unhappy feeling that she was unlikely ever to return. She sighed, unconsciously.

  ‘You do realise Cammie’s in there alone with the Tin?’ Catriona’s voice broke in on her mother’s thoughts. She was curled up on a sun-lounger, idly flicking through a teen ­magazine, and Marjory opened her eyes again to look at her fourteen-year-old daughter. She was growing up fast and, her mother recognised with a pang, was hardly a child any longer. She had the happy combination of Bill’s fair hair and blue eyes and Marjory’s own long legs, quite a lot of them now exposed in skimpy shorts, but she was slightly built and looked like remaining the smallest in the family.

  This evening she was wearing make-up and had changed into a bright pink crop top – a little elaborate for a family barbecue, but then she was still at the stage when she changed her clothes three times a day and of course never wore anything again after she’d had it on, however briefly. Still, it didn’t matter too much now that Karolina had a firm grip on the laundry. God bless Karolina!

  ‘Good thinking,’ Bill said. ‘You’d better go and prise it away from him. Bring it out here – there was a rumour of brownies.’

  Cat unfolded herself and was on her way to the kitchen when the evening peace was shattered by the roar of motorbike engines, close and getting closer. Meg the collie, lying asleep on the lawn, raised her head with a growl, then jumped up and loosed a volley of barks. Cat turned and went to look over the old orchard below the house, where Marjory’s hens had started cackling in fright, to the track which wound up to the farm from the main road.

  ‘What on earth—?’ Marjory exclaimed, sitting up, and Bill, who was still on his feet, went over too to peer down at the two approaching motorbikes, with their denim-clad and helmeted riders.

  Cat turned pink. ‘It’s all right,’ she said hastily. ‘It’s just some boys from school.’

  They had pulled up by the farm gateway, taking off their helmets to reveal one close-cropped dark head and one with bleached shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail. The engine noise stopped and petrol fumes drifted up to mingle with the lingering smell of char-grilled meat.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Bill, eyebrows raised, turned to his wife.

  ‘It explains the make-up and the smart top. She must have been expecting them.’

  ‘Was she, indeed!’ Bill came back and sat down heavily on the vacated lounger. ‘What age do you have to be to ride a motorbike?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ Marjory said grimly.

  ‘And she’s fourteen.’

  ‘I had noticed.’

  ‘Well, she’s not going on the back of one of those things, and that’s flat.’

  ‘You tell her. If I do it’ll start World War Three.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell her. And I want to know a lot more about them, too.’ He got up purposefully.

  ‘Give her ten minutes, then go down and ask them up for coffee. Nicely,’ Marjory suggested.

  ‘Five.’ Bill sat down again, looking at his watch.

  Cat was doing
a lot of laughing. They could hear the distinctive teenage giggling, high-pitched with nervous excitement, and Marjory looked at her husband with a wry smile. ‘You have to face it, Bill – your little girl is growing up, and she’s bonnie. We’re going to have to get used to boyfriends.’

  ‘Not seventeen-year-old bikers. She’s far too young.’ He consulted his watch again.

  ‘That’s three minutes. Barely.’

  ‘I know.’ Bill got up restlessly and started collecting the ketchup-smeared plates. ‘It’s not going to be easy, this next stage, is it?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’ Marjory sighed. ‘And I was just thinking how good it was to have things sorted out – Dad settled, and Mum so much better, and with Rafael and Karolina...’

  ‘So it’s your fault, is it? You ought to know better than to tempt providence like that.

  ‘Well, that’s five minutes. Seven, in fact. I’m going down.’

  But just as he spoke the bikes’ engines started up again and when he looked they were on their way down the drive and Cat was walking back up the slope, still smiling. Without looking at her parents, she headed for the house.

  ‘Cat!’ Bill called and the girl turned, but made no move towards him.

  ‘Come here!’

  She obeyed with obvious reluctance, the smile disappearing.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Just a couple of the guys from school.’

  ‘Do they have names?’ Marjory asked.

  ‘Oh, so it’s police questioning now, is it? Do I have a right to remain silent?’

  Marjory counted to ten. Bill said mildly, ‘Is there some reason why you shouldn’t tell us your friends’ names? Are you ashamed of them?’

  The colour rose in Cat’s face. ‘’Course not. Just, it’s, like, my business, isn’t it? All they did was look in to say hello. So shoot me!’