Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  Fleming glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll have to go. I’ve a meeting with Menzies and Bailey. Incidentally, I shan’t tell them about Tam until I have to, so see it doesn’t leak out.

  ‘Andy, are you and Ewan set up for today?’

  ‘Plenty to do, boss,’ Macdonald assured her, and she hurried out.

  Romy Kyle had cried herself to sleep and woke with a start, her eyes sticky and every limb feeling as if it was weighted down. She was still wearing the clothes she had on last night. The other side of the bed was empty and the house was utterly silent. She swung herself slowly out of bed, then sat on the edge with her elbows on her knees, pushing her hands through her hair, shivering as the memories flooded back.

  Barney was dead. Pete had gone. She didn’t know what to do, and here she wasn’t talking about the rest of her life. She was talking about the next five minutes. There didn’t seem any reason why she shouldn’t sit here with her head in her hands for days.

  But the police would be coming, no doubt. She probably stank; her clothes were crumpled and sweaty. She got up stiffly, peeling them off and dropping them on the floor as she headed for the bathroom. She stood under the shower for what felt like a long time, though it could have been five minutes or half an hour. She didn’t know. Time had gone funny this morning.

  Dressing was unexpectedly complicated. She kept crumpling as shafts of pain hit her, and though she sobbed, no tears came, as if she had used them all up last night. She couldn’t think clearly enough to separate grief for her son from grief for her lost lover; she was enveloped in a huge, obliterating cloud of anguish.

  At last she got herself downstairs, to stand in the kitchen staring at the kettle as if she had never seen it before. She switched it on at last and made tea, though she didn’t like it much. Tea was what you had for shock, tea with sugar in it. That was what the policewoman had tried to give her last night, and somehow then, when she could still think clearly, she’d thought it was funny.

  She stirred sugar into her mug, though, and sat down, collapsed, really, on a kitchen chair, and sipped it tentatively. She shuddered in disgust – she didn’t take sugar in anything – but she made herself drink it.

  It did work, in a way. It forced her to get up and make herself a cup of coffee to take away the taste, and gradually her mind began to clear.

  Romy had always told herself that if Pete left her, she’d die of misery – a Country and Western emotion, she realised now, in the consuming agony of losing Barney. She’d been permanently pissed off with him lately. He was a right little sod. He’d met his death because he’d been victimising an elderly woman. But whatever he had done, he was hers, formed in her body, part of herself for ever. She had been mutilated by his death.

  Perhaps it was just as well Pete wasn’t here. She knew he had problems with Barney and she’d have known that, somewhere at the back of his mind, was the thought, ‘That’s one way to solve the problem.’ And when it showed – as it would, because Pete was far too self-centred to be any good at concealment – she’d have thrown him out anyway.

  But why had he gone? Why last night? Had he heard about it while she was sitting in the studio staring into darkness – darkness in more ways than one? Pete didn’t do deep emotion: like the banal motto on a sundial, he recorded only the sunny hours, and blotted out the rest.

  The woman from Victim Support arrived just as she finished her coffee. Oh, she was well-meaning enough, but Romy had never been one to suffer fools gladly and she took a positive pleasure in telling her that she was just going into the Craft Centre where she had a lot of work waiting to be done. They could find her there when they wanted her to identify the body.

  The woman would have to learn not to show quite so plainly that she was horrified, if she was to be any good.

  13

  Gordon Gloag was not a prepossessing young man. His couch potato’s pallor was in striking contrast to the bright red blotches of acne, his mouth seemed to be permanently half-open and he was unlucky enough to have inherited his father’s small, deep-set eyes. Put a baseball cap back to front on his head and he wouldn’t even need make-up to go on the box as Kevin the Teenager, Tansy Kerr thought as she took her seat on one of the beige leather chairs in the Gloags’ lounge.

  This morning he was noticeably shaken, though the look he gave his father when Gloag Senior explained that he had taken the day off to support his son in his time of need, was not one of gratitude.

  ‘We were hoping to have a word with you, Gordon,’ Wilson explained.

  ‘If you’re up for it,’ Kerr added. ‘You must be feeling pretty bad this morning. You and Barney and Dylan were good mates, weren’t you?’

  The youth gulped. ‘Yeah. What happened – it was gross.’

  Kerr got out her notebook. ‘Maybe you could talk us through yesterday afternoon and evening?’ She turned to Gloag. ‘If you don’t mind—’

  Gloag glared at her. ‘I have absolutely no intention of leaving you alone with my son. I have had recent personal experience of police questioning, and a most unpleasant experience it was. Gordon is in no fit state to guard his words, as it is clearly wise to do, with the police state that now seems to be operating in this country.

  ‘If you wish to hear what he can tell you about yesterday’s tragic events, I know he will be as anxious to cooperate as I am myself. But I shall be present throughout.’

  ‘Mr Gloag, your son is not a minor,’ Wilson was beginning, when Gordon interrupted him.

  ‘For God’s sake, Dad, leave me alone! I don’t need you fussing round me like I was six years old.’

  ‘Gordon, you don’t realise—’

  ‘Yes I sodding do.’ His son got up and turned to Wilson. ‘Probably be easier if I just came with you to the police station. Get him out of my hair.’ He jerked his head towards his father, then added with a sneer, ‘That’ll give the neighbours something to talk about.’

  As a threat, it seemed a trivial one to Kerr, but since his son’s intervention Gloag had been visibly uneasy. ‘No, no,’ he said in now placatory tones. ‘No need for that – of course not, son. By all means, do the interview by yourself. But I want to have a word with you first, if the officers would excuse us for a minute?’

  Kerr and Wilson looked at each other, but before they had time to get to their feet, Gordon burst out, ‘I’ve had enough, OK? I’ll say what I want, not what you want me to say. You’ve told me already and I’m not going to do it, right?’

  Gloag went pale. ‘That’s nonsense, of course it is – a misunderstanding. These youngsters, you know!’ He was trying to laugh it off, but there were beads of sweat on his upper lip. ‘They never listen, then they complain when they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

  Wilson got up and went to hold open the door. ‘I’m sure we can sort all this out, once we’ve had a word with Gordon alone.’

  Very masterful, Kerr thought admiringly – she liked masterful – as Gloag, still protesting but impotent, allowed himself to be ushered out.

  ‘Parents, eh?’ Kerr winked at the boy, who sat down again, looking acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘He’s something else,’ he muttered. He was still looking towards the door as Wilson came back. ‘You realise he’ll be standing out there, listening?’

  Wilson shrugged. ‘So what did he want you to tell us, then?’

  Gordon made to speak, then stopped. ‘It’s – like, difficult.’

  Kerr eyed him shrewdly. ‘He’s still your dad, right? You don’t want to drop him in it.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s a boring old fart—’ He directed this towards the door, raising his voice, then went on, ‘But...’

  ‘The thing is,’ Kerr said, ‘adults often get their knickers in a twist over something daft, like what the neighbours will think. Yeah?

  ‘Well, where we’re coming from is only that we want to know anything you can tell us about what happened to Barney. We need every scrap of information because in a court there’s clever lawyers paid
to do their best to rubbish our case. Look, you don’t think your dad killed Barney, do you?’

  ‘’Course not.’

  ‘Nothing else matters to us. So just tell us straight exactly what happened yesterday.’

  After only the briefest hesitation, Gordon nodded. He addressed himself to Kerr and she saw Wilson quietly taking out a notebook so that she wouldn’t have to break eye contact. He really was brilliant. As well as good-looking, and not a toffee-nosed snob ... But she shouldn’t be thinking about that now.

  She listened to the story of MacNee’s intervention, trying not to wince. The man was an idiot – this was going to be a right mess!

  Gordon was going on, ‘He scared me, you know?’

  Oh, she knew. MacNee had scared many better men than Gordon Gloag in his time.

  ‘But Barney’s been – kind of crazy, lately. He really hated this guy that’s shacked up with his mother, always going on about him, and it was getting to him so he was, like, taking it out on everyone else. Him and Dylan, they thought they were totally cool, so Dylan was OK but they kind of made me feel I only got to tag along because I had a bike. To be honest, I’d had it up to here with them.’

  Interesting that he’d thought this through – the boy wasn’t as dumb as he looked. ‘So you’d all been out to Wester Seton a few times before?’ she prompted him gently. When he showed signs of alarm, she said hastily, ‘Oh, don’t worry. What you did before is nothing to do with us, and this isn’t a formal statement anyway. When they come to take that, you don’t need to say more than that last night it was suggested to you that you went there and you refused – if that’s what happened?’

  ‘Yeah. Like I said, I was scared after what your guy said in the afternoon. And anyway, if I got in real trouble my mum would take the bike away. She warned me, and the only reason she didn’t do it last time was because she knew that letting me keep it would wind Dad up.’

  ‘So when you came home...?’

  Gordon looked down. ‘Well ... it had been a bit heavy after some damage got done to Dad’s car. I reckoned it might get me in good if I told him what the others were planning to do, and that I’d said no.’ His lip curled. ‘He likes people who clype – my sister Cara’s his favourite and she’s always telling tales.’

  ‘And did it work?’ Kerr asked.

  ‘Yeah. He was dead chuffed – said I could order pizza instead of having supper.’ He grinned. ‘Mum was well pissed off – she’d got stuff ready.’

  So, as Big Marge had said, Gloag had known about the plan in time to put a stop to it, if he’d chosen. Useful. Kerr moved on. ‘So you were just at home with your family for the rest of the evening?’

  ‘Well, Dad was out at a meeting or back at the office or something – he usually is.’

  Wilson, who had left the questioning entirely to Kerr, looked up from his notes. ‘So what was it your father wanted you to say that wasn’t true?’

  The male voice was more carrying than Kerr’s. As a red flush evened out Gordon’s complexion and he said gruffly, ‘Don’t suppose it matters much,’ there was a peremptory knock on the door and Norman Gloag reappeared.

  ‘Finished grilling my son?’ he said aggressively. ‘I have your headmaster on the phone, Gordon – he’d like to speak to you.’ He held out a cordless phone.

  Pulling a horrified face, Gordon accepted it and went out. Kerr didn’t need to look at Wilson to know that he was thinking the same as she was: who had instigated that call?

  ‘That’s very timely, Mr Gloag,’ Wilson said smoothly. ‘There are a few questions we have for you too.’

  There were hours and hours of this stuff. Could there be anything more boring than checking out CCTV footage with poor definition, and trying to spot something significant when no one had given you any real idea of what ‘significant’ might be?

  The woman constable stifled a yawn. Kirkluce High Street wasn’t exciting at the best of times and with the starting-point being after the shops shut on Saturday it wasn’t even busy. Spotting one of her pals heading for the pub had been one of the highlights.

  When a possible car passed, you had to stop the tape and check for the registrations of a couple of cars she’d been told to look out for, that had claimed to be driving in convoy – and here was one of these big 4×4s, a Land Rover Discovery, coming along the High Street at definitely over the speed limit, heading in the direction of Fauldburn House. That looked promising. She checked the number. Yes, it was one they’d been specifically told to look out for. Result! She squinted at the figures at the bottom of the screen – 17.45 – and made a note.

  They’d said to watch out for another car, a Saab, which had been claimed to be driving in convoy with the Discovery, but it certainly wasn’t there. A little later one did appear, coming straight along the High Street, but when she paused the tape the number was wrong. With a sigh, she went on.

  It was after six o’clock when more people started appearing on the street. St Cerf’s Church Hall, where the meeting about the superstore had been held, was out of range, but people were gathering and heading in that direction. Personally, she thought having one would be a big improvement, but her mum and dad were dead against it, said people would lose their jobs and stuff.

  There was another Saab. It was pulling out from the side road that led out of the town to the north, and this time the number was right. She jotted down the time, 18.12. Some convoy! The Discovery had arrived a good twenty-five minutes earlier.

  She started the film again. The car turned off into the memorial square and she transferred to the camera that covered it. A woman got out of the car, locked up and walked back to the High Street, then off as if she might be heading for the meeting. You couldn’t see what she did after that, since it was only the central area of the town that was covered by cameras.

  Having found the cars, there wasn’t much else of interest. People she didn’t recognise went to and fro along the High Street, then when groups began appearing, which suggested the superstore meeting had finished, she spotted the woman who’d got out of the Saab walking along with a man. They separated at the turning into the Market Square and he walked along, out of range. Switching to the other camera, she could see a few of the local neds hanging about, not doing anything in particular as the woman got into her car and drove back the way she had come. Not long after that the Discovery appeared, then turned up into the side road too.

  A little later, three motorbikes came out of the square and went off at speed along the High Street; an old man shook his fist after them. She skipped through the evening footage as Kirkluce went about its usual Saturday evening activities of visiting pubs and takeaways and having the odd scuffle. A police car arrived and disgorged two of the lads to break up a group of young men. Her friend came out of the pub, a little unsteady on her feet, with a man; she paused the tape to take a good look at him, then pulled a face.

  It didn’t take long after that to reach the point in the Sunday morning tape when the ambulance and police cars started arriving, and she could stop. She sat back in her chair, stretching to relieve cramped muscles. She hadn’t seen anything she could recognise as significant, and it was a hell of a long time to have spent, just for two car numbers.

  ‘I’m going to take the boss at her word and follow up on the Carmichael investigation,’ DS Macdonald said as he drove with DC Campbell towards Romy Kyle’s house. ‘OK, coincidences are uncomfortable, but I just can’t see that old biddy gunning the Colonel down on his doorstep, and anyway, I’ve got an idea I want to check out.

  ‘If you’re asking me what happened with the boy,’ he went on, though Ewan Campbell showed no signs of doing any such thing, ‘Christina was in such a state she didn’t know what she was doing. Fired her warning shot, right, then swung round and loosed off another that hit him in the back. Didn’t even know she’d done it. And I reckon Big Marge thinks the same.

  ‘So I’m leaving Christina out of it when it comes to the Colonel. We’re going to
follow up on Mrs Kyle’s partner.’

  He glanced at his silent companion. He’d been used in the past to working with Will or sometimes Tansy, neither of whom was ever short of an opinion, but now they always chose to work together if possible – and that was a whole other problem, though there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. It had taken time to adjust to Ewan, who never spoke until he’d something to say worth listening to, but now Macdonald had got accustomed to conducting what was more or less an audible internal monologue. He had even learned to recognise Campbell’s amusement when he made a joke – a sort of twitch around the mouth. A smile was the equivalent of another person falling to the floor and beating their fists on the carpet in paroxysms of mirth.

  He went on, ‘I got a tip from Tam MacNee that Pete Spencer’s been running a scam, and the Colonel found out. We’ll have to get on to the fraud angle later – he’s got previous for that already – but I’d like to know exactly what Spencer was doing, late on Saturday afternoon. He might have reckoned Carmichael would shop him.

  ‘It’s a bit delicate to go in and come the heavy, of course, with Mrs Kyle’s son just dead, but I’d guess she’s out of it at the moment, sedated or whatever, and we’ll have a chance to get him on his own without being accused of a hobnailed boots job. Victim Support’ll probably be round anyway.’

  He had driven into a street of council houses, and was looking at the numbers.

  ‘Twenty-three. There.’ Campbell pointed. With an exaggerated start, Macdonald said, ‘God, what a fright you gave me! I’d forgotten anyone was there,’ and saw the faint flicker of amusement cross Campbell’s face. ‘Go on, spoil yourself,’ he urged as he parked the car. ‘Have a guffaw.’

  ‘Not funny enough,’ Campbell said, and Macdonald had to admit that he was, as usual, perfectly accurate.

  The entrance to the house was at the side, facing the front door of the next house over a wooden fence. As Campbell rang the bell, Macdonald was aware of someone watching them from a side window opposite, and a moment later the front door opened.