Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  An old woman, stooped and bespectacled, with sharp features and a down-turned mouth, appeared. ‘Police, are you? She’s out,’ she croaked. ‘Went off in the car a wee while ago. Awful, this, isn’t it?’ Her ghoulish enjoyment was obvious as she hobbled over to the fence and leaned on it.

  ‘Of course he was a real tearaway, that laddie, him with his bike and all, a right young limmer. Born to trouble, like the sparks fly upwards. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.’

  Macdonald had no doubt that she would too, at regular intervals, to anyone who stood still long enough. ‘In fact, it’s Mr Spencer I was wanting to see. He’s out as well, is he?’

  She settled her elbows more comfortably on the fence. ‘Not just out – gone, by what I saw.’

  ‘Gone?’ Macdonald was startled. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Saw him last night. I was in my bed, and then I heard two of your folk banging on the door, but he didn’t answer, did he? Then a wee while later, here’s himself off out with suitcases and away in the car. And he’s not come back.’

  ‘Perhaps he was going away on business,’ Macdonald suggested lamely.

  ‘Oh, fine ham and haddie!’ she scoffed. ‘Away on business, with three suitcases in the middle of the night! I know a moonlight flit when I see one. You mark my words, laddie, there’s funny business going on there.’

  He couldn’t argue with that. ‘Do you know where Mrs Kyle is likely to be, then?’

  She admitted, reluctantly, that she didn’t know. ‘You’d think she’d be at home, grieving, like a decent soul, but that one’s a law unto herself. Try the Craft Centre, maybe.’

  ‘Thanks, you’ve been very helpful,’ he said, and saw her smirk.

  ‘I’ve always been neighbourly. If you’re a community, you take an interest, don’t you?’

  As they got back into the car, Macdonald said, ‘That’s “neighbourly” as defined in Communist East Germany. How’d you like to have that one living next door?’ He didn’t really expect a reply and he didn’t get one. ‘We’d better try and find Mrs Kyle. There could be some perfectly reasonable explanation.’

  ‘Done a runner,’ Campbell said. ‘Thought we were on to him, which we are.’ Macdonald could only agree.

  Tam MacNee got back to the car. There was a brisk breeze blowing now and his face was glowing, but his depression hadn’t lifted. Even supposing Rutherford said he could get back to work when he saw him tomorrow, he could see himself being suspended pending an investigation.

  As he opened the door for the dog, he said out loud, ‘Well, pal, as Rabbie says, I’ll just have to “jouk beneath misfortune’s blows/As best I may.”’

  The dog glanced up at him as if trying to understand, then jumped in obediently. He slammed the door and got in himself. As he did so, unbidden, the thought he had been groping for popped into his head.

  He realised why he didn’t believe that locking up Christina Munro was the answer to their problems.

  Johnny Black crossed the courtyard from Ellie Burnett’s flat to Romy Kyle’s workshop. He knocked before trying the door: she hadn’t locked it.

  Romy heard the knock, but she didn’t turn her head. She was sitting at the counter, holding a silver beaker she had been rolling between her hands for the last half-hour, her eyes blank.

  He came to stand in her line of sight. ‘Romy? Romy, I’m really sorry.’

  A sigh juddered through her. ‘Yes,’ she said dully. ‘So am I.’

  ‘Ellie would have come, but she’s – well, a bit upset. I said I would convey her condolences.’ He glanced over his shoulder, and following his eyes Romy saw Ellie standing at one of the windows of her flat, looking across.

  ‘Condolences!’ Romy gave a bitter smile. ‘My, what a fancy word.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know what to say. She’d probably have come but – well, to be honest, she wasn’t sure you’d want to see her.’

  ‘Since her son’s alive and mine’s dead? Yes, she’s right. I don’t want to see her. Just tell her to keep away from me.

  ‘She didn’t like Barney. She blamed him for getting Dylan into trouble. Well, I blamed Dylan – tell her that, will you? If he hadn’t been there, always egging Barney on, this wouldn’t have happened.’ Tears came to her eyes.

  Black put out his hand to cover one of hers; she pulled it away. She didn’t like him: what had he come for, except to see her suffering as if she was a freak in a circus?

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, with Pete?’ he was saying.

  She gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, Pete? He’s gone. Smelled trouble on the way and left last night. Good riddance.’

  Black looked startled. ‘Gone? Why? Where’s he gone?’

  What the hell right did he have to barge in here, asking questions? ‘You’re not helping. I want you to go.’

  ‘Of course.’ He backed away. At the door he turned. ‘I – I feel responsible myself. If I hadn’t sold him the bike...’

  ‘You feel responsible! How do you think I feel – I paid for it. Now bugger off and leave me alone.’

  As Macdonald parked the car at the Craft Centre, his mobile phone went.

  ‘Tam!’ he said without warmth. ‘I’m kind of tied up.’ Then, after listening to the voice at the other end, ‘Dead sheep!’ he said blankly. Then, ‘Oh yes. Right. Right. I hear what you’re saying. I’ve the odd doubt myself.’

  He saw Campbell looking at him enquiringly but took a certain malicious pleasure in not offering the information. The man had a tongue in his head; he could just learn to give it a bit more exercise.

  Dylan Burnett, with speakers in his ears, was slumped at the table in the living-room/kitchen. He hadn’t finished the bowl of cereal in front of him. He wasn’t feeling hungry this ­morning.

  When the police brought him back last night, he’d been in a pretty bad state, scared out of his mind. He’d thought his mum would go mental when she heard what had happened, but when she saw him she’d gone straight to phone Johnny, which was the best thing she could have done. He’d kept her calm, and Dylan felt safer as well.

  He’d stayed the night. Dylan had wanted them to get together, but it was kinda embarrassing this morning – his mum looked sort of awkward, with Johnny sitting there at the breakfast table. Still, they’d get used to it; Johnny’d said he was going back to his flat to get some stuff, so he was obviously staying on for a bit.

  That was Johnny coming back now, from talking to Barney’s mum after he saw her coming in to go to the shop. Ellie wouldn’t go, though Dylan kind of thought maybe she should, and Johnny’d obviously thought so too because he’d said he’d make her excuses.

  ‘I passed on your sympathy. And my own. Can’t say she was very receptive,’ he said as he came in.

  Ellie looked at Johnny, but didn’t comment. Dylan asked, ‘Is – is she, like, bad?’

  ‘Yes,’ Johnny said heavily. ‘She’s pretty bad, I think. Awful that this should happen, when it could have been prevented.’

  Ellie winced. Dylan, with a hollow feeling inside, muttered, ‘If we hadn’t gone there, do you mean? I didn’t want to go. It was Barney.’ His eyes were stinging and he rubbed them.

  ‘No, I wasn’t meaning that – you were just kids, just mucking about. There were other factors. The copper told you yesterday that they knew the old girl had a gun – if they’d taken it off her, it wouldn’t have happened. Not like that.’

  ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Dylan had been worrying about that, too. ‘Am I going to be in trouble?’

  Johnny pulled a face. ‘Doubt it. They didn’t exactly beat you up when they brought you back here last night. In the circumstances they won’t want to push it.’

  ‘They kept asking me, though. And I couldn’t think straight.’

  ‘You can’t blame them for being keen to know everything you could tell them. Once it was spelled out that you needed your bed, they were fine.’

  ‘Can you stay with me when they come to take the statement today?’ It w
as like having your dad around, though Dylan’s dad had never given him the feeling of security he got from Johnny.

  ‘If you like. It’s up to you.’

  ‘What about your work?’ Ellie put in. ‘Won’t you have to go and open up the showroom?’

  Black smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. I spoke to the owner earlier. He agreed that in the circumstances we should close for a day or two as a mark of respect. This time of year we don’t do much business anyway.

  ‘I’ll tell you an odd thing, though,’ he was going on, when his mobile rang.

  ‘Oh. Mr Salaman! Yes. That’s right. Look, I’ll give you the background. Hang on a moment, if you would, sir – I’m going to take this in another room...’

  As he went out, Ellie got up. ‘I’m just going to make a cup of coffee. Do you want one?’

  Dylan shook his head. He could tell she was trying to make out like everything was normal but it wasn’t really working.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d like to take a break and go and stay with your father for a bit?’ she said. ‘Get away from it all, take your mind off things?’

  She’d tried that on him before and he wondered suddenly if this was what had been in her mind all along – that she’d get rid of him, now Johnny had moved in? He’d got fed up with her clucking round him all the time but the thought of rejection made him feel cold all over.

  ‘I’ve got my mates here,’ he said flatly. ‘What would I want to go away for?’

  ‘Oh, just for a while. I’m not banishing you or anything!’ She laughed unconvincingly.

  ‘Sounds like it to me,’ he said sourly as the door opened and Johnny came back in.

  ‘That was our Cupid, Ellie!’ He was smiling, but she didn’t smile back. He went over to her and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Come on, love – I know it’s difficult, but everything’s going to be all right now, I promise you!’

  ‘Johnny,’ Dylan burst out, ‘do you want rid of me, now you and Mum are – well, together?’

  He frowned. ‘Rid of you? Of course not! What do you mean?’

  ‘Mum wants me to go and stay with Dad.’

  Johnny looked questioningly into Ellie’s face.

  She pulled away from him. ‘I – I just thought, with all this going on, a bit of a change, take his mind off it...’

  ‘Oh, Ellie!’ He shook his head at her foolishness. ‘It’s all right, you know. Nothing’s going to happen to him, here with us.

  ‘Dylan, your mum’s been scared silly and it’s her instinct to protect you. Sending you away to keep you safe is understandable, but you could just as easily be knocked down ­crossing the road, couldn’t you? It’s up to you, lad – but I like having you around the place.’

  It was a relief to hear him say that. ‘I’m not going, then.’ Dylan added, a little awkwardly, ‘And I’m cool – you know, with you two.’

  ‘Fine,’ Ellie said tonelessly.

  DI Fleming had her mobile phone clamped to her ear as she stood in the corridor outside the room where Barney Kyle’s body lay on a steel trolley. ‘I don’t care what he’s doing, or where he is. You’ve got to find the fiscal. I have to speak to him urgently.’

  14

  It was quarter past twelve when Tam MacNee drove back into Kirkluce, casting a frustrated glance at the Craft Centre as he passed. There were questions needing answers, but he couldn’t as much as try to get them. Even talking to Annie was maybe pushing his luck, but she was a loyal soul: she’d never let on if he said he was operating on the quiet.

  He wanted to quiz her about Christina. It was the wanton cruelty of killing the sheep which had prompted his subconscious belief in her innocence: how could someone so devoted to animals kill the poor beast as a gesture – and anyway, how could a little old lady manhandle the carcass? On the other hand, you had to remember that she’d been a farmer all her life and presumably had developed the knack of ­heaving sheep around, and of course there still was no proof that the animal actually was directly connected to their cases. If Annie had a story to tell about some long ago relationship between Christina and the Colonel, he might have to revise his opinion.

  Annie greeted him with enthusiasm. ‘You’re just the man I want to see, Tam,’ she said as she took him into the sitting-room, then bent to rake up the fire in the little grate to a blaze. ‘What’s going on? Christina Munro – I don’t believe it!’

  She was looking a great deal better than the last time he saw her. There was nothing like a sensation for cheering people up.

  ‘You probably know more than I do, Annie. I’m still not back at my work, and I’ve to be careful not to get in trouble for poking my nose in. So I’ve not been here, if anyone asks you.’

  ‘I’ll never let cheep,’ Annie promised. ‘But Tam, is it right about Christina – not just that she killed the laddie, but the Colonel too?’

  ‘You tell me.’ MacNee settled back in the chair by the fire. ‘Did she know him at all?’

  Annie shook her head vigorously. ‘I’d swear she didn’t. She never came near the house any time I was there, and certainly he never mentioned her. She doesn’t go about much. I only know her because when my mother was alive she used to come round for a cuppa sometimes – they were at the school together.’

  Annie was going to be a bit sensitive about his next question, what with the Colonel’s reputation having taken a wee bit of a dent recently. ‘Could there have been anything – well, between her and the Colonel?’ That was his best offer where tact was concerned.

  Annie stared at him incredulously. ‘Her – and the Colonel! Don’t be daft. Oh, I know fine what you’re thinking about – him and that foreign lady – but that was different. He was a young soldier away from home, fighting and not knowing if he was going to die any moment. It was maybe wrong, but you couldn’t blame him.’

  So the halo was still intact. ‘What about when they were young? Before he was married, even?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t like to cry someone down, but Christina was never bonny, even in the old school photos, and my mother always said she wasn’t sociable either. And with the Colonel being sent away to school, and then Sandhurst – how would he even have known her?’

  ‘It’s what I’d have thought myself, Annie,’ MacNee said with satisfaction. ‘Thanks – that’s what I wanted to know.’ He got up.

  ‘Here!’ Annie protested. ‘You’re never away without telling me what’s going on?’

  ‘No use asking me. I don’t know any more than you’ve heard on the street. I won’t have an inside track till I’m back to work.’ At least the second statement was true.

  She looked at him shrewdly. ‘Aye. And I ken fine what’ll happen then – you’ll say you’re not allowed to tell me. Och, away you go!’

  ‘Thanks,’ DI Fleming said, her voice flat. ‘I’m sure you did all you could. I’ll speak to you later.’

  She’d known it would be a close call, and it hadn’t worked out in her favour. For once the security service had been ­efficient and Christina Munro had been collected from custody and delivered to the court promptly. She had been charged with culpable homicide and had made no plea or declaration: the case had been ordained for further examination. The fiscal had resisted bail, but taking into account the circumstances – an elderly woman and a first offender unlikely to repeat the offence – as well as the guidelines on granting bail wherever possible, the Sheriff had allowed it. Christina would even now be on her way home.

  Earlier, when Fleming had first arrived at the morgue, the pathologist had greeted her cheerfully. ‘Well, good news! You won’t have the report from ballistics yet, of course, and I doubt if even they will be able to swear the shots were fired from the same gun, but what I’ve taken out of the wounds is identical.’

  It was good news, certainly, but it meant that her gut reaction about Christina Munro – and Andy Mac’s too, she rather thought – had been wrong. Oh, she’d been wrong before, of course, but surprisingly often her
gut had been right.

  ‘I can tell you that the gun was loaded with buckshot, and though I couldn’t be sure, my money would be on a 12-bore—’

  ‘What did you say?’ Fleming said sharply. ‘12-bore?’

  The man looked surprised. ‘Weren’t you expecting that?’

  ‘Not a .410?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘You couldn’t be wrong about that?’ Then, as the man looked offended, she added hastily, ‘It’s just that the gun we’ve recovered is a .410.’

  He went across to the trolley beside the body which was still covered by a green sheet and picked up a steel bowl where a small, bloodied mass of fibre lay. ‘The shots were both fired at close range, so the wadding was embedded in the wound. See this? The way it’s constructed, it peels back on impact to form four “petals”, look. If it had been from a .410 cartridge, there would only have been three.’

  He was going on to explain the other differences but she barely heard him, struggling to assimilate the news. Christina Munro’s gun couldn’t have fired the shot. The house had been searched and there was no other gun. So she hadn’t killed Barney, and she hadn’t killed the Colonel, but any minute now she was going to be charged with culpable homicide, on Fleming’s say-so.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she had said to the surprised pathologist. ‘I’ll have to get hold of the fiscal. You get started on the autopsy – I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  But she’d failed. And now, she would have to go back in and watch as the grisly procedures were carried out to tell her what she knew already: that Barney Kyle had been shot dead by a person unknown.

  ‘They’re all singing from the same hymn sheet, aren’t they?’ Will Wilson said to Tansy Kerr. ‘Dylan, the school kids – hey, Big Marge’s daughter’s quite fit, isn’t she? Sulky, though – bet she’s a bit of a handful!’