Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  ‘TV as well?’ Fleming asked hollowly.

  ‘Four camera crews.’

  They sat silent for a moment, contemplating the scale of the problem, then Bailey asked savagely, ‘Who leaked it, anyway? It obviously came from here, from the details given. I want them on a charge.’

  Fleming looked weary. ‘We’ve been here before, Donald. Tell me who it is, and I’ll nail them to the wall by their ears. But it could be anyone – more than one, even. The tabloids pay good money for tip-offs like that.

  ‘I’ve tried to find out who knew about Langlands’s alibi for Spencer last night, but the answer is basically everyone in the station. You know what it’s like with gossip, and you can imagine how quickly that particular story got legs.’

  ‘Marjory, this is intolerable! Can nothing be done?’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll start a witch hunt, warn that careless talk costs careers – that’s about all we can do.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Bailey made his usual sound of frustrated ­disapproval. ‘I suppose so. Monitor the situation anyway.

  ‘But more importantly, is the Sun right? Do we have a sniper?’

  ‘That’s the doomsday scenario. Once you start doubting that there’s any reason behind it, you’ve nowhere to go. If they’re acting on a whim, you can’t deduce from their actions why they did it, or where they may strike next time. Anyone and everyone is at risk.’

  Trying to sound more upbeat than she felt, she went on, ‘But we’re not there yet, Donald. We’ve a list of suspects with straightforward reasons for wanting Carmichael dead, and it’s perfectly possible that Barney Kyle somehow got in the way – may even have tried to make capital out of what he knew.

  ‘For obvious reasons we haven’t yet questioned anyone on that list about Kyle’s murder. I’ve called everyone in today to get started. With a precise time of death, we may be able to do quite a bit on alibi, as happened with Spencer, and that could whittle down our suspects.’

  ‘Then get on with it, Marjory.’ His tetchy response was an indicator of his anxiety. ‘No point in sitting here wringing our hands.’ As she got up, he said, ‘No word of Tam MacNee being passed fit, I suppose?’

  ‘Not as yet. I think you can take it that the ink won’t be dry on the doctor’s signature before he’s round here.’

  Bailey nodded glumly. ‘The way our luck’s running, he won’t be back for a month, and he’s a useful man, very useful.

  ‘Anyway, what am I going to tell the media tonight?’

  ‘The same as you told them this morning, but in different words, I suppose.’ Fleming was unhelpful.

  He gave her a frosty look. ‘I would really have thought it was much more appropriate for the press officer to do it – or you, Marjory, for that matter – but the CC insists that I have to be out there to show how seriously we are taking this.’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure he’s right,’ she said heartily, only adding, ‘It’s your job and you wanted it,’ under her breath once she was safely out of the room.

  ‘Are the police coming back again?’ Maureen Gloag, a ­cigarette in the corner of her mouth, stood in the doorway of her husband’s study.

  Gloag looked up, waving ostentatiously to waft away the smoke. ‘Oh, I thought you weren’t speaking to me?’

  ‘Jeez, you’re so childish! I want to know where I am. If you’re going to be arrested, I’m taking the kids to my mother’s.’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, do you think I’m a murderer?’ His roar of rage shook the glasses in the wall unit drinks cabinet.

  Maureen’s mouth tightened. ‘Gordon told me how you wanted him to lie to the police. I’m not wanting them to see you taken away in handcuffs.’

  Her cold hostility shook him. ‘Maureen, you’ve seen the news. It’s a sniper, someone who’s off his head, with a grudge against society.’

  ‘Load of rubbish,’ she said flatly. ‘You don’t believe it any more than I do. The Colonel’s death was pretty damn convenient, right? And I’ll bet you’ve been chatting up the grandson too, now you know Farquharson’s no use to you.’

  Gloag’s fleshy face turned purple. ‘And – and what if I have? He doesn’t know the neighbourhood, I can be useful to him. And what about Barney? Bumped him off in the interests of business too, did I?’

  ‘You were raging about your car,’ she pointed out. ‘And always yammering on about him being a bad influence on Gordon.’

  His eyes were bulging now. ‘You’re being even more of a fool than usual, woman,’ he yelled. ‘And if you repeat any of this to the police—’

  ‘Threatening me now? That does it.’ She was perfectly calm. ‘I’m away to phone my mother and start packing.’

  ‘And don’t come back!’ As she shut the door, he took up a heavy glass paperweight from his desk and hurled it after her, in a fury. Hitting the door, it broke into four pieces.

  Moments later, Maureen reappeared. She was carrying a digital camera.

  ‘What was that you threw at me? Oh, I see. You could have done me a real mischief with that.’ She focused on the shards and before he could stop her had clicked the shutter several times. ‘Thanks. That’ll look good in court,’ she said as she went out.

  The streets of Kirkluce, when Tam MacNee drove along to the doctor’s surgery, were almost deserted. He was puzzled: it was never this quiet in the middle of a weekday morning.

  There were fewer cars on the road than usual too, and though the shops were open there was none of the normal pedestrian traffic, no hurrying shoppers or chatting pensioners. It was eerie, alarming, like finding yourself in some sci-fi film where something terrible has happened and you’re the only one who doesn’t know.

  He was tempted to stop and find out, but a look at the dashboard clock showed that he’d be late for his appointment if he did, and he wasn’t going to risk being told he had to come back another day. He tuned into the local radio station, but there was only the sort of music that sounded like fifty cats with their tails in a mangle. He snapped it off again and parked by the surgery.

  It was quiet too. ‘We’ve had a lot of cancellations of routine appointments,’ the receptionist said. ‘Well, it’s natural, isn’t it? They’re not wanting to come out if they don’t have to.’

  ‘Natural?’ MacNee stared at her. ‘Sandra, what the hell’s going on?’

  She stared back. ‘You mean you don’t know? It’s been on the telly and everything.’

  ‘Never watch it in the morning. That early, my stomach’s not strong enough to take those grinning numpties on a sofa.’

  ‘There’s a sniper in Kirkluce, just picking people off like flies! No one’s safe.’ She shuddered in pleasurable horror.

  MacNee was shaken. ‘Are you sure? How do you know?’

  ‘It’s all in the papers. They said you lot are baffled, because it’s just random.’

  ‘The papers!’ He spat his disgust. ‘They make these things up, just so daft folk like you will buy them.’

  Over months of appointments, she had got used to Tam and they were old sparring partners by now. ‘Not as daft as your pals in the polis, running round not knowing what to do.

  ‘Anyway, you can go straight in to see Dr Rutherford. He’s twiddling his thumbs this morning.’

  ‘Just as long as he doesn’t decide to have me coming back, just to keep him busy,’ MacNee said gloomily, and headed for the surgery, hoping that anxiety wasn’t going to raise his blood pressure. Surely this time...

  Stoop-shouldered and heavy-eyed, Ossian Forbes-Graham, with his mother fluttering anxiously at his side, walked towards Dr Rutherford’s consulting room, not noticing the short, hard-faced man in a black leather jacket who was coming back along the corridor, turning his head to look after them as he passed. Deirdre glared her irritation at such intrusive behaviour, then opened the door to usher her son in ahead of her.

  Rutherford rose to greet them. ‘Ossian, do come and sit here.’ He indicated the vacant chair beside his desk.

  Indifferen
tly, the young man slumped down. Deirdre looked around; the only other seating in the room was the examination couch. ‘We need another chair. Would you like me to fetch one?’

  ‘No, Mrs Forbes-Graham.’ Rutherford’s voice was kind but firm. ‘I’ll need to talk to Ossian alone.’

  ‘But you don’t understand! He won’t tell you properly – he needs me to explain! I can give you all the background, and then we can discuss what it would be most appropriate to do.’

  ‘That would mean you were my patient, not him, wouldn’t it? I’m sure that’s not what you want.’ He went to the door and held it open, smiling reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Forbes-Graham. I’ve blocked out time in my appointment book so Ossian and I can have a proper chat, to see where we are. That’s all – nothing threatening.’

  Deirdre glanced towards her son but he didn’t seem to have heard what was said. ‘Well, I suppose ... I’ll be in the waiting-room.’ With a last, reluctant glance over her shoulder, she went.

  Rutherford returned to his seat. Ossian didn’t look up. He waited for a moment, then said gently, ‘I gather you’ve been having one or two problems, Ossian.’

  At last he raised his head. ‘You’re going to start probing, aren’t you? That’s what people like you do – poke me like boys poke an animal that’s all curled up, to make it do something?’

  ‘Is that how you feel?’

  ‘Yes. No. How do I know? I don’t feel anything. Not now.’

  ‘You used to?’

  A light flickered briefly in his eyes. ‘Oh yes. Then, I felt – everything! I could do anything. I could move mountains, make things happen, have whatever I wanted. I had power. I could paint the greatest pictures in the world. I could even make her fall in love with me. But what am I now? “Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves”.’

  A little startled, Rutherford recognised the reference. It was Milton describing Samson, bound and powerless, shorn of his famous strength, who used the last of it to pull down everything around him into utter destruction. It was an alarming image.

  ‘You feel trapped?’

  ‘Betrayed. In chains. Blinded. I can’t see what to paint. If I can’t paint, if I can’t have her, there is nothing.’

  ‘Her?’

  It was the last question that needed to be put to him. He talked, in a monotone, until his mouth was so dry that the doctor fetched water for him. Much of what he said was rambling, some of it seriously worrying. It was almost an hour before he stopped talking.

  Rutherford said carefully, ‘Ossian, I think it’s hard for you at the moment to understand what’s happening in your brain. There is help available that will make all the difference. I can refer you—’

  For the first time he showed animation. ‘No!’ he said fiercely. ‘I know what you’re talking about – they’ll drug me, and then I’ll be like everyone else, all you poor, boring, sad people. I’m an artist. I need – whatever it is.’ He subsided into ­listlessness. ‘If I find it again ... If not—’ His shrug was a movement of utter despair.

  With a spring in his step, Tam MacNee walked into the Galloway Constabulary Headquarters, announced to the desk sergeant, ‘I’m back!’ then set off up the stairs, two at a time. With only the most perfunctory of knocks, he bounced into DI Fleming’s office. He’d been looking forward to seeing her reaction – exclamations of delight, relief, even...

  She was sitting hunched over her desk with one of those scribbles she did with names and arrows connecting them in front of her – mind-maps, she called them, though MacNee had never seen the point of them himself. Just as he came in, she swore, crumpled it up and shied it in the direction of the waste-paper basket. She missed. He couldn’t remember when he’d seen her looking so stressed.

  When she saw him, a brief flicker of pleasure came to her eyes. ‘Tam – has he signed you off at last?’ she said, then, when he nodded, went on, ‘Thank heaven for small mercies. Take a seat.’

  It wasn’t quite the welcome MacNee had been expecting. Things were obviously bad. ‘A sniper, is it? That’s what they’re saying in the town.’

  ‘Tell me about it! In the town, in the papers, on the telly – I swear they have the whole place staked out with photographers hoping to be in place to snap the next random victim as he crumples to the ground.

  ‘Of course it isn’t a sniper! But I’ve spent the morning trying to make some sense of it and the more I think, the worse it gets. Carmichael’s death – that could be anyone, if you think about it. We don’t even know whether the man was going to agree to sell or not.

  ‘If he was, all the High Street shops would be affected – not just the ones on the site itself. There are farmers and suppliers of all kinds who have contracts with local firms that might go to the wall, and if there’s no alternative but to sell to the superstores they know they’ll be screwed into the ground on price.

  ‘And that sheep – a farmer has all the means to do it, gun and transport readily available. When everything still seems to be going ahead despite that, he kills Carmichael—’

  ‘Then Barney Kyle? What would he do that for?’

  ‘I know, Tam, I know! Maybe he knew something that compromised the killer, but we’ve no indication that he did. And supposing that’s right, it leaves us with a crippling list of suspects.’

  ‘If it was one of the locals, why the hell would they want to kill the Colonel? The main theory going round was that he was holding out against it. You’d have to be daft to kill him if you wanted to scupper it. Everyone knew what would happen if the Farquharsons inherited, them being the kind that would skin a mouse for its hide.’

  The look of relief he had hoped to see appeared. Fleming even laughed and relaxed back in her chair.

  ‘You’re right, Tam, of course. I’ve been needing to be pulled up short. Everyone else just agrees with me and I’ve been chasing my tail round and round this morning till I was ready to disappear up my own backside.’

  She picked up her phone. ‘I’m going to tell them to hold all calls. I’ll pay for it later, so you’d better make this worth it. Switch on the kettle over there.’

  With mugs of strong black coffee before them, Fleming kicked off. ‘Ideas? You start. I’m tired of mine.’

  ‘Could be a sniper. Practised on the sheep, then took what came his way.’

  ‘Let’s pretend you didn’t say that. If, God forbid, this is haphazard, there’s nothing to talk about. All we could do would be to hope we caught him in the act as he lined up his next victim. Or a photographer does.’

  ‘It’s not nice to be bitter. Gives you acid indigestion.’

  ‘And let’s drop the dead sheep.’

  MacNee grinned, but Fleming hadn’t been joking. ‘How much do you know at the moment, Tam?’

  With studied vagueness, he said, ‘Oh, quite a bit, one way and another. I hear this and that – you know what this place is like.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Andy Mac, I suppose. Don’t worry – I’m not planning to follow it up. I hate to think what hold you’ve got on him.’

  MacNee gave his gap-tooth grin. ‘Good lad,’ he said fondly.

  ‘Indeed. So can I take it that if he knows, you know?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Right. Whether or not Barney was killed because he knew too much, let’s look at him first, instead of second. Pete Spencer’s in the clear – rock-solid alibi from Sandy Langlands, of all people. The team’s checking out the whereabouts of the others that were in the frame for Carmichael. At least we have the timing for Kyle’s killing so precisely that we ought to be able to rule people out on alibi. And that’s where I think we should focus – we’re up against the clock now, with the whole town getting panicky.’

  MacNee shifted in his seat. ‘Andy and me – we were on the spot within minutes. The gunman must still have been around.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fleming pulled some papers towards her. ‘I printed this out – the report from the SOCOs. They’ve found trampled grass and broken twigs behind th
e run of bushes along the side of the track, which is suggestive, though they can’t say when that happened and there are no footprints. There’s the possibility that he didn’t fall off his bike instantly, but I think we have to proceed on the assumption that the shot came from there.’

  ‘Could still have been there when we arrived, then?’

  ‘Probably was. It’s open fields either side of the track. You’d have been more likely to spot him if he’d tried to make off.’

  He grimaced. ‘I thought that. Makes you feel bad, that he was there for the taking – but of course, at the time we thought we knew who’d done it.’

  ‘Must have given him a hell of a fright, you poling up,’ Fleming said absently, then, ‘But listen – that’s not sniper behaviour, is it? Point-blank range, a stake-out, waiting for a precise individual...’

  ‘And he had to know the boys would be coming!’

  They looked at each other. ‘That’s the handle,’ Fleming said. ‘Who knew what they were planning? Now we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘You know your problem? Your problem’s been wanting to know why. What are you needing motive for anyway? Means, opportunity and hard evidence’ll get you a conviction. The rest is fancy-pants stuff.’

  ‘Rude bugger!’ she said without animosity. ‘Andy Mac never says anything like that.’

  ‘That’s because he’s feart.’

  ‘Never! Of me, with my famously sweet nature and patience? Anyway, as I was saying when I was so rudely ­interrupted, who knew?

  ‘Will and Tansy interviewed Gordon Gloag and some kids at school – including Cat, I may say, which wouldn’t please her. Apparently they announced their intentions in the motorbike shop after you left.’

  ‘Mmm. There were a lot of kids there. If they went around gossiping, anyone might know. Black was there, of course, and Dan Simpson too.’

  ‘I know that Gordon Gloag told his father. And Gloag Senior was trying to cover up the fact that he knew before they went out to Wester Seton, to the point where he asked his son to lie about it. That puts him in the frame – and now I think about it, when Macdonald interviewed him, he accused Kyle of damaging his car. There’s a connection there.’