Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  Her husband put his arm round her shoulder, patting consolingly, but he didn’t say anything.

  She went on fiercely, ‘It’s that woman, Ellie – that’s the problem. He’s obsessed. It’s the only word for it. He said yesterday that she was sleeping with Andrew Carmichael, and now with Black – I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but he sounded really angry, and – Murdoch, I’m scared!’

  He made her sit down at the table, with its cheerful blue-and-white floral tablecloth and the places set for lunch. His voice was gentle. ‘Don’t you think it might be an idea to get further treatment? We can both see that Ossian’s very unhappy, and they might be able to make things better for him. There’s no disgrace in mental illness, my dear. Your own father—’

  Deirdre covered her ears. ‘Don’t say that! He was only ... volatile, like Ossian is. But what frightens me is that she could bend him to her will. He’d do anything she wanted, anything!’ She began to cry.

  He hated to see her so troubled. ‘My dearest, if you’re talking about these dreadful murders, you need to look at it more calmly.’ He sat down beside her, taking her hands in his. ‘Even if she could control him – which I would question – why ever would she want Carmichael killed? I’ve no idea what their relationship was, but my reading of the situation is that she’d have been a lot worse off without him to stop the Craft Centre being sold—’

  Deirdre was shaking her head. ‘I’m not talking about the first one. She wouldn’t have told Ossian to kill Andrew, but he hated him anyway. It’s the other boy – I shouldn’t think Ossian even knew him, but he told me she couldn’t stand him, blamed him for leading her son astray, getting him into trouble with the police—’

  Forbes-Graham stared at her, shocked. ‘You’re telling me you think our son would be capable of killing twice, in cold blood?’

  She was crying in earnest now. ‘You have shotguns, Murdoch. It would be easy for him just to get one from the cupboard, and if she brainwashed him—’

  ‘Hush, darling. You’re distressing yourself quite unnecessarily. I can set your mind at rest on that anyway.

  ‘To be honest, I’ve been worried about Ossian for some time. Not that it crossed my mind that he would harm another person but ...’ He paused, reluctant to say the word ‘suicide’. ‘He gets so excited sometimes, so strange, that I thought it would be best to keep the keys to the gun cupboard on me so that there was no question of him finding them. He hasn’t been on a shoot for months now, and on the odd occasion when he wanted to shoot clays, I just told him to get a gun from Danny.

  ‘So I can assure you it’s impossible for him to be implicated in any of this.’ He produced a handkerchief from his top pocket and wiped her cheeks tenderly, as if she was a child. ‘There you are. Now, blow!’

  He smiled at her and she laughed, a little shakily. ‘Oh, Murdoch, what a relief! You are my rock! I should have told you all this sooner, instead of worrying and worrying by myself.’

  ‘Indeed you should. But there is one thing. I don’t often lay down the law, but I’m going to insist that we get help for him. His behaviour at the moment simply isn’t normal, and it can’t go on like this – apart from anything else, it’s distressing you too much.’

  She gave him the smile that had bewitched him from the moment he met her at a dinner party, a slender divorcee in a pale blue dress which exactly matched her eyes, and as unlike the sturdy, sensible woman he was then married to as it was possible to be.

  ‘Of course we must, darling, if that’s what you feel,’ she said soothingly. ‘He can go and have another chat with Dr Rutherford and I’m sure we’ll find he can help him get things straight.’

  ‘But,’ he protested with the feeling of helplessness he so often experienced in dealing with his wife, ‘we must take the professional advice he gives us.’

  ‘Of course we shall,’ she said, patting his hand and getting up. ‘Now, I’ll just finish making the soup, if you’d like to go up and tell Ossian that lunch is ready.’

  Forbes-Graham left the kitchen with something close to despair. She always agreed with him, without argument, but somehow what she didn’t want to happen never did.

  Three minutes later, he came back in. ‘He’s not there,’ he said. ‘There’s no sign of him.’

  Deirdre sighed. ‘Probably gone back to his studio to moon over that wretched woman. Murdoch, what are we going to do about that?’

  With a sinking heart, Murdoch recognised the marital ‘we’ – denoted in normal speech by the pronoun ‘you’.

  The only sandwiches left in the canteen were cheese and pickle, not what Fleming would have chosen, and she was finishing one gloomily when Macdonald and Campbell came in. Macdonald was looking around and, spotting her, came over.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

  ‘I hoped we’d catch you, boss. There’s a couple of things—’

  She made a quick decision. Going back to her office was risky, since she was trying to avoid being trapped at her desk, but on the other hand this was a good opportunity. ‘There’s the briefing tonight, of course, but the team’s all here at the moment and with Tam back it would be useful to meet and share what we’ve got. Round up Will and Tansy, can you, and I’ll prise Tam away. He’s on his second helping of haggis and enough’s enough.’

  As Fleming and MacNee walked upstairs to her office, she said ruefully, ‘That was an awkward little scene earlier. You were quick off the mark in spotting it, Tam. I was going to have a word with you about doing something before it got nasty.’

  ‘Bunty said Aileen was a bit tearful when she saw her. Three kids under six was putting a strain on their marriage already, she said, and she was scared this would finish it completely. Then when I saw the look between the two of them...’

  ‘Yes. I’d have thought better of Tansy, though.’ Fleming sighed. ‘Still, at least that will have stopped it before it became a disciplinary matter. I’ve scheduled them for routine stuff this afternoon, but I suppose we’ll have to rejig the partnerships tomorrow.’

  ‘You could keep him on routine. Just ground him – no one likes doing the basic maintenance.’

  ‘Good thinking.’

  They reached her office and she looked with distaste at the blinking light on her phone. ‘I’ll run through those, see if there’s anything urgent. I’m not even going to look at the emails, though.’

  Fortunately there was nothing that couldn’t wait, and she was ready to start the meeting by the time the others appeared. Wilson, looking shamefaced, took the seat furthest away from MacNee, and Kerr had clearly spent some time working on her make-up, though it didn’t conceal her swollen eyelids.

  Ignoring the atmosphere, Fleming said, ‘You kick off, Andy. You’d something to say.’

  ‘Two things, actually. We interviewed the Farquharsons this morning. Ewan’s just longing to write up the report for you, of course.’

  Campbell looked resigned. Macdonald went on, ‘But there was just this and that about what was said – hard to pin down, but I’m sure we weren’t getting the truth from them—’

  ‘From her,’ Campbell corrected him.

  ‘Fair enough, from her. She told him what to say, and he said it, not very convincingly. Right little Lady Macbeth, she is.

  ‘But then, at the end, she suddenly came out with something she’d heard the night before, when Zack Salaman turned up unexpectedly at a party at the Forbes-Grahams’. Turns out the Farquharsons didn’t know a thing about him – must be the only people in the whole of Galloway who didn’t – and it threw them completely. You have to keep in mind that Mrs Farquharson has an axe to grind, but she told us she’d overheard this conversation between Salaman and Johnny Black. Black was talking about some job he’d done for him, and what caught her attention was that Salaman was seriously annoyed with him for mentioning it. She just wondered, she said, what sort of “job” they were talking about.’

  ‘Black,’ Fleming said with considerable satisfaction. ‘I�
��ve had my eye on him. He was in a pretty seedy business, and coming here from Glasgow—’

  ‘Thanks!’ MacNee said dryly. ‘But I have to say, I think that one’s got legs, Andy. The only thing is, I can see him killing off Carmichael – revenge, profit, particularly if Carmichael was determined to reject ALCO’s offer. But Kyle?’

  ‘If you’re still claiming it wasn’t a sniper, that’s hardly rocket science,’ Wilson chipped in aggressively. ‘Salaman didn’t order that one. That was Black’s private initiative, because Kyle caught him in the act.’

  ‘Certainly, that’s the theory we’ve been running with,’ ­Fleming said hastily, seeing MacNee’s hackles rise.

  ‘Actually,’ Macdonald said, ‘Ewan’s had an idea about that.’ He looked at Campbell, then as Campbell made no move to pick up his cue, outlined the point he had made: that it would be useful to find out exactly where Kyle had been when the Colonel was killed.

  ‘That’s good,’ MacNee approved. ‘You’ve quite a talent for hitting the nail on the head, haven’t you, laddie?’

  Campbell looked pleased.

  ‘Is it OK to speak to Mrs Kyle again?’ Macdonald asked. ‘I thought I’d better check with you – she was pretty ­strung-up about the warrant yesterday and we don’t want complaints about being heavy-handed.’

  ‘Why not try his pals first?’ MacNee suggested. ‘Saturday afternoon – he’s more likely to have been with Burnett and Gloag than sitting at home with his mammy.’

  Fleming approved that. ‘Get back to the school, Andy, and see what you can come up with.

  ‘Now, what else? Tam and I spoke to Gloag this morning and got a pack of lies. I don’t really have him in the frame at the moment, but he’s definitely a sharp operator. Figured out that we were keen to establish if he’d have had time to get to Wester Seton to lie in wait for Kyle to arrive, and he put up a smoke screen about Gordon being confused about the time and not prepared to admit he was wrong. Unless his wife or one of the other kids was around at the time, it would come down to his word against the boy’s, and there’s not a lot we can do about that.’

  ‘Oh yes there is.’ Kerr had been very subdued; Fleming was pleased to see her suddenly alert and interested. ‘I’ve made a start to reading statements, and I went over the interview with Gordon Gloag that Will and I did, Andy. He said after he told his father what Kyle was planning, and that he hadn’t gone along with it, his father was so pleased he said Gordon could order pizza. If we can find out where it came from, they might well have a record of the delivery.’

  ‘Andy, get that from Gordon and pass it back to Tansy for checking. I don’t want to waste too much time on him right now, but it’s a loose end we might as well tie up. Anything emerge from other visits this morning?’

  Wilson didn’t seem interested in contributing, and Kerr said hastily, ‘No. The main objective was to interview Ossian Forbes-Graham, but he was out.’

  MacNee nodded. ‘That’s right, he was. He and his mother were at the Medical Centre this morning. He was going in when I was coming out from my appointment.’

  Wilson said coarsely, ‘Gone to see the doc because the wheels are coming off his wagon, no doubt.’

  Without looking at him, Kerr said to Fleming, ‘I do think we have a problem with him. He seems dangerous to me – certainly not normal.’

  Fleming scribbled a note. ‘Point taken. We’ll be looking into that. Now – anything else before we wrap up?’

  Campbell stirred. It was, somehow, a portentous movement, and the others turned to look at him. ‘Er – I was just thinking. Could it maybe have been meant to be Dylan Burnett? They were both wearing helmets – it wouldn’t be easy to tell the difference, if you didn’t know already.’

  There was a brief silence, then Fleming said, ‘You’re right, of course, but I’m not sure it gets us anywhere. The same arguments, more or less, would apply. Thoughts on that, anyone?’

  ‘We could keep it in mind,’ Kerr suggested, ‘and see if there are connections he might have had that Barney Kyle didn’t. Ask him if anyone had a grudge against him, say.’

  ‘We can do that this afternoon,’ Macdonald said.

  ‘Fine. I think we’ve covered the ground. Tam, I want you to come with me to see Ellie Burnett. We could look in on Ossian Forbes-Graham after that. Will, could you wait a moment too, but the rest of you carry on. Keep me in the picture; I’ll want everything you have in time for the general briefing.’

  Kerr went out with her eyes lowered. Wilson didn’t move, but his face took on an expression of surly defiance.

  Fleming ignored that. ‘Will, it’s getting to the point where there’s a huge amount of stuff coming through, and it would be helpful to have one of the team here at headquarters designated to monitor what comes in. With Tam back now, I want you to take that on. You could trawl especially for anything that could possibly link either Dylan Burnett or Barney Kyle with the Colonel.’

  He looked as if he would have liked to argue, then thought the better of it and shrugged. ‘If that’s an order,’ he said, and left.

  MacNee grinned. ‘Didn’t like that, did he? Just scared to complain.’

  ‘Wisely. Right, Tam—’

  The phone rang. It had been blessedly silent during the meeting, and she looked at it with resignation. ‘I suppose I’d better take that. Too many people know I’m in the building.

  ‘Yes?’ She listened, then said, ‘All right – put him through.’ She just had time to say to MacNee, ‘That’s a piece of luck. Salaman’s on the line,’ before she heard his voice at the other end.

  ‘Yes, Mr Salaman? What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m getting very tired of staying in an extremely inadequate hotel, inspector. I wondered whether there was any reason to protract my stay?’

  ‘We have your London address, of course, so I don’t see that there would be any difficulty, unless you were thinking of leaving the country.’

  ‘Not at the moment, no.’

  ‘Then I think, on that understanding, there should be no reason to ask you to stay. There’s just one small matter I would like you to clear up for us.

  ‘I gather that you had a conversation with Johnny Black at the Forbes-Grahams’ party last night, in which there was discussion of some “job” he had done for you.’

  The voice went very cold. ‘And?’

  ‘Would you have any objection to telling us what that job was?’

  ‘Yes, I think I would. It was my own private business. I can assure you that this was nothing whatsoever to do with the case you are investigating.’

  ‘I can appreciate your feelings, but I would prefer to be the judge of its relevance.’

  ‘I’m sure you would.’

  That was all he said. Pulling a face at MacNee, Fleming went on, ‘I understand that his mention of this “job” caused you serious annoyance. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know how familiar you are with the customs of polite society,’ Salaman said acidly, ‘but I am not in the habit of discussing business matters with my employees at parties.’

  Fleming seized on that. ‘He was employed by you? I recall that you were reluctant to give me this information when last we spoke.’

  She could tell from his voice that his slip had annoyed him, but he said only, ‘That, too, was a complete irrelevance.’

  ‘I must press you.’

  ‘And I must decline.’ It was a steely reply. ‘I would remind you that I am a lawyer, inspector. The information I have given you so far was on an entirely voluntary basis. If you wish to force answers, you will, as you are no doubt entirely aware, have to put this on a different footing.

  ‘I shall be returning to London immediately, unless you detain me.’

  ‘We have no plans to do that at the moment.’

  ‘Good.’ The line went dead.

  Fleming slammed down her receiver. ‘Damn, damn, damn! Got absolutely nowhere with him.’

  ‘Lawyers!’ MacNee rolled his eyes.

&nbs
p; ‘Get most of that, did you? Now, no doubt, he’ll phone Black on his way to the airport, instructing him not to say anything. We’d have to arrest Salaman to compel him to answer, and we haven’t a leg to stand on, as he very well knows. And if we put a toe out of line, we’ll be mince. He’d sue at the drop of a hat.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a pointer, though,’ MacNee suggested. ‘Why would you be reluctant to be open about something like that, unless there was something you were trying to hide?’

  ‘You’d have to allow for sheer cussedness,’ Fleming said gloomily. ‘And a lawyer’s reluctance to give the police any help at all. But put it into the melting pot, with the other theories.’

  ‘It’s certainly still wide open. Can’t say I think we’ve got a glimpse of a logic behind this. To be honest, I’m beginning to doubt that there is any.’

  Fleming felt herself tense up, as she always did, at the suggestion of irrationality. ‘Of course it’s still early days,’ she was reminding him, and herself, when the phone rang. She groaned. ‘I suppose I’d better take that too.’

  ‘I was wanting a word with Tansy,’ MacNee said. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to go.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, Donald?’ she said wearily into the phone.

  Kerr was sitting at a desk in one corner of the CID room, staring at a screen, when MacNee went in. There were half-a-dozen other officers working there too, but, he established with a quick look round, Wilson was not among them. He sat down on the edge of the desk.

  ‘How are you doing, then, Tansy?’

  She bit her lip. ‘Ashamed, Tam. Really, really, ashamed.’

  ‘So well you might be,’ he said, but his voice was not unkind. ‘What did that rotten bastard tell you?’

  ‘Said they were getting divorced, that he and Aileen had been living separate lives for a year now. I shouldn’t have believed him, though, I know. It was just – well, it happened at a bad time...’

  ‘What went wrong with young Rory, then?’

  ‘Took me home to meet his parents, didn’t he? His dad’s a sir, and it’s this great big house. He didn’t tell me, or I’d never have gone. I made a fool of myself, wearing the wrong things, and I’m sure his mother thought I was garbage but she was “awf’ly nice” about it,’ she said with savage mimicry.