Lamb to the Slaughter

by Aline Templeton

  Naismith grinned after her. ‘Nice lassie,’ he said to MacNee.

  ‘Yes,’ MacNee agreed absent-mindedly. ‘Listen, Jock, I’m going to do something awful. It’s going to cause trouble.’

  ‘Oh God! And you only back today!’ Naismith was resigned.

  ‘Listen.’ MacNee outlined his plan. At the end, he said, ‘Are you with me?’

  Naismith groaned. ‘You’re aff your heid!’

  ‘Not as much as you think. I can cope. Are you in?’

  Naismith said guardedly, ‘Well, I won’t say anything to contradict what you say.’

  ‘And you’ll say that one line I told you?’

  Naismith gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll say that one line you told me. But I must be as daft as you are.’

  It was only minutes later that Wilson appeared, going off shift. His face was set in hard lines, and though he nodded to the others as he passed, he didn’t speak or smile. Then MacNee called, ‘Will, I just wanted to warn you – there’s press sniffing around. Watch what you say about it if they approach you.’

  Wilson looked surprised, but came across. ‘About what?’

  ‘Have you not heard? We’ve made an arrest.’

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard,’ Naismith said a little woodenly. ‘Everyone’s buzzing with it downstairs.’

  ‘Who is it, then?’ Wilson’s expression had changed to one of avid interest.

  ‘Salaman. He’s being charged with Carmichael’s murder.’

  ‘Really? Thought he was miles away at the time.’

  ‘That’s what we all thought,’ MacNee said solemnly. ‘But—’ He shrugged.

  ‘That’s amazing. And what about Kyle?’

  ‘Hasn’t been charged with that yet – there’s a bit more work needed. But look, Will, I was wanting to warn you – we’ve to be careful. The Daily Record seems to have picked up on it – one hint of confirmation and they’ll run the story. And the Super’s dead keen to announce it at his conference tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Wilson said eagerly. ‘I’m on my way home anyway, and I’m not stopping to talk to anyone.’

  ‘Good lad,’ MacNee said, and he and Naismith watched in silence as Wilson went out, looking rather better pleased with life.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Naismith said ­heavily.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, all right.’ MacNee grinned. ‘I’m just not absolutely sure what will happen now I’ve done it. But you can get a long way with flat denial.’

  The editor was doubtful. ‘No official confirmation of this, though?’

  ‘No,’ the reporter admitted. ‘They’re stalling. Couldn’t get hold of anyone in authority and all they’re saying is there’s to be a statement tomorrow – don’t want their thunder stolen is my guess. But my source is a good one – given us some great leads, one hundred per cent reliable in the past.’

  ‘It’s a huge risk. Anything else at all to back it up?’

  ‘The hotel says he left unexpectedly this afternoon, which would fit the facts. And apparently the Daily Record’s snooping around. They’ve obviously got wind of it too somehow. If we don’t run it, they’ll dig it out and get the scoop. And it’s a great story.’

  The editor chewed his lip, between the devils of the deadline and the deep blue sea. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll run it. But I hope to God you’re right.’

  20

  DC Will Wilson came into the CID room with a spring in his step. Avoiding Tansy Kerr, who was hard at work at one of the desks, he made for the group of detectives standing over by the window, talking about football. That surprised him a little: usually when stuff was happening, there was a hum of excitement.

  ‘Hey! What about Salaman, then?’ he said jauntily as he joined them. ‘Any more news this morning?’

  They looked at him blankly. ‘Salaman?’ one said.

  ‘The arrest. You know,’ he prompted.

  ‘Has he been arrested? Who said?’

  They were all staring at him and he felt the first prickle of unease. ‘He was arrested yesterday afternoon – they were going to charge him with Carmichael’s murder at least. Tam MacNee told me.’

  ‘Maybe they’re keeping it quiet,’ someone else said doubtfully. ‘But I booked someone in on a drink-driving charge early evening yesterday and they didn’t say a word down at the charge desk.’

  ‘Everyone’s buzzing with it downstairs ...’ Wilson could hear Naismith’s voice saying it. Someone else said unkindly, ‘Probably Tam having you on. You’re not flavour of the month around here, you know.’

  Wilson could feel the blood draining from his face. His head felt light, as if it might detach itself and float away. ‘Where’s – where’s MacNee?’

  No one seemed to know; there was a bit of tittering. He set off to find him, his stomach starting to churn. If this was one of MacNee’s little games he’d – well, he’d make him pay. Somehow.

  He saw his quarry coming towards him along the corridor, with his usual cocky stride. Seeing him, MacNee broke into a grin and it was all Wilson could do not to seize him by the throat and wipe it off with his fist.

  ‘Is it true, MacNee?’ he said thickly. ‘What you told me last night – is it true?’

  ‘What did I tell you last night, Will?’

  ‘You know perfectly well – that Salaman had been arrested for Carmichael’s murder.’

  ‘Arrested? Dear me, no! Now Will, you should listen more carefully to what people say or there could be a serious misunderstanding. I said he had a powerful motive and it would be good if we had found anything to arrest him for.’

  ‘You set me up, you bastard! You know you said no such thing!’ Wilson howled.

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll find I did. Ask Jock Naismith – he was there at the time. That’s a dangerous habit of yours – jumping to conclusions.’ Then MacNee’s playful tone changed. ‘But I can’t see that it’s really a problem, even if you did get hold of the wrong end of the stick. Why does it matter, Will?’

  Wilson’s eyes fell. ‘You know why, don’t you?’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes, of course I bloody do.’ MacNee stepped closer until his face was only inches away from the other man’s. ‘And it answers a question that’s been bugging us for years – who’s the dirty bastard who’s been tipping off the press? Must have been a nice little earner.’

  Wilson shrank back, his legs feeling like rubber. He leaned against the wall, attracting a curious look from a passing FCA. ‘What – what are you going to do?’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s more of a question of what you’re going to do. If you want a suggestion, put in your resignation right away. Tell them you want to spend more time with your family – that’s the usual line.’ The sergeant’s tone was caustic.

  Wilson hardly heard him. ‘They’ve run the story. What’ll they do to me?’

  ‘Your pals in the gutter press? You know them a lot better than I do, I’m happy to say. But Salaman will sue, of course, and he’ll be looking for big bucks – he’s a hot-shot London lawyer, after all, isn’t he? And he’ll have them over a barrel. Let’s put it this way – I doubt if they’ll be putting you up for an award for services to journalism.’

  Cold fear brought rage. ‘I’ll dump you in it too, MacNee!’ Wilson blustered.

  MacNee’s lip curled. ‘You think they’ll be interested? This is between you and them. You can always come and make a complaint to your ex-colleagues when they send someone round to break your legs.’ He started to walk away, then turned back.

  ‘You’d be best to take up that job Aileen’s dad offered you in his firm. You’ll need a wage to support Aileen and all those bairns. Not that he’s going to make it easy for you. You’re one of these folks Burns talks about – “Who know them best, despise them most.”’

  With a look of utter contempt, MacNee walked away.

  Making the coffee so strong had been a bad idea. It had been meant to clear her woozy head, but it was disgusting. Marjory Flem
ing took another sip, grimaced, then pushed it aside. She was feeling terrible this morning, with aching bones and heavy eyes, almost as if she had flu or something.

  For hours she’d been unable to sleep except in brief snatches, when she would wake with wet cheeks. Then in the early morning she’d dropped off at last and woke in a panic to find it was eight o’clock.

  When she got downstairs, the children, on their way to school, hovered round her with unnatural solicitude. Cammie had done the hens for her and Cat – all grudges apparently forgotten – had cleared up breakfast and even washed Bill’s porridge pan. She’d given her mother a bear-hug before she left, too. Marjory was touched by the affectionate gesture, but it all contributed to the feeling of unreality she was ­struggling with.

  Janet had insisted on going back to her own house where she had old friends all about her, so Bill had driven her back after a supper when they had found good memories to talk about. Janet had shed a few gentle tears, but Marjory dared not let herself start. Her mother’s control was amazing.

  As Janet left, Marjory had said to her anxiously, ‘You’ve been so calm – you’re not going to go back and cry all by yourself, are you?’

  ‘I lost your father long ago, pet. I did my grieving for him then, and now I’m just glad he’s not bewildered and unhappy any more.’

  Pressing her lips together, Marjory nodded, and her mother went on, ‘It wasn’t his way to show it, but you know he was real proud of his clever lass.’

  Marjory had managed not to cry until she waved the car away, but it was these words which had haunted her dreams.

  Bill had less than hopefully suggested she take a day off, but accepted that working, when she had no time to think of anything else, would give her respite from the exhaustion of a grief that had so totally taken her by surprise.

  Work had taken her mind off it, all right. The fuss over Salaman had had time to build by the time she’d got in, and she’d hardly caught her breath before she’d Bailey on the phone. It really was the last thing she needed; she’d done her best to calm him down with assurances that it was nothing they had said and then sent for MacNee to try to get to the bottom of it.

  MacNee arrived in a cheerful mood. ‘Och well, at least it gave the Super something to say at the press conference,’ he said cheerily.

  She gave him a jaundiced look. ‘I can’t imagine where this story can have come from,’ she fretted. ‘No one seems to know anything about it, but the editor got on the phone, claiming the information came from a police source. I told Donald to point out that unofficial police sources are not our responsibility.’

  ‘Right enough,’ MacNee approved. ‘Serves them right, sneaky sods.’

  ‘But where can anyone have got that idea?’ she persisted.

  ‘Somebody must have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Probably.’

  There was something about the way he said it... ‘Tam,’ she said sharply, ‘you didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?’

  ‘How could I have?’ He was trying to look hurt at the suggestion.

  She wasn’t amused. ‘I asked you a question, and you didn’t answer.’

  ‘There are some things,’ MacNee said sententiously, ‘that it’s better not to know.’

  Fleming was tired, worried, wrung out by emotion. She lost it.

  ‘MacNee, if this is your doing, I’ll have you on a charge!’ she yelled. ‘You can tell me all about it, or I pick up that phone to set up an internal investigation. And you can consider yourself suspended.’

  ‘Marjory—’

  ‘Ma’am,’ she snapped. ‘Is there permanent damage to your brain or something? It’s the only charitable explanation.’

  She saw that she had got him on the raw, but she didn’t care. ‘We’ve got a murder investigation – two murder ­investigations, that are going nowhere. Every time the phone rings, I’m expecting it to be to tell me someone’s been gunned down in the High Street, and now I’ve got a doolally sergeant.’

  MacNee’s face had gone rigid with anger but then she saw something else too, something worse – uncertainty. Her fury evaporated and she put a hand to her aching head.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said tiredly. ‘Sorry, Tam, I didn’t mean it. Forget what I said.’

  ‘I’m prepared to make allowances, ma’am,’ he said stiffly.

  It was clear she wasn’t altogether forgiven, but she wasn’t about to grovel. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken like that. But if you’ve landed us in this mess, you should apologise too.’

  ‘I didn’t say I had,’ MacNee pointed out, but he wasn’t about to push it, adding hastily, ‘I think you’ll find Will Wilson will be putting in his resignation, though. And after that you won’t have to worry so much about leaks to the press.’

  Fleming gaped. ‘Will – he’s been behind them?’

  ‘Well, let’s just call it a hunch I’ve got.’

  She pursed her lips in a silent whistle. ‘Salaman’s going berserk, got his lawyers on to it already, and libel comes expensive. I wouldn’t like to be in Will’s shoes this morning.’

  ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow,’ MacNee said callously. ‘But here – there are one or two things Tansy came up with yesterday...’

  It was a blatant attempt to change an uncomfortable subject, but she let him get away with it. He seemed pretty confident that whatever he’d done wasn’t going to backfire, and he was right – the less she knew about it, the better.

  She listened with considerable interest to what he was telling her. ‘Let’s bring the Farquharsons in for questioning, separately. We’ve clear evidence they’ve been comprehensively lying to us, and formal questioning might shake them enough to get at the truth. Though it’s hard to see what link they could have had with Kyle—’

  Her desk phone rang. ‘If that’s more on the Salaman ­business,’ she said, looking daggers at MacNee, ‘I’ll have your guts for garters.’

  He grinned at the familiar threat.

  But it wasn’t about Salaman. It was a message from the control room that there was an on-going incident at the Craft Centre; a car had been sent, but they had thought she would want to be informed.

  ‘Thanks,’ Fleming said. ‘I’ll be right there.’

  She felt hollow inside. Another victim? ‘On-going incident,’ she said to MacNee as they hurried downstairs. ‘Could that mean they’ve caught someone in the act?’

  ‘If it’s firearms, you’d better not go rushing in,’ MacNee cautioned. ‘You haven’t got body armour, and neither have I. And I obviously can’t afford to lose any more brain cells to a stray shot pellet.’

  It was a barbed comment, but there were more important matters to attend to at the moment than MacNee’s hurt ­feelings and insecurities.

  The scene at the Craft Centre when they arrived was rather less dramatic than the one Fleming had constructed in her imagination.

  There was a police car in the centre of the courtyard which looked as if it had been abandoned rather than parked as officers jumped out in a hurry. There was a small blue van with its back doors open, with a rocking chair, a sound system and a couple of suitcases visible inside. It was parked outside Ellie Burnett’s shop; the door to the flat upstairs was standing open, and Johnny Black was standing in front of it with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene.

  At the other side, two officers were talking to Ossian Forbes-Graham. He was standing beside them quietly, every line of his body proclaiming dejection: head down, shoulders drooping, hands hanging by his sides.

  Seeing Fleming and MacNee arrive, the woman officer turned and Fleming saw that it was Sergeant Linda Bruce. ‘Bit of a storm in a teacup, ma’am,’ she said in a lowered voice as she reached them. ‘Ms Burnett’s apparently moving in with Black and Forbes-Graham took exception. Says the lady’s being forced against her will but I’ve spoken to her myself and it’s nonsense. Frankly, she looks to me as if she’s badly needing someone to look after her.

  ‘But anyway, young
Ossian sees himself as her knight in shining armour and has a go at Black there. Seems to have come off worst – he’ll have a fine shiner to show for it tomorrow. But he was going on shouting and carrying on, trying to pull things out of the van when Black went upstairs to fetch more stuff, and in the end he called us.

  ‘With all that’s gone on, it got top priority, but quite honestly ...’ She gestured towards Forbes-Graham and shrugged her shoulders.

  Fleming nodded. ‘Looks like a case of giving him a flea in his ear and leaving it at that, especially since Burnett’s moving out. We’d been planning to have a chat with him anyway, so no need for you to hang around. Tell him to go back to his studio or whatever he calls it and wait there for us.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  As she returned to her colleague, Black came towards them. ‘Sergeant MacNee. And—?’ He looked enquiringly at Fleming.

  ‘DI Fleming,’ she supplied. ‘I gather you’ve had a spot of bother.’

  ‘Yes, we bloody have. See here, inspector, I know this looks trivial, and in a sense it is – I can handle a lad like that with my eyes shut and one hand tied behind my back, without bringing the law into it.

  ‘But I’ll be straight with you. I’m worried. The guy’s obsessional about Ellie and after all that’s been going on I’m afraid of what might happen. You have to ask yourself, what has he done already? He’s not normal – you’ve only to look at him.’

  He certainly had a point there. The constable was escorting Forbes-Graham across the yard, the young man walking with exaggerated, dragging steps, as if he hadn’t the energy to lift his feet clear of the ground.

  Fleming said only, ‘We have noted your concern, Mr Black. As I understand it, with Ms Burnett moving in with you today, there won’t be the same opportunity for harassment.’

  ‘There certainly won’t. I have gates to my yard below the flat and I plan to keep them locked. But even so, inspector, I feel there’s more to it than that.’