At the mention of her son, tears came to Ellie’s eyes but she still spoke in the same steady, emotionless voice. A chilling voice, unless you believed what she was saying. ‘Yes. Oh yes. And he could be charming, so charming! He’d worked on Dylan deliberately, so he thought Johnny was his best friend. If Johnny had pointed a gun at him, he’d have thought it was a joke.
‘So you see, to save Dylan, the only thing to do was to kill Johnny.’ She sounded almost matter-of-fact. ‘I hoped there might have been another way – something – a miracle,’ she shrugged, ‘but there wasn’t. That’s why I got the drugs – so it wouldn’t be so difficult. It makes things – less real, somehow.’ She gave a convulsive shiver, as if, perhaps, that effect was wearing off, but she didn’t stop.
‘He had to have the gun somewhere, you see, and I thought probably in the workshop, so when he and Dylan were watching TV last night I took Johnny’s keys and slipped out and ...’ she hesitated, ‘went for a walk. Then when I came back, I let myself into the workshop. There was only one locked cupboard and I found it there, so I loaded it and took it upstairs to hide under the bed.’
‘You planned this, then?’ MacNee said sharply. It was the vital question: premeditation was evidence of murder. If he hadn’t, Fleming would have had to ask it herself, however little she might like doing it.
Ellie didn’t seem to understand the significance of her reply. ‘I had to. It was the only way. When Dylan had gone to school I fetched the gun. Johnny turned and saw it, and came for me, but I got the shot in. I’d have killed myself then too – I had the other barrel for that – but I had to wait to see Dylan, to explain why. I couldn’t have him think his mother...’
For the first time, she showed real emotion. Silent tears began to pour down her face. ‘He wouldn’t listen. Can I speak to him now? Tell him how it was? Where is he?’
‘That won’t be possible. He’s being looked after,’ Kerr said without sympathy.
‘From what my colleague says, he’ll refuse to speak to you anyway,’ MacNee said cruelly.
Ellie gasped, then collapsed on to the table, sobbing.
Fleming had had enough. ‘We’ll break there,’ she said, and went out, with a nod to Kerr to complete the formalities for the tape. MacNee followed her, and as the door shut she turned on him. ‘What the hell are you trying to do, MacNee? Get the woman to top herself?’
‘Oh, I doubt it. Cool as a cucumber, that one. And she wouldn’t be much of a loss, would she?’
Fleming looked at him coldly. ‘I’ll have to have her put on suicide watch. And did you listen to what she had to say?’
‘Yes, of course I did. She was claiming rape, but she would, wouldn’t she? Didn’t have a lot to back up her claims with, though. I’ve seen them together, and when I was questioning her, he was clucking round her like a mother hen, kept making excuses for her. Then, remember, when Linda Bruce asked her if there was a problem, she said no, didn’t she? If she’d told Linda the story she told us just now, we’d have had the handcuffs on him before he could do a thing.’
‘But in her situation, you could be far too afraid to work that out,’ Fleming argued.
Kerr came out, and Fleming turned to her hopefully. ‘What did you think, Tansy?’
Kerr pursed her lips. ‘Quite a piece of work that one, isn’t she? Had it all figured out. Could have sounded quite convincing, if Black didn’t have such a solid alibi for Carmichael’s killing.’
He had, of course. Somehow, Fleming had forgotten that, but what Ellie had said chimed so exactly with her own theory that she wasn’t about to give it up. Solid alibis weren’t always as solid as they at first appeared.
But if Ellie hadn’t been convincing in there, how would she appear to a jury?
The Procurator Fiscal was clearly disappointed that confessions had not been forthcoming for the other two murders. Still, she said, at least there was no problem about the murder charge for Black’s killing. Manslaughter as an alternative charge, a tentative suggestion from Fleming, was instantly dismissed.
‘The lawyers can have their fun with that one,’ Milne said flatly. ‘And we can state that we are not looking for anyone else in connection with the other cases.’
‘I’m going to have another look at Black’s alibi for Carmichael’s murder,’ Fleming said. ‘I feel there may be holes in it.’
‘No, you are not, inspector. That’s the job of the defence, and they are not going to have it done for them in police time. Your job is to look for evidence against her in the other two cases, though given the high level of success you have enjoyed so far,’ Milne said with biting sarcasm, ‘we may never get it. It may have to be enough that we know the woman’s behind bars.’
The conversation finished with procedural arrangements, then Fleming put the phone down, deeply depressed.
She’d argued the point with MacNee and Kerr – ‘Why would she kill the sheep? Why Barney Kyle?’ – and met a stonewall as they united against her.
‘Could have been vandals that killed the sheep, for all we know,’ MacNee had said, and Kerr added, ‘And Ossian told us she hated Barney because he was getting Dylan in trouble. If she could shoot Black in cold blood—’ She shrugged.
Fleming pointed out how well Ellie’s account had fitted with her own hypothesis, but that had merely increased their scepticism. ‘She’d dreamed up a story to fit the facts so the same story occurring to you doesn’t mean a lot,’ MacNee had said, and Kerr plainly agreed with him.
Fleming made a heated defence, but they only listened in silence until she recognised the futility of the argument and let them go.
All she could do was detail Macdonald and Campbell to finish the interview, checking details of times and places, and hope that something to support Ellie’s version might emerge, but since she hadn’t heard from them after they’d finished, she could only assume that there was nothing significant.
She could always defy the fiscal and push on Black’s alibi. If he’d gone to Carmichael’s house by way of one of the backstreets, for instance, avoiding the cameras, he would only have needed fifteen minutes at the most; the boys watching football might well have assumed he was below, in the workshop. But even if she did prove it could be shaken, the fiscal’s office had wide powers in deciding what it would and would not lead as evidence, or even disclose to the defence.
Sick at heart, Fleming decided to pack it in for the night. It was ten o’clock, and tomorrow she was burying her father.
For Angus Laird’s funeral service the parish church, where he and Janet had been married and their daughter had been christened, was almost full. As the minister announced the last hymn, Fleming glanced round. She had never been under the illusion that her father was popular, but the number of officers past and present among their family and friends suggested professional respect, at least. The Chief Constable had actually asked Donald Bailey to be his official representative in making a tribute, an unexpected honour. Marjory was pleased for herself, but even more for Janet.
Today, as the final farewell drew near, Janet’s composure had deserted her. She had needed Bill’s arm to help her down the aisle, and was sitting now, head bowed, as the congregation sang the twenty-third psalm, to the tune ‘Crimond’. It had been sung at their wedding too; was she, perhaps, seeing a tall young man, standing waiting for her at the top of the aisle where his coffin now stood?
Marjory herself was calm today: she felt as if she had cried herself out – or perhaps yesterday’s events had somehow blunted the raw edge of her grief. Cat, upset by her grandmother’s distress, was blowing her nose, but Cammie, tall and solemn at his father’s side, was steady enough. He looked like a young man, not a child, Marjory thought with a stab of pain. The years passed so quickly, one generation going and the next coming up to take its place.
She looked anxiously at her mother as they stood waiting for Angus’s coffin to pass, but she had got shakily to her feet with Bill’s arm round her. Marjory breathed a prayer of gr
atitude that at least, following the old Scottish tradition, the women would not be going to the graveside.
The walk down the aisle seemed very long. Marjory smiled at the sympathetic faces turned her way, but Janet’s head was bent and her daughter wondered if she even saw them. She didn’t stop at the door either and Marjory, with a glance at Bill, stepped forward to support her mother, while he and Cammie waited to line up at the door with the minister. With Cat on Janet’s other side, they went slowly down to the car waiting to take them home.
They were putting the coffin into the hearse now, laying on top of it the two wreaths – the Flemings’ one, of autumnal flowers, and Janet’s own, a wreath of red roses so dark they were almost black.
Janet stopped, then stepped forward from her daughter’s protective arm as the undertakers respectfully fell back. She touched her trembling fingers to her lips, and then to the coffin. And Marjory found that, after all, she still had tears left to shed.
25
It was a dreich Edinburgh day, with leaden skies and a sharp east wind driving the rain which was putting a shining slick on the grey cobbled setts and flagstones of Parliament Square. The severe front of Parliament House and the looming bulk of St Giles Cathedral were uncompromisingly bleak, with their stone rain-sodden until it looked almost black. The only colour around came from the garish souvenir shops of the Royal Mile, flying bedraggled Saltires and Lion Rampant flags, with windows full of tartan dolls and thistle tea-towels and T-shirts demanding, ‘Wha’s like us?’
Coming out of the High Court of the Justiciary, where Ellie Burnett’s trial for murder was in progress, DI Fleming made a disgusted face at the weather and put up an umbrella. DS MacNee, behind her, hunched his shoulders and turned up the collar of his black leather jacket.
‘Calls itself May!’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m perished with cold. See Edinburgh? East-windy, West-endy – you can keep it.’
‘Mmm.’ Fleming plunged her free hand into the pocket of her trench coat. She was feeling deeply depressed.
Neither she nor MacNee had been needed as witnesses, and this was the first day they had come to the court. The trial was in its closing stages, with Ellie Burnett in the witness box.
From what Fleming had gleaned from officers who had been called to give evidence, and from the media coverage, she gathered it wasn’t going well for the defence. The prosecution had managed to suggest that Black had been killed because he’d discovered Ellie’s previous crimes, highlighting her monetary reasons for killing Carmichael and her expressed dislike of Kyle as a bad influence. Dylan’s testimony, talking about Johnny’s care and kindness with a genuine sense of loss, taken together with outright condemnation of his mother, had been damning indeed.
Ellie had no alibi to offer and the QC for the defence seemed to have found nothing in Black’s background, either, to support what Ellie had said about him. Fleming had wanted to do a bit more digging herself, but the fiscal, supported by Superintendent Bailey with his eye on the budget, wouldn’t hear of it. And, Fleming had to acknowledge, it wasn’t unreasonable: they hadn’t found any record of criminal activity, either by him or the agency, and it wasn’t the job of the police to try to punch holes in the prosecution case.
She still stubbornly refused to believe that Ellie’s story was a tissue of lies. Despite intensive work on the murders of Carmichael and Kyle, both by themselves and by the team from Stirling drafted in as assessors of the investigation, no evidence implicating Ellie had come to light over these past months, even with all the forensic reports in. There was nowhere else to go, either to convict her or to confirm the accusations about Black, and that wasn’t for want of trying on Fleming’s part.
The gun Ellie had used was loaded with the type of cartridge which had killed all three victims, though Fleming had made the point that the fingerprints of the dead man had been found on it as well as hers. Ownership of the gun, MacNee retorted, wasn’t in dispute. He’d kept an unlicensed gun. So? And the cartridges used to kill Carmichael and Kyle had no prints at all.
Just as stubbornly, MacNee persisted in his belief that Ellie was guilty. Whatever Fleming said, his reply was, ‘Depends how you look at it.’ Even mentioning the dead sheep became provocative.
‘You might as well be a sheep yourself, bleating on about it,’ he said in a frank exchange of views over an early evening pint in the Salutation one night when Fleming had joined the others to raise a glass to an officer’s retirement. ‘You don’t know for a fact that the beast was shot. Sandy Langlands is not just what you’d call an expert and Linda told me she never even looked at it, it was so messy. Maybe it was run down in the road and someone dragged it there out of the way.’
She had nothing to say to counter that, and in the end they had agreed further argument was pointless.
So today, Ellie Burnett was on the stand, fighting not for her freedom, but for a verdict of manslaughter rather than murder, and a lighter sentence – even a very light sentence, if her version of events was accepted. She had been ready to plead guilty to the lesser crime, but the prosecution had no interest in a deal. The hidden agenda was the assumption of her guilt for two murders which seemed unlikely ever to yield enough evidence for a prosecution.
As Fleming and MacNee walked off down the Royal Mile – looking, in Fleming’s case, for a café which didn’t only serve pies, and in MacNee’s, for one that didn’t fail to offer them – she said, ‘She’s not doing well, is she? And this is the easy part, with her own advocate taking her through the story. Wait till the prosecution gets started.’
‘Didn’t do herself any favours, anyway,’ MacNee agreed.
Ellie had looked almost extinguished after her nine months on remand. The exuberant hair had been scraped into an unbecoming bunch at the back and her face was without colour or animation. The magnetism she had somehow possessed had vanished and her answers sounded as if she had them by heart – as indeed, having gone over them so many times, she probably did.
‘You know her problem?’ Fleming said. ‘It all hinges on her claim that he was so utterly obsessed with her that he would kill twice to possess her. And I could see the men on the jury thinking, “You’re joking!” and the women going, “If she’s Helen of Troy, I’m Cleopatra.” I think she’s finished.
‘And who knows, Tam? Maybe you were right after all.’
‘Aye.’
There was something in his tone that made her look at him sharply. ‘You’re not changing your mind, are you?’
‘We-e-ell,’ he said, and stopped suddenly. ‘Look – what about this place? I can get a pie and a pint and you can be high-minded and have coffee and a sandwich if you like.’
The pub looked decent enough. Fleming compromised on a sandwich and a half, and they found a table.
‘Go on, Tam,’ Fleming urged. ‘Well?’
‘She had to be smart as well as tough to work out all that to cover up what she had done. And today – well, that wasn’t a smart lady. That was a victim, maybe a victim of the prison service, OK, but it got me wondering...’
Fleming smiled at him. ‘You and Bunty,’ she said affectionately. ‘Dog with three legs, cat with one eye, a broken woman – it’s all the same.’ MacNee glowered at her over the rim of his glass, but she went on, ‘The trouble is, Tam, wondering isn’t any good. I’ve been wondering for months, and it hasn’t made any difference. All you can hope is that there’s a stubborn member of the jury who looks at it that way too and can convince the others.’
‘How’s the trial going, boss?’
DC Kerr came along the corridor from the CID room to find Fleming and MacNee, just back from Edinburgh, talking at the foot of the stairs.
Fleming grimaced. ‘Not good for Ellie. The afternoon was worse than the morning, and in the morning she didn’t come over well. It’s his lordship’s summing up tomorrow, and if you want a bet I’ll give you a pound to a dud penny that it’s unfavourable.’
‘Poor woman,’ Kerr said, but without real
feeling. ‘Tam, there was a message for you from your pal Sheuggie in Glasgow. Got some good news for you, he said.’
‘Always ready to hear good news,’ MacNee said. ‘Makes a change.’
He went on to the CID room, and Fleming slowly and unhappily climbed the stairs.
‘Here, Tam – just thought I’d tell you what happened about Ronnie Lafferty. You know, the guy whose fingerprints you got when he cheeked your Big Marge last year.’
‘Oh aye – gutter scrapings, him. Well?’
‘Ten years. How about that?’
‘That’ll teach him to mind his manners. Good result. As it happens, I’m just back from the High Court myself. You maybe read about the case – there was a lot of rubbish in the press about it being a sniper.’
Sheuggie was vague, and MacNee tried to jog his memory. ‘The victim was a guy from your patch – had a detective agency. Johnny Black.’
‘Black?’ Sheuggie was puzzled. ‘You’ve got it wrong there. Black was killed, oh, must have been well over a year ago. We still haven’t laid hands on the killer, but we know who he was.’
‘You’re kidding,’ MacNee said hoarsely.
‘Kidding? Listen and learn, my son. Sad case, was poor old Johnny. Getting a bit past it, then his only son who’d been with him in the business died, he’d no other family, and he started drinking till he never knew if he was coming or going. As far as we could piece it together afterwards, he took on an assistant without making the usual checks, and picked a right one – Joe Connolly, with a record for GBH and stalking. We had him on a rape charge too, but we couldn’t make it stick. He did it, though, right enough. I’d dealings with him – psychopath, if you ask me.
‘Persuaded Johnny to let him take charge of everything, managed the business and was operating under Johnny’s name, till he cleared out the office bank account, shot Johnny and disappeared around last March sometime. Poor old Johnny – lay there a couple of weeks before someone found him. And we’d never have known who’d done it if Connolly’s prints hadn’t been all over the place. Not that it did us any good – got clean away with it.’
Lamb to the Slaughter Page 38