Human Face

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Here you are. Glad to see you survived the drive round that awful road. The potholes are dreadful – I think there’s some dispute between the council and the charity about who’s responsible. What you really need is a boat. If you’re going to be to and fro to Balnasheil Lodge, Douglas could certainly arrange one for you.’

  She was quite right, but it was a leading question and he said only, ‘There was something I did want to ask you, Mrs Ross. Someone mentioned a young woman called Veruschka who was a housekeeper at the Lodge a few years ago and said there had been some talk about her when she left. Do you remember anything about that?’

  Fiona’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, indeed I do! When was it, now – three years ago, maybe, or four. Time just seems to go by quicker and quicker, doesn’t it? She was very striking, I seem to remember, tall, dark, with those very long legs that these Middle European girls seem to have. She was around the bar quite a lot and I think there were one or two young men who were very smitten—’

  ‘Do you remember their names?’

  She looked crestfallen and shook her head. ‘They weren’t local, I don’t think. Murdo John had rather a soft spot for her too, if I remember rightly. But then, he did have an eye for the ladies – you wouldn’t think it, him being so quiet, but he fairly snapped up Vicky after she joined us.’

  Strang filed away the information. ‘And after this Veruschka left …?’

  He watched with misgiving as Fiona sat down on a nearby chair, clearly settling in to enjoy her story.

  ‘Well, it was the cleaner who was there at that time. She started the rumour that there was something funny about her going but – well, not wanting to speak ill of the dead, Inspector, but Morag Soutar would make a sensation out of the post van being five minutes late on its rounds.

  ‘She said she’d seen clothes that belonged to Veruschka still hanging in her wardrobe when she was cleaning the room after she’d gone, but she had to admit afterwards that the girl had asked Miss Lacey to post them on to her later because she didn’t want to have to carry them with her. That was it, and it didn’t seem much to make a fuss about. I don’t think any of us believed her.’

  Was that a note of regret in her voice? ‘I see,’ he said. ‘But you haven’t heard any more about Eva Havel leaving, apart from the complaint to the police?’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘No, not really.’ That was definite regret this time. ‘Just, Daniel Tennant was awfully sure that she wouldn’t have stood him up and he’s got Vicky Macdonald worked up about it too. But a girl like that – oh, you know—’ She gave him a significant look.

  Strang picked up a sandwich and bit into it. ‘Well, thank you very much for your time, Mrs Ross. I think that’s all.’

  Fiona rose with a certain reluctance. ‘Any time – it’s no trouble. And if I hear anything, I’ll report to you, shall I?’

  His mouth being full saved him from having to respond and she left. Dreadful woman, but useful.

  He added another note to his jottings then set about making his calls and checks. He’d better give JB an update once he’d done that to keep her on side; she would certainly be interested and even, he suspected, a bit nervous. He just hoped she wouldn’t decide to interfere. He was relishing this maverick business – though he’d better get it right.

  Beatrice Lacey was feeling terrible. Ever since the visit from the police in the morning she had been suffering from a splitting headache that even Paracetamol Plus couldn’t shift. She’d tried to immerse herself in her work but the memories kept intruding and then she’d be seized with a shivering fit.

  Eventually, at two o’clock, she gave in. At least she hadn’t the horror of getting the evening meal to the table; Vicky had confirmed that she’d be coming over to do it. With her office work up to date there was no reason why she shouldn’t just go and have a lie-down – and indeed, she needn’t even appear at supper if she didn’t want to.

  She climbed the stairs wearily to her flat, then picked up Rosamond from her crib and cuddled her.

  ‘We’re just going back to bed to have a nice rest,’ she told her. ‘Mummy’s very, very tired and she’s had a horrid day.’

  Tears welled up in her eyes as she said that but she brushed them away determinedly. She needed to cheer herself up or the rest wouldn’t do her any good at all. She opened the little cupboard where she kept her stash of sweets and took out a bag of Minstrels – chocolate was always good for lifting the spirits – and chose her favourite from the shelf of Mills and Boon novels, then went through to her little bedroom.

  It was a spartan room, with a cheap single divan and a second-hand wardrobe with matching chest of drawers that was only slightly better quality than the one in what had been Eva’s room downstairs, but the deep burgundy coverlet on the bed was incongruously expensive-looking silk and there were little silver boxes and a silver toilet set on the chest of drawers. Beatrice sank onto her bed, tucked Rosamond in beside her then pulled over the cover with a sigh of relief and switched on her electric blanket.

  Her headache receded a little and she could feel the soothing chocolate and the comforting, familiar story settling her nerves; she was just drifting off to sleep when there was a knock on the door of her flat. She sat bolt upright, tense again.

  It couldn’t be Vicky. She’d gone across with Murdo John at the usual time and she wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. It could only be Adam or Harry and she didn’t really want to see either of them just now.

  But ‘Just coming,’ she shouted, and heaved herself out of bed with a groan – the cheap mattress did nothing for her back – and grabbed a hairbrush as she passed to smooth down the bit she could feel sticking up at the back. No time to put on a bit of lipstick, though. She patted her cheeks and bit her lips as she went to open the door.

  Adam stood there, smiling at her. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry – did I disturb you? Poor sweetie. I just thought you might be upset after having the plods trample all over you with their flat feet and I wanted to check that you were all right. May I come in?’

  He’d never come to her room before; no one had come into her room before. She gave a nervous glance at Rosamond’s crib there in the corner, but she really had no alternative but to let him come in. And he’d come because he was worried about her; Beatrice’s heart melted.

  ‘Oh, Adam, that’s so like you!’ she cried. ‘Come in, come in – can I make you tea or something?’

  ‘No, no, darling, no tea. You just sit down.’ He sat down himself on a Victorian button-back chair she had brought with her from Surrey that mercifully meant he had his back to the crib; his frame was too large to look comfortable in it but he insisted she take her usual cushioned armchair. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘A little bit shaken, to be honest.’ For a moment she contemplated shedding a tear or two in the hope that he would comfort her but, remembering how much he hated any show of emotion, she only gave a little, brave smile.

  ‘Oh, I can understand it. I felt quite taken aback myself. There seems to be someone with an interest in stirring up trouble. But there’s no need to worry about it, sweetie. If they come back, you know what to say – just what I’m sure you’ve said already so they don’t get the wrong idea and make a nuisance of themselves.’

  Adam was eyeing her narrowly. She swallowed hard, but her voice trembled a little as she said, ‘Do you think they will come back?’

  ‘Oh, probably. They always like to confirm everything, even if it means that they end up crossing all the ‘i’s and dotting all the ‘t’s. So don’t tell them anything that might muddle their little brains, will you? I was quite surprised when they started talking about Veruschka this morning, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’ That came out a bit too loudly, and she blushed. ‘I mean, well, I just said she’d been here, and then she’d gone.’

  ‘Absolutely right, sweetie.’ He leant forward to pat her hand. ‘And if they ask again, you remember how when Morag asked about her clothes, we told her you ha
d posted them on to the address she’d left?’

  ‘In London. Yes.’ Beatrice couldn’t look at him.

  ‘That’s right. Do you remember what it was?’

  ‘No.’ She could say that with perfect truth.

  ‘That’s fine. How would you remember, after all this time? So there you are – that’s all you need to say if they ask you about it. No need to worry any more, eh? That’s my good girl.’

  He stood up, bent forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve had all this, darling – and all the fuss with Harry being here too, just because he’s made a mess of some of his business affairs and wanted somewhere peaceful to get them all sorted out.’

  He sighed and shook his head. ‘To be honest, Beatrice, I’ve been wondering whether we were wise to have Harry involved in Human Face after all. I’m not convinced that he has quite the ideals that we both share. Maybe if it was just us two, working together towards our future—’

  Adam looked at her, his head on one side enquiringly, then smiled. ‘Not the time to think about it just now. Later, though, we’ll have a good talk. Now, I don’t want you going back to the office today. Have a nice rest and I’ll see you at supper.’

  Beatrice didn’t move after he’d gone. She sat staring straight ahead of her, her mind spinning with conflicting thoughts. She should have been happy; he’d actually kissed her, mentioned long talks together about their future, suggested the hated Harry might go …

  But she wasn’t happy. She knew what she knew and it was getting harder to pretend that she didn’t. She felt sick and even a little bit frightened. No, more than a little bit. She felt very frightened, and she didn’t know what was going to happen next.

  DCS Jane Borthwick was pleased when DI Strang’s call came through. It had been on her mind: she’d been worrying that plunging a man in a vulnerable emotional state into such an exposed position had been an uncharacteristically risky thing to do.

  But it did look as if a fairly straightforward situation had been bigged up, probably in response to a complaint from some pompous local councillor who was feeling put out at the CID reforms; it should just be a matter of showing the flag and checking there really was nothing untoward about the woman’s disappearance – a way to ease Strang back into work again without too much stress on all sides. At least, she hoped it was.

  His report was a shock. She offered a mental apology to the pompous councillor; if the Met was involved, that explained the order for further investigation and from what Strang was saying now, there was a definite question mark over the disappearance of not one but two women.

  ‘The thing is,’ Strang was saying, ‘there’s no proof of any of this at all. The rumour about the first female – Veruschka, no surname – disappearing isn’t only unsubstantiated, it isn’t believed by the locals. Eva Havel didn’t keep to her spying arrangement with Tennant but she could just have decided to duck out of a situation she wasn’t happy with. I’ve run some checks but there’s no immediate record of her. She could be an illegal immigrant …’

  With a hollow feeling in her stomach, Borthwick said, ‘Or a perfectly legal visitor who isn’t registered because she wasn’t actually working.’ Please God let that be all it was, a visitor who’d left of her own accord.

  ‘Of course, ma’am,’ he said politely, but she could tell he didn’t believe that. ‘I was hoping we might have got an in through the fraud inquiry, but they’re not ready yet, apparently. It’s a major investigation, links all over the country, and if we screw it up for them we’ll really be in the doghouse.’

  ‘I see. It would have been helpful, though, if we’d known about this before, instead of going in blind.’ Making a mental note to have a terse word with the assistant chief constable, Borthwick went on, ‘So where does this leave us, then?’

  She was expecting a request for direction, but his reply was immediate, and confident.

  ‘Reinterview. The woman who seems to run the charity admin, Beatrice Lacey, is the most promising – very nervy, but has stars in her eyes when it comes to her boss. We might get something out of her if we lean a bit. There’s an allegedly Polish handyman who’s been monosyllabic so far but I’ll lean on him a bit more next time too – check immigrant status and so on, see if we can get a bit more out of him. Adam Carnegie, the boss, and his sidekick Harry Drummond, both of them under surveillance – I can rattle the cage but they’ll be clued in so I can’t imagine that will get us anywhere. The barman, Murdo John Macdonald—’

  ‘That’s really his name?’

  ‘Lives up to it – big, black-bearded, strong silent type. Knows more than he’s prepared to admit about the previous woman but I can have another go. And I’m going to want authorisation to task a local PC with dredging for gossip and checking out possible sightings of Eva after she is supposed to have left – buses, taxis, boats, lifts from the locals, all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Certainly, in the circumstances. PCs come cheap, anyway. Have you one in mind?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She could hear reluctance in Strang’s voice. ‘PC Livvy Murray – she gave up her day off to take notes for me. She’s from Glasgow – the Scots Thistle type.’

  Borthwick smiled. ‘You mean “Wha daur meddle wi’ me?”’

  ‘Printed right through her, like a stick of Rothesay rock. She was smarting because I was critical of her initial investigation of Havel’s disappearance but she’s not stupid and she wants to learn. I don’t think she likes me very much – you know what they say about Edinburgh and Glasgow not speaking?’

  ‘Indeed, I do. Can you call a truce?’

  ‘Easier just to run up the white flag, in my experience. Anyway, there’s Tennant too. He’s offered to be co-opted and of course his experience can be useful to me at the Met’s expense. He doesn’t seem to be worried about breaking his cover.’

  ‘He’s presumably competent. That should give you a bit more scope.’

  ‘Yes. But if none of this yields anything …’

  Borthwick could almost hear the shrug at the other end. ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t see what else we can do.’ His voice was flat.

  She wouldn’t lose sleep if this just petered out but in case it didn’t, she wanted to be sure he could cope. ‘How are you finding it, working without a team?’ she asked.

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘It’s high-wire stuff, isn’t it? I’m relying on my own judgement and if it’s wrong it’s a long way down.’

  He didn’t sound, though, as if that was getting to him; it sounded as if he was enjoying it. Intrigued, she said, ‘So, have you a gut feeling about this?’

  His reply came back like a bullet. ‘It’s bad. The set-up stinks – there’s something sick and evil going on there. And from my brief acquaintance with Carnegie I’d be more surprised if you told me he wasn’t a psychopath than that he was, but I can’t see yet how I could nail him.’

  She was taken aback. ‘I see. You certainly know your own mind. Fair enough. But I want to be kept in the picture.’

  Borthwick sat thinking for some time after she put the phone down. With all her years of service she knew all too well how often you knew what had happened but couldn’t prove it, and this sounded like one of those situations.

  Strang seemed to have been landed with a lot more than she had envisaged but he was sounding good, exhilarated, almost. He certainly hadn’t looked to her for guidance – indeed, she’d had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have welcomed it. Was that good or bad? The trouble was she wouldn’t know which it was going to turn out to be until it was too late to do anything about it.

  Murdo John Macdonald got out of the boat to carry Vicky’s suitcase up to the house in silence. She stalked ahead of him; he followed her through the little lobby behind the kitchen where the pantry and the game larder were and set it down on the kitchen floor, then walked off without a farewell or a backward glance.

  Her skin still felt sore and
stiff after the tears; there was a huge, painful lump in her throat and she was feeling sick with nerves as she went to shut the back door behind him.

  She could smell the distinctive whiff of corruption beginning in the hare that was hanging there and its rank, sweetish smell made her feel sicker still. She’d have to hang it for days more before it was rotten enough for Adam’s taste.

  When she walked through the kitchen to the room that had been Eva’s, down the corridor beside the side door, she almost thought the smell from the hare still lingered, though that was nonsense, of course. It was just that in her own mind the house itself was tainted by something evil right at its heart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Quentin Lacey hadn’t had a good night. He was grumpy at breakfast and his partner, Karen Prescott, gave him an acid look. They’d got on fine when he’d first moved in with her – he could be quite a good laugh when he’d had a few – but he seemed gloomier and gloomier as he’d got more and more obsessive about his sister and this charity lately.

  ‘I’d a nightmare last night,’ he said morosely, cradling his coffee mug. ‘Dreamt I was at their wedding. Horrible!’ He gave a shudder.

  ‘Whose wedding?’ she said, just to be irritating.

  ‘Beatrice’s, of course. To that – that creature—’

  ‘Oh, that wedding. Well, if she’s made her mind up there’s not a lot that you can do about it, is there? She’s old enough to know what she wants and she’s got a right to do whatever she likes with her own money, doesn’t she?’

  ‘This isn’t about the money,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘It’s about her. He’s preying on her with this charity of his and if he’s marrying her it’s only so the trust can be broken and he can get his hands on it. You don’t think it’s a love match, do you?’