And Vicky had seen her too, coming out with blood all over her. How could Beatrice prove to anyone that it was her own blood, not his? She’d talked to Vicky last night too when she was so upset, told her far too much. She was in trouble, terrible trouble.
Her heart was starting to flutter, like a trapped sparrow beating its wings against a windowpane. She felt hot and sweaty and burning pain knifed through her every time she moved her arm. What was she to do?
Run. The thought came to her as clearly as if someone had spoken it into her ear. Go. Harry’s going to tell the police you did it because he killed Adam himself, and if you try to convince them you didn’t, he’ll have to kill you too.
Even getting to her feet was a struggle but she had to go up to the flat. She couldn’t go without Rosamond and she would need one or two things – nightie, toothbrush. She picked up the bloodstained handbag that held her credit cards and walked unsteadily to the door, opening it cautiously.
Apart from the dog’s mourning whimpering, the hall was quiet and there was no sign of Harry or Vicky. With the cloud down at sea level today it could take quite some time for the police to arrive, though she couldn’t count on it. She needed to move fast – not easy for her at the best of times and much, much harder for her now.
She hauled herself up the stairs to the flat, dizzy and breathless. Bending over to pick up Rosamond from her crib, she felt so faint she had to sit on the bed but she allowed herself only a moment before she forced herself to her feet. She fetched the holdall and piled in a few things along with the doll, then very quietly she opened her door again and stepped out onto the landing.
The doorbell rang. She shrank back, ready to retreat as she heard Harry’s brisk steps going across the hall below. He’d got dressed and she could see his hair was still wet from the shower. She heard him say, ‘That’s impressively quick! Come in, come in. We’ve got a right mess here.’
Beatrice risked another couple of steps forward until she could peer down between the banisters. If it was the nice inspector, perhaps after all she could talk to him, explain, and he would understand. It wasn’t, though. It was the rude, unpleasant one who’d been carrying on with Eva, making trouble.
No, she would have to go, especially since Harry was saying now, ‘Come up to the sitting room and I’ll explain. Beatrice just flipped, I think, then the dog went for her, defending its master, I suppose. You’d better come up to the sitting room—’ His voice sounded high and nervous.
Beatrice shrank back out of sight as they climbed the stairs to the first floor.
‘You’ll want to interview her, of course,’ Harry said. ‘She’s resting in the office there but I’d better put you in the picture first. I could hardly blame her, you know – he treated her like dirt then laughed about it afterwards.’ The sitting-room door shut and she couldn’t hear any more.
She didn’t need to. She felt awful, hot and cold at the same time, but there was one thing clear in her fuddled head. She had to go. She didn’t know where she would go – not time to think about that now. Just – away.
Halfway down the stairs she stopped. Her car – it was parked round that side, right below the sitting-room window. They’d hear her go and come after her.
Adam’s car, his treasured Merc, was always parked near the top of the drive – and he wouldn’t be needing it any more, would he? she thought, surprising herself with her cold cynicism. Once, what Harry had just said about Adam laughing at her would have cut Beatrice to the heart but she seemed numb, somehow, as if she was floating above it all, detached. She had seen the man she had loved for so long lying dead in a pool of blood and she felt absolutely nothing.
The key was kept on a panel at the back of the hall so that Marek could drive it round to the other side for Adam if he was going away. Feeling very shaky, she had to cling to the banisters as she crept down the final flight of stairs, took it off its hook and let herself out, wincing as the lock clicked when she shut the front door behind her and stepped out into the embrace of the mist.
It bathed her face like a cold wet flannel and she felt herself revive a little; she walked a bit more briskly to the car. It had seemed so hot inside, she’d felt as if she was burning up.
The driver’s door shut with a quiet, well-bred click. She looked at the controls, a little daunted; her head felt so muzzy inside and it was hard to remember what she’d done on the couple of occasions when she’d driven it. There was a special way of starting it – yes, that was right.
The engine purred into action and she propped Rosamond up on the seat beside her then drove off down the drive. As she reached the road, she stopped and lowered the window to listen for the sounds of pursuit but there was only suffocating silence, as if the thickened air was a layer of cotton wool. She had escaped.
‘I’d better explain the situation before I take you round to see for yourself,’ Drummond said.
‘He’s definitely dead?’ Tennant asked.
Drummond was looking grim but at that he gave a short laugh. ‘You could say. It’s pretty gory – place is like an abattoir. Couldn’t see exactly what had happened from the window but piecing it together I reckon that Beatrice killed him, then the dog went for her. Adam had it trained as a gundog, you know – dangerous brute. It didn’t like me – wouldn’t have let me get within ten feet, but I guess it probably knew her better and it was only when she actually attacked Adam that it reacted.’
‘Was she carrying a weapon?’
Drummond shook his head. ‘Dropped it, I suppose. From the mess, I’d guess a knife. She was standing there, blood all over her, her arm savaged – completely hysterical. She’s resting now, but she’s probably still in shock. If you’re hoping to get some sense out of her you might be as well to wait for a bit.’
‘I’d want to wait till DI Strang arrives in any case. I think he’s on his way. But did Miss Lacey have some problem with Carnegie?’
‘Not until yesterday. Far from it, but – well, Vicky Macdonald will tell you about it, but it seems she discovered last night that Adam was married and she was distraught, absolutely beside herself, I imagine.’
Tennant raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh yes, I know, I know. But basically he’d strung her along, keeping her sweet by hinting at marriage sometime, believe it or not. And this certainly took me by surprise too – never heard him mention a wife. Anyway, I’d better take you down and show you.’
Tennant followed him downstairs and out through a side door towards a small patio with French doors opening onto it, fortunately closed, but as they reached it the dog appeared on the other side, barking and snapping white, pointed teeth. As they stood their ground, it hurled itself against the panes.
They both retreated. ‘I’m not sure how sturdy those doors are,’ Drummond said nervously. ‘Better not provoke it. There’s a higher window I looked through before – it’d be safer.’
Cupping his hands against the glass, Tennant peered into the room. The desk where the body of Adam Carnegie was slumped lay below him and there was, indeed, blood everywhere. He couldn’t see a wound but craning his neck he could see that there was a knife lying on the desk beside him. It looked like the ordinary kitchen variety.
He stepped back. ‘The knife – do you recognise it?’
‘Is there a knife?’ Drummond said. ‘I didn’t notice – a bit shocked, I suppose.’
He was shorter than Tennant and he had to stand on tiptoe. ‘Oh yes, I see it now. Could have been his own – fancied himself as a bit of a chef, did Adam. There was one of those wooden block things in his kitchen. And that would fit, if you think about it,’ he said as he stepped back. ‘Beatrice comes in first thing, spoiling for a fight, loses her temper, grabs the knife—’
‘It’s one theory,’ Tennant said coolly. ‘We’d better let the dog calm down before it barks itself into a fit. It’s sounding hoarse already. Perhaps I could speak to Vicky Macdonald now?’
They found her in the kitchen, sitting at
the table with a mug of coffee in front of her, though she looked as if she’d been staring at it rather than drinking it. She was very pale and tired-looking and the look she gave Tennant wasn’t particularly friendly.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Have you seen – him? What are you going to do about it?’
‘Not a lot, at the moment, until the vet arrives to deal with the dog.’ Tennant sat down at the table, nodding to Drummond, who was holding up the coffee pot enquiringly.
‘Oh.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘It’s just I don’t like to think of the dog, you know, in there with him, the blood …’
Both had a struggle to put the image she had conjured up out of their minds. Tennant spoke first, questioning her about the morning’s events. Her account squared with Drummond’s but she wasn’t prepared to go along with his accusation.
‘You can’t say Beatrice did it,’ she argued. ‘She had blood on her, yes, but her own arm was bleeding. And I can’t see Beatrice as the sort to go berserk like that.’
‘Tell me about her reaction to the news that Carnegie was married,’ Tennant said.
Vicky looked accusingly at Drummond. ‘Oh, you told him that, did you? She wasn’t angry, Daniel, she was just very sad and upset – broken, more. You can’t just assume that would make her a murderer.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Tennant said, and rather stiffly she described the phone call from Carnegie’s wife. She seemed reluctant to go into detail; even when he probed, she said no more than that it was natural for Beatrice to feel hurt.
‘And you could just as well say that his wife came and killed him because she discovered he had kept the marriage secret.’ Vicky’s voice was rising. ‘You don’t know, that’s the point. You don’t even know when it happened, really.’
‘True enough,’ Tennant said soothingly. ‘Did you hear anything last night, then, either of you?’
Drummond, setting the coffee mug down in front of him, shook his head. Vicky said, ‘No,’ then hesitated.
Tennant’s ears pricked up. ‘Yes?’
‘I did hear a car coming up the drive in the evening – nine, half past, probably. I wasn’t paying much attention – I was watching a film on my iPad – and I think I just assumed you or Adam had been out somewhere, Harry. I didn’t hear it going away again but then I wasn’t listening. Marek at the gate cottage should be able to tell you.’
‘I’ll want to speak to him, certainly. And the last time you both saw him alive?’
They both spoke at once; Drummond waved Vicky on.
‘I served supper to Adam and Harry, then came back to the kitchen. I didn’t see him after that.’
‘Much the same for me,’ Drummond said. ‘We finished eating and neither of us wanted a sweet so I came in and spoke to Vicky and I didn’t see him again. After that I was working in the office – I’d been hoping to finish up in time to get back to Glasgow today.’ He looked at his watch. ‘When do you think your inspector friend will arrive? I’d like to get on with it.’
‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ Tennant said. ‘Indeed, I’d have thought he’d be here by now.’
She had set off without a thought in her head, except that she had to get away. But now as she drove into the grey murk, Beatrice could feel panic mounting. She’d never driven before when she couldn’t see the verge more than a few feet ahead, with the headlamps reflecting back and making the mist look like a solid yellow wall in front of her.
Mercifully the car was an automatic – how could Beatrice have changed gear, when even turning the steering wheel inflicted acute agony? – but despite being power-assisted it seemed heavy and clumsy compared to the little Fiat she was used to, and that didn’t help either.
She was feeling light-headed and strange as she inched forward along the narrow road. She should be thinking out what she was going to do but somehow her head felt funny and she couldn’t seem to keep track of her thoughts; they twisted and wriggled away and disappeared before she could pursue them to any sort of conclusion. And the bends were so abrupt; she oversteered on one and the car swung across the road, mercifully right towards the hill, not towards the drop on her left that she knew was getting steeper – twenty, thirty, forty, fifty feet – though she couldn’t see it today, Probably just as well.
The right-angle bend before the old bridge couldn’t be far away. Yes, that looked like it now. She sounded her horn as a warning to oncoming traffic.
The roe deer, browsing on the hill above, took a sudden fright and jumped down onto the road, skittering away with a clatter of pebbles as the car rounded the corner. Beatrice screamed, jerked and the big car skidded on the wet road, slewing across it till it hit the stonework of the bridge, long in need of repair. With a rumble of masonry, one side collapsed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Livvy Murray sat moodily staring at the opaque square in her kitchen wall that purported to be a window, trying to plot her day over a cup of black coffee. She hated it black but somehow the milk was sour again which meant she couldn’t have cereal either and she’d forgotten to get bread so she couldn’t have toast.
She had the report to file for Strang about Murdo John Macdonald and she was proud of it, but she wasn’t getting her hopes up. Tennant had got in there like a rat up a drainpipe and Strang wasn’t going to ditch someone from the oh-so-wonderful Met in favour of a wee Glasgow PC who couldn’t even keep her job in Glasgow.
The old feeling of inadequacy overwhelmed her. Sometimes it seemed that no matter what she did, she’d never be anything more than that, just the way her mother had always said. She could just give up—
No, she couldn’t! She was worth more than that; she was tough, she’d done a good job so far, and if the snooty sod didn’t recognise it, too bad.
The thing was, if she could just work with him she knew she could learn, and more than anything she wanted that – wanted to know the right way to do stuff and get results. She’d plenty to offer, she told herself; all she needed was training.
But she was stuck here, trapped. Her mouth drooped.
Then the phone rang, and that changed everything. She listened with astonishment to Sergeant Buchanan, who was sounding harassed and was tetchy when she demanded more details.
‘Never mind that. Just be down the pier in twenty minutes, right?’ he said, ringing off before she could give him her enthusiastic assent.
As she scrambled into full uniform and looked out her wet weather gear, her mind was racing. If ever a man had it coming to him, it was Adam Carnegie, but life was unfair and usually people who had it coming to them somehow didn’t get it. He, it seemed, had, and she couldn’t help herself giving a mental high five to whoever’d had the guts to do it. They weren’t getting anywhere with nailing him for murdering those two poor girls – and who was to say he wouldn’t go on to bump off one or two more if he wasn’t stopped?
But if you were in the polis you weren’t meant to think like that and she’d have to give the hunt for his killer her best shot – it could even be her big chance, and moral issues weren’t part of her job description. Whatever – it would certainly beat manning an office in what was basically a service point for trivial enquiries and feeling the cobwebs starting to form all over her.
Anyway, she just wanted to know who’d done it. She was inquisitive by nature; not knowing a secret was like having an itch she couldn’t scratch. Right off the cuff, she could think of several people who might have hated Carnegie enough to kill him.
And, she suddenly realised with unholy joy, DC bloody Smarty-Pants Tennant was one of them.
After the scream of brakes, the small explosion of the airbag inflating and the bang of the impact, the silence that followed was almost shocking. Half-stunned, Beatrice stayed pinned back in her seat as the bag slowly deflated. She moved, cautiously; she didn’t think she’d been injured because everything seemed to work all right but Rosamond had pitched forward onto the floor and with a cry of dismay she strained forward awkwardly to pick her up, y
elping at the pain in her arm as she did so.
‘There, there, my darling! That was a nasty fright, wasn’t it, but you’re all right. Come to Mummy.’ She put the doll on her lap, patting its back soothingly as she looked helplessly about her.
The car had ended up completely blocking the road, its bonnet crumpled into the bridge wall on the inner side of the road, but the rear end had completely demolished the left-hand side of the bridge and part of one tyre was actually on the edge. Still, it was a heavy car; it seemed stable enough and the driver’s door was unaffected.
Another foot and it would have gone over the drop, down and down into the sea below. Beatrice grasped dimly that she had been lucky but all she could think was how dreadful she was feeling, sweaty and clammy at the same time, and tears of pain, weakness and self-pity came to her eyes.
‘What are we to do, Rosamond? It’s not fair, is it?’
Then she smelt oil. There was something about oil, she remembered. Oil and fire, yes, that was it: the car could go on fire and they’d be burnt up. They had to get out of here.
She tucked Rosamond under her arm and reached to open the door with a trembling hand. It was always a bit of a struggle getting out of a car and not being able to use her injured arm to lever herself up made it worse. But somehow fear gave her strength and she managed to extricate herself, feeble, whimpering with the pain from her throbbing, swollen arm and pouring sweat.
But what was she to do now? She was finding it harder and harder to think clearly. The car was blocking the bridge so that she couldn’t get past but there was some reason why she couldn’t go back the other way, towards the Lodge. She couldn’t think exactly what it was just at the moment but she knew she had to go on. To escape, that was it.
If she couldn’t get past the car, she’d have to go round it. Beatrice could hear the rushing of the burn, see it springing down the stones in little waterfalls when she looked over the inside edge of the damaged bridge.
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