Human Face

by Aline Templeton

  Strang turned to Murray. ‘You can do that, Constable. Can I remind you that this is a simple process of recording information, not sharing it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said meekly. Sarcastic sod! But if that was all he was going to say, she’d got off lightly.

  Tennant, his face set, yielded his seat to her without glancing in her direction.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she cooed. She heard him say to Borthwick, ‘May I have a word, ma’am?’ and then they went out.

  ‘Now, sir,’ she said to Drummond. ‘Can you take me through your movements from the time you arrived at Balnasheil Lodge?’

  Tennant was white with anger. ‘We have a major operation going on here. This is a money-laundering outfit we have been working to crack for months, almost a year. At last we have the opportunity to make real progress and you’re putting obstacles in our way—’

  Strang admired his courage – or perhaps he was just marvelling at his folly in taking on a DCS, particularly when that DCS was JB. He must be tired of life.

  ‘DC Tennant!’ Borthwick’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘Despite the fact that I have had no direct, formal approach for our cooperation we have given you every opportunity to investigate the accounts, have even requested a search warrant for Drummond’s flat in Glasgow. I’ve been told that you still haven’t found the smoking gun you were looking for – is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said savagely. ‘Because somehow he knew we were coming. That’s why I need to keep up the pressure on Drummond—’

  ‘Sorry.’ Borthwick’s voice was flat. ‘Now that it’s been established that this is a murder investigation—’

  Unwisely, Tennant said, ‘And why wasn’t I told? I had to learn it from Drummond—’

  Strang winced for him as Tennant encountered a look that stopped him dead. He bit his lip. ‘Sorry, ma’am. I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Yes. As I was saying’ – she gave that heavy emphasis – ‘now that this is a murder case and you have to be considered a suspect, I am withdrawing cooperation for the moment at least.’

  He looked thunderstruck. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll find I can. DI Strang will arrange for you to be interviewed – with a view to eliminating you from our investigation, of course.’

  Strang seized the moment. ‘In fact, there’s something I want you to do for me now. The body that has been brought ashore – we’re assuming it’s Eva Havel, but obviously it needs official identification. We can go through right away, if you’re ready?’

  Tennant turned first pale, then a queasy shade of green. ‘Identify her? Now?’ he faltered.

  Strang was aware that Borthwick, like him, was studying the man’s reaction closely. ‘Of course, if it’s too emotional, we can give you a bit more time to prepare yourself.’

  ‘No, no,’ Tennant said very hastily. ‘Not at all. I hadn’t been expecting it, that was all. I’ll be fine. Where is she?’ There was still the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Through the back, I understand,’ Strang said. ‘I think the pathologist is still here.’

  As they went along the back corridor to what had been the police cell, the pathologist was just leaving, a heavy, old-fashioned key in his hand.

  ‘I was going to lock up. Want to see her?’ he said with the cheery insouciance of those whose days are spent in company that would give most normal people nightmares. ‘She’s not too bad, actually. Bloated, of course, but the crabs hadn’t got to her yet.’ He opened the door and waved them forward.

  It hadn’t occurred to Strang that he might be expected to go in. He’d never done it before; there was no longer a requirement for anyone except the senior investigating officer to view a body, and the visceral reaction hit him without warning. He wasn’t ready, just at this time, to face again the brutal finality of death.

  He felt his head getting light, as if it might float away, and for a terrible moment he thought he might faint. Tennant was ahead of him; as Strang reached the doorway he paused, leaning against the lintel, looking in to satisfy the technical requirement but directing his eyes downwards, forcing away the memory of his Alexa, also cold and dead.

  He heard Tennant say, ‘Yes, that is Eva Havel.’ His voice was impressively steady. He turned to come out and Strang was able to step back into the corridor.

  As the pathologist, with a hospitable gesture, invited him in he said, ‘I’ve seen all I need to,’ a little hoarsely and turned away. The man locked up and followed them.

  ‘They’re bringing in some bones now,’ he told them. ‘Picked clean, of course, and we can’t hope for ID. We’ll take DNA samples and check the register, but I wouldn’t be optimistic.’

  ‘The other one?’ Tennant said. ‘What was she called again – Veruschka?’

  ‘Yes,’ Strang said, but still not sure he could trust his voice, he didn’t elaborate. What was certain was that the signs of distress Tennant had shown earlier were no longer visible. He must have iron self-control – useful, if you had something to conceal.

  As they walked back to the incident room to record the identification formally, Tennant said in a low, urgent voice, ‘Look, Kelso, you know I’m useful. I’ve had a lot of experience and you need all the help you can get. Keep me in the picture – don’t shut me out of this, even if that old battleaxe—’

  ‘Stop right there,’ Strang said coldly. ‘She’s a highly effective and very senior officer and you’d better show some respect. And anyway, why are you so anxious to be “kept in the picture”?’

  ‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Tennant snapped. ‘This is a big one for me – if I can wrap it up it would mean promotion. If your lot are blundering around you could take away the stuff I’m looking for without recognising it and bury it for years in the files. I need to know what’s going on, Kelso!’

  It sounded logical enough. But somehow Strang was uncomfortable: the two reactions, before and after viewing the body, didn’t square. He was very thoughtful as he went back to Borthwick’s office.

  One of the police boats took Beatrice across to drop her at the jetty. She didn’t protest; there was nowhere else for her to go and she limped painfully up the lawn to the house. There were a lot of police officers around but some seemed to be packing up; it was a gloomy afternoon now and the light was going, the threatening sky heavy with muddy-looking clouds and streaked with sullen purple and dull orange as the sun faded.

  She went over to a man with stripes on his arm who seemed to be organising their departure. ‘Good afternoon, Sergeant. I trust you will be leaving a police presence here tonight?’

  The man looked blank. ‘I’m sorry, madam, I really couldn’t tell you.’

  Beatrice’s voice rose. ‘You mean I am to be left here, unprotected, to be knifed in my bed?’

  ‘I haven’t any instructions about that, madam. I suggest you just lock your door if you’re nervous. Or you could take it up with headquarters.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said bitterly, ‘and speak to someone in Glasgow, who tells me my complaint has been logged? What use will that be?’

  Not waiting for his reply, Beatrice walked up to the house and let herself in. The hall was empty and silent. Perhaps she should just follow his advice; there wasn’t much else she could do.

  She was very, very afraid. If Adam really had – well, done something with Eva, Harry had been in on it: he’d come rushing up just after her disappearance and started checking through everything she might have seen when she was spying. And that was another thing Beatrice hadn’t wanted to admit to herself – that there had been something – well, not quite right about the charity she had dedicated herself to.

  Her heart was fluttering as she dragged herself upstairs to the safety of her flat. She didn’t actually know anything about the paper files she’d never had access to – except, of course, that she’d seen Adam taking them away somewhere. To destroy them, maybe?

  But Harry might certainly believe that she did – and there were
the other things that she actually did know about – those strange house parties for men who didn’t seem to have any interest in hearing about the work of the charity, the ‘distribution’ office in Africa …

  Oh yes, that was her problem: she knew too much. Adam had known everything there was to know about their secret arrangements, then he’d fallen out with Harry and now he was dead, horribly murdered – she gave a convulsive shudder as she thought about the blood.

  She unlocked the door of the flat and almost fell into the room, sighing with relief as she locked it again behind her. Then her eye fell on the little white-draped crib, empty now. She burst into tears and collapsed into a chair, sobbing with grief and misery. And terror.

  ‘Sarge! Over here!’

  One of the uniforms engaged in the search of the grounds was standing looking down at something and Sergeant Rab Buchanan hurried across to him.

  What he was looking at was the remains of an animal – hare, rabbit, probably. There wasn’t much more than the bones, scraps of fur and a fine collection of maggots on what rotting flesh was left.

  ‘Well done, laddie! We were kinda looking for that,’ Buchanan said. ‘Now bag that up and then get it taken across straight away.’

  The constable looked at it with revulsion. ‘Touch it? With my hands?’

  ‘Not going to work if you use your feet, is it? Oh, for any favour, use your initiative – scoop it with a spade or something. But do it properly – it’s got to go to the labs at once. If it’s doped and the dog ate it, it wouldn’t have been able to protect its master.’

  He was impressed with that. ‘Right, Sarge.’

  He went back to look for a spade and a bag then came back and, gagging a bit, managed to guide it in. It was touch and go when a maggot dropped onto his hand but, thinking of the mockery he would get from the men around him if he threw up, he gulped and shook it off.

  The boat waiting at the jetty was Murdo John’s. He glanced at the bag the constable was carrying, then glanced again. ‘What have you got there?’

  The constable shrugged. ‘Rabbit, or something. But they think it’s been spiked and the dog mebbe ate it so it wouldn’t attack the killer.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Murdo John said.

  It was a disappointing reaction to a prime piece of evidence, but then, the constable reflected, Murdo John Macdonald was a surly sod. No point in trying to pursue a conversation when they were almost across anyway.

  It was good news that they seemed to have found the carcass of the hare – though of course they wouldn’t know for sure that it wasn’t just the remains of some fox’s supper, or that the doping theory was right until the forensic report came through, but it was certainly promising.

  With deliberate provocation, DCS Borthwick said to DI Strang, ‘Your little Murray’s useful, you have to admit.’

  He didn’t rise, only saying mildly, ‘I dispute the possessive pronoun. Yes, she’s not stupid but she’s a worryingly loose cannon, ma’am. I certainly agree she’s wasted in a place like this – ought to be back in Glasgow, learning her trade.’

  Borthwick smiled and didn’t pursue it. ‘So – progress today, wouldn’t you say?’

  Strang pulled a face. ‘Some, certainly. And there’ll be a lot more coming in. But they haven’t found the knife that killed Carnegie – at the bottom of the sea, is my guess. And unless there’s something very definite once the SOCOs come back with the warrant to search the whole house tomorrow, we’re dependent on just working the ground – knocking on doors, mainly. And that’s slow and uncertain.’

  ‘Yes. Of course, there’s the big problem.’

  She didn’t have to explain. ‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘It’s not hard to guess what they’ll be saying in the Black Cuillin bar tonight – that Carnegie had it coming to him. They’re not going to be falling over themselves to offer us any incriminating evidence they might happen to have.’

  ‘You know this place better than I do. Would they actually cover up for someone?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say I knew it at all, really, except that the jungle drums are frighteningly efficient. Murdo John Macdonald’s one of their own – Vicky too, I suppose. But the rest of our most likely list – can’t imagine it. Even so—’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. The public conception of what justice means is certainly a lot closer to Carnegie getting his throat cut than him being put on trial and getting out without even completing a full life sentence. And that’s always supposing we’d managed to find enough to satisfy the fiscal.’

  ‘There’s certainly been no response at all to the questioning about boats that might have been out on the bay last night.’

  The sound of rotor blades whirring overhead cut him short. He looked at her sharply. Was she going to go back with it, or was she going to want to stay to oversee his work – or worse, send in someone more senior to take over?

  She laughed. ‘I can read you like a book, Kelso. Yes, I’m going back.’

  He flushed, muttering something, and she laughed again.

  ‘Funny thing, power. It gets addictive, doesn’t it? Oh, I see in you a lot of my own attitudes – and as a matter of fact in little Murray as well: so enthusiastic, so keen to learn.

  ‘You don’t need me to point out that this is a big case and I’m ready to admit I’m very anxious that we don’t screw up – I’ve got the CC on my back, apart from anything else. But I’m going with my gamble. You seem to have a grip on things, for the moment anyway, and politically it suits us better to follow it through on the SRCS pattern.’

  Borthwick gathered up the papers on her desk. ‘I’d better get out there. So it’s over to you, Kelso. What’s next?’

  ‘Marek Kaczka,’ he said. ‘We need the second ID and I want to use that to talk to him, if he’ll cooperate. I suspect he’s using lack of English as an excuse for stonewalling.’

  ‘Keep me in touch,’ she said, and then she was gone.

  When the police told her that Beatrice was back, Vicky Macdonald ran upstairs to knock on her door. When there was no answer, she called, ‘Beatrice, are you there?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Vicky. Just a moment.’ She heard a groan, then heavy footsteps before the door was unlocked.

  Beatrice looked terrible. Her right arm was in a sling and one side of her face was cut and bruised. She had been crying, too; her nose was red and her eyes puffy and swollen.

  ‘Oh, poor you!’ Vicky cried. ‘You don’t look well at all. I thought you would still be in hospital but one of the policemen said you’d come back.’

  She followed her in as Beatrice said bitterly, ‘I should be, of course, but they turn you out the moment you can stand upright nowadays. It’s the Third World in the modern NHS.’

  Tactfully, Vicky didn’t enter into a discussion, just went to help her to sit down. ‘Do you have painkillers and so on? Your arm must be painful.’

  Beatrice snorted. ‘Yes, it is. So they’ve given me paracetamol, which doesn’t look at the problem.’

  Vicky perched on a chair opposite. ‘What happened after you left here, Beatrice? They were saying something about mountain rescue.’

  ‘Oh, it was so awful, just like a nightmare. I remember crashing the car on the bridge – a policeman said the road was blocked now. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicky said. ‘It’s made it difficult for the police too. Were you hurt?’

  ‘I – I don’t think so. The thing is, after that everything is a sort of blur. I was climbing up the mountain in the fog – I don’t know why. I think I was delirious, really. But then they were after me – the dog again, you know, and then—oh!’

  She stopped, her hand across her mouth. ‘There was this – this black monster, gigantic, stalking me, looming up out of the mist. When I tried to run away, it followed me. That was real, Vicky – I know I didn’t imagine that! It was horrible, horrible.’ She shuddered.

  Vicky leant forward to pat her hand. ‘I know just what that was. It happened to me once when I was hillw
alking and it scared me witless. It’s a sort of light effect when there’s fog and the sun comes up – they told me afterwards it’s called a Brocken spectre. It’s your own shadow and when you move, it does too. But that’s all.’

  Beatrice started at her. ‘I ran away from my own shadow? And then because of that I tripped, and lost Rosamond’ – her voice broke – ‘and then I fell myself – oh God, how could I have been so silly?’

  ‘You were ill,’ Vicky said, ‘and shadows – well, shadows are frightening things. But you’re all right now. You need to rest, though. Do you want me to help you to bed?’

  But the other woman shook her head. ‘No. I must be on my guard.’

  ‘On your guard?’

  Beatrice leant forward to whisper. ‘You see, I know too much. I’m a danger to him.’

  It sounded like something out of a B movie. ‘Who – Harry? What do you know about him?’

  Vicky had raised her voice in surprise and Beatrice put a finger to her lips. ‘Sssh! He could be standing outside right now. I want him to think I don’t know anything at all that could be a threat to him but I’m afraid he might work it out. And then—’ She drew her left hand across her throat in a graphic gesture. ‘Vicky, I’m scared.’

  It was obvious that she meant it. ‘What are you talking about?’ Vicky whispered.

  Beatrice didn’t answer immediately. Then she gave a sigh that was almost a sob. ‘Human Face. It’s so important. It does so much good work for these poor little creatures – hungry, sick, abandoned. I knew there were things I wasn’t told – that filing cabinet I was told not to touch, those strange house parties for donors who didn’t really seem the philanthropic type. But the money would come in afterwards, the donations for the charity. And if the taxpayer lost out a bit, well …’

  She looked up at Vicky. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking – I’m stupid. But I’m not stupid. I just – just didn’t want to be smart. And I told you about the girls.’