Human Face

by Aline Templeton

  ‘So I can tell her if she comes back you’ll listen?’ Livvy said eagerly.

  ‘For what it’s worth.’

  If that was what Vicky wanted, it was a good result. Personally, she felt talking to the Black Cuillin itself would be more rewarding, but she’d done what she came to do.

  ‘Thanks for listening to me. That’s all,’ she said and left.

  Doubt assailed her along with the night air. She wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing; Vicky might be furious that she’d interfered. But he had said he’d listen and that had to be good, didn’t it? And maybe if she phoned Vicky and confessed what she’d done and told her that he wouldn’t actually slam the door in her face, Vicky might not lie awake tonight worrying.

  She had the Balnasheil Lodge landline number back at the police office. She switched on the torch she always carried and hurried on up the hill.

  It was almost eleven when Kelso Strang stood up from his desk, stretched and yawned. He was as prepared as he was ever going to be for tomorrow and he’d better get some sleep. He locked the office and let himself out into the darkness.

  He should have brought a torch and vowed to remember in future. All he could see was the small string of lights along the road down at the pier. There were no lights on in the building behind him; Livvy must be having an early night or else she was out, whooping it up – always supposing there was a whooping-it-up venue around here.

  In the city there was always ambient light and Kelso was uncomfortable with darkness like this: it had an intense, almost physical presence. It seemed to wrap itself about you till the air itself felt thick and smothering. There were no stars, only a greenish pallor that was the moon, heavily veiled by cloud.

  He couldn’t claim that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face – he actually held his hand up to check – but he definitely couldn’t see what was under his feet. He was walking all but blindly, splashing in puddles and stumbling into the verges, but somehow that made his other senses more vivid so that he was aware of the damp fresh scent of wet grass and the ranker smell of rotting bracken as well as the small rustlings and stirrings in the night about him. Under it all there was the insistent, threatening moaning of a rising wind. He pulled up his collar with a shiver.

  Nearing the bottom of the hill there was at last light enough to see the pale ribbon of the road in front of him and he quickened his steps. His mind was on the bottle of Scotch in his drawer and a well-earned nightcap when he got back to the hotel. He glanced towards Daniel Tennant’s cottage as he passed it and saw the man himself, sitting at the small square window, staring intently out over the bay towards Balnasheil Lodge. He followed his gaze: the place was in darkness apart from a light on the ground floor at the back and another on the first floor, and a bobbing light in the grounds – the poor wretched constable on duty, no doubt.

  Kelso heard the urgent knocking on the window but walked on as if he hadn’t. He was tired and there was nothing he wanted to say to the man. He wasn’t going to get away with it, though; a moment later there were footsteps behind him and his name was called. He turned with an inward groan.

  ‘Just knocking off?’ Daniel said genially. ‘You look like a man who’s earned a drink. I’ve a bottle of Highland Park with your name on it.’

  ‘Thanks, Daniel, but quite honestly what I want now is to get my head down. It’s going to be another heavy day tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t keep you long. There’s something I really need to say to you. You’ll want to know, I promise you.’

  Kelso didn’t even try to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Oh, all right. But keep it short and never mind the whisky.’ He followed him reluctantly into the cottage.

  It seemed offensive to stand once Daniel was sitting down, but he chose an upright chair to stress that he wasn’t settling in. ‘So – what is it?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry to be keeping a weary man from his bed. I tried to talk to Murray earlier but she’s impossible – the typical perfectly balanced Glaswegian with a chip on either shoulder. No wonder they’ve stuck her out here in the sticks where they thought she couldn’t do any damage.’

  Kelso’s patience snapped. ‘I didn’t come in here to listen to you slagging off another officer. Get to the point.’

  ‘Huh! Scots solidarity, I suppose – what did I expect? Anyway, I called my guv’nor today and he’s given me permission to tell you what we’re looking for. We believe Human Face is a front for money laundering—’

  ‘No! You don’t say? Well, blow me!’

  Daniel gave him a look of distaste. ‘I don’t think being childish helps, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it does,’ Kelso acknowledged. ‘My excuse is that I’m very tired and I don’t really want to sit around listening to you repeating things you’ve said already that were statements of the bleeding obvious anyway. Just give me the basics.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said coldly. ‘From what Eva told me, I know there are paper records – that’s by far the most secure system nowadays. She found them for me and I think that’s why the bastards killed her. So what we’re looking for is paper files. They may have been destroyed already but if they exist at all I need to be able to search myself, in case some plod who doesn’t realise what they are puts them in an evidence bag that will never see the light of day again. I know what your boss said. I’m sorry if I was rude about her – I was just frustrated. But you’re in charge on the ground; you can bring me in on it. It’s my guess you’re not getting anywhere much – is that right?’

  ‘I’m not going to comment on the investigation.’

  The anger that Daniel had suppressed earlier erupted. ‘For God’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘You’re still carrying on as if I were a suspect, when you know I’m not.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Like I said to Murray, think about it. A copper, trying to stage a suicide by smearing the wrong knife with blood and leaving it beside the victim? Do me a favour!’

  ‘It wasn’t going to work, certainly.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing.’ Kelso got up. ‘I’ll undertake to let you see any files that turn up. That should cover the problem you raised. I’ll be sending someone to take your statement tomorrow in the hope that we may then be able to eliminate you from our enquiries.’

  ‘I don’t believe this! Kelso—’

  ‘Sorry.’ He walked out, hearing the man swearing behind him as he closed the door.

  As he walked along to the hotel he thought over what Daniel Tennant had said and found himself wondering if Murray’s reaction had been the same as his was. Of course, it was true that no police officer would imagine forensic experts would be fooled by the wrong knife; it was equally true that if you wanted to divert suspicion from yourself that would be quite a smart move.

  Did he really think Tennant had done it? Surely not – but from the start he had been so insistent about being included in the investigation, and now he remembered the look on the man’s face, before and after he had viewed Eva’s body, and it left him feeling very uncertain indeed.

  ‘Not much of a night for a wee walk. Were you wanting something, sir?’

  Transfixed by the beam of the constable’s powerful torch, Harry Drummond froze. It was well after midnight; he’d watched the man from the window for half an hour to check out his routine, and he should at this moment have been right round the back of the house. But he wasn’t, was he.

  ‘Er – no, no, just – just a spot of fresh air before bedtime,’ he spluttered, even though he knew it wasn’t convincing. It was pitch-black and the air was damp and heavy with that nasty little wind blowing a bit stronger now.

  ‘Oh aye. You won’t be long, then?’

  ‘No, no. In fact, I’m just turning in now.’

  ‘I’ll light your way back into the house, then. You’ll not be wanting to trip or anything.’

  The beam guided him back to the front door and with a falsely cheerful, ‘You’re doing a grand job
, Constable,’ Harry went back inside. When the door was shut behind him he clenched his fists and brought them down hard on the oak table in the hall, giving vent to a stream of obscenities under his breath.

  After a night of the worst sort of dreams – the ones where Alexa was still alive – Strang was headachy and tired. He opened his bedroom curtains on a surly dawn, the low clouds bruise-coloured and heavy. There was something unsettling about the sea, lead-grey and heaving with a queasy motion, as if the tops of the waves had been shaved smooth by the wind that was blowing now with a deep, menacing groaning. The air seemed oppressive and he had to struggle with a sense of foreboding.

  The pathetic fallacy, he told himself – the idea that nature was somehow in tune with human feelings. It was just that the forecast storm was taking longer to arrive than they had predicted and even though it might pose logistical problems, he thought he’d feel better once it arrived. This was – well, unsettling.

  He skipped hotel breakfast. He could get a cup of coffee and a roll at the police office once the caterers arrived; he’d had too many cooked breakfasts and abstention was easier when you couldn’t smell bacon frying. It would be good, too, to get ahead before the working day started. There might be reports in overnight; JB was keeping up the pressure on the labs to get the tests done and sometimes they worked late on priority cases.

  When he switched on the computer there was nothing from forensics as yet. There was, though, a report filed late last night by what must be a very conscientious constable charged with interviewing Quentin Lacey’s partner.

  Or ex-partner, it seemed. Karen Prescott came across as a spirited lady. Her annoyance at having been persuaded to make the nasty little call to Beatrice was clear, even through the stilted language of the statement. She knew she shouldn’t have done it, she said, but ‘he just went on and on and on’. So she was anxious now to dissociate herself from the sordid goings-on at Balnasheil Lodge and, judging by the words she used, which included ‘slob’, ‘sponger’ and ‘whiner’, kicking Quentin out hadn’t caused her too much heartache anyway.

  Importantly, though, she was prepared to swear that on the night of Adam Carnegie’s murder Quentin had said he was going out to see Beatrice, then returned in a very bad mood – ‘with a right flea in his ear’ – shortly before ten o’clock and hadn’t gone out after that.

  Pathology reports having established the time of death as being between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., Quentin could be eliminated from the inquiry. Strang’s own judgement had been that he was more likely to faint at the sight of blood than to slash someone’s artery, but given this they wouldn’t have to go through the motions. Costs were mounting and he knew JB was seriously twitchy about that.

  PC Murray had filed Harry Drummond’s statement too and he had to admit it was a competent piece of work. She’d been quite sharp about the business of the hare and JB seemed to be impressed with her; she had potential, admittedly, but she lacked judgement and he couldn’t trust her not to get something badly wrong.

  To be fair, this was evidence she’d taken on board what he’d said about the difference between conducting an interview and taking a statement. She could be quite useful as long as she didn’t overstep the mark. He’d applied for an interpreter to see if they could get a proper statement from Kaczka; Murray could go along and work that into a statement for him. It would stop her rushing off to ‘use her initiative’ and coming unstuck.

  At 8.30, PC Murray knocked on the door of DI Strang’s office. She’d heard him arrive just after seven o’clock but even though she was more than keen to know what would be happening today, she’d reckoned that interrupting someone who’d come in early to get some peace wasn’t a smart move. But she didn’t want to leave it too late, when everyone else would be clocking in. She was fizzing with ideas and she wanted the chance to run them past him.

  She’d been thinking about motivation – the key to any investigation, surely? – and she’d worked out motives for all the obvious suspects. Some, admittedly, were stronger than others: all she could think of for Vicky Macdonald, for instance, was that Carnegie might have come on to her, but you didn’t cut someone’s throat for doing that – fortunately, otherwise every bar in every city would be knee-deep in blood every Saturday night. But there were others that were definitely worth discussing.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Reporting for duty, sir,’ she said.

  He was frowning at his computer. ‘Oh, good morning, Murray. Do you think you could find me a cup of coffee and a roll if they’ve got the kitchen going?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, trying not to show her resentment. It was a perfectly standard request but it closed out any discussion and put her firmly back in her place. She was on the way to the door, sulking, when Strang said, ‘Oh, by the way, good report on Drummond. And I meant to tell you they found the remains of your hare and it did look as if the dog might have been eating it. It’s with the labs now.’

  ‘That’s good. Thank you, sir,’ she said, though inwardly she was punching the air and shouting, ‘Result!’ She seized her opportunity.‘By the way, I was wanting to say I’d been doing a lot of thinking about motives for our list of suspects, sir …’

  ‘Really?’

  She tried to read his expression – irritated, but perhaps a little amused as well. She coloured. ‘I thought it might be helpful—’

  ‘That’s doing it back end foremost. In real life it’s once the evidence implicates a particular individual that it may be useful to consider why they did it but until then it’s not good practice – if you dream up a convincing motive there’s always the temptation to go looking for evidence to fit the theory. OK?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, feeling crushed. He was more or less implying that she’d got all her ideas from TV detectives, and she probably had. And as she turned to go she remembered her row with Tennant the night before – that could be another black mark, if he made a complaint. She’d be better to get her side of the story in first.

  ‘Er – I think I should maybe tell you I’d a wee bit of a run-in with Daniel Tennant last night. Sorry.’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  ‘Did he tell you? I was in the Black Cuillin and he just sort of butted in. Maybe I was rude.’ Then she paused. ‘Well, not maybe.’

  ‘It’s no business of mine what hobbies you pursue in your own time. He’s having problems with accepting that he can’t take part in the investigation before we’ve eliminated him from the inquiry. I’ll arrange for him to make a full statement today – not to you, though, I think.’

  He was actually smiling properly and she’d been right – he was very attractive when he smiled. She smiled back.

  ‘I’ll get your coffee, then, sir.’ It did occur to her that perhaps she ought to tell him about her visit to Murdo John, but she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. He was pleased with her for once and he’d never seemed too thrilled at the idea of her using her initiative, so it’d be a bit chancy. No, she’d keep quiet about that, for the time being at least.

  When she opened the door, Sergeant Buchanan was standing there, his hand just raised to knock.

  Strang looked pleased. ‘You’re bright and early this morning, Rab. Good – it’s going to be a heavy day. Have the lads arrived to get on with the outside searches?’

  ‘I gave them an early start time, sir,’ Buchanan said. ‘We want to get it done before the weather closes in. They’ve just gone across in the boats now.’

  ‘Excellent. We’d better discuss dispositions, then.’

  Murray didn’t move. Maybe if she just stayed very still he might assign her to something more interesting than fetching coffee.

  But no. He said, ‘Thanks, Murray. Coffee? And can you bring a mug for the sergeant as well, please?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, and went off with her spirits sinking. One day, she vowed, she’d get to be one of the ones who wasn’t sent away when they got to the interesting stuff.

  Marek Kaczka was sweeping leaves off th
e lawn. They were pretty much the last to leave the trees, lying in soggy, impacted piles of pale yellow and brown, with the occasional flash of flame-red from an ornamental maple. He was watching under his brows as the uniformed men and women spread out once more across the garden.

  They’d been crawling around the lawn yesterday; today a line of them was doing that on the slopes on the farther side of the house. Others were beating the bushes, using rakes to drag away debris and check through the undergrowth. And going through the sheds and the barns.

  There was a policewoman lifting the latch on the metal door to Amber’s run. ‘Hey, Sarge,’ she called. ‘You’re sure the dog’s not in here?’

  The sergeant laughed. ‘Sure as death,’ he called back. ‘Saw it stretched out myself.’

  Kaczka raked more slowly. After a few minutes the woman came back out. ‘Sarge! Come and take a look at this.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In the Perthshire farmhouse that was her first ever home after forty years of living in army accommodation, Mary Strang sat in the country-style kitchen she had always dreamt of, reading The Scotsman over breakfast. At the other end of the table in the bow window looking out to her beloved garden, Roderick was absorbed in the Daily Telegraph; they didn’t really speak in the morning until they had both had their second cup of coffee.

  Otherwise, she might have said something when she read the report about a man who had been found dead on the Isle of Skye; the police, it said, were now treating the death as suspicious. It was only a small paragraph on the inside of the front page, but she read it again carefully.

  Was it pure coincidence that Kelso had said he was going to be working in Skye? She knew that now with Police Scotland he could be posted anywhere, but from the way he’d spoken it had sounded temporary, so perhaps it was to do with this. Now she looked at it, though, the man’s death seemed to have happened after Kelso would have arrived, so perhaps it had nothing to do with him after all.