Murray looked at the rising sea and shuddered. ‘Sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned,’ she said and the woman beside her agreed with some fervour.
As the boat bounced its way across to them, her mind went to Murdo John. He’d refused to work last night too; what was he doing, sitting alone there in his house? Brooding about his lost love? Or was he considering how to save his marriage? She wondered suddenly whether Vicky might have come across to see him but when she asked the man at the wheel he said no.
She had briefed Marta with the questions Strang had wanted put to Kaczka, though she wondered if there was any point; both she and Strang had doubted Kaczka’s claim to being Polish. Still, this would establish whether he was or not – and maybe that wouldn’t take long and they could go back before things got worse. Even now she was concentrating on willing the boat to speed across the increasingly stormy stretch of water; it sort of helped to have something to think about apart from her stomach and she managed to reach the jetty without disgracing herself. She wasn’t prepared to bet on the outcome of the return journey, though.
‘I don’t know where Marek will be but we’ll try his house first. He surely can’t be working outside,’ she said to Marta as they hurried down the drive. ‘The place is just minging, but at least it’ll be out of the rain.’
She hammered on the door and they stood shivering for a moment, wondering whether he was there or not, and if he was, whether he would answer. At last the door was opened a reluctant few inches and Murray produced her warrant card hastily, before Kaczka could shut it again.
‘PC Murray – could I have a word? I came before, remember?’
His face was dark and hostile but he swung the door back to allow them to come in. At least there was a log fire burning in the grate but the room seemed in worse disorder than before, the stink of soiled clothing and dirty sheets ranker than ever. There was nowhere they could sit and as she crossed the carpet the soles of Murray’s boots stuck to it. She gave an apologetic glance at Marta, who was looking horrified.
‘Mr Kaczka, this lady speaks Polish and she’s going to be able to explain to you what we want to know. All right?’
It was clear from the expression of Kaczka’s face that it was far from all right. He looked both startled and frightened, then he said, ‘No, only English. I speak English.’
Marta began talking to him. She spoke for a few moments while he looked at her stone-faced, until she stopped and turned to Murray to murmur, ‘I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand this at all. I think if he was Polish I’d have got some reaction.’ She gave a little, wicked smile. ‘I called him some very rude words at the end.’
Kaczka scowled. ‘English!’ he bellowed. ‘Only English!’
Murray felt mixed emotions. On the one hand, she wouldn’t be going back to Strang with the answers he had wanted; on the other, she was going to be able to go back right now.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said to Marta. ‘We’ve dragged you out on a wasted errand. No point in pursuing this.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Marta said, and she started speaking again. Again, Kaczka didn’t react, except with a black look. ‘That was Serbian,’ she said over her shoulder to Murray. ‘I’ll try Albanian next.’
Murray, who could just about order a beer in France if pushed, watched her, humbled. And this time there was no mistaking his reaction; he was alert, following what she said, even though he was making no response. Then she spat out a few words.
He was visibly shocked, rigid with anger. ‘Jo!’ he snarled. Then he stopped.
‘I don’t know what you said to him,’ Murray said with admiration, ‘but it worked.’
‘You don’t want to know,’ Marta said demurely. ‘But he denied it very strongly.’
‘So – Albanian,’ Murray said. ‘Illegal immigrant. Look, tell him that if he cooperates we’ll do our best for him. He’s been all but a slave here – the authorities are very sympathetic to people who’ve been exploited.’
Marta spoke at length and Murray saw the man’s head bow and his shoulders sag, as if he was giving up a struggle that had become too much for him. He said something, his voice heavy and defeated.
‘He says he’ll cooperate,’ Marta said. ‘What do you want me to ask him first?’
Murray considered for a moment. ‘Start by asking him if he killed Adam Carnegie and we can take it from there. You never know – he might say “Yes” and save us a lot of time.’
‘It sounds as if that’s quite definite progress,’ DCS Borthwick said. ‘You should be feeling cheerful – though it can’t be easy, on a day like this. If it’s as bad as this in Edinburgh I hate to think what it’s like with you.’
‘It’s bad and getting worse,’ he said gloomily. ‘We’re starting to bring people back across here now and the SOCOs are packing up. The chopper’s due any minute and they want a quick turnaround.’
‘Can’t blame them. Anyway – Beatrice Lacey? Is she a possibility?’
‘No,’ he said, then qualified it. ‘I should say, hard to imagine. She’s overweight, clumsy – could she have managed an attack like that? And then she walked straight into the dog attack in the morning – though I suppose she could have thought the dog would still be laid out.’
‘It’s not hard to get hold of, zolpidem. I think I was prescribed some myself once.’
‘There’s the Internet too, though I doubt if this was planned that far ahead. I think we’ll start with who would have known about the hare. Vicky Macdonald certainly would and Murray said earlier that when she was there Drummond had made a bit of a thing about stopping Vicky looking for it to cook for supper, though she could be making too much of it. Can’t stand jugged hare myself.’
‘Not my taste either. And if it had been hanging a few days, anyone who passed within a hundred yards would have known all about it – not easy to eliminate anyone at all on that basis. So – just on with the routine stuff, I suppose. Whatever it takes to get a result.’
Borthwick, Strang thought, was sounding distinctly edgy, which wasn’t like her. She’d have the chief constable breathing down her neck, of course, and he’d be looking for a success, preferably a quick one. ‘Quick’ meaning ‘cheap’.
‘We’ll do our best, ma’am,’ he said. He had just put the phone down when it rang again.
‘Buchanan here, sir. Murdo John Macdonald didn’t turn up this morning to help with the shuttle and he was downright rude when someone went to speak to him. Of course, it’s not compulsory, but I thought I’d maybe have a wee chat and see what the problem was. He wouldn’t let me in but he said he was wanting to talk to you. I told him you’d better things to do but he just shut the door on me. I wasn’t sure what you’d want me to do so I thought I’d best check.’
‘Absolutely right. I’m up to the eyes with all this stuff but with the weather deteriorating we need his boat, so if you think I might be able to talk him into doing it, I’d better get down there.’
He logged out with a sigh and fetched his boots and the weatherproof jacket that was unlikely to be proof against this sort of weather, and stepped outside.
It was blowing hard now, a gale coming in off the blackening sea and driving the teeming rain straight into his face, cold and stinging. There were white caps in the bay and the mountains had vanished, yet somehow he could feel the Black Cuillin’s brooding presence, there in the heart of the cloud and mist.
Strang gave the little shudder that had become a reflex when he looked up at it. It spooked him, with that constant reminder of how puny and pathetic human effort was in the face of the implacable hostility of nature.
Visibility was down to a few yards and he did spare a thought for the officers who would be having to cross that menacing stretch of water. He hoped for Murray’s sake that she’d be an early passenger; from what she said she wasn’t much of a sailor.
The lights were on inside the cottage and when he knocked he was aware of Macdonald’s face at the window, checking wh
o it was. The door was opened promptly.
‘All right, Mr Macdonald. What did you have to say to me that you couldn’t say to Sergeant Buchanan?’
The man who was standing in the doorway looked a different man from the one he had seen in the bar when he arrived. His eyes were reddened and there were black circles below them as if he hadn’t slept; his hair was wild and his black beard looked unkempt.
His voice was steady, though, as he said, ‘I want to confess to the murder of Adam Carnegie.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘He says yes, he had a daughter,’ the interpreter said.
PC Murray, who had been listening gloomily, looked at her sharply. ‘Ask where she is, Marta,’ she urged. At last, something promising! She could write the scenario – his daughter, the mysterious Veruschka; somehow he knows she was here, realises Carnegie killed her …This could be it!
There had been nothing useful so far, apart from his admitting that yes, he was Albanian. He’d denied having killed Carnegie – but then he would, wouldn’t he? He said he’d come because he’d been promised a passport that would allow him to work in Britain but Carnegie wouldn’t give it to him and he had no money and nowhere else to go. They’d guessed that already.
‘He is afraid to tell anyone,’ Marta said, adding in a rapid undertone, ‘I think maybe he has a police record – that is perhaps why.’
Perhaps he had but unless they had good arrangements with the Albanian police – unlikely – that wasn’t particularly helpful either. But now they’d reached a breakthrough point. Though Murray didn’t understand the words, she could tell what he was saying from his expression. The daughter was dead and he grieved for her. Could it be …?
There was a long explanation; Marta was nodding sympathetically as she listened and Murray looked from one face to the other, trying to puzzle out what was being said. When Kaczka stopped speaking, he put his head in his hands and she could see that he was crying.
‘It’s very sad,’ Marta said. ‘He had a wife and a child. A little girl. It was a very bad winter and where they lived was cold, damp. He was away – maybe in jail, I don’t know, but they couldn’t pay for a doctor so then they both died. He wanted to leave, find a better life. The same as I did, but—’ She gestured round the hovel. ‘He found this. The guy who was killed – he was a bad guy?’
‘You could say,’ Murray said darkly. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘Maybe he deserved to die,’ Marta said.
Murray pulled a face. ‘In a way, he maybe did. But if you just let folk decide to kill anyone they reckoned was one of the bad guys it would get kind of messy – at least that’s what I have to tell myself, doing this job.’
‘Oh, you are right, I’m sure, but sometimes it’s karma, you know? Anyway, what else do you want me to ask him?’
‘I think that’s all,’ Murray said. ‘For the moment, anyway. We’ll report the exploitation so he can get proper help, so we may need you again. But I think we should be getting back across to Balnasheil now.’
Even in the time they had been talking to Kaczka the pitch of the gale had changed. It was howling round the walls of the cottage and the fire was hissing as raindrops came down the chimney and smoke belched out into the room, making them cough. The draught coming in under the door was lifting the filthy carpet and the door itself was rattling.
‘Let’s go,’ Murray said.
Aware that a passing officer was standing with his eyes out on stalks and his ears flapping, DI Strang said, ‘I think we’d better conduct this interview inside, don’t you?’
Ushering Murdo John Macdonald before him, Strang went inside the cottage and shut the door. Then, very deliberately, he took off his wet jacket, shook it and hung it up on a hook by the door. He went to a chair by the fire and sat down, holding out his hands to the blaze. ‘That’s better. It’s freezing outside.’
Murdo John Macdonald looked down at him, nonplussed. He had been standing squared up to the detective, like an animal at bay; now he looked confused. After a moment he said, ‘Did you hear me? I said I was confessing to the murder of Adam Carnegie.’
‘Oh yes, I heard you. I’m just wondering why you couldn’t have said that to Sergeant Buchanan? I know he’d have been happy to bring you in at that point.’
‘Er—’
‘Not dramatic enough? I don’t play games like that, Mr Macdonald. And before I indulge you in your wish to have me arrest you, we need to have a conversation. Unless you want to call your lawyer?’
The man shook his head and Strang went on, ‘I suggest you sit down. I don’t want to get a crick in my neck looking up at you.’
Macdonald stared at him, then very slowly took the chair opposite.
‘I’m going to start with your movements on the night Carnegie was killed. Let’s begin at 6 p.m.’
The pent-up tension burst out. ‘For God’s sake, man, I’ve made a statement about that already! Why are you wasting time with this?’
‘I imagine that if what you’re now saying is true, the statement was a lie. In which case I need to know what really happened, don’t I?’
Deflated, Macdonald said, ‘Oh – yes, I see. Well, I did my shift at the bar. Finished at eleven, then cleared everything and tallied up and came back here. I went out again later—’
‘How much later?’
‘I don’t know.’ The irritation wasn’t far below the surface. ‘I didn’t look at the time – middle of the night, when no one would be around. I went to the boat—’
‘Not worried that someone would look out when they heard the engine?’
‘Rowed across. Anyway, they’re early to bed here. I moored at the jetty, walked up—’
‘Hang on. Did you take a knife with you?’
Macdonald paused, swallowed, then said, ‘Yes.’
‘Must have been quite a knife, to do that sort of damage.’
‘I – I sharpened it before I went. Threw it in the sea on the way back.’
‘I see. Go on.’
‘I went to the glass doors of Carnegie’s study. I knew no one locked them at night.’
‘Dark, was it?’
He checked, sensing a trap. ‘No – no, it wasn’t. He was still up. He let me in and then I killed him.’
‘Just like that? What about the dog?’
‘The dog?’ he faltered. ‘Oh yes, the dog.’ Then he took refuge in belligerence. ‘Look, I’ve confessed. I’m not going to tell you any more. You can do your own work to prove I did it or whatever it is you have to do. I’m tired of this.’
DI Strang sighed, a heavy, elaborate sigh. ‘Well now, Mr Macdonald, we’re not just looking for someone we can arrest. We’re old-fashioned enough to have a preference for seeing that it’s the right someone and we really need quite a bit more than this to go on. With every murder, we get cranks and loonies coming in to say they did it. They get some sort of kick out of the attention, I suppose, and we can make right eejits of ourselves if we take them at face value. You haven’t done very well so far. I don’t believe you’re either a crank or a loony, but I think you have made an assumption that may be quite wrong.’
Macdonald’s chin jutted. ‘I – killed – Adam – Carnegie.’
‘You – not your wife?’
Avoiding Strang’s eyes, he looked down to his left. ‘No, not my wife. Why would she?’
‘Good question. Why indeed? Anyway, let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about Veruschka.’
The man’s head came up so sharply Strang heard his neck crack. ‘Veruschka?’
‘The love of your life, according to PC Murray.’
‘Oh God! Why did I talk to that woman?’ It was a heartfelt cry.
‘Perhaps because you just wanted to speak her name out loud,’ Strang said. There was sympathy in his voice.
Macdonald bit his lip. ‘There’s nothing to add to what she’ll have told you already. Veruschka disappeared; I believed she’d walked out on me. It was only recen
tly I found out what had really happened. And,’ he went on with sudden conviction, ‘that’s why I killed him – revenge for Veruschka’s death.’
The way he said it made Strang think of a man whose boat has been wrecked suddenly noticing a floating spar. He said, very gently, ‘What was she like?’
Macdonald had to clear his throat. ‘She was – very lovely.’
‘Do you have a photograph?’
For a moment he didn’t move, then he got up and went over to a small, old-fashioned bureau that stood in front of the window. He let down the lid then pressed a panel to the right of three small drawers; it slid forward, disclosing a slim secret compartment. He reached in, took out a photograph, looking at it for a moment as if he didn’t want to let it go, then handed it to Strang.
It had been handled many times; it was a little creased and one edge was dog-eared, but the print itself was clear. It was a dark-haired girl with pale olive skin who was looking at the camera as if it, or the person behind it, was a friend: smiling, wide-set dark eyes soft. She looked very happy, Strang thought with a pang, and she had been, as Macdonald had said, very lovely.
Then suddenly Strang tensed up. He looked again. And he knew.
Lightning flickered above the mountains as PC Murray and the interpreter came out of Marek Kaczka’s cottage and Murray huddled into her hooded oilskin, looking anxiously at Marta’s much lighter windcheater, wet through already. With the clouds so thick and sullen, daylight was fading fast.
Operations had been halted and there was a queue of officers waiting to be taken off in the boats. It was a slow business, with only two boats operating – still no sign of Murdo John, damn him – and the empty one coming back from Balnasheil was positively corkscrewing in the waves in a way that made Murray feel sick just looking at it. How long would it be, she wondered, before they decided it wasn’t safe to run them any more? She was going to be almost the last in the queue, and little as she fancied the journey across, she liked still less the thought of being stranded over here.
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