Human Face
Page 34
There was Marta to consider, though. As a civilian she was entitled to preferential treatment and she led her up to the front of the queue to explain to the sergeant in charge.
‘Yes, of course, madam. We’ll get you onto this one that’s coming in now.’
Marta squeezed Murray’s hand gratefully. A space was made for her but in answer to a muttering of unrest, Murray said, ‘All right, all right, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’ll take my turn, you miserable sods,’ and walked to the back.
At least three more trips needed at a rough count, she thought. She was cold, her face was red and sore and the force of the wind was frightening. She’d got used to the weather in her months here but she was still a city girl and she’d never been exposed to a storm like this. There was a crack of thunder that seemed to be right overhead and she flinched as a lightning flash followed almost immediately.
She didn’t know the lads at the back. Two of them were up from Edinburgh but despite the storm they were in good spirits.
‘Did you hear we got our man?’ one said cheerfully. ‘That should be it for us – you locals can clean up here. You’re welcome to it.’
‘Who’re you calling local? I’m from Glasgow, myself,’ she said automatically, but she was wrestling with profound disappointment. It was all done and dusted and she hadn’t even been there. ‘Anyway, what’s happened?’
‘The Macdonald guy. Someone actually heard him confessing.’
‘Murdo John?’ So she’d been right to suspect him – if only she’d had the courage to question him properly last night when she had the chance! But she hadn’t.
Then she thought about Vicky. How was Vicky going to feel when she heard that the husband she’d been hoping to be reconciled with had been arrested, that he was a man who had killed in a hideously macabre way?
Murray looked at the queue. At this rate it was going to be at least twenty minutes, probably more, before she was taken off and, turning her head, she could see the light was on in the kitchen. She made up her mind, said, ‘Back in a minute,’ and headed for the back door. She knocked on it then went in through the area where the larders were and tapped on the kitchen door.
Vicky Macdonald was standing by the sink, loading mugs into a dishwasher. She was moving listlessly, looking haggard and heavy-eyed but she managed a weak smile when she saw Murray.
‘I’m guessing just one more request for a cup of coffee would be the last straw,’ Murray said. ‘You look absolutely exhausted. I’ve only a few minutes anyway—’
‘There’s still some in the flask. I’m going to have one myself,’ Vicky said. ‘Take a seat.’
She hesitated. Vicky was looking as if hearing what Murray had to say might make her fall apart completely. This was going to be much harder than she had thought.
‘Well, you twisted my arm,’ she said, sitting down.
‘I think I can even find a piece of shortbread, just for you. I owe you one for trying last night.’
As Vicky went through to the larder, Murray frowned. There was something—
Then Vicky came back, poured the coffee, brought the tin and sat down.
She had to be told. Murray took a deep breath. ‘Vicky, Murdo John’s confessed that he killed Adam Carnegie.’
Vicky looked stunned. Then she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! The stupid, stupid idiot! What did he want to do that for?’
It was an odd response. ‘Er – don’t you believe him?’ Murray asked.
‘No – well, I don’t know. Maybe he did. But it just seems, well, sort of unnecessary. Too dramatic, or something.’ Vicky had picked up a piece of shortbread and was reducing it to crumbs with her restless fingers. ‘What happens now?’
‘He’ll be charged, I guess.’ But Murray spoke absently. When Vicky had gone through to fetch the shortbread it had reminded her of the last time, the time when she had come back immediately saying she couldn’t smell the hare. But it had been removed before the murder happened and she must have been to and fro dozens of times since; why had she only mentioned it after Murray had told her they knew it wasn’t suicide? Perhaps there was an explanation – she’d forgotten it was there, she’d only just remembered when she was thinking about making supper, but—
‘Vicky,’ she said, ‘when did you realise that the hare had been taken away?’
Vicky’s face went very still. The wide-set blue eyes were cold, defensive. ‘What on earth do you mean? You know when I realised. You were there—’
‘And it was just after I told you we were treating it as murder,’ Murray said. ‘You said it “stank to high heaven” – how come it was only then that you noticed the smell had gone? You go in and out of the larder all the time.’
‘I didn’t, that was all.’ Her voice was high and unnatural. ‘I just – didn’t. Sorry.’
Murray felt a cold chill. The woman was lying and with a sudden deadly certainty she knew why.
‘Vicky, did you kill Adam?’
Vicky picked up her coffee mug and walked over with it to the sink. ‘That’s such a stupid question I’m not even going to answer it,’ she said, but her voice was shaking.
‘You had means and opportunity.’ Murray was surprised to find that her voice was quite steady. ‘You understand about knives. I’ve seen your chopping skills. Was it one of the knives from here – the knives you use for chopping up hares and deer? Did you use that?’
There was another crash of thunder overhead and a huge gust of wind shook the window as it lit up with the blue brilliance of a lightning flash. Vicky cringed away from it; she was shaking violently.
‘Vicky—’
The woman turned round, wailing, ‘Yes, all right, all right! I killed him. And I’m not sorry I did. You’ve got to listen to me, Livvy. Once you know, you’ll understand. Veruschka was my sister – my half-sister. That wasn’t her real name; she was Nicoleta Gabor.’ She gave a small, dry sob as she said it. ‘My own name’s Viktoria Gabor. My mother married a Romanian and when they divorced my father went back there but I stayed here. I used to spend holidays with my Tata, though.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Couldn’t be faithful for ten minutes, but a lovely man.
‘He got married again, and then there was Nicci. I was eight and she was the most enchanting little thing. I adored her from the day I first saw her. She was so pretty, so charming. Oh, and so wilful, but you could never be cross with her for long – she had such a loving heart. She used to come to stay with us often and even my mother couldn’t resist her. Nicci hated going back to Romania. “There’s nothing there for me,” she would say. “I want to live here, live like you do.” I told her all she had to do was wait; Romania was in the EU, it would only be a year or two before she could move here legally. But Nicci—’ She began to cry.
Murray said nothing, waiting as Vicky wiped her eyes and blew her nose on a tissue, while the thunder, a little further off now, rumbled around the mountains.
‘Nicci didn’t do waiting,’ Vicky managed at last. ‘From when she was tiny, her favourite words were “No, now!” She phoned me four years ago and said she was coming to Britain. She had a job, she said, but she wouldn’t tell me anything about it. She was only eighteen; I was worried when she said I wouldn’t approve – oh, I mothered her, I suppose. She had a wild streak, like my father, and I knew she had a frantic social life in Bucharest.
‘Then she vanished. My father didn’t seem too bothered – she’d called him and said she was fine. She texted me too occasionally, little teasing texts that told me nothing. That last one I got she sounded happy, excited. It said that soon she’d be able to come and see me – “Watch this space,” she finished. Then – nothing.’ Vicky picked up the damp tissue and dabbed at her eyes again. ‘Nothing at all. My father told the police but you can imagine how interested they were – how many illegal immigrants come into the country every year and disappear? You weren’t much bothered at first about Eva.’
It was true; she hadn’t been. ‘I know. I’m sorry
,’ Murray said humbly.
‘The only clue I had was one postcard from Skye, a view of the Black Cuillin ridge on a sunny day, taken from here. “The most beautiful place on earth and I’m going to stay here for ever,” it said. That was all. So she was here, in Scotland! I smiled at the time; no doubt I’d hear from her when she felt like it. But then my mother died – she was only sixty – and I was on my own. There was no one else. Nicci was all I had left and I needed to find her.
‘But there were no texts after that, and she didn’t reply to mine. So I came here to ask if anyone knew a Nicoleta Gabor. They didn’t, of course, but they said that foreign girls worked over at Balnasheil Lodge so maybe she had been one of them – they came and went, seemingly. No one was much interested.
‘I drove out there and spoke to Beatrice. She was very frosty – there had been no Nicoleta Gabor, no Romanian girl, and no, there was no one else I could talk to. That was all. I don’t think she even remembered she’d met me when I got Morag Soutar’s job.’
She held out her hands pleadingly. ‘How could I just give up, Livvy, when it was the only link I had with my little sister? There was a job going at the hotel so I took it. I tried talking to Marek, if he was in the bar – I even tried to ask Adam if he’d known anyone called Nicoleta but he just looked through me as if I didn’t exist. Then there was Murdo John.’ The name seemed to hang heavy on the air.
‘Why did you marry him, Vicky?’ Murray asked gently.
She gave a helpless shrug. ‘Why does anyone marry? He was very attractive; I convinced myself I loved him. Oh, I still do, perhaps, in a way. But I was – sort of hollowed out inside by then, grieving for my mother, and finding Nicci had become an obsession. If I lived here, if I found out more about what had gone on at the Lodge perhaps there were clues I could pick up, work out where she’d gone.
‘Of course I realised it was possible something had happened to her, but being Nicci she might just have decided to disappear. She had my phone number, if she chose to use it. But after Mum died I hadn’t a home to offer her when she wanted to come back. If I married Murdo John – well,’ she shrugged.
It was a chilling idea – marrying a man for a settled address. Murray was feeling considerable sympathy for Murdo John, especially since he seemed to have confessed to protect his wife.
‘But how could you be sure Nicci was Veruschka?’
‘Once I heard there was another girl who had suddenly disappeared from here, who else could it be? Dark hair, brown eyes, Murdo John said – that was Veruschka. She had said she was going to stay here for ever.’ She gave a dry sob. ‘And in a terrible way, I suppose she has.’
Murray glanced at her watch. If she was to get Vicky on the last boat back, she’d better hurry her up.
‘Tell me what made you decide to kill Adam?’
‘When Eva disappeared, I think I knew then that Adam had killed her, even if I didn’t want to face up to it. And later, Beatrice as good as told me he had killed Nicci too. The man was a psychopath and I could see he was going to get away with it this time too.
‘Oh yes, you lot were investigating but you wanted the sort of proof you simply weren’t going to find. He was clever, he’d move away and then there would be another girl, and another. He’d learn from his mistakes this time and the next time there wouldn’t be grounds for suspicion. And as long as he was alive, Beatrice would never get up courage to speak out against him, poor pathetic cow. She’d taken back everything she said even before I left the room.
‘I owed Nicci revenge. So – I killed him. Just went in, hiding my butcher’s knife up my sleeve, holding some papers, and said there was a problem with the household accounts and when he sat down at the desk …’ Her voice trailed away.
The picture vivid in her mind, Murray gulped. ‘Messy.’
Vicky seemed unmoved. ‘Well yes, it was, a bit, but it had to be something he could do to himself, to look like suicide – you see? And I’d seen hogs killed on my grandfather’s farm in Romania – it’s quite easy to do.’ She shrugged with chilling indifference. ‘So that’s what gave me the idea and I knew what to expect, where to stand. And then I just pulled down my sweater over my hand and took one of his own knives to put beside him. There was blood, of course; I had to strip off and go into the sea. God, I thought I would die with the cold! But then my clothes and the knife went into the sea – job done.’
‘And the dog?’ Murray felt almost proprietorial about the dog and the hare.
‘Oh, I knew I had to dope it first, of course. Beatrice had sleeping pills so I just nicked them, laced the hare with them then left it on the lawn – and when I went into Adam’s flat I didn’t have to commit myself until I was sure it was out cold.’
She was sounding – yes, pleased with herself, admiring of her own ingenuity. Murray gave a little shudder. And it was getting late; if she didn’t move now they’d have stopped the boats. She stood up.
‘Vicky Macdonald, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder—’
Vicky jumped up too. ‘No, Livvy!’ she cried. ‘You understand – you know what sort of man he was. You know he deserved this – everyone knows that! What good is it going to do to lock me up for years for ridding the world of Adam Carnegie? If you hadn’t worked it out, what harm would it have done? Don’t tell, Livvy! You’ve been my friend; you’re a woman. You know what it would feel like to be preyed on by a monster like Adam – how can you blame me for what I did? I’m going away. My bags are packed; I’m going to change my name. Please let me go. Don’t stop me! You can say what you like after I’ve gone.
‘Do you want to know how he killed Nicci? He turned the dog on her, to tear her to pieces. Beatrice knows that – she won’t admit it to the police, though. Think about it, Livvy – you’re helpless, in his power, and the dog’s coming at you. How do you feel? You’re terrified, helpless, then you suffer excruciating agony as it savages you to death, tears off your flesh, a bit at a time – while he watches. Didn’t he deserve to die?’
Murray felt sick. She could almost feel the girl’s panic in herself, see the dog, snarling as it went into the attack. The man had been evil personified and the world was a healthier place without him. Should anyone be made to pay for that?
Vicky seemed to sense her weakening. ‘You’re meant to uphold justice, Livvy. Well, this is a life for a life – for two lives, and you’d be letting him steal my life as well. Please, Livvy, please! Look me in the eye – you can’t say this isn’t justice.’
The thunder rolled closer again; the lightning came almost simultaneously. Murray was shaken: all along she had found it hard to care about ‘justice’ for Adam Carnegie and her dogged working to find out the truth had been a combination of her natural curiosity and an ambition for professional success. It wasn’t hard to view what had happened as savage justice – karma, as Marta had said.
She was actually hesitating when Cara came to her mind, Cara, who had been a friend of hers, stabbed to death in Glasgow when they were teenagers. When the man got three years and came out in eighteen months she’d felt like going after him. But even then she’d been streetwise enough to know what would have happened if she had: his friends would have come after her and the cycle of violence would go on and on. It was one of the reasons she had joined the force. Deciding what counted as justice was way above her pay grade.
She drew a deep breath, met the other woman’s eyes squarely and said again, ‘Vicky Macdonald, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything—’
There was a thunderclap right overhead, a noise that made it sound as if the ceiling was coming down. The immediate flash lit up an eerie, livid landscape outside the window. There was a bang and they were plunged into darkness.
It was pitch-black. Murray could hear sounds of movement but couldn’t place them. She turned her head to try to locate the direction. ‘Vicky—’ she said, then something hit her head and she knew nothing more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
With the noise of the sea and the thunder rolling all around it was hard to make himself heard as he told the sergeant on duty that he needed to get back across with the boat.
‘I’ll need a couple of men with me,’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to be making an arrest.’
The man shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir – not now you’re not. We’ve got everyone off and this is the last boat tonight – unless the storm eases back and I wouldn’t hold my breath.’ He seemed to be taking a positive pleasure in refusing.
Counting to ten, Strang said, ‘Look, you got over all right—’
‘Can’t do it. Health and safety, you know.’
Strang gave vent to his opinion of health and safety in terms that drew a dirty look from the sergeant but made the man who had been steering laugh.
‘Right enough, sir, but it is nasty out there. And I daresay whoever you’re going to arrest will be stuck there waiting for you meantime.’
Strang grudgingly acknowledged the truth of that, nodded and turned to face into the wind and rain that was driving in from the Atlantic. If he went back to the police office now he could download the appropriate forms and it would save time when the storm abated and he could get across to Balnasheil Lodge, so he tramped off up the hill.
He’d better take Murray along with him as a woman officer and he ought to phone JB as well. She’d be pleased to hear that the investigation was reaching its conclusion; it had been haemorrhaging money for the last bit.