‘Ms Lannelle – gastronome,’ Felicity growled, disgruntled at not being instantly recognised as the celebrity she was.
As I steered the tear-stained gastronome in the direction indicated, I mulled over the information he’d slipped me. Whatever it was that had prematurely ended Mackenzie’s life, it had happened in the garage. But how? And why? And not an accident. Macleod had been sure about that.
‘Where were you when you heard the awful news?’ I asked, careful to phrase my question so as not to open the floodgates once more.
Felicity teetered to a halt in the vestibule. She put her hand on the elegantly spindly table to steady herself. It wobbled alarmingly under the onslaught, sending the potted fern on its top sliding towards the edge.
‘I just can’t bring myself to talk about it. It’s…it’s so ab-saw-loot-ly awful.’ Her mouth trembled. Her fingers caressed the soft green fronds of the fern. Absent-mindedly, as she spoke, she plucked at it. In a thin green stream the pieces fell and gathered on the pristine Victorian tiles. Not that Mrs Mackenzie would be bothering about that today. She had far weightier considerations on her mind.
‘You’ve had a terrible shock,’ I soothed. ‘We’ll go to the lounge and I’ll get somebody to rustle us up a cup of coffee – or perhaps something a little stronger.’
Her fingers paused momentarily in their plucking.
‘I don’t want to say anything in front of the others,’ she hissed dramatically. ‘Commercial secrets, you know! People are so unethical when it comes to stealing a winning idea!’
At these last words, her mouth trembled again. My initial guess about the source of her anguish must have been correct. Mackenzie’s untimely death would certainly have directed a cold blast at the towering soufflé of her cooking plans.
‘That’s just it, Felicity!’ I cried, seizing my chance. ‘A winning idea can’t be crushed even by a setback like this. Now we’ll go to your room, have something restorative there, and you can tell me everything in confidence.’
‘So there I was, sitting in the conservatory waiting for Mr Mackenzie to serve morning coffee. Such a fine establishment. They serve a full range of speciality coffees.’ Fortified by perhaps too many tumblers of her cooking sherry, Felicity waved a plump hand expansively. ‘Jamaican Blue Mountain, of course, and Monsoon Malabar Mysore’, she rolled the exotic syllables round her tongue, savouring the roasts in a sort of virtual-reality coffee tasting. ‘Do you have a favourite, my dear?’
I was about to administer another dreadful shock to her fragile system by admitting to a partiality for a well-known brand of Instant, but she swept on.
‘My favourite is Sumatra Mandheling. Its hint of chocolate is ab-saw-loot-ly divine.’ A dreamy faraway look softened the gastronome’s plump features.
‘Well, there you were, just gasping for your first sip of Mandheling…and it never came?’ I paused encouragingly.
‘No, it never came.’ The soft faraway look was supplanted by a flush of annoyance at the memory of the deprivation. ‘And I must admit I was wondering if standards were beginning to slip. Then…then…’ she faltered and took another swig from her glass, ‘there was the most frightful high-pitched scream from out the back somewhere.’ Her vast frame shook at the memory. ‘Do you know, it reminded me of the cry a lobster makes when you throw it in boiling water.’ Thoughtfully, she contemplated past culinary incidents. ‘Well, of course, we all looked at each other, wondering. No one liked to say anything. Then we all rushed over to the windows. There was nothing to see. And then Mrs Mackenzie came staggering out of the garage. She just stood there in the sunlight with her hand up over her mouth. Swaying. She started this frightful moaning noise. Just like…’ Felicity paused, searching for a familiar culinary comparison, and failing to find one opted for, ‘…one of those ghastly grey pigeons that go woooh, woooh, woooh.’ She emitted a creditably pigeon-like croon. ‘My dear, it quite made my hair stand on end. A well-bred woman like her, always so refined, so austere, so private, reduced to this.’ She shook her head sorrowfully and fell silent, gazing for a long time into the amber depths of her tumbler, as if seeking an answer to one of Life’s Great Mysteries.
I was silent too. Was Mrs Mackenzie reacting to the sudden death of a beloved spouse, or to the realisation that she and her husband had paid the price for double-crossing Spinks with some little scheme they’d hatched together?
Felicity finished off her drink with one gulp. ‘One of the staff came out and led her indoors. We all stood there looking at each other, not saying a word. The silence was eerie. Then someone came in and told us there had been a dreadful accident and Mr Mackenzie was dead. I just went to pieces.’ She shuffled her feet in embarrassment. ‘You see, I’d had it all set up for just after lunch. Mrs Mackenzie was going to let me into the secret of one of her most successful recipes. But now…’ Once more Felicity stared gloomily into her glass.
‘In a few months when she begins to get over all this, she’ll want a new interest,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘Perhaps you could make an approach then.’ I didn’t think it at all helpful to mention that the only approach she might be making would be through the gates of one of HM’s prisons.
Men in white coveralls and hoods were busy in the garage. A full forensic investigation was in progress, then. Supplementary lighting had been brought in, and an area cordoned off with coloured tape near to where Macleod and a balding man were standing. They were watching the police photographer taking pictures of a heap of cardboard boxes.
When Macleod saw me, he beckoned me over. ‘He’s only been dead about two hours. We’ve a real chance of nailing our man this time.’
I suppose most people subconsciously expect a murdered body to be slumped with a knife sticking out of its shoulder blades, or its skull shattered by some blunt instrument. But all Spinks’s murders appeared, on the surface, to be mere accidents. No suspicious circumstances, that’s how he worked. What had he set up this time? I was both curious and apprehensive.
The boxes I’d last seen neatly stacked to ceiling height against the side of the garage now lay in a jumbled and untidy pile. Some had burst open, spilling tins in all directions. I didn’t notice the hand at first. When I did, I couldn’t drag my eyes away. The fingers seemed raised in a mute appeal for help. The rest of the mortal remains of Murdo Mackenzie were mercifully hidden by the tumbled heap. Had death been swift, or… I swallowed hard.
The balding man answered my unspoken question. ‘Instantaneous, I’d say.’
I picked up a tin. ‘There must be some weight in even one case of these,’ I said speculatively.
He pursed his lips. ‘Severe head injuries – not from those boxes, though. A good attempt has been made at disguising the weapon, but we can usually tell.’
‘You mean he wasn’t crushed by the boxes?’
‘I think we’ll find he was already dead.’ The strong lights glinted on his scalp as he peered over the top of one of the boxes at what must be Mackenzie’s head. ‘Imprint abrasion, you see.’
‘Imprint—?’
‘Human skin picks up the imprint of what hits it. For example, a rope, a shoe, a car bumper, or, as in this case, a thin metal tube.’
‘Like the shaft of a golf club,’ I said slowly.
The pathologist stooped to make a closer inspection of what lay behind the box. ‘Spot on. Not just the shaft. The head of the club too. Tramline marks, curved edge. The heel of a putter. Yes, I’d say it was a putter.’
Spinks had been counting on Mackenzie’s death being dismissed as just an unfortunate accident. This time he had slipped up.
From behind the anonymity of the one-way glass I tried to guess at Mrs Mackenzie’s thoughts. Drawn and grey, she sat in front of the interview table, her back still ramrod straight. She’d been the strong one of the partnership, dominance, not love, the relationship. She would recover. Was she clinging to the hope that the police had not discovered the underground lab? It was well hidden, and if they were concentrating their attentio
ns at the front of the garage…
Macleod was saying, ‘I know it’s painful for you, Mrs Mackenzie, but we had to ask how you discovered the body of your husband. It’s quite understandable that you can’t remember much about it.’
A swift nod of acknowledgement from the upright figure. ‘The accident…such a terrible shock…’ Her lip trembled.
‘That’s just it. You see, we don’t think your husband’s death was an accident.’
The ramrod figure suddenly sagged as if Macleod had struck her a physical blow.
‘Not an accident…’ she whispered. Her eyes were wild and frightened.
‘He was already dead when the boxes fell on him.’
‘No!’ The word was the faintest whisper.
‘Now can you think of anyone who would…?’
But she wasn’t listening. Her eyes stared straight ahead. A muscle in her cheek twitched.
‘Don’t you want to know how he died?’ Macleod waited.
She brought her eyes back to meet his.
He repeated, ‘Don’t you want to know?’
‘How?’ her lips barely moved.
‘Severe head injuries – the weapon, a golf club.’ He made it sound like an incontrovertible fact.
The effect on her was startling. The sagging figure snapped back to its former stiffness. A small red spot burnt in the pallor of each cheek, her slack mouth reset in a thin grim line. I realised with some astonishment that Mrs Mackenzie’s overriding emotion was rage.
Macleod fed the flames. ‘Crushed his skull like an eggshell.’ He pushed a brown envelope across the table towards her. ‘Would you like to see the photographs?’ His tone was casual, as if he was offering to show a collection of holiday snaps.
I winced at the calculated brutality. But it had the desired effect. The gold band on her wedding finger glinted in the harsh lighting as her bony hands gripped the edge of the table.
‘I told Murdo that he was dangerous! I told Murdo not to—’ She stopped.
‘If you’re worried about incriminating yourself, Mrs Mackenzie, I have to tell you that we know all about the lab under your garage and what it was used for.’
Her back slumped against the hard wooden chair. I could see all resistance drain from her. She pushed wearily at a strand of iron-grey hair. ‘What else do you want to know?’ she said dully.
Now that he’d won, Macleod exchanged the bludgeoning stick for the tempting juicy carrot. Kindly, concerned, avuncular, he leant forward. Hyde replaced Jekyll. ‘We’ve got to catch your husband’s murderer. Can you help us to do that, Morag?’ he asked softly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the brief dark interlude between the end of the long summer twilight and moonrise, the coastguard cutter, engines throttled back to a whisper, nosed into a tiny inlet on the most northerly part of the Isle of May. I was one of the dark shapes that scrambled ashore and took up position in the lee of the concrete platform of the North Horn. It would be an hour until the full moon rose above the horizon, the full moon, the smuggler’s friend. But not this time.
Moonlight. The dictionary definition, ‘Light from the sun reflected from the moon’s surface’, is neutral, scientific, correct. But poets write verse after verse dedicated to its beauty…
The dark figure beside me shifted his weight to ease cramped muscles. To distract myself from the mind-numbing boredom of waiting, I listened with closed eyes to the night sounds, Nature’s Moonlight Sonata…the sharp slap of waves on rock, the sad sigh of the night breeze through sea grasses…the distant, ghostly scream of a sea bird… In my mind I heard the tense opening bars of that classic film Dangerous Moonlight…
The big drop had been scheduled for tonight, the night of the full moon. That was all Mrs Mackenzie knew. She’d left that side of things to her dear departed while she cooked the gravy. That had been their little scam – cooking the books, so to speak. ‘Surplus’ gravy had been siphoned off and sold. All very profitable – until Spinks did some probing.
By one a.m. the moon was fully above the horizon. As forecast by the Met Office, a stiff easterly breeze sent clouds scudding intermittently across its face. Nothing else moved. With the wind from this quarter, any landing would have to be at Altarstanes bay, three hundred yards to the south-east. Our laser nightscopes would have no difficulty in picking out detail at that distance. Starlight was sufficient, even if the range had been half a mile.
But there was no need of artificial aid to eyesight at the moment. In the cold light of the moon even the bird droppings were visible on the timber floor of the old iron Bailey bridge below. The path from the bridge forked down to Altarstanes bay a hundred yards further on. Though the beach of the bay itself was hidden from our observation point, nothing could approach unseen by land or sea.
My earpiece squawked into life. ‘Target Zero.’
Target Zero, our name for the ship dropping the drugs, was on its approach run. My earpiece wouldn’t speak again until our quarry was in the bay. The signal had come from a member of the Rapid Reaction Force in heavy oiled jersey and yellow oilskins working the winch of one of the little fishing boats a mile distant. Target Zero, a silent moving shadow, would have suspiciously swept the fishing vessels’ decks with its own nightscope before turning towards the drop zone.
The glittering interplay of moonlight and shadow on the sea made it impossible, even fleetingly, to detect with the naked eye a small moving shape. But through my nightscope…yes, there it was, a powerful motor launch slipping up from the direction of Pilgrims’ Haven, the only other possible landing place on this side of the island. Altarstanes or Pilgrims’ Haven – the drop could have been at either. To ensure the drop was here at Altarstanes, The Maid of the Forth had been anchored off Haven’s small beach. On board, masquerading as a wedding reception party, a lucky squad of the RRF had been noisily drinking and dancing for hours at the taxpayers’ expense.
The smudge on my nightscope vanished as the cliffs folded round the outline of the launch. Cautiously, I shifted my position. Was it going to leave a yellow canister in the bay to mark the drop, or were Spinks’s men already in position on the beach? Our spy on the high ground above the bay would—
‘Meeting,’ said the voice, tinny in my ear. Monosyllabic, the breaking of radio silence, minimum. But it told us all we needed to know.
‘Go. Go. Go.’ No excitement in the voice, just a level calm. Beside me dark shapes rose from the long grass and ran swiftly forward. I followed. Over the bridge, up a slight rise, onto the cliff top. They raced along the path down to the bay. I stopped. Orders. I was solely an observer. They were the experts in violent action.
From my vantage point behind the cover of a large boulder, I could see the narrow strip of beach and the outline of the launch, black against the moonlit waters. A muffled shout, a splash, the high-pitched scream of an engine as the launch tried to make its escape. A creaming wake as it turned in a tight circle and roared towards the entrance of the bay. White lights erupted in a sparkling necklace across that neck of water, as the RRF flotilla, no longer blacked-out, left their cover in the fishing fleet. The lights merged. Now the RRF were moving in for the kill.
Its engine howling in a mad bid for freedom, the launch raced forward. Momentarily silhouetted, then illuminated by powerful searchlights, it hurtled seawards. Over to the far left, there was a gap between the lights. The driver spun the wheel and took his chance.
The next moment, the reason for the gap in the lights became clear. With a screech of tortured metal and a crunch audible even to me on the cliff top, the nose of the launch reared skywards, as if escape lay that way. It hung there, then in a graceful slow motion back-flip, smashed beneath the surface. I shuddered. More deaths.
With the howl of the engine abruptly cut off, shouts and cries from the beach were sharp in the night air. By now, the searchlights from the line of approaching boats had illuminated the beach like a stage. A body, from the clothing not an RRF man, lay at the water’s edge ro
lling lazily from side to side in the surge of the waves. The element of surprise seemed to have been complete. Below me a cluster of dark balaclava-clad figures were pinioning three men face down on the shingle. Two reports rang out over the bay. Shots. One of the RRF men catapulted backwards and lay motionless. The searchlights swung away to probe the cliffs, leaving my side of the beach in shadow. A heat-seeking device locked the light onto a jumble of boulders.
‘Customs. Immediate surrender required in ten seconds. Repeat. Immediate surrender required in ten seconds.’
In the jumble of rocks, no movement.
‘Five seconds, four, three…’
At two seconds, shouts from the rocks. I craned round the smooth sides of my boulder. Orange flame spurted from the shadows. Pfftt. One of the lights exploded. An answering shot sent up a puff of dust. Splinters of rock pattered like raindrops into the sea. Silence.
It was then I heard the scrape of a shoe, the faint rattle of a pebble, the rapid breathing of someone running up the path from the beach. One of the RRF? I’d play safe, anyway. I shrank back behind the boulder. Not having a weapon had its disadvantages.
The sounds were louder, more definite, very close now. I slid slowly down until I was flat on the ground. A face at that level should escape the notice of someone running desperately to evade capture. Or so I hoped. I snatched a look. The figure was little more than a silhouette against the glow from the beach below. But I’d seen enough. It was Spinks’s unmistakable profile and crewcut.
Option – try to arrest a serial killer, though I was unarmed.
Option – follow him, and call in the cavalry as soon as possible.
Option – lie low, and inform control.
I didn’t really have a choice. I would need to stick close to him to have any real chance of bringing him to book. But I could strengthen the odds in my favour. I activated the throat mike all of our party were wearing.
No Suspicious Circumstances Page 24