19 - Fatal Last Words

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Did you know he was dying?’ asked Skinner.

  ‘Honestly, I did not. When I got home and saw the blood on my stick, I realised that I might have hurt him badly. I could have called an ambulance then; I should have, but I didn’t. When I found out that he was dead, I almost came to you then, until I heard that you were looking for his friend. I suppose I reasoned that if you thought he did it, best to keep quiet until you found him, and hope that you didn’t. It wouldn’t have been the first unsolved murder in this area.’

  ‘But it’s solved now, Donald. Come with me, please. One of my inspectors is waiting in the street, in a car.’

  ‘Let me go in and pick up some things. Say goodbye to Margot at least.’

  ‘It won’t be goodbye, only farewell for a while. No, I know you, old guy. On Sunday, you confused cowardice with realism. If I let you go in there, likely you’d be in the library with a shotgun in your mouth. No more death, Colonel Rendell. I’ve had enough for this week.’

  Eighty-seven

  ‘So that’s it all wrapped up?’ Ray Wilding exclaimed. ‘Randy Mosley did the authors and some old soldier murdered the gypsy out in Gullane?’

  ‘That last charge may be culpable homicide, not murder,’ Sammy Pye pointed out, ‘if the fiscal offers him a deal for a guilty plea, but that’s about it, yes.’

  The sergeant handed him a coffee that he had fetched from the office machine. ‘And with Mosley in custody, that ought to mean that Fred Noble’s safe as well?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve pulled his protection team out already.’ The DI grinned. ‘By the way, remember that hypnosis idea of his? Well, I checked with an expert, just for the sake of it. Clinically impossible; it wouldn’t have worked.’

  ‘Come on,’ Wilding pointed out, ‘it was a work of fiction, and it was credible as far as the readers were concerned, so surely that’s fair enough?’ And then he raised his eyebrows, as if in a show of triumph. ‘But if what your so-called expert says is the case,’ he asked, slowly, ‘isn’t it strange that Noble’s just walked in front of a bus?’

  Pye’s face, ever youthful and positive, seemed to age ten years in as many seconds; the mug trembled in his hands. ‘Tell me you’re kidding,’ he whispered.