Dead in the Water Read online

  Today the sea was metallic grey, with a heavy, oily swell, and making a low, threatening moaning. That was the only sound: even the gulls flying about under leaden skies weren’t screeching. It was so cold, so bleak! Fleming shivered and turned to walk out along the headland.

  The turf was springy underfoot, and all around were great wet swathes of dead bracken, brown after the winter frosts. It would have grown and spread after all these years, and the points where there was easy access to the cliff edge would have changed. And you would need that, on a wild night, impeded either by a struggling woman or her dead body.

  There was, Fleming noticed, one area right at the cliff edge where rocky outcrops on either side had stopped the bracken from encroaching, and she went, rather gingerly, to peer over.

  It was a dizzying drop. Here the land fell sharply away straight into the water hundreds of feet below, whereas to left and right the cliffs seemed to slope outward more, so that a body falling would strike rocks before it reached the sea. Ailsa’s body had shown none of the mutilations that a fall on to rocks would produce, so it seemed quite likely that Fleming was standing now where the murderer had stood.

  She walked back towards the lighthouse, trying to think herself into his mind. He could have driven the car as far as the edge of the shorter grass here below the walls where the car would have been invisible from the lighthouse, and certainly he could have gambled on no one being about on a night like that. She paced the distance to the edge – thirty yards.

  Had he been carrying her body – staggering under the dead weight, buffeted by the storm? Or was she still alive, being coerced with an iron grip across the rough ground, her hands tied, her screams torn away on the wind?

  Surely she must have been dead by that stage? No woman would have consented to go with her lover to a place of such danger with a tempest raging. And yet—

  There is something intensely romantic about Nature’s power unleashed. Could he have lured her there with the promise of the ultimate in passionate proposals, wild, storm-tossed . . . Heathcliff and Catherine?

  Unlikely. But even so, should Fleming perhaps have it in mind to look for someone with a strong romantic streak – someone, say, like an actor? Marcus Lindsay’s alibi seemed solid enough, and surely Mrs Grant must have been told this. Why, in that case, had she been so certain of his guilt?

  Her father would have stood here once, just about where she was standing now, looking down at the drowned woman, his inbuilt prejudices blinding him to any evidence of murder. Procedure, he would have been the first to tell you, existed to prevent too personal judgements, and yet on this occasion he had thrown away the rule book.

  Ailsa’s father had at the very least been a strong suspect. What else had happened back at the house, when Ailsa’s hair had been combed? What other evidence had been removed, which might have pointed to him? She’d find it hard to have to put in her report that her father’s action had assisted a cover-up.

  Still, there was a job to do. Balnakenny Farm was her next port of call, but before she returned to the car park, she looked back once more.

  The wind blowing today, though strong enough, wasn’t gale force. She had been hesitant about going near the edge; Ailsa’s killer must have been a brave man to take the risk of finding himself going over with the body. Brave – or desperate. And how would he feel now, when he heard questions were being asked all over again?

  It didn’t take Macdonald and Campbell long to find the house they were looking for. The Hodges’ Miramar was a source of fascination locally and the woman they stopped to ask was delighted to give them all details.

  ‘Oh, it’s a right knacker’s midden! Started off like one of thae ranch houses, ken, but I don’t know what you’d call it now, with all the bits they’ve added on.

  ‘That’s where you’ll find the Polish lads, right enough. At least, I suppose that’s what they are. Foreign, anyway. Keep themselves to themselves.’

  ‘So there hasn’t been any trouble here?’

  The woman’s eyes lit up. ‘Not that I’ve heard. Here! What’ve they been up to?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Macdonald said hastily. ‘I wasn’t meaning that. Just we heard some of the boys around here had been making things difficult.’

  ‘Oh, there’s some right young limmers about,’ the woman acknowledged, but went away disappointed. Bad behaviour by the local neds wouldn’t be news to anyone.

  Miramar stood on its own in an extensive garden up behind the village looking out to Luce Bay. It was, as described, a complete jumble, as if someone had got first one idea for the house’s layout, then another and another, without any attempt at reconciling them.

  Macdonald put up the collar of his coat against the rain and stared at it. ‘Can’t imagine how they got planning permission for this. Must know the right people.

  ‘Pity it’s raining, though – the men’ll have packed it in, with weather like this.’

  He was wrong, though. Walking towards the front door, they could see a building in the later stages of construction and three men working as if the sun was shining.

  There was no one else around. They crossed the lawn towards the builders, Macdonald taking out his warrant card. As always, it had an effect: all three men stopped working and one, older than the others, stepped forward. He was wearing a beige sweat-shirt darkened by rain and his grizzled hair was plastered to his head.

  They could almost see his hackles rising. ‘What do you want with us?’ he said, his battered face stony.

  Macdonald eyed the bruises and the split lip. ‘Been in a fight, then, have you?’

  He didn’t waver. ‘An accident.’

  ‘Funny kind of accident. Look, we’re here to help you. One of you got a knife wound and we don’t want something worse happening.’

  ‘That was an accident too.’

  ‘You seem to have a lot of accidents,’ Macdonald said crisply. He turned to the silent men. ‘Which of you is Kasper Franzik?’

  Again, it was the older man who answered. ‘He is not here. And you cannot speak to them, since they do not understand. It is only me who can speak good English.’

  He could, too – heavily accented, but perfectly clear. Macdonald found himself nonplussed. You couldn’t get far if the only English-speaker refused to acknowledge there was a problem. He had one more try.

  ‘We’re concerned that there’s ill-feeling between you and some of the local lads. Have you had any trouble of that sort?’

  He caught a look pass between the two younger men, but they said nothing and their boss replied flatly, ‘No. None.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to take you at your word. Can you tell me where I could find Mr Franzik?’

  ‘He is gone. I don’t know where.’

  The man went back to his plastering. At a gesture from him, the others too resumed work and Macdonald and Campbell had no option but to leave them to it.

  ‘Scary kind of bloke, isn’t he?’ Macdonald said as they went back to the car. ‘My bet is you should see what he did to the other fellow.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve ticked the box. Write up the report and file it and then we can forget about it.’

  6

  The Grants weren’t good farmers. With her practised eye, Marjory Fleming could tell that immediately.

  For a start, the cattle grazing on either side of the single-track road between cattle grids were a ragbag assortment of Old Galloway, Aberdeen-Friesian crosses, a few Simmental and a lone Charollais, obviously picked up cheaply at cattle sales when the chance arose. The beasts looked dirty and their pasture wasn’t well managed either; Fleming could see docks and even dangerous ragwort growing.

  A rusting tractor stood in one corner of the farmyard, minus its tyres, and the yard itself hadn’t been hosed clean of mud and dung. In the barn, machinery and tools had been crammed in higgledy-piggledy over the years, so that finding what you needed must be a frustrating business.

  There were hens, too, in a chicken-wire encl
osure long since pecked clear of vegetation where the miserable creatures, feathers bunched against the rain, still scavenged listlessly in the unproductive mud. It wasn’t as if grassy areas were in short supply; the enclosure would only need to be moved regularly to give them a richer environment. Thinking of her own chookies’ enjoyment of the grass and grubs in the orchard, Fleming conceived an anticipatory dislike of their owners.

  The farmhouse looked neat enough, but it had a forbidding aspect, built of stone so dark that it was almost black, with dark maroon paintwork. Fleming parked and went through the gate to the small garden at the front. This was well kept too, though there were no flowers, just rows of fruit bushes and earth turned over for spring planting. The brass knocker on the front door was very shiny.

  The woman who opened it looked as dour and unwelcoming as the house itself. She was tall, gaunt and angular, with iron-grey hair pulled into a bun at the back. She had a beaky nose and a prominent chin and her face was innocent of make-up, taut and shiny from soap and water. Her grey eyes had a stony, hostile stare.

  She was an ugly old woman, and her daughter had been a bonny enough girl, yet Fleming could see a strong resemblance. Had Jean Grant in her day, too, been bonny enough, she found herself thinking as the woman snapped, ‘Yes? What are you wanting?’

  Fleming introduced herself. ‘Mrs Grant? I’ve come to see you and your husband and son. I was hoping for a word with you all.’

  ‘You’re seeing me now. My son’s away and you’ll have a job seeing my husband, unless you dig him up first. He’s been dead these seven years.’

  The callous response shed a light on the relationship. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Fleming said, but as that received no acknowledgement, went on, ‘May I come in?’ She took the customary step forward which made it harder to refuse.

  ‘If you have to.’

  Jean walked away down the narrow hall, leaving her visitor to follow and shut the front door. Fleming expected to be taken to the farmhouse kitchen where, as she had reason to know, most social interaction on farms took place, but instead Jean opened the door into what would once have been called the front parlour.

  There were antimacassars on the backs of all the chairs. Fleming hadn’t seen one since she was a child, and the cut-moquette, wooden-framed suite didn’t look as if it merited such protection. The room was otherwise sparsely furnished with only a couple of side-tables and a display cabinet full of glasses. On the mantelpiece an orange china vase held dry grasses and in front of the empty grate was a fan of pleated paper. It was all spotlessly clean but the room felt dank, as if it had been unheated and unused for years. Half-drawn blinds made it dark and no pictures brightened the beige wallpaper.

  The only personal touch was some formal photographs on a side-table. Fleming had seen the one of Ailsa, but there was also a somewhat faded wedding photo, presumably the Grants’ own, and two or three others, including the kind you order through the school: one of a boy with red hair and a dark-haired girl – Ailsa, presumably, before she went blonde.

  Apart from that, the room gave nothing away, any more than did the face of the woman who had sat down in a chair with its back to the light.

  Uninvited, the inspector chose the chair nearest to the photographs. An opportunity to study them might present itself.

  ‘I’m sorry to be raising again what must be a very painful subject, but a decision has been made to reopen the case of your daughter’s murder.’

  She could see no flicker of emotion on the other woman’s face, but then it was in shadow.

  ‘Oh aye?’ was all she said.

  ‘I need to go over the events leading up to Ailsa’s death, and ask you what you can remember.’

  ‘What for? They asked enough questions at the time, and wrote down what we said.’

  This degree of hostility was unexpected. Feeling slightly defensive, Fleming said, ‘I’ve read the reports, but other questions have occurred to me that you may be able to answer. I’m sure you’re even more anxious than I am to get justice for your daughter.’

  At last she got a genuine response. ‘Didn’t get justice last time, did she?’ Jean said savagely. ‘All these years, he’s gone on living his decadent life, spending his money, strutting about. And I told them – I told them. And they did nothing. Why should I go through it all again – for nothing to happen?’

  Fleming leaned forward. She had a low, attractive voice, now at its most persuasive. ‘I know you mean Marcus Lazansky, and if you believe he killed Ailsa I can understand your bitterness. I have a daughter myself.

  ‘But you will know he was in America at the time. I need to hear exactly why you blame him. You can tell me anything, however trivial, that gave you reason to believe that.’

  Jean had raised her head and was looking at her. Her eyes were still cold and watchful, but it was progress.

  ‘They had a relationship when they were quite young, didn’t they?’ Fleming prompted.

  ‘Oh aye, he did. And then dropped her. I saw how my bairn suffered – though dear knows she’d had warnings enough about him. And there were plenty others wanting her – you can see how bonny she was,’ she said, gesturing towards the large photo, ‘but she couldn’t see past him.

  ‘I told her till I was sick telling her, that she’d to have nothing to do with him. He was –’ she spat the word, ‘poison! But I could tell she wasn’t listening.

  ‘Oh, she’d say, “Yes, Mum, got the message.” That was her great phrase, but I knew what was in her heart. We were close, me and Ailsa.’

  ‘The relationship they had as teenagers – was it sexual?’

  For a moment Fleming wondered if the woman would rise and strike her. ‘Sexual? Certainly not! She was only sixteen and I’d warned her well about what men were like.’

  ‘Of course. But—’

  ‘Oh, I know what you’re at! By then she was away from her mother, lonely in a big city, homesick most likely, and he took advantage of that.’

  ‘Mrs Grant, I can appreciate your point. But is there a possibility that there was someone else in Glasgow? Marcus Lindsay can prove he was out of the country most of the time. How could you be sure that being lonely she didn’t take up with another man?’

  Tears welled up and Jean blinked them away. ‘Out of the country? Wouldn’t be telling you if he’d come back sometimes, would he? And how did I know? I’ll tell you. She denied it was him, but she wouldn’t name the father, even to me, and we were close, like I said. The only reason she wouldn’t tell me was because I’d told her she’d not to see him.’

  Was this really all – a mother’s stubborn belief that her daughter tells her everything? Fleming, with clear and shaming memories of her own youth, cherished no such illusions, but she could hardly say that.

  Jean had produced a handkerchief, blown her nose fiercely, and lapsed into stony impassivity. Fleming changed the subject.

  ‘She had a phone call that afternoon. You didn’t know who it was from or hear what was said?’

  ‘The phone’s in the hall there. I was busy in the kitchen and she answered, and by the time I came through to see, she’d finished and was running up the stairs. I asked her who it was but she never said.’

  ‘How was she looking? Upset? Happy?’

  ‘I didn’t see. She was a bit quiet at her tea, but it wasn’t unusual. She and her father weren’t speaking.’

  And that was something Fleming needed to know about too, but she wasn’t going to interrupt.

  ‘She went to her room, after, and then I heard her come back downstairs and she was all made up. I hadn’t seen her like that since she came home. I said, “Where are you going?” and she said she was meeting someone.

  ‘“On a night like this?” I said, and she said, “Don’t stop me. He’s there, waiting for me – I have to go to him.”

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Jean’s voice was thick with tears, but Fleming had to ask a question that hadn’t been asked twenty years ago. ‘Did y
ou hear a car? Did she take anything with her? Clothes, money, a suitcase?’

  Jean stared at her. ‘I – I don’t know. How could I possibly remember, after all these years? She went, that’s all, and I had to let her go.’ She was agitated; she got up. ‘Excuse me – I’ve something to do for a minute.’

  Filled with pity, Fleming heard her hurrying up the stairs. A woman as private as Jean Grant would not weep in public.

  So it looked as if Marcus Lazansky/Lindsay could be scored off the list of suspects. Jean had held a grudge against the young man who had caused her beloved daughter heartache, and it all followed from that.

  And yet, and yet . . . Jean Grant did not strike her as an irrational woman, and this was irrational to a degree. Fleming had a bristling sense of something not quite right. She wished that Tam MacNee had been with her, either to confirm this or to mock her ‘intuition’.

  In accusing Marcus, could Jean be protecting someone? – and suspicion, in the past, had rested on Robert Grant, despite a sturdy alibi. Was it possible the marriage was closer than it had sounded from Jean’s unfeeling remark about digging him up?

  The wedding photograph was on the side-table at her elbow. Fleming picked it up.

  She wouldn’t have recognized Jean, if she hadn’t looked like a darker version of her daughter. She was very young; her face still had softly rounded contours with dark curls framing it. She was wearing a soft, pretty chiffon dress, holding the arm of a burly red-haired man with a ruddy complexion who did, indeed, look like a farmer. He wore an uneasy grin; she looked solemnly towards the camera, as if even then she did not smile readily.

  Life, for Jean, was a serious business. It had been, for them – or had it, until tragedy struck, been good enough? It wasn’t uncommon for marriages to go sour when these things happened. Fleming was trying to frame tactful questions as she heard Jean coming down the stairs again.