Cold in the Earth Read online

  ‘Here – take him through here.’ A woman had emerged from the dining-room and was holding open the door to the small residents’ lounge on the other side of the hall. She was tall, with an air of easy authority; she had reddish-brown hair, neatly shaped, and a wide, good-humoured mouth but, Laura thought, her hazel eyes were cool and watchful. She wouldn’t miss much.

  It took a few minutes for Max to regain control. Visibly embarrassed, he fumbled for a handkerchief. ‘I can’t think why I did that. Sorry. Not my style.’

  Before Laura could speak, the other woman said, ‘You’ve had a considerable shock, Mr Mason. You were extremely helpful to us this morning, helping us to deal with your aunt until DS Mason could get here, and this is a very natural delayed reaction.’ She turned to Laura. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Fleming. And you are . . . ?’

  ‘Laura Harvey.’ A raised eyebrow invited her to elaborate and she added, ‘I’m here doing a piece for the Sunday Tribune on the local effects of foot-and-mouth.’

  She felt, rather than saw, the woman stiffen. ‘You’re a journalist?’

  ‘A psychotherapist. It’s a feature article.’

  It didn’t look as if DI Fleming’s opinion of psychotherapists was a lot higher than her opinion of journalists. ‘And your connection with Mr Mason?’

  Laura had no intention of going into that. ‘We know each other in London.’

  ‘I see.’ Fleming was clearly putting two and two together and making about twenty, but if she chose to jump to conclusions it wasn’t Laura’s job to stop her. She said nothing, and Fleming turned back to Max.

  ‘Are you all right now, Mr Mason?’

  ‘Oh, sure. My father’s murdered my mother, but hey! I’m cool with that.’ Max was recovering his composure.

  Colour rose in Fleming’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Yeah, fine. But look, I’ve had about as much as I can take for today. Leave me with my friend, OK?’

  ‘Of course. But perhaps I could send someone to talk to you tomorrow, Ms Harvey? Nine o’clock?’ She went out.

  ‘Tell me about it, Max,’ Laura said gently and again prepared to listen. She hadn’t done this much listening in the course of a day since she was in New York.

  ‘He’s upstairs with his mother, ma’am. The doctor’s just arrived to give her a sedative.’

  ‘Let’s be thankful for small mercies,’ Fleming said with feeling. ‘Look, when DS Mason comes down again, tell him to stop by my office. I’m going back to HQ now with MacNee.’

  Her jaw aching with nervous tension, Marjory went back out to the car. And she’d thought she’d had problems when she got up this morning! She’d only dealt with a murder once before, a domestic where the victim’s husband phoned the police to tell them what he’d done, which wasn’t exactly like being Senior Investigating Officer on something like this.

  ‘Right,’ she said to MacNee as she drove out of the car park. ‘Tell me what I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Lunch,’ her companion said bitterly.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! I think there’s a bag of apples in the back there if you’re desperate.’

  ‘I’m desperate.’ He leaned over to scrabble in the back seat, found two apples and handed her one. She shrugged and bit into it, though she was too strung-up to feel hungry.

  ‘Secure the site. I’ve done that. Have the police surgeon pronounce death officially.’

  MacNee snorted. ‘Not hard to tell, when the body parts aren’t actually connected.’

  She gave him an impatient look. ‘This is a checklist. I like putting in things I’ve done so I can cross them off. Notify the Chief Constable and the Procurator Fiscal. Open a policy book to record why I made every decision to make it easier for the defence to take me apart in court. How am I doing?’

  ‘Alert the Press Officer? They’ll be over us like blow-flies.’

  ‘They were seeing to that at HQ. But for any favour don’t mention blow-flies. When I get back I’m going to put a bomb under MAFF and make sure they remove all the carcasses today and get on with disinfecting the place. With us all tramping around and vehicles going back and forth we’ll be spreading the virus everywhere we go. Let alone the smell . . .’

  Fleming shuddered. When they had arrived at the farm it had been like some scene from Grand Guignol. There were the bodies of slaughtered cattle everywhere, beginning to bloat as the stomach gases fermented. Foxes and crows had been at them already, tearing at the carcasses and pecking at the dead eyes. A black miasma of flies kept up a low, sinister buzzing.

  The stench was nauseating; the constable with a clipboard logging all visits to the scene was looking green and trying to find a position upwind. He pointed them down the drive from the house, past the maze which Marjory remembered from her childhood, even more overgrown now. A feeble sun was struggling to find its way through the clouds and a fresh wind was blowing in from the sea, mercifully in the right direction, clean and salty, and Marjory drew in deep breaths to clear her lungs.

  As they entered the field, it all seemed surprisingly tranquil. A flock of black and white oyster-catchers had alighted there to feed, strutting about on their red stilt-like legs and probing the grass with long red beaks, but as the metal field-gate clanged they swirled up in alarm with raucous cries.

  A screen of polythene sheeting had been erected already and Fleming and MacNee made their way towards it. A big yellow digger was parked nearby; its operator, leaning against it and smoking nervously, stubbed out his cigarette and stood up expectantly, then, as they went into the shelter, sighed and lit up again.

  Marjory braced herself. Like every police officer, she had experience of road accidents and the horror of tangled metal and fragile human flesh. But this . . .

  Curiously enough, it was less disturbing, not more. What was in the pit, three feet deep, was not immediately recognisable as a body; disturbed, apparently, by the claw-bucket of the digger, the skeletal parts, caked in earth, had been dispersed, dehumanising them. What tissue remained, mainly on the torso, was black and leather-like, reminding her of ancient mummified bodies seen in a museum, the sort they found in peat bogs – and, of course, the soil around here was damp and peaty. There were a few grey, rotting rags of what must have been clothing but there was only one thing to suggest a person who had lived and laughed and suffered: a long strand of earth-clogged hair still clinging to a patch of shrivelled scalp. Marjory turned her eyes hastily away and went back out with some relief into the cold fresh air.

  The surgeon had been, the SOCOs were on their way. They would need to establish an incident room and the Glen Inn, handily placed just a couple of miles away, was the obvious place. Under a certain amount of pressure the proprietor agreed that they could have the dining-room; it was an added bonus when they discovered that two of the guests about to be displaced to the bar for meals were Max Mason and his aunt. Max Mason’s reaction to the news of what they had found at Chapelton and his aunt’s subsequent hysteria had been a rich source of information, or speculation at the very least.

  ‘Do you reckon the guy’s right? That his dad killed his mammy?’ MacNee’s utterance was somewhat impeded by a mouthful of apple.

  ‘It’s possible. I remember my parents saying she just walked out on him, but you’d think she’d have relatives asking questions if she just disappeared.’

  ‘Have to bring in the old boy, won’t we? Where is he?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? He’s in hospital with a stroke. I asked Conrad about him yesterday and apparently he’s stable but he can’t move or speak.’

  MacNee groaned. ‘That’s all we need. A defence agent’s dream – won’t even have to warn him to say nothing under questioning.

  ‘Still, at least if it’s her we’ll know when it happened, for a start. Sixteen years ago she disappeared, the son said. So Conrad would have been – what? Twenty, maybe? That’ll be useful. Not often you get an inside track like that working on a case! Get him to deal with his mother – anyone
else would ask for danger money.’

  Fleming looked at him sideways. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘If it’s not her, you mean?’

  ‘If it is her, Conrad’s a suspect. He’s close family. I’m calling him in to tell him I’m taking him off active duty as of now.’

  11

  When Laura came down the stairs at nine o’clock the following morning, there were two people waiting for her in the hall of the hotel: a short, dark man wearing a black leather jacket and a laconic expression, and a young, nervous-looking policewoman in uniform. The door to the dining-room was open on a scene of considerable activity; the front door was open and a man in workman’s overalls was bringing in rolls of cable.

  The man came forward. ‘Ms Harvey? Detective Sergeant MacNee.’ He flipped open a plastic wallet to give a glimpse of an identity card. ‘This is Constable Johnston. We won’t keep you long – just a brief statement, that’s all.’

  Laura followed them through to the dining-room. It wasn’t an ideal place for an interview. It was very noisy with computers being carried in, telephones being installed and somewhere someone using an electric drill. Uniformed officers and detectives were going to and fro, having discussions and giving instructions; in the car park outside there seemed to be constant arrivals and departures of police vehicles and other cars.

  The questions were fairly perfunctory, like ticks being put in boxes so that it could be said to have been done. Sitting at a table in one corner, she told the police when she’d arrived at the hotel and how long she planned to stay, that she was researching an article on foot-and-mouth and that she had never been here before. They didn’t ask her how she knew Max and she didn’t volunteer the information; there seemed little point in introducing irrelevant complications.

  The policewoman said nothing, confining herself to laboriously recording Laura’s answers in her notebook. MacNee glanced at her irritably once or twice, giving Laura the impression that she must be falling down on the job of asking routine questions and he didn’t like having to ask them all himself. Was this an etiquette based on seniority, or was it perhaps to leave him free to assess her guilty reaction to such penetrating questions as ‘What is your home address?’

  Certainly, as MacNee had promised, it didn’t take long. A statement would be prepared and brought to her for checking and signing, he told her, and thanked her for her cooperation.

  A young man in jeans and a dark green fleece had been hovering nearby. He moved forward as Laura stood up to go, but the policewoman spoke for the first time. ‘Sorry. I didn’t get your address down. Sorry.’

  There was a ‘Tchach!’ of impatience from MacNee; he turned to his waiting colleague. ‘Were you wanting something?’

  The man held out a transparent plastic package. ‘DI Fleming asked me to bring you this. The SOCOs found it yesterday at the site and she wants you to show it to the son to see if he can identify it.’

  ‘Right.’ MacNee took it from him and set it on the table. ‘I’ve to see him at nine-thirty. It’d be useful if he could give us something definite to go on.’

  The policewoman was experiencing some difficulty with ‘Marylebone’. As Laura spelled it for her, her eyes went to the package on the table. It held a thin chain, still looped through a pendant, grimy with the earth which still clung to it but recognisable as gold. The pendant was in the form of a prancing bull.

  Laura stared, feeling the blood drain from her face. Her knees turned weak and there was a ringing inside her head. The policewoman was staring at her stupidly as Laura groped blindly for a chair and collapsed clumsily on to it.

  The two men broke off their conversation. She heard MacNee say sharply, ‘For God’s sake, she’s going to faint!’ and then a grey cloud smothered sound and feeling.

  When she came to, she was stretched out flat on the floor; Lisa Thomson, holding a glass of water, was kneeling anxiously beside her in front of a huddle of awkward-looking men. MacNee, standing at the table where the policewoman was still seated looking bemused, was berating her.

  ‘Could you not have seen she wasn’t well, woman, instead of sitting there looking glaikit? She could have hurt herself if I hadn’t caught her.’

  Laura struggled to sit up. ‘I’m so sorry! I don’t know what—’ Then recollection came flooding back and she put her hand up to her head.

  Lisa put her arm round her shoulders. ‘It’s all right. Take it easy now, and have a wee drink. Then we’ll get you upstairs for a lie-down and you’ll be fine.’

  Obediently Laura sipped and MacNee came over to help her up. ‘Dearie me!’ he said jocularly. ‘We don’t usually get witnesses fainting until after we’ve brought out the thumbscrews.’

  Then he noticed that Laura was looking towards the table, her lips quivering. He followed the direction of her brimming eyes. ‘The necklace!’ he exclaimed.

  Silent tears welled up and spilled, unheeded, down her cheeks. ‘My sister’s,’ she said brokenly. ‘She bought it in Spain after she’d run with the bulls. She said she would always wear it because it was – it was the most wonderful experience of her life.’

  According to the tasking group, there was another foot-and-mouth protest scheduled for today. Thanking whatever gods protected deserving police officers – even if in any profession other than divinity they’d be done for dereliction of duty – Marjory Fleming reflected that challenging though the role of Senior Investigating Officer in a murder enquiry might be, at least it meant she wouldn’t be assigned to other duties.

  She’d had to fly by the seat of her pants yesterday but she hadn’t made any major blunders, which was a good confidence-booster. Then she’d burned the midnight oil to put herself through a refresher course on procedure – always a life-jacket in stormy seas – and this morning she felt much more in control. She’d had a very helpful meeting with the Super, too; Donald Bailey had been SIO on a murder case in his time and she’d been able to talk through some of her concerns.

  Not the least of these was the problem of a trail gone cold. Where did you begin to investigate a crime that was, if Max Mason was to be believed, sixteen years old?

  Bailey put his fingers together in a contemplative pyramid and pronounced, ‘In exactly the same way as if it happened yesterday. You search the scene, you question the suspects, you talk to witnesses, you commission the reports. And you look for the same old things: means, motive and opportunity.

  ‘And in this particular case, it appears at the moment, you have the considerable advantage of knowing not only who the victim is – which is so often the most difficult thing to establish – but you also have a very plausible prime suspect.’

  Fleming grimaced. ‘Try proving it, though, when he can’t even answer the charges. I phoned the hospital and Jake Mason’s condition is not only unchanged but unlikely to change. Ever.’

  ‘Imprisoned already, in his own body, without so much as a trial,’ Bailey mused. ‘Let’s hope he’s guilty. You know, Marjory, this may well turn out to be one of those cases where we can’t close the file but we NFE it.’

  She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘No Further Enquiry’s never a very satisfactory outcome, is it? Cheaper, though – that can’t be bad.’

  ‘Indeed. By the way, what’s the situation vis-à-vis DS Mason? I gather you’ve taken the precaution of suspending him meantime?’

  Fleming sighed. ‘He wasn’t happy about it, and that’s an understatement. Perhaps I could have assigned him to other duties but in the circumstances it seemed a bit risky having him on the premises with possible access to information that some smartass lawyer could claim later he shouldn’t have had, and I certainly don’t want accusations that we assumed he was in the clear because he was a copper. I’ll probably lift the suspension if everything points to Jake Mason, but at least we’ll have shown willing.’

  ‘That seems like good thinking. Try and speed it up, though – we’re overstretched already.’

  ‘I know. Speaking o
f which, I’d better get back to my desk. Thanks, Donald.’ She got up and he rose too and went to hold the door open for her in his old-fashioned way.

  ‘A final piece of advice,’ he said. ‘As SIO your primary task is coordinating and directing. And budgeting too, of course – our masters never let us forget that.

  ‘Your detectives are your eyes and ears on an investigation. It’s your job to be their brain.’

  ‘Will you tell them or shall I?’ Marjory’s response had been flippant but she took the advice to heart. She couldn’t waste her time flat-footing it around, but had to be sure of getting every scrap of relevant information from interviews, without being inundated with details about the witness’s mother’s maiden name. She’d called a briefing meeting for later this morning when she would spell it out and by then she hoped to have Max Mason’s identification of his mother’s pendant to give the direction of the enquiry some immediate legitimacy. Unless, of course, like most men he never noticed anything a woman was wearing.

  DNA tests were the next step; she was just making a note to get one set up for Max Mason when MacNee came in and the whole thing went pear-shaped.

  Fleming listened in stunned silence as MacNee recounted the morning’s events.

  ‘So then Max comes in just as the wifie’s taking Laura upstairs for a lie-down and she tells him what’s happened and then we have him going doolally too,’ he finished. ‘I tell you, it fair takes it out of you.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I thought yesterday there was something else about that girl being there besides the research, something she wasn’t mentioning. From what she said it sounded as if she and Max were an item but the way she reacted to him didn’t back that up.

  ‘Did you find out what the sister was doing at Chapelton?’

  ‘It was kinda vague. He said she was a Girl Friday or something for a few months, but we couldn’t question either of them, with Harvey looking as if she’d collapse again any minute and him glaring at us as if it was all our fault. We’d have had complaints of police brutality before you could say skean dhu.’