Evil for Evil Page 20

  She had a contact in Manchester, DCI Chris Carter, who had worked with her on an earlier case. They’d hit it off a little too well, and she’d discouraged his attempts to keep in touch, but that was years ago. He was probably married by now with a couple of kids, and she was pretty sure he’d do her a favour. She still had the number of the North Manchester Divisional HQ somewhere. She tracked it down, then keyed it in before she could change her mind.

  She crossed her fingers as she asked to speak to DCI Carter. Given Sod’s Law, he would probably be off duty, or even not there any longer …

  But that was his voice saying, ‘Marjory Fleming? Well, well! That’s a name from the past. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. How’s the scene in Manchester?’

  ‘Oh, same old, same old. Kids have gangs now instead of families – doesn’t make for an easy life.’ He sounded weary.

  ‘Sorry to add to the workload, but I’m looking for a favour. We’ve an interesting one at the moment,’ Fleming said. ‘Skeleton in a cave.’

  ‘I read about it,’ he said. ‘Made the nationals with the creepy little detail about the watch.’

  ‘Yes. Pretty sick, that. But it turns out from the DNA report that he’s one of yours – one Andrew Smith.’

  Fleming could almost hear his shrug. ‘Doesn’t immediately ring a bell. Common enough name, of course.’

  ‘That’s the problem. We’re reckoning he’s been dead twelve years, give or take, but they’ve given me a reference for the sample. Any chance you could run a check for me? It’ll take weeks if I make it official.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll get someone on to it …’

  Fleming crossed her fingers again. ‘Any chance you could just press a few buttons right now? You’re obviously at your desk …’

  Carter groaned. ‘If you could see my desk, you wouldn’t ask.’

  ‘Yes, I would. I’m gallus.’

  ‘Gallus?’

  ‘Shameless, with an added dash of chutzpah.’

  ‘You’re certainly pushing your luck. Well, I suppose, just for you, Marjory. Give me the number. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘You’re a star,’ she said gratefully, and switched off the phone. This was definitely her lucky day; she ought to stop and buy a lottery ticket on the way home. She had glanced at her watch impatiently several times, though, before Carter called back.

  ‘I hope you realise crime in Manchester has been going unsolved while three overstretched DCs work for the Galloway constabulary,’ he said. ‘Half an hour, that took. I should bill you for their time.’

  ‘Tam MacNee’s all yours, any time you ask. But go on,’ Fleming prompted.

  ‘It’s certainly an interesting one. Goes back to 1998 – quite an early sample.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Fleming asked, suddenly hopeful.

  Her luck wasn’t that good. ‘Nothing, officially. Seemed to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong company, and got swept up.’

  Her spirits sank again. ‘So – no record?’

  ‘Sorry, no. But I can tell you he had some very nasty little chums – about as nasty as it gets. They were into all the vice stuff in the city – gambling, drugs, prostitution – you name it.’

  ‘But he wasn’t charged?’

  ‘No evidence. There was a big clampdown and he was arrested after a raid on a bar, drinking with a couple of them, but there wasn’t anything to say he was involved. Like I said, found in bad company.’

  ‘Right,’ Fleming said slowly. ‘Thanks, Chris, I owe you one.’

  ‘I’ll get them to send you on the reports, and do a bit of a sniff-around as well.’

  ‘Brilliant. I’ll keep you posted.’ She paused, then added lightly, ‘So, how’s life down there?’

  Carter’s voice warmed. ‘Good, thanks – very good, in fact. I’m engaged now – great girl. You’d like her, Marjory.’

  Fleming smiled. ‘Glad to hear it! Come up to Scotland for your honeymoon and visit us.’

  ‘Might do just that. Good hunting!’

  She was still smiling as she rang off. Chris deserved a great girl and he’d sounded truly happy. Her mind, though, was already racing ahead.

  Lack of evidence wasn’t proof of innocence. Maybe Andrew Smith had just been careful – or lucky. The sadistic manner of his death had made Campbell ask, ‘What did he do?’ Carter had just suggested what it might be.

  There would be victims of the vice trade, and their relatives, who might well feel no suffering was too great. But there would also be men, dangerous and utterly ruthless, who might feel that Smith escaping justice was unfair—

  Or even, she thought suddenly, suspicious. He’s in the bar along with these guys. Suddenly it’s raided, he’s taken in along with them and then released. Could he have been grassing?

  Fleming seized a pad and began scribbling. There’d be no records kept at that time, of course; a snout would just talk directly to an officer he knew, be rewarded with some greasy notes, or a promise to overlook a crime, say … And to safeguard him, they’d arrest him and then let him go. She felt a surge of excitement; she could really be on to something there. But what was the connection with this remote, all but unknown Scottish island?

  Brodie? MacNee had talked of some bad stuff there. She could get him to dig about a bit. If Manchester came up with names of associates, someone would have to head down there, but right now they could find out if any Innellan residents knew Andrew Smith.

  Or at least, they could ask. Finding out might be something else.

  Kerr Brodie was simmering with barely suppressed fury as he left the Kirkcudbright police station, which he had attended ‘by invitation’.

  That always sounded polite, but it was no tea party. He had been grilled for an hour about his past activities and his present activities and had left with the warning ringing in his ears that his future activities had better be confined to knitting and the perusal of the less inflammatory sections of the Bible, if he didn’t want to find himself with the sort of problems that would make the trials of Job look like a walk in the park.

  Brodie was fairly sure the local busies were all piss and wind. They’d got nothing on him – his record was clean and better men had tried and failed to rattle him. It was his guess that now they’d put the frighteners on him they’d relax.

  But even if Ogilvie hadn’t tipped him off, he’d have guessed who was behind it. MacNee would do anything in his power to destroy him, and he certainly wouldn’t give up. While MacNee had him in his sights, there’d be no chance of bringing anything in – or getting anyone out. He couldn’t keep the wretched Fergie in the bothy indefinitely.

  So MacNee had to be neutralised – at least for as long as it took to call in the boat without finding a customs cutter waiting. And suddenly, as Brodie was driving back, the idea came to him. He was fishing for his mobile when it rang.

  He glanced at the number. ‘Lissa,’ he said, without enthusiasm. ‘What do you want?’

  There was a sort of twitter from the other end. He gritted his teeth. ‘I asked what you wanted, Lissa? Right, if it’s nothing, I’ll ring off. I’ve stuff to do.’

  She had started to cry before he switched off the phone, and he grimaced. He’d begun to realise recently that he’d dropped himself right in it, there. She wanted to make it some great love affair, when it was just a sort of sly marking of his territory as alpha male. She now seemed hell-bent on creating some witless drama, without understanding that it would probably lead to them both – or him, at least – being kicked out, which would be a disaster. Lissa’s hysteria could bring everything crashing down about him. She had to be stopped.

  But there were more immediate problems to deal with. He scrolled through his phone book.

  ‘Sammie? I’ve a job for you. Go down round the usual places and see if you can find old Davie. I’ve a wee job for him.’

  Christie Jack was passing through the hall on her way to the kitchen for her tea break as the doorbell rang.
When she saw two uniformed officers on the doorstep, a sergeant and a woman constable, she was pleased at first. Admittedly, she almost said, ‘Better late than never,’ but she was inviting them in politely as Matt came through from the office, Mika as usual at his side.

  The officers looked askance at the dog as Lovatt stepped forward, but it sat on command and neither said anything, though Christie noticed the constable keeping a wary eye on it.

  They had come, she then realised, not to investigate the gate which had been deliberately opened, but ‘acting on a complaint from a member of the public’ about negligence in keeping dangerous animals. No, it was not policy to disclose the name.

  No prizes for guessing who, though. Looking up at Matt, Christie saw his jaw tense and his face go red, apart from the burn area, starkly white in contrast. For a moment she thought he would lose it completely – she would have – but with a restraint that made her admire him even more, he said calmly, ‘Let me take you out and you can see for yourself what precautions we take. We’ve just improved the security.’

  He led the way down the short drive and along the rough road by the shore, Christie beside him and Mika at his heels. The officers followed, the constable making sure she was as far away from the dog as possible.

  In the field nearest the farm buildings, the red deer hinds were restless, roaming to and fro and sniffing the air, ready for mating. The barking roar of the penned stags as evening came on was so familiar to Christie now that she barely registered it, but she could never get used to the musky, acrid stench and she heard the sergeant gagging. Served him right!

  Still, the separate enclosures were gravely inspected. The stags became unsettled, more aggressive – and indeed they were an alarming sight, dripping saliva as they bellowed a challenge. Matt pointed to the heavy padlocks on the gates, and they were solemnly rattled in turn.

  ‘That seems quite satisfactory,’ the sergeant said. ‘Thank you, sir. We won’t take up any more of your time.’

  Christie could sense Matt’s frustration, but he said, mildly enough, ‘What progress have you made about finding who turned the stag loose on Sunday?’

  From the blank look on the young woman’s face, Christie guessed that she knew nothing about it; the sergeant said, indifferently, ‘I understand the injured lady doesn’t want to make a complaint, so there won’t be any follow-up. Maybe you should have installed the padlocks sooner, but—’

  That was when Christie lost it. ‘She doesn’t want to make a complaint? Well, I do. I was in charge of that animal,’ she pointed towards Rudolf with a shaking finger, ‘and someone deliberately opened the gate I had shut. I had to put myself in danger to stop him having to be shot. Someone is victimising Major Lovatt. What more has to happen before you take all this seriously? Someone getting killed? And you could try looking at who’s behind it—’

  ‘Christie!’ Matt’s voice, the voice of military authority, cracked across her like a whiplash, stopping her in mid breath. ‘That’s enough.’

  Blinded by tears, she turned away and half-ran back to the house, stumbling up the stairs to throw herself on her bed. What a fool she was, what an idiot, losing her temper when Matt was trying to keep the police onside! It made her sound hysterical and unbalanced.

  And perhaps she was. Christie had been badly shaken and she was having problems again, not sleeping because she was afraid to dream.

  The atmosphere in the house, too, was growing more toxic day by day. Lissa was blatantly flirting with Kerr, sometimes with a sidelong look at Matt as if she were taunting him. She kept making sly little gibes at Christie too, the sort you couldn’t reply to without sounding oversensitive, but they were demoralising.

  Christie hadn’t had a full-blown flashback for weeks now, but though she did her best to avoid the thoughts that might prompt it, she could sense them hovering in the dark recesses of her mind, along with the other things she had resolved not to think about, waiting, waiting for the barriers she had tried to put up to crumble.

  ‘Good news tonight,’ Fleming said as she started the evening briefing. ‘First, break-in at the off-licence. Our two prime suspects’ alibi was that they were drinking all evening at the Brig Inn in Newton Stewart along with a third, who confirmed it – except he said they were at the Masonic Arms.’

  Amid laughter, she went on, ‘And curiously enough none of the bar staff in either pub remembers seeing them, so with any luck they’ll cop a plea. We’re not exactly talking master criminals here, but it all improves the clean-up rate. Well done that team.’

  There was a ripple of ironic applause and one of the younger detectives went pink with gratification.

  ‘More importantly,’ Fleming said, ‘we now have a name for our victim in the cave – Andrew Smith, from Manchester. No criminal record …’ She explained the background, then added, ‘There’ll be a press statement tomorrow, but I’d rather it wasn’t local gossip until then. I’ll be giving out detailed tasks in the morning and when we get lists of his associates from Manchester we’ll have a power of work to do there.

  ‘Right. Next thing, I want a follow-up on that domestic last week. Wife’s just out of hospital so there’s a chance she might be sober enough to give a statement – if she wasn’t so drunk then that she can’t remember.’

  She tied up a few more loose ends, and finished the meeting. Macdonald and Campbell followed her out.

  Campbell was, as usual, looking impassive but Macdonald said eagerly, ‘Would you like us to make a start on Innellan tonight, boss? I’ve no commitments and Campbell’s dead keen to get out the house – his mother-in-law’s cooking, and she’s into boiled fish.’

  Fleming smiled, wondering if Macdonald’s enthusiasm had anything to do with a certain young lady, but she wasn’t going to tease him. ‘Well, I’m sympathetic, naturally, Ewan. It doesn’t justify overtime, though – nothing’s going to happen before tomorrow. Then you can try to establish some sort of connection. It’s reaching a bit to imagine Manchester villains found Lovatt Island with a pin. OK?’

  As she left them, Macdonald turned to Campbell. ‘I did my best for you. Bad luck.’

  ‘Bummer,’ Campbell agreed. Then he said, ‘They don’t know that, mind.’

  ‘A couple of pints and a game of pool? You’re on.’

  ‘And a pie,’ Campbell said firmly, and went to make his phone call.

  The black Granada was driving very slowly around the warren of streets behind Glasgow Central station.

  ‘There he is!’ the passenger cried. ‘Stop!’

  ‘About bloody time, Sammie,’ the driver grumbled. ‘I’ve more to do than chase sodding alkie deadbeats all over Glasgow.’

  ‘Favour to a friend. The kind of friend you don’t say no to.’ Sammie got out and approached a man sitting on some old bits of cardboard, propped against the wall in a dark, urine-smelling close.

  There was a chill wind whipping down the alley and his mittened fingers were blue with cold, but they were clutching a not quite empty half-bottle of cheap whisky and he looked as if he was feeling no pain. His stubbled cheeks were brick red, roughened by exposure, blotched and mottled, with a bluish tinge around his thin lips. His grey hair was long and wild, caught in a rubber band at the back, and he was wearing a filthy ancient overcoat, held round him by a piece of string. As Sammie approached, he narrowed bloodshot, rheumy eyes at him suspiciously.

  ‘Wha’ are you after?’ he slurred. ‘Lea’ me alone.’

  Sammie wrinkled his nose at the smell as he bent over him. ‘I’ve a job for you, Davie. Come on, upsy-daisy.’

  With some reluctance, he grasped his arm and tried to urge him to his feet.

  ‘I’m no’ – I’m no’ wantin’ a job. Lea’ me alone.’

  Ungently, Sammie levered him up. He was no more than skin and bone, a small man, light as a bird. He clutched wildly at the cardboard he had been sitting on. ‘I’m needin’ that. And ma bags …’

  Sammie glanced at the three plastic bags that had bee
n stacked beside him, full of dirty rags. They stank too.

  ‘We’ll get you some gear. You’re not needing them.’

  ‘I am so! I am so!’ The old man, weaving on his feet, was shouting now, starting to attract attention from a couple of passers-by.

  Grim-faced, Sammie grabbed the bags and bundled Davie, still clutching his bottle and his cardboard, across the pavement to the car.

  Davie stopped in alarm. ‘Here – wha’ the hell’s this? Where’re you takin’ me?’

  ‘To get a drink.’ Sammie used the magic word.

  Davie’s face cleared. ‘I wouldna say no, if you’re offerin’.’

  ‘Here!’ the driver protested as Sammie opened the back door to chuck in the bags, and Davie, preceded by his unique aroma, climbed in. ‘You never said I’d to have him in the car. Take me weeks to get rid of the smell.’

  ‘All right for you,’ Sammie said bitterly. ‘I’ve to take him back to my flat and drive him down to Brodie tomorrow.’

  DI Fleming was getting up from her desk when she paused with a sudden thought. Tony Drummond.

  He’d been on her mind; she’d been annoyed that he’d tried to spice up a fading story with her remark about detectives being sent to pursue enquiries about the stag attack, but she still owed him a favour. She had some sympathy with him, too, having his big local scoop annexed by the big guys. The rest of the press would get the DNA story tomorrow, and if he got it tonight, it would be her quid pro quo to keep him happy.

  ‘The polis with the wrong end of the stick, as usual!’ Kerr Brodie gave a hearty laugh. ‘It’d be Sorley, no doubt. Have to hand it to him – getting the police to check out us instead of them has a bit of style. I think it’s quite funny.’

  ‘Do you? I don’t.’ Matt Lovatt clamped his mouth shut, as if afraid of what he might say next.

  ‘Oh, goodness, Matt,’ Lissa tittered. ‘You have to keep a sense of humour! Come on, Kerr, we won’t let him get us all depressed with his moods.’