Evil for Evil Page 24

  With a sinking heart, he drove up to the house.

  Melissa Lovatt was asleep when her husband knocked tentatively on the door of the side ward. Her dark hair was loose on the pillow, and when she opened her bloodshot eyes, they looked too big for her pinched face. Seeing him she smiled tremulously.

  ‘Lissa, I’m sorry about all this. How are you?’ He took the chair by the side of the bed. An oxygen cylinder with a breathing mask stood on the other side, and she looked very fragile as she struggled up against her pillows, eyes filled with tears.

  She seized his hand, and kissed it. ‘You saved me!’ she cried, her voice roughened and husky. ‘That woman left me to burn to death, and you risked everything to save my life. Kerr told me.’

  They had been in touch already, then. Lovatt said as lightly as he could, ‘Oh, he was exaggerating—’

  But she went on. ‘Oh Matt, we’ve drifted, I know. But that showed me how much you really, really care – enough to die for my sake! It’s not too late, is it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ What else could he say? The hollow feeling spreading through him was – inappropriate, and he fought it down. Reconciliation might – or might not – lie in the future, but for the moment, there was something that must be cleared up.

  ‘Christie didn’t leave you to burn, Lissa. She thought she had wakened you, and at that time the fire was only in the wing.’

  Lissa withdrew her hand, giving him a contemptuous look. ‘Matt, you know what I’m like. You know we have separate rooms because every time you turned over it woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

  Lovatt’s impression had been that they had stopped sleeping together when the contrast between the remoteness of their daily dealings and the intimacy of the marital bed became too stark to be tolerable for either of them, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he said, ‘I just assumed you’d taken sleeping pills, and there was no reason for Christie to know that and try harder to wake you.’

  There was a tiny pause, and then Lissa smiled. ‘Oh, is that what she told you? Darling, I’ve said this before – she’s got a massive crush on you, poor thing.’ She gave a little cough, turned to pick up the glass of water at her bedside and took a sip. ‘Sorry, my throat. Oh, maybe she didn’t start the fire just so she could get rid of me and rescue you, but it must have seemed the ideal opportunity.’

  Lovatt stared at her. ‘You don’t think that, do you? You often take pills—’

  She cut across him. ‘Well, I didn’t last night. I’d had a stressful day, I was tired, so I didn’t need them. I’m sorry if I’m shattering illusions about your little soldier, but I almost died, you know.’

  Her voice had taken on that whingeing tone of self-pity that set his teeth on edge, but she coughed again, reminding him of what she had been through. He said lamely, ‘Of course I know. And I can only be thankful you didn’t.’

  It was a relief when a nurse came in with a chart and some medication, giving him an excuse to leave. Lissa was likely to be released next day, apparently, and she would phone him when she knew the time.

  Lovatt felt more depressed than ever as he drove back to Innellan. Surely what Lissa had said couldn’t be true? There had been an unpleasant, spiteful tone to her voice and certainly he’d dismissed previous comments about Christie out of hand. He wasn’t a vain man; he’d seen nothing more in their relationship than friendship between comrades.

  But now he began to remember small things: her lingering over her lunch if they were in the kitchen alone; her going on the rounds with him if she’d nothing else to do, but never going with Kerr; her pressing him to come to the pub the other night when it was obvious Lissa wouldn’t go …

  He’d had a lot of experience in assessing young people, and he’d been good at it. You had to be, in his job, otherwise your men ended up dead. Christie had always impressed him as a great kid, straight as a die, the best sort of soldier: cheerful, competent and certainly brave – she’d risked her life to stop Rudolf being shot.

  Yes, she had. But that wasn’t exactly rational, was it? And there was plenty of evidence that the ideal qualities for a soldier weren’t always ideal when it came to civilian life, especially after the sort of experiences combat put them through. Achieving your objective was drilled into you from day one, and if you weren’t seeing things quite straight …

  He couldn’t afford to think like that. He put it firmly out of his mind; he’d plenty of other things to worry about. Georgia had offered them her spare rooms for as long as they needed them, but they couldn’t impose on her indefinitely. Then there would be insurance claims, too, and the work of the farm still had to go on.

  The gawpers, at least, had lost interest by the time he got back to Innellan. A policeman was still on duty by the blue-and-white tape, but the site was quiet. A couple of firemen were checking on loose masonry, under the supervision of Williamson, the fire chief, but all the engines had gone.

  The smell of smoke, and the stark skeleton of the wing, in its sea of mud, brought back the horror. Lovatt’s stomach churned, and when Williamson came over to him, it took a mighty effort to make the appropriately grateful noises.

  The fire chief was almost offensively cheerful. ‘Yes, they did a great job, the lads. Of course, the wing’s a hazard – have to be demolished as a priority – but we’ve saved the main house for you. Get the joiners to block it off, and it’s a cleaning job after that, once the worst of the smoke has cleared.’

  ‘Something to be grateful for, certainly,’ Lovatt said. It sounded as if he, at least, would be able to camp there before long. He walked round to the back where once his office had been, while Williamson explained exactly what had happened.

  It was more than he could bear to hear just at the moment. He made an excuse as soon as he decently could, and was turning to go when his eye was caught by a sturdy metal cabinet standing with the rest of the rubble, still intact though warped and twisted by the heat.

  He pointed to it. ‘There’s some dangerous stuff in there,’ he said. ‘Veterinary medicines – it’ll need proper disposal. And there would be a metal bin as well, with hazardous waste – skull and crossbones on the top.’

  ‘Thanks, sir. I’ll see to that.’ Williamson walked over to give the instructions as Lovatt plodded off towards the Smugglers Inn.

  ‘No sign of any bin, Chief,’ one of the firemen called. ‘I’ve raked through the ashes, but it’s not there.’

  ‘Not a lot we can do, then,’ Williamson said. ‘They carted away a lot of stuff already. That’s fine, lads. Finish up, and I’ll get you back for your dinner.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The press conference went badly. DI Fleming had appeared, along with the press officer, to explain that DS MacNee would have been there himself but had taken his father home to be cared for, though the press officer had warned that this wouldn’t go down well. The press liked their prey served up fresh and preferably bleeding, she said, but conceded that MacNee in his present state of mind was unlikely to do himself any favours.

  Fleming’s explanation provoked a ripple of scornful laughter. ‘Bit late for the caring son bit now, isn’t it?’ one hack sneered, and it was clear that as a plea in mitigation, the carefully worded statement had failed to temper the sentences they would write.

  At least press conferences didn’t last for ever. Fleming was figuratively mopping her brow as she escaped, but frying pans and fire were in her mind as she headed towards the super’s office for the second time that morning.

  The first time hadn’t been much fun either. Donald Bailey, who tended to take professional problems as a personal insult, was tetchy about events at Innellan. He had been particularly irritated that the recent incidents, unconnected to the murder, that had caught the media’s attention were regularly giving them material to run the story for yet another day.

  ‘What I want to know, Marjory, is what’s behind it all,’ he had said, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers across his well-ro
unded stomach. ‘And it’s not enough for you to say you don’t know. It’s your job to know.’ His plump cheeks were pouched by a moue of disapproval.

  Fleming looked at his corrugated brow, which seemed to have an ambition to reach the back of his head, and found herself eying the heavy paperweight, topped with crossed golf clubs and an artistically placed ball, which lay on his desk with a certain longing.

  But she said, in placatory tones, ‘We’re doing our level best to find that out, Donald,’ and proceeded to give an extensive, detailed and boring report on deployment, until he showed signs of restiveness and interrupted, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll leave that to you. Let me know immediately of any developments. The chief constable is anxious about it, you know.’

  Fleming had left, congratulating herself on having sustained only surface wounds. She hadn’t, however, reckoned on returning so soon with more bad news. Bailey’s fear of hostile headlines was all but pathological, and this sort of tabloid scandal would leave him irascible and unreasonable for days.

  ‘Gardening leave,’ was his immediate reaction. ‘I can’t imagine how the man could let this happen to his own father—’

  ‘I did explain—’ Fleming put in, but he cut across her.

  ‘I’m not interested in the sordid details. Just see he’s off the premises for the next bit. Put out a statement that he’s been granted compassionate leave – that should put us in the clear.’

  She was dismayed. ‘Donald, we’re under strength already. We’ve three fewer detectives than we had this time last year—’

  ‘In a time of economic stringency,’ he said portentously, ‘we all have to exert ourselves to work that bit harder. The job has to be done, Marjory, and it’s your responsibility to see that it is. But I don’t want to see MacNee again till this blows over. And that’s final.’

  Trying vainly to think of an instance of Bailey exerting himself – or even missing a single golf game – Fleming left muttering resentfully. MacNee was her most effective officer and she needed all the manpower she could muster at the moment.

  There were half a dozen messages waiting when she got back, but she didn’t sit down at her desk. She went to the window and looked out at the plane trees, the leaves turning golden now, and down on to the busy high street, without really seeing the townsfolk of Kirkluce going about their daily business. Unconsciously, she was tapping her finger on her front teeth.

  She was getting a very, very bad feeling about Innellan. The island, with its strange voices and its nasty secret. A dangerous animal set loose. A house burning down.

  It was easy enough to find a rationale for the latter two, especially in the light of a campaign of persecution. Macdonald and Campbell were, she hoped, even now giving the Donaldsons and Sorley a hard time. But perhaps that was too easy?

  Andrew Smith. The Manchester force had done an official check now, but it turned up no more than Carter had told her informally: there was no Andrew Smith on the Missing Persons Register and media publicity hadn’t produced anyone claiming to know an Andrew Smith whose body this might have been, apart from a few of the usual nutters who could be discounted. If he’d had a more distinctive name it would have helped, but even now they weren’t in a position to flesh out the bones which had been stripped of everything.

  Was there a pattern to the events, a pattern she just wasn’t seeing? If there was, she reflected grimly, the next figure in the tapestry was unpredictable – unpredictable, and almost certainly ugly.

  Hatred. The word suddenly came into Fleming’s head. Hatred had left Andrew Smith to die a hideous death. Fire-raising as an expression of hatred and anger was a psychological cliché. The stag incident had risked innocent lives to strike at Matt Lovatt.

  She needed to talk to him again. She knew what he would say – that it was the result of the Donaldsons’ grudge against him. Certainly, there was precedent: over on the west coast a house belonging to an impresario had been burnt to the ground a while ago, and that was almost certainly local resentment. They’d never managed to find enough evidence among the ashes for a prosecution, though, which wasn’t an encouraging thought.

  Despite that, something was telling her she needed to dig deeper with Lovatt. He was a strange man, with what popular psychology liked to term ‘issues’, and certainly MacNee had thought there was something going on beneath that polite and pleasant exterior.

  MacNee. She was going to have to phone and tell him of Bailey’s ukase. Could she see him meekly accepting it? Could she hell! So she’d then have to spend time and energy making sure neither the superintendent nor the press found out that he hadn’t.

  ‘Just routine questions, miss, if you don’t mind.’ Macdonald and Campbell introduced themselves, and Elena Tindall waved them inside.

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you much, but you’d better come in.’

  A good-looking woman, Macdonald thought, as they went into the sitting room with its huge window on to the bay: slim, blonde, elegant even in casual jeans and long-sleeved white T-shirt. Good-looking, yes, but remote, forbidding – no, that wasn’t the word. Guarded, that was it. She seemed on edge, with a tic flickering just above her left eye. No wonder, with all that had been going on; it was surprising that she hadn’t packed in the holiday and gone home.

  They took her name, Natalie Thomson, and her address, 14 Church Street, Solihull, and her age, thirty. Macdonald saw Campbell raise his eyebrows fractionally at this, and he’d have thought she was older himself. Older, but well preserved, though he didn’t think she’d thank him for that.

  ‘Here on holiday?’ he asked, and she nodded.

  ‘Hope this hasn’t ruined it completely.’

  Elena gave a small, tight smile. ‘It hasn’t exactly improved it. But at least it’s a break – and the weather hasn’t been too bad. I’ve had lots of long walks.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  Campbell’s blunt question seemed to take her by surprise, and Macdonald saw her eyes flicker. She fiddled with one of the bracelets she was wearing, intricately engraved silver cuffs.

  ‘I’m … I’m in the fashion business,’ she said, and moved on rapidly. ‘Anyway, I expect you want to know about last night.’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  She didn’t invite them to sit down, as if to make sure the interview was kept short. ‘I’d gone to bed quite early. The sirens woke me and I came through here to see what was happening. The whole sky was lit up – I didn’t put on the light or anything, just went over to the window.’

  ‘A good viewpoint,’ Macdonald said. ‘Did you notice anyone moving about?’

  ‘The fire engines had just arrived and there was a crowd gathering. I watched for a while, but I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep so I flung on some clothes and went down. Just about everyone in the village must have been there, I’d guess.

  ‘Once we heard everyone was safe and they took the woman off in an ambulance, we all drifted away. That’s all, I’m afraid. How is she?’

  ‘The statement from the hospital is that she’s making a good recovery and should be discharged shortly,’ Macdonald said. ‘Just a couple more questions. Were you in the village earlier yesterday evening?’

  ‘No. You perhaps know I had an unfortunate encounter with a stag earlier this week and it’s left me a bit nervous about going out at night.’

  Macdonald nodded sympathetically. ‘I can imagine. So – nothing suspicious that you’ve seen? Nothing out of the ordinary that might relate to this?’

  Elena’s dark-blue eyes met his squarely. ‘Nothing. Sorry. Except … well, it’s probably irrelevant …’

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted.

  ‘It was just … last night, when I got back after the fire, it sounded as if they were having a party in the chalet along the road, and I thought it was a funny thing to do just then.’

  Macdonald and Campbell exchanged glances. ‘Did you see who it was?’ Macdonald asked.

  ‘They came past the window – the man who seem
s to be living there and two other men, one of them quite a bit older, I’d say.’

  Macdonald nodded. ‘Sorley and the Donaldsons that’d be. Thanks, that’s very helpful. Nothing else? Well, if anything occurs to you, however trivial, don’t hesitate to get in touch.’

  ‘Of course.’ She went towards the door to show them out.

  ‘Andrew Smith,’ Campbell said.

  She stopped as he spoke, then reached into her pocket and took out her mobile phone. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just a moment.’ She checked it, then turned round saying, ‘Sorry again. I’ve been expecting a message. What did you say – Andrew Smith?’

  When Campbell didn’t speak, Macdonald said, ‘Do you know anyone called that?’

  Elena looked politely puzzled. ‘Not that I can think of, but it’s a common enough name. Is it someone in the village?’

  ‘Just routine. Thanks for your time, Ms Thomson.’

  Walking back to the car, Macdonald said, ‘Didn’t hear the phone ring, did you? On vibrate, I suppose.’

  ‘Poor lady,’ Campbell said unexpectedly.

  Macdonald stared at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Cuffs,’ he said. ‘Elaborate, with what she’s wearing?’

  Macdonald looked blank. ‘Were they? I don’t know what’s fashionable.’

  ‘Covers the wounds. She’d old scars right up her arm. Silvery marks – saw them when her sleeve slid up.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tam, but that’s the edict,’ Fleming said into the phone, bracing herself for MacNee’s response. To her surprise, it wasn’t as violent as she had feared.

  ‘It’s maybe just as well,’ he said. ‘It’ll give me time to get things sorted out. You did tell the press I’ve been taken off duty for two or three days?’

  ‘Yes – yes, of course.’ She was a little puzzled by his tone, but she went on, ‘Anyway, how’s Bunty taken it?’

  MacNee’s voice warmed. ‘She’s great! You know the way she is when they bring in a stray dog? Well, she just took over – got the clothes off him, dumped him straight into a bath. He’s sitting by the fire now, looking a bit confused, right enough, but he’s supping some broth. I’ve given him a wee dram to keep him quiet.’