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  ‘Can’t be exactly happy about all this happening on their patch, can they? Do you suppose Mr Morrison is as twitchy as the others?’

  They had reached Dunmore. ‘That’s the street we need to take now,’ Macdonald said, turning off the main road and up a steep hill, then making a left turn onto a smaller country road. ‘That must be the house there.’

  ‘Has to be doing all right,’ Hepburn said as they drove up between expensively landscaped gardens. ‘I could quite fancy a bit of that myself.’

  They were just parking the car in the turning circle in front of the house when the front door opened and a pretty blonde girl came out with a toddler on her hip. She glanced across, smiled and then came to meet them.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  They showed their warrant cards. ‘I understand Mrs Morrison was too distressed to talk yesterday,’ Macdonald said. ‘We were hoping to have a word with her today, if that’s possible.’

  She looked rueful. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m Gemma Napier, Mrs Morrison’s daughter. She isn’t here. You’ve had a wasted journey.’

  ‘Oh – when will she be back?’

  ‘Not for a few days, I’m afraid. Mum was just in pieces about poor Anita, and she gets high blood pressure when she’s stressed so we were worried about her being here with all that’s going on. We’ve packed her off to stay with a friend in London. Total change of scene, a bit of shopping – you know?’

  She smiled at Hepburn who didn’t smile back. ‘That’s very unfortunate. Can you give us the contact number in London, please?’

  Gemma clearly wasn’t happy with the suggestion of pressure. ‘I wouldn’t be happy doing that. Sorry.’

  Hepburn would have liked to insist but Macdonald stepped in. ‘Perhaps you could undertake to get a message to her that we would like her to return immediately? This is a murder investigation, and until we can talk to her we don’t know whether she has information that may be important.’

  Gemma said stubbornly, ‘I don’t think she should. It’s a question of her health and, anyway, she told Dad everything. There wasn’t anything useful.’

  ‘That’s for us to judge,’ Macdonald said. ‘Perhaps we’d better have a word with your father, anyway. Is he here?’

  ‘No. He’s taken her to Glasgow to get the fast London train.’

  The toddler, who had been regarding them suspiciously, started jiggling in his mother’s arms. ‘Mummy, Mummy – time to go to playschool.’

  ‘Yes, darling, we’re just going. If you’ve finished …?’ She raised her brows at the officer.

  ‘For the moment,’ Macdonald said.

  As they walked back to the car Gemma went across to the huge garage which must once have been a barn for the farm, clicking a key that made the doors swing open.

  In her designer jeans and fur gilet, with cute toddler accessory, she was the epitome of the yummy mummy. Hepburn struggled to keep an edge of bitterness out of her voice as she said, ‘Very convenient. Fully paid-up junior member of the rules-don’t-apply club, I’d say.’

  ‘Just worried about her mother, like a nice girl should be,’ Macdonald said, as he drove off, adding provocatively, ‘but you wouldn’t know about that.’

  It got her on the raw. ‘Wouldn’t I?’ she said lightly, but she had to turn her head so he wouldn’t see the tears of self-pity.

  Fleming was just finishing up at ten to twelve when the phone rang. She sighed impatiently and picked it up.

  ‘DCI Alexander from Cairnryan would like a word, ma’am. Shall I put him through?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ she said, then, ‘Nick! What can I do for you?’

  She’d always had a good relationship with him and she was taken aback when he said abruptly, ‘Marjory, what the hell are your lot doing trampling all over our patch?’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Marnie blundered past the reporters on her way out of the police station. One of them came towards her calling out a question but she didn’t even hear it and the man stepped back with a shrug.

  She got into the car and drove away, not going anywhere: just driving, as if physical escape could distance her from mental torment. At the moment her mind felt blank and dead but it was the sort of numbness you felt before the anaesthetic wore off after a tooth extraction. Pain was waiting there on the edge of consciousness, red and raw.

  Mother. The word started to spike through the blankness, bringing with it shafts of horror. What sort of woman would kill another child, all but kill her own daughter? What monster had been called up from the deeps by her questioning?

  And what was she, herself? Bad blood, that was what they called it, coming down through the generations. At the thought of what had gone into the making of Marnie she was overcome by nausea. Drax, too? Stopping the car with dangerous abruptness she tumbled out and vomited onto the verge, again and again, as if trying to purge herself of the poison of knowledge.

  At last, shaking and shivering in the cold, she looked about her. She had no idea where she was; she had presumably been driving on autopilot since she hadn’t hit anything, but now she realised she was only a couple of miles from the Clatteringshaws cottage. With the instinct of a stricken animal she had headed for such home as she had. It would be bleak and cold but there was nowhere else she could think of to go.

  Marnie got back into the car and when she reached the loch she slowed down and turned into the car park. It was empty and when she got out she felt as if she might be alone in the world.

  It was all very beautiful today, glittering and icy, with the steel-blue sky cloudless overhead and the loch still as a mirror. The scrubby trees along its edge were leafless, the bare black branches like skinny arms with clutching skeletal fingers at the end.

  There was a hum of traffic from the road behind her but Marnie didn’t hear it. The silence of the hills that encircled the loch seduced her with the promise of peace; the rippling water sang quietly at her feet.

  She had longed to know what lay on the other side of the silence she had lived with for so long. Perhaps this was the only way to find out.

  Shelley Crichton was in the conservatory using a leaf-shine spray and a soft cloth to clean the stiff, sharp leaves of the snake plant as tenderly as a mother wiping her child’s face. It was the most soothing occupation she could think of but today it wasn’t working; her nerves were still jangling like fire alarms going off in her head.

  Shelley didn’t know what to make of last night’s phone call. The caller was a man, certainly, but she didn’t recognise his voice and he didn’t identify himself. He just gave her the information, then hung up.

  How did he know she would want to know? And what else did he know about her – and what might he do with that knowledge? She felt sick at the thought.

  Could it be a trap of some kind? If she was wise, she’d ignore it, pretend it had never happened, but she was tempted – so tempted! Anita Loudon’s death had felt like a sort of revenge but it didn’t satisfy her. The hatred, a constant low-burning flame, flared up until she felt consumed by it.

  A leaf snapped off in her hand. Horrified, she realised her grip had unconsciously tightened; she bent over the mutilated plant to assess the damage, murmuring, ‘Poor baby, poor baby!’

  ‘Nick, I’m sorry,’ Fleming said in bewilderment, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Daniel Lee, that’s what I’m talking about.’ DCI Nick Alexander was definitely annoyed. ‘Look, I know your super is anxious about her precious reputation and thinks we’re not getting far enough quickly enough, but if she sends in your lot to trample all over this with hobnailed boots it will screw everything up just as we’re hoping to move in for the kill.

  ‘I could take this up with a higher authority but I thought a quiet word with you might be the quickest way to choke it off – if the damage hasn’t been done already.’

  ‘She did ask me, yes,’ Fleming admitted. ‘I told her to leave it in your hands but she made it an or
der. My plan was to drag my feet as best I could, and then Anita Loudon’s murder gave me the ideal excuse to put it on hold, indefinitely.

  ‘The reason we were “on your patch” as you put it, is that Daniel Lee was Anita Loudon’s lover and his business associates are at least tangentially involved as well.’

  There was an appalled silence at the other end of the phone. Then Alexander said slowly, ‘Puts us in a spot of bother, then. We’ve been watching them for some time but they’re smart and we’ve never caught them with the goods.’

  ‘The human goods, I take it,’ Fleming said.

  ‘Yes. Asians mainly, some Chinese. We think there may be a Liverpool-Irish connection. We’re liaising with Lancashire and the Garda but they haven’t had any luck either and we’re trying the Al Capone technique. The tax accounts they file are clean as a whistle – and trust me, we’ve checked. There’s no way we’d get warrants for a fishing expedition but our own experts say there must be a paper trail, so we’ve got HMRC on to calling in each individual company’s records to check them out for discrepancies.’

  ‘There’s no reason for them to suppose that our enquiries have anything to do with that,’ Fleming argued. ‘We might even happen on the sort of evidence you’re looking for.’

  ‘Might, perhaps.’ Alexander didn’t sound convinced. ‘But—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Fleming said, ‘but. Where do we go from here?’

  There was a pause, then Alexander said, ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but we’ve had a tip-off about a shipment due in one of Crichton’s container lorries. I want you to lay off any action until I give the nod.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can, Nick. Murder, remember? The situation’s complicated and I still don’t know if they’re even directly involved, but until we can nail whoever did it, there’s someone very dangerous out there. How can I ignore legitimate lines of enquiry?’

  He didn’t back down. ‘We’re talking lives at stake too. Just a few days, that’s all.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Fleming said.

  ‘I’m sorry too. I thought we could have done business without involving the big guns. But—’

  ‘You have to do what you think is best,’ Fleming said stiffly, ‘but so do I.’

  Even so, when she had put down the phone she picked it up again. ‘Tam? If you’ve spoken to your friends in Glasgow about going round to check Daniel Lee’s alibi, get hold of them and call it off. The big boys are bullying us and that can wait for the moment.

  ‘Where are you, anyway?’

  ‘In Dunmore. I’ve a wee notion to find out who was outside Marnie Bruce’s window that night. Try out the patter on the locals, ken, and see what I can find out.’

  ‘Have you seen Andy and Louise? I’m wondering how they got on with Mrs Morrison.’

  ‘They didn’t. She’s done a runner to London.’

  ‘Has she, indeed. Done a runner – or been sent away?’

  ‘Like enough. He’s taken her to the Glasgow train so they couldn’t question him either.’

  ‘Find out when he’ll be back. I want him put over a slow flame before we’re called off.’

  ‘What’s going on, then?’

  ‘Need-to-know basis.’ Fleming was amused at the little ‘humph!’ of annoyance that came down the line. ‘If I told you I’d have to kill you afterwards, but you could maybe work it out if you think of our esteemed superintendent’s most recent preoccupation.’

  ‘Aah.’

  The sound of satisfied curiosity. At least Tam was quick on the uptake. ‘Anyway, good luck. I hope the locals are susceptible to your very particular brand of Glasgow charm. Just a word of advice.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Don’t smile too often. It tends to alarm the natives.’

  Grant Crichton put his head down on the desk on top of the mountain of papers and groaned. He should have been more systematic; now he had no idea what he’d checked and what he’d hadn’t. His stomach was churning and he felt as if someone had put his brains through a blender.

  He’d a good head for figures normally, he kept telling himself. He oversaw everything that came in and went out, so he wouldn’t have put anything in the wrong file. Of course he wouldn’t.

  But what if he had? What if he’d missed some small, insignificant entry – or what if one of the others had? It had run so smoothly for so many years, perhaps they’d got careless. Perhaps he had, even.

  Now it was as if a whirlwind had struck. He was being assaulted from all directions at once and his life was spinning out of control. He couldn’t believe what he had done, what he had become.

  Even if the records were as clean as he believed them to be, it wasn’t the worst of his problems. He might have seen off the sergeant who had come asking questions, but he wasn’t kidding himself that he would be the last.

  It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. All right, what he’d done was wrong, but he could justify it. Most of it. He didn’t want to think about the rest.

  He sat up and went back to his papers, rubbing his eyes as if that would clear his brain. The knock on the door was an unwelcome interruption.

  ‘Your lunch is ready,’ Denise said.

  ‘Lunch? Oh, I’m not hungry.’

  Instead of retreating, Denise came further into the room. She held out something – one of the endless holiday brochures she was always looking at.

  ‘I really need you to decide about this now. If we’re going to do that Caribbean cruise we talked about, we have to book today. There’s only one superior cabin left and—’

  ‘Cruise!’ he roared. ‘You must be mad!’ He gestured at the laden desk. ‘If I can’t get this straight, there will be no more cruises, ever, or anything else! Get that into your dim little brain.’

  Denise didn’t reply. She turned and walked out and he turned to the accounts again. It had relieved the tension to have a legitimate reason to explode and his mind seemed clearer. He hadn’t noticed the mutinous expression on Denise’s face, or the look of loathing she gave him as she went out.

  The relief was short-lived. Just as she shut the door, his mobile rang and when he picked it up Drax’s name was in the caller ID box. He looked at it with a mixture of fear and loathing and his stomach started to churn again.

  The Cottage Bar, Dunmore’s only pub, where the detectives had arranged to meet at lunchtime, wasn’t enticing. It wasn’t a cottage either; it was a seventies single-storey building with metal-framed windows and an interior that suggested its designer’s brief had been to eradicate any vestige of character. If so, it was a succès fou, Hepburn suggested.

  Getting the gist if not a precise translation, MacNee nodded. ‘You’re not wrong there,’ he said gloomily. He’d never enjoyed a pub lunch the same since having a pint with your pie, or even a half, became a mortal sin. And if his nose wasn’t deceiving him, there wasn’t going to be the pie either.

  ‘Just sandwiches. Ham, cheese, ham and cheese, cheese and pickle.’ Hepburn brought over the drinks on a tray and put a glass of a livid orange liquid in front of MacNee, wrinkling her nose. ‘Irn-Bru. And a Coke. I don’t know how you two can drink that sickly stuff.’ She set down her own lime and soda.

  ‘Oh, very French, very sophisticated,’ Macdonald sneered.

  ‘I’m meant to apologise?’

  MacNee looked at them with some irritation. Sophisticated? The pair of them hadn’t got out of the playground. ‘Anyway, orders,’ he said. ‘Would they rise to cheese, ham and pickle, do you reckon?’

  ‘A bridge too far, would be my guess. The girl who served me looks as if remembering two ingredients at the same time will stretch her, but I’ll try.’

  When she returned, Macdonald and MacNee were discussing the sad situation of Rangers FC – at least Macdonald was talking about it while MacNee sat silent in a grief too deep for words.

  ‘It’s finished.’ Macdonald, a Hearts man himself, spoke with ill-disguised satisfaction. ‘By next season – no more Rangers. You’ll have to support a
decent club after that, Tam.’ Then, seeing MacNee’s expression added hastily, ‘Just a wee joke.’

  It was no joking matter. When it came to the Rangers’ plight MacNee felt, to quote Bill Shankly, that it wasn’t a matter of life and death, it was more important than that, a subject only to be treated with reverence. He greeted Hepburn’s return with surprising enthusiasm, given that she was saying cheese, ham and pickle wasn’t on the menu.

  ‘Did Marnie Bruce turn up today?’ Hepburn asked.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you,’ MacNee said. ‘I came straight down here after the interview with Daniel Lee.’

  ‘Anything useful?’

  ‘What happened?’ Macdonald and Hepburn spoke simultaneously.

  MacNee pulled a face. ‘Claims he’s got an alibi for Wednesday night. We’ll have to test it sometime – don’t trust him an inch.’

  ‘Manipulative,’ Hepburn said. The two men looked at her quizzically.

  ‘His schtick is to draw you in, get you to see things with his eyes. He focused on me because I guess women tend to fall for that sort of humorous charm – you know how they always say the most important thing about a man is having a GSOH. Much more important than, say, previous for GBH.’

  ‘Right enough,’ MacNee said. ‘He tried it on with the boss too but he didn’t get very far.’

  Macdonald gave a crack of laughter. ‘He’s a brave man! Did Big Marge tell him she’d have his guts for garters?’

  Hepburn looked at him coldly. ‘I know you all say that’s her catchphrase but I’ve never heard her use it.’

  ‘Used to,’ MacNee said. ‘But she’s not daft – she found out what you were saying behind her back. She always does.

  ‘Anyway – this afternoon. We’ve to see Morrison as a priority, and—’

  Macdonald’s mobile rang. He took the call, raising his eyebrows as he realised who was at the other end. ‘There’s an incident room at the village hall in Dunmore,’ he said, then, ‘No, fair enough. Right, I’ll be there. Two-thirty.’