Evil for Evil Read online

  ‘Not right, this – driving us out in weather like this. Uncivilised, that’s what it is. And set to get worse tomorrow – the forecast’s shocking.’

  Hepburn shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re wrong. They usually are.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right there.’ Her gravelly voice suggested that gin as well as cigarettes might feature in her life. ‘It’ll probably be worse.’

  The characteristic Scottish pessimism made Hepburn laugh, and after a moment her companion joined in.

  ‘Och well, that’s what I always say – you have to laugh, eh?’ Then she looked at her more closely. ‘Here – you’re one of thae detectives, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’ It still gave her a little thrill to say that.

  ‘Terrible thing, that, down at Innellan. Nice wee place, too – you’d never think something like that could happen there.’

  ‘You know it?’ Hepburn said hopefully. Maybe the woman came from Innellan, knew everyone concerned, had some vital piece of knowledge …

  She didn’t. ‘Never been there. Saw it on the news a wee while ago, something about some fella with a farm down there giving a break to wounded soldiers.’

  Hepburn hadn’t really thought she would. She stubbed out her cigarette.

  ‘Better get back to work. See you again.’ She bent to pick up the butt and put it in one of the bins.

  Hepburn was walking along to the CID room when the thought came to her. She remembered the broadcast, because she’d been in the canteen at the time and there had been jokey remarks about Innellan being on the map now.

  Suppose that was exactly right. Suppose the programme had broadcast to the nation that this was where Matt Smith/Lovatt was to be found, and someone had come looking?

  Maybe it had nothing to do with the case, but you couldn’t deny it was an original thought. Maybe the Sartre method wasn’t so crap after all.

  Hugh Donaldson opened the door reluctantly. His son would walk in, and friends who might drop by wouldn’t wait once they’d knocked. He knew exactly who it would be – the effing polis.

  He was totally pissed off. Fair enough, if Sorley wanted to confess he could go and say anything he liked to the buggers, but it was way out of order to dump him and Steve in it too. Now they were making a big deal out of nudging a bolt on a gate that should have had a padlock anyway. There were plenty gallus lads about; all they’d done was expose the weaknesses in the system, like they always said in the newspapers. Still, it would be two against one saying Sorley had done it on his own; Steve would back him up. It was just that there might be one or two problems, and he wasn’t wanting to have to deal with them now.

  Hugh’s face was set in surly lines as he opened the door. When he saw who stood there, though, it relaxed into a leer which showed his broken and discoloured teeth.

  ‘Well, my dear, and what can I do for you?’

  The slim, pretty blonde whom he had seen in the pub didn’t smile, but held out her hand to him, a hand with skin that looked curiously smooth and shiny. ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’

  ‘Course I do. You were at the pub the other night. How could I forget?’ he said, with a nauseating attempt at gallantry.

  ‘Not then. Before that. Long, long, before that,’ she said, as he moved forward to shake her hand.

  She was holding something. As he keeled over, five seconds later, something flickered in his mind, but before he could fix on it, the darkness came in.

  ‘So when one of our officers said the name Andrew Smith to you, you must have realised that your father had died, in a peculiarly unpleasant way?’

  Lovatt’s face, physically immobile on one side, and deliberately immobile on the other, gave nothing away. ‘Yes, I knew. Yes, I lied to the young woman. But since I had nothing at all to do with it, I thought it wouldn’t help to send you off on a wild goose chase.’

  ‘I am constantly touched by the consideration of people who can’t bear the thought that police investigation might somehow be hampered by being given information. Especially when it happens to be the truth. For God’s sake, Matt, what the hell is this about?’

  Fleming’s voice was savage. Lovatt squared his shoulders, as if to withstand the force of a gale as she went on, ‘You discovered your father was dead. So, like any loyal son, you reacted with – total indifference?’

  The biting sarcasm stung him. ‘Loyalty, in my book, has to be earned. This was a man I hadn’t seen since I was nine years old. He wrecked the business he’d inherited from my Smith grandfather and if my Lovatt grandmother had let him take charge of the farm here, he’d have wrecked that too.’

  ‘Gambling?’ It was the sergeant who put the question.

  How the hell did they know these things? How long would it take them to discover …?

  ‘All right,’ Lovatt said. ‘He gambled the money away. Then he walked out and left my mother and me to struggle along as best we could. We never heard from him again. No address. No maintenance. She got a job in a supermarket and we lived on that. She died of cancer just before I got an army scholarship. She didn’t know that I would be all right. She died worrying.’ His voice had risen. ‘So you see, that’s my view of my father – a bastard who didn’t let my mother die in peace, because the support that should have protected me till I could look after myself wasn’t there.’

  Lovatt could feel spittle forming at the rigid end of his mouth and he wiped it away. ‘You can hardly be surprised that I didn’t burst into tears of grief when the constable told me. Clearly he’d screwed someone else just like he screwed my mother and me, and they’d taken their revenge. The throw of the dice was always more important to him than anything else except the turn of a card.

  ‘And before you decide that you’re going to elevate me to prime suspect, can I just say that within the time frame you seem to be talking about for his murder, I was serving with the army in Bosnia, and then having treatment in a German military hospital. I didn’t have a home so I never took home leave. Once I got the dog I stayed with friends in Europe so I didn’t have to bring him into Britain. You can check my passport, if you like. Oh no, silly me, I forgot. Someone burnt down half my house, and probably the passport with it. Still, I’m sure you can check it out somehow.’

  The question was, had he given them enough information to stop them going to search for it? If they did, it would put him again through the sort of hell he had spent most of his life trying to avoid.

  The inspector’s eyes were cold. It had been a moving story, and yet she hadn’t been moved. ‘I see,’ was all she said, then, ‘For the moment at least, I want you where we can keep an eye on you, for your own safety. I understand you were staying at the Smugglers Inn at one stage. I want you back there, and I’ve arranged for police protection.

  ‘We are confident that everything will become clearer over the next few days, but while we are concerned about your safety, we would ask you to stay there.’

  Lovatt’s heart sank. Georgia’s fussing concern, the tiny room, and above all Christie – Christie whom, somehow or other, he had destroyed.

  ‘Of course,’ he said as convincingly as he could. ‘I’ll just wait for the fire to die down then go across. Wouldn’t want the house to catch fire or anything!’

  The feeble joke fell flat. The sergeant, whose name he couldn’t remember, said, ‘Och, I think I can see to it that it’s safe enough,’ and seizing the poker prodded and separated the logs so that the flame dwindled into glowing ash.

  ‘Right, we’ll take you across,’ the sergeant said, with a smile which somehow made Lovatt feel uncomfortable. ‘Just to see you get there all right, ken?’

  He didn’t actually touch Lovatt’s arm, but it still felt like being frogmarched out of the building.

  Bill Fleming came back to the farmhouse feeling tired and depressed. His wife’s car wasn’t in the yard; he hadn’t expected it would be, but seeing it there would have cheered him up after a day spent trying to save a sick stirk, with nothing to show
for the effort except a sizeable vet’s bill. He’d been daft to bother; he’d been pretty sure from the start that he’d lose it, but looking after the beasts was his job, even when it went past the point of common sense. Just the same way as Marjory did her job.

  Cat was in the kitchen, wrapped around a mug of coffee and staring into space, looking tragic. At least she was dressed; he’d been a little terse when he found her still in her dressing gown at lunchtime, and the last thing he felt inclined to do after a hard day’s work was tiptoe respectfully round his daughter’s feelings.

  ‘How are you doing?’ His hearty tone was forced.

  ‘Oh fine,’ she said with heavy sarcasm. ‘As you see.’

  Biting his tongue, he went to the fridge for the casserole Karolina had left to be heated in the Aga.

  ‘I take it Mum won’t be gracing us with her presence at supper again tonight?’

  The sneer in his daughter’s voice flicked him on the raw. He put the dish carefully in the oven and then shut the door while he counted to ten. Then twenty. After twenty, he realised he was still angry – bloody angry.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think she will be. She’s working, you see. She must be absolutely exhausted by now, after two almost sleepless nights, but she’s still working. It’s what grown-ups do.

  ‘The farm made a loss last year – did you know that? And the year before. On the odd good year, I break even. So the childish idea you seem to have that your mother ought to have stayed at home to do nothing but nanny a demanding and, I now think, thoroughly overindulged daughter, would have meant we lost the farm.

  ‘It’s your mother’s earnings that keep us afloat. Those jeans you bought for uni, the designer ones you were so pleased with – it was her job that paid for them, and for your overseas trips with the school and all the other luxuries you take for granted.

  ‘You’re not a child, Cat, you’re a young woman. You made irresponsible, silly decisions and made a mess of things, but you’re not a tragic heroine. You’re just wallowing in self-pity.’

  Cat was gasping with shock. ‘Dad! I thought you were my friend, at least!’ Her eyes filled, then spilt over. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  The childish gesture went to Bill’s heart. His every instinct was to reach out to comfort his little girl, but he steeled himself. ‘A friend is someone who tells you the truth, Cat. You’re not going to sort yourself out by wrapping yourself in a great wet blanket of misery.

  ‘I’m sorry about Will. I thought he was a nice lad, but what he did was rotten, dumping you when you were so vulnerable. But go on the way you’re doing, and you could let him ruin your life. He’s not worth it.’

  ‘I know that. But I was just totally thrown at the time. Didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You could have phoned home,’ Bill began, then catching sight of her face, went on, ‘but of course you were angry with your mum, weren’t you? Was part of this a sort of “That’ll teach her”?’

  Cat didn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘You did a good job of it. She’s in pieces over this. But cutting off your nose to spite your face isn’t cosmetic surgery, is it?’

  Cat mumbled something that could have been ‘Suppose not.’

  ‘Right, lecture over. Next thing – what happens now?’

  Cat looked up, her face tragic again. ‘I don’t know!’ she wailed.

  ‘I’ll tell you. Before supper, you’re going to get paper and a pen and write down everything you can think of that might help to set things straight, and I’ll think too.’

  ‘Well … I could try,’ Cat said doubtfully. ‘I know you want to help.’

  Bill stopped on the way to the door with an exasperated sigh.

  ‘Lassie, your mother has put up with a lot more from you than I ever would have. I can tell you, she’ll have been worrying herself sick about you all day, even while she’s doing one of the most important jobs there could be.’

  Having seen Matt Lovatt safely into the Smugglers Inn, and ordered a uniform patrol for later, DI Fleming and DS MacNee got back into the car. The media presence had thinned out considerably and she discouraged the stragglers with a curt, ‘No comment.’

  ‘What now?’ MacNee said. ‘There’s quite a lot of the lads detailed for the night shift – back to Kirkluce? You look as if you could do with getting home.’

  ‘Getting home!’ Amid the stresses of the day, Fleming realised she had hardly given a thought to the situation at home. ‘Oh yes,’ she said glumly, ‘I suppose I ought to, really. Cat … well, she’s got a bit of a problem.’

  MacNee looked encouraging, but she didn’t want to talk about it. And, now she thought about it, she had neither the strength nor the inclination to go back and let her daughter use her as a punchbag all over again. Cat had made it clear she didn’t care what her mother did – well, fine. There were better things to do than worry herself sick about her daughter’s attitude.

  ‘No, I’ve decided,’ Fleming said. ‘I’ll just phone Bill and tell him I don’t know when I’ll be back. Let’s get along to the incident room now. I’m too edgy about the whole situation to leave at the moment.’

  ‘You’ve set a watch to see no one has another go at Lovatt,’ MacNee argued. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to him tonight.’

  ‘I know, I know. But Tam, suppose we’re looking in the wrong direction? Has the business with the stag distracted us? It could be Lissa who was the target, not Matt at all. It’s possible. We know absolutely nothing about her, so we haven’t an idea what is in the killer’s mind. Anything could happen—’

  MacNee interrupted her. ‘That’s paranoia. It’s lack of sleep talking. There’s plenty of cover – in fact, there’s Andy and Ewan now.’

  Their car was coming towards them down the little street. As they drew level, Macdonald put down his window.

  ‘I was looking for you, boss. A query—’

  ‘Go along to the incident room. I’ll see you there.’

  Cal Findlay’s foot had gone to sleep; he staggered slightly and had to grab at the chair he’d been crouching behind to stop himself from falling.

  He didn’t have much time. They would be back before long, and in a way that was a good thing. He’d spent far too much time already agonising over what he had to do; he knew what it was, and he knew that he should have done it before, long before.

  It was dark now, but he didn’t switch on the lights. He couldn’t be sure both men had left and he wasn’t going to advertise his presence. Anyway, he could have found his way around the familiar house with his eyes closed. The hall, the passageway, the kitchen door, four steps to the drawer beside the sink. The right-hand side of the drawer.

  His hand found the kitchen knife and tested the blade. That would do – yes, that would do. He picked it up, then went back into the hall to pick up a concealing coat from the hallstand.

  ‘Help me! Help me! The wickedness …’

  For a moment he paused, hatred filling his heart. It was her fault, all her fault. Her life for the life she had taken from him?

  Yet he knew he couldn’t. When it came to the moment, disabling memories would rise: a birthday cake, a story – kiss, even. His throat prickled. No, he couldn’t.

  The other death, though – that was different.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Bill?’ Marjory Fleming said. ‘Just to warn you – I’ve no idea when I might get back. It’s all a bit tense.’ She was standing in the street outside the incident room beside the throbbing generator truck as she made her call.

  Her husband sighed. ‘You’re going to keel over if you’re not careful. Still, I’ve learnt enough to know there’s no point in arguing.’

  Fleming laughed. ‘I know. I’m sorry. Anyway—’

  ‘I’d a good chat with Cat this afternoon.’

  ‘Did you?’ Fleming didn’t mean her voice to sound cold, but she couldn’t help it.

  Bill obviously picked it up. ‘She’ll be fine, you know, gi
ven time. Do you want to speak to her?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do, actually. I’d better go.’

  She heard her husband groan, ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Women!’ as she switched off the phone.

  Not driving his own Mercedes had meant that he had been able to follow Elena unnoticed, but now, as he shifted from one buttock to the other and stretched his legs across to the passenger side to ease his cramped position, Eddie Tindall thought longingly of the legroom and deeply padded leather seats in the Merc.

  He’d only just got himself into position outside the empty chalet two down from the one Elena was staying in when he heard the bolts on a gate being drawn. He ducked down below the dashboard – not the easiest of manoeuvres in this confined space – and waited till he heard a car go by before he looked out.

  Yes, it was hers. So she was back – it had obviously been some minor errand. If she’d gone to meet a man she’d hardly have returned so soon. Perhaps she really was just having a quiet holiday, like she said. He could go back and have his dinner at the hotel – he was starting to feel ravenous, despite the scones – and drive back quietly to Salford after a good night’s sleep. She would never have to know.

  Or perhaps, argued the suspicious inner voice he had come to hate, she had gone to leave a note to arrange a meeting? Perhaps he should wait just a bit, to be sure.

  ‘Dad?’ Steve Donaldson called as he opened the door of his father’s house. ‘Are you not wanting your tea?’

  The hall was dark; he stepped forward to grope for the switch and his foot touched something on the floor, something soft. He was already saying, ‘Dad! Dad! Are you all right?’ before he managed to put on the light.

  Steve fell to his knees, put his hand on his father’s chest looking for a heartbeat, but the glazed, wide-open eyes had told him immediately that he wouldn’t find one.