The Third Sin Read online

  DI Len Harris didn’t seem to feel anyone was his friend. He greeted Fleming with barely concealed hostility and MacNee with open aggression.

  ‘Can’t think what they imagine I’m going to learn from you, MacNee. You weren’t even CID in Glasgow.’

  There was nothing MacNee enjoyed more than a bit of aggro. ‘Och well, Lennie, I’ve maybe been learning all the time you’ve been wondering why you should,’ he said cheerfully.

  Fleming shot him a warning look that he took care not to see as, with Harris walking stiff-backed before them, they went into the garage workshop where the car was being kept securely as a crown production.

  It was certainly in a battered state, the paint abraded and the windscreen as well as two of the side windows stoved in. The tyres were ripped and twisted and the doors, buckled by impacts, had obviously been forced open to allow the SOCOs a full examination.

  ‘Not much to learn from that, as you see,’ Harris said.

  Fleming walked round it, studying it carefully. ‘And in your view, the car – what, was deliberately driven on to the flats with the corpse inside it, somewhere around here?’

  He began to explain about the eyewitness, but she cut in. ‘Yes, I’ve read all the background. But it did occur to me – could it have been just a passing grey car, nothing to do with this at all?’

  A flush of colour came to Harris’s face. ‘Yes, of course. But you have to say it was suggestive – two men quarrelling, the right area—’

  ‘Of course, absolutely,’ Fleming said soothingly. ‘If the car was driven into the water at Newbie—’

  ‘If? How else would it get there?’

  ‘Well, it was just the timing – the weather, you know.’

  ‘Oh yes, the weather.’ It was plain that he hadn’t thought about the effect of the spring tide; he coughed, then went on, ‘You’ve formed some theory, have you, because of the weather?’

  ‘Not exactly a theory, just a thought about keeping the options open. With the spring tide and the wind direction, it’s conceivable that the car could have gone in further down the estuary and been swept up here.’

  Harris had a very prominent Adam’s apple and it bobbed up and down as he swallowed. ‘Er, well, of course I did consider it. Naturally. But that would make the search almost impossible – we can only work on information received.’

  Fleming sensed MacNee moving restlessly, heard him draw in his breath to speak and interposed, as she thought tactfully, ‘It’s always the problem, isn’t it? Look, is there somewhere we could go for a cup of coffee and talk this through?’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so. The station’s just round the corner.’

  ‘There’ll be a space in the car park there? Fine, we’ll drive round and see you inside,’ Fleming said.

  As she drove off MacNee gave a low whistle. ‘Man’s a liability. Seems to think a detective’s job is to sit and wait till someone comes and tells him what happened. Starting from scratch, then, are we?’

  ‘With the trail cold and the budget blown already,’ Fleming agreed grimly. ‘Fun, fun, fun.’

  In the gleaming, stainless-steel kitchen at the back of The Albatross pub, Logie Stewart was preparing for the lunchtime service. He was in a bad mood; he always was when it came to wasting his considerable talents on the day-to-day, boring stuff, the food that would appeal to the passing trade or the less discriminating local clientele. The Albatross might be a destination restaurant as a result of his culinary skill but a tasting menu event once a month, parties in the chic private dining room upstairs and fine dining à la carte wouldn’t keep your head above water, particularly before the tourist season got going.

  With a bad grace he topped steak and ale pies with puff pastry, put them into the oven, set the timer, then turned to the small, frazzled looking woman who was chopping vegetables.

  ‘The onions for the lasagne, Maggie – where are they, then?’

  She put up a hand to wipe her streaming eyes. ‘Sorry, sorry, not quite finished yet, Logie. Won’t be a minute.’

  He glared at her. ‘No, you won’t be, will you? Nearer ten, judging by the pile that’s waiting. Heaven send me patience!’

  With an exaggerated gesture of despair he swung round to fetch the mince from the huge industrial refrigerator and he was leaning into it when his wife Kendra came into the kitchen and greeted him. He didn’t turn round.

  ‘Kendra – good. Grab a chopping knife, will you? Maggie’s on a go-slow, apparently.’

  Maggie made an incoherent protest as Kendra said, ‘Oh darling, I would, of course, but I’m just on my way to a hair appointment in Castle Douglas. Sorry face, look!’ She made a little moue and pointed to it.

  He surveyed his wife as he brought the meat back to the working surface. She wasn’t classically pretty but her vivacity was very attractive. Her hair, slicked back into a neat brown bob, looked as it always did.

  ‘Doesn’t look as if it needs it to me,’ he muttered.

  ‘Darling, if I waited until you noticed that it needed it, I’d be having people pointing at me in the street,’ she said, laughing. ‘See you in the afternoon sometime.’

  ‘Oh, fine.’ His tone was grudging. ‘Is that brother of mine lounging about next door, then? Tell him he can come and give me a hand to earn his keep.’

  Kendra turned in the doorway. ‘Oh, sorry again, love. Will’s cadged a lift with me. He’s got an appointment with the bank – something about transferring money from Canada. Bye!’

  Logie grunted, then turned his attention to the unfortunate Maggie. ‘For God’s sake, are you not finished yet? Give me what you’ve done so I can get started with this.’ He grabbed a handful of onions and tipped them into the oil in the frying pan.

  His mind, though, was on other things. He hadn’t exactly shed tears when Will had announced he was emigrating. As a founder member of the Cyrenaics Logie had, of course, endorsed the pleasure principle, had been as ready as anyone to take advantage of the joys of sexual freedom – but he had drawn the line when it came to his wife and his own brother.

  They had assured him, laughing, that they – well, couldn’t. ‘He’s my brother – well, all but,’ Kendra had giggled. ‘Ugh!’

  It was what Logie wanted to believe so he’d accepted it at the time, fighting down the inclination to start watching them, counting the ‘brotherly’ hugs and affectionate exchanges. Affection worried him; that was very different from the casual pleasure that was the Cyrenaics’ creed.

  The scandal that had followed Julia’s death changed everything. They’d all grown up suddenly, avoiding each other, living it down as best they could. And if they felt that life now was dreary and flat, after the rich excitement of those heady days, they didn’t talk about it.

  Bizarrely, it had done wonders for the business; the ghouls had come to gawp and then gone away spreading the word about his cuisine. He’d planned to redecorate the private dining room upstairs with its sombre walls and silver-framed mirrors but it had proved so popular he couldn’t afford to, even though marketing decadence seemed sordid now. The other benefit was that Will had gone to Canada and he could relax.

  Now Will was back. He hadn’t changed in those two years, years in which Logie had grown stouter and balder and wearier with the punishing hours a chef has to keep.

  He tossed the onions in the pan and glanced irritably at his helper. ‘Finished the onions? Hallelujah! Bring the rest over and then get the cheese out of the fridge and start grating.’

  The tantalising aroma followed Kendra as she tripped out to the car. Will, taller and considerably leaner than his brother with a clever, humorous face, was leaning against the car. He straightened up as she reached him.

  ‘All right?’

  Kendra smiled up at him, her brown eyes sparkling. ‘Fine. I’m all yours.’

  Detective Superintendent Taylor had obviously asked to be alerted when they arrived, appearing just as they sat down in Harris’s office in the smart, modern Dumfries Division headquart
ers.

  From the look on his inspector’s face he was about as welcome as sleet at a barbecue but he ignored that, greeting Fleming and MacNee warmly and asking if Harris had ordered coffee for their guests.

  ‘Just about to,’ he said stonily.

  ‘Tell them an extra cup, will you? I’d like to sit in on this.’ He pulled across a seat from the farther end of the room. ‘Marjory, any thoughts?’

  It wasn’t the way Fleming would have chosen to handle it but perhaps this was all to the good. However tactful she was, Harris was going to be resentful; spending time on smoothing ruffled feathers was a luxury they couldn’t afford and he might be more inclined to cooperate in the presence of his senior officer. Might be.

  ‘It seems to me we need to widen the scope of the enquiry. The investigations round Newbie have been carried out very thoroughly, of course,’ she attempted a half-smile at Harris but got only a cold stare, ‘but since that hasn’t yielded anything useful and since we can’t be sure that this was where the car went into the water, I suggest that we consider playing the man instead of the ball. We could—’

  ‘We’ve tried that,’ Harris interrupted rudely. ‘There’s no trace of Kane that we can find, since the suicide note.’

  ‘I thought perhaps we could take it back to the time before he disappeared – who were his contacts and so on. There are quite a number we can readily follow up because of the investigation following Julia Margrave’s death.’

  ‘Have you done that?’ Taylor asked Harris.

  It was clear that he hadn’t, hadn’t even remembered the woman’s name. ‘Not in that sense,’ he said.

  As MacNee opened his mouth, clearly to ask him in what sense he had, exactly, Fleming shot him a quelling glance and he subsided.

  ‘We’ll have all the reports on file,’ she said. ‘I can send them over to you, of course.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Taylor was beaming.

  ‘Can’t see the point,’ Harris said stubbornly. ‘As far as everyone’s concerned, he was dead, wasn’t he? They won’t be able to tell us anything useful.’

  The man was impossible. Taylor was shifting in his seat and Fleming was biting her tongue when the Force civilian assistant came in with coffee, giving her a chance to consider how she was going to take this forward. By the time the business with milk, sugar and biscuits was over she had made up her mind.

  ‘I’m sorry, Len, that’s not a helpful attitude. Your approach has resulted in the investigation running into the sand and I can’t help if you are simply planning to be obstructionist. And I’m going to have to ask you, Tom, to decide who is in charge. I have to have the authority to direct operations.’

  Harris’s face reddened. ‘That’s an outrageous suggestion! I’m the senior inspector here and while obviously I have to consider ideas you put forward, you have to convince me that they have merit.’

  ‘No,’ Fleming said flatly. ‘I take charge, or I withdraw. Tom?’

  Taylor looked from one to the other, his discomfort evident. ‘Len, Marjory’s a very successful and experienced senior investigating officer. We’re extremely grateful to her and to DS MacNee for coming in and I’m sure you’ll cooperate.’ He directed an anxious smile at Harris, but getting no response he went on, ‘You see, since our own SIO – that’s DCI Brotherton, Marjory – is signed off sick for a spell, technically we need one to run this, at least until she returns.’

  It was less than the ringing endorsement Fleming had been hoping for and she wondered what would happen the next time Harris got Taylor round the back of the bike sheds.

  His face rigid with anger, Harris said, ‘Until she returns.’

  ‘Good,’ Fleming said. ‘With DSI Rowley’s permission I can get my team on to interviews that fall within the Galloway division, though I think you might have to have a conversation with her about budgets, Tom.’

  Taylor smiled ruefully. ‘No doubt. Still, cooperation’s much simpler now than it used to be when we had our own little fiefdoms.’

  MacNee, who had been held uncharacteristically silent by the power of his superior’s eye, snorted. ‘Not quite sure our super sees it that way, sir.’

  Harris had been simmering behind his desk. ‘And what am I supposed to do meantime?’ he burst out. ‘Sit twiddling my thumbs, until you graciously solve the whole thing on the basis of feminine intuition?’

  There was a silence, as Fleming waited for Taylor to intervene. He didn’t, only looking from one to the other with a sort of nervous despair.

  Before Fleming could stop him MacNee said, ‘Why not? Getting out a crystal ball wouldn’t be a lot more useless than what you’ve done already.’

  Fleming could only hope that Harris had taken his blood-pressure pills that morning since from the colour of his face it looked as if apoplexy might be imminent. She said coldly, ‘I don’t think this sort of exchange can help the progress of the investigation. Could I suggest that as well as the further plans you have no doubt formulated, you could get teams to check the low roads round the Solway coast, to see if there’s any indication of damage where a car might have gone in. If we could establish that it would give us a better focus for enquiries.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ Taylor said heartily. ‘I’m sure you can get that moving, Len.’

  ‘It’s your call, if you think it’s a good idea wasting time on that nearly three weeks after it happened.’

  The words ‘And whose fault is that?’ hung in the air but Fleming and MacNee resisted the temptation to utter them.

  She got up. ‘I’ll get on with this, Tom. I’ll let you know what progress we make.’ She nodded coldly to Harris and they left.

  As they walked back to the car, Fleming said ruefully, ‘Well, that was a train crash, wasn’t it? I didn’t do very well, getting drawn into dramatic confrontation.’

  ‘Och, rubbish! You gave him his head in his lap and his lugs to play with, as the saying goes, and he was needing it. A fine performance. From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs, eh?’ MacNee was grinning as he quoted his beloved Burns.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘No,’ Detective Superintendent Rowley said. ‘Oh no. If Tom Taylor thinks he can just breeze in and appropriate my officers to boost his clear-up rate – which, I may say, is very far from impressive – he has another think coming. I’ll take it up with the Chief Constable, if necessary.’

  Afraid this would happen, Fleming had rehearsed her argument carefully before she took it to her superintendent on Wednesday morning. In Christine Rowley’s head there was a sort of mental score sheet: will this boost my chances of professional promotion, or not? If the verdict was negative, she’d block this at every turn.

  Admittedly the case didn’t fall within the old constabulary boundaries but those weren’t supposed to exist any more, and if Harris was left in charge it was likely to remain unsolved unless the perpetrator turned up holding his hands out for the cuffs. Now Fleming had got her teeth into it, seen a way forward and made plans for the next steps, she was very reluctant to give it up.

  ‘I think,’ she said delicately, ‘that perhaps this is just the sort of cooperation the CC is keen to encourage. He’s been very insistent about it and I’m sure he’d be impressed that the Galloway Division was so ready to support his ideas.’

  Rowley hesitated, still unconvinced. ‘And suppose you can’t get a result any more than they can? It’s an unnecessary risk to my excellent record, Marjory. I admit you’ve done quite well in the past—’

  ‘Thank you,’ Fleming murmured, quite overcome by this encomium.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t come unstuck on this one. No, I shall phone the CC and explain the situation.’ She paused, struck by a sudden thought. ‘I suppose I could point out that you’re coming to it after they have failed and very likely made a successful outcome impossible. That way he could see I was keen to implement his policy but any failure would be Taylor’s fault. Yes, that would do.’

  Amazed yet agai
n at the unselfconscious transparency of Rowley’s ambition, Fleming found it hard to know what to say but Rowley, having established a strategy, was going on. ‘So, what steps will you be taking?’

  On the principle that the less she knew, the less able she was to interfere, Fleming said, ‘Now you’ve given it the nod I’ll go and sort out the details. I’ll be wanting my own team on this – Macdonald, Campbell, Hepburn and MacNee, of course – and I’ll brief them later. Fortunately we’re not at full stretch for once, and the Dumfries team will be doing a lot of the legwork for us.’

  ‘So I should hope. And we’ll be billing them for our time as well. I’ll get on to the CC just now and as long as his reaction’s favourable I don’t see why you shouldn’t go ahead. But remember, Marjory, this is very important. I need to be able to show continued successful outcomes, so don’t let me down.’

  On the way back to her office, Fleming gave herself a stern talking-to. It was immature even to entertain the thought of making blunder after deliberate blunder, just to wreck Hyacinth’s career.

  Randall Lindsay walked into the hall of Ballinbreck House and called, ‘Hello! Anybody in?’

  There was no answer. They were probably at the warehouse at the other end of the village where there was storage and office space for their online home decor business, along with a shop.

  It had been set up with the last of his father’s family money and it was Philippa’s eye for stylish and unusual home accessories that had made it a thriving business, though since the downturn things hadn’t been going well. That gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Randall went up the stairs two at a time to his bedroom. It was still a shock when he went in, even though he knew his mother had expunged all trace of his childhood when he left home. The room was now an elegant guest room with French-Grey walls and white bedlinen, piled with vintage lace-trimmed cushions instead of the bunk beds and bookshelves and pin boards he still saw in his mind’s eye.