Dead in the Water Read online

  A moment later, the square was empty.

  Karolina Cisek looked at the clock, frowning. It was almost eleven, and Rafael with his early start was usually in bed at half past ten. He had gone to the pub in disgust when she told him she must spend the evening preparing the Flemings’ evening meals for the days when she would be working in the film canteen.

  It was quarter past eleven when she heard their elderly Honda returning, and Rafael came in. He was a big, solidly built man, square-jawed and brown-haired.

  ‘You are very late.’ Karolina greeted him in the Polish they always used at home, trying not to sound accusing, but knowing she had failed.

  ‘I expect you managed to fill in the time.’ Rafael had the sort of excited aggression about him she’d seen in people on the way to being drunk, but he wasn’t a drinking man and he was entirely sober.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ she said, trying to defuse the situation. ‘I finished what I needed to do and I made some apple cake.’

  ‘Fine.’ He sat down by the dying fire, looking into it as his wife switched on the kettle. He didn’t seem inclined to talk.

  ‘Was the pub busy tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. A lot of us gathered there – and there were some strangers.’

  ‘Strangers?’ Karolina frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They were looking for us. They had come into Kirkluce from different places.’

  ‘Oh, Rafael! There wasn’t – there wasn’t trouble, was there?’

  ‘Not of our making. But they challenge us – so . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘What happened? Was there a fight?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Sort of. It turned nasty.’ He mimed someone slashing with a knife. ‘We had to protect ourselves.’

  Karolina was dismayed. ‘Were the police involved? It won’t do us Poles any good—’

  ‘No, no police. Someone was a little hurt, that’s all. Kasper, in fact.’ He turned to look at her coldly. ‘You didn’t tell me Kasper had come here. But you knew, didn’t you?’

  Karolina’s face flamed. ‘I – I forgot. It wasn’t important. I saw him when I went to Mass this morning.’

  ‘Why here?’ Rafael said, a dangerous edge to his voice. ‘He knew we were here – has he come all the way from Poland to find you?’

  ‘No, Rafael, no!’ She came over to kneel on the hearthrug in front of him. ‘That isn’t true! He has just come to make a new life, after he was in so much trouble. And you remember – I turned him down. I chose you!’

  ‘But you could change your mind. He showed he could make money – what can I offer you? So little that I cannot support my wife and son, that you have to work—’

  Tears came into Karolina’s eyes. ‘It isn’t like that! You make enough for a good life, but I like to do this. It could be even better for us, that’s all. Here in Britain it is right for women to work. Bill has this farm and the lovely house, so Marjory does not need to work. She works because it is important to her.’

  ‘She has to have you to do a wife’s job for her. And Bill has to do things a wife should do.’ Rafael sounded stubborn, but what his wife heard was hurt pride. He took his responsibilities as the breadwinner very seriously.

  She said gently, ‘Everyone respects Bill. No one thinks he can’t support his family because she has an important job. It is good for them both.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, a dimple just showing at the corner of her mouth though her eyes were still wet, ‘cooking good Polish food for more people than my husband and son isn’t a big important job. I’ll be back in plenty of time for Janek’s bedtime and your supper. That’s what I want – to be here with you.’

  He looked almost ready to be convinced. She leaned forward and kissed him and felt him respond. Then she said, ‘And Kasper? Pooh! He is a—’ She added an extremely rude word.

  It persuaded him to laugh. He got up, pulling her to her feet. ‘Never mind the apple cake. Come to bed.’

  The nurse unwrapped the blood-stained towel from the young man’s arm and looked at the deep, ugly wound from his elbow to his wrist.

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  He was tall and dark, with very dark brown eyes which did not meet hers. He shrugged. ‘Nie mówie po angielsku.’

  There was a name on the form he had brought in with him from reception, and an address in Ardhill; he had communicated to that extent, anyway.

  ‘Kasper Franzik. Polish?’ she asked, and he nodded. ‘Is anyone with you? Someone who speaks English?’

  He seemed to understand, pointing back to the waiting room, and she went to see.

  It had been quiet in the small medical treatment unit in Newton Stewart and there was only one person there, a man in his sixties, perhaps, with longish, badly cut grey hair. He was a little above medium height, with the lean fitness of a much younger man; from the look of his heavy boots and his hands he did the sort of physical work that would mean you were unlikely to run to fat.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ the nurse asked hopefully, smiling.

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t smile back.

  ‘Could you help me talk to your friend? He doesn’t understand what I’m asking him.’

  He got up without response and followed her through to the treatment room where he said something gruffly to Kasper which the nurse didn’t understand.

  She prepared a steel bowl with water and disinfectant, and brought a handful of swabs to begin cleaning the wound. ‘What happened?’ she asked again.

  ‘An accident.’ The man didn’t consult her patient. ‘He was working on some stone and the – the – I do not know the word,’ he mimed a tool, ‘it slipped.’ That was his only hesitation; he had a strong accent, but his English was good.

  ‘Working on stone with a knife, was he, on a Sunday night? Look, I know a knife wound when I see one. Why not tell me who did that, and we can inform the police?’

  The older man’s face went blank and his language skills seemed to desert him. ‘Don’t understand. Accident.’

  ‘If that’s how you want it, there’s nothing I can do. But tell him to keep out of trouble. Whoever did that wasn’t playing games.’

  She cleaned the wound thoroughly. Kasper, biting his lip, didn’t flinch.

  ‘I’ll put adhesive strips on and bind it up meantime. But it needs proper attention and you’ll need to go to Dumfries. I’ll give you a note – do you understand?’

  Kasper nodded, and she guessed he understood more than he was admitting. Not speaking English could be a way of avoiding awkward questions.

  ‘Do you have transport?’ she asked. ‘There’s a bus service, but it’s not great—’

  ‘We have a van,’ the older man said. ‘I can drive him there.’

  She finished off. ‘There you are. No serious damage, but it needs to be checked and properly stitched. Is it very painful?’

  Again, Kasper nodded, unprompted.

  She fetched painkillers and gave them to him in a paper cup, with a glass of water. He swallowed them, then said a heavily accented thank you.

  She smiled. ‘That’ll keep you going till you get it seen to.’

  His smile made him very attractive, in a brooding sort of way. The older man’s face had relaxed and she thought he too was quite good-looking, with nice blue eyes. She’d noticed before that a lot of Polish men seemed to be, and they usually had nice manners too.

  This wasn’t the first time she’d seen young Poles showing signs of conflict. It was the first time for a knife wound, though, and it worried her.

  The nurse was just about to go off duty when Sergeant Christie from Newton Stewart police station brought in an early-morning cyclist who had come off his bike. She directed him into a treatment room, then spoke to Christie.

  ‘Just thought you should know – I’d a young Pole in here last night with a knife slash on his forearm. He claimed it was an accident, but it looked as if he’d put up his arm to ward off a knife attack. Nasty.’

  Sergeant Christie
was a neat man with a little moustache, very punctilious and a little pompous. ‘A sad reflection on today’s society. Have you the address? We’ll chase it up.’

  4

  ‘You’re early this morning, ma’am!’ the Force Civilian Assistant said as DI Fleming came in on Monday morning.

  Fleming smiled at the woman on the front desk. ‘Lot to do today,’ she said as she passed. She didn’t stop. FCAs had replaced desk sergeants, ‘for efficiency’, they claimed, though a chat with Jock Naismith had always seemed quite an efficient way of catching up with what had happened overnight. Now she got a report on her desk instead: more paperwork, less real information.

  Fleming sighed. She was getting more like her father all the time. And thinking of her father . . . The case had been on her mind ever since she’d been forced to leave it yesterday and she was in a hurry to get back to it.

  She had left the papers ready on her desk, with the second set of interviews with the Grants on top. She switched off her phone, paired them with the earlier ones, and settled down to read.

  Robert Grant, Ailsa’s father, had accepted her suicide unquestioningly and even after the pathologist’s findings seemed unconvinced. The words ‘some mistake’ featured – had he special reason to block an enquiry? The son mentioned family rows, but then clammed up.

  Jean Grant, like her husband and son, had said the three of them were together all evening and Ailsa was the only one who went out. But she had from the first flatly refused to accept her daughter had killed herself, and talked of a phone call to Ailsa that afternoon, and then of her putting on make-up before she left.

  With a pang, Fleming thought of the young woman preparing to go out: her skin with that pregnant glow, eyes carefully shaded, mouth reddened before she put on the pretty blue coat, straining against the bump perhaps. Had she gone to meet her lover eagerly, hopeful that he would take her away, or offer marriage, even? Had she taken luggage with her? No one seemed to have checked.

  The Grants had been asked separately if they knew who the father of the child was. Both men said no, but Jean had hinted at knowledge, while admitting her daughter had not actually told her.

  It was only on hearing the report of murder that she made an astonishingly direct accusation. With a fiercely vindictive tone which came through the formal phrases, she claimed her daughter had been killed by Marcus Lazansky, a former boyfriend who had rejected Ailsa, then gone to Glasgow. Later, despite her mother’s dark warnings, Ailsa had followed him there, with this result. Jean offered no evidence; she ‘just knew’.

  Marcus Lazansky – the man Janet had been talking about only yesterday, now Marcus Lindsay. How strange he should be here, just now! Though of course, since the man owned a house in the area, it wasn’t really that surprising.

  It took some time to work through intervening reports, most of them detailing enquiries which had led nowhere, then at last she came to the follow-up on Lazansky.

  Donald Bailey had interviewed his parents, Ladislav and Flora. They had stated categorically that their son was in the United States and had been there all year, which, Bailey accepted, let Marcus off the hook.

  Fleming sat back to consider it, looked at her watch and was astonished to discover it was almost eleven o’clock. She’d better check there were no urgent messages on the answer machine.

  There were several, all routine stuff until the last one. The acting Procurator Fiscal’s voice said crisply, ‘Inspector Fleming, I understand you have been tasked with reviewing the Ailsa Grant case. I shall want a report from you on your progress as soon as possible. Perhaps you can call me – when you decide to return to your office.’

  Fleming slammed down the receiver and swore, loudly, just as a knock came on the door and DC Kerr opened it, then stopped on the threshold. ‘Sorry, boss! Is this a bad time?’

  Fleming controlled herself. ‘No, no, Tansy. Come in. It’s as well you interrupted me before I strangled the phone, since I can’t reach the Fiscal’s neck. And you never heard me say that.’

  Kerr grinned. ‘Sorry – what was that? Sudden attack of deafness. Must see the doctor.’

  ‘Nasty, deafness. Still, I’m glad you didn’t catch what I said. An innocent young woman like you shouldn’t hear language like that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have understood it if I had, boss.’

  Tansy was looking good these days, Fleming thought. Since the unfortunate business with a fellow officer last year, she’d become a lot less wacky. Her taste in hair colour, previously unusual to say the least, was rather more subtle – ash-blonde today – and her jeans didn’t now look as if she’d gone wild with the scissors.

  ‘What can I do for you, Tansy?’ she asked.

  Kerr looked surprised. ‘We have an appointment. You wanted to see me.’

  ‘Did I?’ Fleming gestured at the boxes around her. ‘I’m afraid I got caught up in this.

  ‘Now, what did I want you for? Oh yes. Your appraisal’s coming up shortly, Tansy, and I wanted to know how you saw your career before it reached me.’

  Kerr looked alarmed. ‘Um – not sure what you mean.’

  ‘You’re an able officer with almost the same years of service as Andy Mac, and he made sergeant eighteen months ago. Have you started working for your sergeant’s exams?’

  Kerr started pleating her fingers. ‘Er – not exactly.’

  ‘Not exactly?’

  ‘Well – not at all, really.’

  Fleming sat back in her chair. ‘I’m not an aggressive feminist. Positive discrimination’s insulting – in today’s world if we want it, we can get it. I don’t feel victimized because the lads describe us as lads as well, or are less than politically correct. I’m as tough as any man and I don’t find people patronize me because I’m a woman.’ She smiled. ‘Well, not twice.

  ‘But I still want more promoted women in the CID. Women have different skills to bring to the table.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Fleming looked at her quizzically.

  ‘You see, the thing is—’ Kerr broke off, then started again. ‘I know that’s right. We need an all-round perspective. But I don’t really want responsibility – not yet, anyway. Happiest day of my life was when I finished school exams and I want to have a good time while I’m young!’

  Fleming looked at her with just a touch of exasperation. ‘What age are you, Tansy – thirty?’

  ‘Thirty-two,’ Kerr admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Not very young, thirty-two, really. Remember how old that was when you were twenty-one?’ Kerr winced, but Fleming didn’t spare her. ‘Take it from me, your thirties whizz by, and suddenly you’re forty.

  ‘Still, it’s your decision. But don’t just drift, will you? Thanks, Tansy.’

  Kerr rose, with some relief. Even cosy chats with Big Marge, as she was known to her officers, had a tendency to turn uncomfortable. She was just leaving when Fleming asked, ‘Quiet day? Nothing’s come my way, anyway.’

  ‘Not bad. But Sergeant Naismith was saying a report’s come in about trouble between the locals and some Poles – a knife involved. He’s going to have a word with you.’

  Fleming frowned. ‘That’s been brewing – vague reports of small incidents. All the gutter press talk about the “Polish invasion” is stirring it.’

  ‘Part of the problem is they all get together and come in a bunch, not just ones and twos. I’ve seen a dozen of them coming out of the Horseshoe Tavern at weekends – wouldn’t be my choice, I have to say.’ Kerr wrinkled her nose. ‘Spit and sawdust, but they say the beer’s cheap.’

  ‘The clientele’s pretty rough as well. Faults on both sides, no doubt. And it’s human nature – young men like fighting.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better get on. Tell Tam I’ll speak to him later.’

  Kerr hesitated. ‘Er – boss, you might want to know you’ve got dusty marks all over your face.’

  ‘Oh,’ Fleming said blankly, then looked at her hands and held them up. ‘Not really surprising. I feel as if I
’ve got dusty marks all over my brain as well, just at the moment.’

  She watched Kerr go out of the door, then shook her head. She recognized that lack of direction, that restlessness, from her own youth. But she had been ten years younger at the time, and she had found her direction the day she joined the Force. She wasn’t sure it was working out that way for Tansy.

  ‘Miss Lascelles! Homage!’ Barrie Craig, director of Playfair’s Patch, came into the drawing room and bent low over the actress’s hand.

  Absurd little man! He looked, Sylvia thought, like a tennis ball – very round, very bouncy and with a fuzz of razor-cut grey hair round his spreading bald patch. Still, she murmured, ‘Too kind,’ with a gracious inclination of the head.

  ‘Are you happy with the script, Miss Lascelles? Any problems, we can fix them.’

  ‘Oh, Sylvia, please! No, it seems perfectly straightforward. I’m sure we can make any adjustments necessary as we go along. And of course I’m always happy to take direction.’

  ‘Of course, of course – Sylvia,’ he gulped. He gestured round the room. ‘I’ve just been checking out the house – they told me it was perfect and it certainly is. That wonderful decayed splendour, the curtains frayed, the carpets threadbare, everything starting to fall apart, and you—’

  With a certain sardonic amusement, Sylvia saw him realize suddenly where that sentence was leading and collapse into crimson confusion.

  Marcus took pity on him. ‘It shows the money and prestige Sylvia’s character once had, and emphasizes the tragic disintegration of her life after her husband’s murder years before.’

  Barrie picked up the lifeline with the desperate enthusiasm of a drowning man. ‘And, of course, with lighting we can make it very creepy indeed when she realizes the murderer is now coming for her too, and here she is – helpless! Those French doors there – perfect!’

  Then he looked round. ‘And where’s the gorgeous Jaki? She’s staying here, isn’t she?’