Carrion Comfort Read online

  ‘I’m a reasonable man, Inspector, but you are trying my patience.’ He gave a martyred sigh. ‘Still, it’s simple enough. I worked here all last week and went home every night. I was there with my wife every evening except Wednesday when there was a Rotary meeting. All right?’

  ‘And the weekend before?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—’ he protested, then seemed to think the better of it and said, with a certain bravado, ‘Oh, I might as well tell you, though God knows how you’ll distort this. I was in Caithness, actually, staying at a fishing hotel with a couple of friends.’

  ‘And were you in touch with Mr Aitchison while you were up there?’

  He suddenly shouted, ‘No! I never went near the bloody man. All right?’

  ‘Fine,’ Strang said and stood up. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, sir. If we need more details about the weekend, we’ll be back in touch.’

  Michie looked astonished at this abrupt conclusion. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘For the moment.’

  As Strang drove away he had plenty of food for thought. If the victim was confirmed to be Niall Aitchison, the inner workings of Curran Services would certainly warrant close scrutiny.

  But he wasn’t going to be able to interview the person he really wanted to talk to, after what he had heard this afternoon – Pat Curran, silent in his grave, but still casting a long shadow.

  DC Livvy Murray, holdall in hand, walked into the police garage where an unmarked car, and DS Kevin Taylor, should be waiting for her. She spotted the registration number she’d been given, walked over and saw that he was indeed in the driver’s seat already. She slung her bag in the back and opened the passenger door.

  He turned his head. He was a big man with a beer gut and ham-like arms exposed by his short-sleeved shirt. In the expanse of his moon-shaped face his small, piggy eyes barely featured so that when he smiled, Murray found her eyes drawn almost mesmerically to his wide mouth with teeth like tombstones.

  He was grinning now. ‘DC Murray? Well, well, they didn’t tell me I was getting a girlie! Hop in, sweetheart.’

  Murray’s hands were curling into claws as she sat down and fastened her seat belt. Taylor revved the engine unnecessarily a couple of times and then pulled out of their parking slot a little too fast.

  ‘Whahey!’ he carolled as he pulled out into the traffic. ‘All set for a holiday at the taxpayer’s expense? And what happens in Thurso stays in Thurso, right?’

  She could tell him to stop the car and file her complaint about sexism right now. And with the current political attitudes she’d get it upheld too – and then what? Yes, Taylor would be in for it, but she’d seen what happened to women who’d been dumb enough to think that just because they were in the right they’d get support. Oh, all the proper things would be said, and everyone would be terribly careful around you, but the easy camaraderie would disappear, and Murray wasn’t about to jeopardise that for this pathetic loud-mouthed oaf – not until she’d a dossier on him that would totally nail him, anyway. And he was her superior officer, and it was a long way to Thurso. A long, long way.

  ‘I don’t think a lot happens in Thurso anyway, sir,’ she forced out.

  Taylor guffawed. ‘It will once we get there! Oh, you got lucky today, believe me. And we’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other before we arrive. I’m Kevin – Kevlar to my friends.’

  You have friends? She managed to say, ‘Why Kevlar?’ instead.

  He struck his chest with his fist. ‘Kevlar, like the armour stuff, as in, strong enough to stop a bullet. That’s me.’

  ‘Really.’ Her tone was so acid that even he noticed. He gave a dramatic groan.

  ‘Don’t tell me – you’re one of the tight-assed ones who can’t take a joke. I’m going to have to watch my language or you’ll have me up on a charge, right? Lezzie, are you?’

  It could be easier if he thought she was. ‘Do I have to answer that, sir?’

  Taylor gave her an ugly look, but he seemed to have got the message that he was on seriously dangerous ground. ‘No, Constable, as we both know, you don’t.’ He simmered in silence for a moment, then said sarcastically, ‘But if it wouldn’t compromise your principles too much, can I ask your name?’

  ‘Livvy.’

  ‘Livvy? What’s that short for?’

  ‘Olivia,’ she admitted reluctantly. Being called after Olivia Newton-John by her star-struck mother was the cross she had to bear.

  ‘Dead poncey name that.’ He sniggered. ‘Sort of name that makes you think you’re better than us that are common as muck.’

  Murray quite literally put her tongue between her teeth and trapped it there to make sure she didn’t get provoked into a response. Silence was the only weapon she had, for the moment at least. She could amuse herself by trying to analyse his weak points, like a gambler looking for another player’s ‘tells’. Vanity, certainly, but his annoyance when she wasn’t prepared to play along suggested insecurity and she could definitely work on that.

  As they crossed the Forth Road Bridge, the frigid atmosphere seemed to be taking effect. Taylor glanced at her, then glanced again with what she hoped was unease and cleared his throat.

  ‘Er … anyway, do you know anything about Strang? I gather he’s in charge.’

  Was the ‘anyway’ a peace offering? If so, she was happy to agree a truce – temporarily. ‘He’s a good officer. Clever. The DCS’s blue-eyed boy. He’s mostly fair but he’s steely – can be pretty hard on you if you step out of line.’ And she had the scars to prove it.

  ‘You’ve worked with him, have you?’

  ‘Just once, a while ago. When they were first setting up the SRCS.’ Too much information, she realised, even as she spoke. Should have kept her tongue trapped.

  ‘Where was that, then?’

  ‘Skye.’

  ‘Skye – right. Nice place.’ Then he said, ‘Hey, hang about. I’ve just remembered something. There was a big stushie, wasn’t there – he got commended or something? Rescued a woman PC, didn’t he? She’d done some daft thing. Did you know her?’

  ‘Slightly.’ The lie tripped off her tongue before her brain got into gear. Never tell a lie when the truth’s on record, her reprobate one-time boyfriend had told her – the one now languishing in Barlinnie jail. She hurried on before Taylor could get in a follow-up question, ‘They’ve sent through our orders for tomorrow, Sarge. I could check them now, if you like – save time later. It’ll be late when we get there and we’re on first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Might as well,’ Taylor said gloomily. ‘You’re not going to be a barrel of laughs, anyway, are you?’

  She seemed to have made her point. There was a lot more work to do towards the deflation of ‘Kevlar’ – huh! – but at least she’d made a start. Murray permitted herself a small smirk as she started reading.

  ‘There’s not much here. First off, we go to a house owned by Niall Aitchison – address supplied. No indication about questioning, just that we’re to see him. Ask if he knows anything about the murder, I guess. After that, we report to the boss – there’s an incident room set up in Forsich village hall.’

  ‘I’m just off now Fran – OK?’ the receptionist called as she went to the door. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Francesca Curran said, ‘Fine. Bye, Cathy!’ She was working through a pile of repeat prescriptions; technically they could be left until tomorrow but unlike Cathy, who was hurrying back to get the supper ready for her family, she had no particular incentive to get finished up promptly. She completed them and laid them ready for collection tomorrow, then sat back in her chair.

  The evening loomed ahead of her. Gabrielle and David were coming round for supper and she’d have to sit there and watch him fussing round her as if she was so fragile and precious that she would break if he didn’t personally wrap metaphorical cotton wool around her every time anyone said anything, and now her mother was just as bad, glaring at Fran last time when Gabrielle had said some
thing stupid and she’d made a light-hearted remark about her being doolally. They seemed to be conspiring to make Fran feel uncomfortable.

  Apparently jokes were out. She hadn’t meant it; Gabrielle, in her estimation, had nothing wrong with her brain. She’d just found a way to hog the limelight in her usual manipulative way, being such a sensitive little flower that everyone had to be on tippy-toes all the time. It wasn’t doing her any good, though, all this grieving and sighing about. She was looking awful and she’d clearly managed to convince herself as well as everyone else that there was a problem. If she just pulled herself together, the way Fran had had to do when things went wrong for her, there wouldn’t be all this fuss.

  And plenty had gone wrong. She lived daily with her regret that she’d never had quite enough energy to strike out and make a life for herself. Or was it courage she lacked? From her earliest days her father had made it clear she was a poor second best and it wasn’t even as if she had been her mother’s favourite, despite being the loyal one who’d stayed. Lilian somehow always seemed to suggest both daughters were rather a disappointment and didn’t quite come up to her standards. She liked having Fran around, though, ready to help with entertaining or do little chores she didn’t fancy doing herself.

  Gabrielle had had it easy, escaping to Aberdeen with Pat while she was young enough to set up a social network and feel at home there. Fran didn’t make friends easily. She had her own small group here, but she’d had to work at it and the thought of being friendless and starting from scratch had left her paralysed; she just didn’t have the confidence to do it.

  When she was leaving school, the receptionist’s job in her stepfather’s surgery had come up just at the right time – or was it the wrong time? Lilian encouraged her, and it had seemed obvious to do that until she decided what she really wanted to do with her life, but it had made it harder for her to say at any particular moment, ‘Now, yes now, I’m going to make the break.’

  And a receptionist’s job elsewhere wouldn’t pay for a decent place to stay. The Sinclairs’ rambling Victorian house not only had space for a smart little self-contained flat for her but also housed the surgery – a ten-second commute to work was hard to beat as well.

  She had to face it – her only hope for a home of her own, before the menacing ticking of the biological clock actually stopped, was finding a man. David had looked like the answer to her maidenly prayers and she liked to think she had been making progress until her sister ruined that for her too.

  But if she was brutally honest with herself she knew that he hadn’t been that into her and what she’d felt afterwards was hurt pride not heartbreak. Even so, she couldn’t forgive Gabrielle for annexing him when she had so many more opportunities than Fran did, up here in the sticks. The only man who figured in her social scene now was Niall Aitchison, and though she was finding it hard to work up the occasional pub supper at a weekend into a serious relationship, if she succeeded he would do.

  Perhaps it was sad to think like that. He was hardly a knight in shining armour, but then she wasn’t a princess. Not like Gabrielle. Francesca, the pathetic loser. Francesca, who could only ever be a poor second best, as her father had decreed.

  It had been after six o’clock by the time DCI Strang was ready to head north, and much of it had been slow driving on smallish roads, so it was after eleven before he crossed the county border with its WELCOME TO CAITHNESS sign – and FAILTE GU GALLAIBH too, by government decree, despite local resistance to the infliction of Celtic Gaelic on English-speaking Picts.

  Apart from a professional visit to Peterhead Prison, this was the farthest north Strang had been on the east side of Scotland and he hadn’t known what to expect. Even this late it was still light, the sky clear apart from some slender golden clouds close to the horizon. Familiar as he was with the dramatic Highlands, he was taken aback by how flat the countryside round about was, with only a few low rises that you could barely call hills. Over to the west the peaks of Sutherland were visible in the distance, but north and east – nothing but that wide, wide sky, punctured occasionally by a village or the spire of a church, like a van Ruisdael landscape. It was – Strang looked for the word – uncompromising country. There was little that was picturesque about the small towns that he drove through either, no different from the small towns in the central belt or the hinterland of Fife.

  It was almost midnight when he reached Thurso. The hotel – he checked the address Angie had given him – was on the outskirts of the town, a forbidding-looking grey stone building called the Masons Arms. Promising, that – not. Yawning, he parked in the street outside, picked up his holdall and his laptop and crossed the pavement to the entrance.

  There was no light on in reception and the door was locked. Strang swore. He was tired, and he wanted to get his head down; Angie had said she would alert the hotel to his late arrival and if Angie said she would, she had. So why wasn’t someone waiting up for him? He looked for a bell to ring.

  There wasn’t one. Swearing again, he took out his phone, looked up the number for the hotel and dialled. He could hear it ringing inside, and then it cut out to an answering service. ‘Please leave a message after the tone …’ It would be unwise to leave the message that would adequately express his feelings.

  What now? Sleep in the car? Not that he hadn’t done it before, but he had no wish to do it again. Without much hope he went back to dialling the number again, ringing off when the message cut in, dialled, rang off, dialled, rang off, dialled.

  And at last, a light came on. A sullen-looking girl in a loose T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, pulled on over her pyjamas by the look of it, plodded across the hall, unlocked the door and opened it.

  ‘Yes?’ She still seemed to be half-asleep.

  ‘DCI Strang. Weren’t you warned I’d be late?’ He walked past her into the gloomy hall. It was high-ceilinged, large, and empty apart from an uncomfortable-looking settle against one wall and a reception desk at the back. An open door behind it showed a couch with a pillow on it and a sleeping bag thrown back.

  ‘Oh.’ She plodded back to the desk, switched on a lamp and looked about her vaguely. ‘There was a note, but I thought that was them that came earlier.’

  Presumably the pair from Edinburgh – that was something, anyway. For a moment he thought of finding out who they’d sent but the girl was yawning her head off and he was keen to get to bed himself.

  ‘My key?’ he prompted.

  ‘Oh – yeah.’ She unhooked a key from a board behind her. ‘First floor. Breakfast from half seven.’ She gestured towards a door on the left, which opened on a dark cavernous space, and was turning away as he took the key from her.

  He gestured towards the staircase leading into upper darkness. ‘Perhaps you could put the lights on?’

  It took a moment for that to sink in, then, ‘Right,’ she said, lumbering over to press a switch at the foot of the stairs. ‘There’s one when you get to the first floor as well.’

  As he reached the stairs she was already shutting the door to the back room and would, Strang reckoned, be asleep before he reached the top. It didn’t give him much hope for comfort over the next few days, but as long as the bed was flat enough to lie down on he didn’t think he’d have much trouble falling asleep.

  As usual, Gabrielle had taken her pills when she went to bed, but at two o’clock she woke up, coming to the surface reluctantly through the mists of sleep.

  She was alone. David was going offshore again and had decided to leave after supper rather than get up in the middle of the night to make an early flight in Aberdeen.

  ‘You need your sleep,’ he had said. ‘I don’t want to disturb you – the early morning’s often when you’re sleeping most soundly.’ Then he added nervously, ‘And you’ll be sure to lock up properly?’

  She had felt a little sick at what that implied, but smiled and promised – though, if it was she who locked the doors, might she not remember where they now kept the keys even if sh
e was asleep? Lilian had brought her home, asked three times if she would be all right, then mercifully was persuaded to go and leave her alone.

  It had been an evening of slow torment. David and Lilian were watching her all the time, ready to leap in with unnecessary reassurance if she so much as hesitated over a word. Their anxiety made her even more anxious; she was sure he was telling Lilian about the sleepwalking when she saw them having a murmured conversation. Or was she telling him about the mix-up over time yesterday? Or – horrible thought – had she done some other crazy thing that they hadn’t wanted to tell her?

  Malcolm had been pompous, Francesca had been acid – situation normal. To be fair to Fran, she’d been set about last time by Lilian and David for the sort of flippant remark to her sister that was common currency in their relationship and the result was a resentment so intense that you could see it was almost choking her. Gabrielle would have sympathised if it wasn’t for the fact that she didn’t seem to have any real emotions any more.

  Once she had locked the doors and put the keys in the bowl in the sitting room, she’d hurried upstairs to take her pills, desperate for a few hours of oblivion.

  Few enough. Gabrielle sat up to look at the clock then sank back on her pillows in despair. David was right – she needed her sleep. But something had wakened her, some unidentified noise.

  And now she heard it – the sound of stealthy movement close by. She listened, straining her ears. An animal in the garden, a fox, perhaps? She’d often seen one, brash and busy, trotting across on its nocturnal business. A badger, even? But the top predators that had the night hours to themselves were confident, unafraid. This wasn’t an animal.

  The sound she was hearing was hesitant, furtive, as if whoever was making it was constantly checking for fear of discovery. But where was it – inside or outside?