Evil for Evil (10 page)

She’d brought a case of wine too, and the Barolo tasted good even from a thick cheap glass. Elena drank the first one fast, the second a little slower. It was a long time since she had done more than sip a little well-chilled white wine and already she could feel the first effects: a loosening of tension, the faintest lift of light-headedness. She must phone Eddie before she got drunk, as she fully intended to.

There were three messages on her mobile when she switched it on. No need to check to see who they were from: he answered before the end of the first ring.

‘I’ve been waiting to hear from you, doll. You all right? Your phone was off.’

‘Eddie, I’m fine. Just starting to chill out. I’ve been feeling very stressed lately and this is the perfect place, a sort of retreat. I can feel it doing me good already.

‘You’ll be patient, won’t you, darling? Don’t know how long it will take, but I’ll come back so relaxed you won’t know me.’ That wasn’t exactly a lie; she hoped it would be true.

‘Of course, of course.’ He sounded deflated, and she could sense his struggle not to break the rules and quiz her. ‘If it’s what you need, it’s all that’s important to me. You know that.’

‘You are a love,’ Elena said, and this time she meant it.

‘Oh …’ Eddie gave a little, awkward laugh. ‘Just so you come back to me at the end of it. Promise? And keep in touch.’

‘Of course I will.’ But when he said, ‘Love you, angel,’ she said only, ‘Night, darling. Sleep well.’

After the third glass of Barolo, Elena got up and went at last to the window. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath and then opened them. Her grip on the glass unconsciously tightened.

The light had all but gone now and a huge harvest moon was rising, a curious deep red-orange in colour. The lights of Innellan shone below, as well as the lights from a house further out along the shore – and there were the islands, dark shadows on a pewter sea.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by a sound which made the hairs stand up on the back of her neck – a long, spine-chilling howl. A dog, Elena told herself, just a dog, baying at the blood-red moon.

But when at last, a little unsteadily, Elena went to bed, she dreamt of wolves she could not see apart from the eyes that glowed in the darkness of the forest where she was being hunted, and she woke with a dry mouth and a thumping head just as a grey shape leapt from the shadows towards her throat.

The concrete floor was stained with dark oil patches. Fergie Crawford could smell it as he lay, his head pillowed on the plastic bag which now held only a spare pair of trainers. He was wearing every other stitch of clothing, but still he was shivering as dawn light seeped under the swing door.

At least it was light enough to see his surroundings. Since nightfall, he’d been in pitch darkness with no idea of the passage of time. He hadn’t slept much, constantly jerking awake with the pain of stiffness and cold, usually in rising panic until he figured out where he was.

That had been the pattern since he started sleeping rough. He’d slept on hard ground often enough in the army too, but then he’d been well fed and physically exhausted enough to crash out and he’d always had a warm softie jacket and a roll mat. The thin rug the sarge had chucked at him hadn’t looked at the problem.

While he could still see to do it, Fergie had arranged the unmarked cardboard boxes stored in the lock-up garage to form a shelter
against the draught that whistled under the door, but that hadn’t helped much. He got up slowly, rubbing at his arms and stamping to get feeling back into his numbed feet. His cramped muscles screamed as he stretched.

He perched himself on a pile of the boxes, keeping his feet up out of the draught and draping the rug round him. There was nothing to say what was inside them, but he’d a pretty good idea that if he broke into one and helped himself he wouldn’t even notice his miseries any more.

He didn’t, of course. OK, he might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he wasn’t mental. When Brodie had told him he’d better shut his eyes so he couldn’t tell anyone where the lock-up was, he not only shut them but covered them tight with his hands, so there was no mistake.

Knowing stuff was dangerous. Taking cash for flogging what Brodie and his pals gave him was fine, but after Brodie took a hit and got his discharge, the trouble started. The boss who took over got greedy and clumsy and the redcap monkeys who lifted him were looking for Fergie now too.

He’d gone on the run in a panic, never thinking where he could go. He’d never had a father – he doubted if even his mother knew who it was. She was an alkie and her current boyfriend was too – violent with it. He’d nowhere to call home, so seeing Brodie on the telly had been like a miracle, when he’d been sleeping rough and begging in the street, all but starving.

He felt like he was starving now. Brodie had left him some scoff but he’d eaten it last night in one go – not that it had been that much anyway, for someone who hadn’t had a square meal in three weeks.

What time was it now? It seemed to have been daylight for hours, but he couldn’t remember when it got light at this time of year.
Brodie’d said he’d be back sometime in the morning, when he could get away.

Fergie bent his knees and hunched himself over them, draping the rug round and tucking his hands into his armpits to warm them up. It wasn’t quite so cold now the sun was up; maybe he could doze off again, to help the time to pass …

When he woke up, the light was stronger. He’d no idea how long he’d slept. What time was it now? When would Brodie come?

And what if he didn’t come at all? He’d spelt it out that Fergie was a problem and Brodie wasn’t the sort to put himself out for you. He could just have gone off, leaving him here till Fergie got tired of waiting and left of his own accord.

Feeling panic rise again, he fought it down. Course Brodie wouldn’t do that. Fergie just had to trust him – what else could he do? On the other side of that door, in the scary outside world, there was the same old stuff: nowhere to sleep, no food, always being terrified the monkeys would find him.

He could give himself up. But then they’d ask all the questions he knew it was dangerous to answer, and somehow they’d make him answer them anyway and then …

Brodie had said he’d a plan to sort it out. Fergie had to hold on to that. It was just the waiting that was getting to him.

If he maybe took a peek outside, he’d get some idea what time it was from the sun. True enough, it was safer if he’d nothing he could tell, but if he just opened the door for a minute it wouldn’t tell him much. Before he was told to shut his eyes, he’d glimpsed the row of lock-ups in a back lane where weeds were growing up round most of the other garages.

Just a quick look, that was all. He’d feel better once he’d been out in the sunlight instead of this greyish half-light – warmer, too.

Fergie went to the door. It was hard to see against the light coming in round the edges and he felt down for the handle – in the middle, he seemed to remember, having seen Brodie close it as he left.

It wasn’t in the middle. He must have been wrong. He patted along the back, along left, along right, up, down, top to bottom.

There was no handle. Why would there be? He was trapped inside.

And the question he had asked returned with devastating force –
what if Brodie didn’t come back at all?

Fleming glanced round the officers assembled for the morning briefing. It was Sunday and the room wasn’t crowded – she hadn’t put out an expensive overtime call to off-duty officers, as would normally be the case in a murder inquiry. Superintendent Bailey, pursing his fleshy lips, had been very definite about that.

‘They’re just old bones, Marjory. You know how tight the budget is this year, and we can take our time over this one.’

She hadn’t argued. Door-to-doors in such a small place wasn’t labour-intensive; there would be a lot of fiddly stuff for the civilian staff, following up records of owners and visitors to the caravans and chalets, but that could wait until they knew the timescale. The pathologist had confirmed the skeleton was adult and male but refused to speculate further in conditions like these, so they hadn’t much to go on as yet.

The photographer had done his stuff, though, and on the huge whiteboard on the back wall his blown-up shots of the pathetic skeleton in its shackles, with the watch, that final refinement of torture, hanging from the arm bone, had produced shudders of distaste as the officers gathered.

‘I’ve glanced at reports from the door-to-doors so far,’ Fleming told them. ‘It’s a close-knit community and it’ll need low-key, persuasive
interviews. And a couple of names suggest a follow-up and I’ll be getting on to them today.

‘Apart from that, I can’t see much more to be done until we start getting forensic stuff. Any questions?’

A female DC put her hand up. Hepburn: fairly new; young, sharp-eyed with olive skin and very dark curly hair that looked as if she’d been pulled through a bush backwards.

‘Is there any particular angle you’d like us to concentrate on?’

Genuine enquiry, Fleming wondered, or the sort of ‘sucking up’ question to get attention that every teacher is familiar with? Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Fleming said, ‘Just use your initiative. Anything else? No? Then the other areas I want covered today …’ Fleming went on briskly to detail them, then finished the meeting.

At the end she called over Andy Macdonald who, to her surprise, she had seen sitting with Tam MacNee and Ewan Campbell.

‘Thought you were on leave,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you today, Andy.’

‘Reckoned I might as well come in, boss. Didn’t fancy getting the third degree every time I went round the pub, and stag weekends tend to run out of steam anyway.’

Fleming couldn’t resist asking, ‘And what about your lady friend?’ Andy had a bit of a reputation for putting them through his hands.

Macdonald pulled a face. ‘Don’t think she ever was, and she certainly isn’t at the moment. But …’ He paused, as if afraid of saying too much.

‘But?’ Fleming prompted, intrigued. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell Tam.’

‘I’ll see him later. Anyway – well, I’m not giving up. She’s quite a girl.’

Smitten, was he? She didn’t let her amusement show. ‘Good for
you! But listen, Andy. You obviously spent time in the place. Any useful contacts?’

Macdonald shook his head. ‘Hardly even met the locals, except the man who used to run a Johnnie-a’-things. He’d a range of the most lurid sweeties you’ve ever seen – we were probably high on E-numbers all summer. But it closed long ago and I don’t think he lived there anyway. The kids I knew all came from the caravans and chalets.’

‘Too much to hope for. No point in you coming down to Innellan, then – there’s just two or three people I want to see at the moment and Tam and I can cover that. Make the most of your day off. Away you go and have Sunday lunch at your mum’s.’

‘Oh, help me! Help me! Don’t go!’ Aileen Findlay sobbed. ‘Don’t leave me! Stop him, stop him!’

She was propped up in bed, grossly overweight with straggly grey hair and demented eyes. The carer, a scone-faced girl in a pink overall, looked helpless, her jaws rotating as she chewed gum.

Her son didn’t conceal his exasperation. Cal Findlay’s swarthy complexion and dark eyes made him look dour at the best of times and now there was a line of temper between his brows.

‘I’ve got to go. Just carry on with the routine.’

Doubtfully, the girl approached the bed, but Aileen slapped at her with a hand like a wet fish. She stepped back, out of reach.

‘Don’t think she wants me. Maybe if you—’

‘She doesn’t “want” me either,’ Findlay snapped. ‘She hasn’t a clue who I am. She’s just unsettled this morning. She’ll be fine once I’ve gone.’

He left, shutting the door on the carer’s protests, and drove to Kirkcudbright harbour in a black mood. At least today he could
nurse it on his own in the small boat, checking lobster pots – he’d a strict quota for the prawn fishing.

Yes, his mother was unsettled. She’d seen the police from the chair by the window where she spent her days and had started rambling, blurting out the random thoughts, disconnected and dangerous, which were all she had nowadays.

She’d been like that for ten years – years of pure purgatory for her son, which wasn’t to say that theirs had been a good relationship before that. They were bound together in a devil’s embrace of need and past events.

Findlay parked then walked to the pier, giving unsmiling nods in response to greetings from acquaintances. He knew they thought he was a moody sod. He didn’t care. He had a lot to be moody about.

He’d come back from working on trawlers on the Cumbrian coast to live at home, buy his own boat and be his own boss; if the fishing hadn’t been kneecapped by the EU, he’d have had his own place too. But here he was, heading for fifty, still at home with his mother, barely able to service the loan on his prawn boat and pay a deckhand, inheriting the house when Aileen died his only hope for the future.

She’d still been in her fifties when dementia struck. Sometimes Findlay wondered if it was a punishment for her actions – or perhaps, more realistically, a result of them. He knew his mother had suffered from guilt, and so she should.

She’d have been in a home long ago, if he hadn’t known she’d be made to sell up to pay for it. So she had to be there in the house, her presence seeming to suck light and even air out of the place, however determinedly he ignored her – sitting in another room, sleeping in the most distant bedroom with earplugs in. Oh, he’d thought of the pillow over the face, but he wasn’t a fool. It would be a sure way of letting her ruin his life from beyond the grave.

Yes, she was his mother. But yes, he had reason to hate her. She had used him when he was too young to understand, had condemned him to the sort of half-life he was leading now. Once he’d had a young man’s dreams; now all he wanted was peace and security – and a mind free from the fear that had stalked him all these years. Once he had thought of it as a figure on the distant horizon, easy enough to ignore; now it was a presence at his shoulder, dogging his steps.

The police wouldn’t have got much out of yesterday’s questioning. Innellan was a place of closed doors and closed mouths when it came to outsiders. But if you put a stick into a muddy pond and stirred the water, there was no telling what would come bubbling up.

Findlay cast off, started the motor and headed out into the Solway Firth. He wouldn’t be going towards the islands today.

‘Thick as thieves,’ Georgia Stanley had said when Fleming and MacNee consulted her, having failed to find Sorley at the run-down chalet. ‘They’ll be together.’

And that, indeed, was where Sorley was: at Steve Donaldson’s house. It had clearly been a labourer’s cottage, a meanly proportioned box built of concrete slabs. There was a traditional croft house nearby, presumably still occupied by Donaldson Senior.

An unsavoury-looking crew, Fleming thought, as she and MacNee joined Sorley and the Donaldsons, father and son, at the kitchen table where they were drinking coffee. The table looked as if it had come down in the world, too large and expensive-looking for this narrow, basic room.

At Sorley’s suggestion Steve’s wife Josie, a wispy woman with an embittered expression, left after setting mugs of instant before the officers with a bad grace. It had been made with cooling water and little undissolved grains floated on top; Fleming pushed hers away,
though MacNee didn’t seem to have noticed and was drinking his with no evidence of distaste.

They had received a cautious welcome and preliminary questions were answered readily enough: they knew nothing of the cave, they had no suggestions about identity. But Sorley, with an eager expression on his weaselly face, was keen to enlarge on his theories.

‘Like I told the officer yesterday, it all fits now. I could tell there was something, the way he wanted to keep folks off the island, when it’s our right by law to go where we like in our own country. Anyone could go anywhere in your day, eh, Hugh?’

Sucking his remaining teeth, Hugh Donaldson agreed. ‘Funny thing, that, right enough. What’s he got to hide? And he’s been like that, right from the start. This deer farming nonsense – he’ll never make it pay, and I made plenty for the old woman, I can tell you that. So what call did he have to refuse my boy the lease? Something funny there, you’d have to say.’