Evil for Evil (27 page)

And from Kerr, hatred. And from Christie – oh yes, from Christie, hatred. It frightened her. Too many people hated her. Where Christie was concerned, she hadn’t thought it mattered. But it had – oh yes, it had.

‘She won’t be pleased,’ DS Macdonald said. ‘This whole investigation has ground to a halt and you could tell yesterday she was relying on a kick-start from the interviews today. And this hasn’t come up with anything either.’

He gestured at the computer screen in front of him, where the SOCO’s preliminary report on the Lovatts’ farmhouse fire was displayed.
He and DC Campbell were alone in the CID room, discussing their unsatisfactory encounters with the Donaldsons and Sorley. At least, Macdonald was discussing them, while Campbell grunted, mostly.

‘There’s nothing to say, except that Steve Donaldson is the weakest link and we failed to crack him. The best we can offer is that it shows there’s a deliberate cover-up going on.’

‘What of?’

Macdonald looked at Campbell impatiently. ‘Now, let me think, what could it be? Oh, I remember. Setting the farmhouse on fire. Slipped my mind for a moment.’

Campbell, provokingly, shrugged.

‘Look, it’s obvious. Those guys are clearly obstructing the investigation. They’ve a history of vandalism—’

‘Alleged.’

‘OK, alleged, if you insist. But who else could have a motive for doing it?’

Campbell only gave him a level look, and Macdonald’s face flushed with anger. ‘If you’re trying to suggest it was Christie, you’re barking. Apart from anything else, she’s not dumb enough to think you can splash petrol about and start a fire, then reckon on getting back into the house to save the person you want and leave the other to fry. And if her defence was going to be that she thought Melissa Lovatt had got out already, she wouldn’t have left the door bolted. I can’t imagine how you can claim she did it.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘As good as. You’re just weaselling now.’ He eyed his colleague with dislike, the old Macdonald saying, ‘Never trust a Campbell,’ coming forcibly to mind.

‘Didn’t,’ Campbell said again.

‘Oh great! Going back to the nursery, are we?’ Macdonald’s voice
had risen. ‘Perhaps, if you could spare more than a monosyllable or two, we could have something approaching an adult discussion—’

‘What’s all this about?’

Macdonald spun round. He hadn’t noticed DI Fleming come into the room. She was looking distinctly raddled this morning, and she didn’t sound very cheerful either.

‘Oh, nothing, boss,’ he said hastily. ‘We were just talking about the interviews.’

‘And …?’

He’d been right. All the signals were there: Big Marge was definitely not in a mood for bad news. He swallowed nervously. ‘They were stonewalling, basically. They’d agreed a cover story between themselves and we couldn’t shake them.’

‘I see.’ Fleming glanced at the screen they had been looking at. ‘Is that the SOCO’s report?’

Macdonald nodded. ‘Preliminary. But …’ He stopped. There wasn’t anything cheering to say about it, and she could read the bad news for herself.

She scrolled down, the disappointment showing in her face as she reached the end.

‘So – where does that leave us?’

The words ‘flatter on our bottoms’ sprang to his mind but in the current situation seemed impolitic, however accurate they might be. ‘Sifting through the reports, more interviews,’ he offered feebly.

‘In line with the striking success we’ve had by these methods before?’ Fleming said with considerable acerbity. ‘Oh come on, Andy, can’t you do better than that? We’re simply plodding determinedly down a street marked Dead End, aren’t we? What about some lateral thinking?’

She paused, looking from one to the other, but when both steadfastly
refused to meet her eye, went on, ‘I’m going to go down there myself this afternoon to have a go at Matt Lovatt. I said I’d take Louise Hepburn with me. Do you know where she is?’

The two detectives exchanged an uneasy glance. ‘Er – I think she went down to do that herself this morning,’ Macdonald said.

‘She
what
?’

Solidarity demanded some sort of defence for a colleague not there to defend herself. ‘I think she thought that was what you would have wanted her to do. She didn’t know when you’d be back.’

None of them had known, and Big Marge in her present mood didn’t seem inclined to explain her absence.

‘Oh, she did, did she?’ Her tone was ominous. ‘I want to see her whenever she appears.’

Fleming swung out of the room and Macdonald watched her go with his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. ‘Who’s stolen her scone? I tell you something – I’m glad I’m not—’

His mobile ringing interrupted him. Smiling as he recognised the voice at the other end, he said, ‘Hi Georgia. What can I do for you?’

His expression changed as he listened to her furious tirade. ‘What a cow!’ he said, when at last he got the chance. ‘Don’t worry, Georgia. I’m going to drop her in it so deep that she won’t come up for air for a month.’

Having an investigation stall was hardly a new experience for DI Fleming. What was different this time was the feeling of utter hopelessness – about that, and about herself. She was a selfish failure who couldn’t do either her job as a mother or her job as a police officer successfully. Her success as a wife – if she could claim that – was entirely due to Bill’s stalwart loyalty. He’d have had a better home life with someone more in the traditional mould. Another failure, really.

She’d had plenty of mistakes to acknowledge over the years, but
failure
– that hurt in one of the most sensitive areas of her psyche, her pride. Hug the pain, someone had said to her once. Take it into yourself, use it to grow. Sound advice, probably, when it came to her personal life.

In her job, though, it was different. If she failed, someone else could die, and right at the moment she had no idea how to prevent it. Fleming brought her fists down on the desk in an agony of frustration.

She had to do something. Her eyes itched from lack of sleep, her head felt stuffed with cotton wool and she felt no enthusiasm as she turned to her computer screen. She’d have to pan through the silt of reports from the uniforms, hoping for a glint of gold somewhere. It was unlikely, though – anything that even faintly resembled progress would have been brought to her long ago.

Somehow, she had to snap out of it, lift her professional mood. Fleming knew she’d been unfair to Macdonald and Campbell in demanding lateral thinking. Ewan had a good analytical mind and Andy was a thoughtful and efficient officer, but neither of them went in for inspiration. That was her job – hers and Tam’s.

His father had been a gratuitous complication. The tabloids had, indeed, been hostile and Bailey had harrumphed a bit, but once old Davie was in the bosom of his family there wasn’t really anywhere for the story to go. Another couple of days at the most – maybe even a day, if everything was still quiet – and she’d have him back on the strength. In fact, she could give him a call now; he’d have had plenty of thinking time and MacNee’s ideas were always worth listening to. She reached for the phone.

‘Bunty? It’s Marjory. Could I have a word with Tam, if he’s around?’

‘Oh! Marjory! Er … sorry, I’ll have to get him to call you back.’

To Fleming’s surprise, Bunty was sounding uncomfortable, almost shifty. ‘He’s out, is he?’ she asked. Perhaps she was imagining it.

‘Well – sort of, not exactly.’

No, she wasn’t. For some reason, Bunty was being evasive, and she wasn’t good at it. Tam had to be behind this, with something he’d wanted his wife to cover up, but Bunty was the soul of truth and Fleming knew she would never tell a direct lie.

Taking base advantage of that, she said, ‘Come on, Bunty, Tam’s up to something, isn’t he? Where is he?’

‘Oh dear, I told him I couldn’t …’ Bunty was fluttering. ‘He’s – he’s not doing anything. He’s just asleep.’

‘Asleep? At this time of day? Is he ill?’

‘No, no, he’s fine. Look, I’ll get him to phone you when he wakes up. I really can’t say anything else.’

Taking pity on her victim, Fleming rang off. But what on earth had MacNee been up to during the hours of darkness that meant he was asleep now? She could only hope that whatever it was wouldn’t draw undesirable attention again and bring Bailey’s wrath down on her already bludgeoned head.

Maybe he was on to something, some change of direction. That was what they needed at the moment. They were allowing themselves to get bogged down in the inquiry about the fire-raising, and the original crime, sadistic murder, was in danger of being sidelined.

Where the fire-raising was concerned, she might just have to accept that even though the Donaldsons and Sorley were prime suspects – there was a good fit with their previous activities and they had the classic means, motive and opportunity – the lack of direct proof could mean there’d be no prosecution. A crime that consumed all the evidence was close to the perfect crime.

What had emerged, though, was that both Macdonald and Campbell believed that they genuinely didn’t know Andrew Smith. So …?

Unconsciously, Fleming was tapping on her front teeth with her
fingernail. So perhaps they were looking in the wrong direction, drawing a blank with all those interviews in the village. If the Manchester force would just come through with some more information on Andrew Smith, it would help – she’d requested interviews with known associates but of course they felt no sense of urgency about another force’s years-old murder.

So where were the gaps in her own investigation? Matt Lovatt was the target of all the recent problems. What had caused this dramatic escalation, after years of petty nastinesses? It was hard to see how discovering Andrew Smith’s body could have provoked it; it made no sort of sense. It simply didn’t feel right, and over the years Fleming had come to trust that sort of gut feeling. It often indicated a subconscious observation that hadn’t yet surfaced in the conscious mind.

Lovatt, though, was an enigmatic figure, which made her even more angry with the jumped-up constable who had denied her the opportunity of a killer interview. Maybe the man hadn’t been there at the time of the murder, but his grandmother certainly had been. Fleming wanted to know more about his grandmother, at the edge of the picture so far.

Fleming could still go and question him herself, of course, but Hepburn had almost certainly sprung the Andrew Smith question, as they had all been instructed to do. If she asked Lovatt again, he would have had time, if necessary, to armour himself against it. She’d wanted to see his reaction for herself. Oh, she had a word or two to say to young Hepburn, when she appeared.

What alarmed Fleming most was the sense she had of – what? She struggled to define it. That it wasn’t over – that was it. That something was happening, but to a quite terrifying degree, she couldn’t say what – or where, or why, or who was doing it. All Fleming’s professional instincts were signalling danger, but she had no idea which direction it was coming from.

Sitting panicking wasn’t going to help. She went back to her sifting, unrewarding as it might be. She had reached the stage where she reckoned she would scream if she read one more report reading, ‘I proceeded to 23 High Street’ – did no one in the police force just go places any more? – there was a knock on the door and DS Macdonald appeared, a little ahead of her ‘Come!’ He was clearly in a state of barely suppressed rage.

‘Sorry to interrupt you, boss, but I’ve had a complaint of harassment from Georgia Stanley at the Smugglers Inn. About DC Hepburn.’

Obviously Hepburn made friends everywhere she went. She was startled, nonetheless. ‘She’s been harassing
Georgia
?’

Macdonald hesitated. ‘Well, not Georgia. She was complaining on behalf of Christie Jack. It was outrageous—’

‘Ah,’ Fleming said. ‘I think you need to sit down, Andy.’

She could almost see him deflating as he obeyed her, and she went on, ‘Right, let’s start at the beginning. I saw for myself that you’re interested in Christie Jack. No, don’t interrupt me,’ as he made a move to speak. ‘You must not have anything more to do with her, in the context of this investigation. You are not to contact her, directly or indirectly. That’s an order.

‘I shall speak to Georgia myself, but if you think you can present the complaint she made in a professional way, I’ll listen to you.’

Fleming could see him struggling. He was a decent, uncomplicated young man, Andy, and for some reason he had fallen with a crash you could hear across in Ireland for Christie, who was taking him well out of his emotional depth. From all reports, Matt Lovatt was the big thing in the girl’s life and that would be hard for Andy to accept, especially since it put Christie on the suspect list.

‘Georgia says Hepburn was all chummy with Christie, then suddenly accused her of setting the fire to murder Melissa Lovatt.
We’d taken her over all that before, and the tone she took sent Christie hysterical. I’ve advised Georgia to take it up with the super.’

‘You’ve done
what
?’ If looks could kill, he would have been a small, fizzing patch on the floor.

That got through to him. ‘Well, she said she’d like to speak to you first,’ he conceded.

‘I’ve got a big problem with this, Sergeant. I thought I could deal with your attitude to Christie, who is obviously a suspect—’

Macdonald opened his mouth to protest and Fleming snarled, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, of course she is – Melissa Lovatt’s accused her. I thought I could just see to it that other people dealt with her. But I’m beginning to wonder whether I can keep you on this case at all.

‘No, I don’t want a discussion. I’m going to think it over, and I’ll let you know of my decision.’

When he left, Fleming put her head in her hands. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. MacNee off pursuing some – probably maverick – idea of his own. Macdonald, with his brain totally in thrall to his hormones. Which left her with Campbell, who hoarded his words as if they were bawbees and many a mickle could make a muckle.

And Hepburn, who was, as far as she could see, the pick of the bunch among the other detectives, and whom she was planning to blow out of the water pretty much as she stepped over the threshold of her office.