Dying of the Light (16 page)

‘I’ve told you, Alice, the man who did it is inside, banged up in Saughton,’ Elaine Bell said testily, holding down a piece of shortbread in her tea as if to drown it.

‘Yep,’ Simon Oakley added, ‘give it a rest, eh? The woman may well be competent, compellable, blah, blah, blah, but she’s also a waste of space, so what’s the point?’

‘The point is…’ Alice tried again, aware that the rest of the squad did not share her view, ‘that she can provide an alibi for McPhail for the likely time of the first murder.’

‘Alibi my arse!’ Eric Manson said forcefully. ‘
Provide
an alibi, my sainted arse! They had it off together, OK? Forbidden love, like that holy mag implied – then it ended. But she thought she could help him, so she blabbed away, and it sounds as if she said whatever came into her head.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Alice replied. ‘She couldn’t know, then, I mean, what would help him. It might have helped him to say she hadn’t seen him on the ninth. Anyway, if she was only helping him with that kind of lie, why didn’t
she begin by saying that he was with her on the second occasion too?’

‘Doesn’t know which way’s up or lost her bloody nerve, I guess,’ DC Littlewood replied, never lifting his eyes from the computer screen.

‘Look, sergeant,’ Eric Manson said with a weary sigh, ‘let’s get real, eh? They had a fling, it all went
pear-shaped
…’

‘Yes,’ Alice interrupted. ‘But why did she tell me that he was with her if he wasn’t?’

‘Because,’ Elaine Bell said, rolling her eyes, ‘she thought it might HELP him! You asked about a particular time. Obviously, that suggested that an alibi for that time might be needed. Without too much thought she
fabricated
one… and when things finally sank in, or she got muddled or whatever, she lost her nerve. Anyway, Alice, the question you should be asking yourself – if you don’t believe she was lying,’ and she pointed at her sergeant, ‘is why she’s not prepared to assist us, even with her lies? Why she’s gone back on everything she said!’

‘But I told you, ma’am,’ Alice said, exasperated in her turn, ‘she told me her husband would divorce her, beat her up, take the kids…’

‘Nope,’ Elaine Bell shook her head, ‘from what you said she’s just not very bright. To begin with, she thought she could help him, the priest I mean, get her oar in, say whatever. Then realisation dawned and she didn’t fancy lying on oath
and
losing her children and so on.
Remember
, she openly admitted to you they were lies!’

‘Well,’ Alice said, sounding more confident than she felt ‘I still think we should follow it up…’

‘Jesus H. Christ!’ Eric Manson bellowed. ‘We’ve got our man in the pokey! What more do you want? Have
you not noticed or something? Everything fits together. The man’s a priest, eh? The poor cows are left in a
position
of p… p… prayer. Geddit? He doesn’t screw them, being celibate, just arranges them into a praying pose. And then – get over this if you can – he leaves his DNA on them. And it’s not an odd hair fibre or something easy to talk your way out of, no, it’s his blood. Explain that if you can. Because he can’t for sure. He denies going anywhere near them! Ever!’

‘Quite,’ Elaine Bell added. ‘It would be a complete waste of everybody’s time to spend another minute on her. She won’t help him and she certainly won’t help us.’

‘Yep,’ Simon Oakley said, unwrapping a Crunchie and looking at it fondly, ‘The woman’s a liar, Alice, on her own admission. Best leave it, eh?’

They stood, side by side, outside the front door of the tenement in Jerez Place while the forensic team searched the priest’s flat for anything to connect him to the killings. Alice glanced longingly at her companion’s hat, a
broad-brimmed
leather Stetson, before shaking her head to get rid of its layer of accumulated snow.

‘It’d be too big,’ he said, as if reading her mind, and she smiled, impressed again by his perspicacity.

‘Think they’ll find the knife?’ he added, staring listlessly down the street, his eyes alighting on a woman wrestling with a buggy, her upended toddler bawling beside her.

‘Nope,’ Alice replied, unwilling to re-open the argument and risk a further bruising for the doubts that she continued to harbour. She knew only too well that they were irrational anyway; she did not have any alternative explanation for the blood traces. Best change the subject.

‘Got anything planned for tonight, Simon?’

‘No. You?’

‘Nothing much. Ian’s going to an exhibition in Dundas Street. A friend of his. I might join him if I get off in time. You could come too, if you want?’

‘No thanks. I’m staying in. Broke up with my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago, and I keep hoping she’ll phone. Maybe even come and collect her stuff. She’s still got a key, but I don’t want to miss her.’

A waddling figure, head down against the blowing snow, approached them from the Fort Street direction, bags of shopping swinging and banging alternately against each leg. It was Mrs Donnelly, and she looked aggrieved at the very sight of them.

‘Can I not get back in yet?’ she demanded in a cross tone.

DS Oakley shook his head, edging to his left to allow her to share the little shelter that they had found below a stone lintel. For a few minutes they stood together in disharmonious silence until Alice’s phone went, and she fumbled in her pockets for it, fingers rigid with cold. It was the crime-scene manager to inform her that they had found a woman’s blue scarf in a cupboard in the priest’s bedroom, and to ask if was to be accorded priority at the lab.

‘What does it look like?’ she asked.

‘As I said, blue – baby blue – and it’s got pink
tassel-like
things hanging off it.’

‘Hang on a sec.’ Alice passed on the description of the scarf to the housekeeper, who answered excitedly, ‘It’s mine – my scarf! But I gave it to him. He kept borrowing it, so I gave it to him.’

‘Jim,’ Alice said ‘don’t worry. No priority with the scarf. Are you lot nearly ready? We’re freezing out here.’

‘Almost finished. At worst, another five minutes.’

‘Any photos of the priest up there?’

‘Aha, loads. There’s pictures taken at Nunraw, some of his first –’ Mrs Donnelly began, thinking the question was directed to her, her face falling when Alice raised a hand to silence her, trying to make out the crime-scene manager’s words against the din.

‘Plenty. I’ll bring down a selection for you.’

‘Why do you need photos anyway?’ Mrs Donnelly said bitterly. ‘You’ve got Father after all? Probably took a
mugshot
, or whatever you call it, too.’

Simon’s eyes met Alice’s, but neither of them felt inclined to tell the housekeeper the truth. That any
individual
suspected of killing two women was considered capable of doing almost anything, and that time, effort and public money would now be spent in an attempt to discover if Father McPhail was responsible for other, as yet unsolved, crimes. And photographs of him at all ages, from boyhood to middle age, would be required to that end.

Alice’s phone rang again, and this time the crime-scene manager’s booming voice was audible to the three
huddled
people.

‘I’ve just put them in a box, dear, d’you want to come and collect them?’

As Alice started to move, Mrs Donnelly threw an
accusatory
look at the policeman, communicating wordlessly that if he was a gentleman he would be the one to climb the many flights of stairs, and carry the heavy weight down.

‘I’ll go,’ Simon said, acute as ever, tipping the brim of his hat to let the snow fall off and stamping his feet before entering the tenement block. Once he had gone, Mrs Donnelly shuffled towards Alice.

‘Sergeant,’ she whispered, heedless of the fact that they were now alone together, ‘did you find that Sharp woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could she not help this time? Explain where he was, I mean?’

Alice shook her head.

‘Before…’ Mrs Donnelly said distractedly, looking into the middle distance, ‘before, she was always the reason,
always
the reason. When I didn’t know where he was, I mean. He’d be there with her. And it got them both into awful trouble. The Bishop was merciless with him. Actually, I’m quite sure it was perfectly innocent this time, but… he just couldn’t keep away from her. It was as if she’d cast a spell on him. I met her once, just the once, she seemed a silly woman to me.’

Stacked in the cardboard box were four photographs, all of them in frames. The first one Alice picked out was of a small boy dressed in a white, long-sleeved shirt and white shorts, staring hard at the camera with unsmiling,
deep-set
dark eyes. A woman’s hand, encased in a mauve glove, rested on the boy’s shoulder. The size and uneven edge of the snap suggested that the rest of her had been cropped from it. A gawky youth clad in bell-bottoms figured in the second, his long wavy hair parted in the middle and a shy grin on his face. In the next a man was robed in priestly vestments, a solemn expression on his face,
shaking
hands with a cardinal, and a handwritten caption at the bottom read ‘10
^th
October 2005. The Retreat.’ The final image was more difficult to make out, the glass in its frame partially opaque, a star-shaped crack across it,
but it showed a young man and a young woman, arms around each other’s shoulders, their laughing profiles close enough to kiss. As Alice was examining the double portrait more closely, she became aware that someone was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder at it.

‘Alice,’ the DCI said, extending her arm to take the picture from her as if by right, ‘we’ve just heard from the lab that one of the eliminatory samples we took in the Portobello area, on the fourteenth of January, matches the semen stain on Isobel Wilson’s coat. The sample came from a man called Malcolm Starkie. He’s listed at ‘
Bellevue
’ in Rosefield Place. Crown Office want him spoken to right now. Could you do it?’

An old fellow, muffled in a thick overcoat, held the door open for her as he was leaving and Alice found herself in a tiny hall, decorated in fine regency stripes with a minute chandelier dangling below the ceiling rose. A clumsily-constructed reception desk, painted in white gloss, divided the room in half. The woman behind it was speaking in a hushed voice down the telephone. When she saw Alice she gestured for her to approach, crooking a finger at her and putting down the phone with her other hand. No farewells were, apparently, thought necessary.

The oddness of the receptionist’s looks ensured that first impressions of her would not be easily forgotten. She was wafer-thin, almost two-dimensional, with a
complexion
as pale as death itself, and short-cropped, blue-black hair. Unnaturally dilated pupils shone through electric blue lenses, and they contracted as soon as they focussed on Alice.

‘Have you an appointment?’ She demanded sharply.

‘No, but I’ve come to speak to Mr Starkie. I’m Det –’

‘Well,’ she was cut off mid-word, ‘without an
appointment
there’s no hope of seeing him today, I’m sorry to say.’ The woman hesitated momentarily before adding, ‘unless, of course, it’s an emergency?’