Lamb to the Slaughter (13 page)

Eventually he had allowed himself to be driven to the phone. Now, as he came in, she saw the set of his shoulders with a twinge of alarm. Surely a man who had been told his long-awaited ship had come into harbour at last would look a little more cheerful?

‘Well?’ she said again.

Giles came over to the table and sat down heavily before he replied. ‘He was non-committal. Said he’d be ready to give us the details of the will shortly.’

For just a moment, her confidence was shaken. Then she said scornfully, ‘Lawyers! They’re all the same. Won’t have bothered to look for the deed box, and then he’ll call us in and charge £
100
for his time.’

‘Probably.’ It was all he said, but Fiona looked at him sharply.

‘Giles, after all this, there isn’t something else you’re not telling me, is there?’

Her voice had risen. He said hastily, ‘No, no, of course not. It’s just that we shouldn’t go counting our chickens. You can’t be sure what’s in a will until you see it.’

Reassured, she laughed. ‘You’re always such a pessimist, Giles! For heaven’s sake, your mother told you years ago that you were Uncle Andrew’s heir. And it’s obvious – who else? Oh, I’m not saying there won’t be legacies for people like Annie Brown and maybe even that sly little Ellie Burnett, but he would know what’s appropriate. And with the money from ALCO we can afford to be generous.’

‘I know, I know.’

He still looked gloomy, but that was just Giles. ‘Right then,’ she said briskly, getting up and stacking the dishes to clear the table. ‘You get on over to Fauldburn now. And while you’re there, you could take a look at the bedrooms. I haven’t been upstairs for years and I can’t remember if there’s a dressing-room off Andrew’s bedroom that could be converted into a bathroom for us.’

Johnny Black put a notice on the door of the motorcycle showroom which said unhelpfully, ‘Back in ten minutes’ without giving a time.

He hadn’t had a phone call summoning him to Ellie’s side. He hadn’t altogether expected it, and he was prepared for that. He wasn’t giving up.

He’d tried phoning her earlier, but she wasn’t answering and there wasn’t even an answerphone to talk to. Still, there was just a chance that despite everything, she might have opened up her shop this morning. If he could only find an opportunity to talk to her properly, he believed she’d come round – but how could you talk to a closed door?

At least he had Dylan on his side. Dylan could see the advantages for Ellie, and for himself too. She still thought of him as a child; he was a young man, and Johnny heartily endorsed his view that it was time his mother got a life. That was where Johnny came in, and if she couldn’t see that yet – well, she was the woman he wanted and he’d just go steadily on until he had convinced her.

When he reached the Craft Centre, Ellie’s shop was shut up and empty. He paused in front of it, considering his next move. After what Dylan had said last night, she was hardly likely to respond to a knock on the door of the flat, and the boy would be at school.

If Dylan hadn’t locked it when he left, Johnny reckoned he might risk going up and taking her by surprise, to get her to listen and allow herself to be calmed and reassured. Why not? What, at this stage, did he have to lose?

The door to the flat was painted white, with panes of clear glass in the upper half. Johnny peered through, but could see nothing beyond a cream-painted staircase. His hand was on the handle when an aggressive voice spoke behind him.

‘You needn’t try to get in. It’s locked.’

Johnny spun round. Ossian Forbes-Graham, scowling, stood behind him like a dog guarding a bone which was out of its reach, determined to see to it that no rival would reach it either.

Johnny surveyed him. ‘So you’ve tried it yourself, then?’

Thrown on the defensive, Ossian stammered, ‘I – I knocked first. Then I thought perhaps she needed help—’

‘From
you
?’ The scorn in the word stung like a lash.

His face crimson, Ossian cried, ‘Yes, from me! I understand her. We’re both artists. What would she have in common with a grease monkey?’

‘You wouldn’t begin to know.’ Johnny was angry now too. ‘Go back and play with your paintbox. Women prefer men to children, hadn’t you noticed?’

Breathing fast, Ossian took an ineffectual swing at him. Johnny parried it without difficulty, catching his arm and twisting it up behind his back. ‘Stupid little sod,’ he snarled.

‘That’s enough! Break it up!’

A man had just sauntered into the courtyard, a man wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. He was smaller than either of them, thin and wiry, but there was something about him that made Johnny feel it wiser to loose his hold. Forbes-Graham sprang away from him, rubbing his arm and still glaring.

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Johnny demanded.

The man had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, meeting Johnny’s belligerence with a cold stare. ‘MacNee.’

Suddenly, Johnny recognised him. ‘I saw you in the pub on Saturday night. And you were in the shop, looking at the Harley. You’re a copper, aren’t you?’

‘If you’re a policeman,’ Ossian interrupted, ‘I want him charged with assault. You saw what he was doing.’

MacNee gave him a sardonic look. ‘It’s the polis decides who’s charged, laddie, and anyway I’m off duty. What’s it all about?’

Like the schoolboy he wasn’t far from being, Ossian looked down and muttered, ‘Nothing.’

Johnny said smoothly, ‘A misunderstanding. We were both concerned about Ellie Burnett. She’s not answering the phone or the door and she’s been very upset about Colonel Carmichael’s death. Maybe you could gain entry, see she’s all right—’

‘And maybe I couldn’t. Like I said, I’m off duty, and maybe the lady’s not wanting to be squabbled over by the two of you. I’d advise you both to leave her alone before she makes a complaint about harassment – and I can promise you that would be taken a lot more seriously.’

For just a moment the two men held their ground, then, shrugging, Johnny left. Ossian, after lingering for a moment to emphasise his rival’s retreat from the field of battle, went back to his studio, to watch from the window for any sign of Ellie appearing.

MacNee continued with his interrupted programme. He’d timed this visit carefully. The officers on the case, he reckoned, would be tied up in a briefing at the moment, which gave him a window of opportunity of rather less than an hour. He wasn’t going to go knocking on doors and waving the warrant card he wasn’t, at the moment, entitled to use. That would be asking for a further suspension and he wasn’t daft. But there was nothing that said you couldn’t walk into a public place, like a shop, for instance, and have a wee chat with the owner.

A delicious smell was wafting from the coffee shop, and MacNee could see someone at the back putting a tray in an oven. But it wasn’t open yet, and there was a light on in the shop next door, which had a window display of rather solid brown and cream pottery, as well as in the silversmith’s ­opposite, where a display of silver gleamed under blue-white spotlights.

The pottery shop was nearer. As MacNee opened the door, a bell jangled and the woman reading a newspaper which was lying on the counter looked up. It was hard to say what age she was, though she was certainly well over fifty; she had shaggy grey hair cut in a heavy fringe, thick, gold-rimmed spectacles and a lumpish figure. There was no sign that she had been working that morning, but the beige jacket she was wearing over a rust-brown dress of indeterminate shape was daubed with smears of clay.

‘Morning!’ she greeted him. ‘You’re an early bird!’

‘Oh, I’m the wee boy for getting the worms.’ MacNee winked at her, then glanced around the shop. ‘Some nice stuff you’ve got here,’ he said insincerely, pointing to an earth-coloured bowl. She smiled complacently.

The paper she was reading was folded to an inner page, to a short item headed, ‘Man found shot’. He jerked his thumb towards it. ‘Nasty business, that.’

The woman shuddered. ‘Can’t bear to think about it. Poor man.’

‘Was he someone you knew?’

‘Och yes! I kent him fine – he was in and out of here all the time, him being the landlord. Always took an interest, and one of my best customers too. He’d a coffee set of mine and seemingly they’d an awful lot of breakages. He was for ever replacing them.’

The mugs she indicated didn’t look to MacNee the sort of thing you’d expect to find gracing the drawing-room coffee table in a house like Fauldburn. Was there a stash of clumsy mugs in a cellar somewhere, a testament to the Colonel’s acts of patronage?

‘Sounds as if you liked him, then?’

‘Everyone liked the Colonel. It’s an awful shame.’

‘Someone didn’t,’ MacNee pointed out.

‘I suppose so.’ Then she stopped, her round blue eyes, magnified by her glasses, wide with suspicion. ‘Here, you’re not one of thae reporters, are you? I’m not wanting to be all over the front page.’

‘No, no,’ MacNee soothed her. ‘I’m a policeman – Tam MacNee. I’m off work at the moment, but I’ve an awful ­curious nature. Can’t help being interested, but it’s all unofficial. You can say what you like, and it’ll not go any further.’

She smiled, reassured. ‘Nice to meet you, Tam. Alanna – Alanna Paterson. Well, don’t say I said this because Romy would go daft, but he should just have agreed to sell up and none of this would have happened.’

‘And you’d have been jake with that? You’ve a nice wee set-up here.’

Alanna glanced round at the potter’s wheel, the airing shelves with drying pots, and the kiln which, to MacNee’s admittedly inexperienced eyes, looked state-of-the-art, then said, a little uncomfortably, ‘Oh, it was nothing but the best for the Colonel. But I’m not getting any younger and I’m needing to think about the future. ALCO was ready to be very generous with compensation, but of course Romy ­wouldn’t hear of it. I’m not sure about Ellie – keeps her cards very close to her chest, does our Ellie, but if you ask me the Colonel wouldn’t sell if she didn’t want him to.’

MacNee cocked an eyebrow. ‘Close, were they?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t like to go spreading gossip,’ Alanna said hastily. ‘It was just that he seemed to dote on her. She has quite a way with her, has Ellie.’

Sensing a certain dryness in her tone, MacNee curbed his enthusiasm as he agreed. ‘So do you reckon he was definitely going to refuse to sell?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, then stopped. ‘There’d be a few people wouldn’t take it lying down if he’d changed his mind,’ she said slowly.

‘Like—?’ MacNee prompted, but that was a step too far.

She backtracked. ‘Och, I’m sure he didn’t. He wasn’t one to go telling lies and he’d said to us not to worry, we’d be staying on.’

‘So there’d be others keen to see the back of him, then.’

‘Oh, plenty of them!’ She was much more prepared to be frank about this. ‘That Gloag, for a start – we all know he’s taking backhanders to get it through planning. And I never had much time for the Colonel’s nephew and that stuck-up wife of his. We’ll know the difference with Giles Farquharson as the landlord, I can tell you that. Even if the Centre’s still going, none of us’ll be here, with what he’ll put the rents up to.’

‘Where does he live?’ MacNee asked innocently.

‘He’s land agent for Ossian Forbes-Graham’s father, up at the back there, about five miles away, between New Luce and Carsriggan. They’ve a wee estate at Ravenshill, and they do motocross and shooting and stuff that he manages for them. But it’s just one of the lodges they live in, and that doesn’t suit Lady Muck. They were desperate for the Colonel to sell so when he died they’d come into the big house and all that money too.’

That suggested a very satisfactory new angle. MacNee changed the subject. ‘I heard you’d problems with a dead sheep a wee while ago?’

The round eyes widened and she put her hand to her chest, as if the very thought gave her palpitations. ‘Gave me nightmares, I’ll tell you that! It’s not nice, is it – poor beast, all bloody, just lying there,’ she gestured. ‘Well, you know how it is with sheep – I’ve been out walking on the hills and seen one lying dead sometimes, and I thought at first it had just daundered in and died, or been hit by a car, maybe, but when I looked – well, I about had a heart attack!’

‘Do you think it had been shot on the spot?’

She shook her head. ‘No, no. Ellie was in all evening and she said she never heard a thing. It must have been shot somewhere else and dumped here. Romy said it was ALCO trying to scare us off, but ...’ She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. It was just kind of – weird. What my grandson would call random.’

Then another thought struck her. ‘Here – you don’t think maybe whoever did it went on and killed the Colonel? They’d have to be mad, going round shooting like that—’

‘No, no,’ MacNee said hastily. If Marjory heard he’d started a rumour that there was a crazy loose with a shotgun, he’d find himself back in uniform when he returned to work. ‘More likely just some kid mucking about and dumping it so the farmer wouldn’t find out.’

‘I’d like to think that, right enough,’ she said dubiously.

Out of the corner of his eye, MacNee caught movement – two people entering the courtyard. Tansy Kerr – with a smart new hairdo – and Will Wilson. Damn. Big Marge must have kept the briefing short. Luckily, they were heading for Ossian Forbes-Graham’s studio on the other side.