Lamb to the Slaughter (15 page)

Menzies nodded agreement. ‘Right, right. But that’s quite a tall order. What about manpower?’

‘We’ll be at full stretch. I’d like more, of course, but just at the moment we can work on overtime without importing officers. Save that for later, if we need it.’

‘I’ll be happy to authorise any support you might need.’ Menzies glanced at Bailey. ‘Anything else? No? That’s about it, then. Thank you, Marjory.’

‘Sir.’ She was on her way to the door when he added, ‘By the way, how’s MacNee? Back at work, is he?’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid. He’s fretting at the bit, but the doctor seems very cautious.’

‘Wise, I’m sure. But you’ll miss him, with a case like this on your hands.’

‘Oh yes,’ Fleming said hollowly. ‘I miss him.’

‘What sort of party would you be thinking of bringing?’ the bored young man, who had introduced himself as Danny Simpson, asked him.

Three? Twenty? MacNee hadn’t a clue what was normal. Clay-pigeon-shooting, for some reason, hadn’t been on the curriculum at his inner-city Glasgow comp. Six seemed ­plausible.

‘Six,’ he said, and was relieved to see the man nod.

They were standing in an old stone building, once a barn and now set up as an office. As the talk ranged over traps, skeets, stands, dropping ducks and bolting rabbits, MacNee’s eyes began to glaze over. He’d had this clever plan for getting access to Giles Farquharson, only to be told by Simpson that he hadn’t turned up today; his uncle was that guy who’d got himself shot.

‘What about guns?’ MacNee asked. ‘Would we have to bring our own?’

‘We can provide guns. Cost you, though.’

‘Right. I’m not a shooting man myself – can I have a look at what I’d be using?’

‘No problem. We’d have to give you tuition, of course – health and safety and all that.’ Simpson took a bunch of keys out of a drawer in the counter, then led the way to a door at the opposite end of the room, a stout door, MacNee noted with a professional eye, with a security keypad on the wall beside it. MacNee watched him tap in the code, able to see clearly what the numbers were. He’d have liked to know how often it was changed, but he didn’t want the man to go thinking he was there to case the joint.

The door opened on to a windowless store, with three steel gun-lockers on one wall. ‘Looks as if you’ve quite an armoury here,’ MacNee remarked.

‘Any time you want to start the revolution, this is where to come.’ Simpson unlocked one cupboard and took out an over-and-under Remington
12
-bore.

MacNee admired it, put it awkwardly to his shoulder and saw his companion smile. ‘You’ll need a bit of tuition before we let you loose with that, mate!’

He lowered it again, saying meekly, ‘Certainly will,’ just as if he hadn’t done basic firearms training. ‘Looks a nice piece of equipment, that.’

Simpson took the gun from MacNee, put it back in the cupboard and locked it again. ‘We get a lot of corporate ­business and people expect decent stock.’

They went back to the reception area, MacNee now satisfied that while they had good security, they had a casual attitude to codes and keys. With his mission accomplished, the sooner he stopped wasting his time here the better. He cut across the sales pitch that was still going on. ‘So how much? That’s what I need to know, to tell my pals.’

When the price was disclosed, MacNee sucked his teeth in horror. ‘Oh, I doubt they’d never go for anything like that! I think I’m just wasting your time, laddie.’

‘That’s all right.’ The brief animation the young man had shown while demonstrating the gun was once more replaced by a bored expression and his tone indicated that this only confirmed his already jaundiced view of life.

Ossian Forbes-Graham didn’t seem to know where he’d been at what time on Saturday night. ‘Around,’ he said vaguely. ‘I don’t wear a watch.’

His studio here, too, had been painted white, though the floor was natural wood. There was a comfortable-looking white leather chair near the window, but apart from that all it contained was painting equipment and half-a-dozen abstract canvases on the walls. Two were huge, taking up most of the space on the back wall, and there were four of varying sizes and shapes on the others.

Not exactly a commercial concern, Tansy Kerr thought, looking round. She quite liked the artworks, in fact, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. They didn’t look like anything in particular, just great sweeps of paint, mostly in reds and oranges, but you could somehow feel a sort of energy coming off them. She couldn’t see any sign of work in progress.

The artist himself was definitely flaky, but quite fit in a manic sort of way, with those very striking blue eyes.

Wilson was prodding him. ‘Do you have definite opening hours?’

Ossian looked at him pityingly. ‘You really don’t understand art, do you? You stop when you’ve finished something, not because of what it says on some clock.’

‘Working on something at the moment?’ Wilson’s tone was casual, but there was nothing casual about the question.

He succeeded in his objective. Ossian had the sort of clear, pale skin which colours easily and Kerr saw a red flush rise as he said defensively, ‘Not – not at the moment.’

‘What on earth do you do all day, then?’ She hadn’t entirely meant to ask that question; it had just popped out, and she was unprepared for his response.

He put his hands to his face and groaned. His nails, she noticed, were ragged and bitten. ‘I think. I think, all the time. I do nothing
but
think.’ He looked up and glared at her. ‘Do you ever think? Really think?’

Taken aback, she didn’t know what to say. Wilson stepped in. ‘We think all the time too, sir. And what we’re thinking at the moment is that it would be a great help to us if you could manage to focus on the events of Saturday night when, you may recall, a man was brutally murdered.’

Ossian looked positively shocked, as if such a confrontational approach was new to him.

‘For a start,’ Wilson went on, ‘had the other shops closed before you left?’

‘Ellie’s had.’ The response was immediate. ‘Once she’d gone, there wasn’t any point in staying.’

Wilson and Kerr exchanged glances. ‘Why not?’ Kerr said more gently.

‘Because—’ Ossian stopped. He had been standing in an almost hunched position; now he stood up straight, almost as if he were pulling himself up on a string. When he spoke again he sounded, if not quite normal, certainly a lot less weird.

‘You could say I see Ellie as my muse, if you like. I’ve been struggling with my painting and I look to her for inspiration. And if she’s not there—’

Kerr looked across to Ellie Burnett’s shop, directly opposite. ‘You mean, you just sit here all day watching her?’ She wasn’t exactly into artistic muses but she knew all about stalking.

He looked away. ‘Sort of.’

‘And is she quite happy with this?’ Wilson’s voice had an edge to it.

‘She’s my friend! She understands – she’s an artist too.’

‘Hmm. We’ll leave that – for the moment. So, after Ellie went home, you shut up shop?’

‘She didn’t go to the flat. She left the Centre.’ He seemed to be remembering now. ‘But by the time I left and went out into the street I couldn’t see her.’

‘And then?’ Wilson had taken over the questioning.

‘I walked, I expect, hoping I’d bump into her. Then I went to the meeting. I knew she’d be there, and singing in the pub afterwards.’

‘Where did you walk?’

Ossian was impatient. ‘How would I know? I just – walked, probably. As you do.’

‘You didn’t go home to—’ Wilson glanced down at his notebook. ‘Ravenshill?’

‘
I don’t know
. I told you. Ask my mother if it’s so important. She’ll probably remember.’

Wilson made a note of that. ‘And you don’t know what time Ellie closed her shop?’

‘I told you, no.’

‘Or where she went when she left?’

‘
No!
’ Then he hesitated. ‘I wondered if she’d gone to see Black.’ He spat out the name.

‘Is that Black who works in the motorbike shop in the High Street?’

‘Yes.’ Ossian’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you ask me, he’s got some sort of hold over her.’

Again, Kerr caught Wilson’s eye. ‘A hold? Really? What sort of hold would that be?’

‘He must have! Why else would she so much as want to talk to someone like him?’ His voice had started to get wilder again. ‘He’s a – a nothing, just a mechanic, poor white trash! Ellie’s an artist. She couldn’t want to have anything to do with him, she couldn’t!’

‘Phew!’ Wilson said as they left. ‘Lucky to get out of there before he started foaming at the mouth and biting people.’

‘Spoiled,’ Kerr said tersely. ‘And a raving snob. People like that bring me out in a rash. We’d better go and see Ellie. See if he scares her as much as he’d scare me, if I was in her shoes.’

They set off across the square. Ellie’s shop was obviously shut, but they knocked on the door leading to the flat above. There was no answer.

They tried again, and Wilson called out, ‘Ms Burnett! It’s the police. Could we have a word?’

There was still no response. ‘Maybe she’s out,’ he suggested.

‘Maybe she’s just not answering, but we can hardly knock the door down, can we? Someone can try again later.’ Kerr rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Anyway, don’t let’s stand here any longer. Forbes-Graham’s eyes are boring a hole in my back.’

‘There’s still the potter and the silversmith to see, not to mention Andy’s auntie. Let’s do the others first and go there at coffee time. I can smell baking.’

Still thinking about the photographs, DS Andy Macdonald walked back down the drive of Fauldburn House. He couldn’t help wondering who the sharp-looking guy in the photo was, but that might be a mystery that would remain unsolved.

They hadn’t found anything else of interest in the house so far. The Colonel’s life seemed to be just as you would expect it to be, though they’d need to speak to the accountant and the lawyer later, just to check the details.

Giles Farquharson had turned up as Macdonald was tucking into some of Annie’s oatie biscuits. He’d felt that having a mouthful of buttery crumbs put him at something of a disadvantage, but Farquharson seemed to be in such a state of nervous tension that he didn’t even notice. Macdonald had scheduled an interview with the Farquharsons for the afternoon, and Giles, twitching visibly, agreed that he and his wife would be there.

He didn’t seem to know why he’d come, asking vaguely if everything was all right, a question which in the circumstances was a little hard to answer. When shown the photographs he’d glanced at them, then said blankly that he’d no idea except that his aunt and uncle might have had some foreign friends. He bumbled round for a bit before muttering something about his wife and a bathroom and heading upstairs, leaving Annie rolling her eyes in a pantomime of disapproval. He had left, still looking awkward, shortly ­afterwards.

Macdonald’s next assignment was an interview with Norman Gloag. He’d been told, when he made the appointment, that Councillor Gloag was a very busy man but naturally his civic duty would take precedence over other demands on his time. Macdonald had struggled to sound appropriately grateful, instead of saying that too damn right it would.

He had arranged for the most recent addition to Kirkluce CID to join him, DC Ewan Campbell, a quiet, red-headed lad from Oban. Despite his ancestral hostility to any member of Clan Campbell, Macdonald had to admit his new colleague was shaping up all right though he wasn’t talkative – which was an understatement on a par with describing the Great Wall of China as a drystone dyke.

When he arrived, Campbell was waiting on the pavement outside the Gloag residence. The house was in a small development of luxury villas, with price tags which had caused headshaking and a prediction that they’d stand empty long enough, but not one house was still unsold and judging by the cars parked outside – second cars mostly, at that – their purchase hadn’t exactly cleaned anyone out.

Campbell greeted him with his usual silent nod and Macdonald rang the bell. It had a Westminster chime, which stopped disappointingly short of striking the hour.

A woman, middle-aged and discontented-looking, wearing tracksuit bottoms and an orange V-neck T-shirt, answered it. ‘He’s got someone with him. But I’m to tell you to come in anyway.’

She led them across the hall to a door at the back, opened it without knocking and stood aside to let them enter unannounced before shutting it behind them with a definite slam.

There was a desk in one corner of the room, but there were two men sitting in chairs around a coffee table in front of a living-gas fire. Macdonald recognised Councillor Gloag, who had made it his business to be recognisable to anyone in his local constituency. The other he didn’t know, a stocky man wearing a green tweed suit, with grey hair and what Macdonald had heard described as an expensive complexion. They were drinking coffee, though the proximity of a bottle of whisky suggested that more had been added to it than the traditional milk and sugar.