Lamb to the Slaughter (47 page)

‘They’re waiting for you. Better move it,’ he advised as she approached. ‘Big Marge and Andy Mac have started already. Tam’s in there with the wifie.’

‘Oh.’ Kerr thought for a moment, then put her head round the door he had indicated.

‘Could I have a word with you, sarge?’ she asked.

It wasn’t MacNee who answered. The woman sitting opposite him across the table, a stout middle-aged woman with high colour and straw-like blonde hair, looked up and glared. In the cut-glass tones that brought Kerr out in a rash, she demanded, ‘What is this? Are we to be further delayed in getting this ridiculous situation sorted out?’

It was perhaps an indication that MacNee’s recovery wasn’t complete that instead of taking the woman on, he only said wearily, ‘Is it urgent, DC Kerr?’

She hesitated. ‘Not exactly urgent, no. But—’

MacNee didn’t wait for the rest of her sentence. ‘Then let’s get this dealt with first.’

And Kerr, reckoning that in the grand scheme of things it probably didn’t matter that much, went in, identified herself for the tapes and sat down.

23

If you could convict someone on demeanour alone, Giles Farquharson would right now have been on his way to Peterhead to start a life sentence. Shifty-eyed and ashen-faced, he was stumbling over his words. Holding up a notice saying in block capitals, ‘I am a guilty man’ would, DI Fleming thought, probably have been less revealing.

But guilty about what? The man was saying one thing, apologising, saying another, contradicting himself, then ­apologising again. As it had been Macdonald who had taken his earlier statements, he was leading the interview, putting them to Farquharson and challenging the version of events he had given.

Suspects who stuck to an improbable story in the teeth of evidence disproving it were common enough, and the ones who rolled up immediately and confessed weren’t unusual. But Fleming had never known one who, while apparently sober, so quickly degenerated into spouting a sort of gibberish in which admission and denial seemed to come randomly and ‘sorry’ was the only coherent word.

The wildness of the man’s replies was beginning to draw Macdonald into the morass of confusion too. Farquharson was breathing faster and faster and Fleming judged that he was starting to hyperventilate. They’d have him passing out on them if they weren’t careful.

She had taken no part in the questioning so far but now she leaned forward. At the sudden movement, Farquharson jumped in alarm and she thought for a moment he was going to make a run for it. As Macdonald at her side tensed for action, she spoke with stern authority.

‘Mr Farquharson, stay where you are and be quiet. You are becoming extremely confused and you need to calm down and take stock of what you are saying.

‘Listen to me. You and your wife have given each other alibis for the times when both murders took place. It is evident that these are false from the CCTV footage we have checked. Now, I am going to tell you exactly what it shows, and you are going to tell me what your movements actually were, in accordance with that.

‘You aren’t going to explain, or apologise, or try to tell me anything about what your wife was doing. You are going to give me straight answers to direct questions.

‘You and your wife did not drive into Kirkluce on Saturday evening in convoy. You came in some twenty-five minutes earlier. Yes or no?’

Farquharson’s breathing had steadied. He hesitated only for a second, then said, ‘Yes.’

‘You were driving in the direction of your uncle’s house. Did you go there?’

‘Yes.’

Fleming and Macdonald exchanged startled glances. They had expected some story which, however flimsy, could be hard to disprove, and this frank and ready admission took them totally by surprise. She said hastily, ‘Giles Farquharson, I am now going to caution you. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence. Do you understand what that means?’

At least the caution in use in Scotland had the advantage of clarity over the newer English version, and he nodded.

‘Could you say, “Yes,” please, for the record?’

‘Yes.’ He seemed to have relaxed, as if a sort of fatalism possessed him now.

‘What happened when you went to see your uncle?’

‘I was going to plead with him to change his mind. I had gone there in the afternoon, you see, to talk about the superstore. Fiona was desperate that the chance shouldn’t be missed and she wanted me to make it an issue of family duty.

‘I didn’t want to do it. But the thing is, I’ve been such a failure, a total failure, ever since leaving the army – and to be honest, I wasn’t a terrific success even there. Being Uncle Andrew’s heir was all I had to offer Fiona and the boys, and she was right – I owed it to them to stop him throwing away what should have been theirs in the future.’

There was something deeply pathetic about Farquharson’s utter dejection. He might once have cut a fine figure in his uniform, but now the big man, with muscle run to fat, looked like a sagging sack as he slumped in the chair.

‘I got there around four o’clock. Uncle Andrew didn’t look pleased to see me, but he asked me in. He seemed very awkward, but I thought it was just because he was going to say no to ALCO and hated having to tell me. He’d do anything to avoid unpleasantness, Uncle Andrew.

‘But then he told me he had a grandson and that he owed it to him to change his will, to set right the wrong he had done all those years ago. I was – well, struck dumb, really. Couldn’t say anything. That was our future, gone. I’d failed again – and how was I to tell Fiona? Never a day went by without her planning what she’d do when we moved to Fauldburn House.’

Farquharson was talking now as if he were in the confessional. Fleming sat still and silent, willing Macdonald to do the same.

‘Of course, he’d never actually promised me. It wasn’t the sort of thing you discuss, after all – what you’re going to get once a chap’s dead. But my late mother was his only sister and he had no children so she’d always told me it would all be left to me. So this was – well, I felt as if he’d punched me. I was dazed.’ He stopped, as if contemplating his own bemusement.

‘I can see that,’ Fleming murmured encouragingly.

‘Yes. I was so devastated, I couldn’t stay. I didn’t wait to hear the details. I just turned and walked out without saying anything and drove around for a good while, trying to decide what to do. In the end, I thought, well, there’s still time. He was pretty fit; I could work on him and persuade him to see it in a different light, see that as his closest legitimate relative I was due a sizeable share, at the very least.

‘The grandson could be a fraudster, could be anyone. I didn’t know anything about him – certainly not his nationality – but I could dig around a bit, check him out. Without telling Uncle Andrew, of course – no point in offending him. But then I thought that I could use all this to persuade him that to be fair, he ought to accept ALCO’s offer so there would be plenty in the kitty to divide between us. If Fiona heard he’d agreed to sell, it would have got her off my back, and even if this grandson was genuine, it could be years before she found out what the situation was.’

‘So you had told her nothing of this?’

‘Couldn’t face it.’

Fleming was interested. Like uncle, like nephew – keen to dodge unpleasantness. ‘So you went there before the meeting, at quarter to six—’ she prompted.

‘Yes. Yes. It was – horrible!’ He was becoming agitated again. ‘I didn’t know what to do, what would happen. I was – I was – he was dead, you see.’

‘Dead when you got there?’

‘Dead. Lying in the doorway. Shot. I went – thought, a heart attack, but – then I could see. Terrible. And if he was dead – well, it was all over for me, for us. Finished. Ruined. What would Fiona say? My fault – not really – but what could I do?’

Fleming cut across him. ‘Did you touch him?’

He shuddered. ‘Couldn’t – couldn’t—’

‘Was there anyone else around? Anyone passing the house when you drove up?’

‘No – don’t know. Didn’t see – just me, by myself.’ His breathing was getting shallower again until he was almost panting.

Macdonald poured some water from a jug on the table into a glass and gave it to him. ‘Drink that. Take your time. You’re doing fine.’

They waited while he sipped at the glass. When he seemed to be steadier, Fleming took up the thread again.

‘You saw your uncle, realised he was dead. But you didn’t summon help or phone the police—’

‘You’d – you’d have thought it was me. Revenge – something. I was scared.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Got back in the car. Drove away. Tried to think – well, pretend I hadn’t been there. Then came back to park in town and go to the meeting.’

‘And you said nothing to Mrs Farquharson?’ Macdonald was sceptical.

‘Nothing. No. It was going to be – well, hellish, frankly, when she found out. Couldn’t face it,’ he said again.

Macdonald pressed him. ‘But she concocted an alibi for you? Why would she do that?’

‘She just said I’d be suspected, being his heir. I hadn’t done it, so it wasn’t wrong. Easier, she said.’

Fleming closed her eyes in exasperation. The trouble that was caused by people who thought lying to the police would make things easier! ‘And she didn’t question what you were doing before you turned up at the meeting?’

‘Didn’t know. She’d no idea when I left home.’

‘Right,’ Fleming said slowly. There was a lot to assimilate; when Macdonald looked at her enquiringly she nodded to him to take on the next stage of questioning.

‘When we spoke before, you said you knew Barney Kyle,’ he said.

‘He was at the motocross a couple of times in a group that hung about with Simpson and Black.’ He sounded much more confident now that they were away from the subject of his uncle. ‘Never had what you’d call a conversation with him.’

‘And on Monday evening, when Barney was killed? What were you doing?’

‘Don’t know what time you’re talking about. But I was at home till about eight when I got a phone call from Murdoch Forbes-Graham about some stirks that were loose on the road. I called the stockman, and we were trying to get them rounded up till after ten.’

It was, Fleming had to admit, a good alibi, checking out with what Forbes-Graham had told her earlier. Macdonald made a note of the stockman’s name and address, but that pretty much wrapped it up.

Fleming looked directly at Giles Farquharson. ‘Did you kill your uncle?’

He met her eyes without hesitation. ‘Why would I? Him living long enough to change his will was our only hope.’

And you couldn’t argue with that.

The interview with Fiona Farquharson was less protracted.

Confronted by the CCTV evidence and accused by DS MacNee of concocting a false alibi for her husband on Saturday, she was totally unfazed. ‘You should be grateful,’ she said brazenly. ‘I knew he’d never have killed Andrew. To put it bluntly, he hasn’t got the guts, but I knew how your plods’ minds would work.

‘He was the heir – or thought he was, thanks to Andrew Carmichael’s despicable duplicity – so you’d have him clapped in irons before he could say, “I didn’t do it.” And then you’d have manipulated him, because he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and there would have been a miscarriage of justice. So yes, I told you that we were together.’

Controlling himself with some difficulty, MacNee said, ‘That’s quite an admission, Mrs Farquharson. It’s wasting police time, and it’s a criminal offence.’

Fiona was scornful. ‘Oh, prosecute me if you like. You’d be throwing away the tax-payers’ money, since they’d just tell me I was a naughty girl and not to do it again. If it ever reached court, which it probably wouldn’t.’

The woman was right about that. With mounting frustration, MacNee said, ‘Let’s turn to Monday evening, then. Again, you claimed that you were both together.’

‘You said you were working in the kitchen and your husband was in his office,’ Kerr put in, anxious to show some of the encyclopaedic knowledge of reports which she now possessed.

‘Same reason – I told you. He was out for a while rounding up straying cattle or something, but you probably wouldn’t have believed him.’

‘Leave his movements out of it. It’s yours we’re interested in.’ MacNee took a vicious satisfaction in making the point. ‘You drove into Kirkluce very shortly before Barney Kyle was killed and back again afterwards.’

Fiona gaped at him with what appeared to be genuine astonishment. ‘You don’t mean – you can’t think that I ... oh really, this is just
too
ridiculous! I’ve never set eyes on the boy.’

Her total self-assurance, MacNee thought gloomily, was either the sort of acting that would make Dame Helen Mirren look as if she belonged in the Kirkluce Amateur Dramatic Society, or the bloody woman was right, and could most likely prove it.

‘For the record,’ she was saying now, ‘I had my assistant Gemma Duncan working with me for the first part of the evening. I then drove her home and went in to check with her husband that he would be able to drive her to the Forbes-Grahams’ the following night to save me having to come into Kirkluce, since she doesn’t drive. I stayed talking, making final arrangements about the party for some little time – I couldn’t be precise, but they will bear me out. Is that clear enough, even for you?’