Lying Dead (51 page)

    ‘Yes, I spotted that too, sir,’ Langlands said unwisely, coming over holding the tapes, and oblivious to Bailey’s glare, went on, ‘We’ve only his word that he found it there, after all,’ which left Bailey with nothing to add.

    ‘An obvious point, constable. Now, I had better go and brief Inspector Fleming.’

Tam MacNee let himself out of the Aitchesons’ house. He hadn’t expected them to show him out with friendly waves and invitations to drop in the next time he was passing. He’d have to watch Euphie Aitcheson didn’t put a knife in his back next time she caught him off his guard.

    It was raining heavily and he could even hear a sullen roll of thunder from somewhere far away. He hunched his leather jacket up over his head and hurried down the path. It had taken a lot of time and effort, but he’d got what he came for in the end. It fitted, it all fitted, every last little piece of the jigsaw puzzle. All that remained to do was go back to HQ and set the wheels in motion.

    But talking of wheels – he reached his car and saw with considerable annoyance that the front tyre was flat. And it had to happen in rain like this, too! He bent down to examine the problem.

    He didn’t hear someone come up behind him until he was almost on him. He was crouching and off-balance; he attempted to straighten up and turn to defend himself but trying to shrug off the jacket impeded him. He only managed to say, ‘Kingsley, bastard—’ before the jack came down on his head and he fell to the ground.

Chapter 25

Marjory Fleming was running a bath. She’d declined the offer of a Bladnoch and a blether, pleading tiredness, and Bill had sent her off upstairs with sympathy and a sizeable dram, never suspecting that she could not bear to tell him about the latest developments.

    The bath was running and she had just pulled on her bathrobe when she heard the phone ring, and swore. It would probably be for her, but if Bill took it, she could trust him to stall them unless it was urgent. Still, she was braced for a shout from downstairs; when it didn’t come she went to test the water temperature. She was on the point of taking off her robe when she heard Bill’s footsteps on the stairs, and went to open the bathroom door.

    His expression was bleak. ‘It’s bad news. It’s Tam.’

    She misunderstood. Taking the phone from his hand, she said, ‘Tam?’ then listened with growing horror to the voice at the other end.

    ‘Right. I’ll be in shortly.’ She turned off the taps and pulled the plug out. ‘Did you get that?’ she asked Bill.

    ‘Not the detail. Just that they said Tam was badly injured.’

    ‘Touch and go. Compound depressed fracture of the skull. He’d gone to see the Aitchesons for some reason. They think that when he came out he was bending down to look at a flat tyre – don’t know yet whether that was part of it, but it seems likely. Someone hit him over the head, but mercifully a man came out of his house at just that moment and scared him off before he could club him to death.’

    ‘Description?’

    ‘The man’s coming in to give a statement.’ She headed for the bedroom to get dressed. ‘But oh, Bill! Poor Bunty! Tam’s all she has – she’ll be distraught.’ There were tears in her own eyes.

    ‘You’re pretty fond of Tam yourself.’ Bill, standing in the doorway, held out his arms, but she shook her head.

    ‘I can’t afford to cry. I’ve got work to do, nailing the bastard who did this to the wall. They’d better not let me get to him first, that’s all.’

The atmosphere in Kirkluce HQ was sombre. It seemed to have been otherwise a quiet night, for a Saturday: an addict found shooting up by the War Memorial, a couple of men cooling off in the cells after a fist fight and the usual flotsam of drunk and foolish teenagers drifting through. But the officers on the night shift were going about their business grim-faced, with none of the usual banter.

    ‘Have they brought in the witness?’ Fleming asked at the desk.

    ‘In the waiting-room, ma’am.’

    ‘Get an interview room set up. I want this recorded for the morning briefing. Are they getting on with house-to-house?’

    ‘Three patrol cars there since eight o’clock.’

    ‘Good. Who’s around?’

    ‘Here’s the duty sheet. And DC Kingsley came in ten minutes ago. Heard it on his car radio.’

    It would be out there by now, of course. That would be an added problem to handle. But it was good news about Kingsley, who was nothing if not competent. He wasn’t in the CID room, but she tracked him down in the control room, listening to messages coming in. He turned as she came in.

    ‘Nothing yet, I’m afraid. This is a terrible thing. Any more news from the hospital?’

    He did, Fleming thought, look quite shaken. She’d suspected his first reaction might be that there could be a vacancy for sergeant, but of course there wasn’t an officer in the Force who could hear of another’s injury without thinking, ‘Next time that could be me.’

    ‘Not good. But the witness is waiting to be interviewed. Come with me, Jon.’

    He hesitated. ‘I thought it might help if I monitored messages—’

    ‘More help if you think of something useful to ask him. Let’s go.’

There was, disappointingly, very little that the witness could tell them. He’d come out of his house on the turning circle at the end of Duntruin Place to see a man in a dark rain jacket with the hood up standing over someone lying in the gutter. He was holding something that looked like a metal tool, and seeing the other man approach took off fast, away from him down Duntruin Place and round the corner into Duntruin Street. The witness – stout and in his late fifties – had not even tried to give chase, contenting himself with dialling 999 on his mobile.

    The attacker had been, he thought, of medium height, neither particularly tall nor short, and the jacket had been either black or dark blue, but that was all he could offer.

    It wasn’t a lot to go on. Fleming returned to the control room with Kingsley; the phones were starting to ring now, but the best the house-to-house had come up with from Duntruin Place was someone who had seen a man in a black hooded jacket walk past a quarter of an hour before. From Duntruin Street, round the corner, came an account of a hurrying man with a hood pulled up, who had then got into a car – no description of that.

    ‘That’s almost certainly him,’ Fleming said, ‘but it doesn’t get us any further.’

    An operator turned round. ‘That’s a message from Car 28. They’ve spoken to the Aitchesons, but they didn’t see anything.’

    ‘Right. We’ll need to talk to them properly,’ Fleming added to Jon. ‘They may be able to shed some light on what he’d been asking them. I suppose it can wait till the morning.’

    ‘I could do that, before I come in,’ Kingsley offered. ‘Driving down to Wigtown isn’t a problem.’

    ‘Thanks, Jon – that would be very helpful. I’ll have the briefing early tomorrow. It’s my guess everyone will have heard the news by then. I’ll contact the hospital again first thing.’

    ‘What is the situation with poor old Tam?’ Kingsley sounded genuinely concerned.

    ‘I haven’t by any means got a full picture, but I think they’re trying to stabilize him with a view to operating tomorrow. All we can do now is pray – and pull out all the stops to get the sod who did this.’

    Kingsley nodded gravely as Fleming went on, ‘I’m just going to phone the Super now – I only hope I get to him before he hears a news broadcast.

    ‘You may as well go home, Jon – but thanks for coming in.’

    ‘Least I could do. I’ll just hang on a little longer, till they’ve finished the house-to-house.’

    ‘Let me know if there’s anything fresh. Goodnight.’

There was more or less a full complement of officers, uniformed and plain-clothes, on duty and off, crammed into the incident room by nine o’clock next morning. As Fleming approached she could hear only low-voiced conversation, which subsided to total silence when she came in.

    ‘First of all, Tam got through the night. He’s in Dumfries – they’re going to operate this morning.’

    There was a buzz of relief and one or two clapped; a voice from somewhere in the middle said, quoting the old Scots motto, ‘Wha daur meddle wi’ Tam, eh?’ and the applause grew.

    ‘Yeah, right,’ Fleming said, clearing her throat. ‘So – strategy for today.

    ‘The eye-witness’s statement was videoed last night – you’ll be shown the relevant part of that later. From the house-to-house interviews last night, we did get an indication of timing: the attack, we know, happened at seven-fifteen, more or less, and at seven o’clock a man matching the description walked up Duntruin Place, which is a cul-de-sac. No one saw him hanging about and he wouldn’t want to be conspicuous. There’s an empty house with a For Sale notice about three doors along from the Aitchesons’ and it’s a reasonable bet he hid in the garden there. A team will be going in to check it out – you don’t need me to tell you what you’re looking for.

    ‘Apart from that, we’ll be tracing Tam’s footsteps, trying to work out what lead he was following. It tweaked a nerve, obviously. Someone will be checking out the Glasgow end – he was there yesterday, and we need to know what came of that. And the Aitchesons – Kingsley, did you manage to see them this morning?’

    Kingsley pulled a face. ‘For what it was worth. Brian Aitcheson said it was mainly about his night watchman shift when Murdoch was murdered – going over it to see if there was anything he’d remembered since he made his statement. Which he said he hadn’t. That’s about the size of it.’

    ‘Hmm. Not very helpful,’ Fleming was saying, when Tansy Kerr spoke up. Her eyes were red; Fleming had noticed her struggling during the bulletin about Tam.

    ‘But he said it was Euphie Aitcheson he was going to see,’ she protested. ‘What did she say?’

    Kingsley shot her a look of annoyance. ‘Not much. Just agreed with her husband. Oh, and she complained that I’d called so early in the morning.’

    But Kerr was not to be brushed aside so easily. ‘He must have been there for ages! He left here in such a hurry that he almost knocked me over and that was around five o’clock. He only left the house at seven-fifteen, and it takes half an hour or so to drive to Wigtown. It wouldn’t take two hours to hear that Brian Aitcheson had nothing to add to his original statement.’

    Kingsley snapped, ‘Well, I don’t know, Tansy. Maybe they got to yarning about old times in the police force. I can only repeat what they told me.’

    ‘That’s enough!’ Fleming said sharply. ‘I can understand that everyone’s on edge, but that doesn’t help.

    ‘We’re getting numerous calls from the public, which will have to be sifted to find those that need a follow-up. There will also be intense interest from the Press and the Press Officer will handle all queries. Superintendent Bailey will be making a televised statement later.

    ‘That’s about it, unless anyone has anything – yes, Macdonald?’

    Andy Macdonald rubbed his hand over his close-cropped head, a habit he had. ‘I don’t know if this is out of order, but if Tam was asking Aitcheson what he saw on the night of the murder, could this link in with Findlay Stevenson? We began wondering last night after he made the statement incriminating his wife whether that could just be a blind for his own activities – if Tam was on to some definite link, and Stevenson somehow got wind of it—’

    Fleming’s eyes narrowed. ‘What time did the interview finish last night?’

    ‘Eighteen-eighteen,’ Langlands said promptly. ‘I recorded the time at the end of the interview.’

    ‘Bring him in again. We’ve got his temporary address?’

    ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sergeant Naismith said. ‘Small hotel in the town here. I’ll arrange that.’

    ‘Thanks, Jock. And can you set up the witness video? Have a look at it, everyone. It’s not long – he didn’t have a lot to tell us, unfortunately. OK, that’s it. Good luck.’

    She was leaving the room when Tansy Kerr stopped her just by the door. ‘Greg Allan was with Tam after he got back from Glasgow. Tam might have said something to him.’

    ‘Where is he?’ Fleming scanned the room.

    ‘Not in yet. I think he’s not on duty till eleven.’

    ‘I see.’ Fleming made her voice as neutral as she could. He must be about the only officer who wasn’t here, and that included those who’d been on duty all night.

    The short video clip finished. Kingsley raised his voice as people started to move. ‘Just a minute!’

    Fleming and Kerr turned to listen.

    ‘Before everyone goes, I think we should have a whip-round. Just to show old Tam we’re thinking about him.’

    There was a murmur of agreement, which covered the sound of Kerr making a sick noise.

    ‘A plant for while he’s in hospital, do you reckon?’ Kingsley was going on. ‘And a large bottle of Scotch, to give him the incentive to get well enough to drink it! I’ll put a box for contributions on the table here.’

    Kerr and Fleming left together. Fighting back tears, Kerr said, ‘He can’t stand Tam. I’m not giving him a penny – I’ll buy my own present for Tam. If he – if he doesn’t . . .’ She bit her lip.