No Stranger to Death: A Scottish mystery where cosy crime meets tartan noir: Borders Mysteries Book 1 (2 page)

‘I expect I did that when we first met. Most of us aren’t used to talking to a person who lip-reads.’

‘You didn’t, but I take your point. Anyway, how are you?’

‘Fine. How are your parents? I really enjoyed lunch with them the other day.’

‘Still fighting over Dad’s diet. As you saw, good food and lots of it is Mum’s answer to everything. She can’t get her head around cholesterol levels and calorie counting.’

‘I loved that story of her posting you potato scones when you lived in London. That’s another Scottish delicacy I must try. Do you think I’ll like them more than haggis?’

Kate said nothing but stood, hands on hips, staring at Zoe.

‘What?’ Zoe asked. As if she didn’t know.

‘I’m waiting for you to stop blethering and get on with the interesting stuff.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Aunty Phil rang to tell Mum the police were at Horseshoe Cottage first thing, then you took them to the field behind The Rocket, and now nobody’s allowed in there and a tent’s been put up over last night’s bonfire. And Chrissie Baird’s missing.’

Kate’s voice became overloud sometimes, when she was excited or annoyed. This was one of those times.

‘Do you want coffee?’ Zoe asked.

‘Not as much as I want to hear what you’ve been up to. But I see I’m going to have to prise it out of you. As usual.’

Kate strode towards the kitchen, Mac and Zoe following. ‘Tell all,’ she said, as they sat down. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’

Zoe took her through the events of earlier that morning, then got up to make the coffee but felt so light headed she had to sit down again.

‘You okay?’ Kate asked.

‘I must have stood up too quickly.’

‘You look a bit peely-wally. Have you eaten anything?’

‘No.’

‘Stay there. Don’t argue.’

Zoe watched Kate make toast and a cafetiere of coffee, then bring them to the table along with plates, mugs, butter and a pot of strawberry jam.

‘I can’t believe the police kept you waiting for so long and then made you come home on your own,’ Kate said, buttering a piece of toast. ‘You’ve already got a bad cold and now you could be suffering from shock.’

‘I’ve seen more dead bodies than most people, remember. Although they’re not usually in that state, thank goodness.’

‘There can’t be much of her left. The Young Farmers excelled themselves this year – it was the biggest bonfire Westerlea’s ever seen. Except for when the old garage accidentally went on fire, of course.’

‘Actually I think it must have been covered over or wrapped in something which stopped it from burning up.’

‘Really? So we’re talking Chrissie en croute.’ Kate laughed at her own joke, adding when Zoe failed to join in, ‘Don’t look so shocked. If you knew Chrissie Baird, you’d understand why I’m not heartbroken. Very few others will be either.’

‘That’s a bit harsh. And we don’t know yet if it is her.’

‘Who else could it be? No one would make a special journey to a wee place like Westerlea just to shove a dead body in our Guy Fawkes bonfire.’

‘All right, let’s say it is Chrissie. Tell me what you’ve got against her. I only met her once and she seemed harmless enough, maybe a bit nosy.’ The slim, middle-aged woman in a pastel blue tracksuit had proved difficult to escape, quizzing Zoe about her plans for converting the coach house and wanting to know what breed Mac was.
As if anyone would produce a dog like him on purpose.

‘Harmless? I won’t repeat the mean things she said about me when Ken left. Luckily Mum has plenty of friends who put her right on that subject.’ Kate paused to lick the melted butter running down her hand. ‘She threw her weight around in the pub so much, a lot of the locals stopped going there.’

Zoe shook her head. ‘That’s in a different league to hating a person enough to kill them.’

‘Has she brought her tray of Remembrance Day poppies into the health centre yet?’

‘I don’t know. But even you can’t hold collecting for charity against her.’

‘Yes I can, when she does it for the same reason she does all her other good works, like turning up with food and sympathy when someone dies. It gives her an excuse to nose around houses she would never normally be invited into.’

‘Every community has its busybody.’

‘People don’t like how she appeared from nowhere and manoeuvred herself into The Rocket and Jimmy’s bed. His first wife was barely in her grave.’

‘That must have been a long time ago.’ From what Zoe had seen earlier, Jimmy Baird was in no condition to have been seduced by anyone recently.

‘Twelve years.’ Kate held up a hand, acknowledging her friend’s look of disbelief. ‘People have long memories around here. It’s different to where you come from. Forget about six degrees of separation, in the Borders it’s more like one or two.’

‘So I’m discovering. Margaret at the surgery gives me potted histories of every patient I see.’

‘In which case it won’t surprise you to hear I’m related to Chrissie. Well, sort of. Her daughter, Alice, used to be married to my cousin Tom.’

‘And how does Tom get on with Chrissie?’

‘He loathes her. He and Alice have twin girls – they’ll be nearly four now – who live with him. Chrissie’s been trying to persuade Social Services to declare him an unfit father and give her custody instead. Can you imagine? I know what I’d do if someone tried to take my bairns away from me.’

Zoe flinched as Kate banged her mug down on the table. ‘If the body is Chrissie’s, your cousin may find himself a suspect.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Tom wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘The police always look at the family first.’

‘In which case let’s hope it isn’t her after all.’ Kate leaned back and folded her arms. It wasn’t hard to guess what was coming next. Zoe knew she was lucky to have got away with it for this long.

‘Tell me what happened last night when we came back here from the pub,’ Kate said. ‘With Neil.’

Zoe gathered up their plates and screwed the lid on the jam pot. ‘Nothing.’

‘Did I ever tell you how much communication is non verbal?’ Kate wagged a finger. ‘It’s no use fibbing to me.’

‘I’m not. We were chatting while I made the coffee.’

‘You were gone for ages. And he’d been a bit twitchy all evening. He was plucking up the courage to ask you out, wasn’t he?’

‘He was talking about the kitchen they’re going to make for me. You know what Neil’s like. Once he gets started he’s hard to stop.’

‘Come on, Zoe, it’s obvious he’s attracted to you. Why don’t you admit you feel the same way and do something about it? He’s not your patient, is he?’

‘No. But that’s not the point.’

‘So what is?’ Kate’s smile vanished. ‘Sorry. I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? It’s probably too soon after losing Russell.’

‘No, it’s not that.’ Zoe half-expected Kate to be shocked by this disclosure, but the only expression on her face now was one of curiosity.

‘So what’s stopping you?’

‘I’m stopping myself. I can’t simply let rip with the first good-looking man who shows an interest in me.’

‘So you do find him good-looking?’

‘That’s not what I –’

The doorbell rang.

A well-built man with close-cropped grey hair stood on the step. He wore a navy cashmere coat over a grey suit; his plain shirt and patterned tie were perfectly coordinated.

‘Doctor Moreland?’ His right hand held up a leather wallet, inviting Zoe to look at his identification rather than the silver cufflink her eyes were drawn to. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Erskine Mather, Police Scotland.’

‘Hello.’

‘Can you spare us a few minutes?’

‘All right.’

Mather stepped into the hall, revealing a pair of black patent-leather shoes which secured his position as the nattiest dresser Zoe had met since crossing the Border. Not that such stylishness made dealing with him any more welcome.

‘This is Sergeant Trent.’

The squat man coming in behind Mather wore wellies and a too-tight raincoat. He nodded a greeting.

Zoe led them through to the kitchen. With luck, Kate’s presence would make them hurry up with their questions and leave.

Mather halted at the doorway, staring at Kate.

Kate stared back at him. ‘Skinny?’

She stood up so quickly she knocked over her chair.

Chapter 3

‘Hello Kate.’ Mather cleared his throat. ‘How are you?’

Kate scraped a hand through her cropped hair. ‘Very well.’

The policeman bent down and picked up the fallen chair.

‘You two know each other?’ Zoe cringed. Could she have said anything more inane?

Mather’s response did nothing to explain or dispel the tension which had sprung up in the room. ‘We were at St Andrews together.’

Before Zoe could enquire further, Kate produced her car keys. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Text me later, Zoe.’ She left without another word.

Mather turned down the offer of coffee, although Trent looked like he needed warming up. Feeling cold herself, Zoe led them through to the sitting room, remembering too late there were not enough chairs to go round.

‘I’ll stand,’ Trent said, leaning against the door frame.

‘We won’t take up a lot of your time,’ Mather said, removing his overcoat, folding it inside out and placing it over the back of the chair before he sat down. His mouth twitched briefly into a smile as he half patted, half pushed away Mac, who was sniffing his trouser leg. ‘An unusual mix of breeds you’ve got there.’

‘You won’t find another dog like him, that’s for sure.’

‘I believe you’re relatively new to the Borders, Doctor Moreland.’

‘I moved up in the summer,’ Zoe said. She started counting down to the inevitable question.

‘To your job as GP at the Westerlea Health Centre.’

‘Yes.’
Here it comes
.

‘Were you already familiar with this area?’

‘No.’
Why doesn’t he come straight out with it?

Mather remained silent.

Zoe’s heart thumped. How ridiculous to be this nervous. She had nothing to hide. ‘I came here because I lost my husband and needed a change of scene.’

This was usually enough to move any conversation along, and it worked now too.

Mather nodded. ‘You don’t think you’ll be able to help, but that’s not necessarily so. A police investigation is like a jigsaw puzzle – we need all the pieces to see the full picture. What you have to tell us about this morning will be a useful starting point.’

‘Like a piece of outside edge, you mean?’

Behind them, Trent only partly managed to stifle a snigger.

Mather smiled ruefully. His eyes were the same grey as his suit, which was probably not a coincidence. ‘I apologise if I sounded patronising. In my line of work it’s all too easy to slip into a combination of clichés and euphemisms when talking to the public about matters they’d rather forget.’

‘The medical profession’s guilty of that too,’ Zoe said. She must be on her guard; she was starting to warm to him. ‘We try so hard to avoid upsetting patients with bad news, it’s no surprise they walk out not having understood a word.’

‘I suspect no doctor could have predicted this particular death,’ Mather said. ‘That person – we have to wait for confirmation that it is indeed the missing Mrs Baird – didn’t get into Westerlea’s bonfire by accident. It’s my job to find out who put him or her there, and you may be able to help. First of all, could you talk me through the events of this morning, up to when you showed Constable Geddes the body?’

Zoe briefly described her walk from Keeper’s Cottage to the field behind The Rocket.

‘What took you to the bonfire site? Did something attract your attention?’

‘Mac ran off towards it and wouldn’t come back when I called him. I thought he’d spotted a hare, but now I realise he was drawn by the smell.’ Zoe grabbed a tissue and blew her nose hard. ‘Sorry, I’ve had a cold.’
God forbid they’d think she was getting weepy.

‘Did you touch anything?’

‘I didn’t need to. Even covered in that melted stuff, I could see what it was. Though I don’t understand why it hadn’t burnt up completely.’

‘Sometimes fire isn’t as destructive as people expect. And I believe heavy rain came on while the bonfire was still burning. Were you there yourself?’

‘I wouldn’t have missed it.’

Zoe could almost hear the fireworks going off as she cast her mind back to the previous evening. According to rumour, this Guy Fawkes celebration would be Westerlea’s last, due to the need for prohibitively expensive insurance, so what seemed like the entire village and all of the families living in outlying farms had come along to make the most of it. The guy, dressed eccentrically in a blue boiler suit, a red cravat and a horse-riding helmet, sat on top of the fire until flames reached up and pulled him in. Rockets shot skyward; Roman candles hissed and exploded.

The occasion was cut short when heavy rain started to fall. Young children grizzled and older ones sulked as their parents took them home, while most of the remaining spectators fled into the cramped comfort of the pub.

Mather cleared his throat, bringing Zoe back into the present. ‘Kate tells me that apart from the New Year’s Day carpet bowls tournament, Westerlea’s Bonfire Night party is the best attended event in the village,’ she said. ‘You see people in The Rocket who don’t go there any other time. It was bursting at the seams, although that’s no hard thing, given its size.’

‘Was the bonfire already burning when you arrived?’

‘We didn’t go out to the garden until the fireworks were about to start. It was roaring by then, although the guy was still on top.’ Zoe paused briefly, as a horrible thought occurred to her. ‘The guy. It wasn’t her, was it?’

‘That’s not likely,’ Mather said.

‘Thank goodness. I couldn’t bear to think we were watching a real person being burnt before our eyes.’

‘You said “we”. Who were you with?’

‘Kate and her children. Well, they played with some of their cousins out in the garden while we sat inside and had our first drink with Neil and Peter Pengelly, the joiners from Larimer Hall.’
He probably didn’t need to know that last bit.