Old Sins, page 27
‘What are you going to do about it, then?’ Maia said. Her voice was harsh, and as she spoke she gave an anxious glance at Antony, whose lips had tightened again.
Sean had gone to the drinks table to top up his glass. ‘Go out tomorrow once it’s light and get some stuff for her – rabbits or something. Lay a trail to finish in the cage. I reckon she’s hungry – she wouldn’t try for deer without her mate. Then I can hover around and get the gate shut.’
‘I only hope you’re right,’ Maia said. ‘Anyway, it’s time we ate.’ She went to the door. ‘Shirley, can you do the sheepdog bit and get them to the dining room while I serve up?’
Thank goodness for that, Shirley thought. If Sean got something to eat it might help soak up the alcohol. But of course the first thing he did was pick up one of the decanters of red wine that was breathing in a coaster on the polished table.
He went round to his usual seat and was ready to fill up his glass when Maia said sharply, ‘Sean, we always seat Antony at the head of the table as our honoured guest – remember? And perhaps he’d prefer white with the smoked salmon – there’s a nice white burgundy, Antony.’
Antony, to be fair, looked uncomfortable and said hastily, ‘No, no, old boy. No ceremony tonight.’
But Sean, looking thunderous and still clutching the decanter, had gone to the other end of the table and sat down. He drank half a glass, then topped it up again.
Maia, her colour heightened, said, ‘Shirley, you come and sit beside Antony. I’ll sit here and Ben, you come on my left. And you could do the honours since the host seems to have abdicated.’
Shirley looked down at her plate, at the delicately sliced salmon, the lemon quarter tucked in muslin, the pretty salad of frilly lettuce and the plump, glistening mound of home-made mayonnaise and wondered how she would manage to eat a mouthful, let alone the whole plate, and the smell of the rich venison casserole floating through from the kitchen was a threat of what was to follow.
Perhaps she could have a dizzy turn. But the atmosphere was so toxic that she was afraid of what might happen if she did leave; she had Sean on her other side and as long as she was here, she might manage to divert his attention while the others were talking about the improvements made to the harbour since Antony’s last visit.
‘You must come up and see it tomorrow,’ Maia said, and Ben added earnestly that it could mean much greater efficiency in bringing in supplies of all kinds.
‘If we got a big speedboat, we could get all our supplies delivered to Lochinver and fetch it by water much more economically than going there or having it come here by road. It’s what they did in the old days.’
Antony beamed at him. ‘That’s good thinking, Ben! Well done for finding him, Maia my darling!’
It was the sort of casual endearment anyone might have used but she raised her glass to him with her heart in her eyes.
Shirley was just about to tell Sean she was sure the police would come with a tranquilliser gun when he rose unsteadily.
‘It’s bad enough having to pimp out my wife to you because you hold the future of everything I care about in your grasping hands, but I’m damned if I’ll sit here and watch you making love to her before my eyes.’
He picked up the wine glass and hurled it straight at Antony. It was a wild throw: it didn’t hit him, but the crystal splintered on the table and the red wine splashed right up the front of the expensive pink shirt and sprayed red spots all over the gold silk dress.
Sean lurched to the door and slammed it behind him.
DCI Strang arrived at the cottage by the lochan ahead of the other two and went round switching on lights and the coffee machine and lit the wood-burning stove. His phone chirruped and he looked to see the text that was waiting.
It was from DCI Jason Dryden. He wouldn’t have got back to him this quickly unless he had something to tell him, would he? He opened it with some eagerness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DC Livvy Murray was very quiet as DI French drove them back along the single-track road to join the main road that led to Lochinver. French didn’t talk much either, apart from mentioning there were all sorts of question marks over Sean Reynolds. She seemed lost in thought too, or perhaps she was concentrating on the road. It was dark and there were more cars than there had been the previous time, perhaps people returning home from work – what passed for a local rush hour. There were two or three occasions when her own braking foot slammed down but the driver seemed impressively unfazed.
She’d been really looking forward to having a brainstorming session with Strang but now guilt was mucking everything up. It sounded like they might be on to something with Reynolds, but suppose he was innocent and they went in hard, and then it was found out that they had written off the DCI’s friend – the mess would be horrific.
She could confess what she’d missed to Strang. Correction, what she and French had missed, but then he’d be implicated in what the press would make sure was presented as a cover-up for a friend. It would be curtains for him, however unfair it might be.
For herself, it would only be something she’d failed to pick up on. She might get a reprimand but that was all. Of course, if Sinclair had killed Danni it was possible he might kill again, but she consoled herself with the thought that right at the moment he was very probably waiting in a cell somewhere to hear the result of his submission for bail.
And even if it was theoretically possible that he could have done it, there was no proof. As they reached Lochinver and turned on to the A837 Murray told herself she just had to keep quiet. As Strang had said himself on the phone to JB, sometimes it was worth taking a risk.
And if she had to lie – well, she was good at it. You got to be ace at lying when your mother would clatter you if she found out the truth.
It was a great cottage. Someone had given a lot of thought to making it welcoming. Definitely a cut above the spartan arrangements in the pod.
Strang saw Murray’s expression and grinned. ‘You’re thinking “jammy beggar”, aren’t you?’
‘We both are,’ French said as they sat down. ‘We don’t have downlighters and uplighters and task lighting in the kitchen area, which in our case is a microwave and a sink.’
‘Not set up for working, though – too much emphasis on mood music. Now – coffee? You’ll be happy to know I’ve bought in a fresh supply of biscuits.’
French laughed. ‘Oh dear – put them at the far end, away from me.’
Murray hadn’t said a word since they came in. They were sharing a joke that didn’t include her and she was feeling resentful now as well as miserable. Two’s company, three’s a crowd … She noticed Strang giving her a quizzical look as he set down the coffee mugs and hastily produced a smile, of sorts.
‘How did the interview with Reynolds go then, boss?’ she said.
Strang pulled a face. ‘He’s slippery – we’ll have trouble piecing together what he actually did. His world is the wolves and nothing else features – he pretty much waved Danni’s killing aside. I couldn’t be sure he has any sort of standard morality.’
‘Like wolves were kind of a religion?’ Murray said. ‘What we’ve done to them, like driving them out – that’s what wickedness really is. He’s got a temper too.’
‘I’m not sure what his motive would be, though,’ French said. ‘He’s got all this money and he was quite sure he could buy her out.’
Murray noticed Strang shifting in his seat. He never liked speculation about motives: it led to confirmation bias and looking for the evidence to fit. Now he said, ‘I think we can leave that side of it meanwhile. What we did find out, Livvy, was that the pine forest where the body was found isn’t far from the place where the wolves’ cage is. Can we kick that around?’
After waiting for a moment to see if French, who’d had time to think about it, had something to say, Murray said, ‘I suppose you have to look at it two ways. Say it wasn’t Reynolds. Did the killer just pick somewhere the body might never be found but was reasonably easy to get to, or did he know Reynolds went there, and that other people knew he did? So if the body was found, he’d get suspected.’
‘OK,’ Strang said. ‘Go on, Livvy. And if it was Reynolds?’
She said slowly, thinking it out as she went, ‘If he put it there, he knew the wolves were nearby. Did he do that because he thought – oh God—’ The smell, the teeth, the terrible yellow eyes – and the fear. She was there again for a moment and she choked, unable to go on.
‘Livvy, are you all right?’ French said anxiously. ‘Take it easy – you had a dreadful experience. I don’t know how you’ve coped.’ Strang was on his feet, fetching a glass of water.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Murray managed, but she was grateful for the water that gave her time to get control. She despised herself for having let it get to her. ‘I wasn’t expecting that – all I got was a fright, after all. But I’m all right now.’
Strang gave her a doubtful look but sat down again and she went on as if determined to prove she could hack it, ‘After all, that’s why killers leave bodies unburied in woodland – they’re relying on nature to do its bit. Wolves – quicker and more efficient, I suppose.’
‘It’s a pretty sick idea,’ French said. ‘But that argument would apply to anyone else as well, if they’d known they were there.’
Strang nodded. ‘Let’s mark that down for further questioning: who knew about them? Was it actually common knowledge? But let’s move on now.
‘What I want to consider is, where was Danni from the last sighting on Monday around 9 a.m. until she arrived back at the cottage sometime after 5 p.m.? No one has come forward to say she spent time with them, there are no signs she was in any way constrained. The weather was dreadful and nothing suggests she was at all inclined to outdoor pursuits. So … ?’ He spread his hands, inviting response.
‘Somewhere she’d gone of her own free will,’ French said. ‘What did she like doing?’
Murray was quick with her answer. ‘Going to the pub, as far as I can make out, but she wasn’t there on Monday. I spoke to Kasper Novak and he said Danni hadn’t been in.’ As she spoke, she remembered that she hadn’t planned to mention that particular little initiative and she hurried on before French could pick her up on it. ‘There’d been that fuss with Joe Dundas on Saturday night. She could have gone into Lochinver to look for a different pub.’
‘That’s an interesting idea,’ Strang said. ‘You said before there could have been a delivery or something, and she could have hitched a lift. And now I think about it, the tracker dog found her scent near the fish farm and followed it for a few yards before it lost interest. I put it down to too many people passing around there, but it could have been that it had just disappeared when she stepped into a vehicle.’
‘And Reynolds said he’d gone into Lochinver on Monday morning. I can follow that up,’ French offered. ‘Find out when he came back. And I can task Bob with finding out which of the men saw him here through the day and try to pinpoint times.’
‘Excellent. Livvy, there’s a photo her parents provided on file. You could flash it around in Lochinver – the store, cafes, bars. You know the routine.’
‘Sure, boss.’ She was feeling better all the time. The net was definitely closing round Reynolds and she didn’t feel she had to worry about Ranald Sinclair any more. It was possible he might have heard the rumours about the wolf – obviously most of the locals had – but if he’d known where they were, she’d put money on him ratting to the police, so there’d be a black mark against Reynolds’ name with the authorities he was getting all those nice fat cheques from.
‘Let’s see what emerges from that,’ Strang said. ‘And I think I’ll speak to our friend Sean again – nothing formal, just a friendly little general chat about the basis of the whole operation. Where exactly the money comes from and so on.
‘There’s one other thing that’s come in. As you know, I’ve been digging a bit into Flora Maitland’s background. There was an unexplained legacy left to a Cameron Christie and I passed it to the Met for investigation. Unfortunately, it was a dead end – literally. A woman, actually – died four years ago. I’ll request more detail but I’m afraid even if Flora Maitland was murdered, there’s nothing we can do about it.
‘Anything else? No? Thanks – a good meeting. Hope we have a quiet night and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
As they drove back, French gave Murray a sideways glance. ‘Are you really all right, Livvy? An experience like that – it’s not something you can just shrug off.’
‘Oh, you can if you’re from Glasgow. They breed us tough, you know.’
It was kind of French to ask, she supposed, but the less she talked about it the better. She was proud of the way she’d managed to carry on back there, but she still felt shivery inside and she was afraid that when she went to sleep, the wolf dream she’d so far managed to escape would appear.
When she got back to the pod, it looked bleak after the cosiness of Strang’s posh pad and the bed looked almost as if it was waiting for her, ready to inflict more horrors. She’d been going to take off her jacket; now she zipped it up again and went along to the pub.
Kasper took her order for white wine politely, but she’d have had to be insensitive not to notice the frosty atmosphere. It was quite busy and there were people standing around the bar in animated conversation, but no one spoke to her; she’d be a marked woman by now and if you were polis, you got used to being a pariah. When she got her drink, she took it to an empty table beside one of the most animated groups. Even if no one would talk to her, they couldn’t stop her listening.
As she sat down, they fell frustratingly silent for a moment and when the conversation resumed it was in lowered voices, but it is hard for people talking together to keep the volume down and after a few minutes she could hear what was being said. She took out her mobile and pretended to be absorbed.
One woman was holding the floor. ‘She was sent home early,’ she was saying. ‘She’d been meant to stay on to clear up after the dinner, but Maia came through with her dress all stained, up to high doh – said it was someone dropped a glass of red wine and it’d made a mess so they’d go through to the other room while Ishbel cleaned up the table. But she told her just to go when she’d done that – not to wait. So she didn’t know what happened after that.’
‘And did she know who dropped it?’ a man asked.
‘Not dropped it, according to Ishbel. One of those heavy, crystal glasses, she said, and it wouldn’t get broken that way. There’d been shouting and then this great crash, so “thrown” was more like it.’
‘So who was it, shouting?’
He was doing her job for her, Murray thought, tapping out nonsense with her thumbs.
‘Oh, Sean, of course. Ishbel reckons there’s something going on with Maia and this visitor, the way she’s been carrying on.’
‘Always thought she was too sweet to be wholesome. You can’t trust those quiet types,’ another woman put in. ‘She’s had a lot to put up with, though. He’s a bad-tempered sod. And poor Hattie Sinclair, too. See men!’
There was a ritual protest from the two men at the table and the conversation moved on to speculating about how much more Ranald Sinclair might be being held responsible for.
It was the last thing she wanted to hear, just when she’d put him out of her mind. Murray finished her wine and got up, concentrating on what she’d heard about Reynolds instead. Violent rage – that fitted with the pattern of the crime. And if the power of his money hadn’t brought Danni into line as it ought to – if she’d said she wasn’t going to sell at all, say, what would his reaction be?
She was tired enough to be ready for bed, after all. And she had very useful info to pass on at the morning briefing.
The next morning Shirley Reynolds opened the door of her bedroom and stood listening. She’d considered just staying in bed, but after a bad night she’d stiffened up so much that she needed to get moving. Anyway, having had no supper she was hungry.
After Sean’s dramatic exit, there had been a stunned silence when nobody moved. Then Maia leapt to her feet. ‘Oh Antony, I’m so sorry about that! Are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’ He gestured towards his shirt. ‘It’s wine, not blood.’ He spoke lightly, but his face was a mask of cold fury.
Ben Linton, looking painfully embarrassed, said, ‘I’ll get a cloth, shall I?’ and bent forward to pick up a shard of glass.
‘Don’t touch it!’ Maia screamed. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. I just didn’t want you to cut yourself. Ishbel can deal with it. Antony, you’ll probably want to change and so will I. Ben, if you could go through to the sitting room with Shirley …’
Shirley felt the chill as Maia’s icy look slid over her. She groped for her stick then stood up. ‘No, I’ll just go to my room. I’m feeling a bit upset.’
She could almost hear the words, ‘So well you might be,’ as she had limped out. She’d been so angry – angry at Sean’s lack of control, and angry with the treacherous Maia, and angriest of all with Antony Stanton, the puppeteer who was pulling all the strings from above.
Shirley wasn’t angry this morning, she was just infinitely sad and very worried indeed. She couldn’t begin to see where they would go from here: even if Ranald Sinclair was arrested for Danni’s murder and the police went away, how could Sean go on living in the same house as Maia – Maia’s house, of course – and what would she do herself?
She could hear someone clattering dishes in the kitchen – Ishbel, probably. Antony Stanton wouldn’t be expected to sit through that so breakfast would be in the dining room. She’d better get it over with. She took a deep breath and went across the hall.
There was a tablecloth spread at one end of the table, with four places set. Maia and Antony were sitting in the places they had occupied the previous night, Antony spreading marmalade on toast and Maia cradling a coffee mug. He rose politely when he saw her.
