Past Lying, page 25
‘Golden Thistle,’ Karen scoffed. ‘That’s a crime in itself.’
‘So McEwen jacked in the day job and started writing full time. And just like in the book, he was flying high while Jake Stein’s career went into freefall. Only last year, he won the National Short Story Award, which is a big deal, because it’s not just crime stories that are eligible.’ They turned into a village of narrow streets lined with whitewashed cottages. ‘I had no idea this was here,’ Daisy said. ‘I suppose the prices are sky high.’
‘And the way things are going, you’d expect to be flooded on a regular basis.’
‘What? Unlike your building?’
‘I’m on the third floor. And besides, the clue’s in the name. Western Harbour Breakwater.’ Karen pulled into the car park with fifteen minutes to spare. Only a handful of vehicles were there; although people were permitted to drive up to five miles for exercise, most seemed to prefer to walk from their front doors. In this part of town, after all, they were spoiled for choice.
They walked to the base of the grassy oval and leaned against the wall and waited. The breeze coursing up the estuary cut through any warmth coming from the sun that was dodging the high clouds. Karen pulled her scarf more tightly around her neck. Five minutes before the hour, a man emerged from the car park and started walking towards them. Karen blinked, then drew in her breath sharply. She’d seen that brown tweed butcher’s boy cap only the day before yesterday. And the grey tweed overcoat. That might possibly have been coincidence, but this man had the same bustling gait: small tight steps that propelled him along surprisingly quickly.
‘What is it, boss?’
‘I saw him – or his body double – the other day. Snogging Rosalind Harris.’
Daisy’s eyes widened. He was less than fifty metres from them. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’d go into the witness box with it.’ As he approached, Karen fixed a welcoming expression on her face.
He stopped the regulation distance from them and spread his hands. ‘Which measure do you prefer? Two Alsatian dogs or one Richard Osman?’ His face crinkled in a smile. The beard hid a lot of it, but it made it to his eyes.
Karen acknowledged him with a nod. ‘Mr McEwen? I’m DCI Karen Pirie from the HCU. Thanks for agreeing to meet us today.’
‘I’m intrigued. Your sergeant’ – he tipped his head towards Daisy – ‘wasn’t very forthcoming, but on the general principle that I owe so much to your helpful colleagues when it comes to researching my books, I thought the least I could do was agree. Shall we walk?’
Karen shook her head. ‘I prefer eye contact, if it’s all the same to you.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m dressed for the weather. So what’s all this about?’
‘We’ve received some new information about the disappearance of Lara Hardie. Do you remember the case?’
‘Vaguely,’ he said. ‘I’m not one of these writers who rips their stories from the headlines. I wouldn’t want to run afoul of the laws of libel. So I just make things up.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘I’m not a news junkie, especially when I’m nearing the end of a book.’
‘Lara Hardie vanished without trace on the twenty-second of April last year. She told her flatmates she was going to the library but she never turned up. There was no sign of her on any of the CCTV cameras between her flat and the library either. She just disappeared from an Edinburgh street.’
‘OK, I’ll take your word for it. But what has it to do with me?’
‘Lara had one ambition. She wanted to be a crime writer.’
He frowned. ‘Wait a minute. That’s ringing a bell. Lara . . . slim, blonde, twenty-ish? I think she came to a workshop I was running as part of Book Week Scotland. Would that be right?’
He’d got there quickly enough, Karen thought, given that he’d not responded to public appeals when she went missing. But then, he’d already covered his back on that one. ‘What do you remember about Lara?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not a lot, if I’m honest. There were a couple of really promising writers in that workshop, but she wasn’t one of them. I would have given her feedback, but I never had any further contact with her.’
‘You didn’t come forward when she disappeared.’ Daisy stepped into the role of awkward cop.
His brow furrowed. ‘Why would I? She came to a workshop months before, I had no further contact with her.’
Karen let that hang a moment. ‘Did you make any suggestions about how she might improve her writing?’
He bit his top lip with his lower teeth in an obvious struggle to remember. Then his face cleared. ‘She was having problems with pace. Pace and suspense. Neither of those are things that I teach – I’ve realised I achieve them by instinct, so I don’t know how to teach them. I’m good on dialogue, story structure and sense of place. So I told her she’d get better value with somebody else.’
‘That somebody else being . . . ?’
He pushed his cap back a little. ‘Well, there are plenty to choose from. I suggested Jake Stein. Because I happened to know he had a workshop coming up.’
‘You suggested Jake Stein as a mentor to a young woman? A man who had been so comprehensively disgraced for his sexual predation?’ Daisy again.
McEwen shook his head. ‘Not as a mentor, for fuck’s sake. As someone running a workshop with more than a dozen other writers. Someone she could definitely have learned from.’
‘Your chess-playing partner,’ Karen said mildly. ‘Is that how it goes in your world? Put business the way of your pals, regardless of their reputation?’
He sighed and started pacing. Five steps, turn, five steps, turn. ‘I felt sorry for him. Jake did a really stupid, offensive thing. And it cost him everything. His reputation, his career, his marriage, his friendships. But he didn’t stop being a good writer just because he was capable of something really shitty.’
‘You didn’t think people would wonder about you? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, that sort of thing?’ Daisy again.
He stopped and turned to face them. ‘No. My friends, my colleagues – they know who I am.’
‘Fair enough,’ Karen said. ‘I was wondering—’
He cut straight across her. ‘You haven’t told me what’s come to light about this woman. And what it’s got to do with me.’
‘I don’t know if you’re aware that Jake Stein’s archive has been bequeathed to the National Library of Scotland?’
He met her eyes in a level stare. ‘I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. It’s what happens with a lot of writers’ papers. And Jake did have a high opinion of himself. He’d expect to be the subject of PhDs, and maybe even a biography. I know they’d approached him about his archive, but they do that to quite a lot of writers. Getting in first before the American universities come in waving wedges of cash. What’s Jake’s archive got to do with me?’
‘There are a couple of unfinished manuscripts there. One of them looks like he might still have been working on it at the time of his death. It’s called The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver.’ McEwen shook his head as she continued. ‘Bizarrely, it seems to map on to Stein’s life in several respects. It’s all about a plot to destroy the man the protagonist plays chess with.’
He gave a disbelieving little laugh. ‘And you assumed he must be writing about me? Because we sometimes played each other? Why on earth would Jake want to destroy me? We were friends.’
Karen let the silence draw out. Then she said, ‘You’re sure there was no reason why Jake Stein would want to frame you for murder?’
‘This is insane,’ he protested. ‘I’ve told you; we were friends. If he wanted to take revenge on anyone, you’d have plenty to choose from. Publishers, journalists, agents . . . Take your pick.’
Karen smiled. ‘But none of them was fucking his wife.’
30
The skin round Ross McEwen’s eyes paled. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say.’ His jaw set hard.
‘I think it’s the truth. As you said yourself, why would he decide to write a plot to destroy you unless he had a very good reason.’
He shook his head, scowling. ‘It’s a helluva jump from a novel’s plot to me screwing Jake’s wife.’
Karen gave him a long, measured look. ‘As you may have noticed, we were waiting here for you to arrive. It’s a habit of mine when I’m meeting people on unfamiliar ground. Two mornings ago, I was waiting to interview Rosalind Harris. Opposite the entrance to the block where she lives. And—’
‘Enough,’ he said savagely. ‘I know what you saw. Yes. Rosalind and I are together now. So what?’
‘Jake Stein was trying to fit you up for murder. The perfect murder, he called it. Did he ever mention that to you?’
McEwen’s eyes popped. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘Yes. He talked about a novel celebrating the perfect murder. Where the killer framed someone flawlessly.’
‘He was writing it and you were recognisably the man in the frame. Do you remember anything else about it?’
McEwen began his truncated pacing again. ‘This is a nightmare,’ he said. He stopped abruptly. ‘And you think this has something to do with Lara Hardie’s disappearance?’
‘We believe it may be connected.’ Karen’s voice was gentle now. ‘What it is you’ve remembered, Ross?’
He swallowed hard and sank down into a crouch. ‘He said . . . He said he wanted to make sure it would work so he had to practise it.’ His voice had dropped, as if he were talking to himself. ‘I thought he was joking.’ He clamped his hands over his face and groaned.
Daisy and Karen exchanged looks. Daisy had an air of suppressed excitement. Karen just felt the sadness welling up in her chest. They waited for McEwen to recover himself. Eventually, he stood up again. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘When did your relationship with Rosalind begin?’
‘June 2018. It wasn’t something we planned. It happened very quickly and it took us both by surprise. Look, can we go and sit down? I feel a bit shoogly.’
Karen led the way to a bench in an alcove in the wall. She told him to sit down and instructed Daisy to sit on the other bench. ‘We’ll give anybody else who tries to sit down the bum’s rush.’ She stood facing them both, hands in her pockets, looked as relaxed as if this was any other day at the shore. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.
He stared at the ground between his feet. ‘I’d met Ros a couple of times, just hello, goodbye, on our chess nights. I turned up one evening as usual to find that Jake’s flight from Leeds had been cancelled. He’d jumped on a train and he wouldn’t be back for another hour and a half. I was going to leave, but Ros said he’d been insistent that I stay. She said’ – he looked up with a sweet smile – ‘she was under orders to keep me there.’
It was a story not so different from the one in the book. Rosalind had fed him a monkfish curry with coconut rice and he’d asked for the recipe. They found a common interest in eating well and cooking, an interest not shared by Jake. ‘You know people who choose wine by the price tag, rather than the contents of the bottle? Jake was like that with food. He’d always choose the most expensive dish on the menu, and he’d just shovel it down without noticing. Ros was wasted on him in every possible way.’
Then they’d run into each other at a cookery writer’s event in a bookshop. Jake was away on tour, and she’d invited Ross for dinner. They talked each other to a standstill and ended the evening dazed with infatuation. Jake’s book tour lasted ten days; by the time he returned, they were lovers.
‘We knew we had to keep our relationship a secret. Jake was incredibly possessive. As far as he was concerned, Ros belonged to him and that was that. If he’d found out, he would have destroyed both of us.’
They’d carried on snatching time when they could, tamping down their greed for each other to avoid taking undue risks. And then Marga Durham had brought Jake Stein’s temple crashing down around his ears. And Rosalind walked.
‘Why didn’t you make it public then?’ Karen had asked. She was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear McEwen’s version of events.
‘Jake was in a state of perpetual rage and pain, like a bull in the ring tormented by the banderilleros. He only ever seemed to calm down when we were playing chess. He would rant about Ros – how she was still his, how she could never be rid of him, how she still loved him deep down, how he would destroy any man she took up with.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘A writer’s reputation is a vulnerable thing. Ours is a gossipy world, and I’ve seen people cold-shouldered and brought down by nothing more than an ill-judged tweet. So I agreed with Ros. We’d keep our relationship under wraps until Jake took ownership of some other poor woman.’ McEwen shook his head sadly.
‘What I don’t understand is why you’re still under wraps,’ Daisy said, a touch of belligerence to break the soft focus.
McEwen looked momentarily pissed off. Then he almost smiled and said, ‘Like I said. Reputation. Jake’s only been dead for a few months. I don’t want it to look like I couldn’t wait for him to drop dead before running off with the woman he professed to love.’
‘So how long is respectable?’ Daisy again.
He gave her a cool glance and said, ‘We reckon about a year should be acceptable.’
Karen studied McEwen, frowning slightly. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr McEwen. There’s only one thing outstanding. In his manuscript, Jake Stein gave a very full account of the perfect murder he was planning. Right down to where he would dispose of the body to best implicate you.’
‘You really think he went through with it? You think he actually abducted Lara Hardie and murdered her? Just to take revenge on me and Ros? That’s sick.’
‘I can’t disagree with that judgement. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to search your property. In particular, your garage. Now, we can do this the easy way, where you give us permission because you’ve got nothing to hide, and DS Mortimer and I come back with you and conduct the search ourselves. Or we can go to the sheriff for a warrant, which complicates everything. Not least, the media are bound to get wind of it. I’m sure you remember the BBC helicopters over Cliff Richard’s house?’
‘This is crazy,’ he said.
‘On the other hand, it might not be. And it’s my job to find out which of us is right.’
31
Hamish Mackenzie loaded the last box of hand sanitiser into the back of his Land Rover. ‘Nice work, Duncan,’ he said to the man he’d granted the title of Head Distiller. It didn’t matter that he was the only one; experience had taught Hamish that people liked a title. It made them feel their work was important and that made them work harder.
Duncan shut the Land Rover with a grunt. ‘Aye. Teegan said she’d bring a sack of the sweetgall down this afternoon so I can get started on a new batch. It smells a wee bit medicinal, folk will think it’s the business.’
‘It’s going gangbusters down in Edinburgh. Between the hand gel and Shona Macleod’s tweed masks, we can hardly keep up with the demand.’
Duncan gave him a sideways look. ‘Aye. There’s always somebody gets the silver lining from the cloud.’
‘Might as well be us, Dunc.’ Hamish clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘You driving back tonight? It’s supposed to be blowing a hoolie.’
Hamish shrugged. ‘Nothing to trouble the Landie.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Or I might just stay the night,’ he muttered, his words lost in the engine clattering to life. In spite of torn-faced Daisy Mortimer.
They walked back to the car park, Ross McEwen leading the way. ‘I wasn’t expecting things to move quite so fast,’ Daisy said.
‘It wasn’t what I’d planned, but it felt like the right decision. When things are moving, it’s always worth sticking to the direction of travel. What do you make of him?’
‘He seems pretty straightforward. Selfish, but then most men are.’
‘To be fair – which always grieves me – he’s the one with something to lose if the trolls turn on him. People are still going to go to Rosalind Harris for their wills and probate, regardless.’
McEwen paused by his car. Neither woman was surprised to see it was a silver Toyota Prius. It seemed that Jake Stein liked to be authentic when it came to detail when he could safely be so.
‘You lead the way, sir. We’ll follow. Give us a minute to get on board.’
They followed him back through the pretty houses of Cramond village and east to the more secluded houses that stood in their own grounds. McEwen led them between tall gateposts up a curving drive to a modern two-storey house with almost as much glass as wall. At one end was a tall white tower whose top storey had windows all round. ‘Looks like somebody dumped a lighthouse in the wrong place,’ Karen said. She drew up behind McEwen. If he decided to make a run for it, it would be slightly harder for him to swing his car round.
When she stepped on to the drive, Karen caught a glimpse of the garage, set back beyond the house. She tipped her head towards it, and Daisy nodded. McEwen led the way round the side of the house to a door opposite the garage twenty feet away. ‘I usually go in through the kitchen,’ he said, hanging cap and overcoat on a hook as they entered. ‘Saves me trailing mud or sand through the house.’ They stepped into the kind of kitchen that features in interiors magazines. Instead of the usual granite and steel, this was all oiled woods and soft lines. Drawers had their uses carved into their faces in cursive script; cutlery, serving spoons, utensils, tea towels. The cupboards followed the trend – cups, plates, wine glasses, tumblers, pasta, sauces, baking, rice & noodles, oils, vinegars, herbs, spices. Handy for those days when you couldn’t remember your own name. A shelf of high-end cookbooks confirmed McEwen’s claims of sharing foodie tendencies with his lover, as well as both an Aga and a gas range cooker.
‘So McEwen jacked in the day job and started writing full time. And just like in the book, he was flying high while Jake Stein’s career went into freefall. Only last year, he won the National Short Story Award, which is a big deal, because it’s not just crime stories that are eligible.’ They turned into a village of narrow streets lined with whitewashed cottages. ‘I had no idea this was here,’ Daisy said. ‘I suppose the prices are sky high.’
‘And the way things are going, you’d expect to be flooded on a regular basis.’
‘What? Unlike your building?’
‘I’m on the third floor. And besides, the clue’s in the name. Western Harbour Breakwater.’ Karen pulled into the car park with fifteen minutes to spare. Only a handful of vehicles were there; although people were permitted to drive up to five miles for exercise, most seemed to prefer to walk from their front doors. In this part of town, after all, they were spoiled for choice.
They walked to the base of the grassy oval and leaned against the wall and waited. The breeze coursing up the estuary cut through any warmth coming from the sun that was dodging the high clouds. Karen pulled her scarf more tightly around her neck. Five minutes before the hour, a man emerged from the car park and started walking towards them. Karen blinked, then drew in her breath sharply. She’d seen that brown tweed butcher’s boy cap only the day before yesterday. And the grey tweed overcoat. That might possibly have been coincidence, but this man had the same bustling gait: small tight steps that propelled him along surprisingly quickly.
‘What is it, boss?’
‘I saw him – or his body double – the other day. Snogging Rosalind Harris.’
Daisy’s eyes widened. He was less than fifty metres from them. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’d go into the witness box with it.’ As he approached, Karen fixed a welcoming expression on her face.
He stopped the regulation distance from them and spread his hands. ‘Which measure do you prefer? Two Alsatian dogs or one Richard Osman?’ His face crinkled in a smile. The beard hid a lot of it, but it made it to his eyes.
Karen acknowledged him with a nod. ‘Mr McEwen? I’m DCI Karen Pirie from the HCU. Thanks for agreeing to meet us today.’
‘I’m intrigued. Your sergeant’ – he tipped his head towards Daisy – ‘wasn’t very forthcoming, but on the general principle that I owe so much to your helpful colleagues when it comes to researching my books, I thought the least I could do was agree. Shall we walk?’
Karen shook her head. ‘I prefer eye contact, if it’s all the same to you.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m dressed for the weather. So what’s all this about?’
‘We’ve received some new information about the disappearance of Lara Hardie. Do you remember the case?’
‘Vaguely,’ he said. ‘I’m not one of these writers who rips their stories from the headlines. I wouldn’t want to run afoul of the laws of libel. So I just make things up.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘I’m not a news junkie, especially when I’m nearing the end of a book.’
‘Lara Hardie vanished without trace on the twenty-second of April last year. She told her flatmates she was going to the library but she never turned up. There was no sign of her on any of the CCTV cameras between her flat and the library either. She just disappeared from an Edinburgh street.’
‘OK, I’ll take your word for it. But what has it to do with me?’
‘Lara had one ambition. She wanted to be a crime writer.’
He frowned. ‘Wait a minute. That’s ringing a bell. Lara . . . slim, blonde, twenty-ish? I think she came to a workshop I was running as part of Book Week Scotland. Would that be right?’
He’d got there quickly enough, Karen thought, given that he’d not responded to public appeals when she went missing. But then, he’d already covered his back on that one. ‘What do you remember about Lara?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not a lot, if I’m honest. There were a couple of really promising writers in that workshop, but she wasn’t one of them. I would have given her feedback, but I never had any further contact with her.’
‘You didn’t come forward when she disappeared.’ Daisy stepped into the role of awkward cop.
His brow furrowed. ‘Why would I? She came to a workshop months before, I had no further contact with her.’
Karen let that hang a moment. ‘Did you make any suggestions about how she might improve her writing?’
He bit his top lip with his lower teeth in an obvious struggle to remember. Then his face cleared. ‘She was having problems with pace. Pace and suspense. Neither of those are things that I teach – I’ve realised I achieve them by instinct, so I don’t know how to teach them. I’m good on dialogue, story structure and sense of place. So I told her she’d get better value with somebody else.’
‘That somebody else being . . . ?’
He pushed his cap back a little. ‘Well, there are plenty to choose from. I suggested Jake Stein. Because I happened to know he had a workshop coming up.’
‘You suggested Jake Stein as a mentor to a young woman? A man who had been so comprehensively disgraced for his sexual predation?’ Daisy again.
McEwen shook his head. ‘Not as a mentor, for fuck’s sake. As someone running a workshop with more than a dozen other writers. Someone she could definitely have learned from.’
‘Your chess-playing partner,’ Karen said mildly. ‘Is that how it goes in your world? Put business the way of your pals, regardless of their reputation?’
He sighed and started pacing. Five steps, turn, five steps, turn. ‘I felt sorry for him. Jake did a really stupid, offensive thing. And it cost him everything. His reputation, his career, his marriage, his friendships. But he didn’t stop being a good writer just because he was capable of something really shitty.’
‘You didn’t think people would wonder about you? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, that sort of thing?’ Daisy again.
He stopped and turned to face them. ‘No. My friends, my colleagues – they know who I am.’
‘Fair enough,’ Karen said. ‘I was wondering—’
He cut straight across her. ‘You haven’t told me what’s come to light about this woman. And what it’s got to do with me.’
‘I don’t know if you’re aware that Jake Stein’s archive has been bequeathed to the National Library of Scotland?’
He met her eyes in a level stare. ‘I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. It’s what happens with a lot of writers’ papers. And Jake did have a high opinion of himself. He’d expect to be the subject of PhDs, and maybe even a biography. I know they’d approached him about his archive, but they do that to quite a lot of writers. Getting in first before the American universities come in waving wedges of cash. What’s Jake’s archive got to do with me?’
‘There are a couple of unfinished manuscripts there. One of them looks like he might still have been working on it at the time of his death. It’s called The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver.’ McEwen shook his head as she continued. ‘Bizarrely, it seems to map on to Stein’s life in several respects. It’s all about a plot to destroy the man the protagonist plays chess with.’
He gave a disbelieving little laugh. ‘And you assumed he must be writing about me? Because we sometimes played each other? Why on earth would Jake want to destroy me? We were friends.’
Karen let the silence draw out. Then she said, ‘You’re sure there was no reason why Jake Stein would want to frame you for murder?’
‘This is insane,’ he protested. ‘I’ve told you; we were friends. If he wanted to take revenge on anyone, you’d have plenty to choose from. Publishers, journalists, agents . . . Take your pick.’
Karen smiled. ‘But none of them was fucking his wife.’
30
The skin round Ross McEwen’s eyes paled. ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say.’ His jaw set hard.
‘I think it’s the truth. As you said yourself, why would he decide to write a plot to destroy you unless he had a very good reason.’
He shook his head, scowling. ‘It’s a helluva jump from a novel’s plot to me screwing Jake’s wife.’
Karen gave him a long, measured look. ‘As you may have noticed, we were waiting here for you to arrive. It’s a habit of mine when I’m meeting people on unfamiliar ground. Two mornings ago, I was waiting to interview Rosalind Harris. Opposite the entrance to the block where she lives. And—’
‘Enough,’ he said savagely. ‘I know what you saw. Yes. Rosalind and I are together now. So what?’
‘Jake Stein was trying to fit you up for murder. The perfect murder, he called it. Did he ever mention that to you?’
McEwen’s eyes popped. ‘Jesus,’ he breathed. ‘Yes. He talked about a novel celebrating the perfect murder. Where the killer framed someone flawlessly.’
‘He was writing it and you were recognisably the man in the frame. Do you remember anything else about it?’
McEwen began his truncated pacing again. ‘This is a nightmare,’ he said. He stopped abruptly. ‘And you think this has something to do with Lara Hardie’s disappearance?’
‘We believe it may be connected.’ Karen’s voice was gentle now. ‘What it is you’ve remembered, Ross?’
He swallowed hard and sank down into a crouch. ‘He said . . . He said he wanted to make sure it would work so he had to practise it.’ His voice had dropped, as if he were talking to himself. ‘I thought he was joking.’ He clamped his hands over his face and groaned.
Daisy and Karen exchanged looks. Daisy had an air of suppressed excitement. Karen just felt the sadness welling up in her chest. They waited for McEwen to recover himself. Eventually, he stood up again. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘When did your relationship with Rosalind begin?’
‘June 2018. It wasn’t something we planned. It happened very quickly and it took us both by surprise. Look, can we go and sit down? I feel a bit shoogly.’
Karen led the way to a bench in an alcove in the wall. She told him to sit down and instructed Daisy to sit on the other bench. ‘We’ll give anybody else who tries to sit down the bum’s rush.’ She stood facing them both, hands in her pockets, looked as relaxed as if this was any other day at the shore. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.
He stared at the ground between his feet. ‘I’d met Ros a couple of times, just hello, goodbye, on our chess nights. I turned up one evening as usual to find that Jake’s flight from Leeds had been cancelled. He’d jumped on a train and he wouldn’t be back for another hour and a half. I was going to leave, but Ros said he’d been insistent that I stay. She said’ – he looked up with a sweet smile – ‘she was under orders to keep me there.’
It was a story not so different from the one in the book. Rosalind had fed him a monkfish curry with coconut rice and he’d asked for the recipe. They found a common interest in eating well and cooking, an interest not shared by Jake. ‘You know people who choose wine by the price tag, rather than the contents of the bottle? Jake was like that with food. He’d always choose the most expensive dish on the menu, and he’d just shovel it down without noticing. Ros was wasted on him in every possible way.’
Then they’d run into each other at a cookery writer’s event in a bookshop. Jake was away on tour, and she’d invited Ross for dinner. They talked each other to a standstill and ended the evening dazed with infatuation. Jake’s book tour lasted ten days; by the time he returned, they were lovers.
‘We knew we had to keep our relationship a secret. Jake was incredibly possessive. As far as he was concerned, Ros belonged to him and that was that. If he’d found out, he would have destroyed both of us.’
They’d carried on snatching time when they could, tamping down their greed for each other to avoid taking undue risks. And then Marga Durham had brought Jake Stein’s temple crashing down around his ears. And Rosalind walked.
‘Why didn’t you make it public then?’ Karen had asked. She was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear McEwen’s version of events.
‘Jake was in a state of perpetual rage and pain, like a bull in the ring tormented by the banderilleros. He only ever seemed to calm down when we were playing chess. He would rant about Ros – how she was still his, how she could never be rid of him, how she still loved him deep down, how he would destroy any man she took up with.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘A writer’s reputation is a vulnerable thing. Ours is a gossipy world, and I’ve seen people cold-shouldered and brought down by nothing more than an ill-judged tweet. So I agreed with Ros. We’d keep our relationship under wraps until Jake took ownership of some other poor woman.’ McEwen shook his head sadly.
‘What I don’t understand is why you’re still under wraps,’ Daisy said, a touch of belligerence to break the soft focus.
McEwen looked momentarily pissed off. Then he almost smiled and said, ‘Like I said. Reputation. Jake’s only been dead for a few months. I don’t want it to look like I couldn’t wait for him to drop dead before running off with the woman he professed to love.’
‘So how long is respectable?’ Daisy again.
He gave her a cool glance and said, ‘We reckon about a year should be acceptable.’
Karen studied McEwen, frowning slightly. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mr McEwen. There’s only one thing outstanding. In his manuscript, Jake Stein gave a very full account of the perfect murder he was planning. Right down to where he would dispose of the body to best implicate you.’
‘You really think he went through with it? You think he actually abducted Lara Hardie and murdered her? Just to take revenge on me and Ros? That’s sick.’
‘I can’t disagree with that judgement. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to search your property. In particular, your garage. Now, we can do this the easy way, where you give us permission because you’ve got nothing to hide, and DS Mortimer and I come back with you and conduct the search ourselves. Or we can go to the sheriff for a warrant, which complicates everything. Not least, the media are bound to get wind of it. I’m sure you remember the BBC helicopters over Cliff Richard’s house?’
‘This is crazy,’ he said.
‘On the other hand, it might not be. And it’s my job to find out which of us is right.’
31
Hamish Mackenzie loaded the last box of hand sanitiser into the back of his Land Rover. ‘Nice work, Duncan,’ he said to the man he’d granted the title of Head Distiller. It didn’t matter that he was the only one; experience had taught Hamish that people liked a title. It made them feel their work was important and that made them work harder.
Duncan shut the Land Rover with a grunt. ‘Aye. Teegan said she’d bring a sack of the sweetgall down this afternoon so I can get started on a new batch. It smells a wee bit medicinal, folk will think it’s the business.’
‘It’s going gangbusters down in Edinburgh. Between the hand gel and Shona Macleod’s tweed masks, we can hardly keep up with the demand.’
Duncan gave him a sideways look. ‘Aye. There’s always somebody gets the silver lining from the cloud.’
‘Might as well be us, Dunc.’ Hamish clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘You driving back tonight? It’s supposed to be blowing a hoolie.’
Hamish shrugged. ‘Nothing to trouble the Landie.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Or I might just stay the night,’ he muttered, his words lost in the engine clattering to life. In spite of torn-faced Daisy Mortimer.
They walked back to the car park, Ross McEwen leading the way. ‘I wasn’t expecting things to move quite so fast,’ Daisy said.
‘It wasn’t what I’d planned, but it felt like the right decision. When things are moving, it’s always worth sticking to the direction of travel. What do you make of him?’
‘He seems pretty straightforward. Selfish, but then most men are.’
‘To be fair – which always grieves me – he’s the one with something to lose if the trolls turn on him. People are still going to go to Rosalind Harris for their wills and probate, regardless.’
McEwen paused by his car. Neither woman was surprised to see it was a silver Toyota Prius. It seemed that Jake Stein liked to be authentic when it came to detail when he could safely be so.
‘You lead the way, sir. We’ll follow. Give us a minute to get on board.’
They followed him back through the pretty houses of Cramond village and east to the more secluded houses that stood in their own grounds. McEwen led them between tall gateposts up a curving drive to a modern two-storey house with almost as much glass as wall. At one end was a tall white tower whose top storey had windows all round. ‘Looks like somebody dumped a lighthouse in the wrong place,’ Karen said. She drew up behind McEwen. If he decided to make a run for it, it would be slightly harder for him to swing his car round.
When she stepped on to the drive, Karen caught a glimpse of the garage, set back beyond the house. She tipped her head towards it, and Daisy nodded. McEwen led the way round the side of the house to a door opposite the garage twenty feet away. ‘I usually go in through the kitchen,’ he said, hanging cap and overcoat on a hook as they entered. ‘Saves me trailing mud or sand through the house.’ They stepped into the kind of kitchen that features in interiors magazines. Instead of the usual granite and steel, this was all oiled woods and soft lines. Drawers had their uses carved into their faces in cursive script; cutlery, serving spoons, utensils, tea towels. The cupboards followed the trend – cups, plates, wine glasses, tumblers, pasta, sauces, baking, rice & noodles, oils, vinegars, herbs, spices. Handy for those days when you couldn’t remember your own name. A shelf of high-end cookbooks confirmed McEwen’s claims of sharing foodie tendencies with his lover, as well as both an Aga and a gas range cooker.
