Past Lying, page 26
Daisy and Karen automatically masked up; McEwen didn’t bother. Careful to keep her distance, Karen walked around the perimeter. There was no view of the garage; that wall was where the vast American fridge and the ovens were situated. ‘You can’t see the garage from the house, then?’
Ross looked up from the bench where he was unlacing his boots. ‘It’s not very scenic. There are good views in other directions, so it’s not like it’s a loss.’
‘We’d like to start with the garage,’ Karen said.
A flicker of irritation crossed his face. ‘I’ll just tie my shoes again,’ he said crisply.
‘Thank you.’ They followed him back outside. Karen noted the bulk of what she took to be a large barbecue, equipped with wheels so it could be moved easily. The garage door was controlled by a numeric keypad; it slid up and over with hardly a sound.
It was a space large enough for two substantial cars. But there were no vehicles inside. ‘You don’t put your car in the garage?’
‘I can’t be arsed. It’s not like it’s a magnet for car thieves.’
At one end was a stack of banker’s boxes. McEwen waved a hand at them. ‘Copies of my books, manuscripts.’ A wry smile. ‘The start of my archive, I suppose you could call it.’
Workbenches occupied the near wall. They were fitted with vices and G-clamps that looked dusty. There were pegboards for tools, but the array was hardly impressive. A hammer, a couple of pairs of pliers, a wrench. An electric screwdriver and a hammer drill sat lonely on the bench top. He caught Karen’s eye and shrugged. ‘I’m not much use with my hands. GSI, that’s me.’
‘GSI?’ Daisy asked.
‘Get Someone In. At least these days I can afford it.’
Next to them was the gardening equipment. Ride-on mower, hedge trimmer, tree lopper, as well as the usual assortment of spades, forks and hand tools. Karen had a sneaking suspicion this was another area where Ross McEwen Got Someone In.
Karen pointed to the floor where a panel of chipboard sat flush with the concrete around it. ‘Is that an inspection pit?’
He nodded. ‘The previous owner’s taste for modernity didn’t go further than his house. He was passionate about vintage cars. He used to pick them up as little more than wrecks then restore them. When I looked at the house, there was a beautiful American car sitting here. A Duesenberg Model J sports coupe. Cherry red. It was a work of art. I’d have bought it on the spot, but it wasn’t for sale. I have no interest in cars – you’ve seen what I drive, for heaven’s sake. But this would have been like having a Picasso about the place.’ He grinned, and at once Karen recognised the boyish charm that probably appealed to Rosalind.
‘So, the inspection pit was there so he could work on his cars?’ Daisy broke the moment.
‘That’s right. I got a local joiner to make a proper cover for it, to avoid any chance of an accident.’
Karen approached and studied the cover. There was the narrowest of gaps all the way round. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Nothing. It’s just a void. I mean, there are steps down at one end, but that’s all.’
‘You didn’t think it would be safer to have it filled in?’ Karen sounded absent, but her senses were on alert.
‘Probably, but the plan is when Ros and I officially come out, we’re both going to sell our places and find somewhere together. It might be a selling point, you never know.’ He smiled. ‘Would it be naïve of me to ask what’s so interesting about my garage?’
‘How do you open this?’ Karen tapped her toe on the cover.
‘There’s a crowbar somewhere . . . ’ He looked around and walked to the end of the workbench. ‘Yeah, here it is.’ He pointed at the corner and went to grab the tool.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Karen shouted. Daisy hustled across the garage and stepped between McEwen and the crowbar. She snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
He looked affronted. ‘Seriously? You think I murdered someone with a crowbar? Should I be talking to a lawyer?’
‘At this point, Mr McEwen, you are not the person of interest to us. We need to be sure, however, that any potential evidence is not compromised.’ She looked around and spotted what she thought was a trenching spade. Narrow flat blade that might fit the gap if she was lucky. And for once, Karen was feeling lucky.
‘On you go, Daisy.’ Younger, fitter, and possessed of less dignity to lose, Karen thought. She kept her eyes on Ross McEwen. He was leaning against the workbench, arms folded across his chest, expression mildly curious,
‘Do you mind telling me what has drawn you to my garage so inexorably?’
‘Let’s just say, information received.’
‘Received via a partial manuscript written by a man who hated me, and wanted revenge on his ex-wife for finding happiness elsewhere? I think you’ve been reading too many of our books, Chief Inspector.’
‘I’ll be the first to apologise if I’ve wasted your time, sir.’
Daisy approached, spade in hand, apparently a woman unaccustomed to horticulture. On the edge of the pit, she hesitated, looking to Karen for guidance. Her boss nodded as she gloved up.
‘One of the short sides, if my memory of Higher Physics is correct,’ McEwen said. ‘Levers and fulcrums and all that.’
Daisy stuck the spade into the gap and leaned on the handle. Nothing happened. She shifted the spade a little and tried again. She grunted and heaved, and this time it moved. Karen stepped forward and crouched to get her fingers under the edge. Daisy dumped the spade and together they inched the board sideways. It was lighter than Karen expected; one person could manage it, she thought.
The cover slid aside. McEwen gasped. ‘Fuck me!’
Instead of the void he’d claimed they’d find, they were staring down at an uneven concrete slab that occupied the bottom half of the pit.
McEwen’s eyes were wide, his hands in his hair. ‘I swear to God, I had no idea . . . ’ He looked around wildly. ‘You’ve got to believe me. Whatever’s down there, it’s nothing to do with me.’
32
Karen left Daisy wrapping a spool of crime scene tape round the garage and walked Ross McEwen back to his kitchen. He slumped into the captain’s chair at the head of the kitchen table, head in hands. He looked up at Karen. ‘You think . . . you think Lara Hardie’s down there? You think Jake put her there? Really?’
‘I don’t want to speculate. I would still like to search the house, if you agree?’
He gave her a searching stare. ‘Do I need to be talking to a lawyer?’
‘You’re free to do so. But you’re not under caution or arrest.’
‘I wouldn’t even know where to begin, this is all so bloody preposterous.’ He got up and went to the fridge. He took out a bottle of vodka and Bloody Mary mix and poured himself what Karen thought of as a big drink.
‘I need to organise a forensic team to excavate your inspection pit. And there will be an officer on duty overnight. I don’t think any excavation will begin until tomorrow morning, but it will be disruptive, I’m afraid.’ And all of this without alerting the Dog Biscuit.
He took a gulp of his drink and shuddered a little. ‘Can I go and stay with Ros?’
‘I’d rather you stayed here. I may have questions as things arise.’
A sardonic grin and a dark laugh. ‘I see what you’re about, Pirie. You don’t want Ros and I to put our heads together to cover our backs.’ He winced. ‘Sorry, terrible mixed idiom. I’m not even sure that’s anatomically possible.’
‘I can’t stop you talking to Ms Harris unless I arrest you and put you in a cell. Which I’m not about to do. But I would like you here until we’ve finished searching the house.’
As she spoke, Daisy returned. ‘All done.’
Karen excused herself. She walked out of the kitchen and into an open-plan dining and living room. It appeared to have been furnished for comfort rather than to impress. She could imagine stretching out on those sofas or chatting comfortably over dinner on those generously padded dining chairs. The back wall was kitted out with bookshelves crammed with crime novels. Where most people would have had a giant TV screen, McEwen had a seascape. It looked like the Firth of Forth on a windy spring day, all blues and whites and greys.
She couldn’t hear Daisy and McEwen. She reckoned she could make her calls without being overheard. She walked the length of the room and sat in an egg chair that looked out over the lawn to a golf course beyond. First port of call was the local station. She spoke to a duty sergeant and outlined what she needed. Lockdown made everything more complicated, of course. ‘I only need one man to guard the perimeter. It’s a formality, so I can stand up in front of the sheriff at some point and say nobody could have interfered with what’s inside.’
The grumbling that followed felt like a dog marking its territory rather than a genuine attempt to evade the task. ‘I’ll have somebody there within the hour,’ he finally conceded. ‘They’ll need to be relieved at shift change, obviously.’
‘I get that, I wasn’t expecting one poor PC to stay there till breakfast. Oh, and if the householder leaves at any point, I’d appreciate it if your officer could inform me.’
Next, the summoning of a forensic team. Who knew what challenges the inspection pit would provide? Karen explained carefully to the duty Crime Scene Manager what she thought might be waiting for them below the skin of concrete. ‘Well, it makes a change from a dog walker finding a decaying corpse in the woods,’ he said. ‘We like a challenge. We’ll be there first thing.’
That only left one job. Someone had to babysit Ross McEwen. There was always the outside chance that he was not the sweetly innocent soul he was presenting to them. Karen often recalled a poem they’d studied at school. ‘The Smuggler’ by Norman MacCaig. She could still quote the final couplet. ‘Nobody with such luggage/has nothing to declare.’ It was one of the tenets she lived her professional life by. A smooth surface didn’t necessarily denote innocence; it simply meant its owner had a better class of decorator.
She could only imagine the Dog Biscuit’s reaction if it turned out there was good reason to charge Ross McEwen with something, only to discover he’d done a runner in the night. She didn’t want to ask Daisy; they still had a search to carry out. And they needed to be fresh in the morning.
She wondered whether Jimmy Hutton could supply a body from the Murder Prevention Squad but immediately vetoed the idea. If this was all going to go seismic with the Dog Biscuit, she didn’t want to spread the damage.
That left one option, and it wasn’t one she relished, for more than one reason. She speed-dialled Jason and waited. ‘Boss,’ he greeted her. ‘No change, that’s what they’re saying. The nurse I spoke to, she said that was a good thing.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Any word from Ronan?’
Jason sighed. ‘A lassie that works in Asda knows him and couldn’t work out why he was wearing a Police Scotland vest. She told her supervisor, her supervisor told security. The security guy challenged him and Ronan chinned him and legged it. It’s a total clusterfuck. I still don’t know where he is.’
‘You don’t know if he’s got any mates that live near the Asda?’
A pause. ‘I don’t know who he pals about with these days.’
She thought he was lying but she saw no point in making an issue of it. ‘He’s his own worst enemy.’
‘That’s what my mum always says.’
‘Listen, Jason. I’m after a big favour. I think we’re making some solid progress on the Lara Hardie case. We’re searching Ross McEwen’s house and there’s an inspection pit filled with concrete on site.’
‘Holy shit, boss. That’s a total tie-in with the book. I picked it up from Gayfield this morning and read it through.’
‘Thanks for that. I’ve lined up one of the tackety boot boys from Drylaw to stand guard on the garage, but I need a body to keep an eye on Ross McEwen overnight. I don’t think there’s any reason to think he’s going to do a runner, but—’
‘You want to do belt and braces, I get it. You want me to sit outside the house and make sure he doesn’t take off, or have any visitors?’
Relief surged through Karen. She hadn’t had to make the ask; somehow, over the past few days, Jason had reached a point where he was willing to take the initiative. ‘Exactly.’
‘Are you forgetting I’m suspended?’
‘No. And Ross McEwen isn’t going to see your face. He’s got a massive pile out by the golf course in Barnton. You’d just have to sit in the car with the end of the drive in sight. And if he comes out, follow him, but call me the minute you’re on the move. How does that sound?’
‘I could do that, boss. It’s better than sitting about doing nothing but chewing my nails. I tell you, I almost wish I smoked so I had something to do with myself.’
More than anything else at that moment, Karen wished Phil could hear what Jason had become. ‘You’re a good man, Jason. Can you get here for eight? We’re going to take a look at the study.’
‘Like it says in the notes: the external hard drive.’
‘Wish me luck. We’ll see you down the road from McEwen’s house at eight. And Jason – thanks for this. I won’t forget it.’
He scoffed. ‘I think you better forget it, boss. Before the Dog Biscuit comes sniffing around.’
She laughed. ‘See you later.’ She stared out into the gathering dusk and wondered how many more times she’d stick her neck out for this job. Sooner or later, Ann Markie was going to come along with a chopper to chop off her head.
Back in the kitchen, McEwen looked as if tiredness had come over him like a wave and left him stranded on the high tide line. ‘What now?’ he asked, his voice slowed by exhaustion or drink. Or both.
‘We’d like to take a look at your study.’
‘You mean my office? I’m not a bloody professor. I’m a jobbing writer. I work in an office.’
It was a strange thing to turn belligerent over, given the ground they’d already covered. ‘Whatever you call it, the room you work in. If that’s the room where you used to play chess with Jake Stein.’
‘Now?’
‘Please. The sooner we get to it, the sooner we’ll be out of your way.’
He led them to the end of the passage and round a corner to a polished concrete stair that hugged the wall of the tower. There were doors in the inner wall; as they went up, McEwen said in a monotone, ‘Utility room, wine cellar, filing cabinets, toilet and shower.’ Narrow lancet windows gave glimpses of the world beyond. They emerged in the top room, windows angled round in an octagonal shape. It was spectacular. The sea, the woodland, the golf course; a view in every direction.
A functional desk sat off to one side, a scatter of paper on the surface and a printer table next to it. On the other side of the room were a pair of leather tub chairs, a table inlaid with a chessboard between them. All round the walls were waist-high bookshelves. ‘This is where the magic happens. Well, that’s how The Times supplement described it. I’d say it’s more like sweat and tears. The blood stays on the page.’
It had the air of a line he’d uttered many times. Karen prowled the perimeter. ‘How do you work on screen with the sunlight coming at you?’
He stepped across to the desk and took out a slim remote. He pressed a button and a semi-opaque blind descended on one window. ‘They’re independent of each other, so it makes no odds where the glare is coming from.’ He sat down in the desk chair.
‘It would be easier for us if you weren’t in the room while we search.’
‘I’ll stay put. I think I’ve already made it pretty bloody easy for you.’
Karen and Daisy exchanged a look. ‘You take the desk, I’ll take the shelves,’ Karen said. Daisy gestured for him to move away, and he pushed back, letting the chair do the work.
‘Be my guest.’ He made an ironic gesture towards his desk drawers. Meanwhile, Karen got down on her knees and began her scrutiny of the shelf contents. Mostly they were reference books: forensic science; OS maps of Scotland; a complete collection of the green-and-white Penguin Famous Trials series; critical writing about crime fiction; biographies of writers; and finally, poetry. It wasn’t what she’d expected from a lad from the Raploch, and Karen chided herself for her knee-jerk prejudice. She was a working-class lassie herself, and she had no chip on her shoulder. Ross McEwen had simply reached his escape velocity by a different route.
She worked her way methodically along the shelves, pulling out anything that might have hidden an external hard drive. She ruled out all the standard format books, but considered slim books of poetry, folded maps, small guidebooks. It was time-consuming but she didn’t care. This might be make-or-break time; the single item that drew a straight line between Jake Stein and Lara Hardie.
In the end, it wasn’t even disguised. It was pushed in between the embossed leather spines of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Heart of Midlothian, barely visible. Karen, still in her protective gloves, pulled out the books on either side to expose the hard drive. ‘Mr McEwen, can you come here, please.’
He crossed to her side, frowning at the gap in the shelf. ‘Is that . . . ? It looks like one of those hard drives people upload stuff to when it’s just cluttering up their computer.’
Karen lifted it carefully off the shelf and showed it to him. ‘Is this yours?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s a bit old school. All my stuff is stored on the cloud. Early drafts, old emails, research files – all tucked away. I can get to it easily enough, but it’s not taking up space on a daily basis. Much more eco-friendly than back-up drives and paper copies.’
‘Not really. I read that data storage uses more than one per cent of global electricity,’ Daisy said. ‘That’s not nothing.’
He glared at her. ‘Fine. Stick to your notebook.’
