Death in a Cold Spring (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 9) (15 page)

‘Maybe there was nobody about,’ said Zak, polishing hard at what looked like a very small spot.

‘Do you know something you’re not telling me?’

‘No... What about?’

‘I don’t know. Maggie Munro – the Face of Pitkirtly – the artists.’ Christopher found himself becoming unreasonably irritated. But Zak definitely had a guilty air about him. Or maybe that was something to do with his girl-friend, Harriet, who worked in the library. Christopher certainly didn’t want to know anything about their love-lives.

‘The artists?’

‘The ones who were last seen here in this room.’

‘Sammy and Craig, you mean?’

‘You know their names?’

‘Stewie...’ Zak’s voice tailed off and he leaned down over the top of the display case and polished with unconvincing vigour.

‘Stewie knows their names?’ said Christopher. He had a vague feeling this was important, but he couldn’t imagine why it should be. He had never quite been able to understand why Amaryllis had adopted Stewie, one of the most unprepossessing young men he had ever encountered. Zak, with his work ethic and his air of confidence, seemed much more worthy of encouragement, although with a pushy parent like Penelope Johnstone he probably didn’t need it.

Zak had taken advantage of his temporary lack of attentiveness to move through to the other room. Christopher followed. Zak was pretending to re-arrange the medieval mining exhibit, which Christopher hated because of its references to the tunnels out under the Forth where Amaryllis had almost come to grief. Although he had to admit that if he avoided all the places where that kind of thing had happened, he would probably never go outside his own front door.

‘How did Stewie know them?’

Zak shrugged his shoulders, causing him to drop a couple of photographs that showed the long-lost entrance to the mines. He bent to pick them up. Christopher folded his arms and waited, trying to look implacable.

Eventually it worked. After he had pinned the photos back up, Zak replied. ‘He was helping the minister with the Face of Pitkirtly thing. He must have met them there. I guess.’

Christopher didn’t think of himself as particularly intuitive, but he had the sense that Zak wasn’t telling the whole story.

‘There’s a senior police officer in the building,’ he said. ‘Sarah Ramsay. Do you think she’d be interested in this?’

‘No,’ said Zak with a glare. ‘It’s just hearsay, isn’t it? Not proper evidence.’

Of course Liam Johnstone’s son would know the difference, wouldn’t he?

‘I’d better find out if Stewie’s prepared to speak to her, hadn’t I?’

Zak shrugged again. ‘You should ask Amaryllis about that.’

‘All right then, I’ll do that.’

Christopher didn’t want to give the impression of flouncing out in a huff, but that was what it felt like. He only just refrained from slamming the door behind him.

‘Oh, Mr Wilson!’ said Harriet from the library as he emerged into the corridor. ‘It’s Maggie Munro.’ She paused for breath, and he detected tears in her eyes. ‘I was just coming to tell you – she’s been found. Outside the Queen of Scots. She’s in a bad way.’

Chapter 17 A Taste of Herring

Keith hadn’t quite finished his paperwork before going to see Maggie Munro, but Chief Inspector Ramsay had sent him to interview her about what had happened while it was still fresh in her memory. Looking at her propped up in bed on several pillows, her face grazed and her arms bandaged, he didn’t think it would be anything other than fresh for some time. Apparently she was a resilient woman, though. She had refused to go to hospital, not that an ambulance would have got there in less than about four hours, judging by previous experience, having instead received a home visit from the local GP practice, which was in itself a minor medical miracle.

‘It’s nothing really,’ was almost the first thing she said to him, followed more or less immediately by, ‘No, I didn’t see who it was’ and ‘There’s not much point in following it up.’

Her husband frowned as he brought her a cold drink and helped her with it, but he wasn’t saying much either.

She had been taken from round the back of the Cultural Centre by a man wearing a mask – she couldn’t even tell Keith what kind of mask it was, although she had ruled out both Mickey Mouse and Sonic the Hedgehog, which suggested it might have been some other cartoon character. Then she had been hustled into a car, definitely not a van. She wasn’t sure of the colour but it was something dark. Black, dark grey or maybe dark green.

Her abductors – there were two of them by this time, the man who had grabbed her and a driver, whom needless to say she couldn’t describe either – had driven her to a quiet spot just outside town where they had manhandled her to an unspecified extent, made threats, possibly relating to her family, but she couldn’t quite remember, and then driven down to the Queen of Scots where they had pushed her out of the car while it was still going, and left.

‘Trumped-up story, if ever I heard one,’ said the Chief Inspector when Keith reported all this to her back at the station. ‘What was the husband’s take on it?’

‘He wasn’t saying much... It’s just another of those random things, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘It’s starting to feel a lot like gang warfare to me. Or a protection racket.’

‘The last time we had that sort of thing around here it turned out to be a branch of the Mafia,’ said Keith.

‘I wonder if the boy and girl stumbled into it.’

‘It’s maybe not connected,’ said Keith.

He wasn’t even convincing himself with this line of thought. And the more he thought about Maggie’s husband’s apparent lack of indignation, the less convincing any of it seemed. Was the man being threatened by a gang or something? The idea slid away from him as he tried to think about the other problems.

‘Any word from the search teams?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘Not yet, sir – ma’am.’

‘I’ve read your reports,’ she told him. ‘I think we may need to bring the minister in.’

‘The minister?’

‘Yes. I know we’ve got the print-out of his records, which by the way we’ll need to go through in detail, to find out who else we should be interviewing. By the sound of it he wasn’t all that eager to hand over any information. We may have to confiscate his computer.’

‘I could go round there and have another word with him,’ Keith offered, somehow not keen to tangle with Mr Cockburn, whom he suspected would put up some resistance, moral if not physical, to being hauled into the station for questioning. ‘He wasn’t very pleased about the church hall break-in. Maybe I can start with that.’

‘You’d better go on home as soon as you’ve done that. You could do with an early night, I expect. Just make sure you stay focussed when you speak to him,’ she warned him. Evidently she had already discovered one of his weaknesses. He hoped she had unearthed a few strengths too, otherwise his whole career might be in jeopardy. But she was smiling, so it couldn’t be too bad, unless of course she liked to smile just before plunging the knife in...

Keith was even more muddled by the time he set out for the manse again. Now he wasn’t just muddled about the case, but about his new boss and about his future in the police force, and his girl-friend, who probably wasn’t even speaking to him. He wouldn’t have been speaking to himself if he had been her, he reflected gloomily, walking down the High Street and trying to avoid catching anybody’s eye in case they distracted him from his mission.

Unfortunately, avoiding Maisie Sue’s eye made him stare straight across to the far side of the street, where a scruffy-looking young man was moving furtively from one shop doorway to another, glancing round as if he wanted to make sure nobody had spotted him, and at the same time making himself exponentially more visible than if he were just striding along normally.

Keith frowned. He had seen the young man before. Wasn’t he the boy who sometimes went around with Amaryllis? Stewie? He thought they had been delivering election leaflets together. Because of the boy’s furtiveness he decided the responsible course of action was to try and find out more. He knew he would stay focussed better if he got this out of the way first.

He hadn’t actually tailed anybody for quite a while. What with the boy Stewie’s furtive glances, he knew there was a good chance he’d be spotted, but he carried on down his own side of the road and just looked across occasionally to make sure his quarry was still somewhere about. They progressed like this right down the High Street to the supermarket car park. It was too open there. Keith hesitated as Amaryllis’s assistant darted across the space, dodging between parked cars, and only followed once the boy had cleared the car park and headed down the road at the other side, a narrow wynd between two rows of houses. Keith knew it led down towards the Queen of Scots eventually, but there was a steep, narrow stretch before that, and probably not much cover either. As far as he knew not many people even used the wynd, except maybe after they had been ejected from the Queen of Scots at the end of the evening and were finding their way home up the hill.

He took his time, hoping Stewie would still be in view once he turned down into the wynd. He spotted the slight figure about halfway down the hill, but no sooner had he seen him than Stewie turned aside from the pavement and vanished.

Keith hurried down the road.

He stopped abruptly. He had forgotten about the Italian restaurant. It seemed that most other people had forgotten too, for the once immaculate paintwork and shining windows showed signs of neglect. He knew the Petrelli family had been through a bad patch over the past few years. Two of their number were currently in prison, the boy Giancarlo, who was surely about the same age as Stewie, had gone to America a couple of months before, and Keith thought Mrs Petrelli had been left to manage on her own. Evidently it was still functioning as a restaurant, more or less, but in reduced circumstances.

That must be where Stewie had gone. Of course, if he had been at school with Giancarlo then he would know Mrs Petrelli. But why all the furtiveness? It was a bit of a puzzle.

‘Hey! Were you on your way to see me?’ called somebody from further down the wynd. Charlie Smith came into view, puffing a bit as he climbed the hill, dog at his heels as usual.

‘Not really,’ said Keith. He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m meant to be round at the manse by now. I got distracted.’ He frowned as he realised that was exactly what the Chief Inspector had warned him against.

‘And your footsteps just automatically took you towards the Queen of Scots?’ Charlie suggested helpfully.

‘No, it wasn’t that. Just something odd.’

Keith didn’t want to add another oddity to the long list of random local events he had already compiled. There wasn’t time to follow up on this one, and it probably didn’t mean anything. Stewie was the kind of person who looked furtive whatever he did, just as Charlie Smith’s dog had a constant air of embarrassment. He leaned down to tickle its ears.

‘He’s looking well,’ he said.

Of course that was the signal for Charlie to hold forth about different brands of dog food and how important it was to choose the right kind for the dog’s age, size, breed, colouring, personality. All right, he didn’t mention the colouring and personality, but as far as Keith was concerned that would have been just as relevant.

He glanced at his watch again when Charlie started in on what Jock McLean should be feeding the wee white dog and wasn’t. Or more to the point, what he shouldn’t be giving it.

‘... seen him sneaking cheese and piccalilli crisps to it under the table...’

‘Sorry, Charlie, I’ve got to get on. The new Chief Inspector...’

‘Sarah Ramsay? She’s all right, isn’t she?’

He might have known Charlie had already heard about the new arrival. For somebody who had left the Force and claimed not to want any more to do with it, he certainly kept his ear to the ground.

‘Yes, but I’ve got to get up to the manse now, otherwise she could bring the iron hand out of the velvet glove.’

‘Can’t have that. Off you go, then. Good luck with the minister.’

‘Thanks. See you around.’

Stewie hadn’t emerged from the restaurant. But there was no reason why the boy shouldn’t make a social call in his spare time, Keith told himself as he climbed the hill again, wishing he had brought his bike. On the other hand, he might have been more conspicuous tracking Stewie that way.

At the manse, Mr Cockburn was full of righteous indignation.

‘Breaking into the church hall! That’s almost sacrilege. I don’t know what anyone could possible hope to gain by it anyway. The art exhibition’s of great local interest but I don’t think the individual pieces would fetch much – not unless one of the artists became famous, that is, and we’d have to wait years for that to happen.’

Keith waited for him to run out of steam, and then said what he had come to say.

‘The Chief Inspector asked me to let you know we might need to take away your computer for a while. Just to check it out. In case there’s anything more...’

‘This is outrageous!’ boomed the minister.

All right, he needed to be able to boom from the pulpit on Sundays to frighten sinners, but did he have to do it in his own front room?

‘I know you gave me the print-out, sir, but there could be further information...’

‘I can assure you there isn’t!’ snapped Mr Cockburn.

‘I’m afraid this is now a murder enquiry, so we can’t take anybody’s word for...’

‘Not even the word of a man of God?’

‘Um.’

Mrs Cockburn burst into the room, flinging the door back against the wall with the speed of her arrival.

‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘I didn’t ask for tea!’ Mr Cockburn roared.

‘Coffee? Biscuits? Water?’

The minister reached for a copy of a book – was it the Bible? – on the little table next to him, lifted it to shoulder level almost as if he were planning to throw it at his wife, then caught Keith’s eye and put it back. To her credit, Mrs Cockburn didn’t flinch or even pause in her attempts to persuade them to take some refreshment.

She must be used to it.

Keith didn’t even want to think about that. He had more than enough on his plate without seeing signs of domestic violence in the manse, of all places. But in all conscience he couldn’t completely ignore it either. He smiled at the woman.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea, if you’re making one.’

She smiled faintly, nodded, and left the room again, leaving the door wide open.

‘I think you gave your wife a bit of a fright then, sir,’ he said.

Mr Cockburn heaved a sigh. ‘High blood pressure,’ he said.

‘What – oh, you mean she’s worried about you?’ Keith hoped his incredulity didn’t show.

‘There’s a family history of strokes. She never stops worrying. It’s stupid, of course. Women!... Are you married?’

‘Not yet.’ And he never would be, the way things were going with missed dates.

‘Don’t do it. They’re always on some project or other. If they’re not meddling in church affairs they’re off visiting somebody in prison all afternoon and you’re lucky to get a bite to eat before seven-thirty. Or they’re scattering their sewing about the place so that the pins stab you whenever you move.’ The minister paced around a bit.

‘Mrs Cockburn visits people in prison?’

The minister shook his head, apparently in denial, but the next words he spoke gave the opposite impression. Maybe he had wanted to expunge the information from his mind. ‘She doesn’t do it a lot. Only if there’s a local connection. She used to go and see that young man who was put away for fraud or something – what was his name? I saw him just the other day.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Keith politely.

‘What were we saying?’ said Mr Cockburn. Fortunately he had calmed down a bit. ‘You want to take away the computer?’

‘It would be best if you gave it to us voluntarily, sir. Otherwise we might have to get a warrant.... Apart from that, is there anything you can think of about the two artists – Sammy and Craig – that might explain why somebody might want to harm them?’

‘I’ve asked myself that... Do you think the girl’s dead too? Is that why you wanted to speak to me again?’