Death in a Cold Spring (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 9) (17 page)

‘Amaryllis!’

The cry came from somewhere behind her. She didn’t turn round.

‘Wait for me! I’m sorry I laughed. It was just a nervous laugh – you’re right, it wasn’t funny.’

‘I’m coming too!’ cried someone else, and Ashley appeared at her side, giggling a little. ‘It’s nerves with me too,’ she added hastily.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Amaryllis, coming to a stop at last, hands on hips. ‘I suppose Charlie’s just closing up the pub so that he can follow on with the dog.’

‘No,’ said Christopher, puffing up the hill. ‘He’s calling for reinforcements.’ He caught up with Amaryllis and Ashley. ‘At least he realises he’s not a policeman any more.’

She was in too much of a hurry to take offence. ‘You’ll have to keep up. I can’t hang about waiting when someone’s life might be at stake.’

Ashley made a sort of faint whimpering sound, but her step didn’t falter. Amaryllis had now decided she was quite a good match for Keith, despite her pallor and tiny voice.

They made good time as far as the turn-off and were just about to start along towards the church and the manse when Amaryllis’s phone rang. It was Charlie Smith.

‘You’d better come back here right away,’ he said.

‘But we’re nearly there!’

‘Never mind that – Keith’s here. Outside the Queen of Scots. Mrs Ramsay’s on her way.’

Chapter 19 Waking up is hard to do

Somebody’s head was pounding from the inside as if there was a man with a sledgehammer trying to get out. A disembodied voice came from somewhere above him. It could have been a woman’s voice but he didn’t really care at that point.

‘Sergeant Burnet – Keith – can you hear me?’

Silly question. ‘Course I can.’

He tried to move, and the next moment he was on his hands and knees being sick. If only he had made it to the kitchen, he thought, then he wouldn’t have messed up the carpet. There was lino on the kitchen floor and it would have been easier to clean.

Then he realised the carpet had turned to tarmac beneath him, and he had grazed his hands on it.

‘It’s all right, son,’ said somebody else, patting him on the back.

He was wide awake now. He turned his head and saw Charlie Smith and Sarah Ramsay leaning over him.

‘My head hurts,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s my brain.’

The two of them exchanged glances. What weren’t they telling him?

‘What am I doing here?’ he asked. It felt like the wrong question, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Jock saw you being dumped out of a car,’ Charlie told him.

‘Maggie.’

‘What?’ said the Chief Inspector.

‘Same as Maggie Munro.’

The Chief Inspector leaned down towards him and stared into his eyes.

‘Could be barbiturates of some kind,’ she reported. ‘I’d better get him tested. Is there a doctor’s surgery anywhere near here?’

‘Hmph,’ said Jock McLean from behind Charlie. ‘You’ll be lucky to catch anybody there at this time of night. And I wouldn’t count on getting an ambulance here before tomorrow morning either – there’s bound to be roadworks on the motorway. Or an accident.’

Sarah Ramsay straightened up again. ‘I’ll turf a doctor out of bed if I have to.’

She sounded very fierce.

‘Glad you’re on my side,’ commented Keith, wondering what had happened to him. His head felt alternately fluffy, as if it were stuffed with whatever they used to fill pillows with, and blurry, as if all his thoughts were being refracted through water. He experimented with turning to one side and then to the other, to see if that made a difference. It didn’t. He just started to feel sick again.

‘We’ll see if I’m on your side or not once we get you straightened out,’ said the Chief Inspector, still just as fiercely. She turned away from him and took a set of car keys out of her bag. Presumably she was going to try and find a doctor straight away. Good luck with that.

He closed his eyes for a moment. It was less exhausting not to have to look at things.

He heard running feet, and the next time he opened his eyes, Ashley was staring at him, quite close up.

‘Keith!’ she exclaimed, and burst into tears.

Fortunately she didn’t hug him, the state he was in.

‘I’m all right,’ he told her.

‘You look terrible. What happened? Can’t they get you to hospital? It can’t be good for you to be lying at the side of the road in the cold.’

‘Don’t mind... ambulances in the roadworks.’

‘What?’

‘They always get stuck in the roadworks,’ Christopher explained.

Just as well somebody was awake enough to do that. Ashley needed answers. She deserved answers. She deserved a boy-friend who was around in the evenings, and took her out on dates, and didn’t get called away to look at blood-soaked quilts.

Keith took this rather complex sequence of thoughts as a sign he had recovered, and began struggling to get to his feet.

‘You shouldn’t get up too quickly,’ said Ashley, grabbing him by one arm.

‘How did it happen?’ said Amaryllis, materialising at his other side. ‘Did they just take you off the street like Maggie Munro?’

‘A cup of tea,’ said Keith, frowning. ‘Young Dave...’

‘I thought he was in custody again. Who gave you the cup of tea?’

‘Sssh, Amaryllis,’ said Charlie Smith. ‘He’s in no fit state for one of your interrogations.’

‘That’s always the best time,’ said Amaryllis, but she paused in her questioning, which was just as well because it was all Keith could do to get on to his feet and stay there.

‘Maybe you’d better come into the Queen of Scots,’ said Charlie. ‘I can’t give you a drink because that would mess up the blood test, but maybe later.’

A little procession, led by Jock McLean, or more accurately by the wee white dog, who was dragging him along, made its careful way into the pub and over to a table where Charlie pushed Keith into a chair and told him to stay there. Ashley took up position next to him. She put her hand on his knee. He thought it was a gesture of possession but he wasn’t sure who it was aimed at – Amaryllis? If he hadn’t felt like a shadow of himself, he would have laughed at that idea. Charlie, Christopher and Amaryllis seemed to be arguing somewhere in the distance. He didn’t want to know.

He had to close his eyes again, and he wasn’t sure how much time passed, but after a while somebody else replaced Ashley on the chair next to him, and he was awake enough to know it was a doctor, who took a blood sample, told him to take it easy for a day or two and to use paracetamol if anything hurt, and left again.

‘Better get you home now,’ said Sarah Ramsay.

‘He can stay here if it’d be easier,’ said Charlie.

‘That probably would be better,’ agreed the Chief Inspector. ‘You can keep an eye on him in the night if you wouldn’t mind. Or I could ask a constable to come down and do that.’

‘I’ll be fine with doing that, or I can get the dog to stay with him,’ said Charlie. ‘Unless Ashley...’

Ashley’s mouth fell open in surprise. Keith blushed.

‘Well then,’ said Sarah Ramsay hurriedly. ‘Come along – can somebody get his other arm? I don’t know if he’s quite...’

There was a blur of activity, they more or less hoisted him bodily up the stairs to Charlie’s flat, and then at last a dim and blissful silence surrounded him, broken only by the funny little snuffling noises the dog made as it was dropping off to sleep at the side of the bed.

It wasn’t quite so bad waking up the next time. He could see the greyness that passed for morning light in Pitkirtly, and he could hear the dog snoring discreetly not far away. There was a shapeless blob on the settee. When it moved he could see it was Charlie Smith. The only downside of having the dog in the room turned out to be that it woke up when Charlie moved, and padded over to the settee, where it sat and whimpered in a quiet but insistent tone until he got up.

‘There’s somebody to see you.’

He opened his eyes again. The light was a paler grey. Charlie was standing over him, a mug in his hand.

‘I’ve brought you some coffee. Mrs Ramsay’s downstairs waiting to speak to you but I thought you might want this first.’

‘Thanks, Charlie... You didn’t need to give me a bed here – I could have gone home.’

‘Ha! No, you couldn’t.’

Charlie put down the cup on a bedside table and left again. A little while later Keith went down to confront the Chief Inspector.

‘How are you today, Sergeant?’ she said cheerfully.

He winced. Her voice was too loud. He noticed she had brought a uniformed constable with her and he had a notebook at the ready. This must be an official interview.

‘Sorry I caused all that trouble.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. I was the one who sent you round to the manse... We have them both in custody, by the way. They might make bail. A dog-collar usually does the trick.’

‘Both...?’

‘Mr and Mrs Cockburn. But I suspect she was the driving force. A Lady Macbeth if ever I saw one.’

Keith blinked. He hadn’t seen Mrs Cockburn as that sort of person at all. He vaguely remembered suspecting her of being afraid of the minister. But maybe the boot was on the other foot.

‘Are you sure they’re both in on it?’ he enquired.

‘To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure what they’re in on yet,’ said Sarah Ramsay, frowning. ‘It could be anything from multiple murder to drug-dealing to absent-mindedness. We’ll need to drill down into this a bit more. Tell me what you can remember from last night. Don’t try and make sense of it just yet. Tell it the way it happened.’

This seemed like good advice, but when Keith started his account he kept forgetting details and having to go back to them. He saw the constable crossing out sections of his notes and scribbling in extra bits here and there. He wasn’t surprised when the man gave him a dirty look.

Charlie hadn’t been present for the first part of the interview, but the Chief Inspector called him in to ask for more information about Keith’s arrival at the Queen of Scots.

‘We don’t know who brought him,’ she said. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see the car?’

‘No, but I think Jock McLean did. He came back early from the Beetle Drive and raised the alarm. But by the time we ran out, it had gone.’

‘Did he say anything about the make or colour?’ said Sarah Ramsay.

‘We were all too busy clustering round Keith and making sure he was still with us,’ said Charlie regretfully. ‘I didn’t talk to Jock about the car at all.’

‘Oh well, I’d have to go and see him anyway, I suppose.’

‘I could come with you,’ Keith offered, a bit less enthusiastically than usual.

‘Good heavens, no,’ she said. ‘You’re taking at least a day off to recover. And if I find out you haven’t been resting, I’ll take you off the case altogether… Do you live on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stay with Charlie until this evening. He’ll look after you.’

Charlie nodded. ‘I certainly will. Starting with breakfast. Do you like your steak well done or rare?’

‘Um.’

Charlie laughed. ‘All right, coffee and toast it is then.’

Keith had to admit he felt a bit better after a few slices of toast. Were there magical life-giving qualities about toast, or was he still in the grip of the barbiturates from the night before?

He felt so much better that he wanted to get back on the case, and that was when he realised why Chief Inspector Ramsay had been content to leave him with Charlie. Together they cleaned the bar area, had another cup of coffee and cleaned the front step, had a couple of biscuits and opened up for the lunchtime rush, which consisted of Jock McLean and Christopher, both keen to find out if he was all right.

He had forgotten it was Saturday. Funny how he sometimes lost all track of time when he was immersed in a case. Well, now he had thought of the word ‘immersed’ he had to admit to himself he had been more or less drowning in it. Except that drowning would have been an inappropriate term in the circumstances.

‘I suppose Amaryllis is out canvassing,’ he said.

‘Missing her, are you?’ asked Charlie with an evil smile.

‘No, of course not.’ Keith didn’t want to admit even to himself that he was disappointed that Amaryllis hadn’t accompanied the two men down to the Queen of Scots, but for once he would have liked to hear her opinion about things now that matters had developed further.

‘She isn’t,’ said Jock suddenly.

‘Isn’t what?’ said Keith.

‘Isn’t canvassing. At least, if she is she doesn’t have that spotty wee sidekick with her.’

‘You mean Stewie?’ said Christopher, coming over to their table with two pints of Old Pictish Brew and a packet of crisps in his pocket for Keith, who had been warned not to drink alcohol yet, but who couldn’t face Diet Coke or any of the more pointless alternatives. If there was indeed anything in the world more pointless than Diet Coke.

‘Yes. I saw him on my way down here. Hanging about outside the Petrellis’. Up to no good, I’m guessing.’

‘The Petrellis’?’ said Keith. ‘What was he doing there?’

‘Lurking,’ said Jock gloomily.

‘He’s a friend of Giancarlo’s,’ Christopher pointed out.

‘Giancarlo’s away,’ said Jock. ‘You must have seen Amaryllis sulking about it.’

‘I didn’t notice,’ said Christopher.

‘I tailed him down to the Petrellis’ the other day,’ said Keith. ‘When was it? Charlie might remember. He was there too.’

‘What was Charlie doing there?’ said Jock suspiciously.

‘Walking the dog... Hmm. Maybe we should pop round there now and...’ Keith hesitated as he realised he wasn’t supposed to leave the Queen of Scots.

‘Get an ice-cream?’ suggested Christopher.

‘Yes,’ said Keith. ‘An ice-cream. Even the Chief Inspector can’t complain about that. It’s medicinal.’

Charlie made a token attempt to stop them, but Jock and Christopher promised faithfully to bring Keith back immediately, and Jock even offered to leave the wee white dog at the pub as a guarantee of good behaviour, but Charlie pointed out that the wee white dog shouldn’t even have been there in the first place.

Halfway up the road to the restaurant, they encountered the whirl of black leather and red hair that was Amaryllis.

‘She’s at the Petrellis’! I can’t believe I didn’t work it out sooner. I’m going to throttle Stewie!’