Evil for Evil (21 page)

MacNee compressed his lips, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. Then he turned to the old man and put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Come on, Dad,’ he said. ‘Wake up. You’re going home.’

Davie sat up, blinking. ‘Home? Where’s that?’

‘You’ve made an appointment for that moron Jenkins. I didn’t want to see him till I’d all the details to hand.’

Marianne Price gave her boss an appraising look. Eddie Tindall had been in a cantankerous mood when she arrived this morning and since there wasn’t a cat for him to kick he was taking it out on her. That Woman’s fault, no doubt.

‘You always say if an employee wants to speak to you, the door’s open.’

Eddie grunted. ‘Not this employee. Not at the moment.’

‘I’ll just tell him that, shall I?’ Marianne made as if to leave.

‘Oh, I suppose … Since it’s in the book …’

Stifling a smile, she said, ‘Fine. Do you want me to get his line manager on the phone, then?’

‘Right.’ Tindall picked up a report from his desk and began to read it without enthusiasm.

Marianne went to the door, then turned with artistic casualness. ‘Heard anything from Clive, then?’

She really shouldn’t tease him, poor old bloke. She knew perfectly well he hadn’t, or it would have been the first thing he’d have told her when she came in. She’d steered clear of mentioning his missing wife for the last couple of days – she’d had enough of his agonising over That Woman – but now, given the chance, it all poured out.

‘I’d like to know what I’m paying the man for! Not a word, and when I phone him all he can say is “making progress”. Progress! Not that I can see.’

And there was more. Elena, he disclosed, had been very chatty on the phone recently, wanting to know what he was doing, how he was getting on. She’d even asked once what Lola had left him for supper!

‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’ Marianne said, uncertainly.

It wasn’t, apparently. As he explained his concern, she got a new insight into that strange marriage. What a cow! It could only be the sex, she concluded. Sex addled the heads of even sensible, decent guys like Eddie. Till he got her back –
if
he got her back – Marianne would suffer. Maybe she should get an office cat – but Eddie would just go soppy over it, and she’d still be in the firing line, having to take out litter trays as well.

When the call came from Clive, she put him through with some relief. Maybe if he’d solved the mystery, Eddie would go back to thinking of something else – like his business, for instance.

Five minutes later, Eddie’s office door opened. He was frowning.

‘Don’t know what to make of this, Marianne. Clive’s persuaded someone to track Elena’s mobile. She’s up in Scotland. What does she want to go to Scotland for?’

‘A holiday?’

‘Some place called …’ He glanced at the sheet of paper in his hand ‘… Kirk-cud-bright.’

‘Kirk-coo-bray,’ Marianne corrected him. ‘I’ve a friend had a holiday there. Nice place, she said.’

Eddie pounced on that. ‘So you think she maybe just went there for a holiday?’

She was fond of Eddie. She’d been with him a long time. He was a good boss, and he paid her well, but sometimes she thought she earned every penny, and there were limits. ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’

‘You see, I was just thinking I might go up and take a look myself. But Clive could only tell me the general area, and it’s big. What do you think?’

What Marianne thought was that the divvy sponging on poor Eddie should come back and earn her keep, and let everyone else get on with life. With exemplary tact, she suggested it might not be a good idea.

‘If you don’t know where she is, there’s not a lot of point, is there? And supposing you found her, how’d you explain how you knew she was there?’

Eddie was struck with this. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Could be awkward, couldn’t it?’

‘Certainly could,’ Marianne said heartily. ‘She’s probably just looking for a bit of peace and quiet.’

And she could fancy a slice of that herself, to deal with the work that was piling up on her desk while she played agony aunt to her boss. And maybe the most useful thing she could do would be to find the Blu-tack, make a model, and stick drawing pins in the vital organs.

Kerr Brodie switched off his mobile, scowling. Lissa Lovatt was rapidly becoming a major problem. She’d called him from the hospital phone trolley before she’d even phoned her husband, expecting him to rush instantly to her side to check for himself that he hadn’t lost her. Lost her! Chance would be a fine thing.

He’d better things to do today – these, at least, seemed to be going according to plan – and he’d tried to choke her off, but he could hear her voice rising, and she could go all dramatic on him any minute. God, he hated hysterical women!

He’d have to deal with her sooner or later, but for the moment all he came up with was laying it on thick about Matt’s devotion and romantic heroism in saving her life, when Christie had left her inside the house to burn. Lissa had seized on that. It might give him a breathing space if she turned her attentions back to Matt.

The success of his other venture was more important, though. This was his chance, with the local police running round like chickens with their heads cut off and MacNee otherwise occupied. He gave a small, self-satisfied smirk.

The lads in the Isle of Man could do a quick run, removing the wretched Fergie, and once all the fuss died down, it would be back to business as usual – if Lissa wasn’t planning to cause trouble. If she was … His scowl returned.

MacNee kept the car windows open as he drove across town. At his side, Davie kept up a constant stream of complaint and he was feeling chilly himself, but even with the flow of fresh air it was hard not to choke.

The physical cold wasn’t as bad, though, as the cold misery inside. He felt guilty and ashamed, even as he told himself angrily there was nothing he could have done. Davie had deliberately disappeared from his life, but he knew how to find Tam, knew too, surely, that his son would always see to it he had a roof over his head. Still, to see his dad like this …

It was the drink, of course. The younger druggies wouldn’t make old bones, but with this generation their addiction didn’t kill them outright, just sucked the life out of them till all that was left was a pathetic husk, to be finished off by a cold night on the streets. It was amazing he’d survived this long.

You couldn’t change the past. You just had to take it from here, work out what to do next. Davie needed rehab, but Tam wasn’t taking him to a clinic until he could go there with dignity: cleaned up, well clad, and properly fed. He’d have to take him back to Bunty, and he had deep misgivings about that.

Not that he doubted her good heart – never that. But he’d been terrified a year ago when Bunty had a breakdown, and though she was fine now, even seemed quite like her old self, it all depended on her medication. Tam had an almost superstitious reverence for the magic pill, but he wondered now if its effects were powerful enough to counteract the stress of an alcoholic, down-and-out father-in-law. If she got that way again … Tam winced at the thought.

But there was no alternative. If he didn’t take him straight home, Bunty would get stressed over what the neighbours would think of headlines suggesting Tam wouldn’t even let his poor old father over
the doorstep. No, he’d just have to do his best to cushion her from the worst effects, and keep Davie discreetly topped up for the moment. The last thing they needed was him with the screaming abdabs.

Brodie was behind it, of course. MacNee knew that, as well as if he’d heard him making the phone calls that had brought Davie to the police station. He could guess, too, what it was about: Brodie must have stuff waiting to be brought in. If MacNee was taken out, the surveillance he was prompting would slip, especially with all that was going on just now. He could read Brodie like a book.

But Brodie could read him, too. Their shared culture went bone-deep and they both knew that this duel at a distance would be fought with no holds barred – every kid on a Glasgow street knew that, in the catchphrase, there are no rules in a knife fight.

But Brodie wasn’t going to win this one. This told MacNee he’d touched on a nerve, and he’d been right all along: Brodie was running drugs, and to nail him, he just had to outsmart him. If the motivation had been strong before, now it was all-consuming.

They had reached the road end. As he turned in, Tam said, with forced heartiness, ‘Here we are, Dad. Bunty’ll give you a hot drink to warm you up.’

‘Hot drink? Och, I’ll not trouble her. Just a wee tot – that’ll warm me up fine.’

With a sinking heart, he drove up to the house.

Melissa Lovatt was asleep when her husband knocked tentatively on the door of the side ward. Her dark hair was loose on the pillow, and when she opened her bloodshot eyes, they looked too big for her pinched face. Seeing him she smiled tremulously.

‘Lissa, I’m sorry about all this. How are you?’ He took the chair by the side of the bed. An oxygen cylinder with a breathing mask
stood on the other side, and she looked very fragile as she struggled up against her pillows, eyes filled with tears.

She seized his hand, and kissed it. ‘You saved me!’ she cried, her voice roughened and husky. ‘That woman left me to burn to death, and you risked everything to save my life. Kerr told me.’

They had been in touch already, then. Lovatt said as lightly as he could, ‘Oh, he was exaggerating—’

But she went on. ‘Oh Matt, we’ve drifted, I know. But that showed me how much you really, really care – enough to die for my sake! It’s not too late, is it?’

‘Of course not.’ What else could he say? The hollow feeling spreading through him was – inappropriate, and he fought it down. Reconciliation might – or might not – lie in the future, but for the moment, there was something that must be cleared up.

‘Christie didn’t leave you to burn, Lissa. She thought she had wakened you, and at that time the fire was only in the wing.’

Lissa withdrew her hand, giving him a contemptuous look. ‘Matt, you know what I’m like. You know we have separate rooms because every time you turned over it woke me and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

Lovatt’s impression had been that they had stopped sleeping together when the contrast between the remoteness of their daily dealings and the intimacy of the marital bed became too stark to be tolerable for either of them, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he said, ‘I just assumed you’d taken sleeping pills, and there was no reason for Christie to know that and try harder to wake you.’

There was a tiny pause, and then Lissa smiled. ‘Oh, is that what she told you? Darling, I’ve said this before – she’s got a massive crush on you, poor thing.’ She gave a little cough, turned to pick up the glass of water at her bedside and took a sip. ‘Sorry, my throat. Oh,
maybe she didn’t start the fire just so she could get rid of me and rescue you, but it must have seemed the ideal opportunity.’

Lovatt stared at her. ‘You don’t think that, do you? You often take pills—’

She cut across him. ‘Well, I didn’t last night. I’d had a stressful day, I was tired, so I didn’t need them. I’m sorry if I’m shattering illusions about your little soldier, but I almost died, you know.’

Her voice had taken on that whingeing tone of self-pity that set his teeth on edge, but she coughed again, reminding him of what she had been through. He said lamely, ‘Of course I know. And I can only be thankful you didn’t.’

It was a relief when a nurse came in with a chart and some medication, giving him an excuse to leave. Lissa was likely to be released next day, apparently, and she would phone him when she knew the time.

Lovatt felt more depressed than ever as he drove back to Innellan. Surely what Lissa had said couldn’t be true? There had been an unpleasant, spiteful tone to her voice and certainly he’d dismissed previous comments about Christie out of hand. He wasn’t a vain man; he’d seen nothing more in their relationship than friendship between comrades.

But now he began to remember small things: her lingering over her lunch if they were in the kitchen alone; her going on the rounds with him if she’d nothing else to do, but never going with Kerr; her pressing him to come to the pub the other night when it was obvious Lissa wouldn’t go …

He’d had a lot of experience in assessing young people, and he’d been good at it. You had to be, in his job, otherwise your men ended up dead. Christie had always impressed him as a great kid, straight as a die, the best sort of soldier: cheerful, competent and certainly brave – she’d risked her life to stop Rudolf being shot.

Yes, she had. But that wasn’t exactly rational, was it? And there was plenty of evidence that the ideal qualities for a soldier weren’t always ideal when it came to civilian life, especially after the sort of experiences combat put them through. Achieving your objective was drilled into you from day one, and if you weren’t seeing things quite straight …

He couldn’t afford to think like that. He put it firmly out of his mind; he’d plenty of other things to worry about. Georgia had offered them her spare rooms for as long as they needed them, but they couldn’t impose on her indefinitely. Then there would be insurance claims, too, and the work of the farm still had to go on.

The gawpers, at least, had lost interest by the time he got back to Innellan. A policeman was still on duty by the blue-and-white tape, but the site was quiet. A couple of firemen were checking on loose masonry, under the supervision of Williamson, the fire chief, but all the engines had gone.

The smell of smoke, and the stark skeleton of the wing, in its sea of mud, brought back the horror. Lovatt’s stomach churned, and when Williamson came over to him, it took a mighty effort to make the appropriately grateful noises.

The fire chief was almost offensively cheerful. ‘Yes, they did a great job, the lads. Of course, the wing’s a hazard – have to be demolished as a priority – but we’ve saved the main house for you. Get the joiners to block it off, and it’s a cleaning job after that, once the worst of the smoke has cleared.’