Lamb to the Slaughter (38 page)

‘Actually,’ Macdonald said, ‘Ewan’s had an idea about that.’ He looked at Campbell, then as Campbell made no move to pick up his cue, outlined the point he had made: that it would be useful to find out exactly where Kyle had been when the Colonel was killed.

‘That’s good,’ MacNee approved. ‘You’ve quite a talent for hitting the nail on the head, haven’t you, laddie?’

Campbell looked pleased.

‘Is it OK to speak to Mrs Kyle again?’ Macdonald asked. ‘I thought I’d better check with you – she was pretty ­strung-up about the warrant yesterday and we don’t want complaints about being heavy-handed.’

‘Why not try his pals first?’ MacNee suggested. ‘Saturday afternoon – he’s more likely to have been with Burnett and Gloag than sitting at home with his mammy.’

Fleming approved that. ‘Get back to the school, Andy, and see what you can come up with.

‘Now, what else? Tam and I spoke to Gloag this morning and got a pack of lies. I don’t really have him in the frame at the moment, but he’s definitely a sharp operator. Figured out that we were keen to establish if he’d have had time to get to Wester Seton to lie in wait for Kyle to arrive, and he put up a smoke screen about Gordon being confused about the time and not prepared to admit he was wrong. Unless his wife or one of the other kids was around at the time, it would come down to his word against the boy’s, and there’s not a lot we can do about that.’

‘Oh yes there is.’ Kerr had been very subdued; Fleming was pleased to see her suddenly alert and interested. ‘I’ve made a start to reading statements, and I went over the interview with Gordon Gloag that Will and I did, Andy. He said after he told his father what Kyle was planning, and that he hadn’t gone along with it, his father was so pleased he said Gordon could order pizza. If we can find out where it came from, they might well have a record of the delivery.’

‘Andy, get that from Gordon and pass it back to Tansy for checking. I don’t want to waste too much time on him right now, but it’s a loose end we might as well tie up. Anything emerge from other visits this morning?’

Wilson didn’t seem interested in contributing, and Kerr said hastily, ‘No. The main objective was to interview Ossian Forbes-Graham, but he was out.’

MacNee nodded. ‘That’s right, he was. He and his mother were at the Medical Centre this morning. He was going in when I was coming out from my appointment.’

Wilson said coarsely, ‘Gone to see the doc because the wheels are coming off his wagon, no doubt.’

Without looking at him, Kerr said to Fleming, ‘I do think we have a problem with him. He seems dangerous to me – certainly not normal.’

Fleming scribbled a note. ‘Point taken. We’ll be looking into that. Now – anything else before we wrap up?’

Campbell stirred. It was, somehow, a portentous movement, and the others turned to look at him. ‘Er – I was just thinking. Could it maybe have been meant to be Dylan Burnett? They were both wearing helmets – it wouldn’t be easy to tell the difference, if you didn’t know already.’

There was a brief silence, then Fleming said, ‘You’re right, of course, but I’m not sure it gets us anywhere. The same arguments, more or less, would apply. Thoughts on that, anyone?’

‘We could keep it in mind,’ Kerr suggested, ‘and see if there are connections he might have had that Barney Kyle didn’t. Ask him if anyone had a grudge against him, say.’

‘We can do that this afternoon,’ Macdonald said.

‘Fine. I think we’ve covered the ground. Tam, I want you to come with me to see Ellie Burnett. We could look in on Ossian Forbes-Graham after that. Will, could you wait a moment too, but the rest of you carry on. Keep me in the picture; I’ll want everything you have in time for the general briefing.’

Kerr went out with her eyes lowered. Wilson didn’t move, but his face took on an expression of surly defiance.

Fleming ignored that. ‘Will, it’s getting to the point where there’s a huge amount of stuff coming through, and it would be helpful to have one of the team here at headquarters designated to monitor what comes in. With Tam back now, I want you to take that on. You could trawl especially for anything that could possibly link either Dylan Burnett or Barney Kyle with the Colonel.’

He looked as if he would have liked to argue, then thought the better of it and shrugged. ‘If that’s an order,’ he said, and left.

MacNee grinned. ‘Didn’t like that, did he? Just scared to complain.’

‘Wisely. Right, Tam—’

The phone rang. It had been blessedly silent during the meeting, and she looked at it with resignation. ‘I suppose I’d better take that. Too many people know I’m in the building.

‘Yes?’ She listened, then said, ‘All right – put him through.’ She just had time to say to MacNee, ‘That’s a piece of luck. Salaman’s on the line,’ before she heard his voice at the other end.

‘Yes, Mr Salaman? What can I do for you?’

‘I’m getting very tired of staying in an extremely inadequate hotel, inspector. I wondered whether there was any reason to protract my stay?’

‘We have your London address, of course, so I don’t see that there would be any difficulty, unless you were thinking of leaving the country.’

‘Not at the moment, no.’

‘Then I think, on that understanding, there should be no reason to ask you to stay. There’s just one small matter I would like you to clear up for us.

‘I gather that you had a conversation with Johnny Black at the Forbes-Grahams’ party last night, in which there was discussion of some “job” he had done for you.’

The voice went very cold. ‘And?’

‘Would you have any objection to telling us what that job was?’

‘Yes, I think I would. It was my own private business. I can assure you that this was nothing whatsoever to do with the case you are investigating.’

‘I can appreciate your feelings, but I would prefer to be the judge of its relevance.’

‘I’m sure you would.’

That was all he said. Pulling a face at MacNee, Fleming went on, ‘I understand that his mention of this “job” caused you serious annoyance. Why?’

‘I don’t know how familiar you are with the customs of polite society,’ Salaman said acidly, ‘but I am not in the habit of discussing business matters with my employees at parties.’

Fleming seized on that. ‘He was employed by you? I recall that you were reluctant to give me this information when last we spoke.’

She could tell from his voice that his slip had annoyed him, but he said only, ‘That, too, was a complete irrelevance.’

‘I must press you.’

‘And I must decline.’ It was a steely reply. ‘I would remind you that I am a lawyer, inspector. The information I have given you so far was on an entirely voluntary basis. If you wish to force answers, you will, as you are no doubt entirely aware, have to put this on a different footing.

‘I shall be returning to London immediately, unless you detain me.’

‘We have no plans to do that at the moment.’

‘Good.’ The line went dead.

Fleming slammed down her receiver. ‘Damn, damn, damn! Got absolutely nowhere with him.’

‘Lawyers!’ MacNee rolled his eyes.

‘Get most of that, did you? Now, no doubt, he’ll phone Black on his way to the airport, instructing him not to say anything. We’d have to arrest Salaman to compel him to answer, and we haven’t a leg to stand on, as he very well knows. And if we put a toe out of line, we’ll be mince. He’d sue at the drop of a hat.’

‘Maybe it’s a pointer, though,’ MacNee suggested. ‘Why would you be reluctant to be open about something like that, unless there was something you were trying to hide?’

‘You’d have to allow for sheer cussedness,’ Fleming said gloomily. ‘And a lawyer’s reluctance to give the police any help at all. But put it into the melting pot, with the other theories.’

‘It’s certainly still wide open. Can’t say I think we’ve got a glimpse of a logic behind this. To be honest, I’m beginning to doubt that there is any.’

Fleming felt herself tense up, as she always did, at the suggestion of irrationality. ‘Of course it’s still early days,’ she was reminding him, and herself, when the phone rang. She groaned. ‘I suppose I’d better take that too.’

‘I was wanting a word with Tansy,’ MacNee said. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to go.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, Donald?’ she said wearily into the phone.

Kerr was sitting at a desk in one corner of the CID room, staring at a screen, when MacNee went in. There were half-a-dozen other officers working there too, but, he established with a quick look round, Wilson was not among them. He sat down on the edge of the desk.

‘How are you doing, then, Tansy?’

She bit her lip. ‘Ashamed, Tam. Really, really, ashamed.’

‘So well you might be,’ he said, but his voice was not unkind. ‘What did that rotten bastard tell you?’

‘Said they were getting divorced, that he and Aileen had been living separate lives for a year now. I shouldn’t have believed him, though, I know. It was just – well, it happened at a bad time...’

‘What went wrong with young Rory, then?’

‘Took me home to meet his parents, didn’t he? His dad’s a sir, and it’s this great big house. He didn’t tell me, or I’d never have gone. I made a fool of myself, wearing the wrong things, and I’m sure his mother thought I was garbage but she was “awf’ly nice” about it,’ she said with savage mimicry.

‘And then at the meal at night they’d all these knives and forks, and I didn’t know what to use, and it was awful. I told him I was leaving the next morning and we’d this huge row – him standing up for them and saying they liked me, as if I couldn’t tell they totally despised me—’ She broke off. ‘Sorry. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. It’s finished.’

‘Shame,’ MacNee said unemotionally. ‘But maybe you wouldn’t have adjusted, even if they did. Anyway, no more nonsense with Wilson. Big Marge knows, of course, but she’s pretending she doesn’t.’

‘Thank God for that!’ It was a heartfelt exclamation. ‘I was terrified. But Tam – I can’t go around with him professionally.’

‘No, she’s thought of that. He’s going to be stuck at a desk for the next bit. That’ll teach him!’

He got the faintest of faint smiles. Then she said hesitantly, ‘There’s something else, Tam. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, because I could be wrong—’

‘Say it anyway,’ MacNee urged. ‘If you’re wrong, I’ll forgive you.’

‘It’s not you that would have to forgive. But anyway – you know the story about the sniper in the paper, after we heard about Pete Spencer being in the clear?’

‘I heard everyone went crazy about it.’

‘There was a real witch hunt, yes. The thing is, I was with Will when the news about Spencer came. We were all exclaiming, and suddenly he goes, “So it really could be a sniper then, right?” And basically we all agreed it was looking more likely.

‘Then about five minutes later, he suddenly said he had to get off home. The thing was,’ she paused again, looking acutely uncomfortable, ‘we’d – we’d been going to go back to my place, just for a bit. And he hadn’t had a phone call, or anything, though he said he did when I asked him about it today.

‘So he left, and then I rang a girlfriend and said I’d go round there instead. But when I went past his house, he wasn’t there. So I – I just began to wonder if he’d been taking the time to contact somebody – you know, with that story appearing this morning.’

MacNee was intrigued. ‘So you think he’s our grass?’

‘He even talked about what the papers paid, once – then laughed about it and said of course you’d be crazy to do it. But Tam, I don’t see how we can prove it. The paper will never give away a source.’

‘I’ll have a think about it. Leave it with me, anyway.’ He smiled at her doleful face. ‘And cheer up, hen! You never died a winter yet!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Kerr demanded, but he only winked and left her to her task.

Ossian Forbes-Graham stood in his studio, looking out across the courtyard. There was no sign of Ellie. She hadn’t been in her shop since he told her about Colonel Carmichael’s death and he’d only seen her occasionally at a window of the flat, like a fairytale princess locked in a tower. He’d always run out into the courtyard when she appeared, but she had consistently ignored his pleas to let him rescue her.

But now she had chosen her protector prince, and it was Black, not him. How could she choose a man like that?

He looked round the studio at the pictures he had created. Once, he had been proud of them. Once, they had value. Now, what were they worth? What was he worth? Nothing.

Slowly, deliberately, he fetched a Stanley knife from his tool drawer. Slowly, deliberately, he scored the canvases across and across, then down and down. He threw the knife on the floor and then, with another look at the blank windows of Ellie’s flat, he sat down and put his head in his hands.

Fleming appeared in the CID room looking harassed. ‘OK, Tam, we can get away now,’ she said, then, as they walked down the corridor together, wiped imaginary sweat from her brow.

‘Donald’s in a state about the press conference this evening. He wanted me to find something new for him to say, but there isn’t anything. And I can’t see that there’s likely to be anything more to report tomorrow.’