Lamb to the Slaughter (50 page)

‘Is there someone you can stay with meantime, Dylan?’ Dr Rutherford asked gently. ‘Your father—’

The boy’s teeth were chattering so that he could hardly speak. The motherly Sergeant Bruce, who had only recently managed to get him calm enough to speak at all, said, ‘I’ve contacted the mother of one of his schoolfriends. She’s coming right over.’

‘Good. You’ll be all right then, Dylan, and I’m going to give you something that will make you feel a bit better. How are you about injections? OK? Good lad.’

He turned to take a syringe out of his case. ‘Have we contact details for the father?’ he asked Bruce as he rolled up the boy’s sleeve.

‘He’s been reached by mobile phone. The funfair’s up in Elgin at the moment – five, six hours’ drive, maybe? I guess it’ll be tomorrow before he gets here.’

Rutherford nodded. He rubbed Dylan’s arm with a swab and injected the sedative. The boy hardly seemed to notice.

‘You’ll feel a bit better shortly. Just sit back and try to relax.’

Dylan did what he was told, like a zombie. As Rutherford went to the door he said to Bruce, ‘I know he’s not under age, but I want to make it clear that he is totally unfit to cope with police questioning, at least before his father gets here in the morning.’

He spoke sternly, and Bruce gave him a cool look. ‘No one’s considering anything except his welfare at the moment. He’ll talk to us when he’s ready.’

Dylan looked up sharply. ‘She killed Johnny. I’ll do anything you want if it helps to make her pay. It was – it was like he was my real dad. And she killed him, her with her rotten drugs.’

Bruce sat down beside him and put her arm round his shoulders. ‘Shush, shush. Time enough to think about it later.’

But she couldn’t stop him. He had been in shock before; now, perhaps with the calming effect of the quick-acting drug, he was starting to think about it. ‘And – and Barney, and that old guy too. Oh God, I want to die!’

Neither adult spoke. What was there to say? Soon, the chemical comfort would ease his agony, but only until tomorrow morning.

Fleming had detailed MacNee to join in Ellie Burnett’s interview, though she wasn’t entirely sure it was wise. Tam had been so disillusioned by the toppling of this icon of beauty and vulnerability that she was afraid he might go in too hard on a woman who must by now be teetering on the brink of mental disintegration.

She hadn’t told him what she herself thought. It was, after all, still only a theory, and MacNee had the sharpest mind of any of her team. It would be better to let him come with a fresh mind to Ellie’s evidence – always supposing it was coherent. Which would, presumably, depend on what drugs she had taken, and when.

‘Yeah, sure.’ MacNee gave his usual laconic response to the summons to Ellie Burnett’s interview. He’d have been offended if Fleming had detailed anyone else, but he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to do it.

His romantic soul, the part of him that responded to love poetry and patriotism, was well concealed, or so he liked to think, and overlaid in real life with healthy cynicism. Yet somehow Ellie Burnett had got under his skin and he found that hard to forgive.

And the drugs. He took a hard line on drugs – too hard, Fleming told him sometimes, but then she hadn’t had his experience. They always trotted out the excuses about poverty and deprivation – well, been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the scars. And when it came right down to it, you’d a choice. A tough choice, if you’d been stupid enough to make the wrong one in the first place, but not making it was your decision and you should take the consequences. He was living proof that being a victim wasn’t compulsory and he wasn’t about to make allowances for her.

He was angry with himself for being gullible, and angry with Ellie for what she had made him feel, even if all she’d done was be what she was and sing like an angel. Added to that, what she’d done had left her son in pieces, according to Linda Bruce.

So he was taking quite a bit of baggage with him into this interview – not the best professional attitude, maybe, but that was just the way it was. Anyway, this was an open-and-shut case, and the boss had a talent for talking even the more reluctant ones through it. He could just tuck in behind.

But when he reached the interview rooms, Tansy Kerr was waiting in the corridor with Fleming.

‘I’m going to get you and Tansy to take this one, Tam,’ Fleming said. ‘I want to observe, at least for a bit.’

‘You’re the boss,’ MacNee said, but he wasn’t happy. He could do keeping his mouth shut, but he wasn’t good at disguising his feelings if he had to speak and he didn’t want to scare the woman into silence.

‘You kick off, Tansy,’ he said. ‘Get the story out of her, get her softened up before I start.’

Fleming leaned against the wall, watching quietly. MacNee had taken no part in it so far, letting Kerr ask the opening questions.

Ellie Burnett was sitting very still, her hands in her lap. She gave an occasional shiver, and yawned twice, but showed no other signs of suffering withdrawal symptoms. The clothing she had been wearing had been taken away for forensic ­examination and what she was dressed in now – a pink flowered skirt and a home-made heavy navy sweater – showed signs of having been grabbed at random from her wardrobe by someone else. Her fair skin, drained of all colour except for the blue-purple shadows round eyes that looked too large for her pinched face, appeared almost translucent, and the ill-assorted clothes seemed to swamp her thin body. Only her hair, with its rippling, silvery-blonde waves and tendrils, had life and energy.

Ellie seemed quite collected, sitting calmly with her hands folded in her lap, though Fleming suspected she had removed herself from what was happening to some safer place, either deliberately or as the result of profound shock. She was ­speaking in a level, lifeless voice.

‘Last night,’ she said in answer to Kerr’s question about her drug use. ‘H. I took it last night and then again this ­morning.’

‘Not before?’ Kerr was clearly sceptical.

‘No. Not for years and years.’

‘Why last night?’

‘I needed it – for what I had to do. I was afraid, otherwise, that I wouldn’t be able to do it.’

‘What did you have to do, Ellie?’

‘Kill Johnny.’

Fleming caught her breath. She could sense the tension in MacNee and Kerr too, but Kerr said without inflexion, ‘You are admitting that you killed Johnny Black?’

‘Yes. You saw him.’ It was an unnervingly emotionless reply.

It was MacNee who spoke first. ‘Did you know how to handle a shotgun?’

‘Of course. I’m a good shot. I even used to do a bit of trick shooting when I was travelling with Dylan’s father at the funfair.’

Fleming shut her eyes in despair. She thought she knew much of the truth already, but the way this was going, Ellie would never be believed. Perhaps it was time to intervene – but how could she blatantly lead a self-confessed murderer into justification?

‘And did you get in some target practice with Barney Kyle and Andrew Carmichael first?’ MacNee was demanding with a savagery inappropriate to a cooperative witness. Kerr shot him a warning glance but Fleming could see he was paying no attention.

The sudden accusation threw her. ‘No – no, of course not!’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t, I wouldn’t—’

‘Come on!’ MacNee sneered. ‘Who do you think you’re fooling?’

He had disrupted the narrative and Kerr, who had been drawing out these damaging admissions, was looking understandably annoyed. Fleming stepped forward. ‘Let’s leave that for now. Ellie, why did you kill Johnny?’

She had barely noticed Fleming. Now she turned those great tragic eyes on her and said, ‘I – I had to. You see—’ She stopped and took a long, deep breath.

Fleming glanced at MacNee, daring him to speak, but he was listening with a cynical expression.

‘I was – I was a sort of hostage, I suppose. Once he had me, as long as he had me, he wouldn’t do anything. He warned me what would happen when I refused to sleep with him, showed me, even, with a sheep he’d killed, but I didn’t believe he would do it.’ She was becoming visibly calmer as she told this part of the story, as if she had rehearsed what she would say. ‘And then when he killed Andrew – I was so shocked, I couldn’t even think straight. I needed time – but he didn’t give me time. Then it was Barney. So I had to give in. He’d have gone on, you know.’

‘And you couldn’t, I suppose, have called the police, to tell us what was happening, like a normal person?’ MacNee hadn’t changed his aggressive tone and she shrank back in her seat.

‘He told me if I did, he’d have killed Dylan long before you could have got to him.’

The last, missing piece of the pattern fell into place. The arrows on her mind-map had focused Fleming’s attention on Black. This morning she had understood the message of the shootings, each one more callous than the last and, she could now see, each one getting closer and closer to Ellie; Fleming had even, after Black’s death, worked out what she believed had been their purpose. What had eluded her was the threat which had kept Ellie silent about murder and enduring repeated rape by a psychopath without even trying to escape, allowing him to play his terrible power game. The thought of it made Fleming feel physically sick, but the way Ellie was telling this, it sounded pat and unconvincing...

‘Surely you could just have sent Dylan away somewhere?’ Kerr was clearly unmoved.

‘Dylan didn’t want to go. And anyway somehow, he’d have reached him. Even if I killed myself, he’d have killed him afterwards. He told me. He’d have found him, tracked him down. A car accident – something. He was clever – he was a detective, you know.’

‘And what did he find out about you?’ MacNee said. ‘What did he discover, that meant you had to kill him?’

‘He didn’t! It wasn’t
like
that!’ She glanced at Fleming, as if sensing she was in some way an ally, but Fleming could say nothing. Ellie would have to speak for herself.

‘Let’s see. You’re suggesting that your victim – who, incidentally, was described by your son to one of our officers as being “like a real dad” – was some sort of sadistic psychopath?’

At the mention of her son, tears came to Ellie’s eyes but she still spoke in the same steady, emotionless voice. A chilling voice, unless you believed what she was saying. ‘Yes. Oh yes. And he could be charming, so charming! He’d worked on Dylan deliberately, so he thought Johnny was his best friend. If Johnny had pointed a gun at him, he’d have thought it was a joke.

‘So you see, to save Dylan, the only thing to do was to kill Johnny.’ She sounded almost matter-of-fact. ‘I hoped there might have been another way – something – a miracle,’ she shrugged, ‘but there wasn’t. That’s why I got the drugs – so it wouldn’t be so difficult. It makes things – less real, somehow.’ She gave a convulsive shiver, as if, perhaps, that effect was wearing off, but she didn’t stop.

‘He had to have the gun somewhere, you see, and I thought probably in the workshop, so when he and Dylan were watching TV last night I took Johnny’s keys and slipped out and ...’ she hesitated, ‘went for a walk. Then when I came back, I let myself into the workshop. There was only one locked cupboard and I found it there, so I loaded it and took it upstairs to hide under the bed.’

‘You planned this, then?’ MacNee said sharply. It was the vital question: premeditation was evidence of murder. If he hadn’t, Fleming would have had to ask it herself, however little she might like doing it.

Ellie didn’t seem to understand the significance of her reply. ‘I had to. It was the only way. When Dylan had gone to school I fetched the gun. Johnny turned and saw it, and came for me, but I got the shot in. I’d have killed myself then too – I had the other barrel for that – but I had to wait to see Dylan, to explain why. I couldn’t have him think his mother...’

For the first time, she showed real emotion. Silent tears began to pour down her face. ‘He wouldn’t listen. Can I speak to him now? Tell him how it was? Where is he?’

‘That won’t be possible. He’s being looked after,’ Kerr said without sympathy.

‘From what my colleague says, he’ll refuse to speak to you anyway,’ MacNee said cruelly.

Ellie gasped, then collapsed on to the table, sobbing.

Fleming had had enough. ‘We’ll break there,’ she said, and went out, with a nod to Kerr to complete the formalities for the tape. MacNee followed her, and as the door shut she turned on him. ‘What the hell are you trying to do, MacNee? Get the woman to top herself?’

‘Oh, I doubt it. Cool as a cucumber, that one. And she wouldn’t be much of a loss, would she?’

Fleming looked at him coldly. ‘I’ll have to have her put on suicide watch. And did you listen to what she had to say?’

‘Yes, of course I did. She was claiming rape, but she would, wouldn’t she? Didn’t have a lot to back up her claims with, though. I’ve seen them together, and when I was questioning her, he was clucking round her like a mother hen, kept making excuses for her. Then, remember, when Linda Bruce asked her if there was a problem, she said no, didn’t she? If she’d told Linda the story she told us just now, we’d have had the handcuffs on him before he could do a thing.’

‘But in her situation, you could be far too afraid to work that out,’ Fleming argued.