Out of Bounds (22 page)

She reached for her cup and pulled a face as she sipped. ‘I think I’m going to give this stuff up,’ she said. ‘If I’ve only got a little time left, I want to enjoy what I put in my mouth. Next time, I’ll have a coffee, darling. To hell with bloody Chinese herbs.’

Before he could answer, her phone buzzed with a text message. Felicity carefully put her cup down and reached for her phone. Her movements, once so confident, were hesitant and much of her old strength had abandoned her limbs so everything now was measured. She propped her reading glasses on her nose and summoned the message. ‘How curious,’ she said, reading it.

‘Who is it?’

‘I’ll read it to you. “Good afternoon, Ms Frye. I’m sorry to intrude but I wonder if you might be able to make time to see me? I am Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of Police Scotland’s Historic Case Unit, and we are re-examining the plane crash in 1994 that killed your friends. It would be very helpful to me to be able to talk to you about Caroline Abbott and Ellie MacKinnon. I am in London today and
tomorrow and I would very much appreciate the chance to talk with you. Thank you.” How remarkable,’ she said, the low thrill of her voice still as beautiful as ever.

‘But why?’

‘I imagine because we were close, darling.’

‘No, sorry, I didn’t mean why you, I meant, why now? Why are they re-examining a case that seemed entirely straightforward at the time? Irish terrorists blow up a plane piloted by a politician who’d served in the Northern Ireland Office. Perfectly dreadful, but perfectly clear. Wasn’t it?’

Felicity pushed a stray strand of hair from her face. ‘We all thought so. But perhaps we were wrong.’ She started tapping the screen of her phone. ‘Do we have anything planned for tomorrow? Shall I invite her to come round in the morning?’ She gave a wry smile. ‘While I still have energy enough to think and talk at the same time.’

Jeremy felt the instinctive kick of concern that always butted in these days when Felicity suggested something he was afraid might be too much for her. ‘Are you sure, my dear? I don’t want you to be upset, thinking about poor Caroline and Ellie.’

‘Oh, Jeremy, you’re so thoughtful. But it was a long time ago now. I grieved for them at the time, and heaven knows I missed their friendship over the years, but it’s scarcely traumatic to talk about them.’

‘You say that now, but I know your tender heart. And besides, you said yourself, you get easily tired.’

Felicity harrumphed softly. ‘I’m not at death’s door yet, Jeremy. If this police officer has taken the trouble to track me down, I think the least I can do is give her the benefit of my knowledge of Caroline and Ellie. If there’s any possibility at all of there having been a mistake made all those years ago, I owe it to them – and to those two boys; men, now – to provide whatever assistance I can to the police.’

Jeremy
sighed. He knew there was no point in arguing with Felicity once she’d made her mind up, especially if she had summoned duty in support of her position. All he could do was make sure she was as well rested as possible ahead of the encounter. ‘If you say so, darling. Why don’t you ask her to come over around ten? That gives you time to have a bath and some tea before she gets here.’

‘I’ll do that very thing,’ Felicity said, continuing to compose her message. ‘An inspector calls. What terrible secrets will come to light, I wonder? Be a dear, would you, and take this horrible concoction away and bring me a coffee?’

Jeremy did as he was asked, as he had been doing for the previous thirty-five years of marriage. As he left the room, he heard his wife say softly, ‘I always knew the day would come when I’d have to tell the truth about those two.’

28

K
aren
stretched out on the bed and flicked through the channels on her laptop. BBC Alba was showing a Raith Rovers game with commentary in Gaelic, a language no one in the club’s home town had ever spoken. She’d had to endure the experience more than once when Phil had still been alive and he hadn’t been able to get to the game. She’d learned that
sgiobair
sounded very like ‘skipper’ and meant captain. She shuddered and kept going, finally settling for a black-and-white Ealing comedy she’d seen half a dozen times before. She could afford to relax a little. She had a meeting set up for the morning with Felicity Frye, she had a decent room in a small hotel round the corner from Euston, and she had stuffed the tiny fridge with the best that the station’s M&S food hall could provide.

The familiar classic lulled her to sleep and she was happily dozing, a line of drool heading for the pillow, when her phone buzzed her awake. ‘Ungh,’ she grunted, pushing herself upright and reaching for it. The screen said, ‘Jason’ and she groaned. ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s Saturday night,’ under her
breath. She swiped the screen and said, ‘What’s the problem, Jason?’ Because there had to be one.

‘Hi, boss, Can I come round and see you?’

Karen was taken aback. They never socialised other than the occasional drink after work. She didn’t think Jason had even been inside her flat before. When he’d picked her up on the way to jobs, she’d always run downstairs to where he was waiting in the car. ‘There’s a slight problem with that, Jason,’ she said. ‘I’m in London.’

‘What? You having a weekend away? You never said.’

‘What are you? My mother?’ Karen knew as she spoke that she was being ridiculously grumpy, but she’d just been woken up.

‘Sorry, boss.’

He sounded on the verge of tears and she softened. ‘It was a last-minute thing.’ Karen crossed to the fridge and took out the bottle of Pinot Grigio she’d treated herself to. She unscrewed the cap and poured out a glass, waiting for Jason to continue. But he didn’t. ‘So what did you want to see me about?’

He cleared his throat. ‘See, it’s like this, boss. You know you set me on tracking down where the leak came from?’

‘Aye. Have you had any luck?’

‘Not really luck, as such. But I think I know where it came from.’

‘Good work. So who’s the guilty party?’

‘Eh …’ A long silence. ‘I think it might be me.’

Now it was Karen’s turn to be stuck for words. She could hear his breath in her ear, heavy and ragged. ‘What do you mean, Jason? It
might
be you?’ She kept her voice gentle, the way she would if she was trying to coax a stray dog within reach. ‘Surely you must know whether you spoke to the media or not?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

That
was a pity. Simple was within his range. ‘How not?’

‘I never spoke to a reporter. But, see, Monday nights we get pizza and have a few beers in the house, me and the guys I share with.’

‘The students?’

‘Right. And they like to hear about what I’m doing at my work. They think it’s cool, like.’

Oh, dear Christ, she could see where this was going. ‘And you told them about Ross Garvie?’

‘I never said his name,’ Jason said desperately. ‘I just told them about the familial DNA and the adoption, because it was interesting and out of the usual run of things. They’re all smart and full of stuff I don’t know anything about, I suppose I was showing off a bit.’ His voice died away. She could feel the shame from the other end of the country.

‘And you think one of them sold the story to a journalist?’

‘I don’t think. I know. We went down the pub today at lunchtime and Liam was buying drinks. Usually, we don’t buy rounds because they’re all skint all the time and it’s easier that way. So I was, like, “Liam, did you win the lottery?” And he’s, like, “Thanks to you, Jason, my man.” I didn’t get it. But Matt, he said, “Put him out of his misery,” and Liam told me he sold the story to a reporter that he knows.’

Karen let the silence hang while she thought of something to say that wasn’t a scream of, ‘You naïve fuckwit!’ Eventually she said, ‘Well, Jason, it is what it is. I’m going to have to think about this, see how we get you the fuck out of hot water. But here’s what I think you need to do in the meantime. You need to pack up your stuff and load it into the car and move back to your mum’s house in Kirkcaldy right now. Tonight. And you don’t go back. And you don’t pay a penny more rent.’

‘But I can’t leave them in the lurch. They’ll never get another tenant this time of year. I can’t do that. They’re my mates.’

‘No, Jason. They are not your mates. You’re a polis. The only people you can trust are other cops and sometimes your family. These toerags are not your mates. They abused your trust. They took the piss. They are not your friends. Pack up and leave.’

His voice quivered with tears she hoped were unshed. ‘What am I going to say to my mum?’

‘Tell her you miss her cooking. Tell her you found your flatmates smoking dope and you can’t live there now. Make something up, Jason. But go home.’

‘OK, boss.’ He sounded choked now.

‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow.’ She pinched the bridge of her nose.

‘I’m sorry. I let you down.’

You did, Jason, you did.
‘We’ll figure something out.’ Karen took a long swallow of her wine. ‘Now away you go and pack your bags.’

‘OK. I’m sorry.’

‘And stop apologising. I know you’re sorry. Goodnight, Jason.’ She ended the call before he could abase himself further. Karen subsided on to the chair by the counter that passed for a desk. Really, it couldn’t have been worse. It explained how so many stories from her department had found their way into the press before they were ready to go public. And now Jilted John was going to be hot on the trail of, it turned out, Jason.

The one thing they had going for them was that newspapers still protected their sources fiercely. It wasn’t like he was going to walk into the offices of the
Record
or the
Scotsman
on Monday morning and be handed full access to their freelance payment files. They’d fight like dogs to keep him out of their system and they’d probably win. But meantime, Jilted John would be cultivating contacts and offering a mixture of bribes and threats to uncover what nobody wanted to tell him. After
all, he was the Macaroon’s man and the Macaroon wasn’t about to pass up a chance to make her life difficult. How he would love it if Jason was exposed as the leak. Being able to blame her at one remove would be almost as satisfying as being able to nail her directly. At the very least, she’d lose Jason and end up with one of the Macaroon’s placemen at her side. She might even lose the HCU and end up back in regular CID, chasing the feckless and the gormless.

Karen knew she had to figure out somewhere else to lay the blame. Somewhere that wouldn’t damage some innocent, obviously. But somewhere convincing. And she had to figure it out quickly.

But right now, she didn’t have an idea in her head.

29

I
t
took the alarm to wake Karen. She couldn’t quite believe she’d slept for more than eight hours. It might have had something to do with the three glasses of wine she’d drunk before her eyelids had grown heavy, but she didn’t think so. There were many nights when she’d necked more alcohol than that and sleep had been as elusive as ever.

It wasn’t as if she had nothing on her mind. After her conversation with Jason, she’d paced her hotel room, trying to come up with a false provenance for the leaks that would convince Jilted John. She’d come up empty. And yet she’d slept.

The disappointing thing was that her subconscious hadn’t come up with anything useful during the night, as it often had before. No brainwaves, no tangent offering a credible alternative to the truth. In the grey light of morning, she was as stuck as she’d been before she’d crashed.

Nothing for it but to ignore the problem and get on with the day. Shower, coffee, breakfast back in Euston station, and by half past nine she was on the tube heading for Notting Hill and Felicity Frye, Jason set firmly to the back of her
mind. This was the make-or-break interview. Either she’d find something to get her teeth into or she’d bury her doubts, walk away and leave Alan Noble to it. Giorsal would just have to live with her uncertainties, the way that so many of them did.

Navigating by her phone, Karen walked down the hill from the tube station, soon finding herself surrounded by high white buildings with porticos and private gardens filling the space between them. It was a bit like a bleached version of the grandest parts of Edinburgh’s New Town. She turned into a quiet side street and followed the numbers till she reached the address she’d been given.

It was the last house in the terrace, separated from the rest of the street by a narrow mews. Three storeys of brilliant whitewash and tall windows with swags of curtains visible from the street. A pillared portico jutted out from the glossy front door with its brightly polished brass letter box. It spoke of money, but there was nothing vulgar about it. Karen had texted ahead because you didn’t doorstep the dying. But faced with this imposing house, she was glad she’d made an appointment. If she’d turned up on spec, she might have bottled it. Outclassed and outgunned, that was how it made her feel.

But there was no going back now. She gripped her bag, climbed the steps and pulled a brass knob that gleamed softly from years of other people’s hands. In the distance, a proper bell jangled. Footsteps approached, muffled by the heavy door. It swung silently open to reveal a slightly stooped man with a large patrician head crowned with thick silver hair swept back from a high forehead. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and a shabby hand-knitted dark blue Guernsey. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Pirie, I presume?’ he said, shaggy eyebrows raised in a question.

‘That’s me,’ Karen said.

‘Come
in, do. I’m Jeremy Frye, Felicity’s husband.’ He stepped to one side and made a sweeping gesture with one arm.

The hallway looked like something out of an interiors magazine – an elaborate tiled floor, tasteful art on the walls, toning colours of paintwork without a single scuff, nothing out of place. Where did people like the Fryes keep their crap, Karen wondered. Where were the carelessly discarded keys and gloves, the junk mail, the bags-for-life waiting to go back to the car? Even a life as stripped-down as hers seemed to accumulate clutter on a daily basis. The rich truly were different.