The Burning Glass (40 page)

“There wasn’t anything here to fix, just some
salt, sugar packets, herbs. . . .” They collided reaching for the
cabinet door. Jean pulled out two small glass bottles filled with
desiccated greenish-brown shreds. Both were wrapped with elegant
but tasteful paper labels reading, “Cookery at the Glebe,” the
names of the individual herbs printed below.

“Those could do with testing as well,” said
Alasdair.

Jean took off each cap and, very gingerly,
sniffed. “That really is thyme. Or at least, if any of it’s
foxglove, a sprinkle of it wouldn’t have been enough to kill
Wallace. And this one is basil. Just like the labels say. Besides,
wouldn’t it have been easier to soak the leaves? A little bit of
liquid poison would go a long way.”

“It might have been prepared at the pub,”
said Alasdair, taking and examining the bottles. “Roddy, for
example, he might have been hanging about the kitchens all the
evening long and no one would have thought a thing of it.”

“I’ll admit that Roddy seems more believable
as the killer than Noel, say, but . . .”

“How’s he benefit from killing Angus? That
brings us back ’round to the disadvantage of using poison.”

“You might not kill the person you intend to
kill.”

“Quite right.” Alasdair set the bottles on
the cabinet and turned his gaze, brighter than any
glass-concentrated light, on Jean. “What if Angus wasn’t the target
at all? What if Minty wasn’t the target? What if . . .”

The tinder of her mind flared. “What if the
killer was after Ciara? That’s got to be it. Eliminate the
troublemaker. Troublemakers, plural, first Wallace with his weird
stuff and then Ciara and her even weirder stuff. The conference
center and so forth would go on as planned, just on a much less
embarrassing basis . . . Oh boy.” She grasped Alasdair’s arm.

“Your listing of the local camps. Are you
thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Oh yeah . . .” Dougie sat up on the couch
and peered with hard, amber eyes toward the hall closet. From which
came the sound of footsteps, the light pad of slipper-like shoes on
stone, echoing through the squint. “Do you hear footsteps?”

Alasdair whipped around, almost throwing her
across the room, seizing her hand to keep her from falling. “You’re
not feeling heavy?”

“No.”

“Well then,” he said with a sudden grin, each
tooth flashing like a tiny dagger, “we’ve caught us a fly.”

Come into my parlor, said the spider to
the fly
. And there was Tolkien’s giant spider Shelob, lurking
in her fetid caverns. . . . But we’re the good guys, Jean told
herself.

Alasdair grabbed the huge flashlight, threw
the door open, and balanced on the top step as Jean, designated the
chatelaine of the castle, locked up.

P.C. Freeman was standing by the gate, the
fluorescent yellow of his coat dulled by shadow, his usually nimble
expression dulled by, perhaps, contemplation of tea times yet to
come. The door of the incident room was shut, but a light in the
window indicated the presence of the second constable. The noxious
yard light hadn’t come on yet, and the hills on the east side of
the river gleamed the deep greens and golds of jewelry against a
velvet-blue sky. Tonight the breeze held no trace of smoke, just
the rich odors of earth, tree, and cow.

Alasdair stepped across the gravel with as
much care as a tiger creeping toward its prey, so that the nagging
little granules barely shifted beneath his feet. Jean tiptoed
behind him up the steps of the castle. The front door was closed,
just as they’d left it.

Freeman suddenly woke up and took a step
forward. Alasdair gestured, palm outward, then touched his
fingertip to his lips. With a nod of understanding, Freeman
subsided, if standing alertly on the balls of his feet could be
considered subsiding. If he tried any flanking movements, the
gravel would sound an alarm.

Alasdair’s voice in Jean’s ear was little
more than a purr. “I’ll run to the right. You cut to the left, keep
Derek from the window. Here, mind the torch.”

Grasping the cold, hard barrel of the
flashlight, she whispered, “Just as long as you don’t expect me to
tackle him.”

“No worries. I’ll do the tackling.” Head
down, shoulders coiled, Alasdair threw the door open and sprinted
through the entrance chamber, deftly flicking the light switch as
he charged by.

Derek was standing over the boxes in a
classic deer-in-the-headlights pose. Or rat in the headlights. With
his black clothing and long, narrow, white face beneath spikes of
hair, he needed only whiskers and a tail to complete the illusion
of a rodent caught sticky-pawed.

At the sight of the adults charging toward
him, he emitted a squeak of dismay and leaped for the window. Jean
zigged to the left, Derek zagged to the right, and Alasdair seized
the boy’s jacket and jerked him to a stop so abruptly that a small
flashlight flew from his hand and shattered on the floor.

Echoes ran away into the upper stories and
dust fell from the ceiling. From the open door of the pit prison
wafted the miasma of wet dog, mingling with an aura of stale sweat
from Derek’s jacket. Unfazed, Alasdair transferred his grip to
Derek’s upper arm and spun the boy around to face him. “Turning up
again, are you, lad? What’s your excuse this time round?”

Jean crept closer, but not too close.
Alasdair’s expression was so cold and fierce it made her quail,
even though she knew it was an act. A very convincing act.

Derek’s knobby knees were knocking together.
He stammered, “I was after seeing where the old guy—”

“Don’t go wasting my time with that flannel.
Why are you here?”

Derek’s eyes rolled toward Jean. She folded
her arms and assumed her best “why haven’t you done your homework?”
frown. He looked back at Alasdair.

No sympathy there. “It’s well past time for
telling the truth. Why are you here?”

“You’re hurting me.”

“Talk,” said Alasdair. Perhaps the stark
white of his knuckles against Derek’s jacket sleeve softened a bit,
perhaps not.

“Me mum and the Macquarrie woman, they’ve
been blethering about a treasure map.”

Alasdair’s glance high-fived Jean’s, then
sprang back to Derek.

“They think I’m a baby, that I’ve not
understood all their plots and plans, but I have done.
Everything’ll be all right if they find the map. So I was after
finding it for them, so maybe they’d show some respect.”

“And where is this map, then?”

“It was Gerald’s. Has to be with Wally’s
stuff, don’t it?”

“Why will everything be all right if you find
it?”

Derek tried a scoff, but it was thin and wan.
“Ciara Crackers, she’ll give mum her money.”

Ciara Crackers? Jean repeated silently. Not
that everyone else didn’t have a similar opinion of Ciara.

“How long’s your mum known Ms.
Macquarrie?”

“Five, six years maybe. Wally sent her to
Middlesbrough, sent her to talk to mum about Ferniebank. It’s
always Ferniebank, isn’t it, arsehole of creation.”

“Your parents were here before you were
born.”

“Yeh.”

“What happened at the dig?”

“I dunno, something about finding treasure,
but then, they’re still looking for the treasure map—it don’t make
sense anyhow.”

“Treasure?” Alasdair asked, with another
lightning-fast glance at Jean.

Treasure
. Well yes, Ciara’s map would
bring in a lot of money, but Ciara hadn’t been at the original dig,
so how . . .

“It was money, that’s all I know.” Derek
sagged and Alasdair pulled him upright. “Mum’s bakery went bust.
Even her posh friends couldn’t stop it going bust. And Dad did a
bunk and my uncles said it was all Mum’s fault for not taking care
of him proper. But Crackers, she’s helping us.”

“Posh friends?” asked Alasdair. “Other than
Ms. Macquarrie?”

“Old Wally sometimes, but mostly Old
Horseface, Angus. What a prat, bringing me toy trucks and the like
when I’d rather have an iPod.”

Well, well, well, thought Jean. Was that
where Angus kept wandering off to, to see—what? A second family?
But he’d never had a first family, other than Minty.

Minty
. Jean tracked the thoughts
moving across Alasdair’s face. Oh yes, they were thinking the same
thing. If she’d grabbed the gold ring in her carousel of thoughts,
it was the plain gold one on Minty’s left hand.

A flicker of light in the entrance chamber
accompanied the sound of a car, of two cars, driving into the
courtyard. Derek looked around, his expression indicating that any
arriving cavalry would just cause him more trouble.

“Wallace and Angus gave your mum money?”
Alasdair asked.

“It was hers, she said. She said she’d earned
it. She said that Flinty Minty—oh shit, oh shit.” The boy’s voice
rose and broke, so that Jean thought he was going to cry.

Alasdair was unimpressed. “What about
Minty?”

“I can’t.” Derek shook his head. “She’ll get
me, too.”

If Alasdair had been any taller his grip
would have raised the boy off the floor, Darth Vader style. “What
makes you think Minty got anyone?”

Car doors slammed. Alasdair scowled. “Tell
me. Now.”

“I don’t, I can’t . . .”

“You’re that interested in where Wally died,
you could do with a closer look. Come along.” He dragged Derek
across the floor. Toward the trap door. Toward the black square
opening into the depths.

An electrical charge exploded in Jean’s
stomach and shot sparks off her appendages. Her free hand flew up
to her mouth. Was she supposed to play good cop and protest? Was
she supposed to just stand there while Alasdair bluffed . . . It
was a bluff, right?
Alasdair, no!

He had the boy by both arms. At the edge of
the pit. “It’s not so far down. You’re young, you’ll bounce a wee
bit, maybe no more than break your legs.”

“No, please.” The boy wriggled. He was going
to come right out of his jacket and tip over the edge. Jean pressed
her own cry of dismay back into her mouth.

But Alasdair had Derek firmly in hand. He
wasn’t going anywhere—unless Alasdair let go. “Talk. Now.”

A heavy step reverberated from the
entrance.

“I saw Minty,” the boy gabbled. “Last night
at the pub. A right posh bitch, me mum always called her, cold as
an iron poker.”

Colder than an iron poker, Alasdair said, “Go
on.”

“She was asking about the plans, and after
dinner, the Yank, he rolled them out on the billiards table and
everyone gathered round. And me mum, she set a tray with the
coffees down on the table. Minty’s special blend coffee, has it in
from Harrod’s. And Mum went back to the kitchen, and Minty, she
pulled out a glass jar from that smart bag of hers, a little jar
with water inside—it caught the light, I saw it, plain—she tipped
it into one of the coffees and put it back in her bag.”

Derek was crying now, his breath gasping, his
nose running. Alasdair didn’t move. “And?”

“Then the lot of them, they sat back down and
she started handing round the coffees, but Noel, he took them away
and handed them round himself—‘Can’t let you do the serving, can
we?’ he said. Minty didn’t say a word, stirred her own coffee and
watched Ciara, smiling like the woman on the cover of that book,
like she knew something no one else did.”

Jean could hear her own breath sieving
between her fingers. What gall. What nerve. What cool. Did Minty
realize the poisoned coffee had gone to the wrong person? If she
had, she could hardly have leaped up with a cry of “Don’t drink
that!” No wonder she’d smiled to see Ciara arrested. She might have
unwittingly sacrificed Angus to her cause, but she thought she’d
won after all, Ciara gone and the new Ferniebank safely and
tastefully under her control.

What nerve
, Jean thought again, but
this time she was looking at Alasdair’s face. The anemic glow of
the ceiling light illuminated his brow ridges and cheekbones,
carved by glaciers, and cast the rest of his features into
shadow.

Delaney walked into the Laigh Hall. “What’s
this, Cameron? Intimidating a witness?”

“I’m not a policeman,” Alasdair told him.
“Just how could I be intimidating a witness?” He aimed the boy away
from the trap door, gave him a push, and released him.

Alasdair’s eyes met Jean’s. Cold as iron, hot
as an anvil, expressionless and yet teeming with expression. He was
an excavation, and she’d just uncovered unexploded ordnance. She
shrank away.

Kallinikos emerged from the shadows behind
Delaney, notebook open, pen in hand. “Come along, lad, P.C. Freeman
will make you a cuppa in the incident room.”

Derek wiped his nose on the back of his hand,
his sniff ringing from the rafters. “Me mum, she’ll not be in
trouble, will she?”

“Depends on how helpful she is,” answered
Delaney.

“She’s on her way here,” Kallinikos
added.

With a thoroughly cowed and yet furtively
admiring look at Alasdair, Derek shambled from the room, to be
intercepted by Freeman in the entrance chamber and escorted out the
door.

Delaney was staring at Alasdair. “Minty
Rutherford? You credit the lad’s testimony?”

“It’s perfectly sensible. We already knew the
poison went into the coffee or dessert. Minty had everything to
gain by killing Ciara, but Noel accidentally handed Angus the
poisoned cup.” The color was draining from Alasdair’s face. He held
out his hand toward Jean—oh, the flashlight. Numbly she placed the
cylinder into his hand. No, he wasn’t shaking. He couldn’t be
shaking. “Besides,” he concluded, “what’s Derek got to gain by
lying?”

Jean realized she was shaking, too. Her
stomach roiled as though she’d drunk coffee with foxglove liqueur.
Turning her back on Alasdair, she walked over to the window, leaned
against the chill stone of its embrasure, and gulped the evening
air. Cool. Fresh. The soft, rounded hills giving up the last of the
twilight into a crystalline indigo sky that faded to the east,
where a full moon was rising.