The Darkness and the Deep (46 page)

It went against the grain for Fleming to stay here, stuck uselessly in a chair with her crutches by her side, but she would be a liability. A moment later she heard the two-tone siren start and she knew she wouldn’t even have reached the car by now. She sighed, following them in her imagination as, blue lights flashing, they sped down the familiar road.

Kingsley came back over to her. ‘I’ve set that up. Do you really think our Tam’s on to something? Or has he just got us dashing madly off in all directions to make it look as if he knows what he’s doing?’

Fleming looked at him coolly. She had been wanting an opportunity to talk to him; now was as good a time as any, when she hadn’t anything to do except fret. ‘Jon, you have a problem with understanding about team work. We’re fighting together against crime, not against each other to see who comes out on top and who screws up. You’re doing yourself no favours at all.’

Kingsley’s good-looking face coloured. ‘That was a joke,’ he said stiffly.

‘Half joke, whole earnest. Do you think I’m stupid?’

‘Of course not,’ he mumbled.

‘I’ve a nasty feeling you do. I’ve a feeling that you think I don’t notice you trying constantly to undermine Tam in particular, though you’re not above doing it to Tansy too.

‘You did a brilliant job bringing in Elder. I was impressed. We were all impressed until you started trying to rub in how impressive it was. What makes you feel you have to stamp over other people to get out in front?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘I’m not just sniping at you, Jon. I want to know what drives you – if you know yourself.’

Kingsley lifted his chin. ‘Unless you’re the lead elephant, the view’s always the same.’

She was surprised into laughter. ‘Well, Jon, you’ll be looking at the backside of this particular she-elephant for the foreseeable future. And don’t bother trying to manipulate me. I’m a mother; I’ve seen every trick in that particular book, performed by the real experts.

‘Now perhaps you could go along to Control and see what’s happening with the cars at Knockhaven. Thanks, Jon.’

Fleming couldn’t read his face as he went out. Perhaps he’d learned something, perhaps he hadn’t and would put in for a transfer back to Edinburgh the next morning.

At least that exercise in plain speaking had taken her mind off her anxieties, briefly. She wasn’t used to a silent and deserted CID room, wasn’t used to not being where it was all happening. This was slow torture.

24

She had abandoned the car, tucking it into a parking place on one of the residential streets in the middle of a dozen others. It would take a while for them to look here; she’d heard the residents complain often enough that they never so much as saw a police car, let alone a bobby on the beat. Long before anyone noticed it, she’d have completed her mission.

Enid approached the Medical Centre cautiously, checking to see no one was watching it. There was a smirr of rain now, a fine, soft mist of droplets which clung to her skin and hair, and when she looked over the wall the tarmac of the car park was glistening black and wet under the street lights. It was empty, like the street outside.

Feeling in her pocket for the keys, she walked across the car park and into the shadow of the porch over the side door. If there was a twitching curtain on the far side of the road, all they would see was one of the receptionists on an out-of-hours errand, but a quick glance over her shoulder assured her that she had been unobserved. The keys turned easily in the security locks, the familiar warning buzz of the alarm system greeted her and she walked unhurriedly over to the instrument panel with its pulsing red light to tap in the code. The light changed to green; the buzzing stopped. In the silence, she heard a car go past outside and tensed, but it went on its way without even slowing down.

Light from the street lamps bathed the room in an eerie glow, and familiar with her surroundings as she was, Enid had no difficulty in moving confidently to her objective. She unlocked the drawer that held the other keys, picking out the one for Dr Lewis’s surgery. It seemed somehow fitting to involve him. Oh, they had such a lot in common, she and Dr Lewis! If only things had been different, over time, who was to say that he wouldn’t come to look for more than glamour and a sexy body?

But that dream was dead now, like all her dreams. That was the past, and for her there was no future now. Only the present.

Enid knew exactly where to find what she wanted. She picked it up and left, automatically locking the door and replacing the key in its proper place. She was feeling quite calm now, calm and confident as she reset the alarm, then after a cautious check let herself out again.

The police car, with Tam MacNee at the wheel, sped into Knockhaven; on reaching the centre he slowed down a little and switched off the warning lights and sirens. As they crossed the T-junction with the High Street on the way to Muriel Henderson’s house in the Mayfield development, he turned his head to glance down it, swore violently and braked. Tansy Kerr’s eyes, shut tight for most of the journey, shot wide.

‘Tam, for God’s sake!’

The car rocketed backwards across the junction with a fine disregard for the Highway Code, then MacNee swung it down into the High Street. ‘There’s two cars outside Davis’s house. How the hell’s there two cars, when one’s meant to be at Muriel Henderson’s?’

He pulled up behind them, jerking on the brake and leaping out almost before the wheels had stopped spinning. Both cars were empty but there was a lot of activity evident inside the house. MacNee stuck his head in at the front door and bellowed.

The lugubrious Ingles shot out from the sitting room as if a cattle-prod had been applied to his plump rear. ‘What’s up, Sarge?’

‘Who’s at Muriel Henderson’s?’ MacNee demanded.

The constable’s face cleared. ‘Oh, she’s fine. We went up to check – no problem.’

‘When was this?’

‘Oh – around twenty minutes ago, maybe?’

‘And what do you think has happened in the last twenty minutes?’ MacNee’s tone was savage.

Ingles gulped. ‘Has she – is there—’

‘I don’t know. But neither do you – that’s the point. I’m away along there now this minute, and you better hope the answer’s nothing.’

He stormed out of the house and reversed the car back up the road. A moment later the constable, now joined by his partner who had wisely kept out of sight, heard it being gunned along the main road.

‘How was I supposed to know they thought she was needing a bodyguard?’ he demanded plaintively.

‘Right enough,’ the other agreed. ‘You’d think if that’s what they wanted, they’d never have asked you.’

‘This is Mayfield
Crescent
, not Mayfield Gardens!’ MacNee snarled, shoving the car violently into reverse yet again. ‘Why they give all these bloody streets the same name beats me. Get on to Traffic, Tansy – find out where we need to go from here.’

There was, she kept telling herself, no reason why the police should guess where she was going, but even so Enid’s heart was thumping heavily again as she walked along the quiet street. It was a cul-de-sac of small modern bungalows and from behind the curtained windows she could hear gentle, domestic sounds: synthetic laughter from a television, music, the noise of a vacuum cleaner. At one window where there was a blind half-drawn she could see a woman working in her kitchen, but she didn’t look up as Enid passed. There were cars parked in driveways and two or three parked by the kerb as well, but even to Enid’s over-anxious eyes, none looked at all suspicious.

Muriel had never invited her home, but the house when Enid found it looked just as she had expected: tidy but tasteless, with a bulbous antiqued lamp above a meagre porch which high-lighted the door’s purple paintwork. There were two tiny lawns on either side of the front path, bordered by weedless beds containing half a dozen cowed-looking plants at regimented intervals. A light was burning behind the curtains of the room to the left of the front door.

Her hand on the purple wicket gate, Enid hesitated, her breath coming in ragged gasps as if her throat was being constricted by a powerful hand. This was different from before. This was an unforced choice, a direct confrontation, an ugly and violent act. Murder. It was the first time she had accepted the word as a description of her own actions.

She needn’t do it. She could turn back, even now, and walk away – to what? To a life where she had no control over even the smallest decision, like opening the door to a room and walking out. A life where she must live for ever with impotent anger and futile hatred and the bitter knowledge of injuries unavenged.

If it hadn’t been for Muriel, the police wouldn’t even have thought of looking in her direction. Slowly, her hand went down and she turned the latch. Slowly, she walked down the path, preparing herself. Muriel was a much bigger, more powerful woman; all Enid had was the advantage of surprise. And a surgical scalpel.

She would have to put her plan into action the second the door opened, bringing up the wicked little knife to slash across the carotid artery and have enough resolution to follow through and sever the windpipe as Muriel collapsed.

She had it ready in her hand as she rang the bell.

It seemed a long time before there was any sound of movement but then, something strange seemed to have happened to time and it didn’t have much meaning any more, seconds stretching out endlessly and half-hours unaccountably disappearing. At last she heard the door open and tensed herself to spring.

But it wasn’t Muriel who stood there. It was a man, of middle height but stocky, who was silhouetted against the light from the hall behind. His face, as he stepped into the little porch, was in shadow, only his eyes catching a glint from the outside light. He was breathing fast, as if he had been running. Then as he came towards her she saw, too, his threatening, gap-toothed smile.

Giving a gasp of terror, she lunged at him, but without conviction. A steely hand gripped her arm so that she cried out with pain and let go of the knife which arced out of her hand, light glinting on its silvery blade. It rang like a bell in its tinkling fall; in Enid’s ears, it sounded like a knell.

She dropped to the ground with a keening wail and Tam MacNee, not normally imaginative, recognised in it the darkness of total despair.

‘Not so much a confession, more a five-hour speech of self-justification,’ Marjory Fleming said. ‘When her brief arrived, he about burst a blood vessel when he found out what she’d been telling us. He’s muttering about improper pressure but he hasn’t a leg to stand on. Tansy Kerr just said, “Now, Enid, I know you’ve had great tragedy in your life,” and she was away. And given the evidence of blood and tissue in the waste traps in her drains and the helpful DIY guide to wrecking lifeboats in Enid’s bedside table drawer, she’ll cop a guilty plea the next time it calls in court. We even found some citric acid in her kitchen cupboard – an essential ingredient in the lemon squash she makes, apparently – and they’re analysing it to see if it matches up with what they found on one of the lanterns.’

It was a week after Enid’s dramatic arrest, the sort of golden autumn afternoon whose warmth hints at a withdrawing sun and few more days like this before the dark, cold days of winter. It had prompted Marjory, on her much-needed day off, to try out the mending ankle on a short walk with Laura; from the valley below where Meg the collie was working them, the bleating protests of hill ewes, brought down to be dipped before they were put to the rams, wavered on the air. Daisy, running ahead, kept lifting her head to watch the sheep and barking while Marjory and Laura followed more circumspectly.

‘I hadn’t picked up on the obsessive side of it,’ Laura admitted ruefully. ‘Of course there was no hint at the time what had prompted it all, but clearly the thoughts and images of her son’s death had recurred in her mind with such force and frequency that they took over her whole life.’

‘But the egocentric angle that you did suggest came out pretty clearly in what she told us,’ Marjory argued. ‘What she felt about her son’s death seemed almost to be less grief than resentment at what he had put her through. And the police in Helensburgh say her ex-husband seems to have been a long-suffering sort of bloke. From interviews with her neighbours they’ve got a picture of a woman so selfish and demanding that if he’d murdered her instead of divorcing her he’d still have found people to go on the stand as character witnesses.’

‘I wish I’d seen Tam and Tansy scrambling through back gardens and over fences to reach Muriel in time,’ Laura said wistfully. ‘Did he find a suitable quotation?’

‘I asked Tansy that, but she declined to repeat what he’d said when Traffic told him Mayfield Crescent and Mayfield Gardens were back to back and going round by the road would take a lot longer, so I think you can assume that if he did, it was from one of the poems you don’t normally find in anthologies.

‘Muriel, mind you, was most indignant when they arrived at her back door. She was positively looking forward to an encounter with what she described as “that shilpit wee nyaff” – that’s a sort of puny, insignificant person, to you – and was mightily offended at the suggestion that she couldn’t cope with any threat from her. And frankly, I wouldn’t back Enid, even armed with a scalpel, if it came to a confrontation with Muriel in her height and glory.’

Laura laughed, then sighed. ‘Poor, sad creature! I wonder what happened to Enid to make her feel so insecure and lacking in trust that she had to reduce her world to containing only herself?’

Marjory gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘You’ve gone a long way to converting me to psychology, Laura, but every villain who comes my way could – and usually does – claim it’s not his fault. But if you accept that . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Well, it makes you either a slave to your genes or the plaything of a malevolent God, and I don’t believe either of those excuses. It’s a hell of a lot harder for some than others, but I’ve seen enough decent people from backgrounds just as bad to feel that assumptions like that are demeaning.’