Gallery Whispers

12

'Couldn't you have visited me at my office tomorrow?' the man asked, as he showed Maggie Rose into his small study.

'I'd have called at your office this afternoon, Mr Futcher,' the redhaired detective replied, 'but you were out and your secretary didn't know when you'd be back.' She glanced around the study; the ornately papered walls were covered in photographs of its owner, mostly in evening dress, and all with other people in groups. As her gaze panned around the room, she recognised several sports and show business personalities, three Scottish business heroes, and a number of public figures, including, to her surprise. Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner.

'Did you tell my wife why you're here, when she answered the door? Not that it matters of course,' he added, too hastily.

'No, we simply introduced ourselves and asked to see you.'

Terry Futcher glanced at Detective Sergeant Stevie Steele. 'Why are there two of you anyway?'

'It's our normal practice in circumstances like these,' the detective chief inspector answered. 'I take it you know why we're here.'

Futcher nodded his head. He was a tall, well-built man in his early forties, sun-bronzed even in late autumn, with immaculately groomed brown hair and a tightly trimmed beard. 'Yes, I can guess. You've come about Gay.' He pointed to a green leather Chesterfield settee.

'Take a seat, please,' he offered, lowering himself into a matching armchair. 'Take a seat.'

'Thank you,' said Rose, settling against an arm of the comfortable sofa. 'How long have you known Mrs Weston, Mr Futcher? she asked.

'For just over four years.'

'How did you meet?'

'I hired her consultancy firm to train my people. She was a specialist in human resources; an inelegant term for what people used to call personnel management. She was very good on team-building and motivation, and I thought she could add a cutting edge to our new business presentations. I must admit that at first I thought her methods were a bit silly, but they worked very well. The Agency's billings have grown in each of the years she's been helping us.'

'Your relationship went beyond the office, though, didn't it?'

Futcher did not meet her gaze as he nodded.

'Since when?'

'That started a few months after she came to work for us, and it's been going on ever since.'

'How often did you see each other?'

'Hard to say, really,' the ad-man replied. 'We'd get together whenever we could arrange it.'

'Would you describe it as an intense relationship?'

'Hell, no! The opposite, in fact: it was a very relaxed thing. We liked each other a great deal, and we had sex on occasion, but we weren't in love with each other.' Futcher took a breath. 'Look, Inspector, I play around. Okay? I mean it's the sort of bloke I am. As for Gay, she came out of a marriage a few years back principally to make her own space and live her own life. Our arrangement didn't threaten that, and it didn't threaten my own marriage.

'That's as frank as I can be with you.'

'You couldn't have put it more clearly,' said Rose. 'Tell me, did Mrs Weston have any other, er, arrangements, to use your term?'

'Was she seeing anyone else, you mean? Not that I know of; she certainly never gave me any hint of that. But to be honest I wouldn't have known if she was. I never visited Gay without checking that it was okay with her. That was the way she wanted it; all part of her having that space of hers…' Futcher broke off, sinking deeper into his chair, gazing at the ceiling.

'When did you find out about Mrs Weston's death, sir?' Steele asked him, quietly.

'This afternoon,' he replied, gathering himself. 'My secretary picked up a copy of the Evening News at lunch-time. There was a story about police being at the scene of the death of a single woman at Oldbams steading. She showed it to me as soon as she saw it. As far as I know there are… were… only two single women living out there. Gay and Joan Ball. I switched on Radio Forth; their two o'clock news bulletin gave out the name.'

'Are you telling us that your secretary knew about Mrs Weston?'

Futcher glanced at the young detective. 'Katie knows everything about me, sergeant. She's been with me since I founded The Futcher Agency twelve years ago.'

'From your concern a few minutes ago, I guess your wife doesn't know about her though.'

Futcher looked at Steele again, uncomfortably and with a touch of anger showing. 'No, she bloody doesn't,' he snapped.

'What did you do when you heard that Mrs Weston was dead?' asked Rose.

'I went to Church, to the Cathedral at the end of York Place: to pray. I'm a practising Catholic.'

You should practise a bit harder; at least until you get to the bit about the Commandments. The response was on the tip of the detective chief inspector's tongue, but she fought it back. 'All afternoon?' she asked instead.

'Almost. I went back to the office just after five, and asked Katie to call a journalist friend others in the Herald's Edinburgh office, to see what he knew. He told her that the police were being cagey about it.

'Is that right? Is there a problem? How did she die?'

Rose ignored his questions. 'When was the last time you saw Mrs Weston?'

Futcher stroked his beard. 'Just over a fortnight ago,' he replied.

'Just before she went into hospital.'

'She went into hospital?'

'She told me she was going into a clinic for a minor operation. She didn't say what it was for, so I assumed it was some sort of women's thing.'

'Have you spoken to her since?'

'Several times, by telephone. She told me that the operation had been fine, that she was recuperating and that everything would be sorted out soon.'

'Is that your phrase or hers?' asked Rose.

The man looked at her, curiously, for a second. 'Hers, in fact. Her exact words; I remember her saying them; I remember it vividly.'

'What did you take her to mean by that?'

'I suppose I thought she meant that her plumbing would all be healed up, and we could…' His voice tailed off.

'… and you could resume a sexual relationship?' Steele offered.

'That's right.'

'Where were you in the early hours of this morning, Mr Futcher?'

He looked round, eyes narrowing, at her sudden sharp question. Rose leaned forward on the leather settee, closer to him.

'In bed,' he answered, quietly.

'From when?'

'From about eleven o'clock.'

'You didn't go to Oldbams last night did you?'

'No, I did not.'

'You didn't help Gaynor Weston end her own life?'

Futcher's face paled. 'Is that what happened?'

'You were nowhere near Oldbams at two o'clock this morning?

You were in bed?'

'No I wasn't,' he gasped. 'Yes I was.'

Maggie Rose settled back into the comfortable old Chesterfield, and smiled gently at him. 'That's okay, then. I'm sorry to have been so direct, Mr Futcher. We have to ask these questions, you understand.'

He sighed. 'Yes, of course.'

'Good, that's good.' She glanced round, at Steele. 'That's us almost finished, Stevie.'

'Yes Ma'am. Just one other thing to do, really.'

'That's right.' The chief inspector, still smiling, looked back across at Futcher. 'If you'd ask your wife to join us, sir. Just to confirm formally that you were here in bed at two o'clock this morning.'

The last vestige of the bronzed look vanished from the man's face.

'No!' he cried out. 'Leave Penny out of this.'

'I'm sorry, sir,' said Rose, trying to sound as if she really meant it.

'I know it's difficult for you, but we need corroboration of your story, for the Fiscal.'

Terry Futcher thrust himself out of his armchair, took a pace towards the room's small window, then turned abruptly, to face the two police officers once more. 'Then don't ask Penny,' he snarled at them. 'I was in bed all right, you bastards, but I never said I was here.

'I was with Katie, my secretary.'