Cold War

SIX

Frank Gorrie sat near the window in his old platform rocker and watched the lights of a car out on the street slide across the dark bedroom walls. It was chilly, quiet, his wife dead to the world under the heavy quilts, her breathing soft and regular.

Gorrie couldn’t sleep. He was wearing his flannel robe and wool socks and had put one of Nan’s hand-knitted throw blankets over his lap. The chair was comfortable, though it creaked when he went rocking back too far. The springs, Gorrie thought. They needed to be oiled. He’d given it a tick on his mental list of waiting house chores. The list was long, and there were many things on it that deserved priority. But oiling the springs wouldn’t take much time. Maybe he’d find a spare moment over the weekend. He ought to anyway. Easier than fixing that runny tap in the loo. He’d try to make a point of getting it done. Next weekend seemed a reasonable target. Meanwhile, Gorrie was trying not to rock too far back in his chair. It was late. The stillness exaggerated every sound. He did not want to disturb Nan. Five nights now since he’d been able to get a decent bit of rest. Or was it six?

He counted backward. Outside, the car moved unhurriedly along the street. He could hear its motor running, and the low shush of its tires as it drew to a halt by the traffic signal at the corner intersection. Then its lights froze on the wall above his bed. Gorrie noticed the diffuse red glow of the stop signal through the frosty window-pane. A law-abiding driver. Commendable. It was getting on two o’clock, stub end of the night. There were only 130 officers to police the sixty thousand civilians in the Inverness Command Area. Scant odds one of them would be around to cite some luckless sod for running a stop signal. Besides Gorrie himself, of course. And he surely wasn’t about to leave the plump, worn-in cushions of his favorite chair.

The signal turned green and the car rounded the corner. Its lights grazed the window, fluttered from wall to wall, then slid across the ceiling. Gorrie counted backward. Five nights, aye, sitting here awake and wide-eyed with a throw over his legs. Wasn’t until a full day after answering the call to Eriskay Road that he’d gotten himself into a twist about it. Gorrie did not know the reason for his delayed reaction. But his mind had been making up for it ever since.

He sat there thinking. Nan shifted under the pile of quilts. He couldn’t tell whether she had moved from her side onto her back, her back to her side, or from one side to the other. The room was very dark. In the winter she had a habit of pulling the quilts up over her head. Slept like a rock under all that fabric and filling. When the cat came pawing at the footboard for her morning meal, you could rely on Nan to be oblivious. Or pretend to be oblivious. It irritated him, obliging that cat’s whims. Sometimes Gorrie would thumb his chest grumpily and protest. Last into bed, first out, he’d say. How’s that for a rule? Where’s the equity? Who rates higher in this household, me or the bloody fur ball? Nan scarcely heeded him, except perhaps to give him a wry little smile.

Gorrie realized he’d almost leaned back too far, gotten the chair to where its rickety springs would squeak. He carefully eased it down. His rocker was different from the cat. The tiniest noise out of it was enough to disturb Nan through her blankets. She’d heard him rocking last night, and the night before. Leave it to Nan. She had peeked an eye out from the thick folds of her covers, asked Gorrie what was bothering him. Not that she didn’t already have an inkling. Or better. Edward and Claire Mackay’s deaths had given a fair boost in popularity to the local papers and telly news broadcasts. Certainly it was meatier dish than the traffic watch, daily stats, or a piece about drunk and disorderly teens setting a brush fire in some city park. And Claire’s former flatmate, Christine Gibbon, had been generous to reporters with every appalling detail of the sight she’d come upon at the bungalow. Nan had his number, all right. Leave it to her.

Gorrie stared at the quilts gathered up in a mound over his wife’s sleeping body. She was a big woman. Even twenty-five years ago, when he had dropped down on his knee to propose to her, it couldn’t have been said that she had a waifish figure. But he hadn’t wanted to marry a nudie-magazine centerfold. Nan knew her best attributes and put herself together in a way that accented them. And when she got that certain randy look her eyes… in spite of his occasional grumbling, Gorrie had no cause to be envious of any man with regard to his conjugal pleasures. Give him his choice of rides, he’d always pick a luxury-model sedan over a Fiat. Not that he didn’t appreciate the latter’s strong appeal.

Another car approached his house, rolled past. Its headlights swept the walls. Shadows scattered from them like black butterflies, then regrouped. Gorrie thought about the deceased Claire Mackay, and how she had looked in the abattoir that was once her bedroom. Claire Mackay lying in that dash of a baby-doll nightie, her leg half wrapped around her husband’s corpse, one hand spread on his naked chest, the other around the gun she’d used to kill him before ending her own life as well. Gorrie could attest that she had been a woman with eye-catching physical attributes. A shape like hers took maintenance. Probably she’d stuck to a regular exercise routine. No doubt she had watched her calories. There had been enough of her exposed for Gorrie to know she’d had no leftover padding from her recent maternity.

He wished it were possible to wash away his recollection of the gruesome sight she’d made of herself above the neck.

Gorrie frowned. Made of herself…

Claire Mackay. Five nights now he’d been thinking about her final act, and the way she had apparently committed it. A bullet in the mouth, its trajectory blasting through the palate into her brain. That method had the surest results in gun suicides involving a head wound. Took some effort, though. It would have required Claire to turn the firing hand toward herself at an awkward angle, most likely gripping its wrist with her opposite hand to steady the barrel. It would also have meant she would be able to see the barrel as she thrust it into her mouth. Well, unless she’d closed her eyes the entire time. They’d been open when he found her, but their lids could have raised postmortem. At any rate, a shot to the temple was more common. Only one hand was needed to grip the gun. It was easier, and usually cleaner. Less blood and tissue splatter. Usually. But it had a downside too. A nervous jitter would cause the bullet to glance off the scalp, inflict nonfatal damage, and leave the person crippled or a dribbling vegetable.

Gorrie supposed the messiness of the scene was another of the things that had niggled at him these past nights. In his experience, women tended to avoid ruining their faces when they did away with themselves. They swallowed pills or poison, slit their wrists in the bath, went to sleep breathing automobile exhaust. If they used a pistol, the fatal shot was most often pointed at their chests. You couldn’t state it hard and fast, naturally. But neat was the preference. A fit specimen like Claire Mackay, who cared about her looks… Gorrie wouldn’t have thought she was one who’d leave herself to be found mutilated. And then there was her racy wear. It wasn’t what she’d have put on before polishing the nails, setting the hair in rollers, and going off to dreamland. A woman didn’t slip into a provocative nightie like that, make an irresistible package of herself, unless she was in what you’d call a romantic mood. Yet Claire’s passion for Ed had gone into a sudden tailspin, hit some jagged divide in the moments before it would have brought them to an act of love.

Gorrie shifted in his chair, his frown deepening. What had her husband done to turn things bad?

Gorrie stared at his sleeping wife in the silence. Shadows crowded him. There hadn’t been a passing car for a while, and the corner traffic signal flashed meaninglessly at an empty street. He had wondered at the absence of a suicide note. In the bungalow, he’d noticed that the wee’un had been fine attended. His room was small but tidy, his pajamas and linens freshly washed, the closet shelves stocked with nappies, cotton bobs, and the like. There were toys and stuffed animals in his crib, bright-colored mobiles hanging above it. Fine attended. Yet in the time between Claire’s putting a shot in her husband’s head and turning the gun on herself, she’d seemingly given no thought to what the consequences would be for the child. Not even to snatching up a piece of paper and scribbling the name of a family member, godparent, friend, some preferred or appointed guardian who would see to his welfare. Instead, she had abandoned her responsibility, left the state to decide what was to become of him.

Gorrie had seen a lot in his twenty-five years on the job. More than he wanted. He knew better than to make assumptions. Still, this affair seemed curious. And there were some further peculiarities he wanted to straighten out in his head when the forensic reports arrived from the lab. That wouldn’t be for another couple of weeks, he’d been told… but Gorrie knew how to put on the hustle.

He meshed the fingers of his hands, stretched his arms above his head, heard vertebrae popping along his neck and spine. The illuminated clock on his nightstand told him it was almost 3 A.M. Och, well. Gorrie had hoped he might get tired enough to catch a nod before the kitty sprang from her basket alongside the bed. But it wouldn’t be long now till the troublesome bugger started a rumpus. He would sit cozily another few minutes, then go into the kitchen, open a can of Felix, put the teapot on the burner…

“Frank? You in that creakin’ monstrosity again? Woke me from a fast asleep.”

Gorrie looked at the bed. Nan had flipped the blankets from her head and propped herself up slightly on her elbows. He couldn’t see her features in the dark, but knew she was scowling at him just the same. He was certain he hadn’t made a sound with the chair.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was about to get up and prepare a small bit ’a breakfast… ”

She leaned toward the bedside clock. “Breakfast? Are you real? It’s not yet three in the morn.”

“Couldn’t sleep much,” he said.

“Losh! Frank, this can na’ go on. Sittin’ up night after night, all the night, then takin’ yourself off to work. I thought you said you’d try’n get some rest… ”

“I tried.”

“You’re no youngster, d’you ken?”

“Sure enough.”

“Then what of it? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” he said. It was mostly a truthful answer.

“Frank, if it’s that business on Eriskay got you gutted, we should bring it out in the open… ”

“Steady on,” Gorrie interrupted. He got up from his rocker, ignoring the loud complaint of its springs, and went over to crouch at Nan’s side of the bed. “Look, Nan. Suppose I give staying under the blankets a better effort after I come home tonight. Ought to be a breeze with some wifely inspiration,” he said, then abruptly bent forward, cupped her chin in his hand, and planted a long, full kiss on her lips.

She sighed. Up this close, Gorrie had no problem whatsoever making out her features. They were crinkled with surprise, exasperation, and affection.

“What was that show of tenderness about?” She gave him a soft nudge on the chest. “Lookin’ to keep me quiet, are you?”

“Maybe I am, sweets,” he said, still crouching over her. “And maybe it just struck me that it’s good to be among the lucky ones.”

The tall firs lining the path to the estate house watched Gorrie come up the drive with the resolute solidity of guards protecting the approach to a castle, pikes and swords at the ready. The tires of the inspector’s Ford Mondeo plowed through the thick bed of stones as he circled the drive to the large house, the path designed to give the visitor a clear impression not so much of the house but the owner’s good taste in having it built. The structure dated from the eighteenth century, a time of relative peace if not absolute prosperity for the Cameron who had first occupied it. Had DI Gorrie cared to inquire, he would have been quickly supplied a thick pamphlet with small type documenting the exploits of the Highland Camerons. The booklet was available at several places in the nearby town; several copies were on the shelves of the local library as well as in all the churches and schools, though in the latter case the edition omitted a few of the more questionable stories from the past.

The place’s ancient history was of no interest to Gorrie; to be truthful, he wasn’t entirely sure that its more recent history was of interest either. The report on Ewie B. Cameron’s death was rather clear and precise: hit by a medium-to-large-sized truck in the early morning hours. Death almost instantaneous from a selection of internal and external wounds. The fog and winding, narrow road would have made it difficult to see the victim, who habitually took the walk as part of his daily exercise. The investigation was open as no one had come forward to claim responsibility; it was possible that the driver hadn’t seen what he had hit, and thought the noise an animal such as a dog, or even one of the deer that wandered the nearby woods.

Not likely, thought Gorrie, but the driver’s solicitor would undoubtedly make the claim if it came to that. A good number of juries might agree, if things were handled just right. Not even the frown of the magistrate would sway them if the accused looked downtrodden and had wife and kiddies in tow.

The stone steps to the front door had slight indentations, scuffed down by three centuries’ worth of soles. Ewie had lived here alone, without even live-in help. A cook came to do his meals, and two maids to keep the place tidy; a gardening service trimmed the grass and attended to the hedges. But at nights the place was empty except for Mr. Cameron; there was no Mrs. Ewie Cameron.

There was, however, a sister, Miss Ellie Cameron, who had come up from Edinburgh to attend to matters after her brother’s demise. And it was she who came to the door as Gorrie approached.

“Inspector Gorrie?”

“Yes.”

“Please.” She turned at the door and headed down a long hallway at the right. Gorrie pulled the door closed behind him, then followed. Ms. Cameron’s heels clicked on the stones, her pace steady. In some homes the entrance hallways were festooned with historical mementos, some pertaining to the family, many not. But these corridors were bare. No thick Oriental carpet covered the floors, and the walls were plaster, not paneled. Somehow that made him feel more at ease, and even respectful.

Family history notwithstanding, Ewie Cameron had not cut a large swath in life, even according to the obituary Gorrie had read. He was a relatively modest and quiet man, keen on doing his duty and otherwise remaining private. He observed the unwritten code of conduct applying to all well-born Highlanders, and most certainly descendants of such noble men as Sir Ewen, seventeenth clan chieftain, Major Allan Cameron, founder of the bold 79th Highlanders, and Air Captain “Hick” Cameron, double ace and hero of the Battle of Britain. He contributed to the proper charities, was unfailingly sober when in public, and golfed twice a week, weather permitting.

Ms. Cameron stopped at the doorway on the plastered side of the hall, extending her arm and trying a smile. She wore thick wool pants and a heavy, severe coat; despite the smile, she reminded Gorrie of the woman in charge of payroll and expenses at the Constabulary area, a grouchy and disagreeable woman who was suspected to routinely apply fingerprint and DNA tests to chits that came across her desk.

“I apologize for the dust,” said Ms. Cameron, following him into the sitting room. He guessed she was about thirty, though her pudding complexion and heavy eyes could easily belong to someone ten years older. “My brother’s maids — you understand.”

Two couches faced each other in the center of the room, each flanking a pair of elaborately carved mahogany tables. Various pieces of furniture were arrayed around the outer edges. All seemed very old, but none looked the least bit dusty.

“There’s news?” asked Ms. Cameron.

“Ah, no news about your brother, I’m afraid.” Gorrie hadn’t explained the reason for his visit when he called. “I’m here on another matter. To my ken at the moment it is unrelated, though I may revise my opinion. It is a coincidence to be investigated, you understand.”

“I’m afraid I don’t, Chief Inspector.”

“It’s just Inspector, miss,” said Gorrie.

A slight young woman appeared at the door with a tray of tea and store-bought cookies. Her red hair flowed down her shoulders; she wore a white sweater that stopped about an inch above the waistband of a long, blue skirt. She seemed to glide into the room, moving as no servant would ever move in a house.

“Inspector Gorrie,” said Miss Cameron, emphasizing his title. “This is my friend, Melanie Pierce.”

“Hello,” said the woman. Even when she spoke the single word, it was obvious she was a Yank. “Tea?”

“Aye,” said Gorrie.

As Melanie poured the tea, Miss Cameron raised her hand gently to the young woman’s side, and suddenly Gorrie understood.

Well, to each his own, or her own, as the case may be, he thought. Nessa would have had something to say about this, were she still his partner. Certainly the American was a beauty, with a face that would shine for decades before fading to a soft, misty glow. A more poetic mind would compare her to a fairy goddess come down from the hills.

Aye, and Nessa would have snorted at that, for all her talk of artists and paintings.

“I am working on another case, a murder and suicide,” said Gorrie after a sip of the tea. “A sad one. Left a baby.”

He told them about the Mackays, running out the main details and then getting to the meeting Payton had mentioned.

“A drink in the pub?” said Miss Cameron. “My brother?”

“It seemed odd, their gettin’ together,” said Gorrie. “It’s a wee bit out of the way for Mr. Mackay to come up here. They were not chums, were they?”

“Chums, Inspector?”

“I would nae think they were acquaintances,” offered Gorrie.

The dead man’s sister obviously didn’t know her brother well enough to account for all of his friends. The thought occurred to Gorrie that perhaps homosexuality ran in the family, but he dismissed it; there seemed no chance of that on Mackay’s account. The man was hetero to a fault.

“Your brother was never married?” Gorrie asked.

“No. There were some, a few women, but gradually I think Ewie came to decide he liked the single life.” Miss Cameron slipped her hand onto the couch, lacing it over her friend’s.

“Perhaps there’s an address book?” Gorrie prompted. “Or if it was on official business of some sort—”

“We can look in his study,” said Miss Cameron, rising. “My brother was very organized, Inspector, so if it was a formal contact, I’m sure it will be recorded in his appointment book.”

It was not; the book indicated his night was free. Edward Mackay’s name was not in the large Rolodex of contacts on Ewie Cameron’s Victorian-era desk, nor could any reference to him be found in the collection of white pads in the top right-hand drawer where the council member apparently kept notes on current business.

“Maybe this man ran into him in the pub and asked about getting a traffic sign or something,” suggested the American.

“He’s not a constituent,” said Gorrie. “Different district.”

“Maybe for the power plant,” said Miss Cameron.

“Very possible,” said Gorrie. He looked over the white pads. The notes were rather cryptic, perhaps taken in response to phone conversations. The top pad, for example, had something to do with lights:

Gorrie guessed it had to do with a request to add lights along a roadway in a small village about a quarter mile from here — a guess aided by his memory of a recent news item to that effect.

The second pad down had a phone number from London above the words “Lin Firth Brdge.” Halfway down the pages was another line, a question. “Hgh Spec Trprt?”

A small, stone structure that stretched the definition of bridge, Lin Firth Bridge had been repaired six or seven months before. It had been the subject of several news items itself, as the delays there had managed to snarl traffic considerably. The roadway had been completely closed off. Drivers traveling from Black Island south or west had to first go north and east, adding in most cases a good hour if not more to their travels. A headache that, and sure to have caused the poor council member assigned to the oversight committee a fair sight of grief.

Another pad had a note about an upcoming fair. The last two were blank. Gorrie returned the pads to the drawer. He looked through some of Cameron’s files and the rest of the desk without finding anything of note. There was no obvious connection between Cameron and Mackay, save for the alleged sighting in an obscure pub by a man who under other circumstances might be judged a suspect in the murder.

Miss Cameron had left Gorrie to explore the study on his own. He closed the desk, glancing around the room at the bookcases with their neatly aligned leather-clad volumes. Here and there a framed photograph stood in front of the books — Ewie with his parents, Ewie with a dog, Ewie receiving a certificate of some sort from a local vicar. Unlike the sitting room, here there truly was dust; obviously the maids were not allowed to enter.

A man’s life ran to this — dusty photographs, odd notes on a pad, an empty house. Gorrie made sure he had closed the desk drawers, then went to say good-bye to Miss Cameron and her friend.

Running late to his appointment with Cardha Duff, Inspector Gorrie stopped at a pub near Walder Street to ring her and tell her of the delay. The phone rang and rang, which made him uneasy; he hadn’t thought she’d supply much in the way of information, but wouldn’t know what to think if she skipped the interview. Maybe the whole thing would be too much for her, he thought — cause of the murder and suicide, all that — but she hadn’t sounded particularly distraught on the phone the other day.

The coroner wouldn’t be preparing his report on the deaths for another few days yet, but the head of CID had left a note on Gorrie’s desk asking when the case might be wrapped up. The tabloid chaps had come up from London as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh, and now were calling him every few hours to see if there were new developments. At least he shielded Gorrie from the rabble.

Gorrie wended his way from Rosmarkie through Inverness, off toward Clava Cairns and the hamlet where Cardha’s flat lay. He turned off the main road into a small set of apartment buildings, then took another turn and found his way blocked by an ambulance.

“Inspector — we were just sending for you,” yelled a voice from the other side of the ambulance.

It belonged to Robertson, the constable who had changed the nappies on the Mackay child.

“What’s going on here, Sergeant?” he asked the constable.

“Another suicide, looks like, Inspector, according to the ambulance people. Been dead since sometime last night, they think.” Robertson frowned deeply and shook his head. Handling three deaths in less than a week might rate as a record for a constable in the Inverness Command Area as far back as the war.

“Wouldn’t be at 212?” said Gorrie.

“It is, sir. A Cardha Duff, going by the license. Not a good photo.”

“Rarely are,” Gorrie told him, walking up toward the building.

The thing that struck Gorrie immediately was that Cardha Duff could in no way be considered beautiful, especially in comparison to Claire Mackay. Few people looked good in death, and this woman looked especially bad, her nose and eyes swollen red, her mouth frozen in what might have been an agonized shout for help. But even allowing for all that, it was clear that she offered no challenge to Ed Mackay’s wife in the looks department. The most attractive thing about her was her red hair, which even Gorrie, no expert, could tell spent most of the week frizzed into unmanageable odds and ends.

Just now the hair lay matted to one side of her head, a twisted dirty tangle that pointed away from her ghost-white face. Cardha Duff’s body sprawled face-up in front of a TV, a few feet from the couch. Her left arm lay out as if in supplication. She had a bandage at the inside joint of the elbow; she’d obviously given blood the day before she died.

A final act of charity before death.

“Has forensics been called?” Gorrie asked the constable who’d been watching the door.

“On the way, sir. Sergeant Robertson took care of it straightaway.”

The ambulance people stood at the side of the room, waiting to hear what they should do. Gorrie wanted to know how the body was when they found it; they assured him they’d only moved it a little, ascertaining she was dead.

“The neighbor, she saw us,” volunteered the driver.

“Which neighbor was that, son?”

“Gray-haired woman, Mrs. Peters. 213. She thought something was amiss because she didn’t answer to the knock. Came in with us.”

Gorrie nodded. “Now tell me why you think it’s a suicide.”

“Pills on the floor, one near the radiator and another under the sink,” said the other attendant quickly. She had a stud in her nose and spoke with a Lowlands accent — Gorrie wasn’t sure which prejudiced his mind worse.

“And how d’you know that, lass?”

“I’m not your lass now, am I?” She’d flushed, though, and Gorrie waited her out. “I went to use the john and I saw it. I didn’t touch a thing. Not a thing,” she said finally.

“How long have you been on the job?” he asked her.

“A few weeks. What is it to you?”

Gorrie went to the bathroom. Though the scene was now obviously contaminated, he used a pencil to flick on the light, peered in a moment, then lowered himself to his knees and looked around. He could see a small capsule below the edge of the towel rack, near the molding and radiator. Another sat below the baseboard casing.

Cold capsules, he thought, but the lads at the lab would be able to tell. Best to leave them to be photographed for position.

If they were cold medicine, most likely they would match the bottle at the bottom of the empty waste bin — Talisniff. Wife used to give him that for the sniffles. There was another bottle of tiny pills that seemed to be for a thyroid condition, along with the usual feminine paraphernalia.

“Wait in the ambulance would you, both of you,” the inspector told the attendants. “Don’t go until I release you — myself, no one else.”

They would end up staying well past dinner, and Gorrie would feel sorry for being so peevish.