Hour Of Darkness

Sixty-Four

‘I can’t get my head round this,’ Sammy Pye said.

‘I have trouble myself,’ Karen Neville admitted, ‘but it’s true nonetheless. I called Jack McGurk and asked him if he knew about it. He didn’t but he rang me back half an hour later, after he’d spoken to DI Stallings. . I don’t know her, she came in after I’d gone to Perth with Andy, but I’m told she’s Ray Wilding’s other half. . and managed to get something out of her, on a colleague-to-colleague basis.’

‘These are heavy grapes, even for the force vine.’

‘Tasty metaphor, Sam,’ she acknowledged. ‘It seems that Ray’s been coordinating a national search for the Mackenzies since Monday, after they both disappeared. The fear was that he’d done her in, not the other way around, but from what Ray said, she turned up safe and sound this morning, claiming no knowledge of where her husband was.

‘He was called in by the chief to talk to her, but not at home, in his nick. Even then, no alarm bells were ringing with him. But when he got to Gayfield, Bob Skinner turned up and more or less took over the interview. Next thing Ray knew, he was being told to arrest her on suspicion of murder, and turn the thing over to Mary Chambers and the ACC.’

‘But only suspicion of murder?’

‘At that point yes, but Stallings. . what’s her first name?’

‘Rebecca. . Becky.’

‘Right. She told Jack that Ray had just been sent by Maggie Steele to an address in Lanarkshire, where a second, related, arrest had been made by Strathclyde.’

‘Does Becky know who it is?’

‘No, Ray wasn’t told. But he did say that the chief sounded very tense indeed.’

‘Jeez,’ the DI whistled. ‘You were right. This is going to be top of the news cycle when it breaks; we’ll get blown out of sight.’

‘Don’t get too down about it. If the Spanish can’t trace this Mia woman, that might be a good thing.’

‘Yes, but even if they do, Karen, it’s her mother’s death that we’re investigating. I know, if what Alafair told you is true, there’s no love lost between them, but even so, her mother. .’

‘Is that so different from Cheryl Mackenzie murdering her husband?’ She frowned. ‘We’ve been friends for a long time, so I can say this to you. I’d say it to Andy as well, for it’s true of him too. . of all of you really. You guys, in your heart of hearts, you want to be Bob Skinner, but he is what he is because there’s no evil beyond his comprehension, nothing so dark that he can’t see its detail.’

‘I don’t know if I fancy that,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe I’ll settle for being Sammy Pye.’

‘That would be a good choice,’ she told him. ‘When you go to the other place, there’s no way back.’

‘Hey,’ Sammy exclaimed, ‘that has the sound of personal experience about it.’

‘Probably, but I don’t want to talk about it. All I’m saying is that when it comes to homicide, nothing’s off limits.’

‘Okay but there’s this too. Everything has to be proved in court, however obvious it may be to the likes of us.’

‘That’s true,’ she agreed, ‘and it’s what I really meant about Mia not being traced being a good thing. We can put her van in Caledonian Crescent at the time of Bella’s death, but we can’t put her in it. Who knows, we might find her DNA in the flat, eventually, but as we’ve just discovered with Hastie McGrew, and as you said yourself a few minutes ago, that won’t prove anything, other than that she went to see her mother.’

Pye yawned. ‘And with that discouraging word,’ he pushed himself to his feet, ‘I’m out of here.’

The DS checked her watch. ‘Me too, in half an hour,’ she said, ‘but I might just go and investigate a break-in in Costa Coffee that I thought had been reported.’

‘Got big plans for tonight?’

She shot him a raised eyebrow glance. ‘Big plans and I don’t go together. I’ve forsworn them, for ever.’

‘Oh dear,’ he chuckled, ‘sorry I asked.’

‘Not your fault. Just when I thought it was time to go back in the water, I found it was too salty for my taste.’

‘I won’t even try to understand that. There are always dating sites you could try.’

‘Online poker, maybe. Online dating, never.’

Pye turned towards the door of his office, to find that it was open and that Jackie Wright was standing there.

‘I’ve just had a call from the Fife police,’ she began. ‘Remember we put out an appeal for any sightings of a wooden blanket chest along the coast? There was one found a few days ago, washed up on the beach at Kinghorn.

‘It’s in the local nick; they weren’t sure what to do with it. They were going to give it to a local antique dealer. They said if we want it, it’s ours, but we’ll have to collect it.’

The DI looked at the DS, and smiled. ‘That could be your evening taken care of,’ he said.