Lethal Intent

Forty-three

Andy Martin had passed through Broughty Ferry only once or twice since his move to Tayside, and he had never stopped there. It was not the type of place to give the police any trouble, and so there was little reason to go there other than to show the flag and keep its people content that they could sleep safely in their beds.

Councillor Diana Meikle, retired, slept safely in hers, that was for sure, thought Martin, as he approached her house, in a leafy street a few rows inland from the esplanade. Two large alarm bells were fixed to the facade of the detached villa, one above the garage, the other above the front door, and a sign on the wall advised that the premises were monitored by a security company. Since the house was probably listed, the policeman wondered if it had occurred to Mrs Meikle to seek planning permission for the installation, but he dismissed the idea as none of his concern.

The front door was opened by a maid attired in a black uniform. Andy remembered his father telling him, long ago, about an old doctor he had known whose household had a domestic servant, but he had supposed that, in urban Scotland at least, those things had died out with the tramcars.

'Who shall I say is calling, sir?' asked the woman, who looked not far short of sixty.

'Deputy Chief Constable Martin,' he told her. He had come in plain clothes, not wanting to advertise his visit. 'Mrs Meikle is expecting me.'

Clearly, the maid had known this all along, but she had been following the routine of a lifetime's service. 'Come this way, sir,' she said, 'and I'll announce you.' Stifling a smile, he followed.

He was shown into a conservatory, a great solid construction that had probably been built with the house itself, rather than one of the mass-produced extensions that the previous owners of his own home had added. Diana Meikle was pruning a bush as he entered. He had no idea what it was: he left gardening to Karen. The former councillor turned to greet him. 'Mr Martin,' she boomed, extending a hand in a way that seemed to invite either a kiss or a handshake. He chose the latter. 'Thank you, Gretchen,' said Mrs Meikle, dismissing the maid. He noticed, near two wicker armchairs, a table set for afternoon tea, complete with an old-fashioned cake-stand, adding to the impression that he had stepped back into his grandparents' time.

'Come and sit down,' his hostess instructed. For all the trappings around her, she did not seem in the least old fashioned. She was not much older than her maid and was dressed in slacks and a light blouse that had probably come from Marks amp; Spencer. 'Find me odd, do you?' she asked, reading his mind. 'Don't blame you. My late husband, God bless him, was quite a bit older than me, and I was middle-aged myself when we married. Gretchen was his maid; he was in shipping, and it was the norm in those circles. After he died I kept her on because I knew that's what he would have wanted. When you've been in domestic service for as long as she has you can't just go and work in a shop, can you?'

She poured two cups of tea and offered one to him. He took it, adding a little milk, but no sugar. 'Cake,' she offered, 'or a meringue?'

'No, you're quite right,' he said, helping himself to a plate, and a chocolate eclair.

She smiled at him as she sank into her chair and he perched uncomfortably on his, balancing the crockery. 'So, Deputy Chief Constable,' she began, 'what brings you here? When Graham Morton called to arrange your visit, he said there were a few things you wanted to discuss with me, but he wasn't specific. He did, however, use the word "discreetly". That suggests that you want me to spill some beans. Since there's nothing in my life of any interest other than my days on the council, I assume that's what you want to talk about.'

'Correct,' said Martin, laying the plate on the floor while he sipped his tea. 'You were a regional councillor rather than city, yes?'

'Indeed; and I still think that abolishing the regions was a great mistake. I served for ten years till the electors bumped me off. The Tories are an endangered species in most of Scotland; here we're pretty much extinct.' She looked at him sagely. 'I suspect that doesn't bother you.'

'It does, though,' he countered. 'How I vote isn't relevant; I believe that there should be the widest possible choice.'

'Say no more,' she announced. 'You're a Liberal.'

'Whatever I am, don't hold it against me, please.' He was warming to the woman.

'I promise you, it's nothing to me,' she said. 'Politics are a thing of the past for me; I often wonder why I became involved in the first place. Because of my husband, I suppose: he talked me into standing for the council. Now he would have held it against you. He hated the Liberals; he was very proud of the fact that his father was active in the defeat of Winston Churchill in Dundee in the 1922 election.'

'Churchill was a Conservative, surely,' Martin exclaimed.

'Only when it suited him, my dear. But you didn't come here for a history lesson, did you?'

'Not that far back, no.' He looked at her. 'Mrs Meikle, can I count on your absolute discretion?'

'When you can't I'll stop you,' she promised.

'Fair enough. In that case, what can you tell me about Tommy Murtagh? I gather that you and he were on the council at the same time.'

'That odious little man!' she exclaimed. 'Yes, we were, more's the pity. If the people of his ward had seen through him thirteen years ago, the first time he stood, we might have been spared a lot. You'll be familiar with the phrase "something of the night". When I sat opposite him in the council chamber I found it difficult to see anything of the day in Mr Murtagh. It simply appals me that he's now our country's First Minister. I argued long and hard against devolution, and I was in the foreground of the "No" campaign in the referendum. I warned that something like this would happen and now I've been proved right.'

Martin waited for the storm of her indignation to subside. 'I gather that Murtagh had a meteoric rise though the local Labour Party,' he said. 'Do you know if he had any particular mentor at the time?'

'Brindsley Groves,' she said at once. 'Old Herbert was still around when Murtagh was a youngster, but he spent most of his time on the golf course by then, or at least in the bar. His son ran the firm with very little input from him. It was pretty well known that there was something between him and Murtagh's mother, and that Brindsley made him a foreman because of it, helped him through university, then gave him a management job afterwards.'

'Did Groves benefit from it?'

'Council contracts, do you mean? Of course he did, but we could never prove it.'

'How did he take it when Murtagh opted for a parliamentary career?'

Diana Meikle looked down her nose, as if she was inspecting one of her potted plants. 'He engineered it; at least that's what I heard. There was another runner for the seat, but he decided to pull out at the last minute. The word was that he had something nasty in his past involving little boys, and that the people behind Murtagh had unearthed it.'

'The mother's dead now, isn't she?'

'Yes. She lived long enough to see her son elected to Westminster, and died the same year. Tommy told me, in one of the few civil conversations we ever had, that she had chronic kidney disease, and it affected her heart.'

'Does he have any other family in Dundee? His father, for example?'

'No, Tommy's parents lived in Derbyshire when he was born. The family, or at least he and his mother, moved up here when he was four.'

'Why Dundee?'

'I have no earthly idea.'

'Why didn't the father come north with them?'

'He was dead by then. He was a motor mechanic; the story was that he was killed in a work accident when Tommy was a baby. The mother took a job as a clerk in Herbert Groves's office; that's where she met Brindsley. He'd have been in his mid-twenties at the time; he's late-fifties now.'

'She was a widow, and yet you're saying their relationship was a secret?'

'It was from Celia, Brindsley's wife.'

'Ahh.' Martin chuckled. 'They must have been married young.'

'They were.' She gave a wicked smile. 'Contraception was much less reliable in those days, you know. The pill wasn't as readily available then as it is now.'

'How many children do they have?'

'Two; a boy and a girl. The son runs a tea-importing business; he and his father fell out years ago, and have barely spoken since. The daughter married a doctor and moved to London. They're not the happiest of families, although Brindsley and Celia are still together.'

'Murtagh doesn't have any siblings as I understand it'

Diana Meikle frowned. 'Who told you that?'

'I've read his official party biography: it says he's the only child of George and Rachel Murtagh.'

'Maybe so, but he's not his mother's only one. She had a daughter when Tommy was about ten. She took her mother and brother's surname, of course, but all the gossip said she was Brindsley's. This is Dundee, though: the talk never got to where the rich people live.'

'Where's the daughter now?'

'I have no idea.'

'Do you remember her name?'

'Funnily enough I do: she was called Geo.'