Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10) (8 page)

Chapter 12 Forming a sub-committee

Jemima hadn’t been at all sure about going out to the Queen of Scots so soon after they had both been in hospital, but Christopher had even sent a taxi for them, so she felt they had to make the effort. She wasn’t letting Dave drive yet, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop him for very much longer. He was as tense as an old-fashioned elastic garter all the way down in the taxi, muttering under his breath about gear changes and Fiat Pandas and cyclists.

The taxi driver was the usual surly old man they had encountered before on the rare occasions when they needed somebody else to drive. But it was either that or ask Christopher to call a taxi from the new company at Torryburn, and surely it would have cost more to get somebody to drive along from there. When she tried to pay the driver, he brushed her aside and said something about it all being taken care of. She dithered as usual over giving a tip, and then Dave helped her down and hurried her towards the pub, so she didn’t get the chance.

‘It’s quiet enough tonight,’ said Charlie Smith, meeting them near the door. ‘I thought we might have to go upstairs, but we can just sit over here if you like... Is it the usual, Dave?’

Dave glared at him. ‘A half of orange juice, Charlie.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Charlie, looking at Jemima. ‘Under orders, are we?’

‘He’s under orders,’ said Jemima. ‘But I’ll have an orange juice too, please, Charlie.’

‘I’ll get Jan to bring them over,’ said Charlie.

Christopher was already sitting at the table. It wasn’t quite as it had been in PLIF days. Charlie had swapped all the tables round when he took over, and done a bit of re-decoration. And of course, plenty more water had gone under the bridge since those days, Jemima reflected. Watching Charlie and Jan at the bar together, she wondered if yet more water was about to go under it – so to speak. But it was hard to tell with those two.

Jock McLean hurried in, looking furtive, just after they had all sat down with their drinks. He spoke to Jan at the bar briefly, collected his pint and came over to the table.

‘Everybody all right for drinks?’ he asked. ‘That’s a sexy new barmaid you’ve got there, Charlie.’

Charlie frowned.

Jemima rushed to fill the conversational crisis. ‘It’s chilly out, isn’t it? Not really August weather.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dave, assisting manfully. ‘Remember when we went to Pittenweem for the day this time last year? Pouring rain and blowing a gale.’

‘They don’t make summers like they used to,’ said Jock.

‘That’s only because you don’t remember the bad ones,’ said Dave.

They all took sips of their drinks.

‘It doesn’t seem right to be here without Amaryllis,’ said Jemima. She hadn’t intended to say that, but somehow the words were forced out of her.

‘It isn’t,’ said Christopher. He had a notebook and pen on the table in front of him. Jemima wondered guiltily if she should be taking notes too. She had always made a rough summary of the PLIF meetings, although at one point Christopher had quietly advised her to destroy her notes. She hadn’t, of course. The little book was tucked away in the box where she kept her important documents.

Charlie took a larger swig of his lemonade, and cleared his throat. ‘So have they actually arrested her? And if so, what’s the charge?’

‘Murder,’ said Christopher baldly.

There was a collective gasp.

Jock McLean wrinkled his brow. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Of course, we know it’s impossible, but the police have to go on actual evidence,’ said Charlie.

‘No, I mean it’s impossible for her to have killed that man,’ said Jock. ‘I was there.’

‘But you weren’t there the whole time,’ said Christopher. ‘You didn’t actually see what happened.’

‘No, but I was there first,’ said Jock obstinately. ‘There was no sign of her when I first went round there.’

‘They must have some other evidence,’ said Charlie. ‘Something that connects her to the victim. A weapon.’

‘She told me she didn’t have a gun any more,’ muttered Christopher.

‘Aye, right,’ said Dave.

Jemima poked him in the ribs. ‘She doesn’t need a gun to defend herself. She told me that too.’

‘There was no sign of a gun either,’ said Jock. ‘Or of anybody else. And the voice didn’t sound like her either.’

‘I hope you’ve told the police exactly what you saw – and heard,’ said Charlie sternly. His dog, who must have taken up position under their table when nobody was looking, gave a low growl.

‘Of course I’ve told them,’ said Jock. ‘It doesn’t really make sense, though. Nobody else would have had time to get out of the place without being caught. We were round at the front until the police came. Amaryllis was at the back, by the greenhouses.’

‘What if somebody went over the fence to the place where the alpacas are?’ said Jemima, who had been trying hard to visualise the scene as they talked. ‘They could maybe get out that way.’

Charlie shook his head. ‘Not over that fence. It’s lethal. Could even be electrified, for all we know.’

‘Are people allowed to have electrified fences round their gardens?’ said Jemima.

Nobody answered that.

‘So who did it then?’ said Jock McLean, staring at them all almost as accusingly as if he thought one of those present had pulled the trigger.

‘Amaryllis must know more than she’s told us,’ said Charlie.

‘It can’t have been her,’ said Christopher fiercely. The dog growled again.

‘I’m not saying it was,’ said Charlie. ‘But she must have seen something at least. Or the police must have something else on her... Pity we didn’t catch up with her before she started roaming round the area. If one of us had seen her, we might have given her an alibi. But it’s hard to do if we don’t know the timetable of events.’

‘The best thing would be if there was another murder,’ said Jemima, surprising even herself. She blushed as they all stared at her, but carried on regardless. ‘While she’s with the police, I mean. Then they’d know it wasn’t her... Not that I want anybody else dead, of course. I would never wish for that.’

‘None of us would,’ said Christopher.

‘Hmm,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s just concentrate on the garden centre case and not speculate about things that probably won’t happen... What did the voice sound like, then, Jock?’

Jock closed his eyes. ‘It was a man’s voice, for a start. Or I suppose it could have been a woman’s voice, if she wanted to sound like a man. And then, it sounded as if it was coming from a long way away – and yet it was quite loud. And maybe a wee bit distorted...’

‘Amplified?’ said Charlie. ‘I mean – as if it was coming through a sound system? Or a megaphone.’

Christopher wrote something in his notebook while the others thought this over.

‘Could be,’ said Jock at last. ‘It definitely wasn’t right, anyway.’

‘Mmm, sound systems,’ said Charlie slowly. ‘That’s odd. I had somebody round here one day last week asking if I wanted one installed in the pub.’

‘What did you say to them?’ enquired Dave. ‘You didn’t agree to it, did you?’

Charlie shook his head. ‘Told them it would annoy the regulars. You know, if there was something that made more noise than them.’

‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Dave, unconcerned.

‘Funny, though,’ said Charlie. ‘I didn’t ask for anybody to come round trying to sell me that kind of thing.’

‘Don’t they try it on all the time, though?’ said Jock. ‘Double-glazing, broadband, loft insulation... They’ve got no shame.’

‘They don’t usually bother with me,’ said Charlie, shaking his head.

‘Maybe the dog keeps them away,’ suggested Christopher.

Charlie stared at him. ‘You know, sometimes I’m not sure if you’re joking or not.’

‘Ashley,’ said Jemima. ‘Ashley would know if they’ve got something like that at the garden centre. For customer announcements or whatever.’

‘Of course,’ said Christopher. ‘She’d know if there’s another way in and out as well. Whether somebody could’ve got out without being seen by the people we know were there.’

Charlie nodded. ‘We’d better think of a way of speaking to Ashley without Keith Burnet finding out, in that case. Or there’ll be hell to pay.’

Chapter 13 The wrong side of the table

Amaryllis faced her old school friend, Sarah Ramsay, across the interview table. A young uniformed constable sat nearby to take notes and presumably to ensure fair play. Sarah had explained that the recording machine had temporarily broken down. Amaryllis’s suggestion that they should try switching it off and back on again hadn’t gone down well.

Maybe they should have sorted it out with a friendly hockey match. Not that hockey was necessarily the friendliest of games, as far as Amaryllis could recall. But then, Sarah didn’t look as if she was in the friendliest of moods.

‘So let’s go over this again from the beginning,’ said the Chief Inspector, as Amaryllis wondered if she should think of her former hockey team-mate. ‘For some reason that you won’t divulge, you decided it would be a good idea to break into the grounds of the house where you thought the alpaca had come from, and when you failed in that aim you traversed the grounds of the former hotel next-door and intruded on to the property of a neighbour whose garden backed on to the one you wanted to get into. Can’t you give me any idea of your motivation?’

‘I still don’t know why you’re making such a big thing about it,’ muttered Amaryllis, experiencing an uncharacteristic feeling of guilt. It was as if Sarah was still the head girl of their school and she was still the rebel who was always in trouble. Perhaps they were destined to go through eternity in a series of this kind of encounter. She frowned as she tried to think of a movie she had once seen where the underlying premise was something like that.

Sarah Ramsay frowned back. ‘It’s a big thing, as you call it, because there’s been a suspicious death! I suppose with all that’s happened since you came to live here, that seems like an everyday occurrence to you, but believe me, it’s important.’

‘You sound almost as if you’re blaming me for everything that’s happened here in the last few years,’ said Amaryllis slowly. ‘I don’t think that’s very fair.’

‘It isn’t fair of you to keep pushing against the police the way you do either,’ retorted Sarah. ‘So why were you so determined to get into that garden? Do you have a secret obsession with alpacas?’

‘No, of course not! I don’t know anything about them. I thought perhaps the woman Jemima and Dave had seen chasing the alpaca might be in some sort of trouble. That’s how this started.’

‘In trouble? Why would you think that?’

‘The way they described her. She sounded a bit desperate. I thought I might be able to help her catch the animal – or something.’

It all sounded terribly lame, and she wouldn’t have blamed Sarah for not believing the story. But the Chief Inspector sat back, took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, and said wearily, ‘But your friend Christopher helped her instead, when he came along... Honestly, Amaryllis, why do you do this?’

‘Do what?’

‘Get yourself into the middle of police cases. There must be lots of other things you could do with your time.’

‘Well, I tried politics, but it wasn’t for me,’ Amaryllis said with a laugh. ‘Then there was a knitting club, years ago...’

‘Listen. I’ve got a problem.’

‘Don’t you mean Houston, we have a problem?’

‘This isn’t the right time for fooling around,’ said Sarah, fixing Amaryllis with a steely gaze. ‘My problem is that one of the neighbours has shopped you.’

‘What?’

‘One of the neighbours has placed you at the crime scene quite a while before you say you were there. And dragging something along with you, too... Now, I don’t think you’ll have failed to notice that the man wasn’t killed at the scene. The lack of blood, the tidy way he was set out... We’re in the middle of running forensics, of course, to make sure of that and to try to establish where he was killed. But in the meantime, you’re the only one in the frame.’

‘What does he mean, dragging something? The only thing I was dragging was my feet... It was hard work going the long way round and having to climb over his fence. How the hell does he think I manoeuvred a dead body over his fence in the first place?’

‘Calm down,’ said Sarah, and Amaryllis realised that by the end of her little speech she had been standing over her former friend and more or less shouting in her face. She simmered down, slumping back into the hard chair. After a moment Sarah carried on. ‘You seem to think you know who this neighbour is, but without giving too much away I can tell you it may not be the person you imagine it is. And by the way, we’ve also logged a second complaint from a neighbour that you were acting suspiciously just today in the same area... This isn’t the Middle East, and you’re not a secret agent any more, Amaryllis. This is a law-abiding town – apart from the recent cases, of course, but they’re just a blip in the crime statistics – and people notice things that are out of the ordinary.’

Amaryllis, feeling even more like the school rebel, kicked the table leg a couple of times and muttered, ‘You really don’t know Pitkirtly, do you?’

‘Be that as it may,’ said Sarah, sounding even more like the head girl or even the headmistress, ‘can you explain why one of the neighbours might have seen you doing the things that have been reported to us?’

‘No,’ said Amaryllis, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I didn’t have anything with me, and I had only just got to the garden centre when it all kicked off. Either he saw someone else or he’s making it all up. Have you even identified the victim yet?’

Sarah took a moment to straighten all the paperwork that was lying on the table in front of her before saying, ‘You know I can’t tell you that. And why should anyone make up stories about your movements?’

‘Why shouldn’t you believe me instead of some complete stranger?’ Amaryllis countered.

‘Could you go along to the tea-room, Constable McLean, and get us all some tea?’ said Sarah suddenly to the uniformed officer who had been sitting silently, writing in his notebook. ‘And maybe a few biscuits, as long as they aren’t those pink wafer things.’

‘I’d prefer coffee, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Amaryllis. She didn’t really want either tea or coffee – a neat whisky might have helped, though – but she was still feeling sulky and unco-operative.

‘Tea – coffee – whatever,’ said Sarah with an impatient wave of her hand.

The constable left the interview room.

‘You do know that I’ve got to do this, don’t you?’ said Sarah urgently to Amaryllis.

‘What do you mean, you’ve got to? You’re the one in charge – you can do what you want.’

‘It isn’t as simple as that, and you already know that. It’s because we’re old friends. I’ve got to be seen to take these reports seriously, otherwise they’ll send somebody even worse than me – I know that’s hard to believe – and you’ll be in real trouble.’

‘So I’m not in real trouble right now?’ said Amaryllis.

‘Look,’ said Sarah, ‘I know you didn’t kill that man. Apart from anything else, you wouldn’t have done it in such a bizarre way or drawn attention to it. For God’s sake, they might as well have made a big sky-written arrow pointing to the scene. No, you’d have done it secretly and silently, and hidden the body somewhere it would never have been found. And you’d have made damn sure you were nowhere around if it was discovered after all.’

‘Nice that you know me so well. But do I really have to stay in custody?’

‘We’re going to have to keep you in overnight just to make a point,’ said Sarah. ‘Unless those friends of yours decide to mount some sort of idiotic rescue operation.’

Amaryllis smiled in genuine amusement for the first time since her arrest. ‘That’s exactly the kind of idiotic thing they might do.’