Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 09 - Now May You Weep

him, but it had been worth it. Everything he had done, he had done for the best, for Alison, and for Chrissy. Surely, now that Alison knew the truth about Donald, she would see things differently. Checking in the rearview mirror, he pulled the old van into the road again. He would pay Alison a visit that evening, but first he had responsibilities to meet.

He had only gone a few miles when he saw the flash of blue lights ahead. Rounding a curve, he braked hard. Police cars lined the road, and a crowd milled in the verge.

His first thought was of his father—he and Janet worried constantly about Tom’s weaving progress down the narrow, winding road, but at least walking was safer than letting him behind the wheel of an automobile. Had the old man tempted fate once too often and stumbled in front of an oncoming car?

But as Callum drew nearer, he realized that the thick-est part of the mob had gathered in front of the Inneses’

gate. He spotted a van bearing the familiar logo of Grampian television. Dread gripped him. He pulled the van off onto the verge, and when he pulled the keys from the ignition, he saw that his hands were shaking.

He pushed his way through the crowd to the gate but

found his way blocked by a uniformed constable. “What is it? What’s happened?” he asked.

“Sorry, sir. I’m not at liberty to say.”

“But I’m a friend of the Inneses. Are they all right?”

Callum moved forward, and the constable stepped sideways neatly, blocking his path. “Sorry, sir. Can’t let you through. Orders.”

Callum hesitated, wondering if he might push his way past, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Peter McNulty, the stillman at Benvulin. McNulty motioned him aside, out of the constable’s hearing.

A dark-haired, blue-eyed Celt, McNulty usually displayed a debonair charm, but now his eyes looked blood- shot, and he was white and pinched about the mouth.

Callum gripped his arm. “What is it, Peter? What’s happened here?”

“It’s Donald Brodie. Someone’s bloody shot him,”

McNulty said hoarsely. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and took a sip from a flask.

“Brodie? He’s dead, then?” Callum stared at him.

“Aye.” McNulty passed him the flask. “I’ve a wee cousin on the force. He saw the body.”

“But—” Callum stopped, still trying to take in the implications.

“He was a good man, a good boss.” McNulty sounded near to tears. “Better than his father. God knows what’ll become of us now with her in charge.”

“Her?”

“Bloody Heather Urquhart. She’s a cold bitch, that one, who cares for nothing but her own power. She’ll try to convince the board of directors to sell to one of the large holding companies, because she thinks they’ll make her managing director. It’s not her family’s business at stake, and if you want my opinion, she’d like nothing bet-

ter than to see the Brodies done for.” McNulty swigged from the flask again, but absently. “French, Japanese, Americans, Canadians—soon there won’t be anything left in Scotland owned by Scots.”

There had been a McNulty as stillman at Benvulin since Donald Brodie’s great-great-grandfather’s time.

While Callum knew what it would mean to Peter to see Benvulin pass out of the Brodie family, he had more urgent concerns.

“But who could have killed him, Peter? Do ye think it was Heather Urquhart?”

Peter considered for a moment, his eyes bleary. “No,”

he said slowly. “She’s a serpent, that one. Not her style to shoot someone point-blank in the chest.”

“Oh, Christ,” Callum muttered, trying to banish the image. “Look, Peter, I’ve got to go.” Turning away, he blundered his way back to the van and climbed inside. He sat there, trying to think things through.

He had been up early that morning, walking Murphy down towards the river. He had heard a shot, he remembered, but had thought nothing of it. And then he had seen—no, that was bollocks.

Surely it had been a trick of the morning light, the mist rising from the river, a twist of his imagination. Callum shook his head as if to clear it, but it didn’t help. For the first time in his life, he doubted the evidence of his own senses.

Like a priest, Ross had seen them in all their affliction—

those dazed and befuddled with grief; those who went sharp and prickly with it, as if they could defend themselves; those who collapsed, like jellies taken too soon from the mold.

Perhaps that was why he had stopped attending the

church. He had had little confidence in the comfort tradi-tionally offered to the bereaved, and even less in God’s ability to punish the wicked.

On this morning, he called the suspects—and they were all suspects to him until proven otherwise—in what seemed to him the order of least importance. Of course, such initial impressions could be misleading, and it was only by a careful piecing together of their stories that he would be able to form a truer picture.

He began with Martin Gilmore. The young man came in with an air of suppressed excitement, and Ross had the impression he was struggling to rearrange his bony features into an expression of appropriate solemnity.

Having ascertained that Gilmore had shared a room with Brodie, and that he had heard Brodie go out about daybreak, Ross said, “You must have had some conversation with the man, then. What did ye talk about?”

Gilmore shrugged. “I don’t think he took me very seriously. Oh, he was friendly enough, but he was an Alan Breck sort of character—you know, all Highland disdain for someone who came from the city. If you weren’t born stalking stags and gaffing salmon and drinking whisky with your mother’s milk, you weren’t in the same club.”

“But he signed up for this cookery weekend.”

“Not that he had much real interest in the cooking. It was more of a lark for him.” Gilmore paused for a moment, as if wondering how much he should say. “And I think he had another . . . agenda. There was something going on between him and Hazel—Mrs. Cavendish.”

Ross raised an eyebrow. “What sort of something?”

“I’m not stupid, you know,” the young man said, his eyes gleaming with sudden malice. “They’ve all treated me like an idiot. There were all these awkward silences and loaded glances. And after that other woman came last

night, you could have cut the tension with a knife. They went out together—Donald and Hazel—after dinner, and you could tell there was a row brewing.”

“Did you hear them argue?”

Gilmore looked disappointed. “No. They must have gone round to the back of the house.”

“Did you see either of them after that?”

“No. The rest of us sat round next door, in the sitting room, and after a bit I went to bed. There’s no telly,” he added, as if inviting Ross’s disbelief.

Ross thought a moment, then backtracked. “You said a woman came here?”

“Just before dinner. Rang the bell and asked to speak to Donald, apparently. She had a child with her.”

“Any idea who she was?”

“Not a clue. A bit tarty, though, from what I could see.

Made me laugh, everyone trying to have a gander without being obvious about it.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“No. All too bloody polite, weren’t they?”

“All right, Mr. Gilmore. If you’ll just go and give your statement to the constable in the kitchen.”

Martin Gilmore stood. “Can I go after that?”

Glancing at his notes, Ross said with casual friendli-ness, “Keen to get back to work tomorrow, are you?”

Gilmore flushed an ugly, mottled red. “I’m out of work just now. Temporary setback.”

When he had left the room, Ross muttered to Sergeant Munro, “At least he had the grace to feel embarrassed about it. Most of the layabouts these days seem to find being on the dole a reason to brag.”

“Weel, I’d say he’d got himself free meals and a comfortable billet for the weekend,” reflected Munro. “What do you wager he’s still here tomorrow?”

*