from me. Not for my own good. Not for any reason.”
“Gemma, I only wanted—”
“No.” Her voice shook. “Not if we’re in this together—
a family. You have to promise me.”
“But—”
“It’s the crack in the ice, Duncan. Don’t you see? It could happen to us, what’s happened to Hazel and Tim, and that’s how it starts. A little deception, a little something kept back. It could happen to us,” she repeated.
And he did see. She was right—he should have told her. It was a learned habit, sharing, and one at which he had not had much practice. He had been on his own for too many years, but before that, he should have learned his lesson with Vic. “No, it won’t,” he said, and ignoring the stares of passersby, drew her to him. “We won’t let it.”
“This is Superintendent Kincaid, from Scotland Yard,”
said Gemma. “We need to see Chief Inspector Ross.”
“He’s out, I’m afraid. If you’ll just—”
“But it’s urgent. If you’ll tell him—”
“He really is out, ma’am,” the sergeant said, apologetically. “He’s in Inverness, at the hospital.”
Of course, Ross would be attending the postmortem, Gemma realized, and she felt a moment’s thankfulness that it wasn’t she performing that duty. “What about Sergeant Munro?”
“With the chief inspector.”
“Can you give the chief inspector a message, then?”
She passed the sergeant her card. “Ask him to ring me on my mobile, as soon as he can. I have some information for him.”
“Is it something I can help you with?” offered the sergeant, his very blue eyes alert and speculative.
Gemma hesitated before replying. “No. I think I’d better talk to Chief Inspector Ross. But ta just the same.”
She flashed him a grateful smile.
When she and Kincaid reached the street again, he grinned wickedly at her. “The man fancies you.”
“What—the sergeant? Bollocks!”
“Plain as day. Unless that’s what they call community policing up here.”
Gemma gave him her most severe look. She knew he was deliberately trying to charm her, to smooth over the difficulty between them, but she was flattered nonethe-less. “It’s too bad my feminine charms didn’t impress Chief Inspector Ross.”
“Shall we wait for him?” Kincaid asked as he reached the car. “I must say I’m looking forward to meeting the man who could resist you.”
“No.” As she slid behind the wheel, Gemma debated bringing up Kit again but decided it would be better to wait until they had some uninterrupted time.
Now she needed to bring Kincaid up-to-date on what she had learned about Alison Grant and her unwelcome suitor. They could pay a call on Callum MacGillivray on the way to the B&B. “No, we can’t afford to put ourselves at Chief Inspector Ross’s convenience. We’ve other fish to fry.”
romantic a figure as Gemma had imagined from her glimpse of him on Saturday night.
At the sound of their car bumping down the track to MacGillivray’s Stables, he had come out of the barn and stood watching them, pitchfork in hand. When they got out and approached him, she found he smelled, quite literally, of horseshit. Nor did he seem particularly pleased to see them.
“If ye want to make a booking, ye’ll have to talk to my aunt, and she’s away the noo,” he said curtly. But in spite of the less-than-welcoming statement, he peered curiously at Gemma, as if trying to place her.
Gemma caught a glimpse of Kincaid’s amused expression and knew he would tease her about making another conquest. Making an effort to ignore him, Gemma focused on Callum MacGillivray and found herself staring at his bare chest. Although not a heavily built man, he was well muscled, and his fair skin gleamed with sweat.
Hurriedly, she raised her eyes to his face and said, “No, it’s you we’ve come to see. You are Callum MacGillivray, right?” Kincaid had agreed that they could not identify themselves as police officers—they were courting Ross’s ire even with their unofficial questions—so they’d decided the simplest approach would be best. “We were friends of Donald Brodie,” she explained after giving their names, fudging the truth only a little. “And since your property is next to the Inneses’, we thought you might have seen something.”
“What sort of thing?” Callum leaned on his pitchfork, looking wary.
Kincaid extricated himself from the thorough sniffing administered by Callum’s dog, a sleek black Lab. “Someone doing something out of the ordinary . . . or someone doing something ordinary at the wrong time.”
“And why should I tell ye if I had? The police have been here already, nosing about.”
“I was staying at the Inneses’,” countered Gemma. “I saw you on Saturday night, watching Alison Grant. And I’ve talked to Alison—she says it was you who told her Donald would be there.”
“What if I did? There’s no crime in that.”
“Alison says you were jealous of her relationship with Donald—”
“Och, you canna believe everything the woman says,”
Callum said with obvious exasperation. “She had no relationship with Donald. I only wanted her to see the truth of it.”
“That was a bit brutal, don’t you think?” asked Gemma, in a tone of friendly inquiry.
“I told her time and again. She wouldna listen to me.”
“Did you think she would thank you for it?”
“Aye, weel, I suppose I wasna thinking past the moment,” Callum admitted, with less assurance. He picked up a fleece pullover thrown carelessly across a wheel-barrow and pulled it over his head, as if the cold had suddenly struck him. “I didna realize she’d be angry with
“But you knew she’d be furious with Donald—which she was. Did you not think she might take it further than a shouting match?”
“Alison? I’ll tell ye what I told thon policeman; Alison wouldna hurt anyone.”
“She seemed pretty tough to me.” Gemma raised an eyebrow.
“You havena seen her with her wee daughter, Chrissy.
She’s a good mother.” Callum’s defense was earnest, but so ready that Gemma suspected he had been called on to repeat it more than once. And it might be true, she
thought, but good mothers could be fierce, especially if their children were at risk. Remembering what Heather Urquhart had said about Alison’s daughter being crippled, she wondered if Donald had somehow threatened the well-being of the child.
Kincaid, she saw, had gone back to fondling the dog, making himself inconspicuous so as not to disturb the rapport she’d established with Callum. She knew he was listening intently, however, in spite of his relaxed posture.
“Callum, how was it you knew about Hazel—my friend—coming to see Donald for the weekend?”
“It was when we were fishing, the three of us. I’d never heard Donald talk that way about a woman before. He took them for granted, the same as he did Alison.”
“The three of you?” asked Gemma, curious.
“Aye. Donald and John and me.” Callum looked suddenly uncomfortable. “We would go out, on the occasion.”
“Salmon good along here, is it?” asked Kincaid.
“Nae. It’s mostly the trout.” Callum reached for his pitchfork again, as if to terminate the conversation.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Gemma said quickly, to forestall him. “You and Donald were friends, weren’t you?”
“Aye. Since we were at primary school together.”
“Did Donald know that you were fond of Alison?”
