In the street outside her flat she thought at first that the Mini would refuse to start. It spluttered and choked and she explained to it, more loudly and obscenely with every twist of the key in the ignition, that she needed this story, she really needed it. At last the engine turned over. As she looked in the mirror before driving off, she thought she saw the back of someone in the front garden of the house where she had her bedsit. She thought for an instant that it was Max, but when she looked again behind her, the figure had gone. Then she told herself that she was losing her mind. She was tired and she had made the image up. It was the postman or that strange man who lived on the ground floor who always went into the garden to clean his shoes. But all day as she drove around the region following her story, asking her questions, becoming more alarmed and triumphant about the answers she received, she had the sense of a shadow behind her. She never saw anyone. She did not even think that she was being followed. It was that someone knew where she was going and arrived there first, that he was following the workings, the logic of her mind. You’re imagining things, she thought. You’re so desperate to have this story to yourself that you’re imagining the competition.
The drunk driver had his own business in a new glass-and-plastic factory on the industrial estate to the west of Otterbridge. He made valves, he told her. She gathered it was something to do with the oil trade, deep-sea diving. He sat in his cluttered office and explained it all in detail, hoping, she supposed, for a feature that would give him free advertisement, but she did not take it in. He offered to take her round the workshop and she went because she thought it would please him. He had a daughter, he said, not much younger than her, a student. She seemed to remind him of his daughter, and when he offered to take her out for lunch, she accepted, thinking she might get more out of him when he had drunk a couple of pints.
“Only the pub over the road,” he said, grinning. “ I can’t take you into town. Not now. I have to get a taxi home and back.” Then, suddenly and lonely: “My wife’s left me, you know. She said the publicity was the last straw. I hope my daughter will keep in touch all the same.”
And there, in the pub over Scotch and scampi, he told her everything she wanted and more, and she came away with a list of contacts. As she went to the ladies’ halfway through lunch, she looked carefully around the lounge bar, sensing again the shadow behind her, but she saw no-one she recognised. When she drove away from the factory, the Mini starting this time as sweetly as anything, it was probably only coincidence that a large grey saloon parked along the road pulled out, too, and kept far enough away from her that it was impossible for her to see the driver.
She arrived home just as the children were coming out of the school on the corner of her street and the pavement was full of mothers. In her flat the curtains were still drawn from the day before and there was a bottle of sour milk on the table. Mary Raven opened the curtains and opened the window to let out the smell, but the noise of the children distracted her and she shut it again. She tried to phone Colin Henshaw, as she had tried several times over the previous days, but again his wife answered. Mary pretended to be an estate agent phoning on behalf of a client who wanted to buy one of the new houses in Brinkbonnie, but Mrs. Henshaw still said he would be out all day.
“Who are you?” Rosemary Henshaw repeated suspiciously when Mary gave her fictitious name, as if she recognised the voice on the telephone and did not believe the fiction.
“Perhaps you could tell me where I can get hold of him,” Mary persisted.
“No,” Rosemary Henshaw said shortly. “ I’m sorry. I’ve no idea.”
So Mary went back to the list of contacts, and encouraging the Mini with soft words and endearments, she set off round the region again, feeling the shape of the story growing more solid with every interview she did, already seeing her name on the front page of the London dailies.
When she got back to the flat late that night, triumphant, needing coffee, whisky, the biggest Chinese take-away in the world, there was a note from James Laidlaw asking her to make sure she reported to the office the next day.
Sod you, she thought. One more day and I’ll have this cracked. Then I won’t need you anymore. You’ll be finished.
Of Max there was no word.
Chapter Twenty
Ramsay was in his kitchen, drinking coffee, spreading some of his mother’s homemade marmalade on a piece of toast when Jack Robson appeared at the cottage. The interview with Mary Raven the night before had depressed and frustrated him. He had expected more from her. He had thought she would provide all the answers he needed. If she had not killed Alice Parry, why was she being so obstructive? Ramsay was sure Max Laidlaw was her secret lover and his failure to persuade her to tell him that had left him feeling incompetent. She was hardly the sort to be coy about sex. He could not help feeling that Hunter would have made a better job of it.
When the knock came on the front door, it was still early, before eight o’clock, and Ramsay supposed it was probably the postman with a circular too big to fit through the letter box. Instead it was Jack Robson, his face glowing after the walk from the other end of the village. He stood, his hands in his pockets, waiting to be let in.
“Hey, man,” Robson said. “ You’re a hard person to get hold of. I was here several times yesterday evening and I couldn’t catch you in.”
“No,” Ramsay said. “I was working late.” He did not know what to make of Robson’s appearance. In a serious investigation there was always the pressure of time, and once he let the old man into the house it might be hard to get rid of him. Yet there was always the possibility that he had useful information.
“Come in,” he said. “ I’ll make you some tea.”
“Well,” Robson said. “If you’re sure you’ve time.” He scrubbed his boots on the doormat and stepped in, looking around him with unembarrassed curiosity. “You’ve a nice place here. And a canny view.”
“Aye,” Ramsay said. “Unless Henshaw gets planning permission and there’s a new estate built at the end of the garden. There’ll not be much of a view then.”
“You don’t want to worry about that,” Robson said. “Building out there would extend the boundary of the village and that’s not in the structure plan.”
“The structure plan didn’t count for much in Brinkbonnie.”
“No,” Robson said. “ Well, I’m here to talk about that.”
Ramsay took Robson into the kitchen and made strong, sweet tea the way Jack liked it.
“Have you come up with anything?” he asked. He felt suddenly optimistic. Surely Jack would not be here so early in the morning if he did not think he could help.
Robson sat on a painted wooden chair. “I’ve no evidence,” he said. “Nothing I can lay my finger on. But I’ve got a theory.”
Ramsay was disappointed. He wanted something more concrete than theories.
“Go on,” he said.
“I’ve been through all the records,” Robson said. “I’ve gone back five years. I’m sure Henshaw’s found some way of manipulating the system. He even managed to get planning permission for sites where other developers had previously been turned down.
“So how’s he doing it?”
“It’s nothing to do with the council,” Robson said. “ I’ve already told you I’m certain of that.”
“Is it one of the officials then? Someone in the planning department?”
“No,” Robson said. “I think the corruption is more grassroots than that. You can have a village with a well-organised community group that successfully fights off any development, then along comes Henshaw and miraculously all the opposition disappears. It seems to happen again and again.”