Both officers towered over the seated figure, feeling awkward and ill at ease, unsure of the etiquette in this situation. Their hostess, in contrast, seemed unflustered, relaxed even, despite the unmistakeable tension of her visitors and her own relative undress. Eyes half closed, she said: ‘Why don’t you both jusst sit on the ground, officers,’ before adding, as an afterthought, ‘I haff only von deckchair ant I neet it.’
And so the interview began with her interrogators squatting at her feet, each wishing that they had taken the initiative earlier and requested, or even demanded, that the session be conducted indoors. Alice, painfully conscious that any authority she might once have possessed had evaporated on finding herself at eye level to a bare knee, began: ‘I understand that you were the first one to find Mr Lyon on Wednesday night. Is that right?’
‘Yess.’
From under the rug Mrs Nordquist found a cigarette, and endeavoured, ineffectually, to light it while preserving her decency.
‘Can you tell us how that came about, you finding him, I mean?’
The remaining lobster-red arm extended itself to grasp the glass, and a large swig was consumed before any answer was forthcoming.
‘Waal, I wass upstairs in my betroom actually-it faces the street-ant I heard a car. The noiss of sutten acceleration… high speet. From nowhere. Then there was the sort of… thut… ant then the sount of the car drifing away. I looked out,’ she stopped momentarily and sighed before continuing, ‘ant there he wass. Nicholas, I mean, lying on the copples, blut all around him. Sso I put down my hairbrush ant ran out to see him. His eyes were clost. I shouted “Mrs McColl, Mrs McColl! Nine, nine, nine.” She gott the ambulance ant brought blankets to keep him varm. I state with him… but he nefer opened his eyes or spoke.’
Alice looked up at Mrs Nordquist’s face. Her lower lip was trembling and she was blinking copiously, fighting to keep control of her emotions. Wordlessly, the policewoman passed her the glass of aquavit and wordlessly, she drank from it, draining every last drop.
‘And when did all this happen?’ Alistair asked.
‘The night before lasst. Oh… say, nine o’clock, possibly, a little after when I heard the noisses.’
‘But you didn’t see anything happen? The collision? The first thing you saw was Mr Lyon, injured on the street?’
‘Yess. I nefer saw the car. Most probably, it must have been parked in Moray Place or something. It wass the sutten acceleration that first… well, that seemed so ott.’
Freya padded through the French doors to join her mistress, and stood expectantly in front of her. Gently, Mrs Nordquist raised both of the dog’s ears in her hands and then sank her face into its warm head. As the detectives began to rise from their prostrate position, it stared at them with its sinister yellow eyes and let out a long, low growl which stopped them in their tracks. The noise only ceased when Mrs Nordquist came up for air and relaxed back into her deckchair. And then, and only then, did her visitors exit her domain.
Mrs McColl, an Aberdonian Scot and as conventional as her Scandinavian employer was unconventional, sat with her knees tight together on a leather-covered stool in the state-of-the-art kitchen. In fact, the place was more of a food laboratory than an ordinary, domestic kitchen, the stainless steel and glass units lending it an air of sterility. Oddly, the housekeeper was wearing a nylon housecoat, a garment completely at odds with her space-age workplace, an environment which would more harmoniously have suited a skin-tight silver one-piece rather than this incongruous throwback to a gentler age.
‘When did you first become aware of the accident, Mrs McColl?’ Alice enquired.
‘The time? Och, mebbe about half nine or thereabouts I’d say. I was doing the washing up-we’ve a Miele, quiet as a mouse you know-and I heard her shouting, screaming something. I ran upstairs, looked out the door and saw her in the street, bending over someone who’s been knocked down. I phoned the ambulance right away. Then, after that, for you… the polis, I mean.’
‘Did you see the car involved in the accident… anything?
‘No, I’m sorry. All I saw was the man, Mr Lyon, lying in the street. I recognised him when I went out with the blankets.’
‘Had you heard anything before you became aware of your employer shouting?’
‘No. I’m really very sorry but I was busy putting away the supper things. I only heard her voice because… well, she was screaming, she sounded hysterical.’
‘Did you know Mr Lyon or Sheriff Freeman?’ Alice persisted.
‘No,’ the woman looked her inquisitor in the eye. ‘I didn’t know either of them. Mrs Nordquist does, so I have seen them both, on occasions, when they’ve visited here. I saw more of the Sheriff. The little I saw of them… well, I liked them. Mrs Nordquist was always very pleased to see either of them, and the Sheriff, you know, helped her a lot after her husband left her. And not just with the legal stuff; as a real friend, I mean. I think, and I may be speaking out of turn, but I think he was helping her to get off… well, the drink. She almost never touched the stuff in the old days. My life was a great deal easier then, when she was happy, I mean.’
‘Alice, love, I’ve left a little note on your desk,’ DI Manson said cheerily to her as she passed him on her way to the Ladies. The ill-suppressed glee in his voice forewarned her that its contents would not please her. Sure enough. It contained an instruction from the DCI that she now telephone all the garages round the edge of the capital; places like Musselburgh, Tranent, Penicuik, Portobello, Ratho and so on. Sheer unadulterated drudgery, probably given to her as a punishment for her unauthorised impersonation and, more damningly, the lack of remorse shown by her for it. At their meeting earlier that morning, Robin Bruce had impressed upon her his disappointment and disapproval of her conduct. And he had conveyed something altogether more sinister; that if the matter were to be taken no further she would, in some intangible way, be in his debt.
‘DS Rice, apart from anything else, scarce resources might well have been wasted in the search for Mr Lyon’s non-existent daughter.’
‘I know, Sir. I’m sorry, too, but I don’t think that’s very likely. Tracing the woman would have fallen to the murder squad, so I’d have heard about it and immediately explained that she didn’t exist.’
‘And if you hadn’t heard… because, say, you were out of the office attending to something or other?
Good point, she thought, but said only: ‘Well. As I say, Sir, I’m sorry. But Mr Lyon had nobody. I knew that he had nobody. And he was, obviously, dying. If I hadn’t pretended to be a member of the family the nurse would have kicked me out.’
‘Before you went to the hospital you didn’t know he was dying. What the hell were you doing there anyway?’
‘It sounded, from your report, as if he was close to death’s door. You said it was “likely to prove fatal” after all, and traffic was involved. I knew him a bit. I liked him. To be honest, I wanted to see him. It all happened in my own time.’
‘Well, we’re lucky that the Infirmary isn’t making more of a fuss about the whole thing. As far as I am concerned you can visit whomsoever the hell you like, in your own time, but do not, I repeat, DO NOT ever impersonate a relative like that again. Is that clear? This is a murder enquiry and you-you nearly sent us off on an expensive wild goose chase.’
‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.’
‘Oh, and Alice?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘For the moment, at least, this’ll go no further. Be our little secret, eh?’ And he winked conspiratorially.
And looking at the Yellow Pages she felt genuine penitence; ‘Boswell’s Garage’, ‘Butchart Motors’, ‘Chas’s Auto Repairs’, page after page of similar entries. But not for holding the man’s hand as he died. Jaded already, she picked up the receiver and dialled the first number.