‘Mmmm… let me think.’ She paused for a few seconds, before continuing. ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t remember a single thing about it now. Nothing sticks in my mind about that date. Apart from the accident, of course.’
Alistair caught Alice’s eye and she removed Mrs Gunn’s signed statement, now folded, from her pocket and handed it to the woman. She ostentatiously unfolded it, looking bemused, disturbed even, as if touching it might, in some way, soil her.
‘Oh, how interesting,’ she purred on reading it. ‘It’s what I remembered when I spoke to that young WPC. Of course! I’d been to drinks at Helen’s that night. You know,’ she paused, ‘there were lights on… in Freeman’s place, I mean. But nobody asked me about that, they just wanted to know if I’d seen anything of the accident. Or heard anything, obviously. No-one asked me about the house. I did see lights on. I thought it was you people actually as, goodness knows, you’d been practically living there.’
‘Iona,’ a voice bellowed, and Hamish Gunn hobbled into the room, doubled up, head almost parallel with the floor. On seeing the visitors, he attempted, briefly, to straighten up, groaned and relapsed back into his crooked state.
‘It’s jiggered, darling. Completely jiggered!’ he said, shaking his head, addressing his wife.
‘How did it happen?’
‘I parked the car in George Street, was just getting out of it, when suddenly, “snap!” and it had gone. Completely gone.’
‘No golf with Freddie at Muirfield this afternoon, then. I’ll phone him for you.’
As the woman left the room her husband lowered himself carefully onto a sofa, looking up at the Police officers.
‘What can I do for you, Sergeants?’ he said, eyes closed tight shut, as if the effort required to show good manners had become too much.
‘In the circumstances, sir, we’ll be very quick. It was just to see if you remembered seeing any signs of life in Sheriff Freeman’s house before Mr Lyon was hit in the accident?’ Alice said.
‘Christ knows!’ He grimaced, clearly in pain.
‘It was the night…’ Mrs Gunn shouted, ‘remember, darling, of Helen’s drinks party. We walked home from Douglas Gardens. There were definitely lights in his house.’
‘Well, I don’t remember any,’ the man replied cantankerously.
‘Well, they were there, sweetheart.’
‘Maybe! Maybe! But I don’t remember any, and I’m off to bed. Give me a hand up the stairs will you, Iona?’
Eric Manson was in a quandary. Should he peek again? But if so what might he find? He might scare himself to death. Preparing himself for the worst, he gently removed the tartan slipper, peeling off the heel, then easing the toe end forwards, minimising any unnecessary pressure on the forefoot. A finger at the top of the sock and it, too, could be removed without pain. Slumped on the lavatory seat he raised the sole for inspection and was horrified to note that the puncture mark was not only red but ridged too, a clear zig-zag pattern extending from it in all directions. Bloody Hell, he thought, this is SERIOUS. Spying his sock down on the floor he bent over to retrieve it, repelled by the prospect of its contamination, but relieved to note on examination that it was textured, replicating precisely the ominous pattern he had observed on his foot. Good. So far, no red line extending from the wound upwards to his heart. Presaging death.
‘Complete wanker!’
The voice, by his cubicle door, alarmed him. He had been so absorbed in the inspection of his injury that he had not heard anyone joining him in the gents.
‘Pussy footing about in his tartan baffy!’ A different voice this time.
‘Marilyn, not Eric. Marilyn Manson. Marilyn. Happy Birthday, Mr Chief Constable… Happy Birthday to you. Boo Boo Be Do,’ the first voice crooned.
Incandescent with rage, but unable to risk clambering off the loo seat, infected bare foot exposed to the filth on the toilet floor, Eric Manson fumed impotently. Little bastards!
A word from him, though, and they would be off, he thought. Unpunished. Stifling little mewls of pain, he pulled his sock on and laid the slipper on the floor, toes pointing like a ballerina, ready to put his foot into it. But the sound of heavy footsteps signalled his tormentors’ premature exit, the door swinging behind them.
In front of the mirror he gazed at his reflection. Too pale. Ghostly. And only yesterday his pleas for a different course of antibiotics had been refused yet again. If that sodding doctor has got it wrong, he thought, bile overflowing, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll… I’ll die! And no painkillers left. Inspiration came quickly, and he fished in his pocket for the Boots bag. Inside it was a small bottle of Calpol, an errand completed for his daughter-in-law. A sweet, strawberry flavour coated his taste buds and he swallowed half the contents, impressed by his own ingenuity, reassuring himself with the thought that babies don’t feel pain.
On Alice’s desk was a note in DC Littlewood’s meticulous hand.
‘Lab rang this morning. Report not available for a further week or so due to backlog. Results are through. Analysis of hair follicle samples and comparison with alien door handle samples from Moray Place reveal the DNA is from the same source.
P.S. Bob says he prefers Glenfiddich.’
Too many roads, Alice thought, were beginning to lead to Christopher Freeman. His DNA was in the Sheriff’s house, but his wife had said that the brothers had not met for years. Somehow, too, he appeared to have known of James Freeman’s change of mind about the access strip almost as soon as the wind farm company did, countermanding the instruction immediately. Yet he had given the impression that he had not been in recent contact with his brother. Urgently, she checked Holmes to see if the statements from their neighbours had been put on the system. Four residents of Frogston Road had been questioned and none of them recalled seeing a ‘For Sale’ sign on the Volkswagen Polo, although every single one of them said that they were familiar with the vehicle, aware that it was owned by the Freemans.
Her arrival at the bungalow was greeted coolly; the Major was present and on his own. His wife, he explained, had gone to collect their dry cleaning. He showed Alice into the sitting room, ostentatiously switched the cricket off and then they sat in the armchairs, facing each other. Both now tense, conscious that a duel was about to begin.
‘This seems to be becoming rather a habit, Sergeant,’ the man began dryly.
‘Yes, sir, but I had to leave prematurely last time, our talk seemed unfinished.’
‘Well, let’s finish our “talk” this time, shall we?’
‘Can you tell me how you knew your brother had decided not to go ahead with the wind farm, to keep Blackstone Mains out of it?’
The man blinked and swept his slick-backed hair with this hand.
‘The company. Vertenergy told me. Obviously.’
‘How did they tell you? By phone, letter or what?’
He paused before answering, ‘By phone, as I recall.’
‘When?’
‘How do you mean “when”?’ he said crossly.
‘When did the company inform you by telephone of your brother’s decision?’
A longer pause. ‘The day before I wrote the letter.’
‘That letter was dated 13th June… one day after your brother’s death, and we informed you of the killing on that very day.’
‘So, what are you suggesting? That I’d be too paralysed with grief to attend to a business matter? I think you’ll find I’ve never pretended to be close to James. On the contrary, I told you that we didn’t hit it off.’
‘No, what I was wondering about, sir, was the land. It belonged to you and James, both of you. On James’ death…’ her sentence remained unfinished.
‘On James’s death, it should by all rights have come to me,’ Christopher Freeman said, before correcting himself, ‘well-normally.’