Bitter End Part 43

'What I'm referring to,' Fizz said, with only the faintest tremor betraying the effect this was having on her nervous system, 'is attempted murder.'

Gra.s.sick didn't even blink. 'Attempted murder, eh? Well now, that's a serious charge. I do hope you have good grounds for laying it. Do tell me: whose attempted murder of whom?'

'Vanessa's attempted murder of you, Mr Gra.s.sick.

Surely you were aware of what had happened?'

After a brief silence, Gra.s.sick shook his head and produced a bark of laughter. This is the result of Buchanan's inquiry, eh? Two weeks raking around and this is what he comes up with? You should take up fiction writing, the two of you.'

'Perhaps you'd allow me to run over our line of reasoning, sir, so that you can point out where we went wrong?'

Gra.s.sick made a show of looking at his watch. 'I can give you five minutes.'

'Thank you, sir.' Fizz felt she should have addressed him as 'm'lud'. Half of what she was about to hit him with was circ.u.mstantial evidence but, with a bit of luck, it would be enough to shut him up. To our way of thinking, the whole thing stemmed from the fact that Vanessa became accidentally pregnant. It must have come as a very nasty shock to her because, according to witnesses, she absolutely did not want a baby. But she was stuck with it, wasn't she? Your political career was built on your Pro Life stance and, if it emerged that your wife'd had an abortion, you'd be back to the drawing board. It would be hard for anyone to prove what you did to prevent her getting rid of the baby 265. but, since it's your money behind her business, one could make an educated guess.'

Gra.s.sick didn't move but his face showed only a faint amus.e.m.e.nt as he waited for her to continue. Fizz hadn't expected him to break down in tears at her first salvo but, even though she knew his calm had to be faked, she still found it horribly unnerving to have to start insinuating that his marriage must have been on its last legs.

'In the end, I think her business meant more to Vanessa than you did. If she wasn't to be lumbered with an unwanted child, you had to go.' She caught sight of her hands shaking and knotted them in her lap. 'She was in no financial position to divorce you so she planned to make use of your visits to Brora Lodge to put an end to your relations.h.i.+p. Probably over a period of a couple of weeks at least, she topped up your store of gas cylinders in the bas.e.m.e.nt, then she bought an old heater from a house sale, one that had a thermostat that would give off a spark when it switched off.'

'Most ingenious.' Gra.s.sick nodded condescendingly as if this was all new to him. 'Sounds like a nice little time-bomb.'

'I imagine it would have done the job,' Fizz agreed. 'All Vanessa had to do was turn on the gas cylinders. We have a witness who saw her at the cottage that Friday afternoon when she was doubtless doing just that. You yourself would have set things in motion when you turned on the electricity at the mains on your arrival, allowing the heater to slowly raise the temperature of the cellar till the thermostat switched off. No doubt, she'd set the thermostat to switch off quickly, but by then she would have been alibiing herself in Inverness. Had your car not started to act up I suspect it would have been your grieving widow I'd have been talking to today.'

'My ex-wife would not have given you the time of day, miss! Nor would she have listened to a word of your complete drivel.' 266. 'But you have, Mr Gra.s.sick,' Fizz dared to point out and paused to let the implication sink in. 'So, with your permission, I'll go on.'

He flushed ruby red but chose not to reply, which Fizz took as a good sign.

By the time Vanessa arrived at the home of her friend, Charlotte Mclntosh, she was all hyped up. But some time during that evening you called her mobile phone and she learned that you had not gone to Brora Lodge after all.

She must have seen, not only that her plan had failed, but that she was in danger of being found out. The gas would have leaked all through the house by the time you got there the following day. You'd smell it and check the cylinders . . . find them all open . . . find the heater . . .' She paused, giving Gra.s.sick the chance to comment, but he said nothing and his face remained unreadable. His stillness shook her confidence a little but she ploughed on.

'Vanessa had to do something. She must have reckoned that she could make it to Chirnside, perform a swift cover-up, and get back to Inverness before she was missed.

Maybe she planned to abort the murder attempt for the time being. Maybe she thought she could get most of the gas out of the cellar and start again from scratch, so that there would be just enough leakage to cause the explosion some time after your arrival the following morning. It's impossible to know which was her intention, but that's when she was killed. She had been in the house only a few seconds -probably making a quick dash to turn off the gas cylinders. It was the doorbell being rung that provided the spark -it was battery operated, wasn't it?'

She took a long breath, trying to gather her thoughts, but Gra.s.sick gave another bark of laughter and pushed back his chair. 'Well, if that's the best you can come up with, Miss Fitzpatrick, I don't think the Procurator Fiscal will want anything to do with it. In fact, the standing of Buchanan and Stewart will be no higher than a snake's belly. And now, I'm afraid I have heard enough nonsense 267. for one morning so if you would kindly--'

'Don't you want to know what Jamie Ford was doing there with your wife at two-thirty in the morning?'

Fizz had been sure all along that Gra.s.sick didn't know the answer to that one even before she had confirmed it with Dougie, the WAS copper, the night before. The police were so determined to keep Ford's story a secret that they had let Gra.s.sick stew over that and he'd have been pretty dumb not to wonder if his wife and Jamie were lovers and if, consequently, Vanessa's child was Jamie's. All the same, it pleased her to see Gra.s.sick sit back in his chair.

'I may as well hear the whole story, I suppose. But please make it brief.'

'According to Mrs Ford, who has been extremely difficult to locate,' Fizz said, 'Jamie Ford was a light sleeper.

He heard the sound of a car, saw the reflection of a torch beam in the garden of Brora Lodge, and a.s.sumed that the place was being burgled. He went over and rang the bell, intending to hide till he saw who came to the door.

However, with the gas already leaking up the bas.e.m.e.nt steps to the hallway, the spark from the doorbell detonated the explosion.'

Gra.s.sick made a robust effort to hide his emotion. For a couple of seconds his face held on to his granite expression of neutrality and then began to slacken as though it were made of melting wax. His jowls sagged, the faint bags under his eyes deepened, and his eyelids drooped over his weary eyes. Fizz could almost have felt sorry for him.

Almost.

'I'm sure that knowledge must set your mind at rest,' she said brazenly, before he could get back to throwing her out. 'Which is at least something you owe Tam Buchanan.

I doubt very much if anyone else would have had the tenacity to pursue that piece of information.'

Gra.s.sick cleared his throat. 'He was never short of tenacity. n.o.body could accuse him of that. Nor, I'm willing to admit, of downright, unnecessary nosiness.' 268. Fizz sat up and recrossed her legs. 'Well that's one thing we're not going to disagree about, sir,' she said, getting ready to go in for the kill with a bright and happy smile that would have cheered up Pagliacci. 'I've worked with Buchanan for more than two years and I'd have to say he's probably the most honourable man I've ever met in my life.

I know for a fact how dearly he would have loved to turn his back on this inquiry, and I think the rest of the Edinburgh legal fraternity would agree with me when I say that if his determination to follow the dictates of his conscience were to damage his career it would be--'

'Oh, do you?' snarled Gra.s.sick, abruptly returning to his normal viperish persona. 'And you're an expert on such matters, I've no doubt. I suppose you think we'll all go weak at the knees under the effect of his bonnie blue eyes, is that it? Away home to your romantic novels and your soap operas, la.s.sie, and give me peace.'

'My intention was merely to a.s.sure you, Mr Gra.s.sick, that Tam Buchanan would not dream of taking what he knows to the police or, indeed, to the newspapers.'

He had done very well, up to this point, to have kept his temper under control but now Fizz guessed she was about to witness the fabled holocaust of his rage. Exactly why he held back was something of a mystery: either Buchanan's warning had rung true or he was muzzled by the perceived threat in her defence of Tarn's morals.

'He wouldn't, eh?' he said nastily. 'But you would, is that right?'

'Of course I wouldn't,' Fizz a.s.sured him. 'Not intentionally.

All I meant to imply was that Buchanan is a man you can trust.'

'I understand perfectly what you intended to imply, Miss Fitzpatrick.' He spat out the words as if they were poison. 'I take it that your purpose in invading my chambers today has something to do with striking a bargain.'

'If you are insinuating something as degrading as blackmail,' Fizz declared, putting on an Oscar-deserving 269. performance of outrage, 'I have to protest. My purpose was to invite your admiration for a brilliant, highly qualified, and dedicated lawyer who deserves your patronage rather than your knife in his back. Admittedly, he has dealt with some high-profile cases over the past few years, but I can a.s.sure you that he did not seek them out, quite the reverse.' She found herself standing up and put her fists on the edge of the desk to steady herself.

'Mr Gra.s.sick, that man is wasted behind a solicitor's desk. He is being stultified. He needs -and deserves -a

job where he can use his talents to their full extent -for

instance, as an advocate.'

Gra.s.sick stared at her with his lips apart for several seconds as if he doubted the evidence of his ears. Then a wide grin broke across his face and he gave vent to a quickly smothered spurt of laughter.

'Miss Fitzpatrick, you are full of surprises. Please sit down.' He folded his arms on the desk and hunched his shoulders as he watched her drop into her chair. 'Yes indeed. You are a most surprising -and, if I may say so enterprising young lady. You're in your third year, I understand, and widely expected to get a first, if you keep on the way you're doing. Oh, yes, er ... Fizz ... I was interested enough to ask a mutual friend about you over the weekend. He thought you were star material, you'll be happy to hear.'

Fizz couldn't imagine where this was likely to lead but she wasn't about to drop her guard just yet. She kept her mouth shut.

'A survivor, he called you, and tough as old boots. Well, that's no bad thing for a lawyer. You'll need all the toughness you can get.' He narrowed his eyes to look closely at her face. 'And you have carved yourself a little niche in Buchanan and Stewart already, eh? Good proactive thinking that, and I've no doubt that's the reason you decided to champion young Buchanan, eh? Safeguarding your own future, am I right?' 270. Fizz moistened dry lips and decided that candour was her best option at this delicate stage in the proceedings.

'Only partly. I do want to make sure I have a firm to work for when I qualify but, more importantly, I think Buchanan is one of the straightest guys in the profession and I think he deserves to get ahead.'

He clasped his hands and confined a smile to one corner of his mouth. 'And how do you know that he'd welcome being called to the bar? Have you spoken to him about this little ploy of yours?'

'No, I haven't. And if I did he'd probably sack me for interfering,' she said. The fact that he had sacked her already was, she felt, irrelevant since she'd be back doing business at the old stand before he was fit again and by then his annoyance would have evaporated. 'But I know he'd jump at the chance. It's what he should have gone for in the first place if he hadn't been bulldozed by his parents.'

Gra.s.sick nodded and regarded his clasped hands in silence for a few moments. 'I have to say, Fizz, that I like your style and, to tell the truth, I can't help liking Tarn's style as well -even without your unsolicited testimonial.

Honesty is not a quality that one meets up with every day -not the kind of honesty that outweighs self-interest, and I hear nothing but good about the lad.' He smiled wryly.

'He's not short of confidence, I'll say that for him.'

Fizz wanted to take a deep breath but couldn't quite make it. She had a suspicion that he was ready to cut a deal but it wasn't easy to be certain. She still had plenty to hit him with. Interfering with the course of justice, for a start. It was perfectly obvious that he had pulled strings to have some aspects of the case suppressed. At another time even he would probably have found that difficult but, given the involvement of the WAS, the Procurator Fiscal would, in any case, have been bending over backwards to hush up the whole business. She was also totally convinced that it was Gra.s.sick who had funded the Pringles' disappearance. 271. It would have been well worth his while to offer them a cruise in the Med or at least a fortnight in a swish hotel to put them beyond Buchanan's reach, and it was clear that n.o.body else was likely to have profited by their disappearance.

She'd have loved to see his reaction to both of these accusations but they could wait till she saw which way the wind was blowing. It was never a good idea to expend ammunition which could be used another time. However, she did feel able to increase the pressure a little.

'Unfortunately, we turned up more than we expected to during the course of our investigations,' she said. 'I think I can tell you, in strictest confidence, that Jamie Ford was under the Witness Protection Scheme and in investigating him we accidentally crossed swords with the villains who were trying to kill him. I really can't go into any details, as you'll understand, sir, but during the arrest of the villains on Sat.u.r.day night Buchanan was shot in the chest. Just a flesh wound, fortunately, but the A&E unit at the Royal decided he had to stay in for observation.'

Gra.s.sick put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes for a second. 'And you tell me he doesn't seek out these confrontations?'

'I have to confess,' Fizz admitted, 'he's inclined to blame it on me.'