Autographs In The Rain Part 37

Sure do, Mercy. You want to hear?' she asked the policeman.

I'll take your word for it. Have you got plenty of groceries in that cottage?'The manager frowned. 'I need milk, but otherwise I'm okay. Why?'

'Because if you're the only alarm system this place has for now, you cannot leave it until proper equipment is installed and running. Whatever happens, suppose you have an emergency call telling you that your granny's house is on fire and she's stuck on the roof, you do not leave that stock unguarded. Clear?'

The woman frowned at him, and nodded. 'Clear.'

'Do you have the number of the police station in Coldstream?'

'It's in the book, isn't it?'

'Look it up. Keep it handy. Just in case. I'm not saying that anything will happen, but still... It'd be nice if you and Ms Alvarez could get these fish to market rather than have someone else do it.'

He looked back at the Spanish owner. 'Friday, remember.'

She sighed. 'Okay, Friday. You send your man back on Friday.'

He gave her a friendly smile and made to turn back towards his car.

'He'll be here,' he said. 'Count on it.'

He drove carefully back down the rough track, turning at last on to a road which led to and through the border town of Coldstream. As soon as he was in open country, he eased his speed and dialled the central number of the Bank of Scotland.

He had to speak to two successive switchboard operators, human screens between bank managers and an admiring public, before finally he was put through to Andrew John's office.

'I'm sorry, Mr Martin,' the banker's secretary told him, 'but Mr John's out of the office until Thursday. He has a series of meetings in England.'

'Too bad. I need to talk to him about one of his clients. Make me an appointment first thing on Thursday. I'll come to him.'Q46.Age for age, Naomi McConnell was as attractive as her daughter; from Ruth's disclosure of the age difference between her parents David Mackenzie knew that she was in her early sixties, but she could have pa.s.sed for ten years younger. He found it hard to believe that she had been retired from teaching for two years.

'This is very distressing,' she said, as she ushered the policeman into the sitting room of her neat bungalow on the outskirts of the seaside town of Ayr. In common with most Glaswegians, he had been taken there by his parents as a boy; in common with many, he had not been back since.

'For all that he was eighty, I was really shocked when I heard that he was dead. With all that golf he played, he always struck me as such a fit man that I thought he'd go on for ever. Now, to learn that there was something suspicious about it...

'Ruth told me that someone drowned him in his bath!' she exclaimed.

- 'We don't know that for sure, Mrs McConnell,' the policeman cautioned.

'It's a possibility, but it'll probably never be any more than that. There were no signs offeree on the body when we found it; we do believe that he was drugged though.'

'Drugged?' She looked and sounded astonished.

'We suspect that he may have been taking tranquillisers, or possibly having these administered to him.'

'My G.o.d. What sort of a world is this? Or what sort of a world was he living in?'

'That's exactly what we have to find out. That's why I'm here; to ask you what you knew of your brother-in-law.'

Ruth's mother drew herself up in her chair. 'As much as I wanted to, and that wasn't much. I hope I'm not incriminating myself here, but I never liked John McConnell. The last time I saw him was at Max's funeral... my husband's funeral... five years ago. Since then we've exchanged Christmas cards, but that's been it.'158.AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.'Why did you dislike him?' Mackenzie asked.

'I don't know for sure, but it was instant, I can tell you that. There was something creepy about him; I remember the way he looked at me this first time we met, and a few times after when I caught him off guard. I felt as if he was sizing me up.'

Tm sorry to be blunt, but do you mean s.e.xually?'

'That's exactly what I mean. I felt as if the man was undressing me with his eyes.'

'What about his wife?' he asked. 'What was she like?'

'Cecily?' Naomi McConnell threw back her head in a gesture which David Mackenzie had seen in her daughter. 'I never knew whether to feel sorry for him, or for her. In the end, I suppose I felt sorry for them both.

They endured a sad, barren marriage for almost forty years, and they always seemed bored in each other's company. Max and I visited them as a duty rather than a pleasure, and entertained them on the same basis.'

The detective looked at her. 'Did Mr McConnell's attentions to you ever go beyond glances?' he asked, cautiously.

She drew in her breath. 'Well, I learned early on never to dance with him,' she snorted, with remembered indignation. 'In fact, I remember once, oh, nearly twenty years ago, at a party we had here when Max retired, I saw him dancing with Ruth. She was barely in her teens then, but she was a well developed girl. I probably let her over-dress a bit that night; she was gorgeous and didn't even know it.

'Anyway, as I said, I saw John dancing with her, and I just wasn't having it, so I walked over to the record player and stopped the music. He looked at me afterwards, and it was the only guilty look I ever had from him. I thought about asking Ruth if anything... anything untoward had happened, but she didn't seem fl.u.s.tered so I let it lie.'

'Your suspicions were spot on though.' Mackenzie blurted the words out in spite of himself.

'You mean ...'

He nodded. 'Ruth told me exactly the same story yesterday. In the circ.u.mstances, and given her age, she seems to have handled it pretty well.'Tell me,' he continued quickly, 'how did your husband feel about his brother?'

'Max tolerated John, but they were never close, by any stretch of the imagination. No, there was something between them. He never said so1.outright, and I never asked him, but I think that he either suspected or knew that John had had an affair with Lorna, his first wife. Mind you, to listen to Max talk about her you'd think she'd had everything in trousers. He was very hurt when she left him, and he stayed bitter about her for the rest of his

life.

'She went off with a man John worked beside, in fact. Max held a bit of a grudge over that too.' She paused. 'Now he did feel sorry for Cecily; he thought it was sad that such an obviously a-s.e.xual woman like her should be married to a man like him.

'I asked him once why they'd married in the first place, all he said was "Respectability". He believed that his brother was promiscuous; he even said to me that he thought he probably cruised the red light district of Glasgow in that big car of his.'

'So all in all, Mrs McConnell, you did not regard your brother-in-law as a very nice man,' the detective summed up.

'Not a bit,' she agreed. 'He was mean too. "As tight as a fish's ..." Max used to say.' She laughed.

'And yet, in the last few months of his life, he gave away all his money and virtually all of his possessions of value . . . everything apart from hisNaomi gasped. 'Ruth didn't tell me that. If that's the case, I can only suppose that the old fool compromised himself with a woman in some way, and that she blackmailed him.'

'Maybe,' Bandit Mackenzie murmured. 'But if she was blackmailing him, why did she take a video camera into his house, on the day he died?

That's the biggest mystery of all.'

They looked at each other across the room.

'You said that your husband's first wife went off with a workmate of his brother.'

'Colleague,' Mrs McConnell laughed. 'John was management and never slow to let you know it. He didn't have workmates. But yes, Lorna went off with a colleague. I never knew his name though, and Max never mentioned it.'

'Perhaps John kept in touch with her.'

'Quite possibly, but she can't tell you anything now. She died about fifteen years ago. I remember John phoning to tell Max about it, to see if he wanted to go to her funeral. As far as I know, he didn't even send flowers.'160.

'd.a.m.n,' said the policeman, his frustration showing. 'Another closed door. I tell you Mrs McConnell; your brother-in-law couldn't have covered his tracks better if he'd tried.'162.47.Way back, when the world was young and James Proud was merely an a.s.sistant Chief Constable, he met a young CID officer whose vision, commitment, and intensity were such that he made a bigger impression on him than any man had ever done before. He had marked that young man as one who, some day, would command the force, and from that time on had taken a personal interest in his career development.

Bob Skinner had known nothing of this at the time; he had been totally focused on his twin ambitions of cracking every crime he confronted and, possibly even more difficult, raising, as a lone parent, his young daughter to womanhood. He had been given time in each CID posting to gather experience and establish his track record, but once he had come within sight of the top of the ladder the rest of his climb had been rapid.

As Sir James Proud looked at him across the coffee table in his s.p.a.cious office, he knew that only one act remained to bring about the final fulfilment of his vision; his own retirement and the installation of his protege as Chief Constable.