Chapter 7
Roberta reached out and put a hand on Lady Bradbury-Scott’s leg. Gave it a wee shake. ‘Hello?’
‘See! She’s dead. And you know who they’re going to blame, don’t you?’
Two corpses in one day . . .
Roberta moved further up the body, till she was standing next to its head.
Was bad enough when a wedding featured a drunken punch-up, never mind a pair of murders.
That said, there didn’t seem to be a mark on her, so maybe this was your basic murder-suicide pact?
Lady Bradbury-Scott catches her husband, the scumbag, pinching other people’s wives’ arses and does away with him, impales him on the big stag, and comes back here to overdose on whatever pills she’s got packed in her toilet bag.
OK. Well, better check anyway. Duty of care to the public, and all that.
Mind you, feeling for a pulse was always a tricky one.
So, how about . . . Roberta reached out, took hold of the lace-edged sleeping mask and pulled the whole thing upward till the elastic was stretched tight, then let it ping back down again.
Lady Bradbury-Scott sat bolt upright and screamed.
Roberta screamed too, leaping away from the bed.
Sergeant Moore did the same thing, clutching at his chest, eyes like oversized pickled onions. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
Lady Screamsalot ripped off the sleeping mask. ‘WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY BEDROOM? WHERE’S MY HUSBAND?’
Roberta held up her hands. ‘Police! We’re the police!’
‘HELP! POLICE! I’M BEING ASSAULTED BY PERVERTS!’
‘WE ARE THE POLICE, YOU DAFT DEAF BINT! Now, could we tone the volume down while we’ve all still got our eardrums?’
A frown. ‘WHAT?’ Then she pulled out a set of earplugs, scrabbled a hand across the nightstand and put on her glasses. Frowned at the man standing at the bottom of her bed. ‘Sandy? What are you doing here?’
He looked down at his Spider-Man PJs, then at Roberta. Who took a quick peek at her own baggy high-vis waistcoat that, to be completely honest, didn’t really complement the ancient grey bra underneath.
Let’s face it: they probably didn’t look the picture of a modern, responsible police force.
‘Well?’
Sergeant Moore sat on the bed, next to Lady Bradbury-Scott, and took her hand. Swallowed. Licked his lips. Took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Jocasta, but we’ve got some very bad news . . .’
Roberta hauled a clean T-shirt on over Old Faithful, and tucked it into her jeans.
Checked her reflection in the mirror: ‘ASK ME ABOUT MY RADICAL LESBIAN FEMINIST AGENDA’ in bold white capitals on a dark-pink background.
And, maybe, with a wee bit of slap on, she wouldn’t look like she’d dropped out the back end of Mr Rumpole any more.
Well, maybe a little bit, but there was nothing wrong with lying to yourself every now and then.
Susan glowered at her from the chair by the rain-rattled window – the expression on her face well suited to a wet weekend. ‘I don’t see why I have to be cooped up in here all day, it’s not as if I killed him!’
Oh, this hotel room was just one gigantic ball of warmth and love, wasn’t it?
‘It’s a murder investigation, OK? Everyone’s confined to barracks.’ Roberta wandered through into the bathroom and toothpasted her toothbrush. Stuffed it in her gob for a good hard scrub, overflowing with minty froth as Susan’s voice stabbed through from the bedroom.
‘“Oh, I’ve come all the way out here to surprise you!” you said. “We’ll have a nice romantic break!” you said. And now you’re working again.’
Wasn’t easy, making yourself heard with a mouthful of toothpaste foam, but she had a bash: ‘Well, what am I supposed to do? You’ve seen what passes for the local plod here: the Chuckle Brothers would be more use, and one of them’s dead.’ More scrubbing. ‘Besides, I’m ranking officer.’
‘You’re a detective sergeant, not a detective chief inspector!’
Time for the molars. ‘No’ my fault there was an old warrant card in my jacket, was it? I’ve no’ had that thing on for years.’
‘You shouldn’t have told them—’
‘I didn’t! That would be what we in the police call “very, very naughty.”’ Spit.
Sploosh a bit of water on the old face to wash away all the foamy white.
How did one wee worm of toothpaste create this much mess?
Should be able to brush your teeth without looking like you’d just starred in a mint-flavoured bukkake video.
‘All I’m doing is holding the fort till the cavalry gets here. After that, we can sod off home.’
‘But—’
‘Or go somewhere “romantic”. You pick. Long as it’s no’ pishing with rain and I can look at hotties in their bikinis all day.
’ Roberta scrubbed her face with one of those lovely fluffy hotel towels.
Grabbed her leather jacket on the way out.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got two numpties to supervise and a killer to catch. ’
While she’d been upstairs getting changed, the Crime Scene Fairies had paid the lobby a visit, festooning it with streamers of not-so-festive bunting. The blue-and-white kind with, ‘POLICE’ on it.
Roberta, Sergeant Moore, and PC McKinnon stood inside the cordon, looking up at Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott in all his half-naked-and-deadness.
She wasn’t the only one who’d taken the opportunity to change – Sergeant Moore no longer looked as if he could do whatever a spider could, going for the kind of casual-trousers-and-a-polo-shirt combo that probably went down great guns at the local golf club.
He sucked on his teeth for a bit. Then, ‘We can’t just leave him there. He’s the local MP, it’s undignified.’
‘Aye . . .’ PC McKinnon pulled a face. ‘But the crime-scene management handbook clearly states that “all remains are to be examined in situ by the appropriate professionals and all efforts taken to preserve the scene.”’
‘His willy’s hanging out, Mikey.’
‘I didn’t write the manual.’
Sergeant Moore threw his hands out. ‘And we can’t keep people confined to their rooms forever! Going to have a riot on our hands if it goes past lunchtime. They’ll all need fed and watered.’
Which was true, but then again, they were all Tories, so sod them.
Roberta shook her head. ‘The wee loon’s right: no mucking about with the crime scene.’
That didn’t stop Moore whinging on about it, though. ‘What’s the temperature meant to hit today, Mikey? Twenty-three, twenty-four degrees?’
McKinnon checked his phone. Frowned at the lack of signal, because he wasn’t the sharpest. A shrug. ‘Twenty-seven?’
‘Aye, and that’s with sky-high humidity as well. We leave Sir Reginald up there in that heat and you can cut the flies with a spoon. Whole place will be thick with them.’
‘Aye, but the manual—’
‘Heat and insects are gonna degrade our forensic evidence, till—’
‘Hoy!’ Roberta gave them both a good hard stare. ‘No one touches that body till the pathologist gets here. And that’s final. We’re no’ screwing this one up before the investigation’s even started, understand?’
No reply, so she gave Sergeant Moore a good hard poke, too. ‘Understand?’
He sighed. Nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good boy. Start drawing up a list of everyone in the place. We’ll need to interrogate the whole sodding lot when I get back.’ She snapped her fingers and marched for the front doors. ‘Constable: heel!’
McKinnon did what he was told, leaving Sergeant Moore standing beneath their half-naked knight of the realm.
‘But . . .’ Moore shuffled his feet, ‘where are you going?’
She hauled the door open. ‘Me and your wee loon need to see a man about some backup.’
Which would have been a really cool line to exit on, if McKinnon hadn’t got tangled up in his own feet and stumbled into the door, thumping it closed again before she could escape.
Idiot.
‘Sorry . . .’ He pulled it open and held it for her.
She stepped out, under that big portico. Its soggy red-white-and-blue bunting flapped in the wind as rain battered down, sparking in the fountain’s bowl. Strafing the puddles that stretched across the gravel driveway. Hissing and growling in the trees.
No sign of the gold balloons. Maybe—
A flicker of white forced back the gloom, followed by a thunderous roar.
Oh yeah, this was going to be lovely.
Roberta nipped inside again and grabbed an umbrella from the stand beside the door.
By the time she got back outside, PC McKinnon was standing at the edge of the portico – grimacing out at the rain. ‘We’re going to get absolutely soaked, aren’t we?’
‘Speak for yourself.’ She popped the brolly open, revealing a large blue canopy with ‘SKIRIVOUR CASTLE HOTEL’ in gold letters.
The cheeky wee sod eased himself up next to her, snuggling in under the umbrella. ‘I’m in the overflow car park.’
Of course he was.
The overflow car park was doing exactly what the name implied. Vast ocean-sized puddles shimmered as rain bounced off the roofs and bonnets of the assembled fancy vehicles. Porsches, Ferraris, Audis, more Range Rovers and Jaguars than you could shake a soggy umbrella at.
The police Land Rover stood out like a tramp at the ballet.
The thing was filthy, clarted in mud so thick even the current monsoon couldn’t shift it.
Dents and scrapes down both sides. A crack in the windscreen.
It wasn’t even one of the new ones; damn thing looked as if it’d been built out of rusty Lego, with a winch on the front and a snorkel exhaust.
And the idiot McKinnon had parked it so far away that Roberta’s shoes were squelchy waterlogged horrors by the time they got there.
Soon as he plipped the locks, she scrambled inside. Where it was every bit as manky as the outside. Only, what was that smell? Like a million wet dogs had rolled around in fox shit.
‘Stinks in here. When did you last clean this tip?’
McKinnon clambered in and clunked his door shut. ‘I spent most of yesterday rescuing soggy sheep.’
‘Aye, well I hope “rescuing” isn’t you back-wood bunnets’ way of saying “having sexual relations with”.’
The engine coughed and spluttered into life – momentarily drowned out by another booming roar of thunder as rain pinged off the Land Rover’s roof.
‘Should we not do a risk assessment before we head out? I mean, with the weather and everything?’
She shoogled the water off her brolly and into the filthy footwell. ‘Don’t be so wet. Foot down, Constable Sheep-Shagger.’
Instead, he gazed out through the windscreen. Looking pained as wind rattled the treetops and rain pummelled the overflow car park, beneath a glowering sky the colour of coal. ‘All right, but I want it on record that—’
‘Blah, blah, blah. Less moaning, more driving.’
One last grimace, then he put the Land Rover in gear and splooshed through the puddles and out of the car park.
If anything, the trees lining the road looked even angrier than the ones around the hotel, branches whipping back and forth as the downpour howled at them.
Roberta cranked up the blowers and the scent of burning dust joined the general sheepiness. She plonked her soggy feet on the dashboard. ‘You ever run into this Sir Rodney Bad-Bogey-Snott?’
‘Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott.’ There was a pause and a frown. ‘He’s a man of . . . very strong opinions. Or at least, he was.’
‘Ah, you mean he was a dick.’
‘Liked to throw his title about. You know the type: favours for the lads, best friends with the Chief Constable, that kind of thing.’
‘Like our mate, Lord Misogyny-Gitbag the third.’
McKinnon pursed his lips and sighed. ‘Two worms in a rotten apple, that pair.’ The Land Rover wheeched around a bend and through a huge puddle, sending arcs of water splashing into the rhododendron bushes on either side of the road.
‘Course, Sir Reginald really burned his bridges with his “surefire”, “can’t fail” investment thing.
Lot of local families got screwed on that one. ’
‘Oh aye?’ Roberta flexed her soggy toes in her sodden shoes, sending foot-water squishing out through the lace holes to trickle down the dashboard. ‘What investment thing is this then?’
‘My mum and dad nearly lost their house over it.’ He curled his lip, like he’d got a pube stuck between his teeth.
‘Thought they were going to make a fortune. A literal goldmine, right here in Skirivour Glen. Wasn’t a single household didn’t sink a big chunk of money into it.
’ He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Daft, really. You know that old doodah about “if something looks too good to be true”?’
‘Hmmm . . .’ Bankrupting the local community wasn’t a bad motive for murder. Which meant they’d have to interview all the inbred yokels out here in banjo country – had to be at least one of them with access to the hotel last night and a good reason to kill the swindling dickhead.
She had a wee scratch at Old Faithful. ‘What about sexy stuff?’
‘Kinks and perversions, you mean?’ A shrug. ‘Probably liked to be spanked and wear nappies, but that’s members of parliament for you, isn’t it?’
Lightning ripped across the charcoal sky, strobe-lighting the waterlogged road. The bellow of thunder that followed was loud enough to make the whole Land Rover shake.
McKinnon tightened his grip on the wheel, making his knuckles stand out as a wee nervous laugh squeaked free. ‘That was close!’
Wimp.
‘Come on then: affairs. Was he humping anyone behind their large, beefy, vengeful husband’s back? Bet an arse-grabbing tosser like Sir Reginald Bumwanky-Shite was at it with every woman in the place.’
‘Oh definitely. I heard he keeps a mistress in Inverness and another in Plockton.’
‘Hmm . . .’ Roberta frowned out the window, watching the sagging trees whip past. ‘I know it’s a pretty place, but it always sounds like a venereal disease to me.
Plockton.’ She put on her best doctor’s voice for, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs McGinty, but you’ve got a nasty dose of the Plocktons, we’re going to have to amputate your bits. ’
The Land Rover rocked down and up again as it charged through a puddle deep enough to send water swooshing the bonnet, the windscreen wipers struggling to cope with the deluge of muddy water. Smearing the dirt about.
‘Think he had a fling with his PA, but she got married to some party bigwig and moved to Edinburgh.’ McKinnon turned the steering wheel, taking them around a hard right, leaning forward in his seat to peer through the filthy windscreen.
‘Then there’s the local ladies! He was— AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
’ Eyes wide, death-grip on the steering wheel, both legs stiff out in front of him as he slammed on the brakes.