Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
The malthouse was lit up, with an anxious Patti and her daughters standing on the doorstep.
‘You wouldn’t believe my daughter was only kissing that boy in the bloody summerhouse, in the garden next to the barbecue!’ Patti said by way of greeting. ‘She is in big trouble!’ She glared at Julie, who pulled a face. ‘Where’s Greg?’ she asked as the dogs bounded into the hallway.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ Ross said, glancing at the girls.
‘Oh no!’ Patti put her head in her hands for a moment, then stared at the tear-drenched Wendy. ‘Oh my God! What’s happened?’
‘He’s dead.’ Wendy spoke flatly.
‘What?’ Patti looked from one to the other. ‘How can he be dead? He can’t be dead!’
The two girls were clinging to each other and looking at Wendy, saucer-eyed.
‘We think he might have tripped and knocked his head on a sharp rock,’ Ally said diplomatically, hoping to spare the girls any gory details.
‘A sharp rock?’ Patti repeated. ‘How the hell could he have done that?’ She appeared to be about to faint.
Ross moved swiftly across to support her.
‘It’s been a shock to us all,’ he said, ‘but I think you should sit down.’ He led her into the sitting room and sat her down in an armchair.
Patti burst into floods of tears. Wendy sat on the sofa opposite, with the girls, all of them now weeping openly.
‘I think drinks are needed,’ Ross said, exchanging glances with Ally. ‘I’ll go and get them.’
He headed off towards the kitchen, and Ally wondered what on earth she could say to give a shred of comfort to this group of weeping women.
‘So where is he?’ Patti asked between sobs.
‘The air ambulance has taken him away,’ Ally explained. ‘That’s why we’re so late.’
‘Oh, Auntie Wendy!’ Janey rushed towards her aunt and put her arm round her. Julie rushed to her other side, both girls weeping – which set Wendy off again.
Patti looked directly at Ross as he re-entered the room with some drinks and mixers. ‘It was an accident?’ She was shuddering uncontrollably.
‘We’ll know after the post-mortem,’ Ross replied. ‘Who needs a nightcap?’
Both Wendy and Patti shook their heads. ‘I feel sick,’ Patti said.
‘Maybe a brandy would help?’ Ross suggested.
Patti nodded, tears still streaming down her cheeks. ‘I’m taking it upstairs with me.’
‘I’ll have one too,’ Wendy said, drying her eyes. ‘But I feel I want to be alone tonight.’
‘Well, I think we should all at least try to get some sleep because the police will be here first thing in the morning,’ Ally said.
Patti stood up, hugged her sister-in-law, took her arm and led her towards the stairs. ‘I’ve got some sleeping tablets somewhere,’ she added.
Ross followed Ally and the dogs into the kitchen, took two glasses out of the cupboards and poured out two hefty measures of Scotch.
‘Oh, I need this,’ Ally said, taking a sip. ‘But I still don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep. Did I tell you about that scrap of paper I picked up?’
‘I saw you handing something to Amir.’
‘Ross, it looked like it could be some sort of blackmail note or something.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ross asked.
‘It said something like “if you want me to keep your secret…” but the paper was ripped in half. This could mean that he was planning to slip away from Wendy and go meet someone, couldn’t it?’
Ross shrugged. ‘I guess so. Hopefully the police will find the rest of it.’
She shuddered. ‘I keep seeing him lying there, like that…’
‘I know,’ Ross said, taking her in his arms, ‘but you must try to put it out of your mind. Let’s get to bed.’
Ally found herself wide awake at five o’clock in the morning. Afraid that her tossing and turning would waken Ross, she got up. But Ross was awake too.
Ally looked out of the window at the darkness and said, ‘It’s too early to do anything.’
‘Not too early for a cup of tea,’ Ross said, getting out of bed. ‘I’ll go down and get the kettle on.’
As she got dressed, Ally wondered if Wendy would be able to eat any breakfast. Her guests were fast disappearing, one by one!
Who might be next? Would anyone ever want to stay at The Auld Malthouse B&B again?
One of the main suspects on her board was now dead.
Ally began to doubt if he really had been Archie’s killer, but, if it wasn’t Greg, who was it?
And she knew, deep down, that someone had well and truly brained the poor man.
With mixed feelings of revulsion, she now felt guilty at ever having suspected Greg at all.
Ally made her way downstairs to find Ross brewing a large pot of tea. He let both dogs out into the garden, and then poured them each a mugful. Within minutes, the dogs had come bounding in, hoping for breakfast.
‘These are two clever girls!’ Ross said, stroking their heads and digging some dog food out of the cupboard. ‘Without you two, we might never have found the poor guy!’
I almost wish they hadn’t, Ally thought, trying to dispel the vision. She wondered what Greg could possibly have done to deserve this.
Patti and the girls surfaced around eight o’clock. ‘I didn’t get a wink of sleep,’ she said, still tearful. She looked drab this morning in a grey, high-necked jumper and black leggings. Both the girls looked utterly exhausted.
‘What about Wendy?’ Ally asked.
‘No idea. There’s no sound from her bedroom, so perhaps she took the sleeping tablets I gave her.’ Patti studied Ally for a moment. ‘It just seems too much of a coincidence that all the suspects for Archie’s death were running around that spot at the time of Greg’s death, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, it does seem strange,’ Ally agreed.
‘I’ll just have fruit juice and coffee,’ Patti said, ‘and I’m not really sure if I can manage that.’ She was looking extremely agitated.
Julie sat down close to her mother. ‘I could eat some toast,’ she said.
Janey nodded. ‘Yeah, me too.’
Back in the kitchen, Ally thought that Patti’s reaction was a little odd, to say the least. She seemed more upset than Wendy, though Greg was only her brother-in-law, not her husband, whereas when her husband had been killed, Patti had recovered almost immediately.
Wendy finally appeared around nine o’clock, looking gaunt, tired and swollen-eyed. She, too, could only manage coffee, so Ally produced a couple of pots and left them to it, aware that Amir had arrived and was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her guests to finish their meagre breakfasts.
He looked up when Ally came in.
‘Before I question the family,’ Amir said, ‘I need to be absolutely certain that neither of you two were up there when that so-called fun run first began?’
‘No, we all went up there as a group around half past five or thereabouts,’ Ross said. ‘The runners were on the far side of the loch then.’
‘So what time did you come back here?’
‘Half past six probably. Wendy had hurt her foot, so she’d come back a little earlier.’
‘Hmm,’ said Amir. He turned to Ally. ‘I have forensics looking for the other half of this note that you found, which hopefully is in his pocket or somewhere. It looks very much like he may have been blackmailed.’
‘For what?’ Ally asked, askance.
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Amir said. ‘Mr Watson’s death could have been an accident, but it’s looking more and more like foul play. So, tell me what happened when you got to the castle.’
‘Well, we saw the runners coming back in, and then Wendy got worried because there was no sign of Greg.’
‘Didn’t she try phoning him?’ Amir asked.
‘Yes, she’d tried several times, but there was no reply,’ Ross said.
‘So we wondered if he’d forgotten his phone, or not charged it up enough, or if there was no signal.
’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘Shortly after we found the body, I tested to see if there was a signal on my phone, and there was. Of course, he would have had a different phone, and perhaps a different network, so maybe there wasn’t a signal on his… ’
‘Did anyone make any effort to see if he’d fallen by the wayside?’ Amir asked.
‘The earl sent his ghillie with the Land Rover back along the path, Wendy with him. But they didn’t see anything,’ Ross replied. ‘That was when we decided to come back here, get some torches and set off to look for him with the dogs.’
‘And what time would that have been?’
‘Probably around half past eight, I think,’ Ally replied, looking at Ross for confirmation.
He nodded. ‘Yes, about then.’
‘And at what time do you reckon you found the body?’
‘Probably about nine thirty,’ Ross replied, ‘bearing in mind it takes a good twenty minutes to get to Loch Soular, and it was dark.’
‘Forensics reckon he’d been dead for two hours before they examined him. And I understand that all the runners would have passed along that route in the early evening,’ Amir said.
‘Surely one of the runners must have seen something?’ Ally suggested.
Amir nodded. ‘Apparently, they all set off at the same time, running round Loch Soular and then following the flags across the moor until they reached the castle. But some were fitter than others and so ran faster. By the time they got to that particular location – where Watson was found – they were probably five or ten minutes apart from each other.’
‘Enough time to attack a walker and drag him down to that rock?’ Ross asked.
‘It’s possible,’ Amir said. ‘Someone called Forbes McKinnon won, I believe.’
Ally pulled a face. ‘Yes, he did. Morag will be here in a minute, and she’s still going to be upset that it wasn’t one of her sons that got the prize!’
‘Furthermore,’ Amir said, ‘I’ve now got a note of who arrived first and who arrived last in this race, but little clue as to what might have occurred in the middle.
’ He sighed. ‘I just wish that the earl or someone had thought to make a note of the runners and their times of arrival, so we could get some idea who was likely to be passing the murder site and at what time.’ Amir consulted his watch.
‘OK, I’ll go and talk to your guests now before your irate cleaner arrives!
’ He picked up his folder and briefcase and disappeared into the dining room at the exact moment said irate cleaner came in through the back door.
‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ she greeted them with a scowl as she fastened her pinny on. ‘If it wasn’t bad enough that Forby McKinnon won the bloody race, they’ve now found a body!’
‘I think we would believe it,’ Ally said calmly, ‘since it was us who found the body.’
Morag gasped. ‘They wouldn’t tell us who it was.’ She looked hopefully from Ally to Ross. Unable to wait for a reply, she asked, ‘Who was it then?’
‘It was Greg Watson,’ Ally said. ‘Brother-in-law of the late Archie Armstrong.’
‘Oh my God!’ Morag sat down heavily on a kitchen chair and wiped her brow. ‘You’ll have nobody left in them rooms at this rate!’
‘The thought did cross my mind,’ Ally admitted.
‘So, what was you doin’ up there on the moors anyway?’ Morag asked.
‘We were looking for him. He hadn’t returned from a walk, and it was dark.’
Morag frowned. ‘Why would he go for a walk in the dark?’ She looked genuinely puzzled.
‘It wasn’t dark when he set out,’ Ally explained patiently. ‘Now, Morag, the detective is talking to the family in the dining room at the moment, so I’d have a go at the bedrooms if I were you.’
Morag heaved herself off the chair. ‘I’ll tell you something else – that Forby McKinnon shouldn’t even have entered. He doesn’t need that bloody hundred pounds!’ She seemed to have forgotten that Ivan had also thoroughly beaten her sons.
‘Fair’s fair,’ muttered Ross as he buttered himself some toast.
‘No, it’s not fair!’ Morag ranted. ‘Like I said to you, that Forby doesn’t need that money! Himself and his dad make a bloody fortune down there with all that fishin’ and tourists and everythin’.’
‘They should have run faster then,’ Ross said under his breath with a wink at Ally.
They both knew that Morag would now launch into countless reasons why they couldn’t.
Ally knew for a fact that Bobby didn’t appear to ever have a job, and Micky’s wife had to work all hours so he had plenty of time off from plumbing to do his bodybuilding.
‘I know,’ she said soothingly to Morag, ‘but life isn’t always fair, is it? Best get these rooms done while the going’s good!’
Morag, with a backward scowl at Ross, mounted the stairs.
No, life isn’t fair, Ally thought, not fair at all.
She thought of Archie and Greg both bringing their families over here but never going home again.
And who on earth would want to kill them both?
Now that there was the possibility of a blackmail note involved, how could she ever come close to finding this killer?