In Place of Death (29 page)

The home page of the OtherWorld forum sat waiting patiently for him to say hello but he'd shied away from reintroducing himself. Instead he just sat and stared like the awkward, gawky
teenager he'd been since he was eight. So much he wanted to say but didn't dare.

He'd read that you don't regret the things you have done but the things you haven't done. There was some truth in that, right enough. If he made a list then top would be
failing to ask Gabby out. Properly, that is. Second would be not going to university but that was different. He had to make a choice and he did what he had to do. After that? He wished he'd
gone to Machu Picchu, the ancient Incan site in Peru. Or the great Pyramid of Giza, the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing. There was smaller stuff too. Bigger in
some senses. He'd never told his dad that he loved him. Because you just don't, right? Not if you come from Glasgow you don't. He'd never flown in a helicopter, given blood,
owned a dog or drunk real champagne. Regrets, he had a few.

But to say you don't regret the things you
have
done . . . well, that just wasn't true. He still mourned the day he wet himself in Miss Johnson's class aged six. He
bitterly regretted the day he ever thought it was a good idea to try to grow a moustache aged twenty-one. He hated himself for being in the library the night his mother died from cancer. And he
wished he'd never walked down the Molendinar Burn.

Maybe it wasn't about regrets at all. There was nothing you could do about those other than choose to live with them or not. You could, maybe, possibly, avoid future regrets though. By not
not
doing the thing. By doing it and to hell with the consequences.

After that hour of thinking and no typing, he had finally worked out what he was going to write. It wasn't much, just a few lines, but he'd convinced himself they were what they had
to be. What he hadn't decided, not quite, was whether he had the guts to send them.

He was nearly there though. One last push. He forced himself to think about why he had to do it, not why he shouldn't. His fingers fretted over the keyboard and got as far as creating a
blank message ready to be filled then hopefully dispatched to the two recipients he had in mind.

He knew it was about his dad, about his mother, about Gabby, about himself. It was about the feel of the dead guy's body against his. About being a loser his entire life and wanting,
aching, to change that. It was about doing the right thing. About doing something. He could stay in the same crappy job, live in the same crappy flat, live the same crappy life and wait till it was
time to die or he could do something. It was about him.

He typed. He pressed enter.

Fuck. He'd done it now.

Saturday morning

Narey had made up her mind to have another chat with Douglas Cairns. The suggestion from his wife's friend that not only was Jennifer having an affair but that Cairns
knew about it made him interesting again. An angry husband and an unfaithful wife made for motivation. He was certainly worth another visit and she wasn't in the mood to care whether he
minded or not.

She made her way to his firm's offices, and again unannounced pushed through the double doors. The assistant, Chloe, rose to meet her and clearly remembered who she was.

‘Are you here to see Mr Cairns? He's in.' Talk of what happened to his wife was clearly the only story in town for the staff.

Narey told her she was and the girl led her to Cairns' inner office.

Douglas Cairns didn't seem exactly overjoyed to see her but was polite nevertheless. Dressed in a black suit with a black T-shirt underneath, he rose from his black-leather sofa like a man
escaping from a tunnel and asked if he could have anything brought for her.

‘A glass of water, please.'

‘Still or sparkling?'

‘Still.'

Cairns nodded and Chloe left to return just moments later with a decanter of water and two crystal tumblers. Cairns nodded again and the girl left. Narey waited until she had closed the door
behind her before she spoke.

‘Thanks for seeing me, Mr Cairns. I realize this is a difficult time for you.'

‘That's an understatement. Do you have any news on the investigation?'

‘We're making progress. There's a couple of definite leads we're looking at.'

Cairns wasn't giving much away, no matter how closely she studied him. There was a nervous air about him but that was hardly surprising given the circumstances.

‘What are they?'

‘Well we've spoken to some of your wife's friends to establish a picture of her movements. That's opened some avenues we're exploring now.'

She was being deliberately vague, teasing a reaction out of him. His mouth twitched: he was suitably exasperated.

‘And?'

‘Mr Cairns, one of the people we've spoken to has suggested that your wife may have been having an affair. Do you know if that is correct?'

He reacted this time okay. His eyes widened, either in shock at what she'd said or that she'd said it. His face darkened and his lip curled in anger.

‘How dare you come here and ask me that at a time like this?'

‘I know this must be upsetting, sir, and I'm sorry for that. But it is something I have to ask. Was Jennifer having an affair?'

Suddenly, Cairns was on his feet and shouting. ‘Who told you that?'

Narey remained calm. ‘Who told me isn't what's important. I'd like to establish if it was the case and if you were aware of it.'

‘Don't fucking tell me what isn't important.' Cairns plucked the glass of water from the table and hurled it across the room where it smashed against the Perspex wall. An
ugly crack appeared in the black frosted screen and, beyond it, Narey could see shadow figures standing up to see what had happened.

Cairns' mouth was hanging open, as if he didn't believe that he'd actually done it. He was shaking with anger or nerves. ‘Get out of my office!'

‘Sit down, please, Mr Cairns.' She kept her voice as low and as composed as possible.

‘Get out!'

The door opened and Cairns' partner David McCormack hurried inside looking suitably anxious. He stared at the hairline in the frosting and the shattered glass on the carpeted floor.

‘Douglas? What the hell's going on? Are you okay?'

Cairns shot him a furious glance, ready to take his anger out on anyone. ‘Yes, I'm okay! I'm just . . . just—'

‘What is all this?' McCormack waved a hand at the broken glass.

‘I'm asking Mr Cairns some questions relating to his wife's death.'

He stared at her, as if not making sense of it. ‘Does this really have to be done now? I'd think Douglas has been through enough.'

‘I sympathize with that, Mr McCormack, but I have a job to do. And sometimes, like now, that means asking difficult questions. I'm sure we all want to find out what happened to Mrs
Cairns. If you could leave us, please, then I can get on with trying to do that.'

The man looked between Narey and Cairns, clearly unhappy at the situation and unwilling to leave.

‘If you could close the door behind you, please, sir. I won't keep Mr Cairns any longer than necessary.'

There was a brief stand-off while the two men considered their positions but finally some of the air and defiance went out of Cairns. He nodded at his colleague that it was all right and he
should go.

‘Okay.' McCormack didn't seem happy at all. ‘But I'll be outside. Call me if you need me, Douglas. And Detective Inspector, I'd appreciate it if you
remembered that Douglas has just lost his wife.'

‘It's why I'm here, Mr McCormack. You can leave us now.'

The man glared but said nothing. He closed the door and left them alone.

Cairns was dragging his hand through his long, greying hair and looking decidedly agitated. ‘Okay, ask me your question.'

‘Please sit down, Mr Cairns.'

He resisted like a sulky teenager but then parked himself angrily back on the leather sofa.

Narey nodded, satisfied. ‘Was your wife having an affair, Mr Cairns?'

His jaw clenched and he took in a lungful of air. ‘I think so, yes.'

‘How sure are you of that?'

The question made him scowl. ‘I'm not
sure.
I just . . . I had my suspicions. I want to know who told you that she was. Was it that bitch Carrie Thomson?'

‘I can only repeat what I asked you. It isn't important who told me. I'm more interested in whether it was true and what you knew of it.'

‘Why don't you tell me what you've been told?'

‘Okay, I will. I am told that your wife had an affair once before. And that she was having an affair at the time she was killed. Does that fit with what you know?'

Cairns gripped the side of the sofa, clawing at the leather with his fingers, and she thought he was going to push to his feet again. He was clearly furious.

‘I told you. I didn't
know.
I suspected.'

‘Okay, what made you suspect?'

He huffed irritably. ‘She was out a lot, vague about where she was, dressed up to the nines. She'd be putting her mobile away when I came into the room. There was something
different
about the way she was acting.'

Narey nodded, making a show of taking it in. ‘The person who told me that Jennifer was having an affair also said that you were aware of it. That you
knew
.'

‘I already told you—'

‘Okay, if you suspected, was there anyone in particular you suspected your wife was seeing?'

This time he did stand up. ‘This interview is over. You can leave now.'

‘I'd like to ask you a few more questions, Mr Cairns. I'm not—'

‘
Get out!
'

His shout brought McCormack back into the room at the double. ‘What's going on? Douglas, are you okay?'

‘No I'm not. This . . . this woman—'

‘Right, I think you should leave. This is harassment. Unless you've got some kind of warrant, you need to go now. The man's wife has just died.'

‘Murdered.'

‘What?'

‘Mr Cairns' wife has been murdered. I think it's important that we remember the difference.'

‘Get out! Get out before I throw you out.'

‘I seriously suggest you do not attempt to do that, Mr Cairns. But there's little to be gained from taking this any further today so I will go. We can take this up another
time.'

‘Chloe!' It was McCormack's turn to shout. Moments later, the young, black-clad woman reappeared looking quite startled. ‘Chloe, show this lady out, please.'

‘Thank you, Mr McCormack, but I'm no lady. And I can find my own way out. Mr Cairns, I apologize for any distress this has caused you but murder investigations work that way
sometimes. And this one isn't over.'

Saturday evening

Winter had spent a long, frustrating day chasing sirens but with his mind most definitely elsewhere. None of it had been the sort of thing to get his pulse racing. A break-in
at an off-licence, the bruised remains of a mugging and the burned-out shell of a stolen Ford Focus. If the day had had a flavour it would have been vanilla.

The job was beginning to feel like work and he didn't like it that way. He'd never wanted routine, never been interested in any job that was done by the numbers or meant drowning in
bureaucracy. Whether he'd changed or the job had, that's how it seemed now. Frame a shot, push a button, fill in a form, go home, start again. It wasn't enough.

He'd just completed the going-home part of his day, albeit that he was still on call, and was ready for something more. The something that had never been more than a thought away the whole
time he'd been on the clock. Euan Hepburn. Jennifer Cairns. The Molendinar and the Odeon. Remy Feeks. Rachel.

He was worried, perhaps even scared. He'd been taking a risk from the moment he'd got involved in this but the stakes were getting higher. It wasn't a game, wasn't a step
into a building where he could back out if he felt unsafe. He was in deep and the door behind him had been locked.

There had been a couple of times he'd felt someone was following him: Friday as he went home after work, and the night before as he'd left Oran Mor. Nothing he could be certain
about, just shadows that were there and then weren't. Footsteps that stopped with his, a feeling that he couldn't shift. He'd have put it down to paranoia but that was defined as
irrational and there was good reason to think he really had put himself in danger.

Not just him, Remy too. Winter worried for the kid even more than himself. He'd take his own chances if he had to but Feeks didn't seem to be able to look after himself. That was why
he'd made the anonymous call to the station, knowing that Rachel would know what to do, knowing she was much more capable of looking after Remy than he was.

Rachel. The biggest risk of all. His greatest fear.

When your mind was as messed up as his was then even doing something good could leave you confused as to why you did it. Like the day before when he'd taken her to the nursing home to see
her dad with the old Rangers player. Had he done that because it was the right thing to do, because he loved her, or because he was guilty of betraying her by interfering with the case?

He fired up his laptop and went straight to OtherWorld. There really was no going back so there was nowhere else to go. He had to sort this. Warn the kid to stay out of it, maybe tackle the
others he was suspicious of. Something, anything, risky or not.

The moment he'd logged in and the home page had built, he saw that he had a message in his inbox. He went straight there, opening it up as quickly as his fingers could fly.

The subject field contained just one word.
URGENT.