The Third Sin (3 page)

The figure on the doorstep was small and slight – and alone. A woman – a child? It was hard to tell. Not threatening, anyway, and clearly distressed, with a livid bruise on the left cheekbone. She was wearing a thin jacket and jeans and she was shockingly wet, dripping as if she had come straight out of the water. Her hair, plastered to her head, was long and curling; as Eleanor released the chain to admit her she saw that her eyes, wide with distress, were as grey-green as the sea itself.

A mermaid, she thought, like the little figurine that had sat on her mantelpiece since a visit to Copenhagen twenty years before. She waved her inside.

‘What on earth’s happened to you? You’d better come through to the kitchen, where it’s warm.’

The girl glanced up at her blindly; she was shivering so much that her teeth were chattering loudly enough to be heard. There was no colour in her face and for a moment Eleanor thought she might even collapse, but she made for the Aga as if with an instinctive response to its heat, huddling against it like an animal.

‘I’ll get a towel,’ Eleanor said, retreating. She was glad to have a moment to collect herself.

Had the girl really come up out of the sea, after a shipwreck, perhaps? Boats came to grief sometimes in these tricky waters – but no, if she’d waded out just now she would have been filthy with sandy mud, and she was only wet. Been walking for a long time, then, while the storm was on?

Under the kitchen light it had been clear that she was older than she’d looked at first – late twenties, early thirties, even. It was also
clear that she was in shock and at risk of hypothermia. She’d have to stay the night, until she was fit to contact her family or friends.

Yes, Eleanor knew her duty but it was with a certain reluctance that she set about fetching towels and bedlinen from the airing cupboard and turning on a radiator in one of the spare bedrooms. The girl would need to get out of those wet clothes too, so she took a thick pair of pyjamas out of her chest of drawers, gave a longing glance at her own cosy bed, and switched on the immersion heater for a bath.

When she got back to the kitchen, the girl was standing as she had left her. She didn’t seem to notice that her clothes were steaming; she was still shivering and still looking blank.

‘What you need is a brandy,’ Eleanor said, handing her a towel and going to the larder. There should still be brandy left from mince pies at Christmas and though it was a year or two old it shouldn’t actually have gone off. ‘I think you should get into a bath as soon as possible too but the water won’t be hot enough just yet. Sit down and drink this and I’ll make a cup of tea. I know I could be doing with one.’

The girl was dabbing at her hair with the towel but she looked at the glass as if she had never seen one before and took a moment to grasp it. Eleanor took her by the arm to urge her into the chair beside the Aga. Her passivity was quite alarming.

‘Now tell me what’s happened,’ she said gently. ‘Did you have an accident?’

She got no answer. The girl was still staring at the brandy; it was a moment or two before she put it to her lips, swallowed and shuddered, then took another sip.

At least the convulsive shivering was subsiding. Suddenly it occurred to Eleanor that she could be foreign, failing to understand what she had been asked. There were a lot of middle Europeans in the area now; she tried German, without result, then French, then miming.

‘Eleanor,’ she said, patting her chest, then ‘Your name?’ pointing. When there was no response, she pointed to the bruise, now spreading in vivid glory. ‘Accident?’

It seemed more as if the girl was disconnected than as if she didn’t understand. As Eleanor made tea, she kept up her attempts to communicate, but without success. The most she got was a shake of the head at a plate of biscuits, but the girl drank the brandy and the mug of tea. It was only when Eleanor turned back from making a hot-water bottle that she realised she had begun to cry silently.

There was no point in asking her questions. ‘It’s time you were in bed,’ she said briskly. ‘Come on.’

The girl got up and followed her. She had a canvas rucksack that had been set down at her feet; it was still soaking wet but when Eleanor suggested she left it by the range to dry she shook her head violently, clutching it to her and holding on grimly.

‘Fine, if you want to keep it with you. But you’d better empty it and spread out your things to dry – it’s soaked through.’ Feeling ruffled – did the girl think she was going to steal something? – Eleanor took her upstairs, pointed out the bathroom, the pyjamas, the bedroom, put the hottie in the bed then left her and went back downstairs.

She’d have to try again in the morning to find out what this was all about, once the girl’s shock had worn off a bit and she wasn’t so tired herself. There really was something very strange about her and she remembered her own fanciful reaction: that here was a mermaid come ashore.

It was only as Eleanor was dropping at last into an exhausted sleep that she remembered the fairy tale: the mermaid was dumb. In exchange for her human legs, she had given her voice.

It was a beautiful morning after the storm, though wrack thrown up into the narrow garden below Sea House bore witness to its power. Eleanor got up with the burden of her unwanted guest hanging over her: she really must find out where the girl had come from – and where she would be going to, as well. She’d done her duty in succouring the distressed but she certainly wasn’t issuing an open-ended invitation to stay. It was still early, though, so she got dressed as quietly as she could. After what had clearly been an ordeal last night the girl needed all the rest she could get.

But when she came out of her bedroom the door to the spare room was standing ajar. The curtains were open, the room was empty and the bed was tidy, with the flannelette pyjamas neatly folded on top. There was no sign of her visitor.

Eleanor sat down heavily on the bed, her knees suddenly weak. Would she go downstairs to find her credit cards and her car gone and the house ransacked? The saying ‘Sooner or later, one must pay for every good deed’ was ringing in her ears as she hurried downstairs as quickly as her creaking joints would let her.

But downstairs everything was in its usual place. It was as if her unexpected guest had been a figment of her imagination – or perhaps, she thought with a nod to fantasy, had merely vanished into sea foam. That a mermaid in legend was famously an ill omen she put firmly out of her mind.

The onrushing tide that had played with the car as if it were a dinky toy, tumbling it over and over as it swept it far up the Firth, retreated slowly. The car settled on its side, then with the next tide, less violent, rolled on to its roof. At last, abandoned on the sandy flats, it settled into the soft silt.

Inside it the man’s battered body, unrestrained within the car, settled too, settled and stiffened.

Was there anything, anything at all, more enjoyable than sitting in a pavement cafe on the Rive Gauche on a sunny Saturday morning in spring, people-watching through the thin blue haze of smoke from a Gitane with a knock-your-socks-off espresso on the little zinc table in front of you? If there was, Louise Hepburn couldn’t think what it would be.

She came to Paris as often as her work as a detective sergeant in the Galloway Division of Police Scotland allowed to see her mother, though Fleur didn’t reliably recognise her any more, slipping into a cruelly early twilight in the care of the
religieuses
at a convent nursing home near her sister Coralie. She seemed content enough there and calm, her moments of unhappy confusion mercifully brief.

Louise had found it very hard to let her mother return to her homeland from Scotland; theirs had been a close and loving relationship and her sense of loss was acute. Her visits to Paris had been clouded by dread of what further deterioration she might find but over time she had learnt a sort of acceptance that allowed her to
take pleasure again in the city she had always loved since childhood holidays with her mother’s family.

Now she stretched luxuriously like a cat in the warmth of the sunshine, her eyes half-closed, then hearing her name spoken looked up to see a tall young man coming along the pavement towards her, raising his hand in greeting.

Embarrassed, she sat up. ‘Just caught me basking,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Great to see you, Randall.’ Then, before she could help herself she blurted out, ‘Goodness, you’ve changed!’

He laughed easily. ‘The beardy student look doesn’t go down very well in business circles.’

Louise had seen his photo on Friends Reunited, then Facebook, but she hadn’t seen the
tout ensemble.
Randall Lindsay was pinkly clean-shaven now and wearing a pale-blue shirt in thick, expensive looking cotton with a coral-pink cashmere sweater knotted loosely round his shoulders.

Oh, very BCBG, Louise thought dryly.
Bon chic bon genre
– good style, good class; the very uniform of the French upper-middle. Even his scruffy student look at Glasgow University, she now remembered, had been very carefully on trend, and as Randall gestured to a waiter she began to regret her impulse to contact him.

They had known each other a little at uni having discovered they both hailed from Galloway, though he came from the smart sailing territory in the south while she came from Stranraer where the sailing was mostly done in ferry boats to Ireland. When she discovered he was working in Paris, Louise had thought meeting up sometimes might be fun; her aunt had a busy social life and her cousins had left home so she was often at a loose end on her visits.

Having ordered his coffee, Randall was studying her. ‘Now, you haven’t changed a bit. Still the same crazy girl, I bet!’

He said it in an admiring way, but she almost had to sit on her
hand to stop it going up to smooth her dark curly hair, which had a will of its own. She knew her own student look had been casual to the point of indifference, owing a lot to Oxfam, but she would have hoped that her Diesel jeans and Karen Millen top might at least have spelt out a change of style.

‘So,’ he was going on, ‘what are you up to these days? You didn’t say on your page.’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I’m a bit careful. Trolls get in everywhere—’

‘Tell me about it!’ Randall leant forward eagerly. ‘I didn’t put the merchant banking bit on mine. You in the same business?’

Now she really was regretting her sociable impulse. ‘Not exactly. I’m in the police. Detective constable.’

He gave a low whistle. ‘Wow – a copper eh? What the hell took you in that direction? Not much money in it – with your degree you could have been a lawyer.’

‘I could, yes.’ She knew she sounded frosty. ‘But when I looked into it, I realised that this seemed much more interesting and challenging. And it is – I wouldn’t give it up for anything.’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘And I like the fact that it’s public service.’

‘Very laudable.’ Randall’s lips twitched in a little, patronising smile. ‘And I’m sure you’ve had a lot of fascinating cases.’

‘Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘And you – what bank is it you work for?’

He told her. He had been based in the Paris branch of a British bank for the past year, a chance to use his degree in French.

‘And what brings you to Paris? Are you sleuthing? “On a case”?’ He indicated quotation marks, looking elaborately round the cafe and indicating a blameless French pensioner. ‘Now that old guy there – in your professional opinion, doesn’t he look distinctly suspicious?’

‘Not really,’ she said coolly. God, what a prat! If she got up and walked out it would be rude to the point of downright aggression, but she was tempted. Fighting the impulse she explained about her
mother. ‘I come over to see her occasionally,’ she said, playing it down in case he suggested a regular meeting.

‘Shame I didn’t know sooner. I could have whisked you round a bit. But in fact, I’m more likely to see you back home.’

Louise was surprised. ‘In Galloway? Didn’t think that would have been your scene any more.’

‘Oh, I pop back from time to time, you know.’

She thought he looked oddly shifty as he said that – perhaps ashamed of admitting to going anywhere so uncool. But he was going on, ‘And my mother is taking this Year of Homecoming stuff terribly seriously – there’s a three-line whip out for some grand event she has in mind, so that was it, of course. Did you ever meet my ma?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You didn’t, then. Once seen, never forgotten. Most people bear the scars for years afterwards.’ He laughed. ‘“She Who Must Be Obeyed”, you know? People in the village run when they see her coming.’

Looking at her son, Louise could well believe it. His air of confident authority probably went down well in banking circles but it was getting right up her nose. She shifted the conversation to mutual acquaintances until she felt able to look at her watch and claim another engagement.

Randall looked disappointed. ‘I thought we could run this into lunch. Come on, chuck your date! I go to this great little place near the Bourse – the patron gets the foie gras straight from his brother’s farm. Oh – my treat, of course.’

As if it was charity to a humble copper who couldn’t possibly afford the local he usually popped round to from work, Louise thought, and if that was meant to impress her he’d really blown it. ‘I’m afraid I don’t eat foie gras,’ she said coldly. ‘I’m lunching with my aunt and I couldn’t possibly let her down – she’s getting on a bit and I couldn’t disappoint her.’

Louise crossed her fingers surreptitiously as she spoke. Her
Tante
Coralie would have had reason to be surprised to hear that, not to say annoyed, since she was currently lunching with two equally youthful looking and elegant Parisiennes in their own very chic local bistro. However, Louise felt sure she would forgive the slur if it allowed her niece to escape this objectionable young man.

Randall got to his feet reluctantly. ‘Too bad. Well – see you at the other end, then?’

‘Absolutely. Great to see you,’ Louise said with what enthusiasm she could muster and left, giving an airy wave before he could complete the move he was making to kiss her.

He probably won’t bother, Louise told herself as she headed back across the river and bought a baguette from a stall near Notre Dame to eat in the Square du Vert-Galant and contemplate the bustle of the Seine.

The tourist season was just starting to get under way and the
bateaux-mouches
were plying their trade up and down, though there were still more tourists in the glass-roofed cabins than hardier souls braving the river breeze on the open decks.

She lit up once she’d finished eating. How strange it felt, sitting here and knowing that the day after tomorrow she’d be back at police headquarters in Kirkluce, Galloway, having to huddle round the back by the dustbins to smoke her Gitane, probably in pouring rain. It really was high time she gave up. She might even do it.

‘What I don’t understand is why they requested you,’ Detective Superintendent Christine Rowley said petulantly. ‘I told Tom Taylor I’d be happy to review their processes in the case and you would have thought he’d have jumped at the offer of an experienced senior officer.’

It was a wet Monday morning, but DI Fleming’s gloom had been
lifted by the invitation to take a look at a murder case in Dumfriesshire that had been going on for some time without apparent progress.

She was trying to conceal her pleasure, though, saying, ‘Mmm,’ as non-committally as possible, though she could have explained that the superintendent – known to her officers as Hyacinth after the redoubtable Mrs Bucket – had gained a reputation for being toxic that went well beyond the bounds of Galloway. Rowley had come from Edinburgh and was unwise enough to make it clear that in her eyes the job out here in the sticks was only a stepping stone to promotion back in civilisation.

Instead, Fleming said with careful tact, ‘He probably felt that doing it at superintendent level would be overkill. It’s an informal request and with all the constabularies being technically merged into one force now this is more like asking a colleague to brainstorm than calling in a formal case review.’

Rowley pouted. ‘The merger wouldn’t have happened at all, if I’d had any say. Now we’re just a division instead of a force – indeed, a subdivision of that division – our successes are going to get blurred.’

‘Our failures, too,’ Fleming put in, with malice aforethought.

Rowley’s sallow skin took on an unattractive flush; she had gone blonde recently which somehow made her skin tone muddier than ever. ‘Compared to other forces – when there still were other forces – it’s a shining example of my good practice, but who will notice that now?’

Here we go again! Once Rowley began on a lament for the diminution of her prospects of becoming a chief constable since there was only one now for the whole of Scotland, it could take quarter of an hour out of the working morning.

Fleming seized on a pause for breath. ‘Anyway, I’m to get in touch with Detective Superintendent Taylor, is that right? I’d better do that now before I get caught up in sorting through the weekend reports.’

Escaping, she headed for her office on the fourth floor of police headquarters in Kirkluce, a market town on the main road between Newton Stewart and Stranraer. She took the steps two at a time; she’d become more conscious of the need for fitness since her husband Bill’s heart attack last year. She was tall – five-foot ten in her socks – and she’d carried the weight that had crept on more or less unnoticeably. She was getting her athletic figure back now, though, and with the intrusive grey hairs in her chestnut crop judiciously camouflaged, she felt she was limiting at least some of the damaging effects of middle age.

And the new task was good news. There had been something of a lull recently and she’d had to take on her share of the chores that were the tedious side of modern police work. Skilfully managed, this assignment could even provide her with an excuse to palm off the statistical return that was currently lying reproachfully on her desk to someone else. With hope in her heart Fleming shifted it to one side as she sat down.

She knew why Tom Taylor had asked for her. He was in his late thirties, young to have made super – another reason for Hyacinth to be snarky about him – and he was new to the job. They had met at a course geared towards bringing together several neighbouring forces before the Police Scotland reforms came into operation. He had sought her out to ask about her most recent murder case and they had been deep in discussion when his senior DI Len Harris appeared, a sharp-featured man with a neat pencil moustache, every hair of it bristling.

He clearly saw this cross-border détente as fraternising with the enemy and was embarrassingly chippy with his senior officer; though Taylor was wise enough not to rise to provocation the atmosphere became uncomfortable and Fleming made a tactical withdrawal. Since then Taylor had come to her with a couple of queries, which by
tacit agreement she had not mentioned to Rowley; she would be very surprised if he’d mentioned them to Harris either.

However, she knew no more about the case in question than she’d read in the press releases: a man’s body had been found in a battered car stranded on mudflats off the Dumfriesshire Solway coast last month, just after a storm and a particularly strong spring tide. Given the conditions, the presumption of accident had been the obvious one: the car, perhaps on one of the low roads running right beside the Firth, had either misjudged a corner or been swept away by a tidal surge and the notoriously treacherous Solway had claimed another victim.

A later release had announced that the police were treating the death as suspicious, but with nothing about it to attract press attention, it had merited only a small paragraph in the Scottish papers. Since then Fleming had heard nothing more and it was with considerable interest that she dialled the number she had been given.

Detective Superintendent Taylor answered the phone himself, his voice brightening when he heard her voice.

‘Marjory! Thanks for getting back to me. I take it Christine told you what this is all about?’

‘Not really, no, except it’s to do with this body that was discovered in a stranded car.’

‘That’s right. Oh, I can send you over the reports if you agree to get involved, but if I brief you on the situation over the phone now I can speak in confidence, I hope.’

‘Of course.’

‘The car was reported stuck on the mudflats near Newbie – treacherous stuff, we nearly lost a tractor trying to get it off. The boffins tell me that from its condition it had been thrown about in the water but as usual they’re reluctant to commit themselves to anything more specific than that, given the weather conditions at the time.

‘Anyway, it finished upside down with the corpse in a corner of the roof.’

‘No seat belt?’

‘Presumably not. None of them was broken. Of course, that’s not of itself significant. As you and I both know there’s all these morons with a death wish out on the roads who don’t use them – the body was a vivid example of what happens if you’re unrestrained when a car goes out of control.’ He paused.