Bitter End Part 14

'Of course,' Buchanan said, affably. 'I can imagine how irritating it must have been to have almost an insurrection on her doorstep. Is the organised opposition still causing you trouble?'

'No . . . not since . . .' Niall stooped to stroke the dogs.

'It seems to have fallen away at the moment. At least, 1 haven't heard anything for a week or so.'

Fizz was replacing the elastic grip that was supposed to be keeping her hair under some sort of control. 'And you are still determined to empty the cottages before the sale?'

'It should have been done by now,' Niall said, almost pettishly. 'I gave them an extra month to get fixed up elsewhere. n.o.body can say I haven't bent over backwards for them, as I told your Mr Whittaker, but they are pushing me to the limit. I may have to ask you to get a court order to evict them in the end.'

'I know you must be aware of the devastation that would cause, not just to the families in the cottages but to the entire village area, so I won't go into that again,'

Buchanan said quickly, before Fizz could make matters worse. 'However, it seems likely that there could be serious ha.s.sle later, if not for you then for the next owner. You might be wiser to consider postponing the evictions and letting the next owner decide whether he wants the residents to stay or go.'

'Yes, but you see, it's a matter of price,' Niall explained as though to a simpleton. 'Mummy is quite insistent that we'll get a much higher price if the cottages are vacant, and your Mr Whittaker didn't disagree. I'm sorry about the tenants but I'm sure they'll find other places to rent, and anyway, I couldn't change Mummy's mind if I tried.'

Buchanan wasn't sure that anyone other than, possibly, a brain surgeon could change Mrs Menzies' mind. He 90. glanced at Fizz to see if she had any ideas on how to handle this impa.s.se but, for once, she was silent. Like himself, she was doubtless far from ready to admit defeat on this one, but it sure as h.e.l.l was going to take some thinking about. 91.

Chapter Eight.

Giles was still having dinner when they arrived at the

hotel, which didn't surprise Fizz in the slightest. She'd half

expected him to be running even later since, when she had

phoned him earlier, he had been en route to Glasgow on

the trail of some lead or other which he'd deemed more

important than visiting the hospital. Because he was driving

at the time, and because the reception on his mobile

phone was terrible, he hadn't gone into details but Fizz

had gathered his purpose was more a matter of elimination

than something crucial. She also had a private little

suspicion that maybe he wanted to postpone going to the

hospital till she was free to accompany him, and she wasn't

going to complain about that. She was halfway through her first G&T when he appeared from the dining room, looking perfectly scrumptious, and started to apologise for keeping them waiting.

Buchanan brushed all that aside and bought him a brandy.

'So how was your day, Giles?' he asked, sipping his own double tonic water. 'Fizz tells me you shot off to Glasgow on a hot trail?'

'On a cold trail, as it turned out, but it took me all day to be sure of that.' Giles ran a hand through his hair, looking tired and discouraged. 'I went back to Chirnside this morning, as planned, to ask Mr and Mrs Pringle which hospital Poppy Ford had been taken to, only to find their house locked up and deserted. Their neighbour, Mrs Armstrong, was able to tell me that the Pringles have gone 93. to visit their daughter in Glasgow, which is something they do at fairly regular intervals.' He swirled the brandy in his balloon gla.s.s. 'I don't know why that struck me as unlikely.

Maybe because, when I was in the house yesterday, I didn't notice any sign that they were getting ready to go away. Mr Pringle had just started a ma.s.sive jigsaw puzzle and he said his wife had gone out to get tickets for a concert in Berwick.'

'Definitely peculiar,' Fizz said, starting to tingle with antic.i.p.ation, and Giles gave her a quick smile.

'Exactly what I thought. Fortunately, Mrs Armstrong had the daughter's address -she'd held it for years in case of emergencies -and I talked her into giving it to me.'

'That was a bit of luck,' Buchanan said. 'So you tracked them down?'

'Nope. Cold trail.' Giles shook his head wearily. 'The daughter's there, but no sign of Mum and Dad.'

Fizz looked at Buchanan to see if that news made any sense to him but apparently he was as bewildered as she was.

'What did the daughter say?' he asked Giles. 'Was she worried when you told her that her parents had disappeared?'

'According to the daughter, they are staying with her,'

Giles said, 'but they'd "just gone out for a walk". She was very jumpy. She wouldn't let me in the house and as soon as I'd gone she was on the telephone to someone -I could hear her through the door and she sounded nervous. I hung around till six-thirty, but the Pringles didn't come back, so either it was a long walk or they're avoiding me.

Take your pick.'

Neither of those possibilities struck Fizz as at all likely but she could think of no other rationale. The Pringles had certainly not been out for a walk for seven hours, not if Mrs Pringle was as unfit as she looked, but they could conceivably have decided to go somewhere or do something on the spur of the moment, while they were out. Yes, 94. but if that were the case, why was their daughter so jumpy?

Was it her parents she'd been phoning so hurriedly or, if not, who was it?

'What could they be scared of?' Buchanan pondered aloud. 'You think Pringle may be regretting giving you that piece of electric heater?'

'I've been wondering about that.' Giles sipped his brandy for a moment as the bartender paused to clear the adjacent table and then, when he had moved on, said, 'It also makes me wonder whether someone has hidden them away in case they say too much.'

'Like who? Lawrence Gra.s.sick?' Fizz suggested, dropping her voice.

'He'd be the most likely person,' Giles nodded. 'What do you think, Tam?'

Buchanan spread a baffled hand. 'To be honest, I don't know what to think. I get the picture that somebody in this game is not just playing for matches, but. . . Gra.s.sick?' He pondered that possibility for a minute, sipping his tonic water, and then shrugged. Then again . . . when I think about it, it could be the sort of thing he might do ... treat them to a holiday somewhere to get them out of my way.'

'Or b.u.mp them off?' Fizz suggested darkly.

'No. Not that,' said Buchanan. 'They must still be alive.'

Giles looked at him closely. 'What makes you say that, Tam?'

'If the parents were dead, why involve the daughter? She obviously knows what's going on and is lending her support.

That makes it look, to me, as though the Pringles were acting independently when they took off.'

'I'm with you on that,' Giles said. 'Although, what I could have said to panic them into such an extreme reaction, I cannot imagine.'

They knew something they were afraid to let out,' Fizz stated confidently.

The way she looked at it, it was perfectly obvious.

The Pringles clearly made a hobby of knowing their 95. neighbours' business -doubtless they were the 'daft old folk' the waiter had been referring to -and in all probability they were the only two people who knew the whole story. They'd know if Jamie Ford and Vanessa Gra.s.sick were having an affair. In fact, they'd had plenty of opportunity to snoop around inside Brora Lodge, so it would be surprising if they didn't know more about the Gra.s.sicks'

personal life than even Gra.s.sick suspected. No doubt they'd have been willing enough to share with the insurance investigator the one or two indisputable pieces of evidence in their possession, but they were too much in awe of Lawrence Gra.s.sick to get dragged into the mire of a scandal. Especially if they knew things they'd no business to know.

Giles and Buchanan were too deep in thought to acknowledge this incisive piece of insight. They were both staring into s.p.a.ce with a concentration Fizz was unable to match. She wasn't good at focusing her thoughts, especially in a public place with music playing and people milling about. She gave up trying to think after a minute or two and sat watching the people at the bar.

There was one guy there she'd seen before somewhere: a heavy-shouldered guy with a square head that was covered in a pelt of greying hair. He looked, she thought, like an ex-soldier -more like an ex-centurion, for some strange reason, maybe because of his beat-up face and his hugely jutting jaw. He had probably been in the bar the evening before, or maybe around the village the last time she and Buchanan had pa.s.sed through. He didn't strike her as being the Chirnside Hall's average type of patron, more like one of the locals who'd just dropped in for a pint though why he'd be paying c.o.c.ktail bar prices instead of patronising the Waterloo was anybody's guess.