Bitter End Part 29

'And in that case,' the young woman said, continuing her conversation with Giles, 'you didn't even know my name!

It's Charlotte Mclntosh, by the way. So, how did you track me down?'

Giles was doing fine with the social side of the business, so Fizz let him get on with it while she took stock of Vanessa Gra.s.sick's friend. She was much the same age as Vanessa had been, maybe a little nearer thirty: a big woman, a good two stone overweight, broad hipped and generously bosomed. She was cleverly dressed in a pair of well tailored trousers and a drapey sort of blouse with a knee-length cardigan on top but she couldn't hide the excess fat on a face that would otherwise have been quite lovely. She had huge dark eyes thickly fringed with curling lashes and wonderfully transparent, creamy skin.

She sat them down at the ma.s.sive table in the centre of the room and spooned coffee into a cafetiere while she listened to Giles's pitch, then she grabbed a handful of 181. mugs and came over to sit beside them.

'Vanessa always stayed with us when she came north,'

she said, using both hands to swoosh back her long scarf of hair. 'Not that we saw a great deal of her -once or twice a year if we were lucky -and she rarely stayed more than a couple of days.' She laid a palm on the cafetiere and watched it thoughtfully as she pressed down the strainer.

'She wasn't a country girl, you see. She had to be doing something every minute of the day and there was too much going on in her life for her to waste a minute of it.'

She swallowed a couple of times, tears welling in her eyes, and blinked out at the walled garden beyond the windows. For a minute, it was so quiet that Fizz could hear the fridge humming. Then Charlotte sniffed and smiled and reached for the coffee mugs. 'I just can't believe she's not around any more.'

'It seems very possible,' Giles said, kindly keeping his gaze averted to give her time to get a grip on herself, 'that you and your husband were the last people to see Vanessa . . . urn . . . urn . . . before the accident. Obviously, I don't want to upset you more than--'

'No, no. I'm just being silly. It's not as if Vanessa and I were so very close. It's just so tragic to see a promising life cut short. Please ... do ask me anything you like.'

Giles wasted a minute or two while they all fiddled around with their coffee, during which Fizz lost patience and said, 'We really need to know if Vanessa said or did anything, the evening she stayed with you, that might have led you to believe she was under some sort of strain.'

Charlotte's already wide eyes widened still further as she swung them from Fizz to Giles and back again. 'You're wondering if she . . . surely not!'

'It's a possibility we have to eliminate,' Fizz told her, sounding, to her own ears, quite official. 'It would also be a help if we knew, for instance, if she was worried or afraid.'

'What are you saying?' Charlotte was openly horrified. 182. That it wasn't an accident? But, that's. . . Good heavens!

Suicide? Vanessa? No! Absolutely not! Vanessa would never do a thing like that. If you knew her -no, I don't believe that for a second. Vanessa wasn't the kind to give up. Never!'

Fizz nodded as though she accepted this opinion without question. 'So, how was she that evening? Quiet?

Happy? Tense? Relaxed?'

Giles made an uneasy movement with his hand, just as Buchanan would have done if he thought she was being too pushy but, h.e.l.l, it was five o'clock and they didn't have all night.

Charlotte looked at her, but didn't say anything. Fizz could see her brain ticking away in there as she thought about it and she saw the uncertainty creep into her expression a little at a time. When she could see that Charlotte was becoming just a tad uneasy at the pictures her memory was flashing up she asked her, There was something strange about her, wasn't there?'

Charlotte frowned at the table top, not wanting to admit it. 'Perhaps she was a little more . . . excitable than usual.

A little hyper. She drank more than usual... a large whisky when she arrived, wine at dinner, and more whisky in the evening.'

'Did she appear worried or angry about anything?' Giles asked.

'I can't believe this.' Charlotte put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. 'Vanessa wasn't like that,' she said through her fingers. 'But, there it is, she was odd that evening. I thought nothing of it. People aren't always the same. They have moods. You don't immediately a.s.sume they're going to commit suicide.'

'But she didn't appear unhappy?' Fizz prodded.

'Why didn't she tell me?' Charlotte sat up, ignoring the question, her face haunted. 'Why didn't she talk to me about it instead of... surely she knew I'd have done anything . . .' 183. Fizz thought she was going to cry again but Giles reached across and put a hand on her arm and she satisfied herself with a few gulps.

'Tell me what you remember,' Giles said, almost tenderly, his voice carrying soothing undertones comparable to Buchanan at his best.

Charlotte took a minute or two for some deep breathing and tucked her hair back behind her ears. 'She was hyper when she came in. Very talkative. Dashing upstairs to her room, out to the garden. Couldn't sit down for a minute.'

'Did she seem afraid?' Fizz asked.

Charlotte pressed her lips together and nodded. 'Yes. I see now that she was afraid of something but she was trying to hide it from me. Oh, my G.o.d, why didn't she tell us? Hugh would have done something . . . called the police ... At the very least, we could have prevented her from dashing back to Edinburgh like that. . .'

'What reason did she give you for suddenly cutting short her visit?' Giles prompted gently.

'She gave us no reason at all. She just went. While we were asleep. Not a word to either of us.'

Fizz exchanged an astounded glance with Giles who, for once, had no ready reply, and took it upon herself to reiterate, 'She left, without warning, in the middle of the night?'

'Not in the middle of the night,' Charlotte said. 'Otherwise how could she have been in Chirnside at two-thirty? It must have been just after we went to bed.'

'And what time was that?'

'About eleven.' Answering Fizz's question, she addressed her remarks to Giles, probably because he was encouraging her with an expression of tender concern. 'Hugh, my husband, has to be up at crack of dawn but usually Vanessa and I would sit chatting till the wee small hours.

But that night she was exhausted . . . she said she was exhausted ... so we all turned in at the same time. I... I think she must have left virtually right away.' 184. 'You heard nothing? Not even the car starting?' Giles asked.

She shook her head. 'Nothing. We park our cars round at the old byre so we wouldn't have heard her leave. We knew nothing about it till the next morning when she didn't come down. Her bed hadn't been slept in. Of course, I phoned her Edinburgh number right away and . . . that's when Lawrence told me what had happened.'

"And you told Lawrence that she had left in a hurry?'

Fizz said, and got a nod in reply. 'Had he any explanation for that?'

'No. He was as baffled as Hugh and I were. All we could suppose was that Vanessa had remembered something important. . .' She waved a hand vaguely. 'I don't know, something to do with her business, perhaps. You don't think that's possible?'

'Perfectly possible, Mrs Mclntosh,' Giles said confidently, holding her eyes. 'Perfectly possible, believe me. I'm really sorry to have caused you distress, but I'm afraid these questions have to be answered. We have to examine every possibility until we establish the true cause of Mrs Gra.s.sick's death. I'm sure you understand that?'

Charlotte was happy to agree that you couldn't make omelettes without breaking eggs and invited them to stay and meet her husband who was due back from the fields in less than an hour. However, neither Fizz nor, apparently, Giles were desperate to hear Hugh's testimony. It was unlikely to differ in any important facet from his wife's and, furthermore, an hour was rather long to wait for him considering they still had a two-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of them.

'Quit while you're winning', Fizz suspected would be found engraved on her heart when she finally fell off her twig. Fleming had decided that it would be unwise to meet at the

Pear Tree too often, just in case somebody got suspicious. 185. That wasn't, in Buchanan's opinion, the least bit likely to happen but he was happy to go along with his choice of the Canny Man at Morningside. It was smokier and noisier than his regular pub but the beer was good.

Fleming, for a change, got in the first round. 'Right,' he said, wiping away his foam moustache with the heel of his hand. 'I had another look at the accidental death report and, between you and me, Tam, it's pretty hazy in places.

It wouldn't have got past me, I can tell you.'

'Uh-huh?' Buchanan tried to look interested in the standards maintained by Hawick police station. 'What about Lawrence Gra.s.sick? Did it establish where he was on the night of the explosion?'

'Not too b.l.o.o.d.y specifically. That's what I'm saying. The whole report was badly written. It says that Vanessa's husband was contacted immediately and informed of his wife's death but it doesn't specify where and it doesn't specify precisely when. "Immediately" could mean within a couple of hours.' Fleming got out his cigarettes and stuck one between his lips, letting it wag up and down as he said, 'We can probably a.s.sume that he was at home, otherwise that fact would have to be made clear on the report. If he wasn't at home when contacted, somebody's going to be demoted to a sleeping policeman when I've finished with them.'

Buchanan had a momentary picture of Virgo lying in the middle of the road with cars b.u.mping over him and the thought was not without its appeal. He said, 'No confirmation of his whereabouts? Nothing approaching an alibi?'

'Let's say, if I'd been in charge of the inquiry I'm pretty d.a.m.n sure I'd have been looking for something a lot more specific. Frankly,' he paused for a gulp of beer and a drag at his cigarette, 'I wouldn't like to be in Lawrence Gra.s.sick's shoes right now. I do not like the way things are shaping up for him. Unless he has proof to the contrary, it looks like he had the means, he had the opportunity, and 186. after ten years of marriage, I'd be surprised if he didn't have a choice of motives. And if it comes out that some silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d down in Hawick took a kickback to cover up for him, by Christ, you'll see h.e.l.l's foundations quiver all right. It'll be a whole sewage plant hitting the fan.'

Buchanan nodded. Everything Fleming said was true but, of course, Gra.s.sick had been the prime suspect from the beginning, simply by virtue of the fact that he was the victim's husband. He might not be able to prove his innocence, but that didn't make him guilty. It didn't make him innocent either, Buchanan reflected, and reached for the solace of his pint.

His concentration, this evening, was inclined to wander.

Half his mind, since eleven o'clock this morning, had been dwelling on Fizz and on how, in G.o.d's name, he could have stopped her from going off with Giles. Her time was her own. If she wanted to earn a couple of hours' wages she turned up; if she had something better to do, she didn't. There was simply no way he could have pretended to have an urgent job for her to do and, the way things had been between them at that point, she'd have told him to get lost if he'd tried it.

That was the bitter bit. She'd been so mad at him and probably with reason -that it would be no surprise at all to him if she had fallen straight into Giles's arms, just to spite him. Because, obviously, she had to know that Giles irritated him, with that s.e.xy come-to-bed look and that cheesy grin and the oily way he b.u.t.tered her up.

Probably even she wouldn't be silly enough to suspect Buchanan of being jealous but she knew how to annoy him just the same.

She should have been back in Edinburgh by eight-thirty, at which time Buchanan had left home to meet Fleming, yet she hadn't phoned, as she would normally have done.