Bitter End Part 31

Buchanan didn't know what it meant. He felt he didn't 193. know what anything meant. He said, 'Was her friend aware of any incident. . . maybe a phone message . . . that might have changed Vanessa's mind about staying overnight?

Did she make any phone calls? Did she show any signs of having received a sudden shock?'

'I didn't think to ask,' Fizz admitted, clearly annoyed with herself. 'I hadn't got that far in my thinking.'

Given the unpredictability of hitting on the right question, Buchanan wasn't about to blame her. He slid the phone across to her and returned to his doodling while she dialled Directory Inquiries and then the number. The subsequent conversation, which lasted about ten minutes, was reasonably easy to follow, so he wasn't too disappointed when Fizz rang off and gave him a synopsis.

'She doesn't think anything happened to alarm Vanessa during the course of the evening. They had a quiet meal, a few drinks, and then went to bed. There were no visitors and, as far as she knows, no phone calls for Vanessa.

However, Vanessa had her mobile phone, so anyone could have called her after eleven p.m. when she was in her room.'

'Or, conversely, she could have made a phone call.'

Buchanan scratched his head with his pen. 'So, whatever happened to spook her, the chances are it must have happened immediately after she went to her room.'

Fizz focused on the toes of her boots and let her imagination roll. 'She phoned somebody. Somebody phoned her. She saw someone or something from her window. She put two and two together and realised she was in danger. She panicked.'

Buchanan flipped open his scribbling pad. 'Right. Let's get organised. Who do you have on your suspects list?'

'Lawrence,' Fizz said in a weary voice, holding up her left thumb and allocating a finger to each subsequent name. 'Ford. Rudyard. Poppy. Niall Menzies. Mrs Menzies -by proxy. Maybe that centurion who's been watching me.

And a person or persons unknown. I don't think Mr 194. Menzies senior is the sort to put out a contract on someone but I guess we ought to include him just in case.'

Buchanan looked at the list he had jotted down. Sometimes just staring at a name on a piece of paper was enough to set his mind working but this time he was stumped. He could give most of the suspects a tick for means, motive and opportunity; some of them appeared barely feasible, but he had no information that would eliminate any of them.

This isn't working, Fizz,' he told her, throwing his pen on the notepad. 'I don't know what we're doing wrong this time but we're not getting ahead.'

'Well, you know why that is, don't you?' Fizz threw wide her arms with an energy that made her chair creak dangerously.

'Genghis Gra.s.sick is working against us, isn't he?

He's having us watched, he knows our every move, and every time we get too close to the truth he spirits away the evidence. We might as well throw in the towel.'

This was merely a figure of speech, of course. She had no intention of throwing in the towel but nor, apparently, did she have any alternative suggestions as to how they should move forward.

He picked up his pen and doodled a question mark beside his list of suspects. 'Where do we go from here?' he asked Fizz, or himself, or maybe the ghost of Sherlock Holmes, but got no reply. 'Fleming hasn't made much headway either. All he had to report when I spoke to him last night was that Lawrence was apparently at home in Edinburgh when the explosion occurred. Oh . . . and the Fords had only a six-month let on their house. They'd only been there for about four and a half months so Jamie can't have known Vanessa long.'

'Ah,' said Fizz vaguely, toying with her bootlaces. 'Giles did mention he'd looked through a crack in the window boards and thought it looked suspiciously tidy. No doubt it's been cleaned ready for the next tenant.'

'It's been cleaned? That's interesting,' Buchanan said. 'It 195. follows that Poppy must have given up her tenancy so, wherever she is, she's still alive, still making decisions and still has no intention of returning home.'

'Big deal,' Fizz returned. 'It doesn't put us all that much further forward, though, does it?'

Buchanan had to agree. 'We're in the doldrums,' he muttered, chewing his pen. 'There doesn't seem to be a single lead open to us.'

Fizz slid her feet off the desk and let them thud to the floor. 'Well, you know what they always say, snook.u.ms: if you don't have any leads you have to make 'em.'

Buchanan eyed her without enthusiasm. His respect for Fizz's flat-pack philosophy did not extend to accepting it as gospel. 'Oh yes? And you have some constructive ideas along those lines?'

'Maybe. They're still simmering but I have hopes.'

Buchanan shivered. 'Fizz . . .'

'Yeah, I know. Don't act on them without discussing it with yer holiness.' She sat up and stretched. 'Meanwhile I think we have to keep up the pressure on Old Man Menzies. I reckon he's a decent old bird and, in spite of what his wife says, he could still put his foot down if he chose to stop the sale of Lammerburn House. Of course, if the sale doesn't go through it would mean we'd lose the commission, but still--'

'But still we'd get our regular fees for administering the estate, which we'd probably miss out on if it went to a new owner.' Buchanan was, in any case, not at all convinced that she had any grounds for optimism and, furthermore, he didn't feel he could pester the Menzies clan any more than he had already done. However, he was willing to go as far as he could to straighten things out. Inquiries about the sale of Lammerburn Estate were already coming in and if the sale went to a quick completion the matter would be out of his hands.

It was excruciatingly tempting to let Fizz have one more go. She had an undeniable talent for persuasion. She could 196. also -despite the fact that she had every fault observed in h.o.m.o sapiens, plus a few a.s.similated from the lower orders of the animal kingdom -make people trust her, if only for short periods. Buchanan trusted her only as far as he could spit her but he was unwilling to abandon the people of Lammerburn village without doing his utmost for them.

'I'll talk to him myself,' Fizz bargained, putting on her prettiest face. 'I reckon I could drop in on a casual visit, not as an employee of Buchanan and Stewart. He's stuck in the house so he'll be glad of a visitor -and I think he likes me.'

Buchanan thought so too, and that was enough to sway him. 'Just. . . don't do anything I'll have to sack you for, okay, Fizz?'

And, oh boy, that really gave her cause for concern, he congratulated himself. As well it might, since he had already sacked her at least twice with no observable effect. Fizz hadn't really expected Buchanan to give her a lift over

to the Menzies' residence. He made the excuse that he

wanted to be on hand in case she felt she needed his input,

but that excuse was thin to the point of anorexia compared

to the much more likely reason: that he was ashamed of

treating her like a wimp and wanted to show it without

actually apologising. This suspicion was only confirmed by

his willingness to wait outside in the ear while she tackled

the Menzies family on her own; something he would never

have done if he hadn't been trying to mollify her. That was OK. She had forgiven him anyway. After all, Buchanan couldn't help but be overprotective. That was never going to change so you had to either ignore it or walk away, and after all the work she'd put in w.a.n.gling her way into his employment, she wasn't going to take the second option. Quite apart from that, she could see that rain was on the way and she was wearing only a short jacket.

She could have done without the company of the stag's antlers, which had now managed to curl so far round her 197. headrest that she had to hold a p.r.o.ng away from her jugular vein every time they took a left. However, mentioning this fact to Buchanan only brought on a fit of the vapours because it was going to take three people and a hand-saw to remove the d.a.m.n thing without ripping his car's pristine upholstery to shreds, so she had to bite the bullet.

As she had predicted, Mr Menzies was openly delighted to see her, a good deal more delighted than his wife, who had just returned from Lammerburn. Fizz, herself, was not exactly thrilled to find the old woman ensconced in front of the television, watching a programme on how to survive in the jungle without support, a situation in which she was, Fizz felt, unlikely to find herself in the near future.

'She's that little office girl of Tam Buchanan's,' the crone was thinking, scarcely taking her eyes off the screen to acknowledge her visitor before returning to her pro- 1

gramme. 'What's she doing here?'

Mr Menzies scowled across at his wife's profile and tried to speak over her. 'Well now, this is nice. Sit yourself down, Miss Fitzpatrick.'

'Fizz. Everybody calls me Fizz.'

'Cheeze!' muttered Mrs Menzies, but whether she was commenting on the nickname or on the TV presenter's recipe for stewed bugs, was anybody's guess.

'Well, Fizz,' said her husband. 'You haven't come to tell me you've sold my house already, have you?'

'Unfortunately not,' Fizz admitted with a smile. She slid her chair closer to him, putting an extra two or three feet between herself and the TV set which was evidently not going to be turned off. 'But we have had a couple of inquiries so it looks like we'll be starting to show the property pretty soon. I thought, if you could spare me the time, it would be helpful if we could discuss some of its selling points in more depth than the prospectus goes into.'

'Happy to. It'll make a pleasant change.' Mr Menzies' 198. eyes darted briefly towards his wife, inadvertently hinting that not only had age withered her but custom had staled her infinite variety.

'I usually a.s.sist Dennis Whittaker in showing properties to clients and it makes it very much more effective if I can give advice as to possible changes the purchasers might wish to make. What snags they might come up against, such as dodgy terrain, local bye-laws--'