Bitter End Part 33

night and by early afternoon the clouds were beginning to

break up, predicting a reasonable start to the weekend. About three o'clock he was just beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel when Ian Fleming phoned.

'Have you time for a pint tonight?' he said, wasting no breath on formalities.

Tonight?' Buchanan couldn't pretend that the idea grabbed him with any kind of compulsion. He'd be pushed to fit in some golf before his regular Friday night dinner and theatre date and he didn't fancy meeting Ian at eleven o'clock at night. 'Is it important?'

Fleming sniffed irritably. 'Maybe yes, maybe no,' he said.

Tt depends on what you make of it.'

'Can't you tell me over the phone?'

'Sure. If all you want is the bare facts. 1 thought you'd want to discuss things, bounce some ideas off each other.'

'Well, yes, sure.' Buchanan found himself doodling a putter on the cover of his notepad and sighed. 'Maybe you could fill me in briefly just now and we can meet for a drink some time over the weekend. Tomorrow evening, say. I've turned up a few interesting facts over the last couple of days -at least, Fizz has -that I should pa.s.s on 205. to you, but nothing of immediate importance.'

'Hang on,' said Fleming. Buchanan heard the sound of the receiver being put down on a hard surface followed by the slam of a door. 'That's better. Too many ears and eyes in this place. Right. There's a couple of things I've cleared up that you can cross off your list, the rest can wait.

Firstly, the heater was probably bought from a house clearance that was advertised in the local paper about a month ago. We can't get a definite identification from the woman who handled the sale -she was doing it for a friend whose marriage had just collapsed -but she can confirm that the convector heater mentioned in the advertis.e.m.e.nt was the model in the catalogue we showed her.

There can't be many of that particular model around nowadays, so I think we can a.s.sume it to be the same one.'

'Can't she remember anything about the guy she sold it to?' Buchanan said. 'You showed her a photograph of Gra.s.sick, I suppose?'

'I did, Tam. At least my pal did, but the woman didn't remember him and she hasn't a clue who bought what.

The house was full of people, she says, and she was only interested in taking the money and getting shot of the obligation. That's how it goes, in this business. You win some, you lose some.'

Buchanan couldn't remember when he last won some but he made a.s.senting noises anyway.

'OK. Next thing,' Fleming said. 'It looks like Lawrence Gra.s.sick has an alibi for the night his wife copped it. He was definitely at his Edinburgh address when he was informed of his wife's death. I spoke to his housekeeper and she confirms that the phone call came at seven a.m. on the Sat.u.r.day morning.'

That doesn't alibi Gra.s.sick,' Buchanan objected. 'That's more than four hours after the explosion: plenty of time for him to have driven up from Chirnside.'

'Yes,' Fleming agreed. 'It took time to establish that Mrs Gra.s.sick was definitely in the house when it went up. 206. However, Mrs Hewlett, the housekeeper, swears that he was at home all Friday night.'

'You believe her?' Buchanan had to say.

'She's very convincing, Tam, and also, I have confirmation that Gra.s.sick's car was in the local garage overnight having a minor ignition fault attended to -had been since late Friday afternoon. That's why he postponed his visit to Brora Lodge at the last minute.'

Buchanan was inclined to feel that this went a long way towards letting Gra.s.sick off the hook. Of course, it didn't necessarily follow, just because the man's car was off the road, that he couldn't have used some other means of transport to get to Chirnside. The housekeeper had not, presumably, been sharing his bed so she could hardly swear to the fact that he had not left the house in the six or seven hours between retiring and taking the phone call at seven a.m. All the same, Buchanan was inclined to believe the alibi was genuine. Maybe because, deep down, that was what he wanted to believe.

'Anything else?' he said.

'Nothing important. Lots of statistics but nothing that won't wait till tomorrow. What's new at your end?'

Buchanan gave him a two-minute briefing that covered Vanessa's sudden departure from her friend's house and the missing cat, and promised a fuller report at their next meeting. He had to agree to a pie and a pint at lunch time tomorrow, which broke up his weekend a bit, but Fleming clearly wanted a brainstorming session and -who could tell? -maybe it would bear fruit.

It was weighing on his conscience a little that he had left so much of the Chirnside aspect of the investigation to Giles. The temptation to keep both Fizz and himself as much in the shadows as possible had made him lax and he was already beginning to wish he had taken the trouble to speak to some of Giles's informants himself. He hadn't even met the Armstrong neighbours, which was nothing short of shameful. 207. This reflection whizzed through his mind in the second he dropped the phone back in its cradle, and in the same instant Fizz burst in like a hurricane and threw herself into the spare chair. One day, Buchanan promised himself, that chair would disintegrate beneath her and it would serve her right.

'What are you doing here?' he said, refusing to be pleased to see her. 'Just a quick answer, please, because I'm going out.'

'Where?'

Buchanan gave her a hard stare, which amused her still further.

'What an old grouch you are, Buchanan. And here I am, thinking about you stuck in this gloomy old office with the sun shining out there and the birds singing and spring springing and--'

'Okay. Cut to the chase. You want a lift somewhere.'

'How sweet of you to offer, O pearl beyond price!'

The answer's no. I'm going to play golf and then I have plans for the evening.'

Her elfin smile vanished and she glared at him as though she were about to buy the firm and sack him on the spot.

'Golf! Is that all you have to do with your time, Buchanan?

Are you really happy to let this Gra.s.sick thing drag on and on while you play silly games half the working day?'

'My G.o.d, Fizz,' Buchanan responded in exasperation.

'We're talking about an hour's relaxation. You are the most talented person I know at making mountains out of molehills!'

'Yeah. Maybe I should have been a cosmetic surgeon.'

She bounced to her feet and strode to the window, hands in the back pockets of her jeans. 'We should be out there making things happen, not sitting around waiting for leads to come to us.'

Buchanan could see his quick nine holes disappearing down a long dark tunnel until it was a mere speck of hope in the vast blackness of improbability. 'Do you have some 208. specifie source you wish to explore?' he asked politely.

'Dozens,' she said bitterly. 'I want to explore Vanessa Gra.s.sick properly, for a start, but we can't go through her belongings without breaking into Gra.s.sick's house. We hardly know what sort of woman she was -everyone who knew her tells us something different: she was an iron lady, she was a neurotic, she was a city type, she was a stay-at- home who liked gardening and peace and quiet. I can't get a grip on her at all.'

Buchanan had no trouble in reconciling all of these different aspects of Vanessa Gra.s.sick's persona but he had to agree, she was still a shadowy character. Latching on to the most worrying piece of Fizz's speech, he said, 'Speaking of breaking into Gra.s.sick's house, Fizz, let's not--'

'Oh, behave yourself, Buchanan! I'm not desperate enough to try something like that -not yet, anyway,' she jabbed, stealing a gleeful look at his face. 'But I do think we should have another poke around Chirnside and have a closer look at the bomb site. If the G.o.ds are on our side we might even run into the cat hunter.'

Had Buchanan's thoughts not been running along these lines he might have told her to make her own arrangements, since she was so keen to go, but as things were he knew that his conscience would nag him if he didn't make the effort. Besides, spending a more or less spare couple of hours on the case this afternoon might save him a whole morning or afternoon next week.

They reached Chirnside at twenty-to-four and went into the village for a walkabout in the hope of finding the postman. Not surprisingly, no-one in Royal Mail uniform was in evidence but the pillar box informed them that he would be there to collect the mail at half-past-four, which was not long to wait. Buchanan, in the hope of finding someone who would gossip to them, suggested a cup off coffee to pa.s.s the time but Fizz refused -probably a first for her -on the grounds that she wanted to sift the ashes of Brora Lodge while there 209. was still sufficient light to see what she was doing.

It was a silly idea because, not only had she no idea of what she might find, but if she subtracted the ten minutes it would take to drive there and the ten minutes for the return journey, she would have barely a quarter of an hour to search. Buchanan made bold to ask her what she would think of a return trip at the beginning of next week and had to listen to her telling him what she thought of it with appalling fluency and in no uncertain terms.

He was glad to leave her to scrabble about while he took a stroll down the side road for a fresh look at the other houses. The Pringles were still not in residence. He walked up the driveway and rang the front door bell, not expecting an answer but using the action as an excuse for a closer look through the windows. It was quite obvious that the old couple had departed in some haste: he could see the barely started jigsaw puzzle Giles had mentioned, plus a couple of vases of daffodils drooping in stagnant water.

The Fords' house was still untenanted and, like the people who'd lived in it, was giving little away. Apart from the few pieces of rubbish that had blown over from the remains of the house next door, the garden was devoid of colour. The little of it that wasn't flagged over was devoted to two rectangular strips of lawn and a small bed of shrubs, an easily maintained design that was probably convenient in a rented property. Buchanan was standing at the gate looking at the boarded windows when he sensed he was being watched.

He had expected the Armstrong house to be as empty as the others at this hour on a weekday but there was, unmistakably, someone observing his movements from the side of the lounge window. He took a look at his watch and found it was ten-past-four, which left him no time for an in-depth interview with whichever of the Armstrongs was hovering there, but he decided to ring the bell, in any case, and hopefully make an appointment for a later date.

He didn't have to ring the bell. The woman who had 210. been watching him must have realised she'd been rumbled because, as he reached the end of her driveway, the door opened and she emerged on to the threshold. Perhaps fortunately, the orientation of the house was such that Fizz could not see her from where she was still poking at things with a bit of curtain rail.

Mrs Armstrong, if it were indeed she, was little more than a girl, which was enough of a surprise to Buchanan, since he had cla.s.sed her in his imagination as roughly a contemporary of the Pringles. But what was more of a surprise was that she was drop-dead gorgeous and s.e.xy enough to knock a guy's eye out at twenty paces.

Her straight caramel-coloured hair lay over her shoulders like a stole and her eyes were brooding and weary as they swept Buchanan from head to toe. She was wearing a lot of shiny eye shadow and her fat lips glittered with what looked like blood red Vaseline, making her look like a lascivious vampire in low-slung jeans.

Her cropped top, Buchanan noticed, was so tight he could hardly breathe.