Madness Lies Read online

  He was in the garden, talking on his mobile phone, leaning on his stick. His leg must be playing up. She had no idea what he’d done to his leg. They’d been going out for a while before he used the stick in front of her. One day he’d picked her up at the retail park. He’d limped out of the car to put her shopping in the boot, and she’d seen the stick. She’d lifted it. ‘I’m presuming this is supposed to be used when your leg’s sore?’

  He’d nodded. ‘I hate it. Makes me feel old and unattractive.’

  ‘Hardly. It’s cool. Quite sexy.’ The stick was black, and the handle was an intricately carved dragon’s head in silver. ‘If you need it, you need it. At least you’ve got all your teeth. How do you think it feels to look like me?’

  Of course he’d assured her she looked great, but if she felt that bad about her teeth, he’d pay for dental work. She’d thought about it for five seconds, then she’d bitten his hand off.

  It was only recently he’d stayed the night with her. Before that, he’d dress in the dark and leave. Even now, he kept the lights off, then he got up really early, like today, or he waited until she was out of the room before he got up. She didn’t know why he didn’t want her to see his leg. Couldn’t be worse than her arms.

  He came in from the garden, made her tea and toast, and asked if she wanted to go for a run in the car. It would be good for her to get out, he said. No point sitting waiting for news of Ryan. They’d get her on her mobile if they wanted her. She didn’t need much persuading.

  *

  Through a gap in the trees, Todd watched them leave. He still couldn’t believe Chris had let that slapper stay the night. And they were off for a run in the car now. Why the fuck was she looking so happy? Her son in the jail and she looked like she’d just won the lottery. And that smug smile on Chris’s face. This had to be a joke. It was one thing banging the tart when he felt the urge, but inviting her to his house, letting her stay? She’d be moving in next with her brats. The thought made him feel sick. Maybe he should follow them. Run them off the road. Bastards.

  He walked up the lane to his car, waited five minutes, then drove into Chris’s drive. As he turned the key in the front door, he thanked Chris for being such a trusting friend. Made it so much easier for him to come and go as he pleased.

  He turned the radio round the right way, then he took his iPhone from his pocket to check the live stream. Saw his own face and gave himself the thumbs up. He felt like gluing the damn thing to the shelf so her arse couldn’t shift it again.

  The camera in the kitchen was still in place. No surprise, really; she’d have to be some kind of monster to reach the heat alarm and knock it off course. Maybe he should have put a camera in the smoke alarm in the living room, instead of buying that radio. It had cost him a fortune, but Chris had appreciated it. What was not to like about a new DAB radio, courtesy of your best friend?

  Everything else was as orderly as ever, but the house was stinking of her. Fucking tart. She hadn’t left anything. Nothing he could destroy. No toothbrush he could use to clean the toilet bowl. That was a good sign. She hadn’t moved in. Yet.

  He sat down at the desk in the study and switched on the laptop. Useless piece of crap. He should offer Chris his expertise, help him get something decent, but how was he going to broach that subject? See the last time I was sitting in your leather chair at your antique oak desk, checking your laptop to see what you’d been up to, as I do on a regular basis, I noticed it was running slowly. Would you like me to recommend a replacement? It would make life so much easier for me.

  A noise in the hall startled him. Shit. He fixed on a smile and went to investigate. It was only the postman. Nothing interesting, but who used snail mail these days? Certainly not their mutual contacts in London. If he was going to find any communication between them and Chris, it was going to be electronic.

  The laptop was ready. A quick check. Nothing. For a year, he’d been checking, and found nothing. He’d left a mess behind him in London. Last thing he wanted was for anyone to know where he was. It would be easy for Chris to let it slip, but, as far as he knew, Chris wasn’t in touch with them either.

  Nothing new in the desk drawers and filing cabinet, except a couple of receipts. Fuck’s sake. Did Chris really pay that for a bracelet for the skank? He needed his head seen to.

  ***

  Chapter 8

  Jackson smirked. They had no leads in the murder of Gordon Sutherland. Nobody in the Council had a bad word to say about the victim. He hadn’t fallen out with anyone. Everyone loved him. His wife had no idea why anyone would target him. Nothing had come from the prints they found in and on the car. Wee Ryan MacRae was saying nothing, and the DNA results weren’t back yet.

  So Wonderboy Galbraith hadn’t got it all sewn up yet? Oh dear. No one had a clue what was going on. Just the way Jackson liked it.

  The DI gave out some tasks. Galbraith and his wee lap dog Roberts, were off to the Council to see some SNP councillor. This one was to go and do that, and that one was to go and do this. Jackson switched off until he heard his name mentioned. He was to work his way through some boxes from the Council’s Education Committee. The victim had been chair of the committee for a few years. Simples.

  *

  A tiny woman with thinning curly hair and bad breath, Alice McGarvie had such a lot to say. Gordon Sutherland was a family man with impeccable morals and a brain the size of a planet. They’d had high hopes for him. He’d refused to put himself forward as a candidate for the 2015 Westminster election, but they’d hoped to talk him into standing for Holyrood in 2016. He’d said he was too old. At sixty four, he was hoping for a quieter life, wanted to spend some time with his wife. At least, that’s what he’d said, but Alice had got the feeling he was interested in Holyrood.

  She dabbed at her eyes with a hankie every so often, though Joe couldn’t see any sign of tears. ‘I was hoping to get a chance to talk to him at our constituency meeting yesterday afternoon. Someone had contacted him about making a donation to the party, some business man. Gordon was hoping to bring him along to the meeting.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Did he tell you who this man was?’

  ‘No. I thought it would all become clear at the meeting.’

  ‘Does he have any enemies within the council or the party? Any rivalries?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not within the council or the party.’

  ‘Anywhere?’

  Alice McGarvie was quiet. She sighed and looked beyond Joe and Roberts.

  Joe leaned towards her. ‘Well?’

  ‘I really didn’t want to have to say anything. He’s dead, after all. It doesn’t seem right to cast aspersions.’

  ‘You haven’t, but if you know something, please tell us.’ Why couldn’t she just spit it out?

  She reached to the drawer on the right of her desk. Of course, the drawer was locked, and could she find the key? Three plant pots and one waste paper bin. No luck. It was under the second pencil caddy. Joe reckoned she knew where it was all along, but she couldn’t resist hamming it up.

  Another tortuous wait for the key to turn, then another, while she rifled through some papers. A white envelope. She slid it across the desk as if she was offering Joe a bribe.

  He took a pen from her caddy and pushed it back. ‘Could you please open it?’

  She looked surprised, but she pulled a single folded piece of paper from the envelope and slid that across to him. He pushed it back, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Ah, I see. Prints.’ She opened it up and turned it towards him. One sentence on the page:

  Councillor Gordon Sutherland is a coward and a killer

  ‘Do you have any idea why someone would say that?’

  ‘No. Gordon was so easy going. Except when it came to gun-carrying police. He’d been het up about that. We all were. It was ridiculous in the Highlands. We don’t have the sort of criminals you get in the Central Belt.’

  Joe raised his eyebrows. ‘Roz Sutherland might disagree.’<
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  Alice McGarvie nodded. A wee dab at her eyes. ‘Quite, but you know what I mean. Gun crime’s pretty rare up here. Not every day someone gets blasted through the chest, sitting in their car on Kenneth Street.’

  Joe stared at her. How exactly did Alice McGarvie know her colleague had been shot in the chest?

  *

  Christopher’s words weren’t reaching Sharon. She had a lump in her throat, and it was growing, as memories rushed through her head. She tried to stop them, but it was hopeless. She left Christopher in the shade of the tree, his brow creased as he tried to decipher the hidden ancient words beneath the lichen and moss.

  Everything in Dunlichity Cemetery was just as it had been the last time Sharon was here, as a teenager. The birdsong and the rustling breeze, the faint barking of dogs and the hum of a tractor’s engine. The stories on the grave stones, the words that had made her jealous. Would she ever be anyone’s beloved wife or mother? Would anyone even miss her? She hadn’t voiced her thoughts that day. She’d boxed them away in her mind, along with all the other emotions and memories she didn’t know to deal with, and she had smiled. It had been a perfect day, the best ever. Before long, it too was boxed away, a little deeper than the rest, where it should have stayed.

  Christopher was behind her. He put his arms round her and held her tight, his breath on her ear making her shiver. ‘Are you okay, love?’

  That word. People said it to each other all the time; it didn’t mean anything. But now, in this place, with her heart a little sore and her defences low, it was more than she could take. She didn’t make any noise as she cried, for she had learned long ago that noisy crying alerted people. They reported it. There were consequences.

  Christopher guided her to the low wall behind the church. He sat beside her and took a hankie from his pocket. He wiped her tears, then he stroked her hair. ‘Is it Ryan?’

  She took the hankie from him and shook her head. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Must be something.’

  She looked out over the drystone wall to the sloping field, where a cluster of cows lazed in the shadow of the trees. The wind was whispering to her. Or maybe it was Alison, letting her know it was safe to remember. She took a deep breath, and she told him.

  Alison was a writer. Her children’s books were the most beautiful books Sharon had ever seen. Her husband, Mark, was a doctor. They lived in a house in the Crown, a huge house with stained glass windows on the stairway and marble tiles in the hall. It was the only foster placement Sharon ever had to herself, and the only foster parents that made her feel safe. It couldn’t last. She told herself that every day of the five months she was with them.

  She’d always done her best to wind her foster parents up, even the nicest ones. Safest to hurt them before they could hurt her. But not Alison and Mark. She’d have done anything for them, anything to stay with them.

  For five wonderful months, Alison and Mark encouraged her to think, to have an opinion, to believe in herself. They made her feel like she was equal to them, like she mattered. They knew what she had been through, but they never criticised her mother, never tried to turn her against her own family, as so many of the others had done.

  Alison took her to a Children’s Panel once. Sharon’s mother was there, all tarted up and showing off, with her latest creep on her arm. Sharon was mortified. What would Alison think?

  She’d watched in awe as Alison took her mother’s hand, stared into her eyes and told her not to worry, that Sharon was doing really well. Her mother was gobsmacked, the old boot. Never had any social worker, foster carer or Children’s Panel member treated her like that. Not a kind word or the slightest morsel of understanding for the fact that she was a useless slut. Sharon had been jealous. She didn’t want to share Alison with her mother. And yet, she’d seen a new look in her mother’s eyes; helplessness and a hint of hope. And maybe even a tear. Was that all it might have taken to make her a better mother? A bit of understanding?

  Sharon closed her eyes. She’d told the tale so fast, it belied the impact of Alison and Mark upon her young life. She wanted to rewind, to tell Christopher again, tell him more, just in case he didn’t get it.

  *

  Christopher got it. Until he met Sharon, he hadn’t appreciated the safety and security of his own childhood, with an abundance of food and warmth and love, with parents that wanted the best for him, no matter how hard he had tried to push them away. Now, the sun was shining on her hair. The breeze lifted a strand of gold and whipped it across her pale, beautiful face. He reached for it, but she got there first and pushed it away. He followed her gaze to the faded plastic flower that skipped across the cemetery, going this way and that, searching for the right grave, just as he searched for the right words. But she wasn’t finished.

  ‘Alison took me here. We spent ages reading the grave stones, seeing who could find the oldest one. I hated cemeteries before that. They creeped me right out. But it’s different here, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. He’d discovered it shortly after moving to Inverness. He couldn’t count how many times he’d driven up here and sat on his own, thinking, remembering, wondering.

  ‘We went for a walk in the forest, beside the reservoir. I’d never gone for a walk before. Not without a reason, like to the shop, or town, or school. It was amazing. The trees and the birds, and someone listening to me, as if I had something really important to say.

  ‘On the way home, she stopped at Essich Farm so I could see the ponies. One of them seemed to take to me, a little black and white Shetland pony. I was scared to touch it, but Alison showed me what to do. I scratched its neck, and it nuzzled into me. That smell.’ She closed her eyes and smiled. ‘Alison said we could go pony trekking at Drumnadrochit. I was so excited.’

  Christopher had ridden as a child. He’d loved it, and often thought of trying it again, if his leg would let him. ‘Did you like it?’

  She made a noise. It sounded like a groan. She stood, her shoulders tense. The plastic flower was back. It circled her feet, and she stamped on it, pinning it to the ground. When she turned, her eyes were narrowed, her face full of spite. ‘Didn’t happen, did it? Alison went and died. Brain haemorrhage. There in the morning when I went to school; gone when I came home. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Everyone I ever cared for deserted me. But Alison seemed different. I really trusted her.’

  Christopher felt as if his body had been plunged into icy water. She really believed Alison had died just to get at her.

  ‘Mark fell to pieces. I’ve no idea what happened to him. I barely had time to pack my things before I was off to the next placement and a foster father that couldn’t keep his hands to himself.’ She shrugged again. ‘That’s life, I guess.’

  No, Sharon, he wanted to say. That is not life; not for most of us. But no words came.

  Sharon smiled. ‘Forget it. I don’t know where that came from. It’s all in the past. Fuck’s sake; that’s not the worst thing that ever happened to me.’

  But Christopher knew it was. The crap mother, the brother and sister she’d lost touch with, the violent husband, the drugs – she had expected no less. But to have foster parents that loved her and wanted the best for her, that was something so unexpected and wonderful, the loss of it must have had a devastating effect. He stood up and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Why don’t we go horse riding soon?’

  Her eyes sparkled. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sound.’ She blew her nose, shrugged and smiled. Business as usual. ‘Are we going for lunch? I’m starving.’

  ***

  Chapter 9

  A single shot from a handgun had severed his spinal column and sliced through Gordon Sutherland’s heart. He would have died in seconds, according to the interim post mortem report. The killer was either very experienced or he’d got lucky. They’d get a detailed report on the ballistics in due course.

  Today there was no eye contact from the victim’s wife. Roz Sutherland was d
istracted and fidgeting, short answers forced through a clenched jaw. Not surprising, really; she probably hadn’t slept. Still, Joe wondered. She’d been in shock yesterday, without a doubt, but she’d been much more together than this.

  She confirmed she’d spoken to several of her late husband’s council colleagues yesterday, but she hadn’t given them any details, and no one had been unduly persistent in seeking information. She listed those she’d spoken to, including Alice McGarvie. Was that a shudder when she mentioned McGarvie’s name? Definitely not Roz Sutherland’s favourite person.

  Roberts took a call on his mobile. He went out into the hall. Joe decided to push her. ‘Mrs Sutherland, I know this is a terrible time for you, for all the family.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything new since we spoke yesterday?’

  There were tears in her eyes as she nodded again, and took the envelope from down the side of the sofa.

  *

  Bio-bloody-logical washing powder. Whoever thought that was a good idea clearly wasn’t a copper. They got nothing from Ryan MacRae’s clothes, not a scrap of evidence. And his phone was squeaky clean. Well, the parents of one Natasha Scott might not be too happy if they knew the content of certain text messages between her and MacRae, but not a bloody thing they could use against him. And see the way the arrogant little shite had smirked when they let him go? If he wasn’t back inside within a day or two, there was no justice in this world.

  Joe nodded and waited for DI Black to finish ranting, then he told him about Alice McGarvie’s note. The DI almost smiled. ‘That’s more like it. And what did Ms McGarvie do about this?’