Dormie 5, page 11
‘I thought you weren’t taking over. I thought this was mine to run.’
Macleod stopped dead in the corridor, stood back to one side and held his hand out to allow Hope to walk in front. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just pitching in to help.’
Together they both marched back to the room holding O’Reilly, who wore a broad smile as they walked in.
‘You’ve got plenty of friends, Pádraig, haven’t you?’ said Hope. ‘Fortunately, one of them has come along, a Mr Greene, do you know where Mr Greene lives?’
‘Ivan. Yes, I know where Ivan lives. That’s where I went. I went to Ivan’s.’
‘What were you looking at in Ivan’s? It’s okay. He’s told us so you can tell us.’
‘Well, for the wife I was getting . . . yes, it’s curtains. Curtains that Ivan had.’
‘He said crystal. Apparently, you’ve had trouble getting hold of crystal.’ Hope watched O’Reilly almost curse himself. ‘Where were you?’ asked Hope. ‘When I was stood at your house, your wife was freaking out. Your wife was having a go at you. At first, I thought it was you getting arrested, but I think it might be something else. Something you can’t want her to know. Something that’s going to blow the two of you apart if it’s admitted to.’
O’Reilly slumped back in his chair.
‘You’ll need to come out with it,’ said Macleod, ‘because it’ll come out eventually and at some point, she’s going to come in here.’
Hope glanced sideways at Macleod. ‘Who was she? How did he know that she would come in?’
‘That’s the trouble. Especially when it’s an attachment. Especially when it’s more than just meeting up, more than just sex. This is what happens when there’s a connection formed,’ said Macleod. ‘Trouble with connections is they show in public. You don’t think they do. You don’t hold hands, you don’t stare at each other. In fact, sometimes you mess it up because you go the other way and try and keep away or at least you do. Your illicit partner doesn’t. Oh no, she stares more intently. She puts little glances in, especially when you’re under pressure. Especially when you’re stressed. You can tell me who she is. I think she lives in the area, doesn’t she?’
Hope looked over. The numbers suddenly clicking in her head.
‘Why were you at Orla Smith’s?’ said Hope.
‘Because he’s right,’ said O’Reilly. ‘I can’t say because when it comes out in the open properly, well then, Mandy will hit the roof properly. There’ll be hell to pay. Can’t do that with that many kids dependent on me.’
‘We’d need to confirm that though,’ said Hope, ‘and we’ll need to do it quickly, so just for the record, confirm to me that you went to Orla Smith’s between ten and eleven yesterday morning. You did whatever and then you left.’
‘You can make it sound a little bit less sordid than that.’
‘It is sordid,’ said Macleod. ‘You’ve got a family and a wife and you’re doing it behind her back. I’m not sorry you got caught. I’m sorry you’re wasting our time.’
‘Well, can you just get hold of her and do it quiet, please? If you can talk to her and she confirms it, I could be out of here. Tell Mandy it was all a big mistake. Tell Mandy that, well, you know, you guys picked up the wrong person; you didn’t understand where I was coming from.’
‘She’ll know though,’ said Hope.
‘Knowing is one thing, proof is another,’ said O’Reilly. ‘I thought you guys of all people would recognise that.’
Hope grunted, stood and marched out of the room. Macleod stood and followed her. She kept a distance from him as she marched off, pulling out her mobile phone from her pocket. She rang a number and Clarissa answered.
‘Have you got anywhere?’ started Clarissa.
‘It’s not him. He’s been seeing Orla Smith. I need you to go to Orla Smith and confirm this. Then I’ll let him out and we’ll get back to looking at this case again.’
‘Okay,’ said Clarissa, ‘you got an address? I’ll take it it’s somewhere near the CCTV camera.’
‘Check-in with Ross. Ross will have all the details as ever,’ said Hope and closed the phone call. By now Macleod had caught up with her.
‘When did you know?’ she raged. ‘I sat in there with you asking questions of him. When did you know?’
‘I thought you were never going to get there,’ said Macleod. ‘First time I saw them at the board together, it was pretty obvious. Don’t be grumpy about it,’ said Macleod suddenly. ‘It’s what I’m good at. It’s my skill. You have skills too. I got to use mine; you will get to use yours. It doesn’t matter who in the team pulls it out, that thread, the one that either leads to the unravelling of the mystery or to a dead end. Doesn’t matter. If you’re going up to Inspector, you’ve got to drop that ego.’
‘I don’t have an ego.’
‘Of course, you have an ego,’ said Macleod. ‘You always had that pride that I can do this, I can do that. I don’t need someone else. An ego’s good, can help you, can drive you, but when you’re up at the level you’re going to and running a team, you got to lose it because it’ll trip you up.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said Hope. ‘I’ll let you get back to your roster.’ Macleod walked away, then suddenly turned around and stuck his tongue out at her. It dawned on her he was just happy to be back in an interview room.
There was no way he would stay a DCI, she thought. He just doesn’t like it. He just doesn’t want to be there. Why on earth was he doing it? And then it hit her. Because if he didn’t, she would have to go elsewhere. Some days she could strangle the man, but other days . . . other days, he was tolerable.
Chapter 13
Clarissa Urquhart raced down in the small green car towards Orla Smith’s house. She didn’t like to run errands like this. She knew Macleod and Hope were waiting for her to bring in the other side of an affair so they could confirm its existence and they’d end up back at square one. Or, if they were having an affair, maybe they were covering for each other. No doubt the boss would find out.
Although things were being run slightly different now with the boss seemingly more aloof. Normally he’d be all over his people, insisting on reports back, opinions, thoughts, but it was Hope picking up everything, and in truth, it was different. Hope was more inclined towards the procedure. Macleod could deviate. He got an idea in his head, and he pushed you on it. At times you were speaking to him, and you got the impression he wasn’t even listening, which frustrated Clarissa, but other times he was brilliant.
Hope didn’t work that way. She was thorough. She got on top of things. She pushed, but Macleod seemed to have an outside-the-box ability, and Clarissa wondered if Hope sometimes got annoyed by it. She also knew the woman was under pressure. After all, there was talk of her going for the DI position, but the force could be unfair. Would they judge her by the way this case was run, whether or not she solved it?
It was one thing being a sergeant, but you could always pass the buck up to the DI. On a lot of cases, the DI was the one leading the investigation. Hope had never truly done that. Well, at least not without some other circumstance pulling Macleod out of the way, and she wouldn’t want to let him down. That was the other thing about Hope; she was loyal, almost to a fault, Clarissa thought. Hope would beat herself up if she didn’t get to the bottom of this, if she couldn’t do it before Macleod stepped in.
But none of that was Clarissa’s concern. Instead, Ross and she would just have to get on with it. Their position hadn’t changed. What they were doing, it may do. Ross may look at a move up to sergeant, and if he did that, well then, what about Clarissa? Clarissa will just sit there and just get on with her job, she told herself. After all, it won’t be that long until I’m out.
Clarissa was older than Macleod. Not by a lot, but she was older, and she had seen him think about retirement before. She wasn’t sure what she would do. No children, no partner, and getting to a stage in her life when having that someone to spend the last days of it with seemed like a good idea. The detective life didn’t give you a lot of opportunities to socialise. Yes, when she was working in the art side, she got invited along to a lot more gallery openings and grander events, but they weren’t real friends.
Being back at the golf club had made her think about when she played and about the friends she had made there. She needed to build a life for herself and soon. Her mind drifted to the head groundsman. There had been that fireman down in Mull, she thought, but she hadn’t followed it up. Maybe she should follow this one up. Maybe she should make an effort this time.
Her driving had been on autopilot, and she only brought herself back to the present when she pulled the car up. She had that ability just to drive, mind elsewhere, but not the senses. If something had happened, if some car had pulled out in front of her, if something was going wrong, her brain would’ve kicked in. She could run fully on automatic. The only problem was sometimes you ended up miles away from where you were meant to be, but not this time.
Clarissa stepped out of the green car, closed the door, and strolled in her boots and shawl up to the house of Orla Smith. It was quaint and cottage-like, and she passed through an archway of leaves. Clarissa had thought about settling down somewhere like this. It was a part of the world she liked, for the North of Scotland was her home. That was where she was from. It was what she was.
She stopped for a moment, using her hands to trace the arch above her before looking at the stone path up to the wooden front door. There was a large black knocker on it. As she approached, she grabbed it and thundered on the door. She was never subtle.
‘Orla Smith. Miss Orla Smith, this is Detective Sergeant Clarissa Urquhart. Are you in?’
Clarissa stood back from the door but heard nothing. She began to walk around the side, looking in through windows, but there were no lights on. She approached the rear door and found it open. She stepped inside.
‘Orla Smith, this is Detective Sergeant Urquhart. Are you there? Orla Smith.’
Clarissa didn’t like barging into people’s houses, despite her rank, and slowly made her way across the kitchen, continuing to shout. She found a hallway and shouted upstairs. There could only have been about two rooms up there, given the size of the building. There came no reply. Clarissa decided to walk through the entire house.
She was right about upstairs, there were only two rooms, and one was a small bedroom, albeit quaint in its own way. Once again, she could see herself somewhere like this.
‘‘Hello?’
A few paintings on the wall wouldn’t have gone amiss. She’d have to get a few of the better ones. It’d been a while since she sat down properly and just enjoyed a good painting. Sit and stare, think about it, let it touch the senses. Exercise her imagination, a side she so often had to shut down in her current line of work.
Clarissa made her way back downstairs, and having thoroughly searched the house, stepped out of the back door again. There was a small wooden garage at the side, and Clarissa entered by a side door that was unlocked. Inside was a rather small metro, quite old, but easy to see out of, thought Clarissa. If you wanted something simple to drive, this was the car.
She walked back outside, exited the property, and strolled along to the next-door neighbours’ property. This garden was not so well kept, and she could see an overturned trolley down one side. As she approached the door, there was no knocker, no number, and only a dirty glass pane that she couldn’t see through. The walls of this cottage were beginning to peel. Clarissa wondered if anybody lived here. Regardless, she thundered on the door with her fist and stood back until the door opened abruptly. On the other side of it was a wary youth, possibly in his twenties. Beyond him, in the hallway, lurked a young woman.
‘‘Excuse the intrusion,’ said Clarissa. ‘Detective Sergeant Clarissa Urquhart. I’m trying to contact Orla Smith next door. You wouldn’t know where she is, would you?’
‘‘That woman next door? To be honest,’’ said the man, ‘don’t usually have many dealings with her.’
‘That’s understood, Mr . . .’ Clarissa left the question hanging.
‘McClintock. Ewan McClintock.’
‘The person behind you is?’
‘Shauna McClintock. This is our house. We haven’t been in here long.’ Suddenly a head appeared beside the man with long brown mousey hair on a woman that stood only four foot tall.
‘Hello,’ said Clarissa. ‘You must be Shauna. Well, Mrs McClintock, Mr McClintock, please think, is there anything about Orla Smith at this time of day, at this time of the week that sticks out to you?’
‘Only been here two months,’ said Mr McClintock.
‘Oh, Alan, but you don’t do anything anyway. You’re so busy working upstairs. He’s a gamer. He helps design computer games,’ said Shauna. ‘Some days he’s up there all day. I like to do a bit of work in the garden.’
Clarissa did her best not to turn her head and look, because having seen the state of it on the way in, she was trying to identify the piece of garden that got any attention.
‘Orla tends to go out this time of the day, returns sometime. Depends on if her friend is . . .’
‘Her friend?’ asked Clarissa.
‘Yes. There’s a man who comes around occasionally. He never parks here. He always walks in. Anytime you talk to her afterwards, she’s quite excited. Quite breathless too. You never see Mrs Smith out in a dressing gown or that, except when he’s been round. Sometimes she walks out to the fence. She’s got a dressing gown on like she’s come out of the shower. Except, well, I’m not sure if she’s come from the shower.’
‘That’s not what you told me. You didn’t say shower. You said they’d been at it.’
‘You mean he comes around for sex,’ said Clarissa.
‘Well, yes, if you want to put it that way.’
‘If I showed you a photograph, would you be able to tell me if it’s the man or not?’
‘Of course,’ said Shauna.
Clarissa pulled out her phone and started going through photographs. When she found the correct one, she showed it to Shauna. Alan bent down and looked as well. ‘Yes,’ they both said, ‘that’s him.’
‘Tried to talk to him once,’ said Alan. ‘Blanked me. Just raced to get out of here.’
‘It’s probably because he’s not meant to be here. His wife wouldn’t be very happy,’ said Clarissa. ‘More importantly, do you know where Orla is? Her car’s there.’
‘She told me once,’ said Shauna, ‘that she goes walking, and yes, she does disappear out. She’ll go up to the golf club. She’s very into it. Always talks to me about the golf club if we ever catch up. That’s not that often.’
‘Do you know how she walks up to it?’
‘Well,’ said Shauna, ‘if you go from here, take a left from the front of ours, keep walking and take a right. Then you’ll see a gap in the wall. It’s not a proper gap, it’s not a proper path, but if you go through that bit and keep walking, you’ll join one of the paths up to the club. Once you’re there, you’re basically on the golf club estate, I would say. Keep walking straight from there. I think that’s what she does. Follows that big circle around, brings you back to the same point and then you can come back again. Takes you a good hour to walk it.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clarissa and took out one of her cards, handing it to Shauna. ‘If in the next hour, you see her come back, ring me, please.’
Shauna nodded, and as Clarissa turned away, she asked.
‘Is she in trouble?’
‘Not yet,’ said Clarissa. ‘We just need to find her to help someone else who is in trouble.’
Clarissa turned away, hearing the door shut behind her. As she exited the garden, she continued to look for that spot of grass, that bit of garden that got the attention of Shauna. It eluded her.
Clarissa didn’t like the idea of having to walk the golf course, but at this point in time, there wasn’t any other option, because she couldn’t take the car to these paths. When she got back to her car, she opened the side door, adjusted her boots, happy they’d be good for walking in. She looked at the sky above, wondering if she’d get any rain, but in truth, the clouds were low and grey. With how chilly it was, they were more likely to get snow.
Clarissa followed the instructions given to her and soon reached the gap in the wall that had been described by Shauna. There was a bit of a climb up to it, but Clarissa managed, pushed through the small gap, and then walked a good two hundred metres in a heavily overgrown bit of vegetation. Tree branches cut this way and that, and she had to bend down several times. Each time, her knees complained at her.
Once she reached the firm path, Clarissa marched off, deciding that she could go left or right, but it would come back to the same place. Taking the left, she suddenly felt good.
The arts team had been her work for so long in the police force, but Clarissa liked the outdoors. She was a Scot after all, and a highland Scot. Nothing would bring Clarissa more joy than marching along through a highland estate, or along a forest, wrapped up in her large shawl. She always felt warm and ready to go, and this time was no exception.
As she walked, she scanned around her. When the path first broke the trees, she found herself alongside one of the holes. She had no idea which it was, but obviously, it was on the parkland course. From here, they were a reasonable distance from the sea and she could hear some of the birds and the crunch of the gravel as she walked along the path. The golf course felt eerily silent with the membership not being allowed to play.
As she marched along, Clarissa thought about retirement. She thought about coming out to the golf course, out with the girls, playing a round, and then in for either a hot pot of tea and a large baguette or sandwich, or maybe even a couple of whiskys. Maybe she would leave the green sports car at home, taking a taxi. It wasn’t often she got to go out like this, striding along, happy as Larry and enjoying the sounds of nature around her. She only missed the whack of the odd golf ball, but inside, she was in her happy place.
