actually held the phone away from his face and stared at it. Was this some kind of elaborate practical joke? ‘DI Pirie? I don’t quite…I could come,’ he gabbled.
‘You’re a desk man. I don’t need a desk man.’ Brodie Grant’s voice was dismissive. ‘DI Pirie is a detective. I liked the way she handled that Lawson business.’
‘But…but it should be a more senior officer who deals with this,’ Lees protested.
‘Isn’t DI Pirie in charge of your Cold Case Review Team?’ Grant was beginning to sound impatient. ‘That’s senior enough for me. I don’t care about rank, I care about effectiveness. That’s why I want DI Pirie at my house at ten tomorrow morning. That should give her enough time to acquaint herself with the basic facts of the case. Good day, Mr Lees.’ The line went dead and Simon Lees was left alone with his rising blood pressure and his bad mood.
Much as it grieved him, he had no choice but to find DI Pirie and brief her. At least he could make it sound as though sending her was his idea. But in spite of there being no appointment in the electronic diary system he had instituted for his senior detectives, she hadn’t been at her desk. It was all very well, officers doing things on their own initiative, but they had to learn to leave a record of their movements.
He was on the point of marching back down to the CCRT squad room to find out why DI Pirie hadn’t appeared yet when a sharp rap on the door was followed without any interval by the entrance of DI Pirie. ‘Did I invite you to come in?’ Lees said, glowering across the room at her.
‘I thought it was urgent, sir.’ She kept walking and sat down in the visitor’s chair across the desk from him. ‘DS Parhatka gave me the impression that whatever it is you wanted me for, it couldn’t wait.’
What an advert for the service, he thought crossly. Shaggy brown hair flopping into her eyes, the merest smudge of make-up, teeth that really could have done with some serious orthodontics. He supposed she was probably a lesbian, given her penchant for trouser suits that really were a mistake given the breadth of her hips. Not that he had anything against lesbians, his internal governor reminded him. He just thought it gave people the wrong impression about today’s police service. ‘Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant called me earlier this morning,’ he said. The only sign of interest was a slight parting of her lips. ‘You know who Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant is, I take it?’
Karen looked puzzled by the question. She leaned back in her seat and recited, ‘Third richest man in Scotland, owns half of the profitable parts of the Highlands. Made his money building roads and houses and running the transport systems that serve them. Owns a Hebridean island but lives mostly in Rotheswell Castle near Falkland. Most of the land between there and the sea belongs either to him or to the Wemyss estate. His daughter Cat and her baby son Adam were kidnapped by an anarchist group in 1985. Cat was shot dead when the ransom handover went wrong. Nobody knows what happened to Adam. Grant’s wife committed suicide a couple of years later. He remarried about ten years ago. He has a wee boy who must be about five or six.’ She grinned. ‘How did I do?’
‘It’s not a contest, Inspector.’ Lees felt his hands closing into fists and lowered them below the desk. ‘It appears that there may be some fresh evidence. And since you are in charge of cold cases, I thought you should deal with it.’
‘What sort of evidence?’ She leaned on the arm of her chair. It was almost a slouch.
‘I thought it best that you confer directly with Sir Broderick. That way there can be no possibility of confusion.’
‘So he didn’t actually tell you?’
Lees could have sworn she was enjoying this. ‘I’ve arranged for you to meet him at Rotheswell Castle tomorrow morning at ten. I need hardly remind you how important it is that we are seen to be taking this seriously. I want Sir Broderick to understand this matter will have our full attention.’
Karen stood up abruptly, her eyes suddenly cold. ‘He’ll get exactly the same attention as every other bereaved parent I deal with. I don’t make distinctions among the dead, sir. Now, if that’s all, I’ve got a case file to assimilate before morning.’ She didn’t wait for a dismissal. She just turned on her heel and walked out, leaving Lees feeling that she didn’t make many distinctions among the living either.
Yet again, Karen Pirie had left him feeling like an idiot.
Rotheswell Castle
Bel Richmond took a last quick look through her file on Catriona Maclennan Grant, double-checking that her list of questions covered all the angles. Broderick Maclennan Grant’s inability to suffer fools was as notorious as his dislike of publicity. Bel suspected that he would pounce on the first sign of unpreparedness on her part and use that as an excuse to break the deal she had brokered with Susan Charleson.
Truth to tell, she was still amazed that she had pulled it off. She stood up, closing her laptop and pausing to check her look in the mirror. Tits and teeth. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Country house weekend, that was the look she’d gone for. She’d always been good at camouflage. Another of the many reasons she was so good at what she did. Blending in, becoming ‘one of us’, whoever the ‘us’ happened to be, was a necessary evil. So if she was sleeping under Brodie Grant’s baronial roof, she needed to look the part. She straightened the Black Watch tartan dress she’d borrowed from Vivianne, checked her kitten heels for scuffs, pushed her crow black hair behind one ear and parted her scarlet lips in a smile. A glance at her watch confirmed it was time to head downstairs and discover what the formidable Susan Charleson had lined up.
As she turned the corner of the wide staircase, she had to jink to one side to avoid a small boy careering up. He brought his flailing limbs under control on the half-landing, gasped, ‘Sorry,’ then hurtled on upwards. Bel blinked and raised her eyebrows. It had been a couple of years since she’d last had a similar small boy encounter and she hadn’t missed it a bit. She carried on down but before she reached the bottom, a woman wearing cords the colour of butter and a dark red shirt swung round the newel post then stopped dead, taken by surprise. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said. ‘You haven’t seen a small boy go past, have you?’
Bel gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. ‘He went thataway.’
The woman nodded. Now she was nearer, Bel could see she was a good ten years older than she’d first thought; late thirties, at least. Good skin, thick chestnut hair and a trim build gave the illusion a helping hand. ‘Monster,’ the woman said. They met a couple of steps from the bottom. ‘You must be Annabel Richmond,’ she said, extending a slender hand that was chilly in spite of the comfortable warmth trapped inside the thick walls of the castle. ‘I’m Judith. Brodie’s wife.’
Of course she was. How could Bel have imagined a nanny so perfectly groomed? ‘Lady Grant,’ she said, wincing inside.
‘Judith, please. Even after all these years married to Brodie, I still want to look over my shoulder when someone calls me Lady Grant.’ She sounded as though she wasn’t just saying it out of fake humility.
‘And I’m Bel, apart from my by-line.’
Lady Grant smiled, her eyes already scanning the stairs above. ‘Bel it is. Look, I can’t stop now, I have to capture the monster. I’ll see you at dinner.’ And she was off, taking the stairs two at a time.
Feeling overdressed in comparison with the chatelaine of Rotheswell, Bel made her way back down the stone-flagged hallways to Susan Charleson’s
