46

Louise turned in to the Hatter Homes’ car park at their head-quarters on Queensferry Road. Some kind of flunky in a uniform came toward her to question her right to be there, and she slapped her warrant card against the windshield and nearly mowed him down. Real Homes for Real People. How had Jackson found out there was a connection between Hatter Homes and Terence Smith? She would bet her bottom dollar that he was on the hunt. Was there ever such a troublesome man?

She was single-handed. Both Jessica and Sandy Mathieson had succumbed to the “flu.” Before she came here she had swung by the Four Clans, but there had been no sign of Martin Canning. The CD was hidden now, safely slipped inside an old Laura Nyro CD. She figured that was the last place anyone would look.

When she got inside, she found the Hatter Homes’ offices were in chaos. She recognized a couple of guys from fraud. One of them said to her, “No sign of Hatter anywhere.”

“Have you tried his house?” she asked, and the guy from fraud said, “Next on our list. The wife’s the other director, she’s in deep shit as well.”

She went looking for the woman behind the man, Hatter’s sec-retary (“Christine Tennant”), who immediately started whining, “I haven’t done anything. I know nothing. I’m innocent.” The lady was protesting a little too much, in Louise’s opinion. She remembered the crack that was running down the middle of her house. If nothing else, Hatter was a rotten builder. There was a fruit basket on Christine Tennant’s desk. Louise could read the card tied to it with a ribbon. It said, “Just a little token of apprecia-tion. Best wishes, Gloria Hatter.”

“Terence Smith?” she asked Christine Tennant.

“What about him?”

“What does he do, exactly?”

“He’s horrible.”

“Maybe, but what does he do?”

The secretary shrugged and said, “I don’t know exactly. Sometimes he drives Mr. Hatter or runs errands for him, does favors. Mr. Hatter’s in Thurso at the moment, though. ‘So they say,’” she added darkly.

“Can you give me Mr. Hatter’s home address? I’d like to talk to his wife?”

Christine Tennant reeled off the address. In the Grange. Nice, Louise thought. She’d bet Gloria Hatter’s house didn’t have a crack in it.

On the way over to the Hatter house, Louise wondered if Archie had come straight home from school or if he were roaming around town, creating mayhem and mischief? Archie and Hamish ought to be tethered somewhere, some dark, quiet place where they could do no harm. Instead they’d be in shops, on buses, in the streets, laughing like imbeciles, howling like monkeys, getting into trouble. If he had a father, if he had a father like Jackson-or even a father like Sandy Mathieson-would he be different?

Her radio crackled into sudden life. “ZH to ZHC-personal-attack alarm at Providence House, Mortonhall Road.To any set that can attend, your call sign and location please.” Louise didn’t bother responding. She was already there. Somehow it seemed unlikely that it was a coincidence. What had Jackson said? “A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen.”

“This looks bad, doesn’t it?” Jackson said.

“Yes,” she agreed, “but no doubt you’ve got an outlandish ex-planation.”

“Not really. You got here fast.”

“Coincidence. Looks like I missed the good stuff again.” He was standing over Terence Smith’s dead body with a gun in his hand, covered in blood. Her heart contracted uncomfortably. Was he injured?

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes, a lot, but I’m okay. I don’t think it’s my blood.”There was a man sitting on the lawn mumbling something about taking vows, the next time she looked at him he seemed to have fallen asleep. There was a woman with peachy-colored hair that complemented the sofa she was sitting on who was having a mild fit of hysterics. “Mrs. Hatter?” Louise asked her, but she didn’t respond.

“I don’t know who she is,”Jackson said. Very helpful. “And the guy asleep on the grass is Martin Canning.”

“The Martin Canning? The writer? The guy who lives with Richard Mott?” Oh, this was too weird. Weird piled on weird.

“You need to secure the crime scene,” he said. “No, you know that, don’t you? Of course, you’re a detective inspector.”

“You’re so not in a position to be making jokes.”

He wiped the prints off the gun and put it on the ground. Jesus, she didn’t believe he’d just done that! She should cuff him and arrest him right there on the spot. He said, “The gun belongs to someone called Paul Bradley, but he doesn’t exist.” He looked around and asked, “Where are the other two?”

“What other two?”

“Mrs. Hatter and Tatiana.”

“Tatiana?”

“Crazy Russian girl. They were here a minute ago. Look, I’d really like to stay and chat, but I have to go.”

Now he was really having a laugh. “This is a murder scene. My career will be over if I let you go. At worst you’re a suspect, at best you’re a witness.” She seemed to have been here before. One more time, Louise, a witness, a suspect, and a convicted felon.

“I know but I’ve got something important to do, really impor-tant.”They both listened to the sound of a siren coming closer. He looked like a dog hearing a whistle. “I don’t exist,” he said. “You never saw me. Please. Do me just this one favor, Louise.”

He was a justified sinner. Like Louise. Louise. Just the way he said her name… she gave her head a shake, tried to dislodge him from her brain.

He went out the back door at the same time as Jim Tucker strode up the front drive. She was going over in her mind how she would present this to Jim. Was she really going to erase Jackson from the picture? Neither of the other two “witnesses” looked as if they had the foggiest idea what was going on. Through the now nonexistent French windows, she motioned Jim Tucker to go to the front door.

“Louise,” he said, “I didn’t know you were already at the locus.”

She could see a DC and two uniformed policewomen at the gate, advancing up the path. And then her phone rang and her world tilted. Archie. “I’ll be right there,” she said to him.

“Archie,” she said to Jim. “I have to go.” He winced, sensing the mess he was about to inherit from her. She tried to make it sound better, which was pretty difficult under the circumstances. “Look, Jim, I just walked in on this a second ago, I know no more than you do, to all intents and purposes you’re the first officer on the scene, but I have to go.”The DC and the two constables were approaching the French windows but changed direction toward the front door when they realized they might be about to contaminate a crime scene. One of the policewomen peeled away and approached Martin Canning. Louise heard her say, “Mr. Canning? Martin? Are you all right? It’s PC Clare Deponio, do you remember me?”

She could hear more sirens, one an ambulance. Louise could taste blood from where she had been biting her lip. She didn’t say “Remember the favor you owe me, Jim.” She didn’t say “How’s your lovely daughter doing at university? Bet she’s glad she didn’t get a drug rap.” She didn’t need to, he knew it was payback time, as you sow so shall you reap. He nodded his head toward the back of the house without saying anything. “Thanks,” she mouthed at him and disappeared. She wondered how many disciplinary, possibly criminal, acts she’d committed within the last five minutes. She didn’t bother to count.

Archie had sounded odd on the phone-strained and slightly desperate-and she thought he must have been arrested or killed someone. But it was worse than that.