‘Come this way,’ Mrs McGhee said, as she regained her balance, swinging ahead of Wright with a degree of expertise, skirting a piano as she led them into a small sitting room, where she backed into an armchair and let herself settle, awkwardly.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ the detective asked.

  ‘A coffee would be nice,’ Mrs McGhee admitted.

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Thank you so much. The kitchen’s through that door: you’ll find everything you need through there. Milk, no sugar for me.’

  The coffee was supermarket instant, but Wright gritted her teeth, took two mugs from a tree and completed her mission.

  ‘Thank you,’ the woman said again as she rejoined her, laying one of the mugs on a table beside her chair. ‘Would you like a biscuit or anything?’

  ‘No, I’m good thanks, Mrs McGhee.’

  ‘Chris, please. Makes things more friendly.’

  ‘It does. I’m Jackie.’

  ‘Not Jacqueline?’

  ‘No, definitely not, never have been.’

  ‘Well Jackie, you’re here to talk to me about my poor cousin, Sandra. Such a terrible shock . . . although it shouldn’t have been. As soon as I was told, I just feel so, so . . . so bloody guilty.’

  ‘About what, Chris?’

  ‘About those people, in that bloody care home! What they were doing! I should have spoken out right away, more so when she didn’t come back to me, but to be honest, I thought they must have done to her what they did to me. But no, it was worse. And now my stepmum . . . Och, it’s . . .’

  ‘Chris,’ Wright said quietly. ‘Drink some of your coffee, calm down and tell me what’s happened.’

  She nodded, did as she had been told, then stayed quiet for a few moments, until she drew a deep breath and said, ‘I think they’ve killed her, Jackie. Those two in the care home. The Rutherfords.’

  The DS remained impassive, as far as she could. ‘Why would they do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Because of her investigation. And it’s my fault, my damn fault, I started the whole thing off.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Chris pursed her lips. ‘I told her I was concerned about the care home, the way it was being run. I’d been noticing for a while that there didn’t seem to be a lot of staff on duty whenever I was there, and not just that, that some of them didn’t appear to speak English well enough to understand what the residents were saying to them. Before you say anything, yes, there are people in there with dementia but most of them are like my stepmum, well switched on. Sandra and I, we speak, spoke occasionally on WhatsApp, and finally, oh, about a year ago . . . I could tell you the exact date from my chats . . . I opened up to her about it. She told me that she was planning to come back to Scotland for a visit, and that when she was there she’d look into it.’

  ‘Did she give any specific reason for coming back?’ the DS asked.

  ‘Yes and no. She said she was in cop mode and needed to check a few things, but that was all.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘No. She didn’t mention anything specific when she came here either, other than to say, the first time she was here, that somebody was in for a nasty surprise.’

  ‘Somebody? No gender? Not he, or she, or they?’

  ‘No, just somebody. Anyway, on her first visit, it was the first Saturday in March, just after leap year day, we talked about my concerns. By that time I’d raised them with the owners, and been more or less brushed off. They said that their homes . . . they have more than one . . . had all been given excellent reports by the Care Protection Agency, and that if I wasn’t happy I could take my stepmum home with me that very day. I told Sandra all this, and she said to leave it to her. She also said that the Care Agency’s unreliable in cases like this, because they give advance warning of their inspections, letting the owners fill the place with agency temps if they’re running short-staffed.’

  ‘I didn’t realise that,’ Wright murmured. ‘When did you see her next?’

  ‘Two weeks later. She came back on a Sunday, and boy had she made progress. She told me that she had established, by talking to those staff members who would speak to her away from the premises, that the Rutherfords, in their three homes, employ a total of eighteen care assistants, about one third of the number they should have. There are also three assistant managers, Hardeep and two others, who are all related to Amina. They’re on salary, but the care assistants, she told me they’re all imported from Africa, on work visas obtained through the Home Office. And, all of them have got contracts that say they have to remain for five years, and that if they leave or even try to, they’ll be taken to court. Sandra reckoned they were legally unenforceable, but the poor folk were just terrified. They sleep in dormitories and they’re paid cash in hand . . . not much cash either. One of them though, a woman called Anne, she let slip about a guy in the Blackburn home who’d complained to Gregor. There had been a confrontation that had got physical, and, Sandra’s informant said, the man had never been seen again.’

  ‘Was his name Francis?’

  Chris McGhee frowned. ‘Yes, I believe it was. All this, Sandra told me, she could prove, and was going to. She was going to see them, she said, and if they didn’t fall in line, then she knew a man, Bob Skinner she said his name was, that she could rely on to blow the whole thing open.’

  ‘In which case she was silenced before she could do that,’ Wright observed. ‘If she had done, it would have been blown wide open, trust me.’

  ‘Maybe she did and this Bob Skinner killed her? Could he have been in on it?’

  The DS laughed, quietly, grimly. ‘No, if she had involved him, it would have been the Rutherfords that were in danger. Chris, we think that Sandra died a very few days after she saw you. Did she leave you a written record of her findings by any chance?’

  ‘No. I’m afraid not, but I’m sure there was one, from something she said. Jackie, they killed her, I’m sure. She confronted them and they killed her.’

  ‘That’s an extreme conclusion, Chris,’ Wright cautioned, although she doubted her own words as she spoke them.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she countered, ‘because they tried to kill me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the DS gasped.

  The woman tapped her cast. ‘Jackie, this isn’t new,’ she said. ‘This is me recovering. Toward the end of March, just before the Easter holiday, I was coming home from work when I was run off the road, near to Thankerton. It was nearly dark, and I don’t remember much about it, but I’m sure that another car, a big car drove up alongside me and forced me off the road. After that I just remember tumbling down a hill side, there being a big bang, and then nothing. Next thing I knew I was being strapped to a stretcher, and screaming in agony. Someone must have given me a shot, for the next thing I remember is waking up in Wishaw General Hospital; a week later, I found out afterwards.’

  ‘Did you report this to the police, when you were able?’

  ‘Jackie, I was pretty much out of it for a fortnight after I woke up. They had me on such strong painkillers that I didn’t know where I was. All I did know was that both my legs and my right arm were in plaster and I couldn’t breathe very well because I had several broken ribs. The police never came to see me, but if they had what could I have told them? It was a big black car, that’s all I could have said. Sometimes I think that I saw the driver and that it was Gregor Rutherford, but that could just be my mind showing me things I want to see,’ she tapped the side of her head, ‘in here. At least that’s what I thought until Sandra got involved, and I heard she was dead.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Wright murmured. ‘Look there must have been a police report of the accident, I promise. I’ll call my boss right away, before I go to the hospital to see how Mrs Crawford is. She’ll find it and if I know Lottie she’ll go ballistic when she hears it was never followed up.’

  ‘One of my nurses said, when I was a bit more compos, that when I was brought in one of the paramedics said the police had told them they thought I’d fallen asleep at the wheel,’ McGhee said. ‘They were right about that . . . but only after my car had turned over three or four times.’

  ‘Chris, if Sandra hadn’t turned up would you ever have done anything about this?’

  ‘No, Jackie, I wouldn’t. Maybe they weren’t trying to kill me, just warn me off. If they did it worked. I’ve been scared shitless ever since, and I was until you walked through that door. Now, I want to nail them to the wall.’

  Seventy-Six

  ‘What’s your problem, Mann?’ Superintendent Steve Murphy barked. ‘My station inspector in Lanark tells me you’ve been giving her grief about some six-month-old RTA. What’s that got to do with CID, and why’s a DCI involved? I’ve heard about you, by the way,’ he added.

  ‘I’ve heard about you too,’ Lottie Mann thought but did not say. ‘One of the last of the old Strathclyde time servers that should never have made it beyond sergeant but wound up running a division in Andy Martin’s time.’

  ‘A DCI’s involved, sir,’ she replied, slowly, for him to hear every word, ‘because that six-month-old RTA’s just become a potential attempted murder, linked to the very successful murder of one of our former colleagues, who might just still be alive if the officers under your command, the two that attended the scene, had done their jobs and followed up the incident as soon as the accident victim was fit for interview . . . even though that might have taken a month.’ She paused. ‘And now,’ she continued, ‘rank set to one side, I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but whatever it is you’d better fucking believe it and co-operate. Otherwise, the next voice you hear’s likely to be that of DCC McGuire. While I might like to stick you in one of your own patrol cars for the rest of your career, he’s actually got the power to do it.’

  ‘True enough,’ Murphy sighed, wearily. ‘You’re everything I was told. You try and do my fucking job, DCI Mann, with the resources I’ve got.’

  ‘At least I would try and fucking do it. Now, I want the names of those attending officers, within half an hour, and I want the pair of them in my office within an hour after that. They come to me, I don’t go to them. Sir.’

  As she slammed the phone back into its cradle, she was aware of John Stirling, standing in the doorway. ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ he murmured.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘A line from one of my favourite movies: Apocalypse Now. There’s this mad air cavalry colonel, his helicopters wipe out a Viet Cong encampment and when they touch down that’s what he says. Robert Duvall. When I heard you there, I thought of him right away. Whoever that was. I can smell his arse burning from here.’

  ‘Robert Duvall,’ Mann repeated. ‘I remember him in a film called A Shot at Glory, when I was a teenager. He had probably the worst Scottish accent I’ve ever heard, but I still remember the movie. Ally McCoist was in it.’

  Stirling’s gaze was incredulous. ‘He was? Acting?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes and no. Yes, he was the co-star alongside Robert Duvall, but no, he was just himself. Right John,’ she exclaimed. ‘Your audition’s over and you’ve got the part. What do you want?’

  ‘We’ve had a delivery, boss,’ he replied. ‘International, all the way from the Bahamas. It’s a computer. I didn’t have a chance to tell you it was coming. It’s Sandra Bulloch’s. Detective Superintendent Haddock found it in her house, and decided it was best if he sent it here.’

  ‘How kind of him,’ Mann murmured. ‘Okay John, get on to the cyber-nerds at Gartcosh and ask them to send a specialist here. Maybe they’ll get more from it than they’ve managed to squeeze out of that mobile.’

  Seventy-Seven

  ‘Biggar’s quite nice,’ Jackie Wright thought as she parked outside Kello Hospital. ‘I wouldn’t mind living here.’

  She filed the idea for future consideration, and possibly discussion with her partner, and walked into the building. She was heading for Ward Two when Dr Wu stepped out of a side room.

  ‘Detective Sergeant,’ he called out. There was a look in his eye that she could not quite interpret, but it seemed portentous. ‘Do you have the lab results yet?’

  ‘I do,’ she replied. ‘They hit my email just as I left my last appointment, but I haven’t looked at them. Here, you do it.’ She took out her phone, opened the message and clicked on its attachment.

  The registrar took the device and put on the spectacles that hung on a lanyard around his neck, along with his stethoscope. He peered at the screen, nodding and murmuring as he scrolled through the report. When he was finished, he whistled.

  ‘Not a surprise,’ he said as he returned the phone. ‘It shows a significant level of morphine, far more than was necessary therapeutically, and far more than it should have been even allowing for the medication she was given here. Dr Rankin’s blameless here,’ he added. ‘She was called in and saw what she was meant to see, a very old person who had suffered a perfectly natural collapse, someone who had simply reached the end of her days, like her late Majesty, for example, who simply died of old age.’

  ‘We’re clear about this, are we?’ Wright asked. ‘It’s your opinion that Mrs Crawford was given an overdose of morphine? Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could it have happened accidentally?’

  Dr Wu shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine that circumstance. That was a good call you made yesterday, Sergeant, when you told us to stop the medication. If we hadn’t she’d probably be dead by now.’

  ‘Will she make it?’

  ‘Come and see.’ He turned on his heel and walked towards the ward, so quickly that Wright had to lengthen her stride to keep pace.

  Sally Crawford’s bed remained curtained off, but Dr Wu slipped into the space, with the detective close behind.

  ‘Hello dear,’ the old lady said. She was sitting up, against a stack of pillows; she looked fragile but she was wide awake. There was a tray in front of her, with an empty cup in its saucer and a KitKat wrapper on a plate beside it. ‘What a surprise,’ she exclaimed, with a gentle smile. ‘How nice to see you again. I’ve had a nice rest, the doctor tells me. Have you come to take me back home?’

  ‘Maybe in a day or so,’ Wright told her, hoping that she was hiding her surprise. ‘But first, there’s something I need to ask you.’

  ‘Tough old bird,’ Dr Wu whispered in her ear. ‘Do you need me any longer?’

  ‘I do,’ she murmured, ‘very much, as a witness.’ She turned back to the recovering patient. ‘Mrs Crawford, can I ask you what happened after I visited you, two days ago. Do you remember that?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. You asked me about Sandra, poor thing. I’m not senile you know,’ she scolded.

  The DS laughed. ‘You don’t need to tell me that. But I meant what happened after I’d left. They told me you had your dinner in the residents’ dining room, and then you went up to your room.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she confirmed. ‘I was there, watching the bowlers, and Amina came in. She said that the doctor, that nice Dr Rankin it would be, that she’d changed my medication, and she’d asked her, Amina that is, to give me a jag. I wasn’t aware I was on medication, but the doctors know best.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Wright agreed. ‘Okay, that’s all I wanted to ask. I’ll need to go now, but a day or so and we’ll get you out of here. Doctor Wu,’ she said, ‘can we draw the curtains back now, and let Sally meet the other patients?’

  ‘Of course.’ He pulled back the first screen; a nurse rushed across to complete the process, and he and the detective left the ward.

  ‘You heard all that,’ she said, in the corridor outside.

  ‘I did,’ he confirmed, ‘and worry not, I will say so in court if I have to.’

  ‘Good. Here’s something else you’ll probably be asked. Having seen the lab findings, do you believe that Amina Rutherford intended to end Mrs Crawford’s life?’

  ‘Let me put it this way, I believe that was the probable outcome of an injection of that size, and anyone with even rudimentary medical knowledge would have known that.’

  ‘Thanks. Don’t let anyone in to see her yet. Amina mustn’t know she’s recovered.’ She took out her phone and called Lottie Mann’s direct landline number. ‘Boss,’ she exclaimed.

  To her surprise, John Stirling answered. ‘Jackie, sorry, the boss is busy; she’s put her calls on divert.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Having an early lunch from the looks of it. Two patrol cops from South Lanarkshire that she ordered in to talk to her about a possible hit and run. I can see in her office; they’re standing she’s sitting, which does not look good for them.’

  ‘I know what that’s about,’ she said, ‘and I hope they enjoy every moment. Since she’s busy this is down to you, John, and it takes priority over whatever else you’re doing. I’m about to go to the Later Era care home to arrest one of the owners on suspicion of attempted murder. I need uniforms there, soonest, to take her into custody. Also, if he’s there, I’m going to detain her husband, Gregor Rutherford, for questioning over the possible hit and run that Lottie’s savaging those two cops about. And also because he’s a cunt,’ she added, gratuitously. ‘We won’t put that on a charge sheet, but I doubt that his wife ever acts alone. If he’s not there I want him located . . . maybe at one of the other two homes. While that’s happening I need an urgent warrant from any sheriff you can find, to let us search all three Later Era homes for illegally held drugs.’

  ‘I’ll do all that, Jackie,’ he promised. ‘At once. Now you do something for me.’

  ‘Okay, if it doesn’t take long.’

  ‘It won’t. I want you to take a deep breath, calm down and get a hold of yourself. I can hear the anger in your voice. When you arrest these people, you need to do it calmly. You say one word to them that could prejudice their trial . . .’