in human resources; an inelegant term for what people used to call
personnel management. She was very good on team-building and
motivation, and I thought she could add a cutting edge to our new
business presentations. I must admit that at first I thought her methods
were a bit silly, but they worked very well. The Agency's billings have
44
grown in each of the years she's been helping us.'
'Your relationship went beyond the office, though, didn't it?'
Futcher did not meet her gaze as he nodded.
'Since when?'
'That started a few months after she came to work for us, and it's
been going on ever since.'
'How often did you see each other?'
'Hard to say, really,' the ad-man replied. 'We'd get together whenever
we could arrange it.'
'Would you describe it as an intense relationship?'
'Hell, no! The opposite, in fact: it was a very relaxed thing. We
liked each other a great deal, and we had sex on occasion, but we
weren't in love with each other.' Futcher took a breath. 'Look,
Inspector, I play around. Okay? I mean it's the sort of bloke I am. As
for Gay, she came out of a marriage a few years back principally to
make her own space and live her own life. Our arrangement didn't
threaten that, and it didn't threaten my own marriage.
'That's as frank as I can be with you.'
'You couldn't have put it more clearly,' said Rose. 'Tell me, did
Mrs Weston have any other, er, arrangements, to use your term?'
'Was she seeing anyone else, you mean? Not that I know of; she
certainly never gave me any hint of that. But to be honest I wouldn't
have known if she was. I never visited Gay without checking that it
was okay with her. That was the way she wanted it; all part of her
having that space of hers . . .' Futcher broke off, sinking deeper into
his chair, gazing at the ceiling.
'When did you find out about Mrs Weston's death, sir?' Steele
asked him, quietly.
'This afternoon,' he replied, gathering himself. 'My secretary picked
up a copy of the Evening News at lunch-time. There was a story about
police being at the scene of the death of a single woman at Oldbams
steading. She showed it to me as soon as she saw it. As far as I know
there are . .. were ... only two single women living out there. Gay
and Joan Ball. I switched on Radio Forth; their two o'clock news
bulletin gave out the name.'
'Are you telling us that your secretary knew about Mrs Weston?'
Futcher glanced at the young detective. 'Katie knows everything
about me, sergeant. She's been with me since I founded The Futcher
Agency twelve years ago.'
'From your concern a few minutes ago, I guess your wife doesn't
know about her though.'
Futcher looked at Steele again, uncomfortably and with a touch of
anger showing. 'No, she bloody doesn't,' he snapped.
45
'What did you do when you heard that Mrs Weston was dead?'
asked Rose.
'I went to Church, to the Cathedral at the end of York Place: to
pray. I'm a practising Catholic.'
You should practise a bit harder; at least until you get to the bit
about the Commandments. The response was on the tip of the detective
chief inspector's tongue, but she fought it back. 'All afternoon?' she
asked instead.
'Almost. I went back to the office just after five, and asked Katie
to call a journalist friend others in the Herald's Edinburgh office, to
see what he knew. He told her that the police were being cagey
about it.
'Is that right? Is there a problem? How did she die?'
Rose ignored his questions. 'When was the last time you saw Mrs
Weston?'
Futcher stroked his beard. 'Just over a fortnight ago,' he replied.
'Just before she went into hospital.'
'She went into hospital?'
'She told me she was going into a clinic for a minor operation. She
didn't say what it was for, so I assumed it was some sort of women's
thing.'
'Have you spoken to her since?'
'Several times, by telephone. She told me that the operation had
been fine, that she was recuperating and that everything would be
sorted out soon.'
'Is that your phrase or hers?' asked Rose.
The man looked at her, curiously, for a second. 'Hers, in fact. Her
exact words; I remember her saying them; I remember it vividly.'
'What did you take her to mean by that?'
'I suppose I thought she meant that her plumbing would all be
healed up, and we could ...' His voice tailed off.
'... and you could resume a sexual relationship?' Steele offered.
'That's right.'
'Where were you in the early hours of this morning, Mr Futcher?'
He looked round, eyes narrowing, at her sudden sharp question. Rose
leaned forward on the leather settee, closer to him.
'In bed,' he answered, quietly.
'From when?'
'From about eleven o'clock.'
'You didn't go to Oldbams last night did you?'
'No, I did not.'
'You didn't help Gaynor Weston end her own life?'
Futcher's face paled. 'Is that what happened?'
46
'You were nowhere near Oldbams at two o'clock this morning?
You were in bed?'
'No I wasn't,' he gasped. 'Yes I was.'
Maggie Rose settled back into the comfortable old Chesterfield,
and smiled gently at him. 'That's okay, then. I'm sorry to have been
so direct, Mr Futcher. We have to ask these questions, you understand.'
He sighed. 'Yes, of course.'
'Good, that's good.' She glanced round, at Steele. 'That's us almost
finished, Stevie.'
'Yes Ma'am. Just one other thing to do, really.'
'That's right.' The chief inspector, still smiling, looked back across
at Futcher. 'If you'd ask your wife to join us, sir. Just to confirm
formally that you were here in bed at two o'clock this morning.'
The last vestige of the bronzed look vanished from the man's face.
'No!' he cried out. 'Leave Penny out of this.'
'I'm sorry, sir,' said Rose, trying to sound as if she really meant it.
'I know it's difficult for you, but we need corroboration of your story,
for the Fiscal.'
Terry Futcher thrust himself out of his armchair, took a pace towards
the room's small window, then turned abruptly, to face the two police
officers once more. 'Then don't ask Penny,' he snarled at them. 'I was
in bed all right, you bastards, but I never said I was here.
'I was with Katie, my secretary.'
47
13
'Here, take this. You look as though you need it.'.Bob handed his wife
a huge vodka and tonic, ice and lemon fighting to break the bubbling
surface near the brim of the crystal tumbler.
'Oh I do, my love. How do I need it.' Barefoot, she leaned back
against the kitchen work-surface, and took a mouthful of the strong
mixture. 'Are the boys asleep?'
'Jazz is. Mark's reading.' He took a deep breath, reading her silence.
'Bad, is it?' he asked at last.
She nodded, and sipped again at her drink. 'It's bad, all right. P
oor
Olive. Poor Neil. Poor kids. Olive has lung cancer, with at least one
secondary, in her lymph glands. They'll give her a scan at the Oncology
Clinic to determine whether it's spread any further than that.
'Honey,' she said, bitterly, 'it's at times like this I feel thankful that
I work in pathology. I don't think I could cope if I had to hand down
death sentences on a daily basis.'
He threw back his head, exhaling a great gasp of air. 'Oh dear
Christ,' he exclaimed, filling up with blind, helpless anger. 'Olive and
Neil Mcllhenney are as nice a couple as you'll meet in a day's march.
They adore each other, and those kids of theirs are a pair of wee gems.
What the fuck have they done to deserve this?
'Does she have any hope?' he asked.
'Depends on what the scan shows. If there are no other metastases,
then clearly her chances will be better. I'm no expert on current
treatments, but I do know the stats. They show that the great majority
of people with this type of cancer, at this stage of development, die
within a couple of years.
'However, being as positive as I can, the available figures only
show the position as it was about five years ago. That's how long it takes for the statistical picture to emerge. Against that, the oncologists,
the drug companies and the clinical researchers are re-writing the
book on cancer every day. I dare say I could connect to the Internet
right now and find a whole list of treatments for lung cancer that I've
never heard of before.'
Bob turned down the heat on the rice and on the marinera sauce,
48
crossed to the fridge and poured himself a drink as big as the one he
had mixed for his wife. As an afterthought, he topped up her glass
with vodka.
'Is there anything we can do to help them?' he asked.
'You can give Neil tomorrow afternoon off, for openers, so that he
can go to the clinic.'
'Jesus, I'll send him on compassionate leave as of this minute.'
'No,' said Sarah quickly. 'He must be the judge of that. Olive's
teaching career will be on hold for a long time, at the very best, but
it's important for them both, from a morale point of view, that he
continues to work as normally as he can. Neil picked that up right
away.
'One thing did occur to me, though. Do you know what the
grandparent situation is?'
His forehead furrowed, characteristically, as he thought. 'Neil's
father's dead. His mother has pretty bad arthritis. She lives in a
sheltered flat. Olive's mother isn't around any more. She went off to
England with another bloke years ago. Her dad's a civil servant;
works in the Benefits Agency up in Aberdeen.
'Brothers and sisters?'
'Olive has a brother; he's a soldier, based in Aldershot. Neil has a
brother called Charlie and a sister called Mavis. He's in Australia and
she's in Canada.'
'Right. In those circumstances, the most helpful thing that we
could do for them is to look after Lauren and Spencer as the need
arises. If this disease is treatable, it'll be done mostly on an outpatient
basis, and Olive could be pretty sick for a day or two after each
session. It'd be best if the kids didn't see that. So if there are no handy
relatives, why don't we offer to put them up?'
'Absolutely.' He turned back towards the hob, and their supper.
'Life can be a bitch, Sarah, can it not,' he said quietly as she came
to stand beside him. 'Until ten minutes ago, I was getting quietly
worked up about my daughter putting her career before her relationship
with Andy.
'Something like this puts that well in perspective. It makes me feel
guilty, too, about how lucky I am. If everyone got what they deserve,
then how would my life have panned out, and Neil's ...'
49
14
He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to his wife breathing
beside him, waiting for his emotions to define themselves.
Since Sarah had broken the news, he had felt rage, pity and a
terrible, terrible fear, all mixed together. He and Olive had eaten a
quiet supper and then they had gone to bed. Her dignified, pale-faced
silence had upset him more than anything else, but he had been afraid
to break it, afraid that if he did he would say the wrong thing.
At last she turned to him, and he took her in his strong arms,
beneath the duvet. Her tears came then; great, heaving, frightened
sobs. 'Why me?' she asked him. 'Why me?'
'Because, my darling,' he said, softly, his deep voice quavering as
she had never heard it before, 'there is in this world, no fairness, no
justice and no righteousness. If there were, things like this just
wouldn't happen.'
He pressed a hand to her breast. 'Love, if I could take this thing from
out of you and put it into me, you know that I would. I can't do that, but
I will be at your side as you fight it, every step of the way. This is a team
game; we're in it together, for you are what my life is about.
'Let's agree two things. First, that whatever treatment they offer,
we grab it, and second, that through it all the "D" word will never be
mentioned. Okay?'
He felt, rather than saw her nod.
'You! Weak?' He chuckled in spite of himself. 'You are about as
weak as a large whisky and Im Bru. You are the strongest woman I've
ever known. This bloody disease doesn't have a clue what it's letting
itself in for, taking on Olive Mcllhenney. Just keep giving it that look
of yours, It'll get the message and bugger off, sharpish.'
'I wish it was that easy.'
'Aye, but it is in a way. I know next to nothing about these things,
but I do know that determination has a big part to play.'
She kissed his chest. 'Okay, I'll do that. I'll give it The Silencer;
and you can take it somewhere quiet and give it a kicking. We'll teach
the bloody thing to try to come between us.'
50
15
'He gets around, then, this Mr Futcher,' said the Head of CID, as he
and Brian Mackie turned the corner into Crewe Road South. The
Western General Hospital lies only a quarter of a mile from the police
headquarters building in Fettes Avenue, and so the two detectives had
decided to walk to their appointment with Professor Nolan Weston.
The rain of the previous day had gone, but the afternoon was drab
and cold. Martin seemed to wear its greyness like an overcoat, to
match his mood. He and Alex had spent a silent night: the crisis
between them remained unresolved.
'So it seems,' Mackie answered. 'Maggie and Steele saw Katie
Meams, the secretary bird, first thing this morning. She backed up his
story, right enough. She told them that Futcher and she worked late
the night before Mrs Weston died. When they were finished he took
her for a steak, then ran her home. She invited him in for coffee and
afters, as she sometimes does, she says, and he stayed until two in the
morning.'
'Did Maggie believe her?'
'Yes, on balance she did.
So did Stevie. They gave her a moderately
hard time; made her go over the story time and again. She never
varied at all. Eventually she got annoyed and went into some very
graphic detail about the size ofFutcher's tackle. Impressive, apparently.
His line to the other ladies is that the wife can't take too much of it.'
The superintendent paused. 'I was thinking of asking Maggie to go
along and take a look at the evidence,' he added, with a sidelong
smile. 'Unless you wanted to lend me Karen Neville, that is.'
Martin chuckled, in spite of himself. 'Neville would love the job,
I'm sure. But she's doing something else just now,' he said, as the two
men turned into the hospital's entrance roadway.
The Department of Clinical Oncology is a complex which includes
some of the newest buildings within the Western General's sprawling
grounds. Mackie led the way through the automatic glass doors and
into the yellow brick reception area. 'Professor Weston, please,' he
said to the nursing assistant seated behind its high wooden counter.
'You're the gentlemen from the police?' she asked, quietly. Martin
51
nodded. 'Yes, he's expecting you. If you go round the corner through
the double doors and up the first flight of stairs, then through another
set of doors, you'll find his office third on the right. I'll buzz him and
let him know that you're coming,'
They followed her directions to the letter. As they pushed their way
through the second set of doors, they found a tall man standing in the
hall. He was shirt-sleeved in the warmth of the hospital, wearing the
trousers of a brown suit. He was as bald as Brian Mackie, but his head
seemed bigger and more pointed than the superintendent's gentle
dome. 'Gentlemen,' he greeted them solemnly, 'I'm Nolan Weston.'
'Hello, Professor,' said Martin accepting the proffered handshake
as he introduced himself and his colleague. 'Glad you could see us so
quickly. We'll try not to take up too much of your time.'
Weston led them into a tiny room, so small that there was barely
room for two chairs on the other side of his desk. 'This is about Gay,
of course,' he began.
'Of course,' said the Head ofCID. 'When did you last see your ex-
wife, Professor?'
'Three weeks ago,' the tall man answered, as he folded himself
awkwardly into his swivel chair. 'She and I took Raymond, our son,
up to Aberdeen, for his first term at University.'