Hurriedly, she raised her eyes to his face and said, “No, it’s you we’ve come to see. You are Callum MacGillivray, right?” Kincaid had agreed that they could not identify themselves as police officers—they were courting Ross’s ire even with their unofficial questions—so they’d decided the simplest approach would be best. “We were friends of Donald Brodie,” she explained after giving their names, fudging the truth only a little. “And since your property is next to the Inneses’, we thought you might have seen something.”
“What sort of thing?” Callum leaned on his pitchfork, looking wary.
Kincaid extricated himself from the thorough sniffing administered by Callum’s dog, a sleek black Lab. “Someone doing something out of the ordinary . . . or someone doing something ordinary at the wrong time.”
“And why should I tell ye if I had? The police have been here already, nosing about.”
“I was staying at the Inneses’,” countered Gemma. “I saw you on Saturday night, watching Alison Grant. And I’ve talked to Alison—she says it was you who told her Donald would be there.”
“What if I did? There’s no crime in that.”
“Alison says you were jealous of her relationship with Donald—”
“Och, you canna believe everything the woman says,”
Callum said with obvious exasperation. “She had no relationship with Donald. I only wanted her to see the truth of it.”
“That was a bit brutal, don’t you think?” asked Gemma, in a tone of friendly inquiry.
“I told her time and again. She wouldna listen to me.”
“Did you think she would thank you for it?”
“Aye, weel, I suppose I wasna thinking past the moment,” Callum admitted, with less assurance. He picked up a fleece pullover thrown carelessly across a wheel-barrow and pulled it over his head, as if the cold had suddenly struck him. “I didna realize she’d be angry with me.”
“But you knew she’d be furious with Donald—which she was. Did you not think she might take it further than a shouting match?”
“Alison? I’ll tell ye what I told thon policeman; Alison wouldna hurt anyone.”
“She seemed pretty tough to me.” Gemma raised an eyebrow.
“You havena seen her with her wee daughter, Chrissy.
She’s a good mother.” Callum’s defense was earnest, but so ready that Gemma suspected he had been called on to repeat it more than once. And it might be true, she
thought, but good mothers could be fierce, especially if their children were at risk. Remembering what Heather Urquhart had said about Alison’s daughter being crippled, she wondered if Donald had somehow threatened the well-being of the child.
Kincaid, she saw, had gone back to fondling the dog, making himself inconspicuous so as not to disturb the rapport she’d established with Callum. She knew he was listening intently, however, in spite of his relaxed posture.
“Callum, how was it you knew about Hazel—my friend—coming to see Donald for the weekend?”
“It was when we were fishing, the three of us. I’d never heard Donald talk that way about a woman before. He took them for granted, the same as he did Alison.”
“The three of you?” asked Gemma, curious.
“Aye. Donald and John and me.” Callum looked suddenly uncomfortable. “We would go out, on the occasion.”
“Salmon good along here, is it?” asked Kincaid.
“Nae. It’s mostly the trout.” Callum reached for his pitchfork again, as if to terminate the conversation.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Gemma said quickly, to forestall him. “You and Donald were friends, weren’t you?”
“Aye. Since we were at primary school together.”
“Did Donald know that you were fond of Alison?”
Callum leaned down to stroke the dog, which had come back to his side. “I knew her first, through the shop.
My aunt orders bits and pieces for the trekkers. But when Alison met Donald at a party, she had nae more time for me. A posh bloke, she said, that owned a distillery. It didna take long to worm it out of her.”
“And you didn’t warn Donald off, once you knew?”
Kincaid asked.
Callum colored. “And have him laugh at me, because I couldna keep a girl?”
“There is that,” Kincaid agreed. “But when you told Alison about Donald and Hazel, did you not think it unfair to rat on a mate?”
“He didna need Alison,” Callum said defensively. “I saw him with her—your friend from London,” he added to Gemma. “On the Saturday morning, down by the river.”
Had he been watching, wondered Gemma, when she had seen Donald and Hazel together? And in that case, had he been watching the next morning as well? Carefully, so as not to sound as if she were accusing him, she said, “Callum, do you walk along the river path?”
“Aye. Sometimes.” He answered casually enough, but his hand on the dog’s neck grew still.
“And yesterday?”
“Yesterday I had to go early to Ballindalloch.”
“You didn’t go out along the river?”
“Nae, I’ve told ye,” he said shortly, rising. “And now I’ve the horses to see to, if ye don’t mind.”
Gemma didn’t see how they could push him further.
They had thanked him and turned to go when Gemma stopped. Prompted by something she didn’t quite understand, she fished a card from her bag and turned back to him. “Callum, wait. I came here on holiday, but at home I am a police officer. If there’s anything you . . . remember . . . or you just want to talk, you can ring me.”
She saw the small flash of shock in his eyes, but after a moment he took the card from her with a nod.
Rejoining Kincaid, she waited until they were on the road again before she said, “John Innes would have told him anyway, if they’re friends.”
“If they’re friends,” Kincaid answered thoughtfully,
“he would know where John Innes kept his guns. You said he was at the house on Saturday night; maybe he nipped round to the back and into the scullery while the rest of you were in the dining room.”
Gemma shook her head. “John and Louise didn’t sit down to dinner with us. They were in and out of the kitchen constantly.”
“Early the next morning, then, before anyone was up and about?”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Gemma admitted. “But why would he bother shooting Donald when he’d already sabotaged Donald’s relationship with Alison? And how would he have known he’d have a chance to kill Donald before anyone noticed John’s gun was missing?”
“Maybe they’d made an appointment to fish together.”
“Then where’s Donald’s fishing tackle? It wasn’t found near his body.”
“The same place as the gun?”
Gemma smacked the flat of her hand on the steering wheel. “Bloody hell, I hate this! We’d have found the gun, if we’d had access to the crime scene.”
“That’s hardly fair, love. That gun could be in England by this time, for all we know.”
She shot him a look as she slowed for the turn into the B&B. “If you mean Tim, I still don’t believe— Look, that’s Heather’s car.”
Heather and Pascal were just getting out of Heather’s Audi as Gemma pulled up beside it. The other parking spaces, Gemma saw, were filled by a crime scene van and several police cars, so the police had not yet finished their search. A blue-and-white crime scene tape had been stretched across the entrance to the path at the bottom of the garden, its ends fluttering in the rising breeze. The