murder?"
"Nicole, Nicole," Campbell said quietly, attempting to calm her storm-tossed thoughts. "There are millions of baffling questions flying around, and it's infuriating that we can't answer them, but what we mustn't do is let them distract us from what we know for sure ."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you've met him. Do you believe Thomas McInnes could have carried out - or been party to - those murders?"
"To tell you the truth, this whole thing's getting so weird I don't know what I believe any more."
He rolled his eyes gently and smiled. "Look at yourself, Nicole. You're forgetting which way is up. Do you know who Tam McInnes is? What he did?"
"Only very roughly. Really just what you told me yesterday."
"He was a burglar. Not by profession, just by, well, a combination of circumstance, naivety and probably a bit of booze, in the first instance. He and his pals robbed country mansions; you know that much. The first one was the home - a home - of the man who took the decision to close down the car plant where they had all worked, because labour was cheaper in the Third World. They had intended the robbery as a protest, a stunt, if you like; said they were originally planning to give the gear back. However. . . to cut a long story short, when it became apparent that nobody had a bloody clue who had done it, they decided to keep their mouths shut and ended up doing it again somewhere else. The spree lasted a few months; they hit I think seven, maybe eight places. But the thing is, they mostly hit places when they were empty; and if someone was going to be home, they made sure they were in and out without a soul knowing. Do you see what I'm saying?"
She nodded and smiled, feeling a welcome moment of comfort as some aspect of solidity, of reassurance returned.
"They never hurt anyone," she said.
"Exactly. Not the proverbial fly. Not then, not before, not since. No knives and no guns. Not even a big stick with a nail through it. But that's only half the point. The reason I sanctioned your wee publicity tour yesterday was that, knowing what I did about McInnes, it seemed at least plausible that somebody might enlist his services forcibly or otherwise - if they wanted to burgle a country mansion, especially if they had inside knowledge that someone as moneyed as Voss would be filling the wardrobes for a few days. And the kind of coercion he's described made sense because as far as I know, Tam McInnes has never committed another burglary since back then, and would be unlikely to be tempted, whatever the potential rewards. What doesn't make sense is murder. Even discounting our generous opinions of Tam's character and 58
morality, the fact is, you don't hire a joiner to fix a burst pipe.
"Now, this suicide business might suggest there's someone else lurking in the background, but to us that's irrelevant. Whether no-one else was behind it or Ernst Stavro fucking Blofeld was behind it, no matter what might have gone wrong, no matter what happened in that bedroom on Sunday night, Tam McInnes went into Craigurquhart House to rob the place. Why there were four corpses behind him when he left is something we aren't going to find out without actually talking to him, so until we're allowed to do that I'd suggest we both distract our tired minds with other matters."
"Like what?" Nicole said apprehensively.
"In your case, this morning, a Mr McCandlish, an octogenarian who, if he's being consistent, probably wishes to sue whoever is top of the charts for plagiarising a radio jingle he wrote thirty-odd years ago. According to the senior partners, he used to do a lot of this in the Sixties, and everyone had assumed he'd died or given up. Unfortunately bands like The Stone Roses and Oasis came along in recent years, and by ripping off the songs he got upset about back then, they've inadvertently set him off again. Good luck."
The fear and the uncertainty, the high stakes and the precipitous sense of danger drifted away as the
"Nicole, Nicole," Campbell said quietly, attempting to calm her storm-tossed thoughts. "There are millions of baffling questions flying around, and it's infuriating that we can't answer them, but what we mustn't do is let them distract us from what we know for sure ."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you've met him. Do you believe Thomas McInnes could have carried out - or been party to - those murders?"
"To tell you the truth, this whole thing's getting so weird I don't know what I believe any more."
He rolled his eyes gently and smiled. "Look at yourself, Nicole. You're forgetting which way is up. Do you know who Tam McInnes is? What he did?"
"Only very roughly. Really just what you told me yesterday."
"He was a burglar. Not by profession, just by, well, a combination of circumstance, naivety and probably a bit of booze, in the first instance. He and his pals robbed country mansions; you know that much. The first one was the home - a home - of the man who took the decision to close down the car plant where they had all worked, because labour was cheaper in the Third World. They had intended the robbery as a protest, a stunt, if you like; said they were originally planning to give the gear back. However. . . to cut a long story short, when it became apparent that nobody had a bloody clue who had done it, they decided to keep their mouths shut and ended up doing it again somewhere else. The spree lasted a few months; they hit I think seven, maybe eight places. But the thing is, they mostly hit places when they were empty; and if someone was going to be home, they made sure they were in and out without a soul knowing. Do you see what I'm saying?"
She nodded and smiled, feeling a welcome moment of comfort as some aspect of solidity, of reassurance returned.
"They never hurt anyone," she said.
"Exactly. Not the proverbial fly. Not then, not before, not since. No knives and no guns. Not even a big stick with a nail through it. But that's only half the point. The reason I sanctioned your wee publicity tour yesterday was that, knowing what I did about McInnes, it seemed at least plausible that somebody might enlist his services forcibly or otherwise - if they wanted to burgle a country mansion, especially if they had inside knowledge that someone as moneyed as Voss would be filling the wardrobes for a few days. And the kind of coercion he's described made sense because as far as I know, Tam McInnes has never committed another burglary since back then, and would be unlikely to be tempted, whatever the potential rewards. What doesn't make sense is murder. Even discounting our generous opinions of Tam's character and 58
morality, the fact is, you don't hire a joiner to fix a burst pipe.
"Now, this suicide business might suggest there's someone else lurking in the background, but to us that's irrelevant. Whether no-one else was behind it or Ernst Stavro fucking Blofeld was behind it, no matter what might have gone wrong, no matter what happened in that bedroom on Sunday night, Tam McInnes went into Craigurquhart House to rob the place. Why there were four corpses behind him when he left is something we aren't going to find out without actually talking to him, so until we're allowed to do that I'd suggest we both distract our tired minds with other matters."
"Like what?" Nicole said apprehensively.
"In your case, this morning, a Mr McCandlish, an octogenarian who, if he's being consistent, probably wishes to sue whoever is top of the charts for plagiarising a radio jingle he wrote thirty-odd years ago. According to the senior partners, he used to do a lot of this in the Sixties, and everyone had assumed he'd died or given up. Unfortunately bands like The Stone Roses and Oasis came along in recent years, and by ripping off the songs he got upset about back then, they've inadvertently set him off again. Good luck."
The fear and the uncertainty, the high stakes and the precipitous sense of danger drifted away as the
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