Lamb to the Slaughter by Aline Templeton Page B

service, but Will had been slower to take his sergeant’s exams – a home which had three kids under six wasn’t the ideal place for studying – and he couldn’t expect to achieve seniority without the necessary piece of paper.
    Tansy and Tam had usually worked together, a good team which formed a solid heart to any enquiry. Now Tansy worked mainly with Will, she seemed to have changed, somehow – a bit more chip-on-the-shoulder, a bit less supportive. Or was Fleming only imagining that?
    She had rather more pressing worries than Tansy’s attitude problem or Will Wilson’s nose being out of joint. Fleming looked hopelessly at the flashing light on her phone, the papers on her desk and, when she opened her email, the messages clicking up one after another. She’d be lucky to get home before midnight, at this rate.
     
    Like a spider sitting watchfully in a corner of its web, waiting for an unsuspecting fly, Tam MacNee sat at one end of the bar counter in the Salutation. It was a less civilised pub than the Cutty Sark, with the sort of wooden floors that weren’t a design statement and a thickened atmosphere from the fire that burned in a central grate open to the two long rooms on either side, but it was the nearest port of call for officers going off duty and desperate for a drink after a trying day.
    There was no sign of any of them yet, though, and it was well past five o’clock. MacNee was on to his second pint, and his afternoon pass from Bunty would be running out soon. The pub was quiet anyway, and though the drinkers had been blethering on about the murder, no one had anything new to say and now the conversation was being recycled for the third time. MacNee looked at his watch again gloomily.
    When the door swung open and PC Sandy Langlands appeared, MacNee brightened immediately. If he could have chosen someone for his purposes, it would have been Sandy: cheerful, open, trusting, like a Labrador puppy. He particularly liked the ‘trusting’ bit. It would never occur to Sandy that Tam MacNee should be denied information, just because he was away from his work for a wee while. And surely Big Marge couldn’t yet have got round absolutely everyone with her directive?
    ‘Sandy! Good to see you, man!’ Tam greeted him, smiling broadly. ‘What’ll it be?’
    The smile, the enthusiasm and the unaccustomed generosity all combined to alarm his victim. ‘What are you after, Tam?’ Sandy asked suspiciously.
    It was sad to see such an innocent nature corrupted by cynicism. ‘Just your company, that’s all. Sit down and give us your craik.’
    Gingerly, Langlands took a stool at the bar and accepted his offer.
    ‘Pint of Special here, Donnie,’ MacNee called to the barman. ‘Now, what’s been going on today? Bit of a shock, something like this within spitting distance of the station, eh?’
    ‘Right enough. Not what you expect in a douce place like Kirkluce.’ Langlands’s pint arrived and he raised it. ‘Cheers, Tam! I’m needing this – thirsty work, asking people questions.’
    ‘Been out on the knocker, have you?’ Tam could sympathise. ‘Tough to go on looking interested when they’ve nothing to tell you.’
    ‘At length,’ Langlands said with feeling. ‘I was working the houses opposite Fauldburn House and not one of them had actually seen anything, but they were all wanting to tell me why it had happened.’
    This was a distinctly poor return on MacNee’s investment. ‘And what did they reckon the motive was?’
    Langlands took a reflective pull at his pint. ‘You could say there were three categories. One lot think it’s because he was going to block the supermarket. There’s the ones that think it was because he was going to sell to the supermarket, and then there’s the idea that it’s nothing to do with the supermarket, that it’s a crazed gunman with no reason at all, and we’re all going to die.’
    MacNee raised his eyebrows. ‘A lot of them think that?’
    Langlands