with DSI Taylor in Dumfries. It had been very unsatisfactory – in fact, when she thought about it, the man himself was pretty unsatisfactory, clearly desperate for her to rescue an investigation from disaster but too feeble to stand up to the pressure from Len Harris.
He’d shown the whites of his eyes when she’d suggested that she should have a briefing session with his detectives.
‘Oh no, Marjory, that wouldn’t be wise. The lads just wouldn’t wear it.’
‘ Wouldn’t wear it? ’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do they have a choice?’
‘Well, of course not, not exactly, but you have to understand the problem. Morale is very low just at the moment and I can’t risk undermining it any further.’
Suppressing her impatience, Fleming said, ‘Don’t you think their morale would improve once they felt the investigation was getting somewhere?’
He seized on that. ‘Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. So ifyou can show them some progress first, they’ll feel quite different and then, of course, you’ll have them in the palm of your hand. Right?’
Kicking herself for not seeing that one coming, she had to acquiesce, though she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘yes’. ‘Mmm. As long as DI Harris understands the position. I’m hoping he will be starting on the Solway search tomorrow. The more manpower we can assign to that the better – perhaps uniforms could be drafted in as well?’
Taylor was on more comfortable ground. ‘I’ve emphasised that is priority, I assure you. And I’m sure Len has it well in hand – he’s very efficient, you know.’
Efficient and obstructive – not a reassuring combination. Still, once she got her own team reporting they might come up with something that would give her ammunition against him – she was starting to see this investigation as a war zone – since at the moment it was plain there was little point in arguing.
Fleming moved on to the next item on her list. ‘I was just wondering, Tom, when you were giving your next press conference. Once we get Kane’s name out there, along with a mugshot, we can enlist the public as our eyes and ears.’
It was such an obvious step to take that she couldn’t think why he hadn’t done it before, but he took on the look of a hunted rabbit.
‘Oh dear, yes. I suppose I have to. But it’ll bring the press down on us like an avalanche. I can hardly bear the thought.’
She remembered suddenly that he’d been given a rough time over a badly managed operation that had led to a bank robbery case collapsing. Well, they’d all had their moment in the Sun , as the saying went. She said briskly, ‘Better give it to them before they come and get it. First rule is to control the information out there.’
He was huddling miserably in his chair. ‘Oh, I know I’ll have to—’
‘When? Tomorrow?’
‘Oh – oh yes, I suppose putting it off won’t make things any better.Unless,’ he sat up, ‘we wait until you come up with something to offer them, Marjory—’
‘Won’t do. I have people going out tomorrow asking questions about Connell Kane and the press could be round baying for blood by tomorrow afternoon.’
Taylor sank back down in his seat. ‘I take your point,’ he said wearily. ‘All right, tomorrow morning.’
She had left him plunged in gloom and no doubt wishing he’d never thought of drawing her in and taking on Len Harris – whose voice Fleming had recognised in Taylor’s replies – or even, probably, of applying to be a detective superintendent in the first place.
She didn’t stop in at the station in Kirkluce and after five miles had reached the turn off for Mains of Craigie, the hill farm that her husband Bill, following his father and grandfather, had farmed all their married life. It was sheep mainly, with young beef cattle bought in for fattening and a couple of the lower fields laid down to winter feedstuff.
Their son Cameron was all set to continue the line into the