No Suspicious Circumstances Read online

  It took a full ten minutes before the lock yielded to my pick-lock gadget and the door swung open. The moon was shining through the large window, the brightness of its rays intensified by the white and stainless steel surfaces of an ultra-modern kitchen.

  Nothing out of the ordinary here, except for two huge stainless-steel vats that stood against the back wall beside a large white cabinet. A quick inspection brought disappointment. Empty.

  I turned my attention to the white cabinet. A faint hum suggested it was some kind of refrigerator. I pulled open the door.

  Inside were stacked several large containers of Felicity Lannelle’s precious haggis and a plastic canister full of a thick dark brown liquid labelled Gravy for Haggis. ‘Eureka!’ I breathed. I took a spoon from a drawer and filled Felicity’s bowl with haggis. As an afterthought, I poured on a generous quantity of the gravy. I’d better give her the whole cordon bleu offering, or I’d find myself making a return visit to the kitchen to fetch that missing ingredient. More in hope than expectation, I spooned a sample of the haggis into an empty film canister to send to London.

  It was frustrating that a thorough search had revealed nothing suspicious. But that security lock was too expensive for so ordinary a kitchen. Perhaps there was an entirely innocent explanation, such as an attempt to protect a traditional family recipe? No. Gut feeling told me that the Mackenzies were guarding a more sinister secret. When Murdo went to that meeting in a few hours, I would follow him to find out.

  I looked round once more. Satisfied that I had left no trace of my presence, I made my way back upstairs to the lobby. By now the coloured pattern from the window had moved from stairs to wall. Controlling my breathing, listening to the loud ticking of the grandfather clock, I stood in the shadows behind the reception desk. I counted slowly to a hundred before I crossed to the glass inner door and slid back the Yale latch. The heavy key in the outer wooden door turned smoothly. No high security locks here.

  A huge moon floodlit the lawn and glittered on the surface of the pond, laying a silvery path across the dark water to the lighted window of the self-catering cottage and an eager Felicity Lannelle. I glanced back at the house. No lights, but eyes could be watching, so it took me fifteen minutes to take a circuitous route to the shrubbery, but once under its cover, it was easy to move swiftly to the rear of her cottage.

  A faint glow filtered through tartan curtains. At my discreet tap the light dimmed.

  A shadowy figure inched the window open a crack, and hissed, ‘Is that you, dear? Have you got it?’

  ‘Yes to both,’ I muttered, resisting the temptation of, ‘It’s Mrs Mackenzie come to see what’s cooking!’

  Felicity was wearing a vibrant orange caftan protected by a large white apron. Behind her, I glimpsed a pot standing on the cooker, and on the worktop a notepad and pen laid out ready for use.

  ‘Oh, thank you so much, dear.’ She seized the bowl of haggis. ‘I just can’t wait to test it. In fact, I’m not waiting. I’m going to try out a little recipe of my own right now!’

  A plump hand waved in dismissive farewell. Ms Lannelle was already lost in her own foodie world.

  Gorgonzola did not take kindly to being disturbed twice by my coming and going, or to be exact, going and coming, in the middle of the night. She took her revenge by making numerous perambulations of her own. I drifted in and out of a troubled sleep, punctuated by a half-remembered dream…

  …a Felicity cum Gorgonzola figure, clad in a tartan caftan, sat at a white-clothed table, napkin knotted round neck, knife and fork poised. Gorgonzola with Felicity’s body, or Felicity with G’s face? I was still trying to figure it out when Mrs Mackenzie, smiling proudly, marched up holding a tray piled high with bowls of steaming haggis. With a flourish, she placed bowl after bowl on the table until Gorgonzola Lannelle disappeared behind a haggis rampart.

  ‘I want some too,’ I cried. With my right foot zipped into the MINE holdall, and my left in the YOURS, I shuffled across the dining room waving a large wooden spoon. Mrs Mackenzie held up her tray, now engraved with the message, The management regrets no Smiths can be entertained. Her thin lips moved, but all that emerged was the high-pitched purring croon that Gorgonzola had been trained to utter when she detected illicit drugs…

  The bleep of my alarm woke me. Prising open one heavy eyelid, I tried to focus on the dial. 7.30 a.m. Sleepily, I turned over, then with a supreme effort of will flung back the duvet. Curled up on the end of the bed, Gorgonzola didn’t even stir.

  ‘A night on the tiles at our age catches up with us, doesn’t it, G?’ I murmured as I headed for the shower. I mustn’t be late for breakfast. That would draw unwelcome attention to myself. Keep a low profile. Give Mrs Mackenzie no cause to notice me.

  There was no sign of Felicity Lannelle at breakfast. Hardly surprising, considering the time she must have spent tasting and making detailed notes. She probably wouldn’t have been able to face breakfast anyway, after consuming that bowl of haggis – unless, as with wine-sampling, it was a case of taste and spit.

  Also missing from his usual position beside the potted plant was godfather figure, Waldo M Hinburger. I checked out the other tables. Not there either. Perhaps he had spent most of the night contacting his associates in the States. I’d arrange for a tap to be put on the phone line, but that would necessitate a warrant, a lot of supporting evidence, and, therefore, time. At least he wouldn’t get between me and my breakfast today.

  I sat in my car, gloomily contemplating the boring hours I might have to spend waiting for Mackenzie’s blue van to set off to that meeting, and for the umpteenth time looked at the dashboard clock. 12.15. My position in the lay-by, three hundred yards or so from the White Heather Hotel, should give me a clear view of the van. I stretched a cramped leg and yawned. The car interior was stiflingly hot even with the windows down. It was becoming a real effort to stay awake…

  The nose of the blue van edged out from the driveway. A clash of gears, a spurt of gravel, and the van set off in the direction of the capital. I allowed a couple of cars to pass me, then slipped in behind and followed at a discreet distance. This could be the breakthrough we’d been waiting for.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I stood under a casuarina tree wearing wrap-around sunglasses and a silk headscarf, a thin disguise but it would have to do. The glasshouses of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens seemed an odd place to hold a meeting, but Mackenzie had made straight there, looking neither to right nor left. And he had not come to talk to the plants, I was sure of that.

  I peered through the cascading blue-green waterfall of branches. The Temperate House with its variety of greens – pale, dark, olive, bottle, and grey – could equally well have been called the Temperate Jungle. Shrubs grew head-high, trees tapped at the glass roof sixty feet above – mimosa, magnolia, banksia, bottlebrush, some kind of oak, everything so luxuriant that I couldn’t see the small group of tourists making their way along another path, only track their progress by their chatter.

  ‘Just look at those purple berries…’

  ‘Not purple. I’d say they were cobalt blue…’

  ‘Never seen a fuchsia with flowers like that…’

  ‘A tomato tree, well I never…’

  Which of the paths through the thick foliage had Mackenzie taken? The nearest wound under a high-level concrete walkway thickly covered in climbing plants that held its upper railing in a stranglehold and trailed predatory tendrils down towards the path below. No trace of him down here. He must have gone to the higher level. Leaving the cover of the casuarina tree, I hurried towards the flight of steps.

  From above my head came Mackenzie’s unmistakable whine, ‘I don’t see why we have to change the drop site. It’s perfectly safe. The new place will be a lot more difficult to—’

  ‘We’ll decide that,’ a gravelly American voice cut him short. ‘Your job is to do what you’re told, fella.’ The tone was menacing, the voice familiar. Waldo M Hinburger.

  I heard the squeak
of a door opening, and the words were abruptly cut off as it closed. I raced up the steps. By the time I got there, the walkway was deserted, but the South American House was only a few yards to the left. Through the glass I could see a hump-backed bridge over a pool surrounded by giant bromeliads. On guard near the door was the sort of plant I visualised Hinburger cultivating in his yard, a murderous-looking agave, the tips of its ferocious leaves looking as if they’d been dipped in blood.

  Nobody was on the bridge, nobody on the path round the pool. With no need for caution, I ran across the bridge to glance in the adjoining Arid House. Spiky cacti, green against the dusty red, buff, and grey of low stone outcrops, stared aggressively back. A few people were wandering round, but Mackenzie and Hinburger weren’t among them.

  I’d turned left at the top of the stairs, so Mackenzie and his companion must have gone right. I rushed back the way I’d come, slowing to a more decorous pace when I joined other visitors on the walkway. More hurry, less speed. A meandering family group, infant in pushchair, grandad with stick, blocked my path. I stepped to the left, grandad shuffled left. I stepped right, the old man stopped dead. His stick swung out at an angle, threatening to entangle itself with my legs, collision avoided by a hair’s breadth.

  ‘Excuse me… So sorry…’ Mumbling suitable apologies, I dodged past and hurried on. A magnificent red passion flower scrambling over the railings stretched out tendrils to clutch at my neck and pluck at my clothes. No time to read its label, no time to admire that purple flower with its velvety leaves, sniff at the fluffy yellow balls of the mimosa, or view close-up the frozen blue-green cascades of the casuarina tree.

  Which way now? To the right, the corridor led to the orchids and cycads. Ahead loomed the steamed up doors of the Tropical Aquatic House. Through the misted glass, hazy and indistinct like a Monet painting, I could make out a pool carpeted with giant water lilies, and, moving away, a blurred burly figure.

  Warm, humid air gusted into my face as I opened the door and slipped in. The hiss of humidifiers and the steady drip of moisture from trees massed between glass and water sounded unnaturally loud. The pool took up most of the area. Huge water lilies, fragile green pads turned up at the rim like enormous spiky flan dishes, spread across the surface of the dark water.

  At the far end of the glasshouse, the door was slowly closing on its weight. Assuming Mackenzie and Hinburger had gone into the next house, there was no cover on the wide path if they took it into their heads to return. On the other hand, they’d probably not notice a woman in headscarf and sunglasses taking an intense interest in those croton leaves streaked Jackson Pollock-style, red, yellow, green and orange.

  With my hand on the Fern House door I had second thoughts. It might be better to retreat now, while the going was good. After all, I had made some progress – I’d established that there was definitely a link between Mackenzie and an American gangster, and I’d overheard a reference to ‘drop sites’. Better a small success than a fatal setback for Scotch Mist if they were put on their guard. On the other hand, what I had learnt so far wasn’t enough to act on. I took a calculated risk and pushed open the door.

  The drop in temperature was marked as the cold mistiness of the Fern House enveloped me, the damp air heavy with the smell of mouldering vegetation. I stopped just inside the doorway, concentrating on the sounds around me – a hiss of mist nozzles, the pit-pat of moisture dripping from the fronds of tree ferns, their intricately incised leaves gracefully arching high overhead, the noisy burbling of a small stream. And off to the right, the faint murmur of voices.

  There was not enough cover along a central path, but another to the left twisted through crowding trunks and giant ferns. I crept along it. The voices were louder now, an American twang, a woman’s derisive laugh, but the words were muffled by the gurgling of the stream and the thick vegetation. Frustrated, I hesitated in mid-creep. Just tourists. I’d foolishly jumped to conclusions when I’d glimpsed that blurred figure through the glass. Disconsolately, I rubbed a finger along a tree fern’s woolly cinnamon stem. They’d be well away by—

  ‘No, I tell you!’ Hinburger’s raised voice made me jump.

  Then, a woman’s voice, indistinct.

  A murmur from Hinburger.

  Silence.

  I inched closer, straining to hear.

  Mackenzie whined petulantly, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the castle. It’s the best place.’

  Hinburger, Mackenzie – and perhaps Gina Lombardini? I raised a hand to ease apart the fronds, when, loud and clear from Hinburger, ‘Yeah, but…’

  Loud and clear. That meant they were… I turned and ran back the way I had come. The noisy stream that I had cursed for blocking out their conversation now concealed the scrape of my feet on the wet stone. If they caught even a glimpse of me… There’s nothing more suspicion-rousing than a running figure. Too late I realised I should have relied on the camouflage of the commonplace, whipped out my notebook and crouched down amongst the ferns in artist’s drawing mode.

  The door of the Fern House swung closed behind me.

  Long before I could make my escape from the Tropical House, they would come through that same door. Crisis. There was no one else here to engage in conversation, no group to mingle with. I looked round for a hiding place. The mass of foliage – tropical shrubs, banana plant, coffee bush, colourful croton – was closely packed, but I’d leave a trail of damage that the three of them couldn’t fail to notice. I might as well put up a sign announcing, Somebody hiding here!

  There was no other cover, none at all. Only that thick clump of sugar cane growing in the brown waters of the pool…

  I stuffed my headscarf and glasses into my pocket, thankful that there was no one to create a fuss as I slid into the pool. I lay stretched out, submerged in the dark water, the back of my head towards the Fern House door. My ears would tell me what was happening. I waited, body shielded by the giant spiky pad of a water lily, head hidden by the thick stems of sugar cane.

  I heard the door opening and footsteps passing by, very close. The woman was saying, ‘We decide this after I been there, yes?’ Foreign accent.

  Hinburger growled a reply.

  Something nibbled at my hand. I had a vision of a darting mass of piranha, my arm terminating in white skeletal fingers. I was being a silly fool. They wouldn’t allow dangerous fish in a pool accessible to children’s hands. I gritted my teeth and flicked my fingers as vigorously as I dared. Little mouths snacked on my other hand. Something large brushed against my leg.

  Ignoring for a moment the fishy diners feasting on my hands, I squinted past the long aspidistra-like leaves of a beautifully patterned plant. I’d been right, the woman was indeed Gina Lombardini.

  She was striding ahead of the others, calling impatiently over her shoulder, ‘Come, come! Let us get out of here quickly. You know I not like being shut up in these so-closed places!’

  With a soft thud the door closed behind them. I mulled over what she had said. We decide this after I been there. Where? Was that her reason for going on that excursion to Inchcolm? And were they arguing about where to bring ashore their drug consignments? Could this be a link between Mackenzie, Hinburger and Lombardini? Progress at last.

  A sharp nip from a would-be piranha brought me back to my present predicament. I sat up. I heard a clatter of little footsteps behind me and a childish voice piping, ‘Mummy, why is that lady having a bath?’ A curly haired child in pink dungarees and floppy sun hat was staring round-eyed at me. ‘Mummy, can I have a bath too?’

  I gazed back gravely. ‘It’s really rather nasty in here. Those little red fish eat you.’

  She sucked a finger while she considered the matter. Then the little face crumpled. With a loud wail she turned to look for her mother.

  I heaved myself onto dry land, and with as much dignity as possible marched, dripping muddy water, past her open-mouthed parent. I had almost reached the door, when it was flung open by a burly member of the Botan
ic Garden’s police force.

  ‘So you’re not drowned, lassie?’ He sounded relieved. ‘Someone down below in the underwater viewing area was looking through the observation glass at the fish, and saw the outline of a body floating up here in the big pool. Gave her quite a fright,’ he added reprovingly.

  I flashed him my most winning smile and my ID card, fortunately laminated and waterproof.

  ‘Revenue and Customs investigations,’ I hissed enigmatically, ‘Top Secret.’ I left him gazing after me.

  I dripped my way back along the walkway and down the stairs. Heads turned, but no one said anything, foreigners mystified, British too polite, I suppose.

  Outside, there was no sign of Hinburger and his companions. The sun blazed down from the bluest of skies and only the faintest of breezes stirred the yellow daisies in the herbaceous border beside the glasshouses, but in my sopping clothes I was chilled. Better try to dry out first. I didn’t fancy a horribly uncomfortable drive back to the hotel. I’d follow the example of the citizens of Edinburgh who were stretched out on the grassy lawns, arms neatly folded over bodies, legs decorously crossed at the ankle, as if pole-axed by the unaccustomed heat and laid out ready for burial by some zealous undertaker. I found a sunny spot sheltered from the wind and laid myself out, arranging my limbs in what seemed to be the approved position. As a faint grey ectoplasm of steam rose slowly from my wet clothes, I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the sun seep into me. My thoughts drifted…