Bitter End Part 9

'Okay, okay. Have it your own way. I was only asking.'

She twirled sideways on her high stool and crossed her legs. She was wearing the usual navy blue dress and plain shoes she came to work in every day but suddenly she looked indefinably . . . cla.s.sier. Or something. Buchanan couldn't quite put his finger on what the difference was . . .

maybe she was holding herself straighter . . . maybe it was something in her expression . . . but she definitely looked different. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Cambridge approaching and was immediately struck by how handsome he was. 58. He was about Buchanan's age or a year or two younger: lean and fit-looking with lazy, shadowed eyes and an easy-going expression. His clothes, slacks and a casual jacket with a black polo-necked sweater underneath, looked well cut and he wore them with a natural grace that turned heads as he returned to his place at the bar counter.

'Mr Cambridge?' Buchanan said right away before Fizz could do anything he hadn't antic.i.p.ated.

The chap swivelled his eyes towards him over the rim of his pint. 'Hmm?'

'I'm sorry to intrude on you but I just heard your name mentioned and wondered if we might have a chat.'

Buchanan slipped a business card out of his wallet. The name's Tam Buchanan and I'm executor of the estate of Mrs Vanessa Gra.s.sick. This is my colleague Miss Fitzpatrick.'

Cambridge set down his beer, whipped out a hankie and dabbed his lips. 'Glad to meet you. And you, Miss Fitzpatrick.' He shook hands with both of them, observing Fizz with unnecessary closeness as though he were memorising her. 'You know, obviously, that I work for Mrs Gra.s.sick's insurers.'

It was a polite way of saying, how in h.e.l.l did you know my business, but Fizz saved Buchanan the trouble of explaining by giving a faint gurgle of laughter and saying, 'You're in Scotland, Mr Cambridge. Everybody knows everything about everybody, usually before it happens. We were having dinner just now and overheard a comment, that's all, and my boss here thought we should meet.'

It wasn't often that she referred to -or even viewed -Buchanan as her boss and it was peculiar that she should do so now, particularly as she had just been introduced as a colleague. It looked suspiciously like she was making it clear that their relations.h.i.+p was purely a business one.

Abandoning the thought, Buchanan said, 'I hope your presence here doesn't mean that you have reservations about the cause of the accident?'

'I'm just doing a routine look-see,' Cambridge said, and 59. then flashed a wide, attractive and non-committal grin.

'But if I can earn myself a bonus by finding the company some loophole, well that's what this job is about. You know what insurance companies are like. They'll do anything to avoid paying out on a premium -and don't quote me on that, will you?'

Buchanan rather suspected that he was playing down his interest but, at the same time, he had hardly expected the chap to take him into his confidence on first acquaintance so he grinned back credulously and said, 'We're actually in much the same position ourselves: making a few low-key inquiries just to be on the safe side before paying out Mrs Gra.s.sick's estate.'

'Really?' He raised his brows, visibly more interested.

'Does that mean you know something I don't?'

Fizz laughed again. 'He's just a nasty suspicious character, that's all, and so nitpicking you wouldn't believe it.

You know who Vanessa Gra.s.sick was, don't you?'

'I hadn't a clue till I got here this afternoon,' he said, nodding his smooth blond head. 'She was just a name on a piece of paper, to me, and to everyone else at head office.

Now I hear that she was married to some sort of law lord.'

'Not exactly a law lord,' Fizz told him, 'but a very senior advocate and a guy with a lot of clout.'

Cambridge finished his beer. 'Yes? Well, I don't see it making a lot of difference to me -not unless it comes to a legal battle. I can't see that happening, not after a police inquiry, but I suppose I'd better make sure I get my facts right just in case.'

'Let me buy you another. Same again? Fizz?' Buchanan mimed the order to the bartender who was polis.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses at the end of the counter. 'As you say, the police have already given their okay on the accident so there can't be much to uncover.'

He thought for a second or two that Cambridge wasn't going to come back on that one but, when the barman had delivered their drinks and gone back to his polis.h.i.+ng, he 60. sent Fizz a glimmer of his s.h.i.+ny grin and murmured, 'I suppose it would be the height of paranoia to wonder if Mr Gra.s.sick's exalted position in legal circles might have put some kind of pressure on the police? Not to falsify evidence, of course, but possibly to speed things up maybe even to the point of carelessness.'

Fizz leaned across Buchanan to bring her head emphatically closer. 'Let me tell you something,' she said. 'I wouldn't be a bit surprised. We're talking about a seriously ferocious animal here. I can easily imagine Lawrence Gra.s.sick leaning on the inquiry team to do what was necessary as fast as possible and get the h.e.l.l out of his hair. He'd put the frighteners on Hannibal Lecter, this guy.' She waved her gla.s.s at Buchanan. 'He went through the roof when Buchanan told him he wanted to check out things for himself. Didn't he, Buchanan? Go on, show him the teeth marks on your b.u.m.'

Cambridge was hugely entertained by this sally. His grin was beginning to lose its appeal for Buchanan but not, he couldn't help noticing, for Fizz.

'So, it's possible we could find something the police have overlooked,' he said, looking down into his beer with an expression that morphed rapidly into one of sober consideration.

n.o.body said anything to that but after a moment he looked up at Buchanan and said, 'But it's not just that possibility that's niggling you, is it? There's something else.

Something more specific.'

Buchanan shook his head. 'I'm not sure that it would be ethical for me to discuss my findings at this point. . .'

'Oh, come on, Buchanan,' Cambridge chided in an all-lads-together manner. 'If there's something going on here that should be looked into we'd do better sharing information, wouldn't you say?' He eyed both of them carefully and then, reading their silence correctly, added, 'Maybe I have information that might be of use to you.'

Fizz started to speak but Buchanan silenced her by nudging her with his knee and said, gently, 'I don't think 61. that's likely, Mr Cambridge. Really I don't.'

Cambridge nodded briefly, as though that were that, but then leaned forward again and said, 'You know about the heater, then?'

'The heater?' Fizz breathed, her gin-scented breath tickling Buchanan's chin.

Cambridge put a hand in his hip pocket and produced a dark oblong of metal which he pa.s.sed to Fizz. She turned it over and ran a finger across the raised print on its surface.

'Philips. Model number LX77731,' she said, and looked back at him questioningly.

'It was given to me by a Mr Pringle, one of Mrs Gra.s.sick's neighbours. It's part of an electric heater which, he claims, was scattered about the scene of the accident in a great many pieces -but not too many to make it unrecognisable as what it was. The police took away the rest of it but Mr Pringle insists that no such heater belonged in Brora Lodge.'

'How would he know?' Fizz asked, clearly not as riveted by the claim as Buchanan was.

The presence of an unaccountable electric heater in a house that had been demolished by a gas explosion was much more significant than the vague rumours that were all Buchanan had turned up so far. The news wasn't exactly what he had hoped for, but it certainly validated his decision to pick Cambridge's brain.

'Mr Pringle told me this afternoon,' Cambridge said, 'that the Gra.s.sicks had asked him if he would keep an eye on the house during the worst of the winter, when it was rarely used. He had a key to the back door and could let himself in to check for burst pipes et cetera and he was familiar with the furnis.h.i.+ngs.' He drooped a conspiratorial eyelid. 'I have a suspicion, from what he said, that he used the opportunity to have a good snoop around. He's that sort of guy. In his opinion, there was a more than adequate central heating system, besides which an old-fas.h.i.+oned 62. heater of this model number would have stuck out a mile against the avant-garde furnis.h.i.+ngs they've chosen.'

'You're thinking it could have been part of some sort of explosive device?' Fizz asked, her eyes wide with a delight that Buchanan was unable to reciprocate.

Cambridge's eyes rested on her appreciatively. 'Dead right. Combined with the amount of gas the Gra.s.sicks must have had stored in the bas.e.m.e.nt it could have made a very effective detonator.'

'But surely Mr Pringle must have mentioned his find to the police?' Buchanan suggested. 'So why didn't it prompt further inquiry?'

Cambridge shrugged. 'You tell me. All Mr Pringle was told was that the police had eliminated it as evidence, but if there was a rational explanation for the heater's appearance in the debris they're keeping it to themselves -which,

in itself, is intriguing.'

Buchanan nodded his agreement, finally accepting the fact that he'd been right to be worried. There was still a possibility that the rumours were all false, of course, but either way it would take time to prove it and, in the meantime, he was going to be seeing a lot of this guy.

'Incidentally,' he said, with a certain amount of hesitation, 'the name's Tam.'

'Giles,' Cambridge smiled and turned an inquiring look on Fizz.

'Fizz,' she said, dimpling back at him in a way that made Buchanan even more depressed than he already was. 63.

Chapter Six.

It wasn't every day that Fizz ran across such supremely

tasty men. At least ninety per cent of her fellow students

were ten years her junior and living in penury, and such

free time as she could spare from her studies was spent