we avoid each other, it looks as if we've got something to be uncomfortable about. If He'd wants me, she's got me. No question."
He shrugged. "Your choice. You pay for the advice whether you take it or not." He opened the door and ushered her out into the corridor. Jackie signed for the return of her belongings, and they made for the exit together.
Tony pushed open the doors that led to the street then stopped short. In spite of the earliness of the hour, three cameramen and a handful of journalists were huddled on the pavement. As soon as they saw Jackie, the cries went up. "Hey, Jackie, have they arrested you?" "Did you and your girlfriend hire a hitman, Jackie?" "What's it feel like to be a murder suspect, Jackie?"
It was the kind of scene she'd participated in countless times, though never from this perspective. Jackie had thought nothing could feel worse than being rousted from her bed in the middle of the night and treated like a criminal by the police. Now she knew she was wrong. Betrayal, she had just discovered, tasted infinitely more bitter.
Chapter 40
The darkness of Graham Macfadyen's study was kept at bay by the ghostly light of monitors. On the two screens he wasn't using at that moment, screensavers showed a slideshow of images he'd scanned into his computer. Grainy newspaper photographs of his mother; moody shots of Hallow Hill; the gravestone in Western Cemetery; and the photographs he'd snatched of Alex and Weird in recent days.
Macfadyen sat at his PC, composing a document. He'd originally planned simply to make a formal complaint about the inaction of Lawson and his officers. But a trip to the Web site of the Scottish Executive had demonstrated the futility of that. Any complaint he made would be investigated by Fife Police themselves, and they were hardly going to criticize the actions of their Assistant Chief Constable. He wanted satisfaction, not to be fobbed off.
So he'd decided to lay out the whole story and send copies to his Westminster MP, his MSP and to every major news medium in Scotland. But the more he wrote, the more he began to worry that he'd just be dismissed as another conspiracy theorist. Or worse.
Macfadyen chewed the skin round his fingernails and considered what he should do. He'd finish writing his devastating critique of the incompetence of Fife Police and their refusal to take seriously the presence of a pair of murderers on their patch. But he needed something else that would make people sit up and take notice. Something that would make it impossible to ignore his complaints or to disregard the way that fate had pointed an undeniable finger at the culprits in his mother's murder.
Two deaths should have been enough to produce the result he craved. But people were so blind. They couldn't see what was staring them in the face. After all this, justice still had not been served.
And he remained the only person in a position to see that it was.
The house was beginning to feel like a refugee camp. Alex was accustomed to the flow of life that he and Lynn had developed over the years: companionable meals, walks along the shore, visits to exhibitions and movies, socializing occasionally with friends. He acknowledged a lot of people would think them dull, but he knew better. He liked his life. He'd understood that things would change with the arrival of a baby, and he welcomed that change wholeheartedly, in spite of not knowing all it might mean. What he hadn't bargained for was Weird in the spare room. Nor the arrival of He'd and Jackie, the one distraught and the other incandescent with rage. He felt invaded, so buffeted by everyone else's pain and anger that he no longer knew what he himself felt.
He'd been stunned to find the two women on the doorstep looking for sanctuary from the press camped outside their homes. How could they have imagined they'd be welcome here? Lynn's first instinct had been to tell them to check into an hotel, but Jackie had been adamant that this was the one place nobody would be looking for them. Just like Weird, he'd thought wearily.
He'd had burst into tears and apologized for betraying Mondo. Jackie had reminded Lynn forcefully that she'd been willing to take a chance and help Alex. And still Lynn had been insistent that there was no place for them there. Then Davina had started wailing. And Lynn had