looked down at the name and address. Neither was familiar to him. "What happened?"
Mondo gave a little smirk, a worldly moment of male complicity. "I drove her home. We had sex. We said goodnight. So you see, Inspector, I had no reason to be interested in Rosie Duff, even if I had seen her. Which I didn't. I'd just got laid. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself."
"You say you had sex. Where, exactly?"
"In the back seat of the Land Rover."
"Did you use a condom?"
"I never believe women when they say they're on the pill. Do you? Of course I used a condom." Now Mondo was more relaxed. This was territory he understood, territory where males colluded with each other in a conspiracy of comprehension.
"What did you do with it afterward?"
"I chucked it out the window. Leaving it in the Land Rover would have been a bit of a giveaway with Henry, you know?" He could see Maclennan was struggling to know where to go next with his questions. He'd been right. His admission had defused their line of questioning. He hadn't been driving round in the snow, frustrated and desperate for sex. So what possible motive could he have had for raping Rosie Duff and killing her?
Maclennan gave a grim smile, not joining in Mondo's assumption of camaraderie. "We'll be checking out your story, Mr. Kerr. Let's see if this young woman backs you up. Because if she doesn't, that paints a very different picture, doesn't it?"
Chapter 9~10
Chapter 9
It didn't feel like Christmas Eve. Walking to the bakery for a pie at lunchtime, Barney Maclennan had experienced the illusion of having been dropped into a parallel universe. Shop windows blossomed with garish Christmas decorations, fairy lights twinkled in the gloaming and the streets were thronged with shoppers staggering under the weight of bulging carrier bags. But it seemed alien to him. Their concerns were not his; they had something more to look forward to than a Christmas dinner tainted with the sad taste of failure. Eight days since Rosie Duff's murder, and no prospect of an arrest.
He'd been so confident that the discovery of the Land Rover had been the keystone that would support a case against one or more of the four students. Especially after the interviews in Kirkcaldy. Their stories had been plausible enough, but then they'd had a day and a half to perfect them. And he'd still had the sense that he wasn't getting the whole truth, though it was hard to pinpoint where precisely the falsehood lay. He'd believed hardly a word that Tom Mackie said, but Maclennan was honest enough to acknowledge that might have something to do with the deep antipathy he'd felt toward the math student.
Ziggy Malkiewicz was a deep one, that was for sure. If he'd been the killer, Maclennan knew he'd get nowhere until he had solid evidence; the medical student wasn't going to cave in. He thought he'd broken Davey Kerr's story when the lassie in Guardbridge had denied they'd had sex. But Janice Hogg, whom he'd taken with him for the sake of propriety, had been convinced that the girl had been lying, trying misguidedly to protect her reputation. Right enough, when he'd sent Janice back to reinterview the girl alone, she'd broken down and admitted that she had let Kerr have sex with her. It didn't sound as if it was an experience she was keen to repeat. Which, thought Maclennan, was interesting. Maybe Davey Kerr hadn't been quite as satisfied and cheerful afterward as he'd made out.
Alex Gilbey was a likely prospect, if only because there was no evidence that he'd driven the Land Rover. His fingerprints were all over the interior, but not around the driving seat. That didn't let him off the hook, however. If Gilbey had killed Rosie, he would likely have called for help from the others, and they would probably have given it; Maclennan was under no misapprehension about the strength of the bond that united them. And if Gilbey had arranged a date with Rosie Duff that had gone horribly wrong, Maclennan was pretty sure that Malkiewicz wouldn't have hesitated to do everything he could to protect his friend. Whether Gilbey knew it or not, Malkiewicz was in love with him, Maclennan had decided on nothing more than his gut reaction.
But there was more than Maclennan's instinct at play here. After the frustrating series of interviews, he'd been about to head back for St. Andrews when a familiar voice