Free The Third Sin by Aline Templeton Page A

upright in her chair. ‘Randall Lindsay?’
    They all stared at her. ‘Know him?’ Fleming asked.
    ‘I’m afraid so. He’s in Paris – I made the mistake of contacting him on Facebook because I’m over there quite a bit, seeing my mother, and I knew him slightly at uni. Tosser!’ She spat the word.
    Macdonald looked amused. ‘What did the poor guy do? Stand you up for a date?’
    Fleming had to repress an impulse to kick his shins – and hers, as Hepburn replied, ‘ Au contraire, ’ choosing a French phrase to irritate him. ‘I walked out on the date he was offering. He’s a smug, patronising toff with a superiority complex and he brought me out in a rash after five minutes.’
    MacNee patted her arm. ‘Don’t hold back, hen. Why not tell us what you really think?’
    ‘Sorry. But honestly, he is a slimeball. Someone else can interview him – I don’t want him crawling all over me again.’
    Amused, Fleming said, ‘I’ll see what I can do. We’re not shelling out for a trip to Paris just yet anyway.
    ‘I’ve got a meeting tomorrow that I really can’t get out of and I’m going to go back to Dumfries today to have a no-holds-barred conversation with DSI Taylor now we’ve got the go-ahead.
    ‘Andy and Ewan – I want you to talk to Jen Wilson and Donald Falconer, Skye’s father. Tam, you and Louise can take Logie and Kendra Stewart as a priority. Anything else may have to wait – there’s no overtime on this one as yet. Tomorrow you’ll have time for any follow-ups that are needed. Let’s hope we get a lead from at least one of them. Any questions? No? Right. Report back to me – I should be out of the meeting by then.’
    As the others filed out, MacNee hung back. ‘Thought we’d a breakthrough in the kindergarten for a wee moment there.’
    Fleming sighed. ‘Andy can’t resist needling and Louise’s back goes up like a cat’s and she starts spitting. But they’re both useful, Tam.’
    ‘Oh, aye. If you ask me, they’re enjoying it.’
    ‘I’m not,’ Fleming said bitterly. ‘And it’s all right tossing ideas around but I don’t think we’re even beginning to skim the surface with this one.’
     
    DI Len Harris came out of DSI Taylor’s office in the Dumfries Headquarters with a thunderous look on his face. He hadn’t expected to have a problem with him once he got that bitch out of the way, but Taylor had shown the stubbornness of the weak man, insisting that Fleming took control.
    ‘The thing is, Tom, the lads won’t wear it,’ he had said confidently right at the start. ‘She’s coming in on to our patch—’
    ‘We’re not supposed to have patches any more,’ Taylor pointed out.
    Harris’s jaw tensed. ‘Yes, of course. No one’s readier to cooperate than I am. But it’s a question of man management. She needs to be tactful, tread carefully, not come in throwing her weight around.’
    Taylor shifted in his seat. ‘Well, I’m sorry. I suppose she can be – well, a bit abrasive, if you like. But we’ve no alternative, Len. What have we got to show for what we’ve spent already?’
    ‘For God’s sake, this is a complex case! We’re not going to come up with the answers right away. This comes across to me as you having no confidence in your own people. No wonder that morale is at a low ebb.’
    ‘Is it?’ Taylor winced. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. But I can’t do anything about it, Len—’
    ‘Not can’t, won’t,’ Harris had retorted. Leaving his superior officer chewing his lip, he walked out.
    He’d called a meeting earlier before going, as he thought, to get the lines of authority sorted out. The Dumfries Division detectives would be there waiting for him now that he had failed and the prospect of humiliation left him seething with impotent rage.
    He couldn’t take Fleming on openly without Taylor’s support and truth to tell he was almost at a standstill on the investigation, unable to think where to go next, if the grey car really did