There beyond the burn, the forest was beginning to thin out. This was a fine and private place to spend eternity, with the murmur of water and the guardian presence of the trees. A hollow had formed at the base of the bank of roots and with deliberate lack of reflection he picked up the formless bundle and laid it there. It looked neat, impersonal, a package not a person in its tarpaulin cover.
The tarpaulin . . . He dared not leave it. There was no reason why they should find – it – for years, until this plantation’s turn for felling came, but he couldn’t take the risk. It must have his prints all over it and there would be traces of his sweat, minute skin cells shed by his hands. In twenty years’ time, thirty, they would still have his prints and his DNA on record. He had to take it with him.
When he removed it, though, she would become a person again. A person whose face he had seen on the pillow next to him, a person who had transformed his agreeable, respectable – oh yes, and dull, dull, dull – life first into a fantasy of enchantment, then into a horror of betrayal and despair. Circe. Delilah . . .
She was dead, he told himself. An inanimate body. A corpse. Her soul – if a soul could be discerned – was elsewhere.
With the resolve of desperation he stood up and with his head averted jerked the edge of the tarpaulin. He pulled it towards him, gathered it up and walked away without looking back to see how snugly she lay on her back, as if the cavity beneath the vipers’ knot of roots had been hollowed out especially to receive her.
PC Sandy Langlands, his boyish face weary-looking after his night shift, emerged blinking blearily from the Galloway Constabulary Headquarters in Kirkluce just as DS Tam MacNee arrived for duty and got out of his car. It was warm already, early as it was, and there was a sticky, sultry feel to the air.
MacNee was wearing his customary summer garb of jeans, white T-shirt, black leather jacket and trainers, though the difference between this and his winter gear might not be immediately apparent to the casual observer, since it consisted only of dispensing with the semmit his wife Bunty insisted he don under the T-shirt when the weather was less clement.
At the sight of his colleague’s haggard appearance, MacNee’s face brightened, his smile exposing the gap between his two front teeth. ‘Man, Sandy, you look like the wrath of God! Heavy night?’
Langlands groaned. ‘You could say. Lost five quid to Wilson, playing poker. We were on back-up and it was dead quiet. Not one call in from the patrol cars the whole time – the night seemed to go on for ever.’
MacNee’s grin faded. ‘I blame the weather,’ he said bitterly. ‘A week of this, and everyone’s in a good mood. You know what the high point was yesterday? Two drunk and incapable – you couldn’t even call them disorderly when they were just passed out in the park, not bothering anybody. Four of the lads went to that one and they’d to fight for the privilege.’ He gave a resigned shrug. ‘Oh well, I suppose it’s desk work again today. I tell you, I’d have gone into the bank instead of the polis if that was what floated my boat.’
The constable greeted this assertion with a certain scepticism. Tam as a bank clerk didn’t really square with his appearance, which was still that of the wee Glasgow hard man he’d been before Bunty, a sonsy lass from Dumfries who punched well above her not inconsiderable weight and had some very old-fashioned ideas about respectability, had taken him in hand. Tam on the other side of the counter with a stocking over his head was an altogether more plausible image, but Langlands refrained from pointing this out. He was too young to die.
‘Right enough,’ he said diplomatically. ‘Well, I’m away to my bed anyhow.’
‘You do that, laddie. I’ll see what we can drum up to keep you busy tonight.’
MacNee went on into the building. The reception area was quiet, with only a couple of people in the waiting area who looked as if they might have come to inquire about lost property, and Naismith, the desk sergeant, was showing an elderly lady a leaflet about home security. It looked like being another quiet day and MacNee, with a sigh, went along to the CID room.
He was surprised to hear, as he reached the open door, the voice of DI Marjory Fleming in full flow. It wasn’t often that ‘Big Marge’, as she was known to her subordinates in recognition of her commanding height and the personality that went with it, came down from the fourth floor to give someone a rollicking in public. Rollickings were usually private and painful.
‘And if not, I’ll have your guts for garters,’ she was saying in a favourite phrase. ‘Frilly ones, with wee blue rosettes at the side.’ It was only this unexpected elaboration, and the gust of laughter that greeted it, which made MacNee realize what he was hearing. No one laughed when Big Marge was giving them laldie.
The voice was that of DC Jonathan Kingsley, a relative newcomer to the Galloway Force with a gift for mimicry which had proved operationally useful in working undercover to break up a drugs ring. MacNee had heard, with appreciation, his take-off of Superintendent Donald Bailey and suspected that there was a Tam MacNee too, which he hadn’t heard, but he hadn’t known about the Big Marge act. It was pretty good, especially considering Jon’s normal voice had an English accent. Grinning, MacNee went in.
Kingsley stopped instantly. ‘Uh-oh! Sorry about that. Back to your desks, guys!’
There were five other officers in the room. Four of them, exchanging sidelong glances, went back to their tasks. Only DC Tansy Kerr, her neat, gamine face flushing, said sharply, ‘There’s no need for that, Jon. Tam likes a joke as much as anyone.’
‘Of course he does!’ Kingsley’s voice was offensively soothing. ‘Morning, Tam.’ He too turned away, but MacNee could see his smirk reflected in the expressions of the men facing him.
It was true, of course, that Tam and Marjory worked closely together. They went back a long way, having been partners from the time Marjory joined as a rookie, and her promotion hadn’t damaged their relationship. Tam had no ambitions to rise to any sort of administrative post: he loved his job with its endless variety, and working with paper in an office on your own held no appeal when instead you could be out on the streets dealing with the public or here in the CID room enjoying the jokes and the cut and thrust that went with being on the team.
Kingsley was becoming a dangerously divisive figure. He was clever and an effective officer, but he was also arrogant and nakedly ambitious. He didn’t like Tam, which was fair enough in its way since Tam didn’t like him either, and in any group, the clash of personalities is a fact of life.
But it seemed now as if Kingsley’s objective was to create his own gang, excluding MacNee from the common currency of jokes and complaints inevitably made by lower ranks about their superiors, subtly implying that he’d run to Fleming and clype – he, Tam, who had been raised in one of the rougher parts of Glasgow with an attitude to tale-bearing which made
omertà
look like a set of recommended guidelines!
He went to fetch the file he’d been working on the day before, and Kerr came across with a report she’d promised to look out for him. She must have dyed her hair again yesterday – it was kind of a hobby with Tansy – and it was bright yellow with a streak of dark green at the front.
MacNee leaned towards her confidentially. ‘Maybe no one’s liked to tell you, Tansy, but your hair’s gone mouldy.’
Kerr didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Your problem is you’ve no fashion sense, MacNee. Look at Jon over there –’ she raised her voice to attract attention, ‘see how he’s colour-co-ordinated? That funky beige shirt just matches the colour of his teeth.’
There was a general guffaw at this and Kingsley shot her a look of intense dislike. MacNee joined in, adding with malicious satisfaction, ‘There you are, Jon. As Rabbie Burns says, “
It’s innocence and modesty/That polishes the dart
.” ’
Kerr groaned and Kingsley scoffed. ‘Innocent and modest? You should have been at the pub after work last Friday.’
Cheered by this exchange, MacNee settled down to another day of pushing paper. Maybe, if he tried hard enough, he could find something in the files that would give him an excuse to go out and interview someone. And if he did, he’d take Tansy with him as a reward.
Detective Inspector Marjory Fleming set the paperweight to the right of the computer screen on her desk, considered it, then moved it back to the other side. She could, unusually, actually see the surface of her desk, which the office cleaners were forbidden to touch; pulling a face, she took a tissue and removed the accumulated dust. Taking another one, she licked it to scrub away the ring left by a coffee mug. It wasn’t a method you’d see used on
How Clean
Is Your House
? but it worked, sort of.
She picked up the pen pot which seemed to be acting as a dating agency for ballpoints, producing hybrids which she was ready to swear she’d never put there. Some had obviously dried out; she threw those away, then tipped out the pot, marvelling at the detritus of paper clips, rubber bands and stray coins collected in the sludge of sticky ink blobs at the bottom.
For once in her life, Fleming was on top of the job. There was no outstanding Government form, demanding information on the number of breaths each officer took in making an arrest. There was no major investigation at the moment, just the ongoing problems with alcohol and drugs, petty theft and vandalism which were all being satisfactorily dealt with at a lower level. She’d a couple of appraisals to do later and she was jotting down budget proposals to discuss with her superintendent, Donald Bailey, at their regular meeting tomorrow, but she’d had no difficulty in working office hours for the last week or two. She wasn’t under pressure, and she wasn’t enjoying it one little bit.
Perhaps she’d become addicted to the adrenaline rush that came from being permanently stressed and these were just withdrawal symptoms. But if she was honest with herself . . . She usually was, blaming Calvin, as Scots do when they don a moral hair shirt, but it was a habit she couldn’t break, so she had to admit that one of the things she liked about her job was the white noise of permanent over-commitment which blotted out the voice of domestic conscience.
This last spell, she hadn’t been able to plead overwork as an excuse for ignoring the dusting, snatching a ready-meal from the freezer and even, when it got right down to the wire, taking a mountain of dirty clothes for a service wash at the launderette – and how boring it was! Bill, her farmer husband, was more ready to help his wife than most of her male colleagues were theirs, as far as she could tell, but he had his own heavy load to carry.
And in fact, it was just as well she wasn’t at full stretch at the moment. Over the years, it had been largely thanks to her mother, Janet Laird, that the household chores didn’t get totally out of hand and that the Fleming children, Catriona and Cameron, actually knew what it was like to have good home-cooking as well as someone with all the time in the world to listen to them.
Janet had always behaved as if Marjory was still a lassie who had somehow acquired a husband and children to be gathered under her own motherly wing. And even Angus Laird – ‘Sarge’ to the officers of the Galloway Police Headquarters for more years than anyone had wanted to see him serve, and a father who had never forgiven his only child for being a daughter not a son – had served his time on the touchline when rugby-mad Cammie was playing.
Until recently. The last few months had seen Angus retreat into a strange and troubled world where his only emotion was rage at the terrifying confusion surrounding him. Marjory had watched impotently as her mother aged ten years and her plump and comfortable frame wasted away to alarming frailty. With her days and nights dedicated to preserving from actual harm the physical husk of the man she had shared her life with for forty-five years, corrosive anxiety had destroyed her cheerful serenity.
‘Janet, you can’t go on like this,’ Bill had said to her gently, taking her thin hand in his. ‘He’s still strong. He could hurt you in one of his rages.’
Janet’s brown eyes looked faded, as if the tears she had shed had washed some of the colour out of them, but she drew away her hand and responded fiercely, ‘He still knows me, Bill, still calls out for me sometimes. And as long as he does, how could I leave him? What would he feel if he wanted me and I wasn’t there?’
And Bill, recognizing defeat, had raised his eyebrows to his wife and she had shrugged helplessly.
That was the worst of it: Marjory was bad at helpless, and she wasn’t very good at Bill’s kind of philosophical acceptance either. While she went round regularly, Janet had an army of friends who were supporting her on the practical side so there was nothing for Marjory to do except fret over her mother’s increasing distraction. Janet seldom managed to finish a coherent sentence while Angus was awake; it was almost as if, using the instruments of torture – sleep deprivation, uncertainty, fear – he was trying to draw Janet after him into his own disordered world.
Marjory couldn’t bear it. ‘A home – somewhere he’d be well cared for – you’ll make yourself ill . . .’ Whatever vow of silence on the subject Marjory made before she went to see them, she couldn’t stop herself returning to it, and Janet would look hunted, as if her daughter’s urging was one more burden she had to cope with.