by Val McDermid
Karen squinched up in her seat and set off in cautious pursuit. Gray wove confidently through the maze of streets then, less than half a mile from home, turned into a short road with a late-night supermarket. Gray took the first parking slot, ignoring the disabled signage. Karen committed to the turn and parked further down. She watched the two men get out of the car and walk back the way they’d come. Now she spotted their destination – a long single-storey building with a pub sign. It was an improbable location, in the middle of a housing estate, and the exterior resembled a wing of a care home. The picnic tables on the patio looked out on a roundabout, two blocks of flats and a bus stop.
Karen gave them a few minutes’ start then she followed them in. The interior was a pleasant surprise. It was brightly lit, wood panelling painted white and pale grey, booths and benches clean and well-maintained. Somebody took pride in this place. There were only a dozen or so people dotted round the big room, most of whom didn’t give her a second glance. The clientele looked to be predominantly in their forties, the women with glasses of wine, the men with pints. There were some chalkboards scattered round the walls with the kind of lines that were supposed to be witty – ‘Toilets: Men to the left because Women are always right’ and ‘Let the Fun beGIN’.
Shand and Gray were leaning on the white bar top, waiting for the barmaid to finish pouring their lager. Karen walked past them and round the corner, where she stood and waited to be served. Gray gave her a cursory look, dismissed her and turned back to lift his pint. Shand handed over a twenty and raised his glass to his lips. He scanned the room with the wary sweep Karen recognised in other prisoners she’d seen over the years. When his eyes reached hers, he fumbled his glass and tipped some beer down his chin. The barmaid had to clear her throat noisily to return his change.
Karen gave him a level stare then turned to the barmaid, who was now moving towards her. She ordered an alcohol-free beer, conscious of Shand’s gaze. When the drink came, she raised it towards him in an ironic salute.
He put his glass down a little too firmly. Gray turned, alarmed, as Shand rounded the bar and stopped a little too close to her. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he demanded in a low voice.
‘Having a wee drink,’ Karen said, mild as milk. ‘Have you got a problem with that, Merrick?’
‘I’ve done my time. You need to leave me alone.’
Karen could hear real venom in his voice. ‘You’re the one bothering me, Merrick. I’m just standing here minding my own business.’
Then Gray was at his side, a hand on his arm. ‘What’s going on, Merrick?’
‘She’s fucking harassing me, that’s what.’
Karen spread her hands in a peaceful gesture. ‘Like I said, I’m having a wee drink.’
‘She’s a fucking cop,’ Shand spat. ‘She was at the trial.’
Karen smiled. Her heart was hammering but she was determined not to show it. ‘Every day. You know the bit I enjoyed most? When they took you down.’ As calmly as she could manage, she swallowed a mouthful of beer.
‘I think you should get lost,’ Gray said, trying to pull Shand away from her. The atmosphere in the pub had changed. There was a stillness in the room.
Now the barmaid was getting in on the act. ‘What’s going on? Luke? Are you boys bothering this lassie?’
‘I just wanted a quiet drink,’ Karen said, placing her glass on the bar, moving her hand quickly in case it was shaking. ‘I thought this was a nice pub. I didn’t know you let convicted killers drink in here.’ Then she turned and made for the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gray grabbing Shand’s arm and holding him back.
She pulled the door open and turned back, taking in the shocked faces, Gray’s look of panic, Shand’s snarl. ‘Bye, Merrick,’ she said. ‘I’ll be seeing you. You might not see me, but I will definitely be seeing you.’
As soon as she was through the door, Karen broke into a run, racing down the steps and across the road to her car. She streaked away from the scene, just in time to see Merrick Shand standing on the pub patio, fists clenched, face livid.
Karen drove home sedately. She’d done what she set out to do. She’d planted unease in Merrick Shand’s heart. She didn’t need to stalk him, as Jimmy Hutton had feared. All she needed to do was to turn up in his peripheral vision every few weeks. Cross his path, apparently by chance. He’d never quite relax again.
It was a start.
12
Tuesday, 18 February 2020
It was hard for Daisy not to feel slighted that her boss had decided to accompany her to interview Mary Auld. He had a reputation for restlessness but knowing that didn’t improve her mood. Just because Charlie Todd hated sitting around waiting for the next development in a case didn’t mean he had to undermine her. It hadn’t been her fault that Mary Auld had flitted to Fife. If Daisy had been good enough to fly solo the night before, how come she needed a babysitter this morning?
Mary Auld had left the Georgian grandeur of north Edinburgh for an unassuming modern bungalow overlooking the golf course at Lundin Links. On a frosty February morning with a brilliant blue sky and a shimmering grey sea beyond the green links, it was easy to see why. ‘You’d never tire of waking up to that,’ Charlie said, as satisfied as if he was personally responsible for it. ‘Different every day.’
Daisy was more ambivalent. There was, in her opinion, a limit to the amount of time you could spend staring at any panorama, however entrancing. ‘You’d have to enjoy it,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s much else to do around here if you don’t play golf.’
Charlie chuckled as they walked up the path. ‘You’ve obviously never lived in a village. Don’t be fooled by the sleepy surface. Most of this lot will have a busier social life than you do.’ Charlie rang the doorbell and fished out his ID.
The woman who opened the door had an ageless quality. Brown hair streaked with silver and cut in a long bob framed a striking face, high cheekbones emphasising beautiful dark blue eyes. Even in jeans and a fisherman’s smock there was something elegant about her. She immediately took in Charlie’s ID and bit her lip. ‘Iain,’ she said. ‘You’d better come in.’ She moved aside to let them pass.
‘It’s not your husband we’re here about, Mrs Auld,’ Charlie said hastily.
She frowned. ‘Not Iain? Then what? Who?’
‘Can we come inside?’ Daisy spoke gently.
‘Of course.’ She led the way into a sitting room that made the most of the spectacular view. ‘Please, sit down.’ Daisy was used to living rooms where a TV was the main focus. Here, there was no blank screen to be seen. Five comfortable chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around the window, each with its own side-table. The pale fitted carpet was scarcely visible beneath a collection of shabby but beautiful rugs. The walls were covered with paintings, all of them figurative in a slight sort of way that took some working out. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?’
‘We’re fine, thanks,’ Charlie said. He waved vaguely. ‘I think we should all sit down.’ He waited till Mary Auld was seated, perched uneasily on the edge of a deep armchair. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. A man we believe to be your brother-in-law has been found dead not far from here.’
She reared back in her seat, gripping the arms, her fingers like claws. ‘Jamie? You don’t mean Jamie?’
‘James Auld, yes. I’m sorry.’
Now she leaned forward, hands clasped tight. ‘Are you sure? Only . . . ’ Her voice trailed off.
‘I don’t think there is much room for doubt, though we would like you to make a formal identification. He was carrying a French passport and driver’s licence in the name of Paul Allard, but our inquiries have led us to believe his true identity is James Auld.’
Mary had nodded several times as he spoke. ‘You’re right, that’s Jamie. But what happened? How can he be dead?’
‘His body was pulled from the sea off St Monans by a local fisherman. He’d suffered a blow to the head before he went into the water.’
‘An accident?’
‘We think it may be a suspicious death.’
Mary covered her eyes with one hand and pressed her lips together so tightly they lost their colour.
‘We’re very sorry,’ Daisy said.
Mary dropped her hand and drew in a noisy breath through her nose. ‘I can’t believe it. He was coming to see me this week.’
‘This week? When?’ Charlie leaned forward, alert as a pointer waiting for the gun.
‘He didn’t say what day. He told me he had some things to see to, then he’d drop by. We left it that he’d text me.’ Now her eyes were shiny with unshed tears and she dashed an impatient fist across them.
‘Why was he coming to see you?’
‘Why wouldn’t he? He was family.’ Her tone was dismissive.
Charlie gave Daisy a pained look.
‘He was also a person of interest in your husband’s disappearance,’ Daisy said. ‘We know they quarrelled.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Mary said scornfully. ‘I said at the time you were all crazy. Just because they had an argument. Have you never shouted the odds at anyone in your family? Jamie and Iain loved each other. Jamie would never have harmed a hair on Iain’s head. I told those idiots in the Met till I was blue in the face. But they were so focused on Jamie, they never investigated Iain’s disappearance properly. No wonder Jamie ran off to join the Legion. The police made his life hell.’
‘In fairness, there was the evidence of the T-shirt stained with your husband’s blood that they found in a bin in the basement of your brother-in-law’s block of flats,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘That’s not nothing.’
‘I’m no lawyer, but I know that’s circumstantial. I can imagine half a dozen scenarios where it would be possible to set that up to frame Jamie.’ Her chin came up. Nothing they could say was going to change her mind.
‘So did you stay in touch with Jamie?’ Daisy asked after a moment. ‘When he joined the Legion?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? I was almost as worried about him as I was about Iain. I’d lost the two men in the world I thought would always be there. I was filled with fear at the thought of what might have happened to them. Nothing made any sense. So when a letter arrived from him about six months after he left, I burst into tears. I was so relieved.’ Mary gave a shuddering sigh. ‘It felt as if I still had hold of a part of Iain.’
‘You didn’t think to report his whereabouts?’ Charlie asked.
An expression of haughty scorn crossed Mary’s face. ‘Why on earth would I do that? Why would I expose him to more accusations from your dim-witted colleagues?’
‘It must have been a comfort for you. Did you exchange letters regularly after that first contact?’ Daisy tried to recover the lost ground.
Mary nodded. ‘Every few months. He’d tell me what he was up to. Mostly about music. We’d always had that in common. Jamie was a saxophonist in the Legion band, but he’d formed a jazz quintet too.’ She sighed again. ‘And I told him what I’d been listening to, what I’d been doing. Nothing of any great importance, just a way of staying in contact.’
‘Did he visit you then?’ Daisy asked.
Mary shook her head. ‘It was impossible. He didn’t have a French passport yet, and his UK passport would have been flagged up if he’d come home.’
‘Did you visit him?’ Charlie butted in.
Daisy glimpsed a flash of shrewdness in Mary’s face as she replied. ‘We met in Paris two years after he joined up. He was on leave and I went over to see him. It was a great support for both of us. To be able to talk about Iain, to discuss our ideas of what might have happened to him.’
‘Did you come to any conclusions?’ Charlie asked.
Mary managed a wan smile. ‘We had all sorts of mad notions. But mostly we ended up back in the same place. A random mugging, his body in the river, torn up by a boat propeller.’
‘Did you continue to meet?’ Daisy asked.
‘We did. Once a year, we’d get together. Paris, Lyon, Marseille. We even met in Berlin one year. Iain loved Berlin, we often went there for city breaks. Then when Jamie left the Legion and got his Paul Allard French passport, he was able to come to the UK in safety. He was still wary, though. When I was living in Edinburgh, he only came and went after dark. He was concerned about the nosy neighbours spotting him and calling the police.’ She wiped an eye with her fingertips.
‘Did he come often?’ Charlie again.
‘A couple of times a year. The first time, I had a specific reason for asking. I was working up to selling the Edinburgh flat. I had to wait for the official declaration of death before I could actually put it on the market, but I started the process of downsizing once that was in train. So I asked Jamie to come for a few days, to choose some things to remember Iain by. Books, paintings, photographs, that sort of thing.’
‘That must have been a painful experience for Jamie,’ Daisy prompted.
‘It was for both of us.’ Mary stared at her hands, now folded in her lap.
‘What did he take?’ Charlie asked.
‘Half a dozen books. Iain’s sketchbook from a holiday we’d all been on in Switzerland. A small oil painting, a seascape. A pair of cufflinks that had belonged to their father.’ Another wan smile. ‘So very Jamie. He could have plundered the place, but all he took were a few things that had sentimental value to him.’
‘A sketchbook?’ Charlie again.
‘It was what Iain did to relax.’ Her face softened at the memory. ‘He wasn’t much good, bless him. But he enjoyed it. Jamie said the sketchbook was more than a souvenir of the holiday, it was a reminder of Iain at his most chilled, when he left the pressures of work behind him.’
‘Do you think there was any special reason why Jamie wanted to visit you this week?’ Daisy asked.
‘He didn’t say. There didn’t have to be a reason, you know. Do you always have a reason when you go to see family?’
Daisy thought of all the reasons she found for not going to see family. ‘I just wondered. If there was a birthday, or an anniversary of some sort.’
Another shake of the head. ‘Nothing. He’d arrive, we’d eat together, share a bottle of wine and we’d talk.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘What I’d been up to, what he’d been up to. Music. Scottish independence. Life in Paris.’
‘Your husband?’
Mary looked down at her hands. ‘At first, yes.’ She raised her eyes. ‘More recently, no. We’d pretty much exhausted the subject. The one thing that was clear to both of us was that Jamie was not responsible for his disappearance.’
‘Did he ever tell you what they’d quarrelled about that night?’ Charlie cut in. Daisy hid her irritation at her boss breaking the line of communication she’d been building.
‘Politics. Jamie’s a passionate supporter of Scottish independence. Iain wasn’t. And Jamie saw Iain’s position in the Scotland Office as ultimately shoring up the position of the Westminster government and Unionists.’
‘And that led to a shouting match? Furniture being overturned?’ Charlie sounded incredulous, but Daisy thought he was being disingenuous. Passions had been running high over Scotland’s future for years now. It was one of the reasons she avoided her own family.
‘You forget how frustrating the political climate was after the Tories won the election in 2010. Jamie despaired of Scots ever having a chance to decide their own future.’ A sad smile. ‘The irony was of course that when the Indy Ref happened in 2014, Jamie couldn’t vote.’
‘Did he stay long when he visited you?’ Daisy tried to steer the interview into less controversial waters.
‘Sometimes he stayed for a day or two, more often he took o
ff again at the end of the evening. He left everything behind when he went to France. Friends, colleagues, people he played music with. Everything. I was the only link he maintained with his past. Understandably enough. He knew he could trust me. And it looks like he was right, if what you’re saying is correct. That his death was suspicious.’
‘We’re waiting for the definitive autopsy report,’ Charlie said. ‘Did Jamie ever mention anybody who had it in for him? Anyone he was afraid of?’
Again that wry smile. ‘Jamie wasn’t much given to fear. When things looked black, he took action. He never mentioned being afraid. And why would anyone have it in for him?’
‘Soldiers sometimes do things in the heat of battle that provoke acts of vengeance.’
‘Jamie didn’t see any front-line action,’ Mary said firmly. ‘He spent most of his Legion career attached to Operation Sentinelle. They’re stationed all over France at sites of potential terrorist attack. He wasn’t waterboarding anybody in Iraq, Chief Inspector.’
‘What about after he left the Legion? Did he say anything about falling out with anybody?’
‘No. He played with his jazz quintet. They got a lot of gigs all over the country because they’re good at what they do. One of the reasons for that, Jamie always said, was that they were each other’s best friends. There was no ill-feeling.’
‘What about girlfriends? Was Jamie seeing anyone?’ Daisy smiled. ‘People always say being a musician is a bit of a babe magnet.’
Mary smiled back. ‘Pascale. They’ve been seeing each other for about a year. She lives in Caen, she owns a jazz club there. They saw each other two or three times a month. I had the impression that it was fairly casual. There didn’t seem to be any question of them moving in together. I suggested he bring her over sometime, but he said it wasn’t the kind of relationship where you got introduced to the family. He certainly didn’t seem tense or stressed about her at all.’
