Still Life

by Val McDermid

  14

  Charlie had been unusually grumpy all the way back from Lundin Links. Daisy wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Mary Auld – a confession? An outpouring of hatred? A denial of having had anything to do with James Auld since he’d fled the jurisdiction? Whatever he’d hoped for, it hadn’t materialised. That much was clear.

  ‘At least we’ll get a positive ID now,’ she’d tried.

  ‘We pretty much had that anyway,’ Charlie grumbled. ‘The ID in his pocket plus the info you got the French consulate to dig up.’

  ‘And now we’ve got the name of the girlfriend and the website for the band. Maybe somebody needs to go over to Paris and talk to them? See if we can get a warrant to search James Auld’s flat?’

  Charlie grunted, his mouth a sarcastic twist. ‘Fancy a wee jaunt, do you, Daisy?’

  She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and controlled the urge to snap. ‘Not me necessarily, sir. I thought you might like to go?’

  ‘I need to keep on top of what’s happening at this end. I can’t go off gallivanting at the drop of a hat. It’s not like the crime happened in Paris.’

  ‘I get that, but since Paris was where his life was, isn’t it more likely that the root of his murder lies there?’

  ‘Daisy, he was the prime suspect in the murder of a senior civil servant, close to the heart of government—’

  Daisy couldn’t stifle a snort of laughter. ‘The Scotland Office? Ten years ago, under David Cameron? Even its own mother wouldn’t have called the Scotland Office the heart of government.’

  It was, of course, the wrong thing to say. It just made Charlie even more huffy. ‘If you ask me, what happened to James Auld happened because of his history here, not his blameless life as a jazzman in France. So if anybody’s going to Paris, it’s not going to be me.’

  Then he turned away and made a call to the incident room. From what she could gather, the officers who’d been questioning the dog walkers of Elie hadn’t turned up a single witness who’d seen James Auld walking out to the headland where the tower stood. Hardly surprising; it had been dusk, or more likely dark. And there was more than one direction from which to approach the promontory. Daisy made a mental note.

  Nor had anyone tracked down where he’d been staying. Daisy thought that had always been a tall order. The East Neuk was saturated with accommodation for visitors, and now short-term lets were so easy to manage online, many of those were officially invisible. Unlicensed, unknown to the authorities. Virtual existence made them virtually impossible to track down.

  Matters only got worse when they arrived back at the incident room. Standing with her back to the door, apparently intent on the progress board, was the unmistakable figure of Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) Ann Markie. Nobody at any rank wore a perfectly tailored uniform that fitted with such flattery. Daisy thought she heard Charlie breathe, ‘Fuck,’ but she might just have been projecting.

  ‘ACC Markie,’ Charlie said, a layer of bonhomie slathered over his grumpiness. ‘Good to see you, ma’am.’

  She turned slowly, making her presence felt. Daisy, who had never seen her close up, marvelled at the perfection of her make-up. And literally not a hair out of place. She looked as if she’d stepped out of some fashion shoot for men who perved about women in uniform. She wasn’t going to be running down the street after some skanky druggy who’d mugged a lassie at a bus stop any time soon. Not in those non-regulation heels. ‘DCI Todd,’ she said. The unspoken, ‘at last’ hung in the air. ‘And this must be DS Mortimer.’

  ‘Ma’am.’ Daisy inclined her head. There was something unsettling about being on Markie’s radar. The woman had a reputation for chilly incisiveness when it came to covering her own back. When the shit hit the fan, it slid off Ann Markie as if she were made of Teflon. Heaven help whoever was standing next to her.

  ‘Not much forward movement so far, then,’ Markie said, waving a casual hand at the board. ‘I’d have to call that a “lack of progress” board.’ The four other officers in the room all became completely fascinated by their computer screens. Fingers tapped keyboards. Nobody wanted to be part of this.

  ‘The body only turned up yesterday morning,’ Charlie protested, but mildly. ‘We’re just back from speaking to Mary Auld. The dead man’s—’

  ‘—sister-in-law, yes,’ Markie cut in. ‘As you may have deduced, that’s why I’m here. The disappearance and presumed death of Iain Auld still remains unresolved. Now his brother resurfaces in mysterious circumstances. Did Mrs Auld shed any light at all on what’s happened?’

  ‘She was expecting to see him this week. James Auld, that is. They’d stayed in regular touch.’

  Markie’s lip curled in a sardonic smile. ‘After he ran away to play at soldiers with the Foreign Legion?’

  ‘Yes.’ Charlie narrowed the distance between him and Markie to conversational rather than confrontational.

  ‘And did that correspondence take us any further forward?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Mrs Auld said neither of them had any idea what had happened to her husband. And she was convinced his brother had nothing to do with it.’

  Markie turned away and studied the board again. ‘And you believe her?’

  ‘At this point, we’ve no reason not to.’

  ‘Except that her brother-in-law comes to visit and ends up dead. It’s quite clear to me that whatever happened to James Auld must be connected to his brother going missing. And that’s a cold case.’ She picked up one of the marker pens sitting on the ledge below the board and wrote, ‘Iain Auld = cold case’.

  Markie perched on the edge of a desk and considered Charlie. ‘You don’t have much experience with homicide. And you certainly don’t have a track record in cold cases. As soon as the Iain Auld element entered this case, you should have consulted his case files, where you would have discovered that DCI Pirie from the Historic Cases Unit carried out a routine review two years ago, including an interview with Mrs Auld. There was nothing fresh to move the matter forward, but she is very familiar with the file. And she has a better idea of how to manage a historic case than you do. So I’m going to assign her to lead on this case.’

  Charlie looked as if he’d been slapped. Which of course he had been, Daisy thought. But Markie was still talking. ‘Someone has to go to France and check out James Auld’s other life. We’re going to look very bloody stupid if Iain Auld turns out to have been playing vibraphone in a jazz funk band in Paris for the last decade.’ She fixed Daisy with her cold blue gaze. ‘Your degree is in French, am I right?’

  ‘French and Legal Studies, yes, ma’am.’

  ‘You can go to Paris with DCI Pirie. I don’t imagine conversational French is in her skill set. And DCI Todd can see whether his team can actually come up with something useful to progress the case at this end. Somebody must have interacted with James Auld. You need to find them. I’ll send Pirie over so you can bring her up to what passes for speed here in Fife.’ Markie picked up her gender-neutral baseball cap and set it straight on her perfect coiffure, shouldered her bag and nodded farewell.

  The door had barely closed behind her when Charlie slumped into a chair. ‘Well, that’s me put in my box,’ he muttered.

  ‘Is she always like that?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘Only to lower ranks.’ He looked mournfully at the board. ‘We’ve hardly had time to get started.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair. Oh, by the way, I had a thought. From what Mary Auld said, it sounded like James Auld was kind of twitchy about covering his tracks. Maybe he didn’t approach the tower from Elie at all. Maybe he came down the coastal path?’

  ‘There would be even less chance of running into a dog walker after dark on the coastal path,’ Charlie said.

  ‘But he had to get there from somewhere. I reckon he must have hired a car when he was over here.’

  ‘He could hav
e got a bus.’

  ‘This is a man who was still so worried about being recognised after ten years that he always turned up at Mary’s after dark. I think he’d want to be in control of his exit strategy. And he had a perfectly legitimate passport and driving licence. I was looking at the map, and you could easily walk along the coastal path from the Ardross Farm Shop to the tower. It’s only a mile and a half. Is it worth getting one of the local officers to check whether there’s been a car left there overnight?’

  ‘That’s a good thought, Daisy.’ Charlie stirred himself and started towards one of the other officers. Over his shoulder, he said, ‘Better away home and get your passport, though. Looks like you’re off to France with KP Nuts.’

  ‘KP Nuts?’

  ‘Karen Pirie. KP Nuts. They call her that for a reason.’

  15

  They’d left Tullyfolda House with a URL for Dani’s website and a promise that Camilla Gordon-Bruce would search her digital photo archive and forward what photographs she could find of Amanda and Dani. ‘What did you make of that?’ Karen asked.

  ‘It’s hard to know,’ Jason said. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t behave that way, but who knows what passes for normal with folk like that? They didnae seem to think there was anything funny about Amanda and Dani just taking off all of a sudden.’

  ‘We need to find out what happened next. Or indeed, previously. We’ve got no eye-witness evidence that Dani Gilmartin was still alive when Amanda drove out of Tullyfolda.’

  ‘You think that’s Dani in the van, boss?’

  Karen filled her cheeks with air and puffed it out. ‘That would make sense. If it was Amanda, why would Susan do any favours for Dani? On the other hand, according to Declan, Dani has an active online business. Maybe we’re looking for somebody else altogether. It could be that Dani and Amanda split up and Amanda took up with someone else and it ended as badly as it could.’

  ‘Right enough, we don’t know how long the van was parked in Susan’s garage. But what if Dani hid the van someplace else with Amanda’s body in it? Then when she saw the reports of Susan’s death, she could’ve moved the van and left it in the garage.’

  It felt far-fetched to Karen but she was pleased that Jason had found the confidence to float his own theory, however unlikely. ‘How would she have got into Susan’s garage, though?’

  Jason frowned. ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, eh.’

  ‘I can think of one possibility. If Amanda still had a set of keys, Dani might have hung on to them.’ Karen imagined a woman moving swiftly up North Woodlands Crescent, keeping in the lee of those high hedges, latex gloves covering her hands. Then slipping down the driveway and letting herself into Susan Leitch’s house by the back door, out of sight of any insomniac neighbours. Into the kitchen, through into the hall, unlocking the door into the garage. The moment of relief when she sees there’s room, as she expected from the stories Amanda told her about Susan’s neatness. She finds the switch that raises the garage door. More noise than she’d like, but she waits and no lights snap on in the nearby houses.

  Then back to the van, parked a few streets away. Drive straight into the garage, minimising the opportunity for anyone on North Woodlands Crescent to hear the distinctive cough of the VW engine. She closes the door, covers the van with the tarp she’s already been using in the barn or shed or garage where she’s been stowing it, lets down the tyres. Then out into the night again. Walk through the sleeping city and arrive at the station in time for the first train out.

  And then she remembered the distressed rubber of the flat tyres. They’d been beyond redemption for a lot more than three weeks.

  ‘Boss?’ Jason startled her from her imaginings.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, are we heading back to the office or what?’

  ‘Back to the office. Hammering the keyboards, staring into the screens. Tedious, I know, but we need to find what happened to those two women.’

  Within minutes of arriving in Gayfield Square, Karen would have paid hard cash for tedium. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ the desk officer told her as soon as she crossed the threshold.

  ‘Who is it?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Three guesses.’

  Karen grinned. ‘I’m a detective, not a psychic. Give it up, son.’

  He gave a quick glance to either side then lowered his voice. ‘The Dog Biscuit.’

  Karen rolled her eyes. Ann Markie had gained her soubriquet from a brand of dog treats. Clever and disrespectful, it had spread through the force faster than a head cold, as the best nicknames always did. ‘Thanks for the heads-up.’ She turned to Jason. ‘Away and get yourself a sandwich or something. I’ll deal with her majesty.’

  On her way down the long corridor to her office, Karen slipped into the toilet. Past experience had taught her she would never rival the Dog Biscuit’s impeccable appearance but at least she could make sure she didn’t have crisp crumbs down her jacket or mud on her trousers. She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to smooth it down, wondering how it was that some women never looked as if they’d slept in a hedge. She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and muttered, ‘Take no snash.’

  Ann Markie was sitting at Karen’s desk, tapping with a perfectly manicured nail on a mini-tablet. She barely looked up when Karen entered. ‘Sit down,’ she said, her voice chilly, and carried on typing. Karen sat in Jason’s seat and waited.

  Their last encounter had not ended well. Markie had given Karen an explicit order not to do something, which Karen had ignored without a single misgiving. In her book, justice would always trump politics. She imagined Markie would claim the greater good of Police Scotland, but for Karen, her duty to the dead and their families came first, second and last. Even though Karen’s insubordination had ended in a murder conviction, she didn’t imagine it had pressed ‘pause’ on Markie’s contempt for her. So what could be today’s reason for ripping her a new one?

  A slow couple of minutes passed while Karen stared out of the window at the wall opposite and thought of lovely things. Like the bottle of Arbikie Nàdar gin that Jimmy Hutton had promised to bring along to their next Gin Monday. Made from peas, with a negative carbon footprint, she thought it was right out there on the margins of mental gins. Who knew what it would taste like?

  The tapping had stopped and Markie cleared her throat. Karen drew her eyes from the non-existent view and looked across at her boss. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Have you been following the case of the man pulled out of the Forth yesterday morning?’ As always when addressing lesser mortals, Markie was abrupt to the point of rudeness. Nobody was ever allowed to forget who was in charge.

  ‘Sorry, that one passed me by. I’ve been dealing with a skeleton in a camper van in prosperous Perth. That’s been occupying all my time since yesterday morning.’

  ‘If it’s a skeleton, it’s about as cold a case as it gets. So there’s no rush, is there?’

  ‘I like to think we bring the same urgency to historic cases as we do to current ones.’

  ‘Don’t virtue-signal to me, Pirie. Even you aren’t so naïve as to think all murders are created equal. You can put Perth to one side for now. I need you to take over as SIO on this case in Fife.’

  Karen seethed but she kept the lid on by digging her fingernails into her palms below the level of the desk. ‘Surely that doesn’t come into my remit?’

  ‘Obviously not, as far as yesterday’s body is concerned. But it’s closely connected to a missing person case that you reviewed two years ago. You made no progress, but at least you know the file.’

  A two-year-old review didn’t narrow it down. Whenever Karen wasn’t pursuing a live lead, she was sifting through the evidence from serious unsolved crimes. But these were not the sort of headline-grabbing cases that Markie craved. These were the dusty and unloved cases that mattered only to the
bereaved. Even the original investigating officers didn’t love those monuments to their failure. ‘Which file would that be?’ Cautious now, wondering where this was going.

  ‘Iain Auld.’

  The name hung between them like a motionless pendulum, waiting for a push to set it in motion.

  Now Karen understood. ‘Senior civil servant in the Scotland Office,’ she said, nudging the pendulum towards Markie. ‘Is this him, then?’

  ‘No. It’s the prime suspect in his presumed murder.’

  Karen sighed. ‘I don’t presume. In my book, it’s still a suspicious disappearance.’ Markie opened her mouth to speak but Karen held up her hand and kept talking. ‘His brother. Can’t remember the name. But he was a person of interest and he did a runner.’ She tapped her fingers on the edge of the desk. ‘Went to . . . Spain, was it? Via Ireland?’

  ‘Well done. Your memory for details is impressive.’ In Markie’s mouth, it sounded like an insult. Karen imagined the unspoken half of the comment running something like, ‘But then you’ve nothing else to occupy you, have you?’

  ‘So the brother turns up dead in Fife. And that concerns me, how?’

  ‘It seems likely that the key to Iain Auld’s disappearance lies with his brother. Don’t you think? They had a fight the night before he disappeared, the Met found a bloodstained T-shirt in James Auld’s bin, then he fled the jurisdiction. I want you to reopen the investigation into Iain Auld’s disappearance. And the best way to do that is for you to take overall control.’ Markie sounded as if the words were being dragged out of her.

  ‘What’s wrong with me working the cold case alongside the existing SIO?’

  Markie pursed her lips then said, ‘He’s never done a murder before. And whatever your faults, your track record when it comes to results is hard to fault.’

  Light slowly dawned on Karen. ‘It’s the politics, isn’t it? The people at the top of the power pyramid here in Scotland now were around then too, only not so important. And with the prospect of a second independence referendum, they don’t want anything to frighten the horses. They want somebody they trust running the investigation.’ She couldn’t help a dark chuckle. ‘Somebody who’s low enough down the totem pole not to have any skin in the game, but far enough up it to deflect any criticism in the media.’