Still Life

by Val McDermid

  Her body was tired but she wasn’t drowsy yet. So she walked down towards the river and stood for a while, transfixed by the elegant curve of the Peace Bridge that crossed the River Foyle. It stood as a promise of an end to centuries of the spill of blood and anger across the streets of a city so divided it couldn’t even make its mind up what to call itself. She’d watched Derry Girls and laughed at its cheek, but she understood that sometimes laughter was the only way to survive wounds that went bone deep.

  However things turned out tomorrow, there would be wounds that would cost at least that much damage. No peace bridge could provide an escape route from that.

  47

  Thursday, 27 February 2020

  By half past six, they were on the outskirts of Ramelton. It was hard to form much sense of the town in the dark. The petrol station on the main road was still closed, to Daisy’s disappointment. ‘I’m starving,’ she complained. ‘You’d have thought they’d have somewhere I could get a bacon roll.’

  Karen scoffed. ‘You’re a bottomless pit. If there’s anywhere open, I promise we’ll stop and stock up.’ They passed a hospital and a Catholic church, rows of white houses opposite like a gap-toothed mouth. Then the bare branches of trees arching over the road, a huddle of houses and a T-junction with the narrow finger of the river a black void beyond it. The house fronts on the main road were painted in assorted pastel colours but in the dim glow of the street lights, they looked sickly. They passed a Spar franchise, shuttered and dark.

  ‘Follow the road round across the bridge,’ Daisy instructed her. ‘Then turn right and take the first left fork. It’s a wee road.’

  Karen did what she was told and almost immediately they’d left behind the streetlights of the small town. She drove slowly along a narrow road that glittered with frost, past a substantial cemetery, the graves ghostly with rime. They’d climbed far enough for her to be able to see across the rooftops of the town below.

  ‘We’re nearly here,’ Daisy said. ‘Those trees up ahead – I think that’s their place. We can pick up the footpath just past their property boundary, I think.’

  They were beyond the limits of the town now, and across the fields they could see the distant glint of a bend in the river. Karen kept going past the belt of trees and they were rewarded with a pair of stone gateposts surmounted by carved pineapples. A simple five-barred wooden gate was closed across the paved driveway. Not a single light indicated the house against the dark mass of the shrubbery. She drove on, slowing as she spotted the point where the trees gave way to scrubby hedgerow. All at once they saw a makeshift gravelled layby with barely enough room for two cars. Karen swerved into it and jammed on the brakes. ‘Not exactly well signposted, is it?’ she muttered.

  ‘There’s a wee sign there, you can hardly see it in the dark.’ Daisy pointed ahead.

  Karen peered out but saw nothing. ‘Time I got my eyes tested. Right then, let’s do it.’ She reached behind the seat and snagged her small backpack. She unzipped a side pocket and took out a small suedette bag. Out of it came what looked like a miniature telescope and a clip.

  ‘What’s that?’ Daisy asked.

  ‘It’s a telephoto lens for an iPhone.’ Karen fiddled with the lens and the clip and managed to attach it to her phone. ‘It’s an optical zoom, not a digital one.’ She chuckled. ‘See how I said that, like I know the difference? All I know is that it works. Perfect for a stake-out. And now it’s time to take a look at our so-called Daniel Connolly.’

  They left the warmth of the car behind and stepped out into a stiff breeze coming across the fields from the sea lough beyond the estuary. Daisy gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘Fuck, it’s cold. Let’s get moving.’ She headed towards the fingerpost that read ‘Ramelton’. It pointed the way through a narrow gap in the hedge.

  The path itself was a considerable improvement on its sign­age and access. About a metre wide, it had been surfaced with asphalt. Even in the dark, the way was clear. It cut along the side of a field of coarse grass, following the edge of a low stone wall that separated it from the tree plantation that surrounded Hill House. The path curved round a corner and they continued for about forty metres. Karen stopped and eyed the wall. ‘I think it’s time we made a move,’ she said.

  Both women scrambled over the wall. In the pre-dawn silence, every movement sounded cataclysmically loud. But no creature stirred as they pushed their way through the trees and on into a mass of rhododendrons and laurels that hid the house from view. Only by crouching low to the ground could they navigate through the sturdy trunks and whippy branches of the well-established plants. Karen had to stifle a cry more than once as a bent stem sprang back and lashed her face. So tightly packed were the shrubs that they almost emerged from cover before they realised they’d reached the edge.

  They’d ended up at one side of the parking area at the back of the house. There was a clear line of sight from the back door to the two cars that sat there, windows crazed with frost. Karen was relieved to see no sign of CCTV security cameras. ‘Well judged,’ Daisy said softly. ‘How do we play this now?’

  Karen hunkered down on her haunches and dipped into her backpack again. ‘I overcame my phobia of HQ for long enough yesterday to go down to Fettes Avenue and talk to the tech guys.’ She took a pair of dull metal boxes no bigger than a matchbox from the bag. She looked up at the house. Still no lights showing. The cold sweat of apprehension crept along her hairline. ‘Wait here,’ she said, then ran at a low crouch across the gravel towards the cars.

  She reached under the wheel arch of the first, a black BMW SUV, and let the magnetised box come to rest against a flat surface. She gave it a tug; it didn’t budge. She hurried on to the next car, a silver Mercedes convertible, and repeated the operation. As she completed her task, Karen glanced back at the house and her chest constricted. On the first floor, a light was showing. No curtains, so probably a hallway or a stair, her panicked brain told her.

  She made a quick calculation. If she made a dash for it, anyone passing the window would be attracted by the movement. She’d be spotted, for sure. She made a snap decision and instead of heading for where she’d left Daisy, she used the cars for cover and rounded the side of the house.

  Karen straightened up, panting, leaning against the wall. There was a twenty-yard strip of lawn between the side of the house and the start of the trees. No cover of bushes here but she could still work her way back to Daisy without being seen. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath then sprinted for the trees, hurling herself to the ground as she reached them. ‘I’m too fucking old for this nonsense,’ she grumbled under her breath as her shin clattered against a trunk and sent arrows of pain up her leg.

  It took an agonisingly long time but she eventually made her way back to Daisy, who had cleared enough space to sit down among the leaf litter. She’d bent a laurel twig to one side so she could see the back of the house and Karen squeezed in behind her. ‘I thought you were done for back there,’ Daisy said.

  ‘And then you remembered who you’re dealing with here,’ Karen said, mock-heroically. Now the first light had been joined by another upstairs. As they watched, a cluster of windows along the lower floor burst into light, revealing a kitchen that was about the same size as Karen’s flat. Warm wood gleamed and even from that distance, she could make out the shapes and shine of a battery of kitchen equipment. She could also see from behind a tall man in a dark blue dressing gown. He put a kettle on a wide range cooker and took two mugs from a glass-fronted cupboard. Reached for a tray. Picked up a large brown pottery teapot and poured in some water from the kettle. Now he turned to face them as he went to the sink to swill out the pot.

  ‘That’s Greig, isn’t it?’ Daisy said eagerly.

  Karen, made more cautious by experience, said, ‘It could be. I can’t be certain from here.’

  He turned away and she watched him spooning loose tea into the pot. He fi
lled it up from the kettle, added it to the tray and carried it out of the room. He left the lights on and they could see him in snapshots as he climbed the stairs and walked along the landing. ‘At least we know they’re home.’ Karen reached for her backpack again and pulled out a folding sit mat.

  Daisy looked on open-mouthed as she unfolded it and settled down. ‘Is there anything you don’t have in there? Trackers, telephoto lenses, something to sit on . . . I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat?’ Karen smiled and her hand disappeared inside the bag again. It emerged with two energy bars. Daisy’s face fell. Reluctantly she took the one Karen offered and studied the label suspiciously. ‘Dates? Apricots? Carob? Oats? Coconut flour? What have I done to upset you, boss? What’s wrong with a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer?’

  ‘You’ll thank me later. Slow release, not a quick sugar high and then a come-down. Now, settle down and keep your eyes on the prize. We could be here for hours.’

  In the end, it was only two cold hours before the back door opened and two men emerged, each carrying empty shopping bags. Karen, who had been nursing her phone in her lap, woke it up and focused the lens on their faces, grateful now for the daylight that had been making her fearful of discovery. A cluster of shots of them both together, then individually. ‘Gotcha,’ she breathed.

  She could feel the excitement vibrating off Daisy. ‘Do you recognise them? Is it them?’

  ‘Hard to tell, but it could be. I need to look at them on a bigger screen.’ As she spoke, they climbed into the BMW and drove off. ‘Off for the weekly shop, at a guess. Let’s get back to the car and take a look at these pics on the laptop.’

  Daisy looked behind her. ‘Do we have to crawl back the way we came?’

  Karen studied the house. The lights were all off and there was no sign of life. ‘Let’s chance it.’ She stood up and packed everything away in her bag, slung it over her shoulder and marched boldly towards the treeline at the side of the property. They pushed through the narrow gaps between the trunks, checked there was nobody else in sight then clambered over the wall. They kept up a brisk pace all the way back to the car, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be walking through featureless fields shortly after daybreak on a freezing February morning.

  Before Karen uploaded the photographs to her laptop, she checked the tracker app on her phone. It revealed that the BMW was parked in a side street in the centre of Ramelton. ‘Seems to be working. You’ll need to get this up and running on your phone too, just to be on the safe side. But right now, let’s see what we’ve got from the telephoto.’

  They both stared intently at the images as Karen scrolled through. Then she pulled up archive shots she’d assembled of both men, including Verity Foggo’s Twelfth Night picture of Iain Auld. ‘That’s so them,’ Daisy exclaimed. ‘We nailed them, boss, we totally nailed them.’

  In reply, Karen moved through the pics slowly, one by one. Then she split the screen and placed old and new images side by side, first of David Greig then of Iain Auld. She had not a flicker of doubt about Greig. His once-luxuriant hair was receding, greying and cut much shorter, but the face was unmistakable. Still handsome, still sculpted round the cheekbones and the jawline, still the same arrogant angle of the head.

  Auld was a different matter. If she hadn’t seen the Twelfth Night photo, Karen would have struggled to see the clean-cut, neatly barbered civil servant in this guise. His still-sandy hair brushed his collar, swept straight back from his forehead. His beard was trimmed to a point, his moustache curled at the ends. If it hadn’t been for the round glasses, he’d have been a dead ringer for one of the supporting cast in Shakespeare in Love. But the more she looked, the more she could see the congruence between the man who had disappeared and the man who had appeared at the back door of Hill House this morning.

  ‘You’re right,’ Karen said.

  ‘But this is supposed to be Daniel Connolly’s house. Where do you suppose he is?’

  Karen chuckled. ‘I think he’s out doing his messages, Daisy. I think we saw him getting into his motor this morning.’

  Daisy frowned. ‘I thought you thought he was a conduit funnelling the money to Greig and Auld?’

  ‘I did. But I was overcomplicating it. Having a third party involved multiplies your risk exponentially. Why involve somebody else when you can become somebody else?’

  ‘You mean they’ve got false IDs?’

  Karen nodded. ‘Exactly. Geary must have dealings with all sorts of dodgy people if he’s shifting stolen art and maybe forgeries too. It’s not too big a jump from that to knowing people who can create a new identity. I’d bet one of those two is Daniel Connolly on paper. And that they’ve both got valid Irish passports.’

  A moment’s silence while they contemplated what Karen had said.

  ‘That’s going to complicate things, isn’t it?’ Daisy ventured.

  ‘Not necessarily. There’s always a way round complications, in my experience.’

  48

  Daisy whinged all the way through Ramelton because Karen refused to stop to buy something to eat. ‘And how clever would it be if we walked into a shop and came face to face with Greig and Auld?’ Karen had demanded.

  ‘They wouldn’t know us from a hole in the ground.’

  ‘True. But if everything I’ve planned goes tits-up and we have to follow them and they notice us at all, they’ll freak out and we’ll not see them for dust. So you’ll just have to hang on till we get to Letterkenny.’

  Daisy sighed, muttered about fainting from hunger and hunched over her phone. ‘There’s a superstore off the main drag. You’ll need to fill up since we’re going all the way to Dublin. We can get petrol there as well as food. And coffee,’ she added, playing to Karen’s known weakness.

  As they drove, Karen called Sandra Murray. ‘We’re getting him back today, hen,’ she reported. ‘They say his leg’s going to be fine if he does what he’s told and goes to the physio. And the dunt to his head did no damage.’ She cackled. ‘You know what they say, where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, that’s a weight off my mind.’

  ‘Aye, well, he says you told him not to go near the lassie, so it’s all his own fault. I hope she’s going to go to the jail for what she did to our Jason.’

  ‘She’s going to go away for a long time, Mrs Murray.’

  After the call ended, Daisy eyed her and said shrewdly, ‘You dodged answering her when she said about McAndrew going to jail for what she did to Jason.’

  ‘Well spotted. I didn’t answer her because she wouldn’t have liked the answer. McAndrew won’t be charged for what she did to Jason.’

  ‘What? How come?’

  ‘It’s a quirk of the European Arrest Warrant. We can only apply for a warrant for crimes committed in our jurisdiction. Somebody who’s returned to us can only be tried for the crimes on the warrant and we can’t then pass them on to another jurisdiction. And because technically England’s a separate jurisdiction, we can’t hand her over to the cops in Stockport to prosecute her there. We’ll just have to make sure we make the homicide charge stick.’

  ‘That feels wrong.’

  ‘I know. Maybe there’s a way for the lawyers to work round it, but I don’t think they’ll see it as a pressing need if we can convict McAndrew of murder.’

  Daisy’s desire to push it further was derailed by the sign for the Letterkenny supermarket. Half an hour later, they were back on the road. Daisy had had two bacon rolls and a hot chocolate with whipped cream; Karen had settled for a toasted cheese sandwich and a large coffee. And they’d changed from their walking clothes into their normal work clothes. ‘More intimidating,’ Daisy said approvingly.

  Karen let Daisy take over the wheel for the next stretch of the journey. She learned more than she wanted to know about the choir that Daisy sang in and her future plans f
or exploring the Greek archipelago. They crossed seamlessly into Northern Ireland at Strabane and left it again at Aughnacloy. ‘I wonder how easy that’ll be after Brexit?’ Karen mused.

  They talked about the implications for the island of Ireland of a post-Brexit world. ‘We’ll see a unified Ireland inside five years,’ Karen said. ‘And that’ll be the start of the break-up of the UK.’

  ‘Only if Scotland doesn’t get there first.’

  Karen sighed. ‘Let’s hope so, eh.’

  ‘So what’s the plan in Dublin?’

  ‘We’ll be having a wee conversation with Francis Flaxner Geary. What happens next depends on how cooperative he is.’ Karen’s smile would have made hard men run for cover.

  It was late afternoon by the time they strolled past Gallery Geary. It was a double-fronted shop, each window displaying a single canvas. One was a large modern abstract featuring drips of paint in dozens of shades that ran from the top of the canvas to the bottom. The other was an older piece, a Victorian evening street scene with horse-drawn trams and people shrouded under umbrellas. Beyond them, the gallery stretched back, broken up by staggered walls that provided more hanging space. A young woman with long blonde hair and tight black clothes perched on a high stool behind a laptop on a cocktail table. ‘Do you think she’s an installation or staff?’ Karen wondered.