Oak and Stone

by Dave Duggan

  ‘Maybe he could. But would you be able to handle it?’ asked Dr Rankin.

  ‘Not even going to try. Good night then.’

  She got up. Dr Rankin got up too.

  ‘It’s a bit early, Elaine. What about a drink in the Professor’s Devilish bar? And if you guys want to join us after your dessert, by all means do.’

  We all stood and shook hands. The two women left. The Professor performed the same end-of-dish ritual with his dessert, his fork swirling a final profiterole round his plate.

  ‘Do you smoke, Detective Slevin?’

  ‘Yeh. You want one?’

  ‘This country is worse than New York. Where do you folks smoke anymore?’

  He relished a last mouthful, belched lightly, then we left the dining room. I looked back from the door. I confirmed that Amy was still at her table, though many people were moving about.

  Because of my afternoon wanderings, I had a detailed sense of the layout of the hotel and very quickly led us to a service entrance that accessed the turning circle for delivery vehicles. A short walk brought us to a perspex shelter beside the lake. The Professor sat on the bench, while I passed him a cigarette and lit us both up. Inhaling and exhaling grandly, neither of us said anything until it dawned on me that he might be cold.

  ‘You want to go back?’

  ‘Naw, it’s great. Fresh air and cigarette smoke. The perfect combination.’

  He laughed and blew a jet-stream into the dark air.

  ‘Even though I know you’re right about “different views”, I say you’ve still gotta go after the evidence. It’s all we’ve got. It’s just about finding the right questions to ask.’

  ‘I know that. But I always feel there’s more.’

  ‘Of course. You’ve gotta find the right people to ask.’

  I knew that too.

  He went silent again. The water lapped towards us, as if in supplication. Even in the dark, the breadth of the lake was daunting. Lights from houses traced a far bank. Moving lights revealed cars on a road climbing a hillside. The water flowed aimlessly, going nowhere except back onto itself.

  The Professor stood up.

  ‘I understand you’re something of a pet project of your CC.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Maybe not. Others would. She had you at dinner tonight to show you off. Agreed?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Or to keep an eye on me.’

  ‘She has goons to do that.’

  I smiled, thinking of Daffy and Goosy.

  ‘You’re political, right?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You’re political. Jesus, you’re a police officer. My folks were political. Going way back to the home country. Ever been to Sicily? You’d love it. Figuring out who did what to who and why, is the daily past-time.’

  ‘Same here. Questions. Answers, even. Sometimes.’

  ‘Yeh, but you can’t forget what your CC said. She’s what my old Papa would have called “quite a dame”. You get the Cicero she dropped in over the roast beef?’

  ‘Cui bono? Who benefits?’

  ‘The key question.’

  I looked across the mercury corrugations on the lake’s surface and felt a light breeze ruffle my shirt.

  ‘It’s all about fear, you know that, Slevin. Lapping waters, rising. A kind of cosmic irony, playing at all times. Which takes us back to the bullet and the evidence. Take care, Detective Slevin.’

  He palmed me his card.

  ‘Thanks for the cigarette. I feel better now, for doing something vaguely transgressive at a police conference. Let’s go back. A drink in the Devilish Bar, whatta you say?’

  We went back the way we’d come. Laughter boomed from the dining room. Conference goers came and went in the corridors and from the small lounge, where guitar cases leaned against a wall and two people laid quiz sheets on round tables. The sign for the Devenish Bar pointed towards the front entrance.

  ‘I just need to get something from my room,’ I said, cutting over to the lifts and up to my second floor room. I phoned reception and asked for a taxi, saying I’d be down in ten minutes. Tidying up and packing took me less than that. I had resolved to leave, fearful that the Professor’s lapping waters would drown me.

  The CC, on her way back from the toilets, found me at reception.

  ‘Leaving early, Detective Slevin?’

  ‘Thank you for the invitation to dinner, Ma’am. Most enjoyable. I hope the rest of your evening goes well.’

  She wasn’t going to give up. She forced me into a lie.

  ‘An urgent call is it? A breakthrough?’

  ‘Well, maybe. Hetherington was on to me. He’s keen to get moving early tomorrow. Wants me to be there.’

  ‘I see. Keep me informed, via DI Hamilton. You were good company for the Professor tonight. He enjoyed your speculations. So did I.’

  ‘Thank you. My taxi, Ma’am.’

  A man in taxi company livery stood near the front door, rubbing his palms together.

  ‘A taxi? Must be urgent. Good luck.’

  She returned to the Devenish Bar and I followed the driver to his vehicle. I got in the back. I told him where I wanted to go. He buzzed the heat to ‘high’ and I fell asleep.

  I wanted away from the CC, from the Professor and Dr Rankin. I wanted away from Amy and her colleague aiming the gun at me. I wanted away from the lapping lake. I wanted away.

  SIXTEEN

  Instead, I stayed, to focus on loose ends in the Todd Anderson case; the second shoe, the folder, the bullet and the gun.

  Sharon loaned me her car and I made an appointment with Mervyn Campbell, the technician. I grinned my thanks to my colleague. When she asked why I didn’t use a car from the pool, I gave her my ‘arched eye-brow and pursed-lips’ look. I hoped she read it as ‘secret love tryst’. Perhaps she simply thought I was an oaf, because she tossed the keys to me with an easy-going ‘stay out of harm’s way, you buck-eejit’. And I was off.

  Off and over the arcing bridge and then left, in the easterly direction that leads to the north coast and the causeway of basalt rocks where giants chased one another, throwing stones like bold boys.

  I drove through the broad steel gates at the Maydown PS(N) depot. It’s our back-office, where technical labs, computer servers, archives and clerical buildings huddle behind two steel-reinforced walls no one is confident will ever come down.

  Mervyn was already seated at a window in the canteen, a large brown envelope, a mug of coffee and a sandwich in front of him. I joined him, with my own coffee and a cream doughnut. Sharon’s vivid red runabout sat at ease in the car-park below us.

  ‘You got a new motor?’ Mervyn asked.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘To go with your feminine side?’

  ‘I borrowed it.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was from the pool. Too new looking. You’re always dodging, Slevin. Here, I’m done with this.’

  Mervyn pushed the large brown envelope towards me. It contained the folder from the train.

  ‘There’s nothing of any use to you there. Only fingerprints are yours, your aunt’s and the fella, Jake Tees, at the station.’

  ‘How do you know they’re his?’

  ‘Look, you told me you got the folder at your Aunt’s. She’s on file from ages ago. And your man is on file for possession about three years ago. Meth, coke. He claimed “personal use” and stayed out. Kept his job, the lucky lad.’

  ‘So no one else handled it?’

  ‘I can’t say that, but no one else did anything meaningful with it – opening it, closing it, putting things in, taking things out, passing it about, that sort of thing – no one did anything like that. When they weren’t wearing gloves.’

  ‘Thanks, Mervyn. I owe you.’

  ‘No, y
ou don’t, Slevin. And that’s the last favour I’ll do for you.’

  ‘Okay, Mervyn. I only asked because …’

  ‘Things are getting muddy around you, Slevin. It’s like the tide’s going out and all there’s left is glar.’

  ‘I’m not dirty, Mervyn. I’m just trying to do my job.’

  ‘I don’t want any part of your job anymore. You’re an old coat, Slevin. Fluff sticks to you and you can’t get clean. If this is police business, put it through the proper channels.’

  ‘It is police business, Mervyn, with all the channels criss-crossed and blocked.’

  ‘Only in your head. You spent too long among the “say nothings” and then on the wings. Now you’re going down roads I don’t want to go down. We’re cops, not spies. Or IS. I’m not really a cop. I’m a lab rat, for fuck’s sake.’

  I could have come clean and told him what I knew about Dalzell. About IS being all over me. About the CC taking an unusual interest. About the Todd Anderson case getting nowhere. But I didn’t want to spook him any more than he was already.

  ‘Sound. Thanks, Mervyn.’

  He lifted his tray and left the canteen, depositing the tray on a rack of shelves beside the kitchen entrance. It would be like we’d never met, never worked together, never acted as colleagues. I felt a sense of isolation grow in me. People were slipping away from me like scales off a gasping fish, floundering on the mudflats.

  I took the folder from the envelope. A simple buff-coloured folder, with a single flap, still tucked in. My details on the front, typed neatly on a white sticker. I opened it and turned it upside down to look closely inside. I couldn’t guess if it had ever held anything. I sensed it had always been empty and wondered who had left it on the train and what kind of game, all fake news and deflection, Dalzell was playing with me. Or was it IS? Was it a pantheon of sub-deities, all working in mysterious ways?

  I munched on my cream doughnut, sensing the sugar migrate to my veins and lift my mood. Sticky cream laced my fingers and I licked them, one by one. When I came to my thumb, I sucked it and remembered my Fionn lore from prison reading and my story-telling at the police conference. Fionn, the bright. Fionn, the fair-headed. Fionn, the wise, who harnessed the wisdom of the Salmon of Knowledge by bursting a bubble on its cooking flesh using his thumb. Was there salvation for me in the knowledge I was gathering or was the case-file as hollow as a snake’s pelt, long shed?

  I am no Fionn. No warrior-seer. No hero. I am a detective, lost in a case with no beginning and no end, sucking on my thumb for comfort and sugar-ease, holding an empty folder and staring at a car-park, where a squat red runabout leers at me like a poisonous toad, from a jungle of steel, rubber and asphalt.

  If Mervyn had seen me in the archive shed after he’d walked out on me, he would be certain I was going down roads he didn’t want to go down. I filled in a request for the archived Todd Anderson material and gave it to the civilian clerk. She countersigned it, tore off a receipt slip and pinged open the gate to the caged area behind her. I strolled the aisles of multi-tier, long-span, slotted-angle steel shelving, neatly stacked with plastic containers, colour coded and numbered.

  The Todd Anderson material was in a single blue plastic-lidded box, that slid off the shelf with a satisfying hiss. The shelving system had retractable platforms spaced at intervals along the rows, big enough to hold one of the lidded boxes and its contents. I busied myself with the scant remains of the Anderson case. I placed the two shoes side by side and thought of Karen Lavery. A leaden bile of regret rose in my gullet as I held the left one, cold now as it had been when she found it in the abandoned chiller.

  I placed the items back in the box, pulled the lid across and played my hands around it before stowing the platform away and lifting the box back onto its shelf. My finger prints would confirm I had been legitimately there, if anyone asked.

  Then I moved deeper into the archive to an area containing mauve boxes, lidded also and of varying sizes. Keeping my arms close to my body, I slipped on a pair of crime scene gloves and stuffed my hands into my pockets. As I walked, the lights above, sensing my motion, sequenced on. Like using Sharon’s car, the gloves would muddy the waters, rather than offering complete subterfuge. I knew where I was going. I’d been there once before. Not long after I joined the Serious Crime Team.

  I pulled out a retractable platform again. I drew down a lidded plastic box, this time using gloved hands. I reckoned the cameras covering me would not pick up skin-covered gloves, as I hunched over the shelf, pressing my arms tight to my body.

  People keep memory boxes for all sorts of reasons; to remind them of a joyous time in their lives – photos, a garter, desiccated flowers excite memories of a wedding day. Or in memory of a dead parent; more photos, a broken watch, a sports medal. Then there are the notes and diaries of adolescence, the hospital records of the birth of a child, including the metal and plastic bracelet with the name Baby Edmund – where could that be?

  My own memory box contained the artefacts of a criminal investigation; photos of a killing scene and of a man, hunched awkwardly against a car window, shattered glass confettied all about him; a wound above his right eye, livid as the mouth of an active volcano; items of clothing - a balaclava, more shoes, both muddied, cheap running shoes branded Life Style, with a swirly S; a folder of fingerprints, a SIM card and parts of a phone; a DVD marked ‘Slevin – car park footage’. I laid more jumble before me and arranged it in a variety of patterns none of which made a workable form, none of which offered revelation. The irony that I was searching for clues to the killing of Todd Anderson, not in his own file box, but in mine, prompted me to smile.

  One more peep to confirm the box was empty. One more shuffle of the jumble on the platform, but, yet again, the pattern failed to adhere.

  I sensed a movement nearby, but when I looked about me I saw no one. I reviewed the oddments in front of me, a time capsule containing a very specific moment in my past and confirmed what I already knew. Both boxes, the Anderson one and my own, the killing of Police Constable Edwin Norris, contained the same emptiness. No murder weapon. No gun.

  SEVENTEEN

  I went back to police HQ, where Hammy found me, poring over the Todd Anderson murder book.

  ‘Ancient history was always your subject, really.’

  When I didn’t answer, he continued,

  ‘You came back early from the conference. Guilt was it, Slevin? Or were you expelled?’

  I had lost whatever spark being at the conference had lit in me. Now I was convinced Dalzell or IS, or both of them colluding with each other, had the gun.

  I was alone with my boss, furiously trying to plug the holes in my story, before he asked me more questions. Pools of light dabbed spots and corners in the office, but the sense of darkness, inside and outside, was pervasive.

  ‘No sir, I was not expelled.’

  ‘I’m told you were at the top table. One of the CC’s cherished guests. Should I be worried about you, Slevin? Are you divulging secrets over the devilled prawns?’

  ‘No, sir. Rocket and salmon salad, with a spicy vinaigrette. Cardamoms, I think.’

  ‘I knew you were the right man to send, Slevin. A proper foodie, with all that slop you ate inside and a doctorate to boot. Most of the chumps here wouldn’t know their Boeuf á la Bourguignonne from a barnacle.’

  ‘Simple roast beef, as the main, sir, no more. Very tender. Sides of local vegetables including gently steamed broccoli, matched with a parsley and dill cream sauce.’

  ‘Enough, Slevin. Enough. You learn anything?’

  ‘Plenty, sir.’

  ‘Anything useful?’

  ‘That the case of Ophelia going into the river is still unsolved and that the evidence is inconclusive.’

  ‘Lovely. Sunday supplement food chat with dodgy literary references. Don’t get too uppity, now. Even if you’re clashin
g cutlery with the head buck-cat.’

  He stepped towards my desk and closed over the front cover of the Todd Anderson murder book.

  ‘You and Hetherington, everything alright?’

  ‘Yes, well, a bit strained after the bomb incident.’

  ‘He blames you for getting him blown up. You have to agree he has a case. He’s doing the psycho follow-up. You’re not attending your sessions, I hear.’

  ‘You sent me to the conference, sir, so I …’

  ‘That was one session. You’ve missed others. Get back into them. What have you actually got on this?’

  ‘I’m just pulling things together. See where we’re at.’

  ‘And your other cases?’

  ‘Sharon’s collating the paper work on the house-break killing. We have a confession from the home-owner. He did it in self-defence, he says. The burglar was unarmed. Sharon will have it with you today, tomorrow. Hetherington is in court later, on that drive-by shooting thing. We made the arrest. Well, he did.’

  ‘Yes, you were driving. The skills of your teenage joy-riding years finally put to good use. What time is Hetherington in court?’

  ‘Twelve o’clock, sir.’

  ‘Fine. You, him, me and Todd Anderson, in my office for twenty minutes. I have an eleven o’clock upstairs. I want prospects and plans. No bullet points. Hard facts, juicy morsels.’

  He turned towards his office.

  ‘What’s this?’

  He stopped in front of a plexi-glass stand between my own desk and Hetherington’s.

  ‘I took one of the moveable displays from the conference centre. I want to get every thing out and look at it again. We’re missing something.’

  He hesitated, as if he was about to speak, but then moved off. I called after him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. The CC, could she have known Anderson?’

  My boss came back towards me.

  ‘I’ve seen photographs of her on the police hockey team. Fit and forthright, that’s her game, even now. I would have thought football was too, I don’t know, too “street” for her. But you never can tell. Look at Sharon here and her kick-boxing.’