The Impossible Dead

by Ian Rankin

  Fox managed a twitch of the mouth. ‘Thanks for the advice, but I’m here for fingerprints.’

  Cash stared at him. ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘Mine,’ Fox explained. Then, patiently, as if to a child: ‘I was in the living room and hallway. Might have left prints. If I give them to Scene of Crime, they can be verified and eliminated.’

  ‘Up to us to decide that,’ Cash stated.

  ‘Of course,’ Fox accepted. Cash’s eyes stayed on him for a moment, then moved to Young.

  ‘Go fetch someone.’

  Young headed into the house. Fox saw that the door jamb was splintered. A crowbar had been used to open it. He walked over to the window ledge, lifted the flowerpot, and showed Cash the key.

  ‘Kirkcaldy CID didn’t tell you?’ he guessed.

  ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘Well, you know what it’s like: this is their patch. Don’t expect any favours.’

  ‘I might say the same thing.’

  Fox gave another twitch of the mouth, nearing a smile this time.

  ‘You’ll give us a statement about the deceased?’ Cash asked.

  ‘Whenever you’re ready for it.’

  ‘How often did you meet him?’

  ‘Just the once.’

  ‘What did you think? Good guy?’

  Fox nodded. ‘Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Seems to me he didn’t suffer fools – or family – gladly. Plus he ran a security firm.’ Fox slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘I was here again afterwards,’ he went on. ‘Not long after the body was discovered. The papers on the table had been disturbed; strewn about the place.’

  ‘Anything taken?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’ He paused. ‘You know what Carter was working on?’

  ‘I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘Lawyer called Francis Vernal. Died in suspicious circumstances. Gunshot. Reckoned suicide at the time. About thirty miles from here …’

  ‘Francis Vernal? That was back in the eighties.’

  Fox shrugged. One of the overalled figures was emerging from the cottage. She removed her hood and overshoes.

  ‘Which one of you?’ she asked.

  ‘Me,’ Malcolm Fox replied.

  He followed her to one of the vans. She climbed into the back and found everything she needed. The portable scanner, however, refused to work.

  ‘Flat battery?’ Fox guessed.

  She had to resort to the back-up of ink and paper. The result was signed by both of them, after which she handed Fox a wet-wipe for his fingers. This was followed by a DNA swab of the inside of his cheek, and the plucking of a couple of hairs from his head.

  ‘I can’t afford many,’ Fox complained.

  ‘Need to get the root,’ she explained. After everything was sealed into pouches, she locked the van.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, heading back to the cottage.

  ‘When was the last time you had your prints taken?’ Naysmith asked.

  ‘Been a while.’ Fox saw Cash watching them from the living room. The DI gave a little wave, as if granting them permission to leave. Naysmith, however, had started walking in the direction of the Land Rover.

  ‘Bit of quality,’ he said, peering in through the driver’s-side window.

  ‘Mind you don’t leave any prints,’ Fox warned him.

  Naysmith took a step back and looked around. ‘Question for you,’ he said. ‘Why leave your car out here when you’ve got a garage?’

  Fox looked in the direction he was pointing. A track led up the slope behind the cottage, ending at a ramshackle building.

  ‘Afraid it might collapse?’ Fox guessed. But all the same, he started trudging uphill, Naysmith a couple of steps behind him.

  The garage was padlocked. The lock looked old. The doors comprised vertical slats of wood, weathered and warped by the elements.

  ‘There’s a window here,’ Naysmith said. By the time Fox reached him, he had wiped at it with a handkerchief, without helping them gain much impression of what was inside.

  ‘Tarpaulin, I think …’

  They walked around the garage, even gave it a kick in a couple of spots, but there was no easy way in.

  ‘Give me a sec,’ Fox said, walking back down the slope again. There was no one in the hallway of the cottage, so he moved briskly past the living-room door and found the small kitchen. Keys hung from a row of hooks to the left of the sink. He ran an eye along them and chose the likeliest candidates. As he was turning to leave, he saw Cash emerge from the living room.

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘Looking for you.’ Fox slipped the keys into the inside pocket of his jacket, removing a business card at the same time.

  ‘So you can reach me to arrange that interview,’ he explained, handing it to Cash. Cash looked at it, then back at Fox.

  ‘I know you’re all excited,’ he said in an undertone, ‘not normally getting to play with the big boys and all that, but I need you to bugger off now.’

  ‘Understood,’ Fox said, managing his best to look and sound humbled in the presence of a Murder Squad detective. Cash escorted him to the front door and looked to left and right.

  ‘Where’s that work-experience kid of yours?’

  ‘Call of nature,’ Fox explained, nodding in the direction of the trees. He walked towards his car, opened it and got in. Cash was at the window again, watching. But after a couple of moments he turned away, and Fox got out of the car, heading back to the garage.

  The second key unlocked the padlock, and they were in. Naysmith had been right. A tarpaulin was draped over what looked like another vehicle. There was dust everywhere. A workbench boasted rusty tools. Home-made shelves had buckled under the weight of old paint cans. There was an electric lawnmower for the patches of grass to the front and rear of the cottage. Along with the rolled-up extension cable, it was the newest thing visible.

  Naysmith had lifted a corner of the tarp. ‘Not exactly roadworthy,’ he commented. ‘More what you’d call a write-off.’

  Fox went to the other end of the vehicle and lifted another corner. The car was a maroon Volvo 244. It seemed fine until he lifted the cover further. There was no glass in the rear window.

  ‘Give me a hand,’ he said. Together they pulled back the tarpaulin. The front of the car was wrecked, its engine exposed, grille and bonnet missing.

  ‘Tell me it isn’t,’ Naysmith said in a voice just above a whisper.

  But Fox was in no doubt at all. Vernal’s car, the one that had been taken to the scrapyard. Fox tried the passenger-side door, but it was jammed shut from the force of impact. The car’s interior didn’t look as though it had been touched in quarter of a century. There were bits of broken glass on the back seat, but not much else. Naysmith couldn’t get the driver’s door to open either.

  ‘How come it’s here?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘No idea,’ Fox said. But then he remembered. ‘Cottage used to be owned by a cop called Gavin Willis. He ran the original inquiry.’

  ‘So he could have kept the car for himself? Still doesn’t explain why.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Fox paused. ‘Reckon you can get in through that window?’

  He meant the gaping rear windscreen. Naysmith removed his expensive jacket, handed it to Fox for safe-keeping, then hauled himself up, squeezing through the gap.

  ‘What now?’ he asked from the back seat.

  ‘Is there anything that might interest us?’

  Naysmith felt beneath the front seats, then stretched between them and opened the glove box. He found the paperwork for the car and handed it to Fox, who stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘Half a set of spare bulbs and a few sweet-wrappers,’ Naysmith reported. ‘But that’s about it.’

  Fox could hear voices down at the cottage. They’d be wondering why his car was still there while he wasn’t. ‘Out you come, then,’ he said.
/>   He helped pull Naysmith through the opening. They were standing side by side, Naysmith slipping his jacket back on, when the garage door shuddered open. Cash and Young were standing there.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Francis Vernal’s car,’ Fox stated.

  Cash stared at the Volvo, then at Fox again. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Make, model, colour,’ Fox explained.

  ‘And damage,’ Naysmith added, pointing to the engine casing.

  ‘I want the pair of you out of here,’ Cash growled, pointing a finger of his own.

  ‘Just leaving,’ Fox told him.

  Cash and Young stayed with them until they’d reached their own car, then watched as they did a three-point turn and drove slowly back down the hill, Cash following on foot, just so he could be sure. They paused while the cordon was lifted, and waved to the uniform as they trundled towards the main road.

  ‘What now?’ Joe Naysmith asked.

  ‘This is where you get to show off your detective skills, Joe,’ Fox told him. ‘Kirkcaldy Library – find a phone book for 1985 and make a note of every scrapyard in the area. If we track down where the car went, we’ve half a chance of finding out why it left there again.’

  Naysmith nodded. ‘Might not mean anything, of course.’

  ‘Every chance,’ Fox agreed. ‘But at least we’ll give it a shot, eh?

  18

  Having dropped Naysmith outside the library, Fox headed for the police station. Rain had started gusting against the windscreen. He turned on the wipers. The drops were huge, sounding like sparks from a fire. He thought back to that day in Alan Carter’s cottage, the two of them seated either side of the fireplace, mugs of tea and an old dog for company. What could have been cosier or more domestic? Yet Carter was a man who had built up a security company from nothing: that spoke to Fox of an inner toughness, maybe even ruthlessness. Then there was the evidence of his old friend Teddy Fraser: the cottage door kept locked at all times – why? What had the jovial old chap to fear? Maybe nothing. Maybe it was the sharp businessman who had to keep his wits about him – to the extent of having a gun nearby …

  If the gun was his to begin with; Teddy Fraser thought otherwise.

  There was no sign of Jamieson or the woman reporter outside the car park. Fox spotted Tony Kaye’s Mondeo. Pitkethly’s space was free again, but she had warned him against taking it. Looked like the Volvo was going to have to sit on the street again and risk a ticket. Francis Vernal, too, had driven a Volvo. A safe, steady choice, so the adverts would have you believe – Kaye had teased Fox often enough about that. The roadway either side of the crash site boasted a few curves and bends, but nothing serious. Fox thought of the speeding cars that had passed him near the memorial. Were there petrolheads back then? Nothing else for the local youths to do of a rural evening? Could someone have driven Vernal off the road?

  Having parked, and looked around for traffic wardens in the vicinity, Fox got out and locked the car. He felt something in the pocket of his coat: the logbook from Vernal’s Volvo. Its edges were brown with age, warped by damp. Some of the pages were stuck together. At the back were sections to be filled out after each regular service. The lawyer had owned the car from new, by the look of things. Three years he’d been driving it, prior to the crash. Eight and a half thousand miles on the clock at the time of its last trip to the garage. The service centre’s stamp was from a dealership on Seafield Road in Edinburgh, long since relocated. There were some loose folded sheets in a clear plastic pocket attached to the inside back cover of the book, dealing with work done to the car and parts replaced. Fox unlocked the driver’s-side door, tossed the logbook on to the passenger seat, and headed towards the station. He was halfway across the car park when his phone rang. It was Bob McEwan.

  ‘Sir,’ Fox said by way of introduction.

  ‘Malcolm …’ McEwan’s tone caused Fox to slow his pace.

  ‘What have I done this time?’

  ‘I’ve had Fife on the phone – the Deputy Chief.’

  ‘He wants to pull us out?’

  ‘He wants to pull you out.’ Fox stopped walking. ‘Kaye and Naysmith can keep doing their interviews and prepare their report.’

  ‘But Bob—’

  ‘CID called his office, apparently furious with you.’

  ‘Because I told them their job?’

  ‘Because you went barging into a potential crime scene. Because instead of leaving when told, you found somewhere else to stick your nose in …’

  ‘I went there to assist.’

  McEwan was silent for a moment. ‘Would you swear to that in court, Malcolm?’ Fox didn’t answer. ‘And would you have Joe Naysmith back you up?’

  ‘All right,’ Fox relented. ‘It’s a fair point.’

  ‘You know better than anyone – we have to stick to the rules.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re coming home.’

  ‘Is that an order or a request, Bob?’

  ‘It’s an order.’

  ‘Do I get to kiss the children goodbye first?’

  ‘They’re not children, Malcolm. They’ll do fine without you.’

  Fox was staring at the station’s back door.

  ‘I’ll let them know what’s happened,’ McEwan was saying. ‘You’ll be back here in an hour, yes?’

  Fox switched his gaze to the sky above. The shower had passed, but another was on its way.

  ‘Yes,’ he told Bob McEwan. ‘I will, yes.’

  When Fox walked into the Complaints office, there was a note waiting for him from Bob McEwan.

  Another bloody meeting. Keep your nose clean …

  Fox noticed a couple of supermarket carrier bags sitting on the floor next to his desk. They were heavy. He lifted a box file from one and opened it. A photograph of Francis Vernal in full oratorical flow stared up at him. Below it lay a sequence of stapled sheets, some half-covered in scribbled Post-it notes. The second box file seemed to comprise more of the same. There was no covering letter. Fox phoned down to reception and quizzed the officer there.

  ‘Gentleman dropped them in,’ he was told.

  ‘Give me a description.’

  There was a thoughtful pause. ‘Just a gentleman.’

  ‘And he gave my name?’

  ‘He gave your name.’

  Fox ended the call and made another – to Mangold Bain. The secretary put him through to Charles Mangold.

  ‘I’m just heading out,’ Mangold warned him.

  ‘I got your little present.’

  ‘Good. It’s everything Alan Carter passed on to me before his death.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you think I can do with it …’

  ‘Take a look at it, maybe? Then give me your reaction. That’s as much as I can hope for. Now I really need to be on my way.’

  Fox ended the call and stared at the two large boxes. Not here: Bob McEwan would have too many questions. He crossed to his boss’s desk and left a note of his own.

  Knocked off early. At home if you need me. Phone the house if you’re sceptical.

  Then he drove to Oxgangs, and placed the two boxes on the table in his living room. As he came back through from the kitchen with a glass of Appletiser, he realised how similar the two scenes might eventually be – Alan Carter’s table, piled high with paperwork, and now his.

  With a tightening of the mouth, he got down to business.

  Alan Carter had, on the face of it, done a lot of work. He had sourced copies of the Scotsman for the whole of April and May 1985, really to prove only that almost no attention had been paid to the lawyer’s death. Fox found himself lost in these newspapers. There was an advert for a computer shop he remembered visiting. The advert was for an ICL personal computer with a price tag of almost four thousand pounds, this at a time when a brand-new Renault 5 – with radio/cassette thrown in – could be had for six. In the Situations Vacant column, one company was seeking security guards at s
eventy-five quid a week. A flat in Viewforth was on sale at offers over £35,000.

  News stories flew at him: bombs in Northern Ireland; a CND demo at Loch Long; ‘Soviet Missiles Freeze Snubbed by Washington’ … There were protesters at a proposed cruise missile base in Cambridgeshire. Companies were being advised to protect ‘sensitive electronic information’ from the effects of a nuclear detonation. The Princess of Wales, on a visit to Scotland Yard, was shown the oven and bath used by serial killer Dennis Nilsen …

  Alex Ferguson was the boss of Aberdeen FC, and they topped the league throughout April. Petrol was going up five pence to just over two pounds a gallon, and Princess Michael of Kent professed herself ‘shocked’ to find out that her father had been in the SS. Fox found himself reaching for his mug of tea without remembering getting up to make it. Animal-rights protests and acid-rain protests and teachers warned by their employers against wearing CND badges in the classroom. Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was on a Middle East tour. A poll showed support for the SNP stubbornly fixed at fifteen per cent of the Scottish population. A flooded colliery was to be closed, and there were fears the Trustee Savings Bank might move its HQ south of the border.

  Joe Naysmith had mentioned Hilda Murrell, and though she had died the previous year, she made it into the newspaper too. The MP Tam Dalyell was insisting she had been killed by British Intelligence, and Home Secretary Leon Brittan was to be quizzed on the matter.

  Fox was surprised by how little of this he remembered. He would have been in his Highers year at Boroughmuir, confident that a university or college place awaited him. Jude had been more interested in politics than him – she’d gone out canvassing for the Labour Party one time. Fox, meanwhile, had turned his bedroom into a sanctum where he could concentrate on his Sinclair Spectrum computer, losing patience as yet another game failed to load because he couldn’t find the sweet spot on his cassette-player’s volume knob. Hearts games with his dad on a Saturday, but only if he could prove all his homework was done. He was fine with schoolwork, but never watched the news or read a paper – just 2000 AD and the sports pages.