The Distant Echo

by Val McDermid

  Weird jumped to his feet. "I don't have to sit here and listen to this. You're full of shite, you've got nothing on me and you know it."

  Burnside was on his feet, obstructing Weird's path to the door while Maclennan leaned back in his chair. "Not so fast, son," Maclennan said. "You're under arrest."

  * * *

  Mondo hunched his shoulders round his ears, a feeble defense against what he knew was coming next. Maclennan gave him a long, cool stare. "Fingerprints," he said. "Your fingerprints on the steering wheel of a stolen Land Rover. Care to comment?" "It wasn't stolen. Just borrowed. Stolen is when you don't plan to give it back, right?" Mondo sounded petulant.

  "I'm waiting," Maclennan said, ignoring the reply.

  "I gave somebody a lift home, OK?"

  Maclennan leaned forward, a hound with a sniff of prey. "Who?"

  "A girl that was at the party. She needed to get home to Guardbridge, so I said I'd take her." Mondo reached inside his jacket and took out a piece of paper. He'd written down the girl's details while he'd been waiting, anticipating just this moment. Somehow, not saying her name out loud made it less real, less significant. Besides, he'd worked out that if he pitched it right, he could make himself look even further in the clear. Never mind that he'd be dropping some girl in the shit with her parents. "There you go. You can ask her, she'll tell you."

  "What time was this?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. Two o'clock, maybe?"

  Maclennan looked down at the name and address. Neither was familiar to him. "What happened?"

  Mondo gave a little smirk, a worldly moment of male complicity. "I drove her home. We had sex. We said goodnight. So you see, Inspector, I had no reason to be interested in Rosie Duff, even if I had seen her. Which I didn't. I'd just got laid. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself."

  "You say you had sex. Where, exactly?"

  "In the back seat of the Land Rover."

  "Did you use a condom?"

  "I never believe women when they say they're on the pill. Do you? Of course I used a condom." Now Mondo was more relaxed. This was territory he understood, territory where males colluded with each other in a conspiracy of comprehension.

  "What did you do with it afterward?" "I chucked it out the window. Leaving it in the Land Rover would have been a bit of a giveaway with Henry, you know?" He could see Maclennan was struggling to know where to go next with his questions. He'd been right. His admission had defused their line of questioning. He hadn't been driving round in the snow, frustrated and desperate for sex. So what possible motive could he have had for raping Rosie Duff and killing her?

  Maclennan gave a grim smile, not joining in Mondo's assumption of camaraderie. "We'll be checking out your story, Mr. Kerr. Let's see if this young woman backs you up. Because if she doesn't, that paints a very different picture, doesn't it?"

  9

  It didn't feel like Christmas Eve. Walking to the bakery for a pie at lunchtime, Barney Maclennan had experienced the illusion of having been dropped into a parallel universe. Shop windows blossomed with garish Christmas decorations, fairy lights twinkled in the gloaming and the streets were thronged with shoppers staggering under the weight of bulging carrier bags. But it seemed alien to him. Their concerns were not his; they had something more to look forward to than a Christmas dinner tainted with the sad taste of failure. Eight days since Rosie Duff's murder, and no prospect of an arrest.

  He'd been so confident that the discovery of the Land Rover had been the keystone that would support a case against one or more of the four students. Especially after the interviews in Kirkcaldy. Their stories had been plausible enough, but then they'd had a day and a half to perfect them. And he'd still had the sense that he wasn't getting the whole truth, though it was hard to pinpoint where precisely the falsehood lay. He'd believed hardly a word that Tom Mackie said, but Maclennan was honest enough to acknowledge that might have something to do with the deep antipathy he'd felt toward the math student.

  Ziggy Malkiewicz was a deep one, that was for sure. If he'd been the killer, Maclennan knew he'd get nowhere until he had solid evidence; the medical student wasn't going to cave in. He thought he'd broken Davey Kerr's story when the lassie in Guardbridge had denied they'd had sex. But Janice Hogg, whom he'd taken with him for the sake of propriety, had been convinced that the girl had been lying, trying misguidedly to protect her reputation. Right enough, when he'd sent Janice back to reinterview the girl alone, she'd broken down and admitted that she had let Kerr have sex with her. It didn't sound as if it was an experience she was keen to repeat. Which, thought Maclennan, was interesting. Maybe Davey Kerr hadn't been quite as satisfied and cheerful afterward as he'd made out.

  Alex Gilbey was a likely prospect, if only because there was no evidence that he'd driven the Land Rover. His fingerprints were all over the interior, but not around the driving seat. That didn't let him off the hook, however. If Gilbey had killed Rosie, he would likely have called for help from the others, and they would probably have given it; Maclennan was under no misapprehension about the strength of the bond that united them. And if Gilbey had arranged a date with Rosie Duff that had gone horribly wrong, Maclennan was pretty sure that Malkiewicz wouldn't have hesitated to do everything he could to protect his friend. Whether Gilbey knew it or not, Malkiewicz was in love with him, Maclennan had decided on nothing more than his gut reaction.

  But there was more than Maclennan's instinct at play here. After the frustrating series of interviews, he'd been about to head back for St. Andrews when a familiar voice had hailed him. "Hey, Barney, I heard you were in town," echoed across the bleak car park.

  Maclennan swung round. "Robin? That you?"

  A slim figure in a police constable's uniform emerged into a pool of light. Robin Maclennan was fifteen years younger than his brother, but the resemblance was striking. "Did you think you could sneak off without saying hello?"

  "They told me you were out on patrol."

  Robin reached his brother and shook his hand. "Just came back for refs. I thought it was you I saw as we pulled up. Come away and have a coffee with me before you go." He grinned and gave Maclennan a friendly punch on the shoulder. "I've got some information I think you'll appreciate."

  Maclennan frowned at his brother's retreating back. Robin, ever sure of his charm, hadn't waited for his brother's reaction, but had turned toward the building and the canteen inside. Maclennan caught up with him by the door. "What do you mean, information?" he asked.

  "Those students you've got in the frame for the Rosie Duff murder. I thought I'd do a wee bit of digging, see what the grapevine had to say."

  "You shouldn't be involving yourself in this, Robin. It's not your case," Maclennan protested as he followed his brother down the corridor.

  "A murder like this, it's everybody's case."

  "All the same." If he failed with this one, he didn't want his bright, charismatic brother tarred with the same brush. Robin was a pleaser; he'd go far farther in the force than Maclennan had, which was no less than he deserved. "None of them has a record anyway. I've already checked."

  Robin turned as they entered the canteen and gave him the hundred-watt smile again. "Look, this is my patch. I can get people to tell me stuff that they're not going to give up to you."

  Intrigued, Maclennan followed his brother to a quiet corner table and waited patiently while Robin fetched the coffees. "So, what do you know?"

  "Your boys are not exactly innocents abroad. When they were thirteen or so, they got caught shoplifting."

  Maclennan shrugged. "Who didn't shoplift when they were kids?"

  "This wasn't just nicking a couple of bars of chocolate or packets of fags. This was what you might call Formula One Challenge Shoplifting. It seems they'd dare each other to nick really difficult things. Just for the hell of it. Mostly from small shops. Nothing they particularly wanted or needed. Everything from secateurs to perfume. It was Kerr who got caught red-handed with a Chinese ginger jar from a
licensed grocer. The other three got nabbed standing outside waiting for him. They folded like a bad poker hand as soon as they were brought in. They took us to a shed in Gilbey's garden, where they'd stashed the loot. Everything still in its packaging." Robin shook his head wonderingly. "The guy who arrested them said it was like Aladdin's cave."

  "What happened?"

  "Strings got pulled. Gilbey's old man's a headmaster, Mackie's dad plays golf with the Chief Super. They got off with a caution and the fear of God."

  "Interesting. But it's hardly the Great Train Robbery."

  Robin conceded with a nod. "That's not all, though. A couple of years later, there were a series of pranks with parked cars. The owners would come back and find graffiti on the inside of their windscreens, written in lipstick. And the cars would all be locked up tight. It all ended as suddenly as it began, around the time that a stolen car got burned out. There was never anything concrete against them, but our local intelligence officer reckons they were behind it. They seem to have a knack for taking the piss."

  Maclennan nodded. "I don't think I could argue with that." He was intrigued by the information about the cars. Maybe the Land Rover hadn't been the only vehicle on the road that night with one of his suspects behind the wheel.

  Robin had been eager to find out more details of the investigation, but Maclennan sidestepped neatly. The conversation slipped into familiar channels— family, football, what to get their parents for Christmas— before Maclennan had managed to get away. Robin's information wasn't much, it was true, but it made Maclennan feel there was a pattern to the activities of the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy that smacked of a love of risk-taking. It was the sort of behavior that could easily tip over into something much more dangerous.

  Feelings were all very well, but they were worthless without hard evidence. And hard evidence was what was sorely lacking. The Land Rover had turned into a forensic dead-end. They'd practically dismantled the entire interior but nothing had turned up to prove that Rosie Duff had ever been inside it. Excitement had burned through the team like a fuse when the scene of crime officers had discovered traces of blood, but closer examination had revealed that not only did it not belong to Rosie, it wasn't even human.

  The one faint hope on the horizon had emerged only a day ago. A householder in Trinity Place had been doing some seasonal tidying in his garden when he'd found a sodden bundle of material thrust into his hedge. Mrs. Duff had identified it as belonging to Rosie. Now it had gone off to the lab for testing, but Maclennan knew that in spite of his marking it urgent, nothing would happen now until after the New Year. Just another frustration to add to the list.

  He couldn't even decide whether to charge Mackie, Kerr and Malkiewicz with taking and driving away. They'd answered their bail requirements religiously and he'd been on the point of charging them when he'd overheard a conversation in the police social club. He'd been shielded from the officers talking by the back of a banquette, but he'd recognized the voices of Jimmy Lawson and Iain Shaw. Shaw had advocated throwing every charge they could come up with at the students. But to Maclennan's surprise, Lawson had disagreed. "It just makes us look bad," the uniformed constable had said. "We look petty and vindictive. It's like putting up a billboard saying, Hey, we can't get them for murder, but we're going to make their lives a misery anyway."

  "So what's wrong with that?" Iain Shaw had replied. "If they're guilty, they should suffer."

  "But maybe they're not guilty," Lawson said urgently. "We're supposed to care about justice, aren't we? That's not just about nailing the guilty, it's also about protecting the innocent. OK, so they lied to Maclennan about the Land Rover. But that doesn't make them killers."

  "If it wasn't one of them, who was it, then?" Shaw challenged.

  "I still think it's tied in to Hallow Hill. Some pagan rite or other. You know as well as me that we get reports every year from Tentsmuir Forest about animals that look like they've been the victims of some sort of ritual slaughter. And we never pay any attention to it, because it's no big deal in the great scheme of things. But what if some weirdo has been building up to this for years? It was pretty near to Saturnalia, after all."

  "Saturnalia?"

  "The Romans celebrated the winter solstice on December seventeenth. But it was a pretty moveable feast."

  Shaw snorted incredulity. "Christ, Jimmy, you've been doing your research."

  "All I did was ask down at the library. You know I want to join CID, I'm just trying to show willing."

  "So you think it was some satanic nutter that offed Rosie?"

  "I don't know. It's a theory, that's all. But we're going to look very fucking stupid if we point the finger at these four students and then there's another human sacrifice come Beltane."

  "Beltane?" Shaw said faintly.

  "End of April, beginning of May. Big pagan festival. So I think we should stand back from hitting these kids too hard until we've got a better case against them. After all, if they hadn't stumbled across Rosie's body, the Land Rover would have been returned, nobody any the wiser, no damage done. They just got unlucky."

  Then they'd finished their drinks and left. But Lawson's words stuck in Maclennan's mind. He was a fair man, and he couldn't help acknowledging that the PC had a point. If they'd known from the start the identity of the mystery man Rosie had been seeing, they'd barely have looked twice at the quartet from Kirkcaldy. Maybe he was going in hard against the students simply because he had nothing else to focus on. Uncomfortable though it was to be reminded of his obligations by a woolly suit, Lawson had persuaded Maclennan he should hold back on charging Malkiewicz and Mackie.

  For now, at least. In the meanwhile, he'd put out one or two feelers. See if anybody knew anything about satanic rituals in the area. The trouble was, he didn't have a clue where to start. Maybe he'd get Burnside to have a word with some of the local ministers. He smiled grimly. That would take their minds off the baby Jesus, that was for sure.

  * * *

  Weird waved good-bye to Alex and Mondo at the end of their shift and headed down toward the prom. He hunched his shoulders against the chill wind, burying his chin in his scarf. He was supposed to be finishing off his Christmas shopping, but he needed some time on his own before he could face the relentless festive cheer of the High Street.

  The tide was out, so he made his way down the slimy steps from the esplanade to the beach. The wet sand was the color of old putty in the low gray light of the afternoon and it sucked at his feet unpleasantly as he walked. It fit his mood perfectly. He couldn't remember ever having felt so depressed about his life.

  Things at home were even more confrontational than usual. He'd had to tell his father about his arrest, and his revelation had provoked a constant barrage of criticism and digs about his failure to live up to what a good son should be. He had to account for every minute spent outside the house, as if he was ten years old all over again. The worst of it was that Weird couldn't even manage to take the moral high ground. He knew he was in the wrong. He almost felt as if his father's contempt was deserved, and that was the most depressing thing of all. He'd always been able to console himself that his way was the better way. But this time, he'd placed himself outside the limits.

  Work was no better. Boring, repetitive and undignified. Once upon a time, he'd have turned it into a big joke, an opportunity for mayhem and mischief. The person who would have relished winding up his supervisors and enlisting the support of Alex and Mondo in a series of pranks felt like a distant stranger to Weird now. What had happened to Rosie Duff and his involvement in the case had forced him to acknowledge that he was indeed the waster that his father had always believed him to be. And it wasn't a comfortable realization.

  There was no consolation for him in friendship either. For once, being with the others didn't feel like being absorbed into a support system. It felt like a reminder of all his failings. He couldn't escape his guilt with them, because they were the ones he'd implicated in his actions, even though
they never seemed to blame him for it.

  He didn't know how he was going to face the new term. Bladder-wrack popped and slithered under his feet as he reached the end of the beach and started to climb the broad steps toward the Port Brae. Like the seaweed, everything about him felt slimed and unstable.

  As the light faded in the west, Weird turned toward the shops. Time to pretend to be part of the world again.

  10

  New Year's Eve, 1978; Kirkcaldy, Scotland

  They'd made a pact, back when they were fifteen, when their parents were first persuaded that they could be allowed out first-footing. At the year's midnight, the four Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy would gather in the Town Square and bring in the New Year together. Every year so far, they'd kept their word, standing around jostling each other as the hands of the town clock crept toward twelve. Ziggy would bring his transistor radio to make sure they heard the bells, and they'd pass around whatever drink they'd managed to acquire. They'd celebrated the first year with a bottle of sweet sherry and four cans of Carlsberg Special. These days, they'd graduated to a bottle of Famous Grouse.

  There was no official celebration in the square, but over recent years groups of young people had taken to congregating there. It wasn't a particularly attractive place, mostly because the Town House looked like one of the less alluring products of Soviet architecture, its clock tower greened with verdigris. But it was the only open space in the town center apart from the bus station, which was even more charmless. The square also boasted a Christmas tree and fairy lights, which made it marginally more festive than the bus station.