The Distant Echo

by Val McDermid

  Mondo grabbed at the belt. He thrust one arm through it and tried to get it over his head. But Maclennan was still gripping his collar, knowing his life depended on it. There was only one thing for it. Mondo thrust back as hard as he could with his free elbow. Suddenly, he was clear.

  He pulled the lifebelt over his body, desperately gasping for breath in the saturated air. Behind him, Maclennan struggled closer, somehow managing to get a hand on the rope attached to the lifebelt. It took a superhuman effort, his waterlogged clothes fighting him every inch of the way. Cold was eating into Maclennan now, making his fingers numb. He clung to the rope with one arm, waving the other above their heads to signal to the team on the cliff to bring them up.

  He could feel the pull on the rope. Would five be enough to get them both up the cliff? Had somebody had the nousto get a boat round from the harbor? They'd be dead from cold long before the lifeboat arrived from Anstruther.

  They closed in on the cliffs. One minute, Maclennan was aware of the buoyancy of the water. Then all he felt was drag as he rose out of the water, holding on to the lifebelt and Mondo for dear life. He stared upward, gratefully seeing the pale face of the front man on the rope, his features a blur through the rain and spray.

  They were six feet up the cliff when Mondo, terrified that Maclennan was going to pull him back into the maelstrom, kicked backward. Maclennan's fingers gave up the fight. He plunged back helpless into the water. Again he went under, again he struggled to the surface. He could see Mondo's body rising slowly up the cliff face. He couldn't believe it. The bastard had kicked him free to save himself. He hadn't been trying to kill himself at all. It had just been posturing, attention-seeking.

  Maclennan spat out another mouthful of water. He was determined now to hang on, if only to make Davey Kerr wish he had drowned after all. All he had to do now was keep his head above water. They'd get the lifebelt back down to him. They'd send a boat round. Wouldn't they?

  His strength was fading fast. He couldn't fight the water, so he let it carry him. He'd concentrate on keeping his face out of the sea.

  Easier said than done. The undertow sucked at him, the swell smashing black walls of water into his mouth and nose. He didn't feel cold anymore, which was nice. Vaguely, he heard the pocka-pockaof a helicopter. He was drifting now, in a place where everything felt very calm. Air/Sea Rescue, that would be the noise he could hear. Swinglow,sweetchariot.Comingforto carrymehome.Funnythethingsthatgo throughyourmind. He giggled and swallowed another mouthful of water.

  He felt very light now, the sea a bed rocking him gently to sleep. Barney Maclennan, asleep on the ocean wave.

  The helicopter spotlight swept the sea for an hour. Nothing. Rosie Duff's killer had claimed a second victim.

  Part Two

  19

  November 2003; Glenrothes, Scotland

  ACC James Lawson eased his car into the slot that bore his name in the police HQ car park. Not a day went by when he didn't congratulate himself on his achievement. Not bad for the illegitimate son of a miner who'd grown up in a poky council flat in a dump of a village thrown up in the 1950s to house displaced workers whose only possibility of a job was in the expanding Fife coalfield. What a joke that had been. Within twenty-five years, the industry had shrunk beyond recognition, stranding its former employees in ugly oases of redundancy. His pals had all laughed at him when he'd turned his back on the pit to join what they perceived as the bosses' side. Who had thelastlaughnow?Lawson thought with a grim little smile as he pulled the key out of the ignition of his official Rover. Thatcher had seen off the miners and turned the police into her personal New Model Army. The Left had died and the phoenix risen from its ashes loved to wave the big stick almost as much as the Tories did. It had been a good time to be a career copper. His pension would bear testament to that.

  He picked up his briefcase from the passenger seat and walked briskly toward the building, head down against a bitter East Coast wind that promised stinging showers of rain before the morning was out. He punched his security code into the keypad by the back door and headed for the lift. Instead of going straight to his office, he made for the fourth-floor room where the cold cases squad was based. There weren't many unsolved murders on Fife's books, so any success would be seen as spectacular. Lawson knew this operation had the potential to enhance his reputation if it was handled correctly. What he was determined to avoid was a botched job. None of them could afford that.

  The room he'd requisitioned for the squad was a decent size. There was space for the half-dozen computer work stations, and although there was no natural light, that meant plenty of room for each of the ongoing cases to be displayed on large corkboards that went all round the walls. Alongside each case was a printed list of actions to be carried out. As the officers worked their way through these tasks, new handwritten actions were added to the lists. Boxes of files were stacked to waist level along two walls. Lawson liked to keep a close eye on progress; although this was a high-profile operation, that didn't mean it wasn't tightly constrained by budgetary controls. Most of the new forensic tests were expensive to commission, and he was determined not to allow his squad to be so seduced by the glamour of technology that they squandered all of their resources on lab bills, leaving nothing for the sheer slog of routine investigative tasks.

  With one exception, Lawson had handpicked the team of half a dozen detectives, choosing those with a reputation for meticulous attention to detail and the intelligence to connect disparate pieces of information. That exception was an officer whose presence in the room troubled Lawson. Not because he was an inadequate copper, but because he had far too much at stake. Detective Inspector Robin Maclennan's brother Barney had died in the course of investigating one of these cold cases, and if it had been up to Lawson, he'd have been allowed nowhere near the review. But Maclennan had appealed over his head to the Chief Constable, who had overruled Lawson.

  The one thing he'd managed to achieve was to keep Maclennan away from the Rosie Duff case itself. After Barney's death, Robin had transferred out of Fife down south. He'd only returned after his father's death the previous year, wanting to work out his last years before his pension close to his mother. By chance, Maclennan had a loose operational link to one of the other cases, so Lawson had persuaded his boss to let him assign the DI to the case of Lesley Cameron, a student who had been raped and murdered in St. Andrews eighteen years ago. Back then, Robin Maclennan had been based near her parents' home and he'd been the designated liaison officer with Lesley's family, probably because of his own connections in the Fife force. Lawson thought Maclennan was likely looking over the shoulder of the detective assigned to the Rosie Duff case, but at least his personal feelings couldn't interfere directly with that investigation.

  That November morning, only two officers were at their desks. Detective Constable Phil Parhatka had what was probably the most sensitive case in the review. His victim was a young man found murdered in his home. His best friend had been charged and convicted of the crime, but a series of embarrassing revelations about the police investigation had led to the overturning of the conviction on appeal. The repercussions had holed several careers below the waterline, and now the pressure was on to find the real killer. Lawson had partly chosen Parhatka because of his reputation for sensitivity and discretion. But what Lawson had also seen in the young DC was the same hunger for success that had driven him at that age. Parhatka wanted a result so badly Lawson could almost see the desire smoking off him.

  As Lawson walked in, the other officer was getting to her feet. DC Karen Pirie yanked an unfashionable but functional sheepskin coat off the back of her chair and shrugged into it. She glanced up, sensing a new presence in the room, and gave Lawson a weary smile. "There's nothing else for it. I'm going to have to talk to the original witnesses."

  "There's no point in that until you've dealt with the physical evidence," Lawson said.

  "But, sir…"

  "You're going to have to go down ther
e and do a manual search."

  Karen looked appalled. "That could take weeks."

  "I know, but that's all there is for it."

  "But, sir… what about the budget?"

  Lawson sighed. "Let me worry about the budget. I don't see what alternative you've got. We need that evidence to apply pressure. It isn't in the box it's supposed to be in. The only suggestion the evidence custody team can come up with is that somehow it got 'mislaid' during the move to the new storage facility. They haven't got the bodies to do a search, so you'll have to."

  Karen hefted her bag on to her shoulder. "Right you are, sir."

  "I've said right from the beginning that, if we're going to make any progress with this one, the physical evidence is going to be the key. If anyone can find it, you can. Do your best, Karen." He watched her leave, her very walk a simulacrum of the doggedness that had instigated his matching of Karen Pirie with the twenty-fiveyear-old murder of Rosemary Duff. With a few words of encouragement to Parhatka, Lawson set off for his own office on the third floor.

  He settled himself behind his expansive desk and felt a niggle of worry that things might not work out as he had hoped in the cold case review. It would never be enough merely to say they'd done their best. They needed at least one result. He sipped his sweet, strong tea and reached for his in-tray. He scanned a couple of memos, ticking off his initials at the top of the pages and consigning them to the internal mail tray. The next item was a letter from a member of the public, addressed to him personally. That was unusual in itself. But its contents jerked James Lawson to attention in his chair.

  12 Carlton Way

  St. Monans

  Fife

  Assistant Chief Constable James Lawson

  Fife Constabulary Headquarters

  Detroit Road

  Glenrothes

  KY62RJ

  8 November 2003

  Dear ACC Lawson,

  I read with interest a newspaper report that Fife Police have instigated a cold case review on unsolved murders. I presume that, among these cases, you will be looking again at the murder of Rosemary Duff.I would like to arrange a meeting with you to discuss this case. I have information which, while perhaps not directly relevant, may contribute to your understanding of the background.

  Please do not dismiss this letter as the work of some crank. I have reason to believe that the police were not aware of this information at the time of the original investigation.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours sincerely, Graham Macfadyen.

  Graham Macfadyen dressed carefully. He wanted to make the right impression on ACC Lawson. He'd been afraid the policeman would write off his letter as the work of some attention-seeking nutter. But to his surprise, he'd had a reply by return of post. What was even more surprising was that Lawson himself had written, asking him to call to arrange an appointment. He'd expected the ACC would pass his letter on to whichever of his minions was dealing with the case. It impressed him that the police were clearly taking the matter so seriously. When he'd rung, Lawson had suggested they meet at Macfadyen's home in St. Monans. "More informal than here at headquarters," he'd said. Macfadyen suspected that Lawson wanted to see him on his home turf, the better to make an assessment of his mental state. But he had been happy to accept the suggestion, not least because he always hated negotiating the labyrinth of roundabouts which Glenrothes seemed to consist of.

  Macfadyen had spent the previous evening cleaning his living room. He always thought of himself as a relatively tidy man, and it invariably surprised him that there was so much to clear up on those occasions involving the presence of another in his home. Perhaps that was because he so seldom took the opportunity to extend his hospitality. He'd never seen the point of dating and, if he was honest, he didn't feel the lack of a woman in his life. Dealing with his colleagues seemed to use up all the energy he had for social interaction, and he seldom mixed with them out of working hours; just enough not to stand out. He'd learned as a child it was always better to be invisible than to be noticed. But no matter how much time he spent in software development, he never tired of working with the machines. Whether it was surfing the net, exchanging information in newsgroups or playing multi-user games online, Macfadyen was happiest when there was a barrier of silicon between him and the rest of the world. The computer never judged, never found him wanting. People thought computers were complicated and hard to understand, but they were wrong. Computers were predictable and safe. Computers did not let you down. You knew exactly where you were with a computer.

  He studied himself in the mirror. He'd learned that blending in was the perfect way to avoid unwanted attention. Today he wanted to look relaxed, average, unthreatening. Not weird. He knew most people thought anyone who worked in IT was automatically weird, and he didn't want Lawson to jump to the same conclusion. He wasn't weird. Just different. But that was definitely something he didn't want Lawson to pick up on. Slip under their radar, that was the way to get what you wanted.

  He'd settled on a pair of Levis and a Guinness polo shirt. Nothing there to frighten the horses. He ran a comb through his thick dark hair, scowling slightly at his reflection. A woman had once told him he resembled James Dean, but he'd dismissed it as a pathetic attempt to get him to take an interest in her. He slipped on a pair of black leather loafers and glanced at his watch. Ten minutes to kill. Macfadyen walked through to the spare bedroom and sat down at one of the three computers. He had one lie to tell, and if he was going to be convincing, he needed to be calm.

  * * *

  James Lawson drove slowly up Carlton Way. It was a crescent of small detached homes, built in the 1990s to resemble the traditional East Neuk style of houses. The harled walls, steep tiled roofs and crow-stepped gables were all trademarks of the local vernacular architecture, and the houses were individual enough to blend innocuously with their surroundings. About half a mile inland from the fishing village of St. Monans, the houses were perfect for young professionals who couldn't afford the more traditional homes that had been snapped up by incomers who wanted something quaint either to retire to or to let out to holidaymakers.

  Graham Macfadyen's house was one of the smaller ones. Two recep, two beds, Lawson thought. No garage, but enough of a drive to accommodate a couple of small cars. An elderly silver VW Golf sat there presently. Lawson parked on the street and walked up the path, the trousers of his lounge suit flapping against his legs in the stiff breeze from the Firth of Forth. He rang the bell and waited impatiently. He didn't think he'd fancy living somewhere this bleak. Pretty enough in the summer, but grim and dreich on a cold November evening.

  The door opened, revealing a man in his late twenties. Medium height, slim build, Lawson thought automatically. A mop of dark hair, the kind with a wave that's almost impossible to keep looking neat. Blue eyes, deep set, wide cheekbones and a full, almost feminine mouth. No criminal convictions, he knew from his background check. But far too young to have any personal knowledge of the Rosie Duff case. "Mr. Macfadyen?" Lawson said.

  The man nodded. "You must be Assistant Chief Constable Lawson. Is that what I call you?"

  Lawson smiled reassuringly. "No need for rank, Mr. Lawson is fine."

  Macfadyen stepped back. "Come in."

  Lawson followed him down a narrow hallway into a neat living room. A three-piece suite in brown leather faced a TV set next to a video and a DVD player. Shelves on either side held video tapes and DVD boxes. The only other furniture in the room was a cabinet containing glasses and several bottles of malt whiskey. But Lawson only took that in later. What hit him between the eyes was the only picture on the walls. An atmospheric photograph blown up to 20" by 30", it was instantly recognizable to anyone involved with the Rosie Duff case. Taken with the sun low in the sky, it showed the exposed long cists of the Pictish cemetery on Hallow Hill where her dying body had been discovered. Lawson was transfixed. Macfadyen's voice dragged him back to the present.

  "Can I offer you
a drink?" he asked. He stood just inside the doorway, still as prey caught in the gaze of the hunter.

  Lawson shook his head, as much to disperse the image as to refuse the offer. "No thanks." He sat down, the assurance of years as a police officer granting him permission.

  Macfadyen came into the room and settled in the armchair opposite. Lawson couldn't read him at all, which he found faintly unsettling. "You said in your letter that you have some information on the Rosemary Duff case?" he began cautiously.

  "That's right." Macfadyen leaned forward slightly. "Rosie Duff was my mother."

  20

  December 2003

  The cannibalized timer from a video recorder; a paint tin; quarter of a liter of petrol; odds and ends of fuse wire. Nothing remarkable, nothing that might not be found in any jumbled collection of domestic flotsam in any cellar or garden shed. Innocuous enough.

  Except when combined in one particular configuration. Then it becomes something entirely undomesticated.

  The timer reached the set date and time; a spark crossed a gap of wire and ignited the petrol vapor. The lid of the tin exploded upward, spraying the surrounding waste paper and offcuts of wood with flaming petrol. A textbook operation, perfect and deadly.

  Flames found fresh fodder in rolls of discarded carpet, half-empty paint pots, the varnished hull of a dinghy. Fiberglass and outboard fuel, garden furniture and aerosol cans turned into torches and flame-throwers as the fire built in intensity. Cinders skyrocketed upward, like a cheapskate's firework display.

  Above it all, smoke gathered. While the fire roared at the darkness below, the fumes drifted through the house, lazily at first and then growing in intensity. The outriders were invisible, thin vapors oozing through floorboards and wafting upward on drafts of hot air. They were enough to make the sleeping man cough uneasily but not sufficiently acrid to waken him. As the smoke followed, it became perceptible, wraiths of mist eerie in the patches of moonlight cast by uncurtained windows. The smell, too, became palpable, an alert for anyone in a position to heed it. However, the smoke had already dulled the responses of the sleeping man. If someone had shaken his shoulder, he might have been able to rouse himself and stagger to the window and its promise of safety. But he was beyond self-help. Sleep was becoming unconsciousness. And soon, unconsciousness would give way to death.