A Darker Domain

by Val McDermid

  ‘We’ll find a donor. Or they’ll find a treatment. All this stem cell research, it’s moving really fast.’

  ‘Not fast enough for Luke,’ Misha said, the familiar sensation of weight in her stomach slowing her steps. ‘John, please. I need to go to Nottingham. I need you to take a couple of days off work, cover for me with Luke.’

  ‘You don’t need to go. You can talk to the guy on the phone.’

  ‘It’s not the same. You know that. When you’re dealing with clients, you don’t do it over the phone. Not for anything important. You go out and see them. You want to see the whites of their eyes. All I’m asking is for you to take a couple of days off, to spend time with your son.’

  His eyes flashed dangerously and she knew she’d gone too far. John shook his head stubbornly. ‘Just make the phone call, Misha.’

  And that was that. Long experience with her husband had taught her that when John took a position he believed was right, going over the same ground only gave him the opportunity to build stronger fortifications. She had no fresh arguments that could challenge his decision. So here she was, sitting on the floor, trying to shape sentences in her head that would persuade Logan Laidlaw to tell her what had happened to her father since he’d walked out on her more than twenty-two years earlier.

  Her mother hadn’t given her much to base a strategy on. Laidlaw was a waster, a womanizer, a man who, at thirty, had still acted like a teenager. He’d been married and divorced by twenty-five, building the sour reputation of a man who was too handy with his fists around women. Misha’s picture of her father was patchy and partial, but even with the bias imposed by her mother, Mick Prentice didn’t sound like the sort of man who would have had much time for Logan Laidlaw. Still, hard times made for strange company.

  At last, Misha picked up the phone and keyed in the number she’d tracked down via internet searches and directory enquiries. He’d probably be out at work, she thought on the fourth ring. Or asleep.

  The sixth ring cut off abruptly. A deep voice grunted an approximate hello.

  ‘Is that Logan Laidlaw?’ Misha said, working to keep her voice level.

  ‘I’ve got a kitchen and I don’t want any insurance.’ The Fife accent was still strong, the words bumping into each other with the familiar rise and fall.

  ‘I’m not trying to sell you anything, Mr Laidlaw. I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘Aye, right. And I’m the Prime Minister.’

  She could sense he was on the point of ending the call. ‘I’m Mick Prentice’s daughter,’ she blurted out, strategy hopelessly holed beneath the waterline. Across the distance, she could hear the liquid wheeze of his breathing. ‘Mick Prentice from Newton of Wemyss,’ she tried.

  ‘I know where Mick Prentice is from. What I don’t know is what Mick Prentice has to do with me.’

  ‘Look, I realize the two of you might not see much of each other these days, but I’d really appreciate anything you could tell me. I really need to find him.’ Misha’s own accent slipped a few gears till she was matching his own broad tongue.

  A pause. Then, with a baffled note, ‘Why are you talking to me? I haven’t seen Mick Prentice since I left Newton of Wemyss way back in 1984.’

  ‘OK, but even if you split up as soon as you got to Nottingham, you must have some idea of where he ended up, where he was heading for?’

  ‘Listen, hen, I don’t have a clue what you’re on about. What do you mean, split up as soon as we got to Nottingham?’ He sounded irritated, what little patience he had evaporating in the heat of her demands.

  Misha gulped a deep breath then spoke slowly. ‘I just want to know what happened to my dad after you got to Nottingham. I need to find him.’

  ‘Are you wrong in the head or something, lassie? I’ve no idea what happened to your dad after I came to Nottingham, and here’s for why. I was in Nottingham and he was in Newton of Wemyss. And even when we were both in the same place, we weren’t what you would call pals.’

  The words hit like a splash of cold water. Was there something wrong with Logan Laidlaw’s memory? Was he losing his grip on the past. ‘No, that’s not right,’ she said. ‘He came to Nottingham with you.’

  A bark of laughter, then a gravel cough. ‘Somebody’s been winding you up, lassie,’ he wheezed. ‘Trotsky would have crossed a picket line before the Mick Prentice I knew. What makes you think he came to Nottingham?’

  ‘It’s not just me. Everybody thinks he went to Nottingham with you and the other men.’

  ‘That’s mental. Why would anybody think that? Do you not know your own family history?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Christ, lassie, your great-grandfather. Your father’s granddad. Do you not know about him?’

  Misha had no idea where this was going but at least he hadn’t hung up on her as she’d earlier feared he would. ‘He was dead before I was even born. I don’t know anything about him, except that he was a miner too.’

  ‘Jackie Prentice,’ Laidlaw said with something approaching relish. ‘He was a strike breaker back in 1926. After it was settled, he had to be moved to a job on the surface. When your life depends on the men in your team, you don’t want to be a scab underground. Not unless everybody else is in the same boat, like with us. Christ knows why Jackie stayed in the village. He had to take the bus to Dysart to get a drink. There wasn’t a bar in any of the Wemyss villages that would serve him. So your dad and your granddad had to work twice as hard as anybody else to be accepted down the pit. No way would Mick Prentice throw that respect away. He’d sooner starve. Aye, and see you starve with him. Wherever you got your info, they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.’

  ‘My mother told me. It’s what everybody says in the Newton.’ The impact of his words left her feeling as if all the air had been sucked from her.

  ‘Well, they’re wrong. Why would anybody think that?’

  ‘Because the night you went to Nottingham was the last night anyone in the Newton saw him or heard from him. And because my mother occasionally gets money in the post with a Nottingham postmark.’

  Laidlaw breathed heavily, a concertina wheeze in her ear. ‘By Christ, that’s wild. Well, sweetheart, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There was five of us left Newton of Wemyss that December night. But your dad wasn’t among us.’

  Wednesday 27th June 2007; Glenrothes

  Karen stopped at the canteen for a chicken salad sandwich on the way back to her desk. Criminals and witnesses could seldom fool Karen, but when it came to food, she could fool herself seventeen ways before breakfast. The sandwich, for example. Wholegrain bread, a swatch of wilted lettuce, a couple of slices of tomato and cucumber, and it became a health food. Never mind the butter and the mayo. In her head, the calories were cancelled by the benefits. She tucked her notebook under her arm and ripped open the plastic sandwich box as she walked.

  Phil Parhatka looked up as she flopped into her chair. Not for the first time, the angle of his head reminded her that he looked like a darker, skinnier version of Matt Damon. There was the same jut of nose and jaw, the straight brows, The Bourne Identity haircut, the expression that could swing from open to guarded in a heartbeat. Just the colouring was different. Phil’s Polish ancestry was responsible for his dark hair, brown eyes and thick pale skin; his personality had contributed the tiny hole in his left earlobe, a piercing that generally accommodated a diamond stud when he was off duty. ‘How was it for you?’ he said.

  ‘More interesting than I expected,’ she admitted, getting up again to fetch herself a Diet Coke. Between bites and swallows, she gave him a concise précis of Misha Gibson’s story.

  ‘And she believes what this old geezer in Nottingham told her?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and linking his fingers behind his head.

  ‘I think she’s the sort of woman who generally believes what people tell her,’ Karen said.

  ‘She’d make a lousy copper, then. So, I take it you’ll be passing it across to Cen
tral Division to get on with?’

  Karen took a chunk out of her sandwich and chewed vigorously, the muscles of her jaw and temple bulging and contracting like a stress ball under pressure. She swallowed before she’d finished chewing properly then washed the mouthful down with a swig of Diet Coke. ‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of interesting.’

  Phil gave her a wary look. ‘Karen, it’s not a cold case. It’s not ours to play with.’

  ‘If I pass it over to Central, it’ll wither on the vine. Nobody over there’s going to bother with a case where the trail went cold twenty-two years ago.’ She refused to meet his disapproving eye. ‘You know that as well as I do. And according to Misha Gibson, her kid’s drinking in the last-chance saloon.’

  ‘That still doesn’t make it a cold case.’

  ‘Just because it wasn’t opened in 1984 doesn’t mean it’s not cold now.’ Karen waved the remains of her sandwich at the files on her desk. ‘And none of this lot is going anywhere any time soon. Darren Anderson - nothing I can do till the cops in the Canaries get their fingers out and find which bar his ex-girl friend’s working in. Ishbel Mackindoe - waiting for the lab to tell me if they can get any viable DNA from the anonymous letters. Patsy Millar - can’t get any further with that till the Met finish digging up the garden in Haringey and do the forensics.’

  ‘There’s witnesses in the Patsy Millar case that we could talk to again.’

  Karen shrugged. She knew she could pull rank on Phil and shut him up that way, but she needed the ease between them too much. ‘They’ll keep. Or else you can take one of the DCs and give them some on-the-job training.’

  ‘If you think they need on-the-job training, you should give them this stone-cold missing person case. You’re a DI now, Karen. You’re not supposed to be chasing about on stuff like this.’ He waved a hand towards the two DCs sitting at their computers. ‘That’s for the likes of them. What this is about is that you’re bored.’ Karen tried to protest but Phil carried on regardless. ‘I said when you took this promotion that flying a desk would drive you mental. And now look at you. Sneaking cases out from under the woolly suits at Central. Next thing, you’ll be going off to do your own interviews.’

  ‘So?’ Karen screwed up the sandwich container with more force than was strictly necessary and tossed it in the bin. ‘It’s good to keep my hand in. And I’ll make sure it’s all above board. I’ll take DC Murray with me.’

  ‘The Mint?’ The tone in Phil’s voice was incredulous, the look on his face offended. ‘You’d take the Mint over me?’

  Karen smiled sweetly. ‘You’re a sergeant now, Phil. A sergeant with ambitions. Staying in the office and keeping my seat warm will help your aspirations become a reality. Besides, the Mint’s not as bad as you make out. He does what he’s told.’

  ‘So does a collie dog. But a dog would show more initiative.’

  ‘There’s a kid’s life at stake, Phil. I’ve got more than enough initiative for both of us. This needs to be done right and I’m going to make sure it is.’ She turned to her computer with an air of having finished with the conversation.

  Phil opened his mouth to say more, then thought better of it when he saw the repressive glance Karen flashed in his direction. They’d been drawn to each other from the start of their careers, each recognizing nonconformist tendencies in the other. Having come up the ranks together had left the pair of them with a friendship that had survived the challenge of altered status. But he knew there were limits to how far he could push Karen and he had a feeling he’d just butted up against them. ‘I’ll cover for you here, then,’ he said.

  ‘Works for me,’ Karen said, her fingers flying over the keys. ‘Book me out for tomorrow morning. I’ve a feeling Jenny Prentice might be a wee bit more forthcoming to a pair of polis than she was to her daughter.’

  Thursday 28th June 2007; Edinburgh

  Learning to wait was one of the lessons in journalism that courses didn’t teach. When Bel Richmond had had a fulltime job on a Sunday paper, she had always maintained that she was paid, not for a forty-hour week, but for the five minutes when she talked her way across a doorstep that nobody else had managed to cross. That left a lot of time for waiting. Waiting for someone to return a call. Waiting for the next stage of the story to break. Waiting for a contact to turn into a source. Bel had done a lot of waiting and, while she’d become skilled at it, she had never learned to love it.

  She had to admit she’d passed the time in surroundings that were a lot less salubrious than this. Here, she had the physical comforts of coffee, biscuits and newspapers. And the room she’d been left in commanded the panoramic view that had graced a million shortbread tins. Running the length of Princes Street, it featured a clutch of keynote tourist sights - the castle, the Scott Monument, the National Gallery and Princes Street Gardens. Bel spotted other significant architectural eye candy but she didn’t know enough about the city to identify it. She’d only visited the Scottish capital a few times and conducting this meeting here hadn’t been her choice. She’d wanted it in London, but her reluctance to show her hand in advance had turfed her out of the driving seat and into the role of supplicant.

  Unusually for a freelance journalist, she had a temporary research assistant. Jonathan was a journalism student at City University and he’d asked his tutor to assign him to Bel for his work experience assignment. Apparently he liked her style. She’d been mildly gratified by the compliment but delighted at the prospect of having eight weeks free from drudgery. And so it had been Jonathan who had made the first contact with Maclennan Grant Enterprises. The message he’d returned with had been simple. If Ms Richmond was not prepared to state her reason for wanting a meeting with Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant, Sir Broderick was not prepared to meet her. Sir Broderick did not give interviews. Further arm’s-length negotiations had led to this compromise.

  And now Bel was, she thought, being put in her place. Being forced to cool her heels in a hotel meeting room. Being made to understand that someone as important as the personal assistant to the chairman and principal shareholder of the country’s twelfth most valuable company had more pressing calls on her time than dancing attendance on some London hack.

  She wanted to get up and pace, but she didn’t want to reveal any lack of composure. Giving up the high ground was not something that had ever come naturally to her. Instead she straightened her jacket, made sure her shirt was tucked in properly and picked a stray piece of grit from her emerald suede shoes.

  At last, precisely fifteen minutes after the agreed time, the door opened. The women who entered in a flurry of tweed and cashmere resembled a school mistress of indeterminate age but one accustomed to exerting discipline over her pupils. For one crazy moment, Bel nearly jumped to her feet in a Pavlovian response to her own teenage memories of terrorist nuns. But she managed to restrain herself and stood up in a more leisurely manner.

  ‘Susan Charleson,’ the woman said, extending a hand. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. As Harold Macmillan once said, “Events, dear boy. Events.”’

  Bel decided not to point out that Harold Macmillan had been referring to the job of Prime Minister, not wet nurse to a captain of industry. She took the warm dry fingers in her own. A moment’s sharp grip, then she was released. ‘Annabel Richmond.’

  Susan Charleson ignored the armchair opposite Bel and headed instead for the table by the window. Wrong-footed, Bel scooped up her bag and the leather portfolio beside it and followed. The women sat down opposite each other and Susan smiled, her teeth like a line of chalky toothpaste between the dark pink lipstick. ‘You wanted to see Sir Broderick,’ she said. No preamble, no small talk about the view. Just straight to the chase. It was a technique Bel had used herself on occasion, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed the tables being turned.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Susan shook her head. ‘Sir Broderick does not speak to the press. I fear you’ve had a wasted journey. I did explain all that to your assistant, but he
wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

  It was Bel’s turn to produce a smile without warmth. ‘Good for him. I’ve obviously got him well trained. But there seems to be a misunderstanding. I’m not here to beg for an interview. I’m here because I think I have something Sir Broderick will be interested in.’ She lifted the portfolio on to the table and unzipped it. From inside, she took a single A3 sheet of heavyweight paper, face down. It was smeared with dirt and gave off a faint smell, a curious blend of dust, urine and lavender. Bel couldn’t resist a quick teasing look at Susan Charleson. ‘Would you like to see?’ she said, flipping the paper.

  Susan took a leather case from the pocket of her skirt and extracted a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. She perched them on her nose, taking her time about it but her eyes never leaving the stark black-and-white images before her. The silence between the women seemed to expand, and Bel felt almost breathless as she waited for a response. ‘Where did you come by this?’ Susan said, her tone as prim as a Latin mistress.

  Monday 18th June 2007; Campora, Tuscany, Italy.

  At seven in the morning, it was almost possible to believe that the baking heat of the previous ten days might not show up for work. Pearly daylight shimmered through the canopy of oak and chestnut leaves, making visible the motes of dust that spiralled upwards from Bel’s feet. She was moving slowly enough to notice because the unmade track that wound down through the woods was rutted and pitted, the jagged stones scattered over it enough to make any jogger conscious of the fragility of ankles.

  Only two more of these cherished early-morning runs before she’d have to head back to the suffocating streets of London. The thought provoked a tiny tug of regret. Bel loved slipping out of the villa while everyone else was still asleep. She could walk barefoot over cool marble floors, pretending she was chatelaine of the whole place, not just another holiday tenant carving off a slice of borrowed Tuscan elegance.