The Darkness and the Deep

by Aline Templeton

  Janet delivered the information unhesitatingly. They were part of her army of workers and like any good commander she knew who they were and where they were. ‘That’s Enid, there, doing the teas. They closed the surgery, of course, as a mark of respect, and the receptionists came to ask what they could do so we put them on the urns. That’s Cara Christie, and there’s Muriel Henderson, look – spending most of her time blethering as far as I can see.’

  Enid Davis wasn’t blethering. A pleasant-looking woman, neatly dressed in a navy suit, she was filling polystyrene cups with quiet efficiency and handing them out to a seemingly unending queue. The rumour about her and Lewis Randall seemed improbable on the face of it, but perhaps after a beautiful, selfish and (allegedly) unfaithful wife you might fancy a change.

  ‘And that’s Joanna Elder over there – bonny woman, isn’t she?’ Janet broke off. ‘Annie, you’ll need to bring through more shortbread. They’ve been at those plates like gannets.’

  Joanna Elder was, indeed, bonny. Wearing a silk blouse of palest pink under a Chanel-style black bouclé wool suit with chunky gold jewellery, she was nibbling a scone as she stood behind one of the tables. She was enviably slim and certainly didn’t look as if the death of the woman she had described to Tam as a close friend had caused her too many sleepless nights. It was hard to imagine such a dainty creature scrambling over rocks in darkness – but of course she was probably seriously fit, given the gym and the swimming pool.

  Another surge of arrivals obviously marked the end of the burial service for Rob Anderson. Fleming saw that Lewis Randall and his mother were among them, stiff and awkward-looking. Rob must have been his patient so they would have felt reluctantly obliged to put in a token appearance here before the journey to the crematorium. She studied the man with interest; even at this distance you got the impression of an impenetrable reserve.

  Following them was a little knot of people clustered round Katy Anderson and the crowd parted respectfully as they went down the hall. A short, burly man had his arm round the widow’s shoulders and Ritchie Elder, looking tired and drawn, was just behind as they reached the urn where Enid Davis was serving tea.

  The women seemed to know each other. Fleming saw what was almost a smile come to Katy’s face and she began a low-voiced conversation with Enid as one of the men took a cup of tea from her and put it into Katy’s hand. A few minutes later Joanna Elder went across and seemed to be offering formal condolences.

  Her work of identification finished, Fleming glanced round the hall. There was quite a number of people she knew but, though they might nod and smile politely, they avoided conversation. She was marked out as being here in her official capacity and the police failure to reassure a shaken and anxious community with an immediate arrest was being laid at her door. And perhaps they were right, at that. It was a bad feeling.

  There was nothing more useful she could do and there would be the usual mountain of paperwork on her desk; if she planned to be home for supper tonight it would make sense to go back and tackle it now. Tam and Tansy were still here; she’d spotted Tam talking to a group of older men and Tansy, having drifted around with a cup in her hand discreetly eavesdropping, was now speaking to Katy Anderson, Enid Davis and Joanna Elder. It would be interesting to hear her report; a good girl, Tansy, and learning all the time.

  Fleming couldn’t see Jon, though. He seemed to play his cards very close to his chest and it was fair enough for Tam to hint that he wasn’t a team player. But the reports he’d turned in were good stuff and if you wanted to use intelligent people you had to give them the chance to prove themselves.

  She was just on the point of looking for Bill again to say goodbye when there was a loud banging on a table. The man she had seen with Katy Anderson was on the platform, waiting for silence. ‘That’s never Willie Duncan going to make a speech!’ she heard someone say incredulously.

  He began by denying it. ‘I’m not making a speech. I’m just saying Katy here’ll be needing a wee hand in the pub for the next bit. I’m doing tomorrow night and down there’s a list you can put your name to.’ He stepped down, his reputation for taciturnity untarnished, and from all across the hall men started forward to volunteer.

  Fleming smiled. There were drawbacks to village life, but the generosity of the support you got at times like this more than made up for them. And she didn’t envy Willie’s job tomorrow night; the pub would be packed to the doors. It wasn’t often you had solidarity as an excuse for a few wee bevvies.

  No doubt Tam would be putting in for a surveillance detail on that one, but if he thought he was going to get overtime he’d another think coming. A couple of halves of shandy on the taxpayer was her best offer.

  Ritchie Elder’s eyes were fixed steadfastly on the road as he drove home with his wife after the funeral tea, but his mind was far away. They would be committing her body to the flames now, Ashley’s soft, exquisite body, the source of so much delight. His throat constricted; with a physical effort he set his jaw and suppressed the emotion which had left him weeping night after night. They had told him what she’d looked like when they found her and he wished they hadn’t. It all seemed to have got worse, not better, after the first shock wore off, and he could almost feel his self-control disintegrating.

  He’d moved into one of the spare rooms, making the excuse that with so much on his mind he wasn’t sleeping well and didn’t want to disturb Joanna. He hadn’t said that waking from a restless dream of Ashley, alive and warm and responsive, to touch alien female flesh was intolerable. The dreams where Ashley was cold and dead, with a featureless horror which had been her face, were worse.

  Joanna hadn’t demurred. Joanna had been smiling and sympathetic, understanding about his all too evident distress. The responsibility, she had murmured, the Press . . .

  He’d accepted that response with unreflective gratitude. In his life to date, reflection had been something to do with mirrors and you only went in for analysis if you were a chemist. The game was every man for himself; you dealt with problems with buccaneering zest and when you went to bed you fell asleep immediately after you made love to whoever was lying next to you.

  He’d let Ashley, somehow, slip under his guard and he was paying for it now. Wakefulness, in the black hours between midnight and dawn, was a new experience. Suddenly, stealthily, he was being encircled by the emotions he had never even recognised before: love and grief and now fear – fear, fear, fear.

  Even in the darkness he felt he was being watched, as if he were under a spotlight while They lurked in the darkness beyond. A woman’s face with a cold, penetrating gaze kept coming into his mind, the face of the policewoman who had interviewed him the day after the wreck. He had never had a problem dealing with women. If they stood up to him when he tried to browbeat them, he rather liked it. They wouldn’t win the argument, but they could have a bit of fun struggling.

  She hadn’t bothered to take him on. It was as if she was so much in control of the situation that it wasn’t worth her while, and that scared him. Women, in his experience, didn’t act like that. Perhaps he didn’t know as much about women as he would like to think. Joanna, for instance . . .

  Had she really known nothing, suspected nothing? Never heard the gossip, never been troubled by his own distaste for the emaciated body which had somehow become a weapon used against him in their childless marriage?

  He stole a glance at her. She seemed perfectly relaxed in the silence which had lasted since they left Knockhaven, her small neat hands with their pink-tinted nails clasped loosely in her lap. And – or was it his imagination? – the gaunt contours of her face seemed softer, somehow, more rounded. He realised he hadn’t seen her in the gym since it all happened.

  Aware of his regard, she turned and smiled. He smiled back, somehow, but the thought having entered his head couldn’t be shaken out. It had never occurred to him before to wonder what Joanna was like, as a person; she was just his wife, a fixture in his life, until the day came
when Ashley had changed all that. After that, Joanna had become an encumbrance in his eyes, treated almost with contempt.

  Had she really noticed nothing? he asked himself again. What if she had known, all along? What if she had watched, and waited and then – acted? Someone had.

  There was the house now. He turned in and as he parked the Mitsubishi by the front door, Joanna leaned across to pat his hand. ‘You go into the sitting room, darling, and I’ll bring you a stiff whisky. You need it, after all that. It’s been a hellish day.’ She jumped down and let herself into the house ahead of him.

  The perfect wife. He followed her more slowly. Perhaps whisky was the answer – a lot of whisky. He couldn’t think of any other way of dealing with the problems that were making his head feel as if it might burst.

  There wasn’t much pleasure in a night down the pub when you could barely raise your elbow for the heaving, sweaty mass of bodies and you were having to drive back afterwards anyway, Tam MacNee reflected morosely. He’d managed to take part of the day off, seeing it was Sunday, and he hadn’t felt a bit like leaving Bunty and his own fireside.

  Most of Knockhaven seemed to have turned out to show support and in the Anchor this evening, the condensation running down the inside of the windows was almost as bad as the rain now streaming down the outside. Behind the bar, Willie Duncan and three of his mates were hard at it, inexpertly pulling pints and serving shots in hastily washed, smeary glasses.

  The worst of it was, MacNee wasn’t getting anywhere. He’d had a lot of grief from the punters – jokes, questions, sly remarks and downright aggro about the lack of progress. Even the jokes had an undertone of uneasiness; the whole town was on edge even as they made a show of going about business as usual. He hadn’t picked up anything either new or useful from the general conversations, which rapidly took refuge in the safe topic of football, and while he had nothing against discussion of the Beautiful Game, it wasn’t enough to justify a car journey on a dirty night like this. Shandy had a limited appeal too. He might as well cut his losses and head for home. He was edging his way gloomily towards the bar to return his empty glass when a burst of raucous laughter made him turn his head.

  A group of young men had colonised the corner to his right. They weren’t quite drunk yet, just well on the way. MacNee was familiar with several of them, including Willie Duncan’s son Ryan, all jobless and at least a couple with drugs raps on their record. He’d be astonished if the rest of them were clean.

  He didn’t recognise the one who was the centre of their attention, wearing a ripped black T-shirt and with hair gelled into spikes. There was a stud glinting in the side of his nose and he had a cluster of dull metal earrings; a vivid snake tattoo coiled up the side of his neck. ‘Here, mate – it’s your shout!’ he called to a red-haired boy with a nasty case of acne, then he added a remark which MacNee couldn’t catch, but which provoked another burst of laughter.

  The accent – MacNee couldn’t quite place it. Scots, obviously, and definitely not local, with that sort of urban edge to it. Alarm bells jangled: someone new on the patch, down from the big city, hanging around with this lot – he might just as well be holding a placard above his head with ‘drugs scene’ written on it. Things were messy enough here already without a turf war starting. He was beginning to edge discreetly closer when the spike-haired youth, as if feeling eyes upon him, turned his head.

  MacNee felt his jaw physically drop. Blandly, DC Kingsley allowed his eyes to slide off the other detective’s face, then turned back to take his pint from his red-haired companion. ‘Here – you’ve slopped this, Dougie!’ he complained. ‘Gie’s a wee sook of yours to make up.’

  The voices rose again in joking argument as MacNee set down his own empty glass and shouldered his way through to the door, oblivious to the drinks he too managed to slop on the way and to the imprecations that followed, half-blind with rage.

  Operation Songbird had been his initiative. He’d been working on it for weeks now, getting to know the players, getting accepted as just another bloke in the bar even if he was in the polis, cannily pulling together all the tiny scraps of information until they led him to Willie Duncan. Willie wasn’t the big man, but he was working for him and knew who the big man was. MacNee had been close to breaking him too; the last time they’d talked he could see Willie struggling between fear of reprisal and desperation to have the questioning stop. He’d seen it in a hundred criminal confessions – the moment when the balance tipped – and he’d been almost there. With all that had happened, the moment slipped away, but MacNee would get back to him again. And again. And again. And he’d break, eventually.

  Kingsley had been told, in no uncertain terms, the limits of his brief, and he’d blatantly ignored them. That could be a great big black mark on the cocky sod’s precious professional record.

  His head down, MacNee ran along Shore Street towards his car in the darkness and teeming rain. Its stinging freshness was almost welcome after the stale, unhealthy atmosphere inside. As he licked at the raindrops trickling down his upper lip, his temper began to cool as well.

  After all, what could he really claim to have achieved recently? Tonight had been a complete bust and the plan to bring more pressure to bear on Willie had to be at best medium term, if the man was refusing to speak to him at the moment.

  Kingsley was in there talking to the right people and he looked the part – even the tattoo looked kosher. And the bastard had managed to sound the part too, which was harder still. It was a classy operation. Sooner rather than later, he’d be put on to a supplier, getting hold of that elusive end of the thread. To make a complaint would make MacNee look jealous and spiteful. And unprofessional – the very charge he had felt the boss was unfairly levelling at him when Kingsley first arrived.

  It genuinely wasn’t that the man was a Sassenach. Tam had had some rare nights out with English lads who took the jokes and gave as good as they got, to mutual satisfaction. It wasn’t even the degree and the toffee-nosed manner. Well, maybe it was a bit, and he’d bristled too because Marjory had seemed to suggest Kingsley merited special treatment. But he’d have got over that if it wasn’t for the man being only out for himself. He’d no interest in being part of a team. He wanted to do it all, get all the credit going, keep everyone else out of it as if the investigation was his personal property – MacNee stopped. The rain was trickling down the inside of the collar of his leather jacket but he didn’t notice.

  ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!’ Why was it that on the occasions when the Power chose to confer that gift, it so often spoke with Bunty’s voice? ‘You daft fool!’ it was saying to him now. ‘You’re like two cocks crowing over the same midden!’

  He walked on and reaching his car, let himself in. His hair was dripping into his eyes; all he could find to mop it with was the duster he kept to wipe the windows, but it was better than nothing. When he could see again he drove off.

  Maybe the boss had been right about lack of professionalism. Maybe, if he hadn’t been so touchy to start with, they could have been working together on this, actually getting a result. They were on the same side, after all.

  It wasn’t too late. Tomorrow he could go in and congratulate the man, tell him to keep up the good work. It would be the generous thing to do, the right thing to do.

  And, as another voice – which certainly wasn’t Bunty’s – whispered wickedly in his ear, he could fairly enjoy seeing the feet ca’ed away from under Jon Kingsley.

  In his bedroom at the back of the flat above the Anchor, Nat Rettie could hear voices and laughter filtering up from the bar below. He had been playing computer games most of the evening, to blot out his uncomfortable thoughts.

  He’d been less than thrilled to see Kylie this morning. For God’s sake, he was in trouble enough already, without the silly little slapper suggesting taking his mother’s car and going off somewhere while everyone was at the funeral tea. With the Filth all over the town
like a rash!

  It was always the guy that got done for under-age sex – what about the girl? It should be illegal for her to do it too, but oh no, all she would get was sympathy while he took the rap if he got her pregnant. And he’d a nasty feeling Kylie quite fancied that, what with one of her sixteen-year-old pals with a baby having her own flat and everything. Nat wasn’t getting into that kind of crap.

  But he daren’t dump her. She could really drop him in it, so he’d just have to sweet-talk her a bit longer, make sure she knew what to say if she was asked. Anyway, he was counting on moving away from here, disappearing for a bit. If he could get his mother to sell the pub there’d be money and she’d probably give him half just to get rid of him. She’d made it pretty clear after she married Rob that Nat was in the way.

  She’d just ignored him since he came back. She didn’t cook for him any more, or do the shopping. Luckily the neighbours were still handing in food and she’d had money in her purse so Nat could buy stuff for himself. When that ran out he could probably nick some from the till in the bar, but what he really wanted was some serious cash so he could get away from this minging place. Certainly the last thing he needed – the very last thing – was all those helpful bastards downstairs interfering, propping her up to keep the pub going till she was ready to take it on again herself.

  He’d taken her a cup of tea a few times, been really nice and asked how she was and all that stuff, but she only looked at him as if she didn’t know who he was. She spent all her time shut in the lounge reading old letters and looking at photographs and newspapers about every lifeboat rescue there had ever been and how great bloody Rob had been and all.

  Nat tore angrily at the skin round his thumbnail; he’d no nails left to bite. He hated feeling trapped, helpless, with the police sniffing around everywhere. It made him scared, gave him a sort of savage feeling inside.