The Second Strain

by John Burke

  Nick felt a tightening across his chest as Lesley Gunn came into the room. She glanced briefly from him to Mairi, and then apologized for the interruption.

  ‘But I do have to take a statement from Mr Erskine to help us in our enquiries.’

  Erskine looked her up and down, his eyes widening appreciatively. Nick was tempted to throw a jug of cold water over him. Or tell him to wipe that dirty grin off his face. There did seem to be a solid foundation for all those distasteful rumours about his character.

  ‘What would be the nature of these enquiries, officer?’ leered Erskine.

  ‘We need to establish, sir, the dates when people concerned were still living here, or when they left, and whether they came back.’

  ‘‘People concerned’? Concerned with what?’

  ‘With the circumstances surrounding the death of the woman who has been found in the Academy flue.’

  ‘This is outrageous,’ Mairi burst out. ‘What possible connection could Mr Erskine have with some sordid murder, long after he left the town?’

  Nick watched the slight tremor of Lesley’s lips. She looked once more at him, then away again. ‘What year did you leave Kilstane, Mr Erskine?’

  ‘God knows. Somewhere in the late sixties.’

  ‘You left on your own, after your . . . accident?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have a devoted following.’

  ‘Mr Buchanan has suggested in a roundabout way to one of my colleagues that his daughter —’

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Mairi.

  ‘Buchanan?’ Erskine laughed. ‘Like all staunch believers in Holy Writ, he’s always been a great one for improbable yarns.’

  ‘His daughter did not accompany you?’

  Erskine seemed to be gloating over her — whether because she was so slim and attractive, or because he was enjoying tantalizing her, it was impossible to tell. ‘Not that I recall, no.’

  ‘You mean she definitely didn’t?’

  ‘I think I’d have remembered. She wasn’t what you’d call desirable. Looked too much like her father.’

  ‘And you didn’t come back to Kilstane at any time, for a visit, or to —’

  ‘I’ve never been back to this accursed place until now. And from what I remember of Buchanan’s daughter, she was having it off with someone called Gallaher, or Gaffney, or something. An Irishman. One of Buchanan’s labourers. Now I look back’ — he rubbed his eyes with one leathered stump — ‘I think the whole town knew it. Except Buchanan. Maybe the two of them cleared off to Ireland. And maybe her father would rather boast about her clearing off with a distinguished composer-to-be than an Irish brickie. Though in view of what he’s said about me, that doesn’t seem likely, does it?’ He rasped another laugh, and produced another burp. ‘I tell you one thing, though, Miss Sleuth. Never believe a word any of that lot tell you. They’re too stupid to know the truth when it hits them in the face. Which it may well do when I get round to telling them. Oh, I could tell you a lot about the con-men in this town.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Lesley.

  He rubbed his eyes again with his right glove as if daylight was hurting them. ‘All in good time. My own good time.’

  Nick was startled by Lesley’s sudden change of tack. ‘Did your boyhood friend McCabe ever come back?’

  There was a long pause. Then Erskine’s eyelids began to droop again. ‘Don’t see how he could. Poor old Jan.’

  ‘I thought his name was Ian when you knew him.’

  ‘Ian . . . Jan. Quite a lad. I ought never to have . . .’ It faded into a mumble. Erskine’s eyes finally closed and his head lolled back against the arm of the settee. Nick wondered if he was genuinely befuddled, or was contriving a tactical retreat; and wondered whether that had occurred to Lesley too.

  He said: ‘I’m sorry, he’s not terribly clear about things this afternoon. You’d better come back another day.’

  ‘If it’s really essential,’ said Mairi tartly. ‘A complete waste of everybody’s time, so far as I can see. It’s all too vague, all in the past. You don’t really know what questions to ask, do you? So it’s just insinuations. A lot of nonsense.’

  Lesley shrugged, defeated. ‘From this weekend on, I’m off the case.’

  Nick felt another tug across his chest. ‘Giving it up?’

  ‘A Sergeant Elliot will be tidying up the loose ends. But I’m ordered back to HQ.’

  ‘Loose ends? And then it’s being written off, this murder?’

  ‘No case is ever written off,’ said Lesley stiffly. ‘It may have to go on the back burner, but the flame’s only turned low, never turned off entirely. Not until the case is well and truly wrapped up.’

  She looked regretfully at Erskine’s sprawled body, clearly wishing she could have had a couple of definite dates, a couple of indisputable facts, to justify her visit.

  ‘Well . . .’

  Nick held out his hand. Her eyes met his in a moment of even worse puzzlement and uncertainty than she had shown towards Erskine.

  ‘Remember’ — Nick had let go of her hand, but was still trying to hold on to her in some way —’ if things don’t work out, there’s still that other opening we discussed.’

  ‘Thank you. I don’t think the question will arise.’

  After Lesley had gone, Mairi said: ‘Poor Nick.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I knew you’d fall well and truly in love one day.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake . . . I rather like . . . I mean, I admire the girl, but it hasn’t gone that far.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it has. Too far to turn back now. It hurts, doesn’t it? Me, I’ve always felt that a regular diet of uncomplicated lust is the healthier option.’

  *

  Through the window of his shop Lesley saw that Adam Lowther was busy. The town was filling up and visitors were picking up leaflets, studying some sheets of music, and reading the backs of CD cases. She hesitated. This was no moment for a final attempt to fill in blanks on a timetable of the past. She had been bluntly instructed to hand over to Elliot, write up her report, and deliver it to the Super when she got back. What awaited her in his office was still shrouded in mystery.

  She couldn’t help herself. As the customers drifted out, some with their purchases and some empty-handed, she let one of them hold the door open for her and went in.

  ‘Ah. Inspector.’ Lowther did not sound very welcoming.

  She said: ‘Just one point I’d like to clear up. Can you tell me the exact date your father left Kilstane?’

  ‘What on earth . . .? I know it was some time in 1981 . . . or was it ’82? I could look it up, I suppose. But what’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I’m trying to establish everyone’s movements around the time we believe that that unfortunate woman was killed.’

  ‘Just a minute. Are you trying to imply . . .’ He had been standing behind the glass-topped counter. Now he began to move round it, pale with anger. ‘This is disgraceful. Bloody disgraceful. Why should my father —’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s simply a matter of routine. If we can eliminate —’

  ‘Eliminate? My father’s been dead for years, but I don’t see why his memory should be dirtied by your shifty insinuations.’

  ‘Mr Lowther . . .’

  Behind her the door opened and three young men came in, one of them heading for the display of guitar strings and two shuffling along the display of cassettes and CDs.

  Adam Lowther was trying to keep them under observation while still glowering at her. ‘If there’s nothing else?’ he said.

  Nothing that could be said in front of other people. And he certainly wasn’t going to shut up shop for her benefit and submit to her questioning. ‘I could look it up, I suppose,’ was the most she was going to get. She left.

  When she had finished writing up her notes she could not sit still indoors. Questions kept hammering away in her mind. She resented being taken off the case in this offhanded way. Was she to be shunted into m
ore menial jobs rather than the specialist work for which she was qualified?

  Apply for a transfer? Approach someone in Edinburgh? Or make a clean break and see what her contacts in the Arts and Antiques group in London could come up with? Start afresh, instead of floundering, snared here in the past.

  The past . . . A past inhabited by a younger Erskine, a shadowy McCabe, Adam Lowther’s father now dead, a skeletal woman now dead. Music from the past, murder from the past.

  She had to get out of this room. She walked round the town, across the square where the usual groups of teenagers lounged in resentful groups, waiting for someone to spur them on into some bout of vandalism, and down to the river. The evening sky was waking up rather than going to sleep. Faintly pink clouds, streaked with dark grey, acquired outlines of orange blood. The distant moors began to shiver with liquid fire like a lava flow, and against it stood the dark rocky silhouette of Black Knowe.

  Old ghosts could come riding out of that backdrop. Reivers crossing the Border to steal more cattle and shed more blood. And the family feuds, generation after generation, lasting on into the world of the Buchanans and Kerrs. The past would never be dead.

  Still the tangled net of it all was wrapped round her and the whole town like strands of a thickening cobweb in the dusk.

  Erskine and that strange woman Mairi McLeod. A hunch that there must have been something between Mairi McLeod and Nick Torrance some way back. And what about herself and Nick Torrance? A past that had never resolved itself. And now never would. She told herself that as firmly as possible. It never would come to anything.

  She tried to shake it off. To be rid of all of it.

  Instead of all these smouldering fag-ends of the past, did nothing ever happen here and now, in the present, right in front of you where you could get at it?

  *

  In the morning, while it was only just becoming light, she was awoken by the mobile phone beside her bed. Sergeant Elliot started her day with the news that Daniel Erskine had been murdered.

  Chapter Five

  Maitland’s voice on the phone was incredulous and a shrill half octave higher than usual. ‘Another death? Good God, I’m beginning to think there’s a jinx on you, Gunn. I seem to remember another incident of murders taking place right under your nose while you were supposed to be investigating something else.’

  ‘One can’t predict these things, sir.’

  ‘Too damn right one can’t. What the hell happened?’

  Lesley summed up, keeping her voice as brisk and neutral as possible. Daniel Erskine’s body had been found at three o’clock in the morning halfway up a cobbled wynd in the centre of Kilstane. The side of his head had been severely battered and led to his death on the spot.

  ‘Any trace of the murder weapon?’

  ‘It was left near the body, sir. A large electric guitar.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A large guitar, sir. The sort used by pop groups. And we’ve got more than a few of those round here right now.’

  ‘Any idea of which of ’em might have done it?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Better stay where you are, then. For the time being. See what you can do about setting up an incident room ready for a full-scale inquiry.’

  ‘Sir, there isn’t a spare couple of square feet in the town. We’ve got a music festival just starting.’

  ‘Festival? When the star turn’s just been done in? Are they going ahead with the thing?’

  ‘That’s one thing we’ll have to find out, sir. But in any event, people are still here. The place is crowded. And all the concert venues have been booked. The old school, the Town Hall, the Tolbooth. And every pub and B-and-B for miles around — all taken. And the nick here is too cramped.’

  ‘Throw somebody out.’

  ‘On what authority, sir?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. All right. Get in touch with MacLeish at Wallace Street yard. I’ll clear an incident caravan for you. Tell him exactly where you want it, and be ready to get it connected up, wherever that is.’

  ‘And sir . . .’

  ‘Yes, what is it now?’

  ‘The festival itself. Ought we to recommend calling it off?’

  There was a long pause. The answer, when it came, was peevish. ‘You talk about authorization, Gunn. Where d’you think I could get authority for that, at short notice? The bloody people are already there, you’ve said yourself, swarming all over the place. If the organizers want to send them home, that’s up to them. But unless they’re likely to start a riot, what reason do we have for asking the Procurator Fiscal or the Sheriff to intervene?’

  ‘They’d be more likely to get nasty if everything was cancelled,’ Lesley agreed, ‘than if it just goes ahead.’

  ‘That’s it, then. Just concentrate on the murder until I get a Senior Investigating Officer to take over. And keep me informed.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘I fancy I’ll be sending DCI Rutherford as SIO. You’ve worked with him before. I’m sure you remember his methods.’

  Oh, yes. DI Gunn remembered Rutherford and his methods all too well. And she could guess what the general tone of his greeting would be the moment he arrived.

  Her prediction was accurate. ‘Out of your depth again, Les? Fancy us being thrown together again like this. You should have got out while the going was good.’

  ‘As I remember it,’ she said, ‘you were the one who told me to stay where I was because my promotion was as good as in the bag. Only it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘You can’t hold that against me. You know how these things go.’

  ‘I do now, yes.’

  ‘Let’s get down to the real business, shall we? Where’s the corpse?’

  She took him to the tent which had been erected over the body. It completely blocked the narrow cobbled slope of Souters Wynd, one end of its roof fastened over the arch of a disused drinking fountain, its flaps twitching intermittently in faint puffs of breeze. Inside, the body of Daniel Erskine was crumpled over the stone bowl of the fountain, his bloodied head sagging into the niche in the wall. One man in white overalls straightened up, pulling off his gloves. Another had been edging round the corpse, taking photographs.

  ‘Head staved in from the side,’ Rutherford said after bending into the recess. ‘And the weapon?’

  The photographer nodded towards the side of the tent. A glow of late morning sunlight turned one wall of the tent golden, and glinted on something lying on the cobbles.

  Rutherford grunted disbelief. ‘A bloody guitar?’

  ‘I think they have a fancy name for it,’ said Lesley. ‘Stratocruiser, or stratocaster, or something like that.’

  ‘Some nut case drugged out of his mind, swinging out halfway through a chorus?’

  A lot of the punk rockers and hip-hop weirdos would certainly have found Daniel Erskine’s music and all he stood for old hat, corny, fuddy duddy, past its sell-by date; but surely not savagely enough to beat him to death?

  A white van had been backing cautiously down the narrow wynd, stopping almost against the tent.

  ‘I think we’ve finished here. We can move him to the morgue.’

  ‘Hold it just a minute.’ Rutherford lifted the flap and looked down the slope. A little knot of gawpers at the foot of the wynd moved away when he took a step out, not anxious to be asked awkward questions. He studied the rise of windowless walls on either side. ‘Was he walking down the alley or upwards?’

  ‘There’s no doorway for anyone to hide in,’ said Lesley. ‘Easier for someone to catch him unawares coming from the top, rather than running uphill carrying that thing.’

  ‘Mm. Or else he just blundered into someone drugged up to the eyeballs who lost his temper, and smashed him one or two.’

  ‘And left the instrument here? They’re pretty expensive.’

  ‘It would have dawned on him that this was no place to be hanging around.’ Rutherford waited for Lesley to accompany him slowly down to the marketpl
ace. ‘Are there a lot of these fancy banjo players in town at the moment?’

  ‘Swarming with them.’

  ‘Oh, great. But there ought to be enough fingerprints on that thing for us to identify one of them. After we’ve worked our way through the whole collection. But where the hell do we start?’

  ‘Adam Lowther.’

  ‘And who’s he?’

  ‘Runs the local music shop. A fanatical admirer of the deceased and his music. Had a lot to do with organizing this festival — and with calling it The Gathering.’

  ‘Let’s go see him.’

  As they emerged from the narrow passage, Galbraith was waiting with his camera. ‘Any chance of a statement, officer? Er . . . officers. Give me an exclusive, and I’ll keep the rest of them off your back.’

  The thought of this seedy little man withstanding the onslaught of determined Press hacks was enough to bring grins to both their faces. Rutherford did not even deign to answer, but waved him aside like a man swatting a fly.

  They found the CLOSED sign in the glass of the music shop door. It took several rings at the door in the pend to bring Nora Lowther down. She nodded as if she had been expecting them, and silently led the way upstairs.

  Adam Lowther was slumped in an armchair, his hands shaking but the rest of his body rigid in a trance of disbelief. He did not wait for the two detectives to introduce themselves, but said: ‘I don’t believe it.’ Then he said it again; and again. And at last: ‘It can’t be true. Can’t be.’

  Nora Lowther indicated that they should sit down.

  ‘Mr Lowther, do you know how Daniel Erskine was killed?’

  ‘Someone says he was . . . beaten up. But who . . . it’s insane. People in this town, after all these years . . .’

  ‘His head was swiped from the side,’ said Rutherford ruthlessly, ‘like someone swinging a caber. Only this was one of those fancy electric guitars you sell. You do sell things like that, I believe?’

  Adam stared at him, stupefied. He shook his head, then nodded. He was still in shock.

  Lesley said: ‘You wouldn’t have sold one to any of the performers here during The Gathering?’

  ‘No. They usually bring their own.’ Adam forced a feeble, ghastly smile. ‘I’d only manage to sell to one of them if he’d smashed his own instrument on stage. They do, you know — jump up and down and then smash their instruments just to drive the crowd wild.’