by Val McDermid
Will sighed, but Alice patted his knee. ‘We understand. We want to get to the bottom of this, the same as you do. Please, sit down.’ She waved at the pair of armchairs at an angle to the sofa.
Jason took the further chair, angling his body away from the couple and taking out his notebook only after Karen had started speaking. The lad was definitely getting better. ‘Let’s go right back to the beginning. I’ve got your address down south here.’ She read it out. ‘Is that correct?’
Alice nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘So can you tell me why you’re here?’
They exchanged a quick glance. ‘It’s a long story,’ she said.
‘We weren’t doing anything wrong,’ Will added hastily.
The perennial cry of the guilty conscience, Karen thought. ‘We’re in no hurry.’ She smiled. ‘Tell me the story.’
Alice untucked her feet and sat up straight, planting her pink woolly socks firmly on the floor. ‘In the Second World War, my grandfather was stationed near here at Clachtorr Lodge. You must have passed it on the way here, it’s that big pile a couple of miles down the road. He was always very cagey about what he did then, but when all these stories started coming out about Bletchley Park and the undercover spies we sent in to Europe, he finally started talking about it. He was employed as an instructor training SOE operatives in survival skills. You know what SOE was, right?’
Karen had a hazy idea. ‘Secret service?’
‘Not quite. It was Churchill’s brainchild. The Special Operations Executive. They were set up to carry out stuff behind enemy lines. Espionage, reconnaissance and sabotage mainly. They did amazing things. And they were all trained up here in the Highlands.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Karen said.
‘The Highlands was a restricted area in the Second World War,’ Jason piped up. ‘You had to have a pass to go north of the Great Glen. And even if you lived here, you had to have written permission to go more than twenty miles from your home. You could end up in jail if you didnae have the right paperwork.’ He caught Karen’s look of surprise. ‘We had a history teacher who went on about how it was like a military coup, how the English treated Scotland like their own personal backyard.’ He gave a slightly embarrassed smile.
‘Thank you, DC Murray. So, Mrs Somerville, your grandfather was up here teaching spies how to live off the land?’
‘More or less. Anyway, when the war ended, they had to withdraw from the area. Apparently, it was more trouble than it was worth to ship a lot of the kit back to wherever it came from, so the instructors and the staff were told to burn everything that was left. That, or bury it.’
‘What? Just dump it?’ Karen’s thrifty soul was outraged.
‘I know, it seems mad. But that’s how it was. Anyway, a couple of weeks before the order came down, they’d taken delivery of two motorbikes from the US Army. Indian Scouts, they were called.’
‘They’re collectors’ items now,’ Will interrupted.
‘Granto – my grandfather – and his mate Kenny fell in love with the bikes. He said they were beautiful examples of engineering. And they couldn’t bring themselves to destroy them. So they came up with a plan. They decided to bury the bikes and come back for them later after everybody had forgotten all about them.’ Alice paused, staring at Karen as if daring her to criticise.
‘That was enterprising,’ Karen said. ‘If marginally illegal.’
‘They weren’t the only ones, according to Alice’s granddad. All sorts of stuff got liberated. And the bikes were only going to be destroyed otherwise,’ Will said. ‘You could argue they were protecting something valuable.’
Karen shook her head. ‘Right now, I’m not interested in debating the rights and wrongs of what your granddad did. What happened after they buried the bikes?’
‘They drew a map. They each kept a copy of it. There weren’t any place names to show where it was, because of course Granto and Kenny knew roughly where they’d put the crates with the bikes. The map was just to remind them of the exact details. And then they went their separate ways. They agreed to wait five years and then they were going to go back and dig them up.’
‘But that didn’t happen.’ Sometimes stating the obvious was the best way to push a story on.
Alice sighed. ‘No. Kenny died. I’m not sure how exactly, all Granto said was that he’d passed away within a year or two of them being demobbed.’
‘So, apart from your grandfather, Kenny was the only one who knew about the bikes?’
She nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘But he might have told his family the story?’
Alice shook her head. ‘He wasn’t married. My granddad went to the funeral, he said the only family Kenny had was his sister, who kept house for him.’
‘Do you know Kenny’s surname? Or his sister’s name?’
Will spoke up. ‘He was called Pascoe. There’s an old photo of them taken at the big house where they were billeted and it says on the back “Austin Hinde and Kenny Pascoe”. Austin was Alice’s grandfather.’
‘He came from the North East,’ Alice added helpfully. ‘Somewhere called Warkworth. I only remember it because Granto used to make a joke out of it. He said going to the funeral in Warkworth was worth the walk.’
Karen flicked a glance at Jason, checking he was getting all this down. ‘Did he mention the sister’s name?’
Alice shook her head. ‘If he did, I don’t remember it. He did tell me how upset he was when Kenny died. It was like the two of them shared so much during the war, Kenny was the only one that knew big chunks of his life and now he had nobody who had any idea what they’d got up to. All those spies they’d trained, all those lives they’d changed. People they’d sent off to their deaths, that sort of thing.’
‘It’s pretty amazing when you think about it,’ Will contributed.
Everyone ignored him. Alice went on, ‘Granto didn’t know what to do then. He knew he couldn’t get them out by himself.’
‘And he didn’t trust anybody to help him,’ Will grumbled. ‘He was scared it would all come out and he’d get arrested.’
‘Anyway,’ Alice spoke firmly, ‘it was always a sort of family legend, the bikes in the bog. I’m not sure we ever totally believed it. He was a great storyteller, my Granto. But when he died a couple of years ago, my mum and I were going through all his stuff, and I found the map tucked away in an envelope. Which was, like, wow. And Will and I, we decided it would be like a sort of tribute to Granto if we went off and found the bikes.’
‘Only it wasn’t as straightforward as that.’ Will sighed. ‘We knew he’d been based at the hunting lodge at Clachtorr but that was all we knew. Stupidly, we thought all we had to do was drive around till we found the layout that corresponded to the map and we’d be sorted. We spent our whole summer holiday last year driving round the area getting more and more frustrated because nothing matched. We’d find somewhere that looked a bit like it, only there would be a hill in the wrong place or one of them sea lochs or whatever. What a waste of time.’
Alice looked at the floor between her pink socks. Clearly this was not the first time she’d heard this rant. ‘I didn’t want to give up. So I went online. I started checking out forums and groups of people who live up here. I posted a pic of the map and asked if anybody knew where it was. Obviously without the “X marks the spot” bit.’ She giggled.
‘And what happened then?’
She looked up and grinned. ‘Hamish happened then. He said he thought the map was his grandparents’ croft the way it had been back at the end of the war. We started talking and he explained the changes to the buildings and the sheepfold and stuff, and yeah, it made sense.’
‘Turned out we’d even checked it out last year but we dismissed it because it was too different.’ Will shook his head in disgust. ‘We could have saved ourselves a year.’
‘No, we couldn’t, Will. We could never have done it without Hamish’s help. He’s been amazing.’
‘So when he got in touch, you asked Hamish Mackenzie for help?’
‘He offered,’ Will said. ‘He was as keen as Alice was to see what was down there.’
‘No reluctance on his part, then?’ It was a question Karen couldn’t ignore.
‘Totally the opposite. He said people were always finding bits and pieces of stuff when they were working their land, but nobody had ever found anything that exciting. I got the impression there’s not much excitement around here,’ Alice said.
It was, Karen knew, a mistake outsiders often made about the apparently bucolic Highlands. They might not have many murders in these parts, but there was no shortage of illicit and illegal activity. Not to mention the perfectly legitimate social activities. She’d have bet there were more routine events in this corner of the world than in the Somervilles’ Home Counties redoubt. ‘So you made a plan?’
‘We agreed a date that we would come up and excavate the site. Hamish reckoned a metal detector would help us to narrow it down. We arrived the day before yesterday, and we were so excited, weren’t we, Will?’
‘We were. We couldn’t wait to get started. I tell you, if we’d known then what we know now, we’d have got in the car and headed back south fast as you like.’
Alice’s bottom lip trembled. ‘I thought it was going to be a dream come true but it’s turned into the worst nightmare. I wish we’d never set eyes on the place.’
19
2018 – Dundee
River was on the outskirts of Dundee when her phone rang. The dashboard computer told her it was John Iverson, so she hastily accepted the call. ‘Hi, John. Thanks for getting back to me so soon,’ she said cheerily, knowing it was a waste of positive energy.
He exhaled noisily. ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a challenge you set me,’ he grumbled. ‘You could have googled it yourself and saved me the bother.’
‘Sorry, John. But I wouldn’t trust myself to get it right. There’s so much detail on these shoes, it needs an expert like you to pinpoint exactly what we’re looking at.’ River took one hand off the wheel and mimed sticking two fingers down her throat.
‘Anybody who knows anything about sneakers would know exactly what you’ve got here.’
‘Even with the staining and the discolouration?’
‘That does make it a bit more challenging, I suppose,’ Iverson said grudgingly. ‘But there’s no mistaking the shape and the contours, the wave pattern and the keynote minimal swoosh.’
River rolled her eyes. ‘And what does that say to you, John?’
‘Well, Dr Wilde, you’re looking at an iconic sneaker here. This is the Nike Air Max 95, designed by Sergio Lozano. It was a running shoe like no other. He based the look on the striations of the Grand Canyon, except he also incorporated the contours of muscles, and eyelets that were like stylised ribs.’ He was off now and there was no stopping him. ‘This was the first shoe with visible air in the forefoot and the rear sole. It was a revolution. It inspired whole generations of sneakers since. Nike even produced a twentieth-anniversary reworking of the original.’
‘And this couldn’t be one of those?’
He breathed heavily. ‘No, they did it in a different colourway. Platinum, silver and black. But the styling was the same, especially the gradient pattern on the women’s edition.’
‘Amazing,’ River said. ‘So when was this particular shoe introduced?’
A weary sigh. ‘The clue’s in the name. Air Max 95. It first went on sale in 1995 and it very quickly became a collector’s item.’
River thought for a moment. ‘So, what? It was a fashion statement rather than a serious athlete’s shoe?’
‘It was both. It was designed as a running shoe, at a time when most of Nike’s attention was focused on basketball shoes. This was their attempt to make an impact on the growing running market. Runners and field athletes liked it but so did kids who wanted to look cool.’ The note of disdain in his voice was unmistakable. ‘Here’s an interesting fact about the Air Max 95. It was the second most common shoe print that UK police found at crime scenes in the late 90s and early 2000s.’
River knew Karen would love that nugget of information. If their victim moved in criminal circles, it might help to make sense of his bewildering presence in the peat bog. ‘Was it an expensive shoe?’
‘Oh yes. It cost ninety-nine pounds in 1995. That was the equivalent of a month’s rent in a council flat in the North of England.’ It was a curiously precise measure, but River didn’t doubt it for a nanosecond. Not from grumpy John Iverson.
‘Did it stay on sale for a while?’
The sound that came from her speakers was a cross between a rumble and a groan. ‘That’s not an easy question to answer. It sold out in a matter of months in its first iteration but there was a massive second-hand market fuelled by the Japanese. People would pay as much as a thousand dollars for a mint pair. But by the looks of the photographs you sent me, your owner treated them as shoes, not trophies.’
‘Is there any way of tracing the individual pair to a retailer?’
A short bark of laughter. ‘I know I said these were iconic shoes, but really, Dr Wilde? Back then, records were skeletal. I would say there’s no chance, not even if you had the original box and receipt.’ He laughed again. ‘Now, that’s all I have for you, Dr Wilde. I’ll invoice your department as usual for my time.’ And the connection dropped out.
River allowed herself a moment of gratification. Inch by precious inch, they were getting closer to their man.
20
2018 – Wester Ross
Karen gave Alice space to compose herself, then said, ‘I know this is upsetting for you, but we’re going to have to go through exactly what happened yesterday.’
Alice shivered. ‘It was horrible. I mean, when I saw that arm sticking out of the peat, all sorts of things went through my head. I even wondered whether it was Kenny in that hole. And if it was, what did that say about my Granto?’
‘Thankfully, Dr Wilde has been able to put your minds at rest on that score,’ Karen said. ‘We think the man whose body you discovered was put in the ground a lot more recently than 1944. Sometime in the last twenty-five years, to be a wee bit more precise.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Which counts as “relatively recently” in our terms of reference.’
‘How far back do you go?’ Will asked.
Karen didn’t think he was trying to distract her, so she said, ‘We generally draw the line at seventy years, from a police point of view. There’s no realistic possibility of finding a living suspect beyond that. The historians and the forensic anthropologists like Dr Wilde take a much longer view. Nothing’s too old for them. But this man whose body you unearthed – he had friends, parents. Maybe even a wife and kids. People who don’t know what happened to him. And I need your help to bring him home to them. Alice, did anybody else know about your granddad’s map?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Well, he talked about it sometimes with family. But like I said, we all kind of half-believed it was one of his tall stories. Exaggerating what a big deal his war work had been. But I don’t remember anybody ever talking about seeing the map. And like I said, it was tucked away in an envelope in a drawer.’
‘Did he have pals from his wartime days? Maybe at the local British Legion, or men he met up with socially?’
Alice shook her head. ‘Not that I know of. I spent a lot of time with him and my granny when I was little, and I don’t remember that. He wasn’t much of a drinker, he didn’t really go out to the pub much. He played bowls a lot, but I don’t think any of his pals from the bowling club went that far back.’
‘So as far as you’re aware, nobody ever came asking about the bikes?’
Will butted in. ‘He’d have said something, wouldn’t he? When he was talking about it to Alice. He knew he couldn’t do it alone, so if somebody had turned up with an interest, he’d have made some sort of a deal with them, wouldn’t he?’
Karen nodded. ‘You’d think
so. But I need to be as clear as possible about the circumstances surrounding these bikes and the map leading to their discovery. I take it you’ve still got the map?’
Startled, Alice sat up straight, hand to her mouth. ‘God, no! It’s still at Hamish’s house. We took it over to compare with the maps he’d researched. And we were in such a state, we never picked it up.’
‘That’s fine, I’ll take a look at it over there. We might need to hold on to it for now, but if we do, I’ll make sure you get a receipt and a copy of it.’
‘Why do you need the map?’ Will demanded.
‘Because it turns out it’s actually a set of directions to a body disposal and I need to be certain nobody else made use of it before you did.’ Karen held on to her patience with grim determination.
‘How will you know that just by looking at it?’
‘We have people called forensic document examiners who uncover all kinds of trace elements from bits of paper that you and me can’t even imagine. And while I’m on the subject, I’ll be getting a uniformed officer to come over and take your fingerprints and DNA samples. I presume you’ve no objection.’
Will looked as if he was about to object but Alice took control. ‘Of course we’ve no objection. Like I said. We want to help.’
‘Thank you. So, let’s go back into the more recent past. Tell me what happened yesterday.’
Alice took a visibly deep breath and told Karen everything up to the point where Hamish had said there was a body in the pit and Alice had screamed herself hoarse. ‘Then Hamish called the police,’ she said, her voice dull and sad.
‘Obviously, whoever he is, he’s nothing to do with us,’ Will said. ‘So, will we be able to take the other bike back with us? The one from the other crate?’
Even Jason turned and stared incredulously at him. ‘I don’t think it belongs to you,’ he said. ‘Just for starters.’
