by Caro Ramsay
I look behind me along the grey outline of the tops against the dark sky, and see a gap. She must have seen it too, must have thought that was her way down on to the road, her way to safety and sanctuary. I slow my pace and move on, searching for any signs that she passed this way, then quicken my pace when I realize I’m on a hillwalkers’ path. If she found it she would stay on it, conserving her energy. She would have had the gap in sight and she would move towards it just as I am moving away from it. I run on, heading north, not watching where I am going but running faster as I gain confidence that this path will meet a track of some kind and spark a chain of evidence that Billy is hopeful of.
Suddenly I am airborne, there is a pain in my ankle and the torch catches a sky full of rain and clouds, then grass, then mud. I fall straight into the soaking, spongy earth which does its best to swallow me up. The ground beneath me is giving way, and I stumble into a roll. The landslide flashes in my mind and I grip on to a clump of earth that yields and tumbles until it and I both come to a halt.
I hear one of the cops behind me say Fuck, the other say Oh my God, then one of them starts to retch and a terrible smell floats to my nostrils. The smell of dead flesh. I think I have tripped over a dead sheep. I lie there looking at the sky, at the huge dark clouds chasing each other, shape shifting the landscape, some so low I think they are snatching at my feet. The footpath has gone, the gap in the hills has gone, I have no idea where I am. The landscape has lied to me as it lied to Lorna.
The beam of light from the cop’s torch bobs around me and I raise my head to examine my ankle which feels both hot and numb. I look around me, frowning as the rain and wind sting my eyes. The cop calls my name, nods to me then beams his torch to the ground where my hand is, where the remains of another hand lies in disturbed earth, its fingers entwined in mine.
The arc lights of the police team cast bright beams of white, catching the dance of the summer heather rippled by the wind. The crime scene officers are silent phantoms, no point in talking when the wind cuts the breath from their lungs and the words from their lips. The plateau of the Ben is its own little world; all actions are accompanied by the patter of the rain on nylon shoulders and the high-pitched whisper of the wind somewhere beyond the darkness.
At three-thirty I am in a four-by-four at the nearest point of vehicular access, having followed the professor, O’Hare, off the hill. I’m not sure that I am invited but I don’t care. The sweat has dried and is salty on my skin, making me feel colder now than I was before. O’Hare immediately switches on the ignition and the heater before he starts struggling to get his jacket and plastic trousers off in the confined space. Grandpa Cop sits in the passenger seat, blowing on the palms of his hands. O’Hare reaches into the footwell, lifts up a small thermos flask and pours two coffees. He hands one to Grandpa Cop and offers the other to me but I shake my head.
I let them enjoy it, let them warm their veins. I’ve already reminded them that I have just found another body hidden amongst the tuffets of grass. Should they not be doing a wee bit more about it than sitting in this car and drinking coffee? Now I think if I am quiet then they might forget about me and talk a little more.
They are indulging in chit-chat about the endless rain when a figure in a white crime scene suit ghosts into sight looking like an overweight Teletubby.
Grandpa Cop mutters something about being glad that the coffee has warmed his brain up a little, he’s getting too old for this game. O’Hare agrees. I deduce from this that the person approaching in the CSI suit is important, someone I should get to know.
O’Hare pumps the horn lightly and the Teletubby hurries towards us, hand up to hold a plastic hood in place, jogging clumsily. The Teletubby opens the back door and clambers in, and the hood is pulled down, accompanied by a vicious curse about the weather as small teeth pull quilted gloves from cold hands fingertip by fingertip. The same fingers then work through crushed, short blonde hair. She looks at me. ‘God, this is fucking awful weather.’
‘Good evening, DS Costello?’ asks O’Hare, his tone drier than anything else in the vehicle.
‘I’ve had better.’
Grandpa Cop twists on his seat to introduce himself like this is a tea party.
‘Is it Sophie?’ I interrupt.
Costello glares at me, annoyed at being spoken to.
‘This is Sophie’s sister,’ says O’Hare quickly, warning Costello that any comment should be guarded. ‘She’s persistent.’
‘By that you mean a pest.’
‘Well, is it? Sophie had a silver locket on … here …’ I put my fingers at my neck, round the top of the blanket. ‘Right here,’ I say.
O’Hare says quietly, ‘That body up there is of a woman much taller than your sister. Off the record, five feet nine, at least,’ he adds, keeping his gaze fixed through the front windscreen.
Sophie is five foot three. I recall my first sight of her Fiat at the reservoir where she disappeared, noticing that the seat was too far back. Somebody else had driven it, someone taller than five foot three.
This is not Sophie. The unspoken question has been on my lips since I felt that cold, rubbery flesh under my fingers and the beam of that torch had passed over hair. Stringy, matted, dark hair. Dark. Not blonde.
Grandpa Cop passes his cup back to Costello, offering a sip of his coffee. She declines with a vigorous shake of the head then opens a small folder of Polaroids and hands them to O’Hare. She leans forward, and her jacket squeaks as she angles her head and shoulders between the front seats. O’Hare switches on the courtesy light to get a better view.
‘What do you think?’ she asks. ‘It’s kind of hard to make out what that actually is.’ She points to the image with her pinkie. ‘They say the body was on the surface but disturbed by the increased stream of surface water sometime before you came across it.’
‘How tall was Gillian Porter?’ As I ask, I can imagine Billy’s face.
‘This girl is taller than Gillian also,’ says O’Hare quietly, but at least it shows he has thought of that as well.
I take the picture from him and study it as the rain, caught by the wind, suddenly batters on the windscreen, on the roof, on the door beside me. It interrupts my train of thought. They start to chat amongst themselves, procedural things like who is doing what and who is going where. Grandpa Cop’s radio starts to buzz and beep so he turns it off. I turn the photograph through 180 degrees but still cannot identify what the mosaic of light and dark, grey and black actually is. ‘You must have some idea who she is?’
The car falls silent, as they recall that I am not one of them.
O’Hare remains quiet; he takes a slow sip of coffee but our eyes meet through the rear-view mirror.
‘Or can you speculate?’ I prompt, trying to read the situation. ‘If anybody has a need to hear your theories then it is me.’
O’Hare shuffles in his seat a little and I hand the Polaroid to Grandpa Cop.
‘Billy Hopkirk. Me. Sophie. Gillian.’ I then add, ‘My brother, my mother, her mother, her husband, her kids – we all need to hear something. A theory?’ I add for effect.
‘OK.’ O’Hare gazes out the front window. ‘We need further tests to be sure how long she has been lying there. But she is female, youngish, emaciated, naked, barefoot. All echoes of Lorna.’ He stops and rubs the back of his hand against the inside of the front windscreen; it squeaks. A small viewing space appears, another two figures are coming off the hill, one raises an arm. O’Hare flashes his lights in response before taking the picture from Grandpa Cop and turning it round ninety degrees. He holds it in his right hand, his index finger dancing on the surface. ‘That is the back of her head. That dark bit is her matted hair, the light bits are her scalp showing through, which is why it’s difficult to make out the form of her head on this. And that …’ he draws his nail along a faint line on the picture, ‘… is her face, buried into her raised elbow, her forehead on her forearm, face down as if she was protecting herself from a
ttack. I couldn’t see any obvious injuries but that doesn’t mean to say they aren’t there.’
‘Might have lain down, sheltering from the wind maybe.’
‘As you say, she might have collapsed and curled up, waiting to die, in which case someone left her there to do that. Or she might have been hillwalking and got hypothermia. It’s not unusual for people with hypothermia to undress. But this is a great dump site for a body; hillwalkers go to the prettier places. There are nearly eight hundred square miles up here with enough nooks and crannies to hide a whole army. Then this torrential rain starts and causes the landslide that trapped Lorna and has helped to expose this lassie.’
‘You say that she had no injuries?’
‘None that was obvious.’
‘So what’s that dark patch then, on her leg?’ I ask, leaning forward between the front seats to point. ‘Right there?’
‘You think she had the same cut as Lorna? I can’t make it out.’
Costello holds out another picture to O’Hare but I take it. ‘Can you see it better in this one? You can see a concavity there – that is interesting. Does it look excised? That could link them, if so.’
‘Lorna’s cut was clean. I haven’t looked at this one yet, have I?’
Costello bites her tongue, she is as desperate for an answer as I am. ‘She might be right, though; if that is an excised wound it does link them.’
O’Hare mutters one word and hands the photograph back. ‘If.’
I wake up later in the morning in the flat at Ardno. My limbs are aching from the tension of last night and the chemical soup that has been brewing in my blood. I switched off my mobile so that I would wake naturally, fed up with tiredness that is so overwhelming that even sleep is too much effort.
I do not touch the phone, can’t be bothered to check the string of messages. I don’t feel ready to face anybody. What does this mean for Soph? Is it bringing me closer to her? She might have wanted to run away but the days are passing and there is still no word and the facts remain – she was out running, it was dusk, and she disappeared off the face of the earth.
I go out for a long, slow run in the fresh summer air so I can think things through. There’s not a soul about, no tourist buses along the loch side, no seals. Even the Highland cattle, their coats the colour of old rust, are on the far side of the field standing against the drystane dyke, away from the deep mud at the lower end. They’re sheltering from a wind that is not here yet, but they are wise in reading the weather, and they know what is coming. At the moment the sky is clear, and it looks as if it is going to be a lovely day. Maybe the land will get the chance to dry out after some of the heaviest rainfall on record.
I jog along by the loch for a couple of miles and then turn back, lack of food making me feel I am running on empty. On the way back I notice that the Shogun is missing, so Charlie is not back.
After a long hot shower, a change of clothes and some toast I sit on the settee and lift my phone. The first voicemail is from DCI Colin Anderson asking me to phone him back or call in to see him at Partickhill station, today if that is convenient for me. But it is said in a way that means I should do it whether it is convenient or not. The second is from a woman who does not identify herself but simply says that, within the bounds of confidentiality of which I have already been informed, she can tell me that the body found last night is not that of Sophie McCulloch or Gillian Porter, and would I keep that news to myself for the moment. I presume she is someone from Jack’s office.
There are two calls from Rod, one asking me to phone him back; the other says it’s OK now, they’ve taken Grant to hospital and got him stitched as I hadn’t returned their call. They have now made an emergency appointment with a Dr Biggar. Rod sounds unsure about that, so I might phone him back. Might.
Then an email from a Matilda McQueen saying that she got hold of my email address and could I have a look at the attachment. I am not good with the phone screen so I open the laptop and start it up. The internet is buzzing with pictures of the last minutes of Lorna’s life as she dives through the night air, caught on the CCTV from the web cam. I close that down, thinking of her dad and his tears. I hope he never sees these pictures.
Once the email has connected I open Matilda’s attachment and a picture of a dog appears, a big dog. I look at the name. Ovcharka. I have not heard of them before. Russian guard dogs of some kind? Matilda’s question is simple: have I come into contact with a dog like this or one that looks a bit like it?
The answer is no, I don’t think I could ever have come across one of them and forgotten about it. The one in the photograph must weigh about ten stone at least. The handler is just visible at the side of the picture and the dog’s head is above the height of her waist. It’s a friendly-looking creature, half dog, half shag-pile carpet. I type the name into Google and select images. The pictures spread in front of me tell a different story. The sight of an Ovcharka in full attack mode is terrifying. With a powerful head and huge teeth, the weight of that body behind any attack would make it a formidable weapon.
I flick back and go through a few pages of breed characteristics. They all say much the same: a good guard dog in the right hands, dangerous in the wrong hands. There is a YouTube clip of the dogs in action, guarding a flock of sheep. A wolf comes too close and pays with its life. The attack of the dogs is short, powerful and deadly, not a fight so much as a mission to kill. The thought does not comfort me. I have a quick look at the websites of the two British breeders who have the kennel names Pasternak and Siberian. There’s a bit of intermingling between the two. I save the numbers of both of them in my phone, just in case.
I email Matilda back. No, I have not seen one, don’t know anyone who has one. Sorry. I close the laptop, wondering what has led Matilda to that point, doubting that she got that from one dog hair – can they tell the breed by looking at a single hair under a microscope or do they need a root bulb for DNA? Maybe dogs are different to humans in that way. And what is the investigating team thinking? If that hair didn’t come from me then it must have been on Lorna. Did it come from the dog that had brought her down? But even as I think that through it does not make sense. Lorna had been clean when she hit the bonnet of that car so the hair must have been caught in her matted hair. But it makes no difference if we can’t find the dog. I look at the TV news: a fourteen-year-old boy has admitted killing his classmate, the Rover Probe is doing exciting things on Mars. There is a YouTube clip of a flash mob at Waverley Station in Edinburgh, doing the Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Show. It caused some disruption and the commuter slaves were not amused. There is more about the weather; it’s going to rain again. Amber warning for floods and high winds, so the cattle are right. The Rest and Be Thankful is going to be closed for a few more hours after another minor landslide. I wondered if that is true or if there’s more investigation going on up there and they want the area clear.
Two minutes later Rod phones with yet another non-update and asks if I know Dr Biggar. Grant has cut his knee open to ‘let the pain out’. I don’t comment about that and tell him another body has been found instead. They’ve already heard; a neighbour told my mother, who drank a bottle of gin and went to her bed. He then tells me that the Lorna incident has sparked renewed interest in Sophie, more photographs are now coming in from mobiles and all sorts. Everybody who knew Sophie is trying to help, he is almost pleading. I say I’m going to drive down to speak to a DCI today.
‘That’s great, Elvie, you can move this thing on.’
‘So can you put all the pictures we have of Sophie on a disk, all of the ones that people have put on the website, no matter who they’re from? Then can you email the file to me? Maybe there’s a connection that we’re missing.’
‘Yes, of course, Elvie.’ He is his usual helpful, unflappable self. He tells me his cholesterol level is getting better, he asks how I am doing.
I say I am fine.
He tells me to keep smiling even though he knows I rarely
smile.
While it is in my mind I also text Belinda to make sure she forwards me the photographs she has of Sophie, all of them. I want to show Jack O’Hare, Grandpa Cop and Costello that I am making an effort and I want to bring something to the table. Costello appears to be a sheep and easy to handle, but if DCI Anderson has the respect of ‘Jack’, then I presume that Anderson is sharp. He might be too sharp; I need to prove to them that I am on board. Just in a different boat.
Once I have picked up the Polo I drive to Partickhill and park, watching the exchange in front of me; one life for another. A blond man stands with two children, one a dark-haired girl in her early teens and the other a blond boy. There is not much of a gap in years but they’re a world apart in maturity. The girl hurries to the other car before she gets cold while the boy stays close to his dad. The door of the car behind opens and the dad bends to have a few friendly words with the red-haired woman in the driver’s seat. They seem hesitant to say goodbye as if there is a lot more to be said. Dad slaps his hands on the roof, steps back and signals that there is a break in the traffic so the redhead can pull out. He waves at them as they go, rubbing the finger where a wedding ring has been until recently. I see the boy in the front seat of the car now devoting all his attention to the small brown dog trying to climb out the gap at the top of the window. This is a marriage that has gone wrong, yet nobody knows why.
