Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  Outside the cells he looked at the desk and summoned the custody sergeant. It was Alec Laird on duty, his deep tan and lightened hair proclaiming his recent visit to warmer climes like a billboard. He eyed the two officers and tipped his head in a knowing nod. Valentine hoped the holiday high hadn’t worn off yet.

  ‘Hello, Bob,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Alec . . .’ He picked up the duty log and ran a finger down the column of names and cells. ‘Right, number four can breathe easy . . .’

  Sergeant Laird recovered the logbook and presented Valentine with a narrow, searching stare. ‘That’s Big Danny Gillon . . . Thought he was in some hot water?’

  The detective shook his head and snatched a pen from the desk without returning the look. ‘Gillon’s always in hot water. Not bloody hot enough this time, mind you.’ He scratched his signature in the book.

  ‘Danny’s always been a daft boy.’ The sergeant looked down at the logbook for what seemed like an eternity. If he chose to be difficult, thought Valentine, then everything would be ruined – the plan would go no further. He jerked back his head as the sergeant took the logbook and hung it on its brass hook, checking the clock on the wall behind him. ‘His problem’s that he likes to run with the big dogs . . . but he’s just a bloody chihuahua!’

  McAlister and Valentine emitted the usual drone of enforced laughter that was the accustomed response to such a remark and turned for the door. The DI spoke: ‘He’s got a van in as well, give it back to him. We won’t be needing it now the trail’s run cold.’

  The sergeant nodded and raised a hand, still smiling at the plaudits to his humour. ‘No bother. Goodnight, lads.’

  On the way out to the car park, Valentine’s knees were loosening, but he tried to keep his wilting resolve from McAlister. He knew he needed to convince him that their mission was at least partway capable of success; after all, the DS had plenty at stake. Valentine was leading the way: it was his idea, his gamble, and he needed to present a confident front to get the result he wanted. Of course, it was all bluff, but he couldn’t show that. Not for a second. He painted on his poker face and lengthened his stride in an act of mock defiance.

  ‘He seemed to buy that well enough,’ said McAlister.

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

  The blunt rebuttal buoyed the DS. ‘No reason, I suppose.’

  On the way to the car, Valentine extended the remote locking and the indicator lights flashed at the vehicle’s corners. It felt like a flag waving, a beacon: they were really doing this. When they got inside, the detective rolled down his window and craned his neck out. The air was cold and still.

  ‘I can see Gillon’s van from here,’ he said.

  ‘Where do you think he’ll lead us?’

  Valentine turned towards McAlister and dipped his brows, and the assuredness of his voice surprised them both. ‘Well, I’ll be bloody disappointed if it’s back to the Auld Forte bar.’

  ‘You and me both, sir.’

  The night air defeated him and he turned up the window again, but kept a few inches of it open in the hope that some of the car’s tension would escape. He had no reason to believe that things would go their way, but tried to tell himself that the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. He had been backed into a corner and knew that there was only one way out. Had it always been like this for him, he wondered: the hard way or the harder way? He had taken risks before – even with his own life – but this was different, felt like something else. As his thoughts swam, he tried to avoid their desperate struggles, to rope in a port of calm. He needed to find some space to think about what he was doing, not what he feared might happen.

  ‘No matter what happens tonight, Ally, don’t let Gillon out your sight.’

  ‘Christ above, I don’t even want to think about losing him, sir.’

  ‘And I don’t want you to either . . . But if things go tits-up for whatever reason, stick with him.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As they readied themselves for the night’s eventualities, they seemed to come crashing down upon them like a violent hailstorm. There was no room for preparation now. There was no place to retreat and rethink the wisdom of what they were doing. The station doors swung open and a thickset figure in a denim jacket emerged into the darkness. He stood for a moment lighting a cigarette and then he loped down the steps, followed by a plume of white smoke. Danny Gillon looked over his shoulder as he walked towards his van, then spun the keys around his finger and started to jog. He looked cocky, confident. Like a man who knew he was to be feared and wielded the assurance like a claymore.

  ‘Seems keen,’ said McAlister.

  ‘Let’s hope so, let’s hope he’s bloody keen and bloody worked up.’

  As Gillon started the van and moved onto the road, he indicated a right turn on the roundabout ahead. Valentine engaged the clutch and pulled out behind with a sense of dread building in the pit of his stomach. The white van followed the pothole-pitted road round to the traffic lights and took a left onto the one-way system of the Sandgate. As the van proceeded through the next set of lights and chuntered uphill towards Wellington Square, the route seemed to indicate the next move would be in the direction of the plush mansions of Racecourse Road.

  ‘Where the hell is he going?’ said McAlister.

  ‘Well, it’s not to any kip-house or B&B . . . Unless it’s a very nice one.’

  ‘He’s heading out to Alloway.’

  Valentine grabbed a glance at McAlister as the van crossed a box junction and proceeded past the desolate playing fields. The road widened, presenting snatches of shoreline and blue sea. From time to time the Isle of Arran came, cloud-wreathed, into view as wide driveways winked between Victorian villas. By the time the white van had passed the entrance to the rarefied echelons of Belleisle golf club, it was clear Gillon was either leaving town or heading to an address the officers had visited themselves only a short time ago.

  ‘This is very odd,’ said Valentine, drumming the dash.

  ‘I didn’t expect this at all . . .’

  ‘Well, why would you . . . ? There’s nothing to suggest Danny Gillon’s had any contact with the Urquharts. But here he is . . .’ His fingers rose from the dash and pointed, palm up, towards the unfolding scene. ‘Pulling into their drive.’

  Valentine depressed the brake and worked down the gears. He brought the car to a standstill behind the drystone wall and watched as the van rolled to a halt, spluttering black smoke onto the driveway. Gillon stalled momentarily, seemed to be gathering wit or wile, it was impossible to tell which, as the sudden parallax shielded his face from view. He exited the vehicle quickly, slamming the door loudly behind him, and proceeded to the front window of the property, where he started banging with the butt of his fist.

  As the two officers followed his action from the car, Valentine spoke. ‘He doesn’t look too happy.’

  ‘Well, you wanted him worked up.’ Ally twisted in his seat. ‘Should we get out?’

  ‘No, we’ll wait and see.’

  As the door to the property opened, Gillon gesticulated wildly, waved his arms and banged a fist off the window ledge. The sound of raised voices, both men’s, was heard by the officers, but from where they sat it was impossible to see who the other voice belonged to. As the men went inside a second door slammed, but the loud yells were still detectable in the street beyond, breaking the sombre peace of a place that was a stranger to anything but hallowed quietude. For a second, Valentine allowed himself to feel he had done the right thing by releasing Gillon, that he might actually get somewhere with the investigation, and then some long-lost philosopher’s lines about hope prolonging the torments of man came back to him, stilling the thought, preserving it like a museum’s extinct species section, never to return.

  ‘Should we go in, boss?’ said McAlister.

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  The raised voices could still be heard from the road. The DS stepped out of the car and made his way towards the edge
of the garden. He moved like an automaton, an unsteady, ungainly figure on limbs too long for his stooped frame. As he leaned onto the wall, Valentine left the car and joined him in the cold, dark street.

  ‘It sounds pretty tasty in there, boss.’

  ‘You’re right . . .’ He looked down the broad, rain-washed street. It was empty. He knew they had brought a disturbance to the stolid neighbourhood, but nobody seemed perturbed – not a curtain twitched. It took some more time, and another sweeping glance at the terrain, before he realised the distances between the buildings were too great for the sound to travel. The price of that isolation was a life lived insulated from your neighbours; none of them knew, or could likely contemplate, what went on behind the topiaried fringes of this exclusive address.

  The shouting stopped as abruptly as it had begun and the officers checked each other through widened eyes. Valentine felt the night air enclosing them as he watched McAlister brace himself like a buttress against the wall. The columnar row of trees that lined the driveway on either side started to sway in the wind and the large, old house etched its bulk against the moonless sky. As the detective focussed on the sturdy property it ceased to be a spacious home and symbol of guarded affluence and transmogrified into a tomb-like keeper of secrets. In the dim light, the building looked old and tired, its too-large windows like eyes scoping an outside world it longed to join but never could. It was an image of misery, a haunting sight that tugged some deep unconscious part of the detective’s psyche where the souls of the past were stirred by the winds of the present.

  ‘I’m going in,’ said Valentine, his voice a faltering marker of doubt.

  ‘Right, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No, you stay here.’ He knew at once how ridiculous such a bold statement sounded from a man in his condition.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding . . . Do the sums, that’s two against one.’

  Valentine put his hand on McAlister’s arm and turned him away. ‘Think about it: if they drop us both, who’s going to raise the alarm?’

  The DS shook his head and made a show of digging in his heels. A defiant gleam entered his eye and then the sharp sound of a door slamming erased it as he turned his gaze back on the house. ‘Wait a minute . . . Someone’s coming.’

  Valentine peered over the wall in the confusion, the scene seemed unreal. He wasn’t prepared to see Danny Gillon striding back towards his van with peremptory steps. He moved quickly, had the engine in motion and the wheels churning up the drive before he closed the door.

  ‘Someone’s in a hurry,’ said McAlister.

  ‘He’s not the only one.’ As Gillon manoeuvred the van through a rough three-point turn in the driveway, Valentine pressed his car keys into McAlister’s hand. ‘Right, follow him and whatever you do don’t bloody well lose him.’

  The DS looked unconvinced by the sudden decision, pinning back the edges of his mouth and looking like he was searching for the right words to object. ‘But . . .’

  ‘No buts, Ally.’ The van screeched past them and into the road, and Gillon wrestled with the wheel, his features a stern grimace signalling a burning anger beneath. Valentine spun the DS towards the car. ‘Get going before you lose him . . .’

  McAlister turned for the car; he was no sooner inside than he had accelerated wildly in the direction of Danny Gillon’s van. The back wheels lost some traction on the smooth, wet road and the car fishtailed for a few yards before righting itself.

  As Valentine stood in the street, peering over the wall towards the large and uninviting house, his heart stiffened and the blood grew heavy in his veins. A dull ache set up lodgings in his chest and spread in numbing concentric rings throughout his body. It was instinctual – a physical reminder of emotional pain. He knew he had not been in a confrontation since he took a knife in the heart, and the thought of how he might react to such a test gripped him tighter than a straitjacket. It was just primal fear, he told himself, a self-preservation that he could do nothing about. But it prodded him, came with images of his beloved family, his wife and children: how would they cope if he didn’t come home? This wasn’t his own conscious thought, he hadn’t originated it; it had floated in from God knows where. If he accepted that, then he could see it for what it was and face it down. As he took his first step towards the Urquhart’s home, Valentine’s heart pounded so hard in his chest he felt a cardiac arrest was surely lying in wait for him.

  50

  The house loomed over the driveway with what seemed like a dolorous reverence for the detective’s approach. Far from welcoming, the face it wore was one that could no longer find shock in the actions of men. He closed the one fastening button of his sports coat to ward off the smirring rain that had started and leaned toward the approaching gable. When he had driven up to the building before he hadn’t taken the time to be awed by its imposing stature, and now he saw it was a much larger property than he had imagined, somehow. The place seemed to belong to another time, another era; surely by this point it should have been subdivided into half a dozen flats or adopted as the headquarters of a government quango. It looked wrong, it was plain wrong that one family occupied its interior, but more than that it looked like it was begging to be put out of its misery. The house was an anachronism, as strange on the eye as catching a procession of Model-T vintage Fords coughing and spluttering amidst the rude health of today’s Toyotas and Audis.

  DI Valentine became dimly aware of the sound his shoes made on the driveway scree and found himself almost proceeding on tiptoes. When he thought about the absurdity of his action, he stopped: what did it matter if he encountered the home’s occupant out in the cold or inside under lamplight? If he was too infirm to defend himself or his ailing heart gave out then a few scatter cushions and a deep-pile carpet would make little difference to the outcome. He passed the first window and glared in: everything was as it should be; normalcy reigned. The flickering coloured shadows from the television screen leant a familiarity to the setting that seemed surreal. All was as it should be, prosaic: chintz and voiles carefully arranged, leather-bound books in order of height on parallel shelves. Convention predominated: it could have been the set of a costume drama or a well-to-do comedy of manners. He didn’t know what he had expected to see. Human sacrifice? Pentagons drawn in blood on the walls? He cached away the suggestion, but whatever it was that waited for him inside he knew it contained an answer. That’s what he was there for, that’s what he had risked his career for and was prepared to risk his life for now. A whirring mist rose in his head, carrying the faces of Janie Cooper and the other victims. Even his own children appeared now; the case had touched so many lives.

  Valentine’s cold breath came in white clouds as he neared the front door of the mansion house. He could feel the icy fingers of the night on his chest and in his lungs. The rain, that insidious leakage from the sky that made itself into almost invisible droplets, had fooled him again; his shoulders were soaking, his hair stuck hard to his brow. He’d caught the kind of drooking that merited a night on the hills in only a few strides and he resented its sneaky encroachment. He felt fooled, deceived. Valentine wondered if his senses had taken such a battering that he was still recovering. At the foot of the steps he saw the door was open, only a few inches, but enough of an invitation for him to take the steps and ascend. As he touched the door, he expected noise – a loud evacuation from obstreperous hinges perhaps – but nothing came. He felt almost welcome, like he was walking with destiny. He stepped in and the squelch of his wet shoes on the hardwood flooring compensated his eardrums for their earlier disappointment. The sound rang out in the still emptiness. There was no sign of anyone. The staircase leading skyward was fully lit, as was the lobby entrance leading towards the living room. The detective stood still, picked up the minute burr of his breathing, but nothing else. He was certain no one had left through the front door, they would have to pass him on the driveway, so whoever had been remonstrating with Gillon must still be there.

 
; His shoes continued to squelch as he turned on the hard floor, assessing his options on each step. There was a third hallway to the rear that he had seen on previous visits but never explored before, and it seemed to be singing to him. Where did it lead? What was in there? Something he’d missed perhaps. Valentine gave in to his curiosity; the unknown was now his favoured option. His pellucid trail of watery footsteps went with him as he approached the dark corridor. As he reached the wall he touched the plaster, searching for a light switch, but found only the flat of the wall. A few more steps into the darkness and he started to question the wisdom of his actions: was this wise without back-up? He spotted a thin strip of light glowing beneath one of the doors ahead. He was aware of his stomach cramping; the dull ache in his chest had become a concussed anvil his heart battered against. There was a dry, almost metallic taste that appeared in his mouth as he reached out for the door handle and slowly, almost wearily, opened up.

  The room sat in stilled silence, almost a tableau of an old-fashioned study. There was an escritoire, a leather-backed chair on castors and a brass reading lamp burning away. It was James Urquhart’s no doubt, and the sight of the large and detailed model railway encompassing three-quarters of the floor space confirmed it. There were no trains in motion, but he saw them there, in the station where tiny people huddled behind newspapers and tinier children rushed about the concourse. The sight of the miniature railway gripped the detective; like a strange message from childhood it seemed to call out to him to take a closer look, to come and play. How many others had felt the same compulsion? He resisted. His attention had already turned towards the open hatch bleeding light from the floor. There was a door from the hatch pressed up against the wall, and as he approached he could see there was a bright light burning in a room below, a white wooden staircase leading the way down. It looked like a cellar, or a basement perhaps, but why was it necessary to keep it out of sight? The rolled-up carpet that came out from the wall had been tugged and torn and now sat in a crumpled mass beside a hessian-backed rug. As he stared, he knew the steps down was the route he should take, but something stopped him. Valentine’s throat tightened as he stood staring into the secret world below; his constricted stomach lurched with his thoughts. As he paused, he sensed a presence; he made to turn, but a heavy blow like a man’s double-fisted punch struck his back.