by Tony Black
Davis exhaled loudly. ‘Okay, that’s a tricky one to put into a pithy summary.’
‘Try hard, Ian.’
‘Well, basically it’s about subjecting a child to terrifying abuse – locking them in cages with dead animals is one way, finding their worst fears and forcing them into contact with them is another. It’s done in order to cause a split in the child’s personality.’
‘That sounds sadistic. And why would you want to split a child’s personality?’
‘That’s a more difficult question to answer, but the short reply would be so that undesirable, or what might be thought of as weak, personalities can be suppressed or whither, and a new stronger personality can be encouraged.’
Valentine closed the file and pushed it away from him; he was beginning to summon revulsion. ‘Ian, I’m really, really struggling to understand why any of this bloody torture of children would be deemed desirable.’
‘Boss, can I speak frankly?’ Davis’s speech pattern had softened, from initially sounding eager to help he was now becoming more cautious with his words.
‘Of course you can be frank. I’m trying to grasp the reality of the situation we’re up against here.’
‘There’s a former detective that I’d like you to meet as soon as possible, sir. I think he could help you understand a lot of the murkier aspects. His name’s Kevin Rickards.’
‘The Glasgow DI, I’ve met him once or twice; we did some of our basic training together. Didn’t he handle the early abuse allegations?’
‘He had the Caroline Simpson case, yes. But he’s taken early retirement now. Rickards gave me some advice at the outset that I have sworn by since. He said, when you investigate these crimes you have to abandon all your reference points for morality – government, the courts, the police, social services, education – they have no moral authority. They are all your enemies.’
‘That doesn’t leave us with many on our side, Ian.’
‘It leaves us with precisely . . . one.’
7
It wasn’t dreaming, it was never like dreaming. DCI Bob Valentine sat on the edge of the bed watching his wife sleep. She seemed perfectly content, deep in her unconscious slumber. In the room’s half-light Clare looked different, much more at ease than when she was awake. She did her battles in the day, thought Valentine, though didn’t we all? He felt like it was him alone who also battled during the night.
The whispering started again. Low at first, like a sound coming from another room that he couldn’t quite make out. After a few more seconds the whispering became decipherable; the words were a girl’s and it was the same voice he had heard before.
Earlier, when he went to bed, Clare was already asleep. He went over the usual replay of the day’s events and found fatigue creeping over him. When the voice appeared he thought at first that it was Clare, that she’d woken up and was trying to talk to him. However, as he turned to face her he found he was paralysed by sleep. It wasn’t like a dream, because he was passive in the dreams he participated in – he felt awake and able to influence his surroundings.
‘Who is it?’ he said.
The reply was too quiet to make out.
He looked at Clare again and got off the edge of the bed. As he grabbed his dressing gown from the back of the door Valentine heard the whispering again.
‘Listen to me, please.’
He moved into the hallway; the curtains were still open and the street light outside the window was shining in. He had a compulsion to look at his hands, to make sure he wasn’t in another dream. He drew fists, opened and closed his fingers, and confirmed he was in full control of his movements.
‘I need you, please listen.’
He stopped still in the hallway and looked around him.He was alone. As he stared to the front he saw the mirror and moved a few steps closer to the reflection. As he stared ahead Valentine’s first instinct was one of confusion, a reaction which was quickly replaced by a strange fear: the face staring back at him wasn’t his.
The young girl in the mirror was pale but her image was clear. Her blue eyes were bright and alive, her soft mouth was moving slowly but with a passion to impart something. Valentine watched the girl speaking to him but the words failed to register. There was a message, told in whispers, but he could only hear the loud thumping inside his chest.
He started to grow dizzy and reached a hand out to steady himself on the wall.
‘What do you want?’ he said. He was closer to the girl’s image, she spoke faster, but the words were so quiet.
‘Help them, please.’
‘What?’ Valentine’s arm was seized with pain, forcing him to jerk his hand from the wall. His shoulder slammed into the plaster and he slipped to the ground.
He didn’t remember landing face down on the hall carpet, or have any idea how long he’d been lying there, but the first signs of daylight and the stirring of birdsong told Valentine he’d been out cold for some time. He raised himself onto his haunches and dragged himself up.
He was cold and had a dull ache in his back and neck, probably from a night spent on the floor, but he was relieved to be in familiar surroundings. As he pulled the cord on his dressing gown, Valentine moved towards the mirror. It seemed an entirely different object from the one he’d looked in earlier, but the reflection, at least, was his.
‘Oh, it’s you?’ Clare was emerging from the bedroom. ‘What are you hanging about out here for?’
‘I had a bit of a rough night. Is it breakfast time already?’
Clare eyed her husband cautiously, like she was surveying him for signs of insanity. ‘Are you all right, Bob?’
‘Yes, fine.’ It was an instinctive parrying of her remark. Any hint of an increase in his stress would lead to a row about the job. ‘I’m not a morning person, you know that.’
Clare gave Valentine a knowing look and, heading down the stairs, left him standing in the hallway, with his back to the mirror.
He took a long shower, letting the warm jets beat into his crown as he tried to make sense of what he had seen. As the steam rose he touched the thick seam of scar tissue that ran down the centre of his chest. The fleshy ridge, as thick as a man’s index finger, was his reminder that his life had been seared in two. There was the man he was before the long-bladed knife cut into his heart and there was the man who came after. Neither seemed related now.
Valentine struggled with the changes he’d been through since the attack. There had been a time of denial, a time when he’d told himself that this just wasn’t happening to him. And there’d been a time of trying to understand, when he’d sought answers to the problem like it was a new case he was working on. He wasn’t quite at the third stage yet, but he knew some kind of acceptance was going to be inevitable if he was to move on.
He dressed slowly, in the sort of ruminative mood that he would have to snap out of soon. The people around him were as wise to his changes as he was, and they spotted the signs. That was another stage of his development: hiding the signs. It wasn’t always easy, though, especially when he was taken unaware by strange new phenomena. And girls talking to him from mirrors was as out-there as he could imagine; he wondered what might be next.
Clare was sitting in the kitchen with a copy of the morning paper and a cigarette burning before her when he went down. Valentine could hear his father moving about in the extension, and presumed it wouldn’t be long before he appeared, so chose his moment to confront his wife.
‘Can I expect the silent treatment to last much longer, Clare?’ he said.
She picked up the cigarette and inhaled deeply, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘I’m speaking to you now.’
‘You weren’t last night.’
‘I was tired, Bob.’ It was only a half-truth. She may have been tired but the trip to Pizza Hut and subsequently ignoring him on her return was designed to isolate him: to cut him off from the family with only his decisions to consider.
‘I’m tired too. I’m tired of ro
wing and I’m tired of explaining why I have to go out to work. Who’s going to pay for the New Zealand jaunt if I don’t?’
She reached over to stub her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘You said you’d come away from frontline policing and go back to the training academy.’
‘I asked for a transfer, you know that.’
‘You obviously didn’t ask loudly enough, or persistently enough.’
‘Clare, the force is under a lot of constraints right now. Government wants savings everywhere, there isn’t the latitude there used to be.’
‘You’re not the only officer on the force, Bob. Don’t they need people to train at the academy, too?’
‘Not so much, obviously. Look, I tried but they need me where I am because there just isn’t a lot of experienced personnel.’
Clare rose and picked up the ashtray. She walked to the sink and ran water over the dishes. ‘It sounds to me like it’s a situation that you’re completely happy with, Bob. That’s what galls me the most.’
‘There was a time when you used to say what got to you the most was seeing me put in danger. Isn’t that what it used to be about?’ Valentine wanted to withdraw the words as soon as they left his mouth. Clare’s reaction, flaring her eyes at him and smacking the tap back off, only confirmed his regret.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve had a sleepless night.’
‘Stop making excuses for yourself.’ She raised her index finger to a point only a few inches from her husband’s nose, but before she had time to load her second barrage the door from the conservatory creaked open.
‘Oh, good morning,’ said Valentine’s father.
Clare dropped her finger and headed back upstairs.
‘Was it something I said?’
‘No, Dad. It was something I said.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Yes. Mostly, it’s something I said.’
‘You should work on that, son.’
Valentine nodded. ‘That and one or two other things.’ He retrieved his briefcase and headed for the front door.
DI McCormack was waiting in her navy-blue Megane at the top of the drive. She waved when she saw Valentine and started the engine. The DCI wondered how long she had been sitting there, and whether or not she might have been better ringing the bell and coming inside, but when he gave the idea further consideration he conceded she was probably wiser to wait at the top of the drive.
‘How long have you been here?’ he said.
‘Oh, maybe ten minutes.’
Valentine fastened his seat belt and put his briefcase on the back seat. ‘You’re probably safer out here, it feels like crossing enemy lines going over my doorstep these days.’
‘I take it Clare’s still not happy about you taking the new job.’
‘No, she’s not.’ He tried to steer the conversation away from his wife, because he still remembered McCormack overhearing one of Clare’s earlier tirades about himself and the new DI having to spend a night in a hotel on Arran when a case caused them to miss the last ferry. It hadn’t been pretty then and he doubted it would be any prettier now.
‘Where’s Donnelly today?’
‘Chasing up a few angles on the Laverock Group. They appear to have more arms than that Indian statue.’
‘Shiva, the God of Destruction.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The statue you mentioned. Let’s hope this Laverock lot are easier to handle.’
The road from Masonhill was relatively free of traffic, for the time of day, but when they reached the bypass there was a line of cars sitting at a standstill. Valentine looked out on the green Ayrshire fields and the rapidly encroaching new-build housing estates and wondered where the urban creep might end. It seemed entirely possible to him that the village of Mossblown might soon be swallowed by a procession of McMansions.
‘Sir, can I ask what you think the post-mortem will tell us?’ said McCormack. She pulled on the handbrake as the traffic stalled completely.
‘I don’t need to think, I know.’
‘What?’
Valentine turned away from the window. ‘You remember that wink you gave me yesterday?’
‘Ah, I see where this is going. You got a sign?’ Her remark seemed so matter-of-fact that Valentine contemplated asking her when they had both became so blasé with such matters.
‘Yes and no. Sylvia, you know you’re the only person I’ve ever talked to about any of this . . .’
‘Except for Hugh Crosbie.’
‘Well, yes. After last night I think I’m going to have to have another talk with him.’
‘What happened last night?’
Valentine looked out on the line of traffic and lowered the window a few inches; the temperature inside the car seemed to be rising. ‘I saw her.’
‘What?’
‘The girl.’
‘Abbie McGarvie?’
He nodded slowly. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Why bring him into it? I’m pretty sure she’s beyond even his help.’
McCormack leaned forward in her seat and folded her arms over the wheel. She seemed to be contemplating the information, or at least filing it away for future retrieval. Her expression was dipping into solemnity when a lopsided grin sprung up. ‘She spoke to you, didn’t she?’
Valentine turned away from the window, his stomach cramping. ‘They’ve never done that before. This time was very different. In the past they just showed and were subtle, but this time she just spoke out . . . like I’m doing with you now.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Help them, I think. I had some trouble hearing her, and accepting it all. And then I passed out.’
‘You passed out! Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. But I’ve realised that I can’t just bury this, like before. I can’t just ignore it. Like Hugh said, I need to understand this.’
‘Didn’t he say that acceptance was the first step?’
‘Yeah, he did. And maybe I’m getting there.’
‘We need to set up another meeting for you with Hugh.’
Valentine nodded. The traffic had started to move and McCormack released the handbrake and engaged the clutch.
‘I’ll get Hugh on the phone once we get to the morgue, sir.’
‘Do that, Sylvia.’
She glanced over. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when you’d actually embrace the idea.’
‘Maybe embrace is too strong a word. But I’m ready to get to the bottom of all this.’
8
By the time the officers reached the city, DI McCormack had adjusted her driving pattern. It was immediately obvious that Glasgow roads demanded more attention than Ayr’s. There had already been a near miss with an erratically driven white van on the Kingston Bridge, which had seen Valentine pumping an imaginary brake pedal in the footwell of the passenger seat. He might once have suggested the road conditions stemmed from an issue with the locals’ temperament, but jokes about the Dear Green Place were now wearing thin on McCormack. As she aggressively rode the gears and pounded the horn, it seemed almost inevitable that her warrant card would soon be produced and shoved in the face of an unsuspecting city driver.
‘Caw canny,’ said Valentine.
‘What? Is that some red-neck jargon?’
‘Don’t they speak Scots in the Smoke?’
‘Not like that, we don’t.’ She flicked on the blinkers and changed lanes, prompting a roar from the motoring horn section. ‘I’m almost losing patience for my old home town.’
Valentine grinned and turned on the radio. The airwaves were full of crackling interruptions, a staccato rendition of ‘Wonderwall’ being the clearest offering. After trying a few more stations he found an FM broadcast that, on the surface, was a gardening programme but seemed almost entirely composed of adverts for products aimed at retired Boomers. He’d need the hip replacement surgery and the indoor stairlift soon enough and definitely didn’t need reminding of the fact;
he flicked off the radio and settled on the view, grim as it was.
The traffic, and tension, thinned as they neared the morgue, but McCormack didn’t look like she was enjoying being back on home soil. There were advantages to living in a big city, that’s what everyone kept telling him, but Valentine couldn’t fathom them. In Ayr things were simpler, the lines of behaviour rooted in a more stable past, and it took longer for the latest politically correct dogma to be adopted. In Glasgow, he never quite knew if he were using an outmoded term that would have him judged as a clog-wearing rural Luddite. None of it bothered him, not beyond a superficial irritation anyway, because he knew who he was and what he stood for. What was the line? Above all else, be true to yourself. It was something like that – the poet might have put it in a prettier fashion but the sentiment was what mattered. He knew who he was, where his people came from, and why he did what he did. Nothing else mattered to him.
‘Sylvia, I spoke to Davis last night on the phone, but I forgot to ask if he was meeting us today?’ said Valentine.
‘Well, your guess is as good as mine. To be honest, I find him a bit of a queer fish.’
‘Ah, that’ll be why he doesn’t have a wife and kids.’
‘I didn’t mean queer, not that way.’
‘So he just likes living alone, then. I always find that odd, perhaps I shouldn’t.’
‘I live alone.’
‘That’s different. You’re a career woman, you’re expected to forgo all happiness in pursuit of the glass ceiling.’
‘Isn’t that a bit sexist?’
The DCI made a show of looking at his watch. ‘Under five minutes, I think that’s a record!’
‘What are you on about?’
‘It usually takes me at least an hour in the city to be tripped up by my Ayrshire upbringing. I haven’t been called sexist in a long time though, perhaps the programming’s wearing off. I should ask Dino for a course or something in case I embarrass the squad on these trips.’ He was dipping into the familiar territory of teasing; it was time to change the subject before McCormack put him in his place. ‘But, perhaps you’re right, Davis might just be a bit of a queer fish. In all seriousness, we’ll have to keep an eye on him.’
