The Dark Remains

by Ian Rankin

  ‘We cross paths again, you’re a dead man.’

  ‘At least I’ll be a dead man who never had to lie about getting knifed in the back.’

  Rhodes gave a wave of one leather-gloved hand as he made his exit. Colvin stood in silence for a moment before topping up his glass. His hand shook a little, but not much. He drained his drink, exhaled, then launched the emptied glass at the nearest wall.

  35

  Laidlaw knocked once on the door before entering and caught Ernie Milligan red-handed as he took possession of the football programme he’d just asked Archie Love to sign. He rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket, trying to look unflustered.

  ‘What do you want, Laidlaw?’ he snapped.

  ‘A word with you – if you’ve finished with the memorabilia.’ Laidlaw saw the swelling on Love’s forehead. ‘If you need someone to corroborate that DI Milligan inflicted that injury, I’m your man.’

  ‘DC Laidlaw sometimes mistakes policing for an old episode of Jokers Wild,’ Milligan stated for Love’s benefit.

  ‘Seriously, though . . .’ Laidlaw made show of examining the bruise. ‘Looks the sort of damage a hammer might do – a hammer or a spanner. Am I right?’

  ‘I tripped in the dressing room,’ Love said.

  ‘Of course you did.’ Laidlaw straightened up and followed Milligan out of the room. Milligan was scowling as he closed the door. He was about to say something, but Laidlaw got there first.

  ‘Describe Bobby Carter’s house to me.’

  ‘Didn’t I see you there just yesterday?’

  ‘You barred me from going inside, though, so humour me.’

  ‘Hallway, living room and kitchen, downstairs toilet, three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.’

  ‘Just the three bedrooms?’

  ‘The boys share, though they’re itching for their sister to move out so they can have a room each.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Milligan folded his arms while he considered. ‘Top-quality furniture, carpets are a bit loud for my taste. There’s a decent-sized back garden plus a garage at the side.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘Vauxhall Victor estate, handy for a big family.’

  ‘Also handy for moving large objects,’ Laidlaw added thoughtfully.

  ‘What the hell is all this?’ Milligan sounded genuinely curious to know.

  ‘You’ve not mentioned the redecorating.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Whole house or just certain rooms?’

  ‘The living room. Wall units moved into the downstairs hall. It was a bit of a bloody squeeze, to be honest.’

  ‘Carpets up?’

  ‘Some, yes.’

  ‘Ladders and tins of paint?’

  ‘Paint yes, ladders no. Satisfied?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. You know the widow’s ex is a painter and decorator?’

  ‘It came up in the notes.’

  Laidlaw nodded to himself, then gestured towards the door. ‘Reckon you’ve got your man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just the autograph, then, eh?’

  ‘He was some player in his day. You reckon Spanner Thomson did that damage?’

  ‘Colvin’s men are too gormless to do anything other than follow their noses, same as this inquiry’s been doing.’

  Milligan’s hackles rose perceptibly, but it was too late to do anything about it. Laidlaw had turned his back on him and was walking away. Milligan went after him.

  ‘You need to tell me what you’re doing. That’s a direct order, DC Laidlaw.’

  ‘Kiss my hairy arse, DI Milligan.’

  ‘What’s the house got to do with anything?’

  ‘You’re a detective. Given a few lifetimes, I’m sure even you can work it out.’

  A whisky apiece with a beer chaser, Bob Lilley given no say in the order. Then the same corner table as before, the one they’d sat at with Eck Adamson. The other drinkers consisted of two women surrounded by bags of purchases from a department store, and a couple of business suits at a separate table who looked as if the future of the world rested on their shoulders. One of the women was being taken to Paris the weekend after next, while the other had a new refrigerator on order.

  ‘We’ve been looking in all the wrong places,’ Laidlaw said as Lilley settled next to him. It was as if his mind was half in the room and half elsewhere, like a medium tapping into the spirit world. ‘You might call it classic misdirection, but the murder itself was amateur hour. Think about it. The body was moved and then found. Why? A professional hit would have been cleaner and the body could have been buried under a motorway.’

  ‘The killer wanted it to be found.’

  ‘After a day or two, yes. But what was going on during that time?’

  ‘Where are you going with this, Jack?’

  ‘Who was it said early on – cherchez la femme? Most murders are domestic, Bob.’ Laidlaw met Lilley’s gaze for the first time and held it. ‘Bobby enjoyed the company of other women, but at home he ruled with an iron fist. Neighbour across the way heard regular arguments. Monica’s ex-husband wasn’t allowed over the threshold. It wasn’t so much a family in that house as a hostage situation. Not that we focused on any of that; we were too busy making the facts suit our preconceived ideas. Gangsters get hit by other gangsters, end of story. And to be fair to us, there was no end of suspects to keep us busy and stop us seeing what was in front of our faces.’ He paused. ‘In fact I blame Milligan for that one hundred per cent. If he’d allowed a proper detective to enter that house, they’d maybe have twigged sooner, but he kept that wee treat to himself. Stupid of us to let him do that.’

  ‘Twigged what, though?’

  ‘The whole house was redecorated a couple of months back, Bob.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’

  ‘This murder was messy and spontaneous and personal. It then took time to work out what had to happen next. Take the body to John Rhodes’s part of town and plant it there; get rid of the knife close to where one of Cam Colvin’s team lives. Planned by someone who knew a bit about both camps. Spanner’s address would be known to anyone near the top of the Colvin hierarchy. The Parlour was where Bobby Carter was due to meet John Rhodes, except Rhodes bailed. Carter would have been fuming about that, maybe said something about it to someone close to him.’

  Lilley was shaking his head as if to refuse the invitation Laidlaw was offering him. ‘I was beginning to enjoy working with you, Jack – if that’s what you can call what we’ve been doing. But now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I don’t like it either, Bob, but the truth’s not about likes and dislikes, it just is. And if you liking me is dependent on me lying to you or giving you soft options, forget it.’

  ‘You saw the family, though – the photos in the paper, the TV pictures. They were devastated.’

  ‘Of course they were.’ Laidlaw paused. ‘They’d just murdered the head of the household.’

  Lilley snorted in disbelief. ‘You’re saying all of them did it, based solely on someone telling you the place had been redecorated recently?’

  ‘Good people do bad things all the time, Bob. Especially when they feel trapped or lied to and let down over and over again. Our job, yours and mine, is to uphold the law, especially when turning a blind eye means other people getting hurt. What we had here was a classic case of the giant’s fingers.’

  ‘You’ve lost me again.’

  ‘It’s something John Updike said – details are like the giant’s fingers. No matter how big and complex something is, it all comes down to smaller details.’ Laidlaw saw the blank look on his partner’s face. ‘Okay then, how about W. H. Auden? His poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”. Friend of mine at school, Tom Docherty, he was a big fan. “About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters”. Auden is looking at Brueghel’s painting The Fall of Icarus. There’s this calamity happening – Icarus falling to his death – but nobody in the painting is paying any attenti
on to it, too distracted by their everyday concerns.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’re a proper philistine, aren’t you?’

  ‘Plain talk and plain bread are my staples, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So what do you say?’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To coming with me.’

  ‘Bearsden, you mean?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘You don’t think you should maybe clear it with Milligan first?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or put together a case that’s more than an amalgamation of guesswork and lines from poems I’ve never heard of?’

  Laidlaw offered a shrug and said nothing.

  ‘You’re going anyway, aren’t you?’ Lilley looked resigned to the fact.

  ‘I’m going anyway,’ Laidlaw agreed.

  36

  When they parked outside the house in Bearsden, Laidlaw gave a wave to Mrs Jamieson, who was peering, sentinel-like, from a gap in her net curtains. They were halfway up the path to the Carter house when its door opened, Cam Colvin paying them no heed as he stomped towards his own car. The two detectives paused to watch him.

  ‘Was that a street map he was holding?’ Lilley enquired.

  ‘You’d think by now he’d know his way around the city,’ Laidlaw agreed, tapping at the open door and stepping into the hallway. He could smell fresh paint. Whatever clutter had been in the hall, however, was no longer there. From what he could see, only the one wall here had actually had a fresh coat – the one running along the side of the staircase. He indicated as much to Bob Lilley before entering the living room. All three children – Stella, Peter and Chris – were seated there, books and comics on their laps. Their mother stood at the entrance to the kitchen. She looked jittery, Cam Colvin no doubt to blame.

  ‘Caught you at a bad time?’ Laidlaw asked.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  It was Stella who answered her mother. ‘He’s the policeman I told you about.’

  Laidlaw had walked towards the shelving unit. It was filled with paperbacks, a mix of recent bestsellers and weightier non-fiction collections.

  ‘I always think you can tell a lot about someone from their bookcases,’ he said. ‘This one, for example, was in the hall a few days back.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You told Ernie Milligan it was because you were getting the place painted.’ Laidlaw made show of studying his surroundings. Monica Carter had settled herself on the arm of the chair her daughter sat on. ‘But this room’s not been touched at all, Mrs Carter.’

  ‘Started with the downstairs hall.’

  Laidlaw began to shake his head. ‘You had the whole house redecorated a couple of months back.’ The teenagers had given up any pretence of reading and their eyes were on him. ‘No smell of fresh paint in here, just in the hall. Yet for some reason you moved the bookcase. It’s a solid bit of wood, too. No cheap rubbish for you. I’d guess it would take at least a couple of people to shift it. Question is: why move it at all?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Monica Carter’s look was all challenge, as if squaring up for a bar brawl.

  Bob Lilley had taken a route around the perimeter of the room and was checking that there were no surprises in the kitchen. He shook his head in confirmation.

  ‘You really want me to do that, Mrs Carter?’ Laidlaw said. ‘Very well then – either you didn’t have time at first to do the painting, or you managed only the one coat and that wasn’t enough. The shelves were to cover the stains until you could do a better job.’ He paused. ‘By stains, I mean bloodstains, of course; your husband’s bloodstains.’

  Suddenly the room was a tumult of noise as Monica Carter and her children began to protest. Laidlaw allowed it for a few seconds, then held up a hand. ‘I need everybody to shut the fuck up!’ he yelled.

  The room froze, turning the family into sudden statues.

  ‘You should engage a lawyer,’ Laidlaw went on, his tone neutral. ‘I can suggest a good one if you’re stuck.’

  ‘He hit her,’ Stella was saying. ‘Even stubbed out a cigarette on her wrist.’

  ‘He was a bastard,’ her brother Chris added. He was the youngest, and resembled both his father and older brother, while Stella was more like her mother. ‘A bastard to all of us.’

  Laidlaw nodded slowly and solemnly. He had planted his feet in front of fourteen-year old Peter, who was staring into space as if trying to make up his mind about something momentous.

  ‘How about you, son?’ he asked.

  It was as if a switch had been flipped. Peter leaped to his feet, drawing a flick knife from his pocket, its tip aimed at Laidlaw. Laidlaw feinted to one side and as the blade approached managed to wrap his fist around the boy’s bony wrist, twisting until the knife fell to the floor. He shoved Peter back onto the sofa and crouched to pick up the weapon. The room had grown noisy again, and Monica Carter dashed forward to hug her son. She squeezed in next to him and he didn’t shrug her off. All the same, his eyes were trained on Laidlaw, and there was plenty of fire still in them.

  ‘Looks like we’ve found our killer,’ Bob Lilley commented.

  ‘It wasn’t Peter, it was me,’ Stella argued, rising to her feet.

  Laidlaw waved her back down. ‘This isn’t Spartacus, Stella. Having said which, I’ve seen worse defence strategies than everybody blaming each other. Jury might have a tough job deciding between you all, based on the evidence. You could end up with “not proven”.’ He paused again, his eyes on Monica. ‘But you know what the problem with that is, don’t you, Mrs Carter?’

  ‘Cam Colvin,’ she answered quietly.

  ‘Colvin still needs to extract justice. If nobody goes away, you can expect a knock on the door one night. It doesn’t particularly matter to me which one of you wielded the knife – maybe you all took turns. But once the deed was done, you definitely acted in concert, didn’t you? Did the body go into the garage first of all? If so, we’ll find blood there. Same goes with the fresh paint – it might hide, but it never erases. Back of your estate car? Same thing.’ Laidlaw could see that his words were getting through to the widow. ‘What did Colvin want, by the way?’

  ‘He grabbed a map from the shelves.’ It was Stella who had spoken.

  ‘Don’t know why,’ her mother added. Then, having come to a decision: ‘It was me, just me and me alone.’ She looked at each of her children in turn. ‘I need you to let me do this, do you hear? I killed him and none of you knew anything about it.’ She turned her attention back to Laidlaw. ‘Is that acceptable?’

  ‘It’s not me you have to convince.’

  ‘So do I hand myself in or what?’

  ‘We can give you an hour’s grace, long enough to sort things out here. If you’re not at Central Division soon afterwards, you can expect us to be back with blue lights flashing and bells ringing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Stella had crossed to the sofa and placed herself next to her mother, so that all four sat in the closest possible proximity, like creatures huddled together for warmth, wary of the coming winter.

  ‘The lawyer you want is Bryce Mundell,’ Laidlaw said, before gesturing towards Lilley and making his exit.

  In the hall, Lilley asked in an undertone if Laidlaw was sure the family wouldn’t make a run for it. Laidlaw shook his head.

  ‘They’ve been waiting for us,’ he said. ‘Patiently, all this time. We’re what they know needs to happen.’

  They had just reached the car when another drew up. Ernie Milligan stepped out, his anger focused on Laidlaw.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said.

  ‘Never mind that – here’s what I’m telling you. We’re off to make a report to the Commander. That report will detail who murdered Bobby Carter and what happened in the aftermath. It will also flag up that if a real detective rather than a jobsworth with a hard-on had been allowed into that house earlier, this would have been done and dusted and a lot of grief might have been s
pared. So instead of whispering any further sweet nothings to the widow, I suggest you follow us in your car. Trust me, you don’t want to miss out.’

  Laidlaw didn’t wait to hear what Milligan had to say by way of reply. He climbed into the passenger seat while Lilley started the engine. Milligan went from tapping on the window to pulling at the door handle, but Laidlaw had pushed down the lock with one hand while turning the other into a pistol, which he pointed at the road ahead, indicating that Lilley shouldn’t hang around.

  As they moved off, they watched Milligan in the rear-view mirror as he scrambled to get back into his own car.

  ‘Are you really going to land him in it?’ Lilley asked.

  ‘Every chance I get, Bob,’ Laidlaw answered, leaning back and closing his eyes.

  37

  Seated behind his desk, Robert Frederick stared at the two detectives. Bob Lilley had taken a seat, on which he writhed and twisted as if racked by doubt. Jack Laidlaw, conversely, stood legs apart, arms by his sides, like an imposing statue erected in honour of some self-confident warrior prince.

  Seeing the sceptical look on the Commander’s face, Lilley felt obliged to break the silence.

  ‘She did confess, sir.’

  ‘According to Jack here, they all did, more or less.’

  ‘If we can muster a forensic team to look at the paint-work . . .’

  ‘First call I need to make is to the fiscal. It’s them that’ll need convincing.’

  ‘Them and you both by the sound of it,’ Laidlaw announced under his breath.

  The Commander glowered at him. ‘There are procedures, Jack, and a reason for those procedures. Why didn’t you arrest them at the house if you’re so sure your theory holds water?’

  ‘Due respect, sir, my theory could float the Ark Royal.’

  ‘Nobody likes a smartarse.’

  ‘Nobody likes Milligan either, yet he keeps rising through the ranks, almost as if a few secret handshakes beats possession of a brain.’

  Colour suffused the Commander’s cheeks.

  ‘What Jack means is—’

  ‘Bob, you’d do well to keep your gob shut,’ Frederick shot back. ‘A DS and a DC don’t get to barge into some-one’s house and accuse them of murder. With their kids sitting right there next to them? Defence would have a field day in court. Any suspicions should have gone to Ernie Milligan and from him to the fiscal. Mrs Carter has now been forewarned, which means if she’s got any sense she’ll be engaging a lawyer and maybe even conferring with her offspring so they get their version of events straight. What happens if we go back there and she denies everything?’