Bury Them Deep

by Oswald, James

  ‘Why’d youse ask then? If you knew it was mine?’ Forbes reached up and scratched at his cheek, hooded eyes glowering at McLean in silent accusation. The look on his face would sour milk. His every movement, the slouch of his shoulders and the way he slumped in his chair, none of it was an act. Angry, bitter and resentful were the only things he knew. It didn’t bode well for them getting any kind of cooperation from him.

  ‘I wanted to see how you reacted.’ McLean left a pause for Forbes to fill, but he wasn’t playing that game. ‘So, tell me. What do you know about the car park in the woods up by Gladhouse Reservoir?’

  Again, McLean was met with a puzzled frown. ‘Gladhouse? Car park? I don’t even drive, pal.’

  ‘How do you explain your lighter being found up there then? How do you explain it being used to set fire to someone’s car?’

  ‘Ain’t got a scooby. Probably the same fucker who nicked it off me in the first place, aye?’

  ‘So you’re telling me you’ve never been up to those woods then?’

  ‘Don’t think so? Why?’

  McLean countered the question with one of his own. ‘Does the name “GoodDog” mean anything to you? Maybe “The GoodDog Club”?’

  It wasn’t easy to read much more than general surliness in Forbes’s expression, but McLean could tell clearly enough that the man didn’t have anything to do with the doggers. That would have been too easy.

  ‘OK then. When do you last remember using the lighter?’

  He may have been trying to think, or he might simply have had a bit of indigestion. Whatever it was, Forbes paused a moment before answering. If he didn’t know better, McLean might have thought the man was considering the option of actually cooperating. Maybe even giving him a straight answer. Stranger things had happened.

  ‘The fuck should I know?’

  ‘OK then. What did you use it for?’ McLean sniffed, but caught no scent of cigarettes off the man. ‘You smoke?’

  ‘Fags are for losers, aye? Got me one of them e-cigs.’ He drummed a foot on the floor for a moment. ‘Only you pigs took it away from me, right? Gasping, I am.’

  ‘So what’s the lighter for then? Setting fire to cars?’

  ‘Told you I don’t know nothing about that.’

  ‘And yet we found it up at Gladhouse, with your fingerprints all over it.’

  Forbes leaned in, elbows clattering on the table in what he probably thought was an aggressive movement. ‘I told you I lost it.’

  McLean had seen it all before, knew it was coming, and didn’t flinch. Instead he held Forbes’s gaze until the man backed down. It didn’t take long this time.

  ‘So tell me about when you lost it. Where were you?’

  Forbes leaned back again, stared up at the ceiling, over at Harrison. His leg was drumming again, so maybe he really did need a nicotine fix, perhaps something a little stronger. Well, he was all out of luck there.

  ‘OK. Was a few weeks back, ken? Know I had it wi’ me cause I used it to light my way.’

  ‘And where was this?’ McLean asked, then added: ‘And don’t say somewhere dark.’

  That got the ghost of a smile from Forbes, an easing in the tension that had filled the room since he’d first been brought to them. ‘I wasnae doing anything wrong, ken? Just having a wee nosey. Place is fair spooky since the fire, eh? All them explosions and stuff.’

  McLean didn’t need to ask what Forbes was talking about any more. He knew well enough.

  ‘Rosskettle? The psychiatric hospital?’

  ‘The loony bin, aye.’

  ‘What were you doing there? I’m surprised the place hasn’t all collapsed.’

  ‘Aw no, man. There’s loads still standing. Fair creepy place, mind. I ken reading about it. All they dead bodies buried in the grounds. Tunnels everywhere. Ghosts an’ shit.’

  ‘So you were just “having a wee nosey” as you put it. And that was the last place you remember having the lighter.’

  ‘Aye. Must have dropped it on my way out.’

  Forbes seemed to relax now that he’d explained himself, which made McLean think he was probably telling the truth. Or at least mostly the truth. It was too far-fetched to be an out-and-out lie, but exploring the ruined buildings was most likely only half of the reason for going there. If he dug deep enough, he’d probably find that the man came from the sort of home it was best to get out of from time to time. Maybe he’d gone on his own, maybe he’d been with friends. It didn’t really matter. He truly had lost his lighter long before it was used to set fire to Anya Renfrew’s car. Another dead end.

  Police Sergeant Donaldson appeared from a side room as the two constables led Dan Forbes away towards the back of the station. He’d almost certainly been listening in on the whole interview, but had to pretend he hadn’t.

  ‘Give you anything useful then?’ he asked as he walked with them to the front door. McLean saw no harm in indulging the pretense.

  ‘Not much. Reckon he really did lose his lighter. He should probably have it back once we’re done, not that they’ll let him keep it where he’s most likely going. Now all we need to do is work out who found it and why they took it up to Gladhouse to torch a car.’

  ‘Can’t help much with that.’ Donaldson shrugged. ‘Where’re you off to next?’

  ‘Back to the city. Might swing past Rosskettle on my way though.’

  ‘Rosskettle?’ Donaldson’s lack of real surprise gave the game away. ‘It’s a nightmare keeping people out of there. You’d think the fact it might collapse at any moment would be enough, but no. That just makes it even more attractive. And the rumours about ghosts, secret tunnels, Christ only knows what else.’

  ‘Were you there? When it blew up?’ McLean remembered the event all too clearly himself.

  Donaldson shook his head. ‘Missed that one. Someone thought it was a great idea to send us rural bobbies over to Glasgow for some street time. Guess that’s better than sending their lot over here.’

  ‘The wonders of modern policing, eh?’

  ‘Aye, that it is.’ The sergeant paused a moment, hand reaching for the door to open it. Then he stopped. ‘Forbes told you he lost his lighter out at Rosskettle, right? He say when?’

  ‘Couple of weeks back, apparently. Why?’

  ‘See, when you get there, the site’s pretty well fenced off. You know as well as I do that’s no obstacle to someone like your man Dan there. There’s all sorts of folk’ve been getting in through a gap by the side of the old railway cutting. Go for a walk and you can’t miss it. Big gorse fire there not that long ago.’

  ‘You’ve been getting a lot of fires out here lately.’

  ‘Aye, well. It’s been a long hot summer. Doesn’t help that the kids are out for the holidays either. Couple of them on bikes seen near Rosskettle not long before the fire too.’

  ‘Kids?’ McLean recalled his visit to the control centre at Bilston Glen, listening to a young lad tell them about the car on fire. ‘Any idea who they were?’

  Donaldson shook his head again. ‘Could be almost anyone. Probably fairly local, but that hardly narrows it down.’

  ‘What about the name Bobby? That mean anything?’

  ‘Bobby? Can’t say as it does, no.’

  ‘Do me a favour and ask around, will you? Anyone who patrols this area regularly. School liaisons, PCSOs. Might be nothing, but someone might know something. If there’s a young lad named Bobby who’s come across their radar recently, I’d like to have a wee chat with him.’

  40

  She does not know how long she has slept. Does not feel as if she has slept at all, only been absent from herself while the minutes and hours and days tick past. Rather than waking, she comes to awareness slowly, reluctantly. The cold is everything, a numbing, sucking presence that makes it all but impossible to think. If anything, her thin blanket only mak
es it worse. A mockery of hope in this hopeless place.

  Her memory is as sluggish as the chill that surrounds her, although it comes and goes with greater freedom than she has in her tiny cell. Sometimes she remembers a car park, men, the guiltiest of pleasures she is surely paying for now. In the quietest times she hears the voices of her workmates, even though she cannot recall their names. They ask her for help and she wants so much to be able to give them that.

  There is more water in the jug by the door, the cup scoured clean. No food though, and the lack of it gnaws at her like maggots burrowing through her insides. Her ribs ache, and the sourness in her mouth reminds her that she was sick. There is no mark in the dirt now to show for it though. Only an insistent pressure in her bladder that seems unfair given how little she has drunk.

  Shivering, she crosses the short distance to the steel bucket, lifts off its lid and squats. The smell is of sickness, and she mourns the heat it takes from her. She kneels, places hands on either side of the pail, but the meagre warmth inside it soon turns cold.

  What is this place? Why are they doing this to her? Who is doing this to her?

  She stands slowly, hugs the coarse blanket around her nakedness and looks back to the door. For an instant she imagines movement, the cover over the small window sliding closed. Was she being watched? Is there someone there?

  ‘H-hello?’

  Her voice is so small, so dry, it is hardly audible at all. She would rush to the door, but sudden movements leave her light-headed, the risk of fainting very real. She goes carefully instead, straining to hear any sound from outside. There is only the distant, constant trickle of water.

  Resting her head against the unyielding wooden planks, she feels sobs of self-pity well up in her. Why is this happening? Is this hell? Eternal punishment for her sins?

  ‘Please. Just let me go.’ Even to her own ears it sounds pathetic, and the fists she raises to the door are too weak to hold up. She is spent, exhausted, beyond starved. It is all she can do to avoid knocking over the water jug as she slumps to the dirt floor.

  She stares at it for a long while, wondering whether she dares drink. Eventually she can stand the foul taste in her mouth no more, pours water into the cup and takes a tiny sip. It is sweeter than any honey, but the chill as it goes down makes her shiver all the more. Far from slaking her thirst, it only makes it worse, and before long the cup is finished, another after it. A glance down at the jug shows it is empty.

  Wiping at dry lips with the back of her hand, she sits and stares across the tiny cell. She sees nothing, all effort given to concentrating on her stomach. Any moment she expects it to squeeze tight again, violently expel the water she has just filled it with. Seconds tick by to the ragged beat of her heart and the regular spasms of shivering that rack her frame. It might be an eternity or it might be only five minutes, lost in her misery she can’t tell. Only when the numbness in her backside begins to spread does she finally wake enough to move. Three short paces to the narrow bed, but before she can reach it, her world explodes once more.

  It’s not vomit this time, but that doesn’t make things any better. She tries to reach the pail, lift off its lid, squat. She doesn’t have the strength, and neither is there anything solid in her gut. Warm liquid gushes down her legs, then they give way and she falls, knocks over the pail, smacks her head against the stone wall. Too much to hope that the blow might knock her out.

  Her ears ring, the noise echoing around the cell. She is battered and bruised, soiled with her own waste, cold beyond bearing and so hungry she can scarcely understand it. Her thin, useless blanket is soaked in piss and worse. There is nothing she can do. No end to this torment and no reason for it either. No half-remembered sin can possibly be as bad as to justify such punishment.

  Collapsed in the corner, too weak to move, all she can do is shiver. She lacks even the strength to cry.

  41

  ‘It’s not my favourite place in all the world, I can tell you that much.’

  Early morning, before the sun had managed to warm the air to gas mark four. Grumpy Bob sat in one of the chairs around the conference table in McLean’s office, nursing a mug of coffee and moaning about the world in general and his imminent retirement in particular. His trip out to Bestingfield psychiatric hospital the day before hadn’t improved his mood, and it was taking a while to get the full story from him.

  ‘It’s a place we send people so we can forget about them, Bob. Not surprising nobody wants to know about it.’ Except that wasn’t strictly speaking true. Yes, there were people who went in and never came out again, and sometimes it really was the best place for them. But there were others who responded to treatment, recovered, returned to society as changed people. He knew which of those two categories Norman Bale fell into.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, I’m glad I’ll not be going back any time soon. Place fair creeps me out.’ Grumpy Bob took a long slurp of his coffee and made a face. Fair enough, it wasn’t the best.

  ‘So, what did you find out then?’ McLean asked. ‘Apart from the fact that it’s not exactly a holiday camp.’

  ‘Your Doctor Graham’s as keen as mustard, for one thing. I can only assume she’s not been in the job long. Still hasn’t had the corners knocked off her. She seems to genuinely believe Bale isn’t a lost cause.’

  ‘He certainly seems to have her wrapped around his finger, if her messages are anything to go by. Did she say why he was so keen to speak to me?’

  ‘I got the impression she was trying to understand his fixation on you. She doesn’t really know why he’s obsessed with you, but she feels that unless he can confront that obsession he’ll never move on.’

  ‘And the only way for him to confront it is for him to speak to me?’ McLean picked up his own coffee mug reflexively, then put it back down again when he realised he didn’t actually want to drink it. ‘I know my psychology degree’s a few decades out of date now, but that seems counterintuitive to me. If I jump in the car and drive down there to see him just because he’s asking for me to do so, then that’s only going to reinforce his obsession, not undo it.’

  Grumpy Bob’s expression suggested that he couldn’t agree more. Still there was something else he’d not said yet, McLean could tell.

  ‘I had a wee chat with some of the psych nurses and orderlies while I was there. They all say Bale’s a model patient. Never does anything to upset anyone. He’s well behaved, polite, does what he’s told. Spends most of his time in his cell reading and writing.’

  ‘Writing? He’s not penning his memoirs is he?’

  ‘No. He’s been compiling a collection of old Scottish folk tales, of all things. Seems a suitably twisted thing for someone like him to do, I suppose.’

  ‘Folk tales? What, like Kate Crackernuts? The milk-white Doo?’

  Grumpy Bob raised an eyebrow. ‘If I’d known you were an expert . . .’

  ‘Hardly. My gran scoffed at all that sort of thing as nonsense, but Mrs Roberts, the old housekeeper, she used to tell me them to get me to sleep. Never read anything from a book. She had them all in her head.’ He smiled at the memory, long forgotten. Then remembered what had brought it back. ‘Do you think he’s playing games with them all? Lulling them into a false sense of security?’

  ‘I don’t know. If he is, then it’s a long game. Takes a lot to pull the wool over their eyes too. I think they mostly figure he’s not doing any harm so they let him get on with it. Occupational therapy, I guess.’

  ‘And yet he still wants to talk to me.’

  Grumpy Bob let out a long sigh. ‘He still wants to see you, aye. According to Doctor Graham he was asking for you in his last session, yesterday morning. Mind you, he asks every session. This time he also asked to pass on another message.’

  McLean was sorely tempted to tell the detective sergeant to keep it to himself, but Grumpy Bob had already gone out of his way to check
out the situation at the secure psychiatric unit for him. And Dr Graham was only doing her job. Might as well take the message; it wasn’t as if he had to do anything about it, after all.

  ‘Go ahead then. What has Norman Bale got to say that’s so important?’

  ‘Apparently he’s been researching the legend of Sawney Bean. I’m guessing that’s not one Mrs Roberts told you just before bedtime, aye?’

  McLean shook his head, a horrible feeling growing in his gut. Too many coincidences, too many echoes. ‘Was that it?’ He had a feeling it wasn’t.

  ‘No. Here, I wrote it down.’ Grumpy Bob pulled out his notebook and flicked through the pages. ‘Apparently he wanted to tell you that Sawney Bean was an East Lothian man, even if he carried out his gruesome trade in Galloway. And that’s why they brought him back to Edinburgh to face justice. So they could control what happened to him.’ He snapped the notebook closed again. ‘Does that make even the slightest bit of sense?’

  McLean rubbed at his face with both hands, his eyes gritty all of a sudden. Everyone knew the legend of Sawney Bean, but it was just that, a legend. A man and his wife, their children and incestuous grandchildren, living in a sea cave on the Galloway coast and killing unfortunate travellers through the nearby forest for food. Twenty-five years and a thousand victims later, they’d been finally brought to justice by King James I himself. Or possibly King James VI, what was a detail of 150 years’ difference in the dates, after all? The entire family had been dragged to Edinburgh, rather than the nearer town of Ayr, and put to death without trial. The story might have been inspired by some actual, long-forgotten case of cannibalism; there were some few historical records earlier in the country’s history, after all. But the old wives’ tale was too full of inconsistencies to be anything else.

  ‘As I remember it, Sawney Bean never actually existed. He was made up, either to sell chapbooks or to help paint the Scots as something less than civilised. English propaganda in the eighteenth century.’