Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  He shrugs. The car turns in the small clearing, and then starts back up the uneven track we came along fifteen or twenty minutes previously.

  ‘I like to have sex with the animals,’ he says.

  I smile and shake my head. The driver glances at him and in the mirror to see my reaction. Kuusk laughs quietly, although I’m not entirely sure he’s joking.

  We start the long drive through the early night back to Tallinn.

  16

  Chief Inspector Quinn’s is an interesting story. Said to me once, maybe five or six months after I arrived, that he’d been married for a few years back in the eighties. No children. His wife left him in the end, because he spent so much time at work, and he never seemed to want to spend time with her. When she left they hadn’t had sex in over two years, and they were still in their twenties.

  He told me this over a drink in the Mallard. I thought he was giving me a valuable lesson in not putting your job first if you want to hang on to the girl. And then he told me he was gay. That he’d always known, but he’d also known that there was little chance of him progressing in the police force at that time if he’d been an openly gay officer.

  The way he spoke, I was the first person to whom he’d come out, but I didn’t ask if that was the case. He said he’d asked one of his female friends to marry him, without telling her the truth. He just used her as cover. He didn’t then particularly mind when she left, because as far as he could tell, she never knew. The marriage fell apart on the story of him always being at work, which isn’t so different from so many other police marriages. Thereafter, he never had to get married again. He was the officer who’d been married once, but it hadn’t worked out because he was married to the job.

  ‘One day I’ll tell her,’ he said.

  I wonder if he has.

  It was a confessional, but I’m not sure why he told me. Maybe, finally, he had to tell someone as he was carrying the guilt around with him, like all guilt, strapped to his back, weighing him down. I was new, not from around Dingwall, didn’t know his past. Perhaps at the time he didn’t think I’d stay around for long. The memory of my parting with Olivia still being so strong, I didn’t judge him at all, I just thought, here’s another man who’s treated a woman badly, even if the reason was different. Join the club.

  In retrospect, his was much worse, and not just because Olivia was married to someone else within the year, and now has two children in private school and an Aston Martin.

  I never asked what his ex-wife is doing now and how much he’d screwed up her life. I didn’t want to know.

  * * *

  ‘I know it’s going to be tough for you, but I need you back tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I don’t think I can make it back that quickly.’

  I look at my watch, although the time right now is of no significance. Quinn has that tone in his voice.

  ‘There’s been a death on the High Street. A hit-and-run, possibly. We don’t know yet, but we’re having to investigate. And also, of course, as with any hit-and-run, the possibility that it was murder. Add to that, two assaults at the Caledonian last night, three different domestics in the last three days, and a woman walked in off the street, attached to a lawyer, with an historic rape claim against a councillor. Suddenly it’s like downtown LA around here. I’m sorry Ben, it’s just the way it goes. Last Friday you going out there wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Four days later, and we look foolish. I’m not in a position to go crying to Inverness on this, and I just can’t afford to have you on the other side of Europe.’

  As he talks, the timings run through my head. I’ve already looked at the various routes back, to try to avoid taking the sixty hours or so that it took me to get here. Google Maps has a direct route driving back, through the Baltic states, Poland, Germany and on through the low countries, of thirty-seven hours, Tallinn to Dingwall. That would be insane.

  Just after eight… no, just after six in Dingwall. Give me an hour to hire a car and sort things out this end, then hit the road. Live on coffee and Red Bull, I’d be in Dingwall by eight on Thursday morning, maybe earlier if I could make up time through Germany.

  Do they really need me for the raid on the house east of Tartu, if that’s what it’s to be? Of course not. Way out of my jurisdiction. Regardless of the nationality of the alleged victim here, I’m going to be nothing more than an observer. I’ve already told Quinn about the plan for the morning, and the usefulness of my being there, but I could backtrack from that easily enough.

  ‘If I left now…’ I begin, but that’s as far as he lets me go.

  ‘You’re booked on a flight out of Tallinn tomorrow evening at six. Change in Amsterdam for Heathrow and then onto Inverness. You’ll be back here by ten at the latest.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘–Ben, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have sent you out there if I’d known I was going to put you in this position.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘–You are not driving for a day and a half without a break, on official duty. It is not happening. And I need you at the raid in Tartu tomorrow morning. You said you were starting early. You need to get down there, get your own car and driver if you have to, and then get back to Tallinn in time for the flight.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘–It’s an order, Detective Inspector. You will be observing the raid in the morning, I want that information first hand, not through the eyes of an Eastern European police force we know nothing about. I don’t care if they’re European Union. And I want you in the office first thing on Thursday morning, fresh and ready to get to work on the case at this end. We’re exhuming Baden’s body early tomorrow morning, so by Thursday we should have been able to do the DNA testing.’

  The arguments are still raging in my head, but he knows how to have an argument with a junior officer. Never cede the floor.

  ‘Mary will have your flight details in your inbox in the next twenty minutes. I’ll see you on Thursday.’

  He hangs up.

  * * *

  I get another call not long afterwards. Maybe twenty minutes. I’ve spent the twenty minutes thinking about sitting on the plane. I’m sweating. The evening stretches before me. All I’m going to be doing is thinking about the plane. I need to stop thinking about it. Do that thing. The thing, which I’m usually so good at, where I can simply put something out of my mind. Dismiss it. Just plant the phrase, stop thinking about it, in my head. Stop thinking about it.

  It usually works. Not this time. And then the phone rings, and it’s Superintendent Stepulov, inviting me out to dinner. I’d rather spend the evening alone, but the invitation puts me on the back foot, unexpected as it is, and I accept. At least it stops me thinking about the damn plane.

  * * *

  She talks about the case for a few minutes. She’s received the download of the day’s events from Kuusk, so I presume she just wants some sort of confirmation. She lets me tell the story, rather than relating to me what he said. I don’t think there’s anything to hide. Perhaps she doesn’t trust him.

  We’re in a small, basement restaurant called Salt, a little away from the centre of town. Unassuming décor, wonderful food. The place is packed, which I thought was good when we arrived, as I assumed there would be long silences between us. Long silences are always worse in quiet restaurants. As it turns out, Superintendent Stepulov is a talker.

  She has the sea bass, I’m eating squid. Tender squid, not the kind of thing you usually get in the UK that you could roll up and use as a squash ball.

  ‘My family came here during Soviet times,’ she says, in reply to a question about her Russian ethnicity. ‘The late 1950s. My father was young.’

  I don’t ask why. The Soviets used to move populations around on a whim, mixing ethnicities, spreading the Russian population to the occupied territories. Not that they actually considered the Baltic states to be occupied. They just considered them theirs.

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He makes
puppets,’ she says.

  My mild surprise probably shows on my face. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, just not something out of the seventeenth century.

  ‘A puppet maker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He still makes puppets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I wonder if she enjoys the reaction of people on telling them that her father is a puppet maker. Having said that, from what I’ve picked up so far, Estonians probably don’t react at all.

  ‘That seems very Hansel and Gretel,’ I say.

  ‘Pinocchio perhaps.’

  ‘Of course. Do people buy his puppets?’

  Does anyone buy puppets any more?

  The troubled shadow crosses her face. She dabs the corner of her mouth. She’s not finished her meal, but I can tell there’s a story coming. I wonder how often she tells the story.

  ‘The Soviets gave him a small shop. The late nineteen sixties. People used to still buy puppets back then. At least in the Soviet Union. And then time moved on, and even with us, puppets were less and less desired. But father worked on, sitting in his small shop every day, making his puppets. He would sell one every so often, but never as fast as he made them. And so the shelves filled up…’

  She shakes her head, a slight smile returns. The tumult of the small restaurant seems to ease a little, as a party of eight or ten noisily leaves, the door is closed, and a more subdued atmosphere settles over the room.

  ‘It was a sight, a wonderful sight. He didn’t mind, he didn’t need the money, and those shelves, so full of his work. So colourful. Walking into that shop, it was beautiful.’

  ‘Your English is very good,’ I say. I don’t know why it seems a surprise. Her English was good earlier.

  ‘Thank you. I studied for four years in Manchester.’

  ‘Manchester University?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice. The shop, sorry. You were talking about the shop. Is it in the old town?’

  It sounds like it should be. Any old town in Eastern Europe, in fact; pitching to the tourists with their traditional artefacts and designs that have been around for centuries. Or maybe such places are just marketed like that. Maybe they’ve only been around since the beginning of the era of mass tourism.

  ‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘And a good thing. If the Soviets had given him a shop there, the Estonians would have taken it back by now. His shop is in Kalamaja. Not many people go there. It’s coming though, it’s coming. Every area is being redeveloped, made into the image of the west. Shopping malls and cinemas showing American films. It will come to Kalamaja soon enough. And then someone will find a piece of paper that says that so-and-so used to own that building, and it’s now been sold to some property development, and he needs to get out in five days.’

  She shakes her head, as though trying to shake away the bitterness that has crept into her voice. I’m not sure what to say to all that, but she waves away the subject and continues talking.

  ‘And then one day, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years ago, when his shelves were full, and his shop was a treasure trove, and he was refusing to let any of those trashy tourist shops around the town sell his puppets, a film star found his place. God knows how.’

  ‘A film star?’

  ‘American,’ she says, disdainfully.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her name will not pass my lips,’ she says. ‘I forget her anyway. I put her out of my mind. She is a bitch.’

  I’m not going to find out who the film star is, but it doesn’t really matter. Just the thought of it, of this senior police officer badmouthing any film star in this strange little basement restaurant seems comical. Can’t help smiling.

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She bought three puppets. For my adopted daughters, she said, as though Father was supposed to be impressed.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound so bad.’

  She snorts.

  ‘Then she told everyone. Told everyone about her puppet maker, as though Father had made those puppets personally for her. She tells everyone about the shop, and she tells them all where to find it, and that they should buy puppets. Father sold virtually all his puppets in a matter of a few weeks, and the shelves were empty. He was on the news, he was in magazines.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound so bad either,’ I say, although even as I say it, I realise I’m speaking for someone else. I’m speaking for those people who would want that to happen. If you didn’t want to sell everything you’d ever made, if you liked things the way they were, you’re not necessarily going to want anything to change.

  That part of the conversation is exchanged in a look.

  ‘He loved them all. I like to think there’s a little piece of him in every one of those.’ She makes an exasperated noise. ‘The story, where does it go…? The usual. People picked him up and they dropped him. Women. He should have known better, but he was just a man. Typical Russian. Head turned by the fame and the glamour, as though it was actually at all glamorous.’

  She pauses, coming to the wretched part. Coming to the part that’s still relevant today, the part that still causes her pain, the part that kills her every time she thinks about it.

  ‘For a while he couldn’t make puppets fast enough, spending all his time at the shop. But it turned out, he wasn’t always at the shop. Started wearing new clothes, started talking about new things, started spending time with new people. Foolish man. And where was Mama all this time? At home, feeling abandoned, waiting for him. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for the front door to open.’

  She’s staring at the floor. This isn’t going to end well. While the words seem scornful, slowly her voice is getting lower, slowly her tone becoming more resigned.

  ‘And then people realised they were just puppets. They weren’t phones, they weren’t some new kind of American or Korean device. Just puppets, that’s all. Nothing special. And father was dropped again. Pfft! Off you go, you pointless little puppet maker.

  ‘But that was him. He’d seen the other side. He’d had his fifteen little minutes of fame. He didn’t care about Mama any more. He still wore the clothes, and he continued to chase after the dream he’d been shown. The fantasy. He wanted a sixteenth minute. He even said it to me one day. I just want the sixteenth minute.’

  The memory of the conversation seems to hurry her to the end of the story, makes her straighten herself a little. She glances at me, shakes her head a little.

  ‘He came home one evening – yes, he actually came home – and Mama was hanging by the neck from the beam in the bedroom.’

  Her eyes drop, she makes a funny little noise, before straightening herself again. Forgetting that she’s learned to deal with this. Forgetting that this is a story she can let lightly trip from her lips.

  ‘And so, where was this film star then? Where was she? We all know, don’t we? She was nowhere. None of these people, none of them cared. Why would they? Who cares about the puppet maker?

  ‘And father was broken. Of course he was. Mama had always… she’d always had trouble. You know, with depression. Drinking. Ha! She is not alone. And now… dead. No more depression, eh? Maybe we should be thankful.’

  She takes another small piece of fish, then places her knife and fork in the middle of the plate, and pushes it slightly away from her. Less than an inch.

  ‘Your father still makes puppets?’

  She said that already, didn’t she? At the start of the conversation, which seems a while ago.

  She’s staring at the plate. Takes a sip of wine.

  ‘He sits and makes puppets, and no one buys them, and slowly the shelves fill up again. But you cannot replace someone who loves you with puppets. You cannot replace someone who loves you… with anything.’

  The waitress stops beside the table. Just a second, and then she picks up on the moment. She catches my eye, smiles a little uncomfortably, and walks quickly to the next table.

  ‘I’d like to see his shop,’ I say.

 
; Seriously? Who am I going to buy a puppet for?

  ‘You won’t have time,’ she says.

  17

  Back on the road early. Stepulov remains sceptical, yet she knows she has to act. She can’t risk there being some kind of thing that she chooses to ignore for no reason other than her gut instinct. She has to do something.

  Last night she called down, dragged the Chief of Police in Tartu out of some sort of reception, listened to his general outrage at being stood up by her officers earlier in the day, and then forced him to cede to her authority and supply the necessary backup for this morning.

  I doubt we’ll find them particularly helpful, but it doesn’t really matter. We just need them there. Feet on the ground, that’s all. Weight of numbers.

  Leave early enough that we drive all the way in darkness. Get to Tartu as the sky is turning a lighter shade of grey. Almost eight fifteen.

  Our car remains the same as yesterday. No conversation on the way down, yet the silence is of a completely different texture. There’s a nervousness this time, the energy of it coming from the driver and Baden. I doubt Baden slept. Not happy to be going back.

  Last night, for the first time, he mentioned returning to the UK. We still haven’t told anyone back there that he’s come in. How can we until we know more?

  I cut him off by telling him I’d need to speak to the Embassy, something which I’ve still not done. I’ll need to squeeze it in on my way to the airport.

  And that, of course, is the thing that bothers me. That’s where my nervousness comes from. It doesn’t matter what happens when we turn up at this house, assuming that we can actually identify the right one when it comes to it. That will take care of itself. And I am, entirely, an observer. If there really is some kind of human farm, it’s a matter for the local police. I’m here to try to sort out the curious case of John Baden, and later today I’ll be getting on a plane out of the country and, more than likely, never coming back.

  The thought of the plane is the plague.

  Never liked flying. Maybe when I was eight and it seemed a big adventure. When turbulence was fun. When you never thought about what could happen. When bad things were what happened to other people.