‘The deer?’
‘What? Of course, who did you think I meant?’
She smiles, but then suddenly there’s a shift and a note of agitation crosses her face, and with a shake of the head she looks back out over the lawn. She briefly taps the middle finger of her right hand against her thumb. A slight twitch of the head.
I think of Dorothy again. Why did I do that? Why now? I have an image of her, sitting alone in a hotel room, consumed by unimaginable sadness. Where did that come from?
I shouldn’t wait until next week to call her. I should call her in Paris. I’ll get her mobile number from the people in Tallinn.
She shouldn’t be in a hotel room, though. She should have gone to Paris already and be with her friend. Why did I picture her in a hotel? She shouldn’t be alone. She should be talking to someone. Perhaps, ever so slightly, starting the long process of trying to move on.
She’s never going to move on. Who could?
I’ll call her tonight. Why did I even get out the car and say goodbye? She spoke to me. After all this time, all these years, I could tell. That was the first time she’d ever said anything to anyone. The strangest thing imaginable happened to her, and for a decade and a half she never mentioned it to anyone. Why now? Why me, now?
I shouldn’t have got out the car. I need to call her tonight.
I realise Mrs Baden has placed her fingers lightly in mine.
‘You look distracted,’ she says. I leave my hand where it is for a moment, then finally withdraw it, shaking my head.
‘It’s all right. I just need to make a call later.’
‘Yes, you do.’
Somehow I feel if I could get Mrs Baden to speak plainly to me, I could get answers to virtually everything in the world in the next ten minutes. She seems so wise. Yet, she’s sitting here in a care home, looking out a window, waiting for a deer, who she thinks is her son. That, as Terry Jones said, doesn’t seem very wise to me.
‘Do you know why I’m here?’ I ask.
Her eyes drop slightly, but she doesn’t reply.
‘I don’t know anything,’ she says. ‘Ask anyone. They’ll tell you.’
She’s not what I’d been expecting, although there’s a strangeness about this entire business which dictates that I should have come with no expectations at all. Indeed, that’s a good philosophy to take into every police investigation.
More and more, in the public services, as in life in general, we come across people with dementia. A natural result of an ageing population. There’s always something there, something that says there’s no mask. There’s no artifice, because the ability for artifice has been lost. It doesn’t mean there are no lies. There’s something deeper than that, more intrinsic.
I’m not picking up the usual signs with Mrs Baden.
‘Who is it who comes to visit you?’
Another lowering of the eyes, and then slowly they’re lifted back up and she looks into the trees.
‘Who do you suppose comes to visit me, Detective?’
She gives me a quick glance. Venomous in a way that I don’t quite understand either. Four sentences into the conversation, and already I feel like I’m getting rings run round me.
‘I don’t know, Elsa, I’d like you to tell me.’
The middle finger and thumb tap together again, another slight movement of the head.
Suddenly her head lifts, her face lightens. I watch her closely for a second, the life and brightness in her eyes, and then turn to confirm what has obviously happened. The deer has emerged from the woods.
A young male, he stands on the grass staring up at the house. It really does look, for all the world, like he’s staring straight at us.
Her hands clap silently together, as though she’s sitting in an audience in a church, silently letting her child know her approval of his performance in the choir.
We watch the deer, the deer appears to watch us. I glance round the rest of the room. Another couple of people have come in. No one else seems interested in the deer. I wonder if only Mrs Baden and I can see it, but dismiss the notion. There may be a certain peculiarity to events, but it’s not a ghost deer.
When I look back, the deer has bowed its head and is eating the grass. Elsa is watching him with a kind of parental concern and pride.
‘What’s the connection with the deer?’ I ask.
‘We’re friends,’ she says.
‘How long have you been friends?’
‘He’s been coming here every morning since I arrived. He says hello, we exchange a few morning pleasantries, and then he goes about his business.’
‘You’ve been here three years?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘He seems young. Younger than three.’
I say this last one with a soft voice. The truth-hurts voice. The I-just-need-to-break-this-to-you-gently voice.
‘You don’t need to be embarrassed pointing that out, Detective. It’s not as though I don’t know. But I’m only telling you what I’m seeing. He hasn’t aged a day in three years.’
‘Maybe it’s not the same deer.’
She turns to look at me full on for a moment, her face softens from the look of outright disdain with which she turned, then she shakes her head and looks back at her friend, whose head remains bowed, eating grass.
I don’t think I’m going to get anywhere talking about the deer. After all, it’s not about the deer. Unless the deer is also, as one might suppose from the way she’s looking at it, her son.
‘Tell me about John,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘Do you remember he died twelve years ago? In Estonia?’
She doesn’t immediately answer. The deer looks up, and they’re staring at each other. Maybe they’re talking. A few moments, and then the deer turns its head and walks slowly away across the lawn and into the trees. It seems to disappear before the trees completely surround it, just as it appears to leave a space where it’s been.
She watches the space for a while, then turns back.
‘That wasn’t him,’ she says. ‘That person who died in Estonia. It wasn’t him.’
‘You identified the body.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘I’ve seen your signature on file. One of my colleagues spoke to the coroner of the day. He remembered the case, he remembered you coming in to confirm the identification, albeit he said it was just as much about you seeing your son for the last time.’
‘I’m not saying that someone didn’t go along and look at that body and identify it as my son. However, it wasn’t my son lying on the table, if that’s where the body was, and it wasn’t me who looked, because if it had been, I would never have identified him.’
Total denial. Tough to argue against.
‘We have DNA evidence to support the fact that it was your son.’
‘It’s wrong.’
I watch her for a moment, and then follow her gaze out to the trees. So assured, so measured. She catches my eye. We share a forlorn glance over the table, as though neither of us is getting from the discussion what we wanted.
‘Can you pour me a cup of tea, please, Detective. I don’t really have the strength to lift the teapot. Just a splash of milk, thank you. I’m sorry there’s only one cup, shall I get you another?’
She goes to press the small alarm that’s hanging around her neck, but I wave her off.
‘Just ate a huge breakfast, drank a lot of tea.’
‘Of course.’
I pour a little milk into the cup, add the tea.
‘Not too much,’ she says. ‘Half a cup.’
It looks cold and stewed, befitting tea that must have been sitting here most of the morning.
‘It’s the way I like it,’ she says.
‘Who was it, then? If it wasn’t you who identified the body, who was it?’
She lifts the tea. Her hands are shaking so much I think the cup will fall from her fingers, or that the tea will spill, which explains why
she wanted the cup half empty.
She takes a drink. I wait for the slurp, the old person’s slurp at a cup of tea, but there’s no sound.
‘Yes, it’s vile, but I can’t drink it hot any more. Shame. A crying shame.’
‘Who identified the body?’
Was it really not her? Or am I sitting here pushing a mad old woman, who can’t even remember her son dying, into naming someone who doesn’t even exist?
‘Roger got a woman to go along with him,’ she says. ‘Pretended it was me, got her to sign in my name. He was embarrassed that I wouldn’t go. He was embarrassed by me.’
‘Why wouldn’t you go?’
‘Because I knew it wasn’t John. My son wasn’t dead, I knew he wasn’t. I wasn’t wasting my time going to look at the dead body of someone else’s son. Anyway, it would have been disrespectful.’
‘Why did your husband think it was John, then?’
‘Oh, he didn’t know him, did he?’
‘Your husband didn’t know your son?’
‘Well, you know, not really. They’d lived together for eighteen years, but he didn’t know him. Not the way I did.’
‘He knew him well enough to recognise him, surely?’
She’d been engaging for a few moments, but at that I can see the shadow cross her face again. She looks away, back out towards the trees, a slightly forlorn look on her face, as though she’d been hoping the young deer would have returned.
‘You know better than that,’ she says. ‘You know better, Detective, I know you do.’
Her eyes are now fixed on the trees. I doubt she will look at me again.
‘Who was the other woman?’ I ask.
A slight head twitch, the barest movement of her fingers.
‘Who was the other woman?’
‘Might have been my sister, I suppose, I don’t know. It’s been so long since I talked to her. Perhaps she died. I don’t know.’
The words are drifting away. There’s no point in enquiring after her sister, I’ll need to find out elsewhere. I glance over my shoulder, having felt the presence of the nurse, and there she is, just inside the door, indicating that I should leave.
I turn back to Mrs Baden, stand, put my hand on her shoulder.
‘Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. If you think of anything else that might be of use, let one of the nurses know and they’ll get in touch with me.’
She stares straight ahead, her shoulders do not move, her mouth does not open. She barely appears to be breathing.
I leave the room, stopping at reception on the way out to enquire after the sister.
24
Come into Anstruther on the Leven road, pull into the car park down by the harbour. Plenty of spaces. Could have gone straight to the police station, but wanted to get a feel for the town again. I can’t remember the last time I was here. Twenty-five years maybe. Been a long time. So long, in fact, that I don’t really know how much has changed. The harbour, of course, is still as it was.
The sun remained behind in Perthshire, as if it wasn’t wanted on the east coast. Patchy cloud became thick cloud, and now, flat, grey, low, oppressive cloud, the sea and the sky indistinguishable. Seems the same, everywhere you look.
It’s a classic harbour, with two walls a couple of hundred yards apart, arcing round towards each other and leaving thirty yards or so in the middle, for the tide and the fishing boats. There are another couple of short piers in the middle, in between the two, creating a further, even calmer, harbour to the right.
Not so many fishing boats any more.
I walk out along the right-hand wall. There’s one old trawler moored up. Looks like it still might be in use. Not much else. An old wooden cruiser, a couple of modern plastic yachts, a couple of rowing boats.
There’s a guy walking a dog, a couple out for a walk, three teenagers sitting in a little group, passing around a single can of McEwan’s.
I called Natterson earlier. There was a pause there, a definite pause, when I said I had the car and that I wanted to go to Anstruther, and then, like the good team player, he said that’d be a great idea. Felt bad, like I’m stepping on his toes, but I wanted to check it out.
I walk along to the end, step up onto the higher wall and look out over the water. Can see a couple of boats, but there’s not much out to sea. Flat and grey and dull, until the water meets the sky. No wind, but the air is cold. I realise the teenagers were sitting in t-shirts. Turn and look back at the town. I recognise it now, the basic shape of the seafront.
Shops and ice cream and afternoons spent on the small beaches start to come back to me. Look round to my right, up to the golf course. Nine holes, very short. Used to go there, play a couple of rounds, made me feel better than I ever really was.
I become aware of the cry of the gulls. It used to be such an evocative sound, a noise that could take you to the seaside in an instant. Maybe not so much any more. Seagulls are everywhere, always scavenging for food. Nobody likes them. The noise and the faeces and the general tumult, as if it’s their fault. As if it’s the fault of the gulls that they’ve had to come inland looking for food.
The seagulls cry and swirl, and as I stand and look over the harbour, I realise how empty it is, how dead. It never used to be like this. Maybe I just came in the summer, that was all.
There’s someone on the far side, down near the bottom of the other arm of the harbour. We stand still, her and I, and I feel like she’s looking at me, like we’re looking at each other, although we’re really far too far apart to tell.
Then she starts walking up the harbour, her gaze directed north, along the shore to Crail.
I don’t wait to see if she looks back. Suddenly the place feels full of ghosts. A harbour full of ghosts. Fishing vessels that no longer ply their trade, and fishermen who are now dead or doing something else, or doing nothing at all, except sitting in a small room lamenting the passing of the years and the passing of the old trades.
The feeling I had sitting in the bright garden centre café while the sun shone suddenly feels like it was several months ago. As I walk back down the harbour, the dog walker is gone, the couple are gone, the three teenagers are gone. The empty can of McEwan’s lies in the middle of the wall.
I stand and look at it for a moment but don’t pick it up.
* * *
And so we come to Emily King’s house, revisiting another part of the tragedy of Tartu from twelve years previously. Me and a police sergeant from the Anstruther office.
I need to get back to the station and get into the old investigation. Never had the chance, of course, leaving so quickly in the first place. That’s what needs to be done, because whatever is happening to these people now, it started twelve years ago, and something has occurred, some event, to make the story relevant again.
Maybe it starts with Baden escaping from the house in the woods. The timing of Emily King dying certainly ties in with it. Whoever those people were, they evacuated that house very quickly. Maybe now they’re tying up loose ends. Maybe that’s all Emily was. A loose end. Lucky, perhaps, that she lasted this long.
The house is small, detached. A couple of rooms and a kitchen downstairs, two bedrooms and a small bathroom upstairs. Taking a general walkthrough to start.
‘You haven’t tipped through the cupboards and such yet?’ I ask.
The sergeant shakes her head. In uniform, no jacket. Hair clipped back. I find her very attractive, nice voice, lovely laugh the one time I say anything remotely funny. So I know how it will play out. I’ll barely look at her, and she’ll think I’m rude, our business will be concluded at some stage, and that will be that.
Seven years and I can still imagine Olivia seeing right through me, as if it matters. How stupid.
‘We had a basic look, but haven’t had the time to get down to the bottom of underwear drawers yet.’
‘Correspondence?’
‘None. Of course, these days we hardly ever find correspondence from anyone, unless
it’s online.’
‘How’s that looking?’
‘She had an old laptop. Surprisingly little on it, for anyone. She was still using some antediluvian internet connection, very little history. Watched some porn, looked at YouTube. Never downloaded anything. By modern standards, just not interested.’
I turn away from her and look at the meagre collection of items in the front room.
‘You got time to help me look through the house now? Shouldn’t take too long.’
I’m not looking at her as I ask. I could do it myself, but I feel I really need to get back to my own station at some point. It will already look like I’m delaying the rebuke from Quinn, which I’m not. Not trying to avoid anything, just following a sensible course of action. Still, it’s time I went home.
‘I can give you thirty minutes,’ she says, after a short pause. I turn and give her the merest of smiles.
‘What are we looking for?’ she asks.
Good question.
‘Anything to do with Estonia…’
‘Estonia?’
‘They still haven’t told you?’
She shakes her head. ‘I presumed there was more to it.’
Stare at the floor for a moment. Quinn obviously has his reasons for not yet passing on the full details of this along the chain, but I can’t think of any that I’m not going to find absurd and petty.
‘OK, me telling you this is probably a bit above both our pay grades, but here it is. And feel free to pass it on up the chain when you get back to the office. I’ll take the heat when I get back to Dingwall…’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Already due a trip to the naughty step. One more thing…’
We share a smile. A moment. One of those moments that always feels so utterly hopeless.
* * *
Natterson’s a decent kid. I don’t think he has a story. Perhaps, in its way, it’s the best story of all. Nothing dramatic, nothing untoward. A normal life. He was a kid from Inverness who always wanted to be a police officer. And now he is. Nothing outstanding about him, just a decent kid doing his job. Working his way through the ranks, but without any ego attached to him. Does his job, goes home to his wife and kids in their house in Culbokie. That’s all.
Song of the Dead Page 12
