Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  She’s nodding, so I bring the press analogy to an end. She doesn’t need me to explain the workings of a police tribunal that knew what its findings were before it started.

  ‘So the narrative around the station–’

  ‘–Had you met him before yesterday?’ she asks.

  ‘Seen him around town, spoken to him a few times. He calls me “Newbie”.’

  She smiles.

  ‘The narrative around the station is that something happened to him in Estonia. It made him, I don’t know, rethink things, made him… did he marry you as a result of it? Was that it? And then it didn’t work out, he started drinking more, it affected his performance, it became a downward spiral where it all intertwined, and eventually…’

  Nodding again.

  ‘Yes, the latter part’s about right.’

  ‘What about the case in Estonia?’

  She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Can I ask when you first met him? Where was he on the downward spiral?’

  ‘I’m not going to be much use to you, you know,’ she says.

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘I met him a month before we got married.’

  Crap. One of those.

  ‘At an AA meeting. We were both dry. We had so many stories. It was going to be great. Except, of course, I’d been dry for three years and he’d been dry for three minutes. He stayed dry until, I don’t know, about a week before the wedding. I should have known but I was in love. Horrible, isn’t it? To think of it? Me and him, a pair of losers. So I had my doubts, but I loved him. Pushed through it. Got married. He celebrated by getting hammered. Think he was drunk for the rest of the time we were together. And then I left. Sounds terrible, but I didn’t love him any more. It came and went, like I was fifteen or something.’

  ‘So what made him drink?’

  ‘Apart from being a police officer?’

  ‘We’re not all alcoholics.’

  She shrugs, follows it by taking a loud slurp of tea.

  ‘You knew he’d been in Estonia?’

  ‘Think he mentioned he’d been there not long before we met, but I never asked him about it. Don’t suppose I cared much. Never thought it was that big of a deal for him.’

  ‘He didn’t mention it as being some sort of moment?’

  ‘Some sort of moment? No, no he didn’t.’

  ‘Did he ever mention the names John Baden and Emily King?’

  She laughs. ‘Did he ever mention names? Are you serious? It was twelve years ago!’

  I’ve got nothing else. She shakes her head, and seems a little guilty that she was openly laughing at the line of questioning.

  ‘Maybe he did talk about it. I mean, seriously, maybe he did, but how am I going to remember? He was drunk! I could barely make out what he was saying most of the time, never mind remember any names.’

  Well, it’s not like I’m surprised. I didn’t come out here thinking she was going to suddenly reveal the truth behind Rosco’s part in the great John Baden mystery. Not that it seemed like so much of a mystery at the time.

  She laughs ruefully.

  ‘Thought I was done with that loser. Can I just say, see when he does kill himself, or ends up dead in a ditch somewhere, you lot really, really don’t need to come and tell me. I don’t care.’

  And that is pretty much that from Mrs Rosco.

  31

  Sitting down by the front at Aberdeen, looking out over the beach. The tide is midway, the sea is flat. The same flat sea that stretches all the way to Scandinavia, working its way past Denmark, and into the Baltic to Estonia. Away to our right a ferry moves slowly from the port. The sky is unremarkable, grey and neverending. There is that fluid quality to the light that is so wonderful in the Highlands and north-east. Maybe you get it everywhere, but it seems so clear, so special up here. You can let yourself go in it, like pushing yourself into the water from the edge of a swimming pool. Float away.

  The guy sits down next to me, and hands me the coffee. He sets his own down beside him on the bench, then pulls a packet of Gauloises from his pocket. Well, there goes the perfect sea air.

  ‘D’you mind?’

  I shake my head. How terribly polite of me. He’s all movement, like a spasming fish in the bottom of a boat. Wired. Yet, this isn’t speaking to the police nervousness. This is constant nervous energy, his hands always on the move. Fingers rubbing together, a scratch at the ear. But steady, very steady as he lights the cigarette, and blows the first puff of Gallic smoke out the corner of his mouth, away from me. I still, of course, get the full scent of it. Not awful, in its fresh state, but still. On a clear day by the beach, the light smell of the sea in the still, cold air, he might as well be breathing death.

  He’s thin, early fifties, a slight moustache, hair starting to thin and go grey. Anyone who uses this much energy just sitting still is never going to be anything other than slim.

  ‘So, I get a call to meet Inspector Natterson from Dingwall, then it’s on the news that a police officer died on the Aberdeen road just outside Nairn, and now you’re here and you’re not Inspector Natterson. Does two and two make four on this occasion?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. Need to work, need to focus. Can’t think about Nat now.

  ‘I’m sorry. You must have worked with him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re involved in the case that he was working on here, or are you asking questions from his notes?’

  ‘It was my… We were working together.’

  ‘He wanted to talk about the Young Conservatives from just after the turn of the century.’

  I spent too long with the turn of the century meaning the early 1900s for it to ever mean anything else, so I take a moment, and then say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been involved since the eighties. We had our day back then, but it was coming to an end of course. Dear old Margaret saw to that. Well, actually, you know, they say that Lady Thatcher did for the Tories in Scotland, but in eighty-seven we still had eleven MPs, and in ninety-two we had twelve. It wasn’t until the end of the Major years, and until the lying Blair came in and seduced everyone, that the MPs vanished. It wasn’t like the mining industry didn’t need tackling head–’

  ‘–Is that some sort of default position?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you meet someone new, without prompting you immediately start defending Mrs Thatcher?’

  He smiles. Rubs his hands along the top of his thigh, takes a draw, lifts his coffee. If you were to study him, you could probably work out a strict sequence in which he makes all his little movements. Like a batsman with a hundred little ticks and affectations before each ball.

  ‘What’s your attachment to the Young Conservatives?’

  ‘Kind of a senior adviser. Obviously there’s a constant turnover of students, and the new ones in first year learn the ropes by the time they’re in fourth year, and they have some idea of what’s going on. But it’s still good to have an old head around, just to keep everyone grounded, to reign in the craziest of the ideas – at least, I try to – and make sure that relations with the wider party in general are relatively smooth.’

  ‘You have a good memory of everyone?’

  ‘Of course. There have been fewer to remember in the last twenty years, but we keep going. There haven’t been any years when we didn’t have enough for a committee, and to play a full part in campus political life.’

  ‘You remember John Baden? Emily King?’

  Another drag, another small smile. The smile goes quickly, as he obviously remembers what happened to Baden.

  ‘Yes, of course. They were great. A great little group we had going for a couple of years. Very energetic. The Four Musketeers, we used to call them.’

  ‘Who were the other two?’

  ‘There was Waverley. Thomas. He was the plutocrat, the free marketer. He was going to be driving Aston Martins and living in Mayfair by the time he was thirty. Oh, we had to keep him in check. He was happy to have a hea
lth service, but that it should only treat people whose ailments and illnesses weren’t self-inflicted. Heart problems because you eat too much junk food? Lung cancer?’

  He laughs, as he blows out another plume of smoke, having already given up the pretence of blowing out the side of his mouth away from me. The slight breeze is in my direction in any case.

  ‘Bad legs due to diabetes? Broken leg walking in the mountains? Skin cancer from too many holidays in the Algarve? Anything alcohol-related? All of the above, you’d better have medical insurance. I mean, to be fair to him, he practiced what he preached. He smoked and he drank, and he had very good medical insurance.’

  He laughs.

  ‘Emily and John were the go-getters, the ones who were going to change things, the ones who believed in old-fashioned Conservatism. Caring Conservatism. God, I hate the way people just laugh at you now when you mention that. And the bloody SNP… what d’you suppose they are, eh? They ran their bloody referendum pretending to be, God, I don’t know, Socialists or some such, but give them five minutes in real power, give them five minutes, and they’ll be further to the right than us, or they’ll go down fighting in the attempt, as broken and busted as New Labour.’

  ‘Who was the fourth?’

  ‘Ha! There was the joker in the pack. Jason. Jason Solomon. He was the bright one. He was the boy, he really was.’

  He scuffs his feet on the ground, takes a last puff of the cigarette then drops it at his feet and grinds the butt into the ground. There’s something childlike in his constant movement, back and forth, a tug and a pull and a scratch.

  ‘There are so many students that pass through here,’ he says. ‘You see them all, don’t you? You see them all.’

  He stops for a moment, suddenly it all stops. The movement. He looks sadly out to sea, and I follow his gaze. There really is an hypnotic flat calm. The cry of the gulls, the meagre sound of the wash on the beach. Inevitably, there is also the sound of the cars behind us.

  The fingers start working again.

  ‘So much hope. Some you know are destined for nothing, and they rarely surprise you, but those who are destined for something, you never know. You never know if they’ll live up to their potential.

  ‘I didn’t think any of them really had a future in the party. They were bright and brilliant, but they weren’t going to be politicians. I saw Emily and John going off and building wells in Africa or something, and although they never quite got around to it, they were going to. I’m sure they were. Waverley went off to do what he’d always said he would. It was just Solomon, the dark devil. It could have gone any way with him. He could have been Prime Minister if he’d wanted. Could have been Judas too. The betrayer. Could have been anybody he wanted. He played them all at the time, that’s what I thought. But, you know, it was university politics, nothing more. In the end, what did any of it matter?’

  ‘What did he do? Solomon?’

  ‘Went to Sandhurst. I honestly did not see that coming.’

  ‘Is he still in the military?’

  He shrugs theatrically, the full range of movements and curious little habits having returned.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you. I don’t usually chase them up. I just thought, I’ll be hearing about you again. Yet I never did. I don’t suppose I would if he’s off somewhere, in Afghanistan or wherever, killing ethnics.’

  Ignore that.

  ‘What about Emily and John? They were a couple right from the off?’

  That’s what he’d told me. Gibson makes a noncommittal movement of the head.

  ‘I think that’s how they played it, but she was much freer than that, Emily. A free spirit. She and John were close, always the closest, but she had the other two as well, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘She had relationships with them…?’

  ‘Oh, you know, it always seemed so complicated. She was probably just fucking them. I don’t know, I really don’t.’

  ‘Did you think there were tensions between the three guys because of her?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Tensions. That’s the word. All in all, however, they were a great team. I didn’t mind the tension. Tensions stop things becoming stale. Look at the Beatles.’

  ‘Did you ever witness the guys falling out, ever see them fight, anything like that? Punches thrown?’

  He takes another long drink of coffee, then lifts the packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and pulls one out with his teeth.

  ‘I don’t remember. They probably did simmering resentment and petty squabbling rather than actual fighting. We’re Conservatives, not Neanderthals.’

  That makes me laugh. He smirks and then settles back, seems to make a conscious effort to stop fidgeting. We sit together, in sudden silence and silence of movement, and look out over the grey sea. I stare away in the distance. I try, as I seem to do every time I look at the sea at the moment, to work out where the water meets the sky, and once again, despite the liquid clarity of the light, I can’t decide.

  ‘Why d’you ask, by the way? John back from the dead?’

  * * *

  He gives me a few more names to talk to, others who were involved in the club, who knew the main four. The big four, as he refers to them at one point. I decide I ought to ask the others about Gibson, with his greying moustache and constantly moving hands. If I can find any of them alive, of course.

  I call Sutherland before I get back in the car, and ask him to find out everything he can about Jason Solomon.

  We don’t talk about Natterson.

  32

  I drive back along the A96. Might as well face it. I presume the road will have been cleared by now, and I can hardly go through life not driving along it. What if something takes me to Nairn? Am I going to go via Aviemore and the Dava moor? A road’s a road and Natterson is dead and not coming back.

  It’s dark by the time I’m through Nairn and on the Inverness road anyway. There’s nothing obvious to see on the approach to the roundabout. What would it be anyway? Turfed up grass. A lone, damaged tree. The spirit of Natterson, smiling at me, telling me not to worry. Of course I don’t begrudge you your slight show of annoyance. Tell Ellen that everything’s all right. I’ll see her and the kids in sixty years, give or take a decade.

  I feel it, though, as I go past. I don’t need to look. There’s a weight that descends. The car doesn’t slow down, but suddenly it’s like driving through something tangible. Some indefinable part of me feels like it’s passing through fog. A thick fog of sadness.

  I wonder if anyone else feels it. Would I have felt it anyway, or is it just because I know it’s there? But then, I’d been assuming it was the Nairn side of the roundabout. I don’t know why. I can’t remember exactly what Fisher said. I get the feeling on the other side though, after passing round, and pulling away again on the way to Inverness. I’d already thought, there it goes, the site of Natterson’s death, I couldn’t see anything, and I didn’t feel anything. And then it comes to me.

  Natterson isn’t standing by the side of the road saying everything is fine, but his spirit is there. His spirit hangs over this place. Forlorn and bereft, clinging desperately to the last place he will ever be on earth.

  In the dark there’s nothing obvious to mark the spot. No flowers, no tyre marks, no small pieces of car. The accident was ten hours ago now. Long since cleared away. They didn’t even need to leave the constant reminder of road traffic collisions that are visible around the country; the yellow board, detailing the date and time, asking for witnesses. They only needed one witness, and it sounds like he owned up on the spot.

  No duplicity, just guilt. How long it stays that way will likely depend on whether or not he has rich parents and a good lawyer. One can easily imagine the dead Natterson being held up in court as a reckless driver, the police officer in too much of a hurry, a police officer thinking he’s above the rules, the police officer who owned the road. Was the defendant guilty of looking at his iPhone? How can we know? He confessed to it in the immediate aftermath of a te
rrible accident. The police had no right speaking to him on the spot. Those witnesses who were held up on their way to the airport? They too were traumatised. Perhaps they were angry. They didn’t care someone was dead, they just cared that they were going to miss the 0935 hrs to Gatwick. They were quick to blame someone, so they blamed the one who wasn’t dead. They blamed the one they could see. How can we trust what anyone saw?

  Maybe the kid will just take what’s coming to him.

  The traffic is heavy around Inverness and onto the Kessock Bridge. I sit in slow-moving silence, the death of Natterson sitting heavily on the car.

  * * *

  Get back into the station just after six. The place is dead. Slightly fewer people than normal at this time, and everyone quiet. Just doing what has to be done. Sutherland is eating a doughnut. Drinking a cup of tea. Young Martin’s still here, also PC Campbell and PC Wright.

  ‘How are things?’ I ask, sitting down opposite Sutherland.

  ‘Been comfort-eating all day,’ he says, indicating the last of his doughnut. ‘We’ve all been. Hasn’t made any difference.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The boss went round to see Ellen. Said it was horrendous. Like, after she heard how it happened, you know.’

  ‘Somehow makes it worse,’ I say, nodding.

  If it had been in the line of duty, not exactly normal up in the north, but the possibility is always there, it’s somehow expected. A car accident that could have happened to anyone on any given day, however. Of course you’re not going to see that coming, you’re not in the least prepared for it.

  ‘The boss still in?’

  He nods, I glance over at the closed door.

  ‘He sent a couple of people home early.’ He indicates the seat in which I’m sitting. ‘Bernie went home to be with his wife and kids. Me…?’