Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  He shrugs, puts the rest of the doughnut in his mouth. Sutherland had a wife, but no longer. Fortunately, by some measure, there were no kids, so all they were left fighting over was the CD collection.

  Place my hands on the desk, by way of moving things on.

  ‘Sadly…’

  ‘Yep, yep,’ he says, trying to shake off the maudlin air. ‘Interesting stuff about our Solomon guy.’

  He searches around for his notepad. ‘So, yes, sure enough he went to Sandhurst. New recruit, February 2001, after leaving Aberdeen Uni the previous summer with Honours in Physiology.’

  ‘What did he do in between?’

  ‘Went to work in an archaeological dig in Syria. Some sort of site of ancient Roman remains.’

  ‘Wonder what state they’re in now?’

  ‘Oh, totally destroyed. I checked.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to be slaughtering people, why would you care about Roman remains?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘He went to Sandhurst, did the eight-month officer training course, passed… and then left.’

  ‘That sounds strange.’

  ‘Yes. Spoke to Army Records, albeit not anyone who knew him there at the time. His file has a record of his CO and training officers at the time being completely bemused. Didn’t make any sense. He was bright, he was good, he was fit. He didn’t pass out as top of the class, but he was in the top five. And he left.’

  ‘Then what did he do?’

  ‘I spoke to his mum. They live near Glasgow. He came back up to Scotland, they heard from him less and less. They weren’t even sure what he was doing. He never gave them an address or a home phone number. And then they stopped hearing from him altogether. They’d been used to the gaps, so time went by, and then, nothing…’

  ‘When was the last time they heard from him?’

  ‘Late 2002. About nine months before Baden and King go to Estonia.’

  ‘Was he reported missing at any point?’

  ‘His parents did, but it was several months after they’d previously talked to him. And she said the police weren’t particularly interested.’ Another shrug. ‘You know yourself, guys like that. We don’t go chasing up people just because they haven’t given their mum a call.’

  ‘When was the report made in relation to Baden being found dead?’

  ‘Several months before.’

  ‘But it wasn’t made up here, I mean, to Dingwall?’

  ‘No, Aberdeen. That was where they thought he’d gone.’

  ‘OK, well this fits into things as much as all the rest. Did his mother ask why you were calling? She didn’t suddenly think we’d found him?’

  He nods. ‘I had to manage expectations on that front.’

  I don’t ask how he did that. ‘How about Waverley and his Thai bride? Black widow, or lonely in Bangkok, looking for love?’

  ‘Went round to her place, had a cup of tea,’ he says.

  ‘Very civil.’

  ‘I’ll say this. However she was when the Inspector went to see her, she’s not upset. And their house is amazing. Big thing, out past Cromarty, up on the hill above the Sutors. Brilliant view. I mean, really. That guy had some serious money.’

  ‘So, what’s your assessment?’

  ‘I’m not going to say she had him killed. Reading further into the death of her first husband, that looked above board. The guy was a drunk, and he had zilch. She got nothing. I guess she faced having to go home or find someone else. I don’t know, not sure about residency rights in that case.’

  He asks the question with a raised eyebrow, I shake my head.

  ‘Anyway, she meets Waverley online. She says that the women up here weren’t good-looking enough for him. He wanted someone sleek, Asian and beautiful.’

  ‘He could have married a Mazda.’

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘And is she beautiful?’

  ‘God, yes.’ He shakes his head, as though it shouldn’t be allowed. ‘Anyway, it looks like a marriage of convenience. She was good-looking enough for him, and he had money. Doesn’t seem they got on that well, but he travelled a lot, she had her big house and expense account, and all she had to do was sleep with him every few days or so. Said he was pretty good, but his dick was uncomfortably large.’

  ‘You really got all the details.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘So, how does she feel, stuck in a house on the Black Isle looking at the rain? Isn’t she desperately homesick?’

  ‘Says she loves it. When I got there I could see her from the driveway. Curled up in a big fleecy jumper, a mug of tea in her hand, looking out over the water.’

  I can see her as he talks. A vivid and clear image. Despite the recent death of her husband, and the fact that he’s not even buried yet, there’s no sadness about her, there’s no sadness about the house.

  ‘So we need to consider everything. With all that’s going on with the others in this quartet from university, it’s easy enough to presume that Waverley’s death is tied in with that. But it could be the widow, and it’s completely unrelated.’

  ‘I didn’t get that impression, sir.’

  ‘And that’s not just because she wooed you with her feminine wiles?’

  He smiles. ‘You get a feeling,’ he says.

  ‘I know, I know. Still, let’s not lose sight of it. Keep digging, see if they have any friends up here. They must know someone. There might be a story or two about them fighting, or, I don’t know…’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Right.’

  Stand up. Take a look around the beleaguered station. I wonder, as second most senior officer, if I should say something. It crosses my mind. Yet, we’re not in some American TV show, and whatever I said it’d likely sound forced and awkward.

  ‘I’ll go and talk to the boss.’

  Another look around the room, tap my fingers on the desk, walk through to Quinn’s office.

  Knock and enter. Open door policy with Quinn, even though he keeps his door closed. He’s standing at the window, his hands behind his back. No music playing. Turns as I enter.

  ‘Ben,’ he says. ‘Come in.’

  I contemplate going to stand by the window with him, but he’s not looking at anything, other than the reflection of the room and a few raindrops on the glass. He waits for another few moments and then comes and sits behind his desk.

  ‘How was Ellen?’ I ask.

  A slight shake of the head. He stares off to the side, one hand resting lightly on the desk, the other on the arm of the chair. His look is slightly lost. Suddenly get the feeling that, unlike his staff out in the station who have had to get on with the job, he has spent the bulk of the day beneath a cold blanket of sorrow.

  ‘We need to look out for her,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll go and see her tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, please do.’

  ‘Does she have anyone coming to stay? Her mother maybe?’

  ‘I wasn’t there long. She didn’t want me in the house, didn’t want the children to see. She said she’d call someone. She said she’d get her brother to help out with everything.’

  ‘Did she get hold of him?’

  He looks up, almost as though he’s suddenly aware that he’s actually talking to someone.

  ‘I don’t know. I called a couple of times this afternoon, but there was no answer.’

  Look at my watch. Not long before seven.

  ‘I should go round now,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, that’d be good. You should. If you see her, call me later.’

  ‘Will do.’

  I’m waiting for him to ask about Aberdeen, but I get the sense that it won’t be happening. He’s not asking about anything this evening. He’s lost an officer and he’s spent the day allowing it to consume him.

  ‘We still have a case to address, sir,’ I say. ‘It still needs to get done. We need to make sure it’s staffed properly.’

  ‘Yes, of course, of course.’

  He waves som
ething of a hand, a gesture like he’s telling his staff to order in as much wine as they want at the Christmas dinner.

  ‘Take who you need. It’s your case now, obviously.’

  Pause. I give him the moment to see if he has anything else to add, but it seems he’s said everything he has to. I wonder whether I should force the conversation, but what would I be doing it for? I don’t need the direction as such. I’m the detective, not him. If it comes to it and we need cooperation with Fife, or anything else that’s obviously above my pay grade, then I can take it to him.

  Get to my feet.

  ‘I’ll go and see Ellen and give you a call later.’

  ‘Please. I’ll be at home.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Out the office, close the door behind me. Take a moment. Deep breath. Head back over to talk to Sutherland. He’s eating another doughnut. He holds his hand up.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say. ‘Do we know, I forgot all about it, do we know if Nat saw Baden’s aunt in Inverness before… if he saw her on the way out this morning? It would have been pretty early, but…’

  ‘I don’t know if he did, but yes, he’d arranged to see her very early.’

  ‘We need to get in touch with her again. Whatever she said, she’s going to have to say it again. I’ll go and speak to her tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll call her, set it up.’

  ‘Thanks. And what else… PC Fisher still around?’

  ‘Shift finished a couple of hours ago. She’ll be in at eight.’

  ‘We need to know, you know, about that DNA sample from twelve years ago. When was it taken? Who took it?’

  ‘You’ll need to speak to Fish, sorry.’

  ‘Sure. And, d’you know if Nat had been following Baden’s money?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘Sorry, insurance money. Baden died, as far as anyone knew, twelve years ago. There was life insurance. Where did it all go?’

  ‘I think he was, but he hadn’t said if he’d got anywhere. I’ll look for it.’

  ‘OK, great.’

  Suddenly feel stressed, which I haven’t done in a long time, and certainly not during the course of any of this, those brief few hours of contemplating getting on a plane excepted.

  It’s because of Ellen. It’s because of walking into that house. It’s uncomfortable, but this is what life is, isn’t it? You can keep as few people around you as possible, but life in all its awfulness still intrudes, from the least likely of places sometimes.

  ‘I’m going to see Nat’s wife, see how she’s doing. Might come back here later. Don’t know. If I don’t see you, catch you in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ he says, his eyes dropping at the mention of Nat, and of his wife, widowed and alone.

  Turn, stop, take a last look over the station, then walk through the main room, down the stairs and out into the wet dark of early evening.

  33

  It doesn’t take long to drive from the station up to Nat’s house. Fifteen minutes, if you’re not in a rush. I force myself to think about the case. I don’t want to think about what to say to Ellen. Anything planned will be as awkward as some pointless little pep talk to three or four people at the station. Although, having seen the dead weight that was enveloping Quinn, someone’s going to have to grab the station by the shoulders and haul it off the ground.

  Four people in some little clique in the Conservative club at university. The fact that they were Conservatives I don’t think makes any difference, and Conservatives aren’t quite as rare in Scotland as the jokes and the media would have you believe.

  They were overseen by the twitchy guy with the moustache. And there are the other names to check out. One must always keep one’s eyes on the periphery. If the genesis of this is twelve years ago, then that’s where we should be looking, and those people, the players from back then, could have dispersed far and wide. Doesn’t mean they haven’t been making trips to various areas to take care of old business. Or what has become new business.

  How did it become new business, that’s the question? It became new when Baden turned up out of the blue in Estonia. Baden hasn’t requested any contact with the UK, nor has he been given the opportunity to make it. He might have now, I’m not sure, but he hadn’t when I was there. He was held in a hospital room without a phone, so they would have known that he had no means to make the call.

  There is the possibility that he made the call before turning up at that police station, and neglected to tell anyone about it. That aside, there’s been an embargo on the information, and yet someone in Scotland found out that Baden was back, and was busy taking out the old crowd. It can only mean that somebody in Estonia passed on the information, either from the Embassy or from the police.

  The British staff at the Embassy would have been long gone, but perhaps there was someone from the locally engaged staff with contacts from the previous time. Will need to speak to the DHM again, although I can’t really ask him to do detective work on my behalf. As for the police, there’s no real way to find out.

  However it happened, it seems there’s no doubt that Baden turning up started off the killing, and if it was so much of a deal that his re-emergence on the scene was enough to spark murder, then isn’t it reasonable to think that, yes, this is the actual Baden. This is him! Why else would there be a fuss?

  There could be a hundred reasons!

  I’m having the conversation with myself, partially speaking out loud. I should have had it with Sutherland back at the station.

  You can’t follow a hundred scenarios at once. You have to pick the most likely, the one that fits what you know; and the most likely, it seems, is that this is the guy. This is Baden. And someone doesn’t want him back.

  It’s always about asking the right question. It’s not about how two bodies, one alive one dead, can have the same DNA, it’s how the pathologist who checked the corpse’s DNA came to believe that he was confirming Baden’s identity.

  I need to get on that. There’s not going to be anything metaphysical. I’m happy to accept strangeness if that looks like the most likely explanation, but not this time. This isn’t it. This doesn’t feel right. Baden turned up and people have started dying, because someone, somewhere, doesn’t like it. That’s not weird, it’s not metaphysics, it’s not supernatural. It’s criminal, that’s all.

  Will speak to Fisher first thing in the morning and see how far she got. The fact that she hadn’t taken anything to DS Sutherland, doesn’t suggest too much progress.

  There’s a basic peculiarity about the case, that was heightened by the slight otherworldliness of Baden’s mother, and heightened in my own mind by Dorothy and her melancholic demise, but what we have here is just plain murder and I need to focus and start treating it as such.

  I start thinking about Rosco and if there really is anything he can help us with, and I wonder if he’s lying face down on the carpet in his front room, choking on his own vomit.

  Concentrating, I drive along the A9 towards Inverness, missing my turn-off, and not until I’m going round the roundabout at Tore do I realise that I missed my left turn several miles earlier.

  * * *

  The lights are on, there’s the sound of voices from inside. I don’t need to lie to myself. I hope that the place is busy, the family surrounded by people, and that I end up standing on the doorstep for two minutes talking to one of Ellen’s relatives, who’s telling me that she’s fine but she’s getting some rest with the children.

  As I start to walk up the garden path, the front door opens. Ellen and another woman. They embrace on the doorstep, then part, both with tears in their eyes, noticing me as they pull away from each other.

  Ellen smiles weakly, but can’t speak.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. Find that I have trouble speaking myself. There’s a slightly awkward moment that the friend breaks.

  ‘I really need to get going. I’ll call in the morning, Ellie.’

  Ellen nods. Smiles. Wipes a
way the tear.

  ‘You’ll be OK, sweetheart. Just remember to breathe.’

  They’re smiling supportively at each other, hands clasped.

  I lower my eyes and wait my turn in the line of condolence, the queue of platitudes. Remember to breathe. That’s what people say now, isn’t it? I wonder where it came from. I don’t think people would have said that in the 1930s. Remember to breathe. Hollywood probably. One of those phrases that a scriptwriter thought would be a great line, and then it became an actual line that people say.

  The friend smiles at me, turns and is gone. The baton is handed over. One last wave, and she’s jogging off down the pavement. Must be late for something. Stayed much longer than she was intending, which likely means there’s no one else here.

  I walk up the steps, not entirely sure how this will play out. I don’t really know Ellen that well.

  When it comes to it, I take her in my arms and hold her until she decides she’s able to let go.

  * * *

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on which way you choose to look at it, the children are young enough that they don’t quite get it. The younger one not at all, the elder is old enough to care, to get that daddy won’t be home tonight, but not to feel the full force. Not the full force of horrible stomach-wrenching grief that comes with death.

  Here I am sitting in a comfy seat in the sitting room, an empty cup of tea on the floor beside me. No one else here, the phone hasn’t rung. Ellen is upstairs putting the kids to bed. Reading them a story.

  Sitting in silence. I could go back over the case, but find myself too distracted. When I came in the lights were on full. Every light in the room. Once she had left me alone, I turned off the main, left a couple of side lamps on.

  The usual small front room of a modern house. TV in the corner, DVDs scattered on the floor. Thomas the Tank Engine and Winnie-the-Pooh. There are a couple of Jack Vettriano prints on the wall. There’s an open fire that looks like it hasn’t been lit since last winter.

  Footsteps on the stairs, and then they pad around in the kitchen, before Ellen comes into the room holding a glass of white wine. She sits down on the sofa, staring at the carpet. Takes a sip of wine. She looks tired and drawn, beyond tears. The first night of the rest of her life.