Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  Cold November afternoon. No one else around the park, the same few number of boats out on the water, although the only one making a sound is the gentle putt-putt of a small motor boat. The air smells wonderful. Crisp and clean, a mixture of the Highlands and the sea. Often enough it’s not like that down here, but sometimes on the good days, like today, the atmosphere gets it just right.

  I’m in no rush to get back, but I don’t really have any choice. Too much to do. Too many people to speak to. I need to call my old office just for general Tallinn information, and I should make contact with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to establish their exact plans for the return and questioning of John Baden.

  Start to walk back towards the station, reluctantly turning away from the still of the day.

  If Baden is who he says, and Solomon was killed in Estonia, how did that play out? Emily King, presumably, knew what was going on. Could she have killed Solomon and sold Baden off? Did she collude with those people? Maybe she drugged Baden, and then they took him away in the night.

  But why was Solomon there undercover, which effectively he was, as whatever name he was travelling under, it wasn’t his own?

  Undercover. That thought, those two words, start a whole new ball of thought rolling. Another completely different possibility, another theory that might fit what facts we know, but which could quite possibly be miles off track.

  Solomon did eight months of military training and then abruptly left. Thereafter, barely heard of, hardly ever contacted his family, went long periods without making contact with anyone at all as far as was recorded in the police files. The police at the time, for their part, were not terribly interested. We can assume that was another fault to be placed on Rosco’s shoulders, but what if it was something entirely different? What if the reason Solomon left the military when he did was because he was recruited by some other government department?

  It’s exactly the kind of thing my old organisation would do. Yes, they have a website these days and they do open recruitment, and it seems that hardly anything they do any more is a secret. But of course it is. Of course most of what they do is secret.

  I stand at the road, waiting to cross, lost in thought. Cars go by. Gaps appear in the traffic. A woman with a pram moves around me and crosses the road.

  Is it possible that Solomon was recruited straight from military training as an operative? Yes, it is. Would they then have set him up on some assignment tagging Baden and King, people with whom he went to university? Not so likely, but not out of the question that he was asked to get involved as he would have had an automatic in.

  That then would be a whole new bag of nails. It might explain, however, why it was all so sketchy from before. It wasn’t just Rosco covering his tracks, but a covert government operation, not so much covering its tracks, as just not leaving any in the first place.

  I finally move. A car horn blares.

  37

  ‘So, let me see if I have all this in order,’ says Quinn.

  I’m in his office with Sutherland, having just given the boss the full catch-up, including much that amounts to little more than speculation at this point. I had to tell Sutherland to wipe some sugar from his cheek before we came in.

  ‘We need to tell Mrs Rosco in Aviemore about the Inspector. You also want to talk to this man Gibson in Aberdeen again, you want to go to Glasgow to see Solomon’s mother, you want to return to Perth to see Mrs Baden, you want to go to London to see MI6 and the Foreign Office and… are we done, or do you need to return to Anstruther to follow up on Emily King?’

  ‘The latter isn’t out of the question, but you’re right, we do need to prioritise.’

  ‘I’m glad you agree with me. Tell me what you’re going to do first?’

  ‘We should get the locals to go and see Debbie Rosco. I’m thinking I ought to go down there out of some sort of duty, like I’m avoiding delivering the bad news. But we don’t have time, and I doubt she actually cares anyway.’

  ‘What about Gibson?’

  ‘I want to go back to him once I’ve spoken to my old lot and the Foreign Office. I don’t think he told me nearly as much as he could have done, but I need to be armed with more before I go back.’

  ‘So–’

  ‘–Mrs Solomon needs to be told that her boy has been found, but not until, obviously, we have definite news. I’m not sure, yet, how we get that.’

  ‘Which leaves London. If you got on a damned plane you could be there before COP today,’ says Quinn, allowing his eyes to drift to the clock on the wall above the door.

  ‘I was thinking I might get the sleeper,’ I say. ‘Do more on this today in the office, will be there for start of work tomorrow morning.’

  That one makes a reasonable amount of sense, so there’s a certain grudging quality to the nod that he directs across the table.

  ‘Suppose you think that’s coming out our budget, do you? You can get the bus.’

  ‘I’ll pick up the tab for the train, sir, just the same as I got the hire c…’

  ‘Yes, all right. It doesn’t really do the rest of us any good when you substitute your ability to get on a plane with piety.’

  Quinn takes a moment or two, letting those words linger in the room, and then nods at the door. Class dismissed. We get up, we walk from the office, close the door behind us.

  One day I expect we’ll get to stopping outside Quinn’s office and telling each other what we think of him, but I don’t know Sutherland well enough yet to think that’d be a good idea.

  ‘We haven’t had anything from Sanderson yet about Rosco?’ I ask.

  ‘I was going to give him a call now, get his initial impressions.’

  Take a moment. What do I actually have to achieve today before heading down to London tonight? Mostly reading files, making sure my thoughts are in order, that I’m asking everyone the right questions.

  ‘Let’s go and talk to him, we can get something to eat when we’re out.’

  Sutherland nods, a man who invariably looks positively upon any mention of food.

  ‘Excellent,’ he throws at my back as we head to our desks to grab a jacket.

  We’ll need to go into Inverness, so on some level we’re basically taking an hour out the office when we could make a two-minute phone call, but as ever with these things, it’s not just about the interaction and seeing things for yourself, it’s taking the time to talk through the case. Sutherland and I can do that in the car without distraction, the blight of the mobile phone notwithstanding.

  I stop at the front desk and smile at Mary.

  ‘What are you after?’ she says.

  ‘Can you book me on the sleeper to London tonight, please?’

  ‘Very fancy,’ she says. ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘It’s business, but the boss wants me to get the bus.’

  ‘He does not!’

  ‘Well, he wants me to get on a plane, and in light of the fact that I won’t…’

  ‘He wants you to get the bus.’

  ‘Exactly. Nevertheless, I’m not. Book me a single cabin please, and if I need to pay it myself, then we’ll do that.’

  ‘First class on the sleeper?’ she says.

  I smile.

  ‘I think you might be paying for it yourself.’

  ‘I don’t care, I’m not sharing.’

  ‘Good for you. When are you coming back?’

  ‘Let’s say tomorrow night. Don’t want to be rushed. I can always grab an earlier train if it works out.’

  ‘Single cabin on the way back too.’

  ‘That’d be lovely.’

  She shakes her head, and says goodbye with a slight nod as the phone rings.

  * * *

  ‘Are you going to see Ellen today?’ asks Sutherland, as we pass the road end.

  Have barely thought about it, and now I’ve booked myself a trip to London. I was going to, wasn’t I? I shouldn’t let it pass.

  I wonder if perhaps we should pop in on the way
back from the city, but that’s not right. That’s not the way to do it, turning up two-handed. I should at least call to make sure that her mother arrived, and that she’s not on her own with the children all day. Look at the time. Too late for that, really, too late to be checking. Should have called when I had the thought earlier.

  ‘I’ll try to drop in,’ I say.

  Glance at him. He’s staring at the road, has a distracted air about him. He called her Ellen, and I wonder how well he knows her. And then I get the feeling, and I know there’s something there. Something beyond passing concern in his colleague’s death and the widow’s well-being.

  Suddenly the sense of it fills the car, and I realise that Sutherland has been up and down since Natterson died. It made sense, of course, because everyone has been up and down, everyone at the station. For the first time though, I get a little more than that.

  ‘Maybe you can go later,’ I say. Choosing to force the subject.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says quickly, and then shakes his head.

  Past the Newton Kinkell turn-off. So much for sorting out the case.

  ‘I mean, I don’t think it would look good,’ he says. ‘The Chief Inspector yesterday, then you last night, then me. Like we’re working our way down through the pay grades.’

  There he has a point, although that’s not the real reason for his reticence.

  We get to the roundabout in silence, then continue along the A9 towards the bridge, unusually high levels of traffic speeding around us. I suddenly wonder if the bridge is going to be congested, as it so often is, and this quick trip to see the pathologist and discuss the case en route, will be neither quick nor involve any relevant discussion.

  ‘You want to tell me about it?’ I ask eventually.

  I feel the quick glance.

  ‘Tell you what, sir?’ he says.

  One of those slight feints in a conversation, working our way around a subject, when he knows what I’m talking about, and I know he knows.

  ‘There’s something with you and Ellen, there’s a reason you’re not comfortable going to see her.’

  We drive on in silence. The dual carriageway and the traffic flash by. The bridge comes into view, and as we get closer it’s obvious that the traffic is not backing up. We’re on the right side of town, and it should be a quick in and out.

  ‘I mean, you’re right,’ I say. ‘It wouldn’t look great. This is all we can afford to send today. Tomorrow there’ll be a couple of constables. So… it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter why you can’t go. I just need to fit in time for a visit. I’ll take the files on the train with me and make sure I’ve got plenty…’

  ‘I slept with her.’

  Oh, God. I was afraid of that. I mean, I pushed him into saying it, yet I didn’t want to hear it. A slight discomfort over another officer’s wife? Life is rich, right enough, and it could have been a hundred other stories. A thousand stories. Look at Dorothy. No one would ever, ever, be able to work out why she was unhappy. That’s a story out of the blue. Even if it wasn’t true, and it was all an invention of her tortured, crazy imagination, it doesn’t matter. No one would ever be able to work it out. There are lots of stories, and always another one to surprise you. And always another one to make you realise how sad the world is. How much unhappiness there is out there. How many bad things happen to good people.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I shouldn’t have forced that out of you.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘It’s all right, Sergeant, you don’t have to tell me.’

  I glance at him, catch the back end of a scowl. That’s unusual.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  We’re all the same, I think. Essentially, we’re all the same. If that was me sitting there, would I be annoyed? And if so, why would I be annoyed? I got it out of him. I got him to tell me why he couldn’t see her. But there’s more. There’s a story, it’s not just some desperate tale of drunken sex at New Year, or behind the shed at a summer barbecue. There’s more. And he was about to tell me, and I told him not to. And now he’s worried that I’m left with the impression that he and Nat’s wife did something stupid and wrong and maybe a bit filthy, when it was more than that.

  ‘You were in love with her,’ I say, not questioning, just kind of resigned. Because I am. ‘Sorry, Sergeant, I just kind of pick up these things. Did you know her before Nat did?’

  ‘No,’ he says.

  Voice low. He knows we’re almost there, past the football ground and along Shore Road, so he won’t be talking for very long.

  ‘Met her not long after they’d had their first kid. Well, I don’t know, six months. They had a thing at their house.’

  ‘I remember,’ I say.

  That was the first time most of us met her. She’d been eight months pregnant when Nat arrived at the station and they moved into the house in Culbokie.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, remembering I’d been there. ‘It was just like… I don’t know, I’ve never known anything like it.’

  His voice is low, the words coming slowly. I struggle to hear as a motorbike accelerates by in the right-hand lane.

  ‘Caught her eye in the kitchen. Just felt it, straight away. Right inside… What do I sound like?’ he says, after a moment.

  ‘What about Ellen?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, his voice light. ‘Yes. It was one of those moments, one of those moments in life when… when there’s nothing else. No other sound, nothing. Like everything in your world is concentrated in that feeling in the pit of your stomach, and you know you’re looking at the person you need to spend the rest of your life with. And yet… it’s painful. It hurts, right away, it hurts. You know something like this can’t end well. No two people can feel that for each other and it be all right. It’s almost like… you know someone’s going to get hurt, probably both of you.’

  I pull into the car park, turn off the engine. I don’t move. Sutherland is staring at the dashboard, his eyes blank. This big hulking man, usually to be found with doughnut sugar on his lips, brought to this by the thought of a woman he very possibly hasn’t seen in several years.

  ‘My soul was crushed, in that first second, even before I realised I was looking at Inspector Natterson’s wife. It didn’t really matter that she was married, there was just this awful realisation that for me to be… whole… I needed someone else. I needed her. And it’s impossible to imagine being happy when there’s that level of intensity. Nothing would ever be the same.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Eyes don’t move. Head doesn’t move. He’s lost in the thought of her, in a way that I’ve never noticed him before. It must take some effort from him to put her out of his mind.

  ‘We never spoke,’ he says. ‘We didn’t need to. It was like looking at someone… like I’d spent all my life with her, yet I was seeing her for the first time. And then I noticed her ring and I realised who she was and why she was in the kitchen. I don’t know how long it was, maybe only a few seconds. We just stared, and I knew everything about her and she knew everything about me. And I turned and walked away.’

  Another car draws up beside us, a silver Citroën, and a woman in a trouser suit gets out and walks quickly in through the front door, the car locking with two sharp bleeps behind her.

  Suddenly it seems almost painful to look at Sutherland, like his agony is scolding to the touch.

  There’s no rush. I don’t prompt him. You can’t rush personal agony. All we’re going to do now is find out about someone who’s already dead. Rosco’s own agony might have been great, but there’s little to be done about it now.

  ‘I left it as long as possible, but every time the Inspector left the office and I knew he was going north or into Inverness or further afield, I thought, this is my chance. I can go round there. And I did. I have no idea how long it was. In moments when I’m kinder to myself, I think of it as being two or three months. It was probably less than that.

  ‘I had someone to s
ee in Cromarty. Left the station, went straight to their house. Rang the doorbell, full of certainty. I presume the baby was sleeping. I never thought about the baby. Ellen answered, and stood there for a moment, and it was the same moment, the exact same thing as we’d had in the kitchen. She held the door open, I walked in. There was just a second or two when one of us could have said something, but I know… it was never likely. There were no words. We held each other, we kissed. We barely moved from the spot. We had sex right there. I can’t… I don’t know how to say it. It was brutal in its intensity, but so complete, so… blissful. And then it was done, a long time later it was done, I don’t know how long. And there was nothing to say. Nothing happened then. It wasn’t that Nat called, there was no baby crying. There was Ellen in her house, and there was me, the lumbering fool who’d just walked into her life, and there was no place for me. There never was.

  ‘She could have got in my car, and we could have driven off, and no one would have ever seen us again. But she wasn’t going to do that, and I wasn’t going to do that. And what we had was no more a thing of furtive meetings and desperate sex than it was about driving off into nowhere…

  ‘We never spoke. Not a word. I got dressed, I stood at the door. That was it. The itch, if it was so inconsiderable that it could be called an itch, had been scratched, and though it hadn’t even touched the surface, that was all there was. My eyes dropped at exactly the same time as hers, and we haven’t looked at each other since.’

  Silence slowly fills the car, like it’s being squeezed from a tube somewhere beneath the glove compartment. Silence filled with sadness. Silence complete with its own personal tragedy.

  I’m not going to comment, just like I didn’t comment to Dorothy. Everyone has a story. Not for me to judge. Perhaps there’s something to be done now, now that Ellen is a widow rather than a wife. But not the day afterwards. Not now. And perhaps not ever. The decision has already been taken, the agony already faced, irrespective of circumstance.

  We sit for a while, staring at the entrance to the mortuary. The story is out there, nothing else to be added. Eventually, like a ball of wool slowly unravelling, the silence exhausts itself and it’s time to move. We feel it at the same moment. His story has been given the right amount of respectful silence. With no words, I put my hand briefly on his arm, and then we’re out into the cold afternoon, the clouds are gathering and threatening an early evening, and the weight of despondency is lifted slightly with the first hint of rain.