Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  38

  Here lies dear old Rosco, taking his secrets with him. After this we can go back to his house for a closer look than we had earlier but, from what we saw before, it didn’t seem that there would be too much to find.

  He looks happier lying there than any time I’ve ever seen him before. Hint of a smile on his lips? I don’t think so. I don’t really think like that. But maybe Rosco, wherever he is, has imparted some little measure of control over his corpse to slightly turn up the edges of his mouth.

  Nevertheless, it’s a look that says, you should see it here, people, you should see what’s waiting for you, you’re going to wish you’d been drunk as often as I had.

  ‘Liver’s not as bad as everyone had been expecting,’ says Sanderson.

  There’s music playing, there always is. Apparently – though I’ve only got this on the back of general office chitchat – he requested a PA system, so that it could be played from speakers inserted in the ceiling. That was refused, so he has a small CD player, with in-built speakers, sitting in the corner.

  Sanderson likes fiddle music. Laments, usually. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve heard anything else, although Nat said he’d been in here once when there was a jig playing. I think Nat was just being nice to him.

  Not that a lament isn’t always suitable, an appropriate soundtrack to the events that slowly unfold in this room. The deceased dissected.

  You know, I don’t know what it is that Sanderson does most of the time. Life in the Highlands is hardly an episode of CSI, we’re not constantly coming up against random murder, where Sanderson has to unearth strange toxins in the blood or weird objects inserted beneath fingernails. Not yet anyway.

  Maybe he just sits around, waiting for the phone to ring on a Sunday afternoon, alerting him to the latest corpse in town.

  ‘If I’m honest, I’ve got to say that I thought dear old Rosco’s internal organs were going to be new to science. I might even have got a paper out of it. But… he still had some way to go before his liver was going to kill him.’

  Dear old Rosco. That’s what I just called him. In my head. Funny. He was the same age as me, probably a year or two older than Sanderson. It’s like we all had this strange affection for him, rather than finding him an embarrassment, and wishing that, since he obviously was never going to be alcohol-free, that he’d just go and live somewhere else. Take the awkwardness with him.

  I never really thought like that, I suppose, having not known him previously, but clearly Quinn did, and he wasn’t alone.

  Dear old Rosco. Dead now.

  ‘He binged infrequently, was dry the rest of the time,’ I say.

  ‘That what he told you?’ asks Sanderson, but not in a way that implies doubt.

  I nod.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘He was sober two days ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why were you speaking to him? It’s not like you people. You weren’t offering him a drink were you?’

  I give him the required glance, and he nods.

  ‘No, no doubt you questioned him about something which then set him off. None of my business.’

  Sometimes Sanderson is direct enough that you just want him to stop talking.

  ‘So, where are we?’ I ask. ‘Drowned in his own vomit?’

  ‘Bang on the nail,’ he says.

  ‘Any possibility that he was held face down in the vomit?’ asks Sutherland, the first time he’s spoken since we got out the car. As though he’s taken ten minutes or so to recover. Now he’s found his voice.

  ‘I’m looking for that, but haven’t found it yet. There’s no doubt that the levels of alcohol in his body are such that he could very well have been completely unconscious, or at least, completely unable to move.’

  ‘You got a percentage?’

  ‘1.027.’

  Sutherland lets out a low whistle.

  ‘He’d be struggling to survive that, regardless of the vomit,’ I say.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’ says Sutherland. ‘What signs are you looking for to suggest he’ll have been held down?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Sanderson, waving his hand over the body, ‘signs of pressure on the back of the head, on the shoulders, maybe on his arms.’

  ‘He’s lying on his back,’ says Sutherland, ‘how can you tell?’

  The music stops, as the fiddles fade off into the distance. Sanderson looks unhappily over the corpse, the stomach cut open, the viscera revealed.

  ‘I’ve already done it, Sergeant,’ he says, as a harp starts playing and a lone fiddle comes in desolately over the top. ‘I couldn’t find anything. When I’m done doing this, I will turn him back over, making sure not to spill anything, and have another look. I don’t think I’m likely to find anything because I do think I checked rather well before. However, I’ll need to shave the back of the head because it’s quite possible, given his level of inebriation, that all it would have taken would have been some pressure applied to his skull. Even then, perhaps all they had to do was gently hold his head, in which case, I’m not going to have an answer for you, other than that he likely died alone. Of course, in a case such as this, one can never absolutely rule anything out.’

  All that was directed at Sutherland, with a little bit of acerbity.

  ‘Any possibility he had sex in the previous twenty-four hours?’ asks the Sergeant, not daunted by the tone.

  ‘I also checked for that, because I know it’s one of the first things that you always ask, Sergeant. Absolutely none whatsoever, not in his state. In any case, there is no evidence of ejaculation, of any activity in the genital region, or of any sexual stimulant in the bloodstream.’

  Again, all directed at Sutherland, then he turns to me with a look that demands any further questions.

  ‘Thanks, Peter,’ is all I give him. ‘We’ll let you get on with the job.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I turn away, Sutherland follows.

  ‘You’ll send the report over when you’re done,’ I throw over my shoulder, receiving a vague, grudging grunt in response.

  Out into the corridor, start heading back towards reception and on out into the late afternoon. I wait for a comment from Sutherland, but nothing comes.

  39

  Sitting in the restaurant car of the night train, trying to see out the window in the dark. Occasional lights flashing by, sometimes the line of a hill etched against the sky, fitful raindrops smeared across the window.

  Waiting for a lasagne. I don’t usually order pasta dishes anywhere, they’re so easy to make at home, but I didn’t fancy anything else on the menu. Have a half bottle of Pinot Grigio, and some bread. Sitting at a table for one.

  It feels like we’re coming to it, the great disentangling of the knots. It doesn’t mean we’ll have the answers at the end, but I sit and stare at my own reflection in an attempt to see the Highlands flit by, and wonder how many more people could possibly die because of this. Something that happened twelve years in the past. The story that I’m finally hoping Baden will tell.

  He’s going to have to be careful, that is certain. His confederates of old are dying, one by one. King and Waverley for certain. Rosco, it’s hard to imagine, was ever his confederate, but perhaps he was. And while ultimately we found nothing incriminating in Rosco’s house, and neither was Sanderson able to report anything suspicious about his death, and even though I was more than half-expecting to find Rosco face down in a swamp of vomit, there can be no ignoring the possibility he was helped on his way to death.

  Without knowing what happened in Estonia twelve years ago, and who the main players were, it’s impossible at this point to predict who, if anyone, might be next, and who might be responsible.

  Perhaps it’s all over. This little burst of excitement that occurred as a result of Baden crawling from the woodwork could be done. The work of Emily King and Thomas Waverley’s killer is at an end, and we’ve seen the
last of them. I’m due to spend my next few weeks chasing a ghost; one that has disappeared back into the netherworld of everyday life, lost in the melee of society.

  And then there’s the other possibility. This whole thing, this whole damned thing, is me trying to squeeze explanations into a box. Into the one box that explains everything, ties together all that’s happened.

  Maybe there was something twelve years ago with Solomon, but that story could be another one. A completely different story. Waverley could have been killed in a regular hit-and-run. Emily King could have been killed in an attempted rape or robbery that went too far. And dear old Rosco died face down in his own vomit because I’d been to see him and told him that the past wasn’t just crawling out the woodwork, it was screaming blind fury from the woodwork and was coming to get everyone involved.

  The steward stands over me and places the plate on the table, smiling as he does so. He pours a little more wine into my glass.

  ‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  And off he goes. There are three of us dining in the restaurant car. Maybe it will get busier later. I certainly came along here as soon as they announced it was open. I like sitting in the dining car as the train goes through the Highlands, although the dark certainly detracts from the experience.

  Having been unable to ask it of Sutherland, I went in to see Ellen on the way back to Inverness. Only had ten minutes. Her mother was there, playing on the floor with the children. Ellen was making them dinner. We spoke briefly. Her brother is coming tomorrow to help out with all the arrangements. I said to coordinate with Quinn.

  She was drained. Getting by. Existing one breath at a time. She walked me out into the small hallway.

  ‘Ben, I hope…’ she began. ‘Sorry, I didn’t come on to you last night, or anything, did I? I thought there was something…’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  Almost let slip the words, I was quite disappointed actually. A stupid joke, and completely inappropriate under the circumstances. Fortunately my brain kicked in and overruled my tongue at the last second.

  ‘I said something that made you think that was what I was thinking, but I wasn’t thinking it, I just said something that I can’t even remember any more.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ she said, smiling a little, shaking her head.

  I gave her a hug, kissed her cheek, said I’d be back in a couple of days. Again words were in my mouth and I stopped them. Was going to ask if she’d like to see Sergeant Sutherland. That would have been foolish. I kept those words to myself too.

  I cut into the lasagne. Outside, the Highlands at night flash invisibly by.

  * * *

  Dorothy’s in my cabin when I get back. It’s not late, but I’m tired. I like lying in bed listening to the sound of the train, the rhythm of the wheels, so I’ll go to bed early. Let the train put me off to sleep.

  I go back with the intention of getting ready for bed, but she’s there, I can feel her, so I don’t do it straight away. There’s no reason for Dorothy to be on the train, so she must be here to see me.

  I can’t actually see her, of course. I just feel that she’s here. It’s sad that she has nowhere else to go, no one else with whom to be. The only life she has is the one she had just before she decided to commit suicide. Spending time with me, travelling. That’s all.

  The cabin feels melancholic in a way that it didn’t when I came in here two hours ago. It’s not frightening. I might have thought it would be, going to a small cabin in a train whistling through the darkness, with the spirit of someone so recently dead. And yet, if I could see her, I know that she would be sitting at the window, staring sadly out at the night, looking slightly lost. She would have an air about her of a girl in a café in Paris, her coffee long since finished, but with nothing to leave for, nowhere to go, because everywhere reminds her of her lover, and her lover is gone.

  Would someone have described me in similar such terms, as I sat at the dinner table, looking out at the night, the dregs of a cup of coffee spun endlessly out over the evening?

  ‘Hey,’ I say, to the empty room, feeling not at all self-conscious, ‘how are things?’

  I don’t know what else to say, but it must be wrong. Perhaps anything at all was wrong. As soon as the words are out my mouth the feeling is gone. Dorothy has gone. I wasn’t supposed to speak.

  And although she has gone, she leaves behind her sorrow and, lying awake in the bed some time later, listening to the relentless click of the tracks, slower by half in the middle of the night, that sorrow rests upon the room and upon me, heavier than the meagre blanket.

  40

  I walk into the building at Vauxhall Cross for the first time in seven years. Photograph taken, temporary pass around my neck, sitting in the small reception area waiting for my old boss. Alec. In keeping with the way things are done around here, I never knew his second name.

  The walls haven’t changed, the carpet the same dark blue. Nothing has changed, or so it seems. The practices will still be the same, the feeling in the office will still be the same, the senior managers still won’t have the kind of technology that they have in the Bond films, because it doesn’t actually exist, or would take their entire budget for a decade to supply. Probably the latter.

  The last head of the department was brought in from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. That couldn’t have been very popular. He’s gone now, replaced from the inside by one of those gentleman spies, the kind who don’t receive a salary, and who hark back to some imagined halcyon time in the fifties or sixties.

  Perhaps, as the Cold War has returned and the Middle East has tumbled ever further into the abyss, things are a bit different now. It’s like the post-war period combined with the Bush/Blair period. Threats all over the place, combining and contrasting, tugging at resources.

  Alec appears in reception, hand immediately extended, great smile on his face.

  ‘God, Ben, good to see you. Look at you. Lost, like, what, twenty pounds since you were here?’

  I smile and follow him out the waiting room, across the main foyer towards the elevators.

  ‘Almost exactly to the pound,’ I say.

  ‘That Highland air must be doing you good.’

  ‘Can’t beat it.’

  ‘Yes, Marcie is always wanting to go back, but it just never seems to bloody happen. Three please.’

  The young woman by the panel presses three and four, the doors – as ponderous as they always were – slowly shut, and we wait to see if someone is going to grab the lift in that interminable period.

  ‘So, you’re not thinking of coming back to us?’ says Alec, his voice still brimming with the same good-natured enthusiasm that it always did.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ head shaking, smiling at the suggestion.

  ‘I mean, there’s a job there for you, Ben, you know that. There’s always a job. And I know there’s the flying thing, but you can be based here, you really can. Not out of the question that we could get you up to Cheltenham. It’s lovely up there. Course, the locals are barking mad, but it’s part of the charm.’

  The doors ping at the third floor. Slowly they open, and out we go, my head still shaking.

  ‘Look, come and say hello to a couple of people, and then we’ll talk.’

  And off we go, walking through these corridors and open plan offices where I used to belong.

  * * *

  Standing by the window in a small side office, overlooking the Thames. A great location, right enough. Alec doesn’t have his own office, not many people do, so conversations such as this one tend to take place in offices like this. Usually reserved for more classified business, but in this instance, I feel like he’s just doing me a favour, getting me away from everybody. Or perhaps, as I’m hoping, he’s intending on telling me more than he should, and doesn’t want anyone else to hear.

  ‘It’s not really our territory, of course,’ he says. Mug of tea in his hand. His hands are
as huge as I remember them, so that it’s almost as though he’s holding a child’s cup, ‘but at the time the Estonians were worried about illegal Russian activity along the eastern border, including on the lake.’

  He laughs, makes a broad gesture with the mug.

  ‘At the time they were worried? Ha! They’ll be worried right up to the point when the Russian flag flies over their parliament building.’

  I’m staring out the window, tea at my lips. There’s little need for me to say anything. I can tell Alec is settling into a narrative. And he’s right, I certainly got the feeling that it was something the Estonians are permanently worried about. And why wouldn’t they be?

  ‘There was all sorts, of course, smuggling in and out. Then there was the more serious stuff. This organ and blood business.’

  Shake of the head, loud slurp of tea.

  ‘You knew about it before Baden turned up last week?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course. Come on, Ben, we know everything.’

  ‘I was here then.’

  ‘Were you on the Estonia desk? You didn’t know about it. Your people, this Baden and the King woman, they ran some spurious dotcom, claimed they made a stack of money online. Copywriting? Seriously? No one makes money copywriting. In truth, they were fencing organs back to the UK, on the black market obviously.’

  ‘Black market organ donation?’

  ‘It’s huge. Still is. There are seven billion people on the planet, that’s a lot of available organs, that’s a lot of people to keep tabs on for society. A lot of those people just disappear, and no one can ever find them. Chances are, any time someone vanishes – especially in Eastern Europe – they’re being sold as traffic, or dissected.’