Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘We got into it through the biology classes at Aberdeen. There was an exchange student who Emily started having a thing with. A guy from Ukraine.’

  ‘I thought you and Emily were an item right from the beginning?’

  ‘We were, but you know, it had its rough patches. Andrei was one of them. He… these things come out. He knew we were in it for making money. It was a weird group, the lot of us, I don’t know what was going on. We were young. There was sex, some drugs, a lot of alcohol. Andrei was this magnetic guy. You know, he attracted people.’

  ‘Did you sleep with him?’

  He gives me the look, then dismisses the question with a slight shake of the head.

  ‘It was all a bit crazy, but ultimately we all had plans and those plans involved making money. It started the last year of uni. Andrei had all sorts of schemes in play, and we were just sort of on the periphery. But then this organ thing came up, and he was going back home to Ukraine and asked us if we wanted to get involved, to run our end of it. You know, it was all through this end of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine up through Belarus, the Baltics. All over. We thought, I guess at first, you know we thought the organs were removed maybe from people that were already dead, something like that. You know, classic donor situation, except rather than going to people in the country, there was this slightly suspect situation where money was changing hands, the organs would come here, and there was this whole black market thing. I mean, it was huge. There’s this whole subculture, like a netherworld, that people don’t know exist.’

  ‘I’m in the police.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And you were but a small part of the entire operation.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There’s a moment when you can see that he feels like he’s been talking too much. The words die in him. Getting too involved, going back to thinking about something he doesn’t want to think about, even though he knows he has to. I’m not going to get many details of what was going on and how it all worked, but I don’t actually need it. I need names, that’s all.

  I give him the space, but it looks like he really might have shut down.

  ‘Tell me about Estonia,’ I say. ‘I don’t need the details of the operation in the UK, that’ll be for others. Just tell me how you ended up in a basement in the middle of a forest.’

  Eyes close for a moment. Taking himself back there. Then he shakes his head again and comes up. We should get him counselling, sooner rather than later. That’ll be something else his lawyer will use, more than likely.

  ‘There was always something funny about Solomon, and the fact that he turned up. He wasn’t in on it at uni, then he came back… said he’d made a hash of things down south, wanted to be part of the show. By this time, we were already thinking that it might be time to get out. Emily and I. We wanted out, had been making plans. Didn’t realise that they knew everything. Andrei’s people, they told us that Solomon was working for the security services. We had to go out to Estonia – which was part of it, but just as much stuff was being brought in through the other Baltic states – and we thought maybe it was just him, just Solomon, who was going to get taken out. Then we realised how much trouble we were in. Solomon was onto us, the Ukrainians were pissed off, the Russians were pissed off. At me. Em wasn’t such a big part of it. You know, there was this really sexist thing going on. She was just the girl. It was me they were pissed off at. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of these people. We hit on this plan. Emily killed Solomon…’

  ‘Emily killed him?’

  No honour among thieves.

  ‘Yes, she was always much more brutal than me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She killed him, we dumped his body in the lake. Then I disappeared. When Solomon’s body was discovered, she identified him as me.’

  ‘How did she think she was going to get away with it?’ I ask.

  Apart from the obvious, that she did.

  ‘There was some policeman in Dingwall that Em knew. Rosco. He used to hang around her like a dog. I mean, puppy love. It was kind of embarrassing. He’d do anything for her. Fucking lovesick retard. I just stayed away from him.’

  ‘So he was involved all along, it wasn’t just that he came out?’

  ‘He came out? When did he come out? When I went missing?’

  OK, that was cheap as well, and he didn’t fall for it.

  ‘Yes, he did. And he covered for Emily all the way through, and it was helped by your father not actually looking at the body when he went to identify you.’

  He blurts out a small laugh, the kind that sounds like it might be about to be followed by tears. In doing what he did, he more or less decided to never see his parents again, and to let them think he was dead. That, in itself, is the action of a very particular type of person.

  ‘Presumably if he had, none of it would have worked,’ I say.

  ‘Rosco said he’d take care of it, that’s all. We just needed out of the situation we were in. Emily was going to come home and wait for me.’

  ‘And you never came.’

  Shakes his head, head low. He must have done a lot of facing up to his past in the last twelve years, but here he is, sitting four feet from a copper while doing it, and it doesn’t really bear close moral inspection.

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘I was going to make my way south, through the Baltics, and into Poland. From there I was going to head home, somehow find my way into the UK without going through an airport. It’s not like the entire coast is guarded, and anyway, if I did happen to be onboard a yacht or something, the coastguard wasn’t looking for someone like me.

  ‘I walked out of the hotel in Tartu in the middle of the night, and disappeared into the forest. I couldn’t be seen leaving on a bus, God knows, I couldn’t get a taxi. Had to be the forest.’

  ‘How long were you in the forest before you were taken?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ he says, then he laughs, bitterly, lowers his head again. ‘Really, I don’t know. It was that night. That first night. When Em was reporting me missing to the police the next morning, well, as far as I know, you know, that was the plan, I’d already been dumped in a basement.’

  ‘You’d been betrayed?’

  ‘I presumed it was Em at first. She was the only one who knew, who knew the plan, knew the specifics, knew the timing. No one else.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t know. A week or two later a couple of guys came to see me. Checking me out medically, seeing what I was good for, I guess. I didn’t know them, but I could tell. One of them knew me. He knew me. I thought, maybe this is my way out. I start speaking to him in, like, the worst Russian anyone ever spoke. He looks at me for a while, he looks at me in a way that just shuts me up without him having to say anything. Then he says, in English, heavy accent, he says, ‘I do you a favour.’’

  He’s not looking at me as he speaks. He shakes his head, a bitter smile on his lips.

  ‘His favour being that they didn’t kill you?’

  He nods.

  ‘And you got lots of sex.’

  Objection your honour, prosecution is goading the witness!

  He closes his eyes. Nothing to say to that.

  ‘So if it wasn’t Emily, it was just chance? Seriously?’

  Another movement of the head, an airy hand waved vaguely at the bottle.

  ‘I had a lot of time to think about it, and I never could make up my mind. Either it was Em, or she told someone what we were doing, not realising what they’d do…’

  ‘And given her relationship with this Andrei character, surely that’s not out of the question?’

  ‘They had moved on, it really wasn’t like that any more.’

  ‘What about Rosco?’

  ‘Rosco… That guy wouldn’t tie his shoelaces unless Em told him to. So if he did anything, it was because Em wanted him to do it. Rosco being involved is the same as Em being involved.’

  Well, that co
uld be significant. The kind of thing that doesn’t point to anything specific, but which speaks volumes all the same.

  ‘What else? What else could it have been? Who else could it have been?’

  ‘In all those years of thinking, I didn’t come up with any other explanation. It was either Em or it was an accident.’

  I smile at last and laugh lightly. He looks sharply at me and I take a drink of water.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just kind of ironic,’ I say. ‘I mean, that is some serious irony going on there. You have a part in some awful illegal organ importation business, and then you end up on the receiving end. That is some major karma.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I let the smile go. It wasn’t like I was actually laughing at him. But that is biblical revenge. An eye for an eye, a kidney for a kidney.

  ‘That’s why I should not go to prison,’ he says.

  ‘That’s not for me,’ I say. ‘I need names, and no Andrei whoever and Sergei something-or-other. I need names in Scotland. Emily’s dead. Waverley’s dead. I don’t need to know what their parts were in this thing all those years ago. I need to know who would want them dead now, and if you have any idea how word got back to someone that you’re alive, because we kept it out of the press.’

  ‘Is Emily really dead?’

  His voice finally sounds small. That’s been a while coming. Had he hung on to a belief in her this whole time? That she might still be waiting for him? Quite possibly. What else do prisoners hang on to? Everyone needs something. Despite the possibility of betrayal, despite the possibility that he’s telling the truth about being forced to have sex, what else did he have to hang on to?

  And there she is, killed as soon as he’s released. That potentially comes high on the irony stakes, except there’s nothing ironic about it. She’s dead because he escaped, pure and simple.

  ‘Yes. She was attacked in her house. Badly beaten. Hands round her neck, fingers into her windpipe. They were good. It didn’t last long.’

  He swallows, his fingers drift up to his neck and he touches it lightly.

  ‘She didn’t deserve that,’ he says.

  ‘You just said she killed Solomon. I know we don’t operate capital punishment, but she chose to play that game, she put herself in that world.’

  ‘Was she married?’

  ‘You know, I can’t be sure but I’d say she was waiting for you. She had no life. I mean, literally, she didn’t do anything. Like she was just waiting for something to happen.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘Anstruther.’

  Another blurted noise from his lips, he leans forward, eyes closed, resting his head in his hand.

  ‘What?’

  Head shakes. ‘That’s where we arranged. Twelve years ago…’

  That was careless. He’s either upset or acting tremendously. Either way, I should have let him tell me Anstruther, not the other way round. Seriously, how long have I been interrogating people?

  ‘So, now, you need to let me know who else was involved in Scotland. Who thought that this was all over? Who would have built a nice life for themselves and who suddenly had to clear up all the old mess when it became apparent that you were coming back? And who, in Estonia, would have let them know that that was what they had to do?’

  He lifts his head, and then he sits back. Slumps against the chair. Looks like there are tears in his eyes.

  ‘Waverley’s really dead too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know many others.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Another shake of the head. Feels like he’s constantly moving, constantly going through some motion or other.

  ‘Gibson. He was… he was a bastard.’

  He laughs. More head shaking. Sit still!

  ‘No scruples. He’s there to help students, just kids really. Advise them. All he did was get in with those who he thought would help him make money once they left. And then there was the sex too, of course. And the great thing about uni, I mean, against a school, is they’re all over eighteen.’

  ‘Did he sleep with Emily?’

  ‘Ha!’

  I guess I’ll take that ejaculation, coupled with the withering look thrown off into the far distance, as a yes.

  ‘You think the whole thing would have folded after you left?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘But the authorities investigating at the time. If they knew enough to have Solomon on the case, they surely didn’t just give up because he vanished. That doesn’t make sense. They would have come back looking. Even with you gone, surely they would have come back.’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’ he says, annoyed now. ‘Why don’t you ask, I don’t know, the people who were working the case back then?’

  ‘Because you know more than they ever did. You know what the connections were. You know where the breaks were. Maybe Solomon just knew about you and Emily. Maybe, with the exception of you two, not one person knew what anyone else was doing, who was involved, what the lines of communication were. That’s how these kinds of things work best, we all know that. You’re never in a position to implicate anyone else.’

  He’s nodding now. The anger given away – slightly – to some sort of mocking incredulity.

  ‘Now you get it, eh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Seriously? You ask me to tell you everyone involved, suggesting that I know all about it, while at the same time implying that I probably didn’t know all about it because that’s how these things work.’

  ‘I’m suggesting you were in charge, John.’

  ‘And I’m telling you I wasn’t.’

  ‘Who was in charge, then? Gibson, Waverley? Emily?’

  ‘I don’t know who was in charge.’

  ‘Who sent you to Estonia in the first place?’

  ‘Gibson.’

  We hold a stare across the table. I look at my watch. I can easily be back up north by this evening, rather than waiting all day for the night train. I think I’ll do that. I need to speak to Gibson, but this way I can be on my way early in the morning. Or I could get the train straight to Aberdeen now.

  Either way, doesn’t matter what I do, it’ll be too long. If Gibson is the killer, then we should be bringing him in. If not, then he may well be on the list. Either way, he’s been implicated in a serious historic crime, and shouldn’t be whiling away his days at the university Conservative club.

  I need to put a call through to Sutherland. First of all, however, I need to get something done with Baden, so that his life is a little more uncomfortable than it currently is.

  I take out my phone and call Scotland Yard, getting up and walking towards the door as I do so. I’m going to need help getting him home, because he’s not going anywhere other than into custody back in Scotland.

  ‘I want to see my mother,’ he says to my back.

  I turn round as I get through to someone. He’s not looking at me. Head down, staring at the table.

  42

  Sitting on the train out of Euston. Changing in Glasgow, will arrive in Inverness not long after seven. That’s pretty good going. A useful trip all round. Feels like we’re slowly closing in. You never know, maybe it has nowhere else to go. Some cases are like that. Some cases just stop, when they seem to be going full throttle.

  Perhaps Gibson is all we’re going to get. It feels like there must be someone in the Estonian police involved in this. It might be that Gibson tells us, something he can use as a bargaining chip. It’s not really our business, but it would be good to be able to pass something back to the Estonians. Well, I say, good. It would depend, of course, on who it was we were selling down the river. If it turns out to be some long-serving, highly-respected, law enforcement officer, worshipped by everyone in authority, then we might not be very popular.

  There’s no dining car on the train, but I buy a ticket in first class, and the steward walks up and down, constantly dispensing drinks and food to the fou
r of us in the carriage. The woman across from me is on her third glass of white wine. The time is three minutes past one. I wonder if she always drinks this much, or if it’s just because she’s paid for the ticket, and there has to be some reason, other than a slightly bigger seat and fewer children, for it being one thousand per cent more expensive.

  I want to say, I hope you’re not driving at the other end, madam, and I probably would have done at some point in the past, but these days I sensibly keep my mouth shut.

  I’m drinking water and eating a prawn and rocket salad. Sitting with my back to the direction of travel, watching the world rush away from me. Been on a lot of trains in the past week, which is good. I like trains. Perhaps, when Quinn notices I haven’t had any holiday for about two years and forces me to take a couple of weeks off – although with Nat’s death, plus Quinn’s general lack of ability to pay attention to such things, it’s unlikely – I could travel around Europe by train. Stay in nice hotels. Paris and Vienna, the Swiss Alps, the beach at Barcelona, the Amalfi coast, the Danube. Or the train that crosses Norway, the one people say is the most scenic in the world, and then cut down through Denmark.

  My phone rings.

  ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘Gibson’s dead,’ he says, getting right to it.

  ‘Crap.’

  I lower the phone, heavy breath. Look out the window. The train has its full speed up, the flat landscape, low grassland leading away to the North Sea, racing by, the occasional spot of rain on the window, streaking across the glass before stretching out into nothingness.

  I don’t want to hear about Gibson dying. It’s not one of those, wanting the world to stop moments; wanting to pause time and not step into the next second. There’s just been too much killing, that’s all.

  The press haven’t really got hold of it yet, as it’s been here or there, and one of the murders was a hit-and-run. They haven’t made the connection, and we haven’t given it to them. They might have done in the old days, when all the papers had thirty guys running the police and court beats. But now, when they’ve cut their numbers to the bone and fill their pages with Associated Press stories and celebrity flimflam, they miss so much.