Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘Maybe he spent it all,’ says Sutherland.

  ‘Or maybe he gave it to someone.’

  Sutherland has a moment and then nods. Mrs Rosco.

  ‘You know, people keep getting murdered and distracting us, but so much of it comes back to Rosco. What was he doing? Why did he do it? If he was as besotted with Emily King as Baden implied, why then marry someone else?’

  ‘Maybe Emily just blew him off, finally, and it was a knee-jerk thing. Your classic marriage on the rebound.’

  ‘That’s got a solid ring to it.’

  Look at the clock. I really do need to get going but I think there might well be time for a quick stopover in Aviemore.

  ‘If I leave now I’ll have time to stop at her house on the way down the road.’

  ‘You want me to call ahead and make sure she’s in?’ he asks.

  ‘No. She doesn’t like talking about her husband. I’ll need the element of surprise.’

  * * *

  Almost as though she knew anyway, as I arrive she’s locking her front door. I park my car across her driveway, to stop her leaving. It’s not that I think she has any reason to run, but there are plenty of people all too willing to be rude – who see the police investigating crime as an intrusion – regardless of whether or not they have anything to hide.

  ‘Can you move that, please?’ she says.

  ‘Just got a few more questions.’

  She stands beside her car, staring blankly at me. We are very familiar with this stare. The one that covers the internal debate on whether or not they should tell us where to go. It’s a wide driveway, and I can see her judging whether or not she’ll be able to squeeze past. I really don’t think she will, and hope she doesn’t try. The paperwork for the car repairs would be a pain in the neck.

  ‘Can I make an appointment for later?’ she asks. Unexpected. ‘Or tomorrow, if that suits you.’

  ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ I say.

  It finishes today. Why are those words still in my head? I’ve already established where they came from. Melanie Waverley and her strange little story. There’s no reason why I should have dreamt about it before having the conversation, but it happened, and that’s all.

  ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. You know what it’s like these days. Miss one, and you don’t get another for six months.’

  I don’t answer straight away, but she’s got me. It’s not like I’ve got a huge amount of time anyway, and if I insist on it, it’s more likely to make her clam up. I had to catch her off guard and willing to talk, rather than just about to go somewhere and annoyed at being interrupted.

  ‘I can see you in an hour,’ she says.

  ‘Needs to be now or tomorrow.’

  She smiles, which is something I haven’t seen before.

  ‘Look,’ she says, her tone softening, ‘another day would do me good anyway. I know you want to talk about Rosco, and I know he was the biggest arsehole on God’s earth. But he was my husband, for a while at least, and I am allowed some mourning period, aren’t I?’

  I’m not sure why my gut instinct is telling me not to let her go. She’s not accused of anything. As far as we know, she hasn’t done anything. This is a background check, another one, that’s all. Yet, when you come to talk to someone and they immediately want to leave, it’s innately suspicious.

  Of course, she had started to leave before I got there.

  ‘Very well,’ I say, ‘tomorrow afternoon. Early.’

  She nods.

  ‘Thanks, Inspector.’

  She opens the car door and gets in. Starts the engine straight away, although she doesn’t do anything so crass as rev the engine. She’s not a teenage boy.

  I look down at her for a few moments, then walk to my car, and move away from the entrance to the driveway. She reverses out and is on her way. Her car is gone from sight by the time I get to the end of her street.

  47

  Debbie Rosco plays on my mind as I head south. A couple of times, near the start of the drive, I wonder if it’s her car I see ahead of me. A red Peugeot, at this distance practically unidentifiable from any other red, saloon car, but it could be her. Why would she be heading south on the A9?

  I feel like I’m letting something go. There’s so much involved in this case, so many people. There’s always something else, there has to be. You make a call on where to draw the circle, and you concentrate on what’s inside. As for what’s on the outside, you end up forgetting it or willfully ignoring it, and all you can do is hope that your judgement was correct in the first place.

  I pull into a lay-by a little north of Drumochter. Call Sutherland. Another phone call from the road. It feels sloppy, like I should be on top of everything, handing out timely orders, rather than constantly playing catch-up.

  ‘Hey, sorry, got something else. Maybe you could ask Fisher.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says.

  I don’t ask what he’s doing now. If it’s important, he’ll tell me.

  ‘Mrs Rosco,’ I say. ‘Just had a quick word with her, but didn’t really have time to talk. I’m going to interview her tomorrow. Get me some more background. See what you can dig up. Anything. I mean, absolutely anything.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘OK, thanks. I’ll call when I’m heading back.’

  He hangs up. I lay the phone down and stare along the road for a few moments. There’s a great wave of dark cloud coming in from the west, contrasting with the high, white cloud overhead.

  I look over my shoulder, and then ease the car back out onto the road.

  * * *

  Words dry up.

  Sitting with Baden on the M9 between Glasgow and Perth. I realise he looks a little better every time I see him. Decent sleep, decent meals. I presume he didn’t get to stay in the Dorchester last night, but he won’t have been stuck in a stinking cell in the basement of Scotland Yard either.

  DCI Meadows of the Specialist Crime Division wasn’t too excited about me taking Baden off for a couple of hours, but he felt some imperative from my official calling in of the favour he owes me for saving his backside on the Revel kidnapping case three years ago.

  Still, he asked that I didn’t question Baden. On the face of it, that’s a counter-intuitive request, because I have him alone and it’s a perfect opportunity for conversation to arise, and things to be said. However, now that Mr. Baden has employed a legal team, there’s really no point. The slightest hint that I’ve been treating him as a suspect, or even a witness, and they’ll be screaming about police abuse, harassment, and inappropriate procedures.

  So, here we are, driving in silence, and I’m wondering why I made the trip down from Dingwall. I needed to see Baden with his mother, I needed it confirmed. I needed to see that woman look into his eyes, the look on her face when she sees her son for the first time in well over a decade.

  But things have been falling into place. We know the body that washed up in the lake wasn’t Baden, we know how Rosco engineered the cover-up. There isn’t any doubt that this is the real Baden sitting beside me.

  Yet, I had to come. It felt right to come. This is where the investigation goes, this is how it progresses. Me and Baden sitting in a car, travelling to see his mother.

  The phone goes. On the motorway there’s nowhere to pull over, so I lift it. DHM Tallinn. Haven’t heard from him in a while.

  ‘Kenneth, hey,’ I say.

  ‘Inspector,’ he says. ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘We’re getting there. A few things happening. Can’t really talk at the moment, sorry.’

  Slight pause.

  ‘All right, of course. I just wanted to let you know that there’s going to be a service for Dorothy next week in London. I know it might be a stretch for you, and it’ll depend on what’s going on work-wise…’

  ‘No, I should try to be there. Definitely. What day?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  ‘E-mail me the details. What about you?’

  ‘Sorry, can
’t. Ambassador’s away all week.’

  ‘Welded to your desk?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Anything to report from your end?’

  ‘The Estonians… they’ve just closed up shop. It’s not our business any more. I mean, they’re usually great, great working relationship. But now they’re in this mode, it’s like, it’s an internal matter. You know, thanks for your help, but we’ll handle it from now on. And you know, we’ve got our guy back, what exactly is it we’d want from them anyway?’

  I think I might have a few more questions for them. I can see their point. Britain has done enough sticking its nose into other people’s business, you can understand why anyone would turn their back on it. But it’s hard not to think that someone at that end is still complicit in what’s going on over here. For these murders to start when they did, someone in Estonia contacted someone in Scotland.

  I glance at Baden. It was either someone from the authorities, or it was this guy sitting here.

  ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know about Dorothy. I’ll try to be there.’

  We hang up. Just placing the phone back down when it rings again. Sutherland. Around three o’clock. No need for headlights yet; we’ll get the full complement of daylight.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Boss,’ he says. ‘Sitting down?’

  Almost smile at that. The first time he said it to me I thought something big was coming. Now he’s overused it. He’ll say it on a Saturday afternoon when County haven’t lost.

  ‘Driving, so yes.’

  ‘Emily King isn’t dead.’

  Sitting in the inside lane travelling at sixty-seven miles per hour. Car in front, a white Audi A3, behind me a Toyota pulling a caravan that I passed while talking to the DHM. Pale blue skies up above.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  As he says it, I realise I’m not surprised. Not at all surprised. Emily King isn’t dead? Of course she’s not dead, you idiot!

  ‘Emily King married DS Rosco.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘No, I can’t, but you can.’

  Glance at the side of the road. Contemplate just pulling over, so that I can get out the car and talk in peace. But then, I’d be talking beside a motorway and I’d barely hear anything, so there’d be little point. Contemplate postponing the conversation until we’re in Perth, and maybe I’ll wait until then to get more detail. However, I need the full gist of it now.

  ‘So, I was chasing down Mrs Rosco, and it was kind of weird, because the woman’s life appears to have started when she married him. Got into Rosco’s things, copy of the marriage licence etc. Everything pertaining to the two of them. This woman did not exist before she got married. Seriously. There’s nothing. Deborah Geddes. That was the name on the license. There’s nothing about her on record, any record. Not this Deborah Geddes. And you know what that means.’

  ‘Keep talking.’

  There’s never nothing on record about people. Not now. Not for a long time.

  ‘Out of nowhere she appeared, a month or two after Emily King returned from Estonia, and she married Rosco. That’s the first time she’s recorded as existing.’

  ‘But how…?’

  Stop myself asking the question.

  ‘It’s her. I’m looking at photographs. The old one on the board of Emily, the one of her from university we got from Gibson’s house, and one, only one, that we found among Rosco’s things of him and Debbie on his wedding day. Like the woman didn’t want her photograph taken. But it’s the same woman, sir. Looking at the picture on her driving licence, there’s something different about her now, like she lost something since she married Rosco…’

  I can see his brow creased, see his head shaking slightly.

  ‘It’s hard to explain. I’ll show you when you get back up.’

  ‘We need more than that.’

  He’d been so definite in his declaration, his big announcement, that I presumed he was going to have more. Yet, the concept does not surprise me. In fact, suddenly everything falls into place. Everything would make sense, if DI Rosco was married to Emily King. It just wouldn’t make sense that it was his ex-wife whom I’d spoken to earlier today, and that she’d also been murdered last week.

  And then the thought strikes me. This whole thing started out with the possibility of there being two John Badens. Perhaps, it would transpire, that the real mystery was that there were two Emily Kings. Nevertheless, that possibility is no less incredible now than it was a few days ago.

  ‘I know,’ he says, ‘maybe they were sisters or something, but all it comes down to is that her hair’s different, there’s a thinness about the face, she’s wearing those thick-rimmed spectacles. I had someone down at SCC run the photographs of Emily King and Debbie Rosco through Ganymede, and they’ve come up with 97 per cent match. So, we’re continuing to work on it, but if we could, somehow, get some DNA from his ex-wife. And we need to work out who this other person was in Anstruther.’

  Ever the pragmatist, Sutherland. I immediately consider the possibility of there being two of the same woman, while Sutherland automatically assumes that one of them is someone else.

  ‘Call Sergeant Edelman, have a word.’

  ‘In Anstruther?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will do. Do you know where Mrs Rosco is now, sir?’

  Shake my head. Had the damned car parked across the end of her driveway, and let her go. Visualising the two women. The old photographs of Emily King, and the woman I just spoke to today. Emily, young and dark-haired and attractive. Mrs Rosco, seemingly much older, more than twelve years older, hair dyed blonde, her glasses now chic and expensive. But there was the reason why I found her so unattractive; she’d had work done. It was a while ago – perhaps after the wedding photograph had been taken – her face had grown into it, but there was something not quite right which I hadn’t placed at the time.

  ‘Still in Aviemore. She was going to the doctor’s. That’s what she said, at any rate.’

  ‘You want me to check that?’

  ‘Sure, if you can get anywhere. And get her car registration number… no, no, not yet. Too early for that. Too early to be going all out. Keep doing what you’re doing, come back to me if there’s anything else significant.’

  Hang up, phone back down, two hands on the steering wheel.

  ‘Who were you talking about?’

  I don’t answer.

  48

  ‘How long has she been here?’

  We pull into the car park. Late afternoon, sun low in the sky.

  ‘Three years,’ I say, as I turn off the engine. Out the car, close the door, and stand for a moment looking at the trees. The air is crisp and cold. It’s going to be a beautifully clear, sharp evening.

  ‘It’s a nice place. She seems to be doing fine.’

  He’s staring around at the trees. The woods here are nothing compared to what he’s just experienced, but I can’t blame him for looking at them with some amount of fear.

  ‘She seemed happy when I spoke to her last week,’ I say.

  ‘Did you tell her that I was still alive?’

  ‘Didn’t have to, she knew. She didn’t doubt for a second that you were still alive.’

  ‘The police in Estonia said that she’d identified my body.’

  ‘That wasn’t her. That was your aunt.’

  He looks confused.

  ‘Margaret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did she identify the body?’

  I’m not going to get into explaining it at the moment, as that would undoubtedly lead to talk of Rosco. When we get into it with Baden on Rosco, it ought to be under strict interview conditions, so that we don’t give his lawyer an excuse to strike off anything he tells us.

  ‘Let’s go and see your mum.’

  He nods. Looks nervous. Wonder if he’s going to start
crying, even before he sees her. However wrong the things he was doing before he was taken prisoner, coming back here after twelve years must still be incredibly strange, verging on the traumatic.

  We could probably stand there looking at the house until it gets dark, so I lead him off with a slight touch of the arm, and walk through the car park and up the front steps. There’s a large front door, unlocked, and a small reception area inside.

  Show my ID as I approach the woman at the desk.

  ‘DI Westphall, I’m expected. Here to see Mrs Baden.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘You’ve been here before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shall I call someone to take you through, or do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘Is Mrs Baden in–?’

  ‘–She’ll be in her usual spot,’ she says. ‘By the window.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I walk on, a glance behind to make sure Baden is following. He looks agitated, but I guess he’s nervous about seeing her. I suddenly wonder if he’s nervous about it because he’s not actually John Baden. He’s worried that she’s going to call him out on it. Maybe he’s worried she won’t recognise him because he is her son, and that would be even worse.

  The latter is more likely.

  ‘Come on.’

  We walk along the short corridor, hung with paintings of deer in the glens, through the small sitting room, leather chairs and shelves of books – they probably call it the library – where once again there is no one sitting, and then through to the large common area at the back of the house, where Mrs Baden spends her life.

  She’s not at the window as we come through, although her place is intact, a cup of tea on the small table beside her spot. There are a few others around – the word inmates comes unavoidably into my head – but no nursing staff. We walk over to the window and stand by her chair.

  I can feel her presence, feel that she was here, but left a while ago. A peculiar feeling, and it’s quickly gone. Not a feeling that I can place or recall or bring back. Came and it went. Look back around the room.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Gone to the bathroom, maybe.’