The Innocent Dead
. . . are always the first victims
LIN ANDERSON
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Three months later
Acknowledgements
For my father
DI Bill Mitchell
The past is what we decide it to be.
1
Karen had been feeling odd for days. Her current world consisted of vivid, insistent and disturbing memories, some of which she would rather not revisit, others that she couldn’t believe had happened to her at all.
The mind played tricks, she reminded herself. Especially at her age. Like the recurring dream she’d had over the years.
In it she was ten and visiting a house with her dad. The house was near a railway line and there was a garden with raspberry bushes. She’d climbed up onto a footbridge to watch a train chug past.
Yet when Karen had asked her dad who’d lived in that house, he’d told her that she must have imagined it. That they’d never had friends or relatives with a house like that.
It was just a dream, he’d said.
But the current memory wasn’t a dream.
It featured Karen’s older sister’s wedding day. Eleanor, all in white, looked beautiful dancing round the floor with her new husband, who was tall and handsome, but . . .
Karen shuddered. There was something about his eyes. The way he would stare at Karen, before leaning down to whisper in her ear.
The memory suddenly switched to another white dress. This time the wearer was small, Karen’s height but with dark hair. It was her childhood pal, Mary McIntyre. She too wore a veil just like a bride.
The image almost made her heart stop.
No, she thought. I don’t want to think about that day. Not now. Not ever again.
It was then she heard a cawing sound coming from the hall or the far sitting room. She tried to recall whether she’d left the porch door open. Could one of the garden birds be trapped inside the house?
Opening the kitchen door, she found the hall empty and the porch door shut. So nothing could have come in that way.
She was about to check the sitting room, when the next memory swept over her like a tidal wave, halting Karen in her tracks.
In it she was walking along the path to the den that she and Mary had built in the woods. Suddenly a crow, disturbed by her approach, abandoned the blood-splattered body of a lamb to rise squawking in front of her, furious that she’d disturbed it at its feast.
A feeling of revulsion swept over Karen, and she reached out to steady herself against the wall.
Why had such a horrible memory come back to haunt her after all these years?
Striving to regain her composure, she contemplated the closed door of the sitting room.
She didn’t go in there much any more. Not since Jack had died. It was too full of memories. Plus Jack had been the one to light the fire and Karen couldn’t bring herself to do that. So she’d taken up permanent residence in the kitchen by the oil-fired range.
‘Don’t be a fool, Karen,’ she said out loud. ‘You have to check.’
Steeling herself, she reached for the handle.
The sitting room didn’t get the sun at this time of day. Also, being at the gable end of the house, it was rarely warm, even in midsummer. Nevertheless, Karen was perturbed to find that the air that rushed out to greet her was cold. Icily so.
Had she opened a window sometime earlier to air the room and forgotten to shut it again?
Glancing around, she noted that the window was closed and there was no immediate sighting of a trapped bird.
Jack’s voice suddenly came to her.
Remember when a pair of crows fell down our chimney? Lucky the fire wasn’t on.
Emboldened by Jack’s internal reminder, Karen decided to check out the fireplace.
It was at that moment she had the strong sense she was being watched. The feeling was so powerful it stopped Karen in her tracks.
Someone or something was in there with her.
Forcing herself to turn, she found a pair of beady black eyes glaring at her from the back of the sofa.
The image of the crow was as threatening as in her earlier memory, and the resulting scream froze in Karen’s throat.
Okay, she tried to reason, her heart pounding her chest so hard that she could scarcely breathe. Jack had been right. A bird had fallen down the chimney and that bird just happened to be a crow. She turned back to the window and, releasing the lock, pushed it wide open. She would need to find a way to shoo the crow out, that was all.
It was then the cat appeared round the side of the house to cross the drive in front of her. Big-bodied, jet-black with a white splash on its chest, there was no doubt it was Toby.
Stunned, she released the window and it immediately shut with a bang. Expecting the noise to startle the crow into cawing, she turned to find the bird no longer there.
In that moment Karen knew the reason for the torrent of memories, the images of white dresses, the appearance of the black crow and the sighting of her dead cat Toby.
It was all about Mary. It had to be.
2
The resurfacing of memories, the imagined crow and the vision of Toby marching across her path had all happened for a reason. What that reason was, Karen had no idea. If Jack had been here, he would have made sense of it all.
As she started up the loft ladder, the pain of his loss gripped Karen and she had to wait until she could draw air into her lungs before she continued her ascent.
She’d never expected to be a widow. She’d always presumed she would be the first to go. Jack’s father had lived into his nineties, faculties intact. His mother had preceded her husband by only a few months.
As for her own parents, they hadn’t been so lucky.
Dust motes, disturbed by her entry, danced before her as she made her way to the box near the leftmost skylight. Jack, in his tidy manner, had labelled the box KAREN MISCELLANEOUS and dated it with the year she’d left home. As such, it had seemed a suitable resting place for what she now sought.
Having extracted it, she headed back down to the kitchen, at which point she put the kettle on and made a pot of tea. In past times, during Jack’s illness and after his death, when anxiety had beset her, she would have sought refuge in a gla
ss of wine.
Not any more.
Settling herself beside the range, mug of tea alongside, Karen opened the old school jotter, hoping whatever was in there hadn’t faded with time.
She had written the diary in pencil. In the lead-up to that day the entries were brief, like ‘practised spelling for test tomorrow’ and ‘Stephen fancies Mary. He sent her a love letter in class.’
Everything changed on the first day of May.
For a moment Karen was back in her old bedroom, sitting at the desk by the window. The street she’d lived in had houses on one side only. On the other side were two newly built primary schools. One for Catholics. The other for Protestants. The school grounds were separated by an area of open land and a small wood.
That’s where we built our den.
The road outside her house was steep and mostly empty of cars. A few delivery vans drove up and down. An ice-cream van. A rag-and-bone cart.
We played in the street all the time.
Until that day.
It was so long ago. How could she possibly remember what she’d felt like back then? Yet, she could. As Karen read the words she’d written, the horror of that day, so long buried, rose up to engulf her.
Diary entry of Karen Marshall aged 11
1 May 1975
It was sunny today. I practised my skipping.
Mary’s in the kitchen
Doing a little stitchin’
In comes a bogeyman
And out goes she
Mary’s my best friend. The bogeyman is the man who waits near the shops to show us his willy. Mary and I always run past trying not to look.
I was waiting for Mary to come and have her photograph taken in our front garden. She would be wearing her white confirmation dress and veil, which are beautiful.
I want a dress like Mary’s, but I can’t be confirmed, because I’m a Protestant. Mary says there’s a seat in heaven reserved for her because she’s a Catholic.
I imagine a packed cinema like the one we go to on Saturday mornings, all the seats filled by Catholics, and wonder where I will go when I die.
The sun shone all day and it got late and Mary never came to have her picture taken.
Then my dad arrived home and told me to go inside as Mary wasn’t coming.
When I asked why, he didn’t answer. Just took me in the house, shouted on my mum and they went into the kitchen together and shut the door.
Standing outside, I heard my mum crying.
That’s when it all began.
3
The April sun was bright, but not strong enough to have made any difference to the temperature of the lochan.
In an attempt at bravado, Dougal had waded in already, wearing nothing but his trunks. Julie knew he didn’t like swimming anywhere other than a proper swimming pool, where he could see what lurked beneath him. A calm sea was also manageable provided he wasn’t required to venture out too far and he could see the sandy floor.
A dark-brown loch, on the other hand, was Dougal’s idea of a horror movie, in which he had a starring part.
So to get him to come here, Julie had had to agree to an evening doing exactly what Dougal wanted. Julie had no problem with that, since Dougal’s romantic plans for tonight pretty well matched her own.
Without a wetsuit, he won’t last long enough to enjoy the water, Julie thought as she watched him wade in cautiously. Once the tingling in his upper body moved from mild to severe pain, Dougal would be back on shore quicker than he went in.
Ready now, Julie walked in slowly, enjoying the sensation of the water entering her wetsuit to form a warm protective film against her skin. Launching herself forward, she began to swim, feeling the soft peaty water enclose her like brown silk.
Much as she loved swimming in the sea in all seasons, there was nothing to beat a freshwater loch whatever the time of year. Turning, she floated on her back and closed her eyes, enjoying the gentle slurp of water in her ears.
It was Dougal’s sudden shout that disturbed this dreamlike state. Julie turned over and took a look, assuming the cold had got to him by now. It certainly appeared that way. He was swimming, seemingly in a great hurry, back to the strip of sand where they’d undressed earlier.
‘Froze your balls off, did it?’ Julie shouted. ‘I warned you.’
Having reached the shore, he rose, swore loudly and pointed at the opposite bank.
‘What?’ Julie said, unmoved by his antics.
Dougal was a joker and he’d caught her out on numerous occasions, so her first instinct was to ignore him.
‘Fu-ck-ing l-l-look!’ he stuttered, his face white, his body starting to shiver.
He was putting on a fine performance, Julie had to admit that. Next, no doubt, would come the theme tune from Jaws. He’d tried that one during one of her wild sea swims.
‘Get dressed before you freeze to death,’ she shouted back. ‘There’s hot coffee in my rucksack.’
‘Julie, I’m not kidding. There’s something over there in the fucking bank.’
Due to the long dry spring weather, the water level in the loch was the lowest she’d ever encountered, leaving the raised peat bank on the far shore exposed.
Although still suspicious, Julie turned and made for the spot where Dougal continued to point.
At first glance, the bank looked normal, although some of it had crumbled away, exposing the twisted form of heather roots.
‘There!’ Dougal shouted, panic still in his voice. ‘There’s something there.’
Julie got closer, treading water, and reached up for the odd bulge made by the knotted roots. Her touch sent more dry peat to detach and plop into the water alongside her.
The tingling cold surged into her own upper body, making her gasp. Yet it wasn’t the length of time she’d been in the water that caused her sudden drop in temperature, but horror at what she now saw.
Free of earth, the leathery finger poked through the tangle of roots to beckon her, as though in desperation.
4
Rhona exited the main door of her flat into bright spring sunshine. She stood for a moment, letting the sun warm her face, before she set off down the steps that led into Kelvingrove Park. Six months ago she had believed herself incapable of either being back living here or walking through the park to Glasgow University and her lab of a morning.
Yet here she was.
Her sojourn on Skye after the sin-eater case had set her on the road to recovery, but it had been her time at Castlebrae, the police treatment centre, that had taught her to properly deal with her PTSD.
As a result of the care she’d received there, the nightmares had eased and the claustrophobic flashbacks diminished in power. Plus she’d heard stories from her fellow inmates which had helped put her own experience into perspective.
The past is always with us, but it need not define us, had become her mantra. Or as Chrissy McInsh, her forensic assistant, was wont to say, Shit happens, but so does fun.
Rhona smiled at the memory of Chrissy’s face when she’d turned up for her first day back at work. Standing outside the door of the lab, Rhona had been besieged by doubts about her ability to do her job again, despite what they’d said at Castlebrae.
Then she’d heard Chrissy inside and smelled the usual pot of morning coffee and, without a doubt, the scent of filled rolls, Glasgow-style, which Chrissy always brought in with her.
Square sausage, tattie scone, black pudding and an egg.
Maybe Chrissy had heard her outside, or maybe it was just that second sense Chrissy often exhibited, but the door had been flung open and the joy on Chrissy’s face had propelled Rhona inside. That and Chrissy’s firm grip on her arm.
‘Perfect timing. I got you the full works this morning,’ Chrissy had informed her. ‘Plus I’ve purchased a few more condiments to complement your breakfast roll.’
Chrissy was a ketchup gal on pretty much everything. Even the haggis rolls she’d bought from the van at Kilt Rock on the island o
f Skye, before she’d abseiled down the cliff face and presented herself to Rhona at the bottom.
After the months of hiding out on Skye at her adopted parents’ former home, Rhona’s heart had lifted at the unexpected sight of Chrissy flourishing those haggis rolls. As a result, she’d heard herself laugh properly. Something that hadn’t happened in months.
Pouring out two mugs of, no doubt, strong coffee, Chrissy had plonked Rhona’s roll down before her with a smile.
‘Welcome back, partner!’
And in that moment, Rhona was glad to be back.
The daily walk through the park held its own memories, none more so than the body they’d discovered near the ancient yew tree. A glance in the direction of its gnarled trunk now no longer brought forth the heavy scent of yew needles mixed with death.
Should she require to walk through the dense undergrowth that surrounded it, Rhona now knew she could handle it. By far the worst symptom of her incarceration had been her panicked reaction to suffocating spaces. That had been her biggest obstacle in returning to work, because working in confined spaces was a necessary part of the job.
She thought of one of the participants she’d met during her stay at Castlebrae: a forensic pathologist who, after working on the terrible site of a major plane crash, had taken to writing her own name on every part of her body before she could climb on a plane.
Trauma took on many guises.
This morning, being crisp, sunny and dry, brought forth runners, walkers and cyclists to populate the paths of the park. In the distance, the red sandstone of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum glowed through the budding trees, watched over from the nearby hill by the Gothic magnificence of Glasgow University.
Crossing Kelvin Way, she made for the path that led up to the face of the university, which was already busy with students set on the same destination. At the top, Rhona stopped for a moment to take in her favourite view of the city of Glasgow which, along with the Palace of Kelvingrove, also included the golden dome of the nearby Sikh temple and the skeleton beauty of the giant Finnieston Crane, a memory of Glasgow’s great engineering past, and still in perfect working order.
When she arrived at the lab, she found Chrissy was there before her. A usual occurrence, broken only for a short while after the birth of Chrissy’s now toddler son, wee Michael, named after DS Michael McNab.
The Innocent Dead - Rhona MacLeod Series 15 (2020) Page 1
