Absolution

by Caro Ramsay

  He saw Helena up on the mezzanine, looking beautiful and curvaceous in a black silk suit, her red hair tumbling down, amorphously melting into a flame-red scarf. She looked her normal self, but her make-up was a little too heavy, her smile a little too wide, as though she was rearranging her features for a photograph. She kept the palm of her hand protectively over her stomach, appearing to smooth down her suit. But she was coping. She was talking to an art critic in front of a painting that, to McAlpine’s untrained eye, looked like an aerial photograph of one of the more boring Scottish islands. Helena was gesturing at something, but, as the critic turned to see where she was pointing, her smile disappeared, her face reverted to the slightly drawn politeness of someone in pain.

  McAlpine made his way up the stairs to talk to his wife.

  ‘Hello. I didn’t expect to see you,’ she whispered to him. ‘But I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘I thought I would come along, offer some moral support.’ He looked around him. ‘It looks as though it’s going well. Lots of people in kilts.’

  ‘That’s as it should be. Do I look nervous?’

  ‘You look just fine.’

  ‘I’ve been doing this for years, but I keep thinking people are going to jump out and stab me.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking it was really busy, all these people I don’t know. Then I realized it’s all members of the Strathclyde police force in plain clothes.’

  ‘They could do with some culture.’

  Helena gave a delightful smile to somebody walking past. ‘How’s your arm?’

  ‘Sore. How are your ribs?’

  ‘Sore. But I win, I’ve got stitches.’

  He lifted up the mineral water. ‘Well, I’ve given up the drink because of the painkillers. One bad habit at a time. How are you, really?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine, until somebody asks me how I am really. I’m going to change the subject now. See the man over there, long hair?’

  ‘With the tartan blanket over his shoulder?’

  ‘That’s Peter Kolster.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that’s the McKolster tartan.’

  Her smile began as a mischievous flicker on her lips. They looked at each other as if they had only just met.

  ‘You left these in the house.’ He handed her the wedding band and blue diamond engagement ring.

  She took them slowly. ‘I did. I’m sorry; my fingers are sore.’ She spanned her fingers revealing the red ugly blisters on the palms. ‘I don’t want to wear them on the wrong finger in case I lose them. Tell you what, you look after them for me.’ She put the rings back in the palm of his hand and squeezed her own fingers round them. He pulled her towards him and kissed her gently. He put the rings back in his pocket. ‘Your tie is squint.’ She straightened it, recognizing the silk one she had bought him last Christmas, her hand lingering on the front of his shirt. ‘How’s the case going?’

  ‘I’m off it. They’ve put Quinn in charge,’ he said bluntly. ‘Once he attacked you, it became personal.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Helena, as her husband’s mobile rang.

  He spoke into the phone, listening, saying ‘yip’ twice before ending the call. ‘Something’s up.’ He snapped the phone closed. ‘But the one thing I do not want to do now is rush out of here, on your big day.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what you are going to do, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘I was trying to be a good husband.’

  She sighed. ‘Al, just be the husband you’ve always been, kind of hopeless. I’m used to that.’

  ‘I’m trying to do the right thing.’ He sipped his mineral water, wishing it was whisky. He had only been teetotal for half an hour, and it was hurting.

  She swirled the champagne around in her glass. He looked at her, his eyes melting to a smile, and for a minute she saw the handsome man he used to be. She smiled back.

  ‘So, are you all nice and cosy at the Gilfillans’?’ he asked.

  The smile died. ‘Quinn sent somebody round to interview them. She seems to think I’m crucial to the case somehow.’

  McAlpine seemed to consider this for a minute. ‘I’d better be going.’ He turned to leave, then turned again to plant a warm kiss on her cheek. She reached out to touch his arm, but he had gone.

  Late on Friday night, the Three Judges was at last quiet, just the local crowd at the bar refusing to go home until the rain eased off.

  McAlpine put a Diet Coke down in front of Costello, who was gripping the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, trying to relax. ‘Get that down you. I’d buy you something stronger, but I know you want to get back across the road and get amongst it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Not really. I want to pop in at the post-exhibition party. See how it went.’

  ‘Good on you, Boss. First time you’ve been there for, well, years.’

  ‘First time I’ve been there full stop.’

  ‘And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go over there. Quinn is ripping Helena’s life apart as well, trying to find the connection between all the victims. Her picture is up on the wall, and yours. It’s not nice to see when it’s somebody you know.’

  ‘The connection is me and this case, surely?’ argued McAlpine.

  ‘That would seem the obvious answer, and we’ve pointed it out to DCI Quinn more than once. But, you know DCIs, sir. They sit at God’s right hand. She’s up and running with Helena and Leask, they’re her two main lines of inquiry.’

  ‘Do you think we’ve been wrong about this all along?’

  ‘I don’t think we’re wrong,’ said Costello defiantly. ‘Leask.’

  ‘Leask just doesn’t strike me as a fucking nutter. No forensics as yet, no eyewitnesses, no ID parade. Just because he’s a birdwatcher and – ’

  ‘And had access to chloroform,’ pointed out Costello.

  ‘You have yet to prove he had access. Don’t get carried away. It’s not enough to bring him in, not enough for a search warrant. And, in spite of Batten’s guidance and all the wee boxes, they could get nothing out of him at the interview. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, we can prove. I thought I’d taught you lot better than that,’ said McAlpine.

  ‘Do you want something to eat while I tell you the latest? I’m starving.’

  ‘You are a sweet person, Costello.’ He downed his orange juice in one. ‘So you think it’s Leask?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Costello, her voice flat. No elation, no victory. ‘The chloroform put the tin lid on it for me. All that driving up and down to see some ancient uncle. Where’s my purse?’ She emptied her bag, notebook, photographs and all, out on the table.

  McAlpine looked at the photographs.

  Costello was still talking. ‘It was here two minutes ago … And that reminds me – I’ve got to write up that report on our big development – about Alasdair Donald Wheeler’s girlfriend and that comment by Leeza … Leeza … Leeza?’

  ‘McFadyean,’ McAlpine said vaguely, unscrewing the top of a bottle of mineral water.

  ‘She said Alasdair hanged himself. So half an hour on the phone to our colleagues in Stornoway, where Anderson had a nice chat with the minister, a few emails to Ballachulish, and we found out some things that made Batten’s ears prick up. DCI Quinn’s a bit iffy about it all, but the rumour is she smiled, so something about all this must be pleasing her.’

  ‘Alasdair Donald Wheeler? Should I know that name?’ McAlpine studied his empty glass.

  ‘Leask’s half-brother – and how he died.’

  McAlpine paused, the water bottle halfway to his mouth. ‘That’s still very raw with him. I don’t think I’d bring that into the inquiry unless you have to.’

  Costello was about to comment that it was he who’d taught her to leave no stone unturned, but one look at her boss’s face told her to think again.

  McAlpine’s eyes closed briefly. Then he opened them and stared at her. ‘What exactly did you find out, Costello?’

  ‘Well, Wheeler
was down here, working. Left uni, got a good job as a trainee accountant, sent money home regularly to help out; a perfect son, until he met a woman, Christina Morton. She was a fair bit younger, introduced him to drink and fornicating and all sorts of things his elder brother would extremely disapprove of. Instead of going home when he was fully qualified, they moved in together; he paid the mortgage and all the bills, while she seemed to spend her entire salary on clothes and beauty treatments.’ Costello opened her purse and pulled out a lone tenner. ‘Why can I not get a man like that?

  ‘It was Leeza who put me on to it. Christina dumped him with no rhyme or reason and left him bereft. Personally I think she spent his money and then legged it. And I’ve a little theory – that I’ll feel very clever about if it pans out – about the downward spiral of depression for Alasdair. It’s not an unusual story, but I’m wondering how Leask coped with that.’

  ‘He probably just let it go, just let the memories float away.’ McAlpine passed the mineral water back and forth under his nose, wishing it had the perfume of malt. ‘The past is the past. Behind us. And that’s where it should stay.’

  ‘You’re very philosophical.’

  ‘I know. I’m sober. Look to the future, always look to the future. After all, that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s only mineral water?’

  ‘How did Wheeler kill himself? Did you find out?’

  ‘A bottle of whisky, a plastic bag over his head, and then hanged himself from the Connel Bridge. The place of all his childhood holidays.’

  ‘At least it was picturesque, must have had a good view as he dropped.’ McAlpine thought of Anna, lying with her arms ripped open, her beautiful feet speckled with blood. What had her last memory been? The feel of the lino floor cold against her face? No, he knew that her final thought had been of him, and him alone. He had been her dying memory. As she would be his.

  ‘You turning into a psychologist?’ Batten cut in, flinging three packets of cheese-and-onion crisps on the table and sitting down. He patted Costello on the head.

  ‘She’s got a head start – female intuition, remember?’ said McAlpine.

  ‘And what a great thing it is.’

  ‘She was pregnant, wasn’t she?’ Costello asked.

  Batten nodded. ‘She aborted the baby. Alasdair was devastated … more than that … it laid waste to all his reason for living.’

  ‘I knew it. I knew it had to be more than just their splitting up.’ Costello ripped open a packet of crisps. ‘I think Leeza had guessed something like that – female intuition again.’

  ‘Bloody women,’ said McAlpine, and was totally ignored by the other two.

  ‘I’ve been going over the dates, like Quinn asked me,’ Batten said. ‘Nothing fits exactly. No anniversaries, nothing like that. I think it was simply that when Christopher Robin realized what a fake Arlene was, he went into some kind of religious meltdown. And each time Lynzi lied, each time Arlene pretended to read the Bible, each time Elizabeth Jane tried to manipulate him, that piece about Helena in the paper – it was another turn of the screw. Each one, by behaving deceptively and dishonestly, was like a hammer slamming it further into his head.’ Batten attacked his packet of crisps, as unmoved as if he had been talking about the racing results. ‘Every single one of those women knew the power of their femininity in some way … a duplicitous way. Speaking from the viewpoint of Christopher Robin of course,’ he added for McAlpine’s benefit.

  McAlpine wasn’t listening. ‘Whores, you mean?’ he asked. ‘Masquerading as angels.’

  ‘Wouldn’t exactly say angels, but …’

  McAlpine wasn’t listening; his eyes fell into the middle distance. ‘Playing at being an angel,’ he muttered. And all the while …

  Costello asked, ‘Sir, what do you mean – an angel? Hardly angelic, any of them.’

  ‘Nothing.’ McAlpine’s eyes suddenly focused on the present. ‘I was thinking about somebody else. But an image can stay with you for life, like an everlasting scab you just pick, pick, pick at.’ He signalled to the barmaid, who brought over a Talisker without being told. McAlpine asked her for an orange juice instead. She turned and bumped into a man in a brown waxed jacket, the same waxed jacket Costello had seen before. Its owner edged into the booth beyond theirs, the one with the good view of the television, and sat down.

  ‘Do you think anything good is going to come out of this case at all?’ Batten asked. ‘It’s always good to think on the positive side.’

  ‘The only good things I can see are that the over-sexed mink of Ballachulish will live a wee while longer. And Sean McTiernan will live a long and happy life out at Culzean with whoever bought the house, the one who has the dog – the girl in the lane, I suspect. His own little blonde seraph.’ She frowned. ‘You know the house, Boss … right where you smacked the car, huge hole in the hedge … you can’t miss it.’ She lifted another two photographs from the file, the backs of them yellowed with age. ‘I can’t help thinking I’m missing something. Right at the start, you said: with Sean, he shows you one thing to stop you looking at another.’

  ‘He’s not daft, that’s for sure.’

  She smoothed out the first photograph on the table, flattening its creases with her thumbnail. ‘So what was he hiding? I would like to know why he killed Malkie Steele. I really would like to know that.’ She noticed McAlpine had finished his drink. ‘And one day I’m going to ask him. I’m going to ask him how he went from being this innocent little boy’ – she handed McAlpine Lorna’s photograph of the children on the beach – ‘to someone who could do that.’ She handed over the picture of Malkie Steele’s crushed face.

  ‘Somebody offered him money,’ said McAlpine, looking at the menu, feeling a bit peckish.

  ‘You don’t go up to a twenty-year-old with no record for anything and offer him forty grand to kill somebody. Davy Nicholson was right; there’s more to it than that. I’ll get you another before I go up the road. You want a toastie, Mick?’

  ‘Aye, cheese and ham. I’m just away to the gents.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’

  McAlpine didn’t answer. Costello got up and went to the bar as McAlpine picked up the photograph and turned it to get a better look. Four children on a beach. Three boys standing at the back. A sand-boat with its flag flying. A wee girl with long blonde hair flying in the wind, a beautiful face with perfect features, fine arched brows and large grey eyes, wide and innocent. And one of the little boys was gazing at her, his own eyes full of devotion …

  ‘Do you want salad with it?’ said Costello, turning back to him, but McAlpine had gone.

  Batten bolted his toastie and drink, and disappeared off, while Costello finished hers at leisure. She was just reaching under the seat for her bag to find her notebook and pen when Anderson eased into the booth opposite her.

  ‘I thought you were on your way home,’ she said.

  ‘I am. But this came through just after you left. I’ve only been waiting two days, although it was urgent.’ He handed her a fax headed Parks and Recreation Department. In two seconds Costello’s forefinger had run down the list of names and dates and come to a halt. She looked sharply up at Anderson. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t. Just something the Boss mentioned, about a case he was involved in once. A young woman who died following an acid attack.’

  ‘Leaving a baby daughter, named after her mother. Well, the pronounceable version of her mother. Geertruijde – Trude. Who would now be – twenty-two, say?’

  Anderson nodded. ‘We don’t really need to dig out the records on that case.’

  ‘But we’re going to. Well, I’m going to. First thing tomorrow.’

  McAlpine parked the car in a lay-by and turned off the engine, taking a few moments to calm down. It had taken thirty-eight minutes to drive the forty-seven miles from Glasgow to Culzean, bypassing Ayr and then taking the high coast road, thrilling but not legal. He had stopped on th
e way and bought a half-bottle of Jack Daniel’s. This was too good not to celebrate. He got out of the car, and twisted the cap off the bottle. The alcohol hit his bloodstream and was welcomed like a long-lost friend. He was about to meet another.

  He was in heaven, a dark and windless heaven; the air hung expectant, waiting. The darkness was intense. He could sense her; she had been speaking to him all along, whispering in the darkness. He just hadn’t been listening.

  He stood there, his eyes closed, seeing her face in his mind’s eye, tasting her on his lips.

  He saw movement on the beach, a young man moving through the moonlight, silhouetted against the darkness of the waves as he ran along the waterline. A man out for a run on a beach with a dog, a white glove or bandage on his hand, punching the air as he ran.

  At midnight.

  McAlpine watched him run into the distance, into the darkness.

  He came to the white cottage, Shiprids, sidestepped two planters filled with something woody and spiky that had been cut back for the winter, and walked on, passing a little red car parked covertly under the hedge. The cottage was dark and deserted, no sign of life. The little old lady protected the lane like a sentinel. But she, his angel, had pulled him from the car. She was here, he knew that now.

  He walked down the lane to the sea, listening to the gentle hush and rush of water he could no longer see now the moon had passed behind a cloud. She had been here; here, then gone.

  He walked along towards the castle, to the little white cottage, much further than he remembered from that night. He saw the sign with the two swans, their necks entwined, the words Keeper’s Cottage wrapped in a diamond of lighter wood. The swans were for her, de Zwaan. The swan. And a diamond. It was only yesterday that he had sat at the side of her bed and held her hand, that fragile hand, watching that little tendril of blonde hair fall over the pillow. He smiled, twisting the imperfect blue diamond in his pocket. At last he was going to give it back to her.