‘Terry, I don’t work for Police Scotland.’
‘And in return,’ Hayes went on, as if it was the continuation of her previous sentence, ‘I’ll see what I can do towards giving you both some special treatment. Off the record, of course. Can’t be seen to be playing favourites.’
Elspeth mulled this over, her cane tapping lightly on the floor tiles. ‘Okay, Terry – deal. I’ll sit on this, for now. But you tell me at least twenty-four hours before it’s made public and also let me know if one of those other buggers stumbles over it. Although most of them can’t find their own keyboard without a press release telling them where it is.’
‘I told you I would. Thanks, Elspeth. This will make you friends here.’
Elspeth grimaced. ‘Aye, that makes me feel all warm and cosy.’
Hayes laughed and, with a nod to Rebecca, walked away in a cloud of perfume probably so expensive that even breathing it in dented her bank balance. Rebecca was about to ask Elspeth a question, but the woman merely shook her head to silence her and flicked her cane towards the lift. They left the building without another word.
Elspeth said nothing as they made their way through the main foyer of the headquarters and exited the glass frontage. She was still silent as they crossed the driveway into the open car park, every space taken. Rebecca spotted Elspeth’s battered old Volvo up ahead. Rebecca had been forced to park even further away, outside a bingo hall, so at least they were heading in the right direction. She looked back at the glass-and-brick frontage of the building, at the blue flash of Police Scotland embedded beside the glass door, judged they were well enough away from the building before she said, ‘Why me?’
Elspeth stopped at the tailgate of her car, fished her cigarettes out of her coat pocket and fired one up. She took a deep draw, held it for a moment, then ejected smoke from the corner of her mouth to avoid it wafting in Rebecca’s face. ‘Why you what?’
‘Why are you bringing me into this?’ Rebecca said. ‘You could easily do it yourself. You’ve done it before.’
Elspeth looked beyond Rebecca to stare at the doors to the police station for a moment and sucked on her cigarette again. ‘As Napoleon said after invading Russia, it seemed like a good idea at the time. My gut tells me this is going to be one belter of a story. I told Terry it has book deal all over it and I meant it, but I can’t handle it alone.’ She waved her cane between them. ‘I need someone to do the legwork, someone I can trust. Also, I know you, Rebecca, you’re like me. You want the story but you’ve not lost your humanity, not yet anyway. And you’re good. I saw that when I hired you, or felt it. That stunt you pulled last year, on Stoirm? That showed me you won’t stop until you learn everything you can. The fact that you didn’t print everything tells me you still care.’
‘How do you know I didn’t print everything?’
Elspeth gripped the cigarette between her teeth. ‘I didn’t, until now.’
‘So, what’s the next step?’
Elspeth fumbled in her bag for her car keys. ‘We find out where the clothes and the sword came from.’
‘How do we do that?’
The cigarette was fished out from between her teeth. ‘That’s your first job. Time to work for your keep.’
Elspeth edged to the driver’s door and unlocked it. Rebecca mulled the problem over. Then something else occurred to her. ‘Didn’t Napoleon get a gubbing in Russia?’
A cloud of smoke rose into the chilly spring air to be caught by the watery sun. ‘Don’t bloody remind me . . .’
16
Rebecca was sipping a coffee and nibbling on an Egg McMuffin as Bill Sawyer pushed through the doors. He was right on time, as usual. She had worried that she might be late but had made it with minutes to spare, which allowed her to order their food. Sawyer was limping but he had shunned the use of a cane, which brought Chaz to mind. The younger man made a hitch in his gait look mysterious; Bill, on the other hand, adopted the look of an otherwise fit older man with a sore leg. Then she thought of Elspeth. What the hell was it with people and limps in her life – some kind of metaphor she was missing?
He dropped into the seat opposite and said, ‘You sure know how to show a guy a good time.’ He pointed at the brown bag in the centre of the table. ‘Mine, I take it?’
She nodded and he opened the bag to peer inside. He disliked the McMuffin and had told her to order him a cheeseburger, which seemed a somewhat unusual choice for eleven in the morning, but hers was not to reason why. Bill squinted at her over the open bag. ‘No pickle, I hope.’
Rebecca had forgotten to ask for that. ‘You can peel it off.’
He grimaced in distaste. ‘I get mustard and sauce all over my fingers.’
‘Man up,’ she said, smiling.
He made a show of opening his burger to find the green slivers, removing them with his fingertips and dropping them into the bag. ‘Don’t see the attraction of those things.’ He took a bite, chewed, swallowed and waved the bun as he said, ‘So, why the big payoff? I didn’t give you anything. What do you want, Becks?’
‘Can’t a girl invite a friend out for a bite of breakfast without there having to be an ulterior motive?’
‘Yes, a girl can. But not you. What do you want?’
He knew her too well. She lowered her voice. ‘I want to ask you about the Burke family.’
‘Ah, fine upstanding pillars of our community. What’s your interest?’
She told him about the campaign they were spearheading, then asked, ‘You ever have dealings with them when you were on the Job?’
‘Tony originally. He’s local and been a tearaway since he was a teenager. I lifted him a couple of times myself. Mo is from Glasgow, but you’ll know that, right? He met her when he was down there doing some work for the McClymont family, Big Joe and his boy. That was when they were pals.’ He took another bite. ‘Not so much now.’
‘What about Mo?’
He gathered his thoughts while he chewed. ‘Her father was a straight arrow, from what I heard, but he dropped out of the marriage when she was about ten, set himself up with another woman and never took any interest in the wee girl. Her mum was a bit wayward, bit of a lass, if you know what I mean, and she had a succession of boyfriends. Mo, though, is nothing like her. She’s a one-guy gal. Since she took up with Tony there’s never been anyone else. Love being a many splendoured thing.’
Rebecca was tempted to ask him if he thought, or had heard talk, that Mo had been sexually abused, but how would he know? If it had happened, it would have been when she was a young girl in Glasgow. Apart from that, mentioning it seemed like a breach of confidence. She wasn’t sure whose, whether it was Mo or Simon. She sighed inwardly. Life is complicated.
‘What about the boys?’ she asked.
‘Nolan and Scott? They didn’t have a chance from the start, not with parents like that.’
‘Even Mo? I thought she came from a decent family?’
‘I said her dad was a straight arrow, if a bastard who shirked his responsibilities, but her mum was a randy cow who thought more of a good shag than she did her lassie. And even if Mo was straight, she married Tony and that leads to the whole “lying down with dogs” thing.’
‘So have the boys been trouble since they were kids?’
‘Not when they were young. No trouble at school. Certainly no trouble at home. Mo wouldn’t stand for that. I’ve got to admit, we never had any shouts to the Burke house for domestics. Some of they type, you’re called out because they get drunk or high or just plain pissed off and they start smacking each other around, but not the Burkes. They may be scumbags, but they do seem to care for each other and their kids.’
Rebecca heard her father’s voice as Bill spoke. Villains are people too, Becks. They can love their parents, their kids, their pets. They’re people . . . but they’re different from you or I.
‘But sooner or later the boys had to revert to type, get into trouble. It’s in the genes. It was after they came back from Glasg
ow that it seemed to kick off.’
She asked, ‘Why were they in Glasgow?’
‘Tony was doing time for assault, believe it or not, him being such a zen-like soul. Mo had been done for reset. DVD players, as I recall, nicked from a warehouse in Edinburgh. Anyway, the boys were split up to stay with separate relatives of Mo’s, including her maw. Scott went to her. She couldn’t, maybe wouldn’t, take Nolan, so he was palmed off on an auntie. They were away for maybe, what, eighteen months? It was fairly soon after they came back to the happy family home that they went off the rails. Well, Scott did.’
‘What happened?’
‘The first time I was involved was when there was a claim that he’d tortured a neighbour’s cat. I won’t go into details but it wasn’t pretty. It couldn’t be proved, though.’
‘Did he do it?’
‘Of course he did it. He’s a right bad wee bastard. I encountered him a few times after that. His brother, too.’
‘What can you tell me about Nolan?’
He laid what was left of his burger down on the greaseproof paper, wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. ‘Those two share the same blood but that’s about it, as far as I could tell,’ Sawyer said. ‘Nolan is the oldest by a year, but he is dark, Scott blond, and that seems to be the way of their personalities too. Nolan is quiet, thoughtful; Scott, full of the chat and always smiling. But that smile hides a darker soul. He’s unpredictable, is Scott. Nolan has a violent streak too, but it’s more focused. It’s used strategically, if you like. A means to an end. Scott? He’s a bad bastard and he doesn’t care who knows it. For him, violence is the end. That’s what he lives for. Gets off on it.’
17
There were books on the shelves that lined the walls, books stacked on the floor, books set out on the wide windowsill behind the desk, which was also covered with books, piled on the corners and around the Apple monitor that rose in triumph above them, a metaphor for the perceived supremacy of new technology over old knowledge. Rebecca hazarded a guess that Anna Fowler liked books, which was not a surprise – after all, she headed up the history department at the University of the West Highlands.
If Rebecca ever had a vision of what an historian looked like, it would not have been the woman sitting in front of her: tall and built like someone who worked out, her blonde hair cut short and bobbed around her ears. She wore no make-up and Rebecca imagined her features could be severe if she hadn’t such a ready smile. She was dressed in a grey suit and a red shirt, a scream of colour in a room that was a conversation in browns and dust. Behind her was an old-fashioned stand draped with coats, jackets and wet weather gear. Rebecca knew it was always wise to be prepared for whatever Scottish weather has to offer but the jumble of clothing on the stand seemed like overkill.
Rebecca had asked Alan to schedule the chat for around one, which gave her time enough to get back to the office and batter out the story on the press conference, as well as other material. She may not be the best reporter there was, but she could write fast, which was even more of an asset in the industry than it ever had been before. She very seldom took a lunchbreak – a sandwich and some soup from the supermarket at the far end of the retail park eaten at her desk was the norm – but no one could say anything about her leaving the office if she did decide to go out for a break. Thankfully, the university campus was only a ten-minute drive from the office, standing between the Inverness Caledonian Thistle ground and the finger of the Kessock Bridge reaching out across the grey waters of the Moray Firth to the Black Isle.
Barry had been sitting in a vacant seat beside another reporter, leaning back, his legs crossed in front of him, one hand gesturing towards her monitor as he discussed a story point. He gave Rebecca a glance as she stood up from her desk and collected her coat from the rack but said nothing, didn’t even break the flow of his own conversation. With an almost imperceptible nod of the head and a tightening of the corners of his mouth, he returned his attention to Yvonne.
Barry knows me too well, Rebecca thought.
Anna Fowler had a very pleasant manner, a warm smile and an easy way of talking that Rebecca guessed would go down well with students. She had welcomed her and offered coffee from a filter machine sitting in the far corner of the room. Rebecca could barely see it behind two stacks of books rising around it. As she poured, Rebecca said, ‘I take it you like to read.’
Anna looked back, puzzled at first, then her eyes darted from book pile to book pile. ‘I do, but these aren’t all mine, I’m afraid. I’m storing them here for a colleague while his office is being decorated. He’s a mathematician and that’s really not my field. I need a calculator to count my fingers.’
Rebecca laughed as she realised this woman could become a friend. Chaz, Alan and even Bill Sawyer apart, she hadn’t made many friends since she had moved to Inverness. And, now that she thought about it, none of them were female. There was Elspeth, of course, but was she a friend? On balance, she’d say yes, but Elspeth wasn’t someone she could go out on the piss with, even if Rebecca had enjoyed doing that. She chatted to colleagues at work, but they didn’t socialise. Actually, her social life was far from scintillating thanks to her insistence on what she thought was doing her job correctly. Occasionally, she went out for drinks with the guys, sometimes a film, but more often than not she could be found in her flat, catching up with the work she should have done during the day or watching some old movie. Thanks, Mum. She was not by nature solitary; she’d had good friends growing up, close friends with whom she still kept in touch, but they were back in Glasgow. No, this was something she had somehow chosen without knowing.
There had been Simon, of course. She had told him on the phone that she thought of him as a friend, but perhaps he was right, perhaps that wasn’t possible. So much water had rushed under that bridge it had damaged the foundations.
Anna brought her the coffee in a mug that said ‘Just When You Thought History Was a Thing of the Past’, then carried her own around the desk and sat down again. She pushed some books aside so they could see each other better, sipped her coffee and then said, ‘So, Alan says you want to know about Culloden?’
Rebecca had taken a mouthful of her own coffee, so she nodded as she swallowed. ‘Yes, I do.’ She laid her mug down on a clear space on the desk and stooped to find her bag. ‘Do you mind if I record this?’
‘Not at all,’ said Anna. ‘As long as you promise not to hold whatever I say against me in a court of law.’
Rebecca fished her recorder out and clicked it on, then set it down on the desk beside her coffee mug. ‘I take it you’ve heard about the body on the moor?’
Anna’s eyes, which had sparkled with good humour, shadowed. ‘Yes, very sad.’
‘It is. But what I need is some background on the battle.’
Interest sparked among the shadows. ‘Do you think it’s got something to do with the murder?’
Rebecca hesitated. She couldn’t mention anything about the costume the dead man was wearing, even though every instinct told her she could trust this woman. ‘Well, we don’t know. I only thought a bit of background on the historical aspect would be handy. It’s an unusual place to dump a body, don’t you think?’
Anna sat back in her chair, sipped her coffee, thought about this. ‘Perhaps.’ Her voice was careful. ‘Perhaps not. It is an open stretch of land and not overlooked by any buildings, apart from the visitor centre. It’s unlikely anyone would be there after dark and the road isn’t overly busy, especially at this time of year. So, unless the person who murdered this man had some special reason to choose the site, it could always be random.’
Rebecca’s voice warbled with a slight laugh as she said, ‘You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?’
Anna smiled. ‘Of course I have. Culloden is of special interest to me. If something happens there, I pay attention. So what do you need from me?’
‘Well, frankly, I need a kind of pocket guide to the battle. Nothing too in-depth, maybe something fo
r a kind of “Did You Know?” section, to give our readers some historical context.’
Anna set her mug down again. ‘How much do you know?’
Rebecca knew very little. ‘Treat me as if I’m a complete ignoramus.’
‘Ah, I’m used to that.’ Anna sat back and stared at the ceiling. As the conversation progressed, Rebecca would come to realise this was something she did when she was gathering her thoughts. ‘All right. Let me see. The battle of Culloden, or more accurately Drummossie Moor, took place on the sixteenth of April 1746 and was the final pitched battle of the 1745 Jacobite rising. Most historians will tell you that it was the last battle fought on British soil, but there was a clash in 1820 between a force of Radicals and government troops near Bonnymuir. It wasn’t that much of a fight, I suppose, but it’s worth remembering. Anyway, Culloden. That was a bloody affair. It lasted a little less than an hour and by its end one and a half thousand clansmen lay dead, but only a hundred government troops. Prince Charles Stuart . . .’
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie, right?’
Anna grimaced. ‘If you must. He fled the field, even though there is a school of thought that it was his own poor judgement that led to the slaughter of the Highland forces. The cause that had begun so confidently less than a year before, when his standard was raised at Glenfinnan and some of the clans rallied to it, was left hacked to bloody ribbons on that moor.’
‘He wanted to regain the throne, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did, for his father. Do you know the history?’
Rebecca felt ashamed. She had paid very little attention to history in school and, like many Scots, knew next to nothing about her own country’s past. Her father had taught her a few things, particularly about the Clearances, when landowners had evicted tenants who had lived off the land for centuries to make way for sheep, which were more profitable. Their visit to the battlefield all those years ago had also seeded a few nuggets in her memory.
Anna caught her look of shame and understood. ‘Briefly, James the Second – the Seventh of his ilk in Scotland – had to relinquish the British throne in 1688 and William of Orange took over to rule with his wife, Mary, who was James’s daughter. Put simply, James was a Roman Catholic but his daughter and her husband were Protestant, and that was far more palatable to the government of the time, not to mention many of the people. Politics and religion were very much synonymous in those days. James died in exile but his son, also James because they didn’t have much imagination and tradition had to be observed, was hailed by supporters as the King Over the Water. Those supporters, Jacobites by name, never gave up trying to put what they saw as the rightful king back on the throne. And so, during the eighteenth century there were a number of risings – 1715, 1719 and then 1745.’
The Blood is Still Page 9