The Blood is Still

by Douglas Skelton

  ‘Miss Connolly,’ he said. They had never been introduced, but he had obviously made it his business to find out her name. ‘Glad to see you are unscathed.’

  She thought about her bruises, but she wasn’t going to tell him about them. ‘Do you have anything to say about last night, Mr Dalgliesh?’

  The grin was replaced by something more sober which, like the smile, was as sincere as a scorpion promising not to sting. Dalgliesh was feigning concern, but it simply was not in his nature. ‘I am deeply troubled by what occurred.’

  ‘Even though it was supporters of Spioraid who started it?’

  ‘You have proof of that?’

  She didn’t and he knew it.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so,’ he said, a look of triumph briefly moving from eyes to tone. ‘From what I understand, passions ran high and spilled over.’

  ‘Passions you enflamed.’

  The grin again. ‘Who can say what caused it? I was not the only one talking last night, as it turned out. And the trouble only began when your photographer invaded a gentleman’s privacy.’

  ‘Allegedly. And that’s not really when it began, was it? It was when your members were called out for what they were.’

  His grin was still in place, as if it had somehow been pasted there. ‘If you can prove they were members of my movement then I’d be happy to condemn them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a train to catch.’

  He began to move past her and she let him. It wasn’t likely she could prove anything of the sort. It occurred to Rebecca that Andy and the others might not even be members but merely hired, a Rent-a-Mob, like movie extras. That thought brought her back to why she was really there.

  ‘Jake Goodman,’ she said, and that made him stop and turn again. But not before she perceived a slight bracing of the shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Does the name mean anything to you, Mr Dalgliesh?’

  He moved closer to her again. ‘Should it?’

  ‘I understand he is a member of your – movement, is it? Or rather, he was a member.’

  ‘Miss Connolly, it may surprise you to know that Spioraid has over five thousand members and many, many more supporters. Am I expected to know every one of them by name?’

  ‘He’s dead, Mr Dalgliesh.’ If the news surprised him, it was not apparent, although the paste on his smile had melted. ‘He was murdered.’

  ‘That’s very sad and I shall, of course, make immediate enquiries. If this poor man – what was his name again?’

  ‘Goodman, Jake Goodman.’

  ‘If this poor Mr Goodman was indeed a member of the movement then I shall ensure that we reach out to his family and offer our support. You say he was murdered?’

  ‘His body was found on Culloden Moor. Perhaps you read about it.’

  She watched him closely for any sign that he already knew that, but saw nothing more than a studied look of sympathy from a politician who was about to send his thoughts and prayers to a bereaved family and make sure everyone knew about it.

  ‘The Outlander Murder,’ he said. The headline-friendly phrase had been coined by a London-based red top. Rebecca hated it – it cheapened the loss of life and turned real tragedy into little more than a label. Even if Goodman was a Spioraid member, he deserved some respect in death. ‘I didn’t think he’d been formally identified.’

  ‘Not formally.’

  ‘And yet you have his name?’

  ‘I have sources.’

  ‘Ah, a reporter and her sources. Well, that is very sad, very sad indeed. But as I said, let me make some enquiries and if your – ah – sources prove correct, a statement will be issued directly.’

  He turned away again and Rebecca stepped forward, only to be blocked by one of the minders who loomed over her like a dentist’s appointment.

  ‘He may also have been connected to New Dawn,’ she said, raising her voice and peering over the minder’s shoulder. She had no idea if Goodman was – all she had was Nolan Burke’s claim that he’d heard the man mention them. She was very much shooting in the dark, but sometimes even then you hit something.

  He stopped again, turned, his eyes flicking to his minders, and she wondered if they were hired hands or actually part of New Dawn. ‘Sources again, Miss Connolly?’

  ‘What would we do without them? Do you condemn the actions of New Dawn, Mr Dalgliesh?’ She took time to check out the faces of the minders, but they remained blank. She pressed on. ‘They have reportedly committed acts of violence, a bit like last night. They have sent bomb threats and hoax packages. They firebombed a mosque the other night. And it wasn’t the first time.’

  Dalgliesh waved all this away as if it was a vaguely troublesome fly. ‘New Dawn is not affiliated with my movement in any way.’

  ‘Not officially.’

  The politician’s smile was long dead now. In its place was the stony glare of the lawyer. ‘Sources are one thing, facts are another. I would be very careful in what you print. Unless you can prove that this poor man is indeed a member of my movement and have concrete evidence that he was also connected to this . . .’ He feigned a vague recollection of the group’s name. ‘New Dawn, then it would be unwise to publish anything that might suggest such a link.’

  Dalgliesh didn’t look back again as he vanished into the station. She inched forward to follow, but the minder in her way gave her a look that told her she should not push her luck. She decided to take the warning to heart. He gave her a nod and followed his boss inside.

  Rebecca thought about the exchange. What had she learned? Nothing concrete, although it had made her feel good to scrape that smile away. However, she had the feeling that Dalgliesh had been shaken by the news that the dead man was connected to Spioraid, not to mention New Dawn. What did that mean?

  She didn’t have a clue.

  She looked across the square to the statue, the tribute to men who had fought in a campaign in Egypt, complete with miniature Sphinx. A seagull stood on the head of the kilted soldier and she wondered if it was the same one that had floated high above the seething humanity the night before. Unfortunately, they all looked alike. Very inconsiderate, she thought.

  Her phone rang and she fumbled in her coat pocket. It was Bill Sawyer.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Outside the station.’

  ‘Taking a trip?’

  ‘No. On a story.’

  ‘Get yourself to the High Kirk then,’ he said. ‘They’ve found a body.’

  39

  At first glance, the tree was still gripped in the small death of winter, the skeletal fingers of its branches reaching out towards the red-hued brickwork of the church made drab by the anaemic sun. And yet, there were traces of life. Sprigs of green sprouting from the bough and, if Roach looked hard enough, she would see buds forming on the twigs. New life. New beginnings.

  None of that mattered to Walter Lancaster, though. The rebirth of nature after the cold season was something he would never witness again. He was spread-eagled across a flat headstone, a raised stone slab really, its inscription worn thin by the generations of rain, snow and wind that had raged over this exposed mound above the River Ness. It was a typical Scottish kirkyard with no uniformity to the graves. The memorials were of differing heights, widths, shapes and materials. They were littered around the church itself, as if they had been simply thrown there like seeds, and an unruly crop had sprouted from the uneven ground. Each stone represented a life, a history. A death. Men and women who had lived through events both momentous and mundane, their existence only marked by yellowing documents in an archive, their passing only remembered now by fading letters etched in these stones. What had once been flesh and bone now mouldering beneath the damp earth.

  Roach didn’t know whose memorial Lancaster had been left on, but she suspected that if there was anything to the old saw of turning in the grave then they would be whirling like a dervish on speed. Deceased he may be, and in its way it was sad, but he
was not a good man and the dear departed would be somewhat disconcerted that their final resting place had been so defiled. His arms were outstretched as if he had been crucified, his eyes open and staring towards the slate-grey heavens as if it was somewhere he longed to be. Lancaster wouldn’t get to paradise, though. Roach knew that, if there was an afterlife, he was somewhere else.

  She knew who he was, of course. She had never dealt with him, but she had been privy to the plan to rehome him and had even been involved in a couple of the meetings to discuss it. So, now he would be rehomed in Inverness after all. Or at least his ashes would be stored somewhere, she supposed.

  She stood on the gravel footpath running alongside the walls of the old kirk, keeping her distance as the experts did what the experts did, but she could see the blood that had burst from his ruptured throat glistening dark against the grey stone and draining down to the grass below. The duty pathologist was on her knees, studying the wound. As with the as-yet unidentified man at Culloden, there was no question of cause of death here, but formalities had to be observed.

  ‘Yul,’ Bremner stepped to her side and surveyed the scene. ‘Well, at least we know where that other uniform is.’

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked over the heavy red material and the pantaloons, at the leather strap across his chest and then back to the wound gaping black and still slightly wet at his throat. She felt queasy, but it was nothing to do with the dark blood and open flesh. Her encounter with Joe the previous night had left her drained, for some reason. She had opened a bottle of wine after he left and had it tanked within an hour and a half. Then she had opened another and managed to dispose of almost half. She was no drinker, and it meant she had slept that strange half-sleep of the drunk, that curious feeling of being awake and yet not, while all around her the room spun as fast as her thoughts.

  She didn’t know why his news had hit her so powerfully. After all, they had been divorced for some time now. But it had. She no longer loved him, of that she was certain. The affair had seen to that. And his point was correct – even before he’d told her about Lolita, things between them had not been perfect. He had his career, she had hers, and they had become more interested in the work than each other. They were little more than housemates, although she had not realised it at the time. It was just something that had happened. What she’d thought was happiness was merely habit. They each had become accustomed to the other’s face. Except he had become interested in something other than his work and his marriage. He had humped some little postgrad assistant. Then he had divorced Val to marry her. And now they were having a child.

  Was that what was bothering her?

  The idea of children had never been part of Roach’s vision for the future. Marriage, yes. A partner, yes. A home, a life, a future. But no children. She was not the motherly type, she knew that. When babies were brought into the station, she did not coo over them. She did not jostle for the chance to hold them and remark on how lovely they were. Joe had been of similar mind, or at least he had said he was. And yet, here he was, facing impending fatherhood. He would be in his late fifties when the child was at its most troublesome teenage years. Good luck to him with that, she thought.

  She looked beyond the body and the personnel clad in coveralls moving around it and the police officers weaving between the gravestones in search of anything that might assist the inquiry. The ground dipped away beyond them to slope quite sharply towards the river. From where she stood she could see the arches of the footbridge and the roofs of buildings, spires on the far side, and the dull featureless sky extending to wooded hills beyond. Her eyes scanned upwards to the church tower and its patchwork of ornate but rough-edged brickwork. There would be quite a view from up there, she thought, but she knew they didn’t allow visitors to climb the stairs now. Health and safety was paramount.

  ‘Any CCTV cameras?’ she asked Bremner.

  ‘Community Safety cameras in the street might have picked something up.’

  ‘Door to door?’

  ‘Underway, but the only thing anyone saw was a guy who seemed drunk being helped by his mate along the road.’

  ‘Descriptions?’

  ‘Sketchy as hell, but the drunk guy could have been Lancaster.’

  ‘And the friend?’

  ‘Tall. Waterproof gear. Hood up.’

  ‘Got a time?’

  ‘Witness couldn’t say. The Curfew Bell hadn’t rung, so it was before eight.’

  ‘The Curfew Bell?’

  Bremner raised one finger to the tower. ‘The bell rings every night at 8 p.m.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘Tradition.’

  She exhaled sharply. ‘Another mystery.’

  She hated mysteries.

  Roach gave the crime scene a long final look. Bremner and the team had this covered and there was little for her to do. It was cold, and she was tired and wanted to feel as if she was doing something other than just standing there being cold and tired. And irritable. Apart from that, she needed a coffee. Her bad night meant she had overslept and hadn’t been able to brew up her thermos of French roast.

  ‘I need you to keep on top of things here,’ she told Bremner.

  ‘Where you off to?’

  ‘I need caffeine.’

  ‘I can send a uniform.’

  She shuddered with mock horror. ‘God knows what kind of sheep dip they’d come back with. I’ll find somewhere with a decent brew and I’ll take it back to the ranch. I’ve got paperwork that has to be done.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bremner said with a sage nod. ‘Time, tide and paperwork await no man.’

  ‘Or woman,’ she added.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he agreed.

  ‘Get it up you,’ she said as she headed to the iron gates that led out to where the circus was in full swing. The street was like a used-car sales forecourt of official vehicles. A cadre of uniformed officers guarded a picket of crime-scene tape strung between a line of traffic cones. The makeshift barrier corralled a crowd of people outside the shops on the opposite pavement.

  Roach had stopped for a moment, wondering where she might find a decent coffee, when she caught sight of two familiar faces.

  40

  Nolan heard the shower going as he walked past Scott’s room, so he nipped in, leaving the door slightly ajar to allow him to hear the water being turned off. The bed was unmade, clothes littered the floor and a plate with the residue of jam and toast crumbs lay by the small table. Maw would have a fit when she saw it, Nolan thought, but she’d tidy it all up. She always did. Nolan’s room was as neat and clean as a five-star hotel. His bed made, his dirty clothes in a laundry basket, other clothes all squared away. He wasn’t here to snoop into Scott’s housekeeping, though. He had other things in mind.

  His brother’s laptop sat on top of a chest of drawers and he opened the lid, waited for the screen to spring to life, listening to the sound of the water thundering in the shower. Scott was messy, but he was scrupulously clean, he’d give him that. His showers were sometimes so long Maw threatened to have his meals delivered.

  The screen was live and Nolan expertly clicked on Google Chrome, manoeuvred the arrow to the three vertical dots on the top right-hand corner and then down to History. He wanted to find out what Scott had been watching the previous night. The furtive way his brother had closed the laptop over had made him suspicious.

  The most recent item, above a number of entries for a free porn site, was a BBC news report – ‘CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER TO BE REHOMED’. The video showed that guy Lancaster walking on the street and being fronted by a good-looking, dark-haired reporter. So, what was Scotty so squirrelly about? Nolan had had the distinct impression he hadn’t wanted him to see what he was looking at. Why shouldn’t he be looking at an online news report about the guy they were protesting against? Didn’t make a lot of sense. Unless he’d been looking at something else and had deleted the entry. Nolan tried to remember what he’d glimpsed just before Scott had clos
ed the laptop. It had been a close-up of someone’s face, a man. Lancaster? Someone else? Could’ve been either because he really didn’t get much of a look.

  He closed the laptop, returned it to where he’d found it, listened to the shower again. His eyes rested on the pile of clothes at his feet, recognised them as those Scott had worn the previous night. Something on the collar of the polo shirt made him stoop to study it further. He tugged the garment free from the tangle and unfurled it completely. Stains on the collar, more on the sleeve and on the chest.

  Blood.

  Nolan stood in the kitchen, his back against the Formica surface beside the sink as he sipped a glass of orange juice and waited for the bread in the toaster to brown. His mother was at the small table, a cigarette smouldering in an ashtray in front of her, a mug of tea beside it. She was watching Scott shaking sugary breakfast cereal into a bowl. Her face was expressionless, but she moved in a stiff way, as if she was fighting anger. Nolan knew she was unhappy that Scott had blown off the demonstration the night before, even angrier over what had happened, and he sensed she was going to say something to him about it. Nolan didn’t want to miss this. Scott so seldom was pulled up for anything.

  Scott poured the milk into his bowl and dug his spoon into the heap of cereal to shovel up a huge mouthful. Nolan was no health nut, but he really couldn’t see the attraction of eating a whole bowl of that shit.

  The silence was broken only by the sound of Scott’s crunching and the clink of his spoon against the bowl. Maw raised her mug to her lips, still staring at Scott. Then she laid the cup down, sat back in her chair and tapped away the excess ash from her cigarette.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘what was that all about last night?’

  Nolan waited for Scott to reply, then realised she was looking at him.

  ‘What?’ he said, thinking the bastard was getting away with it again. He couldn’t believe it.