Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Of course we do. How long are you going to be? I was just going along to the Co-op.’

  ‘I’ve done my shopping.’ Lilian paused, and Dennis guessed what she was going to say next – they’d been talking about the news that was all over the town. Was that an anxious glance she was giving the nervy daughter?

  ‘There’s a bit of a fuss in Forsich. Malcolm was speaking to the police surgeon today and apparently they’ve found a body up at the Mowat farm.’

  Gabrielle stared at her. ‘A body?’

  ‘Oh, some tramp who seems to have been dossing down in one of the sheds, apparently. It’s not at all pleasant, from what Malcolm said – you really don’t want to know. Try not to listen to the gossip. You’ve had more than enough to cope with recently and you know David hates it when you get upset.’

  ‘Yes – yes, I know. Right. I’ll just get what I’m needing and head home.’

  Her mother gave her an anxious look. ‘You are all right, aren’t you? You could come home with me if you like. I think maybe it would be wiser—’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ Gabrielle said hastily. ‘It’s a lovely day. I’ll go for a walk.’

  ‘Don’t forget the sunscreen. You know you burn easily. And you won’t forget when David will get home, will you? He worries if you’re not there.’

  ‘I won’t forget. Why should I?’ Her daughter’s voice was challenging.

  ‘Of course you won’t,’ Lilian said too heartily. ‘I’m just a fussing mother hen,’ she said with a smile to Dennis. ‘Enjoy your walk, darling. We have to make the most of this weather – they’re saying it’s set to break quite soon.’

  At the door to the Co-op there was a group of people in animated conversation. It wasn’t hard to guess what they were talking about; the local grapevine was certainly efficient if not necessarily accurate. There was something repellent about the avid expressions on their faces and Gabrielle determinedly shut her ears as she skirted round them to pick up a basket.

  Somehow her mother’s concern about how the news might affect her made her feel much, much worse. It showed that it was obvious how much she was struggling, and she hated it, too, when Lilian started being motherly. After all that had been said between them over the years she had lost that right. Of course, every child loves Mummy; they’re conditioned to it, poor little sods. But when you grow up you start looking at your mother the way you would at any other person and Gabrielle had concluded a long time ago that Lilian was someone she didn’t much like.

  She’d made regular filial visits over the years – always brief ones, and she always stayed in the house that Pat had had built – an ugly, square block of a house with three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and a living room with a picture window that looked out onto the bogland, scarred by the abandoned drainage trenches and the derelict sheds where there were still some old vehicles they hadn’t managed to sell off. It was flimsy, just thrown up without regard for kerb-appeal or permanence – now it was certainly showing its age – but she still preferred it, despite the draughts and the cracks and the leaks, to Lilian and Malcolm’s grand Victorian pile, for all its expensive comforts. Anywhere was preferable to being under the same roof as Francesca and Lilian.

  Once she’d done the shopping, she’d stop on the road just outside Forsich and walk up to the moors on the rising ground behind the town. She wasn’t ready to go back to the empty house and there might be a breeze up there stealing in from the sea. Perhaps there was even a little healing magic left in the place where she and Paddy had walked together so many times.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Detective Chief Superintendent Jane Borthwick called DCI Kelso Strang into her office on Saturday morning.

  ‘Curious one, this, that’s just arrived on my desk. A bit nasty, really. It’s up in Caithness – body found in a derelict cottage yesterday morning, but only after the ravens had found it first.’

  Strang winced. ‘I’ve seen photos of what they do to lambs.’

  ‘Then you get the picture.’

  They were in Borthwick’s office on the top floor of the Edinburgh Police Headquarters, an ugly block in Fettes Avenue. Her desk, as usual, was bare of everything except a thin file open before her – a reflection, Strang thought, of her own distaste for elaboration and clutter in any form. She was always well-groomed and discreetly made up, usually wearing a trouser suit so neutral that you never gave her appearance a thought.

  Her professional style was similar. Strang had worked closely with her for almost a year now; he respected her ability and was perfectly at ease with her no-frills approach, but he was wary too. When it came to policing, she was a political animal in a way that he wasn’t – at least not yet. He knew she thought his idealism was naïve and even, perhaps, self-indulgent.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting in five minutes, so I’ll give you this to take away with you,’ Borthwick said, tapping the file in front of her with one well-manicured finger. ‘But the gist of it is that it was an adult male and the local force made the initial assumption that this was a down-and-out and most probably drug-related. They got him in to the mortuary in Wick last night and found that he’d actually drowned somewhere and been moved to the cottage afterwards. No ID, as yet.’

  ‘Odd, certainly.’

  ‘I want you to go up and assess the situation first. The body has been flown down to the Scientific Services lab in Aberdeen for further investigation, but they’re closed over the weekend, so we won’t get any answers till Monday.

  ‘Get up there tomorrow, can you, Kelso? If you need a team I’ll authorise that but we’re tighter on budget than ever so keep it to a minimum. OK?’ She was looking at her watch as she spoke, and she stood up, handing him the file.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Strang got up too and moved to hold the door open for her then followed her out. She went along the corridor, but he headed downstairs to the domain of the less exalted beings.

  The Serious Rural Crime Squad had been set up as a money-saving operation, to cut back on the costs of maintaining full CID services in country areas where major crime was rare. Strang was the only officer permanently in place, with a recent promotion to DCI. As a senior investigating officer, he could be deployed to reinforce the detectives on the spot in the less complex cases, without drafting in extra support. The top brass liked that, so he’d still be operating as before; all the new position would do was give him operational rank over the local DI.

  Borthwick had warned him at the start that he would have to be something of a maverick and he’d relished having the power to make decisions without needing to make his case to anyone else – in fact, he’d find it hard now to go back into a conventional team. Last year, when he had been scarred both mentally and physically by the road accident that had killed Alexa, the professional isolation had given him time to adapt to the new normal, to some degree, at least, and the demands of the case had let him shut it out.

  For the time being, that was. Kelso hadn’t given himself time to mourn and after it was over great waves of grief and rage swept through him until sometimes he felt he was drowning in despair. Yet the thought of moving on was almost worse; allowing Alexa to become his past not his present seemed a terrible disloyalty.

  It was only the need to get up in the morning and go to work that had kept him sane, and gradually, with the inexorable healing of time, the cycles of despair recurred less often even if they did not disappear. Working for professional exams had occupied his evenings but now he would welcome a new investigation where again he would be on the spot, living the case day and night.

  He went back to his office. It was tiny, on a back corridor and just beside a cleaning cupboard, but he didn’t have to share it and he could retreat into it like a snail into its shell when he needed peace to think. He sat down at his cluttered desk, so unlike his boss’s, and cleared a space to set down the slender file she had given him.

  It covered the main facts. The village where the body had been found, Forsich, was about ten mi
les along the North Coast 500 road from Thurso and a mile inland, right on the edge of what they called the Flow Country, the largest wetland in Europe. From the preliminary pathology report, the indications were that the man had drowned in peaty water – a burn or perhaps even one of the bogs the area was famous for. Then for some unknown reason, the corpse had been moved to an abandoned croft house where, as Borthwick had said, it had attracted the attention of scavenging ravens, fortunately disturbed by the local farmer.

  Strang finished reading and sat back in his chair. He was certainly getting about Scotland with this job. He’d never been to Caithness; it was famously grim, wasn’t it, situated on that exposed northern coast with dangerous seas and storms from the Arctic sweeping in. He was familiar now with the villages and hamlets of the west coast, picturesque in their isolation, and presumably Forsich was like that too. It would certainly be interesting to see.

  He reached for the phone to make the necessary arrangements. He’d got all the levers he would need to press in place already and he could have the SOCOs in position by this evening.

  DC Livvy Murray had been opening the door from the CID room just as DCI Strang had walked down the corridor towards his office. She shut it again and shrank back; he didn’t notice her. It was her practice to avoid him as far as possible. Not to any extent that would make it obvious and embarrass both of them, of course – if their paths crossed she smiled and said a polite hello, not meeting his eyes.

  But she suspected that he was avoiding her too. When someone had risked his life to save you from your own stupidity, it didn’t make for a comfortable relationship on either side. Every time she heard there was to be an SRCS operation she tensed up, but so far she hadn’t been allocated to one. She’d begun to wonder if this was tact on the super’s part, but since Borthwick hadn’t actually spoken to her since she started at Fettes Row it was more likely coincidence than consideration of the sensitivities of a very junior DC.

  Livvy had settled in to CID work with enthusiasm and her sergeant seemed happy enough, on the whole – or as happy as the dour bugger ever allowed himself to be – but she was having problems with Edinburgh. Her heart was still in Glasgow with its rougher edge and its friendly, down-to-earth folk, always ready to have a laugh with a stranger at the bus stop, instead of standing there like stookies and treating a polite enquiry about when the bus is due like a personal affront. And what sort of police station had Waitrose as its corner shop, for God’s sake?

  She’d found a wee one-room-and-bath flat down in Leith, which was more her kind of place, but she wasn’t trying hard enough to make friends; the first few hours of her time off were always spent getting to the train station and back home to Glasgow. Only it wasn’t her home any more; her old mates there were getting on with living their own lives – married now, some of them, and when you weren’t around for the casual drink after work you sort of lost touch. She felt exiled, a bit of a loner. Ideally, she’d apply for a transfer, but she had enough contacts left in the Glasgow force to know that her name was still mud. She’d just have to sweat it out a bit longer.

  Kelso Strang had disappeared along the corridor and she could safely go for her lunch break now. She ought to have a salad. Maybe she would. She always meant to until she got there and smelt the chips.

  Calum Cameron was looking round nervously as he sidled into the Lemon Tree, Morven Gunn’s cafe. It was always crowded on a Saturday and this morning the local gossips were out in force.

  ‘They’re not letting on,’ he heard one woman say, ‘but someone said to me it was just a tramp.’

  ‘I heard it was old Rabbie,’ another offered. ‘He was fair stotting at the pub last Saturday and he maybe never made it home.’

  Calum knew they’d be talking – the whole town was buzzing with what was probably fake news, mostly – but hearing for yourself what they were saying made it worse. At least there was no sign of Morven; from the clattering of pans she must be in the kitchen directing the preparations for lunch. That was lucky. She’d gone mental about him distracting Kirstie the last time he came in.

  He spotted Kirstie clearing a table in the far corner. She didn’t look round, even when she must have known he was coming over.

  ‘Kirstie, can we talk?’ he said in an urgent undertone.

  She gave him a brief glance over her shoulder. ‘Haven’t time,’ she said. ‘Lunches are just going to start.’

  Was she as worried as he was? It was hard to know with girls – they put on all this stuff, so you couldn’t tell if they were pale and hollow-eyed, like he’d been when he looked in the mirror this morning.

  ‘Later, then. You know what’s happened—’

  ‘Yeah, like I wouldn’t? There’s been police crawling all over the place ever since last night.’

  ‘But they’re saying it’s been there for days.’

  ‘So?’ She still wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘But we know it wasn’t.’

  Kirstie was wiping the table with unnecessary force. ‘And that’s my problem – how?’

  Calum could feel cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. ‘The police – they’re going to be questioning everybody. What are we going to say?’

  She whirled round. ‘Nothing!’ she said fiercely. ‘We’re going to say nothing. Just zip it. No one’s going to ask us, anyway – why should they? And if you open your big mouth and my father finds out about us going there, I’m so not speaking to you ever again.’ She picked up the tray she had loaded and turned away.

  ‘Wait, Kirstie,’ he begged, then lowered his voice. ‘He was lying on my mother’s rug.’

  She froze for a moment, then with determined bravado said, ‘And they’ll know how? They’re not going to look at it and say, “Oh goodness me, isn’t that Calum Cameron’s mother’s rug?” Just shut up about it, pretend it never happened and everything’ll be fine.’

  ‘Suppose my mother sees it’s missing and asks me if I know where it is?’

  ‘Say you don’t know. Or just lie – tell her you took it to have a picnic with some of your pals and left it behind or something – oh, I don’t know! For God’s sake think of your own effing excuse. Just keep me out of it.’

  Kirstie went round him with a swing of her hips. Biting his lip, Calum turned away. It was all very well her talking like that, but he’d never been any good at lying to his mother and lying to the police was plain daft. Even not telling the police something important that you knew could get you in trouble.

  As he weaved his way through the tables to the door, he could see the amused looks. It must have been obvious he and Kirstie were having a row. One plump, motherly lady even patted his arm.

  ‘Och, don’t you worry, laddie! She’ll be ready to kiss and make up tomorrow, you’ll see.’

  Without looking at her Calum bared his teeth in what might pass for a smile and went out, the giggling of the old biddies ringing in his ears. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to kiss and make up. Sure, Kirstie was hot. But she’d shown a nasty side he hadn’t seen before, ready to dump him in it to save her own skin.

  He wouldn’t say anything meantime, but he wasn’t making any promises. If it was all about looking after number one, two could play at that.

  Kelso Strang had got packing down to a fine art, even keeping an extra toilet bag prepacked with shaving tackle and toothbrush ready for a sudden summons like this. He’d had plenty of practice as inquiries took him up and down the country, though over the past year there had only been two other murders since the big case in Skye and both of those were domestics where there was no doubt about the perpetrator.

  When he got back to the old fisherman’s cottage beside Newhaven Harbour, he packed a supply of clothes then added a thick sweater – you never knew what the weather in Caithness might throw at you – with his mind on the case. Why move a body? Because it was in the wrong place, had to be the answer. But why from a bog to a derelict cottage? Why not take it further into the wilds where it might rot away und
etected? Unless you didn’t want it to be undetected – but then, could you be sure it would be found in the cottage?

  He chucked in a couple of books – a short story collection, the new William Boyd – and was zipping up his bag when the phone rang. It was the landline, the one most often used by his family, and he gave a guilty start. He’d meant to phone his mother. Mary Strang always liked to know where he was since he only took his police mobile with him on a case, but in the rush to get away it had slipped his mind. Now he’d have to pretend he was just going to do it and she’d have to pretend to believe him.

  But when he looked at the caller ID, he saw it was his sister. Finella had said she might be dropping in; he should have phoned her too.

  ‘Hi, Fin,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, kid. Are you around tomorrow? Betsy has a playdate after nursery – I hope they know what they’re letting themselves in for but if it gives me a couple of hours’ respite I have no scruples. I’ll be dropping her off at four and I’ll have to pick her up about half five – will you be in?’

  Kelso sighed. ‘Sorry – no go. I’m driving up to Aberdeen and then on to Caithness.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice went flat, and he realised that the brightness of her tone had been artificial – remembered, too, that he’d thought she had something on her mind when he saw her at the party.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, sure!’ The brightness was back. ‘Just thought we hadn’t had a get-together recently. Caithness! You do get around. What is it this time, K? Or will you have to kill me afterwards if you tell me?’

  He thought for a moment. There would be local reports today, the news media would have the full story tomorrow and anyway she wasn’t about to phone the Scottish Sun. ‘It’s a bit gruesome. Someone was found dead, but the ravens got to him before anyone else did.’

  ‘Aargh! That’s horrendous. So – you’ll be away for a while?’