The Distant Echo

by Val McDermid

  "Shut up, Brian," Colin urged. He was only marginally more sober than his brother, but he had always had more of an instinct for staying out of trouble. "Look, we're sorry, OK? Things just got a bit out of hand."

  "I'll say. You've half-killed him."

  "Aye well, him and his pals didnae leave the job half-done when they started it," Brian said pugnaciously. Suddenly, his face crumpled and hot tears trickled down his cheeks. "My wee sister. My Rosie. You wouldnae treat a dog the way they treated her."

  "You've got it wrong, Brian. They're witnesses, not suspects," Janice said wearily. "I told you that the night it happened."

  "You're the only ones round here that think that," Brian said.

  "Will you shut up?" Colin said. He turned to Janice. "You arresting us, or what?" Janice sighed. "I know you buried Rosie today. I was there. I saw how upset your parents were. For their sake, I'm willing to turn a blind eye. I don't think Mr. Mackie will want to press charges." As Colin went to speak, she held up a cautionary finger. "This only works provided you and Cassius Clay here keep your hands to yourself. Leave this to us, Colin."

  He nodded. "OK, Janice."

  Brian looked astonished. "When did you start calling her Janice? She's not on our side, you know."

  "Shut the fuck up, Brian," Colin said, syllable by pointed syllable. "I apologize for my brother. He's had a wee bit too much to drink."

  "Don't worry about it. But you're not stupid, Colin. You know I meant what I said. Mackie and his pals are off limits to you two. Is that clear?"

  Brian sniggered. "I think she fancies you, Colin."

  The idea clearly tickled the drunk part of Colin Duff's brain. "Is that right? Well, what do you say, Janice? Why don't you keep me on the straight and narrow? You fancy a night out? I'll show you a good time."

  Janice caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced round in time to see Jimmy Lawson draw his truncheon and move toward Colin Duff. She raised a hand to ward him off, but the threat was enough to leave Duff backing away, wide-eyed and apprehensive. "Hey," he protested.

  "Wash your mouth out, you sad sack of shite," Lawson said. His face was set and angry. "Don't you ever, ever speak to a police officer like that. Now get out of our sight before I get Constable Hogg to change her mind about locking you two up for a very long time." He spoke savagely, his lips tight against his teeth. Janice bridled. She hated it when male officers thought they had to demonstrate their manhood by defending her honor.

  Colin grabbed Brian's arm. "Come on. We've got a pint waiting for us inside." He led his leering brother away before he could cause anymore bother.

  Janice turned to Lawson. "There was no call for that, Jimmy."

  "No call for it? He was making a pass at you. He's not fit to shine your shoes." His voice was thick with contempt.

  "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Jimmy. I've dealt with a lot worse than Colin Duff without you playing the knight in shining armor. Now, let's get this lad home."

  Between them, they helped Weird to their car and eased him into the back seat. As Lawson walked round to the driver's door, Janice spoke. "And Jimmy… About that drink? I think I'll pass."

  Lawson gave her a long, hard stare. "Please yourself."

  They drove back to Fife Park in stony silence. They helped Weird to the front door then headed back to the car. "Look, Janice, I'm sorry if you thought I came on too heavy back there. But Duff was well out of line. You can't talk to a police officer like that," Lawson said.

  Janice leaned on the roof of the car. "He was out of line. But you didn't react like that because he was insulting the uniform. You drew your truncheon because somewhere in your head, you'd decided I was your property just because I agreed to go out for a drink with you. And he was stepping on your territory. I'm sorry, Jimmy, I don't need that in my life just now."

  "That's not how it was, Janice," Lawson protested.

  "Let's leave it, Jimmy. No hard feelings, eh?"

  He shrugged, petulant. "Your loss. It's not like I'm stuck for female company." He got into the driver's seat.

  Janice shook her head, unable to keep a smile from her face. They were so predictable, men. The first sniff of feminism and they headed straight for the hills.

  * * *

  Inside the house in Fife Park, Ziggy was examining Weird. "I told you it would end in tears," he said, his fingers gently probing the swollen tissue around Weird's ribs and abdomen. "You go out for a bit of light evangelism and you came back looking like an extra from Oh!WhataLovelyWar. Onward, Christian soldiers."

  "It was nothing to do with giving my witness," Weird said, wincing at the effort. "It was Rosie's brothers."

  Ziggy stopped what he was doing. "Rosie's brothers did this to you?" he said, a worried frown on his face.

  "I was outside the Lammas. Somebody must have told them. They came out and set about me."

  "Shit." Ziggy went to the door. "Gilly," he shouted upstairs. Mondo was out, as he had been most evenings since their return. Sometimes he was there for breakfast, but mostly he wasn't.

  Alex came thundering downstairs, stopping short at the sight of Weird's ravaged face. "What the fuck happened to you?"

  "Rosie's brothers," Ziggy said tersely. He filled a bowl with warm water and started gently cleaning Weird's face with balls of cotton wool.

  "They beat you up?" Alex couldn't make sense of this.

  "They think we did it," Weird said. "Ow! Can you be a bit more careful?"

  "Your nose is broken. You should go to the hospital," Ziggy said.

  "I hate hospitals. You fix it."

  Ziggy raised his eyebrows. "I don't know what kind of a job I'll make of it. You could end up looking like a bad boxer."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "At least you've not got a broken jaw," he said, bending over Weird's face. He took his nose in both hands and twisted it, trying not to feel nauseous at the grinding crepitation of cartilage. Weird screamed, but Ziggy carried on. There was sweat on his lip. "There you go," he said. "Best I can do."

  "It was Rosie's funeral today," Alex said.

  "Nobody told us," Ziggy complained. "That explains why feelings were running so high."

  "You don't think they're coming after us, then?" Alex asked.

  "Cops warned them off," Weird said. It was getting harder and harder to speak as his jaw stiffened.

  Ziggy studied his patient. "Well, Weird, looking at the state of you, I hope to Christ they were listening."

  14

  Any hopes they'd had of Rosie's death being a nine-day wonder were dashed by the newspaper coverage of the funeral. It was all over the front pages again, and anyone in the town who had missed the initial coverage would have been hard pressed to avoid the reprise.

  Again, it was Alex who was the first victim. Walking home from the supermarket a couple of days later, he was taking a short cut along the bottom of the Botanic Gardens when Henry Cavendish and his chums ran up in a ragged bunch, dressed for rugby training. As soon as they spotted Alex, they started catcalling, then surrounded him, pushing and shoving. They formed a loose ruck around him, dragging him to the grass verge and throwing him to the slushy ground. Alex rolled around, trying to escape the prodding of their boots. There was little danger of real violence such as Weird had experienced, and he was more angry than frightened. A stray boot caught his nose and he felt the spurt of blood.

  "Fuck off," he shouted, wiping mud, blood and slush from his face. "Why don't you all just fuck off?"

  "You're the ones who should fuck off, killer boy," Cavendish shouted. "You're not wanted here."

  A quiet voice interjected. "And what makes you think you are?"

  Alex rubbed his eyes clear and saw Jimmy Lawson standing on the fringe of the group. It took him a moment to recognize him out of uniform, but his heart lifted when he did.

  "Push off," Edward Greenhalgh said. "This is none of your business."

  Lawson reached inside his anorak and pulled out
his warrant card. He flipped it open negligently and said, "I believe you'll find it is, sir. Now, if I could just take your names? I think this is a matter for the university authorities."

  At once, they were small boys again. They shuffled their feet and stared at the ground, muttering and mumbling their details for Lawson to write down in his notebook. Meanwhile, Alex got to his feet, sodden and filthy, contemplating the wreckage of the shopping. A bottle of milk had erupted all over his trousers, a burst plastic jar of lemon curd was smeared down one sleeve of his parka.

  Lawson dismissed his tormentors and stood looking at Alex, a smile on his face. "You look terrible," he said. "Lucky for you I was passing."

  "You're not working?" Alex said.

  "No. I live round the corner. I just popped out to catch the post. Come on, come back to my place, we'll get you cleaned up."

  "That's very kind of you, but there's no need."

  Lawson grinned. "You can't walk the streets of St. Andrews looking like that. You'd probably get arrested for frightening the golfers. Besides, you're shivering. You need a cup of tea."

  Alex wasn't going to argue. The temperature was dropping back toward freezing point and he didn't fancy walking home soaking wet. "Thanks," he said.

  They turned into a brand new street, so new it still didn't have pavements. The first few plots were completed, but after that, they petered into building sites. Lawson carried on past the finished homes and stopped by a caravan parked on what would one day be a front garden. Behind it, four walls and roof timbers covered in tarpaulin offered a promise of something rather more palatial than the four-berth caravan. "I'm doing a self-build," he said, unlocking the door of the caravan. "The whole street's doing it. We all contribute labor and skills to each other's houses. That way, I get a chief superintendent's house on a constable's salary." He climbed up into the caravan. "But for now, I live here."

  Alex followed. The caravan was cozy, a portable gas heater blasting out dry warmth into the confined space. He was impressed by its neatness. Most single men he knew lived in pigsties, but Lawson's home was spotless. All the chrome gleamed. The paintwork was clean and fresh. The curtains were bright and tied back neatly. There was no clutter. Everything was neatly stowed; books on shelves, cups on hooks, cassettes in a box, architect's drawings framed on the bulkheads. The only sign of habitation was a pan simmering on the stove. The smell of lentil soup went round Alex's heart. "Very nice," he said, taking it all in.

  "It's a bit cramped, but if you keep it tidy, it doesn't get too claustrophobic. Take your jacket off, we'll hang it over the heater. You'll need to wash your face and hands— that's the toilet, just past the cooker."

  Alex let himself into the tiny cubicle. He looked in the mirror above the doll's house sink. God, but he was a mess. Dried blood, mud. And lemon curd spiking his hair. No wonder Lawson had made him come back and clean up. He ran a basin of water and scrubbed himself clean. When he emerged, Lawson was leaning against the stove.

  "That's better. Sit near the heater, you'll soon dry off. Now, a cup of tea? Or I've got homemade soup if you fancy that."

  "Soup would be great." Alex did as he was told while Lawson ladled out a steaming bowl of golden yellow soup with chunks of ham hock floating in it. He put it in front of Alex and handed him a spoon. "I don't mean to sound rude, but why are you being so nice to me?" he asked.

  Lawson sat down opposite him and lit a cigarette. "Because I feel sorry for you and your pals. All you did was act like responsible citizens, but you've been made to look like the bad guys. And I suppose I feel partly responsible. If I'd been out on patrol instead of sitting tucked up in my car, I'd maybe have caught the guy red-handed." He tilted his head back and sighed a stream of smoke into the air. "That's what makes me think it wasn't somebody local that did this. Anybody who knew that area at night would know that there's often a patrol car sitting there." Lawson grimaced. "We don't get enough petrol allowance to drive around all night, so we have to park up somewhere."

  "Does Maclennan still think it might have been us?" Alex asked.

  "I don't know what he thinks, son. I'll be honest with you. We're stuck. And so you four have ended up in the firing line. You've got the Duffs baying for your blood, and from the looks of what I've just seen, your own pals have turned on you too."

  Alex snorted. "They're no pals of mine. Are you really going to report them?"

  "Do you want me to?"

  "Not really. They'd just find a way to get their own back. I don't think they'll be bothering us anymore. Too frightened that Mummy and Daddy might get to hear about it and stop their allowances. I'm more worried about the Duffs."

  "I think they'll leave you alone too. My colleague gave them the hard word. Your pal Mackie just caught them on the raw. They were pretty chewed up after the funeral."

  "I don't blame them. I just don't want a doing like Weird got."

  "Weird? You mean Mr. Mackie?" Lawson frowned.

  "Aye. It's a nickname from school. From a David Bowie song."

  Lawson grinned. "Of course. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. That makes you Gilly, right? And Sigmund's Ziggy."

  "Well done."

  "I'm not that much older than you. So where does Mr. Kerr fit in?"

  "He's not a big Bowie fan. He's into Floyd. So he's Mondo. Crazy diamond? Get it?"

  Lawson nodded.

  "Great soup, by the way."

  "My mother's recipe. You go back a long way, then?"

  "We met on our first day at high school. We've been best mates ever since."

  "Everybody needs their pals. It's like this job. You work with the same people over a period of time, they're like brothers. You'd lay down your life for them if you had to."

  Alex smiled understanding. "I know what you mean. It's the same for us." Oritused to be, he thought with a pang. This term, things were different. Weird was off with the God Squad more often than not. And God alone knew where Mondo was half the time. The Duffs weren't the only ones paying an emotional price for Rosie's death, he suddenly realized.

  "So you'd lie for each other if you thought you had to?"

  The spoon stopped halfway to Alex's mouth. So that was what this was about. He pushed the bowl away from him and stood up, reaching for his jacket. "Thanks for the soup," he said. "I'm fine now."

  * * *

  Ziggy seldom felt lonely. An only child, he was accustomed to his own company and never lacked diversion. His mother had always looked at other parents as if they were mad when they complained about their children being bored in the school holidays. Boredom had never been a problem she'd had to contend with.

  But tonight, loneliness had seeped into the little house on Fife Park. He had plenty of work to keep him busy, but for once Ziggy craved company. Weird was off with his guitar, learning how to praise the Lord in three chords. Alex had come home in a foul mood after a rumble with the Right and an encounter with that copper Lawson that had turned very sour. He'd got changed then gone off to some slide lecture on Venetian painters. And Mondo was out somewhere, probably getting laid.

  Now that was an idea. The last time he'd had sex had been quite a while before they'd stumbled over Rosie Duff. He'd gone to Edinburgh for the evening, to the one pub he'd ever been in that welcomed gays. He'd stood at the bar, nursing a pint of lager, surreptitiously glancing to either side, carefully not making eye contact. After half an hour or so, he'd been joined by a man in his late twenties. Denim jeans, shirt and jacket. Good looking, in a tough guy sort of way. He'd struck up a conversation, and they'd ended up having fast but satisfying sex against the toilet wall. It had been all over well before the last train home.

  Ziggy hankered after something more than the anonymous encounters with strangers that were his only experience of sex. He wanted what his straight friends seemed to slip into with ease. He wanted courtship and romance. He wanted someone with whom he could share an intimacy that went beyond the exchange of body fluids. He wanted a boyfriend, a lover, a p
artner. And he had no idea how to find one.

  There was a Gay Soc at the university, he knew that much. But as far as he could gather, it consisted of half a dozen guys who seemed almost to relish the controversy of being seen to be gay. The politics of Gay Liberation interested Ziggy, but from what he'd seen of these guys posturing round the campus, they had no serious political engagement. They just liked being notorious. Ziggy wasn't ashamed of being gay, but he didn't want it to be the only thing people knew about him. Besides, he wanted to be a doctor, and he had a shrewd suspicion that a career as a gay activist wouldn't help him achieve his ambition.

  So for now, the only outlet for his feelings was the casual encounter. As far as he knew, there were no pubs in St. Andrews where he was likely to find what he was looking for. But there were a couple of places where men hung out, ready for anonymous sex with a stranger. The drawback was that they were in the open air, and in this weather, there wouldn't be many braving the elements. Still, he couldn't be the only guy in St. Andrews wanting sex tonight.

  Ziggy pulled on his sheepskin jacket, laced up his boots and walked out into the freezing cold night air. A brisk fifteen minute walk brought him to the back of the ruined cathedral. He crossed over to The Scores, making for what remained of St. Mary's Church. In the shadow of the broken walls, men often lurked, trying to look as if they were out for an evening stroll that encompassed a bit of architectural heritage. Ziggy squared his shoulders and tried to look casual.

  * * *

  Down by the harbor, Brian Duff was drinking with his cronies. They were bored. And they were just drunk enough to want to do something about it. "This is no fucking fun," his best pal Donny complained. "And we're too skint to go somewhere you can get a decent night out."