The Distant Echo

by Val McDermid

  "It's a theory, I suppose. But if nobody knew who the father of her child was, it still doesn't take us anywhere."

  "But you didn't know then that she'd had a child. I bet you never asked who she was going out with four years before her murder. Maybe her brothers knew who my father was."

  Lawson sighed. "I'm not going to hold out false hope to you, Mr. Macfadyen. For one thing, Brian and Colin Duff were desperate for us to find Rosie's killer." He enumerated the points he was making on his fingers. "If the father of Rosie's child had still been around, or if he'd reappeared, you can lay money that they'd have been knocking on our door and screaming at us to arrest him. And if we hadn't obliged, they'd probably have broken his legs themselves. At the very least."

  Macfadyen compressed his lips into a thin line. "So you're not going to pursue this line of inquiry?"

  "If I may, I'd like to take this folder away with me and have a copy made to pass on to the detective who's dealing with your mother's case. It can't hurt to include it in our inquiry and it might just be helpful."

  The light of triumph danced briefly in Macfadyen's eyes, as if he'd scored a major victory. "So you accept what I'm saying? That Rosie was my mother?"

  "It looks that way. Though of course we'll have to make further inquiries ourselves." "So you'll be wanting a blood sample from me?"

  Lawson frowned. "A blood sample?"

  Macfadyen jumped to his feet in a sudden access of energy. "Wait a minute," he said, leaving the room again. When he returned, he was grasping a thick paperback which fell open in line with its cracked spine. "I've read everything I could find about my mother's murder," he said, thrusting the book at Lawson.

  Lawson glanced at the cover. Getting Away With Murder: The Greatest Unsolved Cases of theTwentieth Century. Rosie Duff merited five pages. Lawson skimmed it, impressed that the authors seemed to have got so little wrong. It brought back in uncomfortably sharp focus the terrible moment when he'd stood looking down at Rosie's body in the snow. "I'm still not with you," he said.

  "It says that there were traces of semen on her body and on her clothing. That in spite of the primitive levels of forensic analysis back then, you were able to establish that three of the students who found her were possible candidates for having deposited it. But surely, with what you can do now, you can compare the DNA in the semen to my DNA? If it belonged to my father, you'd be able to tell."

  Lawson was beginning to feel as if he'd stumbled through the looking glass. That Macfadyen would be eager to find out anything he could about his father was entirely understandable. But to carry that obsession to the point where finding him guilty of murder was better than never finding him at all was unhealthy. "If we were going to make comparisons with anyone, it wouldn't be you, Graham," he said as kindly as he could manage. "It would be with the four lads referred to in this book. The ones who found her."

  Macfadyen pounced. "You said, 'if.' "

  "If?"

  "You said, ' Ifwe were going to make comparisons.' Not, when. If."

  Wrong book. It was definitely Alice in Wonderland. Lawson felt just like someone who has tumbled headlong down a steep, dark burrow, no safe ground beneath his feet. His lower back pain throbbed into action. Some people's aches and pains responded to the weather; Lawson's sciatic nerve was an acute barometer of stress. "This is very embarrassing for us, Mr. Macfadyen," he said, retreating behind the phalanx of formality. "At some point in the past twenty-five years, the physical evidence relating to your mother's murder has been mislaid."

  Macfadyen's face screwed up in an expression of angry incredulity. "What do you mean, mislaid?"

  "Exactly what I say. The evidence has been moved three times. Once, when the police station in St. Andrews moved to a new site. Then it was sent to central storage at headquarters. Recently, we moved to a new storage facility. And at some point the evidence bags that contained your mother's clothes were mislaid. When we went looking for them, they weren't in the box where they should have been."

  Macfadyen looked as if he wanted to hit someone. "How could that happen?"

  "The only explanation I can offer is human error." Lawson squirmed under the young man's look of furious contempt. "We're not infallible."

  Macfadyen shook his head. "It's not the only explanation. Someone could have removed it deliberately."

  "Why would anyone do that?"

  "Well, it's obvious. The killer wouldn't want it found now, would he? Everybody knows about DNA. As soon as you announced a cold case review, he must have known he was living on borrowed time."

  "The evidence was locked up in police storage. And we've not had any break-ins reported."

  Macfadyen snorted. "You wouldn't need to break in. You'd just need to wave enough money under the right nose. Everybody has their price, even police officers. You can hardly open a paper or turn on the TV without seeing evidence of police corruption. Maybe you should be checking out which one of your officers has had a sudden dose of prosperity."

  Lawson felt uneasy. Macfadyen's reasonable persona had slipped to one side, revealing an edge of paranoia that had been previously invisible. "That's a very serious allegation," he said. "And one for which there is no foundation whatsoever. Take it from me, whatever happened to the evidence in this case, it's down to human error."

  Macfadyen glared mutinously. "Is that it, then? You're just going to stage a coverup?"

  Lawson tried to arrange his face in a conciliatory expression. "There's nothing to cover up, Mr. Macfadyen. I can assure you that the officer in charge of the case is conducting a search of the storage facility. It's possible she may yet find the evidence."

  "But not very likely," he said heavily.

  "No," Lawson agreed. "Not very likely."

  * * *

  A few days had passed before James Lawson had a chance to follow up his trying interview with Rosie Duff's illegitimate son. He'd had a quick word with Karen Pirie, but she'd been gloomily pessimistic about getting a result from the evidence warehouse. "Needle in a haystack, sir," she'd said. "I've already found three misfiled bags of evidence. If the public knew…"

  "Let's make sure they never do," Lawson had said grimly.

  Karen had looked horrified. "Oh God, aye."

  Lawson had hoped the cock-up with the evidence in the Duff case could be buried. But that hope had died thanks to his own carelessness with Macfadyen. And now he was going to have to confess it all over again. If it ever came out that he'd kept this particular piece of information from the family, his name would be smeared across the headlines. And that would benefit nobody.

  Strathkinness hadn't changed much in twenty-five years, Lawson realized as he parked the car outside Caberfeidh Cottage. There were a few new houses, but mostly the village had resisted the blandishments of developers. Surprising really, he thought. With those views, it was a natural location for some boutique country house hotel catering to the golf trade. However much the residents might have changed, it still felt like a working village.

  He pushed open the gate, noticing the front garden was as neat as it ever had been when Archie Duff had been alive. Maybe Brian was confounding the prophets of doom and turning into his father. Lawson rang the bell and waited.

  The man who opened the door was in good shape. Lawson knew he was in his midforties, but Brian Duff looked ten years younger. His skin had the healthy glow of a man who enjoys the outdoors, his short hair showed little sign of receding, and his Tshirt revealed a wide chest and the barest covering of fat over a taut abdomen. He made Lawson feel like an old man. Brian looked him up and down and indulged in a look of disdain. "Oh, it's you," he said.

  "Withholding evidence could be construed as police obstruction. And that's a crime." Lawson wasn't going to be put on the back foot by Brian Duff.

  "I don't know what you're on about. But I've kept my nose clean for over twenty years. You've no call to come knocking on my door, slinging your accusations about."

  "I'm going back more than twenty
years, Brian. I'm talking about your sister's murder."

  Brian Duff didn't flinch. "I heard you were trying to go out in a blaze of glory, getting your foot soldiers to try and solve your old failures."

  "Hardly my failure. I was just a bobby on the beat back then. Are you going to invite me in, or are we going to do this here for the whole world to see?"

  Duff shrugged. "I've got nothing to hide. You might as well come in."

  The cottage had been transformed inside. Uncluttered and pastel, the living room showed the handiwork of someone with an eye for design. "I've never met your wife," Lawson said as he followed Duff into a modern kitchen, its size doubled by a conservatory-style extension.

  "That's not likely to change. She'll not be home for an hour yet." Duff opened the fridge and took out a can of lager. He popped the top and leaned against the cooker. "So what are you on about? Withholding evidence?" His attention was ostensibly on the can of beer, but Lawson sensed that Duff was alert as a cat in a strange garden.

  "None of you ever mentioned Rosie's son," he said.

  The bald statement provoked no visible response. "That would be because it had nothing to do with her murder," Duff said, flexing his shoulders restlessly.

  "Don't you think that was for us to decide?"

  "No. It was private. It happened years before. The boy she was going out with then didn't even live round here anymore. And nobody knew about the baby outside the family. How could it have had anything to do with her death? We didn't want her name dragged through the mud, the way it would have been if your lot had got hold of it. You'd have made her look like some slag who got what was coming to her. Anything to take the heat off the fact that you couldn't do your job."

  "That's not true, Brian."

  "Aye, it is. You'd have leaked it to the papers. And they'd have turned Rosie into the village bike. She wasn't like that, and you know it."

  Lawson conceded the point with a faint grimace. "I know she wasn't. But you should have told us. It might have had some bearing on the investigation."

  "It would have been a wild-goose chase." Duff took a long swig of his lager. "How come you found out about it after all this time?"

  "Rosie's son has more of a social conscience than you. He came to us when he saw the story in the papers about the cold case review."

  This time, there was a reaction. Duff froze halfway through raising the can to his mouth. He put it down abruptly on a worktop. "Christ," he swore. "What's that about, then?"

  "He tracked down the woman who ran the home where Rosie had the baby. She told him about the murder. He wants to find his mother's killer as much as you do."

  Duff shook his head. "I doubt that very much. Does he know where me and Colin live?"

  "He knows you live here. He knows Colin's got a house in Kings-barns, though he's mostly out in the Gulf. He says he traced you both via public records. Which is probably true. There's no reason why he should lie. I told him I didn't think you'd be very pleased to meet him."

  "You're right about that at least. Maybe it would have been different if you'd managed to put her killer away. But I for one don't want to be reminded of that part of Rosie's life." He rubbed the back of his hand against his eye. "So, are you finally going to nail those fucking students?"

  Lawson shifted his weight. "We don't know it was them, Brian. I always thought it was an outsider."

  "Don't give me that shite. You know they were in the frame. You've got to be looking at them again."

  "We're doing our best. But it's not looking promising."

  "You've got DNA now. Surely that makes a difference? You had semen on her clothes."

  Lawson looked away. His eye was caught by a fridge magnet made from a photograph. Rosie Duff's smile beamed out at him across the years, a needle of guilt that pierced deep. "There's a problem," he said, dreading what he knew would come next.

  "What kind of a problem?"

  "The evidence has been mislaid."

  Duff pushed himself upright, tense on the balls of his feet. "You've lost the evidence?" His eyes blazed the rage Lawson remembered across the gulf of years.

  "I didn't say lost. I said mislaid. It's not where it should be. We're pulling out all the stops to track it down, and I'm hopeful it'll turn up. But right now, we're stymied."

  Duff's fists clenched. "So those four bastards are still safe?"

  * * *

  A month later, in spite of his supposedly relaxing fishing holiday, the memory of Duff's fury still reverberated in Lawson's chest. He'd heard nothing from Rosie's brother since then. But her son had been a regular caller. And the knowledge of their righteous anger made Lawson doubly conscious of the need for a result somewhere in the cold case review. The anniversary of Rosie's death somehow made that need more pressing. With a sigh, he pushed back his chair and headed for the squadroom.

  22

  Alex stared at the entrance to his drive as if he'd never seen it before. He had no recollection of the drive out of Edinburgh, across the Forth Bridge and down into North Queensferry. Dazed, he eased the car in and parked at the far edge of the cobbled area, leaving plenty of space for Lynn's car nearer the house.

  The square stone house sat on a bluff near the massive pilings of the cantilevered rail bridge. This close to the sea, the snow was fighting a losing battle with the salt air. The slush was treacherous underfoot, and Alex almost lost his footing a couple of times between the car and the front door. The first thing he did after wiping his feet and slamming the door closed against the elements was to call Lynn's mobile and leave a message warning her to be careful when she got home.

  He glanced at the long case clock as he crossed the hall, snapping lights on as he went. It wasn't often that he was home on a weekday in winter when it was still technically daylight, but the sky was so low today, it felt later than it was. It would be at least an hour before Lynn returned. He needed company, but he'd have to make do with the sort that came out of a bottle till then.

  In the dining room, Alex poured himself a brandy. Not too much, he cautioned himself. Getting pissed would make it worse, not better. He took his glass and continued through to the large conservatory that commanded a panoramic view of the Firth of Forth and sat in the gray gloom, oblivious to the shipping lights twinkling on the water. He didn't know how to begin to deal with the afternoon's news.

  Nobody makes it to forty-six without loss. But Alex had been luckier than most. OK, he'd been to all four funerals of his grandparents in his twenties. But that was what you expected of people in their late seventies and eighties, and one way or another all four deaths had been what the living referred to as "a welcome release." Both his parents and his in-laws were still alive. So, until today, had been all his close friends. The nearest he'd come to intimacy with the dead had been a couple of years before, when his head printer had died in a car crash. Alex had been sad at the loss of a man he'd liked as well as relied on professionally, but he couldn't pretend to a grief he hadn't felt.

  This was different. Ziggy had been part of his life for over thirty years. They'd shared every rite of passage; they were the touchstones for each other's memories. Without Ziggy, he felt cast adrift from his own history. Alex cast his mind back to their last meeting. He and Lynn had spent two weeks in California in the late summer. Ziggy and Paul had joined them for three days hiking in Yosemite. The sky had blazed blue, the sunlight casting the astonishing mountains into sharp relief, their every detail clear as the acid etching on a printing plate. On their final evening together, they'd driven cross country to the coast, checking in to a hotel on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. After dinner, Alex and Ziggy had retired to a hot tub with a six-pack from the local micro-brewery and congratulated themselves on having their lives so well sorted. They'd talked about Lynn's pregnancy and Alex had been gratified by Ziggy's obvious delight.

  "You going to let me be the godfather?" he'd demanded, chinking his amber ale bottle against Alex's.

  "I don't think we'll be d
oing the christening thing," Alex said. "But if the parents push us into it, there's nobody I'd rather have."

  "You won't regret it," Ziggy said.

  And Alex knew he wouldn't have. Not for a second. But that was something that would never happen now.

  The following morning, Ziggy and Paul had left early for the long drive back to Seattle. They'd stood on the deck of their cabin in the pearly dawn light, hugging farewell. Another thing that would never happen again.

  What was the last thing Ziggy had called out of the window of their SUV as they'd set off down the trail? Something about making sure Alex indulged Lynn's every whim because it would get him into practice for parenthood. He couldn't remember the exact words, nor what he'd shouted in reply. But it was typical of Ziggy that their last exchange had been about taking care of someone else. Because Ziggy had always been the one who took care.

  In any group, there's always one person who ends up as the rock, who provides the shelter that allows the weaker members of the tribe to grow into their own strengths. For the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy, that had always been Ziggy. It wasn't that he was bossy, or a control freak. He just had a natural aptitude for the role, and the other three had been the constant beneficiaries of Ziggy's capacity for getting things sorted. Even in their adult lives, it had always been Ziggy that Alex had turned to when he needed a sounding board. When he'd been considering the huge jump of shifting from gainful employment to taking a chance on setting up his own company, they'd spent a weekend in New York thrashing out the pros and cons, and Ziggy's confidence in his abilities had, if Alex was honest, been more of a clincher than Lynn's conviction he could make a go of it.