The Distant Echo

by Val McDermid

  "So why did he do it?"

  Alex sighed. "He'd been going out with her for a few weeks. And she wouldn't go the whole way. He says she would only ever go so far, then no further. And she drove him beyond control. He raped her. According to him, she said she was going straight to the police. And he couldn't handle that, so he picked up his filleting knife and stabbed her. It was already snowing, he thought there would be nobody around, so he dumped her on Hallow Hill. He meant it to look like it had been a ritual killing. He's saying he was horrified when he realized we were being suspected. Obviously, he didn't want to be caught himself, but he claims he didn't want anybody else fitted up for the crime."

  "Very high-minded of him," Weird said cynically.

  "I think that's the truth. I mean, with one little lie, he could have dumped one of us right in the shit. Once Maclennan knew about the Land Rover, all Lawson had to do was to say it had slipped his mind that he'd seen it earlier. Either on the way to Hallow Hill or outside the Lammas at closing time."

  "The Lord alone knows the truth, but we can give him the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. You know, he must have thought he was home and dry after all this time. Never so much as a whisper of suspicion."

  "No. We were the ones who carried that can. Lawson had twenty-five years of living an apparently blameless life. And then the Chief Constable announces a cold case review. According to Karen, Lawson had ditched the physical evidence the first time DNA was used successfully in court. It was still held at St. Andrews then, so he'd have had no trouble accessing it. The cardigan was genuinely misfiled at some point when the evidence was moved from one location to another, but the rest of the clothes, the stuff with the biological samples, he got rid of himself."

  Weird frowned. "How come the cardigan ended up in a completely different place from the body?"

  "When he was going back to his panda car, Lawson found the cardie lying in the snow. He'd dropped it carrying the body up the hill. He just stuffed it into the nearest hedge. It was the last thing he wanted sitting around in his police car. So with all the relevant evidence missing, he must have thought he could still ride out the review safely."

  "And then Graham turns up out of the woodwork. The one factor he'd never been able to take account of because of her family's craving for respectability. Here was somebody who really had a stake in Rosie's death, demanding answers. But what I still don't see is why he decided to start killing us off," Weird said.

  "According to Karen, Macfadyen was on Lawson's back constantly. Demanding he reinterview witnesses. Particularly us. He was convinced we were the guilty men. Among the stuff on his computer, there was an account of his conversations with Lawson. At one point, he comments that it surprised him that Lawson hadn't seen anything suspicious, sitting in his patrol car. When he put that to Lawson, he seemed very edgy about it, which Macfadyen assumed was because it sounded like he was being critical. But of course, what was really behind it was that Lawson didn't want anyone focusing on what he'd been doing that night. Everyone had taken his presence at the scene for granted, but once you took us out of the equation, the only person we know for sure was in the area that night was Lawson himself. If he hadn't been a cop, he'd have been the prime suspect."

  "Even so. Why decide to go for us after all this time?"

  Alex shifted uncomfortably on the rock. "This is the bit that's hard to take. According to Lawson, he was being blackmailed."

  "Blackmailed? Who by?"

  "Mondo." Weird looked thunderstruck. "Mondo? You're kidding. What kind of sick line is Lawson shooting now?"

  "I don't think it's a line. You remember the day Barney Maclennan died?"

  Weird shuddered. "How could I forget?"

  "Lawson was the front man on the rope. He saw what happened. According to him, Maclennan was hanging onto Mondo, but Mondo panicked and kicked him off the rope."

  Weird closed his eyes momentarily. "I wish I could say I don't believe it, but it's exactly how Mondo would react. Still, I don't understand what that has to do with Lawson being blackmailed."

  "After they pulled Mondo up, it was chaos. Lawson took charge of Mondo. He went in the ambulance with him. He told Mondo he'd seen what had happened and promised that he would make sure Mondo paid the full legal price for what he'd done. And that's when Mondo dropped his wee bombshell. Mondo claimed that he'd seen Rosie getting into Lawson's patrol car one night outside the Lammas. Well, Lawson knew that he'd be in deep shit if that came out. So he did a deal. If Mondo kept quiet about what he'd seen, Lawson would do the same."

  "Not so much blackmail as mutually assured destruction," Weird said harshly. "What went wrong?"

  "As soon as the cold case review was announced, Mondo went to see Lawson and told him that the price of his continued silence was to be left alone. He didn't want his life blown apart a second time. And he told Lawson he had insurance. That he wasn't the only one who knew what he'd seen. Only, of course, he didn't specify which one of us he'd allegedly told. That's why Lawson was so insistent that Karen concentrate on the physical evidence rather than interviewing us again. It bought him time while he killed off anyone who might know the truth. But then he got too clever by half. He wanted to make Robin Maclennan look like a suspect in Mondo's murder, so he told him how Barney had really died. But before he could kill Mondo, Robin Maclennan got in touch with Mondo, who panicked and went to see Lawson again." Alex gave a wry smile. "That was the bit of business he had over in Fife the night he came to see me. Anyway, Mondo accused Lawson with breaking his end of the bargain. Older and wiser, or so he thought. He said he'd get his side of the story in first so that Lawson's claim that he killed Barney Maclennan would look like the desperate mud-slinging of a cornered man." Alex rubbed a hand over his face.

  Weird groaned. "Poor, silly Mondo." "The irony is that, if it hadn't been for Graham Macfadyen's obsession with the case, Lawson might well have succeeded in killing all four of us."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If Graham hadn't been tracking us all via the Internet, he'd never have found out about Ziggy's death and he wouldn't have sent that wreath. Then we'd never have made a connection between the two murders and Lawson would have been able to pick us off at his leisure. Even then, he muddied the waters as much as he could. He carefully made sure I knew all about Graham, even though he pretended he'd accidentally let it slip. And of course, he told Robin Maclennan how Mondo had killed his brother. That way, he could give himself a bit of insurance. After Mondo was killed, the sly bastard went to Robin and offered him an alibi. Which Robin agreed to, not thinking for a minute that it worked the other way too— that he was giving an alibi to the real killer."

  Weird shivered and pulled his legs up, hugging his knees to his chest. He felt a twinge in his ribs, the shadow of a former pain. "But why did he come after me? He must have realized that neither of us knew what Mondo had seen or else we'd have confronted him with it after Mondo's death."

  Alex sighed. "By that time, he'd dug himself in too deep. Because of Macfadyen's wreaths, we'd made the connection between two killings that were supposed to look completely unrelated. His only hope was to make Macfadyen look like the killer. And Macfadyen wouldn't have stopped at two, would he? He'd have gone on until he'd taken us all out."

  Weird shook his head sadly. "What a terrible mess. But why did he kill Ziggy first?"

  Alex groaned. "It's so banal it would make you weep. Apparently he'd already booked his holiday in the States before the cold case review was announced."

  Weird licked his lips. "So it could just as easily have been me?"

  "If he'd decided to go fishing on your side of the country, yes."

  Weird closed his eyes, steepling his fingers in his lap. "What about Ziggy and Mondo? What's happening about that?"

  "Not so good, I'm afraid. In spite of the fact that Lawson's singing like the proverbial bird, they've got no corroborative evidence that ties Lawson into Mondo's murder. He was very, very careful. He's got no alibi,
but he claims he was up at his caravan that night, so even if they can find a neighbor to confirm his car wasn't at his house, he's covered."

  "He's going to get away with it, isn't he?"

  "It looks that way. Under Scots law, a confession has to be corroborated before a prosecution can succeed. But the cops in Glasgow are giving Hélène and Jackie a wide berth, which is a result of sorts."

  Weird slammed the flat of his hand against the rock in frustration. "What about Ziggy? Have the Seattle police done any better?"

  "A little. But not much. We know Lawson was in the U.S. the week before Ziggy died. He was supposedly on a game-fishing trip in Southern California. But here's the thing. When he took his rental car back, it had about two and a half thousand miles more on the clock than you'd get from local driving."

  Weird kicked out at the rock beneath his feet. "And that's a round trip from Southern California to Seattle, right?"

  "Right. But again, there's no direct evidence. Lawson's too smart to have used his credit card anywhere other than where he was supposed to be. Karen says the Seattle police have been showing his photo around hardware stores and motels, but no luck so far."

  "I can't believe he's going to get away with murder again," Weird said.

  "I thought you believed in a judgment more powerful than humans can provide?"

  "God's judgment doesn't absolve us from the duty to operate in a moral universe," Weird said seriously. "One of the ways we show love for our fellow human beings is to protect them from their own worst impulses. Sending criminals to jail is just an extreme example of that."

  "I'm sure they feel loved," Alex said sardonically. "Karen did have one other piece of news. They've finally decided not to charge Lawson with attempted murder for his attack on you."

  "Why the heck not? I told them back then that I was willing to come back and testify."

  Alex sat up. "Without Macfadyen, there's no direct evidence that it was Lawson who did you over."

  Weird sighed. "Oh well. At least he's not going to be able to wriggle off the hook over Rosie. I guess it doesn't much matter whether he faces charges over what he tried to do to me. You know, I've always prided myself on being streetwise," he mused. "But I walked out of your house that night full of bravado. I wonder if I'd have been so brave or stupid if I'd known there was not just one person but two on my tail."

  "Be grateful for that. If Macfadyen hadn't been spying on us, we'd never have been able to place Lawson and his car at the scene."

  "I still can't believe he didn't intervene when Lawson started beating me to a pulp," Weird said bitterly.

  "Maybe he was forestalled by Eric Hamilton appearing on the scene." Alex sighed. "I suppose we'll never know."

  "I guess what matters most is that we finally got the answer to who took Rosie's life," Weird said. "It's been a thorn in our flesh for twenty-five years, and now we can put it to rest. Thanks to you, we managed to neutralize the poison that infected the four of us."

  Alex gave him a curious look. "Did you ever wonder…?"

  "If it really was one of us?"

  Alex nodded.

  Weird considered. "I knew it couldn't have been Ziggy. He had no interest in women, and even back then, he didn't want to be cured. Mondo wouldn't have had the nerve to keep his mouth shut if it had been him. And you, Alex… Well, let's just say I couldn't figure out how you would have got her up to Hallow Hill. You never had the Land Rover keys."

  Alex was shocked. "That's the only reason you decided it couldn't have been me?"

  Weird smiled. "You were strong enough to have kept your own counsel. You've got the capacity for tremendous coolness under pressure, but when you blow, you blow like a volcano. You were taken with the lassie… I'll be honest. It did cross my mind. But as soon as they told us she'd been attacked somewhere else and dumped on the hill, I knew it couldn't be you. You were saved by the logistics."

  "Thanks for your confidence," Alex said, wounded. "You did ask. And you? Who did you suspect?"

  Alex had the grace to look embarrassed. "You did cross my mind. Especially when you got God. It seemed like the sort of thing a guilty man might have done." He gazed out over the treetops to the distant horizon where mountains folded into each other in a blue haze. "I often wonder how different my life would have been if Rosie had accepted my invitation and come to the party that night. She'd still be alive. So would Mondo and Ziggy. Our friendship would have survived in much better nick. And we'd have lived without guilt."

  "You might have ended up marrying Rosie instead of Lynn," Weird commented wryly.

  "No." Alex frowned. "That would never have happened."

  "How not? Don't underestimate how slender are the threads that bind us to the life we have. You fancied her."

  "It would have worn off. And she would never have settled for a boy like me. She was far too grown up. Besides, I think I knew even then that Lynn was the one who would save me."

  "Save you from what?"

  Alex smiled, a small, private smile. "From anything and everything." He stared down toward the cabin and the clearing where his heart was held hostage. For the first time in twenty-five years, he had a future, not just the millstone of a past. And it felt like a gift that he'd finally earned.