A Darker Domain

by Val McDermid

  ‘Punish her for what?’

  ‘You name it. Her talent. Her privilege. Her father.’

  He thought about it. ‘It’s hard to imagine. The thing is, she’d just spent four years in Sweden. She just called herself Cat Grant. I don’t think anybody over there had the faintest idea who Brodie Maclennan Grant is.’ He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. ‘She did summer school over here the first couple of years she was in Sweden. She hooked up with some of the people she knew from when she was at the Edinburgh College of Art.’

  Karen sat up straight. ‘I didn’t know she was at the Edinburgh College of Art,’ she said. ‘There was nothing in the file about that. All it says is that she studied in Sweden.’

  Sinclair nodded. ‘Technically, that’s right. But instead of doing the sixth year at her fancy private school in Edinburgh, she did a foundation course at the College of Art. It’s probably not on the file because her old man didn’t know about it. He absolutely didn’t want her to be an artist. So it was a big secret between Cat and her mum. She’d go off every morning on the train and come home at more or less the usual time. But instead of going to school she went to the college. You really didn’t know?’

  ‘We really didn’t know.’ Karen looked at Phil. ‘We need to start looking at the people who were on that foundation course.’

  ‘The good news is that there weren’t many of them,’ Sinclair said. ‘Only ten or a dozen. Of course, she knew other students, but it was the ones on her course that she mainly hung out with.’

  ‘Can you remember who her pals were?’

  Sinclair nodded. ‘There were five of them. They liked the same bands, they liked the same artists. They were always going on about modernism and its legacy.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I used to feel like a complete hick from the sticks.’

  ‘Names? Details?’ Phil putting the pressure on again. He reached for his notebook and flipped it open.

  ‘There was a lassie from Montrose: Diana Macrae. Another from Peebles, what was her name…? Something Italian…Demelza Gardner.’

  ‘Demelza’s not Italian, it’s Cornish,’ Phil said. Karen silenced him with a look.

  ‘Whatever. It sounded Italian to me,’ Sinclair said. ‘There were two lads as well. A guy from Crieff or some arsey place in Perthshire like that: Toby Inglis. And finally, Jack Docherty. He was a working-class toe-rag from Glasgow. They were all nice middle-class kids and Jack was their performing monkey. He didn’t seem to mind. He was one of those people who don’t care what kind of attention they get as long as they get some.’

  ‘Did she stay in touch with any of them when she went to Sweden?’

  Sinclair stood up, ignoring her, as his boys raced across the grass towards him. They threw themselves on him in an excited torrent of what Karen took to be German. Sinclair clung on to them, struggling forward a couple of steps with them hanging on like baby chimps. Then he dropped them, said something to them, ruffled their hair and sent them off in pursuit of their mother, who had disappeared towards the steps down to the shore. ‘Sorry,’ he said, coming back and sitting down again. ‘They always like to be sure you know what you’re missing. To answer your question - I don’t really know. I vaguely remember Cat mentioning one or other of them a few times, but I didn’t pay much attention. I had nothing in common with them. I never met any of them again after Cat left the college.’ He ran a hand over his jaw. ‘Looking back at it now, I think that, the older we got, the less Cat and I had in common. If she’d lived, we would never have got back together again.’

  ‘You might have found some common ground over Adam eventually,’ Karen said.

  ‘I’d like to think so.’ He looked longingly at the gateway his boys had disappeared through. ‘Is there anything else? Only, I’d kind of like to get back to my life.’

  ‘Do you think there was anyone from her art college days who might have harboured ill feeling towards her?’ Karen asked.

  Sinclair shook his head. ‘Nothing she ever said would make me think that,’ he said. ‘She had a strong personality, but she was a hard person to dislike. I don’t remember her ever complaining that she’d been given a hard time by anybody.’ He stood up again, smoothing down his trousers. ‘I have to say, I can’t believe anyone who knew her would think they could get away with kidnapping her. She was far too good at getting her own way.’

  Glenrothes

  The Mint stabbed the keyboard with his index fingers. He didn’t know why they called that fast business ‘touch typing’. Because you couldn’t type without touching the keyboard. It was all touch typing, when you got down to it. He also wasn’t sure why the boss kept lumbering him with the computer searches unless it was just pure sadism. Everybody thought young guys like him were totally at home in front of a computer, but for the Mint it was like a foreign country where he didn’t even know the word for ‘beer’.

  He’d have been much happier if she’d sent him off with the Hat to the College of Art to talk to real people and pore through yearbooks and physical records. He was better at that. And besides, DS Parhatka was a good laugh. There was nothing funny about trawling through the message boards and membership lists of www.bestdaysofourlives.com searching for the names the boss had dropped on his desk on a tatty page torn from a notebook.

  This was so not what he’d joined up for. Where was the action? Where were the dramatic car chases and arrests? Instead of excitement, he got the boss and the Hat acting like they were some ancient comedy partnership, like French and Saunders. Or was it Flanders and Swann? He could never get them straight in his head.

  He hadn’t even had to monster anybody to get full access to the website. The woman he’d spoken to had fallen over herself to be helpful. ‘We’ve helped the police before, we’re always happy to do what we can,’ she’d gabbled as soon as he’d made his request. Whoever she’d dealt with before had clearly left her in a state of shivering submission. He liked that in a source.

  He checked the list of names again. Diana Macrae. Demelza Gardner. Toby Inglis. Jack Docherty. 1977-78 the year he was looking for. After a couple of false clicks, he finally made it to the membership list. Only one of them was there. Diana Macrae was now Diana Waddell, but it wasn’t hard to figure that out. He clicked on Diana’s profile.

  I followed my foundation course at the College of Art with a degree from Glasgow School of Art, specializing in sculpture. After graduating, I started working in the field of art therapy for people with mental illness. I met Desmond, my husband, when we were both working in Dundee. We married in 1990 and we have two children. We live in Glenisla which we all adore. I have started sculpting in wood again and have a contract with a local garden centre as well as a gallery in Dundee.

  A gallery in Dundee, the Mint thought scornfully. Art? In Dundee? About as likely as peace in the Middle East. He skimmed through more rubbish about her husband and kids, then clicked through to her messages and emails from fellow ex-students. Why did these people bother? Their lives were as dull as an East Fife home game. After scrolling through a couple of dozen innocuous exchanges, he found a message from someone called Shannon. Do you ever hear from Jack Docherty? she asked.

  Darling Jack! We swap Christmas cards. Her smugness penetrated the notoriously nuance-free email. He’s out in Western Australia now. He has his own gallery in Perth. He does a lot of work with Aboriginal artists. We have a couple of pieces from him, they’re remarkable. He’s very happy. He has an Aboriginal boyfriend. Quite a few years younger than him and very handsome, but he sounds like a sweetheart. Once our two are off to uni, we’re planning a trip out to visit.

  Two birds with one stone, the Mint thought, scribbling the details down on. He continued to the end of Diana’s wittering correspondence, then decided he needed a break while he came up with his next move.

  A cup of coffee later, he got back to his search. Neither Toby Inglis nor Demelza Gardner showed up anywhere on the College of Art area of the website. But thanks to the way his
contact had rolled over, he was able to search the entire website. He typed in the woman’s name and to his complete astonishment, he got a hit. He clicked on the result and discovered Gardner described as totally my favourite teacher. The message was on the site of a high school in Norwich.

  At least he had the sense to Google the school. And there was Demelza Gardner. Head of Art. God, this computer stuff was a piece of piss once you got the hang of it. He tried Toby Inglis’ name in the search engine and again came up with a hit. The Mint followed the link to a forum where former pupils of a private school in Crieff could rabbit on to their hearts’ content about their fabulous bloody lives. It took him a while to unravel the threads of correspondence, but at last he found what he was looking for.

  Feeling rather pleased with himself, the Mint tore off the top sheet from his notepad and went off in search of DI Pirie.

  It had, Karen thought, gone something like this. She had called Bel Richmond and invited her to come to CCRT for an interview as soon as possible. Preferably within the hour. Bel had refused. Karen had mentioned the small matter of police obstruction.

  Then Bel had gone to Brodie Grant and complained that she didn’t want to trot off to Glenrothes at Karen Pirie’s beck and call. Then Grant had called the Macaroon and explained that Bel didn’t want to be interviewed and DI Pirie had better stop threatening her. Then the Macaroon had summoned her and given her a hard time for upsetting Brodie Grant, and told her to lay off Bel Richmond.

  Then Karen had called Bel Richmond again. In her sweetest voice, she had told Bel to present herself at CCRT at two o’clock. ‘If you’re not here,’ she said, ‘there will be a squad car at Rotheswell ten minutes after that to arrest you for police obstruction.’ Then she’d put the phone down.

  Now it was a minute to two and Dave Cruickshank had just called her to say Bel Richmond was in the building. ‘Get a uniform to take her up to Interview One and wait with her till I get there.’ Karen got herself a Diet Coke out of the fridge and sat down at her desk for five minutes. She took a last swig from her can then headed down the hall to the interview room.

  Bel was sitting at the table in the grey windowless room, looking furious. A pack of red Marlboros sat in front of her, a single cigarette lying next to it. Clearly she’d forgotten the Scots had banned smoking ahead of the English until the uniformed officer had reminded her.

  Karen pulled a chair out and dropped into it. The foam cushion had been worn into its shape by other buttocks than hers and she wriggled to get comfortable. Elbows on the table, she leaned forward. ‘Don’t ever try to fuck with me again,’ she said, her voice conversational, her eyes like glittering granite.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Bel said. ‘Let’s not make this a pissing contest. I’m here now, so let it go.’

  Karen didn’t take her eyes off Bel. ‘We need to talk about Italy.’

  ‘Why not? Lovely country. Fabulous food, wine’s getting better all the time. And then there’s the art -’

  ‘Stop it. I mean it. I will charge you with police obstruction and put you in a cell and leave you there till I can bring you before a sheriff. I am not going to be jerked around by Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant or his minions.’

  ‘I’m not a minion of Brodie Grant,’ Bel said. ‘I’m an independent investigative journalist.’

  ‘Independent? You’re living under his roof. Eating his food, drinking his wine. Which I bet is not Italian, by the way. And who paid for that little jaunt to Italy? You’re not independent, you’re bought and paid for.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’ve got more freedom of action than you have right now, Bel. I can tell my boss to shove it. Come to think of it, I just have. Can you say the same? If it wasn’t for the Italian police, I wouldn’t even know you’d been talking to people in Tuscany about the Villa Totti. The very fact that you’ve been reporting to Grant and not talking to us tells me that he owns you.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. Reporters don’t talk to cops about their investigations till their work is finished. That’s what’s going on here.’

  Karen shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t think so. And, to tell you the truth, I’m surprised. I didn’t think you were that kind of woman.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me, Inspector.’ Bel settled herself more comfortably in the chair, as if she was getting ready for something pleasurable.

  ‘I know you didn’t earn your reputation spouting clichés like that.’ Karen pulled her chair closer to the table, cutting the distance between them to less than a couple of feet. ‘And I know that you’ve been a campaigning journalist for almost the whole of your career. You know what people say about you, Bel? They say you’re a fighter. They say you’re someone who does the right thing even if it’s not the easiest. Like the way you took your sister and her boy under your roof when they needed looking after. They say you don’t care about the popularity of your position, you drag the truth out kicking and screaming and make people confront it. They say you’re a maverick. Somebody who operates to her own set of rules. Somebody who doesn’t take orders from the Man.’ She waited, staring Bel down. The journalist blinked first, but she didn’t look away. ‘You think they’d recognize you now? Taking your orders from a man like Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant? A man who epitomizes the capitalist system? A man who resisted his daughter’s every attempt at self-determination to the point where she ended up putting herself in harm’s way? Is that what you’ve come down to?’

  Bel picked up her cigarette and tapped it end to end on the table. ‘Sometimes you have to find a place inside the enemy’s tent so you can find out what he’s really like. You of all people should understand that. Cops use undercover all the time when there’s no other way of getting a story. Do you have any idea how many press interviews Brodie Grant has given in the last twenty years?’

  ‘Taking a wild guess, I’d say…none?’

  ‘Right. When I found a piece of evidence that might just crack this cold case open, I figured there would be a lot of interest in Grant. Publisher-type interest. But only if someone could get alongside Grant and see what he was like for real.’ She raised one corner of her mouth in a cynical half-smile. ‘I thought it might as well be me.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m not going to sit here and pick holes in your self-justification. But how does your quest to give the world the definitive book about that miserable family grant you the right to stand above the law?’

  ‘That’s not how I see it.’

  ‘Of course it’s not how you see it. You need to see yourself as the person who’s acting on behalf of Cat Grant. The person who’s going to bring her son home, dead or alive. The hero. You can’t afford to see yourself in a true light. Because that true light shows you up as the person who is standing in the way of all of those things. Well, here’s the scoop, Bel. You haven’t got the resources to bring this to an end. I don’t know what Brodie Grant’s promised you, but it’s not going to be clean. Not in any sense,’ Karen could feel her anger coiling inside her, getting ready to spring. She pushed her chair back, putting some space between them.

  ‘The Italian police don’t care about what happened to Cat Grant,’ Bel said.

  ‘You’re right. And why should they?’ Karen felt her face flush. ‘But they do care about the person whose blood is all over the kitchen floor of the Villa Totti. So much blood that that person is almost certainly dead. They care about that and they’re doing everything they can to find out what happened there. And in the course of that, there will be information that will help us. That’s how we do things. We don’t hire private eyes who tailor their reports to what the client wants to hear. We don’t construct our own private legal system to serve our own interests. Let me ask you a question, Bel. Just between the two of us.’ Karen turned to the uniformed constable who was still standing by the door. ‘Could you give us a minute?’

  She waited till he had closed the door behind him. ‘Under Scots law, I can’t use anything you
say to me now. There’s no corroboration, you see. So here’s my question. And I want you to think about it very carefully. You don’t need to tell me the answer. I just want to be sure that you’ve thought about it honestly and sincerely. If you were to find the kidnappers, what do you think Brodie Grant would do with that information?’

  The muscles round Bel’s mouth tightened. ‘I think that’s a scurrilous implication.’

  ‘I didn’t imply. You inferred.’ Karen got up. ‘I’m not a numpty, Bel. Don’t treat me like one.’ She opened the door. ‘You can come back in now.’

  The constable resumed his station by the door and Karen returned to her chair. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said. ‘Who the hell do you people think you are, with your private law? Is this what you’ve spent your career working for? A law for the rich and powerful that can thumb its nose at the rest of us?’ That hit home. About bloody time.

  Bel shook her head. ‘You misjudge me.’

  ‘Prove it. Tell me what you found out in Tuscany.’

  ‘Why should I? If you people were any good at your job, you’d have found it out yourself.’

  ‘You think I need to defend my ability? The only thing I have to defend is that our investigations struggle under the weight of rules and regulations and resources. That sometimes means it takes me and my team a while to cover the ground. But you can be sure that, when we do, there’s not a blade of grass goes unexamined. If you give a toss about justice, you should tell me.’ She gave Bel a cold smile. ‘Otherwise, you might find yourself on the other end of the reporters’ notebooks.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  To Karen’s ear, it sounded like bluster. Bel was close to spilling, she could sense it. ‘I don’t need to threaten,’ she said. ‘Even Brodie Grant knows what a leaky sieve the police are. Stuff just seems to slip out into the public domain. And you know how the press love it when someone camped out on the moral high ground gets caught up in a mudslide.’ Oh yes, she was right. Bel was definitely growing uneasy.