Sins of the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  If I didn’t know of its existence, how then could I have dreamt of it?

  For there was no doubt in her mind that this particular tree was the one in her dream, or rather, nightmare. She acknowledged that on entering this clearing, had she spotted disturbed earth beneath its branches, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Rhona thought then of Conor’s words on how in dreams the imagination was given free rein. And, via their darker side, how dreams might paralyse us with our buried guilt.

  My buried guilt.

  Chrissy had tried to persuade her to come for a drink at the jazz club after they’d finished on site, but Rhona had had no heart for that. She’d slept badly the previous night after the weird phone call and now made up her mind to head for home, eat what was left of Sean’s casserole and go to bed, maybe this time make use of Conor’s sleep aid, if there was a chance that by listening to it she would get at least eight hours’ uninterrupted slumber.

  The recurring headache had returned and with it a dull pain low down in her groin. Rhona had long ago stopped blaming the red wine and was now convinced that a vague virus was the likely culprit, irritating but inconsequential, which would disappear once she had a proper rest.

  She put in a call to the vet as she made her way home. Tom, it seemed, was recovering, but they would prefer to keep him another night.

  ‘Any idea what he might have eaten?’ the vet asked.

  ‘I’ve collected some of his vomit,’ Rhona told him, ‘but nothing distinguishable in there. If I find time at work, I might take a closer look.’

  The vet, aware of her profession, said, ‘If you do find the culprit, please let us know, in case another victim appears.’

  Rhona agreed to do that, then rang off. Missing Tom’s company as she was, the only patient she wanted to tend to tonight was herself.

  Reaching home, she found the flat stuffy and too warm, the south-facing sitting room in particular, where the sun had been beating on the windows for a large part of the day. Passing the spare room, Rhona realized that Sean must have come back for some reason, the formerly tidy bed now strewn with clothes.

  She contemplated giving him a call, but decided she didn’t have the energy for even a brief conversation. The kitchen, thank goodness, was cooler, Tom’s escape window to the roof still open. Rhona dumped her bag and tried to decide what she should do first, eat or shower.

  Checking the slow cooker, she found to her dismay that it was empty. Had Sean finished the remains of the stew? The rest of the red wine had gone too. Disappointment swept over her as she realized she’d have to phone out for pizza instead.

  Opening the fridge door in the forlorn hope that she might find something edible inside, Rhona gave a little whoop of joy at what she found there. It seemed Sean had transferred the remains of the casserole from the slow cooker to the fridge. Something she should have done last night.

  Even better, there was a bottle of chilled white wine alongside it.

  Had Sean been there at that moment, Rhona would have more than kissed him.

  Slipping her meal into the microwave, she set the timer, then headed for the shower. Ten minutes later she was sitting, feet up, with a plate of stew and a large chunk of the remaining Henrietta’s bread, a glass of wine on hand.

  The stew tasted richer and even more aromatic than it had the previous night. Rhona wondered if Sean had added anything in the interim, maybe the remains of the red wine.

  Mopping up the juice with the bread, she literally cleaned her plate and, with a satisfied sigh, went to refill her glass. The wine plus the food was definitely having the desired effect, Rhona thought, as she smothered a yawn. Maybe she wouldn’t require Conor’s sleep hypnosis recording after all.

  As she stood in the hall contemplating whether she should just head for bed, the phone rang. Her initial response was to answer, but after the last time, she thought twice about doing that.

  If it was a robotic caller, it normally gave three rings, then stopped. If it went to voicemail instead and it was someone she wanted to speak to, she would pick up, she decided.

  At that moment there was a loud thump from the kitchen. Her immediate thought was that it was Tom jumping down from the window seat, but it couldn’t be the cat because Tom wasn’t here.

  Rhona headed for the kitchen to investigate, just as a voice started recording.

  ‘Rhona. Are you there?’

  Rhona halted midway to the kitchen and went for the phone instead, surprised at how pleased she was to hear Sean’s voice.

  ‘You okay?’ he said. ‘Chrissy told me about Tom.’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Rhona said. ‘He’ll be home tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. Was there enough stew left for tonight?’

  ‘There was. Thanks. It was delicious. And the wine,’ she added.

  ‘Chrissy said the red wine gave you a headache.’ Sean sounded puzzled.

  ‘The bottle of white in the fridge,’ Rhona corrected him.

  A female voice on the other end abruptly interrupted Sean’s response to that, and after listening to whatever issue he was required to address, he came back with, ‘Sorry, a problem with the sound system. Can I call you back?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Rhona said. ‘I’m headed for bed shortly.’

  Sean gave her a brief ‘okay’ and rang off.

  Calls to and from the jazz club were often interrupted like that, Rhona acknowledged. Just like calls to the lab were for her. Determined not to be pissed off by the female voice which she’d recognized as the lovely Imogen, the post-graduate student of archaeology, in Sean’s words, working nights to help pay the rent, Rhona consoled herself by heading for the kitchen to top up the wine Sean had bought for her.

  Momentarily forgetting the thudding sound earlier, she now discovered its origins and possibly the reason for Tom’s emergency visit to the vet.

  The head lay askew, almost severed from the neck, the glassy eye staring blindly up at her. Its patchy feathers suggested a disease of some kind which had weakened its power and perhaps sense of direction. Rhona imagined the gull missing the landing space above and hitting the partially open window, breaking its neck in the collision, to fall through and land with that thump on the floor.

  Rhona went for the rubber gloves, her intention being to bag the dead bird and take it down to the refuse bin. Realizing that a diseased gull like this might have been Tom’s downfall, Rhona squatted next to the body and took a closer look.

  Her touch, even through the gloves, told her that her initial analysis of what had happened couldn’t be right.

  Death came in many forms, but a bird that had recently flown would still be warm, unlike the stiffened body she now saw this was.

  Had it died on the roof and, with a little help from the wind, fallen off and been blown in at the open window? Even as she considered the scientific possibility of this, Rhona didn’t believe that could happen.

  Then how had it got here?

  It was possible to gain access to the roof from the open kitchen window, but you had to be a cat or unafraid of heights and a little mad to try it. Coming back down would be equally fraught for anything other than a feline or a mountain climber.

  The only person she knew daft enough to gain entry via the roof had been Sean, and only then after a few whiskies, which had either increased his chance of success or failure. They’d fallen out spectacularly over that escapade, which he’d used to show her why she shouldn’t leave the window lying open, in particular at night.

  Rhona had responded with a characteristic rejection of being told what to do, believing his trip to the roof was more about Sean proving a point, rather than for her protection.

  Rhona abandoned the bird and, going to the window, opened it wider. Sticking her head out, she attempted to look upwards. Despite watching Sean achieve the roof from here, she was still unconvinced it was possible.

  A quick and scary look down four storeys to the convent garden below suggested that anyone who would
choose this method of accessing the roof, instead of the pull-down ladder on her landing, must have a death wish.

  One that she didn’t share.

  At that moment something brushed her face and, reaching out, she caught the offending article. It wasn’t, as she’d suspected, a floating feather, but a fine wire noose dangling from the roof. Immediately going back inside, Rhona went over to the bird.

  No wonder the neck was almost severed from the head.

  There had been much talk earlier in the year of dissuading the gulls from nesting on the roof and by a variety of means. Had wiring their nesting area been one of them?

  Even as her rational mind considered how the bird might have come to rest on her kitchen floor, another creeping thought entertained an altogether different scenario.

  What if Sean had been right when he’d suggested that she was vulnerable to nutcases who knew what she did for a living, and might take an unhealthy interest in her because of it?

  And what about McNab’s belief that they were being played, her in particular?

  I know what you did. The muffled words uttered on the phone the previous night returned now with a vengeance.

  Rhona bagged the bird and put it in the bin. She would dispense with it tomorrow. Crossing to the window, she banged it shut and secured the brass lock, telling herself as an excuse that Tom wouldn’t need to go out tonight.

  46

  McNab stood by the window watching night descend. In the city it was never truly dark, even in the wooded confines of Kelvingrove Park. He didn’t like countryside dark at all. In fact he felt positively smothered in open spaces and under open skies. At least here in the city you knew as a human being you meant something, had done something, such as erected these buildings, laid these roads and produced the electricity that lit them.

  In the countryside, you were nothing more than every other creature that inhabited that space, with nothing to prove your superiority as a species. Nothing to show for centuries of progression.

  As for woods, they were the worst, even the small ones, where they’d been today.

  McNab went over to the sink and ran the cold water, ostensibly to splash his face, but in reality to wash away the tears that had sprung up in his eyes at the memory of Claire Masters sitting against that fucking tree. When he found the bastard …

  McNab imagined all the things he might do to the perpetrator, knowing he would in fact do none of them.

  If caught, he would simply arrest him. He would be brought to court and given a ‘fair’ trial, the outcome of which might be a dozen years or a place in a secure hospital, perhaps freed in the future to perpetrate such vile acts again.

  You stopped that happening once before, an inner voice reminded him. And Josh Kearney deserved to die, whatever Rhona said.

  McNab glanced at the whisky bottle on the table, glass by its side. He’d made a point of eating a fish supper on his way home, consuming it to line his stomach for the onslaught of whisky he had planned.

  Turning off the tap, he forced his anger to dissipate with the draining water, then dried his face. He couldn’t save Claire, but he might manage to help Ellie, who surely had an even greater call on him.

  You have no proof that she’s in danger, he told himself again.

  In fact Mannie at the Ink Parlour hadn’t voiced any concern. ‘Ellie sometimes takes off on her bike. Needs the open road,’ he’d said. ‘Have you two fallen out?’

  McNab had said no, although he wasn’t sure it was the truth.

  ‘Try the Dunedin Chapter Facebook page. Check if there are any ride-outs on the go. She may have joined one.’

  McNab had felt a little better after that, although it had been obvious that Mannie knew nothing of what had happened in the tunnel, nor Izzy’s fear for her friend. So he’d called Izzy and told her Mannie’s thoughts and, after a pause, she’d agreed that that was what Ellie sometimes did, and yes, that might be the answer.

  McNab suspected when Izzy rang off that his call had merely served to put her at ease, not him.

  Then had come the other call, to him this time, and unexpected, out of the blue.

  Mary’s voice had sounded throaty, as though she was back on the smokes or hitting the bottle. McNab recognized the syndrome because he’d experienced it himself often enough.

  They exchanged what might be regarded as pleasantries, but in reality the back and forth between them was more of a disguised interrogation, on both sides. What McNab remembered most about Mary Grant was the way power had always shifted between them. When the power had been with him, he’d felt sorry for her. When it lay with her, she’d often taken pity on him.

  That power could never be evenly distributed. McNab doubted if it could in any relationship, recognizing that what had been between him and Mary wasn’t that different from what currently existed between Rhona and himself.

  He also acknowledged that he and Ellie had not reached that point, as yet, probably because it signified commitment of some sort, or at least the beginning of the next stage of a relationship.

  ‘How are you, Mary?’ he managed.

  ‘Mending.’ As she coughed, McNab recalled her figure in the hospital bed, broken and battered, and how badly he’d felt about that. Then an image of Davey, her husband, and his old mate, came to mind. And with that, the memory of what Davey had done, and hate reappeared like a bright hot flame in his chest.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ McNab said, his voice now officious rather than friendly, a change that didn’t go unnoticed.

  ‘For a start, you can stop talking to me like an arse.’

  He could make out her breathing as she waited, expecting an apology.

  And there it was, the shift in power.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Accepted.’ She sucked in a breath and McNab wondered what was yet to come. ‘After you visited us that night with Ellie, Davey went and bought a fucking Harley.’

  ‘What?’ McNab said in disbelief. Bloody Davey with money to burn.

  ‘I want you to take it away,’ Mary said.

  ‘Take it where?’ McNab struggled for her meaning.

  ‘I want you to have the bike. You caught the bastard. You found out what he was doing. I want you to have the Harley.’

  ‘Davey wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what Davey would like,’ Mary said. ‘Can you come and get it tonight?’

  ‘Mary, that’s not a good idea,’ McNab said, glancing at the whisky again.

  ‘We need to talk. In the hospital, you promised me we would talk.’

  He had promised to keep in touch, and he hadn’t kept his promise, even when Ellie had reminded him of it.

  ‘Are you on duty?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope,’ McNab admitted.

  ‘Then come round and get the bike.’

  McNab glanced over at the waiting bottle. What would be the more dangerous route to take – the whisky or Mary?

  He’d been wrong about the drink and the fags. Mary was deep-throated all right, but McNab now believed it was because she’d been crying. If he was right, then she’d made a decent job of tidying up the evidence of it before his arrival. The make-up looked perfect, as did the hair.

  McNab had questioned himself all the way here as to why he’d come. The fact that he’d grabbed a taxi also suggested that a) he was likely to drink or b) he did plan to ride the bike back.

  She’d taken a few moments to answer the door to him. As he’d waited, McNab had imagined her standing in that big hall with its polished wood panelling, wishing to God she hadn’t phoned him in the first place. Then the door opened and there she was. The Mary he remembered, but without the husband.

  ‘Mikey.’ She gave him a tentative smile. ‘Come on in.’

  She didn’t ask for his jacket, just marched off towards the kitchen expecting him to follow, which McNab did. The rest of the house lay in darkness, unlike the evening of the dinner party when it had been lit up like a beacon to afflu
ence and success. Davey had wanted to show off to his teenage mate just how good life had been to him.

  And I played the same game. Taking my biker chick girlfriend. Arriving on her Harley. What a pair of sad, lying, competitive bastards we were.

  Entering the kitchen, McNab was immediately struck by how different the room appeared from the last time he’d been here. Now it looked lived in, as though Mary had moved in here and abandoned the rest of the house. Glancing back at the doorway, he suddenly remembered Ellie walking in on Mary and him, and guessing there was more to their conversation than just making the after-dinner coffee.

  God, Ellie was pissed off, and rightly so. They’d had their first argument over it.

  ‘How’s Ellie?’ Mary said, as though reading his mind.

  McNab was about to give the statutory fine, then said instead, ‘Off on a motorbike jaunt. The Highlands, I think.’

  Mary gave him a studied look. ‘She’s a lovely girl.’

  McNab immediately interpreted Mary’s rendition of the word girl to indicate she thought him too old for Ellie. He was about to protest this, although he thought it himself at times, but managed to stop himself.

  Then came the hundred-dollar question. ‘Join me in a drink? I’ve a nice malt here you’d like.’

  ‘If I’m taking the bike back …’ McNab trailed.

  ‘Sorry, I called my lawyer. Seems we have to sign some papers first.’ She flourished them as evidence. ‘Once the lawyer okays them, I’ll have the bike delivered to you, or you can come back for it yourself.’

  McNab still wasn’t sure if such a transaction would work on his end. A serving policeman being given an expensive Harley by the wife of a convicted felon.

  But if a lawyer okayed it, who was he to argue?

  A fleeting image of his boss’s expression at such a development came to mind and it didn’t look happy.

  Mary was flourishing the bottle, awaiting an answer to the proffered drink.

  Fuck it, McNab thought. It’s been a shitty day.

  ‘I’ll get a taxi back,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ She smiled at him in a way he remembered.

  They hadn’t drunk much up to now, but talked plenty. McNab realized that though he’d promised Mary this chance in the hospital, he hadn’t kept his word, so eventually she’d had to approach him. And the bike had been the way to do it.