The Skeleton Road

by Val McDermid

  That was the first time I’d ever spoken to Tessa Minogue. I knew who she was; the IUC was too small for anonymity. But our paths had somehow never crossed properly before. We walked back up from the harbour and it turned out she was living just round the corner from our flat. I invited her in for a drink that night and a friendship was born, a friendship that persists. To this day, Tess is the first person I turn to in times of trouble, perhaps because our relationship was forged under fire.

  It makes me slightly uncomfortable to say this but the two relationships that mean most to me in this world came out of the Croatian war. Mitja probably wouldn’t have been in Dubrovnik when I was there had it not been for the imminent threat of war. And I might never have bonded with Tess but for that moment by the harbour.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not so egocentric as to think that war isn’t a bad thing if such positive outcomes can result from it. Rather, what I feel is a kind of shame, that out of the hell that was the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century, I gained so rich a reward.

  25

  Karen was surprised to find Phil chopping vegetables in the kitchen when she arrived home in the middle of the afternoon. At her rank, there was no such thing as overtime. But she worked long hours and weekends with few complaints, so she reckoned she was entitled to head out early when there was nothing urgent on her desk. Besides, she always thought better outside the office. ‘What are you doing home at this hour?’ she asked, hugging him from behind and planting a kiss on the back of his neck.

  He shivered pleasurably. ‘Careful, these knives are sharp. Everything went tits-up this morning. We had him staked out at home from yesterday teatime. But when we went in mob-handed this morning, the bird had flown.’

  ‘How come?’ Karen took off her jacket and slung it over the nearest chair.

  ‘Nobody’s taking responsibility, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the late-night stake-out lads decided he was in for the night so they nipped off at some point for a coffee or a curry or a kip. And either our boy dropped lucky and happened to leave for the airport at the right moment by chance, or else he was staking out the stake-out.’

  ‘The airport?’

  ‘Aye. According to his wife, he’s away to Liechtenstein for a few days. Presumably to say hello to his money.’

  ‘Bummer.’

  ‘Indeed. Mind you, it’s partly our own fault. I should have checked his schedule with the wife.’

  ‘You reckon he knows you’re after him?’

  Phil shook his head and tipped a pile of chopped shallots and red peppers into a smoking skillet. ‘I don’t think he did. But I’m worried the wife will tip him off. She swore blind she wouldn’t. Although she’s refusing to give evidence against him, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to stand in the way of us taking him off the streets. But you never know. When she’s face to face with him, who knows how it’ll go.’ A hissing cloud of steam enveloped them both in a rich aroma as he crushed garlic and added it to the pan.

  ‘That’s crap. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live your life terrorised by the person who’s supposed to love you.’

  Phil turned and grinned at her. ‘Oh, I get the odd inkling.’

  ‘That’s not funny,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘So what brings you home?’ He returned his attention to the pan, stirring vigorously and adding a chopped head of fennel and a handful of diced chorizo.

  ‘I need to have a think about my next move. Plus I’ve not stopped since we found the skeleton on Saturday.’

  ‘So where are you up to?’ It was how they’d worked best when they’d been on the same team, bouncing ideas off each other. Neither saw any need to stop now they were working on completely different things. Technically, they shouldn’t be talking about confidential police matters outside their own group. But Karen had never cared about rules she couldn’t see the point of and Phil had caught the habit from her.

  Karen brought him up to speed with the day’s developments. ‘I wish I could have been there to break the news to Maggie Blake myself. I’d like to have seen her reaction. Not that I think she’s a suspect. If she was going to bump him off, she would have had plenty of opportunity to do it in a much less complicated way.’

  ‘But it’s always good to see how the spouse takes it.’ Phil transferred the vegetables to a saucepan and added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a handful of torn basil leaves. ‘Did we leave any red wine last night?’

  ‘I think there’s half a glass in the bottle.’ Karen went to fetch it from the living room. On her way back in to the kitchen, she said, ‘If you ask me, whoever did this came from his past. From the Balkan wars. He was there all the way through, you know. In the Croatian Army for the Croatian war, with NATO intelligence for Bosnia and then with the UN for Kosovo. Plenty of chances to make enemies. When he went missing – which is presumably when he was murdered – all the indictments at the war crimes tribunal had been handed down, but obviously the trials were still going on. And a fair few of the accused hadn’t been arrested yet. So it wouldn’t be surprising to find someone from the old days with powerful reasons to want Petrovic out of the picture.’

  Phil tipped the remains of the wine into the pan. ‘I’m just going to leave that to simmer,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe a wee bit of chilli?’ Karen did a big-eyed pleading pose.

  ‘Oh, all right. But only because I love you, right?’ Phil took a grinder of dried chilli from the cupboard and gave it a couple of twists over the pan.

  ‘Plus one of the guys from the climbing club said that when Petrovic went buildering, he went with somebody he’d known from back in Yugoslavia.’

  ‘So, somebody based over here, you reckon?’

  ‘Either that or someone who used to come over regularly. But according to Maggie Blake, he didn’t see much of anyone from the old days.’

  ‘Which might suggest that he had good reason for avoiding people from the past?’

  ‘That’s not such a daft idea. With him being in intelligence, he probably knew all sorts of stuff that certain people didn’t want out in the open.’ Karen picked a pear out of the fruit bowl and began eating absently. ‘Maybe even some of our people,’ she added, thinking about Macanespie and Proctor. Maybe their visit had been bullshit. Maybe they’d just been fishing for what she actually knew.

  ‘So how are you going to find out about his mysterious past?’ Phil pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her. ‘I suppose we must have high-ranking soldiers who knew him from Kosovo?’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re not going to tell the likes of me anything useful. Especially if they’re in intelligence. And even if they’re retired, they still keep their mouths shut. No, I’ve got a better idea. I went to the bookshop up by the university and checked out the books they’ve got about the Balkan wars. I was amazed how many there were. There’s a lot of people like Maggie Blake making a living from other people’s misery. It’s like true crime. Anyway, I looked at the indexes, and I found his name in one of them. The author mentions meeting Petrovic after the siege of Dubrovnik when he was just a colonel. Describes him as one of the rising talents, the ones that held out some hope for building a future that wasn’t as mental as the past.’

  ‘And that’s all he says?’

  ‘It’s all he says by name. But this guy clearly knew everybody who was anybody. He’s a journalist. He covered the Balkans right through the wars and beyond. Did a lot of stuff for the BBC as well as the print media. I managed to track him down. He’s in Brazil now. Apparently they’ve got some big sporting stuff going on down there later this year?’ She paused for effect and Phil poked his tongue out at her. ‘So I’ve arranged to FaceTime him in a couple of hours.’ She grinned. ‘I have the distinct impression that the Macaroon thinks I’m out of my league on this one. I’m looking forward to proving him wrong.’

  Theo Proctor dropped into his desk chair like a stone. ‘I’m fucking exhausted,’ he complained. ‘All that running around, and for wh
at? If we’d just waited instead of chasing Maggie Blake around Glasgow, we’d be exactly where we are now. I should be at home, having a cold beer before dinner.’

  Macanespie shrugged and turned on his computer. ‘If all you’re going to do is whinge, why don’t you just bugger off and do that?’ He glowered at the screen, fat fingers flying over the keys to bring up the spreadsheet he’d created back when they still thought Dimitar Petrovic was their vigilante assassin.

  ‘What else do you want me to do?’ Proctor took off his jacket and threw it on to the desk next to his like a petulant child.

  ‘We’ve got the best chance of finding some solid evidence in the most recent case. Miroslav Simunovic in Crete. Book us tickets on the first flight out. There must be something in the morning. It’s the tourist season. Check the records and find out who the Greek investigating officer is. Then email him and let him know we’re coming to review the case.’

  Proctor’s jaw dropped at this display of decisiveness. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘Did you not understand what Cagney was saying? Failure’s not an option here. We’re going to be nailed to the wall if we don’t deliver what he wants from us. Now, this might just be a ploy to flush you and me down the toilet. But if it is, I’m not going without a fight, all right?’ He turned back to his screen and studied it, frowning intensely.

  ‘And you think the Greeks will just cooperate? “Hello, we’re coming from The Hague to show up you bumpkins for not doing your job properly.” What could possibly go wrong?’

  ‘Well, I’d have thought we could manage a wee bit more subtlety than that. Maybe along the lines of, “We’ve got one or two suspects in other, similar cases and we want to take a look and see if anything jumps out at us.” People they couldn’t possibly know were of interest. That sort of thing. How hopeful we are that they might have gathered the crucial piece of evidence that’ll make our case. It’s called flattery, Theo.’

  ‘And what are you going to be doing while I sort all this out?’ The Welshman’s scowl was the perfect representation of a man hard done by.

  ‘I’m going through the spreadsheet line by line. We need to narrow down where the bloody inside leak has come from. I’m eliminating everyone who wasn’t on the team here at Scheveningen for the whole period of the killings. We’ve got a definite start-point now. If they weren’t on staff when Petrovic disappeared, they’re not in the running. And if they’d gone by the time Simunovic was killed, they’re also off the list. We didn’t work the list hard enough before. Be honest, Theo. We weren’t that bothered and we thought we could just busk it.’

  ‘Fair enough. But I think you’re over-reacting. Cagney can’t just fire us, for God’s sake. There are procedures.’

  Macanespie rolled his eyes. ‘Christ. You were the one rabbiting on about not wanting to lose your pension, giving me the bleeding heart stuff about having a wife and kids to support. Bleat, bleat, fucking bleat.’

  ‘Yes, well, that was before I thought things through. Before you dragged me off to Glasgow to play at James Bond. The more I think about that, the more insane it sounds.’

  ‘I didn’t drag you into it. It was your idea in the first place, remember? You were perfectly willing when you thought it was a shortcut to Wilson Cagney’s good books.’ Macanespie gave him a look of utter disgust. ‘Now, are you going to get your namby-pamby arse in gear or are you going to fuck off out of my road and let me get on with some proper work? I’m damned if I’m going to be beaten to the draw on this by that wee fat lassie from Police Scotland.’

  Muttering under his breath, Proctor turned on his computer and started looking for flights.

  26

  Karen loved the kitchen in Phil’s house, but the wifi signal wasn’t powerful enough in there to carry a FaceTime call. So she’d had to set herself up in what they scornfully called ‘the library’. Shelves of books – some fake, concealing a plasma TV – overstuffed club chairs, a leather-topped desk and a tartan carpet combined to make Karen feel she’d stumbled into the badly dressed set for some stereotyped sitcom. She adjusted the lighting so the camera wouldn’t pick up background detail, set the system to record and called Adam Turner’s number.

  The ringtone warbled and she thanked her lucky stars again that it had been so easy to track down the journalist. By happy chance, when she’d googled him she’d found a piece he’d filed only a couple of days previously in the Telegraph. A quick call to the paper’s staffer in Edinburgh had produced a contact number and email address and the rest had been amazingly easy. She’d texted him, he’d replied and they’d set up the call.

  And now her own image on the screen was dissolving and morphing into a man’s face in the bottom half of the screen, a pock-marked yellow wall behind him. His skin had a jaundiced tint that might have had something to do with the decor or the climate. Or possibly, with him being a journalist, the drink. His eyes were indistinct behind large glasses with fashionable heavy black rims. His untidy brown hair was thinning; under the bright lights of his hotel room, Karen could see pink scalp gleaming through. She hoped she didn’t look as unappealing, though you could never be sure with digital communications. ‘Hi, Adam. This is Karen Pirie from Police Scotland,’ she said, producing her best reassuring smile.

  ‘Hello, Karen. Thanks for accommodating my schedule.’ He had a typical broadcaster’s voice – rich, dark and warm, with the faintest trace of a northern accent. All the better for delivering horrors into people’s living rooms. He seemed alert and eager, which was a welcome plus in Karen’s world.

  ‘No, I appreciate you taking the time out to talk to me.’

  ‘You’re welcome. I’m always happy to take a walk down memory lane. Even when the memories are as horrific as the Balkans. You wanted to talk about my time in the Balkans? Specifically, about Dimitar Petrovic? Is that right?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  He chuckled. ‘That’s a long time and a lot of miles ago. I thought everyone had forgotten the Balkans. There’s nothing grabs the headlines less than last year’s war. So what’s your interest? What’s General Petrovic been up to?’

  ‘He’s not been up to anything for a while. He’s been dead for the past eight years.’

  Turner’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really? I didn’t know. The last I heard he was living the quiet life in Oxford. But that must be, what? Nine, ten years ago. Why are you so interested in a man who’s been dead for eight years?’

  ‘Because we’ve only just found his remains.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Surely somebody must have noticed he wasn’t around? Didn’t – what’s her name? Moira? Maggie? Something like that – didn’t she report him missing? Or is she the prime suspect?’

  ‘She thought he’d left her and returned to Croatia. He was a grown man, there were no suspicious circumstances other than his absence. So there was no reason why the police would take an interest. And no, Professor Blake is not the prime suspect,’ she added drily, knowing that without that denial Maggie would remain firmly in the media’s frame of interest. ‘Apart from anything else, I haven’t said anything that would indicate the potential existence of any suspect.’

  ‘Come on, Chief Inspector. You and I both know we wouldn’t be having this conversation unless there were suspicious circumstances. So where did he turn up? And why did it take so long? I mean, I know disposing of a body’s the hardest part of committing a murder, but eight years is a long time.’

  ‘His skeleton was found on the roof of a building that was about to be demolished.’

  ‘Wow.’ Turner looked impressed. ‘And nobody noticed there was a dead body on the roof? That’s weird.’

  ‘Not really. It was hidden from sight. And the building’s been empty for the best part of twenty years, so there was no reason for anybody to be poking around up there.’

  ‘Wow. And this was where? London? No, wait, you’re Police Scotland. So, Scotland somewhere?’

  ‘Edinburgh.’

  ‘Curiouser and c
uriouser. What was he doing in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Apparently his hobby was a thing called “buildering”. Where you free climb the outside of buildings. For fun.’ Karen still couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. Adam Turner’s face froze, his mouth open. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘Here we bloody go.’ She drummed her fingers on the desktop till the blur resolved itself and they re-established a connection.

  ‘So he climbed this building and got killed?’

  ‘That’s what we’re surmising.’

  ‘And it’s a skeleton. I’m guessing he either had his head caved in or he was shot. Anything else would be hard to categorise as murder. How am I doing?’

  She had to smile. ‘Right on the money. A bullet wound to the head, to be precise.’

  ‘And you think whoever killed him did it because of what he did during the various wars in the nineties?’

  Give a little to get a lot. She hoped. ‘He was leading an apparently blameless life in Oxford. It seems to me the chances are that whatever happened on that roof was a result of his past life, not his present one. And we have reason to believe he did his buildering with someone he’d known back then.’

  Turner chuckled. ‘I love that police speak. “Reason to believe”. And I’m guessing you’re reluctant to talk to the powers that be about General Petrovic’s war because they’ll spin you a line composed largely of bullshit?’ He froze again, his face blurring to resemble a cookie decorated by a toddler. So much for modern technology replacing the face-to-face. Karen wouldn’t swap the interview room and the whites of their eyes for a roomful of iPads. It did have its uses, especially when the witness was on the other side of the world. But it was too easy to hide behind the technology. She knew from her own experience that if you wanted to freeze the screen to earn yourself some breathing space, all you had to do was open up more apps or programs that would interfere with your FaceTime demands for bandwidth. Then you could compose yourself and figure out your answer. She didn’t think that’s what Adam Turner was doing here, but she was glad of a moment to come up with an appropriate answer.