The Second Strain

by John Burke

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Made no bones about it.’ The sergeant snickered. ‘If you see what I mean. Pleaded guilty and proud of it. Said that Erskine’s hands wouldn’t be wandering over his wife’s body again, and wouldn’t be much use on a piano keyboard. Got four years — or was it five?’

  ‘I meant after he’d got out.’

  ‘We never had any reason to follow that up.’

  ‘I’ve asked around,’ Elliot interrupted. ‘Lang seems to have made himself scarce. His wife cleared off after he was put away, and there’s talk of her divorcing him, but nobody’s too sure. But how does this fit in with the time our corpse met her end? You don’t think she might be . . .?’

  ‘What I do think,’ said Lesley, ‘is that it’s high time we settled down to getting our dates sorted out. Who was where, and when.’ She looked unfavourably round the bleak station walls, their only decoration a few lists of regulations, a don’t-drink-and-drive poster, one of the timetables for The Gathering, and a photo of a missing schoolgirl, then raised an eyebrow at Elliot.

  ‘Care for a coffee across the road?’

  The Wee Bothy Tearoom sported lace curtains looped back to allow passers-by to see that trade was brisk, and plastic tartan tablecloths. Trade was in fact not all that brisk at this time of day. The only customers as Lesley and her companion entered were two elderly ladies at the window table. They could have been twins, in identical dark purple coats which they had not unbuttoned while eating. One of them was distinguished from the other by a large hairy mole on her right jaw. Her friend wore a large Victorian brooch which caught an occasional spark of light as a passing lorry’s windscreen tossed a reflection into the tearoom. Propped against their chair legs were large plastic bags labelled MACKENZIE’S PROVISIONS: BONNIEST IN THE BORDERS.

  The waitress was a thin girl with a whiny edge to her voice as she repeated their order for coffee and shortbread word for word, as if she would remember it better by rote than by the notes she had scribbled on her pad.

  A few moments after she had disappeared through the kitchen door, there was a sudden blast of pop music from a speaker dangling above the serving counter. Lesley winced. The two women at the window table bristled. The moment the girl came back with the coffee and shortbread, the woman with the hairy mole snapped: ‘Since when have ye had that dreary din?’

  ‘It’s all to do with the festival. And people expect to have that sort of music nowadays.’

  ‘We don’t expect it,’ said the woman with the mole. ‘And we’d not be wanting it. Perhaps ye’ll see to turning it off.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Mrs Craig.’

  ‘Do that. Or send Mrs Craig out here.’

  The girl shuffled off, banging her hip against one of the tables as she went.

  ‘Always was a dismal dreep, that Reid lass.’

  ‘Half Irish,’ said the brooch dismissively. ‘And there’s a few saying the other half could have been a wee touch foreign as well. That so-called McCabe laddie who was here during the war, before he went back wherever he came from — there was talk of him and the McKechnie lass, and her son married that girl’s mother from Larne, so . . .’ She glanced at Lesley Gunn and Elliot as if noticing them for the first time, and leaned across the table to mumble confidences made even less intelligible by a mouthful of cake crumbs.

  The music stopped in mid-bar. Mrs Craig was evidently in no mood for confrontation. When the girl came back, she steered clear of the window table before reaching Lesley and Sergeant Elliot.

  ‘Well, now.’ Lesley stirred her cappuccino. ‘Who’s top suspect?’

  ‘It might narrow things down if we knew who the corpse was. A local girl, presumably. Somebody got her pregnant. And then tried to dispose of her. Daniel Erskine? But he doesn’t seem to have been ashamed of his carryings-on. You’ve only got to listen to local gossip’ — Elliot glanced at the silhouette of two women’s heads close together against the window — ‘to know that he didn’t give a damn about the consequences. Why murder one of them in particular?’

  Lesley, too, kept her voice down, not wanting to contribute any more fuel to the two old women’s gossip. ‘True. And in any case, do the dates fit? I fancy there’s too big a gap.’

  ‘Since Forensic are willing to estimate the time of death as around nine years ago, that would have been long after Erskine left the area.’

  ‘He could have paid return visits. Openly, or surreptitiously.’

  ‘That would take some establishing.’

  ‘The other one — the Czech? The one they called McCabe. Another tearaway, by all accounts.’

  ‘He went off behind the Iron Curtain. And when it was lifted, he doesn’t seem to have reappeared.’ Elliot meditatively crunched a corner of shortbread. ‘But that possible date of death — that would be around the time that Adam Lowther’s father took his wife and son away at very short notice.’

  That idea had fidgeted off-and-on at the back of Lesley’s mind. It was time to bring it to the forefront. ‘Lowther senior may not have wanted to wreck his marriage. And working for a puritanical old bigot like Buchanan, there’s a chance his job would have been at risk as well.’

  ‘But Lowther only had an office job. Would he have been capable of getting a corpse up there on his own and sealing it up in a concrete overcoat? And if he had a helper . . . who would that have been?’

  Lesley scraped froth off the sides of her cup with a spoon. Divination by tea-leaves had been an old custom: a pity there was no way that the patterns in cappuccino froth could provide any inspiration.

  ‘Why do you suppose Erskine’s come back after all this time? I understand he turned down an invitation to appear at The Gathering, but then changed his mind.’

  ‘Changed it,’ Elliot had no need to remind her, ‘after the news was published that our corpse was a woman. And pregnant.’

  ‘Quite. It seems to me,’ said Lesley, ‘that we do have to interview Erskine. And Adam Lowther. And see about drawing up a calendar, complete with the usual paraphernalia of drawing pins and little stickers in pretty colours.’ She finished her delving with the spoon. ‘Erskine first, I think.’

  ‘You do believe in tackling the tough ones first, guv.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lesley, ‘I do.’

  Chapter Three

  Halfway through Thursday morning the pack began assembling. At first there was no apparent purpose. They emerged on to the streets one or two at a time, staring up at the streamers of flags with their semi-quaver emblem as if wondering how to whistle the notes, and then drifting vaguely together. It was common enough in the evenings to see groups of Kilstane teenagers lounging aimlessly about on street corners or huddled into shop doorways. But this wasn’t an evening, and the men were not teenagers but middle-aged and older citizens of the town. They looked a bit baffled by their own aimless sauntering, waiting for a cue. Enoch Buchanan emerged from the alley beside the Tolbooth and stared across the marketplace like a sergeant-major planning manoeuvres on a parade ground. Instinctively the other men began to gather around him.

  Adam Lowther, on his way back from the printer with another supply of leaflets for his shop, saw them, and beyond them saw two strangers dressed in calculatedly scruffy hobo costumes, carrying a concertina and a guitar. It was a day too soon for them to take on the role of strolling players, but they were in the mood to play, and seeing a potential audience waiting, they launched into a reel. There were as yet none of the police appointed to move them politely on.

  Briefly distracted, neither Adam nor the cluster of men across the square saw two figures coming down the hill from the Academy. They could have been a couple of sightseeing tourists at this time of year, simply taking in the buildings and atmosphere of the place, to be fitted into a pattern when they talked it over later and riffled through their photographs. Neither of them, though, was carrying a camera.

  And they were no ordinary trippers. One was Duncan Maxwell from the Tourist Information Office. The othe
r was Daniel Erskine.

  Duncan must be guiding the visitor down familiar streets and half-forgotten or lost memory lanes, explaining rebuilding and a new one-way system which had been made since his day.

  They all saw Erskine and all recognized him at the same moment.

  Without any apparent signal the men moved out on to the square, splaying out to form an arc across the path of the two men, its wings ready to close in and drive them into a narrow cul-de-sac. Behind them a white van jolted to a halt and its horn blared out. It was ignored. The concertina and guitar went on grinding away at a less steady tempo.

  Adam tensed, uncertain what move to make.

  They were such an ordinary cluster of men. Nothing about them to suggest a serious breach of the peace in the offing. But among them were some who had marched, two years ago, to an old croft outside the town where a paedophile newly released from jail had been housed by the authorities, ransacked the place, and beaten him up. They had been brought together today by the reek of another prey.

  Adam stepped out decisively and joined Duncan and Erskine. ‘You can see what they’re hoping, to do, sir. They want to drive you into Souters Wynd and deal with you there.’

  ‘Deal with me?’ Erskine snorted. ‘Scum. It was always the scum that came to the top in this town, never the cream.’

  ‘You’d better move. Can I join you?’ Adam was trying to urge them along the pavement without showing too obvious a panic. ‘I never get tired of looking into places I knew when I was a kid. You must have the same sort of feeling.’

  ‘Sentimental crap. Only too glad to shake the dust of the place off my feet. Only it wasn’t dust but shit.’ But then, gruffly, Erskine said: ‘No use thinking of the might-have-beens. Or even’ — a mischievous, throaty chuckle — ‘the things that really were.’ Unexpectedly his padded right glove rested on Adam’s arm. Adam felt that if there had been usable fingers inside that glove, they would have closed affectionately on his wrist.

  The gang had decided to advance. ‘Oot o’ the way, young Maxwell. And you, Lowther — we’ve nothing against ye.’

  Adam stood beside Erskine. ‘Three of us are better than two,’ he said optimistically.

  The self-appointed vigilantes charged. Adam was knocked to one side. The leaflets he had been clutching went flying. Some went face down, others fluttered along the gutter with a photograph of a younger Daniel Erskine staring up at the sky.

  Duncan grabbed Erskine’s arm and rushed him towards the alley beside the Tolbooth.

  By the time Adam had picked himself up, the mob had gone yelling in pursuit. Their voices faded, then raged out again from another direction. The pounding of feet ebbed and flowed, with a few murmuring intervals of frustration.

  Three men came back to the square and began pushing their way into shops along High Street and hammering on house doors, like secret police determined to flush out a fugitive.

  ‘Would ye be sheltering that Erskine scunner? Come on, Maisie, he’s not worth it. Hand him over.’

  ‘Ye stupid gowk. Why would I be —’

  ‘If it’s not you, maybe it’s Jessie next door, eh? We ken where your Wullie came from, don’t we? And her Katrina . . .’

  A vase of flowers snatched from the hall table was emptied over his head.

  Adam gathered up as many leaflets as he could and headed for the police station. There was a woman in a dark blue cardigan at the desk in the outer office, but it was obviously not police issue. She was civilian staff.

  ‘Where’s the duty sergeant?’ Adam demanded.

  ‘The station’s not fully manned on a Thursday morning.’ She spoke with prissy precision.

  ‘Well, where’s that woman detective, and her sidekick?’

  ‘I believe they’re away somewhere. And they don’t come under our jurisdiction. In an emergency, Rowanbie station should be contacted.’

  ‘Bloody hell, this is an emergency. There’s a riot brewing out there.’

  ‘If you’ll give me the details, I’ll phone through and see how they’re fixed at Rowanbie.’

  ‘Just give me the phone, and —’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s not allowed.’

  ‘This is crazy.’ As her face hardened with self-righteous dignity, he implored her: ‘Look, please call Rowanbie, and tell them there’s a vigilante mob on the loose, chasing Daniel Erskine.’

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘Erskine. The composer. And if you wait too long, there’s a chance they could kill him.’

  ‘Oh, really, sir!’ She reached sceptically for the phone. ‘May I tell them your name, so that we have a record of who is reporting the alleged disturbance?’

  Outside the station, Galbraith, his camera at the ready, was trying desperately to make out what distant noises might mean. ‘Adam, is it true? They’re after him? What’s the story?’

  Adam brushed past him and hurried back to the shop to make his own phone call. Through the window he saw a woman like an avenging fury, her hair wild, gesticulating with long, slender fingers as if to bring down incantations on somebody’s head. Nora’s head was bent before the storm.

  A strident voice was added to the gesticulations as he opened the shop door. ‘There you are.’ Mairi McLeod turned as if to accuse him of some monstrous crime. ‘Where is he? Where’s Daniel?’

  ‘I don’t know. The last I saw of him . . .’ Adam faltered.

  ‘I assumed he had come to see you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Well . . .’ It was Mairi McLeod’s turn to hesitate. Then she said unconvincingly: ‘Oh, to arrange one of your concerts. Or just to talk.’

  There was no way out of telling her the truth. ‘He’s been stravaiging, rambling round old haunts. Only I’m afraid one or two awkward customers seem likely to cut up rough.’

  ‘I should never have let him out of my sight.’ She took a long, shuddering breath. Her fingers clenched and slackened, clenched again, as if trying to strangle somebody. ‘I want the police in on this before it’s too late.’

  ‘I’ve already been to the station.’

  ‘And?’

  He explained, and she exploded again.

  ‘So he’s out there on his own?’

  ‘Duncan Maxwell’s with him.’

  Nora’s little gasp of alarm didn’t escape Marie McLeod. ‘A reliable friend? Or not?’

  ‘Duncan works part-time in the Tourist Office. He knows the place pretty well.’ Adam hedged. ‘Excellent guide.’

  ‘But . . .?

  ‘He doesn’t mind the odd dram or two,’ said Nora dismally.

  ‘That’s all we need!’ raged Mairi McLeod. ‘A guide to anywhere you can get pissed.’

  ‘He’ll turn up.’ On his way towards his own phone, Adam tried to sound reassuring.

  *

  The Schiltron Circle were assembling in the function room of the Pheasant as Adam hurried in from the saloon bar. He was only a guest speaker, not a member of the club, so had to wait deferentially by the wine racks while they went through their opening formalities. He had hoped to catch the Chairman before the ritual got under way and warn him that their most distinguished guest had unfortunately gone missing, but he dared not interrupt the preliminary rites.

  Captain Scott-Fraser, his chest puffed out like a pigeon which could not possibly make room for anything further to eat this lunchtime, stood framed in the curve of the dining-room’s bow window, and began a booming intonation.

  ‘Let this month’s chosen men-at-arms present themselves.’

  Six members shuffled forwards along the narrow space between the wall and the tables. There were two accountants, one solicitor, a newsagent, a retired naval commander, and Enoch Buchanan.

  Buchanan, breathing heavily, had only just made it on time. He glared at Adam in a way that suggested he was longing to pick a fight — which also suggested that they must have failed to get their hands on Erskine — but even Buchanan was not arrogant enough to break ranks at this point in the
proceedings.

  The Chairman stood to attention. The six men stood to attention. Upon his appointment, Scott-Fraser had wanted to adopt the title of Marischal, but the less grandiose title of Chairman had been established long before his appearance in the district.

  ‘Form the schiltron.’

  The six men huddled together in a tight hedgehog, each holding a skean-dhu at shoulder level, bristling outwards at an angle of forty-five degrees, symbolizing the tightly packed battle groups of Bruce’s day.

  Scott-Fraser cleared his throat and intoned: ‘Now is the time . . .’

  ‘Now is the hour,’ responded the sextet.

  The dirks were sheathed, and they took their allotted places at the table.

  Scott-Fraser called upon an official known as a Pikeman to report on donations to local charities, and an appeal for more money to be allocated to Kilstane’s home for the elderly to replace windows smashed by hooligans on the evening of a televised rugger match between England and Scotland. There was also an excess expenditure on the last Burns’ Supper night, still unresolved from their last meeting. A small levy must be made at the end of today’s luncheon in order to balance the books.

  Adam could only be thankful that, as a guest, he was placed beside Scott-Fraser and ran no risk of being Buchanan’s neighbour. On the other side of the Chairman was an empty place, waiting for the guest of honour to make his brief appearance at the end of the luncheon.

  It was now his task to warn his host that Daniel Erskine might not, after all, show up.

  ‘What? Why the blazes not?’

  ‘There was some unpleasantness in the town earlier. Harassment by a group of ill-wishers.’