Broken Ground (Karen Pirie Book 5)

by Val McDermid

  ‘So where did all the people go?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Well, duh,’ Will said. ‘How do you think Canada ended up full of people with Scottish names?’

  ‘Canada, and New Zealand, and the Carolinas, and India and pretty much everywhere else the British Empire needed willing bodies,’ Hamish said, his tone less blunt. ‘Right now, there are far more descendants of the Scottish diaspora scattered around the world than there are living in Scotland.’

  ‘Wow, I so didn’t know that.’ Alice surveyed the landscape, trying to imagine what Hamish had described. ‘Was that even legal?’

  Hamish shook his head. ‘They didn’t have secure tenancies back then.’

  ‘But couldn’t they protest? Put up a fight?’

  Hamish gave her a long, hard look. ‘There’s not much you can do about it when they set fire to your house in the middle of the night because you want to stand up for yourself.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’ Alice’s eyes were wide.

  ‘So, how long have your family been farming here?’ Will asked before she could say anything more.

  ‘The parish records go back to 1659, and we were here then. My grandparents thought they would be the last of the line because my mum moved away to Edinburgh to become a doctor and my uncle joined the army and married a German woman and settled over there. But I’ve been coming here every chance I get since I was wee, and I learned from them how to manage the land. So they left the tenancy to me.’ He grinned at them. ‘How lucky am I?’

  Alice looked dubious. ‘Does it not get lonely?’

  Hamish shook his head. ‘Plenty going on around here.’

  ‘The winters must be very bloody bleak.’ Will’s expression was sour.

  ‘I kinda like bleak. And it’s a contrast with now. I mean, look at it. With the sun out, you could be in Greece. The sparkle of sea, all turquoise like the Med. And the landscape, it’s not that different from Crete.’

  ‘Apart from the temperature being about fifteen degrees lower.’ Will again, his resentment getting the better of him.

  And then they breasted a gentle rise in the road and right ahead of them a yellow mini-digger squatted by the side of the road. A small cab with a flimsy roof perched on top of a pair of caterpillar treads, its toothed bucket tucked under its folded arm like some sleeping mechanical bird. The paintwork was faded and the dents and scratches had been repainted in a not-quite-matching shade. ‘It’s not exactly a new bit of kit,’ Hamish admitted. ‘But we look after stuff round here – it has to last a long time before it starts to earn its keep.’

  He swung himself easily into the cab, where he looked like an adult in an over-indulged child’s toy. ‘Let’s get started.’ The engine caught at the first attempt. ‘Will, can you grab those spades and the crowbar?’ He pointed towards the crooked tree on the far side of the digger, then set off across the boggy heathland.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Will said, struggling to manage three spades and a substantial crowbar.

  ‘Give me that.’ Alice reached for the crowbar. ‘Wow, that’s heavy. He said he’d marked the spot, remember? I’m assuming he knows what direction he’s going in. I mean, he’s not going to go off at random, is he? It might look like a wilderness to us, but he probably knows it like the back of his hand.’

  Will hung back. ‘Alice? How much do we know about this guy? I mean, we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. Not another human being in sight. He’s got a digger and a bloody heavy crowbar. He could be some kind of mad Highland serial killer for all we know.’

  Alice’s mouth fell open momentarily, then she burst into a fit of giggles. ‘You had me there for a nanosecond, you bad, bad boy. Mad Highland serial killer.’ She snorted with laughter. ‘Come on, you lazy sod. Let’s go and make our fortune.’

  8

  2018 – Wester Ross

  It was immediately apparent that Hamish knew what he was doing with the digger. He positioned the bucket on the far side of the staked-out area and lowered it with surprisingly smooth delicacy towards the surface of the rough bogland. The teeth bit through the coarse grasses and scrubby heather, digging into the peaty soil. They scraped a long scar across the surface, then Hamish manoeuvred the bucket up and across, depositing the contents outside the baler twine he’d positioned as a guide.

  Alice couldn’t help herself. She gave a whoop of delight as the claggy peat slid out in a glistening pile. Hamish caught her enthusiasm and grinned back at her then returned to his task. He stripped an area about two and a half metres by a metre. Then, painstakingly, he cleared the layers of peat until, without warning, the soft sucking of the peat gave way to a faint scraping. Frantic, Will waved his arms, convinced Hamish couldn’t hear the change of note over the digger’s engine.

  But Hamish had already disengaged the bucket; years of working the land had sensitised him to the shift in vibration as the digger hit a different density. He jumped down and joined Alice and Will, who were peering into the hole. It was over a metre deep, the brown water seeping from the edges making it hard to distinguish anything. ‘What is it?’ Alice asked.

  Hamish took a torch from his pocket, playing a thin beam of light over the surface below. ‘I’m not sure. Could be wood, could be stone,’ he said. ‘Only one way to find out.’ He crouched at the edge and let himself slide down into the hole. His boots squelched on soft peat but he could feel something substantial underfoot. He hunkered down and rubbed his fingers cautiously through the muck. Definitely something solid. ‘Chuck me down one of the spades,’ he said.

  ‘I’m coming down,’ Alice said, her voice shrill with excitement.

  ‘Wait, no!’ Will sounded cross but it had no impact on his wife. She jumped down regardless, staggering into Hamish as she landed and almost sending him sprawling.

  He laughed and shook his head in faint exasperation. ‘Better make that two spades, Will.’

  Clearing the surface was tedious work, but half an hour later they’d exposed a series of planks stained the same dark brown as the peat walls of the hole. ‘It looks like a coffin,’ Alice said.

  ‘Wrong shape,’ Hamish grunted, scraping the last of the peat from the far end of the wood.

  ‘Do you want the crowbar now?’ Will asked.

  Hamish nodded, wiping the sweat from his brow and leaving a dark smear on his skin. ‘Aye, let’s see if we can get inside.’

  Alice reached up and grabbed the end of the crowbar as Will lowered it. ‘This is so exciting,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait.’

  ‘There are no guarantees,’ Hamish cautioned her. ‘There’s no knowing what state your inheritance is going to be in. It’s been down here a long time.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a peat bog, right?’ Will chipped in. ‘I mean, I’ve read about bodies being preserved in peat bogs for hundreds of years.’

  ‘Bodies are one thing. I’ve no idea what happens to metal if the water gets to it down here. I’m no chemist, but it’s really acidic and I’m guessing it’s not very kind to metal and rubber.’ Seeing Alice’s downcast expression, he shrugged. ‘Fingers crossed, though. Come on, let’s see if we can get a look inside.’

  Hamish stood on the furthest side and jammed the claw of the crowbar into the narrow gap he’d cleared between the planks. Grunting with effort, he struggled to raise the furthermost board. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a creak; a groan; and finally a toe-curling screech as the long-sealed gap succumbed to Hamish’s weight. Freed, the plank tipped sideways against the peat wall. ‘Bloody hell,’ Hamish gasped.

  Alice paid no heed, leaning past him and snatching the torch up from where he’d put it down earlier. ‘There’s definitely something there,’ she shouted. ‘Will, I can see something.’

  ‘What sort of something?’ Will demanded.

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. We need to get the other boards up,’ Hamish said. He attacked the next plank over, which shifted more readily now it had somewhere to go. A third followed it, and that cleared enough of a spac
e for them to get a sense of what lay beneath. It was a shapeless bulk, stained dark brown from the peaty water that had seeped into the crate over the years. ‘Looks like a tarpaulin,’ he said.

  ‘Christ,’ Will exploded. ‘Is it waterproof? Or are we just going to find a bag of rust?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Hamish’s tone was mild but Alice caught the look of irritation that tightened his mouth and furrowed his brow.

  ‘What do we need to do, Hamish?’ Her voice had a sweet warmth that Will recognised. But he didn’t resent it; rather, he recognised it as step one on Alice’s regular route to getting her own way.

  ‘We need to get the rest of these boards lifted and then get a rope round the tarp. I can fasten that on to the digger arm, then we’ll be able to lift it clear.’ Hamish picked up one of the loose boards and thrust it upwards towards Will. ‘There you go, do something useful and put that out the road.’

  Alice put a hand on Hamish’s shoulder. ‘I bet all that’s easier said than done,’ she said. ‘You’re amazing, Hamish. I can’t believe you’re putting yourself out like this for a pair of strangers.’

  ‘That’s Highland hospitality for you.’ It was impossible to miss the thread of sarcasm in his voice but he carried on with the backbreaking filthy task he’d outlined. After he prised another plank free, Hamish persuaded Alice to accept a leg-up out of the hole to give him space to finish the job. ‘It’s easier to manage by myself.’ The implication was clear; neither Alice nor Will had enough of a clue to be any use in the practical matter of unearthing their own inheritance.

  ‘You’re so strong,’ Alice said as she scrambled out of the way. ‘It’s amazing, watching you work.’

  He chuckled. ‘There’s a dozen like me in the local pub. So much of the land around here is impossible to cultivate with conventional machinery. You work this land, you can’t avoid building muscle.’

  ‘All the same … ’ She gave him a dreamy look.

  Will caught it and scowled. ‘Yeah, well, horses for courses. I bet Hamish wouldn’t feel so confident preparing a costing proposal for replacement windows.’

  Hamish shook his head and continued with the backbreaking work. It took a while, and attaching the rope to the tarpaulin was difficult and treacherous, but finally, he clambered back to the surface, the rope wound round his body. He undid it and attached it to the arm of the digger, above the bucket. Then centimetre by slow centimetre, the mahogany-stained bundle emerged from the boggy hole, dripping with sludge and clarted with muck. The tarpaulin rendered its contents entirely amorphous.

  Hamish gently lowered it to the ground. Eyes wide, Alice and Will drew close, one step at a time, both apparently struck at last by how amazing an achievement this was. ‘Wow,’ Alice breathed as Hamish jumped down and joined them. He unzipped a breast pocket and took out a large clasp knife, opened the blade and handed it haft first to Alice. She looked startled.

  ‘Go on,’ Hamish said. ‘It was your granddad that buried it, it’s only right that you should be the one to open it up.’

  ‘How? Where do I … ?’

  ‘I don’t think it matters. Grab the tarp with one hand and stick the knife in. It’s sharp, it’ll do the work for you.’

  They all held their breath. Almost overwhelmed with the mixture of trepidation and anticipation, Alice did her best to grip the slimy unyielding canvas.

  ‘Up a bit,’ Hamish said. ‘Look, it’s like a seam. I think somebody’s taped it down to make it watertight.’

  Alice peered down. It took the best part of a minute, but she eventually made out what Hamish had noticed. Gingerly, she stuck the knife in and wiggled it about. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the blade found a weakness and sliced cleanly along the barely visible seam. Alice let out a low scream of delight, almost capering along the side of the tarpaulin, splitting it open like a giant banana peel.

  The canvas slid away, revealing a second protective sheath. ‘Oilskin,’ Hamish said. ‘Whoever did this, they knew their business. Go on, Alice, you’re nearly there.’

  A second cut, and this time, nobody spoke. The buried treasure emerged from its covering like a moth from a chrysalis. Painted in khaki drab, complete with twin leather panniers, as clean as the day it was cocooned: a 1944 Indian 741 motorcycle.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Hamish breathed. ‘Now that’s what I call a miracle.’

  9

  2018 – Edinburgh

  If Gerry McCartney really was the Dog Biscuit’s lapdog, Karen decided she’d better not offer herself up on a plate to the ACC. There was an argument that said senior officers shouldn’t dirty their hands with the scut work. But the Historic Cases Unit was so tiny, Karen had grown accustomed to mucking in when she had nothing more pressing to occupy her. So as she’d walked up the hill the next morning, hunched against a steady drizzle blowing in from the North Sea, she’d decided to roll up her sleeves and show McCartney how they did things on her team.

  There was no sign of the new boy but Jason was already at his desk, his ginger hair darkened to auburn by the rain that had plastered it to his head. He’d recently moved into a cramped one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor of a tenement building in one of the side streets near the bottom of Leith Walk. He’d explained to Karen that parking spots were at such a premium, he only moved the car if he absolutely had to. Getting soaked on the fifteen-minute walk to work was better than a twenty-minute hunt at the end of the day for somewhere to park. It was a familiar complaint in the city; the council sold far more parking permits than there were available spaces. It had been one of the reasons Karen had opted for a modern block with dedicated underground parking.

  ‘You need to invest in a hat.’ Karen shook out her umbrella and hung up her coat.

  ‘I look stupid in a hat.’

  ‘You don’t look that smart without one.’ McCartney had arrived. Dry as a bone. ‘Am I the only one that knows what a car’s for?’

  Jason flushed and frowned at his screen. Irritated, Karen produced an insincere smile and said, ‘Well, Gerry, since you’re the only one that’s not already drookit, you can go and get the coffees. Mine’s a flat white with an extra shot. From Valvona and Crolla, across the road on Elm Row.’

  McCartney stopped halfway through taking off his overcoat. ‘That makes no sense. Jason’s already wet, it’s no skin off his nose to go back out in the rain.’

  ‘Jason’s already stuck in at his work, Gerry. I don’t want to interrupt that. Last in … ’

  He muttered something unintelligible through tight lips and shrugged his coat back on. ‘Fine,’ he snapped. ‘What does the ginger ninja want?’ Jason flicked a quick glance at the sergeant, but said nothing. McCartney caught Karen’s eyes narrowing and blustered. ‘What? This is a cop shop. Everybody’s got a nickname.’

  ‘Aye. And Jason’s is the Mint.’ The final ‘t’ was percussive and dismissive. ‘I’ve heard what they call you, Gerry. If you’re lucky, we’ll not use it.’ Karen turned away and wakened her computer screen. ‘At least, not to your face.’

  The door shut with a sharp snick, the nearest it was possible to get to a slam thanks to its slightly warped frame. There was a long moment of silence, then Jason said, ‘What is his nickname, boss?’

  Karen chuckled. ‘I neither know nor care. But he obviously does.’ She swung round in her chair. ‘So where are we up to with the red Rovers?’

  ‘Well, it’s not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. According to DVLA’s records, there were only sixteen red Rovers registered in Scotland in 1986 with a first letter B in the reg. They pinged the details across late yesterday morning and we were doing our best to track down the owners.’

  ‘“We?”’

  Jason’s eyes slid to the side, as if he was checking something on his screen. ‘Well, mostly me. DS McCartney had some calls to make. You know how it is?’

  Karen shook her head. ‘Don’t let him make you his drudge, Jason. If he’s dodging, you need to tell me, OK? He’s here to do a job, same
as you.’

  Jason sighed, but he nodded weakly. ‘So, I wasn’t getting very far and then I had a thought.’ He gave her a wary look, half-expecting incredulity.

  ‘Always a good start,’ Karen said, her tone neutral.

  ‘I went back to DVLA, because I figured if somebody was the registered owner of a motor, chances were they had a driving licence as well. So I asked them if it was possible to run the drivers’ details that corresponded to the registered owners. The lassie I spoke to was really helpful, for once. So when I came in this morning, she’d sent me current addresses for thirteen of them. I think the other three are dead or abroad because they all drop off the records between six months and five years ago, according to the DVLA lassie. Kayleigh, her name is.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’ Karen tried not to sound surprised, but she was. As Jason grew in confidence, he was starting to confound her expectations. Maybe choosing, ‘What would Phil do?’ as a mantra was paying off. How weird would that be? Phil’s ghostly presence improving her working life – she’d better not tell Jimmy or he’d be sending for the guys with the jackets that fasten up the back. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Jason nodded and set the printer wheezing into action. It spat out a couple of sheets of paper, which he passed across. Names, addresses, dates of birth. She grinned. ‘This is a great start. I really didn’t think we’d get anywhere with something so slender.’

  ‘How’re we going to tackle it?’

  Karen pored over the list, mentally dividing it by location, age and gender. She marked four with a cross, six with an asterisk and three with a horizontal line. ‘Those four are guys in the Central Belt. All mid-fifties upwards. Gerry’s the best fit for them. These six are all older women, from Edinburgh to Stonehaven. That’s your slice of the action, Jason. Little old ladies love you. And I’ll take these last three. Women in their fifties. That’s about my speed. We’ll crack on with the interviews today.’