by Val McDermid
‘Inspector Wilson? Pleased to meet you. Looks like you’ve got the scene well organised.’
‘We might not get many murders up here, but I like to think we know what we’re doing. Now, what can I tell you?’
‘Right now, what I want is to see the body and the crime scene,’ Karen said firmly. ‘I’m planning to interview the Somervilles and Mr Mackenzie when my bagman gets here in a couple of hours. And I’ll need somewhere local to use as a base. Is there a room you can give me at the station in Ullapool?’
Hamish Mackenzie reappeared at her shoulder in time to hear the end of Karen’s words. He handed her a steaming mug of coffee that smelled as improbably good as its provider looked. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t help overhearing. We’ve got a brand-new straw-bale yurt half a mile down the track, just round the bend. It’s a holiday let but our first bookings are not for a couple of weeks yet.’ He shrugged. ‘We didn’t expect to get it finished as soon as we did. You’d be very welcome to use it. Without charge, obviously. Think of it as a snagging operation.’
‘Straw-bale?’ Karen looked dubious.
‘It’s all the rage now,’ Wilson said, his disdain barely hidden. ‘Solar powered, carbon neutral, supposedly. Bloody hobbit houses all over the landscape.’
Hamish rolled his eyes. ‘I bet people said the same thing when they replaced thatch with corrugated tin roofs.’
‘They had a point,’ Karen said. ‘Has it got electricity?’
‘Solar panels and its own wind turbine. And satellite Wi-Fi. The bathroom uses rainwater capture, and there’s a body dryer instead of towels. There’s a peat stove as well.’
Wilson harrumphed. ‘Or you could opt for civilisation. We can find you a room in Ullapool.’
Hamish smiled pleasantly. ‘Up to you, Chief Inspector. But it’s the best part of an hour’s drive to Ullapool. I don’t know how long you’re going to be here, but that soon adds up … ’
‘Is it just the one bedroom?’ Karen asked. Now she was stalling for time, weighing up why Hamish Mackenzie was being so helpful. Was he simply a generous man or was there something more hiding behind the charming exterior?
‘A double room and a single.’
‘That works for us,’ she said. ‘At least for tonight. Thanks, Mr Mackenzie.’
He dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘I’ll see you later, then. I’d better take the flasks back so I can bring up another brew in a bit.’ He strode off with a brief waggle of his fingers in a casual farewell.
‘He seems very obliging,’ Karen said. All her natural instincts told her to beware of Greeks, especially when bearing gifts. Her job had inoculated her against the easy charm of the beautiful. On balance, she thought she could gain more from accepting his offer, both practically and investigatively. If Hamish Mackenzie thought being kind to her would do him any favours if he’d broken the law, he’d be sorely disappointed. He was dealing with a woman who’d been accustomed to being passed over from the days of teenage discos. Karen had no illusions about her prosaic charms.
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to be under an obligation to the man whose land this body was found on?’ Wilson’s mouth was as sulky as a toddler’s.
‘I think so. Keeping your friends close but your enemies closer cuts both ways, Inspector.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Shall we go and take a look at this body, then?’
16
1944 – Antwerp
When Arnie Burke walked in on Oberstleutnant Gisbert Falk, the German was emptying his safe, shovelling folders and black velvet bags into a capacious leather satchel. Falk turned, hand on his pistol. When he saw who it was, he relaxed. Falk thought the man who was closing the door behind him was a trusted ally, a collaborator who had been supplying him with valuable intelligence for years. Not to mention the fine cigars that were beyond even the black market in Antwerp, a port where there was little that couldn’t be bought if you had enough cash. Reassured, Falk went back to his task.
It was a misapprehension he wouldn’t live long enough to regret. In two swift silent steps Burke crossed the office, drawing his own silenced CZ1927 pistol and firing two quick shots into the back of Falk’s grizzled crewcut head. The German fell like a dropped sack of coal, clattering to the floor.
Burke worked fast. He grabbed the folders and stacked them back in the safe, closing the door and spinning the combination wheel to lock it. He collected the small black velvet bags and zipped them into a concealed body belt that circled his waist and sat unobtrusively on his hips beneath the heavy serge workman’s trousers he always wore. If Falk was discovered by any of his Wehrmacht colleagues, the intact safe meant nobody would consider robbery as a motive. There were plenty of people who hated Falk enough to take the opportunity of the approaching Canadian Army to get their own back.
Burke replaced his gun in its soft leather shoulder holster and straightened his jacket before he left the second-floor office. He passed a cleaner sweeping the stairs on the way down, but the man didn’t even raise his eyes. Even if the cleaner had heard the soft popping of the shots, there was no prospect of him talking. The poor fuckers who’d had to work for the German officers over the past few years had learned that being blind, deaf and mute were required survival strategies.
And what was one murder in the middle of a war, especially since the invading Canadians were fast approaching? Burke knew all about the exigencies of war. Falk wouldn’t be the only German officer on the wrong end of an execution in the coming days.
He emerged into a busy street, crowded with people hurrying home at the end of the day. Fear was no stranger to the citizenry of Antwerp, but this evening there was an almost electrical hum of tension in the air. Everybody believed the end was close for the German occupiers. Even the soldiers in their field grey uniforms were infected with anxiety, nervous where usually they were full of bullying bluster. Burke kept his head down and hurried through the streets. He wasn’t going home to the tiny apartment in the eaves of a medieval building by the Scheldt. It was time to pull out. Time to stop pretending to be a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond.
He’d known this moment would come and he was prepared. His exit strategy had been the first thing his OSS bosses had imprinted on his brain before they’d let him loose. But the secret of surviving undercover behind enemy lines was to make yourself truly believe in your fake life. He’d been acting the fascist for so long he’d almost forgotten what being Arnie Burke from Saginaw felt like. One thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going back to some shitty Midwestern life in a car plant. The contents of those black velvet bags were his ticket to a better life. Living a double life on the constant knife-edge of fear, he’d fucking earned that at least.
Burke walked the streets until darkness blanketed what remained of the warren of lanes behind the cathedral. He ducked into a narrow alleyway between a pair of crooked houses whose upper storeys almost touched. He unlocked the unassuming wooden door at the end and stepped into a tiny backyard. He crouched down and counted three bricks along and two up from the far corner. He scraped the dirt away with his clasp knife and eased the brick out. It was a con, like him. Only skin deep.
Behind the cover was a package wrapped tightly in oilskin. US identity papers, a passport, dollars. Burke pocketed the parcel and replaced it with the black velvet bags. It was a tight fit, but he managed it. He replaced the brick and smudged the seams around it with dirt. They’d search him when he returned to the US Army fold and he wasn’t going to risk losing what he’d worked so hard to gain. The war in Belgium wasn’t going to last much longer; Burke would find an excuse to come back to Antwerp and retrieve his treasure.
And then, look out world. Arnie Burke was on the up.
17
2018 – Wester Ross
Working cold cases, as she’d been doing for most of her career, Karen didn’t often come across crime scenes with the bodies still in situ. Generally, she worked from photographs that
had been taken a long time before, with all the limitations that implied. She followed Wilson, picking her way across the bog from tussock to tussock, avoiding the soft damp treacherous patches that would swallow her foot to the ankle and beyond.
The excavation area was protected by a white tent which was surrounded in turn by police tape. Not that there were any rubberneckers to keep at bay. If the news had reached what passed for locals around here, it hadn’t been intriguing enough to drag them away from their routine tasks. Karen ducked under the tape and Wilson handed her a white suit from a box sitting by the tent entrance. Karen struggled into the overall, slipping out of her boots one at a time and trying to avoid standing on the wet ground with an exposed sock. At least the uncomfortable suits fitted her a bit better these days. Not much compensation for the reason behind her weight loss, but you had to rescue what you could from disaster.
The first thing she took in when she entered the tent was River’s bowed head sticking out of a hole in the ground. Karen took a deep breath and followed the marked path the few yards to the edge of the pit. River caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and straightened up. ‘Karen,’ she said. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Not the circumstances I’d have chosen, but yes, it’s good to see you too. So, what have we got here?’
They both knew it was a superfluous question. All Karen had to do was look down past her feet into what was effectively a grave. What appeared to be a crude sculpture of a motorbike had been propped upright on one side of the hole, looking like a potential entrant for the Turner Prize. Beside it, his torso twisted at the waist, making an awkward angle to his legs, lay their victim. The peat had stained his skin the colour of weak coffee, but apart from that, he was as perfectly preserved as a shop window mannequin. Short dark hair, well-shaped brows, long eyelashes – they were all clearly visible now River had carefully cleared the peat debris from his head. The strong line of a square jaw and a small nose completed what was still a distinctively handsome face. Hard to believe he hadn’t been missed.
‘You can see how well-developed his musculature is,’ River pointed out. ‘He’s a real he-man.’
‘Gym bunny or working muscles?’ Karen asked.
I won’t swear to it till I get him in the dissecting room, but I’d say these are from working out. Working out hard, over a long period of time. The thing with occupational muscles is that they’re never symmetrical. You do the same task again and again and some muscles become disproportionately developed. Our man here looks as if his bulk has been built in a more balanced way.’ River leaned forward and indicated two small circular marks, each a darker shade than the surrounding skin. ‘And these are what killed him. A bullet to the chest, probably a bit to the right of the heart. But the real damage would have come from this one.’ She laid a finger against the hole in his neck. ‘All sorts of structures in here that could take major damage from a small projectile tumbling around inside. Major blood vessels, the spinal column. It could even end up bouncing around in the brain. No exit wound, you see?’
Karen understood. A small-calibre bullet, probably a .22 or something similar. Not enough power behind it to pass straight through a body, especially if it had an upward trajectory that took it inside the strong cage of the skull. But it would bounce and tunnel through every piece of soft tissue, every fragile blood vessel in its path. The dead man would have been beyond fear and pain in a matter of seconds. ‘So now you’ve had a good look at him, any estimates as to how long he’s been here?’
River shook her head. ‘I won’t know that for sure till I can do the lab tests. When John Iverson gets back to me, we’ll at least have an end point.’
‘If I pushed you?’
‘I’d still say the same thing. You’ll have somewhere to start soon enough, and with this degree of preservation, we’ll be able to give you a good photographic likeness you can put out there. Anybody who knew him is going to recognise that face. And look.’ She traced an outline on his forearm. ‘He’s got a tattoo. You can’t see the colours because of the peat staining, but the dyes will have been taken up by his lymph nodes. We’ll be able to enhance the design in the lab and tell you what the colours were.’
Karen grinned. ‘You’re a witch. Have I mentioned that?’
‘Luckily we’re not in the sixteenth century. I think I’ve done just about all I can do here. The crime scene techs have still got a shedload of work to do but they’ve taken their pix and vids, so as soon as the undertakers have bagged up the body for the drive back to Dundee, I’ll be done here.’ River moved to the end of the pit and climbed out.
‘You’re taking the body to Dundee?’ It was the first thing Wilson had said since they’d entered the tent. Karen had hoped the presence of the body had been enough to silence him.
River shrugged. ‘It’s where my lab is. There’s a whole battery of tests we need to do on this body and that’s the best place to do them. We’ve got an accredited pathologist at our disposal for the post-mortem, and then we can proceed to a more detailed exploration of the victim’s body.’
‘It’s the same jurisdiction,’ Karen reminded him. ‘We’re all Police Scotland these days.’
‘Still. This is a crime that’s taken place on my patch. I’m not comfortable with letting the body disappear down the road where we’ve got no input into what’s going on.’ Wilson’s prickles were fully extended again.
‘Call your superintendent. I’m sure he’ll confirm it’s my case now.’ Karen was tired of deferring to Wilson’s swiftness to take umbrage. She knew his boss would be more than happy to hand off a complex and potentially budget-busting case like this. ‘The most important thing at this stage is identification. And Dr Wilde’s lab is all about ID. That’s where the body needs to go. It’s not up for discussion.’ She moved across the tent to where the crime scene technicians were patiently working through the pile of peat that Wilson’s officers had removed from the hole. She introduced herself and asked for the crime scene images to be sent to her. ‘Make it a priority, please. We need to identify this man. Somebody somewhere is living with the pain of not knowing what happened to him. We get the chance to put a stop to that.’
By the time she turned back, Wilson had gone. River gave her a rueful smile. ‘Another name to add to the Christmas card list.’
Karen pulled a face. ‘I’m not here to make friends. I can’t be doing with all that pissing up lampposts business. Murder isn’t territorial. You going back tonight?’
‘If the undertaker gets here soon, yes. You?’
‘I’ll be here a while yet. I have interviews to conduct. But Hamish the hunk has offered me a holiday let down the road. An eco-yurt, would you believe?’
River raised her eyebrows, a cheeky little smile twitching her lips. ‘Some girls have all the luck.’
‘Aye. A night in an eco-yurt with the Mint. Be still my beating heart.’
‘Jason’s on his way?’
Karen checked her watch. ‘Should be here within the hour. And then the real fun begins.’
18
2018 – Wester Ross
There was no doorbell on the low stone building Hamish had directed them to. Just a heavy iron door knocker in the shape of a Celtic knot. Karen nodded to it and Jason dutifully raised it and let it fall. Jason, who had arrived scant minutes before, said, ‘So what’s going on here, boss?’
‘Good question. And what do we do when we don’t know what’s going on?’
He looked pained. ‘We pretend,’ he said, doom-laden. Pretending was not Jason’s strong suit.
As he spoke, the door opened on a young man who looked like he’d spent much of his life in front of a mirror. His hair was immaculately shaped, held in place by the kind of product urban barbershops made their profits from. His goatee was trimmed and groomed with the same precision. Skinny jeans and a red-and-black plaid shirt that still had the creases from the packaging. Karen struggled to imagine him getting his hands dirty in a peat bog. ‘Are you
the police?’ he said, an uncertain frown creasing his forehead. If he’d known how it betrayed his age, Karen thought, he’d never have let his face do that.
‘We are. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit.’ Sometimes she liked to roll out the full title. It distracted people from the depressing reality that she and Jason – and now, she supposed, Gerry McCartney – were the entirety of the Historic Cases Unit, ‘And this is Detective Constable Murray. Mr Somerville, is it?’
He nodded. ‘You’d better come in. It’s all been a bit of a shock. Welcome to Scotland, dead bodies our speciality.’ His yappy Estuary English voice was already setting Karen’s teeth on edge.
‘To be fair, they’re not exactly a common occurrence,’ Jason grunted as he followed Karen into the small square hallway.
Will Somerville opened the door on the left and led them into a spacious room that occupied about half of the building. With one sweeping look, Karen took in a compact galley kitchen at one end, separated from the sitting area by a pale wood dining table and four chairs; and exposed stone walls decorated with large framed photographs of the wild western coastline. In one corner of a tweed-covered sofa a woman was huddled, legs tucked under herself. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, from which a few untidy strands had escaped. Anxiety had sharpened the bones of her face, making her look like a small frightened animal. ‘This is my wife, Alice,’ Will said. ‘Alice, it’s the police. Finally.’
He dropped on to the sofa next to her and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘We’ve had no information at all about what’s been going on,’ he added, trying for stern and achieving only sulky.
‘We prefer to wait until we have something to report,’ Karen said, mild and calm. ‘Now, I know you had a chat with the local officers earlier, but my team has taken over the case because it’s clear that this is not a recent incident. And I’m afraid that means we’ll have to go through the whole thing with you again.’