by Val McDermid
Karen shook her head. ‘A crofter found his body in a peat bog in a wee place called Clashstronach. About an hour out of Ullapool, round about where Wester Ross turns into Sutherland.’
‘Clashstronach? Never heard of it. What the hell happened to him?’
‘We think he was helping somebody dig up a couple of motorbikes that were buried there at the end of the Second World War—’
‘Motorbikes? Joey never had a bike. He never had any interest in bikes that I knew.’ Macaulay looked confused. ‘So what happened? Did he get sucked into the bog? That can happen, I’ve heard tell.’
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mr Macaulay. Joey appears to have been shot.’
A long silence. ‘Shot?’ It was barely above a breath.
‘That’s what it’s looking like right now.’
His lips quivered. ‘That’s … that’s brutal. Joey never deserved that. What the hell could he have done to bring that on himself? I’d maybe have credited it if he’d been caught out with somebody’s wife, but digging up motorbikes? That’s mental.’
Karen let Macaulay sit with this new knowledge for a moment. When he seemed more composed she said, ‘Did he have any enemies? Rivals who might have wanted him out of the way?’
Macaulay winced. ‘He had rivals, right enough. But the games and the strongman circuit isn’t the kind of world where you bump off somebody that can throw the hammer a wee bit further than you. End of the day, we’re pals. Sure, you get a couple of guys getting into a wee ruck sometimes, but never anything serious. And like I said, everybody liked Joey. I’m not just saying that because he’s dead. Ask anybody that knew him, they’ll say the same.’
‘With all that charm, did he have a girlfriend? Anybody he saw regularly?’
A wistful smile. ‘He liked his fun, did Joey. But he never made any promises or stuck to any one lassie. He said he wasnae ready to settle down.’
‘Did he introduce you to the American lassie in Invercharron?’
Macaulay snorted with laughter. ‘No chance of that. He was keeping her to himself.’
‘What about friends? Was there anybody he was particularly close to?’
Macaulay pointed to his chest. ‘Who’s the one he came to for the money? I was his pal. I took him under my wing right from the get-go. I could see he was going to be a star and it never hurts to be pals with the stars. That’s how it started, but it turned out we actually enjoyed hanging about with each other.’
‘We need someone to formally identify Joey’s body—’
‘I’m not doing that!’ It was almost a shout. ‘I can’t, I can’t look at a dead body.’
It was an extreme reaction. Almost a suspicious one, Karen thought. Macaulay had given a splendid performance of candour, but it might be just that – a performance. If he’d killed Joey Sutherland, the last thing he’d want would be a confrontation with the body. Especially all these years later. Karen parked the idea for further consideration and said, ‘So can you put us in touch with any family members? Parents, perhaps, or siblings? Where did he come from?’
‘His family came from Rosemarkie on the Black Isle. Joey couldn’t escape fast enough. He hated life on the land. Didnae much like his family either. He had a sister. She got the brains, he got the brawn. She went to the university at Edinburgh. She’s a lawyer now. Well, she was the last I heard. Donalda, that’s her name, though everybody called her Dolly.’
Jason added the name to his notebook.
‘Are his parents still on the Black Isle?’ Karen asked.
Macaulay shook his head. ‘I saw their place up for sale five or six years back. I heard they’d moved down to Edinburgh. Dolly bought them some wee retirement flat without so much as a window box. The chat in the pub said old man Sutherland had had enough of breaking his back for next to no reward. Never wanted to turn a spit of soil again.’ He gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Ironic, given where Joey ended up.’ He frowned and fixed Karen with a shrewd look. ‘Do you think he was killed right after Invercharron? That he never ran away at all? That all this time I’ve been thinking ill of him when he was lying dead?’
There was no way to sweeten the pill. ‘It looks that way,’ she said. ‘You weren’t to know.’
Macaulay clenched his fists and banged them on his knees. ‘Aye, but all the same … What kind of friend jumps straight to thinking the worst? What kind of friend doesn’t even bother telling the polis when somebody disappears?’
‘He was a grown man, Mr Macaulay. Whatever happened to Joey, it wasn’t your fault.’ It was inadequate, she knew. But it was better than telling that other truth: that Joey Sutherland had been responsible for the choices that had led him to a shallow grave in a Wester Ross peat bog. He probably hadn’t deserved what had happened to him. But he’d chosen the road that had taken him there.
29
2018 – Edinburgh
It had been too late for Jason’s visit to the cinema by the time they’d made it back to Edinburgh, but Karen had persuaded him to invite the lassie for a late drink to make up for it. Her good deed for the day, she thought, dropping him outside a chain pub on George Street before heading home.
There was an email waiting for her from McCartney, outlining his interview with Sheila Chalmers and his intention to speak to Barry Plummer in the morning. The subtext was that this was all a waste of his precious time but she was the boss. Karen fired off a quick, ‘Well done, good luck tomorrow,’ and left it at that.
She stared into the fridge. She’d hit the supermarket the week before but nothing suited her mood. She should have been buzzing with delight at their progress, but there was something about Joey Sutherland’s murder that had got under her skin. Although on the face of it, nobody had missed Joey Sutherland when he disappeared it was clear that he would be mourned. On the long drive south, she’d kept running over how Ruari Macaulay had spoken about the dead man. Warmth, affection, regret. All markers for loss. And nobody understood loss better than Karen.
It was, she decided, a night for comfort food. Potatoes and onions from the fridge, coriander leaves from the freezer, red lentils from the store cupboard. She chopped the onions and threw them in a pan with a slug of olive oil, then diced the potatoes and added them. A couple of handfuls of lentils, then boiling water to cover the contents of the pan. She remembered to add a chicken stock gel, then chopped the coriander. Half now, half when she was about to dish up. Lentil stovies had been her own invention when she’d lived alone and in spite of Phil’s reservations as a red-blooded carnivorous Scotsman, it had become his favourite scratch supper. The sensible Karen knew it was daft to find significance in lentils and tatties, but the emotional Karen couldn’t deny that she felt Phil’s presence when she ate the food they’d enjoyed together. She didn’t care if it was sentimental nonsense. There was nothing maudlin about it. It simply revived the good memories of the brief time they’d shared.
After she’d eaten, Karen opened her laptop and went to the website of the Law Society of Scotland. She typed Donalda Sutherland’s name into their search engine, and struck gold. Donalda Mary Sutherland was a solicitor in a family law firm with offices in George Street. She specialised in conflict resolution and mediation. Messy divorces, in other words. Karen’s pal Giorsal, a senior social worker over in Fife, had once commented wryly that the unintended consequence of equal marriage had been equal divorce and the concomitant bonanza for family lawyers. Karen didn’t imagine Dolly Sutherland was anywhere near the breadline.
Not that money was any kind of salve for grief. Losing her brother would be the same blow regardless. But at least the family would be spared the desperate problems that came with losing a breadwinner. Even coming as late to the party as Karen usually did, she’d seen too often the shattering effects on a family of losing someone they depended on as well as loved.
For once, although it was barely after eleven, Karen felt sleepy. ‘Like a normal person,’ she muttered as she got ready for bed. She was about to drift
into sleep when what she’d missed hit her. ‘Ah, shite,’ she groaned. The obvious question. If Joey was in the ground, where was his swanky camper van? She grabbed her phone and composed an email to Ruari Macaulay.
Sorry to bother you again, Mr Macaulay. But I was wondering whether by any chance you might have a photo of Joey with his camper van? We’d like to track down the van and any details would help – make, model, colour, number plate. I know it’s a long shot but in my experience, sometimes those long shots pay off. All the best, DCI Karen Pirie.
The chances were slim, she knew. But it was worth chasing. And now she was awake.
Morning brought lashing rain and the sort of east wind that exfoliated anyone caught in its grip. Even Karen had her limits. She took the bus up from Ocean Terminal to George Street, squeezed between the cold window and an elderly man who smelled of wet dog. It was almost a relief to step out into the bitter weather.
Family lawyers didn’t spend a lot of time in court. Karen reckoned she’d find Donalda Sutherland in her office. And if not, she was only a few minutes’ walk from her own desk.
A discreet brass plaque marked the entrance to RJS, the firm that listed Donalda among its partners. Glass doors opened into an anonymous foyer that could have belonged to any kind of business. A receptionist sat behind a curved white desk; four white leather two-seater sofas sat around the room; the low tables held a selection of that morning’s newspapers and a few apparently random magazines.
Feeling too bedraggled for the room, Karen waited while the receptionist finished a phone call then said, ‘I’d like to see Donalda Sutherland.’ She held up her warrant card.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ It was an automatic response, without thought.
‘No.’
She lifted her phone handset. ‘Can I ask you what it’s in connection with?’
‘You can ask, but I won’t tell you. It’s official police business.’
The woman’s professional smile tightened. ‘Take a seat and I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I’ll just wait here,’ Karen said, matching the smile. She wasn’t going to be kept dangling by some snotty receptionist who thought lawyer trumped cop in the valuable time stakes.
The woman tapped a couple of keys, waited, then said, ‘Angie, I’ve got a police officer here who wants to speak to Ms Sutherland. Does she have a free slot this morning?’ She waited, avoiding Karen’s eye. ‘She can? OK, leave it with me.’ She replaced the phone and said, ‘She’s in a conference right now. She can see you in half an hour.’ She looked pleased with her small victory.
‘Great.’ Karen checked her watch. ‘I’ll away across to Burr and get a cup of coffee and come back in half an hour,’ she said cheerily, refusing to give the receptionist the satisfaction of pissing her off.
Settled with a flat white on a comfy banquette at the back of the café, Karen opened her laptop and checked the news sites. As she’d expected, the story of the mysterious bog body had been picked up across the board. Even the London-based nationals, notorious for the paucity of their coverage of anything north of Hadrian’s Wall, had found it intriguing enough to give it a good show. Karen chose one of the Scottish dailies, figuring it was most likely to cram in as much information as they could get their hands on. The piece was topped by the reconstruction of Joey Sutherland’s face. The reproduction made him look like a character from a Pixar animation. But Karen thought anyone who knew him would recognise Joey. She hoped Donalda Sutherland wasn’t a news junkie.
MYSTERY OF BODY AND BIKES IN THE BOG
When crofter Hamish Mackenzie went digging for treasure, he got more than he bargained for. As well as the vintage motorbikes he was looking for, he uncovered the perfectly preserved body of a man buried in a peat bog.
Mr Mackenzie, 37, who farms at Clashstronach in Wester Ross, said, ‘It was a terrible shock. I’d heard about peat bogs preserving bodies but you never think one will turn up on your land. It was the last thing I expected.’
The excavation took place after Mr Mackenzie was contacted by a couple from the South of England. ‘The woman said her grandfather had been stationed near here during the Second World War. He was one of the trainers for Churchill’s Special Operations Executive – the people who were trained as spies and saboteurs and sent behind enemy lines.
‘At the end of the war, they were told to destroy all the equipment. But there were two brand-new Indian Scout motorbikes that had only just arrived from the US, and the woman’s grandfather and his best mate couldn’t bear to break them up. So, under cover of darkness, they wrapped them in tarpaulins, crated them up and buried them on the croft. My grandparents knew nothing about it, obviously.’
The couple who got in touch with Mr Mackenzie had a rudimentary map and with the help of a borrowed metal detector, the treasure hunt began. ‘I used my wee digger and about four feet down, we hit the top of the first crate. When we opened it up, we found a motorbike in pristine condition.’
But the second crate was a very different proposition. ‘Right away, I knew something was wrong. The top of the crate had been disturbed. And when we started to clear away the peat and the planks, we realised that what we were looking at was a human arm. There was no mistaking it. We could see the fingernails and everything.
‘It was a hell of a shock. We climbed out as fast as we could and called the police. When they arrived, they soon established there was a man’s body down there. They told us afterwards that the rest of the body was as well preserved as the arm.’
Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit later confirmed that a man’s body had been recovered from the peat bog at Clashstronach. She revealed that the body is not thought to date from the end of the war. ‘We have reason to believe that the dead man was only placed in the makeshift grave at some point in the last twenty-five years,’ she said. ‘We are treating this as a suspicious death.’
The piece ended with the details from Karen’s press release. She was grateful to the journalists for respecting her request not to reveal Joey’s identity. Bad enough if his family saw the picture. Much worse if their worst fears were confirmed in so brutal a fashion.
Tomorrow, Joey Sutherland would be all over the news media. If they got lucky, somebody’s memory might be kick-started. Historic cases weren’t like live ones. You couldn’t shake the witness tree by going door to door or interviewing everyone who’d been present at the events leading up to the crime. Ruari Macaulay seemed to think the Invercharron Highland Games was Joey’s last public appearance. Maybe somebody heard or saw something that afternoon that would push their investigation forward. These were the fragile links Karen relied on to build a chain of evidence. And maybe Donalda Sutherland could provide her with a few of her own.
30
2018 – Edinburgh
When Karen returned to RJS twenty-five minutes later, a different woman was behind the desk. Younger and apparently happier with her lot. As soon as Karen explained that she was expected, Receptionist 2.0 directed her down the hall to the second room on the left.
Karen knocked and entered a small interview room. It was about 300 per cent more inviting than its equivalent in the police station. Three comfortable armchairs, a low table with a box of tissues, soft lighting that had been designed rather than merely installed. A long high window revealed a sliver of sky above rooftops. Nobody else was there, but she took off her coat anyway and slung it over the arm of a chair.
‘Chief Inspector, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.’ The only resemblance between the woman who walked in and Joey Sutherland was that she was taller than average. She looked to be in her late thirties; scant make-up, thick black hair streaked with silver, cut in a long bob. She wore a black jersey dress that clung to her slim frame, low-heeled pumps and a pair of chunky earrings that sparkled like the real thing. She wore oversized black-rimmed glasses that gave her an intellectual air, but her smile and her voice radiated warmth. She stretched out a hand
to shake Karen’s then waved her to chair.
As she sat, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. Rachel, who was on the desk when you arrived, didn’t make a note. Call me Donna, by the way.’ She crossed her feet at the ankles, setting her legs at an angle.
Donna now. Obviously she’d decided nobody would take seriously a lawyer called Dolly. ‘I’m Karen Pirie. I’m with the Historic Cases Unit.’
‘Interesting. And how can I help you, Karen?’ Her expression was one of intelligent interest. She was clearly accustomed to quickly putting people at their ease.
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ There was never a way to sugarcoat it.
A quick wrinkling of the eyebrows. ‘A client?’
‘No. Donna, when did you last hear from your brother?’
She drew in her breath sharply. Her right hand clutched her left. ‘Something’s happened to Joey.’ Not a question. ‘I knew it. I’ve always known it. He might go off without a word but he’d never have kept that up for twenty-three years. He had his differences with my parents but he didn’t hate them. And you’d have to hate someone to do that to them.’ She closed her eyes momentarily then visibly drew herself together. ‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘A body was found in a peat bog in Wester Ross earlier this week. It was very well preserved because of the soil conditions. We had a forensic expert prepare a picture of what the dead man would have looked like and a local journalist at the press conference thought he recognised your brother.’
‘Let me see. You have it with you?’
Karen took out the copy she’d printed that morning and handed it over.
Donna’s face crumpled. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘How much work did your forensic artist have to do?’ Everybody clung to hope, even when they knew it was futile.