by Susan Hill
He had not said that.
Her brain spun round.
She sat for nearly an hour, finishing the mug of tea and ordering a second, even eating the sawdust cake, going over everything Lee Russon had said to her, but when she eventually left she was no clearer in her mind, no further forward.
Nothing had been gained and, oddly, she had somehow been made to feel as if she were the one guilty of something. She had come away from the prison with this vague sense of guilt, but other than that, she had come away empty-handed.
Thirty-nine
Kirsty had followed him outside as he had left that morning and said five words to him, quietly, as if she had finally made up her mind that if it had anything to do with Sandy’s death, then she had a duty to speak. If it had not, no harm would have been done. And she knew Simon. He would tread carefully, not barge in, shouting it out, challenging, asking questions.
He woke just after four. The gale was roaring across towards the house. The last thing he had done before he went to bed had been to repeat those five words to himself. Then he had read a couple of chapters of an old Evelyn Waugh favourite, and gone to sleep. The words would sink down into his unconscious. He would know what to do, if anything, in the morning.
He knew at four o’clock and knew also that he wouldn’t sleep longer. He got up and made a pot of strong coffee, took a notebook and wrote down a list of single words. Then he showered, read his emails, and opened up the Kimberley Still file.
The gale had blown itself out quite suddenly, as it sometimes did here, and the clouds had scudded away, leaving one of the occasional brilliant, brittle days of late autumn. The sea was edged with foam as the tide came sweeping in.
It was only just after eight when he reached the pub, but smoke came from the chimney. Lights were on.
Should he go in now, even though Lorna might be about, or wait, and risk the first ferry coming in with a delivery? He needed to catch Iain alone and keep him like that for a while. What his reaction would be to the things he had to say, the questions he needed to ask, it was impossible to guess.
He waited in the car until he saw movements through the window of the pub. If Lorna was there Simon had an excuse in mind for arriving so early, but when he tapped on the door, the man opened it himself, held it wide, and was obviously alone.
‘Morning, Simon. I canna get you a dram but there’s a brew of coffee on.’
He seemed unsurprised to see him there so early.
‘Thanks – that’d be great. I’ve been on the other side trying to get a signal.’
He took a table in the far corner.
Iain brought two mugs of coffee, sugar and milk, and sat down, which meant Simon didn’t have to ask him to stay.
‘It’s a great time of the day, you know, from five or so till half eight. I get a load of stuff done but I do it on my own without anybody bothering me.’
‘Ah. Sorry, Iain.’
Iain waved him away. ‘It’d never be you.’
‘Is Lorna not up this early?’
‘Lorna’s away to Glasgow with her family.’
He put sugar in his mug. Did not meet Simon’s eye. Simon waited calmly, sipping the hot coffee. It was a technique, he knew that he was using it, his interviewing cap on.
Iain still did not look at him. ‘Ferry’s not for another hour, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘So you’re not going aboard.’
‘I’m not.’
‘How much longer are you staying here?’
‘I’ll be off soon. I’m nearly done.’
‘Done?’
He went on with his coffee and did not answer, knowing Iain would be forced to bring the subject up soon.
Because there was no wind, a rare thing, the pub and the world beyond it seemed very quiet. The tide was out. No waves crashing onto the quay.
Iain was staring hard at the tabletop.
He would do what he always did, count slowly to a hundred, then break the silence. But before he had reached twenty, Iain was on his feet and to the door. He bolted it and drew the blind halfway down the near window. When he turned, Serrailler saw that he was crying.
‘Take your time,’ he said.
The man hesitated as if he would go behind the bar and take a dram from the optics, but in the end, he just sat down again and went back to staring at the table.
‘You were seeing Sandy?’ Serrailler said.
Iain nodded. ‘You know how it is. Lorna isn’t here much. We rub along, I won’t be lying that we were miserable, it wouldn’t be true. But Sandy … great company and … interesting. I thought about her a lot and then we talked a lot, you know, in here after we were closed, early mornings. Like this. And she could talk to me …’
‘Did Lorna find out?’
He did not answer. ‘All right,’ Simon said, brisk now, pulling things together. ‘What happened, Iain?’
‘How much … do you know?’
‘About Sandy? Everything. Well, and in another sense, nothing. But the important thing.’
‘Aye.’
‘I saw the body.’
Iain wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Aye.’
‘Do you want to tell me from here?’
Silence.
‘We’ve a bit of time, I’m not pushing you. But someone will be here before long and you’ll have to open up.’
They sat on. More silence. Too much silence.
‘When did you find out?’ Simon asked.
Iain shook his head.
‘Did she refuse to sleep with you? When it was clear that you wanted to? Did she tell you or … ?’
‘She’d no choice.’ He made a strange sound in his throat. ‘I still cannae believe it, you know? I still … I can’t understand how I didn’t know.’
‘Why? I didn’t know Sandy as you did, but I saw her quite a bit, we had some talks. I didn’t guess. Nor did anyone else. She was she.’
Silence.
‘Did it make you angry?’
Silence.
‘Understandable if it did. You would have felt betrayed.’
Silence.
‘Did Lorna find out?’
Silence.
Simon paused before, in a swift change of tack, he leaned across the table and said, ‘Where did you get the gun, Iain?’
Nothing. Then Iain looked up at him, tears streaming down his face, his mouth working.
‘You have to tell me,’ Serrailler said. ‘You won’t live with yourself if you don’t, and what’s more important, if you don’t, I can’t help you.’
‘Why should you help me?’
‘You tell me.’ He got up. ‘I don’t care what the hell the time is – you need that dram.’ He took two from the optics, though he was not going to touch his own, and went back to the table. As he did so, he glanced out of the far window. No one. The sky had clouded over.
Iain drank his single whisky in one.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘That depends on what you tell me.’
‘You’ll shop me. It’s your job.’
Now it was his own turn to be silent.
‘How do you know? How did you find out?’
He waited.
Eventually, Iain said, ‘I was in the army. Bosnia. You were meant to hand in your gun, of course, but I didn’t, like plenty of others. You’d be surprised. No good reason except you never feel safe, you never want to be without one again. It stays in your head. Jesus.’
‘Twenty years then.’
Iain nodded. He had not looked up, not met Simon’s eye once.
‘It just stayed there, in the bottom drawer of my old desk. Locked drawer, I’d never take risks. I never forgot it was there, it was what made me feel secure. Not that there’s any danger on Taransay.’
‘You have a rifle as well.’
‘Two, and a full licence, and they’re locked away in the gun cabinet, all legal. But a rifle’s a different matter. As you know.’
&
nbsp; ‘What happened? You got angry.’
‘Yes. But – no. I was angry with myself for being a fool, angry with her – him – for making a fool out of me … all of that. Upset. Plus I didn’t understand. I still don’t. She knew full well what she was doing but she let it go on and she must have known it’d come to a head, she was going to have to tell me. So why?’
‘She liked you. She wanted to be with you. I don’t think she meant to make a fool of you at all, Iain. People can make a relationship work in this way, though it takes time.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Did Lorna find out?’
‘She did and she didnae. She asked me questions, she watched me, she thought there was someone, something. But she never found out the truth.’
‘You sure?’
He shook his head. ‘No. How can I be? I’m no sure about anything much any more.’
‘Except for the fact that you shot Sandy Murdoch. You went to her house, with your gun, you knew what you were going to do, this wasn’t a red mist coming over you when she told you, it wasn’t hitting out at her in fury and distress and knocking her to the ground, so that she fell and hit her head. You planned it.’
‘I suppose so. Sounds so fucking callous.’
‘It was.’
Now, Iain did look up.
‘What’s going to happen to me?’
‘Where’s the gun now?’
‘In the sea. I threw it … I threw it over the cliff. After her. And don’t look at me wi your copper’s face, it’s God’s truth.’
Serrailler was taken aback for a moment. ‘Your copper’s face?’
‘That’s gone. The gun. That won’t wash up.’
‘No.’
‘I asked you what’s going to happen to me.’
Simon was silent for a while. Then, the sound of tyres outside and the doors of a vehicle slamming.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘and that’s God’s truth too. I know what ought to happen. I know what the law says.’
Iain shook his head again.
‘I’m going home. I’m going to think it all through. You understand this isn’t mine any longer, it’s Police Scotland now. I have no say.’
‘What difference would it make?’
Simon stood up. Someone banged on the back door. ‘You OK to get that?’
‘Day has to start.’
‘I’ll come in tonight, Iain. Ten or so.’
‘Lorna gets back tomorrow.’
‘Will you tell her?’
As he went out to answer the door, Iain said, ‘That’s for me to know.’
Forty
He hadn’t heard anything but someone had slipped the paper into the crack of the door. There was no letter box. He had no letters. No address. He didn’t exist. He hadn’t existed for nearly two years.
Thin cheap brown envelope. Nothing written on the outside. He looked at it, picked it up and turned it over.
He left it and went to make tea. When he came back and before he could think about it and start asking himself questions he couldn’t answer, he slit it open and took out the sheet of paper. There were four lines, typed.
No signature.
He had two reactions, one following quickly after the other. A spurt of excitement. Then fear.
The excitement was real and as strong as he had ever felt but the fear as strong, too. He didn’t need to go through the possible dangers, the possible consequences if things went wrong, they leapt out at him, almost smacked him in the face. But so did the excitement. The anticipation. The overwhelming sense that this might be the best, what he had always been leading up to, planning for without knowing it.
The last line was. Will be in contact. Till then stay out of the way.
Forty-one
Simon did not go back to the cottage. Instead, he drove to the north of the island, the wild side where few people came, the sheep did not graze, there was nothing but a scrape of soil and starved grass on the hard rocky ground, treacherous scrambles down to the shore, and the wind. But, from here, there was an incomparable view of endless sea meeting sky, changing and shifting from greys to blues, dark to light, the surface ruffled and ribbed by the movement of the air. He sat on an outcrop and looked out. He never came here with his sketchbook because there was nothing to draw. Pencil and ink could never convey the constant movement and there was not enough detail, though he had often picked up stones, strangely bent twigs and grasses, and sometimes bones, to take back and work with.
After sitting for a few minutes watching the sea, he began to think, calmly and methodically, going over what had happened from the time Sandy had gone missing, to the moment he had driven away from the pub just now. All his old skill at taking a case apart piece by piece, in consecutive detail, came into play. Kirsty had said five words. ‘Iain was in the army.’ From there, it had been straightforward, but Iain’s confession had been vital. His having been a soldier twenty-odd years earlier did not mean he had either kept a gun or killed Sandy and the business of finding out the truth would have been left to Police Scotland.
But Iain had admitted to murder.
The next thing Simon had to do was notify the DI, and then either arrest Iain himself or wait until they arrived on the next ferry to do it themselves. It made little odds. Iain would be taken to the mainland. Simon would be asked for a full report, after which he would have nothing more to do with the case. Again. And after that, Iain would never return to Taransay but most likely be sentenced to life. The waves were coming in across the bay, from the west. Simon watched their rhythm, as they rolled back upon themselves, over and under, over and under. It helped him work out what he was going to do.
Which was nothing. Nothing at all. The law demanded that he make one call. Justice demanded that. Or did it? Yes, Iain was guilty, and yes, he himself was duty-bound as a police officer to pass on the information he had been given. But nothing would bring Sandy Murdoch back. Why had he come to the island and stayed here? Had his family rejected him? His friends? Society? Simon realised that in working out what had happened for the last half-hour, he, or his subconscious at least, had also worked out the solution to a puzzle, while he had slept or walked or listened to Iain.
He watched the waves and the scudding sky and the changing shifting light on the horizon and on the surface of the sea. He made up his mind.
He had always believed that the day he forgot that he was a human being first and a cop second – or at the very least, a cop at the same time – was the day he should quit. He hoped that he had never forgotten it, either in mind or in action. The human being was pretty sure what he should do now and the DCS did not disagree – he remained neutral. His conscience was untroubled.
He walked back across the tracks to his car, enjoying the stretch and the space, thinking of everything else, now that he had made up his mind – thinking of Cat and Sam, his father, the hospital appointments to come, his future as a policeman and what difference his injury would make to it – though Kieron had assured him that there would be none. He thought about Kirsty and Douglas and Robbie. About when exactly he would leave Taransay.
The cottage was cold when he got back but he would not make up a fire and stoke the range until he had made the one call.
‘Iain?’
Pause.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Have you people there?’
‘A couple but I’m out the back. You coming over? Or will it be the others?’
‘I think this is down to you, Iain. Not to me. I’ve only your word for all of it – I’ve nothing else, no evidence, no proof. So this is what should happen. You should be the one to tell them. Ring them. Speak on the phone or get them to come over. And tell them what you told me. It’s not my case now, it’s theirs. You talked to me as a friend, not as a policeman, and I’ll be gone in a couple of days. But my conscience is clear on this. It’s for you to spare everyone a long investigation, and the island being in the s
potlight for months, it’s for you to make it clear and simple. Which it is. You owe it to yourself, and even more, you owe it to Sandy. You owe me nothing. Think about it but not for too long. It’s your call, Iain.’
He had made his decision. Now he had to live with it, something every cop started learning from his first day.
There was just one other thing. Nobody, so far as he was aware, knew about Sandy, and although it was not Simon’s job to broadcast the news to the entire island, he thought he ought to tell her.
‘Kirsty?’
‘Hi, Simon. Everything OK?’
‘There’s something you should know but it’s for you to keep to yourself, at least for now. You’ll know if the time comes when you have to tell someone else.’
‘For God’s sake, you’re worrying me now.’
‘It’s about Sandy.’
‘What’s happened? What have you found out?’
‘That Sandy was Alexander … she was a man.’
‘What? What are you saying? I don’t believe you.’
‘I saw the body, Kirsty. Who knows if Sandy would ever have chosen to tell anybody on the island … maybe, maybe not. She was taking hormones but no other form of treatment so far as the pathologist could tell, though there’ll be more info from the full report. I just wanted you to know … you can help if it all comes out.’
‘Help? Sandy’s beyond help now.’
‘Yes, but it’s about softening the blow of it. You don’t know how people will react.’
‘Same way as they react anywhere. Some will accept it, some won’t, but it will surely come as a shock to them – though maybe it’s easier now.’
‘How?’
‘They don’t have to react to her face, think what to say, all of that. Because whatever they thought it would have been difficult, strange. Aren’t you surprised yourself?’
‘Very. It had never crossed my mind.’
‘Well then. I have to go, the soup pan is going to boil dry. I won’t say anything.’
He was sure of that.