Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  ‘Clare . . . Clare . . .’ Valentine called to her. ‘I’m only having a joke with you. I’ll eat it . . .’

  She turned on her heels in the kitchen and stomped back into the dining room. ‘I bought it because it is good for you, lower fat, healthier . . . better for your heart. Perhaps I shouldn’t have bloody well bothered.’ She left the room again and closed the door behind her.

  Valentine dropped his own knife and fork and stared out into the garden. He could see his neighbour’s sprinkler spraying a wide arc of lawn. The sun was low and flat in the sky. For a moment the scene felt calm and familiar, and then the realisation of recent events hit him. Valentine was suffused with a strange kind of sadness. It was the type of feeling he’d had when watching the girls grow up: a pride tinged with loss, the realisation that each day they were getting further away from him. There would be no more first birthdays, no more first steps; so many good times had passed and the future was so filled with uncertainty that it was hard to focus on the good times that were still to come. He knew Clare was not dealing well with his return to active policing; she was handling the situation in her usual way, and he knew what that might mean. Valentine had a well of guilt swelling in him because he felt sure he couldn’t give Clare his full attention and still devote himself to the case. But what option did he have? A man had been killed, in brutal fashion, and now the press were circling – he would need to find answers.

  The detective removed his mobile phone from his trouser pocket and scrolled the contacts for DS Rossi’s number. The phone was answered after only a few seconds.

  ‘Hello, sir.’

  ‘Paulo, I’ve been waiting for the update on what happened with Mrs Urquhart.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry boss . . .’

  Valentine cut in. ‘Well?’

  ‘I was having my tea . . .’

  ‘Well, you can get back to your bloody spaghetti in a minute, Paulo. Tell me the details, eh.’

  The sound of shuffling and the creaking of a door came down the line. ‘It’s a positive ID, sir. The wife, er, Mrs Urquhart, picked him out at the morgue no trouble.’

  ‘She did . . . and what was the response like?’

  Rossi cleared his throat before speaking. ‘She seemed a bit, erm, stony-faced, I suppose you would say.’

  ‘Not emotional?’

  ‘Well, yes and no: there was some dabbing at the eyes with a hankie, if that’s what you mean, but there was no big outburst or the like.’

  Valentine tried to spool the image in his mind: it seemed to fit with what he had come to expect of Mrs Urquhart. She was too high up the social ladder to put on any outward display of emotion in public. They were a reserved lot, the upper classes. The act of keening over the dead was something reserved for the lower caste.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting suttee, Paulo.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind . . . And the son, Adrian, how did he appear?’

  Rossi’s regular tone returned. ‘He wasn’t there, sir . . . It was the neighbour . . .’ The pause in his speech was filled with the sound of pages turning in a notebook. ‘Ronnie Bell’s his name.’

  ‘I know who he is, Paulo, we’ve had the pleasure . . . What I want to know is what he was doing running Mrs Urquhart up to the morgue when her own son was on hand and there’s no shortage of luxury motors sitting in the driveway.’

  ‘Erm, well . . .’

  ‘It didn’t strike you as just a wee bit odd?’

  ‘Now you mention it, sir, I suppose the boy would have been the likely one to go and hold his mother’s hand, but maybe he was too upset or something.’

  ‘Aye, maybe . . . or maybe not. We don’t know, Paulo, and that’s the problem here. This is a murder investigation and we don’t know anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Rossi’s voice registered the fact that he had absorbed some of the DI’s disapproval.

  ‘Right, I want you to start a file on this Ronnie Bell character, and in that file I want to see everything, including his preference for Ys or budgie-smugglers, and it better all be there the first time I pick the file up, Paulo. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. And in future, Paulo, the second anything comes in you pick up the phone, do you hear me? I don’t care if you’ve got a mouthful of spag bol made by the wee granny off the Dolmio ads herself, you let me know what you know right away.’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . I’m sorry about that.’

  Valentine hung up. He could feel the throbbing of his vocal chords from when his rant had reached a rasp.

  He scrolled down his contacts of his phone again and found DC McAlister. The DI’s mind was still sparking as McAlister answered.

  ‘Yes, boss. . .’

  ‘Ally, we have our ID.’

  ‘She picked him, then?’

  ‘Aye, it’s officially James Urquhart. I don’t see any point in keeping it from the press when this Sinclair hack has so much information.’

  ‘What was his explanation?’

  ‘He said he got an anonymous tip-off from someone claiming to be an ex-employee of Urquhart . . . Plausible, I suppose.’

  McAlister made a dismissive huff. ‘I don’t know . . . anonymous. Sounds like one from the hack’s rulebook to me.’

  Valentine felt the skin tightening on the back of his neck. ‘We’ll see. I don’t think there’s any point going in too hard on Sinclair at this stage. It might just be one lucky bit of information that fell into his lap. If he starts sprouting them on a regular basis we might need to look a bit more closely at him . . . and those around him.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’ McAlister paused, seemed to hold his breath for a moment or two, and then spoke. ‘You don’t suspect anyone on the squad, do you, sir?’

  Valentine’s response to the same question by the chief super had been swift and decisive, but after talking to Sinclair and seeing the whites of his eyes he wasn’t so sure of himself.

  ‘I suspect everyone, Ally. Always do. One thing’s for sure and certain, though: if we have a mole on the team feeding biccies to Sinclair, then I’ll be feeding them into a mincer.’

  McAlister’s voice rose. ‘For what it’s worth, sir, I’d be stunned if anyone was that stupid.’

  ‘Ally there’s no shortage of idiots in this world.’ He cut the conversation off at the knees. The point had been made and he could rely on Ally to circulate the salient facts. ‘Anyway, get in touch with Coreen in the morning and tell her to give the victim’s name to the press pack at close of play tomorrow – not before. I want a clear day for us to get our ducks in a row before we have to start answering press queries again. But at the very least we’ll be raining on Sinclair’s parade.’

  McAlister bit. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I asked him not to release the name in tomorrow’s paper for fear of prejudicing the investigation.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘Ally, if he’s smart he’ll play fair by us.’

  ‘I don’t know, boss: like you say, there’s a lot of idiots in the world.’

  15

  Valentine awoke from an uneasy sleep, and troubling dreams, to an empty bed. Clare had been there when he’d decided to slink upstairs the night before, but she had slept with her back to him. He reached out to her side of the bed and touched the linen sheet: it was cold. For a moment Valentine stared at the ceiling, allowing his thoughts to swirl around, but then he started to feel them gather there like dark clouds above the bed.

  ‘Get a grip,’ he mouthed to himself.

  Valentine lay for only a second or two longer and then flattened his palms either side of him and pushed away from the mattress. The bedsprings wheezed beneath him. He knew it was becoming difficult to avoid dark thoughts about Clare, even though he tried to fend them off. When he thought about her issues, they seemed so ridiculously trite compared with the issues he dealt with in his working life – but he understood they were very real to her. He knew he couldn’t allow his wife’s n
euroses to dominate his thought patterns for fear they would distract his attention from the case. But there was a bigger picture too: he didn’t want to see the children affected by a problem that was nothing to do with them. The DI dressed quickly and took himself downstairs. Clare was in the kitchen reading the newspaper and smoking a cigarette when he appeared.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Clare turned towards her husband and plucked the filter tip from her mouth. ‘Morning.’

  Valentine watched the blue stream of smoke spiral upwards and declined to comment. He filled the kettle with water instead; he was removing the coffee jar when Clare spoke again.

  ‘Isn’t this what you’re working on?’ She held up the newspaper: it was the Glasgow-Sun.

  Valentine squinted towards the page – along the top, not quite a page-lead, was the story of the Urquhart killing. He read a few words from the first deck of headlines and then his brain started to hum.

  ‘I don’t believe it . . .’ He reached out and snatched the paper from his wife.

  ‘What is it?’

  Valentine stood over the newspaper, shaking his head. The kettle started to roar and steam beside him. His temper was just as hot as the kettle when it pinged. ‘This bastard’s only gone and released the name of my victim . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  Valentine was gripping the paper, scrunching it in his hands. ‘Cameron bloody Sinclair . . .’

  ‘And who’s he?’

  ‘A reporter . . . or likes to think he is. I told him not to print this name and he’s only gone and done it.’

  Clare pinched her cheeks. She seemed to be searching for the right words, but pouring oil on troubled waters had never been one of her strengths. ‘Maybe it just popped out . . . like a mistake or something.’

  ‘What?’ He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No, I’m just . . .’ Her mouth sat like an open gutter.

  ‘Well, just don’t!’

  Valentine balled the paper in his hands; he was wringing it like a rag as he stomped from the kitchen and collected his coat and case. On his way towards the car, his mind surfed the channels of consequence. The chief super would soon be on the hunt for someone to blame, if she wasn’t already. He checked his phone as he got in the car to see if he’d missed any calls from her: he hadn’t. He threw the mobile on the dash and groaned audibly as he sat, resting his forehead on the rim of the wheel.

  ‘Bloody Sinclair . . . I’ll string him up.’

  He turned the key and pulled out of the drive.

  On the way through Maisonhill, the commuter traffic was just starting to make its presence felt on the Ayrshire roads. There was a tailback outside the Spar shop where people were stopping off to stock up on sandwiches they’d eat at their desks in place of a proper lunch break. The scene wasn’t wasted on Valentine: he knew now his own workload had just got a lot heavier. There would be a queue of hacks looking for confirmation of the details released by the Glasgow-Sun. There’d be recriminations to deal with too, and that was before he got to work on the proper business of finding James Urquhart’s killer.

  This wasn’t about the actions of an over-ambitious journalist, thought Valentine; it was a blatant swipe at his authority. Sinclair intended to plant his flag in the case and claim it as his own. Valentine had lost the first skirmish, and the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to usurp Sinclair by releasing the victim’s name to the rest of the press later was another blow that had been landed without any effort.

  At King Street station, Valentine locked the Vectra and walked towards the door. There was some heat in the morning air now and the dew on the grass by the sides of the road was evaporating. He looked out over the skyline towards the flats and saw an old man positioning a deckchair on the balcony of his property. The sight of the man settling down in the chair stirred something like envy in the detective, and he checked himself. He knew, of course, he wasn’t envious of the old man’s leisure time – the day ahead in the sunshine – it was the wearisome thought, recurring now, that his own life had been shortened by a job that he continued to give more to than to anything else. He knew he had stored up more conflict for himself with Clare with his reaction to the Sinclair headline, and the realisation gored him now. The job just didn’t leave room for anything else: it required everything he had to give.

  Jim Prentice was on the desk when Valentine walked through the door. He wore a grave expression as he balanced on one elbow and tapped the buttons on a telephone with his other hand. ‘Oh, just about to give you a ring . . .’ He put the receiver down and at the same time dropped his voice several octaves. ‘Herself is up and about early this morning.’

  Valentine manoeuvred towards the desk, raised up his briefcase and attuned himself to Jim’s frequency. ‘What’s up?’

  The sergeant inverted a smile. ‘A paddock out at the track . . . something going on there.’

  Valentine shrugged. ‘What are you saying to me, Jim?’

  He played with the lobe of his ear as he spoke. ‘I’m not saying anything because I’ve been told nothing.’ He leaned forward and let his gaze thin. ‘But if you were asking me to guess – from the way she’s acting – it’s not bloody pretty. Got uniform on the way out there now.’

  Valentine eased himself from the desk, retrieved his briefcase and made for the stairs. On the first rung, he spun and called to Jim. ‘Anything comes on that radio – you shout me.’

  ‘Aye sure . . .’

  ‘I mean it, right away, Jim.’

  As Valentine bounded up the steps, his pulse quickened. His thoughts were eddying; he had started the morning with a shock in the paper, but if his worst fears about Jim’s announcement were realised then the newspaper issue would be overtaken. On the top landing, the DI felt his temperature rising beneath his dog-tooth sports coat and loosened his tie. He was removing his sleeve and switching his briefcase to the other hand as the chief super’s door opened and she stood in the frame. He wondered if she’d been listening for his footsteps.

  ‘Bob – in here now.’ Her voice was immediate, certain.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  He watched her turn away from him and return to the office. She had a look that unsettled him. Martin was usually so full of her own self-importance, so assured, but she seemed to be on edge in a way that indicated panic.

  She spoke again as he entered. ‘Close the door.’

  Valentine took a few steps towards her desk and lowered his briefcase onto the ground. He was laying his sports coat on the back of the chair when she caught his attention by slapping her palm off the desk.

  ‘What’s the worst possible nightmare you can imagine?’ Her voice bled anxiety, edging into a shriek.

  Valentine held himself together; it was a trait he was adopting more and more at the sight of rising tensions. ‘Are you looking for a list?’

  The chief super turned away from him and dropped into her chair. She sat deflated and slumped for a moment and then leaned forward. Valentine removed the chair in front of him and sat down. Martin was grimacing as she spoke.

  ‘We had a call from the racecourse about half an hour ago.’ She brought her hands together and looked as if she was about to start praying. ‘It was from one of the maintenance blokes . . . He reckons there’s a white male impaled on a stake in the middle of the track.’

  Valentine sensed cold pustules of sweat standing out on his forehead. His eyes studied the chief super’s face for more information, but it was clear she had none. He knew what this latest turn of events meant and didn’t want to believe it: he had a strange compunction to object.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, Bob, I’m making it up for a laugh . . .’ She slumped back in her seat and a truculent gleam entered her eye. ‘I’ve got uniform out there taking a look now, but it sounds genuine, so you’d better get yourself prepared for a day and a half.’

  It seemed like a good time to bury bad news. Valentine
made to rise; his chair legs scraped on the carpet tiles as he stood. ‘By the way, in case you haven’t seen the paper . . .’ – he retrieved his case and grey dog-tooth sports coat – ‘our man Sinclair shafted us well and truly.’

  ‘What?’

  Valentine was at the door when he replied. ‘Gave our victim’s name away. When the hacks get wind of today’s turn of events, I think they’ll be having a day and a half as well.’

  16

  Valentine wondered what it was that had kept him in the job all these years. It wasn’t his progression through the ranks or the feeling of moving onward with life in other ways. The job afforded you so little status that it was hardly worth counting; to most, their rating of a police officer was somewhere shy of used-car salesman. The job certainly didn’t open any doors to rarefied echelons, or if it did, it was for all the wrong reasons.

  There had been a moment at the outset of his career when he thought that he was doing some good. Rounding up rowdies at Somerset Park after the Killie games, or scooping up the Saturday night dafties before they went scripto, felt like a job worth doing. It was physical too, and he remembered a time when he was fit enough and fond enough of his own chances to get a buzz from it. He smiled inwardly – a lot of the boys had joined up because they knew, as he did then, that it was very hard to lose a fight in uniform. But somewhere along the line he’d realised that the task was a thankless one: he was merely working to keep the prison service supplied. He didn’t want to be a social worker, picking up the detritus left by political failings: ‘an instrument of the state’ was the term his father had used to galling effect. It always felt like doing someone else’s dirty work: someone better paid, higher up the corridors of power, someone who didn’t want to get their own hands dirty.

  Valentine knew he remained a police officer for two reasons: because it kept his attention after all these years, and because he had passed the point where there was any other option on offer. He was too old and too set in his ways to switch lanes now – and where would they lead? A private security firm? Nightwatchman? At his age the choices were thin, so he resigned himself to the fact that he still took an interest in the job and its challenges, but more so in the complexities of human foibles. He conceded that, along with the criminal flotsam and jetsam, some complex situations washed up. At their margins of endurance, when pushed, people acted to their true type, and this fascinated Valentine. It confirmed the blackest thoughts he harboured about the human race: we were all, each and every one of us, capable of heinous criminal acts. All that we needed was circumstance. Unravelling the motives, the causes and the triggers that led to crime showed the DI the real people he shared the planet with, and he could think of no other job that would afford him that insight.