Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  They drove to Ayr Road and over Tam’s Brig before heading out to Prestwick shore, at the end of the esplanade, where the walkway ran into an expansive car-parking area. Gillon pulled up the van. As the engine stilled, he removed the keys and reached out for a packet of Club that sat on the dash. He lit up and offered a cigarette to Leanne.

  There was a car on the other side of the van, about forty or fifty metres away, and as she lit her cigarette she saw a man opening the door and heading towards them.

  Gillon turned and wound down his window. He waved to the man and he reciprocated.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Leanne. She peered past Gillon’s shoulder towards the approaching man. He looked to be no threat. There was nothing to him: thin shoulders, a chubby face with glasses; he wore a pair of comfortable, sensible shoes and his clothes looked to have been picked out by a wife or mother.

  ‘This is a mate of mine,’ said Gillon. ‘I want you to have a word with him . . .’

  ‘What about?’ Leanne’s voice revealed a rising panic.

  Gillon spun round to face her. ‘Whatever he wants to know, you tell him.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  His eyes widened; she sensed a threat. ‘Look, don’t mess me about, I want you to tell him about that fat paedo and your other pal . . .’

  ‘What other pal?’

  The man approached the window and smiled. He nodded to Gillon, then waved a hand towards his passenger. ‘You must be Leanne?’

  She raised the cigarette to her mouth and drew the nicotine deep into her lungs. An uneasy tremor passed from her stomach to her chest and neck, which made her feel like her heart was in her mouth. She watched Gillon reach for the door handle and step outside, and as he did so the man leaned forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Cameron Sinclair and Danny here’s told me a lot about you.’

  As Sinclair stepped into the van and closed the door behind him, Gillon took himself for a walk, back towards the esplanade.

  24

  Detective Inspector Bob Valentine didn’t realise his posture was so stiff, his demeanour so harsh, until he crossed his legs and caught sight of the rigid angle his foot made to his ankle. He stared at his shoe, pointing upwards towards the desk, and wondered if it might snap off, it looked so brittle, like it was the frosted, frozen branch of a tree that threatened to fall. He ran a finger down the crease of his trouser leg and then found himself scraping the stubble on his chin with a fingernail.

  ‘Is everything all right, Inspector?’ said Carole-Anne. Her voice was a low, flat monotone that never contained any inflection: a professional contrivance, no doubt, thought Valentine.

  ‘No, everything’s . . . just fine.’

  The therapist’s eyes seemed to be measuring him. ‘Perhaps you could tell me what it’s like being back to normal duties . . .’

  Normal duties – what were they? thought Valentine. Was it normal to find an esteemed member of the public had been impaled on a wooden spike at the communal tip? Was it normal to find a repeat sex offender – one who had never expressed an ounce of remorse for the children he abused – executed in similar fashion? Oh yes, it was all another day at the office. He girded his jaw and let his gaze shift through the woman who was perhaps young enough to be his own daughter.

  ‘Inspector, are you uncomfortable speaking to me?’ She started to fan the yellow pencil in her fingers; the rubber tip became a blur.

  Valentine knew he was in a no-win situation. CS Martin had made it clear the therapy sessions were to be a trade-off: a return to the training academy at Tulliallan was the alternative. If that happened, he knew also that the case would be turned over to Glasgow CID. He thought of the latest addition to the murder squad – DS Sylvia McCormack – and his throat constricted, numbing his clenched muscles.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to appear . . . uncooperative.’

  ‘But . . . ?’ She presented the one-word interruption like a uppercut. He took it on the chin.

  ‘But . . . I really do feel that your experience could be put to better use elsewhere. I’m fine, I told Marion Martin as much.’

  Carole-Anne put down the pencil and eased herself back in her chair; a reporter’s notebook that sat in her lap followed the pencil. ‘Bob – you don’t mind if I call you Bob, do you?’

  Valentine shook his head.

  She continued. ‘We have to get something straight. I’m doing a job. I know you know how to do yours, but you need to appreciate that you’ve been referred here by a senior officer with, it must be said, good cause.’ A narrow smile eased over her face and he noticed that the smooth skin of her cheeks contrasted starkly with the dark crenulations beneath her eyes, which seemed to remove her from the vicinity of youthfulness.

  ‘I understand that.’ Valentine paused, then planted his foot down firmly. He could see there was no point in parrying her questions. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me how you feel about what happened to you?’

  A tut, followed by a long exhalation of breath. ‘You mean how I felt about being stabbed in the heart . . . ? You can say it, y’know.’

  She pressed out another smile, a weaker one this time, but no words followed.

  Valentine continued. ‘The physical aspects are impossible to describe. I mean you can appreciate, I’m sure, what it feels like to have a piece of cold metal thrust into your chest cavity, but the shock almost cancels that out . . . I remember the blood, the sight of the blade sitting there – in my chest – they say your whole life flashes before you and by Christ it does . . .’

  The therapist shifted uneasily in her seat; her face seemed to slacken and her mouth dipped towards her neck. ‘Perhaps not the physical aspects, I was alluding more to the way you were affected psychologically . . . that’s what I’m here for.’

  She was there to make notes in her little book, to tot up the pros and cons of keeping him on the force, thought Valentine. He suddenly felt an almighty enmity towards her, but it seemed to wash over him and disappear as quickly as it had appeared. She wasn’t a bad person – that much he knew – she was just, as she had said, doing her job.

  ‘I thought I wasn’t going to see my children again . . . and my wife.’

  ‘You have two children, Bob, is that right?’ She reached over to retrieve a stack of notes from her desk.

  ‘Two girls.’

  ‘It must have been hard for them . . . and your wife.’

  The mention of Clare seemed to disrupt the image he was carrying in his mind of the girls as they were when he woke up in the hospital after surgery. He wondered now if the image was real: was any of it? He had officially died and been revived; he was a man risen from the dead – how real could that story be? And yet he knew it was him. He was the man his doctors said was ‘lucky to be alive’. And he was, he knew it. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that he had been brought back for a reason. He wasn’t the same Bob Valentine who had gone out to work that morning looking for a lead on a drug cartel and ended up stabbed in the heart with a nine-inch blade. No matter how many times he relayed these facts to people, or replayed them in his own mind, something out of the ordinary had happened that day and he hadn’t been the same man since.

  ‘I’d sooner not talk about my family,’ said Valentine.

  Carole-Anne’s cheeks flushed. ‘Of course, we don’t need to discuss them if you don’t want to.’

  The detective felt a pang of guilt; they had only just thawed the room. ‘Maybe next time.’

  A car passed by the window outside; its shadow washed over the battleship grey walls. ‘It’s later than I thought . . . perhaps that’s enough for a first session, enough for one day.’

  Valentine felt relieved, as if he had been released from a straitjacket. He exhaled a long breath and rose from the chair. Carole-Anne was standing to meet him with her hand outstretched.

  ‘Thank you, Bob.’

  He shook her hand and turned for the door.

  In the
corridor, Valentine caught sight of the cleaners wheeling a Henry hoover towards the main incident room and the image brought him back to reality with a shudder.

  ‘No you’re all right there, love . . .’ He started to jog towards the cleaner, who dipped back her head and eyed him from beneath her heavy glasses. He grabbed the door from her. ‘Maybe leave this one till last, eh, got a couple of things to tidy up in here myself.’

  ‘If you’re tidying up, son, I’ll give you the trolley and the dusters!’

  Valentine smiled, but the cleaner pressed out a frown, which suggested she wasn’t joking.

  ‘I’ll only be half an hour . . . if you don’t mind.’

  She retreated a few steps and made for the chief super’s office, shaking her head and trailing the vacuum cleaner like it was a badly behaved child.

  When Valentine got inside the room the light outside was dimming. He reached out for the row of switches by the door and pressed them down. The strip bulbs buzzed and then illuminated the broad room. He was about to walk towards the glassed-off office at the other end when some movement caught his eye.

  ‘You’re working late, aren’t you?’ he said.

  DS Sylvia McCormack sat behind a pile of case notes. She patted the top folder and peered over. ‘Maybe not for much longer . . .’

  Valentine approached her. ‘What are you doing anyway?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, good question.’

  He could see she was doing something; he didn’t need to be a detective to work that one out. Her body language belied any wrongdoing, though he conceded that he might have preferred to catch the Glasgow detective in a compromising situation so he had the choice of removing her – and her department’s – involvement in the case. He walked towards the desk and picked up a file. ‘Knox . . . You’re going over his record?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be stepping on any toes; if someone else has this in hand . . . It’s just . . .’ She cut herself off.

  Valentine returned the folder. He had a twinge in his back; he’d been in the office too long and needed to find some time to release the tensions. He wondered how it felt for DS McCormack on her first day in the post. ‘No, you’re all right . . . I was going to give this to Phil or Ally, but they’ve both got pretty heavy paper rounds as it is. And what with this morning’s press kerfuffle . . .’

  The DS nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  He knew when he had hit a raw nerve – the press situation was a bigger embarrassment than he thought if the squad’s newest member already had the good grace to look ashamed at the mention.

  ‘I should probably get off.’ The DS reached out to retrieve her handbag from the back of the chair and eased past the detective.

  ‘Hang on . . . It’s just – what?’

  She stopped and turned. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The files.’ Valentine turned towards Knox’s case notes and tapped the top. ‘You had an idea about these.’

  ‘Oh right.’ She brought her hand up to her head and grabbed a stray bunch of hair from her fringe. As she stood the strap of her handbag worked its way off her shoulder, but she caught the bag before it hit the ground. ‘Yes, the name Knox . . . It rings a bell; I don’t know from what, though.’

  Valentine thinned his eyes and took two steps towards the DS. ‘The name Knox rings a bell with you . . . What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, I just thought I’d come across it before.’

  ‘Where . . . Glasgow?’

  She started to play with the buckle on the outside of her handbag. ‘I don’t know, sir . . . It might be nothing.’

  Valentine saw his hopes, at once raised so high, now dropping back below the horizon. ‘It’s a pretty rare name . . . You’d think you’d remember the case.’

  The DS shrugged her shoulders again. Valentine felt a twinge of anger and locked it away – it had been a long day. ‘Right, get off home . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But before you go . . .’ He turned towards the desk with the large pile of blue files and picked them up. ‘Here, take these with you . . . If there’s something in there that jogs your memory, you can tell me about it in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh and this is your personal obsession while you’re in Ayrshire – get to know Duncan Knox inside out. I want to know all there is to know about him – if he traded a jelly-trifle for a bag of snout in Peterhead, I want to know who with. Get me?’ He placed the pile of files in her arms and held the door open for her.

  ‘Yes, sir . . .’ She collected the files on her way through the door. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  As the door’s hinges let out a sigh, Valentine sat down on the top of the desk. Where he had removed the files sat a copy of the Glasgow-Sun that seemed to have passed through the hands of the entire murder squad. He picked up the newspaper and turned to the story Jim Prentice had brought to their attention at first dawn. The paper was dog-eared and tatty, beyond any doctor’s surgery or barber’s shop waiting-room offer. There were smudges of ketchup and the ringed remnants of coffee cups all over, but none of it altered the contents or the headline:

  AYRSHIRE POLICE HUNT DOUBLE MURDERER

  ‘Bastard . . .’ Valentine felt like spitting on the paper, but he resisted. The article’s subheading had drawn his attention away:

  KNOWN PAEDOPHILE FOUND AT RACECOURSE

  Valentine had read the article already, but he passed his eyes over it again: if nothing else, it would reassure him that he hadn’t imagined it – the newspaper had indeed identified Duncan Knox as the murder victim.

  ‘That’s twice they’ve shafted me now.’

  Valentine closed the paper and shoved it into the wastebasket.

  25

  DI Bob Valentine knew he was an uxorious husband at times and a proprietorial father all of the time. His family meant more to him than anything, perhaps more than it did to other people – at least that’s how it felt to him. There was no escaping the link between his family and his profession: on one cold night in desolate woodland he had watched the brittle white corpse of a fourteen-year-old girl cut down from the branch she had hanged herself from, and he had become like his daughters’ stalker around their home. He found himself listening in on their phone calls to friends, tracking their Facebook posts and once – bizarrely, in retrospect, he conceded – checking Chloe’s pulse as he found her asleep in front of the television. He couldn’t detach fully from what he saw in the job. The curtain that cops pretended to lower behind them when they returned home wasn’t a portcullis; it was permeable, porous, and often at the moments when it was least expected.

  Valentine knew he had once been the typical, gruff hard man from Ayr – all bluster and gumption – but having children and watching them grow into near adulthood had changed him. He’d seen his daughters’ struggles in the adult world and knew he could no longer slap down his damning authoritarian observations on shop girls, waiting staff or even his own employees. Valentine suppressed his emerging sensitive side when he had to – to get the job done – but at such times it felt at odds with the man he should be. He still remembered his own early mistakes, his faux pas on the force. It was difficult to go from being indulged as a child to barely tolerated in the workplace, but that was life. That was growing up, and he worried about the hard years his daughters faced in the transition to adulthood. None of us had it easy, but Valentine knew he had it in his power to make it a little easier for some, though he worried he was going a little soft and how that might impact on the job.

  As he pulled the Vectra into his driveway he gave a wave to his neighbour, Brian, who was mowing the lawn. Valentine felt the guilt over his own shabby yard distil in him. Brian’s manicured lawns and carefully tended shrubberies were a constant source of shame: it was as if they were planted to taunt him, a reminder of his own tardiness in reacting to the sprouting of weeds and rapid skyward acceleration of his grass.

  ‘Hello, Brian,’ he called out.

  T
he cachinnating mower whirred to a slow stop and his neighbour straightened his back. There was a nod above the noise of the stilling mower and then he made his way towards the edge of the lawn with a wave. Valentine watched Brian hoisting up his trousers before brushing grass clippings from the flattened bulk of his belly. His T-shirt was sweat-stained and a spray of grass cuttings clung with grim resistance as if pasted there.

  ‘Only been out half an hour and I’m like Albert Steptoe already,’ he said, before leaning over the party wall and smiling.

  Valentine liked Brian but had always found it difficult to bond with neighbours; having a police officer in the street made people watch their words, act cautiously. Some went to the opposite extreme and acted as if the street possessed a personal watchman to whom they could deliver suspicions and seek instant solutions to all manner of law-breaking accusations, like he was a resident judge and jury. It was a strange state of affairs: people didn’t treat you like one of them – you were an outsider wherever you went.

  ‘You must think my garden’s been abandoned.’ Valentine turned towards his lawn and shook his head. ‘I just can’t find the time to get into it, thinking of getting a gardener in . . . at least temporarily.’

  Brian nodded and eased himself back from the wall with a sigh. ‘Well, you’ve had your hands full of late.’ He seemed at once in sympathy with his neighbour. ‘I saw you on the news the other night . . . terrible business.’

  Valentine drew a deep breath. He didn’t feel comfortable discussing the case with Brian, but the subject had been raised and it would look haughty to dismiss it. ‘No, not a pleasant state of affairs, but we’re on top of it.’

  ‘I was just saying to the wife, I don’t know what this town’s coming to.’ Brian gripped the bevelled brick at the top of the wall, and his cheeks flushed red as he started to speak again. ‘I mean, if you’d said to me a few years ago we’d see that kind of thing, a bloody execution no less, in Ayr, I’d have been waiting for the punchline . . .’