Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  ‘Sorry, sir . . . I had a late night last night with the Knox files.’

  ‘Oh yes, did you remember the case you thought he was linked to?’

  The sun’s glare crept up behind her and a pair of drowsy eyes flickered. The chatter and fuss of the busy office seemed to subside as she spoke. ‘That’s what I wanted to see you about.’

  27

  As Valentine waited for DS McCormack to retrieve the paperwork she wanted to show him, he stood in the glassed-off office at the end of the incident room and stared out the window. The youths he had spotted earlier were still in the vicinity, still behaving like little more than unruly apes. He watched them, worked up over who knows what, smacking walls and doors. They attacked with fist, foot or forehead any number of inanimate objects in their path. Injury seemed an irrelevance. When a car’s horn sounded in their direction, one took a swing at a moving windscreen. Another let fly at a lamppost. Valentine had seen it all before, seen them swinging bottles like clubs. Had any of them progressed from troglodytes? They ranted, shouted, screamed, poured recriminations in every direction, and why? To draw attention to themselves? To assert their authority within the pack? To test their virility? The answer didn’t matter, he no longer needed to divine a reason: he had reached the conclusion that youths off the estates were feral. The detective had seen footage on television of Indian apes terrorising city dwellers and he had made the connection. He knew what it was like to face off gangs acting out their primal instincts, terrorising people who lived quietly in their homes, he’d even been on the receiving end of blows and blades, and he had little desire to repeat either. He had never felt the need to act in such a way, never felt the want to strike out, to attack the weak in order to assert a sense of superiority. As he watched them, the actions of the youths disturbed Valentine. Their behaviour was bestial, and it both repulsed and unsettled the detective to think that he shared a world with them. He didn’t want to think of himself as being part of the same species as those swaggering apes he had cause to lock away in cells for their own good, week in and week out, since he had joined the force.

  ‘All kicking off, is it?’ said DS McCormack as she walked in clutching a bundle of blue folders and peering out the window to the street.

  Valentine greeted her with a thin smile. ‘No, it’s just Ayrshire rites of passage.’

  The DS placed the folders on the desktop and took in the view properly. A thin beanpole of a youth batted his chest and made a Nazi salute. ‘Shouldn’t we tell uniform?’

  ‘Are you kidding? This is a daily occurrence . . .’

  ‘But in front of the station?’

  The detective tipped back his head and laughed. ‘That’s the reason for it: it’s posturing to the powers that be . . . like an Orange walk. Don’t worry about it, Sylvia, by lunchtime they’ll all be full of Buckfast and basking in the warm glow of their own bullshit.’

  She didn’t look convinced. Valentine wondered how it must appear to an outsider, even someone from Glasgow, the infamous ‘No Mean City’ where there was no shortage of louts and yobs. He concluded inwardly that the sea air, or the water, or those inveterate west-coast genes were to blame, but really the cause didn’t bother him: it was the effect that struck a chord. He folded the thought away and stacked it neatly with a host of other wearisome observations.

  ‘Right, what have you got for me?’ he said, drawing out a chair and positioning himself behind the desk.

  DS McCormack stood before him and tapped two fingers on her cheekbone before inhaling sharply and bursting into lyrical speech. ‘Right, you remember I told you that I thought I knew the name Knox . . .’

  Valentine cut in. ‘And do you remember I told you I wanted a complete case file on him, not just chasing rainbows?’

  ‘You have it.’ She rummaged in the pile of notes and presented the DI with a blue folder.

  He took the folder and opened it up; he was scanning the contents as McCormack started to talk again. She seemed animated, keen: he liked to see that in his squad, but he knew enthusiasm was no substitute for groundwork, she would need to impress him with her police work over any desire to shine.

  ‘Knox has spent more time inside than out in the last thirty years, some hard yards as well,’ she said.

  ‘Took a chiv in the back in Peterhead, I see . . .’

  ‘Yeah, it was a sharpened chicken bone, I believe. He did the rest of his stretch in isolation, but still managed to get his top row of teeth knocked out.’

  ‘Popular bloke . . . Can’t say I’m welling up with sympathy, mind you. This record’s horrific; I’d have knocked his teeth out myself.’

  McCormack bunched her brows and then her expression gave way to a more understanding look. ‘Never expressed remorse once, never submitted fully to any treatment: I think it’s fair to say Knox was a serial paedophile without contrition for his crimes.’

  ‘He was bloody well committed to it. He was a beast, nothing more.’

  The DS nodded. ‘There are psych reports in there, but they don’t make for pretty reading.’ Her eyes darted. ‘Sir, if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a point about Knox’s time in custody.’

  Valentine closed the folder, leaned back and laced his fingers across his stomach. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I listed the times Knox was inside and plotted his known whereabouts when he was at liberty . . . Not always easy, because a few times he managed to slip under the radar, but in the main, save a period of about six months I couldn’t account for when I think he was in the north, he stayed in and around greater Glasgow.’

  The DI edged forward in his seat, placing his fingertips on the rim of the desk. ‘Are you going to tell me you remembered the case?’

  McCormack smiled. ‘Better than that, sir.’ A gleam entered her eyes as she reached for another folder. The desk was becoming messy. ‘I found the case by cross-referencing all of Knox’s offences with all of those of a similar nature stretching back through his period of offending.’

  ‘Thirty-plus years – you trailed that last night?’

  ‘Not exactly . . . I subtracted the times he was inside and only looked at what was left, which cut it down by a massive amount.’

  ‘Sylvia, I’m guessing you still had quite a few cases to wade through, but are you going to spill the beans?’

  ‘Yes, sir . . . I’m getting to it.’

  ‘No, DS McCormack, spit it out . . . I’m not a dentist, I don’t pull teeth.’

  She took her hand away from the blue folder and stepped back from the desk. She was pacing as she spoke, finding the exact words clearly a struggle for her. ‘There was a case in Partick and a case in Shawlands, so two cases with the same MO, and Knox was living in a bedsit on Jamaica Street at the time of them both.’ She paused. ‘Boss, Urquhart was in Glasgow then too . . . This is the only time outside of their recent past in Ayr that I can pinpoint them in the same locality.’

  ‘And years later, they both turn up on wooden spikes in my patch . . .’

  The DS nodded. ‘This could be the link.’

  ‘Tell me they took him in?’

  She sighed, stopped pacing. ‘Not for the Partick one . . .’

  ‘Glasgow questioned Duncan Knox for Shawlands?’

  ‘Yes. I checked just five minutes ago, sir, the Partick case was closed anyway, but the one they quizzed Knox on is still open.’

  Valentine rose from the desk and put his hands in his pockets; his throat constricted rapidly as he tried to still his mind. He walked towards the window and stared out at the grey wash of sky. It was raining now, and a flooded culvert seemed to swallow all the detective’s instincts whole.

  ‘Right, Sylvia, give me the details . . .’

  The DS reached for one of the folders and removed a single sheaf of paper. ‘A missing Shawlands schoolgirl, Janie Cooper . . .’

  The girl’s name made Valentine reel. A knot twisted in his stomach and his breathing stilled. He had never heard the name before and his reaction p
uzzled him; it was as if he had been told of the death of a relative. A lightness in his head sent his balance askew and he reached out to steady himself on the filing cabinet. He felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs, like he existed in a vacuum. It was a strange feeling of weightlessness, of being a soul separate from the physical body.

  ‘Is everything OK, sir?’

  His mouth was dry, a lofty anger exuding through his pores; it was as if the current of his thoughts had accelerated. He nodded and heard the blood pounding in his eardrums. ‘Yes, go on . . .’

  ‘She was only six, a pretty wee thing by all accounts . . .’

  ‘Do we have a picture?’ He didn’t know why he had asked. He was magnetically drawn to Janie Cooper’s plight; it felt as though their thoughts had become synchronised the second he became aware of her.

  ‘No, not a hard copy, I’ll print one up . . . It was twelve years ago now that she disappeared.’

  ‘He did it . . . Knox.’

  ‘What?’

  Valentine moved away from the filing cabinet and placed the flat of his back on the bare plaster wall. His mind dawdled through a field of immense possibilities; his pulse beat harder when he thought of finding justice for Janie. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, I just know.’

  DS McCormack double-blinked and looked away. ‘Erm, Glasgow questioned Knox, but he was released soon after.’

  ‘He did it.’

  McCormack closed the folder over and started to tidy the notes on the desk into their respective piles. She tried not to look at the DI as she spoke. ‘I know at least one of the officers is still on the force, sir. I could arrange a meeting.’

  ‘What about Janie’s parents?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . I could find out.’

  Valentine nodded. ‘Yes, do that. I want to meet them.’

  ‘Is that a good idea, sir?’ The DS seemed to be overwhelmed by the reaction the information had generated in the detective. ‘I mean, won’t that be like building their hopes up?’

  Valentine pushed himself off the wall. The room felt suddenly small and insufficient for the knowledge he carried inside him. ‘It’s twelve years, Sylvia, did they ever find a body?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, sir. The remains of Janie Cooper were never recovered.’

  Valentine crossed the distance to the door and opened it. He felt enveloped in a void of helplessness, detached from the reality he knew. He yelled out to the room, ‘Ally, get in here!’

  McCormack looked panicked as she picked up the files and headed for the door. ‘I’ll get onto Glasgow, get images.’

  ‘Right, and get onto the parents: I want to meet them as soon as possible.’ He drew deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Maybe want’s too strong a word.’

  28

  Diane Cooper stared out of the broad bay window of her childless home at the rain-washed road as if it held some secret that would never be given up. The street lamps had started to deliver an umber burnishing to the paving stones, but their filaments were not in full flow; when they were, the road would be smeared in an orange oil that Diane knew well. From the top-floor tenement building, the broad sweep of the long, straight street stretched out like a horizon she surveyed with weary eyes. Every inch of the view – a mile long to east and west – was familiar to her. The huddled, amorphous masses of people that passed by were not known by name, but each one was identifiable on sight. The old woman with the water-bag legs, trailing her tartan shopping trolley, was running late – she’d be lucky to catch the butcher’s shop before closing. The broad man with the blazer – it was a blazer today, a change from pinstripes – sheltered under a raised newspaper outside the estate agents; had he left his briefcase behind? The Evening Times seller beneath the clock was never bothered by the rain, just let it plaster his hair to his head and collected his dues, crying, ‘Times . . . Times . . .’

  It was starting to get cold, a change in the weather. There would be no more good drying days, her mother had said just that morning. Seasons changed overnight in Scotland: you woke up and suddenly the sun of summer was gone, replaced by winds and wet and the promise of frosts of winter to follow. Diane didn’t like the nights drawing in, the cold, the wet. She didn’t like to see the people rushing in the streets to get indoors, bumping into each other with elbows aloft beneath umbrellas. She didn’t like to see the cars with their lights on when the day wasn’t even halfway through. She didn’t like to see the children coming home from school waiting at the crossing for the green man to appear. The younger ones would shiver in the cold; she feared for them. It was cold and flu season. Some didn’t have proper coats. Children needed proper coats in this weather: it was Scotland, and four seasons in one day wasn’t unheard of in summer, never mind winter. People needed to look after their children, needed to take care of them. Children were a gift: Diane knew this, sometimes, she thought, like no one else.

  ‘She’s a wee angel, so she is . . .’ Her mother had said.

  She could still hear the words, see the faces around the hospital bed. Billy had wanted a boy, but when he saw her his heart melted.

  ‘She’s perfect,’ he said.

  He had tears in his eyes when he held her. He didn’t want to hold her, hardly ever wanted to pick her up because he was frightened that he’d drop her.

  ‘Take her, daftie,’ Diane told him. ‘You’ll not break her.’

  He took her in those big builder’s arms of his and held her in a way she’d never seen anyone else hold a baby: out in front of him, like it was an angry cat or laundry being delivered. It had made her laugh; she still laughed now.

  ‘Oh, Billy, hold her to you,’ she’d said. ‘She needs to get the scent of you, get used to you, you’re her dad.’

  ‘I just don’t want to drop her or, you know, hurt her.’

  ‘You’ll not drop her or hurt her.’

  He held her tighter and smiled and stared at her. ‘She’s just so . . . perfect.’

  And she was: Janie had been perfect. There wasn’t a day went by that Diane didn’t remember her daughter and thank God for the time she’d had with her. It was a short time, far too short, but the memories of that time burned like an eternal flame in her mind. She could still see her the day they brought her home from hospital – just a baby then – and then there were her first words, her first steps, her first day at school . . .

  Diane felt pressure building in her chest and retrieved her gaze from the street. It was as if she had been staring into complete darkness, and the return to the dimly lit room required some adjustment. She reached out and took hold of the back of the sofa to steady herself. How long had she been standing there, staring out? She didn’t know. The sense of time seemed to have deserted her; she was unsteady, woozy. It was as if the laws of gravity had altered when she was in her daydream. She pressed both palms onto the sofa’s soft moquette and stilled her breathing. She’d been told about this before; she worried that the panic attacks might come back. Today she worried about them more than she had before.

  ‘Jesus, Billy . . . Where are you?’

  The room spun now, little blotches of iridescent light appeared on the rain-splattered window, the street seemed like a poorly lit circus, all loud noises and rushing, whirring bodies and vehicles she couldn’t quite focus on. Diane folded over, balanced her brow on the back of her arm and then tried to straighten herself. She made for the kitchen and retrieved a tall glass from the draining board to fill with water. The city water wasn’t the best, carried the taste of old pipes with it, but she gulped down a mouthful, and then another. When she was finished, she placed the glass on the drainer and turned her back on the window that overlooked the communal yard of the flats. Janie had played there, in the yard, as a little girl. Diane could still remember calling out to her on a spring morning to come inside and put on a cardigan. She was just playing, though, just playing with her little friends. Diane sighed, a deep, care-worn exhalation; she still saw Anna and Michelle, and the other little gi
rl, Tammy, still lived across the close. She was eighteen a little while ago, the stair was trailed in bunting and banners, big keys . . . the key to the door, the keys to the outside world, the adult world. Life. Diane’s heart stilled at the thought. Janie would have been eighteen this year, a grown-up, a woman.

  ‘Twelve years . . .’ She dropped onto her haunches and cried. ‘Twelve years since . . . Janie . . . Janie.’

  The kitchen linoleum was cold beneath her feet, but she didn’t care. She toppled over and lay on her side where she fell; her bare arms touched the cold floor, but she didn’t care. Janie was cold. Somewhere. Wherever her daughter had met her end, she was cold, dead. The tears became harder, stronger, more rhythmic. The tears shook her whole body and gathered in a shallow pool beneath her head. There had been so many tears, so, so many. There had been years of crying and recriminations. Years of hurt and hoping for better days to come, but they never did. Nothing repaired the damage done to a family by the death of a child, of a much-loved daughter who could never be replaced. How did they go on from that? How did she? The tears intensified once again, but the rictus of her contorted, agonised mouth refused to allow the deep wails of hurt that she held inside. It was something she couldn’t share, not after twelve years, not even with her husband.

  ‘Billy . . .’

  Where was he?

  She wanted her husband. She wanted him home, to hold her. To say he understood. To tell her that wherever Janie was, she was safe. She was with angels. She couldn’t hurt any more. She couldn’t feel pain, the pain they felt, because she was in heaven. It was all words, all Billy’s timeworn words that he repeated to reassure her that she didn’t need to see the doctor again, didn’t need to have her prescription antidepressants increased from three a day to four. She could leave the flat, she could leave the building, she could, maybe, one day, if she felt like it, go into the real world, back to work even.