Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  ‘What?’

  He dropped the pencil; it started to roll towards the edge of the desk and he slapped the palm of his hand over it before it fell. The noise acted like a clapperboard in the room. ‘I have Sylvia McCormack in Glasgow today . . .’

  ‘Bob, are you shunting that girl out of the way?’

  ‘No. Not at all . . .’

  A hand shot from the hip and a ragged red fingernail pointed at the DI. ‘I mean it, she’s to be given full responsibility, I don’t want to have her scratching at my door next week telling me she’s been sent for a long stand or a tin of tartan bloody paint!’

  Valentine reclined in his chair and laced his fingers across his chest; he became vaguely aware of the strength of his heart beating beneath his shirtfront. ‘I took Sylvia to Glasgow myself yesterday; we were exploring a link between Knox and a previous case, the disappearance of a schoolgirl in Shawlands twelve years ago.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Her name was Janie Cooper.’

  ‘It doesn’t ring any bells, was it high profile?’

  ‘It was a big case, yes.’

  ‘There was so many of them around that time, wee lassies snatched every other day of the week, you couldn’t keep up . . . Anyway, what’s the connection?’

  The DI felt his breath still. He wet his lips with his tongue and then wiped the back of his fingertips over his mouth. ‘Knox was called in, they questioned him over the disappearance of the Cooper girl, but they released him.’ Valentine’s voice became reedy and slow. ‘We haven’t got anything solid yet, but Urquhart was living in Glasgow at the time and I think there may have been contact. I’ll know for sure when I get the Knox interview transcripts today.’

  There was a moment of stilled silence in the room as the chief super started to pace towards the window. She still had one hand on her hip, but the other pinched a dimple in her chin. As he watched her, Valentine felt the air packed in his lungs crying out to be released, but he held back and tried to remain as stiff as possible. He had extended the known facts of the case now, embellished even, to make it sound like he was making progress, and he knew – with the proper questioning – he could be found out. But he knew also that CS Martin was likely to be some distance shy of the required yards to keep up with him.

  ‘So, you’re saying that Knox and Urquhart knew each other from before, from the Janie Cooper disappearance?’

  ‘No. Not exactly . . . I’m saying I suspect that.’

  She turned and cut in. ‘Right, let’s not quibble over the wording, Bob . . . You think we have a predatory paedophile connection to the killings on our turf?’

  He rolled eyes and permitted himself a half-nod. ‘It’s possible.’

  CS Martin’s features solidified into a delicate mask. She looked like she might shatter before him if she hadn’t spoken and broken the spell. ‘Well, if we thought we had some press attention before, what the hell’s it going to be like when they get hold of this?’

  Valentine raised a hand. ‘No, there’s no chance of that . . .’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ She jutted her jaw. ‘You’ve no way of knowing that.’

  ‘Well, I believe I’m quite confident in declaring myself some way in front of the press pack on this one, because the only way they would know what I know was if they were involved in some way.’

  ‘Or had an inside track . . .’

  Valentine shook his head. His chest inflated as he rose from his seat and placed his palms on the desktop. ‘We had one mole, Paulo, and he got his. Nobody out there would be so bloody stupid to jump into his boots.’

  ‘You hope . . .’

  ‘Do you have some information you’d like to share with me, or is this just scaremongering?’

  Her face said she didn’t like the detective’s tone. ‘I don’t scaremonger.’

  ‘Then my original suggestion stands.’ He picked up the telephone’s receiver. ‘Shall I call in the rep?’

  Martin crossed the floor towards the desk. ‘Don’t think about taking me on, Bob, or you’ll be back teaching cadets how to wipe their arse before the day’s out.’

  He lowered the phone into its cradle – something told him he’d come too far with the investigation to risk losing it. The recent talk of Janie Cooper pushed her image back into his mind. ‘My squad’s watertight: I won’t tolerate leaks and they know it.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ The chief super kept a firm stare on the DI for a moment and then turned for the door. As she reached for the handle, she called out. ‘I want a full report of what we’ve just discussed on my desk by close of play tonight. With Sylvia’s transcripts from Glasgow . . . If it sounds at all promising, you might not have to look out your tracksuit and whistle again.’

  36

  Valentine watched the chief super strut through the incident room and then stand and wait, regally, as the door was opened for her. When the door closed, he mouthed the word ‘bitch’ under his breath and then he found himself following her footsteps into the main room. Some more officers had appeared now and he nodded to DS Donnelly and some uniforms he recognised from the murder scene at the racetrack. The DI stood before the board and took in the information, which consisted of scrawled notes and mugshots, scenes of crime photos and long, looping delineations that may or may not indicate links. He brushed at the sides of his mouth as he took it in and then he picked up a black marker pen and drew a thick line between the two victims: Urquhart and Knox.

  ‘Looks definite enough,’ said DS Donnelly.

  ‘Bloody sure it is, Phil,’ said Valentine. ‘That pair were in cahoots: I can feel it in my blood. They knew each other, they were connected, and they preyed on children together.’

  ‘Whoa . . . Step back a bit,’ said Donnelly. ‘We’ve got nothing to put Urquhart in the same league as Knox.’

  ‘Oh, come on . . . He’s textbook. He never had so much as a casual acquaintance with anyone he worked with. Kept himself to himself, always. He had no critics, but he had no admirers either . . . Wonder why? Because he was keeping a low profile, he was leading a double life and was frightened that if he revealed even a little of himself he’d be found out.’

  DS Donnelly didn’t look convinced. He seemed to be letting the DI speak himself out in the hope that he would say something he agreed with.

  ‘Boss, I don’t know . . . You always say we can’t make assumptions; this just seems a bit against the grain.’

  Valentine turned from the board and replaced the top on the marker pen. He tried not to look at the DS because he knew his run of untrammelled confidence would be shattered by a single glance. He dipped his head towards the desk. ‘OK, then what have you got, Phil?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Squat . . . Same as everyone else.’

  ‘Sir, I’m not playing devil’s advocate here, I’m just saying show me the evidence.’

  ‘Are you saying that there’s no evidence, just because we haven’t found it?’ He raised his head and took in the DI. ‘Because that doesn’t wash either, Phil . . . In the absence of what we’d like, we have to make do with what we’ve got.’

  DS Donnelly drew his lips into a tight aperture; he raised his hands and then folded them behind his head. It was a gesture that told Valentine he wasn’t retreating any time soon; it also told him that if he was going to press the case against Urquhart then he was going to need more than blind loyalty to get the squad to go along with him. Was he losing it? Was he really letting his imagination take over from the rational part of his brain, the part that admonished officers like Donnelly when they made the kinds of lunging assessments he had just made? He was tense: the muscles of his shoulders ached like he had been carrying a loaded backpack, or the weight of the world perhaps. He was looking for answers where there were none, and he knew it. The earlier run-in with CS Martin had acted like a lash on him: he felt pressured, and that was never a good way to be. He knew police officers under pressure made mistakes, made the wrong moves; he had done that
once before and nearly paid for it with his life.

  Valentine peered over DS Donnelly and called out, ‘Ally . . . Over here a minute.’

  The DS closed the top drawer in his desk and pushed out his chair; as he walked towards the two officers he put his hands in his pockets. His expression was calm, blank almost.

  ‘Yeah, what’s up?’

  ‘Ally, tell us what you got with the club you were checking out.’

  He looked perplexed. ‘Club?’

  ‘The model-railway club . . . the Wednesday night thing that Urquhart was supposed to be going to but never showed up at.’

  ‘Oh, the railway, sorry . . .’ He trotted back towards his desk and reopened the drawer he had just closed; when he made his way back to Donnelly and Valentine he was carrying a notebook.

  ‘Right . . . Here we go.’ McAlister flicked through the first few pages. ‘OK, nothing from the first credit card. Well, it was used on a Wednesday night at the Tesco Express on Maybole Road . . .’

  ‘That’s almost on his doorstep, doesn’t tell us much,’ said Donnelly.

  ‘At what time did he use it, though?’

  ‘Ah, don’t know . . . Have to get the file.’

  Valentine sighed and touched his forehead; moisture was pooling in his deep-furrowed brow. ‘Well, check it: if it’s late at night it could be because he was coming back home from somewhere else . . . What about the other stuff?’

  He turned the spiral pages over. ‘Yes, here we are . . . got a bank-card transaction on three successive Wednesdays at the off-licence on the Prestwick Road.’

  ‘Why’s he going to an offie?’ said Valentine. ‘I’m presuming these are nights he didn’t make the railway club?’

  ‘Er, yes . . . All those nights were no-shows. So the question remains: where was he going with the booze?’

  ‘He bought alcohol?’ said Valentine.

  ‘Yes, same every night a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape . . .’

  DS Donnelly curled down the corners of his mouth, then shot them up in a smirk. ‘Very nice indeed.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think James Urquhart has the type of palate to tolerate Blue Nun . . . He’s drinking that, but who with?’

  DS McAlister turned a few more pages in the notebook, then reversed the spiral and returned to the front cover. He let the pad flap open for a moment and then, as if overly conscious of its presence, he turned it behind his back.

  The DI spoke. ‘Right, that’s three Wednesdays on the trot he’s buying expensive plonk when he’s supposed to be at some old-boys’ model club . . . What the hell is he playing at?’

  ‘It’s a bird,’ said Donnelly. ‘It’s got to be.’

  ‘I’d have to say you’re right.’

  ‘But doesn’t that rule out your earlier theory . . .’

  Valentine shook his head. ‘Are you saying he can’t have an interest in birds too . . . ? He was married, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but that could be a front, boss.’ Donnelly positioned himself on the edge of the desktop. ‘If we’re following your line of thinking.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Ally.

  Valentine flagged DS McAlister down. ‘In a minute . . .’ He turned back to Donnelly. ‘My point exactly. This is a man, a predator, who likes fronts. Perhaps the wine was for someone who had something he wanted . . . A young daughter, perhaps.’

  Donnelly eased himself from the desk. ‘We need to check the rest of those cards.’

  The DI nodded. ‘And we want the CCTV footage from this off-licence and anywhere else within a country mile of Prestwick Road.’

  ‘We should run the same checks on Knox too; I don’t think for a second he’s likely to have been as careful as Urquhart.’

  ‘You’re right . . . You got that, Ally?’

  DS McAlister returned to the notebook and stood poised with a pen over the paper. ‘Before I do anything, is someone going to fill me in on what we’re talking about?’

  Valentine patted Donnelly on the shoulder. ‘That’s one for you, Phil . . . and when you’re done with that, you can put a summary on the board. There’s been far too little going up there of late and Dino’s starting to get nervous. She’ll be in here pissing on the table legs to assert her authority if we’re not too careful.’

  McAlister and Donnelly were smiling as Valentine retreated to the glassed-off office at the end of the room. His mind was racing with the possibilities, but there was something sticking in there like a sharp splinter of ice. He didn’t want to believe that he was being overtly influenced by forces he didn’t understand, but he knew he was. He was being led by the thought that he might solve the Janie Cooper case if he could solve the murders of Urquhart and Knox. To a seasoned detective it was absurd, he was being led by instinct and avoiding the facts, but he couldn’t deny that every significant development in the case had come as a result of throwing the rulebook out and following his gut, not from carefully acquired factual knowledge of the evidence.

  As he sat down behind his desk, Valentine removed the blue folder that had the details of the Janie Cooper case that DS McCormack had compiled. He turned over the first page and skimmed the others until he found the photographs. There were pictures he had seen already, newspaper cuttings he hadn’t seen before and a selection of lab pictures that were tagged and bagged, but only the one numbered 14 stuck out. The item was a small blonde-haired doll, a Sindy doll like his eldest daughter had once owned. He had seen it before, though: not one like it, not a similar one. It was the doll Janie Cooper had been swinging in her hands when he’d passed out and seen her in her parents’ home.

  ‘Christ . . .’

  Valentine picked up the picture and read the description on the label that was attached. The doll had been found a few streets from Janie’s school on the day she disappeared; it was the last artefact to be uncovered before the girl was declared missing.

  The DI felt his thoughts being dragged away by a wild river. The sound of footsteps, cabinets closing, telephones ringing and all the shrill din of noise from the office around him became a cacophony that filled his ears. A dull pain was beginning to form in his arm, which told him he needed to alter his breathing and find calm. As he did so, the room lost its foggy haze and he felt the truculent ache in his chest subside. Despite the shock, both physical and mental, Valentine felt invigorated. He let the thought of his growing confidence settle on his mind like a warm glow, and then a smile replaced his frown and he stored the knowledge of Janie Cooper and her doll in the new and rapidly expanding niche he had reserved for the unexplained.

  37

  It was like there was a scale inside of him, a see-sawing balance of weights and measures that divided the good and the bad from each other. At normal times, when all was well and as it should be, the scale registered an equanimity that was imperceptible to Valentine. But when his world was at odds, his children unsettled, his work life tiresome or over-challenging, then the balance tipped. He found himself stacking columns of pros and cons on each side of the fulcrum. It was a demonstrably divisive enterprise, or game, if you preferred, because there was little tangible benefit, save amusing himself. The silver plates he weighted with the good and the bad formed a snapshot of his existence, but sometimes it was lopsided. A positive representation of his wife, for example, with due credit given to her dogged support over the years of their marriage may be pitted to the negative, the diametric opposite, of her own selfish indulgences at scent counters and homeware stores. At times of true passivity, when he had given over to life’s buffeting like a leaf on a breeze, he became a mere spectator – watching one side of the scales afflicted by an avoirdupois he was incapable of controlling. At such times, Valentine lost faith in the future and became submerged under the grim burden of an unsympathetic fate.

  It was the gloom, the black dog, the Scots’ bleak penchant for predestination. It didn’t matter what you called it, or if you even subscribed to its existence, because the entity – and it felt like a separateness, a spe
ctre – was no respecter of opinions. The black dog roamed wild, brought misery to bear wherever it touched and left the same in its wake, like messy paw prints that served as warnings of an imminent return. But why was there no white dog – an antithetical beast that brought some levity to the world? He smirked at the thought. It was not in the Scots’ make-up to invent an antidote; and why would they? Surely that would merely deprive them of the very real aspect the black dog bestowed: identity. We wanted to be miserable, we wanted to watch the black dog bay at the moon because it was who and what we were. We found our definition in the dreich skies and desolate landscapes; we lived for the light touch of smirr blown from the sea; the jagged, rocky outcrops glimpsed through the gloaming sang to us – they were the ghosts of our souls and we would no more part with them than an arm or a leg because they were such an integral part of who we were. And, he knew, it was certainly who he was.

  Valentine tried to comprehend what his wife was saying, but the words wouldn’t go in. He stood in the hallway with his grey dog-tooth sports coat still on and his briefcase in hand, with Clare resembling a harpy before him, castigating and caterwauling.

  ‘He’s your father. How?’ She shook her head and brought hands to her brow in a dramatic flourish of pique. ‘Tell me how you managed to forget that?’

  He didn’t reply, because, although it was a question – posed in her own singular language – he didn’t feel an answer was required. When Clare became rhetorical it was for effect, for show. She liked to repose in movie-star-style indulgence of her whims at every opportunity. And missing his father’s return from hospital was an opportunity not to be passed up, even though he suspected her ire had more to do with the neighbour’s new extension. Valentine took his wife’s castigating blows because they had little impact on him now; he shook them off in the same way he brushed raindrops from his shoulders and with just as much care. He could let her go on all night, talk herself hoarse, as it barely penetrated the epidermis he would doubtless slough off in the next downpour. He wondered why his expression wasn’t a giveaway to her. Why didn’t she see her words were falling into a black hole of disinterest? He assumed it was because she didn’t really care: he was just the target, it was the releasing of barbs she was concerned with. If it helped her deal with being Clare Valentine then he could stand there and take them all night.