Artefacts of the Dead

by Tony Black

  The pimp crouched onto one knee and grabbed her hair. ‘Am I supposed to believe that?’

  She tried to speak, but merely spluttered.

  ‘What . . . What are you saying to me?’

  ‘I–I said it’s true. Honest, Danny, I wouldn’t lie to you.’ She brought her hands together as if about to pray. ‘Danny, do you have anything . . . ? Just a wee bit, just to see me through.’

  He smacked her head off the wall. As she yelped, her shoulders slid down the plasterboard.

  There was a rage building in Danny Gillon’s head and heart as he stamped down the steps towards the entrance to the flats. In the car park, the sight of the can of Export sent him lunging with a kick once again, but there was none of the playfulness of his earlier shot. The can fired into the air and smacked off the side of the flats, dislodging some roughcast with the force of impact.

  ‘Bloody hell, Leanne . . . I will kill you for this.’

  When he reached the van, Gillon removed his mobile phone from the inside pocket of his denim jacket and scrolled the contacts for Cameron Sinclair.

  The reporter answered straight away.

  ‘Yes, what’s up?’ he said.

  ‘You’re not going to like it.’

  ‘I don’t think I do already and you haven’t even told me what’s happened.’

  ‘It’s Leanne . . . She’s jumped ship.’

  ‘What?’ Sinclair sounded incredulous.

  ‘You heard, she’s done a runner.’

  There was a pause on the line. ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘Believe it, I don’t make up stories.’

  He could hear Sinclair sighing down the line. When he spoke again, his voice had an angry quiver he hadn’t heard before. ‘You’ve done this . . .’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re trying to bump your price up, aren’t you . . .’ He sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth.

  ‘Wait a minute . . . I’m as pissed off about this as you, mate.’

  ‘I’m not your bloody mate.’ Sinclair ranted now. ‘And I’m not someone you can jack up for a few quid. I told you what the deal was, Gillon: now get me that girl or you won’t see a bloody penny.’

  ‘Now hang on . . .’

  ‘I mean it, Gillon. You think you can mess me about, you’re in for a shock.’

  The line died before he had a chance to reply, but as he stared out of the dirt-scarred windscreen into the fast-darkening Lochside ghetto, Danny Gillon knew there was nothing to say anyway.

  39

  DI Bob Valentine sat on the edge of the bed with his hands gripping the sides of his head and his elbows balanced precariously on his thighs. He didn’t know how long he had been there, but the birdsong beyond the window – a recent alert to his senses – suggested some time. He lowered his hands and sat upright, staring towards the closed curtains: a thin bleed of light from outside had started to seep along the top and at the edges. For a moment he wondered about the time of day. It still felt like night, but it couldn’t be, surely. The desire to know sent him glancing towards the bedside clock. It glowed back with 6.05. He raised himself onto his feet and felt slightly uneasy – not dizzy, but in the neighbourhood – when he walked towards the bathroom door. The flick of the light switch sent his eyeballs running for cover in the back of his head. He couldn’t understand this. For some hours his eyes had been preoccupied with what seemed like Technicolor film-reels. It had been in sleep, or something like it, he knew that – but the shock of returning to reality and the limitations of the physical world, things like recoiling from bright light, seemed utterly alien to him. He wondered where the world of dreams ended and the world of reality began. If he kept company with the incubus inside his head for much longer, he feared he might not be able to tell. The line between the two worlds felt like an infinitesimally thin membrane, and if he succeeded in piercing it then where would he be? Trapped – neither here nor there. But then he felt that way now. He was lost to himself and feared the very real consequences of an unreal situation.

  When he was showered, Valentine dried himself in the bathroom and then returned to the bedroom to dress. Clare was still sleeping, her head dug into the pillow and covered by her blonde hair. He watched her at rest for a moment as he tied his tie and wondered what occupied her thoughts. He smiled to himself. She was always so keen to know what was going on with him and what he was thinking about, and yet he couldn’t remember the last time he had asked how she was, how she felt? Was he a good husband, he asked himself? He didn’t have an answer to hand. He was a contented husband and father, he loved his family and would be lost without them, but the way Clare acted told him that her experience had not been the same. She didn’t work and occupied herself with inanities – he couldn’t do that – so he afforded her some latitude as a result. Life was hard enough for those who went out into the world and became inured to its workings, but to be sheltered from it, only glimpsing the insanity from a window or a television screen, must be difficult. You needed to be equipped with experience to make sense of the place and Clare was without any, so she occupied herself with the surface trivia of shopping and competing with the neighbours. He felt sorry for her because she had never had the chance to toughen up, to test the real value of all the junk she cluttered her mind with. But at the same time he envied her insularity; when he compared Clare’s daily preoccupations with those of Diane Cooper – someone who had assuredly seen the worst the world beyond the window had to offer – she seemed trite and unreasonable. He was nobody to judge, though he knew just one gramme of the dose of life that Diane Cooper had been given would fell his wife, completely and resoundingly. She thought she was missing something, but in the final assessment Valentine was glad she didn’t know just what that something was.

  In the hallway, the detective checked the door to the room where his father had been sleeping, but the bed was empty. He was always an early riser; he remembered his father dressed and ready for him every morning when he was at school. Even after, when his father had retired from the mines, he was still the first of the household to rise. It was a strange comfort to have his father, and his old ways, transplanted to his home. He didn’t know why it should be a comfort, but it was: it gave him a warm glow of nostalgia for times past; he remembered the feeling of security his father’s presence brought to the household. He had been relied upon, a feature of his childhood that was as regular and dependable as the sunset. His father was known as the source of the household’s income – he paid their way – and though it was never mentioned, it was an unspoken knowledge that bestowed an incogitable grandeur on him. He remembered the sight of his father walking the back lanes in the evening light, a piece box and Thermos slung over his shoulder, an inclination to a tired stoop the only giveaway of the day’s duty done. When he came closer, un-hasped the gate and walked the path, the blackened features of his face, contrasted with the white creases of his eyes, detailed how hard the task had really been.

  Valentine smiled to himself as he descended the stairs. He couldn’t have lived his father’s life, he knew that, but then how could one man live another’s? Through the door that linked the living room and dining room, he spotted his father’s thin shoulders poking beneath the paisley dressing gown that must have been at least thirty years old.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ he said.

  His father turned briskly to face the source of the greeting. ‘Oh, it’s yourself . . . I was wondering if you still lived here.’

  ‘Don’t you start!’

  His father was smiling, an indication he had picked up Clare’s earlier unease. Valentine looked the old man over: he seemed pale, gaunt. There was a little bruising on his forehead and white sticking plasters crossed his temple like a mark on a pirate’s map. He could sense his unease. His father didn’t want to be there, he wanted to be in his own home, but there was a weariness about him now that suggested he was tired of fighting the reality, or perhaps was ready to give in
.

  ‘Did you not get yourself some tea or coffee?’ said Valentine.

  ‘Och, I’m not raking about in Clare’s cupboards.’

  The old assumption that the kitchen was a wife’s territory raised a smile with the detective. ‘Well, I know my way about . . . What can I get you?’

  ‘Tea . . . You remember how I take it?’

  He shrugged. ‘I think she’s got it written down somewhere . . .’

  ‘Milk and two sugars . . . and leave it some time to stand.’

  As he clattered with the cups and kettle, Valentine called through to his father. ‘So how are you feeling anyway?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’

  His father was never a man to bemoan his lot; he would be half-starved before he’d ask for a scrap from another man’s plate.

  ‘You don’t remember what happened?’

  ‘Well, I do and I don’t . . .’

  The kettle boiled and Valentine popped his head round the door. ‘What?’

  His father was rising from the chair a pained expression crossed his face as his slow gait took him to the kitchen. ‘See, the thing is, I’d need to swear you to secrecy.’

  The detective felt like his stomach was dissolving into his backbone. ‘I don’t like the sound of this, Dad.’

  He reached out a hand, slapped it on his son’s shoulder and gripped tightly. ‘Oh, God, no . . . It’s nothing like that!’

  The kettle boiled, prompting him to pour out the tea. ‘Well, what is it then?’

  His father’s long fingers, gnarled and toughened by a lifetime of manual labour, tapped the keys on an imaginary piano, then shot upwards to the waves of white hair on his head. It was clearly very difficult for him to find the words. ‘Well, son, you see I was given this gift . . . A beautiful gift it was too, and I was very grateful for it at the time.’

  Valentine clattered the spoon off the counter with impatience. ‘Look, will you just tell me?’

  ‘It was the slippers . . .’

  ‘What?’ Nothing made sense. He wondered if his father was going senile.

  He sighed, reached out for the cup and turned for the dining room. ‘You see, Clare bought me these lovely slippers the other day, grand they were, nice and comfy with the fur inside . . . but . . .’

  The two men sat facing each other over the table. ‘But?’

  ‘They were too big, son . . . I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I did myself a turn in them.’

  Valentine started to laugh. ‘You tripped over your own feet?’

  ‘Oh, bugger off . . . They’re size tens, I’m only an eight . . . Took a nosedive down the stairs, so I did.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to tell, Clare . . .’

  ‘God, no, she’d be heartbroken . . . It was a lovely thought.’

  The detective looked at his father, a wide smile crossing his face; he was delighted that there was no serious damage done. The thought of the old boy going for a day of scans and having to keep his mouth shut for Clare’s benefit was comical to him.

  ‘You know she has you shipped upstairs for good?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, you’ll have to set her straight.’

  ‘Me?’

  He drew his hands from the sides of the cup. ‘I need my own space; I can’t be stopping in the youngster’s room.’

  Valentine took a sip of coffee, then made his way back to the kitchen to collect his coat and briefcase, but kept his stare on his father. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I don’t think you’re getting off that lightly, though, she’ll keep you under observation for a bit longer.’

  His father was on his feet, waving him off as he opened the back door. ‘Aren’t you going in a bit early?’

  ‘I’ve got a lot to do, Dad. I’ll see you tonight . . . Mind how you go, especially on those stairs!’

  ‘Och, bugger off . . .’

  Hillfoot Road was so quiet that he gave serious consideration to leaving the house at an earlier hour every day. There were still plenty of Glasgow commuters about, and maybe even a few late starts to Edinburgh. You could pick them by engine size, or marque: to a one they were Mercedes or BMWs, with a suit jacket hanging in the back window, perhaps a hard hat on a parcel shelf to signal a property tycoon, businessmen with beer bellies and fully laden egos to match. He shook his head and tried to take in the thought of what a two-hour drive at the start of every day, and again at the end, would feel like. What kind of vanity compelled them? It was insane, he thought, but that’s what Ayr had become – a commuter town where shiny-arsed cogs in the capitalist wheel travelled for hours to have a bigger house at a better price than in the city. It would continue, because there were more houses going up all the time – fields given to foundations and the telling scars of heavy infrastructure; he’d even heard of people commuting to London now on the cheap flights from Prestwick Airport. He couldn’t imagine it did much for the town’s social cohesion, but then there was very little of that left anyway.

  As he reached King Street station, Valentine ascended the stairs to the incident room and slid backwards through the swing door as he wrestled himself out of his sports coat. The lights were out. He fumbled for the switches on the wall and soon the room was flooded with the familiar bright, blinding whiteness that would burn throughout the working day. He didn’t know why they needed to have such powerful, searing light – the place was lit up like a supermarket or one of the bigger branches of Boots – but nobody seemed to complain, so he felt stuck with it. On his way to the far end of the incident room, the detective glanced at the whiteboard to make sure DS McAlister had added the results of the credit card and CCTV sweep: he hadn’t.

  ‘Bloody hell, Ally.’ He would call him on that later – if the chief super hadn’t already. She was becoming more than a worry to the DI now. She was fickle at the best of times, but when she was under pressure, or in anyway exposed to censure, she became erratic. Dino could just as quickly divest Valentine of the case as she had delivered it; he knew that, and the added pressure was a weeping sore he felt the need to pick at constantly. One more piece of bad press, or another line of inquiry drawing a blank, and she was liable to wobble. He’d seen it before, she was prone to it, and when she did wobble he knew to get out of the way or she would use him to break her fall.

  When he reached his glassed-off office at the end of the incident room, Valentine’s eyes were drawn to a set of blue folders. He flipped the first one open: an old VHS videotape sat on the tip with a yellow Post-it note attached. The note was in Ally’s spidery scrawl: ‘Interesting viewing, boss!’

  At once the detective felt a gnawing pang of guilt for having cursed the DS about his progress. A smile spread up his face and settled like a surreal scar as he thumbed the rest of the pages. Ally had indeed come up trumps with the credit search: two more successive Wednesday-night purchases attributed to James Urquhart in the same locale. But it was the CCTV footage from a Prestwick Road twenty-four-hour garage that intrigued him. Valentine took the tape and slotted it into the TV-recorder in the corner of the room. The dust on the screen fizzled as the tube heated.

  ‘Right then, Ally . . . Let’s see what you’ve got here.’

  The tape was set a few minutes before the point of interest that had been marked by the DS. Valentine watched the grainy image of the petrol station forecourt. There appeared to be one car parked at the pumps and another just arriving but making its way to the parking bays next to the bags of charcoal and the long-past-their-best bunches of flowers. He thought he recognised the second car from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it.

  ‘Interesting . . .’

  The screen changed again: a white band descended diagonally, splitting the image in two and merging with a new screenshot of the interior. A clock in the lower left corner ticked away the hours, minutes and seconds. It was 7.15 p.m.

  ‘Hello . . .’

  The first man to the counter was stocky and broad-shouldered but carrying a heavy paunch. His hair was short and cropped close to h
is scalp. As he handed over his money to the teller, there was no mistaking Duncan Knox.

  Valentine nodded. ‘Nice work, Ally.’

  He let the video play a little longer and watched Knox leave the shop, and then the screen flipped back to the forecourt and he watched him getting into his car and driving away. He reached out to pause the video recorder. For a moment, the detective let his thoughts breathe. This was evidence placing Knox and Urquhart in the same vicinity at the same time, but it was far from the conclusive stamp he needed. Valentine knew Knox and Urquhart were connected – to have his suspicions almost confirmed was tantalising, but added little to his overall knowledge. Would it be enough even to convince the chief super of a link? He doubted it. What it presented was an interesting proposition, a list of more possibilities but little else.

  He returned to the blue folder on his desk and removed the yellow Post-It note on which DS McAlister had written the next screen time he wanted him to view. He pressed the fast-forward button and watched the counter reach the requisite number. As he pressed play once again, the picture had jumped back out to the forecourt but was obscured by two jagged diagonal lines. He could see the door of the other car – the one he thought he recognised – opening and a figure stepping out. The screen jumped again, back to the interior, and Valentine leaned forward to better view the figure going into the store and approaching the counter. He had his head down, towards the counter; the rim of a tweed cap obscured the man’s face. He was buying cigarettes. He paid cash and then as he collected his change he tipped his head towards the camera.

  Valentine leapt to press pause on the video recorder.

  As the screen stilled, there was no doubt in his mind the man in the tweed cap was James Urquhart. He stared at his face and tried to process the information it provided. The detective felt like he had tapped into a secret signal from satellite orbiting in space and he needed someone to translate the raw binary code of the message into English for him, but his thoughts were already buzzing with the possibility of what it might say and what it might mean, for not only the investigation but for the case of the missing Janie Cooper.