When Stars Grow Dark

by Scott Hunter

With a frisson of self-awareness, she realised she enjoyed seeing him smile. There was something about the way it transformed his face. ‘I’ll bet,’ she said, not trusting herself to look at him.

  They turned through a narrow iron gate into a small car park. ‘Here we are.’ Luscombe killed the engine and withdrew the keys. ‘Not quite as grand as your place, but I like to think it has a certain charm.’

  Charlie fished her bag from the boot and followed Luscombe into the police station, trying to work out whether she’d discerned a twinkle in his eye or if her imagination was just working overtime.

  CHAPTER NINE

  George McConnell pressed the doorbell and stood back. He felt the familiar, conflicting, emotions of peace and disquiet he always experienced when visiting. The grounds were picturesque, spacious. A well-tended lawn stretched back to a line of birches and oaks that half-concealed a small lake, itself delimited by a profusion of pickerelweed and blue flag iris, sedge and arrowhead. George had taken to walking the lake’s perimeter after his visit. Time spent in reflection in the lakeside’s restful environment helped to alleviate the feelings of helplessness that always threatened to overwhelm him as, after each visit, he would reluctantly concede that Tess had made little progress. But at least, the nursing officer habitually offered by way of reassurance, she seemed ‘comfortable’ and not in distress.

  The door was answered by a new staff member whom he didn’t recognise. He explained the reason for his visit, showed his ID. And then he was alone in the hall, the empty staircase beckoning him forward. This was the hardest part. He knew what to expect, and yet a small spark of hope still smouldered. Today she would recognise him. Today would bring the first signs of returning life, maybe a gesture, a look – even better, a word.

  Tess was sitting by the window, in her usual chair, looking out over the lawn towards the dark ribbon of partially-obscured water. The sun was shining, and there was a hint of spring in the air. One of the small bedroom windows was open in acknowledgment, and the room felt airy, laced with the faint scent of cut flowers.

  ‘Hi,’ George said. This was the second hardest part. Once he got used to the rhythm of the one-way conversation, he knew he would be more at ease, able to rabbit on about all sorts of trivia: what was going on at the station, the new case they were working on, the guv taking time off, how Collingworth was getting on his nerves, big time. Once he started it would all start to flow. He summoned his reserves of courage and approached her. She was dressed in a long skirt and plain top, her hair loose, longer now than she used to wear it. Her face was pale, though, and George thought that she’d lost weight. Last week he’d queried this with the nursing officer, but had been reassured that Tess was eating ‘plenty enough’.

  ‘Lovely day out there. I might take a wee walk by the lake, a bit later.’

  Tess stayed in the same position, but her head tilted to one side a little, as though she’d heard some faraway, familiar sound to which she would have liked to respond, but, for whatever reason, found herself unable.

  George took this as encouragement. He pulled up a chair, drew it in close. He fell short of touching her, although he very much wanted to, because he worried that physical contact might alarm her. The drug she’d been given was, according to the boffins at the hospital, uncategorised, a compound mix of various chemicals the like of which hadn’t been seen before in the West. Its long-term effects were therefore, according to the chemists, almost impossible to predict. ‘The human brain is an extraordinary and largely unknown organism,’ the experts had reported. ‘Great advances have been made over the last fifty years, but we are still very much in the dark as to exactly how the brain functions.’

  George was well aware that, in the light of this vague prognosis, there were two possible paths open to him. One led to despair, anger and frustration, the other to a cautiously optimistic hope that Tess would make, if not a full, then, given time and, most importantly, encouragement, at least a partial recovery.

  ‘Charlie’s off up north today,’ he told her. ‘Aviemore. I know it. Used to be a lovely spot. Bit too touristy for me nowadays. Skiing and the like. Nice time to go, though, in the early spring.’

  Tess made a soft moaning noise in her throat. What was she thinking? Could she understand him? He pressed on. ‘She’s gone up with a fella from Police Scotland. Nice guy. Only met him briefly. Luscombe, he’s called.’

  George chatted away for twenty minutes or so until he felt that he, or maybe Tess, had had enough. He hated leaving her. He knew she was cared for here, but…

  He left her with a promise to pop in again in a day or so. His descent of the grand staircase was accompanied, as usual, by a lump in his throat, a fierce stinging in his eyes. He stood in the drive for a few minutes, taking in draughts of pure, clear air, then headed purposefully across the lawn, making for the lake.

  Moran had developed a sure instinct over the years. He knew when he wasn’t alone. He knew when he was being tailed. And this morning, as he joined the traffic on the Oxford Road, he knew that someone was interested in him, in what he was doing. He glanced in his rearview. There it was, a grey Mercedes A Class, just nosing out a few cars behind him.

  Moran wasn’t too bothered. This guy wasn’t about physical contact. He was just keeping an eye out. But for what? He’d called round, but Moran had been out. So, why not call again, when he was in? He’d been in the whole evening, since he’d taken Archie out for a stroll at eight-ish, and he’d been in all night.

  A better question: who was he? Moran turned left at the Inner Distribution Road roundabout, headed towards the station. The A Class mirrored his actions, just two cars behind. When they reached the police station roundabout, and Moran turned into the service road that led to the underground car park, the A Class cruised on past the turning, the driver staring fixedly ahead.

  See you later, no doubt…

  Moran guided the car into a space, clearing the treacherous concrete posts with an inch or two to spare, and spied the tall silhouette of DC Collingworth walking towards him. Before Moran’s feet touched the asphalt, Collingworth called a greeting.

  ‘Guv. I was hoping to catch you early – before we got going, so to speak.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Moran thumbed his key fob and turned to face the detective.

  ‘I understand you’re stepping in as SIO on the Chapelfields case, while DI Pepper is away?’

  ‘For the short term, yes. Probably a couple of weeks maximum.’

  They crossed the car park and Collingworth punched in the door entry code. They went inside, called the lift.

  ‘You’ll be aware, guv, that I passed my sergeant’s board recently.’

  ‘Yes. Well done.’

  The lift arrived, and the two men stepped inside.

  ‘I was wondering if you might put in a word, if I applied for the internal vacancy – it was posted a couple of days back.’

  ‘Well, by all means go ahead and apply, DC Collingworth. I’m sure DI Pepper will take everything into consideration.’

  The lift stopped, the doors slid open and they exited to the reception area.

  ‘That’s what I mean, guv.’ Collingworth hovered by the internal door to the open plan. ‘I’m not sure that DI Pepper and myself … see eye to eye, exactly. We seem to have got off to a bad start.’

  Moran squared up to the younger man, looked him in the eye. ‘From what I’ve seen and heard, DC Collingworth, you have the potential to do well. However, I’ve also heard that there have been occasions where your interactions with colleagues have been less than helpful. If you take steps to improve your peer-to-peer relationships, I have every reason to believe that DI Pepper will look more favourably on the possibility of endorsing you for a suitable role in your new grade.’

  Collingworth was silent for a moment. ‘I see. It’s just that, I thought… well, as DI Pepper is unavailable at present–’

  ‘–you’d slip your application in without reference to said officer?’

&nbs
p; ‘Well, if you put it like that, I suppose so, yes. But I don’t see anything wrong with–’

  ‘–No, and that, perhaps, is part of the problem. Now, if you’ll excuse me, DC Collingworth I have one or two pressing matters to attend to before briefing, and I’m sure you have plenty to be getting on with in the meantime. I’ll see you at ten.’

  Moran felt Collingworth’s eyes boring into his back as he walked away. A rough diamond. Potential, for sure, but the lad had some way to go. He’d done well at his board; his ability wasn’t in question, just his attitude. Moran had seen many a promising career wrecked by a lack of self-awareness in that respect. Would Collingworth see the light? Difficult to tell. His ambition was commendable, but there was rather too much of a self-serving bias to Collingworth’s modus operandi for Moran’s liking – and clearly for Charlie’s, too.

  Moran sat at his desk and tried to focus on next steps for the Chapelfields murder. His mind kept wandering back to the Mercedes, to Cleiren’s artic, to the pistol beneath the dead driver’s seat. It all needed following up. But how, logistically, to cover all the bases? He ran through a mental list of available officers. He’d have to split them down the middle. Half to Chapelfields leads, half to the truck. Or should he instead, perhaps, just alert the customs and port authorities regarding the latter? Let them take up the investigation? The artic had been passing though the Thames Valley, but that didn’t necessarily mean he had to take it on.

  Moran drummed his fingers. No, it didn’t feel right. His instincts told him this was something he needed to tackle head on, especially given the truck’s minor diversion to Tenby. Flynn had mentioned Joe Gallagher’s connection to the port at Ringaskiddy.

  He stood, went to the wall map and traced a line from Tenby to Ringaskiddy. A straight line, pretty much.

  A straight line, perhaps, for a crooked operation.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The house was small, one of a group of terraces. Bleak, was how Charlie would have described it. Colourless. The town and its environs were a place of contrasts – beauty in the surrounding natural landscape, and cheap, ugly housing tucked away in dowdy corners.

  Luscombe parked the BMW in an empty space opposite a run down house with a ‘for sale’ notice leaning at a forty-five degree angle, and switched off the engine. ‘Happy for you to take the lead,’ he said. ‘I’ll chip in if anything gets lost in translation.’ Again came the grin, the sudden brightening of the eyes. Then he was out of the car and walking towards number eleven.

  Charlie followed the tall detective through the rusted wrought-iron gate, and along the short path which led to Isaiah Marley’s sister’s front door. The rain, which had begun as they’d left Aviemore police station, was teeming down, and looked as though it was likely to stay that way.

  ‘Reckon she’ll be in?’ Charlie shivered as they waited for a response.

  Luscombe shrugged. ‘Where else is she going to go? People who live in this area don’t tend to move around much.’

  ‘Unless she was spooked by the phone call.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Luscombe said. ‘But she must be expecting someone to call about her brother, sometime.’

  ‘George said she sounded scared.’

  ‘Aye, well we’ll soon find out.’ Luscombe cocked his head at the sound of a chain being slid aside, or perhaps fastened. The door opened a fraction, and a face peered through the gap. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police,’ Charlie said. ‘Can we have a moment of your time?’

  ‘This is about Isaiah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The chain rattled again and the door opened. ‘Thank you,’ Charlie said, and followed the woman inside.

  They were shown into a small lounge, where the woman indicated a two-seater settee. The only other chair was an armchair, where, judging by the glass and book resting on the table next to it, she’d been sitting when the doorbell rang. There was a moment of awkwardness as Charlie and Luscombe assessed the available seating. They squeezed onto the two-seater, and Charlie crossed one leg over the other in an attempt to create a little personal space. The woman resumed her place in the armchair.

  She was small in stature, of Caribbean descent, dressed simply in a white top, blue cardigan, and jeans. She looked resigned, as if she’d been expecting bad news for a long time. Charlie recognised the signs; the downturned mouth, blank expression, automatic movements. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at them both without a trace of curiosity.

  Charlie took a mental deep breath and began. For some reason she was more nervous than usual. ‘I’m DI Pepper from the Thames Valley Constabulary in Berkshire. This is Detective Sergeant Ian Luscombe, of Police Scotland. You spoke briefly to my sergeant, George McConnell, yesterday.’

  ‘I knew Isaiah was dead. I dreamed it.’

  ‘Perhaps if we can confirm your full name to begin with?’ Charlie gave her an encouraging smile.

  ‘Grace Elizabeth Baxter, nee Marley. Born 1969.’

  ‘Thank you. Tell us about Isaiah, Grace. Did he live with you? What was he doing in Berkshire?’

  ‘Looking for work. An’ he told me he might have found a job, workin’ at the hospital. I said, I could have got you a job at my hospital, but he wouldn’t listen. Stubborn. Always stubborn.’

  ‘You work at the local hospital?’ Luscombe prompted.

  ‘I’m a cleaner. They always need cleaners, but Isaiah liked to do things his own way.’

  ‘So,’ Charlie pressed on, ‘he had his own place here, in Aviemore? Or did he stay with you?’

  ‘He worked around a bit, used to live in sometimes with his jobs. When he had no job he’d come to me.’

  ‘Grace, was Isaiah in this country illegally?’ Luscombe pitched in bluntly.

  Charlie flinched. That was a potentially interview-terminating question, if Grace took it the wrong way.

  ‘Sure. Of course. He only came here when our parents died. Otherwise he’d still be livin’ there.’

  ‘And where is that, exactly, Grace?’

  ‘Where d’you think, girl? Do I sound like a Spanish woman to you, or what?’

  Charlie sensed Luscombe suppressing a guffaw. She smiled. ‘All right, Jamaica would be my guess.’

  ‘There y’are. So I can see you’re a good detective.’

  ‘Did Isaiah confide in you? Did you talk?’

  ‘Only small things. Never any heart-to-heart. That wasn’t his way.’ She leaned forward suddenly. ‘What happened to my brother? Was it his fault?’

  A flicker of emotion clouded Grace’s features. Charlie would have guessed her age wrongly; she looked older than her fifty-one years.

  ‘No,’ Charlie said gently. ‘It wasn’t his fault. His car was hit by an articulated lorry.’

  Grace looked into her lap. ‘What was he doing? Was he up to no good?’

  ‘Did he usually get up to no good, Grace?’ Luscombe asked.

  Grace hesitated. ‘He never meant to, but he always needed money. He spent too much – what he didn’t have. My parents, they coddled him, y’know? When they passed away he just expected to carry on, like he always had. He couldn’t get a permit to work here, but some friend of his say he could come anyway, they’d fix it all for him. So he came.’ She shrugged.

  ‘And yourself?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I ain’t illegal, dearie. I can show you my passport. I came here in eighty-nine. I wanted a future, I wanted to see this country. I got married. It was all fine, until my husband died. Since then, I just done the best I could.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie said. ‘That must have been hard.’

  Another shrug. ‘Life’s hard, ain’t it? No one ever promised you an easy one, eh?’

  ‘When did you last see Isaiah, Grace?’

  She paused, knitted her brow. ‘I see him in January. He come in to tell me he’s goin’ south. He didn’t stay long.’

  ‘Did he have friends in this area, or contacts? He only had your number in his mobile phone. No one else. Was he hidin
g something, or hiding from something?’

  ‘–Or someone?’ Luscombe added.

  Grace was silent for a moment, then she answered with her own question. ‘Why you so interested in him? He’s dead, in an accident. What else is there?’

  Charlie exchanged a look with Luscombe. He nodded. ‘Grace, there was a dead body in the car with him at the time of the accident. An elderly man. He wasn’t killed by the accident, he was dead already.’

  Grace put a hand to her mouth, then made the sign of the cross. ‘Oh, Lord.’

  ‘We don’t know who killed him, Grace,’ Charlie quickly added. ‘It may not have been Isaiah. We’re trying to build up a picture, to establish where Isaiah had been, where he went and why. Can you help us in any way? Is there anything he might have said to you–’

  ‘–Like I said, dearie, he never told me nothing.’ This was declared emphatically. Grace folded her arms, looked at them both. ‘My, but you two make a fine couple.’

  Charlie felt herself colouring, her cheeks heating up like two beacons. She rummaged in her bag to hide her discomfiture, trying not to catch Luscombe’s eye. ‘Mrs Baxter, if you do remember anything – anything at all – please call me. It’s very important that we find out who did this.’ She handed Grace her card.

  ‘Sure. But like I said, my brother never told me much about nothin’.’

  ‘Do you have other relatives in the UK, Mrs Baxter?’ Luscombe had stood up, was smoothing his jacket, straightening his tie.

  ‘It’s just me. Everyone else is either back home, or dead.’ She paused. ‘Who … who do I talk to about…’ Grace Baxter trailed off, pursed her lips. Her eyes fell to the threadbare carpet.

  Charlie reached over and touched the older woman’s shoulder. ‘The funeral? I’ll let you have the necessary contact details. Don’t worry. There’ll be arrangements in place for this kind of eventuality.’ Charlie gave her a tight-lipped smile. ‘I’m sorry we had to trouble you today, Grace. But please – call me, even if it seems like something trivial. Nothing is too small, or silly, OK?’