I had.
CHAPTER 25
Thursday, 21 June 2007
‘That poor boy.’ Death is something Aelish lives with every day, but she has a capacity for caring that sometimes seems too big for the shrinking body she inhabits. She took Donnie McLeod’s death hard, but she would have taken it a lot harder if I’d told her everything. Donnie had helpfully filed the serial numbers off the shotgun before taking out his hopelessness on Mr Ali’s Aston Martin, and there didn’t seem to be much point in letting her know who’d supplied him with the gun. The cops had given me a hard time, but they couldn’t prove I’d intentionally got in the way of their operation and eventually they’d had to let me go. ‘But they charged you?’
‘Only with breach of the peace,’ I shrugged, ‘which covers everything from breathing in a disorderly manner to running naked up the Royal Mile. I doubt if we’ll hear any more.’
‘You shouldn’t have gone there, Glen. They could have shot you, too.’
I shook my head and was about to say something witty and brave when she gave a little sharp cough.
‘Are you okay?’ The bird flu scare had been getting more serious lately, with a few confirmed cases down south and a couple of scares nearer home. I wasn’t convinced by the dire predictions of the doom-mongers, but it scared me to think what it might do to someone in Aelish’s condition.
‘I’m fine.’ The way she said it was defensive and didn’t convince me, but there was no arguing with Aelish in this mood. ‘I can’t help thinking that Donnie McLeod is as much this killer’s victim as Shoaz Ahmad or the young Algerian boy. We have to help them find him, Glen.’
Those last words made me wince. I could still feel the grip of Donnie’s fingers on my hand and I knew that moment would never leave me. But blaming myself wasn’t going to bring him back. On the other hand I knew she was right. Maybe if we could track down the killer it would at least give Donnie McLeod’s death some meaning. As far as anyone else was concerned he was nothing but a murderer who had committed ‘suicide by cop’. The name he’d whispered with his final breath had convinced them he’d buried Gurya somewhere on the hill. They decided he’d done away with her to pay back some imagined slight from her father. Nothing I said would make them think differently.
That didn’t bring me anywhere nearer the killer than they were. Fortunately, there’s more than one investigator in the family. ‘I found something, Glen.‘ Aelish eased the wheelchair towards her computer and pushed the mouse so that the screen became active with the last website she’d been studying.
Bannockburn.
‘Robert the Bruce,’ I said, trying to sound as if I’d known all along.
She gave me the kind of look schoolteachers reserve for the kids who don’t know their Hamlet from their Hamilton Accies. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not Robert the Bruce.’ She brought up another site. Threave Castle. And a third. Roxburgh Castle. ‘Robert the Bruce is our link to Bannockburn, his most famous battle against the English. But Threave Castle wasn’t built until after Bruce died. Only one name links all three . . . and the heart.’ My own heart beat faster now. The heart was the clue. Dewar was right. If we could find out where the heart fitted in all this we’d be halfway to finding the killer. ‘Douglas. Sir James Douglas.’
‘The Black Douglas,’ I said giving her the hug she deserved. ‘Bruce’s lieutenant and . . .’
‘God’s Warrior. The man who took Bruce’s heart on the Crusades. To the Scots, he was the Good Sir James. Back then it was only the English who feared him, who called him the Black Douglas.’ She gave me a strange look. ‘It says here he was tall and dark of visage and he was utterly ruthless in battle. English mothers told their naughty children that the Douglas was coming to get them. Who does that remind you of?’ I smiled modestly, but didn’t rise to the bait. She continued: ‘He fought beside Bruce at Bannockburn and he took Roxburgh Castle for the king in 1313. His son built Threave Castle and it was a Douglas stronghold for a hundred years.’
She pulled up a map and I studied it over her shoulder. ‘So we have three killings. Here, here and here . . .’
‘Not the killings,’ she corrected me. ‘Where the bodies were left.’
‘But each place has a special significance linked to Sir James Douglas. Can you pull up a biography of the man?’
She handed me a sheaf of papers with what might be considered a superior smile.
‘And now we have Gurya Ali.’
‘Who may be alive or dead.’
‘Let’s say she’s alive.’ Our eyes met and she nodded gravely. I studied the text. Douglas wasn’t just Bruce’s lieutenant. He was also his friend. And it wasn’t only Bannockburn. They’d fought together the length and breadth of Scotland. So many places.
‘I’ve made a list.’ She handed me a sheet of printed paper. ‘And the significant dates.’
‘There are dozens of sites,’ I pointed out unnecessarily. ‘Perth, Berwick, Loudon Hill, and those are just the ones I recognise. Where the hell’s Glen Trool? The problem is that we can’t rule anywhere out just because it’s small or not particularly well known. Look at Threave.’
‘Why don’t we look at the dates instead?’ Aelish suggested.
I realised she was right. Time was the key. If the dates were significant and she was being held somewhere by Shoaz Ahmad’s killer, time could be running out for Gurya Ali. ‘The Black Douglas took Roxburgh Castle on the thirteenth of March, but Shoaz Ahmad’s body wasn’t found there until the seventh of June.’
‘The anniversary of Robert Bruce’s death,’ she pointed out.
‘True, but in that case why not place the body where he died?’ I consulted the text again. ‘Cardross, up near Dumbarton, which is closer to where Shoaz was taken . . .’
‘But probably not where he was kept before his body was dumped.’
‘Maybe because the killer was more interested in making the link with Douglas?’
‘Mmmmh.’
‘Bilal Hammouche, the Algerian boy, died at Bannockburn on the fourteenth of June, but I can’t find anything important that happened in either the lives of Bruce or Douglas on that date.’
‘So it looks as if he’s making a statement with the places, but the dates are arbitrary?’ She frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me. Everything I’ve read about serial killers points to an ordered, tidy mind. They like to tick boxes, and if this man is tying the killings to places associated with something then the dates should matter, too.’
I thought about it. Aelish could be right, but I’d read about serial killers, too, and the one thing I’d learned was that there is no such thing as a typical mass murderer. Then again, there are times when Aelish’s Celtic intuition goes beyond any talents I have. ‘All right, I’ll go with that.’ I picked up a sheet of paper with a list of the fortresses Bruce and Douglas had captured in the fourteenth century. ‘There are dozens of battles and sieges here that aren’t dated. Let’s assume our man – I think we can be fairly certain he’s a man – knows a hell of a lot more about Douglas than we do. There could be a dozen dates we aren’t aware of that are significant to him.’
‘And places,’ she suggested. ‘I . . .’
The phone rang in the next room and I bit back a curse. For the first time since I’d been summoned by Gurya Ali’s father I had the feeling we were beginning to get somewhere. I left Aelish at the computer and went to answer it.
‘Savage,’ I said abruptly.
‘Mr Savage? This is Helen Simpson at Intermetal Analysis.’ The voice was cool and businesslike, and there was a pause as she waited for me to acknowledge who she was and my brain fought to remember why she was important. ‘We met yesterday,’ she continued helpfully. ‘At the lab.’
My heart gave a little buzz. I’d assumed the first thing Mr Ali would do when I left his house was cancel the test, but it looked as if he’d had better things to do.
‘Hi, Helen,’ I said, making as if she was my long-lost best friend. ‘Thanks for getting
back to me so quickly.’
I sensed her smile and her tone relaxed. ‘It was only after you left that I remembered I didn’t have your address to send the report to. I considered couriering it to Assad to pass on, but you said it was urgent, so I thought I’d give you a call.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ I wondered what Mr Ali would have made of his surprise parcel. ‘What do you have for me?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not all that much.’ Her voice didn’t hold out much hope of anything significant, but I picked up a pen and began jotting down a summary of her words anyway. ‘You have to understand that the analysis of worked lead is not an exact science and has only limited things to tell us. Studying the smelting process can give us certain signatures in trace elements – that is, minute quantities of other metals within the lead – and the levels of natural radiation emitted by it, which some of my colleagues believe help us to identify the sources of the original ore. Unfortunately these variations tend to be swamped if the metal is reworked, which I believe is the case here.’
‘That’s disappointing. So we don’t know where it came from or when the toys were made?’
‘Not with any accuracy,’ she admitted. ‘But . . .’
‘But?’
She gave an almost embarrassed sigh. ‘But, if it helps, I can tell you what Ithink, rather than what I know. I’m aware how important this might be, Mr Savage.’
‘Go ahead, Helen. It could help a lot. I’d be very grateful and I’m sure Mr Ali would be, too.’
‘Well, there’s nothing that would stand up in court, but I believe . . . Ithink . . . there are signs indicating that the lead I analysed may have originated in ancient times, specifically Roman times. It contains no alloys of any kind, which certainly points in that direction.’
I’d been ready to hear a lot of things, but not that. ‘I didn’t think the Romans were up here for long enough to smelt lead. When was that? Two thousand years ago?’
‘Oh, they stayed for much longer than most people realise, Mr Savage. They probably exercised control over southern Scotland for a hundred and twenty years and more, and they were great exploiters. If lead, silver or gold was here in any quantity the Roman engineers would have found it. But this might well be lead imported from other areas of Britain and used here.’
I said I couldn’t understand how something so ancient had survived for so long and in enough quantity to be used to make the killer’s toys.
But Helen Simpson had an answer for that. ‘You’re forgetting that this material has been reused, Mr Savage, and that it may not be the first time it has been reused. The most likely source of Roman lead is in medieval buildings which still survive. It might originally have been used for the plumbing in some fort on Hadrian’s Wall, but there would always be some medieval entrepreneur willing to gather it up and sell it to the church or the local landowner to line their roof or make one of those little pipes you see sticking out of a gargoyle’s mouth at Holyrood Palace or St Giles’ Cathedral.’
Medieval. I felt the electric pulse of a connection run down my spine. Whatever question you asked about the murders, medieval always seemed to be at least part of the answer.
Helen was still talking, but I’d stopped listening and I had the distinct feeling I shouldn’t have. ‘Sorry, I missed the last part.’
‘I just said I hoped whoever made this toy didn’t make too many of them.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I also analysed the paint he used. Apart from the fact that he’s been working with the lead figures, he’s also using a lead-based paint. That’s a pretty potent combination. There could be a serious risk of lead poisoning if there has been long-term exposure. Anyway, that’s as much as I can give you,’ she finished. ‘I’m sorry it’s so little and so imprecise, but I hope it helps in some way to find Gurya.’
I thanked her again and walked back through the house to where Aelish still sat hunched over her computer.
‘Anything new?’ she asked brightly. I was still struck by how well she had looked since she’d come out of hospital. She tired easily, but so far she hadn’t had any of the crippling muscle pains that she’d suffered so often in the past. Sometimes I felt as if I was suffering along with her, but I knew that was an illusion I had created to ease the guilt that I couldn’t help her. If the treatment was working, I had to find some way of extending it. But without Mr Ali’s money the only way I could do it was by selling the house, and that meant that all this, all the weightless accumulation of twenty years of marriage, the mementoes of one short, shitty war, one lengthy, pointless police action and a dozen years of professional striving would no longer be ours. Somehow I managed to push the thought from my mind and force a smile. ‘Medieval,’ I said and her eyes lit up with interest. ‘That was the scientist I asked to look at the metal in the toys. They’re made of lead which she thinks could have been originally smelted a couple of thousand years ago, but the most likely source would be from somewhere linked to the Middle Ages.’
‘Somewhere like Threave Castle?’
‘I suppose so. I could get in touch with the curator and ask him to check if any lead was stolen around the time the body was dumped there.’
‘Do the Crusades count as the Middle Ages?’
‘Probably. Why?’
‘Because while you were away trying to get yourself killed, I was making a few inquiries about yoursepoy.’
The way she saidsepoy made it clear I knew as much about history as Coco the Clown’s fashion adviser knew about haute couture.
‘Hey,’ I said defensively, ‘I only said theylookedlikesepoys.’
‘Well, take a closer look.’ She handed me the lead soldier I’d left with her. Baggy white trousers. Red tunic or shirt. Some kind of white turban. The right hand wielding a curved sword as if the holder knew how to use it. Martial pose and a brown smudge for a face.
‘Okay,’ I conceded. ‘Maybe not asepoy, but still Indian?’
She shook her head. ‘Not Indian. Take another look. Think medieval. Think Crusades.’
I gave her my scary sergeant’s glare, but she countered with the angelic smile that still melts my insides after two decades together. I took another look and thought Crusades. Most of what I knew about the Crusades was what I’d read about Richard the Lionheart when I was a kid at school. Brave Christian knights from throughout Europe had banded together to win back Jerusalem and other Holy sites in the Middle East from the nasty Saracens. Of course, as I grew older I discovered that the Crusaders were pretty much murderous incompetents and the Saracen leader Saladin had run rings round them and eventually kicked them out of what was now Israel, Syria and the Lebanon. I was vague about the dates on all this, but, studying the figure again, I could see the maker might have meant it to be Arabic rather than Indian. What I’d thought was atulwar, the traditional Indian curved sword, could just as well be a scimitar. I was looking at a Saracen foot soldier. Sir James Douglas had fought against the Saracens. But where did that take us? What was the significance of the little tokens the killer had left behind? What was the fatal link between a knight who had lived and died seven hundred years ago and three young people who had been killed in the past few months? It didn’t make sense. But then, what murder does?
‘All right,’ I conceded. ‘So this is a Saracen and the Black Douglas fought the Saracens. It reinforces the theory that the killings are somehow linked to Douglas, but it doesn’t bring us any nearer to finding the killer or knowing when or where he’ll kill his next victim. For all we know, Gurya Ali might be dead already, lying somewhere on some remote mountainside. And we don’t know if these are the only victims. This could go back years. We need to check out each of these sites linked to Douglas and Bruce and see if there’s any correlation with unexplained deaths. Dewar might help out with that. Am I missing something?’ She was wearing that superior look again.
‘Possibly. You’ve forgotten about the Black Douglas.’
‘He took Bruce’s hea
rt and went to the Holy Land to fight the Saracens and he didn’t come back. What else is there to know?’
She sighed and picked up the papers she’d given me. I realised I hadn’t read to the end.
‘He didn’t go to the Holy Land, Glen. He only got as far as Spain. A place called Teba de Ardales, where they fought beside King Alfonso of Spain against the Moors of Granada.’ She started to read: ‘The Scots charged prematurely and were surrounded. When Sir Douglas saw Sir William Sinclair of Roslin hard pressed he . . .’
Suddenly the room wasn’t a room any more. The little lead figure seemed to pulse in my hand. Where the ceiling had been a sky of pristine blue formed a celestial dome and the burning sun beat down like a blacksmith’s hammer. The heat inside the iron helm was stifling to the point of suffocation and the weight of the chain mail armour threatened to drag me from my charger. Through the thin slit of the visor Willie Sinclair’s banner fluttered alone in a sea of scarlet crescents fifty paces ahead and the man himself was caught in a whirlpool of circling Moorish light cavalry and almost lost in the red dust kicked up by thousands of hooves. Where were the Spanish? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that a warrior of God did not leave his comrade to fight and die alone. I felt for the casket at my neck. It was our talisman, undaunted and unvanquished, the ultimate symbol of chivalry. The heart of Robert the Bruce, my friend and my king. For a second my hand hesitated, but the power of the casket was too strong. He would not have paused. This was the destiny he had been deprived of in life. The moment he had lived for since he felt the touch of a sword upon his shoulder. Now or never. With a cry, I tore the casket from its chain and hurled it towards the maelstrom around my brother knight . . .
‘Glen, are you all right?’
I heard my voice, the accent thicker, the rhythm of my speech archaic. ‘My lance was splintered, but my sword still sharp. I unhorsed the first and disabled the second, but there were too many. Sinclair was already dead. Logan’s horse went down, hamstrung by a scimitar and my destrier followed. Unhorsed and in full armour, I was as helpless as a beetle on its back. A brown hand pulled the helmet from my head and the sun glinted on the curved Moorish blades. My last thought was one of terror, but not at the loss of my own life. Christendom’s battle against the enemies of God would be won in this world or the next. My lord’s heart lay just beyond my grasp, I reached for it as the swords flashed down . . .’
War Games Page 17