‘Glen?’ A hand on my shoulder. Sweat running in torrents down my face. I turned to Aelish and I could see the fear in her dark eyes.
‘Christ.’ I rubbed the back of my hand over my mouth and I could taste my own fear. ‘I could feel the blades cutting into my flesh. They . . .’
‘Don’t, Glen.’
‘Douglas and Bruce feared Islam as they feared nothing else, not even the English they’d fought all their lives,’ I said, letting the thoughts run unfettered through my head. ‘The warriors of God and the enemies of God. That’s what this is all about.’ I closed my eyes, attempting to separate fact from theory, evidence from information. ‘The victims we know about are all brown-skinned.’
‘Yes, but they’re not all Moslems.’
‘But the killer might not have known that. The Crusades – it was a religious war, not an ethnic or racial one. Maybe that’s what this is about. Religion. Didn’t George W Bush get into trouble for calling the War on Terror a new crusade? But what if he’s right? What if one man is conducting a crusade of his own?’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she pointed out. ‘Why choose Sir James Douglas? Why not Richard the Lionheart or any other knight whodid reach the Holy Land and fought the Saracens on their own ground?’
‘Because the killer is Scottish. Because he has some kind of fascination for or connection to Douglas. Because . . .’ I ran out of ideas as it struck me how ludicrous the theory was. ‘I don’t know. No, that’s wrong. I do know. I understand how crazy it sounds, but there’s nothing sane about a serial killer.’
‘And the hearts?’
‘The hearts are what give the killer power over his victims. In his mind heisthe Black Douglas. Bruce’s heart became Douglas’s life and it drove him to his death. Our killer has the same obsession with the heart.’ I had a thought that sent a shiver through me. I picked up the sheets of paper with the story of James Douglas’s life on them. ‘When the battle was over and the Sultan of Granada realised whose body it was, he had Douglas returned to King Alfonso for burial – along with the heart.’
‘He must have been an honourable man, even a good one.’
‘That’s the tragedy of every war, Aelish. ‘I heard the bitterness of hard experience in my voice. ‘There are good men on both sides. Douglas’s remains were carried home to Scotland by his friends and buried in St Bride’s chapel in Douglas, over in Ayrshire.’
‘And Bruce’s heart?’
‘Is buried not three miles from here.’
A gasp escaped her pale lips. ‘I’d forgotten. In Melrose Abbey.’
We sat for a while, steeped in our own thoughts and looking out through the picture window and down the valley towards the great bend in the Tweed that protected the twelfth-century stones of what was once the richest of the four Border abbeys.
‘There’s something else, Glen.’
‘What have I forgotten now?’ I said irritably.
‘You said the dates could still matter?’
I grunted. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘What was the most significant event in the lives of Robert the Bruce and James Douglas?’
It didn’t take too much working out. ‘Bannockburn, but . . .’
‘And what date is it today?
‘The twenty-first of June.’
‘The anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn is on the twenty-fourth. Three days from now.’
Three days. If Gurya Ali was still alive, I had three days to save her.
CHAPTER 26
‘You have to tell the police, Glen.’
‘What?’ I feigned surprise.
‘You have to tell the police about the toy soldiers and the Black Douglas.’ Her dark eyes pinned me liked a butterfly on a collector’s board and dared me to deny it. How could I? It was obvious. The only sensible thing was to give everything we had to the cops. They had the resources and the manpower. There might be a dozen clues in the make-up of the toy soldiers that they had the technology to find, clues that Helen Simpson’s lab couldn’t unearth. And that didn’t take into account fingerprints – which reminded me that mine were all over them – and DNA. They could already have a suspect and the medieval link to the Black Douglas might make the difference between arresting him and not. It would be crazy to keep the information to ourselves.
‘But it’s all speculation, Aelish. We don’t have anything at all. They’d think I was crazy and chuck me in the tank for interfering with their investigation and withholding evidence. Christ’s sake, they think Gurya is already dead and buried.’
Her eyes flashed dangerously and her mouth hardened in a very un-Aelish way. ‘You’d risk a young girl’s life because you’re scared of the police?’ Anger made her voice brittle. ‘I don’t believe it, Glen Savage. If you’d do that, you’re not the man I think you are. You have to take those soldiers to the police and tell them everything. Because if you don’t I will.’
I raised my hands in surrender.
‘You’re right, love, I know that. It’s just . . .’ It was just something I couldn’t explain to her now. Maybe it was something I could never explain to her. ‘I’ll call them in the morning and arrange a meeting with Dorward.’
She looked at me suspiciously; she really did know me too well. ‘Why Dorward? Why not just hand them in at Galashiels? This is about Gurya Ali now.’
I hesitated before conceding the point. Not because I hadn’t already made up my mind what I was going to do, but because I didn’t want to look as if I was giving in too easily. That wouldn’t be Glen Savage at all. ‘Sure, if you think that’s a better idea,’ I said eventually, letting her hear the resentment. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’
*
It wasn’t a comfortable night. There have been times, sometimes eternities, when MS has come between us like some kind of domestic Berlin Wall. Even to approach it invited the ground to explode at your feet or brought a fusillade of verbal bullets whistling past your ears. It’s bearable, even acceptable, when you’ve lived with it for as long as we have. I have never been a patient man, but I’ve learned to tell the difference between when affection is needed and when solitude is required, though the long periods of solitude have brought me to the edge of the long slope that leads back to the dark places. This was different. In the good times, when the disease is in remission, each of us revels in our own way in the rare commodity that is normality. Aelish enjoys using her body to prove that she can still be a wife and I enjoy the things that most men do. It hasn’t always been that way. It’s taken us a long time to get past the fear.
So, it was hard to lie on my own side of the bed, not even close enough to feel the warmth of her body, in the knowledge that this time the chasm that lay between us was my fault and not multiple sclerosis. Aelish and I don’t row. We don’t have the luxury of the time to row.
Why did I lie to her?
To save her life.
*
I rose early next day – I don’t say woke, because I didn’t do much sleeping – and left for Galashiels after helping Aelish to dress. Uncomfortable silence doesn’t come naturally to us, but that morning we managed it well enough.
The road curled along the north bank of the Tweed, past the little village of Gattonside where you can still see the ancient apple trees that were once tended by the monks of Melrose Abbey. Two miles beyond the village the river turns west towards its source in the hills beyond Tweedsmuir and the pretty Borders countryside gave way to the bleak concrete sprawl of the Langlee housing estate.
Galashiels police station is at the far end of the town just off the main street, but I had no intention of going anywhere near it. Instead, I drove into the centre and parked the Capri near a little café where I knew I’d get something that bore no resemblance to a skinny latte or anything related to it. It was empty apart from a solitary old gent in a flat cap near the door and a couple of girls in jodhpurs and hacking jackets, which reminded me it was the start of the local common riding season when half the Borders jumps
on a horse. I ordered and took a seat at one of the plastic tables near the back. The coffee was so hot it blistered my throat, but that’s the way I like it. I slurped in appreciation, which drew a broad grin from the waitress who’d served me. She didn’t look quite so cheery when I pulled out my mobile phone and put it to my ear. The Borders is like that; people feel entitled to a bit of old-fashioned courtesy of the kind that cellphones have consigned to the dustbin of history in most places.
‘Willie?’
‘Who the fuck did you think it was going to be?’
I grinned. ‘Could’ve been Mrs Dewar,’ I protested. I’d never met Mrs Dewar, but I’d heard enough tales to know she was more than a match for her husband, who’d slugged it out with men who made the characters inNo Mean City look like a set of social workers. ‘Anything new?’
Dewar wasn’t a man to waste any time on pleasantries. ‘The body down Threave way was female. New Zealander, they think, with a touch of Maori, which would fit, if you think about it.’
‘Yes, it would.’
‘She had her throat cut and her heart removed. They’re not gonna say that, though. They’ll just put out that the body was mutilated. Mind what I told ye? The heart’s the key.’
‘Will they link the killing to the others?’
I could visualise him shrugging. ‘No way they’re gonna keep the lid on it for much longer. The big surprise is that it’s lasted this long.’
I agreed. It was bound to happen and I could imagine the tabloid frenzy when it did. A serial killer was one thing, a serial killer with a habit of cutting out human hearts was something else. ‘Do they know where the killer picked her up?’
‘No one’s certain. She’d been staying in one of them young folks’ hostel places in Carlisle. Left one morning saying she was off to Edinburgh. No one saw her alive again.’
‘Are they making any progress on the other cases?’
He snorted. ‘They couldnae find their balls if they had a hole in their trouser pocket.’
I laughed, but he wasn’t finished. ‘An’ what about you, Savage?’
I grunted noncommittally, but Dewar wasn’t going to be suckered.
‘C’mon, pal. This isnae a one-way street. I only get because I give. If you hold out on me and they hear that Willie Dewar’s been feedin’ you, I’m fucked. And if I’m fucked, Savage, so are you.’
‘Nothing yet, Willie,’ I assured him. ‘If I get anything you’ll be the first to know.’ The lie came more easily with Dewar than it had with Aelish, because I knew he’d shaft me if it suited him. Still, screwing my nearest and dearest was becoming a bit of a habit.
He rang off with a bark of disbelief.
I was in no hurry to get home, but there were things I needed to know. My brain felt a little like one of those Rubik’s Cubes that were all the rage in the Eighties. Every now and then one of the squares would land in the right place but you were never certain whether you’d taken one step forward or two steps back.
Aelish was in the kitchen when I returned to the house. She’s always been determined that the illness will never stop her doing what normal women do, which has saved me a lot of cooking over the years. Come to think of it, it might have been my cooking that made up her mind in the first place. We have special units, including a hob and oven, set low enough that she can comfortably reach what she needs from her chair. My mouth started to water as soon as I got through the door. Like everything else, if Aelish does something she does it right and she’s taught herself to be a great cook. If my nose wasn’t lying we were having some kind of interesting casserole tonight, heavy on the herbs. Clearly, we were back on speaking terms.
‘How did it go?’ she said whirling through to meet me in the hall.
‘It was fine.’ I gave her what passed for a smile, feeling guiltier by the minute, and bent to kiss her on the cheek. She turned her head at the last minute so that our lips met. God knows how to punish a man.
When we were done, she backed away and tilted her head so she could look up at me.
‘Fine? I thought they were going to arrest you?’ She wasn’t being accusing, just curious.
I shrugged and dug myself a deeper hole. ‘They were so pleased to have some hard evidence they didn’t even think about it. They took a statement and sent me on my way.’ I’ve done plenty of lying in my time. But when you lie to someone you care about and you know you’re just going to have to keep on doing it, you shrivel up inside. I felt like one of those mummies they dig up now and again in the Valley of the Kings, but somehow I kept on smiling.
She reached out and took my hands, which only made me feel worse. ‘Thanks, Glen. I know you didn’t want to go, but it was the right thing to do, whatever happens.’ I could feel that she wanted me to hold her, but my hands stayed where they were. I knew that if I took her in my arms I’d probably confess everything and be in bigger trouble than when I started. It’s a bit like being in a battle; sometimes the only way to go is forward, no matter how bad it seems, because if you go back, more people will get hurt.
‘I’ve got work to do, love,’ I said, dropping her hands and trying not to see the disappointment on her face. I gave her a consolatory peck on the forehead, walked through to my study and closed the door behind me.
That afternoon I drove to Melrose and parked across the road from the abbey. I spent a few moments sitting in the Capri staring across at the ruins. In its day it had been the richest monastic house in Scotland. What’s left of the magnificent pink sandstone tower stood just as it had for almost nine hundred years. In 1136, King David of Scotland invited the Cistercian order to found a monastic church and they brought architects and builders from France. He also donated lands to sustain the monks who worshipped within the walls. English raiding parties had put the abbey to the torch at least fives times during the Wars of Independence, but it had always risen from the ashes. The only thing it couldn’t survive was change.
Things were beginning to come together. Dewar was wrong. The heart wasn’t the key. It was significant, but not the key that would unlock this case. The key was medieval. A medieval war. Medieval kings. Medieval lords. Medieval toys made with medieval lead. Melrose was a medieval monastery.
I walked across the road to the little pay booth and bought my ticket. A light summer breeze added to the enjoyment of an already pleasurable day and a few tourists wandered the carefully tended grass in shorts and skimpy T-shirts that would have given the former residents a collective heart attack. To my right, with the Eildons in the background, a broad swathe of land studded by weathered gravestones marked the last resting places of men and women whose identities had been obliterated by time. To my left, in the direction of the river, the Commendator’s House, now the abbey museum, lay beyond a long, shoulder-high wall breached by a single gateway.
The abbey stood directly in front of me, ruined but still hugely impressive, a monument to a day when the glory of God outshone the glory of kings. The original building had formed the shape of a cross. Now, a row of arched windows created a one-sided guard of honour leading towards the remains of the great square tower that marked the meeting of the north and south transepts. In the afternoon sunlight the individual stones glowed a hundred unlikely shades of pink and the delicate carved tracework in the windows created geometric patterns on the grass at my feet. What survived may have been the product of hundreds of years of violence and neglect, but its beauty and the craftsmanship that created it still had the power to awe. As I entered the shadows of the abbey church I felt an unaccountable chill and a wearying inner desolation that felt like loneliness. The ghosts of the past were all around me, yet not one of them said a word.
Just before I reached the tower I turned left and walked back into the sun towards a square of gravel set into the grass. At the centre lay a roundel of carved stone, sculpted with an entwined Saltire – and a heart.
CHAPTER 27
At first, the sun’s glare made the inscription difficult to read, but that didn
’t matter because I already knew what it said. ‘A noble hart may hae nae ease, gif freedom failye’, which, translated from the old Scots means ‘A noble heart will have no ease if freedom fails’. The noble heart below this stone was reputed to be the heart of Robert the First of Scotland. Robert the Bruce. There’s some debate about whether it is Bruce’s heart, but at that moment I had no doubt it was true.
When the remains of Sir James Douglas were returned to Scotland in 1330, the casket containing Bruce’s heart came with him. Douglas was buried at St Brides, the heart was interred at Melrose Abbey, which Bruce had rebuilt in 1322 after Edward the Second burned it down as payback for his humiliation at Bannockburn.
I looked upon that simple cream stone and felt doubt creep into my bones the way rot creeps into a fallen tree. Was what I was doing noble or just foolish? I heard muttering behind me and saw that two Japanese tourists, an older man and a young woman, were taking pictures of me. It was only then I realised that with my bowed head and worry lines I must look as if I was praying. The thought made me laugh out loud, and I turned and walked away, leaving them staring at me in bemusement.
The Commendator was a fancy name for the abbot of Melrose and he lived in some style, untroubled by the austere existence of his fellow Cistercians in their cells in the main abbey. I’d always thought of churchmen as humble, but the abbot here was as powerful as any mighty lord of Cessford or Buccleuch. He held sway over the lands and people for dozens of miles around and kings, English and Scots, feasted at his table. The house was large and sturdily built in the Borders fashion, grey stone and a dark slate roof, designed to keep out the wind and rain and the occasional rampaging army bent on pillage and destruction. I entered by a substantial doorway set into the angle of the tower and the main building. When my eyes adjusted to the gloom the interior consisted of whitewashed walls and odd pieces of carved stone labelled with names like greywacke and trachyte that might have been illuminating to a geologist or a master mason, but didn’t tell me much. Only the occasional gargoyle lightened the mood, the stony eyes bulging and mouth twisted into a leer it had held for nearly nine centuries.
War Games Page 18