Song of the Dead

by Douglas Lindsay

  That doesn’t sound great. Shake my head. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I was recording that on my phone,’ says Sutherland smiling, ‘so we’re good.’

  45

  Set the alarm for six. Wide awake about ten seconds before the alarm is due to go off, a voice in my head. It happens. Waking up, as though someone is speaking to you. Seems so real. It’s a woman’s voice that I don’t recognise. Young. A slight accent I can’t place.

  ‘It finishes today.’

  That’s all. I wake up with someone saying those words to me. Bolt upright in bed, in the way that people wake up in movies. A quick glance around the room in the dark. Look at my phone, check the time. Quickly turn off the alarm, so that it doesn’t blare out into the darkness. Swing my legs over the side of the bed. Straighten my back.

  The voice is still in my head. It finishes today. That’s what she said. That’s what who said? Try to remember what I was dreaming about, but there’s nothing there. No dreams. Or, if there were, they are instantly gone.

  Into the bathroom, cold water on my face, brush my teeth, step into the shower. Water as hot as I can stand for five minutes, and then full-on cold for thirty seconds.

  Dressed, into the kitchen. Two fried eggs on toast, cup of coffee, glass of water, glass of orange juice. Put the dishes in the sink, contemplate washing them, then decide to leave them until later. Tie on, out the door, and I’m in work before seven.

  * * *

  ‘What’s the latest on Baden?’

  Sutherland and I are back in Quinn’s office. The superintendent is thinking a lot. There are long silences, but at least it’s better than its opposite; not thinking at all. You can hear the cars on the road outside. The clock is unusually loud. There’s something about the tick today that seems jarring. Perhaps its battery is running out, and the hands are struggling to keep up.

  ‘They’re bringing him up to Gartcosh this morning. I thought I’d go down there after lunch. I want to take him to see his mother.’

  ‘At the home in Perth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve cleared that?’

  Hesitate for a moment. ‘No, not yet. I need to make a call.’

  He holds my eyes for a second, understanding that getting them to release Baden might not be particularly straightforward.

  ‘If you need me to intervene,’ he says.

  ‘I have someone I can speak to.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He nods, glances down at his notes.

  ‘And you’re bringing this Asian woman in?’

  ‘Not sure yet. Just about to go and talk to her. I’ll make the call when we’re there.’

  He taps his fingers. Right hand. Often has a slightly distracted air about him. Just his way. He’s not at all distracted.

  We’ve been in here twenty-five minutes already. Been through it all. Death by death, murder by murder, what we know of the case from twelve years ago, what we know now. The answer to the murders in the present lies in the past, on that we have so far agreed.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, breaking the silence, ‘go and speak to her, and do what you have to do. I hope, however, that this speculative dart will not become the sole avenue of investigation.’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  We stand up, quick glance between us and out the door, closing it behind.

  * * *

  And there the widow sits, just as Sutherland had previously described her. The sofa in the front room is placed with its back to the window, and she is sitting side-on, resting her arms on its back, resting her head in her arms, looking out to sea. As I get out of the car, I follow her gaze. Fresh morning, something of a wind, clouds flitting across the sky, sunshine and rain promised in equal measure. It must be like this most days up here. And if I had this house, would I ever be able to pull myself away from the window?

  She turns to watch us as we approach the front door, waits for Sutherland to ring the bell, so that I’ve almost begun to think that she must be expecting someone else to answer it, and then, after leaving us standing for half a minute or so, she’s there before us, dressed all in white. Slim, tight-fitting jeans, a woollen top, her long black hair hanging straight around the shoulders.

  She is beautiful. Catch-your-breath-in-your-throat beautiful. If the bereaved Mrs Waverley wants to find another husband, I can’t imagine she’d have too much trouble.

  ‘Sergeant Sutherland,’ she says. ‘And…?’

  ‘Inspector Westphall,’ I say, automatically showing her my card.

  She looks in my eyes, doesn’t look at the card.

  ‘Come in.’

  Sutherland closes the door, and we follow her into the front room, the room with a view, looking out directly over the mouth of the Cromarty Firth to the cliffs opposite, and away over the large grey expanse of the Moray Firth. All three of us stand and stare at the scenery for a few moments, then she moves, sits back down in her spot, and resumes her position.

  ‘I find it hard to drag myself away sometimes.’

  I recognise her voice, but not her face.

  ‘Can we talk to you about your first husband?’

  She turns, a slight look of surprise on her face.

  ‘David?’

  ‘If he was your first, yes,’ I answer.

  Maybe she was married in Thailand. Maybe she’s been married to others, and we missed that as well.

  ‘Yes, David was my first.’

  ‘Did you know that David worked at a university before you met?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Aberdeen.’

  ‘And did you ever meet any of his friends from his days at Aberdeen?’

  A slight pause. Whatever she is, she’s not a professional liar. We can see her quickly thinking this over.

  ‘That was how I knew Andrew,’ she says.

  ‘Your second husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Shakes her head slightly.

  ‘Of course, there was an element of chance about it. There are, sometimes, elements of chance. We’d met a couple of times. He was at David’s funeral. Then… then I signed up to an online dating site, and we…’

  ‘Why?’

  She stares straight at me for a moment. Really, where am I going with that question? Am I going to tell her that she’s preposterously beautiful so why did she feel the need? Am I just going to dismiss questions of confidence and self-assurance and personality, and suggest that everyone’s actions are entirely based upon their looks? Am I living in the 1970s?

  ‘I was lonely,’ she says.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How long did you see each other before deciding to get married?’

  ‘He asked on our first date.’

  That’s not surprising. Andrew Waverley presumably was going to want to get her off the market as quickly as possible.

  ‘Are you going to judge us, Inspector Westphall?’

  ‘Did you say yes?’

  ‘Yes, I did. We knew each other, he seemed like a nice man. It felt like fate that we’d both signed up to the same site. It suited us at the time, there was no point in waiting.’

  ‘Was it working out?’

  She holds my gaze for a moment, and then turns so that she’s looking over the back of the sofa, out to sea.

  ‘No, not really,’ she says.

  ‘Were you both unhappy, or just you?’

  She doesn’t turn back. We sit in silence. Sutherland is staring at her, his expression hard to read. The silence is somehow special. A silence quite beyond explanation. A silence that can be waited out, no one in a rush to fill it. Melanie staring at the view, Sutherland and I looking at the back of her head, the stark, attractive contrast between her dark hair and the perfect white of her top.

  It was one of the great differences between Olivia and I. One of the things that defined us, that separated us. The silences. I was happy to exist in the silences. The silences that are conducted with music in the background, or the clatter and hubbub of a b
usy restaurant. The silences like this one, that are absolute. The silences that are ultimately a silence of two people with nothing to say.

  Olivia hated those silences. She filled them. Or worse, she chose not to fill them and instead she judged them.

  ‘There was a book once,’ she says.

  I don’t know how long it takes her to speak. That kind of silence has no time. Time is irrelevant.

  ‘You know Mr Wakamoto, the Japanese author?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ I say.

  Sutherland nods, although she’s not looking at us, her gaze still directed out to sea.

  ‘I was in a bookshop. Last year. I was looking at Mr Wakamoto’s books. I’ve read some of them, but not all of course. There was one I had not heard of. The Song of the Dead. I started reading the book. It was the story of a young woman who is lost. Lost in her life, and in time. She loses her family, her husband and her young daughter, and cannot get them back. It seemed such a sad story.’

  A young woman, lost in time, who cannot find her family. She’s talking about that? How can she be talking about that?

  Her voice is part of the room, part of the scenery. We need to get on with this day, and yet I get the feeling that when we leave here, we’re unlikely to have been in the house for more than a few minutes.

  ‘I wasn’t… I didn’t buy the book. I don’t know why. A few days later I was back at the bookshop, and this time I thought, this time I will buy this book. I want to know what happens. So I went back to the section with Mr Wakamoto’s books, and I look. But there is no book with this title. No book titled The Song of the Dead by Mr Wakamoto. I think at first that someone must have bought it. I go to the counter and ask if they have another copy. They look on their system for the book. They say they have no book with that title, nor have they ever had the book.

  ‘We argued for a moment, but the lady was adamant. I checked the list of his books inside his other titles, but there was no mention. I went home and I looked online. There is no book with this title, by Mr Wakamoto, or by anyone else. A short poem by Mr Kipling, but no book, and certainly not by Mr Wakamoto. How is one to explain this, Inspector? I picked up the book. I can see the cover, now, in my head. I read the first few pages. I know there was a book. And yet… I cannot find the book. The book does not appear to exist.’

  Slowly she turns and looks back at us. There are mundane explanations in my head. The book is by someone else. She got the title wrong. It’s an advance copy that somehow found its way onto the shelf. But I doubt it’s any of those.

  Is Dorothy listening? Was she just a character out of a book?

  That’s absurd! She was an officer in the FCO! It’s not like I sat in a car with her, and no one else even knew she existed!

  ‘What did you learn from the first few pages of the book?’ I ask.

  ‘There was nothing to learn from those pages, Inspector. The question is, what will I learn from the radio? I heard this story…’

  She pauses, her eyes lower. Sutherland and I glance at each other.

  ‘I don’t know what made me turn on the radio. I don’t usually listen to the radio. Maybe I was lonely again, maybe I needed another voice in the house. And there it was. My strange story was on the radio. My lonely, lost girl.’

  The room and the view and her voice and her looks, they all kind of swallow you up. Mesmerising. I suddenly think, I should have brought Fisher with me. Would she be telling this story if there was a woman in the room? Did she tell stories before when Fisher came?

  I don’t pick up on any artifice in her voice. This doesn’t feel like the conversation of evasion. Nevertheless, I probably ought to be somewhat more focused, as Quinn will be asking, and we can’t say that we spent the entire time discussing mysterious Japanese literature and its otherworldly connection with the woman who is now haunting my dreams.

  ‘Did you know anyone else from David’s time at Aberdeen?’ I force myself to ask. ‘Ever meet them, get to know them, anything?’

  She seems slightly curious that I’ve interrupted her narrative, stares at the carpet for a moment, then there’s a slight movement of her shoulders.

  ‘A few. I don’t think I remember their names. Maybe if I tried. But Andrew didn’t want anything to do with them. He said he’d moved on from those days, wanted to leave them behind. Leave the people behind. I thought it was sad.’

  ‘Did he talk about them? Was there a reason why he wanted to leave them behind?’

  ‘There was definitely a reason, but as to what it was…’

  Finally glance at my watch. Needing to get on with the day. One last person to ask about.

  ‘Did you know Detective Inspector Rosco in town?’

  She turns back, smiling. ‘Everyone north of Inverness knew DI Rosco, didn’t they? Poor thing.’

  ‘How did you know him?’

  ‘When I came up here with Andrew. He was one of the ones he knew from the old days. I’m not sure why, what context. Andrew didn’t want anything to do with him.’

  Hold her gaze for a moment. Look at my watch again. There’s more to be found out here, I think, but it’ll take time.

  ‘We might need you to come down to the station,’ I say. ‘We’re trying to piece together the story of what went on at Aberdeen back at the time when your husbands were friends.’

  ‘Just call and let me know,’ she says. ‘I’ll be here.’

  She smiles, a slightly sad, almost affectedly hopeless smile.

  ‘I’ll be looking at the view, listening to the radio later. Listening to my sad story. They haven’t said, but I have a feeling it finishes today.’

  And that was how I’d recognised her voice.

  46

  ‘I didn’t tell you what Baden said about Rosco, if we could believe him.’

  Back at the station, sitting at our desks. Now that we’re here I am, inevitably, questioning myself over the decision not to bring Melanie Waverley straight to the station. Did I not bring her because she’s beautiful, a beauty increased by her air of melancholy? Was it her strange story that somehow mirrored the other strange story of the last few days? Or because Quinn told us not to make her the sole avenue of the investigation? If it was any of those, I don’t deserve to be in the job.

  It didn’t feel right, that was all. Like we’d be wasting our time. Another road slowly explored with nothing to show for it at the end.

  ‘He knew him?’ asks Sutherland, looking up.

  ‘Said he was all over Emily. Lovesick. Would do anything for her, which would explain why he helped her with the false identification. We could do with finding out if there’s more to it, or if there was even that much.’

  ‘You mean, if Baden’s telling the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Look at my watch. Have already called Gartcosh and arranged to meet DCI Meadows just after three. Meadows owes me a favour, a pretty big one at that. Slightly disappointed that I’m calling it in over this, although I’m not sure what I’d consider worthwhile, if this isn’t it.

  Not that he was particularly gracious. Be there at three or miss your chance, he said, so I ought to be heading off in the next few minutes.

  ‘Money? Maybe there was money.’

  ‘Money, certainly, has got to be a possibility. We need to chase down his banking records. You know who he was with?’

  ‘Clydesdale.’

  ‘OK, get on to them, see what we can get. I’m sure you’ll get the usual raised eyebrow about information that old, but you know…’

  Phone rings.

  ‘And we need to imagine it’s not money. Let’s think about other things… Westphall?’

  ‘Sergeant Edelman.’

  Anstruther calling. Another neglected strand.

  ‘Beth, what have you got?’

  ‘You sound business-like,’ she says, a smile in her voice.

  ‘Got that, you know, got that feeling. It’s coming to an end, one way or another. What do you have?’

  No time fo
r idle chatter, I think, although I seem to let Melanie Waverley get away with rather a lot of it.

  ‘We’ve been looking at Emily King’s bank account. Basically she was being paid once a month for the past nine years. Not clear yet by whom, but we’re chasing the money.’

  You should always chase the money. At the root of nearly everything.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘One thousand.’

  ‘A thousand a month for nine years… One hundred and eight thousand. Had the amount changed at all?’

  ‘No. You’re bang on. A hundred and eight thousand paid into her account, give or take a month or two. Seems she paid her mortgage and her bills, and saved several hundred a month. Had nearly thirty grand in there.’

  ‘You think she was saving for something? Waiting for something?’

  ‘I think she was. But then, we knew that anyway.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Pause. A curious, slightly awkward pause, as though one of us is supposed to say something else.

  ‘OK, thanks, Beth. Can you let me know if you manage to trace the money?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When are you working ‘til today?’

  She laughs lightly at the other end. Am I thinking I might stop by after dropping Baden back to Gartcosh? Like it’s anywhere near.

  ‘Not sure,’ she says. ‘Evening.’

  ‘OK, thanks. We’ll be in touch.’

  Hang up before there’s any more awkwardness. Stare across the desk at Sutherland.

  ‘Well, Emily King was getting paid money from somewhere. Things come together for a reason, Sergeant. We were just talking about Rosco, and we hear about Emily King’s bank balance.’

  ‘Loaded?’

  ‘She was doing all right, although more through frugality than any individual large payments. Rosco similarly didn’t look loaded, but I really don’t think he was waiting for anything.’