by Rick Blechta
“Neurotica.”
My statement elicited no reaction from Campbell, but the constable taking shorthand looked up inquisitively.
“And what was the purpose of your visit earlier this week?” he asked next.
“I had to come over to look at an instrument I was considering purchasing, so I also took the opportunity to visit my old friend. I arrived a week ago Thursday, stayed with Angus for a few days, then borrowed his car to drive down to Birmingham to purchase the instrument and visit my mum. I drove back on Monday and left early on Tuesday morning.”
He was silent for a moment. “I will ask you again if you had reason to suspect that your friend was in any sort of trouble.”
“No,” I answered perhaps too quickly, then stopped to consider. “What sort of trouble do you mean?”
“Did he have financial problems?”
Shaking my head, I answered, “No. He bought his house outright, and his needs were very simple. If he required money, he only had to hire out again as a road manager. Angus had a very good reputation in the business. Any number of bands would have hired him if they knew he was available. He’d done that often in the past.”
“What about drugs? Did he have a drug problem?”
“No. Angus was very anti-drug. Why do you ask?”
Campbell looked down at his hands. The office was obviously not his. I felt certain that his own would not have had so much as a paperclip out of place, and I doubted if a backwater such as Dunoon would have warranted its own Detective Inspector anyway. Considering its close proximity to Glasgow, he’d probably been brought in from there. Consequently, Campbell seemed ill at ease.
Finally, he looked up. “I’m going to take you into my confidence. Certain bits of evidence have come to light since we spoke yesterday, and they have led us to believe the people who visited Mr. MacDougall on Thursday evening are involved in the drug trade.” Campbell fastened his eyes on mine. “In light of that, would you like to revise what you just told me?”
“No. I wouldn’t. Angus had nothing to do with drugs of any sort.”
“Excuse me if I find that a little hard to believe. After all, he worked in the pop music business—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I interrupted, “to hear most people talk, you’d think we...they did nothing more than get wasted and defile young women. Well, I was there, and yes, there was some of that to be sure, but most of us took our job seriously, and you can’t play well when you’re wrecked. Angus’s job was very tough, and he couldn’t have done it either, if he’d had a drug problem. What makes you think Angus’s killers were part of the drug trade?”
“As I said, various bits of evidence. Things that were done. We have a national computer database where we can input facts we discover and it will tell us if this sort of thing has been reported before. In your friend’s case it has. Three other unsolved murders. These were criminals who came to his house. If you’re telling me the truth, why did those particular people come there? It’s that question I most want the answer to.”
“What in God’s name happened? You keep hinting around, but you haven’t really told me anything.”
Campbell considered for a moment, then came to another decision and abruptly stood. “Constable Dickson, could you see aboutgetting one of the pool cars to drive us out to the MacDougall place?”
“Right away, sir.” Dickson closed her pad with a snap and left the room.
***
The weather and the drive out to poor Angus’s place was a far cry from my last trip there. The roads were completely dry, and as a passenger, I could watch the scenery go by. The cold, clear air, cloudless sky and distant vistas gave me a lot to look at, but I cannot say I enjoyed the trip.
A road block had been set up at the beginning of the one-lane road to Angus’s.
“Can’t have media vans clogging a one-lane road, can we?” Campbell said as we passed, and I slumped down in the seat, hoping the few newshounds wouldn’t somehow spot me. Earlier, I’d slipped into the police station right under the noses of several. I knew that sort of luck wouldn’t last forever.
Campbell sat in the front while Dickson drove. We spoke very little. I got the feeling that the detective was letting me stew in my own juices in the hope that I might reconsider what I’d told him. I had a pretty good idea of why he was taking me to the crime scene.
As we came to the last mile of our trip, Campbell turned around and said, “We’re fairly certain your friend let his killers in, since there’s no evidence they forced their entry.”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t have been a need. Angus seldom locked his door.”
Campbell, unperturbed by my correction to his hypothesis, scribbled in a small notebook he took from his jacket pocket. “There appears to have been a struggle once they were in, though. Papers were scattered all over the room, and—”
“Papers were scattered all over the room when I was there,” I interrupted again. “Angus was attempting to do his own taxes.”
This time Campbell looked up sharply, and I could have sworn Dickson snorted, but if she had, it was quickly covered up by snuffling and other cold-type noises.
“We found broken furniture and a bookcase knocked over. He fought back hard, it seems.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Angus was a big man and wouldn’t back down from anyone.”
Arriving at the farmhouse, we pulled into the spot where I’d parked the damaged XKE just a few days earlier. It felt like a lifetime. Climbing out of the back seat of the police sedan, I looked out at Loch Striven. The scene was still beyond description, the hills as forlorn and forbidding as ever. The gulls still wheeled, crying in the air above. But something had gone, and everything felt as if it were rapidly receding into a distant memory. I knew I would never return here of my own volition.
Yellow crime scene tape snapped noisily in the steady wind. A blast skittered down my neck, causing me to shiver, but out of proportion to how cold it actually was.
Angus’s Jag wasn’t parked in its usual spot, nor was the beat-up Land Rover. Both had probably been carted off somewhere for examination. A white van stood there instead, along with a blue and yellow checked Strathclyde police sedan. As we’d pulled in, a sleepylooking constable had jumped out of the driver’s side. This time Dickson snorted for sure.
Campbell walked over to me. He had to raise his voice against the wind. “As near as we can figure, three people arrived here shortly after eight on Thursday evening. We’ve spoken to a witness who drove by a bit earlier, and there were no strange cars parked here. An hour later there were. These visitors probably didn’t leave until the wee hours of the morning. The Medical Examiner thinks your friend died sometime after two a.m.”
“How did Angus die?” I asked.
Campbell fixed me with a curious gaze. “Sure you want to know?”
“I can handle it.”
Campbell looked at me assessingly. “Your friend was tortured and eventually had his throat slit.”
Campbell’s blunt, matter-of-fact delivery caused me to feel like I’d been kicked in the stomach, even though I should have been prepared by all his dark hints.
My legs suddenly felt as reliable as overcooked spaghetti, and I had to lean heavily against the police car. The world spun crazily as I forced myself to take some deep breaths.
As if from the far end of a long tunnel, I was aware of Constable Dickson saying to her counterpart from the squad car, “Bet you five quid he loses his breakfast. Seems like the kind.”
That pulled me out of my funk. With my eye on the big-mouthed constable, I straightened and said, “Right, then. Shall we go inside?”
Campbell and I had to put on the white crime scene suits you see on the telly.
The place certainly was a mess. On the right as you entered the sitting room stood a large stone fireplace with bookcases on either side. One of these was down completely, and the other leaning precariously. I’d been so wrong in my assessment of the tax documents piled ev
erywhere earlier in the week. It had been nothing like what I saw now. The big table in front of the windows had been smashed, chairs overturned and the fireplace poker stuck out of a wall at a crazy angle.
What caught my attention, though, was a wooden chair from the kitchen which stood in the middle of the room. On the seat and streaked down the legs to the floor where it had pooled, I could see the very obvious remains of a whole lot of blood.
Campbell let me take in the scene for several moments before speaking. “I know that it’s nigh on impossible to tell from the state of the room, but do you notice anything missing?”
I could only manage a shake of my head.
“Follow me then, and please stay close to the wall. We’ve cleared a wee path through the mess.”
Campbell led me into the kitchen. Everything there looked pretty well as I’d seen it last. On the stove stood a half-cooked dinner its chef would never eat. A bottle of Scotch on the table had the cork out, although the glass next to it was empty. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Angus had just stepped out for a moment.
I became aware of sounds from Angus’s bedroom, directly above us. “What’s going on up there?” I asked.
“Scene of Crime lads. They have to go over the whole house. You never know what you might find, although I’m not holding out much hope in this case. You being here is a good thing for us, since you knew MacDougall well, and you were here recently. Anything missing or out of place in this room?”
“No. It looks much as it always did.”
Campbell took me through the entire house, including the basement which I’d never seen, a place filled with junk pre-dating Angus’s tenure. I felt distinctly uncomfortable when we went into the bedroom I’d last used and saw the bed I’d shared with Regina. The sheets and blankets had been removed, making it appear even more forlorn.
We stood in the doorway for several moments longer than was necessary. “You say the linens were fresh when you went to sleep the last evening you were here?” he finally asked.
I almost fell into it, realizing only when my mouth had actually started to form the word “yes” that I hadn’t said anything about bed linens. Only then did I realize what even a forensic buffoon would have known: two obvious sets of hair in the bed, since Regina’s was chestnut to my light brown and a lot longer.
“Ah, no, they weren’t,” I answered casually. “I’m afraid Angus wasn’t much into housekeeping, and I was far too shagged from the drive north to even begin to think about changing them myself.”
Campbell hid his disappointment quite well, and as we went on to another room, I looked heavenward and said a silent, “Thank you!”
In the bathroom, I found out that I’d been correct in my assumption when Campbell asked, “Did MacDougall have any lady friends who might have visited him recently?”
I pretended to think for a minute. “Not that I remember him mentioning. The last lady friend I knew about was probably two years back. That wouldn’t have stopped him picking up someone down at the boozer, though, in all likelihood. Why do you ask?”
“We found hair samples in the shower here and also back in the bed in which you slept. Anything you’d like to add to what you’ve told me, Mr. Quinn?” Campbell asked with raised eyebrows.
“No.”
Campbell shook his head and turned towards the stairs. As we headed back outside, I asked him, “You said earlier that you thought there were three men. How did you figure that out?”
He turned to face me. “Certainly it would have taken at least two strapping lads to subdue a man the size and apparent strength of MacDougall. In my experience, these people prefer to work in groups of three. Two to hold the person, and one to soften him up. You’ll be happy to know that at least one of the intruders got what looks like a very bloody nose, and one may have cracked his head on the bookcase before it fell down. We won’t know for certain until the laboratory results come back, but that’s my feeling based on the evidence collected so far.”
“And so these three bastards burst in on my friend,” I said carefully as we stared out at the sunlight reflecting off the loch below. “What could they have wanted?”
“That’s why I asked about money or drug problems. This is the approach used by people such as those mixed up in the drug trade when they want something. Send some lads over to scare the person, hurt him enough to let him know they mean business. The average victim crumbles pretty quickly under that sort of treatment and soon coughs up what’s wanted. Occasionally, I’ve seen them do something like this when they don’t get what they want, or to send a strong message through to someone else.” Campbell again peered at me in that uncomfortable way of his. “Any idea who that might be?”
I wasn’t about to tell him anything more at that point. Possibly later. I’d have to see how things shook down. It’s not that I wanted to hinder the investigation and see the bastards get away with it. I wanted to see them get the full measure of the law, but I did feel I had to protect Regina—for the moment at least.
“So they pounded Angus around then slit his throat?”
“As I said earlier, he was tortured. That’s why I think they wanted to know something.”
“How did they torture him?”
“Cigarette burns. The poor sod’s body was covered with them. MacDougall was either very stubborn, had a terribly high pain threshold—or didn’t know what they wanted to hear.”
I hoped poor Angus had been all three in this case.
Campbell next went to the largest of the two outbuildings on the property, this one located west of the house and slightly further down the hill.
I’d only been in it once when Angus had first moved in, and it had been in pretty rough shape. The walls, probably stones cleared from the surrounding fields, had been well constructed and were still sound, but the roof had holes, the doors leaned at crazy angles, and the building had contained rusted farm implements, doves and cobwebs.
As we approached it now, I noticed that it had a new roof, and the wide doors had been rehung. A large, shiny padlock now kept the world at bay. Odd for Angus to lock this when he didn’t lock his house.
On finding the padlock secured, Campbell, with some irritation, turned and bellowed up the hill, “Dickson! Some idiot has locked this bloody thing again. Fetch the key!”
Dickson and her comrade held a hurried discussion, with the result that they trotted off to the house and returned shortly with a large ring of keys. “Here they are, sir,” she said. “Would you like me to open it?”
Campbell snatched them out of her hands. “I think I’m capable of opening a padlock!”
With the number of keys, though, it took him nearly a minute to find the right one.
As he worked, I asked, “What is it you want to show me?”
The detective ignored my question, and Dickson started to speak when Campbell glared at her over his shoulder. Her mouth shut with an almost audible snap.
The padlock didn’t give up the fight until only the last few keys remained. Campbell grabbed one door, Dickson took the other, and they swung them back. Sunlight flooded into the room.
It took my eyes a few moments to adjust. The room gradually revealing itself was completely different from the wreck I remembered. Even though everything was covered with sheets to keep dust out, it was easy to see that Angus had built a rehearsal hall.
He’d cut two large windows (curtains closed at the moment) into one of the long walls. They’d have fine views of Loch Striven. The ceiling had been closed in (no more open rafters and roosting doves), and the floor had been carpeted. Scattered in a rough circle around the walls, I could see what looked like a complete band set-up: three amplifier stacks, a large drum kit, mics, a fair-sized mixing desk, monitor speakers. But it was something at the far end of the room that caught my attention.
I threaded my way around the drum kit and crossed the open area, barely avoiding tripping over a mic cable. Lifting a sheet, I stood gazing at somethin
g I never thought to see again. My interior emotions were surprisingly strong, but outwardly I only smiled wistfully at what Angus had done.
The two cops stood in silent bemusement as I went around the room removing all the sheets. Finally I stood in the middle of the circle, slowly turning to look at what surrounded me.
Angus had all of Neurotica’s original equipment. The battle scars on each piece spoke to me of half-forgotten memories. All I’d have to do was flip on the mains, and everything would work perfectly. Angus had always seen to that. The crowning glory and what had set my heart rate through the roof was the fact that my old keyboard rig still existed. He had everything: Hammond C3, Wurlitzer Electric Piano, Minimoog and a Yamaha DX7, set-up as they always had been, seemingly waiting for me to come in and pick up where I’d left off twenty-four years earlier. When I’d beat my hasty retreat from the band, I’d left everything behind, not caring what happened to it. I’d assumed it had all been sold or junked or stolen years ago. And now here it all was again.
Looking at the set-up, it felt as if the lads and I had merely nipped down to the nearest pub for a pint and a pie and would be returning shortly to run through the tunes for our latest album or rehearse for our next tour. Everything came flooding back, whether I wanted it to or not.
As I stood gawking like an idiot, someone crunched along the gravel outside and stopped in the doorway. I turned, only seeing a silhouette against the glare from outside, but I knew who it was regardless. The only living people I’d known longer were my mum and my auntie.
“Hello, Michael,” said my former best mate and comrade, Rolly Simpson, lead singer of Neurotica.
Seven
Roland Paul Simpson was the reason I still had an unpublished phone number. After walking out on Neurotica in the middle of the tour which, according to our record label, would have made us one of the top five acts in the world, Rolly started calling me on a daily basis.“The band can’t go on without you.” “You can’t just walk away from us; we’re mates!” “How can you be so hard-hearted and selfish?” “You’re killing Neurotica, you know.” Or variations on the theme.