The Big Chill

by Doug Johnstone

  She was struck, as always, by how he carried himself – upright, confident but never arrogant. It couldn’t be easy, being a black man in a Scottish police force was as rare as hens’ teeth, but he walked as if he knew his place in the world.

  ‘Dorothy, are you OK?’ Still the trace of Swedish in his voice despite living here for twenty years. That was another reason she liked him, they were both immigrants in this strange country with its black humour and deep-fried food. Now they were both widowed, another thing in common.

  He pulled her in for a hug, more than perfunctory, and she let herself be held, sank into it. Eventually she pulled away. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  Thomas looked her in the eye. ‘I like fussing over you.’

  He was fifteen years younger than her but there was something unspoken between them. Never acted upon, she’d been happily married until six months ago. Since then she’d felt untethered from her previous life. Maybe it was time to do some tethering. Who was she kidding? She was seventy years old, that stuff didn’t happen to women her age.

  ‘Come through,’ he said, holding the door.

  They went up to his office, a better view of the Crags from here. It was kicking on for sunset, the sky was a bruise behind the blade of the cliffs, a few dots moving on the skyline, tourists up for the views.

  Laid out on a table against the far wall were the joyrider’s belongings. The grubby sleeping bag and the rucksack, its contents alongside.

  ‘How’s the young officer?’ Dorothy said.

  Thomas shook his head. ‘He’ll be OK.’

  ‘He was in shock.’

  ‘Understandable. But he was to blame too.’

  ‘Don’t be hard on him. He needs support.’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘He’ll get it. But there will be an enquiry. He didn’t follow procedure.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Thomas leaned against his desk. ‘He saw the car parked somewhere it shouldn’t have been. Ran the plates and realised it was stolen. When he approached the vehicle it took off, so he went after.’

  ‘Through a graveyard?’

  Thomas rubbed at his forehead. ‘He’s only been with us a few months.’

  ‘Poor guy.’

  ‘Dorothy, he could’ve killed you, or anyone else at the funeral.’

  ‘He didn’t, though.’

  ‘Only through dumb luck.’ Thomas waved at the table of stuff. ‘And if he hadn’t kept after him, our joyrider would still be alive.’

  Dorothy walked over to the table. The sleeping bag was filthy and ragged, the zip broken, a hole where the stuffing poked out. She ran a finger across it.

  ‘Do we know who he was?’

  ‘No ID in his possessions. We’ve compared his picture to local missing persons, no match.’

  ‘DNA?’

  ‘A sample is in the system, but if we don’t have him on file we won’t get a hit.’

  Dorothy looked at the rucksack. It was a decent brand but ancient, frayed around the zip, worn through at the corners, stains on the material. She looked over its contents, a filthy jumper, skanky boxer shorts and socks. Heroin works, syringe, belt, spoon, cotton wool, lighter. All used. An A6 notebook with puckered pages from water damage. A single photograph of him with a woman.

  She picked it up. He looked younger, no beard, light-blue eyes. He wore a hoodie and crucifix, one ear pierced. The woman was the same age, early twenties, short blonde hair, sharp nose. They were up a hill, a view of Edinburgh and the Forth spread out behind them.

  ‘Arthur’s Seat?’ Dorothy said.

  ‘I think so.’

  Dorothy flipped the picture over but there was nothing on the back.

  ‘You could put this out, see if the woman comes forward.’

  Thomas nodded. ‘If the DNA doesn’t come through.’

  ‘He was homeless.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘So maybe check hostels and social care.’

  Thomas took the picture and studied it. ‘We don’t have the resources, you know that.’

  ‘If he was a murder victim or suspect, you would.’

  ‘This wasn’t murder, it was an accident. A stupid, avoidable accident.’

  Dorothy opened the notebook. A manic pencil scrawl. She narrowed her eyes and tried to read. Words about hate, conspiracy, the system keeping people down. It wasn’t sentences, just ramblings.

  ‘Can I take this?’

  Thomas frowned. ‘One of our guys has been through it. He doesn’t think there’s anything to identify him.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘OK, but don’t lose it.’

  Dorothy smiled. ‘And can I get a copy of the photograph?’

  ‘I’ll email it.’

  ‘Is his body at the City Mortuary?’

  Thomas nodded. ‘Post-mortem is tomorrow. I’m not expecting much but toxicology might throw up something.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  Thomas still had the picture in his hand. He looked from it to Dorothy, sizing her up. ‘You know Graham Chapel down there, right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell him I said it was OK.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Thomas put the picture down then placed a hand on Dorothy’s elbow, his face softening. ‘What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘Are you serious? He literally crashed into my life.’ Dorothy touched the edge of the notebook. ‘We all come from somewhere. I want to know who he was.’

  Thomas gave her elbow a rub then let go. ‘I get that. But remember last time you got your teeth into something like this. After Jim … passed. You can get carried away.’

  She’d called in favours with Thomas to work out her dead husband’s secrets, only to realise they were worse than she could’ve imagined. And Thomas didn’t even know the whole story – only her girls and Archie knew what really happened.

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘Was it?’ Thomas said.

  ‘It was personal.’

  ‘And this isn’t?’ Thomas gave a sceptical smile. ‘He almost killed you.’

  Dorothy looked at the photograph again.

  ‘I just want to know who he is.’

  6

  HANNAH

  She stared at her laptop screen. She’d got the title, ‘Melanie Cheng Memorial’, and the cursor blinked at her from the next line. Anxiety swelled from her belly to her chest, and she breathed deeply and looked out of the window.

  The view was out to the back of the flats, a patchwork of small lawns, a cluster of birch trees, and thirty other living-room and bedroom windows. She was reminded of that Hitchcock film Gran liked, imagined seeing a murder across the road. But all she could see was an old man bent over a stove, a young couple building Lego with their son, students staring at phones, their faces lit like figures in a Renaissance painting. Everyone getting on with life, the little disappointments and triumphs, the small gestures of comfort or annoyance, the incremental moments of time that accumulated into experience.

  She felt stuck in comparison. For her, those moments weren’t accumulating, they were slipping away, one flash of panic to the next, one depressive slump bleeding into another, the constant anxiety. And this blank page in front of her wasn’t helping.

  ‘You don’t have to do it.’

  Hannah turned to see Indy in the doorway, her face a balance of love and worry. Hannah felt her own twinges of love and worry. She was sick of feeling shit because of what happened, and Indy had been so supportive through everything. But it was crap that she had to be supportive, that Hannah needed nursing, when all she wanted to do was throw Indy onto the bed and kiss her, or go to the park and have a picnic, or sit in a café over brunch and taste each other’s food.

  ‘I do,’ Hannah said, looking at the screen.

  Indy came over and placed her hands on Hannah’s shoulders. ‘It’s too much stress.’

  ‘I want to do it. We’re supposed to celebrate Mel’s life and we were her best friends.’ Hanna
h put a hand on Indy’s. ‘How do you do it, how do you cope?’

  ‘You know it’s different. With me it’s just grief, with you it’s more complicated because of your dad.’

  Hannah had done the reading, on top of the grief there was guilt that her dad had killed Mel. And survivor guilt too, that she was alive when her friend wasn’t. She was to blame, of course, because if she had never been friends with Mel then Craig wouldn’t have met her. But how far back do you go with cause and effect? She preferred the quantum world, where cause and effect were looser, time didn’t run at the same rate, where her friend was still alive and nursing her new baby.

  Indy leaned down and kissed Hannah, and she felt a shiver. She was glad she still got that, despite everything, that she was still turned on by her girlfriend.

  She pulled away eventually.

  Indy pointed at the laptop. ‘Just speak from the heart. Whatever you say will be great.’

  It’d taken six months for the physics department to get around to this memorial for Mel, and Hannah was surprised they’d done it at all. It was complicated by departmental politics for a start. If they did a memorial for Mel, did they need one for Peter too? Hannah presumed they didn’t want to go there, given he was having an affair with one of his students, was thrown out by his wife, suspended by the department, then hanged himself. That’s the kind of thing that gives a physics department a bad name.

  But one of the elderly professors, Hugh Fowler, insisted that Melanie’s life should be honoured by the department. Hugh was that peculiar creature of science departments, a doddering old guy who’d spent his life in academia, a kindly geriatric who never seemed to work but never retired either.

  Hugh had contacted Hannah after a tutorial one day and asked if she would come into the office. He wanted a memorial for Mel, would she speak at it? So here she was the night before, staring at a blank screen. And it was worse because Mel’s family was coming down to Kings Buildings tomorrow. Hannah didn’t need that pressure on top of everything else.

  Her phone rang. It was a mobile number, not in her contacts. No one ever called her except Mum and Gran. Probably just some marketing thing, but something made her curious and she pressed reply.

  ‘Please don’t hang up.’

  Blood rushed to her face and she couldn’t breathe. She struggled to swallow as panic snaked up her throat and into her mouth.

  Indy frowned and gave her a look.

  ‘I need to explain,’ the man said. The man she’d known all her life, the man she’d last seen when she stood over him on Bruntsfield Links, as he bled out on the grass, admitted what he’d done, telling her he wanted to die. Her dad.

  ‘How dare you,’ Hannah said, her voice and hand shaking.

  ‘I wasn’t myself,’ Craig said.

  ‘You can’t call me. You don’t get to speak to me.’

  She hung up. Tears in her eyes as she let out a shaky breath.

  A look of realisation spread across Indy’s face. ‘No.’

  Hannah looked wide-eyed.

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ Indy said. ‘Babes.’

  Hannah shook her head and tears dropped onto her laptop. She felt Indy embrace her, trying to comfort her.

  ‘How can he just call you from prison?’ she said.

  Hannah couldn’t speak, the sound of his voice in her head, the sight of him on his knees in the dark, blood pouring from his chin and chest. She wished he’d died, all of this would be easier.

  ‘Why now?’ Indy said.

  Hannah extricated herself from the hug, wiped at her face. ‘Maybe it’s the plea thing.’

  ‘Diminished responsibility is a joke.’

  ‘I know.’

  Indy nodded at the phone, like a radioactive source glowing on the desk. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wanted to explain.’

  ‘What is there to explain?’

  ‘He said he wasn’t himself.’

  Indy shook her head, angry now. ‘You need to tell the police and the lawyers.’

  Hannah looked at Indy, the intensity of her girlfriend’s stare too much. She turned to look outside at all the people living their lives in the flats opposite, the crows in the trees, the vapour trail from a jet high in the darkening sky, a plane full of people escaping their lives for a moment.

  ‘Tell them what?’ she said.

  7

  DOROTHY

  Dorothy sat behind the drum kit, her beautiful sunburst Gretsch, and tried to focus on the music through her headphones. It was early Biffy Clyro, full of sudden changes, dynamic bursts, odd time signatures. She wanted something to challenge her, something forceful too, nothing with too much feel. But it wasn’t working. She kept thinking about that poor kid in the driver’s seat, his cut forehead, blood, blank stare. No ID, few possessions, just a stolen car and a one-eyed dog.

  She stumbled over a middle eight with lots of random stop-starts, her sticks clacking against each other. She never got back into the rhythm, unsure of herself. Behind the kit was usually a place she could be in control, but not today.

  Where was Abi? She was already fifteen minutes late for her lesson. She loved drumming, never missed a lesson without sending a dozen WhatsApp messages of grovelling apology. Dorothy had fewer students since she’d taken over Jim’s work at the funeral business, but she’d kept on a handful, all girls, and she loved that. In her own small way she was a role model – an old Californian woman bashing her way round the toms, back to the hi-hats, into syncopated snare trills.

  The song settled into a groove and Dorothy with it. She thought about what Fiona said. Craig changing his plea was ridiculous, there was so much evidence against him. A court case was the last thing they needed, dredging it all back up. Dorothy had returned to yoga once her injuries healed but her muscles still nagged across her shoulders and back from where he’d slammed her against the wall.

  She didn’t believe in evil, but her former son-in-law had put that to the test. Dorothy had the least emotional attachment to him, and she keenly felt her inability to help Jenny and Hannah. Just be there, that’s what she’d learned from her years in the death business. Same as being a mother or grandmother.

  The song finished and Dorothy slouched and removed the headphones. Her arms were tired, her back grumbling. She checked her watch. Where was Abi? She picked up her phone, no messages. She called, got voicemail. No surprise, kids never used their phones to speak. She sent a message. Checked her watch again.

  In the silence, her ears adjusted. Birdsong outside in the park, traffic on Bruntsfield Road. She heard someone coming up the stairs, then there was Einstein, ears pinned back, body low to the ground, tail wagging.

  ‘Hey boy,’ Dorothy said, putting her hand out.

  Einstein scooted over and licked her hand, let himself be stroked behind the ears. Dorothy stared at the scar tissue around the dog’s eye socket. It was well healed, must’ve been long ago.

  ‘How did that happen, eh?’ she said, holding the dog’s face in her hands.

  She thought about the guy in the car, everything she didn’t know about him.

  Then she had an idea.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she said.

  The dog was nervous off the lead, staying close to Dorothy across Bruntsfield Links and the Meadows. She got caught out when he went for a crap, didn’t have bags. She wrapped the shit in several tissues and binned it.

  Middle Meadow Walk was one of her favourite streets in Edinburgh, a pedestrian artery linking the centre with the south, cyclists and students, young mums and the elderly. She had Einstein on the lead as they went past the museum on Chambers Street, down Infirmary Street to the City Mortuary on Cowgate.

  It was an unremarkable dark-brick building, boxy seventies design, built on a slope, surrounded by trees in an attempt to hide its purpose from the public. This was where any suspicious deaths came for post-mortems. If you died normally, a doctor signed it off and that was that. This place was for suicides, murder vict
ims and anything else unexplained. Of course it was obvious how the joyrider died, but because the police were involved they needed the post-mortem.

  Dorothy went into reception, past the small brass council sign. She pressed the buzzer at reception and waited. Looked at the posters on the wall, mental health, Samaritans, alcohol awareness, drug dangers, trying to keep people from ending up here.

  Graham Chapel came through in his white overalls, peeling plastic gloves off. He was a professor of forensics but wore that lightly, seemed more like a friendly plumber or electrician. Greying hair neatly combed back, a barrel chest and wisps of hair poking from the shirt under his scrubs.

  ‘Dorothy,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Graham.’

  He nodded at the dog. ‘Who’s this wee guy?’

  ‘Einstein.’

  Graham gave her a look. ‘This about the car crash?’

  Dorothy nodded.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Graham said. ‘I heard all about it.’

  ‘Bad news travels fast.’

  Graham shook his head. ‘There’s nothing but bad news here, you know that.’ He held the door open. ‘Come through. You’ll need to tie Einstein up.’

  The post-mortem suite was similar to the embalming room back home only bigger. Three metal tables for bodies, a larger bank of fridges, and a viewing area behind glass. Graham opened one of the steel fridge doors and hauled a body tray out. Pulled the cover from his face.

  ‘Did him first thing this morning,’ he said. ‘No surprises.’

  The sheet was far enough down that Dorothy could see the start of the chest incision. Checking the organs and brain was standard post-mortem procedure.

  ‘Died from the blow to the head on impact, severe cranial haemorrhaging. Would’ve been pretty much instantaneous.’

  Dorothy saw the cut across the boy’s forehead, a cut that would never heal now. If the Skelfs did the funeral, Archie would be able to deal with that easily, patch him up and conceal it. She suddenly realised that she really wanted to do this funeral, whether they discovered his identity or not. It was unbearable to think someone else would deal with him. She was frustrated they didn’t have a name, she couldn’t keep referring to him as the joyrider or, even worse, the homeless guy.