Foreign Bodies

by Colin A Millar

  He had lost them after that, his mother slapping his knee and tsking at the unseemly craning of his neck and gawping at the congregation. As he reluctantly turned back to face the lectern there was a hissed reprimand from his mother reminding him of his duty as the son of the minister to behave with dignity and respect for their place of worship. He hadn’t listened, he was too intent on trying to discern where she was just with the power of his mind, which he knew before he started was a waste of time. So he had to content himself with simply knowing she was somewhere behind him, could perhaps see him and might even at this moment be looking at him.

  Her family had moved to the village a couple of weeks before – escaping what to them was the rat race of Aberdeen and looking for the quieter, everybody-looks-out-for-everybody-else life of a village. Her parents had presented themselves at the manse the day after they had moved in, telling his father over tea and scones (great doughy abominations with the odd currant in, that took longer to chew through than it had taken to cook them – his mother insisted on making them and his father insisted on forcing them on anyone who came within 10 feet of the house) that they were deeply spiritual people and had felt their faith waning the longer they had spent among the Godless masses of the city. His father, naturally, had welcomed them to the village and spoken effusively on how most of the villagers attended the kirk every week, barring illness, and that they all held strong beliefs in the family of the church and that he was sure they would soon find their obvious and powerful faith returning once they were settled within the community.

  He had sat, quiet and uninterested, whilst his father had droned on about his church and congregation. If he was home at the time of these visits – which, aside from school and the very occasionally allowed visit to a friend, he generally was – he was expected to present himself and sit with his father in what was rather grandly known as ‘the receiving room’ whilst they talked. It seemed to him that this was the closest his father could get to passing on the family trade to his son. It was an apprenticeship in banal conversation interspersed with the occasional tersely delivered tirade on the dangers of sin or the perils of treading too far from the sight of God and so suffering the agonies awaiting those who had fallen from His grace. He was not in the least bit interested in any of it.

  He would generally spend this time daydreaming, creating cinematic scenes in his mind from passages in his favourite books. He would often find that by the end of one of these chats he had effectively watched an entire film in his head.

  The part of his brain that always paid attention to the room, and especially looked out for when he was being directly addressed, had suddenly realised his father was speaking to him. With some effort his mind caught up with the conversation and begun paying full attention to what was happening around him.

  ‘You’ll be happy to show Mr and Mrs MacInally’s daughter around the school, won’t you boy?’ his father was saying.

  His father had always called him boy, even when it was just the two of them, and always used the same gruff, stern tone of voice. There was never a hint of pride or encouragement in the way his father spoke to him, never did he hear anything that might resemble love or even mild affection. Everything his father said to him sounded, at best, like a superior talking to a troublesome and particularly slow junior, and more often like an admonishment waiting to turn into a full-on, invective-ridden, screamed rant. He was essentially a man from the wrong century living his life 100 years too late.

  He had given himself one heartbeat to catch up – they had a daughter! That really caught his interest. His 15-year-old mind had been focused more and more on the opposite sex for the last half year or so, but living in a small village did not exactly allow for any experience outside of his own imagination. And due to the very small sample size his imagination also lacked for material. It wasn’t that the girls in the village were particularly unattractive or that there weren’t any with the requisite anatomy already-developed – they just all seemed very unapproachable in a sexual sense.

  It had already occurred to him that he had known many of them since they were literally babes in arms. They had grown up together and he had seen every one of them in various situations that didn’t lean towards a burgeoning sexual imagination – eating worms, peeing themselves and getting covered in mud and coo shit did not feature highly on his list of sexy things a girl might do. He also knew that being the son of the minister excluded him from many of the more surreptitious activities that the others of his age got up to, especially in the woods by the burn. No one wanted his father to find out and so there was an element of mistrust towards him too.

  But now there was a chance to get to know a girl he had never met – and to do that ahead of all the other boys who, like him, would no doubt relish the thought of a new girl in the village.

  ‘Yes of course,’ he had replied in his most respectful and polite voice. ‘I’d be happy to, and perhaps, if she’d like, I could also show her around the village tomorrow so she knows her way around before going back to school?’

  ‘I’m sure Ailsa would be grateful of some company her own age,’ Mr McInally had replied. ‘That’s very good of you, I’m sure she’d be glad to be out and about.’

  So, it was agreed he would call round the next day and have this new girl all to himself until their return to school. He had felt delighted, excited and not a little nervous about the whole thing. Over-arching all of this was the thrill of having the opportunity to ‘get ahead of the game’ when it came to getting to know this Ailsa girl.

  The following day had gone well as far as he was concerned. She was pretty and kind of funny, and he felt they got on very well. They had chatted amiably as he showed her around the village – what there was of it – generally covering her life in Aberdeen, how the village was so small in comparison and how much she missed her friends. She bemoaned that she had had so many friends in Aberdeen and that she doubted there were enough kids in the village to replace them all. She talked for some time about the ‘wild’ afternoons spent in parks and other hang-outs where adults were scarce on the ground.

  He had listened politely enough, not really knowing what to say. Eventually he had found himself defending his wee village, claiming they were a great bunch of kids, all of whom could be pretty wild and fun, and that there were loads of hang-out spots around the village where you wouldn’t see an adult for hours on end. As he spoke he led her out of the village and took her to the various spots he had mentioned, hoping no one was there as he approached each one. There wasn’t and so he relaxed into their afternoon.

  He had found his feelings for her developing very quickly. He wanted to take her hand in his within 20 minutes and wanted to kiss her after an hour. He had felt a connection and believed wholeheartedly that they would become a couple over the next week or so before going back to school. He might even get to sate some of that sexual curiosity that ate away at him almost every waking hour. The very thought of that had him keeping his hands in his pockets to try and hide his very obvious excitement.

  He was more than a little disappointed when he had finally walked her home and, on the doorstep, she had thanked him for a lovely afternoon and for showing her the village and then promptly turned and walked straight into the house. No kiss? He hadn’t been expecting much but at least a quick peck wouldn’t have gone amiss, would it? After all, hadn’t she looked as though she had felt their connection too? Wasn’t it obvious to her as well as him that they were clearly destined to be together? He had left feeling a little dejected and rejected, but on the walk back to the manse he came to the conclusion that she was simply shy and had hidden that by getting into the house as quickly as possible.

  As he walked, he began to daydream – their first kiss, shy and tentative to begin with would become more passionate and confident as they continued, finally breaking away slightly breathless and both flushed with excitement. They would continue these illicit snogs for some weeks, talking in between and g
etting to know each other in a way that surpassed friendship and even family to become a deep and unbreakable love.

  He had reached the manse just as his daydream had started to get more interesting, or at least more graphic as he imagined them moving on to what was known as heavy petting – he was determined to find out exactly what that entailed before he and Ailsa got to that stage – and by the time he had reached the front door the dream had begun to flash forward to their first full sexual encounter.

  Closing the front door, he had run straight upstairs to his room, trying desperately to hold the imagery and sensations he had conjured in his mind. Closing the bedroom door and jumping onto the bed he immediately started doing what countless pubescent boys had done for many thousands of years, all the time praying his mother or father would not enter the room unexpectedly.

  He had tried to call on her a few times over the 10 days leading up to the return to school and was always left disappointed. She had either found an excuse for why she wasn’t available or had on two occasions invited him in only for them to sit in the living room having excruciating and stilted conversations with her parents. He felt she constantly contrived to avoid seeing him alone, but having already formed the opinion she was a shy and quiet girl these minor rejections were to be expected, he had supposed.

  On the first day back to school, he had collected her as promised. On the walk there, their conversation was stilted and perfunctory – not at all the dazzling, rich and deep repartee he had imagined. Neither was there any gazing into each other’s eyes, ignoring all others around them, or a hand-in-hand romantic stroll towards school. He had thought of nothing else for days and had in his mind’s eye a crystal-clear image of how this should have gone. The reality was as far from the dream as Inverurie Loco FC were from the Scottish Premier League.

  ‘You’ll be in a different form class to me,’ he had mumbled, as he trailed along beside her. ‘It’s done alphabetically so you’ll be with Mrs Daniels and I’m in with Mr Proudfoot, but I’ll show you where to go so you’ll know for tomorrow.’

  She had replied with a lacklustre ‘Ok, thanks’ and that was that.

  That was the height of the walk to school. His disappointment was so strong he felt like he could reach out and touch it, receiving an electric shock in return.

  Over the following weeks his disappointment had slowly morphed into resentment and frustration. It wasn’t long before she was leaving ahead of him to walk with new-found friends, girls from her form class who were notoriously part of the ‘cool’ clique. They were soon joined by the boys from this set – football and rugby playing school heroes, all big-built sons of farmers, with fair-haired rugged good looks and the flushed cheeks common to many Highland lads that girls seemed to find so attractive.

  He had watched enviously as she laughed and messed around in and amongst a group of people he rarely spoke to, never mind had the gall to try and join. Most disheartening was the obvious way she had opened up. She wasn’t the shy, introverted girl he had believed she was – she was energetic and vocal with a fun, carefree nature that the cool set simply lapped up.

  Slowly, however, the dream of the life they would have together had re-emerged. He would lie half asleep at night and his mind would slowly concoct the story of their lives – predicting every move, twist and turn of their sometimes turbulent but always passionate and loving relationship all the way to their old age and beyond. So detailed were these dreams and imaginings that he could, had he the inclination or desire to do so, have written a full-length romantic novel to rival Wuthering Heights or anything by Joanna Trollope.

  In his dreams, they would return to being friends – she realising that the kids she’d been hanging out with were shallow and ultimately uninteresting. Slowly they would come to realise, so the story went, that they were far closer in nature than their initial meetings had indicated. He was more open, funny and lively, she would turn out to have a great love of books and an interest in politics. They would spend hours either laughing at joke after joke or running about like little kids in a quiet area of the woods, shouting and shrieking as they fooled about. Other times they would sit quietly, under a tree on pleasant summer evenings, discussing a particularly good novel or what they would change if they were in government.

  That tree would be the site of their first kiss, as they sat both reading from the same book. Their heads would move closer together, then they would turn at the same time to say something, their eyes meeting and shy smiles appearing on their lips and finally, with sighs of relief and growing excitement, they would kiss. Both had wanted to for weeks but neither had plucked up the courage to do anything about it and now was the time. It was natural and unforced, with neither of them making the running but simply submitting to the moment.

  The dream had become more fantastical from this point on. They would move quickly from kissing to touching and ultimately, naturally, they would make love in the woods where their relationship had been born. At this point he would always have to break off and relieve the ache in his groin, always being careful not to make too much noise or stain the bed covers.

  Sated, he would lie back a little breathlessly and continue his internal narrative.

  Realising the disapproval of their parents (they were too young to be so close, they had to finish school, get good grades, and so forth) they would hatch a plot to run away to Edinburgh. There they would find exciting and fulfilling lives, he as a novelist and politically-active commentator, she in PR or advertising, both of them rising to become leading lights in their fields. Their parents’ initial horror and shock at their running away would soon turn into pride and admiration. Eventually, they would willingly give their approval to marriage. Children would follow and life would be bliss for the rest of their lives.

  And so, the dreams would go on … night after night, becoming ever more real, more solid and then finally slipping from fantasy into a form of reality. They were no longer imaginings, they were – ultimately and inevitably – a map for how the future would look. It would happen, could happen no other way. There were no alternate paths, no twists or turns in the route. She would be his, and was meant for no one else. She would see that clear as day in the weeks or months to come.

  He would make it happen.

  And then she laughed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Fran Pearson and Malcolm Tanner were sitting in the saloon bar of the Porters Arms, a good old copper’s pub, one that had seen several generations of police officers sitting quietly discussing the job over a post-work pint or two. They had just come out of an ‘inter-departmental liaison and cooperation planning meeting’, the kind of stuff that would make even the most ardent fan of management meetings shudder. Both had moved at breakneck speed towards ‘the Porter’ at the end of the meeting without a word being passed between them as to their destination.

  Police officers rarely talked about anything other than the job, and Pearson and Tanner were no exception. On the surface of it, it was just two colleagues chatting over their respective caseloads or certain managerial problems they were facing. In reality, it was an informal case review being conducted with two pints of Speckled Hen sitting between them.

  ‘So,’ Pearson said. ‘Bring me up to speed, Malcolm. What are your thoughts in general about the evidence we have so far?’

  Tanner took a healthy gulp of his ale and wiped the froth from his top lip before replying, ‘Well, I’m not sure we have much, Fran.’ He said this with a slight twist of his mouth indicating he was about to disappoint his boss. ‘Any so-called evidence we have is purely circumstantial, at best. Handley has looked further into the dates and details from the FO – that was a good spot, that pattern he saw almost straightaway. Anyway, he reckons there is some correlation between the dates and locations where Marcus Travers was away on business and some of the murders we are attributing to the Charmer, but not all of them, it would appear.’

  Tanner took another swig of beer then said, ‘G
ood lad that, dedicated and determined. I need to work on his focus a little perhaps but he went through reams of the stuff the FO sent over. It may be that there’s more to be gleaned from it all but I really need more manpower to cover all the ground. Although, I have to say, I’m not sure we’ll get much further on that line. Some dates match, so what? Still doesn’t really mean much – there’s likely to be as many, if not more, where they don’t.’

  Pearson nodded and frowned at the same time. Tanner hoped the nod meant agreement to more manpower while the frown was likely to be a concern for budgets and so on. Pearson sympathised with his boss and friend – budgets were the bane of all senior officers’ lives, Tanner’s included.

  ‘OK,’ was all Pearson said. ‘What else have we got?’

  ‘As I said, we should probably go through every line of the FO’s information but I also wanted Handley working a couple of other angles. He’s already been over to the Travers’ place and collected whatever they could find in terms of fingerprints, hair and items that might still yield DNA. Looks like we’ve found some prints on an old paint can which is something. The rest is with forensics now, so we’ll see what turns up. Also, I wanted him to work the Julia Metcalfe angle so I’ve sent him off to The Guardian and also got him checking as many sources as he can think of to try to track her down. We still figure they’re together somewhere, so finding her may well lead to finding him.’

  Again Pearson nodded. ‘Yeah I think you might be right there.’ He appeared to think a moment before saying, ‘OK, tell you what. I can give you budget for two more bodies – you can pick who you want to work with. That should give you enough to continue with the information from the FO and yet keep opening other lines of enquiry.’

  Tanner raised his pint gratefully towards his boss and said a relieved thank you. Pearson raised his own glass in return.