Dark Suits and Sad Songs (2 page)

He began by promising himself that he couldn’t love her, that it was all part of life’s rich experience. Then, when she wasn’t there, he felt an emptiness that gnawed at him; unable to sit down, stand up, sleep, or perform any of the other mundane activities of which most of life comprised. He loved to be around her. She was kind, with a quiet determination and dry sense of humour. They made sense together; they had similar tastes, they laughed at each other’s jokes, and both understood the demands of a career in the police force.

As he overheard her moving around the kitchen, he could hear she was singing a song to herself. Like him, she loved music but was tone deaf, making it impossible to discern the tune she was murdering. He looked at the ceiling, rubbed his eyes and sighed. He knew he shouldn’t have carried on with this relationship. They had kissed on the day he had saved her life, the day he showed Liz the pictures of her in the arms of Mark Henderson – the day his life had changed. He had tried to reason with himself, but to no avail. Liz’s absence had
left a gaping hole in his life, one that only his young subordinate appeared able to fill.

He was careful to dial 141 before entering the number for Kinloch Police Office; even though gossip, rumour and speculation had died down, he didn’t need to rekindle the fire.

‘Daley here,’ he said, almost yawning. ‘What’s up?’ He listened for a few moments, then began to rub his forehead, muttered a hasty goodbye and clicked the phone off.

‘Not good, I take it?’ Mary Dunn’s face was serious as she passed Daley the steaming mug of coffee.

‘No. Not good at all. In fact, I would get dressed if I was you.’ He gave her a weak smile, as he tentatively sipped the strong coffee.

She watched him walk to his car and drive away. Certainly, he was not the young, groomed, tanned and moisturised specimen of manhood held up as the ideal to women of the twenty-first century; he was almost twice her age, but it didn’t seem to matter. She thought he was fine; confident without being arrogant, brave but also thoughtful. He made her feel special, he made her heart leap.

Dunn brewed another cup of coffee. Soon she would have to put on her mask, pretend that the man in the glass box wasn’t the man she loved, but what he had been from the beginning – her boss. She pushed the hurt from her mind, telling herself that this was just the way it had to be right now. She didn’t want to analyse it all too closely. She didn’t want reality to come up short.

The telephone rang. Someone in Kinloch Police Office was about to tell her something she already knew.

2

As Daley drove down Main Street, he could see that despite the hour a large crowd had gathered near the pontoons. A small number of uniformed officers were struggling to maintain order; it looked as though they were fighting a losing battle. He parked his car as close to the loch as the throng would allow and made his way towards the scene. Black smoke was still visible in the clear air and an acrid smell, carried on the warm breeze, assaulted his senses.

‘Excuse me,’ Daley shouted as he tried to shoulder his way through the gathered locals.

‘Aye, let the officer past,’ a member of the crowd called.

‘C’mon, let the main man through!’ someone else insisted. ‘Can you no’ see how tired-lookin’ he is?’ This spread a frisson of mirth amongst the early morning onlookers.

‘Nae wonder. I’d be stayin’ in my bed a’ day wae that wee cracker.’ At this, many of the locals – despite the visceral scene before them and the bitter smell – burst into gales of laughter.

Though he was used to the banter, the early hour and something about the locus made him angry; the crowd of people so anxious to see the remains of a fellow human being made him feel suddenly sick. He turned on his heel. ‘Right,
that’s enough! Someone has lost their life here and all you can think to do is laugh and joke. I am treating this as a crime scene until I know otherwise, so I want you all to move back and let us get on with our work, otherwise I will be instructing my officers to make arrests. Constables, if you would.’ He beckoned to the uniformed officers, who began to push the now much more pliant gathering away from the pontoons.

Daley ducked under the yellow police tape and felt his trousers strain at the behind. Thankful that they remained intact, a small mercy, he walked to the edge of what was left of one of the buoyant decking piers that made up the yacht moorings. Members of the fire brigade were aboard a small wooden vessel, the front of which was badly burned. It was secured next to what could best be described as a gaping black hole which had turned the far end of the decking into an island. He stepped towards the uniformed sergeant and two suited figures who had their backs to him, all peering into the shallow waters of the loch.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. An update please, DS Rainsford.’

A tall young man in a sharply tailored suit walked towards him. His long thin face and angular features lent him a haughty look; he wore his hair short and parted to one side. He was slightly taller than Daley who, faced with such sartorial elegance in his junior, felt the subconscious need to adjust his hastily knotted tie.

‘Good morning, sir. As you can see, I thought it best that we try to remove the body from the water as soon as possible.’ He gestured towards three men who were waist deep in water, two of whom Daley recognised as members of the local RNLI, the other a fire and rescue officer. The lifeboat
men wore orange wetsuits, while the fireman had to make do with a pair of yellow waders, over which water was already lapping. ‘The tide’s on its way in, sir. I trust you appreciate the need for action – even before SOCO get here.’ Rainsford’s accent sounded neither Scottish nor English – neutral, Daley always thought.

‘What about corruption of the scene?’ he asked, anxious that no evidence be lost in the attempt to retrieve the body from the loch.

‘If we don’t get the body out of there it’ll start to degrade rapidly, I’m afraid, Jim.’ Daley turned towards the short, fat figure of Dr Richard Spence, one of the local doctors, all of whom, given Kinloch’s remoteness, dealt with police matters as and when necessary. Daley liked the man, unlike some of the less police-friendly members of the practice, and respected his opinion.

‘That’s the trouble with this type of thing,’ Spence continued. ‘Fry ’em then immerse them in cold water. It’s a bit like doing it with a side of beef, bits will start coming off – especially in salt water. Best we get him – or her – out of there as soon as we can, Jim.’

Daley thanked the doctor, then turned back to the DS. ‘So what else do we know?’

‘I spoke to the pontoon manager on the phone a few minutes ago, sir. The boat’s called
The Alba
, she docked here yesterday lunchtime. A man named Walter Cudihey booked the vessel in and paid his berthing fees by credit card; the manager’s going to email me the details as soon as he gets into the office. I’m also checking with the RYA to see if he’s registered with them.’ He smiled confidently. ‘Apart from fire and rescue personnel dealing with the fire on board the
vessel, nobody has touched it.’ Rainsford raised his brows and looked down his nose. ‘Thought it best we wait for you before commencing a search, sir.’

Daley nodded curtly. ‘Yes, you did the right thing, DS Rainsford.’ The young detective sergeant had been in place for nearly four months; he was efficient, knowledgeable and bright, though something about his manner irritated Daley. Perhaps it was his honours degree in sociology, his trim physique, or his somewhat patronising manner – maybe a mixture of all three. He supposed he reminded him vaguely of his hated brother-in-law, Mark Henderson. In any event there was something about Marcus Rainsford that Jim Daley didn’t like. And he couldn’t ignore the obvious: simply, DS Rainsford, despite his undoubted intelligence and grasp of the minutiae of police procedure, lacked one thing – he wasn’t Brian Scott.

It took over an hour for the body, by way of an impromptu hoist, to be removed from the loch, during which time SOCO officers arrived to carry out a forensic assessment of the craft and what was left of the pontoon. The body was being prepared to be taken to Glasgow by helicopter so that a detailed post mortem could take place. Locals lined the street as Daley drove up the hill and in through the gates of Kinloch Police Office.

‘Excuse me, sir.’ DC Dunn was already at her desk, her open laptop displaying some hazy black-and-white images. ‘I thought you might want to see this,’ she said, gesturing towards the screen.

Daley leaned over her, placing his hand on the back of her chair to prop himself up as he squinted at the laptop. Her
hair smelled of strawberries and he watched, absently fascinated, as she used the keyboard scrolling function with one long thin finger to rewind the on-screen footage.

‘Here, sir.’ The image froze, bringing to a halt a long array of numbers at the top of the screen which meant little to him; in the bottom right-hand corner, the time was displayed as 04:17:23. ‘This is footage from the CCTV camera at the head of the pier, sir. It covers the area quite well, though – well, you’ll see for yourself.’ She clicked an arrow on the screen and the image began to move.

Though the picture was monochrome it was well defined. There was a flash as the cabin door of
The Alba
swung open, revealing a short, fat bald man, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, carrying a large square container in one hand. Daley watched as he jumped easily onto the pontoon and out of shot.

‘What now?’ he asked, for some reason looking at the top of Dunn’s head.

‘Just a second – keep watching, sir.’

There was a flash which momentarily turned the laptop screen white. As the glare faded, the flames that now engulfed the yacht could be seen flickering on the extreme left of the picture.

‘There we have it,’ said Daley, standing up with a long sigh.

‘No, wait a minute, sir, that’s not all.’ Dunn set the image swirling backwards at high speed as she rewound the footage. Daley, leaning back over her again, looked on as the time on the bottom right of the screen scrolled backwards. ‘Once I isolated the actual event, I thought I’d do a quick recap to see what happened in the time prior to the fire.’ She looked up at Daley and smiled at him. ‘Watch.’ She stopped the footage at 02:07:48.

Again the cabin door swung open, though this time no sunlight flashed against the porthole. Two men stepped onto the narrow deck of the vessel, one of whom looked very unsteady on his feet. Daley watched as this man was helped over the deck and towards the pontoon by the man with the bald head and Bermuda shorts. Dunn stopped the image, just as the unsteady figure stood up straight and looked in the general direction of the camera. There was no mistake – even at this distance, Hamish’s face was unmistakeable.

‘Oh no,’ Daley groaned.

3

She had never taken to Kirkintilloch; part of her still yearned for Glasgow’s East End. Her friends, her family – or what was left of them – just about everyone she cared for, lived somewhere in that much-maligned side of the city. The move to Kirky, as the town was known by most of its populace, had been a compromise.

She supposed that while her children had lived at home she had been too busy to worry about her surroundings, but now that they had both spread their wings, she had much more time on her hands – well, much more time in the house, after all that had happened.

A photograph on the mantelpiece caught her eye. The man stood straight; his arms pinned to his side, his hands, balled into fists with thumbs pointing to the ground, were adorned with white gloves. She smiled as she studied his chiselled features, only just visible under the black-and-white checked cap with the high brim and black polished peak. Even from here, she could make out the sharp crease in the uniform trousers and sleeves of the tunic. She smiled at the serious young face; an expression so at odds with what she knew of the man. The picture had been taken many years before; just after they had married, in fact. Her chest had
filled with pride as she watched her man, Brian Scott, at his passing out parade from the police college. A tear meandered down her cheek.

Her fond reminiscences were disturbed by a sharp knock on the door. Through the glass panelling she could make out the uniformed figure; the gold braid on the cap indicated that not just any officer had come to call.

‘Willie!’ She invited the immaculately dressed figure into her hallway. ‘I canna remember the last time I saw you. How’s Sheila and the weans?’

‘Aye, fine, fine. A’ grown up noo, same as yours. What aboot yoursel’, Ella, how are you coping?’ The man was tall and thickset; with one meaty hand, he pushed the cap to the back of his head and embraced her in a bear hug.

‘Put me doon, you big bugger,’ she squealed. ‘Come on in, take the weight off them huge feet o’ yours – an for fuck’s sake take that bunnet off, you look like the Duke o’ Edinburgh.’

‘Aye, these uniforms get mair fancy by the day. Did you ever?’ he said, pointing at the high-necked jumper that had replaced the tunic she’d just been looking at in her husband’s photo. ‘By fuck, they’ll have us wearing baseball caps next – especially since this Police Scotland palaver.’

‘But what’s a’ that jazz on your shoulder mean? I’ve been aboot the polis for a long number of years noo, an’ I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Ella stood back, admiring her old friend as she pointed him to the big leather recliner.

‘Ach, I’m Deputy Assistant Chief Constable, would you believe. What a bloody mouthful, tae. Chief Superintendent did me just fine. An’ I’ve got tae traipse a’ the way oot tae Kincardine every bloody day noo. I never liked Tulliallan
when me an’ your Brian were probationers, an’ I’ve seen nothing in the last few weeks tae change my mind. All a piece o’ nonsense tae – every bugger knows fine that this new force will end up being headquartered in Glasgow, or not far away; it’s the only thing that makes sense. Mind you,’ he said, ‘we’ll get the usual bollocks fae the Edinburgh mob.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve lost touch with what’s goin’ on since – well, you know,’ she said, with a deep sigh. ‘Things have changed. I’ll no’ lie tae you, Willie, there’s been times when I just feel like stayin’ in my bed an’ pulling the covers over my heid.’ She sat down on the sofa opposite him.