Val McDermid - The Distant Echo

Maclennan nodded. ‘I don’t think I could argue with that.’ He was intrigued by the information about the cars. Maybe the Land Rover hadn’t been the only vehicle on the road that night with one of his suspects behind the wheel.

Robin had been eager to find out more details of the investigation, but Maclennan sidestepped neatly. The conversation slipped into familiar channels – family, football, what to get their parents for Christmas – before Maclennan had managed to get away. Robin’s information wasn’t much, it was true, but it made Maclennan feel there was a pattern to the activities of the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy that smacked of a love of risk-taking. It was the sort of behaviour that could easily tip over into something much more dangerous.

Feelings were all very well, but they were worthless without hard evidence. And hard evidence was what was sorely lacking. The Land Rover had turned into a forensic dead-end. They’d practically dismantled the entire interior but nothing had turned up to prove that Rosie Duff had ever been inside it. Excitement had burned through the team like a fuse when the scene of crime officers had discovered traces of blood, but closer examination had revealed that not only did it not belong to Rosie, it wasn’t even human.

The one faint hope on the horizon had emerged only a day ago. A householder in Trinity Place had been doing some seasonal tidying in his garden when he’d found a sodden bundle of material thrust into his hedge. Mrs Duff had identified it as belonging to Rosie. Now it had gone off to the lab for testing, but Maclennan knew that in spite of his marking it urgent, nothing would happen now until after the New Year. Just another frustration to add to the list.

He couldn’t even decide whether to charge Mackie, Kerr and Malkiewicz with taking and driving away. They’d answered their bail requirements religiously and he’d been on the point of charging them when he’d overheard a conversation in the police social club. He’d been shielded from the officers talking by the back of a banquette, but he’d recognized the voices of Jimmy Lawson and Iain Shaw. Shaw had advocated throwing every charge they could come up with at the students. But to Maclennan’s surprise, Lawson had disagreed. ‘It just makes us look bad,’ the uniformed constable had said. ‘We look petty and vindictive. It’s like putting up a billboard saying, Hey, we can’t get them for murder, but we’re going to make their lives a misery anyway.’

‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Iain Shaw had replied. ‘If they’re guilty, they should suffer.’

‘But maybe they’re not guilty,’ Lawson said urgently. ‘We’re supposed to care about justice, aren’t we? That’s not just about nailing the guilty, it’s also about protecting the innocent. OK, so they lied to Maclennan about the Land Rover. But that doesn’t make them killers.’

‘If it wasn’t one of them, who was it, then?’ Shaw challenged.

‘I still think it’s tied in to Hallow Hill. Some pagan rite or other. You know as well as me that we get reports every year from Tentsmuir Forest about animals that look like they’ve been the victims of some sort of ritual slaughter. And we never pay any attention to it, because it’s no big deal in the great scheme of things. But what if some weirdo has been building up to this for years? It was pretty near to Saturnalia, after all.’

‘Saturnalia?’

‘The Romans celebrated the winter solstice on December seventeenth. But it was a pretty moveable feast.’

Shaw snorted incredulity. ‘Christ, Jimmy, you’ve been doing your research.’

‘All I did was ask down at the library. You know I want to join CID, I’m just trying to show willing.’

‘So you think it was some satanic nutter that offed Rosie?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a theory, that’s all. But we’re going to look very fucking stupid if we point the finger at these four students and then there’s another human sacrifice come Beltane.’

‘Beltane?’ Shaw said faintly.

‘End of April, beginning of May. Big pagan festival. So I think we should stand back from hitting these kids too hard until we’ve got a better case against them. After all, if they hadn’t stumbled across Rosie’s body, the Land Rover would have been returned, nobody any the wiser, no damage done. They just got unlucky.’

Then they’d finished their drinks and left. But Lawson’s words stuck in Maclennan’s mind. He was a fair man, and he couldn’t help acknowledging that the PC had a point. If they’d known from the start the identity of the mystery man Rosie had been seeing, they’d barely have looked twice at the quartet from Kirkcaldy. Maybe he was going in hard against the students simply because he had nothing else to focus on. Uncomfortable though it was to be reminded of his obligations by a woolly suit, Lawson had persuaded Maclennan he should hold back on charging Malkiewicz, Kerr and Mackie.

For now, at least.

In the meanwhile, he’d put out one or two feelers. See if anybody knew anything about satanic rituals in the area. The trouble was, he didn’t have a clue where to start. Maybe he’d get Burnside to have a word with some of the local ministers. He smiled grimly. That would take their minds off the baby Jesus, that was for sure.

Weird waved goodbye to Alex and Mondo at the end of their shift and headed down towards the prom. He hunched his shoulders against the chill wind, burying his chin in his scarf. He was supposed to be finishing off his Christmas shopping, but he needed some time on his own before he could face the relentless festive cheer of the High Street.

The tide was out, so he made his way down the slimy steps from the esplanade to the beach. The wet sand was the colour of old putty in the low grey light of the afternoon and it sucked at his feet unpleasantly as he walked. It fitted his mood perfectly. He couldn’t remember ever having felt so depressed about his life.

Things at home were even more confrontational than usual. He’d had to tell his father about his arrest, and his revelation had provoked a constant barrage of criticism and digs about his failure to live up to what a good son should be. He had to account for every minute spent outside the house, as if he was ten years old all over again. The worst of it was that Weird couldn’t even manage to take the moral high ground. He knew he was in the wrong. He almost felt as if his father’s contempt was deserved, and that was the most depressing thing of all. He’d always been able to console himself that his way was the better way. But this time, he’d placed himself outside the limits.

Work was no better. Boring, repetitive and undignified. Once upon a time, he’d have turned it into a big joke, an opportunity for mayhem and mischief. The person who would have relished winding up his supervisors and enlisting the support of Alex and Mondo in a series of pranks felt like a distant stranger to Weird now. What had happened to Rosie Duff and his involvement in the case had forced him to acknowledge that he was indeed the waster that his father had always believed him to be. And it wasn’t a comfortable realization.

There was no consolation for him in friendship either. For once, being with the others didn’t feel like being absorbed into a support system. It felt like a reminder of all his failings. He couldn’t escape his guilt with them, because they were the ones he’d implicated in his actions, even though they never seemed to blame him for it.

He didn’t know how he was going to face the new term. Bladderwrack popped and slithered under his feet as he reached the end of the beach and started to climb the broad steps towards the Port Brae. Like the seaweed, everything about him felt slimed and unstable.