Val McDermid - The Distant Echo

The desk sergeant had told him that the other interview room was occupied by the medical student with the Polish name. He was the one who had been adamant that Rosie had still been alive when they found her, claiming he’d done all he could to keep her that way. He’d seemed pretty cool in the circumstances, cooler than Maclennan would have managed. He thought he’d start there. Just as soon as Burnside showed his face.

The interview room that housed Ziggy was the double of Alex’s. Somehow, Ziggy managed to look comfortable in it. He slouched in his chair, half-leaning against the wall, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. He was so exhausted he could easily have fallen asleep, except that every time he closed his eyes, the image of Rosie’s body flared brilliant in his mind. No amount of theoretical medical study had prepared Ziggy for the brutal reality of a human being so wantonly destroyed. He just hadn’t known enough to be any use to Rosie when it mattered, and that galled him. He knew he should feel pity for the dead woman, but his frustration left no room for any other emotion. Not even fear.

But Ziggy was also smart enough to know he should be afraid. He had Rosie Duff’s blood all over his clothes, under his fingernails. Probably even in his hair; he remembered pushing his wet fringe out of his eyes as he’d desperately tried to see where the blood was coming from. That was innocent enough, if the police believed his story. But he was also the man without an alibi, thanks to Weird’s contrary notions of what constituted a bit of fun. He really couldn’t afford for the police to find the best possible vehicle for driving in a blizzard with his fingerprints all over it. Ziggy was usually so circumspect, but now his life could be blown apart by one careless word. It didn’t bear thinking about.

It was almost a relief when the door opened and two policemen walked in. He recognized the one who had told the uniforms to bring them to the station. Stripped of his overwhelming overcoat, he was a lean whippet of a man, his mousy hair a little longer than was fashionable. The stubbled cheeks revealed he had been rousted from bed in the middle of the night, though the neat white shirt and the smart suit looked as if they’d come straight from the dry cleaner’s hanger. He dropped into the chair opposite Ziggy and said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Maclennan and this is Detective Constable Burnside. We need to have a wee chat about what happened tonight.’ He nodded towards Burnside. ‘My colleague will take notes and then we’ll prepare a statement for you to sign.’

Ziggy nodded. ‘That’s fine. Ask away.’ He straightened up in his seat. ‘I don’t suppose I could get a cup of tea?’

Maclennan turned to Burnside and nodded. Burnside rose and left the room. Maclennan leaned back in his chair and checked out his witness. Funny how the mod haircuts had come back into fashion. The dark-haired lad opposite him wouldn’t have looked out of place a dozen years earlier in the Small Faces. He didn’t look like a Pole to Maclennan’s way of thinking. He had the pale skin and red cheeks of a Fifer, though the brown eyes were a bit unusual with that colouring. Wide cheekbones gave his face a chiselled, exotic air. A bit like that Russian dancer, Rudolph Nearenough, or whatever his name was.

Burnside returned almost immediately. ‘It’s on its way,’ he said, sitting down and picking up his pen.

Maclennan placed his forearms on the table and locked his fingers together. ‘Personal details first.’ They ran through the preliminaries quickly, then the detective said, ‘A bad business. You must be feeling pretty shaken up.’

Ziggy began to feel as if he was trapped in the land of clichés. ‘You could say that.’

‘I want you to tell me in your own words what happened tonight.’

Ziggy cleared his throat. ‘We were walking back to Fife Park …’

Maclennan stopped him with a raised palm. ‘Back up a bit. Let’s have the whole evening, eh?’

Ziggy’s heart sank. He was hoping he might avoid mentioning their earlier visit to the Lammas Bar. ‘OK. The four of us, we live in the same unit in Fife Park so we usually eat together. Tonight, it was my turn to cook. We had egg and chips and beans and about nine o’clock we went down into the town. We were going to a party later on and we wanted to have a few pints first.’ He paused to make sure Burnside was getting it down.

‘Where did you go for your drinks?’

‘The Lammas Bar.’ The words hung in the air between them.

Maclennan showed no reaction, though he felt his pulse quicken. ‘Did you often drink there?’

‘Pretty regularly. The beer’s cheap and they don’t mind students, not like some of the places in town.’

‘So you’ll have seen Rosie Duff? The dead girl?’

Ziggy shrugged. ‘I didn’t really pay attention.’

‘What? A bonnie lassie like that, you didn’t notice her?’

‘It wasn’t her that served me when I went up for my round.’

‘But you must have spoken to her in the past?’

Ziggy took a deep breath. ‘Like I said, I never really paid attention. Chatting up barmaids isn’t my scene.’

‘Not good enough for you, eh?’ Maclennan said grimly.

‘I’m not a snob, Inspector. I come from a council house myself. I just don’t get my kicks playing macho man in the pub, OK? Yes, I knew who she was, but I’d never had a conversation with her that went beyond “Four pints of Tennent’s, please.”’

‘Did any of your friends take more of an interest in her?’

‘Not that I noticed.’ Ziggy’s nonchalance hid a sudden wariness at the line of questioning.

‘So, you had a few pints in the Lammas. What then?’

‘Like I said, we went on to a party. A third-year mathematician called Pete that Tom Mackie knows. He lives in St Andrews, in Learmonth Gardens. I don’t know what number. His parents were away and he threw a party. We got there about midnight and it was getting on for four o’clock when we left.’

‘Were you all together at the party?’

Ziggy snorted. ‘Have you ever been to a student party, Inspector? You know what it’s like. You walk through the door together, you get a beer, you drift apart. Then when you’ve had enough, you see who’s still standing and you gather them together and stagger off into the night. The good shepherd, that’s me.’ He gave an ironic smile.

‘So the four of you arrived together and the four of you left together, but you’ve no idea what the others were doing in between?’

‘That’s about the size of it, yeah.’

‘You couldn’t even swear that none of them left and came back later?’

If Maclennan had expected alarm from Ziggy, he was disappointed. Instead, he cocked his head to one side, thoughtful. ‘Probably not, no,’ he admitted. ‘I spent most of the time in the conservatory at the back of the house. Me and a couple of English guys. Sorry, I can’t remember their names. We were talking about music, politics, that sort of thing. It got quite heated when we got on to Scottish devolution, as you can imagine. I wandered through a few times for another beer, went through to the dining room to grab something to eat, but no, I wasn’t being my brothers’ keeper.’

‘Do you usually all end up going back together?’ Maclennan wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but it felt like the right question.

‘Depends if anybody’s got off with somebody.’

He was definitely on the defensive now, the policeman thought. ‘Does that happen often?’

‘Sometimes.’ Ziggy’s smile was a little strained. ‘Hey, we’re healthy, red-blooded young men, you know?’

‘But the four of you usually end up going home together? Very cosy.’