Jeremiah's Bell Read online

  Praise for Denzil Meyrick and the DCI Daley thriller series:

  ‘Absorbing . . . no run-of-the-mill tartan noir’

  The Times

  ‘Universal truths . . . an unbuttoned sense of humour . . . engaging and eventful’

  Wall Street Journal

  ‘A compelling lead . . . satisfyingly twisted plot’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘You’ll have a blast with these’

  Ian Rankin

  ‘A top talent, and one to be cherished’

  Quintin Jardine

  ‘Spellbinding . . . one of the UK’s most loved crime writers’

  Sunday Post

  ‘Touches of dark humour, multi-layered and compelling’

  Daily Record

  ‘Striking characters and shifting plots vibrate with energy’

  The Library Journal

  ‘Compelling new Scottish crime’

  The Strand Magazine

  ‘If you like Rankin, MacBride and Oswald, you’ll love Meyrick’

  Sunday Mail

  ‘The right amount of authenticity . . . gritty writing . . . most memorable’

  The Herald

  ‘All three books have a strong sense of place, of city cops trying to fit in to a small, tightly knit rural environment’ Russell Leadbetter,

  Evening Times

  ‘Denzil Meyrick’s [books] . . . certainly enriched my world’ Richard Bath, Editor,

  Scottish Field Magazine

  ‘Meyrick has the ability to give even the least important person in the plot character and the skill to tell a good tale’

  Scots Magazine

  ‘Following in the tradition of great Scottish crime writers, Denzil Meyrick has turned out a cracking, tenacious thriller of a read. If you favour the authentic and credible, you are in safe hands’

  Lovereading

  ‘If you thought Denzil Meyrick’s The Last Witness was thrilling, Dark Suits and Sad Songs is truly mesmerising . . . DCI Daley is shaping up to be the West Coast’s answer to Edinburgh’s Rebus’

  Scottish Home and Country

  A note on the author

  Denzil Meyrick was born in Glasgow and brought up in Campbeltown. After studying politics, he pursued a varied career including time spent as a police officer, freelance journalist, and director of several companies in the leisure, engineering and marketing sectors. Previous novels in the bestselling DCI Daley thriller series are Whisky from Small Glasses (Waterstone’s Scottish Book of the Year, 2015), The Last Witness, Dark Suits and Sad Songs, The Rat Stone Serenade, Well of the Winds, short-story collection One Last Dram Before Midnight, The Relentless Tide and A Breath on Dying Embers. Denzil lives on Loch Lomond side with his wife Fiona.

  Also available in the D.C.I. Daley thriller series

  Whisky from Small Glasses

  The Last Witness

  Dark Suits and Sad Songs

  The Rat Stone Serenade

  Well of the Winds

  One Last Dram Before Midnight (short stories)

  The Relentless Tide

  A Breath on Dying Embers

  eBook only

  Dalintober Moon (short story)

  Two One Three (short story)

  Empty Nets and Promises (novella)

  Single End (short story)

  JEREMIAH’S BELL

  A D.C.I. DALEY THRILLER

  Denzil Meyrick

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  1

  Copyright © Denzil Meyrick 2020

  The right of Denzil Meyrick to be identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents

  are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978 1 84697 520 2

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 279 1

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

  Typeset by 3btype.com

  Dedicated to the memory of Tommy Morran and John Mactaggart.

  ‘Not all those who wander are lost’

  —J.R.R. Tolkien

  PROLOGUE

  The old woman stood on the jagged promontory, the strong wind catching her plaid shawl, sending it flapping round her shoulders. She drew it over her bony frame as she shivered in the late November chill. The sea was pale green, almost luminous in the gloom of the day. A storm had hit hard the previous night, and high above its tail was curling like a celestial whip ready to crack its full wrath against them once more before the next dawn.

  In the distance, a fishing boat struggled through the turbulent swell, a determined prow cloaked in the white crash of waves, the safety of port still to be gained. The silhouette of a lone gull rode the gale almost motionless under the pale glimmering disc of a shrouded sun. Framed by it, the bird hung like a dark crucifix in the lowering sky: the absence of benediction. The thrash of the tide crashed over the Barrel Rocks, calling to the ghosts of the many mariners who had perished on them through the ages; a desperate lament for the departed, ripped from the world like leaves from an autumnal bough, lost souls never to settle or rest, but to rot unremembered in the turbulent depths.

  She hefted the bell in her right hand, and with no little difficulty swung it to and fro. This was far from a call to prayer; more like the summoning toll to children at play in the schoolyards of long ago. Its peal caught on the wind and the modulated chime cried plaintively against the tumult all around. Nonetheless, three figures stirred against the dark rocks and the washed lime sea, their ears long since attuned to the urgency of its call. Slowly, begrudgingly, they turned in the direction of the bell’s insistent demand, swaddled arms laden with driftwood bleached white like old bones by the unforgiving wuthering wind and waves.

  Satisfied, the old woman let the bell swing loose in her bony hand, then turned for the weather-beaten cottage across the rocks and beyond the dark rampart of seaweed which had been forced into the cove by the sheer ferocity of the storm. Here it would stand sentinel before the low dwelling until the spring tides and warmth of the sun ate away at its wasted, rotting edifice.

  She trod on, her worn boots sinking into the black soft cleft of the weed until the rough shingle afforded surer footing. A brief turn of her head was enough to register the lurching shapes close together in her wake, quite indistinguishable now, slouching forward, almost as one foul beast, headed for an ancient little town.

  1

  They were all there; at least those who had taken the trouble to say goodbye to the man now encased in the wooden casket. Old friends and new – faces from the past and the present.

  Hamish was huddled in a voluminous black woollen seafarer’s pea jacket. Suddenly he looked frail and old in a garment that seemed to draw what little light there was from the grey sky and hid an off-white shirt and a badly knotted black tie. Beside him, Annie took a handkerchief from her handbag and wiped tears from her eyes. Though she was dressed brightly – she refused to wear black – her heart was stifling sore.

  Brian Scott’s dark suit did nothing to hide the neatly laundered collar from which his wife now banished a dark mote blown there by the gusting wind. His hand darted to loosen the top button of
his shirt, but a look from Ella was enough to make him withdraw it hurriedly. He stared into his wife’s blue eyes behind the short black veil of her hat and gave her a weak smile. She whispered something into his ear and clutched his hand hard enough to help him choke back the tears that were making his throat ache unbearably.

  Carrie Symington stood at the head of a rank of police officers, all dressed in their best uniforms, white-gloved, heads bowed. The gold braid on her cap caught a shimmering shaft of sunlight that faded as quickly as it had arrived. Her chin jutted determinedly forward, face expressionless; but anyone close enough would have been able to see the tears brimming her dark eyes.

  The large coffin was poised above the gaping hole in the ground on two stout planks of wood, red winding cords sprouting from the gleaming brass handles round its sides. The white hair of Kinloch’s undertaker was tugged at by the wind as he solemnly handed out little white cards bordered by black edges to some of those gathered by the graveside.

  The saddest sight of all was that of the beautiful woman holding the little boy by the hand. She was bare-headed; a break with tradition that had seen some shaking of heads in the town’s chapel during the funeral service. But everyone had averted his or her eyes when her sad, hypnotic gaze caught theirs. The child pushed back a lick of dark hair from his forehead and looked up at his mother, bewildered by the unfamiliar ritual of it all. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted when the man in the flowing robes of a Roman Catholic priest called those present to order.

  The small throng fell silent. All that could be heard now was the distant cry of gulls, as beyond the serried ranks of gravestones a wailing wind whipped whispering waves on to the shore at Kinloch.

  Despite the silence, though, the name on the polished brass plate of the coffin shouted loud as thunder.

  James Francis Daley.

  He sat bolt upright in bed, the sweat that covered his body making him shiver in the darkness. Beside him, a figure stirred, slowly propping herself up on one elbow. Her face was suddenly illuminated by a slash of white moonlight through a chink in the curtain.

  ‘Jim, it’s okay. A dream – another nightmare.’ She embraced him, feeling the clammy dampness of his skin against hers. ‘Have you taken your pills?’

  He didn’t reply, choosing to sit forward, his head bowed, breathing heavily. It had all seemed so real, as though he was actually looking at the mourners at his own funeral. It was a spectre that had been haunting him for weeks. The panic attacks when he was awake, the nightmares when he slept. The first was when he’d fallen on to the pontoon beside the boat called Wisdom. He’d had a few since, but though these wakeful attacks seemed to be decreasing in number, the dreams of his own interment were with him every night still.

  ‘I’ll get some hot milk. That helps you get back over,’ said Liz. She slipped from the silken sheets of the bed and padded out of the room, her shape seeming to flicker like an old black and white movie as she walked through the shaft of moonlight.

  Daley lay back. His head had made the pillow damp, and the sensation of lying on it was an unpleasant one. He was trying to slow his breathing; somehow the sound of his wife busy in the kitchen helped, and soon he began to feel slightly better.

  Better – would he ever be able to say that and mean it? If this was the path his life was to take, Jim Daley wasn’t sure that the constant anxiety and dread of his own mortality was something with which he could cope. Though he’d always felt melancholy about the end of life, he could no longer free himself from the fear of its cloying bonds. It was with him night and day – every night and day. He’d always thought of himself as brave; well, brave enough to face what life as a police officer threw at him. But this was something he couldn’t face with anything other than horror. He’d seen the dreadful finality of death all too often, and it always made him recoil.

  Soon Liz was back with the hot milk. She sat beside him on the bed and helped him sit up and hold the mug in his shaking hands. ‘This can’t go on, Jim. You’re going back to work soon; you have to be honest with Carrie – with everybody!’

  He took another sip and looked at her through the darkness. The months since the brutal attack perpetrated on her by the man she would no longer talk about had banished her cuts and bruises. Her face was flawless again, apart from the sliver of a scar across her left cheekbone where her attacker’s signet ring had ripped through the flesh.

  Sometimes, Daley was ashamed that he’d lost control, beaten his wife’s tormentor mercilessly. But more often than not, the thought helped restore some equilibrium to his soul. He’d been quite prepared to face the consequences, face justice for what he’d done, but his victim refused to make a complaint, no doubt worried about his own culpability, and given the circumstances the Procurator Fiscal had decided that there was no case to answer, despite the PIRC report.

  ‘Jim, you’re not listening. You can’t go on like this. How on earth are you going to function back at work when you hardly get any sleep?’

  ‘Being back at work will help.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, I think.’ He finished the hot drink and his wife took the empty mug back through to the kitchen. In all honesty, he didn’t know how he would cope, but he had to try. His job was all that kept him tethered, and the months without it had seen him plumb the depths of despair.

  Surely he could find himself again.

  As Liz Daley slid back between the covers, the howling wind sent a flurry of heavy rain against the bedroom window from clouds that suddenly obscured the moon. Another storm was brewing, and DCI Jim Daley was going to have to face it.

  2

  Alice Wenger was fifty years old, but could easily have passed for someone fifteen years younger as she sat in the Executive Lounge at Heathrow Airport. Her skin, though tanned, bore none of the signs of premature ageing that ravaged regular sun worshippers. Yes, she’d had some work done, but her plastic surgeon was good, his work subtle.

  Her soft grey leather jacket was tasteful, yet fashionable – the best Beverly Hills could offer – and it complemented the well-cut pale jeans and Roman sandals she’d worn to make the flight from Los Angeles. As she checked her phone, she ran her hand absently through her honey-blonde hair, her finger, as always, then exploring the tiny lump above her right eye. It was her touchstone, the link from her privileged present back to the past from which she had escaped. But life was a circle, and everything came round again – if you were lucky enough to survive the first spin, that was. It was her turn to ride the wheel, and she was determined that on this occasion those who had made her suffer the first time round would face her once more.

  ‘Speak!’ she said into the phone after it buzzed in her hand, then listened intently for a few moments. ‘How much do I pay you, Janneck? No, that’s not a question you need to answer, honey, it’s rhetorical. I’m sure I don’t have to explain what that means to a man with an Ivy League education. Just do what you’re paid to do – direct, manage, work the fucking problems, and do what I tell you when I tell you, you got that?’ She listened again, briefly, then clicked off the call without ceremony.

  Though Alice had spent almost twenty years in California, the sibilant tones of Kentucky still sounded strong when she opened her mouth. She knew she could change her voice – after all, she’d done it before – but she liked the way her adopted accent played across her lips, and the impact it had in the rarefied circles in which she now moved. Very few people wanted to cross the acid-tongued Southern girl who’d made her way up in the hotel and leisure industry with such speed and efficacy. That pleased her, and it had made her rich – very rich.

  ‘British Airways flight 194 to Glasgow Airport is now boarding . . .’

  Alice ignored the rest of the message, heaved the large handbag over her shoulder and made her way towards the aircraft that would take her back to a country she’d not seen for a very long time. The wheel of life was about to turn again, but this time it was firmly in her grasp.<
br />
  ‘Gie me a break, Ella,’ said Acting DI Brian Scott as he knotted his tie. ‘The big man’s coming back, and I don’t know if I’ll be an inspector, a janitor or a chief bottle-washer. Anyway, I’ve hated every minute o’ it.’

  ‘Why, what’s there to hate?’ replied his wife, pouring milk on her cornflakes.

  ‘The paperwork, for a start! Have you any idea what’s involved in a’ that? Bugger me, it’s bad enough in the polis these days for everyone, but see when you’re a gaffer, it never ends: forms, rotas, reports, assessments. I’ve even had tae count money!’

  ‘Aye, well you’ve never been any good at that, mind you.’

  ‘Naw, and I’ve no’ improved, neither.’ He took a bite of white toast and washed it down with some black coffee. ‘I joined up tae be a polis, no’ some pen-pusher.’

  ‘You joined up for a bet, Brian.’

  ‘True, it started off as that, but I got in, didn’t I?’

  ‘I never thought you’d pass the exam.’

  ‘Listen tae it! You encouraged me, if I remember.’

  ‘Huh, I didnae think you would end up as target practice for all and sundry. You’re safe in an office. You might no’ like it, but that’s a fact.’

  ‘I’m an acting inspector – acting, Ella. That means when I stop acting I’m back tae plain DS, and no’ a moment too soon.’

  The couple consumed the rest of their breakfast in silence, Ella staring at him resentfully over her mug of sweet tea.

  ‘Right, that’s me away,’ said Scott.

  ‘Aye, see ya, inspector.’

  ‘You know, you amaze me, Ella. Never stop miscalling Lizzie Daley, yet you’re gettin’ just as bad. What’s got intae you?’

  She looked out of the kitchen window. ‘Maybe I liked having a husband who was an inspector – the extra money’s certainly been welcome.’