Jeremiah's Bell Page 5

Daley folded his arms. ‘You know. She’s being Liz.’

  ‘Which consists of?’

  ‘Carrying on as though nothing has happened. She’s been doing it all the way through our marriage, so why stop now?’

  ‘I wish she’d taken it further – what happened to her, I mean.’

  ‘Me too – though I doubt I’d be sitting here if she had.’

  ‘Is that why Liz wouldn’t proceed, you think?’

  ‘No. If I thought that, I would have persuaded her to make a complaint.’ Daley shifted in his seat uncomfortably. ‘She doesn’t want her family and friends to know. Nor does she want to go through the hell of the trial and all the publicity that would surround it. You know the score: rich businessman and top cop’s wife. I can see the headlines myself.’

  ‘And how does that make you feel?’

  Daley angled his head towards the ceiling. ‘With the greatest of respect, ma’am, this isn’t a therapy session. In any case, I don’t know how I feel – about anything.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘But you think you’re fit to come back?’

  ‘Raring to go! My job – well, I’ve realised that, like it or loathe it, it’s become my life. You’re a cop; you must realise that too.’

  Symington nodded feebly. ‘Yes, it does become rather all-encompassing. But it’s up to us not to let that happen, Jim.’

  ‘You might be able to, but it’s too late for me. I’ve felt completely rudderless over the last few months. Yes, the illness made me uneasy, but not having a reason to get up in the morning is the worst feeling in the world.’

  ‘You could try other things.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Daley’s look was intense.

  Symington sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m not good at this, Jim. Of course I want you back – we all do. You’re one of the best men we have. I just want you to know that you have other options than to come back to this.’

  ‘You know what’s funny, ma’am?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For years I felt out of place in this job – it’s not so long ago I resigned, or tried to, at least. But that would have been on my own terms. When the decision is made for you, it’s as if you’re helpless – nowhere to go. Like a naughty child being punished by having toys taken away. It’s only since then I’ve realised how much this means to me.’ He passed his hands through his hair. ‘A long time ago someone told me not to let this happen – the job become my life, I mean.’

  ‘But you didn’t take the advice?’

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘It came from a man who was sitting in a shed at the bottom of his garden. He’d retired, but he was still as involved with being a policeman as he’d ever been – but only a few knew it.’

  ‘DCI Burns, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that’s how you see your life now?’

  ‘Not in a shed, no!’

  ‘Okay, okay, Jim, I understand. I’m here to tell you that it’s here for you whenever you want – work, I mean. You have medical clearance and PIRC have no objections.’

  ‘Huh. Not since the PF threw out the case against me.’

  ‘You know how complicated that was. Everyone just had to follow the rules – unlike you, Jim.’

  ‘I know I’ve been lucky, ma’am.’ His tone was now one of contrition.

  ‘One day I’ll tell you a story about my life. Trust me, I’m not judging you.’

  Daley looked puzzled for a moment, but decided to carry on. ‘So, back on Monday? Is that too soon?’

  ‘No – not at all. I’m delighted we’ve managed to get to this place.’ Her expression changed.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I have to tell you something.’

  ‘Go ahead, ma’am.’

  ‘It’s a trial period, Jim. Best I could do.’

  ‘The trial being in what form?’

  ‘Nothing complicated – just to make sure you can cope, that’s all.’

  ‘So I’m treading on eggshells.’

  Symington leaned forward. ‘Listen, with your health scare – and everything else – I had no choice but to agree. We give it six months, then your situation will be reviewed. Nothing sinister.’

  ‘I suppose I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as going straight back to normal.’

  ‘It will be normal, Jim . . .’

  ‘Just don’t knock the shit out of any dentists or fall over, eh?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She smiled. ‘Monday it is, then?’

  ‘Yes, Monday it is, ma’am.’

  They stood – the big detective towering over his superior – and shook hands.

  ‘It’ll be good to have you back, DCI Daley.’

  ‘You’re just saying that because I’m good at roster sheets.’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes, that has been a bit of a problem. Not Brian’s thing, really.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can understand that.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, though; he’s done a good job.’

  ‘Underneath it all he’s one of the best cops out there, ma’am.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I know. And one of the most decent people, too.’

  As though on cue, an urgent knock sounded on the door and Scott’s face appeared round it.

  ‘Jimmy boy!’ He rushed over and enveloped his old friend in a hug. ‘Good to see you, big man. I was going tae take a run up last night, but Ella was in my ear aboot cleaning oot the garage.’ He stepped back for a moment, looking between Daley and Symington. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Monday, Brian,’ said Symington.

  ‘Monday what?’

  ‘I’m back on Monday, Bri.’ A broad grin transformed Daley’s face. He grabbed Scott’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  ‘Steady on, big chap – you’ll dislocate my shoulder!’

  8

  Alice Wenger lay on her bed in the Machrie House Hotel. Absently she was studying a small fly trapped in a spider’s web in one corner of the high ceiling. As it weakened and became resigned to its fate, its desperate attempts to be free slowed to a stop.

  Though she couldn’t reach the web, even standing on a chair, Alice resolved to free the tiny creature. She opened a drawer in her dressing table and removed a pair of climbing socks, rolled into a ball, bought from the shop in Kinloch with the rest of her wet-weather gear. She padded across to the corner of the room and took aim at the web.

  On the first occasion she missed the silken prison by a few inches, but her second attempt was more successful. The ball of socks scored a direct hit, and she was pleased to note that the web had been destroyed and there was no sign of the wretched insect. She bent forward to collect the socks, but was dismayed to find the fly lying only a few inches away, its legs still entangled in slivers of grey web. Carefully she picked it up and walked to the large sash window, which she forced open to let the fly fall from her hand into the sea-tanged air. It was a tiny gesture of kindness – setting a soul free – but to her it mattered. It was only when she returned to her bed that she considered the possibility that the fly had been killed by the blow of the heavy socks.

  She lay back, troubled still. This tiny moment seemed like a metaphor, an encapsulation of her life in one act. Or at least that’s what it promised to be. For the first time she asked herself the question: had coming here been a mistake, likely to do more harm than good? It was possible, but she knew she couldn’t draw back now. For her, freedom was precious. For years she’d shied away from thinking about the course her life would have followed had it not been for the decision to flee, to be free of the web that entangled her. But as she’d watched the three shambling shapes far below the cliff and heard the tolling of the bell, the truth had confronted her like a kick to the guts. In another life, a middle-aged woman was gathering driftwood on that beach, her mind blank, responding only to the summoning toll of the bell.

  On her nightstand, her cell phone pinged and she reached for it with a sigh.

  Need your authoris
ation to transfer tax payments. J.

  No, he didn’t! Alice had made provision for that; she’d told Janneck.

  Her phone pinged again, this time just a spam email. This tiny device was her bell, she realised. Its call was irresistible.

  But Alice Wenger – Alison Doig – was no lumbering figure on a windswept beach.

  Scott keyed the name Alison Doig into his computer. He was searching Kinloch’s cold case archives. Almost instantly, the details appeared on the screen, mostly scans of typed reports and case notes by the officers who had investigated the girl’s disappearance at the time.

  As he scrolled down, an image appeared. The girl was a teenager. Her cheekbones were high, exaggerating a gaunt, pale face, flecked with acne. Her light brown hair hung in straggles almost covering the shoulders of a faded blue chemise. Her black-and-yellow-striped school tie, frayed and badly knotted, was hanging loose, though her blouse was still buttoned to the neck. She looked like many of the kids he’d been to school with in Glasgow’s East End; there was poor, like his family, and then there was piss-poor. Alison Doig certainly fitted the latter category.

  Her eyes drew him in, though. Large, green – wary, but bright, reflecting intelligence, he thought.

  As Scott scanned the case notes, it was clear that Erchie had been accurate in his brief summation of events more than thirty years before. It appeared that Alison had taken an old Ford transit van without the knowledge or permission of her parents, abandoning it near the pier at Tarbert to the north end of the peninsula. It also appeared in a scanned photograph. Though faded, Scott could tell the vehicle was green, and was pictured on its own beside a muddle of nets, creels and buoys. A couple of interested young fishermen stood nearby smoking cigarettes and sporting haircuts redolent of the time – mullets. Scott found this an appropriate style for men of that occupation and chuckled to himself.

  As he reached the end of the case notes he came upon a final statement, written by an Inspector Innes.

  It has become clear over the last few days that Alison Doig was unhappy with her domestic circumstances. That she took the decision to abscond is an assumption, but seemingly a sound one under the circumstances. She will remain categorised as a missing person.

  She is known as a wilful, difficult pupil by her teachers, and had few companions at school, save for two or three girls with whom she appears to have struck up an unlikely friendship. The foremost of these is Sheena Cunningham, daughter of a prominent businessman in Kinloch, but she has been notably unhelpful to the officers investigating this case.

  Scott read on, unimpressed by the off-hand manner of the man writing the report. But as he knew, that was the way things had been back then. Invariably, cases of missing teenagers were seen as merely troublesome, meriting little in the way of investigation at any serious level. The basic attitude was that they’d chosen to leave the family home, and – being considered adults at sixteen in Scottish law – would have to abide by that choice. This attitude was confirmed in the last line of Inspector Innes’s report: Though we have taken every step possible to locate Alison Doig, and will leave the case open, I can justify spending no further time or expense on tracing the aforementioned, who by now could be almost anywhere.

  Scott leaned back in his chair and shook his head. That he was a police officer of the old school there was no doubt. But he was the first to acknowledge that things had changed for the better during his many years in ‘the job’. Not all, by any means, but most.

  It was always worth listening to ex-cops and he’d been convinced by Erchie’s theory. Brian Scott resolved to have a chat with the woman his lunchtime companion had identified, if she was still in the area.

  Symington knocked lightly on the door of the glass box and entered. ‘You busy, Brian?’

  ‘Not really, ma’am. Just looking at some old case notes on a missing person. I’ve reason to believe she’s back for the first time since she disappeared – or at least it’s a possibility.’

  ‘Interesting. Keep me informed, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Aye, will do, ma’am.’

  Symington took a seat opposite the acting sub-divisional commander. ‘So, Jim. What do you think?’

  ‘In what way?’ Scott remembered how unhappy he was about being used to judge the current state of his old friend and colleague. ‘Is he up to coming back? He’s been tested by a’ the docs, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind, why ask my opinion?’

  ‘You know him, Brian. I mean really know him.’

  ‘He looks fine tae me. Wee bit pale aboot the gills, but who wouldnae be, after what he’s been through, eh?’

  Symington pushed a piece of paper across the desk.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the email address for the person in HR who’s dealing with Jim’s case.’

  ‘And what dae you want me tae dae with it?’

  ‘We’ve discussed this, DI Scott. Every day I want you to send a short report as to DCI Daley’s – well, his fitness for duty. I want you to copy me in, too.’

  ‘Something like Oor Jimmy was quite cheery this morning. He’d a ham roll for his lunch and took a shite aboot half three? Is that what you’re after?’

  ‘Don’t play the fool all the time, Brian. It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘And as I’ve told you, this doesn’t suit me, neither – ma’am.’

  ‘It’s the way things are, Brian. Make no mistake: if you don’t take this seriously it will harm Jim. I hope you realise that?’

  ‘Aye. I’ve been in this job mair than twice as long as you. I know the score – wae fucking bells on.’

  ‘Well, do your job, DI Scott!’ Symington’s voice was raised, her face red.

  ‘Fine, point taken.’

  ‘Good! And it’s wae fucking bells on, ma’am.’

  ‘Toupee!’

  ‘It’s touché, Brian.’

  ‘Och, I knew I hadnae got it right. It’s one o’ Jimmy’s favourites.’

  Symington leaned across the desk and grabbed his hand. ‘Do it for him, Brian – please.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do it.’ Brian Scott knew when he was beaten; it was his default position in his marriage and his job.

  9

  Nathaniel Doig had three failed attempts at starting the old pick-up before the diesel engine rattled haltingly into life. The Peugeot had replaced the rusting Ford Transit that was slowly decaying into oblivion in their yard. Now, though, this vehicle sported almost as much rust as its predecessor, with only flecks of red paint visible here and there to identify its original colour. He doubted it would last much longer.

  Slowly, nursing the ruined pick-up over the bumps and potholes that punctuated the unkempt lane from their cottage, he eventually reached the smooth tarmac of a single-track road. He turned right, hoping the Peugeot would still be capable of negotiating its way up hill and down dale until he reached Kinloch.

  As the engine spluttered at the top of the longest climb, he looked across the restless sea. No sign of Ailsa Craig, far less the Ayrshire coast, on a day like this. The world felt enclosed, as though the walls of his existence were slowly but surely tightening in around him, ready to smother his life away.

  Life? Did his experience of existence even merit the name, he wondered. Ambitions thwarted by a brutal father he never dared disobey, who was succeeded by a wife who’d ruled the roost since Nathaniel had been foolhardy enough to marry her. But Nathaniel knew that he was no hapless innocent when it came to the dynamics of his family – perhaps he’d even made them all what they were. He’d certainly started the process. There is no more demanding master than stifled ambition that eats away at the soul; he’d read that once. Certainly, it makes a man – or woman – do things at odds with a normal life. He’d always recognised that, even when all that had gone on around him became so abhorrent. No blame to him, then – no, that was firmly the responsibility of others.

  The familiar sync
opated knocking from his offside front wheel sounded as he turned right on a corner and the island at the head of the loch hove into view. He’d often wondered when the telephone box at the causeway would be removed; he knew that with the advent of mobile phones such things were rapidly becoming an anachronism – a bit like himself, he considered. But as he drove along the straight section of road next to the seaweed-slathered shore the red box soon became visible, and he pulled up in the little lay-by beside it, tugging hard on the handbrake in order to make sure it held.

  Inside, the box reeked. Someone had pissed in it, and there was a used condom on the floor. Disgusted, he pushed it into a corner with the toe of his boot, before reaching into his pocket for the handful of pound coins he’d placed there before leaving home.

  The call took moments to connect. He cleared his throat ready to speak. Sure enough, the confident tones of a young woman sounded on the other end of the line.

  ‘Williams, Strong and Hardacre, how can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to speak with Mr Hardacre, please,’ replied Doig.

  ‘Oh . . . I see.’ The confidence seemed stripped from the woman’s voice.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘I’m sad to say there is. We lost Mr Hardacre three months ago.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘He passed away, sir – sorry, can I ask who’s calling?’

  Ignoring the question, feeling rather stunned if truth be told, Doig carried on. ‘Well, who has taken over from him – taken on his old clients, I mean?’

  ‘That’s young Mr Williams – Blair Williams.’

  ‘In that case I’d like to speak with him, please.’

  ‘As I say, I need your name. Mr Williams is a very busy man . . .’

  ‘He’ll find time for me. Please tell him that Jeremiah is calling.’

  ‘Mr Jeremiah, or is that your first name?’

  ‘Just Jeremiah.’

  Surprised by the abrupt nature of the conversation, Karen Milne sighed. She was used to awkward people; they seemed to be attracted to lawyers like moths to a flame. She recalled a woman arriving recently in the office shouting, swearing and threatening. She’d called one of their clients a psychopath; clearly the idiot hadn’t looked in the mirror herself recently. Karen had had to deal with all sorts – including clients who were much ruder than this Jeremiah. ‘I’ll put you through, sir,’ she replied for want of a better title.