Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2003

Copyright © Val McDermid 2003

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover photograph © Roy Bishop/Arcangel Images

Val McDermid asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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

Source ISBN: 9780007344659

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Praise for The Distant Echo:

‘She has created some of the most appealing figures in current crime fiction. Val McDermid has used the crime genre to write a novel that, above everything else, celebrates life and loyalty’

TLS

‘A real page-turner and another McDermid triumph’

Observer

‘McDermid’s plot is a classic, and she pulls out all the stops to achieve a sense of mounting anguish, as her hero juggles multiple red herrings, mixed loyalties, differing police agendas and complicated family ties. Impeccable’

Guardian

‘Reminiscent of one of Ruth Rendell’s Barbara Vine thrillers – a few more sly, old-fashioned whodunits like this and she’ll join the sturdy ranks of the queens of crime, on course to become Dame Val or Baroness McDermid’

Sunday Times

‘The real mistress of psychological gripping thrillers’

JENNI MURRAY, Daily Express

‘A powerful story of murder and revenge … an exciting page-turner’

Sunday Telegraph

‘McDermid’s capacity to enter the warped mind of a deviant criminal is shiveringly convincing’

MARCEL BERLINS, The Times

Dedication

For the ones who got away; and for the others, particularly the Thursday Club, who made the getaway possible

Epigraph

I now describe my country as if to strangers

From Deacon Blue’s ‘Orphans’, lyrics by Ricky Ross

Contents

Copyright

Praise for The Distant Echo:

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part Two

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

Prologue

November 2003; St Andrews, Scotland

He always liked the cemetery at dawn. Not because daybreak offered any promise of a fresh beginning, but because it was too early for there to be anyone else around. Even in the dead of winter, when the pale light was so late in coming, he could guarantee solitude. No prying eyes to wonder who he was and why he was there, head bowed before that one particular grave. No nosy parkers to question his right to be there.

It had been a long and troublesome journey to reach this destination. But he was very good at uncovering information. Obsessive, some might say. He preferred persistent. He’d learned how to trawl official and unofficial sources, and eventually, after months of searching, he’d found the answers he’d been looking for. Unsatisfactory as they’d been, they had at least provided him with this marker. For some people, a grave represented an ending. Not for him. He saw it as a beginning. Of sorts.

He’d always known it wouldn’t be sufficient in itself. So he’d waited, hoping for a sign to show him the way forward. And it had finally come. As the sky changed its colour from the outside to the inside of a mussel shell, he reached into his pocket and unfolded the clipping he’d taken from the local paper.

FIFE POLICE IN COLD CASES REVIEW

Unsolved murders in Fife going back as far as thirty years are to be re-examined in a full-scale cold case review, police announced this week.

Chief Constable Sam Haig said that new forensic breakthroughs meant that cases which had lain dormant for many years could now be reopened with some hope of success. Old evidence which has lain in police property stores for decades will be the subject of such methods as DNA analysis to see whether fresh progress can be made.

Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) James Lawson will head the review. He told the Courier, ‘Murder files are never closed. We owe it to the victims and their families to keep working the cases.

‘In some instances, we had a strong suspect at the time, though we didn’t have enough evidence to tie them to the crime. But with modern forensic techniques, a single hair, a bloodstain or a trace of semen could give us all we need to obtain a conviction. There have been several recent instances in England of cases being successfully prosecuted after twenty years or more.

‘A team of senior detectives will now make these cases their number one priority.’

ACC Lawson was unwilling to reveal which specific cases will be top of the list for his detectives.

But among them must surely be the tragic murder of local teenager Rosie Duff.

The 19-year-old from Strathkinness was raped, stabbed and left for dead on Hallow Hill almost 25 years ago. No one was ever arrested in connection with her brutal murder.

Her brother Brian, 46, who still lives in the family home, Caberfeidh Cottage, and works at the paper mill in Guardbridge, said last night, ‘We have never given up hope that Rosie’s killer would one day face justice. There were suspects at the time, but the police were never able to find enough evidence to nail them.

‘Sadly, my parents went to their grave not knowing who did this terrible thing to Rosie. But perhaps now we’ll get the answer they deserved.’

He could recite the article by heart, but he still liked to look at it. It was a talisman, reminding him that his life was no longer aimless. For so long, he’d wanted someone to blame. He’d hardly dared hope for revenge. But now, at long last, vengeance might possibly be his.

PART ONE

1

1978; St Andrews, Scotland

Four in the morning, the dead of December. Four bleary outlines wavered in the snow flurries that drifted at the beck and call of the snell north-easterly wind whipping across the North Sea from the Urals. The eight stumbling feet of the self-styled Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy traced the familiar path of their short cut over Hallow Hill to Fife Park, the most modern of the halls of residence attached to St Andrews University, where their perpetually unmade beds yawned a welcome, lolling tongues of sheets and blankets trailing to the floors.

The conversation staggered along lines as habitual as their route. ‘I’m telling you, Bowie is the king,’ Sigmund Malkiewicz slurred loudly, his normally impassive face loosened with drink. A few steps behind him, Alex Gilbey yanked the hood of his parka closer to his face and giggled inwardly as he silently mouthed the reply he knew would come.

‘Bollocks,’ said Davey Kerr. ‘Bowie’s just a big jessie. Pink Floyd can run rings round Bowie any day of the week. Dark Side of the Moon, that’s an epic. Bowie’s done nothing to touch that.’ His long dark curls were loosening under the weight of melted snowflakes and he pushed them back impatiently from his waif-like face.

And they were off. Like wizards casting combative spells at each other, Sigmund and Davey threw song titles, lyrics and guitar riffs back and forth in the ritual dance of an argument they’d been having for the past six or seven years. It didn’t matter that, these days, the music rattling the windows of their student rooms was more likely to come from the Clash, the Jam or the Skids. Even their nicknames spoke of their early passions. From the very first afternoon they’d congregated in Alex’s bedroom after school to listen to his purchase of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it had been inevitable that the charismatic Sigmund would be Ziggy, the leper messiah, for eternity. And the others would have to settle for being the Spiders. Alex had become Gilly, in spite of his protestations that it was a jessie nickname for someone who aspired to the burly build of a rugby player. But there was no arguing with the accident of his surname. And none of them had a moment’s doubt about the appropriateness of christening the fourth member of their quartet Weird. Because Tom Mackie was weird, make no mistake about it. The tallest in their year, his long gangling limbs even looked like a mutation, matching a personality that delighted in being perverse.

That left Davey, loyal to the cause of the Floyd, steadfastly refusing to accept any nickname from the Bowie canon. For a while, he’d been known halfheartedly as Pink, but from the first time they’d all heard ‘Shine On, You Crazy Diamond’ there had been no further debate; Davey was a crazy diamond, right enough, flashing fire in unpredictable directions, edgy and uncomfortable out of the right setting. Diamond soon became Mondo, and Mondo Davey Kerr had remained through the remaining year of high school and on to university.

Alex shook his head in quiet amazement. Even through the blur of far too much beer, he wondered at the glue that had held the four of them fast all those years. The very thought provoked a warm glow that kept the vicious cold at bay as he tripped over a raised root smothered under the soft blanket of snow. ‘Bugger,’ he grumbled, cannoning into Weird, who gave him a friendly shove that sent Alex sprawling. Flailing to keep his balance, he let his momentum carry him forward and stumbled up the short slope, suddenly exhilarated with the feel of the snow against his flushed skin. As he reached the summit, he hit an unexpected dip that pulled the feet from under him. Alex found himself crashing head over heels to the ground.

His fall was broken by something soft. Alex struggled to sit up, pushing against whatever it was he had landed on. Spluttering snow, he wiped his eyes with his tingling fingers, breathing hard through his nose in a bid to clear it of the freezing melt. He glanced around to see what had cushioned his landing just as the heads of his three companions appeared on the hillside to gloat over his farcical calamity.

Even in the eerie dimness of snow light, he could see that the bulwark against his fall was no botanical feature. The outline of a human form was unmistakable. The heavy white flakes began to melt as soon as they landed, allowing Alex to see it was a woman, the wet tendrils of her dark hair spread against the snow in Medusa locks. Her skirt was pushed up to her waist, her knee-length black boots looking all the more incongruous against her pale legs. Strange dark patches stained her flesh and the pale blouse that clung to her chest. Alex stared uncomprehendingly for a long moment, then he looked at his hands and saw the same darkness contaminating his own skin.

Blood. The realization dawned at the same instant that the snow in his ears melted and allowed him to hear the faint but stertorous wheeze of her breath.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Alex stuttered, trying to scramble away from the horror that he had stumbled into. But he kept banging into what felt like little stone walls as he squirmed backwards. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He looked up desperately, as if the sight of his companions would break this spell and make it all go away. He glanced back at the nightmare vision in the snow. It was no drunken hallucination. It was the real thing. He turned again to his friends. ‘There’s a lassie up here,’ he shouted.

Weird Mackie’s voice floated back eerily. ‘Lucky bastard.’

‘No, stop messing, she’s bleeding.’

Weird’s laughter split the night. ‘No’ so lucky after all, Gilly.’

Alex felt sudden rage well up in him. ‘I’m not fucking joking. Get up here. Ziggy, come on, man.’

Now they could hear the urgency in Alex’s voice. Ziggy in the lead as always, they wallowed through the snow to the crest of the hill. Ziggy took the slope at a jerky run, Weird plunged headlong towards Alex, and Mondo brought up the rear, cautiously planting one foot in front of the other.

Weird ended up diving head over heels, landing on top of Alex and driving them both on top of the woman’s body. They thrashed around, trying to free themselves, Weird giggling inanely. ‘Hey, Gilly, this must be the closest you’ve ever got to a woman.’

‘You’ve had too much fucking dope,’ Ziggy said angrily, pulling him away and crouching down beside the woman, feeling for a pulse in her neck. It was there, but it was terrifyingly weak. Apprehension turned him instantly sober as he took in what he was seeing in the dim light. He was only a final-year medical student, but he knew life-threatening injury when he saw it.

Weird leaned back on his haunches and frowned. ‘Hey, man, you know where this is?’ Nobody was paying him any attention, but he continued anyway. ‘It’s the Pictish cemetery. These humps in the snow, like wee walls? That’s the stones they used like coffins. Fuck, Alex found a body in the cemetery.’ And he began to giggle, an uncanny sound in the snow-muffled air.

‘Shut the fuck up, Weird.’ Ziggy continued to run his hands over her torso, feeling the unnerving give of a deep wound under his searching fingers. He cocked his head to one side, trying to examine her more clearly. ‘Mondo, got your lighter?’

Mondo moved forward reluctantly and produced his Zippo. He flicked the wheel and moved the feeble light at arm’s length over the woman’s body and up towards her face. His free hand covered his mouth, ineffectually stifling a groan. His blue eyes widened in horror and the flame trembled in his grasp.

Ziggy inhaled sharply, the planes of his face eerie in the shivering light. ‘Shit,’ he gasped. ‘It’s Rosie from the Lammas Bar.’

Alex didn’t think it was possible to feel worse. But Ziggy’s words were like a punch to his heart. With a soft moan, he turned away and vomited a mess of beer, crisps and garlic bread into the snow.

‘We’ve got to get help,’ Ziggy said firmly. ‘She’s still alive, but she won’t be for long in this state. Weird, Mondo – get your coats off.’ As he spoke, he was stripping off his own sheepskin jacket and wrapping it gently round Rosie’s shoulders. ‘Gilly, you’re the fastest. Go and get help. Get a phone. Get somebody out of their bed if you have to. Just get them here, right? Alex?’

Dazed, Alex forced himself to his feet. He scrambled back down the slope, churning the snow beneath his boots as he fought for purchase. He emerged from the straggle of trees into the streetlights that marked the newest cul-de-sac in the new housing estate that had sprung up over the past half-dozen years. Back the way they’d come, that was the quickest route.

Alex tucked his head down and set off at a slithering run up the middle of the road, trying to lose the image of what he’d just witnessed. It was as impossible as maintaining a steady pace on the powdery snow. How could that grievous thing among the Pictish graves be Rosie from the Lammas Bar? They’d been in there drinking that very evening, cheery and boisterous in the warm yellow glow of the public bar, knocking back pints of Tennent’s, making the most of the last of their university freedom before they had to return to the stifling constraints of family Christmases thirty miles down the road.

He’d been speaking to Rosie himself, flirting with her in the clumsy way of twenty-one-year-olds uncertain whether they’re still daft boys or mature men of the world. Not for the first time, he’d asked her what time she was due to finish. He’d even told her whose party they were going on to. He’d scribbled the address down on the back of a beer mat and pushed it across the damp wooden bar towards her. She’d given him a pitying smile and picked it up. He suspected it had probably gone straight in the bucket. What would a woman like Rosie want with a callow lad like him, after all? With her looks and her figure, she could take her pick, go for somebody who could show her a good time, not some penniless student trying to eke his grant out till his holiday job stacking supermarket shelves.

So how could that be Rosie lying bleeding in the snow on Hallow Hill? Ziggy must have got it wrong, Alex insisted to himself as he veered left, heading for the main road. Anybody could get confused in the flickering glow of Mondo’s Zippo. And it wasn’t as if Ziggy had ever paid much attention to the dark-haired barmaid. He’d left that to Alex himself and Mondo. It must just be some poor lassie that looked like Rosie. That would be it, he reassured himself. A mistake, that’s what it was.

Alex hesitated for a moment, catching his breath and wondering where to run. There were plenty of houses nearby, but none of them was showing a light. Even if he could rouse someone, Alex doubted whether anyone would be inclined to open their door to a sweaty youth smelling of drink in the middle of a blizzard.

Then he remembered. This time of night, there was regularly a police car parked up by the main entrance to the Botanic Gardens a mere quarter of a mile away. They’d seen it often enough when they’d been staggering home in the small hours of the morning, aware of the car’s single occupant giving them the once-over as they attempted to act sober for his benefit. It was a sight that always set Weird off on one of his rants about how corrupt and idle the police were. ‘Should be out catching the real villains, nailing the grey men in suits that rip the rest of us off, not sitting there all night with a flask of tea and a bag of scones, hoping to score some drunk peeing in a hedge or some eejit driving home too fast. Idle bastards.’ Well, maybe tonight Weird would get part of his wish. Because it looked like tonight the idle bastard in the car would get more than he bargained for.

Alex turned towards the Canongate and began to run again, the fresh snow creaking beneath his boots. He wished he’d kept up his rugby training as a stitch seized his side, turning his rhythm into a lopsided hop and skip as he fought to pull enough air into his lungs. Only a few dozen more yards, he told himself. He couldn’t stop now, when Rosie’s life might depend on his speed. He peered ahead, but the snow was falling more heavily now and he could barely see further than a couple of yards.

He was almost upon the police car before he saw it. Even as relief flooded his perspiring body, apprehension clawed at his heart. Sobered by shock and exertion, Alex realized he bore no resemblance to the sort of respectable citizen who normally reported a crime. He was dishevelled and sweaty, bloodstained and staggering like a half-shut knife. Somehow, he had to convince the policeman who was already halfway out of his panda car that he was neither imagining things nor playing some kind of prank. He slowed to a halt a couple of feet from the car, trying not to look like a threat, waiting for the driver to emerge.

The policeman set his cap straight on his short dark hair. His head was cocked to one side as he eyed Alex warily. Even masked by the heavy uniform anorak, Alex could see the tension in his body. ‘What’s going on, son?’ he asked. In spite of the diminutive form of address, he didn’t look much older than Alex himself, and he possessed an air of unease that sat ill with his uniform.

Alex tried to control his breathing, but failed. ‘There’s a lassie on Hallow Hill,’ he blurted out. ‘She’s been attacked. She’s bleeding really badly. She needs help.’

The policeman narrowed his eyes against the snow, frowning. ‘She’s been attacked, you say. How do you know that?’

‘She’s got blood all over her. And …’ Alex paused for thought. ‘She’s not dressed for the weather. She’s not got a coat on. Look, can you get an ambulance or a doctor or something? She’s really hurt, man.’

‘And you just happened to find her in the middle of a blizzard, eh? Have you been drinking, son?’ The words were patronizing, but the voice betrayed anxiety.

Alex didn’t imagine this was the kind of thing that happened often in the middle of the night in douce, suburban St Andrews. Somehow he had to convince this plod that he was serious. ‘Of course I’ve been drinking,’ he said, his frustration spilling over. ‘Why else would I be out at this time in the morning? Look, me and my pals, we were taking a short cut back to halls and we were messing about and I ran up the top of the hill and tripped and landed right on top of her.’ His voice rose in a plea. ‘Please. You’ve got to help. She could die out there.’

The policeman studied him for what felt like minutes, then leaned into his car and launched into an unintelligible conversation over the radio. He stuck his head out of the door. ‘Get in. We’ll drive up to Trinity Place. You better not be playing the goat, son,’ he said grimly.

The car fishtailed up the street, tyres inadequate for the conditions. The few cars that had travelled the road earlier had left tracks that were now only faint depressions in the smooth white surface, testament to the heaviness of the snowfall. The policeman swore under his breath as he avoided skidding into a lamppost at the turning. At the end of Trinity Place, he turned to Alex. ‘Come on then, show me where she is.’

Alex set off at a trot, following his own rapidly disappearing tracks in the snow. He kept glancing back to check the policeman was still in his wake. He nearly went headlong at one point, his eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the greater darkness where the streetlights were cut off by the tree trunks. The snow seemed to cast its own strange light over the landscape, exaggerating the bulk of bushes and turning the path into a narrower ribbon than it normally appeared. ‘It’s this way,’ Alex said, swerving off to the left. A quick look over his shoulder reassured him that his companion was right behind him.

The policeman hung back. ‘Are you sure you’re no’ on drugs, son?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Come on,’ Alex shouted urgently as he caught sight of the dark shapes above him. Without waiting to see if the policeman was following, Alex hurried up the slope. He was almost there when the young officer overtook him, brushing past and stopping abruptly a few feet short of the small group.

Ziggy was still hunkered down beside the woman’s body, his shirt plastered to his slim torso with a mixture of snow and sweat. Weird and Mondo stood behind him, arms folded across their chests, hands tucked in their armpits, heads thrust down between their raised shoulders. They were only trying to stay warm in the absence of coats, but they presented an unfortunate image of arrogance.

‘What’s going on here, then, lads?’ the policeman asked, his voice an aggressive attempt to stamp authority in spite of the greater weight of numbers arrayed against him.

Ziggy pushed himself wearily to his feet and shoved his wet hair out of his eyes. ‘You’re too late. She’s dead.’

2

Nothing in Alex’s twenty-one years had prepared him for a police interrogation in the middle of the night. TV cop shows and movies always made it look so regimented. But the very disorganization of the process was somehow more nerve-wracking than military precision would have been. The four of them had arrived at the police station in a flurry of chaos. They’d been hustled off the hill, bathed in the strobing blue lights of panda cars and ambulances, and nobody seemed to have any clear idea of what to do with them.

They’d stood under a streetlamp for what felt like a very long time, shivering under the frowning gaze of the constable Alex had summoned to the scene and one of his colleagues, a grizzled man in uniform with a scowl and a stoop. Neither officer spoke to the four young men, though their eyes never strayed from them.

Eventually, a harassed-looking man huddled into an overcoat that looked two sizes too big for him slithered over to them, his thin-soled shoes no match for the terrain. ‘Lawson, Mackenzie, take these boys down to the station, keep them apart when you get there. We’ll be down in a wee while to talk to them.’ Then he turned and stumbled back in the direction of their terrible discovery, now hidden behind canvas screens through which an eerie green light permeated, staining the snow.

The younger policeman gave his colleague a worried look. ‘How are we going to get them back?’

He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to squeeze them in your panda. I came up in the Sherpa van.’

‘Can we not take them back down in that? Then you could keep an eye on them while I’m driving.’

The older man shook his head, pursing his lips. ‘If you say so, Lawson.’ He gestured to the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy. ‘Come on, youse. Into the van. And no messing about, right?’ He herded them towards a police van, calling over his shoulder to Lawson, ‘You better get the keys off Tam Watt.’

Lawson set off up the slope, leaving them with Mackenzie. ‘I wouldnae like to be in your shoes when the CID get off that hill,’ he said conversationally as he climbed in behind them. Alex shivered, though not from the cold. It was slowly dawning on him that the police were regarding him and his companions as potential suspects rather than witnesses. They’d been given no opportunity to confer, to get their ducks in a row. The four of them exchanged uneasy looks. Even Weird had straightened out enough to realize this wasn’t some daft game.

When Mackenzie hustled them into the van, there had been a few seconds when they’d been left alone. Just sufficient time for Ziggy to mutter loud enough for their ears, ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t mention the Land Rover.’ Instant comprehension had filled their eyes.

‘Christ, aye,’ Weird said, head jerking back in terrified realization. Mondo chewed the skin round his thumbnail, saying nothing. Alex merely nodded.

The police station hadn’t felt any more composed than the crime scene. The desk sergeant complained bitterly when the two uniformed officers arrived with four bodies who were supposed to be prevented from communicating with each other. It turned out there were insufficient interview rooms to keep them separate. Weird and Mondo were taken to wait in unlocked cells, while Alex and Ziggy were left to their own devices in the station’s two interview rooms.

The room Alex found himself in was claustrophobically small. It was barely three paces square, as he established within minutes of being shut in to kick his heels. There were no windows, and the low ceiling with its greying polystyrene tiles made it all the more oppressive. It contained a chipped wooden table and four unmatching wooden chairs that looked exactly as uncomfortable as they felt. Alex tried them all in turn, finally settling for one that didn’t dig into his thighs as much as the others.

He wondered if he was allowed to smoke. Judging by the smell of the stale air, he wouldn’t have been the first. But he was a well-brought-up lad, and the absence of an ashtray gave him pause. He searched his pockets and found the screwed-up silver paper from a packet of Polo mints. Carefully, he spread it out, folding the edges up to form a rough tray. Then he took out his packet of Bensons and flipped the top open. Nine left. That should see him through, he thought.

Alex lit his cigarette and allowed himself to think about his position for the first time since they’d arrived at the police station. It was obvious, now he thought about it. They’d found a body. They had to be suspects. Everybody knew that the prime candidates for arrest in a murder investigation were either the ones who last saw the victim alive or the ones who found the body. Well, that was them on both counts.

He shook his head. The body. He was starting to think like them. This wasn’t just a body, it was Rosie. Somebody he knew, however slightly. He supposed that made it all the more suspicious. But he didn’t want to consider that now. He wanted that horror far from his mind. Whenever he closed his eyes, flashbacks to the hill played like a movie. Beautiful, sexy Rosie broken and bleeding on the snow. ‘Think about something else,’ he said aloud.

He wondered how the others would react to questioning. Weird was off his head, that was for sure. He’d had more than drink tonight. Alex had seen him with a joint in his hand earlier, but with Weird, there was no telling what else he might have indulged in. There had been tabs of acid floating around. Alex had refused it himself a couple of times. He didn’t mind dope but he preferred not to fry his brains. But Weird was definitely in the market for anything that would allegedly expand his consciousness. Alex fervently hoped that whatever he’d swallowed, inhaled or snorted, it would have worn off before it was his turn to be interviewed. Otherwise, Weird was likely to piss the cops off very badly indeed. And any fool knew that was a bad idea in the middle of a murder investigation.

Mondo would be another kettle of fish. This would freak him out in a totally different way. Mondo was, when you got right down to it, too sensitive for his own good. He’d always been the one picked on at school, called a jessie partly because of the way he looked and partly because he never fought back. His hair hung in tight ringlets round his pixie face, his big sapphire eyes always wide like a mouse keeking out from a divot. The lassies liked it, that was for sure. Alex had once overheard a pair of them giggling that Davey Kerr looked just like Marc Bolan. But in a school like Kirkcaldy High, what won you favour with the lassies could equally earn you a kicking in the cloakroom. If Mondo hadn’t had the other three to back him up, he’d have had a pretty thin time of it. To his credit, he knew that, and he repaid their services with interest. Alex knew he’d never have got through Higher French without Mondo’s help.

But Mondo would be on his own with the police. Nobody to hide behind. Alex could picture him now, head hung low, tossing the odd glance out from under his brows, picking at the skin round his thumbnail or flicking the lid of his Zippo open and shut. They’d get frustrated with him, think he had something to hide. The thing they’d never suss, not in a million years, was that the big secret with Mondo was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, there was no secret. There was no mystery wrapped in an enigma. There was just a guy who liked Pink Floyd, fish suppers with lashings of vinegar, Tennent’s lager and getting laid. And who, bizarrely, spoke French like he’d learned it at his mother’s knee.

Except of course tonight there was a secret. And if anybody was going to blow it, it would be Mondo. Please God, let him not give up the Land Rover, Alex thought. At the very least, they’d all be landed with the charge of taking and driving away without the owner’s consent. At the very worst, the cops would realize one or all of them had the perfect means to transport a dying girl’s body to a quiet hillside.

Weird wouldn’t tell; he had most to lose. He’d been the one who’d turned up at the Lammas grinning from ear to ear, dangling Henry Cavendish’s key-ring from his finger like the winner at a wife-swapping party.

Alex wouldn’t tell, he knew that. Keeping secrets was one of the things he did best. If the price of avoiding suspicion was to keep his mouth shut, he had no doubts he could manage it.

Ziggy wouldn’t tell either. It was always safety first with Ziggy. After all, he was the one who had sneaked away from the party to move the Land Rover once he’d realized how off his head Weird was getting. He’d taken Alex to one side and said, ‘I’ve taken the keys out of Weird’s coat pocket. I’m going to shift the Land Rover, put it out of temptation’s way. He’s already been taking people for a spin round the block, it’s time to put a stop to it before he kills himself or somebody else.’ Alex had no idea how long he’d been gone, but when he’d returned, Ziggy had told him the Land Rover was safely stowed up behind one of the industrial units off the Largo Road. ‘We can go and pick it up in the morning,’ he’d said.

Alex had grinned. ‘Or we could just leave it there. A nice wee puzzle for Hooray Henry when he comes back next term.’

‘I don’t think so. As soon as he realized his precious wheels weren’t parked where he left them, he’d go to the police and drop us right in it. And our fingerprints are all over it.’

He’d been right, Alex thought. There was no love lost between the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy and the two Englishmen who shared their six-room campus house. There was no way Henry would see the funny side of Weird helping himself to the Land Rover. Henry didn’t see the funny side of much that his house-mates did. So, Ziggy wouldn’t tell. That was for sure.

But Mondo just might. Alex hoped Ziggy’s warning had penetrated Mondo’s self-absorption enough for him to think through the consequences. Telling the cops about Weird helping himself to someone else’s car wouldn’t get Mondo off the hook. It would only put all four of them firmly on it. Besides, he’d been driving it himself, taking that lassie home to Guardbridge. For once in your life, think it through, Mondo.

Now, if it was a thinker you wanted, Ziggy was your man. Behind the apparent openness, the easy charm and the quick intellect, there was a lot more going on than anyone knew. Alex had been pals with Ziggy for nine and a half years, and he felt as though he’d only scratched the surface. Ziggy was the one who would surprise you with an insight, knock you off balance with a question, make you look at something through fresh eyes because he’d twisted the world like a Rubik’s Cube and seen it differently. Alex knew one or two things about Ziggy that he felt pretty sure were still hidden from Mondo and Weird. That was because Ziggy had wanted him to know, and because Ziggy knew his secrets would always be safe with Alex.

He imagined how Ziggy would be with his interrogators. He’d seem relaxed, calm, at ease with himself. If anyone could persuade the cops that their involvement with the body on Hallow Hill was entirely innocent, it was Ziggy.

Detective Inspector Barney Maclennan threw his damp coat over the nearest chair in the CID office. It was about the size of a primary school classroom, bigger than they normally needed. St Andrews wasn’t high on Fife Constabulary’s list of crime hotspots, and that was reflected in their staffing levels. Maclennan was head of CID out at the edge of the empire not because he lacked ambition but because he was a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad, the sort of bolshie copper senior officers liked best at a distance. Normally, he chafed at the lack of anything interesting to keep him occupied, but that didn’t mean he welcomed the murder of a young lassie on his patch.

They’d got an ID right away. The pub Rosie Duff worked in was an occasional drop-in for some of the uniformed boys, and PC Jimmy Lawson, the first man at the locus, had recognized her immediately. Like most of the men at the scene, he’d looked shell-shocked and nauseous. Maclennan couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a murder on his patch that hadn’t been a straightforward domestic; these lads hadn’t seen enough to harden them to the sight they’d come upon on the snowy hilltop. Come to that, he’d only seen a couple of murder victims himself, and never anything quite as pathetic as the abused body of Rosie Duff.

According to the police surgeon, it looked like she’d been raped and stabbed in the lower abdomen. A single, vicious blow carving its lethal track upwards through her gut. And it had probably taken her quite a while to die. Just thinking about it made Maclennan want to lay hands on the man responsible and beat the crap out of him. At times like this, the law felt more like a hindrance than a help when it came to achieving justice.

Maclennan sighed and lit a cigarette. He sat down at his desk and made notes of what little information he’d learned so far. Rosemary Duff. Nineteen years old. Worked in the Lammas Bar. Lived in Strathkinness with her parents and two older brothers. The brothers worked in the paper mill out at Guardbridge, her father was a groundsman up at Craigtoun Park. Maclennan didn’t envy Detective Constable Iain Shaw and the WPC he’d sent up to the village to break the news. He’d have to talk to the family himself in due course, he knew that. But he was better employed trying to get this investigation moving. It wasn’t as if they were swarming with detectives who had a clue about running a major inquiry. If they were going to avoid being pushed out to the sidelines by the big boys from headquarters, Maclennan had to get the show on the road and make it look good.

He looked impatiently at his watch. He needed another CID man before he could start interviewing the four students who claimed they’d found the body. He’d told DC Allan Burnside to get back down to the station as soon as he could, but there was still no sign of him. Maclennan sighed. Goons and balloons, that was what he was stuck with out here.

He slipped his feet out of his damp shoes and swivelled round so he could rest them on the radiator. God, but it was a hell of a night to be starting a murder inquiry. The snow had turned the crime scene into a nightmare, masking evidence, making everything a hundred times more difficult. Who could tell which traces had been left by the killer, and which by the witnesses? That was assuming, of course, that those were separate entities. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Maclennan thought about his interview strategy.

All the received wisdom indicated he should speak first to the lad who’d actually found the body. Well-built lad, broad-shouldered, hard to see much of his face inside the big snorkel hood of the parka. Maclennan leaned back for his notebook. Alex Gilbey, that was the one. But he had a funny feeling about that one. It wasn’t that he’d been exactly shifty, more that he’d not met Maclennan’s eyes with the kind of piteous candour that most young lads in his shoes would have shown. And he certainly looked strong enough to carry Rosie’s dying body up the gentle slope of Hallow Hill. Maybe there was more going on here than met the eye. It wouldn’t be the first time a murderer had engineered the discovery of his victim’s body to include himself. No, he’d let young Mr Gilbey sweat a wee bit longer.

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.’

‘You know, Inspector, not all students are obsessed with sex. Some of us know how lucky we are to be here and we don’t want to screw it up.’

‘So you prefer each other’s company? Where I come from, people might think you were queer.’

Ziggy’s composure slipped momentarily. ‘So what? It’s not against the law.’

‘That depends on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with,’ Maclennan said, any pretence of amiability gone.

‘Look, what has any of this got to do with the fact that we stumbled over the dying body of a young woman?’ Ziggy demanded, leaning forward. ‘What are you trying to suggest? We’re gay, therefore we raped a lassie and murdered her?’

‘Your words, not mine. It’s a well-known fact that some homosexuals hate women.’

Ziggy shook his head in disbelief. ‘Well known to whom? The prejudiced and ignorant? Look, just because Alex and Tom and Davey left the party with me doesn’t make them gay, right? They could give you a list of girls who could show you just how wrong you are.’

‘And what about you, Sigmund? Could you do the same thing?’

Ziggy held himself rigid, willing his body not to betray him. There was a world of difference the size of Scotland between legal and comprehended. He’d arrived at a place where the truth was not going to be his friend. ‘Can we get back on track here, Inspector? I left the party about four o’clock with my three friends. We walked down Learmonth Place, turned left up the Canongate then went down Trinity Place. Hallow Hill is a short cut back to Fife Park …’

‘Did you see anyone else as you walked down towards the hill?’ Maclennan interrupted.

‘No. But the visibility wasn’t great because of the snow. Anyway, we were walking along the footpath at the bottom of the hill and Alex started running up the hill. I don’t know why, I was ahead of him and I didn’t see what set him off. When he got to the top, he tripped and fell into the hollow. The next thing I knew was he was shouting to us to come up, that there was a young woman bleeding.’ Ziggy closed his eyes, but opened them hastily as the dead girl rose before him again. ‘We climbed up and we found Rosie lying in the snow. I felt her carotid pulse. It was very faint, but it was still there. She seemed to be bleeding from a wound to the abdomen. Quite a large slit, it felt like. Maybe three or four inches long. I told Alex to go and get help. To call the police. We covered her with our coats and I tried to put pressure on the wound. But it was too late. Too much internal damage. Too much blood loss. She died within a couple of minutes.’ He gave a long exhalation. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

Even Maclennan was momentarily silenced by the intensity of Ziggy’s words. He glanced at Burnside, who was scribbling furiously. ‘Why did you ask Alex Gilbey to go for help?’

‘Because Alex was more sober than Tom. And Davey tends to go to pieces in a crisis.’

It made perfect sense. Almost too perfect. Maclennan pushed his chair back. ‘One of my officers will take you home now, Mr Malkiewicz. We’ll want the clothes you’re wearing, for forensic analysis. And your fingerprints, for the purposes of elimination. And we’ll be wanting to talk to you again.’ There were things Maclennan wanted to know about Sigmund Malkiewicz. But they could wait. His feeling of unease about these four young men was growing stronger by the minute. He wanted to start pushing. And he had a feeling that the one who went to pieces in a crisis might just be the one to cave in.

3

The poetry of Baudelaire seemed to be doing the trick. Curled into a ball on a mattress so hard it scarcely deserved the name, Mondo was mentally working his way through Les Fleurs du Mal. It seemed ironically appropriate in the light of the night’s events. The musical flow of the language soothed him, rubbing away the reality of Rosie Duff’s death and the police cell it had brought him to. It was transcendent, raising him out of his body and into another place where the smooth sequence of syllables was all his consciousness could accommodate. He didn’t want to deal with death, or guilt, or fear, or suspicion.

His hiding place imploded abruptly with the crashing open of the cell door. PC Jimmy Lawson loomed above him. ‘On your feet, son. You’re wanted.’

Mondo scrambled back, away from the young policeman who had somehow changed from rescuer to persecutor.

Lawson’s smile was far from soothing. ‘Don’t get your bowels in a confusion. Come on, look lively. Inspector Maclennan doesn’t like being kept waiting.’

Mondo edged to his feet and followed Lawson out of the cell and into a brightly lit corridor. It was all too sharp, too defined for Mondo’s taste. He really didn’t like it here.

Lawson turned a bend in the corridor then flung a door open. Mondo hesitated on the threshold. Sitting at the table was the man he’d seen up on Hallow Hill. He looked too small to be a copper, Mondo thought. ‘Mr Kerr, is it?’ the man asked.

Mondo nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. The sound of his own voice surprised him.

‘Come in and sit down. I’m DI Maclennan, this is DC Burnside.’

Mondo sat down opposite the two men, keeping his eyes on the table top. Burnside took him through the formalities with a politeness that surprised Mondo, who had expected The Sweeney: all shouting and macho swaggering.

When Maclennan took over, a note of sharpness entered the conversation. ‘You knew Rosie Duff,’ he said.

‘Aye.’ Mondo still didn’t look up. ‘Well, I knew she was the barmaid at the Lammas,’ he added as the silence grew around them.

‘Nice-looking lassie,’ Maclennan said. Mondo did not respond. ‘You must have noticed that, at least.’

Mondo shrugged. ‘I didn’t give her any thought.’

‘Was she not your type?’

Mondo looked up, his mouth hitched up in one corner in a half-smile. ‘I think I definitely wasn’t her type. She never took any notice of me. There were always other guys she was more interested in. I always had to wait to get served in the Lammas.’

‘That must have annoyed you.’

Panic flashed in Mondo’s eyes. He was beginning to understand that Maclennan was sharper than he had expected a copper to be. He was going to have to box clever and keep his wits about him. ‘Not really. If we were in a hurry, I just used to get Gilly to go up when it was my round.’

‘Gilly? That would be Alex Gilbey?’

Mondo nodded, dropping his eyes again. He didn’t want to let this man see any of the emotions churning inside him. Death, guilt, fear, suspicion. He desperately wanted to be out of this, out of the police station, out of the case. He didn’t want to drop anyone else in it in the process, but he couldn’t take this. He knew he couldn’t take it, and he didn’t want to end up acting in a way that would make these cops think there was something suspicious about him, something guilty. Because he wasn’t the suspicious one. He hadn’t chatted up Rosie Duff, much as he might have wanted to. He hadn’t stolen a Land Rover. All he’d done was borrow it to drive a lassie home to Guardbridge. He hadn’t stumbled over a body in the snow. That was down to Alex. It was thanks to the others he was in the middle of this shit. If keeping himself secure meant making the cops look elsewhere, well, Gilly would never find out. Even if he did, Mondo was sure Gilly would forgive him.

‘So she liked Gilly, did she?’ Maclennan was relentless.

‘I don’t know. Far as I’m aware, he was just another customer to her.’

‘But one she paid more attention to than she did to you.’

‘Aye, well, that didn’t exactly make him unique.’

‘Are you saying Rosie was a bit of a flirt?’

Mondo shook his head, impatient at himself. ‘No. Not at all. It was her job. She was a barmaid, she had to be nice to people.’

‘But not to you.’

Mondo tugged nervously at the ringlets falling round his ears. ‘You’re twisting this. Look, she was nothing to me, I was nothing to her. Now, can I go, please?’

‘Not quite yet, Mr Kerr. Whose idea was it tonight to come back via Hallow Hill?’

Mondo frowned. ‘It wasn’t anybody’s idea. That’s just the quickest route from where we were back to Fife Park. We often walk back that way. Nobody gave it a second thought.’

‘And did any of you ever feel the need to run up to the Pictish cemetery before?’

Mondo shook his head. ‘We knew it was there, we went up to look at it when they were excavating it. Like half of St Andrews. Doesnae make us weirdos, you know.’

‘I never said it did. But you never made a detour there on the way back to your residence before?’

‘Why would we?’

Maclennan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Daft boys’ games. Maybe you’ve watched Carrie a few too many times.’

Mondo tugged at a lock of his hair. Death, guilt, fear, suspicion. ‘I’m not interested in horror films. Look, Inspector, you’re reading this all wrong. We’re just four ordinary guys that walked into the middle of something extraordinary. Nothing more, nothing less.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of innocence that he prayed was convincing. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to the lassie, but it’s got nothing to do with me.’

Maclennan leaned back in his chair. ‘So you say.’ Mondo said nothing, simply letting his breath out in a long sigh of frustration. ‘What about the party? What were your movements there?’

Mondo twisted sideways in his seat, his desire for escape obvious in every muscle. Would the lassie talk? He doubted it. She’d had to sneak in to the house, she’d been supposed to be home hours before. And she wasn’t a student, had known almost nobody there. With a bit of luck, she’d never be mentioned, never questioned. ‘Look, why do you care about this? We just found a body, you know?’

‘We have to explore all the possibilities.’

Mondo sneered. ‘Just doing your job, eh? Well, you’re wasting your time if you think we had anything to do with what happened to her.’

Maclennan shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, I’d like to know about the party.’

Stomach churning, Mondo produced an edited version he hoped would pass muster. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to remember every detail. Not long after we arrived, I was chatting up this lassie. Marg, her name was. From Elgin. We danced for a while. I thought I was in there, you know?’ He pulled a rueful face. ‘Then her boyfriend turned up. She hadn’t mentioned him before. I was pretty fed up, so I had a couple more beers, then I went upstairs. There was this wee study, just a boxroom really, with a desk and a chair. I sat there feeling sorry for myself for a bit. Not long, just the time it took to drink a can. Then I went back downstairs and mooched around. Ziggy was giving some English guys his Declaration of Arbroath speech in the conservatory, so I didn’t hang around there. I’ve heard it too many times. I didn’t really pay attention to anybody else. There wasn’t much in the way of talent, and what there was was spoken for, so I just hung around. Tell you the truth, I was ready to go ages before we finally left.’

‘But you didn’t suggest leaving?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Don’t you have a mind of your own?’

Mondo gave him a look of loathing. It wasn’t the first time he’d been accused of following the others around like a mindless sheep. ‘Of course I do. I just couldn’t be bothered, OK?’

‘Fine,’ Maclennan said. ‘We’ll be checking your story out. You can go home now. We’ll want the clothes you were wearing tonight. There’ll be an officer at your residence to take them from you.’ He stood up, the chair legs grating on the floor in a screech that set Mondo’s teeth on edge. ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Kerr.’

WPC Janice Hogg closed the door of the panda car as quietly as she could. No need to wake the whole street. They’d hear the news soon enough. She flinched as DC Iain Shaw slammed the driver’s door without a thought and directed a glare at the back of his balding head. Only twenty-five and already he had an old man’s hairline, she thought with a flash of smug pleasure. And him thinking he was such a catch.

As if the tenor of her thoughts had penetrated his skull, Shaw turned and scowled. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get it over with.’

Janice gave the cottage the once-over as Shaw pushed open the wooden gate and walked briskly up the short path. It was typical of the area; a low building with a couple of dormer windows thrusting out of the pantile roof, crow-stepped gables dressed with snow. A small porch thrust out between the downstairs windows, the harling painted some dun colour that was hard to identify in the weak light shed by the streetlamps. It looked well enough kept, she reckoned, wondering which room had been Rosie’s.

Janice put the thought from her mind as she prepared herself for the coming ordeal. She’d been brought in to deliver the bad news on more than her fair share of occasions. It came with the gender. She braced herself as Shaw banged the heavy iron knocker on the door. At first, nothing stirred. Then a muted light glowed behind the curtains at the right-hand downstairs window. A hand appeared, pulling the curtain to one side. Next, a face, lit on one side. A man in late middle-age, hair greying and tousled, stared open-mouthed at the pair of them.

Shaw produced his warrant card and held it out. There was no mistaking the gesture. The curtain fell back. A couple of moments later, the front door opened to reveal the man, tying the cord of a thick woollen dressing gown round his waist. The legs of his pyjamas pooled over faded tartan slippers. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, hiding apprehension imperfectly behind belligerence.

‘Mr Duff?’ Shaw asked.

‘Aye, that’s me. What are you doing at my door at this hour?’

‘I’m Detective Constable Shaw, and this is WPC Hogg. Can we come in, Mr Duff? We need to talk to you.’

‘What have they laddies of mine been up to?’ He stood back and waved them inside. The inner door gave straight on to the living room. A three-piece suite covered in brown corduroy laid siege to the biggest TV set Janice had ever seen. ‘Have a seat,’ he said.

As they made for the sofa, Eileen Duff emerged from the door at the far end of the room. ‘What’s going on, Archie?’ she asked. Her naked face was greasy with night cream, her hair covered in a beige chiffon scarf to protect her shampoo and set. Her quilted nylon housecoat was buttoned awry.

‘It’s the polis,’ her husband said.

The woman’s eyes were wide with anxiety. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Could you come and sit down, Mrs Duff?’ Janice said, crossing to the woman and taking her elbow. She steered her to the sofa and gestured to her husband that he should join her there.

‘It’s bad news, I can tell,’ the woman said piteously, clutching at her husband’s arm. Archie Duff stared impassively at the blank TV screen, lips pressed tightly together.

‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Duff. But I’m afraid you’re right. We do have some very bad news for you.’ Shaw stood awkwardly, head slightly bowed, eyes on the multicoloured swirls of the carpet.

Mrs Duff pushed her husband. ‘I told you not to let Brian buy that motorbike. I told you.’

Shaw cast a glance of appeal at Janice. She took a step closer to the Duffs and said gently, ‘It’s not Brian. It’s Rosie.’

A soft mewing noise came from Mrs Duff. ‘That cannae be right,’ Mr Duff protested.

Janice forced herself to continue. ‘Earlier tonight, the body of a young woman was found on Hallow Hill.’

‘There’s been some mistake,’ Archie Duff said stubbornly.

‘I’m afraid not. Some of the officers at the scene recognized Rosie. They knew her from the Lammas Bar. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your daughter is dead.’

Janice had delivered the blow often enough to know that most people fell into one of two reactions. Denial, like Archie Duff. And overwhelming grief that hit the surviving relatives like an elemental force of nature. Eileen Duff threw her head back and roared her pain at the ceiling, her hands twisting and wringing in her lap, her whole body possessed by anguish. Her husband stared at her as if she were a stranger, his brows drawn down in a firm refusal to acknowledge what was happening.

Janice stood there, letting the first wave break over her like a spring tide on the West Sands. Shaw shifted from one foot to the other, unsure what to say next.

Suddenly there were heavy footfalls on the stairs that led off one end of the room. Legs clad in pyjama bottoms appeared, followed by a naked torso then a sleepy face topped with a shock of tousled dark hair. The young man stopped a couple of steps from the bottom and surveyed the scene. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he grunted.

Without turning his head, Archie said, ‘Your sister’s dead, Colin.’

Colin Duff’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’

Janice stepped into the breach again. ‘I’m very sorry, Colin. But your sister’s body was found a short while ago.’

‘Where about? What happened? What do you mean, her body was found?’ The words tumbled out as his legs gave way and he crumpled on to the bottom tread of the stairs.

‘She was found on Hallow Hill.’ Janice took a deep breath. ‘We believe that Rosie was murdered.’

Colin dropped his head into his hands. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he whispered over and over again.

Shaw leaned forward. ‘We’re going to need to ask you some questions, Mr Duff. Could we maybe go through to the kitchen?’

Eileen’s first paroxysm of grief was easing now. She’d stopped wailing and turned her tear-streaked face to Archie. ‘Bide here. I’m no’ a bairn that needs to be kept from the truth,’ she gulped.

‘Have you got some brandy?’ Janice asked. Archie looked blank. ‘Or some whisky?’

Colin stumbled to his feet. ‘There’s a bottle in the scullery. I’ll get it.’

Eileen turned her swollen eyes to Janice. ‘What happened to my Rosie?’

‘We can’t be certain yet. It appears that she was stabbed. But we’ll need to wait for the doctor before we can be sure.’

At her words, Eileen recoiled as if she herself had been struck. ‘Who would do a thing like that to Rosie? Her that wouldnae hurt a fly.’

‘We don’t know that yet either,’ Shaw chipped in. ‘But we’ll find him, Mrs Duff. We’ll find him. I know this is the worst time in the world to be asking you questions, but the sooner we get the information we need, the quicker we can make progress.’

‘Can I see her?’ Eileen asked.

‘We’ll arrange for that later today,’ Janice said. She crouched down beside Eileen and put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘What time did Rosie usually come in?’

Colin emerged from the kitchen carrying a bottle of Bells and three glasses. ‘The Lammas has last orders at half-past ten. Most nights, she was in by quarter-past eleven.’ He put the glasses down on the coffee table and poured three stiff measures.

‘But some nights she was later?’ Shaw asked.

Colin handed his parents a whisky each. Archie downed half of his in one gulp. Eileen clutched the glass but didn’t put it to her lips. ‘Aye. If she was going to a party or something.’

‘And last night?’

Colin swallowed some whisky. ‘I don’t know. Mum? Did she say anything to you?’

Eileen looked up at him, her expression dazed and lost. ‘She said she was meeting some friends. She didnae say who, and I didnae ask. She’s got a right to her own life.’ There was a defensive tone in her voice that told Janice this had been a bone of contention, probably with Archie.

‘How did Rosie usually get home?’ Janice asked.

‘If me or Brian was in the town, we’d stop by at closing time and give her a lift. One of the other barmaids, Maureen, she’d drop her off if they were on the same shift. If she couldn’t get a lift, she’d get a taxi.’

‘Where’s Brian?’ Eileen said suddenly, anxious for her chicks.

Colin shrugged. ‘He’s not come home. He must have stayed down in the town.’

‘He should be here. He shouldnae hear this from strangers.’

‘He’ll be back for his breakfast,’ Archie said roughly. ‘He needs to get ready for his work.’

‘Was Rosie seeing anybody? Did she have a boyfriend?’ Shaw let his eagerness to be away take over and shunt the interview back on the track he wanted.

Archie scowled. ‘She was never short of boyfriends.’

‘Was there anyone in particular?’

Eileen took a tiny sip of whisky. ‘She’s been going out with somebody lately. But she wouldnae tell me anything about him. I asked her, but she said she’d tell me in her own good time.’

Colin snorted. ‘Some married man, by the sounds of it.’

Archie glared at his son. ‘You keep a civil tongue in your heid when you talk about your sister, you hear me?’

‘Well, why else would she keep it secret?’ The young man’s jaw jutted out defiantly.

‘Maybe she didnae want you and your brother sticking your oar in again,’ Archie retorted. He turned to Janice. ‘They once gave a laddie a battering because they thought he wasnae treating Rosie right.’

‘Who was that?’

Archie’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘That was years ago. It’s got nothing to do with this. The laddie doesnae even live here any more. He moved down to England not long after it happened.’

‘We’ll still want his name,’ Shaw insisted.

‘John Stobie,’ Colin said mutinously. ‘His dad’s a greenkeeper at the Old Course. Like Dad says, he wouldnae dare go near Rosie.’

‘It’s not a married man,’ Eileen said. ‘I asked her. She said she wouldnae bring trouble like that to our door.’

Colin shook his head and turned away, nursing his whisky. ‘I never saw her with anybody lately,’ he said. ‘But she liked her secrets, did Rosie.’

‘We’ll need to take a look at her room,’ Shaw said. ‘Not just now. But later today. So if you could avoid moving anything in there, that would be helpful.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If you’d like, WPC Hogg can stay with you?’

Archie shook his head. ‘We’ll manage.’

‘You might get reporters coming to the door,’ Shaw said. ‘It would be easier for you if you had an officer here.’

‘You heard my dad. We’re better left to ourselves,’ Colin said.

‘When can I see Rosie?’ Eileen asked.

‘We’ll send a car up for you later. I’ll make sure somebody calls you to arrange it. And if you remember anything Rosie said about where she was going tonight, or who she was seeing, please let us know. It would be helpful if you could make a list of her friends. Especially anyone who might know where she was last night and who she was with. Can you do that for us?’ Shaw was gentle now he could see his escape route clear.

Archie nodded and got to his feet. ‘Later. We’ll do it.’

Janice stood up, her knees complaining at their prolonged crouch. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’

She followed Shaw to the door. The misery in the room felt like a tangible substance, filling the air and making it hard to breathe. It was always the same. The melancholy seemed to grow incrementally in those first hours after the news arrived.

But that would change. Soon enough, the anger would come.

4

Weird glared at Maclennan, skinny arms folded across his narrow chest. ‘I want a smoke,’ he said. The acid he’d taken earlier had worn off, leaving him jittery and fractious. He didn’t want to be here, and he was determined to get out as quickly as he could. But that didn’t mean he was going to give an inch.

Maclennan shook his head. ‘Sorry, son. I don’t use them.’

Weird turned his head and stared at the door. ‘You’re not supposed to use torture, you know.’

Maclennan refused to rise to the bait. ‘We need to ask you some questions about what happened tonight.’

‘Not without a lawyer, you don’t.’ Weird gave a small, inward smile.

‘Why would you need a lawyer if you’ve got nothing to hide?’

‘Because you’re the Man. And you’ve got a dead lassie on your hands that you need to blame somebody for. And I’m not signing any false confessions, no matter how long you keep me here.’

Maclennan sighed. It depressed him that the dubious antics of a few gave smart-arsed boys like this a stick to beat all cops with. He’d bet a week’s wages that this self-righteous adolescent had a poster of Che Guevara on his bedroom wall. And that he thought he had first dibs on the role of working-class hero. None of which meant he couldn’t have killed Rosie Duff. ‘You’ve got a very funny notion of the way we do things round here.’

‘Tell that to the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four,’ Weird said, as if it were a trump card.

‘If you don’t want to end up where they are, son, I suggest you start co-operating. Now, we can do this the easy way, where I ask a few questions and you answer them, or we can lock you away for a few hours till we can find a lawyer who’s that desperate for work.’

‘Are you denying me the right to legal representation?’ There was a note of pomposity in Weird’s voice that would have made the hearts of his friends sink if they’d heard it.

But Maclennan reckoned he was more than a match for some student on his high horse. ‘Please yourself.’ He pushed back from the table.

‘I will,’ Weird said stubbornly. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you without a lawyer present.’ Maclennan made for the door, Burnside on his tail. ‘So you get someone here, right?’

Maclennan turned at the open doorway. ‘That’s not my job, son. You want a lawyer, you make the phone call.’

Weird calculated. He didn’t know any lawyers. Hell, he couldn’t afford a lawyer, even if he’d known one. He could imagine what his dad would say if he phoned home and asked for help with the situation. And it wasn’t an appealing thought. Besides, he’d have to tell a lawyer the whole story, and any lawyer paid for by his father would be bound to make a full report back. There were, he thought, far worse things than being nicked for stealing a Land Rover. ‘I tell you what,’ he said grudgingly. ‘You ask your questions. If they’re as harmless as you seem to think, I’ll answer them. But any hint you’re trying to stitch me up, and I’m saying nothing.’

Maclennan closed the door and sat down again. He gave Weird a long, hard stare, taking in the intelligent eyes, the sharp beaky nose and the incongruously full lips. He didn’t think Rosie Duff would have seen him as a desirable catch. She’d probably have laughed at him if he’d ever propositioned her. That sort of reaction could breed festering resentment. Resentment that might have spilled over into murder. ‘How well did you know Rosie Duff?’ he asked.

Weird cocked his head to one side. ‘Not well enough to know what her second name was.’

‘Did you ever ask her out?’

Weird snorted. ‘You’ve got to be joking. I’m a wee bit more ambitious than that. Small-town lassies with small-time dreams; that’s not my scene.’

‘What about your friends?’

‘Shouldnae think so. We’re here precisely because we’ve got bigger ideas than that.’

Maclennan raised his eyebrows. ‘What? You’ve come all the way from Kirkcaldy to St Andrews to broaden your horizons? My, the world must be holding its breath. Listen, son, Rosie Duff has been murdered. Whatever dreams she had have died with her. So think twice before you sit here and patronize her.’

Weird held Maclennan’s stare. ‘All I meant was that our lives had nothing in common with hers. If it hadn’t been for the fact that we stumbled across her body, you wouldn’t even have heard our names in connection with this investigation. And frankly, if we’re the best you can do in the way of suspects, you don’t deserve to be called detectives.’

The air between the two of them was electric with tension. Normally, Maclennan welcomed the raising of the stakes in an interrogation. It was a useful lever to get people to say more than they meant to. And he had a gut feeling that this young man was covering something with his apparent arrogance. It might be nothing of significance, but it might be everything that mattered. Even if all he’d gain by pushing him would be a sinus headache, Maclennan still couldn’t resist. Just on the off chance. ‘Tell me about the party,’ he said.

Weird cast his eyes upwards. ‘Right enough, I don’t suppose you get invited to many. Here’s how it goes. Males and females congregate in a house or a flat, they have a few bevvies, they dance to the music. Sometimes they get off with each other. Sometimes they even get laid. And then everybody goes home. That’s how it was tonight.’

‘And sometimes they get stoned,’ Maclennan said mildly, refusing to let the boy’s sarcasm rile him further.

‘Not when you’re there, I bet.’ Weird’s smile was scornful.

‘Did you get stoned tonight?’

‘See? There you go. Trying to fit me up.’

‘Who were you with?’

Weird considered. ‘You know, I don’t really remember. I arrived with the boys, I left with the boys. In between? I can’t say I recall. But if you’re trying to suggest I slipped away to commit murder, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Ask me where I was and I can give you an answer. I was in the living room all night except for when I went upstairs for a piss.’

‘What about the rest of your friends? Where were they?’

‘I haven’t a clue. I am not my brothers’ keeper.’

Maclennan immediately noticed the echo of Sigmund Malkiewicz’s words. ‘But you look out for each other, don’t you?’

‘No reason why you’d know that that’s what friends do,’ Weird sneered.

‘So you’d lie for each other?’

‘Ah, the trick question. “When did you stop beating your wife?” There’s no call for us to lie for each other where Rosie Duff is concerned. Because we didn’t do anything that needs lying about.’ Weird rubbed his temples. He wanted his bed so badly it was like a deep itch in his bones. ‘We just got unlucky, that’s all.’

‘Tell me how it happened.’

‘Alex and me, we were mucking about. Pushing each other in the snow. He kind of lost his balance and carried on up the hill. Like the snow was making him excited. Then he tripped and fell and the next thing was, he was shouting us to come up quick.’ For a moment, Weird’s cockiness slipped and he looked younger than he was. ‘And we found her. Ziggy tried … but there was nothing he could do to save her.’ He flicked a smudge of dirt off his trouser leg. ‘Can I go now?’

‘You didn’t see anybody else up there? Or on the way there?’

Weird shook his head. ‘No. The crazed axe-murderer must have gone another way.’ His defences were back in place, and Maclennan could see that any further attempts to extract information would likely be fruitless. But there would be another day. And he suspected there would be another way under Tom Mackie’s defences. He just had to figure out what that might be.

Janice Hogg slithered across the car park in Iain Shaw’s wake. They’d been more or less silent on the drive back to the police station, each relating the encounter with the Duffs to their own lives with varying levels of relief. As Shaw pushed open the door leading into the welcome warmth of the station, Janice caught up with him. ‘I’m wondering why she wouldn’t let on to her mum about who she was seeing,’ she said.

Shaw shrugged. ‘Maybe the brother was right. Maybe he was a married man.’

‘But what if she was telling the truth? What if it wasn’t? Who else would she be secretive about?’

‘You’re the female here, Janice. What do you think?’ Shaw carried on through to the cubbyhole occupied by the officer charged with keeping local intelligence up to date. The office was empty in the middle of the night, but the cabinets with their alphabetically arranged filing cards were unlocked and available.

‘Well, if her brothers had a track record of warning off unsuitable men, I suppose I’d have to think about what sort of man Colin and Brian would consider unsuitable,’ she mused.

‘And that would be what?’ Shaw asked, pulling open the drawer marked ‘D’. His fingers, surprisingly long and slender, began to riffle through the cards.

‘Well, thinking aloud … Looking at the family, that buttoned-up, Fife respectability … I’d say anybody they considered beneath her or above her.’

Shaw glanced round at her. ‘That really narrows it down.’

‘I said I was thinking aloud,’ she muttered. ‘If it was some toerag, she’d probably think he could hold his own against her brothers. But if it was somebody a bit more rarefied …’

‘Rarefied? Posh word for a woolly suit, Janice.’

‘Woolly suit doesn’t mean woolly brain, DC Shaw. Don’t forget you were in uniform yourself not so long ago.’

‘OK, OK. Let’s stick to rarefied. You mean, like a student?’ Shaw asked.

‘Exactly.’

‘Like one of the ones that found her?’ He turned back to his search.

‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’ Janice leaned against the doorframe. ‘She had plenty of opportunity to meet students at her work.’

‘Here we are,’ Shaw said, pulling a couple of cards out of the drawer. ‘I thought Colin Duff rang a bell with me.’ He read the first card, then passed it over to Janice. In neat handwriting, it read, Colin James Duff. DoB: 5/3/55 LKA: Caberfeidh Cottage, Strathkinness. Employed at Guardbridge paper mill as fork-lift truck driver. 9/74 Drunk and disorderly, fined £25. 5/76 Breach of the peace, bound over. 6/78 Speeding, fined £37. Known associates: Brian Stuart Duff, brother. Donald Angus Thomson. Janice turned the card over. In the same handwriting, but in pencil this time so it could be erased if ever called into evidence, she read, Duff likes a fight when he’s had a drink. Handy with his fists, handy at keeping out of the frame. Bit of a bully. Not dishonest, just a handful.

‘Not the sort of guy you’d want mixing it with your sensitive student boyfriend,’ Janice commented as she took the second file card from Shaw. Brian Stuart Duff. DoB 27/5/57 LKA Caberfeidh Cottage, Strathkinness. Employed at Guardbridge paper mill as warehouseman. 6/75 Assault, fined £50. 5/76 Assault, three months, served at Perth. 3/78 Breach of the peace, bound over. Known associates: Colin James Duff, brother. Donald Angus Thomson. When she flipped it over, she read, Duff junior is a lout who thinks he’s a hard man. Record would be a lot longer if big brother didn’t drag him away before the trouble really gets going. He started early – John Stobie’s broken ribs and arm in 1975 likely down to him, Stobie refused to give a statement, said he’d had an accident on his bike. Duff suspected of involvement in unsolved break-in at the off-licence at West Port 8/78. One day he’s going to go away for a long time. Janice always appreciated the personal notes their local record-keeper appended to the official record. It helped when you were going out on an arrest to know if things were likely to turn ugly. And by the looks of it, the Duff boys could turn very ugly indeed. A pity really, she thought. Now she looked back, Colin Duff was rather hunky.

‘What do you think?’ Shaw asked, surprising her both because of her train of thought but also because she wasn’t used to CID expecting her to be capable of joined-up thinking.

‘I think Rosie was keeping quiet about who she was seeing because she knew it would provoke her brothers. They seem like a close family. So maybe she was protecting them as much as her boyfriend.’

Shaw frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘She didn’t want them getting into more trouble. With Brian’s record especially, another serious assault would get them both jail time. So she kept her mouth shut.’ Janice put the cards back in the file.

‘Good thinking. Look, I’m going up to the CID room to write up the report. You go down to the mortuary and see about arranging a viewing for the family. The day shift can take the Duffs down, but it would be helpful if they know when that’s likely to happen.’

Janice pulled a face. ‘How come I get all the good jobs?’

Shaw raised his eyebrows. ‘You need to ask?’

Janice said nothing. She left Shaw in the intelligence office and headed for the women’s locker room, yawning as she went. They had a kettle in there that the guys knew nothing about. Her body craved a hit of caffeine and if she was going to the mortuary, she deserved a treat. After all, Rosie Duff wasn’t going anywhere.

Alex was on his fifth cigarette and wondering if the packet was going to last him when the door to his interview room finally opened. He recognized the thin-faced detective he’d seen up on Hallow Hill. The man looked a lot fresher than Alex felt. Hardly surprising, since it was getting on for breakfast time for most people. And Alex doubted very much if the detective was experiencing the dull ache of a fledgling hangover at the base of his skull. He crossed to the chair opposite, never taking his eyes off Alex’s face. Alex forced himself to hold the policeman’s gaze, determined not to let exhaustion make him look shifty.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Maclennan,’ the man said, his voice clipped and brisk.

Alex wondered what the etiquette was here. ‘I’m Alex Gilbey,’ he tried.

‘I know that, son. I also know you’re the one that fancied Rosie Duff.’

Alex felt a blush rising across his cheeks. ‘That’s not a crime,’ he said. Pointless to deny what Maclennan seemed so certain of. He speculated which of his friends had betrayed his interest in the dead barmaid. Mondo, almost certainly. He’d sell his granny under pressure, then convince himself it was the best possible outcome for the old woman.

‘No, it’s not. But what happened to her tonight was the worst kind of crime. And it’s my job to find out who did it. So far, the only person connected to the dead girl and also connected to the discovery of her body is you, Mr Gilbey. Now, you’re obviously a smart boy. So I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?’

Alex tapped nervously on his cigarette although there was no ash to dislodge. ‘Coincidences happen.’

‘Less often than you might think.’

‘Well, this is one.’ Maclennan’s gaze felt like insects crawling under Alex’s skin. ‘I just got unlucky, finding Rosie like that.’

‘So you say. But if I’d left Rosie Duff for dead on a freezing cold hillside and I was worried I’d maybe got some blood on me, and I was a smart boy, I’d engineer it so that I was the one who found her. That way, I’ve got the perfect excuse for being covered in her blood.’ Maclennan gestured at Alex’s shirt, smeared with the dirty rust of dried blood.

‘I’m sure you would. But I didn’t. I never left the party.’ Alex was starting to feel genuinely scared. He’d been half expecting some awkward moments in the conversation with the police, but he hadn’t expected Maclennan to go in so hard so soon. Clammy sweat coated his palms and he had to struggle against the impulse to wipe them on his jeans.

‘Can you provide witnesses to that?’

Alex squeezed his eyes shut, trying to quiet the pounding in his head enough to remember his movements at the party. ‘When we got there, I was talking to a woman on my course for a while. Penny Jamieson, her name is. She went off for a dance, and I hung around in the dining room, just picking at the food. Various people were in and out, I didn’t pay much attention. I was feeling a bit drunk. Later, I went into the back garden to clear my head.’

‘All by yourself?’ Maclennan leaned forward slightly.

Alex had a sudden flash of memory that brought a flicker of relief in its wake. ‘Yes. But you’ll probably be able to find the rose bush I was sick next to.’

‘You could have been sick any time,’ Maclennan pointed out. ‘If you’d just raped and stabbed someone and left her for dead, for example. That might make you sick.’

Alex’s moment of hope crashed and burned. ‘Maybe, but that’s not what I did,’ he said defiantly. ‘If I had blood all over me, don’t you think someone would have noticed when I went back into the party? I was feeling better after I’d thrown up. I went back inside and joined in the dancing in the living room. Any number of people must have seen me then.’

‘And we’ll be asking them. We’re going to need a list of everyone who was at that party. We’ll be speaking to the host. And to everybody else we can trace. And if Rosie Duff showed her face, even for a minute, you and me will be having a much less friendly conversation, Mr Gilbey.’

Alex felt his face betray him again and hurriedly looked away. Not soon enough, however. Maclennan pounced. ‘Was she there?’

Alex shook his head. ‘I never saw her after we left the Lammas Bar.’ He could see something dawning behind Maclennan’s steady gaze.

‘But you invited her to the party.’ The detective’s hands gripped the edge of the table as he leaned forward, so close Alex could smell the incongruous drift of shampoo from his hair.

Alex nodded, too riven with anxiety to deny it. ‘I gave her the address. When we were in the pub. But she never turned up. And I never expected her to.’ There was a sob in his voice now, his tenuous control slipping as he remembered Rosie behind the bar, animated, teasing, friendly. Tears welled up as he stared at the detective.

‘Did that make you angry? That she hadn’t turned up?’

Alex shook his head. ‘No. I never really expected she would. Look, I wish she wasn’t dead. I wish I hadn’t found her. But you’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘So you say, son. So you say.’ Maclennan held his position, inches from Alex’s face. All his instincts told him there was something lurking under the surface of these interviews. And one way or another, he was going to find out what it was.

5

WPC Janice Hogg glanced at her watch as she made for the front counter. Another hour and she’d be off duty, at least in theory. With a murder inquiry in full swing, the chances were she’d be stuck on overtime, particularly since women officers were thin on the ground in St Andrews. She pushed through the swing doors into the reception area just as the street door was barged open so hard it bounced against the wall.

The force behind the door was a young man with shoulders almost as wide as the doorframe. Snow clung to his dark wavy hair and his face was wet either with tears, sweat or melted flakes. He hurtled towards the front counter, rage a deep growl in his throat. The duty constable reared back in shock, almost toppling off his high stool. ‘Where are they bastards?’ the man roared.

To his credit, the PC managed to find some sang froid from the deepest recesses of his training. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked, moving out of reach of the fists that were pounding on the counter top. Janice hung back unnoticed. If this turned as nasty as it promised, she’d be best served by the element of surprise.

‘I want those fucking bastards that killed my sister,’ the man howled.

So, Janice thought. The news had reached Brian Duff.

‘Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the PC said gently.

‘My sister. Rosie. She’s been murdered. And you’ve got them here. The bastards that did it.’ Duff looked as if he was about to clamber over the counter in his desperate desire for vengeance.

‘Sir, I think you’ve been misinformed.’

‘Don’t come it with me, you cunt,’ Duff screamed. ‘My sister’s lying dead, somebody’s going to pay.’

Janice chose her moment. ‘Mr Duff?’ she said quietly, stepping forward.

He whirled round and glared at her, wide-eyed, white spittle at the corners of his mouth. ‘Where are they?’ he snarled.

‘I’m very sorry about your sister. But nobody’s been arrested in connection with her death. We’re still in the early stages of our investigation, and we’re questioning witnesses. Not suspects. Witnesses.’ She put a cautious hand on his forearm. ‘You’d be better at home. Your mother needs her sons about her.’

Duff shook off her hand. ‘I was told you’d got them locked up. The bastards that did this.’

‘Whoever told you made a mistake. We’re all desperate to catch the person who did this terrible thing, and sometimes that makes people jump to the wrong conclusions. Trust me, Mr Duff. If we had a suspect in custody, I would tell you.’ Janice kept her eyes on his, praying that her calm, unemotional approach would work. Otherwise he could break her jaw with a single blow. ‘Your family will be the first to know when we make an arrest. I promise you that.’

Duff looked baffled and angry. Then suddenly, his eyes filled with tears and he slumped into one of the chairs in the waiting area. He wrapped his arms round his head and shook in a paroxysm of violent sobbing. Janice exchanged a helpless look with the PC behind the counter. He mimed the application of handcuffs but she shook her head and sat down next to him.

Gradually, Brian Duff regained his composure. His hands dropped like stones into his lap and he turned his tear-stained face to Janice. ‘You’ll get him, though? The bastard that’s done this?’

‘We’ll do our best, Mr Duff. Now, why don’t you let me drive you home? Your mum was worried about you earlier. She needs to be reassured that you’re all right.’ She got to her feet and looked down at him expectantly.

The rage had subsided for the moment. Meekly, Duff stood up and nodded. ‘Aye.’

Janice turned to the duty constable and said, ‘Tell DC Shaw I’m taking Mr Duff home. I’ll catch up with what I’m supposed to be doing when I get back.’ Nobody was going to give her a hard time for acting on her own initiative for once. Anything that could be discovered about Rosie Duff and her family was grist to the mill right now, and she was perfectly placed to catch Brian Duff with his defences down. ‘She was a lovely girl, Rosie,’ she said conversationally as she led Duff out of the front entrance and round the side to the car park.

‘You knew her?’

‘I drink in the Lammas sometimes.’ It was a small lie, expedient in the circumstances. Janice considered the Lammas Bar about as enticing as a bowl of cold porridge. A smoke-flavoured one at that.

‘I cannae take it in,’ Duff said. ‘This is the kind of thing you see on the telly. Not the kind of thing that happens to people like us.’

‘How did you hear about it?’ Janice was genuinely curious. News generally travelled through a small town like St Andrews at the speed of sound, but not usually in the middle of the night.

‘I crashed at one of my pals’ last night. His girlfriend works the breakfast shift at the greasy spoon on South Street. She heard about it when she turned in for work at six and she got straight on the phone. Fuck,’ he exploded. ‘I thought it was some kind of stupid bad-taste joke at first. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you?’

Janice unlocked the car, thinking, No, actually, I don’t have the sort of friends who would find that amusing. She said, ‘You don’t want to think even for a second that it could be the truth.’

‘Exactly,’ Duff said, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Who would do a thing like that to Rosie, though? I mean, she was a good person, you know? A nice lassie. Not some slut.’

‘You and your brother kept an eye on her. Did you see anybody hanging around her that you didn’t like the look of?’ Janice started the engine, shivering as a blast of cold air gusted out of the vents. Christ, but it was a bitter morning.

‘There were always lowlifes sniffing around. But everybody knew they’d have me and Colin to answer to if they bothered Rosie. So they kept their distance. We always looked out for her.’ He suddenly slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘So where were we last night when she really needed us?’

‘You can’t blame yourself, Brian.’ Janice edged the panda out of the car park on to the glassy compressed snow of the main drag. The Christmas lights looked sickly against the yellowish grey of the sky, the glamorous laser laid on by the university physics department an unremarkable pale scribble against the low clouds.

‘I don’t blame myself. I blame the bastard that did this. But I just wish I’d been there to stop it happening. Too fucking late, always too fucking late,’ he muttered obscurely.

‘So you didn’t know who she was meeting?’

He shook his head. ‘She lied to me. She said she was going to a Christmas party with Dorothy that she works with. But Dorothy turned up at the party I was at. She said Rosie had gone off to meet some bloke. I was going to give her what for when I saw her. I mean, it’s one thing keeping Mum and Dad out of the picture. But me and Colin, we were always on her side.’ He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I cannae bear it. Last thing she said to me was a lie.’

‘When did you see her last?’ Janice slewed to a halt at the West Port and edged forward on to the Strathkinness road.

‘Yesterday, after I’d finished my work. I met her in the town, we went shopping for Mum’s Christmas present. The three of us clubbed together to get her a new hairdrier. Then we went to Boots to get her some nice soap. I walked Rosie to the Lammas and that’s when she told me she was going out with Dorothy.’ He shook his head. ‘She lied. And now she’s dead.’

‘Maybe she didn’t lie, Brian,’ Janice said. ‘Maybe she was planning to go to the party but something came up later in the evening.’ That was probably as truthful as the story Rosie had offered up, but Janice knew from experience that the bereaved would grasp at any straw that kept intact their image of the person they’d lost.

Duff acted true to form. Hope lit his face. ‘You know, that’s probably it. Because Rosie wasn’t a liar.’

‘She had her secrets, though. Like any girl.’

He scowled again. ‘Secrets are trouble. She should have known that.’ Something struck him suddenly and his body tensed. ‘Was she … you know? Interfered with?’

Nothing Janice could say would offer him any comfort. If the rapport she appeared to have established with Duff was going to survive, she couldn’t afford to let him think she too was a liar. ‘We won’t know for sure until after the post mortem, but yes, it looks that way.’

Duff smashed his fist into the dashboard. ‘Bastard,’ he roared. As the car fishtailed up the hill towards Strathkinness, he turned in his seat. ‘Whoever did this, he better fucking hope you catch him before I do. I swear to God, I’ll kill him.’

The house felt violated, Alex thought as he opened the door into the self-contained unit the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy had turned into their personal fiefdom. Cavendish and Greenhalgh, the two English former public schoolboys they shared the house with, spent as little time there as possible, an arrangement that suited everyone perfectly. They’d already gone home for the holidays, but today the braying accents that sounded so stridently posh to Alex would have been far more welcome than the police presence that seemed to dominate the very air he breathed.

Maclennan at his heels, Alex ran upstairs to the room where he slept. ‘Don’t forget, we want everything you’re wearing. That includes underwear,’ Maclennan reminded him as Alex pushed the door open. The detective stood on the threshold, looking mildly puzzled at the sight of two beds in the tiny room that had clearly been designed for only one. ‘Who do you share with?’ he demanded.

Before Alex could reply, Ziggy’s cool tones cut through the atmosphere. ‘He thinks we’re all queer for each other,’ he said sarcastically. ‘And that of course is why we murdered Rosie. Never mind the complete absence of logic, that’s what’s going on in his mind. Actually, Mr Maclennan, the explanation is far more mundane.’ Ziggy gestured over his shoulder at the closed door across the landing. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

Curious, Maclennan seized Ziggy’s invitation. Alex took the opportunity of his turned back to strip himself hastily, grabbing at his dressing gown to cover his embarrassment. He followed the other two across the landing and couldn’t help a smug smile when he saw Maclennan’s bemused expression.

‘You see?’ Ziggy said. ‘There’s simply no room for a full drum kit, a Farfisa organ, two guitars and a bed in one of these rabbit hutches. So Weird and Gilly drew the short straws and ended up sharing.’

‘You boys are in a group, then?’ Maclennan sounded like his father, Alex thought with a pang of affection that surprised him.

‘We’ve been making music together for about five years,’ Ziggy said.

‘What? You’re going to be the next Beatles?’ Maclennan couldn’t let it go.

Ziggy cast his eyes heavenwards. ‘There are two reasons why we’re not going to be the next Beatles. For one thing, we play purely for our own pleasure. Unlike the Rezillos, we have no desire to be on Top of the Pops. The second reason is talent. We’re perfectly competent musicians, but we haven’t got an original musical thought between us. We used to call ourselves Muse until we realized we didn’t have one to call our own. Now we call ourselves the Combine.’

‘The Combine?’ Maclennan echoed faintly, taken aback by Ziggy’s sudden access of confidentiality.

‘Again, two reasons. Combine harvesters gather in everybody else’s crop. Like us. And because of the Jam track of the same name. We just don’t stand out from the crowd.’

Maclennan turned away, shaking his head. ‘We’ll have to search in there as well, you know.’

Ziggy snorted. ‘The only lawbreaking you’ll find evidence of in there is breach of copyright,’ he said. ‘Look, we’ve all co-operated with you and your officers. When are you going to leave us in peace?’

‘Just as soon as we’ve bagged all your clothes. We’d also like any diaries, appointment books, address books.’

‘Alex, give the man what he wants. We’ve all handed our stuff over. The sooner we get our space back, the sooner we can get our heads straight.’ Ziggy turned back to Maclennan. ‘You see, what you and your minions seem to have taken no notice of is the fact that we have had a terrible experience. We stumbled on the bleeding, dying body of a young woman that we actually knew, however slightly.’ His voice cracked, revealing the fragility of his cool surface. ‘If we seem odd to you, Mr Maclennan, you should bear in mind that it might have something to do with the fact that we’ve had our heads royally fucked up tonight.’

Ziggy pushed past the policeman and took the stairs at a run, wheeling into the kitchen and slamming the door behind him. Maclennan’s narrow face took on a pinched look around the mouth.

‘He’s right,’ Alex said mildly.

‘There’s a family up in Strathkinness who’ve had a far worse night than you, son. And it’s my job to find some answers for them. If that means treading on your tender corns, that’s just tough. Now, let’s have your clothes. And the other stuff.’

He stood on the threshold while Alex piled his filthy clothes into a bin liner. ‘You need my shoes as well?’ Alex said, holding them up, his face worried.

‘Everything,’ Maclennan said, making a mental note to tell forensics to take special care with Gilbey’s footwear.

‘Only, I’ve not got another decent pair. Just baseball boots, and they’re neither use nor ornament in weather like this.’

‘My heart bleeds. In the bag, son.’

Alex threw his shoes on top of the clothes. ‘You’re wasting your time here, you know. Every minute you spend concentrating on us is a minute lost. We’ve got nothing to hide. We didn’t kill Rosie.’

‘As far as I’m aware, nobody has said you did. But the way you guys keep going on about it is starting to make me wonder.’ Maclennan grabbed the bag from Alex and took the battered university diary he proffered. ‘We’ll be back, Mr Gilbey. Don’t go anywhere.’

‘We’re supposed to be going home today,’ Alex protested.

Maclennan stopped two steps down the stairs. ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ he said suspiciously.

‘I don’t suppose you asked. We’re due to get the bus this afternoon. We’ve all got holiday jobs starting tomorrow. Well, all except Ziggy.’ His mouth twitched in a sardonic smile. ‘His dad believes students need to work on their books in the school holidays, not stacking shelves in Safeway.’

Maclennan considered. Suspicions based mostly on his gut didn’t justify demanding that they remained in St Andrews. It wasn’t as if they were about to flee the jurisdiction. Kirkcaldy was only a short drive away, after all. ‘You can go home,’ he said finally. ‘Just as long as you don’t mind me and my team turning up on your parents’ doorsteps.’

Alex watched him leave, dismay dragging him further into depression. Just what he needed to make the festive season go with a swing.

6

The events of the night had caught up with Weird at least. When Alex went upstairs after a glum cup of coffee with Ziggy, Weird was in his usual position. Flat on his back, his gangling legs and arms thrown out from under the bedclothes, he shattered the relative peace of the morning with grumbling snores that mutated every now and again into a high-pitched whistle. Normally, Alex had no trouble sleeping to the strident soundtrack. His bedroom at home backed on to the railway tracks, so he’d never been accustomed to night silence.

But this morning, Alex knew without even trying that he’d never drop off with Weird’s noises as a backdrop to his racing thoughts. Even though he felt lightheaded with lack of sleep, he wasn’t in the least drowsy. He gathered an armful of clothes from his chair, scrabbled under the bed for his baseball boots and backed out of the room. He dressed in the bathroom and crept downstairs, not wanting to wake Weird or Mondo. He didn’t even want Ziggy’s company for once. He paused by the coat hooks in the hall. His parka was gone with the police. That only left a denim jacket or a kagoule. He grabbed them both and headed out.

The snow had stopped, but the clouds were still low and heavy. The town seemed smothered in cotton wool. The world had turned monochrome. If he half-closed his eyes, the white buildings of Fife Park disappeared, the purity of the vista defeated only by the rectangles of blank windows. Sound had disappeared too, smothered under the weight of the weather. Alex struck out across what would have been grass towards the main road. Today, it resembled a track in the Cairngorms, flattened snow indicating where occasional vehicles had toiled past. Nobody who didn’t absolutely have to was driving in these conditions. By the time he reached the university playing fields, his feet were wet and freezing, and somehow that felt appropriate. Alex turned up the drive and headed out towards the hockey pitches. In the middle of an expanse of white, he brushed a goalmouth backboard clear of snow and perched on it. He sat, elbows on knees, chin cupped in his hands, and stared out over the unbroken tablecloth of snow until little lights danced in front of his vision.

Try as he might, Alex couldn’t get his mind as blank as the view. Images of Rosie Duff flitted behind his eyes like static. Rosie pulling a pint of Guinness, serious concentration on her face. Rosie half turned away, laughing at some quip from a customer. Rosie raising her eyebrows, teasing him about something he’d said. Those were the memories he could just about cope with. But they wouldn’t settle. They were constantly chased away by the other Rosie. Face twisted in pain. Bleeding on the snow. Gasping for her last breaths.

Alex leaned down and grabbed a couple of handfuls of snow, clenching them tight in his fists until his hands started to turn reddish purple with cold and drops of water ran down to his wrists. Cold turned to pain, pain to numbness. He wished there was something he could do to provoke the same response in his head. Turn it off, turn it all off. Leave a blank the brilliant white of the snowfield.

When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he nearly pissed himself. Alex stumbled forward and upward, almost sprawling in the snow but catching himself just in time. He whirled round, hands still fists against his chest. ‘Ziggy,’ he shouted. ‘Christ, you nearly scared the shit out of me.’

‘Sorry.’ Ziggy looked on the point of tears. ‘I said your name, but you didn’t react.’

‘I didn’t hear you. Christ, creeping up on people like that, you’ll get a bad name, man,’ Alex said with a shaky laugh, trying to make a joke of his fear.

Ziggy scuffed at the snow with the toe of his wellies. ‘I know you probably wanted to be on your own, but when I saw you go out, I came after you.’

‘It’s OK, Zig.’ Alex bent over and swept more snow off the backboard. ‘Join me on my luxurious couch, where harem girls will feed us sherbet and rose water.’

Ziggy managed a faint smile. ‘I’ll pass on the sherbet. It makes my tongue nip. You don’t mind?’

‘I don’t mind, OK?’

‘I was worried about you, that’s all. You knew her better than any of us. I didn’t know if you wanted to talk, away from the others?’

Alex hunched into his jacket and shook his head. ‘I’ve nothing much to say. I just keep seeing her face. I didn’t think I could sleep.’ He sighed. ‘Hell, no. What I mean is, I was too frightened to try. When I was wee, a friend of my dad’s was in an accident in the shipyard. Some sort of explosion, I don’t know exactly what. Anyway, it left him with half a face. Literally. He had half a face. The other half’s a plastic mask he has to wear over the burn tissue. You’ve probably seen him down the street or at the football. He’s hard to miss. My dad took me to see him in the hospital. I was only five. And it freaked me out completely. I kept imagining what was behind the mask. When I went to sleep at night, I’d wake up screaming because he’d be there in my dreams. Sometimes when the mask came off, it was maggots. Sometimes it was a bloody mess, like those illustrations in your anatomy textbooks. The worst one was when the mask came off and there was nothing there, just smooth skin with the echoes of what should be there.’ He coughed. ‘That’s why I’m frightened to go to sleep.’

Ziggy put his arm round Alex’s shoulders. ‘That’s a hard one, Alex. Thing is, though, you’re older now. What we saw last night, that was as bad as it gets. There’s really nothing much your imagination can do to make it worse. Whatever you dream now, it’s not going to be half as bad as seeing Rosie like that.’

Alex wished he could take more comfort from Ziggy’s words. But he sensed they were only half true. ‘I guess we’re all going to have demons to deal with after last night,’ he said.

‘Some more practical than others,’ Ziggy said, taking his arm back and clasping his hands. ‘I don’t know how, but Maclennan picked up on me being gay.’ He bit his lip.

‘Oh, shit,’ Alex said.

‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told, you know that?’ Ziggy’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘Well, apart from the guys I’ve been with, obviously.’

‘Obviously. How did he know?’ Alex asked.

‘I was being so careful not to lie, he spotted the truth in between the cracks. And now I’m worried that it’s going to spread out further.’

‘Why should it?’

‘You know how people love to gossip. I don’t suppose cops are any different from anybody else in that respect. They’re bound to talk to the university. If they wanted to put pressure on us, that would be one way to do it. And what if they come and see us at home in Kirkcaldy? What if Maclennan thinks it would be a smart move to out me to my parents?’

‘He’s not going to do that, Ziggy. We’re witnesses. There’s no mileage for him in alienating us.’

Ziggy sighed. ‘I wish I could believe you. As far as I can see, Maclennan is treating us more like suspects than witnesses. And that means he’ll use anything as a pressure point, doesn’t it?’

‘I think you’re being paranoid.’

‘Maybe. But what if he says something to Weird or Mondo?’

‘They’re your friends. They’re not going to turn their backs on you over that.’

Ziggy snorted. ‘I tell you what I think would happen if Maclennan lets slip that their best mate is a poof. I think Weird will want to fight me and Mondo will never walk into a toilet with me again as long as he lives. They’re homophobic, Alex. You know that.’

‘They’ve known you half their lives. That’s going to count for a lot more than stupid prejudice. I didn’t freak out when you told me,’ Alex said.

‘I told you precisely because I knew you wouldn’t freak out. You’re not a knee-jerk Neanderthal.’

Alex pulled a self-deprecating face. ‘It was a pretty safe bet, telling somebody whose favourite painter is Caravaggio, I suppose. But they’re not dinosaurs either, Ziggy. They’d take it on board. Revise their world view in the light of what they know about you. I really don’t think you should lose sleep over it.’

Ziggy shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right. I’d prefer not to put it to the test, though. And even if they’re all right, what happens if it gets out? How many out gays can you name in this university? All those English public schoolboys who spent their teens buggering each other, they’re not out of the closet, are they? They’re all running about with Fionas and Fenellas, securing the succession. Look at Jeremy Thorpe. He’s standing trial for conspiring to murder his ex-lover, just to keep his homosexuality quiet. This isn’t San Francisco, Alex. This is St Andrews. I’ve got years before I qualify as a doctor, and I tell you now, my career is dead in the water if Maclennan outs me.’

‘It’s not going to happen, Ziggy. You’re getting things out of proportion. You’re tired, and you said yourself, we’ve all had our heads fucked up by what’s happened. I tell you what I’m a lot more concerned about.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The Land Rover. What the fuck are we going to do about that?’

‘We’ll have to bring it back. There’s no other option. Otherwise it gets reported stolen, and we’re in big trouble.’

‘Sure, I know that. But when?’ Alex asked. ‘We can’t do it today. Whoever dumped Rosie there must have had some sort of vehicle, and the one thing that makes us look less like suspects is that none of us has a car. But if we’re spotted tooling around in the snow in a Land Rover, we go straight to number one on Maclennan’s hit parade.’

‘Same thing applies if a Land Rover suddenly appears smack bang outside our house,’ Ziggy said.

‘So what do we do?’

Ziggy kicked at the snow between his feet. ‘I suppose we just have to wait till the heat dies down, then I’ll come back and shift it. Thank God I remembered about the keys in time to shove them into the waistband of my underpants. Otherwise we’d have been screwed when Maclennan made us turn out our pockets.’

‘You’re not kidding. You sure you want to move it?’

‘The rest of you have got holiday jobs. I can easily get away. All I have to do is make some excuse about needing the university library.’

Alex shifted uneasily on his perch. ‘I suppose it has occurred to you that covering up the fact we had the Land Rover might just be letting a killer off the hook?’

Ziggy looked shocked. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting … ?’

‘What? That one of us could have done it?’ Alex couldn’t believe he’d given voice to the insidious suspicions that had wormed their way into his consciousness. Hastily, he tried to cover up. ‘No. But those keys were floating around at the party. Maybe somebody else saw a chance and took it …’ His voice tailed off.

‘You know that didn’t happen. And in your heart, you know you don’t really believe one of us could have murdered Rosie,’ Ziggy said confidently.

Alex wished he could be so sure. Who knew what went on in Weird’s head when he was drugged up to the eyeballs? And what about Mondo? He’d driven that girl home, obviously thinking he was in there. But what if she’d knocked him back? He’d have been pissed off and frustrated, and maybe just drunk enough to want to take it out on another lassie who had knocked him back as Rosie had more than once in the Lammas. What if he’d come across her on his way back? He shook his head. It didn’t bear thinking about.

As if sensing the thoughts in Alex’s head, Ziggy said softly, ‘If you’re thinking about Weird and Mondo, you have to include me in the list. I had just as much chance as them. And I hope you know what a ludicrous idea that is.’

‘It’s insane. You’d never hurt anybody.’

‘Same goes for the other two. Suspicion’s like a virus, Alex. You’ve picked it up off Maclennan. But you need to shake it off before it takes hold and infects your head and your heart. Remember what you know about us. None of that matches up with a cold-blooded killer.’

Ziggy’s words didn’t quite dispel Alex’s unease, but he didn’t want to discuss it. Instead, he put his arm round Ziggy’s shoulders. ‘You’re a pal, Zig. Come on. Let’s go into town. I’ll treat you to a pancake.’

Ziggy grinned. ‘Last of the big spenders, huh? I’ll pass, if you don’t mind. Somehow, I don’t feel that hungry. And remember: All for one and one for all. That’s not about being blind to each other’s faults, but it is about trusting each other. It’s a trust that’s based on years of solid knowledge. Don’t let Maclennan undermine that.’

Barney Maclennan looked round the CID room. For once it was packed out. Unusually among plain-clothes detectives, Maclennan believed in including the uniformed officers in his briefings on major cases. It gave them a stake in the investigation. Besides, they were so much closer to the ground, they were likely to pick up things detectives might miss. Making them feel part of the team meant they were more inclined to follow those observations through rather than put them to one side as irrelevant.

He stood at the far end of the room, flanked by Burnside and Shaw, one hand in his trouser pocket obsessively turning over coins. He felt brittle with tiredness and strain, but knew that adrenaline would keep him fired for hours to come. It was always the way when he was following his gut. ‘You know why we’re here,’ he said once they’d settled down. ‘The body of a young woman was discovered in the early hours of this morning on Hallow Hill. Rosie Duff was killed by a single stab wound to her stomach. It’s too early for much detail, but it’s likely she was also raped. We don’t get many cases like this on our patch, but that’s no reason why we can’t clear it up. And quickly. There’s a family out there that deserves answers.

‘So far, we’ve not got much to go on. Rosie was found by four students on their way back to Fife Park from a party in Learmonth Gardens. Now, they may be innocent bystanders, but equally they might be a hell of a lot more than that. They’re the only people we know that were walking around in the middle of the night covered in blood. I want a team to check out the party. Who was there? What did they see? Have our lads really got alibis? Are there any chunks of time unaccounted for? What was their behaviour like? DC Shaw will lead this team, and I’d like some of the uniformed officers to work with him. Let’s put the fear of God into these partygoers.

‘Now, Rosie worked in the Lammas Bar, as I’m sure a few of you know?’ He looked around, seeing a handful of nods, including one from PC Jimmy Lawson, the officer who had been first on the scene. He knew Lawson; young and ambitious; he’d respond well to a bit of responsibility. ‘These four were drinking in there earlier in the evening. So I want DC Burnside to take another team and talk to everybody you can find who was in there last night. Was anybody taking particular notice of Rosie? What were our four lads doing? How were they acting? PC Lawson, you drink in there. I want you to liaise with DC Burnside, give him all the help you can to nail down the regulars.’ Maclennan paused, looking round the room.

‘We also need to do door-to-door in Trinity Place. Rosie didn’t walk to Hallow Hill. Whoever did this had some sort of transport. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the local insomniac. Or at least somebody who got up for a pee. Any vehicles seen on the move down that way in the early hours of the morning, I want to know about it.’

Maclennan looked round the room. ‘Chances are Rosie knew the person who did this. Some stranger grabbing her off the street wouldn’t have bothered to move her dying body. So we need to go through her life too. Her family and friends aren’t going to enjoy that, so we need to be sensitive to their grief. But that doesn’t mean we settle for coming back with half a tale. There’s somebody out there who killed last night. And I want him brought to book before he gets the chance to do it again.’ There was a murmur of agreement through the room. ‘Any questions?’

To his surprise, Lawson raised a hand, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘Sir? I wondered if there was any significance in the choice of where the body was dumped?’

‘How do you mean?’ Maclennan asked.

‘With it being the Pictish cemetery. Maybe this was some sort of satanic rite? In which case, could it not have been a stranger who just picked on Rosie because she fitted in with what he needed for a human sacrifice?’

Maclennan’s skin crawled at the possibility. What was he thinking of, not to have considered this option? If it had occurred to Jimmy Lawson, it might well occur to the press. And the last thing he wanted was headlines proclaiming there was a ritual killer on the loose. ‘That’s an interesting thought. And one we should all bear in mind. But not one we should mention outside these four walls. For now, let’s concentrate on what we know for sure. The students, the Lammas Bar and the door-to-door. That doesn’t mean closing our eyes to other possibilities. Let’s get busy.’

The briefing over, Maclennan walked through the room, pausing for a word of encouragement here and there as officers bunched around desks, organizing their tasks. He couldn’t help hoping they could tie this to one of the students. That way, they might get a swift result, which was what counted with the public in cases like this. Even better, it wouldn’t leave the town with the taste of suspicion on its tongue. It was always easier when the bad guys came from the outside. Even if the outside, in this instance, was a mere thirty miles away.

Ziggy and Alex got back to their residence with an hour to spare before they had to leave for the bus station. They’d walked down to check and had been assured that the country services were running, although the timetable was more honoured in the breach than the observance. ‘You take your chances,’ the booking clerk had told them. ‘I can’t guarantee a time, but buses there will be.’

They found Weird and Mondo hunched over coffee in the kitchen, both looking disgruntled and unshaven. ‘I thought you were out for the count,’ Alex said, filling the kettle for a fresh brew.

‘Fat fucking chance,’ Weird grumbled.

‘We reckoned without the vultures,’ Mondo said. ‘Journalists. They keep knocking at the door and we keep telling them to piss off. Doesn’t work, though. Ten minutes go by and there they are again.’

‘It’s like a fucking “knock, knock” joke in here. I told the last one if he didn’t piss off, I’d knock his puss into the middle of next week.’

‘Mmm,’ said Alex. ‘And the winner of this year’s Mrs Joyful Prize for Tact and Diplomacy is …’

‘What? I should have let them in?’ Weird exploded. ‘These arseholes, you have to talk to them in language they understand. They don’t take no for an answer, you know.’

Ziggy rinsed a couple of mugs and spooned coffee into them. ‘We didn’t see anyone just now, did we, Alex?’

‘No. Weird must have persuaded them of the error of their ways. If they come back, though, you don’t think we should just give them a statement? It’s not like we’ve got anything to hide.’

‘It would get them off our backs,’ Mondo agreed, but in the way that Mondo always agreed. He specialized in a tone of voice that managed to suggest doubt, always leaving himself a way out if he found himself accidentally swimming against the tide. His need to be loved coloured everything he said, everything he did. That and his need to protect himself.

‘If you think I’m talking to the running dogs of capitalist imperialism, you’ve another think coming.’ Weird, on the other hand, never left room for qualms. ‘They’re scum. When did you ever read a match report that bore any resemblance to the game you’d just seen? Look at the way they ripped the piss out of Ally McLeod. Before we went to Argentina, the man was a god, the hero who was going to bring the World Cup home. And now? He’s not good enough to wipe your arse with. If they can’t get something as straightforward as football right, what chance have we got of getting away without being misquoted?’

‘I love it when Weird wakes up in a good mood,’ Ziggy said. ‘But he’s got a point, Alex. Better to keep our heads down. They’ll have moved on to the next big thing by tomorrow.’ He stirred his coffee and made for the door. ‘I’ve got to finish my packing. We better give ourselves a bit of leeway, leave a bit earlier than usual. It’s hard going underfoot and, thanks to Maclennan, none of us have got decent shoes. I can’t believe I’m walking around in wellies.’

‘Watch out, the style police’ll get you,’ Weird shouted after him. He yawned and stretched. ‘I can’t believe how tired I am. Has anybody got any dexys?’

‘If we did, they’d have been flushed down the toilet hours ago,’ Mondo said. ‘Are you forgetting the pigs have been crawling all over the place?’

Weird looked abashed. ‘Sorry. I’m not thinking straight. You know, when I woke up, I could almost believe last night was nothing more than a bad trip. That would have been enough to put me off acid for life, I tell you.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor lassie.’

Alex took that as his cue to disappear upstairs and cram a last bundle of books in his holdall. He wasn’t sorry to be going home. For the first time since he’d started living with the other three, he felt claustrophobic. He longed for his own bedroom; a door he could close that nobody else would think of opening without permission.

It was time to leave. Three holdalls and Ziggy’s towering rucksack were piled in the hall. The Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy were ready to head for home. They shouldered their bags and opened the door, Ziggy leading the way. Unfortunately, the effect of Weird’s hard words had apparently worn off. As they emerged on the churned-up slush of their path, five men materialized as if from nowhere. Three carried cameras, and before the foursome even realized what was happening, the air was thick with the sounds of Nikon motor drives.

The two journalists were coming round the flank of the photographers, shouting questions. They managed to make themselves sound like an entire press conference, so quickfire were their enquiries. ‘How did you find the girl?’ ‘Which one of you made the discovery?’ ‘What were you doing on Hallow Hill in the middle of the night?’ ‘Was this some sort of satanic rite?’ And of course, inevitably, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Fuck off,’ Weird roared at them, swinging his heavy bag in front of him like an overweight scythe. ‘We’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ Mondo muttered like a record stuck in the groove.

‘Back indoors,’ Ziggy shouted. ‘Get back inside.’

Alex, bringing up the rear, reversed hastily. Mondo tumbled in, almost tripping over him in his haste to get away from the insistent badgering and the clicking cameras. Weird and Ziggy followed, slamming the door behind them. They looked at each other, hunted and haunted. ‘What do we do now?’ Mondo asked, voicing what they were all wondering. They all looked blank. This was a situation entirely outwith their limited experience of the world.

‘We can’t sit tight,’ Mondo continued petulantly. ‘We’ve got to get back to Kirkcaldy. I’m supposed to start at Safeway at six tomorrow morning.’

‘Me and Alex too,’ said Weird. They all looked expectantly at Ziggy.

‘OK. What if we go out the back way?’

‘There isn’t a back way, Ziggy. We’ve only got a front door,’ Weird pointed out.

‘There’s a toilet window. You three can get out that way, and I’ll stay put. I’ll move around upstairs, putting lights on and stuff so they’ll think we’re still here. I can go home tomorrow, when the heat’s died down.’

The other three exchanged looks. It wasn’t a bad idea. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’ Alex asked.

‘I’ll be fine. As long as one of you rings my mum and dad and explains why I’m still here. I don’t want them finding out about this from the papers.’

‘I’ll phone,’ Alex volunteered. ‘Thanks, Ziggy.’

Ziggy raised his arm and the other three followed suit. They gripped hands in a familiar four-way clasp. ‘All for one,’ Weird said.

‘And one for all,’ the others chorused. It made as much sense now as it had when they’d first done it nine years before. For the first time since he’d stumbled over Rosie Duff in the snow, Alex felt a faint flicker of comfort.

7

Alex trudged over the railway bridge, turning right into Balsusney Road. Kirkcaldy was like a different country. As the bus had meandered its way along the Fife Coast, the snow had gradually given way to slush, then to this biting grey damp. By the time the northeast wind made it this far, it had dumped its load of snow and had nothing to offer the more sheltered towns further up the estuary but chilly gusts of rain. He felt like one of Breughel’s more miserable peasants plodding wearily home.

Alex lifted the latch on the familiar wrought-iron gate and walked up the short path to the little stone villa where he’d grown up. He fumbled his keys out of his trouser pocket and let himself in. A blast of warmth enveloped him. They’d had central heating installed over the summer, and this was the first time he’d experienced the difference it made. He dumped his bag by the door and shouted, ‘I’m home.’

His mother appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. ‘Alex, it’s lovely to have you back. Come away through, there’s soup and there’s stew. We’ve had our tea, I was expecting you earlier. I suppose it was the weather? I saw on the local news you’d had it bad up there.’

He let her words wash over him, their familiar tone and content a security blanket. He hauled off his kagoule and walked down the hall to give her a hug. ‘You look tired, son,’ she said, concern in her voice.

‘I’ve had a pretty terrible night, Mum,’ he said, following her back into the tiny kitchen.

From the living room, his father’s voice. ‘Is that you, Alex?’

‘Aye, Dad,’ he called back. ‘I’ll be through in a minute.’

His mother was already dishing up a plate of soup, handing him the bowl and a spoon. While there was food to be served, Mary Gilbey had no attention to be spared for minor details like personal grief. ‘Away and sit with your dad. I’ll heat up the stew. There’s a baked potato in the oven.’

Alex went through to the living room where his father sat in his armchair, the TV facing him. There was a place set at the dining table in the corner and Alex sat down to his soup. ‘All right, son?’ his father asked, not taking his eyes off the game show on the screen.

‘No, not really.’

That got his father’s attention. Jock Gilbey turned and gave his son the sort of scrutiny that schoolteachers are adept at. ‘You don’t look good,’ he said. ‘What’s bothering you?’

Alex swallowed a spoonful of soup. He hadn’t felt hungry, but at the first taste of home-made Scotch broth, he’d realized he was ravenous. The last he’d eaten had been at the party and he’d lost that twice over. All he wanted now was to fill his belly, but he was going to have to sing for his supper. ‘A terrible thing happened last night,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘There was a girl murdered. And it was us that found her. Well, me, actually, but Ziggy and Weird and Mondo were with me.’

His father stared, mouth agape. His mother had walked in on the tail end of Alex’s revelation and her hands flew to her face, her eyes wide and horrified. ‘Oh, Alex, that’s … Oh, you poor wee soul,’ she said, rushing to him and taking his hand.

‘It was really bad,’ Alex said. ‘She’d been stabbed. And she was still alive when we found her.’ He blinked hard. ‘We ended up spending the rest of the night at the police station. They took all our clothes and everything, like they thought we had something to do with it. Because we knew her, you see. Well, not really knew her. But she was a barmaid in one of the pubs we sometimes go to.’ Appetite deserted him at the memory, and he put his spoon down, his head bowed. A tear formed at the corner of his eye and trickled down his cheek.

‘I’m awful sorry, son,’ his father said inadequately. ‘That must have been a hell of a shock.’

Alex tried to swallow the lump in his throat. ‘Before I forget,’ he said, pushing his chair back. ‘I need to phone Mr Malkiewicz and tell him Ziggy won’t be home tonight.’

Jock Gilbey’s eyes widened in shock. ‘They’ve not kept him at the police station?’

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ Alex said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘We had journalists on the doorstep at Fife Park, wanting pictures and interviews. And we didn’t want to talk to them. So me and Weird and Mondo climbed out the toilet window and went off the back way. We’re all supposed to be working at Safeway tomorrow, see? But Ziggy’s not got a job, so he said he’d stay behind and come home tomorrow. We didn’t want to leave the window unlocked, you know? So I’ve got to phone his dad and explain.’

Alex gently freed himself from his mother’s hand and went through to the hall. He lifted the phone and dialled Ziggy’s number from memory. He heard the ringing tone, then the familiar Polish-accented Scots of Karel Malkiewicz. Here we go again, Alex thought. He was going to have to explain last night once more. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time either.

‘This is what happens when you fritter the nights away drinking and God knows what else,’ Frank Mackie said bitterly. ‘You get yourself in bother with the police. I’m a respected man in this town, you know. The police have never been at my door. But all it takes is one useless galloot like you, and we’ll be the talk of the steamie.’

‘If we hadn’t been out late, she’d have lain there till morning. She’d have died on her own,’ Weird protested.

‘That’s none of my concern,’ his father said, crossing the room and pouring himself a whisky from the corner bar he’d had installed in the front room to impress those of his clients deemed respectable enough to be invited into his home. It was fitting, he thought, that an accountant should show the trappings of achievement. All he’d wanted was for his son to show some signs of aspiration, but instead, he had spawned a useless waster of a boy who spent his nights in the pub. What was worse was that Tom clearly had a gift for figures. But instead of harnessing that practically by going in for accountancy, he’d chosen the airy-fairy world of pure mathematics. As if that was the first step on the road to prosperity and decency. ‘Well, that’s that. You’re staying in every night, my lad. No parties, no pubs for you this holiday. You’re confined to barracks. You go to your work, and you come straight home.’

‘But Dad, it’s Christmas,’ Weird protested. ‘Everybody will be out. I want to catch up with my pals.’

‘You should have thought about that before you got yourself in trouble with the police. You’ve got exams this year. You can use the time to study. You’ll thank me for it, you know.’

‘But Dad …

‘That’s my last word on the subject. While you live under my roof, while I’m paying for you to go to the university, you’ll do as you’re told. When you start earning a living wage of your own, then you can make the rules. Till then, you do as I say. Now get out of my sight.’

Fuming, Weird stormed out of the room and ran up the stairs. God, he hated his family. And he hated this house. Raith Estate was supposed to be the last word in modern living, but he thought this was yet another con perpetrated by the grey men in suits. You didn’t have to be smart to recognize that this wasn’t a patch on the house they used to live in. Stone walls, solid wooden doors with panels and beading, stained glass in the landing window. That was a house. OK, this box had more rooms, but they were poky, the ceilings and doorways so low that Weird felt he had to stoop constantly to accommodate his six feet and three inches. The walls were paper thin too. You could hear someone fart in the next room. Which was pretty funny, when you thought about it. His parents were so repressed, they wouldn’t know an emotion if it bit them on the leg. And yet they’d spent a fortune on a house that stripped everyone of privacy. Sharing a room with Alex felt more privileged than living under his parents’ roof.

Why had they never made any attempt to understand the first thing about him? He felt as if he’d spent his whole life in rebellion. Nothing he achieved had ever cut any ice here because it didn’t fit the narrow confines of his parents’ aspirations. When he’d been crowned school chess champion, his father had harrumphed that he’d have been better off joining the bridge team. When he’d asked to take up a musical instrument, his father had refused point blank, offering to buy him a set of golf clubs instead. When he’d won the mathematics prize every single year in high school, his father had responded by buying him books on accountancy, completely missing the point. Maths to Weird wasn’t about totting up figures; it was the beauty of the graph of a quadratic equation, the elegance of calculus, the mysterious language of algebra. If it hadn’t been for his pals, he’d have felt like a complete freak. As it was, they’d given him a place to let off steam safely, a chance to spread his wings without crashing and burning.

And all he’d done in return was to give them grief. Guilt washed over him as he remembered his latest madness. This time, he’d gone too far. It had started as a joke, nicking Henry Cavendish’s motor. He’d had no idea then where it might lead. None of the others could save him from the consequences if this came out, he realized that. He only hoped he wouldn’t bring them down with him.

Weird slotted his new Clash tape into the stereo and threw himself down on the bed. He’d listen to the first side, then he’d get ready for bed. He had to be up at five to meet Alex and Mondo for their early shift at the supermarket. Normally, the prospect of rising so early would have depressed the hell out of him. But the way things were here, it would be a relief to be out of the house, a mercy to have something to stop his mind spinning in circles. Christ, he wished he had a joint.

At least his father’s emotional brutality had pushed the invasive thoughts of Rosie Duff to one side. By the time Joe Strummer sang ‘Julie’s in the Drug Squad’, Weird was locked in deep, dreamless sleep.

Karel Malkiewicz drove like an old man at the best of times. Hesitant, slow, entirely unpredictable at junctions. He was also a fair-weather driver. Under normal circumstances, the first sign of fog or frost would mean the car stayed put and he’d walk down the steep hill of Massareene Road to Bennochy, where he could catch a bus that would take him to Factory Road and his work as an electrician in the floor-covering works. It had been a long time since the disappearance of the pall of linseed oil that had given the town its reputation of ‘the queer-like smell’, but although linoleum had plummeted out of fashion, what came out of Nairn’s factory still covered the floors of millions of kitchens, bathrooms and hallways. It had given Karel Malkiewicz a decent living since he’d come out of the RAF after the war, and he was grateful.

That didn’t mean he’d forgotten the reasons why he’d left Krakow in the first place. Nobody could survive that toxic atmosphere of mistrust and perfidy without scars, especially not a Polish Jew who had been lucky enough to get out before the pogrom that had left him without a family to call his own.

He’d had to rebuild his life, create a new family for himself. His old family had never been particularly observant, so he hadn’t felt too bereft by his abandonment of his religion. There were no Jews in Kirkcaldy, he remembered someone telling him a few days after he’d arrived in the town. The sentiment was clear: ‘That’s the way we like it.’ And so he’d assimilated, even going so far as to marry his wife in a Catholic church. He’d learned how to belong in this strange, insular land that had made him welcome. He’d surprised himself at the fierce possessive pride he’d felt when a Pole had become Pope so recently. He so seldom thought of himself as Polish these days.

He’d been almost forty when the son he’d always dreamed of had finally arrived. It was a cause for rejoicing, but also for a renewal of fear. Now he had so much more to lose. This was a civilized country. The fascists could never gain a hold here. That was the received wisdom, anyway. But Germany too had been a civilized country. No one could predict what might happen in any country when the numbers of the dispossessed reached a critical mass. Anyone who promised salvation would find a following.

And lately, there had been good grounds for fear. The National Front were creeping through the political undergrowth. Strikes and industrial unrest were making the government edgy. The IRA’s bombing campaign gave the politicians all the excuses they needed for introducing repressive measures. And that cold bitch who ran the Tory party talked of immigrants swamping the indigenous culture. Oh yes, the seeds were all there.

So when Alex Gilbey had rung and told him his son had spent the night in a police station, Karel Malkiewicz had no choice. He wanted his boy under his roof, under his wing. Nobody would come and take his son away in the night. He wrapped up warmly, instructing his wife to prepare a flask of hot soup and a parcel of sandwiches. Then he set off across Fife to bring his son home.

It took him nearly two hours to negotiate the thirty miles in his elderly Vauxhall. But he was relieved to see lights on in the house Sigmund shared with his friends. He parked the car, picked up his supplies and marched up the path.

There was no answer to his knocking at first. He stepped gingerly on to the snow and looked in through the brightly lit kitchen window. The room was empty. He banged on the window and shouted, ‘Sigmund! Open up, it’s your father.’

He heard the sound of feet clattering down stairs, then the door opened to reveal his handsome son, grinning from ear to ear, his arms spread wide in welcome. ‘Dad,’ he said, stepping barefoot into the slush to embrace his father. ‘I didn’t expect to see you.’

‘Alex called. I didn’t want you to be alone. So I came to get you.’ Karel clasped his son to him, the butterfly of fear beating its wings inside his chest. Love, he thought, was a terrible thing.

Mondo sat cross-legged on his bed, within easy reach of his turntable. He was listening, over and over again, to his personal theme, ‘Shine On, You Crazy Diamond’. The swooping guitars, the heartfelt anguish of Roger Waters’ voice, the elegiac synths, the breathy saxophone provided the perfect soundtrack for wallowing to.

And wallowing was exactly what Mondo wanted to do. He’d escaped the smother of his mother’s concern that had swamped him as soon as he’d explained what had happened. It had been quite pleasant for a while, the familiar cocoon of concern spinning itself around him. But gradually, it had started to stifle him and he’d excused himself with the need to be alone. The Greta Garbo routine always worked with his mother, who thought he was an intellectual because he read books in French. It seemed to escape her notice that that’s what you had to do when you were studying the subject at degree level.

Just as well, really. He couldn’t have begun to explain the turmoil of emotion that threatened to swamp him. Violence was alien to him, a foreign language whose grammar and vocabulary he’d never assimilated. His recent confrontation with it had left him feeling shaky and strange. He couldn’t honestly say he was sorry Rosie Duff was dead; she’d humiliated him in front of his friends more than once when he’d tried on the chat-up lines that seemed to work with other lassies. But he was sorry that her death had plummeted him into this difficult place where he didn’t belong.

What he really needed was sex. That would take his mind off the horrors of the night before. It would be a sort of therapy. Like getting back on the horse. Unfortunately, he lacked the amenity of a girlfriend in Kirkcaldy. Maybe he should make a couple of phone calls. One or two of his exes would be more than happy to renew their relationship. They’d be a willing ear for his woes and it would tide him over the holidays at least. Judith, maybe. Or Liz. Yeah, probably Liz. The chubby ones were always so pathetically grateful for a date, they came across with no effort at all. He could feel himself growing hard at the thought.

Just as he was about to get off the bed and go downstairs to the phone, there was a knock at his door. ‘Come in,’ he sighed wearily, wondering what his mother wanted now. He shifted his position to hide his budding erection.

But it wasn’t his mother. It was his fifteen-year-old sister Lynn. ‘Mum thought you might like a Coke,’ she said, waving the glass at him.

‘I can think of things I’d rather have,’ he said.

‘You must be really upset,’ Lynn said. ‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like.’

In the absence of a girlfriend, he’d have to make do with impressing his sister. ‘It was pretty tough,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to go through that again in a hurry. And the police were Neanderthal imbeciles. Why they felt the need to interrogate us as if we were IRA bombers, I’ll never know. It took real guts to stand up to them, I can tell you.’

For some reason, Lynn wasn’t giving him the unthinking adoration and support he deserved. She leaned against the wall, her expression that of someone waiting for a break in the flow so she could get to what was really on her mind. ‘It must have done,’ she said mechanically.

‘We’ll probably have to face more questioning,’ he added.

‘It must have been awful for Alex. How is he?’

‘Gilly? Well, he’s hardly Mr Sensitive. He’ll get over it.’

‘Alex is a lot more sensitive than you give him credit for,’ Lynn said fiercely. ‘Just because he played rugby, you think he’s all muscle and no heart. He must be really torn up about it, especially with him knowing the girl.’

Mondo cursed inwardly. He’d momentarily forgotten the crush his sister had on Alex. She wasn’t in here to give him Coke and sympathy, she was here because it gave her an excuse to talk about Alex. ‘It’s probably just as well for him that he didn’t know her as well as he’d have liked to.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He fancied her something rotten. He even asked her out. Now, if she’d said yes, then you can bet your bottom dollar that Alex would be the prime suspect.’

Lynn flushed. ‘You’re making it up. Alex wouldn’t go around chasing barmaids.’

Mondo gave a cruel little smile. ‘Wouldn’t he? I don’t think you know your precious Alex as well as you think.’

‘You’re a creep, you know that?’ Lynn said. ‘Why are you being so horrible about Alex? He’s supposed to be one of your best friends.’

She slammed out, leaving him to ponder her question. Why was he being so horrible about Alex, when normally he’d never have heard a word against him?

Slowly, it began to dawn on him that, deep down, he blamed Alex for this whole mess. If they’d just gone straight down the path, somebody else would have found Rosie Duff’s body. Somebody else would have had to stand there and listen to the last breaths dragging out of her. Somebody else would feel tainted by the hours they’d spent in a police cell.

That he was now apparently a suspect in a murder inquiry was Alex’s fault, there was no getting away from it. Mondo squirmed uncomfortably at the thought. He tried to push it away, but he knew you couldn’t close Pandora’s box. Once the idea was planted, it couldn’t be uprooted and thrown aside to wither. This wasn’t the time to be coming up with notions that would drive a wedge between them. They needed each other now as they had never done before. But there was no getting away from it. He wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for Alex.

And what if there was worse to come? There was no escaping the fact that Weird had been driving around in that Land Rover half the night. He’d been taking girls for a spin, trying to impress them. He didn’t have an alibi worth a shit, and neither did Ziggy, who had sneaked off and dumped the Land Rover somewhere Weird couldn’t find it. And neither did Mondo himself. What had possessed him, borrowing the Land Rover to take that lassie back to Guardbridge? A quick fuck in the back seat wasn’t worth the hassle he faced if somebody remembered she’d been at the party. If the police started asking questions of the other partygoers, somebody would shop them. No matter how much the students professed contempt for authority, somebody would lose their bottle and tell tales. The finger would point then.

Suddenly, blaming Alex seemed like the least of his worries. And as he turned over the events of the past few days, Mondo remembered something he’d seen late one night. Something that might just ease him off the hook. Something he was going to keep to himself for now. Never mind all for one and one for all. The first person Mondo owed any duty of care to was himself. Let the others look after their own interests.

8

Maclennan closed the door behind him. With WPC Janice Hogg and him both in the room, it felt claustrophobic, the low slant of the roof hemming them in. This was the most pitiful element of sudden death, he thought. Nobody has the chance to tidy up after themselves, to present a picture they’d like the world to see. They’re stuck with what they left behind the last time they closed the door. He’d seen some sad sights in his time, but few more poignant than this.

Someone had taken the trouble to make this room look bright and cheerful, in spite of the limited amount of light that came in at the narrow dormer window overlooking the village street. He could see St Andrews in the distance, still looking white under yesterday’s snow, though he knew the truth was different. Already, pavements were filthy with slush, the roads a slippery morass of grit and melt. Beyond the town, the grey smudge of the sea melted imperceptibly into the sky. It must be a fine view on a sunny day, he thought, turning back to the magnolia-painted wood-chip and the white candlewick bedspread, still rumpled from where Rosie had last sat on it. There was a single poster on the wall. Some group called Blondie, their lead singer busty and pouting, her skirt impossibly short. Was that what Rosie aspired to, he wondered.

‘Where would you like me to start, sir?’ Janice asked, looking around at the 1950s wardrobe and dressing table which had been painted white in an effort to make them look more contemporary. There was a small table by the bed with a single drawer. Other than that, the only place where anything might be concealed was a small laundry hamper tucked behind the door and a metal wastepaper bin under the dressing table.

‘You do the dressing table,’ he said. That way, he didn’t have to deal with the make-up that would never be used again, the second-best bra and the old knickers thrust to the back of the drawer for laundry emergencies that never happened. Maclennan knew his tender places, and he preferred to avoid probing them whenever he could.

Janice sat on the end of the bed, where Rosie must have perched to peer into the mirror and apply her make-up. Maclennan turned to the dressing table and slid open the drawer. It contained a fat book called The Far Pavilions, which Maclennan thought was just the sort of thing his ex-wife had used to keep him at bay in bed. ‘I’m reading, Barney,’ she’d say in a tone of patient suffering, brandishing some doorstop novel under his nose. What was it with women and books? He lifted out the book, trying not to notice Janice systematically exploring drawers. Underneath was a diary. Refusing to allow himself optimism, Maclennan picked it up.

If he’d been hoping for some confessional, he’d have been sorely disappointed. Rosie Duff hadn’t been a ‘Dear Diary’ sort of girl. The pages listed her shifts at the Lammas Bar, birthdays of family and friends, and social events such as ‘Bob’s party’, ‘Julie’s spree’. Dates were indicated with the time and place and the word, ‘Him’, followed by a number. It looked like she’d gone through 14, 15 and 16 in the course of the past year; 16 was, obviously, the most recent. He first appeared in early November and soon became a regular feature two or three times a week. Always after work, Maclennan thought. He’d have to go back to the Lammas and ask again if anyone had seen Rosie meeting a man after closing time. He wondered why they met then, instead of on Rosie’s night off, or during the day when she wasn’t working. One or other of them seemed determined to keep his identity secret.

He glanced across at Janice. ‘Anything?’

‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect. It’s all the kind of stuff women buy for themselves. None of the tacky things that guys buy.’

‘Guys buy tacky things?’

‘I’m afraid you do, sir. Scratchy lace. Nylon that makes you sweat. What men want women to wear, not what they’d choose for themselves.’

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. I should really have been buying big knickers from Marks and Spencer.’

Janice grinned. ‘Gratitude goes a long way, sir.’

‘Any sign she was on the pill?’

‘Nothing so far. Maybe Brian was on the money when he said she was a good girl.’

‘Not entirely. She wasn’t a virgin, according to the pathologist.’

‘There’s more than one way of losing your virginity, sir,’ Janice pointed out, not quite courageous enough to cast aspersions on a pathologist who everyone knew was more focused on his next drink and his retirement than on whoever ended up on his slab.

‘Aye. And the pills are probably in her handbag, which hasn’t turned up yet.’ Maclennan sighed and shut the drawer on the novel and the diary. ‘I’ll take a look at the wardrobe.’ Half an hour later, he had to concede that Rosie Duff had not been a hoarder. Her wardrobe contained clothes and shoes, all in current styles. In one corner, there was a pile of paperbacks, all thick bricks of paper that promised glamour, wealth and love in equal measure. ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ he said.

‘I’ve just got one drawer to go. Why don’t you have a look in her jewellery box?’ Janice passed him a box in the shape of a treasure chest covered in white leatherette. He flipped open the thin brass clasp and opened the lid. The top tray contained a selection of earrings in a range of colours. They were mostly big and bold, but inexpensive. In the lower tray there was a child’s Timex watch, a couple of cheap silver chains and a few novelty brooches; one looked like a piece of knitting, complete with miniature needles; one a fishing fly, and the third a brightly enamelled creature that looked like a cat from another planet. It was hard to read anything significant into any of it. ‘She liked her earrings,’ he said, closing the box. ‘Whoever she was seeing wasn’t the kind who gives expensive jewellery.’

Janice reached to the back of her drawer and pulled out a packet of photographs. It looked as if Rosie had raided the family albums and made her own selection. It was a typical mixture of family photos: her parents’ wedding picture, Rosie and her brothers growing up, assorted family groups spanning the last three decades, a few baby pictures and some snaps of Rosie with schoolfriends, mugging at the camera in their Madras College uniforms. No photo-booth shots of her with boyfriends. No boyfriends at all, in fact. Maclennan flicked through them then shoved them back in the packet. ‘Come on, Janice, let’s see if we can find something a bit more productive to occupy us.’ He took a last look round the room that had told him far less than he’d hoped about Rosie Duff. A girl with a craving for something more glamorous than she had. A girl who kept herself to herself. A girl who had taken her secrets to the grave, probably protecting her killer in the process.

As they drove back down to St Andrews, Maclennan’s radio crackled. He fiddled with the knobs, trying to get a clear signal. Seconds later, Burnside’s voice came through loud and clear. He sounded excited. ‘Sir? I think we’ve got something.’

Alex, Mondo and Weird had finished their shift stacking shelves in Safeway, keeping their heads down and hoping nobody would recognize them from the front page of the Daily Record. They’d bought a bundle of papers and walked along the High Street to the café where they’d spent their early evenings as teenagers.

‘Did you know that one in two adults in Scotland reads the Record?’ Alex said gloomily.

‘The other one can’t read,’ Weird said, looking at the snatched picture of the four of them on the doorstep of their residence. ‘Christ, look at us. They might as well have captioned it, “Shifty bastards suspected of rape and murder”. Do you suppose anybody seeing that wouldn’t think we’d done it?’

‘It’s not the most flattering photo I’ve ever had taken,’ Alex said.

‘It’s all right for you. You’re right at the back. You can hardly make out your face. And Ziggy’s turning away. It’s me and Weird that have got it full frontal,’ Mondo complained. ‘Let’s see what the others have got.’

A similar picture appeared in the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald and the Courier, but thankfully on inside pages. The murder made it to the front of all of them, however, with the exception of the Courier. Nothing as insignificant as a murder could shift the fatstock prices and small ads from their front page.

They sat sipping their frothy coffees, silently poring over the column inches. ‘I suppose it could be worse,’ Alex said.

Weird made an incredulous face. ‘Worse how, exactly?’

‘They spelled our names right. Even Ziggy’s.’

‘Big fat hairy deal. OK, I’ll grant you they’ve stopped short of calling us suspects. But that’s about all you can say in our favour. This makes us look bad, Alex. You know it does.’

‘Everybody we know is going to have seen this,’ Mondo said. ‘Everybody is going to be into our ribs about it. If this is my fifteen minutes of fame, you can stuff it.’

‘Everybody was going to know anyway,’ Alex pointed out. ‘You know what this town’s like. Village mentality. People have got nothing else to keep them occupied but gossiping about their neighbours. It doesn’t take the papers to spread the news around here. The plus side is that half the university lives in England, so they’re not going to know anything about this. And by the time we get back after the New Year, it’ll be history.’

‘You think so?’ Weird folded the Scotsman shut with an air of finality. ‘I tell you something. We better be praying that Maclennan finds out who did this and puts him away.’

‘Why?’ Mondo asked.

‘Because if he doesn’t, we’re going to go through the rest of our lives as the guys that got away with murder.’

Mondo looked like a man who’s just been told he has terminal cancer. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my puff,’ Weird said. ‘If they don’t arrest anybody for Rosie’s murder, all anybody’s going to remember is that we’re the four who spent the night at the police station. It’s obvious, man. We’re going to get a not proven verdict without a trial. “We all know they did it, the police just couldn’t prove it,”’ he added, mimicking a woman’s voice. ‘Face it, Mondo, you’re never going to get laid again.’ He grinned wickedly, knowing he’d hit his friend where it hurt most.

‘Fuck off, Weird. At least I’ll have memories,’ Mondo snapped.

Before any of them could say more, they were interrupted by a new arrival. Ziggy came in, shaking rain from his hair. ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said.

‘Ziggy, Weird says …’ Mondo began.

‘Never mind that. Maclennan’s here. He wants to talk to the four of us again.’

Alex raised his eyebrows. ‘He wants to drag us back to St Andrews?’

Ziggy shook his head. ‘No. He’s here in Kirkcaldy. He wants us to come to the police station.’

‘Fuck,’ Weird said. ‘My old man’s going to go mental. I’m supposed to be grounded. He’ll think I’m giving him the V-sign. It’s not like I can tell him I’ve been at the cop shop.’

‘Thank my dad for the fact that we’re not having to go to St Andrews,’ Ziggy said. ‘He went spare when Maclennan turned up at the house. Read him the riot act, accusing him of treating us like criminals when we’d done everything we could to save Rosie. I thought at one point he was going to start battering him with the Record.’ He smiled. ‘I tell you, I was proud of him.’

‘Good for him,’ Alex said. ‘So where’s Maclennan?’

‘Outside in his car. With my dad’s car parked right behind him.’ Ziggy’s shoulders started shaking with laughter. ‘I don’t think Maclennan’s ever come up against anything quite like my old man.’

‘So we’ve got to go to the police station now?’ Alex asked.

Ziggy nodded. ‘Maclennan’s waiting for us. He said my dad could drive us there, but he’s not in the mood for hanging around.’

Ten minutes later, Ziggy was sitting alone in an interview room. When they’d arrived at the police station, Alex, Weird and Mondo had been taken to a separate interview room under the watchful eye of a uniformed constable. An anxious Karel Malkiewicz had been unceremoniously abandoned in the reception area, told abruptly by Maclennan that he’d have to wait there. And Ziggy had been shepherded off, sandwiched between Maclennan and Burnside, who had promptly left him to kick his heels.

They knew what they were doing, he thought ruefully. Leaving him isolated like this was a sure-fire recipe for unsettling him. And it was working. Although he showed no outward signs of tension, Ziggy felt taut as a piano wire, vibrating with apprehension. The longest five minutes of his life ended when the two detectives returned and sat down opposite him.

Maclennan’s eyes burned into his, his narrow face tight with some suppressed emotion. ‘Lying to the police is a serious business,’ he said without preamble, his voice clipped and cold. ‘Not only is it an offence, it also makes us wonder what exactly it is you’ve got to hide. You’ve had a night to sleep on things. Would you care to revise your earlier statement?’

A chilly shock of fear spasmed in Ziggy’s chest. They knew something. That was clear. But how much? He said nothing, waiting for Maclennan to make his move.

Maclennan opened his file and pulled out the fingerprint sheet that Ziggy had signed the previous day. ‘These are your fingerprints?’

Ziggy nodded. He knew what was coming now.

‘Can you explain how they came to be on the steering wheel and gearstick of a Land Rover registered to a Mr Henry Cavendish, found abandoned this morning in the parking area of an industrial unit on Largo Road, St Andrews?’

Ziggy closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Yes, I can.’ He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. He’d rehearsed this conversation in bed that morning, but all his lines had deserted him now he was faced with this unnerving reality.

‘I’m waiting, Mr Malkiewicz,’ Maclennan said.

‘The Land Rover belongs to one of the other students who shares the house with us. We borrowed it last night to get to the party.’

‘You borrowed it? You mean, Mr Cavendish gave you his permission to ride around in his Land Rover?’ Maclennan pounced, refusing to give Ziggy the chance to get into his stride.

‘Not exactly, no.’ Ziggy looked off to one side, unable to meet Maclennan’s stare. ‘Look, I know we shouldn’t have taken it, but it was no big deal.’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ziggy knew they were a mistake.

‘It’s a criminal offence. Which I’m sure you knew. So, you stole the Land Rover and took it to the party. That doesn’t explain how it ended up where it did.’

Ziggy’s breath was fluttering in his chest like a trapped moth. ‘I moved it there for safety. We were drinking and I didn’t want any of us to be tempted to drive it when we were drunk.’

‘When exactly did you move it?’

‘I don’t know exactly. Probably some time between one and two in the morning.’

‘You must have had quite a lot to drink by then yourself.’ Maclennan was on a roll now, his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned into the interrogation.

‘I was probably over the limit, yes. But …’

‘Another criminal offence. So you were lying when you said you never left the party?’ Maclennan’s eyes felt like surgical probes.

‘I was gone for as long as it took to move the Land Rover and walk back. Maybe twenty minutes.’

‘We’ve only got your word for that. We’ve been speaking to some of the other people at the party, and we’ve not had many sightings of you. I think you were away for a lot longer than that. I think you came across Rosie Duff and you offered her a lift.’

‘No!’

Maclennan continued relentlessly. ‘And something happened that made you angry, and you raped her. Then you realized that she could destroy your life if she went to the police. You panicked and you killed her. You knew you had to dump the body, but you had the Land Rover, so that wasn’t a big deal. And then you cleaned yourself up and went back to the party. Isn’t that how it happened?’

Ziggy shook his head. ‘No. You’ve got it all wrong. I never saw her, never touched her. I just got rid of the Land Rover before somebody had an accident.’

‘What happened to Rosie Duff wasn’t an accident. And you were the one who made it happen.’

Flushed with fear, Ziggy ran his hands through his hair. ‘No. You’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with her death.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Because I’m telling you the truth.’

‘No. What you’re telling me is a new version of events that covers what you think I know. I don’t think it’s anything like the whole truth.’

There was a long silence. Ziggy clenched his jaw tight, feeling the muscles bunching in his cheeks.

Maclennan spoke again. This time, his tone was softer. ‘We’re going to find out what happened. You know that. Right now, we’ve got a team of forensic experts going over every inch of that Land Rover. If we find one spot of blood, one hair from Rosie Duff’s head, one fibre from her clothes, it’ll be a very long time before you sleep in your own bed again. You could save yourself and your father a lot of grief if you just tell us everything now.’

Ziggy almost burst out laughing. It was so transparent a move, so revealing of the weakness of Maclennan’s hand. ‘I’ve got nothing more to say.’

‘Have it your own way, son. I’m arresting you for taking and driving away a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent. You’ll be bailed to report to the police station in a week’s time.’ Maclennan pushed his chair back. ‘I suggest you get yourself a lawyer, Mr Malkiewicz.’

Inevitably, Weird was next up. It had to be the Land Rover, he’d decided as they’d sat in silence in the interview room. OK, he’d told himself. He’d hold his hand up, carry the can. He wasn’t going to let the others take the blame for his stupidity. They wouldn’t send him to jail, not for something so trivial. It would be a fine, and he could pay that off somehow. He could get a part-time job. You could be a mathematician with a criminal record.

He slouched in the chair opposite Maclennan and Burnside, a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, trying to look casual. ‘How can I help?’ he said.

‘The truth would be a start,’ Maclennan said. ‘Somehow, it slipped your mind that you’d been joyriding in a Land Rover when you were supposed to be partying.’

Weird spread his hands. ‘It’s a fair cop. Just youthful high spirits, officer.’

Maclennan slammed his hands down on the table. ‘This isn’t a game, son. This is murder. So stop acting the goat.’

‘But that’s all it was, really. Look, the weather was shite. The others went on ahead to the Lammas while I finished doing the dishes. I was standing in the kitchen looking out at the Land Rover, and I thought, why not? Henry’s away back to England and nobody would be any the wiser if I borrowed it for a few hours. So I took it down the pub. The other three were pretty pissed off with me, but when they saw the way the snow was coming down, they decided it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. So we took it to the party. Ziggy moved it later, to save me from making a complete arse of myself. And that’s all there is to it.’ He shrugged. ‘Honest. We didn’t tell you before because we didn’t want to waste your time over something and nothing.’

Maclennan glared at him. ‘You’re wasting my time now.’ He opened his file. ‘We’ve got a statement from Helen Walker that you persuaded her to go for a ride in the Land Rover. According to her, you were trying to grab her as you drove. Your driving became so erratic that the Land Rover went into a skid and stalled against a kerb. She jumped out and ran back to the party. She said, and I’m quoting now, “He was out of control.”’

Weird’s face twitched, tipping the ash from his cigarette down his jumper. ‘Silly wee lassie,’ he said, his voice less confident than his words.

‘Just how out of control were you, son?’

Weird managed a shaky laugh. ‘Another one of your trick questions. Look, OK, I was a bit carried away with myself. But there’s a big difference between having a bit of fun in a borrowed motor and killing somebody.’

Maclennan gave him a look of contempt. ‘That’s your idea of a bit of fun, is it? Molesting a woman and frightening her to the point where running through a blizzard in the middle of the night is better than sitting in a car with you?’ Weird looked away, sighing. ‘You must have been angry. You get a woman into your stolen Land Rover, you think you’re going to impress her and get your way with her, but instead she runs away. So what happens next? You see Rosie Duff in the snow, and you think you’ll work your magic on her? Only she doesn’t want to know, she fights you off, but you overpower her. And then you lose it, because you know she can destroy your life.’

Weird jumped to his feet. ‘I don’t have to sit here and listen to this. You’re full of shite, you’ve got nothing on me and you know it.’

Burnside was on his feet, obstructing Weird’s path to the door while Maclennan leaned back in his chair. ‘Not so fast, son,’ Maclennan said. ‘You’re under arrest.’

Mondo hunched his shoulders round his ears, a feeble defence against what he knew was coming next. Maclennan gave him a long, cool stare. ‘Fingerprints,’ he said. ‘Your fingerprints on the steering wheel of a stolen Land Rover. Care to comment?’

‘It wasn’t stolen. Just borrowed. Stolen is when you don’t plan to give it back, right?’ Mondo sounded petulant.

‘I’m waiting,’ Maclennan said, ignoring the reply.

‘I gave somebody a lift home, OK?’

Maclennan leaned forward, a hound with a sniff of prey. ‘Who?’

‘A girl that was at the party. She needed to get home to Guardbridge, so I said I’d take her.’ Mondo reached inside his jacket and took out a piece of paper. He’d written down the girl’s details while he’d been waiting, anticipating just this moment. Somehow, not saying her name out loud made it less real, less significant. Besides, he’d worked out that if he pitched it right, he could make himself look even further in the clear. Never mind that he’d be dropping some girl in the shit with her parents. ‘There you go. You can ask her, she’ll tell you.’

‘What time was this?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Two o’clock, maybe?’

Maclennan looked down at the name and address. Neither was familiar to him. ‘What happened?’

Mondo gave a little smirk, a worldly moment of male complicity. ‘I drove her home. We had sex. We said goodnight. So you see, Inspector, I had no reason to be interested in Rosie Duff, even if I had seen her. Which I didn’t. I’d just got laid. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.’

‘You say you had sex. Where, exactly?’

‘In the back seat of the Land Rover.’

‘Did you use a condom?’

‘I never believe women when they say they’re on the pill. Do you? Of course I used a condom.’ Now Mondo was more relaxed. This was territory he understood, territory where males colluded with each other in a conspiracy of comprehension.

‘What did you do with it afterwards?’

‘I chucked it out the window. Leaving it in the Land Rover would have been a bit of a giveaway with Henry, you know?’ He could see Maclennan was struggling to know where to go next with his questions. He’d been right. His admission had defused their line of questioning. He hadn’t been driving round in the snow, frustrated and desperate for sex. So what possible motive could he have had for raping Rosie Duff and killing her?

Maclennan gave a grim smile, not joining in Mondo’s assumption of camaraderie. ‘We’ll be checking out your story, Mr Kerr. Let’s see if this young woman backs you up. Because if she doesn’t, that paints a very different picture, doesn’t it?’

9

It didn’t feel like Christmas Eve. Walking to the bakery for a pie at lunchtime, Barney Maclennan had experienced the illusion of having been dropped into a parallel universe. Shop windows blossomed with garish Christmas decorations, fairy lights twinkled in the gloaming and the streets were thronged with shoppers staggering under the weight of bulging carrier bags. But it seemed alien to him. Their concerns were not his; they had something more to look forward to than a Christmas dinner tainted with the sad taste of failure. Eight days since Rosie Duff’s murder, and no prospect of an arrest.

He’d been so confident that the discovery of the Land Rover had been the keystone that would support a case against one or more of the four students. Especially after the interviews in Kirkcaldy. Their stories had been plausible enough, but then they’d had a day and a half to perfect them. And he’d still had the sense that he wasn’t getting the whole truth, though it was hard to pinpoint where precisely the falsehood lay. He’d believed hardly a word that Tom Mackie said, but Maclennan was honest enough to acknowledge that might have something to do with the deep antipathy he’d felt towards the maths student.

Ziggy Malkiewicz was a deep one, that was for sure. If he’d been the killer, Maclennan knew he’d get nowhere until he had solid evidence; the medical student wasn’t going to cave in. He thought he’d broken Davey Kerr’s story when the lassie in Guardbridge had denied they’d had sex. But Janice Hogg, whom he’d taken with him for the sake of propriety, had been convinced that the girl had been lying, trying misguidedly to protect her reputation. Right enough, when he’d sent Janice back to re-interview the girl alone, she’d broken down and admitted that she had let Kerr have sex with her. It didn’t sound as if it was an experience she was keen to repeat. Which, thought Maclennan, was interesting. Maybe Davey Kerr hadn’t been quite as satisfied and cheerful afterwards as he’d made out.

Alex Gilbey was a likely prospect, if only because there was no evidence that he’d driven the Land Rover. His fingerprints were all over the interior, but not around the driving seat. That didn’t let him off the hook, however. If Gilbey had killed Rosie, he would likely have called for help from the others, and they would probably have given it; Maclennan was under no misapprehension about the strength of the bond that united them. And if Gilbey had arranged a date with Rosie Duff that had gone horribly wrong, Maclennan was pretty sure that Malkiewicz wouldn’t have hesitated to do everything he could to protect his friend. Whether Gilbey knew it or not, Malkiewicz was in love with him, Maclennan had decided on nothing more than his gut reaction.

But there was more than Maclennan’s instinct at play here. After the frustrating series of interviews, he’d been about to head back for St Andrews when a familiar voice had hailed him. ‘Hey, Barney, I heard you were in town,’ echoed across the bleak car park.

Maclennan swung round. ‘Robin? That you?’

A slim figure in a police constable’s uniform emerged into a pool of light. Robin Maclennan was fifteen years younger than his brother, but the resemblance was striking. ‘Did you think you could sneak off without saying hello?’

‘They told me you were out on patrol.’

Robin reached his brother and shook his hand. ‘Just came back for refs. I thought it was you I saw as we pulled up. Come away and have a coffee with me before you go.’ He grinned and gave Maclennan a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘I’ve got some information I think you’ll appreciate.’

Maclennan frowned at his brother’s retreating back. Robin, ever sure of his charm, hadn’t waited for his brother’s reaction, but had turned towards the building and the canteen inside. Maclennan caught up with him by the door. ‘What do you mean, information?’ he asked.

‘Those students you’ve got in the frame for the Rosie Duff murder. I thought I’d do a wee bit of digging, see what the grapevine had to say.’

‘You shouldn’t be involving yourself in this, Robin. It’s not your case,’ Maclennan protested as he followed his brother down the corridor.

‘A murder like this, it’s everybody’s case.’

‘All the same.’ If he failed with this one, he didn’t want his bright, charismatic brother tarred with the same brush. Robin was a pleaser; he’d go far further in the force than Maclennan had, which was no less than he deserved. ‘None of them has a record anyway. I’ve already checked.’

Robin turned as they entered the canteen and gave him the hundred-watt smile again. ‘Look, this is my patch. I can get people to tell me stuff that they’re not going to give up to you.’

Intrigued, Maclennan followed his brother to a quiet corner table and waited patiently while Robin fetched the coffees. ‘So, what do you know?’

‘Your boys are not exactly innocents abroad. When they were thirteen or so, they got caught shoplifting.’

Maclennan shrugged. ‘Who didn’t shoplift when they were kids?’

‘This wasn’t just nicking a couple of bars of chocolate or packets of fags. This was what you might call Formula One Challenge Shoplifting. It seems they’d dare each other to nick really difficult things. Just for the hell of it. Mostly from small shops. Nothing they particularly wanted or needed. Everything from secateurs to perfume. It was Kerr who got caught red-handed with a Chinese ginger jar from a licensed grocer. The other three got nabbed standing outside waiting for him. They folded like a bad poker hand as soon as they were brought in. They took us to a shed in Gilbey’s garden, where they’d stashed the loot. Everything still in its packaging.’ Robin shook his head wonderingly. ‘The guy who arrested them said it was like Aladdin’s cave.’

‘What happened?’

‘Strings got pulled. Gilbey’s old man’s a headmaster, Mackie’s dad plays golf with the Chief Super. They got off with a caution and the fear of God.’

‘Interesting. But it’s hardly the Great Train Robbery.’

Robin conceded with a nod. ‘That’s not all, though. A couple of years later, there were a series of pranks with parked cars. The owners would come back and find graffiti on the inside of their windscreens, written in lipstick. And the cars would all be locked up tight. It all ended as suddenly as it began, around the time that a stolen car got burned out. There was never anything concrete against them, but our local intelligence officer reckons they were behind it. They seem to have a knack for taking the piss.’

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.

As the light faded in the west, Weird turned towards the shops. Time to pretend to be part of the world again.

10

New Year’s Eve, 1978; Kirkcaldy, Scotland

They’d made a pact, back when they were fifteen, when their parents were first persuaded that they could be allowed out first-footing. At the year’s midnight, the four Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy would gather in the Town Square and bring in the New Year together. Every year so far, they’d kept their word, standing around jostling each other as the hands of the town clock crept towards twelve. Ziggy would bring his transistor radio to make sure they heard the bells, and they’d pass around whatever drink they’d managed to acquire. They’d celebrated the first year with a bottle of sweet sherry and four cans of Carlsberg Special. These days, they’d graduated to a bottle of Famous Grouse.

There was no official celebration in the square, but over recent years groups of young people had taken to congregating there. It wasn’t a particularly attractive place, mostly because the Town House looked like one of the less alluring products of Soviet architecture, its clock tower greened with verdigris. But it was the only open space in the town centre apart from the bus station, which was even more charmless. The square also boasted a Christmas tree and fairy lights, which made it marginally more festive than the bus station.

That year, Alex and Ziggy arrived together. Ziggy had called round to the house to collect him, charming Mary Gilbey into giving them both a tot of Scotch to keep out the cold. Pockets stuffed with home-made shortbread, black bun which nobody would eat, and sultana cake, they’d walked down past the station and the library, past the Adam Smith Centre with its posters advertising Babes in the Wood starring Russell Hunter and the Patton Brothers, past the Memorial Gardens. Their conversation kicked off with speculation as to whether Weird would manage to persuade his father to let him off the leash for Hogmanay.

‘He’s been acting pretty strange lately,’ Alex said.

‘Gilly, he’s always strange. That’s why we call him Weird.’

‘I know, but he’s been different. I’ve noticed it, working beside him. He’s been kind of subdued. He’s not had much to say for himself.’

‘Probably something to do with his current lack of access to alcohol and substances,’ Ziggy said wryly.

‘He’s not even been stroppy, though. That’s the clincher. You know Weird. The minute he thinks anybody might be taking the piss, he erupts. But he’s been keeping his head down, not arguing when the supervisors have a go. He just stands and takes it, then gets on with whatever they want him to do. You think it’s the business with Rosie that’s got to him?’

Ziggy shrugged. ‘Could be. He took it pretty lightly at the time, but then he was off his head. To tell you the truth, I’ve hardly spoken to him since the day Maclennan came over.’

‘I’ve only seen him at work. Soon as we clock off, he’s out of there. He won’t even come for a coffee with me and Mondo.’

Ziggy pulled a face. ‘I’m surprised Mondo’s got the time for coffee.’

‘Go easy on him. It’s his way of dealing with it. When he’s getting his end away with some lassie, he can’t be thinking about the murder. Which is why he’s going for the all-comers’ record,’ Alex added with a grin.

They crossed the road and walked down Wemyssfield, the short street that led to the Town Square. They had the confident stride of men on their home turf, a place so familiar that it conferred a kind of ownership. It was ten to twelve when they trotted down the wide, shallow steps that led to the paved area outside the Town House. There were already several groups of people passing bottles from hand to hand. Alex looked around to see if he could spot the others.

‘Over there, up at the Post Office end,’ Ziggy said. ‘Mondo’s brought the latest lay. Oh, and Lynn’s there with them too.’ He pointed to his left, and they set off to join the others.

After the exchange of greetings, and the general agreement that it didn’t look like Weird was going to make it, Alex found himself standing next to Lynn. She was growing up, he thought. Not a kid any more. With her elfin features and dark curls, she was a feminine version of Mondo. But paradoxically, the elements that made his face seem weak had the opposite effect with Lynn. There was nothing remotely fragile about her. ‘So, how’s it going?’ Alex said. It wasn’t much of a line, but then, he didn’t want to be thought to be chatting up fifteen-year-olds.

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