The Impossible Dead

18



Having dropped Naysmith outside the library, Fox headed for the police station. Rain had started gusting against the windscreen. He turned on the wipers. The drops were huge, sounding like sparks from a fire. He thought back to that day in Alan Carter’s cottage, the two of them seated either side of the fireplace, mugs of tea and an old dog for company. What could have been cosier or more domestic? Yet Carter was a man who had built up a security company from nothing: that spoke to Fox of an inner toughness, maybe even ruthlessness. Then there was the evidence of his old friend Teddy Fraser: the cottage door kept locked at all times – why? What had the jovial old chap to fear? Maybe nothing. Maybe it was the sharp businessman who had to keep his wits about him – to the extent of having a gun nearby …

If the gun was his to begin with; Teddy Fraser thought otherwise.

There was no sign of Jamieson or the woman reporter outside the car park. Fox spotted Tony Kaye’s Mondeo. Pitkethly’s space was free again, but she had warned him against taking it. Looked like the Volvo was going to have to sit on the street again and risk a ticket. Francis Vernal, too, had driven a Volvo. A safe, steady choice, so the adverts would have you believe – Kaye had teased Fox often enough about that. The roadway either side of the crash site boasted a few curves and bends, but nothing serious. Fox thought of the speeding cars that had passed him near the memorial. Were there petrolheads back then? Nothing else for the local youths to do of a rural evening? Could someone have driven Vernal off the road?

Having parked, and looked around for traffic wardens in the vicinity, Fox got out and locked the car. He felt something in the pocket of his coat: the logbook from Vernal’s Volvo. Its edges were brown with age, warped by damp. Some of the pages were stuck together. At the back were sections to be filled out after each regular service. The lawyer had owned the car from new, by the look of things. Three years he’d been driving it, prior to the crash. Eight and a half thousand miles on the clock at the time of its last trip to the garage. The service centre’s stamp was from a dealership on Seafield Road in Edinburgh, long since relocated. There were some loose folded sheets in a clear plastic pocket attached to the inside back cover of the book, dealing with work done to the car and parts replaced. Fox unlocked the driver’s-side door, tossed the logbook on to the passenger seat, and headed towards the station. He was halfway across the car park when his phone rang. It was Bob McEwan.

‘Sir,’ Fox said by way of introduction.

‘Malcolm …’ McEwan’s tone caused Fox to slow his pace.

‘What have I done this time?’

‘I’ve had Fife on the phone – the Deputy Chief.’

‘He wants to pull us out?’

‘He wants to pull you out.’ Fox stopped walking. ‘Kaye and Naysmith can keep doing their interviews and prepare their report.’

‘But Bob—’

‘CID called his office, apparently furious with you.’

‘Because I told them their job?’

‘Because you went barging into a potential crime scene. Because instead of leaving when told, you found somewhere else to stick your nose in …’

‘I went there to assist.’

McEwan was silent for a moment. ‘Would you swear to that in court, Malcolm?’ Fox didn’t answer. ‘And would you have Joe Naysmith back you up?’

‘All right,’ Fox relented. ‘It’s a fair point.’

‘You know better than anyone – we have to stick to the rules.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And that’s why you’re coming home.’

‘Is that an order or a request, Bob?’

‘It’s an order.’

‘Do I get to kiss the children goodbye first?’

‘They’re not children, Malcolm. They’ll do fine without you.’

Fox was staring at the station’s back door.

‘I’ll let them know what’s happened,’ McEwan was saying. ‘You’ll be back here in an hour, yes?’

Fox switched his gaze to the sky above. The shower had passed, but another was on its way.

‘Yes,’ he told Bob McEwan. ‘I will, yes.’

When Fox walked into the Complaints office, there was a note waiting for him from Bob McEwan.

Another bloody meeting. Keep your nose clean …

Fox noticed a couple of supermarket carrier bags sitting on the floor next to his desk. They were heavy. He lifted a box file from one and opened it. A photograph of Francis Vernal in full oratorical flow stared up at him. Below it lay a sequence of stapled sheets, some half-covered in scribbled Post-it notes. The second box file seemed to comprise more of the same. There was no covering letter. Fox phoned down to reception and quizzed the officer there.

‘Gentleman dropped them in,’ he was told.

‘Give me a description.’

There was a thoughtful pause. ‘Just a gentleman.’

‘And he gave my name?’

‘He gave your name.’

Fox ended the call and made another – to Mangold Bain. The secretary put him through to Charles Mangold.

‘I’m just heading out,’ Mangold warned him.

‘I got your little present.’

‘Good. It’s everything Alan Carter passed on to me before his death.’

‘I’m not sure what you think I can do with it …’

‘Take a look at it, maybe? Then give me your reaction. That’s as much as I can hope for. Now I really need to be on my way.’

Fox ended the call and stared at the two large boxes. Not here: Bob McEwan would have too many questions. He crossed to his boss’s desk and left a note of his own.

Knocked off early. At home if you need me. Phone the house if you’re sceptical.

Then he drove to Oxgangs, and placed the two boxes on the table in his living room. As he came back through from the kitchen with a glass of Appletiser, he realised how similar the two scenes might eventually be – Alan Carter’s table, piled high with paperwork, and now his.

With a tightening of the mouth, he got down to business.

Alan Carter had, on the face of it, done a lot of work. He had sourced copies of the Scotsman for the whole of April and May 1985, really to prove only that almost no attention had been paid to the lawyer’s death. Fox found himself lost in these newspapers. There was an advert for a computer shop he remembered visiting. The advert was for an ICL personal computer with a price tag of almost four thousand pounds, this at a time when a brand-new Renault 5 – with radio/cassette thrown in – could be had for six. In the Situations Vacant column, one company was seeking security guards at seventy-five quid a week. A flat in Viewforth was on sale at offers over £35,000.

News stories flew at him: bombs in Northern Ireland; a CND demo at Loch Long; ‘Soviet Missiles Freeze Snubbed by Washington’ … There were protesters at a proposed cruise missile base in Cambridgeshire. Companies were being advised to protect ‘sensitive electronic information’ from the effects of a nuclear detonation. The Princess of Wales, on a visit to Scotland Yard, was shown the oven and bath used by serial killer Dennis Nilsen …

Alex Ferguson was the boss of Aberdeen FC, and they topped the league throughout April. Petrol was going up five pence to just over two pounds a gallon, and Princess Michael of Kent professed herself ‘shocked’ to find out that her father had been in the SS. Fox found himself reaching for his mug of tea without remembering getting up to make it. Animal-rights protests and acid-rain protests and teachers warned by their employers against wearing CND badges in the classroom. Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour Party, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was on a Middle East tour. A poll showed support for the SNP stubbornly fixed at fifteen per cent of the Scottish population. A flooded colliery was to be closed, and there were fears the Trustee Savings Bank might move its HQ south of the border.

Joe Naysmith had mentioned Hilda Murrell, and though she had died the previous year, she made it into the newspaper too. The MP Tam Dalyell was insisting she had been killed by British Intelligence, and Home Secretary Leon Brittan was to be quizzed on the matter.

Fox was surprised by how little of this he remembered. He would have been in his Highers year at Boroughmuir, confident that a university or college place awaited him. Jude had been more interested in politics than him – she’d gone out canvassing for the Labour Party one time. Fox, meanwhile, had turned his bedroom into a sanctum where he could concentrate on his Sinclair Spectrum computer, losing patience as yet another game failed to load because he couldn’t find the sweet spot on his cassette-player’s volume knob. Hearts games with his dad on a Saturday, but only if he could prove all his homework was done. He was fine with schoolwork, but never watched the news or read a paper – just 2000 AD and the sports pages.

Francis Vernal had died on the evening of Sunday, 28 April. That night, a large chunk of the population – Fox included – had been glued to their TV sets as Dennis Taylor faced Steve Davis in the final of the World Snooker Championship. Taylor, eight frames down at one stage, had staged the fightback of his career. When he potted the final black of the final frame, to take the match 18–17, it was the first time he’d been ahead in the entire contest. For the few days afterwards, his face was all over the papers. Vernal’s death rated not a mention, until his obituary appeared, including, on one line, a misprint of his name as Vernel.

‘Couldn’t happen today,’ Fox mused out loud. No internet back then, as Naysmith had said. Rumours could be contained. Even news could be contained. Few enough Woodwards and Bernsteins in the Scottish media at the best of times. Fox could imagine a newspaper editor baulking at reporting details of a suicide: there was the family to consider, and maybe you’d liked the guy, respected him. What good did it do tarnishing his name by letting strangers know how he’d died?

A patriot.

Opening the second box, Fox felt his eyebrows raise a little. Photocopies of the original police notes on the case, along with autopsy details and pictures. Someone had been into the vaults to retrieve this lot, which Alan Carter had then copied and sent to his employer. Had money changed hands, or did Carter still have friends on the force? Where did Fife Constabulary store its old case-work? In Edinburgh, they used a warehouse on an industrial estate. He checked his watch. It would take him a few hours to go through everything. He knew he should take a break. The sound of a message arriving on his phone was timely. Tony Kaye and Joe Naysmith were having a drink at Minter’s.

POETS Day, remember!

Fox smiled to himself: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

It was all the invitation he needed.