Complicity

CHAPTER 11 — SLAB

"Andy?"

"Hello, Cameron."

It is his voice, urbane and controlled; until this moment some tiny part of me still believed he was dead. I get the shivers, and the hair on the nape of my neck prickles. I lean back against the wall, looking at McDunn, who's standing with his arms crossed a metre away. The young officer who turned on the Walkman hands McDunn a pair of earphones plugged into the machine. McDunn listens in.

I clear my throat. "What's going on, Andy?"

"Sorry to drop you in it, old son," he says in a conversational sort of way, as though apologising for some thoughtless remark or landing me with a mismatched blind date.

"Yeah? Are you?"

McDunn makes a circular waving motion with one hand; keep going. Oh, Christ, here we go again. They want me to keep him talking so they can trace him. One more betrayal.

"Well, yes," Andy says, sounding as though he's a little surprised to find he actually is sorry, albeit only slightly. "I feel a bit bad about that, but at the same time I felt you deserved it. Not that I thought you'd go to prison for it; wouldn't inflict that on you, but… well, I wanted you to suffer for a while. I take it they found that card I left in the woods near Sir Rufus's place."

"Yes, they did. Thanks, Andy. Yeah; great. I thought we were friends?

"We were, Cameron," he says, reasonably. "But you did run away, twice."

I give a small, despairing laugh, glancing at McDunn again. "I came back the second time."

"Yes, Cameron," he says, and his voice is smooth. "That's why you're still alive."

"Oh, thanks very much."

"But anyway, Cameron, you're still part of it. You've still played your part in it. Like me; like all of us. We're all guilty, don't you think?"

"What is this?" I ask, frowning. "Original sin? You becoming a Catholic or something?"

"Oh, no, Cameron; I believe we're born free of sin and free of guilt. It's just that we all catch it, eventually. There are no clean rooms for morality, Cameron, no boys in bubbles kept in a guilt-free sterile zone. There are monasteries and nunneries, and people become recluses, but even that's just an elegant way of giving up. Washing one's hands didn't work two thousand years ago, and it doesn't work today. Involvement, Cameron, connection."

I shake my head, staring at the little window in the Walkman where the tape spindles are patiently revolving. The strange thing is, it is like talking to a dead man, because he sounds like the Andy I used to know. Andy the mover and shaper, the Andy from before Clare's death, before he gave it all up and became a recluse; it's that voice, calm and untroubled, that I'm hearing now, not that of the man I knew from that dark, decaying hotel, flat with resignation or audibly sneering with a kind of cynical despair.

McDunn's looking impatient. He's writing something on his notebook.

"Listen, Andy," I say, swallowing, mouth dry. "I told them about the guy in the woods; they've been down the air shaft. They found him."

"I know," he says. "I saw." He sounds almost regretful. I close my eyes. "They almost caught me, actually," he says conversationally. "That'll teach me to break my own rules and attend the funeral of one of my victims. But then it was supposed to be my own, after all. Anyway, you told them, did you? Kind of thought you might, one day. That a weight off your mind, is it, Cameron?"

I open my eyes as McDunn nudges me and shows me the two names he's written on his notebook.

"Yes," I tell Andy. "Yes, it is a weight off my mind. Listen, Andy, they want to know what's happened to Halziel and Lingary."

"Oh, yes." He sounds amused. "That's why I called."

McDunn and I exchange looks. "Look, Andy," I say. I laugh nervously. "I kind of think you've made your point, you know? You've scared a lot of people —»

"Cameron, I've murdered a lot of people."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, and a lot more are terrified to open their doors, but the point is you've done it, man; I mean you might as well let these guys go, you know? Just… just let them go, and, and, and you know; I'm sure if we can just talk about this, you know, talk about —»

"Talk about this?" Andy says, laughing. "Oh, stop gibbering, Cameron." He sounds so relaxed. I can't believe he's talking this long. He must know they can trace calls really quickly these days. "What next?" he asks, sounding amused. "Are you going to suggest I give myself up and I'll get a fair trial?" He laughs again.

"Andy, all I'm saying is let those guys go and just fucking stop all this."

"All right."

"I mean… what?"

"I said all right."

"You'll let them go?" I look at McDunn. He's raised his eyebrows. A uniformed cop comes in the front door and whispers something to McDunn, who takes one of the earphones out to listen. He looks annoyed.

"Yeah," Andy says. "They're a boring couple of farts and I guess they've suffered enough."

"Andy, are you being serious?"

"Of course!" he says. "You'll get them back unharmed. Can't vouch for their mental state, of course; with any luck the bastards'll have nightmares for the rest of their lives, but…"

McDunn looks pained. He makes the waving keep-going signal again.

"Listen, Andy; I mean, I guessed you were Mr Archer —»

"Yes, I used a voice synthesiser," Andy says patiently.

"But all that Ares stuff; was it all…?"

"A diversion, Cameron, that's all. Hey," he laughs, "maybe there was some heinous plot linking those five dead guys, but if so I've no idea what it was, and as far as I know there's no link between them and Smout and Azul. Pretty neat conspiracy theory, though, don't you think? I know you hacks just love that sort of thing."

"Oh, yeah, had me fooled." I smile weakly at McDunn, who motions me to keep talking.

"But how did you…?" I have to swallow again, fighting my nausea. I feel like I've got a coughing fit coming on, too. "How did you know those IRA code-words? I never told you."

"Your computer, Cameron; your PC. You had them in a file on your hard disk. Made everything a lot easier when you got that modem. Don't think I ever told you I'd become a bit of a hacker in my spare time, did I?"

Christ.

"And that time I rang the hotel and you phoned back, when you must have been in Wales…?"

"Yes, Cameron," he says, sounding indulgently amused. "Answer-machine at the hotel, linked to a pager; called up the machine, heard your message, rang you back. Easy-peasy."

"And you were on the same plane as me to Jersey?"

"Four rows back; in a wig, glasses and "tache. Got a taxi while you were still looking for the hire-car desk. Anyway," he says, and I imagine I can hear him sighing and stretching, "must dash; this technical stuff's all very fascinating but I do have a faint suspicion they're getting you to keep me talking. I'm on a mobile, which is why they haven't traced it yet; this is a biggish cell I'm in. Hey, that's a coincidence, isn't it, Cameron? You in a cell last week, me in one now… Well, maybe not. Anyway, as I say, it's a biggish cell but if I keep talking I'm sure they can find me here too, eventually, so —»

"Andy —»

"No, Cameron, just listen; I'll return Halziel and Lingary tonight, in Edinburgh. There's a double call box in the Grassmarket outside The Last Drop pub; I want you to be in the coin-operated box at seven o'clock. You personally, nineteen hundred hours tonight, coin-op box outside The Last Drop public house, in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh. Bye now!"

The line goes dead. I look at McDunn, who nods. I put the phone down.

Edinburgh on a cold November evening; the Grassmarket, light-bright under a smir of rain below the castle, a rotund floodlit presence in the orange darkness above.

The Grassmarket is a kind of long square in the hollow southeast of the castle, surrounded by mostly old buildings; I can remember when it was a seedy, run-down old place full of winos but it's moved gradually up-market over the years and it's a fairly cool area to hang out now; chic eateries, good bars, fashion outlets and shops specialising in things like kites, or minerals and fossils, though there's a still a homeless hostel round the corner, so it hasn't been irredeemably gentrified.

The Last Drop is at the east end of the Grassmarket, near the split-level curve of Victoria Street, home of yet more specialist shops including one that mystifyingly seems to provide a living selling only brushes, brooms and very large balls of string.

The pub's name is less jolly and more witty than it sounds at first; the city gallows used to be right outside.

No obvious cop cars around. I'm sitting — handcuffed to Sergeant Flavell — in an unmarked Senator with McDunn and two plain-clothes guys from Lothian. There's another unmarked car at the far end of the Grassmarket, several others nearby, and a couple of vans full of uniform guys parked in side streets, plus various cruising patrol cars in the vicinity. They say they've checked the box itself and all likely vantage points, but I'm still worried that Andy's not finished with me yet, that he's lying through his teeth and if I step into that telephone box I'll get a rifle bullet through the head. A plain-clothes guy is in the box, pretending to use it, so it'll be free when Andy calls. It's already wired up so they can record everything. I look at the facade of The Last Drop. There's a new up-market Indian restaurant within sniffing distance, too, near where the old Traverse Theatre used to be.

A pint and a curry. Jesus. My mouth waters. We're spitting distance from the Cowgate and the Kasbar, too.

McDunn looks at his watch. "Seven o'clock," he says. "I wonder — " He breaks off as the cop in the phone box waves at us.

McDunn grunts. "Military precision," he says, then nods to Flavell; we get out of the car as the driver switches something on the radio, producing a ringing tone in time with the one I can hear coming from the box.

Flavell squeezes into the box with me while the other cop waits outside.

"Hello?" I say.

"Cameron?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Change of plans. Be in the same place at three o'clock this morning; you'll get them back then." Click. The line goes look at Flavell.

"Three o'clock, did he say?" Flavell says, looking peeved.

"Think of the overtime," I tell him.

They take me to a cop shop in Chambers Street, about a minute's drive away. I get fed and watered and put into a cell that look and smells of disinfectant. The food they give me is crap; gristly stew, mushed potatoes and brussels sprouts.

But there is one wonderful thing.

They've given me back my lap-top. McDunn's idea. I try not to feel too pathetically grateful.

I check the files first; nothing missing. I give half a thought to going into Xerion to try the mushroom-cloud-riding trick Andy showed me, but it's only half a thought; instead I go straight into Despot.

I can't believe it's the same game. I feel my mouth open.

It's a wasteland. My kingdom is gone. The land is still there, some of the people are, and the capital city, designed in the shape giant crescents of buildings around two lakes, so that from the air it says «CC»… but something terrible seems to have happened. The city is crumbling, largely abandoned; aqueducts fallen, reservoirs cracked and dry, districts flooded, others burned down; the activity taking place within the city is about what you'd expect from town. The countryside has either become desert or marsh or returned to forest; huge areas are barren, and where there is any agriculture it's in the shape of tiny strip-fields around little villages deep in the woods or on the fringe of the waste. The ports are drowned or silted up, the roads and canals have fallen into disrepair or just disappeared altogether, the mines have caved in or been flooded, all the cities and towns have shrunk back, and all the temples — all my temples — are ruined, dark, abandoned. Bandits roam the land, foreign tribes raid the provinces, plagues are rife and the population is much smaller, less productive and individually shorter-lived.

The civilisation to the south that I had so many problems with seems to have retreated or relapsed as well, but that is the extent of the good news. The worst of it is there's no head man, no Despot, no me. I can look at all this but I can't do anything about it, not on this scale. To start playing again I'd have to trade this omniscient but omni-impotent view for that of… God knows, some tribal warrior, village elder, a mayor or a bandit chief.

I range over it all for a while, looking down, appalled. Somebody must have started it up just to look, then left it running while they checked out the other stuff, or maybe they tried to meddle, played with the game but couldn't control it… Unless this is what they wanted, what they designed; I guess a radical Green or Deep Ecologist would think it's a pretty cool result.

The battery alarm beeps. Might have known they wouldn't have charged the damn thing up properly.

I watch the unfolding of my once great realm until the machine senses too little power to work with, and closes itself down. The screen fades out on the overhead view of my capital; I watch my vainglorious "CC'-shaped city just dissolve quietly into darkness. They put the cell lights out a few minutes later.

I sleep on the narrow little metal cot with the lap-top cradled in my arms.

Three in the morning; dry, now, but cold. The police driver leaves the engine running and our exhaust smoke drifts into the air to one side on a chilly breeze. The Grassmarket is silent. The car isn't; the radio chirps now and again and I can't stop coughing.

The cop in the phone box waves, bang on three.

"Corner of West Port and Bread Street, soon," Andy says, then hangs up.

It's walking distance, but we take the car anyway, pulling up outside the Gas Rock Cafe bar. Nothing much here; office buildings, shops across the street. Another unmarked car is parked on Bread Street itself. The vans with the uniformed police are parked on Fountainbridge and the Grassmarket, and the various patrol vehicles are still cruising in the neighbourhood.

McDunn takes a walk around, then comes back to the car.

We have some coffee from a big thermos, sipping it black. It helps my cough a bit.

"Soon," McDunn says, contemplatively, looking into his plastic cup as if searching for coffee grounds to read.

"That's what he said," I tell him, clearing my throat.

"Hmm." McDunn leans forward to the two guys in the front. "Don't smoke, do you, lads?"

"No, sir."

"I'll go outside to be unhealthy, then."

"That's all right, sir."

"No; I want to stretch my legs anyway." He looks at me. "Colley; smoke?"

I cough again. "Can't make me any worse."

Handcuffed to the DI: I guess it's a kind of promotion. We light our fags and have a stroll, down past the pub, across the road to look in the window of a second-hand bookshop, then walk up past a video shop, a butcher's and a sandwich shop, all of them dark and quiet. A taxi rattles past, for-hire light on, heading into the Grassmarket. We stand leaning over the pedestrian barrier at the kerb. The tenement buildings behind look run-down and from here I can see the Victorian pile of the old Co-op building which closed just this year, and the "sixties-modern Goldberg's department store, shut down the year before.

Doesn't even smell too good right here; there's a wet-fish shop just behind us and a chip shop down the road but upwind; even the pavement looks greasy. Can't imagine they'll be bringing the Euro-heads of state down this neck of the woods for a black-pudding supper and a dirty video. Christ; that beano's only three weeks away now. Bet the Lothian police boys are enjoying this little outing when they've got all that to look forward to. I expected to be busy doing lots of Euro-articles for the paper in the run-up, right about now. Ah well.

"He had a good Army record, your friend," McDunn says after a while.

"So did Lieutenant Calley," I suggest.

The DI ruminates upon this. He studies the cone of his cigarette, smoked down almost to the filter now. "Do you think he's politically inspired, your friend? Looks it, up till now."

I stare up High Riggs as another taxi comes bumping down towards us. McDunn folds his cigarette neatly against the railing of the barrier we're leaning on.

"I don't think it's political," I tell McDunn. "I think it's moral."

The DI looks at me. "Moral, Cameron?" He sucks through his teeth.

"He's disillusioned," I say. "He used to have lots of illusions, and now he's got only one: that what he's doing will make any difference."

"Hmm."

We turn to go; I drop my fag to the greasy pavement and grind the butt out with my shoe, then look up. The lights of the cab turning out of High Riggs and rattling down West Port swing across behind us.

I stare. McDunn's saying something but I can't hear what it is. Funny noise in my ears. McDunn's tugging at my wrist with the handcuffs. "Cameron," I hear him say, somewhere in the distance. He says something else after that but I can't hear what it is; there's this weird roaring noise in my ears; high-pitched but roaring. "Cameron?" McDunn's saying, but it's still no good. I open my mouth. He taps me on the shoulder, then holds my elbow. Finally he brings his head round in front of me, putting his face between me and the fish shop. "Cameron?" he says. "You all right?"

I nod, then shake my head. I nod again, pointing forward, but when he looks he can't see anything; the shop is dark and the street lights don't light up the interior.

"Ha…" I begin. I try again. "Have you got a torch?" I ask him.

"A torch?" he says. "No; got my lighter. What is it?"

I nod my head at the fish-shop window again.

McDunn flicks his lighter. He peers in, face close to the glass. He shields his eyes with his other hand, taking my hand with it.

"Can't see anything," he says. "Fish shop, isn't it?" He glances up at the shop's sign.

I nod back towards the unmarked car. "Tell them to reverse up Lauriston Street and put full beam on. On here," I say.

McDunn looks narrow-eyed at me, then seems to see something in my face. He waves to the car. They put the window down and he tells them.

The car whines backward up Lauriston Street, lights on.

Full beam; we turn away from the glare and stand just to one side of the shop front.

The fish shop has a pull-up front window. Inside there is a single slab of what looks like green granite, sloped a little off the horizontal, where the fish are displayed when the shop's open. It has stubby, rounded walls at each side and a little gutter at the bottom, near the window.

On the slab there are bits of meat, not fish. I recognise liver — ruddy chocolate-brown and silky-looking — kidneys like dark, grotesque mushrooms, what is probably a heart and various other cuts of meat, in steaks, cubes and strips. At top centre of the slab there is a large brain, creamy-grey-looking.

"Good Christ," McDunn whispers. Funny, it's that that brings the shivers, not the sight, not after that first glimpse and realisation in the taxi's headlights.

I look back at the neat, almost bloodless display. I suspect even a Sun reader would know none of this came from a fish; I'm fairly sure it's human, but just to leave us in no doubt, at bottom centre of the slab there is a man's genitalia; uncircumcised penis small and shrivelled and grey-yellow, scrotum crumpled and brown-pink, and the two testes pulled out, one to each side, little egg-shaped grey things like tiny smooth brains, connected by slender convoluted pearly tubes to the scrotal sac, so that the final effect is oddly like a diagram of ovaries connected to a womb.

"Halziel or Lingary, I wonder?" McDunn says, sounding a little croaky.

I look up at the sign. Fish.

I sigh. "The locum," I tell him. "The doctor; Halziel." I start coughing.

The lights behind us flash, just as I'm about to ask him for another fag. The car comes quickly across the street to us, turns to face down West Port, and the passenger's window opens again.

"Found one of them, sir," Flavell says. "North Bridge."

"Oh, my God," McDunn says, putting his free hand up to the back of his head. He nods down the street to the other car. "Get those lads here; the other one's lying in this fish shop, dissected." He looks at me. "Come on," he says, rather unnecessarily as we're still handcuffed together.

In the car, he unlocks the cuffs and pockets them without comment.

And so to North Bridge; slanting over the platforms and glass roofs of Waverley Station, newly painted, floodlit, the link between the old and the new towns, and barely a cobble's throw from the Caley building.

There are two cop cars there already when we arrive. They're pulled up near the high end of the bridge, on the west side where the view looks across the station and Princes Street Gardens to the Castle.

The decorated parapet of the bridge here holds a couple of large plinths, one on either side. On the east, where during the day you can see Salisbury Crags, the countryside of Lothian and the scoop of the Forth coast at Musselburgh and Prestonpans, the plinth supports a memorial to the King's Own Scottish Borderers; a group-sculpture of four giant stone soldiers. There is a similar plinth on the west side, where the cop cars are, blue lights strobing along the painted panels of the parapet and the grubby blond stonework of the plinth. Until now that plinth has been empty, sitting there unoccupied and unused except to provide temporary parking for the odd wittily removed road cone or possibly a platform for an adventurous rugby fan to demonstrate high-altitude pissing from.

Tonight, though, it has another role to play; tonight it is the stage for Andy's tableau of Major Lingary (retired), in full-dress major's uniform, but with the insignia torn off, and with his sword lying, broken, beside him.

He has been shot twice in the back of the head.

McDunn and I stand looking at him for a while.

In the morning, at Chambers Street, they feed me a fairly decent breakfast and give me back my own clothes. I was back in the same cell for the rest of the night, but this time the door wasn't locked. They're letting me go, after a few statements.

The interview room at Chambers Street is smaller and older than the one at Paddington Green; green painted walls, lino floor. I'm becoming something of a connoisseur of interview rooms and this one definitely wouldn't rate a star.

First there's a CID guy from Tayside wanting to be told the whole story about the man in the woods who became the body in the tunnel. Gerald Rudd, the man's name was; been on the Missing Persons list for twenty years, assumed to have walked into the Grampians and disappeared, and (ironically) he really was a policeman, if only part-time. A special constable and scoutmaster from Glasgow, he was already under investigation for interfering with one of the boy scouts. Coffee at eleven — they even send somebody out to get me fags — then another statement, punctuated by my coughs, to a couple of Lothian CID lads covering what I know about Halziel and Lingary.

They haven't got much from last night. Inside the fish shop the display got even more bizarre — Andy had used the doc's fingers to spell out I LIED on the counter (only the «E» gave him any problems) — and somebody saw a white Escort driving away from the plinth on North Bridge shortly before Lingary's body was discovered. The car was later found abandoned on Leith Walk. They're dusting the fish shop and the car but I don't expect they'll find anything.

McDunn comes in with another plain-clothes guy about half twelve. He introduces the other cop as Detective Inspector Burall, from Lothian. They're holding on to my passport and they still want me to keep them informed of my whereabouts, in case the Procurator Fiscal decides to prosecute on the Rudd case. I have to sign for the passport. I'm coughing a lot.

"I'd get to a doctor about that cough," McDunn says, sounding concerned. I nod, tears in my eyes from the coughing.

"Yeah," I wheeze. "Good idea." After I've had a walk and a few pints, maybe, I'm thinking.

"Mr Colley," the Lothian cop says. He's a serious-looking guy, a bit older than me with very pale skin and thinning black hair. "I'm sure you'll understand we're concerned about Andrew Gould possibly still being in the city, especially with the European Summit coming up. Detective Inspector McDunn believes there is a chance Andrew Gould will attempt to contact you, and even that he might try to attack or kidnap you."

I look at McDunn, who's nodding, mouth compressed. I have to admit the idea of Andy paying a visit had occurred to me as well, after that I LIED. Burall continues: "We'd like your permission to station a couple of officers at your flat for a while, Mr Colley; we'll put you up in a hotel if this is agreeable to you."

McDunn sucks through his teeth, and I almost want to laugh at the sound now. I don't; I cough instead.

"I would advise you to say yes, Cameron," McDunn says, frowning at me. "Of course, you'll want to pick up some clothes and things first, but —»

The door swings opens and a uniform guy rushes in, glances at me and whispers into McDunn's ear. McDunn looks at me.

"What sort of present for you would he leave at Torphin Dale?"

"Torphin Dale?" I say. The sickness comes back. Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ. It's like I've been kicked in the balls. I have to struggle to make my mouth work. "That's where William and Yvonne live; the Sorrells."

McDunn stares at me for a moment. "Address?" he says.

"Four Baberton Drive," I tell him.

He glances up at the uniformed guy. "Got that?"

"Sir."

"Get some cars out there, and get one for us." Then he's up out of his chair, nodding at Burall and me. "Come on."

I stand up but my legs don't work too well as we walk quickly out of the station into a bright, cold afternoon. A uniformed driver runs out ahead of us, pulling on a jacket and blipping the doors on an unmarked Cavalier.

A present for me, at Torphin Dale. Oh, sweet Jesus, no.

"Come on! Get out the way!"

"Now, Cameron," McDunn says.

Burall puts the radio handset down. McDunn asked me for the telephone number of William and Yvonne's house; Chambers Street is ringing there now and they'll call us if they get through.

"Come on!" I mutter under my breath, willing the road to clear for us.

The driver's doing his best; we've a siren going and blue lights flashing behind the grille, we're darting in and out of the traffic and taking a few risks, but there's just too much traffic. What are all these people doing on the road? Why aren't they at work or at home or on public transport? Can't the bastards walk?

We go wailing across the red lights at Tollcross, snarling traffic up in all directions, take the right-turn lane heading up Home Street, dodge a little old lady on the pedestrian crossing at Bruntsfield and scream down Colinton Road through thinning traffic. The radio gibbers away at us; I lean forward, trying to listen. A patrol car's there at the house; no sign of anybody. My hands are hurting; I look down and see they're clenched tight, tendons standing out on my wrist. I sit back, thrown to one side as we swerve for a car coming suddenly out of a side street. The radio tells us the garage doors are open at the house. The beat cops can't get any answer at the front door.

We sweep across the by-pass. I'm sitting back in the seat, staring at the headlining of the car's roof, coughing now and again, tears in my eyes. Oh Christ, Andy, please, no.

We enter the executive development of Torphin Dale between the tall sandstone gateposts of the old estate; on Baberton Drive, everything looks the way I remember it apart from the orange-and-white parked in the short driveway from the bottom of the cul-de-sac to the house. The three garage doors are all tipped open. I don't know why but this gives me a bad feeling.

William's Merc is there; Yvonne's 325 isn't.

We pull into the drive. It takes a second for me to remember that I'm not handcuffed to anybody. The driver stays in the Cavalier, talking into the radio.

A uniformed cop comes down the drive from the front door, nodding to Burall and McDunn.

"No answer, sir. We haven't looked inside yet; my mate's round the back, looking in the garden."

"There a door from the garage to the rest of the house?" McDunn asks.

"Looks like it, sir."

McDunn looks at me. "You know these people, Cameron; they in the habit of leaving the place unattended like this?"

I shake my head. "Pretty security-conscious," I tell him.

McDunn sucks on his teeth.

We walk into the garage under the tip-up doors. The usual garage stuff, if you're filthy nouveau riche; packing cases, golfing gear, the Jet Ski on its trailer, a work bench, a grid on the wall holding neatly arrayed car and garden tools, most of them gleaming and unused, pairs of ski-boot bags and ski bags hanging from the wall, a steam-cleaning outfit, a little mini-tractor lawn mower, a big grey-black wheelie bin and a couple of mountain bikes. The triple garage is huge but still cluttered; if Yvonne's car was here it would be positively crowded.

McDunn knocks at the door into the rest of the house. He frowns, looks back at Burall. "We got any disposable gloves with us at all?"

"In the car," Burall says, and jogs back to the Cavalier.

"You've been here before, have you, Cameron?" McDunn asks.

"Yes," I say, coughing.

"Right; let us know about any nooks and crannies, will you?"

I nod. Burall comes back with a handful of the sort of gloves you can buy at service stations for working on the car. We all get a pair, even me. McDunn opens the door and we go into the utility room. Nothing in the cupboards in the utility room; nothing in the kitchen.

The four of us spread through the house; I stay with McDunn. We walk through the main lounge, looking behind the curtains, the couches, under the tables, even up inside the hood of the central fireplace. We head upstairs. We check one of the back bedrooms. The officer in the rear garden, walking back towards the house, sees us; he waves and makes a hands-out shrugging motion, shaking his head.

McDunn inspects the drawers built into the divan bed. I look in the built-in wardrobe, sliding my mirrored image out of the way, my heart in my mouth.

Clothes. Just clothes, hats and a few boxes.

We go to the main bedroom. I try not to think about what we were doing here the last time I was in this room. I have that roaring noise in my ears again and I've got a cold sweat and I feel like I could just collapse at any second. I have a weird, invasive feeling, being here with the detective inspector, clumbering around the expensively delicate domesticity of this house with no William or Yvonne here.

I look in the dressing room while McDunn checks under the bed, then looks out onto the balcony. I open the dressing-room wardrobes. Lots of clothes. I pull them back, hands shaking.

Nothing. I put the mirror doors back. I walk towards the bathroom. I put my hand on the door; a pale, pastel light shines from the room as the door starts to open.

"Cameron?" McDunn says, from the bedroom. I retreat, padding through, leaving the door half-open. He's looking out the window towards the drive. He glances at me, nods. "Car."

I go to the window; a red BMW325. Yvonne's car.

It's as if the car's hesitating, just in front of the drive, put off by the patrol car and the unmarked Cavalier parked in front of the garage.

Then it parks across the bottom of the drive, blocking our way out but leaving an escape route for itself. McDunn looks suspicious but I feel relieved. If Andy was here, he's long gone; that's an Yvonne move.

And it's her. Sweet Jesus, it's her, it's her, it's her. She gets out of the car holding a big black torch about two foot long, her face set in a frown. She's wearing jeans and a leather jacket over a sweatshirt. She's had her hair cut again. Her sharp, lean-featured face is un-made-up and looks aggressively distrustful. She looks wonderful.

"That Mrs Sorrell?" McDunn says quietly.

"Yes," I say, on an outrush of breath, something in me easing. I want to cry. Yvonne looks away up the drive as another patrol car swings in. She puts the torch away as the car pulls to a stop and two uniformed officers get out. She walks up to them, nodding back to the house.

"Let's get down there and see what she's got to say, shall we?" McDunn says.

We go past the dressing-room door. "Just a minute," I say. McDunn waits as I go through the dressing room. I press the door to the bathroom open. The pale light spills out onto me.

Nothing. I look in the shower, the Jacuzzi, the bath. Nothing. I take a swallow and a deep breath and join McDunn to head downstairs.

"Cameron!" Yvonne says as we get to the bottom of the stairs. She's putting a newspaper and a couple of pints of milk down on the telephone table. The two cops from the second car are behind her. She glances at McDunn then comes up to me, hugs me, holding me tight. "Are you all right?"

"Fine. Are you?"

"Yes," she says. "What is all this? Somebody from the paper said you were the man they were holding for all those murders." She pulls away, still with one arm round my waist. "Why the police?" She looks at McDunn.

"Detective Inspector McDunn," he says, nodding. "Good afternoon, Mrs Sorrell."

"Hello." She looks at me, stepping back but still holding my hand, searching my face. "Cameron, you look…" She shakes her head, sucking on her lips. She looks around and says, "Where's William?"

McDunn and I exchange looks. Detective Inspector Burall comes downstairs, saying, "Nothing up there…" as he sees Yvonne.

She lets go of my hand, taking a step back and looking around at all of us, as the cop from the first patrol car comes into the hall from the study, and I see her gaze falling on my transparently gloved hands, and on the hands of the other men.

There's an instant when I suddenly see her as a young woman in her own home, surrounded by all these men who've invaded it, just turned up uninvited; all bigger than her, all strangers except for one she's been told might be a serial killer. She looks wary, angry, defiant, all at once. My heart feels fit to melt.

"Was your husband here when you left, Mrs Sorrell?" McDunn asks, in a comfortingly natural voice.

"Yes," she says, still looking round us all, settling on me, evaluating, enquiring, before looking back to McDunn. "He was here; I only left about half an hour ago."

"I see," McDunn says. "Well, he's probably popped out for a moment, but we had a message that there might be some problem here. We took the lib —»

"He's not in the garden?" she asks.

"Apparently not, no."

"Well, you don't just "pop out" from this estate, Detective Inspector," Yvonne says. "The nearest shops are ten minutes" drive away, and his car's still there." She looks at the cop who was upstairs. "You've been searching for him, searching the house?"

McDunn is all charm. "Yes, Mrs Sorrell, we have, and I apologise for this invasion of privacy; it's entirely my responsibility. The investigation we're involved in is a very serious one, and the tip-off we had was from a source that has been reliable in the past. As the house was open but apparently unoccupied, and we had reason to believe there might have been a crime committed I thought it right to enter, but —»

"So you haven't found him," Yvonne says. "You haven't found anything?" She looks, suddenly, small and frightened. I can see her fighting it, and I love her for it, and want to hold her, shush her, comfort her, but another part of me is full of a terrible jealous despair that the person she's so concerned about is William, not me.

"Not yet, Mrs Sorrell," McDunn says. "What was he doing when you last saw him?"

I see her swallowing, see the tendons on her neck stand out as she tries to control herself. "He was in the garage," she says. "He was going to take the Honda out — the wee tractor — and sweep up leaves in the back garden."

McDunn nods. "Well, we'll just have a look, shall we?" He looks at the two cops who've just arrived and holds up one hand, flexing it. "Gloves, lads."

The two cops nod and head back for the front door.

The rest of us troop towards the garage, through the hall and the kitchen. My feet feel like they're wading through treacle and that roaring noise is coming back. I try not to start coughing.

McDunn stops at the utility room. He looks slightly embarrassed. "Mrs Sorrell," he says, smiling. "I couldn't ask you to put a kettle on, could I?"

Yvonne stands looking at him. She looks hard and suspicious. She swivels on her heel and marches towards the work surface where the kettle is.

McDunn opens the door into the garage and I see the Mercedes and I'm thinking, The car; the boot of the car. I see the packing cases; Christ, there too.

I don't feel so good. I start coughing. McDunn and the officers look in the packing cases and the car, and it's like they're not seeing the big black wheelie bin. I stand to one side and lean against the wall, listening to them talk, watching them open and lift and peer, and that big black bin is just standing there, ignored, bulking dark against the light of the day outside where a breeze stirs, swirling dust and leaves into the air, pushing a few of the leaves onto the white-painted garage floor. McDunn looks under the car. Burall and the other cop are removing some of the packing cases and tea chests against the wall to look in the ones beneath. The two cops from the second patrol car are walking up the drive, pulling on plastic gloves.

I push myself away from the wall when I can't take it any longer, just as Yvonne comes into the garage from the house; I stagger across to the fat, chest-high bin. I can feel the others looking at me and sense Yvonne behind me. I'm coughing as I put my hand on the bin's smooth plastic handle. I lift it.

A rotting, fishy smell comes out, faint and tinged with other scents. The bin is empty. I stare into it, perversely shocked, reeling back. I let the lid fall.

I bump into Yvonne and she holds me. The breeze eddies in through the open garage doors again; one of the poised garage doors creaks. Then something snaps, overhead, and the middle door swings suddenly down in the faces of the two policemen coming up the drive, making me flinch and step back, and as that middle section of the light closes off and the door slams clanging down in a cloud of dust and Yvonne gives a quick, cut-off scream, I see William; William, strapped to the internal bracing of the door with tape and twine round his wrists and ankles, his head covered with a black rubbish bag, tied tight round his throat with more black tape, his body limp.

I turn away, doubling up and coughing and coughing; blood comes suddenly from my mouth, splattering red on the white of the garage floor as, in that particular instant of loneliness, through my tears I see McDunn come forward and put a hand on Yvonne's shoulder.

She turns away from him and from William and from me and puts her hands up over her face.