Fatal Last Words

Thirty-nine

‘Wherever this guy came from,’ said George Regan quietly, ‘he didn’t bring much with him.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

The DI turned to his sergeant. ‘I was just thinking that this guy wasn’t big on personal possessions,’ he told her. ‘He has no photographs, no books, nothing at all, other than his passport and the letter from the immigration people giving him indefinite permission to stay in the UK.’ He pointed to a tiny wardrobe, the door of which was open. ‘As for clothes, apart from what he was wearing when he died, he’s got one pair of work boots, a pair of shoes, four shirts, one jacket and two pairs of trousers.’

Lisa McDermid pulled open the drawer she had just searched. ‘He didn’t change his underwear or his socks too often either, if this is his entire stock in here.’ She looked around the shabby caravan. ‘Imagine living like this.’

‘Most of us are pretty comfortable.’ Derek Baillie was standing in the doorway. ‘We’re not all like Az. When he arrived here he was set up by Playfair’s charity. They gave him the van, and his old truck to tow it.’

‘And the clothes?’ McDermid asked. ‘The manky old pants here are from British Home Stores.’

‘The jacket isn’t,’ Regan pointed out as he checked its pockets. He twisted it on its hanger to show the label. ‘Whatever that is, it’s not English.’

Baillie held out a hand. ‘Let me see.’ He took the black garment that the detective passed across, peering at the lettering. ‘It’s the Cyrillic alphabet,’ he declared. ‘Bulgarian, I guess, given that’s where Az was from.’

‘Did he ever talk about his origins?’

‘Not much. I asked him about Sofia once; he said that for him it was a shit-hole with no jobs for casuals, and that he never went near it. He said he was a countryman, and having seen him at work, I can understand that. His skills were rural rather than urban. He was a pretty fair gardener; I took him out on jobs with me whenever I could. I’d service the machinery and he’d test it for me, cutting grass, trimming hedges and so on. He was good at that, but he hadn’t a clue about what made the things work.’ He smiled. ‘Actually, he was a bit better than fair in the garden. He and I did a big house once, down near Lauder. It had a lot of topiary. . hedge sculptures and such. . that had been neglected. Az found a pair of shears and went to work; it took him half a day and everything was perfect. There was a vegetable garden too, and it was a shambles. The guy who owned the house was a stockbroker, and he hadn’t a clue. Az told him that he’d no chance of growing maize in that soil, and the bloke said, “OK, sort it out.” So he did. He tore the place apart, junked nearly all of it. I wound up labouring for him, and in a couple of days he had potatoes, carrots, cabbages and leeks, all in neat sections and rows. He was singing away as he worked, in his own language. That was the happiest I ever saw him, but when I said as much, he clammed up. It was odd.’

‘In what way?’ asked McDermid.

‘The way he looked. It was as if he felt guilty about being so contented. Like I said, I’ve never seen him that way since, the poor wee guy. Resentment and suspicion were never far from the surface with him. I guess he was one of those old-fashioned gypsies, the sort who want as little as possible to do with the other world. Even last night, when we met your boss, I had to lean on him to get him to come, but it was a waste of time. The man was perfectly reasonable, perfectly polite; I understood his point of view, but Az wasn’t having any of it. He drank up and left.’ Baillie shook his head sadly, then handed the jacket back to Regan.

The inspector took it from him, and made to hang it on its rail; as he moved, the back of his free hand brushed the hem of the garment and felt something hard. He frowned, slipped it from its hanger, turned it inside out and felt inside the shiny lining until he found a tear inside the breast pocket, large enough for him to retrieve the hidden object.

It was a brown envelope, unsealed, its contents stiff. He drew them out, a small bundle of letters and two photographs, all held together by an elastic band which snapped as soon as he made to release it. He laid the letters on the caravan’s kitchen work surface and looked at the first of the images. It was cracked and its colours had begun to fade, but the woman it portrayed, seated on a grassy hillside, was still strikingly beautiful, with dark hair, high cheekbones and eyes that seemed to grab Regan and capture him. He stared at her, until he realised that his companions were staring at him. The second snapshot showed the same woman, a few years older perhaps, but still as dramatic, standing, flanked by two small children, a boy, no more than a toddler, and a girl, taller and a year or two older; in the background were a caravan and a car.

The DI glanced at Baillie, then handed the photographs to him. ‘Did he ever mention a family?’

‘No,’ the traveller replied. ‘Never. Not once. Do you think this could be his wife and kids?’ He passed the two prints to McDermid as he spoke.

‘It needn’t be. Could be his sister and hers.’

‘His mother?’ the sergeant suggested. ‘Could the boy be him?’

‘Look at the car in the picture with the kids,’ Regan told her. ‘It’s a Volvo. According to Mustafic’s passport he was thirty-eight years old. So if that’s him as a nipper. . Well, it couldn’t be, end of story. I did enough time on traffic when I was a plod to know that model’s ten years old, fifteen at most. If this is his family, and he left them behind when he came over here, no wonder he was a sad wee bugger.’

‘If they are, they need to be told about this,’ McDermid declared.

‘In that case,’ said Baillie, ‘you’d better speak to Hugo Playfair. There’s nobody else here who’ll have the faintest idea how to trace them.’