The Impossible Dead

17

The cordon had been moved further up the track. It comprised the usual length of crime-scene ribbon guarded by a bored-looking uniform. Fox and Naysmith showed their ID.

‘CID must have arrived,’ Fox explained to Naysmith as the uniform lifted the tape so their car could pass under it.

The gate to the field was open, the field itself emptied of livestock and now useful as a temporary car park. Two unmarked cars, one patrol car, and two white vans.

A suited, shaven-headed veteran was talking into his phone beside one of the unmarked cars. His eyes were on the new arrivals as they parked and got out. Fox offered him a nod and started walking towards the cottage. He could see figures moving around inside. At least two of them were Scene of Crime – dressed in regulation hooded white overalls, hands and feet covered so they wouldn’t contaminate the locus.

‘Bit late for that,’ Fox muttered, thinking of the number of people who had traipsed in and out since the body had been found.

‘Hey, you!’

The man with the phone was approaching from the field. He had a loping gait, which caused him to slip on some mud and nearly lose his footing. From the look on his face, Fox surmised this wasn’t the first time it had happened.

‘It’s treacherous,’ Fox commented.

The man ignored him, using his phone as a pointer. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name’s Fox.’ Fox reached for his warrant card again. ‘Inspector, Lothian and Borders.’

‘So what brings you here?’

‘How about some ID first? Can’t be too careful.’

The man gave him a hard stare, but eventually relented. His name was Brendan Young. He was a detective sergeant.

‘Glenrothes?’ Fox guessed.

‘Dunfermline.’

‘You in charge?’

‘DI’s inside.’

‘Not now, he isn’t.’ The man who stepped from the cottage was six foot three and as broad as a rugby player. Jet-black hair combed straight forward, and small, piercing eyes.

‘I’m DI Cash.’

‘They’re Lothian and Borders,’ Young informed him.

‘Bit lost, gentlemen?’ Cash asked.

‘I was out here a few days ago,’ Fox began to explain, ‘interviewing Alan Carter about his nephew.’

‘You’re the Complaints?’

Fox sensed a hardening of tone. Doubtless Young’s face was hardening too. Normal enough reactions.

‘We are,’ he concurred.

‘Then I was right first time – you are a bit fucking lost.’ Cash smiled at Young, and Young smiled back. ‘This is a suspicious death-’

‘Not murder yet, then?’ Fox interrupted. But Cash wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an answer.

‘Why don’t you just go back to strip-searching your own kind to see if they’ve pocketed any paper clips from the stationery cupboard?’

Fox managed a twitch of the mouth. ‘Thanks for the advice, but I’m here for fingerprints.’

Cash stared at him. ‘Fingerprints?’

‘Mine,’ Fox explained. Then, patiently, as if to a child: ‘I was in the living room and hallway. Might have left prints. If I give them to Scene of Crime, they can be verified and eliminated.’

‘Up to us to decide that,’ Cash stated.

‘Of course,’ Fox accepted. Cash’s eyes stayed on him for a moment, then moved to Young.

‘Go fetch someone.’

Young headed into the house. Fox saw that the door jamb was splintered. A crowbar had been used to open it. He walked over to the window ledge, lifted the flowerpot, and showed Cash the key.

‘Kirkcaldy CID didn’t tell you?’ he guessed.

‘They didn’t.’

‘Well, you know what it’s like: this is their patch. Don’t expect any favours.’

‘I might say the same thing.’

Fox gave another twitch of the mouth, nearing a smile this time.

‘You’ll give us a statement about the deceased?’ Cash asked.

‘Whenever you’re ready for it.’

‘How often did you meet him?’

‘Just the once.’

‘What did you think? Good guy?’

Fox nodded. ‘Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, though.’

‘Oh?’

‘Seems to me he didn’t suffer fools – or family – gladly. Plus he ran a security firm.’ Fox slipped his hands into his pockets. ‘I was here again afterwards,’ he went on. ‘Not long after the body was discovered. The papers on the table had been disturbed; strewn about the place.’

‘Anything taken?’

‘Couldn’t say.’ He paused. ‘You know what Carter was working on?’

‘I get the feeling you’re about to tell me.’

‘Lawyer called Francis Vernal. Died in suspicious circumstances. Gunshot. Reckoned suicide at the time. About thirty miles from here…’

‘Francis Vernal? That was back in the eighties.’

Fox shrugged. One of the overalled figures was emerging from the cottage. She removed her hood and overshoes.

‘Which one of you?’ she asked.

‘Me,’ Malcolm Fox replied.

He followed her to one of the vans. She climbed into the back and found everything she needed. The portable scanner, however, refused to work.

‘Flat battery?’ Fox guessed.

She had to resort to the back-up of ink and paper. The result was signed by both of them, after which she handed Fox a wet-wipe for his fingers. This was followed by a DNA swab of the inside of his cheek, and the plucking of a couple of hairs from his head.

‘I can’t afford many,’ Fox complained.

‘Need to get the root,’ she explained. After everything was sealed into pouches, she locked the van.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, heading back to the cottage.

‘When was the last time you had your prints taken?’ Naysmith asked.

‘Been a while.’ Fox saw Cash watching them from the living room. The DI gave a little wave, as if granting them permission to leave. Naysmith, however, had started walking in the direction of the Land Rover.

‘Bit of quality,’ he said, peering in through the driver’s-side window.

‘Mind you don’t leave any prints,’ Fox warned him.

Naysmith took a step back and looked around. ‘Question for you,’ he said. ‘Why leave your car out here when you’ve got a garage?’

Fox looked in the direction he was pointing. A track led up the slope behind the cottage, ending at a ramshackle building.

‘Afraid it might collapse?’ Fox guessed. But all the same, he started trudging uphill, Naysmith a couple of steps behind him.

The garage was padlocked. The lock looked old. The doors comprised vertical slats of wood, weathered and warped by the elements.

‘There’s a window here,’ Naysmith said. By the time Fox reached him, he had wiped at it with a handkerchief, without helping them gain much impression of what was inside.

‘Tarpaulin, I think…’

They walked around the garage, even gave it a kick in a couple of spots, but there was no easy way in.

‘Give me a sec,’ Fox said, walking back down the slope again. There was no one in the hallway of the cottage, so he moved briskly past the living-room door and found the small kitchen. Keys hung from a row of hooks to the left of the sink. He ran an eye along them and chose the likeliest candidates. As he was turning to leave, he saw Cash emerge from the living room.

‘What are you doing there?’

‘Looking for you.’ Fox slipped the keys into the inside pocket of his jacket, removing a business card at the same time.

‘So you can reach me to arrange that interview,’ he explained, handing it to Cash. Cash looked at it, then back at Fox.

‘I know you’re all excited,’ he said in an undertone, ‘not normally getting to play with the big boys and all that, but I need you to bugger off now.’

‘Understood,’ Fox said, managing his best to look and sound humbled in the presence of a Murder Squad detective. Cash escorted him to the front door and looked to left and right.

‘Where’s that work-experience kid of yours?’

‘Call of nature,’ Fox explained, nodding in the direction of the trees. He walked towards his car, opened it and got in. Cash was at the window again, watching. But after a couple of moments he turned away, and Fox got out of the car, heading back to the garage.

The second key unlocked the padlock, and they were in. Naysmith had been right. A tarpaulin was draped over what looked like another vehicle. There was dust everywhere. A workbench boasted rusty tools. Home-made shelves had buckled under the weight of old paint cans. There was an electric lawnmower for the patches of grass to the front and rear of the cottage. Along with the rolled-up extension cable, it was the newest thing visible.

Naysmith had lifted a corner of the tarp. ‘Not exactly roadworthy,’ he commented. ‘More what you’d call a write-off.’

Fox went to the other end of the vehicle and lifted another corner. The car was a maroon Volvo 244. It seemed fine until he lifted the cover further. There was no glass in the rear window.

‘Give me a hand,’ he said. Together they pulled back the tarpaulin. The front of the car was wrecked, its engine exposed, grille and bonnet missing.

‘Tell me it isn’t,’ Naysmith said in a voice just above a whisper.

But Fox was in no doubt at all. Vernal’s car, the one that had been taken to the scrapyard. Fox tried the passenger-side door, but it was jammed shut from the force of impact. The car’s interior didn’t look as though it had been touched in quarter of a century. There were bits of broken glass on the back seat, but not much else. Naysmith couldn’t get the driver’s door to open either.

‘How come it’s here?’ he asked quietly.

‘No idea,’ Fox said. But then he remembered. ‘Cottage used to be owned by a cop called Gavin Willis. He ran the original inquiry.’

‘So he could have kept the car for himself? Still doesn’t explain why.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Fox paused. ‘Reckon you can get in through that window?’

He meant the gaping rear windscreen. Naysmith removed his expensive jacket, handed it to Fox for safe-keeping, then hauled himself up, squeezing through the gap.

‘What now?’ he asked from the back seat.

‘Is there anything that might interest us?’

Naysmith felt beneath the front seats, then stretched between them and opened the glove box. He found the paperwork for the car and handed it to Fox, who stuffed it into his pocket.

‘Half a set of spare bulbs and a few sweet-wrappers,’ Naysmith reported. ‘But that’s about it.’

Fox could hear voices down at the cottage. They’d be wondering why his car was still there while he wasn’t. ‘Out you come, then,’ he said.

He helped pull Naysmith through the opening. They were standing side by side, Naysmith slipping his jacket back on, when the garage door shuddered open. Cash and Young were standing there.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

‘Francis Vernal’s car,’ Fox stated.

Cash stared at the Volvo, then at Fox again. ‘How do you know?’

‘Make, model, colour,’ Fox explained.

‘And damage,’ Naysmith added, pointing to the engine casing.

‘I want the pair of you out of here,’ Cash growled, pointing a finger of his own.

‘Just leaving,’ Fox told him.

Cash and Young stayed with them until they’d reached their own car, then watched as they did a three-point turn and drove slowly back down the hill, Cash following on foot, just so he could be sure. They paused while the cordon was lifted, and waved to the uniform as they trundled towards the main road.

‘What now?’ Joe Naysmith asked.

‘This is where you get to show off your detective skills, Joe,’ Fox told him. ‘Kirkcaldy Library – find a phone book for 1985 and make a note of every scrapyard in the area. If we track down where the car went, we’ve half a chance of finding out why it left there again.’

Naysmith nodded. ‘Might not mean anything, of course.’

‘Every chance,’ Fox agreed. ‘But at least we’ll give it a shot, eh?