Detective Inspector Bob Valentine’s jaw tightened as he walked from the chief super’s office; his teeth would be grinding next. He knew there were good reasons for him not to play up the emotions he was feeling – the strain it placed on his heart, that hard-pressed, overused and badly damaged muscle, was one good reason – but he also knew he had never been very good at containing his anger. It was as if there was nowhere for it to go; once created, the anger had to find an outlet, like the letting of a valve on the side of a dam – you didn’t turn the handle and expect to keep your shoes dry. He was not an angry man, he knew that much about himself; he had once been called proud and didn’t understand what was meant by that. He was proud of his job, his position, that was a fact, and when he examined his inner workings it was always this fact that seemed to be beneath most of his problems. But Valentine was getting older now and his physical diminution was a consideration he had to examine more closely. Dealing with Chief Superintendent Marion Martin suddenly felt like an unnecessary and unwelcome weight to add to the load he was pushing uphill. Throwing him under the watch of a psychotherapist was a low blow, though; anyone in his position would have objected to that, he told himself.
Valentine halted mid-stride and checked his watch, tapped the face. As he tried to clear his thoughts and assess what he needed to do – more than bemoan his boss – he thinned his eyes into tiny slits. One of the civilian staff passed by and glanced his way; he felt his skin prickling as he made a poor attempt at a smile. He gripped tight to the handle of his briefcase and walked on. The diversion of the everyday seemed to free him from the tangle of angry thorns he’d taken from Martin’s office, but he knew there were still one or two sticking in him. It had not been a good start to his return to active policing.
The incident room was bare. Valentine strolled between the rows of tables towards the broad window that looked out onto the town of Ayr, collecting the view like a postcard. Amethyst clouds sat high above the rooftops, and a white chalk line from a passing aeroplane dissected the cumulus into two distinct camps: those drifting to and those drifting from the horizon. The detective felt a sickening turn of his guts as he followed the pull of familiar sights: Wallace Tower was where he remembered it, the vast carbuncle that was the multistorey car park still stuck out and the King Street bus stop was stacked full of dafties and druggies from the nearby flats. He felt like he had never been away.
He didn’t know how long he’d been staring out the window, hands in pockets, just contemplating the day and his duties when the heavy doors clattered off the top wall and two female PCs giggled their way into view. He didn’t like the peace of his incident room being disturbed at the best of times, but today was not the day to test his better nature.
The two young officers seemed wholly unaware of his presence at the other end of the room. Valentine felt invisible as he watched them dislodging photographs from the blue folders in their arms. They laid the pictures out – as they’d obviously been told to do by the SOCOs – but something about the manner in which they went about the duty sent the red mist swirling inside Valentine’s mind once more. He walked slowly over to the young girls; neither noticed him, and that surprised him because he felt like there was steam emitting from his ears and nostrils.
‘Big Rab knows what you’re like after that night in the Treehouse,’ said the taller of the two. She was clearly the more recessive, because the other one had a sharper line in riposte.
‘Bugger off . . . That’s the last time I take you howking for men!’
Valentine managed to bring himself within their ambit without either of them noticing him. He raised himself on his toes for a moment or two, scanning the pictures of the crime scene – close-ups of the victim’s facial contusions and wider shots taking in the sweep of the landfill site. They were colour photographs, they spared no detail and yet their content had failed to derail the women’s pub chatter. There was a time and a place for everything, and Valentine knew the time had come for the girls to meet their new boss.
He folded his arms and made a deeply guttural noise that might have been taken for throat clearing by an imbecile, but to anyone with a modicum of intelligence it yelled trouble.
‘Oh.’ The taller of the two spoke first; she had the decency to appear embarrassed.
The other officer fronted it out, painting a wide smile on her face and presenting an open hand to shake. ‘Hello, sir, I’m Kirsty Duchar.’
Valentine kept his eyes on the PC, then lowered his gaze towards her hand and spoke. ‘Do you believe in miracles?’
The girl’s smile faltered, slackened a little. She kept her hand out, directed towards the detective, but a few seconds more and she would be in the avenue of looking very silly.
‘Winged horses . . . angels . . . alien intervention in human affairs?’ said Valentine.
The smile dropped off her face completely. ‘I–I . . .’ the proffered hand began to tremble a little. Her head stayed front, but her gaze lunged towards her friend as if she was begging for help.
Valentine kept still; his voice was low and calm but backed with a confidence that boomed like a marching band. ‘Because you’ve as much chance of seeing any of those in here as me remembering your name, love. By the end of today this room will be chock-full of uniforms like yours, and if we’re here next week you can think of another number and double it.’
He unfolded his arms, placed one hand in his pocket and with his other he gently lowered the PC’s outstretched arm. ‘I’ll call you “love” or “dear” if I’m in good fettle . . .’ He paused and glanced at the other girl – she had her gaze fixed firmly on her shoes. ‘If I’m not in good fettle I’ll call you what I bloody well like and you can bet that’ll not be something you’d like to repeat to your granny.’
He raised his head, but kept his steely gaze on the pair of them. He appraised them for what they were – a pair of daft lassies. He had been young and daft himself, it wasn’t a crime, but this was a police force and he was conducting a murder investigation. There were far too many new recruits who saw the job as a stepping stone to middle management; they spent a few years on the force to make their CVs look interesting. Valentine had nothing against people bettering themselves, he had nothing against ambition, but he had everything against wet-nursing other people’s children through the adult world he lived in. The job required more diligence, more respect, and if that wasn’t made clear from the outset then some painful shocks were likely to be had along the road.
‘I’m a moody bastard, in case you hadn’t guessed,’ he said. ‘And the mood between me calling you “love” and calling you out is me pointing to the coffee machine and expecting you to read my mind.’
He pointed to the coffee machine.
The officers turned away and started to disassemble the filter from the coffee jug.
‘Milk, one sugar,’ said Valentine.
‘Yes, sir.’
As he walked around the table the detective ignored the flurry of activity, but was grateful for the lack of bawdy conversation. He’d set the tone; he knew they’d call him a bastard for it, but they’d think twice about trivialising his investigation. If they had any nous, he thought, they might even think about what they were there for in the first place.
Valentine leafed through the photographs from the crime scene. The first one to strike him was of the victim’s face – the expression he wore looked different from how the detective remembered him. It was strange, he seemed almost contented, but it was the camera playing tricks. The next picture was a close-up of the main entry wound – it would take a perverse mind to be contented by a wooden spike inserted where the sun didn’t shine, he thought.
‘Jesus Christ.’ He took the pictures and started to tack them to the noticeboard.
‘Your coffee, sir.’
‘Put it on the table.’
The girl retreated, looked as deferential as a punkah wallah. The image poked at Valentine for a moment, but there was no retreating from his earlier stance now; that would merely make a mockery of him and what he had said. He raised the cup of coffee and placed it to his lips; it was warm and welcome.
DC McAlister was the first of the officers to show, sauntering through the door and nodding to Valentine. ‘Morning, sir.’ He moved towards the table and picked up a paper cup. ‘Coffee, nice one.’
Valentine turned back to the board and started to loosen off his collar. ‘What are your thoughts today, Ally?’
The DC laughed. ‘Oh, no . . . Caught me with that already. Not making any guesses.’
Valentine smirked. ‘How’s the sweep-up going?’
‘They got the lion’s share of the tip bagged last night, take a wee while for them to sift through it . . . You know Dino’s going to do her nut when she hears about that.’
‘Leave her to me.’ Valentine lowered his cup. ‘I’m the one calling the shots. How many uniforms have you got sifting through the rubbish?’
‘Plenty, about twenty at least.’
‘Double it.’
‘What, sir?’
The DI tilted his head towards McAlister. ‘You’re not going to make me ask you twice, are you?’
‘No, sir.’ He placed the paper cup on the table and reached for the telephone. As he spoke into the receiver, Valentine returned to the folder containing the photographs and looked for the accompanying paperwork.
There was a list of items that the SOCOs’ photographer had seen fit to draw attention to: scrapes on the wall of the tip; red markings that may have been blood on a sheet of corrugated iron; a fresh splinter of wood that had detached from the wooden stake. He matched the list to the pictures and tacked them to the wall.
McAlister raised the paper cup to his lips and nodded approvingly. ‘That blood splatter’s in for testing.’
‘Know it’s blood, do you?’
‘Looks like it.’ He took another swig from the coffee cup, then altered his voice to a more matter-of-fact tone. ‘Right, that’s the Stigs’ Department doubled.’
Valentine smirked. ‘Tell me about the door-to-door last night.’
McAlister sighed. ‘Well, it didn’t turn up much. There was a white van in the locus around 9 p.m. and . . .’ He put down his cup again and removed a spiral-bound notepad from his jacket pocket. ‘Yeah, around 9 p.m. and it was seen again about 9.30-ish. It could have been a delivery – y’know, no one in and he’s leaving it with a neighbour.’
Valentine scrunched his brows. ‘At 9 p.m. . . . working late for a delivery man. Did anyone get a number plate?’
McAlister shook his head.
‘Nobody ever does,’ said Valentine. ‘Right. Check it out, check if anyone on the street got anything delivered, or a tradesman called between 9 and 9.30. You know the drill.’
‘Way ahead of you, sir. Got uniform on that this morning. Got the whole area gridded off and being checked.’
‘Good.’ Valentine knew they were searching for the slightest lead, anything. A chance encounter, a strange-looking manoeuvre in the street, just something that stuck out as unusual and could be examined more closely. This was the vital time: the chances of solving the case depended on the information that came in during the first forty-eight hours. After that, clues withered, got washed away, and singularly human traits like memory and waning interest came into play.
Valentine and McAlister were returning to the folders when there was a thud on the swing doors of the incident room and a rush of movement sent a gale to upend the paperwork.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad?’ It was the chief super, marching towards them as the doors passed each other in an out-of-sync motion that caused a chain of jarring, clattering collisions.
Valentine sensed McAlister turning towards him, but he looked away at the quick-stepping chief super.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘ID on your corpse from the tip.’ She spat the information in a staccato burst. ‘Oh, and you’ll love this as well . . . he’s a banker wanker!’
Valentine let himself pause for breath, for a moment to digest the sudden turn of events. As he watched the chief super draw up to within inches of his stance, he became aware of her heady perfume. He didn’t like the scent, it was overpowering. ‘And the bad news?’
She reached out and flicked Valentine’s tie. ‘You’ll need to smarten yourself up . . . The news hounds are on the sniff.’