On the road back to the station, Detective Inspector Bob Valentine sensed his spirit collapsing inside him. He was queasy and couldn’t think clearly – it was as if the whole situation had the unreality of dreams. His mind wandered back to the nightmare he’d had when he saw the little girl with the white-blonde hair laying flowers round the corpse of James Urquhart. He knew the mind worked in unusual ways – that it was likely his unconscious creating an image of a situation that troubled him – but he wondered now what situation could be more worrying than that image? He thought of the girls, Fiona and Chloe: they had been that size once – was there a connection? Chloe had been most like the girl in the dream – she had been a chatty child, though, and this girl had seemed so withdrawn, taciturn. When Chloe was very young she would stay in her room and hold conversations with imaginary friends, always happy, always benign. But when asked who she was talking to, she would go quiet and cross her lips with fingers as if forbidden to say. It puzzled Valentine then and it made him think about the situation again now: children possessed something special at that age, almost preternatural, which was lost in adulthood.
As Valentine drove towards the station, he was bothered by an irritant. A thought was lodged in his mind like a splinter, and he was avoiding it, trying to take an oblique view in the hope that if he snuck up on the thought then it would lose its power. But there was no getting around it. He was being bothered by this case in a way he hadn’t been before – he felt it more, but the feelings the case triggered were not ones he had ever encountered.
‘Get a grip, Bob,’ he mouthed as he rounded the bend towards King Street and took the entrance to the station car park.
As he pulled up and killed the engine, Valentine sat drumming his fingers on the dash for a moment. The sight of the latest murder victim had lit a fuse in him. He felt it burning away inside his gut. Valentine had allowed his intuition to play a part in the job before, but this was something altogether different: he felt as if he was being led by outside forces rather than by his own knowledge and experience. He rolled up the window and let his breathing still as he tried to focus. There was a wider picture – a broader purview than he had – something was tugging him away from the obvious, but even the most mundane and pedestrian of assumptions seemed to be swept aside by the latest victim.
He slapped a palm off the wheel and opened the car door. On the way into the station he nodded to Jim on the desk and then made straight for the incident room. The first person to catch his attention was Paulo, who had his back to him and was speaking into a telephone.
‘Aye, put that on and give me another two hundred on the nose.’
Valentine moved in front of the DS and stood with his hands in his pockets, making it perfectly clear that he had caught the gist of the conversation.
‘Got to go . . .’ said Paulo. ‘Er, sorry, boss.’
‘That wasn’t what I think it was, because if it was then you’d have my foot in your arse and a new role mopping out the kennels for the dog handlers, Paulo.’
He dropped his gaze and painted a contrite look on his face. ‘Yes, sir.’
Valentine let his indignation burn into the DS for a moment longer and then he called out to the room. ‘Right, can I have all of you round the board, please.’
There was a shuffle of chair legs and some muttering as the squad made their way towards the whiteboard. Valentine picked up a pen and removed the cap; he was writing a description of the latest victim as he began to speak. ‘White male, middle aged, blue-collar worker and spiked through the backside with a sharpened plank of wood.’
‘It’s the same MO, then . . .’ said DS Donnelly.
‘Ah, Phil, you’re here.’
‘I was just on my way out to the scene, sir.’
‘Leave it. Ally can handle that lot; you’ll be more use to me here if they get an ID.’ The DI put the cap back on the marker pen and walked in front of the board. ‘There’re obviously striking similarities to the murder of James Urquhart, so I’d be expecting to uncover links between the two victims . . . What those links will be at this stage we can only guess.’
Paulo asserted himself. ‘They must have known each other.’
Valentine tapped the board at the description of the latest victim. ‘Do they look like the kind of people to be friends . . . ? See James Urquhart going for a game of darts with our latest victim?’
‘Maybe casual acquaintances: he could have been a gardener or tradesman, odd-job man?’ said Donnelly.
‘Better . . . Get on that, Phil.’ He laid the flat of his shoe against the wall and reclined in the chair. ‘Anyone get anything on James Urquhart’s movements yet?’
DS Donnelly spoke again, reeling off a list of regular activities. ‘He was a member of the Rotary Club but not a regular by any means, and there was a model-railway club that according to their website meets on a Wednesday night in the town.’
‘Check it out with the club, and with his wife. See if they tie up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Anyone got anything else to report at this stage?’
DS Rossi raised a hand. ‘I looked into the neighbour . . . Ronnie Bell.’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘Well, on paper anyway, he’s clean.’
‘Most folk are, Paulo . . . I’m not interested in his parking tickets or if he takes too many plastic bags at Asda. Pay him a visit, get under his skin. How friendly was he with Urquhart? And how friendly is he with his wife?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Valentine clapped his hands together. ‘Right, that’s it for now. Get back to work and let me know the second anything comes up.’
The DI returned to the board and stood with his hands on his hips, taking in the details that had been put up. They had little to go on. He looked at the photographs that showed James Urquhart’s brutal injuries, and he thought of the latest victim and the pictures of his injuries that would soon be added to the board. He caught himself tapping a thumbnail off his front row of teeth – the clacking noise seemed to indicate nervousness to him, and he halted it at once. As his thoughts zigzagged, he wondered how long it was going to be before the chief super started to goad him with the possibility of turning the case over to the Glasgow Murder Squad. He knew that he would need to get a lead, to stake a claim on the case to ward off that eventuality, but there was nothing presenting itself. He closed his eyes in an effort to summon inspiration, but the process was immediately droned out by the ringing of a telephone.
‘Hello, Valentine . . .’
It was DC McAlister. ‘Sir, you’re not going to like this, but the SOCOs have ID’d our stiff.’
‘They have?’ He paused. ‘And why wouldn’t I like it, Ally?’
‘Well, for starters he’s known to us . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘Sir, he’s a stoat-the-ball.’
‘Convicted?’
‘Yes, he’s a convicted paedophile, sir . . . Name’s Duncan Knox.’
The name didn’t register in Valentine’s memory banks. ‘I take it you’ve run him through the system.’
‘Yeah, and it’s a list of convictions as long as your arm . . . If you were looking at a revenge killing, you could be pulling potentials from all over the country. I’d say he’s spent more time inside than out.’
Valentine eased himself down into a chair. Pressure was building in his chest and he started to rub the palm of his hand down the front of his shirt. As he looked up, he noticed the chief super walking into the room, eyeing him cautiously.
‘OK, Ally, get yourself back to the station when you’re ready. Good work, son.’