Chapter 17

I was seven when it started, as far as I know. That’s how I remember it, although of course there might have been some earlier incident or accident, some strange occurrence that I didn’t understand at the time, and which soon passed out of memory.

Like an astronomer inspired by watching Star Trek, or an RAF pilot inspired by 633 Squadron or The Battle of Britain, my aspirations of joining SIS began with watching old Bond movies on TV. Connery, of course, not that hapless fop Moore, nor any of the imposters who followed. Not that I ever admitted that at the old office, but then, I was hardly likely to be alone.

So aged seven, having watched You Only Live Twice on a late February Sunday afternoon, I went out on my bike to the back field, a long, wide slope of late winter grass, leading down to a 1970s housing estate, the gable end of the terraces abutting directly onto the field. How this one field had clung on amidst the spread of urban sprawl wasn’t something I ever thought about; and it is, in any case, now long gone.

There was a rock near the bottom of the field, and the game we all played was to ride down the hill as quickly as possible – or, more like, as quickly as we dared – hit the right-hand front of the rock which sloped at a perfect angle, take off, and then slide to a stop on the other side before hitting the six-foot wooden fence which marked the boundary of the housing estate, the end of the terrace rising directly behind.

Some of the older kids had mastered the art of sliding, staying upright, and then riding through the turn, keeping their momentum going throughout. I wasn’t there yet, so concentrated on speed on approach, and jump height.

There was always a moment, coming downhill, when you applied the brakes. Always. Tough not to, as the hill was long enough and the grass, especially at that time of the year, short enough, that you could pick up fantastic speed. But the fear was always there.

That afternoon, emboldened by James Bond, I went for it. Two of my mates were there, and Gerry, this older kid, who I was trying to impress. Full pelt at the rock, I kept my nervous fingers off the brakes.

I’m not sure what I hit just before reaching the rock. A rut maybe, or a stone that I hadn’t noticed. I didn’t get the chance at the time to go back and check. The front of the bike twitched, my heart was in my mouth, and before I could brake or do anything to avert disaster, I’d hit the left side of the front of the large rock, which did not slope so smoothly. The lower left side, in fact, jutted out of the ground at a ninety-degree angle.

Over the top of the bike, through the air, smacked into the wooden fence full bore.

Bond would have got up and continued chasing the bad guy. I woke up in hospital.

As landings go, however, ultimately a wooden fence was a soft one. Bang on the head, with an ugly, bloody cut above the hairline, dislocated collar bone, broken tibia, three broken bones in my right hand, and a mass of bruising that grotesquely moved through the colours over the ensuing weeks, running into a couple of months.

I remember the feeling when I came round in the hospital. It was a ward with four beds, two of the others occupied. My mother and father were there, and a doctor or a nurse, I don’t remember. My mother, having imagined me being in a coma for years, while she lived out a painful bedside ritual, squealed at the first movement of my eyes, and then sobbed and laughed, borderline hysterical for a couple of minutes. My dad squeezed my hand and didn’t speak; all his efforts, I now realise, directed at stopping himself crying.

And I lay there, overwhelmed by a sadness that I couldn’t understand. I hurt, a lot, in a variety of places, but that didn’t bother me. I never minded the pain. I didn’t then, and I still don’t. Someone mentioned my high level of tolerance to it, but I was quite detached from the conversation.

‘You’ve had a big shock,’ mixed with, ‘You’ll take a long time to get over it,’ and a restrained argument between my parents, to be played out at much greater length, and volume, once we were all back at home. My dad, conventionally, thought I should get back out on the bike as quickly as possible. My mum, equally conventionally, was ready to lock me up in a room full of feather pillows, and was adamant that I should never ride another bike again for the rest of my life.

When I finally thought about it myself, I was reinvigorated. I’d hit the wooden fence at full pelt and survived. Maybe I hadn’t walked away unscathed, but I’d walked out of hospital the following day. I was ready to take on that rock at full bore and make the turn.

Lying in hospital, though, I couldn’t think about it. All I could feel was this suffocating veil of sorrow enveloping the ward. How could my mum laugh like that, even while crying? How could my dad smile? How could the doctor nod his head in relief? How could anyone feel anything other than choking, crushing grief?

And yet, I couldn’t understand why that was. There was me, a few minutes in, sitting up in bed, drinking orange juice. There was the boy directly across the ward, reading a football magazine. There was the kid to my left, talking to his friend, a conversation about Star Wars, some of the words of which I can still remember.

And there, diagonally opposite, was the empty bed.

I didn’t have to ask anyone why it was empty. I could still feel the boy. He hadn’t left the ward yet. It was the last place he was going to be on earth, and he couldn’t leave. Maybe he didn’t know how. Maybe he was hanging on, hoping for a miracle, although his body was long gone. Maybe he was just a normal kid, afraid of the change, afraid to take the next step, whatever that next step was.

I couldn’t speak to him. I couldn’t see him. His family didn’t return, for why would they? There was just this space where he’d been, and the overwhelming sensation of despair, and I knew he was still there. That was all.

I slept through the night, and in the morning he was gone. The sadness was still there, but it was different. It was within me. The boy had gone, and all he had left behind in the ward was my feeling of loss, mourning a kid I had never met.

I asked around about him, I even contemplated trying to get to his funeral, but that would have required my parents’ buy-in.

That was the first time it happened, but ever since, that kind of feeling has persisted around death, although it is fleeting and occasional. What happened with Sanderson, however, and what seems as if it happened with the woman on the bridge: those are new, and I really don’t understand.

Maybe in years I will look back on that mountaintop glass of wine with Sanderson in the same way that I look back on the time I ended up in hospital after riding my bike, flush into a rock. The first time that something happened. The first of many.

 

So, where are you, Boy 9? That’s what I’m wondering. If I have this ability to sense the dead, and talk to the dead, where are you? Why aren’t you waiting for me at the top of a mountain? Why aren’t you standing here in the mortuary with the rest of us? Why don’t you just turn up and give us the answers we need? Some of them, at least. Where are you, Boy 9?

Instead, we have nothing, and every passing development makes the case all the more confounding. The questions continue to mount. The horror increases. Boy 9 remains invisible to me, bar what is on the table before us.

‘Does that make sense?’ asks Quinn, his brow furrowed, an expression of concern on his face.

The expression of concern seems an inappropriately restrained reaction. What we’re looking at is horrific, baffling, terrifying.

Or perhaps it’s just a lie, and Quinn is absolutely right.

Wade and I are still in the mortuary, having been joined by the chief constable. Quinn is on the other end of a video call. Boy 9 – maybe Boy 9 – lies on the table. I’m holding my phone over him, having run it up and down the entire length of the body, so that Quinn can see what has become of him.

Wade is watching proceedings with a professionally raised eyebrow. Cool, perhaps with the air of someone who sees this kind of thing all the time, but nevertheless in the presence of some strange circumstance that she doesn’t understand.

Darnley is staring sceptically down at the body.

‘No,’ I say to Quinn, ‘it doesn’t.’

‘And you’re sure it’s Boy 9?’ asks Quinn. ‘You didn’t pull out the wrong drawer by mistake?’

‘No,’ says Wade, her tone neutral. ‘That’s what I thought myself, at first, but of course, we wouldn’t keep such a body in here in the first place, and from my initial tests, and from looking at the teeth, it’s definitely the boy from the well.’

‘Definitely?’ says Darnley, and Wade nods, her eyes on the body.

‘And you can tell us what happened?’ asks Quinn.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have an explanation yet.’

‘When did you discover this?’

‘I came to look at the body about an hour ago,’ says Wade, ‘having not looked at it since Monday afternoon. I was finished with it then, and there have been other matters, other cases, needing to be dealt with.’

‘Why did you return to the body today?’ asks Darnley.

The woman is hard and cold and not at all fazed by what is lying before her.

Wade glances at her, then turns her eyes to me. Ball’s in my court.

‘I asked the doctor to re-examine him,’ I say. ‘There was something I wanted her to check out.’

Another moment looking down at the cadaver, the body now wasted away to nothing but decomposed skin and bone, and looking not unlike a corpse that might have been lying at the bottom of a well for two hundred years – then Darnley asks, ‘What was it?’

I glance at the phone, where Quinn is still staring at us as though he’s from the 1930s and has never before seen a live video feed, then back to Darnley.

‘Well, Inspector,’ she says, ‘this looks like it might be interesting. Did you ask the doctor to check the corpse for signs of premature decomposition?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Sounds like we’re getting closer,’ she says. ‘Go on.’

‘Two hundred years ago, the son of the lord of the estate on the Black Isle disappeared. The son’s heart was apparently cut out and sent to the landowner, and the boy was never seen again.’

A beat. A nice little pause to the conversation, almost as though there’s a metronome ticking back and forth, counting in the time to the next instalment of disbelief.

‘And you wondered,’ says Darnley, ‘if this might be that boy?’

I don’t answer.

‘And he’d somehow lain un-decomposed for two hundred years?’

Still no answer.

‘You asked Dr Wade to check out if there was anything that could’ve prevented the body’s natural decomposition. She was sceptical, but pulled the body out to start having a look. And voilà . . . the body has suddenly decomposed, two days after being removed from its unnatural environment.’

‘That’s the way it is,’ I say, having not taken my eyes from her throughout. ‘I know the first half sounds incredible, and was certainly clutching at straws. The second half of that, the part where this happened,’ and I indicate the body, ‘I really don’t know. I wasn’t expecting that. I was . . . we were desperate. We still are. We have a boy dead, and no idea who he is. We’re not even sure how his body got in the well. This story was at least something with which we could run. If nothing else, there has to be the possibility that someone who knows the story is re-enacting it in some way. Perhaps carrying out an act of vengeance.’

‘For the Clearances?’

‘Like no one talks about that any more,’ I say, and she nods thoughtfully in acceptance, then turns back to Wade. She is clearly staying remarkably open-minded. No way we would have got this far having this kind of conversation with Quinn.

‘Doctor,’ asks Darnley, ‘any explanation?’

‘Not so far,’ she says. ‘I did call the inspector as soon as I discovered this. I’ve taken a few more samples, but it’ll be a while before we see the results.’

‘I meant, any explanation as to how someone could have got a completely different body in here, and what they did with the actual body of Boy 9?’

‘Hmm,’ says Wade. ‘I alerted security, and they’ve looked at the CCTV footage. There was no sign of a break-in, and no sign that anyone has been down here who shouldn’t have been. I understand this seems the most likely option, but I also believe we need to consider every eventuality. That’s what I’m doing.’

‘All right,’ says Darnley, and there’s an obvious tension between the women, ‘what can you tell us about the decomposition? It looks pretty far gone, but internally, is this the body of someone who died two hundred years ago, or four days ago?’

‘Good question,’ says Wade, and she nods to herself, looking down at the corpse.

‘And is there an answer?’

‘Yes,’ says Wade. ‘Internally the decomposition is consistent with what is displayed externally.’

Darnley now has her hands on her hips. Classic pose.

‘However unlikely it is,’ she says, ‘that someone evaded security to break in, and then switched round a body, it is still far more likely than this. This transmogrification – this instant decomposition – that lies before us here. We surely have to give the possibility of a body swap a damn sight more consideration.’

‘No one broke in,’ says Wade, staying very matter of fact. ‘But I will have security go over the footage again . . .’

‘I’ll send a couple of my team down,’ says Darnley.

‘Of course,’ says Wade. ‘However, like I said, initial indications are that the body is the same, but we will need to wait for the DNA tests to come back, and as you know . . . this is not an episode of American television.’

‘Thank you,’ says Darnley. She shakes her head, looks back at the body, sighs heavily and gives in to considering the option that we’ve so far been discussing. ‘All right, if we are to take it that this is the same . . . person, that this is Boy 9, what are the options? Could a body have lain un-decomposed for two hundred years? Could it have taken a couple of days, and then suddenly shrivelled up? Is there anything else that could’ve happened while the body was in here to cause this effect? I mean, we’re spit-balling here, I’m not going to hold you to anything. At this stage, it’s not a matter of tests, it’s a matter of possibility. Are there any? Are there any possibilities?’

Wade holds her gaze for a moment, turns her eyes to me, and then looks down at Boy 9. Quinn continues to be ignored. Quinn may as well not be on the other end of the phone.

‘No,’ says Wade. ‘I can’t think of anything. But I need to check. There may be possibilities that I don’t know about. I’ll do some research; there might be other tests I can do.’

‘Thank you,’ says Darnley.

‘Maybe we should speak to a forensic anthropologist, an expert in decomposition of bodies which have been dug up after centuries.’

I look at Wade as I say it, wondering if she’ll take it as a slight, but she just nods and says, ‘Sure, I can find someone.’

‘Good,’ says Darnley, ‘let me know what they say.’

She takes another long look at the corpse, and then looks up, taking in both the doctor and me.

‘Seems you have your work cut out for you. Keep me posted, and nil returns every couple of hours, if there’s nothing definite.’

She nods at us both, glances at Quinn, having ignored him but having been aware of his remote presence throughout, says, ‘David,’ then turns and walks quickly from the room.

 

Sutherland calls as I’m on the way out the building, but I get in there first before he can speak.

‘How are we doing on tracing the descendants of the Balfours?’

The short silence at the other end gives the answer.

‘It’s not—’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say, cutting him off, ‘but I need you to get on it now. It was the family of the lord of the estate; it shouldn’t be too hard to trace what happened to them. Maybe get a genealogist to help. Whatever else you’re doing, drop it, get to work on that.’

‘Right, sir, but there’s something else. Managed to fill in a gap in those early years of Belle McIntosh’s life.’

‘Go on.’

Standing by the car, waiting to end the conversation before heading off.

‘She was married for three years. Mrs Tom Daniels. Lived over in Inverurie.’

‘And?’

‘They had a kid. Born with a heart defect, never got out of hospital, died at four months. She and her husband separated the following year.’

‘How’d you get this?’

‘Tracked it down through university. Spoke to hospital records, just had a chat with the husband. Engineer with Balmoral Offshore in Aberdeen. Remarried, three kids.’

‘And?’

‘Didn’t know anything about her now. Said his wife hadn’t been able to cope with their boy dying. Felt . . . he was aware that he hadn’t been of much use. He’d reacted to it by going out drinking with his mates. He coped in his way, and didn’t help her, though he doesn’t think it would have made much difference. Either way, the marriage didn’t last.’

‘Right. Good catch, Iain.’

‘You want me to bring her in?’

‘No, we’ll go back out. Let’s be careful. She might have lied, but let’s not get carried away here. We can’t be bringing someone in because she doesn’t want to talk about the most heartbreaking thing that ever happened to her. I’ll be back first, though. Twenty minutes.’

Hang up, into the car and get going. Contemplate putting the blue light on, just because I suddenly feel pissed off and needing to get on with it. Not annoyed at anything in particular. But there’s a dead child, and the start of the investigation should be straightforward. We find out who the child is, we speak to his family, his friends, his school, his teachers, we find out his last known whereabouts, and soon enough we know who killed him. But this? No identification, no family, no friends, no school, and here we are with body decomposition peculiarity, forensic anthropologists and genealogists and land registry and cults and picking ideas out of the sky hoping that something, anything, fits.

It feels like a shambles – an omnishambles – of an investigation, and I’m the one in charge of it. At the very least, we need to take some of the ideas and bin them. We need to start taking ideas off the board; we need to start narrowing the playing field. We need a working and plausible hypothesis, that doesn’t include non-decomposing, 200-year-old bodies, or instantly decomposing 72-hour-old corpses; it doesn’t include me standing at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, sensing God knows what in the darkness, and it doesn’t include any input from the recently deceased pathologist.

Back across the Kessock Bridge, already doing seventy-five by the time I pass the point where I stood and talked to the woman who now lies dead in the morgue.

I don’t look at the spot as I drive by. I don’t sense her presence. The image of her leaning on the railing comes into my head, and is gone in an instant, and by the time I’m off the bridge I’m hitting ninety in the outside lane.