The Darkness and the Deep Page 4

  Daisy waited a few minutes, then wriggled up the bed until she was cosily settled in contact with her new best friend, her head tucked comfortably under Laura’s chin. Entirely satisfied by this adjustment to the pecking order, she sighed pleasurably and fell asleep.

  3

  The spicy, delectable smell of home-baking wafted through the kitchen of Enid Davis’s modest terraced house in Knockhaven High Street. With one of the changes of mood so typical of this south-west corner of Scotland, yesterday’s grey dankness had given way to a clear autumn morning with the sunshine making golden pools of light on the blue vinyl floor.

  Enid had wakened early – she rarely slept well – and put a batch of rock cakes in to bake while she had her usual cup of weak tea and toast with her home-made marmalade. They should be ready now; she opened the oven door and took out the tray, viewing them with satisfaction – all golden-brown and glistening with the demerara sugar she had sprinkled on top. There was a clean dish-towel waiting to receive them and she lifted the buns into it, folded it neatly, then put the bundle into a basket standing ready on the worktop.

  It was an old-fashioned kitchen, bare of the usual knick-knacks, and immaculately kept. She hadn’t been able to afford to replace the chipped blue and cream formica units but she was good at DIY and she’d fitted the new vinyl to the floor and painted the walls cream so that at least it was clean and functional, which was all that mattered. She enjoyed cooking still, even if doing it for one was a depressing business.

  Now, she went over to the mirror she’d fixed to the back of the kitchen door and, though it was neat enough already, brushed the straight, light-brown hair which she wore in a longish bob, powdered her nose and put on some pale coral lipstick. She sighed. There was nothing wrong with her looks: she had regular features, a good skin and really quite pretty grey eyes. She looked neat, efficient – and wholly unmemorable, the sort of person you could be introduced to and not recognise the next time you met her. Not that she wanted to make a spectacle of herself; it was just that this was yet another instance of the terrible unfairness of life, the way other people, like Ashley Randall for instance, should have it all – looks, status, a good husband and not a care in the world – and not even appreciate it.

  Enid glanced at her watch, then rapidly gathered up her handbag, her basket and the coat she had laid out ready on the back of a chair. It would only take her a few minutes to walk to the Knockhaven Medical Centre, leaving a good half-hour before the doctors would start arriving and the doors had to be opened to patients at half-past eight. When she was on the early shift she liked to have plenty of time to deal with messages on the answerphone and check the appointments before that.

  And sometimes, if she was lucky, Dr Lewis would be in early too. He was such a kind, sympathetic man: she always felt better when the day started with a chat to him, and on the days when she brought in baking for the receptionists’ elevenses she could rely on him stopping with his nose twitching as he passed the reception desk. He’d said before that rock cakes were his favourites, and there was one thing certain – that she wouldn’t bother herself to make them for him at home.

  Her mouth twisted into a bitter line. It would do Ashley Randall good to live with Enid’s ex-husband for a bit. They could have a competition to see which of them could be more cruel and selfish and insensitive to anyone else’s feelings. And unfaithful, too – oh yes, the receptionists all knew how she was going on. And poor Mrs Randall knew now too; Muriel Henderson had felt she ought to be told. Though of course she’d seen through her daughter-in-law long before that, Muriel said, and she’d gone through agonies watching her son suffer, being ordered around like a slave, with no proper home life, and now being cheated on. Enid hadn’t much time for Muriel, but she approved of Mrs Randall – she was a devoted mother and a nice woman who always had a word for you when she came into the Medical Centre, not like Dr Ashley, who treated everyone behind the desk like dirt. Some days, when things got on top of Enid, she just felt like telling the stuck-up bitch what she could do and walking out.

  But that was stupid. She’d left her home up on the West Coast north of Glasgow to get away from her broken marriage and her painful memories; almost broken herself, it had taken finding the job here a few years ago to give her a new sense of purpose, and she wasn’t about to squander that in a fit of temper. She should be used to controlling her feelings by now. With a final pat to her hair and a neatening tug at her navy skirt, she picked up the basket and went out.

  She arrived at the surgery first, as she always liked to do. She was listening to the answerphone messages when Muriel Henderson arrived, sniffing the air.

  Muriel was the most senior of the four receptionists employed at the Knockhaven Medical Centre. In her fifties, she was divorced with two children who had imitated her husband in making an early escape. She had lived in Knockhaven all her life and with her local connections had an intelligence-gathering service which would have had the KGB queuing up for lessons. ‘The trouble with Muriel,’ one of the doctors had been heard to say, ‘is that she sees the practice as her own little police state.’

  Disliking her was the aversion that dare not speak its name and Enid smiled, as everyone always did, in response to Muriel’s jovial greeting.

  ‘Goodness me, Enid, you’ve been at it again, haven’t you, you terrible woman, with me trying to keep on my diet! Did you spend all your time off baking? And you know the doctors’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks – it’s the obesity clinic this morning, and that smell’s like waving a bottle of whisky around at an AA meeting!’

  ‘I’m thinking of sending you on a diversity course, Tam.’

  Detective Sergeant Tam MacNee’s swarthy face, pitted from teenage acne, took on an expression of horror. Dressed in his customary plain-clothes uniform of black leather jacket, white T-shirt and jeans, he had just come into DI Fleming’s office; he kept hold of the door handle as if ready to bolt back out again at any moment.

  ‘Tell me you’re kidding me, boss,’ he pleaded. ‘This is just a wind-up, eh?’

  Fleming kept her face serious. ‘It’s something we’re all supposed to do. It’s to stamp out racism, sexism, politically incorrect language—’

  ‘Look!’ Letting go of the door, MacNee came to sit opposite her, leaning earnestly across the desk. ‘See Wilson and Macdonald from the crime desk? Went on that course a couple of weeks ago, right? And here’s me going into a meeting with them about shoplifting yesterday. They’re both from Edinburgh, so what does Wilson say? “Here, he’s from Glasgow – who let him in?” And Macdonald goes, “Sorry, he could speak English so I didn’t realise.” That’s how much good it does.’

  ‘I didn’t say it did any good. I just said it’s one of the boxes we need to tick. There’s a slot available and I think I should send you on it. Unless . . .’

  ‘Unless?’ MacNee’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘Oh, there isn’t one, really. It’s just you could maybe—’

  MacNee relaxed visibly, sitting back in the chair. ‘Oh, we’re talking blackmail, are we? Oh, I’m jake with that. I’ve a thing or two up my sleeve I could use myself if I have to.’

  He wasn’t wrong there. There were one or two revelations he could make, from the early days when they were partners in a squad car, that would be worth good money down in the CID room.

  She grinned, putting up her thumbs and saying, ‘Keys?’ in the traditional Scottish playground signal of truce. ‘The thing is, you know Charlotte Nisbet’s getting married and going to live in Stirling? We’ve got a replacement coming.’

  ‘So I should bloody well hope. We’re spread as thin as fish paste on a Morningside sandwich as it is.’

  ‘It’s a man.’

  ‘Fair enough. And?’

  ‘He’s moving here from Edinburgh.’

  ‘So? I’ve a forgiving nature. I even bought Wilson a pint last night.’

  ‘He’s English.’

  There w
as an appreciable pause. MacNee sighed. ‘Even so, he might be all right.’

  Fleming pounced, like a cat which after waiting a long time in the grass has at last seen the fieldmouse twitch. ‘That’s exactly my point, Tam. Diversity course.’

  ‘It was a joke, for any favour.’

  ‘I know. You’re supposed to get trained not to make jokes like that.’

  He stared at her, flatly disbelieving. ‘Are you serious, Marjory?’

  ‘We-ell, of course not entirely. I’m not saying you can’t have a bit of a laugh. If we stopped everyone making jokes at someone else’s expense a deathly silence would fall on the whole place. But you know as well as I do about anti-English feeling.’

  ‘And you don’t think the English lad would come to you complaining about discrimination if I was rude to everyone except him?’ MacNee’s tone was dry.

  ‘The problem is that jokes are a helluva lot funnier when you’re an insider. It can just be a short step from there to downright bullying. You’ve seen the cases in the Press where English folk claim they’ve been victimised at work.’

  ‘If he thinks he needs special consideration from his fellow officers, what’s he going to do if there’s a brawl when he’s making a couple of arrests? Tell them to cut it out, chaps, in a pan-loaf voice?’

  ‘I’ve no reason to suppose he thinks any such thing.’ Fleming’s voice took on a steely edge. ‘He’s coming to us with the highest recommendation from the St Leonard’s Street HQ in Edinburgh. He’s got a lot of experience of the drugs scene and you know how we’re struggling with that at the moment.’

  MacNee grunted. ‘We’re doing our best—’

  ‘But it’s getting worse, that’s the point. Oh sure, so we’re picking up the kids smoking a joint – now they get a Fiscal fine which they don’t pay anyway. They just grin and walk away without so much as a note on the file, let alone a criminal record. They know we can’t touch them – why would they cooperate with us to close down the supply lines? We’re not containing it, Tam, are we?’

  ‘We know what a lot of the problem is – there’s too many lads around here unemployed. With the foot-and-mouth last year, and them that should know better deciding to hand all our fishing rights to Spain and send the boats to the breaker’s yard – well, Satan finds mischief for idle hands, as my nan used to say any time she saw me sitting down. They’ve risk in their blood, these fisher folk, and supposing they’re short of money, with easy access to a wee boat . . . Well, some of them are just suppliers waiting for someone to tell them how to do it.’

  ‘I know that, Tam. But theories aren’t enough. We need a high-profile arrest or two to put the frighteners on them.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’ His tone was defensive.

  ‘I know that too. I’m not criticising, this is just a situation where we need all the help we can get. We need everyone to work together as a team and what we don’t need is the whole initiative coming unstuck, either because this guy feels uncomfortable and applies for a transfer back, or because you come to his contribution with a hostile attitude. The Super isn’t at all happy.’

  ‘Who is?’ MacNee shrugged, his face set in a hard, indifferent line. ‘Was there anything else, or was it just to get me to promise to be a good wee boy?’

  ‘Tam . . .’ she said uncomfortably. She hadn’t handled this well; it had been meant to be a light-hearted warning to lay off the English jokes and somehow it had got out of hand. ‘He’s just another copper to be treated decently.’

  He went to the door. ‘Seems more as if he’s “a gentleman who held the patent for his honours immediately from Almighty God”,’ he quoted acidly. ‘I’d maybe have thought you could trust me to behave professionally but never mind.’ The door was shut pointedly behind him.

  Fleming hadn’t even had the heart to point to the box that stood on her desk to collect the fines she’d imposed on him for quoting Burns. She always thought that wretched man – Tam’s idol – had a lot to answer for when it came to the less admirable Scots characteristics, like the aggressive ‘wha’s-like-us-damn’-few-and-they’re-a’-deid’ attitude. If they just banned the Burns personality cult, Braveheart and the Old Firm matches, it would do wonders for the Scots’ reputation for chippiness and prejudice.

  It vexed her, though. Tam was not only her most useful officer, he had seen her through in the days when she was a raw recruit and had watched her progress past him up the promotion ladder without resentment or envy. She relied on him, too, for the street-wisdom he’d acquired in his unregenerate youth in Glasgow, before he fell in love with Bunty, who came from this corner of the world and who, generous in nature as in girth, had sorted him out, married him and brought him back home in much the same spirit as she rescued homeless dogs and one-eyed kittens.

  It had been Donald Bailey who’d insisted on a pre-emptive strike. The Superintendent, while being, as he assured Fleming with his usual pomposity, ‘fully apprised of MacNee’s value to the Force’, was nonetheless anxious that the rough places should be made plain for the advent of DC Jonathan Kingsley. Kingsley, he explained, had got into conversation with Assistant Chief Constable Paula Donald at a conference on drugs and impressed her mightily. It was she who had suggested the transfer.

  In Fleming’s jaundiced opinion it wouldn’t be hard to impress the ACC if you were a reasonably personable young man. On the other hand, as Tam might say, even so he could have something substantial to contribute to their struggle against the flood of drugs – everything from cannabis and ecstasy to heroin and crack cocaine – which had hit this quiet rural area particularly hard over the last few years.

  Tam’s analysis was shrewd enough. There was anecdotal evidence to suggest that at least one of the trafficking routes was through the ports in the south of Galloway, with the stuff coming in via Ireland. He was right, too, that it was hard for lads with a seafaring tradition who would have grown up in the expectation of getting not only a job, but one that would satisfy the young man’s need to live life on the edge without having to join the Army or buy an overpowered motorbike. And somehow, the evil, invisible men had found them and now there was a direct channel of destruction straight to the heart of the rural community Fleming had grown up in, and loved so well.

  Surely it had all been easier when her father had been a sergeant in the same police station where she was now an inspector? But perhaps not; perhaps each generation of law-enforcement officers saw apocalypse in the vices of the day.

  Oh God! Was she really getting that old? She needed a talk with Laura Harvey; it was good to have acquired a younger friend who could give her a sense of perspective on this, who could remind her how Socrates had despaired of the manners and morals of the younger generation in his day too. Marjory had used that argument against her own old-fashioned father in the days when she had a starry-eyed belief in progress; she was terribly afraid she might be against it now, and there wasn’t a more middle-aged attitude than that.

  She might drop in on Laura on her way home tonight. She’d been delighted that a contract for psychology-based articles with a Sunday broadsheet – and, Marjory guessed, a fairly substantial income from her dead parents’ estate – had allowed Laura to decide to settle in Kirkluce. It was handy having her there when you wanted to pick her brains and anyway, Marjory was keen to see how Daisy was settling into her new home. Daisy had been Bill’s present to Laura, who had used her psychotherapist’s skills during the foot-and-mouth epidemic to persuade him to grieve over his slaughtered herds as he needed to do, but also to put it all behind him and move on.

  Daisy was a considerable gift. Meg, her mother, had a reputation in sheepdog trials which meant that her pups would sell at a substantial premium, and money was tight in the Fleming household at the moment. But it was important for Bill’s pride that his gratitude should be commensurate with the favour received.

  ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on Laura, though,’ he warned Marjory. ‘I’ve picked that pup carefully. She’s the so
ciable one in the litter – you don’t want a one-man dog unless you’re going to work it – but she’s a bright wee smout. Laura will have to see she’s not bored, or there’ll be trouble. And she’ll have Laura wrapped round her little finger if she doesn’t watch out, and it’s a cruel thing to let any dog get away with that. They need to know you’re boss – you tell Laura that.’

  It would be fun to see how Laura and her Daisy were getting on. It would take Marjory’s mind off her professional problems – and perhaps Laura would even have a few psychological tips to give her about how to deal with wee Weegie hard men who were feeling threatened.

  And that was even before she had broken it to Tam that Jonathan Kingsley was a graduate entry to the profession. If she were to be honest, she felt a bit threatened by that herself.

  ‘But where were you last night, Nat?’ Katy Anderson persisted, prodding the onions in the frying pan. She was cooking him a beefburger for his tea; he liked them, and if she was going to have an unpleasant confrontation with her son it made sense to avoid an argument about what he was meant to be eating at the same time.

  Nathan Rettie, at the kitchen table and apparently deeply absorbed in the sports pages of a red-top, muttered, ‘Oh, nowhere, just out.’ He was big for sixteen, dark and heavily built like his father, and his face with its fiery plague of adolescent spots was eloquent testimony to the hormones raging within. He had a row of silver rings in one ear and another ring through his eyebrow which his mother couldn’t look at without wincing.

  ‘Out where?’

  He looked up then, his brown eyes blazing. ‘Quit nagging, Ma, OK? I’m not some kid who gets told what to do.’

  At the aggression in his tone, bad memories stirred. It took a lot of courage for her to say, ‘You are when it’s my car you’ve taken and you’re too young to drive.’

  ‘Oh, turn me in to the police, why don’t you? That’s what he wants, isn’t it? Well, you know what you can do, both of you!’ He proceeded to tell her, his voice rising as the torrent of obscenities went on.