The Distant Echo. Val McDermid
did you do with it afterwards?’
‘I chucked it out the window. Leaving it in the Land Rover would have been a bit of a giveaway with Henry, you know?’ He could see Maclennan was struggling to know where to go next with his questions. He’d been right. His admission had defused their line of questioning. He hadn’t been driving round in the snow, frustrated and desperate for sex. So what possible motive could he have had for raping Rosie Duff and killing her?
Maclennan gave a grim smile, not joining in Mondo’s assumption of camaraderie. ‘We’ll be checking out your story, Mr Kerr. Let’s see if this young woman backs you up. Because if she doesn’t, that paints a very different picture, doesn’t it?’
It didn’t feel like Christmas Eve. Walking to the bakery for a pie at lunchtime, Barney Maclennan had experienced the illusion of having been dropped into a parallel universe. Shop windows blossomed with garish Christmas decorations, fairy lights twinkled in the gloaming and the streets were thronged with shoppers staggering under the weight of bulging carrier bags. But it seemed alien to him. Their concerns were not his; they had something more to look forward to than a Christmas dinner tainted with the sad taste of failure. Eight days since Rosie Duff’s murder, and no prospect of an arrest.
He’d been so confident that the discovery of the Land Rover had been the keystone that would support a case against one or more of the four students. Especially after the interviews in Kirkcaldy. Their stories had been plausible enough, but then they’d had a day and a half to perfect them. And he’d still had the sense that he wasn’t getting the whole truth, though it was hard to pinpoint where precisely the falsehood lay. He’d believed hardly a word that Tom Mackie said, but Maclennan was honest enough to acknowledge that might have something to do with the deep antipathy he’d felt towards the maths student.
Ziggy Malkiewicz was a deep one, that was for sure. If he’d been the killer, Maclennan knew he’d get nowhere until he had solid evidence; the medical student wasn’t going to cave in. He thought he’d broken Davey Kerr’s story when the lassie in Guardbridge had denied they’d had sex. But Janice Hogg, whom he’d taken with him for the sake of propriety, had been convinced that the girl had been lying, trying misguidedly to protect her reputation. Right enough, when he’d sent Janice back to re-interview the girl alone, she’d broken down and admitted that she had let Kerr have sex with her. It didn’t sound as if it was an experience she was keen to repeat. Which, thought Maclennan, was interesting. Maybe Davey Kerr hadn’t been quite as satisfied and cheerful afterwards as he’d made out.
Alex Gilbey was a likely prospect, if only because there was no evidence that he’d driven the Land Rover. His fingerprints were all over the interior, but not around the driving seat. That didn’t let him off the hook, however. If Gilbey had killed Rosie, he would likely have called for help from the others, and they would probably have given it; Maclennan was under no misapprehension about the strength of the bond that united them. And if Gilbey had arranged a date with Rosie Duff that had gone horribly wrong, Maclennan was pretty sure that Malkiewicz wouldn’t have hesitated to do everything he could to protect his friend. Whether Gilbey knew it or not, Malkiewicz was in love with him, Maclennan had decided on nothing more than his gut reaction.
But there was more than Maclennan’s instinct at play here. After the frustrating series of interviews, he’d been about to head back for St Andrews when a familiar voice had hailed him. ‘Hey, Barney, I heard you were in town,’ echoed across the bleak car park.
Maclennan swung round. ‘Robin? That you?’
A slim figure in a police constable’s uniform emerged into a pool of light. Robin Maclennan was fifteen years younger than his brother, but the resemblance was striking. ‘Did you think you could sneak off without saying hello?’
‘They told me you were out on patrol.’
Robin reached his brother and shook his hand. ‘Just came back for refs. I thought it was you I saw as we pulled up. Come away and have a coffee with me before you go.’ He grinned and gave Maclennan a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘I’ve got some information I think you’ll appreciate.’
Maclennan frowned at his brother’s retreating back. Robin, ever sure of his charm, hadn’t waited for his brother’s reaction, but had turned towards the building and the canteen inside. Maclennan caught up with him by the door. ‘What do you mean, information?’ he asked.
‘Those students you’ve got in the frame for the Rosie Duff murder. I thought I’d do a wee bit of digging, see what the grapevine had to say.’
‘You shouldn’t be involving yourself in this, Robin. It’s not your case,’ Maclennan protested as he followed his brother down the corridor.
‘A murder like this, it’s everybody’s case.’
‘All the same.’ If he failed with this one, he didn’t want his bright, charismatic brother tarred with the same brush. Robin was a pleaser; he’d go far further in the force than Maclennan had, which was no less than he deserved. ‘None of them has a record anyway. I’ve already checked.’
Robin turned as they entered the canteen and gave him the hundred-watt smile again. ‘Look, this is my patch. I can get people to tell me stuff that they’re not going to give up to you.’
Intrigued, Maclennan followed his brother to a quiet corner table and waited patiently while Robin fetched the coffees. ‘So, what do you know?’
‘Your boys are not exactly innocents abroad. When they were thirteen or so, they got caught shoplifting.’
Maclennan shrugged. ‘Who didn’t shoplift when they were kids?’
‘This wasn’t just nicking a couple of bars of chocolate or packets of fags. This was what you might call Formula One Challenge Shoplifting. It seems they’d dare each other to nick really difficult things. Just for the hell of it. Mostly from small shops. Nothing they particularly wanted or needed. Everything from secateurs to perfume. It was Kerr who got caught red-handed with a Chinese ginger jar from a licensed grocer. The other three got nabbed standing outside waiting for him. They folded like a bad poker hand as soon as they were brought in. They took us to a shed in Gilbey’s garden, where they’d stashed the loot. Everything still in its packaging.’ Robin shook his head wonderingly. ‘The guy who arrested them said it was like Aladdin’s cave.’
‘What happened?’
‘Strings got pulled. Gilbey’s old man’s a headmaster, Mackie’s dad plays golf with the Chief Super. They got off with a caution and the fear of God.’
‘Interesting. But it’s hardly the Great Train Robbery.’
Robin conceded with a nod. ‘That’s not all, though. A couple of years later, there were a series of pranks with parked cars. The owners would come back and find graffiti on the inside of their windscreens, written in lipstick. And the cars would all be locked up tight. It all ended as suddenly as it began, around the time that a stolen car got burned out. There was never anything concrete against them, but our local intelligence officer reckons they were behind it. They seem to have a knack for taking the piss.’
Maclennan nodded. ‘I don’t think I could argue with that.’ He was intrigued by the information about the cars. Maybe the Land Rover hadn’t been the only vehicle on the road that night with one of his suspects behind the wheel.
Robin had been eager to find out more details of the investigation, but Maclennan sidestepped neatly. The conversation slipped into familiar channels – family, football, what to get their parents for Christmas – before Maclennan had managed to get away. Robin’s information wasn’t much, it was true, but it made Maclennan feel there was a pattern to the activities of the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy that smacked of a love of risk-taking. It was the sort of behaviour that could easily tip over into something much more dangerous.
Feelings were all very well, but they