LITMIR.BIZ

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hard as this.

      Did she remember that night six weeks ago? Could she remember, vaguely, walking out the hospital? Standing in the light rain in Great Western Road, watching the traffic? She was probably looking for an off licence. Then there was a smell of perfume she could recall, something familiar she recognised from Abigail’s house. Was that merely an association of ideas, her imagination filling in the blanks?

      Another pause.

      A rustle of impatience from the drive.

      That would be the boss, a small fascist detective with hard flinty eyes. That cop was mistaken if she thought her pillar-box red lipstick distracted from the incipient Hitler moustache. Her junior officer, the big bearded bloke, kept a good four paces behind her. Like Prince Philip.

      Fascist and Beardy, it was easier than remembering their names.

      Valerie heard footfall behind her as the cops and Archie, here in his role as her godfather, not in his professional capacity as the chief fiscal, were walking up the gravel driveway. They were only moving because it was too wet for them to hang around outside but it still felt like harassment.

      Bugger them. She would do exactly what DI Costello had done on the day she had discovered the bodies. Valerie pulled away from the front door and made to walk briskly round the house to the back garden.

      She turned to confront Fascist and Beardy, wishing them away. They were standing across the path, blocking her way. Archie gave her an encouraging smile.

      The rainwater ran down his face, to be cast off as he nodded his head. They were getting soaked through. Even better, Fascist had a sour look on her face, her lippy was about to run.

      Valerie took a deep breath and walked in the back door, recognising immediately the stink of the forensic cleaning team, a scent she knew well from her days as a fiscal. This no longer smelled like Abigail’s house; these rooms were no longer infused with the aroma of roses, fresh coffee and George’s aftershave. She walked through the pristine utility room, the kitchen – everything neatly tidied away – to the back of the hall where her boots touched carpet for the first time. Was this where Costello had spotted the tiniest smear of blood on the wall, blood that somebody had attempted to clean?

      Valerie wondered how easy that had been to wipe away; probably easier to erase it from the wall than to erase from the memory. Fascist crept up behind her, coughed in irritation.

      ‘Is there anything missing that you notice?’ she asked in her snippy voice. ‘We have a comprehensive list of the items that Mr Haggerty has removed and we have the crime scene photographs and . . .’ That earned her an elbow in the ribs from Archie, now standing beside her. Nobody wanted to be reminded of that.

      ‘Anything missing?’ confirmed Valerie, thinking that her sister’s smile was ‘missing’, the hugs from Malcolm were ‘missing’. The house was a mausoleum.

      ‘Anything?’

      Valerie looked around, climbed the stairs to the half landing and Primavera, resplendent in coloured glass on the west-facing window. The view east was totally obliterated by the monkey puzzle tree. It was an easy escape route; this window, down to the roof of the porch, a short slither to the ground. It was reported Malcolm had tried to escape that way once after an argument with his father. This was actually an easy house to gain entry and exit without being observed; the monkey puzzle tree hid a lot. She turned to look down at her companions, then up through the balusters to the upper landing, with its expensive Persian rug on an expanse of oak flooring. And a plain magnolia wall. Valerie screwed her eyes up to concentrate on what she wasn’t seeing. On her previous visit she had stared at the gap on her nephew’s bookcase for a full minute before realising that Malcolm’s favourite Lego toy, the Millenium Falcon, was gone.

      ‘Well, there was a picture there, a pastel. I suppose George took that, he always liked it.’

      ‘What was the picture? I don’t think he has mentioned it.’ Bannon checked his iPad.

      ‘A painting, it was a painting. A rowing boat on a canal, under willows, weeping willows. How fitting is that?’ She turned to the other three. ‘Uncle Archie? Did you say there was music playing when you . . . found them?’

      Archie nodded, teary. ‘Yes, that kid’s song, it was on repeat on the CD. It had been playing for hours. “The Clapping Song”, the one w-where . . .’Archie stuttered. ‘Where the monkey got choked and they all—’

      Valerie stared at the gap on the wall. ‘They all went to heaven in a little rowing boat.’

      KIERAN COWAN DROVE ALONG the loch side, through the dark night and the streaming rain. The engine of Ludwig, his 1977 Volkswagen Camper, hummed along nicely as the windscreen wipers beat a regular tattoo on the glass. The left one squeaking at the end of its sweep, the right one responding a millisecond later with a resounding thunk. He had been intending to fix that, but after a fortnight of constant rain, he had got used to the noise. It provided an irregular backbeat to ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, which blasted out the old Clarion cassette player at full volume.

      He was used to this road. He would be able to drive even if the wiper gave up the ghost and fell off completely, spinning over the top of the van and flying into the night sky. He had driven Ludwig to Ardnamurchan once with a cracked windscreen, sticking his head out the driver’s window until he could pull over and punch the crazed glass out.

      Cowan kept his eyes on the road, the narrow stretches where he had to slow, the wider stretches where he could put his foot down and the nasty bends where he needed to hug the rock wall in case he met an HGV over the white line.

      The clock on the dash was saying it was half eight. He wasn’t in a hurry per se; he was a little concerned about time. As long as it was dark.

      The job needed to be done, sorted and over with.

      He drove confidently now, one hand on the steering wheel and the other steadying the rucksack that rolled and yawed in the passenger seat. The camera had been borrowed from the university. He had signed it out on Friday night to be returned Monday morning. It was an expensive bit of kit, a Macro Scub 4 underwater video camera. It was fully charged and ready to go, safely tucked in the rucksack along with his flask of tomato soup and some sandwiches. He had no idea how long he was going to be here. As someone with a gift for stating the obvious once said, ‘It will take as long as it will take.’

      Cowan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music as he waited for a short procession of traffic to pass, and when the road was clear he put his foot down. Ludwig’s air-cooled engine whirred in protest. He turned onto the road that hugged the north-west side of the loch and accelerated, cruising along, singing tunelessly with Glen or Don, as he checked the clock again. He was probably a little early. He could have stayed at his laptop and got a bit more of his essay done but he wanted to be there first and check out the lie of the land, get a good spot where he could stay hidden.

      Covert breeds covert.

      He pulled into the car park of the Inveruglas visitor centre, putting his lights off first so as not to disturb anybody already there. The car park was not entirely empty, there was a Mini parked at the front, looking out over the water. Cowan gave it more than a passing glance, his heart thumping, in case this was who he was looking for. But the windows of the other car were steamed up. He judged it had been there for some time and it looked as though there was still somebody in it. Or it might be two heads in the driver’s seat, a lovers’ tryst, a quiet night out on the loch side.

      But he was mindful there was somebody there and he wished that Ludwig did not have such a distinctive engine.

      Tonight could be the night.

      He drove Ludwig into the far corner of the second car park, beyond the café that led to the other exit road. Nobody driving into the main car park would see Ludwig; he would be safely obscured by the dark and by the screen afforded by the single line of trees. He switched the engine off, letting the camper roll forward, closer to the pathway that went up the hill to the viewing point. That was where he needed to be. He lifted his rucksack

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