The Distant Echo - Val McDermid

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going to a party later on and we wanted to have a few pints first.’ He paused to make sure Burnside was getting it down.

      ‘Where did you go for your drinks?’

      ‘The Lammas Bar.’ The words hung in the air between them.

      Maclennan showed no reaction, though he felt his pulse quicken. ‘Did you often drink there?’

      ‘Pretty regularly. The beer’s cheap and they don’t mind students, not like some of the places in town.’

      ‘So you’ll have seen Rosie Duff? The dead girl?’

      Ziggy shrugged. ‘I didn’t really pay attention.’

      ‘What? A bonnie lassie like that, you didn’t notice her?’

      ‘It wasn’t her that served me when I went up for my round.’

      ‘But you must have spoken to her in the past?’

      Ziggy took a deep breath. ‘Like I said, I never really paid attention. Chatting up barmaids isn’t my scene.’

      ‘Not good enough for you, eh?’ Maclennan said grimly.

      ‘I’m not a snob, Inspector. I come from a council house myself. I just don’t get my kicks playing macho man in the pub, OK? Yes, I knew who she was, but I’d never had a conversation with her that went beyond “Four pints of Tennent’s, please.”’

      ‘Did any of your friends take more of an interest in her?’

      ‘Not that I noticed.’ Ziggy’s nonchalance hid a sudden wariness at the line of questioning.

      ‘So, you had a few pints in the Lammas. What then?’

      ‘Like I said, we went on to a party. A third-year mathematician called Pete that Tom Mackie knows. He lives in St Andrews, in Learmonth Gardens. I don’t know what number. His parents were away and he threw a party. We got there about midnight and it was getting on for four o’clock when we left.’

      ‘Were you all together at the party?’

      Ziggy snorted. ‘Have you ever been to a student party, Inspector? You know what it’s like. You walk through the door together, you get a beer, you drift apart. Then when you’ve had enough, you see who’s still standing and you gather them together and stagger off into the night. The good shepherd, that’s me.’ He gave an ironic smile.

      ‘So the four of you arrived together and the four of you left together, but you’ve no idea what the others were doing in between?’

      ‘That’s about the size of it, yeah.’

      ‘You couldn’t even swear that none of them left and came back later?’

      If Maclennan had expected alarm from Ziggy, he was disappointed. Instead, he cocked his head to one side, thoughtful. ‘Probably not, no,’ he admitted. ‘I spent most of the time in the conservatory at the back of the house. Me and a couple of English guys. Sorry, I can’t remember their names. We were talking about music, politics, that sort of thing. It got quite heated when we got on to Scottish devolution, as you can imagine. I wandered through a few times for another beer, went through to the dining room to grab something to eat, but no, I wasn’t being my brothers’ keeper.’

      ‘Do you usually all end up going back together?’ Maclennan wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but it felt like the right question.

      ‘Depends if anybody’s got off with somebody.’

      He was definitely on the defensive now, the policeman thought. ‘Does that happen often?’

      ‘Sometimes.’ Ziggy’s smile was a little strained. ‘Hey, we’re healthy, red-blooded young men, you know?’

      ‘But the four of you usually end up going home together? Very cosy.’

      ‘You know, Inspector, not all students are obsessed with sex. Some of us know how lucky we are to be here and we don’t want to screw it up.’

      ‘So you prefer each other’s company? Where I come from, people might think you were queer.’

      Ziggy’s composure slipped momentarily. ‘So what? It’s not against the law.’

      ‘That depends on what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with,’ Maclennan said, any pretence of amiability gone.

      ‘Look, what has any of this got to do with the fact that we stumbled over the dying body of a young woman?’ Ziggy demanded, leaning forward. ‘What are you trying to suggest? We’re gay, therefore we raped a lassie and murdered her?’

      ‘Your words, not mine. It’s a well-known fact that some homosexuals hate women.’

      Ziggy shook his head in disbelief. ‘Well known to whom? The prejudiced and ignorant? Look, just because Alex and Tom and Davey left the party with me doesn’t make them gay, right? They could give you a list of girls who could show you just how wrong you are.’

      ‘And what about you, Sigmund? Could you do the same thing?’

      Ziggy held himself rigid, willing his body not to betray him. There was a world of difference the size of Scotland between legal and comprehended. He’d arrived at a place where the truth was not going to be his friend. ‘Can we get back on track here, Inspector? I left the party about four o’clock with my three friends. We walked down Learmonth Place, turned left up the Canongate then went down Trinity Place. Hallow Hill is a short cut back to Fife Park …’

      ‘Did you see anyone else as you walked down towards the hill?’ Maclennan interrupted.

      ‘No. But the visibility wasn’t great because of the snow. Anyway, we were walking along the footpath at the bottom of the hill and Alex started running up the hill. I don’t know why, I was ahead of him and I didn’t see what set him off. When he got to the top, he tripped and fell into the hollow. The next thing I knew was he was shouting to us to come up, that there was a young woman bleeding.’ Ziggy closed his eyes, but opened them hastily as the dead girl rose before him again. ‘We climbed up and we found Rosie lying in the snow. I felt her carotid pulse. It was very faint, but it was still there. She seemed to be bleeding from a wound to the abdomen. Quite a large slit, it felt like. Maybe three or four inches long. I told Alex to go and get help. To call the police. We covered her with our coats and I tried to put pressure on the wound. But it was too late. Too much internal damage. Too much blood loss. She died within a couple of minutes.’ He gave a long exhalation. ‘There was nothing I could do.’

      Even Maclennan was momentarily silenced by the intensity of Ziggy’s words. He glanced at Burnside, who was scribbling furiously. ‘Why did you ask Alex Gilbey to go for help?’

      ‘Because Alex was more sober than Tom. And Davey tends to go to pieces in a crisis.’

      It made perfect sense. Almost too perfect. Maclennan pushed his chair back. ‘One of my officers will take you home now, Mr Malkiewicz. We’ll want the clothes you’re wearing, for forensic analysis. And your fingerprints, for the purposes of elimination. And we’ll be wanting to talk to you again.’ There were things Maclennan wanted to know about Sigmund Malkiewicz. But they could wait. His feeling of unease about these four young men was growing stronger by the minute. He wanted to start pushing. And he had a feeling that the one who went to pieces in a crisis might just be the one to cave in.

      The poetry of Baudelaire seemed to be doing the trick. Curled into a ball on a mattress so hard it scarcely deserved the name, Mondo was mentally working his way through Les Fleurs du Mal. It seemed ironically appropriate in the light of the night’s events. The musical flow of the language soothed him, rubbing away the reality of Rosie Duff’s death and the police cell it had brought him to. It was transcendent, raising him out of his body and into another place where the smooth sequence of syllables was all his consciousness

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