The Distant Echo

Maclennan closed the door behind him. With WPC Janice Hogg and him both in the room, it felt claustrophobic, the low slant of the roof hemming them in. This was the most pitiful element of sudden death, he thought. Nobody has the chance to tidy up after themselves, to present a picture they’d like the world to see. They’re stuck with what they left behind the last time they closed the door. He’d seen some sad sights in his time, but few more poignant than this.

Someone had taken the trouble to make this room look bright and cheerful, in spite of the limited amount of light that came in at the narrow dormer window overlooking the village street. He could see St Andrews in the distance, still looking white under yesterday’s snow, though he knew the truth was different. Already, pavements were filthy with slush, the roads a slippery morass of grit and melt. Beyond the town, the grey smudge of the sea melted imperceptibly into the sky. It must be a fine view on a sunny day, he thought, turning back to the magnolia-painted wood-chip and the white candlewick bedspread, still rumpled from where Rosie had last sat on it. There was a single poster on the wall. Some group called Blondie, their lead singer busty and pouting, her skirt impossibly short. Was that what Rosie aspired to, he wondered.

‘Where would you like me to start, sir?’ Janice asked, looking around at the 1950s wardrobe and dressing table which had been painted white in an effort to make them look more contemporary. There was a small table by the bed with a single drawer. Other than that, the only place where anything might be concealed was a small laundry hamper tucked behind the door and a metal wastepaper bin under the dressing table.

‘You do the dressing table,’ he said. That way, he didn’t have to deal with the make-up that would never be used again, the second-best bra and the old knickers thrust to the back of the drawer for laundry emergencies that never happened. Maclennan knew his tender places, and he preferred to avoid probing them whenever he could.

Janice sat on the end of the bed, where Rosie must have perched to peer into the mirror and apply her make-up. Maclennan turned to the dressing table and slid open the drawer. It contained a fat book called The Far Pavilions, which Maclennan thought was just the sort of thing his ex-wife had used to keep him at bay in bed. ‘I’m reading, Barney,’ she’d say in a tone of patient suffering, brandishing some doorstop novel under his nose. What was it with women and books? He lifted out the book, trying not to notice Janice systematically exploring drawers. Underneath was a diary. Refusing to allow himself optimism, Maclennan picked it up.

If he’d been hoping for some confessional, he’d have been sorely disappointed. Rosie Duff hadn’t been a ‘Dear Diary’ sort of girl. The pages listed her shifts at the Lammas Bar, birthdays of family and friends, and social events such as ‘Bob’s party’, ‘Julie’s spree’. Dates were indicated with the time and place and the word, ‘Him’, followed by a number. It looked like she’d gone through 14, 15 and 16 in the course of the past year; 16 was, obviously, the most recent. He first appeared in early November and soon became a regular feature two or three times a week. Always after work, Maclennan thought. He’d have to go back to the Lammas and ask again if anyone had seen Rosie meeting a man after closing time. He wondered why they met then, instead of on Rosie’s night off, or during the day when she wasn’t working. One or other of them seemed determined to keep his identity secret.

He glanced across at Janice. ‘Anything?’

‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect. It’s all the kind of stuff women buy for themselves. None of the tacky things that guys buy.’

‘Guys buy tacky things?’

‘I’m afraid you do, sir. Scratchy lace. Nylon that makes you sweat. What men want women to wear, not what they’d choose for themselves.’

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. I should really have been buying big knickers from Marks and Spencer.’

Janice grinned. ‘Gratitude goes a long way, sir.’

‘Any sign she was on the pill?’

‘Nothing so far. Maybe Brian was on the money when he said she was a good girl.’

‘Not entirely. She wasn’t a virgin, according to the pathologist.’

‘There’s more than one way of losing your virginity, sir,’ Janice pointed out, not quite courageous enough to cast aspersions on a pathologist who everyone knew was more focused on his next drink and his retirement than on whoever ended up on his slab.

‘Aye. And the pills are probably in her handbag, which hasn’t turned up yet.’ Maclennan sighed and shut the drawer on the novel and the diary. ‘I’ll take a look at the wardrobe.’ Half an hour later, he had to concede that Rosie Duff had not been a hoarder. Her wardrobe contained clothes and shoes, all in current styles. In one corner, there was a pile of paperbacks, all thick bricks of paper that promised glamour, wealth and love in equal measure. ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ he said.

‘I’ve just got one drawer to go. Why don’t you have a look in her jewellery box?’ Janice passed him a box in the shape of a treasure chest covered in white leatherette. He flipped open the thin brass clasp and opened the lid. The top tray contained a selection of earrings in a range of colours. They were mostly big and bold, but inexpensive. In the lower tray there was a child’s Timex watch, a couple of cheap silver chains and a few novelty brooches; one looked like a piece of knitting, complete with miniature needles; one a fishing fly, and the third a brightly enamelled creature that looked like a cat from another planet. It was hard to read anything significant into any of it. ‘She liked her earrings,’ he said, closing the box. ‘Whoever she was seeing wasn’t the kind who gives expensive jewellery.’

Janice reached to the back of her drawer and pulled out a packet of photographs. It looked as if Rosie had raided the family albums and made her own selection. It was a typical mixture of family photos: her parents’ wedding picture, Rosie and her brothers growing up, assorted family groups spanning the last three decades, a few baby pictures and some snaps of Rosie with schoolfriends, mugging at the camera in their Madras College uniforms. No photo-booth shots of her with boyfriends. No boyfriends at all, in fact. Maclennan flicked through them then shoved them back in the packet. ‘Come on, Janice, let’s see if we can find something a bit more productive to occupy us.’ He took a last look round the room that had told him far less than he’d hoped about Rosie Duff. A girl with a craving for something more glamorous than she had. A girl who kept herself to herself. A girl who had taken her secrets to the grave, probably protecting her killer in the process.

As they drove back down to St Andrews, Maclennan’s radio crackled. He fiddled with the knobs, trying to get a clear signal. Seconds later, Burnside’s voice came through loud and clear. He sounded excited. ‘Sir? I think we’ve got something.’

Alex, Mondo and Weird had finished their shift stacking shelves in Safeway, keeping their heads down and hoping nobody would recognize them from the front page of the Daily Record. They’d bought a bundle of papers and walked along the High Street to the café where they’d spent their early evenings as teenagers.

‘Did you know that one in two adults in Scotland reads the Record?’ Alex said gloomily.

‘The other one can’t read,’ Weird said, looking at the snatched picture of the four of them on the doorstep of their residence. ‘Christ, look at us. They might as well have captioned it, “Shifty bastards suspected of rape and murder”. Do you suppose anybody seeing that wouldn’t think we’d done it?’

‘It’s not the most flattering photo I’ve ever had taken,’ Alex said.

‘It’s all right for you. You’re right at the back. You can hardly make out your face. And Ziggy’s turning away. It’s me and Weird that have got it full frontal,’ Mondo complained. ‘Let’s see what the others have got.’

A similar picture appeared in the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald and the Courier, but thankfully on inside pages. The murder made it to the front of all of them, however, with the exception of the Courier. Nothing as insignificant as a murder could shift the fatstock prices and small ads from their front page.

They sat sipping their frothy coffees, silently poring over the column inches. ‘I suppose it could be worse,’ Alex said.

Weird made an incredulous face. ‘Worse how, exactly?’

‘They spelled our names right. Even Ziggy’s.’

‘Big fat hairy deal. OK, I’ll grant you they’ve stopped short of calling us suspects. But that’s about all you can say in our favour. This makes us look bad, Alex. You know it does.’

‘Everybody we know is going to have seen this,’ Mondo said. ‘Everybody is going to be into our ribs about it. If this is my fifteen minutes of fame, you can stuff it.’

‘Everybody was going to know anyway,’ Alex pointed out. ‘You know what this town’s like. Village mentality. People have got nothing else to keep them occupied but gossiping about their neighbours. It doesn’t take the papers to spread the news around here. The plus side is that half the university lives in England, so they’re not going to know anything about this. And by the time we get back after the New Year, it’ll be history.’

‘You think so?’ Weird folded the Scotsman shut with an air of finality. ‘I tell you something. We better be praying that Maclennan finds out who did this and puts him away.’

‘Why?’ Mondo asked.

‘Because if he doesn’t, we’re going to go through the rest of our lives as the guys that got away with murder.’

Mondo looked like a man who’s just been told he has terminal cancer. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my puff,’ Weird said. ‘If they don’t arrest anybody for Rosie’s murder, all anybody’s going to remember is that we’re the four who spent the night at the police station. It’s obvious, man. We’re going to get a not proven verdict without a trial. “We all know they did it, the police just couldn’t prove it,”’ he added, mimicking a woman’s voice. ‘Face it, Mondo, you’re never going to get laid again.’ He grinned wickedly, knowing he’d hit his friend where it hurt most.

‘Fuck off, Weird. At least I’ll have memories,’ Mondo snapped.

Before any of them could say more, they were interrupted by a new arrival. Ziggy came in, shaking rain from his hair. ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said.

‘Ziggy, Weird says …’ Mondo began.

‘Never mind that. Maclennan’s here. He wants to talk to the four of us again.’

Alex raised his eyebrows. ‘He wants to drag us back to St Andrews?’

Ziggy shook his head. ‘No. He’s here in Kirkcaldy. He wants us to come to the police station.’

‘Fuck,’ Weird said. ‘My old man’s going to go mental. I’m supposed to be grounded. He’ll think I’m giving him the V-sign. It’s not like I can tell him I’ve been at the cop shop.’

‘Thank my dad for the fact that we’re not having to go to St Andrews,’ Ziggy said. ‘He went spare when Maclennan turned up at the house. Read him the riot act, accusing him of treating us like criminals when we’d done everything we could to save Rosie. I thought at one point he was going to start battering him with the Record.’ He smiled. ‘I tell you, I was proud of him.’

‘Good for him,’ Alex said. ‘So where’s Maclennan?’

‘Outside in his car. With my dad’s car parked right behind him.’ Ziggy’s shoulders started shaking with laughter. ‘I don’t think Maclennan’s ever come up against anything quite like my old man.’

‘So we’ve got to go to the police station now?’ Alex asked.

Ziggy nodded. ‘Maclennan’s waiting for us. He said my dad could drive us there, but he’s not in the mood for hanging around.’

Ten minutes later, Ziggy was sitting alone in an interview room. When they’d arrived at the police station, Alex, Weird and Mondo had been taken to a separate interview room under the watchful eye of a uniformed constable. An anxious Karel Malkiewicz had been unceremoniously abandoned in the reception area, told abruptly by Maclennan that he’d have to wait there. And Ziggy had been shepherded off, sandwiched between Maclennan and Burnside, who had promptly left him to kick his heels.