A Darker Domain

The women never cooked dinner again.

Grazia’s cooking made Bel’s morning runs all the more necessary. As forty approached, she struggled harder to maintain what she thought of as her fighting weight. This morning, her stomach still felt like a tight round ball after the meltingly delicious melanzane alla parmigiana that had provoked her into an excessive second helping. She’d go a little further than usual, she decided. Instead of making a circuit of the sunflower field and climbing back up to their villa, she would take a track that ran from the far corner through the overgrown grounds of a ruined casa colonica she’d noticed from the car. Ever since she’d spotted it on their first morning, she’d indulged a fantasy of buying the ruin and transforming it into the ultimate Tuscan retreat, complete with swimming pool and olive grove. And of course, Grazia on hand to cook. Bel had few qualms about poaching, neither in fantasy nor reality.

But she knew herself well enough to understand it would never be more than a pipe dream. Having a retreat implied a willingness to step away from the world of work that was alien to her. Maybe when she was ready to retire she could contemplate devoting herself to such a restoration project. Except that she recognized that as another daydream. Journalists never really retired. There was always another story on the horizon, another target to pursue. Not to mention the terror of being forgotten. All reasons why past relationships had failed to stay the course, all reasons why the future probably held the same imperfections. Still, it would be fun to take a closer look at the old house, to see just how bad a state it was in. When she’d mentioned it to Grazia, she’d pulled a face and called it rovina. Bel, whose Italian was fluent, had translated it for the others; ‘ruin’. Time to find out whether Grazia was telling the truth or just trying to divert the interest of the rich English women.

The path through the long grass was still surprisingly clear, bare soil packed hard by years of foot traffic. Bel took the opportunity to pick up speed, then slowed as she reached the edge of the gated courtyard in front of the old farmhouse. The gates were dilapidated, hanging drunkenly from hinges that were barely attached to the tall stone posts. A heavy chain and padlock held them fastened. Beyond, the courtyard’s broken paving was demarcated with tufts of creeping thyme, camomile and coarse weeds. Bel shook the gates without much expectation. But that was enough to reveal that the bottom corner of the right-hand gate had parted company completely with its support. It could readily be pulled clear enough to allow an adult through the gap. Bel slipped through and let go. The gate creaked faintly as it settled back into place, returning to apparent closure.

Close up, she could understand Grazia’s description. Anyone taking this project on would be in thrall to the builders for a very long time. The house surrounded the courtyard on three sides, a central wing flanked by a matching pair of arms. There were two storeys, with a loggia running round the whole of the upper floor, doors and windows giving on to it, providing the bedrooms with easy access to fresh air and common space. But the loggia floor sagged, what doors remained were skewed, and the lintels above the windows were cracked and oddly angled. The window panes on both floors were filthy, cracked or missing. But still the solid lines of the attractive vernacular architecture were obvious and the rough stones glowed warm in the morning sun.

Bel couldn’t have explained why, but the house drew her closer. It had the raddled charm of a former beauty sufficiently self-assured to let herself go without a fight. Unpruned bougainvillea straggled up the peeling ochre stucco and over the low wall of the loggia. If nobody chose to fall in love with this place soon, it was going to be overwhelmed by vegetation. In a couple of generations, it would be nothing more than an inexplicable mound on the hillside. But for now, it still had the power to bewitch.

She picked her way across the crumbling courtyard, passing cracked terracotta pots lying askew, the herbs they’d contained sprawling and springing free, spicing the air with their fragrances. She pushed against a heavy door made of wooden planks hanging from a single hinge. The wood screeched against an uneven floor of herringbone brick, but it opened wide enough for Bel to enter a large room without squeezing. Her first impression was of grime and neglect. Cobwebs were strung in a maze from wall to wall. The windows were mottled with dirt. A distant scurrying had Bel peering around in panic. She had no fear of news editors, but four-legged rats filled her with revulsion.

As she grew accustomed to the gloom, Bel realized the room wasn’t completely empty. A long table stood against one wall. Opposite was a sagging sofa. Judging by the rest of the place, it should have been rotten and filthy, but the dark red upholstery was still relatively clean. She filed the oddity for further consideration.

Bel hesitated for a moment. None of her friends, she was sure, would be urging her to penetrate deeper into this strange deserted house. But she had built her career on a reputation for fearlessness. Only she knew how often the image had concealed levels of anxiety and uncertainty that had reduced her to throwing up in gutters and strange toilets. Given what she’d faced down in her determination to secure a story, how scary could a deserted ruin be?

A doorway in the far corner led to a cramped hallway with a worn stone staircase climbing up to the loggia. Beyond, she could see another dark and grubby room. She peered in, surprised to see a thin cord strung across one corner from which half a dozen metal coat hangers dangled. A knitted scarf was slung round the neck of one of the hangers. Beneath it, she could see a crumpled pile of camouflage material. It looked like one of the shooting jackets on sale at the van that occupied the lay-by opposite the café on the main Colle Val d’Elsa road. The women had been laughing about it just the other day, wondering when exactly it had become fashionable for Italian men of all ages to look as if they’d just walked in from a tour of duty in the Balkans. Weird, she thought. Bel cautiously climbed the stairs to the loggia, expecting the same sense of long-abandoned habitation.

But as soon as she emerged from the stairwell, she realized she’d stepped into something very different. When she turned to her left and glanced in the first door, she understood this house was not what it seemed. The rancid mustiness of the lower floor was only a faint note here, the air almost as fresh as it was outside. The room had obviously been a bedroom, and fairly recently at that. A mattress lay on the floor, a bedspread flung back casually across the bottom third. It was dusty, but had none of the ingrained grime the lower floor had led Bel to expect. Again, a cord was strung across the corner. There were a dozen empty hangers, but the final three held slightly crumpled shirts. Even from a distance, she could see they were past their best, fade lines across the sleeves and collars.

A pair of tomato crates acted as bedside tables. One held a stump of candle in a saucer. A yellowed copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lay on the floor next to the bed. Bel picked it up, noting that the date was less than four months ago. So that gave her an idea of when this place had been last abandoned. She lifted one of the shirtsleeves and pressed it to her nose. Rosemary and marijuana. Faint but unmistakable.

She went back to the loggia and checked out the other rooms. The pattern was similar. Three more bedrooms containing a handful of leftovers - a couple of T-shirts, paperbacks and magazines in English, Italian and German, half a bottle of wine, the stub of a lipstick, a leather sandal whose sole had parted company with its upper - the sort of things you would leave behind if you were moving out with no thought of who might come after. In one, a bunch of flowers stuck in an olive jar had dried to fragility.

The final room on the west side was the biggest so far. Its windows had been cleaned more recently than any of the others, its shutters renovated and its walls whitewashed. Standing in the middle of the floor was a silk-screen printing frame. Trestle tables set against one wall contained plastic cups stained inside with dried pigments, and brushes stiff with neglect. A scatter of spots and blots marked the floor. Bel was intrigued, her curiosity overcoming any lingering nervousness at being alone in this peculiar place. Whoever had been here must have cleared out in a hurry. Leaving a substantial silk-screen frame behind wasn’t what you would do if your departure was planned.

She backed out of the studio and made her way along the loggia to the wing opposite. She was careful to stay close to the wall, not trusting the undulating brick floor with her weight. She passed the bedroom doors, feeling like a trespasser on the Mary Celeste. A silence unbroken even by bird-song accentuated the impression. The last room before the corner was a bathroom whose nauseating mix of odours still hung in the air. A coil of hosepipe lay on the floor, its tail end disappearing through a hole in the masonry near the window. So they had improvised some sort of running water, though not enough to make the toilet anything less than disgusting. She wrinkled her nose and backed away.

Bel rounded the corner just as the sun cleared the corner of the woods, flooding her in sudden warmth. It made her entry into the final room all the more chilling. Shivering at the dank air, she ventured inside. The shutters were pulled tight, making the interior almost too dim to discern anything. But as her eyes adjusted, she gained a sense of the room. It was the twin of the studio in scale, but its function was quite different. She crossed to the nearest window and struggled with the shutter, finally managing to haul it halfway open. It was enough to confirm her first impression. This had been the heart of the occupation of the casa rovina. A battered old cooking range connected to a gas cylinder stood by a stone sink. The dining table was scarred and stripped to the bare wood, but it was solid and had beautifully carved legs. Seven unmatched chairs sat around it, an eighth overturned a few feet away. A rocking chair and a couple of sofas lined the walls. Odd bits of crockery and cutlery lay scattered around, as if the inhabitants couldn’t be bothered collecting them when they’d left.

As Bel walked back from the window, a rickety table caught her eye. Standing behind the door, it was easy to miss. An untidy scatter of what appeared to be posters lay across it. Fascinated, she moved towards it. Two strides and she stopped short, her sharp gasp echoing in the dusty air.

Before her on the limestone flags was an irregular stain, perhaps three feet by eighteen inches. Rusty brown, its edges were rounded and smooth, as if it had flowed and pooled rather than spilled. It was thick enough to obscure the flags beneath. One section on the farthest edge looked smudged and thinned, as if someone had tried to scrub it clean and soon given up. Bel had covered enough stories of domestic violence and sexual homicide to recognize a serious bloodstain when she saw it.

Startled, she stepped back, head swivelling from side to side, heart thudding so hard she thought it might choke her. What the hell had happened here? She looked around wildly, noticing other dark stains marking the floor beyond the table. Time to get out of here, the sensible part of her mind was screaming. But the devil of curiosity muttered in her ear. There’s been nobody here for months. Look at the dust. They’re long gone. They’re not going to be back any time soon. Whatever happened here was good reason for them to clear out. Check out the posters…

Bel skirted the stain, giving it as wide a berth as she could without touching any of the furniture. All at once, she felt a taint in the air. Knew it was imagination, but still it seemed real. Back to the room, face to the door, she crab-walked to the table and looked down at the posters strewn across it.

The second shock was almost more powerful than the first.

Bel knew she was pushing too hard up the hill, but she couldn’t pace herself. She could feel the sweat from her hand coating the good quality paper of the rolled-up poster. At last the track emerged from the trees and became less treacherous as it approached their holiday villa. The road sloped down almost imperceptibly, but gravity was enough to give her tired legs an extra boost and she was still moving fast when she rounded the corner of the house to find Lisa Martyn stretched out on the shady terrace in a pool chair with Friday’s Guardian for company. Bel felt relief. She needed to talk to someone and, of all her companions, Lisa was least likely to turn her revelations into dinner party gossip. A human rights lawyer whose compassion and feminism seemed as ineluctable as every breath she took, Lisa would understand the potential of the discovery Bel thought she had made. And her right to handle it as she saw fit.

Lisa dragged her eyes away from the newspaper, distracted by the unfamiliar heave of Bel’s breath. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re about to stroke out.’

Bel put the poster down on a chair and leaned over, hands on knees, dragging breath into her lungs, regretting those secret, stolen cigarettes. ‘I’ll be - OK in - a minute.’

Lisa struggled ungainly out of the chair and hurried into the kitchen, returning with a towel and bottle of water. Bel stood straight, took the water and poured half over her head, snorting as she breathed it in by accident. Then she rubbed her head with the towel and slumped into a chair. She swallowed a long draught of water while Lisa returned to her pool chair. ‘What was all that about?’ Lisa said. ‘You’re the most dignified jogger I know. Never seen an out-of-breath Bel before. What’s got you into such a state?’

‘I found something,’ Bel said. Her chest was still struggling but she could manage short bursts of speech. ‘At least, I think I found something. And if I’m right, it’s the story of my career.’ She reached for the poster. ‘I was kind of hoping you might be able to tell me whether I’ve completely lost the plot.’

Intrigued, Lisa tossed the paper to the ground and sat up. ‘So, what is it, this thing that might be something?’

Bel unrolled the heavy paper, weighing it down at the corners with a pepper grinder, a coffee mug and a couple of dirty ashtrays. The image on the A3 sheet was striking. It had been designed to look like a stark black-and-white woodcut in the German Expressionist style. At the top of the page, a bearded man with an angular shock of hair leaned over a screen, his hands holding wooden crosses from which three marionettes dangled. But these were no ordinary marionettes. One was a skeleton, the second a goat and the third a representation of Death with his hooded robe and scythe. There was something indisputably sinister about the image. Across the bottom, enclosed by a funereal black border, was a blank area about three inches deep. It was the sort of space where a small bill might be posted announcing a performance.

‘Fuck me,’ Lisa said. At last, she looked up. ‘Catriona Maclennan Grant,’ she said. There was wonder in her voice. ‘Bel…where the hell did you find this?’

Thursday 28th June 2007; Edinburgh

Bel smiled. ‘Before I answer that, I want to clarify a few things.’

Susan Charleson rolled her eyes. ‘You can’t imagine you’re the first person who’s walked through the door with a faked-up copy of the ransom poster. I’ll tell you what I’ve told them. The reward is contingent on finding Sir Broderick’s grandson alive or demonstrating conclusively that he is dead. Not to mention bringing Catriona Maclennan Grant’s killers to justice.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ Bel said, smile mischievous but not giving an inch. ‘Ms Charleson, I’m really not interested in Sir Broderick’s money. But I do have one condition.’

‘You’re making a mistake here.’ Susan Charleson’s voice had acquired an edge. ‘This is a police matter. You’re in no position to be imposing conditions.’

Bel placed a hand firmly on the poster. ‘I can walk out the door now with this poster and forget I ever saw it. I’d have little difficulty in lying to the police. I’m a journalist, after all.’ She was beginning to enjoy herself far more than she’d anticipated. ‘Your word against mine, Ms Charleson. And I know you don’t want me to walk out on you. One of the skills a successful journalist has to learn is how to read people. And I saw the way you reacted when you looked at this. You know this is the real thing, not some faked-up copy.’

‘You’ve a very aggressive attitude.’ Susan Charleson sounded almost nonchalant.

‘I like to think of it as assertive. I didn’t come here to fall out with you, Ms Charleson. I want to help. But not for free. In my experience, the rich don’t appreciate anything they don’t have to pay for.’

‘You said you weren’t interested in money.’

‘That’s true. And I’m not. I am, however, interested in reputation. And my reputation is built on being not just first with the story but with getting to the story behind the story. I think there are areas where I can help unravel this more effectively than official channels. I’m sure you’ll agree once I’ve explained where this poster came from. All I’m asking is that you don’t obstruct me looking into the case. And beyond that, that you and your boss cooperate when it comes to sharing information about what was going on around the time Catriona was kidnapped.’

‘That’s quite a significant request. Sir Broderick is not a man who compromises his privacy readily. You’ll appreciate I don’t have the authority to grant what you are asking.’

Bel shrugged one shoulder delicately. ‘Then we can meet again when you have an answer.’ She slid the poster across the table, opening the portfolio to replace it there.

Susan Charleson stood up. ‘If you can spare me a few more minutes, I might be able to give you an answer now.’

Bel knew at that point that she had won. Susan Charleson wanted this too badly. She would persuade her boss to accept the deal. Bel hadn’t been this excited in years. This wasn’t just a slew of news stories and features, though there wasn’t a paper in the world that wouldn’t be interested. Especially after the Madeleine McCann case. With access to the mysterious Brodie Grant plus the chance of discovering the fate of his grandson, this was potentially a bestseller. In Cold Blood for the new millennium. It would be her ticket for the gravy train.

Bel gave a little snort of laughter. Maybe she could use the proceeds to buy the casa rovina and bring things full circle. It was hard to imagine what could be neater.

Thursday 28th June 2007; Newton of Wemyss

It had been a few years since Karen had last taken the single-track road to Newton of Wemyss. But it was obvious that the hamlet had undergone the same transformation as its sister villages on the main road. Commuters had fallen ravenous upon all four of the Wemyss villages, seeing rustic possibilities in what had been grim little miners’ rows. One-bedroomed hovels had been knocked through to make lavish cottages, back yards transformed by conservatories that poured light into gloomy living-kitchens. Villages that had shrivelled and died following the Michael pit disaster in ’67 and the closures that followed the 1984 strike had found a new incarnation as dormitories whose entire idea of community was a pub quiz night. In the village shops you could buy a scented candle but not a pint of milk. The only way you could tell there had ever been a mining community was the scale model of pit winding gear that straddled the point where the private steam railway had once crossed the main road laden with open trucks of coal bound for the railhead at Thornton Junction. Now, the whitewashed miners’ rows looked like an architect’s deliberate choice of what a vernacular village ought to look like. Their history had been overwhelmed by a designer present.

Since her last visit, Newton of Wemyss had spruced itself up. The modest war memorial stood on a triangle of shaven grass in the centre. Wooden troughs of flowers stood around it at perfect intervals. Immaculate single-storey cottages lined the village green, the only break in the low skyline the imposing bulk of the local pub, the Laird o’ Wemyss. It had once been owned collectively by the local community under the Gothenburg system, but the hard times of the eighties had forced it to close. Now it was a destination restaurant, its ‘Scottish Fusion’ cuisine drawing visitors from as far afield as Dundee and Edinburgh and its prices lifting it well out of her budget. Karen wondered how far Mick Prentice would have had to travel for a simple pint of heavy if he’d stayed put in Newton.

She consulted the Mapquest directions she’d printed out and pointed to a road at the apex of the triangle to her driver, DC Jason ‘the Mint’ Murray. ‘You want to go down the lane there,’ she said. ‘Towards the sea. Where the pit used to be.’

They left the village centre behind immediately. Shaggy hedgerows fringed a field of lush green wheat on the right. ‘All this rain, it’s making everything grow like the clappers,’ the Mint said. It had taken him the full twenty-five-minute journey from the office to summon up a comment.

Karen couldn’t be bothered with a conversation about the weather. What was there to say? It had rained all bloody summer so far. Just because it wasn’t raining right this minute didn’t mean it wouldn’t be wet by the end of the day. She looked over to her left where the colliery buildings had once stood. She had a vague memory of offices, pithead baths, a canteen. Now it had been razed to its concrete foundation, weeds forcing through jagged cracks as they reclaimed it. Marooned beyond it was a single untouched miners’ row; eight raddled houses stranded in the middle of nowhere by the demolition of the buildings that had provided the reason for their existence. Beyond them was a thick stand of tall sycamores and beeches, a dense windbreak between the houses and the edge of the cliff that plunged down thirty feet to the coastal path below. ‘That’s where the Lady Charlotte used to be,’ she said.