And then things changed again.
Everything suddenly stopped being quite so uncomfortably familiar and became even more uncomfortably unpredictable. He knew this wasn’t how things were supposed to be, that the police were turning a blind eye and playing fast and loose with procedures, but why? Was it, as he suspected, a clichéd case of locals closing ranks to deal with an outsider who, they’d decided, had harmed one of their own? Or was this just the way things were done up here? Whatever the reason, it was playing out like a scene from a bad TV drama: just him and a plain-clothes officer facing each other in a grey and featureless room. The door was slightly ajar. There was someone waiting outside.
‘I need a lawyer,’ Scott said, remembering the TV routine. ‘I’m not saying anything until I’ve got a lawyer.’
‘On his way,’ the officer said. He looked to be in his mid- to late-fifties, grey-haired, with a bulbous, purple-tinged, drinker’s nose. Scott could see straight through him, trying to act all casual and matey, like he’d just decided to stick his head around the door on the off chance Scott felt like a chat or maybe confessing… save them all a load of hassle. This guy really seemed keen to live up to all the clichés: world weary, jaded, been around the block a few too many times… Scott might have risked taking the piss if he hadn’t been so bloody frightened. This your last week in the job, officer? One final case to crack before you hand in your badge for good? Do you keep a bottle of whiskey in your desk drawer? Do you live alone? Wife got bored and found someone else because in all your twenty-plus years together, you’ve always really been married to the force…
‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Detective Inspector Litherland. I thought we might try and help each other out, Scott. Your brief’s going to be a while getting here. That’s the problem with living somewhere like Thussock, as I’m sure you’ve already discovered. It takes forever to get anywhere.’
‘I’d rather wait.’
‘Your prerogative, of course. Don’t be too hasty, though. You scratch my back, and all that shite…’
‘Nice. What is this, Taggart?’
‘You’re in no position to take the piss, sunshine. I’d be very careful if I were you. Believe me, you’re in a shitload of trouble right now.’
Scott bit his tongue. He knew the detective was right. He swallowed hard and looked away, not wanting him to see how nervous he was. But then again, it wouldn’t have taken a body language expert to work that out. The back of his shirt was drenched with sweat; dark, wet rings under both armpits. He constantly chewed the ends of his fingers.
‘Okay, Scott,’ the detective said, ‘I’ll lay things on the line for you here, just so you know what we’re dealing with. Graham McBride is dead, and we’ve several witnesses who saw you beating seven shades of shit out of him shortly before he died.’
‘No comment.’
‘I’m not really asking for your thoughts just now, sunshine, I just need you to listen. Absorb and understand, okay? Now, as I was saying, you were seen kicking seven shades of shit out of Mr McBride—’
‘He was harassing my step-daughter. He had his dick in his hands for Christ’s sake. He was wanking himself off. She’s not even seventeen… what would you have done?’
‘Calm down, Scott, I’m not here to—’
‘Sure I punched him a couple of times, but I didn’t do enough to kill him.’
‘Medical expert, are you?’
‘No, I—’
‘Or is it that you checked Mr McBride was okay after you finished beating him up? Oh no, that’s right, you didn’t. You left him at the side of the road, barely even breathing.’
‘It wasn’t like that. I didn’t—’
‘Slow down, and calm down. Take your time. As I said, listen to me first, then we’ll talk. You see, my biggest problem right now is that it’s not just Mr McBride we’re talking about here. Poor old Graham’s not the only death we’ve had to deal with recently.’
‘I don’t know anything.’
‘Think carefully, Scott.’
‘I told you, I—’
Litherland raised his hand, silencing Scott mid-sentence. ‘Remind me again, how long is it that you and your family have lived in Thussock?’
‘We moved here last Saturday.’
‘By we, I take it you mean your family?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what about you? How long have you yourself been up here?’
‘I came up about a week and a half earlier to get the house straight. Wait, what are you saying? Do you think I—?’
‘I’m not saying anything. My job’s not to suppose, it’s to prove. You see, I’m just trying to work out what’s going on around here. Look at it from my perspective… until these last few weeks, there’d only been one murder here in eight years. Now in the time since you first got here, seven people have died. Heck of a coincidence.’
‘And that’s all it is, a coincidence. I don’t know anything.’ He stopped, still trying to make sense of all of this. The woman in the woods, Potter, the girl in his garden, that nutter Graham McBride… ‘Wait… seven people?’
Litherland picked up a folder full of papers, then sat down opposite Scott. If he was trying to intimidate him, it was working. ‘Giles Hitchen,’ he said.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You sure? Think carefully, lad.’ The detective pulled out a glossy photograph from the folder and passed it to Scott. He looked at it briefly, then put it down on the table. A young guy sprawled across a pavement on his back, his head and shoulders hidden in the hedgerow, legs naked and drenched with blood. What was left of his shredded penis hung between them. The gore was astonishingly vivid: a crimson scrawl across the monotone.
‘I don’t know anything about this,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen this man.’
‘Joan Lummock.’
Another photograph, this one even worse. A woman in her late fifties, her skin discoloured by the first signs of decay, lying on a bed of blood-soaked leaf litter. He recognised the location from TV reports he’d seen. This was the woman they’d found in the forest last weekend. Again, same as the last picture, she was naked from the waist down. What was left of the rest of her was hard to make out; a vile, bloody mess instead of a vagina. Scott could barely stand to look.
‘I don’t know anything,’ he said, simply and emphatically.
‘Took us a while to find poor Joan,’ Litherland continued. ‘She’d been missing a day or so by the time we got to her. None of this ringing any bells?’
‘I heard about her on TV, but that’s all.’
A third photograph. A dead man in walking gear, anorak on top, waterproof trousers wrapped around one ankle. He was slumped against a wall inside a particularly cramped looking house, his groin eviscerated.
‘David Ferguson. Retired. Recently widowed. Father of four. His youngest, Karen, did admin work here at the station for a while. David was found like this up at the youth hostel near Glenfirth.’
Scott looked into the dead man’s face, his lifeless eyes staring at nothing. His glasses were at an awkward angle, half-on, half-off. It was easier to focus on them than on the rest of the bloody corpse.
‘How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t know anything about this.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘I swear!’
Unperturbed, Litherland continued. Another photograph, this one depressingly familiar. ‘Shona McIntyre. You must remember poor Shona?’