Where the Bodies are Buried (43 page)

‘No, what?’ Cairns asked impatiently. ‘Cancer?’

‘They signify absolutely nothing,’ she replied. ‘I only mention them by way of contrast: you know, in comparison to the tiny
red spots on all of your skins that signify you’ve had police marksmen training laser-sighted rifles on you since you got
here.’

The three cops looked at each other and saw the little red dots on each other’s foreheads, which had moved there from less
conspicuous places since Fallan gave the code word.

An electronically amplified voice hailed them from the rim of the quarry, where the marksmen were positioned.

‘Put down your weapons slowly, place your hands on your heads and get down on your knees,’ it commanded.

Cairns and McDade let out gasps of disbelieving exasperation, but all three of them complied with the order immediately, smoothly
and demonstrably. These were men who implicitly understood the equation governing risk to civilians and margin of doubt in
the minds of trained police shooters. One involuntary twitch and they’d be dropped. This was over.

‘What was that about not recognising a trap when you see one?’ Jasmine asked Cairns, backing away from where the three men
were now kneeling on the earth.

Cairns didn’t even look at her by way of response. He only had eyes for Fallan.

‘How about that,’ Fallan said. ‘Me, bringing down the bad guys, just like my old man always didn’t.’

‘Your old man?’ Cairns asked, then spat on the ground. ‘I suppose, under the circumstances, I might as well let you know now.
It was me that killed him.’

He spoke with real venom, true conviction.

Fallan stared down at him pityingly.

‘I’m not the kind of guy who can always tell when somebody’s lying,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you’re lying about that. You
were too big a shitebag, and you haven’t changed. Anyway, I’ve got to go, and there’s a guy on his way down wants a word with
you. Something about locusts and mosquitoes, I think he said.’

Catherine wouldn’t normally allow anybody to smoke in the car, but she was making an exception. Dominic Wilson was so jumpy
that she feared he’d throw open the rear door and dive out while the vehicle was in motion if he didn’t have a cigarette to
occupy himself. Catherine was in the back with him, Laura at the wheel, her little dark cloud just a shade lighter these past
few days. She’d been quieter, though; more reflective, but when she did speak, she was less deferential. She seemed to have
developed a strange fascination with Glen Fallan, which Catherine was less happy about, but anything that helped bring out
the detective Catherine had heard about from her colleagues on the east coast would be tolerated.

‘How’s Ruaraidh?’ Catherine asked, a sensitive question, she appreciated, but for all that a good distraction from Dominic’s
anxiety over the coming rendezvous. She chose her phrasing carefully, too, avoiding the words dad and father, as their status
was now more than a little ambiguous.

‘He’s on holiday,’ Dominic replied. ‘Took off to Malaysia with this woman he’s been seeing. Everybody assumes he’s hiding
from the press, but I think he’s hiding from me. The weird thing is, I don’t actually feel angry with him. I mean, like, I
actually feel less anger with him than ever before, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe I’m still just numb from shock, but
that’s not how it feels.’

‘I was there when he was initially confronted about it,’ she told him. ‘And the one thing there’s no ambiguity about is the
depth of his feelings for you.’

‘Yeah. I think the reason I’m not angry is I kind of feel sorry for him. I can’t decide whether he did a good thing for bad
reasons or a bad thing for good reasons. And without getting too anthropic about it, his decisions made me who I am and I
can’t change it. It’s a serious head-fuck. Been over and over it in my mind, but I haven’t reached any conclusions.’

‘What about the PF’s office: have they?’

‘Oh, the one thing that’s for sure is that he’ll walk away clean. I’m staying out of it, though. Recused. Thinking of taking
a holiday myself. I’m glad to be clear of what’s going on just now anyway. Someone will be able to write a PhD one day about
the horse-trading that’s going on with regard to who’s getting prosecuted for what on this one.’

‘Deals within deals and compromises within compromises,’ Catherine suggested.

‘You’ve no idea. The big balancing act is between bringing an acceptable form of resolution while keeping certain cans of
worms closed. Everybody’s got an agenda. You guys never got the drugs, did you?’

‘Not a chance,’ Catherine admitted. ‘Disappeared untraceably into Tony McGill’s gossamer web, probably within hours of the
station job.’

‘Yeah. Cairns, Raeside and McDade aren’t helping to hang him either, which surprised me. I’d have thought they’d stake everything
on deflecting as much blame as they can his way.’

‘Scary gig being a polisman in prison,’ Catherine said. ‘They’ll have a lot of enemies, so they’ll need allies on the inside.
It’s in their interests more than ever that Tony McGill enjoys an Indian summer to his criminal career.’

Laura brought the vehicle to a halt outside the Ramsays’ house. Catherine imagined she could detect Dominic’s anxiety levels
surging in response to the finality of the engine being switched off. He seemed in no immediate rush to get out of the car.

‘I’m so nervous about this,’ he said, perhaps oblivious to how staringly apparent this was.

‘There’s nothing to worry about. I met her a couple of days ago. She’s lovely.’

‘I’ve
met her too,’ he retorted, ‘about a dozen times. Prosecuted her clients back when she was in criminal law. That’s what’s
so freaky. This is very different.’

‘You spoke to her on the phone, though, didn’t you?’

‘For about an hour.’

‘Well, there you go.’

‘I know, I know. It’s just, face to face … I’m excited. This will be good,’ he coached himself. ‘I’ve got a niece and a nephew,
did you know that? Got aunts and uncles too; cousins. My family was so small, so enclosed.’

He reached for the door handle: finally, she thought, plucking up the courage to open it, but he stopped and looked at her
again.

‘Did I tell you it turns out I’m a Catholic?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘I was christened, apparently, at three weeks. Irony is, I’ve got a season ticket for Parkhead.’

‘What’s ironic about that?’

‘I decided I was a Celtic fan when I was about twelve just to annoy my dad, because he was such a Rangers man. A very prominent
Rangers man, in fact: all brown brogues and dignity. Turns out the whole time I was actually Tim to the brim.’

‘Enough procrastinating,’ Catherine told him. ‘On you go.’

The front door swung open even as they were walking down the garden path. It was Jasmine Sharp who opened it, performing the
counterpart chaperoning role on behalf of her client.

Jasmine ushered Catherine and Dominic into the living room, where Anne Ramsay was standing, clasping and unclasping her hands.
She looked just as anxious as Dominic, but expectantly so rather than apprehensive. Catherine noticed the kids’ toys scattered
about the place but an absence of actual kids. Must have been parcelled off to Granny’s, as this would have been a confusing
moment for them to witness.

Anne didn’t say anything. She almost did, opening her mouth for a second or two, but words didn’t come; words couldn’t deal
with this. Then she took a couple of steps towards Dominic and pulled him to her, the tears flowing before they’d even touched.
His body was shaking with her sobs as she clung on to him, his own arms visibly tightening around her as something inside
him let go.

Catherine looked silently at Jasmine and gestured towards the door. Anne’s husband, Neil Caldwell, read it too, and joined
them in the hall, where Laura was waiting.

‘Is she okay in there?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Absolutely,’ said Neil, his own eyes a little watery. ‘Absolutely. She’s been like a kid on Christmas Eve the past few days,
waiting for this moment, but happy, you know? At peace.’

He got out a paper hanky and dabbed at his eyes and nose.

‘We’re both so grateful to you for what you did,’ he said to Jasmine. ‘And so sorry about your uncle.’

Jasmine nodded her acknowledgement. Catherine could tell she was holding back tears of her own.

‘And get your bill in right away,’ Neil told her. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony. The best money we’ve ever spent.’

‘Never mind about the money,’ Jasmine said softly. ‘It wasn’t about that.’

Catherine recognised that the girl was a little overcome.

‘She’ll send you an invoice,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure of it. Gratitude and warm wishes don’t pay the rent,’ she told Jasmine
with a friendly smile.

The girl nodded, a wry look of self-reproach on her face.

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Glen said something similar.’

Which quite wiped the smile off Catherine’s face.

‘You know,’ Laura said, twisting the key in the ignition as Catherine pulled on her seat belt, ‘all it takes is somebody to
just mention that man’s name and you look like you’re going to punch a wall. It’s a bit scary.’

Catherine glanced back towards the house, where she could see Jasmine still chatting to Neil Caldwell at the open front door.

‘Not as scary as I find Fallan,’ she replied. ‘We’re talking here about a man whose reputation is so grim in certain circles
that last week he frightened off an armed gunman using a mobile phone.’

‘Yeah, but it looks to me like these days he’s on the side of the angels.’

‘My fear is more derived from his abilities than which team he’s currently playing for, because that can change: what he’s
capable of does not. Once a killer, always a killer,’ she added, with a conviction borne more of fear that it was true than
of certainty.

‘It’s no wonder. The more I hear about his dad …’ Laura gave a shudder. ‘A pure psycho.’

‘Yeah, well, there you go,’ Catherine replied. ‘Like father, like son.’

Laura’s hand had been hovering over the gearstick, but she withdrew it and turned to look at Catherine.

‘You really hate him, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, not just fear. True hate. Did you know him back when, before he disappeared?’

Catherine let out a sigh, buying time as she gathered her thoughts. She wasn’t going there, not with her DI, and not now.
Laura deserved an answer, though, because what she had said was true.

‘I encountered him fleetingly, a long time ago,’ she replied. ‘He was a nobody, a small cog in a very nasty machine, so oblivious
or indifferent to the damage being done that he doesn’t even remember. I don’t hate him for that. I hate what he represents.’

Laura took this in and seemed to understand what Catherine was trying to say, but she didn’t look entirely satisfied. Nor
did she look any longer like someone who was going to keep her thoughts to herself.

‘But does he not also represent the possibility that we don’t have to be defined by the worst things that happened to us?’
she asked, sounding like she needed to believe this was true. ‘Does he not represent the chance that we can change?’

By the time of Jim’s funeral, the weather had turned, heavy squalls of rain soaking people who had left for the outdoors unprepared
due to the periods of watery sunshine in between. For the first time in months, the rain felt cold, and there was a bite in
the wind that warned Jasmine that summer was quite definitely at an end.

She didn’t fear the winter. It couldn’t bring anything worse than what she had endured last year, the least of whose depredations
had been the coldest weather in four decades.

They’d had to wait for the post-mortem and all the attendant investigations to be completed – for Jim’s body to finally cease
being an instrument of the law, even after death – before they could bury him. Or rebury him, rather, somewhere fitting, the
sod cast this time by those who loved him and mourned him.

Jasmine had stood among them, missing him, remembering him, loving him, though she thought that this time tears would not
come. She had cried already, she thought, cried enough; known Jim was dead long before anyone else here, and forced herself
to confront that as a reality.

She was wrong, however: as she saw the grief on her cousins’ faces, she saw reflected back the grief she had suffered this
past year, and cried once more. She was mourning Jim, and still mourning Mum, but would admit that she was crying just a little
for herself. She was allowed to do that now: she didn’t need to worry that it meant she was crumbling, that she wouldn’t cope.

While the rest of Jim’s immediate family began drifting away towards the warmth and shelter of the waiting car, his eldest
daughter Angela came over to Jasmine and they stood by the grave, the rain pitter-pattering on their umbrellas like the departing
susurrus of quiet, respectful voices.

‘I wanted to say thank you,’ Angela said. ‘On behalf of … I mean, my mum as well, and everybody.’

Jasmine felt a little confused as to what she might be being thanked for, and it must have registered on her face.

‘Without you, we wouldn’t have had this. A chance to say goodbye, to all come together. To
know.
God knows the Ramsays never got that.’

Jasmine gave her a sad smile and a hug by way of acknowledgement, her thoughts going back a few days to the service she had
attended for Anne’s parents, Stephen and Eilidh. People had thanked her then, too: total strangers, these middle-aged men
and women with decades of hurt in their eyes turning to sincerest gratitude for having been released from this prison of not
knowing.

For the first time in over a year, she had stopped feeling like a lost little girl. All these older people, a generation apart,
were acting like she was the one who had taken care of them, like they saw this woman standing there whom it took Jasmine
a while to recognise as herself.

‘Look,’ said Angela, ‘there’s another reason I need to speak to you. We had the reading of the will. Jim left the business
to us, to his children, collectively. It wasn’t that specific a stipulation, it just got covered among a more general directive.
The thing is, it’s not worth anything except as a going concern. The office is rented on a lease and there’s not a lot of
assets worth liquidating: an ageing computer, an old van, a bunch of surveillance equipment and some office furniture. I mean,
he
was
the business: a one-man show. Until he brought you in.’