The Distant Echo Read online

  Jock Gilbey's eyes widened in shock. "They've not kept him at the police station?"

  "No, no, nothing like that," Alex said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. "We had journalists on the doorstep at Fife Park, wanting pictures and interviews. And we didn't want to talk to them. So me and Weird and Mondo climbed out the toilet window and went off the back way. We're all supposed to be working at Safeway tomorrow, see? But Ziggy's not got a job, so he said he'd stay behind and come home tomorrow. We didn't want to leave the window unlocked, you know? So I've got to phone his dad and explain."

  Alex gently freed himself from his mother's hand and went through to the hall. He lifted the phone and dialed Ziggy's number from memory. He heard the ringing tone, then the familiar Polish-accented Scots of Karel Malkiewicz. Here we go again, Alex thought. He was going to have to explain last night once more. He had a feeling it wouldn't be the last time either.

  * * *

  "This is what happens when you fritter the nights away drinking and God knows what else," Frank Mackie said bitterly. "You get yourself in bother with the police. I'm a respected man in this town, you know. The police have never been at my door. But all it takes is one useless galloot like you, and we'll be the talk of the steamie."

  "If we hadn't been out late, she'd have lain there till morning. She'd have died on her own," Weird protested.

  "That's none of my concern," his father said, crossing the room and pouring himself a whiskey from the corner bar he'd had installed in the front room to impress those of his clients deemed respectable enough to be invited into his home. It was fitting, he thought, that an accountant should show the trappings of achievement. All he'd wanted was for his son to show some signs of aspiration, but instead, he had spawned a useless waster of a boy who spent his nights in the pub. What was worse was that Tom clearly had a gift for figures. But instead of harnessing that practically by going in for accountancy, he'd chosen the airy-fairy world of pure mathematics. As if that was the first step on the road to prosperity and decency. "Well, that's that. You're staying in every night, my lad. No parties, no pubs for you this holiday. You're confined to barracks. You go to your work, and you come straight home."

  "But Dad, it's Christmas," Weird protested. "Everybody will be out. I want to catch up with my pals."

  "You should have thought about that before you got yourself in trouble with the police. You've got exams this year. You can use the time to study. You'll thank me for it, you know."

  "But Dad…"

  "That's my last word on the subject. While you live under my roof, while I'm paying for you to go to the university, you'll do as you're told. When you start earning a living wage of your own, then you can make the rules. Till then, you do as I say. Now get out of my sight."

  Fuming, Weird stormed out of the room and ran up the stairs. God, he hated his family. And he hated this house. Raith Estate was supposed to be the last word in modern living, but he thought this was yet another con perpetrated by the gray men in suits. You didn't have to be smart to recognize that this wasn't a patch on the house they used to live in. Stone walls, solid wooden doors with panels and beading, stained glass in the landing window. That was a house. OK, this box had more rooms, but they were poky, the ceilings and doorways so low that Weird felt he had to stoop constantly to accommodate his six feet and three inches. The walls were paper thin too. You could hear someone fart in the next room. Which was pretty funny, when you thought about it. His parents were so repressed, they wouldn't know an emotion if it bit them on the leg. And yet they'd spent a fortune on a house that stripped everyone of privacy. Sharing a room with Alex felt more privileged than living under his parents' roof.

  Why had they never made any attempt to understand the first thing about him? He felt as if he'd spent his whole life in rebellion. Nothing he achieved had ever cut any ice here because it didn't fit the narrow confines of his parents' aspirations. When he'd been crowned school chess champion, his father had harrumphed that he'd have been better off joining the bridge team. When he'd asked to take up a musical instrument, his father had refused point blank, offering to buy him a set of golf clubs instead. When he'd won the mathematics prize every single year in high school, his father had responded by buying him books on accountancy, completely missing the point. Maths to Weird wasn't about totting up figures; it was the beauty of the graph of a quadratic equation, the elegance of calculus, the mysterious language of algebra. If it hadn't been for his pals, he'd have felt like a complete freak. As it was, they'd given him a place to let off steam safely, a chance to spread his wings without crashing and burning.

  And all he'd done in return was to give them grief. Guilt washed over him as he remembered his latest madness. This time, he'd gone too far. It had started as a joke, nicking Henry Cavendish's motor. He'd had no idea then where it might lead. None of the others could save him from the consequences if this came out, he realized that. He only hoped he wouldn't bring them down with him.

  Weird slotted his new Clash tape into the stereo and threw himself down on the bed. He'd listen to the first side, then he'd get ready for bed. He had to be up at five to meet Alex and Mondo for their early shift at the supermarket. Normally, the prospect of rising so early would have depressed the hell out of him. But the way things were here, it would be a relief to be out of the house, a mercy to have something to stop his mind spinning in circles. Christ, he wished he had a joint.

  At least his father's emotional brutality had pushed the invasive thoughts of Rosie Duff to one side. By the time Joe Strummer sang "Julie's in the Drug Squad," Weird was locked in deep, dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Karel Malkiewicz drove like an old man at the best of times. Hesitant, slow, entirely unpredictable at junctions. He was also a fair-weather driver. Under normal circumstances, the first sign of fog or frost would mean the car stayed put and he'd walk down the steep hill of Massareene Road to Bennochy, where he could catch a bus that would take him to Factory Road and his work as an electrician in the floorcovering works. It had been a long time since the disappearance of the pall of linseed oil that had given the town its reputation of "the queer-like smell," but although linoleum had plummeted out of fashion, what came out of Nairn's factory still covered the floors of millions of kitchens, bathrooms and hallways. It had given Karel Malkiewicz a decent living since he'd come out of the RAF after the war, and he was grateful.

  That didn't mean he'd forgotten the reasons why he'd left Krakow in the first place. Nobody could survive that toxic atmosphere of mistrust and perfidy without scars, especially not a Polish Jew who had been lucky enough to get out before the pogrom that had left him without a family to call his own.

  He'd had to rebuild his life, create a new family for himself. His old family had never been particularly observant, so he hadn't felt too bereft by his abandonment of his religion. There were no Jews in Kirkcaldy, he remembered someone telling him a few days after he'd arrived in the town. The sentiment was clear: "That's the way we like it." And so he'd assimilated, even going so far as to marry his wife in a Catholic church. He'd learned how to belong in this strange, insular land that had made him welcome. He'd surprised himself at the fierce possessive pride he'd felt when a Pole had become Pope so recently. He so seldom thought of himself as Polish these days.

  He'd been almost forty when the son he'd always dreamed of had finally arrived. It was a cause for rejoicing, but also for a renewal of fear. Now he had so much more to lose. This was a civilized country. The fascists could never gain a hold here. That was the received wisdom, anyway. But Germany too had been a civilized country. No one could predict what might happen in any country when the numbers of the dispossessed reached a critical mass. Anyone who promised salvation would find a following.

  And lately, there had been good grounds for fear. The National Front were creeping through the political undergrowth. Strikes and industrial unrest were making the government edgy. The IRA's bombing campaign gave the politici
ans all the excuses they needed for introducing repressive measures. And that cold bitch who ran the Tory party talked of immigrants swamping the indigenous culture. Oh yes, the seeds were all there.

  So when Alex Gilbey had rung and told him his son had spent the night in a police station, Karel Malkiewicz had no choice. He wanted his boy under his roof, under his wing. Nobody would come and take his son away in the night. He wrapped up warmly, instructing his wife to prepare a flask of hot soup and a parcel of sandwiches. Then he set off across Fife to bring his son home.

  It took him nearly two hours to negotiate the thirty miles in his elderly Vauxhall. But he was relieved to see lights on in the house Sigmund shared with his friends. He parked the car, picked up his supplies and marched up the path.

  There was no answer to his knocking at first. He stepped gingerly on to the snow and looked in through the brightly lit kitchen window. The room was empty. He banged on the window and shouted, "Sigmund! Open up, it's your father."

  He heard the sound of feet clattering down stairs, then the door opened to reveal his handsome son, grinning from ear to ear, his arms spread wide in welcome. "Dad," he said, stepping barefoot into the slush to embrace his father. "I didn't expect to see you."

  "Alex called. I didn't want you to be alone. So I came to get you." Karel clasped his son to his chest, the butterfly of fear beating its wings inside his chest. Love, he thought, was a terrible thing.

  * * *

  Mondo sat cross-legged on his bed, within easy reach of his turntable. He was listening, over and over again, to his personal theme, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond." The swooping guitars, the heartfelt anguish of Roger Waters's voice, the elegiac synths, the breathy saxophone provided the perfect soundtrack for wallowing to.

  And wallowing was exactly what Mondo wanted to do. He'd escaped the smother of his mother's concern that had swamped him as soon as he'd explained what had happened. It had been quite pleasant for a while, the familiar cocoon of concern spinning itself around him. But gradually, it had started to stifle him and he'd excused himself with the need to be alone. The Greta Garbo routine always worked with his mother, who thought he was an intellectual because he read books in French. It seemed to escape her notice that that's what you had to do when you were studying the subject at degree level.

  Just as well, really. He couldn't have begun to explain the turmoil of emotion that threatened to swamp him. Violence was alien to him, a foreign language whose grammar and vocabulary he'd never assimilated. His recent confrontation with it had left him feeling shaky and strange. He couldn't honestly say he was sorry Rosie Duff was dead; she'd humiliated him in front of his friends more than once when he'd tried on the chat-up lines that seemed to work with other lassies. But he was sorry that her death had plummeted him into this difficult place where he didn't belong.

  What he really needed was sex. That would take his mind off the horrors of the night before. It would be a sort of therapy. Like getting back on the horse. Unfortunately, he lacked the amenity of a girlfriend in Kirkcaldy. Maybe he should make a couple of phone calls. One or two of his exes would be more than happy to renew their relationship. They'd be a willing ear for his woes and it would tide him over the holidays at least. Judith, maybe. Or Liz. Yeah, probably Liz. The chubby ones were always so pathetically grateful for a date, they came across with no effort at all. He could feel himself growing hard at the thought.

  Just as he was about to get off the bed and go downstairs to the phone, there was a knock at his door. "Come in," he sighed wearily, wondering what his mother wanted now. He shifted his position to hide his budding erection.

  But it wasn't his mother. It was his fifteen-year-old sister Lynn. "Mum thought you might like a Coke," she said, waving the glass at him.

  "I can think of things I'd rather have," he said.

  "You must be really upset," Lynn said. "I can't imagine what that must have been like."

  In the absence of a girlfriend, he'd have to make do with impressing his sister. "It was pretty tough," he said. "I wouldn't want to go through that again in a hurry. And the police were Neanderthal imbeciles. Why they felt the need to interrogate us as if we were IRA bombers, I'll never know. It took real guts to stand up to them, I can tell you."

  For some reason, Lynn wasn't giving him the unthinking adoration and support he deserved. She leaned against the wall, her expression that of someone waiting for a break in the flow so she could get to what's really on her mind. "It must have," she said mechanically.

  "We'll probably have to face more questioning," he added.

  "It must have been awful for Alex. How is he?"

  "Gilly? Well, he's hardly Mr. Sensitive. He'll get over it."

  "Alex is a lot more sensitive than you give him credit for," Lynn said fiercely. "Just because he played rugby, you think he's all muscle and no heart. He must be really torn up about it, especially with him knowing the girl."

  Mondo cursed inwardly. He'd momentarily forgotten the crush his sister had on Alex. She wasn't in here to give him Coke and sympathy, she was here because it gave her an excuse to talk about Alex. "It's probably just as well for him that he didn't know her as well as he'd have liked to."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He fancied her something rotten. He even asked her out. Now, if she'd said yes, then you can bet your bottom dollar that Alex would be the prime suspect."

  Lynn flushed. "You're making it up. Alex wouldn't go around chasing barmaids."

  Mondo gave a cruel little smile. "Wouldn't he? I don't think you know your precious Alex as well as you think."

  "You're a creep, you know that?" Lynn said. "Why are you being so horrible about

  Alex? He's supposed to be one of your best friends."

  She slammed out, leaving him to ponder her question. Why was he being so horrible about Alex, when normally he'd never have heard a word against him?

  Slowly, it began to dawn on him that, deep down, he blamed Alex for this whole mess. If they'd just gone straight down the path, somebody else would have found Rosie Duff's body. Somebody else would have had to stand there and listen to her last breaths dragging out of her. Somebody else would feel tainted by the hours they'd spent in a police cell.

  That he was now apparently a suspect in a murder inquiry was Alex's fault, there was no getting away from it. Mondo squirmed uncomfortably at the thought. He tried to push it away, but he knew you couldn't close Pandora's box. Once the idea was planted, it couldn't be uprooted and thrown aside to wither. This wasn't the time to be coming up with notions that would drive a wedge between them. They needed each other now as they had never done before. But there was no getting away from it. He wouldn't be in this mess if it wasn't for Alex.

  And what if there was worse to come? There was no escaping the fact that Weird had been driving around in that Land Rover half the night. He'd been taking girls for a spin, trying to impress them. He didn't have an alibi worth a shit, and neither did Ziggy, who had sneaked off and dumped the Land Rover somewhere Weird couldn't find it. And neither did Mondo himself. What had possessed him, borrowing the Land Rover to take that lassie back to Guardbridge? A quick fuck in the back seat wasn't worth the hassle he faced if somebody remembered she'd been at the party. If the police started asking questions of the other partygoers, somebody would shop them. No matter how much the students professed contempt for authority, somebody would lose their bottle and tell tales. The finger would point then.

  Suddenly, blaming Alex seemed like the least of his worries. And as he turned over the events of the past few days, Mondo remembered something he'd seen late one night. Something that might just ease him off the hook. Something he was going to keep to himself for now. Never mind all for one and one for all. The first person Mondo owed any duty of care to was himself. Let the others look after their own interests.

  8

  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 h
emming 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 gray 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 woodchip 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 makeup 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.