Where the Bodies are Buried (5 page)

Croft was already nodding. She saw his eyes flash when she mentioned the price quoted, and if there was any question of him
squirming on the hook, it evaporated with the words ‘cash in hand’.

‘Aye, I could manage that.’

‘Could you do it for the same money?’

‘Sure, aye. Sounds fair enough. Unless it’s like a mansion or something.’

‘I wish. But see, the other thing is when. After all this time, as you can imagine, we’re just sick looking at it, so the
sooner the better. I don’t suppose you could manage next week?’

He glanced away a moment, calculating. He wasn’t much of an actor.

‘I’d have to move something, but I could manage next Monday.’

‘Oh, thank you, so much,’ she gushed, with not entirely fake sincerity. ‘You’ve really bailed me out of a hole.’

They traded mobile numbers and she gave him the address. What she had from the bodycam was probably plenty, but if that wasn’t
enough, it would definitely sink him to turn up with all his kit next Monday at Jim’s flat in Hyndland.

As she watched him walk away, continuing as he had originally intended along Great Western Road, she felt this almighty endorphin
rush, which combined with everything else that had flooded her system over the past five minutes made her whole body thrum.
Suddenly, everything seemed possible. She could do this job. Not only that, she could act: she could play a part under pressure,
she could improvise, anything.

She found herself hurrying back along Byres Road. She would join Charlotte and her pals at their table and explain. Charlotte
would lap it up too: it was an amazing – and true – story, one that showed what a colourful character Jasmine was, someone
with background and depth, someone who was acting on a razor’s edge like none of them had ever experienced.

She broke into a jog, then almost a sprint, slaloming pedestrians, giggling to herself as she turned the corner on to Cresswell
Street.

The table was empty. Charlotte and her friends had gone.

Of course.

Jasmine screws up.

‘Mum, what does whodunit mean?’ Duncan asked, as Catherine tucked his Ben 10 duvet tightly around his shoulders.

‘I’ll tell you in the morning. Time for you both to go back to sleep.’

‘It’s who
did
it,’ corrected Fraser, fifteen months his junior and ever eager to imply that he was smarter than his big brother.

‘I know it’s who did it,’ Duncan retorted with a tut. ‘God, I knew that when I was a P3. That’s why I’m asking why people
talk about a whodunit. What does it mean?’

Amazing how garrulous they became in the middle of the bloody night, Catherine thought. You could ask them a dozen questions
throughout the day and receive one-word answers, and as for what was happening at school, it was easier persuading suspects
to open up in interviews than to get an expansive answer on that subject. Yet when the time drew near for lights out, or when
they had managed to snag a parent in the small hours with the had-a-nightmare routine, they invariably became quite the little
interlocutors, keen for all manner of broad discourse. Perhaps she should give it a shot down the cells.

She sighed. Sometimes a bit of chat at this time made them feel they’d got their money’s worth and they’d go back to sleep
without a fuss; other times, of course, you just whetted their appetites for more attention.

‘It means a story about a murder, where the detectives have to work out who was responsible.’

‘So why is it not who
did
it?’ asked Fraser.

‘Don’t the detectives have to work out who did it in every murder?’ enquired Duncan simultaneously.

‘I don’t know why people say “whodunit”.’ She answered Fraser first, knowing that his older brother tended to have a little
more patience. ‘I think it was the Americans that coined it.’

‘They spell colour wrong too,’ Fraser observed sagely.

‘Mum,’
Duncan insisted, growing dismayed at Fraser’s success in diverting the conversation.

‘Sorry, pet.’

‘And favourite,’ Fraser continued.

Catherine had to stifle a laugh, aware that she had better give Duncan an answer before he leapt across the gap between the
beds and chinned his brother.

‘You’re right. The detectives have to establish who was responsible for a murder, but it’s not always a mystery. When it
is
a mystery, that’s when the story is called a whodunit.’

‘What about in real life? Is there a name for when it’s a mystery?’

Aye, Catherine thought: a pain in the arse.

‘Do you have to work out who done it, I mean who did it?’ Fraser interrupted again. ‘Is that your job, Mum?’

‘Do you catch murderers?’ Duncan trumped.

‘Have you seen a dead body?’ bid Fraser.

‘Have you ever caught the wrong man?’

Catherine was actually relieved when she heard her mobile ring from her and Drew’s bedroom across the hall, even though it
had to be work calling, and even though she was technically still on holiday until tomorrow morning.

Drew was beside her in moments, passing her the phone and holding open the door to let her out, an unspoken team tag. He’d
been awake anyway from when Fraser came in and played the bad-dream card. Drew knew that any call on her mobile could be his
cue to take over bed- or bathtime supervision, and at three in the morning it was a certainty that the child-comforting baton
would have to pass to him. How he must hate the sound of her ringtone, she thought. If it wasn’t waking him up in the middle
of the night, it was heralding an evening in on his own and frequently the waste of whatever he might have spent two hours
cooking.

He seldom complained, though sometimes she thought it might be reassuring if he did. Nobody could be that tolerant without
having some ghastly hidden dark side to compensate, could they? Perhaps periodically getting sole custody of the Sky remote
for the evening was compensation enough. It probably helped that the boys tended to act up less whenever she was out of an
evening. They seemed to understand that if they were down to one parent, they’d better stay onside. That was how it worked
for him, anyway. The novelty value of a night when Daddy was out and just Mummy was home tended to bring out the wee chancer
in both of them.

She walked down the hall, out of earshot of the boys’ room, before answering the phone. It was Sunderland. The Almighty.

He gave her the script, staccato and succinct as only a detective chief super could be when he was delegating decisively in
order to get back to bed.

‘I appreciate you’re not officially back yet, but I’d a notion you’d want this one,’ he said. ‘There’s certain of your peers
want you on it too, but don’t ever let on I told you that.’

She felt her mouth go dry as she processed the details, simultaneously wondering why he was buttering her up. Could be in
compensation for the late call when she was still on leave, but it was seldom that obvious with Sunderland. Why would her
peers – whoever he might be talking about – particularly want her on this case, and why would he be so indiscreet as to relay
this tacit (and doubtless private) vote of confidence? She shook it off. No point dwelling upon the vicissitudes and outright
caprice of a man like Sunderland, especially as that might be precisely what he intended. When it came to that level of police
politics, she had long since adopted the wisdom of the big computer in
War Games:
‘the only way to win is not to play’.

‘Laura Geddes is on her way,’ Sunderland informed her. ‘She’ll pick you up in five. Don’t say I’m not good to you, McLeod.’

She was trying to think of a polite but spiky response when he rang off.

Drew stuck his head out of the boys’ bedroom door, his sandy hair looking endearingly unkempt. Actually, everything about
him looked that bit more attractive when she was being dragged out of the house in the small hours.

‘Work?’

‘I’m sorry. I know I’m still on leave, but …’

‘I’m guessing it’s something big.’

‘Somebody seems to think so.’

She threw on a suit, tied back her hair into something that would pass for order at this hour and allowed herself a quick
check in the mirror. Ostensibly this was for reassurance that her appearance was professionally acceptable before leaving
the building, but that was the only issue it offered any reassurance on. It was never the best time to judge these things,
but she thought she looked old. Grey flashing at the roots, and the rest of it never the silky black it had once been without
the help of her colourist. She was overdue a trip to the salon,
something she’d put off until after her holiday, sunshine, sand and seawater never doing much for her coiffure.

Her eyes looked a little puffy, though the consolation was that the minor swelling stretched the skin and concealed a few
wrinkles. Drew always said he thought the lines gave her eyes an intensity, but he was the one who referred to her nose as
being aquiline when a less indulgent individual would probably have settled for big. His testimony was far from objective,
especially considering that it was frequently offered in the service of improving his chances of a shag, but she liked to
hear it anyway.

Catherine slipped out quietly, her sons’ queries still resonating despite the gravity of the development that had interrupted
them. Whodunit. She didn’t want to go there. She avoided talking shop around the boys, but the truth was they couldn’t get
enough of it. All the things that she feared might disturb them were the very things they most craved to hear about. Evil
little changelings: where had they come from? What had happened to the guileless wee innocents that she used to pick up from
nursery?

She always thought she’d have daughters. There was no rational basis to believe this would be the case; it was simply how
she had imagined motherhood, probably influenced by her own upbringing. She’d have little girls who liked scrapbooks and horses
and dressing up; she’d read them Malory Towers and
Heidi,
and tell them about the games she liked to play when she was a girl. Instead she’d got two boys and was utterly outnumbered
in her own home, the only female. No scrapbooks, no horses, just guns and swords, fake wounds and plastic dog turds. Instead
of Malory Towers and
Heidi,
she was reading Mr Gum and Captain Underpants, and instead of her telling them about innocent childhood days on a farm, they
were asking about dead bodies and whodunits.

That said, she’d be more comfortable telling them about the smelly corpses than about ‘solving’ the murders. Guts and gore
they were fine hearing about, as evidenced by the Horrible History books lining their shelves, but the squalidly mundane realities
framing the deaths were another matter. The Putrid Present was maybe a bit much for wee boys to cope with.

The very word ‘whodunit’ put her in mind of her one-time boss and mentor, Moira Clark, whose mantra – often restated bearing
the added emphasis of a clout to the back of the head with a file folder – was simply: ‘This is Glesca.’

The first time Catherine heard it was in direct response to her suggestion that a case was ‘starting to look like a whodunit’.

‘This is Glesca,’ Moira told her. ‘Any time you’re confused, take a wee minute to remind yourself of that inescapable fact:
this is Glesca. We don’t do subtle, we don’t do nuanced, we don’t do conspiracy. We do pish-heid bampot bludgeoning his girlfriend
to death in a fit of paranoid rage induced by forty-eight hours straight on the batter. We do coked-up neds jumping on a guy’s
heid outside a nightclub because he looked at them funny. We do drug-dealing gangster rockets shooting other drug-dealing
gangster rockets as comeback for something almost identical a fortnight ago. We do bam-on-bam. We do tit-for-tat, score-settling,
feuds, jealousy, petty revenge. We do straightforward. We do obvious. We do cannaemisswhodunit. When you hear hoofbeats on
Sauchiehall Street, it’s gaunny be a horse, no’ a zebra, because?’

‘This is Glesca,’ she answered.

Catherine was still closing the car door as Laura pulled away, never mind waiting for her to clunk-click. The girl was keen,
give her that, but the guy would still be dead when they got there.

‘What are we dragging you away from?’ Laura asked. ‘A night in front of the telly? Dinner for two and a bottle of wine with
the kids tucked up?’

‘Laura, it’s ten past three.’

‘Christ. Sorry.’

‘Been there.’

And she had, many times. It was easy to lose track of normal people’s schedules when you were on a run of shifts. You remained
aware that you were out of synch but became vague about by how much, and would take a random stab on the basis of whether
it was dark or light. At least it assured Catherine that she wasn’t sporting that conspicuously dragged-out-of-bed look.

Laura, for her part, had an animated eagerness about her that suggested she really needed to cut down on the coffee. She could
come across like a probationer as a result, despite being an experienced DI. This girlish keenness was at odds with her dress,
too, which seemed sober to the point of austere. Catherine couldn’t decide whether she seemed like a young girl dressing primly
to look older or some wild child trying too hard to rein in her natural instincts.

‘Heart-starter that call in the dark, eh?’ Laura stated. ‘You never get used to it.’

‘I was awake anyway. Fraser had a bad dream, and of course as soon as I appeared, Duncan woke up as well. They were giving
me a grilling, so I was saved by the bell. I hate it when they ask me about my job. The other night Duncan wanted to know
where gangland was. I think he’d seen it on a newsagent’s billboard. I had to stop myself telling him it was a theme park,
just to see the look on his face. “Aye, they’ve got the nuttercoaster and the joyriding dodgems, but watch yourself on the
shooting gallery, because they shoot back.”’

‘I always thought it sounded like a shop,’ said Laura, accelerating through a set of lights as they turned amber. ‘You know,
Gangland: your one-stop for all your criminal needs. What did you tell him?’