The Art of Dying

Book 3: DI Westphall

by Douglas Lindsay

Genres: Police Procedurals; Paranormal; Ghost; Occult & Supernatural; Crime Fiction; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

Book 3 in the 'dark and satisfying' (James Oswald) DI Westphall series.

Praise for the DI Westphall series

'Richly atmospheric . . . Lindsay solidifies his place as one of the rising stars of tartan noir' Publishers Weekly

'The Boy in the Well is a dark and satisfying mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the company of DI Ben Westphall, a compelling personality . . . This one comes thoroughly recommended' James Oswald

Release date: August 22, 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter 1

In no particular order.

March 2006: As the senior SIS officer in the area, I interrogated a suspect in a small village outside Kabul. Two British aid workers were being held captive, location unknown. The suspect smiled when he told me they were already dead. The interrogation went too far. There was blood on my boots. I felt his Adam’s apple pop.

January 2009: Zétény Kovács. Forty-three. Hungarian, working for the Russians. I threw him out a fifteenth-storey window in Paris. A classic of the kill-or-be-killed genre. I wasn’t particularly invested in him dying, but he gave me no option.

Kiev, summer 2003: An affair with a Ukrainian journalist. Alina. She thought I worked for AP. She loved me. When I’d got what I needed from her, I left. Returned to London, didn’t say goodbye. Maybe Alina got over it. I never heard of her again.

Stockholm, October 2007: A hit job. Not a killing, just the run-of-the-mill destruction of a political life. Someone in London didn’t like the rise of an opposition MP. I wasn’t told the reasons, though I worked them out along the way. Seemed trivial, but I had a job to do. Money, sex, intoxication, the trifecta of political downfall. She had issues with none of them, so I had to create them. Took less than a month. Lost her job. Might also have lost her marriage and her children, but I didn’t hang around to find out.

December 2009: A fire-fight on the Rwanda–DRC border. I, and four others, fired Heckler & Koch MP5s into the jungle at unseen figures, for twenty-three and a half minutes. At some point the return fire ended. We went on our way. We didn’t count the dead.

Those instances come to mind.

There have been others.

 

I was doing my job. It wore me down to the point where I gave it up, transferring over to the police service. They didn’t haunt me, though. The victims. I didn’t think about mothers grieving sons, broken lives or broken hearts.

And then a year ago a woman killed herself in front of me, a woman who’d spent the previous two nights in my bed. I stood and watched her, and all I cared about was the information I’d got from her before she died.

Sometime later she returned. Walked into my head in the middle of the night. Didn’t say hello, just took her position in the line-up of guilt. I hadn’t known that particular alliance of the lost and the damned had even existed. All those years, doing my job, or doing things that perhaps weren’t necessary but which came with the job all the same. No guilt. That’s what I thought.

Turned out they were waiting for me. Like highwaymen. Midnight robbers. Lurking in the shadows, come to take away my nights.

Chapter 2

Five forty-five, early Saturday evening. I step out of the car and look up at the dark, cloudy sky. A second to adjust to being at work, to the damp air, to the evening. Recapturing the moment of the murder from fifty minutes earlier.

‘Boss,’ says Detective Sergeant Sutherland, as he walks up beside me.

‘Iain.’

A quiet street down past the hospital in Dingwall, that bustles every time County are playing at home. The road leads down to the river as it opens out onto the firth, houses irregularly spaced along the way.

There are still some cars parked at uneven intervals, fifteen police officers already at the scene, a few more on their way from Inverness, a ragtag gaggle of spectators pushed back about thirty yards on all sides beneath orange streetlights. There are three TV cameras and two ambulances.

There are voices all around, conversations, shouting. There’s one reporter calling out repeatedly, the same question over and over – Have you made an arrest? – her voice clear through the damp autumnal evening.

A few yards from where I’m standing, a teenage boy sits on the road, leaning back against the door of a police car. There is a bandage across his nose. He’s staring at the sheet-covered corpse ten yards in front of him, his expression faraway, his mouth slightly open. A paramedic stands not far from him, looking down, a watchful eye. The other paramedic sits in the rear of the ambulance, her legs dangling over the side. They’re waiting to be called to remove the victim’s body.

Further back there’s a guy standing with a blanket over his shoulders, holding a bandage against his cheek. I doubt he needs to hold it, as it looks like it’s been taped to his face, but he’s clutching the remembrance of the attack, as another paramedic stands beside him, her eye level a good six inches lower than his, looking up at him, speaking slowly.

‘What have we got?’ I ask.

Sutherland, who’s been on shift since seven this morning, indicates the body without turning towards it.

‘Thomas Peterson, aged fifty-one. He was at the game this afternoon with his son, Roddy,’ says Sutherland, and he nods vaguely in the direction of the boy.

Just as bad as it looks. A boy staring across the road at his dead father. What’s the official line on whether he should be allowed to just sit there? These moments, the last half hour, the death, everything about this scene, will be burned into his memory.

‘The dad got into a fight when he had his kid with him?’ I ask.

‘He was attacked.’

‘Unprovoked?’

‘Far as we can tell. A guy in a hood ran up to him, swung a punch, then laid in. His kid made one attempt to protect his dad, and got batted. The fellow there in the blanket says he weighed in, and got banjoed for his trouble.’

‘We don’t know why he attacked Peterson in the first place?’

‘The boy thought it might’ve been related to an incident earlier in the ground.’

‘Go on.’

‘Hibs have got the lad Sanga, you know him?’

Think about it for a moment, but I don’t really follow it closely enough. There was a time when I thought my interest in football had waned as work and life got in the way, but really it’s the awfulness of it all that did for me. The cheating and the time wasting, the clutched face, the preposterous fall, the haircuts and the tattoos, mobbing the referee, and more time spent on the training ground working on the goal celebration than on controlling a twenty-yard pass.

‘He’s French,’ says Sutherland. ‘Well, Senegalese, eligible to play for France . . .’

‘Is that relevant?’

‘Only in that he’s black.’

‘OK. Go on.’

‘First time Sanga touches the ball, some guy behind them in the crowd makes a monkey noise. Just the one guy. Peterson gets to his feet, turns round, says something like, “Seriously? A monkey noise? What are you trying to do to this club?” Then he sits down, someone starts clapping, and then boom, hundreds of people are applauding the guy.’

‘An everyday hero making a stand against racism.’

‘Yep.’

‘Any more monkey noises?’

‘Nope.’

‘Any further incidents during the game?’

‘Nope.’

‘So, do we suppose the guy who made the monkey noise bore a grudge?’

‘There’s no direct evidence, but so far it’s all we’ve got.’

‘You get a description of the assailant?’

‘Still in the process, but we’ve got the boy, and blanket guy over there, although he already sounds a bit sketchy. We should be able to put something together.’

I look back to the boy sitting against the police car door.

‘How’s the kid?’

‘Didn’t want to leave.’

‘You’ve looked at the victim?’

‘Yep. Bloody. It wasn’t a single punch, though some way short of an out-and-out pummelling.’

‘OK, we should get the body moved.’

Sutherland turns towards the paramedic sitting on the back of the ambulance and makes a wheels-up gesture. The paramedic nods, looks over at her partner and the two of them get to work.

‘You’ve been in to speak to the club yet?’

‘Waiting for you,’ says Sutherland.

‘And the mother?’

‘Should be here shortly.’

‘Right. You get along to the ground. Speak to security. Have a look at CCTV. If Peterson and his kid were sitting in a section with season ticket holders, get as many names as you can. We should be able to get them from online sales too. We’ll get a description from the boy and the blanket guy, see what we can match up. This won’t look good for the club, so hopefully they’ll be helpful. If it was the monkey man who did this, it shouldn’t take too long to pin him down.’

‘Boss,’ says Sutherland, and he turns away.

He stops for a second, looks at the boy sitting on the ground, lifts his head to the air, smelling the evening, searching for rain, then walks quickly through the small crowd.

Led by Sutherland’s movement, I do the same, tilting my head to the evening sky. Rain on the way. Then I walk over to the boy and stand next to him for a few moments, waiting to see if he’s going to look up. He doesn’t so much as glance at my shoes. He’s watching the body being removed, face still that peculiar mix of shock and awe.

‘Roddy.’

There’s an entirely predictable pause of a few seconds, then he says, ‘What?’ without looking up.

‘Can I get you anything? A drink? Or is there someone you’d like to call while you wait for your mum?’

A moment, then he turns his hand to show me the phone I’d already noticed.

‘You don’t want a drink?’

‘I’m good.’

Give him another couple of seconds, while we both gauge how this is going to go. Sometimes you have to tiptoe, and sometimes you just have to step boldly forward.

‘Did you and your dad come here every week? Were you season ticket holders?’

Patience. Can’t look away from him, as he’s as liable to answer with a silent gesture as he is with a sullen word.

‘He wasn’t my dad,’ he says after a while, his voice low. ‘And no.’

‘He wasn’t your dad?’

‘Dad’s in America.’

I automatically glance round at Sutherland, who’s speaking to one of the officers on the perimeter.

‘Mr Peterson was your stepdad?’

‘Yes,’ he says, then a strange, small noise escapes the back of his throat, somewhere between a rueful laugh and the sound of a sob catching.

‘You live with Mr Peterson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were he and your mum married?’

‘Yes.’

His answers are carrying a lot of weight for a monosyllable.

‘You didn’t get along?’

At last he slowly turns his head and looks up. He studies me for a few moments, taking the time to decide whether or not he considers me worthwhile talking to, obviously determines that I’ve passed some strict teenage engagement test and says, ‘He was an asshole,’ although his tone is neither as harsh nor glib as the words suggest.

‘How often did you come here?’

‘Third time. He was an asshole the first two times as well.’

‘Was he an asshole all the time, or just when he took you to the football?’

As the words cross my mouth, I can see the look on the face of some bureaucrat sitting in an office being shocked that that was how I just referred to the murder victim.

‘Twenty-four seven,’ he replies, and his eyes drop, as though he feels guilty for speaking so ill of his newly deceased stepfather.

‘Tell me about the attack.’

‘Some guy just came up behind him, lamped him on the head.’

‘With a bat, a . . .’

‘No, punched him. Didn’t knock him out, or down even, just knocked him off balance, then he grabbed him, punched him another couple of times. Started hosing blood straight away. Jesus.’ He pauses, winces at the thought of it.

‘How’d you get that?’ I ask, indicating the bandage on his face.

‘Thought I should help him. The guy lashes out at me, tells me to fucking mind my own business. I mean . . . suppose I could’ve waded back in, couldn’t I?’

‘We wouldn’t be talking now.’

Another quick look up, then he lowers his eyes.

‘What kind of accent did the attacker have?’

‘Around here, I suppose. Nothing specific. Bit of a ned.’

‘You think he’d been at the match?’

‘Probably.’

‘You think he was the guy who made the monkey noise?’

‘I don’t know what that guy looked like. Wasn’t like I looked round to see any of them.’

‘Did your stepdad indicate if he’d realised who’d made the noise? If he’d engaged anyone in particular when he turned round?’

‘Didn’t speak to him.’

‘At all?’

‘Pretty much.’

I turn away for a moment, look around the scene. Give the boy some space.

Perhaps we just have a typical relationship between child and step-parent. The resentment at the break-up of the parents’ marriage, the need to take it out on someone, the step-parent being the easiest available target.

It sounds old and worn, but then there are so many broken marriages, so many step-parents, that every conceivable outcome has been seen and done before, a thousandfold. Nothing new in the human world.

‘Had he called out racism before? Were there any incidents at either of the previous two games you’d been to?’

A half-glance, then his eyes drop. A slight change in his demeanour. The front he’s been bravely putting on to cover his distress slips. There’s a little more of an answer to be given to this.

‘Your face just did a thing,’ I say, when the inevitable silence ensues. ‘What was the face, Roddy? You have to help me out here.’

Bad wording. No one has to do anything, least of all this kid, whose stepdad just got murdered in front of him. The step from seeing death in Call of Duty to the real thing is giant, and it’s going to affect anyone, even the coolest teenage kid on the block.

His head moves from side to side, a slow-motion refusal to answer.

‘Tell me, Roddy,’ I say, trying to get back on track.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘I asked if your stepdad had said anything at a previous game, and there was something there.’

Another pause, and then the words, ‘What’s it matter?’ are bequeathed reluctantly to the dank dark of early evening.

‘We need to find the man who did this as quickly as possible. We don’t want it to happen to anyone else.’

‘What are you saying?’ he asks, his words harshly spoken to the ground. ‘If I don’t help you, the next guy’s blood’ll be on my hands?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Like Tom’s blood is on my hands? Is that it?’

‘How could his blood possibly be on your hands, Roddy?’

‘Jesus,’ he says, cursing out the word.

‘Roddy?’

‘Fuck’s sake.’ Ready to talk now, grudging words leaked from between tight lips. ‘The last game, I don’t know, a month ago, we were here. Some guy behind us called that wee Rangers winger a black bastard. Tom was full of himself afterwards, full of outrage. I said to him, well you should’ve said something then, shouldn’t you? If you’re so full of outrage, say something.’

His head drops a little further. A small, hopeless hand gesture.

‘Now he’s dead.’

The body is in the back of the ambulance. Shortly it will be gone. The boy hasn’t been paying it any attention since I started asking questions.

‘The guy over there,’ I say, ‘the one with the blanket.’

He looks up at me for a while, and then turns towards the blanket guy. Gives him a few seconds’ consideration, and then turns back.

‘That guy was an asshole as well.’

‘You know him?’

‘Never seen him before in my life.’

‘So, how’d you know he’s—’

‘Tom’s dead and all he wanted to talk about was himself. My part in not even remotely preventing the murder. He’ll be in the pub in half an hour pretending to be a hero.’

Smart kid.

‘Don’t take it for granted that the guy behind you in the crowd making the noise was the guy who did this,’ I say. ‘It could be entirely random.’

His gaze shifts to the side. He watches something over my shoulder; his eyes widen slightly, just for a moment, and then narrow again.

‘Your mum?’ I ask, without turning.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘Mum. Here to make everything better.’

Chapter 3

‘I fought in the war.’

Robert Kane says the words with total confidence, but that confidence slowly drips away beneath my look from across the desk. I fought in the war.

He’s still pressing the bandage against his face. He did not bleed, at all, though the single blow he received did result in some bruising. The paramedic reported there’d been no point in applying a bandage, and he hadn’t been intending to, but then the victim had taken a selfie, posted it on Instagram, and a couple of his friends had replied telling him to get a bandage on it.

They’d argued, briefly, then the medic had shrugged and given him his stupid bandage.

‘Which war?’

‘Afghanistan.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Out of Bastion.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure.’

‘How much fighting did you do?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Which unit were you with?’

‘51st Highland.’

‘Territorials then.’

‘If you want to call them that.’

‘How long d’you do at Bastion?’

Pause, then he says, ‘A fortnight.’ Another pause beneath my withering gaze, then he adds, ‘It was intense.’

‘Did you discharge your weapon at all in that time?’

Nothing.

I give him another few seconds, but there’s little else to be said on the matter. He spouted his line, some people might be impressed by it, and unfortunately for him, I’m not one of them.

‘Tell me about the incident.’

‘Of course. What d’you want to know, Officer?’

That tone.

‘You didn’t leave the game until after the final whistle?’

‘Stayed right to the end, always do. It’s only ninety-some minutes, what’s the point of missing any of it?’

‘Which section of the ground were you in?’

‘Far end, West Stand. Went for a slash after the game, had a chat with Tony, but he was going off back up to town, I was heading for my car.’

‘Where were you parked?’

‘Ferry Road. I’m just heading out, then I see this guy punching the other guy.’

‘Many people around?’

He stops his fairly quick flow of answers, looks away from me, narrows his eyes on a spot on the wall behind me. Placing himself once more at the scene. A moment, then he says, ‘Not sure.’

‘Why?’

‘I was in the zone.’

I hold his gaze for a moment, and I can see the confidence drain from him in the same way that it did after he said he’d fought in the war.

‘Which zone?’

‘I write copy for a marketing agency in Edinburgh. Slater & Cummins. Got a pitch to prepare for Monday, was just running some ideas through my head. I was in my mind palace.’

‘That’s not what a mind palace is.’

‘We’ve got a project on a new range of flavoured waters. Water Just Got Interesting,’ he says, making a banner gesture.

‘That’s all you’ve got? Water just got interesting?’

Cheap shot, but he deserves it.

‘It’s punchy,’ he protests, weakly.

I hate people.

‘So what was it that distracted you from your water project?’

‘I heard the kid shouting,’ he says. ‘His voice is quite high still, right? Heard that, looked over, and the kid was reeling backwards. The guy had just hit him.’

‘You saw that, or you’re assuming he’d hit him?’

‘It looked like he’d hit him.’

‘What was Mr Peterson doing at that point?’

‘He was on his knees. The attacker, the guy, whoever he was, swung another punch at him, and he fell back. Man, blood just flew off him, you know, as he toppled backwards, face pointing upwards, and whoosh! So much, so much blood. I have never seen anything like that in my life.’

‘And you fought in the war . . .’

‘Is there another officer I can speak to?’ he asks, although I think he’s trying to be funny.

‘Was Mr Peterson struck again before you intervened?’

‘He was, but just the once. You know, at first, you have to take a moment, you really do, to establish what’s going on.

‘So the killer leans over the poor bastard, and gives him another bruiser to the face. More blood. And then I’m like, it’s time for Bastion Bobby to make an appearance. So I got stuck in.’

I find it easy enough to ignore the facetious absurdity of Bastion Bobby.

‘What happened?’

‘He sees me coming, he straightens himself up and then it’s just me and him, mano a mano.’

I let that particular piece of preposterousness hang in the air for a while, before indicating with a sceptical hand for him to continue.

‘We duked it out for a few blows, then he caught me with a lucky punch,’ and he indicates the bandage on his face, ‘then when I’m out the way, he turns back to the dude, lands another couple of whoppers on him and legs it.’

If you’re in the mood, there’s a certain amount of sport to be had with the fool and his stories, but not today. Feels like I haven’t been in the mood for a long while.

‘The boy said you never landed a punch, the guy hit you once, you went down and stayed there.’

He doesn’t answer, although as is so often the case, the answer is in the silence.

‘Can you show me your injury, please, Mr Kane?’

‘Got the bandage,’ he says, indicating the bandage.

I play out the way the next two minutes could unfold, and contemplate just reaching over there and ripping the bandage off. Then I remember I can look at his Instagram account, and decide to step away from the confrontation. Within minutes of getting out of here, the guy is going to be speaking to the media, so I ought not to give him an I’m-the-victim-but-the-police-treated-me-like-I-was-a-serial-killer story.

I get quickly to my feet and he looks surprised.

‘Constable Cole will be in shortly to take your written statement.’

‘Wait, what? Can’t I go? I’ve got to drive back to Edinburgh.’

‘You can shortly, Mr Kane, but we’ll need a statement, thank you. She won’t be long.’

‘Who won’t be?’

‘Constable Cole.’

‘A woman?’

I save my most contemptuous look for last, then walk out the small room, leaving the door open behind me.

 

There are five of us watching a large TV screen. Sutherland and I, the boy and his mother, and PC Fisher, who we’ve made liaison between the family and the investigating officers.

Sutherland presses rewind, we watch the reverse whirl of black and white, then he stops the film and plays it again. It’s a clear view of the section of the West Stand in which Roddy and his stepdad were sitting, around twenty rows in view. There’s no sound.

The crowd is subdued, not densely packed, the action on the park obviously slow. A figure in a dark coat, four rows behind Roddy, cups his hands to his mouth, then lowers them, smiling. A moment, and then Peterson gets to his feet and turns. It’s impossible to see from the angle how much he speaks, or if he looks directly at the man he’s addressing. A few seconds, then he sits back down. A moment, and then someone a few seats along from him starts applauding. Shortly, about half of the people in view are applauding. No one within three seats of the perpetrator joins them.

It’s the third time we’ve watched it. No one’s spoken. This time, as the applause dies away, Sutherland stops the footage, looks at Roddy, and then indicates the man in the dark coat on the screen.

‘Does this look like the man who attacked your dad, Roddy?’ he asks.

Sutherland gives me a quick glance. Our eyes make contact for the most fleeting second, but it’s a look that asks if he should have said stepdad rather than dad, and how could either of us possibly know which the mother would prefer? The minefield, the fine lines, of family politics.

‘No,’ says Roddy, quite sure of himself.

I look at the face on the screen. Just a face. Any old man. Impossible to tell from here what he could be capable of. We know, at least, that he’s comfortable with overt racism.

‘You’re sure?’ asks Sutherland.

‘Yeah.’

‘And the men on either side of him,’ I ask. ‘What about them?’

The boy takes his time. I also look, to see if there’s anyone who meets the description he’s given of his stepdad’s assailant. Glance round at him, and he’s still got his eyes on the screen. He’s wanting to help, at least, which is positive.

‘No,’ he says, looking at me as he speaks.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Broaden it out, take another look. Is there anyone in the entire shot who resembles the attacker? And remember, they might have taken off a coat or a hat before they came to attack your dad. The hood will be down. They might not have been dressed as you see here.’

Another look at the screen, then he turns back, looking blank. He’s got nothing.

I turn to Sondra Peterson, who’s still studying the screen.

‘D’you recognise anyone here, Mrs Peterson?’

She looks at me curiously, then her brow wrinkles and she says, ‘Why would I?’

‘You’re studying it very closely.’

‘I could be looking at the man who killed my husband.’

‘Yes.’

Her eyes narrow a little more, but the look on her face is one of curiosity, like she doesn’t fully understand why we’re having this conversation. She’s a bereaved widow, so why am I even speaking to her?

There’s a flicker of a twitch in her right eyelid, which I noticed as soon as we met outside the football stadium. Nerves, guilt, worry, fear, grief, stress, fatigue, caffeine, the early symptoms of Parkinson’s . . . Who knows?

You see everything with a bereaved spouse, and you can’t go making assumptions. Peterson’s wife’s air of detachment could just be her way of holding it together, trying not to let herself go in front of her son, or in front of the police.

‘D’you mind if we have a word with you on your own, Mrs Peterson?’ I ask. ‘The constable will sit with Roddy until we’re done. It shouldn’t take long.’

‘Yes, of course,’ says Peterson, and she squeezes her son’s hand.

I glance at the other two officers, Sutherland turns off the screen, Fisher nods, and we head from the room.

 

‘D’you know of any reason why someone would want your husband dead?’

Sutherland and I sitting across the desk from the widow. Away from her son, it seems now that some of the reserve has gone, the guard has dropped a little. She doesn’t have to show the brave face for us that she did for him.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Just like it sounds.’

‘He was killed at the football,’ says Peterson. ‘Roddy watched it happen. Why should it be for any reason other than the one you mentioned . . . the thing you pointed out already? The man and the noise.’

‘Roddy didn’t see his killer in the rows behind them.’

‘Maybe it was someone else. Maybe it was some other reason.’

‘That’s what I’m asking.’

‘No,’ she says, sounding confused, ‘that’s not what I meant. Maybe it was some other reason at the football.’

‘Roddy couldn’t think of anything else of significance.’

‘He’s fourteen,’ she says, brow furrowed.

‘He quite understands what’s going on around him,’ I say. ‘He was very aware of the significance of his stepdad standing up and telling someone off in front of people. And yet, he’s also quite sure that. . .