Summoning the Dead (DI Bob Valentine #3)(19)

Valentine put his hand on hers. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, love?’

She jerked her hand away. ‘It means what it means.’

‘Clare, come on, would you listen to yourself?’

‘No, Bob, you listen to me. I want you to ask for a new job, a transfer back to the training college, something away from the front line.’

‘I can’t do that. The force is stretched to breaking point; they need all the experienced manpower they can get.’

‘I mean it. Ask for a move, or it’ll be me who’s moving on, and I’m not kidding this time.’

The door from the extension opened and Valentine’s father stepped through. ‘Oh, hello, lovely morning.’

He was met with frosty silence and averted gazes.

‘Was it something I said?’ There was no reply from Valentine or Clare. ‘I think I’ll go back out and come in again.’

‘No, Dad, come away in. I’m just leaving anyway.’ The DI couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with his wife as he went.





11

The early-morning drive to Glasgow passed without traffic disruption, except for the usual snare up on the Kingston Bridge. The sun appeared to favour the city over Ayr today, even managing to push the morning rays through a canopy of cloud covering the sky. Valentine observed DS McCormack’s mood brightening too, as it always did when she returned home. She tapped a beat with her fingertips on the gearstick as she drove towards the morgue; it was only mildly disconcerting to the DI to have such a chipper travel partner so early in the morning.

‘How are you getting on with the list, sir?’ said McCormack.

The DI looked up from the pages. ‘There’s some interesting details, if it is a little sketchy.’

‘We should have the bagged-up artefacts in the incident room later today; the photogs are still working on them. I thought what we do have already paints an interesting picture of the two boys.’

Valentine put down the report. ‘They’re clearly from very different backgrounds.’

‘Do you think they knew each other? I mean, how would you know that? But it seems likely.’

‘I’m not assuming anything at this stage, Sylvia. Except that one of the boys was fairly well-to-do and one not so much.’

McCormack indicated to change lanes; they were entering the city centre and slowing with the increasing traffic. ‘Did you see the rosary, sir?’

‘Yeah, and a St Christopher pendant – but no chain. It doesn’t say if there’s anything engraved on the back. It could belong to a St John’s pupil, which is the Catholic school, but the listing for the school tie doesn’t say what it looks like.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘St John’s ties were striped – blue, black and white.’

‘I’ll check that when we get parked, sir. It’s just a phone call. That would be the better-off boy, I take it?’

‘Yeah.’ Valentine’s gaze wandered over the cityscape. ‘I think I remember a boy going missing from there, a while back now. Was I still at school myself? Can’t quite recall the details, if he was found or not.’

‘What about the other boy, anything standing out?’

‘Everything seems so well preserved. There’s school jotters and a comic, football stickers but no bloody details! There could be names sewn into their clothes and we don’t know going by this list.’ Valentine returned to the report. ‘The other kid, yeah, elbow patches on the grey V-neck, a penknife and a bookie’s pen in the pocket of the shorts, and tackity boots – contrast those to the Clarks’ shoes on the other lad. They were definitely from opposite sides of the tracks.’

As they pulled up outside the morgue McCormack yanked on the handbrake. ‘You go in, sir. I’ll call the photogs and see if they can shed some light on this.’

‘All right. But hurry up, I want you to see Wrighty’s work.’

Valentine headed for the pathology department and made his way to the morgue. Once briskly dressed for the procedure he approached Wrighty, who was talking into a microphone that dangled over the slab. Both the boys’ bodies were laid out, side by side; they seemed smaller and more shrivelled than the DI ever imagined.

‘They look so tiny,’ he said.

The pathologist steadied the mic to stop it swinging. ‘Another human tragedy with horrific consequences.’

Valentine made a closer inspection of the corpse he had seen the previous day. He was surprised that it didn’t smell a lot worse. ‘The smell’s gone.’

‘Mummified remains are virtually odourless. The soil might have been damp – that’s probably what you were smelling.’

‘So you have experience of this sort of thing then?’

‘Oh, yes. Surprisingly common, though normally it’s mummified bairns I see. When they die young and get shoved in a drawer or the back of an airing cupboard it’s the perfect conditions to ward off putrefaction. That’s all it is by the way, a denial of the usual order of decay.’

Valentine eyed the second corpse. The head was pressed into the shoulder at an unnatural angle. The black, leathery, skeletal features of the face looked very peaceful by contrast.

‘Can you tell me what went on here, Wrighty?’