A Deviant Breed (9 page)

‘You have not – anyway there’s nae such –’

‘I’m not sayin’ I –’

‘I’m not having this conversation, Zoe,’ Dunbar cut in brusquely. 

‘We just have – so I’ll put it in writing for you,’ Zoe retorted, as she headed back to the exhibits tent to lend a hand.

‘Do that!’ he snapped.  Somehow, no matter how it started, it always came around to the same thing, Maggie’s suicide and the rancour that tragic event generated.

***

Maggie’s pregnancy had been no accident.  It was an escape strategy from.  Her parents’ religious devotion was suffocating her.  Dunbar had often wondered how long it would take before Zoe felt that same desperate urge; around the same age, as it happened. University was the open door Zoe bolted through.  In short, Maggie had seen him as a way out of her archly-conservative, stultifying home environment.  She wanted her freedom and most of all – she had wanted sex!  That was the reason she had never trusted him around other women.  Maggie had presumed that all women were as voracious as she was. 

Even in the depths of her illness Maggie would sometimes send little Zoe to Elaine and Jim’s for the night and greet him in her sauciest underwear as he came through the door, then go at him like a nymphomaniac on a cocktail of speed and amyl nitrate until they eventually collapsed, sweating, sore and exhausted.  He had never experienced sex like it before or since and he missed it.  He missed her, even though afterwards she would invariably spoil the moment by slyly asking if any of his policewomen were as good, then rail wildly at his weary denials.  He had even begun to consider divorce before she overdosed, but never raised the subject out of fear that she might.  He had often wondered since whether she had sensed that divorce was on the cards.  Was that why she had taken her life?

Her parents’ blinkered take on events went something like: a lip-service Anglican stole their daughter’s innocence and got her pregnant when she was barely eighteen.  Then, having done so, left her to raise their granddaughter while he pursued his career and a life of carousing with his mates while she sought comfort from prescribed drugs.  It was a singularly prejudiced view but
accurate enough to cut a grieving man to the quick.  Then four years after Maggie’s funeral he met Elspeth Rennie.  That put the seal on what were already, quite strained relations with his former in-laws – and further distance between him and his impressionable daughter.

***

As Zoe flounced from his view into the tent he turned to see Tyler watching from close by.

‘Did you want something, Inspector?’

‘Me!?  No, sir.  But your fashion editor does.  A wee quote I imagine.’ Tyler prodded her thumb over her shoulder.  Ruth the Truth was balancing on the next to top rail of the gate, craning her neck, trying to get a better view of the scene.  Dunbar groaned and marched towards the nosy reporter. Tyler fell in alongside.

‘Rule one when I’m SIO – we never lie to the press,’ he growled. ‘And the best way to ensure that is by not telling them anything.’

‘But –’

‘No buts – refer them to press liaison.’

‘We haven’t appointed a press liaison yet, have we?’

‘No, but that’s who I’m going to send her looking for.’

***

Dunbar dismissed the reporter politely but firmly and once she realised there was nothing to gain by hanging around she staggered off down the rough track in her particularly unsuitable footwear. Watching him assuage and deflect the persistent hack with effortless authority, Tyler began to feel as if she was getting a handle on her reluctant mentor.  His was not a contrived air of nonchalance; it was an energy-saving device in order that he could direct everything towards the immediate problem.  Ruth the Truth was not a problem, just a distraction he could do without.  In fact Dunbar wasted little in words, thoughts or deeds.  Tyler had begun to suspect that even his small talk concealed an objective.  She was as much under his microscope in his company as any suspect sitting across the table from him in an interview room.

Dunbar’s leg was troubling him, Tyler saw him tapping it with his stick out of frustration.  Professor Geary had noticed too and wandered over to him, carrying a shooting stick.  He half turned and smirked.

‘Didn’t have you down as one of the country set, Professor.’

‘I most certainly am not – but like the hip-flask of malt, I find this invaluable in the field,’ she explained, as she snapped open the seat concealed within the handle.  Dunbar nodded his appreciation and perched on it to survey his crime scene.

‘Plug’s ferrying your SOCO people up the lane.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied, as the professor moved to leave. ‘Can you recommend any decent accommodation within striking distance?  Inspector Tyler and I will be stopping over tonight.’

‘We’re stopping in Greenlaw.  It has a couple of pubs that do decent bar food and it’s only ten minutes away – if you have a Land Rover and don’t have to walk from the road.’

‘Sounds good.’

The professor wandered back to her tent to see Tyler opening the gate as the Land Rover roared into view.  Inside Eugene clung on for dear life to the overhead handle beside the passenger door. How many times had she told Plug about his driving?  He seemed determined to test that vehicle to destruction.  But on this occasion, just to see Eugene Grant’s expression – it was perhaps worth it.  The vehicle ground to a stop, chewing up turf as it did.  Eugene stepped out unsteadily.

‘Thank you, Plug – cannae commend the ride comfort though.  Had a seat but rarely had my arse on it,’ the dour CSI muttered before turning towards Briony Tyler. ‘Might as well ridden up here on a bucking bronco.’

Laughing Boy could barely contain himself as he unloaded their kit from the rear with Plug’s help.  Dunbar suspected that it was Eugene’s mischievous assistant who had probably asked the student digger to put his foot down.

***

Tyler felt that there was little point in standing around watching Eugene and Laughing Boy dig up a severed head.  Dunbar could do that and he now had the professor’s shooting stick, would comfortable while doing so.

‘Can I borrow the car?’

‘My car?’ he asked.

‘Well I don’t think they’d let me take the Land Rover, sir.’ 

‘Driven many automatics?’

‘My dad’s Range Rover.  Does that qualify me?’

Dunbar rummaged in his coat pocket and produced his keys and let them hover above her open palm. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Not much I can do here – thought I’d go and have a chat with, Wilson Farish.’  He held onto his keys and hesitated. ‘Do you want to come?’ she asked.

Finally he shook his head, didn’t fancy hobbling down that lane again. ‘Watch her – she’s an eager beast,’ he warned, as he dropped the keys into her extended palm.

‘That makes two of us,’ she replied with a wicked grin. Why is it men always sexualise their cars? A car was a car as far as Briony Tyler was concerned, a mode of transport, a machine designed to get people from A to B, nothing more.  Dunbar watched her walk away.  Stop staring at her arse, he cautioned silently, only to catch his daughter watching him with a wry and knowing smile on her face.  He snapped around to contemplate his latest victim again – and to spare his blushes.

***

Wheezing deeply with each step Wilson Farish progressed down his hallway with the hesitant purpose of a chameleon stalking its prey.  Every movement of his walking frame and subsequent footstep was carefully choreographed to ensure frame and foot were planted firmly enough, so that he could safely shift his balance and take the next step.

‘Age plays wicked games on us, Inspector,’ he said between deep breaths as he finally led her into his sitting room.  ‘With some it’s dementia, others physical torments, and in truly tragic cases –
both!
  At least I still have my wits and would not swap them to be rid of my infirmity.  At the centre I attend there are residents who regard their own kin as complete strangers – so sad.  Not for them, they’re oblivious, but their poor loved ones –’  He shook his head and gestured for her to sit, then swung the frame to one side, before using the winged back of his remotely adjustable armchair for balance as he made for his walking cane.

‘Allow me,’ Tyler said.

‘Thank you, but this is all the exercise I get.  Please – sit.’  Having retrieved his stick, wheezing deeply with each step, he shuffled even more slowly around to his chair carefully positioned himself and finally flopped down onto it.  ‘There!’
He tapped at his fire grate with his stick. ‘The frame gets too hot beside the fire, as I discovered when my carer once moved it to serve my lunch.  Poor lass, it gave her quite a nasty burn.  Now!  You’re here about Archie.’

‘You’ll have heard about his discovery up at Braur Glen?’

‘I’ve heard of little else for the past twenty-odd years give or take a few – that is, Archie’s search for Obag’s Holm.  And for that I blame myself.’

‘Because?’

‘For getting him interested in genealogy in the first place.’ he explained with a weary sigh.

‘I thought his granny did that.’

Farish shook his head.  ‘She sparked it by filling his head with all that nonsense about Morag or, as folklore knows her, Obag.  But it was I that steered him towards an academic approach.  I saw genealogy as a means of getting him reading and writing – and of learning the joy of research and of how knowledge empowers us.  What with their distant link to that family tree, I thought it might ignite his enthusiasm for learning – and boy-oh-boy did it ever!’

‘So he’s not quite the autodidact he claims to be?’

Farish chortled and it made him cough. ‘To be fair – since Archie completed his modest education, he must be given due credit for what he has achieved.  Firstly, in working very hard to improve on what I had taught him, and secondly, for his persistence and like many of his kind, he has a phenomenal capacity for retention of facts and certain details but only if they are of specific interest to him.’

‘His kind?’

‘Yes, as I say, quite an accomplishment considering he was a boy of limited educational ability when we first met.  In truth – he talks of nothing else because he knows nothing else.  Steer the conversation off that topic and you’ll encounter the real Archie.’

‘Limited?’

‘Yes, Archie is chronically dyslexic and in my lay-capacity as a former educator; I’d venture Aspergers Syndrome, or at least in the spectrum.   Not that his folks or Dr Petrie ever picked up on it.  Petrie was old school, a potions and poultices, pills and wee dram type of GP.  If the remedy couldn’t be found via those tried and tested methods, I’m afraid you were very much in the hands of The Almighty.  Big in the Kirk was Petrie – as was Archie’s grandpa.’  Farish chortled. ‘They were known as the Holy Trinity hereabouts, Fraser English, Doc Petrie and the pastor.’

‘It would explain his obsessive-compulsive traits.’

‘Everything in its place – even where there is no space!
Ach!
Quite so.’  He gazed into the distance for a moment as if reminiscing. ‘That said – it has served him well in his quest, his obsession with chronology, with tidiness, neatness and order.  It made keeping track of facts, dates and details much easier.’

‘How did he come to receive one-to-one schooling?’

‘Bullying!’ he paused for thought for a moment. ‘Illegitimate, you see.  His young, pretty and precocious mother was the talk of the village when I arrived.’

‘What was she like?’

Farish hesitated but only briefly. ‘She’d skedaddled before I came on the scene, never to return.’  He leaned forward in his seat conspiratorially and lowered his voice.  ‘According to gossip, his father was either an Irish tinker who plied his trade on the black top or a travelling salesman. But – it pays not to take heed of tittle-tattle, in my experience.’

‘Black top?’ She queried, as she scribbled notes furiously.

‘Resurfacing roads,’ he explained, then hesitated again while she wrote it down.  ‘But it was no Cathy and Heathcliff romance if so – ach no, a scandalous tryst at the time I gather, all rather sordid and the outcome quite predictable.’

She looked up. ‘Sorry about this, I have to –’

‘I imagine so, Inspector.’ He waited for her to stop writing before continuing. ‘Now her parents would have everyone believe she fell pregnant to a rakish farm supplies salesman who then did the dirty on their innocent daughter, and that it was he who turned her pretty head and stole her away leaving them to raise wee Archie. 
But!
  She was no innocent – jail bait by all accounts. That tinker was wise to run.  Jail is where he’d have gone. 
Aye
– the dirty was done, nae question about that, but by whom remains a great mystery.’ Farish paused again to allow Tyler time to get it all down.

She nodded her appreciation.

‘Archie was raised by his grandma, her own wee Pinocchio, her toy child who she tried to breath normal life into but, just like Geppetto, she couldn’t.  Being considered something of a simpleton on account of the difficulties we’ve just discussed, Archie was slow in school and bullied on account of his mammy.  However, there was something endearing about his absence of awareness.’  Farish glazed over for a moment. ‘Aye, a wee cherub of a boy he was, with a melancholic smile even when he was happy.  I felt sorry for him – for them all – and so offered to tutor him in my spare time in return for room and board.’