A Darker Domain

Bel rounded the corner just as the sun cleared the corner of the woods, flooding her in sudden warmth. It made her entry into the final room all the more chilling. Shivering at the dank air, she ventured inside. The shutters were pulled tight, making the interior almost too dim to discern anything. But as her eyes adjusted, she gained a sense of the room. It was the twin of the studio in scale, but its function was quite different. She crossed to the nearest window and struggled with the shutter, finally managing to haul it halfway open. It was enough to confirm her first impression. This had been the heart of the occupation of the casa rovina. A battered old cooking range connected to a gas cylinder stood by a stone sink. The dining table was scarred and stripped to the bare wood, but it was solid and had beautifully carved legs. Seven unmatched chairs sat around it, an eighth overturned a few feet away. A rocking chair and a couple of sofas lined the walls. Odd bits of crockery and cutlery lay scattered around, as if the inhabitants couldn’t be bothered collecting them when they’d left.

As Bel walked back from the window, a rickety table caught her eye. Standing behind the door, it was easy to miss. An untidy scatter of what appeared to be posters lay across it. Fascinated, she moved towards it. Two strides and she stopped short, her sharp gasp echoing in the dusty air.

Before her on the limestone flags was an irregular stain, perhaps three feet by eighteen inches. Rusty brown, its edges were rounded and smooth, as if it had flowed and pooled rather than spilled. It was thick enough to obscure the flags beneath. One section on the farthest edge looked smudged and thinned, as if someone had tried to scrub it clean and soon given up. Bel had covered enough stories of domestic violence and sexual homicide to recognize a serious bloodstain when she saw it.

Startled, she stepped back, head swivelling from side to side, heart thudding so hard she thought it might choke her. What the hell had happened here? She looked around wildly, noticing other dark stains marking the floor beyond the table. Time to get out of here, the sensible part of her mind was screaming. But the devil of curiosity muttered in her ear. There’s been nobody here for months. Look at the dust. They’re long gone. They’re not going to be back any time soon. Whatever happened here was good reason for them to clear out. Check out the posters…

Bel skirted the stain, giving it as wide a berth as she could without touching any of the furniture. All at once, she felt a taint in the air. Knew it was imagination, but still it seemed real. Back to the room, face to the door, she crab-walked to the table and looked down at the posters strewn across it.

The second shock was almost more powerful than the first.

Bel knew she was pushing too hard up the hill, but she couldn’t pace herself. She could feel the sweat from her hand coating the good quality paper of the rolled-up poster. At last the track emerged from the trees and became less treacherous as it approached their holiday villa. The road sloped down almost imperceptibly, but gravity was enough to give her tired legs an extra boost and she was still moving fast when she rounded the corner of the house to find Lisa Martyn stretched out on the shady terrace in a pool chair with Friday’s Guardian for company. Bel felt relief. She needed to talk to someone and, of all her companions, Lisa was least likely to turn her revelations into dinner party gossip. A human rights lawyer whose compassion and feminism seemed as ineluctable as every breath she took, Lisa would understand the potential of the discovery Bel thought she had made. And her right to handle it as she saw fit.

Lisa dragged her eyes away from the newspaper, distracted by the unfamiliar heave of Bel’s breath. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘You look like you’re about to stroke out.’

Bel put the poster down on a chair and leaned over, hands on knees, dragging breath into her lungs, regretting those secret, stolen cigarettes. ‘I’ll be - OK in - a minute.’

Lisa struggled ungainly out of the chair and hurried into the kitchen, returning with a towel and bottle of water. Bel stood straight, took the water and poured half over her head, snorting as she breathed it in by accident. Then she rubbed her head with the towel and slumped into a chair. She swallowed a long draught of water while Lisa returned to her pool chair. ‘What was all that about?’ Lisa said. ‘You’re the most dignified jogger I know. Never seen an out-of-breath Bel before. What’s got you into such a state?’

‘I found something,’ Bel said. Her chest was still struggling but she could manage short bursts of speech. ‘At least, I think I found something. And if I’m right, it’s the story of my career.’ She reached for the poster. ‘I was kind of hoping you might be able to tell me whether I’ve completely lost the plot.’

Intrigued, Lisa tossed the paper to the ground and sat up. ‘So, what is it, this thing that might be something?’

Bel unrolled the heavy paper, weighing it down at the corners with a pepper grinder, a coffee mug and a couple of dirty ashtrays. The image on the A3 sheet was striking. It had been designed to look like a stark black-and-white woodcut in the German Expressionist style. At the top of the page, a bearded man with an angular shock of hair leaned over a screen, his hands holding wooden crosses from which three marionettes dangled. But these were no ordinary marionettes. One was a skeleton, the second a goat and the third a representation of Death with his hooded robe and scythe. There was something indisputably sinister about the image. Across the bottom, enclosed by a funereal black border, was a blank area about three inches deep. It was the sort of space where a small bill might be posted announcing a performance.

‘Fuck me,’ Lisa said. At last, she looked up. ‘Catriona Maclennan Grant,’ she said. There was wonder in her voice. ‘Bel…where the hell did you find this?’

Thursday 28th June 2007; Edinburgh

Bel smiled. ‘Before I answer that, I want to clarify a few things.’

Susan Charleson rolled her eyes. ‘You can’t imagine you’re the first person who’s walked through the door with a faked-up copy of the ransom poster. I’ll tell you what I’ve told them. The reward is contingent on finding Sir Broderick’s grandson alive or demonstrating conclusively that he is dead. Not to mention bringing Catriona Maclennan Grant’s killers to justice.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ Bel said, smile mischievous but not giving an inch. ‘Ms Charleson, I’m really not interested in Sir Broderick’s money. But I do have one condition.’

‘You’re making a mistake here.’ Susan Charleson’s voice had acquired an edge. ‘This is a police matter. You’re in no position to be imposing conditions.’

Bel placed a hand firmly on the poster. ‘I can walk out the door now with this poster and forget I ever saw it. I’d have little difficulty in lying to the police. I’m a journalist, after all.’ She was beginning to enjoy herself far more than she’d anticipated. ‘Your word against mine, Ms Charleson. And I know you don’t want me to walk out on you. One of the skills a successful journalist has to learn is how to read people. And I saw the way you reacted when you looked at this. You know this is the real thing, not some faked-up copy.’

‘You’ve a very aggressive attitude.’ Susan Charleson sounded almost nonchalant.

‘I like to think of it as assertive. I didn’t come here to fall out with you, Ms Charleson. I want to help. But not for free. In my experience, the rich don’t appreciate anything they don’t have to pay for.’

‘You said you weren’t interested in money.’

‘That’s true. And I’m not. I am, however, interested in reputation. And my reputation is built on being not just first with the story but with getting to the story behind the story. I think there are areas where I can help unravel this more effectively than official channels. I’m sure you’ll agree once I’ve explained where this poster came from. All I’m asking is that you don’t obstruct me looking into the case. And beyond that, that you and your boss cooperate when it comes to sharing information about what was going on around the time Catriona was kidnapped.’

‘That’s quite a significant request. Sir Broderick is not a man who compromises his privacy readily. You’ll appreciate I don’t have the authority to grant what you are asking.’

Bel shrugged one shoulder delicately. ‘Then we can meet again when you have an answer.’ She slid the poster across the table, opening the portfolio to replace it there.

Susan Charleson stood up. ‘If you can spare me a few more minutes, I might be able to give you an answer now.’

Bel knew at that point that she had won. Susan Charleson wanted this too badly. She would persuade her boss to accept the deal. Bel hadn’t been this excited in years. This wasn’t just a slew of news stories and features, though there wasn’t a paper in the world that wouldn’t be interested. Especially after the Madeleine McCann case. With access to the mysterious Brodie Grant plus the chance of discovering the fate of his grandson, this was potentially a bestseller. In Cold Blood for the new millennium. It would be her ticket for the gravy train.

Bel gave a little snort of laughter. Maybe she could use the proceeds to buy the casa rovina and bring things full circle. It was hard to imagine what could be neater.

Thursday 28th June 2007; Newton of Wemyss

It had been a few years since Karen had last taken the single-track road to Newton of Wemyss. But it was obvious that the hamlet had undergone the same transformation as its sister villages on the main road. Commuters had fallen ravenous upon all four of the Wemyss villages, seeing rustic possibilities in what had been grim little miners’ rows. One-bedroomed hovels had been knocked through to make lavish cottages, back yards transformed by conservatories that poured light into gloomy living-kitchens. Villages that had shrivelled and died following the Michael pit disaster in ’67 and the closures that followed the 1984 strike had found a new incarnation as dormitories whose entire idea of community was a pub quiz night. In the village shops you could buy a scented candle but not a pint of milk. The only way you could tell there had ever been a mining community was the scale model of pit winding gear that straddled the point where the private steam railway had once crossed the main road laden with open trucks of coal bound for the railhead at Thornton Junction. Now, the whitewashed miners’ rows looked like an architect’s deliberate choice of what a vernacular village ought to look like. Their history had been overwhelmed by a designer present.

Since her last visit, Newton of Wemyss had spruced itself up. The modest war memorial stood on a triangle of shaven grass in the centre. Wooden troughs of flowers stood around it at perfect intervals. Immaculate single-storey cottages lined the village green, the only break in the low skyline the imposing bulk of the local pub, the Laird o’ Wemyss. It had once been owned collectively by the local community under the Gothenburg system, but the hard times of the eighties had forced it to close. Now it was a destination restaurant, its ‘Scottish Fusion’ cuisine drawing visitors from as far afield as Dundee and Edinburgh and its prices lifting it well out of her budget. Karen wondered how far Mick Prentice would have had to travel for a simple pint of heavy if he’d stayed put in Newton.

She consulted the Mapquest directions she’d printed out and pointed to a road at the apex of the triangle to her driver, DC Jason ‘the Mint’ Murray. ‘You want to go down the lane there,’ she said. ‘Towards the sea. Where the pit used to be.’

They left the village centre behind immediately. Shaggy hedgerows fringed a field of lush green wheat on the right. ‘All this rain, it’s making everything grow like the clappers,’ the Mint said. It had taken him the full twenty-five-minute journey from the office to summon up a comment.

Karen couldn’t be bothered with a conversation about the weather. What was there to say? It had rained all bloody summer so far. Just because it wasn’t raining right this minute didn’t mean it wouldn’t be wet by the end of the day. She looked over to her left where the colliery buildings had once stood. She had a vague memory of offices, pithead baths, a canteen. Now it had been razed to its concrete foundation, weeds forcing through jagged cracks as they reclaimed it. Marooned beyond it was a single untouched miners’ row; eight raddled houses stranded in the middle of nowhere by the demolition of the buildings that had provided the reason for their existence. Beyond them was a thick stand of tall sycamores and beeches, a dense windbreak between the houses and the edge of the cliff that plunged down thirty feet to the coastal path below. ‘That’s where the Lady Charlotte used to be,’ she said.

‘Eh?’ the Mint sounded startled.

‘The pit, Jason.’

‘Oh. Right. Aye. Before my time.’ He peered through the windscreen, making her wonder uneasily if he needed glasses. ‘Which house is it, guv?’

She pointed to the one second from the end. The Mint eased the car round the potholes as carefully as if it had been his own and came to a halt at the end of Jenny Prentice’s path.

In spite of Karen’s phone call setting up the meeting, Jenny took her time answering the door, which gave them plenty of time to examine the cracked concrete flags and the depressing patch of weedy gravel in front of the house. ‘If this was mine,’ the Mint began, then tailed off, as if it was all too much to contemplate.

The woman who answered the door had the air of someone who had spent her days lying down so life could more easily trample over her. Her lank greying hair was tied back haphazardly, strands escaping at both sides. Her skin was lined and puckered, with broken veins mapping her cheeks. She wore a nylon overall that came to mid-thigh over cheap black trousers whose material had gone bobbly. The overall was a shade of lavender found nowhere in nature. Karen’s parents still lived in a street populated by ex-miners and their kin in unfashionable Methil, but even the most dysfunctional of their neighbours would have taken more trouble with their appearance when they knew they were in for any kind of official visit. Karen didn’t even bother trying to avoid judging Jenny Prentice on her appearance. ‘Good morning, Mrs Prentice,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m DI Pirie. We spoke on the phone. And this is DC Murray.’

Jenny nodded and sniffed. ‘You’d better come in.’

The living room was cramped but clean. The furniture, like the carpet, was unfashionable but not at all shabby. A room for special occasions, Karen thought, and a life where there were few of those.

Jenny waved them towards the sofa and perched on the edge of an armchair opposite. She was clearly not going to offer them any sort of refreshment. ‘So. You’re here because of our Misha. I thought you lot would have something better to do, all the awful things I keep reading about in the newspapers.’

‘A missing husband and father is a pretty awful thing, wouldn’t you say?’ Karen said.

Jenny’s lips tightened, as if she’d felt the burn of indigestion. ‘Depends on the man, Inspector. The kind of guy you run into doing your job, I don’t imagine too many of their wives and kids are that bothered when they get taken away.’

‘You’d be surprised. A lot of their families are pretty devastated. And at least they know where their man is. They don’t have to live with uncertainty.’

‘I didn’t think I was living with uncertainty. I thought I knew damn fine where Mick was until our Misha started raking about trying to find him.’

Karen nodded. ‘You thought he was in Nottingham.’

‘Aye. I thought he’d went scabbing. To be honest, I wasn’t that sorry to see the back of him. But I was bloody livid that he put that label round our necks. I’d rather he was dead than a blackleg, if you really want to know.’ She pointed at Karen. ‘You sound like you’re from round here. You must know what it’s like to get tarred with that brush.’

Karen tipped her head in acknowledgement. ‘All the more galling now that it looks like he didn’t go scabbing after all.’

Jenny looked away. ‘I don’t know that. All I know is that he didn’t go to Nottingham that night with that particular bunch of scabs.’

‘Well, we’re here to try to establish what really happened. My colleague here is going to take some notes, just to make sure I don’t misremember anything you tell me.’ The Mint hastily took out his notebook and flipped it open in a nervous flurry of pages. Maybe Phil had been right about his deficiencies, Karen thought. ‘Now, I need his full name and date of birth.’

‘Michael James Prentice. Born 20th January 1955.’

‘And you were all living here at the time? You and Mick and Misha?’

‘Aye. I’ve lived here all my married life. Never really had a choice in the matter.’

‘Have you got a photo of Mick you could let us have? I know it’s a long time ago, but it could be helpful.’

‘You can put it on the computer and make it older, can’t you?’ Jenny went to the sideboard and opened a drawer.

‘Sometimes it’s possible.’ But too expensive unless there’s a more pressing reason than your grandson’s leukaemia.

Jenny took out an immaculate black leather album and brought it back to the chair. When she opened it, the covers creaked. Even upside down and from the other side of the room, Karen could see it was a wedding album. Jenny quickly turned past the formal wedding shots to a pocket at the back, thickly stuffed with snaps. She pulled out a bundle and flicked through them. She paused at a couple, then finally settled on one. She handed Karen a rectangular picture. It showed a head and shoulders of two young men grinning at the camera, corners of the beer glasses in shot as they toasted the photographer. ‘That’s Mick on the left,’ Jenny said. ‘The good-looking one.’

She wasn’t lying. Mick Prentice had tousled dark blond hair, cut in the approximation of a mullet that George Michael had boasted in his Wham period. Mick had blue eyes, ridiculously long eyelashes and a dangerous smile. The sickle crescent of a coal tattoo sliced through his right eyebrow, saving him from being too pretty. Karen could see exactly why Jenny Prentice had fallen for her husband. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Who’s the other guy?’ A raggedy mop of brown hair, long, bony face, a few faint acne scars pitting the sunken cheeks, lively eyes, a triangular grin like the Joker in the Batman comics. Not a looker like his pal, but something engaging about him all the same.

‘His best pal. Andy Kerr.’

The best pal who killed himself, according to Misha. ‘Misha told me your husband went missing on Friday the fourteenth of December 1984. Is that your recollection?’

‘That’s right. He went out in the morning with his bloody paints and said he’d be back for his tea. That was the last I saw him.’

‘Paints? He was doing a bit of work on the side?’

Jenny made a sound of disdain. ‘As if. Not that we couldn’t have used the money. No, Mick painted watercolours. Can you credit it? Can you imagine anything more bloody useless in the 1984 strike than a miner painting watercolours?’

‘Could he not have sold them?’ the Mint chipped in, leaning forward and looking keen.

‘Who to? Everybody round here was skint and there was no money for him to go someplace else on the off chance.’ Jenny gestured at the wall behind them. ‘He’d have been lucky to get a couple of pounds apiece.’

Karen swivelled round and looked at the three cheaply framed paintings on the wall. West Wemyss, Macduff Castle and the Lady’s Rock. To her untutored eye, they looked vivid and lively. She’d have happily given them house room, though she didn’t know how much she’d have been willing to pay for the privilege back in 1984. ‘So, how did he get into that?’ Karen asked, turning back to face Jenny.

‘He did a class at the Miners’ Welfare the year Misha was born. The teacher said he had a gift for it. Me, I think she said the same to every one of them that was halfway good looking.’

‘But he kept it up?’

‘It got him out of the house. Away from the dirty nappies and the noise.’ Bitterness seemed to come off Jenny Prentice in waves. Curious but heartening that it didn’t seem to have infected her daughter. Maybe that had something to do with the stepfather she’d spoken about. Karen reminded herself to ask about the other man in Jenny’s life, another who seemed notable by his absence.

‘Did he paint much during the strike?’

‘Every day it was fair he was out with his kitbag and his easel. And if it was raining, he was down the caves with his pals from the Preservation Society.’

‘The Wemyss caves, do you mean?’ Karen knew the caves that ran back from the shore deep into the sandstone cliffs between East Wemyss and Buckhaven. She’d played in them a few times as a child, oblivious to their historical significance as a major Pictish site. The local kids had treated them as indoor play areas, which was one of the reasons why the Preservation Society had been set up. Now there were railings closing off the deeper and more dangerous sections of the cave network and amateur historians and archaeologists had preserved them as a playground for adults. ‘Mick was involved with the caves?’

‘Mick was involved in everything. He played football, he painted his pictures, he messed about in the caves, he was up to his eyes in the union. Anything and everything was more important than spending time with his family.’ Jenny crossed one leg over the other and folded her arms across her chest. ‘He said it kept him sane during the strike. I think it just kept him out the road of his responsibilities.’

Karen knew this was fertile soil for her inquiries but she could afford to leave it for later. Jenny’s suppressed anger had stayed put for twenty-two years. It wasn’t about to go anywhere now. There was something much more immediate that interested her. ‘So, during the strike, where did Mick get the money for paints? I don’t know much about art, but I know it costs a few bob for proper paper and paint.’ She couldn’t imagine any striking miner spending money on art supplies when there was no money for food or heating.

‘I don’t want to get anybody into trouble,’ she said.

Yeah, right. ‘It was twenty-three years ago,’ Karen said flatly. ‘I’m really not interested in small-scale contra from the time of the miner’s strike.’

‘One of the art teachers from the high school lived up at Coaltown. He was a wee cripple guy. One leg shorter than the other and a humphy back. Mick used to do his garden for him. The guy paid him in paints.’ She gave a little snort. ‘I said could he not pay him in money or food. But apparently the guy was paying out all his wages to the ex-wife. The paints he could nick from the school.’ She refolded her arms. ‘He’s dead now anyway.’

Karen tried to tamp down her dislike of this woman, so different from the daughter who had beguiled her into this case. ‘So what was it like between you, before Mick disappeared?’

‘I blame the strike. OK, we had our ups and downs. But it was the strike that drove a wedge between us. And I’m not the only woman in this part of the world who could say the same thing.’

Karen knew the truth of that. The terrible privations of the strike had scarred just about every couple she had known back then. Domestic violence had erupted in improbable places; suicide rates had risen; marriages had shattered in the face of implacable poverty. She hadn’t understood it at the time, but she did now. ‘Maybe so. But everybody’s story’s different. I’d like to hear yours.’

Friday 14th December 1984; Newton of Wemyss

‘I’ll be back for my tea,’ Mick Prentice said, slinging the big canvas bag across his body and grabbing the slender package of his folded easel.

‘Tea? What tea? There’s nothing in the house to eat. You need to be out there finding food for your family, not messing about painting the bloody sea for the umpteenth time,’ Jenny shouted, trying to force him to halt on his way out the door.