The Distant Echo. Val McDermid

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СКАЧАТЬ him that his life was no longer aimless. For so long, he’d wanted someone to blame. He’d hardly dared hope for revenge. But now, at long last, vengeance might possibly be his.

PART ONE

1

       1978; St Andrews, Scotland

      Four in the morning, the dead of December. Four bleary outlines wavered in the snow flurries that drifted at the beck and call of the snell north-easterly wind whipping across the North Sea from the Urals. The eight stumbling feet of the self-styled Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy traced the familiar path of their short cut over Hallow Hill to Fife Park, the most modern of the halls of residence attached to St Andrews University, where their perpetually unmade beds yawned a welcome, lolling tongues of sheets and blankets trailing to the floors.

      The conversation staggered along lines as habitual as their route. ‘I’m telling you, Bowie is the king,’ Sigmund Malkiewicz slurred loudly, his normally impassive face loosened with drink. A few steps behind him, Alex Gilbey yanked the hood of his parka closer to his face and giggled inwardly as he silently mouthed the reply he knew would come.

      ‘Bollocks,’ said Davey Kerr. ‘Bowie’s just a big jessie. Pink Floyd can run rings round Bowie any day of the week. Dark Side of the Moon, that’s an epic. Bowie’s done nothing to touch that.’ His long dark curls were loosening under the weight of melted snowflakes and he pushed them back impatiently from his waif-like face.

      And they were off. Like wizards casting combative spells at each other, Sigmund and Davey threw song titles, lyrics and guitar riffs back and forth in the ritual dance of an argument they’d been having for the past six or seven years. It didn’t matter that, these days, the music rattling the windows of their student rooms was more likely to come from the Clash, the Jam or the Skids. Even their nicknames spoke of their early passions. From the very first afternoon they’d congregated in Alex’s bedroom after school to listen to his purchase of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it had been inevitable that the charismatic Sigmund would be Ziggy, the leper messiah, for eternity. And the others would have to settle for being the Spiders. Alex had become Gilly, in spite of his protestations that it was a jessie nickname for someone who aspired to the burly build of a rugby player. But there was no arguing with the accident of his surname. And none of them had a moment’s doubt about the appropriateness of christening the fourth member of their quartet Weird. Because Tom Mackie was weird, make no mistake about it. The tallest in their year, his long gangling limbs even looked like a mutation, matching a personality that delighted in being perverse.

      That left Davey, loyal to the cause of the Floyd, steadfastly refusing to accept any nickname from the Bowie canon. For a while, he’d been known halfheartedly as Pink, but from the first time they’d all heard ‘Shine On, You Crazy Diamond’ there had been no further debate; Davey was a crazy diamond, right enough, flashing fire in unpredictable directions, edgy and uncomfortable out of the right setting. Diamond soon became Mondo, and Mondo Davey Kerr had remained through the remaining year of high school and on to university.

      Alex shook his head in quiet amazement. Even through the blur of far too much beer, he wondered at the glue that had held the four of them fast all those years. The very thought provoked a warm glow that kept the vicious cold at bay as he tripped over a raised root smothered under the soft blanket of snow. ‘Bugger,’ he grumbled, cannoning into Weird, who gave him a friendly shove that sent Alex sprawling. Flailing to keep his balance, he let his momentum carry him forward and stumbled up the short slope, suddenly exhilarated with the feel of the snow against his flushed skin. As he reached the summit, he hit an unexpected dip that pulled the feet from under him. Alex found himself crashing head over heels to the ground.

      His fall was broken by something soft. Alex struggled to sit up, pushing against whatever it was he had landed on. Spluttering snow, he wiped his eyes with his tingling fingers, breathing hard through his nose in a bid to clear it of the freezing melt. He glanced around to see what had cushioned his landing just as the heads of his three companions appeared on the hillside to gloat over his farcical calamity.

      Even in the eerie dimness of snow light, he could see that the bulwark against his fall was no botanical feature. The outline of a human form was unmistakable. The heavy white flakes began to melt as soon as they landed, allowing Alex to see it was a woman, the wet tendrils of her dark hair spread against the snow in Medusa locks. Her skirt was pushed up to her waist, her knee-length black boots looking all the more incongruous against her pale legs. Strange dark patches stained her flesh and the pale blouse that clung to her chest. Alex stared uncomprehendingly for a long moment, then he looked at his hands and saw the same darkness contaminating his own skin.

      Blood. The realization dawned at the same instant that the snow in his ears melted and allowed him to hear the faint but stertorous wheeze of her breath.

      ‘Jesus Christ,’ Alex stuttered, trying to scramble away from the horror that he had stumbled into. But he kept banging into what felt like little stone walls as he squirmed backwards. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He looked up desperately, as if the sight of his companions would break this spell and make it all go away. He glanced back at the nightmare vision in the snow. It was no drunken hallucination. It was the real thing. He turned again to his friends. ‘There’s a lassie up here,’ he shouted.

      Weird Mackie’s voice floated back eerily. ‘Lucky bastard.’

      ‘No, stop messing, she’s bleeding.’

      Weird’s laughter split the night. ‘No’ so lucky after all, Gilly.’

      Alex felt sudden rage well up in him. ‘I’m not fucking joking. Get up here. Ziggy, come on, man.’

      Now they could hear the urgency in Alex’s voice. Ziggy in the lead as always, they wallowed through the snow to the crest of the hill. Ziggy took the slope at a jerky run, Weird plunged headlong towards Alex, and Mondo brought up the rear, cautiously planting one foot in front of the other.

      Weird ended up diving head over heels, landing on top of Alex and driving them both on top of the woman’s body. They thrashed around, trying to free themselves, Weird giggling inanely. ‘Hey, Gilly, this must be the closest you’ve ever got to a woman.’

      ‘You’ve had too much fucking dope,’ Ziggy said angrily, pulling him away and crouching down beside the woman, feeling for a pulse in her neck. It was there, but it was terrifyingly weak. Apprehension turned him instantly sober as he took in what he was seeing in the dim light. He was only a final-year medical student, but he knew life-threatening injury when he saw it.

      Weird leaned back on his haunches and frowned. ‘Hey, man, you know where this is?’ Nobody was paying him any attention, but he continued anyway. ‘It’s the Pictish cemetery. These humps in the snow, like wee walls? That’s the stones they used like coffins. Fuck, Alex found a body in the cemetery.’ And he began to giggle, an uncanny sound in the snow-muffled air.

      ‘Shut the fuck up, Weird.’ Ziggy continued to run his hands over her torso, feeling the unnerving give of a deep wound under his searching fingers. He cocked his head to one side, trying to examine her more clearly. ‘Mondo, got your lighter?’

      Mondo moved forward reluctantly and produced his Zippo. He flicked the wheel and moved the feeble light at arm’s length over the woman’s body and up towards her face. His free hand covered his mouth, ineffectually stifling a groan. His blue eyes widened in horror and the flame trembled in his grasp.

      Ziggy inhaled sharply, the planes of his face eerie СКАЧАТЬ