on the deep-set window. The pub had no central heating and the fire of the evening before had long since gone out.
He was reluctant to get up to put on his stained clothes and he needed some time to think now that his head felt clearer. Why had those men broken into the car, tried to stop him on the road and what connection did those incidents have with the intruder at his office?
He tried to remember what they looked like but he only had a general impression from the few seconds the two cars had been close together. He had a vague idea of their build and their ages from where he’d seen them at a distance in Biggar, but his full attention then had been on David.
The man in the passenger seat of the car was probably the one who had pushed David to the ground and he was also the heavier of the two. He might recognize him again. He could have died in that gully—if the farm worker had not seen him go over the edge—and yet the men in the car had done nothing to help. They hadn’t reported what had happened. What sort of people were they, for Christ’s sake?
He threw back the duvet and jumped out of bed, went to the window and saw that the landscape was white. The branches of the fir trees were weighed down with snow, and there wasn’t a bird to be seen, nor a farm animal. He shivered and discovered that Betty had laid out some of her son’s clothes for him. Tim was not as tall as he was, so the cords were short and he tucked them into the rugby socks. The Aran jumper was better, but there were no shoes. He went downstairs when he smelled bacon frying, and met Betty’s husband, Joe, whom he had not met the night before.
‘I’ve got a suitcase in the car,’ he said after a good breakfast, but Joe shook his head.
‘You’ll not get that back until they fetch up the car. I’ll see to that if you like.’
‘Still, I’d like to walk along there, to have a look at the place in daylight,’ John said. ‘It’s hard to believe it happened, so I want to see just what the drop is like.’ That sounded morbid but Joe seemed to understand.
‘They were going to put up a better fence, maybe now they will,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad corner if you don’t know the road.’
They found a pair of wellingtons that fitted him and an anorak belonging to Joe, and John trudged along the road with his hands in his pockets. The small hamlet had a row of cottages, a post-office-cum-store and a garage that no doubt serviced the farm machinery. A hundred yards further on he was on the long bend and it was easy to spot where his car had gone over because of the new gashes on the tree-trunks.
Fresh snow had almost covered the tracks on the grass verge but he saw that his footprints were not the only ones that were fresh. A car had stopped there recently and someone had walked to the same place. Inspector Jamieson no doubt had stopped there on his way to work, to inspect the spot in daylight. John held on to the trunk of a tree and leaned out to look down on his car. The vet’s description had been right; his car was hooked by the branch that went right through the windscreen and the tree itself was on the edge of a sheer drop. It was a sturdy old tree but landslips had taken the soil from its roots and now the main trunk was leaning out over the river.
There were deep grooves in the thick leaf mould showing where the car had gone down and where his rescuers had struggled to get him and themselves back up the slope, but it occurred to John that those marks might hide the traces of someone else having been down there later. It was a suggestion he couldn’t brush off as far-fetched, either, because the men had been so determined to make him stop, but what they’d hoped to find was beyond him.
The open boot of his car was facing him and there was no sign of his suitcase in it and Joe would have told him if it had been brought up—but on the other hand it could have sprung open during the car’s descent and the case could now be in the river …
It was Tollis who came in the green Range-Rover to collect him and John was relieved that Rees hadn’t come in person. Tollis might not have a lot to say, but he was a restful person to be with and wouldn’t press him to discuss what had happened.
‘You all right?’ was all he said after John had said goodbye to Betty and Joe.
He glanced over John’s odd assortment of clothes and the dressing on his forehead and then reached to start the engine. ‘It will be the first time the girls in reception have let anyone like you inside the building.’ And for Tollis that was humour.
‘They won’t see me like this. I’ll change at the flat first.’
Tollis shook his head. ‘Rees wants to see you right away.’
‘It won’t take long, and I can’t go around like this,’ John protested, lifting a green Wellington to prove his point. Tollis said nothing for a bit and seemed to be concentrating on his driving, but at last he looked over at John.
‘You can’t go to your flat. Rees sent somebody there to get you fresh clothes this morning and he found the door open. It’s a mess. Everything is smashed all to hell.’
John felt a sickening lurch deep in his abdomen. ‘I don’t believe this.’
‘Look, we’ll go to see Rees and talk it all out. There’s no point in saying anything until we’re all sitting down together.’
‘After I’ve been to the flat.’ John made it clear that he wasn’t prepared to argue on that point. ‘Just take me there first so that I can see it for myself.’
‘The police may be there still,’ Tollis pointed out, but he drove on in silence until they reached the city outskirts where dirty snow was piled high in the gutters. He still hadn’t spoken when he turned off and headed for Stock-bridge.
And during that time John was thinking of the flat, how he hardly used it these days except as somewhere to sleep. He and Trish had bought it when they married and he’d changed nothing after she was killed.
He had thought of moving several times but he’d never got around to actually doing it. It would have been too final. In the beginning it would have meant admitting that she was gone for good and later he’d been loath to shut the door on the memories. There had been nothing to motivate him into looking for somewhere else.
Tollis stopped in the main street and looked with raised eyebrows at John.
‘No, I’ll go up on my own,’ John said.
There was only one policeman still there and he was about to seal the door. John told him who he was and the man agreed to let him look around. ‘We’ve done all we want anyway,’ he said.
He stayed in the close as John stepped warily inside, afraid of what he’d find and the first thing was broken glass under his feet. Then a sour smell filled his nose and he tracked that down to his bedroom where all his clothes had been removed from the wardrobe and dumped on the floor. The bedlinen was piled on top and it was from this heap that the smell came. He moved closer and then was repelled when he realized that someone had sprayed urine over everything. In all the other rooms the surfaces had been swept clear, curtains pulled down, pictures removed from the walls. It was all smashed, trampled under feet that had delighted in wrecking his home. Photographs were scattered around and he salvaged a few that had escaped being fouled by urine.
Nothing else was worth saving. It hadn’t been expensively furnished. Most of the bits and pieces didn’t even match because in those early days of marriage they had bought what they could afford. They went to auctions and he had a sudden vivid picture of Trish’s delight when she had the highest bid. She didn’t
