him, brushing past and stopping abruptly a few feet short of the small group.
Ziggy was still hunkered down beside the woman’s body, his shirt plastered to his slim torso with a mixture of snow and sweat. Weird and Mondo stood behind him, arms folded across their chests, hands tucked in their armpits, heads thrust down between their raised shoulders. They were only trying to stay warm in the absence of coats, but they presented an unfortunate image of arrogance.
‘What’s going on here, then, lads?’ the policeman asked, his voice an aggressive attempt to stamp authority in spite of the greater weight of numbers arrayed against him.
Ziggy pushed himself wearily to his feet and shoved his wet hair out of his eyes. ‘You’re too late. She’s dead.’
Nothing in Alex’s twenty-one years had prepared him for a police interrogation in the middle of the night. TV cop shows and movies always made it look so regimented. But the very disorganization of the process was somehow more nerve-wracking than military precision would have been. The four of them had arrived at the police station in a flurry of chaos. They’d been hustled off the hill, bathed in the strobing blue lights of panda cars and ambulances, and nobody seemed to have any clear idea of what to do with them.
They’d stood under a streetlamp for what felt like a very long time, shivering under the frowning gaze of the constable Alex had summoned to the scene and one of his colleagues, a grizzled man in uniform with a scowl and a stoop. Neither officer spoke to the four young men, though their eyes never strayed from them.
Eventually, a harassed-looking man huddled into an overcoat that looked two sizes too big for him slithered over to them, his thin-soled shoes no match for the terrain. ‘Lawson, Mackenzie, take these boys down to the station, keep them apart when you get there. We’ll be down in a wee while to talk to them.’ Then he turned and stumbled back in the direction of their terrible discovery, now hidden behind canvas screens through which an eerie green light permeated, staining the snow.
The younger policeman gave his colleague a worried look. ‘How are we going to get them back?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ll have to squeeze them in your panda. I came up in the Sherpa van.’
‘Can we not take them back down in that? Then you could keep an eye on them while I’m driving.’
The older man shook his head, pursing his lips. ‘If you say so, Lawson.’ He gestured to the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy. ‘Come on, youse. Into the van. And no messing about, right?’ He herded them towards a police van, calling over his shoulder to Lawson, ‘You better get the keys off Tam Watt.’
Lawson set off up the slope, leaving them with Mackenzie. ‘I wouldnae like to be in your shoes when the CID get off that hill,’ he said conversationally as he climbed in behind them. Alex shivered, though not from the cold. It was slowly dawning on him that the police were regarding him and his companions as potential suspects rather than witnesses. They’d been given no opportunity to confer, to get their ducks in a row. The four of them exchanged uneasy looks. Even Weird had straightened out enough to realize this wasn’t some daft game.
When Mackenzie hustled them into the van, there had been a few seconds when they’d been left alone. Just sufficient time for Ziggy to mutter loud enough for their ears, ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t mention the Land Rover.’ Instant comprehension had filled their eyes.
‘Christ, aye,’ Weird said, head jerking back in terrified realization. Mondo chewed the skin round his thumbnail, saying nothing. Alex merely nodded.
The police station hadn’t felt any more composed than the crime scene. The desk sergeant complained bitterly when the two uniformed officers arrived with four bodies who were supposed to be prevented from communicating with each other. It turned out there were insufficient interview rooms to keep them separate. Weird and Mondo were taken to wait in unlocked cells, while Alex and Ziggy were left to their own devices in the station’s two interview rooms.
The room Alex found himself in was claustrophobically small. It was barely three paces square, as he established within minutes of being shut in to kick his heels. There were no windows, and the low ceiling with its greying polystyrene tiles made it all the more oppressive. It contained a chipped wooden table and four unmatching wooden chairs that looked exactly as uncomfortable as they felt. Alex tried them all in turn, finally settling for one that didn’t dig into his thighs as much as the others.
He wondered if he was allowed to smoke. Judging by the smell of the stale air, he wouldn’t have been the first. But he was a well-brought-up lad, and the absence of an ashtray gave him pause. He searched his pockets and found the screwed-up silver paper from a packet of Polo mints. Carefully, he spread it out, folding the edges up to form a rough tray. Then he took out his packet of Bensons and flipped the top open. Nine left. That should see him through, he thought.
Alex lit his cigarette and allowed himself to think about his position for the first time since they’d arrived at the police station. It was obvious, now he thought about it. They’d found a body. They had to be suspects. Everybody knew that the prime candidates for arrest in a murder investigation were either the ones who last saw the victim alive or the ones who found the body. Well, that was them on both counts.
He shook his head. The body. He was starting to think like them. This wasn’t just a body, it was Rosie. Somebody he knew, however slightly. He supposed that made it all the more suspicious. But he didn’t want to consider that now. He wanted that horror far from his mind. Whenever he closed his eyes, flashbacks to the hill played like a movie. Beautiful, sexy Rosie broken and bleeding on the snow. ‘Think about something else,’ he said aloud.
He wondered how the others would react to questioning. Weird was off his head, that was for sure. He’d had more than drink tonight. Alex had seen him with a joint in his hand earlier, but with Weird, there was no telling what else he might have indulged in. There had been tabs of acid floating around. Alex had refused it himself a couple of times. He didn’t mind dope but he preferred not to fry his brains. But Weird was definitely in the market for anything that would allegedly expand his consciousness. Alex fervently hoped that whatever he’d swallowed, inhaled or snorted, it would have worn off before it was his turn to be interviewed. Otherwise, Weird was likely to piss the cops off very badly indeed. And any fool knew that was a bad idea in the middle of a murder investigation.
Mondo would be another kettle of fish. This would freak him out in a totally different way. Mondo was, when you got right down to it, too sensitive for his own good. He’d always been the one picked on at school, called a jessie partly because of the way he looked and partly because he never fought back. His hair hung in tight ringlets round his pixie face, his big sapphire eyes always wide like a mouse keeking out from a divot. The lassies liked it, that was for sure. Alex had once overheard a pair of them giggling that Davey Kerr looked just like Marc Bolan. But in a school like Kirkcaldy High, what won you favour with the lassies could equally earn you a kicking in the cloakroom. If Mondo hadn’t had the other three to back him up, he’d have had a pretty thin time of it. To his credit, he knew that, and he repaid their services with interest. Alex knew he’d never have got through Higher French without Mondo’s help.
But Mondo would be on his own with the police. Nobody to hide behind. Alex could picture him now, head hung low, tossing the odd glance out from under his brows, picking at the skin round his thumbnail or flicking the lid of his Zippo open and shut. They’d get frustrated with him, think he had something to hide. The thing they’d never suss, not in a million years, was that the big secret with Mondo was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred,
