The Distant Echo. Val McDermid

about to clamber over the counter in his desperate desire for vengeance.

      ‘Sir, I think you’ve been misinformed.’

      ‘Don’t come it with me, you cunt,’ Duff screamed. ‘My sister’s lying dead, somebody’s going to pay.’

      Janice chose her moment. ‘Mr Duff?’ she said quietly, stepping forward.

      He whirled round and glared at her, wide-eyed, white spittle at the corners of his mouth. ‘Where are they?’ he snarled.

      ‘I’m very sorry about your sister. But nobody’s been arrested in connection with her death. We’re still in the early stages of our investigation, and we’re questioning witnesses. Not suspects. Witnesses.’ She put a cautious hand on his forearm. ‘You’d be better at home. Your mother needs her sons about her.’

      Duff shook off her hand. ‘I was told you’d got them locked up. The bastards that did this.’

      ‘Whoever told you made a mistake. We’re all desperate to catch the person who did this terrible thing, and sometimes that makes people jump to the wrong conclusions. Trust me, Mr Duff. If we had a suspect in custody, I would tell you.’ Janice kept her eyes on his, praying that her calm, unemotional approach would work. Otherwise he could break her jaw with a single blow. ‘Your family will be the first to know when we make an arrest. I promise you that.’

      Duff looked baffled and angry. Then suddenly, his eyes filled with tears and he slumped into one of the chairs in the waiting area. He wrapped his arms round his head and shook in a paroxysm of violent sobbing. Janice exchanged a helpless look with the PC behind the counter. He mimed the application of handcuffs but she shook her head and sat down next to him.

      Gradually, Brian Duff regained his composure. His hands dropped like stones into his lap and he turned his tear-stained face to Janice. ‘You’ll get him, though? The bastard that’s done this?’

      ‘We’ll do our best, Mr Duff. Now, why don’t you let me drive you home? Your mum was worried about you earlier. She needs to be reassured that you’re all right.’ She got to her feet and looked down at him expectantly.

      The rage had subsided for the moment. Meekly, Duff stood up and nodded. ‘Aye.’

      Janice turned to the duty constable and said, ‘Tell DC Shaw I’m taking Mr Duff home. I’ll catch up with what I’m supposed to be doing when I get back.’ Nobody was going to give her a hard time for acting on her own initiative for once. Anything that could be discovered about Rosie Duff and her family was grist to the mill right now, and she was perfectly placed to catch Brian Duff with his defences down. ‘She was a lovely girl, Rosie,’ she said conversationally as she led Duff out of the front entrance and round the side to the car park.

      ‘You knew her?’

      ‘I drink in the Lammas sometimes.’ It was a small lie, expedient in the circumstances. Janice considered the Lammas Bar about as enticing as a bowl of cold porridge. A smoke-flavoured one at that.

      ‘I cannae take it in,’ Duff said. ‘This is the kind of thing you see on the telly. Not the kind of thing that happens to people like us.’

      ‘How did you hear about it?’ Janice was genuinely curious. News generally travelled through a small town like St Andrews at the speed of sound, but not usually in the middle of the night.

      ‘I crashed at one of my pals’ last night. His girlfriend works the breakfast shift at the greasy spoon on South Street. She heard about it when she turned in for work at six and she got straight on the phone. Fuck,’ he exploded. ‘I thought it was some kind of stupid bad-taste joke at first. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you?’

      Janice unlocked the car, thinking, No, actually, I don’t have the sort of friends who would find that amusing. She said, ‘You don’t want to think even for a second that it could be the truth.’

      ‘Exactly,’ Duff said, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Who would do a thing like that to Rosie, though? I mean, she was a good person, you know? A nice lassie. Not some slut.’

      ‘You and your brother kept an eye on her. Did you see anybody hanging around her that you didn’t like the look of?’ Janice started the engine, shivering as a blast of cold air gusted out of the vents. Christ, but it was a bitter morning.

      ‘There were always lowlifes sniffing around. But everybody knew they’d have me and Colin to answer to if they bothered Rosie. So they kept their distance. We always looked out for her.’ He suddenly slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘So where were we last night when she really needed us?’

      ‘You can’t blame yourself, Brian.’ Janice edged the panda out of the car park on to the glassy compressed snow of the main drag. The Christmas lights looked sickly against the yellowish grey of the sky, the glamorous laser laid on by the university physics department an unremarkable pale scribble against the low clouds.

      ‘I don’t blame myself. I blame the bastard that did this. But I just wish I’d been there to stop it happening. Too fucking late, always too fucking late,’ he muttered obscurely.

      ‘So you didn’t know who she was meeting?’

      He shook his head. ‘She lied to me. She said she was going to a Christmas party with Dorothy that she works with. But Dorothy turned up at the party I was at. She said Rosie had gone off to meet some bloke. I was going to give her what for when I saw her. I mean, it’s one thing keeping Mum and Dad out of the picture. But me and Colin, we were always on her side.’ He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I cannae bear it. Last thing she said to me was a lie.’

      ‘When did you see her last?’ Janice slewed to a halt at the West Port and edged forward on to the Strathkinness road.

      ‘Yesterday, after I’d finished my work. I met her in the town, we went shopping for Mum’s Christmas present. The three of us clubbed together to get her a new hairdrier. Then we went to Boots to get her some nice soap. I walked Rosie to the Lammas and that’s when she told me she was going out with Dorothy.’ He shook his head. ‘She lied. And now she’s dead.’

      ‘Maybe she didn’t lie, Brian,’ Janice said. ‘Maybe she was planning to go to the party but something came up later in the evening.’ That was probably as truthful as the story Rosie had offered up, but Janice knew from experience that the bereaved would grasp at any straw that kept intact their image of the person they’d lost.

      Duff acted true to form. Hope lit his face. ‘You know, that’s probably it. Because Rosie wasn’t a liar.’

      ‘She had her secrets, though. Like any girl.’

      He scowled again. ‘Secrets are trouble. She should have known that.’ Something struck him suddenly and his body tensed. ‘Was she … you know? Interfered with?’

      Nothing Janice could say would offer him any comfort. If the rapport she appeared to have established with Duff was going to survive, she couldn’t afford to let him think she too was a liar. ‘We won’t know for sure until after the post mortem, but yes, it looks that way.’

      Duff smashed his fist into the dashboard. ‘Bastard,’ he roared. As the car fishtailed up the hill towards Strathkinness, he turned in his seat. ‘Whoever did this, he better fucking hope you catch him before I do. I swear to God, I’ll kill him.’

      The house felt violated, Alex thought as he opened the door into the self-contained unit the Laddies fi’ Kirkcaldy had turned into their personal fiefdom. Cavendish and Greenhalgh, the two English former public schoolboys they shared the house with, spent as little time there as possible, an arrangement that suited everyone perfectly. They’d already gone home for the holidays, but today the braying accents that sounded so stridently posh to Alex would have been far more welcome than the police presence that seemed to dominate the very air he breathed.

      Maclennan at his heels, Alex ran upstairs to the room where he slept. ‘Don’t forget, we want everything you’re wearing. That includes underwear,’