Everyone could feel it and in small ways showed it: the team was complete again with DCI Bell back in charge. For over an hour they had exchanged information, explained leads followed, cursed over dead-ends and, at the close, had their tasks allocated to them by her.
‘Alice, you and Alistair can go to Nicholas Lyon’s funeral,’ she instructed. ‘It’s at the Warriston crem. Starts at eleven o’clock.’
Then she turned her attention to DI Manson. ‘By the way, Inspector, you haven’t told us how you got on with that Munro woman?’
Open laughter followed her query, and she raised her eyebrows quizzically.
‘Well, Eric?’
‘A malicious nutter, ma’am. I had to climb eleven storeys in a tower block to be told that she’d seen the accident, but only in her fucking head.’
‘And I gather you’ve a sore leg?’ Elaine Bell said sympathetically, looking at his left foot, now shod in an oversized tartan slipper.
‘I have,’ he replied with dignity.
‘Well, maybe today you could mark up statements, eh? Stay in the office?’
The Inspector nodded before limping off, turning round angrily on catching a whispered chant of ‘Pieces of eight, pieces of eight’ from Alistair Watt.
Little groups of people wandered uneasily about the car park, conversing in low voices, peering around anxiously for their allocated place, no allowance made in the crematorium’s rigid timetable for the bereaved getting lost. The notice stated that the ‘Lyon’ funeral was to be held in the Lorimer Chapel, a building more fitted to a bus-station complex than any religious purpose, its architecture low-key and utilitarian, carelessly hostile to the numinous.
Mrs Nordquist was standing alone in the front row, the place otherwise completely deserted. Feeling the need to stick together and somehow manufacture a congregation out of thin air, the others took their places beside her as if such proximity had been necessitated by a shortage of space. She acknowledged their presence by no more than a slow-motion blink in the shade of her broad-brimmed black hat.
‘When’s kick-off?’ Alastair whispered.
‘Eleven o’clock exactly. Three minutes to go.’
An aged man crossed in front of the altar, genuflected while making the sign of the cross and made for a pew towards the back. He was joined, seconds later, by a couple of elderly women, ankle-fat sagging over their too-tight shoes. The sound of piped music became audible as if to herald the entry of a group, pensioners all, whispering to each other irritably before cramming themselves in single file into a middle pew. Last to arrive was a thin man, evidently unused to such chapels, placing the kneeler on his seat as if it was a cushion.
The service itself was uninspiring, all the motions simply gone through. Prayers were murmured in reverential tones and the paltry congregation’s attempt at hymn singing was bolstered by another hidden music system, miraculously providing an angelic choral accompaniment. Eventually, to the sound of the Trumpet Voluntary, the coffin, swathed in an embroidered sheet, sank down before juddering its way into a concealed opening, its last few feet in silence except for a strange squeaking sound from the rollers.
A few more desultory devotions and they were free to go, the black-hatted undertakers almost outnumbering the bereaved. Alice recognised one of the old ladies as the gossiping shopkeeper, and the family resemblance with the other one was so marked that she had no doubt that they were sisters. Their escort, the aged man, dawdled nearby, fidgeting, eventually cupping their elbows and easing them into the car. The pensioners helped each other clamber back into their minibus, a battered van with ‘MOODY’S COACHES-CARNBO 866644’ in gold lettering on its unwashed rear. Two attempts at ignition and its engine spluttered into life, the vehicle weaving its way between dazed mourners. Only the thin man remained unaccounted for, gazing at the bouquet of flowers propped up against the chapel wall, reading the inscription on the card.
‘Excuse me, could we talk to you for a minute?’ Alice asked hesitantly. The mourner looked up, surprised to be approached, more so again when they showed him their identification.
‘Are you a relation or friend of Mr Lyon?’ Alistair began.
‘Yeah, relative. I’m Ivan McKellar, his nephew. My mum’s his sister.’
‘But she’s not here?’
‘No. They don’t get on.’
‘Sorry to intrude, here of all places, Mr McKellar, but could you tell us why?’ Alistair continued.
Seeing the man’s disquiet at the query, Alice indicated the Astra and the three of them then sat inside it, as if in some way a post-funeral Police interview in an enclosed space was more seemly than an open-air one.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Ivan McKellar enquired.
‘We need background information about your uncle. He died as a result of a hit-and-run accident. His death is being investigated, but we know very little about him. Anything you could tell us might be of help.’
‘Okay,’ the man nodded, ‘but I haven’t much to give you. They fell out, him and my mother because… well, he was gay wasn’t he? She’s religious, Catholic, devout, blah, blah, blah, blah. She thinks hell-fire’s his destination…’ he shrugged. ‘Mine too, if she but knew it. She cut him off thirty, maybe more, years ago. I was only about six but I remember him well. I loved him, thought he was the world’s best uncle. One day she said we were never going to see him again. She’d discovered that he was involved in a gay relationship with the man he lived with. Obviously, nobody else would ever have assumed anything else but… jeez, otherworldly or what? Anyway, all contact ended then, but I never forgot him. I missed him. So when I was older I started writing to him, just now and then, but he always answered. Dead quick, too. After I moved to Edinburgh, got a teaching job at the University, we used to meet up. Not often, he wasn’t in the city much. I eventually told him I was gay, but he didn’t say a lot about it. Old school maybe, you know, the “don’t flaunt it” attitude. And perhaps there is a gay gene, because I’ve certainly got it. Soon, I’ll tell her too, and then she’ll cut me off as well. None of that loving the sinner crap for her.’
‘Are you his only family then, your mother, brothers and sisters or whatever?’
‘I think so. There were just the two of them and there’s just the one of me. Not good breeders, you see, my family. Yeah, we’re pretty well it.’
‘Nobody else?’ Alice asked.
‘Nobody else. Too many dead ends. Me and him for a start.’
Elaine Bell could not conceal the pleasure she felt on returning to St Leonards and her command. The weeks away had felt like an eternity. She was conscious that she was smiling too much, an almost imbecilic grin periodically escaping, and had to stifle the impulse to sing under her breath. But this was the way it was meant to be for her. Destined. Alive again, truly living. And those familiar station smells were most welcome. No more cooking, cleaning and manufacturing outings simply to get herself out of the house. No more awkward exchanges with neighbours or, God forbid, day-time television. All the pains remained, but here they were no more than a distraction, there they had somehow magnified, engulfed her.