Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
‘Toblerone?’
Dave Davidson reached across the kitchen table for the offered triangle of chocolate. The old man holding the wrapper—Joe—nodded encouragingly.
‘Cheers,’ Dave told him. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’
On the other side of the table, sitting beside the man, a sixty-something woman, who had clearly enjoyed a number of Toblerones over the years, watched Dave like he was a magician doing a trick.
‘Can you eat that OK, aye?’ she asked.
Dave hesitated with the chocolate halfway to his mouth. ‘Can I eat a bit of Toblerone?’
‘I mean, you know, in your’—her eyes flitted up and down, taking him in—‘condition?’
‘Jesus Christ, Maureen,’ the old man whispered.
‘What condition’s that?’ Dave asked. ‘Sitting down? I mean, I hear that it’s better for digestion if you eat standing up, but that presents a few challenges.’
He shoved the chunk of chocolate in his mouth and grinned back at her.
‘Still, I reckon I can handle it. Seriously, you should see me setting about a Curly Wurly.’
‘Sorry about that,’ Joe said. ‘She’s…’
He carefully wrapped the chocolate in its silver foil while he considered his next word.
‘Thick.’
‘Oi!’ Maureen gave her husband a shove. ‘Cheeky bastard!’
It was said in such a way that Dave couldn’t quite tell if there was humour behind it, or if she was genuinely annoyed. Either way, she got up and clicked the kettle on for them, so her feelings didn’t seem to have been too badly hurt.
‘I’ll leave youse to it,’ she told them. ‘Emmerdale’s on.’
Joe blew out his cheeks and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He waited until the kitchen door was closed before apologising again.
‘She doesn’t mean anything by it. She’s just got no filter. She says what she thinks and, unfortunately, what she thinks is often a load of shite.’
‘It’s fine. Honest. Cheers for the chocolate,’ Dave said. ‘Joe, isn’t it?’
The old man sat straighter on the rustic wooden bench. ‘Joseph Malcolm Robertson. Born January fourteenth, nineteen-fifty-nine, Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Parents, Agnes Smith, born—’
‘Eh, that’s fine,’ Dave said, cutting the man off before he could deliver his entire life story. ‘So… You alright with “Joe,” aye?’
‘That’s OK, yes,’ Joe said, and though he attempted to hide his disappointment, he didn’t make a very good job of it. ‘I can write those details down for you, if it’ll be useful. I can send them over. We do email now. My grandson put it in the computer for us.’
‘I’ll get back to you on that,’ Dave told him. ‘I was just hoping you could talk me through what happened tonight. When you found the body.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Joe chewed thoughtfully on his own bit of Toblerone for a few moments, then nodded to indicate he was ready. ‘Mr Robertson was proceeding along a quiet stretch of the A95 as part of his usual nightly—’
‘Why are you doing it like that?’ Dave interjected.
Across the table, Joe blinked in confusion. ‘Like what?’
‘In third person. Like you’re talking about someone else.’
‘I thought that would make it easier for your report,’ the old man explained. ‘You could just write down what I said, exactly as I said it.’
‘Right. Well, cheers for that, but you’re fine. Just tell me in your own words.’
‘In my own words?’ Joe placed his hands flat on the old oak table and moved them back and forth, like he was grounding himself on the worn wood. ‘Right. OK. Well, I was out on my evening patrol, as usual.’
‘Patrol?’
‘Aye. With HAWKS.’
A crease appeared on Dave’s otherwise mostly smooth forehead. ‘You were patrolling with hawks?’
‘Aye. Wait, no. I don’t mean… Not the birds. I’m not the Hawkmaster, or anything.’
Joe reached a hand down beside him to the bench, then held up a bright yellow hi-vis vest. The letters HAWKS were emblazoned across the front, formed from strips of black electrical tape.
‘Highland Area Watch Keepers Society,’ Joe announced, pointing to each letter in turn.
Dave’s initial thought about an organisation dedicated to the ownership of timepieces was quickly replaced by a much more sensible suggestion.
‘Oh right, aye. You mean like a Neighbourhood Watch, sort of thing?’
‘Ha! Oh, you could say that! You could say we’re a Neighbourhood Watch sort of thing,’ Joe replied, though he seemed to be scoffing at the idea. ‘If you think the Territorial Army’s the special forces. Or… or a traffic warden’s the head of CID.’
The old man tapped at each of the letters again, reiterating their significance.
‘Highland Area Watch Keepers Society. Highland Area,’ he stressed.
‘That’d be an awfully big neighbourhood, would it not?
The neighbourhood watches, they’re important, aye.
They’re vital out here, but they’re just cogs in the machine.
HAWKS is the machine. That’s the best analogy I can give you.
There’s really no way to accurately describe it. ’
‘Right.’ Dave glanced down at his notebook. He was yet to write anything in it. ‘So, it’s like a network of Neighbourhood Watches, then?’
Joe hesitated, then quietly swallowed the remains of his Toblerone. ‘Aye, I suppose you could describe it like that, right enough.’
Dave smiled encouragingly. ‘Good. Right. So, you’re a volunteer, and—’
‘Pfft! A volunteer? A volunteer, he says! I’m the coordinator for the Aviemore-adjacent branch of the organisation. I manage all the other local volunteers.’
‘In Aviemore?’ Dave asked.
Joe shifted uncomfortably on the bench. ‘In the area adjacent to Aviemore. Aviemore itself is Callum Walker’s territory,’ he said, and Dave got the impression that this was a bone of contention for the old man. ‘I’m coordinator everywhere north of Aviemore and south of Boat of Garten.’
Dave couldn’t quite visualise what that might look like on a map, but it struck him as quite a small area with not very much in it.
‘So, you were on your patrol…?’
‘Yes. I’d already done a pass. I go down the track from here, along the A95 a few hundred yards, then up the track to Sally’s.’
‘Sally?’
‘Sally Robinson. Lovely woman. Grows her own carrots. She had a chicken. Wendy. I don’t know if she still does. I’ve not seen it, and I don’t like to ask.’
‘She’s a neighbour?’
‘Aye, Sally, then there’s Michael and Lesley on the other side, they’re lovely. Bit up their own arse, but lovely. Very into recycling. They text if we’ve left an upstairs light on.’
His lips puckered, like he didn’t really approve of that sort of behaviour.
‘And then, we don’t really know the other ones further along.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, like he was sharing some terrible secret. ‘They’re Indian. Nice enough, I think, but we don’t really cross paths all that much.’
An idea hit him so hard that he almost toppled backwards off the bench.
‘Here, you don’t think it was them, do you?’
‘I doubt it,’ Dave told him. ‘But we’ll talk to everyone.’
Joe pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Christ. Maureen gave them her big plate.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Maureen. When they moved in. Before she knew they were… She made them one of her apple pies. Does it in a big plate. We assumed they would bring it back, but, well…’ He sighed heavily. ‘Well, that’s that gone, then.’
‘You walked to Sally Robinson’s,’ Dave urged, trying to get things back on track. ‘Did that take you past the lay-by where you found the car?’
‘Yes. But that’s the thing, it wasn’t there then,’ Joe said.
‘This was around… Four o’clock? Thereabouts.
A Place in the Sun had just finished on Channel 4.
Whatever time that is. They were in Tenerife.
Eighty grand was all they had. It was nothing but shoeboxes.
I mean, one had a roof terrace, but you’d barely get a deckchair on it. ’
Dave, once again, fought to keep things headed in the right direction.
‘So, when did you see the car?’
‘That was around quarter to six,’ Joe said.
‘That must be a long patrol for you.’
‘Aye, well, better to be thorough,’ the old man reasoned.
‘I do two or three miles up north on foot, then all the way to the Aviemore boundary. If it’s raining heavy, I’ll drive it, but I think it’s important to be seen.
Let ne’er-do-wells know that the area’s under protection.
Reassure the general public, sort of thing. ’
‘So, the car must’ve arrived between four and quarter to six, you reckon?’
‘Absolutely. I assumed the worst as soon as I saw it.’ Joe’s lips thinned as he sucked in his cheeks. ‘Sexual congress. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve come across it, you know? Not by a long shot. People doing it. Out there. Not a thought for who might see them.’
‘You thought people were having sex in the car?’ Dave asked, finally jotting down a note. ‘That’s why you approached?’
Joe’s head was turned to the window. He gazed out through it, like he was looking back through time.
‘They wouldn’t have cared who’d seen them. Not one bit,’ he muttered. ‘You could’ve stood there for ages watching it, and they wouldn’t have bloody blushed. Sometimes they encourage that sort of thing, would you believe? It’s indecent, is what it is.’
He chewed at a bit of loose skin on his bottom lip.
‘Absolutely indecent.’
‘But, eh, nobody was actually shagging in the car, though?’ Dave asked.
The question jolted Joe back to the here and now. ‘Hm? Oh, no. No, he was dead.’
‘You opened the door?’
‘Too right I did. I was going to give them a piece of my mind for their… their dirty shenanigans,’ Joe explained. ‘And then, when I saw him, I knew straight away something wasn’t right. You know, with the blood, and the…’
He motioned to his throat, drawing an invisible line across it.
‘You don’t expect to see that sort of thing, do you? I mean, I suppose you do. I suppose it’s par for the course when you do your job,’ Joe said.
He turned his attention to the window again, and to the darkened world beyond the glass. The words became a whisper, clawing their way up his throat.
‘But when you’re not expecting it, it really catches you off guard.’