Black Hearts Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE SKELFS

  ‘The Skelfs return in a dynamic and poignant entry in this startling series, where Johnstone balances the cosmos, music, death and life, and wraps it all in a compelling story featuring strong women’ Marni Graff

  ‘I am running out of superlatives for this cracking, unmissable series. I adore the Skelfs, am an unashamed #Skelfaholic (I even have the T-shirt). Black Hearts is outstanding. I loved it with a passion … best yet in this superb series’ Live & Deadly

  ‘A study in humanity from the darkest of corners’ Sarah Sultoon

  ‘Simply stunning. Tense, funny and deeply moving’ Mark Billingham

  ‘If you loved Iain Banks, you’ll devour the Skelfs series’ Erin Kelly

  ‘Nobody portrays modern Edinburgh better than Doug Johnstone. The Great Silence speaks volumes about the power of story’ Val McDermid

  ‘Mysteries aplenty … a poignant reflection on grief and the potential for healing that lies within us all. A proper treat’ Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘A thrilling, atmospheric book, set in the dark streets of Edinburgh. That great city really came alive for me in this gripping tale. Move over Ian Rankin, Doug Johnstone is coming through!’ Kate Rhodes

  ‘An unstoppable, thrilling, bullet train of a book that cleverly weaves in family and intrigue, and has real emotional impact. I totally loved it’ Helen Fields

  ‘The power of this book, though, lies in the warm personalities and dark humour of the Skelfs, and by the end readers will be just as interested in their relationships with each other as the mysteries they are trying to solve’ Scotsman

  ‘Remarkable’ Sunday Times Crime Club STAR PICK

  ‘Keeps you hungry from page to page. A crime reader can’t ask anything more’ The Sun

  ‘This enjoyable mystery is also a touching and often funny portrayal of grief … more, please’ Guardian

  ‘Wonderful characters: flawed, funny and brave’ Sunday Times

  ‘Exceptional … a must for those seeking strong, authentic, intelligent female protagonists’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘An engrossing and beautifully written tale that bears all the Doug Johnstone hallmarks in its warmth and darkly comic undertones’ Herald Scotland

  ‘Gripping and blackly humorous’ Observer

  ‘A tense ride … strong, believable characters’ Kerry Hudson, Big Issue

  SHORTLISTED for the McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Book of the Year

  LONGLISTED for Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

  SHORTLISTED for Amazon Publishing Capital Crime Thriller of the Year

  Black Hearts

  Doug Johnstone

  For Tricia, Aidan and Amber

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Dorothy

  2 Jenny

  3 Hannah

  4 Dorothy

  5 Jenny

  6 Dorothy

  7 Hannah

  8 Jenny

  9 Hannah

  10 Dorothy

  11 Jenny

  12 Dorothy

  13 Hannah

  14 Jenny

  15 Dorothy

  16 Jenny

  17 Hannah

  18 Dorothy

  19 Hannah

  20 Jenny

  21 Dorothy

  22 Hannah

  23 Dorothy

  24 Jenny

  25 Hannah

  26 Dorothy

  27 Hannah

  28 Jenny

  29 Dorothy

  30 Jenny

  31 Hannah

  32 Dorothy

  33 Jenny

  34 Hannah

  35 Dorothy

  36 Hannah

  37 Jenny

  38 Hannah

  39 Dorothy

  40 Jenny

  41 Hannah

  42 Jenny

  43 Dorothy

  44 Jenny

  45 Hannah

  46 Dorothy

  47 Jenny

  48 Hannah

  49 Dorothy

  50 Jenny

  51 Hannah

  52 Jenny

  53 Hannah

  54 Dorothy

  55 Jenny

  56 Dorothy

  57 Jenny

  58 Hannah

  59 Dorothy

  60 Jenny

  61 Hannah

  62 Jenny

  63 Dorothy

  64 Jenny

  65 Hannah

  66 Dorothy

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Black Hearts

  1

  Dorothy

  The atmosphere in Liberton Cemetery was off. Dorothy pulled at her cuffs as she walked behind the four pallbearers carrying Kathleen Frame to her last resting place. The starchy Church of Scotland minister had just finished an awkward service in the kirk behind them, and that energy followed them out to the graveyard. With the stone steps and rough tarmac here, they couldn’t use the wheel bier. It wasn’t good to have the coffin rattling its way to the grave, mourners imagining the body being tossed around inside.

  Archie was front left of the coffin, holding a handle at waist height. Across from him was Mike, Kathleen’s brother-in-law, mouth turned down. Back left was Kathleen’s son Danny, gripping his handle so tight his knuckles looked fit to burst. He glowered at Mike’s back like he was trying to burn a hole through him.

  Grief came in infinite forms, there were as many different ways to mourn as there were people, and Dorothy had learned never to be surprised. Some wailed and gnashed their teeth, others quietly sobbed, laughed nervously or openly, stood like statues, simmered like pressure cookers.

  They passed a row of old, fallen gravestones, no living relatives to pay for restoration. They walked past a gathering of smaller graves for stillborn babies, all from the early seventies. She thought about the lost possibilities. They would be late forties now, her daughter’s age.

  The pallbearers walked through a passageway in the wall separating the old kirkyard from the newer cemetery. The view from Liberton Brae filled Dorothy’s heart, Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags towering over the city like ancient sentinels. She could see the observatory on Blackford Hill where Hannah’s post-grad office was, and Braid Hills further left, large expanses of grass and gorse.

  The sky was mottled salmon skin, the leaves on the cherry and yew trees wet to touch as Dorothy passed. She felt the freshness on her fingers, touched them to her forehead. Up ahead, Danny was still trying to crush his coffin handle, staring at Mike’s back. The fourth pallbearer was a friend of Danny’s called Evan, clearly uncomfortable in a black suit too small for his lanky frame. He’d accompanied Danny to the Skelf house to arrange the funeral. Danny didn’t mention his dad throughout the whole process.

  As they came over the rise, the view of the city expanded. Dorothy thought about her family’s relationship with Edinburgh. She pictured the city as a biodome, a complex and interconnected group of organisms, autonomous yet part of a greater self. She imagined herself, Jenny, Hannah and Indy as miniscule bacteria, working to help other parts of the whole, scurrying from their funeral-director home to hospitals, care homes, hospices, the mortuary, churches, mosques, synagogues, crematoriums, cemeteries, graveyards, memorial gardens, wakes. Helping people transition from life to death.

  She looked around. There were thirty mourners, mostly middle-aged, a handful of Danny’s friends, wide-eyed at being confronted by mortality. Graveyards were no place for the young.

  They walked past a noticeboard at the Liberton Brae entrance. Pinned on it was a council warning not to misbehave, sixteen bullet points written in constipated quasi-legal language: ‘No person shall, whilst in a cemetery, wilfully or carel
essly use any profane or offensive language, or behave in an offensive, disorderly or insulting manner.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Dorothy said under her breath.

  They reached the freshly dug grave and put Kathleen down on a low wooden plinth alongside. Archie joined Dorothy as the mourners gathered at the other side of the grave. The smell of damp earth was strong, and Dorothy thought of planting and rebirth. She was spiritual not religious, didn’t follow any doctrine but did believe there were energies in the universe we don’t fully understand. Hannah told her that modern physics agreed – the interconnectedness of things, chaos theory, fuzzy logic, quantum entanglement.

  She looked at the coffin and the grave. Burial was becoming less common, cremation overtaking. Both were terrible for the environment, but most people they dealt with were old and liked the old ways. Things take time to change.

  The minister stood at the head of the grave. Danny glared at his uncle, who stood next to his wife. Mike had a strong jaw and blue eyes, Roxanne had bright-red hair, Jackie O shades and a low-cut black dress.

  Dorothy glanced at the adjacent gravestone, worked out the age of William Hush when he died. Sixty-seven. She did this with every grave. Now, at seventy-two, she was older than many she calculated.

  The minister’s monotone fought with the traffic noise from Liberton Brae. A bus’s chugging engine filled the air. Two crows took off from a gravestone and flew into a fir tree. Dorothy felt drops of rain on her face.

  ‘You fucking know.’ This was Danny pointing at Mike.

  Evan reached for Danny’s shoulder but Danny shook him off. The minister stopped.

  Danny took two steps towards Mike. ‘You know where he is.’

  Mike shook his head and took his hands out of his pockets.

  ‘Danny,’ he said. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘No.’ Danny took more steps. ‘He faked the whole thing and you know all about it.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’ Mike’s fists were clenched. He shifted his shoulders so that he was now protecting Roxanne.

  ‘You bastard.’

  Danny lunged at him. Mike ducked but not quick enough, got a thunk on the side of his head which knocked him off balance. Danny shoved his chest and kicked his crotch, Mike doubled over. Danny went to punch again but Mike shoulder-charged him, arms around his waist as they staggered towards the open grave. Danny smacked the back of Mike’s head then writhed free and spun the pair of them round. Mike’s heels hung over the lip of the hole as Danny pummelled him. They lurched backward and for a moment they were suspended over the grave. Mike’s feet scrambled until he found footing on the other edge of the grave, Danny gripping his waist, their weight propelling them over the hole and straight into Kathleen’s coffin, which slid off the plinth and smacked into William Hush’s gravestone. The lid split as the casket fell back from the stone, then it flapped open and Kathleen sprawled onto the grass, her face thumping the ground, skirt riding up her thighs, arms splayed out like she was skydiving.

  2

  Jenny

  She stepped into the water and her breath caught in her chest. She waded deeper, grey swells hitting her thighs and groin. She breathed, tried to get over the shock. Each time she did this, her body acted like it would never recover. Gradually her breathing softened but her skin still burned with cold. She went in up to her chest and turned.

  Porty Beach had changed a lot in the few years since she’d lived down here. It was mostly empty back then and no one went wild swimming. She hated that term, it was just swimming. Now groups of women were out in the water, bathing-capped heads bobbing like inquisitive seals along the seafront. Some folk were on paddleboards, kayaks, a rowing boat heading to Musselburgh. The sky reflected the shifting grey of the sea.

  She swam straight out. Most other swimmers were in groups, but she wasn’t someone who joined in. The dark stretch of Fife lay across the firth as she swam into bigger waves, salty mouthfuls when she timed it wrong, seaweed against her legs. It wouldn’t take Freud to work this out. Just over a year since all the shit with Craig on Elie beach – setting fire to him and watching him burn on the boat like it was a Viking funeral. They still hadn’t found his body. And here she was, swimming in the same stretch of water to heal herself mentally and physically. And maybe stumble across his charred and bloated corpse so she could be sure.

  The waves got bigger as she paused to rest. Swirls tugged at her legs, an undertow she hadn’t felt before, despite coming here for the last year. Brandon, her therapist, had his doubts about all this. Dorothy and Hannah pushed her towards therapy because of the night terrors, the alcohol and sleeping pills, the fact she’d destroyed everything with Liam. Fuck, swimming was supposed to stop her thinking.

  She pushed into the swells, sea spray on her face. She felt another tug at her legs as a wave swept over her. She flipped, struggled to get upright, eyes stinging from the salt. She saw gloomy daylight for a moment, gulped in air, then another wave crashed on her head, pushing her under like a giant hand, the undertow spinning her until she wasn’t sure which way was up. She felt another wave hammering the surface and plunging through to shove her down, her lungs starting to burn, arms and legs frantic, scrambling to get to the surface, whichever way that was, then another wave and she felt energy drain from her limbs.

  She saw a figure approach through the murk, then she was spun around by a current. She felt hands on her waist, pushing her up, and she pictured Craig, his gun at her head as he shoved her into the boat and poured petrol over her before she flipped things and sent him to his death. But maybe he had come back, this was his revenge, drag her to the bottom of the ocean with him.

  Her head broke the surface and she gasped, swung round and threw a punch, only it wasn’t Craig, of course, just some Good Samaritan saving her life, blood now pouring from his nose. A wave broke over her head and she wanted to get sucked into oblivion.

  ‘So that’s been my morning,’ Jenny laughed. ‘Punched a guy for saving my life. What about you, cured any psychos?’

  She tilted her head and smiled at Brandon. His office was just big enough for a desk in one corner, a therapy area in the other, two low chairs facing each other. The chairs were uncomfortable and Jenny heaved herself out and walked around. Nervous energy coursed through her every time she came here.

  Brandon King was attached to the university’s psychology department. He wasn’t a qualified psychotherapist yet, which meant he was dirt cheap. His wee office in the new building at the bottom of Chalmers Street was a stone’s throw from where Hannah used to attend counselling sessions. Hannah had apparently come to terms with her dad’s psychotic behaviour and eventual death. She had Indy for support, a new marriage to a loving wife, two beautiful young things bouncing back from everything life threw at them. Jenny didn’t feel like she would ever bounce back from this.

  She stared out of the window. The leaves were turning in the Meadows and over on Bruntsfield Links. She could just see their house, three storeys of Gothic Victorian melodrama overlooking the Links from Greenhill Gardens. Funeral directors and private investigators, it was a wonder she hadn’t been to therapy before now. And she didn’t even believe in therapy. Talking about your feelings was stupid. She’d come here under duress but found Brandon cute and amiable, a daft puppy.

  She turned back to him. He still hadn’t spoken, classic therapist schtick. He was tall and goofy, a mop of curly black hair, in a plaid shirt and jeans, Converse. He was early thirties, not quite young enough to be her son but not far off.

  He stuck his chin out eventually. ‘So how did that make you feel?’

  Jenny rolled her eyes and tutted at the cliché. ‘Fucking great. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t sue.’

  Brandon nodded. ‘Are you sure swimming in the Forth is a good idea?’

  He was a hundred-percent right. But imagine a crazy coincidence, if, one time, she found Craig’s disintegrating corpse bobbing on the surface, fish nibbling his toes, sucking out his eyeballs, chewing on his re
ctum. How fucking sweet would that be?

  ‘It’s good exercise,’ she said.

  Brandon frowned. She found his disapproval hilarious. He knew exactly what she was like yet still managed to be disappointed in her.

  ‘What about the meditation exercises we talked about?’

  She went cross-eyed and stuck her thumbs up. ‘Just great. Fantastic.’

  She was trying to get a rise out of him, part of the playful back and forth.

  He shrugged and smiled. It was a cute smile. ‘You’re paying for these sessions, Jenny. If you don’t think they’re useful…’

  This was part of it too, he pretended he didn’t care but he was too nice not to.

  ‘OK.’ Jenny put her hands up as if he was pointing a gun. She remembered Craig doing exactly that on Elie beach, lighthouse flashing behind him, the shush of the waves in her ears.

  She felt suddenly tired, crashing after the adrenaline from the thing in the sea earlier.

  Her phone pinged in her bag, and she went to her chair and took it out. A message from Mum. She read it and lifted her bag from the back of the chair, threw it over her shoulder and stuffed the phone back in.

  ‘Sorry, big guy, I have to pick up a body. You can cure me next time.’

  3

  Hannah

  Hannah watched Indy walk up Middle Meadow Walk towards Söderberg. Her hair had grown out recently and suited her face, and the dark-turquoise highlights matched her eyes. The curve of her hips in her suit, bracelets on her wrists, henna patterns on her hands. She spotted Hannah and waved. Hannah got up from her seat outside the café and they kissed, once hard then a softer coda.

  ‘How’s work?’ Hannah said as they sat.

  ‘You know,’ Indy said, flicking her hair forward over a shoulder. ‘Full of death and grief. You didn’t make it into uni yet, then?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  Hannah had been excited to start her PhD a year ago, working in the exoplanet research group at Edinburgh University, her own small office at the Royal Observatory. But she was in the middle of it now and felt a little ground down. She was a long way from the initial burst of enthusiasm, but the end point seemed an impossible goal. Her daily routine was number crunching and mathematical modelling, working out the signatures of planets around other stars. But the giant telescopes they needed to detect these things took forever to come online, and it all seemed billions of miles away. Literally.