Up the hill towards Liberton from the Cameron Toll shopping centre and Inch Park, the housing estate was a twisty mess of cul-de-sacs and circles designed to confound even the most well-developed sense of direction. It had been built long before the advent of Sat-Nav, and Janie Harrison could only imagine that the planners involved had suffered miserable childhoods. It didn’t help that all the houses looked the same, making it almost impossible to tell whether they had been down any particular drive once or half a dozen times.
‘Not the most inspiring of places,’ she said as she leaned over the steering wheel and peered out through the windscreen. The pool car she’d managed to grab wasn’t as nice as the boss’s Alfa, but it was a lot quieter. One of the new additions to the fleet, a boxy little Nissan, it ran on electricity and was surprisingly fun to drive. It seemed to have a decent range too, if the numbers on the screen built into the dashboard were anything to go by. How long it would last when a forgetful constable left it parked up overnight without plugging it in was something they would no doubt find out soon enough.
‘Doesn’t look much, no. But these houses are a lot bigger than the shoeboxes they’re throwing up nowadays. Friends of mine rented one when they were at Uni.’ DC Blane had pushed the passenger seat so far back he was practically looking out the rear window.
‘You’ve been here before then?’ Janie asked, as she indicated to turn down yet another street with no obvious street sign.
‘Not for a while. But I crashed a couple of times. It’s fine and handy for the King’s Buildings.’
Janie tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘So you know your way around then, Lofty, so how the hell do we get to Cairn Close?’
Blane sat up a little straighter, his head brushing the roof lining. ‘Sorry. Thought you knew where you were going.’ He pointed to an opening between two houses that might have been a road. ‘It’s up there.’
Janie muttered under her breath, but followed the directions, and soon enough they were sliding into a parking space in front of an anonymous semi-detached house. Much like the others in the close, it was harled in grey-brown pebble-dash render, with dark brown frames to the windows and a matching front door. If the estate’s planners had intended the houses to have front gardens, that wish had long since given way to two-car family lifestyle. Number Twelve was fronted by an uneven patch of tarmac with dead weed poking through plentiful cracks. An elderly Volvo estate had been backed in tight to the wall that marked the boundary between the two halves of the semi-detached house. Judging by the patina of dirt, the faded paintwork and the flat tyre, it hadn’t moved anywhere recently. Janie pointed at the number plate. ‘Run that when we get back to the station, aye?’
Lofty nodded, pulled out his notebook and was in the process of writing when the front door opened wide. A woman not much older than Harrison herself stood in the doorway, a small child apparently welded to her hip.
‘What youse want? If you’re here to sell Jesus, I’m no’ buying.’
‘Detective Sergeant Harrison.’ Janie held up her warrant card with one hand and pointed at Lofty with the thumb of her other. ‘My colleague, Detective Constable Blane. Would you be Miranda Whitaker?’
The woman took a step forward so that she could see the card. Janie gave her all the time she needed to read it. They were bearing bad news of a sort, nothing to be gained from antagonising her.
‘Aye,’ she said, after a moment.
‘Could we possibly come in?’
The inside of the house lived up to the low expectations of the exterior, although Lofty had been right about the generous size of the rooms. Miranda led them through a hallway that would have been wide had it not been for the baby buggy and other detritus cluttering up the space. Open-tread stairs in a dark stained bare wood climbed up to the first floor, and someone had made a makeshift gate at the bottom to stop the toddler exploring. It reminded Janie of her gran’s house. All very chic and fashionable in the seventies perhaps, but not exactly practical for modern living.
‘Will this take long? Only I’ve tae get Senga down soon or she’ll be a right pain later on.’ Miranda hefted the child to her other side. Janie wasn’t much of the mothering type, but even she thought the little girl looked a bit dopey. Wide eyes stared at nothing in particular, and she sucked continuously on a rubber teat. Maybe she’d just had a feed.
‘How old is she?’ It seemed the thing to ask, even if Janie didn’t think it would pertain much to their investigation.
‘Eighteen months, good as. Been out twice as long as she was in.’ Miranda smiled at her own joke, then turned serious again. ‘Come on through and sit down. Youse wanting a coffee?’
Tempting though it was, Janie declined. They went through into a slightly less cluttered living room that looked like it hadn’t been redecorated in fifty years. Lofty sat first, no doubt aware that his size could be intimidating. Janie waited for Miranda to settle with her child into a large armchair, then perched on the arm of the sofa so her head was at the same height as her colleague.
‘Your child’s father, Stephen. You’re separated now, yes?’
Miranda joggled young Senga on her knee, the child no more animated than a doll. ‘Steve? What’s that bastard done now?’
‘There was a fire at his tenement last night. I’m sorry, but he didn’t survive.’
The silence that fell on the room lasted a long time. Somewhere a clock ticked, and the soft shush shush shush of Miranda’s foot on the carpet was the only other sound. She didn’t look shocked, or even sad. Something else entirely spread its slow way across her face.
‘He’s dead?’ she asked eventually. Then without waiting for an answer added: ‘Well thank fuck for that.’
As responses went, it wasn’t quite the one Janie was expecting. She’d done more than enough death knocks in her time, and the responses were usually much the same. Shock, surprise, denial, anger. She’d never encountered relief before, at least not worn so openly.
‘Did he suffer?’ Miranda asked, then shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter, really. He’s dead and that’s the end of it. Thank fuck.’
‘How long has it been since you separated?’ Janie asked.
‘Not long enough. Four months? Maybe five? Still waiting on the divorce to come through, but at least he’s out of the house.’ Miranda paused a moment, then her face lit up. ‘Guess I won’t be needing the divorce after all. Won’t be a trial either.’
‘Trial?’ Janie glanced across at Blane, who was doing his best to be unobtrusive. He shook his head and shrugged, no more clued up than she was. That was unlike him.
The brightness disappeared, replaced by anger. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I . . . No. I’m sorry. It only happened this morning.’
‘Unbelievable.’ Miranda shook her head slowly for a moment, then stared straight at Harrison. ‘I caught him abusing our wee girl. Playing with her like she was . . . and she was barely three months . . .’ Her face screwed up in utter disgust. ‘Oh, he tried to deny it, but then I found stuff on his computer. That’s when I called you lot. You should’ve locked him up and thrown away the key, but that fucker of a lawyer pops up and the next thing he’s got bail. At least they stopped him coming round here, but . . .’
She stopped speaking, partly because she appeared to have run out of words, partly because the child had finally picked up on her mother’s agitation and begun to sob. Not the full-throated someone’s trying to kill me wail that Janie associated with small infants, but distress nonetheless.
‘Hey, hey, little one. Daddy won’t hurt you ever again, my sweetheart.’ Miranda hugged her daughter close, one hand gently stroking the infant’s wispy hair. In moments the child had calmed.
Janie stood up, one hand going to her pocket. She pulled out a card, aware that it still identified her as Detective Constable Harrison. It didn’t matter, the numbers were the same. ‘I’m sorry. We should have known about Mr Whitaker’s . . . situation before we came here. I’d offer my condolences, but I don’t think you’d want them. If you need anything else though, give me a call.’
She slid the card on to the coffee table. DC Blane was already through the door and into the hallway.
‘We’ll see ourselves out, Mrs Whitaker. Thank you for your time.’
Janie was halfway to the door before the woman spoke.
‘It’s Miss Keegan. There’s no Mrs Whitaker any more.’
‘Well that was a bit bloody embarrassing.’
Janie sat in the passenger seat this time, staring out at the identikit houses as DC Blane drove slowly away from Miranda Keegan’s address.
‘Sorry, Janie. I should have done a proper background on him.’
‘Don’t sweat it, we all make mistakes. Still embarrassing, finding out from her like that.’
‘Do you think it makes a difference to the case?’ Blane hunched over the steering wheel, elbows out at awkward angles as he tried to fit into a space not built with him in mind. Janie should have offered to drive, but he’d insisted it was his turn.
‘What do you mean? Do I think she somehow torched her ex?’ She shook her head. ‘No. She was genuinely surprised to hear he was dead. Elated, sure, but surprised.’
‘We’ll still have to get her in for an interview. Look into her background.’
‘Like we looked into her husband’s?’
‘Aye, well. Like I said. Sorry about that.’
‘She didn’t strike me as the vengeful type. Not the way you said her husband died.’
‘I didn’t see it, but from what the forensics team said, it was weird. Like he’d burned from the inside out, and the fire had barely touched anything else. Don’t see how anyone could do that, even if they were angry.’
‘Well she was certainly that. But you’re right. The way he died, Whitaker. That doesn’t square with vengeful wife. She’d have stabbed him in the bath or poisoned his food or something. What happened to him is too . . .’
‘Complicated?’ Blane offered.
‘I was going to say bizarre, but that too.’
Janie stared out the side window at the passing tenements as they sped their quiet, electric way around the Cameron Toll roundabout and on to Dalkeith Road. She could see things getting more and more complicated with each new revelation.
‘I’ll run a proper background on Whitaker soon as we get back to the station.’
‘Aye, Lofty. You said. Don’t fret about it. Mistakes get made.’
Crammed in behind the wheel, the detective constable already looked uncomfortable, but Janie thought she saw an added level. Something more than physical was paining Blane. ‘What’s up, Lofty? You’ve been acting weird for weeks now.’
‘It’s nothing. Tired, I guess. Meg’s overdue already but she’s been nippy sweetie for months now. Sooner the wee one’s born the better . . .’ He tailed off, clearly as uncomfortable talking about it as he was squashed into a space designed for someone a foot shorter than him.
‘Oh God, Lofty. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. Is she very late?’
‘Coming up on a fortnight. They’re going to induce her if she doesn’t start soon. I was told it got difficult once the wain was born, but see these past few months . . .’
‘You’ll be away on the paternity soon, then?’ Janie voiced it as a question, even though she knew the answer.
Blane shrugged, causing the car to swerve dangerously towards the oncoming traffic before he pulled it back into the right lane. ‘Thought about putting it off, given how short-staffed we are. But there’s some new DCs arrived now so I don’t feel so bad.’
‘Just have to hope they shape up. Who knows? We might even get a new DCI too. Place could be awash wi’ detectives.’ Janie stared at the lines of squad cars as they pulled into the station car park, noticed DI McLean’s black Alfa Romeo squeezed in between two armoured Transits. Brave or foolhardy, she couldn’t really decide. ‘Seriously though, Lofty. Is it any surprise we make mistakes like that, given how few of us have been here to do the work? Anyone calls you out for missing that Whitaker was out on bail and on the register? You let me know and I’ll give them a piece of my mind.’