IT WAS uncomfortable for Darian to be in the Cnocaid police station, the place his father had worked, and where the anti-corruption unit Darian had broken apart was still based. Wasn’t the same ACU anymore. Most, but not all, of the former officers had been pushed out and its remit severely narrowed, but the memories were the same.
Wasn’t much more fun for Sholto who had worked there for years and hated every brick of the building, but it was his idea to go there as a first step in finding Freya Dempsey. Darian had told him everything Vinny knew and Sholto decided the police officially leading the search for her would probably know more, which meant Cnocaid station.
It had been an easier conversation than he’d expected that morning when Darian pitched the case to Sholto, spelling it all out, including the fact that Vinny’s trousers weren’t falling down because of the weight of the wallet in his pocket.
Sholto had nodded and said, “He’s quite popular, your pal Vinny, among the rest of the force, I mean.”
“He is, yeah.”
“I do enjoy getting paid for my work, but I also like being able to do it without fear of the police shutting us down. We can help him out, but I’m not making it my life’s work.”
He had found out the detective with responsibility for the Freya Dempsey search was DS Irene MacNeith, and that pleased him because he had never heard of her. Cops who had worked with Sholto tended not to take him too seriously. They had introduced themselves at the front desk of the building on the corner of Kidd Street and Meteti Road and were waiting for DS MacNeith to come to them.
She was in her mid-thirties, a short woman with dark skin and shoulder-length black hair, large eyes and a squint front tooth. Her expression suggested she was going against her better instincts by talking to them. Those brown eyes were flooded with showers of contempt for the two private investigators she had been saddled with, and that annoyed Darian. In his noble opinion a person serious about achieving their aim didn’t turn down help, whoever it came from, but perhaps knowing where it came from was the source of the scorn. She led them into what the plate on the door called a “family room” where vulnerable witnesses or victims were usually questioned. The only differences between it and a typical interview room were that the table and chairs appeared to have been stolen from someone’s kitchen and there was a window from which you had a charming view of the side of the building next door.
As she sat she said, “I’ll be honest with you both, if you hadn’t been sent by PC Reno I wouldn’t be talking to you. You’re friends of his and everyone here seems to be friends of his, too, so we’ll talk.”
The blunt tone with which she attacked her mention of Vinny made clear his popularity meant less to her than him being the last person to see Freya.
Darian said, “Whatever you might think of us we’re not bumbling amateurs and anything we do will be done carefully. We’re all trying to find Freya Dempsey.”
“Some of the stories I’ve heard about you, Mr. Ross, suggest bumbling would be a generous term, but you are trying to find her and that could be useful to me. I’ll give you a few pointers then. There was no sign of her from the moment we’re told she left her ex-husband’s home on MacWilliam Drive, although the CCTV coverage in Whisper Hill is about as useful as a two-inch stepladder. It’s like the Forth Rail Bridge. By the time you’re done fixing one vandalized camera the last two repairs have been broken again. Someone’s targeting them, probably the Creag gang, and the force have practically stopped funding replacements.”
“So you have nothing to say if she was being followed.”
“No. What we can say is that her car has also gone missing and it didn’t leave the city. The Southern Road, Heilam Road and Portnancon Road are all covered by working cameras and the ferry terminal is, too. We can’t find her car at all, a two-year-old light-blue Volkswagen Passat, so if you want to help the investigation you can focus on that and let me know how it goes. The registration is CX41 VMT.”
“How many people do you have working on this?”
“Officially? It’s one of four missing persons cases that I and two other colleagues are working on.”
“Unofficially?”
“PC Reno has a lot of friends on the force. There are plenty of people in this station with an eye open, hoping Freya Dempsey will come into view, and I’m sure the same is true of officers in other stations. He’s a boisterous and talkative person, PC Reno, the fact he’s friends with you both is probably further proof of that.”
“You don’t sound like you’ve fallen under his spell.”
DS MacNeith looked at him and said, “When a woman goes missing do you know what the statistics are on a partner or ex-partner being involved?”
Darian said, “In this case, misleading.”
“You told me you wouldn’t bumble, Mr. Ross, but you’re already bumbling.”
She walked them back to the front desk and left them without a goodbye. As they headed back to where Sholto had parked his Fiat he said to Darian, “Well, we found one woman immune to Vinny’s lovable roguishness.”
“She seems to hate him. I hope it’s not clouding her conduct of the search.”
“Darian, listen. I know it’s hard to think about a friend like this, but you have to realize that right now Vinny ticks a lot of boxes he wouldn’t want to get trapped in. He’s her ex and they got along like a bull and a china shop after they split up. He was the last person who saw her, and the alibi his young son gives him is gossamer-thin. An alibi from an infant offspring isn’t exactly the Rolex of cover stories. Right now he’s the person at the top of DS MacNeith’s list, and he’s the only name on ours, even if he did hire us.”
“He’s not on my list at all.”
“Then you don’t have a list, you have a blank sheet of paper and a lack of imagination. If it wasn’t Vinny then we have to come up with someone else who had motive and opportunity.”
“We’ll start with the car. If that hasn’t left the city then we can find it. We do that and it gives us a thread to pull at.”
As he opened the driver’s door Sholto said, “It does, but until then we have a case where the person who hired us is the front-running suspect. Don’t know about you but that’s eerily familiar and I don’t like it.”
Darian tutted at more memories he wished hadn’t been reawakened and got into the car.