YOU NEED to go home. Go and get some sleep and we’ll take another crack at this in the morning when we might know more than the nothing we know now.”
Darian said, “That’s more hours we’re wasting. We should be out there…”
“Where, Darian? There’s nowhere out there for us two to go. Do we go to Geug Place or Eilean Seud? To do what? Do we go to the police and if we do, what do we tell them? They’re the ones with access to the Sutherlands and their legal team, so we wait for them. Rushing just gets us to the wrong location faster.”
“Rushing? Freya Dempsey is out there somewhere and we’re going home to get some sleep because we’re a bit stuck. That can’t feel right to you.”
Sholto wasn’t programmed for confrontation, least of all with people he liked. When faced with this sort of conversation with Darian he liked to treat it as an opportunity to educate. He assumed his most scholarly expression and leaned back in his seat, the desk in front of him once again covered in piles of papers that seemed to have somehow found their own way back to their original places.
Sholto said, “When Vinny brought this to us she had been gone for, what, five days. At that time she was missing and there was a chance, however slim, that she had left of her own accord. We were looking for someone who might have run, so we were hurrying because the more of a head start a person has the less likely we are to catch up. Then we found the connection to Ruby-Mae. It was chasing Freya that brought us to that, and if they’re connected then I think we have to assume that the urgency has gone from our investigation. It’s likely that the only difference between Freya and Ruby-Mae is that we haven’t found Freya’s body yet. It’s likely to be the same killer and the same outcome. We have to recognize that the best speed to go at is the one that will deliver the correct result, not the fastest result. I want to catch this bastard, Darian, just as much as you do, and that’s going to mean us both being awake and alert enough to pounce when he passes in front of us, if he’s still alive enough to do so. I know you’re young and full of enough fire to burn the city down, but you’re also smart enough to know that rest matters.”
There were moments in his speech when Sholto was so certain of his accuracy he began to sound smug, but Darian couldn’t disagree with him. It was hard to admit but there was every chance they had been too late to save Freya before they even started.
“It’s just rotten, you know. The fact she’s probably dead, that Finn will never see his own ma again. Doesn’t seem right that we weren’t able to do anything to help her.”
Sholto nodded. “Powerlessness is a horrible and cruel thing when you realize it applies to you, too. When I was a young cop I thought I was going to be able to help so many people, but the truth was that I was mostly just cleaning up after other people’s horrors. There are four hundred and seventy-nine thousand people in Challaid, if you believe the census, which I don’t, and we have no influence over the behavior of any one of them. If they choose to do something appalling all we can do is react to it, and that makes us feel weak. Thing is, Darian, cleaning up after the bad guys, it still matters. It’s how we stop them from doing it again. We want the power to stop them the first time but as that’s not possible this is the next best thing.”
Darian thought about that a lot on the way home. He picked up a meal from The Northern Song and got the train through the tunnel. It was crowded but he got a seat opposite a couple arguing loudly, in Gaelic so it sounded like they were spitting on the floor half the time, about a gas bill. Darian was still lurching toward maturity. For example, he was immature enough to feel resentment toward the people on the train because none of them were acknowledging the traumas happening in the city around them. On the other hand he had recently acquired the maturity to understand how childish that resentment was, demanding a person recognize the pains of strangers as well as their own, a burden no one should be asked to carry.
He walked with his bag of food to the flat. It was in these moments of quiet misery that he wished he had a girlfriend, as bad as his taste had proven to be, or a close circle of friends away from his work. He could have picked up the phone to his sister Catriona or his brother Sorley but he didn’t feel comfortable with that. Instead he took a plate from the kitchen through to the table by the window in the living room and sat looking out at the loch, eating slowly.
His mind returned to Bran Kennedy, a greedy person walking away from good money. He had said Sutherland was trying to protect the family. Any Sutherland had the money to give Freya expensive gifts she didn’t want. Simon couldn’t have met her outside his house unless he was lying about who he was, and for that to be the case he would have had to fool a lot of very clever people. If he was lying then why leave the bra to be found? It was unlikely, but it wasn’t impossible. Harold had met her but there was nothing to suggest he had any wish to meet her again and nothing to link him to Ruby-Mae. If Simon didn’t leave the house then he would need Dent to do a lot of the work for him. Harold had been at a Challaid FC match at the time Freya went missing, so he too would have needed Dent to do the dirty work. There was a third Sutherland. Sholto had mentioned Phil and Darian drifted mentally back to him, the quiet young man of money who had met Freya several times and who could command the same undue protection from his uncle and uncle’s driver that Simon did.
As he watched a small yacht make its way to the south harbor in the early evening light Darian picked up his phone and made a call.
DC Vicario answered and said, “Hello?”
“Hi, DC Vicario, it’s Darian Ross, from Douglas Independent Research. Listen, uh, we’ve hit a bit of a dead end on this, but we’ve collected a few interesting pieces of information along the way. I wondered if we could talk, compare notes.”
“Tonight?”
“Are you free?”
There was a laugh in her voice when she said, “I am. You can buy me a drink. You know MacCoy’s, on Wodan Road?”
He smiled at the thought of a cop wanting to drink in a pub named after an infamous bank robber. “I know it, I’ll see you there in, uh, three-quarters of an hour.”