Police were all over Broughty Ferry like an east-coast haar. They were in the shops and on the street corners. They knocked on doors and ticked boxes on the questionnaires attached to their clipboards. They filled the betting shops and the coffee houses and, when they were done, they packed the bars. All the time they asked for help and all the time they failed to receive it. Not because the good citizens of the cultured seaside suburb were being difficult. How could you help when you had nothing to tell?
Lynne Ireland might have lived on another planet, as far as most of them were concerned. She left for work in the morning before the place was fully awake and by the time she returned in the evening the shutters were coming down. The ones who knew her best, her neighbours, didn’t really know her at all.
She was ‘a lovely young woman’ who was ‘decent and respectable’ and she never made ‘trouble’ because she was ‘quiet and private’. The subtext was they were hardly aware of her existence because that was how she liked it.
The door-to-door inquiries were productive only because they were non-productive. Whoever had visited the college administrator to take her life had been as ‘quiet and private’ as the occupant of the unremarkable flat herself. Death had arrived and departed unseen and apparently with an absence of sound. It was a brick wall.
None of it came as any surprise to Campbell McBride. Lynne Ireland symbolised a significant strata of her gender and generation. Financially independent. Emotionally uncommitted. Psychologically balanced. Socially anonymous. Everything about her said she would never finish up a murder victim – except her father’s occupation.
Why should that be so important? It was a question McBride had asked himself a hundred times.
The same query had also been put to her father, ex-Chief Superintendent Thomas Ireland, who had finished a distinguished career as a divisional commander with Strathclyde Police, the largest force in the country. He had a high clear-up rate for most of his career but did not have the remotest notion why his job might have cost his daughter her life. Furthermore, he had rarely visited Dundee until his daughter had moved to a job in the city eighteen months earlier. None of it was particularly helpful.
McBride drew the Mondeo into the kerb in Gray Street after checking he was not parking on a yellow. It was an unaccustomed practice but, with the place swarming with uniforms, it seemed a sensible precaution. He realised he had pulled up outside two of his three most favourite places in the Ferry. After The Fort, he preferred to spend any spare time he had left browsing in Eduardo Alessandro’s art studio, or sampling the extraordinary range of ice cream in Visocchi’s parlour next door. He was in the process of contemplating a lightning visit to the latter when his mobile sounded.
Petra wasted no time with pleasantries. She told him the DNA test results were back and said he might be interested in what they showed.
He said nothing, waiting for her to expand.
Speaking with quiet deliberation that demanded no interruption, she explained that the profiles from the semen removed from Lynne Ireland and from the hair on the inside of the sweatband of the police hat had been compared. They did not come close to a match.
He remained silent, prompting her to repeat her announcement, which she did, this time with heavy emphasis on the ‘not’.
McBride swore in disappointment
Petra spoke again. ‘That was the good news,’ she said, unable to keep a smirk from her voice. ‘The hair belonged to a friend of yours.’
‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘Bryan Gilzean.’
‘What?’
‘Bryan Gilzean, you know, the man doing life up at Perth,’ she said, louder than she’d ever spoken to him before.
McBride swore again, this time with unexpected vigour.
He paused to consider the implications of the time bomb she’d tossed at him. No rational explanation surfaced. ‘What in God’s name does that mean?’ he declared at last.
‘It means the hair on the sweatband came from the head of Bryan Gilzean,’ Petra said. ‘No one else’s head. That’s it really. The rest we have to find out.’
‘How?’ McBride pressed.
‘You’re the investigative reporter.’
‘And you’re the detective inspector,’ McBride said, exasperation overtaking him.
‘Yes and we’re both screwed,’ she said, ringing off.
He sat behind the wheel staring at a signed Vettriano print in Alessandro’s window but not seeing it. An avalanche of thoughts roared through the mind which, minutes earlier, had been wiped blank. None of them made any sense. Except one. The only certainty was that whoever killed Lynne Ireland, it was not Bryan Gilzean. Is that the message? he asked himself. Is someone trying to prove he’s an innocent man? Or is that just what we’re supposed to think? Are we being informed or tormented? Or both?
McBride was still wrestling with his thoughts when his mobile ran again. The caller did not identify herself. She did not have to. McBride instantly recognised the even voice that gave no hint of its geographical origins. Anneke Meyer was relaxed, playful – and inviting. She would be working out at Next Generation in a couple of hours. Was he free? Would he like to meet?
McBride told her he was tied up.
‘That sounds interesting,’ she teased. ‘Feet or hands?’
He explained about Lynne Ireland – the story he needed to write about her murder for the next day’s national paper he was freelancing for.
She reminded him of where she worked, told him she was aware of the tragedy, felt sick at the details.
McBride brightened. ‘You’ll have inside information, then,’ he said. ‘Maybe I should take down your particulars, after all?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ she said, sounding serious for the first time. ‘But I imagine you know more than me. Petra will be keeping you informed.’ She managed to make the comment sound like a question.
He did not oblige. ‘Her lips are tighter than yours,’ he said lightly.
‘No comment – but maybe she needs more practice,’ Anneke said, starting to laugh.
She allowed McBride to finish the call only after extracting a promise from him that he would be in touch within the next few days.
The mobile sounded once more. Petra said she was phoning because she knew he would suddenly remember to remind her of something she had remembered anyway.
‘I’m confused,’ McBride said. ‘Remind me.’
‘OK. We’ve staked out the Central Library. Same team. More cameras.’
He started to laugh. ‘Not a chance in hell,’ he said. ‘There’s more likelihood of Dundee United winning the European Cup than there is of our man showing up there. But do it anyway.’