Costello trudged up the stairs to her flat, trying to avoid disturbing her next-door neighbour. Mrs Craig, a lovely little lady, was recently widowed and had taken on the social grace of a huntsman spider, jumping out at anybody who happened to cross the landing. Costello was fit enough to use the stairs, but God help anybody who was caught waiting for the lift. If lucky, she got away with a five-minute chit-chat on the weather, if not there could be a summons to tea and biscuits and a request for a lift to the doctors or assistance with a light bulb that needed changing. I know you are busy dear, aren’t all the young people today, but it won’t take a moment.
Costello would always knock first thing to make sure that she was OK, and pick up a shopping list, and put it through the door of whoever was going shopping that day. The good thing about senior citizens was they were creatures of habit. Mr Simons downstairs drove Mrs Craig to her appointments and Mrs Armstrong from the single end flat on the landing did the evening gossip with digestives and soap operas.
It was going on for six, not Costello’s duty, so she snaked past on tiptoe, looking forward to her shower and her pot of tea. She shouldered the door open, turning the key in the lock as quietly as possible, then slid inside, kicking her boots off and padding her way into the kitchen, wondering when it had turned into a bombsite. She had hardly been home in the last two weeks, so who had left all these empty tins of beans and breadcrumbs sprinkled all over the worktop? She scooped them into the bin, opened a few cupboards and found only a half empty jar of jam, mouldy, and a packet of cream crackers that had gone soft. She filled the kettle and then walked wearily into the bathroom. She had turned the shower on and taken out the pearl earrings she wore to work when she heard her mobile. A colleague she presumed, wanting a chat about the Kissel case. She ignored it, flicking her fingers in the stream of water from the shower testing the temperature, thinking about watching The Walking Dead. She’d get halfway through one episode then fall asleep. She’d had enough death and desperation for one week.
As soon as her mobile fell silent, her landline started.
She walked barefooted back into the hall, leaning her forehead against the mirror as she answered the phone.
She listened for a minute, two minutes, then closed her eyes.
She uttered two words.
‘Why me?’
DI Costello parked the Fiat behind the squad car, and pulled on her woollen hat and her heavy jacket that made her look two stone heavier, even though the rain was starting to ease. Strange. No scene of crime, all very low key. A small row of shops in Waterside, outside Lenzie, a posh sleepy village on the outskirts of Glasgow to the north and east, well known for a very good school and little else.
When the two cops on duty saw her, they pointed her down the narrow road to the side of the row of shops.
The older one approached.
‘DI Costello, called out from Govan. What’s happened? Child abduction?’
‘Constables Kenny Prior, Donny McCaffrey.’ He introduced himself and his colleague, rainwater dripping off his hat as he nodded. ‘Child abduction after a fashion. Roberta Chisholm was driving around trying to get her wee kid to go to sleep.’
‘Sholto,’ added the younger one, McCaffrey, who looked as though he might be old enough to cross the road on his own. ‘He’d been screaming the place down for hours, difficult baby, six weeks old. Hence the drive around.’
Costello nodded. McCaffrey looked empathetic. She judged that he was talking from experience. ‘And?’ She sensed more she didn’t want to hear but wished they would get a bloody move on. Time was not the investigator’s friend in child abduction.
McCaffrey continued, ‘Well, the husband phones and says he has landed the dream job, and the wife pulls up here to buy a bottle of bubbly …’
‘And leaves the baby in the car?’ Costello pulled her hat down over her sticky, dirty hair, marvelling at the stupidity of people. ‘She comes out the shop, baby has gone.’
‘Well, yes.’
Costello took a deep breath.
‘And another baby left in its place.’
‘OK,’ said Costello, ‘wasn’t expecting that.’
‘She left the car, a Dacia Duster, right there.’ He pointed to where Costello’s Fiat was now sitting. ‘It’s easily in view of the shop.’ The windows were largely uncluttered between the hanging hams and strings of garlic.
‘And when was this?’
‘Back of five, the credit card machine said five eleven. It was still daylight but overcast.’
She looked at her own watch. Forty-five, fifty minutes ago. ‘Cordon?’
‘It’s set up, got that up in ten minutes but we are only looking for the baby. The Duster was found immediately up that access road, it goes round to the car park. The local guys were on the scene straight away.’
‘OK,’ said Costello slowly, ‘the Duster was found round there. But they had taken the Chisholm baby and left another.’
‘Sholto, his name is Sholto,’ corrected the younger officer, his face grave. ‘And yes they left another baby in his place.’
Costello let out a long, slow breath. ‘Jesus. Are we sure it’s not her baby? Has she suffered some mental health issue?’
‘The baby that was left is Down’s Syndrome.’
‘And Sholto is not Down’s?’
‘No, he’s not.’
‘Who calls their kid Sholto anyway? Bloody hell.’ As she spoke she walked up to the corner, approaching the car, a Duster, the tiny car cot still clipped on the front passenger seat, facing backwards. It wasn’t an easy get out. She could count four straps, four clips to a complicated buckle, on the first glance. ‘Do we have confirmation he’s not Down’s?’
‘The husband confirmed it,’ said the older cop, walking in her footsteps.
‘OK, we’ll check the medical records anyway.’ She stood back, as the young cop played his torch over the vehicle, pointing to where the mother, Roberta Chisholm had parked it then walked into the shop.
‘She knows the guy who owns the place. They were both keeping an eye out, you know, watching the car.’
‘Well, obviously they didn’t,’ yawned Costello, too tired to stop it. She walked towards the actual abduction site, listening to the story of the drama unfolding. She could have filled in the blanks herself. Roberta leaving the shop and starting to scream blue murder. She had, she thought, left the keys in the ignition, but she was so tired she couldn’t recall. The Duster had automatic cut out, and automatic start up when the accelerator was tapped. Costello looked at the dark pavement still glistening from the rain, the orange glow from the street lamps. It looked so peaceful.
Nobody would hear a thing. But there was a report from an eyewitness who saw a man in an anorak, hood up, moving the car. She had presumed that he was putting the baby in it. Costello felt her spirits lift until she learned that the witness, Angela Carstairs, was seventy-eight years old. In this weather, at that age, there would be a suggestion of gender bias. If Angela had seen Costello standing here in her bulky jacket, flat boots and trousers, Carstairs would have presumed that she too, was male. But the old dear did say that the man did not come out from the back of the shops again on foot, so he must have had his own car waiting there. Costello thought for a moment. They might need to check the old biddy’s eyesight.
She looked up, wishing she was back at her flat, standing under the shower instead of under this dark and rumbling sky. The dank, rich smell of autumn had given way to an aching chill in the air. She was cold. ‘Once she has calmed down as bit, go and see her and check her eyesight, make sure she had her specs on.’
She waited until they wrote it down then asked where Roberta Chisholm was now.
‘I sent the wee guy off to A and E to get checked over, he was coughing pretty badly. Mrs Chisholm looked shattered so we sent her as well. I expect they will just check her out and send her home.’
Costello nodded, thinking about some poor woman losing the plot after having a Down’s child, a child that then got sick. God knows what she could be going through with hormones raging all over the place. She shouldn’t be too difficult to track down though, a minor psychosis after delivering a disabled child. What went through her mind when she saw a perfect woman with a perfect child, and the perfect opportunity to take the child in some belief that a swap would make her life complete again.
She checked the house-to-house was underway around the village of Westerton and the Chisholm’s exact address in the small development at the back of the shops. The house-to-house team had been detailed to ask subtly about any newborns in the area. She glanced at her watch. ‘Can somebody give me an update at eight? Who’s in charge here?’
PC McCaffrey shot a sidelong look at Prior, shuffling his boots nervously, making waves in the puddles. ‘We were told you were.’
‘Really?’
They stood in front of her. It began to rain again and she realized they were waiting for instructions. ‘OK, so let’s get the Chisholm’s life under a microscope for me? See what you can get by eight?’ And they walked off, McCaffrey with a spring in his step, Prior moving like he was walking to his own execution.
Anderson felt like a total bastard. He knew it was a stupid, knee-jerk reaction, not even under his control but he had made Gerry Stewart a promise that he would bring Gillian’s rapist to justice, hence why he was back in the station, sitting in the quiet office looking through the case again, trawling through the same notes that many others had read before him, trying not to come to exactly the same dead-end conclusion. He agreed Gillian had not known her attacker, and rapists of strangers tend to be serial offenders. And serial offenders are exactly that. So, he had struck again? Of course, he had. If the evidence wasn’t in this file, maybe it was in another. Two would be a coincidence, three made a pattern. All he needed was a suggestion of similarities between the attacks, a hint of consistency in the pattern then he could argue to have similar rapes reviewed. Computers nowadays could pick up even the slightest commonality as long as you knew what you were looking for.
At his desk, he typed up the notes and updated them, then put a request in for the sexual crime database to be searched. Gillian might have passed away, but her case would not die with her.
Wanting a break, he nipped out onto the stairs, thinking about going to the loo and hiding there for ten minutes. He strode along the corridor, head down, face tight in concentration, looking like a man with a mission.
‘Colin, just the man I was looking for.’ Mitchum, Assistant Commissioner of Crime, guided him to the side of the corridor, waiting until a couple of uniforms went past. ‘How are you finding life at the cold case review team?’
The question was asking for reassurance not honesty. ‘I think it will take time to settle in,’ he said tactfully. ‘We seem to move bits of paper about most of the time.’
The ACC gave him a conciliatory smile. ‘We were a bit worried that … that there might not be enough danger in it for you. Then I remembered your PTSD and thought you would be glad of a quiet life. You are a danger magnet but at least you haven’t sued us for failing in our duty of care.’
‘Yet.’ Anderson smiled.
‘However, we are aware that we have a responsibility to keep you out of trouble, as it seems to be rather good at finding you. To be frank, Colin, I am giving you the heads up, off the record. You will be pulled into a meeting tomorrow.’
‘Not another cold case review?’
‘It is. After a fashion. We are under pressure. The sentencing of that sex offender last week? We need to be seen to do something about that.’
Anderson recalled his own anger when he had heard about the lenient sentence given out for a sexual assault. He could see the quote in his mind’s eye: ‘Miss C’s skirt was too short, she was too drunk, she had been partly responsible for the assault upon her person.’ Anderson could sense that a can of worms was about to be opened and couldn’t help himself. ‘To be seen doing something? Rather than actually do it?’
‘Look, you are reviewing the Gillian Witherspoon case. Can you sound her out for becoming a voice, a face for those who have been victims of sexual assault, heading up a media campaign to—’
‘She’s dead,’ Anderson said bluntly.
‘Oh shit.’ The words were out before the ACC could stop them. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘I’m sure she was more than a bit pissed off about it herself. It was totally unexpected.’
‘Sorry, we had her tagged to approach about the SafeLife initiative, we just need a face for the campaign.’
‘There are plenty of them unfortunately, sir. Miss C for one. I’m sure she’d waive her anonymity in anger.’
‘No, we need one that will—’
‘—tow the party line?’
‘You know as well as I do, that it’s not all down to us. We need the public, police and the fiscal’s office to all pull together on this one, but that isn’t going to happen. Therefore, we are left with making sure that our garden is clean, all clean and tidy. We need to respond to Miss C’s rape and this ridiculous short sentence with a strong, empathetic voice and we had earmarked Gillian Witherspoon for that. She had a kind of mumsy appeal.’ He raised an eyebrow, inviting Anderson to come up with a plan B.
‘And how popular did you think that was going to be? Sir,’ he added. ‘Compare Miss C’s rape with Gillian’s.’ Anderson resisted the urge to poke his finger right in the ACC’s shiny buttons. ‘Gillian was dragged across a car park with a rope round her throat. He dislocated her shoulder and punched her so hard he ruptured her spleen. She bled so much internally, they had to pump twelve pints of blood into her – all because she had nipped out to buy a pint of milk. Miss C was drunk, hanging around outside the pub and she went home with the man who raped her. She consented and then changed her mind. I know she has the right to do that. She was not “asking for it” but if you put them both in the hands of the media you will get much more sympathy for the Gillians of this world than you will ever get for the Miss C’s. It might even create a bit of hostility. Yes, they are both tragic, but they are not the same.’
Mitchum nodded. ‘I know, remember the fiasco of the Stay Sober initiative. Not too difficult, you would think, in this day and age of the nominated driver, for one person to stay sober and look after the others but all it did was produce a backlash.’
‘We were condoning the evil of men.’
‘We can’t help it if people don’t want to know the truth. All stupid people do is hand the power to the predators among us. You know that better than any of us. We’d better get back to the drawing board. The meeting tomorrow will still be on. I shall have to think of something else.’ The ACC nodded to him in dismissal and walked off down the corridor, his shiny shoes clipping on the lino.
Colin Anderson was having a cup of coffee, sitting on his favourite spot on the sofa, trying to read Garcia Marquez but still thinking about the ACC and his new campaign and Gillian Witherspoon. There was a knock at the front door and he looked up, wondering when his house had become a hotel. Nesbit was curled up at his feet, snoring softly and preventing his owner from standing up, so Anderson was still sitting, paperback in hand, when he heard the usual thump of Doc Martin’s on the stair carpet and a shout of ‘I’ll get it.’
Claire.
As usual she was dressed in black, in a skirt so short it wasn’t worth wearing and thick, black tights covering her long slender legs that had made her the butt of teasing at school, but which now signalled her metamorphosis into the kind of girl that turned men’s heads.
Anderson had no real idea when that had happened.
He heard the front door open, a muffle of conversation and then Claire shouting, ‘It’s only David.’
It was always ‘only David’. For Anderson, the father, ‘the boyfriend’ was new territory. Was he supposed to stick his head out the door and ask David in for a coffee, small chit-chat that avoided the question, ‘Are your intentions honourable?’ Anderson knew his daughter better than that, and yet suspected they weren’t doing anything that he didn’t do himself at that age. Which was cold comfort.
And this house didn’t lend itself to casual intervention. The living room was too big for a start, there was no incidental meeting at the bottom of the stairs, no way he could leave the door open and call the boy in without it appearing the summons that it was. So he sat there, impotent, listening to the quiet thump of Claire’s feet and the painfully slow step of David. There was a blast of music as the bedroom door opened, abruptly silenced as it closed over again.
Maybe more prudent to leave them to it. David was still carrying the scars of a terrible and violent crime. The perpetrator was in Carstairs for the criminally insane, pronounced unfit to face trial. Detained under The Mental Health Act, he was locked up for much longer than they ever would be at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. It was not the easy way out, there was no defined tariff which meant they could stay there, locked up for the rest of their life and nobody would bat an eyelid. But the fact remained, David was the victim of extreme violence borne of a deranged mind. Apart from that, he was everything that Anderson would want in a boyfriend for his daughter. But he still wished they weren’t upstairs on their own. When Colin had mentioned it to Brenda, she had drawn him one of her ‘well she lives with you’ looks. Mum and daughter spoke, they went shopping and had lunch. Surely Brenda and Claire must have spoken about ‘that stuff’. Colin thought that David Kerr was a lovely young man, kind, intelligent, obviously thought the world of Claire, but if he laid a hand on her, Colin would have him up against a wall by his throat and the boy would be singing falsetto in a Bee Gee’s tribute band.
He picked up his mobile. Brenda would know what to do. She was a mum, it was in her job description. There was no answer, no opportunity to leave a message. The last time he had tried, it had been turned off. He dialled the landline but instead of voicemail, Peter answered, his voice full of ‘just got out of bed’ teenage enthusiasm. Colin managed to extract a little information from him, a few statements about school, homework and his upcoming work experience. After that conversation had run its brief course, Colin asked if ‘mum’ was in. Peter’s answer was short and sweet. ‘No.’
He didn’t elucidate. No mention of where she was and when she would be home. So he left it.
Colin slipped back into the chair and went back to Love in the Time of Cholera, trying to enjoy it. He had some stats to look at for an early meeting tomorrow, and the outline of a development report to write to lend support to his opinion about the way money was being spent in the cold case unit. He needed to affirm that cold cases should be selected by the scientific support staff like Mathilda McQueen, those cases where there was a little bit of tissue evidence or a DNA stain, where science might have caught up and it took an expert to recognize what might be useful. But everybody had an agenda. Usually on someone else’s budget.
And there was the knock-on effect of Gillian Witherspoon’s passing and that meeting to look forward to.
He came out in a cold sweat when he thought of the way he had knocked her door, intruding on the grief of that family. Police Scotland had had their pound of flesh from him this week, and tomorrow looked like death by spreadsheet. He felt like he was the only one who did the job for the right reasons nowadays.
There was another burst of music as the bedroom door opened, more clattering of swift feet on the stairs, so that would be Claire going downstairs to the kitchen for a beer for David. Claire was very sweet natured and supportive – a word she used a lot – but Colin was sure David would get through his trauma with or without her. The boy had emotional and familial resources, an adoring mother, his estranged father was back on the scene. He enjoyed a wide network of friends, a good brain and career prospects. To be fair, Claire had been just as kind to the other youngster caught up in that horror. Paige Riley. The Paiges of the world usually slipped through the net but she and Claire had struck up some kind of bond. Claire had explained to her dad, with all the patience of a teenager to a stupid parent, that she knew she couldn’t help them all. But she knew Paige and she could help Paige. Well, her dad could help Paige. He had money. It had been hard to argue and Colin had felt rather proud of his daughter and her passion for helping a girl who had not benefitted from all that Claire took for granted. Paige had been abducted and held captive for weeks. The only person who had noticed she was missing was the woman who put a pound coin in her begging bowl every day. Even now, the file had no precise date as to when Paige was actually snatched from the street.
Anderson got into a panic if Claire was half an hour late.
So, Colin Anderson and his socially conscious daughter had come to an agreement. Paige was to become David’s carer, accompanying him to uni, carrying books, his laptop and helping out when Claire or his mother couldn’t. Anderson paid her a wage so long as she stayed clean; one whiff of heroin, any return of her habit and she’d be out on her ear. He had taken her to one side and told her that in a language she had understood. He had then pulled strings to get her put up in a decent halfway house run by a priest he knew well. Anderson was aware he was conducting a social experiment. Paige was removed from her old friends, taken out of her environment and placed in another where she was made to feel welcome. And useful. Paige had had her moments but overall, she was doing OK. The priest said she was now thinking about going back to college. It had been her idea. Claire had asked her dad if he would give her an allowance to help her through college. He said he’d think about it, recalling that quote about saving a life and then being responsible for everything that life did. The last time he had set eyes on her, Paige had stood, rake thin staring at him with eyes that burned with distrust and abuse. It was all she knew from every man she had ever met. He had smiled, said hello and walked on as if he hadn’t noticed.
But he had the money. Funny how it had always been an issue, Brenda and him as newlyweds, struggling to pay a heavy mortgage. Now he had inherited loads of it and seemed to be getting more and more with every day that passed. He knew nothing about art as commercial value; a painting was a picture that sat on a wall and you looked at it. Either you liked it or you didn’t. What he didn’t know was that Helena had rented out much of her work and it was becoming more and more in demand now she had passed on.
Oh, it was a very nice position to be in, another sip of instant coffee. That was symbolic of the issue. He still couldn’t work out how to get a good cup out of the state-of-the-art black mega vanilla steamer hot squirt device that sat in the corner of his kitchen. It seemed to behave for other folk, but not him. He was instant coffee and Greggs, not fancy dancy decaff mulberry flavour shite with more stuff on it than a John Lewis Christmas tree.
He felt that this one, this life he was living now, was not his somehow. He had been derailed into a life of good suits and endless meetings with wankers like Stu and Bruce. He was now valued in Police Scotland as some kind of adviser as he had ‘been there’, ‘done that’ and had the mental health reports to prove it. He was not old enough to be shifted into retirement, and he suspected that his history of PTSD simply made him an asset, allowing his bosses to show they were considerate to their colleagues injured in the line of duty.
His trouble was, having seen it all and done it all, he wanted to see and do it all again. And soon, before he got soft and rotted away into this lovely sofa and started cutting his crusts off and eating goat’s cheese. He was one step away from tasting wine before he drank it and using a napkin. It would be quinoa next.
He needed to get back in touch. He scrolled down his mobile, thinking about texting Costello, getting her opinion on this media thing.
Costello had an opinion on everything.
DI Costello was cold and hungry by the time she was waving her warrant card at the hospital reception and had been told to take a seat like everybody else. In the emergency department waiting area there were a few pale-looking kids, two adults holding towels to various bleeding parts of their anatomy and three drunks arguing about Glasgow Rangers and Theresa May, as if they were in some way connected.
Costello sat in a plastic chair bolted to the floor, glad to have a rest, and watched the Sky evening newsfeed on the overhead screen. The Kissel conviction had not made the national news, thanks to Brexit and a supermodel falling over. That wee kid didn’t even warrant a few words on the rolling commentary across the bottom.
She wondered if Anderson had read it. Was he taking an interest? Did she really want him dissecting her case, making sure that any chance of an appeal would be squashed, ensuring she left no way in for an inventive defence council? She wondered where the old gang were now. Anderson living up in his posh house, and working in a nine to five. Mulholland stuck in his desk-bound job by default due to his leg injury. Some weird kind of fracture he had that had formed a cyst in the bone. Was he still convinced that he was Johnny Depp’s better looking younger brother? She wondered if he had undergone another leg operation. It had seemed so simple at the time, a fall from a stone not a foot from the ground yet it threatened to end his career. In new Police Scotland, if you weren’t fit, you were out. But then, just as one of the drunks, the one with blood all over his face, demonstrated how to take a penalty, she recalled a rumour he had been transferred to some intel unit that was so hush hush nobody knew anything about it. Although she didn’t put it past him to be the source of that rumour, to add a touch of glamour to what was a job involving sitting on his arse and typing. She hoped that Wyngate was with him, they worked well together and Wyngate lacked the streak of meanness needed to be a really good detective. But give him a computer …
One drunk was now doing the rounds of his captive audience, asking if they had any spare change.
She looked at her watch. This baby abduction was going to take a lot of legwork, Roberta and James Chisholm’s lives were being pulled apart as she sat here. That baby had been targeted, she was sure of it. She wasn’t so sure of Prior and McCaffrey, especially Prior. Still in uniform and out on the street at his age showed a remarkable ability to avoid promotion. She could do with the technical support of Wyngate and Mulholland.
After collecting a cup of hot tarry tea from the machine, she enquired at the desk if they had any idea how long it was going to be. Flashing her warrant card again only got her a bad tempered ‘Can you not see I am busy?’ Costello closed her warrant card wallet slowly, looking long enough at the nurse’s face to let her know her features and her name were being mentally noted. Busy was one thing, rudeness was something else.
Costello settled down with a cup of sticky tea and a notebook, aware of the staff at the desk talking about her. One sharp look at the words ‘snotty’ and ‘bitch’ silenced them. She had very good hearing.
This baby abduction case was falling apart before it had got going. She didn’t know how she was supposed to work it. Nobody official had told her that Roberta was still here. That had only come to light on her visit to the neat, brand new, three-bedroomed detached sitting in the cul de sac at the end of Westerton Farm Lane. Despite the Duster in the driveway, she noted the darkness of the property before she had got out of her car. No lights on, no police cars, no sign of anybody. She had called in again, thinking that Sholto had been found but was told no. Had Roberta gone back to her mum’s for some emotional support? Costello was still in the car waiting for Govan to get back to her with an update when the cop’s gift appeared: the nosey neighbour.
Costello got out of her Fiat, encouraged that the woman in the flowery pyjamas and thick fluffy housecoat might know something. Bobby, Roberta, she had corrected herself was still at the hospital. Had Costello any news, nothing as yet she assured her but took the chance to ask if there were any other young babies in this estate, less than a year old? There were not.
That would have been too easy.
Costello then wondered why the house-to-house had not contacted her yet. She’d ask that young cop McCaffrey when she saw him. He had sounded bright enough to spell his name properly, which she couldn’t say about many of the new recruits who went home at five p.m. on the dot and complained about the pension scheme.
Fifteen minutes after she had finished her tea, she was still sitting in the waiting area having remonstrated with the drunks for annoying the queue. Then she started arguing with the desk staff. Then she decided on blatant queue jumping. Costello eventually wound her way round to the treatment area of the A and E and was walking up and down until a voice asked if she was looking for him.
It was McCaffrey, sitting on a padded blue chair with his back to the wall, playing solitaire on his phone. She mouthed hello before pulling back the plastic curtains by an inch and glancing into the cubicle; two nurses, a baby tucked under a blue blanket with a drip that wound down to his tiny chubby shin, tiny pads of a heart monitor taped on the visible portion of his chest. A woman with bad skin was lying on the bed, her forefinger looped around the baby’s elbow while a smartly-dressed man stood to one side, an island of calm in a sea of chaotic efficiency. Costello registered the child’s shallow epicanthic fold, the big forehead. She withdrew, sensing her relief. They had traced the mum, she would get looked after. Nothing here that needed her attention right now and she could go home and have a shower, climb into bed and sleep the sleep of the righteous. She turned and sat beside the constable, wondering if she could take her shoes off and give her feet a massage, her soles were burning. She didn’t think she could make it all the way back to the car, it was parked miles away.
‘We meet again.’
‘How long have you been waiting here for?’
‘Long enough, I’ve been waiting for somebody to come here and relieve me, I didn’t think I could leave, you know. Got kind of involved with it all.’
Costello waved her hand. ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you can go now. The mum’s here so as long as everybody is safe and well, the paperwork can wait. Who is she? What’s her story?’
McCaffrey stood up, and rolled his shoulders, then cleared his throat. ‘That’s not the mum, that’s Roberta Chisholm. She’s here because the wee guy has a chest infection. She “needed” to be here.’
That explained the man’s detachment. It wasn’t his child.
‘At least he’s in the best place.’ She pulled out her notebook, sitting with pen poised. ‘But why is Roberta in there, doing all that? That’s not their kid. What’s happening with Sholto? And where is that baby’s real mother? Uniform haven’t even called at the Chisholm’s neighbours yet.’
‘They said they were short-staffed.’
‘Christ.’
‘Road blocks up but I’m not sure with all those fields and back roads it will do much use.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Nothing has come back to me yet.’
‘Let me know as soon as it does. How is that wee guy? It’s not serious, is it?’
‘I’ve called him Moses, you know … out the—’
‘Yeah, I know the story …’
‘His body weight is low, he’s only five weeks, still vulnerable.’
‘Any sign of abuse?’
He shook his head. ‘No, he seems very well cared for. I thought he was coughing too much, going a bit blue round the gills so sent him here. They are waiting for a bed in paediatrics, and the paediatrician to have a look at him. We have been waiting a while, no surprise.’ He moved into the side of the corridor, indicating that Costello should follow. ‘You know, my wife was a mess after the second baby. Neither up nor down after the first. Five weeks is a long time to bond.’
‘And long enough to succumb to the psychosis of sleep deprivation.’
‘Indeed. And maybe the mum was OK with that until Moses got ill and she panicked. Maybe it was one push too far. She could be an unsupported mother with no experience. So she sticks her kid on a mum who appears to be doing a better job than her. And Roberta Chisholm is fulfilling that role, cuddling and soothing that kid as if it was hers. Maybe Moses’ mum knew Roberta would be like that?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s understandable. The doc suggested we leave it for now.’
Costello was warming to this young cop. ‘It might give us more time. If Sholto was lifted because he was healthy and Little Moses left because he wasn’t, I don’t see the abductor hurting Sholto. I need advice about the press release, can’t afford to get that wrong.’
‘Moses might be on the mend from the chest infection, the Down’s is pretty permanent. If it was the Downs she rejected …’
She asked, ‘Do you think it was a man who swapped them?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, but shook his head, the idea not sitting with his internal logic, ‘and to mention something more weird … Mrs Carstairs said the man had the baby in a seat he was carrying. Like a car seat.’
Costello nodded, that would explain the quick in and out.
‘And another weird thing?’
‘Weirder than this?’
‘I think I heard Roberta and James arguing. In fact they have done nothing but argue. She thinks the blanket round Moses is the same as Sholto’s but is not his, not the actual blanket. James says she’s talking crap.’
‘OK,’ Costello said slowly, letting the implications of that sink in.
‘The blanket is in there, still round the baby.’ He nodded at the cubicle. ‘You might want to retrieve it as soon as you can, it’s distinctive. Got lambs round the bottom.’
‘You’re good. You should have a future in CID.’
He smiled. ‘I hope so. Do you want me to hang around? I should have been off duty an hour ago.’
‘Yes, you go,’ she said ignoring the protests from her feet. ‘From the sound of it, your wife needs you more than I do. What age is your youngest?’
‘A year.’
‘OK. Before you go, spare me a minute and give me a list of all the places your wife takes the wee one. Clinics? The yummy mummy’s club? Yoga for the under twos. Baby juggling? Somebody knew Roberta, and knew the baby.’
He rattled off a list that was alarmingly long, stopping every now and again to think and then coming up with another few items, checking the calendar on his mobile. Nathan seemed to have a very hectic social life. It confirmed Costello’s fear. Anybody who wanted to get near that baby could.
‘And again, before you go, who is the paediatrician?’
‘It’s a Dr Hayman they are trying to get hold of, he’s not around after hours. Dr Hogan is the guy dashing in and out the cubicle. He’s good, come across him before. Been here a few times with injuries sustained falling off swings, one was breathing difficulties and one a bad donkey bite. Oh, and one broken wrist after bouncing off a trampoline. But that was the wife and doesn’t really count. You got kids?’
‘No. I prefer a good night’s sleep. I bet you are on some social services list with that catalogue of incidents. But yeah, off you go, I’ll get in touch with Hogan.’
He got up and swung his over jacket over his uniform, ‘Keep me in the loop will you? I’d like to know how this pans out. I’ll get back to you about …’ He indicated those behind the curtain.
‘Sure, I’m based at Govan, here’s my mobile number and office email. It’s the best way to contact me with my roving brief, that way you can be sure I have received it.’
She watched him go, young and enthusiastic, ready to tackle the failure of law and order. Police Scotland would soon put an end to that. She peeked through the gap in the curtain, Baby Moses was mouthing as though he had something unpleasant on his tongue, the little blue blanket gripped tight in his fist. She closed the curtain over again and sat back down to witness the comings and goings through the curtain as she slipped one shoe off.
A quarter of an hour later a large doctor, hirsute and smiling, steth swinging from his neck, strode purposefully along the corridor and entered the cubicle. Costello leaned forward, trying to listen but she could not hear.
After a few minutes, he emerged, ‘Hi, I’m Drew, the baby is doing fine, we have him on some IV antibiotics.’
‘How is Roberta?’
‘She is very shaky, feels very guilty. I’d rather that you didn’t disturb her. It’s all very emotional, I’m sure you understand that.’ He cupped his hand round her elbow. ‘Can I have a word? I made a few enquiries as soon as I heard. There was a patient who gave birth to a disabled child five weeks ago. On the off chance I gave her a call, and she’s at home with her husband, and the baby is there too. The health visitor has seen the baby, and I’ve asked her to check again tomorrow.’
‘Thank you. Was there only one?’
‘That recently, in this health board, yes. There are only two Downs born a day in the UK, it’s not as common as it used to be, thanks to the tests available. And I’m not sure where my patient confidentiality issues start and end with this, but I was concerned about the mother’s mental health. She was flagged on the system but I think she’s a non-starter for you. But to keep things right maybe you should follow that up yourself,’ he said. ‘Notes can take a long time in this hospital to come online, we have a nine-month waiting list in maternity,’ he joked, rather charming when he smiled, reminding Costello of some old TV programme about a giant of a man living in the wilds of Canada, who used to befriend bears.
He rubbed his beard, Costello could hear the prickling of the bristles. She wasn’t the only one who looked as though a good night’s sleep might be in order. ‘I am more worried about Roberta than I am about the baby.’
‘And how do you know them Dr …?’
‘Everybody calls me Drew. Jimmy and I go to the same tennis club.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you any trace on Sholto?’
‘Not yet. We need to find the woman who gave birth to that baby, and I’m sure she will be looking after Sholto just fine.’ Costello smiled in what she hoped was a comforting manner. ‘She saw a healthy baby and took it. I hope it is as simple as that.’
‘Except Jimmy tells me it wasn’t the mother who swapped them, was it? It was a man,’ said the doctor.
Costello left the hospital with the keys for the Chisholm’s house in the can holder on the console of the Fiat. She drove back to Waterside, back into the little estate, the neighbour flicked her window blind, still keeping an eye out and seeing that the family was not returning, she retreated. Costello let herself into the house. It was as if Roberta had just walked out, a pair of slippers at the door, two damp towels thrown on the stairs, her handbag sitting beside the two-seater sofa. The house was clean, a mismatch of style that showed two different people had set up home together. Mostly it was cluttered with the detritus of a new baby, including a huge pile of dirty washing sitting on a pink plastic basket on the living-room floor. No doubt Roberta thought she would have time to tidy up later, once Sholto had stopped crying. She walked through the living room to the kitchen at the rear. On the rack above the tumble dryer she had said. There were a few keys, she picked out the one that was most like a car key and two minutes later she was crouching beside the open passenger door of the Duster, the torch on her mobile phone focussed on the catch of the Car Easy car seat.
Roberta might be right about the blanket. Mrs Carstairs might be right about the car seat, so she examined the clasp that attached the cradle to the seat belt. It was scored slightly, indented in a linear arc as if, Costello thought, it had been adjusted while somebody had been holding a key in the same hand. The mark did not carry over to the other part of the clasp, leaving the score to come to an abrupt end at the junction. Carefully, she leaned over, trying not to touch anything. The car, technically, had been impounded, but the car seat could have very important evidence. The clasp next to the handbrake, to the naked eye, was a perfect match, but microscopic analysis would confirm the seat was newer than the cradle it clipped on to. Not a match. This piece of information was going to stay within the investigation. She left a note, dated, timed and signed that she had been there and closed up both the car and the house.
‘You alright there, pet?’ asked the neighbour through a slightly open door.
‘Yes thanks,’ Costello replied, without looking round.