FOUR

Wednesday 11th October

Valerie Abernethy stepped out of the shower and wrapped a plush white towel round her before walking across the upstairs hall into the spare bedroom, a casual glance out the window to make sure the Porsche was still there. They were coming to take it away next week.

The shower had woken her up, and she had further endured a quick blast of cold to give her focus after a sleepless night. She had dropped off to a fitful sleep around midnight only to wake up an hour later as the little flicker of a flame burning in the back of her mind began to fire.

God, she needed a drink.

She was still mindful that she was in her sister’s house, hearing the odd snore coming from a bedroom, a slight wheeze and a fit of coughing. Standing outside Malcolm’s room and stealing a glance through the door, she recognized the Star Wars Lego; The Millennium Falcon, something from her era. She had built it with the family, when? Last Christmas? Kneeling on the floor, getting the small white bricks under her shins, it was very painful. All this family stuff was painful. Abby was a great mother and didn’t deserve the way her eldest daughter had deserted her.

So Valerie had steered clear, she had preferred, until now, to be on her own, nice clean life, in nice little boxes. She saw Malcolm’s babylike button nose sticking over the duvet, translucent eyelids flittering with the internal drama of a bad dream, a lemon drink sat on the carpet beside the bed, a box of tissues open. Her sister was a GP and didn’t agree with cough bottles. Valerie couldn’t recall a time when her own dreams were anything other than films of children, small children, other people’s children who had been battered and burned, injured and bruised. In her dreams they always screamed. They existed in photographs, in computer files, in her cases. A name and a family incident number. The stack of files on her desk was growing by the minute. She worked fourteen-hour days to clear her backlog, only for it to get caught up on the next desk in the hierarchy. And then it wasn’t really cleared, not really. It was moved onto another place. And they kept coming. The files got bulkier, the kids kept getting battered, the excuses got tired, the merry-go-round kept turning. Nobody getting off, nobody getting on. For years now, the children had spoken to her in her dreams, pleading that they don’t get forgotten, asking that they were not allowed to drift away.

Now they were told to prosecute only twenty percent of cases. Everything else to be on a fixed fine. That ‘everything’ included those crimes that were gateways to violent escalation. And people wondered why she liked a tipple?

She pulled herself away, unpeeling from the white gloss doorway, instinctively rubbing where her hand had been with the sleeve of her dressing gown, wanting to leave no trace. Why not? This was her sister’s house. She was a guest here. She had been invited. That didn’t mean she was welcome. By Abigail, yes. But not by him. Never by George. He had seemed more wound up than usual last night, if that was possible. He had been agitated as he closed the gate, locked up the house and looked out the windows for some unseen intruder.

She walked back to the guest bedroom, where her suit for work was neatly hanging in its cover, to protect the fine wool from getting covered in Alfred’s cat hair. Her black court Louboutins in a bag wound round the neck of the hanger. After a spray of deodorant and a good covering of Jo Malone’s Wild Fig, she pulled on her fleecy leisure suit, and lifted up her trainers. She stuck the perfume in her handbag and draped her suit bag over her arm. She went downstairs. The grandmother clock on the half-landing resonated on all three floors. It had been left to both sisters in the will, Abigail had taken it. It wouldn’t have suited Valerie’s minimalist flat anyway. The striking of the clock was one of those noises she only heard when she listened for it, like the gentle burr of a child snoring; her sister when she was growing up and then her daughter, and now her son.

In those days, when they were young, an argument at a chimp’s tea party wouldn’t have woken them up. Years ago Mary-Jane had dreamt about the ponies she thought she was getting for her birthday and then how she was going to be the next Adele. And Malcolm? Well, what was going on in his mind was anybody’s guess? Even though he hadn’t seemed well when he went to his bed, still sweating and shivery, Valerie had caught him reading his vintage Dandy comics at midnight, under the covers but hadn’t told his mum. Valerie used to do that too when she was a kid. He was a little livewire, a kid the word rapscallion was invented for. He was bright and rebellious, a kid with scraped knees who would have perfect false teeth after getting all his natural ones knocked out. He was always covered in bruises.

But Mary-Jane and Malcolm were safe. Not like those victims sitting on her desk, little lives laid bare in black and white.

She scribbled a note for Abby and left it on the telephone table in the lower hall, saying she had enjoyed her night at the theatre and scribbled her goodbye. Then added, thinking of the foul mood George had been in after Malcolm had come home, ‘Call me if you need me’.

She thought that sounded innocent.

As she unlocked the Porsche, the lights flashed.

It was five past five in the morning.

Costello had hardly slept that night. The time for sleep had passed her by the time she went to bed and she had lain awake, working through the mechanics of the abduction. The abductor had been lucky. More than that he had been organized. The one image she couldn’t get out of her head was the way James Chisholm had been leaning against the wall of the cubical in Casualty, wearing his lack of concern like a suit of armour. Detached. She wondered what a DNA test on Sholto would show.

She got up early and made sure Mrs Craig across the hall had put her lights on. Then she logged on and checked the result of the door-to-door, nothing of much interest. She had ordered the phone records to be pulled for the mobiles and landlines of James and Roberta but she hadn’t had time to go through them yet.

By nine a.m. she was at the Chisholm’s house, niceties over, a cup of hot tea in her hand, she had watched James’s face intently as she told him and his wife about her findings on the car seat, showing them the photos on her phone in extreme close-up. It was shockingly obvious. If anything, James was more shocked than Roberta.

And Roberta had turned on her husband at that point; she had known it wasn’t his blanket, now it turns out it wasn’t his chair either. Why didn’t he listen to her? And then there were more tears.

James didn’t react, this was not new.

Costello had studied them during this little exchange. Roberta was stressed, no doubt about that. She had a pale, puffy look about her, her body still in aftershock from the birth. She was on maternity leave from a reasonable job working for NHS 24. Their bank account was veering towards the red, but they had a nice little house, a nice little life. But there was something about James, aside from his reaction at the hospital. He was either detached or sniping at his wife, removed from the horror of his son being abducted. As if it was nothing. As if he had known.

And he had never asked, Why Sholto?

There was a slight reaction when Costello explained that the Duster was being impounded by the forensics team and they were not to go near it, while neglecting to mention that it would have been picked up already if not for an oversight the night before.

‘We will run you anywhere you want to go. You do have Constable McCaffrey as your designated case officer. He’s clearing other cases so that he can be solely yours. We need to keep tabs on you, and protect you from the media. It can get unpleasant, and we do need to use the media carefully so they stay on our side. We run the case, not them,’ Costello said, following James Chisholm’s eyes to the folded newspaper thrown onto the table. ‘Sorry I’ve not seen the headlines this morning, only what was online.’

‘They are saying Sholto was taken by a paedophile. Is that true?’

‘I doubt it. He was taken by somebody who knew you and knew you well. They have been in your company if they know what car seat you use.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Roberta let out a small yelp. ‘Please no, oh please no.’ She started to cry and reached out to James who responded by shuffling along the sofa. Away from her.

‘We have no reports, no spike in activity about paedophiles and our boys would know. We have a whole department tracking that kind of thing.’ She hoped she sounded surer than she felt. ‘And they would not have left “Moses” as Constable McCaffrey has called him.’

Through her tears, Roberta gave a wry smile. ‘Moses. Wee Moses.’

‘We are working on the theory that a woman has become fixed on Sholto, seeing him as her ideal baby, maybe emotionally rejecting Moses. So, I need you to talk through everywhere you have been in the six weeks, since Sholto was born. Your main contacts might now be with people that you only know because you have had a baby. Or it might be something simpler,’ Costello threw in. ‘Have you upset somebody recently, Mr Chisholm?’

Roberta looked up, throwing a sharp look at her husband before pulling her wet hair from her face, trying to think rationally. Her brain had something to work through, and that was much better than doing nothing. But she shook her head. ‘No, he hasn’t, not now. He upsets nobody apart from me. He’s middle management and boring.’

‘You have just been promoted, though, did you step on anybody’s toes?’

‘My firm isn’t like that,’ he said, eyes fixed at the carpet.

Costello let that go, the seed had been planted. ‘OK. Where did you buy the car seat?’

‘Mothercare.’

‘Which branch? And was that type recommended to you?’

Roberta spread her hands spread out in a helpless gesture. ‘Well, at the prenatal class, and then I checked some out on the net, as you do.’

Costello knew the women at that prenatal class had already been checked – no Down’s syndrome babies in their immediate family.

‘The Car Easy was on special purchase,’ said James. ‘We bought it at Mothercare. We drove down to Ayr.’

‘And when was that?’

‘Two weeks before Sholto was born.’

Costello wrote that down. ‘And since then, you don’t recall anybody taking special interest, asking too many questions, paying Sholto a little too much attention.’

‘No.’

‘Roberta, do you …?’

‘Bobby, please, nobody calls me Roberta.’

‘Bobby, how would you feel about doing a media appeal? It would be carefully scripted by our psychologist. Nothing of authority as that might scare the person who has Sholto. We don’t want to frighten her into doing something. We would want it to be more of a “mother to mother”, with little Moses, showing how lovely little Moses is, that he’s better. An appeal from mum to mum, come and see how your baby is doing. No harm done, let’s talk. We need to get her to engage.’

‘Why would we risk that if there is a chance that she might harm Sholto?’ James asked, rubbing his arms, conflicted already.

‘The theory is that as we speak to her, everybody hears the story. It will be on the front pages of every newspaper and somebody somewhere will know the woman who had a Down’s baby, and now does not have a Down’s baby. It might be as simple as that. She cannot hide Sholto.’

‘What happens though if she dumps him? You read about people doing that.’ James was belligerent. ‘And you don’t really know who … who that baby is. Do you?’

‘We will—’ she looked him straight in the eye – ‘we will.’

‘Imagine feeling so awful about your own child that you take somebody else’s. I know how that poor woman must have felt, the way they cry and cry …’

‘Only last week you said you would have swapped Sholto,’ said James, childishly petulant.

‘Never!’ she yelled at her husband, arms flaying.

‘It wasn’t that when he was screaming the bloody place down.’

Roberta shot him a look of sheer hatred and became very still. ‘I think we should do an appeal.’

‘I don’t,’ James said petulantly.

‘It’s a calculated risk, but it’s worth thinking about. It’s going to be in all the papers, all over the net so his abductor will know anyway.’

‘I think I need another cup of tea,’ said Roberta, getting up from the sofa.

‘Me too, please,’ said Costello, opening her notebook. ‘Now, if you talk me through everywhere you have been since the baby was born …’

For over an hour they pieced together everywhere that baby had gone, everywhere the Duster had been with the car seat in place, who Roberta had spoken to, every hospital visit, every postnatal class, every antenatal class, her postnatal Pilates, her baby bouncers, the local coffee morning, the mother-and-baby group in the village. James kept getting up and going into the kitchen to collect a diary, a calendar, his phone. Her phone, the laptop. He was a very organized man. Roberta stayed on the settee and got more tearful, tiredness etched into her face. Costello looked at her notes, pages of them. She had enough to be going on with. This was only the start of the process, so she got up to leave, with Roberta saying she was going back to bed, pushing James out the way on her way to the stairs.

James got up to see Costello out the door. ‘She’s phoned the hospital three times this morning, she’s worried about the other kid.’ He cast a glance up the stairs, making sure she was out of earshot. ‘She wants to go in and see him, but he is not our child.’

‘She’s thinking that if she looks after Moses then whoever has Sholto will be looking after him,’ said Costello thinking how much worse McCaffrey had made it by giving the unknown baby a name, it made him seem more vulnerable. Harry Fucking Styles could look after himself. But Malcolm was vulnerable.

‘But if they bought a chair the same then that is not the case, is it? They just want us to think that.’

She was glad she was saved from answering by her phone. She was being summoned back to HQ.

James saw the expression on her face change to a smile.

‘News?’ His face was pathetic in hope.

‘Not for you, sorry. But I think they are already moving this up the food chain.’ If she was being sent to West End Central then surely she’d be back with Colin Anderson and be able to get this case moving herself. ‘But I think we should keep the knowledge about the chair being swapped to ourselves. Cases like this attract nutters, we need to be able to weed them out.’

James nodded.

‘I know we already touched on it, but can you think of any reason why somebody would want to harm you – or want revenge on you for some slight, real or imagined.’

He was too quick to answer. ‘No.’

‘We have your phone records, all of them.’

He shook his head, but his insistence was gone.

‘And what about other women in your life, any of them creeping around that we should know about. Before we find out.’

‘Nothing like that.’

She stared him down.

‘Do you think you will get my son back alive?’

My son. Not our son. She paused a minute too long before answering.

‘OK then.’ He closed his eyes slowly and swallowed hard. ‘You had better get on with it.’

Anderson jolted his head up at the TV news bulletin, the words Glasgow and baby abduction catching the periphery of his consciousness. Or maybe it was the mention of a team from Govan. From Govan to Waterside, he looked round to see that everybody was watching even Stuart and Bruce. Baby abduction was thankfully uncommon. The story from the newsreader, a female with a homely face, was gentle and engaging. The image changed to show the small row of shops, couple of old guys standing outside the post office, talking about the previous night’s excitement. But they were a generation that were wary of the cameras. The end of the item was a close-up of a little baby with Down’s syndrome, smiling. He wondered if the dad had a good alibi, that was crime stat rule number one. Dead baby, suspect the man who lives with the mum and you couldn’t go far wrong, He could read the subtext of the news item easily enough, hoping that the abductor wouldn’t be put off coming forward by the social media fascists who were already talking about hanging the paedophiles concerned. The image changed to a healthy wee baby, lying in a cot kicking at a flowery mobile, laughing. It was unspoken but the genetic defect was there for all to see. This was a case of broken hearts, no crime intended, just some kind of desperation. The mother needed help. It was sad all round.

He turned his attention back to the cold case he was supposed to be reviewing in between meetings, now he had, reluctantly, put Gillian’s rape back in the file. This was a murder 25 years ago, June 1992. It sounded so long ago: 25 years.

It had been a fine summer Sunday morning when a young man had been battered to death on the steps outside his own back door. Edward Nicol Wiley, a thirty-year-old supermarket manager with two young kids; the kind of guy who polished his Ford Escort every Saturday. Not the sort to have his skull smashed with a neighbour’s claw hammer by person or persons unknown. And for an unfathomable reason words from his old DCI floated back to him, ‘Too boring to be murdered’. Harsh, but they contained a simple truth.

Wiley had access to money, access to a safe. Was it some kind of kidnap situation gone wrong? A bad idea drummed up in the pub after a few pints too many? Wiley was not easy to blackmail. He had been investigated to the hilt, Anderson had gleamed that much, and was squeaky clean. This was a case where the evidence would lie with the victim, not with the person or persons unknown. And Mrs Wiley was cleaner than the convent laundry, a stay at home mum who taught in the Sunday school. The senior investigating officer had considered the attack a case of mistaken identity.

Boring men did not get their skulls battered in.

His first task was ensuring what little forensic evidence there had been still existed. All he was looking for was a starting point like some retained material from the head of the hammer that could be subjected to a new DNA exam. He sighed. He needed to order a search of the databases for attacks where a hammer was the weapon of choice. A hammer that had been picked up in the neighbour’s garden. Handy. It was the only thing about the Wiley case that was not boring.

That and Wiley having his brains bashed in.

He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. A young female civilian stood behind him, her huge earrings that clanked when she moved her head were as gaudy as her perfume.

‘Oh hello …’ He searched for her name. ‘Vicki?’

‘Vivien,’ she corrected. ‘DCI Anderson, you are wanted in the meeting room.’ She smiled. ‘Again. I thought you might be able to smell the big cheese from here.’

Not over the stink of your perfume, he thought. Her earrings clinked like Tinkerbell as she nodded her head, subtly in the direction of the corridor. Through the open blind, the one that covered the glass partition, he could see a procession of three men going through the door and taking their jackets off. He recognized the detective super among them.

He noticed how quiet the office had become. Stuart and Bruce were standing at their desks, pretending not to look over but listening intently. ‘Am I in trouble?’ he asked her.

‘Not yet,’ she said in a voice that was just husky enough to be sexy. If she had not been the same age as his daughter.

Colin Anderson took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the interview room, fully aware of the continued scrutiny of his colleagues. A quick response told him to enter, he stepped inside.

It was the big boss, the det super who greeted him. Four of them were seated round the table, sleeves rolled up, tucking into the coffee and biscuits.

‘We need a word, Colin,’ Mitchum spoke next, indicating that he should sit.

Anderson noted the use of the first name, nodded to the others. ‘Why am I sensing that this is not good news?’

Mitchum waved his concerns away. ‘What are you working on at the moment?’

Anderson put his pen down, thought about the Wiley file. ‘Not much I can get my teeth into.’

Mitchum spoke, ‘Well, you might be able to help us out. We have been forced into a corner somewhat unfortunately. As you know, we had Gillian Witherspoon pinned for a new, low-key but wide-reaching campaign. And now that she has …’

‘Died?’ added Colin helpfully.

‘We need to find somebody else quickly.’

‘Why?’

They were silent for a moment.

‘We need to reinstate the campaign,’ said Mitchum reluctantly.

‘Reinstate the campaign rather than set up a specialist cold case task force to review the evidence and maybe catch the perpetrator. He’s still out there.’

‘God, DCI Anderson, you talk like it’s our job to solve crime!’ Mitchum allowed himself a chuckle. ‘No, not that, but we did stumble across something we found to be of interest. Something about you.’

‘Intriguing.’

It was the ACC who spoke, ‘Do you remember Sally Logan?’

‘Vaguely,’ he lied as his mind jumped back twenty years, twenty-five years. Sally with her honey blonde hair and endless energy. The first on the trampoline, the first to skip when she thought nobody was looking. She was a delight, pissed out her brain on the dance floor while Andrew Braithwaite bopped with her, a dancing bear with a beer in his hand. Sally with her long brown legs, the scar deep on the inside of her knee. ‘I can remember I had to prove where I was at six o’clock on the morning of her rape.’ Anderson felt a little uncomfortable, they were poking into his past to a place and time that he considered his own. A life before he wore a uniform. A time before he wore a wedding ring. ‘Yes, I knew her quite well.’

‘You were a person of interest,’ smiled Mitchum. ‘For about five minutes.’

He remembered now, she had lost a year at uni due to a knee injury, and she was so happy to get back on the hockey team, back on the running track and out onto the hills. Then the attack happened. ‘Did you ever find her attacker?’ he continued.

‘No.’

‘We never found the man who attacked Gillian either, did we.’

‘No.’ Mitchum caressed his pen, holding it under his nose as if scenting a fine cigar. ‘Sally was, if you recall, very media friendly as we would put it nowadays. She was that bright, smiley, any girl type of victim.’

‘Yes.’ He remembered that smile well.

‘She had agreed to waive anonymity and become the face of a personal safety campaign we had at that time. She had our photographer take pictures of her neck wounds, the bruises on her face, the damage to her shoulder. Physically, she was a mess after the assault and she would have been good in that role, an eloquent woman standing up, telling her story, her injuries visible. Telling other women that keeping safe was the better part of being strong.’

Anderson was confused. He would have known about that if it had come to pass, that was the sort of thing he would remember. She was not a woman easy to forget. ‘What happened?’

‘We don’t really know. She backed off. She changed her mind. Suddenly.’

‘Women have that right,’ said Anderson.

‘Indeed, they do. We want you to ask her again. Give her the same script you were going to give Gillian for the SafeLife campaign. You know, speaking out for the victims of violent and sexual crime.’

Anderson said quietly, ‘Would that not be better coming from one of your specially trained media officers? You spend a huge budget training them, why not use them?’

‘Because they are all on a bloody training course,’ said the super with a flicker of a smile. ‘But you have history with the woman.’

‘Hardly, sir, we were at the same university. Twenty-odd years ago, but I have no problem catching up with her and having a chat. But if the answer is no, then the answer is no. I am not going to use any past acquaintance to persuade her.’

‘Of course not. But just one more thing.’ The detective super got up, sliding a file towards Anderson. ‘We have contacted your old DI. She’s in the building right now on another case but feel free to approach her if you feel it more prudent to do this with a female officer.’

‘Who?’

‘DI Costello.’

‘Oh,’ said Anderson, wondering what idiot would put the words ‘prudent’ and ‘Costello’ in the same sentence. ‘Just as I was beginning to like the idea.’

Costello slipped her card through the electronic lock of West End Central, summoned to a meeting which she knew would be about the media fallout from the Kissel case, so on the way she had got hold of PC McCaffrey on his mobile, firing out instructions, passing on all the information she had about the routines of Roberta and Sholto Chisholm and asking him to get them cross-checked and dig deeper into the phone call records of James. He was up to something, she could smell it off him. The lives of the parents would now be subjected to intense scrutiny, him more than her. He had told Roberta to go to that shop, the remote way he stood in the hospital cubicle. It was too neat, but so far there were no red flags.

As she waited for the lock to recognize her, she ran through various scenarios for the meeting. She had no doubt she was invited here for a game of one potato, two potato with social workers, cops, doctors, health visitors; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men sitting in one room seeing who else they could blame. Responsibility for the death of that child would be bounced around between them. Ignoring Humpty who sat in the corner, quietly bleeding to death, or starving to death as he would have been in Bernadette Kissel’s care. She thought of the wardrobe in the child’s room, a single wardrobe with a solitary rail and on it hung one hanger. On the hanger was one tiny jumper, a small blue and white striped affair, a navy blue anchor sewn onto the bottom corner.

And that was all. The only piece of child’s clothing in the entire house. And it still had its label on it.

The door, resolutely refused to open. She gave it a quick push but it remained firm, responding to her violence with a reproachful buzz. She swore, waited, looking round her. Standing in a doorway across the street was the beggar she had seen the day before, still looking for handouts. Everything that woman owned in the world would be in that big Lidl plastic bag. She was ferreting about in the bottom of it now, a large lady bending over straight over from the hips. Costello saw that she still had her Crocs on. Of course she would, how many pairs of shoes do homeless people have? Her feet would get cold in this weather. Although still raining, it was warmer today, but if that woman was sleeping rough or out on the streets begging tonight, then the evening chill would bite deep. God, nothing was going right in this world. She wondered if she should go across and mention the nearby hostel. She could try and get her a bed for the night. Suddenly the thought of Malcolm floated across her mind. Had he been fed last night? Was somebody taking him to a doctor or to hospital? Or was he sent off to school because there was going to be nobody at home to look after him? Although she tried not to, she automatically recalled the black Porsche that had driven into the house. She had clocked the plate, of course: VA 2661.

Costello had friends in traffic, a revengeful nature. And endless patience.

The door buzzed her in and she walked through, into the warmth of West End Central.

‘We are being joined by a leading supervisor from Social Services, she’s in charge of liaison between social workers and health visitors for the various child protection units around Glasgow. She has a multi-agency remit and is keen for her input to be heard right at the get-go.’ Detective Super McGrath glanced at his watch and then at the clock. ‘She seems to be running a little late.’

‘Probably can’t get in that bloody door,’ muttered Costello to herself.

The room fell quiet, six of them sat, looking at each other and the two empty seats. Four of her colleagues had laptops or tablets placed squarely in front of them. Costello pulled out her battered black notebook and searched her handbag for a pen that worked. Aware the very well-dressed man who looked like the actor in the stairlift advert was looking at her, Costello looked out the window of the room, taking advantage of the good view of the corridor her position afforded her. She thought she had caught a glimpse of Colin Anderson going into the room opposite. If it was him, he was looking much better. He had either put on a little weight or had started working out. Or maybe he could afford a well-cut suit now. She wondered what his meeting was about. Would they bump in to each other later? Surely if he knew she was here, he would make the effort? Then again, when did men ever make any kind of effort for her nowadays?

And she was thinking about it, wasn’t she? Considering it rather than making a definite plan to catch hold of him later. They had grown so far apart without either of them really noticing, maybe that was the way of things as people grew older, they were merely twigs floating in the stream. The door closed on their meeting room leaving her to look again at her colleagues, trying to read the agenda upside down.

She wondered if this meeting had anything to do with a rumoured convergence of the cold case unit and her domestic violence remit, maybe bringing some psychological insight to those who started with fists and ended up with knives. And stop them before they did it.

Nobody had said a word. Costello had a sudden impulse to burst out laughing. Mr Stairlift, she didn’t know. Ditto the other police officer, looking like he’d put his hand up first to answer teacher. There was one nervous-looking civilian poised to take minutes. The well groomed man on the far side was from the fiscal’s office. He looked too young to have an opinion about anything. He was here to report back to his boss, Archie the bastard, who wasn’t here to see things for himself. Probably couldn’t face her, in case she read the guilt written all over his face.

‘I think that might be the head of the team coming now,’ said the young police officer at the noise of clomping footfall along the corridor. Whoever it was was heavy and dragging their feet, or maybe burdened down. The young cop got up to open the door, Archie walked in. Costello refused to return his smile, giving him her thousand-mile death stare but he ignored her, standing to one side to let his companion enter the room. Their local head of child protection social work. As the woman came in the room, she glared at Costello as hard as she could with her soft brown eyes before she placed her bulging, Lidl bag on the table.

Costello found herself on her feet, her face fixed to conceal the conflict of her emotions: guilt, shame, embarrassment and disbelief. And she daren’t look at Archie, in case the woman had mentioned that some stupid, racist, female cop had thought she was a bag lady, snapping at her that she had no spare change. God, she could be in all kinds of trouble now.

‘This is Deliana Despande.’ Archie introduced her, his careful enunciation making it obvious he had been practising.

She pulled a cushion from her Lidl bag then sat down on it, smiling her way round the room at the introduction. The smile got rather fixed and frosty when it came to Costello.

They sat down, Costello taking her time to pull the seat in under her, still not able to believe it. She really was up to her neck in shit now.

‘Call me Dali, it helps.’ Her accent was pure Glaswegian, slightly punctuated with harsh Asiatic consonants. She shuffled her heavy bulk down on the cushioned seat, adjusted the shoulder strap of her bra and slipped a dirty, bulky anorak from her shoulders. ‘Sorry I am late, I am too fat to walk quickly.’ She laughed as she pulled another file from the bag and opened it.

Costello, sitting at right angles to her, had a good view of the first and second pages, densely covered in an inky web of thick black italic pen.

She cast a glance at Costello, a small, fleeting smile that seemed totally without vitriol. ‘And you are DI Costello?’

Costello nodded, wondering how fast her career was going to come crashing around her. She looked at Archie, the two-timing bastard gave her a sweet smile like everything was normal. Had Dali not said anything to him and she was waiting to make her humiliation public? Or was she going to be taken in to a small room and lectured before being suspended for abject racism?

Dali was talking, ‘DI Costello. Yesterday you were sent to investigate a very strange crime indeed? One child, a baby was swapped for another?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know, I tried to talk to you about it twice but you were … busy,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ That didn’t sound enough. ‘Sorry,’ she added.

‘It happens all the time, don’t give it a moment’s thought.’ Her dark eyes twinkled. ‘We need to get to the bottom of that incident, and given your circumstances, I think you can be of great help to me. And vice versa.’

Given your circumstances? Was that a hint of career blackmail? Costello, while resentful, couldn’t help but be impressed.

Dali waved her arms about and pulled up her bra strap again. ‘I need a team of people who are focussed and don’t talk shite. My office is complete rubbish, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.’

Costello smirked, caught Archie’s eye and received the hint of a grin. The bastard.

‘We are under investigation, our investigators are under review from this agency and that agency. I really would like some staff to help my staff to do their bloody job and then,’ she rattled her fingertips off the top of the table, ‘you Mr Walker, might have less work to do. We are there to prevent the crimes, not solve them and then you do not have to prosecute something because … it has not happened. Why is that madness?’

Shocked, Archie opened his mouth, but she was talking, sweet and brown-eyed, chattering like a Gatling gun wrapped in a duvet before he managed to get a word out.

‘We need to start doing something. And it starts now. With us. Here.’

And something deep in Costello cheered.

She had left the meeting enriched as if somebody had lit the fire in her belly. There was no doubt that Dali was a straight talker and took no shite from anybody. Costello had become aware, as the meeting had gone on, that the young fiscal wasn’t getting a word in edgeways. The cop with all the right answers wasn’t doing that very well either. In the end, she felt like Dali was talking to her and Archie alone. Maybe because they were the only two listening rather than typing and looking up various references.

The young fiscal argued that a point Dali was trying to make was unlawful but she talked over him, her silky voice had the subtlety of a snow plough.

‘This bastard broke the child’s arm, in three places, he made the child sit in the house with pants on his head, pants that were covered in shit and piss. Now, Mr Fiscal, if you tell me that any intervention to stop that is unlawful then I suggest you set about getting the law changed. Or you get another job.’ She didn’t quite add the ‘young man’ but it was there.

Dali was proposing a unit that would actually get things done. They had to report back to her wherever they encountered problems. Why things were not getting done, and then, yes, all they do is sign reports that sit on the fiscal’s desk and nothing happens, while the wee kid still gets to sit in the corner with the shitty pants on their head.

‘This is the now, it is in the present, it’s not like a crime that should be investigated after it has been committed. We have to prevent those crimes from being committed and I know that does not sit well with you legal people, but the consequence of your reluctance to act is this.’ And she placed an A4 colour photograph in front of the young fiscal. Costello could make out the boy’s bare body, bruised, broken and burned.

The fiscal looked away, towards Archie who offered him no help.

‘You can pretend you don’t see it but we see it every day. And now, I hope that image is burned onto the back of your eyes. It’ll make you better at your job. Now, who is in charge of the tea here? I could do with a brew.’

And with that she had announced that while they were waiting for the refreshments she was going to use the ladies. She lifted her cushion and stuffed it back in her bag, a clear indication that she considered the meeting over. Costello watched as Archie stood up, trying to help her, and she gave him her bag to carry as she put her jacket back on, then thanked him and made her way clumsily out the room. They heard her heavy footfall on the squeak of her Crocs on the lino floor.

Costello sat quietly, closing her notebook, thinking about Malcolm. There was a case that was going to happen, but the young fiscal was right. You can’t act on a feeling or experienced intuition. It was almost impossible to wade in before there had been an incident. Even if there was evidence of initial abuse, sending an official round might keep the child safe while the abuser was sober, and could apply reasoned thought, but once they were drunk or high or enraged, then it would be open season.

She found herself alone with Archie. The others had left, he was standing at the door. She wasn’t sure if he realized he was holding it closed.

‘So how are you getting on? I’ve not seen you since the Kissel verdict came back.’

‘I’ve been busy.’ And she added, ‘And so have you.’

‘Are you working on the Waterside abduction?’

‘I am, and I seem to be a one-man band on it.’ She folded her arms, waiting for Archie to open the door.

‘You’re a DI, form a team.’

‘Aye right, meanwhile here in the real world.’

‘Are you in a mood?’

‘Why should I be?’

‘Bloody hell, I only asked.’

Archie looked normal, he hadn’t changed into a two-headed evil beast that dripped blood on the floor. He was the same Archie, neat as a new pin, sharply ironed creases and perfect salt and pepper hair.

‘How is Pippa?’

‘Not good, she’s refusing to eat and that’s causing issues at the home.’

She wanted to ask where he was on Tuesday afternoon but couldn’t.

‘Is Colin here?’ she asked. ‘I thought I saw him.’

‘Yes, I think Mitchum has him next door. He’s being collared into PR.’

‘I’ll go and find him then,’ she said and reached round him to open the door, and squeeze past him before he could stop her.

Costello walked up behind DCI Colin Anderson but he was so engrossed in his phone and the outpourings of the coffee machine, he hadn’t even noticed. She had waited until her lips were at the lobe of his ear, waited until she could smell the familiar scent of him, before she spoke. ‘I thought I smelled you in the building.’

He turned. ‘Costello, how are you?’ He sounded glad to see her and thought about hugging her then remembered that she hated any physical human contact.

Her grey cold eyes were already on the file, honing in on the photograph that he had been examining before his phone went. ‘I’m fine. Are you working here? Is that your case?’ She nodded at the picture.

‘Somebody I knew at uni. Is Archie with you?’

‘No. Who is she?’

‘Where is Archie?’

‘In that room there, waiting to burn in hell so he might be a while.’ She turned her head to look at the photograph the right way round. ‘God, she looks good for her age, much better than you. Has she had surgery or did you go to a tough school? She’s …’

‘Absolutely gorgeous?’ suggested Anderson, knowing the only way to avoid interrogation was to give her something. ‘She was always a good-looking woman. Nice too. Not like you at all, she’s one of these really healthy types, always climbing mountains at weekends and swimming across lochs at six in the morning.’

‘Sounds a right pain in the arse. I bet she ate yoghurt.’

‘By the bucketful.’

‘Is she a cold case?’ She plucked the picture from him, sticking it under her nose, so close to her face Anderson thought she might need her sight tested.

‘She was raped. It was never solved, so yes, it might be a cold case. Or something.’ He took the photograph back. Not wanting her to have possession of it. Of any of it. ‘She got badly hurt.’

‘Is she another one of your redheads?’

‘No,’ he said patiently. ‘She ended up marrying the guy at uni who got her better after she was attacked. Her physio, I think he was. And he was a much bigger bloke than me so I wasn’t going to fight for her. He would have crushed me like roadkill. What happened between you and Archie?’

Anderson lifted his paper cup of coffee from the machine and took a sip, but Costello was already going through the file, memorizing the names, seeing the injuries, the scar, the deep cut on the side of Sally’s face, the swelling with the odd speckle constellation of scars around her shoulder, some of them forming perfect teardrops on her tanned skin. He let her look, then held out his hand to stop her at one picture, a close-up of the bruising around her shoulder.

‘Does she know you are a cop now?’

‘She will when I tell her. I am going out to see her later. Does Archie know you are back here?’

‘Yes. Is she involved in SafeLife?’

‘You seem very well informed.’ His voice was curt.

‘Tread carefully, my friend, fools rushing in, where angels fear to whatsit.’

‘And what happened with you and Archie? Precisely?’

‘He’s a bastard. Precisely. I’ve never heard you talk of her before? What’s her name again?’

‘I didn’t say. It’s not a big deal, Costello. Brenda and I were not in their social league. They both had the sort of parents that … well, they had money, let’s leave it at that. They lived a life we couldn’t afford.’

‘The sort of life that you can afford now, Colin? Or have you forgotten that? You could buy Claire a flat in the city centre if she goes to art school. You and your ex – Sally, is it? – might be in the same league now, you can easily afford to take her out to the fancy dancy places. She might be able to show you how to work that bloody coffee machine of yours.’

‘Costello, I have no interest in working this case at all and Sally’s not my ex.’

‘Liar,’ she replied sweetly.

‘I have enough on my hands, with Brenda and Claire and Peter. Nesbit is the only one that doesn’t give me aggro these days.’

‘And David. And Paige.’

‘Indeed.’ He turned over the page, ‘We didn’t keep up with them, Sally and Andrew, but it will be nice to catch up with old friends. Brenda wasn’t that keen on socializing with them, back in the day.’

His DI pursed her thin lips, not saying ‘thou protesteth too much’, but the silence let him know she was thinking it. ‘Brenda doesn’t really like anybody,’ was all she said.

‘Neither do you,’ he snapped. ‘And that is my file.’ He turned away, pulling the file from her and closing it, wanting the conversation to be over. It had been about six months since he had last set eyes on Costello. Two minutes reunited and she was annoying him already.

‘So why are you here?’

‘At a meeting.’

‘Me too.’ She sighed, then bit her lower lip. She deflated.

That was a bad sign that he recognized. ‘Are you in trouble? Do tell, are you on your final written warning? I could do with cheering up.’

‘It could be serious.’

‘Even better.’ But he was looking at her closely now. She was thoughtful, and he felt guilty and concerned. They had been through a lot together, her distress already part of his territory.

‘The head of a new unit from Child Protection for Strathclyde was at my meeting. I bumped into her yesterday. She approached me and, well, I told her I had no spare change and she wasn’t to bother me.’

Anderson tried not to laugh. ‘You thought she was a dosser. Why?’

‘Because she looks like a supermodel? Why do you think?’ Her voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘Dali she called herself. Like the painter.’ She rubbed her face, she looked worn out.

His eyes drifted over her shoulder to a door opening and an overweight woman of Asian origin was making her way towards them, dragging her feet along the corridor, her Lidl bag over her shoulder, the weight of it giving her gait a roll.

‘Did you think the head of the new unit was an immigrant beggar?’ He laughed, but he could see why. ‘I wouldn’t worry, if she has got that high in her career in this part of the world, she will have heard, and been called, much worse. She probably found it funny.’ He turned away. ‘Probably. But if she wants to make a thing of it, you could really be in deep shit.’

‘Oh God, she’s coming along here, isn’t she? Is she stopping at the lifts? Please tell me she’s getting in the lift.’

Anderson watched the overweight woman pass the small queue for the lift. She was coming directly towards him, her plastic bag tucked under one arm, her anorak swinging from her shoulders. ‘Nope. She’s right behind you,’ he whispered.

‘Costello?’ Her voice held a hint of command.

‘Dali?’

The eyes were calculating and intelligent. ‘Excuse us,’ she said to Anderson with consummate politeness. ‘Costello, can I have a word, please,’ she said, flashing Colin Anderson a smile of beautiful white teeth as she placed a puffy hand with gnarled joints on Costello’s shoulder and guided her back along the corridor.

He wished he was a fly on the wall.