Orla Sheridan lived in a small flat tucked away in one of the narrower side streets off Dumbarton Road. Wheelie bins were out permanently, two skips at the end of the street stuffed full with old sofas and carcasses of kitchen units. A row of three discarded fridges like decayed teeth was evidence that the students had started a new term and the detritus of the tenants last clear out had not yet been uplifted. Somebody had left out a cheese plant, complete with ceramic pot, a sign round its neck pleading for a good home.
It looked as though it had been waiting for some time.
The journey took less than ten minutes. Stromvar Drive was spotless at one end, slightly more ‘bohemian’ at the other. Dali seemed to have forgotten her embarrassing encounter with Costello, too busy talking about the stress her staff were under. But Costello had no doubt it was tucked away at the back of her mind, a weapon of destruction that could lay dormant, to be armed when needed. That’s exactly what she herself would do.
Dali’s stream of consciousness was a rant about her anger and her passion for women and women’s rights and their safety, and furious too that Lorna McGill, the young social worker, had been battered by an expensive legal team determined to blame the death of Bernadette Kissel’s child on anybody but Bernadette Kissel.
Then it dawned on Costello that it was the same social worker they were talking about. Piecing together the strands of Dali’s rant, she deduced that Lorna McGill had gone out to visit a five-week-old baby called Polly. And was determined she wasn’t going to leave until she saw her. Polly’s mum Orla wouldn’t even open up until the guy from upstairs had come down and battered on the door. Dali described Orla as ‘thick as mince’, brown with fake tan and ridiculous black eyebrows. The excuses followed; first the ‘wean’ was asleep, then it was asleep at her mum’s, then it was with a friend in the pub. Like it wasn’t there at all. Once she had gained entry Lorna had carried out a quick check. No Polly. More alarmingly, no food, nothing to suggest that a baby had ever lived there. Costello thought of all the evidence lying around in the Chisholm’s house as Dali ran through all the correct protocols the young social worker had followed, slightly defensive as if she was fed up of her team getting the shitty end of the stick. It was while Lorna was phoning Orla’s mother that Orla said she was going to the loo and then climbed out the window.
Costello had to smirk at that. ‘How was she to know?’
‘Indeed,’ said Dali, ‘Lorna’s a good kid, go easy on her. She’s had it tough the last few weeks. And what motivation do they have now. They are too young, too inexperienced, too big a case load and not enough support. I mean it’s the bloody lawyers and the bloody fiscals, all those arses who pass letters here and emails there and nobody ever makes a fucking decision about anything. All they are interested in is a blame hound. And this girl Lorna is good, she is very good and now we will lose her to the profession, and—’ she started banging her fist on the dashboard – ‘we cannot afford to let good staff like that go. We cannot allow that.’ She sat back and took a deep breath. ‘But how do you solve a problem like Orla Sheridan?’
‘That sounds like a cue for a song.’
The flat was the small one, bottom right, one tiny living room with a kitchen off it, bathroom in the middle with an air extraction unit, and an even smaller bedroom at the back. Even at the front door it smelled of damp and dope.
Dali had left her plastic bags in the back seat of Costello’s car, only taking a well-worn black diary with her. She waddled straight through to the living room, obviously familiar with the property.
Costello introduced herself to the young woman standing by the window, waiting their arrival. ‘Lorna? DI Costello.’
‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’ She sniffed, her eyes red and sore from crying.
‘I worked the Kissel case, Lorna. You might have seen me at court.’
Lorna looked worn out, defeated, ready to cry again. ‘Well, I fucked that up and I think I fucked this up as well. She got away from me.’
Costello cast a look at Dali thinking that she might remonstrate at the language, but the older woman just patted her younger colleague on the shoulder.
‘Well, you didn’t fuck up the Kissel case, but you did let Orla escape out a window – trick 2A in the book. Chalk it up to experience. Costello may be a DI here but she’s not beyond the odd fuck up herself,’ Dali said cheerfully, ‘and she is still standing so don’t you worry about it. It wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. In this job, we never do anything right so we may as well settle for doing our best. We will always get roasted by people with testicles who never get off their fat backsides. It’s shite.’ Dali readjusted the huge navy blue duvet of a jacket, her armour against an unfair world. ‘The big question is, have you ever seen this baby? Ever?’
Lorna shook her head, wretched. ‘Never.’
‘Never,’ Dali repeated, glancing at Costello, making sure she got that.
‘I think this might be Daniel Kissel all over again. Or am I seeing something that isn’t there?’
‘Innocent people don’t climb out windows. And you’ve checked to see if the child has been here recently?’ Dali wobbled her way round the sofa, her pen pointing, her head twisting to get sight of the worktops in the small kitchen area.
‘I’ve checked the bedding, the food cupboards, the clothes, the fridge. There is no sign that Baby Polly has been here for a while. Or ever.’
‘Good, you’ve done good,’ said Costello, looking at Dali.
‘Lorna thought there might be an issue going on here.’ She raised an eyebrow at Costello from behind the sofa, a silent tic-tac, not to be talked about in front of the young social worker. ‘Orla is what? 18? 19? Legged it through the back window while saying she was going to the loo.’
‘While I just sat here and let her,’ moaned Lorna.
‘You’ll learn. But we need to find her. And the baby, she’s only five weeks old. And not Down’s syndrome,’ she added knowing the way that Costello’s brain would jump.
‘Five weeks?’ confirmed Costello. Sholto was six weeks. Moses five. She realized Dali was looking at her, making sure she was joining the dots. ‘I presume that you have checked relatives, friends? Anywhere the baby—’
‘Polly.’
‘Polly might legitimately be? And are they reliable?’
‘I did. I have phoned everywhere, all the contact numbers I have. They all seemed to think that the baby is elsewhere. Should I phone Family Protection?’
‘I already have, they are sending somebody out to do a report,’ Lorna said.
Dali raised an eyebrow at Costello. ‘Nice of them. But I think we will get DI Costello to do it instead. She can kick a few arses for us.’
‘I would but I have my hands full with—’
‘With what? A missing baby? Well, while you are looking for that one you might find ours. We might get a BOGOF. You know, buy one get one free.’ Dali’s look was slightly more threatening this time. ‘There is deliberate manipulation here.’
‘You’re telling me?’ said Costello, just so they understood each other.
‘Sorry,’ said Dali. ‘But I want you to find Polly. Quickly.’
‘Did she have a phone, Lorna?’ asked Costello, reminding herself that she did have the power of a police officer, not a social worker and grudgingly saw Dali’s point.
‘Oh God, yes,’ replied Lorna, the absurdity of the question making her forget her stress. ‘An all-singing, all-dancing one. With them it’s a bigger priority than feeding the kids. Hers was an iPhone 7, in a black and white diamanté case, skull and cross bones. I have the number, she never changed it. She also had an iPad, she was always taking photographs on that.’
‘Of Polly?’ asked Costello.
‘Of herself.’ Lorna scrolled down her own phone and pressed once, and held it out to show Costello. ‘It’s just ringing out.’ She tried it again with the same result.
‘OK, so ringing and traceable. Orla is not a priority but Polly is.’ Costello took the phone from Lorna and moved over to the front window to call the station and leave a message that they needed a trace on that number and would somebody call her back. ‘She said she was going to the loo?’ asked Costello, making her way to the small square hall. Dali had to move round the sofa to let her past.
‘And she did. Then she came in here to put a jumper on and then climbed out the bedroom window.’ They walked through a cloud of cheap perfume into the tiny room at the back of the flat. All three of them stared at the peeling wallpaper and the mould growing up the corner under the window. It was a study in bright pink. A poster with six tangoed male strippers, each one wearing a tiny thong with a couple of socks jammed down the front, dominated the room but there was no cot, no crib, no nappies, no baby clothes, no bottle. Wherever Polly was, she wasn’t expected back.
With a gloved hand, Costello lifted the window. The sash ran up easily, only the smallest of rumbles giving it away, easily masked by the closed door. It was low enough for Orla to slip through and drop out onto the bed of weeds beneath, across the back green and out. She had the choice of three or four different escape routes. Each would have taken her to a street not visible to Lorna in the living room at the front of the flat. But the weeds were flattened and broken by something more than a pair of feet. Costello looked around.
‘Did you see her take anything with her?’
‘Can’t say, I just saw her close the door.’
‘There was something sitting here?’ She pointed to a distinct rectangle of clear floor between a box and a pile of dirty clothes. ‘Every bit of floor in this room is covered with crap except this wee bit. What do you think? A small suitcase sitting upright? A big handbag?’
Lorna looked round the room. ‘Well, she had a leopard patterned suitcase. You know, a small one with a pull handle? I noticed it when I came in, I thought she was taking her clothes to the laundry.’
‘Do you know if anything in the wardrobe is missing?’
Dali looked at her. Then at the mess on the floor. And opened her arms – how would they know.
Lorna shook her head. ‘No idea.’
‘This is worse than my daughter’s room and she is the messiest person I know. What a tip. Orla could be housing twelve illegals under her dirty laundry and we wouldn’t know.’
Lorna flicked a smile at Costello, Dali’s sense of humour was well-known.
‘Can you look for a handbag, a passport, a bank card? Anything like that?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Dali. ‘I’ve been into Shareen’s room and got out without any notifiable disease. Well not that I know of. I’ll have a good look. Bloody teenagers.’
Costello handed her a pair of nitrile gloves.
‘Are these for my health or your evidence?’
‘Both,’ answered Costello.
Lorna smiled as Dali squeezed past her into the hall to deposit her diary somewhere safe.
‘What was she wearing when you last saw her?’ Costello had her notebook out.
‘Tiny skirt. Bare legs, flat black pumps and a black T-shirt. I think she put on a red jumper but I’m not sure.’
Costello nodded. ‘And that, Lorna, what do you think that was?’ Costello pointed to the small picture lying on the bed in bits, the frame separated from the glass, the glass away from the picture.
‘It was hanging up there earlier. It was a picture of a stupid wee dog, like a postcard.’ She pointed to the empty nail. ‘Could she have knocked it off the wall as she made her way out?’
Costello showed her the metal claws on the back. ‘Maybe, but she has prised these clips open. It’s an odd thing to have in a room like this with her Ed Sheeran poster and the Highlanders with their pecs. This wee Westie is a bit twee. The only reason I can think of as to why somebody would remove the back of a picture during their getaway was to retrieve something hidden there.’ She gauged the size of the indent. ‘Money? Credit cards?’
‘Sort of thing my granny likes,’ said Lorna, looking closely at the picture. She turned it over. It had been cut from a calendar.
‘She must have dropped that on the bed this morning if she slept in it last night.’ Costello picked up all the layers of the picture, feeling the odd width. She tried to put it back together. With the backing replaced, the picture at the front was bevelled. ‘Looks like there has indeed been something stuck in there. Look at the size of it, what do you think? Cash? Was she a prostitute? Drug dealer?’
Dali was standing at the door, her face grave. ‘Neither that we know of, well not in any big way. But she had some cash stashed. And her baby is missing.’
The lift up to the yoga studio was on the exterior corner of the Blue Neptune, right at the back on the junction of Sevastopol Lane and Inkerman Street, a complex comprising a nightclub, bars, four restaurants, executive offices and penthouse apartments. The rental included access to the gym on the top floor and that was where the yoga studio was situated. Anderson could have accessed it by the main door of the Blue Neptune and walked through the marble foyer to a reception where he would have to explain himself, so he chose the lift with its direct access to the gym and the studio from Sevastopol Lane.
He stood in a little inshot, a marbled porch protected by a metal slide gate that was pulled back and locked at the moment. He pressed a button to call the lift. The door clicked opened, and he entered directly into a lift filled with the scent of flowers. The green marbled walls and the carpet tiles on the floor were very clean. He imagined there was a well hidden camera, scrutinizing anybody who pressed that button before they were admitted. Nobody who looked like they needed a pee was ever going to get in here.
It played a sweet light tune, not the usual banal lift muzak, it sounded like an acoustic version of the Beatles? ‘Blackbird’? The lift took him, silently and smoothly, right up to the sixth floor.
He wondered if Sally owned the gym, or managed it? Had she ever finished her degree? Or had her career been derailed, as her life had in many more subtle ways. He was curious, maybe more than curious, about what had become of her. He had been very sure of himself when he had told Costello that Sally and Andrew were still together, but he didn’t know that. He only knew what was stated in the file at the last update. Anything could have happened to them since then. He didn’t know what he was hoping for. So, he didn’t hope for anything.
The doors opened and he was immediately overwhelmed to complete surrender by gentle greens and beguiling blues, the heady aromas of eucalyptus and lavender.
A young woman as slim and neat as BA cabin crew, brown hair pulled into a bun, sat behind a glass counter, on a rattan and blue cushioned chair, the counter an artistic mix of bamboo and glass. On the wall were similar bamboo shelves and tinted glass. The shelves were stacked with rolled turquoise and sunflower towels, ornamental vials of azure liquid and small wooden sticks that looked like instruments of torture.
‘Can I help you?’ Her smile was very friendly. She looked young and … Anderson struggled for the word … clean. Almost sterile. She was either very pretty and wore no make-up or was so good at putting on make-up, that it was enhancing but invisible. She didn’t look like the usual beauty therapy bimbo, more like a nanny from a posh nanny academy.
‘I’d like a word with Sally, Sally Logan, or Braithwaite.’ His smile said, this is official business and you would really be better off not asking. His fingers flicked round his warrant card, upending it on the glass surface of the reception desk, ready to show it if needed.
‘Can I tell her who is calling?’ A saccharine smile as she lifted up the phone, then placed the handset back on its cradle.
‘Don’t worry. I think I recognize that voice. Hello, Colin.’
He recognized her voice. He knew it in an instant. Soft and low, with a slight upward inflection that hinted at invitation. Or was that his wishful thinking?
He turned to see her standing in the doorway of the office behind him.
And for a moment he drank in the sight of her. She was older, but unfathomably so. She was, in essence, exactly the same. He would have recognized her anywhere. Her dull golden hair was wound up loosely on the top of her head, as if she had scooped it up and stuck two long pins through it. Her face was a little more lined, her lips a little thinner. Her pale green eyes were now hidden behind round-framed glasses. She was dressed in a kind of Japanese kimono, open at the front, wrapped round her blue leggings and her loose T-shirt.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘I think this is where you are supposed to say that I haven’t changed a bit.’ She stepped forward, the kimono billowed out a little behind her. Even in her blue trainers, she was nearly as tall as he was.
‘You haven’t changed that much.’ Their eyes met and held. ‘Not that much at all, if truth be told,’ he said, honestly.
She stepped forward, easily slipped into his arms and proffered a cheek for him to kiss.
His heart thumped as he caught a scent of lime, the perfume that Helena used to wear. It confused him and for the quickest beat, he closed his eyes and held that moment; a beautiful woman in his arms and the scent of lime. When he stood back he hoped she didn’t notice the moistness of his eyes. Well, why not, they were old friends. Maybe more than that.
Then she stood back and looked him up and down, a slow blink of those green eyes behind the glass rims.
‘I think I can guess why you are here. Have I worked my way to the top of the pile again?’ She turned away and looked back over her shoulder. ‘Do you want to come through?’
‘You don’t need to speak to me,’ he said, not moving.
She wrinkled her nose, a tic that took him back twenty years. ‘No, I don’t need to, but I would like to.’ She gestured that he should follow her into the office. ‘Robyn, hold any calls.’
The office was a fair size, the same theme of pastel shades, saved from looking too cold by the warmth of the golden sand colour, and the matching swirls of muslin at the huge window that formed one wall of the office. The view of the Clyde snaking in the distance was impressive. Today the sky was low, grey and rolling but it was pleasantly warm in here.
Anderson walked up to the glass, and stood, aware of the draft of heated air coming up from a gap on the floor. ‘What a view.’
‘I like it. I have my desk looking out the window. Bet you don’t get that at your job.’ She had climbed up on her desk, folded her long legs underneath her, easily, sitting in the lotus position in supreme comfort.
‘If I had, I wouldn’t get any work done. I presume you know I’m a cop?’
‘I have heard that down the grapevine. And I may have read about you in the newspapers now and then.’ Then her face changed, as if remembering why he was here. ‘Do you want a seat?’ she indicated the two pastel blue sofas behind the desk, huge cushions nestling in wicker frames. She swirled on the desk, so while she was facing him, she was also looking down on him. He could give her that. If she felt the need to be in control, to be at home, then so be it. He noticed the slim wedding band, the small solitaire engagement ring slipped over it. Did that mean she was still with Andrew?
Suddenly she was awkward, messing with her hair, a nervous biting at her lip. The tic of wrinkling her nose again.
‘So how did you end up with all this? I am very impressed.’ It was trite but it got the conversation moving.
‘Not all this, I have the gym, the spa and the studio. That is about it. I really got into yoga, you know. All those years ago I wasn’t really getting over it.’ Her eyes flicked up to meet his, the consent to talk about ‘it’. ‘I went away for a while, travelling. I spent a few months in India, did all kinds of soul-searching and navel-gazing. And yoga.’
‘Oh. We were wondering where you went.’
‘We? We or you? Did you ever wonder where I went?’ She learned forward, searching him for a response. He was unsure what was expected.
‘Of course I did.’ He was indignant, he meant it. ‘I think we all wondered about you. God, when did I see you last?’
‘I can tell you that. I can tell you that exactly. It was at a party, at the uni, there were cocktails and the bar staff were so pissed they were just sticking anything in the drinks. We all got very drunk and ended up in the park.’ She coloured a little, some other little memories filtering through. Then she said quickly, ‘And you ended up with Brenda. Was that the girl from the hockey team? Business studies?’
‘Accountancy. We have two children.’
That made her face cloud over, a slight tensing in her long, tanned neck. She flicked the small chain that hung there, quickly as if in irritation. ‘So, you and Brenda are still together?’
‘Sort of.’
She laughed. ‘What kind of answer is that? Surely you either are? Or you are not?’
‘We are close but we live apart. It’s a long story. And complicated.’
She smiled and nodded, content to leave it at that, as if Colin Anderson from uni should never have matured into somebody ‘not complicated’. ‘So what do you have? Girls or boys?’
‘Youngest is a boy, a sloth who lies in his bed all day and … Well, I have no idea what he does apart from eat and sleep with occasional forays to school. But my daughter is a beautiful girl who is the most marvellous creature on the face of the planet. That is a scientific fact, I am not biased about that at all. She’s 17. Some kind of talented mega being.’
Sally giggled. ‘A daughter? How marvellous. And what makes her tick? Is she going to be a detective like her dad?’
‘Bloody hope not. She’s an artist, hoping to go to the art school in Glasgow.’
‘She must be good. What is she doing?’
‘What do you mean, what is she doing? Makes a lot of mess as far as I can see.’
‘I mean, is she doing fine art or sculpture or design or …?’
‘Painting, painting pictures, that is all I get told. And I see things going through on the credit card that make me wonder what she is actually painting. It looks like I am sponsoring enough paint for the Forth Road Bridge and three undercoats. Oh, I know, her latest thing is fluorescence. Fluorescence and Warhol.’
‘We have fish downstairs that glow in the dark, in the big restaurant. You should bring her in to see it, it’s very beautiful.’
We?
The Blue Neptune had one of the most expensive restaurants in Glasgow and he wanted to say that money was not a problem, he could afford to eat there, but chose not to. He wanted to take her in his arms and say it’s OK and I can take care of all this.
He chose not to do that either.
That was not why he was here. And there was nothing that needed taken care of. Sally was doing fine, the same Sally. Except …
He was here to ask her to revisit the most awful day of her life.
She inclined her head, peering at him over the top of her glasses, a few strands of reddish gold hair toppled, a scent of lime drifted across to him. ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about fluorescent fish, Colin.’
DS Viktor Mulholland looked at his iWatch, swiping at the screen with his thumb while the phone was jammed between his right ear and his shoulder. He had been waiting for Social Work to answer their phone for thirty-three minutes. He had read all the bits of paper stuck on the blue-padded partition of the office and had rearranged his desk, counted his paperclips, if Big Brother hadn’t been monitoring his computer activity he would have been playing FreeCell.
He slunk down in his chair, a parody of death by boredom played on his handsome face.
DC Gordon Wyngate, swinging on his chair like a slow metronome, held up his hand from his position on the opposite desk. Somebody had answered. The phone had actually been picked up. He punched the air in sarcastic celebration then collapsed again. Wyngate listened for a moment to the voice on the end of the phone, his hand stroking the top of his head, then he slowly turned his swivel chair round until he faced the handsome features of his colleague slumped down at the desk opposite him, shaking his head. ‘Yes, but we are not Child Protection. I can put you through if you want.’ Wyngate stuck his tongue out at Mulholland and got a two-fingered salute in return.
They both pressed mute on their respective calls.
‘That will give them a taste of their own medicine, God I am bored.’
‘I have applied to get back to MIT. Did you get anywhere the last time you tried?’ It was a conversation they had often had in the last few months. ‘I had heard there was another big reshuffle, thought I might try my luck.’
Mulholland pulled a cynical face as he was informed yet once more that his call was very important to somebody but not important enough for someone to bloody answer it. He covered the receiver. ‘Colin Anderson has a cold case post now, do you know that? Why is he still working anyway? If I was him I’d be in Vegas having three blondes lapping Jack Daniels from my belly button while watching a box set of Game Of Thrones.’
‘That’s an image I didn’t want in my head before lunchtime.’ Wyngate checked the phone, still on hold. ‘And if you get to MIT, and Anderson leaves, then guess who might take over cold case, and think of the pleasure they might feel as they swipe you from your true vocation, back to looking at cold cases by desk-bound file review.’ He raised his eyebrows in a speculative way, the small plaques of scarring on his face, white and circular, made him look like an overanxious panda when he pulled faces like that.
And Mulholland’s mind moved up a gear. Back to a log cabin at Inchgarten, crouched in the corner as a forest fire raged around him, holding onto two human beings he barely knew. Not able to get out, not able to get away, his injured leg failing him. Colin Anderson and Costello had put him in the safest place they had, they had locked him away out of danger and gone to face the unknown. And somebody Anderson loved had died. That was the job, he could live with that. But he wanted to work that again, he wanted to be on the front line. This secondment was a slow death by a thousand paper cuts. He looked at the phone number flashing up on his phone. And then did a double take.
He widened his eyes at his colleague, lifted the receiver and said, ‘Of all the gin joints in all the bars in all the world, you had to walk into mine.’ He allowed himself a smile, knowing that Wyngate had turned around wondering who the hell was calling. Mulholland leaned back in the seat and pushed himself into a little twirl of his own.
The voice at the other end was as caustic as ever. ‘DS Mulholland? You are still a DS, aren’t you? Not been demoted again?’
He smirked, Costello might be a pain in the arse, but she always attacked from the front, none of that political nicey nicey shite he was subject to now.
‘Good to hear from you,’ he said and with a bit of a shock he realized he actually meant it. ‘And what can I do for you?’ he asked in mock politeness.
‘How long have you got?’
‘I’ve been on hold to Social Work for twenty minutes so I think I might have all day.’
‘What part of Social Work?’
‘Well, I have now been passed to Child Protection, but these kids might be grown up and married by the time they answer this phone.’
‘Child Protection?’ she said out loud, watching Dali rummaging around in what passed for a dressing-table drawer, still looking for a passport or credit cards. ‘Why was this call transferred through to you? Are you the office boy?’
‘What do you want, Costello?’
‘I am here with the head of a child protection unit. If you put a rush on this, I will get somebody to answer your call.’
‘Deal.’
‘OK, here’s the whole story.’ She told it, keeping the story of Orla, and Polly, short and sweet. ‘I think she legged it out the window and went through the close. She might have been pulling a leopard-pattern hard plastic suitcase, a rigid one, carry-on baggage size. Might being the operative word. She might have called a taxi, that would have been about half eleven.’
She could hear him typing, he asked her to repeat the address. ‘But she might not have called the taxi to this precise address, here or hereabouts?’
‘Do you have CCTV there?’
‘Maybe not on this street but you could check on the main road. Would you be a gentleman and do that for me too? And get a trace on that phone number, she’s supposed to be not that bright so might still be texting her friends. We need to make sure that child is well and with who it is supposed to be with.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘No clear idea yet.’
‘Is this a case for MIT?’
She said quietly, ‘I think it might come to that. There’s a lot about this I am not liking. We haven’t found Baby Sholto yet either.’
‘You involved with that? Any chance you might need some more feet on the ground?’ He laughed to keep the longing out of his voice, knowing that she would be alert to his desperation, but he had to take the chance. He couldn’t sit here with his career on hold.
‘Feet yes, but you only have one good foot, so no, not you. Have a good day with the phone company and the CCTV. Get back to me ASAP.’ The line went dead.
‘Bitch.’
‘So, Lorna? Give me some background on Wee Polly.’ Costello was thinking of Baby Sholto and Little Moses and looking for any tentative connections to Polly.
‘Well, we inherited Orla Sheridan from another department. She was a troubled teen, from a stable background, the sort that give their parents sleepless nights. She said that she didn’t know she was pregnant until she was about eight months. Once the pregnancy was confirmed she was passed over to us,’ Lorna explained.
‘Eight months and she had no idea. You are joking.’
‘If she had known, she would have already applied for a new flat, all kinds of benefits. She would have gone right to the top of the list so no, I don’t think she knew she was until it was too late. She’s not the brightest.’ Lorna then added, ‘But she knows the value of a dollar. You know the type.’
‘And she could afford a brand new phone. Any idea where the money was coming from?’
‘She wasn’t a substance abuser beyond a bit of dope. And if she was a sex worker it wasn’t a regular thing. It’s what we a call a promiscuous profession that indulges in high-risk behaviours, those are the new buzz words. Covers a multitude of crap and criminality.’
‘A small player but not professional, if you like. Just cash for favours, like the government,’ Dali said shrugging, and Costello knew what she meant.
Lorna looked miserable. ‘I shouldn’t have let her walk out the room like that.’
‘What were you supposed to do, rugby-tackle her? Lorna, I once held the lift door open for the man who mugged me, so don’t worry about it. When he tried to get out the lift I sat on him so I got the last laugh.’ Dali held up a stylish pair of skinny leg jeans. ‘Size 8. They have been worn recently, pulled inside out and left here. Top of the pile.’
Lorna looked at her boss, not making any sense of it.
Costello started to sift through the clothes that Dali had already searched, nothing was elastic-waisted or loose fitting. She was a young fashionista, a size eight. The slim-fitting skirt was a size eight. She would have known the minute that she started to put on weight. Orla Sheridan had known that she was pregnant, Costello was sure of it, but had kept under the radar despite the financial benefits social services would have offered her. Was there financial benefit to be harvested in some other way?
‘Where did she have the baby?’
‘The Queen Elizabeth.’ Lorna’s eyes creased up at the corner. ‘I think.’
Costello phoned in to check, not really surprised that there was no record of Orla Michaela Sheridan having given birth at that hospital, but their record-keeping could be notorious. She would run a full check later.
‘OK, so has anybody, anywhere, actually seen Wee Polly?’
‘I have …’ Lorna began, then corrected herself. ‘I have seen photographs of her.’
‘Or of a baby?’
‘Yes, a baby. But Wee Polly? I wouldn’t know. I really wouldn’t know.’
Valerie Abernethy walked into the huge, high-ceilinged hall of her flat. Her flat, not their flat any more. Her flat, it had been that way since Grieg had walked out, plucking his car keys from the small ebony bowl that still sat on the hall table next to the picture of Abby and the kids, taking his Audi and driving out of her life. She tossed the keys of her Porsche in the self-same bowl, just to show she didn’t care. The mirror above, all six-feet high and four-feet wide, ornate in its guilt frame, looked back at her with somebody else’s eyes. Black. Barren. Guilty. She dropped her small suitcase, her handbag and her laptop under the table, and kicked off her shoes, dropping three inches in height suddenly, going back to what she had become; small and dumpy.
She clapped her hands, the slap echoing round the empty space. That normally brought Alfred running. He was a strange little cat with funny bulging eyes that were too big for his face, his round tummy too short for his legs. Black and white, he looked like a penguin or a film director. It was his resemblance to Hitchcock that got him his name.
Alfred didn’t appear. There was no loud mewling from the kitchen demanding food, which was his ‘Mohammed must come to the mountain’ act. There was no banging of the cat flap, which was his ‘where have you been all day’ act. There was no sprint down the hall with heavy paws that suggested the weight of a full-grown Bengal tiger. There was nothing at all.
Just silence.
She skliffed her way on her stockinged feet, through to the kitchen that seemed empty without the pad pad of the cat behind her and put the kettle on before opening the fridge and taking out a bottle of vodka. She poured herself a long measure and downed it in one, letting that little frisson float over her. Then poured herself another. She sipped this one more slowly, walking towards the window that looked over the back garden and leaned on it, staring down. One of the neighbours must have been out sweeping up loose leaves. It looked very tidy. From up here on the Royal Terrace, she could see right over the city, Auld Reekie. Edinburgh. A city built of water colours; muted and rather quiet, distinguished and a bit … well, sad. A city with her best days behind her, a city with her guts ripped out. Anybody enjoying themselves in Edinburgh city centre was either faking it or a tourist, or a tourist faking it. She didn’t think that the city had any soul, no real soul, it was very beautiful but without spirit. Like a few women she had known.
Or maybe it was the subtle but prevailing east wind, so cold it caught her breath and ran away with it. Even a warm day in Edinburgh had a chill about it, the way a warm day in Glasgow could still have rain pouring from the heavens.
She looked out at the gathering clouds and then down at the back garden again to where the bins were, neatly lined up and numbered. Two owners had their names on the lids. A black bag sat on the lid of her bin, folded and curled round its contents. That would incur another complaining letter to the factor about the bins being kept untidy and encouraging rats. Valerie put the glass down on the marble worktop of the central island and picked up the keys to the communal back door. She didn’t bother putting any shoes on, hurrying in her stocking feet, out her own door and into the hall, then to the back of the terrace where she was smacked by a blast of cold Edinburgh air. Through the small gate, the roughness of the small brick path bit into the skin of her feet, snagging her tights.
The package was small, cold, heavy. It gave slightly as she lifted it with both hands. She unwound a little of the bag, exposing the small face, the little pair of white feathery spectacles, his open eyes stared into nothing, pink button nose with moustache of crimson blood. She rewrapped the plastic shroud. Her heart chilled. She couldn’t look but she couldn’t pull her eyes away. His intestines had come out his tummy, a string of pink sausage on the bin lid.
She stood in her black LK Bennett suit, realizing she was saying goodbye to her best friend.
And they had driven away, leaving him on the road.
To be scooped up and put on the bin.
Alfred.
The door behind her opened. It was the nosy cow from the other ground-floor flat, a right Miss Jean Brodie, tight-arsed in a cream Arran knit and tweed trousers.
‘Oh, you’ll get the death of cold about you, dear. Oh, look at the mess of it, the poor wee thing.’ She stretched out her wrinkly old hands, trying to fold the cat back into the bin bag, squeezing him all wrong, crunching him up like an unwanted jumper.
‘No,’ snapped Valerie, elbowing the woman away. Valerie seized her sad little bundle, slamming the back communal door behind her, locking the old bitch out. Valerie wanted to scream at the top of her voice. Nothing went right for her, absolutely fucking nothing and now her little cat had been killed. What harm had he done to anybody?
She placed the little bundle on the central island, a small pathetic parcel in such a big and bright room, downing her vodka in one, then pulled a stool over and sat at the island, refilling the glass, not bothering to close the bottle. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring Jean Brodie hammering on the outside door. Valerie sat and looked at the bundle of fur and blood and bone for a long time, stroking his fur and flattening it all back down, pulling out bits of gravel and dirt that didn’t belong there.
Unsteady on her feet, she went to fetch the red blanket from the bedroom.
She wanted to text somebody and ask them to come over. Grieg would be away with his new wife. Abigail would be at home with her man and her son. Archie would be ‘busy’ in Glasgow, visiting the wife who was incarcerated for losing her mind. Valerie found that a bit funny, then bit her lip until she stopped crying. By then her lips were bleeding.
She picked the blanket from the bedspread, now as smooth as a millpond. He was a good wee cat Alfred, never scratching the furniture but leaving circular patterns of dark hair on the bedclothes, spirals like ebony snowflakes. There was very little sign that he had ever been here. She carried the blanket back through to the kitchen, negotiating her way through the open kitchen door and round the end of the breakfast bar, holding on to steady herself on the sharp corners.
After another slug from the bottle, she climbed back on the stool and opened the sad little parcel. Slowly and carefully she started to push the soft intestines back into her wee cat.
Costello had left the flat, walked down the close and out into the back court and now she was squatting, looking at the badly laid concrete slabs and noticing the linear patterns of little clumps of earth, about eighteen inches apart, that stopped a couple of feet away from the edge of the flower bed under the window. Then her phone pinged. One text was from Archie asking her if she was OK, so she deleted that immediately. The other was far more interesting. McCaffrey had done a thorough job and came up with two numbers, both pay-as-you-go, that James Chisholm had called regularly. One had twenty-to thirty-minute calls over the last few months, the other had only two-or three-minute calls. Both had stopped the day before Sholto was taken. McCaffrey was good but he had had no training with CID, never mind a murder team. He was intelligent, had sense and didn’t mind staying on to get the job done. She texted back thanks and told him she’d order a triangulation on the numbers. That cost a lot of money but she was saving them a fortune in man hours. Whatever it was, James Chisholm was up to his eyeballs in it.
She had just finished texting when her phone rang.
It was Mulholland on his mobile. ‘Hi, taxi company called me back within five.’
‘What magic do you possess to get that info so quickly?’
‘Taxi companies always do. I threaten them with you.’
‘And?’
‘We’ve already got the driver. Billy McDonald, he had just come into the office for his lunch. I mentioned a vulnerable child, five weeks old, missing, and the address of Orla’s flat. They think it was a pick up on Primrose Street.’ He waggled the handset around. ‘I have been looking at the map, it looks right. Big black hair? Red jumper? Teens?’
Costello raised an eyebrow, moving out from the building to see if the reception got a little better. ‘Sounds right. Where did he take her?’
‘To Glasgow Central.’
‘Shit.’
‘But she didn’t get on a train.’
‘Really?’
‘I could really do with something more interesting than hanging around on this phone like a bell end.’
‘Where did she go, Vik?’ She heard him sigh, it was pathetic. ‘Look, Vik, you know you are not fit to be operational, but I will do what I can. I think this is going to pan out to something bigger and if so, I will put a word in for you, but in all honesty, the way my luck is going, as soon as I flag it up, the case will be taken off me. I hear what you are saying but as yet I have no connection between these two cases I am working. But, I think somebody with a better mind than me has already joined the dots.’ At that moment she looked into the back window of the flat, Lorna had moved to the window and was watching Costello carefully and behind her was Dali, watching Lorna.
Costello moved the phone closer to her ear, as if they could hear her through the glass of the old sash window.
‘There was no baby in the cab.’
‘I think I knew that.’
‘She gets off at the taxi rank but she asked, specifically for the one on Hope Street, not at the main door, so I figure she’s not getting on the train?’
‘What about a low-level train?’
‘No, he watched her as she dragged her case across Hope Street, heading west,’ said Mulholland. ‘And Wyngate says hello.’
‘Say hello back,’ said Costello, ‘I hope you are both very happy together.’
‘The driver confirmed there was a small suitcase, leopard skin pattern but it was not heavy, she moved it about with no effort if it stayed on the flat. We’ve asked for the CCTV, it’ll be here anytime now. They will buzz it straight through to me, and Wyngate and I have offered to view it for you and help you in any way we can.’
‘You are so generous. What did your boss say to that?’
‘Mahon? I think his attitude is more secular, and we should all stick to our own jobs. He didn’t say it in quite so many words though.’
‘Well, if you really want to annoy him, find out who owns these numbers.’ She reeled off the two mobile phone numbers that James Chisholm had called regularly. ‘I know they are pay-as-you-go but do what you can.’
‘In exchange for …?’
‘I will do what I can.’ And she continued her slow progress round the garden, glad of the protection from the wind afforded by the high walls of the tenement. She felt like she was walking in a fortress.