Anderson had phoned in to say he would be late in the office. He had been up most of the night, not just the heat keeping him awake. The relief at the body in the box not being that of Irene’s son was heartfelt but fleeting. They had no knowledge as to where David was. Or if he was about to suffer the same fate as the unknown boy.
The unknown boy. It was too lacking in respect to call the body ‘Jack In The Box’, and the name Jack would only add to the confusion, seeing as O’Hare’s first name was Jack. O’Hare hated referring to unidentified bodies by a number, it was one of the few things that really riled the old pathologist, so he had addressed the body as ‘Mr Hollister, here,’ and that had stuck in Anderson’s mind, so Mr Hollister he was until they knew otherwise.
Since he got home from the morgue at three a.m., Anderson had been thinking about the dead boy. Somebody, somewhere, was waiting for that boy to walk in their door. They were still waiting. The technical cause of death was asphyxiation, caused by vomit blocking his airway. Some drug had retarded the onset of rigor; the stomach was empty. So the pathologist could offer no timeline as yet. He was waiting for the queue of work at the lab to be processed.
Claire had been sitting on the stairs waiting for him, asking about David, the boy who had given her the flower. He told her that the body was not that of the boy who had been sitting outside the Zeitgeist Café. She had pursed her lips and pulled her long hair back behind her ears. Her eyes filled up as she asked what had happened to the boy in the crate. Anderson had given one of his stock answers; they would get on to that tomorrow. He had tried to pass her, get up the stairs and into his bed but she asked her next question as he stepped over her long legs. So who was the boy in the lane? Surely somebody would be missing him. In today’s society, the answer was ‘sadly not’. Nobody had noticed Paige Riley had gone, or knew what had happened to her. Nobody noticed because nobody cared.
And then Anderson had sat down on the stair above her, looking down at the stained glass of the front door. Ceres was sowing the seeds of knowledge from a woven basket that sat on her hip. Anderson wished she would fling some his way.
He didn’t need to remind Claire how lucky they were that they would be missed and that there was always somebody waiting for them somewhere. He looked at her, thinking how beautiful she was, how delicate her soul might be. She had a caring nature and that meant she was hurting; for the boy who had handed her the flower, and for the boy who been folded into a box and left down a lane. Two people who may never have met in life, yet their existences had collided so tragically.
As the clock wound round, he thought he may as well get to work. He took his shoes off and chatted to his teenage daughter, trying not to make it too obvious that he was subtly interviewing her. Going back over the meeting at the parade, what she could and couldn’t recall about David, every single detail. Her thoughts and impressions. It took them a whole hour and they both crept up to bed somewhere at the back of four that morning.
The whole exercise got them nowhere. To the trained and untrained eye, David Kerr was exactly what his mother thought he was. And in that was a greater tragedy.
When Anderson walked gingerly into the investigation room, nursing a tired muzzy head, he was glad to see the windows wide open. The draught might be warm, but at least it was fresh. Archie Walker and Costello were already there, and looked settled as if they had been there for a while. Her face was still swollen on the right side. The cut now had small pieces of white tape holding the edges together. Her right eye was almost closed by swelling, giving her the appearance of being slightly lascivious, which was ironic to anybody who knew her. He wondered if they had spent the night together. There was never any sign of intimacy between them, if anything all he had witnessed was mild acrimony.
Costello had already split the board; a missing person on one side and a murder victim on the other: David Kerr still missing; Mr Hollister still awaiting his identification. The body’s DNA had no match in the system. They were still examining his clothes. His list of injuries was horrific. Both shoulders and elbows had been dislocated. There had been an injection site on his left buttock. And he had not eaten for at least three or four days. The photograph of his face; eyes closed, restful, was on the board. He looked at peace.
‘So we have no idea at all who Mr Hollister is, or what he has been through. Are we agreed that we are looking for the same perpetrator?’ asked Walker. ‘The Blonde.’
‘I have that picture and description circulated. She knows this area, that’s for sure,’ said Costello.
Anderson said, ‘And we need to find David before he turns up in a box somewhere. We need to dig a bit deeper. David is a low-risk victim. He isn’t stupid. He is young, strong but they still took him.’ He dropped his head into his hands. ‘For somebody who has a medical degree, O’Hare may be good with the dead but he is shite with the living. In the end Irene ended up in A & E, she split her lip open.’
‘Serves her right, she bloody nearly broke my cheekbone,’ said Costello. ‘But O’Hare knew that it wasn’t David, so he wasn’t going to let her suffer a minute longer than she had to. His stomach was empty.’ She looked round. ‘I asked somebody to get an updated list of missing persons. Why is it not on my desk?’
‘The updated one doesn’t seem to have arrived yet,’ Archie Walker said automatically, staring at the board.
‘Quite a few things dislocated? Like Amy’s knee?’ Anderson said and asked for a third column to add to the murder board. ‘Amy survived, her memory is precise. It must mean something. The more facts, the higher the probability that the connection will become obvious.’
Costello wiped some text off the whiteboard to rewrite it smaller, then wrote Amy’s name up in big letters. ‘I’ve been on the phone to the hospital. Her mum says she doesn’t recall anything else but is perfectly lucid in every other way. No illicit drugs in her system, her tox screen was clear bar a small amount of alcohol. Brain scan is clear, no physical or pathological cause for her memory loss. But the damage to her knee is severe. She will need an operation. Probably more than one.’ She dabbed the top of the whiteboard pen onto the girl’s picture. ‘So she believes that she saw what she says she saw.’
Anderson said, ‘And I saw the lines on Mr Hollister’s legs. Black lines where the joint could be bent enough to dislocate it? We should get Dr Batten in on this. Serial attackers have their root in fantasy and all that. What is this guy fantasizing about? Being a surgeon?’
‘Not my guess to make? How do you want to play it?’
‘I’ll take David Kerr. You take the dead boy, Mr Hollister. No doubt our paths will cross and cross. You happy with that, Archie?’
‘Absolutely, we will support you in any way you see fit to run the case but I think there might be another victim who got away.’
Both cops looked at him.
‘Why did you not say anything before now?’ asked Anderson, hands out in wonderment.
‘You need a few reps to recognize a pattern. The name is Jeffries. DCI Alistair Jeffries. I’ll arrange an interview.’ And that was all Archie Walker would say on the subject and left, his shoes squeaking and leaving a trail of Penhaligon’s Sartorial behind him.
‘Can you shed any light on that?’ asked Anderson.
Costello shook her head. ‘Nope. I don’t think so.’
Anderson slid lower in his seat, started twiddling with a pen which was a sign he was thinking. ‘Jeffries, eh? I heard he had been hurt in an incident. Lost interest when I heard it wasn’t fatal.’
Costello climbed off the desk, the conversation over.
‘So how is Archie doing?’ asked Colin, trying to sound polite rather than nosey.
‘You should have asked him yourself, he was here a minute ago,’ she replied sarcastically.
He tried another tack. ‘How’s his missus up at the care home.’
‘It’s like one of our middle management meetings; everybody sitting around staring at each other, open mouthed and looking stupid. But he seems worse than her. She has taken it in her stride, much calmer than she ever was at home. I think that might be the effect of a drug regime given out on time.’ She turned her grey eyes on him, ‘Does the name Kilpatrick mean anything to you? No big career criminal that jumps to mind.’
‘No, they are all Russians these days, or your young friend, Miss Hamilton.’
‘Libby? She can’t help the family she was born into.’
‘She seems to be making a name for herself, right enough. Somebody was hacked to death in Castlemilk in the small hours of this morning.’
‘Yes, I saw that. The drugs war continues. Not our case though. I’d let Kirkton deal with that particular aspect of the Safer Society.’
The phone went. Anderson lifted up his mobile, his eyes darting towards the ceiling when he saw who it was. ‘Oh God, bloody O’Hare again, I wonder what he wants now.’
Anderson listened, Costello strained to hear and tried to make out the odd word. She didn’t think she had heard right. Anderson swiped his phone off and looked at it, as if the phone had just lied to him.
‘And?’ asked Costello.
‘Mathilda McQueen showed Irene Kerr the clothes that were taken off the dead body. And Irene confirmed that they were the clothes her son was wearing. Mathilda said she was very sure.’
‘And Mathilda tested the DNA to prove her wrong …’
‘And they proved her right. The dead body was wearing David’s clothes.’
‘The dead boy was dressed in the clothes from the missing boy?’ She repeated slowly to be sure that she had got it right. She went over to the whiteboard and drew a big plus sign linking the two cases, her mind wondering what horrors David Kerr was going through now. So she underlined it, they needed to find him. Soon.
‘So was Mulholland on the ball with tracing this woman then?’ asked Costello, walking through the car park of the block of very nice flats in Jordanhill.
‘Nope, he asked Elvie,’ replied Anderson. ‘Very useful having a logically minded girlfriend who’s a medic. It’s MindSafe, a brain injury charity. Elvie recognized the logo straight away so he phoned and asked them if they had anybody out doing collections yesterday. They didn’t, but they knew who I was talking about. Happens she was meeting the person I spoke to on the phone, going out for breakfast before going collecting in the city. I’ll be good cop, you be yourself. She might be a player in all this, she can hang around as if she’s invisible,’ He read the names by the buzzer. ‘Flat three. Second floor.’
Wendy Gibson was a little wary when she opened the front door of her flat to two police officers in plain clothes. She looked carefully at their ID then let them in. Her suspicion changed to pleasure. Anderson got halfway down her hall before he stopped and pointed to the framed photograph on her wall, an assistant chief commissioner. The colours around the edges were going a little green, but the face was instantly recognisable. ‘Is that your dad,’ he asked, ‘Billy Gibson?’
‘It is indeed,’ she said, delighted that her visitor had recognized him.
‘Oh, that takes me back, he was …?’
‘Greenock.’
‘Yeah Greenock, I never worked under him directly but he was a great bloke, very well thought of.’ Anderson nodded at the memory. ‘Firm but fair was a phrase always banded around about him.’
‘“Firm but fair bastard” was the term he used for himself, I believe.’ She took the compliment graciously and opened the door for them to go into her living room. Very clean with a pale wood floor, the whole room kitted out from Ikea.
Anderson gave Costello a look, telling her that Wendy was off the suspect list. She gave him a raised eyebrow back. According to her, Wendy was not.
‘Do sit down, and how can I help you?’ She pulled her skirt down over her knees. She was very classily dressed, a long silky jumper over her skirt and a scarf loosely draped round her neck in a way that Anderson’s wife complained she could never manage. ‘Do you want a coffee or something?’ An elegant finger pointed to the kitchen, curled in questioning.
Anderson shook his head, wishing that Costello would sit down behind him but his DI was taking her time, as if David Kerr might be stuffed down the back of a sofa. She was stalking the joint.
‘I presume it is about that boy who went missing at the parade.’
‘Yes, it is. We think that you might have seen him before he was abducted.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything.’
‘Meaning you saw something.’
Her eyes looked from one to the other. ‘Well, I called the helpline number to say that I had been on that corner. Is that not why you are here?’ She looked puzzled now.
‘We found you on the CCTV.’
‘And nobody told you about the phone call? Well, times don’t change.’ Wendy smiled, recalling her dad moaning about exactly the same thing; one hand having no idea what the other hand was up to.
‘Can you tell us your movements on Sunday?’ asked Costello, sharply.
‘Well, we had a small reception breakfast for the charity volunteers. I’m with MindSafe Brain Tumour Trust, so I was going to meet Elspeth. We knew it would be busy so we decided to meet on Vinicombe Street. So that’s how I came to be standing on the corner where the boy went missing, across Vinicombe Street but on the same side of Byres Road.’
Anderson smiled encouragingly and asked her to go on.
‘Well, I texted Elspeth and told her that I was going to wait further up Vinicombe Street. That would have been about twenty past nine, half nine. I was early, but it was getting busy. We could have missed each other easily.’
‘So it was the preamble of the parade?’
‘The best part I always think, folk walking up to the start. More fun than the parade itself, no neds, no drunkenness. It’s good to see the costume malfunctions, the dads dragging their kids along, screaming. However, Elspeth texted back. She was caught in traffic so I had a wee wander and ended up at the corner of Vinicombe Street, right at Vinicombe Lane.’
Which was exactly the place where the second camera had picked her up.
‘Did you notice anything strange?’ asked Anderson.
‘On parade day? Everything!’ she laughed.
She had a point.
‘Did anybody speak to you?’
‘A few people. I collect around the area so there are people I bump into, they stop and pass the time of day, but …’ She stopped to think. ‘Nobody of interest really.’
‘Do you remember anybody supporting a young man, helping him as if he was injured? You might have thought they were drunk?’
‘No, not really. There was a boy in a wheelchair. I held the car door open for him, so his mum could get him in properly. The wheelchair went into the hatchback.’
Anderson didn’t look at Costello.
‘Can you describe the boy?’ asked Costello, sitting on the arm of the chair looking straight at Wendy. It was intimidating but Wendy didn’t seem to notice.
‘Well, a teenager, youngish teenager though.’
‘And you didn’t think to come forward when you heard we were looking for a teenager who had gone missing.’
‘No, like I said I did phone the helpline, all the charity people did,’ said Wendy, looking a bit embarrassed, ‘but this boy was disabled. He was wrapped in a blanket, with his mother. The wheelchair folded into the hatchback. She lifted him well, like an expert. He had something wrong with him, cerebral palsy, I think. He was rolling a little the way they do and he was dribbling. He wasn’t that boy on the news, and …’ She looked up trying to recall something.
‘What?’ prompted Costello.
‘Well, just that I have met that woman before. She must live or work around here and she’s interested in the work that the charity does. I’ve said hello to her before that incident, nodding terms, you know? I feel I know her.’
‘Do you know her name? Where she works?’
Wendy shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘And you presumed he was disabled because he was in a chair? Or was there something else?’
‘I presumed he was disabled because he was – well – unresponsive. And I presumed that she was interested in the charity because she nursed or knew somebody who had such an injury, and so when I saw her with him I put two and two together. I don’t think that I was wrong.’ She shook her head, lips pursed, quite definite. ‘No, I wasn’t wrong. That woman knew that boy and was used to handling him. It’s not an easy thing for a woman to do, moving somebody like that from a wheelchair into a car seat.’
Costello opened up the file she was holding. ‘Was this him?’ It was Innes’s picture of David Kerr.
Wendy looked at it carefully. ‘No, I really don’t think so.’ She got up and walked over to the sideboard, lifting up a pair of glasses. She put them on, looked at the picture again. ‘There is a resemblance, though, but no, I don’t think it was him. The boy in the wheelchair was younger, smaller. His hair was slightly darker, shorter. Maybe not shorter, but swept back, different style.’
‘So, not him.’
‘You are making me doubt myself now. Do you think that was him?’ She went back to the settee handing Anderson the photograph as she passed.
‘What about the woman?’
‘Oh her? Beautiful clothes. She always wears beautiful clothes. A light blue silk top, beautifully cut, cream linen trousers, French style.’
‘Hair colour?’
‘Blonde. Big dark glasses. Thought she was brave being so well dressed looking after a teenager like that. But I guess she’s used to it.’
Costello was now frowning. ‘Well, a woman managed to get a teenage boy off Byres Road without anybody noticing. We are wondering how she did that. She being female, he was a healthy teenage boy. So where was the wheelchair?’ asked Costello. ‘Did you see her with the chair empty? Or collapsed?’
Wendy raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorry, I don’t know what you mean?’
‘She didn’t have it ten minutes earlier on the CCTV. So what did she do with it in the meantime – the blonde woman?’
Wendy thought. ‘Sorry, when I saw her, she had the chair.’
‘Could you recognize the woman if you saw her again?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And the car? If we put some pictures in front of you, would you be able to identify it?’
‘Yes, I think so, and it had a disabled sticker.’
‘Did you see the car drive off?’
Wendy looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, it was parade day so she did a U-turn, and went straight across Byres Road. It was behind one of the sound units.’ She smiled. ‘I held up the cars on Vinicombe Street to let her get round. It was so busy.’
And there it was; how the body got across the busy street. Costello made a mental note to look at the CCTV again, find the car.
‘How did she seem, the woman? Her demeanour? Anything odd about her?’
‘Not at all, just as she always seemed. A little harassed maybe but that was because it was busy and she was pushing the chair through all those people. There was nothing odd about her.’
‘But?’ asked Anderson picking up on her verbal cue.
‘The boot of the car had a jewellery box in it.’ Wendy laughed. ‘I thought it was odd. It was lying there. I thought, I bet her daughter borrows her jewellery so she keeps it in the boot. I had a friend who used to do that. Strange but true.’ Wendy gave another little laugh.
Costello asked, ‘Can you describe the car for me?’
‘Yes, it was white.’
Sandra looked round the day room, all was well. The residents were children, they had to be settled and kept amused but once they had fallen asleep, they could be left alone. They fell asleep quickly in this place, quicker than they had in any of the other homes. There was no pacing up and down, anxiously wringing their hands, stuttering on the same word over and over again or shouting obscenities at each other like the bar at a Tourette’s convention.
They were better behaved at Athole House, compared to the other homes Sandra had worked in. They turned to jelly after a while. The place was tranquil, beautiful but soulless and deathly quiet. Maybe the torpor ate into their bodies until there was no way out but to capitulate.
Sandra ghosted up the stairs and slid into Tosca. She checked the time on the Gothic clock on the mantelpiece. It was her break now. Lynda had taken over downstairs, sitting in the centre of the day room and listening to the snoring of the other two, deep in post prandial sleep. Lynda could give Kilpatrick his cup of tea and his digestive biscuit. They had to be dunked for him since the old scrote had lost the use of his hands in the fire. He’d also lost his wife so the rumour went. The fire had been in a friend’s house, round the corner from here. Just behind the building where they found the body yesterday, according to the care home gossip. The police had been three times so far. Twice by normal uniform and the plain clothes police had been in to see Paolo about the phone. Sandra knew she had to stay calm and keep below the radar.
She was aware Kilpatrick had items of value in his room, and he had no eagle-eyed visitors to keep tabs on his stuff. He must have money as he had been here for years and, so far, there had been no talk of him being transferred. One of the owners, a nasty little doctor called Pearcy, was very quick to claim the resident would be better transferring to a nursing home as the secure living facility did not cater for those who needed nursing. Or couldn’t pay for it any longer. There was a joke about absent relatives paying extra to have their relatives taken downstairs to where the bins were, never to be seen again.
Although Sandra knew how keen people were to get on with their lives and jettison the baggage of the elderly, the dribbly and the incontinent, she had been attentive when she had witnessed some covert behaviour going on downstairs; Matron Nicholson and Pearcy were either having an affair or being enthusiastic about counting their money.
It was Philippa Walker Sandra was wary of; her husband was a cop or a lawyer or something. Pippa had more pearls than functioning brain cells. Too many to notice if any went missing, but her husband just might. Her man was the law so Sandra was steering clear of her. In fact, Pippa Walker being here bothered Sandra more than she cared to admit. What if he wanted a look at the employment history of the staff? That would be the first port of call if anything happened. Even something that Sandra had not actually done; one of the oldies could genuinely flush a valuable piece of jewellery down the loo or swallow an earring. Or die in their sleep unexpectedly. Pippa’s man might think it was odd and get it investigated, he had that power. For Sandra that would be bad news.
It didn’t stop her planning though. Last week she had wandered into Deke Kilpatrick’s room while he was lying in the bed, covered in a single sheet. She had wedged the door open as she looked around, knowing he was watching her through his good eye but was unable to do much about it. He could only move his right arm, so she was fine if she kept clear of that. He had a record player in here, a pile of LPs stacked in exactly the same order they were on her previous visit. They were all by singers she had never heard of. She had moved on to the brass tray on his dressing table. Nice cufflinks and a signet ring that felt heavy and therefore valuable; marked and monogrammed so no value to her. The emerald ring with the diamonds had attracted her the most. Deke grunted if she touched it, the only response that ever came from him.
Did this belong to the wife who had burned in the fire? Was she wearing it when she jumped? There was a whole arc of photographs arranged so he could see them, neatly framed on the chest of drawers, all beautifully shot. The sort of thing that Sandra would have liked for herself, the pictures of a life lived. Sandra leaned against the dresser and slid the ring up and down her finger so that Deke could see. Then she returned it to the box, she always would but he didn’t know that. Her favourite taunt was to walk round his room slowly, holding a pillow. Looking at him and looking at the pillow. As if checking that it would fit over his face.
Now she had bigger fish to fry.
Alone up in Tosca, she opened the wardrobe and began to finger the silks and the linens and the pure cashmere wools. She had her eye on a fuchsia jacket. That would look marvellous against her skin. She held it up to her, letting it slither off the hanger, then ruffled the wool sleeve under her chin seeing how it clashed with her face. The Duchess had a typical Italian complexion, Sandra’s was more Ruchill than Rome; grey, flecked with skin tone, and pale blue eyes. She looked anaemic even when she was perfectly healthy.
Paolo didn’t look much like the Duchess though. But he had said that people from Northern Italy looked more northern. That was how he had put it. And of course Italians had moved about a lot, goodness knew what was deep inside his DNA. Sandra pulled the woollen jacket over her navy blue uniform. She slipped her bare feet out of the fake Crocs she had bought down the market for a few quid, standard wear in the home as they were so comfortable and so quiet. Not that it mattered here as this lot slept through anything, the result of good soundproofing, she reckoned.
Sandra looked at the bottom of the wardrobe; boxes. Of course the Duchess’s shoes would be kept in those yellowed boxes, aged but not dusty. Paolo hated dust and Sandra always made sure that Elsa, the young Polish cleaner who cleaned the four biggest rooms, always vacuumed inside the wardrobe as well as outside. Paolo approved of that.
He was too observant though. He’d notice immediately if anything went missing, so Sandra had changed her plans, now a bigger prize was in sight.
Sandra’s heart was thumping, her fingers trembling, reaching out towards the top box, lifting it slightly to look at the picture on the front. A little drawing of the shoes it contained with the word ‘blu’. Well that didn’t need a lot of translation. She was looking for the shoes that matched this jacket; everything the Duchess owned matched something else. ‘Rosa’. She took them out. The shoes had been wound in fine tissue paper, each wrapped separately, then together. That would be Paolo. She wondered what he would do when his mother died. Sandra was going to work here until that day happened, and be so nice to Paolo that he would see her for what she was, what she was pretending to be. She sat down on the double bed with its huge amount of cushions, all in the best linen, Italian cotton or Belgian lace. She sat carefully on the end, her arms now in the jacket sleeves and her feet slipped into each shoe. They were made of fine leather, handmade and so soft, so incredibly supple they wrapped round the curves of her feet. As she stood up, the slight cushioning on the sole eased her feet onto the carpet. They had a nice heel, slim and elegant but not so high as to be tarty. The kind of heel Queen Elizabeth would have worn in her young days.
Sandra stood tall. The shoes made her feel slimmer, streamlined, not that she carried much weight. She thought that she and the Duchess had a very similar build although Sandra was a bit taller, more Paolo’s height. She turned to the mirror, pulling up her short hair into a small bun at the back of her head, pouting, then looking demur, then smiling, imagining going to a Christmas party. No, somebody’s engagement. No, a wedding. Yes, an Italian society wedding and saying, ‘Oh me? I am with Paolo, yes one of those Girasoles. The opera people.’
She heard the buzzer go at the front door. Matron would be expecting a member of staff to appear in case somebody needed showing round or taken somewhere, even keeping an eye on in case they wanted to see something that the guests of the residents were never, ever allowed to see. Like the bins. Or the basement. Guests were invited to look at the kitchens, the wet rooms, the infection control protocols and the state-of-the-art automatic drug dispensers that were housed on each floor, too secure for Sandra to get into.
She slid off the shoes and then carefully wrapped the shoes back in the tissue paper as well as she could, but it was like folding a map. She could hear footfall coming up the carpeted stairs. That was somebody who did not know the building well. They were walking up the middle of each stair, the squeaks heralding their arrival. Sandra knew better, she was skilled at ghosting around this building.
She replaced the box containing the pink shoes under the box containing the blue shoes and squared up the stack. Her heart raced a little with the thought that she could work her way through the whole pile. She put the jacket back on the hanger and placed in its original position on the rack. Paolo would notice immediately if it had been replaced wrongly. She checked the room before she left it, noticing the flattened area on the bedspread where her weight had been settled. She smoothed it out.
She opened the door of Tosca again, closing it quickly behind her.
The grey-haired man in the smart suit on the stairs said hello, stepping sideways slightly to block her path.
‘Hello, Mr Walker, isn’t it?’
He was a handsome man, lightly tanned faced with friendly bushy eyebrows and steely blue eyes. A bit too old, a bit too small for her, too well dressed. He was the fiscal or the cop. She hoped the alarm didn’t show on her face.
‘Yes, Sandra?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was wondering how you thought Philippa was settling in? She seems to have been asleep since she came here. Is she OK?’
‘She is fine.’ Sandra turned to walk along the hall, passing over the top of the sweeping staircase. ‘Let me reassure you, I am not an expert but I have noticed in my time working with Alzheimer’s, especially those with “unsettled torpor”, you know, where they are still aware of the … well, you know, reality?’
‘Ones who are aware that they don’t recall all they should?’
‘Yes. It keeps them awake. I heard Dr Pearcy say that by the time they get here, the patient and the family are totally exhausted. I’m sure you have been catching up on sleep, and so is she.’
‘Obvious when you think about it,’ agreed Archie Walker, thinking how great, and how guilty, he had felt on that first morning; a full, unbroken sleep through the night when Philippa was at the care home. He had no concept of how exhausted he had been. It had become such a way of life; her illness had become his way of life.
‘So when they get here, I think they feel safe and they sleep.’ She smiled, she had a nice smile, what his mother would have called homely. ‘And that can only be good for them.’
‘She’s asleep now, should I wake her up or …?’
Sandra consulted the watch hung upside down from her breast pocket. She had wanted that ever since she was a wee girl, and an absent-minded theatre nurse had later obliged. ‘Well, she has just had something to eat and they like to have a little sleep after that.’
‘Maybe I’ll pop in and see that she is OK.’
‘OK, but they do get into the routine in here very quickly, don’t be surprised if she is deep in snooze land. I’ll be about on the landing if you need anything. In fact, I could rustle you up a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘That would be lovely, Sandra, thank you. It is Sandra, isn’t it?’ he confirmed.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Sandra Ryme.’
But he did look at her for an extra beat, a quizzical narrowing of the eye, a crinkling of his forehead. As if he knew.
Archie Walker had a good game plan. An hour after he left the care home, he was walking through the vast atrium of the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital with zero enthusiasm for life and the frailty of the human condition. He felt better now, fuelled by black coffee and a pain au chocolate. He got on OK with most of the cops he had worked with. He might not have liked them, but they could rub along together and get the job done.
Then there was Alistair Jeffries, a man Walker would cross the road to run over.
Walker picked up a copy of Classic Hi Fi magazine, then thought again and put it down to choose the Top Gear one instead. He could recall Jeffries having a souped-up car with an exhaust that announced his arrival at a crime scene from about a mile away. Then he bought a packet of shortbread and a bottle of Lucozade at the shop and checked that the envelope of photographs was still tucked underneath his suit jacket before setting off again across the vast concourse that looked like an aircraft hangar designed by a Lego fan.
All very trendy.
All very pretty.
All very noisy.
While being built it was known locally as the Death Star but the news that the super hospital was to be named the Queen Elizabeth II University Hospital, had it immediately rechristened ‘Sweaty Bettys’. No matter what they called it, the towers with the wards still smelled of hospital: of antibiotic spray, stewed apples and death. The atrium, though, smelled more like an airport: coffee beans and pesto. Walker made his way to the lifts. He had been here with Pippa often enough. He knew where he was going, he didn’t need the map. He checked ward and bed number, showing his ID when he was half challenged by a bored nurse. She lifted her head from her computer screen at the nursing station and tilted her head down the long corridor.
All he could see was white wall and more white wall.
The new hospital was all single-room occupancy, which, as Walker strode past window after window, reminded him of a zoo. He looked into each room to see if there was anything interesting going on. Some inhabitants looked vacantly at the screen hanging on a metal arm over the bed. He heard snatches of a pointless TV quiz through open doors. Others were asleep. Or dead and nobody had noticed yet. The young chap in room 10 looked as though he could beat the fiscal in a hundred-meter sprint. The old man in room 12 looked hopefully at Walker as if he might be the Grim Reaper, before turning his head away in disappointment.
In room 14 a plump man, chin grizzled with dull stubble, lay on his back, propped up on a mountain of pillows, reading a western. He was still attached to the drip, an oxygen tube taped onto his top lip like a comedy white moustache. Walker stayed at the door, to make sure before raising his hand and knuckling the door. The occupant of the bed responded with a slow head turn.
Alistair Jeffries smiled, a sore bitter grin, eyes narrowed with the pain. He curled his fingers at the door, Come in, come in. ‘Archie Walker? Christ – have I died and gone to hell?’
‘Not yet. But we live in hope. How are you feeling?’ Walker tried to be friendly; well, not friendly, more concerned and professionally polite. He was banking on the fact that Jeffries would be up for some fiscal baiting.
‘I am bored out my tiny skull. My tiny fractured skull.’ He pointed to his bandaged head. ‘I am going to be pensioned off after this. Years on the beat chasing nutters up blind allies, kicking Dobermans in the balls and never got a scratch. And now this, career over. Good bye and thank you.’
‘No problem with your speech then, Alistair.’
‘I’ve been in the force twenty-five years and the only injury I have ever suffered was a sore face when I chatted up Costello at the Christmas party.’
‘You got away lightly.’
‘She’s a cow. I heard the rumour that you were shagging her?’ Jeffries sucked at his lips, making a noise like the aspirator at the dentist. Walker made a show of giving that some thought.
‘I heard that rumour too, but as I still have my testicles intact, we were obviously misinformed.’ Walker handed over the Lucozade.
‘No vodka then?’
‘No.’ Walker pulled up a seat. ‘We need to talk.’
‘No, we don’t. You are not the boss of me.’
‘Correct.’
‘I was jumped. I banged my head. Unlucky, that’s all.’
‘It was a nasty injury.’
‘Consistent with my head hitting the corner of the pavement, that’s all.’ Jeffries pulled a face, like he was sucking something that had been caught in his teeth. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Following up some vague thoughts,’ he answered, opening the shortbread and offering some to Jeffries in an attempt to stop that awful noise. He put the magazine on the bedside table. ‘Alistair. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. Neither of us have an issue with that.’ He placed the picture of Mr Hollister, lying in the mortuary, on top of the magazine. The lack of colour in the skin, the wet hair swept off his face, made him look about ten years old. Walker wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. ‘But you have done the job a long time. Look at that and then tell me what happened to you. It was a mugging but nobody touched your wallet? You were not hit on the head, you fell. The admission officer at A & E noted that you had a red mark on your left buttock, like an injection site. But your GP said that you are not on any injectable medication.’
Jeffries shook his head. ‘They keep asking me about that, like I am some arsehole junkie. They were in here, you know, looking between my toes and bloody everywhere.’
‘I think if you were injecting yourself with something you would find an easier place to do it than your own backside. It was done to you.’
Jeffries looked at Walker with something as close to respect as he could manage.
‘I’ve been watching some CCTV of another incident. A young man was abducted off the street. Somebody bumped into him. He is then seen rubbing his arm. He then becomes very compliant but not unconscious. So I am wondering about you?’
Jeffries shrugged.
Walker pointed to the picture. ‘It might have happened to him. It might have happened to her.’ He pulled out a photograph of Amy’s bloodied knee, with its dark line drawn round the joint.
Jeffries placed a finger on the skin of his own knee. His hand tremored a little, and he paled, suddenly looking every day of his fifty-eight years. ‘I can’t help you.’
‘For Christ’s sake, look at the mess of him. This boy—’
Jeffries shook his head. ‘I don’t remember. I can’t help you. Not that I won’t.’
‘Really?’ Walker pulled his chair closer, he was going to stay until he got an answer.
‘It’s fucking embarrassing.’ Jeffries ruffled the blue blanket, the heat beamed in through the window. He looked close to tears.
‘Not the first embarrassing thing that has happened in your career.’ Walker tried for levity.
Jeffries winced and pushed the photographs away. He tried to move up the bed a little. Walker didn’t help him.
‘I have no memory of it. Nothing at all. So there is no point in you being here or talking to me.’
‘You know I am a tenacious wee git so I’m not leaving here with that crap. What do you remember? Waking up in here? You must recall something.’ He braced himself for a story about aliens.
‘I recall picking up my jacket at the station. Then wakening up in here. And that’s all.’ He looked out the window, tasting the fear on his lips. ‘Feeling helpless and I don’t know why.’
‘You were found on the pavement up Foremount Lane just behind the Rock. You were drinking there. How did they know you were there?’
He told the same story Walker had read on the initial report.
‘My mates say I was having a drink, went to the loo and didn’t come back.’ He shrugged. ‘They thought I had met somebody I know. They texted me. I texted them back, seemingly. I mean I don’t remember doing it. I told them to go on without me. I have no memory of that at all. Now I think that … well, I don’t know what I think …’
‘The perpetrator did that so nobody came looking for you. Somebody targeted you.’
Jeffries dismissed it with a sharp shake of the head. ‘Didn’t happen, just a mugging. So there you go, you can take that back to your hot shot team and see what they make of it.’ He made his aspirator noise again.
Walker looked at the picture of Amy. ‘She can’t recall it either.’ He tapped the picture of the dead boy. ‘I’m sure his mother wishes all he had was loss of memory. There’s another young man missing and we need to get to him before he becomes a victim; dead, I mean, not just embarrassed. So what happened to you? How did you get from inside the pub to outside up the lane?’
‘Anderson is smart. He’ll get on with it without my help.’ But he didn’t look Walker in the eye, his hand reached out again to the photograph. The eyes swept the picture, instinct, alive through the drugs.
‘Come on, tell me. Anything.’
Jeffries’ expression changed.
Walker pulled his seat further forward and looked round, making sure the door was closed. He placed the photograph of Amy right under his nose. ‘Amy Niven, nineteen years old. Like you, she got away, the next one wasn’t so lucky.’
Jeffries lifted a hand, pale, paper-thin skin stretched and wrinkled over his fingers as he took hold of the picture. The photograph shivered with his tremor. He shook his head, then pointed at the table and Walker got up to pull it over to the bed. ‘My glasses, hand me my glasses?’ The pallor seemed to have slipped from his face, a more natural colour, something had his interest now. ‘Should I know her?’
‘She is a classics student from Glasgow University,’
‘No, sorry.’ He handed the picture back, looking questioningly at Walker.
‘You know what criminologists say about the mechanics of this crime. The killer separated her from the crowd, like a lion taking a gazelle. Just as you were separated from your friends.’ He went on as Jeffries failed to respond. ‘Somebody sent them a text from your phone to keep them away. You were found a street away, lying in the bottom of a lane bleeding from a serious head injury.’
Jeffries moved slightly on the bed, still sore from the surgery. Walker saw it. People were people. Fear was fear.
‘Alistair, I can get Costello to go over old cases, talk to your old colleagues and pull out some files of those who might bear a grudge that strong. See anything that might not be quite as it should be. I am the chief fiscal. I can do anything I want. You know that. You have a reputation of not being the cleanest of cops. And you know Costello, she will not let it go. And if Anderson starts to head up a cold case initiative—’
That hit home, a flash of a more feral fear crossed his face. ‘Fuck off.’ But his resolve was diminishing.
Walker smiled. So there was something there. Funny how the guilty saw a vague accusation as a direct threat; the guilty mind saw proof of knowledge where there was none. ‘So if you tell us what happened, I don’t need to get Costello to trawl. I have no interest in what dirty little shite you had going on. You aren’t coming back to work, but you might be able to save this guy’s life, so tell me what happened that night at the Rock.’
‘Nothing. I don’t recall anything.’ He opened his palms, the fight seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Honest.’
Walker nodded. ‘OK, so if we could get you hypnotized, would you agree to that?’
‘What?’
‘Hypnotized. You know, dangling a watch in front of your eyes and all that. Force you to tell the truth.’
He saw Jeffries wince, his mind whirring to think of a reason to refuse.
Walker backpeddled. ‘Limited to this crime only. I can get Dr Batten to do it, you know him. He’s one of the guys.’
Jeffries looked out the window, his thumb shaking on the photograph, flicking the corner making a faint clicking noise.
‘The last time you were in the public eye was not good. You were on the front page of the Daily Record.’
‘Bloody awful picture, made me look like Peter Stringfellow’s pervy older brother.’
‘There is a resemblance, from a certain angle. What about this woman, do you recall seeing her?’ He put the picture of Blondie on the table in front of Jeffries.
‘Not a very good picture, is it? I wouldn’t be able to recognize my own granny from that. I can only see the side of her face.’ He screwed his eyes a bit. ‘No, I don’t know her.’
He looked out the window seeing the blank white wall of the other side of the atrium, catching sight of an admin worker in her glass box, sneaking a coffee. ‘The wife hasn’t been in to see me.’ A tear ran down his face. ‘It’s so embarrassing. He must have been so close, right up, personal. His hand was in my pocket to get my phone. And I don’t recall anything about him, not one thing. The one lead we might have and I don’t recall one damn thing.’ He had spent his time in hospital reflecting a life that was not well lived. A man who was not well loved. And now he was feeling it.
‘So are you going to let us hypnotize you? Or do I tell James Kirkton that you are refusing to contribute to our safer society.’
‘He wouldn’t care.’ He snapped. The instancy tinged with something. Disappointment?
Their eyes met. Jeffries looked away first.
‘Aye, whatever.’
Sandra was early finishing her duties. The linen cupboard on the first floor was so clean, it could have been a House Of Fraser window display. She had taken her time, waiting for Paolo to pass, so she could be here, casually being helpful.
That had been her plan but then that bloody woman Nicholson had started talking to her in the walk-in cupboard, blocking her vision. She thought she had heard Paolo on the stairs going into the Duchess’s room. He was light on his feet. She wondered what he did for a living. He was in and out here at all hours. She thought he might be a doctor. He spoke like a doctor. He knew medical terms and he had those nice strong white, very clean hands, just like a doctor.
It was late, nearly eight o’clock before she got rid of the matron. She needed a ploy to get to Paolo. She could say that she was popping in to make sure his mother was OK. Get more brownie points. She stopped outside Tosca and tried to remember how she would usually approach the door. She reversed a few steps and approached again, grasping the handle. No, she didn’t do that. She reversed again and lifted her hand ready to knock. No, she didn’t do that either. She only knocked if she knew Paolo was there and she was pretending that she did not know that. Anybody who knocked on that door would wait all day. The woman had dementia. Paolo was in there, and she didn’t want him to think that she was disturbing him, but then she wasn’t supposed to know that he was in there. She was over-thinking this. He would presume that somebody had told her he was there. And she was supposed to be at home. But he must not think that she had been waiting for him. She had been, but he needn’t know that. She went all the way back to the top of the stairs; just don’t think about it. It was a walk up to the door, a quiet, perfunctory tap with the knuckle of the forefinger and then immediately she would open the door. It was an unconscious, habitual thing.
She entered the room. The Duchess was sitting on her wheelchair, her throne in the middle of the room, dressed in beige swathes of towelling like a sculpture waiting to be unveiled. She was playing with a white flute of handkerchief, waving it in the air as she conducted the imaginary orchestra in her mind. Paolo was nowhere to be seen but Sandra could hear the shower running. He must be swishing out the wet room after showering his mother. She looked like Joan Crawford, or Jane Russell in her long nightdress with its feathered collar, those days when stars were real stars. She turned to look right through Sandra, the handkerchief of material now furled into the palm of her hand. Sandra noticed that her nails had been repainted, bright red and newly shaped. The air in the room had the scent of acetone.
Sandra checked the door was closed, then went to the mirror and sorted her short brown hair, newly highlighted. Paolo commented that he liked the colour of her hair. Funny how he should think that. Her hair had been every colour under the sun but nobody had ever commented on it before. She liked how he had noticed, how he had a good eye for that sort of thing.
The Duchess’s make-up bag was on her dressing table. Keeping one eye on the door to the wet room, she took out some lipstick and put it on. It was a deep red, she recognized it as the shade that matched the nail varnish. It was too dark for Sandra but she really didn’t want to be bare faced in front of Paolo, not after all her hard work and effort. She had a quick squirt of Fracas perfume behind the ears then wafted the air around her head with her hands to disperse the smell. Then she felt guilty. Paolo would spot that. She panicked, and turned round, bottle still in her hand as if offering it to the Duchess. The old woman’s ebony dark eyes were watching her, watching her every move. Sandra saw the silk-covered pillows on the bed, one of those and that would be all it took. When the time came.
What was she thinking? Where had that got her before? Absolutely nowhere. Slowly, slowly. Nobody ever got rich overnight. She was working the long game on this one.
And Paolo was a rich, handsome, young man.
He was lovely, attentive to his mum. Not like the tossers she had met in her life. One had put her in Casualty twice. One had left her pregnant. One had moved in, started up his own business and then did a moonlight flit with all her money. It was only when the letters came from the mortgage company that she realized that the money he had raised on her house was gone. And the home her mum had left her was no longer hers. And she was now in a council flat. And with her change of address came a change of attitude towards men.
It was on her terms now. Take. Take. Take.
She flattened her navy blue tunic and walked over to the en suite, leaning her ear against the door. Behind the noise of the water running was the soaring melody of an opera. The sad bit from Madam Butterfly, where the woman is crying her eyes out. She opened the door, quietly but not slowly so that if he caught her she would say that she thought somebody had left the water running and apologize.
He didn’t hear her, he didn’t notice.
Paolo was in the shower, naked. His back was towards her. He had turned his face up towards the jets of water as if he was facing the sun, his eyes closed. He was slim and lightly muscled, a little taller than Sandra. She watched for a moment, transfixed by him and his beauty, then pulled herself away. As she closed the door behind her she knew the Duchess had been watching her, watching him.
The old woman’s eyes were alive with wicked light.