Sandra was ready to leave. It had been a busy morning and her feet were aching. The home was full of warm, heavy air that induced lethargy. But she couldn’t find her car keys. They were not on the hook where they were supposed to be left when someone borrowed them to move the vehicle, and that suited her usually. Then she was told by Lisa that ‘her boyfriend’ was upstairs. So she smoothed out her hair and checked her breath. She went up to Tosca, as if she was going to say goodbye to the Duchess.
He didn’t seem annoyed by her interruption, if anything he was rather pleased.
‘So sorry, I was going to say goodbye.’
‘You would have a hard job leaving,’ laughed Paolo. ‘You left your car keys on the dressing table over there.’
That was a big mistake. She had left them here. ‘Oh thank you. I think I am losing the plot at the moment.’ But she didn’t leave, the Duchess seemed happy to see her although she felt that she had walked in on something. Their politeness was covering up their uneasiness at nearly being caught. But that might be her own interpretation.
‘Nice hair, I meant to say yesterday. It suits you. Being blonde,’ he said, looking at her, as if he knew. ‘Suits your brown eyes.’
Sandra felt her stomach jump, she was nineteen again. ‘How is she doing?’
He didn’t let Sandra wait for an answer, guiding her to the corner of the room.
‘Can I ask you a delicate question?’
‘Oh.’ Sandra bit her lip and opened her big brown eyes wide.
‘Have you been going through the Duchess’s clothes?’ He didn’t seem angry.
‘I was looking at them, yes,’ she answered honestly, ‘it’s that they are so beautiful, so well crafted. How do they get like that, I mean, where do you buy them?’
‘Not all of them are bought. In the old days she used to get all her clothes made for her. The blue dress, the one she likes to wear, the Sunday dress? I have taken that dress apart and made a pattern from it so I can make more in the same style as she loses weight, as she gets a little …’ He was about to say stooped.
‘Frail?’ suggested Sandra.
‘Yes. She would not be happy unless she looked her best. What do you wear when you go out on the town? Out with your friends?’
She let the question pass, having no answer. ‘How did you learn to do all that make-up stuff, sewing? You really are very good at it.’
He smiled at her, his Paul Newman eyes creased up. ‘Growing up in the theatre, I had very good training. The best. I can make anybody look like anybody else. It’s more about having the knack of seeing what you see, seeing what the person has that you can make stand out. When you are on stage, people don’t see a face. They see an expression, a reaction, and that is what registers with them. It’s all about using the face to communicate.’
‘Oh,’ she said. Noticing that he was closing the make-up bag, ready to go and she did not want him to go. She was hit by a sudden impulse to keep him there. She walked towards the door and stood there in what she hoped was a laid-back fashion, as if it was the kind of thing she did all the time; hang about and lean against walls. ‘Is it what you do now?’
‘No, now I have the most boring job the world has ever seen. I work at the council and I sit all day and bang numbers into a computer for so long that it makes my brain ache, but you, you have a great job surrounded by this life and this wealth of experience.’
She stared at him not really believing him. He was a doctor, a lawyer, not somebody who worked in the council. Was he having her on?
He seemed to read her mind.
‘A job is a job. The money I get does not reflect what use I am to society. Look at what you do, you’re really valued by people, Sandra. You are so valued. What could be better than that?’ He placed a hand on her shoulder.
Surrounded by bed pans and incontinence pads, thought Sandra. Paolo had a point. And some folk who worked in the council get paid mega bucks. ‘Not all our guests are as lovely as your mother,’ she said.
‘The Duchess,’ corrected Paolo, something that he did automatically. ‘Please, come and sit.’
She sat on the stool in front of the mirror, trying not to pull a face different to her own. He pulled her hair back and adjusted the neck of her jumper slightly, making a collar round her throat so he could see the outline of her face, her jawline and the curve of her cheekbones.
He then took out a lipstick. ‘I bought this for you. It will match your complexion, and your new blonde hair. You don’t make the best of yourself, Sandra. You don’t realize that you have cheekbones that could knock people out.’
‘Would you do my face, you know, if I paid you? Like you do with your … with the Duchess?’
He looked at her, his head to one side, then looked at his watch. ‘Let me think about that.’
He was embarrassed. He did not want to say no and now he was desperate to get away from her. He looked over at the door.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not something I’ve had the chance of before.’ At least that was true.
‘No, no, it’s fine.’ He was apologetic. ‘I was just thinking that my flexi will nearly be up. I need to get back to work.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I had better not keep you.’
The moment was gone, he picked up his jacket and slid one arm in, then the other. He lifted the satchel he always wore over his shoulder and the laundry canvas bag, then he walked to the door. Sandra’s heart was breaking as she opened the door for him, wondering if he thought she was acting strangely; out of the ordinary now that she knew he was ordinary. He paused as he was about to go through the door, and put the canvas bag down. He stood in front of her and pulled her collar back, both hands, firm but gentle against the side of her head, fingering the strands of hair from her face.
‘Sandra?’
He had never said her name before. Not like that.
‘Yes?’
‘Why don’t we meet later tonight?’
‘OK,’ she whispered.
‘Then I shall come back tonight.’
She thought about the princess in the book, her arched eyebrows and porcelain skin. Rapunzel. ‘And you can make me beautiful?’
He placed his lips lightly on her forehead. ‘It’s not such a hard task, Sandra.’
Anderson was trying to have a fruitful morning in his office. He knew they were getting close.
Wyngate had looked into the past of the Girasole family; not so extraordinary, theatre people. The Girasoles of the Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre. He thought back to the windows he had seen, colourful and magical scenes of goblins and elves, draped in dark red curtains. There was skill, a theatrical skill of showmanship. And of misdirection.
They were a normal family who had lost a son and the aging mother was now in a care home, an expensive care home that showed how just how financially successful the family business had been.
He had spent some of the previous night with Alistair Jeffries. It had not been pleasant. No police officer enjoyed questioning another police officer, but Jeffries had been the victim of an attempted abduction. And there was the small matter of some missing files from the 1999 fire. Not an unusual occurrence, but too much of a coincidence.
Was there a link?
Jeffries had thought about answering, then told Anderson to go ahead and review everything in the cold case file. It had all been fully investigated in early 2000. Pietro Girasole had been found dead, and nobody had any idea how he got up Lillybank Lane.
So Anderson left him with the picture of Pietro, dead on a slab. His aquiline profile was one Jeffries should have been very familiar with.
As good as his word, back at the station, they were reviewing the 1999 tape. Jeffries was right. There was no sign of Pietro coming out of any of the nightclubs or pubs along that way. Nothing. He had just turned up dead in the lane. It had been a clear night with a full bright moon, easy to see, except that a young man in blue jeans and a white, short-sleeved T-shirt was hardly unique. Too hardy in his youth to feel the cold. Or too drunk. Or had some of his clothes been taken?
The only areas being monitored were the university and Byres Road in those days and there were experimental cameras around the Ashton Lane area, luckily for them. At that time there was a parliamentary report about the efficiency of CCTV in deterring or solving crime, so much of the tape from that time was kept. Almost every movement of the millennium celebration in the area around Byres Road was caught on film and stored safely, hour upon hour of it.
At the time the film had been watched frame by frame, looking for Pietro Girasole to appear somewhere and meet his murderer. And he had not. All the same, Anderson was not downhearted. Obviously something had been missed. It was an overnight case at New Year. The major investigation team from 2000 were not incompetents from the dark ages; they had been a good, reliable squad; cops he had known personally. The advantage that Anderson’s team had was that he knew about Blondie. They knew who they were looking for. He also told the ten-man team who were viewing the footage that they were looking for a woman acting strangely. A blonde in a nice frock with a neat bob. And a young man in blue jeans. ‘Keep an eye out for her, that’s all.’ The images they had of her were all up on the wall.
‘How do you know she has a neat bob?’ asked one, a neat-boned Asian woman.
‘I doubt she has changed her style in the last twenty years. Or she has returned to it now. She’s revisiting it all; lock, stock and barrel. Haircut included.’
They were working away. Anderson was flicking over the written reports as they emptied the boxes, everything sealed in plastic bags, everything tagged and labelled, the complexity of the evidential chain shown by thirty or more signatures.
‘There is one thing that makes me think that we are barking up the wrong tree. They never found Pietro Girasole on the tapes did they? He was found dead the next morning, which technically was the next year, but nobody saw him and his murderer together. So why are we looking for her?’ Wyngate contemplated. ‘We can’t even find him.’
‘Let’s ask her when we find her. And if we see her on the tape, we might see him. She’s easier to spot. Nobody saw Amy with anybody, nobody saw Alistair Jeffries with anybody,’ Anderson pointed out.
Wyngate asked, ‘So are we looking for a woman? Or a man?’
‘One or the other, Gordon.’
‘Just that Batten said arsonists were male. But we are looking for Blondie, yes …?’
‘And her male accomplice, Wyngate.’
Anderson was watching the film thinking about something else Batten had once said about the difference between actors and impersonators. The impersonator takes the actions of another upon themselves, and they merge. But the original is still there, perfectly visible. A good actor becomes that other person.
Anderson went into the sanctity of his own office to read the contents of O’Hare’s email. The old pathologist seemed obsessed with Pietro’s fingers. They were the anomaly. What did he actually do for a living? The analysis of the skin swabs had revealed lotion on his skin and something that resembled make-up remover. O’Hare had highlighted this to see later. Anderson looked at the pictures of the face on the CD, easing his fingers apart on the screen to magnify the image, then looked deeply at the eyelashes, the base of the eyelashes, then at the mouth, around the mouth, the outline of the lips, nothing there. The body was smooth of hair. He had a thin, lithe build and it was not unusual for men who go to the gym to get a chest wax, a buttock wax. What was it they called it? A back, crack and sack? Anderson juddered at the thought and moved on. Pietro had smooth legs. Smooth feet. He had been epilated. The pathologist at the time had placed a question mark there. Because he was gay?
He went back to the photograph of the body lying before the post-mortem had started, lying as if he was sleeping. Peaceful, extremely … pretty was the word that came to Anderson’s mind. Pietro had looked like some actor, a young Jude Law maybe.
Pietro had been five feet seven, had weighed nine and a half stone, with slim, well-defined muscle, when he died. Anderson stared at that picture for a long time, looking at the eyelashes. Some men were blessed with very long eyelashes, his wife had remarked on that often. But his beard line was non-existent. Were there metrosexual men in the last millennium?
So what was Pietro Girasole doing? Out enjoying the New Year celebrations. Then what? He looked back at the bare feet. He needed to get those clothes up from the productions archived store as soon as possible.
He went back to the body of the email.
It was postulated that the body was undressed after he was murdered and then redressed in clothes that were not his – the white T-shirt, the jeans. That had echoes of Mr Hollister. Right down to the lack of shoes. And if they could …
The door burst open, it was Mulholland looking uncharacteristically excited. ‘Sir, you need to see this—’ he pointed at his own monitor – ‘on the CCTV coming out of the Auditorium, which was a nightclub up near where Oran Mor is now. The film is black and white and as gritty as anything … But there she is. Blondie. And she’s heading down towards Ashton Lane.’
Anderson sat down on his sergeant’s vacated seat. ‘With this guy. Who’s he? Too tall to be Pietro. Much bigger build.’
‘And once we move on down the road, she gets very pally with him.’
‘Let’s isolate that bit of film.’
‘He looks sober, he has his arm round her shoulder at this point. But then she kind of shrugs it off, and here he adjusts his hair, preening, all to look good for Blondie …’ said Mulholland.
‘OK, he’s interesting but she is the one of interest. Follow her all the way, sooner or later, she will walk into Pietro Girasole. Sooner or later …’
‘She’s a rather grand lady, do you get a lot of them in here? You know, actresses all swanning around being lovely, the old guy in the front room? What happened to him exactly? And don’t even try to pull the confidentiality trick this time.’ Costello smiled, sweetly.
‘Oh, I don’t know if I can tell you that,’ said Matron Nicholson, looking very starchy and efficient in an office that was pleasingly chaotic.
‘I am a police officer,’ said Costello, which had no relevance whatsoever in the case of Deke Kilpatrick but it often did the trick, that and the fact she could see the matron of the home was desperate to talk about something.
‘He was burned in a fire. Just over there.’
‘Marchmont Terrace? 1989?’
She looked surprised. ‘Goodness, that long ago? Yes, I think so.’
‘And the Duchess, does she ever speak? Could she be interviewed?’
The matron looked a little confused at the sudden change of subject. ‘Doubt it, she just speaks the odd word here and there. In Italian.’
‘Do the Duchess and Mr Kilpatrick ever communicate?’
‘No. They really don’t like each other, they are like kids.’
‘Yes, I noticed. The way they glare at each other. Do you think they knew each other from before?’
‘They might have done. They were both from round this area. The Girasoles were theatre people and he was a singer, no a saxophone player, I think. His wife was an actress. Or a dancer. She died in the fire, so sad.’
Costello held her stare for a long time.
‘So what’s her name? The Italian with the opera diva hair?’
‘Everybody just calls her the Duchess, it’s one of the few names that she actually responds to.’
‘Her real name?’
‘Ilaria. Ilaria Concetta Girasole.’
‘Her son died.’
‘When? That’s terrible.’ The matron looked shocked, her breath went as though she had been punched in the stomach. She sat back on the edge of her crowded desk. ‘That’s terrible. He was here only … well, an hour ago …’
‘No, I mean her other son.’
‘She only has one son.’
‘I mean Pietro. He was killed in 1999.’
The matron looked a little puzzled, ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you meant Paolo. I thought he was an only child and he was here this morning, alive as anything. Nice boy, very nice boy.’
‘Paolo? I think he’s a cousin.’ Costello sat on the edge of the single armchair in the office, inviting more chit chat. ‘He helped her identify Pietro’s body. I think over the years, they have grown close.’
The matron smiled, then her eyes flitted round the room, as if she had just remembered something very unpleasant. She stood up and straightened her uniform. ‘God, that’s sad, maybe it does explain why they are so close. But not in a mother to son way. But he does everything for her; he pays all her bills.’
‘And Deke Kilpatrick? No family for him?’
‘No, not him. No visitors. He has very little memory nowadays.’
‘Can I have a word with him?’
‘If you think it’ll do any good, of course. He’s in his room. Come on, I will take you there.’
Costello followed her, with her neat little nurse’s walk, along the lower-floor corridor to a small single room.
Deke was lying on the bed, a thin blanket over him. He tried to move slightly as the two women came in, trying to wriggle away from them. The dark eye looked ahead, then followed after the matron when she left, leaving the door open. He was suspecting an attack was coming from somewhere but had no idea where from.
‘Hi. I think you know that I am a police officer.’ She placed her warrant card right in front of his good eye. ‘I want to talk to you.’ She picked up a few records and flicked through them. ‘Dexter Gordon? You rate him? I’m more of a Julie London fan. Lena Horn, Stormy Weather and all that.’ She pulled out her mobile, turned on the media player and flicked down. ‘You recognize this?’ She pressed play. ‘“The Blue Bossa”, you like it?’
The dark eye stared straight ahead, but he didn’t slide away. If anything he leaned in a little closer, listening to the slightly tinny noise coming from the phone speaker. She sat beside him, nodding her head along, not really wanting to say that this wasn’t really her thing. Derek ‘Deke’ Kilpatrick was a real jazz musico and to do anything but listen in silence to a jazz blues classic would be sacrilege. The track finished, she turned it off. The head stayed inclined, but turned away slightly. She leaned forward to see into his face better. The face turned away ever so slightly, but not before she had seen the tear.
‘I want to talk to you,’ she said, ‘and I think you want to talk to me.’
The eye opened, looked straight at her.
‘When I first saw you I thought you had committed a crime. But I was wrong; you have been the victim of a crime. And now, there’s nobody looking out for you. You are on your own. I’ve looked into your background.’ She pulled out a small buff envelope. ‘I found some of these, maybe if you looked through them? Some are from the internet, just pictures I pulled out. Some of the jazz clubs around Glasgow. My friend was a fan of yours, imagine. And here is one of you and Alice.’ She placed that into his hand; he tried to turn it over. ‘She died after the Marchmont Terrace fire, didn’t she?’
She could swear that he nodded. She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at his eye. The black eye had a jagged line across it. The other eye was a bright blue, solid yet marled. Another scar from the Marchmont Terrace fire.
But his body language had changed. The hand moved forward and reached out to her. Just one simple movement.
‘When you saw me, you knew I was a cop, didn’t you?’ Her eyes held his steady, watching for a response. ‘Why was that? Do you have something you want to tell me?’ The hand tightened on hers a little. ‘You want to tell me something? About your wife? About the fire? About the McEwans? Did they start the fire? Did they do something deliberate? Did the boy?’
That got a response.
‘Do you know where the boy is?’
She thought she saw a smile play round his lips. A faint movement of the finger, trying to point.
‘Has he been here?’
Another slant of a smile.
‘Ah,’ was all Costello could say. And played “The Blue Bossa” again. She thought she might get to like it.
Paolo sat down, the fiscal and Costello sat opposite him in the small visitors’ area on the first floor. He had left the Duchess in her room. They could hear the soft flow of opera coming out from behind it.
Paolo didn’t look troubled. Just a little nervous; enough for an honest citizen, not brazen like the guilty.
‘Can you confirm your relationship to Ilaria Girasole, please?’
He laughed lightly. ‘I wish I could. I have the same surname and as kids Pietro and I naturally gravitated to each other. I was told I came over from Italy young, grew up in care, you can check all that out. I ended up going to the same school as Pietro. The name brought us together and if anybody asks I say I am a cousin, a distant cousin. And I think I have been saying that for so long, I believe it. The Duchess does. I would have said that when I identified Pietro’s body. And deep down, I think the Duchess knows who my mother was. I think she might have guessed who my father was. Her husband was a bit of a lad when he was alive. You get the picture?’ He made a very Italian gesture with his hands. ‘All I know is that the Duchess, and old Guido, bless him, have always looked out for me. Treated me the same as their own child.’
‘So where were you on the night of the millennium?’
‘In bed with flu. I know that very well. I remember trying to get out of bed when the Duchess got the news. If I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened.’ He opened his big blue eyes very wide. ‘The Duchess isn’t one for turning back the clock. My own mother left me, I was brought up in the Nazarene care system. So I was always very glad to go to the Girasoles. The Duchess has never got over the shock of Pietro.’ He started to cry.
Costello went to the toilet and brought him back some tissue.
‘I’m sorry, the Duchess is very ill. Some things just bring it all back. The incident at the end of the lane, the unknown boy? That really got to me.’ He shook his head.
‘I’m sorry. We didn’t know she was unwell.’
‘I forget her age. You believe some people are going to go on for ever.’
‘So who is this then?’ She held out the picture of Blondie again.
Paolo wasn’t fazed. ‘Like I said, she looks like somebody Pietro knew. His girlfriend would be putting it a bit too strongly. Oh, I don’t know. He never said.’ Paolo rubbed his eyes, tired suddenly, the emotion too much for him.
‘But you two were close.’
‘Time is a river that rolls on, it takes you where it takes you. I was growing into his family. Maybe Pietro was growing away from his, as boys of that age should do. I think he met a girl and didn’t tell me or the family. I think that’s her but I thought she was older than that. She never came to the funeral. She never came near the family once, not once.’
‘What was her name?’
Paolo looked at the picture and shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’
‘What did the family do, Ilaria’s family?’
‘The Girasoles ran the Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre. Just like the one in Central Park in New York. I saw it had burned down. I’m trying to stop the Duchess from reading that or hearing about it. I feel like everything I have is being taken away.’ He looked at the ceiling. He was a beautiful man, a young God. ‘I used to like looking in that window when I was a boy. So maybe I knew it was in my blood. Then Pietro died. His father died. We lost the theatre. And I had to get a job in the council.’
‘Do you know about the Facebook campaign for the theatre? It was very active.’
‘Oh yes, but it’s more about politics than puppets. I don’t know Pauline Gee. She doesn’t know the Duchess. Or me. So go figure.’ He shrugged.
‘OK, we will leave it there; I hope the Duchess feels a wee bit better.’ Costello stood up.
They left, walking slowly along the carpet before turning to go down the wide sweeping stairway. They passed within inches of Sandra hiding against the corner wall, where she had been for the duration. She counted to a hundred then walked neatly round the corner carrying her bundle of towels and did a good act of stopping dead in surprise when she saw Paolo.
‘Has anything happened to the Duchess?’
‘No. Sorry. I need to go into work. I don’t want to talk about it.’ Then he relented. ‘Well. Not now. We’ll go out for something later.’
She smiled her widest smile, straightened up his collar and sent him on his way saying that she would stay with the Duchess. She walked into the room closing the door behind her. The old woman was sitting in the bay of the window, looking out.
Sandra sat on the bed and looked at herself in the mirror, trying not to get excited. She recognized that nervousness. He wasn’t upset, he was nervous they were going to find out a secret. She turned her head so she could see the Duchess, and looked round the room. He was a cousin, the son had been killed. Nobody knew who by. And Paolo claimed to have been in his bed with the flu. And who benefited from all that? One person. Only one person. Paolo. He would have all this. Sandra doubted he worked for the council, he was never there. He had given her a car. He had money. He let the mad old bitch think that he was Pietro. She had called him that at least twice in Sandra’s earshot and he had not corrected her. And he had all this. No wonder he was so nice to the old cow. It was guilt.
And maybe that was why Paolo liked her. Did he sense the same thing in her?
‘Game on,’ she thought, ‘Game on.’
Costello walked down the hill past the gardens and into the lane. It was empty, but of course it would be. She had arranged for Rosemary Lucas and Eddy Urquhart to meet her at the site of the fire. Not in the lane behind it. She retreated back out of the lane, the chill in the air eating into her bones. The sky was getting heavier by the hour. She looked up at the oppressive clouds, the same slate grey as the roof of Athole House, almost blending together.
Rosemary Lucas was standing there, looking at her watch. Middle-aged now, a neat haircut with blonde covering the grey, dressed in an old-fashioned, light raincoat that would be rolled back up into her bag if the rain stayed away. It rustled as she walked. She had on Pavers shoes, a slight swelling of the ankle carrying an overhang. She looked like a woman who would still go to church and mean it.
‘Rosemary? DI Costello. Thank you for coming along. Sorry if I am going to stir up bad memories.’
Rosemary Lucas nodded, nervously. They shook hands.
‘I’ll be as brief as possible. I hope the rain stays off. It’s going to be a downpour.’
They were silent in tacit acknowledgement that Scottish weather was a law unto itself.
‘So, Rosemary, do you recall the night well?’
‘Of course I do. I was just over there when I heard the crash. That was the first thing we heard, my husband and I. We were walking home after the midnight mass, it was snowing lightly. All very romantic and Dickensian. There was a smell of smoke in the air but it was very pleasant. Like wood smoke, not like burning plastic.’ She spoke well, clearly. Costello let her speak. ‘And there was the heat, never felt anything like it.’
Rosemary bit her lower lip, looking round her. ‘We ran round the corner. We were in hell. The paint on the front door of the house was melting right in front of my eyes. There was a man behind the glass, trapped. The smoke kept burling round and round, sometimes I could see him, sometimes not. I tried to reach him. God knows I tried.’
‘Deke Kilpatrick.’
‘Yes, then the …’ She turned at the sound of shuffling footsteps of an old man walking slowly along Marchmont Terrace, waving a magazine in front of his face, trying to give life to the dead air. Rosemary sidestepped to let him pass. But he stopped and looked at both the women.
‘Rosemary Lucas?’ he asked, extending an old, liver-spotted hand.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
The old firefighter was struggling a little, emotional and breathless. A hand under his red rheumy eyes wiped away a light tear. Costello stood back, letting them compose themselves. They were standing on the pavement, shaking hands. He held on to hers far longer than was polite. Then Rosemary gave him a hug that was strong and heartfelt.
Costello wondered if firefighters ever met their successes. Of if they were eternally haunted by their mistakes? This man had sent another man to his death. Not an easy thing to deal with. Costello knew that.
She waited until they broke up. ‘Thank you both for coming. I know it can’t be easy.’
‘It’s refreshing to know that you are still trying to get to the bottom of it.’ Urquhart’s voice was rough.
‘It was an accident, surely,’ said Rosemary. ‘The boy? That poor wee boy who was taken away, kept from the public eye, poor child.’
Eddy Urquhart snuffled in what might have been a snort of disbelief.
‘Did you know him? The family?’ Costello directed the question to Rosemary.
‘Yes, I knew him. Paul. Used to wear a sunflower yellow duffle coat. He walked back and forth to school in it. Nice wee kid, I used to feel a bit sorry for him. He was a lonely child. Always on his own. No other family. No friends. Nobody at all, not afterwards.’
‘Happy child?’
‘Not a word I’d use.’
‘Maybe that was why he did what he did,’ said Eddie, looking up at the new build.
‘Do you think it was deliberate?’ Costello asked.
‘Oh he did it. No wonder social services took him away. Hope he never found out what he actually did.’ There was bitterness in his voice. ‘I sent a man in there to look for the kid. He lost his life. The boy wasn’t there. We found Ally’s body in the boy’s bedroom.’ Eddy looked away, slow gentle tears coursed down his lined face. ‘I sent him back in. I had been told the boy was in there.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Costello said.
‘We got the bodies out. Barry McEwan had tried to get out the back door, he was found in the kitchen. The wife was found in the upstairs toilet. Totally untouched by flames, the smoke got her just like Kenny Fraser. It happens all the time. Then Alice Kilpatrick got trapped out on the ledge. She couldn’t get back in, so she jumped. We got Deke out from behind the front door alive. We had to stop Rosemary here from rescuing him.’ A memory halted him in his tracks.
‘And Paul?’ Costello nudged him.
‘We were led to believe he was still inside. Ally was in there as we heard the roof come down. I tell you, hen, there is no other sound in the world as horrible as that. Terrifying. His fault, you know. That wee lad. He left. And before he left he set fire to the house. Out the front door as smart as you like, started the fire with the candle on the coat stand. His room was downstairs – right at the front door. Oh, I think he did it.’ The old man nodded. ‘Oh yeah, he did it.’
‘You can’t mean that.’ Rosemary was shocked.
‘So why is he being protected now?’ The old man turned to look at Costello. ‘Find him and ask him.’
Back in the station, Costello leaned back in her seat and looked at the ceiling. ‘I am trying to follow your thinking here, Colin. You seem to be spending a huge amount of money for no gain. Pietro Girasole was in a nightclub. He left although nobody saw him. He must have gone out a back door, then went up the back alley with or without a blonde who may or may not be our blonde and then his body was found. And the Blonde disappeared into fresh air, the same way that this blonde has disappeared into fresh air.’
‘I think that’s what connects it in my mind, now you see her, now you don’t.’
She turned to look at her boss for reassurance. ‘Is she some kind of White Widow? Colin, can we do a full media blowout? Just find her. Cut the crap. We ask her if she had anything to do with that murder all those years ago. Or do you think she will hurt David if we do that? And David will slip through our fingers?’
‘To tell you the truth, Costello, I have no idea and—’ The door bounced open. ACC Mitchum came in, closely followed by James Kirkton. The local member of the Scottish Parliament did not look like himself, the veneer of smugness and the arrogance was gone. Costello and Anderson exchanged glances before Mitchum said, ‘You two, Anderson’s office. Now!’
The four of them squeezed into the small room, Mitchum taking pride of place behind Colin’s desk. He wasted no time in getting to the point.
‘Tania Kirkton didn’t come home last night. She was out at a garden party over in Kelvinside and her mother got a text from her about half ten to say that she would be staying over.’
Anderson had that dreadful feeling of déjà vu. ‘Just a text, your wife didn’t speak to her in person?’
Kirkton shook his head but didn’t manage to look Anderson in the eye. Mitchum explained that he had already sent out the local police to investigate discreetly and that for now they wanted it all kept under wraps.
‘But how can we?’ asked Costello, ‘with all that going on out there. How long has she been away for? Eighteen hours now and there has been no sign or sight of her?’
‘I think we have to prepare for the worst and presume that she has come to the same fate as David Kerr,’ said Mitchum brutally.
‘So I want every resource you have available on this taskforce. I want to know exactly where this investigation is going. I want my daughter back and that is the most important thing.’ Kirkton’s face looked grey, yet it couldn’t be from lack of sleep. They’d had no real idea there was anything wrong until Tania failed to return that morning. They had believed she had stayed over.
Anderson and Mitchum both knew it would be Costello who said it. ‘And I am sure the most important thing for Irene Kerr is getting David back. Your daughter is no more important than anyone else’s child and you will get the same resources and endeavour that everybody else gets. After all, we are all committed to the safer society.’
Wyngate was wondering how dark and humid it would get before it finally started to rain. The clouds that rolled in were more black than grey. The city was a very uncomfortable place to be. He hoped it would have its downpour and clear the air.
He was walking up Byres Road after a rather nasty emergency root canal, still in pain but a different pain to the one he had had before; instead of the daggers of agony shooting through his jaw that were so painful it almost made him pass out, there was now a dull throb that was responding to paracetamol. He was going up to Boots to collect a prescription for antibiotics. He walked with his jacket collar pulled up over the side of his face as his tongue probed at the gap, gently feeling its way round where the dentist had performed his surgery. It felt … Wyngate stopped.
There she was.
Walking down Byres Road, lilac raincoat swinging open, small heels, blonde hair and dark glasses. A large black handbag swung from the crook of her arm. She was walking quickly like she was in a hurry but was too cool to run. He slipped into the crowd walking behind her. Byres Road was busy. People were sitting out drinking coffee, looking at the sky as if the weather of the next half hour was going to be an event. At the corner of the Hilton she slipped up the small lane that led from the Waitrose car park and beyond through the pike that prevented vehicular traffic through to the service lane beyond. Wyngate thought that if his geography was right, this would take him out at Athole Lane, where Mr Hollister had been found. He got out his phone, held it to his ear as if he was making a call. She had slowed slightly and he did not want her to turn round. Her shoes seemed to be causing her a little difficulty on the rough surface of the lane so Wyngate was forced to slow down. He ambled along, one hand on the phone at his ear, one hand in his pocket, appearing casual while his heart thumped like a piston. The walls of the tenements to the left and the right, four- or five-storey high buildings on either side, cut out the noise from the city. They could have been anywhere, locked in a world of their own walking along. She was going quicker now as the lane surface became well repaired concrete. She went past a skip. There was a car half-parked to the side, well tucked in to let other vehicles squeeze past. He leant on the skip, scared of getting too close, and took a photograph of the figure in the lilac coat. Her gait had changed, walking slower now, as if she was enjoying herself or as if she had found out that she was early for an appointment after an initial panic. He phoned Vik Mulholland back at the station and tried to keep his voice calm.
‘Vik? I think I have a visual on Blondie … she’s walking along Athole Lane. Right in front of me.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, heading south. Do you know how many exits there are?’
He heard Vik typing away, calling up a map. ‘Gordon, there are loads of ground troops out there. Do you want me to send somebody to see where she goes in case you lose her?’
Wyngate heard the noise of typing. ‘Yes.’
‘The lane ends in a T-junction with Bowmont Gardens, so she can go north or south. If we get a patrol to Saltoun Street, they will see her at the other end and see what way she goes. You can’t afford to lose sight of her and you will at the dogleg. This is the closest we have got to her. We need …’
Wyngate could hear the panic in his voice; not like Mulholland to get carried away like this. ‘What’s happened, Vik?’
‘Tania Kirkton has gone missing.’
‘Oh God. I need some help here, Vik, she’s moving fast again. Get back up, she’s easy to spot. Blonde. Aviator sunglasses. Same bob cut. Lilac coat.’ He moved out from behind the skip, in pursuit once again. The lane doglegged to the left then the right. He lost sight of her for a moment. When he walked on to the straight stretch, she had disappeared. He turned round making sure that he had not missed her.
That wasn’t possible. There were six doors in the walls on either side, old wooden garden doors that allowed access from the lane into the rear courts of the tenements. He pushed at the first one, painted bright red. Locked. The second one, its peeling black paint formed a bond over the frame. It had not been opened for years.
No, no, no, no, no. He couldn’t have lost her. He jogged on. Not believing it, his toothache forgotten. He eyes searching, looking for a hidden little place, any other pathway or doorway where she might have gone.
He redialled. ‘Vik, are you looking at a map? Is there any other way out of this lane, right at the dogleg, right here? I can’t see her at all.’
‘I have the map right in front of me and there are two doglegs but no way out until the fork at the end. Surely each garden has a back door that opens on to the lane. She’ll have gone in there. Did she go left or right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Wyngate said.
Silence, then: ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘I mean that, I really don’t know.’
Wyngate closed the phone and cut the call. He needed to think. He walked back to the bright red door, closest to where he had last seen her and tried the handle. It was securely locked on the inside. He stood in the lane looking behind the wheelie bins as if she might be hiding there like a kitten, ready to jump out at him.
But she wasn’t.
He walked up to the next door, newly painted with a serious padlock on a metal clasp. He thought it had given way, then he heard a lock turn. A young man with dark spikey hair and a smear of earth on his tanned face stuck his head out the red door; the one he had first tried.
‘Can I help you?’ The voice was clear, clipped and very Edinburgh. The suggestion, politely put, was that he was going to be arrested if he didn’t have a very good reason for trying the door.
‘I am a police officer.’ Wyngate searched for his warrant card, dropping his phone in the process. The man watched him bend down to pick it up, with a look of slight amusement. The door opened a little more to reveal a long dirty shirt and baggy trousers, a pair of secateurs in his dirty gloved hand which he raised to backhand sweat from his forehead. He had been busy pruning.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, I was when I left the station this afternoon,’ he joked.
‘And do you have a reason to be sneaking about here? I was watching you from the house.’ The man waggled a finger at the door. ‘Is it to do with the body found out there?’
‘Yes.’ Wyngate gestured to his right, the direction the Blonde had walked off in. ‘I was following somebody who we would like to talk to. Just caught sight of her, then lost her.’
‘Who?’ He seemed more interested now, the door was opened a little more. His large dark brown eyes flickered down the lane.
‘I just want to know where they went, or if they live round here. Blonde lady. Lilac coat, well dressed.’
He looked up the lane. ‘I don’t recognize that description. A lot of folk use it as a shortcut though.’
‘Does anybody here keep their door open? Where she could have got in? I would really like to talk to them.’
He glanced back at the ID, rubbing his eyebrow with the back of his glove, leaving another smear of dirt on his face, then said, ‘Shona, maybe? That black door there. They have young kids that play up and down here on their bikes. That might be a place to start. I’ll phone her and let her know that you are coming. After all that’s been going on, she might be a wee bit reluctant to open her door. We are all a bit jumpy after that boy was found.’ He put the rusty secateurs on the ground and patted his pockets, presumably looking for his mobile. ‘Are you any further ahead with that?’
‘We are looking into a few leads. So over here, behind the black door?’
‘Yes, it will be open. You should tell us what’s going on. We might be of some help.’
‘I’ll pass that on to community liaison. Thanks. And your name is?’
‘Hodge. Richard Hodge. 27 Marchmont Terrace. Secretary of the local Neighbourhood Watch. You can pass that on to James Kirkton. We like to police ourselves here.’ The door closed in his face.
Wyngate turned round, checking the lane again, a strange chill flickered in the heat. None of this made sense. He pushed in the newly painted black door. It opened to reveal a neat back garden with stone inlay patio, a table with four wrought iron seats and a neat old-fashioned clothes line with four posts and a flower border as straight as sentinels. Wyngate walked up the path to what would be the rear door of the close in the old days. It was locked as well. So if she had come in here then she must know the code.
He walked to the rear window, tiptoeing through the border of red gravel to see a woman talking on the phone as she folded something on the ironing board. His face at her kitchen window startled her. She put her hand to her chest and then held it out; recognition as he held up his warrant card. She cut the call and left the room appearing at the rear door of the close less than thirty seconds later; the security pad protected the rear door. She was not happy. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’
He repeated the story of the blonde woman.
She looked at him as if he was mad, shaking her head. ‘Nobody here of that description. And nobody can get through. See, even if the door was open you need the code to get in to the close in order to get access to the front. I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘Always?’
‘Yes always. And I can hear that door open and shut so would have known.’
‘Oh, it’s just that the man across there said that you were the likely one, he must think that your door goes all the way through,’ he ended lamely. He felt his heart sink. ‘Are you called Shona?’
‘No, who’s Shona? There’s nobody round here called Shona.’
‘And there’s nobody round here called Richard Hodge either is there?’ At that point Wyngate started swearing quietly to himself, looking at the red door, banging gently in the wind.
‘Why do you have dirt on your face?’ asked Paolo, pointing at Sandra’s eyebrow.
‘Do I?’ She lifted her hand to her face. ‘I picked up that bloody cat. He gets everywhere. Wee Piero, he’s been rolling in the garden. I think he’s trying to cool down. This weather is awful, too clammy.’
Sandra sat facing the mirror on the dressing-table stool that the Duchess used to use before her balance got too bad. Paolo had pinned her hair back and wrapped a towel round her neck. He worked intensely. He was concentrating but soon she too was totally immersed in what was happening to her face. Her skin, red and blotchy, was evened out with pale green cream rubbed in so finely that it disappeared and her face, for a moment, was almost translucent with the subtle gloss of a pearl. He dotted on vanilla coloured cream, and smoothed it over her skin with firm pressure, fine deft strokes as if he was painting. Her face became a doll’s face, all the imperfections of humanity gone; her eyebrows were beautifully pencilled back in, then the fine thick black eyeliner shadowed her eyes, which looked garish against the milk white of the rest of her face. As he worked his hands creamed on her cheek, brushing white powder one way and brown powder the other, contouring her face. He held her head delicately so she kept still and did not pull away and spoil it.
When he said ‘close your eyes’, she did. She did not want to open them again.
At some point he put on some opera; she wondered what it was.
Sandra let herself relax along with the music. This was what the Duchess listened to. The young man crying his heart out for the love of women who didn’t want to know him because he is poor.
‘Does this mean a lot to your mother? She listens to this so often.’
‘Do not speak,’ he said and gently pressed his lips against the top of her head.
She was transported, not aware of the brushes on her skin. It seemed easy to allow him to slip off her clothes, pulling the rough nylon tunic up over her head, then something else, softer and warm-flowing down over her shoulders. The stiff trousers came down, she held her hand out to steady herself as she stepped out of them and felt something cascading down her back, stockings being rolled on her feet, her feet being slipped into shoes. Her hair released from its binding. His fingers through it and pulling her fringe this way and that. Then she was pulled back onto her feet. She could feel his breath close to her ear, she didn’t want to look. She wanted to hold on to the feeling of being beautiful, of being treasured.
‘Open your eyes,’ he said and she did slowly, feeling the weight of individual eyelashes on her eyelids. She looked at herself in the mirror. Another face looked back at her; a perfect version of herself. Paolo stood behind her and rested his chin on the top of her head as they looked into the mirror together.
She smiled at him. ‘Oh thank you very much. Thank you so very, very much.’ And she felt truly grateful. He looked absolutely smitten as his gaze drifted over the reflection of her features.
Now she had him where she wanted him.
Wyngate felt wretched; his misery was deep and all consuming. And so obvious, nobody was taking the piss. Not even Mulholland. He had always been the back room boy, sitting at the computer and doing what he could to support the team and he excelled in that. But he had always harboured thoughts to go operational in the field. So far he had been out twice.
And messed it up twice.
It wasn’t his forte. He was not good with people. He was not sharp like Costello or empathetic like Anderson, not bright like Mulholland or worthy like Walker. He did not have the gravitas of O’Hare. But when Vik had to go in for his second operation on his leg, it had seemed perfectly logical, instead of recruiting another member to the team, to swap roles. Or swap part of the roles. It had been Wyngate’s job to show Vik how to input data and how to get the best out of the databases.
He had done the right thing; he had followed the Blonde when he saw her. He had phoned in and asked for help when it was unclear which way she was going to go, and the path might have taken her a way that he could not confidently follow. That was right. Only, she had just disappeared.
His colleagues had not said anything but he sensed their disappointment, and their frustration. He had held her in his sight and he had lost her. Their big lead was gone. It had reached the ears of the ACC and now they would have to close ranks, especially with Tania Kirkton missing.
How could he have messed it up so badly? But she had disappeared into thin air. As Costello had put it, he had ballsed it up totally – except he knew he hadn’t.
He sat and nursed his ego and his cup of tea, then had an idea.
Anderson stood at the wall, looking at Mulholland’s efforts at making sense of the case. David was still missing. So was Tania.
The Blonde had now moved centre stage, she was at the top of the board with a map of her last known movements. They had no idea who she was. They had no idea who Pauline Gee was either, but a trace of her IP address, the only one that related to the Facebook page, was registered to Athole House Secure Living Facility. The clustering of activity suggested that ‘Pauline’ had a job that allowed her access to the computer daily but only in small intervals. The pattern of a shift worker.
So tomorrow they were going to make a move on Paolo Girasole, ask him about the original fire and have a chat about the Vinicombe Street fire. Then ask him again who Blondie was. Tonight they were going to prepare the case for the interview. They wanted his DNA and they wanted some leverage on him. Was he the ‘Paul McEwan’ who had disappeared at nine years old on the night of the fire? Paul could be anywhere in the world by now, living a life without any criminality. He may have grown up into a man with a different life, keen to leave the tragedy of the Marchmont fire behind.
Or he might be three minutes away.
And ‘Paolo Girasole’ had appeared from nowhere. There was no record of somebody of that name working at the council and no record of him living at any Manchester Avenue address. If nothing else, he had some explaining to do.
It was the Blonde they really wanted to speak to. Costello had pointed out the oddity of a woman who didn’t change her hairstyle for years. Princess Anne was the only one she could think of. She thought if it was a wig, it was a very good one. Even if it was the same wig, it didn’t mean it was the same person.
One thing they had confirmed was that Pietro Girasole was dead and buried, lying in the Linn cemetery. So at least they knew where he was.
The phone went. Everybody looked at Anderson, knowing it would be Irene Kerr. They knew that time was running short. If it hadn’t already run out.
So they ignored it.
Sandra had relished the meal and the company, the music and the ambiance accompanied by the satisfaction of a plan coming together. Paolo had taken her to Café Russo. She had walked past the front door many times, not knowing that a beautiful little Italian restaurant existed upstairs, all checkered tablecloths and dripping candles in raffia-clad bottles. The lighting was very subtle.
Paolo had booked them for the pre-theatre timeslot, sort of implying that he had plans to take her somewhere else but didn’t say what or where.
He was lovely. Younger than her, obviously, but he had enough maturity to look after his mother, look after her because she was precious to him, through choice not obligation. Or were there darker reasons? She tried to find out exactly how old he was; he looked young. He could be young enough to be the Duchess’s grandchild. She tried a few gambits to try and figure out exactly how old he was. Her favourite one was ‘who was your favourite Dr Who?’ as inevitably, the answer would be the one that they had watched as a child. In the early days, when Dr Who actors stuck with the character for more than one series before Hollywood called. The answer might get her within a vague age bracket, but Paolo’s answer was typically theatrical. He liked them all. They all gave something to the part. She had to understand that they were not comparing like with like. He spoke about the special effects, the costumes and the standard of writing and how an actor can live the part so much more when good writing and imagination is not hemmed in by budgets.
‘So were you ever an actor?’ she asked, refusing another top up of Pinot Grigio but glad to see that he was swigging it down. She needed a clear head, to be in control.
‘I was never an actor although in some ways I consider myself the greatest actor the world has ever seen.’ He took a mouthful of the gnocchi and laughed. ‘I mean I go to the council every day and act like I enjoy my work. I talk to people I despise. I go to meetings as if I’m paying attention when my mind is really writing the next play or designing this or that. The art of the theatre is what I love in my head. So yes, I think I am the greatest actor the world has ever known.’ He was sincere, scarily sincere.
She thought about swimming in the blueness of his eyes. He stared back at her for what seemed a very long time, the intensity was palpable. She began to feel very nervous, like he could see inside her soul. She looked away.
Then he laughed. ‘You see what a good actor I am. You loved all that shit, didn’t you?’ He had a captivating laugh.
And she laughed too. Glad that she had been caught out. She took a large slug of wine, trying to rid herself of the feeling that she was back at school and everybody was laughing at her. She was wearing someone else’s coat. A hand-me-down. Second class. Second rate.
‘Are you having a good time?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I am, I really am.’ She raised her glass to him and they toasted each other. He excused himself and went to the loo. She watched him go up the stairs; a hunter watching its prey. He wasn’t a big man, rather insubstantial with thin, narrow shoulders. There was not a lot of power there.
He had the biggest blue eyes she had ever seen, large pale blue moons, just like those of the Duchess. But diluted, washed out as if he had been crying for a whole lifetime. He had a small nose on his handsome face. That was a sign of moral weakness. She hoped.
She saw him come out the toilet, pause at the top of the stairs and look round for her, smiling when their eyes met. A nice, open smile.
She knew he would pay the bill. She knew he would ask her if she had enjoyed the night. She would say she had. She knew he would suggest going for a walk, head off for somewhere quiet he had in mind. And she would let him think it was his idea.