Anderson hadn’t even sat down at his desk before his phone rang. It was the ACC. He was curt and to the point.
‘I’m not sure if it is a blackmail demand but James Kirkton has had a letter through his door during the night, telling him to show up on Elean Street, at the corner where the garage is; the wee antique mall?’
‘Yes I know it, all back alleys and footpaths. That’s difficult.’ His respect for Blondie was growing.
‘We can think that through. The letter has the middle name of Kirkton’s wife which is something very few people know; Priscilla,’ he added. ‘And that is some kind of proof that whoever wrote the letter, might have had Tania sitting in front of him. Kirkton wants nothing done.’
‘So why did he contact you then?’ snapped Anderson.
‘I suppose he’s conflicted. The note says don’t tell the police and he was telling me as a friend so that if we got wind of it, he wanted nothing done. But that’s not his call and he damn well knows that. Which is why he phoned me in the first place. I think a low-key presence following Kirkton might be of use but you need to get your skates on. The note was put through his door by hand overnight and he has to be there this evening. I don’t need to tell you the importance of this, Anderson. He has been an irritating thorn in our side all year but this could silence him forever. If you know what I mean. You will have all my support, whatever you need.’
‘And what if David is in there? We can’t have a low-key, fast-action response team. We either do or we don’t. Ask Batten and see what he says?’
‘Do that. And I know what Batten will say.’
‘Talk her round? She’s angry, emotional and hurting.’
‘So that’s just your thing, you and your emotional IQ. And, you know Paolo Girasole doesn’t have a driving licence or a car. So Blondie is the driver. Stick him on the back burner for now.’
It was a not-so-subtle command from a superior officer. Anderson wondered who had told Mitchum that, but had neglected to tell him. Mulholland. It would be Mulholland.
‘Kirkton will be your way in. And use your intelligence, Anderson. This is a woman who can be talked round, maybe a killer, or a killer’s accomplice. No big stuff. Whoever she is, she wants you to know about it. She, or her accomplice, told Amy to tell you, so there is some connection there. We don’t know if David and Tania are there. We need to do as she wants. For now. You want Costello with you? I’d rather you kept her out of it.’
‘Blondie needs to separate her victims from the pack. I trust Costello to stick to me. She’s my defence.’
Mitchum was quiet for a long time, mulling this over. Then agreed and hung up.
In the station, Anderson called a meeting for a full briefing at ten a.m. The case was subject to a media blackout. The DCI listened as Costello gave them the details of the Elean Street rendezvous. Her meeting with the fire officer who had attended the Marchmont Terrace was history now. He could tell by the way she was talking that she was going through the motions, her mind was already running through the various outcomes of that evening. Even the worst.
Batten was sitting at the back, working out a strategy of what to say and how to talk Blondie down. He did point out that they didn’t know who had actually written the letter, what part they were playing. But his advice was the same. Blondie was angry about something, and she wanted them to listen and empathize. No matter what she said. They were going on the principle that the letter writer was Blondie, a female arsonist with some connection, probably a childhood connection, to the Vinicombe Street Theatre. She was making dolls of people. If they died in that process, so be it. She needed help. But she was very, very angry about something.
And they had to diffuse that by talking. Any show of force would make her worse. And – the big and, – she was not stupid.
Costello was now talking about the fire at Marchmont Terrace as the logistic guys from West End Central made their electronic plans in the room next door. She pointed to the photographs on the board. Barry McEwan had burned to death trying to get out the back. His wife Diane was found in the upstairs toilet, untouched by flames, having succumbed to smoke inhalation. Alice Patricia Kilpatrick, Deke’s wife, was the only victim of the Marchmont Terrace with a definitive time of death as she had survived the flames, the damage to her lungs, the fall and the collision with the Victorian birdbath that shattered her spleen. She had survived the fracture to her skull on landing only to die two weeks later of a chest infection. Her husband Derek Kilpatrick had survived his injuries but was left partially sighted, disabled and disfigured. His own opinion was that his life was not worth saving as it was not worth living. He had been staying at the Athole care home for the last twenty years, under an antidepressant and analgesic regime of medication.
The fire had been started by a candle placed under a coat rack, deliberately according to the chief fire officer at the time. ‘And somewhere in that, in all that tragedy,’ said Costello, ‘is the reason why Blondie is so angry.’ She then pointed to the DNA coding on the wall. ‘That DNA links the two scenes.’
‘So it must be Paolo.’
‘Or Deke.’
‘It’s male, that’s all we know for sure.’
‘Well, it’s not Blondie then. Which gets us nowhere.’
Wyngate sat down in Anderson’s office. Batten sat beside him, asking him if he was comfortable. Wyngate said no, his toothache was still bothering him. He was keen, he wanted it to be shown that he had not lost Blondie, that she had vanished into thin air. And if he needed hypnosis to prove that, then so be it. He was so sure, he wanted it on tape.
Batten began by asking Wyngate if he was relaxing now, calling him Gordon, repeating a few phrases over and over.
Wyngate closed his eyes, his breathing slowed down, his shoulders dropped a little. Batten asked him to lift his finger. Wyngate’s hands were placed on top of his own knees, like he was ready for a hard question at an interview and wanted to keep his hands from betraying any nervousness.
His finger rose but Wyngate’s eyes remained closed. Batten talked him through it one more time saying the same words in a deep calm voice. The phone rang outside. Costello moved to tell them to silence it but Batten held up his hand. There was no point. Wyngate relaxed, his conscious could be aware of all the noise in Christendom but it was the subconscious that Batten was talking to.
Batten asked him for a few points of reference. Wyngate knew where he was and he knew what day it was. Costello commented that that in itself was a first.
Batten asked if Wyngate recalled what had happened the day before.
‘Many things, the usual things. Sam had been sick that morning. He eats his food too quickly.’ Wyngate spoke about his wife cleaning the mess up. It had been all over the baby’s face. She had taken cloths and wiped him, then Wyngate wiped his face with an imaginary cloth, then nodded. That was the end of it.
Anderson looked at Costello and shrugged, no idea what was going on here.
‘So you went to the dentist? Where did you go?’
‘Walter Armstrong, Byres Road.’
‘And did you see anybody you recognized?’
‘The Blonde.’
‘And what was she wearing?’
‘Lilac coat, black shoes.’
‘Was she carrying anything?’
‘A black bag, like an overnight bag thing. Big handbag.’ His hands indicated the size of the bag. His subconscious had noticed it.
‘And what did you do when you saw her?’
‘I followed her.’
‘And where did she go?’
‘Up Athole Lane. Where Mr Hollister was found.’ Wyngate got quite animated, his breathing quickened, his feet started twitching as if he was running. ‘I phoned Mulholland. I didn’t know where she might go at the other end. Left or right or straight on. I might not get there in time.’
‘Why might you not get there?’
‘I didn’t want to follow her too closely as she would see me, so I held back. I stayed out of sight.’ His hands waved at his side. ‘There was a skip here so I stood behind that and pretended I was on my phone, then I stood in a doorway. The lane turns left then right. She walked round the corner and by the time I got there, she was gone. She was not there.’ It was said calmly but definitely.
‘Where did she go?’ asked Batten.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You didn’t see where she went?’
‘I did not.’
‘What did you do?’
He started moving his right hand, knuckles tight trying to get a door handle open. ‘I am opening the garden doors, to get access. She must have gone into a garden. But there was only one unlocked. But the lassie who was not Shona did not hear her door open or shut. The close door is locked so the Blonde did not go through her close.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘I do.’
‘Why did you call her “the woman who was not Shona”?’
‘The man said that she was called Shona. But she was not.’
‘What man?’
‘Richard Hodge.’
‘OK, where was she when you first saw the woman who is not Shona?’
‘In her house on her phone, she saw me out the window.’
‘Did she come out to get you?’
‘Yes,’ Wyngate said straight away. ‘Yes, but I had to wait until she went out the door of her flat, then came to the back door of the close, then out to me.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I waited.’
‘For how long?’
‘This long.’ He paused. ‘About that length of time.’
‘And who else did you speak to?’
‘No one.’
‘Let’s go back to the man called Richard Hodge.’
‘He’s behind the red door. He heard me try the handle, he came out to see what I was doing.’
‘Was he in the house?’
‘He was gardening.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He was dirty, holding secateurs.’
Batten leaned forward, checking that the machine was recording. ‘When you were talking to him, was his close door open or shut?’
‘Shut.’
‘And you are at the bottom of the garden? How far is it to the door at the back of the close?’
‘About thirty metres. They have very long back gardens.’
Everybody in the room knew that they did.
‘And who is Richard?’
‘He lived there.’
‘Do you know that?’
‘No, I do not. That was what he said.’
‘How was he breathing?’
‘He was out of breath.’
‘And the back door of the close was shut?’ he repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you describe Richard?’
‘Shiny face,’ came the reply. Then Wyngate started to talk. ‘He had short dark hair, slicked back against his head and dirt on his cheek.’
‘How old was he?’
‘Twenties maybe thirties, maybe older. Edinburgh accent.’
‘Eye colour?’
‘Brown eyes.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘I did not.’
‘Had you seen him before?’
A pause. ‘I had not.’
They looked at each other.
Batten leaned in.
‘Did you recognize him?’
Wyngate’s eyelids flickered. The question created conflict.
‘He said …’
‘Yes?’
‘He said, “And you can pass it on to James Kirkton. We like to police ourselves.”’
The room fell quiet.
Batten went on. ‘So he saw you from the house, but suddenly appeared at the door at the end of the garden. Was there enough time?’
‘There was not.’
‘Did he say he was in the garden?’
‘No, he did not. He said he was in the house.’
Batten paused for a while, looked over to the other two then asked, ‘What was he wearing?’
‘Long dirty white shirt, old black trousers.’
‘And on his feet?’
‘Black shoes.’ Wyngate seemed to pause. He shook his head. ‘His laces were undone.’
‘OK, what did you think when you saw his face. Damp like that?’
‘He reminded me of Sam after we had wiped the beans from his face.’
‘And the trousers, how did they look at the bottom?’
‘Creased. Been folded.’
He counted him back out of his relaxed state. Wyngate opened his eyes and looked around hopefully. ‘So was that of any use?’
‘Yeah, we know your kid rubs beans on his face and that you are a shoe fetishist, so no, no bloody use,’ joked Costello but the whole room had relaxed.
They knew.
Batten pulled a photograph from the wall, the picture of Blondie at the fire where bright flames cast shadows on her face, highlighting her cheekbones, darkening the hollows. The huge dark glasses that covered her eyes were a canvas for the reflection of the bright jagged flames.
Batten placed the photograph next to the computer screen. ‘OK, Vik work your magic, change the hair in that to brown, slick it back like Wyngate described.’
‘You want me to turn her into some bloke that Wyngate met in Athole Lane behind the door?’
‘Yes,’ said Batten blankly. ‘And take all that make-up off him, take off that lipstick. Give it a little more masculine hair line, a widow’s peak. Take the scarf away. Now the glasses. Wyngate? Describe his eyes.’
‘Large, very open.’ Wyngate pulled his own eyes very wide. ‘And a deep, deep brown.’
Vik shrugged but did it. The face grew in familiarity.
‘But doesn’t that just look like him because I am making it so.’
‘There are many bits she can’t change; the shape, the nose, the lips.’
‘Shades of Pietro though, that cleansing of the face?’ said Costello. ‘Paolo has very big blue eyes. Not brown.’
‘And no driving licence,’ said Anderson bitterly.
‘Are we saying that Wyngate was talking to a woman and didn’t notice?’
‘Who wears a coat in high summer? Big bag? Do you think she might have been carrying her alter ego around in there? Miss Blondie … No wonder we can’t find you anywhere, you don’t bloody exist. She just goes around then slips in somewhere. Coat off, wig off, changes shoes. But in this case had no time to tie the laces.’
‘Why didn’t she stay there behind the wall? Wyngate would have walked off.’
‘Well anybody could have looked out those windows at any time. And she would have heard Wyngate phone for back up. The place was going to be full of cops. She, he might have even passed Wyngate as she walked out.’ Batten sat back thinking this through.
‘Weird? Absolutely. Clever? Absolutely. But that sense of theatre, of acting.’ He pointed to the picture of the Vinicombe Street Theatre on the board. ‘And it all goes back to there.’
David wondered what had happened to the girl he had tried to talk to. There was something that he was not seeing, and something that he was missing. The woman had come out and adjusted the drip in his arm. He had passed out, drifting out to the white place where nothing annoyed him and all was good. It wasn’t heaven but it was pretty close to it, as close as his imagination could get. There, walking around, he saw his mum and dad back together again. The dog was a playful puppy. He was younger, he must have been because Granny and Granddad were there. It was Christmas but they were all out in the garden. He had heard them talk, talk about him and what a shame it was.
He was trying to tell them that he was OK. But his mouth wouldn’t move. Nothing would move.
Then he was up on his feet. A clanking from above was pulling him up by the shoulders. His arms moved without any effort on his part. He could only feel a little pain as he was suspended from the brace across his chest, his feet not on the ground. His arms now falling uselessly by his side. He could see them but could not move them. There was a tight wire fixed to his wrists, so deep in, the tight, swollen skin was cut through. His fingers were somebody else’s thick black fingers. Then his hand moved. He tried to raise the right hand to look more closely but it was the left hand that moved.
He attempted to look down. He couldn’t, something was holding his chin up. In front of him was a huge nothing, just blackness. The noise was the same, but the smell was different. Using only his eyes, he strained to look above him. Branches, leaves, trees, all bright green and false. He could see somebody up there, crawling through metal girders, a faint and silvery will-o-the-wisp through the darkness.
There was a creak and he felt his neck snap. His chin fell onto his chest. Now, at least, he could look down to the dark, stained concrete floor. But he was standing on wooden floorboards. Beyond that were tea chests, stacked up.
He was on stage.
He was waiting for his audience.
And at that minute, he knew he would die.
He thought about his mum. And Winston’s dog. Strange thoughts with no tears.
He thought about that pretty girl with the dark hair, the one with the flower. Had she been part of this? Part of the lure? The woman who had come back and stabbed him in the arm so he lost control and she could bundle him away into a car. Had they been part of it all? He closed his eyes, thinking of her smile; a Judas smile.
Sandra woke up. Something lovely had happened. Mentally she snuggled down deep in the duvet that honeycombed round her. Paolo had been lovely. So lovely. He had taken her to a small Italian restaurant, upstairs somewhere on Byres Road, a small intimate place where he spoke Italian to the waiters and they greeted him like a long-lost family member. She was included in their hugs and kisses. She hadn’t recognized any dishes on the menu but he had asked her what she liked and he had chosen for her. They had drunk wine, far too much wine. She was wearing a dress that belonged to the Duchess, while silk, simply cut that cascaded from the cowl round her neck down in soft waves to mid-calf. Nothing she hadn’t worn before, it was one of her favourites but Paolo was not to know that. Or if he did, he didn’t mind. The leather of the Duchess’s handmade shoes was so soft it caressed her feet as she climbed the stairs. After that things got a little hazy, she remembered going down the stairs, back to the street. The cool wind on her new, lovely face. Rain was on the way at last. They walked across the road towards the car. Paolo had taken the keys, insisting on driving. And she remembered getting back in it, drowsy with the drink, then she couldn’t recall any more but that didn’t matter as her plan was coming together. And as the Proclaimers song said, she was on her way from misery to happiness.
She told Paolo where to drive, not noticing where he was going, and now she was snuggled up, looking up at the sky, the trees and the green little animals hanging off them. So pretty.
Sleep came quickly. She had some thinking to do about part two of her plan. It was all going so well.
Wyngate was back at the dentist late that afternoon. His root canal was starting to feel very hot and painful. Then it started to throb and Anderson had told him to go round and get something done with it. In truth Wyngate was happy to walk away. They hadn’t really said anything but he felt guilty. If he had had his wits about him, would they now have Blondie in custody?
And what about him? Wyngate knew it had been a bloke he had talked to. And it was a woman he had been following. He could tell the difference. His subconscious mind had told his colleagues what he knew they wanted to hear; that was the problem with hypnosis. He was mulling it over, wanting to prove himself right but seeing no way to do it. He was walking down towards the bottom of Byres Road, out of the dentist and heading towards Elean Lane which would take him up to Elean Street. He had lost her once before, but he was going to be ahead of the game this time. He was fed up with Mulholland’s sly glances. He pulled his hood up against the light drizzle that was threatening, at any moment, to turn into a downpour. He continued up past the Cambodian restaurant with its three scooters neatly parked outside, under a canopy in preparation of rain. The cobbles underfoot were slippy, oily after so many days of blistering heat. He looked round, searching for any sign of a low key operation being underway. By now, they would have some covert surveillance on the situation. But to him it appeared to be office workers hurrying back and forth, the odd shopper, all moving quickly to get inside before the heavens opened. He looked at the angry black clouds, grinding their way across the sky, charging into each other. He scanned the roof of the single-storey garage with the double-storey central workshop. There were no Sky men, no BT engineers, no roofers, nobody that might be a surveillance unit. There was an arcade or something here, an antique shop, bric-a-brac, a warren through the old single-storey buildings.
Of course, anybody on a roof would be highly suspicious with the amber weather warnings currently in existence. Was Blondie merely lucky or had she moved quickly on Tania Kirkton to take advantage of the weather?
She was not a lady to be underestimated.
Wyngate stood in the middle of the crossroads. Cobbled lanes, four of them at this point, five or six if you counted those offshoots within a twenty-feet radius. It was a clever place for a meet, easy to lure him here, easy to see him without being seen. But then what? Lure Kirkton away with a phone call? Then Wyngate realized that he himself was acting suspiciously. So he pulled out his phone, easing himself on to the wall of the disused garage; the old Elean Lane Car Repair and Body workshop. The vehicle entrance was roller shuttered, closed tight. It hadn’t been used for years this place, but it had an overhanging roof which gave him a good eighteen inches of protection from the rain. He too was going to take advantage of the weather, and shelter under the roof. A young man, on his mobile. Nothing suspicious there.
His tongue was back at his tooth, probing the numbness of his cheek, wondering if it had stopped bleeding at last. The door behind him opened, then closed. Quietly, as if nobody was supposed to notice.
Then it opened and closed again, nothing more than a little bang and a bounce. As if somebody was checking he was gone before they came out.
He looked round, then tapped roughly on the door with his knuckle. He placed his hand against it, it opened easily; just an old wooden door with the wood at the bottom frayed, eaten through by damp.
This would be a good place for the homeless to sleep. Were they gathering here in readiness for the onslaught of weather? It looked like the Met Office might have got their timing right this time. A chill of wind pushed the warm air from the narrow channel of Elean Street as he stepped inside. He shouldered open the door as it caught on the rough concrete.
And he was in an office, a dusty old office with a flagstone floor and an ancient desk, a tattered and curling Pirelli calendar above it. It was dark in here. It was getting dark outside, the sky blackening by the minute. He left the door open to get some fresh air in. He called out, ‘Hello?’ This would be a good place to view the crossroads outside. He called out again.
No answer. There was no real furniture, just a rusty cabinet like a wardrobe, and an old filing cabinet, both drawers slightly open. He didn’t investigate closer.
‘Anybody here?’ He got his warrant card out, pulled down his hood. The metal cabinet was locked. There was another wooden door, presumably into the mechanics bay and the main workshop of the garage. At the far end of that were the big double roller shutters that opened on to the other side of the lane. Another good viewpoint.
He opened the door, and stepped through into a stone floored corridor. The place was bigger than he thought. The left-hand wall had a huge mirror, somebody here was either very vain or it was some kind of two-way mirror for the workman to see who was going in and out of the office.
There was no sign of anybody about, but there was a sense of there being life here. Paige Riley would run to a place like this. Wyngate knew this area was on their watch list for beggars. He opened another door, just a cupboard, old shelves. He disturbed something that scurried away with a flash of silver.
He closed the door. There were another two, one double, a single and one of them, he presumed, must take him on to the floor of the workshop.
David watched him through the big window, his heart striking a military beat. So close. So close. He could see the man in his hooded anorak opening and closing the doors behind the window, could see the individual crystals of rain on his shoulders. So it was raining out there. He could hear the drumming on the roof that was a few feet above him, but sounded so far away. Was this somebody coming to look for him? This thin man who walked nervously, opening cupboard doors, here and there, peeking in like he was playing hide and seek and he was seek.
David knew he was hidden, behind the mirror, swinging. He was dangling in mid-air, swaying slowly with an invisible momentum, suspended by the bands round his groin, his waist and under his shoulders. He could see his own wrist, the tight wire wound round it that disappeared into thin air even though it was slack now and his wrist dangled at his side. Earlier, the wire had been tight and had been tightened further, moving his arm up by jerky movement, accompanied by a mechanical clunking and grinding from above him, from up in the trees somewhere.
But he couldn’t move or shout. All he could do was watch.
He looked over to his left. The girl came into view every now and then, a frail wispy creature who floated through the air on her gossamer wings. She had been noisy at first, then bleeding. Now she was silent. And the bleeding had stopped.
Wyngate could hear the rain battering down on the flat roof, it rattled like a drum-core. He opened another door, just a storage room, no sign of anybody living there. Strange when the door was unlocked. Surely some desperate soul would have discovered this.
He opened the double door, and took two steps back. A rack of little people hanging one by one, neatly arranged. To one side was a frame with clothes hanging. Shelf upon shelf of fabric, wire, tools, small pieces of wood, turned and smooth. The largest single item was a yellow duffle coat, too small to fit an adult but much bigger than any of the other dolls clothes.
On the side of the door were separate sheets of paper, pinned many layers thick, numbers listed with beautiful italic writing, four sets of numbers again and again. And on the inside of the wooden door, much older paper but the writing was of the same style, the same pattern.
He saw pairs of tiny shoes, polished to perfection. And a rolled-up futon.
A clean, rolled-up futon. And a neat pile of folded clothes.
So somebody had been sleeping here. Somebody who loved dolls and puppets, and made dolls and puppets.
Was Tania here? David?
He saw a case, like an artist’s case with pockets and drawers. Full of make-up. And on top of that a familiar little case; blue circle on one side, white on the other. Contact lenses. He bent down to pick them up, unscrewing the top. Brown-coloured lenses.
Don’t it turn my brown eyes blue, so the song went. Or was it vice versa?
He thought about searching the rest of the place but this was no time for bravado. He was going back out to the street to call for back-up. He jumped at a noise, like a cough or a muffled shout, and turned round. He placed his ear against the wood of the big door. He was sure this was the door going back into the workshop. He opened it slowly. The smell that assaulted him was recognizable. And human. Human decomposition. He lifted his phone to use the light. Then he hit the floor.
David couldn’t turn his head. But he heard her. The click click of those heels on the concrete floor as she walked across the floor beneath him, heading for the single door. She was going for the man in the anorak. He had taken his hood off now, he was moving very slowly and taking his time as he walked up to the big double cupboard. Why was he on his own? Why was he being so slow? She would be here soon, shadowing around in that suit that rendered her invisible in this dull light. He wouldn’t see her or hear her. David watched helpless, his heart sinking. He knew she was going to open the door and the man in the hood would be too late turning round.
David swung, back and forth, dangling from his four wires and he knew blackness and despair.
They looked at each other in the mirror. One chin resting on the head of the other. Identical. Like a sculpture. Blonde on Blonde. Naked.
Lips parted. One in pleasure. One in fear.
Four eyes wide open.
A gloved hand side-shifted a few stray hairs from the fringe. So they matched. Precisely.
Pale skin. Dark eyes. Perfect arched eyebrows.
Ruby red lips.
Blood red lips.
And he had said that colour was too dark for her.
Two hands came to settle round a neck, giving the sculpture a base, two serpents of forearms and fingers wound and twisted.
A kiss from ruby lips to a nest of blonde hair.
One face leaned back to scrutinize the other in the mirror.
There had been alcohol and sleep. And now this.
Lips kissed the top of a head again.
This was a game.
It was going to be OK.
Just a game.
They were Greek gods.
One body, two faces.
The dark eyes studied the image, examining its every pore, as if they were a sculpture of great value, of great beauty.
The work of art was admired by its creator. And vice versa.
So close, so very close.
Then a wave of hot breath over skin. The scalpel came up slowly.
The blade pressed against the skin just under the ear and pierced the flesh creating a single bubble of ruby red. The edge worked its way round the jaw line. Not going deep, just slicing under the skin, peeling it off as it cut its path.
The gloved fingers eased the skin off the underlying tissue, loosening it so the face could come away in one piece.
There was no pain. Just a bubble of ruby red that turned into a crack of crimson, that formed a rose that veined and spread to give a cerise collar on the perfect white skin.
It was raining by the time the police gathered, covertly, in the cobbled junction of Elean Street, Elean Lane and a very narrow walkway called the Potters. Kirkton was making himself very obvious, walking up and down, a slight march rather than a leisurely stroll. They had not wired him. Colin Anderson, in a beanie hat, was watching the doorway of the antique mall, doing a good impersonation of a hungry husband waiting for a wife to take him to dinner. Costello was studying the menu in the door of the Cambodian restaurant, giving her a good side view of the area. She thought she could see a couple of members of the tactical deployment team, but maybe not. They should not be obvious.
Batten had assured them that it would not come to that. Blondie was angry, she wanted to be heard and their best weapon was to listen. He pointed out that this was a public place, obvious, with no easy get out. His reason for this was that this was her end game, she wanted to finish it here. They just had to make sure that the end was on their terms not hers. He had suggested that Blondie had a previous rapport of some kind with Anderson, something so slight it had meant nothing to him but had significance for her. So he needed to work on that. Batten had spent a couple of hours with Anderson going through tactics, the deployment team had kept to themselves, Mitchum being the liaison back and forth, only telling them what they needed to know. Costello was wired and had a baton. They both had a camera, they both had Kevlar. Slash proof but not stab proof. The jury was out about hypodermics.
Anderson was watching Kirkton, knowing that he should feel a degree of pity for the man, but couldn’t quite shrug off the feeling that the politician had brought this on himself. There was something he was not saying, some reason why he didn’t want Anderson on that cold case team. And had that made him a target? Well, they would get his daughter back and sort out the devil in the detail later.
Anderson was keeping an eye on the garage diagonally across from him. Costello was watching the antique arcade behind him. She looked like a tourist waiting for a friend, caught out by a Glasgow downpour and amusing herself by looking at all the menus.
Anderson saw Costello go walkabout, casually taking in the doors of the garage, the single door that was almost rotten away. She then looked down the cobbled lane, a wine merchant and two hairdressers, a shop for vintage clothes – all their wares pulled tight under a canopy for the forecasted cloudburst. It was strange to watch people walk about, looking at the sky. Costello herself was looking at the big roller doors, covertly looking at the rust, seeing if they had been opened recently. They hadn’t.
Whoever Blondie was, she knew the city well. This was somebody who had spent a lifetime walking round here, Costello mused.
Anderson coughed. Costello strolled back to her position at the restaurant, hidden from anybody coming down the lane. Kirkton had reacted to something. Costello saw him turn. There was a subtle flow of a signal from the couple who were eating chips in the doorway of the printers, to the man talking to nobody on his mobile phone, to the older man reading the menu in the window of the Italian restaurant then to a joiner fixing a lock on a door of an office. He spoke into a radio clipped on his collar. The rain got a little heavier, everybody moved on.
A few nods. Everybody in position. One radio directive. Seven answers. Nobody was going to get out of this building, no matter how she was dressed.
Then Kirkton moved, a definitive step to the side. A door had opened welcoming him in. He closed his umbrella, shaking it out before he entered through the door with the rotten lower planks.
The door closed.
Taking a deep breath Anderson signalled to Costello. ‘Let’s do it.’
Costello took a last sweeping look round the crossroads and hoped that those who should have been watching were watching.
Anderson opened the door. Costello followed him into the small outer office. Kirkton was standing in the middle, trying to be brave but they could see the relief in his eyes.
‘The door was open,’ he said.
‘The door was opened,’ Costello corrected, looking round her, ‘for you, so there is somebody here.’ She looked at him with a degree of suspicion, for a moment she wondered who was following who. Her hand rested on her baton. Then she recognized the scent in the air, above the stink of damp and rotting wood, were the high notes of Fracas.
‘What now?’ Kirkton asked.
They were standing in a tiny wood panelled hall. The single door in off the lane was battered and old. There was another door, a small dusty desk. An old Pirelli calendar on the wall, browning and curled. There was no natural light at all, except some filtering through from the slightly open door and a small glow from somewhere else, but the shadowing patterns were confusing.
‘I guess you should go in, that’s the way the sign points.’ Costello held her mobile phone in her hand, and opened the door slightly. ‘We will be right behind you, working towards a safer society. Couldn’t possibly leave you alone in a place like this. Anything could happen to you.’
Kirkton stood his ground. For a minute Anderson thought he was going to bluster.
Then the room darkened.
The three of them stood, knowing that they were not alone but their company was not in this reception area. Anderson tried the light switch. Nothing happened. The door that led into the main part of the garage opened with the same slow squeak that is a cliché in any horror film, but is truly blood-curdling in real life. It moved with more strength than could be caused by a breeze. In the dark. A gentle light came on in the room beyond. Anderson could hear Costello breathing and felt her fingers curl round the bottom of his jacket just to make sure they didn’t lose each other. Or if one took a syringe stab, the other one would know. There was a sharp clunk, deafening in the silence. That was the door behind them locking.
‘What was that?’ asked Kirkton, the voice coming from the blackness behind Anderson.
‘Our escape route,’ said Costello. There was the noise of movement, shuffling of feet, as Costello told the politician to stay close.
They all jumped as the discordant harmony of funfair music started. Barrel organ deafeningly loud, small bright lights started dancing in the darkness. Head splitting volume, the colours disorientating. Costello extended her baton. Nobody was coming near her with a hypodermic without getting a battering.
‘Theatre people,’ muttered Anderson, by way of explanation of the macabre sideshow. He pointed to a rotating disco light in the ceiling. Cheap. Simple. The music quietened, to that of a child’s music box somewhere in the next room where the music would always be just out of their reach. Anderson felt behind him for Costello’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He was going to walk forward. Costello dropped the baton onto its wrist loop, and switched on the phone torch.
She heard Kirkton mutter one word. ‘Tania.’
The three of them walked forward into a narrow corridor with several doors on the left, a big mirror to the right, reflecting them moving slowly in a single line, second rate Keystone Cops. There was a door open at the end, to the right, to the area behind the mirror. Anderson tried to get his bearings, that would be to the mechanics bay.
They went through, three of them; Anderson in front, Costello at the rear. The circus music was louder here, more flashing lights in bright colours spun past them, faster and faster. Anderson thought they were in some house of horror cakewalk.
This was pure theatre.
Anderson had paused with his back against the black painted wall of the old garage and he pointed at the row of tea chests banked up high, decreasing in number as they went towards the front, forming a theatre, an auditorium.
Auditorium. The club where Blondie had been in 1999.
Tea chest. Just like Mr Hollister.
They edged along the narrow gap. The seats appeared to be occupied but the only light in the room were the dancing flickers that kaleidoscoped around the room, making it difficult to work out shapes with any precision and making it impossible to ascertain any movement. Or if anybody was there at all.
In the front, beyond the lights, was darkness, too black to be merely the absence of light. That was the backdrop of a stage.
Costello kept her back to the solid concrete wall, thinking about going back and closing that door that left them exposed. All those films she had seen, the good guy at the back copped it first.
They moved in timid single file along the narrow gap between the wall and the tea chests. Costello swung the narrow beam of the torch around, picking out shoes and bits of legs and trousers of an audience that were deadly still and deadly quiet. The air was cold and rank. Sitting in the middle of the lowest row of tea chests sat a figure blocking the light from the stage beyond. The silhouette was a circle on a box. Perfect round hair on a pair of narrow shoulders. Costello caught the sight of jet black hair and a handle. Then the flash of a white bony hand raised in mid-air, playing a silent piano, a mosaic as the kaleidoscope colour whizzed round them, flinging bright patterns on the wall; reds and yellows. Like a roundabout. But they were standing still.
She could make out, in the flickering, the Duchess in a deep pink evening gown and her rolled up black hair, the lights tinkling and glinting off her tiara. Or her crown.
Costello swore quietly.
In the back of the Italian restaurant they were following the images on two laptops, relayed from the cameras on Anderson’s jacket and Costello’s lapel. The command had all kinds of earpieces, talking quietly to each other but not to the two detectives who had gone into the garage.
Batten and Mulholland were watching the same feed at the station, both anxious. Costello was wearing a wire and had two panic buttons, but Batten had told them to be as unobtrusive as possible. If the images through the lightshow were what they appeared to be, Blondie was putting on a show for them.
Once she had her say, she would be a different creature.
Mulholland watched until he saw the stage in the old garage. It was a hidden corner of the West End with tiny antique shops and a couple of very good restaurants that he could no longer afford. He knew the area, he should have been there, but they thought him unfit because of this leg and his fracture that kept fracturing. So they trusted that arsehole Wyngate now. Wingnut Wyngate with his sticky out ears and his little rucksack that went everywhere with him. Mulholland looked round at the coat stand. Wyngate’s anorak was gone but his rucksack was still there. He had gone back to the dentist. Anderson was fed up with him and Costello having a ‘who has the sorest face competition’.
He stood at the whiteboard, looking at the stills from the various videos and the CCTV screen shots. The picture of Kirkton that Costello had put up on the board. A victim now surely that Tania had gone missing. Mulholland turned back to make sure that Wyngate’s rucksack was still there, then phoned Graham downstairs, confirming that the constable had left but not yet returned. Mulholland phoned Wyngate’s phone. Switched off.
So he was held up at the dentist. Nothing more. Trust him to be away when all the excitement was going on.
He settled back to look across at the footage streaming in, just colours and lights, but the movement of the camera suggested someone walking slowly. Both trackers said the same, Anderson and Costello were moving and were still together.
He wished them well and looked at the photograph of David. He reached out and touched it, his fingertip on the boy’s cheek. He hoped he was there, alive. His mother had not been told of the operation today; she couldn’t be trusted on social media and there was a media blackout. He looked at David’s hair, spikey, high up off his forehead. And then James Kirkton with his big floppy fringe like a poor man’s Boris Johnson. The picture had caught him with that tic of his, third finger of the left hand pulled through his hair like a snowplough. He had seen that before.
The circus music stopped, the barrel organ wheezed to silence.
The soaring strains of Madame Butterfly filled the room. Darkness fell. The swirling lights slowed and slowed, spinning to a standstill.
For a moment Anderson held his breath, he flicked his eyes down to the small camera, hoping it was still working.
Then a voice, quiet and perfectly harmonic with no distortion through the sound system, asked them very politely to ‘Take a seat. All of you.’
‘Well, she knows fine that we are here.’
‘I think she knew that all along. And I don’t think she is going to mind a bigger audience than she invited. Theatre folk never mind that, do they?’
Kirkton, now in-between the other two, hissed at them. ‘If this, any of this, means that I will not get my daughter back then …’
‘There will only be one person responsible for you not getting your daughter back. And right now, she’s calling the shots.’
Madame Butterfly got a little louder. A spotlight settled on one empty tea chest, crudely rigged up to look like a chair with red velvet cushions. The seat was next to the Duchess’s wheelchair.
If it were for James Kirkton, then the member of the Scottish Parliament had the best seat in the house.
Costello said quietly into the ear of James Kirkton, ‘Go and take your seat.’
As the politician did so, a single spotlight danced around him. Anderson tried to look up to the stage, to see if there was somebody present. Not all of this was pre-recorded. Kirkton’s every movement was being illuminated and there was no way that could have been predicted unless there was a motion sensor motor on the light. This technology was impressive, and beyond the profile they had of Blondie.
Had they got this wrong?
However, the light followed Kirkton and only him. Leaving us in the dark, thought Anderson, hoping the words were not significant.
The music changed to a song Anderson vaguely recognized. He recognized the female voices. Abba. When they sung the lyric ‘Happy New Year’, Kirkton nearly jumped out his seat, looking around him. Feral fear now gripped his face, all thoughts of his daughter had gone. He was up, ready to leave.
Costello gripped Anderson’s upper arm.
‘I saw that.’
The red curtains rose inch by slow inch. The music dampened down, but the bass remained full and throbbing as if somebody had closed a thick door over, creating a barrier.
It took a moment but Anderson recognized the scene that had been expertly painted on the backdrop on stage. He had looked at it often enough in the last twenty-four hours. And he had seen it in the cold case file. The small alley at the back of Ashton Lane; Lillybank.
Mulholland looked at the photograph on the wall for a long time. He had seen that, in motion, recently, that weird tic of Kirkton’s. He ran the CCTV over in his mind. His memory trying to reach for the colour but not getting it. It would only come back to him in black and white. Was it from the CCTV footage from 1999?
He looked around him, there was no free computer in the room. The hub of the tactical squad had taken over so he walked over to Anderson’s office, pushed at the door to see if it was locked. It rarely was. He then sat at his boss’s desk and fired up the computer, logging in. He glanced at the photographs in their silver frames; Claire and Peter, both growing up so fast. Vik felt very old.
Then he started to search for the files on the CCTV footage of 1999, Byres Road. The old nightclub near where Oran Mor was now, what had it been called? Auditorium? He pressed play and watched. Anderson’s file only held the edited highlights, starting at the point when Blondie walked into view, the tall man beside her with his arm over her shoulder. She moved to one side. He moved the other way. They laughed. Mulholland wondered if they said bread and butter when they joined hands again. The man’s black fringe fell forward and he swept it back over his forehead. Third finger left hand.
Tania Kirkton walked on the stage, eyes open, mouth open. She was drooling. Her walk was ungainly, slow and mechanical. Her elbows held high, her hands swung as her body moved in response to the tension of the fine wires that ran up to the darkness. On her head, brilliant gold in the lights, was a blonde wig, bob cut. Kirkton moved towards the stage.
The music stopped instantly.
Tania stopped moving, only her right hand, dangling free shook a little.
Batten was right, Blondie wanted to have her say. They had to listen and watch.
Anderson narrowed his eyes, trying to see what was behind the curtains. He could hear a gentle grinding, like fine meshed gears. Was this some mechanical system, ran by a computer in synch with the music?
Or was that too high tech for her?
He looked back at Kirkton. The politician’s demeanour had changed, as if some new and terrifying realization had just dawned upon him.
He knew what all this was about. ‘Tania’ was now standing up. The crude noose that ran under her chin to the top of her head pulled her face up so she had sight of her select and noiseless audience. Anderson could see someone else lying on the stage, curled behind her, on a piece of backdrop painted as a back doorway. Tania looked into the audience and saw her own father. Tears rolled down her face, her eyes red and swollen, her nose puffy she tried to shake her head. Pleading.
In desperation.
In pain.
Anderson watched, hating himself for hearing Claire’s small voice in his head, distressed about the bullying. Tania was the victim now. And he despised himself for the little quiver of pleasure he felt.
He concentrated on the horrific tableau being created in front of him, trying to figure out how many people were there. Did Blondie have an accomplice? If so, which one was the dangerous one?
Another figure hobbled on from stage right, a mechanical clunking accompanying every lift of his leg, left and right being dragged up by the knee. His feet not touching the ground in a slow motion parody of Irish dancing. Then Anderson looked up at the hair, the bruised and bloodied face. The ill-fitting leather jacket swung round him, puckered at the collar where the underlying wires, now weight-bearing, pulled taut. He recognized the face, Gordon Wyngate. He heard Costello swear behind him. The strains of Agnetha and Frida, singing about a world where every neighbour is a friend, echoed round the walls.
They watched in macabre fascination as Wyngate’s marionette walked up to Tania’s. The faces came together. Arms flew out, heads spun. Knees lifted off the ground. A shoulder moved too far from the chest wall. Dislocated.
Their heads locked.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful.
Anderson was trying to count the wires that ran high into the darkness above the stage. More than one set, more than two … there had to be more than one puppeteer then.
Costello pressed the alert on her phone. She’d had enough, no matter what Batten said. Now was the time for back-up to arrive.
‘Wyngate’ had his arm pulled back, elbow first and he threw a wild comedy punch that went all round the houses. Tania crumpled, dropping as if her strings had been cut, and lay on the stage, folded, limbs lying at strange angles. Then Anderson noticed the shadow of the other puppet rising, the dark outline first. Then the actual form of a human being, a ghastly creation with a blonde wig and a terrible blood-smeared face.
‘Oh my God,’ Costello muttered.
Anderson felt her recoil. This shadow marionette had had its face removed. The mask it wore had a fine wire of its own, barely visible. The puppet tried to step over the body of Tania but didn’t manage to lift its foot clear and the body dangled, lurching back and forth, the knee held high and the lunar trainer swinging loose. And its further progress was blocked. Anderson looked at the shoes, the misshapen shoulders and the height of this marionette next to that of his colleague. This puppet was a man.
The marionette stayed where it was, swaying slightly, elbows high. The skin of the face slid loose and floated away like a bird, suspended on a fine wire that fluttered it heavenward.
‘Call for back-up,’ whispered Anderson.
‘Already have.’
He heard Costello click her baton to full length.
Kirkton was on his feet, screaming, the music got louder; all three at once now, Madame Butterfly and Prince made up a rabble that was deafening. Then Anderson heard, or felt, a gasp from Costello, as the shadow marionette lifted his hand and swung for Wyngate’s marionette which promptly collapsed as well. His body hit the floor with a resounding thud that echoed over the blaring racket. Then it quietened. A waif in the air, dropping down on gossamer wings was flying towards the bloody-faced marionette. It outstretched one thin, fragile arm and the stage was obscured by a star shower in gold and silver. The shadow marionette rose from the ground, slowly up and up into a cloud of dry ice that billowed from the ceiling somewhere.
The music stopped dead.
Everything stopped.
They could hear the rain batter on the roof, the sound of footsteps outside somewhere. Quiet.
Then gentle words floated round the theatre.
‘Bravo, bravo.’ The Duchess gave a slow handclap.
The curtain fell and a single spotlight highlighted central stage. A lone figure taking a bow. A blonde with a bob cut, dressed in a black and grey baggy boiler suit, silvery striped. It distorted her outline. It covered every part of her body apart from her face, her blonde bob was in place, and her make-up was immaculate.
She had her arms out, absorbing her applause, then she curtsied.
‘Bella, bella.’
She slithered off the stage towards Kirkton who retreated quickly. Costello stepped forward, baton raised, calculating how quick she could get there but two steps took the Blonde to the Duchess, an embrace. The doors opened and the back-up flooded the room with light. Nobody moved. For a minute everybody was standing still, caught in a snapshot.
Blondie was quick. She jumped back on the stage and out of sight. Then reappeared, climbing like a monkey. Anderson reacted first and bounded onto the stage, after her. He climbed, trying to keep clear of the maze of tight wires, looking up into the swirling darkness, seeing the small skylight, the forest above. The animals on the tree branches danced and quivered in the draft from the open door. Anderson was climbing high on an internal steel stairway, getting a better view of the gantry as he gained height. Blondie had stepped onto a giant metal grid, like a huge weaving loom. She wormed her way through, keeping clear of the taut strong wires that could hold a man’s weight and would probably slice off a limb if it caught it. She clipped herself onto a wire, and used that to pull herself up; she was an alien, the alien, attached to her wires, just as Amy had said. It allowed her to climb. She was getting away.
Anderson looked down, and held on. Thinking what he was going to do now. She had nowhere to go. What use was this? He was near the top of the garage, right at the ceiling two floors up. It was a long way down. He leaned over to see what was happening below. The stairway squeaked clear of its bolts on the wall and swung out alarmingly. He leaned in quickly, keeping his body weight close to the wall. He could taste fear but he saw torch beams on the ground below him, moving slowly, no panic. The tactical team were in recovery mode.
It was over.
He allowed himself a long slow breath and decided that somebody else could be a hero today. He was too old and for this particular stairway, he was too heavy.
Anderson heard the hammering of heavy rain on the flat roof. He could see the little paper animals that Amy had seen, quivering with the vibrations of the thunderstorm. Below, the beams of torch light played over the floor. He saw a patch of red, ever increasing, from under the Duchess’s wheelchair. Somebody was shouting. He could hear sirens approach through the battering of the downpour. Kirkton was on the stage cradling his daughter’s head. Costello was kneeling beside a pair of gossamer wings, her baton discarded.
He followed a torch beam as it highlighted the audience. All stuffed people, false heads, big puppets, small puppets, misshapen, every one of them dressed up. He heard somebody shout for the ambulance to ‘bloody hurry up’. He closed his eyes at the thought of Wyngate. Or David. Then heard the words, ‘It’s the Riley girl.’
‘Paige?’
He looked down at the swarm around Wyngate, somebody was telling him not to move. Anderson tried to find a foothold to steady himself, when he flinched at a bright spotlight. The spotlight whirled and went back to centre stage.
Everybody fell silent.
Nobody moved.
She was beautiful, her blonde hair, her pale, pale skin and ruby red lips against the black backdrop. Dali’s ‘Christ of St John’ high above the stage.
Then slowly, imperceptibly, she took a step forward. She hung for a moment in the bright light and then joined the glitter flakes falling.
Falling.
Falling.
By the time Anderson had climbed gingerly down the stairway, Costello was already helping Wyngate onto a stretcher. One of the response team had found some wire cutters, but even he was having difficulty cutting them free. At the secure points, the wire had cut into the skin, bleeding and blistered. Another scar he would have for life.
Costello was busy unwinding the wire that ran under Wyngate’s jacket, another cop pulling on it to give some slack. She repeated his name over and over, telling him that he would be all right and that his wife would meet him at the Queen Elizabeth. The paramedics were already here, prioritizing.
‘We think he might have been given something called Paracurarium,’ she said.
Anderson now stood in the middle of it all. Blondie was lying in her silvery black outfit that shimmered every time the light hit her. Her mouth was open slightly, a single trickle of blood ran from the corner of her lips but her body seemed to melt into the stage. Some kind of backstage material necessary for a puppeteer. It blurred their outline, making them invisible. The silver alien, just as Amy had said.
An older paramedic had his fingers at the Duchess’s throat, leaning over to avoid standing in the pool of her blood. He straightened up and closed her eyelids, wrapping her shawl round the narrow shoulders, as if he was closing a book. He turned round and walked away.
Costello came over, blood smeared down her cheek. ‘Not an opera singer then, she was a puppet master. She did that thing with her hand all the time at the care home. God, what a mess.’
‘How’s Wyngate?’
‘God knows, they are getting him to hospital.’ She pointed to the puppet lying on the floor of the stage, hands up over his bloodied face. ‘David, he is conscious, still crying for her to leave him alone; Christ knows what she had been doing to him. They are getting him out of here. His face has been butchered. What the hell has been going on here?’
‘Did I hear somebody say Paige Riley?’
‘Yes. That was her in the clouds, the damage from those wires is very deep, and infected. She’s emaciated. And not conscious.’
Anderson stepped over the commotion on the stage. ‘Mr Kirkton, you may accompany Tania to the hospital and stay there for as long as you wish. Then come to the station and tell me exactly what happened that night in 1999. Somebody has to make sense of all this.’
The politician was kneeling on the ground beside Tania, sobbing. She was bleeding a little. Her hair pulled back in a white skull cap, the make-up made her look like a clown.
‘But right now, in front of these witnesses, admit that you killed Pietro Girasole.’
He was crying, he nodded, sniffling. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know.’ He dissolved into tears, shoulders shaking.
‘Didn’t know what?’
But the answer was interrupted by a paramedic with a stretcher. ‘What the hell has been going on here?’
‘Long story,’ answered Anderson backing off and picking his way over wires, limbs and medical equipment to Blondie, lying on her back. A young male paramedic was feeling the movement of the bones in her neck.
‘Is she dead?’ he asked, not knowing what he wanted the answer to be.
‘Who?’
‘Her?’ He pointed to the Blonde.
‘Him,’ he corrected. ‘No, he’s alive.’
‘Sir? You might want to see this?’ A voice shouted, a few faces turned to look at him. Four of them. One response team member, one crime scene and two paramedics were looking at the ground. The paramedic was pointing backstage, to a pale pink fold of damp paper … or was it?
‘I think that’s somebody’s face.’ The paramedic swallowed hard. ‘So if we have a face there, then there is somebody missing a face …’ Her voice tailed off. She went very pale in the harsh glare of a spotlight.
‘Would somebody survive that?’ asked Anderson.
‘I bloody hope so.’ The paramedic replied as she paled further.
‘Come on, Colin,’ said Costello, ‘we need to search this place. There is somebody else here. This lot are getting the help they need.’ Then she relented. ‘Do you want to phone Irene first? David will be next in the ambulance.’
‘She can wait.’ He turned to the paramedic. ‘Can I borrow your torch?’
They walked away from the mayhem, back into the hall and looked in the cupboards just as Wyngate had done. They came to the big wooden cupboard, the crèche for the marionettes, the little numbers on the side.
‘Measurements for the puppets, their clothes? What kind of fascination is this?’ she answered herself. ‘Tragic.’
They moved on in silence, keeping together. Costello reunited with her baton, Anderson wielding a torch. They found the futon, the clothes, evidence of food, a small burner, water bottles. Somebody had been living here, alone. Surviving.
Then under the big mirror was a bin bag, they could recognise the smooth curves of a hip, the point of a flexed elbow. Costello held the torch in one hand, the baton ready in the other. Anderson tucked his torch under his arm and opened the bag and looked in, and quickly pulled back.
‘Jesus, get one of those ambulances here now.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Don’t know. They don’t have a face.’
Anderson walked up to the whiteboard and looked at the smiling face of David Kerr. He was safe now and he would recover. He had his whole life ahead of him which was looking unlikely for Sandra Ryme; she was fighting hard though.
Tomorrow the boys would start looking into her background although there was information coming up on the system already; some blackmail, some theft; a highly suspicious death of an old woman she was looking after.
Sandra Ryme.
People had liked her. She wasn’t the brightest and had made a lot of bad choices. Going to work at Athole House was one of them. She had met Paul McEwan there, Paolo as he called himself. He looked at his watch. Batten was going to interview Paolo at the hospital. Anderson was going to have a chat with Kirkton. At some point.
Tania and her mother had been very quickly debriefed and had flown off to a special clinic in London to get her shoulder operated on. And to keep out of the eye of the media. The police czar was in the headlines now for all the wrong reasons, and he was keeping Archie Walker busy, listing the charges the politician would face. Murder was at the top of that list.
Two incidents tragically linked. One on Christmas Eve 1989 when a nine-year-old boy had set fire to his parents’ house. The second when a married rising star of politics succumbed to the charms of a beautiful young blonde in the Auditorium nightclub. She was celebrating the millennium. He was celebrating the birth of his son. He was pretending to be single.
She was pretending to be a she.
This time Costello walked confidently up the worn steps of Athole House Secure Living Facility for the retired stars of stage and screen. As she waited for Mulholland to drag his bad leg up behind him, she rang the bell and didn’t resist the temptation to look through the letterbox. She saw Piero the cat sitting on the bottom step of the carpeted stairs, tail jerking back and forth. The cat hair. The black and white long cat hair. Piero’s expression said, ‘You should have asked me, I’ve known all along.’
‘My leg hurts,’ Mulholland moaned.
‘Well it’ll stop once you see this matron, she graduated from the Lucretia Borgia school of nursing.’
‘Matron? Christ!’
Eventually, they heard the rattle of the door opening.
‘Hello. Matron Nicholson. Elizabeth, isn’t it?’ asked Costello.
‘Hello.’ She looked past Costello to the two men behind her, one with a bad limp and the other a uniformed police officer. ‘I’m not sure that this is the best time, you know. We are a care facility.’
‘Well, this time, it doesn’t really matter what you think. We are coming in to look around.’ Costello stepped into the hall. ‘It’s all on official business. Ours, not yours.’
The matron looked at Costello in her navy blue suit, the flat black boots. She thought for a moment, then straightened herself up. ‘I think you need a warrant.’
Costello gestured to the uniform who handed over the papers.
She looked them over briefly. ‘OK, I’ll go and speak to Dr Pearcy.’
‘Yes, of course. But you are taking PC Graham here with you. Just so nothing happens to you. You no longer have Kirkton to protect you with his Safer Society.’
That got a reaction. Matron looked at the young constable in horror. He smiled obligingly.
As they walked away along the carpeted corridor to the main office, Costello took Mulholland down the stairs to the green door. ‘I really want to know what is behind here. Archie is convinced this is where the Paracurarium might come from.’
‘It’s locked,’ said Mulholland, trying the door.
‘Yes. I can see that, Sherlock. But can you get it open?’
‘Nope, it’s an electronic lock. We need the code.’
Matron found them ten minutes later, her hands were shaking.
Costello was very helpful. ‘Under the terms of the search warrant you have to open the door and show us what’s behind it.’
‘I don’t think I have to do anything of the kind.’ The words held more defiance than her voice.
Costello sensed victory. The woman was caught between a rock and a very hard place. Cooperation was her only way out.
The matron swallowed hard and for a minute her eyes drifted to the keypad.
‘Look,’ said Costello, ‘you’ve got yourself involved in something here. You probably had no idea what it would lead to. People have died and you are an accessory before and after the—’
The matron was already shaking her head. ‘No, no, no. It was nothing like that, not at all.’ Her perfect little hat fell to one side.
On a roll, Costello could lie with the best of them. ‘Why do you think the fiscal got his wife in here? She’s never been an actress, never set foot on the stage in her life. But Mr Walker was very insistent. And why do you think I’ve been here pretending to visit Mrs Walker? We know all about it so open the door.’
The matron’s hands were trembling that much she couldn’t have pressed the buttons if her life depended on it. She gave the detectives her six-figured code quietly in one breath and then held her hands over her face and slid down the wall into a sobbing heap on the floor. Mulholland was already entering the buttons on the pad. There was a click. Both of them hesitated before they pushed the green door open. Mulholland walked in first, getting one step inside the room. Then he stopped so abruptly that Costello walked into the back of him.
Mulholland spoke three short words, but took his time over every syllable. ‘Oh. My. God.’
Twelve people lay in beds, jammed packed, the air fetid and stale. It was a basic dormitory ward, nothing more. Nothing less. Leading off it were two of three other rooms, each full of five or six beds, each bed had an occupant. Then it struck Costello that nobody had turned when they came in, nobody had batted an eyelid. These residents were zombies.
‘OK,’ said Costello, turning to the matron. ‘We are going to get our own medical team down here. Do you want to save us the time and money and tell us about the Paracurarium?’
Matron Elizabeth Nicolson nodded in resignation and pulled another key from her belt. She handed it to Mulholland and pointed to a door in the far corner. ‘It’s all in there.’
‘And did you supply Paolo Girasole with the drug?’
She shook her head. ‘But I knew it was going on.’ She blinked, very close to tears.
‘Give us the quick version,’ asked Costello, not able to look at the skeleton staring at the strip lights, or the wizened paper thin woman holding a baby doll in her withered arms.
‘Dr Pearcy. Paolo said he needed it for the Duchess.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘No. We sometimes use it here to relax the muscles in the throat but Paolo was blackmailing James and Rodney, Mr Kirkton and Dr Pearcy.’ She corrected herself. ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly blackmail. He wanted the drug, and it is available for institutions like this. He just wanted the best room for Ilaria. That was all. Once he found out we had residents down here, paying and … well, not getting the service they are paying for.’
‘Where are their relatives? Does nobody visit? The care commission?’ Costello was horrified, but not surprised at Nicolson’s answer.
‘Nobody comes near them. Even if somebody does visit, it doesn’t take long to take them upstairs to a nice room, and pretend it’s theirs. Nobody cares. We feed them, clean them and keep them drugged. They aren’t even on the radar.’
‘And you charge them full care fees?’ Costello looked round at each face staring at the ceiling. No response, not awake, not asleep. Just staring. Like Pippa. ‘Poor bastards.’