To: DCI Colin Anderson
From: DS Tony Bannon
Hi Colin,
Thanks for the email. We had a review meeting of the entire case last night and everybody seems on board. O’Hare’s PM initial report came back inconclusive; there are no injuries to Aasha’s skin that couldn’t have been caused by her time in the water. We’re waiting on the toxicology.
We’ve trawled the interviews of the security staff and they agree with the course of events as Poole tells it. He certainly came back to the club. Cool and collected by some accounts, wound up and tense by others. The ‘breath of fresh air’ he went for may be a euphemism for scoring drugs, but we have no real evidence for that. There’s nothing to suggest a cocaine rage. After talking to Costello, we re-walked the route last night. Poole would’ve had time to catch up with Aasha on the bridge and make his way back – a fast walk would do it. My young constable managed to avoid CCTV all the way. The camera sticks to the walkway, and all he did was go over the barrier and walk on the grass. How Poole would know that was a blind spot, I don’t know, but there’s no doubt he’s bright. On the CCTV, on the way to the site at the river, we can see somebody in dark trousers and a white long-sleeve shirt walking towards the flats where Aasha’s shoe was found. (Thank Costello for prodding the river authority on that. They confirmed that the tide would have taken her to where she was found, give or take a few hundred yards.) The CCTV footage is ten minutes too early for the timing to be sweet for Poole, but we’re doing another run on that today to establish if we can get back quicker. We have some hope that he will crumble. O’Hare won’t say whether Aasha had sustained any defensive injuries, but he’s confident that there was no sexual assault.
I’ll let you know how it pans out.
I see we are both in the papers. I’m dragging my feet with a racially motivated crime and you are dragging your feet with the investigation of historic child abuse.
In reality, from the gossip on social media, Poole was dead set on doing medicine. His dad was definitely set on him doing medicine and his grades were good enough, but the class numbers were full. The uni, according to him on Twitter, has to take so many fee-paying students to allow the course to go ahead, so he lost his place to some Asian students. He may believe that he lost his place to Aasha and this might be a sore point, even if it’s not true. Like you, I get the feeling that Poole was fond of Aasha. I remain unconvinced of a racial motive.
I’ve heard that O’Hare is never deliberately obstructive. There will be a reason for what he is withholding. I’ll keep you posted on what transpires today. I am going for the big interview with Poole – now that we have better timings, I’ll throw that CCTV footage at him and see what he says.
Tony
Costello woke up very early, got showered and then phoned the hospital; there was no change in Vera’s condition. She spent ten minutes watching the news on her laptop. The coverage on the BBC of Aasha’s death had become respectful and distant, the lawyers sensing a court appearance soon. Then Toastie Warburton appeared, assuring the public that all complaints of harassment due to race or gender were taken seriously, but denying that a special task force had been set up to investigate a recent incident related to historic abuse. She watched him skilfully evade the question while getting the message out. There was something about his podgy, avuncular face that made you believe him.
How much of what they were doing now was simply to appease the media?
But it was interesting, this cold case, reading and reviewing. The answers were either there or they were not; there was nothing else to find, only facts to reinterpret.
She poured another cup of tea and opened the blue file, marked CS 1 in the upper right corner, content to read while munching on her toast. The desiccated elastic band snapped in several places as she tried to pull the few sheets of foolscap from their cardboard cover. Something about it reminded her of a legal file, or papers from an old insurance document. She scanned over it, looking at the handwriting: royal-blue ink and a fountain pen, an educated hand with the lower-case G and Y forming a loop. Distinctive. She read it quickly at first, stuffing her face with toast, licking the butter from her fingertips, then wiping her hands down the front of her T-shirt as she became more and more engrossed.
It was an unofficial document, she was sure of that. It was uncorroborated evidence, a series of sequential reports that somebody had written, and despite it not being of any real value, it had got filed away with the rest. It was not documented, correctly noted or stamped, but it made compelling and uneasy reading. It was from somebody who did not want to be identified and the officer in charge had named ‘CS 1’. There was a lot of talk of abusive and sexual activities, never specified but more than hinted at. ‘They liked their boys young’, ‘the girls were safe’, ‘separated the kids up in the woods’, ‘explicit pictures.’ ‘What really happened to Ben? He was growing old.’ Costello wondered where it was all going. The writer didn’t sound like a victim – they sounded more of a powerless confidante of the victims, who were named. She recognized the names as those of the Peacock children as she had listed them on the whiteboard. Lori would be Loretta, Benji Benjamin, Andy, Ronnie would be Veronica, she presumed, and Brian was always Brian. Through the document, which was in six different parts, written as the witness kept recalling another story to tell – or were they imparting more information that they had just found out? – there were precise little ticks in red ink. These looked more recent than the handwritten pages. They were undated but had been in a box from the review in 2010. She read it through, trying to see it with the eyes of the detective at the time. Was this a record from a concerned person, listing incidents they had witnessed? Or that they suspected? They recorded it and sent the instalments to a detective. The tone of it sounded empathetic, intelligent with the occasionally formal phrasing ‘consistent with’. They asked a lot of questions. ‘Is that normal? I want you to know what is going on but I cannot tell you who I am.’ It wasn’t vindictive or threatening. The voice sounded close to the Peacocks, speaking about them coming home from a holiday in Arran or a weekend at Aviemore, and they were familiar with their ages, but talking vaguely as folk do. ‘I think Ronnie must have been about ten or so at the time.’ More interesting to Costello were the ticks that were speckled through the document, confirming a statement; others were marked by a question mark. Confirmed by other documentation or not? She tried to think how good this was as evidence, especially now on a cold case. Somebody had taken it seriously enough to cross-check the contents. And what had sparked CS 1 in the first place? It was a one-way conversation. Six letters, then they stopped. Because something had happened to the writer? Because they had achieved their purpose?
Or because it was too late.
Costello got up and wandered over to her big window, looking down at the river. How had this come about? The writer had been around the family. A friend, a friend of Birdie perhaps. The writer knew the three men well.
One of them lost his wife, his friend was doing time for her murder, the third one was a womanizer. She thought of Eddie and Dougie. Frankie was a police officer. Did the writer suspect a cover-up? Then something had happened to spark an investigation. She needed to get all this stuff in chronological order. Wyngate was already getting to grips with the massive timeline, but Mulholland was still struggling to locate these people.
Smoke and mirrors?
Investigative noise to drown out the real crime?
How many child abusers got away with their crimes because there was no evidence, no reliable witnesses? That was the nature of the beast. Somebody had gone through this blue folder carefully but had not tossed it in the bin. Had they put it in with the other evidence for a future investigation to come across? But who was it? Were they still around to be interviewed?
Somebody had murdered Eddie Dukes. Her original thought – that he was tortured while being forced to watch that film – was maybe still valid. Dukes might have only held on to the innocent films, the incriminating films destroyed when they went their separate ways. And what had caused that? The death of Birdie? Had she come close to finding out what they were doing?
That theory did not explain why the kids appeared to be so bloody happy. They’d get the psychologist to assess the behaviour of the children on the films later, and consider if that happiness was genuine.
Brenda was already reading the morning newspaper and eating toast by the time Anderson appeared at the breakfast table. Norma had very quickly developed the habit of hanging around under Moses’ baby seat, catching any scraps the toddler dropped.
Anderson said good morning and opened his laptop, as Brenda switched the kettle on again. It had become the domestic life they had both slipped into: family time. Moses was sitting in his highchair, moving Rice Krispies around on the table, then sliding them off to Norma. The boy needed routine, and because of that the family was forced to follow. For Anderson, breakfast had never been a family affair. In the early days, it was a sink full of nappies, Brenda in a foul mood due to lack of sleep and at least one child screaming: Claire, then Peter, and, on a bad day, both of them. In those days, Anderson had grabbed toast and coffee, and got out of the door as fast as he could; sometimes he didn’t hang around for the coffee. Nowadays, there was no nagging, none of those phrases that used to be hurled at him like a well-aimed machete. Well, just make sure you do. I am left to do everything around here. You just disappear out that door. If that’s your bloody attitude, don’t bother coming back.
Now he was older, the job could wait or he could send Costello. They chatted about Moses. Brenda planned to spend the day in the garden as the weather was going to be nice.
‘Is there a parasol somewhere?’
‘In the basement,’ replied Anderson, and then offered to get it out for her and bring it up the steps before he went to work.
She thanked him. They were behaving like adults: none of the screaming matches of the last few years. And while much of it was because of Moses, much more had been because of Rodger or whatever his name was, and the way that man had got under Brenda’s skin. It took Costello to point out that Rodger had hurt and embarrassed her. She had loved him, and not only was his betrayal of her cruel and criminal, but it had also broken her.
‘Remind me before I go out. I think the base is still attached – you’ll never get it up those stairs.’ A smile passed between them.
He began to read the news. Aasha’s photograph filled the front page. ‘Jesus, where are they getting all this race stuff from? I warned Bannon the media would see it that way.’
‘Was she Pakistani? Muslim?’
‘No, her mother was Indian, her dad was Italian, and she was born a Catholic in Romford.’
Peter arrived at the door in T-shirt and shorts, bed head and yawning. ‘If you think that’s bad, Dad, you should see what’s going round social media. If they catch the cop in charge, they’ll lynch him.’
Anderson and Brenda exchanged a glance. Even wee Moses stopped chewing on his cereal and rolled his blue eyes sideways, regarding his big brother with a degree of awe, as if he had never heard the teenager speak before. Norma broke the silence by munching on some cereal.
He had, his dad had noticed, been getting up and out of his bed; he was talking and reacting to the rest of the family, which was not normal for Peter Anderson, aged fifteen and a half. A weird civility had settled on the Anderson household in the absence of Claire and Paige, the catalysts of drama.
‘Nice of you to join us for breakfast,’ said Anderson. ‘That doesn’t happen often.’
‘No point, when the Sad Sisters of the Apocalypse are here, is there? But if you want me to go away, I don’t have an issue with that.’
‘No, stay and eat your toast,’ said Anderson.
‘I have stuff to do.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Stuff. Just stuff. Any juice in the fridge?’ Peter got up, not answering any of the questions in that teenager way of being too important.
‘Girlfriend?’ mouthed Brenda to her husband behind their son’s skinny back.
Anderson smiled. ‘Boyfriend, for all I know.’ For a moment, they were back together, the way they were twenty years before. Her eyes fell back to the newspaper. ‘Who is threatening to lynch him?’
‘Everybody,’ said Peter, opening and closing cupboard doors.
‘Try the big white thing – that’s the fridge,’ said Anderson.
‘I’m looking for the marmalade.’
‘It’s on the table. Can you be more specific than that? The lynching?’
‘Well, all these folk on Facebook – those that like to be offended by bloody everything – they are now offended that the police are doing nothing. Black lives matter.’
‘Are they saying that we are doing nothing because she’s Asian?’
Peter stopped halfway through ramming the door closed. ‘No, half of them are saying that. The other half are saying that the investigation is having more funds poured in because she is Asian.’
‘Surely there’s a voice of reason in the middle.’
‘It’s Facebook, Dad. There’s no place for those with a voice of reason.’
Anderson took a deep breath. ‘Peter, DS Bannon is just as committed to the job as I am. Have you ever heard me say, “Yes, I’ll try harder because their skin is a different colour”? What pish are you reading up there?’ He shook his head in dismay.
‘Come on, Dad, I’ve heard you say that pretty blonde dead women get more attention than young men.’
‘Peter, they get more attention from the media. They do not get more attention from the senior investigating officer and his team. Sometimes it’s hard to get some publicity for a case when we do need help from the public, because all the press are interested in is reporting something stupid said on Love Island. And other cases do get a lot more attention because of human interest. They read tabloid fodder because that’s what they are given to read. And that is a shitstorm that Tony Bannon is about to walk into – from the look of this, already has.’
Peter sat down beside them and started talking to Moses. The two-year-old was not yet verbal, but he could make himself understood perfectly well. The family had been told to force him to speak, so when he pointed at the orange juice and made a noise, he wasn’t to get it.
Anderson zoned out from the happy noises and scrolled through the papers, which were full of the usual political squabbles, fighting over furlough, payments for the self-employed, half the country straining to get back to work as the other half had little interest in doing so. He was reading some of the comments on the BBC webpage when he felt Brenda tap his arm and slide the folded-over newspaper on top of his laptop. He saw the picture, an old one of Archie Walker, the Chief Fiscal who had pissed off Costello by bringing his new girlfriend to the barbecue, the one who may or may not have leaked something to Fettercairn. He read the by-line. Then the name. Clarissa Fettercairn had been on track to get a story in one of the dailies.
It was a whole article about nothing but the current climate of direct action, statues being torn down and rioting – a real kick to the hornet’s nest. The subject may have changed, but the two witnesses missing were truth and fact. It was an opinion piece, and it was all about nothing – ‘there had been allegations’, ‘sources close to’ and ‘it is understood that’. There had been a series of deaths of those who, it was alleged, were involved in a paedophile ring that had been working quietly behind the scenes for many years.
It ended with a cryptic line about a seaside village with a history of long-reported but ignored paedophile activity, with a former senior police officer at its core, which made Anderson turn back to his laptop.
The atmosphere was buoyant in the annexe. The briefing left the team with a sense of purpose: today was the day they would pull it all together.
Costello had received a cryptic voicemail from Valerie Abernethy, telling her to Google a paralegal called Mary Travers. Valerie was a lawyer – she’d have contacts who’d know a paralegal. She deleted the message, not wanting to join in the gossip surrounding Archie Walker’s mysterious companion, but logging the name at the back of her mind for future reference. She was already back at her place by the window, going through files, methodically opening them and closing them, the pile to her right getting smaller as the one on the left grew. Wyngate had said little about his meeting at Complaints, probably because he had been told not to, so he was busily extending his timeline with a piece of wallpaper lining, just in case anybody asked. Above it was a typed sign, Operation Pavo II, and underneath, handwritten, was Pavo cristatus: the Peacock crossed out and Peafowl written over it, but the point was made. The police had been down this road before.
‘Have you seen this?’ asked Mulholland, limping in.
‘Go away, I am busy,’ answered Costello.
‘You are not too busy to see this. Your old pal Archie has got himself in a bit of bother.’
‘He’s not my old pal. He’s an arse,’ said Costello, off the window ledge and beside her colleague in an instant.
‘Oh, Costello, I thought you quite liked him.’
‘I did like him, but then he became an arse, so I don’t like him now.’
‘He’s in trouble for pillow talk with some young lady.’
‘Mary Travers, the paralegal?’
‘Have you seen her? She looks like you. But nicer.’
‘No, he wouldn’t do that. He’s Mr Proper and spreadsheets and everything—’ She looked at the picture he was holding. ‘Oh my God, has he actually done that?’
‘Try to keep the delight out of your voice,’ warned Anderson, looking over her shoulder, recognizing the article. ‘He knows the investigation is ongoing, but it’s scaled down to a single small team as they are not given adequate resources despite a recent live complaint.’
‘Who is that, then?’
‘He’s been set up, hasn’t he?’
‘By that blonde tart with the hard face? The Mary doll.’
Wyngate’s fingers were flying over his keyboard. ‘Hang on, I’m just Googling … Oh, listen to this … She lost her job at the fiscal’s office in Edinburgh and she has a previous link with Fettercairn, on her website – the Forgotten Victims one. She identifies herself as a whistle-blower.’
Costello gave a snort of disgust. ‘Well, I’m not putting Clarissa Fettercairn up on my board, even if she turns out to be the one who climbed into Dukes’ attic and strangled him with her cashmere scarf.’
‘She would have strangled him with a silk scarf actually, but get her name up there anyway,’ said Anderson. ‘She’s an agitator in this. She runs that website ForgottenVictimsScot.com and it gets a fair amount of traction among those who have suffered abuse but never got satisfaction in the legal system, which is fair, given Weinstein, Harris, Savile and God knows how many others.’
‘But that has nothing to do with this, has it?’ Costello didn’t move. ‘I’m not validating the gutter press by writing speculation as fact.’
‘Well, I can’t write it up – I can’t get up there,’ said Mulholland. ‘I have a hole in my leg.’
‘I know. I can smell it from here.’
‘I have parmesan on my pasta,’ admitted Wyngate.
‘Really, is that a euphemism as well?’
‘Children, do you mind? Costello, I am your senior officer, so kindly write it up on the board,’ said Anderson. ‘Put a question mark after it if it makes you happy.’
‘As you ask so nicely.’ Costello slid off the desk. ‘And seeing that peg leg here isn’t capable. Fettercairn is a journalist. She’s behind the Lyonns letter getting all over social media, forcing Toastie Warburton to stick his evil face on the TV, placing the mental health of the country in jeopardy with his big fat sweaty fizzog on the plasma widescreen,’ said Costello, writing the name with such venom that the marker squeaked like a mouse having a go at the Hallelujah Chorus. ‘What kind of journalist is she?’
‘Apart from absolutely gorgeous, with great legs?’ Mulholland pointed to her picture in the sidebar.
Costello turned from the board. ‘Two? Does she have two legs? A matching set? Imagine that. Vik, wouldn’t you like that?’
‘You’re mocking the disabled.’
‘No, I am mocking you. She’s freelance … Is she a redhead?’
Anderson snapped. ‘Fuck off, Costello. No, she’s not. And stop right there and listen. We missed something. Gordon Ellis Whyte was born in Invernock and left there when he was twenty-one. I bet he was active in the seventies and eighties.’
‘As in Gordon Whyte, child rapist and murderer?’
‘He died in jail, did he not?’
‘Yes, and although he was convicted for three child murders in England, he’s suspected of the Donna Arden disappearance in Edinburgh. He did go back to Invernock to visit family in the twenty years before they caught him. Think about that. Mulholland, you are on this. Fettercairn wants to write a book about the cover-up that she thinks has happened over historic paedophile activity around Invernock. Does she know something that we don’t? I think she suspects that we – they – missed a chance early on to put Whyte away, and they did nothing. That’s why she knows there’s a book in this. She might be right.’ He waved a hand over the pile of boxes. ‘And in among all this is that incident with Veronica Scanlon that we can’t find. How do we move this on?’
‘I’ll have a look online for any reference. It might not be accurate, but it will give us an idea,’ said Wyngate.
‘Good thinking. I suspect that’s what she thinks and that’s what we have to prove one way or the other.’
‘Is it true, though?’
‘We can’t prove a negative. And it doesn’t work like that, does it? If we investigate and find nothing, she’ll say, “Oh, you see, there is a cover-up and you four are part of it.” If we investigate and find that there was a paedophile ring going on, if Ellis Whyte was part of it, she will say, “See, I told you so,” and take all the credit. It’s a lovely thing called a lose–lose situation. She’s not going to leave us alone, is she?’
‘Nope,’ said Anderson, ‘but we could stop being sidelined. We have the death of Eddie Dukes, we have that letter. We have Dukes being harassed for years by somebody who thinks he is a paedophile, so we investigate that. If there’s another reason for his death, then that might be the end of it. We have the dog being wagged by the tail here.’ A thought popped into his head. ‘Talking of the dogs, the torture to Norma was confirmed. That may be why Dukes was so compliant. He loved that dog.’
‘I don’t think I’d love a dog enough to let somebody attack my genitals with a knife,’ muttered Mulholland.
‘I doubt he knew what was coming. It does mean something, though. The person who did this did not kill the dog, just hurt her enough to scare Eddie. Bad enough, but it means something: the killer hates men and loves dogs.’
‘That’s most of the women I know,’ said Mulholland.
They looked at the board, the picture of the three young men. The Peacocks. ‘What secret bound them together for thirty years?’
It was Costello who broke the silence. ‘When is the PM?’
‘O’Hare will let us know as soon as. Forensics?’
‘Nothing through yet, but Mathilda says there’s nothing much to go on. All they have is a skin sample on the switch for the loft ladder. She surmises they had bloodied their gloves and slipped them off to flick the switch and walk away. There’s no DNA on the collar, and the beautiful shoeprint in the weeds was MacMillan’s after he remembered that he stood in the flower bed to look in at the window. More interesting is that the only laptop on the premises was used for banking and playing Scrabble – no downloads of any kind.’ Costello looked down at her notes. ‘The letter only had Lyonns’ fingerprints. The envelope was stuck very carefully, and Mathilda suspects it was kept in a polythene sleeve before it was put through the door of their house.’
‘Really?’
‘Something to do with static. So why do all that and put it through the wrong door?’
‘I’m not sure they did. Why were they so prepared?’
‘What do you want to do now?’ asked Costello, tilting her head to one side. ‘What would you say if I said we should have a look at him? At Toastie?’ She slid into her seat at the window, looking from Anderson to Mulholland, her grey eyes perfectly still.
Her companions both glared back.
‘Are you serious?’ asked Anderson.
‘I’m perfectly serious. Look at his age and who might have been a senior officer when he was a junior officer. He might have seen something or been exposed to something. Maybe an incident that didn’t make sense to him then and he was told to keep quiet about it.’
‘Issues calling out a superior officer?’ Mulholland shrugged. ‘I’ve never been aware of that.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed that over the years,’ said Anderson wryly. ‘Maybe see if there’s a Moby Dick in his past – the case that got away – before you put your career up the Swanee. He did talk about the pool at Invernock as if he knew it well.’
‘Somebody else grew up there? Who was that?’
‘Whyte?’
‘Before that. MacMillan’s wife?’
Costello nodded thoughtfully.
‘So, technically, he could be a witness to the dark past of that wee village, and I suppose later I could bring him in and grill him deeply.’ She smirked. ‘I will grill the Toastie.’ She swung round in her seat. ‘Where are you with tracking these elusive people, Mulholland? You getting anywhere with them?’ She looked at her colleague. ‘Anybody close to Scanlon – he’s the one we think is still alive.’
‘Fill your boots,’ Mulholland said, patting a thick pile of A4 paper. ‘I was up all night doing that!’