To: DCI Colin Anderson
From: DS Tony Bannon
Hi,
Well, it’s got out to the media that we are not seeking any third party in the death of Aasha Ariti. The rumour is that her death was alcohol-related, so the parents will make a statement after they have spoken to O’Hare. He has offered to talk to them later today and try to explain better than I obviously did.
It turns out there was a complaint about Poole made by another student at the university, re his attitude towards some Chinese students. We are still looking for Poole, but so far all leads are coming up blank. Interestingly, when we told his mum and dad O’Hare’s findings from the post-mortem, they could still shed no light on where he was, although we could see the relief was overwhelming.
Oh, and, Diane, my old boss at Complaints and Investigations, has just called me to sound me out about DI Costello. Seems there has been an allegation made against her. Totally unfounded as far as I could see, but if a complaint has been made, they have to investigate. You might want to warn her.
Regards,
Tony
‘Before you ask, I ended up having a coffee with Douglas McSween’s eldest son, after he rammed my face into a wall.’
‘Really? That looks sore.’
‘You should see the state of him.’ Anderson sat down. ‘He threw his coffee all over the inside of my car. He’s a little volatile.’
Costello looked at his face. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yip. No wonder his sister doesn’t talk to him. I think that his father’s death has really affected him, or one of his other childhood traumas,’ he added. ‘He’s more upset by the death of Dukes, and I didn’t tell him the manner of it. It would seem he hates the idea of his idyllic childhood being tainted. He freaked when I asked him about the day his brother died.’
‘And it was an idyllic childhood. The child psychologist watched the films and said there’s no stress on those kids at all. Some are more confident than others, but the relationship with the adults is normal. Are you charging him with assault?’
‘We have enough paperwork to do.’ He clapped his hands in enthusiasm, getting them up to speed with the changes in the Ariti case.
‘Seriously? She died because she felt she needed to be thin?’ Costello’s voice was steely cold.
‘Not got time for a feminist rant now, Costello. That’s the way of the world.’
‘So good enough to argue that she was “of colour” but not because she was damaged by a thousand images of the perfect woman being thrown at her every day?’
Anderson held his hands up in submission. ‘It’s not your job, it’s not mine. This is our job here and, thanks to Mulholland and Wyngate, we have a full day of interviews ahead.’
‘Is there any trace of Frankie?’ asked Wyngate, keen to move the situation on.
‘He doesn’t drive, he doesn’t have a car or a credit card, he doesn’t vote, he has a NI number but it has no current address, and his passport has lapsed. He went to Spain in 1987, then nothing. Nobody knows where he is. As far as I see, there’s no death certificate. He has faded away,’ said Mulholland.
‘Well, I’ve been looking at the disappearance of Andrew McSween. Did his brother say anything about it?’
‘It wasn’t a viable topic of conversation.’ Anderson slapped his ear gently: the tinnitus was still there.
‘One common factor when both boys met their demise, presuming that Andrew is dead, is that it was an occasion when everybody was there – you know, an extended Peacock picnic. So Anne McLeod was there, both times.’
‘It happened up in the woods behind a campsite at Oban. Anne had driven up for the day. Andrew’s body was never found. It’s suspected that he drowned – there’s a lot of lochans up there. They searched for a whole week and found nothing.’
‘Any trace on Veronica?’
‘Still looking for her husband, then I’m going back all the way with her – going back to the hospital she was in and her designated care worker. Of them all, she’s the one who has been most affected by … by whatever it was they were subjected to.’
The four of them sat round, Costello with her fingers still on the keyboard, the other three with their heads turned, all looking at the wall.
‘There is a problem with this family. They lose their children or … well, you need to look at the bigger picture to see the pattern here, don’t you? Too much coincidence, and then you add into the mix the fact that Dad was a senior detective and the rumours that follow these Peacocks round,’ considered Anderson.
‘There’s the driver of a small dark car following them around. Do we like Loretta, Veronica, Anne or another we don’t know about yet?’
‘Anne drives a navy Corsa. Loretta has a red Audi, but there’s also a black Sandero registered at that address. I’m trying to get a trace on their movements, but I suspect you will have to re-interview them. And, by the way’ – he consulted a bit of paper – ‘Loretta was off work the day of the funeral. She had a meeting at the Blair Hotel about the wedding arrangements but left at two p.m. No alibi after that. I’d have to approach the family to take it further, see when she got home. Do you want me to do that now?’
‘Keep it on the list. I’m keen to find Scanlon.’
Costello pulled a face. ‘Despite what may or may not have been going on with abuse, those kids lost two of their pals. That was trauma enough. They are victims of that. It seems to diminish them in some way to call them survivors, a bit “boo sucks” to those that did not survive. I mean, Veronica was placed in a protective environment – her dad paid to keep her safe. They don’t all have that privilege.’
‘Don’t repeat that outside this room or I will lose your manpower …’
‘Woman power.’
‘… to a course on political correctness.’ Anderson rubbed his face. ‘Brian, who does suffer from mental health issues, said that he was not abused, but there’s something about the way he acts that doesn’t sit right with me. He did say that when he went to his father’s funeral, neither Frankie nor Eddie was there – hardly anybody was from those days.’
‘And McSween definitely died of natural causes?’
‘It doesn’t matter how often you ask the question: he died of the virus after complications.’
Anderson heard Wyngate click away at his keyboard. ‘Do we think that Scanlon is still alive? Something gives me the impression that Toastie thinks so, but I can’t be sure. Surely the fact he’s so difficult to find is evidence in itself. He’s still in receipt of his police pension; that takes me to a legal firm who are not happy to chat, but I suspect they are dealing with his affairs. Or his estate.’
‘And Veronica is also nowhere to be found. She walked out of that school, disappeared, got married, then disappeared again. What do we think about that? I’m phoning the old matron’s assistant later as it’s too far to drive.’
‘And then there were none. The last one left standing is the killer. Or is there a forgotten victim out there, somebody that has no other connection with that family. There could be any number of victims – survivors who have been waiting, biding their time until the right moment came along for them to make their move. Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold.’
‘Well, I’m blagging my way into the hospital first. I’ll be back as soon as. I can’t sit here with those accusations hanging over me.’
Costello had gone home to shower. The heat of the annexe made her uncomfortable and she thought it wise to be completely clean to visit Vera. Unlocking her door, she heard the dull voice of Joanna Craig, obviously on her mobile, walking around inside, crossing the hall behind the front door from bedroom to kitchen and then back again.
She didn’t mean to listen, but just by taking a few steps towards her neighbour’s front door, bending down so her outline was not seen at the glass panel, she could hear her own flat being described. No doubt Vera’s was being discussed: three bedrooms, views over the river … The voice faded and returned as Joanna walked backwards and forwards, through the hall, walking from room to room. It was obvious to Costello that she was getting a valuation.
Costello judged that Joanna couldn’t be in two places at once, so she had a quick shower and headed off to the hospital, where she paid a fiver for a cup of tea and a biscuit in the coffee shop in the large atrium. By the time she walked to the lift, the tea was burning through the cardboard holder round the cup and scalding the skin of her hand. In the lift, she was so tightly packed between other visitors that she couldn’t shift her handbag to change hands. By the time she got out of the lift and found the room, the tea was cold.
She learned from the nurse at the station that Mrs Craig had regained consciousness. Closed to visitors, but not closed to the police on an active case, which Costello neither confirmed nor denied. She was here, so she flashed her warrant card.
Mrs Craig looked delighted and then worried to see her. She pulled herself up on the bed, the dressing across her head making her look like Blackbeard’s cleaner.
Costello dragged a chair and placed it in the corner of the room.
They chatted, all the usual stuff at first. Then, at the first lull in conversation, Vera Craig said, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘What about?’ She waited for the old lady to broach the subject.
Vera’s old fingers pulled up the thin duvet, as if she hoped to disappear behind it.
Costello sensed her tension. ‘What is it, Vera?’ she asked pleasantly, thinking that her daughter had said something the little old lady was not comfortable with. Costello was nothing but a friendly face popping in, and although Mrs Craig could sense Costello on the landing at all hours of day and night, opening the door with a request to pick up this or get that, it was never onerous. If she had been attacked, the issue was with the residents buzzing people in without knowing who they were. That was a lecture for the community police to give; they were all responsible for each other’s safety.
Then, looking at the tiny wrinkled face, the wadding round the head wound, the thin-lipped mouth moved. ‘I’m so sorry, it’s just that the young man with the terrible ears, he has gone to so much trouble, and all along it was me. It was only me being a daft old woman and I didn’t know that all this was going on. He came to see me. He was so sweet and earnest. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was nobody else there. I fell. I’m sorry.’
‘You fell?’
‘Twice. I got up and tried to clean up the blood, but I don’t know what happened after that. I really can’t remember.’
‘Well, I will call DC Wyngate. I know he’ll be very relieved. Vera, did you have money in the flat?’
‘Yes, I did keep some.’
‘OK. Can I ask how much?’
‘About ten thousand pounds. I thought it was safe, with you being a police officer, but Joanna was saying …’
The door opened behind her. Joanna came in, saw Costello and snapped, ‘Excuse me.’
Vera recoiled immediately.
‘Are you OK, Mum? Don’t speak to her. She stole your money. I saw her car drive away when I was on the phone.’
Vera’s eyes fluttered to Costello, their message clear. Then Joanna looked in her mother’s face, her thumb on her mother’s chin, turning her face so their eyes met.
‘I was just paying her a visit, being neighbourly,’ said Costello.
‘And you’re forbidden to do that.’
‘Oh, nobody told me.’
‘Well, this is harassment. We’ve made a complaint.’
Costello turned to Vera, almost pinned to the bed. ‘Mrs Craig, I’d better go now. I’m glad you are feeling better. I didn’t take any money from your flat, and I know you know that.’
Mrs Craig looked shocked. It seemed as if she was not aware of it either. ‘My money?’
‘Yes, she took your money – the ten thousand pounds,’ said Joanna.
‘Difficult to do when I didn’t know about it. So we’ll see, Joanna. We’ll see.’ And Costello closed the door behind her.
‘Just to warn you that Costello is sitting in her car again, so she’s in a mood,’ said Anderson as Mulholland limped out to the toilet and Wyngate looked intently at his laptop.
Five minutes later, Costello stomped into the room. ‘What a cow, that Joanna. Wee Vera is just lying there, terrified of her daughter. And I’ve no proof that I didn’t take the money. I don’t have proof of any of it.’
‘They have no proof that you did. It’s a load of crap.’
‘So what am I to do? This woman has me over a barrel. She could ruin my career.’
‘And mine.’ Wyngate’s face was as miserable as Costello had ever seen it, his features concertinaed and collapsed into the lower half, as if it would take a lot of effort to ever smile again. And in that moment, it looked unlikely.
Costello leaned back and swung her boots on to the tabletop, clasping her hands over the gap in her open jacket, her fingers interlocking like an interested psychiatrist.
Anderson was calm. ‘Well, the first thing is to congratulate yourself that you did the right thing, and you had clearance to do everything that you did from above, so you were in a chain of events that you had no real control over. Were you there as a neighbour or a police officer? It was the former. Then you can write a complaint about Knobby and Plod for not doing their jobs properly and putting the wind up everybody. They presumed what had happened because you were an eyewitness, reported it to be so. An over-tired, half-asleep witness who had an emotional interest in the case.’
‘I think the bitch daughter is thinking about putting that flat on the market.’
‘But her mum isn’t dead. Yet. Or is she going to take Vera to live with her?’
‘There’s something not right about this entire situation. Vera is under pressure from her daughter, and she’s scared. I’ve seen enough abuse victims to recognize it.’
‘I was frightened of Joanna when she spoke to me,’ admitted Wyngate. ‘And I am used to dealing with scary women.’
‘On a daily basis,’ muttered Anderson, glancing at Costello from behind a computer screen.
‘So maybe she’s just taking advantage of the shortcuts Plod and Knobby took. Would you do that, Colin? Accept blindly the thoughts of somebody half-asleep. I was a witness, but they should have done their job properly – got witness statements, door to door, flat to flat, investigated who used the lifts – but they jumped the gun and drew a very wrong conclusion. There’ll be an enquiry into how all this went wrong, and you and I are going to find ourselves dragged into it. Yes, Wyngate, you took their word for it, but they gave you a biased version of events because it suited them.’
‘You didn’t report on it, Costello.’
‘I offered to, they said not to bother. So I didn’t,’ she said. ‘They might have spoken the truth, but they were lazy, I believe. They repeated what I said – I was there, remember, lying on my sofa, with my front door open and my hall door open. I could hear what they were doing. They were talking about football and having a wee rest on the stairs, waiting for somebody more senior to turn up. When you did, their respect went out of the window and they abused you, mocked you – all that Big Ears and Noddy stuff. There’s no room in modern policing for that. They should have passed on the information they had gathered in a professional and concise manner.’
‘But they didn’t.’
‘Exactly. Was Vera Craig pushed or did she fall?’
‘She said herself that she fell; I doubt she was coerced into that. But there’s something about all this that just does not fit.’
‘Joanna was on to Diane Mathieson at Complaints. Bannon told me.’
‘Well, that’s me sunk.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure. I think Mathieson had her fingers burned in the Sideman case; she will go carefully now.’
‘Carefully as in hippo in an outrage.’ Costello looked round. ‘I suppose that Joanna will inherit everything that Mrs Craig has.’
‘Don’t even think about it. We can’t do an investigation into the financial status of her daughter just for you to prove a point.’
Costello looked at the wall, her eyes scanning over the names. ‘That’s a point, actually. Inheritance. Who gets Dukes’ house? There must be a will, a lawyer, a something somewhere.’
‘I know the answer to that,’ said Anderson through his laptop screen. ‘Ingram Selwood, a company in the middle of Glasgow.’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Wyngate. ‘I’m sure …’ He flicked furiously through sheets of paper on his spiral pad. A smile lit up his face. ‘That’s the same legal firm that looks after Frank Scanlon. That’s where his police pension goes.’
‘This is getting interesting. Could we do a backwards trace on the houses that Eddie Dukes has owned? He’s been in this one for ten years. Hill houses along that coast are not cheap.’
The three of them considered that for a very long moment, interrupted by Costello thinking out loud. ‘Could that be the pay-off for going to jail for the murder of somebody who was not Birdie? Was Frankie supporting him? Bought him his first house to get him on the property ladder when he came out of jail?’
‘He’d get Birdie’s life insurance.’
‘Bloody hell, is this going to be something as basic as an insurance scam?’
‘How are you fixed with your workload, Wyngate?’
‘I am pretty full. Tracing cars, Veronica and Frank – nobody is easy to find in this case. But Brian found you … I was thinking that if we dangled a carrot, they might find us.’
‘Was that what Eddie was tortured for? The whereabouts of Frankie? Veronica, even?’
‘There are a lot of people hiding. How is Mulholland doing with the missing woman – the list from 1978?’
‘Where is he, anyway?’
Anderson pulled a face, ‘He went to the loo. Is he making a phone call?’ He walked round a stack of folders to the door and opened it, listening down the corridor. Then he went out. Costello and Wyngate heard his footsteps quicken, breaking into a run as he shouted, ‘Costello, call an ambulance.’
It took the ambulance ten minutes to arrive. Wyngate was dispatched to inform Vik’s mother and make sure she got to the hospital to see her son. Vik had looked terrible – white, sweating – and he was in some respiratory distress by the time he was covered in a blanket on the stretcher. The paramedic had cut the leg of Mulholland’s designer suit to relieve the pressure at the operation site, now swollen, green fluid seeping through the dressing. As one paramedic cut through the second dressing and padded it, he looked at his companion and said, ‘Well, at least it’s not coronavirus.’
Anderson said he’d stay in the office as Costello already had an interview booked in, and she was glad of the fresh air and the time to think as she walked down Hyndland Road to meet at an outdoor café. Lynda Armstrong, one of Veronica’s named carers at St John’s, had been easy to track as she had a social media presence. She was living in Glasgow and had agreed to meet in one of the coffee houses that was now open. She was a tall, thin woman, lecturing at the university, and from the look of her, Costello would guess it was politics or feminist studies. There was something about the number of scarves she wore round her neck that sounded her alarm bells. Costello was feeling rattled after Mulholland’s collapse, so she was glad for a seat, a cup of tea and fresh air.
‘Yes, I recall Veronica Scanlon – funny kid, damaged goods.’ Lynda sipped a latte with caramel syrup which Costello had paid for. ‘God, she was fragile – like deep down. I was only a few years older than her, so within the boundaries of care I guess we became friends.’
‘Did you talk a lot?’
‘Not at first, and she didn’t speak to anybody else either, but we did in time. I was part of her journey, the process she was going through. She was still finding her way through the emotional fog, if you will.’
‘I won’t, thank you,’ muttered Costello. ‘What was her emotional state like?’
‘She was both lovely and awful in equal measure. Still, you think there but for the grace of God go I. If I’d been through what she had … I mean, to conceptualize what she had witnessed was so utterly traumatic.’
‘The death of her mother.’
She placed a ringed hand, palm up to Costello’s face. ‘The murder of her mother. Can you imagine that?’
‘Oh, yes, I used to fantasize about killing my mother. She was that kind of mother.’
Lynda’s face was frozen in sincerity. ‘Well, Veronica was very close to her mother, and years later for her brother to slip from her grasp as she was trying to hold on to him, actually trying to help him cling to life. Then he’s gone. That burned deep in her mind. If she had held on until her daddy got there, she could have saved him. She always felt that her dad blamed her. Can you imagine that degree of survival guilt? Maybe all along, she should have blamed her dad.’
Costello lifted her hand to the scar on her hairline, a present from her brother when he tried to murder her. Her dad had saved her. She felt brief empathy for the troubled Veronica.
‘Did she talk about Andrew?’
‘Lost in the mist? Yes, Veronica was dipping her toe into a friendship with the other girl. They were out for a walk, talking to each other, acting more like babysitters than two young girls who wanted to talk about David Essex and the Bay City Rollers. You see, Ms Costello, there was no room for them to grow up, to express themselves. They were, collectively, “the children”. There was no expression of self, so she self-harmed a lot. We really struggled to get her medication right. She was a non-person at times.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just that she wasn’t there. She was absent. You could talk to her for days and not know anything about her, other than losing her mum and her brother. Her dad’s friends …’
‘Eddie and Dougie?’
‘Well, I can’t say much, but when there is a victim presenting in that fashion, there does tend to be an abuser in the background. And if you snapped that girl in two, she’d have the word “victim” drilled right through to her core. Now, of course, we’re much more enlightened, and I think she started to present with an extreme form of borderline personality disorder. She struggled with her identity – she really had no concept of who she was and where she belonged in the world, you know. She struggled to find her feet.’
‘Don’t we all?’
‘Yes, but there was the huge, extremely swift change in her perceptual concepts, the degree of her self-mutilation.’
‘When? At the time her mother was murdered?’ asked Costello.
‘No, later in our care, when her dad abandoned her.’
Costello noted the use of the word abandoned and asked, ‘Ever any sign of her mutilating others?’
Lynda ignored her.
‘Obviously, I don’t know much about it, but don’t sufferers of BPD tend to indulge in risky behaviour patterns – drug abuse, promiscuity, gambling? Veronica has no criminal record, no bad debt – nothing shows that pattern. Or am I way off here?’ Costello asked, fishing.
‘Even back then, she had poor control over her antagonistic behaviour and was very confrontational when threatened with abandonment.’
‘Understandable, when her father abandoned her,’ agreed Costello.
‘I’d really like to see Veronica if you know where she is. I’d be interested to see how she has managed over the years, how she has coped with her paranoia, her emotional detachment and—’
Costello interrupted. ‘Would you expect her to hold a grudge?’
‘Oh, yes – for months, even years. Some delude themselves that avenging that grudge can redress their emotional imbalance, put them back on the right track, so to speak.’
‘And does it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And now we’re looking at the Peacocks, if you’re familiar …’ nudged Costello.
‘Oh, yes, I’ve done a fair bit of reading about them. There’s a section about them in the cultural history museum in Glasgow. I was looking at the methods of access these men had, looking at the Peacocks through those eyes.’
‘Access?’
‘To children. They kept it within the family – those three men considered themselves family.’
Costello waited to see if any direct evidence was going to come her way.
‘Something happened to her father. I can’t recall what, but Veronica tried to escape. Dawn Flanders, another resident, went with her …’ Lynda shook her head, aware of saying too much.
‘Escape?’
‘Well, Dawn was a right tough nut and they decided to make a run for it. They were fourteen, and they realized they could get over the far wall. According to Veronica, she was already crying and wanting to come back when they got to the wall, but she said Dawn pulled out a knife and forced her to help her over. And over the two of them went. They could have been away, but Veronica refused. There was a fight, the knife got pulled, they both got hurt. Veronica was stabbed through the hand and into the leg. Dawn got stabbed in the leg. That, unfortunately, turned out to be fatal. They were found lying in the grass, at the bottom of the wall. They must have been lying for half an hour or so, both unconscious. Veronica survived. Dawn passed away, and there was a whole kick-up about it, as you can imagine.’
‘There would have been a fatal incident enquiry.’
‘Oh, there was. I recall being terrified of the fiscal, all that machismo oppression. Who was where and when, how did they make their way from one part of the building to another? They asked us over and over again. How did they escape? Like it was Colditz.’
‘You do make it sound like a prison.’
‘Well, it was an educational institution, but it was a prison in reality, of course. In those days, men believed in institutional violence and repression. Veronica was a victim. She had huge issues.’
‘You only have Veronica’s version of events on the night of the escape, is that correct?’
‘Well, yes. Dawn died of blood loss.’
‘One knife?’
‘Yes, look, Veronica was a victim. She was always … well, I really have to say that I’m no longer comfortable talking about this. She had big issues with her mental health. It’s nothing trivial we’re talking about, and she has a right to her confidentiality, no matter where she is.’
‘Legally, that confidentiality goes out of the window when there’s a life at risk, especially if the life at risk is hers. It’s not like we’re going to blast it all over the place, but the person in charge needs to know what we are up against, so we can try to ensure the safety of others as well as her.’
‘Well, you need to get a warrant or court order as you won’t hear it from me, no matter what she has done. This is not a police state.’
‘No, it’s not. If it was, I wouldn’t have bothered buying you a coffee.’
When Costello got back to the incident room, Anderson was sitting at his desk, scrolling.
‘Have you heard how Vik is?’
‘They’re pumping antibiotics into him. He’s in a bad way. They have asked Wyngate and his mother to stay there.’
‘I think that’s a good idea. Mulholland’s an only child – his mum might need some support.’
They both slumped into their seats, suddenly tired, the wind taken out of their sails. Anderson stared at the mess, files strewn everywhere, coffee cups, Mulholland’s jacket still on the back of his chair.
‘How did you get on with Veronica’s care person?’
‘She was a pain in the arse. But she told me one interesting thing. There was another violent incident in Veronica’s youth, where she was stabbed by another girl. It sounded fifty-fifty, but the other one died.’
‘Really? That sounds familiar. What kind of place was St John’s in reality? Was she there to be helped or was she there because Frankie wanted her out of the way?’
‘It’ll be interesting to see what the old matron’s assistant has to say about Veronica,’ said Costello. ‘She sounds such a traumatized wee girl. It was a small, selective, expensive place. She was there for five years. Frankie didn’t even take her home for the summer holidays. She stayed there all year. Was she under some kind of care order or was there just nothing to go home for, nobody to go home to? Poor kid. And Colin, you’re a dad – would you not want Claire at home, especially if something had happened to Brenda and Peter? If Claire was thirteen, would you not want to take care of her and make sure that she was safe from all the evils of the world? That wee lassie had already suffered so much loss.’
‘I think I would, but then I’m not Frankie, and Claire is not Veronica.’
‘You’re not so different – both dads are cops who know the nasty side of life, and both kids have suffered loss at a young age.’
‘Or was Veronica incarcerated there so that nobody believed what she said? The bigger difference is society. Nowadays, you’d be expected to have her at home – but in those days? I don’t know what society would make of a man like that living alone with a young daughter with mental health issues.’
‘He sells the family home, understandable when you think that his wife, or so he claimed, had bled to death in that kitchen. Too many memories for him – so yes, he’d have sold it.’
‘Or if he needed the money to send Veronica to this place, or to pay off Eddie? She was in a locked school, basically. How much did they listen to what she said? She saw a woman die, believed it was her mother, Colin. Her wee brother slipped out of her fingers and that resulted in his death. Her wee friend wandered off into the mist at Oban and was never found.’
Anderson closed his eyes, leaned back in the seat and then stared at the ceiling.
‘Why don’t we go back to first principles and look at the money. Frankie would have been on a good salary. Birdie was insured. Would the insurance pay more if she had been the victim of violent crime?’
‘Frankie gets the insurance money and the money from the sale of the house. He moves to a smaller place, pays for Veronica’s care, in inverted commas, and then he pays Eddie Dukes when he comes out of jail, four years for culpable homicide. Served less than three.’
‘And much of that in a soft prison.’
‘Somebody said that Veronica was in the paper, that she had the article framed. She was a swimmer – she used to swim in the Firth in the summer on a daily basis. There’s one incident that I think Wyngate found where she swims out and raises the alarm for an older woman who got into difficulty. She wasn’t strong enough to bring her to shore, but she held the woman up and screamed until two men swam out to the rescue. She was about, what, six then? A wee celebrity.’
‘Six? That’s really young?’ Anderson shook his head in disbelief.
‘And then later that year there’s an allegation of a sexual assault – same beach, Black Bay down at Invernock. That was before the marina was as big as it is now. After that incident, most people went to the open-air swimming pool.’
‘Wyngate did come across this obscure website. It links the Scanlon family with paedophile accusations but not in the way we might think. Veronica, down at the beach at Invernock, the tenth of July 1976. There was a mighty hoo-ha about her being touched inappropriately by a stranger, a man she later identified as a Daniel Fishbourne – she looked at him, pointed him out.’
‘Did we not think that it might have been Ellis Whyte, the child killer? You said he was born there, may have been honing his skills on the locals before he left?’
‘That’s all with hindsight. The police arrested Fishbourne there and then, but dropped all charges later due to lack of evidence.’
‘Fishbourne denied it to the day he died. Nobody else was ever suspected. Kelly’s review in 2010 said that Ellis was on the east coast that weekend, and that’s why the rumour followed Fishbourne around. It ruined his career. Frankie hated him and was warned off to let the police do their jobs. The care team in charge of the six-year-old reported that they were convinced she was telling the truth.’
Anderson swung round in his seat.
‘That’s interesting … Not sure where it fits in here, though.’
Costello’s phone rang so she lifted it up and pulled a face at Anderson, then turned to look out the window.
He couldn’t help but hear what she said.
‘Hello, Diane. Yes, I know. Complaints … No, I didn’t know that she had money in the house … I don’t know why Joanna said that Vera had told me because she didn’t … and no, I wasn’t looking for her will … I was looking for Joanna’s phone number … Wyngate knows that … No. I didn’t expect to get anything in her will. Where is all this coming from? … Yes, I did her shopping … I was being neighbourly … Yes, I was keen to look round the property … I was looking for Joanna’s phone number … and yes, I did have a set of keys … Pardon?’ Costello turned to Anderson, her face was white. ‘In that case, I think I need to consult the Federation, but yes, I can make that. This is a complete load of shite.’ She swiped her phone off and started swearing again. ‘What a fucking joke.’
‘Was that Diane Mathieson from Complaints by any chance?’
‘The Gruppenführer herself. She was warning me. Joanna Craig is tying us all up in knots. Mathieson suspects Ms Craig might be making a career out of this.’