Valentine watched the chief super strut through the incident room and then stand and wait, regally, as the door was opened for her. When the door closed, he mouthed the word ‘bitch’ under his breath and then he found himself following her footsteps into the main room. Some more officers had appeared now and he nodded to DS Donnelly and some uniforms he recognised from the murder scene at the racetrack. The DI stood before the board and took in the information, which consisted of scrawled notes and mugshots, scenes of crime photos and long, looping delineations that may or may not indicate links. He brushed at the sides of his mouth as he took it in and then he picked up a black marker pen and drew a thick line between the two victims: Urquhart and Knox.
‘Looks definite enough,’ said DS Donnelly.
‘Bloody sure it is, Phil,’ said Valentine. ‘That pair were in cahoots: I can feel it in my blood. They knew each other, they were connected, and they preyed on children together.’
‘Whoa . . . Step back a bit,’ said Donnelly. ‘We’ve got nothing to put Urquhart in the same league as Knox.’
‘Oh, come on . . . He’s textbook. He never had so much as a casual acquaintance with anyone he worked with. Kept himself to himself, always. He had no critics, but he had no admirers either . . . Wonder why? Because he was keeping a low profile, he was leading a double life and was frightened that if he revealed even a little of himself he’d be found out.’
DS Donnelly didn’t look convinced. He seemed to be letting the DI speak himself out in the hope that he would say something he agreed with.
‘Boss, I don’t know . . . You always say we can’t make assumptions; this just seems a bit against the grain.’
Valentine turned from the board and replaced the top on the marker pen. He tried not to look at the DS because he knew his run of untrammelled confidence would be shattered by a single glance. He dipped his head towards the desk. ‘OK, then what have you got, Phil?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Squat . . . Same as everyone else.’
‘Sir, I’m not playing devil’s advocate here, I’m just saying show me the evidence.’
‘Are you saying that there’s no evidence, just because we haven’t found it?’ He raised his head and took in the DI. ‘Because that doesn’t wash either, Phil . . . In the absence of what we’d like, we have to make do with what we’ve got.’
DS Donnelly drew his lips into a tight aperture; he raised his hands and then folded them behind his head. It was a gesture that told Valentine he wasn’t retreating any time soon; it also told him that if he was going to press the case against Urquhart then he was going to need more than blind loyalty to get the squad to go along with him. Was he losing it? Was he really letting his imagination take over from the rational part of his brain, the part that admonished officers like Donnelly when they made the kinds of lunging assessments he had just made? He was tense: the muscles of his shoulders ached like he had been carrying a loaded backpack, or the weight of the world perhaps. He was looking for answers where there were none, and he knew it. The earlier run-in with CS Martin had acted like a lash on him: he felt pressured, and that was never a good way to be. He knew police officers under pressure made mistakes, made the wrong moves; he had done that once before and nearly paid for it with his life.
Valentine peered over DS Donnelly and called out, ‘Ally . . . Over here a minute.’
The DS closed the top drawer in his desk and pushed out his chair; as he walked towards the two officers he put his hands in his pockets. His expression was calm, blank almost.
‘Yeah, what’s up?’
‘Ally, tell us what you got with the club you were checking out.’
He looked perplexed. ‘Club?’
‘The model-railway club . . . the Wednesday night thing that Urquhart was supposed to be going to but never showed up at.’
‘Oh, the railway, sorry . . .’ He trotted back towards his desk and reopened the drawer he had just closed; when he made his way back to Donnelly and Valentine he was carrying a notebook.
‘Right . . . Here we go.’ McAlister flicked through the first few pages. ‘OK, nothing from the first credit card. Well, it was used on a Wednesday night at the Tesco Express on Maybole Road . . .’
‘That’s almost on his doorstep, doesn’t tell us much,’ said Donnelly.
‘At what time did he use it, though?’
‘Ah, don’t know . . . Have to get the file.’
Valentine sighed and touched his forehead; moisture was pooling in his deep-furrowed brow. ‘Well, check it: if it’s late at night it could be because he was coming back home from somewhere else . . . What about the other stuff?’
He turned the spiral pages over. ‘Yes, here we are . . . got a bank-card transaction on three successive Wednesdays at the off-licence on the Prestwick Road.’
‘Why’s he going to an offie?’ said Valentine. ‘I’m presuming these are nights he didn’t make the railway club?’
‘Er, yes . . . All those nights were no-shows. So the question remains: where was he going with the booze?’
‘He bought alcohol?’ said Valentine.
‘Yes, same every night a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape . . .’
DS Donnelly curled down the corners of his mouth, then shot them up in a smirk. ‘Very nice indeed.’
‘Well, I don’t think James Urquhart has the type of palate to tolerate Blue Nun . . . He’s drinking that, but who with?’
DS McAlister turned a few more pages in the notebook, then reversed the spiral and returned to the front cover. He let the pad flap open for a moment and then, as if overly conscious of its presence, he turned it behind his back.
The DI spoke. ‘Right, that’s three Wednesdays on the trot he’s buying expensive plonk when he’s supposed to be at some old-boys’ model club . . . What the hell is he playing at?’
‘It’s a bird,’ said Donnelly. ‘It’s got to be.’
‘I’d have to say you’re right.’
‘But doesn’t that rule out your earlier theory . . .’
Valentine shook his head. ‘Are you saying he can’t have an interest in birds too . . . ? He was married, you know.’
‘Yes, but that could be a front, boss.’ Donnelly positioned himself on the edge of the desktop. ‘If we’re following your line of thinking.’
‘What’s this?’ said Ally.
Valentine flagged DS McAlister down. ‘In a minute . . .’ He turned back to Donnelly. ‘My point exactly. This is a man, a predator, who likes fronts. Perhaps the wine was for someone who had something he wanted . . . A young daughter, perhaps.’
Donnelly eased himself from the desk. ‘We need to check the rest of those cards.’
The DI nodded. ‘And we want the CCTV footage from this off-licence and anywhere else within a country mile of Prestwick Road.’
‘We should run the same checks on Knox too; I don’t think for a second he’s likely to have been as careful as Urquhart.’
‘You’re right . . . You got that, Ally?’
DS McAlister returned to the notebook and stood poised with a pen over the paper. ‘Before I do anything, is someone going to fill me in on what we’re talking about?’
Valentine patted Donnelly on the shoulder. ‘That’s one for you, Phil . . . and when you’re done with that, you can put a summary on the board. There’s been far too little going up there of late and Dino’s starting to get nervous. She’ll be in here pissing on the table legs to assert her authority if we’re not too careful.’
McAlister and Donnelly were smiling as Valentine retreated to the glassed-off office at the end of the room. His mind was racing with the possibilities, but there was something sticking in there like a sharp splinter of ice. He didn’t want to believe that he was being overtly influenced by forces he didn’t understand, but he knew he was. He was being led by the thought that he might solve the Janie Cooper case if he could solve the murders of Urquhart and Knox. To a seasoned detective it was absurd, he was being led by instinct and avoiding the facts, but he couldn’t deny that every significant development in the case had come as a result of throwing the rulebook out and following his gut, not from carefully acquired factual knowledge of the evidence.
As he sat down behind his desk, Valentine removed the blue folder that had the details of the Janie Cooper case that DS McCormack had compiled. He turned over the first page and skimmed the others until he found the photographs. There were pictures he had seen already, newspaper cuttings he hadn’t seen before and a selection of lab pictures that were tagged and bagged, but only the one numbered 14 stuck out. The item was a small blonde-haired doll, a Sindy doll like his eldest daughter had once owned. He had seen it before, though: not one like it, not a similar one. It was the doll Janie Cooper had been swinging in her hands when he’d passed out and seen her in her parents’ home.
‘Christ . . .’
Valentine picked up the picture and read the description on the label that was attached. The doll had been found a few streets from Janie’s school on the day she disappeared; it was the last artefact to be uncovered before the girl was declared missing.
The DI felt his thoughts being dragged away by a wild river. The sound of footsteps, cabinets closing, telephones ringing and all the shrill din of noise from the office around him became a cacophony that filled his ears. A dull pain was beginning to form in his arm, which told him he needed to alter his breathing and find calm. As he did so, the room lost its foggy haze and he felt the truculent ache in his chest subside. Despite the shock, both physical and mental, Valentine felt invigorated. He let the thought of his growing confidence settle on his mind like a warm glow, and then a smile replaced his frown and he stored the knowledge of Janie Cooper and her doll in the new and rapidly expanding niche he had reserved for the unexplained.