DI Bob Valentine spread the Leanne Dunn file over the desktop in front of him. His thoughts moved quickly as his eyes took in the details, darting like an agile little fish on a coral reef. She was an Ayr girl, had always lived locally, if you could apply that term to how her days had gone. He couldn’t hide his sympathy for her; it all seemed such a tragic waste. The poverty and the deprivation she had endured since childhood had been compounded by a drug-addicted mother. She’d had little success with foster parents from an early age and ended up in care homes. He knew the types of places, had heard all the names before: they were the region’s hate factories, churning out the types of conveyor-belt criminals he was depressingly familiar with. She suffered under what the social workers called a ‘constellated disadvantage’: a life of casual drug use and less casual criminality. Her death in a field before the age of nineteen could almost have been written in the poor girl’s horoscope from the day she was born. What the detective also knew, however, was short lives like Leanne Dunn’s were remarkable in being defined by their chaos. Murder victims mostly knew their killers and the likes of Leanne didn’t mix with master criminals: they were the bottom feeders, the pond life, the scum that always left a sticky trail in their wake. He would find Leanne’s killer – he knew it – because experience had taught him that unravelling the murder of a penniless prostitute was much easier than that of a wealthy banker. Whoever her killer was didn’t know it yet, but the DI was prepared to gamble on wrapping up more than one murder now; in that regard Leanne Dunn’s short life and brutal death may yet serve some wider good.
Valentine had called the other detectives back from Mossblown and now they started to appear in the incident room.
‘What you got there, boss?’ said DS McAlister.
The DI took the page containing the picture of Leanne Dunn and pinned it on the board; he nodded to Phil and Sylvia as they arrived.
‘This is our girl in the wood,’ he said. ‘Leanne Dunn, a prostitute who is well and truly known to us.’
‘Local girl, then?’ said Ally.
‘Born and bred.’ Valentine stood square-footed before the others. ‘Right, you know what I want and you know I want it done yesterday . . .’
DS Donnelly stepped out from behind the filing cabinet he was leaning on. ‘So, she’s Ayr: then that narrows down the options.’ He turned to Ally and showed his hands like he was testing for rain. ‘We’re talking one of Big Madge’s girls or someone like Finnegan or Gillon.’
Ally nodded but Valentine halted him from speaking. ‘Dunn was street brass according to her record, so that rules out Madge. I want all known bedsits, flats, bloody lay-bys used by Finnegan’s girls and Gillon’s looked at by uniform right away. I want the word out on this that I’m taking them all in, every last one. I want no brass in Ayr in any doubt that we will bust heads on this.’
DS McAlister seemed pensive, deep in thought, as he pushed his way to the front of the board and stood there.
‘What is it, Ally?’
He pointed to the board. ‘Here, sir: the tip murder, we were trying to trace a white van.’
‘And?’
McAlister turned to face the team. ‘Danny Gillon drives a white van.’
DS Donnelly nodded. ‘He does too . . . Calls it his shagging wagon. And, boss, we had something like van tracks out at Mossblown as well.’
Valentine stepped away from the board and cut a path through the squad as he made his way towards the desk with the rest of the notes. When the DI collected the page he was looking for, he picked up his sports coat and started to slot his arms into the sleeves. His voice came loud and firm, followed by a wide-eyed trawl of the room: ‘Right, Ally and Phil, I want you to take Danny Gillon’s place right away. Get the word out to uniform too: I want all his known haunts dug up, and while we’re at it every pub on the port . . . The Ship, Smugglers, the Anchor, the Campbelltown; anywhere I’ve missed, try there too.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The pair moved towards the door.
‘Sylvia, you’re with me . . .’ said Valentine.
‘Yes, sir.’ She gripped the strap of her bag and turned to follow the DI as he made his way to the top of the stairs. ‘Where are we going?’
At the first rung of steps, Valentine locked eyes with her. ‘Leanne Dunn’s last known address . . . It’s in Lochside.’
DS McCormack tipped her head towards her shoulder and gripped the banister as the DI started to descend the stairs at speed. ‘Right behind you, sir.’
The officers trailed the marked cars out of the station car park. A man with a dog made a sour look as he was flagged from the road, he leapt back to the pavement and the dog was jerked fast to his side by a tight leash. The persistent rainfall of earlier had diminished, but the road was still wet, and waterlogged potholes became short-lived geysers as the car’s tyres crossed them. Valentine spun the steering wheel awkwardly and gunned the engine to keep pace with the marked cars. The houses and flats they sped past sat shrunken beneath an oppressive grey sky. A few heads turned, mouthed some words, but soon moved back in step with their drudge trails towards the town’s centre. No one was heading to Lochside, it seemed, apart from the police officers; the grim council scheme was a place you went when all other options were no longer open to you.
Valentine glanced towards his passenger. DS McCormack’s eyes flitted about the streets, eager for information. As they turned into the final road before Leanne Dunn’s flat, an old man gave them a gummy smile then halted in the street and delivered them a V-sign salute.
‘That’ll be the welcoming party,’ said McCormack, a smile sliding onto her face.
‘We’re as welcome as a dose of the clap around here.’ He turned sharply into the parking area outside the flats and a spray of water was evacuated from a deep declivity in the road. As he parked up and exited the car, Valentine felt the tips of his fingers pulsating after the rapid friction of his movements. He broke into a jog as the uniforms congregated outside the door to the flats.
‘What the bloody hell are you waiting for?’ he called out.
The uniforms exchanged blank glances amongst each other.
‘Put the door in for Christ’s sake!’
An officer in a high-visibility stab-vest and protective helmet swung a small battering ram in front of him and charged the door. The rotten wood splintered and the weak lock retreated from the jamb as if backed by explosives. The squad piled onto the stairs.
‘Right, up to the next flight,’ said Valentine.
The sound of their boots on the stone steps sounded like an army manoeuvring. A door opened and a head popped out, then quickly retreated. The action was mimicked several times as they approached the flat that had been occupied by Leanne Dunn.
‘That one . . .’ Valentine brought the black mass of bodies to a halt outside the door. He moved to the front and battered with the heel of his hand. There was no reply. He made way for the officer with the battering ram once more.
‘She’s not in!’ The words came from the flat next door. An old woman with a cardigan clutched tight to her chest stood half in the lobby, half out.
Valentine raised his hand to halt the uniform. ‘Wait . . .’ He approached the woman. ‘What’s that you say?’
Her hair was as white as cotton wool, sitting in limp curls around her heavily lined face. The long fingers worrying the seams of her cardigan were attached to liver-spotted hands. Her voice came quieter the second time she spoke. ‘She’s not there, hasn’t been for days.’
The detective approached the old woman. ‘This is Leanne Dunn we’re talking about?’
She pinched her mouth, tightened her lips as if she was preparing to whistle. ‘I don’t know what her name is . . .’
Valentine removed the printout with the photograph from his pocket. His hand trembled a little from his recent exertions, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. ‘Is this her?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
He looked back to the team and ordered them to go in. The sound of the wood splitting in the door caused the old woman to shrink further into her property. The detective stepped forward and adjusted his vision to take her in again. ‘Can I ask, when did you last see her?’
She looked perplexed; her face became a ligneous mask and then her eyes flickered as if she sensed it was safe to proceed. ‘There was a man round asking me that yesterday . . . He was screaming like billy-o.’
‘A man?’
She nodded again; she was relaxing some now. ‘He’d been round before.’
The sound of the officers in the next flat came through the thin plaster walls, and Valentine felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the old woman who’d had to endure the noise generated by the previous occupant. Is this how his country rewarded their elderly? A rathole flat in a drafty and decrepit ruin with prostitutes turning tricks a few feet away and their pimps shouldering the door whenever it took them? As his mind totted up the column of new facts, he knew at once who he was dealing with. ‘A tall man, quite stocky?’
‘Yes, he’d be about thirty or thirty-five . . .’
The thought that he was getting close to Gillon coalesced with an earlier emotion: there were three murders on his books and the disappearance of a schoolgirl from twelve years earlier. He didn’t dare to think that he was close to a quick solution for those unsolved cases, or even getting close to finding the connecting link that might lead somewhere – a pointer to evidence or an indicator of what might have gone on. Right now all he had was questions and precious few answers. But the more he thought of Gillon, the more he felt he was the ice chilling his veins.
He turned for the other flat. ‘Thank you . . . I’ll send an officer round to get your details.’
As Valentine was entering Leanne Dunn’s flat, he was distracted by movement in the corner of his eye. When he turned, he spotted someone on the steps, staring at him through the stanchions. She knew she had been recognised immediately and slunk back, running down the stairs.
‘Hey!’ Valentine’s voice came like a howitzer. He ran to the top of the stairs and called again. ‘Stay where you are.’
The thin girl in the tight blue dress froze on the spot. As the detective reached her, he took the last few steps slowly, then circled her like a lion taunting prey.
‘Where do you think you’re going, Angela?’ he said.
The girl folded her arms, but seemed uncomfortable in the stance and unfolded them again quickly. As Valentine took her in, her lazy left eye drew the attention from her other features. She could have been described as pretty once, he was sure of that, but her looks had long since left the vicinity. No celebrity fitness video or cosmetics regimen was going to return them either; she’d gambled with what she’d been given and lost it.
‘I’m not saying nothing . . .’
Valentine’s chest was rising after the exertion of chasing her; his breath was heavy as he spoke. ‘You know the drill, Ange: you can say what I want to hear now, or you can say it down the station.’
She shook her head. ‘You’ll get me killed, you will.’
‘Oh, really . . . Like Leanne, you mean?’
Angela screwed up her features. ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That right? Funny you should say something like that when I’ve just seen Leanne cold as stone out in the wilds of Mossblown.’
Angela’s mouth opened a little, but the corners stayed closed, stuck together by a heavy application of red lipstick. She stared at the detective for a few seconds then pressed her hand to the wall as if she was looking for support.
Valentine reached out to steady her. ‘Here, sit yourself down . . .’
She folded her arms again, seemed to grip herself as if a saw blade was slicing through her middle. ‘I need a fag . . .’
‘Right, just wait.’ He went to the top of the stairs and called out to the squad in Leanne Dunn’s flat. DS McCormack came running, one hand in her bag removing a packet of cigarettes. Valentine caught the box of Benson & Hedges as she threw them and then nodded for her to join him on the stairs.
‘Here you go, love,’ he said.
Angela’s long, thin fingers, the nails bitten to the quick, shook as she opened the packet and took out the pink plastic lighter inside. She drew out a cigarette and pressed it in her mouth, and instantly the filter tip became smeared in thick lipstick. ‘I just saw her the other day . . .’
‘Had she been arguing with Danny?’
The girl looked up; her eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus. Valentine knew she would be needing a fix within an hour; her shoulders started to shiver as she spoke. ‘No. Danny was with me.’
The DI looked towards McCormack and then back at the girl. ‘Angela, I never asked you if Danny was with you.’
She flicked the cigarette ash on the stairwell, drew a deep drag from the tip. ‘But he was, all day . . . and night.’
DS McCormack was moving her head from left to right as Valentine looked up from the stairs. He placed the sole of his shoe on the step Angela was sitting on and leaned forward. Before speaking, he pinched the tip of his nose between thumb and forefinger and took a sharp breath. ‘Look, Angela, I want you to think very carefully about what you’re saying . . .’
She jerked her gaze towards him. ‘He was with me.’
‘Ange, I’m not buying that. It sounds too rehearsed to me.’
She returned her eyes front and brought the cigarette to her lips once more. ‘I’m not saying any more.’
Valentine stepped away. He straightened his back and motioned for DS McCormack to follow him to the foot of the stairs.
‘What do you make of that?’ he said in a whisper.
‘She’s lying.’
‘No kidding . . . Do you think Gillon’s put her up to it or is she acting on instinct?’
McCormack turned to look at the prostitute. ‘Hard to say.’
‘Right, get her down the station and let her sweat for a bit . . . She’ll be scratching at the walls for a fix soon enough. We can try her again then.’
‘Yes, boss.’