DI Bob Valentine knew his options were rapidly running out. He couldn’t count on Danny Gillon to reveal any more information, and what he had revealed was something and nothing. The nothing part of it was already knowledge to Valentine, of a sort, though the confirmation that Urquhart and Knox were connected through Leanne did little to further his understanding of the murders that had been committed. The something – that Cameron Sinclair had been probing the case’s seedy underside – was, he supposed, to be expected. It would take a wilful naivety on his part to assume the Rossi affair and Sinclair’s own suspension from the Glasgow-Sun would thwart his ambitions any; he was in too much of a hurry and too rash a man. Quite what the consequences of Sinclair’s actions had been remained unknown – the detective knew it wouldn’t be without recrimination, but questioned how far he would go.
The part that puzzled Valentine the most was Gillon’s revelation about the length of time Leanne had been known to Urquhart and Knox. If he was to be believed then she had been abused in care when she was still a child, and the timing was close to the disappearance of Janie Cooper. Was there a wider paedophile ring in operation? If there was, and he felt certain of it, then it was on his patch and had some history. The roots would go deep. Valentine scrunched his eyes and tried to process the thoughts that were galloping through his mind. There would be another case now: a cold investigation of the children’s home and the broad sweep of Urquhart and Knox’s associations. He could see the helical strands of the cases intertwining, but he knew he must separate them. It was impossible to process so many possibilities, so many ‘what ifs’ and ‘wherebys’. The detective’s main target had to be the murder investigations that were in hand and the rest would have to wait, but the cries of justice for the children burned like a fierce acid corroding him from the inside.
The skies outside King Street station were already darkening as Valentine stood at the window stroking a deep ache inside his ribcage. He watched an old man navigate the road as the wind picked up, blowing a stray newspaper that attached itself to the man’s leg. Another man, younger, made to wrestle the paper from him; the scene was almost comical, had the quality of slapstick, but the detective felt too raw to be amused. He turned from the window and walked back towards the main incident room. DS McAlister stood by his desk, deep lines standing out on his forehead as he crossed the floor towards the board.
‘What’s that you’re sticking up, Ally?’ said Valentine.
McAlister turned round to face him. A dull glaze had settled on his eyes. ‘The Sinclair stuff, sir . . .’
‘Give me that.’ He snatched the papers from his hand. ‘We’ll keep that to ourselves for now.’
‘But . . .’
Valentine cut him down. ‘No buts about it, Ally, if Dino gets wind of Gillon’s ramblings then she’ll be on us like a dog on chips.’
McAlister bowed to superior wisdom. ‘I called the paper . . . spoke to the editor.’
‘What did Jack have to say for himself?’
‘Hasn’t heard from Sinclair since his suspension over the bribery allegations.’
‘Did you believe him?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, I’d no reason not to. He didn’t go as far as calling Sinclair a square peg, but I got the impression he was a bit surprised that I seemed so interested in him.’
‘Just because he’s a public schoolboy doesn’t make him as pure as the driven snow, Ally.’
‘I know. Anyway, Phil and Sylvia checked out his flat and he’s not there. They’re going to check a few hacks’ drinkers on their way back.’
‘He’s not there?’
‘Aye, he gave a forwarding address of a guest house in Queen’s Terrace, but he was only there for the one night.’
Valentine cached away a mounting frustration. He raised himself onto the edge of the nearest desk and listened to the hammering inside the smithy of his mind. ‘Right, get onto all your touts, even the ones you haven’t seen for a while, and find him. Bloody Ayr’s not got that big and he isn’t the invisible man.’
‘Yes, boss . . .’ He stood splay-legged for a moment and then eased himself onto the adjacent desk. ‘What’s going on, sir?’
Valentine threw up his hands. ‘At this stage, Ally, who knows?’
‘Do you see Sinclair in the frame?’
‘What’s his motive?’
McAlister shrugged and let his vision drift. ‘Well, it’s a cracking story whichever way you look at it.’
‘Oh, come on, that’s taking manufacturing the news a bit far.’
He slid off the desk. ‘Well, maybe he had some connection to Urquhart and Knox that we’ve not seen . . . We’ve not been looking at Sinclair.’
‘So he’s an unknown factor to us . . . So are you, Ally, we haven’t looked into your background on this one: does that make you a suspect?’
‘Get real, sir.’
Valentine smirked; he took the putdown because he deserved it. ‘Who’s to say you’re not on the right lines, Ally? The truth of the matter is right now we don’t know. There are too many variables. Has Sinclair been up to something? Yes, I’ve no doubt. And has Gillon been up to something too? Yes, I’ve no doubt about that.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Where can we go? We can’t magic up extra variables to the mix . . . we have to wait and see.’
‘Dino will love that. She went out that door tonight expecting us to have it wrapped up by the morning.’
Valentine shook his head: the mere mention of the chief super’s name stuck a spike in an exposed nerve. ‘Bloody deluded bitch . . .’
McAlister gnawed his bottom lip as he spoke. ‘You know she’s going to drop the bomb tomorrow morning.’
‘Not if we don’t give her the chance.’
‘Meaning?’
The DI raised himself from the desk and headed for the glassed-off office at the end of the room. ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Get onto those touts now, and don’t expect to get home tonight!’
DS McAlister collected his jacket from the back of his chair and headed for the door as Valentine stepped into his office. He stood for a moment in the centre of the room and dipped his head; there was a penny sitting on the ground that compelled him to pick it up. As he reached down for the coin he remembered his grandmother; he hadn’t thought of her for a long time.
‘Pennies from heaven . . .’
He took the penny, walked towards his desk, removed his chair and sat down. As he looked at the shiny coin, he turned it over in his fingers. It seemed to sing to him of times gone by. His grandmother had been a superstitious woman; she would never allow a hat on a bed or an umbrella raised indoors. If a cat crossed her path there was a reason for it and a spilled saltcellar took a pinch over the shoulder. He smiled thinking of her now: she had been a kind woman, he had always remembered her that way. She once told him, when he was a young boy, that when you found a penny it was someone in heaven’s way of telling you that they were with you, thinking of you. He smiled at the coin, and the memory of his grandmother, and wondered who in the heavens would be watching over him now.
The blue folder containing the details from the Janie Cooper case was still sitting on his desk. He turned over the cover and saw the picture of the little girl staring back at him. The image of the doll was there too, sticking out from beneath a sheaf of notes. She had been swinging the doll and smiling at him when he passed out at the Coopers’ home. Since that day he had tried to push the image from his mind and tell himself that it hadn’t happened. He knew DS McCormack thought differently, but she had her reasons for that. There may indeed be more things on heaven and Earth, as she said, but he was a man of reason and hoped to remain so. Valentine didn’t want to rely on guesswork to find the killer of three people and solve the disappearance of a schoolgirl more than a decade ago, but the more he searched the further he seemed to get from a solution. He leaned over the desk and put his head in his hands. The blood was rushing hot in his veins. For a moment the sounds of the street brimmed in his ears and then lapsed into no more than a dull humming. He could have been anywhere: at home, on a beach, it didn’t matter. He was tired, he wanted to rest, and was ready to give in to sleep. He knew his body was not what it had once been, he was weaker now, perhaps too weak for the job he had taken on, but it was too late to make that conclusion. The detective would see the job out now, even if it killed him.
As he removed his hands from his eye sockets and allowed his gaze to take in the full extent of the incident room, he spotted DS Donnelly and DS McCormack walking through the door. A brief pang of optimism lit inside him and he rose from his chair and tapped on the windowpane to beckon them in. As he checked the clock on the far side of the room, he knew the evening news headlines were just about to start. He was leaning over to switch on the television as the officers came in.
‘Hello, sir,’ said DS Donnelly, his voice a low growl.
‘Well . . . What did you turn up?’ said Valentine.
Donnelly sighed and motioned to DS McCormack.
‘Not good, sir,’ she said.
‘What do you mean, not good?’
‘We did the usual points of interest . . . Nothing. No one’s seen hide nor hair of Sinclair for days.’
‘Have you rung the B&Bs . . . the hotel bookings?’
‘Yes, boss, we tried that,’ said Donnelly. ‘What are the odds on him booking himself under his own name? He’s not stupid.’
DS McCormack spoke up. ‘And he obviously doesn’t want to be found . . . Apparently he was a regular in the Phoenix – there every night – and two days ago he vanished without trace.’
Valentine flagged the officers down. ‘Right, shush . . . I want to hear this.’
As the news headlines played on the small portable screen, he reached down to turn up the volume. The familiar face of the early evening news anchor read out an abridged snapshot of the day’s events: a fatal road accident on the A9 was followed by a Royal visit to Deeside and a factory closure in Broxburn. There was no mention anywhere of the west coast of Scotland; for once, Ayrshire was gratefully ignored.
‘Well, that’s something,’ said McCormack. ‘Gives us some breathing space.’
Valentine flicked off the television. ‘Maybe twelve hours if we’re lucky.’
The officers looked at each other with heavy eyes.
‘So, what now, boss?’ said Donnelly.
Valentine’s answer was short. ‘Nothing.’
‘Come again?’
‘Unless you’re hiding something that’s going to spark my interest, Phil, then nothing . . . You might as well both go home.’
They glanced at each other again.
McCormack pitched up on her toes and raised her voice. ‘Well, we can keep searching the town for Sinclair.’
‘And what makes you think you’ll do any better than uniform? It’s like Phil said: he’s smart and doesn’t want to be found.’
‘So we just give up?’ said Donnelly, his voice following the same peaks as McCormack’s.
Valentine shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that. I said you both go home and get some rest; it’s been a long day. If anything changes, I’ll let you know. I’d sooner have you both fresh for tomorrow.’
Donnelly inflated his cheeks and exhaled slowly. He turned for the door and waved farewell to the others. When he had left, DS McCormack lowered her voice to a near whisper. ‘Is everything OK, sir?’
Valentine turned back to the television screen and pressed the on switch. ‘Perfectly, Sylvia. Go home.’ He turned to wave her out of his office. ‘You heard me, give me some peace to catch the headlines on the other channel.’
The detective reclined in his chair and raised his ankle towards his knee. He stared through the blinds towards the bottom of the incident room and watched Donnelly and McCormack put on their coats and make their way through the door. As he returned to the television screen, he lunged forward and flicked the channel to the other side. He felt sure that both stations ran with much the same output, but wanted to check. He sat through twenty minutes of trivia masquerading as news-entertainment, a schedule of football fixtures aimed at the recently lobotomised and a weather report by a glamour model in a cocktail dress. When he was sure Ayrshire was not making the headlines on any of the main stations, he switched the television set off and closed his eyes before lowering his head onto the desk and giving in to his exhaustion.
DS McAlister was arriving back in the empty office when Valentine next looked up. The large incident room was empty, with only the hum of strip lights and the occasional gurgle from the coffee machine attempting to suggest otherwise. McAlister didn’t seem to notice the detective until he called out on his way to greet him.
‘Any luck, son?’ said Valentine.
McAlister stood silently, his face stone as he shook his head.
‘Not a thing. I don’t know what to say, boss.’
‘You don’t need to say anything.’
‘Well, there’s nothing to say . . .’
Valentine pulled out a chair and directed McAlister to sit down. He reached out for another chair and dragged it by its castors towards him, then sat with his chest leaning on the chair’s high back.
‘Look, Ally, I know you want this bastard as much as I do. I can see it: that’s why I bumped you up to DS when Paulo lost the plot . . .’
‘You’re not wrong, boss.’
‘But I don’t want you to think you owe me for that. You deserved the promotion and it was coming your way sooner or later.’
He looked perplexed, shrugging and showing his palms. ‘OK . . .’
‘You see, I’m going to ask you to do something, but you don’t have to say yes.’
His eyes widened. ‘Do something . . . What?’
‘Now remember you’re under no obligation. You can say no and I won’t hold it against you.’
‘I understand what you’re saying, boss.’
Valentine leaned back from the chair; he decided he might be more comfortable standing. ‘You’ve got your whole career in front of you, son, and you have to think about that, but if you’re game, and you trust me, I think we can close this case tonight.’
McAlister pressed the palms of his hands firmly onto his trouser fronts. His jaw was tight in his face as he spoke. ‘Well, I’m in . . . Just tell me what you want me to do.’
The detective reached a hand out and placed it on DS McAlister’s shoulder. ‘Good, lad.’