Saturday 22 August 2015
Lynda McMutrie was lying in the basement of number 10, drifting in and out of unconsciousness. Time had passed. She was hungry and really needed to empty her bladder.
She couldn’t get up on her feet. Her knee was sore; it was better to sleep to let it pass. Except each time she woke up, the pain was still there. Every time she moved, the agony in her knee was like a blunt saw going through the bone.
She shouted for help. She called. She was ignored.
God, she needed a drink.
She drifted off, the pain fading and the daydreams drifting to warm fantasies of the man in the photograph. Her face felt peculiar – prickly, but nicely prickly, as if something warm and furry was rubbing at the soft skin of her neck, like her lover when she was young. Her lover’s stubble stroking her cheek, his fingertips dancing across her eyelids. She would get up and leave the cottage, walk into the wood to meet him at the Doon and snog his face off on the Clachan Stone – in the early days, that was. Later, there would be a lot more than snogging on that stone. Her heart still gave a little flutter when she thought of the way he was then. To be truthful, her heart still did when she bumped into him now. Not that she was often out of the house these days; drink lasts a long time in the cupboard.
She thought of that poem ‘Maud Muller’, where he was the judge and she was the maid. And that last line, she couldn’t recall. Not any of it. She sailed off on a sea of sleep as she reminisced, reliving the way he nibbled at her ears, making her laugh. Lying in the grass with her good-for-nothing lover, that beautiful handsome man, and how her parents had disapproved. And how that had appealed to her rebellious nature! Oh, his fair hair, that chiselled square jaw and that wicked gleam in his eyes. He could always make her laugh. She had climbed out of her window and he would be at the bottom of the parade on his old motorbike. Which was too knackered to go anywhere, so they just sneaked into the wood instead.
Life would have been good.
It would have been so different if …
How did that bloody poem go again? Something about the saddest words being ‘If only …’
If only her parents hadn’t split them up. If only she had been strong enough to stand up to them.
He had never married. He had never left. He was still here, in front of her, constantly reminding her of a life she could have enjoyed. It was the constant regret that made her drink, but she’d never confessed that to him, the big-headed bastard.
Recalling those days, those days spent with him, deep in these woods having picnics, drinking cheap wine and smoking French cigarettes. His dog, what was it called? A wee black dog that would take biscuits out of her mouth; the dog’s little teeth nibbled her lips gently. It had tickled then and it was tickling now. What had made her remember that all of a sudden? It was a good ratter, that wee dog.
On Saturday morning, Jock climbed the opposite way, going round the north end of cottages to get on to the hills before cutting back to his own house. He wanted to see what the new development was doing.
Down on the street he could see the line of official cars at the side of the wood. So the police were still interested in something. He looked down into the Steeles’ back garden as he went past. Their plastic grass was very green but unconvincing.
The drunken bitch at number 10 hadn’t been seen for a few days, so she would be on a bender. At number 4, the Broadfoots’ garden was almost under water. Next door, the scarfed harpy had taken the kids and the cleaned-up dog to the summer cottage for the weekend. Dad was in hospital, so it was left to the Polish nanny to pop in and feed the goat and the chickens.
The wee lassie at number 8 hadn’t been seen since they went off in a police car yesterday.
All food for thought. The husband certainly wasn’t back for the weekend.
His curiosity salved, he went on his way. Betty following him so close he could feel her body on the side of his leg. They walked round the back of his own house, up the path to the old graveyard. He had seen the cops on the hill looking for disturbance. There was nothing obvious on the surface, but Jock knew what he was looking for, what the cops would miss. They needed to know the land. The grass undulated under his steps, where the lairs had dropped down, the soil eaten away. Some of the movement had been slow; that was usual in an untended graveyard like this one, and the grass had time to adapt and grow longer in the nitrogen-rich burial site, and hid the depressions in the ground. So the seemingly flat surface was a trap to unwary walkers and hikers taking a short-cut. It was being eaten away from underneath in a slow, ongoing process of decay. Just like what was happening in the street below.
Jock was looking for something more recent, a dropping of the ground level, a precursor of a sinkhole. Eight feet long, three feet wide, and he found them exactly where he thought he would. He felt his heart weary. They were not in the contour line of the hill, but at the bottom, a gentle curve. Three of them, probably only visible from this elevated viewpoint. It was recent enough for fresh earth to show; earth as fresh as that on the side of the sinkhole outside the wanker’s house.
He found a depression under his toe and felt around, four inches deep for most of its six-feet length. He wondered if it had contained any of his family. Prodding with his stick told him that the soil was soft but not overly so. It was wet with the constant rainfall of the last month. They had endured rain like that here before, of course. The snow and ice drifts eventually melted and ran off the hills to cause problems, but not like this. He walked on, past the remains of the old church. Betty, keen on the newly exposed soil, trotted around, nose to the ground, exploring then sniffing then sneezing. On he walked, up the slow rise of the hill that began at the back of his house. It took him forty minutes to get to the top; this hill, Saircoch, was an old extension of the Kilpatricks, the run-off here was down to the Clyde eventually.
Eventually.
The land in the woods was dry and it shouldn’t be. Over the years he had installed a drainage system that was now wet, but not flooded, not overwhelmed the way they should be in this weather.
Jock Aird was an old man who knew the course of the rivers before the intervention of Scottish Water, before the row of cottages had been built, before the new development at the back of the hill was begun.
At the moment the north side of the Clyde had more water than they knew what to do with. The overground rivers were obvious, the underground rivers were secretive. A few folk knew about the Molendinar, the river that ran under Glasgow. It was a tributary to the Clyde, little more than a stream or a trickle at times. And the Dorcha, the obscure river, that was probably running somewhere under his feet right now.
He finally got to the top of the hill and took a deep breath. Betty made her way up slowly behind him, sitting down beside his leg and panting, her tongue lolling, getting her breath back. Jock knew how she felt.
He didn’t want to look down but he did. The building work was well under way. That bastard Gregor had put in a lot of work. The plots pegged out, grass disrupted in a central channel. Beyond lay a field of detritus, that looked suspiciously like landfill, illegal landfill. They had already started work on the perimeter wall of what was going to be a gated development. If they got planning permission. They must be confident of success, then, to go ahead with the expense of building the wall.
Jock felt his heartbeat give a little dance, a sharp pain flitted across his chest. He took a few deep breaths and decided to stand there a little longer until the fire in his legs subsided.
He needed to get back down the hill, but before he left the summit, he took one final look. Underground rivers were like icebergs. It was the unseen that was dangerous. By the time it made itself known, it was too late.
Costello had found it difficult to sleep, the blister on her foot constantly nipping, a doubt nagging at the back of her mind, a doubt about Colin. Something she didn’t feel she could tell anybody about. Not without feeling disloyal.
She had taken a copy disc of the crime-scene photographs home with her last night. It had kept her up until the small hours. Anderson hadn’t asked to look at it, although Mulholland had the relevant images printed out ready.
She had phoned into the office before driving out to the site, leaving a message to say she wanted a better sense of where this had all happened, and asked Wyngate if anything had been actioned. He got back to her as she was turning into Altmore Road, just before eight a.m.
His text was succinct. No.
Once she had parked her Fiat behind the pathologist’s Vectra, she called Wyngate back and asked him to look into the background of all the players involved in 1992. All of them. Professors O’Hare and Darvel were at the sinkhole, supervising the sifting of the water from the churning depths. They walked around in their plastic suits, each with a dark blue anorak on top, discussing the contents of small trays that emerged like magic from out of the hole. As she approached they were in deep discussion over something small and brown which was lifted with a delicate gloved hand; their touch was reverent. So Costello didn’t need to ask if the bones were human.
‘This is the sixth time I’ve got wet in two days,’ she said to the pathologist.
‘Eighth for me. You should be used to it,’ replied O’Hare.
‘I’ve never actually dried out,’ added Darvel, holding a small white fragment to her eye.
‘We have nothing to report, not yet. When we do report the nothing that we have to report, do we report to you or Colin?’
Costello was used to the double-talk. ‘To me, if you want anything done with it.’
‘Not good then?’
Darvel sidled away, showing a respect for other people’s privacy that struck Costello as remarkable. She herself would have leaned in closer, so she didn’t miss a word.
‘Under par, not on the ball. Not at all.’
‘Good God, the man has been off on the sick for over a year. He’s back for less than an hour when he’s thrown into this. Give him a chance to get his hand in, at least.’
‘You should have seen him with that Jennifer woman; he was desperate to get in there and help wipe bottoms and stuff. Doing his Driving Miss Daisy routine to take her to hospital.’
O’Hare raised a grey caterpillar of an eyebrow.
‘He got that daft misty look in his eyes as soon as he saw her, all lonely with those two wee snotty-nosed ankle-biters. Him and his knight-in-shining-armour complex.’
‘I’m sure Prof Batten will have a name for it – post-traumatic hyper-empathy, or something. It will be a condition. Or a syndrome. Names for bloody everything. If you’re not on a spectrum, you don’t exist nowadays.’
Costello dusted the raindrops from her hood. ‘He’s a bloody soft touch. She is not a single parent. She has a husband who should get his arse booted and dragged back to base to look after his own fricking kids.’
‘And who else do you know who works all the hours God sends and leaves his wife alone with two children? Anderson spent his whole career doing that, he’s probably looking at that relationship in the light of his own experience and trying to make it right.’
‘Or he was skiving. He’s not doing so good.’ She nodded to the tray of brown-pitted bones lying on the tray, covered with a Perspex lid. ‘And what about him?’
‘He’s not doing so good either.’
Knowing that was all she was going to get, she said, ‘Speak to you later then.’ She walked away, checking her phone. As soon as there was confirmation of human bones in this street, the press liaison office would be in touch. Andrew Gyle’s solicitor – somebody Rossi, she recalled from the file – would be vocal, twitching his nose for a right to appeal. Same song, different tune.
Walker had instructed that the brief was to show there was no exculpatory evidence for Gyle here. They needed it to be clear; all had been considered and accounted for. She walked on up Altmore Road, wondering who was watching from behind the curtains. The street was quiet compared to the circus of the day before, but the skies were still heavy, damp, with dark, threatening clouds. Costello wiped the rainwater from the end of her nose. Her hood seemed to be a special type that funnelled the raindrops into her eyes. Rossi, Gyle’s lawyer, was being bankrolled by somebody. He seemed to have a never-ending supply of money to spend on defending Gyle. Wherever he was getting the funds from, it wouldn’t be from the sale of the property on this crummy wee street. Why was Gyle still protesting his innocence? He had still been at the scene, covered in blood, when the first officer appeared.
Costello was now paused at the gap in the rhoddies, the way into the wood. The mud footprints showed the path was well used but not overly so, the grass had not worn bare. Twenty-three years ago, Sue had walked through here with the boys. She had met Gyle, her argumentative next-door neighbour, by chance. Something was said. Gyle lost the plot. He attacked them. The weapon only had his DNA.
Nobody ever claimed it was premeditated, but any argument of innocence was a load of bollocks.
Walker would have been a young fiscal in those days. Was he harbouring any doubts? Or was this a PR exercise? Costello had seen mistakes in cases like this before. Even in the Shadowman case, people got carried away in the horror of it. They wanted it closed. Gyle was there, cut and dried. Maybe the SIO signed off on a ground search that was little more than a quick look around. Maybe the forensics were restricted to supporting evidence. Twenty-three years later they had a sinkhole with some bones in it, which Costello hoped were entirely unconnected.
Most folk didn’t give a shit if Andrew Gyle rotted in that cell. She picked up her phone again. ‘Wyngate? Gyle had a daughter, didn’t he?’
‘Yip.’ She heard a slurp, Wyngate was enjoying a morning coffee. ‘Lorna Gyle. Wrote Friday’s Child, her biog. It was a bestseller.’
‘I recognize the title.’
‘Batten has dropped in a copy. He’s read it.’
‘Ta, I’ll call him.’ She redialled.
‘Hi. This book, Friday’s Child? What’s it about? Can’t be arsed reading it.’
‘Good morning to you.’ He went into a fit of coughing. ‘This bloody weather.’
‘Not the forty-a-day then.’
He ignored her. ‘It is a very unsensational book. Quite fascinating. A simple family, Mum, Dad and a wee girl. Fate threw a lot at that family, stuff that everybody could relate to. Gyle was the everyman murderer just as much as Sue was the everywoman victim. Society pretty much lined itself up on those two lines. Gyle was a good man who snapped. That was his Lorna’s opinion. It’s a touching tale, Costello. But Gyle himself has refused to join any media circus, he just reiterates his innocence. He believes the person or persons who carried out the triple murder is still out there.’
‘I am at the woods. There is nothing here to mark the site, nothing. Is that odd?’
‘It was five years before Diana’s death – we didn’t go around leaving flower shrines all over the place in those days. The bodies were cremated; there is nothing to become an attraction for the morbid tourist.’
‘I think it’s odd.’
‘Can you visit your brother’s grave?’ asked Batten.
‘No,’ Costello ended the call. Batten was too good at his job sometimes.
She turned her head to the sky and pulled down her hood, letting the rain cool her face and soak her hair. She thought for a few minutes, enjoying the silence. Without looking she phoned Wyngate back. ‘Specifically, trace Lorna Gyle for me?’ Then added, ‘And Steven Melrose.’