Anderson found himself looking at an extremely attractive woman dressed in her well-fitting gym gear. Her long blonde hair had worked its way loose from its elastic grip, falling over her forehead. She was pretty, slim, her make-up disguised any natural imperfections. She sported light brown tattooed eyebrows, with lips either naturally full or slightly enhanced. She didn’t look as if she had gone for the full, I’ve been smacked in the mouth by a dead kipper look yet, but she might succumb in a few years.
‘So how can I help you?’ he asked, but he thought he knew the answer to the question.
‘I haven’t told anybody that I am here, but I guessed that Brian had phoned you. He was trying to tell you to leave me alone, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. He is very protective of you.’
She looked up and down the street. It would have been comical if she wasn’t so obviously distressed.
‘Danny’s Coffee is still open,’ he suggested. ‘Neutral territory. Laura.’
They settled in, both of them uncomfortable. They ordered. She took a black coffee, having a look at the Fitbit on her wrist.
‘Does that help? Surely you are not watching your weight?’ He realized it was a crass thing to say. ‘I mean, with you being an owner of a gym and everything, I thought you would not need those.’
‘I have a very sweet tooth I need to watch.’ A shy smile. She had no idea how pretty she was.
The coffees came. She folded her arms, sat head down looking at her cup. ‘I need to tell you something and I would like you to promise that it will not go any further.’
He was about to say yes, then reconsidered. He was a DCI. ‘I can’t promise that, not if it has a bearing on the case. If not, it can stay off the record.’
‘What is the case?’
‘We have a missing person.’
‘Oh well, I am not missing.’
‘But your husband did not seem keen that it became public knowledge who you were.’
‘Where I am,’ she corrected, shifting uneasily in her seat. ‘It’s that the street, by association, is infamous. It might get into the media, and once it is out there, it is really out there.’ She looked down, picked at a manicured nail, asking a question she did not want answered. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with the Melrose murders? It said in the paper that the case was being reopened.’
‘I can assure you that’s not true.’
There was something in the way she said it, a wariness about her eyes, that made Anderson lean forward. A sheet of long blonde hair tripped over her face; she pulled it back, her left arm moving over her forehead to clasp it back, fingers moving deftly. He saw a bad scar on the top of her shoulder.
‘Did Andrew Gyle do it?’ she asked.
‘All the evidence points that way. At the risk of repeating myself, why do you want to know?’
She picked up a napkin with her fine manicured fingers, folded it carefully and wiped a tear from under her eye. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not used to talking about it.’
‘It’s OK, just take your time.’
‘I was married two years ago. Before that I was Reid, Laura Reid. I changed my name aged eight when I was legally adopted by a lovely woman called Vivienne Reid. But I’d changed my name before, much younger than that.’
‘And what was your name?’ he asked, looking into her dark blue eyes and knowing the answer.
A tear filled the corner of her eye. ‘Lorna. Lorna Gyle.’
They ordered another coffee. She had relaxed now that the difficult part of the conversation was over.
‘I am sorry to ask this, but do you recall anything of that day?’
‘No,’ Laura shook her head. ‘I had all kinds of things done to me.’
‘Why?’ he asked, vaguely thinking of Jock Aird.
‘To help me remember. But I have only vague memories. My dad went away. On the Friday my mum told me he might not be coming back. We went to a hotel but then my mum was taken to hospital. I was taken to stay with a foster mother. She was nice, but that was only for a couple of days. I know that Jock came to see me, he took me out for cream soda. Every time I see that on a menu, I think of him, yet mum didn’t like him coming round the house. I never noticed.’
Anderson couldn’t bring himself to ask the obvious question. What exactly was the adult in front of him telling him about the child she had been?
‘Then I went to live with Vivienne and Nick; they were very good to me. My memory seems to restart at that point.’
Anderson remembered Batten saying that if a personality resists a memory, it will simply invent a new set of memories.
‘It was my mum who really left. My dad killed these people and is effectively dead to me. He was there, then he was gone, but it took my mother a long time to die and I watched her suffer. My memory cuts off at the point she died. November the sixth, 1992. Another Friday. I know this will sound hard but I am not that person. I have returned there and faced my demons.’
‘You are not scared of Jock any more?’
Her bright eyes sparkled, a look of fear then gratitude as she realized they were on the same wavelength. ‘I have a new life with Brian. I am not that victim. We have a good professional reputation. So you can see why I don’t want any of that getting out. I don’t want them knowing who I am. Especially Jock Aird.’ Her words were hard, rattled out like bullets.
‘Has he not recognized you?’ asked Anderson.
‘He’s an old guy with bad eyes. But I don’t care if he does. I am not that victim any more,’ she repeated.
Anderson wondered if that was a therapeutic mantra for her.
‘So why move back to Altmore Road?’
‘Lorna wouldn’t have, but Laura is made of stronger stuff. Strong as Steele,’ she laughed. She had a nice laugh.
‘But to the same road? Why?’
‘Money. You will know from talking to the neighbours about McGregor Homes’ development on the other side of the hill?’
Anderson nodded.
‘So we’re sitting on a gold mine; most of us are waiting. That’s why the silly cow in number eight stays in the damp house that is killing her children. That’s why the McMutries moved but didn’t sell.’
‘But the Dirk-Huntleys are holding out.’
‘And now they’ve got a sinkhole, so go figure. The development will happen anyway, as Altmore Road will have to be re-engineered.’
‘Aird’s house stands in the way,’ pointed out Anderson.
‘And I want to be there when it falls.’
‘Hi, Jennifer Lawson?’
She walked into the room, Robbie holding tightly on to her hand. The wee guy was scared and so was she. The doctor was there, the nice one with the beautiful head with his roots in North Africa somewhere. A nurse was messing about with the sink at the corner of the room, and then there was the woman who had been talking to Douglas. She was sitting with her legs crossed, funny-coloured tights under her boots. She looked as though she should be knitting lamb’s wool in a yurt somewhere. She had an iPad in front of her, there had obviously been some discussion going on before she came in the room, and Gordy’s file was on the top of the pile.
‘Hi, Jennifer, come on and let’s have a look at Gordon. Have you seen him today?’
‘Yes, of course I have. I was told to come through here and speak to you. And we call him Gordy, he knows himself as Gordy.’
‘Of course, Jennifer this is Yvonne. Yvonne, this is Jennifer, Gordy’s mum.’
‘And this wee man must be Robert.’
‘And we call him Robbie.’
They spoke between them back and forward, including her in what they were saying but not actually talking directly to her.
At the cot side, Gordy was lying asleep in his plastic womb. He had a drip attached to his arm now.
‘He has an infection. And his condition is mild but his temperature is high. He’s vomiting, he’s not eating. You can see the redness around his eyes. He has a slight rash and the reason you brought him in was the cough. We do need to keep him here. In ninety per cent of cases, it will be fine. We need to treat him, hydrate him, and hopefully he will make a full recovery.’
Jennifer trembled, her hand gripped Robbie a little tighter.
‘Well, in young children such infection can lead to meningism. He had a seizure yesterday evening, while you were out, as you know.’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘We told your husband, I’m sure he mentioned it to you.’
Jennifer shook her head, noticing the look that passed between them. They were thinking of her as a bad mother, thinking that she could not cope, that she could not remember.
‘Your baby is ill, Jennifer.’
‘Yes, I get that. Can you make him better?’ She leaned over the cot, stroking the baby’s cheek.
‘We are from social services, we believe wee Gordy here isn’t doing too well. Would you mind if we came to have a look at the house?’ asked Yvonne, polite but insistent.
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because Gordy’s medical team have raised some concerns about him, about his welfare and where he came into contact with the rat. We need to get the house sorted before you take him home, you can see the sense of that.’
‘The rat?’
‘Yes.’
‘They said it was an infection,’ she turned to the doctor. ‘You said it was an infection, didn’t you? The rash? The skin?’
‘We just want to check that your house is suitable for the child.’
‘I have another child, he’s fine.’
They looked at each other again. ‘Robbie is three, and still in nappies? So he is not in nursery, he’s not meeting other children. He’s not developing as he should. If Gordy needs looking after, then it follows that we might have some concern about Robbie, if he is in the same house.’
Jennifer felt the ground beneath her feet shift; she took a step back. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
‘It has been reported to us that the house is unsuitable for the children. Because of the rats.’
‘I don’t have rats. If you need to come and look at it, for the kids, and make sure it is fine, that’s OK. But it is damp and the doors don’t close and there is a smell.’
‘And Gordy had a chest infection. Robbie has been coughing,’ said the doctor. ‘So I think the boys should stay here overnight, and tomorrow we will come out and see the house.’
‘Gordy can stay, I’m taking Robbie home. You will need a lawyer or something. I will tell my husband and he will get it all sorted.’ She finished with a note of triumph, holding herself back from adding, So there!
‘Jennifer, it was your husband who spoke to us. He is the one concerned.’
The drive up to the Carron Bridge Community took an hour and a half, mostly due to the terrible rain. She had heard of the community; there were a few such places dotted around Scotland, full of crystal healers, vegans, people who smelled of garlic, alternative therapists, chakra-balancing, gong-baths and past-life regressionists.
The whole place stank of shit. Bullshit.
There was a café in the middle. The alternative community was an attraction of sorts, and the citizens were not above making a few bob out of the constant influx of nosey tourists who sauntered through the carless streets, looking at the ecological lodges and the wooden pods.
Steven Melrose was easy to spot. Costello recognized him from the photographs even twenty-odd years further on. The residents of Carron Bridge were allowed to have cars, old cars, the sort that could be fixed by taking them apart and putting them back together again. Steve Melrose was an old-fashioned car mechanic, so he was a perfect fit. She stopped to read a sign that said how big the carbon footprint of new car manufacture was compared to running an old one, and beyond that was Melrose leaning over an open bonnet of a 2CV, a baldy, chubby man with a wee ponytail at the back, a goatee beard at the front.
She put her warrant card flat on the wing of the car and slid it under his nose. ‘DI Costello, Police Scotland. Can I have a word? It is Steven Melrose, isn’t it? You are not an easy man to find.’
After twenty minutes he joined her in the café, apologizing, saying that one of the rules they had here was no Swarfega. The Ecover handwash left a lot to be desired. She pushed a cranberry juice and a carob cake in front of him, and tried to make herself comfy. Her seat had no back, was carved straight from a tree, and the carpenter had left most of the splinters in. She had folded her wet jacket underneath her so was now getting a wet arse as well. Steven slipped off his own wet woollen jacket that was starting to smell worse than the puce vegan mash bubbling in a cauldron at the till. Her mind suddenly thought about how the testing on the vomit sample on the toe of Gyle’s boot was doing.
The bell on the door tinged as a man came in. Costello guessed he was in his mid-thirties. His long hair and serious face gave him the look of Neil Young in his Harvest years. The girl behind the counter with the horn in her ear smiled at him, and he sat down in the corner. But Costello did not miss the slight look of panic he cast in their direction, small-community prejudice to a stranger.
‘So what is this about? I’ve heard there has been some activity back at the old street.’
‘I’ll give it to you straight, seeing as you guys seem to believe in love and peace and truth.’
‘You won’t say anything that I haven’t heard before. But I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t spread the word about where I am, please.’ He looked at her in earnest.
‘Of course not, we only found you because we employ a computer genius and because you have a car registered to your person. An old VW Beetle.’
He nodded, as if to say fair dos. ‘So, how can I help you?’
‘To put it bluntly, was Sue as lovely as everybody makes out? She seems to have become angelic, a woman who could do no wrong. Time and tragedy tends to twist our perception of people. There are very few folk who seem to have known her still alive, you were the obvious one to track down. Her mother has passed on. Her father has got Alzheimer’s and has no reliable memory. So it is down to you. It’s difficult to find an enemy when all we are told is how lovely somebody is. Everybody annoys somebody.’
‘Old Eddie has dementia? I am sorry to hear that. But yeah, Sue was OK, she didn’t deserve what happened to her.’
‘Nobody deserved that, but that is not what I am asking.’
‘We were not getting on.’ He flashed a look over to Neil Young, who seemed to be trying to pay attention to the conversation. ‘We were not a happy couple.’ He put his hands down on the table, rattling his fingertips against it.
‘We have a statement from her mother, taken at the time, that said something like you got on well but you weren’t really what she wanted. And that the marriage would not have lasted. Is that accurate?’
He nodded. ‘I was looking for something, she was looking for something. They were not the same things. I liked going out with the dog and the fresh air, she liked loud music and shopping. But I miss my boys so much.’ He stopped, the sorrow still strong. ‘I got away.’
‘Did she do anything to wind up the neighbours?’
‘She did everything she could to wind up Andrew. It got beyond a joke. It became a bit of an obsession. She was bored. She was bored that day; she wanted to go out or something. We had no money,’ he rubbed the side of his face as if he was massaging the memory. ‘We were finding trouble paying the mortgage. I was working late, grabbing all the overtime I could get. She took a drink sometimes; I hated that when she was alone with the boys.’ He gave another small sideways glance over to Neil Young, who was now sipping something that looked like steamed mud. Melrose blurted, ‘I was the one who persuaded her to go out for a walk that evening.’
‘I don’t think I read that anywhere.’
‘I’ve never told anybody, but it was me.’
‘You weren’t to know.’ Costello nibbled her dairy-free chocolate cake. It had the texture of a brick and tasted of bitter cocoa. ‘Was there any reason she changed her clothes?’
Steven shook his head, ‘None at all.’
None that you know of. ‘From the outside, it seems people in that street acted … well, strange. Why?’
‘It’s the crowding, you know. Altmore Road is short but isolated.’
Costello narrowed her eyes.
‘I mean, look at this place. We have time to breathe and get away from it all. Sue was caught in that street with neighbours she hated, all older than her, stuck with Bobby and George. Every time she looked out that window, all she ever saw was that wood.’
‘I thought she liked it.’
‘She did on a good day. I’m sure you like trees, but don’t like to be near them when it’s blowing a gale and they are creaking and groaning. It can be very intimidating. They move and breathe you know, trees.’
‘I suppose you hug them here.’
‘Yes we do,’ he said without a trace of irony. ‘But Sue did what she wanted to do and didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought.’
‘Was she having an affair?’
Melrose thought for a long time before he answered; he swirled his cranberry juice round in the thick glass. It looked like blood. He put it down on top of the table and watched it settle. ‘Doubt it. She would have rubbed my face in it. She wouldn’t have been so bored. She was flirtatious and fun but not everybody’s cup of tea. Sorry if I can’t be any more help.’
‘Do you think Gyle did it?’
‘Nothing that Sue did warranted what he did. There’s irrefutable evidence. The axe.’ His eyes clouded. ‘You could get that DNA-tested again. New techniques, but the result will be the same. And his story did not add up. The police checked if sound carried that far, from the Pulpit to the Doon. And it does not.’
Costello was about to say, well, that remains to be seen, but Melrose was pulling out his wallet.
‘Do you want to see a picture of them, as they were, at the time?’ He sniffed; it still hurt. ‘When they were alive and … well, this is how they reign in my heart.’ He opened the wallet, folded it back on itself, not wanting Costello to see the photograph on the other side, the photograph of the fresh-faced man who bore a resemblance to Neil Young, his long brown hair caressing his face. She concentrated on the picture of the two wee boys opposite, one of them wearing a sunflower hat. ‘He’d be twenty-four now, making his own way in the world.’
‘Do you have any other children?’
‘What, to replace them?’ snapped Melrose.
‘No, just wondered if you had family now.’
He went to stand up, she grasped his hand.
‘No, please don’t go. No, not yet. I think your sons deserve a wee bit more of your time.’