‘Where has bloody Anderson gone?’
‘On another jolly with Griffin? Who knows? He tells us nothing these days.’
The phone went; they all looked at each other. It was Wyngate who picked it up. He was nearest. His face was devoid of expression. ‘It matches. The DNA matches.’
‘So the woman living at number twelve is indeed Lorna Gyle, as she said she was,’ pondered Costello, confused. ‘And the foot and the head also belong to Lorna Gyle.’
‘Yes, so she is alive and dead. She’s identical twins.’
‘Or, or,’ said Mulholland, proving that he was paying attention, ‘two options. One: Lorna Gyle has had a foot transplant, which we presume the woman living at number twelve has not as she is a gym bunny, goes running, does all kinds of healthy shit.’
‘Option two?’
‘The Sherlock Holmes option. If that foot belongs to Lorna Gyle, then Lorna Gyle is dead. That must be true. We don’t actually know whose hair sample that is; we don’t know whose hairbrush that was.’
‘OK,’ said Costello. ‘Say I wanted to be Lorna Gyle. What would I do? Get to know her, study her, read her book. We are similar build, similar age …’
‘She has the advantage of already having an assumed identity.’
‘Yes, good point, so I would tattoo myself with birthmarks or scars, then change my hair, my face, my weight. I am unrecognizable from who I was and would be accepted as a Lorna Gyle who needed to change.’
‘And Anderson fell for it. He was played.’
‘He was vulnerable.’
‘And why do all that to not be “Lorna Gyle”? The woman at number twelve is not putting herself out there.’
‘The money,’ suggested Costello. ‘She got paid a huge sum for that book, she got the house and … oh hell. A nice identity for somebody who wanted to shed their own.’ She looked round the room, pointed at the wall. ‘Lorna’s adoptive mother died in a hit-and-run. Car never traced, weird marks on her leg that they couldn’t ID.’
‘Is there anybody around who can identify her? Lorna, I mean. As an adult?’
They thought.
‘Her dad? Aird?’
Costello phoned Anderson again. His phone was switched off.
An hour later, Jennifer felt much better; the sun on her back, a cup of warm coffee in her hand, put there by a man who had cleaned a dirty cup without comment. The coffee was strong, and milky. He had gone away and brought back some milk from his own fridge, and a wee bit of whisky for the bairn, as he called Robbie. The fractious two-year-old was now in his car seat in the middle of the floor, having had some milk with a few drops of whisky in it. He had sucked at it hungrily, and had promptly gone off to sleep. The old man had swung him around a few times, wrapping him up tight in his blanket, binding him round his arms and legs.
‘You are not supposed to do that nowadays,’ said Jennifer from her seat on the step, getting some sun but staying in from the rain, looking at the dark clouds coming over.
‘It works with lambs, it’ll work with this wee beastie.’
Jennifer called Robbie a traitor under her breath and took another nibble out of her doughnut. It was a good one with a really tarty jammy centre. ‘Where did you get these?’ she asked.
‘That new place on the parade. Coffee tastes like goats’ piss, but the cakes are good.’
Bloody hell, he meant the patisserie; it was a bloody fortune in there. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled. ‘I haven’t eaten today, I need to take a painkiller.’ She tried to get up to the box on the worktop but he got to his feet before her. It was an easy reach for him to pass them over. He went to get them. She stayed on the step. The old collie wandered into the kitchen and looked at her with one blue eye, one brown eye. It sniffed at her, circled round and lay down behind her. Her warm body at the small of Jennifer’s back. Quiet dog, quiet baby, a little sunshine, having a coffee and a doughnut with a paedophile serial killer old geezer.
There were worse ways to die.
Jock was back with her handbag which contained the painkillers. He handed it to her.
‘So what happened last night, when you went downstairs into the basement? I saw the police earlier, quite a commotion going on.’
‘I got a fright when the wall came away, and there was this head. It had big eyes and a big grin, like it was wearing false teeth. It was awful. I thought it was you.’ She sipped her coffee, the dihydrocodeine was kicking in. She was feeling a bit more human. ‘Sorry if that sounded rude.’
But he laughed, folding his arms, making himself comfy on the wall of the back step. Not too close to her, not too far away.
‘Do you ever see anybody at the end of your garden?’
‘Like what? Fairies?’
‘Oh, dinnae mock it. You’ve no idea what I’ve seen in the woods after I’ve had a wee dram or two. No, I mean, there is a path at the bottom of your garden, so somebody must use it.’
‘I’ve never been down to the bottom of the garden,’ she confessed, letting the sun relax her and warm her bones. If the rain stopped, she could put a wash on and get it out to dry. She needed to go and see Gordy in the hospital. There were a hundred and one things she needed to do.
‘Never see any men creeping about?’
She opened her eyes at that. She had. She had told Colin Anderson. In fact, she had thought it was Jock, but she couldn’t say that now, not now he was here making her coffee and giving her doughnuts. ‘No.’
‘Is your man coming home to take you to the hospital?’
‘No, I’ll get the bus.’ She answered quickly; it was too painful to think about Douglas and her being a nobody. ‘I should really get going.’ She realized how long they had been sitting there – too long. It would be dark soon.
‘Well, I’ll let you get ready. You smell like a pigsty, hen, but I’ll come back and get you, run you down to the hospital, I’ll just take the dog out.’
There was a ping.
‘Oh, that’s my phone, it’s been out of charge.’ There was a text. That might be Douglas. Jock reached over the worktop and unplugged her phone, handing it to her.
It was from Colin Anderson, sent on the Wednesday night. A polite request to help in a police reconstruction – just to walk through the woods with the boy and sit at the Doon. He would meet her there. There would be police around; she was to ignore them.
She phoned him back but got his voicemail. Then she phoned the station and spoke to somebody, saying that would be fine and sorry for not getting back to him earlier, but she had only just got the message.
‘He’s so nice,’ she said to Aird. ‘I’ll see Gordy later, Colin will run me over there after we’ve done this.’
Jock stayed at his counter in the kitchen, listening. ‘Did he mention it when he was in earlier?’
‘No, he got a bit of a shock. But he did come in to tell me something. He must have forgotten.’
Aird looked at his watch. No time to walk the dog; he was going back to his house to get his gun out the cabinet.
Anderson was neck-deep in water that swirled around him, angry at him. The flow of water coming from somewhere, along a culvert of some deep waterway that had jagged walls and a rough floor. He stumbled through the water, often going under. He tried to climb over rocks on the bed of the ancient river, piles of stones where the roof had collapsed. He often had to crouch under the rocks that made up the roof, where bits of concrete jutted out.
He was moving along like a monkey in a tunnel of water. The bloody rats were with him every step. The force of the water washed them towards him and he struggled on all fours against the force of the flow. One thing in his mind was that the crisp packet was recent. And he could see daylight from somewhere, playing on the black, seething water ahead. The crisp packet had washed down here from a drain or a culvert, and from there he might be able to attract attention. He was trying to ignore the thumping in his head, and the pain that was growing in his head. Something kept blinding him, pouring into his right eye so he couldn’t see. He couldn’t afford to panic.
He couldn’t afford not to panic.
This was water – cold, freezing, dirty water with rats.
But there was no fire.
So on he went.
Stumbling in the darkness, the rocks cutting his feet, thinking about Lorna and what had brought her to this, how scared she had been. He felt himself going under for a third time.
Now he found it difficult to get up; tired, tiring, too tired … He swirled around underneath, clambering to get back to the surface; it was very turbulent here, and he saw why. The joining of two waterways: one looked manmade; the other natural, old. He tried to see along it.
The little ray of daylight was getting closer.
A little ray of hope.
And there was a waterfall, like a curtain of burnt umber. A grated drain cover above. High above him. He needed to climb, if he could reach it. He could call for help, shout. Anything. So he started to clamber, his bleeding, broken hands trying to grip the brick wall of the drain. His back hit something hard, narrow. An iron handle. Something to climb up. He took a deep breath and started.
‘Costello, why are we here? The last time we did this I nearly ended up getting burned alive.’
‘No, you didn’t, you nearly ended up getting an arrow through your vital organs. If you are going to be melodramatic, at least be accurate.’ She mimicked Mulholland’s lazy, superior voice. ‘“Have you seen the phone log? Jennifer called in to confirm something, something tonight.” What a tosser! And Anderson has his phone switched off … He is not where he should be; Lorna is not where she should be. Neither is Brian, or Steven Melrose. Thank Christ for Aird and Jennifer, otherwise I’d start to think they were all bloody in it.’
‘Steven?’
‘He left the Carron Bridge Community early this afternoon. I phoned him.’
‘Why?’
‘Just wanted to noise him up a bit. I wanted to see if he would move, who he would contact. He’s in this up to his greasy little armpits. It would take him less than an hour to get here, if that is what all this is about. We have the bruising on the front of Vivienne Reid’s body and the fact that Helen McNealy was a member of the Braveheart Bangers classic car club. It’s a small link to make, but something is connecting all these crimes and we are not seeing it. Maybe Steven Melrose wanted his marriage to be over and she wouldn’t go. Who knows what happened between him and the boys? Hard though it is to accept, he wouldn’t be the first father to kill his children in anger. And somebody phoned Jennifer Lawson pretending to be Colin Anderson. And although there is no connection we can see between Jennifer and Sue, Batten thinks there may well be one in the eyes of the killer.’ Wyngate and Costello sat in her Fiat, watching the night fall and the wind rise.
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Wyngate.
‘Whatever we do, it had better be off the record, Wyngate. Colin, our DCI, was last seen with Jennifer, for God’s sake! He is messing around with a witness, and by messing around, I don’t mean in the sexual sense. I mean in the emotional sense, and if that gets out he, us, the whole shebang, could be jeopardized. By jeopardized, I mean totally fucked.’
‘So what do we do now?’ repeated Wyngate.
‘Find him and belt seven barrels of sense into him.’
‘Where do you think he will be?’
‘What’s with the questions? He was seen here, in this street. You go up to the Steeles’ place. I’ll go down to the Lawsons’.’
‘It was a nice evening earlier.’
‘Yeah, with clouds of midges hanging round street corners, waiting for us to step out so they could feast. So well done, rain. Now you won’t be itching in your bed tonight and be scratching like a scratching thing with an extra reason to be itchy.’
‘Thank you, Baldrick.’
‘You go up and chap the door, see if you can find Anderson anywhere else. I’ll go in and see if I can find Jennifer. Keep your radio with you. And hope that we don’t need them.’
Wyngate pulled up the collar of his anorak and tried to stride against the wind. The hesitant sunshine of the late afternoon had gone, leaving the sky to darken. The power of the rain increased, stinging his face as he walked into the oncoming deluge. He had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for, and even less idea of how he was supposed to see it when he couldn’t open his eyes without the rain stinging. He walked up the path of number 12 with its neat little garden and knocked on the front door. There was no response. The Chrysler was parked out on the street heading down towards the parade, and the pink Fiat was parked rather badly askew on the new slabs of the drive. There was no response at the front door, so he walked round the back, listening for any sign of life – the bump-bump of a young gym bunny listening to music, or the animated conversation of a Friday-night drama.
He could hear nothing.
Standing in the shelter of the garage, he phoned both the house number and the mobile numbers of Brian and Laura Steele. There was no answering ring from inside the house. Round the back there was no answer at the back door. He balanced himself on the planter and looked in through the kitchen window; he could see right through to the front door. The house didn’t look right. Drawers slightly open, things discarded on the floor, on the worktops. Somebody had left here in a hurry. This was his chance. He had always been the geeky backroom boy, the one who stayed in the office with his searches and his databases. Now he could prove that he could be as effective as the rest of them and as unconventional. The back door was closed, but he saw through the pane of glass that the key was in the inside lock. He picked up a small plant pot and tapped the glass sufficiently until it broke and all the glass was removed out of the small frame – enough to get his hand through without cutting himself. Within a minute he was inside the house. Once his eyes had adapted to the lack of light, he looked round the kitchen. The sink had a few dirty dishes in it, the fridge was humming away. He walked over to the state-of-the-art coffee machine, he could smell fresh coffee grounds and the steamer was still warm to his touch. So somebody had been here recently.
He ignored the quickening of his heart, the nausea that squeezed deep in his stomach. There was a noise upstairs, a shuffling sound. Then it stopped. Wyngate stayed perfectly still, then crept forward as quietly as he could, closing the door to the downstairs cupboard as he passed.
He called ‘Hello.’
No answer.
The noise happened again, closer. It was the weather; it was turning out to be a wet and stormy night. He looked into the living room – was somebody packing? A small suitcase sat on the carpet beside a pile of neatly folded clothes. Glasses, medication, keys gathered on the coffee table. Then he saw Colin Anderson’s anorak lying on the back of the settee.
OK, so he was here somewhere. Doing what, he didn’t like to think, but Costello was right. Better they found out before it became public or official.
He didn’t want to put the light on, so he went upstairs, bedroom to the front, bedroom to the back, bathroom at the top of the stairs. On the top landing he paused, no noise. Nothing at all. He called out, just to make sure. Again, no answer.
He turned into the main bedroom, black wall, red bed. Lying on the bed was Brian Steele, dressed in a dark blue suit. He could have been asleep, except people don’t sleep in their shoes. And the gash of dark red across his throat, another huge patch of blood at the bottom of his stomach. Wyngate turned round to get out as fast as he could, pulling his radio from his pocket, but he didn’t get past the bathroom door before the spray hit him in the face.