Erin and Rachel had left Lomondside campsite after a hearty breakfast, cooked outdoors on a single burner Calor gas stove, starting with a knob of butter melting and finishing with the full English swirling in a golden gravy of animal fat and rainwater. It tasted delicious. Then they packed up the tent and repacked their day rucksacks, leaving the bigger rucksacks to be picked up by HikeLite and taken up to the next stop at Bridge Of Orchy.
It was a three-hour walk, to be completed that morning. They hadn’t made good progress, the rain and wind had been in their faces every single step of the way.
At half eleven, there was a brief cessation in the onslaught of rain, so they decided to rest before they reached Tyndrum. They were walking cold and tight-legged. The stony path underfoot was puddle after puddle, their waterproof boots had held out for the first thirty miles of the West Highland Way and had then become absorbent. Now it was a question of keeping the water swilling around their feet warm, and keeping out the ice-cold water that lay in wait in the deeper puddles. They walked in silence, the two of them in single file. Changing every so often with one in the lead being battered by the elements, the other sheltering behind. The rain seemed to be changing direction exactly as the path changed, so it was always hitting them in the face. The weather and the conditions underfoot were challenging as the guidebook said it often was when doing winter walking on the west coast. This wasn’t pleasant hiking, this was a trial of endurance and character. The beautiful, stunning scenery was clouded, often they were walking through the clouds themselves. And it wasn’t quiet, always the splish thud of their boots on the path, the pitter-patter of rain and the squeak of their waterproofs against each other.
They were walking up to Tyndrum to the ‘By The Way’ hostel, a hot shower and a cooked meal that was devoid of rainwater. They could dry off their socks, get a rest and, hopefully, a good night’s sleep that wouldn’t be interrupted by the wind clawing and baying at the door of the tent and the constant irregular flap-flap of battered canvas.
They walked past the River Fillan, flowing high and angry, its grey waters tumbling and rushed. Two gold panners, covered in waders that reached to their armpits, and gloves that melted into a hat showing not one single flash of skin, stood on the calmer parts of the river, ever hopeful of finding a tiny nugget of a darkly glistening stone.
They turned away from the path to the river, heading north towards the hostel. They would be there in half an hour, maybe a little less if the path started to decline, a little more if the wind blew up again. They knew from the map that the lochan was ahead of them and they both wanted to see it. They had hoped the rain would clear, so they could get some photographs taken. They had been discussing it in the pub last night, warm and cosy, and more than a little drunk, looking at the map and trying to get a signal on their mobiles. As was usual in these parts, the barman proved better than Google and was happy to supply the two students of English Literature with the colourful history of the area, despite the fact that he was from the Ukraine. He told the story of Robert the Bruce throwing his sword into the lochan, a fine claymore it had been, about five-feet long and it ‘weighed a ton’. The king was being pursued at the time by a couple of armed horseman, probably English, but the details were sketchy. After a few more drams, the defenceless king single-handedly brought down the entire English army before legging it.
They were going to ask if the sword in the lochan was protected by a lady of the lake but they thought the locals might not find that funny and kept their counsel.
Sure enough at the side of the footpath, they came across the stone, a large rectangular rock with the outline of a sword carved into it. ‘They used to swing a claymore around their heads you know,’ the barman had said, ‘hacking bits off anything or anybody too close.’
The lochan nestled in the hills, mist drifting right and left, low on the dark, black surface of the loch. There didn’t seem to be any clear border between land and water, no clear line at all, greens and reds and blues, muted black and browns all melting into each other. They stood, looking in silence, catching their breath, before both of them shrugged off their rucksacks, a signal that they were going to rest a while, at least the stone gave them something to sit on.
In silence they sat, the two of them, staring out over the water. Being mesmerized by the mist drifting from left to right, right to left, slowly revealing something on the far bank. Something with legs that floated out in the black water, something with arms up on the grassy bank, somebody with fingers grasping, as if he had reached out and nearly, very nearly, made it.
Anderson closed his eyes and cursed inwardly, his exhilaration of the early morning evaporated in an instant.
They had found Donnie McCaffrey.
There was no doubt it was him. His DNA was on file. They had swabbed the body at the site and the sample had been brought down to Glasgow and processed immediately.
As Anderson was in Mitchum’s office, the boss had taken the phone call, his face had turned ashen as he had put the phone down.
Then Mitchum had warned Anderson in no uncertain terms that he was to cooperate with Mathieson and Bannon’s investigation. Totally nothing was to override this, no sense of personal loyalty, nothing.
It has to be investigated and it has to look transparent. And where the hell was Costello?
Anderson said he had no idea, as politely as he could, sitting there trying to be calm but thinking where, and when, Costello’s body was going to appear.
‘Do you think I might do better if I went north? There’s a link to my cold case rape enquiry.’ He explained about Morna’s invite, Patrick had given his consent. The look of relief on Mitchum’s face was so joyous, it was as if Santa had existed after all. ‘Go, with my blessing. It’ll keep you out of Mathieson’s claws.’
Anderson excused himself. He went to the toilet where he threw up all the coffee he had drunk that morning, burning acrid in his throat as he wretched again and again. His phone was beeping, as a wave of text messages came in. He leant against the wall of the toilets and took out his mobile, scrolling through, messages from Wyngate, Mulholland, Bannon, another couple of colleagues all wanting to know what was going on. Plus, DCI Mathieson requesting another meeting sooner rather than later. Anderson had been hoping that one would be from Costello saying something, anything. Any kind of explanation for the death of a young man.
Sometimes there is nothing scarier than silence.
Isla McCaffrey sat down on the settee, not speaking, unable to speak.
Mathieson gestured to Bannon that he should put the kettle on. They would have to get on with the investigation and the family liaison officer could do all the handholding she needed to do once they had left.
But PC Donald McCaffrey’s wife was sniffling a lot, Mathieson thought she might get further if there were some reinforcements present. ‘Do you want a friend with you? Is there somebody we can get for you?’
Isla nodded. ‘Can you get Pari, she lives next door?’ She shook her head, already worn out and wishing everybody would go away. Maybe she could go back to sleep and wake up again or go back out to Lidl and do her shopping, somehow she needed to rewind the day, rewind the last few days and get back to the point when his phone had beeped and he had looked at it and smiled. He had got up, and left. He had told her not to order too much from the Argos catalogue, don’t spend too much on the boys.
Now he was dead.
Gone. Not coming back. Ever.
The female detective was sitting in front of her now, her small pale face all bony and full of contrition. The man had gone out to get her neighbour, her friend. Pari was one of life’s calm people. She had been good when Nathan had choked, that was a midnight rush to the hospital. And when she had gone into labour with the youngest and Donnie had been at work.
A policewoman arrived, a beautiful coloured girl and she had muttered a few condolences and then gone into the kitchen to join the tall bloke who had been in the kitchen clattering cutlery. Isla could hear drawers being opened and closed now; they were looking for teaspoons and coffee.
That was one of the last things he had done before he left that night, he had loaded the dishwasher, all the dishes left from that Saturday where her mother had talked about the arrangements for Christmas dinner and he had pulled faces at her over the chicken casserole.
Now he had been killed. She couldn’t believe what they were saying now, she put her hands over her ears and kept them there, watching whose stupid red lips that never seemed to stop moving.
When she stopped talking, Isla let her hands fall, she wiped the tears from her eyes, tears of anger not sadness. All of it would hit her later, she was sure of it, but now, here in her own living room, she had a fight on her hands. Somebody had taken her husband’s life. And now the police, his colleagues, were ready to attack his reputation.
‘I am really sorry to have to go through this with you,’ said the torn-faced blonde.
Isla McCaffrey looked at her face and doubted it very much, she looked like a kid who was waiting for the gingerbread to come out the oven.
‘Sorry, can you tell me again what happened, I don’t think I’m getting this at all.’
‘I was saying that we have found Donnie’s body at a lochan up near Tyndrum,’ said Mathieson. ‘Do you know Tyndrum, thirty miles north of here, a few miles further on from Inveruglass?’
‘Why? Why was he there?’ Isla’s face was blank, the news hadn’t quite sunk in.
‘I’m really sorry, but as yet we do not know, but we are very suspicious of foul play and we are trying to ascertain—’
‘Do you think he was murdered? Donnie? My Donnie.’
‘Yes, I do. PC McCaffrey had sustained fatal injuries.’
‘What injuries? How did he die?’ asked Isla giving herself a comforting rub on the arm.
Mathieson bit the side of her lip, ignoring the warning sign from Bannon. ‘We are waiting for the post-mortem results. Do you feel you can tell us what he was doing at Inveruglass? What he was doing there that got him killed?’
Bannon had driven Mathieson from Isla’s house back to their divisional headquarters at Govan. He had tried to drive legally, with Mathieson snapping at him and swearing at other drivers who had done no wrong other than being in the vehicle in front of Mathieson. They had left Isla with speed that bordered on rudeness the minute Mathieson’s tablet had binged and she had glanced at the comments of the email attachment of five photographs. There was one nod to Isla, a brief ‘We’ll be back’ and she had stood up and was out the door, leaving Bannon to apologize, and cast a look at Pari, who caught the meaning and nodded.
‘Archie, you know we have found Donnie McCaffrey’s body earlier today.’ Mathieson sounded tired. ‘We are bringing the body down here for a post-mortem, of course, but nobody is telling me bloody anything.’
‘Yes, I know. I don’t get it. All this is connected somehow, I can’t see it. But I’m not going to stop trying. You still think that Costello has got something to do with it? And now these photographs have come to light.’ Archie Walker flicked through the photographs feeling sick to his stomach, how a whole life was about to come tumbling down. ‘Do you ever think that you never know anybody as well as you think you know them?’
‘In my job, all the time,’ said Mathieson.
Walker felt sick. He’d been sympathetic and stuck by Valerie during all the chaos that she’d brought upon herself, but there was no way he could help her get over this, indeed he wasn’t sure he wanted to. She was having her private life drama. A young police officer had lost his life. No contest. ‘I’m struggling to understand these.’
The photographs were so incriminating that even Mathieson was quietly empathetic. ‘I’m sorry, Archie, but these put a totally different spin on the situation.’ She took the photographs from the procurator fiscal’s shaking hand and flicked through them looking for one in particular. The one that showed George Haggerty and Valerie Abernethy in a tight embrace. He had his hands cupping her jaw. It was obvious to anybody that this was not a brother-in-law/sister-in-law saying goodbye. ‘Has she ever hinted that she was having an affair with George?’
Archie snorted. ‘With George? She always said she couldn’t stand the man but I can see it leads you to the conclusion that this was an old-fashioned love triangle, maybe sparked by …? Oh, I don’t know – how do you justify something like that? Or was she playing at hating him. For Abigail’s sake, for my sake?’
‘A psychologist would say that Valerie was robbed of one kind of family so she was ready to take on another, one that happened to be her sister’s. If you look at what she’d been through, what she was about to go through, the humiliation of the court case. She’d know a decent defence counsel was going to rip her apart. “Miss Abernethy, did you seriously think that you could buy a baby and get away with it?” How emotionally crippled was she going to sound when she answered that? “You were turned down for adoption, Miss Abernethy, would you like to tell the court why, because you were too drunk.” Considered too drunk to be a mother … and there’s Abigail, all sweetness, light and loveliness.’
‘So why would she kill the boy?’
‘Maybe she didn’t mean to, maybe he came in and saw her, maybe that’s what sparked the intense rage. Malcolm standing up for his mother. Nobody had ever stood up for her, had they? In her eyes, I mean, addicts always think that everybody is against them.’
Archie shook his head again. ‘I really don’t believe this.’
‘Which is why we are telling you before we put out a warrant for her arrest. That arrest may take place at your house. You need to be prepared for that.’
Archie was speechless for a moment, then said, ‘But playing devil’s advocate, it does explain what happened to that Star Wars Lego thing she was going on about. That some kind of emotional hook or trophy or whatever you want to call it.’
‘We are, of course, going to question George again as he has lied to us about their relationship, but he has an alibi. It’s likely he was trying to protect her – and himself. But we both know that knife was not in his hand.’ Bannon had the pictures now, three of them were taken of the couple walking up Great Western Road past the petrol station. He was studying them carefully.
‘Can I ask how you got hold of these? The obvious question to me is who took them and why?’ said Walker.
It was Mathieson who answered. ‘They were sent to me directly from a private detective. He hinted that Abigail had employed him as she didn’t trust Valerie and has been waiting for Abigail’s lawyer to say it was OK to send these images to me. Believe that if you want. He refused to give his name and we will send the photographs away for forensic examination to make sure they have not been doctored, although they look genuine to me.’
‘Is that it?’
‘We’ll trace who sent them, don’t worry.’
They both looked at Bannon, who had coughed meaningfully after swiping through his phone. ‘The headlines on that day were … yip … So this petrol station looks like the one on Great Western Road. You can see the newspapers on the display rack outside. The firestorms in California were front page news, and that corresponds with the date. I think, you could get that enhanced and that would confirm what day it was. The Evening Times is there and it’s dark so this must be late and I suspect this guy has sent you these photographs and this one in particular because it shows George and Valerie together on the evening Abigail and Malcolm were killed.’
‘Which is useful,’ understated Mathieson, after a minute of shocked silence.
‘Which is very convenient. I’d get them checked out,’ said Walker, not able to keep his eyes off them. ‘Far too convenient. You have the murder of a young police officer to solve; I suggest you get on with that.’
‘And it hasn’t gone past me that she’s wearing heels in this picture. She’s five seven, plus those heels five feet eleven. I don’t need to tell you the significance of that,’ said Mathieson. ‘The height of the spatter shadow at the crime scene. The person who had that knife was five feet ten or eleven, or smaller with heels. I know it’s all circumstantial but it’s all starting to point the same way.’
Bannon nodded. ‘Whatever way it blows, be prepared for the shitstorm.’
Valerie walked out of Judy Plum heading down Mitchell Street. She felt better than she had felt for ages. Liberated, that was the word. She had a plan, something to do with her life. She had bought a blond shoulder-length wig.
Susan, as the woman in the shop had introduced herself, had been empathetic but very matter of fact. It was easy for Val to say what she was looking for. A short blond wig, slightly longer at the back, with a fringe, a longish fringe if possible. She looked around, picking out two she thought would do. Susan held her fixed smile and looked at Valerie’s naturally dark hair, such a dark brown it was almost black.
‘It might not suit your colouring,’ Susan counselled.
‘I want something totally different. A totally different look,’ said Valerie looking in the mirror and feeling rather joyous.
She walked down the road, thinking about buying a warm jacket and some outdoor boots. She was more than a little fed up with Valerie Abernethy. She didn’t know DI Winifred Prudence Costello but she intended to get right under her skin. She knew a bit from what she’d read in the paper. And had guessed that Uncle Archie had a thing going with her and Archie might be old but he was nobody’s fool. He didn’t like stupid women, so DI Costello was not stupid.
And Costello was going nowhere, she had much more use as a smokescreen, a confusion, an obfuscation. One of Archie’s favourite words. That seemed fitting.
She had left the hospital and made a few phone calls, mostly to the Freigate Clinic, a small private hospital that was best known for treating rich people with substance abuse issues, and as such they had three very good psychologists on the staff and two psychiatrists, none of whom had ever set eyes on Winifred Costello.
Valerie had hired a car to take Costello, under an assumed name, from the Queen Elizabeth to the private facility where she would have her own room. And the pay as you go phone that Valerie had just bought for her would be waiting there for her.
She had been lucky that Hannah had been convinced by her story, by her fiscal’s ID with her finger covering the name but not the picture. She had told enough lies over the truth to be convincing, and there was the obvious evidence of Costello who had been subject to an attack, and Hannah had to help in their efforts to protect her. Hannah had nodded, but not before asking a few questions about Costello’s medical care that proved she was not as gullible as she might appear.
Valerie caught a taxi, directing the driver to Archie’s house, checking her phone in the back seat. She saw the breaking newsfeed flash across the screen, the body of the missing police officer had been found. It pulled her up short. She must have squealed as the driver asked her if she was OK. She nodded and examined her phone. Two missed calls from Archie, one from DCI Mathieson. Her mind started to race. She sensed, knew, that she was about to be hauled in to help with enquiries and she knew where that would lead. She adjusted her position in the seat, her mind racing. As she leaned forward she caught sight of the Daily Record, lying on the passenger seat. The heads on the picture were tucked under but she knew by the position, Pippa’s coat sitting in the window of the French Café. Her and George. He had set her up for the media. Bastard.
As they turned the corner she saw a police car pull into the same street two cars ahead of them. She asked the driver to pull in feigning that she had just remembered she needed to see a neighbour. Did she need anything? She put her hand in her bag; the gun was there, that was all she needed. She paid the driver and walked the rest of the way, staying on the opposite side of the road until she could see, out the corner of her eye, the two cop cars at Archie’s house. Without missing a step, she turned right and walked down the side street back into the city. The steps she was taking felt familiar, the gardens she passed, the streets signs, as if she had walked this way before.
Archie was keeping away from his own house. There was a warrant out for Valerie’s arrest, there wasn’t much more he could do before he could be justifiably accused of perverting the course of justice. Mathieson had decided that Valerie should be brought in and left to stew, and had acquiesced that Walker would supply her with a very good defence brief, Archie had already called Kerr, he was on standby. Walker and Mathieson were both now on very different sides of the fence, but both being experienced they were politely going by the book. Transparency above all else.
Costello? Now Valerie?
Was his life going to get any worse?
So he was now standing watching Mathieson and Bannon search Costello’s living room. They had done everything but ask him the question they really wanted to know the answer to, some vestige of professional respect had kicked in. But Walker had no doubt of the arsenal of ammunition Mathieson could bring to bear down on him.
He couldn’t appear as concerned about Costello as he really felt; she was a colleague, but over the years she had become so much more. He thought a lot of her, he had total respect for her, but he wasn’t in love with her. She was far too annoying for that. It was just … he was desperately worried about her.
In response to their indirect question, he had told them he had been in the house a few times, and as far as he knew nothing had been moved or changed. Nothing looked out of place.
‘So you don’t know where Valerie is and you have no idea where Costello is?’ asked Mathieson, her purple Nitrile gloves clashing with the bright red lipstick.
‘Or the Holy Grail, or Glenn Miller.’
It was Mathieson that got to him. She was a shady little creature who pouted as she spoke. Was she really so hard and brutal as she looked? Or was it the insecurity of her position, the fact that Bannon would always get a better response from a witness than she ever would. But then maybe that made them an effective team, like Anderson and Costello, the ying and yang.
Her thin blonde hair was sculpted in a wave that kicked out to rest on her shoulders, a fringe that sat two inches too high was fixed on her forehead with hairspray, the overall effect was that of a blonde helmet on a Stepford wife. She kept talking to Bannon out the corner of her mouth, quietly as if he, as the chief fiscal, was not worthy to hear it, his opinion not worthy to be sought. Bannon, give him his due, was younger and believed more in engagement to get results. Whatever Costello had got herself involved in, it was directly related to what she had seen that October morning six weeks before.
Walker couldn’t shake the news about Donnie from his head. ‘You don’t really suspect her of killing another police officer?’ His tone of voice was testimony to just how stupid he thought that idea was.
‘At this point I don’t really know what to think. I can see her getting angry and lashing out at him, nothing pre-planned, but provoked. Don’t you? I’ve read a fair bit about her. Listened when you and the others are talking about her, I think she’d lash out when she thought she was on the moral high ground.’
Archie could only give a little nod while admitting to himself that Mathieson wasn’t too far off the mark.
‘And there was the incident when she broke Viktor Mulholland’s nose. One single punch. Hardly the act of a professional police officer.’ She sighed, looking round the living room, her gloved hand sitting on her hip, a stance that reminded Walker of Costello herself. ‘But you know her better. Tell me what you think happened.’
‘All this is complicated enough without people starting on hypotheticals.’
‘Where would she go, though? Any relatives? She must have somebody.’
‘None that I know of, but you might be better asking Colin Anderson.’
Bannon had his hand down the back of the sofa, pulling out a few coins, a remote control, and a crumpled paperback. He looked up and raised an eyebrow, having heard the gossip and possessing enough sensitivity not to point out that it was him here, not Colin Anderson. And his presence spoke volumes.
‘What about intimacy?’ asked Mathieson.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Had she mentioned McCaffrey to you or any of the gang of four, in an intimate way?’
‘The gang of four?’
‘We will be talking to Costello’s colleagues, Anderson, Wyngate and Mulholland so we will know if she has mentioned something that maybe you have forgotten.’ It was Mathieson’s turn to raise an eyebrow, questioning.
Walker answered carefully, ‘Not that she told me, but she did know McCaffrey, as a police officer.’
‘Off the record, do you have any ideas where she is?’
‘And if it’s off the record, you shouldn’t be asking. But I will answer on the record. I do not know where she is.’
‘But you know her and we know how well you know her. She has a good police record, mostly,’ she added, ‘she herself, but when you look back at her family, it’s all there. All there for us all to see. So you are here to make sure that we do our job properly, but that is all. Do I think she’d kill a colleague? No. But when I read about her family, about her brother? Then I can think that she has a cop’s sense of moral outrage at what happened to Abigail and Malcolm that fits in with her personality. I can see that she might have pulled a young cop like Donnie into her way of thinking … and maybe when he realized how far she was prepared to go and he said that he wasn’t … Then I can picture a scenario that fits what we have here. There could have been a fight, he might have come off worse.’
‘I can think as far as that. But she would not be running away. She’d be standing here shouting. And her blood was there.’
‘A trickle of her blood, and she is nowhere to be seen, and she has been texting you so she’s about somewhere,’ said Mathieson.
‘But she has gone on the run. She certainly hasn’t been back here. That’s what I’m thinking. And Donnie McCaffrey is very dead,’ added Bannon.
Archie nodded, giving the idea some thought. It wasn’t that far away from what he was thinking himself. It was a logical chain of thought that could explain everything and nothing. It would fit the way she had handed in her notice, and left Mitchum in no doubt about what she had thought of the lack of investigative progress into the deaths of Abigail Haggerty and her son Malcolm. But if she had injured Donnie, she would have taken him to the hospital, not up to Tyndrum to die.
He watched them in silence. Costello’s living room was still dark, they hadn’t opened the big white curtains that covered the picture window and hid the beautiful view of the Clyde. He lifted his mobile from his pocket, checking it for a message from her, nothing.
He read a few emails from work, looking busy. He didn’t want to appear that he was watching them but he couldn’t help himself, thinking like a prosecutor. He followed them, seeing what they were seeing and trying to interpret the facts in a different way.
Her car was missing. Her laptop was nowhere to be seen. There was an abandoned cup of tea. Had she left in a hurry?
They went through everything and every room. He followed them out to the linen cupboards, Bannon opened the door allowing Mathieson to look in, have a good search round. Archie could see the white laundry basket on the floor, Mathieson in her haste had missed it and she nodded to Bannon to close the door which he was about to do when Bannon said, ‘What’s that?’ and picked up the bag that was lying in the laundry basket.
‘Interesting,’ he said as he looked in, avoiding Archie’s eyes. ‘Bloodstains. On a bath towel. Get all that bagged.’
Mathieson picked it up, suspending it between a gloved finger and thumb, explained it to him as if he was a child. ‘Covered in McCaffrey’s blood.’
‘Somebody’s blood. She was bleeding too, remember?’
‘There’s a pair of trousers and … oh no.’ She pulled out a jacket and showed them the large slash at the back. ‘That looks superficial, that didn’t go through. She was well enough to come back here. He lost his blood, and his life at the scene.’
‘Well, get it tested and we will find out,’ Archie said. ‘I can put a rush on it through Matilda McQueen.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think, as we basically have the budget from Complaints, then we will get a private lab to run the tests. Not that I suspect McQueen would be underhand in any way but we are going to aim for transparency here. It’s time for the truth, whatever that is.’
‘Of course. The fiscal’s office will support you in any way we can,’ Archie said. ‘And in my role of chief fiscal, my office is formally requesting a copy of that email, with the photographs attached, of course.’
Mathieson stood up, looking straight at him, trying to figure out what he was thinking. ‘Of course, transparency in all things, Mr Walker.’
‘Thank you.’ This time he gave way to the relief he felt.
Whatever mess Costello was in, she was going to have to get out of it herself.
Walker was wound as tight as a rattlesnake. Brenda had given him a cup of coffee and he was making half-hearted attempts to amuse baby Moses, who was gurgling when he was the centre of attention and scowling when he was not.
Anderson took a long time looking through printouts of the photographs; he placed them on the coffee table in something that approached chronological order. ‘You know, Archie, if I was the defence council, I would be asking myself exactly what these photographs show.’
‘They show my god-daughter is a lying little piece of shit.’
‘Do they? Look at the clothes, three different occasions from the look of them. Valerie is not dressed up, she has no make-up on.’
‘She has heels on?’
‘She has the shoes on that she was wearing when she was taken to the hospital, that night. She was Valerie Abernethy, the suited, Porsche driving fiscal, on her way to the Blue Neptune; she’d have been in high-heel mode.’
‘A woman can borrow clothes, but nobody can wear someone else’s shoes,’ added Brenda, thinking she had to give some female input.
‘And look, she’s never kissing him, he is kissing her. Look at this one.’ He held one out for Walker to have a better look at. ‘In that one, she has her hands up; her palms are on his chest like she is ready to push him away. And it’s all a little convenient, isn’t it, that these suddenly appear on Mathieson’s desk from an anonymous source? So maybe not a little lying piece of shit, maybe she’s being manipulated by somebody who is very good at it.’
‘Haggerty?’
‘I think so, you know what effect those pictures will have on a jury. And Mathieson has moved on them. These pics will get Valerie arrested.’
‘I have Kerr booked for her defence, I think she might need somebody good. I will make sure he interviews whoever took the photographs. It’s a bit too convenient that it shows Valerie left the hospital and walked in the direction of Balcarres Avenue on the night of the murders. And she has no memory of it.’
‘I think Mathieson is too quick. You need to get her to look at that CCTV again, further afield. Find out where Valerie and George went. Don’t accept all this at face value.’
Archie Walker looked defeated, he looked crumpled; a sad sight in a man who took great pride in his appearance.
‘I’ve always said the crime was far too controlled for an addict like Valerie.’
‘So get hold of Valerie, get her together with the best legal representation and get Mathieson on the back foot. There’s holes in her case a bus could get through. You are a lawyer after all. Play the game the way Mathieson plays it.’
‘Just one problem.’
‘What?’
‘I have no idea where Valerie is. Her stuff is in the room at my house, but her handbag has gone.’
‘God, it’s like that Agatha Christie book when they all disappear one by one.’
Mathieson was cold and wet by the time she got hold of Colin Anderson in the interview room at West End Central at half six at night.
‘Right,’ she said banging a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. ‘Just so you know, we have found bloodstained clothing at Costello’s residence.’
‘With a slash in it,’ added Bannon.
Anderson kept his face straight. ‘So a serving police officer who has worked in major cases leaves that kind of forensic evidence lying around her flat? Where did you find it?’
‘In her washing basket,’ answered Bannon, helpfully before Mathieson could stop him.
‘Her washing basket.’ Anderson threw his hands up in the air. ‘Well, you probably got her right there. I’d say that was the act of a guilty person, putting dirty washing in the washing basket. Jesus, if she had anything to do with this you’d find no evidence at all. She’d have walked down to the river and chucked it in there. It would be floating past Ireland now.’
‘People do things by force of habit. Even cops who should know better.’
‘I’ll give you that,’ agreed Anderson sweetly.
His acquiescence unnerved Mathieson slightly, for one single beat she was put off her stride.
‘They knew each other; McCaffrey and Costello, so what happened to him? His wife says that Costello texted him, he went out to Inveruglass to meet her. And there was an incident that involved blood, cocaine and alcohol.’
‘Crap,’ said Anderson.
Mathieson wrote that down.
‘Costello wouldn’t touch alcohol if you paid her.’
‘So he did the drinking and she drove her car, we haven’t found it yet.’
‘No. Let me put that another way. All evidence is open to interpretation, so I think you are mistaken in your interpretation of the evidence that has been put before you. Do you want to write that down?’
‘I know that, Colin.’ Bannon was back to first-name terms. His voice was soft and sympathetic which unnerved Anderson more than if he had been scathing and threatening. ‘But you can see the uncomfortable position we are in. We have no sign anybody else was there.’
‘You didn’t know Kieran was there, did you? You don’t know who put the tobacco tin in the wing of the camper. No, you don’t. Stop bowing to pressure and do your fucking jobs properly. I’d never jump to the conclusions that you have. Unless she was standing there with a smoking gun, covered in an obscene amount of gunshot residue, while standing next to a bleeding McCaffrey who was screaming, “Oh Costello, please don’t shoot me again”.’
‘She was there when the bodies were found at the house, the Haggerty house,’ said Mathieson briskly.
‘So was Archie Walker. They found the bodies together, full stop.’
‘How did she know to go there? There was no inclination, no pointers, she just decided to go round there and hey ho, a twelve-year-old boy and his mother had been stabbed to death.’
‘You saying that doesn’t change the facts of the case. She went round there in the company of Archie to inform the deceased about the state of her sister, a fiscal called Valerie Abernethy who is—’
‘Mr Walker’s god-daughter, yes we know. Who is having an affair with George Haggerty? And who we are now looking for in connection with that crime.’
‘Again, that’s your interpretation.’
‘Why did Costello go with him? With Archie to that house? Why?’
‘He’s a friend, and it was a police matter. Costello had derived the plan to catch the person who had killed Mary Jane Duguid, remember.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘So it subsequently turned out. And Valerie was nearly killed by Braithwaite. Why shouldn’t Costello go?’
‘But why with Archie, then, if it was not a family affair.’
‘She went because it was a family affair and she’s not family. She’s a serving police officer.’
‘Was, Colin, she was a serving police officer.’
‘She was at the time and was keeping it all above board.’
‘Does she do what Archie suggests? Does she go out with him? Are they having an affair?’
‘Well, he took me out for a pint last week, are we having an affair too?’ he snapped back.
Bannon was doing his softly, softly thing again.
‘I’ve seen the pictures of that scene, they were pretty horrific. Do you think that could have pushed her over the edge and she might now be planning to take some investigation into her own hands?’
‘By killing a fellow police officer? No, I don’t think so.’ But that was exactly what he thought, Costello and McCaffrey, a two-man tag team. Just like Anderson and Costello had been but Anderson could always rein in Costello, he doubted McCaffrey would attempt to do that.
‘What do you think then, Colin? We need some help here.’
It was a textbook ploy to get him to talk but he could see how it might be for them and, he acknowledged to himself, there was the possibility that with pressure from above they might be forced to close the case on the most obvious evidence available in the absence of Costello to give her version of events.
‘Well, if you don’t hear it from me you would hear it from others. It’s a popular theory but I don’t think so. She’d be here kicking and punching. I think it broke her and she has gone off to lick her wounds. I think she felt very responsible for the death of Malcolm, the boy had called her on his phone. She had alerted Children’s Services. A woman called Dali Despande had placed it on a priority list of some sort but there was no real evidence that the child was in danger. Until somebody stabbed him twelve times, of course.’
‘But that person was not a member of the family, so why bring Family Services into it? Surely the tragic outcome of that situation shows that Costello got it wrong, it wasn’t his dad that the boy was afraid of. Maybe it was Valerie.’
Of course it was his dad, thought Anderson, of course it was. Whatever else had gone on in there, Malcolm Haggerty had been scared of his own dad. Colin recalled the conversation at Mary Jane’s funeral. ‘She was very suspicious of George, and wherever she is, I think she still will be.’
‘And this?’ Mathieson pointed to a picture of the young police officer, a death forgotten in the internecine arguments about a woman who wasn’t there.
‘I don’t know about that. Or him. I haven’t heard. I’ve worked with Costello for years and all I get is titbits of a lot of blood, a bit of cocaine, a lot of alcohol. If you want to give me all the relevant details, I will certainly give you my opinion. If you value it, knowing her as I do.’
‘We feel you might be guilty by association, if you assisted her in some way.’
Anderson nearly laughed. ‘You have got to be kidding, look at my service record, look at hers …’
‘Yes, we know,’ said Bannon. ‘We know that, you and I both know that, but if this goes to court they will argue that if anybody helped Costello, it would have been you.’
‘You do know about Costello’s family past?’ If Mathieson was supposed to edge that question in carefully, she hadn’t made a good job of it.
‘Yes I do. I know her brother nearly killed her, which is how she got that scar on her forehead. And obviously I know about her brother and father. It’s all over the bloody papers.’
‘It’s in the public domain.’
‘The timing is rank.’
‘That doesn’t change the facts. You do see our problem,’
‘If you think she did that—’ he tapped his finger on the photograph – ‘then I think you are barking well up the wrong tree, she might lash out in anger but not that.’
‘So where is she?’
‘I have no idea, has there been any movement on her credit cards? Her bank cards? Trace her phone, you’re the police you can do what you want.’
‘She’s taken money out from her account. The transactions started again this morning. And she brought a pay-as-you-go mobile using her credit card. She knows we’ve been tracing her calls. We will trace the CCTV cameras and then we will bring her in. And we have a White Fiat on CCTV on the A9. Just waiting confirmation.’
Anderson knew that wasn’t true, Mathieson was playing him. They’d have confirmation on the car owner immediately, but it made him sit up. ‘Really? She’s up and moving? She bought another mobile?’
‘And headed north. Do you know of any friends or relatives up there?’
Anderson smiled. ‘If she turns west off the A9, and joins the North Coast 500 route then you have a connection. She has no relatives up north, she has no relatives at all. But George Haggerty is from that part of the world.’
Mathieson nodded. ‘We had worked that out. And you can see how it looks. I’m sorry but Costello is a suspect in this, so as with any suspect, her life, her friends her career, all of it, is under scrutiny. Until we know what happened to McCaffrey, Costello remains a person of interest.’
‘And the boy, the one in Raigmore? Cowan?’ Anderson directed the question to Bannon who flicked open his folder and ran a finger down an index, then flicked over a few pages. He could hear Mathieson’s fingernails tapping in impatience and got the feeling Bannon was winding her up. He would have the information Anderson wanted at the forefront of his mind.
‘So preliminary report from the scene of crime, and the tracker dog. Basically, the tyre treads of the camper are at the viewing point car park and he left there at speed.’
‘Suggesting that he had done or seen something that he wanted away from?’
‘Maybe he drove north for a couple of miles and ended up in a lay-by.’ He looked up. ‘I think you know about the waxed ball bearings?’
‘Two miles, was that enough to melt the wax if they had been put in at Inveruglass, at the viewing site? Or would it have to be warmed by miles of driving?’
‘The engine would be hot anyway, he’d driven up from Glasgow remember. And what an easy vehicle to follow. There was no phone or camera in the car, the camera was at the bottom of the loch and the keys were found in a field thirty feet from the lay-by.’
‘So he was chased?’
‘He stops the van because of the clatter, his assailant comes up behind him, probably friendly as Kieran takes the keys out the engine. There is an incident that involves Kieran being on the ground, then the dogs pick up a scent running towards the trees, over the wire fence, thick trees, running deeper into the forest, he was veering as he ran …’ He cocked his head. ‘That time of night it was dark, keeping in the cover of the tree trunks. Then the dogs found the main site about a hundred yards in. Blood. Disturbance, and then he was dragged out.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea why. There are signs of blood loss and two things of interest. He seems to have lost his waistcoat, loose, lots of pockets, like a photographer’s but the best thing is the few fibres found on a branch, that looks hopeful of something. As if somebody put their hand on a branch and they’ve left a trace. The lab at Inverness has been sent the sample, so they can be processed alongside the sample from Kieran.’
‘So Costello did that, then pulled the body back to a small Fiat and drove 300 miles north to drop it on a remote mountain pass?’
‘Something happened. She has not come forward, but she’s up and about. You have been on this side of the desk long enough to know what it is like and that there are, very rarely, any surprises,’ said Mathieson.
‘And if she has gone rogue—’ Bannon took a look at the picture of the young cop – ‘I can understand her logic. She has a very developed sense of morality and justice which sometimes the police service cannot deliver. And I think she’s keeping you and Archie out the loop because she doesn’t want to make trouble for you. She is a very loyal friend, she doesn’t want to involve you in her … well, whatever it is she has planned.’ Bannon shrugged. ‘That’s my thoughts.’
‘But she wouldn’t do this.’ Anderson pointed to the picture of Donnie. ‘This guy was one of us.’
The other two sat and did nothing, forcing him to speak. He studied the photograph of the dead young police officer. ‘Who has done the forensics on this?’
‘Your usual team.’
Anderson nodded slowly. ‘OK so O’Hare, McQueen?’
‘Yes. Costello’s DNA is all over his dead body,’ said Bannon.
Mathieson argued, ‘I’m a simpler soul. I’m going for the obvious. She killed him. Maybe not intentionally, maybe it was something that got out of hand but … Well, you can’t argue with the science. Their bloods are mingled. Bloods. Both of them were bleeding. We have one body and the other one is missing. They met in that car park after Costello had summoned him, and something kicked off. There was a fight.’
‘Could they have been attacked and she got away?’ Anderson asked.
‘Away to where? And from what? If that was the case then why wouldn’t she run here so we can help her? Why keep below the radar?’
‘Well, you can’t have it both ways. If she was keeping below the radar there’s no way she’d use her bank card. She’s too clever for that, she knows the way we work.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Was it an auto bank?’
Bannon looked down. ‘Yes and a visa card.’
‘So you don’t know for sure that somebody else isn’t using it instead of her? You need to look at the cameras.’ He got up to leave.
‘It was a female fitting Costello’s description that bought the phone. The film does look like her, short blonde hair, anorak.’ Mathieson stood up, small and insignificant between the other two detectives. ‘And if you hear from her in any way, shape or form, you will tell us.’
He paused. ‘I will tell her to get in touch with you, of course.’
‘Not quite the same thing, DCI Anderson.’
‘It’s the best I can do.’
And he left.