Читать книгу The Sideman - Caro Ramsay - Страница 11

TWO

SUNDAY, 26TH OF NOVEMBER

Old Salty’s Fish and Chip Emporium was busy, and very noisy. Adding to the usual chattering and cutlery commotion was the family at table eight, who were having some birthday Jenga-with-chips competition. The very attractive Australian waitress was judging and the rest of the restaurant was clapping and taking bets.

All except the four men sitting at table nine.

Four men on a table set for five.

They were subdued, three of them picking at their chips with their fingers, the eldest of the four using a fork. Failure has a bitter taste that no amount of cheesecake can sweeten; they ate as if their food was choking them, totally oblivious to the birthday celebrations in the next booth.

The four men; three detectives and a procurator fiscal. It was the first time they had met since the brutal murder of Abigail Haggerty and her son Malcolm six weeks before.

Not something anybody with a human soul should get over quickly.

They had an unspoken pact not to talk about it. That had lasted until the first lull in conversation, between the fish and chips being cleared away and the arrival of the cheesecake. They had exhausted the ‘how are the kids doing?’ conversation for Gordon Wyngate, and the ‘how is Baby Moses doing?’ conversation for Anderson.

Archie Walker related the story of walking round the house with Valerie and the missing picture and Lego model. At that point they all tried to avoid talking about Costello when she was the one thing they really did want to talk about; she was their thread of commonality.

It was a puzzle that consumed the detectives, eating away at their core. At the heart of the case was a strange coincidence, which was later revealed not to be so much of a coincidence at all. The Braithwaite Case and the deaths at the Monkey House, as the tragedy of the Haggertys had become known, were ‘intertwined, but legally separate cases’ as the fiscal had put it. And the Haggerty case was under the eagle eye of DCI Diane Mathieson. Those sitting around the table, as part of the original Braithwaite investigation team, had been debriefed, welcomed, tolerated and then told in no uncertain terms to ‘bugger off and to stop trying to be helpful’, according to DI Bannon, or ‘stop bloody interfering’, according to DCI Mathieson.

While they had no reason to meet, none of them had wanted to be the one to call off a date that had been pencilled into the diary for weeks. And they wanted to know about the problem. Costello’s empty chair.

DCI Colin Anderson, the blond detective in the jeans and casual shirt, had had very little to do with the case professionally, but he had a declared personal interest. This personal interest, the discovery of a daughter he never knew he had, automatically precluded him from any further professional connection. And he was becoming aware that it wasn’t in his nature to accept that.

Archie Walker, the fiscal, looked to be his immaculately dressed self, but the constant drumming of his fingers, the frequent glances at his watch, betrayed him. He might have been trying to fool himself that all was OK in his world but he was having no luck fooling the three detectives round the table with him. His goddaughter was suspected of murdering her sister and her son. And she had no alibi. No memory. Only now was he discovering the issue of her alcoholism, mostly from reading his online newspapers.

Viktor Mulholland was watchful, keen to enhance his career here. This situation was a mess and he knew Diane Mathieson. He might hear something round this table that he could casually mention to her. Indeed, she was already approaching him, not any of the others, for any information she needed. That might be a simple matter of rank, but Mulholland suspected something more political. Mathieson was a player and Mulholland hadn’t quite come to a decision about which team to back. His present career trajectory was on shaky ground.

With Costello gone, and the increased likelihood of Anderson going, the solid peg he had pinned his entire career on was now looking very shoogly indeed. And Mathieson had a reputation as a two-faced wee bitch. Being a cop who investigated cops was bad enough, but her track record was worse than most. She was after Costello for harassment of George Haggerty. And that complaint was justified.

Mulholland didn’t like being associated with Anderson’s team, not now Complaints were sniffing around, but he didn’t enjoy the thought of being exposed in a new team led by a woman with only her own ambition at heart, so he was watching both Anderson and Walker carefully. Both men seemed deep in thoughts that he would like to have access to.

However, Gordon Wyngate was happily eating his cheesecake, aware of the tensions round the table and easy in the knowledge that he would be the one who would unwittingly broach any forbidden subject. So he did.

‘When’s the trial starting?’

The silence fell like a rock through a cloud.

Wyngate wanted the ground to swallow him, Mulholland merely smiled.

‘No date set yet,’ said Walker calmly.

‘Do you think—’ Wyngate stopped as Mulholland accidently stabbed him in the thigh with his fork and interrupted with a question of his own.

‘Is Braithwaite still blaming everybody else?’

‘Yes, and he has Tomlinson defending. Well, I have heard.’ Walker intertwined his fingers and placed his chin on the mound of knuckles.

‘You have Valerie’s testimony. She survived. You were out with her yesterday, she must be getting more . . .?’ asked Anderson, the question had to be asked now.

‘Sober? Do you mean will she be fit enough to appear as a coherent witness? Is that what you are asking?’ Walker snapped. He was touchy on the subject of the darling goddaughter who had fallen from grace so spectacularly.

‘No, that’s not what I meant, not at all. I meant, can she stand up to that questioning.’

A roar of excitement went up at the Jenga table.

‘She lost her niece, then her sister and her nephew.’ The fiscal raised three fingers. ‘The three people in the world she was closest to. How do you expect her to be?’

‘Archie, I know she’ll be in tatters . . .’

‘Are you asking if she’s stopped drinking?’

‘No,’ placated Anderson. ‘I’m genuinely asking after her welfare. She was half-strangled and left to die in a cupboard, so I’m asking how she’s doing.’

‘She’s doing OK,’ answered Walker. ‘Sort of.’

‘You’re her godfather, and that excludes you from having any place in the investigation.’

‘And as Mary Jane’s father, you can have no place in it either,’ snapped Walker.

It wasn’t like them to stick the knife in. Wyngate began to find the morsel of cheesecake on his plate mesmerizing as Mulholland slid back in his chair, enjoying this gladiatorial exchange. He found Valerie Abernethy fascinating. A successful young woman who had everything: a career, a Porsche, a £600,000 flat and then threw it all away when she tried to buy a baby. The investigation into her life had revealed a story much more sordid than anyone would have thought. Mulholland thought it had broken Walker. His darling goddaughter was a delusional drunk, and then Mathieson had actioned the investigation into Valerie Abernethy as a viable suspect for the murder of her sister and her nephew. As far as Mulholland knew, the only motive was sibling rivalry; Abigail hadn’t fucked up her life quite as much as Valerie had. A thin motive, but they had all known addicts kill for less. Alcohol messed with your thinking, that whole compass of acceptable behaviour was reset to where the next drink was coming from. Mulholland had not voiced the opinion, but it was obvious Valerie being the wielder of the knife solved a few unanswered questions. The lateness of the night yet Abigail opened the door. The neighbour said they had been alive at 1 a.m. Who else would Abigail take up to the bedroom? Who else would take Malcolm’s beloved Millennium Falcon? Who else but the woman who gave it to him? Strange trophy for a killer. There were six stab wounds to the woman, twelve to the boy. The weapon had come from the house, a new set of knives George had bought the month before at Abigail’s request. Or so George Haggerty had said. And there was no witness left alive who could say whether Valerie had been in their house that evening.

That was all he knew, common knowledge round the station, there would be a whole other layer they were not privy to.

‘God, those two arseholes still think Valerie had something to do with killing her sister.’ Walker clapped his hands over his face.

Mulholland looked down, avoiding their eyes.

‘Who? Mathieson and Bannon?’ clarified Anderson.

‘They are a couple of arseholes,’ agreed Mulholland, playing along.

‘Well, she is.’

‘Too right.’

‘But Valerie was in the hospital recovering. Didn’t Andrew nearly strangle her during the Braithwaite case?’ Mulholland asked, fishing for information, seeing Anderson rub his own neck, remembering.

‘Somebody had a real go at her. She has blackouts. Had blackouts,’ Walker corrected himself. ‘And she was not in the hospital the night of the murders. She’d walked out at the back of seven that night.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that rumour,’ said Mulholland, a little too readily.

‘Why?’ asked Wyngate. ‘Had she not just been strangled?’

‘Yes, but she had recovered from that. There was no brain damage. No damage to her larynx. And she has other issues. It was very stressful for her to be in the hospital and as she needed peace more than she needed medical attention they came to a compromise. She was free to come and go.’ Walker pulled a face. ‘I wish to god she had stayed in, got herself a rock-solid alibi.’

The table fell silent. One by one they looked at the empty chair.

‘Diane Mathieson asked me where I thought Costello was. As if I would know,’ said Wyngate.

‘None of us know. I think we have all that quite clear,’ said Walker.

‘But you have heard from her?’ Anderson wanted confirmation.

‘Well, I get an odd text now and then. She asks about Pippa. Nothing else,’ he snapped, then reconsidered. ‘Nice of her to ask about my wife. I think Costello understands how difficult it is, losing somebody with dementia, but apart from that, not a word.’

‘Bloody hell. I knew she’d fallen out with me but I thought she’d keep in touch even if to tell me what a fair-weather friend I was, if in less polite terms.’

‘You thought wrong.’ Walker was spikey.

‘What I meant was,’ Anderson picked his words carefully, ignoring another cheer from the Jenga table, ‘none of us know where she is and she’s not one to go anywhere quietly. This meal was planned for five. She was icily polite when she refused the invite. She asked after Moses, said she was glad he was doing well and that I was to keep the baby away from George Haggerty as that man killed his wife and his child. And I was never to forget that.’

‘How many times does she need to be told!’ snapped Walker. ‘She just won’t accept the fact that George Haggerty has a cast iron alibi for that morning. They were murdered between four and six; George had left at one and was on the A9. The fact he looked at Costello “funny” at Mary Jane’s funeral does not make him a murderer.’

‘She told me he looked right at her and clapped his hands,’ said Wyngate.

‘She told me the same thing,’ agreed Mulholland. ‘And “The Clapping Song” was on the CD, on repeat, when she walked in and found the bodies.’

‘That’s the song where they all go to heaven . . .’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Walker quietly, closing his eyes, summoning some patience. ‘I was there, about four feet behind her. Please, can we let it go?’

The table fell quiet as another table burst out laughing at some witticism.

Anderson said, ‘I did ask George about it. He’s round my house quite a lot these days to see Moses, so we do chat.’

‘Why?’ asked Mulholland.

‘Because,’ Anderson explained slowly, the facts so bizarre that he still found difficulty coming to terms with them himself. ‘He was Mary Jane’s father for most of her life, he has some . . .’ he struggled, ‘emotional right to see her son. Moses would have been his grandson.’

‘Until the DNA proved he was your grandson, you know, after you and Sally Braithwaite had a . . .’ added Wyngate, with his usual skill for saying the wrong thing, ‘fling.’

‘George says he has no idea what Costello’s talking about. He recalls seeing her at the funeral, he might have looked at her. He might have been brushing his hands against each other to keep warm. It was a cold day; he had just come out the crematorium. I was standing right next to him and there was bloody Costello hiding behind a Victorian gravestone like a ferret-faced Goth stalking the dead.’

The image made them smile.

‘George Haggerty might not have been everybody’s idea of a perfect husband but he had cared, in his own way. I have seen his distress at the loss of Mary Jane—’ Anderson took a deep breath. ‘My daughter. He has been generous to me in that grief while his wife and his son were murdered. He’s devastated; he’s on some serious medication. And’ – Anderson looked at them all one by one – ‘he is Moses’ grandfather. George has been dignified over that as well. That child was taken from him with little more than a glance at a test tube.’ He nodded. ‘When the court made that interim judgement, he said “do whatever is best for the boy”. And he meant it. I don’t think that’s the act of a guilty man.’

‘Sounds innocent to me,’ said Wyngate. As the father of two wee kids, he felt he could judge that.

‘And I bet Costello said that was exactly how a guilty man would act,’ argued Mulholland.

‘How does she think an innocent man should react to the murder of everybody he had loved in his life? Given her past, she should know the answer to that one,’ said Walker. ‘And there is the small issue of a total lack of evidence. As well as an alibi that can’t be broken.’

‘You checked?’ asked Anderson, surprised.

‘Bloody right I did. You?’ Walker asked.

‘Of course I did. So did Mitchum. I trust that bastard Haggerty as far as—’

‘I thought you just said—’

‘I know what I said,’ Anderson replied, ‘but that’s not what I feel. I know exactly what Costello is going on about. Yeah, I asked around about George’s alibi. He’s watertight. Police Scotland are his alibi. He was caught speeding up the A9. Dad in care home in Port MacDuff, care home phones the house at 1.10 a.m. George leaves after a bit of an argument. He stops on the road and texts the missus, she calls back. That all maps out. The mobile phone is where it should be. And then, thirty minutes later, he gets stopped by the traffic police. But Costello is . . . Well, George Haggerty is an itch she can’t reach to scratch.’ Anderson opened his palms, grasping for the right phrase. ‘She’s obsessed by him.’ He caught Walker’s eye, a shared thought that neither of them voiced. What the hell was she up to?

The Jenga tower at the corner table of Old Salty’s got higher, somebody was clapping their hands together in delight.

Clap clap.

‘Have you and George really bonded over Baby Moses?’ asked Walker.

‘Well, Moses has Down’s syndrome, he’s three months old. Mary Jane was his mother and she sold him. Seeing he was Down’s, Braithwaite the baby broker rejected him. Mary Jane was then murdered and Moses was abandoned in a stranger’s car. I think the wee guy needs all the family he can get. He’s great.’ His voice was full of pride.

It was obvious to the others that while Colin Anderson and George Haggerty had indeed bonded over their loss, their relationship would fracture the friendship of Anderson and Costello. It explained her absence from the table.

‘You can understand Costello being bitter. She feels that Malcom tried to reach out to her, and she failed him. I’m bitter. I’ve known Abigail all my life,’ said Walker. ‘Abigail Haggerty would have loved Moses, if she had ever been allowed to know she had a grandson.’

Anderson thought that he would have loved his daughter had he been allowed to know Mary Jane existed. But Sally had never told him about the outcome of their one-night stand when they were at uni together, and he had only found out about Mary Jane when her DNA flagged up. Yes, I would have loved to have known her, Anderson thought, but we don’t make the rules.

Mulholland waved a sticky finger in the fiscal’s direction. ‘You have known the Haggertys all your life, and you accept that George is innocent.’

‘I accept his alibi,’ corrected Walker, carefully.

‘And Colin, you share a grandchild with the guy, you know him, and you think he’s innocent. Why the hell does Costello think she knows better?’

‘Bloody female intuition,’ said Anderson dryly. ‘Seemingly that trumps small things like evidence and cast iron alibis.’

‘Well, she’ll have to toe the line when she finally deigns to return to work, when she gets on with cases she’s actually paid to investigate, not go off on a whim of her own. Yeah, a few days back and we’ll sort her out.’ Mulholland gave Wyngate an exaggerated nod, and got one in return.

Colin Anderson put his hands on the table then took a sip of his pint. Something about his manner, his quietness, cast unease over the rest of the table. ‘She’s resigned.’

‘Fuck!’

‘She what?’

Anderson looked at Walker, and gave him a slight shake of the head. ‘Sorry Archie, I didn’t know if you knew. She resigned on Friday the 10th. She wound up Haggerty at Mary Jane’s funeral on the Friday, then spent all weekend asking you, me and the Baby Jesus for help. Then she hangs about Haggerty’s house and he files a complaint for harassment. She gets short shrift from ACC Mitchum and resigns, not wanting to be hampered by the legal restrictions of Police Scotland.’

‘Resigned? Really? Resigned and didn’t tell me.’ The fiscal’s face was etched with disbelief that slowly morphed into hurt.

‘She didn’t tell me either.’ said Anderson. ‘I was told “formally”.’

‘Bitch,’ muttered Walker.

‘Stupid bitch,’ added Mulholland.

‘Brave though, that takes some balls.’ Wyngate raised his glass, they toasted her.

‘To Costello’s balls,’ said Mulholland.

The mother of the family in the next booth turned to give them a dirty look. The chip tower of Jenga collapsed.

A TOURIST BUS CRAWLED past, part of a new Explore Scotland initiative. Glasgow at midnight, on a bitter cold November Sunday. The open-topped upper deck was empty apart from the two drunks leaning off the back of the bus singing a song about where to shove your granny. The downstairs of the double decker was steamed up. Anybody in there would see nothing but glazed lights and a dense smirr of rain, which was probably just as well.

‘I do worry about Valerie. She wasn’t exactly stable before the murders. Something I have only become aware of in hindsight,’ said Walker, now he and Anderson were alone.

‘She was married though, so there was a somebody once?’

‘He left her because of her drinking, I know that. Now. She was like a robot walking round the house on Balcarres Avenue, no tears, no emotion. It all seemed too much trouble for her. Talking about a picture that was missing, where was the Lego model she had built at Christmas? Was George going to sell the house?’

‘You know murder transforms those it touches. Valerie’s not immune because she’s part of the judicial system. She has lost everybody,’ argued Anderson.

‘I don’t even think she sees George now.’ Walker glanced at his watch. ‘I suppose I should go and visit her. She’s staying at the Jury’s.’

‘Really? It’s very nearly midnight.’

‘Alcoholics don’t sleep; recovering ones sleep even less. And she’s in a hotel because she’s skint. She sold her flat to try to buy a baby, remember.’

Archie Walker wasn’t ready to sleep and he wanted to clear his head. It was only a twenty-minute walk from Byres Road to the hotel where Valerie had been living for the last three weeks. She’d be awake. Insomnia was one of the reasons she had reached for the bottle. He’d get there and phone her. If she answered, fair enough, if not he’d walk on to his own house which was another ten minutes along Great Western Road.

It was one of his conditions to get her to stop drinking. He would pop in with no advance warning, and she had better be sober. So far, for him, it was fifty-fifty.

As he watched the steady rain, the glow of the traffic lights, he wondered about her memory lapses, and the nagging doubt at the back of his mind. Valerie was a fiscal, she had been a talented prosecutor in court, fierce when she was at the top of her game. Would she know how to commit a perfect murder?

Since Braithwaite attacked her at the Blue Neptune, Abigail had said Valerie could stay at her house, but Valerie said she had not been there, or if she had she couldn’t recall it. If she had been there on the night Abigail and Malcolm were killed, she was drunk and nobody else left alive could bear witness to what had happened. Valerie had been in the house on the 11th of October, three days before the murders. Her prints had a right to be there. And the perpetrator had taken their time in the house, they had known the house, known the victims.

And in DCI Mathieson’s view, from her position in Complaints and Investigation, a smart fiscal like Valerie Abernethy would be well placed to have committed these murders. But whoever had committed that atrocity had a clear and precise thought process. That wasn’t the Valerie Archie now knew, the one who crawled around the floor, too pissed to stand up.

He watched two young women, giggling as they got off the bus, deciding walking would be quicker than waiting for the late-night traffic through Queen Margaret Drive to clear. Their laughter made him think of how Valerie had been his favourite godchild, the quiet, thoughtful one. Abigail was the loving wee girl then, a normal happy child, mischievous and playful, a free spirit. She was fun to be around.

Anderson nudged him. ‘Now we are on our own, tell me, do you think Valerie did it?’

‘Nope. She’d have been so pissed she wouldn’t have cleaned up. It was a cool, methodical mind committed that crime.’

‘OK, does she share Costello’s suspicions of her own brother-in-law?’

‘Valerie is the one with no alibi, not George.’

‘Answer the question, Archie.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘Come on, let’s walk up to Oran Mor,’ Anderson suggested; it was too cold to stand still. ‘So what was Abigail like?’

‘I was just thinking that. She was happy. A GP, bright. She was happy, then Oscar, her first husband, was killed in an accident – boating, I think. Car? No, drowning. She ended up going to court to get him declared dead.’

‘That takes ages, seven years?’

‘Indeed. Mary Jane was about six or seven at the time he went missing,’ Archie replied.

‘They seem to be a very unlucky family,’ said Anderson thoughtfully, standing at the kerb, waiting to cross Byres Road. ‘Abigail’s first husband drowned when he fell off his yacht, then Mary Jane was murdered by Braithwaite . . .’

‘You don’t know that . . .’

‘. . . and then Abigail and Malcolm were murdered. So I do see Costello’s point that no family can be that unlucky, which suggests it was nothing to do with a lack of luck.’

‘Maybe that’s not true, maybe in a roundabout kind of way everything is linked.’

‘A butterfly flaps its wings in Columbia and the number twenty-seven bus gets diverted through Clydebank? That kind of thing? Come on, let’s cross.’ They both jogged across the road, cutting between the four lanes. Once safely on the pavement Anderson continued, ‘It’s not a small world when the fish swim in the same small circles. I still don’t understand why Sally never told me she was pregnant. I know we were young and still at university but I’d have stood by her. I’d have wanted to know Mary Jane.’

‘Maybe she didn’t know the baby was yours. Or she did and didn’t want you to know. She was with Braithwaite at the time and we know what a psycho he turned out to be. Maybe it was self-preservation.’

Despite the tragic ending to the whole situation, Anderson smiled. ‘It was a drunken night in the park when Sally’s bloody boyfriend had buggered off elsewhere. So yeah, not proud of it, but we were young and, maybe not in love but in lust at least.’

‘Well, there you go then, at least you are human.’ Walker stopped to put a pound in the box of a homeless person. Anderson patted the Staffie cross that was snuggled under the blanket and gave him two of Nesbit’s treats. They walked on. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ proclaimed Walker.

‘Be careful,’ cautioned Anderson. ‘You’re a lawyer, it’s against your religion to think without getting paid by the hour.’ They continued up to Oran Mor, watching the remnants of the rain fall as orange and golden tears, catching the glare of the street lamps and the headlights of the traffic waiting at the Queen Margaret Drive junction.

Walker spoke with a sigh. ‘I really do need to go and see Valerie, I’m feeling guilty. I think she’s hiding from me. She thinks that she has let me down, again. Especially at the house. She could barely be bothered to put a comb through her hair, or wash her face.’ He shook his head, being as perjink and neat as he was, this was a heinous offence. ‘Maybe she became a lawyer for all the wrong reasons. Who can cope with months and months of working on child abuse cases when she was yearning for a child she couldn’t have. I’m her godfather. I’m supposed to look after her spiritual welfare, so I buggered that up good and proper.’

‘She buggered it up herself. At one point, Valerie was on a good career ladder. She was already in charge of a unit in Edinburgh. She was doing OK. At one point,’ Anderson repeated.

‘She was, at least until . . . until her marriage broke up, until she realised that she was going to have difficulty having kids. Then she began to drink. It was the pressure of the job, the pressure of going through every test in the book, with a husband that thought it was all too much bother. Grieg, Valerie’s husband, had more of a que sera sera view on the subject. I’d like to think if I had a fiscal in my office with failed IVF behind her, I’d have the sensitivity to transfer her away from a child abuse unit. I saw her falling apart, I tried to intervene, talk to her boss to get her moved, but they wouldn’t do it unless she asked, and rightly so . . . well, I thought that was a shit decision. It had to come from her, but she was far too proud to say that she couldn’t cope,’ Walker said.

‘She was very well thought of at her job, and she’s still young. She’ll get back to it, once all this calms down. She’ll get back on track, just needs a bit of time, a bit of support to get off the sauce.’

‘I don’t think I can be bothered with her nonsense tonight.’ Walker sighed. ‘Is George really round your house a lot?’

‘Too much for my liking,’ answered Anderson truthfully. ‘At times I like him, other times he gives me the creeps. He walks about my house, he drinks tea with my wife, he cuddles my grandchild, but I can’t deny him that, can I? My Wee Moses was Mary Jane’s baby, and he adopted her. I never met the girl, and then I waltz in and take the only surviving relative George has and claim him as my own. Emotionally, Moses belongs to him.’

‘You need to think practically, you have a house, a wife, a bank account that can support it all. George Haggerty is a bereaved mess, he lives here and in Port MacDuff, two hundred and fifty miles apart. He shuttles back and forth. Not exactly stable. I think you are doing the right thing, I don’t know that I could do it.’

They stopped at the corner outside Oran Mor, beside the bus stop, a couple of Jack Russell terriers crossed the road, their double lead tied to the handles of a bike with no lights ridden by a Chinese student. She nodded at them in acknowledgement for clearing the path for her. ‘Yet Costello, a detective whose judgement we both trust, believes in George’s guilt so much she has resigned from her job.’ Anderson smirked. ‘Mitchum said that she told him to take a running fuck!’

Walker smiled.

‘Does she say much in the texts?’ Anderson asked.

‘It’s all very civilised.’ Archie pulled out his phone. ‘She never told me that she has resigned though. I guess she thought I would talk her out of it.’

‘Do you know what she’s up to?’

‘Nope, but I presume she’s after Haggerty.’

‘Do you think she’s going to do anything stupid?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do I.’

WILMA PATRICK LAID DOWN her knitting and fumbled for the remote before that dreadful reality TV show started, the one where the ‘stars’, who had spent their youth at the best public schools in England, can’t string a coherent sentence together. Wilma had retired for health reasons, having taught primary pupils for over thirty years. Nothing wrong with a bit of ABC and 123 before they started all that vertical learning and companion studies nonsense. She had taken her package before she said something she really meant during a meeting. She blamed Alastair, of course. Being married to him always gave her a different perspective on life. And the lack of it.

The remote had slipped from the arm of the wheelchair and had disappeared under her ample buttocks. She wriggled around and poked under the cushion, before shaking out her knitting. The remote went flying across the floor. It spun round and spilled its batteries under the dog basket.

Hamish the Scottish terrier opened one eye, judged there was no food involved in this disruption and wasn’t for moving, so Wilma wheeled over and turned the channels over on the Sky box, poking the button with her knitting needle. There was a new Scandi drama starting on Channel 4 that she wanted to see. She had perfected the art of reading subtitles and knitting a complicated Fair Isle pattern simultaneously.

She reversed herself back to the sofa. The programme was starting in less than five minutes so she’d wait until the first advert break before she shouted at Alastair to put the kettle on. He always spent a Sunday night doing his guitar homework, though why, she had no idea, as he had a tin ear. He’d had to stop the singing lessons when he made Hamish howl, so he had taken up the guitar now. It was no more tuneful but it was quieter. Wilma understood it was therapeutic for him to plunk away.

The programme started and she settled back. A young girl, in her early twenties, was walking through a field of corn in the windblown rain. She had the obligatory Nordic jumper on, her red hair and high cheekbones gave her the look of that young constable Morna Taverner that Alastair was working with. The jumper and the actress were being soaked by the rain, and would probably catch the death of cold, thought Wilma. But, knowing these dramas, the girl would be dead by the first advert break anyway. She knitted on, with one eye on her needles and the growing tapestry of colour spilling across her lap, the other on the screen. The girl was running now, her arms pumping. There was no music, only the sound of her ragged breathing and heavy footfall. She was running for her life, obviously. Wilma counted her stitches and listened to the rain battering on the living-room window. The noise deafening, then quiet, as the wind changed direction. The weather had been foul all week. The Portree–Port MacDuff ferry had been off more often than it had been on. She turned her attention back to the television, where a man was now watching the running girl. She was still in a cornfield. He was in a car, a Volvo of course, watching her through the raindrops on the windscreen. The wipers went back and forth, clearing both his and the viewer’s vision of her running away with her wet red hair straggling after her. She was an elusive figure between the sweeps of the wipers. Each time she reappeared she was further away. She might just make it. The girl was obviously running away from him, terror filled, not caring where she went, not looking back. She did the obligatory stumble as she ran, her arms wind-milling to stop her falling. There was music now, helping the drama along. The man stayed in his car, watching as the camera angle swept in so it was right on the girl’s shoulders, as if the audience themselves were chasing her down.

Wilma liked that effect, she had to resist looking over her own shoulder. She settled for a shiver.

The girl looked behind her, her small heart-shaped face stared right into the camera. The corn parted, swallowing her. She turned and ran straight into the arms of a big man.

There was a bang. Wilma jumped. Hamish woke up, ears alert. The screen went black and silent as the opening credits rolled and the image on the screen changed to a fat detective sitting in his office, swinging on his chair, drinking a cup of cold coffee. It always was in these dramas, they never had time to eat and they never went to the toilet. Wilma went back to her knitting, realising she had dropped stitches, and tutting, unravelled it.

The scene with the detective moved on with no sound. The storm fell quiet allowing the sound of the guitar to float down, a few ragged chords, a song that got so far and then got stuck. It resumed but floundered at the same point. The detective on the TV started shouting down his telephone in Swedish. Or Danish. Or something. The music stopped again. This time it got far enough for her to recognise the song; one of Simon and Garfunkel’s lesser known ones, the one about Emily. It wasn’t one of her favourites, but Alastair had always had a fondness for it.

The scene on the TV returned to the cornfield. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view that rose until the body of the girl appeared, lying in a small flattened area of corn, as if she was in a nest, comfortable and asleep. A few dots circled round her, policemen like vultures. The girl lay in the middle, a tiny spindle in a big spinning wheel.

Then the camera plummeted down like a hawk on its prey, crashing into the dead girl’s eye, into the blackness and emptiness of one single pupil.

Wilma went back to her knitting as the investigation got underway. In forty-five minutes all would be well.

She heard another bang and looked up. Hamish growled at the front door; she thought she could hear the low rumble of a diesel engine. A car coming up the street, then doing a U-turn, there was a flash of headlamps and a squeal of brakes.

The music from the TV got louder, more dramatic.

She heard another bang, this time she knew it was the front door. She thought about ignoring it but that had been twice now. Maybe three times. She checked the clock; it was nearly midnight. Putting her knitting to one side, she wheeled to the window, pulling back her winter curtains by a fraction of an inch to look out into the bitter night. She saw a Land Rover bumped up on the pavement and flinched when she caught sight of the man, dressed in black, barely visible, standing in her front garden. He gestured that he wanted the front door opened. Now.

She let the curtain roll back, tensed in her chair, gripping the wheels, suddenly feeling like the girl running through the corn. Her husband got the awkward chord change and the tuneless song went on.

JO AND WALTER HAD walked the same route every Sunday, around midnight, except when on holiday and the twelve weeks when Jo was off with her new hip. They sauntered mostly together, side by side, chatting and watchful. They looked like any other old couple, maybe a bit incongruous out on the streets of Glasgow in the witching hour; Walter with his thick anorak zipped up to his neck, a scarf tucked in to keep out the chill. Jo wore a navy-blue coat that nearly reached her ankles but it did keep the cold away from her hips. Their faith and their uniform were both worn quietly, their belief more obvious in their compassion.

Over the years they knew who was on the street, who would be in what doorway, who might need feeding, who might kick-off, who was new and who might be saved in the Lord’s eyes. Nobody was beyond redemption. But mostly, they sought out those who might be in need of a kind word and a bowl of soup, if not the loaves and fishes of the Lord himself. Though, they both hoped, that would come later.

Big Smout McLaughlin sometimes joined them. He was an enigma of Glasgow city centre. Tall, thin with chiselled features, articulate and well educated. They wondered, but never asked, why he chose to sleep in an alley at the back of the sheriff court. Sometimes he would come to the soup kitchen with a young one in tow, showing them there was always someplace to go if it got too scary out on the street. Smout McLaughlin had only ever stayed in the night shelter himself once in the twenty years he had been living rough and that was because of a vile chest infection. Jo reckoned he had somewhere to go when he needed, a safe haven tucked in his back pocket somewhere. To Jo, the maths was simple. People didn’t last twenty years on the streets of Glasgow; pneumonia, sepsis or more recently TB would take their toll. All on the backdrop of the chilling wind and the damp, damp air that picked off the weak.

On this bitter November evening Jo and Walter were heading east from George Square. They had walked the concourse of Queen Street train station, had a word with the transport police. All was good. Next stop was Buchanan Street bus station, the first stop for many of the throwaways and runaways finding refuge in the cold, hard streets of Glasgow, or as their overnight stop on the way down south, to the colder, harder streets of London.

Walter adjusted the holdall he carried over his shoulder. It wasn’t heavy, just bulky. It contained a couple of clean blankets and about ten pairs of warm woolly socks. They were heading, vaguely, for a young lad living in a box outside the side door of the bus station. Until recently he had been overnighting on the ground floor of the multi-storey. That was highly prized territory in the depth of the winter. Last week, the boy had his cardboard boxes back out on the street, tucked underneath the overhang of the station roof. And he had a bruised, bloodied face and a red socket where a front tooth used to be.

Tonight they found him, nestled into his fleece against his flattened cardboard. It was three degrees outside, the boy didn’t have a pick on him. They woke him with a gentle prod, knowing that he would lash out before realising they were handing him a blanket. Then they gave him the socks, Walter handing them over one at a time trying to make some kind of human, and humane, contact, letting the eye connection last as long as possible.

The boy had woken up, flinching, his fist up ready but he didn’t pull away. Seeing the socks, he immediately kicked off his dirty soaking trainers, one toe pushing off the heel of the other. Even in the stink of the human waste in the alley, Jo could smell the stench of the boy’s feet from here. His toes were translucent grey, the skin round his toenails white and wrinkled, fisher-woman toes. There were deep dark tramlines where the seams of the socks had put pressure on the skin. She thought she could see the red puncture marks through the dirt in between the toes, but it was dark except for the overspill of lights from the concourse; maybe she was seeing what she expected to see. It wasn’t her place to judge. The boy pulled on a pair of fresh socks, then placed his foot on the ground, soaking the dry sock, then pulled on his trainers.

Walter was talking to him, taking a good look, thinking that he was in his late teens at the most. Jo stood back, pretending to give him space and remain unthreatening, but really keeping clear of the dreadful smell. Walter’s voice, friendly but not overly so, was telling the boy how close the soup kitchen was if he wanted something to eat, giving him rough, brief directions, before adding, if he couldn’t manage they did have a van and could collect him. The boy was ignoring him, going anywhere meant giving up his space under the overhang. He was too busy stuffing the other two pairs of dry socks into his pockets and down his trousers. They were a prize and he didn’t want them taken from him by unseen eyes watching from the dark.

Walter asked him if there was anything they could do for him. The boy looked blank. Even if he didn’t speak a word of English, as increasingly was the case, there tended to be some response. Those in the clutches of heroin tended ‘to roll’ as Walter put it. Cocaine addicts rarely stayed still enough to fall asleep but this boy gave a resentful closed look before he went back to his business with the socks, pulling back the cardboard bed into the shelter of the overhanging roof. Two sheets had worked their way out from the wall a few inches and were swelling with the rain.

The look was more than Walter had got the last time, and an inch was better than a mile in the right direction. A look, then a word, then a smile, then he would be looking out for Jo and Walter to come walking along the street. Then a conversation and information. Then the boy was not that far from being saved from the streets and hopefully safe in the arms of Jesus.

Jo and Walter walked away, saying goodbye, wishing the boy would shout at them to come back but he didn’t. Not this time.

Their next stop was usually the Heilandman’s Umbrella, a section of Argyle Street under the raised tracks of the railway.

The shops and pubs were busy with shoppers during the day and clubbers out on the bevvy at night, and with the homeless and the lawless in the small hours. They preferred to get covered in pigeon shit rather than the constant Glasgow rain. Jo and Walter had turned into Buchannan Street precinct when Smout appeared, out of nowhere. This time he had a saxophone as well as his rucksack, obviously been doing some busking.

‘How are you doing, my friends? Still doing the good work of the Lord?’

‘While there remains good work to be done? Of course.’ It was a familiar exchange.

Their conversation was light-hearted; Smout was not a lamb looking for a shepherd. He was more a collie looking after his flock.

He fell into stride with them both. ‘There’s a new one you might want to talk to, she’s hanging about the bottom of the Buchanan Galleries. Been there all evening, confused. Older, definitely older, and somebody has had a go at her already. And drunk, can’t get a word out of her, you’ll know by the smell, Eau De Thunderbird. See ya.’ And he nodded, slapping Jo gently on her back, walking his jaunty walk into the darkness of Dundas Lane, where he melted to invisibility, the smirr of rain swallowing him.

Walter consulted his watch and looked up as the rain started coming down in stair rods, jagged spears of orange in the street-light. A night bus crawled its way round Nelson Mandela place, windows steamed up, engine groaning slightly.

‘Shall we?’ asked Walter.

Jo nodded. There was only one thing more vulnerable than the young on the streets of a big city. The elderly.

Ten minutes later Jo and Walter found the woman huddled into the corner of the steps of the concert hall. Her dark blue jacket had the hood up over her head and pulled tight round her face in an attempt to keep the world out. It was Jo who approached this time; even from a distance she could smell the alcohol but as she got closer she could see the blood on the side of her cheek, dried in a leaf-like pattern. The woman looked up, then when she saw Jo looking at her hands, she looked down at them also.

Jo approached as if she was a frightened animal. It could be a mental health issue, she needed to be careful. Human bites could be very dangerous. She knew that. But the older woman stayed calm, staring at some point lying in the middle distance.

Jo tried a few opening lines: ‘Would you like a blanket? Something to eat? A bed for the night? Someone to talk to?’ There was no response at all. But she didn’t react adversely and Jo placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder. Soaking wet. That jacket was giving her no protection from the rain. Jo turned and shrugged to Walter, who pulled out his mobile phone and called the community police as Jo got a blanket from the bag and placed it round the woman’s shoulders. The woman, maybe not so old now, had looked up, vague recognition in her eyes as she reached out, her bony fingers moving in the air, edging their way to the badge and the black epaulettes on Jo’s uniform.

And with a trembling finger, she pointed.

WILMA SAT AT THE doorway, the warm living room behind her; the hall had taken on the chill of the November air. She had called for Alastair but he hadn’t heard. She opened the door.

There were three of them, all dressed alike. One nodded to her and invited himself in.

He said one word. ‘Tonka?’

Another stood back watching the street, one hand holding a large torch, the other deep in his parka pocket. The man in the doorway pressed closer, his hands crossed in front of him, peering over her shoulders up the stairs, then followed his colleague up, giving her a nod in passing.

Twenty years of peace and quiet, away from the madness, and here they were knocking on her door at midnight. She’d had her mouth open ready to protest, to ask them who they were, exactly. But she had known, known from the minute she saw them. No point in asking these men for I.D., that was the last thing they would have given.

She tried to tell them there was nobody living here of that name, no Tonka. It was a forlorn feeble attempt, her words spoken to their backs as they went up her stairs, silent muddy boots on her lovely new stair carpet. She could have wept.

They knew who they wanted, and they knew he was here. The final man came inside and closed the door, dwarfing her and the cottage. All of them wore bulky dark blue and black jackets. Small men, in their thirties she guessed, young enough to be her boys. Hard faces, wide shoulders, alert and light on their heavy feet.

‘Evening missus. Sit quiet and we’ll be out of here double quick.’

Glaswegian accent. They usually were, these people; Glaswegians were violent, any excuse. The guitar fell silent on a protesting chord. She waited, staring up the stairs.

Wilma had known that this day would come, shattering life’s illusion like glass. It was a relief. There was nothing like waiting for that knock that never came. She kept to one side, her chair against the living-room door, but never taking her eyes off the top of the stairs where she could see a sliver of the man’s body through the spindles of the bannister as he spoke softly, a quiet monologue. She heard Hamish whimper on the other side of the living-room door as if he also knew. She was still watching as the men came back down the stairs, moving at speed. They both nodded to Wilma as they passed, avoiding her eyes, and they went straight out the door, leaving Wilma, in her chair, impotent in the possession of her own house. She watched them disappear into the black night, the dark wind swallowing them. She didn’t hear the doors of the Land Rover open or close. Just the gentle pit pat of her husband coming down the stairs, carrying what he called his ready pack from the top of the wardrobe. He took his boots from under the stair, his jacket and his scarf from the hall stand. He didn’t say a word to her or look in her direction in case he read it in her eyes.

Don’t.

She looked into the ebony night, her eyes catching the twitch of the curtains across the lane as the neighbours had a quick look. She sat there alone and stunned as the Land Rover tail lights retreated and then vanished from her view as the vehicle turned the corner, hearing the engine accelerate hard, then there was nothing but the rattle of the rain and the howl of the wind.

THE WOMAN HAD SAID nothing on her way to the hospital, sitting in the back of the police car with ease and a degree of comfort, as if the journey did not faze her or she had absolutely no understanding of what was going on. The two cops who had picked her up, Turner and Whitely, had tried a few opening gambits about the weather and how it was far too cold to be sitting on a stone step at this time of year.

Silence.

Trying for a bit of chit chat, Turner asked her if she was hungry because they were passing ASDA and they could pop in for steak bake. Much to their disappointment she remained quiet, so they drove on.

She looked out the window, watching the nightlife of Glasgow float past; through the Clyde Tunnel, her eyes became wild and frightened. The blood was still steadily dripping from her head. Every so often she would fist it away, then rub the blood onto her anorak. Then look at the anorak as if she had never seen it before in her life.

At the desk in Accident and Emergency, Turner gave the details of where they had found her, and that they had no identification. He pointed to the blood on the side and the back of her head and to the overpowering stink of alcohol, both he felt being relevant to her story. He confirmed, in response to the receptionist’s questioning eyebrow, that as yet there had been no reports of any missing person in the system who resembled this woman, and repeated that she had no ID on her, but they had only checked her outer pockets.

‘I’ll leave it to you lot to get her undressed and have a more thorough look. She’s still bleeding.’

‘No phone? No credit cards?’ asked the receptionist, battering at the keyboard while her eyes flicked between Turner and the blonde woman. ‘She OK?’

‘Head wound,’ Turner confirmed needlessly, then added that the patient was perfectly compliant, and seemed fully conscious. But wasn’t talking.

‘Can she walk OK?’ The receptionist nodded towards the doors to the treatment area. ‘Or do you want a chair?’

‘She’s a bit unsteady but she’ll get through there. We’ll stay until she gets sorted out. Is your coffee machine still on the blink?’

The receptionist pulled a sheet of A4 out the printer. ‘Take that through with you and if you smile very, very sweetly, some nice nurse might stick the kettle on for you.’ She gave them a huge grin that took sarcasm to an Olympic level. ‘Make sure you’ve signed all your paperwork before you go. All of it, mind. And can you take that through with you,’ and she opened the glass partition to shove a huge file into his hand. ‘Dr Russell is wanting it. Well, somebody is.’ The glass partition fell shut.

The two cops waited for the receptionist to press the green button and the door to the treatment area clicked open.

‘Oh, hello you two. Three.’ The nurse, her uniform straining to contain her ample figure, turned to the woman who was standing between the two cops like a young child, slightly nervous and waiting to be told what to do. The nurse looked at the slow trickle of blood meandering down the woman’s forehead. ‘Come on, sweetheart, I’m Hannah, let’s get you through and find out what’s been going on.’ She placed a cupped hand under the elbow of the woman, easing her through the second set of double doors to the receiving and assessment unit. The woman paused for a moment and turned, as if reluctant to leave the two policemen behind.

‘It’s OK,’ said Turner, ‘go with Hannah, she will look after you. And while you are in there, we’ll get a wee cup of tea.’ Turner thought he saw a flicker of a smile in the woman’s face.

‘You know, pet,’ said the nurse, ‘they’ll be lucky, getting a cuppa in here. Now you come with me, you’ll be fine.’ And they both were consumed by the blue curtains of an empty cubicle.

‘What do you think?’ Whitely asked. ‘Domestic?’

‘Could be. She stinks of booze. She could have fallen and hit her head and got concussion. She’s developing that panda-eyed thing, so she’s bleeding somewhere. Might be nothing in it for us but it’s bloody freezing out there and nice and cosy in here so don’t be so quick to get going.’

Whitely sat down beside him. ‘Do you think we should see it through to the bitter end?’

‘Oh yes. She’s had head trauma.’ Turner stood up to retrieve his notebook from his jacket and sat down, got comfy and started to write it up. Despite his levity, it troubled him a little. The woman was confused, non-vocal and had a nasty head wound that, weirdly, looked clean. Had she already received medical attention? Had she gone voluntarily? Had she had the wound cleaned and then a deeper bleed, some unseen damage now leaking into her brain that was causing a slow reduction in function? He had been a beat copper for twenty years and had seen everything, been bitten, spat at, punched, nearly stabbed a few times. Compliance like that was odd. She was quite at home in the police car, she smelled of alcohol but her eyes were straight and seemed to focus OK. And, apart from the blood, she was clean, well dressed; some attempt had been made to brush her hair, so most likely somebody somewhere was missing her. He radioed back to the station, checking that no more reports had come up on the missing persons, reading out his initial description: sixty-year-old female, blonde, grey-eyed, slim, five four . . . But that was all he knew.

The station checked the log, the number of people who went missing each day was incredible. The percentage who disappeared was growing as well; if people wanted to go, they would go.

They had one report that might fit. A Peter Gibson of Lochmaben Road in Crookston had phoned in to say that he had spotted a woman sitting on one of the benches at the perimeter of the small park known locally as the Tubs. She was wearing grey trousers, a long black jacket, white blouse. He guessed she was about sixty. Gibson had approached her, thinking that her clothes were not warm enough for this time of year and that she must be disturbed. Or drunk. Or drugged. Gibson had seen the blood on the white of her blouse and called 999. When the cops got there, she had run off.

Turner read the description again. Right age, wrong clothes.

Not their woman.