‘He comes to your place or you go to his?’
Slight pause. There we are. Right there.
‘I go to him.’
That pause. What was that?
‘You went to him every day?’
‘Yes.’
Why’d you have to think about it then, Mia Wallace?
‘Was that just the case this week, or do you always go to his home?’
‘Not always, no. He has been a regular visitor to my office.’
‘So, what was so –’
‘He asked me to,’ she says quickly. For the first time she seems troubled by the direction of the conversation. ‘And more to the point, he paid me, paid me rather well, actually.’
She’s been holding Taylor’s gaze, then she glances at me before turning back to him.
‘So, I need to make money, Chief Inspector. Are you going to hold it against me?’
‘How did Mr Clayton come to you in the first place?’ he asks.
Another pause. A more reasonable one, I suppose. That’s one question she might well have to think over before deciding what to tell us.
She lifts the packet of cigarettes again, flips the lid and removes a smoke one handed, puts it in her mouth, lights up, long draw, and blows out the smoke as she settles back into her seat.
‘I was recommended by his GP.’
‘When was this?’
‘A certain amount of time ago.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’
Another long draw, smoke held in the mouth and then exhaled to the side.
‘I know quite a lot about you two.’
DRIVING BACK TO THE station. Less than ten minutes. Taylor doesn’t speak for the first half of the drive. Got the feeling she really did piss him off. Face set, lips tight.
‘No,’ he says eventually, just as we’re driving into Cambuslang.
His voice is as firm and unyielding as the look on his face.
‘No, what?’
‘No, she can’t be your psychiatrist.’
I glance back at him, and then turn and look out of the passenger door window. The grey buildings of the town flit by. Not many pedestrians down this way, down the hill, before you get to Main Street.
I think about saying that I wasn’t going to ask, but I don’t feel like talking, and it would be a lie anyway.
30
The day is playing a blinder so far. Another anonymous, untraceable e-mail, a dead girl on the train tracks, a barely post-pubescent literary agent who seems to know more about Police Scotland than I do, and then the unspeakably cool psychiatrist, who is probably in a position to help us, and who gives us absolutely nothing.
There’s always the possibility, of course, that there’s nothing to tell. That, regardless of Clayton’s involvement in the Plague of Crows grotesquery, and whatever he told DCI Lynch about the previous murder charge on which he was acquitted, he really does have nothing to do with this.
Still, I was the genius who brought it up and made sure it came to the attention of the senior suits in the service, so there’s no backing away from it now.
Four in the afternoon, warm day, a quiet Sunday afternoon kind of buzz around the place. Morrow out somewhere, Taylor in his office, on and off the phone, me at my desk. Trawling through the details of the lives of all the victims so far.
That, of course, is regularly the most depressing part of any of this kind of work. The poor old victims, about whom we so often forget. Or, in my case, try to not give a shit about right from the off.
This is why, right here. You start looking into their lives, and you start to care. How can you not? How can you not care anything about them?
Today’s victim was eleven years old and had been missing from her home in Kilmarnock since last Sunday afternoon. Her mother was a staunch supporter of letting her daughter roam free, playing in the street or in the park, walking to school, playing in the nearby woods. She didn’t want to over-protect, she didn’t want her kid watching TV for eight hours a day, while playing Two Dots on an iPod the rest of the time. She wanted to instill in her the kind of independence she’d had as a child, she wanted her to have the imagination to build a fort in the woods, and to go exploring and to make dams in any stream she could find. She wanted her daughter to be everything that children in our generation were, and which has now been lost through technology and fear.
And this is what she got for her trouble. Her kid snatched from a wood, a week of worry, followed by a lifetime of regret and self-loathing.
From what we’ve heard already, her husband is letting her take all the blame; indeed, has been doing so since the first moment they started worrying about where the kid had gone.
Kid dead, marriage over, you sue me and I’ll sue you. Pass the pretzels.
Always worse, of course, when the victim is a child, but it’s not like the rest of the dead leave behind stories that deserve to end in bloodshed and an early grave.
I read on, sucked further into the mire of misery, and getting nowhere nearer any kind of answer or connection.
Taylor pulls out Morrow’s seat and sits down opposite.
‘How are you getting on?’ he asks.
‘Got nothing so far. Nothing to suggest it’s not the worst case scenario for us that we’ve been assuming all along; an entirely random selection of individuals.’
He stares idly at the papers lying around Morrow’s desk. Glad to see that as Morrow becomes more experienced and his workload inevitably increases, he’s becoming a lot less organised. By the time he gets to my age he’ll be filing documents in the bin by the hundred-load like the rest of us.
‘We should be talking to Connor,’ says Taylor. ‘I was hoping he’d have gone by now, and it could wait until tomorrow, but it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Anyway, doesn’t really matter. We are definitely presenting to the Chief tomorrow morning, so we need something, even if it’s a mea culpa and some sort of retraction.’
I stare blankly into space, same as he is. Beginning to feel a little hopeless. Beginning to feel, absurdly, that Clayton has total dominion over us. Like he can do what he wants. Like we’re the Thistle and he’s PSG, and we can imagine for a few fleeting moments we have some sort of chance, but in reality, and ultimately, we’re just going to get our arses handed to us, even if it takes a penalty box dive by that little bastard Neymar in the last minute.
‘I want you to go back and speak to the psychiatrist,’ he says.
I look up.
‘Seriously?’
‘Oh, no, I’m just sitting here making shit up,’ he says, with instant anger.
I hold up an apologetic hand, and he waves it away with some element of apology at his outburst.
‘Talk to her. I don’t know what that was earlier, and maybe it’s the real thing.’ He shakes his head at the thought. ‘I mean, seriously... If that’s who she is, then fine. But try and get beneath it, if you can. Maybe you’ll have more luck on your own. You can do, you know, whatever it is you usually do.’
‘I usually sleep with them,’ I say.
‘I know.’
I give him a questioning look.
‘I don’t give a shit,’ he says. ‘Just get in touch with her, try whatever you think is necessary. It would be better.... It would be for the best if you didn’t get her into bed, but actually, like I said, I don’t care. Just try and get anything you can.’
He stands up, looks somewhat troubled about having instructed one of his officers to go out and prostitute himself for information – at least on that front he picked the right guy – taps Morrow’s desk a couple of times, and then turns back to his own office.
Stops, looks round, comes back to stand at the desk.
‘That moment, the second when I asked if she saw him at his house or her office... What was that?’
‘I know, it was weird.’
‘It was a straightforward enough question. And even allowing for her thinking everything over, deciding what questions
were to be answered and what was encroaching on her damned confidentiality...’
‘Yep.’
Holds my gaze briefly, and then turns away.
He gets to return to his desk, I get to go and see the vamp. Sadly, just at the thought, I can feel myself getting turned on.
What a dick. I mean, that’s the point of a fucking vamp, isn’t it? It’s the tease, it’s the style. They’re vamps, they’re not slappers. And really, this thing I’ve got going, where somehow I get women to sleep with me... it never happens on command. It just happens. Sometimes. And sometimes it doesn’t.
Highly unlikely to be happening with Dr Brady, and if it did, how the fuck would I know she wasn’t playing me on Clayton’s command?
Note to self: exercise extreme caution and try not to think with your dick.
AS IT IS, EVEN MY DICK doesn’t get to do any thinking. She answers neither her mobile nor her work phone. I sit at my desk, the phone still in my hand, the anticipation fading, and then decide that I’m going to go round to her office. Sunday afternoon, chances are there will be no one there, but I have to give it a go. Everything’s open on a Sunday these secular days.
Stick my head into the boss’s office, let him know what’s happening so he can pass it on to Connor if the knob comes looking, and off out the door, armed with both her office and home address.
Her office is just off Kelvingrove Park, up behind, close to the statue of Field Marshall Lord Roberts, great hero of the Indian wars and others, who one day will no doubt find himself torn down, as righteous rage continues to grow against the old Empire.
A large Victorian detached house, converted into a series of offices and surgeries. I get buzzed in, where a man sits behind a desk, the downstairs hall off the front door having been converted into a reception area. A few chairs, pictures on the wall. It oozes money.
The guy glances at his watch as I approach the desk, then straightens his shoulders a little as I hold out my ID, steady before him for a few seconds, so that he can read the details.
‘Sgt Hutton?’ he says, looking up. ‘I’m afraid there’s no one here anymore.’
I glance around. The place is deathly quiet, and even though you might not expect there to be any particular sound coming from a medical practice reception area, there’s a sense of the emptiness in the building.
‘This is a private doctor’s practice?’ I ask.
‘The facility is run by EmMed International, a subsidiary of Viathol. There are offices here covering various streams across the health spectrum, including dentistry, pediatrics, psychiatry, orthopedic... and many more,’ he adds, as though advertising a K-Tel best-of-the-60s compilation.
‘So why is no one here?’
‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ he answers, in a tone suggesting I’m the idiot.
‘Why are you here?’
‘To field enquiries until five pm. Such as this one. What can I do for you, Sgt Hutton?’
I glance up the stairs, then take a quick look around the room. There are two cameras trained on us.
‘You like getting watched at work?’ I ask.
‘I doubt anyone’s actually watching,’ he says. ‘They’re only there in case of any incidents. What can I help you with today?’
‘I’m looking for Dr Brady,’ I say quickly, ditching the vague conversational style.
‘She’s on holiday,’ he says.
‘We saw her today.’
‘Where?’
‘How d’you mean she’s on holiday? Since when?’
‘She’s been off all week.’
‘You know where she went? If she went abroad, England...?’
He’s shaking his head, long before I get to the end of the question.
‘I don’t really know the practitioners particularly well. Only been here four weeks. Was previously working for the Forestry Commission. I’ll probably move on again in a couple of months. This is pretty boring to be honest.’
Jesus, enough with the fucking commentary. It’s not about you.
‘When was the last time you saw Dr Brady?’
‘That would have been a week past on Friday.’
‘Can you describe Dr Brady to me?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Can you de...’
‘I heard you, it’s just, you said you saw her today. You presumably know what she looks like.’
‘Just describe her, please.’
‘What’s this about?’
‘This is about me, a police officer, asking you, a member of the public, some questions, coupled with you answering them.’
‘I do work for a private medical practice,’ he says, and as he talks, that thing you get where the tone lifts slightly at the end of a sentence or statement becomes more pronounced, ‘so I am bound by issues of confidentiality.’
‘I’m not asking anything confi-fucking-dential, I’d just like you to describe what one of your doctors looks like.’
Nice, Hutton, you dick.
‘All I’m asking is why?’
‘So I know that the woman we interviewed today is the same woman you see in the office every day.’
‘Why wouldn’t she be the same? Why would someone be pretending to be Dr Brady?’
‘Can you just describe her for me, please?’
He holds my gaze, then says, ‘No,’ swallowing noisily as soon as the syllable is out his mouth.
I manage to refrain from blurting out the work fuck too loudly, hands on hips, turn away. And there it is, the thing that was so natural in this setting, and so obvious, it hadn’t even registered with me it was there. The large board listing every practice in the establishment, with photographs of each of the doctors and other practitioners in house.
I stare at it, turn and give the receptionist a glance, then walk over to the board.
‘You can’t look at that,’ he says, although the conviction in his voice has vanished even before he gets to the end of the sentence. I ignore him anyway.
There she is. Dr Veronica Brady. Bobbed brown hair, fringe a little too long. No spectacles, barely any make up. Attractive, recognisably the same person we saw earlier today, but with none of the artifice.
‘Is this a recent photograph? I mean, is this how she looked the last time you spoke to her?’
He doesn’t answer. I give him a second, then turn round. He’s looking at me, his face resolutely blank. Give him another second or two, then walk back over.
‘Just fucking tell me if this is how she looked the last time you saw her.’
‘We’re on camera, you know. Sound too.’
‘Good. We’ll have evidence when we charge you with obstructing the police.’
‘You can’t do that!’
‘Is that what Dr Brady looked like the last time you saw her?’
‘Yes,’ he says quickly.
‘Thank you. You know when she booked this week off on leave?’
‘She e-mailed it in,’ he says. ‘First thing last Monday morning. Asked me to cancel all her patients.’
‘How many patients did she have this week?’
A short pause, and then, ‘A full slate.’
‘Did it include a Mr Michael Clayton?’
He stares at me, the look on his face hardening. At least, the look he was attempting to put on his face hardens. There’s nothing hard about him, but I’m not going to push it.
My eyes move to the monitor beside him, he follows my look, then quickly presses a couple of keys on the keyboard to log himself out. Now there’d be no point in me going over there and manhandling him off his computer, which is obviously what a police officer such as myself would usually do.
He blinks beneath my stare.
‘In your limited experience, have you known Dr Brady to take time off before at such short notice?’
‘No.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘No.’
‘Just that she was going on holiday?’
He pauses again, befor
e nodding at his own thought.
‘I’m going to say she just wrote she was taking the week off,’ he says, ‘that’s pretty much all. I don’t know that she actually used the word holiday.’
‘Is it possible she’ll have seen any of her patients at her own home or at their home?’
Blank look, finally, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Would there be a reason why she might not have wanted to work here all week?’
My tone is getting harsher, and I’m quite pleased to see he’s wilting before it, his pusillanimity beginning to show. Unfortunately, he’s not hiding anything. Just scared of the police.
‘I don’t know.’
I let out one of those long, exasperated, tired sighs and turn away. Look back at Brady’s photograph. Quite ordinary. Nothing there to stir the contents of a pair of finest M&S NASA-technology pants.
‘Would you tell me her home address, please?’ I ask.
‘Couldn’t possibly,’ he answers quickly.
I turn and look at him, just give him the menacing police glare, and then smile.
‘I already know it. I’m going round there now. You want to call it in, see if you can get the cops to head me off at the pass?’
‘What pass?’
It seems everybody on earth is now twenty years younger than me, which is bloody depressing.
‘Thanks for your help,’ I say. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
31
Grabbed by Taylor, just as I get back to my desk. The place is quieter than before I went out. Have just sat down, had time to look at my inbox to make sure there are no further mocking missives. Contemplating getting a cup of coffee. Beginning to think it might be Sunday evening alcohol time. Taylor arrives to get my mind back on work.
‘How’d it go?’ he asks, standing by Morrow’s empty desk. ‘You don’t look flushed.’
I wonder what he means for a second, then remember he sent me off with strict instructions to have sex with the witness.
‘Weird,’ I say. ‘Went to her office, the guy there says she e-mailed on Monday morning and cancelled all her appointments for the week. I went round to her house, no one in. Spoke to a couple of neighbours, no one had seen her for a while. They didn’t sound like that was necessarily odd, because it’s not like they were living on top of each other in a tenement, but even so... I broke into the house. Mail hadn’t been lifted all week.’
DS Hutton Box Set Page 93