by T F Muir
‘Mr Samuel Johnson Bell?’ Jessie said, holding up her warrant card.
The man cocked his head.
‘We need to talk to you.’
‘Talk?’
‘Can we come in?’
Bell stared at Jessie, silent.
It took several seconds for Gilchrist to notice that Bell’s pupils were dilated, that he was likely high on drugs. ‘We could drag you down to the Station, if you’d prefer,’ he said. ‘But I think you’d catch your death of cold. So why don’t you invite us in so we can talk in the warmth?’
Bell’s lips parted in a weak grin. ‘Heating’s not on,’ he said.
‘That’s it,’ Jessie said, and reached for her plasticuffs.
Bell’s eyes widened at the sight of the cuffs, and he took a step back.
‘These are going round your wrists or your balls, I don’t care which.’
Gilchrist grabbed Bell’s arm as he stumbled backwards, and managed to prevent him from falling. But Bell locked an out-of-focus stare on Gilchrist’s hand, and said, ‘Pi can’t be expressed as a fraction.’
‘Do you have a solicitor?’ Jessie asked.
‘It’s an irrational number that never repeats—’
‘How about repeating this? Do you have a solicitor?’
‘ . . . and never ends when written as a decimal.’
Gilchrist relaxed his grip on Bell’s arm, and gave Jessie a tiny shake of his head. She got the message, and slipped her plasticuffs back into her pocket. ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea, Mr Bell?’ Gilchrist asked.
Bell seemed confused for a moment, then said, ‘No kettle.’
Jessie tutted and pushed past him, towards a door that Gilchrist assumed opened to the kitchen. Bell turned and followed her, Gilchrist behind him.
Where the exterior of the house was immaculate, the kitchen was a different matter.
Pots and pans piled high in a scum-lined sink. Crusts of burned toast and the remains of other food littered the draining basin. Emptied tins of baked beans sat on the granite tops, some on their sides, dribbling the last of their contents down the cupboard doors. The air was thick enough to taste, and a smell that left a coating on the tongue had Gilchrist pressing the back of his hand to his nose.
‘Bloody hell,’ Jessie said, and snapped open a window.
Fresh air rushed in.
Bell stepped towards a circular oak table, bare feet squelching on sticky linoleum. An opened bottle of ginger beer lay on its side in the corner. He shoved aside a stack of books, and hastily scraped together a haphazard pile of loose papers. Then he looked at Gilchrist, papers hugged to his chest.
‘Let’s try the front lounge,’ Gilchrist said.
Without a word, Bell walked from the kitchen.
In the lounge, other than the opening of the blinds, the room looked as if Bell had not set foot in it. Cushions sat plumped up on a crinkle-free settee, as if untouched since their last cleaning. Two crystal vases stood on a glass-topped coffee table, lily and rose petals scattered around them like crinkled scraps. On a shelf by the rear window, a devil’s ivy drooped to the floor, its yellowed leaves as crisp as dried paper.
‘How long have you lived here, Mr Bell?’ Gilchrist asked.
Bell was standing at the window again. A fierce-eyed eagle spread its wings across his upper back, yellow beak open, talons splayed, feathers fluttering from the rippling of his muscles. Bell might be high on drugs, but he was in excellent physical shape.
Gilchrist let a silent ten seconds pass before saying, ‘I don’t like repeating myself.’
‘A month,’ Bell said, ‘give or take.’
‘These papers you’re holding, Mr Bell. What are they?’ He detected a tensing in Bell’s stance.
Jessie took a step closer to Bell. ‘Are you hiding something?’ she asked him.
Bell turned suddenly, and held the papers out to Gilchrist.
From where Gilchrist stood, the pencilled triangles and trapeziums and numbers for angles reminded him of his geometry classes in secondary school. But he kept his arms at his sides. ‘Studying maths?’ he said.
‘It took over three hundred years for Fermat’s Last Theorem to be solved—’
‘Where were you last night?’ Gilchrist interrupted, and watched calculated cunning slide behind Bell’s eyes.
‘Why?’
‘Just answer the question.’
Bell pulled his papers back to his chest. ‘I was here.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you go out at all?’
‘Where to?’
‘That’s what I’m asking.’
‘I had a couple of pints.’
Like pulling teeth, Gilchrist thought. ‘Where?’
‘Golf Hotel.’
The Golf Hotel was at the other end of town, but an image of Bell seated in the lounge having a jovial pint did not materialise. ‘The bar?’ he asked.
‘Where else?’
‘What’s that?’ Jessie asked, and nodded to Bell’s papers.
But Bell ignored her, kept his eyes on Gilchrist.
‘Looks like there’s some photos in that lot,’ she persisted.
Bell tightened his grip on the bunched papers.
Jessie smiled. ‘Head shots of Fermat, are they?’
Gilchrist eyed the papers, but from where he stood, all he could see were scribbled pages. ‘Like to show us?’ he said to Bell, and held out his hand.
Bell pulled the pages tighter.
‘We can apply for a warrant,’ Gilchrist reasoned.
Something seemed to settle over Bell at these words but, as he relaxed his grip, first one photograph, then another, slipped from the loosening pages. He tried to catch them, but only made matters worse as other scribbled pages and coloured prints fluttered to the carpet.
Jessie reached down and retrieved a photograph. She stared at it for several seconds, then said, ‘What’s this got to do with Fermat’s Last Theorem?’
Bell gave her a dead-eyed stare.
‘Did someone give you this, or did you download it?’
Silence.
She picked up another photograph, then one more, and said, ‘We can take you to the Station as is. Or you can get dressed. But however you do it, I’m detaining you on suspicion of downloading images of underage children. You do have a computer, don’t you?’
Bell lifted his gaze to the ceiling, and cocked his head as if some idea had come to him. Then he gave a weak smile, and said, ‘I’ll get dressed.’
‘Not so fast,’ Jessie said. ‘Leave that lot here.’
Bell crouched down, and placed the papers on the carpet with care, revealing more images of what looked like child porn.
Gilchrist said, ‘I’ll come with you while you dig out your clothes.’
‘I can manage,’ Bell said, and turned to the door.
Jessie took a step to the side, blocking his way. ‘You heard the man.’
Bell narrowed his eyes, as if seeing her for the first time.
‘That’s right,’ she said to him. ‘We’ll be searching that computer of yours before you can delete a bloody thing.’
CHAPTER 3
While Jessie arranged transport to take Bell to the North Street Office, Gilchrist phoned Brenda McAllister, the Procurator Fiscal, and organised a search warrant for Bell’s property. With the process started at least, Gilchrist walked upstairs, leaving Jessie to keep an eye on Bell. Strictly speaking, anything found in advance of the warrant could be deemed inadmissible in court, but Jessie would back him up, he knew.
Just as on the lower floor, upstairs was a dichotomy of cleanliness and disarray. He entered a front bedroom, the floor littered with clothes, bed-sheets, discarded beer cans, plates dirtied with hardened lumps of food. The walls, once neatly wallpapered, were pencilled from floor to ceiling in scribbled mathematical equations that ran for line upon line in the tiniest of writing, making Gilchrist wonder if Bell had been trying to solve Fermat’s
Last Theorem all by himself.
An opened laptop sat on the bed, screen half hidden by a filthy pillow which he eased aside. He ran a knuckle over the touch pad and the screen revived to an image of what looked like the lower half of a naked child, legs wide . . .
Gilchrist’s stomach seized. He turned away as the urge to throw up hit him like a kick to the guts. He choked back a sliver of bile, ran the back of his hand over his lips, his mind screaming that he would have Bell, he would kill the man, he would . . . he would . . .
He took a deep breath to settle his heart, and forced his mind to think rationally. He accessed the images in sequence to confirm the child was female but, importantly, that she had a small birthmark on her inner right thigh, which could help identify her. The corner of his eye caught what he thought was spillage on the bedsheets. He leaned over for a closer inspection, and managed to stifle another spasm as his gut threatened to eject his breakfast.
But he gagged it down, and stumbled from the bedroom.
Jessie’s eyes widened as Gilchrist barged into the living room.
Bell stood in profile, facing the window, lips curling with the tiniest of smiles. Then he turned and stared through Gilchrist, pupils no longer dilated. And Gilchrist wondered if Bell had not been on drugs but high on the sexual thrill of masturbating to children.
The smirk was too much.
One step, two steps, and he had his fingers around Bell’s neck and his back thumped hard enough against the wall to send a mirror crashing to the floor.
‘Who is she?’ he snarled.
Bell’s muscles flexed, then he launched himself from the wall and went for a head-butt. Gilchrist was ready, and pulled him off balance with a twist of his shoulders and a hook of his leg. Bell hit the floor and a knee thumped into the small of his back, emptied his lungs with a surprised grunt.
‘Was that Katie Davis?’ Gilchrist growled.
Bell bellowed in pain, but managed to grunt, ‘Who’s Katie Davis?’
Gilchrist pressed harder. ‘I swear I’ll—’
‘Andy.’
Jessie’s shout brought him back. He released his grip, pushed himself to his feet.
Bell rolled on to his side, and Gilchrist jerked him upright, thudded his back against the wall again, ready to send him to the floor if he so much as looked as if he was going to retaliate. But Bell coughed once, twice, then chuckled. ‘You don’t know,’ he said, ‘do you?’
‘Don’t know what?’
Bell shook his head with a smile. ‘You just don’t know.’
It took all of Gilchrist’s willpower not to throttle the life from Bell. ‘We’ll ID her from the birthmark,’ he said.
Surprise flickered across Bell’s face.
‘And if that’s you on the screen, I’ll make sure you spend a weekend in Cornton Vale before they send you to Barlinnie.’
Gilchrist knew his words were meaningless to a man like Bell. Being threatened by the law was no more hurtful than being sworn at. Nonetheless, he breathed a sigh of relief when a police Transit van pulled up on the pavement outside Bell’s house – the uniforms to take Bell to North Street.
By the time the warrant arrived, Jessie had been through Bell’s laptop, but found no more child porn. When the SOCOs turned up, Gilchrist and Jessie had their stories straight, and Gilchrist made a point of following Colin, the lead SOCO, into Bell’s bedroom, where the laptop was discovered and bagged for removal. Gilchrist then instructed Colin to search the place from top to bottom, and left him to it.
As he and Jessie walked along the garden path, he said, ‘Penny for your thoughts?’
‘You can’t afford them, the things I’m thinking of doing to that pervert.’
‘We don’t yet know that the man in the images was Bell,’ Gilchrist reasoned.
‘Just some pervert who needs his cock whacked off,’ Jessie said. ‘And I’ll tell you what, for all the shit those dickheads for brothers of mine have done, they draw the line at that.’ She scurried down the steps and stomped across the road to her Fiat.
Gilchrist could not argue with her. Tommy and Terry Janes might both have served time in Barlinnie, but Jessie’s criminal brothers were just that – criminals, not paedophiliac perverts. He pressed his key fob. ‘Let’s leave Bell to stew for a bit in the Station—’
‘Stew? I’d boil the bastard.’
Gilchrist opened the car door. ‘Let’s have a look at Grange Mansion first,’ he said.
Grange Mansion stood in a wooded enclave on the east side of Grange Road, and was accessed through a stone gateway that looked as though age was doing what it could to pull it down. Dislodged stones lay in roadside piles overgrown by dandelions and nettles tall enough to sting your face. Police cars, Land Rovers, Transit vans with antennae spiking skywards, and an array of private cars, lined the opposite side. Police tape blocked the entrance where journalists milled like a market throng.
A TV crew went about its business of setting up cameras.
Gilchrist nosed closer, flashed his warrant card, and was permitted access.
The entrance driveway was little more than two worn tracks in weed-riddled gravel, pot-holed and puddled. Rhododendron bushes brushed the car’s wings as he eased through, its chassis bucking as he negotiated the dips and hollows. He found a spot by a derelict barn, which offered a narrow view across open fields.
Jessie parked her Fiat next to him.
He removed a set of coveralls from the boot. The wind had settled, and a white haar was gathering from the north. In the distance, a flat sea melded into a horizon as grey as slate. St Andrews lay off to the left but, from that angle, through the trees, only the harbour’s stone pier and a snippet of the East Sands was visible.
The Crime Scene Manager was WPC Mhairi McBride, who had only just returned to the Constabulary the week before after being hospitalised. She signed them in, noting the time, and said, ‘We’ve almost completed a search of the house and the outbuildings, sir.’
Gilchrist felt his gaze being pulled to the derelict barn, and two dilapidated buildings either side, which could both do with new roofs. Plenty of places for a child to hide.
‘But Katie’s not here. The SOCOs are working the back garden, sir, which is where they believe entry to the property was made. Over the boundary wall, sir.’
‘How did he gain access to the house?’
‘Used a glass cutter on the bedroom window, then undid the sash lock. No prints, so he was wearing gloves.’
Gilchrist stared along the side of the house, beyond a white Lexus that looked as if it could do with a cleaning. From where they stood, he could see the stone wall that bounded a property line thick with shrubs and bushes. In pitch darkness you could stumble about, maybe lose your bearings. Had the kidnapper known the layout? He felt his gaze drift back to the driveway. This far out of town, the kidnapper must have come by car, parked on Grange Road remote from the entrance, and maybe edged along the south boundary wall.
But the SOCOs would confirm that.
He turned to Mhairi. ‘Do we have a list of friends, relatives, tradesmen; anyone who might have had recent access?’ he asked.
‘DS Baxter is collecting that information, sir.’
‘Is he here?’
‘Popped back to North Street, sir.’
Gilchrist eyed Grange Mansion, a two-storey stone structure that lacked any sense of architectural vision; just upper and lower windows either side of a dark front door. Like the outbuildings, it was in a poor state of repair. Paint peeled in blisters and flakes from rotted windows and fasciae. Weeds sprouted from rooftop gutters. Rainwater darkened the corner where a downpipe hung loose like a broken leg.
‘Where’s Ms Davis now?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘She’s inside, sir. With Family Liaison. WPC Carlton.’
‘Good. She’ll handle her well.’
He was about to walk off when Mhairi said, ‘Did you know that Ms Davis’s father is the ex-MSP, Dougal Davis, sir?’
Gil
christ grimaced. From memory, Dougal Davis had been forced to resign from the Scottish Parliament after his third wife turned up at the local A&E with a fractured arm, and confessed to a series of incidents of physical abuse throughout her marriage.
Davis denied every one of them, and the Procurator Fiscal decided against proceeding with criminal charges in the end. The popular story at the time was that Davis had bought the PF’s silence. But the damage was done, and Davis had to step down from a career in politics. Gossip was rife, with other stories of abuse surfacing for a moment, only to be squashed by solicitors representing the powerhouse businessman that Davis had since become.
‘Did Davis ever remarry?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘Nobody’ll have him, more like,’ Jessie said.
‘Maybe so. But we need to check him out.’
Gilchrist thanked Mhairi and was about to walk away, when he caught sight of Tosh at the corner of the barn, barking into his mobile phone like a field commander. He thought he looked fatter by about a stone, maybe three. Fat bulged around his neck, and his face look boiled. The only thing thinner about him was his hair, which sported a freckled patch at the back of his crown.
When Tosh saw Gilchrist, he turned his back on him and walked off.
Gilchrist resisted the urge to follow, and strode towards the house. ‘See if you can get hold of Jackie,’ he said to Jessie, ‘and find out everything you can about Dougal Davis.’
Gilchrist stepped on to the front porch while Jessie walked off for better reception. He opened his coveralls and put them on. The main door creaked when he turned the handle, and he stepped into a dark hallway that smelled of damp wool and stale dust. Ahead, it widened to a staircase on the left, which rose to the upper floor. On the right, a narrower walkway led deeper into the house.
He caught the faintest echo of conversation, the distant sound of footsteps on wooden floorboards. He walked past the staircase, the voices becoming clearer. The ceiling lowered where the staircase above turned at the mid-landing. He bent his head, and stumbled down a couple of steps he failed to see in the dim light, beyond which the hallway ended at a door.