by T F Muir
‘Midday. My office. And best to bring a box, a big one.’
The connection died.
Gilchrist laid his mobile on his lap and stared out the window. If he’d had any doubts that Greaves had it in for him, they were quashed right there. Even though Gilchrist had been McVicar’s blue-eyed boy over the years, this case was personal to him, through his friendship with Vera Davis, or perhaps through the political weight of her ex-husband, Dougal. Even though Dougal was a disgraced ex-MSP, he still had political clout, of that Gilchrist had no doubt. And chief constables never liked to be in any politician’s bad books, disgraced or otherwise—
‘That sounded like it went well,’ Jessie said. ‘Let me guess. The Chief Super?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘How long now before you get kicked off the case?’ she quipped.
‘I wish,’ he said, conscious of the sudden silence in the car while Jessie shifted in her seat so that she faced him. Mhairi’s eyes held his in the rear-view mirror.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Jessie said.
‘Afraid so.’
‘You’re kidding me. He hasn’t fired you, has he?’
‘He’s leaving that for McVicar. If where we’re heading turns into another balls-up, I’ll be walking the West Sands tomorrow morning looking for seashells.’
Jessie held his gaze for several silent seconds, then turned to stare out the windscreen, nudging Mhairi as she did so. Without a word, Mhairi pulled the Vectra into the fast lane and eased the speed upwards.
Pine-covered hills flashed past in a green blur. Across the M74, fields rose like swelling waves to the ugly sight of electricity pylons. Overhead cables streaked the sky like string. He glanced at the speedometer, watched the needle touch the ton, and creep beyond it – 105, 110. He thought of telling Mhairi to slow down, but it really didn’t matter. The sooner they got to Castle Douglas and established that his convoluted theory was just that, a theory, the sooner they could all head back to St Andrews and his personal sacking.
He almost smiled at the thought.
Big Archie was a fair man, who had often stood up for Gilchrist when others would have dropped him like a hot rock. It would give McVicar no great pleasure, he knew, but you did not become Chief Constable by pussyfooting around. You had to be tough, and McVicar could be tough when called upon. He would do the necessary – oh, he would be diplomatic about it, of course he would; probably make Gilchrist feel as if he were doing him a favour in the end – then he would move on with business. And Gilchrist’s career – the long days, the late nights, the missed weekends, the stress and the heartbreak, the relief and the laughs – would be nothing more than a mention in case records and a closed personnel file.
The Vectra ate up the miles, Mhairi resolute in her determination to make it to Castle Douglas in as short a time as possible. Only once on the M74 did she let the speed drop below the ton, and when she slipped off the motorway she held it a steady sixty.
Trees, hedges, bushes flashed past in a silence broken once by Jessie saying, ‘I think we should alert the local Office.’
‘And get the pair of you dragged into my mess?’ Gilchrist said.
‘But we—’
‘Not this time,’ he said. ‘This is all on me.’
Not another word was spoken until they reached the exit for Dumfries.
‘Should we drive by and pick up Mr and Mrs Kirkwood, sir?’ Mhairi asked.
‘Keep going,’ Gilchrist said. ‘With a bit of luck, we can do that later.’
Gilchrist sank into his seat, shrinking so that his head was below sill level, as if for fear of the local police seeing him – there goes that mad DCI from Fife. He could hear their voices now, see them chuckling, shaking their heads, his name the topic of jocular pub talk from now until Christmas – maybe into the New Year and beyond. He could be a cult legend or a laughing stock. Who knew? For the hundredth time, it seemed, his mind worked through the rationale, and for the hundredth time came up with the same answer – Katie was with Kirkwood’s mother.
She just had to be.
And no one spoke as the miles clicked by on the A75.
Mhairi paid attention to the change in speed limit, slowing down in advance of the thirty miles an hour limit as they approached the next small town. It seemed to Gilchrist that she, too, was dreading what they would find. They drove through the occasional village; nothing more than rows of houses, the odd shop and pub on either side of the road. In one village, whose name he failed to catch, bunting stretched from lamp pole to lamp pole. He thought he caught the twisted wires of fairy lights entangled among the flags – either put up too early for this Christmas, or not taken down from last.
The occasional farmhouse, cottage and B&B flickered past. But mostly the scenery was one of bucolic tranquillity – open fields, rows of trees, bushes, lines of fence posts, and untrimmed hawthorn hedges that bordered roadside ditches. Overhead, a blue sky could trick you into thinking summer had at last arrived. The temperature gauge on the dashboard, 15°C, which required a quick mental calculation to convert it into old money – 59°F – confirmed otherwise.
Gilchrist pulled himself upright as they passed the brown road sign for local services at Castle Douglas. Mhairi indicated left as she slowed for the approaching roundabout and, five minutes later, they were cruising along King Street, the main road that ran through the heart of the old Scottish town.
Old sandstone buildings, with their lower levels converted to banks and shops, slipped past on either side. The sat-nav directed Mhairi to turn left, and she did so at Academy Street, following directions until she eased into Queen Elizabeth Drive, an eighties-styled residential area of mostly bungalows that seemed to spill down a shallow incline.
Farther along the drive, lawns became sparser, their front gardens consisting of brick paving or gravel yards, which doubled for parking space, mostly deserted. They found the elderly Mrs Kirkwood’s address before the end of the drive, a tidy bungalow with a grass lawn that looked small enough to lift and lay. Rose bushes, pruned to their core, spiked a strip of soil on the other side of a low garden wall.
Mhairi pulled up to the kerb, and switched off the engine.
Jessie peered through the side window. ‘What d’you think? No car in the drive. Is she at home?’
Gilchrist had the door open and his feet on the ground, strangely eager to get on with it, like a condemned prisoner’s moment of relief when the priest enters his cell at long last. The air felt cool, clear, Scottish-fresh. He caught the faintest smell of manure on the wind and tilted his head to it. Then he eyed the bungalow as first Jessie’s door, then Mhairi’s, slammed shut.
‘I don’t think she’s in,’ Jessie said.
‘Which doesn’t bode well,’ he added. ‘Can’t imagine a seventy-year-old pushing a pram, can you?’
‘Seeing as how you put it like that, no, neither can I. Maybe she’s got a babysitter.’
‘She is the babysitter,’ he corrected her.
‘Oh, right, of course,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
Together, they strode up the garden path to a door that fronted a vestibule.
Gilchrist rang the doorbell, heard it echo from within. Then he stepped back and eyed the windows. The curtains were drawn back, the blinds open, so things looked hopeful – in a dark meaning of the word. He was about to ring the bell again, when the inner door opened, and an elderly lady with a mop of white hair and knuckled hands clutching a walking stick waved at them to come in.
‘It’s not locked,’ she shouted.
Gilchrist tried the handle and, sure enough, the door opened.
‘Mrs Kirkwood?’
‘Yes?’
‘We’re with Fife Constabulary,’ Gilchrist said, holding out his warrant card. ‘Can you spare a few minutes to talk to us?’
‘Fife, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s been a while since I was in Fife. Michael spent his child hood in Lower Largo,’ she said, as i
f everyone was expected to know who Michael was – her late husband, Gilchrist was willing to bet. ‘He was born there. But I haven’t been back for . . . oh, I don’t know how many years now.’ Then she looked at him, as if expecting him to tell her when and where she’d last been in Fife.
‘May we come in?’ Gilchrist asked.
She gave him a narrow-eyed look, shifted her gaze to take in Jessie and Mhairi then, seemingly satisfied, said, ‘I was just about to put the kettle on. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘That would be very kind of you, Mrs Kirkwood,’ he said, just to keep up his side of the conversation.
Gilchrist went first, not for the purpose of being discourteous, but so he could assess the situation quickly, tell the others to backtrack if they had to, just leave the place, he’d got it oh-so-fucking wrong again, and let’s head back to St Andrews for the sacking.
He followed the elderly woman along a short hallway and into a cosy lounge that overlooked a tidy back garden, again spiked with rose bushes so severely pruned that they looked like whittled sticks that had no chance of flowering that summer, maybe even the next. But as Gilchrist walked to the window, taking in the details – boxes of pills dotted the mantelpiece, the People’s Friend open-flapped on the arm of a well-worn chair, specs, magnifying glass, dog-eared romance novels stuffed in an overflowing magazine rack by the hearth, five or six library books with jackets covered in clear plastic piled on the floor, a well-thumbed Bible, all within easy reach of a seated pensioner – he saw no sign of any toys, or children. The house had an empty feel about it – walls bare of pictures, flat and polished surfaces devoid of photographs; not even any of her own son, Kevin. And Michael might have spent his childhood in Lower Largo, but whoever he happened to be, he was all but forgotten in Castle Douglas.
A television sat in the corner, its screen black – no sign of the remote.
Rather than backtrack out of the place, Gilchrist said, ‘Do you watch TV?’
‘Hardly at all,’ she said. ‘I much prefer to read.’
Gilchrist stood with his back to the window, while Mrs Kirkwood fussed and faffed around Jessie and Mhairi, fluffing up cushions, instructing them to take a seat while she went to the kitchen to get the tea ready. Gilchrist caught Jessie’s eye, and nodded.
‘I’ll give you a hand to make the tea, Mrs Kirkwood,’ Jessie said.
‘Would you, dear? That would be so kind of you.’
Silent, Gilchrist felt the heavy weight of defeat settle over him, pulling him down as he eyed the doors off the hallway – one to the front bedroom, no doubt, another to the back bedroom, or maybe the main bathroom. From the kitchen he heard the clatter of dishes, the melancholy mumble of voices. He caught Mhairi’s despairing look, her silent question – do you want me to poke around? – and shook his head.
‘We’ll have a polite cup of tea,’ he said, ‘then head off.’
Mhairi returned his gaze, tight-lipped.
He could almost feel her disappointment. He’d let her down; let them all down. His gut instinct was no longer the force it had once been. He’d got it wrong. He’d had them drive here on the back of the slimmest of slim hunches. There was no evidence of any child being here. On top of that, Mrs Kirkwood seemed too old to look after a young child.
Mhairi turned her head to the kitchen door, as if she’d heard something.
Before Gilchrist could move, Mrs Kirkwood walked from the kitchen.
Jessie followed, giving a fleeting wide-eyed stare at Gilchrist – can you believe this? – as the elderly lady reached for a door handle and eased the door open with barely a creak.
From where Gilchrist was standing, the room stood in shadow as the missing jigsaw pieces flipped over and clicked into place. He found himself pushing Jessie aside, squeezing past her to make his way into the room.
‘Sshh,’ Mrs Kirkwood admonished.
But he moved forward in the semi-darkness towards the cot, its four legs as wide apart as the imprints on the Kirkwoods’ bedroom carpet. Even in the dim light, he could make out the shape of a sleeping child, although the unhealthy silence had his heart racing.
‘Light switch,’ he said.
‘She’s asleep.’
‘I know she is,’ he said to Mrs Kirkwood. ‘But I need to know she’s okay.’
‘Of course she’s okay, dear. Why wouldn’t she be?’
The room burst into brightness as Jessie clicked the switch.
Gilchrist leaned into the cot, his heart pumping in his mouth at the uncanny stillness, the deathly silence that told him what he dreaded. Despair swept through him in a debilitating spasm as he reached out and took hold of the small, silent bundle, a woollen Chivas falling off to the side.
They had arrived too late, all their efforts in vain.
‘Dear God, no,’ he gasped.
He eased the lifeless body from the cot, pulled the child to him . . .
As she let out a hearty cry that almost took his eardrum with it.
CHAPTER 31
‘You’ve woken her up,’ Mrs Kirkwood complained.
Gilchrist laughed as he stared into the child’s eyes. Even through her swelling tears he could not be mistaken. ‘I have indeed,’ he agreed, and hugged her to him. He pressed his lips to her little face, feeling warmth that he’d failed to register in his earlier panic, and rocked her in his arms to settle her.
But she was not for giving up.
‘What’s her name?’ he asked above the din.
‘Michelle,’ she said. ‘After my late husband, Michael.’
Although he was confident he knew the answer, he needed to ask the question. ‘Who are Michelle’s parents?’
‘Kevin and Annette,’ she said, as if that explained all.
Well, there he had it. But he needed more, so he chanced it with, ‘I was told they couldn’t have children.’
‘They’ve been trying for years,’ she said, not put off by his piercing comment. ‘But they’ve been blessed with this child now.’ She reached out to take Michelle from him.
But Gilchrist wanted to cherish the moment. ‘I’ll carry her through to the lounge for you,’ he offered, ‘and you can sit with her there.’ He blew warm breath on the child’s neck, whispered sweet nothings, the way he used to with his own children, surprised to find that it still worked. Her hard cries softened, and by the time they stood in the lounge, she was looking around her. He blew on her neck and cheek again, her eyelashes fluttering with surprise. ‘There you go, my little princess.’
Mrs Kirkwood eased herself into her fireside chair. Gilchrist leaned forward, handed the bundled child to her, which she slipped on to her lap with a confidence that defied her years.
‘I’ll get the tea,’ he said, then strode towards the kitchen, followed by Jessie.
In the kitchen, two hefty cardboard boxes filled with assorted baby foods and toys sat on the floor in the corner, presumably where they’d been left the previous night by her son.
‘How do you want to handle this?’ Jessie asked him.
He had his mobile out, was already auto-dialling Chambers. ‘Arrest and charge the Kirkwoods for starters,’ he said. He wanted to make the arrest himself, but needed to move quickly, no matter what. When he got through to Chambers, he said, ‘How soon can you bring in Kevin and Annette Kirkwood?’
Chambers didn’t remind him of his earlier fiasco, but said, ‘What’ve you got, sir?’
‘Katie Davis. She’s with Kevin Kirkwood’s mother in Castle Douglas.’
A pause, then Chambers was back, all business. ‘I’ll get on to it myself, sir.’
‘Keep the press out of this,’ Gilchrist said, ‘at least until the Kirkwoods are in your custody. And send a medical team to . . . ’ He rattled off the address in Queen Elizabeth Drive. ‘Katie appears to be unharmed, but I don’t want to take any chances.’
‘Will do, sir.’
He ended the call, then faced Jessie. ‘Get the car keys off Mhairi, and tell her to stay here and keep an e
ye on them. You and me, we’re heading back to Dumfries.’
Before leaving, he checked on Katie. She had fallen back to sleep, snuggled into old Mrs Kirkwood who looked ready to nod off, too. He leaned down, and spoke quietly so as not to waken Katie.
‘We’ve got to step out,’ he said. ‘DC McBride will make you that cup of tea.’
‘All right, dear,’ she said, but by the time Gilchrist and Jessie left, the old lady’s head was already nodding.
In the Vectra, Gilchrist stabbed the key into the ignition and floored the pedal, the tyres spinning for grip on the asphalt.
‘Steady on,’ Jessie said. ‘I’ve not brought a spare pair of knickers.’
Gilchrist eyed the dash, forced himself to stay at a calm thirty-five as he worked his way through the housing estate towards the main road. But his mind remained on overdrive. He had been right about Novo. Her lack of interest in her niece’s abduction had not just spoken volumes, but yelled. She had known Katie was safe and not murdered and buried in an unmarked grave in some desolate Scottish wasteland.
She had known, because she had instigated it. She must have . . .
‘You’re gritting your teeth,’ Jessie said.
He jerked a look at her. ‘Force of habit.’
‘Anger, I’d say. What’re you thinking?’
What indeed? Should he arrest Novo? Had she organised the whole thing? But, if so, why kidnap her sister’s daughter? It made no sense. As he tried to work through the logic, he came to understand that to determine the extent of Novo’s involvement, they needed to work backwards – back from the person who’d removed Katie from her home? Or back from the person who’d received her?
Or were they one and the same person?
The obvious candidate was Kirkwood. If he’d taken Katie from St Andrews, they would find footage on CCTV and the ANPR – automatic number-plate recognition system. If Novo had not participated in person, had she been responsible for organising the abduction? He thought back to that first call to her office. She’d just returned from a trip to China. Had she flown in from Scotland instead? When her twin sister, Andrea, called her that morning on her second mobile, where had Novo been?