by Denise Mina
‘She was blackmailing them?’
‘Aye. Pay me or I’ll get the polis in, sort of thing.’
Hettie would have gone quite happily, thought Morrow, imagining her climbing into a car or a van, a small greedy smile on her face.
‘Anyway, I’m not fucking living with Noonan,’ said Marnie.
‘They’ll never ask us to live with him,’ said Debbie. ‘They won’t, will they, Scar?’
‘Can I adopt them?’ said Scarlet, thumbing at her sisters.
‘Social work’ll do whatever they can to keep you out of care. How come you didn’t report your mum missing?’
The girls looked at each other.
‘She went missing a lot. Went on holidays and that. Didn’t always tell us. Ye didn’t know when she’d be here, really. And we’ve got food… ’
Morrow could see the girls and their mum, the trust between them damaged early on. The girls were too young to feel they should lie about their feelings for her. They’d formed their own family without her and their sadness was for Hester’s loss, not their own. They didn’t seem to feel they had lost that much. It made her think of Danny. She wished she could be as honest as them.
Marnie interrupted Morrow’s train of thought: ‘What would you do with all of this stuff?’
Morrow looked at it, pricing the consoles and the telly, at a big Buddha’s head on a table in the corner. They should confiscate it for proceeds of crime. ‘EBay it.’
Marnie nodded seriously. ‘Reckon?’
‘Quickly. Get all the money and put it in a bank account. Show the social worker you’re able to support yourselves. Your dad won’t stand a chance then.’
She was lying to them. Noonan wouldn’t get custody of the girls if they objected but he might burgle them and then they would have nothing. It was pretty good advice. She felt that she had finally managed to do something useful.
‘Is there any more of it?’
‘Serious? Come ’ere.’ Marnie was on her feet, leading the way out to the hall. Morrow and McGrain followed her up a steep set of stairs to the landing. The other girls came too.
On the landing Marnie stopped outside the first bedroom and reached for the handle. She turned it, throwing wide the door to her mother’s inner sanctum, and stepped back quickly, chin down, wary, as if the God of Avarice might fly out of the dark and eat her.
The room was dim, the curtains drawn. For a moment Morrow couldn’t make visual sense of it. She stepped into the room. A double bed in the middle, lit by the light from the hall. It was unmade. The indent from Hettie’s head still on the pillow.
From the corner of her eye Morrow saw what she assumed was a narrow black wardrobe. It was actually a TV the size of a single bed, still shrink-wrapped, propped against the wall. Her eyes adjusted to the dark and she saw, suddenly, all around the walls, on the floor, stacked up, boxes and bags and suit bags and unopened internet packages. A tumble drier, still packed in plastic, against the wall. On top of it was another TV, in the box, and two Blu-ray DVD players. A narrow valley led from the door to bed.
Debbie looked at it and spat, ‘Stuff. Fucking… stuff and more stuff.’
‘Clothes?’ asked Morrow.
‘Bags and clothes and shoes and jerseys and designer shit she was too fucking fat to even wear.’
Morrow looked at Marnie’s clothes. ‘Nah,’ said Marnie, looking down at her cheap Primark vest and shorts. ‘Never bought us nothing if she could help it.’
‘Stuff,’ said Debbie again, looking into the room. ‘Couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t wear half of it or they’d know she was at it. Just. Mental.’
They stared into the room, reluctant to cross the threshold into their mum’s cave. Then Debbie did. She stepped very pointedly over the metal edging strip on the carpet. Her sisters followed her. Debbie snapped the light on and broke the spell. They looked around as if they were in a warehouse sale, touching and toeing individual items.
Debbie’s voice had dropped reverently, as if she was in church. ‘Sure the polis won’t take it away?’
‘Well,’ said Morrow, aware she was polis, that they were desperately in need of funds and she should be taking it away. ‘We’re investigating your mum’s death. It doesn’t look right if we start emptying your house.’ She looked at McGrain and he nodded. ‘I wouldn’t make a big noise about it though.’
‘Poor Mum,’ said Debbie. ‘What a fanny. The fuck did she want? More and more and more. She had enough.’
‘Fucking stupid.’ Marnie was looking down at a stack of three identical DAB radios still in their boxes.
Scarlet put her arm around Debbie’s chubby shoulders and they cried a little. Marnie moved near them, squeezed her little sister’s wrist and shook her head mournfully at a stack of shoeboxes.
Morrow didn’t think they were crying for their dead mother but mourning Hester’s mistake–more and more and more at the price of enough.
They were right to cry. It was tragic.
31
Morrow and McGrain looked out at Sutherland Crescent. It was a neat semicircle of immaculate properties behind well-tended hedges. Except for number seven where the hedges erupted exuberantly over the grass verge. A vigilante gardener had hacked angrily at the branches from the street but the hedge was growing back, serene and green and wild again.
The Helensburgh houses they had seen so far were on the hillside, facing forwards, each insisting on a personal relationship with the sea. But a different set of fictions was playing out here. This area was flat and the crescent looked out over a faux grassy common, as if it was deep in the heart of the bucolic countryside.
McGrain pulled on the handbrake and they got out. The houses were modest by comparison to the big gardens.
The Vicente children had been calling someone located here, possibly their mother. Roxanna might be captive here, or she might have run off, Morrow didn’t know what she was dealing with any more. She could be hiding in there. Morrow considered how Roxanna could know it was empty. No estate agent’s sign outside advertised it for sale, but she might have viewed it and taken a sign down. She might even have bought it.
The thick hedge hid the house. Morrow and McGrain found a high wooden gate to a driveway, rotting on its hinges, the nose ploughed deep into the muddy ground.
Together they lifted it up and managed to swing it inwards through a thick tangle of nettles. They left it there, lolling drunkenly on one good hinge.
It was a forlorn little house. Someone had loved it very much, but that was a long time ago. Glazed blue patio pots under the window were choked with dead weeds. The roof sagged in the middle. Paint was peeling from the window frames and a glass pane was cracked on the attic.
They waded through the grass and nettles of the driveway towards it. It was only when they got to the front door that they noticed a garden path covered with flattened weeds, leading over to an obscured break in the hedge: someone had been here very recently.
She ordered McGrain around the back of the house, waiting for him to get there before knocking gently on the door. She watched through the frosted side window, alert to any changes in the light inside. She waited, knocked again and saw nothing.
Taking the other side of the house, she was walking around to join McGrain at the back but found her way blocked by a car under a mouldy green tarp. Slipping on a glove she lifted the edge and saw the bonnet of a silver Ford Fiesta. She walked around it. An overgrown driveway led into the back lane. The grass and weeds were flattened.
Morrow slipped past the car around to a vast back garden enclosed with a high brick wall. It was a mess. Plucky sycamore saplings and weeds had grown tall along the top of the wall, setting the garden in perpetual twilight. Wooden sides on raised beds had crumbled and rotted, dead plants were nailed to the wall. A slice of bright day caught Morrow’s eye.
It was coming from a door in the garden wall. It was hanging open, framed in a brick arch. Morrow walked over and teased it wide with her finger. The fas
tening on the outside was rusted but the rust was worn and uneven. Something had been rubbing it. She ran her finger over the top of the hasp. The loose rust had been rubbed smooth in the middle, and recently. A padlock had been hanging on it but was gone now.
She turned back to look at the house. An old-fashioned conservatory, attached to the back of the building, listed softly to one side. The kitchen door was open.
As per protocol, she phoned Kerrigan, notifying her of the location and the time. If she didn’t phone back in twenty minutes they were dead at this address. Kerrigan said, oh no, hang on, Thankless was driving them to that address anyway: Fraser had been spotted talking to the listed householder in the town this morning.
Morrow looked up at the derelict house. ‘A householder? For this address?’
‘Yep. Susan Grierson. Tall, fiftyish. Slim.’
Morrow hung up and took a step towards the kitchen door when she heard a voice behind her.
‘The fuck?’
Framed in the open garden gate stood a man, backlit in the bright contrasting day. Like a stained glass window, his hands were open at his sides and black soot outlined the contours of his face. He was tall and broad across the chest. Handsomey, but also kind of prisony.
McGrain had recognised him too. ‘Sir—’
It was meant as a preamble but Iain Joseph Fraser had been arrested often enough to know police patter. Startled, he fell back a step as if he was going to run. But then he didn’t. Conflicted, he twisted back and away, his feet planted. McGrain took his wrist and he didn’t resist. Gently, McGrain levered the man’s hand up his back.
‘OK,’ said Fraser, nodding. ‘Aye, it’s OK.’
Morrow was at his side. ‘Are you Iain Joseph Fraser?’
He nodded, too slowly, looking out into the street, reminding her of Andrew Cole. ‘Are you on drugs, Mr Fraser? You’re moving quite slowly.’
His breathing was laboured. ‘Pills,’ he said. ‘’Scription.’
‘What sort of medication, sir?’
‘In my pocket.’
‘I’m just going to check for you, sir, OK?’
Fraser nodded his consent.
‘Have you got any needles or sharp objects on your person that I should know about?’
‘No.’
Morrow reached gingerly into his hoodie pocket, nothing. Other pocket, a dry tissue. Back pocket of his jeans, an envelope, unsealed. Unsure whether she was looking for actual medication or a script for medication she opened the envelope and pulled out a photograph. It was taken several years ago and was poor quality but still clear.
Roxanna was standing in a street with two men. She wore a raincoat and carried an umbrella. The road was wet but the men were in shorts and T-shirts.
Morrow held it up at Fraser. ‘Who is this?’
He shrugged.
‘Is this the picture you used to find her?’
Iain Fraser looked at it again. He shook his head.
‘Why have you got this photograph?’
Shrug. ‘Someone gave it to me.’
‘Who gave it to you?’
He didn’t answer.
She pointed at Roxanna. ‘Did she give it to you?’
He looked at it again, seemed hurt and then frowned. He was looking at one of the men in shorts. ‘Him?’
She followed his eyeline and pointed at a face. ‘Him? This man gave you this photo?’
‘Know him. I’ve seen him. Where’s Andrew?’
‘Do you know his name?’
He shook his head. His breathing was ragged, as if he’d run a long way. She reached into his front jeans pocket and took out a small bottle with two pills rattling at the bottom. She read the label. There had only been four pills in there and the label dated them this morning. He hadn’t taken an overdose, but it was a high dose of antipsychotics.
‘Where did you get this photograph, Mr Fraser?’
He looked up and nodded at the house, at the door lying ajar. ‘From her.’
‘The person in this house gave it to you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘This woman?’ She pointed at Roxanna.
‘No. Susan,’ he said. ‘Look: it was me. I killed a lassie at the loch. Not… It was just me.’ Fraser’s knee buckled and he looked as if he might fall over. They took an arm each and sat him down on the ground. Fraser’s shallow pallor wasn’t just a prison tan. The man wasn’t well.
She told him his rights, speaking carefully. She knelt down and showed him the picture again. ‘Susan Grierson gave you this?’
‘She’s not Susan.’
‘Susan is not Susan?’
‘She says she’s Susan but she’s not Susan.’
‘Why did she give it to you?’
‘For Andrew Cole.’
Morrow stood up. She didn’t want him to say any more about that until she got a tape recorder working in a station.
‘Everyone here seems to know everyone else,’ she said, for something to say.
Fraser lifted his face to look at her. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘No one here knows anyone.’
Thankless and Kerrigan arrived at the back gate. Morrow told them to take Fraser to Simmons’ office. ‘And get him checked out by the police surgeon. The prescription seems to be a new one. He might be having an adverse reaction.’
She watched as they walked Fraser to the car, telling him what was going to happen next. Fraser was relieved to be taken in. He was compliant the way habitual prison hands often were on rearrest.
As she watched Thankless cup Fraser’s head to bundle him into the back seat of the car she felt a pang of tenderness. Hardcore jail fodder like Fraser might be perpetrators of horrors, but most of them were victims too. It was a hard story to hold in your head, hard to tell and harder to hear. She thought of him in Shotts. He’d been there until recently. He’d have been in there with Danny.
The car drove away and Morrow and McGrain turned back to the house. If anyone had been hiding in there they’d had a good long time to get out now. She felt a bit of relief about that.
The kitchen door opened silently. A smear of fresh oil glinted on the hinge. It was a big kitchen, bright if the windows had been washed, but they hadn’t. Warm currents rolling in from the glass conservatory invigorated the dusty air, making it almost viscous. A large table in the middle of the room. Old units from the fifties, a modern electrical hob cut into the worktop. The ceiling had collapsed in a corner. They checked double doors opposite and found they led into a damp and empty cupboard.
The hallway was sticky, long-term cold. A big dirty window on the stairwell lit the space. A neat quarter-circle combed through the hall carpet showed that the front door had been opened recently. Two rooms led off the hall, one door open, one door firmly shut.
She knew.
Through the open door, a dining room. Polished dark-wood table. Sideboard cabinet. A glass display case, empty.
Morrow knew. Before she opened the second door in the hallway. She could smell the sweet, heavy odour of bad meat wafting up from behind it.
McGrain knew too. He groaned ‘Oh shit’ and reflexively pulled a police-issue taser from his pocket, turned it on. The battery was flat.
Morrow and McGrain snorted, laughing because it was stupid and futile: you couldn’t taser a dead body away.
Morrow groaned and reached forwards, opening the firmly shut door.
Dark room. Curtains drawn. A nest of occasional tables next to the fireplace. A couch. A chair. Behind the couch, on its side, a zipped up sleeping bag. Bulky. Leaking. The source of the smell.
32
Morrow stood in the doorway of the room. The menthol petroleum jelly on her top lip made her eyes water but mercifully masked the smell. She watched the sleeping bag being unzipped under the white lights and recognised the tumble of blond hair around a bloated red face. She wasn’t sure until she saw the plain rose gold hoops in an earlobe. Roxanna wore them, always.
Superficially, the senior Scene of Crime officer sa
id Roxanna had been strangled with a length of wire. He could tell because it was still lodged in her neck. She’d been dead for at least two days. The officer explained that the impact bruising on her knuckles, very pronounced with post-mortem lividity, showed extensive defensive wounds on her arms and hands. A struggle. Defensive wounds from wire cuts through her forearms. She’d been punched on the side of the head behind her ear. Probably attacked from behind.
Morrow gave a nod and they zipped Roxanna back into the sleeping bag. They would keep it intact while they transported her to the path lab.
She moved out to the hallway and found Thankless waiting for her.
‘Got the info on the owner of the house.’ Thankless stood behind her, too close, smiling annoyingly. She knew that everything he did was wrong and the fault was hers. He pulled his notebook out of his pocket, stupidly.
‘A Susan Grierson owns the house. She moved to America decades ago but her mother died… ’ he peered at his own writing, ‘nineteen months, does that say? Nineteen months ago and she inherited the house. Well, it went into a trust in her name so… ’
‘A trust in her name?’
‘Americans?’ Thankless shrugged. ‘Tax. They’re wily.’ He looked at his shoes. ‘Like the coyote.’
That was quite funny, she knew that, technically. ‘Has she come back, then?’
‘Well, Iain Fraser is quite insistent that he’s met her. He came here looking for her. A shop owner in the town said he saw Fraser with her and he knew her as Susan Grierson. He was at a charity dinner last night, a hundred people there and she was being introduced to people. She was working for the caterers, apparently.’
‘Who did the food?’ A sharp blue light lit the living room.
Morrow wondered why the hell they would test for that.
‘I’ll find out,’ said Thankless.
Morrow heard the photographer mumble in the living room and take some pictures. She couldn’t bring herself to look back in. She shouted into the room, ‘Please, for God’s sake, tell me it’s not?’
‘Sorry,’ shouted the SOCO back, ‘but it is.’
Morrow cringed. Some scenes were just too grim.