Blood Salt Water

by Denise Mina

  ‘What is it?’ asked Thankless.

  ‘They’ve found semen.’

  ‘Oh.’ He grimaced. ‘Oh! Jesus!’

  ‘But it’s in a weird pattern,’ called the SOCO. ‘It’s not ejaculatory. Looks like it’s been poured in there.’

  The whole scenario was off. A house held in trust by a woman who didn’t live there. Iain Fraser said she was an imposter and now this. Morrow remembered the alcohol wipe marks on Roxanna’s car and the clear set of Fraser’s prints. Professional, but not very.

  They heard the plastic flap of the body bag as it was opened wide to swallow the sleeping bag. They’d roll her into it and when they did Morrow and Thankless both knew a rancid haar would roll through the house.

  They covered their mouths and noses and walked back out through the evidence path, through the door, to the front garden. Kerrigan and McGrain were standing there, chatting.

  ‘Did the people who met Susan Grierson recognise her from before?’

  ‘Why are you asking that?’ Thankless was squinting at her.

  It was an astute question. She thought of the alcohol wipes and the clean floor in Fuentecilla’s Alfa Romeo. ‘Professional,’ she said. ‘Seems professional to me. But then to leave her in your house, that’s just the opposite.’

  ‘Careless?’ suggested McGrain.

  ‘That’s the most likely answer. Semen, though? Christ. Thankless, phone London Road, tell them we think we’ve found Roxanna. Get them to put out a call to stop Susan Grierson leaving the country. Airports, ferries, all that. You and Kerrigan drive around the town, see if you can dig up a photo from last night, check phones. McGrain and I’ll be at the local station with Fraser. Get Family Liaison over to Robin Walker and give him an update.’

  Morrow covered her nose and went back into the house.

  She caught the chief SOCO. ‘Keep it discreet here, would you? Small town. We don’t want the neighbours knowing what we’ve found.’

  ‘Always,’ said the officer.

  The police surgeon was German. A kind man who knew Iain Fraser and had actually prescribed the medication to him this morning. Mr Fraser, he told them, had suffered a psychotic episode before, while incarcerated, and he had also suffered a very terrible shock last night: he had witnessed two people killed in a fire. He was incredibly upset and the medication could potentially make him suggestible but he was fit for questioning.

  ‘If I may give you some advice?’ said Dr Neiman.

  ‘Sure,’ said Morrow.

  ‘My understanding of Mr Fraser’s last day is that he has not yet slept. I would, perhaps, leave the questioning of this man until he has at least had some sleep and eaten.’

  Morrow didn’t exactly tell him to fuck off but she strongly implied it between thank yous and goodbyes.

  They took Iain Fraser into Simmons’ interview room on the second floor. The flood from the burst pipe was marked down the wall, a mould-speckled river of black. The room was small and smelled of sweet mildew. Their giant suspect sat very still, his mouth open, his hands loose on the table.

  Iain Fraser did not want a lawyer. His eyes were very red and he spoke slowly but he was clear about this: He didn’t know a woman called Roxanna Fuentecilla and he didn’t recognise her in any photographs. Susan Grierson had given him the envelope with the picture in it at the bins by the wee Asda. He was at great pains to tell them that he had killed Hester Kirk. He, and he alone, had killed her. She didn’t deserve it. And she was a nice lassie. She was nice. So nice she let him take her. He, and he alone, took her to the golf course and killed her on the dock and it was him. Just him. And yes, he would repeat it for the tape and no, he didn’t want a lawyer. Let that be an end to it.

  ‘Can you drive, Iain?’

  He couldn’t.

  ‘Did you walk her there?’

  No, he didn’t.

  ‘D’ye get a minicab?’

  He didn’t know how to answer that.

  ‘Who gave you the code to get in?’

  He looked up at that.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Who texted you the security code so you could get through the gates and onto the golf course?’

  ‘Text?’ He spent a while looking at the table and then looked up at Morrow’s throat and told her he didn’t get texts. He didn’t have a phone.

  She told him: There’s someone missing from this story. Someone drove Hester Kirk to the boat. Andrew Cole texted someone the security code to get into the golf course in a van. So there’s someone missing from your story. Can you tell us who it is?

  He shook his head, frowning at the table. Andrew? he said. Andrew texted it?

  ‘Do you know Andrew?’

  Andrew Cole. Andrew Cole was in Shotts. Andrew texted someone the security code?

  ‘We’re quite sure he did. Why?’

  Fraser was hurt by that, for some reason. He said he’d thought Andrew Cole was like a kid or something.

  ‘Mr Cole likes to come over as quite helpless, doesn’t he?’

  Fraser looked up at Morrow, suddenly coherent and clear-eyed, but he didn’t speak.

  ‘I’m not convinced Mr Cole is an innocent.’

  He flashed her a wry smile. ‘Who is?’

  She smiled back. ‘We found your fingerprints on a bag of cocaine in Roxanna Fuentecilla’s car, Mr Fraser.’

  He wasn’t even agitated by that but shrugged lazily, as if it wasn’t true but he couldn’t be bothered arguing. Morrow wanted to shout over the table at him, order him to give a fuck. But he didn’t. She could see he didn’t. And it wasn’t just the medication.

  ‘We found a body in Susan Grierson’s house. A woman. Can you tell me anything about that?’

  He didn’t react beyond lifting an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her. ‘Mr Fraser? We found another woman, dead, zipped up in a sleeping bag, in that house you were at today. Did you kill her too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who do you think did?’

  ‘Susan.’

  ‘Why do you think that, Mr Fraser?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s Susan.’

  ‘Who do you think she is?’

  He shrugged. ‘Thinking back… dunno. She said she was Susan, but I dunno… ’

  ‘Why would you doubt it?’

  ‘She’s different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He thought about that for a long moment. ‘Exploiting.’ He rolled a hand slowly, as if he was hoping more words would come, but they didn’t.

  ‘Were you in Roxanna’s car? An Alfa Romeo car, black?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Did you touch a Waitrose freezer bag of cocaine?’

  He frowned at her, asked her to say it again.

  ‘A blue Waitrose freezer bag full of cocaine. It had bits of Jaffa Cakes in it. Did you touch one of those?’

  He thought about it for a moment, staring at the table, and then, as if he’d never heard a funnier joke in his life, he huffed small laughs to himself. ‘Jaffas… ’ He laughed. ‘The fucking… Waitrose.’

  He couldn’t be brought back to the conversation then. He kept saying the supermarket name over and over, snorting sleepily to himself. Whatever she asked him, he kept coming back to Jaffa Cakes and Waitrose.

  Morrow called Thankless and Kerrigan in: take him to Glasgow. Keep a close eye, I don’t know if Mr Fraser’s very well. She was turning to leave when he sat upright and spoke to her.

  ‘Barratt,’ he said.

  Morrow turned to him. ‘Mark Barratt?’

  ‘Coming home. Tomorrow. Seven fifteen a.m. from Barcelona. Into Prestwick. He’ll tell them. About the fire. Tell them who.’

  ‘He’ll tell what?’

  ‘The fire. Murray and… ’ He wilted, face down, into the cradle of his arms, muttering, ‘It wasn’t me. Make Barratt tell Annie. And Eunice.’

  Morrow watched him for a moment, heard him snuffle, and realised that he was asleep.

  Simmons was waiting outside the inte
rview room. She was delighted when Morrow told her that there was a connection between the dead woman in the loch and the fire at the Sailors’ Rest.

  ‘You’ll be working with us, then?’ she said. ‘Because I am seriously stretched here.’

  It would have been better manners to pretend she was pleased for another reason, glad of the insight and skills Morrow’s team would bring or anything other than having less to do herself.

  ‘Do you know a woman called Susan Grierson?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lives up at Sutherland Crescent.’

  ‘I don’t know many people who live in Sutherland Crescent, DI Morrow. Is it her house the body was found in?’

  ‘Yeah. We’re looking for her but there’s no sign. She worked for the company that did the cooking for the charity dinner last night.’

  ‘The Paddle Café? I know them, they’ll tell us where she is if they know.’

  ‘Iain says she gave him this photo.’ Morrow showed her the picture of Roxanna.

  Simmons looked at it. ‘Oh, yeah, there he is.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Him.’ Simmons touched the man in shorts in the photo. ‘He owns the Paddle Café. This was taken a while ago though.’

  The man on the left was holding up a medal on a ribbon that hung around his neck. Morrow looked closer at it. It was a medal for the London Marathon.

  33

  Boyd hadn’t come in until after the lunchtime rush and it was fine. They had done the washing up, taken the deliveries, served lunch and the leftover quiche from last night had sold. He couldn’t have been more pleased. He promised them an extra twenty quid in their wage packets and sent them both home an hour early.

  He was wiping the counter top with a cloth, smiling at a four-toothed toddler hanging over his mother’s shoulder, when he heard:

  ‘Boyd Fraser?’

  They looked like debt collectors, the man and woman blocking his exit by standing at the break in the counter.

  ‘Are you Boyd Fraser?’

  ‘I am. Can I help you?’

  ‘We’re from Police Scotland. Can we talk to you through the back for a moment?’

  ‘Can’t you talk to me here?’

  ‘It’s quite a serious matter… ’

  Shit shit. The sniff. It was the fucking sniff.

  ‘Of course, please do come through.’

  He took them through the kitchen to the back office but when they got to the door he realised that they wouldn’t fit. They had to shuffle back in single file, to the kitchen.

  ‘We can sit here.’ He patted the edge of the steel kitchen table, asking the part-time cook, Moira, ‘Will we be in your way?’

  He was never that polite but he was trying to come over as a good bloke. Moira went along with it.

  ‘Oh, you’re lovely there!’ she said warmly, though they never really spoke to each other like that, it was just for the benefit of the strangers.

  Boyd dragged the office chair into the kitchen and was asking Moira about the fold-away sents they kept in the lock-up but the blonde woman stopped him. ‘We don’t really need to sit down. This is quite urgent. Could you stop… ’

  Fussing, she’d been going to say. He was fussing.

  ‘Sorry.’ He stood still, nodding Moira away into the café. She was only waiting for trays of brownies to come out of the oven anyway.

  ‘OK, Mr Fraser. Do you know a woman called Susan Grierson?’

  Shit. Susan! She was a dealer or something. Prostitute dealer or something. Worse than he could have imagined, the way this was going. Lucy would fucking kill him. She would leave him and kill him.

  ‘You don’t seem sure.’

  ‘Yeah, no, I do, I do know her, yeah.’

  He was holding the edge of the table and noticed, at the same time as the woman cop, that his hand was shaking. He put it in his pocket and gave a ridiculous high-pitched giggle. It sounded suspicious. So suspicious that he began to sweat a bit.

  ‘How do you know her?’

  ‘She’s, um, she worked for me last night. At a charity dinner. She’s from here.’

  ‘Have you known her a long time?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did you know her in the States?’

  ‘No! She went there to live when I was young. She came back because her mum died… ’ But then he remembered that, no, she hadn’t come back because of that. Her mum was dead but that was… Lucy said it was a while ago. ‘She… No–her mum–ah, she came back.’

  ‘When did you meet her again?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘Did she say why she was back?’

  ‘She told me her mum died and I sort of assumed that’s why she was back. But actually, that wasn’t why she was back. But I don’t know if she said that to me.’

  ‘How did you find out that it wasn’t why she came back? Did she tell you some other reason?’

  This was good, they were interested in Susan, not him. God knows what else she’d been up to. ‘No, she didn’t. She said she was back because her mum died, but my wife said that Mrs Grierson, old Mrs Grierson, died a couple of years ago. So, I suppose, that’s not why she was back.’

  ‘Two days ago. That was the first time you met her again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you meet her?’

  So he told them the story, about her being in here, them seeing each other by accident…

  ‘Did you recognise her immediately?’

  ‘Yeah, she said she was Susan and I recognised her.’

  ‘She said she was Susan?’

  ‘Yeah, and I recognised her.’

  ‘Did you recognise her before she said her name?’

  Odd question. He cast his mind back. ‘No.’

  ‘Did she approach you?’

  ‘Um, yes.’

  ‘Have you been to her house in Sutherland Crescent?’

  Lucy didn’t know he had been there. Did it matter? She would have wanted to know about the inside of the house for Sara Haughton. But they were the police and lying to the police was stupid. He hadn’t really done anything. ‘I have. I did. Last night.’

  ‘What for?’

  Boyd licked his lips and looked through to the café. ‘Just, you know, had a drink or something. It was after the charity dinner. We were celebrating. Drink and so on, you know.’

  He was pleased with his answer. Honest, but giving nothing away, but the cop wasn’t listening any more. She was looking around the kitchen, nosy and not hiding it the way a polite person would. The man caught his eye and smiled as if this was a normal thing.

  ‘We’d like to ask you about a photograph, sir.’

  The woman carried on nosing around, even bending her knees to look under a shelf of dry goods, for fuck’s sake. The man held a photo up to him.

  ‘Yeah! Me and Sanjay,’ he said, enjoying seeing him again. ‘What? Is this about Sanjay?’

  The woman reached across and her finger landed, gentle as a fly, on Sanjay’s girlfriend’s face. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Sanjay’s girlfriend, at the time.’

  The man asked, ‘Who’s Sanjay?’

  ‘Sanjay Hassan. We worked together in London. He was a trainee solicitor then, he’s qualified now. We worked for a catering company together. Events.’

  The woman asked, ‘How well do you know her?’

  Relieved, he smiled. ‘Oh, look, I don’t know her. I met her at the end of the marathon with Sanjay. They split up after a few dates. She had two kids.’

  The man said, ‘Roxanna Fuentecilla.’

  ‘Roxanna! That’s right. I remember now. Roxy, he called her. What’s going on?’

  The policeman looked at the policewoman, as if he didn’t know what else he should ask. She was staring at the row of plastic tubs on the dry goods shelf. She nudged the man and pointed at one of the tubs. The plastic on the lid was cloudy, scratched from being washed and reused. It had Baking Soda written on it in black felt pen.

  ‘Is Sanjay OK?’<
br />
  ‘Can I open that?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course!’

  She put on latex gloves and peeled the lid back. On the flat white surface sat a bubble of blue. Someone had shoved a blue plastic bag in there.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  The police officers looked at each other and asked if Boyd had any tinfoil.

  ‘Of course!’ Trying to be helpful, Boyd reached under the sink and hoisted out a big tinfoil roll onto the table. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

  They were quite insistent that they’d do it themselves and the man put on latex gloves as well. Then they rolled out a length of the foil on the table and she pinched the bubble and lifted it out of the baking soda. It was a mobile, a Samsung, quite new.

  ‘What’s that doing there?’ asked Boyd and then realised it was a stupid question. It was his kitchen in his café.

  The cops eyed a conversation at each other. Boyd could tell it wasn’t favourable to him.

  ‘That’s not my phone.’

  The woman flattened the freezer bag against the phone and turned it on. She went into her own pocket, took out a clunky work phone and called a number. The phone in the freezer bag lit up.

  ‘Whose phone is it?’

  The woman cop hung up her own phone. ‘It belongs to the woman in the photograph of you and Sanjay.’

  ‘Sanjay’s ex-girlfriend?’ He laughed again, not sounding like a dick this time, just incredulous. ‘Sanjay’s ex? What?’

  ‘Mr Fraser, I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to come with us. And we’re shutting the café down for a thorough search.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This woman has just been found dead. In Susan Grierson’s house.’

  They shut the café down. Moira ushered all the customers out with their lunches packed up to go. She took the tray of brownies out and set them on a mesh tray to cool. As a final dutiful gesture she phoned Lucy at the house, told her to come down because the police were here questioning Boyd. Then Moira left, glad to get out but rubbernecking through the window as she passed it.

  The cops told him he had the right to remain silent and other things. Boyd didn’t really listen because it was just a mix up.

  Minutes later the double buggy came through the door. Boyd saw that William had just woken up and looked cross and startled. He looked up and Lucy caught his eye. She had the same look on her face. The cops wouldn’t let them speak to each other. Then two other cops came, a bald man and snaggle-toothed woman, and they took Boyd away.