by Denise Mina
34
Morrow and McGrain looked through the café, in the cupboards, in the toilets, behind the counter displays. They stood on a chair to check the high-up shelves. Three yellow olive oil drums were lined up on a shelf. They were empty but brought a splash of vibrant yellow and green to the room. McGrain lifted each one in turn and shook. The third one had something in it. He brought it down and they lifted off the lid. A bag from Waitrose, blue, with white powder inside.
‘Must’ve used a whole bloody roll of freezer bags,’ muttered Morrow.
Lucy Fraser said, ‘That’s not his.’
She was sitting in the café with two small boys, one fighting to get out of the buggy. She had given them a brownie each from the pile on the counter and one of them had fallen asleep with a tiny chocolate bite still on his tongue. Morrow wanted to go home and see her own boys so much she could hardly look at them.
They lifted the tin down from the shelf carefully.
‘I’ll tell you why I know it isn’t his,’ said Lucy Fraser. ‘Because he only got a deal last night and this morning he said that when he got another one he’d get some for me too. So, there’s no way that’s his. We’ve been here for two years and we’ve never had a deal. We’ve just set up a business and we’ve got two kids. Honestly, it’s not his.’
She looked slumped, miserable and sad but Morrow could tell she had no idea that they were investigating a murder. Morrow should tell her. It wasn’t a chore she was relishing.
‘McGrain, go to the car and get one of the big production bags.’
He put the oil drum on the floor and left through the door to the street.
‘Really,’ said Lucy Fraser, staring miserably at the drum, ‘that’s not his.’
Morrow looked sceptical.
‘I know,’ said Lucy. ‘“Husband lies to wife.” Hardly front page news, is it? But it isn’t. He said he didn’t have any… ’ Her voice trailed away at the end and when she spoke again it sounded very faint. ‘I know I sound like an idiot–here with my kids, looking absolutely knackered. But I know what sort of shit he is, and he isn’t a hold-out shit.’
Lucy and Morrow smiled at each other, not warmly, just an acknowledgement that they were both there and both human.
‘Lucy, I think I should tell you—’
‘Look,’ Lucy steeled herself, ‘Boyd didn’t come home last night. He didn’t get in until very late. We used to take sniff a lot, in London, just for fun, but we haven’t done it for ages and I know the signs and I know when he has and he hasn’t.’
‘What time did he get in?’
‘About four thirty.’
‘Where was he?’
McGrain was passing by outside the window, reaching for the door.
‘I think he was out fucking some waitress.’ Lucy Fraser’s chin buckled. ‘He’s pretty restless at the moment.’
The door opened, McGrain came in and the moment was gone. Lucy went back to tend to the boys in the buggy.
McGrain opened the production bag and held it wide. Morrow lifted the tin very carefully and put it inside the bag.
‘Fill the label out and put it in the car, would you?’ McGrain took the production bag out and Morrow waited for the door to fall shut.
‘Lucy, you need to know that this investigation isn’t about a deal. Two women have been killed. We don’t think Boyd did it but there are a lot of confusing coincidences. Too many coincidences for it to be chance.’
Lucy’s face had turned grey. She stood up, her mouth slack, eyes open wide. ‘What can I do?’ she murmured.
‘Tell me the truth?’
Lucy nodded at Morrow’s stomach.
‘Which waitress do you think it was?’
‘Susan Grierson, I think. This morning, he flinched when her name came up. He was coming down this morning so he was all sort of twitchy and exaggerated. He was trying to be nice.’ She smiled miserably. ‘Out of character… ’
Morrow nodded. ‘Other than last night, has he been out late?’
‘No. The most he does alone is go for a run but that’s usually teatime or lunchtime and only for half an hour. Other than that he’s here or home.’
‘Two days ago, Tuesday morning at five thirty, where was he?’
‘Asleep next to me,’ said Lucy.
Morrow believed her.
No one by the name of Susan Grierson had tried to leave the country. Thankless had found a photograph of the woman. He had been asking in a butcher’s shop on the square and a customer behind him volunteered the series of photos of the dinner dance that she had taken on her phone. She’d let him skim through until they found one with a woman in the background that everyone agreed was Susan Grierson. Thankless got her to text it to him.
They stood in Simmons’ office and looked at it. Susan Grierson was tall, she was slim, she had a long nose and grey hair cut in a sharp bob.
‘Print that,’ said Morrow and went off to use the phone.
The fire investigation team had set up camp at one of the desks and were swanning about with great purpose.
Boyd Fraser had given her Sanjay Hassan’s mobile number. He picked up at the third ring. Hassan was walking in a very noisy street. When he heard that his friend Boyd was in custody he did them the favour of not going down into Holborn Tube station but staying on the phone.
Morrow messaged him the photo from the envelope in Iain Fraser’s back pocket and he called her back. That was the day of the London Marathon, he shouted over the noise of buses rumbling past. He had run it for the last three years as well and beat that time. Morrow thought he had been cut off.
‘Sorry, “beat that time…”?’
‘My TIME,’ he shouted. ‘My time is better now. On the marathon.’
‘Oh, your marathon time?’
‘Yes, my time.’
She asked him if he could possibly keep speaking to her but go somewhere quiet so that she could hear him properly. He said he could. An abrupt change in atmosphere and soft background music told her he was in a shop.
‘I’m in a shop,’ he shouted.
‘OK, Mr Hassan, the woman in the photo, what can you tell me about her?’
‘That’s an ex of mine, Roxanna Fuentecilla. She had kids.’
‘Where did you meet her?’
‘Oh, God, I don’t know. Brown’s, maybe? I worked as a waiter then, part-time, for money while I was training. I think it was Brown’s. We only went out a couple of times. She was Spanish.’
‘Did Boyd know her?’
‘No.’ He seemed quite sure.
‘Who would be able to get a copy of that photo?’
‘Didn’t Boyd have that on his café’s website or something?’
‘Did he?’
‘Still does, I think, doesn’t he? He asked me what I thought of his website and, well, I don’t really like that picture. He beat me that year and he looks really smug. I’m sure he put it up to piss me off. My time’s better now. I don’t think Boyd even runs any more.’
Morrow could hear a shop assistant whispering to ask if he wanted to try that on?
‘Have you seen her since?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You haven’t bumped into each other or been at the same parties or anything?’
He didn’t know what to say to her. ‘Have you ever been to London? It’s pretty big.’
35
Boyd had been sitting on the concrete bench for forty minutes. Each time he shut his eyes to blink, he expected the world to be different when he opened them. It never was. A dead woman found at Susan’s.
Boyd only met Roxanna once. Sanjay didn’t talk about her much and then she was history. She had kids. They were young blokes. Boyd was honestly more startled to hear that Sanjay’s ex had been in Helensburgh than that she was found dead in Susan’s house. His time in London and Helensburgh felt so separate. It was like finding a character in the wrong movie.
A grey wall opposite him. A grey floor in front of him. Heat-sapping
cold under his buttocks. He leaned forward again, folding the thin mattress under his bum and sitting on that. He had been alternating for thirty minutes between sweating into the rubberised plastic and freezing his balls off on the bare concrete.
He shut his eyes. Question him. They needed to question him about a murdered woman? Lucy didn’t know how serious it was when they took him away. She thought Boyd got caught for getting a deal. He could see she blamed him.
His mother’s angry voice came into his head: Speak clearly, don’t mumble, stay calm, don’t lie. Fucking useless advice in this context.
He kept shutting his eyes and thinking about Miss Grierson. They said two women had been killed. She was the only woman he could imagine might be missing, the only woman he felt guilty about. She said she was leaving, that she didn’t belong here and he should tell them. That should be the first thing he told them. Less than twelve hours ago she stood in the doorway to her garden, watching him leave, a reassuring lack of affection and warmth in her expression as she said goodnight, see you later, formulaic phrases that promised nothing and asked for nothing.
If she was dead they would find traces of him all over her. Even if she’d taken a bath as soon as he left, bits of Boyd would be all over the kitchen and on the floor of the conservatory. He felt sick at the memory of the conservatory. Why did they do that there, on a dirty floor? The house had bedrooms. But he knew why. They did it there because it wasn’t a bedroom. Neither of them wanted intimacy. They were looking for the opposite of intimacy.
Footsteps outside the door. Locks scraping open. A stern woman. Come with me, please, sir.
They took him out of the building onto the Helensburgh street and put him in the back of a car, a shitty car. Then two uniformed police got in the front and they drove all the way to Glasgow in silence. It was horrible.
They pulled up in a shit area of that shit city. Why would anyone live there? It was so ugly. Around the back of a big building and into a walled car park topped with razor wire and cameras.
They got Boyd out and walked him up a concrete ramp, through a security door and to a sort of check-in desk. Then they handed him over to the cops there, gave them a padded brown envelope with all of Boyd’s personal belongings in and left, saying they had to go back to Helensburgh and get someone else. Who else? Susan Grierson?
A very tall female officer came and stood by him. The man behind the desk took his details and they moved him over to a big machine that photographed his fingerprints. The man looked at Boyd’s cashmere sweater and told the giantess to be careful with this one.
A joke. She was built like a tank.
Boyd only realised it was a gentle joke, not nasty, when they were around the corner on the way out to the interview rooms. Boyd wanted to go back and smile at the man, show he got it. But he couldn’t. He followed the giant sheepishly, through a stairwell, into a room with a wire mesh window on the door and a table in the middle with four chairs.
They wouldn’t be long, she said and then she left him alone. A sarcastic camera winked high in the corner of the room.
Now she was missing too.
The door flew open behind him. The people who had come to the café marched in. They introduced themselves as DI Alex Morrow (the woman) and DC Howard McGrain (the man).
‘Right, Boyd, we want to ask you about Roxanna Fuentecilla: when did you meet her?’
Boyd hesitated. ‘After the London Marathon. Three years ago.’
‘And the next time?’
‘There wasn’t a next time. That was it.’
‘Did you go for something to eat afterwards?’
‘No.’ Obviously she had never run a marathon. He wanted to tell her that you didn’t exactly feel like nipping into a Nando’s afterwards but he was scared of her.
‘When Fuentecilla came to Helensburgh, did she come to the café?’
‘You know, honestly? She might have. But if she did I didn’t recognise her. I met her that one time and I’d just run a marathon. That was it. If it wasn’t for that photo I probably wouldn’t even remember. Sanjay split up with her afterwards. She had kids and I think all he liked about her was her house. She lived in Belgravia. He thought she was rich.’
‘Was she?’
‘I guess not. I think he could have overlooked the children if she had been.’
‘Have you sold any land recently?’
‘Land?’
‘Have you?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know Frank Delahunt?’
‘No.’
‘Tell me what happened with Susan Grierson.’
He baulked at that, but he told them: I knew her growing up. She moved away for a very long time. I met her again recently. She asked for a job and worked for me for one night. After the dinner she approached me. She said she had some cocaine. She went to the café and waited for me. In the café, after, well, sort of…
Boyd was blushing furiously. It was one thing to do things but telling was different.
The woman seemed to have been through this before. ‘Just look at the table and say it. You’ll not be telling us anything we haven’t heard a hundred times.’
He looked at the table and said it: She gave me a blow job. Weird. How was it weird? She had a kind of bag in her mouth. She sort of hid it from me by doing that–he showed them the mouth movement and the way she swung her head away, covering her mouth with her flat hand. So that was, kind of, odd. We went back to her house. We took more coke—
‘Where was the coke, was it in a packet or an envelope of some kind?’
‘Yeah, a Waitrose bag. Freezer bag. Small size. Like that one the phone was in. I noticed it because it made me think of work. Waitrose take a lot of our custom.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Well, we went to her house and you know… ’
‘Had sex?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the kitchen area, sort of. Please don’t tell my wife.’
The woman looked at him for a moment, as if she was deliberating. ‘Your wife knows. She told me. She said, “I think he was out fucking some waitress.” Where is Susan Grierson now?’
He was too startled to speak. All he could think about was Lucy in the kitchen with the boys this morning, crying, hiding it from them, and how sad she must feel. He had done that. And she had known, this morning, when he stomped into the kitchen and hugged her and pulled her onto his knee. She had known. He was an arsehole.
‘Mr Fraser? Where is Susan Grierson now?’
Boyd forced himself to speak. ‘Told me she was leaving. Again. Said she didn’t belong here.’
They pushed a different photo over at him, a picture of a family in a botanical glasshouse. Roxanna was in the foreground. He hadn’t seen her for a long time, barely remembered her from then, but she was still fantastically good-looking.
‘Do you know this man?’
They pointed to a man in the background, red-trousered. The husband? Boyd looked at him for a moment. ‘I think he comes into the café. He looks like a customer. Maybe.’
‘And the woman?’
‘Well,’ he felt they were trying to trick him, ‘isn’t it Roxanna? The woman from the photo with Sanjay?’
‘Yes.’ They put it away. It felt like a dumb test of something. He was pissed off by that. The regret was ebbing away and he felt himself getting angry.
‘Look, how did you even get the photo of me and Sanjay? Did Sanjay give it to you?’
‘You put that photo up on the café website, didn’t you?’
Oh, God. They were right. He had put it up there, as a finger to Sanjay; well not really a finger but more of a goading gesture. When it was obvious he was never coming up to visit.
‘The picture we found is very low res,’ said the man. ‘We think it’s a print from the website image.’
The woman was looking at her notes and Boyd suddenly thought, Fuck this. ‘Can I go home?’
They ignored hi
m.
She looked up. ‘What’s your relationship to Iain Fraser?’
Boyd shook his head. ‘Sorry, who?’
‘Iain Fraser. A man from Helensburgh.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘He has the same surname as you and he lives in Helensburgh.’
She didn’t know the town. Boyd explained patiently that there were two different Fraser families in Helensburgh. There had been a spit in the family a generation back. His father’s sister converted to Catholicism. Their father was a minister and Boyd’s father was a minister, and the two sides didn’t really talk to each other. Colquin and Lawnmore Frasers, they were known as. It felt odd explaining small-town family politics to a stranger in a Glasgow police station. It was more of a tea and scones conversation piece.
‘So, Iain Fraser’s your cousin?’
Cold crept over Boyd’s shoulders. He had the sensation of the ground moving under him. ‘I suppose. Technically.’
The woman’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she took it out, looked at it and left the room to take the call. They were so fucking rude! When she came back in she was agitated and in a hurry to get away.
‘That’ll be all for now, Mr Fraser. We’re going to go and talk to some people but we’d like you to stay here with us. We’ll come back to you in an hour or so. OK?’
‘Anything,’ he said, not feeling gracious at all, wanting to cause a fuss and get out. ‘Really. Anything that helps.’
They escorted him downstairs to the check-in desk and the man in the shirtsleeves. Boyd tried a smile at him, the smile he meant to give when he made the joke about the big woman being wary of him. The man smiled back pleasantly but Boyd didn’t think he remembered.
A buzzer rang behind the desk, chiming with a bell in a distant concrete corridor. The shirt-sleeved man leaned down and spoke into an intercom. What is it? Cup of tea? Sugar? Sit tight, mate, and we’ll get that to you.
It was the cousin. They’d gone back to Helensburgh for him. The Colquin Frasers, tainted by Rome, the non-elect.