Dotty’s voice thumped out into the car. ‘… not telling you again!’
Watt, in the background: ‘You’re not allowed to use a mobile phone while driving. It’s illegal.’
‘Oh, go bugger yourself with a loo brush.’ A pause. ‘Rosalind, we’ve chased the labs up and guess what: fingerprints.’
‘You’ve already been in one horrible car crash, Hodgkin, let’s not make it two.’
‘Genuinely, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. They soaked the hands in glucose, peeled them off the bones, and got one of the APTs to wear them like gloves. Urgh …’
‘I’d like to go home tonight with both my legs, if that’s OK with you?’
Callum raised his voice. ‘Did they get an ID off the prints?’
‘Oh, hello, Callum. Can you do me a favour and tell Watt he’s being a big – girl’s – blouse?’
‘Do you two always have to do this?’
Watt: ‘And you can tell her she’s being petty, irresponsible, and childish! Traffic laws are there for a reason.’
He slid the car forward another length. ‘Dotty, give Watt the phone.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Just do it, OK? Please?’
Watt’s voice came through loud and clear. ‘Thank you. It’s about time someone—’
‘And you can stop being a dick. Stick us on speakerphone.’
‘That’s right, take her side. Everyone always—’
‘Don’t be such a Jessie! I’m the one—’
‘OH FOR GOD’S SAKE, THE PAIR OF YOU! You’re not six!’
Silence from the phone.
A gap opened up and Callum slid the car into it, crawling along as the line of traffic snaked back to its own side of the road. A massive road grader growled its way along the central reservation, flanked by soggy-looking men in dripping high-viz jackets and hard hats.
The Mondeo thumped over a hard line in the tarmac, marked ‘RAMP’.
Still nothing from the phone.
‘Fine: I’m sorry.’
Dotty sniffed. ‘That’s better.’
‘You are six.’
‘It’s not my fault he always—’
‘Did you get an ID off the fingerprints, or not?’
‘Hmmph.’
Watt sounded a bit smug, as if he somehow thought he’d won something: ‘I’ll answer that one, shall I, Sergeant? Apparently they have to wear the hand in order to flesh out the fingers, so to speak. We got them to run the prints and they came back with two matches.’
A coach crawled past on the other side of the dual carriageway, full of pre-teen girls waving home-made placards with things like ‘WE ♥ MR BONES!!!’ and ‘MARRY ME TAYLOR!!!’ on them.
Franklin scowled at the phone. ‘This isn’t Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Watt. Stop milking it.’
‘Sorry, had to check my notes. The body from the tip was one Roger Barrett. Did five years for armed robbery, got out last January. Hasn’t been to see his probation officer in nine months.’ That smug tone was back. ‘And you’ll never guess where he worked—’
Dotty hammered in over the top: ‘Strummuir Smokehouse!’
‘I was actually telling them that!’
‘Rosalind’s right: you were milking it.’
No wonder Mother went around with a pained expression on her face most of the time. ‘So who’s victim number two?’
‘The mummy from the car boot was one Richard Duffy. No criminal record, but his prints are on file, cos someone broke into his house on Christmas Eve and stole a thousand quid’s worth of electronics and jewellery from under the tree. So his wife got him a last-minute fill-in present: a charcuterie and artisanal curing-and-smoking course at Strummuir Smokehouse. He took it in January. His wife reported him missing in March.’
Which made sense.
Tod Monaghan was a creature of habit, picking his victims from the people he saw at the smokehouse. Too thick to realise that it left a trail leading straight back to Strummuir.
‘We’re on our way to break the news to Duffy’s wife now.’
‘OK, thanks.’ Callum grinned across the car at Franklin. ‘And Watt, Dotty? You did good. You make an excellent team.’
There was a small pause, then Watt’s voice rang out loud and clear: ‘Don’t patronise me.’ He hung up.
Franklin shook her head. ‘You did that on purpose, didn’t you?’
‘Oh hell yes.’
Franklin clambered out into the rain and hurried in through the overflow mortuary’s front doors. Paused for a second to turn and wave at him, then disappeared inside.
Callum sat there with the windscreen wipers moaning. Pulled out his phone and called Control. ‘What happened to the PNC checks I asked for days ago?’
Silence.
‘Hello?’
A woman’s voice stabbed out from the speaker. ‘Do you want to try that again, DC MacGregor, using words like “please” and “thank you”?’
Prima donnas. ‘Please can you tell me what happened to the sodding PNC checks I asked for days ago? Thank you.’
‘Good manners don’t cost anything, you know. And I don’t appreciate your sarcasm, by the way.’
‘Fine. I’m sorry. Please can I have my PNC results.’
‘That’s better.’ The sound of a keyboard being thumped into submission. ‘I have eight names and details all emailed to you the day before yesterday.’
Thursday. The day they accused him of murdering his own mother.
‘Yes. Sorry I was … It wasn’t a good day. I’ll check when I get back to the office.’
‘See: there was no reason to be all sarcastic and demanding, was there?’
‘No. Sorry. Thank you.’
He hung up. Ran his good hand across his face.
Well done, Callum. Way to be a complete and utter dick.
‘Urgh …’
Let’s face it, with all this crap going on, he needed every friend he could get right now.
And speaking of which: he dialled Shannon.
‘What?’ The word barked down the line.
‘Bob, it’s Callum. This a bad time?’
‘Oh, OK. Hold on.’ It sounded like Marilyn Monroe was singing in the background, boop-boop-de-dooping her way into silence. Then Shannon was back. ‘Sorry, it’s been bloody government boiler schemes and green-energy review calls all sodding morning. Some people need stabbing in the ear with a trowel. Is it too much to expect to watch a film in peace?’ A grunt. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’
‘Any news on that name?’
‘The Old Age Police network needs time, Callum. I know it’s important, but these guys are wading through nearly thirty years of junk to get at notebooks and case files. And even then, there’s no guarantee.’
Of course there wasn’t.
‘Sorry.’ He rubbed the fingertips of his broken hand across his brows. Trying to massage some life into them. ‘Pike’s up before the Sheriff at eleven and he’s still not saying anything.’
‘He likes screwing with people.’
‘It’s not like the name’s any good to him.’
‘He needs Viagra to have a wank, Callum, screwing with people is probably the closest he gets to a natural hard-on. And even then, it’s probably just a semi.’
Now there was an image.
‘I don’t know what to do, Bob.’
‘We’ll sort it out, don’t worry. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Tony Curtis is about to change out of his dress and into a blazer.’
Callum slipped the phone back into his pocket and sat staring out at the rain.
Checked his watch.
Half an hour and Pike would be making his guilty plea. Then a short car ride to HMP Oldcastle to wait for Social Work reports and sentencing. Taking his secrets with him.
And there was nothing Callum could do about it.
51
The old station house in Castleview h
ad a weird sour coconutty smell, as if it’d got blootered on Malibu the night before and vomited all over itself. Maybe the Security Monitoring And Analysis Department liked to lube themselves up with suntan lotion of a Saturday morning?
Callum parked his backside on the windowsill and tucked his filthy fibreglass cast into his jacket pocket. Hiding it away. ‘What do you think?’
The man in the blue hoodie was far too old to be wearing it, or the big fancy trainers, or the ‘HALFHEAD ~ BONES & STONES WORLD TOUR!’ T-shirt. He’d scraped what little hair remained on his head back into a sumo-wrestler’s pigtail, glasses perched on top of his shiny scalp. ‘Hmmm …’ He picked at his soul patch – greying like the eyebrows. ‘Why not: Winston Smith likes a challenge.’
The Mondeo’s digital video drive sat in a little plastic cradle, connected to a silvery tower unit. A few clattering keystrokes and lights on the drive flashed green. A few more and the thing bleeped and whirred.
‘Of course, I can’t promise anything, yeah? Winston never knows what he’s going to see till he sees it.’
The room was strangely empty. Just the desk and the computer, one very expensive-looking office chair, one filing cabinet, one window, and a radiator that pinged and gurgled like a fat man’s stomach.
Callum checked his watch. Again. Ten past.
Pike would be on his way back to the cells by now.
‘Right, here we go …’ Smith’s fingers flew across the keys and half a dozen little windows appeared on the computer monitor, each playing a view from the Mondeo’s dashboard camera. Second-hand flickering lights and speeding streets. He fiddled with the mouse, closing all the windows but the one with yesterday’s date – the dual carriageway roared past at triple speed, cars and traffic cones flashing by, over the bridge, round the roundabout, up into Kingsmeath.
Another click and the video slowed to normal speed.
The car swept around onto Manson Avenue.
Froze.
Wound back a bit.
‘There we are, one black Mercedes.’ Smith tapped the screen, where the back end of the Merc was just disappearing around the corner, partially obscured by an ancient Fiesta. ‘Now, let’s see what being a genius gets you these days …’ He pecked at the keyboard and the window zoomed in on the car’s number plate. The footage ran forwards and backwards a few times and the frown on his face deepened. ‘Hmmm …’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s low light, which doesn’t help, it’s far away, which also doesn’t help, and the camera lens isn’t the cleanest either. This is as good as we can get.’ A blurred and lumpy grey-and-yellow smear.
‘Can’t you do some sort of image enhancement thing on it?’
‘This isn’t science fiction, my friend. Winston is a genius, but he’s not a miracle worker. These cameras record the image as a big block of pixels and write them to the hard drive. You can zoom in all you like, but there comes a point where all you’re doing is making the pixels bigger. You can’t magically wring more resolution out of the system, because it just doesn’t exist.’
‘Oh.’
Well that was a complete waste of time.
Callum stood. ‘Well, thanks anyway.’
‘Ah, ha, ha!’ Smith held up a finger. ‘Winston said he wasn’t a miracle worker, but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of the odd miraculous act. You see the pattern of blurring we’ve got here, the lights and the darks? That’s been formed by the numbers on the number plate, and the way they combine in a given set of lighting conditions at a certain range. Winston can’t make them any less blurry, but he can run a very clever bit of software to blur thousands of different number and letter combinations to see what produce the closest matches.’ A wink. ‘Told you: Winston Smith likes a challenge.’
He curled over his keyboard, face inches from the screen as he typed. Opening up programs, setting things running, clicking and clicking and clicking. ‘You might want to grab a cup of tea, this is going to take a while.’
Callum took a sip of scalding hot tea, wandering the corridors. ‘No, I just wanted to see if there was any news.’
Mother’s voice crackled out of the earpiece as if she were on the other side of the planet, not the other side of the river. ‘Well, Dorothy and John are off looking into Roger Barrett. Probably won’t add anything to the stew, but it’s better to err on the safe side, isn’t it? I want us to have a good squint at Ashlee and Abby Gossard’s movements in the run-up to the abduction. Monaghan must’ve bumped into them somewhere, and far as we know they’ve never been to Strummuir Smokehouse. Which reminds me: we’ve still not had anything back from the CCTV team, so if you wouldn’t mind giving them a prod, that’d be nice.’
‘I’m there now.’
‘Good. And tell Voodoo that Jack and I would love to come to Ian’s party. I’ll be bringing my famous spinach and artichoke dip. Jack will bring his infamous peapod burgundy.’
‘Will do.’
The CCTV control room door was open, offering a view into a dim room lined with screens – each one displaying a different view of Oldcastle. Half a dozen support staff sat at the long central desk, working the joysticks that moved the cameras and eating cake.
‘Callum?’
‘Yes, Boss?’
‘I hear someone broke Blakey this morning.’
That was one way to put it.
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘He’s been signed off on the sick. Stress.’
‘Oh for …’ Callum closed his eyes and thunked his head off the corridor wall. ‘So there’s no one running the case?’
‘I hear you think this paedophile, Gareth Pike, saw what happened to your parents?’
‘How can there be no one running the case? Blakey was useless, but at least he was there!’
‘When you get back to the station, we’ll see what we can do, OK?’
His shoulders sagged. ‘Yes, Boss.’
‘Good. Now, in the meantime, go chase up Voodoo. And remember: spinach dip.’
Callum hung up, put his phone away. Thunked his head off the wall again.
Bloody Blakey. Thunk. Bloody useless half—
‘I hope you’re not putting dents in my lovely headquarters, Callum.’
He picked his head off the wall and turned, faked a smile. ‘Voodoo.’
She was dressed in Police Scotland black, complete with shiny boots and epaulettes on the shoulders of her T-shirt. A small woman, with close-cropped grey hair and arms like a marathon runner. A big broad smile that made the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. ‘I hope you’re here to accept my party invitation?’
‘Thought it would be wise to see a photo of your daughter first.’
‘Cheeky sod.’ Voodoo dug into her pocket and produced her phone, swiping away at the screen. ‘I know you didn’t come all the way over here for that, so what’s the real reason?’
‘Mother wants to know how you’re getting on with the vehicle check for our Johnson Crescent abductions. Vans and big four-by-fours?’
‘Ah yes. Walk this way, young man.’ She turned and marched off, still fiddling with her phone. ‘We’ve run through every ANPR camera in a half-mile radius, and the security footage from all public spaces in the area.’ At the end of the corridor, Voodoo pushed through the double doors and hammered up the stairs, taking them two at a time. ‘Keep up, Callum.’
It wasn’t easy. ‘Did you … did you get … anything?’ Puffing and panting all the way. Tea slopping from side to side in his mug.
She stopped on the landing and held out her phone. ‘There you go.’
A young woman smiled out of the screen: long brown hair, big brown eyes, long thin nose, suntan, huge smile, and a tiny blue bikini.
‘That’s our Becky. Still swithering about coming to the party?’
‘Well, if I wasn’t breathing heavy already …’
‘Good boy. She likes sauvignon blanc.’ And Voodoo was off again. ‘I’ve got a lon
g-list of about a hundred vehicles, but we’ve narrowed it down to three likely targets: a small grey Peugeot Bipper, a rust-brown Bedford Rascal, and a green Fiat Fiorino. There’s a lot of four-by-fours, but these are the vans that get my juices flowing.’
A young man emerged into the corridor, did a double-take. ‘Chief Inspector.’ Then flattened himself against the wall as Voodoo strode past.
‘Get the kettle on, Williams. I’m gasping.’ She kept on going.
‘Yes, Chief Inspector.’
She swung through a door near the end, and into a large office with one whole wall given over to at least two dozen TVs. A coffee table and a couch sat in front of them, along with a phone and a wireless keyboard. Voodoo perched herself on the edge of the couch and fiddled with the keyboard.
Pictures sprang into life across the screens: a curling cobbled street in Castle Hill, the bus station on Dalrymple Street, three views of Harvest Lane’s rows of nightclubs, the car park just inside The Swinney, two views of Camburn Woods, then MacKinnon Quay, the school on Preston Row, Montgomery Park with its collection of marquees and big inflatable spider … On and on, peering into other people’s lives – like being God, or GCHQ.
‘Take a seat, Callum, you’re making my office look untidy.’
‘Sorry.’ He sank into the couch next to her and stuck his mug on the coffee table as she did some more fiddling. ‘Don’t suppose any of these vehicles were registered to a Tod Monaghan, were they?’
‘No.’
‘Oh …’ Well, it was never going to be that easy, was it? Monaghan would be driving someone else’s van. Maybe without them even knowing.
The monitors divided up into three huge pictures, stretched across multiple screens. A green van in one, a manky orange-brown van in another, and a grey van in the third. All small vehicles, nowhere near as large as a Transit, and all waiting to go through a different set of traffic lights.
Their number plates sat in a caption box at the top of each image.
‘We’ve got them going into the vicinity of Johnson Crescent between seven and eight, and coming out again between quarter past eight and twenty to nine. And by the way, you owe me six bags of doughnuts – getting my team to drop everything and slog through all that footage required bribery.’ She poked at the keyboard again and the images on the screen pulsed like a slideshow as each of the vehicles were picked up on various CCTV and ANPR cameras across the city. ‘We followed them as far through the system as we could, but …’ a shrug, ‘sadly the powers that be won’t let me put cameras on every street in the city. If they did, just imagine what we could achieve!’
A Dark So Deadly Page 40