by Ed James
Ryan looked at his wife and something passed between them. Maybe Cullen had won. But that remained to be seen.
Cullen shrugged. ‘Okay, so on Friday you were on your healthy walk alone in the fresh air. That certainly isn’t illegal. You’re allowed daily exercise, after all. Going to the glen? Well, it was shut but they were opening it on Monday, right? And you’re not outwith the hour of exercise. And then if you suddenly became amorous, why, that’s just nature, isn’t it?’
Now they looked at each other and Cullen saw a hunger in their eyes. Yep, that was the least of what they were up to. ‘It was something like that.’
‘I mean, maybe you saw her on this excursion. Whatever was going on.’
Dawn sat forward, hands clasped together. ‘The kids have been a nightmare since lockdown. It’s been bedlam. And then they let us have my parents into the garden. So we thought they could look after them for a bit… Well. And one thing led to another when we were out.’
Murray lurched to his feet. ‘When you were doing this, did you notice anyone else who was out for a similar healthy? Did they notice you?’
‘Stop judging us. It’s nature.’
‘But you were dogging, weren’t you?’
Dawn shot daggers at Murray. ‘That’s so crass.’
‘It is crass. Swinging, dogging, whatever. You were doing it.’
Cullen held up a hand to shut up Murray. ‘There would be no prosecution of something so minor. The problem is, you have probably spread coronavirus to over twenty people. You might not go out much, fair enough, but if someone goes to visit their elderly father this afternoon when we could’ve prevented it? Well, that’s on your conscience. Those deaths are on you. Because it won’t just be one. It’ll be many.’
Ryan looked at Cullen now. ‘This woman, how can we help? You got a photo?’
‘If I did, I couldn’t even show you.’
Ryan ran a hand down his face.
Cullen sat forward on his seat. ‘All we have is it was a woman in her early forties. Dyed her hair blonde.’
Dawn frowned. ‘Look, let’s just say there was a woman who wore a mask to a few of these … events we went to. It might be her.’
‘You know her name?’
‘No.’ Dawn grabbed her husband’s hand. ‘Ryan knows who organises these events. Maybe that guy recognises her.’
8
Quite a smashing view from up here, have to say.
Calton Hill towers above us, catching the light, towering over the parliament. Almost beautiful.
We’re up on the Argus’s roof garden, and it’s actually a lovely day but windy as fu— all hell.
Christ, am I allowed to say “hell” these days?
And this fanny doesn’t know how good he’s got it. Alan Lyall. Sure there’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’ve turned over a new leaf, haven’t I?
Scrawny wee git, like, and with a real evil look in his eyes. Swear I could argue with you all day long about whether evil’s innate or not—and you know which side I’d be on—but this boy would be the first piece I’d put into evidence. Just get him up on the stands and one look at his coupon is enough to persuade any reluctant jurors.
He’s sitting there acting all casual, when most people would be terrified of two cops showing up. Then again, this boy looks experienced and he is a journalist. Been around the blocks a few times with clowns like Shepherd, knows how to play them.
Well, wait till he gets a load of me!
‘We probably shouldn’t be working in an office, no, but some of us are deemed essential.’
Shepherd shifts his metal chair again, the foot grinding off the concrete slabs. I mean, they’re not exactly comfy, but Christ, it’s like he’s inside an Iron Maiden or something. ‘Looks like it’s just you, though.’
‘Couple of us.’ Lyall twangs his face mask. ‘Got to wear this all day, wash our hands every half an hour, sanitise every fifteen minutes. Absolute ball-ache. And meeting you out here at much greater than the social distancing guidelines.’
I’m about ten metres away from the boy, not two. Still feels too far. Afraid I might catch evil from him. ‘Okay, but we just need to find Ms Geddes.’
‘Dr Geddes.’ Lyall grins at Shepherd. ‘Nope. But she’s a right arse about making sure people use that title.’
‘She been an arse with you?’
‘Had to cover school stories as part of my beat. Sat down with her a few times. So aye, she’s been an arse with me.’
‘We’re just looking for some help finding her.’
‘No, you’re looking for my sources on this story, and you’re looking to access my reporting.’
‘She’s a missing person.’
‘So?’ Lyall runs his tongue across his lips. ‘You know why sources are confidential, right? It’s to protect them, and to make sure the truth comes out.’
Shepherd’s nodding along with it. ‘Wouldn’t want it any other way.’
‘So you’ll appreciate me not divulging any names.’
Shepherd is still nodding. Does he think that’s endearing? Who knows. ‘What is there to protect, though?’
‘Where do I know you from?’ Lyall’s looking right at me. These days, I’m trying to keep a low profile, but this boy is more interested in me than Cullen would be in a single mother. ‘Sure our paths have crossed somewhere.’
I give the boy a shrug. Play this right and I can show this fanny Shepherd a thing or three. Might be useful to have allies in the wider MIT, anyway. ‘I’ve got one of those faces.’
‘Nah, it’s not that.’ Lyall clicks his fingers a few times. ‘You weren’t working in Dundee a few months ago, were you?’
‘That?’ I give the boy a shake of the head, not too much, just enough to show some irritation, enough to show I’m on his side of the coin. ‘Less said about that the better.’
Lyall flicks his eyebrows up. ‘Tell me about it.’
I slide the morning’s paper over the table. The newsroom in this place used to be busier than Ibrox at ten to three on a Saturday, but out here, even with that bloody wind, it’s not that you can hear a pin drop so much as a sexy police officer sliding a newspaper across a desk at a distance of ten metres. I tap the front page. ‘We’re interested in this piece you did on Isobel Geddes.’ Calling it a piece rather than a hatchet job is bound to buy some brownie points. ‘Turns out Dr Geddes is now missing.’
‘You don’t say.’ Lyall lets out a sigh. ‘Look, are you suggesting my piece has driven her away?’
‘Not in the literal sense, no. But in the figurative? Maybe.’
‘You don’t think this is an important story to get out there?’
‘Not our place to judge, sir. We’re merely responding to a missing persons report. Now, normally, that’d be the responsibility of our uniformed colleagues, but when it’s the Schools Minister and the whole nation is under lockdown? Different kettle of fish, eh?’ I give the boy a wee bit of a breather. Two big cops hitting him hard must feel like a bit of an imposition. ‘Just need to know if you’ve had any contact with her recently.’
‘Wednesday.’
‘Here?’
‘Outside Holyrood.’ Lyall looks over at the parliament. Probably not too far away from her office, as it happens. Strange how things end up like that, isn’t it? ‘It was like that unstoppable force meets immovable object thing. She wouldn’t talk on the phone, or even on neutral territory. So I had to bite the bullet to visit her, risking life and limb. Place is absolutely rife with Covid, I swear.’
‘Take it you asked her about this piece?’
‘Refused to comment on the story, didn’t she?’
‘So she knew about it?’
Lyall sniffed. ‘Sometimes in this job, you realise when you’ve been played. A story like this, I was hoping to get her on the record, maybe force an apology or resignation.’
‘But?’
‘But she doubled down. Pushed back against it. Not so much as denied it, but… The trouble wi
th Holyrood is it gives them an unwarranted sense of entitlement. Bottom line, Dr Isobel Geddes played politics with it.’
‘How so?’
‘I messed up. Told her too much. So, their party leader called my boss, got her to spike the story.’ Lyall raises his forefinger exactly on the last syllable. ‘Before you ask, I don’t know how. Way above my pay grade, isn’t it? Horse-trading they call it. Probably see a flurry of interesting stories break over the next few days and weeks.’
I’m nodding along here, but there’s so much unsaid by this boy. ‘Problem is, the fact that your bosses here have published this morning shows you didn’t get the quid pro quo you were after.’
‘Again, that’s way above my pay grade.’
I make eye contact with Shepherd. Credit to the lad, he’s letting me get on with this, rather than taking over like some other cops might. ‘Well, Luke, turns out we’re talking to the wrong boy. This lad doesn’t know much about his own story.’
Oldest trick in the book and it still works like a treat.
Lyall shakes his head, looks a bit pissed off with us. ‘It’s not that. My understanding is the story was supposed to go out yesterday. Big Sunday splash, get her on the morning interview shows. Way I hear it, though, the party’s chief lawyer got wind of the impending publication and put in a call.’ And that checks out with Tomlinson’s story. ‘Don’t know how, it wasn’t me who leaked, but I was told it was put in a holding pattern. Then it came out.’
‘Sounds like when your bosses didn’t get anything back, they ran it?’
‘That’s a fair assumption to make.’
‘This lawyer boy, you deal with him?’
‘He called me on Saturday. I told him I couldn’t do anything about the story.’
‘Passed it up the ranks?’
‘Right.’
‘You know he’s Dr Geddes’s ex-husband, right?’
‘Right.’ Can see the boy’s fingers twitching, desperate to type on his keyboard. File that one before lunchtime and make poor Tomlinson look like a right dickhead.
Shepherd leans forward and rubs his hands together. ‘We’re not really interested in political intrigue, though. We just want to find Dr Geddes.’ He grabs the paper and runs his finger around a photo of her on Friday night, still with that scarf wrapped around her neck. ‘You know who took this?’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Not what I asked.’
Lyall does a little weird little thing with his eyes, where they kind of roll. If it went on any longer, I’d think he was having a stroke or something. He waves his paw over at the steps we had to climb to get up here. Rickety would be generous.
But they’ve barely rattled, and this other skinny bugger is walking over the rooftop, with a pair of fancy headphones around his neck catching the light. Takes us a few seconds, but I think I know him. Richard McAlpine.
Cullen used to live with him, but not like that. Flatmates. As far as I know, anyway.
He stands between me and Lyall. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Cops here are asking about the Geddes story.’
‘Right.’ Rich does not look like a happy bunny, at all. Standing so far away that it’s really bloody hard to make him out over the wind. Boy’s a whisperer, that’s for sure. ‘What about it?’
Lyall sits back down, seeming a bit more at ease now that he’s shared the blame around. ‘Rich did a lot of the work on this too, especially on her background. His photo, too.’
Rich just stands there, supermodel thin. Bones for arms where there should be muscle. Least he’s grown his hair out a bit. ‘Alan, I’m taking the rap for this.’
‘There’s no rap to take, Rich. Come off it.’ Lyall sits back and twangs his mask again. ‘Look, we got a tip-off from a concerned citizen in Stow.’ Bingo, old Maureen’s southern cousin. ‘Neighbour of Dr Geddes reported strange weekend comings and goings. So the pair of us took turns watching Dr Geddes’s home in Stow over the weekends. See her arriving on a Friday, leaving early on a Monday.’
Rich stares at us, clearly knows who I am, but doesn’t say anything. ‘I was there on Friday night.’
‘And you saw her?’
‘Well, yeah. The photo’s in the paper, you chump.’
‘Chump. That’s a good one.’ I give him a big laugh. ‘So you—’
‘Aye, I saw Dr Geddes turn up. It was getting dark, so I had to use the telephoto with a flash and a slow shutter speed.’
‘You took them yourselves?’
‘Another cost-saving thing, isn’t it? I mean, I could dig out the photos and tell you the timestamp.’
‘That’d be good.’ Make the old mental note to follow up. ‘You see anyone?’
‘Nope. Just caught her on camera and drove off.’
‘Okay, and do you have any idea why she would just disappear like this?’
‘I mean, yeah.’ Rich sticks his tongue in his cheek. ‘I mean, we’re making her life a misery by running this. Wouldn’t you bugger off somewhere?’
‘Aye, but we’re in lockdown. Where could she go?’
He just shrugs. Lyall joins in with one of his own.
‘So neither of you know where she could’ve gone?’
‘Flat in Edinburgh. Porty, I think.’
‘Been there already.’
Rich shrugs. ‘Then, as far as I know, she’s still in that house.’
9
The A68 through Pathhead thundered with lorries and cars, like the lockdown was already over. Eight weeks of staying in except for essential trips. And that story in the morning’s paper was probably another nail in the coffin, along with that Westminster adviser who drove to County Durham, the English scientist who was seeing his mistress on the sly, and the Scottish scientist travelling to Fife. Hard not to get angry with them, thinking they’re above the law.
And Isobel Geddes was another one, her story filling the news. Most people would skirt the line, maybe two hour-long walks on a Sunday, or going to the shops twice, but when you’re in the spotlight, it’s the worst thing you can do.
Cullen drove on, but lockdown meant the village was a ghost town. But things had picked up today, with the village pub offering takeaway tea and coffee. Could probably rustle up some draught beer if you asked nicely. He pulled in between two big SUVs, one of them with two flat tyres.
Murray was sitting on the bonnet of the other one, tapping his watch.
Cullen got out and joined him. ‘Had to come here a few weeks ago. Bizarre for the main road to Newcastle to be so empty.’
Murray hopped down onto the pavement. ‘And you didn’t call me?’
‘Kind of a bit of a rush. Plus I wasn’t feeling so well.’
‘Oh?’
‘I had Covid.’
‘Shite.’ Murray walked up the long path to the front door. Big old farmhouse, but the settlement had grown up around it. ‘Impressive work back there. My lads have been at them and got nothing.’
Cullen peered through the replacement windows, but couldn’t see past his own twisted reflection. ‘It’s all just “cognitive distortion” on their part.’
‘What?’
‘You’ll know it as “Stinkin’ thinkin’”, or just the lies people tell themselves to justify their actions. The Marshalls wouldn’t admit that they’d been dogging, but if you take each lie as it comes, you can lead them to the point where you can break the story apart in a different way. And the bottom line is I got them to admit they were there, got some potential witnesses, some definite contacts to trace. And murder trumps perversion every time.’
‘Sound like you’ve been on a course.’
‘Just you wait until you’re a DI, Stuart. It never ends. Day job takes up all your time, then they expect you to attend courses in the evenings.’
‘Well, that’ll be a long—’
The door opened to a crack and an eye peered out, baby blue and squinting. A thin shard of cheek, covered in stubble. ‘What?’
‘Wayne Leonard?’
>
‘Aye?’
‘Police, sir.’ Murray held out his warrant card. ‘Need to ask you a few questions.’
‘Just a sec.’ Leonard disappeared and the door opened from an inch to a foot. Leonard had a thick beard and hair piled up on top. Mid-forties, maybe. ‘Sorry, you can’t come in. I’m not well.’ And there it was, an eruption of the Covid cough. Leonard had to double over to get it out of his system.
If Cullen hadn’t been through it himself, he would’ve suspected some tearing to the lungs. ‘Coronavirus?’
‘Tested positive yesterday.’ Another wracking cough.
‘Sorry to hear that, sir.’ Murray adjusted his face mask. ‘Do you know where you caught it?’
‘Complete mystery, pal.’
‘When did the symptoms first appear?’
‘Woke up on Saturday and felt a bit crappy. Got worse from there. Sunday, I was coughing my guts up.’
‘You woke up here on Saturday?’
Leonard frowned at Murray. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means, you might’ve caught the virus on Friday night.’
‘No, I think the incubation period is a bit longer than that.’
‘Okay, so say it was from the previous Saturday, any idea—’
‘Why are two cops pitching up on my doorstep?’
‘We’re doing contact tracing, sir.’
‘Contact tracing?’
‘It’s become part of the job just now. Helping out where we can, especially when there’s an outbreak that requires absolute truth.’
‘Right.’
‘So where were you on Friday night?’
‘Well, I was here.’
‘Alone?’
Leonard sighed. ‘You trying to suggest I wasn’t?’
‘You a married man?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Sir, we’re contact tracing from a meeting in Gore Glen on Friday night. If you were there, you might’ve been passing on the coronavirus asymptomatically. We need to confirm your whereabouts in the evening. Say you went for a walk with a friend. Socially distanced.’