The only thing a close examination of the contents produced was a burst of sneezing from McBride, brought on by the release of an excessive number of dust particles that had triggered a near-forgotten allergy. Apart from the grime, the news reports of Roberta’s strangulation were pure and untouched.
McBride blew his nose – loudly, in the hope that it might irritate Brad. He moved from the main file area, round the corner to the section containing the more recent newspapers, and dragged the one he wanted from its place on the shelf. Feverishly, he pulled back the pages.
The story of Virginia Williams’ demise in douce St Andrews was instantly rewarding. A neat square hole under the headlines was obviously where a photograph of the Kiwi lawyer had once been positioned. In the last column of the report, five paragraphs from the end, there was a much smaller aperture where two sentences appeared to have been removed. McBride fought off an overwhelming desire to punch the air but permitted himself a soft, ‘Yessss.’
Like the other larger extraction, the missing words had been excised with infinite precision, by a sharp blade. He flicked the page over and whistled in admiration. There was no trace anywhere of a carry-through cut. Whoever had performed the surgery had also come equipped with some kind of protective pad to prevent damage to other parts of the file. ‘Impressive … and interesting!’ he exclaimed inwardly.
McBride was still marvelling at his discovery when a whining voice sounded from twenty feet away. ‘Are you nearly finished here?’ It was the slimeball walking towards him, a set of keys in his hand, his moist forehead glistening under the bright ceiling light. McBride snapped the file shut, anxious that he should not see where it had been opened.
The sweating librarian seemed suddenly uninterested in the activities of his visitor. He paid no attention to the file McBride had now lifted up into his arms.
‘I have to go out and I’m not allowed to leave anyone alone if no staff are on duty.’ He noted McBride’s questioning look and added, hurriedly, ‘We’re short of bodies – flu – so I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
‘Give me a couple of minutes more and I’ll be gone for good. OK?’
Brad hesitated. ‘OK, two minutes, no more.’ He rattled his keys officiously and walked reluctantly away. ‘Remember, two minutes – I’ll be waiting at the door,’ he called out as he disappeared back round the corner of the aisle.
McBride replaced the file on the table, reopened it at the cut pages and wrote swiftly in the pad he had pulled from a pocket, noting the precise spot where the extracted words had been.
Brad kept his promise and was standing with his arms folded at the door of the library, one foot gently tapping on the scuffed vinyl floor covering. His truculence remained to the end. He did not meet McBride’s eye as he ushered him through the entrance and nor did he acknowledge the short ‘Thanks’ McBride grudgingly uttered as he filed past.
It was only when he was in the street outside that it occurred to McBride that Brad had not followed him out. Instead, he had remained inside the file room, locking himself in after McBride had left. McBride shook his head at the unpleasant assistant’s odd behaviour but, somehow, it did not surprise him.
He did not waste time reflecting on it. All he wanted was to return to his car as fast as humanly possible to read Gwen’s copied article about the killing of Virginia Williams – the same one as the one in the library, only without the missing sentences.
He resisted the urge to run to the car park, knowing he would have looked like a shoplifter or someone with bladder problems, and contented himself with as fast a walk as seemed decent. Once inside his car, all control deserted him and he ripped at the packet of cuttings bearing Gwen’s distinctive handwriting like a child tearing opening a Christmas parcel. His eyes raced to identify the mystery absent passage. At first, he skimmed over them. They seemed so inconsequential that he believed he had mistaken their location. He rechecked his notebook only to discover there had been no error.
The words that had been so painstakingly removed were part of a statement given at a press conference by one of the murder team in answer to a reporter’s facetious question about the possible reasons for Ginny’s murder. The complete text of the affected sentences ran:
Your suggestion of a royal crime of passion is just one more on the list. Another much further away from reality is that Prince William is also a descendant of Jack the Ripper!
The parts removed were:
just one more on the list. Another much further away
McBride repeated them over and over.
‘Jesus!’ McBride exclaimed. He slammed his hand hard into the steering wheel, hitting he horn and sending a deafening blast round the echo chamber of the multi-storey. Conveniently, it blotted out the sound of McBride’s voice, which was roaring, ‘If you want to tell me something, just lift the phone! Bastard … bastard …’
17
McBride lay wide awake in the darkness and tried again to empty his mind. He did not succeed. Instead, he reached out and pressed the button to illuminate the clock beside his bed. It dimly pronounced 1.40 a.m. – seventeen minutes since his previous time-check.
He stared at the ceiling and thought about Ginny Williams and why she had died. He thought also of what had been written about her death. But most of all he thought about what someone had wanted him to learn by apparently keeping it from him. He had deliberated on almost nothing but the excised sentences since leaving the library.
McBride pulled himself from the bed, crossed the room and thrust a Coldplay disc into the CD player. He turned the rod of the window blind until the slats were open enough for the light from the moon to reveal the incoming tide rushing up the beach towards him and again he appreciated the gentleness of the whispers the river brought with it as it washed over the sand. At any other time, he would have lingered at his good fortune to be living where he was but all that crowded his mind was a picture of a New Zealand lawyer lying perfectly attired but even more perfectly dead in her apartment in St Andrews, ten miles away as the seagull flies.
At least he was now fairly certain he did not need to concern himself with the deaths of Nicola Cassidy and Roberta Kerr, disturbing though they were. Deeper reflection suggested greater differences between their murders and those of Alison Brown and Ginny Williams than he had first imagined. Apart from the longer timescale since Nicola and Roberta had died, both had literally perished ‘at the hands’ of their killer, signifying more impulsive, unpremeditated acts than the ones where ligatures had been used. In the case of the call-centre worker, a petty theft had also occurred. A discrepancy with the other victim was the timing – she had arrived home drunk in the early hours after a night on the town with her friends. They really didn’t fit very well at all, he told himself. Besides, no ‘message’ had been sent about either of them.
The music stopped and McBride hit the replay button on the remote. Briefly, incongruously, he wondered how anyone with the talent of Coldplay’s frontman could also be so inconsiderate as to name his children Apple and Moses. It made almost as little sense as the message someone was so painstakingly trying to deliver.
Whatever way he viewed it, he ran into the same brick wall. How could the person who had taken such trouble to so deftly wield the razor be certain anyone would come across the results of their efforts? Was there really any connection between the murders of Ginny Williams and Alison Brown or was a warped mind simply setting up a tormenting game for him to play? And were there any other participants?
He wanted a drink but even he couldn’t contemplate the cold sharpness of a beer after getting out of bed at that hour. He poured an inch of Metaxa brandy into a straight glass and filled it to the top with Coca-Cola. For the next ten minutes, he sipped easily at it and watched as the tide carried two empty detergent bottles back and forth on to the beach.
Then he returned to bed to gaze at the ceiling again – only now he was thinking of Caroline and his beloved bike. Christ, he’d always lectured her ab
out her grasshopper mind and her inability to switch off. At least the new images were preferable to the two dead women who had come uninvited into his life.
The woman who used to share his bed was still in his head when sleep overtook him. It was 3.20 a.m.
18
When he jerked back to life less than four hours later, sunshine was flooding the room. It was the kind of morning that folk who ran prayed for – bright, cool and windless and with a rising winter sun for company. But McBride resisted the desire to put on his trainers and head for the beach. Miraculously, what had passed for sleep had cleared his head and so there was no need to sort out his mind with the consumption of several miles by his legs.
He knew exactly what he must do. He needed to consult the police but it had to be someone familiar and not necessarily someone still serving. What he required was contact with an officer with enough seniority to have been informed of the background of the Alison Brown case, even if they had not worked on it, and who was prepared to speak off the record. Such a man, he believed, was David Novak.
He could not remember when they had last spoken but thought it had been when the then detective inspector had thoughtfully called him in London to express his sadness at Simon’s death. There were few officers in Dundee who were tougher or more demanding. There were also few more compassionate or caring. If DI Novak had arrested you, there was little prospect of an acquittal but, if the evidence was not there, the lanky Novak would not indulge in dishonest investigative techniques to create it. It was always a fair cop by a fair cop. Strangely, his approach was often appreciated more by those he endeavoured to arrest than by some of those who served with him.
McBride felt genuine fondness for the man. It was an emotion that had been reciprocated when they had used each other’s services all those years ago. He was unsure of Novak’s whereabouts. Please God he wasn’t dead. An easy find in the phone book erased that concern. The fact that there was a directory entry for him also told him that Novak was probably retired – for obvious reasons, few serving officers were ever listed.
McBride noted his address, breakfasted on toast and coffee and absently reread the previous day’s newspaper as he waited for sufficient time to pass before it would not seem indecent to turn up unannounced on someone’s doorstep. His impatience overtook him and, shortly after 9 a.m., he turned his car into a small estate of 1980’s private houses on the western perimeter of the city just before it met Invergowrie.
The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac and McBride smiled softly, wondering if its location was accidental. Probably not, he decided. The detective inspector, he remembered, left very little to chance and the smart bungalow would likely have been chosen for its secure position more than its price.
Although milk bottles were still sitting on the doorsteps of the houses on either side, Novak’s home bristled with wakefulness. The windows of what appeared to be the main bedroom were open, the front door was ajar and a wheelbarrow full of garden debris occupied the middle of the drive which led to a garage.
McBride drew to a halt at the same moment as a lean figure carrying perished plants appeared from the rear of the house. The man stopped, knowing instinctively that the visitor was for him. But he did not move in McBride’s direction. He remained standing at the corner of the house, as though deciding whether the caller should be welcomed.
McBride’s uncertainty about whether it would be necessary to introduce himself vanished within ten seconds of stepping from his car. The face of the man staring intently at him from thirty feet away slowly changed into a spreading smile and he called out, ‘Campbell McBride, if I’m not mistaken!’ And, with that welcome, he walked briskly down the drive, throwing the long-dead plants into the barrow and extending a hand that looked as though it had been used to excavate a ditch. McBride grasped it warmly, pleased he had been remembered and oddly glad to have been reunited with the policeman.
‘Hello, David, good to see you again,’ McBride said inadequately. It was the kind of remark that might have been appropriate had they been reintroduced at some official function but, as an opener from someone who had appeared on your doorstep out of the blue at nine o’clock on a winter’s morning, it had a decidedly artificial ring.
Novak dallied only long enough to politely respond, ‘You too.’ Then he got down to business. ‘So, to what do I owe this dubious pleasure? I have a feeling you are not here to enquire about my looks. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you’re not seeking information.’
McBride flushed and laughed at the same time. ‘So cynical for one so young. But why are you not more direct? You must be losing your touch.’
It was Novak’s turn to chuckle. ‘OK. Come inside and tell me all about it. I could do with a cup of tea anyway,’ he said.
For half an hour, McBride did not tell him anything about it. They used the time to identify the milestones in the lives of each of them since they had last faced each other.
Novak, still a year away from his bus pass, had eventually risen to the rank of detective chief superintendent and had commanded the Tayside Police crime management department, which was the new but meaningless title for what had been the CID – the name most folk still used for it. He had retired four years earlier but cruelly his wife had passed away three months after he had become a civvy. They had not even had time to take the cruise every retiring police officer seemed to deem an essential part of the leaving ritual.
In the time since he had handed in his warrant card and walked out of police HQ in West Bell Street for good, Novak had devoted himself to his garden. Unexpectedly, he had also rediscovered a suppressed talent for art. He combined the two and numerous paintings of flowers lined a wall of the room where they sat. They weren’t good and they weren’t bad. They were just watercolours of flowers – the end product of someone with time on his hands.
The ex-chief superintendent professed a contentment in his new existence but McBride didn’t swallow it any more than Novak did. A cop with his skills would never feel fulfilled just painting pansies, even if they had been masterpieces.
‘OK, Campbell, what is it you want?’
McBride sensed that the former policeman had become desperate to move away from the small talk. That he was eager to reconnect with the old days, and anxious to learn what had caused the reporter to track him down.
‘Has it anything to do with this book you’ve written?’ Novak gestured to a shelf of books over his visitor’s shoulder.
McBride turned to see the spine of The Law Town Killers sandwiched between a thick manual on painting techniques and Charlie Dimmock’s latest offering on garden water features.
‘I’m flattered, Dave. Is it a rare unsigned copy you have? Glad to see you haven’t lost your deductive powers, though. Then again, maybe you don’t have to be the world’s greatest mathematician to put two and two together. What can you tell me about Alison Brown? Or, more precisely, what do you know about the background to it all?’
Novak spread his hands, turning the palms upwards. ‘What’s to know? She argued with her boyfriend, he strangled her and now he’s up in the pokey at Perth where he belongs. By all accounts, the case didn’t take much solving.’
McBride looked questioning. ‘What do you mean “by all accounts”? Weren’t you involved?’ he asked.
‘No. I was back at Tulliallan doing another stint in the classroom.’
McBride had forgotten. David Novak’s gift for catching the bad guys made him a natural for teaching duty at the Scottish Police College. Half his career had been spent in and out of the classrooms at the college.
‘Yes, but she was a policeman’s daughter. That made it a bit special, didn’t it?’
‘Of course it did. Frankie Brown, God rest his soul, was a popular bloke. Nobody likes to see a young lassie ending up that way but it’s ten times worse when it’s the bairn of someone you know.’
McBride moved his head in agreement. ‘That would make it all the more important to get a result,’
he said.
‘Sure – we’re all human. You’d be the same if it was the child of a reporter you worked with.’
McBride nodded again. ‘So, all the lads would have tried extra hard on it?’
‘Yeah. But what are you saying?’ Novak was becoming agitated. ‘Are you heading where I think you are, Campbell? If you’re trying to say the boyfriend was fitted up just because of who her father was, forget it. He left a trail a mile wide.’
McBride soothed him. ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he replied, not entirely convincingly. ‘But it didn’t take long to bang him up, did it?’
‘That’s the way it goes sometimes. You know as well as I do that murder is usually either the easiest or hardest crime to solve. Most of the killers are known to their victims, so you get them quick. It’s the bastards who strike out of the blue that you have all the problems with. They’re the ones you sometimes never catch.’ Novak was becoming impatient. ‘Look, Campbell, what’s this all about? Why the big interest?’
McBride was amazed he hadn’t put the questions much earlier. ‘Now you’ve got me, Dave. Gut feeling – can’t explain it. Just doesn’t ring true.’ He struggled to find a credible explanation for his belief. ‘I’ve spoken to Bryan Gilzean up the road in Perth. He did a good job of convincing me it wasn’t him. So did his father, come to that.’
‘His father? Adam Gilzean has told everyone his son is innocent. Apart from the fact that he’s a bit of a religious maniac, he isn’t exactly unbiased, is he? You’d say the same if it was your son.’
Novak suddenly remembered that McBride no longer had a son. ‘I’m sorry, Campbell.’ He reddened with embarrassment. ‘I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I was going to ask. How have you been?’
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