‘Is it buggery. I put in a request for a helicopter and thermal-imaging camera, you know what they said? They said, “Sod off, Oldcastle, we’ve only got one helicopter and Strathclyde needs it.” How the hell am I supposed to find Toby Macmillan if they don’t give me the right kit?’
I settled on the edge of the bed and ruffled Henry’s furry head. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re on telly right now.’ After all, one of those small figures in the white suits was probably him.
‘You hear that?’ There was a moment’s silence, then what sounded like the far-off pounding whirrrrrrrrr of someone trying to beat partially-set concrete with an electric whisk. ‘Sky News have got a bloody helicopter. The BBC have got a bloody helicopter. Everyone’s got a bloody helicopter except the poor sod who actually needs one: me!’
‘Well … what about drones, then? Surely someone at the university’s got a few they can lend you. Part of a research project or something?’
‘If this was America, I could shove my badge in the pilot’s face and say, “I’m commandeering this helicopter!” And if he said no, I could shoot the bastard.’
‘No luck with your sex offenders, then?’
‘Why does everything have – to – be – so – bloody – hard? Why can’t I get an easy case for a change?’
I stood and pulled on my jacket. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I’m heading down for a massive hotel-breakfast fry-up.’
‘No, it doesn’t. And we’ve been through every nonce, stott, and greasy bastard in Oldcastle already. Twice.’
‘Then stop being a dick and go talk to Alice. She thinks this guy’s not on the Sex Offenders’ Register, because he’s never done anything like this before. He’s learning as he goes.’
‘Aaaaargh … How’s that supposed to help me? Instead of a finite pool of known kiddie fiddlers, I’ve got to interview every tosser in the whole place? This isn’t … God’s sake, what now?’
It went quiet for a bit, some muffled conversation barely audible in the background.
On the screen, Hugh the roving reporter marched across the car park, to the cordon. Where Chief Superintendent McEwan and his sidekick, Inspector Samson, were standing, in full dress uniform, with clipboards out and chins up. Soon as the other news crews got there, McEwan nodded and launched into a speech. No idea what he was saying, but it’d be the usual platitudes and look-at-me-being-all-in-charge bollocks he always came out with at these things. Not worth unmuting him for, anyway.
Then, Shifty was back: ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Apparently no one can find their arse with both hands unless I’m there to show them the bloody way!’ And with that, he hung up.
Say what you like about being kicked off the force, at least it meant I didn’t have to run around after tosspots like Chief Superintendent McEwan.
‘Right,’ I pointed at Henry, ‘if you stay here, and you’re a good boy, I’ll bring you back something greasy from the breakfast buffet.’
He grinned back at me.
Little sod was going to be the size of a beach ball by the time we got home.
The sun had barely cleared the horizon as Henry and I wandered along the promenade. Four big fat seals rolled in the gilded water, gulls wheeling overhead. Bit of a nip in the air, but at least it’d stopped raining. Should be a nice day, for a change.
Monday morning rush hour was in full swing. Which in Rothesay wasn’t saying much. A half dozen cars, the odd taxi. That open-topped bus again. Ten past eight – not even the carpet shops would be open yet.
I nipped across the road to a café, bought a decaf latte, then went back to the promenade to drink it. Chucking a tatty old tennis ball for Henry to fetch. The wee man scurrying about on clockwork legs, tail thumping back and forth like this was the best day of his life.
Ah, to be a daft, slightly stinky, Scottie dog.
My phone launched into a weird unfamiliar ringtone and I dragged it out, leaning against the blue railings, watching a couple of tiny fishing boats puttering out into the morning light. The words, ‘LEAH MACNEIL’ sat in the middle of the screen.
I jabbed the button. ‘Leah? It’s Ash Henderson, are you OK?’
Nothing from the other end.
‘Hello?’
A scrunching, popping noise, then a voice so muffled it was barely audible: ‘I’m frightened … He’s … I love him, but … he did something last night, something … something terrible. He’s … he’s scaring me so much …’
‘Leah?’
She didn’t sound like an eighteen-year-old, she sounded like a terrified child.
‘He’s in paying for the petrol and I don’t know what to do.’
‘Get out of there, Leah. Get out of there and run!’
‘I can’t.’
‘Is there another car at the petrol station? Someone you could go to?’
‘He’s locked the car and I can’t get out … Please help me!’
Come on, Ash, think.
‘OK, where are you?’
‘I don’t know, he … We’re … it looks like a supermarket, maybe?’
‘What kind? Can you see any road signs? Landmarks? Anything that’d help us find you?’
‘Oh God, he’s coming back!’ Her voice getting even harder to make out. As if she’d stuck her phone in a pocket, or something.
Then a clunk, a thump, and the sound of something crackling.
A man’s voice, talking at full volume. ‘Sorry, Caroline, they didn’t have any of the jelly beans you like, so I got jelly babies instead. Hope that’s OK?’
A click.
The man again: ‘What? No, I don’t think so. It’s too dangerous.’
Whoever he was talking to, not a single hint of what they said made it down to my end. Not even mumbling.
‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking too. What about you, Leah?’
‘Erm …’ A pause. ‘If you think it’s a good idea?’
‘Got to trust Caroline, she knows about this kind of thing.’
‘OK …’
My phone ding-buzzed.
ROBOSABIR:
>>Target Phone Activation Detected
>>Requesting Location Data
About time too.
Ding-buzz.
ROBOSABIR:
>>Triangulating Source
>>Pending
Come on, come on …
‘Now, what shall we listen to today? How about … Götterdämmerung?’ A small laugh. ‘Remember we played it all night when we had that young woman from Dundee to stay? You remember that, Caroline? Oh, wow, did she have a great set of lungs on her. Screamed and screamed and screamed.’
Then silence. Leah had ended the call.
Ding-buzz.
ROBOSABIR:
>>Target Phone Disconnected
Damn it.
She must’ve switched the thing off as well.
I pulled up my contacts and called the real Sabir.
Took him nearly a dozen rings to answer. ‘What the bloody hell do youse want now?’ Followed by a full-mouthed yawn.
‘Did you get a location or not?’
‘Mornin’, Sabir. You’re sounding dead sexy today, Sabir. Hope yer not too shagged out from humping my ma all night, Sabir.’
‘I got a text on my phone saying Leah had activated her phone.’
‘Youse are welcome.’
‘I need a location!’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know where they are? I’ve been asleep! You woke us up!’
‘It’s nearly twenty past eight.’
‘And I’ve been up most the night, trying to track down a bunch of internet kiddie fiddlers, so excuse me if I’m not at your beck and bloody call twenny-four hours a day!’
Off in the distance, sunlight flared off something white on the water, followed by the long mournful cry of a ship’s horn.
‘OK, OK. Sorry.’
‘It takes time for the system to triangulate data from mobile phone towers. If your Leah doesn’t leave her phone on long enough, there�
�s sod all I can do about it.’
‘Can we at least … guesstimate where she is?’
A moany grumbling noise rattled out of the phone. ‘I’ll have a go. But I’m promisin’ nothing.’ He hung up.
So close.
The shining dot in the distance grew, making a beeline for Rothesay. That’d be the ferry from Wemyss Bay. The one we’d be taking back to the mainland.
Of course, the big question was: who on earth had Gordon Smith been talking to in the car? ‘Caroline’, his wife, died four years ago of bowel cancer … Or that’s what Helen MacNeil had told us. So was he talking to himself, someone else, or maybe even Leah? Did he think his neighbour’s eighteen-year-old granddaughter was the woman he’d married nearly half a century ago?
Might explain why he’d kept her alive.
And if Leah had half a brain about her, it was a delusion she’d be playing along with.
Mind you, he’d also spoken to Leah by name. But that could be part of it, couldn’t it? If he had dementia, or something so he couldn’t tell who was who?
This was all really Alice’s field, rather than mine.
What was it she’d said? Something about not knowing what happens when one half of a couple-that-kill dies? Maybe the dominant one mourns for a couple of days, then goes out and finds himself another accomplice? Whether she wants to be, or not.
Especially when Leah said he’d done something terrible last night. Maybe it …
Ah.
Speak of the Devil’s neighbour.
Helen MacNeil stood in the middle of the promenade, scowling back at me, hands curled into fists at her sides.
I nodded. ‘Helen.’ Bent down and grabbed Henry as he returned the tatty ball. Clipped his lead on again. Just in case.
She didn’t move. ‘You know what it’s like.’
‘Yeah.’ Welcome to the world’s most horrible club. I peered past her, towards the strange pavilion thing that bisected the putting course. ‘What happened to your “friend”?’ Adding a stab of bitterness to that last word.
‘All she wants is dirt for her book, she doesn’t give a damn about Sophie or me.’
What could I do but shrug? ‘You want my advice? Avoid Jennifer Prentice like a weeping sore. She’s poisonous.’
‘I want Gordon Smith.’ Helen’s chin came up. ‘He deserves to suffer for what he did to my Sophie. For what he did to all those people!’ Her left arm trembled, as if she was having difficulty keeping it under control. ‘But they won’t do that, will they. They’ll arrest him, if they catch him at all, and they’ll try him, and they’ll stick him in some cushy psychiatric hospital with all the other whackjobs, feed him and water him and dose him up with all the best drugs.’ The arm shook harder. ‘While my Sophie GOT TORTURED TO DEATH!’
Helen’s face flushed.
I took a breath. Tried to sound reasonable. ‘You don’t know Sophie was—’
‘SHE TOLD ME!’ Jabbing a finger back towards the town centre. ‘Jennifer. She showed me the Polaroids – the other ones. The ones he took after what he did to them.’
Oh, for God’s sake.
I let my head fall back and stared up at the sapphire sky.
Oldcastle Police strikes again. Couldn’t keep a secret if you stitched it inside the useless bastards.
Helen’s voice dropped. ‘Jennifer had a copy on her phone – of Sophie, in the basement …’ Voice wobbling as much as her fist now. ‘She showed me … She sent them to me.’
And I knew how that felt as well.
Every year on Rebecca’s birthday: another homemade card from the bastard who killed her, with a photo of my baby girl being tortured on it.
Took some doing, but I cleared the knot out of my throat. ‘She shouldn’t have done that.’
Helen stepped closer. ‘That six million: I’ll split it with you, straight down the middle. Three million pounds, if you help me find Gordon Smith before the police do.’
It was like a weight pushing down on my shoulders. ‘I can’t, it’s—’
‘Four million! OK?’ Throwing her arms out, eyes shining as the tears welled up. ‘Five? You can take the bloody lot if you want: all six million!’ Her arms fell back to her sides and she sagged. Shrinking into herself. ‘I don’t care. I want him to know how my Sophie felt when he killed her. I want my hands round his throat, staring into his eyes as he gurgles and thrashes and pleads, his blood smeared up to my elbows, bits of him lying on the concrete floor.’
I leaned back against the railing. ‘It won’t bring Sophie back, Helen.’
‘No.’ She ground the heel of one hand into her eye, wiping away the tears. ‘But it’ll make me feel a hell of a lot better.’
Yeah, it probably would.
‘We’re heading back to the mainland on the next ferry. You could do worse than nick Jennifer Prentice’s car and abandon her here.’
With any luck she’d try to swim home.
And drown.
Twenty minutes out of Rothesay, I stepped out of the ferry toilets and there she was. Looked as if Helen hadn’t managed to lose her after all.
‘Ash.’ A semi-frozen smile. ‘I hope you washed your hands.’
I limped straight past her. ‘Whatever you want, Jennifer, you can bugger off.’
‘Oh, don’t be so sulky.’ She eased up beside me, keeping pace. ‘I know things finished on a slightly sour note with us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.’
‘Go away, Jennifer.’
‘One million pounds each. Think what you could do with the money: retire, have a decent holiday for a change. You could finally marry off that daughter substitute you’ve been hauling around since Katie died.’
I had to squeeze the words out through clenched teeth: ‘You remembering I’m a feminist?’
‘You’re not going to hit me, Ash. Not unless I hit you first – you’re sweetly old-fashioned that way. I know you, remember?’
Through the doors and into the outside seating area at the back of the boat, looking out over the shining blue water and the purpled hills.
‘We had some lovely times, didn’t we, Ash? When things weren’t going well with you and your wife, I didn’t put any pressure on you, did I? Didn’t make scenes or demands. It was simple, uncomplicated, sweaty … fun.’ She scooted around in front of me, backing towards the handrail. The twin red-and-black exhausts towering overhead, keeping the diesel fumes away from the passengers. ‘We could have that again. No judgement, no pressure, no commitments.’
The metal handrail was cold against my forearms. Leaning on it, taking the weight off my foot. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘Like the Energiser Bunny,’ Jennifer licked her lips and winked, ‘remember?’
Yeah.
She linked her arm through mine. ‘It wasn’t all bad, was it?’
I puffed out a breath. ‘No. Suppose not.’
‘There you go.’ Bumping her shoulder into mine. ‘Not such a grumpy Gus, after all.’
We stood there in silence, or at least what passed for it with the ferry’s massive diesel engine making the deck vibrate beneath us.
‘This book you’re writing …’
‘“Garden of Bones”, brackets, “hunting Scotland’s most notorious serial killer: The Coffinmaker”.’ A frown tried to force its way onto her frozen forehead. ‘Or is the subtitle too long? Putting his name on the end there seems to undermine the drama, doesn’t it? But readers need to know who it’s about when they see it in the supermarket.’
‘It’d be … tasteful’s the wrong word, but you know what I mean?’
She squeezed my arm harder. ‘No lurid prose. No lingering on the grisly details.’ A my-hands-are-tied shrug. ‘The publishers will probably insist on photographs, you know what they’re like, but it’ll be a proper piece of investigative journalism. Not sensationalist in any way. Respectful to the victims and their families.’
I nodded. ‘OK.’
Jennifer pressed her lips against my cheek, breat
hing deep. ‘I have missed you, you know. Even if you were horrid to me.’
‘Come on then.’ I turned my back to the railing and pulled out my phone. Called up the camera app and set it to selfie mode. ‘Squeeze in.’
An actual, real smile broke across her lower face. It might not have moved the rest of it, but it sparkled in her eyes as she huddled in and pouted for the camera.
I pressed the button.
Frowned at the screen. ‘Think my camera’s buggered …’
‘Here,’ she pulled out her phone instead – something fancy in a jewelled case – held it out and up, pouted again. ‘Say cheese.’
Click.
‘Can I see?’
‘Course you can.’ Jennifer passed me her phone, and there we were, the pair of us together again. Side by side at the ferry’s railing. Her nestled in under my arm, pulled in tight, as if we were still lying sticky with sweat in that Travelodge on Greenwood Street, the duvet rumpled around our ankles. She looked really, really happy.
I turned and hurled her phone – not straight back, where it might crash down onto the car deck, but at the perfect angle to send it sailing over the side, twirling end-over-end. Didn’t see it hit the water, but it was enough to know it did.
‘MY PHONE!’ Jennifer stared at me. Then gripped the railing and looked out at the point where her phone and its fancy jewelled case had disappeared. ‘ARE YOU OFF YOUR BLOODY HEAD?’
I leaned in close. Kept my voice nice and friendly. ‘You shouldn’t have shown Helen MacNeil the photo of what Gordon Smith did to her daughter. You – repulsive – fucking – vulture.’
Then turned on my heel and limped away.
Jennifer’s voice boomed out behind me, getting higher and sharper with every word. ‘THIS ISN’T OVER, ASH HENDERSON! IT’S NOT OVER BY A LONG WAY! I’LL MAKE YOU WISH YOU WERE NEVER BORN!’
She could join the queue.
28
The pool car roared past the Cumbernauld junction, Franklin keeping the needle hovering around seventy-five. Snarling as she overtook cars and lorries as if their merely being on the road this morning was a personal affront to her.
I reclined my seat far enough to check the rear-view mirror.
Yup, Nick James’s fusty yellow Golf was still there. Only now Jennifer wasn’t trying to hide the fact. And she wasn’t alone in the car, so it looked as if Helen hadn’t told her what she could do with her self-serving exploitative bollocks after all.
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