by Helen Black
‘And guess what the unit was called?’ I’m so pleased with myself, I can’t contain a smile.
‘The Orchard,’ he says, somewhat stealing my thunder.
‘It sounds to me like Miggs might have lived at the unit, that he met this Ronnie character in there. What do you think?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘I thought maybe we could check the records, find the details.’ I’m on a roll now. ‘I mean, I know they’d be out of date now, but it might give us some clue as to how to find him . . .’
Clem puts up a hand. ‘Hold it right there.’
My mouth is still open.
‘I’m grateful for this, it’s a good lead, but you have to leave it to us from here,’ he says.
My face falls.
‘I was with the PM and Benning this morning,’ he continues.
Shit. Is this Clem’s way of telling me I’m fired? ‘Did you tell them about last night?’ I ask.
‘Of course not.’
‘Thanks,’ I whisper.
‘I didn’t do it for you,’ he says. ‘But the upshot is they’re under the impression that only they and I know about Ronnie, and that’s the way they want it to stay.’
I look down at my hands. A moment ago I was elated, taking charge of my own destiny. Now I’m being told what to do like I’m a silly child. Again.
Clem stands to leave, smoothes down his jacket. ‘Do you understand what I’m telling you, Jo?’
It’s the first time he’s called me by my first name.
‘Do you understand me?’ he repeats.
The feeling of disappointment, familiar and itchy, sticks in my throat.
‘Completely,’ I say.
Chapter Seven
Nathan Shaw felt the world tilt.
It was as if he was standing right on the very edge, looking down into a heap of nothing. Sometimes, when he was very drunk, he had the exact same feeling and had to hold the bathroom walls to stop himself falling into the bowl. His mother would shake her head and mutter about being more responsible, but his daddy would just laugh and tell her that boys needed to let off their steam. Oftentimes, if the beer made him sick, Nathan would swear off it. Those good intentions didn’t make it past Friday night, though. Still, he was pretty sure he wasn’t drunk now. Only had one goddamn bottle.
‘Nathan, can you hear me?’
He squinted up at the voice.
‘You stay with me now.’
It was George, leaning over him, big old flaps of fat swinging around his jaw.
‘You listening to me, boy?’
Nathan nodded that yes, he was listening, couldn’t do much else with George up in his face.
‘You need to press on tight,’ said George. ‘Understand?’
Nathan smiled, didn’t want to admit to the senior officer that he couldn’t take his drink. Then his eyes started to close.
‘Nathan!’
A hard slap stung his cheek. Hell. He hadn’t actually been sleeping, just shutting up shop for a second. Such a hot day. Couldn’t George understand that?
George slapped him again. ‘I’m talking to you, boy.’
It was the noise more than any pain that forced Nathan’s eyes open. When he saw George’s face, he knew to keep them open. The old man looked more than frightened. He looked terrified. Like those Halloween masks everyone wore. Nathan had once taken Stacey La Salle to see a horror movie where the serial killer had worn one. She’d laughed every time he jumped. Nathan tried his damned hardest not to, but it was the scariest thing he had ever seen in his life.
Until now.
‘What is it, George?’ Nathan’s voice sounded small and far away.
‘I need you to do what I tell you, boy,’ said George.
Nathan nodded.
‘I need you to press hard on this.’
Nathan followed George’s eyes to his hands. He’d seen those hands a hundred times on the wheel of the cruiser. Fingers yellowed by tobacco, a white band of untanned skin peeping out when his wristwatch rode up.
What he saw now made them unrecognisable.
‘George?’
They were slick up to his elbows in blood.
‘What the fuck’s going on, George?’
‘No time for talking, son.’ He grabbed one of Nathan’s hands in his own, the squelch making Nathan gag.
He tried to pull his hand away, but George had a firm grip and forced it down onto Nathan’s stomach. Then he took the other and pressed that down on top of it.
‘You got to push,’ said George. ‘Push with everything you have.’
Nathan looked down at his hands, now as covered in blood as George’s. Underneath, more was gushing upwards, pouring out like an oil slick.
‘Sweet baby Jesus,’ said George. ‘I’m going to get some help.’
I step off the Intercity and the late afternoon air feels distinctly colder in Glasgow than it did in London. I wish I’d brought a jacket but there was only enough time to grab my laptop.
I spent the journey gathering as much information as I could. By the Midlands my eyes began to droop and it occurred to me that I should try to snatch a few hours’ sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I could hear Clem’s warning to leave the investigation to him.
So I went back to the internet.
I cross the concourse and jump in a black cab.
‘Where to, sweetheart?’ The driver’s accent takes me straight back to the hospital room in St Barts.
‘George Square,’ I reply.
‘Right you are.’ He pulls out, glancing at me in his mirror, clearly trying to place me.
I know a lot of folk in my position would love nothing better than to chat to the public and enjoy their time in the sun. The old man would never have passed up the opportunity for a blether with a cabbie. Probably would have quoted some nugget he picked up during his next speech. But I’m just not made that way.
I pull out the notes I made on the train and re-read them. The Orchard Residential School opened in 1975, and despite its name was not a school or any type of educational establishment. It was, in fact, residential accommodation for children in care. By 1985 it had become a secure unit housing children with social, emotional and behavioural problems. Or, as the Glasgow Herald blithely put it, ‘a dumping ground for children that nobody wants’. I bite my lip and refuse to think about Davey. In 2005 it closed, following allegations of abuse. Although the city council refuses to acknowledge the link between its closure and the allegations, there are still ongoing legal cases brought by former residents.
‘Okay, sweetheart.’
I look up to see the taxi has already stopped and I wonder if actually I could have walked. The square is not what I imagined. Then again, what did I imagine? Dull grey tower blocks and dirty streets peppered with down-and-outs clutching their cans of Special Brew? Instead, I’m met by a wide public space, accented by flowerbeds full of tulips and flanked by Georgian buildings.
I pay the driver and head towards the City Chambers. I called ahead from the train announcing my approach to Mrs Debbie McAndrews, head of Social Services, who, naturally, had tried to put me off.
‘I’m afraid I have meetings all day, Miss Connolly,’ she said.
The thing is, I know public servants. I’ve been around them all my life. They have meetings about meetings. At least half the people there aren’t listening. I’ve done it enough times myself, nodding at regular intervals and pretending to make notes on my laptop, ensuring no one can see over my shoulder and discover I’m actually playing Tetris.
‘I understand that entirely,’ I said, ‘but this matter is extremely important.’
‘If you could make an appointment,’ she stuttered.
So I pulled rank horribly. ‘Mrs McAndrews, I’m charged with ensuring the Olympic Games run smoothly. If I had any space in my diary I would make the necessary arrangements. As it is I need this information today.’
‘I see,’ she said.
‘I must report b
ack to the prime minister tonight.’
Mrs McAndrews greets me outside her office. She’s a small, dumpy woman with a tight perm and a plaid skirt. I salute her patriotism considering how badly it suits her.
‘Glad to see you, Miss Connolly.’ She casts a puzzled smile at my tracksuit.
‘Call me Jo,’ I beam back. ‘Everyone does.’ I just pray she hasn’t asked herself the bleeding obvious: what has a Scottish children’s home got to do with the Olympic Games?
She nods and shows me into her office. Her desk is obscenely tidy – a place for everything and everything in its place.
‘You mentioned an interest in The Orchard,’ she says.
‘In particular a boy who may have stayed there,’ I confirm.
‘There were a lot of residents there.’ Her tone is even but her hand flutters at her neck. ‘Is he one of those making a claim against the council?’
I think of Miggs in the morgue, an MI5 bullet through his temple. ‘I think that’s highly unlikely.’
‘Good, good,’ she says, as much to herself as to me. ‘And I suppose you’re not at liberty to explain your interest?’
‘Not at this time,’ I say. I’m amazed how readily she accepts my implied authority. But didn’t I do the same with the PM and Clem? I just assumed they had good reasons.
‘Right then.’ She turns, all business, to her computer and clicks her mouse, which I notice is the old-fashioned kind, still connected by a cable.
‘In around 2005 we began centralising all our records,’ she says. ‘But of course there are some gaps in respect of the older files.’
The cynical part of me wonders if any of these losses are coincidentally those of former residents suing Social Services.
‘What was the name?’ she asks.
‘Stephen Miggs.’
She taps her keyboard and waits. ‘You’re in luck,’ she says. ‘Stephen Miggs’s records are here in some detail.’
My heart beats fast. I hadn’t anticipated it would be this easy. ‘And he was a resident at The Orchard?’ I ask.
She scrolls down with her ancient mouse. ‘Uh huh. He arrived in 2005 when his last foster placement broke down.’
I resist punching the air. ‘Is there anything in his file that might point to him being violent – dangerous, even?’
Mrs McAndrews turns to me and sighs. ‘The Orchard was a secure unit, Miss Connolly. None of the residents were sweet wee kiddies.’
I nod my understanding. ‘Perhaps you would print off the file and I could look for myself.’
‘There’s the matter of confidentiality,’ she says half-heartedly.
‘Stephen Miggs is dead.’
‘I see.’ She presses the print button on her computer, sending the printer in the corner of the room into life.
I sit in an uncomfortable silence as at least ten pages print out, Mrs McAndrews waiting to catch them like a wicket keeper. When the file is finished she grabs them and holds them out to me at arm’s length, clearly desperate for this meeting to end.
‘Just one more thing,’ I say.
She visibly cringes. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m trying to find another resident who was probably at The Orchard at the same time as Stephen Miggs.’
Mrs McAndrews’s nostrils flare but she heads back to her seat. ‘Name?’
‘Ronnie,’ I say.
She raises her eyebrows.
‘I know, I know.’ I open my palms. ‘It’s not ideal.’
She begins tapping once again, her stubby fingers punching hard at the keyboard this time. ‘There’s nothing for anyone known as Ronnie at The Orchard during the two years Stephen Miggs lived there.’
‘How about Ronald?’ I ask.
‘Nothing.’
It was a long shot, of course it was, but I’m disappointed.
I stand to leave and pocket the information she’s given me. I’m not relishing the thought of the journey home. Maybe I’ll buy a couple of glasses of wine in the buffet car and knock myself out.
‘One second . . .’ Mrs McAndrews holds up her hand. ‘There was a Paul Ronald who arrived in 2002 and left in 2005. Not much of an overlap with Miggs. A month or two at best.’
A month was long enough for me. More than long enough.
Clem peeled back the cling film from his sandwich and sighed. Tuna salad on granary. No butter. He opened the car window to release the smell of fish.
He’d spent the day closing down the Miggs story. The PM, or more likely that little toerag Benning, had decided to hold back the news of his death until tomorrow. Today they wanted the press all over the Games. No doubt they’d be chuffed by the pictures of Connolly playing basketball, which had gone viral. You couldn’t move on YouTube for montages of her, and the middleclass Guardian botherers on Mumsnet had described her as ‘our new girl crush’.
Clem shook his head in disgust. Did the PM and Benning really think you could keep everyone quiet? This wasn’t North Korea. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Every red cent and every ounce of the UK’s credibility were on the line and it was warping their sense of reality.
He took a bite of his sandwich and sighed again. Oh, for a bacon roll.
Mouth full, he checked his watch. Ten past five. Just enough time to follow up the intel on The Orchard. Clem had to hand it to Connolly – she’d done a bloody decent job so far of tracking things down. He reached for his mobile, punched in a number and swallowed the dry bread.
‘Debbie McAndrews.’
The head of Glasgow Social Services sounded very weary. Clem knew how she felt.
‘Good afternoon,’ said Clem. ‘Christian Clement here. I emailed earlier.’
‘Uh huh.’ Her voice was heavy. ‘Is this about Stephen Miggs?’
Clem sat up straight. He hadn’t mentioned any names in his email. ‘That’s right.’
‘I can only tell you what I told your colleague.’
‘My colleague?’
‘Yes, I gave her a copy of the file,’ she said.
Clem couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Could you confirm the name of my colleague, madam?’
‘Jo Connolly,’ she said.
Unbelievable.
My taxi pulls up outside a three-storey house with most of the windows boarded over with metal plates.
‘Arnsdale Place?’ I ask.
‘Aye,’ says the driver.
This is exactly how I imagined Glasgow. As far as the eye can see are houses and tower blocks, each one as grey as the last, punctuated only by small patches of nettles.
My hand wavers over the door handle as I squint out at the graffiti spray-painted across the pavement.
Robo is a cunt.
Succinct.
A group of boys saunter into view. They wear matching uniforms of nylon tracksuits and scarred cheeks. One is nearly pulled off his feet by a Rottweiler tugging at his chain-link lead.
‘Doesn’t look like anyone lives in there,’ I say.
‘Not necessarily,’ says the cabbie. ‘Windows in Easterhoose get smashed all the time. Council donnae replace them sharpish.’
I don’t get out.
The old man would laugh at my reticence. He grew up on an estate in Toxteth. He shared shoes with his brothers, and his uncles settled their scores on a Friday night after a skinful in the working men’s club.
‘Do you want me to wait?’ asks the cabbie.
‘If it’s no trouble.’ I cough away my embarrassment.
He taps the meter ticking away happily. ‘Nae bother at all.’
I get out, avoid making eye contact with the local welcoming committee and approach the door. This is the last known address Social Services had for Paul Ronald.
I check the numbers at the door. 22c is on the third floor. I press the buzzer. No answer.
I try again, though I’m pretty sure it’s pointless. No one will be living anywhere so derelict.
‘Yeah?’ A voice comes through the intercom.
I’m so shocked, I’m no
t sure what to say.
‘Is that you, Robo?’ a woman’s voice asks. ‘’Cos if you think you can piss me around again, you’ve got it all wrong, pal.’
I glance down at the graffiti and wonder if this Robo is one and the same.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘My name’s Jo and I’m looking for Paul Ronald.’
‘He hasnae lived here since December.’
‘Have you any idea where he moved to?’ I ask.
She doesn’t answer. Instead, an upstairs window opens and a young woman with her hair scraped back in a high ponytail leans out.
I step back and wave up at her. ‘Hi there.’
She looks me up and down. ‘You’re not from round here.’
‘No. I’ve come from London.’
She looks at me again, then at the waiting cab. ‘Hold on,’ she says and slams the window shut.
A second later she appears at the door with a toddler on her hip. He peers at me over a bottle of purple juice clamped to his mouth.
‘It’s kind of you to come down,’ I say.
She scratches a scab at the corner of her lip until a pinprick of blood flowers.
‘What’s it worth?’ she says.
‘Pardon?’
‘What’s it worth to know where Paul is?’
It takes me a second to realise she means money.
‘Twenty quid,’ she says.
‘I’m not sure I can—’
‘Twenty quid or piss off,’ she says. ‘Your choice.’
I don’t have a choice, do I? I take out my purse and peel off two tens, which she snatches out of my hand.
‘Tollcross Cemetery,’ she says and begins to close the door.
‘What?’
‘He OD’d on Christmas Day.’
With that, she bangs the door shut and I hear her muffled footsteps as she tramps back upstairs to her flat.
Rory’s intercom flashes.
When he moved into this flat, it had a buzzer. Rory hated the sound. It made his ears hurt. He replaced the buzzer with an electric light. At first he could only find a red bulb, but Rory hates red. It made him ill so he replaced it with a green one.
He leaves his bank of computer screens and checks the video feed. He likes to see who is at the door. He hates visitors. They make a noise and smell of other things he hates. Like onions. And toothpaste.