Throwaways

by Jenny Thomson

  Tommy laughed. “Mind me not to get on the wrong side of you, Nancy.”

  Chapter 22

  The following afternoon, we turned up for our meeting with Kim. She’d wanted to meet in a public place, so we met in the food court in St. Enoch’s shopping centre. This time she was early and her hair was jet black. Her make-up was more muted and instead of a short skirt and halter top she was wearing a dark blue pullover, jeans and boots. Under the bright strip lighting she looked sickly and painfully thin.

  A faint smile crossed her lips when I dropped her ring into the palm of her hand.

  “Okay, we did what you asked,” I said. “Time for you to hold up your part of the bargain.”

  Kim slurped her milkshake as we sat there waiting for her to speak. When she’d finished, she addressed me.

  “How did it go with creepy Colquhoun? Bet he told you I owed him more cash. That guy is as sleekit as they come.”

  “He did,” I said, “he wanted payment in kind.”

  Kim scrunched up her face. With her intricate facial features she resembled an angry china doll. “Thought he might pull that one. The guy’s a freak.” She paused to eye Tommy greedily. “I take it you took the hunk of muscle along and he dealt with the scumbag?”

  “Nah,” I said with a triumphant grin, “I broke the bastard’s nose. He was blubbing away when I left him.”

  Kim’s smile brightened up her whole face. “I’d have loved to have seen that. You go girl.”

  To my surprise, she gave me a high five.

  “Thanks. I enjoyed it.” And I had, especially when I saw the look of incredulity on his chops.

  But, I couldn’t help thinking about the women who were too scared to fight him and what he did to them.

  Still smiling, Kim said. “How did he look after you did it?”

  “As mad as hell. He was going about holding his nose and saying he was gonna sue me. He thought Tommy here would be his witness.”

  She clapped her hands and the two women at the next table glared at her. She glared back and they swiftly diverted their gaze. “That’s brilliant. Wish I’d seen it.”

  Tommy cut in. “Now, if we’re done with the mutual appreciation club ladies, can we get back to business?”

  Kim and I raised our eyebrows. “Hark at him,” I said. “he’s all business.”

  “Okay,” said Kim after she’d used her finger to pick out the remnants of her milkshake. I’d noticed that she didn’t order any food: she must be at the stage drug addicts get to where they can only digest liquid food. “You want to know what happened that night? I’ll tell you. But what I say is between us and only us.” She stuck out a finger. “If you go to the cops, I’ll deny I told you anything.”

  “We won’t go to the police,” I said. “They’ve hardly done a bang up job of investigating so far. Whatever you tell us stays with us.”

  Tommy nodded his agreement.

  Kim’s face relaxed. “Fair enough.” She took the ring off her finger and started fiddling about with it; a classic delaying tactic. “He was waiting for me in a car across from George Square. He looked normal, shy even. Sheena was in the front seat. I’d told her to wait for me, but she hadn’t listened. She wasn’t as streetwise as me.” She paused to inspect her fingernails. They were chewed down to the quick.

  “She was giggling away and drinking from a glass. She told me it was champagne. That her friend Mike was celebrating his birthday and that I should have some too. He poured out a glass for me.”

  In my mind’s eye, I could picture the scene. Sheena bubbly and giggling away because she’d been nervous and the alcohol relaxed her. No doubt her good mood was heightened by seeing the face of a friend; safety in numbers and all that. Except she wasn’t safe.

  “Did you drink from the glass?” I was eager to know whether the booze was drugged. That’d explain how the doctor managed to abduct them. Who’d turn down an innocent glass of bubbly from a man who was going to pay them a lot of money? If you did he might view it as a slight and toss your ass out of his car and there’d go your big payday.

  Kim shook her head. “I never drink on a job. Now if he’d offered me some coke that’d be different.”

  Tommy and I leaned in closer.

  “So, what did you do?” I asked her.

  “I pretended to drink, but when he wasn’t looking I emptied the glass out at my feet. We drove out of Glasgow. The weirdo said he had a country pad he wanted to take us to with a Jacuzzi and a heart-shaped swimming pool. He even boasted about having stables and horses we could ride.”

  She paused and a brief smile crossed her face. “I used to go riding when I was a kid. So did Sheena. She even has her own pony. That’s why we hit it off.”

  She started to shake and at first I thought she was going to start crying until I realised she was jonesing for a fix.

  She made a face. “It sounded too good to be true, so I knew it was a load of crap. This job’s not Pretty Woman where some rich hunk puts you up in the Ritz and buys you designer outfits to wear at various social events. We’re street walkers. Occasionally we get a footballer and end up back at his fancy pad where we get sandwiched between him and his obnoxious mates. That’s if we’re lucky.”

  “Sheena fell asleep and I knew right away he’d put something in her drink. One minute, she’s all hyper, the next she’s conked out. People don’t drop off like that. Not when they’re working and in a stranger’s car.”

  “I knew she’d been drugged so I waited a few minutes and pretended to be zonked out myself. He’d locked the car doors the minute I’d climbed in. The second he unlocked the doors, I was gonna bolt.”

  She stopped talking and stared vacantly into the distance as though she was back in that car.

  “What happened next?” said Tommy, his voice buzzing with excitement.

  “We were on this country road when the car stopped. Except for the light from the headlights, it was dark. These headlights appeared and a van pulled up alongside us and stopped. I could see the blue van in the car mirror. He unlocked the doors and got out. He was talking to someone, I don’t know who; it was a man’s voice. I couldn’t hear everything that they said, but I think he called him brother.”

  I didn’t want to interrupt, but I had to be certain. “Are you sure he called him brother? Could you have misheard?”

  “No, he definitely called him brother. He said it twice.” There was no doubt in her voice.

  “Sorry,” I said, “Go on.”

  “He opened the passenger door and together they lifted Sheena into the back of the van. When they were carrying Sheena, I knew that was my only chance to escape, so I quietly opened the door and jumped out and just ran like hell until eventually I was so knackered I had to hide. Nobody came after me and I couldn’t believe it.” She was breathless now. “I had a lucky escape, didn’t I?”

  Reaching across the table, I patted her hand. Even in the heated mall, her hand felt deadly cold. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said and I meant it. If anyone knew what it was like to feel helpless, it was me. Kim scowled at me and quickly withdrew her hand.

  “What did this Mike look like?” Tommy was straight back to business. “Did he look like this?” He held out the picture we’d found in a medical journal where Dr. Cassidy had outlined his “unorthodox” clinical methods for dealing with troubled adolescents. Somehow I doubted any of his methods involved abducting and drugging patients and doing god knows what to them including possibly forcing them to eat a human finger.

  We eyed Kim with anticipation as she looked at the picture.

  “Yes, that’s him if you take away the glasses and the beard.”

  Bingo. We’d got him. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. There were times when I thought we’d never find Sheena.

  “Did you see the other man’s face?” said Tommy.

  I knew where Tommy was going with this. Maybe Donald Cassidy called his accomplice brother as a term of friendship and not because he was re
ally his brother.

  Kim wrinkled her face. “No, how could I see him when I was flat out on the backseat pretending to have passed out? It wasn’t like I could look out the window. I wasn’t on some fucking family holiday.”

  There was an edge to her voice and I didn’t blame her. The police had asked me a lot of dumb questions after my parents were murdered. Of course, I knew they had to ask them, but that was beside the point. Talking about events when you were the victim is painful; you don’t want to go back there; you don’t want to go back to a time and place where you were helpless and alone.

  “All I remember is he had a Glasgow accent and Mike called him brother.” She stared at Tommy. “He definitely called him brother.”

  “Thanks, Kim,” I said. “You’ve been really helpful.”

  She nodded. “Just find that weirdo before he takes anyone else.” Her features softened. “Sheena was a nice kid, you know. I liked her. But there was nothing I could do to help her. I had to get away; save myself.”

  Although she probably wasn’t that much older than Sheena I didn’t doubt that she saw her as a kid.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?” Tommy said. “They might have been able to track the car and find Sheena.”

  “Yeah, right,” she tutted, eying him wearily. “You don’t get it, do you? When you do what I do to make a crust, nobody cares when shit happens to you. Not the cops, not other people. You’re on your own. If I’d gone to the cops they’d have said I was lying to score drugs.”

  Her eyes bored into Tommy’s. “That mister is the reality for people like me, until we’re found dead in an alley with a needle stuck in our arm, then suddenly there’s all this blubbering about drugs being a scourge when the real scourge is folk not giving a shit about people like me. We’re throwaways, disposable. Folk only care when nice girls get killed and we’re not nice girls.”

  “Have you any idea where he was taking Sheena?” I asked. “Did they mention somewhere?”

  My heart was on stereo as I waited for her to answer.

  “No,” she shrugged. “They never said.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I wish I did know. I might have gone to the cops. Saved Sheena.”

  Kim stood up, scraping her chair along the floor. “Now, if that’s us done, I’ll be off. Things to do, people to see.”

  Tommy took the envelope with the money out of his inside pocket. There was 400 quid inside. We’d decided that if Kim did tell us the truth we’d try and get her to make herself scarce for a while.

  “Take this,” he said. “Go away somewhere for a week. Spain’s nice at this time of year.”

  She eyed Tommy and the money he was holding dismissively. “You can put that away, brown eyes. I’m doing this for Sheena. I liked the kid. Besides, we had a deal. You did your part, I did mine. Now we’re quits.”

  “Please take it,” I said. The last thing I wanted was for her to be found dead in a ditch somewhere, or worse, never found at all.

  This time when Tommy held out the cash she grabbed it and shoved it down her top. Then she trotted off without as much as a glance in my direction.

  “She’s off to score,” said Tommy.

  The depressing thing was he was probably right. But, it was none of our business. What she did was up to her. We’d done our best to keep her safe. Beside, we’d bigger things to worry about. We had to find out where they’d taken Sheena.

  Chapter 23

  Once Kim had gone Tommy and I stared at one another. “Brother, you told me he was an only child, Nancy.”

  “He was.” I couldn’t hide the irritation from my voice. I’d been thorough. Well, as thorough as you can be when you don’t have access to the same records the police can get at the touch of a button. I dug my nails into my scalp. “There’s got to be something we missed. Maybe his parents adopted a child. That’d explain why I couldn’t find a record for him.”

  That’d make sense,” said Tommy. “So, how do we find that out?”

  “Can’t your police contact help?”

  Tommy’s forehead creased. “Think they’ve had enough of helping me and are getting worried their boss will find out.”

  Great. Now, we didn’t even have outside help.

  Tommy grinned at me. “Maybe you could use your feminine wiles to get some info.”

  I cackled. “Maybe you could offer to sleep with your police contact? Lots of stuff comes out during pillow talk.”

  Tommy held his hands up in mock surrender. “Fair enough, how can we find out if Cassidy’s parents adopted a kid without either of us using our sexual magnetism?”

  “Let me think.” And that’s what I did.

  Fifteen minutes and 2 hot chocolates and a slice of pizza later, I had a plan.

  Five minutes later, we were back in his car putting my plan into action.

  After punching the numbers into my phone, I heard it ring and I waited.

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice came on. When I asked to speak to Dr. Cassidy’s wife, the woman was reluctant to put her on, but when I gave her my spiel about owning the building Dr. Cassidy’s office was in and wanting to send a card of condolence, she relented. “Eileen’s sleeping, but I can give you the address. I’m her sister.”

  She reeled it off and I pretended to write it down. Then I casually mentioned that Dr. Cassidy had talked about his brother during one of our regular chats.

  “You don’t happen to have an address for him so I can send him a condolence card?”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. “Sorry, I can’t help you there. Donald’s brother Eddie’s in an institution. He’s been there for oh, it must be 20 years now. That’s why Donald became a psychologist. To help people like his foster brother.”

  “What was wrong with Eddie?” I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I couldn’t resist it.

  “Eddie started to hear voices, when he was a teenager, a few years after he was adopted by Donald’s parents and he’d get violent.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. Do you know where Eddie is now? Maybe I could send him a card of condolence too?”

  A pause. I was expecting her to hang up on me, but after a few seconds she said, “The last time I heard he was in Shield House Hospital.”

  Shield House was a psychiatric hospital outside Glasgow. Well, it had been. Years ago it’d been closed down. I wasn’t sure why, but it was probably to save money. These days, they preferred care in the community to institutionalizing people.

  Tommy had already typed the name into a search engine on his laptop by the time I’d disconnected the call. “The place was closed down five years ago. It says here the patients were sent to different hospitals.”

  He pointed at the screen. “But, one patient didn’t make it to another hospital.”

  “Don’t tell me Eddie escaped?”

  Tommy nodded. “The papers have the missing patient listed as Edward Doran, but it’s got to be him. He must have kept his birth name. Maybe he wasn’t formally adopted.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.”

  There was a wee flutter in my chest. “And, what better place to hide abducted women than a disused hospital?”

  There was a glint in Tommy’s eyes. “You do know he could be anywhere by now? Even if they did have the women there, he could have scarpered when his brother died; ditched the girls.” He saw my disappointed face. “But, we’ve got nothing to lose by checking it out.”

  We arranged for Eric to meet us there.

  Chapter 24

  My dad used to say that no matter what people did nature always managed to fight back. Shield House was proof of that. The hospital had been abandoned five years ago, but it looked more like 15.

  The local health authority had been in negotiations to sell the land the hospital stood on to a housing developer, but no work had been done. There wasn’t even a demolition sign. Thistles as high as us had taken over the car park, their purple flowers st
anding proudly to attention in the grassy wilderness as Tommy snaked the car round them and the weeds.

  The hospital itself was set well back from the road and was on six floors. Most of the roof had caved in and pigeons had taken over the building. The outer walls were caked in excrement. All of the windows within view were smashed.

  If you were looking for the ideal place to hide abducted women, this was it. Nobody would expect anyone to be within a million miles of this place.

  By this time, Eric had joined us in his car. “Let’s check round the back,” he said, with his usual economy of words. There’d been no hello, or small talk.

  “Okay,” said Tommy, turning his gaze on me. “You stay in the car and act as a lookout. If anyone comes, toot the horn and drive the hell out of here. We’ll use Eric’s car.”

  My whole body shook with indignation. “Are you fucking kidding me?” After all we’d been through he honestly wanted me to play the little woman whilst the men got on with the real work. Screw that.

  “I’m coming,” I said. “Are you gonna stop me.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

  For the first time I noticed the worry lines on Tommy’s forehead. “We don’t know what we’re facing, Nancy. Doran might have a gun.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I felt like saying he could have two guns and a machete and he’d still be no match for a pissed off psycho bitch like me. Then I remembered what Eric had said about Tommy not wanting to lose anyone else so I decided to hit him with logic. “Look, if Sheena and the others are inside they’ve been locked up in this dump with Dr. Frankenstein and his psycho brother, doing god knows what to them. They’re going to be traumatized and the last thing they need to see is more men. They might freak out. Think you’re part of it. End up having a heart attack or a mental breakdown.”

  “She’s got you there,” said Eric. “And she can handle herself. She’s shown that in training.” He winked at me. “She knows how to fight dirty. In fact, she seems to prefer it.”

  A compliment from Eric, at last. Throughout our training, the best I’d got out of him was “not bad” and a wee smile that vanished as quickly as it appeared after I’d broke his nose. Both were so fleeting that afterwards I doubted they’d ever happened at all.