The Suffering of Strangers

by Caro Ramsay

  The man closed his eyes and sighed, pulled his hand over his face then reached back closing the living-room door behind him so nobody else could overhear. Anderson noticed the three people staring out the window were all dressed in black.

  ‘Could you come upstairs for a minute?’ The man stood back, backhanding a lock of grey hair from a furrowed brow. He gestured to the steep internal set of stairs, resplendent in a plush dark-red carpet. The downstairs hall was covered in boxes, some open, some taped up, some with clothes piled up on top of them. Women’s clothes.

  Were they moving out?

  As he went up the stairs, one foot in front of the other, thoughts darted into his head with every tread. The cars parked outside. The cards on the window ledge. The red-rimmed eyes. The gathering in the downstairs room. Why Gillian herself was still to come to the door.

  The black tie.

  Black.

  Shit. Talk about bad timing.

  He had come at a very bad time.

  Gillian had a father, who would now be an elderly man and might now be lying in a wooden box in the room downstairs.

  ‘I am so sorry. I now realize that this is a very difficult time to call. I apologize,’ Anderson said when he stepped onto the tiny landing, noting the small nest of tables. The top was covered with a silver framed photograph of Gillian and a younger version of the man now following him up the stairs. She held a small posy of flowers in front of her light-blue dress, a matching group of flowers nestled in her dark hair.

  ‘You have no idea how bad your timing is,’ said the man. ‘I’m Gerry. Gerry Stewart. Gillian’s husband.’

  ‘Glad to meet you.’

  ‘I’m afraid your journey has been in vain.’

  Anderson stepped through into the bedroom, noticing another photograph of Gillian on the pillow, only one half of the bed had been slept in.

  The two men looked at each other. Gerry’s eyes started to well up.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  ‘I am so, so sorry.’ Anderson felt like a total bastard.

  ‘Not your fault. She told me that she was expecting a review of … the incident. She spent her life waiting for that knock on the door.’

  ‘I hope we were never intrusive.’

  Gerry shook his head. ‘No. No. She never thought that. She wanted the bastard caught. Not got him yet though, have you?’

  Gerry sat down on the bed, Anderson leaned against the windowsill. The hopper was open slightly, the cool draft making him realize how stifling the bedroom was. They remained in total silence for a few seconds making the sound of approaching footsteps immediately apparent. There was a quick knock at the door before it opened.

  ‘You OK, Gerry?’ The slightly older one asked.

  Not his son then. Anderson could see the resemblance, these were Gillian’s boys.

  ‘Yeah. I was telling Mr Anderson here what a great woman your mum was.’

  ‘I am sorry, I had no idea …’ said Anderson, not bringing himself to say that he was sorry for their loss, it had always sounded so trite.

  ‘Looks like there was someone we forgot to tell. So, thank you for coming, Mr Anderson, I think you can update your records now. Gillian passed away last week. Monday it was.’ He glanced at his stepsons for confirmation. ‘Seems a lifetime ago.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry. I have been there. I know what you are going through, time seems to slow down to the point of standing still. She couldn’t have been that old?’

  ‘She was 45. We were about to go to Dublin for her birthday but she was having an operation and died while under the anaesthetic. Routine, they said, but she never woke up.’ He shook his head. ‘Never had a chance to say goodbye.’ He dropped his head into his hands, Anderson placed his own hands on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your mourning. I never met her but she seemed a fine woman.’

  Gerry’s hand slipped over Anderson’s, a rough hand, calloused with the hard skin of one who knew manual work. ‘You have no idea how strong she was.’

  Anderson thought of Helena, riddled with cancer, stepping in front of Claire on a dark rainy beach, sacrificing herself to save his daughter. He too had known strong women.

  TWO

  Costello trudged up the stairs to her flat, trying to avoid disturbing her next-door neighbour. Mrs Craig, a lovely little lady, was recently widowed and had taken on the social grace of a huntsman spider, jumping out at anybody who happened to cross the landing. Costello was fit enough to use the stairs, but God help anybody who was caught waiting for the lift. If lucky, she got away with a five-minute chit-chat on the weather, if not there could be a summons to tea and biscuits and a request for a lift to the doctors or assistance with a light bulb that needed changing. I know you are busy dear, aren’t all the young people today, but it won’t take a moment.

  Costello would always knock first thing to make sure that she was OK, and pick up a shopping list, and put it through the door of whoever was going shopping that day. The good thing about senior citizens was they were creatures of habit. Mr Simons downstairs drove Mrs Craig to her appointments and Mrs Armstrong from the single end flat on the landing did the evening gossip with digestives and soap operas.

  It was going on for six, not Costello’s duty, so she snaked past on tiptoe, looking forward to her shower and her pot of tea. She shouldered the door open, turning the key in the lock as quietly as possible, then slid inside, kicking her boots off and padding her way into the kitchen, wondering when it had turned into a bombsite. She had hardly been home in the last two weeks, so who had left all these empty tins of beans and breadcrumbs sprinkled all over the worktop? She scooped them into the bin, opened a few cupboards and found only a half empty jar of jam, mouldy, and a packet of cream crackers that had gone soft. She filled the kettle and then walked wearily into the bathroom. She had turned the shower on and taken out the pearl earrings she wore to work when she heard her mobile. A colleague she presumed, wanting a chat about the Kissel case. She ignored it, flicking her fingers in the stream of water from the shower testing the temperature, thinking about watching The Walking Dead. She’d get halfway through one episode then fall asleep. She’d had enough death and desperation for one week.

  As soon as her mobile fell silent, her landline started.

  She walked barefooted back into the hall, leaning her forehead against the mirror as she answered the phone.

  She listened for a minute, two minutes, then closed her eyes.

  She uttered two words.

  ‘Why me?’

  DI Costello parked the Fiat behind the squad car, and pulled on her woollen hat and her heavy jacket that made her look two stone heavier, even though the rain was starting to ease. Strange. No scene of crime, all very low key. A small row of shops in Waterside, outside Lenzie, a posh sleepy village on the outskirts of Glasgow to the north and east, well known for a very good school and little else.

  When the two cops on duty saw her, they pointed her down the narrow road to the side of the row of shops.

  The older one approached.

  ‘DI Costello, called out from Govan. What’s happened? Child abduction?’

  ‘Constables Kenny Prior, Donny McCaffrey.’ He introduced himself and his colleague, rainwater dripping off his hat as he nodded. ‘Child abduction after a fashion. Roberta Chisholm was driving around trying to get her wee kid to go to sleep.’

  ‘Sholto,’ added the younger one, McCaffrey, who looked as though he might be old enough to cross the road on his own. ‘He’d been screaming the place down for hours, difficult baby, six weeks old. Hence the drive around.’

  Costello nodded. McCaffrey looked empathetic. She judged that he was talking from experience. ‘And?’ She sensed more she didn’t want to hear but wished they would get a bloody move on. Time was not the investigator’s friend in child abduction.

  McCaffrey continued, ‘Well, the husband phones and says he has landed the dream job, and the wife pulls up here to buy a bottle of bubb
ly …’

  ‘And leaves the baby in the car?’ Costello pulled her hat down over her sticky, dirty hair, marvelling at the stupidity of people. ‘She comes out the shop, baby has gone.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  Costello took a deep breath.

  ‘And another baby left in its place.’

  ‘OK,’ said Costello, ‘wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘She left the car, a Dacia Duster, right there.’ He pointed to where Costello’s Fiat was now sitting. ‘It’s easily in view of the shop.’ The windows were largely uncluttered between the hanging hams and strings of garlic.

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘Back of five, the credit card machine said five eleven. It was still daylight but overcast.’

  She looked at her own watch. Forty-five, fifty minutes ago. ‘Cordon?’

  ‘It’s set up, got that up in ten minutes but we are only looking for the baby. The Duster was found immediately up that access road, it goes round to the car park. The local guys were on the scene straight away.’

  ‘OK,’ said Costello slowly, ‘the Duster was found round there. But they had taken the Chisholm baby and left another.’

  ‘Sholto, his name is Sholto,’ corrected the younger officer, his face grave. ‘And yes they left another baby in his place.’

  Costello let out a long, slow breath. ‘Jesus. Are we sure it’s not her baby? Has she suffered some mental health issue?’

  ‘The baby that was left is Down’s Syndrome.’

  ‘And Sholto is not Down’s?’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘Who calls their kid Sholto anyway? Bloody hell.’ As she spoke she walked up to the corner, approaching the car, a Duster, the tiny car cot still clipped on the front passenger seat, facing backwards. It wasn’t an easy get out. She could count four straps, four clips to a complicated buckle, on the first glance. ‘Do we have confirmation he’s not Down’s?’

  ‘The husband confirmed it,’ said the older cop, walking in her footsteps.

  ‘OK, we’ll check the medical records anyway.’ She stood back, as the young cop played his torch over the vehicle, pointing to where the mother, Roberta Chisholm had parked it then walked into the shop.

  ‘She knows the guy who owns the place. They were both keeping an eye out, you know, watching the car.’

  ‘Well, obviously they didn’t,’ yawned Costello, too tired to stop it. She walked towards the actual abduction site, listening to the story of the drama unfolding. She could have filled in the blanks herself. Roberta leaving the shop and starting to scream blue murder. She had, she thought, left the keys in the ignition, but she was so tired she couldn’t recall. The Duster had automatic cut out, and automatic start up when the accelerator was tapped. Costello looked at the dark pavement still glistening from the rain, the orange glow from the street lamps. It looked so peaceful.

  Nobody would hear a thing. But there was a report from an eyewitness who saw a man in an anorak, hood up, moving the car. She had presumed that he was putting the baby in it. Costello felt her spirits lift until she learned that the witness, Angela Carstairs, was seventy-eight years old. In this weather, at that age, there would be a suggestion of gender bias. If Angela had seen Costello standing here in her bulky jacket, flat boots and trousers, Carstairs would have presumed that she too, was male. But the old dear did say that the man did not come out from the back of the shops again on foot, so he must have had his own car waiting there. Costello thought for a moment. They might need to check the old biddy’s eyesight.

  She looked up, wishing she was back at her flat, standing under the shower instead of under this dark and rumbling sky. The dank, rich smell of autumn had given way to an aching chill in the air. She was cold. ‘Once she has calmed down as bit, go and see her and check her eyesight, make sure she had her specs on.’

  She waited until they wrote it down then asked where Roberta Chisholm was now.

  ‘I sent the wee guy off to A and E to get checked over, he was coughing pretty badly. Mrs Chisholm looked shattered so we sent her as well. I expect they will just check her out and send her home.’

  Costello nodded, thinking about some poor woman losing the plot after having a Down’s child, a child that then got sick. God knows what she could be going through with hormones raging all over the place. She shouldn’t be too difficult to track down though, a minor psychosis after delivering a disabled child. What went through her mind when she saw a perfect woman with a perfect child, and the perfect opportunity to take the child in some belief that a swap would make her life complete again.

  She checked the house-to-house was underway around the village of Westerton and the Chisholm’s exact address in the small development at the back of the shops. The house-to-house team had been detailed to ask subtly about any newborns in the area. She glanced at her watch. ‘Can somebody give me an update at eight? Who’s in charge here?’

  PC McCaffrey shot a sidelong look at Prior, shuffling his boots nervously, making waves in the puddles. ‘We were told you were.’

  ‘Really?’

  They stood in front of her. It began to rain again and she realized they were waiting for instructions. ‘OK, so let’s get the Chisholm’s life under a microscope for me? See what you can get by eight?’ And they walked off, McCaffrey with a spring in his step, Prior moving like he was walking to his own execution.

  Anderson felt like a total bastard. He knew it was a stupid, knee-jerk reaction, not even under his control but he had made Gerry Stewart a promise that he would bring Gillian’s rapist to justice, hence why he was back in the station, sitting in the quiet office looking through the case again, trawling through the same notes that many others had read before him, trying not to come to exactly the same dead-end conclusion. He agreed Gillian had not known her attacker, and rapists of strangers tend to be serial offenders. And serial offenders are exactly that. So, he had struck again? Of course, he had. If the evidence wasn’t in this file, maybe it was in another. Two would be a coincidence, three made a pattern. All he needed was a suggestion of similarities between the attacks, a hint of consistency in the pattern then he could argue to have similar rapes reviewed. Computers nowadays could pick up even the slightest commonality as long as you knew what you were looking for.

  At his desk, he typed up the notes and updated them, then put a request in for the sexual crime database to be searched. Gillian might have passed away, but her case would not die with her.

  Wanting a break, he nipped out onto the stairs, thinking about going to the loo and hiding there for ten minutes. He strode along the corridor, head down, face tight in concentration, looking like a man with a mission.

  ‘Colin, just the man I was looking for.’ Mitchum, Assistant Commissioner of Crime, guided him to the side of the corridor, waiting until a couple of uniforms went past. ‘How are you finding life at the cold case review team?’

  The question was asking for reassurance not honesty. ‘I think it will take time to settle in,’ he said tactfully. ‘We seem to move bits of paper about most of the time.’

  The ACC gave him a conciliatory smile. ‘We were a bit worried that … that there might not be enough danger in it for you. Then I remembered your PTSD and thought you would be glad of a quiet life. You are a danger magnet but at least you haven’t sued us for failing in our duty of care.’

  ‘Yet.’ Anderson smiled.

  ‘However, we are aware that we have a responsibility to keep you out of trouble, as it seems to be rather good at finding you. To be frank, Colin, I am giving you the heads up, off the record. You will be pulled into a meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Not another cold case review?’

  ‘It is. After a fashion. We are under pressure. The sentencing of that sex offender last week? We need to be seen to do something about that.’

  Anderson recalled his own anger when he had heard about the lenient sentence given out for a sexual assault. He could see the quote in his mind’s eye: ‘Miss C’s skirt w
as too short, she was too drunk, she had been partly responsible for the assault upon her person.’ Anderson could sense that a can of worms was about to be opened and couldn’t help himself. ‘To be seen doing something? Rather than actually do it?’

  ‘Look, you are reviewing the Gillian Witherspoon case. Can you sound her out for becoming a voice, a face for those who have been victims of sexual assault, heading up a media campaign to—’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Anderson said bluntly.

  ‘Oh shit.’ The words were out before the ACC could stop them. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  ‘I’m sure she was more than a bit pissed off about it herself. It was totally unexpected.’

  ‘Sorry, we had her tagged to approach about the SafeLife initiative, we just need a face for the campaign.’

  ‘There are plenty of them unfortunately, sir. Miss C for one. I’m sure she’d waive her anonymity in anger.’

  ‘No, we need one that will—’

  ‘—tow the party line?’

  ‘You know as well as I do, that it’s not all down to us. We need the public, police and the fiscal’s office to all pull together on this one, but that isn’t going to happen. Therefore, we are left with making sure that our garden is clean, all clean and tidy. We need to respond to Miss C’s rape and this ridiculous short sentence with a strong, empathetic voice and we had earmarked Gillian Witherspoon for that. She had a kind of mumsy appeal.’ He raised an eyebrow, inviting Anderson to come up with a plan B.

  ‘And how popular did you think that was going to be? Sir,’ he added. ‘Compare Miss C’s rape with Gillian’s.’ Anderson resisted the urge to poke his finger right in the ACC’s shiny buttons. ‘Gillian was dragged across a car park with a rope round her throat. He dislocated her shoulder and punched her so hard he ruptured her spleen. She bled so much internally, they had to pump twelve pints of blood into her – all because she had nipped out to buy a pint of milk. Miss C was drunk, hanging around outside the pub and she went home with the man who raped her. She consented and then changed her mind. I know she has the right to do that. She was not “asking for it” but if you put them both in the hands of the media you will get much more sympathy for the Gillians of this world than you will ever get for the Miss C’s. It might even create a bit of hostility. Yes, they are both tragic, but they are not the same.’