by Caro Ramsay
‘And was left there for a good few hours, I would say. There’s something ingrained in that mark, looks like dirty oil or something, something not washed off by the water.’
‘Not bruising from the loch?’
‘Doubt it. Look at the lettering.’
‘I can’t make it out.’
‘You should eat more carrots.’ And he turned away, getting back to work, pointing at the circular bruise on her thigh so the photographer could capture good clear images.
Costello had another glance round the scene, looking at the clouds and the dark. If they were all awake, she saw no reason why other folk should be getting a good night’s sleep. And she needed to stay here and pick O’Hare’s brains about Janet before she let him go. She pulled her phone out; she was going to test Mulholland’s resolve to get back on the team.
Mulholland was glad to be woken up, he was never a good sleeper anyway. He stopped at the all-night truck stop, and sipping a hot tea, he looked at maps on his satnav, examining the various routes from the lane at the Blue Neptune to the loch side out at Lochwinnoch. He was going to spend the night driving around, looking at skips and ditches, rubbish piles and tipping sites. In fact he was looking for anywhere somebody would dump a plastic carry-on suitcase. In a hurry.
Hard plastic. Leopard skin.
He looked at the journey he would be going on at this time of night and had second thoughts. He wasn’t a coward but he wasn’t stupid either. In this car, his little Audi, he looked soft and as if he might have a bob or two. He looked like a target and there was no point in adding to the crime stats. He called the wimpiest guy he knew, just to make himself seem brave.
Wyngate too, was glad to get out the house, one of his children had been sick during the night so he was already awake and watching Netflix with a stinky kid snoring on the settee beside him, a plastic tub at his feet in case the wee guy decided to throw up again.
Both Wyngate and Mulholland had been incarcerated for too long and were relishing the opportunity of getting out. Mulholland was ignoring the question of the legality of the search, but they were not looking for anything that had not been dumped, technically.
They had found one of the missing girls, dead. They had no idea who, or where, Miss Bluecoat was and there were now real fears for her safety.
The suitcase could be a vital piece of evidence. There would be huge kudos if they found it, a needle in a haystack it might be but they had experience and could read the situation. On this first night they would need to think like the killer, and do what they thought he would do. Thinking along the same lines, Costello had already ordered a torch sweep of the water at the other side of the loch, the suitcase would be near the shore if it had been thrown in there. The water was not deep, and he had agreed with her, it would have already drawn attention from the dog walkers and the canoeists.
They would give this their best shot in the time they had. The killer wouldn’t have dumped it in the middle of Glasgow, too much CCTV, too many people ready to pull a good-looking suitcase out of a skip. It would take a very steady nerve to drive slowly with a body in the back. Wyngate suggested, and Mulholland agreed that the killer would have got on the motorway out the city as quickly as possible, and then looked for a dump site.
Once out on the A737, the dual carriageway was high on the surrounding land, it would be quiet at that time of night, presuming that they would move the body at night. They were presuming a lot, but they didn’t have a lot to go on. Once they neared the turn off for Linwood they realized how high the road was, how steep the embankment. They drove slowly along the verge on the inside lane, catching sight of the odd mattress dumped over the side. They stopped, bumped up the verge as close as the metal barrier would allow them and got out the car. Torched up, they walked in different directions. Two hours, cold feet, three mattresses, a few kitchen units, five microwaves and one dead dog later, Mulholland saw a spotty surface that gleamed a little too shiny in the glare of the torch. He phoned Wyngate to join him before he went any further, but the pulsing of his heart was telling him he was right.
It was partially buried under a whole lot of damp, white-veined wood. They photographed it on their phones, then pulled their nitrile gloves on and got to work, wrestling the suitcase from under the wood that had been roughly piled over it. They worked in silence, dragged it up the embankment and then along to the car, Mulholland holding the handle at the side so as not to disturb any fingerprints that might have been left on the handgrip, the suitcase trundled obediently behind him like a young puppy.
They decided to open it up in the back of the car and have a look, but not to remove any items from it. The locks sprung open with very little persuasion from a small spanner. Dirty clothes, summer clothes, Mulholland noted, a smaller bag like a little plastic rucksack, black with red flowers, the sort of things that a wee girl might take to school. He shone his torch into the small bag; passport, phone with battery going flat, a few euros, a folded set of A4 papers, the print out of a boarding pass and an e ticket for a flight to Alicante that had already left from Glasgow. He counted the euros, twenty.
‘I think somebody had relieved her of her sterling. Sure she wasn’t stupid enough to go with twenty euros.’
‘In any case, she was leaving the country, going on a little holiday. Didn’t bloody make it though, did she?’
‘That’s a bit extreme, just to get away from her social worker.’
‘But they were on the lookout for Wee Polly, and she couldn’t produce that baby. She runs.’
‘To Malaga?’
‘She’s young and stupid.’ Mulholland looked along the motorway. ‘She can’t go to her parents, they think she still has the baby. She goes to the broker who has … bought the baby?’ he suggested.
‘And they give her money to leave the country?’
‘Costello said she thought Orla had money, well cash, and had taken it with her out the window, she goes up Sevastapol Lane to meet whoever, and they run her to the airport.’
‘Which we have just driven past …’ Wyngate realized.
‘They kill her and take the money. She has already told folk she’s away on holiday, nobody misses her.’
‘Or they kill her there and drive her out here. You wouldn’t want her panicking when you drive past the airport exit.’
Costello was dog tired. She had gained an hour’s kip in the office to be woken up by the cleaners coming in at seven. So she sneaked out for a roll on sausage for breakfast, not taking it back to the station but sitting at the window of the Tea Traders Cafe thinking. James Chisholm had trouble keeping away from the ladies. They were still to establish contact from the second pay-as-you-go. She was getting pissed off with it.
She phoned James to inform him that there had been a huge response to the appeal for information and there was a team dedicated to working through that intel so the scripted appeal was on the back burner for the moment. She didn’t tell him that most of them were from timewasters, or the genuinely deluded. One woman came on the phone crying, saying that ‘Moses’ was her son. He had Downs and had been missing for thirty years. Thank God the cop on the other end of the phone had the good sense to take her name and number and would action a welfare check. Not one of the calls related to Moses, not one call. So his mother either wouldn’t get in touch, or couldn’t.
‘And while we are at it, who are these two numbers on your phone?’ She read them out and she heard him move and a door close over, out of Roberta’s earshot no doubt.
‘Friends, private friends, nothing to do with the case,’ he said.
She replied that Angelika had said that but what about the other number.
‘Nothing to do with the case,’ he said again.
‘My decision, not yours, pal.’
He thanked her with only mild sarcasm and the phone went down.
It was getting on for half eight now, a decent time to phone a fiscal on her direct number. It was answered very quickly, the voice sharp a
nd cold. Words slightly clipped, too carefully pronounced. It would have fooled most people, but not the daughter of an alcoholic.
Valerie Abernethy, the Porsche-driving fiscal, seemed to believe that police officers who phoned her early in the morning were a species to be ignored. She had told Costello to get hold of the file on Sonja Gibson in the usual way. Costello explained that she had done that and was now looking for some explanation as to the request the fiscal’s office in Edinburgh had submitted.
That had stopped the fiscal in her tracks.
‘Would you prefer that I ask Archie Walker to make an official request?’
The response was a snide, ‘That would be easier for you as you know him so well. Why are you bothering me?’
That left Costello speechless.
Valerie said the case was still under review, said goodbye and hung up.
It had been a stupid thing to do, but she had wanted to hear that voice, to fill in the gaps in her picture of this woman. But she had slipped up, Costello had only referred to the Gibson death in Glasgow south side and repeated the case number. Valerie had called her Sonja – her professional name.
Interesting.
But two stupid things in a row? She may as well and called Archie.
Five minutes later, she shut her phone and decided to switch it off for a couple of minutes.
Just to digest what Archie had said. Valerie Abernethy was his goddaughter.
Goddaughter. She had asked him why the fuck had he not said. He had replied in that superior way he had, that he didn’t know anybody was asking. And Costello had felt defensive and was rude, very rude.
Then Archie had said, ‘Funny you should ask but her boss in Edinburgh, Bill Nelson, had been worried about her.’ No bloody wonder, pissed at her desk in the morning but she thought it more prudent not to say – even as she was talking she recalled her at the restaurant with Archie, Valerie had pushed the wine glass away and drunk water, the loose-fitting clothes, or shapeless. Was she pregnant?
Had she been but wasn’t now, if she was drinking again?
Now she was off the phone she felt guilty.
And slightly stupid. She had pissed off two fiscals, one of them a witness. She had known that he was godfather to the daughter of his friends who had died a couple of years ago. But she doubted she had ever heard him say Valerie, or if he had, she had not registered it. She would have to apologize to them both. Eventually. But Archie had hinted that Valerie was troubled about something, so troubled she was pissed at her desk at half eight in the morning.
While she was there she decided to phone Dali and tell her about the body they had found overnight. There was silence on the end of the phone. Costello thought she hadn’t heard. So she repeated it.
‘I heard you.’ A sniff, like she was holding back tears.
‘Sorry, Dali, but I think it’s Orla.’
‘What now?’ She was indeed crying. ‘We have to do something, Costello.’
‘And you have to leave it to us.’
Mulholland had strict instructions from Costello to be charming to Lorna McGill, a woman ten years younger than himself, and to show her the body of the girl she had let climb out the window. Orla’s mum, still in a state of shock, had initially resisted showing her daughter’s body to a potential witness but she understood the logic of it. Somebody was recruiting these girls, and they had to suspect everybody. All Sheila Sheridan wanted to know was who had killed her daughter.
Two coffees and a bacon roll later, he slid into the seat beside Lorna, introduced himself and shook her hand. Despite his tiredness, he felt alive and more alert than he had since he was discharged from the hospital after the last attempt to pin his broken leg.
She looked very relieved to see him.
‘Can I have a word with you? I don’t want you to record this anywhere, certainly not in any official notes.’
‘Am I in trouble?’ Her wide eyes blinked slowly. She was nervous, but that needn’t be a sign of guilt.
‘No, not at all, why do you think that?’
‘Because I visited her at her house, I wanted to know where Polly was. I’ve been asked to pass the file to my supervisor and finalize my report.’
‘Leave them to us. How old is Polly?’
‘Five weeks.’ Lorna nodded.
‘We’d like you to identify the body.’
‘What here? Now?’ Lorna looked round nervously, ‘I thought Sheila would identify her, she is her mother. Is that not normal, to get the next of kin?’
‘You saw her last,’ said Mulholland, ‘it might help us out.’ He got up and didn’t let her argue any further. He led her to a door that looked thick and well locked. He typed in a number on the keypad, there was a whirring noise. Mulholland didn’t speak to Lorna, making her hurry to keep up with him as he walked along a corridor, turned left, turned right, showed his ID twice and was buzzed through. They had organized that the mortuary technician would be opening the handle and pulling the gurney out before Lorna would realize where she was. The gurney’s legs extended automatically as it left its cold hidey hole in the wall.
Lorna took a step back, Mulholland felt her hand brush the side of his own arm, whether it was accidental, or an instinctive reach for support, he didn’t know.
They watched as the assistant unzipped the bag and opened the sheet. The assistant, a taciturn dark-haired woman with her hair pulled back under a cap, paused at the other side of the body and then freed up Orla’s arms, leaving them on top of the sheet so the body looked, as they all did in that pose, as if they were asleep.
Lorna said nothing, although her mouth was moving, words would not come. She stretched her arm out to touch the sheet that lay in folds round the contours of Orla’s body. A gentle touch, fingertips, making contact and no more. She withdrew her hand. ‘Sorry, she looks so young.’ She sniffed back tears. ‘She always looked older, with the make-up, and the clothes and … everything … She looks like a wee kid now.’
‘She was very young, Miss McGill. You had a professional association with this young lady?’ asked Mulholland.
‘Yes, only a few months.’
‘And she had a baby five weeks ago? And you have no idea where that baby is?’
‘No idea, I have never set eyes on Polly.’ Her eyes were fixed on Orla’s face. Tears rolling freely.
‘Was she planning to go anywhere?’ he prompted.
‘She had booked a holiday somewhere, or so she said. She was a … well, a liar, a fantasist. She used to tell me all kinds of crap. She was getting a record contract, she’d met a millionaire, she was writing to somebody on death row, she was moving to the country and buying a pony, all kinds of rubbish.’
‘Did you note down the rubbish anywhere, in any write-ups of your visits?’ he asked hopefully.
She shook her head. ‘I dismissed it as her crap. Maybe I shook have taken her more seriously.’
‘Hindsight is always 20 20. Was she a sex worker?’
‘Not on our system.’
‘If she was working in that field,’ he phrased the question carefully, ‘do you know where that might be? Anywhere she mentioned?’
Lorna McGill closed her eyes, thinking. ‘There were a few places she mentioned. God, I can’t remember, I am sorry.’
‘Emma has something that might help.’
Emma, the assistant, picked up a small handheld UV light and scanned it down the skin of Orla’s arm, showing blotches, subcutaneous contusions and café au lait patches under the intense light that were invisible to the naked eye. At the base of the thumb, she stopped, and turned the victim’s left hand over so they could see the small tattoo like drawing, the outline of a spikey pattern.
‘What is that?’ Lorna asked.
‘You can probably make it out better if you come around here.’ Emma twisted the dead girl’s shoulder to pull the hand away from the onlookers. Mulholland walked a reluctant Lorna round the body, staying behind her so they had the same viewpoint. The image was com
posed of blurred lines of a single colour, like a spikey flower.
‘We think it’s a nightclub stamp.’
‘It is. I’ve been there. It’s the Rockpool, it’s a starfish,’ said Lorna.
‘Where the hell did she get the money to drink in a place like that?’ asked Mulholland. ‘Rich sugar daddy?’
‘She’d need one in there.’ Lorna had calmed a little. ‘I was only there once, staff do. We didn’t go back, it was too expensive. If you want a drink in the Blue Neptune you are better going to The Pond. Was she there before she died?’
‘The day before she died.’
Lorna shook her head. ‘How could she afford that?’
Costello had just walked back into her office at Govan when her mobile went, a call redirected from her desk number.
‘DI Costello?’
‘Speaking.’ She nipped behind a set of double doors into a quiet corridor.
‘I believe you are trying to track me down and I want you to understand that I have a private acquaintance with James Chisholm and that I am not connected, in any way, with the abduction of his child.’
‘Thank you for calling. Can I ask the nature of your relationship with him?’ Costello heard something else behind this woman’s tone. Her speech rhythm wasn’t right. As if she was reading a script, and was tense about doing it.
‘Private, we weren’t having an affair.’ This sounded more natural.
‘Was he just a friend then?’
‘Yes, we would meet for coffee and chat. He was happy with Roberta but the baby just wouldn’t stop crying. He was out of his depth and wanted somebody to talk to. Nothing more than that, I hope you understand.’
‘Yes, of course. Can I ask your name?’ Costello was super polite.
‘It’s Valerie. Valerie Abernethy.’
‘Thank you, Valerie. Thank you for calling.’ And the line went dead.
‘Are you fuck Valerie Abernethy. You’re sober for a start.’
She called Wyngate and asked him to get back to her with the location of what had become known as pay-as-you-go two, when it had phoned her Govan station number.