The Suffering of Strangers

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The Suffering of Strangers Page 21

by Caro Ramsay


  ‘Back on the day, this was covered by a flap, you can just see the screws for the hinge.’ He was on his knees now, peering at it with the torch on his mobile phone.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she said, looking at the sticky patches of stale urine. ‘Instead of somebody coming out, can it be used as a way in? If they opened it up and timed it right, so the cameras were swinging away.’

  Mulholland fell silent, thoughtful. ‘She was on the phone, Orla? On the film, she took out her phone.’

  ‘And Miss Bluecoat leaned against the wall and fiddled with something. Could have been her phone.’

  ‘So shall we try it?’

  ‘No, you try it. I’ll stand back and keep well out of trouble.’

  ‘I have a bad leg.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were fit for active service? Press it, you tosser.’

  He placed his toe gently on it as Costello looked up and down the street, as if she was keeping look out. She looked down when she heard a small click, so quiet they couldn’t locate where it came from. A taxi at the rank sounded its horn and broke their concentration. They lost the location of the sound. Costello now got out her torch and shone it over the concrete of the lane, nothing on the wall, the metal gates still locked, the door still in place, nothing had moved.

  ‘We’re missing something, do it again.’

  ‘Can’t, it’s already in the down position. It must release on some kind of tension or timer.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Victorian. If you don’t know where you have to look, you will never see it.’

  ‘Can we speak to some of the old coppers who used to work down here, they will remember this. They might be able to shed light on it, if as you say, it was used to mug people.’ He had taken the torch from her and started shining the beam closely to the wall, with no intention of going anywhere until he had found the answer to this.

  ‘Stop,’ said Costello, sharper than she intended. ‘Look at that.’ She pointed to the old black door, metal painted and covered in graffiti, dirt drifted up against the bottom of it. It looked as though it hadn’t been open for ages. There was now a line of clean black paint round the border.

  ‘That wasn’t like that earlier.’

  ‘Well I never, I think it is a Black Donald.’ Mulholland leaned closer and looked, placing a single finger on the door, pushing it ever so gently.

  And it opened.

  Parts of the Blue Neptune were so exclusive, nobody really knew what went on there. Anderson knew about the fluorescent fish and the exclusive roof terrace, but he had no first-hand experience of either. He had looked into the rental of the office spaces and they all seemed legitimate. An office for travel injection and inoculations now that the NHS didn’t do them. A small pension company, a very exclusive estate agent. And two lawyers, including Helena Farrell’s lawyer, the short one with the weird haircut; the one that couldn’t spell, or pronounce her own name.

  But Anderson was very interested in what was going on up at the rooms on the same floor as the gym and the perfumed Pilates people as they had become known. There had been a name of the Pilates list that caught their interest: Roberta McIver, or Chisholm as they knew her. He couldn’t find anything listed for what was going on on the floor above. He wanted to have a look around, the kind of look around that might not be welcome. He had accepted Andrew and Sally’s invitation to dinner and to drinks.

  He had to keep his mind on that and not think about his wife and the new man that had so enchanted his children. Without telling him. How many times had they met? Had he really been so wrapped up in his own world that he had not noticed? Of course he bloody had.

  He stood outside, checking the time, looking at the door of the Rockpool. That was a small club up on the first floor, with a door on street level that had two very well dressed, very big men posed outside it, plus a small blonde female, to take the sting out the fact they might be in need of bouncers.

  She gave him a look. He wasn’t dressed appropriately to go in there. He made a point of looking at his watch again. Then saw the double swing doors for the Blue Neptune foyer, bars to the left and right. The right one was the Sky Blue for a more student crowd with money, to the left was the Navy Blue, where all the staff were dressed as sailors, the female waitresses in short skirts and neat little white hats with gold anchors on them. It bordered on naff without actually getting there. In between was a man in a frock coat standing at a highly carved lectern, behind him the marble doors of the Admiral restaurant itself.

  He went up and asked if there was a table booked. The name was Anderson.

  ‘No,’ said the maître d’ smiling, ‘I think the table is booked under the name Braithwaite. Welcome. We will sit you at their regular table, one of the best in the house.’

  And Anderson wondered if they did own a slice of this place. Was that why they lived the way they did? Had they sunk every penny into this or had they slipped too deep into debt that they didn’t have a choice? Looking back at their university days, Sally and Andrew had always had money. Family money. What had happened to all that?

  And what did they do now that they were asset rich and cash poor?

  Earn money in any way they could. Was Costello right, were they selling children?

  Then murdering their mothers?

  Wyngate checked his watch, now sitting out on the van with Tom Stafford and Bob Noakes, big cops who knew how to handle themselves. Wyngate knew from bitter experience that he wasn’t built for the rough and tumble. He had been injured twice badly on duty and he wasn’t taking any more risks. Not that he was being allowed to.

  He had a simple remit now, to sit in the van and listen to what was going on. And not touch any buttons on the recording device. Costello and Mulholland were going up the lane to see what was going on, investigating the mystery of the disappearing women.

  Anderson was cashing in on his friendship with the Braithwaites to see what he could find out, they might know something. There was definitely something going on in that beautiful building, and he was to keep a watching brief on the off chance that they might see the girl in the blue coat. They had a slight side view of her face, the only image they had, now blown up and clarified, in case they saw her.

  Or a baby that might be only a few hours old.

  Costello had to ask. ‘What kind of mind came up with a Black Donald?’

  ‘Somebody with a passion for theft and hide and seek. I think the name comes from an old word for the devil. How old is this place?’

  ‘The Old Edwardian? 1880? 1890? They loved mechanical tricks like that in the old days.’

  They both stepped through the door onto an old concrete platform bordered by rails of blackened painted metal. The top rail worn to dull metal with age, the paint weathered away.

  Mulholland shone the torch. ‘It’s an old concrete stairway, down to an ancient drinks cellar, I presume.’ The stairway turned immediately to their right, then turned back on itself and continued twisting down into the darkness below. But three steps down and underfoot the steps were repaired and restored from their years of wear.

  ‘I am leaving this door open. We agree that before we go ahead and cut off our escape route, we go in to see what is happening down there and then we report back. OK? We do not rediscover the ancient underground city that lives beneath us. Agreed?’

  Mulholland nodded, glad that she had made that decision and he wasn’t being left to look a wuss. They walked down the steps, keeping close together and turned the stairs heading down another layer, the air was cold but not stale. There was very little light now they had exited the relative shelter of the recessed stairwell. Costello shone her torch around catching a bumper, a black car, a few crazed white lines marked out on the concrete.

  ‘It’s a bloody car park. Where are we, under the Blue Neptune or the Old Edwardian?’

  ‘Both.’

  They stepped forward, rounding the end of an internal wall. It got a little lighter. ‘Look over
there.’ Her torch drifted across the empty space to the wall on the opposite side, the gap in it that ran the full height of the basement, slightly wider than the width of a car. The gap was covered by thick black railings. Beyond that they could make out the boundary wall on the far side, topped by a series of small rails at ground level on the pavement side, so near the roof from the inside, four or five inches high.

  They walked up to the railings which turned out to be two gates held closed, tight and strong, by a thick chain.

  Mulholland looked through to the car park beyond. ‘This must be good cheap storage for classic cars. Dry, cold, no bugger knows about it. That old Rover there must be worth a few bob.’

  ‘How did these cars get down here?’ Costello looked into the light across a central way to the car park, her torch sitting between the rails. On the other side, the concrete was better maintained, the markings a bright yellow paint, a typical city centre underground car park. ‘It’s the Crimea Street car park. There’s a ramp that brings you under the road over in that corner.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know, I’ve never been able to afford to park there.’

  Costello ignored him. ‘So Orla could have come down here and got in a car and been taken anywhere? That does not help. If we know when, the CCTV would pick her up as she left the car park.’

  ‘Or the CCTV from the exit of the car park might give us some clue as to how her body got out to Lochwinnoch. I presume somebody on this side can get those railings to open. If they had a key. There are drag scrapes here in the concrete.’

  ‘Have you looked at these cars? Those at the back haven’t been moved for years. And those two cars over here?’ Costello pointed to a couple of new Fords on their side of the railings, two different colours of grey metallic paint. ‘They have the same reg number.’

  ‘Well spotted. We might make a cop of you yet. That is an alibi in the making.’ He looked around her. ‘You got a signal on your mobile?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘We don’t have enough to get a search warrant. Yet,’ added Costello, ‘but the Braithwaites park in that private car park on the other side of Inkerman Street, not down here. I am thinking that I’d like to find a manhole cover. O’Hare said there was oil in the impression on Orla’s thigh, it must be from here surely.’

  ‘But how do we get into the building? Whatever is going on is going on up there.’

  ‘They appear to have no need for this space, which is what they want people to think. But somebody uses it for other purposes, like taking away the bodies of dead girls.’

  They stood at the railings, looking through and both ducking at the sudden increase in volume of traffic noise above their head, a rumble that stopped then started again as the lights changed above from green to red to green again. Costello had her head right at the railings when the place was suddenly awash with bright light. It was a normal underground car park, bright yellow grid marks on the ground, the sign saying that it was a one-way system. The cars looked fresh and undusted, just vehicles that would come and go here every day, the commuter delight of close, cheap parking.

  ‘We have triggered a sensor,’ said Costello, nudging Mulholland then pointing towards the Porsche Panamera parked neatly in the corner. ‘She is here, somewhere.’

  They could see the end of the barrier from here and the keypad on a yellow metal pole, bashed and battered by cars that had misjudged the narrow gap.

  Costello thought out loud. ‘Our answers are not here, they are over there. Mathilda is processing the oil on Orla’s thigh, it was deep in the skin, old, dirty engine oil perhaps?’ She kicked at something with her toe before following Mulholland. This was a graveyard of old cars. From this viewpoint, he could see a small set of narrow concrete stairs in the rear corner. Mulholland walked over as Costello kept her torch light focussed on him as he climbed the steps.

  ‘There’s a small keypad here, a metal door and …’ A noise alerted them. He fled down the stairs and they both darted for cover, Costello behind an old car with four flat tyres and Mulholland behind a concrete pillar.

  They heard a click of light heels across the concrete. The heels stopped, started again and stopped.

  The noise echoed round the hard walls. Then there was a hard click, which Costello prayed to God was not the Black Donald door closing over. She crouched down and peered out, Valerie Abernethy had no idea where she was supposed to go. As Costello watched, the fiscal looked at her phone and noticed the lack of signal. She was looking around her, her face looking a little fearful.

  Costello moved slightly, her nose alerting her to something familiar. Looking at her hand, she saw it was covered in sticky grimy oil. It was on the knees of her trousers as well. And she realized that she recognized the smell, she was kneeling in a mixture of old oil and dried blood, her nostrils were full of it now.

  She looked up to the car, the pattern of disturbance on the dust on the side panel, then the side panel of the car behind her. A black Volvo had a single clear palm print on the dark paint.

  Then the car park was plunged in a darkness that was total and absolute.

  ELEVEN

  The meal had been lovely, a tiny steak cooked in some fine wine sauce that Colin could not pronounce. It was so delicately flavoured it made his eyes water, as did the price of it. Million-pound house or not, he was glad he was not footing the bill. Sally had sparkled in a black jumper, delicately fluffy, and black velvet trousers that skimmed over her slim hips and long legs. Her golden hair bounced as she told funny stories of her travels around the world.

  It was as if the intervening twenty years had not happened. Andrew sat back and watched Sally and Colin, offering the odd comment, punching in with a few one liners. They laughed. And laughed. Sally drank three or four glasses of Pinot Grigio, Colin only one. Andrew had mentioned that he was on call and didn’t stray from sparkling water.

  Anderson excused himself and nipped to the toilet, checking that the wire was working just as Andrew checked his pager and said he needed to make a phone call.

  Noakes’ voice cracked back that they were hearing it all fine and what kind of sarcastic bastard was he, describing the food when they were sitting in the van with a flask of tea and one cheese sandwich between the three of them. Wyngate told him that Costello and Mulholland hadn’t returned yet, so they must have found something. The constable’s last words ‘be careful’. It had been quiet on the line for a moment and then he had replied, ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’

  And he didn’t. They had been here before and here they were again, watching each other’s backs.

  When he went back out to the restaurant, Andrew’s chair was empty and tucked back into the table. Sally was flirtatiously apologetic. ‘He’ll be on the phone for ages.’

  ‘I know that feeling,’ said Colin. ‘What does he do exactly?’

  ‘Andrew? He rents a room here and does Botox and fillers, light cosmetic work and he works in A and E, he’s registered with an agency. Nothing permanent.’

  She was quieter then. He didn’t know if it was fear, a realization that this meal might not be entirely recreational or something more akin to the frisson of sitting mildly pissed, next to an ex-lover, and the husband now in absentia.

  Colin wanted to get her talking, so he brought up a few names from their past. The chit-chat went on, over coffee, gossiping about people they had known at uni, postulating what had become of those they had lost touch with.

  Once the coffee was over, she asked him if he wanted a brandy, her eyes flicked left and right, wary of the members of staff eavesdropping, as they floated around in that silent, ethereal way waiters do in posh establishments. She lifted her glass, the light glistening off the crystal of the glass and glinting in the blue of her eyes.

  ‘It’s nice to have you back in my life. There are a few advantages to renting space here. I get free access to the roof terrace. Let’s go up there and look over the city. It’s lovely on a clear
night like this.’

  ‘Can I trust you?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘Nope.’

  Costello had already switched her torch off, Mulholland did the same. They wanted – needed – to see where Valerie went and from the look of her, she was waiting for somebody to give her instructions. It had crossed her mind that she wasn’t sure how to get out.

  They both stayed hidden, listening to Valerie’s footfall, three steps to the right, three to the left. Waiting. Apart from calling out, ‘Is there anyone there?’ and the occasional ‘Hello?’ she was quiet.

  Costello wondered if they should make themselves known, Mulholland would follow her lead, but she wanted to see, or hear what was going to happen.

  Then a small light shone in the corner of the car park, up to their left, under the Blue Neptune. Costello hit the deck, aware now what she was kneeling in. She heard a voice, too quiet to recognize. Valerie’s answer was, ‘Oh thank God, I thought you had forgotten.’

  And they walked off, two sets of footsteps heading towards the small steps in the corner and the source of the light, which went out but not before Costello had crawled out to catch a glimpse.

  Mulholland switched his torch back on and jogged over to Costello who was trying to get up without touching the cars on either side of her.

  ‘Look at this, blood, handprints on the car. We have something of evidential value. Let’s get out. We need to tell the boys to track Valerie.’

  ‘And whoever that was with her, they didn’t come out the shadow of that door, I didn’t get a look at him.’

  ‘I did. He was at the hospital with Moses, that was Andrew Braithwaite. No surprise there.’

  ‘OK, we need to get out of here now.’ Mulholland was shaking. ‘Wyngate can’t hear us down here.’

  ‘Nobody can.’ Costello sniffed at her fingers. ‘That’s definitely blood. Orla’s blood. I bet nobody heard her either.’

 

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