by Caro Ramsay
‘Do you think she has come to harm?’
‘I fear for her. I know what Andrew can be like.’
Costello had seen it many times in victims; one simple act that would ensure their safety. And they can’t do it. A psychological block of weird self-preservation simply calls a halt to all logical process. Mulholland’s brain was being very dogmatic in its approach, if he jumped from that height of five feet or even if he slithered down the railings, his leg would snap like a twig. No amount of cajoling or persuasion could convince him that he had two legs and he could land on the other. Time was passing, Costello needed to get out and get out through the car park barrier, run down Crimea Street and take a left and she would be at the front door of the Blue Neptune. As soon as she was free of the six floors of building above her head, she could radio the team to come and rescue Mulholland. When she explained that to him, his ambition overruled his fear and the fact Costello had said twice that she would never let him forget it. She bent over and formed a cradle with her hands, allowing Mulholland, who was chivalrous enough to hang his weight through his arms, to place one knee on Costello’s back, the other foot in her cupped hands and then lowered himself gently to the ground. Where he stumbled and cursed, sprawled on the concrete floor. They looked at each other.
‘I can’t get up. Seriously I can’t. My leg!’
Costello stared at the mess of the palms of her hands, covered in grime, old engine oil and probably Orla’s blood and knelt down, cleaning her hands by wiping them slowly and deliberately, down the front of Mulholland’s designer jacket as he lay pale faced and gasping.
‘I’ll be back for you.’ She jogged away, ignoring the obscenities he was shouting after her.
Sally stood back from the rail, her eyes red and swollen with tears. She looked all around the roof terrace, taking in the rattan furniture, tied up and forgotten, covered with pigeon shit. ‘I didn’t know how we got from that to this. But I guess it’s all going to change now.’
‘I think you should come down to the station and make a statement. We have a lot to sort out, we need to know where the babies are. We need to know about Sholto and get him back where he belongs. And I don’t doubt there are others.’
She shook her head. ‘Come on.’ And suddenly she was the old Sally again, head up, decision made, uncertainties swept aside. ‘Come on.’ She stopped and turned. ‘You will look after me, Colin, won’t you. I …? I don’t know but I need help with all this.’
He nodded.
Sally walked slowly to the door in the middle of the roof terrace, surrounded by planters growing small trees that helped to disguise the outline of the exit. The door itself was glass and steel, protected by an electronic lock. She pressed a few numbers into a keypad, buzzing the door open. She led him down a narrow but beautifully decorated staircase, open plan once they were below the level of the roof. He followed her as she walked slowly along the carpeted corridor, the smell of eucalyptus telling him that they were near the gym. She turned left when his instinct told him they should have gone to the right. ‘You did say that you needed to know all of it. I think I should show you something. Down here.’
She walked down another corridor, reminiscent of a hotel. Pictures, soft carpeting, fire doors and somewhere he could hear the muted sound of a Friday night television show. They stopped in front of a picture of New York skyscrapers, abstract and colourful. Sally pressed a button and the picture shaded to white, then cleared. The first thing he saw was a blue coat on the white clothes stand, the woman heavily pregnant was sitting in an armchair, watching the television. The bed near her had been slept in but neatly made. It was light blue. Sterile. ‘This is where they come to stay before they give birth. Adele was here for a couple of months.’
It looked like a room in the best of private hospitals.
She was talking through her tears. ‘I had to show you that. I don’t want you to think, think that anybody gets hurt here. Look at that, she is fine, her delivery will be fine – there is a birth suite next door – and her baby will be looked after by people who will adore it.’
Colin had noticed the theme of Sally’s warped reasoning – if they pay for it, they will love it. ‘You think that nobody gets hurt?’ he asked gently.
‘Nobody gets hurt in here. I was hurt out there in the big wild world.’ She looked away. ‘At first that was all we did. Took babies from girls that didn’t want them. We were putting women with unwanted babies in touch with couples who desperately wanted children and I didn’t see it getting any more than that, I never saw that. We were doing nothing wrong. But then Andrew started, well, it all started to slide. We were contacted by a couple who wanted a baby of their own. Nobody was to know their child was adopted, which was the usual story. They said they were in the process of adoption and people going through that process never get asked anything more than “how’s it going”. It’s too sensitive.’
‘So to the family, this was a process of adoption?’
‘Yes, and no recourse for the real parents.’
‘Bloody hell, do the children not have a basic human right to know who their parents are?’
‘Real parents like Bernadette Kissel?’ she snapped. ‘My friend was adopted. Their birth mother tracked them down, asked to be pals, my friend met her to say thanks but I have a great life and I have a mother, thank you. Don’t worry about me I am fine. Your mother is the one who washes your socks, not the one who gives birth to you. It’s our western world that has got all that a bit screwed. Being a parent is not a God given right; it is a privilege that has to be earned.’
For the first time Colin saw a flash of something Sally was not in control of and he wondered what Sally’s parents had been like, their reluctance to accept her decision to keep the baby.
‘Then Andrew changed into somebody I didn’t know.’
She switched a button, the glass clouded over again, the New York skyline reappeared. Anderson realized that the patient was unaware she had been observed. He had noticed the food on the tray was the same as that in the restaurant, Costello had been right. It was a damn sight more comfortable than the NHS hospital where both Claire and Peter had been born. But that wasn’t the point. This was about Adele. And a girl called Orla. It looked like somebody had taken Orla downstairs and killed her. Downstairs from here.
‘Sally, you need to get your story down. A child was abducted.’
‘Sholto Chisholm.’
‘And he has a mum and a dad, and a cot waiting for him.’
‘He has a dad who sleeps with everybody in the tennis club. A mother who does nothing but moan how much her baby cries …’
There it was again, Sally justifying it to herself.
‘He is a much loved child, he has a nursery that he has barely slept in. He keeps his mum awake all hours of the day and night. She is exhausted. But she would go to the end of the earth to get him back.’
‘Yeah, Roberta.’ Sally was in shock but she walked on, back to the studio area. She opened a door onto the gym, the line of running machines standing silent now looking out onto the city scape through the huge window.
‘I need to make a statement. I need to tell you where the children are. And Sholto? Sholto Chisholm. Bobby’s wee kid. I need my jacket, my keys. Oh Christ. Where is Andy? Don’t let him come back here. Not until I can get away. Where is my jacket? My keys?’
‘Calm down, Sally. We will sort everything out. Was that a genuine call on his pager?’
‘What?’
‘I’m just asking. Did you see it go? Or hear it?’
‘No, I didn’t hear it. Oh God!’ And she was crying again …
‘Are you sure he is gone?’
Her face fell. ‘I need to get my jacket.’ She was walking past the weights, all stacked neatly in their racks. She opened another door, the smell of ozone drifted out, the air damp and warm. The walls were lined with pine. Saunas? Whirlpools? Was this where the spa was? She stopped and turned to him, her head down. ‘Colin, I a
m really sorry, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’
‘About what?’
‘What was that?’ Out in the van they heard a thud followed by a lack of voices, a more worrying lack of noise. Then a deep ominous rumble.
‘Fuck!’ Bob Noakes jumped back, pulling his earpiece out before the volume was turned down.
Then the silence was total.
‘Has that bastard turned the mic off?’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Shagging her before he arrests her?’
‘You’d think he’d have left it on, we could do with a laugh.’
Then they sat in silence.
‘I think you should go in,’ said Wyngate.
‘He’s not going to like it if he has pulled out his wire so that he gets a bit of nookie with his old bird in peace and quiet.’
‘He wouldn’t pull out his wire,’ Wyngate said hopefully, acknowledging that it was not beyond reason.
‘Aye, right, if I had a bird like that pouring over me.’
Wyngate called Costello. Her voice came back loud and clear.
‘We have lost contact with Anderson, it’s gone quiet.’
‘Last time of contact?’
‘Two minutes ago.’
‘Was he with Sally?’
‘He was. Andrew was called away.’
‘I think we saw him come back in. I think we had better get in there. Mulholland is a man down.’
‘Do you want us to—’
‘No just leave him for now.’
He heard her move, walking quickly across concrete then her heels clicking as she went up the stairs of the Blue Neptune, barking out questions. ‘Sally Braithwaite and the blond guy? Where did they go?’
‘Roof top. You can take the lift,’ the maître d’ pointed, anything to get the scruffy cop with her stinking jacket out of his posh restaurant.
She rushed up the stairs and burst onto the roof, looking round, nobody was there, then suddenly Braithwaite was running up behind her. She held her baton tight.
‘One nine three eight, the code is one nine three eight,’ he said and Costello, nearest the key pad, hit the combination with her free hand. The door opened, and they rushed down the stairs, aware now of the loud rumble.
‘Hydro pool!’ shouted Braithwaite, pushing Costello out the way. She fell clumsily, stumbling into the side wall but she had heard a splash of water and Braithwaite shout something. It didn’t sound good. He sounded scared.
Costello limped round the corner, moving as fast as she could, through a door into an area tiled and scented with ozone or chlorine. Two training pools, each three feet off the ground, one as still as a millpond, the other angry and turbulent.
Doing contortions at the far end was Colin Anderson, submerged in the current, crimson jet streams trailing from the back of his head. Costello climbed into the pool, trying to stand up in it, waist deep, holding Colin’s head above water as his body twisted and contorted to get away from her, battered by the force of the water. She braced herself against the low side and grasped the side of Colin’s chest and pushed as hard as she could. Braithwaite seemed to be panicking in the corner, flinging open the door of a metal cupboard, looking for the right switch to flick among the bank of switches. Then Costello got a good grip, the water slowed and the noise was beginning to quieten.
Costello pushed Anderson’s body over the rim of the hydro pool and his centre of gravity did the rest. He slithered onto the floor tiles, coming to rest face up, skin reddened by the pulsation of the water pressure, a small vein of red pooling underneath his head.
Costello knelt beside him, her face down at his, saying words in his ear, asking Anderson if he could hear her, feeling for a pulse.
She said she couldn’t find one, so she started doing CPR, then turned him on his side, blood and water and all sorts spewing from Anderson’s guts. She was shouting down her mouthpiece for an ambulance, not caring who heard.
‘It’s already on its way,’ Wyngate was shouting back.
‘Let me, let me, I am a doctor,’ said Braithwaite, rolling up his sleeves but Costello pushed him away.
‘I think you might be better restraining her …’ She had seen Sally wild eyed and panicking out the corner of her eye but as she looked up, Sally’s foot, clad in her black heels, caught her right on the temple, and Costello fell back onto the wooden side of the hydro pool, hitting her head hard.
Sally hurdled Anderson but slipped on wet floor tiles as she landed. Braithwaite lunged at her as she tried to regain her balance, but she twisted through his arms, then hurtled to the stairs, heading towards the roof terrace. Costello managed to dodge out the way as the bulk of Andrew Braithwaite followed his wife, screaming her name at the top of his voice.
The sound of his deep voice, shouting, ‘Sally, no! No!’ followed him up the stairs and out the door.
Wyngate looked at his older colleagues. ‘Do we go in now, or do we sit here and keep listening in case they need us.’
Bob Noakes’ answer was to rip the wires out the recorder, as his mate opened the back of the van and within a minute they were gone, running back down the lane to get to the front entrance of the Blue Neptune. It was a long way round. The cars based at Glasgow Central would get there first.
Wyngate followed them out the back door. It had all gone quiet over the air and he had no real idea of what he was doing next, thinking about Anderson, hoping that he would be OK. The boss had always bounced back, he was sure he was going to bounce back this time.
He tried calling out over his mouthpiece but nobody responded. He listened to his airwave radio, a lot of panic and chatter and lot of screaming for ambulances. He kept hearing the code for cop down, and he wondered who it was. Which one it was. He was thinking, hearing sirens in the distance when a body battered into the cobbles beside him. It shuddered a little before coming still. Wyngate looked at it, blonde hair webbed against the dark stones underneath. He looked up, realizing the body must have come from the top of the Blue Neptune.
‘Costello? Costello?’
The figure lay motionless, blood spreading. He bent down to touch her shoulder, his mind slowly numbing with what he was seeing. Then he saw the shoe that had come loose as the body had fallen, strappy black high heels. Not Costello then. His mind cleared, hair too long, more red gold than white gold.
‘Not Costello,’ he sighed, his relief overwhelming. People were streaming into the lane now, attracted by a single scream. He heard somebody start to shriek and lifted up his radio, trying to be heard above the fray.
Suddenly everything started to happen at once, Costello was doing CPR trying to keep the rhythm right, tears streaming down her face, ‘He’s not breathing, he’s not breathing’ she kept saying out loud until a first aider appeared and then an ambulance man. O’Hare appeared from nowhere and pushed the first aider aside.
‘How long was he under the water?’
‘A few minutes?’
O’Hare shook his head. ‘Let’s get him out of here, we can work on him better in the van.’
And they rolled the inert, soaking body of Colin Anderson onto the stretcher.
‘Keep him on the oxygen, let’s see if we can get something going, we will still work on him.’
‘Did you find a pulse?’
‘No.’
‘But we will keep at him.’
Costello realized she was holding Anderson’s hand until he was carried to the lift door, that slowly closed over, leaving her behind.
Waterlogged, Costello walked down the hall, and squelched her way back up the single set of stairs and onto the roof. She felt she was on automatic pilot.
Did that just happen?
Did all that actually just happen?
She saw Braithwaite sitting on the ground under the wall, hands on his head, crying his eyes out.
‘She went right over the top. She jumped right over the top.’
Costello was stunned. She sat, sliding down the wall to sit beside
him and stared straight ahead, registering nothing.
TWELVE
Mulholland and Wyngate were both back in the interview room. It was two o’clock in the morning. Andrew Braithwaite looked as if a strong whisky might be welcome. Mulholland’s leg was strapped, he had refused to stay at the hospital and Wyngate had realized that he, nominally, was in charge.
‘I’m afraid Sally has been lying to you,’ Braithwaite said after listening to the recording.
Wyngate pushed across a cup of black coffee. ‘It looks like she’s not the only one.’
‘How is Colin? Is he doing OK?’
Mulholland looked at Wyngate.
‘No, not really. How long have you known him?’
‘About twenty-five years, but there was a twenty-year gap in the middle of that.’
‘He is on life support.’
‘Good God.’
‘His wife and children have been in to see him.’
‘Yes, I think Brenda has taken them back home, you know. It could go on for a long time,’ added Wyngate.
‘So, Mr Braithwaite. Andrew. You have heard what Sally had to say?’
‘Yes. Where is Sally just now? I mean, where?’
‘She is being taken care of, you know as well as I do what happens with bodies. There will be a post-mortem then we wait and see. O’Hare will try to hurry it through. Can you talk us through what happened on the roof?’
And he did, sobbing frequently. Wyngate began to get emotional, recalling the horror of the noise when she landed, the sickening thud. Mulholland called a halt to the proceedings, there and then. They might not have had a lot but they did have time.
Braithwaite’s story was a simple one. Sally must have bolted after hitting Anderson and had ran across the roof. Whether she meant to stop or whether she meant to jump was unclear to him, but he had caught her before she reached it, and she had pulled free leaving him carrying an empty sleeve. If only he had held on. And she had run away from him, tears blinding her, right to the rail, and went over.
‘She didn’t stop to think about it?’
‘I don’t know. How could I know? Oh God, what am I supposed to do without her?’