by Denise Mina
As Morrow shut the front door after herself she heard the lock click firmly. The car was parked right outside and Harris had the keys in his hand. “Are we going home?”
But Morrow stopped him. “Where’s the chapel?” she said, looking back up at the house.
They stepped away, looked left and right. They walked ten feet to the doors of the changing room. The chapel was behind it, a tall blond barn of a building, pushed back from the main façade, with red glass windows coming to a point at the top, like those of the parish house. They stood and looked at it. Harris looked back at the front door for Doyle.
“Let’s go for a wander,” said Morrow.
There was a logical time frame to the extensions: the first-built and worst-worn buildings were close to the back of the main house: a wooden corridor and a hall that looked as if it had been thrown up during the war. Beyond them were the red-brick builds of recent years, what looked like classroom blocks and a swimming pool with big sliding windows on metal frames. Tucked far around the back was a white concrete block, the regular windows and uniform navy blue curtains lending it the feel of a cheap hotel.
Behind that was the startling latest development. A series of corrugated-iron rectangles, shipping containers, two stories high, each spray-painted subtly different tones of white with a gray mesh staircase leading up and around the building. Each had a wall of windows with frosted portions to afford privacy but they could see that the lowest one housed a common room: five boys lounged in armchairs, and a darts board and a plasma TV hung on the wall. Above and around the others were classrooms with jolly furniture, multicolored recycled-plastic desks and chairs. A boy sitting in a chair by a window on the first floor looked down at them and pointed.
A door opened in his block and a tall thin man stepped out onto the gangway one floor up. He shouted down, “Can I help you?”
Harris shouted back, “Strathclyde Police.” He showed his badge. “We’ve just seen Mr. Doyle. We’re looking around the grounds.”
The teacher went back into his room and they saw him through the glass wall as he told the boys something that made them all stare out of the window. The boys at the back came over to the window to see them.
Morrow and Harris backed up the side of the common room block.
It was then that they saw the notice: a sign bolted onto the side said that the buildings were composed entirely from recycled materials, were carbon neutral and solar powered, and they had been kindly donated by Sir Lars Anderson.
Morrow and Harris hurried around to the front, past their car and found the front door locked. Morrow tried pressing the bell but she couldn’t hear it ringing inside.
“Changing rooms,” said Harris, and headed back the way they had come.
“We’ll get lost,” said Morrow, turning to him. Then she saw him, a boy running around the corner from the extensions, tall, about sixteen, head swiveling, looking frantically for someone.
He stopped, his shoulder to them, taking them in. He was thin, his nose was short, eyes baby-round. His head was shaved, his skin sunny-summered. Morrow had seen him in the classroom with the nosy teacher. He’d come to the window to look at them.
“Hey, son,” said Morrow. “How do we get back in? We need to see Mr. Doyle.”
“You don’t need Doyle.” He was panting. “You’re here to see me.”
FORTY-FIVE
Thomas sat in the corridor on a hard chair and listened to Moira opening the front door downstairs. She had a bit of trouble, tried the wrong lock twice and finally, fitting the key in and turning it, the door fell open and she stood there for a moment. “Hello? Anyone?”
Thomas let her wait. “Up here,” he said quietly.
“Thomas?” She came to the bottom of the stairs. “Thomas? Are you there?”
As she approached he felt the hairs rise on his arms, on his neck.
“Tom?” She was smiling, as if it was a game of hide and seek, coming to the bottom of the stairs. “Hello-ho?”
They were both still, Thomas on the hard chair outside Ella’s open door, Moira at the bottom of the stairs. She shifted and he heard a small brittle noise amplified by the stairwell, the light crumple of tissue paper. Tissue paper in a bag.
“Up here,” he said, his voice flat.
“Oh.” She took a tentative step, wary because of his tone, because he hadn’t moved to where she could see him, because she sensed the fury in his voice. But still she came and he heard the soft whisper of tissue shifting in a bag as she took the stairs, and she muttered as she came, “Good heavens, the traffic was terrible in the town.” And “These stairs seem to get steeper every time…” making pleasant conversation, willfully pretending that they were happy friends having a jolly little fucking conversation.
She arrived at the top of the stairs and saw him sitting sentry outside Ella’s door. She was carrying a bushel of bags, cardboard with ribbon handles, from posh clothes shops. She saw him look at them.
“For the funeral.”
He said nothing.
“Sales…my own money…”
Thomas looked away and folded his arms. She didn’t move, shifted her hips awkwardly, opened her mouth to speak but drew a blank and tittered nervously as she glanced at her bedroom door. She wanted to go to her room and try on her new things, he knew that, but she was afraid to pass him.
“Have you been there long…?”
Thomas turned to look at her. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
She flinched at his tone and his manner, looked hurt, raised a shoulder against him. “Your father’s funeral…”
“She’s suicidal, Moira. You went out and left her here with me.”
Moira dropped the bags to the floor. “Tom, you don’t know—”
“I shouldn’t be left in charge of her.” He was shouting now, and glad he was shouting, enjoying the release.
“Darling, you don’t know the first thing about it.”
“You’re right, you stupid bitch.” He rose to his feet. “The doctor’s here, I know nothing about her condition, I’m talking to him like a prize prick. How the fuck do I look?” They both froze at that. It was Lars’s phrase. Thomas should have stopped there but shame propelled him on, “What kind of fucking mother are you?”
“I had to arrange your father’s funeral, my husband’s funeral!” She was tearful, stuck at the head of the stairs, the bags at her feet wilting onto their sides from the weight of the contents and he saw her do what she always did when she argued with Lars: roll her shoulders inwards, her head drooping to her chest. She was making him the bad guy.
He stomped over to her. “I couldn’t even phone you—”
But she turned to face him, tears streaming down her face, her voice whiny. “Imagine how I feel, Tommy: I’m in an undertakers’, with people looking at me, they know who I am, and then he calls the desk and asks for me.”
“I haven’t got a mobile number—”
“Why?” she shouted, flailing her arms wide. “Why? Why haven’t you got a mobile number for me? Because I had to throw my mobiles away. Journalists were phoning every minute. I can’t even have a mobile. How do you think that feels?”
He was close to her now, and he saw how near to the edge of the step her heels were, how far she had to fall. “It didn’t occur to you in your tiny mind that you could just have not answered when journalists called? It says ‘unknown’ when someone you don’t know calls. You don’t have to throw the whole fucking phone away.”
Moira glanced at her feet, was suddenly aware of the drop behind her, looked accusingly at Thomas who had stopped three feet away, and turned her back to the wall.
They glared at each other, Thomas leaning forward, making himself the predator, Moira feeling behind her for the wall, face turned away.
“What’s the fucking point of you?” he said, giving her the cue to run.
Moira covered her face, splaying her fingers so she could see, and turned to run downstairs, but the clothes bags were
about her feet and her heel pierced a thick blue ribbon handle, becoming entangled, making her stagger unsteadily.
“Thomas?” A small voice behind him, Ella, not even on the landing but half in the doorway, keeping covered. She was still wearing the clothes from yesterday, still had sticky pink and white smears of marshmallow stuck to the front of her T-shirt. She watched Moira slip and tumble, her arms sliding down the wall, fingers flexing, looking for purchase.
Thomas spun back to a dull thud. Moira was on the floor in front of him, splayed on her side, the ribbon handle on the bag still skewered on her heel, the bag gaping crazily.
Black tissue ripped with a hiss and a pair of brown leather trousers dropped out, slowly unfolding as they cartwheeled down the staircase and came to a stop.
An alarm sounded, the soft, gentle trilling of the house phone, like the end of a round in a genteel boxing match.
Moira pulled herself upright and looked down the hall to her bedroom. “If that’s the doctor, I’m not in.”
Ella looked to Thomas, one eye visible, pleading with him as she hung on to the door frame.
Thomas smiled at her weakly and walked down to Moira’s bedside, picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”
“Hello, Thomas, is your mother there?” It wasn’t Dr. Hollis.
Numb, he walked down to Moira in the hall. She was sitting on the top step, untangling the ribbon from her heel and saw him hold out the receiver. She took her time, standing up, patting her hair to make sure it was straight, and took the phone. “Hello?”
She listened. Theresa’s voice on the other end was harsh, loud, haranguing. Moira’s face hardened as she listened. “Did he?” she said at one point, glaring angrily at Thomas. She listened until the monologue ended and then waited, pinching her mouth. “Is that all you have to say?”
She listened again. Thomas looked back down the corridor and saw Ella still in the doorway, watching, curious and forgetting herself. He smiled to see her like that and she met his eye and gave a half smile. She knew he’d stayed with her and it mattered. For a moment Thomas felt proud and honorable.
“Hmm,” said Moira, as though she had been told something only quite interesting. “Well, if this is indeed the case then I’m very sorry for you and your children.”
The voice on the other end shouted but Moira spoke even louder and drowned her out. “You must remember, dear: the world is full of whores but in England a man can have only one wife.”
She hung up, and handed the phone back to Thomas as if it belonged to him. Looked him up and down and then bent to pick up her shopping bags.
When she stood up again she looked older. “I have a headache and I’m going to my room, darlings. Perhaps you could just see the doctor yourselves.”
FORTY-SIX
His name was Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon. He stood in front of the changing rooms, eyes on the horizon, and told them the story as if he was being sick: he and his friend Thomas Anderson skived off after athletics. They drove to Glasgow, to Thorntonhall. They broke into Sarah Erroll’s house, through the kitchen. They were supposed to frighten her but his friend lost it and kicked her face in and killed her. Jonathon stood, breathing unevenly, holding his chest.
“Have you got asthma?” asked Harris.
“A little bit,” said the boy.
Harris got him to bend over, asked if he had an inhaler but he didn’t. As he held the boy’s shoulder and let him catch his breath, Harris looked over at Morrow.
Neither of them wanted this: their adrenaline was up, their fingers were tingling, they were ready for the chase but the fox had come over and shot itself at their feet.
The boy stood up, his breathing more regular. Morrow looked for a spark of emotion on his face but found nothing.
Harris was the first to speak. “Where was she when you went in?”
“Asleep,” he said, calm now. “Upstairs, in a room. It was round, the room.”
“Did you kill her there?”
“No, no, no.” He fell back a step and Harris lurched towards him, thinking he was about to run but the boy held his hands up and made it clear he was giving himself up. “No, I mean, I didn’t do it.”
So Harris rephrased the question with exactly the same intonation: “Did your friend kill her there?”
“No.” The boy was speaking to Harris and Morrow took the chance to move around behind and block him, why she didn’t know, she wasn’t in a fit condition to run after him or tackle him. “She ran downstairs. He did it there, at the bottom of the stairs.”
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“My car. I’ve got baby wipes covered in her blood.”
They all turned towards the sound: someone approaching from the far corner, walking quickly. A big square man in a gray suit came around the far side of the building and stormed over to them, taking charge.
“Hamilton-Gordon, get back inside.” He swung his shoulder between them and the boy. “Officers, what are you still doing on the school grounds? Mr. Doyle asked you to leave.”
Morrow was catching her breath. “Sorry, you are…?”
“Mr. Cooper.”
“OK, Mr. Cooper. We’re bringing this boy upstairs to talk to him, and Mr. Doyle or yourself can sit in.”
“No.” Cooper held a massive hand up flat to her face. “Here’s what’s going—”
Morrow was full of adrenaline and disappointed at the chase being cut short. She spoke so loudly that Harris and the boy cringed.
“We are detaining this boy in connection with the murder of Sarah Erroll. You can participate in the process. If you do not choose to participate an alternative responsible adult will be found to sit in on the process. The purpose of the appropriate adult is to clarify events, step by step. Is that clear to you?”
Cooper’s hand withered back down to his side. He looked from Morrow to the boy. “Jonathon, I’ll phone your father—”
“We did it,” said Jonathon, but he couldn’t look at Cooper. “We did it, sir.”
“You…?”
“And Thomas Anderson.”
Back up in Doyle’s office the boy was more cowed. He listened to his rights, nodding, as if he knew them already. Then he began to talk again. He hung over his knees, hugging himself as he told them the details. He didn’t waste time emoting or making a case in his own favor but stuck to the bald facts of how and where. Morrow watched, able to because the boy had decided that Harris was in charge and told him. The confession sounded rehearsed. He didn’t hesitate or wonder, wasn’t dredging up facts. He had practiced this confession and it bothered her that he had.
Doyle gave her a slip of paper with Thomas Anderson’s home address. She handed it to Harris and he slipped out to the corridor and made some calls to the other boy’s local cops.
Morrow made them sit in silence until he came back, upping the tension, making them itchy to talk. When Harris came back he looked lighter, gave her a nod, and she motioned for him to start the questioning again.
“How did you get there?”
“I’ve got a car…” Doyle and Cooper sat up at that, “in the village.”
“Where’s your car?”
“In a garage behind the Co-op.”
“Where did you get the car?”
“Dad got it for me.”
Doyle was furious. “You’re sixteen years old!”
“Well, Dad got it for me.”
Cooper flared his nostrils at Doyle. Morrow made a note to ask about the father.
“Jonathon.” She sat down near him. “Did you tell anyone about this? After it happened, did you speak to anyone?”
The boy looked up, his eyes red from being rubbed with his knees and he looked past Morrow to the window. “I did,” he said lightly, “I made a confession to Father Sholtham.”
“And what did he say?”
“He told me to call Thomas and get him to give himself up with me.”
“Will Father Sholtham confirm that?”
; He almost smiled. “Well, I don’t know if he can say what I said but he will admit that I spoke to him.”
“Did you call Thomas and ask him to give himself up?”
He was staring into the distance and chewing his fingertips.
“Jonathon, did you call Thomas?”
“He wouldn’t answer after the first time. He’s the guilty party. He didn’t want to give himself up. If you check his phone you’ll see that I called and called.”
She looked at his feet. He was wearing leather shoes, class shoes not sports shoes. “Have you got trainers, son?”
He shrugged. “I’ve ordered new ones from Mrs. Cullis in the linen room. They’ll be here any day. Might be here today.”
“I see. What size did you order?”
“I take an eight and a half. She’ll have a record of it. She had to write it down and everything.”
“Right.” She nodded, watched his face, saw an expression in his eyes, triumph or amusement, she couldn’t tell.
“What happened to your other ones?”
“Lost them.”
“When?”
He smirked at that. “This week sometime.”
“You ordered the new ones this week?”
“Yes.”
Harris asked: “And Thomas has those same shoes?”
“Yes, he does.” He was too quick with the answer, much too quick. “His shoes are in my room.”
Morrow interrupted. “Why are they in your room?”
“Oh, I must have picked his up thinking they were mine and then mine went missing so I had to order new ones. His name’s in them, I realized, after I took them to my room.”
“I see,” she said flatly. “Can I see one of the shoes you’re wearing now?” She held her hand out. He was reluctant, gave himself time to think about it. He bent down, pulled his laces loose, took the shoe off and handed it to her.
The leather instep was worn but she could still read it. It was a size nine and a half.