“There’s nothing you can do, not while the sheriff is still in charge.” Margo’s voice cut across the crowded room.
“The sheriff’s been murdered, Margo. He was killed last night on the estate. This isn’t only about righting wrongs, seeing that every child who suffered at the orphanage is given the right to see their abusers punished. It’s also about preventing any more murders. One of you either knows or suspects who the murderer is, or has information that will enable us to catch him. No matter what happened to you, and I know nothing can ever make that right, nobody can take the law into their own hands. Will you help me?”
“They had it coming.” A dishevelled character spoke up, the source of a sour aroma that permeated the room. He had the unhealthy pallor that Corstorphine associated with a lifetime of dissolution, a single-minded dedication to the use of drugs and alcohol to erase a life no longer worth living. It didn’t take a detective to work out this must be the homeless guy, George Winter.
“That’s as may be, but now’s your chance to take whoever was involved to court, see justice be done.” Corstorphine could see he was failing to inspire the three of them who still stood there, viewing him with distrust, looking at the exit and wondering if they should just leave him to it.
“And there is the matter of the compensation you’d be due if we follow this through.” He’d played his trump card. He watched the calculations begin in their eyes and knew he’d got them.
“Margo, shall we start with you? Hamish, can you make Mr Craig Derbyshire and Mr George Winter as comfortable as possible and we’ll have them in as soon as we can. Frankie, in with me, please.”
As Hamish led the other two down the stairs, Corstorphine indicated the interview room to Margo. Against her instincts she entered the room, wondering how much she could make out of this – enough to set her up for life?
“I’ll have to record this conversation, Margo, and read you your rights. Just tell me the truth. If you lie, then it gives the defence the perfect opportunity to destroy any case we bring. Do you understand?”
She nodded and sat with hands folded across her womb. This is for you, little one, this is for you.
Margo ran through everything she’d already told the Courier, adding details where Corstorphine pressed for more information. She confirmed that Oscar had beaten up the victim that drunken evening and not Simon Battle.
“Where was the reporter’s notebook, Margo? Where exactly did you find it?”
“I found it in the locked equipment store. It was the only place Oscar kept locked up. I wouldn’t have even looked for it but the laird was sniffing about. He knew Oscar had it, at least I think he knew he had something. Oscar always had some kind of hold over him. It wasn’t the usual laird-gamekeeper relationship.” She laughed mirthlessly.
“Was there anything else, Margo? Anything else that might help us identify who the murderer is?”
She considered, wondering whether the photographs were worth more to a newspaper or would help ensure a potential financial settlement from the court case. She reached into her bag and placed them on the desk in front of her.
“What are these?” Corstorphine queried.
“They were in with the reporter’s notebook. I think it’s the children who were killed. Someone’s drawn a skull and crossbones on the back of eight of them.”
Frankie reached over to take the photographs. They looked like the sort of thing you’d take in a passport photo booth, in the days before colour. She selected one, turned it over to show Corstorphine. There was the roughly-inked outline of a skull and crossbones, a child’s representation of death.
“Who is this?” Frankie held the photograph up for Margo to see.
She looked at it momentarily, disinterested. “Don’t know. Friends of Oscar’s? Back when he had friends,” she added.
“Who do you think drew the skull symbol on the back?”
“How should I know? I only saw them when I found the tin in the shed.”
“What tin was that, Margo?” Corstorphine’s voice was quiet.
“The photos and notebook were kept in a tin. To stop the mice eating them, I suppose. It was up in the rafters. I saw it with the flashlight.”
“What else did you find in the tin?”
Margo squirmed uncomfortably. “There wasn’t anything else, just the notebook and photos.”
Corstorphine’s eyebrow rose. “Who could identify these children?”
“I dunno. Ask Craig and Georgie, they stayed at the orphanage. I was just taken there by my parents whenever they volunteered to help. Godly work, they called it, working with the Holy Sisters.”
“Did they now? Are they still living here?” Corstorphine sensed another line of enquiry.
“Mum is. My dad died years ago. She’s still living at home. I haven’t seen her for ten years at least.”
“What’s her address?” Frankie took down the address, one of the council houses on the estate.
Corstorphine wrapped up the interview. “Margo, we’ll get a statement of what you’ve told us which you’ll need to sign. Can you stay here for an hour or so until we get that done?”
“I suppose,” came the sulky reply. “How much do you think we’re going to get?” Her mood picked up at the thought of more unexpected funds coming her way.
“That’s difficult to say, Margo. How long’s a piece of string?” Corstorphine formally concluded the interview, turning off the recorder as Frankie escorted Margo out of the room.
Margo muttered something under her breath as she passed Frankie by. It sounded suspiciously like ‘How fucking long is a length of fucking string?’
XXVII
FRIDAY 10:13
“Lamb!” Corstorphine called out from the interview room and the PC poked his head around the door, wondering whether he needed to prepare to duck.
“Yes, sir?”
“Come in. Stop making the place look even more uncomfortable. Here, grab a seat.”
PC Lamb sat uncomfortably beside the DI, hoping he hadn’t been identified as the source of leaks for the newspaper stories. Corstorphine already had a shrewd idea it was him; he’d been spotted buying the French reporter drinks in a town bar – nothing stayed secret in the town for long. Then there were a few idiosyncratic turns of phrase used in the paper which Josephine Sables was unlikely to have learned during the time she’d been here, and the clumsy description of the minister’s death, incorporating the words ‘dead ringer’ in an extremely unsubtle way.
“You know the French reporter for the Courier, don’t you?”
Lamb’s crestfallen face was sufficient evidence for Corstorphine, but he had other more pressing concerns. “Do you know what part of France she’s from?”
Lamb’s look of relief would have been amusing in any other circumstances. “Paris, sir. She told me she’s from Paris. Came over here a year ago to improve her English and saw the reporter’s job advertised.”
“Unusual for a Scottish newspaper to employ a French reporter, isn’t it?”
“Well, she worked for Paris Match or something, some big newspaper. Impressed the Courier’s editor so much that he offered her the job there and then.”
Corstorphine frowned as he wrote neat notes in his notebook. “She’s never had any connection with Toulouse?”
“Not that she ever told me, sir.” Lamb decided it would be prudent to fight a rear-guard action. “I don’t know her that well, sir. Just bumped into her at a few places and had a brief chat.”
“OK. Thanks, you’ve answered one question.” Lamb’s relieved expression faltered as Corstorphine added, “For the moment. Frankie tells me your father works for Highland Geophysical Research?”
“Yes, sir, he’s the CEO.”
“Good. I want you to ask him whether he could do us a massive favour.”
“Yes, sir, certainly. I
’m sure he’d be glad to – they’re looking for work now the A9 groundworks is winding down.”
Corstorphine passed over a sheet from the ordnance survey, an irregular outline marked in red biro prominent on the page. “If he can spare the equipment and manpower, I want this area checked with ground penetrating radar this morning, or as soon as humanly possible.”
“The site of the old orphanage gardens. What can I tell him you’re looking for, sir?”
“Graves. He’s looking for shallow unmarked graves that are the size of young children. Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to go now, sir?”
Corstorphine bit his tongue. “Yes, Lamb. Now! And ask your Josephine Sables to pop in urgently. I’ve something interesting for her. Tell her to bring the notebook. She’ll know what I mean.”
Corstorphine rummaged around in his desk, pulled out a small electrical screwdriver and returned to the interview room.
“Hamish, can you bring George Winter to the interview room? Oh, and raise a maintenance report when you get back to the front desk, the recording light seems to have stopped working on the voice recorder.”
By the time the desk sergeant returned, George Winter following in his footsteps like a lost wean, the screwdriver had been returned to Corstorphine’s pocket. “Can you stay in here sergeant? Make Mr Winter comfortable? I just need to get a fresh memory stick for the recorder.”
Corstorphine requisitioned a new USB memory stick and placed the old one on Frankie’s desk. “I know you’ve already got a lot on your plate, but I need a written statement for Margo to sign before she loses patience and leaves. Her interview is on this USB.”
“We’re getting calls from the press, sir. They want a TV interview for the evening news and…”
“Stall them. Brian will have called the Assistant Chief by now. I reckon we have at best an hour before he marches in here and tries to shut the whole investigation down.”
“He can’t do that! We need to find out the truth about those children and we’ve still to identify the murderer.”
“He can, and he will. It’s his prerogative to replace us with a hand-picked team from Inverness if he wants. We just have to make that as difficult as possible for him. Get Margo’s statement printed out and make sure she signs and dates it. Make two copies and countersign them yourself with the date and time. I’m going to interview George Winter now, then Craig Derbyshire, and hopefully I’ll get corroborative statements. Then we’ll see how Brian wants to play it once the cards are down.”
Corstorphine returned to the interview room, ran through the witness briefing and turned on the recorder. “The time is 10:24am, Friday 23rd May. Present are DI Corstorphine, Sergeant Hamish McKee and Mr George Winter. The recorder is now running. For the record, the voice recorder light has stopped working. We all OK with that?”
They nodded, wondering why he’d made a point of mentioning it.
“OK. George, you were at the orphanage run by the Sisters of Holy Mercy for how long?’
“I don’t remember anywhere else, so I must have been there as a baby. I left at sixteen like everyone else did. They didn’t want us once we were grown up.”
“Did you ever suffer from any abuse whilst at the orphanage?”
His eyes shot up from contemplation of the table. “Margo said the sheriff’s been killed, is that right?”
“Yes. His body was found yesterday evening.”
He grinned, eyes suddenly more alive than before. “Good!”
“Why do you say that, George? Did you have any reason to dislike the sheriff?”
“I hated the bastard. I’m glad someone’s got to him.”
“Did you have anything to do with his death, George?” Corstorphine asked gently.
“Me? You have to be joking. I can’t even manage to kill meself. Tried enough times.”
“Can you tell us about life at the orphanage, George?” Corstorphine asked again, trying not to look towards the clock ticking each second away, one by one.
“It wasn’t a place any child should have been sent to. You think you know what hell is, Inspector? Let me tell you. Hell isn’t a place where you go when you die and red devils torment you in fire for all eternity. No, it’s a lot worse than that. It’s a place where poor defenceless kids are left as playthings for the rich and powerful, where they’re used and thrown away like garbage, where they are killed for fun.”
“You saw this yourself?”
“Aye. I saw it. And I saw who did it. Those faces will never leave me. They come out of the dark to torment me, even now when I try and sleep. Death will be a fucking relief, but I’m glad they’re being taken, one by one.”
Corstorphine leaned forward. “Who do you remember, George? What are their names?”
He suddenly clammed up. “I’m not saying anything. You can’t do anything about them, they’re too powerful.”
“We’ve already been given names, George. William Booth has given us names, Margo has given us names. The more people give us information, the more we can make sure that we take these abusers down. Will you help us?”
He looked at them both, greasy hair turning grey as it curled over the collar of a coat two sizes too big for him. “What the fuck? What can anyone do to me now, anyway? It’s not as if I can sink any lower.”
His eyes sank towards the table again, unwilling or unable to face the two policemen as he told his tale of lost childhood for the first time in his life. At the end, Corstorphine passed over the photographs of the children. He looked at them as if seeing ghosts.
“Do you recognise any of these children, George? Were they at the orphanage with you?”
“Aye, I know some of them.” He made two small piles of the photographs, pointing to the pile of eight. “These are the ones they killed, the people I told you about.” He spelled out their names as he placed each one down, then spread the remaining seven out on the table, pulling out one. “This is me.” Another three photographs were lifted out of the pile. “This one’s Craig, this one’s William Booth, and this one’s Oscar.”
“What was Oscar doing at the orphanage?” Corstorphine queried. “He had parents.”
“Oh, Oscar was the minister’s favourite. He brought him along for all the special parties.”
Corstorphine formally finished the interview at 10:55, and had the sergeant accompany George back to an unlocked cell. He felt physically and mentally drained, but at least he now had the names of the children in the photographs and the names of five children whose deaths were never reported. Just one interview to go.
“Bill?” The PC was typing up the sheriff’s death on the report sheet. “Leave that. I want this audio recording typed up as soon as you can. Get George Winter to read and sign it, then countersign, date and time. Take two copies.”
He walked over to the front desk to see what the growing commotion was. Hamish was trying to fend off a growing melee of reporters. “Clear reception, Hamish, and lock the doors.” In a louder voice, he addressed the throng. “You’ll get a statement in good time. In the meantime, we have a job to do.” He spotted Josephine trying to get through the crowd of reporters and film crew and motioned her to go around the back to the car park.
“I had a message that you have some information for me?” She seemed totally unfazed by the scrum of reporters out front.
He locked the rear door before anyone else had the bright idea of entering the station that way. “Come with me.”
His office was an oasis of calm in the midst of a growing storm. “You’ve heard the laird has been found dead?”
“Why do you think I’m here? It was all around town by 9:00 a.m. I’ve been trying to call you, but the lines are always busy.”
“Yes, well, we didn’t design the comms infrastructure with the expectation that we’d be in the centre of a major murder enquiry. Li
sten, I don’t have much time. Did you bring the notebook and transcription?”
She dug around in her over-shoulder bag and produced two clear plastic folders. “My editor said you’d have a warrant before I hand these over?”
“I’ll have a warrant for you eventually. In the meantime, I’m going to give you everything I know.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why would you do that? You could jeopardise any prosecution, never mind lose your job!”
Corstorphine offered her a thin smile. “This is what I want you to do with the information.”
It had gone 11:30 a.m. by the time Josephine slipped out the back door, shorthand pad full of hastily constructed hieroglyphs. Still no sign of the Assistant Chief. At least something was going his way today.
“OK, Frankie, how’s the statement looking?”
“Finished, sir, and Margo’s signed it. She had one look at the front door and decided to stay here a while.”
He grimaced. “Can’t blame her for that. Let’s get Craig in for a chat.”
Once again, they sat in the interview room, Frankie accompanying him this time.
“Craig, thanks for your time. I’ll try and make this as brief as I can. You were at the orphanage at the same time as George Winter?”
“He was a lot older than me. I was only ten when I went there, same time as that journalist’s daughter. George must have been thirteen or fourteen.”
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