‘Dad! Dad!’ The words carried to me through the deafening din. It was Tina’s voice and I, like a ewe, had distinguished the bleats of my little lamb from the rest of the flock. That said, my little lamb’s bleats were a lot louder than most of the other little lambs and she was standing only ten feet away, on tiptoe, trying to peer over the top of a bright-yellow picket fence.
Tina was thirsty. Again. Problem was there were several notices scattered about stating that no food or drink was to enter the soft play area and Tina didn’t want to leave as that would entail me signing her out, returning to our table for a drink and then queuing up to be signed back in again; a process invariably delayed by a steady stream of snotty-faced children wailing about some minor injury or other and wanting their mums. So to circumvent this rigmarole we’d developed our own system. Tina squeezed her face against the fence, I held a carton of apple juice between the slats and she sucked it through a straw. It was the playground equivalent of a Formula One pit stop, and carried out at a speed with which the McLaren team would have been pretty pleased.
Refuelled, Tina sped off and I returned to my table to find Vikki, still with a teary-eyed little girl at her side.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Molly doesn’t want to go in.’
Molly? It was the girl I’d rescued from the farm. ‘Hi, Molly?’ I said. ‘Do you remember me?’ If she did she didn’t say, just turned and pressed her face against Vikki’s thigh. A metre further north, Vikki was looking puzzled.
‘Wait there,’ I said, and went off in search of Tina. After a few minutes hunting, one of the supervisors came to the gate with her. ‘There’s a wee girl here who’s not sure what to do,’ I said to my daughter. ‘I want you to take her hand and stay with her until she gets used to everything, okay?’
Tina was prepared to give it a shot and so, after some persuasion, was Molly.
‘Thanks for that,’ Vikki said, after we’d resumed our seats and she’d brought us over some coffees. ‘Forgive me for asking, but how is it that you know Molly?’
‘I found Molly up at the farm and took her to the police.’ At least that part was true. ‘That’s why I was there yesterday; I was just wanting to know how she was getting on. I wasn’t sure what had become of her.’
‘It was you who found her? The police wouldn’t tell me what happened. Obviously, I know about Daisy. Were you a friend of hers?’
‘Not a friend. I was there to see her about some legal business. It was confidential. You’ll understand?’
Fortunately for me, Vikki did. The conversation moved on to Molly for a while, but it wasn’t long until I had us back on the topic of dead Daisy Adams.
‘She moved through this way about a year ago,’ Vikki said. ‘But you’ll probably know all about that.’ She looked to me for confirmation, didn’t receive any and continued. ‘She had problems in her personal life. She wanted to adopt Molly, and there were a lot of obstacles in the way. I guided her through the process and prepared the report prior to the court granting the permanence order.’ Vikki took a sip of coffee. ‘We saw each other so often during the adoption process that we became friends. She didn’t seem to have many of those. Kept herself very much to herself. I used to drop by now and again or we’d meet up for lunch or to take Molly somewhere. The last few weeks I’d been so busy it was text messages only.’
‘What’s going to happen to Molly?’ I asked.
Vikki shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. Daisy has no family, just an ex-husband prone to domestic violence. Molly calls me Aunt Vikki. For the moment I’m the nearest thing to family she has.’
‘But there must be plenty of people out there looking to adopt?’
Vikki set down her coffee mug, shaking her head. ‘Potential adopters want babies, not five-year-olds. And Molly has other problems than just her age. At first they thought she had foetal alcohol syndrome. It’s not as bad as that, fortunately, but now they think she could have a mild form of autism. She’s not what you’d call a catch. She’s a young girl who might grow up to be a bit of a handful. She looked over her shoulder at the play area. ‘How’s Tina doing? Are you coping?’
Everyone wanted to know if I was coping. Did women who were single parents get asked the same question? Or because they were women, was the ability to cope implied? Was it all part of the gender bias Barry Munn had warned me about? Maybe I was reading too much into what was, after all, an innocent enough question – even if it did come from the woman who would eventually write the report recommending, or not, my suitability as Tina’s full-time parent. Why hadn’t I at least paid for the coffees?
‘No bother. We’re getting on great,’ I said.
‘Can’t be easy. Single man, busy professional life. Paternity leave is a fairly new concept for some employers. How is yours taking it?’
‘No problems there either,’ I said. ‘I’m on very friendly terms with the boss.’
‘Good,’ she said. Had she done no research on me at all? Hopefully not. ‘Still, no matter how understanding your employer is, it won’t be easy when you go back to work and have to deal with both a professional and a family life. You don’t have a partner, do you?’ Maybe she had done some background checking after all. Or perhaps she could just tell.
‘That particular situation is vacant at the moment, but I can manage. In my line of work I’m used to juggling court cases. Being in two places at the same time is practically second nature.’
‘And you’ll just add Tina to all the things you have up in the air? Better watch you don’t let something drop.’ Vikki took another drink of coffee. ‘But being in two places at one time?’ She looked down at the dregs in her coffee mug. ‘That’s a useful skill to have.’ She said something else. I didn’t hear what because I wasn’t listening. Suddenly I realised that she was smiling and I wasn’t smiling back.
‘Sorry,’ I said, thumping the side of my head with the heel of my hand.
‘I think you were somewhere else just now,’ Vikki laughed. ‘Miles away, in fact.’
‘I think it’s called being a parent,’ I said. ‘There’s always something needing done. I’m still trying to get to grips with it.’ I made a reasonable attempt at a light laugh. What was I doing? I should have been concentrating more on making a good impression, and yet, two places at the same time? Wasn’t Deek in Glasgow being assaulted by Marty Sneddon one day a couple of weeks ago? When exactly was Daisy Adams murdered? I needed to find out. It was at times like those I wished I had a watch to look at, so I could say, ‘Goodness, is that the time?’ and make an escape.
The appearance of Tina’s face at the yellow fence, a much happier Molly by her side, helped rescue me from the awkward moment. I thought she might be thirsty again and picked up the half-full apple juice carton, but Tina just waved and then they were off again.
‘Those two seem to be getting on well,’ Vikki said. ‘How about me and Molly come back with you after this? The girls can play and, since I’ve had no luck catching up with you through the week, you can tell me all about yourself and how the father/daughter bonding is coming along.’
I hadn’t had a lot of practice dissuading good-looking women from inviting themselves back to my place, but I feared this would be no social visit. I had a fleet of dirty dishes floating in my sink, a bedroom festooned with unwashed clothes and a mountain of ironing you could have planted a flag atop. I couldn’t let myself be seduced into a spot check on my daughter’s accommodation. I could almost see Vikki’s court report now, featuring adjectives such as unhygienic, chaotic and war-torn.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘can we make it some other time?’
‘Of course.’ Vikki broke off eye contact, sat back, picked up Molly’s folded coat, opened it and, for no apparent reason, refolded it.
Had I misread the signals? Maybe she was just being friendly. Maybe it was just a social visit. Did there have to be an ulterior motive? Why did women always have to be so subtle about everything? Semaphore was tricky, b
ut at least there was a manual to read.
‘Tomorrow?’ I blurted.
‘Tomorrow’s not good for me, I’m afraid.’
‘What about Tuesday? Or Wednesday? I’m pretty much free all week.’
Vikki paused. ‘I could perhaps do Wednesday.’
‘Tina has nursery in the morning.’
‘Then let’s make it the afternoon. That’ll give you time to collect Tina from nursery and get lunch out of the way.’
The girls were at the fence again, waving to us.
‘Wednesday afternoon would be fine,’ I said. It would probably take me until then to tidy up.
20
I’d forgotten that Edinburgh Zoo was built on the side of a hill. I couldn’t have been much older than Tina on my last visit, and too excited to notice the steep incline.
Unhelpfully, my dad had told Tina all about the giant pandas and it was the pandas my daughter wanted to see. Trouble was, so did everyone else and I wasn’t all that keen on forking out even more money to stand in line just to see a couple of bears with a custom paint job eating bamboo shoots. As things turned out, I was spared the extra expense because the Chinese immigrants were attempting procreation. They needed peace and quiet and so their enclosure was closed for several weeks, while the mood-lighting was installed and Barry White music piped in.
‘What else does it do?’ Tina asked, as she stared through the security glass at a lioness, sprawled on a rock and being annoyed by a gang of impertinent sparrows.
‘Not all that much, really,’ I said. ‘Unless you go in there beside it.’
‘What does it do then?’
I grabbed her and gave her a shake, snarling, ‘It eats you up for its tea!’
Tina found that more amusing than the couple a few yards away, whose own children looked at us as though we were part of the exhibits. When the one in the pushchair began to cry, I took Tina’s hand and led her away in search of more animal magic. There wasn’t any. The giraffes had gone and a bronze statue of an elephant wasn’t the same as the real thing. I explained to her that the sign beneath it said that being in a zoo made elephants unhappy and so they didn’t keep them any more.
‘Are the other animals unhappy too?’ she asked.
I told her the other residents were generally pretty ecstatic about their surroundings, especially the penguins. Pre panda-mania, they had topped the bill at the Edinburgh Zoo. Armed with ice lollies, we joined the crowd lining the avenue from Penguin Rock and waited patiently for the daily parade. On the appointed hour the gate was opened. Four penguins, a King, a Gentoo and a couple of Rockhoppers emerged and waddled past, more, I suspected, out of a sense of duty than any joie de vivre.
‘Why are the rest of them not coming out, Dad?’ Tina asked. I was wondering the same thing until the keeper explained that under some sort of European Convention of Penguin Rights, the birds were no longer made or even encouraged to take part in the parade nowadays, and only went for a walk if they felt like it.
‘I think it’s a bit cold for some of them today,’ the keeper laughed, and waddled after his dinner-suited charges in his wellies.
Things didn’t improve after that. Many of the enclosures that had promised so much were empty, their occupants having decided either to take that October Monday as a duvet day or been given early release for good behaviour.
I thought the reptile house might cheer us up. It had been my favourite as a lad. Sadly, like my childhood, it had long gone and as we hadn’t pre-booked a ticket for the half-hour lecture on snakes, we had to slither off in search of other exotic life forms. It was the lemurs who saved the day. Some might say it was stretching the truth for me to call them baby pandas, but surely that was down to a quirk of evolution and, judging by Tina’s excitement at seeing them, one black and white furry animal was as good as another to someone who still believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
‘Where are we going now?’ she wanted to know as I strapped her into the car. She was clutching a panda key ring from the Zoo gift shop as if it was made of gold, and which, by the price tag, it should have been. ‘Are we going home for tea?’
We weren’t. Not just yet. I climbed aboard, started the engine and set off towards Edinburgh, the city that hates motorists.
‘Where are we going then?’
‘To see a man.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s going to help Daddy with his work.’
‘Does he put baddies in jail too?’
‘Sometimes. But he’s not a lawyer like me. He’s a doctor,’ I said, trying to remember the way to Professor Edward Bradley’s house. I’d only been to it once before, but in a posh area like this I was certain his rusting Volvo estate would stick out a mile.
I took a left turn into a wide tree-lined street, not a lacrosse shot from St George’s School for Girls. There had been a couple of former pupils in my year at uni. I’d gone out with one of them for a while until her parents decided we weren’t right for each other.
I suddenly noticed that Tina was awfully quiet. I checked the rear-view mirror. She was sitting picking the fuzzy skin off her panda key ring.
‘Don’t waste it,’ I said.
She looked up and our eyes met in the mirror. Hers looked watery. ‘Are you not feeling well, Dad?’
‘Me? No, I’m fine.’
‘Why are you going to the doctor then?’
‘He’s not that kind of doctor.’
‘What kind of doctor is he?’
‘A special doctor. He looks at dead people and finds out what they died of,’ I said.
Silence from the back seat. My explanation hadn’t helped much. What was going through that little head. Memories of her mum? I forced a laugh. ‘Wait until Gramps hears that you saw some baby pandas.’
There was a long pause and then, ‘I liked their big long tails the best.’ Soon Tina was blethering away happily on the subject of her trip to the zoo, and I realised that there was only one thing worse than Tina’s incessant talking and that was her not talking. I kept the chat going until I spied a familiar clapped-out Volvo in the driveway of a big old sandstone house and pulled in behind it. I was unbuckling Tina from her child seat when the professor materialised amidst wreaths of pipe smoke.
‘Robbie Munro, is that you?’ Tina jumped out. ‘And who’s this you’ve brought with you?’
‘This,’ I said, Tina in front of me, my hands on her shoulders, ‘is my daughter. Say hello to Professor Bradley, Tina.’
‘You shouldn’t smoke. It makes you die. And it smells horrible,’ Tina said.
‘And very nice to meet you too, young lady.’ The professor gave Tina a cautious pat on the head as though she might be infectious.
‘You’re still smoking,’ Tina said, in case the professor hadn’t noticed.
Professor Bradley stared down at Tina who, in order to drive home her message, had screwed up her face and was pinching her nose. ‘I didn’t know you had a daughter, Robbie.’
‘Came as a pleasant surprise to me too,’ I said.
He took a couple of draws from his pipe and after blowing a cloud of blue smoke skywards, pointed the stem at the house and the open front door. ‘Run inside, dear, and tell Mrs Bradley to put the kettle on. Sounds like you and her have a lot in common.’
‘No, we’ll not disturb you,’ I said, keeping a grip on Tina’s shoulders. ‘It’s just a flying visit.’
‘Robbie, if this is to do with . . . the little lady and DNA or something, I’m afraid that’s not really—’
‘What?’
Tina started to cough loudly. ‘Are you going to stop smoking or do you want to die?’ she asked.
‘I’m talking about your little anti-tobacco campaigner.’ The Professor tried to ruffle Tina’s hair but she pulled away. ‘If you’re looking for me to run some tests . . . ’
I laughed. ‘No, nothing like that. She’s definitely mine.’
‘Yes,’ said the professor, ‘I was beginning to detect a certain fam
ilial likeness. Is she always quite so . . . forthright?’
A grey squirrel ran down a tree and across our path. It stopped on the front lawn to gnaw at something.
‘Go and see how close you can get to it,’ I said. ‘Be very quiet, you don’t want to scare it.’
‘Scare it as much as you want,’ the professor said, through another blast of smoke. ‘If I could get close enough, I’d throttle it. One of them chewed through the telephone cable. I had to use the wife’s mobile for a week, stupid wee footery thing, buttons the size of pinheads and, when you do manage to get through to anyone, you can either put it to your ear or at your mouth, never both at the same time. Anyway,’ he said, watching Tina run off and letting loose a rapid series of puffs, ‘where’s the girl’s mother?’
‘Dead,’ I said.
‘Oh. But that’s not why you’re here?’
‘No, I want to speak to you about the deaths at Sunnybrae Farm. The PF tells me you carried out the post-mortems.’
The professor turned the bulb of his pipe upside down and banged it against the palm of his hand. Sparks and burning tobacco fell out on to the driveway and burst on impact like tiny bombs. He ground the smouldering ash with the sole of an ox-blood brogue. ‘Robbie, this is highly irregular.’
‘All I want to know is time of death.’
‘And that’s something you’ll find out soon enough – once the prosecution authorities are ready to release that information to you.’
‘Meanwhile my client has to rot in jail for a crime he didn’t do?’
‘Your clients never do anything, Robbie. When I think of all those poor innocent men and women picked on by the state and—’
‘Listen, when my dad dies you can have his job. Until then what’s so top secret about time of death?’
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