After more rummaging, Vikki found her car key. ‘It wasn’t just something. You were asking him about Daisy. You never told me you were acting for the man who murdered her.’
I let the whole presumption of guilt thing slide. ‘Would that have made a difference?’
‘Of course it would have made a difference. For one thing she was my friend. For another . . . Well, that’s the main one, and, there’s also the fact that you are supposed to be on paternity leave, not investigating a murder case.’ I’d really hoped she wouldn’t bring that up. ‘Where is Tina? Why isn’t she with you?’
‘She’s with my dad. I only nipped up here to see Barry about something.’
‘And to bring his secretary flowers?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Why were you phoning my office? They sent me a text saying you wanted to know where I was.’ She delved once more into her bag and brought out her phone, presumably, in case I demanded to see evidence.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ I said.
‘Really? Why ever, when you haven’t done anything wrong?’
‘I think you’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion,’ I said. ‘I’m a defence lawyer with a client who needs defending. Sorry if everyone is happy to convict him because they can’t find anyone else to pin the blame on, but some of us take our jobs seriously.’
Vikki pulled open the car door, threw her bag onto the passenger seat and turned to face me full on. She looked angry. Really angry and really pretty. ‘You don’t think I take my job seriously?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘I take my job very seriously, which is why I don’t mind telling you that your job should be to look after and bond with your child.’
‘That’s what I’m trying to do, but I’m also looking to the long term and this case is important to my business.’
‘Is it? Exactly how much are you being paid to abandon your daughter?’
‘It’s not like that.’ Well, it wasn’t too much like that. ‘If the court grants me residence of Tina . . . ’
‘If.’
‘I’m going to have to keep working. It would be a lie to pretend otherwise. How can you write a report based on an artificial set-up? By continuing to work – and by the way I’m concentrating only on one case at the moment, so it’s not taking up all of my time – everyone can form a much better idea of how things will be if Tina stays with me permanently.’ Vikki’s ire began to subdue slightly. ‘That said, I suppose I should have told you about my involvement in Daisy’s case.’
‘You lied to me. That first day at Sunnybrae. You weren’t there because of Molly, you were there for the same reason you went with me on Saturday: to find out what you could in order to get your client off.’
‘How is Molly?’ I asked.
The change of subject wasn’t seamless, but had the desired effect.
‘It’s hard to tell,’ Vikki said. ‘As you know, her communication skills are extremely underdeveloped.’
‘She’s welcome to come back and see Tina anytime. You are too.’
Vikki didn’t discount the suggestion out of hand. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I’m being hard on you. I’m a bit upset. I had a meeting with Barry earlier.’
‘About Tina?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not about Tina.’ She looked like she was about to start crying. Now what was I supposed to do? Give her a hug? I patted her shoulder a couple of times. She sniffed and wiped a hand across her brow, flicking hair out of her face. ‘I was seeing Barry about another case in which things haven’t gone quite to plan and . . . no, let’s say in which Barry has totally botched up. I hope that man’s got professional indemnity insurance because . . . ’ She reached into the car and tugged a packet of paper hankies out of her bag along with a stuffed pelican. The toy rolled across the seat, out of the door and onto the ground. ‘And before I can do anything else I’ve to get that stupid thing back to Molly.’ Vikki gave the stuffed animal a gentle kick with the toe of her shoe, blowing her nose on a tissue at the same time. ‘She left it when they took her to the dentist yesterday. I told the Home I’d pick it up when I was passing and they’ve been on to say that she’s howling the place down for it.’
I bent and picked up La-La the pelican. The only memento Molly had of her real mother. What was Molly’s mum’s real name?’ I asked. ‘I don’t suppose it was actually La-La?’
Vikki almost allowed herself a smile. She took the stuffed toy from me. ‘Lafayette,’ she said. ‘Lafayette Delgado. Now you know why people called her La-La.’
31
Tuesday. No nursery and I had things to do. First was to drop off my dirty suit. I’d already given it a pretty thorough wipe down to remove any lasting reminders of my first meeting with Molly, but felt I needed the reassurance of a proper dry-clean.
I was almost out of the shop door when the dry-cleaning man called me back in.
‘You want this cleaned too?’ he asked, holding up a mobile phone. It wasn’t mine; that was still in my secretary’s safe keeping. It took me a few seconds to remember that it was the one I had taken from Molly at the farmhouse.
I took the phone and shoved it into my pocket. So far so good. Next up was food shopping. Starting at ten I’d reasonably estimated a time frame of one hour to visit both dry-cleaner and supermarket. No chance. A shopping trip with Tina involved returning more things to the shelf than actually ended up staying in the trolley, and then there was a major delay caused by the great biscuit debate of aisle 18 where, due to some stocktaking disaster there were no BN biscuits other than apricot ones which Tina didn’t like the look of.
After the baked-goods equivalent of the Man Booker Prize selection process, the choice was whittled down to either Jammie Dodgers or Jaffa Cakes. I told Tina she could have one or other; learning to make decisions was an important part of growing up. Much soul-searching, some pleading and one near-tantrum later, Tina and a packet of Jammie Dodgers did eventually make the trip from biscuit aisle to check-out, where was found, to Tina’s alleged amazement, a pack of Jaffa Cakes hiding under a box of Rice Krispies. Another important part of growing up: getting your own way. Tina was ahead of the learning curve on that one.
‘You can’t treat this place like a crèche,’ Grace-Mary said, when we dropped in to my office around noon. My secretary liked to complain. I was pretty sure it was in her job description. I slipped through to my office and put Molly’s mobile phone on to charge. Grace-Mary was still speaking on my return to reception. ‘There are people trying to work here, you know?’
‘Where’s Joanna?’ I asked.
‘Court.’
‘Then what’s the problem? If she’s not dictating, you’re not typing.’
‘I don’t just type. We’ve just been sent a whole lot of disclosure in the Pudney case and I’ve got to print it all and sort it out.’
I took a quick look at the latest evidence to arrive by the Crown’s secure email system. It was mainly photographs of the crime scene and surroundings, as well as before-and-after autopsy shots.
‘Leave it,’ I said. ‘I’ll look through them later and print off the ones I think are important.’
‘It’s not just these. I’ve other things to be doing as well,’ Grace-Mary said.
‘That’s all right. Don’t mind Tina.’ I set down two carrier bags full of groceries on the reception desk. ‘I’ll only be half an hour. Make her some juice, throw a couple of Jammie Dodgers in her general direction and she’ll sit and draw until I come back.’
‘I like drawing,’ Tina confirmed. ‘But I like painting better.’
Grace-Mary took some sheets of A4 off the desk and selected a pen, pencil and yellow highlighter. ‘You’re drawing.’ She took Tina by the hand. ‘Let’s go through to your dad’s office and you can draw me a letter of resignation.’ She stopped on the way out of reception. ‘Was there anything else? I am available at weekends and for children’s parties.’
‘Lafayette Delgado,’ I said.
; ‘Who’s she?’
‘She was the natural mother of Molly, the girl I found at the farmhouse. She died a few years back, a drugs overdose in Edinburgh somewhere.’
‘Molly’s my friend,’ Tina said. ‘Her mum is in heaven too.’ Grace-Mary let go her hand and she ran through to my office.
‘And . . . ?’ my secretary asked.
‘I wondered if you could phone the Fiscal in Edinburgh and see what you can find out about her.’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything. Where she died, when she died—’
‘Her shoe size?’
‘Probably not strictly necessary, but you’re getting the idea.’
‘You really think the PF’s office will release information over the phone? They’ll want a letter and a good reason for the request. Even then, what chance is there of actually getting a reply?’
True. Writing to the PF was one of life’s more futile exercises. Like a beam of light at the edge of a galactic black hole, correspondence, it seemed, could enter the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service but not escape.
There was a crash from next door. The perfect distraction. Father and daughter working as a team. Grace-Mary went through to assess the damage. I took the opportunity to leave.
An hour later I was back with more carrier bags full of stuff I’d never realised were even for sale until my daughter had come to stay. ‘Took a bit longer than I expected,’ I said, by way of apology. Grace-Mary was sitting at reception with Tina who was playing with the phones. ‘Who are you phoning?’ I asked.
‘I’m phoning Granny Vera,’ Tina said, phone to her ear, punching random numbers.
Grace-Mary held up the end of the phone line which she’d unplugged from the wall.
‘What’s she wanting to phone her granny for?’ I whispered to Grace-Mary.
‘She misses her. Nothing wrong with that.’
Tina had lived with Vera Reynolds for several weeks before she came to live with me. I knew I shouldn’t feel threatened, except I did.
‘I haven’t had my lunch yet.’ Grace-Mary handed me the end of the telephone cable. ‘When Tina’s finished speaking to her gran, plug it back in.’ She came around the reception desk and unhooked her raincoat from the back of the door.
‘I don’t suppose you got around to phoning the PF about Lafayette Delgado?’ I asked, helping my secretary struggle into her raincoat.
‘Of course I did.’ Grace-Mary tilted her head at Tina, now deep in an imaginary conversation. ‘After all, I’ve had nothing else to do.’ Point made and raincoat on she went to the fax machine. ‘I find that if you want to know information about a dead person the best place to start is the Registrar’s Office. Here.’ She handed me a sheet of paper. Lafayette Delgado’s death certificate. ‘Robbie, this business with the Sunnybrae murders and Jake Turpie. Don’t you think it’s getting in the way of more important things?’ She tilted her head at Tina.
‘I’m doing this for you-know-who,’ I said. ‘I win the case and I own this office. Less outlay, more income, bigger house, better chance of keeping my daughter. Also, less chance of future back problems for me if I don’t have to sleep on that camp bed.’
Grace-Mary wrapped a scarf around her neck and tucked it inside her coat. She said goodbye to Tina and walked to the door. ‘Sometimes I think if you lived in a mansion and had a four-poster bed you’d still be doing this. Honestly, it’s not fair on the girl.’
I followed her into the corridor and halfway down the stairs on her way to the front door.
‘Where are you going for lunch?’ I asked.
‘Never mind me. All Tina has had to eat is some biscuits. A growing girl can’t survive on Jammie Dodgers and Jaffa Cakes. Why don’t you close the office for an hour and take her for something nice to eat?’
I put my hand in my pocket, pulled out all the cash I had left over from my morning at the shops and shoved it at Grace-Mary. ‘How about you do that?’
32
Lafayette Delgado had been pronounced dead one May morning nearly four years before. She’d been thirty-one. The cause of death: diamorphine overdose. The place of death: Cypress House, Leith, an anonymous red sandstone building down by the Firth of Forth. Four storeys high, it was divided into a few self-contained bedsits with a communal lounge, kitchen and laundry on the ground floor.
Men who turn up unannounced at a women’s refuge can expect a less than warm reception, unless it’s the heat of burning oil being poured from an upstairs window. Defence lawyers take their lives in their hands, which was why, with a transient flash of my Law Society ID card, I introduced myself as a lawyer investigating the death of Daisy Adams, keeping my actual role in proceedings as hazy as possible.
The caretaker was a short, solid woman of indeterminate age with a bleached blonde crew cut. She was wearing denim dungarees and the sleeves of her checked shirt were rolled up to reveal a series of ancient India-ink tattoos. She remembered Daisy and had seen reports about her on the news.
‘I thought they’d got someone for the murder,’ she said over her shoulder, leading me from the entrance, down the hallway and into a laundry room that was home to a couple of industrial-sized washing machines, a spin drier and a herd of clothes horses. The damp had lifted the cracked lino in places to expose a stone floor. Drying racks draped with wet clothes were suspended from the ceiling, their pulley-ropes tied to wall hooks in horribly complicated knots. ‘You thinking maybe it could have been someone else? What about her ex?’
‘He’s forming part of my enquiry,’ I said, trying to sound official and prosecutorial.
‘He’s got a flower shop.’ Bleach-blonde put her back against a washing machine, placed two hands on top, jumped up and sat crossed-legged. ‘Down Gorgie Road. I was in there once, before I knew who he was. He seemed all right, but then they’re all sweetness and light when they want to be.’
From which I inferred she was referring to those of us with a Y chromosome. Now wasn’t the time to stick up for my sex. Bleach-blonde struck me as a woman not overly fond of men, in any capacity. ‘What was Daisy like?’ I asked. ‘Did she have enemies?’
‘Apart from the bastard who broke her jaw? No, Daisy was really lovely. Got on with everyone. She was here quite a wee while coz her husband was out on bail for his trial and it kept getting put off. For most of the girls this is just a temporary stop-off until they can get themselves sorted and back on their feet.’
‘She had a friend, I think. Lafayette Delgado. She died here, didn’t she?’
The sound of feet in the hall. A child’s voice.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Daisy adopted her daughter. I’m trying to make a connection, see if there are other lines of investigation I should follow.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t divulge anything at this stage, it’s all part of the ongoing enquiry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
A woman entered the room carrying a white plastic pail full of dirty clothes in one hand and dragging a toddler along by the other. She eyed me suspiciously.
The caretaker jumped down from the washing machine, said something to the woman about fabric conditioner and then led me out and up several flights of creaky stairs to the top of the building and a converted attic with a coombed ceiling. There was an ironing board in the centre of the room surrounded by baskets of laundry. She pointed at a bed in the corner of the room. It had no covers or pillows and was piled high with bundles of neatly folded clothes. ‘That’s where they found her. Right there.’
‘Had you known Lafayette for long?’
The caretaker smiled. ‘Sorry, it’s just that you keep saying Lafayette. I only ever knew her as La-La. We were at the same school. I was the year below, in her sister’s class. That’s probably when she started getting called La-La – a whole lot of five-year-olds trying to say Lafayette? Not happening, is it?’ She walked over to a window set into the slope of the ceiling, and on tiptoes tried to lo
ok out. ‘We all looked up to La-La, and I mean up. She’d have had no trouble seeing out of here. She was about your height, taller in her heels.’
I went over and stood beside her and gazed out over a strip of grey sea to an island in the hazy distance. It was a fine view, even on an overcast October afternoon.
‘That’s Inchkeith,’ she said. ‘They used to quarantine folk with syphilis there. That was back in the Middle Ages. Did the same when the plague hit town.’ She laughed. ‘I like history. I read a book on it once. Did you know that James the Fourth had the great idea of marooning a dumb mother and her two babies over there to see what language the kids would end up speaking?’
I could probably have gone through the rest of my life happily not knowing, but she told me anyway.
‘He thought that with no one to teach them a language, they’d come back speaking the pure language of God, whatever that is. All he got after a few years was a couple of kids doing a whole lot of grunting.’ She turned to look at me, jerked her head. ‘Men, eh?’
I shrugged apologetically on behalf of my brethren, and she was off again on the island’s history, this time about ‘The Rough Wooing’ and Mary Queen of Scots. The clock on the wall said half past one.
‘Was it you who found La-La’s body?’ I asked, as the Seventeenth Century loomed.
‘Yeah. Daisy heard crying and went to see what the matter was. The door was locked and she couldn’t get any response from inside except for the bairn breaking its wee heart. Daisy loved that kid. I’m not surprised to hear that she adopted it. Anyway, she shouted for me, I broke in and found La-La, stiff and cold with a syringe sticking out from between her toes.’
‘Why was La-La staying here?’
‘The room was spare. The other rooms are properly fitted out. We really only used this for storage. I do the ironing here now. It’s not part of my job, but I like it. I whack the radio on and off I go. The girls give me a few quid sometimes. It’s peaceful.’
‘Why take her in? Did she have man trouble?’
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