The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘Nice thought, nice to try and make a difference.’

  Anderson needed to be careful here. He kept reminding himself that this man had lost his wife and his child, and tried to wish him well. But somehow, he just couldn’t empathize without immediately feeling a churning anger that it might have been him who killed them.

  ‘Do you want a coffee? I’m having one,’ said Anderson.

  George shook his head, his arms out. ‘No, no, I didn’t want to interfere with your night. I popped in to see Moses and the girls invited me in. I had brought you a nice Rioja. They have drunk it. And I had a game of Zombie Gunship with Peter. He beat me, he absolutely wasted me.’

  Anderson made an empathetic noise as if he knew what Haggerty was talking about, trying to hide the increasing unease that Mr George Haggerty was becoming so familiar with his own children. And a rage of jealousy that Peter had never, ever, asked his dad to play Zombie Gunship with him.

  ‘Yet again I have abused your hospitality, but I did want to know if you had heard anything.’ He sat back down, waiting and cautious, keen for any details. ‘In case you didn’t want to say in front of the girls.’

  ‘I’m sorry, George, but honestly, you probably know more than me. DCI Mathieson is good. She will be working away but keeping it from public attention. The exact time of death is causing problems. The pathologist thinks very early in the morning, you know, around six a.m., so why were they both dressed. They should have been in their night clothes.’

  George nodded. ‘They asked me about that. They were dressed when I left the house. That pathologist told me they had to reposition the bodies at the mortuary so they could line up the wounds; some blows from that knife had gone through both bodies …’

  Anderson was sure O’Hare had said nothing of the sort. ‘Mathieson wants to trace the CCTV, try and get a vehicle check. There’s a lot about the case that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘They keep asking me if Abigail had another man in her life. She didn’t, just so you know.’ He turned to look at Moses, running his fingertip up and down the baby’s chubby cheek.

  Anderson wanted to ask him not to do that, but had no reason to, apart from that vague dislike. He had no reason for that either.

  George turned and looked up, as if he had read Anderson’s mind. ‘I hope you don’t mind me being here.’

  ‘Well,’ Anderson struggled to be honest, ‘the circumstances are a little weird.’

  ‘I like to talk to Claire; she is so very like Mary Jane.’

  ‘Well, they were half-sisters,’ said Anderson mildly.

  George was staring at the door, watching the space where Claire had left the room. ‘Claire has got such brains, concentration, focus. She’s so talented. Have you seen this picture of Moses?’ He patted the unwrapped package beside him, smiling.

  ‘She gets that from her mum,’ muttered Anderson, pouring in the boiling water to the coffee.

  ‘They have the same gestures and the same …’ Haggerty paused, a wry smile played around his lips.

  ‘Attitude?’ offered Anderson.

  ‘Well maybe, in your daughter, it’s a well thought out …’

  ‘They were both my daughters,’ corrected Anderson, then softened it with, ‘but I know what you mean, something in that DNA that you cannot deny. Claire is an artist, Mary Jane was a singer.’

  ‘Mary Jane thought she was a singer, that’s not the same thing. She couldn’t sing, no talent at all, but wouldn’t be told. What a disservice we do our youth by letting them believe that everybody is owed their fifteen minutes of fame. And Mary Jane was nowhere near as intelligent or as instantly likeable as your Claire. This portrait of Moses shows a maturity beyond her years.’

  Stay away from my children. Anderson pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Claire has been through a lot, far more than somebody of that age should be, but I’d like to think that she regards Brenda and I as constants in her life. No matter what she does, we will always be here. Mary Jane might have felt rejected by her birth mother, then her adopted Dad died, and then she was rejected again, maybe that coloured her whole life. If she knew it could be as precarious as that, why shouldn’t she go and try to achieve what she wanted? I’m sure you didn’t want to dash her dreams.’

  ‘And then she dashes every dream she had by getting herself pregnant. And not a word to her mother or me.’ George’s eyes narrowed, as if not being told was the bigger issue.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Not until … no, I didn’t. I do wonder if Abigail knew though. But she would have told me.’ He placed his hands behind his neck. ‘Mary Jane was twenty-four, she should have been able to cope with it on her own. I suppose she was drawn to having the baby adopted, as she herself had been.’

  Anderson did not know how much George knew. Mary Jane was not having her child adopted; she had sold it just as her own mother had sold her. Mary Jane had sold her baby to a couple who had really wanted a child, just as, twenty-four years before, Anderson’s old girlfriend Sally had got pregnant with Mary Jane, not told him and sold their baby to Abigail and Oscar Duguid. Nobody knew who Mary Jane’s baby had been destined for as Moses had been born Downs Syndrome and had been deemed not fit for purpose.

  And that made Colin Anderson very angry.

  He presumed that there was a strange kind of karmic synergy in that. Did George really not know that; had Abigail kept the pregnancy secret from him? That would have rattled a control freak like him. Anderson sipped his coffee wondering how hurt he would be if Claire kept something like that from him. But she never would. Or would she?

  No.

  Anderson looked at the man sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee, talking about his daughter and his grandson. He could see how easy it would be to paint him as prime suspect, as Costello had done. His mouth opened before his brain could catch it.

  ‘Did you report DI Costello for harassment?’

  George had not expected the question. He had thought they were having a friendly father to father talk, not cop to witness, or cop to suspect. His dark brown hair fell over his forehead, giving him the appearance of a guilty schoolboy. His eyes darted around, he was thinking too long to answer truthfully. ‘I think I did, I didn’t mean to. I was sort of saying to somebody, one of your colleagues, that Costello was parking outside my house, watching me, when I had already been spoken to, my statement had been taken, my alibi confirmed.’ He raised his finger to Anderson making his point. ‘I had been cleared. Costello was annoying me for no real reason. It was Diane Mathieson I spoke to and she said to stop Costello, I really had to make it official, so yes in the end I did report her for harassment.’

  Anderson nodded, imagining how that conversation would have gone down. He was about to ask if Costello had left him alone after that but Haggerty returned to talking about Mary Jane. Anderson had thought he had caught a moment’s hesitation, when Haggerty had considered lying, lying as an afterthought. Haggerty was here to talk his own conversation; the mention of Costello had made him a little uneasy, scared even.

  Had she been onto something?

  He sipped his coffee, watching as George Haggerty rubbed Moses’ head and for the first time Colin Anderson felt a little fearful of what might have become of his sidekick.

  He dragged away the chair, pulling Moses’ cot with it.

  The Casualty officer had taken one quick look, checked the chart where the patient’s vital signs were being recorded and then taken a closer look at the occipital wound. While noticing it was remarkably clean, he saw it was also very deep. Any pressure with his fingers caused the patient to pull away but not before he had felt a degree of cushioning under his fingertips. He needed an X-ray to confirm what he already knew: there was a fracture in there. The woman was sitting on an examination couch. Hannah had patted the pillow, and gestured in every way that she could think of, but the woman remained sitting.

  ‘She might not want to lie down with a head wound like that, and I don’t bla
me her. Can you get an X-ray organized? It takes a hard blow to fracture an occiput, but I don’t like the feel of it. If we see a fracture, we will MRI. Or if her neurologicals start to decline. They are fine at the moment but her comprehension’s slow and she’s not verbalizing. Not in any language. Weird. Keep her under close observation. Stay with her, go with her to Radiology. Let me know if anything changes.’ The woman was co-operative but he noticed she had latched onto Hannah, her eyes flicking back and forth. When he asked a question, the woman would look to Hannah for an indication as to whether the answer was yes or no. And then let Hannah answer for both of them.

  The doctor left, Hannah heard him talking to the cops, then heard them ask where the nearest vending machine was.

  Hannah talked constantly, explaining to the patient that she needed to undress in case they needed a scan later and offered her a gown so she could examine her for other injuries, old scars, stitch marks that might show the site of a metal implant. The woman was co-operative, not really following instructions but not resisting as Hannah opened the zip of the anorak and slipped the woman’s arms out. It was soaking wet and stank of alcohol. She held it under her nose, the smell was overwhelming, leaving Hannah to wonder if somebody had smashed a bottle of plonk over the back of her head. She’d seen that before.

  Hannah leant over the patient to slip her arms out the wet jumper; had she got wet through the anorak? Had she been somewhere without her jacket? Hannah breathed in over the patient’s hair. It smelled of shampoo, coconut shampoo. She sniffed at the patient’s breath as she looked into her eyes. No alcohol.

  Hannah leaned forward again as she undid the top buttons of the black jumper, checking. Definitely no smell of drink on her breath. She stood back and looked at her, something here wasn’t right. Then she put her head out the cubicle and requested a plastic bag for the woman’s belongings. The woman watched as her arms were revealed from the sleeves of the jumper, cold, pink skin with lacerations, cuts on the lower forearms, defensive wounds. The arms had been held up to ward off an attack to the head. Yet the clothes were intact? No tears in the fabric of the T-shirt, jumper or anorak.

  ‘Good God,’ said Hannah, now thinking about sexual assault and that the victim had been undressed then redressed. ‘What the hell has happened to you?’ She looked into the grey eyes. They stared back at her, something was rumbling around in there at the back of the patient’s head. ‘Can I take your T-shirt off?’ There was no obedience, but no resistance. Hannah rolled up the T-shirt, starting at the waist. The patient winced, flinching a little so Hannah apologized and leaned forward to look over the patient’s shoulder to her back.

  ‘Shit!’ She let the T-shirt fall back down and hurriedly stuck her head out the curtain to get hold of the two cops. Their seats were empty.

  Anderson eventually guided George Haggerty on to the terrace, the elegant façade lit up in bright amber, two windows already showing the sprinkling lights of early Christmas trees. Anderson breathed in the cold night air, the rain had stopped.

  ‘How long does it take you to drive up there? Up to Port MacDuff.’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘Five and a half hours? Thereabouts. The A9 is forty miles longer but six minutes quicker, if I don’t get stopped for speeding. I thought the average speed cameras had put an end to that. Bastards.’ Then George remembered who he was talking to. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘They are bastards. Even we can’t stand them.’

  ‘Well, look on the bright side, if I hadn’t got nicked for speeding you would still think that I was involved in my wife’s death, my son’s death.’

  ‘Every cloud.’

  They had reached the back of the Volvo, but George Haggerty made no attempt to unlock the car. ‘Have you not heard from Costello?’

  ‘Nope, not at all.’ Anderson shook his head, hands in his pockets.

  ‘I saw her on the 8th. She called me on the 11th …’ Haggerty rubbed his chin. ‘Friday? Saturday? Definitely Saturday. Didn’t say much, just told me that I wouldn’t get away with it. Must have been Saturday. I was talking to the estate agent when she phoned.’

  Anderson couldn’t hide his curiosity. ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘Just the usual abuse,’ Haggerty said, good-naturedly.

  ‘Estate agent? Are you selling the house?’ Anderson’s shiver was nothing to do with the chill of the night air.

  ‘Oh, there’s no way I can go back and live there, not after that. I’ve said to Valerie to go out and see if she wants anything, but me? No.’ He shook his head. He got his keys out his pocket and beeped the boot open. ‘Do you think it got to your colleague in the end, the way she found the bodies? The scene was brutal.’

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say, well she has seen worse. But he didn’t know if that was true, but Costello felt guilty, and had ranted about the way Malcolm, according to her, had been so desperate to get away from his father he had tried to climb out the window. Anderson could see both sides. Children can cultivate anybody who will listen. Malcolm had lost his elder sister, he must have known about the attack on Valerie. His life was already unsettled and then … well. Then what?

  Haggerty nodded. ‘Well, if you see her …’ he laughed. ‘Tell her I’m innocent, OK?’ The smile switched off as fast as it had switched on. ‘I know she’s your colleague, ex-colleague.’

  ‘I know you have complained, but she hasn’t been sacked.’ Anderson nodded; the chill of the night was starting to gnaw at his bones now. ‘You got your picture?’ he asked, pointing to the package under Haggerty’s arm.

  ‘Yes. My dad will be thrilled. He can’t believe it. A great-grandson.’

  Except he isn’t, thought Anderson, nodding. Good manners made him provide the expected response. ‘Well, if he is ever down this way then give me a call, and we can get them together and he can see Moses for himself.’

  Haggerty opened the boot of his car, the light came on and he swung his bag and the picture into the boot. The back of the car was illuminated to show it crammed full of bags and boxes, piled on top of an offcut of orange carpet, a tarp covering the back of the boot so it was kept very clean. Of course, he was clearing out his house. He reached for something packed safely at the back.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind but I came across this and I thought you might like it. Just one of those things.’ He handed over a flat package wrapped in bubble wrap. Anderson unpeeled the padding and as he did, his fingers felt the regular squares, the widened border. It was a photo frame and as he unwound the wrapping, the photograph came into view. He didn’t need to ask who it was. The girl in the picture looked very like Claire, lighter colouring, but the same smile, and though Anderson knew Mary Jane had been seven years older than Claire, in this picture, she looked so much younger.

  Fresh faced, hair uncoloured and falling naturally round her face. The rain spotted the glass as he held it there, she became more interesting behind the pinpoints of rain water, they added an ethereal quality to her smile.

  ‘Mary Jane, about sixteen or seventeen then.’

  ‘Yeah, a good kid before she lost her dad,’ said Haggerty. ‘My good friend Oscar. And that was horrible. He sailed off, he drowned. All the coastguard found were bits of burning wreckage. The dinghy was still tied to the Jennifer Rhu. And if the wee boat was still tied to the yacht, he didn’t get off the burning boat. You can understand the effect that had on Abby and Mary Jane, seven years of wrangling to get him declared dead, as there was no body. It was a horrible time, absolutely bloody awful. Mary Jane grew up through all that.’

  It was the most animated Anderson had ever seen him.

  Haggerty said, opening the door and climbing into the car, ‘She didn’t have a father, you know. She had three and none of us were there when it mattered.’

  And with that he indicated and pulled out into the terrace.

  She didn’t have a father, you know.

  What did Haggerty actually mean by that?

  Oscar Duguid had died y
ears before Anderson had any idea that the girl had even existed so there was no way that he could have stepped into the breach. It was Haggerty who had done that. He was the one who had married Mary Jane’s mother, Abigail, and then gone on to have Malcolm and make the picture of the perfect family complete. He did a quick mental calculation. They must have met, got together, married and had Malcolm very quickly.

  Anderson made a note to find out how they met, exactly, out of idle curiosity as Haggerty spoke of Oscar as if he was a close friend.

  Anderson couldn’t imagine losing Brenda and Peter, and being able to have a conversation that only barely mentioned them. As if they were completely something of his past, talking about the horror of the scene without giving a thought as to what his loved ones had gone through.

  He had never once asked, ‘Did they suffer?’

  Alastair Patrick closed his eyes and waited, he didn’t know these men. But he sensed that they shared one thing.

  A history.

  After a couple of weaves left and right, the Landie came to a halt, skidding jerkily to a standstill as if the driver had suddenly realized that they had arrived at their destination. The driver and the others got out; the cold wet air snaked into the vehicle. He saw another identical vehicle, the door opened as another man, dressed exactly as the others, dark blue and black got out. That made four, the perfect sabre. There was no light except for the beams of six spotlights that shone uphill into the infinity of the night, picking up nothing but the rain slicing like tracer fire in the beam. That and a few barren stone stacks, standing like wraiths, waiting.

  Then one gorilla walked briskly back to the vehicle and opened Patrick’s door. He took the hint and got out.

  The Gorilla and the Glaswegian climbed back in the Land Rover and drove off without a word, leaving Patrick standing in the pouring rain that bit at his neck and face, he felt its sting and recoiled, the cold air snatched at his hood, pulling it from his head, then he felt the wind tug at his hat. Watching the three other men walking around. One then walked away and climbed into the other Landie. The other came towards Patrick, and he felt himself stiffen, rising on the balls of his feet, bracing himself, his fists clenching. Ready. Patrick scanned the face behind the black mask, looking for targets. Another old habit.