The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

There was no response to either. He was fast asleep, drifting away in a world of his own.

  If she was a betting girl, she’d go for the student. No wife would let her husband out with that ancient jumper.

  DCI Patrick walked out the HQ of the Wester Ross Police and took a deep sigh. He glanced at his watch, his face creasing, annoyed at the bloody waste of his life. That was an hour he was never going to get back. ACC Blackward was clear, keep the crime local, get it solved and get it solved quickly. The tourist board marketing people had been pushing the North Coast Five Hundred as an all-year road trip. During the winter months they removed the Bealach Na Ba and sent the route the long way round, but the infamy and the beauty of the road had given it a celebrity status. It was now considered the daredevil way to go; the more weather warnings the better. Blackward had placed in front of him media clippings of the pass; classic cars, hospital beds, you name it, it had tried to go up over the road to Applecross and then to Port MacDuff beyond. And now, all that good will and hard work had gone for nothing. If there was not a quick resolution to this case then the Bealach Na Ba, that golden goose, would forever be tarnished by the memory of a young man, battered and bleeding at the summit.

  Patrick had remained silent except to utter three words, ‘He’s not dead.’

  Blackward’s reply was swift. ‘Yet.’

  Patrick had handed over the part of the file he knew the boss liked. Solid evidence. He had a photograph of a unique jumper, and that picture was being shown to a cop’s wife and a student’s mother. And they were running a trace on the orange fibres, the soil from the soles of the boots. He himself was prioritising the location of the camper. Some result would come of that, even if exculpatory.

  And, he closed his eyes thanking God for Morna and her precision, he pointed to the report about the orange tri-lobar fibres. ‘These could be important.’

  ‘And where are they from?’

  ‘Cuffs, socks on the victim. The back of the head. Areas that would have been exposed, if he was rolled in a carpet or something. It’s a tough hard-wearing carpet, used in cars, caravans, boats. Not for houses or hotels. The bad news is that Nissan, Volvo and Fiat all use that same material. So do many camper vans, especially conversions.’

  ‘Caravans? Motorhomes?’ Blackward had rolled his eyes. ‘The tourist board are going to love this. But if we find the vehicle, then we can match it?’

  ‘The dye, yes, the orange dye will be unique for that run.’

  Blackward had palmed his hand across his mouth. ‘Sometimes I think this place is cursed.’

  ‘It’s people, it’s only people.’

  Blackward had nodded. ‘Keep on it and keep focussed. Are we getting anywhere on the coke trail?’

  ‘I think we might be. Too much of it is being moved around too easily. And we have left it, with the knowledge of the surrounding forces, until we get a pattern. The longer we wait, the more we know and we have more chance of getting higher than the monkeys. Would be nice to nail those who are bringing it in.’

  ‘Are we close to doing that?’ asked Blackward.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you have a good idea who is moving the stuff around, locally?’

  ‘Yes, we do. As you said the tourist board won’t like it. But they don’t pay my wages.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘I don’t know. You can make that request for information further up the food chain.’

  ‘So who contacted you?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Patrick heard gunfire, rapid, assault rifles. The noises went no further than his head. He had heard his own voice report where the body had been found but Blackward looked blank, which showed he had spent too long behind the desk.

  So Patrick had excused himself before the boss could ask anything else.

  Once out on the street, Patrick breathed in the salted air and watched the seagulls wheel and circle above. He was jealous of their freedom, up and around higher and higher. He phoned Morna to find out how the young man was doing. He was still alive, he was trying to say something, ‘Finn’ and ‘Cam’. He could hear the flicking of the pages of her beloved notebook. She was in love with pens and paper, unlike her colleagues who were very keen on their iPads and electronic notebooks.

  Finn? Cam? It meant nothing to him.

  Colin Anderson sat down in the blue-carpeted family interview room at the old Partickhill station where Anderson had spent most of his working life. The picture of the flowers on the wall was the same, he could still see a stain on the carpet from a cup of black coffee he remembered going over. So why did he feel so unwelcome on his own turf, being questioned by these two interlopers? It was the summons that did it, the phone call from Complaints that they would like a word with him. The message was clear; get your arse down here. He had left an unusually quiet office, everybody was tiptoeing round him.

  They came in, the two of them, Bannon and Mathieson. Anderson knew Bannon, not well but enough to know that he wasn’t hated, not the way that some of them were from Complaints and Investigations; the cops who policed the cops. It wasn’t an easy job, and Anderson doubted that it was a pleasant one, but he understood the need for the force to be policed. Mathieson, he didn’t know. But he presumed she was the small blonde, blanched white, she looked as though she had seen a ghost, her nacreous face highlighted by the dark red of her lips, lips that were firmly closed at the moment, fixed in a tight, thin line. Anderson was a man who noticed women’s hair, the way other men noticed curves or legs. He was quick to see that he could look right through hers. It wasn’t thick and titan like Brenda’s, not curled and blonde like Sally’s, not long and auburn like Helena’s. Mathieson was almost bald.

  Maybe that was why she wasn’t a barrel of laughs.

  ‘Sorry, Colin,’ she said. ‘Not good of us to meet like this but I didn’t think I could do this by phone.’

  ‘Do what?’ he asked, nodding, shaking hands with them both, acknowledging her apology. He knew that whatever it was; it had nothing to do with him. They were here to get him to spill the beans on a colleague, but he couldn’t think who. He had mulled it over in his mind, and hoped it was about Mulholland and his leg, more a matter for HR and occupational health. He would have thought, but who knew with the state of Police Scotland these days, anything to avoid paying an ill health retrial pension.

  But he knew, in his bones, it was about Costello.

  Mathieson was still smiling slightly, as a look it didn’t suit her. Bannon sat down, in the position of the observer. So this was important, this could be serious.

  ‘Your partner DI Costello? Do you have any idea where she is?’

  ‘Costello?’ The question had genuinely taken Anderson by surprise.

  ‘Yes Costello, your colleague. You have worked with her for many years. I’m sure you remember her.’ The pretence of politeness was gone, now replaced by sharp sarcasm that could have come from Costello herself.

  ‘Yes, I know who she is. I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Nobody does. Do you know this gentleman?’

  God they were treating him like a suspect. He knew the next move, to slide a photograph across the table then turn it over at the last moment, increasing the shock value.

  Bannon had the grace to look a little sheepish as the 16 by 12 photograph was slid across the table towards him.

  Anderson had to cough to hide a smirk.

  He looked at it, a fresh-faced young man in a blue jumper – he looked like the sort of man that appears on adverts for formula milk or a new housing development. He would have two small kids and a wife who worked part time, a sandpit in the garden and every house he bought would be another step on the ladder until they started downsizing.

  ‘I don’t think I do,’ he replied carefully, aware of the sweat of stress around his collar.

  ‘Does the name Donald McCaffrey mean anything to you?’

  Something sparked in his mind, but not enough to hold on to.

&
nbsp; ‘Donnie McCaffrey?’ offered Bannon.

  ‘Yes.’ The small memory in Anderson’s mind caught the spark and came to life. ‘I think he was the first officer on the scene w-when,’ he stuttered realizing he wasn’t about to relate an event, he was about to talk about Moses.

  ‘Yes, when your grandson was discovered in a car, alone. A Dacia Duster that had been moved from its original parking spot.’

  ‘In the end that case resulted in two deaths, one fatal incident and a trial in preparation, so we don’t need to discuss any of that.’ Anderson was acting as if he outranked them now. He did. Talking about the job was OK but they were talking about his family. ‘But don’t take my word for it, you can check the log.’

  ‘We did,’ said Bannon.

  OK, so that wasn’t what they were here for. Anderson waited, the next move was theirs.

  ‘Colin …’ It was Bannon’s turn to speak, trying to engage him; he was going to be the matey one, inviting confidences that he wasn’t entitled to. ‘How well do you know Costello?’

  ‘As well as any police officer knows another who they have worked alongside for twenty years. There have been months on an investigation when we have been in each other’s pockets and other times when we hardly see each other. This is one of those times – a not seeing each other time,’ he clarified for them. ‘Has anything happened to her?’

  ‘We thought you might be able to tell us that.’

  ‘Well no, I haven’t heard from her.’ Archie Walker had but he wasn’t going to tell them that. An unwelcome thought floated through his mind at that moment, a text identified a phone, not the person who sent it.

  The two detectives passed a look between them, something that would have gone unnoticed if the person sitting opposite them hadn’t been skilled and experienced in investigation techniques. They were about to change tack.

  ‘I presume that you and Costello have had differences of opinion in the past.’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘Do you think she’s gone off in the huff?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So only this time.’

  ‘Only this time, what?’

  ‘For going AWOL. Is she in a relationship?’ That was a very focussed question, and the sudden change of direction did not go unnoticed. Was it Archie they were after?

  Mathieson caught the hesitation.

  ‘The answer to that is either yes or no.’

  ‘The answer to that question is none of my business. I am her work colleague not her big brother.’

  ‘We are coming to her brother in a moment.’

  I bet you are.

  ‘Have you seen the newspaper article? That was very damming.’

  ‘Oh, so the press are the moral guardians of the complaints? God luck with that. And you should be more concerned with finding out who in your team is taking backhanders for dealing that dirt.’

  ‘It was bad,’ sympathized Bannon. ‘But it wasn’t from us, it was from George Haggerty.’

  ‘And who told him? Bloody hell,’ Anderson dropped his head into his hands, all those little midnight chats with Haggerty. He’d kill the bastard.

  ‘Anything to tell us?’ asked Mathieson.

  ‘Relationships can be very complex. Unless you see the world in black and white, most relationships are shades of grey. My reading of the situation is that she felt very responsible for the death of Malcolm Haggerty—’

  ‘So she was responsible for the death of Malcolm Haggerty?’ Mathieson was on it, her eagerness pulling her right into a trap.

  ‘Only as much as you and I are. We should provide a safe society and we don’t. Have you never been involved in a case and thought, if only I had done X or Y, they wouldn’t have died.’ He looked her straight in the eye, she didn’t look away. ‘Obviously not then. You are very fortunate.’

  Bannon decided either he’d had enough, or that they were getting nowhere. He started again with his engaging approach.

  ‘Colin we have a problem, a big problem. Costello has disappeared. So has this young man, under very suspicious circumstances.’

  Anderson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘This young cop was friendly with Costello.’ Bannon tapped the photograph.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘His blood was found at the small hill to the rear of the viewing point at Loch Lomond. He may have been stabbed.’

  Anderson put his hands up, palms out. ‘But he is a police officer, he must have enemies? Why are you talking to me?’

  ‘We have been in touch with the investigating officers and the case is now ours.’

  ‘Why? Because he is a cop?’

  ‘According to his wife, Costello invited him to a meeting somewhere, summoned him, she asked, he jumped.’

  ‘So they were onto something?’

  ‘Onto what?’ Mathieson’s eyes glinted dangerously.

  ‘Something? I don’t know. Wasn’t there. Wasn’t told.’ But he’d bet his bottom dollar that it was to do with George Haggerty. ‘Has something happened to her?’

  ‘We have found “significant DNA” on a small sample of blood. And another DNA from a much larger sample of blood.’

  ‘Whose?’

  Mathieson hesitated so it was Bannon who spoke. ‘McCaffrey and Costello. And you know how we would interpret that. The person with the bigger blood loss was the victim, the other the perp. It’s a theory that we are working on.’ He upended the pen on his desk letting it drop between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It fits the facts as we have them, but that will and can change as the evidence comes in.’ He smiled benignly. He didn’t believe it either. ‘It’s just a theory.’

  ‘You think that Costello attacked and wounded McCaffrey? Why the hell would she do that?’

  ‘That is how we would interpret the evidence if there weren’t two police officers involved. The problem is that we have no evidence that anybody else was there.’

  ‘Barking, wrong tree and up. Put that in any order you want.’ Anderson was scathing in his lack of respect.

  ‘We need to go where the evidence takes us, Colin, and it makes no sense to me,’ said Bannon. ‘Can you shed any light on it?’

  ‘As I said, it’s a theory and being who she is, her family …’ said Mathieson, staring directly at Anderson. ‘Maybe with a little bit of mental instability …’

  ‘Hers or yours?’ asked Anderson, staring straight at Mathieson.

  ‘We’ll see.’ She closed the file. ‘I presume this interview is over.’

  ‘You presume right.’

  EIGHT

  The landing of Costello’s flat smelled of fried liver and onions, making Valerie feel vaguely homesick yet comforted. She could remember that far back with no problem at all.

  ‘Did you see the newspaper this morning?’ The old woman smiled. ‘It’s terrible what they print nowadays.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, they are just trying to stir up some evidence from the Monkey House of Horror. Costello was very involved in that.’

  ‘And is she all right?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine but we are keeping her out the road, not quite witness protection but that kind of thing.’ Valerie was amazed at how easily she lied. Mrs Craig looked like the kind of old dear who would watch Law and Order, she’d believe in witness protection.

  ‘Here’s my number, you can call me if somebody else wants to borrow the key and you are not sure.’ Valerie swapped the key for a small piece of card with the number of her new untraceable mobile number. ‘Don’t give it to anybody else, please.’ Valerie smiled her sweetest smile. ‘We need to keep her safe.’

  Valerie slipped the key in the lock, opened the door and walked into Costello’s life. Costello could not tell the whole story because she didn’t know what exactly had happened, but she knew how it had felt when it had happened. And that was far more telling.

  Valerie walked into the living room; the huge glass wall that looked over the river was covered by a closed curtain, bathing the room
in a dull half-light that suited her purpose and her mood. The subject of her visit was lying on the glass table beside a cup of half-drunk tea, a cold deflated teabag still hanging over the side of the mug. Valerie picked up the laptop and unplugged the power cable. Whatever Costello’s brain had forgotten, this laptop would recall perfectly.

  She looked around, finding a credit card in the kitchen cupboard above the kettle, as Costello had said. The spare car key in a drawer in the bedroom, her passport in a small case at the bottom of her wardrobe. She looked at the picture, sitting down in front of the mirror, holding her hair up, imaging it blonde.

  She didn’t look like Costello at all. But she didn’t need to.

  Walking into the bathroom, she stopped in her tracks. Rivers of red ran down the tiles of the shower cubicle; Costello had been bleeding badly in here. Valerie held onto the wall, looking at the bloodstained towels, the red pooling on the shower tray. She carefully picked up a red piece of cloth, then realized it was the back of a white blouse, bloodstained and cut, slashed through by a very sharp blade. It took Valerie’s breath away. Evidence should be bagged, tagged, sterile and contained. It was shocking so close, like Abigail’s lilac blouse. She should call somebody, she could call Archie, but that would unravel the whole story and where would that get them?

  It could get Costello into a lot of trouble.

  No, she had to be a little cleverer than that.

  She nipped out to the kitchen and rooted around until she found a pair of marigolds, then went back and bundled up the rest of the bloodstained clothes, grey trousers and a dark cardigan, and stuffed them at the bottom of the washing basket. If they searched the place they would find them. She rinsed out the shower cubicle with bleach and found and wrapped the bloodstained blouse in a roll of cling film, gathered the rest of the stuff on her list and left quickly, locking the door behind her and then giving the key back to Mrs Craig.

  Morna had been snoozing in the corner, prodded to wakefulness by a quiet ping. She opened the email, forwarded by DCI Patrick. The attachment showed the student matriculation card of Kieran Cowan, aged twenty-three, student at the College of Sciences where he was studying environmental science, zoology and biology. His classmates said he had left that night to film at the loch as part of a wildlife preservation project. Film. And he had his camera with him. There had been an incident, blood had been found. Alastair Patrick was trying to find out details. She’d let him know, but if a DS from Glasgow called Vik Mulholland phoned it was because Patrick had passed on the number.