by Caro Ramsay
‘So preliminary report from the scene of crime, and the tracker dog. Basically, the tyre treads of the camper are at the viewing point car park and he left there at speed.’
‘Suggesting that he had done or seen something that he wanted away from?’
‘Maybe he drove north for a couple of miles and ended up in a lay-by.’ He looked up. ‘I think you know about the waxed ball bearings?’
‘Two miles, was that enough to melt the wax if they had been put in at Inveruglass, at the viewing site? Or would it have to be warmed by miles of driving?’
‘The engine would be hot anyway, he’d driven up from Glasgow remember. And what an easy vehicle to follow. There was no phone or camera in the car, the camera was at the bottom of the loch and the keys were found in a field thirty feet from the lay-by.’
‘So he was chased?’
‘He stops the van because of the clatter, his assailant comes up behind him, probably friendly as Kieran takes the keys out the engine. There is an incident that involves Kieran being on the ground, then the dogs pick up a scent running towards the trees, over the wire fence, thick trees, running deeper into the forest, he was veering as he ran …’ He cocked his head. ‘That time of night it was dark, keeping in the cover of the tree trunks. Then the dogs found the main site about a hundred yards in. Blood. Disturbance, and then he was dragged out.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea why. There are signs of blood loss and two things of interest. He seems to have lost his waistcoat, loose, lots of pockets, like a photographer’s but the best thing is the few fibres found on a branch, that looks hopeful of something. As if somebody put their hand on a branch and they’ve left a trace. The lab at Inverness has been sent the sample, so they can be processed alongside the sample from Kieran.’
‘So Costello did that, then pulled the body back to a small Fiat and drove 300 miles north to drop it on a remote mountain pass?’
‘Something happened. She has not come forward, but she’s up and about. You have been on this side of the desk long enough to know what it is like and that there are, very rarely, any surprises,’ said Mathieson.
‘And if she has gone rogue—’ Bannon took a look at the picture of the young cop – ‘I can understand her logic. She has a very developed sense of morality and justice which sometimes the police service cannot deliver. And I think she’s keeping you and Archie out the loop because she doesn’t want to make trouble for you. She is a very loyal friend, she doesn’t want to involve you in her … well, whatever it is she has planned.’ Bannon shrugged. ‘That’s my thoughts.’
‘But she wouldn’t do this.’ Anderson pointed to the picture of Donnie. ‘This guy was one of us.’
The other two sat and did nothing, forcing him to speak. He studied the photograph of the dead young police officer. ‘Who has done the forensics on this?’
‘Your usual team.’
Anderson nodded slowly. ‘OK so O’Hare, McQueen?’
‘Yes. Costello’s DNA is all over his dead body,’ said Bannon.
Mathieson argued, ‘I’m a simpler soul. I’m going for the obvious. She killed him. Maybe not intentionally, maybe it was something that got out of hand but … Well, you can’t argue with the science. Their bloods are mingled. Bloods. Both of them were bleeding. We have one body and the other one is missing. They met in that car park after Costello had summoned him, and something kicked off. There was a fight.’
‘Could they have been attacked and she got away?’ Anderson asked.
‘Away to where? And from what? If that was the case then why wouldn’t she run here so we can help her? Why keep below the radar?’
‘Well, you can’t have it both ways. If she was keeping below the radar there’s no way she’d use her bank card. She’s too clever for that, she knows the way we work.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Was it an auto bank?’
Bannon looked down. ‘Yes and a visa card.’
‘So you don’t know for sure that somebody else isn’t using it instead of her? You need to look at the cameras.’ He got up to leave.
‘It was a female fitting Costello’s description that bought the phone. The film does look like her, short blonde hair, anorak.’ Mathieson stood up, small and insignificant between the other two detectives. ‘And if you hear from her in any way, shape or form, you will tell us.’
He paused. ‘I will tell her to get in touch with you, of course.’
‘Not quite the same thing, DCI Anderson.’
‘It’s the best I can do.’
And he left.
ELEVEN
Thursday, 30th of November
Isla had been told to go to bed. Her mum and dad were staying over, and the kids were in the spare bedroom with them. The GP had come out and given her a sleeping tablet, well, five, to get through the next few days.
So she lay alone in the bed she had shared with her husband, as the world went on as normal outside. They had been married seven years, he was her husband, her best friend, dad to her children.
She wondered where Costello was right now. No one seemed to know.
She couldn’t get her head round that.
She stared at the ceiling, lying with the light on, her mind not really keeping up with the issues that everybody had brought up, how are you going to cope? She had no option but to cope. Her children would grow up, they would remember their dad. She’d make sure they knew him and the man he was.
And why he had died.
She stared at the ceiling again. There was a spider’s web up there, dancing.
She lay in the darkness and then cried her eyes out.
All that did was give her a headache and make her eyes sore. She had no emotion left, except anger. She could hear her mum and dad next door, talking quietly. They still had each other, in their sixties they could still lie in bed entwined in each other’s arms.
The pain of that stopped her breathing.
She felt she had nothing to say. She wanted to look after the kids but couldn’t look at them with their huge trusting brown eyes, ready to ask where Daddy was. When was Daddy coming home? The questions were bound to start coming and she didn’t have the heart to answer them. She didn’t have the heart, full stop.
It had been ripped out of her.
Her mum and dad were now settled in the youngest’s room and the kids were all piled in together.
Why not use the fourth bedroom? Her mum had asked, and got a dig in the ribs from her father. It was Donnie’s room, just for Donnie.
She got up, pulled on her dressing gown, a big fluffy white one that Donnie had bought her when Nathan had been born. He had wrapped it all up in paper, when she opened it in the hospital he’d had to take it back home as it was too bulky to go in any of the cupboards. And she was scared it might get lifted.
She brought it up to her face, smelling the scent of Donnie’s aftershave, the times she had lain on the sofa, on a Saturday night; her lying in his arms sipping a Prosecco, him sipping a beer and watching the football while she flicked through a magazine.
Little things, he was never one for the big gestures, but he was always there, always thoughtful.
She went to the next room, the small room that sat next to the box room. She undid the little hook at the top, a simple plain hook sitting in a brass ring. She twisted it round, lifting it off, the door swung open and she closed it behind her very quietly. She turned on the light switch, the tiny room lit up like Wembley Stadium. Books, a laptop, a sound system and one lazy boy easy chair, with a blanket and a pillow on it.
Donnie’s den.
He would come in here when he was on night shift and he needed a kip during the day. He’d lie there with his headphones and watch a film on the laptop or listen to his music, a whole wall of his favourite CDs, keeping them away from small sticky hands. And then his vinyl collection, his greatest love: Hotel California, Dark Side of the Moon, Going For The One and every one of David Bowie’s thirty-five albums. His adoration of the sidemen, the
unsung heroes.
She sat on the arm of the recliner, and reached over to put on the sidelight, then got up to put the overhead light off. The room changed character totally, calming now, relaxing. Lying down on the chair, she pressed the button to drop the back, the footrest coming up under her legs and she pulled the blanket round her.
This was his favourite place, her eyes scanned round at the picture of her and the boys pinned to the corkboard, a list of stuff she wanted him to pick up at Argos for Christmas, before they sold out or it got too busy.
Christmas. How the hell was she supposed to cope with Christmas?
Without Donnie? Two words she could never imagine saying together.
She closed her eyes, she had to be strong. Or she’d fall apart, she didn’t really have to do anything, her husband had been killed. She could see herself in the car, him driving the kids squealing in the back, him winding them up and her trying to get them to calm down. They had driven up to Inveruglass many times. The last time the boys had climbed to the viewing point with the Gaelic name.
How do you say that, Daddy?
No bloody idea.
The youngest had climbed up on Donnie’s shoulders for a lift, she had taken the eldest by the hand, then had walked up to the top step of the viewing platform where they had a clear view right down the loch. They had sat together. Their hands intertwining automatically, she had had her gloves on, it had been cold. The boys had climbed up and down the steps, the big boy helping the wee boy, punting him up, helping him down. Near the bottom, Donnie had set off to retrieve them.
Donnie had loved the place. Why would he go there, why did he take Costello?
He had liked her, she was still missing. There was still a chance that she would be found alive. At that moment Isla hated her, she was single with no kids: she could die and nobody would notice.
Was she on the run after killing Donnie? She doubted it.
So he had gone there, met her and been murdered. His body taken up the road to Tyndrum, thirty miles north, dumped in a lochan. Thrown away like trash.
By whom? And why?
He wasn’t doing anything official, it was something he’d had an idea about. He would have written something down or noted something on his computer. He had a brown notepad somewhere, he was always scribbling here and there.
There would be something in this room.
She was wide awake now.
She looked over at his desk, she could start up his computer, and find nothing. She would do that later. Closing her eyes, she thought of him sitting in his boxers, on the recliner, his mobile in his hand. They had been phoning each other, Donnie and Costello. How often, she had no idea. He had taken the phone out the room, when she had been present, nothing unusual in that, she had no interest in his work, apart from how it affected him.
So he would be in here, on his phone, making notes, even something he typed up on his computer, he would do that while he was on the phone. She glanced over at the bin, it was empty, of course. She had emptied it when things were normal and Donnie was going to walk back in the door.
She closed her eyes and asked Donnie for help. If he was out there in the ether, she needed his help right now. His name was being dragged through the shite and she wasn’t going to let that happen. She thought about the last time she saw him, she was going through the Argos catalogue making a list. Why was she thinking of that? She had a nice notebook with flowers on it, that was her Christmas notebook. Donnie had a simple reporter’s notebook with a spiral of wire across the top, usually with a blue biro rammed through it.
He had been using it to get the measurements for the new tiles for the bathroom floor, well, that wasn’t going to happen now. But he did use that notebook a lot, she had seen him here, on this recliner, phone jammed in between his ear and shoulder, notebook on his thigh, his foot up on the chair, scribbling. She had been telling him that his dinner was ready, he had nodded. It was cold by the time he had come through. When had that been? Last week? The week before?
She didn’t know why but she knew now that he had been talking to Costello.
She scanned the small bookcase in the room, and there it was, lying on top of The Godfather DVD collection she had bought him for Christmas last year. She reached over and picked it up. He had written his name on the front page, like a school kid, he had even underlined it and added a doodle of a motorbike.
She flicked it open feeling like a spy, intruding on his life. There was nothing in it. Of course he had torn out the pages with the notes for the bathroom tiles and stuck them on the tiler’s business card. There were little fragments of paper at the top, where he had pulled pages out, recently from the fact that the tiny pieces were still trapped in the spiral. Even as she had moved it from the bookcase back to the seat, some had fallen on the carpet, she picked them up carefully and laid them out on top of his keyboard, wary to lose anything that might have been part of him.
Then she looked back at the pad, flicked the top page over, letting it fall in behind the rest. He had been using it, she could see the indents of his writing, the circular doodles that he did when he was bored, or thinking, circles that would pair up and morph into motorbikes.
They had been watching that forensics programme together where the farmer had placed a bomb under his own car, then slashed himself and then shot his neighbour dead making out his neighbour had been targeting him. Donnie had pondered why the farmer didn’t move house. But Isla could remember the CSI had held the notepad to an oblique light source and read the indents of the threatening letter that the neighbour was supposed to have written. She went over to the desk and switched on Donnie’s desk lamp. She could make out a few letters, see the individual pen grooves of the doodles.
She turned the light out and went back, so the only source of light in the room was the small Ikea desk lamp. She moved the pad back and forth, seeing numbers and cms, that was him making the measurements for the tiles, but there was something else.
A name. It looked as though Donnie had written it and then gone over it again and again, doodling over the letters as he was on the phone. She could make it out, more than a few letters. She fired up the computer, feeling better now that she was doing something, she Googled the name, variations of the same, the search engine brought back a few possibles. Nothing that matched exactly what she had thought she had read. But one entry caught her eye, not the bar at the top but in the two lines of small print underneath.
And then, at the bottom a name she was more familiar with, that was scribbled all over this page. It was just Donnie, being Donnie.
Oscar Duguid, believed drowned, search called off. Leaving a wife Abigail and a daughter Mary Jane. Isla, read that again; Abigail and Mary Jane, Kelvindale Bridge, NC 500, phone land registry, harbour master and Jennifer. Jennifer was common enough but not Abigail or Mary Jane. Neither were particularly common names. Donnie had been ranting about that, the name of the girl Braithwaite had killed though Donnie thought they would have a tough time proving it. Braithwaite, who was arguing it was all his wife’s fault, the wife who had conveniently fallen from the top of a high building. Not enough to be not guilty but enough for there to be reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury, he would be a good witness, he might get off.
She couldn’t sit here and do nothing.
Anderson sat at his kitchen table, the house was quiet for once, just a steady beat of music from upstairs somewhere and the rasp of Nesbit’s snoring. The blank page of his iPad was staring at him. His head was hurting just thinking about what Costello had got herself caught up in. He was concerned about her safety, more concerned than he dared to voice, even to himself. He had seen the worried look on Walker’s face, even the fiscal had stopped fooling himself that the texts had been coming from her. They could have been sent by anyone who had got her phone off her. And nobody knew who that was.
But now she had come out of hiding and was back on the road, having purchased a new phone.
He wished he c
ould feel a sense of relief in that, but, and there was a but, it wasn’t her.
He called up the map of Loch Lomond, tracing the route to Tyndrum which followed the West Highland Way. Just as the Bealach followed the 500? Anybody who wanted to be there, had a reason to be there, hiding amongst the tourist traffic.
He thought about the others, the pile of paperwork on the rapes. Mitchum had given him a week. He was so fucked up over this he hadn’t given a thought to Sally and to Gillian. Was there a connection as Morna thought?
He tried to put that to the back of his mind, making himself think about the An Ceann Mor viewing point. Somebody had chased the student down. Told him his car was leaking fluid? Maybe Cowan had already stopped due to the noise made by the tin of ball bearings. There must have been some kind of chase, the boy trying to get away and he was pursued through the trees. His attacker caught up with him, battered him in the face then slit his throat. Then what? Why take him so many miles away? A journey that would take over three, maybe four hours and then dump him on a remote mountain pass?
Was it because he was going there anyway? Not out of convenience, but for ease of explanation if their vehicle was spotted en route. Years ago the body should have lain at the pass until the road reopened in the spring but now there was no presumption of isolation. Why roll the body out the car and into a gully? Were they too weak to take it any further? Yet they took the body from the woods to the lay-by two hundred miles north? Tired? Injured? A different person? Or a lack of time? A woman?
Anderson pushed that thought away and looked again at the screen. Or was he pushed for time? Would his tardiness be noticed, and remembered by a third party? There had been many places, better places, to leave the body on the way up. Places where it would not have been found.
It had taken them three months to find Sharon Sixsmith.