The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  Morna looked at the curtain, still shifting with the wind and rushed out the room to get her mobile. She phoned Neil, left a message and then called Patrick who answered immediately, and told her to keep calm. He mentioned an amber alert, told her to keep her mobile phone with her.

  She said she had to get out and search, she wasn’t staying here.

  He said he would get a team organized when he thought it was pertinent to do so.

  What?

  ‘He might have climbed out the window, Morna. We have to be sensible here. Go round, ask Lachlan, check Finn’s friends, phone round, be logical and don’t panic. Everybody round here knows Finn. He’ll have gone off on a Star Wars adventure. They will spot him, don’t you worry.’

  And with that the phone was cut off leaving her staring at the screen.

  Patrick looked around, standing on top of the hill, watching the lie of the land, binoculars at his eyes. He was close into the side of the wall, a small cliff face, scanning the horizon down towards the water, watching. He checked his watch; it was half past three. Finn had been missing for eight hours. People were predictable and he was sure Morna was no different. She had spent most of the day with Lachlan, being driven around, leaving her mother at Constance House to watch the phone in case there were any sightings. Patrick knew that wasn’t going to happen. The lack of sightings would drive her to look round Dolphin Point eventually, within the next hour, he reckoned. People really could be that predictable.

  Ten minutes later he saw Morna walk along, hearing her shouting for Finn, on her own. No Neil with her, that suited Patrick fine. That useless piece of crap would be out doing his own dirty business. He had been worried that Anderson might get involved but Patrick had made sure the city boy was where he belonged, wrapped up in the office, dissecting the video from the loch.

  He took no pleasure in watching Morna, listening to her hoarse voice shouting, the heartbreak she had been going through that day. In every way, she was on her own. Slowly, he lifted the phone and called a number and gave a set of coordinates. She was on form, she wasn’t going to be going anywhere fast, the guys would move in and take her, easy.

  He waited, motionless. He was a man who could wait for a long time. Occasionally pulling back into the shadows when he thought Morna might be looking up his way. How pathetic she was, how programmable. One word from Lachlan about how the boy had believed Chewbacca lived up here, that the boy believed Neil when he told him the tall stories of this magical place and this might be the place a boy would run to. Morna had really accepted their reasoning. She had checked everywhere else, and now she had been brought to where her son might be. So she thought.

  It had been easy to take the boy.

  Taking the mother would be easier.

  He waited until he saw the man approach, forty degrees behind the target, downwind, so she wouldn’t catch the stink of dead fish. It was going to be a simple take down. Patrick didn’t stop and watch, he didn’t need to. Seen too much of that in his time.

  He slipped his binoculars into his pocket and walked away.

  Morna was looking for her son, meandering over Dolphin Point, no plan to her search. Neil was going round the town, asking in pubs, like that would help. She was walking south out towards the lodge. It wasn’t like the wee boy to wander away, but her mind didn’t want to think past that possibility. She’d had eight hours of tears and screaming and doubt.

  DCI Patrick had taken charge. He was organizing the search teams. The helicopter would get called out, the dogs, everything for wee Finn. Patrick adored her wee boy. She couldn’t work out why she had heard nothing so far, the sky was quiet. Even Anderson had given her nothing but platitudes, leave it to Patrick, he knows what he’s doing.

  She checked her watch, it was mid-afternoon. Where was a search team? What was holding them up? She should have brought the dog, but she didn’t want to interfere with the search dogs. But she couldn’t sit at home doing nothing. Morna turned, thinking she heard somebody coming through the hedgerow behind her. She called out, shone her torch around for a bit of extra light, but it was just the bushes waving, only the wind. She shouted, calling out again and again, the breeze catching her words and taking them out to sea.

  Then she stood very still for a moment, in windblown rain; she pulled her jumper round her, zipped up her jacket. There were sounds out here in the half-darkness; she shouted her husband’s name louder, then quietly. Then she called for her son.

  She tried to ease the beating in her heart. There was somebody up here with her.

  She stood very still, very still indeed. Listening. Then the thought struck her that now Finn was gone, they might be after her. But why?

  Her car was down at the road so she turned and started to walk, then ran, her arms pumping. The sound of her throat rasping for air, she heard her footfall, but nothing following them. But she felt she was running for her life. She believed in the instinct of danger, she needed to find Finn and she needed to be alive to do that.

  She ran through the undergrowth. It was getting thicker, holding her back. She thought she was running down to the road but looking back she couldn’t see the rock stack. She couldn’t see it against the darkening sky. Had she come down the wrong way? Her wet red hair was straggling behind after her. She stumbled as she ran, her arms windmilling to stop her falling. There was somebody there now, she could hear their feet behind her, they were getting closer. She was being chased down. She risked a quick look over her shoulder, managing to run forwards while looking back.

  She ran straight into his arms, a fist to her stomach. She was down, winded.

  Morna lay in the undergrowth, sleeping in a nest, comfortable and still. They circled round her, people like vultures. She lay in the middle, a tiny form in a big spinning wheel. The man looked down at her and smiled.

  Easy.

  ‘What do you mean, you let him go?’

  ‘Nothing to hold him on,’ said Patrick, tapping angrily at the enter button on his laptop.

  ‘Well, fraud for a start, he defrauded his insurance company out of millions of pounds. If we don’t get Haggerty for the murders or for facilitating those rapes, we could at least hold him for fraud.’

  ‘DCI Anderson,’ Patrick began, ready for a speech, ‘in the whole scheme of things, of life and death and the universe and the glory of a sunrise, nobody cares. Joe Bloggs out on the street would clap at that fraud, bravo they would say. Sometimes better to go with that, eh? What good would it do? Ask yourself, what good would it do? Let Oscar be. Anything else would be cruel. And Morna’s boy is missing. Did you know that? And now we can’t find her either. I’m worried, DCI Anderson.’

  ‘Sorry. Surely Finn’s just wandered off and got lost? Morna is a trained police officer, any idea where she has gone?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No. Has she just upped and left?’

  Patrick had his chin on his hands, deep in thought. ‘Her son was abducted, she has been abducted.’

  ‘So why are you not out there looking for them. Get an incident room set up, call in the squad for a house to house.’ He was appalled. ‘If that’s what you think why are we doing nothing?’

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. ‘Just as you are turning over every leaf to find Costello and Abernethy?’ He gave a trite nod. ‘We have the situation in hand, believe me.’

  It sounded like a slight threat. This was Port MacDuff. Anderson needed to be careful, he wasn’t going to be burned in a wicker pyre. He had missing people of his own to look for so he excused himself and went to phone Mathieson for an update. ‘Fine,’ he said, as he went out the office door, ‘your turf, your rules.’

  FOURTEEN

  Saturday, 2nd of December

  Morna woke up, slowly. Looking at a ceiling she didn’t recognize, a wooden slatted roof with the cross beams stuffed full of some yellow packing stuff that looked like fluffy clouds or dandelion heads. She was under a warm duvet, she was fully dressed, except her boots that she could se
e paired neatly on the floor beside the bed. Her head hurt but she wasn’t injured. She eased her limbs one by one. And she could smell dead fish.

  She had been found by somebody and brought here; she slid out from under the duvet thinking about finding Finn, and finding a toilet. She looked around, she had her anorak on when she’d been outside, and in the pocket was her mobile phone. She looked out the window, nothing there just trees and brown ferns, no sign of the cliffs, no sign of the rock stack. She pulled back the curtain that served as a door, it covered nothing more than a fire and a chair, an ancient chair piled up with dirty cushions. There was a radio on a shelf, some electric equipment, and a pile of blankets on the floor. She recognized it immediately as a dog bed. There was a Calor gas cooker in the corner, a plastic bag from the local co-op.

  This was somebody’s secret hideaway? Or did they live here? Her anorak was on the back of the chair and her mobile was on a shelf. She grabbed at it but it felt too light, somebody had taken the battery out.

  She looked around; there was no sign of life, nothing.

  Morna wasn’t staying, so she slipped her boots on. She opened the door and pulled her hood up, the wind had got up but it had stopped raining. She made her way round the back of the hut and squatted to empty her bladder, hoping the relief would help her think clearly.

  Looking at the sky, the cloud cover had lifted a little so she could see the flat peak of the rock stack, and from that, she knew roughly where she was, inland to the south of the stack, so the coast road would be right in front of her as she stood here. She needed to make her way down there. But she didn’t, she turned round and went back in, switching on the radio, being careful not to untune it to the station it was already on. She knew it would be local, for the weather if nothing else. She listen for a few minutes, realizing the time, hearing the news, the local news. Nothing about Finn, nothing about her boy.

  She felt sick. She was on her own, there was some conspiracy going on. DCI Patrick and his little smiles. He had done nothing. She was a cop and she had been abducted, just to get her out the way? Why? To get Finn out the village?

  She looked round, searching for clues, opening bags, looking under the bed, the person that lived here led a very simple life. There was an old bookcase, shackled together, stuff that a charity shop would throw out; there were a few tattered books, a couple of candles. A battery-powered lamp, a good torch. And at the bottom, yellowed and musty was a curled page on a pile of old newspapers. She bent down and looked at them, thinking she might see a headline of other children that had gone missing, children she knew nothing about. Other victims. These papers were old.

  She lifted the top one, Jennifer Argyll, November 1987. A beautiful photograph of Jennifer, on the front page, curled and fragile with time. It was a familiar picture for her, the official press photograph. And a clipping, the name of the newspaper cut off the top. An attack on a mystery woman, raped, a twenty-three-year old. The following newspaper carried the same story; a story that went nowhere. Then Sharon Sixsmith, the one found at the bottom of the gorge and then one she didn’t recognize, Patricia Sandyman. The article was cut out. No date. Morna looked round until she saw a small army knife on top of the pile of books.

  It would do. She slipped it in her pocket and ran.

  There is some comfort in knowing that today is the last day of your life.

  No better player than a woman with nothing to lose.

  There had been a lovely item on the news that morning, a still from CCTV six weeks before, on the Kelvindale walk. A picture of a person, walking, probably a man, just a person the police hoped might be able to assist them with their enquiries as they might have seen something pertaining to the murders of Abigail and Malcolm Haggerty. To anybody else watching it looked like a bloke walking home with a package under his arm. Thirty-three inches long, twenty-two inches wide, carried on its side so it fitted under his arm.

  She recognized it, she had built it.

  Valerie had paused the TV screen, and looked closely. She knew that shape: the Millennium Falcon.

  She had known that she had to move and move fast, Mathieson was close to the truth, but she was closer, so she rolled the white Fiat into the trees and down into the thick bracken. There was only dense undergrowth in sheltered places, and there was little shelter on the headland, up near the lodge. She’d do the last bit by foot. But she had her boots, her jacket and her gun.

  She was going to end it now. She’d been following Haggerty for a couple of days now. He had been doing nothing but lazing around, drinking, meeting his friends and socializing, constantly on his mobile to somebody. The one place he had not been was the care home where his dad was. This morning was different though. Haggerty had been up, ready and was moving quickly. She could sense things were coming to a head. He would have seen that footage from the bridge and she was going to get him before he boarded a ferry and slipped away.

  Her decision was made.

  Valerie Abernethy felt the happiest she had felt for ages.

  DCI Alastair Patrick was back at the rock stack, standing in the shadows, as motionless as the standing stones. His utter stillness made him invisible, the way an aboriginal standing can be mistaken for a tree. His background of grey rock matched the pallor of his face.

  ‘Is this where Oscar lives? Up here at Dolphin Point?’ asked Anderson, sotto voce.

  ‘Be quiet and keep your eyes open. And don’t move, if you move you will be seen.’

  ‘But is this where—’

  ‘Quiet.’

  He had got a similar answer when he asked, ‘What are we doing up here?’

  They had been there for two hours, at Dolphin Point, on the far side where the outer limits of the house used to be. Anderson was in awe of Patrick’s ability to remain motionless. He tried to amuse himself, keep himself warm, closed his eyes and tried to keep standing up, got cold and numb. He wanted a hot coffee and his bed, a cooked breakfast, anything but to be here. But he didn’t really trust Alastair Patrick. Not one bit.

  ‘Hear that?’ whispered Patrick.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vehicle coming.’

  ‘You can hear that?’

  ‘I can if you don’t speak.’ Patrick’s head was down, looking at his feet, as if he was concentrating on his ears.

  ‘We should be out looking for Morna and the boy. Abigail and her boy were killed, now Morna and her boy have gone missing.’ It was the fourth time he had said it.

  Patrick said, ‘Huge difference between being missing and being dead.’ Then he ignored him.

  The noise of the engine stopped. To Anderson it only sounded like the wind dropping a little. Patrick held his hand up, telling him to wait. And pointed to the Sound, where the land flattened off. In the cine film this had been where the tennis courts were, flat all the way to the cliff with a gentle seaward fall. Anderson suddenly got a very bad feeling about this, he watched where Patrick had indicated to look, and saw a disturbance in the trees. He dropped down a little to stay out of sight as they walked into view. The two of them.

  ‘Who is that?’ he whispered.

  ‘If there is a god it will be Haggerty and Taverner,’ whispered Patrick, then turned to look straight at Anderson. ‘Why? Who were you expecting?’

  ‘The Argyll and Sutherland Pipe Band for all I know.’ Anderson grew silent, fascinated as he watched the two men; Haggerty, the smaller figure out in front, walking through a plain flat field of grass but following a definite path. Neil Taverner, taller, at the back was less certain, he kept turning round, checking the horizon. Alastair Patrick didn’t move, he stayed very still against the rock face. Neil Taverner’s eyes passed right over them. Anderson wondered how often Patrick had stood here, watching.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Anderson as a smaller figure came walking over the hill, from behind the rock stack. They too, were heading towards the sea.

  ‘I have no bloody idea,’ replied Patrick, almost in admiration that something was going o
n that was unexpected.

  ‘I think I do, I think that’s my DI.’

  ‘The untraceable Ms Costello? Well, she’s come ready for the party. That’s a firearm in her right hand.’ Patrick raised his binoculars. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘She can’t be allowed to do this, she can’t risk everything to take Haggerty out. We have enough on him.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that though.’

  Patrick remained immobile so Anderson made a decision and ran, slipping out from his hiding place and moving fast across the ground, losing height with every forward stride, gaining on the two men from behind. They both took off at the sound of footfall without looking round, but they had seen the woman with the firearm. They were caught in a pincer movement. Both ran towards the edge of the cliff, trying to outrun them before they ran out of land.

  Anderson could hear Patrick behind him, shouting, and then the woman held the gun up as if to fire it. She took aim and seemed to pull the trigger. Anderson yelled at her, holding his arm out.

  It all happened in perfect slow motion.

  Absolutely nothing.

  The woman tried to pull the trigger again.

  Nothing.

  Anderson was still shouting Costello’s name. He’s not worth it.

  She didn’t seem to hear, but he had no idea if she could hear him. Then she was running, still holding the gun, making for the smaller of the men. She was going for Haggerty, getting closer before she tried firing again. Anderson saw Patrick cut off to his left, blocking any escape that Neil Taverner might think he had.

  The two men backed up, Anderson noticed how much land they had covered, how little grass was left between them and the cliff top. Then he saw the hand rise again, gun perfectly level, this time in a double-handed stance, like a police officer. She stood firm, and pulled the trigger, nothing happened.

  Haggerty stopped and turned towards her. Facing her, he brought the palms of his two hands together.

  Clap clap.

  Then he turned, resuming his flight.

  Patrick was running up fast behind her, reaching for the gun. The woman screamed as it was wrestled from her hand, she twisted free and started running, running as if the devil himself was after her. The look on her face was one of intense concentration, beyond human, she was a killing machine.