The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘We think Taverner had a bad shoulder, there’s anecdotal evidence of a young woman throwing him at karate, breaking his shoulder. That might have annoyed him a bit.’

  ‘Easy for Taverner to drive around, early morning, late at night. He had a right to be everywhere. Woman walking, hiking, camping on their own.’

  ‘So it was all for money, and the nice little line they had running cocaine about the country. I wonder how many of their hikers are extremely regular. And sniff a lot.’

  ‘All small fry compared to the murder of Malcolm and Abigail.’

  ‘You were right about the MO. Haggerty came home the previous evening and drove in to the garage. I think Taverner was in the boot. Taverner stayed in the garage, then walked in the back door, killed them. The guy on the CCTV on Kelvindale path is the right height for Taverner, not for Haggerty. There is no DNA because of that outfit he wears, it’s like a boiler suit, with the name of the company on it. He killed them, slipped a jacket over his easily recognizable suit and left. Walked back to wherever he left his car. It wasn’t sophisticated, it wasn’t even that clever. It was merely effective.’

  ‘Haggerty had been using that path for years, he was a secretive man and the path had been closed from his end, so it’s likely that he “allowed” naughty Malcolm to open the path again knowing that it would give Taverner a way out in the early hours of that morning largely unseen. Nobody else knew about the path at the back, Haggerty would deny it. Mathieson and her team missed it, they didn’t know where to look, a small gap in an overgrown hedge. Heads will roll that the search team missed that.’

  ‘And Oscar Duguid? The first husband? What’s his role in all this?’ asked Costello.

  ‘I think something happened to Oscar Duguid when he heard about Mary Jane’s death. Her murder shocked him, just because he walked away from the marriage doesn’t mean he stopped loving his daughter, my daughter,’ said Anderson. ‘He thought he had left them comfortable and safe, his friend moved in as role of father and protector. He knew about the attacks on women, that was his insurance to keep them quiet about his disappearing act. They didn’t stop the attacks. Haggerty is a man of intense cruelty, Oscar was OK with faking his own death, but he must have had a serious rethink when Abigail was murdered. And maybe when he worked out what might have happened to Jennifer Argyll up at Dolphin Point. His Jennifer, thirty years before. That’s still under investigation. Lachlan McRae was the SIO on her disappearance.’

  ‘Where is he now? Oscar?’

  ‘DCI Patrick is saying nothing. You can attach electrodes to his testicles and you’ll get nothing out of him,’ said Anderson smiling.

  ‘Reading the reports. I fail to understand why Taverner’s body was washed out to sea,’ said Walker.

  ‘You had to be there,’ said Anderson blithely. ‘I’m more interested in the psychological hold that house held over them, it became a focus for memories. That’s why people have cenotaphs set in stone, I suppose, so their memories are also set in stone. Happy days at the lodge, the three boys growing up there. Then Jennifer Argyll went missing, Oscar’s heart was broken and from then on, it was all downhill.’

  ‘Memories, eh? Powerful but untrustworthy.’

  ‘They are useful,’ added Costello.

  ‘Well, I had better get home before I get forgotten about,’ said Anderson.

  ‘And I’m going to visit my sober god-daughter,’ Walker shrugged, ‘now that she’s therapeutically plastered.’

  ‘Oh very good,’ laughed Anderson. ‘I’m going home to a kitchen which is slightly busier than Sauchiehall Street in the Boxing Day sales.’

  ‘And does that not make you yearn for the ruggedly beautiful isolation of Dolphin Point?’ asked Walker.

  Anderson appeared to consider it carefully. ‘Nope.’