Standing Still

by Caro Ramsay

  That was when he realized that he couldn’t move.

  Not at all.

  TWO

  Monday 6 June

  Anderson had phoned in to say he would be late in the office. He had been up most of the night, not just the heat keeping him awake. The relief at the body in the box not being that of Irene’s son was heartfelt but fleeting. They had no knowledge as to where David was. Or if he was about to suffer the same fate as the unknown boy.

  The unknown boy. It was too lacking in respect to call the body ‘Jack In The Box’, and the name Jack would only add to the confusion, seeing as O’Hare’s first name was Jack. O’Hare hated referring to unidentified bodies by a number, it was one of the few things that really riled the old pathologist, so he had addressed the body as ‘Mr Hollister, here,’ and that had stuck in Anderson’s mind, so Mr Hollister he was until they knew otherwise.

  Since he got home from the morgue at three a.m., Anderson had been thinking about the dead boy. Somebody, somewhere, was waiting for that boy to walk in their door. They were still waiting. The technical cause of death was asphyxiation, caused by vomit blocking his airway. Some drug had retarded the onset of rigor; the stomach was empty. So the pathologist could offer no timeline as yet. He was waiting for the queue of work at the lab to be processed.

  Claire had been sitting on the stairs waiting for him, asking about David, the boy who had given her the flower. He told her that the body was not that of the boy who had been sitting outside the Zeitgeist Café. She had pursed her lips and pulled her long hair back behind her ears. Her eyes filled up as she asked what had happened to the boy in the crate. Anderson had given one of his stock answers; they would get on to that tomorrow. He had tried to pass her, get up the stairs and into his bed but she asked her next question as he stepped over her long legs. So who was the boy in the lane? Surely somebody would be missing him. In today’s society, the answer was ‘sadly not’. Nobody had noticed Paige Riley had gone, or knew what had happened to her. Nobody noticed because nobody cared.

  And then Anderson had sat down on the stair above her, looking down at the stained glass of the front door. Ceres was sowing the seeds of knowledge from a woven basket that sat on her hip. Anderson wished she would fling some his way.

  He didn’t need to remind Claire how lucky they were that they would be missed and that there was always somebody waiting for them somewhere. He looked at her, thinking how beautiful she was, how delicate her soul might be. She had a caring nature and that meant she was hurting; for the boy who had handed her the flower, and for the boy who been folded into a box and left down a lane. Two people who may never have met in life, yet their existences had collided so tragically.

  As the clock wound round, he thought he may as well get to work. He took his shoes off and chatted to his teenage daughter, trying not to make it too obvious that he was subtly interviewing her. Going back over the meeting at the parade, what she could and couldn’t recall about David, every single detail. Her thoughts and impressions. It took them a whole hour and they both crept up to bed somewhere at the back of four that morning.

  The whole exercise got them nowhere. To the trained and untrained eye, David Kerr was exactly what his mother thought he was. And in that was a greater tragedy.

  When Anderson walked gingerly into the investigation room, nursing a tired muzzy head, he was glad to see the windows wide open. The draught might be warm, but at least it was fresh. Archie Walker and Costello were already there, and looked settled as if they had been there for a while. Her face was still swollen on the right side. The cut now had small pieces of white tape holding the edges together. Her right eye was almost closed by swelling, giving her the appearance of being slightly lascivious, which was ironic to anybody who knew her. He wondered if they had spent the night together. There was never any sign of intimacy between them, if anything all he had witnessed was mild acrimony.

  Costello had already split the board; a missing person on one side and a murder victim on the other: David Kerr still missing; Mr Hollister still awaiting his identification. The body’s DNA had no match in the system. They were still examining his clothes. His list of injuries was horrific. Both shoulders and elbows had been dislocated. There had been an injection site on his left buttock. And he had not eaten for at least three or four days. The photograph of his face; eyes closed, restful, was on the board. He looked at peace.

  ‘So we have no idea at all who Mr Hollister is, or what he has been through. Are we agreed that we are looking for the same perpetrator?’ asked Walker. ‘The Blonde.’

  ‘I have that picture and description circulated. She knows this area, that’s for sure,’ said Costello.

  Anderson said, ‘And we need to find David before he turns up in a box somewhere. We need to dig a bit deeper. David is a low-risk victim. He isn’t stupid. He is young, strong but they still took him.’ He dropped his head into his hands. ‘For somebody who has a medical degree, O’Hare may be good with the dead but he is shite with the living. In the end Irene ended up in A & E, she split her lip open.’

  ‘Serves her right, she bloody nearly broke my cheekbone,’ said Costello. ‘But O’Hare knew that it wasn’t David, so he wasn’t going to let her suffer a minute longer than she had to. His stomach was empty.’ She looked round. ‘I asked somebody to get an updated list of missing persons. Why is it not on my desk?’

  ‘The updated one doesn’t seem to have arrived yet,’ Archie Walker said automatically, staring at the board.

  ‘Quite a few things dislocated? Like Amy’s knee?’ Anderson said and asked for a third column to add to the murder board. ‘Amy survived, her memory is precise. It must mean something. The more facts, the higher the probability that the connection will become obvious.’

  Costello wiped some text off the whiteboard to rewrite it smaller, then wrote Amy’s name up in big letters. ‘I’ve been on the phone to the hospital. Her mum says she doesn’t recall anything else but is perfectly lucid in every other way. No illicit drugs in her system, her tox screen was clear bar a small amount of alcohol. Brain scan is clear, no physical or pathological cause for her memory loss. But the damage to her knee is severe. She will need an operation. Probably more than one.’ She dabbed the top of the whiteboard pen onto the girl’s picture. ‘So she believes that she saw what she says she saw.’

  Anderson said, ‘And I saw the lines on Mr Hollister’s legs. Black lines where the joint could be bent enough to dislocate it? We should get Dr Batten in on this. Serial attackers have their root in fantasy and all that. What is this guy fantasizing about? Being a surgeon?’

  ‘Not my guess to make? How do you want to play it?’

  ‘I’ll take David Kerr. You take the dead boy, Mr Hollister. No doubt our paths will cross and cross. You happy with that, Archie?’

  ‘Absolutely, we will support you in any way you see fit to run the case but I think there might be another victim who got away.’

  Both cops looked at him.

  ‘Why did you not say anything before now?’ asked Anderson, hands out in wonderment.

  ‘You need a few reps to recognize a pattern. The name is Jeffries. DCI Alistair Jeffries. I’ll arrange an interview.’ And that was all Archie Walker would say on the subject and left, his shoes squeaking and leaving a trail of Penhaligon’s Sartorial behind him.

  ‘Can you shed any light on that?’ asked Anderson.

  Costello shook her head. ‘Nope. I don’t think so.’

  Anderson slid lower in his seat, started twiddling with a pen which was a sign he was thinking. ‘Jeffries, eh? I heard he had been hurt in an incident. Lost interest when I heard it wasn’t fatal.’

  Costello climbed off the desk, the conversation over.

  ‘So how is Archie doing?’ asked Colin, trying to sound polite rather than nosey.

  ‘You should have asked him yourself, he was here a minute ago,’ she replied sarcastically.

  He tried another tack. ‘How’s his missus up at the car
e home.’

  ‘It’s like one of our middle management meetings; everybody sitting around staring at each other, open mouthed and looking stupid. But he seems worse than her. She has taken it in her stride, much calmer than she ever was at home. I think that might be the effect of a drug regime given out on time.’ She turned her grey eyes on him, ‘Does the name Kilpatrick mean anything to you? No big career criminal that jumps to mind.’

  ‘No, they are all Russians these days, or your young friend, Miss Hamilton.’

  ‘Libby? She can’t help the family she was born into.’

  ‘She seems to be making a name for herself, right enough. Somebody was hacked to death in Castlemilk in the small hours of this morning.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that. The drugs war continues. Not our case though. I’d let Kirkton deal with that particular aspect of the Safer Society.’

  The phone went. Anderson lifted up his mobile, his eyes darting towards the ceiling when he saw who it was. ‘Oh God, bloody O’Hare again, I wonder what he wants now.’

  Anderson listened, Costello strained to hear and tried to make out the odd word. She didn’t think she had heard right. Anderson swiped his phone off and looked at it, as if the phone had just lied to him.

  ‘And?’ asked Costello.

  ‘Mathilda McQueen showed Irene Kerr the clothes that were taken off the dead body. And Irene confirmed that they were the clothes her son was wearing. Mathilda said she was very sure.’

  ‘And Mathilda tested the DNA to prove her wrong …’

  ‘And they proved her right. The dead body was wearing David’s clothes.’

  ‘The dead boy was dressed in the clothes from the missing boy?’ She repeated slowly to be sure that she had got it right. She went over to the whiteboard and drew a big plus sign linking the two cases, her mind wondering what horrors David Kerr was going through now. So she underlined it, they needed to find him. Soon.

  ‘So was Mulholland on the ball with tracing this woman then?’ asked Costello, walking through the car park of the block of very nice flats in Jordanhill.

  ‘Nope, he asked Elvie,’ replied Anderson. ‘Very useful having a logically minded girlfriend who’s a medic. It’s MindSafe, a brain injury charity. Elvie recognized the logo straight away so he phoned and asked them if they had anybody out doing collections yesterday. They didn’t, but they knew who I was talking about. Happens she was meeting the person I spoke to on the phone, going out for breakfast before going collecting in the city. I’ll be good cop, you be yourself. She might be a player in all this, she can hang around as if she’s invisible,’ He read the names by the buzzer. ‘Flat three. Second floor.’

  Wendy Gibson was a little wary when she opened the front door of her flat to two police officers in plain clothes. She looked carefully at their ID then let them in. Her suspicion changed to pleasure. Anderson got halfway down her hall before he stopped and pointed to the framed photograph on her wall, an assistant chief commissioner. The colours around the edges were going a little green, but the face was instantly recognisable. ‘Is that your dad,’ he asked, ‘Billy Gibson?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ she said, delighted that her visitor had recognized him.

  ‘Oh, that takes me back, he was …?’

  ‘Greenock.’

  ‘Yeah Greenock, I never worked under him directly but he was a great bloke, very well thought of.’ Anderson nodded at the memory. ‘Firm but fair was a phrase always banded around about him.’

  ‘“Firm but fair bastard” was the term he used for himself, I believe.’ She took the compliment graciously and opened the door for them to go into her living room. Very clean with a pale wood floor, the whole room kitted out from Ikea.

  Anderson gave Costello a look, telling her that Wendy was off the suspect list. She gave him a raised eyebrow back. According to her, Wendy was not.

  ‘Do sit down, and how can I help you?’ She pulled her skirt down over her knees. She was very classily dressed, a long silky jumper over her skirt and a scarf loosely draped round her neck in a way that Anderson’s wife complained she could never manage. ‘Do you want a coffee or something?’ An elegant finger pointed to the kitchen, curled in questioning.

  Anderson shook his head, wishing that Costello would sit down behind him but his DI was taking her time, as if David Kerr might be stuffed down the back of a sofa. She was stalking the joint.

  ‘I presume it is about that boy who went missing at the parade.’

  ‘Yes, it is. We think that you might have seen him before he was abducted.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Meaning you saw something.’

  Her eyes looked from one to the other. ‘Well, I called the helpline number to say that I had been on that corner. Is that not why you are here?’ She looked puzzled now.

  ‘We found you on the CCTV.’

  ‘And nobody told you about the phone call? Well, times don’t change.’ Wendy smiled, recalling her dad moaning about exactly the same thing; one hand having no idea what the other hand was up to.

  ‘Can you tell us your movements on Sunday?’ asked Costello, sharply.

  ‘Well, we had a small reception breakfast for the charity volunteers. I’m with MindSafe Brain Tumour Trust, so I was going to meet Elspeth. We knew it would be busy so we decided to meet on Vinicombe Street. So that’s how I came to be standing on the corner where the boy went missing, across Vinicombe Street but on the same side of Byres Road.’

  Anderson smiled encouragingly and asked her to go on.

  ‘Well, I texted Elspeth and told her that I was going to wait further up Vinicombe Street. That would have been about twenty past nine, half nine. I was early, but it was getting busy. We could have missed each other easily.’

  ‘So it was the preamble of the parade?’

  ‘The best part I always think, folk walking up to the start. More fun than the parade itself, no neds, no drunkenness. It’s good to see the costume malfunctions, the dads dragging their kids along, screaming. However, Elspeth texted back. She was caught in traffic so I had a wee wander and ended up at the corner of Vinicombe Street, right at Vinicombe Lane.’

  Which was exactly the place where the second camera had picked her up.

  ‘Did you notice anything strange?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘On parade day? Everything!’ she laughed.

  She had a point.

  ‘Did anybody speak to you?’

  ‘A few people. I collect around the area so there are people I bump into, they stop and pass the time of day, but …’ She stopped to think. ‘Nobody of interest really.’

  ‘Do you remember anybody supporting a young man, helping him as if he was injured? You might have thought they were drunk?’

  ‘No, not really. There was a boy in a wheelchair. I held the car door open for him, so his mum could get him in properly. The wheelchair went into the hatchback.’

  Anderson didn’t look at Costello.

  ‘Can you describe the boy?’ asked Costello, sitting on the arm of the chair looking straight at Wendy. It was intimidating but Wendy didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Well, a teenager, youngish teenager though.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to come forward when you heard we were looking for a teenager who had gone missing.’

  ‘No, like I said I did phone the helpline, all the charity people did,’ said Wendy, looking a bit embarrassed, ‘but this boy was disabled. He was wrapped in a blanket, with his mother. The wheelchair folded into the hatchback. She lifted him well, like an expert. He had something wrong with him, cerebral palsy, I think. He was rolling a little the way they do and he was dribbling. He wasn’t that boy on the news, and …’ She looked up trying to recall something.

  ‘What?’ prompted Costello.

  ‘Well, just that I have met that woman before. She must live or work around here and she’s interested in the work that the charity does. I’ve said hello to her before that incident, nodding terms, you know? I fee
l I know her.’

  ‘Do you know her name? Where she works?’

  Wendy shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘And you presumed he was disabled because he was in a chair? Or was there something else?’

  ‘I presumed he was disabled because he was – well – unresponsive. And I presumed that she was interested in the charity because she nursed or knew somebody who had such an injury, and so when I saw her with him I put two and two together. I don’t think that I was wrong.’ She shook her head, lips pursed, quite definite. ‘No, I wasn’t wrong. That woman knew that boy and was used to handling him. It’s not an easy thing for a woman to do, moving somebody like that from a wheelchair into a car seat.’

  Costello opened up the file she was holding. ‘Was this him?’ It was Innes’s picture of David Kerr.

  Wendy looked at it carefully. ‘No, I really don’t think so.’ She got up and walked over to the sideboard, lifting up a pair of glasses. She put them on, looked at the picture again. ‘There is a resemblance, though, but no, I don’t think it was him. The boy in the wheelchair was younger, smaller. His hair was slightly darker, shorter. Maybe not shorter, but swept back, different style.’

  ‘So, not him.’

  ‘You are making me doubt myself now. Do you think that was him?’ She went back to the settee handing Anderson the photograph as she passed.

  ‘What about the woman?’

  ‘Oh her? Beautiful clothes. She always wears beautiful clothes. A light blue silk top, beautifully cut, cream linen trousers, French style.’

  ‘Hair colour?’

  ‘Blonde. Big dark glasses. Thought she was brave being so well dressed looking after a teenager like that. But I guess she’s used to it.’

  Costello was now frowning. ‘Well, a woman managed to get a teenage boy off Byres Road without anybody noticing. We are wondering how she did that. She being female, he was a healthy teenage boy. So where was the wheelchair?’ asked Costello. ‘Did you see her with the chair empty? Or collapsed?’