by Caro Ramsay
Jeffries shook his head. ‘They keep asking me about that, like I am some arsehole junkie. They were in here, you know, looking between my toes and bloody everywhere.’
‘I think if you were injecting yourself with something you would find an easier place to do it than your own backside. It was done to you.’
Jeffries looked at Walker with something as close to respect as he could manage.
‘I’ve been watching some CCTV of another incident. A young man was abducted off the street. Somebody bumped into him. He is then seen rubbing his arm. He then becomes very compliant but not unconscious. So I am wondering about you?’
Jeffries shrugged.
Walker pointed to the picture. ‘It might have happened to him. It might have happened to her.’ He pulled out a photograph of Amy’s bloodied knee, with its dark line drawn round the joint.
Jeffries placed a finger on the skin of his own knee. His hand tremored a little, and he paled, suddenly looking every day of his fifty-eight years. ‘I can’t help you.’
‘For Christ’s sake, look at the mess of him. This boy—’
Jeffries shook his head. ‘I don’t remember. I can’t help you. Not that I won’t.’
‘Really?’ Walker pulled his chair closer, he was going to stay until he got an answer.
‘It’s fucking embarrassing.’ Jeffries ruffled the blue blanket, the heat beamed in through the window. He looked close to tears.
‘Not the first embarrassing thing that has happened in your career.’ Walker tried for levity.
Jeffries winced and pushed the photographs away. He tried to move up the bed a little. Walker didn’t help him.
‘I have no memory of it. Nothing at all. So there is no point in you being here or talking to me.’
‘You know I am a tenacious wee git so I’m not leaving here with that crap. What do you remember? Waking up in here? You must recall something.’ He braced himself for a story about aliens.
‘I recall picking up my jacket at the station. Then wakening up in here. And that’s all.’ He looked out the window, tasting the fear on his lips. ‘Feeling helpless and I don’t know why.’
‘You were found on the pavement up Foremount Lane just behind the Rock. You were drinking there. How did they know you were there?’
He told the same story Walker had read on the initial report.
‘My mates say I was having a drink, went to the loo and didn’t come back.’ He shrugged. ‘They thought I had met somebody I know. They texted me. I texted them back, seemingly. I mean I don’t remember doing it. I told them to go on without me. I have no memory of that at all. Now I think that … well, I don’t know what I think …’
‘The perpetrator did that so nobody came looking for you. Somebody targeted you.’
Jeffries dismissed it with a sharp shake of the head. ‘Didn’t happen, just a mugging. So there you go, you can take that back to your hot shot team and see what they make of it.’ He made his aspirator noise again.
Walker looked at the picture of Amy. ‘She can’t recall it either.’ He tapped the picture of the dead boy. ‘I’m sure his mother wishes all he had was loss of memory. There’s another young man missing and we need to get to him before he becomes a victim; dead, I mean, not just embarrassed. So what happened to you? How did you get from inside the pub to outside up the lane?’
‘Anderson is smart. He’ll get on with it without my help.’ But he didn’t look Walker in the eye, his hand reached out again to the photograph. The eyes swept the picture, instinct, alive through the drugs.
‘Come on, tell me. Anything.’
Jeffries’ expression changed.
Walker pulled his seat further forward and looked round, making sure the door was closed. He placed the photograph of Amy right under his nose. ‘Amy Niven, nineteen years old. Like you, she got away, the next one wasn’t so lucky.’
Jeffries lifted a hand, pale, paper-thin skin stretched and wrinkled over his fingers as he took hold of the picture. The photograph shivered with his tremor. He shook his head, then pointed at the table and Walker got up to pull it over to the bed. ‘My glasses, hand me my glasses?’ The pallor seemed to have slipped from his face, a more natural colour, something had his interest now. ‘Should I know her?’
‘She is a classics student from Glasgow University,’
‘No, sorry.’ He handed the picture back, looking questioningly at Walker.
‘You know what criminologists say about the mechanics of this crime. The killer separated her from the crowd, like a lion taking a gazelle. Just as you were separated from your friends.’ He went on as Jeffries failed to respond. ‘Somebody sent them a text from your phone to keep them away. You were found a street away, lying in the bottom of a lane bleeding from a serious head injury.’
Jeffries moved slightly on the bed, still sore from the surgery. Walker saw it. People were people. Fear was fear.
‘Alistair, I can get Costello to go over old cases, talk to your old colleagues and pull out some files of those who might bear a grudge that strong. See anything that might not be quite as it should be. I am the chief fiscal. I can do anything I want. You know that. You have a reputation of not being the cleanest of cops. And you know Costello, she will not let it go. And if Anderson starts to head up a cold case initiative—’
That hit home, a flash of a more feral fear crossed his face. ‘Fuck off.’ But his resolve was diminishing.
Walker smiled. So there was something there. Funny how the guilty saw a vague accusation as a direct threat; the guilty mind saw proof of knowledge where there was none. ‘So if you tell us what happened, I don’t need to get Costello to trawl. I have no interest in what dirty little shite you had going on. You aren’t coming back to work, but you might be able to save this guy’s life, so tell me what happened that night at the Rock.’
‘Nothing. I don’t recall anything.’ He opened his palms, the fight seemed to have gone out of him. ‘Honest.’
Walker nodded. ‘OK, so if we could get you hypnotized, would you agree to that?’
‘What?’
‘Hypnotized. You know, dangling a watch in front of your eyes and all that. Force you to tell the truth.’
He saw Jeffries wince, his mind whirring to think of a reason to refuse.
Walker backpeddled. ‘Limited to this crime only. I can get Dr Batten to do it, you know him. He’s one of the guys.’
Jeffries looked out the window, his thumb shaking on the photograph, flicking the corner making a faint clicking noise.
‘The last time you were in the public eye was not good. You were on the front page of the Daily Record.’
‘Bloody awful picture, made me look like Peter Stringfellow’s pervy older brother.’
‘There is a resemblance, from a certain angle. What about this woman, do you recall seeing her?’ He put the picture of Blondie on the table in front of Jeffries.
‘Not a very good picture, is it? I wouldn’t be able to recognize my own granny from that. I can only see the side of her face.’ He screwed his eyes a bit. ‘No, I don’t know her.’
He looked out the window seeing the blank white wall of the other side of the atrium, catching sight of an admin worker in her glass box, sneaking a coffee. ‘The wife hasn’t been in to see me.’ A tear ran down his face. ‘It’s so embarrassing. He must have been so close, right up, personal. His hand was in my pocket to get my phone. And I don’t recall anything about him, not one thing. The one lead we might have and I don’t recall one damn thing.’ He had spent his time in hospital reflecting a life that was not well lived. A man who was not well loved. And now he was feeling it.
‘So are you going to let us hypnotize you? Or do I tell James Kirkton that you are refusing to contribute to our safer society.’
‘He wouldn’t care.’ He snapped. The instancy tinged with something. Disappointment?
Their eyes met. Jeffries looked away first.
‘Aye, whatever.’
Sandra was early
finishing her duties. The linen cupboard on the first floor was so clean, it could have been a House Of Fraser window display. She had taken her time, waiting for Paolo to pass, so she could be here, casually being helpful.
That had been her plan but then that bloody woman Nicholson had started talking to her in the walk-in cupboard, blocking her vision. She thought she had heard Paolo on the stairs going into the Duchess’s room. He was light on his feet. She wondered what he did for a living. He was in and out here at all hours. She thought he might be a doctor. He spoke like a doctor. He knew medical terms and he had those nice strong white, very clean hands, just like a doctor.
It was late, nearly eight o’clock before she got rid of the matron. She needed a ploy to get to Paolo. She could say that she was popping in to make sure his mother was OK. Get more brownie points. She stopped outside Tosca and tried to remember how she would usually approach the door. She reversed a few steps and approached again, grasping the handle. No, she didn’t do that. She reversed again and lifted her hand ready to knock. No, she didn’t do that either. She only knocked if she knew Paolo was there and she was pretending that she did not know that. Anybody who knocked on that door would wait all day. The woman had dementia. Paolo was in there, and she didn’t want him to think that she was disturbing him, but then she wasn’t supposed to know that he was in there. She was over-thinking this. He would presume that somebody had told her he was there. And she was supposed to be at home. But he must not think that she had been waiting for him. She had been, but he needn’t know that. She went all the way back to the top of the stairs; just don’t think about it. It was a walk up to the door, a quiet, perfunctory tap with the knuckle of the forefinger and then immediately she would open the door. It was an unconscious, habitual thing.
She entered the room. The Duchess was sitting on her wheelchair, her throne in the middle of the room, dressed in beige swathes of towelling like a sculpture waiting to be unveiled. She was playing with a white flute of handkerchief, waving it in the air as she conducted the imaginary orchestra in her mind. Paolo was nowhere to be seen but Sandra could hear the shower running. He must be swishing out the wet room after showering his mother. She looked like Joan Crawford, or Jane Russell in her long nightdress with its feathered collar, those days when stars were real stars. She turned to look right through Sandra, the handkerchief of material now furled into the palm of her hand. Sandra noticed that her nails had been repainted, bright red and newly shaped. The air in the room had the scent of acetone.
Sandra checked the door was closed, then went to the mirror and sorted her short brown hair, newly highlighted. Paolo commented that he liked the colour of her hair. Funny how he should think that. Her hair had been every colour under the sun but nobody had ever commented on it before. She liked how he had noticed, how he had a good eye for that sort of thing.
The Duchess’s make-up bag was on her dressing table. Keeping one eye on the door to the wet room, she took out some lipstick and put it on. It was a deep red, she recognized it as the shade that matched the nail varnish. It was too dark for Sandra but she really didn’t want to be bare faced in front of Paolo, not after all her hard work and effort. She had a quick squirt of Fracas perfume behind the ears then wafted the air around her head with her hands to disperse the smell. Then she felt guilty. Paolo would spot that. She panicked, and turned round, bottle still in her hand as if offering it to the Duchess. The old woman’s ebony dark eyes were watching her, watching her every move. Sandra saw the silk-covered pillows on the bed, one of those and that would be all it took. When the time came.
What was she thinking? Where had that got her before? Absolutely nowhere. Slowly, slowly. Nobody ever got rich overnight. She was working the long game on this one.
And Paolo was a rich, handsome, young man.
He was lovely, attentive to his mum. Not like the tossers she had met in her life. One had put her in Casualty twice. One had left her pregnant. One had moved in, started up his own business and then did a moonlight flit with all her money. It was only when the letters came from the mortgage company that she realized that the money he had raised on her house was gone. And the home her mum had left her was no longer hers. And she was now in a council flat. And with her change of address came a change of attitude towards men.
It was on her terms now. Take. Take. Take.
She flattened her navy blue tunic and walked over to the en suite, leaning her ear against the door. Behind the noise of the water running was the soaring melody of an opera. The sad bit from Madam Butterfly, where the woman is crying her eyes out. She opened the door, quietly but not slowly so that if he caught her she would say that she thought somebody had left the water running and apologize.
He didn’t hear her, he didn’t notice.
Paolo was in the shower, naked. His back was towards her. He had turned his face up towards the jets of water as if he was facing the sun, his eyes closed. He was slim and lightly muscled, a little taller than Sandra. She watched for a moment, transfixed by him and his beauty, then pulled herself away. As she closed the door behind her she knew the Duchess had been watching her, watching him.
The old woman’s eyes were alive with wicked light.
THREE
Tuesday 7 June
David could recognize the taste of apple that covered his tongue. The tune of ‘Proud Mary’ still ran through his mind, a song he didn’t really like. But it was all coming back to him slowly. Pieces of the jigsaw falling into place but not yet in the right order. He had been walking along the street, leaning on somebody he didn’t know but she was a nice lady. He recalled feeling dizzy, holding on to a metal table that slid away from him and he fell. There was a girl, with a paper rose and a camera. Then the power had gone from his legs and the lady had picked him up, and ran her fingers through his hair. There was a wheelchair tucked behind the bins of the Zeitgeist Café. He had been impressed by that, by the organization. He had felt so grateful, being pushed along, up Vinicombe Street and he thought he would be going to the hospital. Then his memory ran out.
Or did it? He could recall the rose petal, a paper rose petal curled in his hand, and a hand that had outstretched to hold his.
Now he was in a place with no fresh air and a mild dancing light. There were some trees overhead, but he was indoors. That was all he could remember, nothing more. He did know that he could not move. He could see, but it was so tiring to blink, it was better to keep his eyes closed. He felt a tear roll down his face but could do nothing to remove it.
The briefing kicked off at nine a.m. Everybody was updated with the events so far. It was Costello who took the meeting; despite the heat building outside she still had on her navy blue suit, it was becoming her second skin.
Walker had put something up on the board about the thunder and the downpour that was expected, like they couldn’t tell by the pressure in the air. There were storm warnings of lightning flash floods and extreme rain for the next twenty-four hours. But so far, the sky was clear.
Anderson was there in body but not in mind, sitting with his chin cupped in his hands, as if in deep concentration, but in reality, he was a hundred miles away. Twice he had to be prompted by Costello to fill in the details about the injection sites that had been found on Amy, Jeffries and Mr Hollister. It was the big connection. An incidental finding was some cat hair Mathilda McQueen had found on the black jumper; a long-haired black and white cat hair. The Kerrs did not have a cat.
Mulholland reported that both O’Hare and Elvie McCulloch were researching injectable drugs that metabolized so quickly nothing would be left in the system of the victims. He had heard a few generic names which he promptly forgot, the more important aspect was that whoever Blondie was, she had access to serious pharmaceuticals and knew how to use them.
Anderson was deep in thought about the hypnotherapy that Professor Batten was doing with Amy at that exact moment. He would rather have been there but her mother was present instead. The girl could obviously r
emember something but had got it confused in her mind, with the injected drug, the stress and the drink. Anderson had high hopes that Batten could find out exactly what Amy saw and that they, in the cold light of day and perfectly sober, could make sense of the aliens and give them the lead they needed.
Unfortunately, as James Kirkton had witnessed the girl stagger up the steps himself, he had taken a keen interest in the case and that fact alone made Anderson very wary. Not only would they have to investigate it, they would have to be visibly busy investigating it. It afforded them little chance of keeping their progress in-house.
Amy was young and pretty. She possessed that increasingly rare quality of ‘every girl’ that the press in general, and James Kirkton in particular, so loved in a victim. Amy Niven had nothing anybody could object to: youth, class, intelligence. If such an assault happened to her, there was no hope for the rest of us. Her looks, and her injuries meant she was in danger of being drawn into being a poster girl for the Safer Society campaign. James Kirkton had already been dropping hints to the media about the scuffle at the end of the lane and why six police offers could not save Irene Kerr from the trauma of seeing her ‘son’s’ body. Anderson refused to be drawn into a tit for tat correction of the facts and be caught between Klingon Kirkton and ACC Mitchum, which was about as unpleasant as being between a urine-stained pavement and a dog turd. Anderson wondered how close the friendship was between the two men. Did they play golf together because they liked each other’s company? Or because it was good for their careers. Anderson knew that Mitchum was nobody’s fool. Anderson could see him as a man who would keep Kirkton close on the ‘keep friends close and enemies closer’ theory.