by Caro Ramsay
One was the act of a desperately sad woman but sane. The other? Batten had used a lot of big words.
‘We do have a Mr Paolo Girasole who seems to be very honest. How was he when you interviewed him?’ asked Anderson.
‘OK. Just a normal guy. He did react a little when we showed him Blondie’s picture.’
‘So we bring him in again?’ Costello got to her feet.
‘No, let’s talk to him but play nice. David’s life could depend on us getting this right.’
Kirkton was on TV, annoying Costello with his big shiny face and long, drawn-out vowels, flicking that irritating fringe. To her there was a direct line of stinking contamination. Kirkton to Jeffries, who had removed the file about the death of a handsome young man called Pietro Girasole on the dawn of the new millennium. And, as soon as Anderson had started digging around, Kirkton appeared to muddy the waters. All that crap in the newspaper. He was such a media whore … but why was he interfering with this investigation? There was something about that case that Kirkton and Jeffries did not want them to find out. That would explain why he was discrediting this enquiry and blocking Anderson looking into the cold case. If the two cases were connected to each other and in some way to Kirkton himself … So she was going to do some digging herself. Somewhere at the bottom of all this mess was David Kerr, and the death of an innocent man not called Mr Hollister. She thought about Amy and Anderson, Jeffries and David Kerr. And Kirkton. There was a sequence there.
On the TV, MSP Kirkton stood with his wife and family. Tania, the daughter, was standing to one side. Their son, Giles, to the other. They looked like every family of any disgraced politician: here is my wife and the two products of my loins, he seemed to say as he beamed for the gathered press. He spoke about the importance of the family unit, and the tragedy of the missing young man David Kerr. Costello starting mimicking him at this point: A nice respectable boy who lived with his mother and had two working parents, and was white and Protestant, for all these reasons I back the police all the way to the hilt in their effort to secure a happy ending to the boy’s disappearance. Then she listened to Kirkton speak: … which had been ruled to be an abduction and now they were all united in working towards a happy result for the family. It was to his sorrow that one of the senior investigation officers in the case had taken the decision to involve his own child. At that point Costello thought she could detect a smirk from the lovely Tania. James Kirkton hoped that this would not have tragic consequences as he, as a father, knew that he could not have kept his mind on such a stressful job if his own beautiful daughter, who was in fact a good friend of Claire Anderson, was involved in this terrible crime. He wished DCI Anderson and his team God speed in bringing the case to a swift and happy resolution. He would ensure they had any extra funding required.
Costello pressed the remote and silenced him mid-speech, hearing the door open behind her.
‘From what budget? And where in this mess do we find David? Is Kirkton scared that we uncover what a horrible wee bitch his daughter is? Or do we think that he was caught in suspenders up a dark alley with a beer bottle up his arse when he was a student and thinks we will find evidence of it back in 1999? And do what? Sell it to the papers?’ Costello threw the remote onto the desk in front of her in disgust.
‘That’s what he would do. But it’s a fact that he has not been off our backs while this case has been on.’ Anderson started sifting through a sheaf of paper.
‘Because the media is all over the place because of the festival, so he’s glad-handing with one hand and slapping us with the other. He was on one channel yesterday hinting that if David’s parents hadn’t been separated then he wouldn’t have been abducted. “The lack of strength in the family unit.” Yeah, that makes perfect sense.’
Anderson looked up, checking that she was being sarcastic. ‘That’s typical behaviour for any politician, there is nothing special in that two-faced shite. What is unusual is that he is not up at West End Central, they are the big boys. Why is he down here, annoying us?’
‘Because of the cold case initiative. I’m telling you.’
‘But we haven’t upset him in some way have we? Personally?’
‘Not yet no. but it’s time we did,’ said Costello.
O’Hare was re-examining the cold case evidence at Anderson’s request; well, he was trying to but none of it made much sense. It was only 1999, not that long ago. Everybody had the flu and the world was going to crash and burn with the millennium bug.
In the end he had given up trying to find the police copy of the PM report which had been signed out and in by DI Jeffries and had then disappeared. O’Hare called in a favour from the mortuary’s own records. The suspicious death of Pietro Giuseppe Girasole was scanned and emailed over to him. He downloaded it, then deleted the email immediately. He would rather work here on his own desk at home than at the big hospital, and away from the big queue to get out the car park at this time of day. He had bits of the file all over his desk and a very large, black coffee; he was on call. Turning over page after page of the printout, he jotted down the odd note here and there. The Girasole murder’s chief investigating officer was Alistair Jeffries and O’Hare knew he wasn’t going anywhere soon.
It had been in 1999, the millennium street party in Ashton Lane, the body found in Lillybank. O’Hare had worked that Christmas shift and his colleague had worked New Year. He had been English, only stayed with the department for a couple of years before changing his mind about his career and gone to train with Médecins Sans Frontières. God, was it ten years since he had died, caught up in some epidemic in Africa somewhere. O’Hare closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. Was his memory really getting that bad? A young man he had worked alongside day by day for a couple of years. A young man who had sat opposite him, drank whisky with him, attended scenes with him, discussed difficult cases long into the night with him, and he couldn’t even remember when he had died. Not long ago. God he was getting old.
He remembered where Pietro Girasole died though, right at the end of one of the walkways that ran from Lillybank Gardens and down on to Ashton Lane. At that time of year it had been full of revellers, people everywhere were good natured and celebrating.
And everybody was busy having a good time.
Nobody had seen Pietro or where he had come from, but his body had been found lying against the wall the next morning, dead. It appeared death was caused by a single punch. One punch that had sent him backwards into a doorway. It might have been an accident, young guys larking around. His parents identified his body the next day. O’Hare could remember another boy, probably a younger brother, holding on to his mother, though who was giving who support was difficult to say. He wondered if it was now considered racist to say it had been very Italian; a lot of wailing, and weeping.
The case had been left open but remained inactive, closed to all real purpose six months after the incident, the summer of that year. And that was it. O’Hare flicked back and forth, it was a shamefully slim file. The document index was all over the place. Somebody had been in, taken something out to read and lost it. It did happen, especially with unsolved investigations. Every so often a cold case review has another wee poke, and the sign-in, sign-out system worked, most of the time.
O’Hare read the post-mortem findings, noting those that didn’t quite fit then but they might fit now.
He would ask Archie Walker for a full forensic review. They would have to put in the request for the documentation, the clothing, the forensic samples and the pathology to make it official and to keep it nice and tidy. O’Hare was looking for a connection, any connection between the events of 1999 and those of 2016.
But he never lost sight of the fact that a nineteen-year-old lad had died. He was a nice lad, much loved by his parents and his brother. He flicked round the page, the 1999 death. He remembered Pietro had been a joiner, but there was nothing written for occupation, so why did they think that? He reread the PM. Rough hands? Splinters
? The victim had worked with raw wood, a little intuitive insertion by his colleague? O’Hare could not recall. Whatever he was, he had deserved a lot better than he got. O’Hare carried on clicking through the pictures thinking about the DNA and how far that had come in the seventeen years since the Girasole boy died. Anderson had said something in a report on Mr Hollister. The phone that had been lost by David Kerr had been handed in by … He flicked through the paperwork. Paolo Girasole? Was that the name of the Girasole boy’s wee brother?
Maybe not as strange as it appeared, the man who found the phone might walk past that spot on Athole Square seven or eight times a day. The deposition site of the Athole Lane victim – Mr Hollister – right behind where the Marchmont fire had occurred, was the coincidence. It was starting to all look rather tasty. Two was a coincidence, three was a pattern.
As his mother used to say on Grand National Day, ‘It was worth a punt.’
Dennis, his name was Dennis. It was coming back to him know. A case that they did not solve and he could now recall Dennis coming to him to talk about it. They had even gone to the scene together, on the pretence of going out for a bite to eat at The Chip. A young bloke, killed, one fatal punch. O’Hare closed his eyes, recalling slowly. It was common knowledge that the body had had an item of clothing removed. There was very little blood on the clothes that he had been found in. So some outer clothing had been removed, a jacket, a coat, a scarf. It had been a cold night. A clear cold night, somebody most likely removed an item of clothing because there had been DNA trace on it. And there had been no defence wounds on the body, nothing at all.
And that pricked his conscience. The name of the deceased was not a common one. Girasole. Sunflower. That was also the name of the old theatre: The Vinicombe Street Children’s Theatre. And that had just burned down. He remembered listening to something on the radio about the protest, crowd funding and other stuff he didn’t understand. The Pietro Girasole case had troubled Dennis, the murderer had got away. It had been a rage killing. They had come to the conclusion that Pietro had been frequenting the gay clubs around that part of town. He had gone up a back alley with somebody for whatever reason and ended up dead. Some inciting event had happened in that lane. Had he run into a gang of some sort in the wrong place at the wrong time? It must have been quick, for there to have been no time for him to defend himself. There was something else. The boy’s face had been very clean; it had been cleansed. Dennis had commented on it. Somebody had removed some identifying mark or substance from his face. And had taken his shoes. That was bad enough, worse was the fact that they did that without going for help.
He was about to close the computer down, when he saw the name – that was the connection his brain had made, the name of the woman who had identified Pietro Girasole was Ilaria Girasole.
He needed a map. He needed to join dots. He was on call tonight so he did not bother going to bed, he walked into the kitchen and made himself another black coffee instead and thought who he could get to stick a fox in the chicken coup. He thought about who he could phone.
Costello had got the nod that James Kirkton would be visiting the station again. He would be asking for Mitchum or Anderson but Costello’s nose was still sore so she was just in the mood for him.
She watched him from the open window in Anderson’s office as he stood on the steps, still expounding the virtues of the family unit and not quite blaming mothers for failing to look after their own kids. He was getting a lot of media interest. What he was saying struck a chord with the populous, and that made him dangerous in Costello’s eyes. She opened the window further and stayed close to the wall to listen. She overheard a veiled criticism of Irene Kerr, to all intents and purposes a single mother who had no idea where her son was. It might have been couched in terms of concern and ‘my thoughts are with her at this difficult time’, but the slur was still there. The actual facts of the case were missing. Irene Kerr generally knew exactly where her son was and it was his sudden disappearance from her radar that sparked the investigation so quickly. Boys like that did not change their plans for nothing. David had had his plans changed for him.
When Graham buzzed up that Kirkton had arrived in reception and wished to speak to Mitchum or Anderson, both were diplomatically unavailable. So he asked for Costello.
She bounced out of the locked door like a sycophant. Or a serial killer. He was nearly walking out himself before he actually noticed her. ‘Costello. DI Costello. How are you?’
His voice was as smooth as ever, but she detected a little fear somewhere.
‘Fine. How are you?’ She looked around. ‘Why don’t you come upstairs and lend us your expertise. We have a clear desk policy, so you won’t see anything that might … upset you.’
He said, with mild irritation, ‘I thought I was going to talk to a senior officer.’
‘Oh, Colin’s around, you know Colin, don’t you? And his daughter? Who is friends with your daughter? No wait, I got that wrong. Not exactly friends.’ She let that lie. ‘However, I am here to be your serf with regard to your capacity as czar. Policing czar. That’s such an odd title they have given you, considering what happened to the czar.’
‘I am here to help sort out the mess that is Police Scotland and this case.’
‘Like Thatcher offering to help in the search for the Yorkshire Ripper?’
He pulled the A4 sheet of paper she was reading away from her. He had fat stubby hands, his wedding ring cut tight into the skin round the base of his finger. ‘You can stop reading that. I want to talk to you.’
‘To me?’ She started up the stairs.
‘I am talking to all of you, looking at ways to make the place more efficient.’
‘Difficult to measure how efficient a police service can be but the best way I find is to leave us alone and let us get on with the job. We are a major investigation team, we have a murder and we are investigating. We don’t help little old ladies across the road. We go where the evidence leads, in this case back to 1999.’
He winced.
‘But we could herd all the murderers together so that we can catch them all at once? Would that help?’
Kirkton smiled, it was that easy smile of a politician. It didn’t really go anywhere. Or mean anything.
She held the door open for him. Costello smiled back, knowing that easily doubled as a threat.
‘How do you find working here?’
‘Fine. How do you find working in your office? Here the coffee drinkers steal the tea drinkers’ HobNobs.’
‘Offices are the same the world over, I am sure.’
‘Course they are.’
‘You have a very productive unit here.’
‘I don’t, I am part of the team, of this unit.’
‘And what do you put the success of this team down to?’
‘The lack of interference from above.’
‘Above?’
‘The police are very hierarchical. ACC Mitchum keeps out of our way but is always there to support us. We try to keep within our budget, but that is because we have a very small geographical area to look after and only specific crime to look into, the other units give us the support that we need. It works well for us, but not something that would be practical to roll across the force.’
Kirkton nodded. ‘I think there might be more to it than that.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, your own dedication to the force.’
‘Maybe that’s because we are not just numbers to each other, we work well together.’
‘You and Archibald Walker the fiscal work well together?’
‘I think it is fair to say that he goes out of his way to help us in our investigations but, as I said, we are a major investigation team. Any MIT will have a fiscal on hand.’
Kirkton looked deep into her grey eyes, regretted it and looked away. ‘And do you think his home life is impacting on his working life?’
‘I do not really know. I think you would have to ask him
that, but I do know that his wife has suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s, so if there had been any impingement to his working life then I think it would have been before he placed her in a secure living facility, but you would know that. Seeing as you own it. Do you use a lot of drugs up there?’ The question came at him, bullet fast.
‘I suppose they do.’
‘A drug called Paracurarium?’
He frowned in genuine confusion. ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Then he changed the subject. ‘You and DCI Anderson work particularly well together. Do you think that works well, a well-defined pairing like that?’
‘I think having longevity in a team like that helps, but I am a typical DI and he is a typical DCI, we complement each other. I wouldn’t want his paperwork and he likes being tied to the office,’ she lied. ‘In our past two major investigations, he has caught two killers who had evaded justice. So that might be an area for you to look at – maybe here prevention is better than cure. You know, catch them before they go on to kill a second time. I know it’s not sexy and it doesn’t grab headlines. You can’t prove a negative. But it is something to think about,’ she said, and flicked a sarcastic smile. ‘Do you want to see the board? I know we can trust you. This is David. His mother …’ She spread her hand, watching for a flicker on his face – and there was something there; a wee bit of something.
He changed the subject. ‘How is Anderson coping?’
Her grey eyes turned cold beyond a January grave. ‘Fine.’
‘Must be difficult, living in the house of an ex-colleague. A dead colleague who gave his life in the service of his duty, well that is one version of what happened. One version.’ Kirkton allowed himself a sly smile. ‘Anderson’s career is not going unnoticed. His relationships are not going unnoticed. He brought his daughter into danger in the case up at Inchgarten.’ He put his hand up to stop Costello correcting him. ‘And he seems to be getting his daughter involved in this case.’
Costello snorted dismissively. ‘Hardly, she was right there when David Kerr keeled over. It would have been dereliction of duty not to interview her. He was there as her guardian, a responsible adult. It was me who did the interview.’ She smiled at him. ‘And you can’t prove otherwise.’