by Caro Ramsay
Winterston flinched.
‘So, DI Winterston, get started.’
‘Yes, as deputy investigating officer, maybe you’d like to start. As your senior officer hasn’t bothered to turn up yet,’ snapped Walker, one-upmanship from a master of the art.
‘Do you mind if I stand up?’ asked Winterston, quietly assertive.
‘Yeah, it will make you an easier target,’ whispered Costello as she moved her seat back to let her new colleague out.
Sammy Winterston stood up and smoothed her skirt behind her. Costello looked down to notice her heels. They were too high, too expensive and too clean.
Winterston picked up the remote control in her hand and Wyngate showed her what button to press. She seemed in full possession of herself now. ‘I think it might be best to start with a sense of place. On the east coast of Loch Lomond, three miles to the north of Rowardennan, is a small bay called Inchgarten Bay. Named after the island.’ The laptop showed a few images: the loch, the islands, the small beach, the holiday village sign, the view from the beach, eight barrel-shaped lodges sitting neatly on the rise on the right-hand side. So far it could have been a tourist board presentation.
‘Looks like a hobbit village.’
‘It does. But in reality? Septic tanks and power cuts, no Sky, no mobile signal when it rains. It’s basic.’ Winterston paused. ‘Before the death of Grace Wilson in 2012, it was a thriving but small holiday camp, most of it repeat business. Three families paid a retainer so they could use their lodges whenever they wanted. The other lodges were rented out normally. All the incidents took place at the time of the solstice. At the solstice these three families liked the place to themselves.’ She paused as a mutter of recollection flickered round the room.
‘The Dewars, the McCardles and the Wilsons. The place is owned by Anthony Michael Laphan and his sister, Daisy Cerridwen Laphan. It was all inherited. Tony is a farmer who does not farm; he has a medical degree but doesn’t use it. He does a bit of pottery. Daisy looks after the place, a woman of the earth if there is such a thing. Local rumour says she’s a witch.’
‘Complete pish,’ said Mitchum angrily.
‘It has a bearing on how the media reacted,’ Winterston told Anderson directly. The screen now showed a photograph of a young girl, about four years old, dark curls. Thick glasses sat askew on her snub nose, hiding big brown eyes. The ruffles of her blouse framed her chin, with a red ribbon tied round her neck. The picture was familiar to them all. ‘Grace Amelie Wilson died in what we thought was a terrible accident at Inchgarten Lodge Park, around midnight, at the summer solstice two years ago.’
For the second time that day, Costello looked at the clock calendar on the wall and calculated – they were five days away from the solstice now.
‘Grace died after impaling herself on a metal stake.’ The picture changed to the wee girl naked, the dark rosette of the wound near her collar bone stark against the pallor of her skin. ‘It was all over the news at the time, very tragic. She was on holiday with Mum and Dad. They put her to bed at her usual time, but she must have got up later. Maybe to spy on the adults at their bonfire. Wee Grace was discovered missing from her bed when they went back to the lodge at two in the morning. Half an hour later they found her, dead. Her wee anorak over her PJs, her slippers on. She was at the Roonbay, down here, having fallen off the Rocking Stone.’ The image changed again, back to a sunny, sandy beach with one large, dark stone. ‘There are a few rocking stones around, balanced in a strange way so they—’
‘Rock?’ offered Anderson.
‘Sit on it and you get pregnant, seemingly.’
‘Can think of better ways,’ muttered Costello, scribbling something down.
‘It’s about three feet high, three long, two wide and sits right where the water is deep. The Roonbay is the smaller bay south of Inchgarten Bay but really only separated from it by a strip of shrubs and the Rocking Stone. Grace seemed to have slipped from the Rocking Stone on to …’ Winterston put the remote control down and starting talking with her hands. ‘If you imagine one of those cradle things they rest canoes on. Well, it was one of them with the rubberized arms removed so only the sharp uprights were left. That was what she fell on to.’
‘Four years old?’ confirmed Anderson.
‘Yes, old enough to cruise, as they say,’ replied Winterston. ‘That investigation ended with a verdict of accidental death by the fiscal’s office.’ She looked at Walker; she was not taking the blame for all of it.
He stared back at her. ‘Accidental death with a degree of parental negligence.’
‘Or a nice piece of misdirection.’ Costello was looking at a photograph and gave it a minute’s consideration before turning it over and lifting it up, showing it to the others. A white face and brown hair spread out over the coarse sand. The obscene star-shaped wound.
‘The boys admitted that they had spied on their parents’ party from there so she tried it as well. There was no huge murder theory about it. It was a tragic accident.’
‘And since Madeleine McCann, the papers jump on anybody leaving their kids sleeping alone. The press didn’t miss that one; the Wilsons left the country.’
‘And McAvoy had an alibi, as you say. If he was working with kids, had he been through any disclosure at all?’ asked Anderson.
‘He hardly exists in paperwork, never mind disclosure. He’s a weird hippy. His mum is the real deal, A-class, meths-drinking vagrant and he inherited the inability to settle down or remain indoors. He was quoted as saying that living in four walls would kill him. But during the routine investigation, we came across Warren McAvoy because he was around Inchgarten Bay at the time.’ The image on the screen flicked again, and both Anderson and Costello leaned forward, examining the image, a fresh-faced young man, brown haired, brown eyed. Mentally they both superimposed it on the bloodied face of the man in the field. ‘He was traced as a matter of procedure but never formally interviewed. He had a watertight alibi. He was very much on the periphery of things anyway; all he did was hang around the camp site helping. He was in a restaurant in Balloch with his sister Alexis, known as Lexy, on the night Grace died. He was twenty miles from the scene. But it was not thought to be a crime. The PM report on Grace was conclusive as to cause of death. Grace’s parents moved away to the States. They came back for the inquest, stayed at the Lodge Park, funnily enough, but their daughter’s death was put down to a very tragic accident.’
‘Why do I feel a “but” coming on?’ ventured Anderson.
Walker raised his pen, stopping Winterston before she restarted. ‘Just to be clear, the fiscal’s office did act. The owners got their knuckles rapped for not keeping the beach at Roonbay tidy. The three boys admitted they had taken the canoe down there and left the cradle by the stone, but the Laphans did not move it back. The parents confessed they had left Grace in the lodge alone—’
‘And a mention of witchcraft in the tabloids, I recall—’
‘It was all nonsense, DCI Anderson,’ said Winterston.
‘Colin,’ he corrected, and was rewarded with a shy smile. Relief crossed her face.
‘Nonsense as far as we could make out. The solstice was an annual private party for them, that’s all. But the Rocking Stone has Druid significance, as they all have, and the place is atmospheric but—’
‘Nobody goes round sacrificing haggis. But what about tarot cards?’ asked Costello.
‘What about tarot cards?’ asked Winterston, her eyes lighting up.
‘The body had one in its mouth, the Fool. O’Hare had one under the windscreen wiper of his car, Justice. Constable Cusack says he had the cars going past in convoy. Somebody could have leaned out the window … or come out the undergrowth of the hedgerow and placed it there. Three people walked past with dogs, Cusack is trying to trace them. No doubt the dogs will be walked same time tomorrow morning.’
Winterston started to flick the pages over in the file in front of her. She fumbled with the clip; a loose leaf sl
id from the small pile and drifted to the floor.
Costello picked it up and Mitchum was heard to mutter, ‘Oh for God’s sake.’
Winterston continued. ‘McAvoy comes into the frame exactly a year later, on the Saturday the twenty-second, the longest day of 2013. He attacked the three boys while they were out on the island. Only one of them – Jimmy Dewar – escaped and lived to tell the tale.
‘McAvoy had been living around there in his vagrant style, man of the woods, Bear Grylls type. He was good at outdoor stuff. He didn’t have a job, never has had. I think the boys, and maybe their stressed-out dads, admired him, envied him his freedom. The solstice barbecue was going ahead as usual, and this time two boys, Callum McCardle and Robbie Dewar, died out on the island. They were both ten.’ The image on the screen went blank for a minute, then two pictures came up, side by side. Again, everybody in the room recognised the faces immediately. ‘Both boys had sustained head injuries, blows to the temporal region with a stone. The details are in the reports for everybody to read. No accident this time. They were on the island with the older Dewar boy, James. He was the one who escaped, taking the only boat. He witnessed McAvoy killing his own brother, Robbie.’ Jimmy’s photograph flashed on the screen, brown hair, freckles, a wide smile. He looked like the smart kid in any American film of the last twenty years. ‘McAvoy had taken the three of them out to the island that night by a canoe, the Dreamcatcher. The same one whose cradle had killed Gracie. It was nearly midnight when Jimmy made his way back, hysterical and bearing the physical signs of his escape from McAvoy.’ She pressed the remote and the picture changed to Jimmy, red-eyed, two lacerations on his forehead, blood streaming down his face. ‘That was taken by his dad’s iPhone at the time. McAvoy was stuck on an island with no boat. The current in the narrows is too strong to swim across. Nobody saw him get back to the shore. McAvoy vanished into thin air.’
Elvie stepped out of the shower and waited for the steam to clear. She raised her damp hands to her nose and inhaled deeply. She could still smell the ‘street’: rotten rubbish and urine. She had spent the day tramping around the areas of Glasgow where the homeless hung out. She had been propositioned five times, mostly by men who thought she was a bloke, which was an easy mistake to make with her masculine build, short, spiky black hair, toned muscles and the deep acne scars that pitted her cheeks. Stick her in a hoodie and she was one of the universally unaccepted.
She carried with her a photograph of Tattoo Boy, the seventeen-year-old heroin addict called Iain John Matthews who had run away from home three years ago. His mum was now dying of cancer; she wanted him found.
So far the Salvation Army had given her some details; the ink tattoo of his mum’s name Hilda on the knuckles of his left hand made him easy to identify.
At times, Elvie was glad that she didn’t understand people.
She hadn’t found him yet but she would. She had missed him by two days when he had been sleeping outside Central Station, but the police had moved him on. Most likely he had gone down to the banks of the Clyde, probably the south side.
She sniffed under her fingernails and then set about them with TCP and Hibiscrub, just to make sure.
Afterwards she sat on her sofa with her laptop, the BBC news on low, half listening as she Googled Warren McAvoy. Some cop in a shiny uniform was saying there would be no comment until the body was formally identified. Her search didn’t tell her anything that she didn’t already know. He was wanted in connection with the deaths of three children. He was the shadowman who disappeared into thin air. Even wee Charlie, her friend’s five-year-old son, knew that if he didn’t do as he was told, Warren McAvoy would come to get him.
So the police of the whole country had been looking for him for a year when, according to his long-lost father, Warren had been living with his sister Alexis only twenty miles from where he was last seen?
That sounded nonsense to her logical mind. So Alexis must be lying.
It was the Parnell Fox agency who had tried to trace Patricia McAvoy for Geno DiMarco but only succeeded in finding her daughter Alexis. It was Alexis who had told Geno he had fathered a son but omitted the part that the son was a suspected double, maybe triple child killer.
Which was understandable.
The air in the meeting room grew stale, matching their attitude. ‘And because your team could not find McAvoy, Winterston, somebody else did and took their own revenge. Which is a bloody embarrassment to us.’ Mitchum seemed to take it as a personal affront. ‘And it makes it very difficult to move the case forward. Interviewing parents of dead children is never easy, especially when we have to ask them where they were in the small hours of this morning. The public will want an enquiry into the errors in the original case that allowed McAvoy to walk free, not an investigation into who killed the bastard. They will want to nominate the killer for a knighthood.’
Walker nodded, his hands expansive. ‘So do we all agree that Grace’s death might not be accidental? That’s been the belief of my office since the murders of the two boys.’ He looked questioningly at Anderson.
‘But you still have McAvoy’s alibi for that night, the night Grace died,’ the DCI replied.
‘And it wasn’t just his sister that alibied him; the waiters, the other diners agreed. We considered it unbreakable,’ said Winterston.
‘OK,’ Anderson made a note. ‘It was Dr Jo Darcy who did the original post-mortems on the boys. She’s on mat. leave so I have asked O’Hare for a review. I hate jargon, but we are forced to go down the transparency line here.’ Anderson ignored Costello’s sarcastic face.
Walker nodded. ‘Indeed. Any questions so far?’
Costello pulled out Winterston’s seat for her, indicating she should sit. ‘Was there anything you thought was not covered?’
Winterston shook her head. ‘McAvoy disappeared into thin air that night. All those eyewitnesses on the beach? Nobody saw anything.’ Her hand slapped on the desk, punctuating the words.
‘Nobody?’ asked Anderson slowly, seeing her problem.
‘Not a thing. Seven adults, a dog, a clear night with good vision, barely dark. Although McAvoy could swim, the local met office said the solstice tends to bring a strong current in the narrows. The locals say it’s not swimmable. Despite the evening being clear and sunny, by the time we got there, the rain was biblical. A lot of evidence was washed away.’
‘Well, he wasn’t washed away, was he? He obviously did get off the island if he resurfaced in a field near Erskine with no arms exactly a year later.’ Mitchum was unimpressed.
‘Nobody has seen him since. His sister Lexy maintains she has not set eyes on him and we have no evidence to contradict that. He has no paper trail, he does not pay tax, he does not earn, and he doesn’t have a doctor, no dentist …’ She shrugged her frustration.
Mitchum opened his mouth again but Anderson got in first. ‘What does your instinct say now? Are these related crimes? Grace? The boys? Warren?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘OK,’ said Costello. ‘So we need to break that first alibi.’
‘You can’t. The evening that Grace died, was killed, McAvoy was miles away having a meal at a restaurant with his sister Lexy.’ Winterston was adamant.
‘We will check it again.’ Anderson was now flicking through a file. ‘So from now on, we refer to Grace as the first murder. Adam Wilson is an engineer; Grace’s mum …’ He flicked over a few pages.
‘Wendy. Housewife. She enjoyed the company of the other mums at the village over the holidays. The mums and kids stayed the entire summer holiday, the dads joining them as they could. The women relaxed, read books, went into Balloch, had coffee, visited the hairdresser’s. The men climbed the Ben or went hillwalking with McAvoy acting as guide. They made fires and tents and stuff. McAvoy took the boys on adventures.’
‘He liked being alone with the youngsters,’ said Walker to Anderson meaningfully.
‘So the men ran around and did stupid stuff in t
he woods, like a bunch of wee boys?’ asked Costello.
‘That’s about it. They all liked McAvoy; he was odd but likeable.’
‘Killers often are,’ agreed Costello. ‘But he has never been brought to trial.’
‘No, but the general public think he’s as guilty as hell.’ Sammy grimaced in frustration. ‘To us, he has remained a person of extreme interest.’
‘So what happened last year?’ asked Anderson.
‘Well, on the night the boys died, the parents all had a fair bit to drink except Ruth McCardle. She was stone-cold sober, keeping a lookout for Callum. He was out on the island. He never came back; he died on the island from horrific head wounds.’ Sammy wriggled in her seat slightly.
Costello looked directly at Mitchum for the first time. ‘But, to play devil’s advocate, if the alibi holds, then he was not involved in the first case, so should we be looking at him, and only him, for the second? Maybe he’s a victim, not a suspect. Was somebody else on the island?’
‘No. And Jimmy’s testimony has never wavered,’ Mitchum pointed out. ‘He witnessed his brother and friend being killed by McAvoy smashing their heads in with a rock.’
‘OK, but might there be no connection between the deaths of Grace Wilson and the deaths of the two boys a year later?’ Costello argued. ‘Maybe Grace was simply an accident. Only Robbie and Callum were murdered.’
‘Too much of a coincidence,’ said Mitchum. ‘In the eyes of the public.’
‘Three kids killed within a day of the solstice. Then McAvoy found dead this morning, killed in such a medieval manner.’ It was the first time Wyngate had spoken; his eyes were fixed on the screen, on the smiling face of the boy. ‘And Jimmy – how old was he?’
‘Twelve. Even though he was injured, he got to the Dreamcatcher first and got enough water between him and the shore to be safe. It was a hugely traumatic experience. He has struggled with PTSD ever since. He has had to change school. The Dewars have had to move house.