by Caro Ramsay
‘Mary set up a missing persons’ agency,’ said Elvie with her characteristic bluntness.
‘We had heard that rumour,’ said Costello.
‘Two years ago the agency tried to trace a Patricia McAvoy for an American man. Turns out he’s Warren McAvoy’s father. He hadn’t heard from him for a few days. He’s worried.’
‘And now you know why. So McAvoy has a father?’
‘Yes. But we only found Alexis. She told him she lived with her brother.’
‘That’s crap!’ Costello shook her head, thinking of Lexy’s flat. Two cups beside the kettle, but only one bed. ‘She struggles with the truth. Elvie, did they make contact by internet by any chance? Lexy has a new iPad, expensive.’
‘By Skype. Can I talk to Lexy now?’
‘We’d rather you didn’t,’ said Costello carefully.
‘A journalist called Karen Jones knows about horses and tarot cards. It didn’t mention any of those details in the paper.’
‘Christ!’ cursed Anderson. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I stood behind her and listened. Said it was a “he” who told her. Do you have someone watching the house?’
‘No.’
‘Well, somebody is. Just watching. White van, mucky number plates. It drove off when your car pulled up.’
Anderson and Costello exchanged glances. ‘Can you give us the number?’
‘Plates too dirty, but the van was clean. It was a Citroën Berlingo.’
‘You are a star. Can you give us the name of the American?’
‘I can. But won’t.’
Costello opened her mouth but a raised hand from Anderson shut her up. ‘We respect your professionalism, Elvie. Lexy is not doing a formal ID until tomorrow; it might be better to leave it until then. Maybe let her break the news to her dad, stepdad, whoever.’
There was the hum of traffic from the loudspeaker as Elvie processed this. ‘OK.’ She cut the call.
‘Elvie’s great, isn’t she? Just information, no shite at all. As she said, it’s all black and white to her. Why are we leaving the ID until after Lexy has seen the body?’
‘Getting our ducks in a row. Christ, listen to me. Ducks in a row? I’ve been spending too much time with Archie Walker.’
Professor Mick Batten, behavioural analyst, chose his usual seat in the corner of the café and ordered a black coffee. He removed his hat and placed it carefully on top of his notes, tucked in the angle of the seat. It was a smart coffee house, typical of the type that been springing up all over Glasgow. It was one of the many changes in the city over the few years he had lived here; the rise in begging on street corners, cash for gold shops becoming as common as bookies.
Batten sipped his coffee, enjoying the rush in his arteries. It was his only sin now he was trying to keep away from the hard stuff. Alcohol was too easy to make friends with in Glasgow; it was so much of the social culture – difficult to avoid, so easily accepted. His commissions of work as an analyst were rare now – everybody and his dog had taken courses in profiling these days – so he was doing yet another study on alcoholism for the Scottish Government. It would show how things would continue to improve if alcohol was made more difficult to buy. It was a no-brainer.
But the criminal work was his passion. He was honoured that Mitchum had requested his secondment to the McAvoy case, a poisoned chalice but a welcome one.
He looked at the front page of the Daily Record. The sidebar said, The Death Of The Shadow Man. The McAvoy case had them rattled.
He studied the face of the dark-haired young man, Warren McAvoy. The ‘most wanted’. He pondered what was there in his background. The vagrant son of a vagrant mother and an unknown father. A child killer who was untraceable. Clever enough to get away and kill again. Intriguing.
He sipped his espresso and withdrew further into the back corner of Costa Coffee, waiting for the two o’clock low level train. He needed to get an idea of the man. He liked that name, shadow man. First obvious thing, he had been living somewhere and someone had sheltered him. Secondly, before the murders there would have been escalation, assaults on children before. McAvoy seemed to have come from nowhere. And disappeared again.
He turned his back into the corner, opening up the ring-bound file of photographs that had been hidden by his hat, all stamped and dated by Gordon Wyngate on the orders of Mitchum. In the front he had a few press clippings, a few printouts of stuff he had found on the internet.
It was intriguing that almost everything known was in the public domain. Everything up to when the two boys were killed. Then nothing; McAvoy had indeed slipped back into the shadows. He was always on the sidelines, talked about, glimpsed in passing, anecdotal evidence of him being here and there, but nobody admitted to actually talking to him. He was Lord Lucan for the new millennium.
And the couple at Inchgarten Lodge Park spoke words, but said little. It was the obvious place for Warren to be; everybody needed a stone to hide under.
The media reaction was predictable. First was shock at the horrific death of a pretty wee four-year-old, accidents do happen. Then shock turned to accusations of parental neglect. Given it had happened on the longest day of the year, there had been a few murmurings about witchcraft at the time. Then a year later, exactly, another two children died … Shock, horror, murder, suspicion.
The press had linked the death of Grace with the deaths of Robbie and Callum, although the police had not. Overnight McAvoy was a triple child killer because of the testimony of the surviving boy. All without trial or verdict. The quiet holiday camp at Inchgarten had come under intense scrutiny, correctly so. Even with his stranger’s clarity, Batten was not sure they were wrong. Flowers had been laid at the Rocking Stone where the girl had died. Wendy Wilson’s tears over the tragic accident were front page news, worsened by the fact that Grace was a much waited for miracle baby, conceived after years of failed IVF. Then a year later the boys were killed, the tears of Ruth and Isobel followed.
The investigation had stalled. The grief passed and the tide began to turn. What were the parents doing drunk? What was going on in this community tucked away from the world? Why were so few people invited to stay in this so-called holiday park? Four weeks after the double murder, the parents were satanists and the deaths were some kind of ritual that had gone wrong.
Batten looked for the name of the writer of that particularly vitriolic piece: Karen Jones. That was familiar.
He flipped over the page to look into the bright blue eyes of James Dewar, the surviving boy. His story never changed, probably because it was true. But a boy with distraught parents would automatically remember what his parents wanted him to, that was the nature of traumatised children. Two interviewing psychologists had walked away, uncertain. One had mentioned foreshadowing, where the truth can be unwittingly and universally rewritten in a few frantic moments. Batten had seen it many times. First witness statement: I saw him pull something from his pocket. After the witness realizes the victim was stabbed, the statement becomes I saw him pull a knife from his pocket. And he would believe it. It would be Batten’s turn now to interview the boy, one year on. He would reinforce the validity of his version or break it.
But first he needed to get on that island and get a feel for the place. Which was a problem. He hated boats.
He took a sip of his espresso, turning back to McAvoy’s face. The shadow man. A worn, weary face for one so young, but the big brown eyes were languid and peaceful.
Batten opened up a small map, scaled on to A4 paper, the open forest, the loch, the island, the places McAvoy loved to roam free when at the loch. Even when in Glasgow, he lived within a quarter square mile. Either one place or the other, held in by boundaries only he could see. Something to make him feel secure.
The city because that’s where he and his mum had been together, sleeping rough. From the age of thirteen, he had survived foster parents and occasional home visits when Patricia was sober. Alexis had got a council flat when she was si
xteen. When Warren turned sixteen, he disappeared from the system. He had taken to the country, to the lochside and his own idea of survival. He was a child of a single parent whose heart had been broken when her workplace closed and drink became her solace. Warren had given up on school, but was bright and independent. Did he envy other kids who had all that he had never had? Had he envied Grace and Callum and Robbie with their close-knit families? It would all be in the background reports.
He closed the file and drained his coffee. He needed to get into Inchgarten Lodge Park; he needed to shine a light into the shadows.
DI Sammy Winterston pulled a few faces at herself in the mirror then ran the small red foam bud of ‘Raspberry Sorbet’ round her lips. She fluffed up her short hair and dug about in her handbag for her breath freshener.
She was going back in time to a case she had failed to solve. She had met her lover on that case. Not the sort of thing either of them would want to come out now.
DCI Anderson seemed OK. She felt she could guide him past parts of the investigation she might not want examined too closely. She would simply offer to revisit those aspects herself, confident that nobody was going to look over her shoulder. So why did she feel so uneasy?
She checked her phone. Nothing. And what the fuck was Bernie playing at?
This afternoon she was interviewing the Dewars, with DS Vik Mulholland, the capable but ill-tempered hottie. She had almost lived with Eoin and Isobel Dewar through the worst nightmare any parent could have. All made a thousand times worse by what they had gone through to have Robbie. It was heart-breaking and now she was about to bring it all back up again.
Wrecking ball time.
One last look in the mirror, a last fix of the hair, and she went to find Mulholland, wherever he was sulking.
Anderson walked into the incident room and slammed the door shut behind him. He had a good look round to see who was there, decided it was safe and then let rip. ‘Who the fuck has been leaking this stuff to the press? I mean, what kind of low-life little shitbag is risking their pension by selling this … The Death of the Shadow Man, police incompetence. Crap. Crap …’ he waved a copy of the Daily Record in the air, ‘… and anybody who—’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ said Costello, walking in behind him. ‘It’s nobody in this room, so there’s no point even asking that question.’
Mulholland added, without looking up, ‘And to really make your day, sir, you have a press conference later on. I think the blabber has been blabbing even more. The blogosphere is alive with stories about witchcraft and sacrifice and a young man “screaming in terror as his arms were pulled out of their sockets”. Direct quote.’
‘Whit?’ The anger turned Anderson’s eyes the cold blue of a polar ice cap. The assembled company experienced a similar change in the atmosphere. ‘And how did they know that?’
Mulholland shrugged nonchalantly. ‘No idea. Some sad git has an internet take on Where’s Wally, called “Where’s Warren”. They have a caption of DCI Bernie Webster’s face looking down a toilet.’
‘What is the matter with these people?’ said Anderson, as Costello leaned over Mulholland’s shoulder for a better look.
‘They’ve caught a likeness of him, though, round the eyes and—’
‘So,’ Anderson interrupted, ‘the meeting with Marion Barr? Bella’s daughter. How did that go?’
‘How did you expect it to go? It wasn’t a bank holiday trip to Millport for a pokey hat.’ Mulholland did not look up from the cartoon; the sarcasm had been laid on with a trowel.
‘Vik? You have just interviewed the daughter of a woman who was set on fire. Are you so desensitised? So tell me, how did it go?’ Anderson leaned over and closed the DS’s laptop. Mulholland nearly got his fingers out in time.
‘Oh for God’s sake, O’Hare is getting back to me. Then I’ll prepare a report for the fiscal. The neighbours are adamant they saw a van with council lettering. The council didn’t send it. Nobody got the number but they noticed two carers. What more do you want me to say or do?’
‘Dig deeper.’
‘Dig deeper, into what?’
‘Ask Hemphill to do another house-to-house until they get everybody in, then review.’
‘I’ve told you. I’ve been through the house with Miss Barr and Bella’s neighbour; nothing had been taken,’ said Vik in response to Anderson’s unasked question.
The door opened and Sammy Winterston came in, a waft of Coco Chanel following her.
‘You ready, Mulholland, are you up to speed?’
He capped his pen. ‘As I will ever be – got fuck all else interesting to do.’
‘I’ll lead, you second,’ said Sammy, hoping she didn’t sound too keen to control the interview.
‘You are my senior, so it is as you wish …’ said Mulholland, getting up from his seat.
‘Good luck and be kind,’ said Anderson. Then, as Sammy closed the door behind her, ‘When did he get so useless?’
‘I blame his mother,’ muttered Costello.
Isobel and Eoin Dewar were in the informal interview room at Partickhill. They sat in silence, side by side on the edge of the settee. He had his head down, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the carpet, dressed in a well-fitted lightweight suit with the tie loosened off. He was well-muscled, fair hair cut in a number two. He looked caged in the small room, his heel tapping constantly on the carpet tiles. Isobel had arrived straight from the school. She sat pulling her beige jacket tightly around her as if she were cold, her arms crossed, palms clasping and unclasping her shoulders. Her face was pale, too pinched to be pretty. Her blonde hair needed a good shampoo. She was so colourless she blended with the magnolia paint of the wall behind her beautifully. Isobel was ten years older than her husband, but looked about ten years older than that.
They were united in the fact they both wanted to be anywhere but here.
When Sammy had phoned them requesting a meeting, Isobel had flatly refused to let the police come to the house. Fed up with it all was how she had put it, her voice both strong and quivering. After a pause, she had added, ‘We’ll come to you, where? How long will it take?’ She didn’t have to ask what it was about. It was all over the news.
Their son, Robbie, had been killed the year before, a month before his eleventh birthday.
Since then almost everything in their life had been about Robbie. Or because of Robbie.
Eoin looked ready to go through it all again. He was a handsome man, capable but crushed. He got up as Sammy entered the room, opening his arms, hugging her.
‘I’m so sorry this is all coming up again.’ Sammy leaned over and placed her hands on Isobel’s shoulders. ‘This is DS Vik Mulholland.’ Sammy introduced him, there was a flurry of handshakes over which Sammy explained that he was not on the original case, and a new team was investigating McAvoy’s death. She was liaising.
They both nodded. ‘Bernie’s not involved in this, then?’ asked Eoin.
‘He will be, he’s trying to free himself up,’ lied Sammy, ignoring Mulholland’s puzzled glance.
‘So our question is where has McAvoy been all this time?’ Eoin asked.
‘I wish I knew. More than anything in the world I wish I knew.’
‘So what about you, DS Mulholland, where do you come into this?’ asked Isobel.
‘Just new eyes, that’s all.’ He rose to get the coffee.
‘I suppose you are sorry for my loss?’ she snapped.
‘Isobel!’ said Eoin, placing his hand on her knee in warning.
She pulled away.
Mulholland put a cup of coffee in front of Isobel, then a milk jug and a small bowl of sugar envelopes beside it. All very normal, all very mundane for a conversation that would bring back memories of her staring at her ten-year-old son in the mortuary.
Mulholland sat down, a weariness on his shoulders. ‘I don’t think anyone can know what it is like to lose your child. So I don’t pretend I do.’
Isobel nodded, tendrils from t
he blonde hair piled on top of her head waving around. She must have been an attractive woman until the grief ate away at her. ‘Thank you for your honesty. Stay childless, then you will never know this grief.’
Mulholland stared into her deep blue eyes, pools of torment, and felt guilty.
Eoin cleared his throat. ‘You know Saturday is the anniversary of …’
Isobel looked at the ceiling and swallowed hard as Eoin picked up a package of sugar and started grinding the granules between thumb and forefinger, waiting for an answer to his unasked question. A tear rolled down Isobel’s lined cheek. She thumbed it away.
‘The date might be of significance for somebody,’ said Mulholland.
‘It’s significant for the killer,’ said Sammy. ‘But we don’t want you to—’
‘Where were you on Sunday night, through to Monday morning?’ asked Mulholland.
‘In bed, asleep, together. No witnesses,’ Isobel retorted.
‘She went to bed early. I was working the next day, had to be up at seven.’
Isobel started to cry, then blew her nose hard. ‘Sorry. But I relive it every day, every single day. Then I saw the bloody papers this morning. The press were camped outside the school; they won’t stop phoning Eoin’s work. Thank God we moved house. But I am not going through all that again.’
Eoin placed his right hand over hers; the left kept working away at the sugar.
‘How is Jimmy?’ asked Sammy.
‘He’s still having counselling, still having nightmares, problems at the new school. He’s left Glasgow High; he’s now at the local state school. Sammy, we want Jimmy to know as little as possible about this. We want the new house to be free of these bad memories. I want to remember Robbie as he was. God knows, we waited so long to have our boys, our lovely boys.’ Eoin squeezed his wife’s hands. ‘We all know that bastard McAvoy killed Robbie. Jimmy was so lucky to escape.’ Isobel looked at the ceiling again, chin trembling, more tears streaking her cheek. Eoin nodded, a tired, weary nod, like the emotion was repressing him. Sammy looked at the clock. The room fell quiet.
Anderson heard three bolts being slid back behind the door before it opened. It was caught on a chain; a bearded face looked through the narrow gap.