by Caro Ramsay
‘Don’t bank on it. Have you heard?’
‘Everybody has heard. You don’t want to go in there right now. The monkey chiefs are in, screaming and pulling their hair out. They want to know what you’re going to tell the press.’
‘Nothing. If McAvoy has killed somebody and dressed the scene to make it look like he himself was murdered then I might be happier to let him continue to think that.’
‘It would seem a tad unsophisticated. He’d know we get to the DNA quickly.’
‘McAvoy is not sophisticated. He chose somebody the right height, weight, build, and slipped in the ID; that was close enough. God, I think it even fooled Lexy for a minute when the curtain pulled back – then she realised. And she was scared. So we have left her to stew.’
They stood leaning against the wall, faces to the sunshine, listening to the traffic like two naughty kids sent out of class.
‘It’s your case, Colin, don’t let them bully you. Christ, get walking. Karen Jones has appeared at the corner for a smoke. I get the feeling somebody is keeping her up to speed, whether you like it or not.’
Anderson took her by the elbow and walked round the building, through the lane where the cars were parked. ‘You think it’s somebody from the original investigation? Sammy?’
‘I don’t want to. But Bernie’s team had a good working relationship with the press; they needed the media behind them to find McAvoy.’
‘But they didn’t, did they? And now we have to think that McAvoy is still out there. And that is a scary thought.’
‘Sammy made a good point. Inchgarten Lodge Park is basically two people – two people who might be harbouring a killer. Bernie felt he made no headway with them, but you agreed with Batten when he said we need to look round there, back where it all started. McAvoy got off that island somehow.’
Anderson looked at the sky again, puffy clouds drifting on a soft blue backdrop. The image of Bella’s wizened little face floated in front of him. A good wee woman who had lived a good life. ‘I’m worried about Mulholland. On one hand he’s going out with somebody who looks like Angelina Jolie’s prettier sister and—’
‘Bottom line? He lives at home and his mum irons his pants for him,’ Costello cut in.
‘How do you know his mum irons his pants? Did he actually tell you that?’
‘No, she did.’
‘Who, Sonja?’
‘No, his mum. But yeah, Vik is about as useful as a cat flap in an elephant house.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So we can do without him around, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good,’ said Costello and walked away, leaving Anderson to worry what he had agreed to.
‘Not McAvoy!’ Sammy’s face was ugly with anger. ‘How did we get that wrong? But it was front page news that McAvoy was dead! Oh my God!’
Her anxiety seemed genuine, Anderson noted. Either she was not the leak or she was a very good actress. His jury was still out.
Walker sat on one of the desks in the incident room, glasses off, finger and thumb rubbing at his eyes and swearing gently, which had been his default position since he had finished ranting. Mulholland was leaning back on his seat, staring at the ceiling. One by one they lifted the receivers off each desk phone; the ringing echoed down the corridors. Through the open windows they could hear car doors slam and engines rev.
They were being hunted.
Costello stood at the board, unpinning McAvoy’s photograph and moving it to the centre. From victim to person of extreme interest.
‘Can I say something?’ Wyngate raised his hand like a swotty schoolboy.
‘If you feel you have to,’ said Anderson, slumped over Costello’s desk.
‘Well, I’ve checked to make sure. Our press release never said that the body was McAvoy. The wording is clear. The body had the ID of, we went no further—’
‘But somebody told the press that it was him,’ said Costello.
‘Nobody from our team,’ muttered Mulholland, his gaze leaving the strip light and falling on Sammy.
‘Well, I never said anything,’ protested Sammy, her face flushing red, hand on her chest, protesting innocence.
‘What Vik meant was that the press would know your team better than ours, with regard to this case. Bernie must have courted them at the time, for the manhunt for McAvoy. He might have said something,’ argued Costello, standing up and approaching her, arms folded.
‘If he has, then he’s around somewhere, so why has he not been in touch?’ said Sammy weakly.
‘It was said at Riverview that there might be a cop behind all this,’Anderson commented as Costello took a step closer. ‘Bernie disappeared right after I phoned him.’
Sammy looked from him to the fiscal, burst into tears and fled from the room, knocking the spider plant from the top of the filing cabinet. Wyngate caught it before it hit the ground.
Costello said, ‘I think Sammy and Bernie might have been close.’
‘Close?’ Walker raised an eyebrow.
‘Married man, single lady type close,’ said Costello pointedly.
‘And how close was he to retiring? Months? And this was the big case that he never solved?’ Mulholland let the accusation lie.
‘Look, his wife hasn’t heard from him since yesterday early afternoon. His phone hasn’t been used. His colleagues are phoning the hospitals. Something has either happened to him or …’ Costello didn’t want to be the first to voice it.
‘His wife thinks he has run off with some slapper. Wouldn’t be the first time,’ said Walker. ‘I had a brief word with her earlier, but she is worried. Either McAvoy has got hold of him or Bernie got hold of “Mr Field”, our armless friend here, thinking he was getting hold of McAvoy. DCI Anderson? Get Bernie up on the wall. One way or the other we need to find him.’ He got up from the desk, tapping the folder on his thigh. ‘And that is an instruction from the fiscal’s office. You can continue with the party line that we are looking at McAvoy as a missing person. But we are actually looking for him as a person of interest.’
‘OK.’ Anderson nodded slowly. ‘So if that poor sod is not McAvoy, then who the hell is he? He’s not on any database.’
‘But if he had McAvoy’s ID, then McAvoy must have put it there; there must be a connection between them,’ reasoned Costello.
Batten came through the door after a gentle knock, holding a plastic envelope. ‘I’ve heard. So I thought I’d deliver some more bad news. This was delivered to this station.’ He placed the black envelope on the table in front of Costello.
The room fell silent.
‘It’s addressed to you.’
She looked at it then looked away, as if by not seeing it, it would disappear.
‘Open it, it won’t harm you. And I wouldn’t worry about destroying any forensics; he’s too clever for that.’
‘I’m not bloody well opening it,’ said Costello.
‘You bloody well are.’
‘No, you do it.’
‘Fine, it doesn’t bother me,’ said Batten. ‘Never had you down as a mamby pamby girlie type.’ He opened the black envelope carefully, as if he was opening yet another council tax demand for money he did not owe. ‘You have the Sun.’
‘The Sun? What does that mean? Do I have to get my tits out?’
‘Do you have the card pulled from McAvoy’s mouth – I mean the man who is not McAvoy?’
‘Mr Field. It’s on the board, as is the one from O’Hare, sealed.’
Batten took Costello’s card over to the whiteboard and stood looking at all the information. ‘OK, I’m going to sit here and take all this in. Don’t mind me.’ He pulled a chair out and sat looking at the board, immediately drifting into a world of his own.
‘Whoever is sending these knows exactly who is working on the case,’ said Anderson. ‘Which reinforces the cop idea.’
It was Mulholland who spoke first. ‘What about Lexy? She might be the connection between McAvoy and the victim. Maybe she was expecting to s
ee her brother but saw somebody else, somebody she knew and cared for. Victim was a pal of Lexy’s, McAvoy takes him out, gets him drunk, drugged, whatever. Then takes him for a walk in the field for some reason and pulls his arms off.’
‘Why? Why would he do that?’
‘Why would anybody?’
Costello held her head in her hands. ‘We only have her word for it that the man in that photograph was McAvoy. Following Vik’s logic, Mr Field could be the man in that bedside photograph, somebody she did have feelings for. There’s no record of her having any long-term man in her life; Bernie’s surveillance team would have clocked that. It was dole office, tattoo parlour and hairdresser. And I bet Mr Field was married. That might be why Lexy didn’t want to say who he was and why the relationship was covert.’
‘So if we accept that the shock on Lexy’s face was not because it was her brother, but because it was not …’ Anderson tapped the photograph of the deceased and scribbled Mr Field underneath with a marker. ‘It might well be McAvoy has learned some new tricks. He might have played his cards very well, pardon the pun. His ID was on the body, remember. So where is he now?’
‘Well,’ said Costello, ‘the only place he thought of as home was Inchgarten Lodge Park, so I have booked the Eigg Lodge at the campsite for a triathlete in training and their coach.’
‘No way!’ said Wyngate.
‘Not any of us couch potatoes. Elvie McCulloch.’ Costello smiled at Vik.
‘Thank God!’
‘And you, Vik, are her coach. All that fresh air will be good for you. So now you can go home and pack. All shell suits and stopwatches. Lots of steroids and stuff.’
‘Wait,’ said Batten, ‘that could be dangerous.’
‘Which is why we are using Elvie,’ said Costello.
‘But she’s an ordinary member of the public; you can’t expose her to that kind of thing.’
‘She can go but I’m bloody not,’ said Mulholland. ‘No way.’
‘Every way, Vik,’ Anderson stepped in. ‘It will be good for you, as she said: fresh air, thinking things over, real undercover stuff – couldn’t be better.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t like ordering folk about but I will, Vik,’ said Anderson, folding his arms.
‘But—’
‘But nothing, it will be good for you. That’s an order.’
‘And here are Wyngate’s notes on Daisy and Tony Laphan,’ added Costello. ‘And a dog called Mr Peppercorn, who barks at all things.’
‘But did not bark the night of Grace’s murder,’ said Walker automatically. ‘Or the night the boys were killed. OK, they were far away on the island, but if Grace was murdered, and that is what we are thinking now, then it makes sense that the dog was familiar with the murderer. An old adage but a true one.’
‘OK, so all we need to do is go through the dog’s contact list,’ said Mulholland.
‘Probably got less dogs in it than your address book,’ sniped Costello.
‘Makes more fucking sense than me in a tracksuit.’
‘Do you the world of good, you miserable git.’
‘Enough, you two,’ Anderson interrupted. ‘Meeting first thing tomorrow. And keep me updated about Bernie – I’ll get a trace on his car.’
Batten asked lightly, ‘I’d like to ask who put that line under the word suspected.’
‘I did,’ said Costello, ‘to keep in mind that he’s innocent until we can prove something. McAvoy has never been convicted of any crime.’
Batten got up and tapped the file lying in front of Costello. ‘This whole manhunt is based on media bias and one witness statement – that of a twelve-year-old boy. Now in what other circumstances would you put so much store on one uncorroborated statement? I’ve no doubt he was questioned vigorously and he passed muster, so to speak. But now we have two similarly built men, one of them carrying false ID. The key to this is Jimmy. Nobody else.’ He placed his fingertip on the file on Costello’s desk.
‘You’ll have to get past his dad first,’ said Costello, standing up to Batten.
He looked her straight in the eyes. ‘And maybe the reason McAvoy has never been convicted of any crime is because the bastard hasn’t been caught yet.’
The living room of the Dewars’ house was not at all what Costello had expected: none of Isobel’s sophisticated, restrained good taste. Everything in here was ill fitting and nothing matched. The brown carpet was a little worn, covered with two blue rugs. The sofa was too big for the room, as was the coffee table. The yellow and navy cushions matched the sofa but were at odds with the carpet. The curtains were bunched at the hem. Then she remembered they had recently moved.
It had taken a lot of persuasion to get permission to come out to the house; only the threat of bringing Jimmy into the station actually got them through the front door. They found him sitting in an armchair dressed in a Liverpool football top and shorts, a tall, lanky boy, eating chips with his feet up on the coffee table. He grumbled a typical teenage ‘hello’ as Isobel clunked him on the side of the thigh. Eoin ushered him from the room as his wife waved a folded newspaper about to disperse the smell of vinegar, muttering apologies.
‘Makes me hungry,’ Batten smiled as he settled himself on the sofa.
Costello sat sideways on the easy chair next to the fire. It had a cashmere throw over it, and there was a fine watercolour original of a loch in winter over the fireplace. That was more Isobel Dewar.
Costello leaned forward. ‘There is no easy way to say this. The body found at Riverview Farm was not Warren McAvoy.’
Isobel pointed a bony finger in Costello’s face.
Costello waited until the penny dropped.
‘What do you mean, it wasn’t his body? You said—’
‘It had McAvoy’s identification. But it wasn’t him.’
Isobel took a deep breath. ‘OK, wishful thinking.’ She rubbed her upper arm and slowly closed her eyes. She seemed genuinely shocked.
It was Eoin who spoke next. ‘Jesus Christ.’ He lifted his hands and ran them over his hair. ‘No, how can that be …?’
Costello did not answer directly. ‘I need to ask you a strange question: have you ever seen anything like this before?’ She opened the file and took out the tarot card, the Fool.
Isobel hardly glanced at it. ‘No,’ she snapped and turned her head away, but Eoin’s face betrayed something, a flash of recognition, before he managed to look away.
‘Mr Dewar?’
He didn’t miss the formality of his surname; she was over with nice. She was a Detective Inspector now. Eoin gave her a tight little nod.
His wife stared at him. ‘What?’ she sniffed. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’
‘Mr Dewar. It’s important.’
‘We got two. Can’t recall them. Priestess? And a Ben Hur-type picture. Not that picture, but the same design, black and gold. Where did you get that one?’
Costello ignored him, glancing down her list of tarot cards. ‘The other would be the Chariot?’
‘Maybe.’ He flicked his finger at the black envelope, not looking at the card. ‘What is this about?’
‘How did you get them? In the post?’
‘Yes, a couple of weeks ago …’
‘Sent here?’
He nodded.
‘Eoin?’ Isobel interrupted.
Costello silenced her with a raised hand. ‘Do you still have the cards?’
He shook his head. ‘It meant nothing to me. I stuck them in the bin.’
Now Costello turned to Isobel. ‘Mrs Dewar. You don’t seem the type, but have you ever consulted a tarot card reader or a psychic about Robbie?’
‘Of course not.’ Hard blue eyes met Costello’s again. ‘My son speaks to me every day. He is still alive, in my heart, in my head …’ The tears began to stream in earnest now. ‘So I don’t need to speak to any fu— anybody like that. What has this got to do with us or Robbie?’
‘Or Warren McAvoy? Unless you think that he
sent them?’ Eoin swore quietly under his breath.
‘We aren’t sure. Isobel, it might be better if you went to stay with a friend or your mother. Whoever sent you the cards knows where you live.’
Batten coughed gently. ‘I think there might be other ears listening,’ he pointed at the door. Eoin threw his eyes at the ceiling.
‘Would you mind if I keep him occupied?’ asked Batten. ‘Just a word, Liverpool fan to Everton fan.’
Isobel was about to say no, but Eoin nodded. ‘Go ahead. Please don’t upset him.’
‘Of course,’ said Batten with his clinical smile, his object achieved.
Costello waited until he had left the room and heard Batten’s voice saying, OK, young man, what are you up to? and Jimmy’s young teenage voice replying that nobody ever told him nuffin followed by You got anybody yet?
‘That might not be for your ears, and my granny always said folk who listen at doors never hear good about themselves. Now explain to me this Liverpool thing …’ Their voices faded. They were walking along the hall going somewhere out of earshot.
‘I don’t want Jimmy upset. I’m not having that.’ Isobel reached out, holding her hand out for Eoin. Costello could not help but notice the casual curl of his fingers into hers. ‘It takes him ages to get to sleep at night as it is.’
‘He has fairly grown, hasn’t he?’
‘Can’t keep up, he goes through the fridge like a plague of locusts. At least he’s normal in some ways.’
‘He was close to his brother, wasn’t he?’ Costello let her eyes drift up to some photographs on the dresser. ‘Is that the boys together? And your dog? A black … what is he?’
‘Cockapoo. Casper. We think the neighbours poisoned him – one of the reasons we moved. Jimmy was heartbroken.’
Costello pulled out her notebook but didn’t write anything down. ‘How is he now? With the new house and new school?’
Isobel shuffled in her seat a little. Her head turned towards the door of the living room, anxious to know what was going on the other side. ‘He has been better at the new school. He had been very disruptive, fighting, being bullied and being a bully, if the truth be told. He has no friends. It’s very difficult. People know who he is.’