by Caro Ramsay
‘How do you know?’
‘He just wasn’t here,’ he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders.
He could have been in the shadows and you wouldn’t have known, thought Mulholland, looking at the bushes behind him.
‘The way Bernie was larking about was disrespectful to the memories of those boys, and Grace. The way they carried on.’ Tony snorted. ‘You should go back to square one, to what you know, not what you have been told or what Bernie thought. Otherwise you are going to end up the same blind alley he did. You need a new perspective.’
‘Elvie McCulloch was sent here by Warren’s dad. To find out the truth.’
‘Warren’s dad? Bloody hell,’ Tony nodded at that. ‘I’m pleased to hear that. She can tell his dad that Warren was a fine man. Totally without ego. I used to think that if I could capture that essence he had, that ability to see the world in the big picture, then I would earn a fortune. More like him and the world would be a better place.’
‘He wouldn’t have the words child killer chalked on his forehead.’
Tony shook his head. ‘Warren could spend his days lying on the streets of Glasgow freezing, huddled in a doorway, and still feel empathy for the poor buggers in the rat race rushing for their train. He drifted in. He drifted out. No one owned him.There’s a lot to be said for that.’
Mulholland didn’t think it was prudent to point out that, charismatic though he might have been, Warren probably returned here the minute things got a bit tough on the streets. The manipulative nature of the serial killer. ‘Hence why you didn’t think too much when he went missing?’
‘Ask Daisy how much she misses him. He worked his arse off, that lad, the place hasn’t been the same without him. It’s running down, it needed his energy. He was a man of very simple needs, he knew what was important in life. No, Warren didn’t judge anybody, didn’t judge me.’ He looked off into the distance. ‘This is a very beautiful place, but a very sad place. You know that Grace wasn’t the first child to die here. There was wee Angela Colquhoun years before. The rumour is they never got to the bottom of that one either. Terrible how some places are cursed.’
Mulholland was making a mental note when Tony added, ‘But that was a long time ago, when my granddad had the farm.’
They watched Elvie for a few minutes, standing at the water’s edge, hands in pockets, looking out to the island. ‘Which boy?’ asked Vik. ‘You said you remembered the boy screaming.’
‘So what’s happened to you?’ Batten pointed at the dirty strapping round Jimmy Dewar’s right wrist then shook hands with Eoin Dewar. He sat back on the reception chair in the informal interview room, opening a can of Irn Bru to look unofficial, friendly and safe. ‘Though I’ll warn you to speak up. I spent five minutes with a baby and I think it’s deafened me.’
Jimmy gave a sardonic teenage smile and wriggled in his seat a little, pulling up the jeans that hung round his hips. He then folded the wires of his headphones round his fingers. ‘Fell off my bike.’
‘Again,’ added his dad, shaking his head.
‘I read your essay, quite liked it.’ Batten ran his thumb round the top of the can. ‘So was that true, your favourite place on the planet is still Inchgarten?’ Batten directed the question somewhere between the father and the son. Jimmy had seemed to have grown even more as he slumped back on his chair, long legs at an awkward angle, scribbling on the fabric of the strapping, emphasising the weave. ‘I would have gone for Rio or Acapulco. Anywhere with better weather.’
‘No, I think he’d stick with Inchgarten. Lots of happy memories in a short life. If, well, if … I would be saying that as well, it was a boy’s paradise. All that adventure right on our doorstep. That’s why we went back year after year.’
It was relevant and pleasant, but Eoin was dominating the conversation. ‘And do you miss it, Jimmy?’ asked Batten.
A reluctant nod from the boy.
Eoin opened his mouth so Batten quickly asked, ‘And how is the new school?’
‘Kinda OK.’
‘Miss your old pals?’
‘Not really.’
‘I think he misses his old teachers more. Mrs Grieg, you liked her, looked like Jessie J.’ Eoin cuffed his son. It seemed friendly enough.
‘Saw you giving it all that at parents’ night,’ Jimmy made a mouth with his fingers and thumbs.
‘Well, don’t tell your mother.’ A conspiratorial smile.
‘Was Mrs Grieg the one you did the essay for?’
‘Yeah,’ the boy smiled, brightening his face, an easy smile. ‘I’m usually crap at English.’
‘And when you were there on your holidays, what would you do?’
‘Went sailing with Tony and Dad, and played pool.’
‘If the table wasn’t covered in mould. We ate a lot, Daisy’s stuff.’
‘Yeah, she doesn’t do any exercise, but she’s fun.’ Jimmy rubbed his wrist.
‘And the others?’ probed Batten.
‘Uncle Fergus sleeps all day,’ he answered, a raised inflection almost forming a question.
‘Come on, Jimmy, what was your favourite?’
‘My favourite?’
The boy seemed to be struggling, not to recall but to forget.
‘It’s OK,’ Eoin encouraged. ‘You liked the Dreamcatcher?’
‘Yeah, the big canoe. You’re close to the water, we could go really far and it’s so quiet. With the big paddles, I could go myself.’
‘We didn’t allow that,’ Eoin told Batten.
‘But we did it anyway,’ retorted Jimmy.
Another conspiratorial smile.
‘And Warren, at the start? What was he like?’
‘Nice, seemed nice.’ Jimmy’s voice was suddenly clipped.
‘Until, what happened on the island?’ Out the corner of his eye Batten saw Eoin bristle, but kept his focus on the boy.
‘Until then, yes.’ Jimmy shifted his weight in his chair, uncomfortable with the memory.
‘Can you talk me through it?’
He looked at his dad, who nodded.
Jimmy pursed his lips, then spoke. ‘We took the boat up the shore. Warren pulled it high on the beach …’
‘He hadn’t done that before; he did that thinking that the boys wouldn’t be able to get off the island without him,’ Eoin added.
Batten nodded as if grateful for the interruption. ‘So you pulled the boat up …’
‘We climbed the folly wall, we were going right round through the jungle. We had passed the cliff at the north side, found the small bay there. It’s very rocky. The three of us were there, then …’ Jimmy stared at the floor, breathing quickly.
His dad placed his palm on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Just tell it as it happened.’
‘I heard noises, then I saw … Robbie on the ground and Warren had this stone, hitting him.’
‘Then?’
‘He looked up and saw me, so I turned and ran. He chased me, all the way back, round the path. I heard somebody behind me and I thought it was him but it was Callum. I got him through the slit in the folly. I had to pull him hard. He fell when he landed. Warren came after us and …’ The boy started to cry.
‘So you and Callum got back through to Snooky Bay but Warren still came after you?’
Jimmy sniffed.
‘And then?’
‘Warren was faster, he got to Callum. I managed to get to the boat. He couldn’t get away; I couldn’t save him.’ Jimmy looked at Batten, his eyes wide and tear-filled. He started howling; his dad put his arms round him, nestling his face deep in his son’s hair.
The interview was over. Batten got up and held the door open for them, thinking about this tall, thin boy. The pets he had loved had gone. The brother he loved had gone. He nodded goodbye to Eoin as he walked past. Jimmy had a paper tissue at his nose, wiping away the snot. Batten looked closely at him, feeling another handkerchief being forced into his own hand. Jimmy’s eyes never met his, they were staring at his dad’s retrea
ting back.
‘Bye then,’ he said as the desk sergeant took them through the next set of doors.
Once they were out of sight Batten looked at the hanky. Jimmy hadn’t been scribbling on his strapping, he had been scribbling on the tissue. The message was short.
Never fallen off my bike.
At seven in the evening Vik hobbled across to the Boathouse in response to foghorn Daisy’s clarion call that dinner was ready. When he got there, Daisy made sure he could sit comfortably on the bench seats, fussing over him, clucking away like a chicken and not letting him get a word in edgeways. He exchanged a few glances with Tony, who rolled his eyes in a ‘Women!’ kind of a way while flicking through a hillwalking magazine. Daisy jabbered on, even when she was in the kitchen. The voice never stopped. She still believed in their pretence of triathlete and trainer. Daisy told him that she had got Elvie a special breakfast for the morning so that not a drop of fat would pass her lips. But that he, Vik, needed to heal an injury so he needed good protein. He was glad when Elvie joined them, fresh from a shower, short black hair spiking. Vik had never seen such bad acne scars on a face. It didn’t seem to bother her.
Elvie walked and talked the part of an athlete, whereas Vik knew his knowledge was limited to a Garmin and a tube of Ralgex.
The food was wonderful. They had dined on the sort of food that furred the arteries just looking at it: trout in butter and broccoli in garlic sauce, side order of sweet potato chips.
The trout was from the loch, beautifully cooked. The candles lit the table. The door was open, a mesh hanging over it to keep the midges out. The dessert was freshly made scones with fresh cream and ice cream with meringues. Afterwards, Tony told them stories of sculptures gone wrong, pots he should never have potted, things that went in the kiln decent and came out positively obscene. He was funny, entertaining and lively. Daisy only ever stopped talking because she was eating.
Elvie had finished all her chips and started on Vik’s leftovers, her long, thin fingers sneaking out and nicking them off the side of his plate. She listened like she was listening to a foreign language and translating it. And by the time she had, the conversation had moved on and she had missed it. But when Tony mentioned again, the historic murder of a child on the lochside, her brown eyes had flicked up to meet Vik’s. And he knew she was listening. He realized, with a pang of pity, that her life might be a rather lonely existence.
Apparently Angela Colquhoun had been killed, aged four, by her mother. Or so it was said. Tony’s grandfather had known her. The mother had been sentenced to hang. It was startling to hear the details with the background of friendly chit-chat and chocolate meringue. Vik had to remind himself that he was supposed to be suspicious of these people. The weirdest person round the table was Elvie. But they completely accepted her as, he presumed, they had accepted Warren.
Then the whisky came out, clear whisky in a lemonade bottle. Elvie excused herself. Vik was starting to feel the pain in his leg and thought a wee snifter might help.
When he got back, eventually, Tony had walked him back and he couldn’t recall who was using the crutches. He let himself in the lodge, clonking his way up to the decking and then trying to open the door the wrong way round.
He sank on to the sofa and waved goodbye. He checked his mobile, his voicemail, then lay back to think about Angela Colquhoun. The laptop was still lying open and sat on his blanket hibernating. He was thinking about the way Elvie had stolen his chips. And what Costello had said.
He was about to put the laptop on the floor and fall asleep on the settee when he realized she had left a document open. There was a message from Elvie at the top: Will talk to you about this tomorrow.
He maximized it and began reading Elvie’s notes. The girl was a bright cookie, a medical student, so it was no surprise to him that her notes were succinct and precise.
Angela Colquhoun had been strangled, at the Rocking Stone, on 21 June, 1934, which was a Thursday and the summer solstice. She was four years old. Her mother pleaded guilty and was nearly hanged. Elvie included a few links to various famous true crime websites that detailed the case. The body had been moved. There had been a delay in alerting the police. Why did a family from Govan go up to the lochside? Devil worshippers?
Then typed in her own font, Interesting, don’t you think?
Costello was feeling guilty, but only just. She was parked in the McDonald’s near the Southern General Hospital thinking things through. It had not been an easy evening. She had dropped Batten off at Balloch train station then driven out to the small cop shop in Alexandria where Bernie Webster headed up the CID. It was a small white single storey building, more farm worker’s cottage than a centre of law and order.
Anderson had phoned her and told her not to submit the vest for forensic examination but to bring it back to Partickhill. Did any police officers know about it, or just Batten and Elvie? Vik knew. Anderson explained his predicament, hearing Costello rummage around the evidence bag. ‘It’s a female’s top, size twelve. I know Warren was a skinny wee guy but it’s too small for him.’
‘Well, it’s Sammy’s. It got torn during the search and she took it off. Then lost it.’
‘It is torn indeed,’ Costello had said, her voice full of disbelief.
She had then driven to Alexandria, starting to wonder about the lack of depth of the initial investigation. Wyngate, not the most observant of police officers to start with, had already come to that conclusion himself. There were only very slim files on the parents and the Inchgarten locals, but Warren had been pursued vigorously. But there was nothing to suggest that Bernie’s team had tried to break Warren’s alibi for the night of Grace’s murder. Anderson had checked back the receipt from the original investigation. At Sammy McSingh’s, Lexy and her vegetarian brother had eaten lamb? That should have been picked up. The bigger question was why did Warren go along with that? He had a whole year to correct the facts of his whereabouts on the night Grace was killed. But he had not.
So where was he? Killing Grace was the obvious answer. His sister fortuitously handed him an alibi to keep the secret of her affair with Eddie.
Costello had tried to keep her face pleasant as she walked into Alexandria station to see the original team she now spent her working day criticising. And they knew it. She got lots of questions about Sammy, lots of concern about Bernie. They both seemed popular with their workmates but Costello herself was met with icy smiles. She wondered how she would feel if the boot was on the other foot and Colin was missing and another detective came on her patch to help out. She would have welcomed them. She would have given all assistance, not the polite little nods she was getting now from the two officers who accompanied her. A beardie and a non-beardie with funny teeth, they looked like Benny and Bjorn from Abba. Did they have something to hide or was it her own paranoia? Maybe Bernie and his team had a nice little scam going on here and they did not want her digging about.
But it wasn’t about Bernie. It was about Robbie and Callum and Grace.
Bernie’s own office was opened for her by ‘Benny’. The desk was well ordered, much tidier than Colin’s ever was. A picture of a woman in her mid-thirties, the long-suffering wife, probably, sat beside the phone. There wasn’t much else on the top, just routine detritus of office life: calendar, coffee mug, computer. Costello had permission to burst the locks, with a hammer if needed. She made sure she was crouched low between the desk and the wall as she tackled the drawers. Benny and Bjorn stayed chatting at the door of the office. They talked mundanities to each other while watching her every move, talking about the case, about Bernie, about Grace. Then someone asked whether the Partickhill team thought they were doing any better?
She had a quick search, answering the questions in friendly monosyllables as she found a toothbrush, a few batteries, some pens, some cassettes for a voice recorder, then she discovered a blue mobile phone under a desk diary. She slipped that in her jacket pocket, keeping her hand low so they did not see.
‘You found something?’ asked Benny, walking over.
‘Just his diary.’ Costello pulled it out. ‘Do you know if he still used this or did he keep his diary on a cloud?’
‘His work would be on the cloud. Don’t know about a diary. He kept a change of clothes over there.’ Bjorn pointed to a spare chair, pulled out from the wall.
If they wanted her to walk over there, she wouldn’t. She stood up and flicked over a few pages in the diary. At the front there was a request for the school records of the parents – Eoin Dewar, Fergus McCardle, Isobel Swanson and Ruth Hyslop. School records? Struck out as if he had received them, then a note to himself to request medical records. Fat chance of getting them. On Monday the 16th he had made a note of an appointment to see Anderson at night, before the rest of them. She flicked to the front, a list of names and codes, passwords, thinking they would be safe locked in his drawer. She pulled out her own phone and photographed it, all the time fending off questions disguised as casual chit-chat, but when they saw her with her phone the questions became a little more direct.
‘Should you being doing that?’
‘Well, I don’t want to take it with me, otherwise you wouldn’t have a copy. There might be something in there that you need.’ She passed the diary over to them, getting a look of stone.
The other drawers contained a few thin buff-coloured files, some of which they had been looking for. She couldn’t be sure but the codes were familiar. The file on Ruth was thicker than the others; a quick flick through showed handwritten notes ripped out of non-issue notepads. She bundled them up together; they were all relevant to the ongoing investigation.
‘I don’t know if you should be taking them. You should put in an official request. They are Bernie’s personal files.’