Picture Her Dead (Rhona Macleod)

by Lin Anderson

  ‘Rhona. How nice to see you.’ No one could lie as sincerely as Fiona. She glanced about. ‘Alone?’

  ‘Henrik is in a business meeting with Mr Brogan.’ Rhona watched Edward absorbing this and knew he would dearly love to know who Henrik was. Fiona did the job for him.

  ‘Henrik?’ she questioned, teasingly.

  ‘A banker from Iceland,’ Rhona obliged. ‘Who still has money.’ She made to move away, but before she did so, Rhona fired one last shot. ‘I saw Liam yesterday. You’ll be pleased to know he’s doing very well. He’s at Glasgow University studying Physics.’ On that, she turned and strode away. Rather than heading for a corner of the bar, she made for the foyer where she downed her glass of champagne in one.

  Conversations with Edward always played out the same way. If she was honest with herself, she instigated most of the drama, but Edward was so self-satisfied and superior that she needed to see him bleed, if only momentarily. The trauma, she knew, would swiftly abate, smoothed over by Fiona. The only difficulty with the recent episode was that she now found herself outside the bar and in need of another drink.

  She hovered uncertainly as people moved past, some headed for the bar, others up the wide staircase. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and a voice she recognised as McNab’s hissed in her ear.

  ‘Upstairs. Now.’

  Rhona did what she was told, her heart racing. What the hell was McNab doing here? At the first landing he propelled her left through a door marked ‘Staff’. On the other side she could hear the distant clanging sounds of a kitchen in action. McNab caught her wrist and swung her round to face him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was about to ask you the same thing,’ she retorted.

  They eyeballed one another for a moment, then McNab let go of her wrist and stood back. ‘What am I going to do with you, Dr MacLeod?’

  ‘Telling me the truth might be a start.’

  He regarded her with equanimity. ‘The blank sheet of paper pissed you off?’

  ‘This isn’t a game.’

  ‘Too fucking right it isn’t. What if Brogan had seen you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He thinks I’m Petersson’s arm candy.’

  That didn’t amuse McNab, then he seemed to realise what that meant. ‘Petersson’s in with Brogan? Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  McNab clenched his fists and hissed an expletive.

  ‘You gave him the lead,’ she reminded him sharply. ‘What did you expect him to do with it?’

  McNab contemplated this, then seemed to come to a decision. One, Rhona suspected, she wouldn’t like.

  ‘I want you out of here.’

  ‘I’m waiting for Petersson. That was the arrangement.’

  ‘The game has changed.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do?’

  ‘What I came here for.’ He took her arm, more gently this time, then slid his hand down to take hers. ‘Go back to the flat, Rhona. Please. Wait for us there.’

  13

  Bill studied the young man opposite. Liam resembled Rhona, especially around the mouth and in his gestures. Even in the tone of his voice. Bill was rather pleased that he didn’t sound like his father. He remembered how irritating he’d found Edward Stewart. Still, the man had been devastated when his other son had gone missing during the rent-boy case a few years back. There had been no doubting Edward Stewart’s sincerity then.

  They were sitting in a tiny office, more of a cubicle. Charlie the warden had made them mugs of coffee, both of which sat untouched on a nearby table as Liam repeated his story of Jude’s disappearance.

  Bill was intrigued and not a little alarmed by it. In his experience, true runaways had a reason for going. It might be brought on by depression, or some other mental health condition; difficult family circumstances, or debts they couldn’t deal with. Jude, according to Liam, was a reliable and extremely organised person who loved her studies. At first glance, there was simply no reason for Jude to run away, but then first glances rarely provided the entire picture.

  There was another oddity about this conversation. Bill had the impression Liam wasn’t telling him the entire story. That was another feature he shared with Rhona, an open countenance that made it difficult to lie. He might be withholding something trivial or something embarrassing. Honest people were often discomfited by small untruths just as much as larger lies.

  ‘And Jude doesn’t have a boyfriend?’ Bill asked again.

  ‘No. Or not that I know of,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘Would you be able to give me a list of her friends or acquaintances?’

  ‘I don’t think she has other friends. She never mentioned anyone.’

  ‘Didn’t you find that odd?’

  ‘Jude is a bit of a loner.’ Liam hesitated. ‘The truth is I think she might be a bit autistic or maybe has Aspergers.’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the exact difference between the two conditions.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Liam struggled to put his thoughts into words. ‘She’s obsessed with order and routine. And she completely misreads people sometimes.’

  ‘She misread you?’

  ‘At the beginning, maybe, but it’s OK now. We got on – get on well, but we’re not an item.’ He looked at Bill to emphasise the fact. ‘Jude wasn’t keen on parties or on being in a big crowd. She didn’t like physical contact. You know, the way people hug one another nowadays, and kiss on the cheek. Jude wouldn’t have any of that.’

  Bill was a bit suspicious of all that himself. Fortunately the habit hadn’t yet infiltrated the police station, and as far as he was concerned it wouldn’t.

  ‘Did Jude have any special support from the Art School because of her condition?’

  ‘She didn’t mention any support apart from a bursary. It’s the only reason she was able to come here.’

  ‘And she has no family contact?’

  ‘She said she was brought up in care in the north of England. She never mentioned anything about a family.’

  The next step would be student support. They should be able to fill him in on Jude’s background. Liam was shifting in his seat. He looked weary and not a little stressed.

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me that might help find her?’

  Liam shook his head, looking embarrassed.

  Bill waited as Liam struggled with himself. Eventually the words burst out. ‘I took a memory stick from Jude’s desk the first time Charlie and I were in the room. I needed to know which cinema she’d gone to. I thought she might keep an electronic diary. I couldn’t get on the computer, so I took the back-up.’ He waited for the axe to fall.

  ‘And?’ Bill prompted, more interested in the memory stick than its removal.

  ‘That’s how I figured out she’d gone to the Rosevale, but there are sound files she recorded on there too. She interviewed someone, a man, a former projectionist.’

  ‘Where is this stick?’

  With a sheepish look Liam took it from his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘I thought if you did start to look for her, you had the laptop.’

  Bill watched as Liam visibly wilted under his penetrating look. Had he been too easy on this young man up to now, because he was Rhona’s son?

  ‘Is that the real reason you took the memory stick? You weren’t worried there was something on it? Something awkward or embarrassing?’

  Liam looked shocked. ‘No!’

  ‘Did you delete anything?’

  ‘No!’

  Bill tried to read the boy’s reaction. Had he been told the whole truth? He decided he had enough, for the moment. He stood up.

  ‘Can I go now?’ said Liam eagerly.

  ‘If you think of anything else …’

  ‘Do I tell Rhona or call you?’

  Bill gave him a card. ‘Call me.’

  Bill watched Liam leave the building before he went to check on the
SOCO working upstairs in Jude’s room. He’d already had a chat with Charlie Murdoch who’d proved to be a solid source of information. He’d confirmed most of what Liam had said, although there had been no mention of the memory stick. However, Charlie had intimated that he’d left Liam alone in the room for a short period, while he dealt with a call at the desk. Long enough to remove something.

  He took the stairs to the first floor. The building was brick built, the same yellow bricks that now peppered a city that had once been only blond and red sandstone. Regardless of that, it seemed to fit into the line of older, grander buildings, halfway down Garnethill. Through a landing window he looked on to Buccleuch Street and the smooth-faced three-storey houses opposite, now split into flats, a few with ‘To rent’ signs in their windows. A suited man with a briefcase waited patiently at a communal front door. He’d been there since Bill’s arrival. It looked as if someone hadn’t been keeping up with the rent.

  In the corridor all was quiet. Studious, even. No loud music, no frantic student life. Bill imagined his daughter Lisa living in a place like this, when she headed for Edinburgh University in the autumn to study medicine. For a moment it looked safe, safe enough even for his precious daughter. But when he reached Jude’s door and saw the police tape, he knew it wasn’t. Nowhere was.

  He opened the door. There was only one white suit working the room. Bill didn’t recognise the wearer until she looked up and he saw the distinctive eyes above the mask. One blue, one brown.

  ‘Sadie?’

  The mask creased as Sadie Martin attempted a smile behind it. ‘Sadie, all alone.’

  ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘I’ve picked up a couple of prints,’ she indicated a desk drawer, ‘but the place is spotless, apart from the scattered clothes. No evidence of a forcible entry. What about the occupant?’

  ‘No one’s seen her for the last forty-eight hours so the warden checked the room yesterday. There was a laptop on the desk and no mess.’

  ‘If she ran off, she didn’t take much with her. Lots of clothes still here. Usual toiletries in the bathroom.’

  ‘So nothing obviously missing?’

  She shook her head. ‘Except maybe that.’ She indicated two parts of a flat metal circular tin. ‘It’s an old sixteen millimeter reel tin. It was lying open on the floor, but there’s no sign of any film. There’s a label.’ She showed him with gloved hands. The neatly written label said, ‘Olympia Bridgeton’ and was dated a week before.

  Liam could hear Ben’s voice and that of a girl. He quietly closed the main door and tiptoed along the hall to his own room. Once inside he locked the door, leaving the light off. The street lamp would give him enough light to move about. If Ben was to check he would hopefully think he’d gone to bed.

  He went straight to the computer and brought up the folders he’d copied from the memory stick. The deep discomfort Liam had felt when talking to the policeman had metamorphosed into a grinding apprehension. Something bad had happened to Jude. He was convinced of it.

  He checked the sound files again, putting on the earphones, listening repeatedly to each section of the interview. Apart from the pleasure he got from hearing Jude’s voice, he could recognise nothing of significance.

  He then opened the folder called ‘Olympia Bridgeton reel’. That had been the name on the label of the old reel tin he’d seen in the desk drawer. He recalled standing in the ransacked room. The desk drawers had been emptied on the floor. He’d spotted the tin there too, but couldn’t recall if it had been open or not.

  He went back to the folder. Inside were dozens of jpg files, numerically named Frame1, Frame2, up to fifty of them. Liam clicked on the first and it opened to reveal a black and white image of poor quality. He could barely make out what looked like two male figures. He opened Frame2. It looked much the same, as did Frame3 and Frame4. All the surfaces were speckled white.

  Liam sat back. They looked like individual frames from the reel of film, judging from the slight differences between each shot. Curiosity awakened, he recalled a time when Ben had run together a series of photos from a party into a film clip. He tried to remember what software Ben had used and whether he could get access to it. The other possibility was to engage Ben in the exercise, which at any other time, Ben would gladly welcome. But just now?

  Liam rose and went quietly into the hall, then made a point of opening and shutting the front door, loud enough for Ben to be in no doubt he was back.

  ‘Ben! Mate, are you here? You’ll never believe it. We found a dead body walled up in that cinema Jude visited.’

  It was a smart move. Liam heard some frantic whispering then Ben’s voice shouted, ‘Cool. I’ll be right out, mate.’

  Liam retreated to the kitchen, pulled a beer from the fridge and opened it. Moments later a dishevelled Ben appeared, slowly followed by a pretty girl with brightly coloured dreadlocks, who didn’t look too happy.

  ‘You found a body?’ Ben eyeballed him.

  ‘Rhona did. It was walled up in the projection room.’

  ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ Ben was impressed. Then he remembered. ‘What about Jude?’

  ‘She’d been there. We found a footprint, but still no sign of her.’

  Ben was swithering between his need to know more about the body and his concern about Jude. ‘You think Jude saw this body?’

  ‘I don’t know. There was only a small hole in some brickwork. There was a weird smell coming out of it.’

  The story was getting ever more intriguing for Ben. Liam decided to take advantage of this.

  ‘Jude’s room in halls has been ransacked and her laptop’s gone.’

  Ben’s eyes opened even wider. ‘Jeeez.’

  ‘I’ve got a back-up of some of her stuff. Want to take a look?’

  Did he ever? Sexual encounter forgotten, Ben headed swiftly for Liam’s room. Liam threw an apologetic look at the forsaken girlfriend. ‘D’you want to come?’

  ‘I’ll leave it, thanks.’

  Ben didn’t even register the slam of the front door. He was already sifting through the folders on the screen.

  ‘There’s something in particular I wanted you to take a look at.’

  ‘Yeah, what?’ Ben gazed up eagerly.

  Liam indicated the frame images. ‘Can you run these together like you did with those party photos?’

  Fifteen minutes later they were seated in front of Ben’s impressive computer system.

  ‘OK, I’d take a guess and say Jude photographed individual frames from some old film reel she’d found, probably because it was too fragile to run on a sixteen millemeter projector, even if she had access to one.’ Ben began selecting and dragging each image, explaining as he went along. ‘I grab each of the images and insert them.’ He chose ‘Insert frame’ from the drop menu and located Frame 1 on his hard drive. ‘Normally when an image changes, say in place or people, we would insert it as a key frame, indicating the next sequence, but since we don’t know what any of these contain, we’ll give each image the same time and just run them together. We can play about with the timing later if need be.’

  Liam nodded, just wanting him to get on with it. Ben set it running. Along the top a vertical red marker began moving through a horizontal line of frames while below a 550 by 400mm window opened on the screen. Now that the images were blown up larger it was much easier to see the figures.

  As the movie reached the end of its frames and came abruptly to a halt, Ben gave a long low whistle. ‘Wow. I never thought your Jude would be into old-time gay porn.’

  14

  Rhona woke with a start and stood up, still fully dressed. She had fallen asleep waiting for the buzzer to sound.

  She remembered pacing up and down the sitting room until 2 a.m., before finally dozing off in front of an old black and white movie, filled with people in evening dresses and tuxedos, bizarrely like the Poker Club.

  As her head began to clear she registered it was still pitch black outside. She checke
d her watch. Three thirty. So there was still time for Petersson and McNab to appear. But what was taking them so long?

  She looked about for her mobile then remembered she’d been holding it in her hand, willing it to ring, before she’d fallen asleep. She eventually located it partway under the couch, and eagerly scanned the screen for a missed call or text. Nothing.

  She cursed under her breath. She’d only agreed to leave the Poker Club because McNab had promised to come here with Petersson. She should never have listened to him. And what of Petersson? Had McNab even told him why she’d left?

  A second thought occurred. What if the two men had been in on this together from the start? Petersson had definitely not wanted her to go with him and McNab had been furious to find her there. The thought ran on, growing bigger, gaining momentum like a snowball running down a hill.

  Petersson hadn’t managed to persuade her, finally agreeing that she tag along. Rhona recalled that exchange, Petersson’s closed expression, the tone of his voice. Had he known McNab would be there? She’d never been sure about Petersson. Even now she didn’t completely trust him. And did she even trust McNab?

  She went to the kitchen, made a pot of extra strong coffee and took a mug of it back to the lounge. Sipping it, she considered what her next move would be in the event that the two men didn’t appear by dawn.

  She considered calling Bill, telling him of her visit to the Poker Club. She’d done nothing wrong in going there, she reminded herself, but Bill would seriously question her judgement in revisiting the scene of the attempted murder, especially now that McNab’s apparent resurrection was the subject of speculation. The second issue was Petersson; she’d never revealed her connection to the investigative journalist even when Bill had brought her the news that McNab was alive. And finally, how would Bill react to the news that McNab had also been on the premises? All things considered, Rhona decided she would wait a little longer. And hope.

  She flicked from the movie channel to BBC News 24, where a newsreader with a grave expression was reciting the world’s ills. Rhona finished her coffee and went for a refill. When she returned a breaking news banner was running across the bottom of the screen.