by Ed James
"And before that?" asked Bain, stroking his moustache.
"We went to Church."
"As a family?"
"Indeed."
"Is that the Church of Scotland on the High Street?" asked Cullen.
Gibson smiled. "No, we're no longer members of the Parish there," he said. "We attend the God's Rainbow group."
Cullen had noticed a rainbow on a building on the High Street.
"Never heard of it," said Bain.
Gibson's eyes suddenly lit up. "It takes elements of Christianity and Judaism and exposes the truth in all of the Gospels," he said. "It teaches us a way to live our lives in the modern world."
"How big is this group?"
"It is just based in Garleton at present," said Gibson, "though we do have plans to expand."
"We?"
"Well, yes," said Gibson. "I am training to become a minister in the church. I feel that I have incurred sins in my profession as a banker. I need to cleanse them more substantially than I do with my one-on-one sessions with Father Mulgrew. I want to take our word to the world - Father Mulgrew intends to move away from this parish and set up in another town. East Linton is the favourite."
"And is Father Mulgrew the minister at this God's Rainbow?" asked Cullen.
Gibson paused for a second. "Father Seamus Mulgrew is the head of our church," he said, "if that's what you mean."
Cullen obtained an address for Mulgrew and the church.
"And did anything unusual happen during the service?" asked Cullen.
Gibson twitched. "No, it was perfectly normal, I'm afraid."
Elaine Gibson reappeared at that point, her face flushed. She was accompanied by the dog, its tail wagging furiously - it ran over to Cullen and started sniffing at him. Elaine sat down next to her husband and cuddled in tight next to him. "I'm sorry," she said. "This is proving a bit too much for me."
"I understand," said Bain. "Can I ask both of you if there is anyone who you think would have wanted to harm your daughter?"
Gibson screwed his face up and let out a sigh. "Define what you mean by harm," he said, almost in an undertone.
"Mr Gibson, your daughter has turned up in a shallow grave three miles from her house," said Bain, "can you think of anyone who would wish to do that to her?"
"The only person I could even consider as being responsible for this would be Jamie Cook," said Gibson.
"Charles," said Elaine, her eyes wide. "Robert and Wilma are our friends, how could you consider accusing their son of that?"
"I could accuse that boy of bloody anything," said Gibson. He looked at Bain. "He is the local problem child."
"Is he capable of murder?" asked Bain.
"Capable of anything," said Gibson.
"Anybody else?"
Gibson shook his head slowly. "We make sure that we don't wrong anyone," he said. "Jamie makes sure that he wrongs everyone."
Elaine Gibson had shrunk back in the sofa, almost disappearing from sight, or so Cullen felt.
"Fine," said Bain. He checked his watch. "I'm expecting some Scene of Crime Officers around here soon."
"Is that strictly necessary?" asked Gibson.
Bain nodded. "We need to be extremely rigorous with this investigation," he said. "We can't rule anything out at this stage. I'm sure you want your daughter's killer to be brought to justice."
"Yes, but we are a family in mourning," said Gibson.
"There'll be plenty of time for that later," said Bain. "Right now, the priority is looking for any telltale signs of intrusion in here. As it stands, we do not know how your daughter disappeared from her bedroom."
"I told you," said Gibson, "she probably ran away."
"I'm not a man that takes probably for an answer," said Bain.
Cullen almost shook his head in disbelief. If ever there was a police officer that enacted entire vendettas on the flimsiest of premises then it was Bain.
"Fine."
Bain looked over at Elaine Gibson. "Would your son be able to show DC Cullen here around Mandy's bedroom?"
four
Cullen pulled the curtain aside and looked out at the garden. Mandy's room faced to the back of the house, looking south. The ground sloped up from the house to the Hopetoun monument, a local landmark that could be seen all the way from Edinburgh.
He checked the window, shut tight and locked with no sign of the key. He faced back into the room.
Elaine Gibson stood in the doorway, arms folded, looking as if she was going to break down again at any moment. Cullen didn't particularly want her or her son with him at that point, but he had to follow Bain's instructions.
"Do you know where the key to the window is?" he asked.
"It's in the safe in our room," she said. "It's still there, I have checked."
Mandy's room was bigger than any bedroom Cullen had ever been in. It was decorated in pink and looked more like it belonged to a six or seven year old. There were rainbows and trees stencilled on the wall in thick paint. There were a few My Little Pony posters on the wall. Cullen's younger sister had the dolls when they were kids in the 80s - he'd recently read about them becoming popular again, particularly with a weird faction of adult men.
A lamp sat on the bedside table, still on. The bed had clearly been slept in - the purple duvet was pulled back, revealing the crumpled pink bed sheet with a purple pillow. The rest of the duvet was covered in teddy bears - most of them were Disney-branded.
"You put her to bed last night?" asked Cullen.
Elaine nodded. "She was like a five year old," she said. "She used to need a story to get her to sleep. She could sleep through anything."
"When she gets out, is she sleepwalking?" asked Cullen.
"No," she said. "She seems to be awake and fully aware of what's going on. There were a couple of times when she escaped and we caught her. She ran off down the lane and we didn't catch her until the Russells' house. I'm sure you can imagine how difficult it was with that happening in the middle of the night."
"How long has she been doing this for?"
"It's going back a couple of years," she said. "Maybe eighteen months."
"It's not exactly normal behaviour," said Cullen. "Do you have any idea why she was doing it?"
Elaine glared at him. "Since her accident, Constable, she has not exactly been normal." She exhaled loudly. "We have been to behavioural psychologists about it. Nobody could get to the bottom of it."
"Could you give us the names of the people you spoke to?"
She frowned. "Why?"
Cullen smiled. "You heard my boss downstairs," he said. "With a case like this, we can't rule anything out."
"I'll see what I can find," she said.
"What have you done to stop her getting out?" he asked.
"What haven't we tried?"
"Have you put a lock on her door?"
She closed her eyes. "My daughter is not some animal in the zoo."
"So how did she escape then?"
"She was very mischievous," she said. "She would steal a key and hide it from us."
Cullen noted it down.
"Is there anything else?" she asked.
Cullen took a long look around the room. Her school uniform sat on a chair in front of a dressing table, her small leather satchel hanging off the back.
"Let's get back downstairs," he said.
*
In the cool January air, Elaine Gibson opened the gate and led them down the path. She was wrapped up tight in a big ski jacket, a thick scarf wrapped around her neck.
Bain had instructed them to retrace Mandy's likely steps - Cullen felt as though he was marking time. Although it seemed to Cullen like overkill, they were accompanied by Caldwell, Thomas Gibson and ADC Law.
The small lane ran from the midway point in the arc of Dunpender Drive to the end of Aberlady Lane, just off Aberlady Road, the main road out of Garleton on the west side of the town. Six foot tall wooden fences lined both sides of the lane. Cullen could only just s
ee across the tops into the immaculate, sprawling gardens on either side - a large green lawn on the left, a pebbles and decking affair on the right. The tarmac pavement underfoot was a mush of rotten leaves, no doubt dropped months previously from the now-bare oaks that lined the path, set in a few feet worth of bare earth. It had been raining all day and had just recently stopped, the grey clouds still ominously cruising overhead.
"Is this the only way?" asked Cullen, as they slowly walked on, keeping eyes open for anything useful.
"It's the most direct way," said Elaine. "You could go down the main road and double back, but it's a long way round. The other way is around the park, but this is the quickest way to the park."
"We usually walk Monkey this way," said Thomas, his expression unreadable.
"Is Monkey your dog?" asked Law.
"He is," he said. "Mandy named him." He turned away from them.
Cullen saw a right-angled twist in the path ahead. A gate lay straight ahead of them.
"Does this path lead to the park?" asked Cullen.
"It does," said Elaine. "It ends up at the top of Aberlady Drive and there's an entrance to the park there. We let monkey off there."
"And you caught Mandy running away down this path?" asked Cullen.
Elaine nodded. "I had been really worried that she was sleepwalking and had been going down the main road," she said. "It was somehow reassuring that she was taking a safe route."
"I assume that the doors to your house were all locked?" asked Cullen.
"Yes," she said. "We have a set of keys each, Charles and I. Thomas has a front door key. She still managed to get out."
"There weren't keys in the door last night, were there?" asked Cullen.
"No."
"As far as I'm aware, we haven't found a set of keys on Mandy's person."
"I can only think that the door must have been left open last night," she said.
"But it was locked this morning?"
She stopped in the path by the gate. "It was," she said.
Cullen hoped that Bain was having more joy with Charles Gibson. He pointed at the street beyond the gate, lined with houses that were similarly sized if not as grand as those on the Gibsons' street. An elderly couple walked slowly down the street, heading away from them. "Is that where Susan lives?" he asked.
She nodded. "Number seven."
"I wonder if you could introduce us?" asked Cullen. "If Mandy came this way, then we need to scour her likely route, including their house."
"Certainly," said Elaine, though she gave a sigh after her answer.
Cullen opened the gate and let Elaine head through. He held it open for ADC Law to catch. She smiled warmly at Cullen - he let his gaze linger a bit too long.
"Mum!"
He turned back around and saw Elaine Gibson running to a small continuation of the path that ran to the side. Cullen and Thomas Gibson gave chase. She was kneeling about twenty feet from the gate, clutching something.
"What is it?" asked Cullen.
Her eyes were streaming, her body racked with sobs. She rocked back and forth, holding something tight to her.
Thomas spoke up. "It's Mandy's favourite teddy bear."
five
Cullen had eventually managed to prise the teddy bear from Elaine's clutches. He had put on a pair of protective gloves, though he feared that any forensic traces would have been lost in the onslaught of rain that morning.
It was a large brown bear, very classic looking. It wasn't one of the many Disney tie-ins, but something from an earlier age. He turned the bear over and over, looking for any clues but couldn't find anything. It was just a bear.
Elaine Gibson was on her feet now, still in floods of tears. Caldwell had her arm around her shoulder, slowly patting her back. Thomas Gibson stood beside them, unsure what to do. Cullen thought that he was trying to look mature, but occasionally he caught glimpses of emotion tearing the boy's face apart.
"What shall we do?" asked Law.
Cullen realised that he was the most senior of the three officers present. While they were all Constables, he was the only fully-fledged Detective. He looked back down the lane and tried to think. A middle-aged woman opened the gate at the far end and struggled through with her dog. A million thoughts raced through his head - how had nobody seen the bear? The path looked like it was fairly well-used and it led from a populous part of the town to a park. How had nobody spotted anything? How had nobody spotted Mandy?
He took a deep breath and made a decision. "Can you take the Gibsons back home?" he asked Law. "I want to speak to someone in the Russell's house."
Law raised an eyebrow. "Got a thing going with ADC Caldwell, have you?" she asked, a grin on her face.
Cullen shook his head. "No, I don't," he said. "And don't listen to what Bain might say, either."
She smiled. "Is she not your type?"
"Something like that," he muttered.
Law bit her lip. "So you know where they live?" she asked.
"Number seven, according to Elaine Gibson."
"I'll let you get on, then," she said.
"You're okay doing this?" he asked.
"Used to be a Community Officer," she said. "Second nature to me."
*
The Russell house wasn't in the same league as the Gibsons' but it was still way out of the price bracket Cullen could ever afford, even if he made DCI. It was of inferior quality and it was clear to Cullen that corners had been cut on the route to making money. The plots were much closer together, the houses that bit smaller. There seemed to Cullen to be the same number of windows, implying the same number of rooms, but where the Gibson house was spacious, he imagined that the rooms in the Russell house would be smaller.
"Awful business," said Cath Russell.
She was a big woman. Her rich voice had a strong Highland accent, which reminded Cullen of an English teacher he had in school.
They sat in her conservatory, located at the back of the house, which looked across an immaculate, if small, garden - the lawn looked perfect even in winter and the mature fruit trees at the end of the garden were placed in an unusual manner, aligned in a long curve rather than the standard straight row. Cullen also noticed another conservatory - he could barely understand getting one, but having two with such a small plot just puzzled him. Even in January, the heat in the room was stifling and Cullen noticed that the radiators were on full blast.
"I believe that you helped Charles and Elaine Gibson hunt for Mandy this morning," he said.
"Indeed I did," she replied. "My husband, Paul, had already left for work but I helped them search for her. Poor wee soul."
"They said that Mandy had run away before and ended up here?" asked Caldwell. "Is that true?"
Cath nodded. "Indeed," she said, sitting forward and clasping her hands together. "Quite a few times. Mandy was friends with my Susan. I say friends, but poor Mandy was not particularly capable of the sort of friendship that Susan requires. She's a very bright girl, you know, very advanced for her age."
"So what sort of friendship did they have?" asked Caldwell.
"Well, because of the way that Mandy was," said Cath, taking care with her wording, "it was less a friendship and more like Mandy was a younger sister - much younger. Mandy really looked up to Susan."
"And they were in the same year at school?" asked Caldwell.
"Well, yes," said Cath. "But you must remember that Susan was in the top class for all of her subjects and that poor Mandy was in the special needs class. So really they were only in the same class for a few subjects. PE, Religious Education, that sort of thing."
"Can you explain why Mandy came here when she ran away from home?" asked Cullen.
"I've no idea."
"No idea at all?"
"All I can think is that she wanted to see Susan," said Cath. "My daughter is a very nurturing soul and Mandy must have been drawn to that. She's very much like me in that sense."
Cullen almost choked. "How many times
has she come here during the night?" he asked.
"It was about once a month on average."
"And when did it start?" asked Cullen.
"Oh, now you're asking," she replied. "I would say it was probably late summer 2010."
"So eighteen months ago?" asked Cullen.
"Yes, that would be about right."
Cullen felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but he let it ring out.
"Had there been any trouble at home, do you know?" he asked.
She scowled. "Heavens, no," she said, her voice high and lilting. "They were very loving towards Mandy. After what happened in Edinburgh, well, it would have driven most families apart, but it seemed to make Charles and Elaine even stronger."
"Does your daughter know what has happened to Mandy?" asked Cullen.
"No, not yet," she said, biting her lip. "She's at school today. I will tell her after school but I don't want this harming her education."
Cullen glanced at Caldwell, who was virtually rolling her eyes.
"I can understand that," he said. "Would I be able to see her after school?"
She nodded. "She usually gets home at the back of four."
"Would it be possible to speak to your husband?" asked Caldwell.
Cath frowned. "As I said earlier, Paul had left for work by the time Charles came here."
"We'd still like to speak to him," he said."
She turned her lip up. "I suggest that I get him to turn up at whichever police station you are working from."
"We're based in Garleton while this case is ongoing," said Cullen.
"Then I shall send him there."
*
"Fat lot of good that was," said Caldwell as they walked back along the lane to the Gibsons' house. "Can't believe how up herself she was. My daughter this, my daughter that. I'm a very nurturing soul."
Cullen laughed. "Other than getting a corroboration of the Gibsons' story," he said, "it just made me glad to not live in a place like this."