Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘No word back on that yet,’ said Wyngate.

  ‘Can you ask them to do it before Christmas? This Christmas! Any other ideas? Mulholland, am I boring you?’

  Vik turned, woken from his dwam. ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Any other ideas?’

  ‘Oh, Miss Cotter, obviously; she’s the batty neighbour, killing the children and putting them in the back of the wardrobe,’ said Mulholland. ‘Case solved. Can I go home now?’

  Anderson ignored him. ‘Anything else? Has anybody found any tie-up with Luca Scott? However tenuous?’

  Lewis shook her head. ‘Nothing that we can find.’

  Anderson said, ‘OK, interview Miss Cotter. And Alison McEwen, and Lorraine Scott – just in case there is a connection. Both boys are seven years old, cute, angelic-looking, both have dysfunctional mothers, and both are under social care orders. Both boys disappeared at roughly the same time on consecutive days; is that a connection? Anything else? Come on, you lot.’

  ‘We’ve checked the central record, cross-referencing these abductions, if that’s what they are,’ said Lewis. ‘There are no matches, and nobody jumps out as a suspect.’

  ‘Which leaves the possibility that there’s somebody new we don’t know about,’ said DS Littlewood. He added darkly, ‘Or somebody we don’t want to know about – a new perve on the block.’

  Anderson ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I really don’t want to think about that. And Rogan O’Neill’s presence in the country means the papers are paying these abductions a lot less attention than they normally would at this stage. The media are more interested in his sex life than the fate of two missing children.’

  ‘No change there then,’ muttered somebody from the back.

  ‘So, let’s hope that Lewis’s photo shoot gets us some good coverage. Christ knows we could use it. Meeting over,’ Anderson announced. ‘Such as it was,’ he muttered to himself.

  9

  Anderson took a deep breath out in the close, as though not sure when he’d get another. He immediately regretted it, as he took in a heady mixture of pakora, vomit and cat pee. Costello looked at the panel of hardboard on Alison McEwen’s door.

  ‘Violent entry?’ Anderson suggested.

  ‘Alcoholics don’t always remember the keys, or to feed their children, or indeed bloody notice them – otherwise we wouldn’t be here,’ Costello pointed out dryly. ‘Let’s get on with this.’

  The first search of Alison McEwen’s apartment had been carried out immediately after the alarm had been raised. They’d looked in the usual places children always hid – under the bed, on top of the wardrobe, in the attic behind the water tank. Now they pulled on protective gloves before starting to search for the second time.

  Troy’s bedroom, a small room at the back of the flat, held a narrow single bed under a cracked window which let in a bitterly cold draught. The room itself smelled awful, a damp cloying reek. A growth of mould crept across the floor under the window. A dehumidifier sat idle in the corner, and Anderson nudged it with his foot; it was full. The radiator was cold, and felt as though it had been that way for a while.

  Colin Anderson pulled his anorak round him and opened both the window and the door to allow a breeze through. It was a typical boy’s room, not unlike Peter’s, with posters on the wall, he noticed, pinned up only as high as the boy could reach himself, higher over the bed, lower round the walls. The duvet was still pulled back where Troy had shrugged it off. Lying against the skirting board were a discarded T-shirt and a pair of socks. Oddly, the other dirty clothes were piled neatly in the corner. Colin opened the single wardrobe to find a few clothes, hung up neatly but smelling slightly stale. He found some DVDs and a small collection of videos, mostly Wallace and Gromit and a few Disney classics. He recalled that no DVD player had been found in the living room, where gaps in the usual detritus of living indicated that things had been pawned, never to return.

  Anderson opened the little chest of drawers, and found a few more T-shirts, and a tinfoil bundle. Carefully he opened the package to find a homemade Empire biscuit, the blue and white Scottish flag on the top knocked sideways. At the back of the drawer he found a selection of brightly coloured paper umbrellas, the type used for cocktail decorations. His eyes went round the room, falling on a black shoebox in the corner, with a folded jumper on top, a video, and a pair of socks that were almost threadbare. Troy had begun to write the label – for my frends in Pakistan – pointing out in very bad spelling that there were ‘no earthcakes in Scotland’ and ‘we was luki’.

  ‘He seems to be a sweet kid, this Troy,’ he observed.

  ‘Hey, look at this – a prescription slip,’ said Costello, waving a piece of paper. ‘For something called Penicillin V. But it isn’t for the mum. It’s for him. Do you want me to phone and find out what it’s for?’

  ‘I know. It’s what they gave me for Claire.’ Anderson’s face paled and he sat down on the bed. ‘It’s dated a week ago. If we show that to O’Hare, he’ll tell you we’re looking for a body.’

  ‘I think it might be worth asking him, though. A sick kid would give us more leverage with the press.’ Costello pulled her mobile from her pocket. ‘I should have his number stored somewhere. What gets me is that Alison made the effort to get her own script filled – that bottle of capsules she had in her hand was dated Tuesday. So, why did she not pick up his stuff at the same time? Unless she knew he wouldn’t be around to use it…’

  ‘Or was too thick to realize how important it was. That sore throat thing can be fatal.’ He thought about Brenda. She wasn’t stupid but hadn’t she just done the same thing?

  Costello scrolled down to O’Hare’s number and pressed it. ‘How could she not say? She didn’t even mention it. He might be lying dead somewhere behind a wheelie bin. If he collapsed, this bloody weather would be enough to do him in. Oh, it’s ringing…’ Costello paused, then smiled. ‘DS Costello here, can I pick your brains?’ She related the contents of the prescription, then said yes, yes, yes and a quiet oh, no, before saying thanks and closing her phone.

  She looked at it thoughtfully for a while, prompting Anderson to ask, ‘Well?’

  ‘If we accept he’s badly nourished, he might have been given that script just because he has a weak immune system. But if he’s out in this weather, any secondary infection – food poisoning or anything – will just rip through him.’ She drew her finger across her throat.

  ‘Cheery bloke, that O’Hare.’ Anderson held out the Empire biscuit in his open palm. ‘What do you make of this?’

  ‘I bet that will be his little stash of treats. Troy never knew where his next meal was coming from. You know, I saw an Empire biscuit just like this not two hours ago.’

  Anderson passed the biscuit under his nose. ‘It smells fresh enough. You think he might have gone hungry?’

  ‘Kid of an alcoholic mother? No dad? Bloody right he’d go hungry.’

  Anderson busied himself with wrapping the biscuit up again. ‘Right, we’ll go next door and speak to Miss Cotter. See how ill she thought the boy was. And if she’s in the habit of handing out Empire biscuits.’

  ‘The issue is: were they his treat?’ Costello took the biscuit from Anderson and turned it over in her hand. ‘Or her bait?’

  ‘Hello?’ said a voice, cracking with age. The other door had opened a few inches, caught by a thick chain, a fine polished wood door with a spyhole.

  Costello looked at the nameplate. ‘Mrs Cotter?’

  ‘Miss Cotter,’ the voice corrected.

  ‘I’m DS Costello, Partickhill Station. This is DI Anderson.’

  The door closed slightly, then opened, the rattling of the chain echoing up the stairwell. Miss Cotter, a tall woman in a beige cardigan that had seen better days, did not invite them in, but stood there expectantly, her blue-veined twigs of legs sagging under her weight.

  She took a deep breath before she spoke. She had the audible wheeze of the chronic bronchitic. ‘Are you here about w
ee Troy? Any news yet? The other man couldn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Most children turn up safe and sound,’ Anderson tried reassuringly. ‘He’ll be well tucked in somewhere that his mother doesn’t know about.’

  ‘Not him; he’s not like that.’ Her voice was tremulous but sure. ‘If he was anywhere he’d be here.’

  ‘Miss Cotter.’ Costello took a step forward. ‘Would you mind if we came in? It’s very cold out here. I think I saw you at the hospital this morning; you had the refreshment trolley?’

  ‘Diet Coke? Ye’re too thin, ma girl – Diet Coke indeed! Aye, I remember. Better come in then.’ The door swung open, and the sweet smell of an overheated electric fire wafted into the hall as Miss Cotter led them into her front room. A cloth-covered dining table with four chairs took pride of place. On the table were some Christmas cards, a list of addresses, a cheap biro and some wrapping paper, a plastic car, a rolled-up wigwam, and a boxed game. Miss Cotter wearily took her seat at the table, lowering herself carefully as if her joints were sore. Costello nodded to Anderson, indicating the photographs of Troy McEwen on the mantelpiece.

  ‘We are not disturbing your lunch, are we?’ asked Costello, registering the smell of boiling cabbage.

  ‘No, no.’ She walked slowly into the small kitchen off the living room, her hands carefully repositioned from the back of one chair to another for support.

  ‘So, Miss Cotter, could you tell us how often, roughly, Troy came in here? Once a week, twice a week?’ Costello called through.

  ‘Oh, more than that, young lady. Every night if he could. He was a nice wee boy. Oh, he could be a cheeky wee sod, but not like some of the kids I see,’ Miss Cotter replied, opening the salon doors.

  ‘And did you buy him Empire biscuits, and give him the little umbrellas we found in his bedroom?’

  ‘I didn’t buy him the Empire biscuits,’ Miss Cotter reproved her. ‘I’ve always made them for the WRVS trolley to raise a bit of money, though that will come to an end, with the health and safety Nazis. Troy used to help me. Well, he made them by sticking two digestive biscuits together with jam and then putting the icing on. I make them properly, from scratch. Troy was always hungry, always had his fingers in the bowl, licking the icing. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d made him toast and a wee bowl of porridge in the morning before he went to school. Alison wasn’t much of a mother.’ Miss Cotter coughed, covering her mouth with a hanky she pulled from her sleeve. ‘But what can you do? He’s not my boy.’ Her voice cracked slightly.

  Costello pulled out a photograph of Luca Scott. ‘Have you ever seen this child?’

  ‘Aye, that’s that other boy.’ Miss Cotter nodded, her lips pursing. ‘I know of him, because he’s been in the papers. And they’re all talking about it down at the hospital café.’

  ‘Did Troy ever mention Luca? It’s not a name you could forget.’

  Miss Cotter shook her head; she was quite definite. ‘Do you have any idea what’s happened to wee Troy? I mean, he can’t just have disappeared into thin air, can he?’

  ‘No, certainly not.’ Costello asked, ‘When did you last see Troy? How was he, was he well, was he happy? Excited about anything?’

  ‘I last saw him about eight o’clock the night before. He had mince and tatties, a good dinner… all kids like that, you know. Only so many burgers they can eat. At least he had something inside him to keep him going. He was excited about Santa, I suppose.’

  ‘And he ate well, no sore throat, nothing like that?’

  ‘He always had a sore throat, tonsil trouble or something. In ma day they wheeched your tonsils out and that was that. He was always on tablets for one thing or another. Alison probably got more money from the social for that.’ Miss Cotter smiled a wry smile. She reached down into a plastic carrier bag and pulled out a teddy bear dressed in a Scotland football strip. ‘This is what he’s getting from Santa – I thought he would like it.’ She handed it to Anderson. ‘Would you like a wee cup of tea and an Empire biscuit yourself?’ she asked.

  Anderson signalled to Costello.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ said Costello.

  They both watched as Miss Cotter walked into the darkness of the kitchen.

  ‘Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,’ Costello whispered to Anderson as the door closed behind her.

  ‘Why not get in there, offer the old dear a hand with the cups and saucers?’ he suggested.

  Costello shot him a look that said she could make some caustic comment about ‘women’s work’ but wasn’t going to bother.

  ‘Do you have much of a family yourself, Miss Cotter?’ she asked, once she was inside the cramped little kitchen.

  ‘No, none.’ Miss Cotter pulled the back of her hand across her thin lips.

  ‘Yet you have so many photographs of children, in the living room,’ said Costello. ‘I thought they might be your grandchildren.’

  Miss Cotter pulled two cups from their hooks, and placed them on two saucers on a tray. She didn’t answer for a while, her thin fingers straining as they turned the dial on the geyser.

  Costello waited.

  ‘If I had a grandson, he’d probably be in his early twenties by now.’ A plate and two Empire biscuits joined the tray. ‘Mid-twenties maybe.’

  ‘But you are fond of children?’ asked Costello, picking up the tray.

  The old woman leaned on the worktop and shook her head, suddenly weary. For a moment Costello thought she was going to collapse. ‘Poor wee Troy… it just seems so much worse at Christmas.’ She coughed again into her white handkerchief. ‘Fifty-seven years in this flat, and I’ve always had a good reason for Christmas. It’s not just for myself, see. There’s always been someone for me to look after, nearly always wee boys, though there was one wee special girl; her granny lived across the landing there, in the same flat Troy does now. She was the bee’s knees, that one, pretty as a picture, a sensitive wee soul…’ Miss Cotter’s eyes clouded over. ‘Her mum was never around, and she got beaten up by her dad every two minutes, so she lived with her granny more often than not.’ She wiped her nose. Costello put the tray down and waited. ‘But you kept quiet about that kind of thing in those days. The wee lassie would come in here to escape. She still does sometimes, poor soul. There’s a whole load of unhappiness in this world. But at Christmas, there’s always presents under my tree for them, all my little friends over the years.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed them as I came in. All labelled and everything. I haven’t even bought mine yet.’

  ‘You got a lot to buy for?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ve no family at all, have you? You’ve that look about you.’

  Costello smiled. ‘You might be right about that.’

  Miss Cotter steadied herself on the door jamb as Costello held the door open for her, and made her way back into the living room. ‘I’ve friends at the WRVS who don’t see their grandkids from one week to the next, but me, I’ve Troy in and out every two minutes, causing havoc. So, I think I’m quite lucky.’ She looked from Costello to Anderson, and tears welled up in her eyes. ‘Can you try to get him back for his Christmas dinner? I do miss him.’

  10

  The smell of the close seemed to have invaded Anderson’s head. He got up and opened the window a little in search of fresh air, glaring at DC Vik Mulholland whose lunchtime salad was stinking out the Incident Room with a heady mixture of Parmesan and basil. Combined with his aftershave, it could be tested as a chemical weapon. Vik slowly pulled himself from the window, totally unaware of being observed, and settled into his late lunch, leaning over his desk with a paper serviette tucked into the collar of his shirt. Anderson watched as DS Kate Lewis slid into the seat across from Mulholland, pulling it round so she was at right angles to him. She smiled as she stabbed at Mulholland’s salad with a plastic fork, stealing a sundried tomato here, a piece of tuna there, then placed the forkful between her wide red lips and chewed slowly. Her legs were crossed, giving both And
erson and Littlewood another look at her long tanned thigh. She leaned close and started a quiet discussion into Vik’s ear.

  Costello tried to block out the inane conversation between them and concentrated on reading her briefing notes on Alison McEwen. It wouldn’t be an easy interview. Troy McEwen’s mother was an alcoholic and emotionally unbalanced, and she was not the brightest at the best of times. They would need to word their questions carefully. Costello was trying to make a list but Mulholland and Lewis were getting on her nerves. So far she’d heard what the boyfriend, Stuart, was buying Kate for Christmas, what Vik wanted to buy for beautiful Frances, and that Vik had invited Frances to Christmas dinner but Frances was ignoring Christmas altogether. Vik was worried ‘Fran’ wasn’t taking him seriously. Good for Fran, thought Costello. Then Mulholland dropped his voice even more and Costello found herself straining to hear. Frances had phoned to say Mulholland had left his gloves at her flat. Vik was saying he would go round and get them. She had refused.

  ‘So, she’s playing hard to get. Women do that to keep you on your toes. What’s she like in bed?’ asked Kate, smiling provocatively, like a woman who knew everything.

  Costello listened to their whispers and conspiratorial giggles, then heard her own first name followed by a stifled cackle of laughter from Lewis, which was hastily cut short with a single glare.

  Costello leaned over to Anderson. ‘If she dares call me by my name she’ll wake up not knowing if it’s New York or New Year. Cow,’ she hissed.

  ‘Do you believe if a man knows your name, he owns you?’ muttered Anderson, holding drawing pins between his lips, adjusting the information sheet on the wall.

  ‘I believe if that woman uses my name she’ll be paying a visit to casualty. Just look at those two.’ She nodded across at Mulholland, still deep in conversation with Lewis. ‘If Vik is emotionally distraught, I would be the first to rejoice. But not here and not now. Why can’t they just get on with their bloody jobs?’