Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘They’re a couple of children,’ said Anderson, pinning new instructions on the wall. He added quietly, ‘Am I the only one who’s noticed that Littlewood has stopped sharing his desk space? He never gets given anything to do by Quinn. They should be at each other’s throats, but they aren’t.’

  Costello was quick. ‘I’ve noticed his computer is password protected beyond normal, and his drawer is locked.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Anderson.

  ‘I was innocently looking for the magnifying glass,’ she fibbed with extreme ease. ‘Do you think he’s had a sniff and he’s been told not to tell us? I think he’s definitely mulling something over. Something more than Lewis’s arse, I mean.’

  They watched Littlewood, deep in thought, pull a packet of chewing gum from his pocket and press through the bubble pack with his thumb. Costello’s eyes were fixed on Littlewood’s fat yellow fingers as he popped the chewing gum into his mouth. ‘I think Quinn has pulled him off this part of the enquiry and got him started on something else. Nothing like fighting with one hand tied behind our backs,’ said Costello, her train of thought interrupted by the now-familiar ‘Sex Bomb’ ringtone of Lewis’s mobile. ‘Bloody answer that now!’

  The response was a wide smile and a wink from Lewis.

  ‘Do you know,’ Anderson retrieved Costello’s attention, ‘after talking to Miss Cotter, something struck me. Both these boys – there’s nobody. I’ve been looking at the phone log. In every other missing person case, especially young people – kids – there’s a queue of folk phoning up, camped on the doorstep, Family Liaison on twenty-four-hour call. But for these two, nothing. Except, of course, for Miss Cotter.’

  Costello’s mobile rang. She listened to a quick message and closed her phone with an annoyed snap. ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘That was to say Troy’s mum is downstairs now. She’s sober and being fed coffee.’ She handed Anderson a page of notes and questions from her yellow notebook. ‘Me bad cop, you good cop?’

  The reception area of Partickhill Station was bitterly cold, and a trail of water with clumps of melting snow led from the door to the enquiry desk. A bare Christmas tree leaned abandoned against the wall; maybe somebody would get round to it later. Anderson picked up the list Wyngate had been using: Troy McEwen’s classmates, his teacher, the teaching assistants, a few neighbours who hadn’t yet been contacted – all the people on the periphery of a seven-year-old’s life.

  ‘Can you not find somewhere a bit more appropriate to do that?’ Anderson asked, halting Wyngate’s finger in mid-dial. Wyngate opened his mouth to snap back and then remembered who was talking to him. ‘You shouldn’t be making those kinds of phone calls from the front desk. Anybody could be listening.’

  ‘DCI Quinn told me to do it, sir,’ Wyngate muttered. ‘There’s nobody about to man the desk, and she said I could be killing two birds with one stone.’ He leaned forward and added in a whisper, ‘And I’m keeping my eye on her.’

  Anderson and Costello both turned round to see a skeletal woman sitting on the bench seat in leggings and jumper, her shoulders huddled into the warmth of an Afghan coat.

  ‘Troy McEwen’s mother?’ asked Costello.

  Wyngate nodded ‘Keeping her off the…’ he mimed drinking from a bottle.

  ‘Well, get her out of here,’ Anderson growled. ‘She should be in an interview room somewhere.’

  ‘We’re waiting for one to warm up. It’s number…’

  Anderson glanced at his watch. He had wanted this to be over by now so he could look in on the re-enactment on his way past. He didn’t trust Lewis to cope with Peter’s extremely low boredom threshold.

  The door opened and the reception area was hit by an icy blast. A tall dark-haired woman came in, wearing a long dark coat with the collar up. She stamped on the mat, shaking the snow from her boots, then slid the black pashmina from her head. Her face was pale, with huge brown eyes, her perfect patrician features enhanced by the imperfection of a small scar on the arc of her cheekbone. She glanced a little uncertainly at Costello as Wyngate recovered enough to ask, ‘Can I help you?’

  She placed a small carrier bag on the counter, like the ones sandwiches came in from the deli. ‘I’m leaving these gloves for Vik Mulholland – he’s a DC…’

  ‘Yeah, we know who he is,’ said Costello, shifting the bag from the counter to behind the reception desk and simultaneously having a good look at the woman. Striking, but not as young as she had first thought.

  The woman smiled, a beautiful but empty smile, both enchanting and vacant. Costello recognized a face that was used to keeping secrets – shameful secrets? She noticed faint white tramlines on the inch of pale skin between her gloves and her coat sleeve. Her mind shot back to Mulholland’s secret whisperings with Lewis, to his concern and Lewis’s trivial dismissal. She felt ashamed. ‘I’ll make sure he gets it,’ she said quietly but the woman had turned away to sit beside Troy’s mum on the bench seat.

  ‘Alison, hello. How are you?’ she asked softly, her hand touching the other woman on the shoulder.

  Costello watched as Alison McEwen shrugged a little, biting back tears. Frances’s long pale fingers closed over the woollen collar of the Afghan coat. A conversation ensued. It was too soft for Costello to hear, but the lovely Frances was definitely offering words of genuine comfort in her low husky voice. For a brief moment the haggard face of Alison McEwen flickered into a smile as Costello caught Frances’s parting words, He’ll be all right, I promise.

  So far, the reconstruction was going well. DS Kate Lewis stood on the pavement outside the Joozy Jackpot amusement arcade, smiling. She was dressed in an oversized fluorescent jacket, rainproof clipboard in hand, doing what she did best – handing out orders and looking fantastic.

  She had briefed Patsy McKinnon on the run-through. The cashier had turned up early for her shift, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing on Monday ‘for greater realism’. Indeed, it smelled as though she had never taken them off. Patsy was enthusiastic but not too bright, casually mentioning that one minute she had been filing her nails in the kiosk to ‘I Have a Dream’ by ‘those nice Irish boys’ and the next she had heard the commotion as Lorraine collapsed among the slot machines. No, she didn’t get to hear the whole song, she said in reply to Lewis’s question, but she knew the radio was tuned to Clyde Two. A brief whisper into the radio pinned to the collar of Lewis’s jacket and, by the time Irvine and Peter Anderson had turned up in an unmarked car, Lewis knew the song had been played from 4.08 to 4.11.

  Lewis slipped up her huge yellow sleeve to glance at her watch; it was three minutes to four. Five photographers were present, hiding under the canopy of Kemper and Jones, twisting lenses on to camera bodies and looking up into the sleety rain, muttering.

  They were right on time. Peter had already been dressed in a parka and jeans, and the two members of the security staff who had been working on Monday afternoon were already in position. A few regulars had turned up, eager to help, and had had their details surreptitiously taken by the two officers in the incident van. All would be checked and double-checked later. Already details were starting to filter through – the security officer remembered Luca sneaking in but couldn’t remember him going out. They could remember rushing to Lorraine when they heard the crash of her head against the machine. One thought she had lost the plot after losing her last 10p and had wrestled her to the ground before noticing her body was writhing all by itself.

  ‘Gail? Can you take Peter over to that machine – the Regatta, I think it’s called – and on my cue, can you roll on the floor, please?’

  ‘You want me to roll on this vomit and urine stained carpet?’

  ‘Come on, everybody else is doing their bit,’ said Lewis, brushing her objections aside.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You’ve got dark hair, so has Lorraine.’

  ‘So have you.’

  ‘I’m the DS, you’re the DC, so you do as I say.’

  ‘She’s f
orty-two and I’m twenty-six. She’s fourteen stone and I’m nine stone. I don’t think the realism will suffer much if I decline.’

  ‘You will do as you are told.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘I’ll tell Quinn.’

  ‘Why, do you think she’ll volunteer?’ With that Irvine walked to the back of the arcade with Peter. With her hair scraped back in a ponytail, and wearing her regulation black T-shirt and jumper, she looked much as Lorraine had looked, if younger and slighter. At the Regatta machine she turned, arms folded, and waited.

  At ten past four Lewis instructed Peter to pull up the hood of his parka and keep his face tucked in. He walked out of the arcade, hands in pockets, and stood out in Byres Road as the photographers snapped away at him. Two uniformed cops circulated, ready to question anybody who was hanging around, staff in surrounding shops, and people standing at the bus stop. A sign on the central reservation asked drivers to pull over if they had passed that way on Monday.

  Lewis whispered in Peter’s ear, telling him to keep his face well hidden in the snorkel, as his dad had been so insistent. But as soon as she turned her back, Peter had his face out to see what was going on.

  The photographs went on and on, while the sleet soaked them all through. A few buses passed, and faces peered through the steamed-up windows. Lewis was determined to keep everybody on site until the ‘ambulance’ arrived at 4.28. The police photographer was in an unmarked white Transit, taking panoramic views for later examination, giving the cops on the ground a chance to interview everyone. A small queue was forming outside the Incident Room. Irvine, annoyed, caught Lewis smiling to herself. There were two DSs on this case and Irvine would bet her bottom dollar Lewis planned to grind Costello into the ground. She saw DS Littlewood walking casually along the gutter, bumping his beer gut through the crowd, on his fourth or fifth pass of the arcade.

  Lewis was rattling off the carefully worded press release prepared by Mulholland, as the cameras flashed. She was the new face of the Strathclyde Police Service – young, attractive, committed, intelligent. She finished off her spiel and turned to Irvine. ‘I think that went well,’ she said.

  ‘Really? That photographer is asking Peter who he is, for God’s sake!’ Irvine hissed at Lewis. ‘Stop him!’

  ‘Do you mind? That’s it – over! You have your photographs. Thank you so much for attending.’ Lewis stepped back, giving the cameras another dazzling smile.

  ‘So, is that Kate or Katherine Lewis?’ asked a young reporter, with fashionably spiky, peroxided hair.

  ‘Kate.’ She shook her hair free from her hood, so that her dark curls were garnished in a white gossamer of sleet.

  ‘Dave Ripley,’ said the reporter, holding out his hand and rattling off the name of a big tabloid.

  Irvine felt her phone vibrate. A brief glance at it told her it was the Poison Unit. ‘Well, while you two get acquainted I’m going back to the van to return this call.’ She stomped off, her feet numb with cold, then half shouted over her shoulder. ‘Remember to keep an eye on the wee guy.’

  Silence has its uses. It can hang in the air, like water gathering at the tip of an icicle, hanging heavier and heavier till something has to give. Then words, like the water, will start to flow.

  DS Costello wasn’t talking. She was watching Alison McEwen. Troy’s mother was staring at some distant point on the lino, which kept her focus away from the two police officers. She leaned on the fagscarred table, looking older than her twenty-four years, thin folds of flesh hanging from the skeletal arms wrapped round herself. Her cracked lips were white, and the left side of her mouth had started to bleed. She wiped it with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of red, as though she had just eaten something that was still alive.

  When Costello finally spoke, there was no compassion in her voice. ‘So, again – when did you last see your son?’

  Alison shrugged, as though the question was too difficult to answer. Time, for her, was an elusive thing; it came, it went, it passed her by, it left her behind.

  Anderson walked slowly behind the table, its top tattooed with cigarette burns, and glanced into Alison’s bag, a hessian open-topped carrier left on the floor. He nudged it with his foot, hearing the clonk of a half-empty quarter bottle of vodka.

  Alison scratched the sleeve of her coat with a spidery hand.

  ‘Were you feeling unwell when you were in the park?’

  ‘Ah sat down,’ she said, her hand waving in midair, and her silver bracelets jangled on Costello’s nerves. ‘Ah sat down, an’ he was playing on the swings. He likes to play on the swings.’ Alison pulled her chin back, her head wobbling slightly as if to say: And that’s it. ‘Ah’m not thinking straight. Ah need ma meds.’ She reached into her bag, digging about, careful not to reveal the bottle of vodka.

  Costello watched as Alison emptied two blue capsules from a brown plastic bottle into the palm of her hand, and realized the pharmacist didn’t trust her with the full prescription all at once. She would have sold it.

  ‘When did you realize he was gone, Alison?’ asked Anderson softly.

  She shrugged. ‘Ah think he fell off the roundabout, or something. He was moaning about his foot, or his leg. Or something,’ she repeated.

  ‘Had he hurt himself?’

  Alison shrugged again as if to say: How should I know?

  ‘Did you see him hurt himself?’ Anderson persisted. ‘Please answer me.’

  ‘Aye, he fell.’

  Anderson caught Costello’s eye. ‘That might be an explanation for the small dot of blood we found. Did he hurt his leg, or his face or his arm? Did he cut himself?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘How long were you there in the park for?’

  Alison shook her head. She had no idea.

  ‘Do you always take these capsules like that?’ asked Costello, picking up the bottle.

  ‘Aye,’ Alison nodded.

  ‘And they slide down easily?’ She tipped one out on to her own hand.

  ‘Ah get them on prescription.’ Alison’s eyes were suspicious.

  Costello raised an eyebrow, looking at the capsule in her hand, at the two halves that fitted together so snugly.

  Alison McEwen snatched the capsule back, repeating aggressively, ‘They’re prescription!’

  ‘But what about Troy’s prescription?’

  ‘Wit?’

  Costello took a deep breath. ‘Look, the doc came out, he looked at Troy and he told you to get him medicine. What was it for?’

  ‘He was moaning he’d a cold or a sore throat. Or something…’

  ‘But you didn’t get the medicine for him?’

  ‘Nae, he was fine.’

  Anderson closed his eyes and prayed quietly, thinking of Claire, how quickly the infection had taken hold, how deadly it might have proved. He wondered if Alison had ever felt that mortal panic. Troy had been missing for as long as forty-eight hours. Time to play good cop. He offered her a fresh paper tissue and shot a look at Costello, warning her to behave, but she was ignoring him, looking out the window at the rain, deep in thought.

  Lewis was standing talking to Dave Ripley, flirtatiously telling him that she couldn’t possibly meet him for a drink later in a way that suggested she well might.

  Irvine looked round, waiting for Lewis to notice her. The crowds were drifting back to work, and the press were disappearing into Bonham’s pub. ‘Lewis, I’ve got some important information. I need to get back to Partickhill asap. Can you take Peter…’ She looked around. ‘Lewis? Where is Peter?’

  Lewis turned, annoyed at the interruption. ‘I thought he was with you.’

  ‘No, I left him here with you. It was the last thing I said – look after him.’

  Dave Ripley was now interested. Lewis recovered herself and said to him, ‘I know he went to the van, I saw him myself. Excuse me.’ She turned away, and whispered to Irvine, ‘Shit.’

  ‘So, where is he? Where’s Peter?’ Irvine had her face two inches
from Lewis’s, her voice quiet but accusatory.

  ‘He was here a minute ago.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t here now, is he? Excuse me, has anybody seen the…’ And that was as far as she got before being halted by a sharp elbow in the ribs from Lewis.

  ‘Shut up. We don’t want them to think we’re completely stupid. He’s a wee boy, he can’t have gone anywhere far.’

  ‘I bet that’s what Lorraine thought.’

  Lewis headed up Byres Road, gently pushing through the onlookers, and Irvine opened the door of the police Transit and stood on the footplate, looking up and down, gaining a good view over the heads of the dispersing crowd. But she could see nothing. She jumped down, and ploughed through the crowd, pulling her radio from her pocket. OK, so Anderson would kill her, but she didn’t care how much trouble they got into. Her thumb hovered over the orange emergency button.

  Anderson felt depressed as he wandered back to his desk, and guilty. Guilty that he didn’t want to go home – anything was better than Brenda’s ranting. She had picked up his message and was none too chuffed. Maybe he wasn’t so different from Alison; her distraction was the bottle, his was the job. He checked his mobile – three missed calls from his home phone. He turned it off.

  He drummed his thumb and forefinger on the desk, agitated. ‘Have you heard how the reconstruction is going?’ he asked Costello.

  ‘Peter’s just standing in the street, having his photo taken, Colin; he’ll be fine.’

  ‘I thought they would be back by now.’

  ‘Could be a sign it’s going well.’

  Anderson didn’t look convinced.

  ‘Phone them then, if you’re worried.’

  ‘Already tried. Littlewood was the only one who answered. Irvine was engaged and Lewis is on voice-mail. And Littlewood said all was well.’

  ‘Well, what are you worried about?’

  Anderson shrugged. ‘It’s all a bit close to home, that’s all. They look so alike. What are you worried about?’