Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘She’s from Toronto,’ Rogan said through a mouthful of orange. ‘They get cold, they get wet, but they don’t do cold and wet together.’

  ‘So, when did you fly in?’ asked Costello. Make friends, be nice…

  Lauren smiled at her. ‘God, did you see the state my skin was in? You rehydrate and rehydrate, but it still shows.’

  Costello nodded in wry sympathy, noting her question hadn’t actually been answered.

  Lauren handed Rogan his Coke, and her hand shook slightly. She even moved, sinuous and silent, like a nervous racehorse.

  Nervous? Scared? Wary… Costello searched for the right word.

  The podiatrist picked up something that looked like an iron file.

  ‘In my day I’d have used that tae break out of Barlinnie Prison.’ Then Rogan remembered who he was talking to. ‘Not that I’ve ever been there – much.’

  Costello tried again.

  ‘Do you still carry the same road crew with you as you did back then?’ she enquired. ‘Or did you leave them somewhere along the way?’ Costello was aware of Anderson looking at her.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but Rogan paused before answering, as if thinking about what he was going to say. ‘No, the boys are still with me. We met when we were eight, and we’re still together… and that’s not PR, that’s the truth. See, I don’t like being surrounded by yes men, and those two will always tell me where to go. Jinky Jones and Dec Slater. We stick together.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth!’ Lauren sighed, with a degree of bitterness that Costello didn’t miss. And there was something else – a small prickle in her posture, a little lie somewhere. ‘He even sent them over here last week, so they could see the castle before us. They’ll end up living with us. Again.’ She didn’t sound overjoyed.

  ‘And they’re here with you now?’ Costello probed.

  ‘Yeah, we move, they move. Same as for ever,’ said Lauren, spanning her fingers and examining her perfect nails.

  Rogan O’Neill turned his head quickly, his jovial manner gone. The podiatrist halted the scalpel in mid-scrape.

  ‘Lauren is pregnant. I want my son born on Scottish soil, so we’re buying a castle. Look, you get back to your bosses, and tell them I’ll pay for all the security at the fair, and the sky’s the limit. You just send me the bill. I’m not having any more wee kids nicked while they’re waiting for Santa.’ Their dismissal couldn’t have been more obvious.

  ‘We’ll pass that on to our superiors. And we thank you for all your help.’ Costello walked towards the door, and Anderson followed.

  ‘Ouch!’ Rogan pulled his foot back quickly; a small bubble of red was growing on his big toe.

  ‘Oh, Rogan, I am sorry.’

  17

  Peter Anderson was excited. He had waited in the queue that snaked round the railings of Rowanhill Primary School for a full twenty minutes. Then he had carefully handed over a pound coin from his own cold hand into Santa’s, whispering, ‘A computer game, and a dragon jigsaw. And a dog. And if I can’t have a dog, then can I have a goldfish?’ Then he thought for a moment and added, ‘Thank you, Santa.’

  Santa, who bore a striking semblance to Alan Arnett, chairman of Partickhill tenants’ association, nodded and said hello to Helena McAlpine. He ruffled Peter’s hair, extracting a promise of good behaviour till Christmas Day at least.

  The Rowanhill School Christmas Fair in aid of Andy’s Appeal was going well. Braziers were burning brightly round the playground gates, and four uniformed coppers, tinsel round their necks and Squidgys on their helmets, danced from one foot to the other to keep warm, toasting gloved fingers over the flames. Parents stood about in the semi-darkness drinking mulled wine out of polystyrene cups. Arm-Strong Security was displaying a not-so-discreet presence. Rogan O’Neill was in the school building and, even though it was starting to snow, the queue for him to sign his new CD was snaking out of the gym hall and into the playground. Every time another hundred pounds was raised for the appeal, another helium balloon was added to a tree of helium balloons, each addition punctuated by a whoop from the crowd. Among the Santas and the snowmen, huge black and white photographs of freezing orphaned Pakistani children reminded everybody exactly why they were there.

  Both Evelynne Calloway and Rogan O’Neill were making personal appearances. Evelynne, a charmless thin blonde stick of a woman, dressed in a long black coat three sizes too big for her, had arrived to open the fair in an open-topped bus bedecked with an inflatable Squidgy McMidge, and had given away a thousand Squidgys to adorn the tops of Christmas trees, as well as donating an original signed drawing of him for the auction. The auction was to start at four o’clock, with Rogan O’Neill at the microphone, and – as the top prize – a VIP box for his fund-raising Hogmanay concert at Hampden Park. The original concert dates had been sold out for a whole year, and rumour said the bidding was already standing at over six grand. Out in the street stood a huge relief truck donated by a local firm of haulage contractors keen to get their name in the papers. The plastic midge on the windscreen, legs akimbo as if it had been splattered in a high-impact collision, flashed bright red and blue as the volunteers on board accepted shoebox after shoebox for the relief effort. Somebody had threaded some tinsel through the handles at the back of the truck, and, like autumn leaves gathering in a sheltered corner, the van had acquired a festive adornment of tinsel, baubles and glitter.

  There was the usual array of Christmas lucky dips and face painting, bring and buys, tombolas and raffles, and everywhere the smell of frying onions from the hotdog stand. It was busy, and that was the main thing.

  But in the air hung the ever-present feeling of menace from an unseen enemy. Parents held their children a little closer, watchful for any strangers who came too near, and lots of children were wearing light-blue rubber armbands with a fluorescent strip, so they would not forget Luca and Troy. And everywhere, on every wall, on every door, were posters with photographs and a grim caption: Have you seen these boys?

  Inside the hall, Evelynne Calloway sat signing Squidgy postcards and flick books, smiling for the cameras, while an assistant handed her copies and presented children to her as if she were the Queen.

  In the corner behind her sat a grossly fat, squat woman in a wheelchair, her auburn hair curled under a woollen hat, tree-trunk legs wrapped in a red tartan rug. She was eating her way through a cheeseburger – the torn papers on her lap showed that it wasn’t her first – and she looked as miserable as sin. She finished her cheeseburger and picked up a Squidgy McMidge balloon from her lap. She blew into it and then let the air out slowly, doing a very good impersonation of a flatulent elephant. She drew a few dark looks from the parents in the baked potato queue, but some of the children round her giggled, and she laughed, pulling her woolly hat down over her face.

  Wandering round with Peter’s hand held tight in hers, Helena was glad of the comfort. She had been pathetically grateful when DS Costello had phoned, short and to the point as usual. Anderson was the most senior officer at the station, so he couldn’t leave. Brenda was already up in Glasgow with the car, finally getting away from the kids to do the Christmas shopping. Could Mrs McAlpine pick Peter up from his granny? Now Helena was being pulled around by a bundle of boundless fun and nonsense dressed in a dragon suit.

  Out in the playground, it was getting dark, and the flames from the braziers cast dark shadows into the corners. The spotlights were starting to flicker into life.

  Peter started stomping impatiently, wanting to know where his dad was. But Helena had no idea. Colin could be anywhere – walking round the perimeter fence, seeing how the troops on the ground were doing, checking that the makeshift communication system was up to the job. That’s what Alan would have been doing. Her eyes rested on a boy on his own, eating a baked potato from a polystyrene bowl. On his own. The boy was transfixed by the coloured lights on the illuminated snowman and the sequence of on-off, on-off flashes.

  Helena glanced quickly round. She d
idn’t want to speak to the grotesquely fat woman in the wheel-chair, who already had a little audience for her theatre of rude noises. She pulled out her phone and called Colin’s mobile, watching the boy all the time until Colin answered and barked instructions to a third party. A uniform in a Santa hat appeared from nowhere and took the boy by the hand. The uniform gave Helena a slight wave. Situation under control.

  ‘Where are you?’ Colin asked. ‘I’ll come down in a minute.’

  ‘I’m about to be attacked by a six-foot penguin,’ Helena answered.

  ‘Be there in a mo.’

  ‘Pat the Penguin’s here!’ shouted Peter. ‘Auntie Helena! It’s Pat the Penguin!’

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ said Helena, with little enthusiasm.

  ‘Can I have my photo taken with him?’ Peter slipped from her grasp and ran through the crowd to the six-foot penguin. The community police, and Willie McCaffrey who was annually incarcerated in the mouldy penguin suit, were known for their intolerance of anyone under four feet tall, but now the penguin was looking nervous, and it moved quickly – followed by the police display team’s Alsatian, Bruno, which was licking its lips. The dog was in a foul mood, having suffered the indignity of doing a magnificent display of canine police work with a garland of red tinsel round its neck.

  ‘Those bastards have rubbed Pedigree Chum all over the suit,’ Willie hissed through his beak, ‘and that dog’s after ma arse.’

  ‘Could be worse, Willie,’ Anderson laughed, joining them. ‘Could be Rogan O’Neill after yer arse. Hello, wee man, how’s my Puff?’

  ‘Picture! Picture!’ said Peter, pointing at the camera.

  The penguin bent over, his wing round Peter’s shoulders, and a flash went off. ‘Right,’ the penguin announced, ‘I’m going for the Glühwein. Merry Christmas.’ And off he stomped with all the subtlety of a combine harvester, leaving Peter to make friends with Bruno instead.

  Anderson smiled at Helena. ‘Thanks for picking Peter up; it was a great help. Brenda will get off my back now.’ His voice mellowed a little. ‘She has a lot on her plate right now.’

  ‘Well, there’s your daughter over there. About two o’clock as you cops would say. She’s with a boy, so don’t make it obvious.’

  Claire was indeed talking to a boy. She went very red and waved a little when she saw her father, before weaving through the crowd to join them.

  ‘Can I go to the disco tonight with Graham?’

  ‘Disco?’ It was the first Anderson had heard of it. ‘Graham?’

  ‘Mum said I could. She’s going to the German Market and I don’t want to go.’

  It dawned on Anderson that his daughter was being asked out on a date. ‘What disco? And who’s…’

  ‘Tonight at six. It’s for the twelve and unders. You said you’d think about it. Well, Mum said you’d think about it.’

  At that moment, Miss Saunders, the primary teacher, displaying a worried smile and three forms of ID, collected a very excited Peter for the nativity play and joined him to the end of a chain of equally excited five-year-olds. They were led away, Peter shouting over his shoulder, ‘Watch me, Daddy! Watch me!’ Anderson waved his son off, thinking about Claire’s party. Brenda was out doing her Christmas shopping and her mobile was off. Disappointment hit him in the stomach. He really wanted to go to the carol concert with Helena but he was going to spend the evening sitting alone in the car park, waiting for his daughter to finish partying. ‘How do you know this boy?’ he whispered, his father’s instinct telling him that anybody after his daughter was a child molester in the making.

  ‘Dad, he’s in my class. It was his mum who picked me up today. Dad, everybody else is going,’ Claire whined.

  ‘My mum works here at the school, and she said I was to give you this.’ The boy handed over a piece of paper with a woman’s name on it and a mobile number. Anderson couldn’t help noticing the boy had clean hands and unbitten nails.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Ten. My name’s Graham, Mr Anderson. Graham Smeaton.’ Clean hands and polite. Helena had to hide a smirk behind her scarf.

  ‘And where is your mother?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘She’s on the tea bar. I’ve to stay with people I know,’ Graham recited, ‘not leave the school under any cir-circumstances. And I’ve to check in every thirty minutes. Otherwise she’ll go mad,’ he finished.

  ‘Rightly so.’

  ‘She says you can phone her if you want. She’s going to be there tonight, supervising,’ the wee lad said carefully. ‘She’s taking six of us. We’re going back to the house for pizza until the other parents come.’

  Anderson knew he was being outmanoeuvred by an expert. Equally, he saw his evening with Helena coming back into focus. He phoned Graham’s mother. Yes, she said above the rattle of teacups and the intermittent rush of tap water, she would take Claire and the other kids to the disco, then back to Clarence Drive for pizza and juice. He could come over later and pick Claire up. He said he might be late. She said not to worry, lots of the mothers were taking the opportunity to wrap presents and do last-minute shopping; there was an open invite for the dads to go to the German Market to sample the wine, the beer, the cheese, more beer and maybe a spot of Bavarian dancing. They weren’t expected to stagger back until gone midnight. Colin could be as late as he liked.

  Claire was now smiling up at her young man.

  ‘My daughter has grown up,’ Anderson said to Helena, bemused. ‘She has a boyfriend!’

  ‘Yes, but it’ll be a “Can I borrow your pencil?” type of boyfriend, not a…’ she thought carefully, ‘… not a behind-the-bike-shed type of boyfriend.’ She caught him smirking. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know! I went to a girls’ boarding school.’

  ‘And I always thought they were supposed to be the worst.’ Anderson shook his head. ‘But down here in the real world, in Greenock, there’s a boy of twelve who’s a father – and I kid you not.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry.’

  ‘I’m a parent. I always worry.’

  ‘Colin, Claire’s a sensible kid. And so is Peter, though you might not think it. Look, he drew a special little Squidgy for me.’ She showed him a drawing of a dragon-like midge, with short spiky hair that almost matched her own. ‘But now, I have some judging to do. Four hundred pictures of demented midges. I’ll speak to you later.’ And she was off through the crowd.

  Colin Anderson turned, and walked right into Miss Cotter carrying a tray of her Empire biscuits to the tearoom. She said hello, distractedly, as though trying to place his face, and he stole a biscuit and winked at her, catching – out of the corner of his eye – Helena trying to look dignified as she was introduced to the wall of midges. Anderson felt sick suddenly. Here he was, on the brink of something he had never thought possible – and he was terrified.

  ‘Hello, I couldn’t get parked.’ Brenda Anderson tapped him on his shoulder, wrenching him from his dream. ‘Where’s the wee man – you managing to keep tabs on him this time?’

  ‘Not now, Brenda.’

  ‘Did you have to send that McAlpine woman round to my mum’s to pick him up, queening it in a taxi? She’s no better than she should be, that one.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t drop him off, would you?’ Colin hissed under his breath. ‘And what’s this about Claire at this disco? You should tell me these things, you know.’

  ‘If you were at home I would have told you, but you’re always at your bloody work. And when you are at home you never bloody listen. I mean, you’re not listening now, are you?’

  Indeed, Anderson was not listening. He was looking past his wife to Helena, who was patting the head of a toddler and pointing at a green blob of a cartoon.

  He looked at his wife, standing with her hands on her hips, her face drawn into a scowl. And something inside him died.

  ‘So?’ Littlewood was insistent. ‘How was our resident superstar?’

  ‘Exactly as I thought he would be.’ Costello frowned at the two des
ks that now looked like a computer repair shop. A large multicore cable ran across the floor of the Incident Room. ‘What is all this?’

  ‘It’s the cameras for the school, so I can see everything that’s going on.’

  ‘You can’t see anything; it’s as black as the Mariana Trench at midnight.’

  ‘Where’s Anderson?’

  ‘Away with his kids to the fair.’ Costello tried to twiddle a knob, which earned her a slap on the wrist.

  ‘Leave it. Was there anybody there with Rogan? Declan Slater? What about Jinky Jones?’

  ‘He still has the same crew, from way back, apparently. They’re here in Scotland, and they flew in a week ago. Why?’

  ‘Rogan’s just bought Muirmakin Estate: twelve bedrooms, turrets, dungeons, and the right to murder the local wildlife and eat it.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. Why do you want to know?’

  Littlewood dodged the question a second time. ‘Lauren McCrae – how was she?’

  ‘Stunning. Look, John, we know you’re on to something – what else are you thinking of?’ Costello caught sight of a pile of pictures and snatched them before Littlewood could stop her. ‘These are from a newspaper archive. How did you get them?’ She flicked through them. All were of Rogan through the years, but never just of Rogan. In each shot either Jinky Jones or Dec Slater was hanging around, like the proverbial bad smell. On the desk another pile, all those that showed only Rogan, had been stacked separately. ‘What did you promise the paper?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘First bite. It was that journalist who was chatting up Lewis – Dave Ripley.’

  ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘Who gives a fuck?’ Littlewood shook his head. ‘Did you pick up on anything? About Lauren?’

  Costello shrugged. ‘She was definitely uncomfortable. She struck me as nervous more than anything else,’ she said. ‘Well, maybe not nervous… out of her depth.’ She leaned against the wall.

  ‘Did he remember you?’