Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘Peter’s gone.’

  20

  ‘OK, Costello,’ Anderson snapped. ‘What’s happening?’

  Costello had been waiting in the street for him, dressed in somebody else’s anorak, and she was chilled to the bone. She ran to keep up with him, as he crossed Hyndland Road to the police station where she jumped up the steps in front of him, stopping him from going any further. ‘You know Peter was out with Brenda, at the German Market?’ she panted. ‘They were in the car park at Byres Road. Brenda just turned round and he wasn’t there. We’re examining the CCTV footage right now. But nobody could find you and I didn’t want you walking in…’

  ‘Yes?’ Anderson snarled.

  ‘Colin, Brenda’s here. I’m not letting you walk in there with lipstick on your face. At least make it look as though you’ve been interviewing Helena.’

  Anderson took the steps two at a time. He paused at the top. ‘Thanks, Costello.’

  ‘You owe me,’ she said.

  DCI Quinn made it through the door of the Incident Room one second before Anderson. She had changed from her usual navy-blue suit to a black cashmere jumper over tight blue jeans, and the untied laces of her trainers were dirty and soaked. Her face was devoid of make-up, her hair pulled back in a scrunchie.

  Gail Irvine was sitting in the corner with her arm round a shocked Brenda who was cradling, but not drinking, a cup of tea. Gail was talking to her, a constant stream of delicate questions. Brenda shook her head. Anderson glanced at his wife, bit his lip, then walked on without exchanging a word. Brenda saw him pass, and reached towards him, the fingers of her outstretched hand trembling. He ignored her. Shocked, she put her hand to her mouth and the tears started to flow in earnest. Word had got around, and more than one officer had come in from sick leave. The room stank of strong coffee and VapoRub. The radio chattered constantly, different voices answering, and Anderson recognized the Partick Central code. The situation was personal now – one of their own was missing.

  DS Lewis was on the phone to Partick. ‘Yes, all your CCTV tapes,’ she was saying for the third time, with exaggerated patience. ‘Because we need to check every single one, that’s why.’ A voice garbled down the phone. ‘Yes, I appreciate you’re short-staffed. So are we. So, if you could… look! Three children in five days! Every minute you spend making excuses is a minute wasted. You moron! ’ she hissed so the idiot on the other end of the phone couldn’t hear. She clammed up the moment she saw Anderson.

  Anderson was looking at the wall. And now Peter had gone, from right under their noses.

  Quinn came up to him, placing a hand momentarily on his shoulder. ‘Sorry, Colin, but we can’t have you in here. You need to go and speak to Brenda.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘She’s upset. She was the last person to see Peter. Irvine’s getting nothing concrete out of her. She says she was walking down Byres Road, she turned round and Peter wasn’t there. We need more than that, Colin. We need you to try. We’ll take her to the interview room, and you can speak to her in there. We’ll keep you informed of our progress.’

  He realized she had been walking him, slowly, out of the Incident Room and along the short corridor to the nearest interview room. Irvine withdrew as they appeared at the door and, before Colin could say anything, he was alone with his wife. Brenda was wearing the same coat she had had on at the fair, but apart from that he hardly recognized her. She was red-eyed, blotchy-faced and totally distraught. She moved towards him, her arms open. He took a step back, then stood behind the table, physically emphasizing the barrier between them.

  Brenda held her hands to her face, the tears pouring down again. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Did you have to let him go? Could you not have held his hand?’ He stabbed his finger in front of her face. ‘Was it too much bloody effort to look after your own kid?’

  Brenda bit at the corner of her mouth, the tears still streaming. ‘And where were you? We both let him down.’

  ‘Speak for yourself. I’m not a bad parent.’

  ‘But you’re a crap husband, and sometimes that’s the same thing.’

  ‘Don’t dump the blame on me,’ Anderson hissed, angry at Peter, angry at himself. Angry at Brenda for speaking the truth.

  ‘Well, you should be out there looking for him.’

  ‘At least we agree about something. I’m going, but first we need a statement from you.’

  ‘Nothing happened, Colin, honestly. One minute he was there, the next minute he was gone. I’ve told that girl all I can think of.’

  Colin looked at the pad, with the few scribbled notes Irvine had taken. He scanned through them. ‘Not good enough. Think a bit harder.’

  He looked at her. The whites of her eyes were red-veined lilies, her face puffy and swollen, and she was shaking. Her fingers constantly writhed, squeezing the blood from the tips, leaving them blue and cold.

  ‘Sorry, love, I’m just… I’ll get us a coffee. You sit down and take a deep breath, calm down. Panic will get us nowhere. Just relax.’ He stilled her hands with his own, pushing all thoughts of Helena from his mind. ‘Brenda, try to relax and think. Just set your mind free and think about him walking beside you – what happened then? Tell us everything you see and hear… you are the best chance he has.’

  Once Lynne was sure Eve had fallen asleep again, with a sleeping pill and three glasses of red wine inside her, she pulled the raffia folder from under the blanket on the settee. It didn’t feel like an art folder full of A4 paper; it felt more like a scrapbook. Lynne even felt slightly amused as she sat back in her armchair and curled her feet under her, looking at Eve asleep and snoring. She had caught her sister out at another of her little games. And this one might be more dangerous. She opened up the folder and stared, her amusement turning to nausea.

  It was full, not just of printouts from the internet, but of cuttings from the newspapers about Eve’s accident, and about Neil Thompson’s previous acquittal for dangerous driving. And about the defence counsel who had achieved that acquittal, Mr Douglas Munro. Eve had then traced his every move, noting every court case, and then every planning application as he changed career. She’d even delved back far enough to download from the internet a page from his yearbook at his private school, and an old newspaper report about how an outward bound school trip up to Lord Berkeley’s Seat had gone wrong. There was a photograph in the paper of a jaggy outcrop in the middle of nowhere; Douglas had been hospitalized after the trip with hypothermia, among other things. There was a covert shot of Douglas and his mother outside the house at Kirklee Terrace; his graduation picture, his mother proudly on his arm; and the business card of Munro Properties. Lynne’s self-interest took over; she flicked the pages back and forth but there were no pictures of Mrs Douglas Munro or the wedding. And, Lynne noticed, there was nothing at all about the accident that had crippled Eve and earned Thompson a custodial sentence. Douglas had not been involved in that at all.

  For someone who couldn’t even get dressed without help, Eve had got a long way – or was someone else doing this for her? Someone tall enough to nudge a painting with a passing shoulder, somebody who knocked over a chess piece sitting on a sideboard without noticing? Lynne paused at a well-fingered photocopy of a photograph, taken outside the court, of Neil Thompson walking away from a dangerous driving charge with his driving licence intact, followed by Douglas Munro. A few months later, Thompson had downed half a bottle of vodka and smashed his car into Eve’s. And into Eve.

  Lynne breathed out slowly. OK, so Eve knew. Anybody could have found it out from the Sheriff Court. But this – this obsession – was something else. Thompson was in jail, way beyond her reach. But Douglas, he was close to home, too close for his own good. Lynne folded the photocopy back along its original crease. What would she do about it? The first thing was to find out who was helping Eve. And she knew just who to ask.

  Over the road, Stella’s lights were still on. Lynne glanced at her watch, put her coat and boots o
n, opened the door and slipped out. If anybody came and went from this house, Stella McCorkindale would know.

  On the settee, Eve opened her eyes, stretched and smiled wickedly.

  ‘Are you sure you want to watch this?’ asked Quinn. ‘You don’t have to, you know.’

  Colin Anderson nodded, biting his lip hard, eyes not moving from the screen.

  ‘He’s my son,’ he said quietly. ‘Just play the tapes.’

  ‘Colin,’ Quinn persisted. ‘We have to move quickly. We knew about Peter within an hour, so we have to strike now. It might be more useful if you helped Brenda with the appeal. You know we can’t let you do it; you’re a cop, you’re too well known. Brenda is your wife; you can get the best out of her.’ Quinn’s voice was almost pleading. She looked across to Costello for support.

  ‘Might be worth a try, Col? We’re ahead of the game here. Go and do something that will help.’

  ‘She’s doing her best. Just play the tape,’ he said, his voice unnaturally steady.

  Costello shrugged in defeat. They had watched the footage again and again, and they knew what it showed. It echoed exactly what Brenda had said, but hearing it was one thing, seeing it was something else entirely. The image of your own son, there one minute, gone the next. No idea when or if he would ever be seen again.

  The monitor flickered into life, and black and white images began ghosting from the left of the screen to the right. The two cameras looked out from the west side of Byres Road on to the small triangular car park at University Avenue which was playing host to the German Market, and an overspill of cheery Christmas shoppers treading through dirty slush and puddles.

  The time stamp showed 19.20.

  When life had been normal.

  ‘How quickly was the alarm raised?’ asked Costello.

  ‘As soon as she got to the car,’ answered Quinn equally quietly.

  ‘Don’t act as if I’m not here,’ said Anderson, his voice sharp with anger. ‘So, she’d walked a fair way down Byres Road before she noticed he wasn’t behind her? The car was down at Dumbarton Road, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It was busy, Colin, she… oh, never mind. On you go, Gordon.’

  Wyngate sat back, including Anderson in their circle. ‘We’ve watched this fifteen times or so,’ he sighed. ‘See this man here, with the hat? Keep your eye on him. She’s just behind him, and coming this way.’

  People walked back and forth, carrying bags, pushing prams with rolls of Christmas paper poking out like jousting lances. The images were grainy, and with the elevated position of the camera giving a fish-eye distortion to the screen it would be all too easy to miss something.

  ‘That clock is correct, I take it?’ Mulholland pointed at the time stamp.

  ‘It’s spot on. I’ve checked.’

  Brenda appeared behind the man in the hat, turned a little as if saying something over her shoulder, then shifted her shopping from one hand to the other. ‘I thought she was waiting for him at this point,’ said Wyngate. But Brenda kept walking. Nobody said anything. Costello touched Anderson lightly on the forearm, but he quickly pulled away.

  The grainy figure of a man in a long dark coat, leaning against an estate agent’s window, appeared in the middle of the screen.

  ‘Is he waiting?’ Costello asked. ‘If so, what for?’

  Figures continued to drift across the left monitor to be picked up on the right. Silent, ethereal, their motion slowed by the camera, they looked like the living dead.

  ‘This guy…’ Wyngate pointed with his pen to a single man in an anorak and jeans, ‘… is just behind them. We’re trying to get a still of him, trace him, find out if he saw anything.’

  Anderson was peering at the screen with ferocious intensity. At twenty past seven he’d been outside the auditorium, waiting for Helena McAlpine. He had been thinking about enjoying himself…

  Wyngate butted in. ‘And he’s carrying a small bag from one of the stalls. We have a list of the stallholders.’ He tapped his pen on the monitor. ‘It looks like one of those long German sausage things.’

  Costello felt herself tense, waiting for Anderson’s reaction, as Brenda walked into view, buttoning up her coat and yanking her shoulder-bag strap up on to her shoulder.

  ‘Where is Peter?’ said Anderson, whispering under his breath.

  Now Brenda was walking away from the market, on the pavement, perfectly framed by the camera. A wee boy carrying a Winnie-the-Pooh rucksack with a dragon dangling from it followed, trotting fast to try and keep up. Peter still had his dragon trousers on; they could see the hooves swinging loose above his shoes.

  ‘Christ!’ said Anderson. ‘How far behind is he?’

  ‘Not as far as it looks on this – ten, fifteen feet maybe?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter – it was enough.’

  Wyngate put the film on to slow motion. Brenda, shuddering slightly on the film, stopped and turned as if Peter had called her. She was angry; it was obvious from her body language. Peter ran towards her, and was briefly lost in the crowd of Christmas revellers, then he appeared again. But, turning her back on him, his mother continued to walk away, her stride quickening. Leaving him behind.

  Peter didn’t follow. He stood his ground.

  How easily it happens, thought Costello, her heart going out to Brenda. That moment would be forever in her memory. A whole lifetime of: If only I’d held on to him, if only I hadn’t turned my back. And Costello knew Colin well enough to know that he would not forgive. Who would?

  ‘So far,’ Wyngate said, leaning forward again, ‘this is the only tape where we can actually see Peter and Brenda. It’s not much. ’

  When they looked at Brenda on the other screen, Peter wasn’t following.

  There was complete silence in the room now, the passing time marked by the slow click of the tape in the machine. Nobody said anything. Nobody said: But it’s all we have.

  Wyngate broke the silence. ‘Watch this.’ Two people walked left to right; one, a lone female, stopped under the camera, checking a shopping list, then turned and walked back the way she’d come. ‘This guy…’ said Wyngate. ‘Him in the long coat. We saw him earlier, and here he is again. And these two, hanging around up here… you can see better from this one.’ Wyngate moved his chair out of the way of the second monitor. ‘Two men, here, leaning against the glass, one also in a long coat. He puts a baseball cap on, kicks himself upright off the glass and goes; the other follows.’

  ‘Is that a logo on the cap, a name?’ Mulholland pressed his face against the screen. ‘If it is, can we get it blown up?’

  ‘I’m on it.’ Wyngate made a note. ‘Now one of them goes to the door… and see this…’ Wyngate tapped the glass of the first monitor. The other figure pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and started dialling, pacing back and forth, moving in and out of the view of the lens.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  Littlewood shrugged. ‘Worst-case scenario, he was watching the lad, saw him separated from his mum, so he phones a colleague waiting further up the road…’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ Anderson swore. ‘I can’t believe this. What does she say?’

  ‘She thought he was behind her,’ Wyngate recited. ‘She was digging in her handbag for her car keys, looking for her car. Well, she got to the car, opened the door, and when she turned round the wee lad wasn’t following. Nobody saw anything.’

  ‘How could they not see anything?’ Anderson’s voice was harsh.

  The room was silent. ‘A small boy in a busy market place, crying, is just a kid having a Christmas tantrum,’ said Costello. ‘I’m sorry, Colin, that’s what people would see. Even with Luca, Troy and now Peter being taken, that’s still what they would see.’

  ‘Did Gail get anywhere with Stella?’ asked Quinn. ‘Was it Troy she saw?’

  ‘We got nothing useful, ma’am. She could only remember what she had already told us and that memory was prompted by the newspaper description. Not reliable – sorry, Col.’ Costello
offered a tentative smile.

  Anderson raised his hand to stop her; he didn’t even want to think about this. ‘Look, Luca must have gone up Highburgh Road, towards here. If that boy was Troy, he went the same way. Might Peter have been taken that way too? Have you got somebody down there?’ He looked at the map, the junction where Byres Road intersected with University Avenue, Highburgh Road, the car park and a crow’s foot of minor roads and pathways within fifty yards.

  ‘It was the first thing we did,’ said Quinn following his gaze. ‘The Search Unit was in Crown Avenue, Colin; you put them there yourself. They were on site within three minutes.’

  ‘What about those two guys in the long coats?’ asked Costello.

  ‘We think we have a lead on them. They were seen getting into a big car… We have twelve uniforms down there, and they’re working on it now from their end. We’re trying to get a lead on that logo. We’ll get it traced, don’t worry.’

  Wyngate shrugged and stopped the tape. It paused as the man with the mobile momentarily faced the camera. They all stared at the image, committing it to memory.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Mulholland, pointing at someone else, further away. They all looked at the tall figure, wearing a long woollen coat, frozen in mid-stride. ‘Run that on a bit.’ The figure jolted into action, as Wyngate edged the film onward.

  ‘That’s Frances,’ said Mulholland in a hurt voice. ‘She said she was going home – she said her face was sore.’

  ‘So, she changed her mind,’ said Costello.

  ‘That girl is messing you about,’ said Lewis.

  ‘I’ll see if she remembers seeing anything.’ Mulholland left the room, pulling his mobile from his pocket.

  ‘But if Brenda and Frances bumped into each other – then if Peter had lost sight of his mother, could he have tried to follow Frances?’ asked Costello.

  ‘I think we need to get her down here. Not that I don’t trust Vik, but we have to do things by the book.’ Costello looked at Quinn for tacit consent before going to the door. ‘Vik, ask Frances to come down here. She must have walked along the street within a minute of the abduction. We need to talk her through it.’