Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘Want me to deal with this?’ asked Kate Lewis, in a way that wasn’t an offer.

  ‘Aye, go ahead,’ Costello said. ‘I’ll stay out here and phone Littlewood. Just get this over with asap; we need to get back to the station.’ She scrolled down to Littlewood’s number.

  ‘How did you get on with Lauren?’ Littlewood demanded, before Costello could say a word.

  ‘She told me nothing, John, but she hinted at a lot. She does seem scared. There’s something there all right, but it wasn’t the time or the place for her to tell me. I’ll talk to you the minute I get back. Anything at all happening at your end?’

  With a snarled ‘Naah!’ Littlewood put the phone down.

  Costello snapped her phone shut, and leaned against the window of the shop. She needed to get her head clear and think deeply about Rogan O’Neill and the little Lauren had told her; there was a picture there that was not clear yet. Now she had to deal with this detail about the cyanide case while hoping Dr Mick Batten was having a productive working breakfast. Costello looked round her – this was a cosmopolitan city, so why should it not have its share of perverts and paedophiles?

  This part of Sauchiehall Street was full of small specialist coffee shops with umbrellas over wooden tables. Somebody had said it looked like Paris after a nuclear holocaust. But in Glasgow, never a city of pretence, what you saw was what you got; the umbrellas were there to keep the rain off the smokers who preferred to die from lung cancer than pneumonia. Some Japanese tourists walked past, no doubt on their way to the Willow Tearoom to eat a toasted scone while their arses got sore sitting on a Rennie Mackintosh chair. They’d be better off in Bijou Bytes, where at least the seats looked comfortable, Costello thought.

  Through the open shopfront, Costello could watch Lewis as she spoke to the manager. A hand was moving, demonstrating a height slightly smaller than herself. Lewis was being given a description, so something was moving. She turned away, noticing a row of Squidgy McMidges hanging over the bread counter. Squidgys were like shoplifters – once one had been pointed out, they were bloody everywhere.

  The conversation drew to a close. Lewis nodded her thanks, folded up her notebook, and walked out of the shop, rolling her eyes heavenward.

  ‘Was that phone call anything good?’ she wanted to know. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Nothing. How did you get on?’

  ‘Well, the number belongs to that computer in the corner, but there’s no CCTV on it and the security camera is focused on the till. I have a list of everybody who’s worked here over the last year, eight of them in all. Nothing’s ever been delivered here from the States, except one item which was handed in at the shopfront… a wee box in a Jiffy bag, the manager called it. Maybe more than a month ago, but she can’t be sure. It was addressed to here and to somebody called Margaret. Turns out one of their regular customers had asked them to take in a delivery that she had ordered over the café internet…’

  ‘And don’t tell me – said regular customer hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘Spot on. “Margaret” apparently worked at the jewellers’ over the road. She said the package was a clock, a surprise birthday present for a colleague. They wanted it to be delivered here in case she caught wind of it before the official presentation.’

  ‘So, she collected the clock – or, to be correct, a package from the USA with a delivery address that is now a dead end. And description?’

  Lewis looked at the sky, recalling. ‘Older, female, grey-haired, heavy build – well, fat – small, wore a hat, thick glasses. ’

  ‘All removable.’

  ‘Yes. The only strange thing was that she had trouble getting up the step. She had a bad leg. Better check out the jewellers’, eh?’

  ‘It’s why we’re here,’ muttered Costello. ‘We’re following in her tracks.’

  The windows of Cornerstone Jewellers were covered with gold tinsel and fake snow. Costello shivered. ‘Why do I feel a sort of premonition that they will have never heard of Margaret or her colleague’s birthday?’

  It took only two minutes in the jewellers’ shop to establish that their staff had indeed never heard of ‘Margaret’. They had no idea who the police were talking about and they could not recollect anyone of that description. They offered their surveillance tapes, but Lewis said no thanks. ‘Margaret’, whoever she may be, was clever enough never to have set foot in the place. ‘Margaret’ had hand-picked the staff of Bijou Bytes – helpful but not the brightest – for her purpose.

  ‘Margaret’ had played them every step of the way.

  The Willow Tearoom was crowded with Christmas shoppers, but Douglas was known there so the waitress showed him and Lynne to a table at the furthest point of the mezzanine. They sat on the tall Rennie Mackintosh chairs and ordered pancakes and coffee for him, toast and Earl Grey for her. Lynne, becoming a little nervous, was wondering why Douglas had brought her to this sweet little coffee shop that sat, peculiarly, above a jewellers’, and wondered what, if any, significance there was in that.

  ‘Sorry I was late,’ Douglas said pulling his coat off and placing it on the back of the chair. ‘Stella was called away to give the police access to some property. God knows what they expect to find.’

  ‘I was a little late myself,’ she said, lying through her teeth. Actually, she had been kept waiting in the sleet in Sauchiehall Street for more than ten minutes, her scarf round her mouth as people coughed and sneezed as they went past. ‘Why were you working the Saturday before Christmas? You work far too hard, darling.’

  Douglas leaned forward and started drumming his fingers on the table. He had something on his mind. ‘Look, Lynne… I had something really nice planned for us – over Christmas.’ He smiled. ‘Really special. But I had a meeting this morning that means I have to be involved in an unexpected project, last-minute but very profitable.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her light-blue eyes opened flirtatiously. ‘Something really special?’

  ‘Very special, but not till this other thing is over. Is that OK?’

  He was nervous as he asked, his fingers still drumming away on the tabletop; he could hardly look her in the eye. She was touched. ‘If it has to be, it has to be. I know the stress you’re under,’ Lynne replied, lost for a minute in the fantasy that she was a corporate wife.

  ‘And on top of that, I had the police in the office this morning.’

  ‘About the keys? You said.’

  ‘No, something else I appear to be mixed up in. Have you seen this stuff about the recall of some painkiller?’ He pulled a copy of that morning’s Record from his coat pocket, his hand shaking slightly, and passed it to Lynne. ‘They’re claiming that a particular batch might cause stomach problems – to prevent panic, I suppose – but it’s much worse than that.’

  ‘It’s all cheap nonsense, what they sell at that shop; I would never buy anything there. What does it have to do with you?’

  Douglas leaned forward. ‘Keep this to yourself but from what the detective said, I think there’s a product tamperer about. Cyanide.’ He took a bite of his pancake. ‘Imagine that, cyanide!’ He backhanded a crumb from the side of his mouth and added quietly, ‘Lynne, people are actually dying from this stuff!’

  Lynne paused, a piece of toast halfway to her mouth, her throat suddenly dry. ‘And…?’

  ‘And now they’ve traced the cyanide and lo and behold, it was bought by me.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘Over the blasted internet. The cyanide – would you believe it, cyanide – was bought on my credit card.’

  ‘How did that happen?’ asked Lynne quietly.

  ‘They’re not sure about that. Somebody with access to my card. Or the number.’

  ‘Stella?’ asked Lynne, too quickly, as she thought of the many times Douglas had left his jacket lying around their living room. Around Eve.

  Douglas laughed. ‘Don’t be daft. I asked a friend about it – an educated cop, not one of those Neanderthals that came to see me
this morning. He said anybody could just have copied the strip on my card, he knows a fair bit about the mechanics of it all.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous to think you could have had anything to do with it.’ Lynne went on the defensive. ‘And they came to your place of work? What if you’d had an important client there? Can’t you lodge an official complaint?’

  ‘Oh, I shall expect total exoneration and an apology. But in the meantime – yes, you’re right; it would be very damaging to my professional reputation if it became known. Which it could, easily; your sister was right outside my office door and her mouth is like Radio Clyde.’

  ‘Eve? What on earth was she doing in your office?’

  Douglas chewed a mouthful of pancake, giving himself time to think. He decided on an edited version of the truth. ‘I think she’s concerned that I’m leading you astray, me being married and all that.’ He finished with a convincing lie. ‘I told her it was none of her business.’ In reality, he had just looked at the pathetic, obese figure in the wheelchair and hadn’t listened to a word. But he had told her to mind her own business. Once he had the house on Horselethill, Eve would be out on the street. Even if it cost him the price of a wee ground-floor flat at the far side of Maryhill, he’d still be quids in.

  But he shivered as he remembered the chill of her stare.

  ‘Good.’ Lynne took a sip of Earl Grey, only half listening, thinking about the habit Douglas had of leaving his jacket lying over a chair in their front room, where anybody – well, anybody in the house – could get to it. There weren’t very many people it could be. She felt a small creep of betrayal in her stomach, and pushed her toast away, thinking about that well-fingered photocopy of Douglas walking away from court. ‘So, getting back to your credit card, why would somebody do a thing like that – poison innocent people?’ She spoke mechanically, thinking it through.

  Douglas nodded as the bill was put in front of him. ‘Because they’re a mad psycho, who probably never had a job, and thinks the world owes them a living because they were hard done by.’ He reached into his jacket pocket, then realized he’d put his wallet in his coat pocket. As he dug deep he pulled a face. ‘What on earth…?’ He flicked a packet on the tabletop where it landed in a saucer. The writing on the tinfoil strip was plainly visible.

  Headeze.

  Anderson was trying to contain his anger but nothing was moving forward. The boards were not getting any fuller; in fact, more and more leads were being explored and found to go nowhere.

  He could think logically as far as the next move, the next person to speak to, the next thing to investigate, the next line to pursue. Then he would remember that they were looking for Peter, and his heart would crumple. Then he felt so scared he couldn’t function, so he had to stay calm, stay on the fringes of the investigation, though trying to get an overview of it all. He watched Wyngate as yet another statement, originally filed as ‘possible’, proved to lead nowhere. Yes, the guy had been driving his cab at the time of Peter’s abduction but he had seen nothing. It was dark, snowing and very busy – what did the police expect? Anderson took the red marker pen and struck the taxi driver’s name off the board as Wyngate typed two lines, pressed Print, clipped the original notes to the page, signed it off and filed it. His mind kept going back to what Littlewood had said – they were missing something.

  Mulholland wasn’t faring much better. He was swanning around in a dwam over Frances who, no matter how many times he texted and phoned her, just wasn’t answering. He was getting edgy and bad tempered with everybody except Lewis, with whom he giggled like an imbecile. They had been teamed to interview recently released paedophiles. Littlewood had voiced his own opinion – that the offender would return to the scene of his first offences – he would be there, in the shadows.

  Simple.

  24

  At last Littlewood took Costello to one side and debriefed her about Lauren, drawing little patterns in a notebook, going from Rogan O’Neill to Dec Slater and Jinky Jones, then to Lauren. They agreed there was something there, but neither could say what. Littlewood sat back and nodded slowly. ‘Something’s always better than nothing,’ he grunted. ‘Phone Lauren tomorrow, will you? Just a friendly enquiry after her health?’

  ‘Happy to. But I’ll have to find a way to make sure that Rogan isn’t around when I phone. I don’t want to get her into trouble. She had a bruise on her hand, another on her face.’ Costello felt her own cheek, remembered ducking blows from her own mother’s fist. ‘That and the way she talks about him.’

  Littlewood left her to her thoughts. At the moment the only thing she could do was crack on with the cyanide lead, and leave other officers free to pursue anything that came in about the children. She couldn’t understand why three of them had been detailed on it this morning when so many other matters were pressing, but Quinn would no doubt have her reasons.

  She turned back her notebook and reread what she had been doing that day. Doodles, notes, et cetera. Something was nagging at the back of her mind; something about this stuff just wasn’t right. She looked up and caught Anderson staring into space, looking as lonely as any human being she had ever seen.

  ‘How are you, Colin?’

  ‘Desperate,’ he answered.

  ‘Any word from Mick yet? It’s past two – how long does he need?’

  ‘There’s no word yet, nothing. That’s why I’m here. Port, storm, any, in. Arrange them in any way you see fit.’ His words caught in his throat. ‘Like I said, desperate.’

  Costello slipped an arm round his shoulder, but she had no words of comfort. ‘Let me know the minute you hear anything, anything at all.’

  He patted her hand, grateful.

  ‘Gail,’ she asked. ‘Can you come over here?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Irvine said sarcastically. ‘You got more exciting typing for me to do?’

  ‘Can I use your brainpower?’

  Irvine hesitated. ‘For what it’s worth.’

  ‘Think back to your notes. You remember the date the first cyanide victim died?’

  Irvine shook her head. ‘That was so long ago, I’d be guessing. Remind me.’

  ‘Duncan Thompson. The fourth,’ Costello supplied without hesitation. ‘I’m trying to put myself in the place of a wronged employee, perhaps unjustifiably accused. Would I take a pop at the establishment, have a go at the system? Randomly murder innocent people by way of revenge, just to show I could?’

  ‘I think you would. I certainly wouldn’t cross you,’ said Irvine. ‘But what are you getting at?’

  ‘Well, it’s been confirmed, it’s not a bad batch. But they were all bought from the same shop, so we will deduce it’s the shop the perp uses regularly. I tried to run this past Quinn but I’ll run it past you instead. Why let people die if money or principle is the point? So, the point must be murder, pure and simple.’

  Irvine glanced quickly over at Mulholland, still texting on his mobile, then at Lewis who was sweet-talking down her phone, and then at DCI Quinn busy in her office, doing something they were not privy to. Anderson was still sitting on the desk looking at the wallboards. ‘I don’t think I can handle this,’ said Irvine, nervously chewing at the side of her thumb.

  ‘Not much use to him if we don’t handle it, are we? He needs to be focused on Peter, we need to leave him to get on with what’s important to him. We get on with this, let the squad get on with that. You follow?’

  ‘OK, go on,’ Irvine said quietly. ‘But what’s in it for the poisoner – what’s in it for them? Can’t be the glory of it; there was no news coverage until we established the pattern.’

  ‘For that amount of effort, I’d be killing someone in particular,’ Costello smirked as Kate Lewis walked past. ‘So,’ she resumed, following Irvine’s glance. ‘Do we go back to that old question: Where do you hide a murder?’

  ‘In among a whole lot of murders,’ answered Irvine slowly. ‘Which would explain why there was no blackmail attempt at the time. The last thing they’d w
ant would be anybody drawing attention to it.’

  ‘Right, so say we wanted to kill…’

  ‘Lewis.’

  ‘We’d have to join the queue. But she’s a coffee drinker. A tea drinker – me – would tamper with several lots of coffee at Waldo, and put a tampered pack beside the kettle in the Incident Room, knowing the whole squad drinks coffee except me. Lewis falls down dead, as do half the squad and several other innocent souls all over the West End – Oh, dear. Poor Lewis, a victim of the tamperer. Die young and stay pretty.’

  ‘I’d be dead too. I drink more coffee than she does.’

  ‘So, you’re collateral damage. What do I care about that?’

  ‘But the killer would have to hate the intended victim an awful lot. I mean, to kill so many other people…’

  ‘Or adore her Newton Mearns lifestyle.’

  Irvine’s smile became thoughtful. ‘So, you think maybe Sarah McGuire tampered with several packets of Headeze, kept one, put the rest back on the shelves, then gave part of a pack to her dad and carefully took some herself, knowing she would survive?’

  ‘Best way to avoid suspicion. It wouldn’t be too difficult for her to become a little old lady called Margaret. If we could just find a grey wig and sensible coat in her house…’

  ‘And she was prepared to let a whole lot of other people die? Just to get her hands on her dad’s house?’ Irvine shook her head. ‘That’s far too horrible, even with the amount of money that place would be worth…’

  ‘People have killed for a lot less, and the daughter knows how cyanide works, don’t forget. She has her grandfather’s books about the Third Reich in the house.’

  ‘It may fit, but it’s too far-fetched, Costello. You’d need a connection with Douglas Munro – him of the credit card – for a start. Do they know each other?’

  ‘Tom McGuire’s a builder. Douglas Munro is a property developer. Could there be a connection there? They might have worked with each other.’

  ‘But suppose Sarah and her dad are both genuine victims – then it means somebody else is planning to murder somebody, or already has, and doesn’t care who gets killed in the crossfire. And that person knows Munro well enough to get hold of his credit card.’