by Caro Ramsay
Putting his hands in his pockets in an effort to keep them warm, he found a half-eaten packet of Starburst and the sticky plastic wrapping of a toffee apple, remnants of Peter’s feasting at the fair. Only two days ago. In those two days he had so nearly lost his son.
And there was still more unfinished business; the tamperer was still out there, evil, malevolent, unseen and dangerous. There were rumours in the hospital that the sister of the author of the Squidgy McMidge books had succumbed, but Colin found that hard to credit. Not after all that publicity; surely not.
He saw Vik Mulholland trudging across the car park, pulling up the collar of his Crombie. The poor boy was exhausted – he had aged, and he bore the posture of the old and weary.
Anderson leaned over and opened the car door. ‘Vik?’ he called. ‘Can I give you a run somewhere?’
Mulholland slipped into the passenger seat. He didn’t look at Anderson. ‘Nowhere to go, mate,’ he grunted. ‘Not now.’
‘Ditto.’ Anderson stared out through the wind-screen. ‘Did you see her?’
‘No, I’ll leave it for another day. She’s not going anywhere.’
‘I’m sorry, Vik. I didn’t really know her, but I’m sorry.’
‘Can’t help thinking I should have noticed something – Christ, I was there when those kids were downstairs. But she was so nice, Col, so… so loving. I still don’t believe it.’
‘God knows, women are complex enough at the best of times. And your Frances never had the best of times.’ He shifted in the car seat and sighed heavily. ‘But that’s someone else’s problem now. I’ve a family of my own to look after. I’m even keeping my phone off.’
‘No, you won’t. You’ll turn it on again, just in case.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’re more like the old boss than you think.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘It wasn’t meant as one.’
And Anderson knew he did not relish going home, not with Peter still in the hospital. However, Vik needed some support. And Quinn had come good for him in the end – so had Costello. They all needed a drink. It might be like the old days – Christ knew, he owed it to them. He might even invite O’Hare. How much fun could a pathologist have at Christmas with a full morgue?
They sat for a minute in total silence, watching two nurses nip out for an illicit fag break. Both had tinsel round their necks.
‘Vik? You fancy going out and getting absolutely rat-arsed?’
Vik took a deep breath. ‘I’ve never been known to disobey a superior officer, DI Anderson.’
‘Glad to hear it, DC Mulholland.’
The two nurses were joined by Santa, who immediately cadged a fag and lit up.
Anderson turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life, the lights and the radio coming on with it. The closing strains of ‘Tambourine Girl’ filled the car.
‘Sorry, mate,’ said Anderson, reaching out to turn it off.
‘No, leave it,’ said Vik.
They sat and listened, Anderson’s finger on the Off switch, Vik’s hand on his wrist, until the song finished. She says goodnight to you.
They waited for what felt like an eternity, though it was no more than a second or two. At last, the husky little voice said Goodnight.
He was walking away. Douglas was actually walking away!
Lynne had called after him but he didn’t even look back. She had watched him go. She had watched him talking on his mobile, chatting away to his bloody wife and ignoring her; she had watched him as he leaned on the roof of his car and stuck his finger in his ear to hear better. He then snapped the phone shut, looking worried. She thought he was reconsidering. Maybe in a few seconds he would come walking back to her. He was still standing in the angle of the door as he pulled his coat tight round him. She called out to him again but all he did was open his phone again – he was calling her back! Lynne frowned, then turned on the ignition, gunned the engine, closed her eyes and put her foot down – hard.
33
O’Hare was sitting with an espresso on a big comfy settee, regarding the misty reflection of a rather excellent Christmas tree in the huge front window of the Nuffield hospital. The gardens beyond were beautifully lit with fairy lights. And the coffee was excellent too. He had no real idea what he was doing here, sitting in the reception area of a plush private hospital, waiting while Costello brought moral pressure to bear on a patient upstairs, but he was glad of a moment’s peace, some thinking time. He was glad too that he only had the vaguest idea what Costello and Quinn were up to, as he suspected it was highly unethical and probably illegal.
He drained his cup, thinking about the product tampering, about the kind of keen, patient and dangerous intelligence behind it. Six dead. Six. And how many more? He shut his eyes for a moment.
Costello bounced on to the settee beside him, looking dog-tired but happy. O’Hare could not help but notice that she no longer had the buffcoloured file she had held clamped to her chest on the way over. He hadn’t asked what was in it but he was content it was nothing from his office, nothing to do with Frances. The original lyrics, in Frances’s handwriting – that old sheet of folded, stained paper – had disappeared from the crime scene. Maybe Frances would have her revenge in the end.
‘Was it a success?’ he asked.
‘Some kind of justice will be done.’
O’Hare placed his cup and saucer down on the table. ‘So, can we now have some justice for the others? For the ones who aren’t supermodels or superstars? You think the tamperer will stop. He won’t, you know. Barbara Cummings’s kids are without a mum this Christmas. Moira McCulloch’s mum’s without her daughter.’
‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘I’m on the case.’ She leaned forward tensely, peering out into the darkness. She put her hand on the window. ‘Somewhere out there is the tamperer; they don’t stop, you have to stop them. They are terrorists.’ Then she looked back at him, as if suddenly remembering he was there. ‘Look, it’s gone eight. You can go home now, if you want.’
‘The tamperer can wait. I’ll run you somewhere if you want.’
She shrugged, her mind elsewhere already, her gaze back on the car park, as if she were waiting for something.
‘Don’t you think you should have something to eat?’ O’Hare enquired.
She ignored the question. ‘How long would it take to get from the M8 at Govan to here?’
‘In this traffic? On Christmas Eve? Bloody ages.’
She sighed impatiently.
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Justice,’ she said. ‘She told Rogan, you know.’
‘Lauren told Rogan? About what?’
‘About our meeting. He went nuts, then Jinky Jones and Dec Slater were on the next flight out. Interesting, isn’t it?’
‘Somebody else’s problem now.’
‘So it’s OK as long as it’s not on our doorstep?’ asked Costello pointedly.
‘The Americans will go after them, even in Thailand. It is really not your problem now. That was a good bit of work. My job’s simpler in many ways. The dead may smell, but at least they don’t trot off round the world.’
Costello’s mobile rang, and she answered it quickly. Colin, she mouthed to O’Hare. ‘Yeah, it went well. I’m hanging around for a wee while, though.’ She glanced at her watch, then smiled. ‘Yeah, he’s here. I’ll ask him.’ She addressed O’Hare. ‘Colin says do you want to go out for a quiet drink? He doesn’t think Vik should be on his own. He’s trying to get hold of Quinn. Just for a couple of hours, then we’ll get back to the job in hand. I promise.’
‘Maybe we could all do with a bit of company now, sad though the occasion is.’ O’Hare nodded. He didn’t really want to go back to his flat and his Marks and Spencer ready meal. An evening out with the squad, especially Costello, even in these terrible circumstances, was much more inviting.
‘Yeah, we’ll meet you there… oh, I don’t know�
� not much longer. I hardly think he’ll pass up on – R… right…, yeah, I heard it. Sure.’ She snapped the phone shut. ‘Sounds like somebody just rear-ended their car.’
‘Hope they’re OK. I’d like a night off,’ said O’Hare dryly. ‘Is this who you’re waiting for?’ He nodded at the roar of a motorbike racing into the car park.
Costello ducked down in the settee, invisible to anybody looking in at the window or coming in through the door.
‘Prof?’
‘Jack.’
‘Jack? Look out the window for me. That motor-bike – driver and pillion?’
‘Yes. Newspaper bike. Passenger’s taking his helmet off.’
‘Don’t make it obvious you’re looking, but is he blond? Spiky hair?’
‘It’s Dave Ripley, if that’s what you want to know,’ said O’Hare, faintly amused.
‘Great.’ Costello hid behind a copy of the Tatler, until after Ripley had had a quick word at Reception, shown his ID and been directed up to Lauren McCrae’s room.
‘Costello, am I supposed to ask what that was about?’
‘That,’ said Costello with a huge grin, ‘was the shit getting ready to hit the fan.’ O’Hare cocked a quizzical eyebrow. ‘That brown folder…’
‘Yes, I was wondering.’
‘… contained photocopies of the original lyrics and music to Rogan’s two big hits…’
‘Which were written by Frances Coia.’
‘… and a map of the USA, a list of names and dates, the dates of Rogan’s US tours… She’ll work it out.’
‘And then the lovely Lauren blows Rogan sky-high. Oh dear, Costello, I’m beginning to think you’re as much of a devious old cynic as I am. Well done, though.’
‘And Quinn, don’t forget. Quinn’s come good.’ Costello was on a roll. ‘For all that fluttery blonde airhead stuff she does, Lauren’s no fool. And she’s not a bad person. Right now, she’s shocked and distressed. But she’s angry too. Rogan’s turned out to be a fake, a thief and a world-class sleazeball, and she thinks her relationship with him could damage her career. Though his fists might have done that eventually,’ she finished grimly.
‘So, she’ll get her retaliation in first,’ observed O’Hare, who was glad to see Costello so animated, with the old spirit sparking. He hadn’t seen that for far too long. ‘Do you really think she had no idea?’
‘No, I think she did have an idea. Certainly about Jinky and Dec. That was what she was trying to tell me. But she was effectively on her own with it, and in a foreign country, and didn’t know how to go about it.’
‘We’re pretty certain, aren’t we, that Rogan had nothing to do with the killings of all those boys in the States? Though I’d say he has one death on his conscience – he killed the soul of Frances Coia, twenty years ago.’
Costello nodded. ‘But he knew about Jinky and Dec; I’d put money on it. None so blind as those who will not see. And I’d also bet they knew that he stole Frances’s songs and made big money out of them. And maybe that he beat her to a jelly as well. Three nasty pieces of work that thoroughly deserve each other. It’ll catch up with them, though.’ Costello pulled a face. ‘It will catch up with them.’
O’Hare took one look at her and didn’t doubt it.
‘Well, it looks as though justice of a kind is going to be done at last,’ he said. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Costello, why are we still sitting here? This foyer is extremely comfortable and I’m in danger of falling asleep.’
‘Right, Prof,’ said Costello, jumping to her feet. ‘Let’s go and celebrate.’
Both Anderson and Mulholland jumped at the noise, as violently as if something had struck the car they were sitting in.
‘What the fuck was that?’ said Mulholland.
Anderson cut the phone call to Costello and looked round, his hand already reaching for the door handle. In a second, both men were out of the car, running, the two nurses following in hot pursuit.
‘Christ!’ said Anderson. The Audi had been hit on the side, pushed up on to the small grassy knoll in the car park. The bonnet of the Corsa was concertinaed against the driver’s door, and a limp and bloodied figure was caught between the two vehicles. Anderson leapt on to the Audi’s bonnet to reach the victim. He recognized Douglas Munro. Leaning up over the windscreen he steadied Munro’s head, cradling his face in his hands.
‘You’re OK, mate, you’re OK,’ he lied. Munro’s head lolled as he struggled to say something, and fine streams of frothy blood erupted from the corner of his mouth. Anderson wrestled to hold him still as an oxygen mask appeared. Munro got more agitated, pulling his face from the oxygen that could save his life. His eyes were rolling and darting frantically, as he tried to mouth his words.
‘Hold still, hold still,’ Anderson kept telling him. ‘Just breathe – that’s it… You’ll be fine.’
Mulholland ran to the Corsa. A blonde woman sat at the wheel, her face masked with blood. He heard Anderson insisting the other victim took the oxygen, telling him help was on its way. Lights and sirens suddenly fractured the night, as two ambulances screeched across the car park. Yet even through the deafening racket, Vik could hear Munro, pinned against the Audi, still trying desperately to say something, only to be silenced as the oxygen mask was clamped over his face.
Instinctively, Vik tried to open the driver’s door of the Corsa, but it was hopelessly buckled and jammed. He ran round the back, and got into the passenger seat. The engine had come free from its bearings. He tried to ignore the mess that had once been the woman’s legs. She was just breathing, barely conscious.
‘You’re OK, you’re OK,’ he said, reaching for her hand and feeling for a pulse. The woman gurgled slightly, and he pulled the bloodied hair from her face, knowing he had seen her before but with no cognizance of where or when. He checked her airway. She muttered something incomprehensible.
‘That’s right – you keep talking to me. Just keep talking.’ Through the windscreen, he could see the others trying to free the man from the Audi. A nurse was lying across the car roof, trying to get a line into him.
All the noise and the shouting were out there. The Corsa was a little bubble of silence, just the two of them. His face was close to hers as he felt the weakening pulse in her neck. ‘My name is Vik,’ he said, realizing he was kneeling on her handbag. ‘We’ll have you out of here in a minute. You just keep breathing now, keep breathing.’ He opened the handbag, looking for a name, an ID. He pulled out some grey hair – a wig? And out fell a tiny packet of white powder. A panda car arrived, its flashing blue light illuminating the inside of the car.
One strobe, he looked.
Second strobe, he focused on the label, catching sight of the St Andrew’s flag. Third strobe, he recognized it. The yellow label, the black skull and crossbones, the lettering – NaCN. Sodium cyanide.
He picked it up and dangled it in front of the woman’s eyes, like a mesmerist with a watch.
Through the blood, her eyes barely registered a faint flicker of emotion. ‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘Please help me.’
Vik looked at her and retreated from the seat. He put the white powder on top of the handbag, made sure the wig was visible. They could work it out for themselves. His foot caught something lying on the ground, which skittered a few feet, and he got out the car and picked it up. It was a mobile phone, smashed to bits. No bloody use to anyone now. He held it up, and Anderson acknowledged with a quick nod that he’d seen it. Vik put the phone back down beside the rear wheel of the Audi.
He glanced back inside the car, a bloodied hand stretched out to him, the voice so thin, it was barely audible. ‘Help me?’
He slammed the car door, and walked away.
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