The Shadow Man

by Helen Fields

  ‘Goodbye,’ Fergus muttered as he crawled through the debris in the hallway then stepped over the shards of wood that had been the door to the flat.

  Silence.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Connie sat alone in the incident room and stared at the phone while randomly clicking the refresh button on the secure email address she’d been given for responses to the alert. It had gone out four hours earlier.

  In that time, a media alert had been circulated for the car that had been seen at Farzana’s house, a vague image of their suspect had been released to the press, and an all-ports warning had been sent out across the UK. In addition, there was a whole room of people doing nothing but checking CCTV footage across the city between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. There were few stones left unturned, and a palpable sense of desperation. Every ringing phone was grabbed. Every possible new detail immediately added to the evidence boards, but nothing was helping. Baarda had called a couple of times to check in, and Connie had gone back over the information already gathered. Nothing new. She could have screamed.

  She rechecked her watch for the hundredth time in as many minutes. Scotland’s medical practitioners would be getting up, making their kids’ lunch boxes and beginning to think about their day. Many would not yet have even seen the alert, let alone have addressed their minds to going through their files to identify matches. Yet, she had sat at her desk all night waiting for something. Anything. Overbeck had made it clear she wasn’t welcome at the Farzana abduction crime scene. Hers was to be paperwork profiling only from now on. Connie got it. The scepticism that greeted her profession was a known quantity. For every cop who valued her input, there was another who consigned her to the realms of hocus-pocus before she’d even opened her mouth.

  To kill time, she’d conducted a little research on Farzana’s address in Slateford. Moat Place had a few small shops, a church, some hairdressing salons and takeouts. That morning was indeed bin collection day for that area. The council website had been remarkably helpful, but a local-issues forum had informed her that the bins weren’t likely to be collected until 11 a.m. at the earliest. So what had Farzana been doing at 2 a.m.?

  The realistic chance of Elspeth’s killer stepping beyond his established racial group was so low that she’d dismissed it as soon as she’d heard the victim’s description. Their killer had murdered one Caucasian woman and abducted another. After that, he’d taken a white girl, presumably to play the role of his child. Another white male for purposes unknown. The fact that a young woman had been walking to the end of her garden at 2 a.m. to perform a task that didn’t need to be done until the following morning was simply confirmation of what Connie already felt in her gut. Farzana Wakim had undoubtedly disappeared, but not as part of some delusional fantasy inside the head of a man who believed he was one of the walking dead.

  The first email in response to the medical alert came in while she was flicking through Farzana’s social media presence. It was from a community mental health team leader in Paisley who’d had a male matching the physical description three years earlier suffering bulimia and depression, but missing the other indicators for Cotard’s syndrome. Connie marked the email negative and carried on scrolling through Farzana’s selfies. She could only afford the time to chase up responses with both a positive indicator for Cotard’s and a match for the patient’s description, or she’d end up flooded.

  Connie turned her attention back to Farzana Wakim, who had two styles of selfie online. One was proper and traditional, when she would wear a headscarf and appear makeup-free. On others the scarf was slipped so far back as to be virtually invisible – and when Connie enlarged those images, there were traces of mascara and lipstick, even a little glitter. Connie went back to the start of the photographs, wishing young people would learn to keep their profiles private but equally glad that she was able to access so much of Farzana’s life.

  There were family members in most of Farzana’s formal photos, and a few people listed as friends – but those, without exception, were female. Connie texted Baarda.

  ‘Not to stereotype but please check. Evidence around home of religious devotion/strictness? Check Farzana’s room for hidden clothing, makeup. Recent deletions from mobile.’

  A second medical alert response came in as she hit Send.

  It was from a clinic in Glasgow, written up by a nurse who had discharged a patient from her care four years earlier, who had repeatedly attended with different ailments relating to his internal organs. On no occasion did any testing reveal a cause, and thereafter, the complaints would shift to a different organ to start again. He resembled the physical description, but with more hair and less emaciated. After that, the emails started flooding in. Connie knew she should have anticipated it, but as the minutes passed, the enormity of the task she’d created for herself became apparent.

  Her mobile pinged.

  ‘Affirmative. No social media/calls/texts visible for the last week. Thoughts?’ Baarda replied by text.

  ‘Either Farzana erased everything to cover her tracks, or someone else deleted information to cover motive for harming her. Do not believe this is Elspeth’s abductor. Starting to get …’ Connie stopped typing.

  An email had come in from a doctor’s surgery in Niddrie Mains asking to speak by telephone and leaving a number. Connie dialled.

  ‘This is Dr Ross,’ a woman answered.

  ‘Good morning, Dr Ross,’ Connie said. ‘I’m Dr Constance Woolwine. You were kind enough to respond to the medical information alert issued through MIT.’

  ‘Yes, hello. I don’t have long, I’m afraid; my clinic opens in a few minutes.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Connie said, turning down the police radio that had been playing in the incident room next to her so she could keep up to date with what was happening at Farzana’s house. ‘That’s better. Sorry to have interrupted. You have some information that might match the alert?’

  ‘I do, although it might prove to be a bit vague. I’ve been working at this practice for more than a decade now, and I’m used to patients going through phases, coming in and out. There’s one particular male who I referred for a brain scan last year, as well as a psychiatric consultation. He didn’t attend either. He explained that he’d been traumatised in his youth. Having suffered severe depression, which hadn’t been managed effectively through medication, he was sent for electroconvulsive therapy. Since then, he hasn’t been able to tolerate any sort of treatment relating to his head.’

  ‘I see,’ Connie said. ‘What was it about his symptoms that made you think of him today?’

  ‘He’s come to us over three discrete periods in the last five years, on each occasion attending regularly for a few months then disappearing for around six months each time. The symptomology follows a similar pattern each time. He starts off by reporting a general sense of unwellness. Generic stomach pains, aching limbs, headaches, reports of mild fever but nothing that ever shows on a thermometer. No discernible physical presentations when we begin investigations. Urine and stool samples come back clear. Same with bloods. The first time we ordered both an endoscopy and a gastroscopy.’

  ‘Both clear?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Both clear. But by then he was presenting with new symptoms that bore no clear link to the original ones. At the end of the first period of presentation, he told me he could no longer feel his heart beating. I put his fingers on his wrist, let him listen through my stethoscope, and he told me I’d completely validated his complaint. He heard and felt nothing. After that I asked him to allow me to refer him to psychiatric services. While he was with me, he agreed. I said he’d get a date through. He didn’t appear to be any threat to himself at that stage, hadn’t self-harmed or threatened suicide, so when the hospital notified me that he hadn’t attended his psych appointment, there was no further action I could take.’

  ‘And then?’ Connie asked.

  ‘He didn’t come to the clinic for …’ there was the whisper of turning pages, ‘seven
months. The next time he came back he asked to see a different doctor, which was fine. In fact, at that stage he was presenting with a stomach complaint, saying he couldn’t keep food down. It was diagnosed as a virus, advice was given. The notes say he was rational and not expressing any of the previous symptoms that had given rise to the psychiatric referral, so we treated him normally.’

  ‘Did his symptoms worsen?’

  ‘They did. At one point he believed his lungs were disintegrating. He lost a massive amount of weight and with that, many of his symptoms became real, but in a self-fulfilling circular way. His blood pressure became so low that he would regularly pass out, then suffer injuries as a result. You can imagine. Anyway, on that occasion, my colleague also recommended a psychiatric referral. He disappeared from view very quickly that time. Thereafter, we heard nothing from him for eight months.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then a young man registered with the clinic. As part of the context, you should know that we have over 5,000 patients registered with us and twelve doctors. We’re busy, we perform both clinic and home visit practices, with a high turnover of administrative support staff.’

  ‘Okay,’ Connie murmured.

  ‘So, earlier this year, one of my colleagues came to me for advice. We do this whenever necessary, as well as conducting formal weekly reviews. The more junior doctors in the practice have an opportunity to discuss their complex cases with the team, get a second opinion and see if the right approach is being taken. The doctor in question reported that he was treating a young man who was presenting with a series of increasingly serious but unconfirmed complaints. He’d ordered all the right tests, so I recommended continuing to treat as and when he presented.’

  ‘It was the same patient?’

  ‘Yes, and alarm bells should have rung then, but we were in the middle of an inspection, and when I read the file, it didn’t occur to me that it was the same man.’

  ‘But why …’

  ‘Because he’d given a different name. Presented new documentation. Re-registered. And had specifically asked for a male doctor when previously he’d been treated by women, so he was guaranteed not to see either myself or the other doctor who’d treated him before.’

  ‘Active avoidance facilitated by fraud,’ Connie said. ‘Clever, organised behaviour.’

  ‘Indeed. Had the junior doctor not become concerned whilst the patient was still in his office and come to find me under the pretence of his stethoscope not working, we might never have figured it out. The patient had declared himself to be rotting internally. The details he gave were utterly convincing. He seemed to be completely immersed in the illusion. I went to see him myself and recognised him as soon as I entered the room. Of course, he recognised me, too, and left immediately.

  ‘Again, there was no evidence he was a threat to himself or others – anything but, in fact, given that he’d been through the same process twice before and had never come to any harm from it. He didn’t meet the criteria for involuntary committal, so there was nothing left for us to do. We wrote to him, of course, asking for him to contact us for assistance. We telephoned. Two of our nurses even visited the address we had on file for him. When we got no response, we had to leave the matter there. Until I got the police alert today.’

  Connie breathed hard. There was a noise in her ears not dissimilar to nails being dragged along a chalkboard.

  ‘I need his name,’ she said.

  ‘I can give you the names he gave us. What’s interesting is that when I discovered his deception, I checked our computers. It turned out that there had been two other names registered from his stated address. Date of birth the same on each occasion. All male. He’d previously been treated by other doctors, one of whom had retired and another who’d passed away.’

  ‘All right,’ Connie said. ‘Give me the list.’

  ‘Randall MacGregor came first, as far as I can ascertain, then Rupert Brown. Third came Andrew Drummond – that was the name he used twice – and finally Fergus Ariss.’

  Connie wrote them down in order on a piece of scrap paper.

  ‘Date of birth?’

  ‘Always given as 1st May 1985,’ Dr Ross said.

  ‘And the address?’

  Connie’s hands were shaking as she grasped the pen to write it down.

  ‘Tamar House, Whitehill Road, Niddrie Mains,’ Dr Ross said. ‘I want to apologise. I feel as if I should have done something more … and sooner.’

  ‘You did your job,’ Connie said. ‘That’s all any of us can do. Thank you, Dr Ross.’

  Connie hung up and stared at the address on the paper in front of her. Her phone buzzed. She’d forgotten to finish her text to Baarda, who was chasing a response. Clicking Send on her draft earlier response about the missing Farzana, she followed up with a second message: ‘Interesting lead from a doctor. Checking out info. Off to Niddrie Mains. Call me.’

  Running from room to room along the corridor, it became clear that the few officers left in the building were focused on the Farzana investigation and handling the other 999 calls that were coming in that evening. Grabbing the arm of a passing officer, she thrust the sheet of paper she’d written notes on into his hands.

  ‘Check out all the names on this piece of paper,’ she said. ‘I need to know what contact any of them has had with police in the past, and any alternative addresses on file.’

  ‘Very good, ma’am,’ the officer replied.

  ‘Call my cell as soon as you have anything; the number’s on the bottom of that note. Also, what’s Niddrie Mains like? High crime rate?’

  ‘Niddrie Mains? Not much out there, really. Good access to the coast. Stays pretty quiet.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Connie muttered to herself as she grabbed her coat. ‘Quiet is exactly how he’d want it.’

  She sprinted down the stairs, ran outside and hailed a cab to Niddrie Mains.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Xavier was stuck. Safe, for now, but he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. As Fergus had been tying up Elspeth and Meggy, he’d made a decision. He wasn’t going to sit on the lounge floor and wait for the maniac to come for him. The blockade in the hallway was going to last a while, but not forever. If he couldn’t fight, at least he could make it as difficult as possible to be killed.

  It hadn’t been easy. The lack of light in the room below had helped to conceal his activity, but the success had been touch and go. Had his friends not pestered him every week to spend hours in the gym maintaining his upper body strength, and hounded him to play wheelchair basketball at every opportunity, he’d never had managed the feat.

  Pulling himself to the opening above Elspeth and Meggy, Xavier had dragged his legs over the edge in the void. He’d moved as silently as possible while Fergus had come and gone, bringing in ropes and gags, talking to himself, cycling through a stream of different names. Trying to summon a strength he would never have thought possible and praying that his mental calculation was correct, Xavier had taken his whole weight on his arms and lowered himself by his hands into the void.

  ‘Xavier,’ Fergus had said suddenly, turning round as if expecting to see someone standing behind him.

  Xavier was frozen, suspended, legs dangling through the hole in the ceiling.

  ‘Who was that? Did he leave me, too?’ He was talking to himself, clearly confused, going from one incoherent rant to the next.

  Then Fergus had continued as before, checking the knots on the ropes before walking to the painted-in windows and pretending to close the painted-in curtains. Xavier had stared down at him, incredulous, through the tiny gap between his body and the edge of the hole.

  Forcing himself to continue before his arms gave in, he’d looked inside the darkness of the cavity between the two floors for the most accessible rafter. His line of vision was too limited, and it mattered. He’d had to grab for the rafter in a single movement that could not be repeated. He had nothing to hold on to above the floorboards, and his body would h
ave started to fall as soon as he’d shifted his body weight.

  Lowering himself so that his forearms were flat along the floor, he’d given himself more manoeuvring space but made the required gymnastics that bit more awkward. The closest rafter was to his left, which was a shame given that he was right-handed, and that for some seconds he would be supporting the entirety of his dangling body through one hand. Not that he’d had any good choices. If his head, chest and hips didn’t all fit into the cavity, he’d be stuck there waiting both to be rescued and also to be murdered by the same madman who was currently below having a multi-party conversation with himself.

  Xavier had taken several deep breaths, sucking as much oxygen into his muscles as he could manage. The memory of how this would have felt with a working set of lower limbs came back bittersweet, unbidden and unhelpful. He’d have been able to draw his legs up, or swing them to one side to get better movement and more purchase. He might even have been able to pull a single leg up to jam a knee into the gap. Of course, with working legs he’d also have had the option to have gone into the cavity feet first, using his legs to wrap around the joist and hold with his ankles.

  No use crying over spilt milk, he told himself. He was what he was. He hadn’t fought as hard as he should have at the sports centre. It was partly the shock of seeing his friend die, but some of it had also been fear. Easier to have let himself be taken in the hope that the hand of fate might intervene and save him. No one was coming though. He, Elspeth and Meggy were not going to be rescued. He knew that now. It was self-help, or an inevitable ending.

  Xavier had taken the leap of faith and the dreaded drop, grabbing with his left hand as he’d begun to fall, scrabbling at nothing with his right. Several inches lower, his body had jolted to a halt. He’d felt two of his fingernails ping away into the void as he’d thrust his right hand in to join the left. His neck had caught the edge of the broken floorboard as his body spun, cutting jaggedly into his flesh. Xavier had bitten his lips to keep from crying out, but both hands were on the joist, and as much pain as his body was in, that was better than the sensation of falling and waiting to smash into the scene below.