by Helen Fields
‘Forgive me, I just got the impression, from some of the answers you gave me, that the stresses in your life rather predate the point in time of your diagnosis. There were moments when you were showing a remarkable resilience to your current situation, a much greater positivity than you talked about yesterday. It’s as if your inner thoughts are at odds with the external you. Does that make any sense?’
‘Not really,’ Callanach lied. ‘I haven’t been getting much sleep and my emotions have been very up and down. It’s probably just a reflection of that. So how does hypnotherapy work? Is there something I need to do to trigger a particular response or is it automatic?’
‘No, it’s not about programming at that level. It’s much more about putting you in touch with a version of you that’s beyond your illness. What we find is that when people become chronically ill, or when they’re given a diagnosis of a terminal illness, they often get swallowed up. They become completely defined by it. Their former interests and achievements almost cease to exist. It’s important to locate times and places beyond a diagnosis or a prognosis that more accurately define and reflect the whole individual. All I’ve done today is help you bring a particular memory to the forefront of your mind, encapsulated it in the present, and established it as a coping mechanism. It won’t so much spring into your mind unwanted as it will occur to you as something that will help when necessary. It’s still your image to build and decide to use.’
‘I certainly feel more relaxed already,’ Callanach smiled. ‘So where do we go from here?’
‘I think some counselling sessions might be helpful. Your needs and emotions change as your physical treatment progresses, so it’s useful to have a place to come and unload. We recommend one session per week, and you can always add additional time when you need it. Also, do consider attending our social events, get to know some of our regular clients. There’s a wine tasting tomorrow evening if you’re free, with soft options for people undergoing treatment that conflicts with alcohol. Also, many of our clients benefit from using the massage or aromatherapy services. Just coming to unwind is an equally valid use of the centre.’
‘Tomorrow night sounds good,’ Callanach said. ‘I’ll book in. And thanks for this. It’s good to have made a start on coming to terms with what’s happening to my body.’
‘Indeed. I should warn you that a small number of patients experience strange dreams the first night after a hypnotherapy session. It’s nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes it’s just the deep relaxation opening up doors that have been closed a while. Any concerns, feel free to phone in.’
Callanach excused himself and walked out into the foyer with the odd sensation that he wasn’t fully clothed, or that he had forgotten to do something important. His mobile buzzed in his pocket and he reached inside to divert the call to voicemail. He wasn’t ready to talk to anyone just yet.
‘Hey, you okay?’ Alex asked. ‘You look a little out of it.’
‘Yeah, feels like I just had a long sleep, that’s all. Have you ever tried that?’
‘No, I’m way too cynical. Not sure it would work on me. I don’t fancy having an audience. I’d be sure to dribble or snore or something.’ He gave a short smile, then caught himself, reddening. ‘I mean, not that I think you did, oh, man, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You were there for a reason, and all those people were in there trying to help you. I wasn’t making light of it.’
‘All what people?’ Callanach asked.
‘Obviously Dr Bruno, but Lucille Blaise who you met yesterday, and one of the physical therapists – I forget his name. They went in fifteen minutes or so after you, and came out a few minutes ago. Did you …’ he trailed off, looking towards the administration area window and dropping his voice a few volume levels ‘… did you not realise?’
‘You sure it was the room I was in?’ Callanach asked.
‘Sure, I was right opposite. The staffroom is across the corridor. I was filing my timesheet for this month. Look, I didn’t mean to say anything, and I shouldn’t have talked about Dr Bruno’s sessions at all. The important thing is that it might help you.’
‘I need some water,’ Callanach said. ‘I’m feeling a bit shaky.’
‘Sit down,’ Alex said quickly, ‘I’ll bring you a cup.’ He fussed with the water fountain for a minute, before returning with a half-full paper cup.
‘Thanks,’ Callanach said, taking a sip. ‘Does that sort of thing happen often? People who work here wandering into each other’s sessions?’ He kept his eyes on the cup. No big deal. Just making conversation.
‘I really can’t, you know? They wouldn’t like it if I talked about the centre. There’s a confidentiality thing we sign …’
‘That’s about the patients, right? It’s good to know everyone takes that seriously. I was asking about the staff though. I read some reviews online from a couple of patients who were concerned their details had been passed on, and how they were being offered treatments that weren’t suitable for them. I just want to know that this is the right place for me. It’s important, especially if I’m running out of time …’ He let the rest of the sentence hang.
‘Don’t say that.’ Alex took the seat next to Callanach’s. ‘Most of the staff here are excellent. Not that I’ve had treatment as such, I just know by the way they talk about the patients and their work, how much they care.’
‘Most of the staff?’
Alex didn’t answer the question.
‘You’ve got good doctors at the hospital, right? Other professionals to advise you?’
‘Why, Alex? Is something bothering you?’
‘No, what do I know? I watch the door, call cabs for people and show everyone where to get coffee or water. That’s my whole job and I like working here.’ He began fiddling with his name badge. Callanach knew Alex was a closed door for the day.
‘Well, I’m glad you work here. A smiling face is a rarity in places like this. I’ve been invited to some wine tasting evening tomorrow. You going to be on the door? I don’t really want to come if I won’t know anyone at all.’
‘Certainly,’ Alex said, standing up again, his grin back in place. ‘I can even introduce you to a few other people. You should definitely come.’
‘I will,’ Callanach said. ‘My phone’s buzzing. I’d better take it.’ He gave Alex a goodbye nod and walked out onto the street, taking his phone out. Voicemail message delivery kicked on.
‘Hello, this is a message for Detective Inspector Callanach. I hope I have the correct number. Your details were passed to me by a boy currently under arrest. His little sister is here too. My name is Annette Thomas from Child Services. Could you give me a call back urgently, please? The children are Azzat and Huznia. They’ve declined to give us their surnames at present.’
She left a number at the end of the message that Callanach wrote on the back of his hand. For a few seconds, he’d had no idea who the woman was talking about. It seemed like an age ago now that he and Jean-Paul had searched the location where Malcolm Reilly’s body had been left. He’d given the two Afghan children his card. The brother had to be pretty desperate if the only adult contact they had in Paris was him. He thought of the girl crying and hiding behind the bins, hungry. Seconds later, he had Child Services on the phone. Two minutes after that he was in a cab, on his way to talk local police out of charging Azzat with a burglary that could mean prison time, and losing contact with his sister for long enough to hurt them both.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Anyway, it turns out …’ Lively announced to the audience gathered around him in the incident room, ‘that Finlay Wilson had been spending a substantial amount of time in Wester Hailes. Suffice it to say, no one I spoke to was the least bit concerned to hear the wee bastard had passed. Someone actually thanked me for letting them know, and that was a first.’
‘Any information on Wilson’s most recent racket then?’ DI Graham asked.
‘Pimping, apparently. He’s been involved be
fore, mostly small-time. Not quite standing on street corners negotiating his workers’ fees, but nothing very sophisticated.’
‘Maybe if we can find some of the women he was running, they’ll be able to shed light on who he’d made an enemy of recently,’ Ava suggested.
‘Perhaps it was one of the prostitutes that did it,’ DC Swift offered.
‘Sex workers,’ Ava corrected him.
‘You think one of his toms went to the trouble of cutting off his head and hands, gift-wrapping him, lifting him into a van then driving around the city with him rolling around in the back rather than just emptying his pockets, fleeing the scene and going to the nearest pub to get good and pissed in celebration?’ Lively asked, arms crossed, shaking his head. ‘Do the letters DC in front of your name stand for Doesn’t Concentrate?’
‘All right sergeant, that’s enough,’ Ava butted in. ‘We need to speak with any known associates of Wilson’s. If he was running girls on the street, regular patrols should know about it. If not, he’s got a base somewhere. Phone records?’
‘Not a chance,’ Lively said. ‘He was an evil little git, but he wasn’t stupid. There won’t be a phone contract in his name. More likely he was using burners.’
‘Track down Wilson’s family, find out where he was living, any vehicles registered to him. Perhaps you could make a start on that, Constable Swift,’ Ava offered as a lifeline before he became forever known as ‘Doesn’t Concentrate’, although she realised it was probably too late already.
‘What’s maybe more interesting is the fact that one of my sources has confirmed that Finlay Wilson and Gene Oldman knew each other. Makes sense, if Wilson was hanging around Wester Hailes a lot, but Oldman isn’t exactly a likely candidate for an associate of Wilson’s. By reputation he was something of a hermit, and certainly not a tough guy.’ Lively reached out for the last ageing doughnut that had somehow been left uneaten in a box from the local supermarket. Ava heard the crunch as he bit into it and winced.
‘What about the young woman whose footprint was found in Oldman’s house, and the blood outside?’ she mused. ‘Perhaps Finlay was keeping his workers off the streets and offering a home delivery service? Less chance of being stopped by the police, he could control the price, send one of his men with each woman to collect the money, so he was never going to be ripped off or short-changed.’
‘Still doesn’t give us a suspect. Oldman couldn’t have killed Finlay, the deaths are in the wrong order,’ Graham said.
‘Maybe it was a rival pimp. It’s possible that Finlay started running his business on someone else’s patch,’ Lively said, mouth still full of stale dough.
‘Work that as a theory. I want a list of anyone known or suspected of organising prostitution in the city. Speak with the deputy pathologist and scene examination team, would you, DI Graham? Let them know we want to double-check for any overlap between Finlay Wilson and Gene Oldman. Wilson’s fingerprints or DNA in Oldman’s house, make sure the footprint on Oldman’s floor wasn’t Finlay’s, as unlikely as it seems. At present we’re assuming the footprint belonged to a female, but Wilson was only five foot four tall. And find his head and hands. That’s a story someone’ll be itching to tell after a few pints.’
She stood up and walked to the wall that held endless photos of Malcolm Reilly, together with maps of his last known movements, and the out-of-focus likeness of the woman he was believed to have met at the gym.
‘Right, DI Callanach is working on a lead in the Reilly murder that’s led him to a clinic in Paris. It looks as if someone was offering to use healthy organs as some form of cure, presumably to people with chronic illnesses who could get their hands on the right amount of cash. If that’s right, it means that the operation has been carefully set up, streamlined and financed. After going to that much trouble, it seems unlikely that they’ll stop at selling just one set of organs …’
‘What are they doing with them, ma’am, if not transplants?’ someone asked.
‘We don’t have the answer to that yet. There’s a suggestion of a more alchemistic element to it. Myrrh was burned and found as a residue in Malcolm’s hair and the wounds suggest a level of anatomical knowledge but little surgical skill.’
‘Is it witchcraft?’ Swift asked.
‘It’s a con,’ Ava replied firmly. ‘There’s no such thing as witchcraft. There are, however, plenty of extremely vulnerable people out there who’ll do literally anything to survive, and for cranks and charlatans they’re easy prey. Alternative therapies with no sound medical basis are being offered for tens of thousands of pounds. Globally, this is a multimillion-dollar industry. Take a quick look at crowdfunding and you’ll see endless supposed breakthrough remedies being promoted.’
Ava had looked, and spent much more time on the variety of websites offering seemingly miracle cures than she’d intended. Natasha was still in the early stages of treatment with the best medical team supporting her, and even so it was difficult not to get caught up in the brilliantly marketed, utterly convincing scams that promised natural therapies that worked with the body’s own immune system to fight the disease. The options were mind-bending, and all came complete with financial advice for those who might need to ‘liberate’ some cash from their home to pay for the chance to survive that they’d been persuaded their current doctors were somehow conspiring to keep from them.
She moved across to Bart Campbell’s section of the board.
‘The woman who spoke with Bart in the restaurant as he finished his shift matches the general description of the woman Malcolm Reilly was seeing, but I doubt if that’s what she looks like now. Her hair might be shorter, or a different colour, she might have coloured lenses in, or be using different clothing and padding to alter her body shape. What does seem unlikely is that Bart met this woman for the first time that evening and agreed to hook up with her. That doesn’t fit with what we know about him, so we need to investigate further back on his timeline. It might give us more detail about where they met, possibly alternative CCTV footage. Maybe one of his college friends spoke to her at some point, or perhaps he dropped her name into a conversation. Bart’s mother says she has a very open relationship with her son, especially since the death of his father,’ she pointed at a printout of a faded colour photo on the board that showed a man in uniform holding a baby boy, ‘so it seems entirely possible that Bart was strongly urged to keep the relationship a secret, which is the main link between our two cases at the moment.’
‘Except for that photo,’ Swift piped up.
Every head turned.
‘Sorry, which photo?’ Ava asked him.
‘The one with his dad there. It’s been all over Facebook, that one. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before when it got pinned to the board in here, but I hadn’t put two and two together until now.’
There was a long silence while they collectively waited for Swift to explain himself. He didn’t.
‘Are you saying that someone has shared this photo on Facebook to promote the search for Bart?’ Ava asked gently. ‘His mother, perhaps?’
‘No, it wasn’t that. Hold on, it’ll come to me.’
Lively jolted in his chair and Ava put a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him in place.
‘That’s it, it wasn’t Facebook at all. It was Twitter. You know, like those things when some kiddie loses their teddy bear at a train station, and someone picks it up and takes a photo of it? They tag it, like, please share, this lost bear was found this morning at Waverley Station. Let’s see if we can’t help find its way home.’
‘What the fuck’re you—’ Lively began.
‘Hold on,’ Ava murmured in his direction. ‘Constable, are you saying that someone else found this photo and has no idea of the connection to Bart Campbell?’
‘That’s right,’ Swift grinned.
Ava realised there was only so long she was going to be able to prevent Lively from bursting into an act of physical violence that would require an internal investigation
to be held, not to mention probable criminal charges.
‘So what did the message with the photo actually say?’ she asked.
‘No idea,’ Swift replied, eyes wide. ‘I couldn’t understand a word of it. I never learned French.’
Every chair scraped at once. Every computer screen was prompted into life. Social media filled the room, all bright colours and GIFs.
‘Find it right now,’ Ava ordered, ‘and make sure we get a completely accurate translation of the message. Source the original media post, then get Interpol on the phone. I’ll call DI Callanach.’
‘Got it,’ DI Graham shouted across the din. Ava scooted between chairs and bodies to see the screen. There it was, a photograph of a photograph, curled at the edges, tatty from years of being carried in a pocket, taken out frequently and admired. Next to it was a second photo, this time of the back, with the handwritten but legible message, ‘Bart, I may not always be by your side, but I will always come back to you. Love Dad xxx.’
‘That’s definitely the original,’ Ava said. ‘The copy on our board is from a scan Mrs Campbell took of the photo in case it ever got lost. Apparently Bart had it in his pocket at all times as a way of keeping his father with him. She’d told us about the message on the back, but it hadn’t been released to the media. Mrs Campbell was adamant about keeping it private.’
Below the two images, someone had already made the effort to translate the original message. It had been found on the ground in a car park outside the town of Arras, close to where the A1 road ran south to Paris.
‘Map,’ Ava said. The screen changed to an overall view of Paris, then zoomed in closer and closer, until the road system around Arras could be seen. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing at one particular junction. ‘He had that photo on him. His mother said he transferred it morning and night to whatever trousers he was wearing. They’d have checked for his phone and wallet, but this would have been easy to miss, or they just might not have been bothered about it. He left us breadcrumbs.’