Cooper cocked his head. ‘Then there’s Jenkins. She knew Lexie’s dealer, met with him the night she was killed. And Jenkins links right to you, Sanders and MacNeill.’
Eve couldn’t argue with that. ‘Yeah, and the newspaper article wrapped around Jenkins’ tongue made sure of that. But why the tongues? Why the week apart?’
Cooper lay his head against the seat. ‘Jesus, we sound like we did that night at mine. Right back where we started.’ He spun his chair around, helped himself to another slice of pizza.
Eve stared past him to the board. One link. Something that would bring it all together. She turned as she heard noise in the corridor. Mearns and Ferguson. ‘Hey, guys, pizz—’ Eve stopped when she saw their faces, Ferguson’s especially. All colour gone from it.
‘What?’
‘We found the guy. We’d missed him for his morning whisky snifter. Barmaid told us he’d be in for lunch, but he didn’t show. Finally arrived at seven p.m.’
‘And?’ Eve wished he would get on with it.
‘The one thing the hotel barman hadn’t mentioned in his description was the thing I noticed first.’
Mearns stood beside Ferguson, staring at Eve. It was Cooper who spoke. ‘Jesus, Ferguson, spit it out.’
‘Spider’s-web tattoo on his left temple. One of MacNeill’s men, Eve. He was there that night.’
Eve felt like she’d been whacked in the stomach all over again. Instantly pulled back to that night. Seeing him standing in that room with Sanders. The only reason he wasn’t in prison along with MacNeill was because he hadn’t been instrumental in inflicting injury, had just stood there, silent. What a joke. She was glad she was sitting. ‘It looks like we’ve found our missing link.’
It took a while for them to gather themselves, to digest the sheer scale of what they might be looking at. Eve was first to recover.
‘He didn’t see you?’
‘No.’ Ferguson looked buoyed, involved. ‘And we didn’t approach him, as we thought you’d want him left – keep an eye on him, see where he leads us next. The barmaid says he’s in there most nights to closing time. I don’t think he’s going anywhere soon.’
Eve glimpsed the man she used to work with in front of her. ‘Good thinking. Look, I appreciate it’s getting late, but would you guys be OK to go keep watch until closing time, see where he goes after?’
Mearns and Ferguson nodded without hesitation.
‘Thanks.’
Eve updated them on their visit to Hardy, both of them as convinced as she was that he was involved. Cooper too, even though he’d asked her to step back a bit at Hardy’s house.
She was feeling as buoyed as Ferguson looked. ‘First thing tomorrow, Mearns, I want you to interview the boss at the veterinary practice, the former employer that Hardy stole the ketamine from. See if we can get anything that might link him to MacNeill’s guy. I’ll speak to Sonia again, see if she ever saw Hardy with anyone.
‘Ferguson, I want you to find out if Hardy has any social life to speak of – anyone who resembles a friend. See if we can’t pin him to the dates of the murders.’
Ferguson stood to attention, nodded.
‘OK, let me know where our dealer man goes tonight. Cooper, since you don’t need to be home, you’re with me.’
Chapter 31
Rosie looked anything but rosy. Eve watched her suck the life out of what was left of her roll-up, the orange tip illuminating her face in the fading light, before flicking it out on to the pavement from the tenement doorway that she stood in. Union Grove, grey blocks of flats running either side, rusting satellite dishes as far as the eye could see, the street tucked off the bustle of Holburn Junction, which led on to Union Street, the heart of the city.
It was an ideal location for punters. Rosie didn’t bother to lift her scuffed stiletto heel to stub out the cigarette, the driving sleety rain taking care of that for her. Even from across the road where they sat in the unmarked car, Eve could see that any life left in her had been sucked out a long time ago.
Rosie pulled together the edges of the flimsy unbuttoned black raincoat that she wore; it barely concealed the bony chest in a low-cut top and laddered fishnets beneath a skirt that could pass as easily for a belt.
In the few minutes that they’d been sitting there, she’d smoked two cigarettes. Seemed unlikely she had a punter waiting for her. Eve wondered how many girls were inside. Whether the pimp would be visiting any time soon. She still couldn’t believe the changes in the city’s prostitution trade over the last decade. The red-light district, a tolerance zone down the harbour area, had been abolished, at first forcing the women on to the city streets but eventually seeing them trading from private flats and homes, brothels on the rise, with Aberdeen being named the brothel capital of the UK in 2016.
What an accolade. But it was the women that Eve felt for. They were invisible, vulnerable and in more danger from the pimps that ran them.
Rosie was staring at them, glazed eyes thin slits, challenging them. She wasn’t stupid, she knew not to approach them – had a sixth sense, like any of the girls who worked the trade, about who was a potential client and who was a copper. She’d be off and running as soon as they opened a door. Eve turned to Cooper, who sat in the driver’s seat. ‘You ready?’ Cooper nodded and Eve pulled at the door handle, knowing she wouldn’t have to worry about her leg.
Eve took her time crossing the street, making sure her own jacket was fastened while listening to the click-clack-click of Rosie’s shoes echoing off the granite tenements as she tottered up the street and attempted to run across towards Albyn Lane. Cooper didn’t even have to break into a jog before Rosie was slipping on the wet cobbles of the lane, crashing to the ground and then fighting against Cooper like an alley cat as he attempted to help her.
‘Bastards.’ She sounded as common as she looked. ‘You can fucking pay for my tights.’ Cooper shook his head, amused, as she flailed around on the end of his arm.
Eve joined them as Rosie was giving up the battle. ‘How about we take you for a cup of something warm instead?’ She saw the surprise and then the hope in Rosie’s features as she glanced along the stretch of Union Grove to the Foundry pub in the distance. Eve followed her gaze and smiled. ‘I was thinking more non-alcoholic.’
Rosie huffed and made a half-hearted attempt at shrugging free of Cooper’s grasp on her elbow before letting herself be escorted to the car.
The Asda café at the Bridge of Dee, a five-minute drive from Union Grove, was deserted this time of night. Perfect for parking and a place that, in this quiet hour and with the flash of a badge, wouldn’t refuse entry to Rosie’s attire. Tea-time trade was over, the rectangular, cheap-looking veneered tables cleared but still in need of a good wipe.
They sat in silence as Rosie bulldozed her way through an all-day breakfast, her cracked, sore-covered lips never closed for long as she chewed. Eve and Cooper sipped at their coffees and waited for her to finish, the fork and knife clattering as she threw them on the plate and grabbed at her own coffee.
‘Not like you coppers to wine and dine a girl. What’re you after?’
Eve watched coffee collecting at the corners of her mouth, mixing with the drying egg yolk there. ‘We wanted to have a wee chat about a friend of yours.’
‘Aye?’
‘Adrian Hardy.’
Rosie put down her cup, started picking at one of the scabs on her face as she stared at the table. ‘What about him?’
‘We went to see him earlier today. Wanted to talk to him about some things. He told us to come and see you. Here we are.’
‘What do you want with me?’
‘I think he reckons you’ll be able to give us an idea of what he’s about.’
‘Eh? Can you not suss that out from talking to him yourselves?’
Eve pursed her lips. ‘Let’s say it’d be better for him if I didn’t go by that opinion.’
Rose looked first at Eve, then Cooper, and drooped her shoulders. ‘Is t
his off the record?’
Cooper winked. ‘We were never here.’
Rosie looked at the empty plate in front of her. ‘In that case, it won’t show on the department budget if I ask for a second helping.’
Eve waved over the elderly woman sat peering at a crossword through the milk-bottle thick glasses perched on her hooked nose. She shuffled towards them with the manner of someone who has been inconvenienced, white thinning curls clapped to her forehead under the regulation hairnet she wore that did nothing for her.
The second breakfast was out within minutes and it was only once it was set down, a fresh coffee alongside it, that Rosie spoke.
‘Met him a year ago. Started off once or twice a week he’d come to the flat. Always the same time and always wanting the same thing.’
‘Which was?’
‘To talk.’
‘To talk?’ Eve couldn’t hide the disbelief in her voice.
‘Yeah. I get all sorts. As long as they’re paying, I couldn’t give a shit if someone wants to yap crap or pretend I’m their mother-in-law.’
Eve hid the smile. ‘And was he yapping crap?’
‘At first I didn’t listen, let him babble on, but he started coming more, and I kinda got to like listening.’
‘How come?’
‘He was harmless. Lonely. Been given a rough deal from folk. Said they didn’t understand him. The usual patter. Course I’ve heard it all before, but for some reason I believed him and sometimes I talked about my own shit.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos he was paying and willing to listen. Made a change from being a means to an end and knowing to keep your gob shut – unless they liked a bit of chat, if you know what I mean.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Anything and everything. Not smutty shit, nothing to do with sex. Chat.’
‘And he never wanted anything else?’
Rosie hugged the mug of coffee to her goosebumped chest. ‘Not at first. I don’t think he was experienced. Wondered if he was gay. But then one night he said he wanted to make love to me. No one ever said that to me before. I’m not the kind of lass the word love gets used around.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I started unbuttoning his jeans.’
Cooper laughed, stopped himself. ‘And?’
‘He stopped me. Got a bit weird about it all. Started banging on about how he was a gentleman and wanted to look after me.’
Eve’s eyes widened. ‘And what did you think?’
‘That he was a bit weird after all. All mouth and no action. Thought he was scared to do it. But I soon found out he definitely liked the action.’
Eve pictured Hardy and the way he’d been in his aunt’s kitchen, felt sick even thinking about him in action. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He told me that night that he could arrange a place I could go. That if I agreed to be his, he’d keep me safe.’
‘You agreed?’
‘I ain’t stupid. It’s not like I love what I do. He wasn’t exactly my dream guy, but I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. Better I stick with the weird that I know rather than laying myself open to the dickheads I don’t.’
‘You think he’s weird?’
Rosie bit her bottom lip. ‘He’s different.’
‘Different how?’
Rosie was now pulling at her lip. ‘Look, the guy’s been good to me. I don’t want to drop him in any shit.’
‘I respect that, Rosie, but we need to know more about Hardy. Let’s say you might be helping other women with their shit.’
Rosie’s jaw set, a hardness creeping into her eyes. ‘What women?’
‘What is it with you and Hardy?’
‘Like I said, he looked after me.’
‘No funny business?’
‘Depends what you mean by funny business. He gave me a place to stay, a cheap Airbnb he paid month to month, made sure I had food and all the rest of it.’
‘In return for what?’
Rosie looked at the table, scratching at another sore. ‘For being his.’
‘And what did being his involve?’
‘Not seeing any other punters.’
‘That’s it?’
Rosie kept her gaze downwards. ‘He liked me to stay indoors, always, to be there whenever he needed me. He’d tell me what to wear, how to be.’
‘And what did he like you to wear?’
‘Simple stuff. Nothing fancy. Nothing slutty.’
‘And you did this?’
Rosie coughed, a deep chesty wheeze that shook her small frame. As she covered her mouth, the sores on her hands were as bad as those on her face.
‘Yeah. Like I said, he was paying.’
‘What else did he tell you to do?’
‘He liked to bathe me, to feed me. He’d decide what I was to eat and that. Said he wanted to take care of me.’
‘When did the drugs come into it?’
Rosie dropped her hand beneath the table. ‘He knew I wasn’t the Virgin Mary, even though I think he wanted to pretend I was. And I think we both knew I didn’t go into that bedsit without a wee stash. I ran out quick, sitting around all the time.’ Rosie shrugged. ‘I dunno, maybe he sensed it. Next I knew, he was offering the goods.’
‘Did you take ketamine together?’
‘Fuck, no. It was something else he liked to provide me with, to give me.’
‘How did he give it to you?’
Rosie patted at the top of her arm. ‘Needle.’
Eve glanced at Cooper.
‘Ever give you enough that you were completely out of it?’
Rosie’s eyes flickered. ‘Eh?’
She’d struck a nerve. ‘As in not able to move.’
It was a beat too long before Rosie answered. ‘Wouldn’t be a lot of use to him then, would I?’
Cooper shifted in his chair. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Listen, I don’t know what you want from me, but I’ve nothing bad to say about the guy, OK?’ Rosie was pulling her coat around herself again.
Eve was at a loss as to why this woman who had been kept like some kind of animal would want to protect Hardy. ‘Do you still see him?’
‘Yeah, what of it?’
Eve could sense she was losing her. ‘Often?’
‘Not like before.’
‘Why not?’
Rosie’s thumb and forefinger were fiddling at one of the buttons on her coat. ‘When the shit hit the fan with the theft and his job, he couldn’t keep me in the bedsit any more. I had no choice but to go back on the game. Different flat. Different pimp. That bitch that took him in sure as hell wouldn’t have had me moving in.’
Eve was taken aback by the spite in her tone. ‘What’s the story with you and Hardy now?’
‘He comes to see me sometimes, to chat again. He still gets me the drugs sometimes.’
Eve’s eyes widened. ‘How? How did he manage that once he’d lost his job?’
Rosie let go of the button and patted at her lip before wiping blood on her tights. ‘Some guy.’
Eve’s heart thumped. ‘Some guy? Rosie, do you remember the guy’s name?’
‘No.’
Eve was desperate; she wanted to reach across and shake it out of Rosie. ‘You can tell us. We would protect you; no one would know it came from you.’
‘I don’t need your protection. Hardy’s not a guy that likes to share, but he doesn’t want to give up on me. He’ll protect me.’
She sounded proud of that fact. Eve was reminded of what Hardy had said about Sonia. ‘Some people can’t take the help they’re being offered. Don’t deserve what they’re being offered … Disloyal. I wasn’t willing to waste any more time on her.’ But it seemed Rosie was more than willing to take it and remain loyal to him.
Eve wanted to groan. ‘Doesn’t want to give up on you?’
Eve wanted to shake some sense into the emaciated woman sitting in front of her. What the hell was wrong with h
er? It reminded her of that cellar girl in Austria, her name escaping Eve – how the girl had been inconsolable to hear of her captor’s death. That she still carried a photo of him in her wallet. There was a name for it. Whatever it was, it was the only reason she could think of for Rosie’s bizarre attachment to Hardy.
Or maybe it was as simple as the guarantee of having a roof over her head, of feeling wanted in the world – no matter how warped the way in which that person wanted her. She felt sick that someone could be that desperate.
Rosie sniffed. ‘That’s right. Says he’s going to get set up again, that he’ll make things the way they were. Until then he doesn’t want anything physical, not while I’m seeing other punters.’
Eve looked at Rosie’s hands, the raw skin exposed by bitten fingernails. She glanced at the empty plate in front of her, thinking about the speed at which Rosie had eaten both helpings, and Eve pictured the doorway they’d found her in. And she understood. As Rosie said herself, better to stick with the weird she knew.
Rosie coughed again, her fragile body wracked by it, eyes squeezed shut, bones visible through the paper-thin flesh above her low-cut top, black-tinged tears rolling down hollow cheeks. As she fought to recover, Eve saw then how desperate she probably was, and she was willing to bet Rosie would be a ready-made alibi for Hardy.
‘Then if he’s adamant he won’t give up on you, it won’t matter if you give us the guy’s name who’s getting Hardy the drugs.’
Rosie sat, weighing whether she had anything to lose. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know it, but I can tell you what he looks like.’
Eve felt the chill crawl up her neck and over her head.
‘Short guy but solid. Bald. Gappy teeth. A spider’s-web tattoo here.’ Rosie pointed to her left temple.
Cooper looked as shocked as she felt.
Chapter 32
Thursday, 28 November
‘I want surveillance on him. Tonight. I’ll do it.’
Hastings didn’t reply but remained standing with his back to Eve, as rigid as the new city-centre shopping complex that now blocked the horizon.
‘Sir?’
Her boss turned, leaned spindly hands on the cracked leather chair behind his desk. ‘You need to go home. Get some rest. You look like shit. The three of you do.’
Hold Your Tongue Page 19