by T F Muir
Jessie said, ‘Can you show us the plane tickets?’
‘I’ve only got the e-ticket printouts,’ Kirkwood said.
‘That’ll do.’
‘I haven’t printed them out yet.’
‘We’ll wait,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Your laptop’s in the bedroom. Where’s the printer?’
Kirkwood seemed reluctant to leave his wife, who surprised Gilchrist by saying, ‘I’ll print them out from my computer in the study.’ Then she squirmed free of her husband’s grip and left the room. Gilchrist nodded for Mhairi to follow her.
Kirkwood raked his hair with long fingers. ‘You know, we . . . ’ He showed his horse teeth. ‘You make us feel like criminals. We’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Force of habit,’ Gilchrist said, and tried a smile of reassurance – for Kirkwood, or for himself, he could not say. He felt so sick to the pit of his stomach that he could easily tilt his head and throw up all over their nicely vacuumed carpet. How had he managed to convince himself that Novo’s call last night had been to warn the Kirkwoods to move, that the police were closing in? And now he was here – his gaze shifted around the room – he was closing in on what? The Kirkwoods were working professionals, with no family of their own. He eyed the room, tried to imagine a child in this house, but the image failed to compute.
As if sensing Gilchrist’s weakness, Kirkwood said, ‘We’re happy to help, but we’ve got a lot to do before flying out this evening. So I . . . I . . . we’d like you to leave.’
Gilchrist would have liked to leave, too, the sooner the better. He glanced at the lounge door, hoping to see Mhairi return with the e-tickets, then he could make a quick exit, try to get over the utter fucking balls-up he was making of it all.
He eyed Kirkwood again. ‘You said you were packing.’
Kirkwood gave a sheepish grin. ‘I lied. I’m sorry. I hadn’t started.’
‘So what took you so long to come to the door?’
‘I was in the toilet,’ he said, and his eyes lit up with relief as his wife returned with several pages of printouts, which she handed to Gilchrist.
He stared at them. Two tickets: one in the name of Kevin James Kirkwood, and the other, Annette Kirkwood. It all seemed so clear to him now, the fatal flaw in his rationale, the error in his logic that two adults would try to leave the country with an abducted child whose photograph had fronted every national newspaper for the last several days, been highlighted on every news channel, been on the radar of every police force. As a family, the Kirkwoods would never get through Customs without being stopped. He had made such an error that all he wanted to do now was wish the Kirkwoods a safe flight, then shrink from view, and return home to crawl into bed and lick his wounds.
After being fired by Greaves, of course.
He handed the e-tickets to Jessie, and said to Kirkwood, ‘If you could take a few minutes to give statements to DS Janes, we’ll get out of your hair.’
Kirkwood struggled between smiling and grimacing. ‘Of course.’
‘In the meantime, do you mind if I look around?’
‘Yes I bloody well mind,’ Kirkwood snapped.
Gilchrist gave a wry grin, and a nod of his head.
It really had been stupid to ask, he supposed.
He turned and walked from the lounge.
CHAPTER 29
It took Jessie and Mhairi just over half an hour before they returned to the Vectra.
They slid into their seats in silence – Mhairi behind the wheel, Jessie the passenger – as if they didn’t have it in their hearts to try to cheer up Gilchrist with the good news that the Kirkwoods had broken down and confessed.
Fat fucking chance.
Just that thought almost brought a groan to Gilchrist’s lips. He sat alone in the back, dejected and miserable. He had tried to take his mind off his failing investigation by calling Jack. But the beeping tone told him that Jack had powered down his mobile, which was how he dealt with stuff – ignore the storm until the sun comes out. He’d been in no mood to call Maureen, either. Nor Cooper, for that matter. She was on holiday for the rest of the week, fuck it.
But his mind refused to let go.
No matter how much he chastised himself for screwing up, a child’s life was still at stake. He had to get his investigation back on track – somehow. He needed to go through the files again, see what he had missed, because he was missing something. But more troubling was the fact that, as each hour passed, the chances of finding Katie shrank, and as Greaves’s words came back to him, If you haven’t found Katie by close of business Thursday, you’re being pulled off the case, he realised he might already be out of time.
He shrunk deeper into his seat, and stared out the window.
No one spoke until Mhairi exited Dumfries town limits and accelerated towards the M74. Jessie shifted in her seat, looked over her shoulder. ‘Want to talk about it?’ she said.
‘Not really.’
‘It was a good theory. You almost had me convinced.’
He grimaced at the word almost and said, ‘Until?’
‘Until we couldn’t find anything.’ Jessie shook her head. ‘When the wife answered the door with that look on her face, I’m thinking to myself, bloody hell, we’re onto a winner here. We’ve nailed it. Game over.’
‘But you found nothing,’ he said, more comment than question.
‘Not a thing, sir.’ Mhairi touched the brakes as she approached a roundabout. ‘But I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Something about the whole thing didn’t seem right.’
Gilchrist pulled himself upright, gripped the back of Mhairi’s seat. ‘In what way?’
‘They both looked tense, sir. Unnaturally so.’
‘What about you, Jessie?’
‘You’d have to think they were hiding something. But whatever it was, it wasn’t Katie Davis. Of course, bursting into their home the way we did wouldn’t exactly settle nerves.’
‘Do you think they’ll make a formal complaint, sir?’ Mhairi asked.
‘I’d be surprised if they didn’t,’ he said. ‘But you were following orders. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Jessie?’
‘Whatever.’
Gilchrist slumped back into his seat. He had failed. He had made a fool of himself – majestically. He had taken the beast by the reins and gone straight in, full gallop, dragged Jessie and Mhairi with him, and failed as only he could. Kirkwood and his wife would file a complaint to the powers that be, and DCI Andy Gilchrist would be carpeted. Of that he had no doubt – none whatso-fucking-ever. Just how thick that carpeting would be was another matter. Kicked off the case? Suspended from the Force? Asked to resign?
Or just fired on the bloody spot?
Quite a few options, if you thought about it. But as his mind contemplated the end of his career, already working out how to come to terms with it, his subconscious niggled away at some deeper level. He had never understood how the mind worked, or more exactly, how his mind worked. Ideas popped in and out all the time, like insects through open windows.
Sometimes they flew in and stayed. Other times they flew off.
But the sweat on Kirkwood’s face stayed. His excuse about packing stayed, too. And why lie? Because Kirkwood had thought Gilchrist was a salesman? Even after he flashed his warrant card to his wife? Her stare when she first opened the door: that stayed, too. And her trembling lips; her inability to look him in the eye.
These images did not fly from his thoughts. No, they stayed.
And the e-tickets had not been printed out, even though Kirkwood said they had. And why had his wife offered to print them out? Because she had not wanted Gilchrist to go back upstairs to the master bedroom, with all its personal and private clutter, and the carpet not vacuumed, with its electrical wires, its discarded clothes, and its imprints . . .
He caught his breath.
. . . its discarded clothes, and its . . .
. . . imprints.
He forced himself to t
hink back to what he’d seen, but could not recall the details, only that the imprints on the carpet looked . . . what? Different? Wider than the chair legs?
Then he came to question what his eyes had seen but his mind failed to register, and he shook the back of Jessie’s seat. ‘What did you find downstairs?’ he asked her.
‘Nothing—’
‘No. Were the rooms neat? Tidy? Hoovered? What?’
‘Tidy. The whole place was immaculate.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘No mess anywhere. In any of the rooms. Right?’
Silent, Mhairi returned his gaze in the rear-view mirror.
Jessie turned to face him. ‘Right,’ she said.
‘Except the master bedroom,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘But I do.’
‘So you’re saying what?’
What indeed? If only he could still these ephemeral thoughts that flitted in and out of his mind like summer ghosts; clutch them, study them, work out what they meant. ‘Kirkwood said he was packing,’ he tried. ‘Did either of you see any evidence of that? Any suitcases?’
‘They weren’t flying out until that evening, sir,’ Mhairi reminded him.
And Jessie said, ‘He hadn’t started packing yet. He said that, too. Remember?’
‘I do, yes. But he was sweating when he answered the door. So I’m asking – Why? What had he been doing to make him sweat?’
‘Maybe he was nervous?’ Mhairi ventured.
Gilchrist had seen criminals sweat from nerves. Kirkwood hadn’t been sweating from nerves – not to begin with. He’d been sweating at having put in some effort. ‘They’d moved quickly,’ he said. ‘They get a call last night. They book their flights. But they haven’t packed yet. Why?’
‘I’m not sure I follow, sir.’
‘Because they had to do something else first,’ he said, pressing forward between the front seats, so that he was almost in line with both of them. ‘Let’s say that they have Katie . . . I know, I know, no need to look at me like that, I know it’s a stretch.’ He waited until Jessie settled down. ‘But for the sake of argument,’ he went on, ‘let’s just say that they do in fact have her. What would they have to do first if they were flying out of the country?’
‘As a family of three?’
‘No. They would be risking it if they took Katie with them.’
‘Then they’d need to arrange for someone to look after her,’ Mhairi said.
Gilchrist smiled. His logic was getting there. But it was still too grey, not enough black and white. ‘And who would that have to be?’ he asked.
‘Someone they trusted?’
‘Or someone who was in it with them,’ Jessie added.
‘Maybe,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But for the sake of argument, I’m thinking that the fewer people who knew, the better it would be—’
‘The fewer who knew?’ Jessie snorted. ‘Everybody knows Katie’s been abducted. It’s in all the news—’
‘I know, I know, but think about it. If someone didn’t know, who would that someone have to be?’
‘Someone who wouldn’t be up to speed with the news?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And maybe someone old, or older, sir.’
Jessie blew out her cheeks. ‘One of their mothers?’
Gilchrist reclined back into his seat, mobile in his hand. ‘You got Kevin Kirkwood’s mobile number?’
Jessie accessed her records, then read it out to him. ‘You going to phone him up and ask?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve got a friend who owes me a favour,’ he said, not wanting to mention Dick by name. The trouble with Dick was that he had no qualms about crossing legal boundaries for a fee, a fact Gilchrist kept to himself and remote from his colleagues. ‘Text Jackie,’ he said to Jessie, ‘and get her to find out where their parents live.’
‘Would you like me to head back to Dumfries, sir?’ Mhairi asked.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Take the next exit, and see if we can find a coffee shop. My mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot’s cage.’
By the time they drove into the tiny village of Crawford, Jessie had heard back from Jackie, who’d texted with confirmation that Annette Kirkwood’s parents had retired to Bude in Devon – too remote to fit in with Gilchrist’s thoughts. But Kevin Kirkwood’s father had passed away ten years ago, and his mother, now in her seventies, lived alone in a bungalow in Queen Elizabeth Drive in Castle Douglas, less than twenty miles south-west of Dumfries.
Which gave Gilchrist food for his theory.
He’d already passed Kirkwood’s mother’s details to Dick, but after his earlier fiasco that morning, he’d be damned if he was going to take further action without first hearing back from him.
Mhairi pulled to a halt in front of an old stone building that doubled as a post office and licensed grocer’s. The air smelled fresh and clean, and a cool Scottish breeze that kept the temperature in the fifties ruffled Gilchrist’s hair as he stepped from the car. The endless rush of motorway traffic droned in the background.
‘Anyone like a bite?’ he asked.
‘Watching my weight,’ Jessie said.
‘Still?’
‘Bugger off.’
Mhairi shook her head. ‘Coffee only, sir.’
Inside, Gilchrist placed the order, then retrieved his mobile. If his gut was correct, he expected Dick to confirm that Kirkwood had phoned his mother shortly after Novo’s cryptic call to him.
Dick picked up on the second ring. ‘Can’t find anything, Andy.’
A buffalo hoof kicked the air from Gilchrist’s lungs. ‘Tell me you’re joking.’
‘No joke.’
Bloody hell. How many times could he be wrong in the one fucking day? He thought he’d worked it all out. But no, he was wrong. How could that be? He was missing something. He just had to be. But what? The answer was there, before him. All he had to do was find it.
‘When was the last call made?’ he tried.
‘There’ve been no calls out from that number since late yesterday afternoon.’
‘Could he have lost his phone?’
‘He could’ve,’ Dick said. ‘But I’ve just been checking that Castle Douglas number you gave me. It’s taken three calls in the last twenty-four hours. All from the same incoming number. One last night, two this morning. I was about to work on that when you called.’
‘Give me that incoming number,’ Gilchrist said and, once he had it, said, ‘Let me get back to you.’ He ended the call, tapped in the code to withhold his own number, then dialled the number Dick gave him. He covered the mouthpiece as the connection was made, held his breath as it rang once, twice, then was picked up on the third ring.
‘Hello?’ a woman’s voice said.
Gilchrist killed the call.
The pieces slipped into place. He recognised the high-pitched tone, the almost whine-like voice, and felt a spurt of irritation at his limited thinking. Why had he thought that only Kevin Kirkwood would have called his elderly mother, and not her daughter-in-law—?
‘There you are, mister.’
Gilchrist faced the counter as the till was ringing up, pulled out a tenner and handed it over. Then he grabbed the three coffees with two hands, and backed out of the door without spilling a drop.
Mhairi was seated in the Vectra, on her mobile, while Jessie strode down the gravel side road, talking into hers. She looked up as Gilchrist walked to the car, and she nodded to him, then rushed to finish her call.
‘What kept you?’ she said, popping the top off and taking a sip.
‘Had to take a call,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Let’s get back on the road while I run some thoughts past the two of you.’
Mhairi fired up the ignition, reversed from her parking spot. ‘Where to, sir?’
‘Back to Dumfries,’ he said.
Jessie looked at him, incredulous. ‘About to make an arrest, are we?’
‘Not yet. But we’re getting there.�
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CHAPTER 30
By the time Mhairi worked her way back on to the M74, Gilchrist had run his thoughts past her and Jessie. ‘So, what do you think?’ he said.
‘That it makes sense,’ Jessie said.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
‘But so did your last theory, and look where that got us.’
‘Sir, would you like me to call DS Chambers,’ Mhairi said, ‘and arrange for some local support again?’
Time was critical, he knew. Chambers had jumped when asked earlier, but it would be too much to expect him to jump a second time after his earlier fuck-up. ‘Let’s test the waters first, before we go diving in again,’ he said.
‘Oh, I like that,’ Jessie said. ‘The royal We. Excuse me, but speaking for myself, I was diving in the first time following orders. Specifically yours.’
With Jessie, Gilchrist was never sure if she was being tongue-in-cheek, or downright serious. But no matter how he looked at it, she was correct. ‘Noted,’ he grumbled, and was about to slump back into his seat when his mobile rang – ID Greaves. ‘Bugger it,’ he said, and took the call.
‘Where are you?’ CS Greaves started, without introduction.
‘Following a lead, sir.’
‘Well, I need you in my office no later than midday, Andy. I’ve had the Chief on the line, and he’s hopping mad. Never heard him so frustrated. Nearly blew my eardrum out.’
A clamp tightened around Gilchrist’s chest. Kirkwood had moved quicker than he’d anticipated. ‘Anything in particular upsetting him?’ he tried.
Greaves held his chuckle so long that Gilchrist thought he was listening to a recording that had stuck. Then his voice broke in with, ‘I think this day’s been coming for a long time, Andy. Although it won’t be pleasant watching big Archie chew you down to size and spit you out, I think it’s well deserved.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Me, too, Andy. But you really can be the cheeky bastard.’
‘Yes, I can, sir.’
