The Photographer

by Craig Robertson

  It was different though, he had to remind himself of that. He was different. He might have to think like Broome to work out what he’d done and what he might do next but that didn’t mean he was like him. This guy wasn’t wired the way other people were.

  He couldn’t afford to get caught up in the process or be bothered by it. Only the end result mattered.

  He had to wade through shit to get out of the sewer.

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘Dan, I need your help with something.’

  ‘Name it, Rachel.’

  ‘That trick you pulled to get the numbers of the calls in the middle of the night? Your contact who can trace things. I need him to get me something. Fast. I don’t have time to fanny around doing things by the book and waiting for warrants and phone companies.’

  ‘It’s a her but it won’t be a problem. Just make sure you cover yourself by also getting it done through channels.’

  ‘Christ, it’s not my first week. I do know what I’m doing, Danny.’

  She closed her eyes and took a breath. ‘Sorry. Again. Look, Leah Watt has gone missing and I’m terrified that either she’s done something stupid or Broome has got to her. I need to know where she was yesterday, not just calls she’s made but where she was. And I need to cut corners. Your contact, she can triangulate from masts or whatever it is and give me some locations, right?’

  ‘If it can be done, she can do it. Just give me the girl’s number and leave it with me. But listen to me, this isn’t your fault. Go find her but don’t do it out of guilt.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Dan. Even I don’t know that. Right now, it sure as hell feels like my fault.’

  While waiting for technology to do its stuff, Narey did what she knew best. Old school. Feet on the pavement and knock on doors. Sure, her phone was burning hot with the calls in and out but if Leah was out there then there would be someone who’d know where she was.

  The ‘if’ hung over her, a dark cloud waiting to tip down in buckets. If it fell, she’d drown.

  Leah had been a hairdresser until the rape, working out of a shop on the south side. She’d tried to go back part-time a few months later but it was just too public – too many knowing looks between the customers, too much tea and sympathy from the staff.

  She’d packed it in and did temp office work when she could get it. It suited her not to be in the one place for too long, before word got round.

  Her best friend still worked out of the same hairdressers, though, and Narey wanted to pay her a visit. Cover Girl sat next to the Rum Shack on Pollokshaws Road. Across from another bar, along from another hairdresser’s, near another bar, near another bookies.

  Narey saw Shazia Karim through the window and said a silent thanks for the first bit of good news in a while. She’d met Shaz once before and remembered her ferocious protectiveness of Leah, a bond forged through secondary school and on through college to the world of boyfriends, broken engagements and prosecco pick-me-ups.

  A bell sounded as Narey entered the shop, causing Shaz to look up from the blonde hair that was looping through her left hand. Recognition became alarm became anger. The woman in the chair yelped as her hair was tugged. Shaz held up a finger, signalling Narey to wait. In a flurry of snips she was done, the poor customer left as half cut as anyone in Heraghty’s pub across the way.

  ‘Through the back,’ Shaz snapped. She was a beautiful girl with large, haunting eyes and long hair so dark it almost had a hue of blue under the lights. Beautiful but fierce.

  She closed a door firmly behind them, a violent tug on a light pull revealing a small kitchen with a formica table and three odd chairs. A kettle was brewing huffily on a worktop and Shaz stared at it as if deciding whether politeness overruled anger. It clearly didn’t, as no offer of tea or coffee was made.

  ‘So, where is she?’

  ‘Shaz, I’m hoping you can tell me. Have you heard from her, anything at all?’

  The chestnut eyes flared and for an instant, Narey thought one of the mugs on the worktop was going to be flying in her direction. Shaz settled for holding on to it, just in case.

  ‘I wouldn’t even be in today except we’re short and I couldn’t get the time off. I was going to tell the old cow to ram her job but then I realised I didn’t know what I’d do anyway. Go knocking on doors, go to the places we’d go? I didn’t know where to start.

  ‘All I know is she’s not answering her phone. It goes straight to voicemail without ringing. It’s switched off or the battery’s dead. You’re the bloody police! Where is she? What the fuck has happened to her?’

  ‘When did you last speak to her, Shaz?’

  The younger woman was nearly strangling the mug to death by its handle. Her other hand was squeezing the life out of the worktop edge.

  ‘Two nights ago. The night before she . . . when she was last seen. We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘How did she seem?’

  ‘Down. Angry. Pissed off at you. Scared too, I’d say. She never said as much but I heard it in her voice. But she wasn’t . . . I didn’t hear anything that made me think she’d run off.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what she’s done? Run off?’

  ‘I’m fucking hoping that’s what she’s done! I’m terrified to think it’s something else. If that bastard has hurt her again . . .’

  The handle snapped in her hand, ceramic splinters crashing onto the work surface and one slicing into her palm. ‘Shit!’ She ripped off sheets of kitchen roll and wrapped her hand in a makeshift bandage.

  Narey strode over and despite some resistance, took Shaz’s hand in hers, applying pressure to the cut.

  ‘Think back to what she said, Shaz. Please. Any little thing might be useful. If she has run off, where do you think she might have gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I’m not sure I care, as long as she’s all right. I’m just pissed off she didn’t take me with her.’

  Narey pressed slightly tighter on the cut to gain Shaz’s attention. ‘Think, please.’

  There was a heavy sigh. ‘Grasmere, maybe? You know, in the Lake District. She’d been a couple of times and loved it there. She talked about it a lot. I’m not saying she’s gone there. Just maybe.’

  ‘Thanks, that helps. We’ll check it out. Anyone that she might have run to? Another close friend?’

  Shaz seemed to take it as an insult, her lips pursing. ‘

  I’m her best friend.’ She sniffed. ‘There is her rape counsellor but I don’t know where she is, just that she’s in Broomhill somewhere.’

  It was little information but a little more than Narey knew and the fact stung. All Leah had told her was that she was getting counselling and that progress was slow but worthwhile and she was feeling better about herself because of it. Any more than that was declared off limits. It seemed Shaz shared her frustration at being shut out.

  ‘Tell me what Leah said when she last spoke to you, Shaz. I need to know.’

  ‘Yes, but are you sure you want to know?’

  The tone of her voice made Narey doubt very much that she did. But she had to.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘She said you let her down. That she should never have listened to you. You’d told her everything would be okay and it wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t. She said you’d pretended to be her friend but in the end you did nothing.’

  It hurt. The truth often did. This wasn’t about her, though.

  ‘What else did she say? Did she talk about Broome, about her mum and dad, about any plans? Did she mention anything at all she was going to do yesterday? Or make plans to meet you?’

  The rage on Shaz’s face was starting to give way to distress. Narey had seen it so many times. Scaffolding collapsing because the weight was too much to bear.

  ‘She said her mum and dad were doing her head in. She felt guilty about that but couldn’t listen to them worrying much longer. She said she couldn’t live with the look in her dad’s eyes. Disappointment. She didn’t mention Broome. She ne
ver did by name. Just by what he did to her. She talked about moving to Spain or Italy and getting a job where no one knew her but she can’t speak the language. She didn’t mean it. I’d have known if she did. I wasn’t pretending to be her pal, Inspector. I really was.’

  Narey wasn’t going to rise to it. It would do no one any good.

  ‘How did the call finish? Were you going to call each other yesterday, or text maybe? Did you arrange to meet up?’

  ‘She was going to come over to mine last night and I was going to cook and open a bottle. I texted her in the afternoon to make sure she was still on but didn’t get an answer. I called her later and just got the voicemail. When she didn’t show up, I called her mum and dad and they told me.’

  ‘Shaz, what was the last thing she said to you?’

  ‘What? Are you fucking trying to make me greet?’

  ‘No. I’m trying to find out what happened to her.’

  The brown eyes grew damp, dousing some of the fire, and her voice softened into a plea. ‘Don’t say happened. Please. Don’t say that. Don’t let it be that.’

  Shaz closed her eyes, part thinking, part hiding. Finally. ‘She said she wasn’t taking this shit any more. Those was her exact words. Not taking this shit. I asked her what she meant but she just said she’d see me tomorrow. She said she loved me and hung up.’

  Narey had more questions than Shaz could answer. Mainly they boiled down to the same one that Shaz had asked Leah herself. What had she meant? I’m not taking this shit any more.

  Before the rape, Leah used to work out a lot. She’d told Narey that she hit the gym three or four times a week, usually straight after work. Spin classes, body pump and something called velocity were her favourites, along with circuits of the various machines. It kept her in shape and looking good.

  Then Broome came along, turned everything upside down and inside out. She couldn’t face people, didn’t care if she was fit or fat. Self-respect was swapped for self-loathing and the gym was abandoned to a past she longed for.

  She drank. She didn’t hide the fact, which was a good sign, but neither did she apologise for it. Narey had seen empty wine bottles stacked ready for recycling and when Leah saw her looking she just shrugged unashamedly. People with less reason than her drank at least as much; who was to say she shouldn’t.

  It wasn’t all home drinking though. Sometimes Shaz would venture over the river and they’d knock back vodka or Belgian beer in Brel on Ashton Lane, not caring if anyone saw them crying. Leah would never go alone.

  According to Shaz, her solo excursions were confined to making her weekly visits to Broomhill for counselling. There was a café nearby that she told Shaz she’d grown fond of, named Kothel. Shaz said Leah would often pop in before or after her therapy sessions. Surely it was worth a try. Narey could make some calls, grab a late lunch and maybe, hopefully, someone in the café would know something that could help.

  She parked on Crow Road, just a few yards from the café but far enough that a sudden cloudburst had her scurrying from her car and through the door. She was assaulted by the sudden heat and the aroma of coffee and cakes. There was a strong hipster vibe to the place with heavy wooden tables and hanging hams, exposed piping and bare bulbs. She liked it, though, and could see why Leah did.

  She took a seat at a high wooden bench, eyeing up the array of vintage bottles and books when a waitress breezed up bearing a smile and a menu. She was about Leah’s age with a sweep of dark hair tied back and large brown eyes.

  ‘Hi, I’m Georgina. How are you today?’

  It was the question that people didn’t really want an answer to. Depressed, devastated, desperate and angry. That would have been the truth, but Narey settled for the default setting.

  ‘Not bad, thanks. Can I get a coffee and . . .’ she looked at the array of cakes on display by the counter ‘. . . and one of those, but don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Our secret,’ the waitress laughed. ‘They’re great.’

  There was a newspaper lying on a tabletop and despite knowing she probably shouldn’t, Narey began flicking through the pages. The face that looked out at her from the top of page five confirmed her initial resistance was well founded.

  Broome stared at her above an opinion piece. WHEN WILL MEN GET AN EVEN BREAK? It was a bitter whinge about what he saw as a new inequality; the female-dominated society where poor men were continually left holding the shitty end of the stick. She got through six or seven paragraphs of his garbage and threw it aside.

  She made calls but none of them reaped anything that made her happy. There had been no activity on Leah’s bank account since a little after noon the day before. She’d bought a bottle of still water and a tuna crunch baguette from the Greggs on Buchanan Street, near Queen Street station. And that was it. No train ticket, no flight, no large cash withdrawal, nothing.

  Her other friends, none of them as close as Shaz Karim, all said they hadn’t heard from her in days. There was nothing from the hospitals and, thank God, nothing from the morgue.

  She called Tony’s mobile, just wanting to hear his voice, but it went straight to voicemail. She tried Danny but his did the same. For a brief moment, she struggled in the quicksand of self-pity before remembering that was the surest way to drown.

  The waitress came back with the coffee and a million calories disguised as a cake.

  ‘Georgina, before you go, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I was wondering if you knew a friend of mine. She’s a regular customer in here.’

  ‘Oh, I might do. What’s her name?’

  ‘Leah. Leah Watt.’

  Georgina lifted her shoulders apologetically. ‘Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell.’

  Narey brought a photograph from her bag. ‘This is her.’

  There was instant recognition. ‘Oh yes, I know her. She comes in once a week. Always has a hazelnut latte. And a chocolate brownie. Is she okay?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s just that’ – she wasn’t sure whether to go on, worrying about betraying a confidence – ‘she often seems quite sad.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, maybe I shouldn’t be saying but sometimes I’ve been sure she’d been crying. She covers it up but you can still tell. I always felt sorry for her but I knew she wasn’t the kind who wanted me to ask about it. So, we all just sort of ignored it.’

  Even in her place of refuge, Leah couldn’t escape her nightmares.

  ‘When was she last in?’

  ‘Oh, three days ago. Always a Tuesday. Is she okay?’

  A sigh escaped like a prisoner. ‘I hope so, Georgina. I really hope so.’

  When she got back into the car, she checked her phone. Two missed calls, one each from Tony and Danny. Tony had left a voicemail, just checking she was okay and saying that he’d call later.

  ‘Hey, Dan.’

  ‘Hey love, you doing okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry for snapping at you this morning.’

  ‘Stop apologising. I do know what it’s like, remember.’

  ‘I know, I know. So, did your contact get anything?’

  ‘Yeah, she came through. It’s probably going to cost me a case of gin so I hope it’s worth it. She’s got a tail on your girl for yesterday.’

  Her pulse accelerated.

  ‘First up, Leah made no phone calls yesterday morning. That’s the bad news. The last call she made was the night before. My contact checked it out and the number’s registered to a Shazia Karim. Call made at 19.28, lasted a bit over fifteen minutes. However, she did use her phone yesterday and we’ve got a trace on where she was.

  ‘It was used three times in the morning, between nine and eleven. Probably texts but they don’t leave a fingerprint of where they went except on the hardware of the phone itself. Not that my girl can pick up anyway. You’ll need GCHQ or the like for that. But she can tell that they were made from Leah’s home, either in or very near to the
house. It’s later that it gets interesting.’

  ‘Don’t tease, Danny. Spill it.’

  ‘You said she left home late morning. About eleven thirty, right? She was on her phone half an hour later in the city centre, again no call but probably using the internet. She was on Milton Street.’

  Danny waited to hear the sound of the penny dropping.

  ‘Milton Street? That’s where the passport office is.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe just coincidence.’

  ‘There’s not much else there. The Sunday Post used to have its offices across the street but they’ve been demolished. It’s just car showrooms plus the work and pensions office.’ She paused, thinking. ‘And it’s a five-minute walk to Stewart Street.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that too. But you’d have known if she’d turned up at the station asking for you. Anyway, she couldn’t have been there long. The next signal was from just below St Vincent Street at Hope Street. Corner of Boswell Lane. From there, happily for us, it kept signalling. She was on the internet, on the move.’

  ‘Using Google Maps?’

  ‘That’s what we think. Trying to find her way to somewhere specific.’

  The itch at Narey’s wrists and the prickling of the hairs on her neck were a sign of something bad on its way. Not a prophecy, more a consciousness borne out of experience. Cop sense, not magic.

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘She went south on Hope Street and turned onto Gordon Street. Then Union Street to Argyle Street and from there onto the Trongate, past the Barrowlands Ballroom then on along London Road.’

  Narey’s mind was in overdrive, a flag somewhere just out of reach.

  ‘She walked for about twenty-five minutes, using the internet the whole way.’

  Narey’s cop sense was screaming at her. She wanted to say the place before he did but didn’t want it to be true. Except, a small part of her did. The cop part.

  ‘She got as far as Binnie Place. It beeped out from there for a while then it went dead.’

  Danny’s words battered her head. If he knew the significance of Binnie Place then there was nothing in his voice to give it away.