The Suffering of Strangers

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘She was sold.’

  ‘Well, if you are going to be all Pollyanna about it, there’s another logical conclusion to all this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, there’s more.’

  ‘What? What could be worse than that?’ He looked at her face.

  ‘It does get worse. One thing is that the woman who bought Adele as a baby, was called Abby and was the same age as Sally roughly. Sally told you that. Adele would be about twenty-four now. And we have an Abigail, with a twenty-four-year-old daughter, called Mary-Jane. Who wanted to be a singer, like …’

  ‘Adele?’

  ‘And if she got pregnant, it’s not beyond possibility that Abigail might have directed her daughter down the same route that she went. George was not going to give Mary-Jane the time of day, so maybe Abigail thought she was doing the best thing. Think how she must have felt, finally getting pregnant after all she’d been through. Especially if you think how badly George treats Malcolm, and that boy is his own flesh and blood so Abigail might have thought it best if Mary-Jane went to the Braithwaites to be “looked after”.’

  ‘That’s all supposition.’

  ‘The neighbour recognized the photo immediately as Mary-Jane. She hasn’t seen her for months. Long enough to go away and give birth.’

  Anderson dropped his head in his hands. ‘Poor kid, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Think about the timing of the birth and the abduction. There’s … well … another DNA issue. The match of Sally’s grandchild if you like. Adele’s, Mary-Jane’s baby. We have treble-checked this. Mathilda sent the original sample to another lab for checking. She was desperate to avoid cross-contamination. She has checked and double-checked until we are sure, but whatever way you look at it …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Baby Moses. His mother is your daughter. Congratulations, Granddad.’

  ‘The wee Down’s baby?’

  Costello nodded. ‘The wee Down’s baby. Sorry to put that all on you. I thought better me telling you than hearing it from Stuart or Bruce.’

  He smiled at her, his eyes now glistening with moisture. ‘Yeah, rather you than anybody else. God, woke up this morning as a dad of two, going to bed as a dad of three and a granddad. This will take some getting used to.’ Then his eyes creased. ‘But you don’t know where Adele is?’

  ‘As far as we know, five weeks ago she walked up Sevastopol Lane and gave birth to Moses. We don’t know what happened to her after that. We are finding it difficult to find anybody to ask.’

  Colin folded his arms. He swallowed hard. That look of steel hardened in his blue eyes.

  ‘But we will find her, Colin, we will.’

  Thirty minutes later Lorna McGill and Mulholland walked up the path of the house, through an overgrown garden. The front door was old and painted many times over. A large brass knocker hung in the middle with nine thick glass panels and a curtain behind, preventing anybody on the step from looking in.

  ‘Look at this place, this garden, I would have given my right arm to grow up in a place like this.’

  ‘Sholto is not their baby, Sholto has a mother and a father who are waiting for him. He doesn’t need all this.’

  ‘But what about wee Little Moses, who is going to look after him?’

  ‘He will be adopted eventually.’ Mulholland kept his lips sealed, the DNA results were not public knowledge yet. And they were still looking for Mary-Jane, also known as Adele.

  ‘Aye after years going through the state system, going from pillar to post being unable to form long-term friendships and relationships. That’s what does all the harm. Could we not just take Sholto away and give them baby Moses instead?’

  ‘Moses has family,’ said Mulholland, feeling a burst of paternal loyalty to Anderson.

  ‘I have the same amount of paperwork to fill in as you do, so the brief answer to that is no. We need to let the wheels of justice take their course. Roberta and James are waiting for Sholto. Imagine what that woman has gone through.’

  ‘But we are doing the same to them.’

  ‘Not their baby. Small detail, but true.’

  ‘Do we just go in and do it?’

  ‘We do. Nothing else for it.’

  They heard a dog panting at the back of the door, a male voice shouted, ‘Hold on, I’ll get it’ and told the dog to get out the way. As the door opened a large golden retriever rushed out, panting, tail wagging. Lorna immediately bent down to pat it on the head.

  Mulholland held up his warrant card. ‘We need to have a word.’

  The man who opened the door aged about ten years in one glance. He stepped forward and closed the door a little behind him. ‘Please. My wife, please.’

  ‘The baby is not yours, you know that.’

  ‘He is ours. We adopted privately. So there is a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Have you read the newspapers, Mr Ingram? Then you will know why we are here.’

  ‘I’m Lorna McGill, I am a social worker and—’

  ‘We were turned down for a baby by you lot, considered too old. Too old? Look what we can offer.’

  Mulholland had to agree but thought it best to say nothing. They were not Sholto’s parents.

  Ingram opened the door wider and they walked into the hall. Standing at the bottom of it, outlined against the light in the doorframe was a thin woman, dressed in leggings and a T-shirt, a baby in her arms. She was dangling a pair of blue fluffy leggings in the baby’s face, he was gurgling and kicking his legs in appreciation.

  ‘Isobel?’ Ingram said gently. Her eyes went from her husband to Mulholland to Lorna and then a tear started to fall. She muttered one word.

  ‘Please?’

  The nurse had left him alone at first with this tiny little person. He didn’t know, but perhaps he would spend the rest of his life with him. Moses opened his eyes, blue like his granddad’s, so clear the likeness now they knew. A warm blue and a crinkly little smile. His overlarge tongue protruded slightly. Anderson stuck his tongue out in return. It seemed appropriate. Moses’ arm waved in the air, vaguely at Anderson. He looked like a drunk trying to hail a taxi. Anderson held up his little finger and Moses’ hand opened like a starfish and grasped at it tightly. And with remarkable strength.

  ‘Hello grandson,’ Anderson said, aware his voice was breaking. The baby was so small. The door opened quietly behind him, Brenda came in. and stood at the side of the cot. ‘So it’s true then.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Then both stood in silence looking at Moses still holding onto Anderson’s finger. He knew he was holding his breath, not knowing which way Brenda was going to jump. This was really nothing to do with her. She could be very black and white.

  ‘You forget they are so small, so helpless,’ she said, running the back of her hand over the baby’s forehead, lifting the curl of blonde hair. ‘You had a curl like that, I remember your mum showing me a photograph of you sitting in your nappy in front of a coal fire.’

  ‘No central heating in those days. We thought we had it tough.’ Moses gurgled a little. ‘God knows how tough he’s going to find it.’

  Silence fell between them again as they listened to Moses quietly crooning, kicking his legs as if he wanted the blanket off.

  Brenda took a deep breath. ‘The kids are outside, they didn’t know if they should come in or not.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if …’

  ‘Sure of what?’ Brenda looked at him, her head down, eyes studying him from under her eyebrows. ‘Not sure if they want to meet their baby nephew?’

  So Peter and Claire came in and fussed and bothered over him, Anderson stood back in the corner of the room, trying to stop the lump in his throat from choking him, as they chatted about where Moses was staying, fighting over him. What they needed to buy, and if they were still going to call him Moses as somebody had pointed out that was not his name. He had no name.

  And he was intensely proud of his family, his open-hearted loving family. If he could do
it for them, he could do it for Moses.

  After a few moments Dali came in, slithering through the door as easily as a large lady could. It was the first time he had seen her without her great blue duvet jacket. She smiled at him and folded her arms over her huge chest, letting her forearms rest there.

  ‘It’s lovely, Mr Anderson, just lovely.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘And you have no idea how much paperwork you have to go through, this one almighty legal mess.’ She seemed to take some delight in this.

  ‘But he is mine, the DNA doesn’t lie. In law, I mean.’

  ‘It will be fine, complex but fine.’

  ‘Can we take him home though?’

  ‘Legally you can, seeing you are who you are.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to find a nurse who will tell me how he is, if we can take him, medically.’

  ‘There was a bloody meeting at the corner of the corridor with five managers, I had to walk round them.’ Her brown eyes crinkled mischievously. ‘As I said, that’s the problem with this case, too many chiefs, not enough Indians.’

  ‘Is that racist?’ smiled Anderson.

  ‘Probably.’

  And then Moses started crying.

  FOURTEEN

  Friday 3rd November

  Costello got out the car, closing the door carefully. She stepped back a little onto the road, smoothing down her black coat, grasping the handbag under her arm. It was a dull day, with a light breeze blowing in from the east. The wind carried with it a bitter chill, as befitted the sad occasion.

  The funeral of Mary-Jane Haggerty, aged 24. A dog walker had found her body in a car, her own small Fiesta. She had been curled in the driver’s seat and had been there for a few weeks by the state of her decomposition. O’Hare had found a single injection site in her neck, he thought she had suffered an air embolism that had been administered deliberately.

  And Archie Walker was after Braithwaite. He had known Mary-Jane as part of Valerie’s extended family. And Costello was banned from that investigation.

  Adjusting her hat to obscure her face, Costello walked through the gates of the cemetery, having parked her car a couple of streets away to be anonymous in a line of residents’ cars. She had no intention of joining the cortège or attending the service. She intended to watch them as they came in, see how Haggerty behaved and how the family – the two families – reacted. Then, as she moved her handbag from one side to the other, she realized her hands were empty, she had forgotten the flowers. They were still sitting in the boot of the Fiat so she hurried back and quickly retrieved the wreath, a circle of intertwined orange and crimson flowers; the colours of Partick thistle.

  She held the wreath close to her chest, protecting it from the wind as she returned through the big gates, keeping to the path away from the vehicle access, so nobody in a car could catch a glimpse of her. She’d be just another woman in black. At a funeral.

  There was already a crowd of mourners at the doors of the crematorium, a gathering in black, seeking shelter from the wind. Costello walked on, briskly, making it quite clear to anybody who was watching, that she was headed elsewhere.

  She had no interest in this funeral, which was true. She had never met the deceased alive, she was more interested in who was attending.

  Trying to appear inconspicuous, she strolled slowly round the older gravestones, reading the engravings that hadn’t been weathered away. She studied the tall stone with the one-winged angel on top, and the gentle indents of an ornate carving which would be lost in the next years. The stone was for Donald McPhail and his ‘beloved wife Elizabeth’ who had gone now to lie in the arms of the lord. It was too cold to do the maths but they had both lived a good long life, buried in the days when a memorial in death meant they had been something in life. She wondered what Mary-Jane’s family would get to remember her short time on this earth, all of twenty-four years. And who was ‘her family’? Who would do it for her? The man who had brought her up, George Haggerty, or her biological father, Colin Anderson.

  It was Colin’s DNA that had been the blueprint to her existence but it was George Haggerty who had helped with her maths homework, who had taught her how to ride a bike and who had broken her nose. Twice.

  Costello stood at the side of the tall headstone with its slightly faulty angel, leaning against it slightly, the soft, brittle moss crackling under the weight of her shoulder and flaking onto the black wool of her coat. She was leaning more than the deceased might think appropriate due to her heels sinking into the grass, so she apologized. The wind was bitter here, as she was exposed on the rise of the hill. She explained to Donald and to Elizabeth, and to herself, hoping they would understand. They had lived long lives, hopefully untouched by violence. Mary-Jane’s short life had been full of it.

  Aware of the little crowd stirring, Costello turned as the hearse arrived. The mourners, about thirty of them in all, began to thread themselves along the back of the car park, respectful but not crowding. Costello felt her stomach tighten as George Haggerty got out the lead car. She scanned her eyes over the crowd, Colin Anderson was not amongst them. Maybe he had decided he had no place here, he had not known his daughter in life. But Costello did watch carefully as George remained at the door of the limousine, helping out an elderly woman. His mother? Older sister? Dressed in very formal black, her face covered by a dark veil that blew and billowed in the wind, the old woman carried herself with the grace of a princess. Costello thought she would be getting good wear out of that outfit, seeing as George had murdered his wife and his son, and was now burying his daughter. It was difficult to fathom how they could all be there, so accepting of this farce, or were they questioning it just as she was.

  Another car followed, pulling slowly and silently into the car park, then another car behind that, all three were black limousines. It was a good send-off. Three women got out, dressed in the way of the young, more like a wedding than a funeral; high heels, long glossy dark hair, thick black eyebrows and all sharing the same pout. As they stood, almost posing, the back of the hearse was opening up to reveal a wreath of pink flowers, lying on top of a white coffin. George Haggerty had been watching that but turned to the three women and gave them a little smile, they raised white hankies to their eyes. The doors of the second limo opened.

  Anderson was here after all. She recognized him immediately, the tall blond man who emerged as the door was held open by the driver, even though he was dressed in a black suit, well cut, a Crombie coat to keep the wind out. Brenda followed him out in a long dark coat, her auburn hair now tinged with grey that softened and lightened the colour. Then Claire got out, wearing a black trouser suit and polo neck, with David Kerr. Anderson gave his daughter’s boyfriend help out the car, handing him his crutches as the boy got to his feet. Then came Peter, almost as tall as his sister now. He was a wee kid when Costello had last seen him, a wee kid with a gap in his teeth who ate Milkybars and giggled a lot. Then she noticed the other girl emerging from the car, and it took Costello took a moment to recognize Paige Riley who was looking around like a startled fish, mouth gaping open. So this was Anderson’s little social project, this was Paige the junkie transplanted to a middle-class life where you attended funerals for people you had never met and you had to behave yourself.

  The runaway ex-heroin addict scrubbed up well. Costello had to give her that. Anybody would have bet a thousand pounds that Paige would have been in a coffin long before Mary-Jane. Except Colin had intervened in Paige’s life, he didn’t get that chance with his eldest daughter.

  The crowd shuffled around slightly as the coffin was pulled from the back of the hearse. Dad, biological dad, and a brother she had never met, lifted her body in its wooden shroud and carried her through the dark doors of the crematorium, the mourners following behind.

  Costello thanked the McPhails for their support and walked down to the main driveway of the cemetery, working her way up the hill and to the right, to the grave where she was going
to leave the wreath, that of Alan McAlpine, DCI of the Strathclyde police as they were. Joining him in his eternal rest was his wife, Helena. Costello placed the wreath on top of the short grass and stood back considering the black marble stone, how faded Alan’s gold intimation was compared to Helena’s more recent. She was thinking about her old boss lying there, on his side as he had requested, so he could look at the view over the campsies for all eternity. Silly bastard.

  Bastard. Hard wee bastard, flawed enough to understand the flaws of others, unlike Colin Anderson, her current DCI, who was Maria Von Trapp in comparison.

  ‘I hope you like the flowers,’ she said, her words caught and spread by the wind. ‘That bastard Haggerty wouldn’t have you fooled for a minute.’

  DCI Alan McAlpine remained silent.

  By the time she had walked around a little, stopping at the stones of those who had died before they had lived a life, the service was over and the funeral was breaking up. Mary-Jane was on her way to the flames, once there was a trial, her brother and mother would be out of cold storage and be able to join her. As the mourners made their way to a local pub, Costello made her way back behind the gravestones, mentioning to the McPhails that they had the best spot. She wouldn’t be the first to stand here and she wouldn’t be the last. How many ex-wives had hidden here, how many mistresses, not allowed to mourn the man they loved?

  She was watching George Haggerty, a weasel of a man talking to Brenda as if they knew each other well. They had obviously met at the hospital as Moses continued to thrive. How did they reconcile the complex family entanglements? Perfectly well from the look of things.

  She knew he was there before she turned round; she had caught the scent of his aftershave on the wind.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘It’s a free country. And I wanted to see him.’

  ‘George Haggerty did not kill Abigail and Malcolm.’ Colin Anderson said it, for the hundredth time.

  Costello was not listening. ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘He did not kill his wife and his son. He was already on his way to the hospital to see his mother; he’s on the speed cameras all the way up the road and they were alive when he left the house. We have witnesses.’ He had given her that speech a few times too.