Throwaways (Crime Files Book 2)

by Jenny Thomson

  Tommy rolled his eyes. “Christ, Nancy, who puts these ideas into your head?” His lips moved into a smile. “Course, I know you’re not serious. You’re not that stupid or psychopathic.” He paused, probably remembering my DIY tattoo on the killer-rapist. “Nah, you are a bit psycho.”

  He knows me. That’s why we get on so well.

  ***

  Dr. Cassidy had a practice on Great Western Road, one of Glasgow’s longest streets. When we dialed the number, we got a recorded message telling us he was on vacation and giving the number for two other psychotherapists if we were patients facing “a crisis.”

  “What do we do now?” Tommy said teasingly. “Do you think the good doctor might be playing hooky?”

  “Nah,” I said,” I think he may be too busy torturing the poor women he keeps in his basement to go to work.” I shivered when I said it because I hoped it wasn’t true.

  We decided to pay him a visit on the off chance he was there and reluctant to answer his phone.

  Before we’d even got to his office we heard the sirens. When we turned the corner, the place was swarming with police. We watched two crime-scene techs dressed like giant condoms performing a fingertip search of the area around the red sandstone building. One was in the small garden at the front of the building, crouching down to inspect the small patch of shrubbery for clues, whilst her colleague followed the short path that led up to the main door. A bored police officer who looked incapable of outrunning a donut stood sentry at the gate, barring the way in.

  Tommy slowed down the car to get a better look.

  “There’s only one way to find out what’s going on,” I said. “Let me out and I’ll see what people are saying.”

  A crowd of around forty people had gathered behind the tape. Some of them gawped and pointed, whilst others, including an elderly woman and a ruddy woman in a cleaner’s uniform, silently watched the crime-scene guys. For them, this was better than Taggart.

  I settled in beside and elderly man who had his grandchild with him in a pram. “What a little cutie,” I said, beaming as I gazed down at the wee boy who was sleeping soundly, clutching a floppy bunny rabbit.

  The man flashed me a wry smile. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d heard him a wee while ago, hen. The racket he was making.” He raised his eyes, which only served to highlight the wrinkles on his leathery face. “Then all this hoo-hah started just as I’d got him to sleep. Can’t believe he hasn’t even stirred.”

  “Have you any idea what’s happened?” Before he could answer, I added, “My sister lives on this road. I’m worried about her.”

  “They brought someone out ten minutes ago. Didn’t look too good to me. My eyes aren’t too good, but I reckon they put a body bag in the back of an ambulance. Guess we’ll hear more about it in the news, hen.”

  Telling him I had to phone my sister, I skulked off.

  “I don’t think we’ll get that wee chat with Cassidy,” I said to Tommy as I climbed back in the car.

  ***

  Cassidy had been found slumped over his desk by the cleaner, with half his head missing and his gun at his feet.

  It seemed like a classic case of suicide; he’d shoved the gun in his mouth and fired, but the police had to be sure there wasn’t a link between his death and the type of work he used to do. Before he went into private practice, he’d been one of the resident psychologists at Herriot House, a secure unit for troubled youngsters, many of whom had committed horrendous crimes. He’d left his job there after four years by “mutual consent.”

  When the police delved deeper, they discovered he’d been asked to resign over his “questionable therapeutic methods.” These included encouraging a thirteen-year-old child rapist to scrub his genitals with steel wool and telling a fifteen-year-old girl who’d drowned her baby sister in the bath to sit in a bath full of ice for ten minutes to atone for what she’d done. The girl had nearly died of hypothermia. Cassidy had claimed that in order to be cured, these disturbed kids had to be cleansed. He sounded crazier than the people he’d been treating, and his erratic behavior was blamed on the stress of the job.

  Tommy put it best when he said, “So the psychopath was looking after the psychopaths. Lovely. Wonder if they’ll mention that in his eulogy.”

  I didn’t have the energy to laugh, because with Cassidy dead we were faced with one big problem: we’d no idea where he’d hidden the women. We had to find them. With their captor dead, the clock was ticking before they starved to death. That’s if Cassidy hadn’t killed them before he’d killed himself.

  Chapter 12

  Tommy’s face was etched with concentration. “If he did take those women, where would he hide them?”

  We were back at his place, hoping that a mug of strong tea and a few Tunnock’s teacakes would bring us inspiration. So far, it’d failed.

  “Well, it can’t be his home or his rental properties. The police will have checked them to see if there was any evidence that something to do with his work pushed him over the edge.”

  “Detective Inspector Waddell’s very thorough.”

  Tommy grinned. “Detective Inspector Waddell? Thought you two would be on first-name terms, being best pals and all.”

  Leaning over, I gently punched him on the arm. “It’s not like that. You know that.” I paused, trying not to rise to the bait, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You know he was the only one who came to visit me in the hospital after…you know.”

  My only other visitors had been my cheating ex-boyfriend and my auntie who soon scarpered when she realized I was in gaga land.

  “Now where would he stash the girls?” Tommy said. “Think.”

  A thought occurred to me. “What if he didn’t act alone? The girls could be hidden at the home of his accomplice.”

  Tommy frowned. “There’s nothing to suggest he had an accomplice.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “What about the secure hospital where Cassidy worked? He’d know it well. I’d be a great place to hide them. Nobody would think of looking there.”

  Tommy made a face. “Nah, I checked that with my contact. The place is run like a prison, and they have a biometric entry system and an iris scan. It’s been stepped up since Cassidy last worked there. Before it was all electronic key cards. Besides, he’s been banned from the place. He’s not even allowed to visit.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  We both knew, but we’d been avoiding saying it out loud because that would mean taking drastic action.

  “We need to find Kim,” Tommy said.

  Initially labeled as a missing person, she’d been spotted on the streets again and there was only one way we’d find her.

  It was time for a career change…

  “Mummy, can we have fish fingers and beans for dinner?”

  A smile formed at the corners of Diane’s mouth as she looked at her little girl’s gap-toothed grin. Another tooth had fallen out that day. That meant it was tooth fairy time. She’d wait until Kyra was asleep and leave two shiny pound coins under her pillow.

  “Of course we can.”

  Kyra let out a happy shriek and ran over to her. “Mummy, you’re the best,” she chirped as she wrapped her little arms around her waist. Diane took in the strawberry scent of her daughter’s hair and closed her eyes. Right at that very moment, she was content...

  A swathe of light burned into her retinas as the door was thrown open. And with the light, her little girl was banished as if she’d never existed at all.

  “Coming in, ready or not,” the voice chanted.

  He was back again.

  A line from a poem she’d learnt at school came into her head. Something about all that we see or seem being a dream within a dream.

  She wondered if that was what her life was now. Then he threw cold water over her, and it felt like icy nails being driven into her skin. She would have shrieked, but the ball gag was back in her mouth. All she could do was watch wide-eyed as the man advanced towar
ds her.

  “It’s time for your treatment.”

  His singsong voice gave her the creeps, but she tried not to show it. When she saw the long needle he clutched in his hand, she whimpered.

  “It will just sting a little bit,” he said as he injected it into her arm. Pain ripped through her body...

  Chapter 13

  I was talking to a Polish girl called Katya when a white van roared towards us. I’d barely had time to register the screeching of brakes, when the back doors crashed open and a pair of arms reached out and grabbed me, lifting me off my feet and into the bowels of the van.

  Before I could protest, a fist pummeled into my jaw, and I skidded against one of the wheel arches, clobbering my head off the side of the metalwork.

  As the vehicle sped off, all I could do was stare up at my kidnapper.

  The beast who’d grabbed me was as ugly as he was fat. His beer belly hung over his oil-stained trousers as though his gut had been pumped full of air. His Popeye forearms were twice the size of a normal man’s. He stood over me, leering, hand down the front of his trousers, giving himself a right good scratch. Eyeing him warily, I tried not to puke as the vehicle lurched from side to side as though we were in the Grand Prix.

  “We’re gonna have some fun, you and me, doll.” He started fumbling with his belt.

  Great, another fucking rapist. That’s all I need.

  “If any part of your anatomy comes near me, I’ll fucking bite it off.”

  The threat sounded empty to my ears, but no way was I gonna let him think I was an easy target. Now if only I could scoot over to my handbag; when I’d been bundled in the van it had come off my shoulder. It lay just feet away. Inside was pepper spray and my trusty Taser.

  Throwing the whole weight of my body at the bag, I dived for it.

  The strap was within my grasp when the bastard booted me in the stomach. Pain exploded in my gut, and the wind went out of me.

  All I could do was curl up into a ball as the kicks rained down on me.

  The van shuddered to a halt, and the bastard was flung to one side.

  “Fuck, fuck. Some cunt’s blocked us in.” The panicked voice of the driver boomed from the front, and my heart did a wee leap. Maybe I wasn’t going to die today.

  Then I heard Eric’s voice. “Make a move, pal, and you’re a dead man.”

  The back doors were wrenched open, and Tommy appeared wielding a baseball bat. As the fat bastard clambered to his feet, Tommy whacked him across the middle, and the thug folded, groaning and clutching his stomach like his gut had burst. Tommy cracked him again, this time over the head, and the fat man went down, his head smacking against the metal floor.

  Tommy stepped over him and helped me up. His face was set in a grimace. “For fuck’s sake, Nancy. Why didn’t you use the pepper spray or the Taser? If we hadn’t boxed them in, they’d have been away with you.”

  Like I didn’t know that?

  If my jaw hadn’t been throbbing and my head hadn’t been stuck on a merry-go-round, I’d have given him a mouthful of abuse. Instead, I let him help me out of the van. He had to take my full weight when I almost fell jumping down because the world was swimming before my very eyes like I was trapped in a snow globe.

  Tommy’s face was etched with concern, and for the first time since I’d known him, he looked worried. “You need to go to hospital.”

  “I’m okeshhh.” My brain was saying the right words, but my mouth wouldn’t comply.

  I knew I sounded drunk and that I was drooling blood and bits of broken tooth, but I didn’t want to go to hospital. Me and hospitals just don’t get on. Not after I’d spent so much time in one when I was attacked and left for dead.

  Tommy slung an arm around me and helped me into the backseat of the car. The last thing I remembered before drifting off was taking some painkillers washed down with Irn Bru and arguing with Tommy because he wouldn’t let me wash them down with vodka.

  When I came to, I was lying on Tommy’s couch, wrapped in a duvet, and he had his hands clasped behind his head and was saying ‘‘shit’’ over and over again. His face was as gray as a Glasgow sky.

  When he saw me, he said, “What was I thinking of, letting an untrained civilian go in without backup?”

  I was about to tell him that was army speak and I hate army speak, when I realized I could no longer articulate the words. My jaw was numb from where the bastard skelped me in the face, and I was on so many painkillers—I vaguely remember Tommy waking me to give me more—I could barely keep my eyelids open. It was as though iron weights had been attached to the ends.

  The last thing I heard before I headed off to dreamland was Tommy prattling away about needing to train me. Drifting off to images of hunky soldiers in combat fatigues, I didn’t wake up for another twenty-six hours, and by then another woman had gone missing.

  ***

  “How are you feeling, Nancy?”

  Below me, I felt the crinkle of starched sheets, and the smell of disinfectant snaked its way up my nose.

  Bastard. Despite what I’d said, Tommy had taken me to hospital. How could he do this to me?

  When you’ve been locked up in a loony bin that you thought you’d never get out of, you panic when you wake up in hospital—any hospital.

  My hands scrambled around trying to find a Call button. When my desperate hand closed in on one, I almost wept with relief. This was a real hospital, one you could sign yourself out of. The one I’d been in before only had Call buttons for staff.

  A nurse stood over my bed, holding a clipboard. “How are you feeling?” She paused to consult the clipboard. “Nancy.”

  “A bit woozy. My jaw, was it broken?”

  The words sounded dumb in my mouth. Of course it wasn’t broken. If it was, I wouldn’t be able to talk.

  She shook her head and told me my ribs were heavily bruised, but not broken. That surprised me, because when he’d kicked me, I’d thought I felt something snap.

  “When can I go home?”

  She scanned my file again. “After the doctor’s done his rounds and checked you over one last time. You had quite a fall.”

  So that was the cover story Tommy used. The tightness in my chest eased.

  ***

  By four o’clock that day, I was back at Tommy’s, wrapped up in my dressing gown, sipping some sort of vegetable concoction Tommy had made me in the liquidizer and trying hard not to be sick. He told me I’d need to eat if I wanted to take any more codeine-based painkillers, or they’d “burn my stomach to hell.”

  “We were bloody stupid, you know,” he said as he eyed me whilst I forced down some soup. “Leaving you exposed like that. You’re just a civilian. You haven’t had any combat training.”

  Of course I wanted to say “Duh,” but the movement it would have taken to speak would have hurt my face. Instead, I nodded. I’d rather have been kicked in the face again than listen to what I call Tommy’s “Jesus on the cross” routine where he thinks he should be the savior to everyone, including me.

  Tommy knelt down on the floor so he was level with the couch and put his hand in mine.

  Christ, he was going to propose! A phlegmy chuckle rose in my throat.

  Tommy’s face was serious. “When you’re better Eric’s gonna teach you how to take care of yourself. Until he does, you’re not going anywhere near those streets.”

  Tommy couldn’t understand why I was cackling away like a crazy cat lady.

  Chapter 14

  When I woke up the next day, I felt as though a squad of kids had been using my head as a trampoline. For once, I decided to take Tommy’s advice and spend the day resting up.

  That’s what I was doing, lying on the couch channel-surfing, drifting in and out of consciousness when the familiar voice of Heather MacDonald, the Scottish news anchor, snapped me awake. Another woman had gone missing. Diane Chambers had last been seen getting into a silver car two days ago. One important factor made her stand out from the other mispers�
�the word we’d heard on a show about missing persons. Diane had a child.

  After grabbing a mug of tea and a piece of dry toast, I gingerly stepped into the shower. I needed to drag my sorry ass out of my sickbed and go and speak to Diane’s mother. According to the news report, she’d reported Diane missing after she’d failed to collect her wee girl from school.

  Nettie Chambers wasn’t hard to find. It said in the brief article I found online that she worked at a Citizens Advice Bureau. Due to cutbacks, there weren’t many of them left, so I phoned the few that hadn’t been forced to close and asked to speak to Nettie. I struck it lucky with the third office I phoned. I spun the flustered man I spoke to a line about how Nettie had been recommended to me by a friend she’d helped.

  After a lengthy wait on hold, Nettie Chambers came on the phone and I told her why I really wanted to speak to her. At first she was hesitant and asked me if I was a reporter, but I convinced her that I was a relative of one of the other missing girls. She agreed to meet me at a local café as long as I could get there within the next hour because her shift was finishing.

  I was on my way out the door when the landline rang. It was Michael. That was all I needed. My ex was the last person I wanted to speak to. He must have got my number from a mutual friend.

  “I need to see you.”

  There was an urgency in his voice, and that made me want to reach down the phone and choke him until his lips turned blue and his limbs went floppy. He had no right to ask me for a thing. Not after the way he’d abandoned me.

  “We’ve got nothing to say to one another.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath down the line. The man used to getting his own way had his panties in a bunch, and that gave me way more satisfaction than it should.

  “We’ve got to meet, Nance. There’s something you need to know.”