by Caro Ramsay
I have no idea what has happened to her.
I have no idea what to do.
I look round at the hills, the rolling summit of Ben Ime in the distance. The closer pointed crag of Ben Lochain. Right on the back doorstep is Cruach nam Mult lying like a sleeping puppy. It makes me think – the hills are unchanging but I am not. I am a transient in the world; we all are.
It is gone six o’clock when I finally crawl into bed. Every night before I go in search of sleep I look through my photographs. These are just for me, not for the press or the police or the Facebook page where everything is food for public digestion. I have seen these images so many times, but I relish them as others enjoy seeing a close friend. There’s the one of me and Dad digging the garden. Another of Soph and me on a swing, she’s about ten or so. Then again on the same swing aged twenty, very drunk. Second last is an informal shot at someone’s wedding with the family as it is now. Rod at the helm, Mum holding on to him, Grant looking blond and blue-eyed, Sophie his female double at one side, me the raven-haired geek at the other. We are like bookends. Then three of us at Soph’s birthday meal for the family – that was the twenty-ninth of March – the week before she disappeared. Hindsight focuses the mind but I now realize that Soph hardly ate anything that evening. Grant acted drunk long before he was, and Mum acted sober long after she was drunk. I ignored both of them. In a paper clip I have two pictures that Belinda from Boadicea had taken at Soph’s party on the thirty-first. I wasn’t there. Soph only invited me to her social events safe in the knowledge that I would never go. I’d rather put staples in my toes than sit and listen to her pals talking about nail extensions and child protection orders. Soph loves company whereas I don’t see the point of other people.
I didn’t need all that, I had Sophie. We had each other. We were Lizzie and Laura.
I put the photos back in the drawer and lie back, staring out the windows waiting for sleep. When I do close my eyes, the dream is waiting. The little night-time goblin that comes out from the shadows to mess with my head is now showing me a film of Sophie in the bath in my flat, bleeding. Her head turns away as I try to speak to her, then she dissolves in the water, laughing, then screaming. Sophie is there one minute, gone the next.
It’s me screaming, of course. I wake myself up and a glance at the clock confirms I have been asleep for all of five minutes. I crawl out of bed to go to the toilet, where my stomach retches and retches, trying to get something out of nothing. Just bile. I need to eat to be sick. I need to go out for a run; my veins feel like they are bursting.
I open the bathroom cabinet and look at my medication. I should be taking it to control these symptoms until the tests are complete, but I’ve cancelled the appointment because I’m not taking any of this stuff; I need to be strong. In the mirror the changes are obvious. I should face the fact that I need help.
But Sophie needs my help more.
To fetch one if one goes astray.
I pull on my running socks and trousers, my top and my Nikes, then head out down the road to the loch side where I can watch the seals bobbing their heads through the water as I run. On a good day I’ll tackle the lower slopes of Cruach nam Mult but today is not a good day. At the water’s edge the air is deathly still. It is cool in my lungs and my legs loosen as I wind through the bracken on the lower slope. I feel weightless and supercharged. This is what it does for me; I become another being when I run the hills in the early light. Everybody else is somewhere other than here.
One hour and fourteen minutes later, I come out of the shower and sink on to the sofa with a strong coffee and a Pro Plus. The TV is on with the sound turned down low. I like looking at the moving pictures. It’s like having company without having to listen to any crap.
I watch a rerun of some cop show with subtitles as the sun creeps its way across the carpet. I am in a dwam rather than asleep, the adrenaline is melting. The cop show ends and the two leads drive off in their car having caught the bad guys. It freezes on a still of them doing a high five. A subtitle comes up to tell me that there is music playing now. The TV screen changes to the seven-thirty news bulletin, the doom and gloom economy and a bit of football gossip. Then the Scottish news. Alex Salmond is the lead story. Some blue-haired coffin dodger is jabbering on about her pension, her mouth moving nineteen to the dozen while her teeth try to keep up. The colour of her lips matches her hair colour, a sure sign of insidious heart failure, so by Christmas she’ll no longer be dodging her coffin, she’ll be lying in it. Then I recognize the Rest and Be Thankful in a long panning shot. A library picture of the rockfall site. I flick up the volume a little … expect delays, an incident related to a missing person.
I lean in closer. It doesn’t say how the body was found. There’s that same picture of Lorna Lennox, smiling her Ali McGraw smile.
The newsreader is an eternally optimistic girl with black hair and a bobbing head. She’s trying to tone down her lust for life as the picture of another woman fills the screen; she says there might be a link to the disappearance of Gillian Porter. I used to think women who went missing were stupid and should have taken more care, but that was before last Thursday, before Sophie failed to turn up at the Goblin Market. They show old footage of a press conference, a long table, Gillian’s mother tearfully reading a statement. Gillian’s husband leans over to the microphone to add something he has written, his hands trembling. He’s appealing on behalf of their two kids. The four people at the table are showered in the flashlights of a hundred cameras. Then the camera pans out and I see him sitting on the far side, wearing an ill-fitting suit, speaking into a microphone with a voice that could grind concrete; a granite-faced man who has seen everything and been impressed by none of it. His hair was darker, shorter then. The skin was still pink so this was before his liver packed up with the drink. The sign underneath him says DCI W. Hopkirk of Strathclyde Police; he was the chief investigating officer in the missing person enquiry.
The Private Investigator.
Mr Slip-on Shoes.
An hour of Googling William Albert Hopkirk tells me he achieved some kind of status when he found two missing children. Another link to a picture of a girl with dark, corkscrew hair, her murder unsolved. I recognize her: she was killed while she was at Glasgow uni the year before Sophie went, which means she must have been there about the same time as Mary. I recall her name before my eye catches the small print. Natalie Thom. She was murdered as she walked through a Glasgow park at midnight. I thought then that it was a stupid thing to do.
I still think it now.
The voice that answers the phone is raw Woodbine. It’s half seven in the morning. He says one word.
‘Hopkirk.’
I say, ‘McCulloch.’
He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘How are you doing, hen?’
‘Sorry to call you so early.’ Sophie always says politeness opens doors.
‘I don’t sleep. I bet you don’t either.’ I’m listening for the sounds behind his voice – he’s not at home, he’s outside somewhere. ‘We need to talk, you and me.’ Then he asks me if I’m still up at Parnell’s house. So he knows that much about me.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Can you get away?’ There’s a muffled tap; I guess the phone has been moved from one hand to the other to check the time.
It’s a Saturday, Mary is in Glasgow. There won’t be a problem. ‘Yes.’
‘Can you meet me today? What about Dunoon? I can get the ferry over, you can drive round. About one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know the Henry the Eighth Tearoom?’ He hears my snort. ‘So you do.’ It’s his first show of humour.
‘The Henry the Eighth Tearoom is full of old gits with bladder issues.’
‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I blend in.’
By a quarter to two I am sitting outside the Henry Eighth Tearoom in Dunoon. The little resort town sits right on the Cowal peninsula and is reputed to have the second most vulnerable economy in Scotland. A s
cabby seagull picks at the leftovers of a fish supper and gets a mouthful of newsprint which has more fibre than any of the locals ever get.
I park Mary’s two-seater silver Merc on the opposite side of the road with the window open slightly. It’s conspicuous but the Polo is still with the police and the Shogun is with Mary in Glasgow. Mary won’t bother; she hates the Merc as much as she hates all the cars Parnell buys her. It’s five to when Mr Slip-on Shoes comes waddling round the corner in his disgusting baggy jogging bottoms, which are four inches too short so the world can see his white socks. The waist elastic is still fighting to contain the swollen belly that protrudes and flops as he waddles. He’s wearing a faded Fred Perry shirt and the bobbles on his burgundy fleece are visible from the opposite side of the road. The scent of old nicotine carried on the wind might just have been my imagination. He looks like a jakey just out the hostel and looking for a bin to rake through. As a disguise, it’s a good one.
If it is a disguise.
At the door of the café he drops his cigarette, stubbing it out under his toe before grinding it into the ground with a foot motion that reminds me of my dad doing the twist. He waves. He has known I was here all along.
This is a lesson for me. Never underestimate him – he is a clever man. He just hides it well.
I get out the Merc, lock it and wait a minute for the traffic to pass. The Henry the Eighth Tearoom used to be a small department store but now it is a Thornton’s and a bakery on the ground floor and the café on the first. There is a gallery of overpriced prints of little girls with unfeasibly large eyes looking at lambs under a sky the colour of an engorged spleen on the stairway. Little wonder there is such a high level of drug abuse in the area.
The café smells of damp and chip fat, and the ancient Artex on the ceiling is stained with circles of water damage. Slip-on Shoes is sitting at the fake coal fire, which is on full blast despite the fact that it is the middle of summer. As I walk towards his table, I feel I am walking uphill. The building seems to be slowly sliding into the Firth of Clyde.
‘Take a pew,’ he says, without looking up from the menu.
I slide into the seat opposite him.
‘The latte is good, ’cept it’ll be cold or in the saucer before you get it.’ He sucks air through his teeth; it sounds like someone clearing a blocked drain. ‘But you do get a nice wee biscuit.’ He flicks the menu with his thumb. ‘I’ll have a Coke, chips and cheese sauce.’
‘Classy.’
A waitress with peroxide hair and five chins is hovering. Both her black jumper and matching skirt are in need of a good wash. Her face powder has sprinkled over the front of her jumper, making her bosom look like a dusty shelf.
He orders.
The waitress turns to me. ‘And what do you want, son?’
I say nothing. Then ask for a black coffee, folding my menu over and giving it back to the stupid cow.
‘You’ll get that a lot, with a face like yours,’ he says as he watches her waddle away, her worn shoes scuffing the carpet as she goes, leaving a dual trail in the pile like a jet engine. I watch him watch her, his tongue playing around his lips. His face is red and swollen, with flecks of dry white skin around his nose and mouth. The whites of his eyes are red-veined and yellow-tinged. I could write him up for a case study at uni and list his disease processes alphabetically.
His eyes are still on the waddling figure as he says, ‘So you phoned me because … let me guess, you saw me on the news?’
I nod.
‘And you are wondering if it was pure chance that I was at that meeting?’
I nod again.
‘Do you know how many meetings like that one I’ve sat through, listening to all the shite of the day? Listening for anybody with a story like Gillian’s?’
‘You were lucky you picked that meeting.’
He winked. ‘Not called Billy the Fox for nothing. Your dad put it on Facebook.’
I say, ‘He’s not my dad.’
He drops his eyes from mine the way folk do when they touch a raw nerve. I pick up a small envelope of sugar from the bowl and squeeze all the contents up to one end. I have only one question for him. ‘Can you help me find Sophie?’
‘Can you help me find Gillian?’ He chews on his lip.
I stare him out. He blinks first.
‘I was in charge of the Gillian Porter case and I failed to find her. She went missing in the first week of March 2010. It was a Thursday night, her usual running night, but she went out later due to the rain. Stop me when this sounds familiar …’
The reality of it hits me; the simplicity of his words exaggerate the similarities.
‘We failed to find any trace of Gillian. Your lot failed to find any trace of Sophie.’ He pauses a little, he is making sure that his words are sinking in.
‘She was a teacher?’ I ask. ‘A PE teacher? Something like that?’ Rod used to be a PE teacher, that’s the thing that has stuck in my mind.
He nods. ‘Well remembered.’ He sits back a little as the coffee is put on the table along with a can of Coke and an old-fashioned thick glass. My cup is small and chipped, with a little band of gold that doesn’t quite go all the way round the top. I turn it until the chip is furthest away from my mouth, placing the handle directly towards me. It might look clumsy but at least it is infection-free.
A plate of chips arrives in front of him, like oily dead worms. A lake of vinegar swirls round, adding to the aroma. A yellow paste of cheese sauce sits to one side in a ramekin, a nod to sophistication. He picks up the ramekin and slaps it heavily on the bottom, making the sauce splurge on top of the chips. He picks up a long chip, scoops up some sauce and stuffs it in his mouth, chewing noisily. He eats like a starving pig.
‘Chips are great.’ He pulls the can of Coke towards him, opens it and the noise goes round the room like sniper fire. ‘It was not my biggest case, but it was my last one. I’ve spent a long time looking round for any others.’
‘Others?’ I hold my cup to my lips, moving it back and forth under my nose, smelling the coffee, breathing in caffeine.
‘Others. I don’t think whoever took Gillian stopped. People who are good at doing things like that don’t come out of nowhere; they’ve been around and they’ve practised.’ He waves a chip in the air before it disappears between those fleshy blue lips. ‘Problem is, if these women were loonies or lezzies or druggies or whores, the cops would be all over the place, searching.’
‘I presume you were kicked off the force before you could sign up for political correctness class?’
‘You bet your bottom dollar, sweet cheeks.’ He waves another chip at me. ‘It’s more likely that young, clever women from decent homes decide to leave for their own good reason. They’re also more difficult to take and that makes me suspicious. Why would Sophie go away with a stranger?’
I can’t tell him that. Ex-DCI Hopkirk is staring at me, waiting for an answer. ‘Do you think the same man took Soph?’
‘Do you?’ He stuffs another chip in his face, sideways. ‘I’m a private detective and I’m working this case. Unhampered by the force, I can take a more free range approach.’
‘The case you started and didn’t finish because of the drink?’
His glass of Coke pauses slightly between his mouth and the table; he regards me again with eyes of warm, faded cornflower blue. ‘It was the drink that finished my career.’ He smiles a little. ‘It was that case that drove me to the drink.’
He calls the waitress over with a nod and a wink. She is putty in his hands as he asks for two lattes. She smiles back at him, the bright red lipstick cracking open to reveal nicotine brown teeth with a gap where she balances her fag. They would make a good couple, these two. They share the same rank body odour.
As she ambles away her buttocks roll like a strolling elephant. Billy stares after her, his eyes narrowing slightly as he struggles with a thought. He looks like a fox scenting the night air, a sleekit, sly, canny old fox. ‘So tell me about
Sophie. What about the clothes missing from her room?’
‘How did you know about them?’
‘I didn’t but I do now.’ He nods to himself; he does not seem to gain any pleasure from outwitting me. ‘I knew Costello had good reason not to investigate it too seriously.’
‘I think that there’s a fine institution looking for them. It’s called Strathclyde Police. I think they’re doing all that needs to be done.’
He looks at me, his face incredulous. ‘And I think that most people will agree that the NHS is a fine institution but it does not do all that can be done. It does all it can do and that is not the same thing. Is it? So anything you can tell me, anything at all, will be good.’
I consider that for a moment before I say, ‘There was something up with her. She said nothing to me, but according to her friend Belinda, Sophie got upset at her birthday party.’
‘That was the thirty-first of March?’
‘She was a bit quiet but she had a lot on at work. On the fifth of April she went out for a run and never came back. I was busy so she went out on her own. I went over later when Rod phoned me to say she was very late; he’d already phoned everybody he could think of. My brother was frantic, he’d just come in from looking for Soph; my mother was on her third G and T.’
‘And you then went out and found her car parked down by the dam, locked? Like she’d walked away and left it.’
‘As I’ve said before, you seem very well informed.’
‘Friends in low places. You got nothing else to tell me about the car?’
‘No.’
His eyes flash over mine, he does not believe me. Tough. ‘And then?’
‘Rod reported it to the cops. Sophie and Avril Scott …’
‘The PC? Giffnock?’
‘That’s her, they knew each other personally, so Avril has been going above and beyond for us, but the official line is that Sophie went of her own free will.’
‘Because of the clothes taken, the affair with the married man, the money? Understandable.’
