by Caro Ramsay
‘I’ll mention it to him,’ I say and cut the call. Is Parnell playing with me? I can’t tell.
Now the phone beeps again, a text message. ‘U busy?’
I recognize the number. Billy.
It bleeps again before I can answer. ‘I’m outside. Can we chat?’
At this moment, even Billy is slightly more appealing than the mess that is rolling in my head. I text back.
The reply is immediate. ‘Put the kettle on.’
The downstairs entry buzzes before I get to the kitchen. Minutes later Billy comes in, red in the face and wheezing after climbing the stairs. He half collapses against the worktop, dropping a Morrisons carrier bag on the floor.
‘What the fuck! Do you need oxygen to get up here? You get a good view down on to Everest from your window?’
‘Shut it. Coffee?’
‘Yeah, you got a dining table?’
‘In the living room.’ I point the way through.
‘Nice flat. Any chance of a bit of toast?’
‘No. I’ve heard from Parnell. He wants us to find Mary.’
Billy makes the disgusting slurping noise that I now know is a sign he is thinking. ‘Really.’ He seems unimpressed. ‘Yeah, he lost Natalie Thom, now he’s lost his wife. Bit careless.’
‘When you met me, did you come to that meeting to see me because of Sophie? Or because you knew that Parnell was my employer?’
‘Can I be enigmatic and say both? You just count your fingers after you shake hands with him. You ever seen him hit Mary?’
‘Never saw it. So does he know you – Parnell? He doesn’t recognize you.’
‘He’s too arrogant, and I was deskbound in those days, but I know him all right.’ Billy shakes his head. ‘You know he married her within months of Natalie being killed? Natalie and Mary were best pals at uni.’ He tuts a little, happy with his implication. He then echoes my thoughts. ‘He had a hand in the design of Ardno. But why have a security gate logging you in and out the front gate then not be bothered fixing a gap in the back wall?’
‘They kept coming out to fix it, but never did.’
‘Who?’
‘Builders from his company, I presume. A fat one with a limp and a wee guy who whistles badly.’
‘So you would know them again?’
‘Of course. Has this got anything to do with Sophie?’
‘Well, when you started looking for her, he got you under his wing sharpish. Right where he could keep an eye on you. Neat.’ He shrugs. ‘Toast would be good.’
‘So would a lottery win,’ I reply. Before I have left the room Billy has removed his jacket and dropped it on the floor; he then kicks off his shoes. By the time I come back through with the tea, toast and Marmite he is massaging his foot with both hands. He has two holes in his left sock. The stink of stale cheese is horrendous. ‘My mother always says that sore feet show in your face.’
‘I knew your face must be like that for a reason. Nature is not that cruel.’ I pick up my Snoopy mug of tea from the floor beside the settee and take it over to the small pine dining table. I notice that Billy has emptied the Morrisons bag; a pile of buff files lies on the table top.
‘What’s that?’
‘Stuff about Mary. I’ve been having a chat with a few folk.’
I look at my watch: less than twelve hours have passed since the call at Eric’s house. It seems a lifetime away. Billy has been busy.
‘Just remember that Costello is a smart cookie; she’s keeping you close so that she can keep an eye on you too.’
‘Yes, I know. I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘So where were you when Mark Laidlaw went into the water?’
At times my lack of emotion serves me well. Deadpan, I reply, ‘Nobody knows when Mark Laidlaw went into the water.’ I take four photographs out of a folder and point at the numbers on them. ‘Should you have these?’
‘Copies. Elvie, I’m devious, not friggin’ stupid.’
‘Either you’ve had these all along or you got hold of them very quickly.’ I shuffle through the rest of the pictures.
‘Never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to. Three women, maybe four. Mary could be five.’
‘So it could be kidnap? You don’t think Parnell has just paid someone to throw her in the Clyde?’
‘No, with his money, he’d have taken his private yacht out to sea and dumped her where the tide is stronger. But for the moment, go with me. Tell me if I’m right or wrong.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because DCI Anderson is straight as a die. But Costello needs a break on this case. If we hand this to her she’ll go easy on us. Anderson will play it by the book but Costello we can bargain with.’
Billy is right. I look through the photos and hand them back. He places them down and then swaps two of them over. ‘This first one is Lorna Lennox, then Gilly Porter, then Sophie McCulloch; we might add Mary to the end. And Katrine, the unknown girl on the hill. We need to look at Lorna.’
‘Why?’ I pull my face slightly.
‘Because we know her end point. That might lead us to the others.’
I look at the photos again.
‘With Parnell’s connections, Anderson will get a big budget to investigate the Mary Parnell case. I’d like to piggyback that case with these three women, Operation Beluga. I think Costello has similar thoughts. But you and I don’t really think they’re all connected, do we? Not all.’
‘It’s too different, the way she was taken.’
‘Yes, but Mary was never allowed out on her own. There was violence there, control. The stalking and watching element is there, but the execution – for want of a better word – is not there. And those three were all their own people.’
‘Mary wasn’t.’
‘As far as you know.’
‘Runners can be observed, they have a uniform, a routine. The Night Hunter has no need to speak to them, he just needs to observe. Mary didn’t run, so maybe another approach was needed.’
Lorna, Sophie and Gillian were smilers, Mary less so. Perhaps she is the most striking of them, but not the prettiest. There is no photograph of Katrine. Billy’s phone rings; its weird plinky-plink ringtone gets on my nerves.
It’s Costello – she is blunt and to the point. ‘Tell Elvie we’re coming to search her flat. We know you’re both there.’
‘I think she heard that.’ His eyes look at the files, willing them to disappear.
‘Has Parnell been in touch with you?’
Billy raises an eyebrow. ‘Yes.’
‘Asking you to find Mary?’
‘Yes.’
‘I bloody knew it! Look, I want you to do what he asks but keep us informed every step of the way.’
‘We’re always willing to help.’
‘And if you don’t I’ll have you both done for con—’
‘Yeah, heard it,’ he says and cuts the call. ‘I presume you caught that.’ He looks at his phone. ‘That’s interesting. Her back is right against the wall and she knows it. It’s my investigative genius she is after really, of course. I’m going to need a fresh cup of coffee.’ His eyes wander round the room, over the old fireplace and the pictures on the mantelpiece. ‘Is that Sophie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice picture. Who’s the raven-haired wee sweetie with her?’
‘That’s me,’ I say.
‘Bloody hell, hen, what happened to you?’
‘Long story.’
It has not been a good way to spend a Sunday. The whole world seems to have gone mad. Billy lifted the files and left just before Costello appeared with a whole search team. They are going through the flat here, and then Parnell’s in Glasgow. Later they’re going up to search the property at Ardno. She advised me that I could object.
I don’t give a shit, and said so.
In the end, though, they are polite and quick. They move through the flat, two going into each room. They ask which room Sophie used when she slept here and whi
ch room was mine. Where was I when Sophie was in the bath, what did I see? I sit down on the red settee and again tell Costello what happened that night. When did I last do the washing? she asks. Sophie has been missing for sixty-seven days. Of course I’ve washed the towels.
Costello is particularly annoyed about that and her expression reaches a new height of sourness. ‘We could have had blood or DNA or all sorts on that. I suppose you’ve changed the bed sheets as well?’
‘Mine, yes. Don’t know about hers.’
She breathes out, her fingers playing with her hair, thinking hard.
‘Would the bath be any good?’ I ask. ‘I never have a bath. I use the shower and I’m rarely here. The shower is not over the bath. I’m thinking … plughole?’
She smiles at me. ‘Fuck! What else am I missing? I’m just so tired.’ She goes through and talks to some white suits who promptly trot out of the bedroom and into the bathroom.
‘Two bathrobes on the back of the door, Elvie?’
‘The black one is mine.’
‘And this one?’ She holds up the pink one at arm’s-length in gloved fingers. ‘Sophie’s? Bag and tag. We can take you up to Ardno as soon as we’ve finished here, if that’s all right? You need to be present when we search your flat there. Does Parnell have a key to it?’
‘Probably,’ I say.
‘Elvie, did you ever see Mary talk to anybody else? She hasn’t spoken more than a few words to her parents since she married Parnell. She only seems to see you or him, or both of you.’
I search my mind. ‘No, just the book group. I ran her there, went off with Charlie and came back to get her, then ran her home. Otherwise she was never out of my sight. That’s why I was employed, and she knew that.’
‘As a bodyguard rather than a nanny?’
‘As a spy rather than a bodyguard. Parnell is not thick; I think he was keeping tabs on her even when I wasn’t there.’
‘Maybe that’s the real reason for the chip. Chipped, beaten and spied on. Poor kid. Her phone just has calls to you, Eric Mason and Alex on it. She lived in a bubble.’
I remember a day when Charlie and I had been down at the lochside. Mary had stayed up on the road. I heard Mary laugh, not something I heard often. She was on the phone. I replay it in my mind. Not her touch pad phone? There was no sweeping of the finger … In my memory she was tapping buttons, using an older phone. Did she have two phones?
‘Did Charlie say anything?’
‘He saw nothing. He’s being interviewed by a play therapist but Parnell insists on sitting in, so it’s not ideal. The boy doesn’t want to speak until his dad approves. Is he like that with his mother?’
‘No, he jabbers away like a wee monkey.’
‘Her parents get a card from Charlie every now and again but they don’t speak.’ She pulls out her phone and checks it. ‘Funny, I don’t see Mary as the type of person that would cause an estrangement. She seems a bit weak-willed, a follower.’ She closes her phone; something has displeased her. She gets called from the bathroom. I hear her say, That’s great and Get it back to the lab.
She reappears, her mind back on the job. ‘We need to get moving now, you have five minutes to get your stuff together.’
By half past four they have already gone through the apartment above the dining room with all kinds of forensic stuff. The flat is tiny so I couldn’t be shuffled about and kept out of the way as they look under cushions, look at my books, examine Charlie’s drawings on the fridge door. It took a tenth of the time it took them at the Glasgow flat.
The forensic presence has been at the big house all night. I’ve gleaned that Mary was attacked when she was alone in the kitchen. She cut herself on the broken glass as she was dragged through the patio doors, then she was taken across the lawn and over the field to the damaged wall. They avoided the electronic lock on the front gate. Any car waiting there would have a good run to Glasgow but they stopped halfway and chased her up a hill.
It doesn’t make sense unless Mary got out in some way and tried to escape. Was she then chased down like Lorna?
I’m back down on the patio with Charlie; he wants a go on the swing. It’s a good place to watch the comings and goings of the team while Charlie asks me a thousand times, in a hundred different ways, when his mother is coming back. I recognize one of the team as Matilda, the wee forensic girl who found the dog DNA.
My phone goes again, it’s Billy. Pushing Charlie on the swing with one hand, I listen as he tells me to ‘follow any leads’. Then specifically he tells me to trace the other women at Mary’s book group or find if there’s another mobile phone somewhere, with numbers that might tell us about some other life. I tell him I am way in front of him; he does not seem surprised.
I hang up and give Charlie an extra push. The good thing about a small community like this is that everybody knows everybody’s business.
Or they think they do.
I organize a game of hide and seek with Charlie. While I can see him hiding behind the police car I make a few calls. It takes me exactly three minutes to get the phone number I need.
‘Come out, come out wherever you are.’
MONDAY, 11 JUNE
Rachel sweeps her long hair behind one ear. ‘So it looks as though she was kidnapped. Alex is loaded.’ She moves some library books from the top shelf to the trolley. This takes up a lot of her available brain power.
‘I haven’t known Mary for a long time but you’re the only person whose name I’ve ever heard her mention, as a friend.’ That’s a bit of a stretch. Rachel is the only person I ever actually heard Mary mention.
Rachel looks up. ‘Really?’
‘So can you tell me anything that might help us find out where she might be?’ It sounds a very stupid request, not one that would stand up to any scrutiny, but Rachel mulls it over.
‘Not really. Haven’t seen her for a while, but she wasn’t happy, was she?’ The books move from the trolley back on to the shelf. ‘I think, wee things … like the group would stay on at the coffee shop to have a gossip and a cuppa, but she would never come. Never on the nights out. Like she was scared of him. She was always checking her watch so that she wouldn’t be late back.’
She looks out the window. Dunoon is hiding behind some light summer rain. ‘Funny, when she joined the group, we all thought Mary had everything. Posh taste in reading, Austen and Thomas Hardy. No Fifty Shades for her. We didn’t really take to her. Incomer, married to the rich man, building her own house up here … But she was so not like that. She was quiet, timid. A bit boring really.’
I can’t help but notice that we are talking about Mary in the past tense.
‘For someone who had everything, she had nothing.’
‘It’s often the way,’ I say. Sophie taught me to leave such statements open, so you get more.
‘Well, a wee thing. Kim had this really battered laptop, up for grabs. Mary looked at it as if she’d won the pools. Kim phoned me afterwards, you know, thinking – God! All that money yet she wants something like that! That’s how they get rich, isn’t it, these people? Just don’t spend it.’ Rachel looks at me, remembering why I’m here. ‘Still, hope she gets back OK.’
‘You said you hadn’t seen her for some time?’
Rachel has a good think. ‘Oh, not since a while.’
‘A while?’
‘Well, before Kirsty had her baby.’
That’s supposed to mean something to me. ‘And how old is the baby?’
Rachel smiles. ‘Oh, about twelve weeks, Sienna-Faye, a real wee poppet, she …’
‘So you’ve not seen Mary for three months?’
Rachel shakes her head. ‘Not hide nor hair of her. Took that bloody laptop and we never saw her again.’
‘Do you recall the make of the laptop?’
‘Nah. And to think she could afford a state of the art tablet. Nothing as queer as folk, eh?’
So each time I dropped Mary at the door of the library, she went elsewhere. T
wo hours on her own. It gives me a wee kick of hope. She had a life we did not know about. There was the day she took the four-by-four somewhere and Parnell wanted to know the mileage. And a phone and a laptop.
What was she doing while Charlie and I went to the beach or to the pier to watch the ferries come and go? And with who?
The blood did not lie; the chip had been cut out of her. That she carried it was something she didn’t confide in me. But would she tell a lover? Or someone she thought was a lover? What kind of trouble had she got herself in?
Had she run away from Parnell just to run into somebody much worse like Sophie had?
Billy is interested in my theory. ‘So what do you think about that?’
‘Well, people run to type. Mary had studied English, she loved the written word. Everything she did was monitored by him, but then she gets a chance of a laptop, to write. Imagine the freedom of mind that would give her.’
‘A diary? A misery memoir?’
‘Same thing in her case. The problem is, I’ve never seen a laptop like that in the house. Everything is the latest high-spec stuff that Parnell likes. So where do you think she might have hidden it?’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Standing among the trees in Hell’s Glen, there’s nobody here for miles around. I need to think.’
‘No you don’t, you need to get back to the house, act casual. Act like you’re worried about Mary. Then search the house right under his nose.’
‘Just like that?’
‘There’s a whole search team there but they’re not looking for what you’re looking for. Oh, and don’t get killed.’
Back at the house I think about Mary as I put the orange juice in the fridge, in date order just as Parnell likes it. I put the kettle on for the ever-growing army of cops and SOCOs drifting around, and I think about her life and her love of literature which has been denied her since she married and moved here. The old laptop makes sense but I’ve no idea where she has hidden it. I get up and move round the house, putting away clothes, cleaning a little, trying to think like Mary. She would certainly think of somewhere Parnell did not go. And Mary would be clever about it.
