by Lynne McEwan
‘Who could have removed it?’ Shona asked, peering over Vin’s shoulder.
‘No one,’ he said. ‘Well, maybe someone on the team. Thing is, there’s a continual recording requirement, like a master tape. It’s in case the defence say we’ve tampered with the evidence, made it look like something it isn’t.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Shona. ‘Maybe there’s a master somewhere else.’
‘No, this is it. Something’s gone wrong. If Op Fortress fails in court because of this…’ He looked pale. ‘We’ll get the blame… I might not get another big job. Baird will side-line me, won’t he?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Shona soothed, patting him on the shoulder, ‘no one will blame you. It will be one of the tech guys who’ve messed up.’
‘But I am the tech guy,’ said Vinny with a mixture of horror and indignation.
‘Look.’ Shona understood Vinny’s distress, but she couldn’t cope with a grown man crying in her office over an IT issue when she’d a couple of murders to crack on with. ‘Can you give me a copy of the corrupted file?’
‘It’s not corrupted…’
‘Just the file then. Give me a copy. I’ll call Baird and we’ll sort it out.’
A chink of light appeared in Vinny’s darkness. ‘Okay.’ But then he frowned. ‘I’m not sure your security clearance…’
‘Vincent, listen to me.’ Shona’s patience was at an end. She drew herself up. ‘I am a detective inspector and your line manager. I’m also the only one who can pull your cahoonies out of the fire if Baird does his nut over this. Get that file on my desktop now, then go back out there.’ She pointed to the CID room, where a few heads had turned. ‘And get on with the backlog of work your little jaunt to Glasgow has left us with. Understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Vinny, hurriedly downloading the file and signing off.
‘Murdo will give you the list,’ Shona said, stepping back behind her desk and folding her arms. She stared after him as he scurried out of the room. Murdo caught her eye and winked. She shook her head in exasperation, pointing at Vinny’s retreating back and the cases on the whiteboard, and mouthing ‘get busy’ at him. He replied with a good-natured salute.
Shona ran the file. There was Jamie Buckland arriving at his mate’s house in Dumfries, then leaving twenty minutes later, sports bag in hand. In the intervening period, there were two short gaps totalling about ninety seconds. Without Vinny Visuals spotting the anomaly of the clock, Shona would never have noticed them. If it wasn’t a software problem, a glitch or corrupted file, why would anyone remove such a short section? She played and replayed the file, searching the street for clues, but could find nothing. What would take about forty-five seconds? The file dated from a month ago, just before the raids. She watched a neighbour pull up, get out of his car and go into a house further up the road. She looked at the timer. He was in view for thirty-eight seconds. The gaps were enough time for someone to arrive at the house and then leave. The question was, who was that person, and why did Op Fortress want their identity kept secret? Only Jamie Buckland and DCI Gavin Baird could give her the answer. One was currently missing and the other was the one person she didn’t want to ask.
Chapter 21
Shona was on her way home. Ravi and Kate had completed the interview with Wazir and the fiscal had approved the theft charge. He would go to court in the morning. Wazir had identified Isla and Sami as the two other people in the baby milk CCTV photographs. A lawyer had advised he apply for asylum and Shona had asked for protected custody as a potential witness, while her enquiries were ongoing. Finally, they had their baby milk thieves, but Wazir had remained tight-lipped about the traffickers and they were still no nearer to finding out who had killed Sami and Isla. She hoped for an update soon from Dan, saying he’d tracked down the elusive Buckland. Maybe the boy Jamie would bring them a step closer to the answer.
The low, late September sun shone directly in her eyes as she headed west along the A75. It caught every rise and undulation of the land, painting it with soft purple shadows and turning the wind-blown grass on the roadside to a fiery, flickering fringe. Shona thought of the estuary and the curlew’s call on the mudbanks. She looked forward to the view from home.
The phone rang, showing Becca’s name. She clicked the hands-free button on the steering wheel. ‘I’m on my way back, darlin’. Be with you shortly.’
Becca’s breath came ragged and uneven through the speaker. ‘Mum… Mum.’
Shona felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I was on my bike… I fell… a car hit me,’ Becca said, the wind-noise almost overwhelming her weak voice.
‘Where are you?’ Shona sat forward straining to catch every detail.
‘On the top road… near the farm.’ Becca sobbed. ‘I can’t… get up.’
‘Stay on the line, darlin’. I’m putting you on hold to call help. Don’t hang up.’ Shona flicked the controls and dialled 999. ‘This is DI Oliver, Dumfries CID, I need an ambulance. RTA on the B712 by Mainsgill Farm. Casualty is a fifteen-year-old female cyclist. Attending. ETA,’ Shona glanced at the clock on the dashboard, ‘ETA, fifteen minutes.’ She switched the call back to Becca. ‘I’m coming, Becca, stay where you are. Keep talking to me. I’m coming.’ Then she floored the accelerator and pulled out, overtaking a lorry and several cars, flashing her headlights at an oncoming tractor before leaving the A75 and weaving through the tight lanes.
‘Where are you?’ Shona searched the road ahead, lined on each side with solid, drystone walls, but could see nothing. Then she gasped; the pink metal paintwork of Becca’s mountain bike lay crumpled like a sweet wrapper against the moss-green of the verge. ‘I see you, I see you.’ Shona pulled the Audi to a halt, grabbed her phone and flew out of the car. ‘Jesus.’
Becca was lying in a shallow ditch. She was dirty and wet, blood smeared across her face. She clutched her right arm, which flopped at an odd angle, the bone above her wrist protruding through the skin. Her bike helmet lay next to her showing a long split where it had struck the loose granite stones on a tumbled section of the wall.
‘Becca.’ Shona choked back a sob, tearing off her suit jacket and folding it under her head. ‘The ambulance is coming. Where are you hurt?’
‘My arm.’ Becca tried to sit up. ‘My head hurts.’ Her skin was clammy and waxy white, the skin around her eyes and mouth blueish. Shona was afraid she was going into shock. She glanced at the shattered helmet and tried not to imagine what it signified. How bad was her head injury? Stay calm, deal with what you see.
‘Don’t move,’ Shona warned her. She quickly assessed her daughter’s condition, then ran back to the car for the first aid box and the thick tartan blanket she kept in the boot. She covered her, wrapping a triangular bandage loosely over Becca’s wounded arm. Becca sobbed, biting her lip in pain, but she let her mother continue. ‘Okay, okay, it’s done,’ Shona reassured her. ‘Got to get you warm. Can you tell me what happened?’
‘I was going up to the farm for eggs. A car hit me. Drove off.’ Becca blinked slowly. She was shaking, letting go now that her mother was here. Cold, and dropping adrenaline levels were taking their toll.
‘Did you know who it was? Did you recognise the car?’ Shona was keeping her conscious and distracted from the pain. She dialled Rob’s number. He was close by, at High Pines. Why hadn’t Becca called him?
‘No one comes up here, ’cept the farmer.’ Becca’s words were slurred.
‘Your dad’s not answering.’
‘Out… with Uncle Sandy.’
Shona needed Rob, here, now. But there were other people she could rely on in an emergency. Her lifeboat family. Skipper Tommy McCall answered on the first ring. ‘Becca’s hurt, accident on Mainsgill Farm Road. Bring a spinal board.’
Tommy was there in minutes, his white Ford Transit van roaring up the tarmac track and pulling in behind Shona’s car. ‘For goodness’ sake, Becca. What have you done to you
r mother now? She’s enough to do catching robbers without you flinging yourself off bikes.’ Tommy stroked Becca’s hair back from her forehead, feeling the clammy skin and the rapid pulse beneath her chin. She gave him a weak smile in return. He confirmed Shona’s diagnosis of concussion and compound tib-fib fracture. ‘Pop this on for me, Becca, just to protect your neck.’ He slipped the cervical collar over her head while Shona contacted the control room via Tommy’s VHS radio.
‘Ambulance is still thirty minutes away.’
‘I’m not happy with her condition,’ Tommy said quietly, his face grim. ‘Let’s get her onto the spinal board. We could call the helicopter, but it will be quicker to make our own way there. Agreed?’ He waited for Shona to nod, then he turned back to Becca.
‘Och, let’s not wait for the slow-pokes,’ he said, loudly. ‘Becca fancies a ride in my van. Don’t you, pet?’ Becca looked back at him through half-closed eyes. ‘Listen,’ he said, half under his breath to Shona, ‘I can’t give her any gas and air, Entonox is contra-indicated for head injuries. Don’t want her to slip under. Understand?’
Shona nodded, biting her lip. Then she squeezed her daughter’s good hand. ‘We’re off to hospital, but we need to get you comfy for the ride,’ she said brightly. ‘I want you to take big breaths and be a brave girl for me.’
Becca cried out as they slid the orange plastic board beneath her. Shona could feel the panic rising in her own chest. Now Tommy was here, and Becca’s rescue was not her sole responsibility, the anguish she felt as Becca’s mother was pushing at her composure as a police officer. It threatened to burst through, as unstoppable as the Solway tide. She swallowed hard and forced herself to smile. Becca was whimpering, rivulets of tears forming paths through the blood and dirt on her face.
‘Not long now,’ Shona said, watching Tommy run to the van, turn it round then jump out again to fling open the rear doors ready to load Becca inside. She tried Rob’s phone again meanwhile, cursing under her breath as it rang out before resorting to voicemail.
‘Let’s go.’ Tommy lifted the bottom of the stretcher, Shona the head, murmuring a stream of reassurance to Becca. They slid her into the centre of the van, between the old fishing nets, wet-weather gear and boxes of spare parts. Shona jumped in beside her as Tommy closed the doors and ran round to the driver’s side. As they set off, Shona updated the 999-control centre that they were on their way in with the casualty.
With the motion of the van and her body held rigid by the stretcher, Becca was drifting into sleep. ‘Becca, Becca, open your eyes for me,’ Shona said desperately. ‘Dad will be at the hospital, so be ready to give him a big smile.’ She lay down full length next to the stretcher, protecting her daughter’s battered body with her own, bracing them both from sliding around as Tommy took the bends and inclines at speed. The steel floor of the van dug into her hips and ribs as she clung on, whispering old family stories into Becca’s ear like charms to ward off the darkness that pressed on them both. How Becca had tripped as a toddler and knocked her front tooth out. How she’d once fallen in the lock on their only canal boating holiday and been hauled out by her mother grabbing the red ribbon of her pony tail. When those ran out Shona turned to snatches of favourite nursery rhymes, books that her daughter had loved as a child. She pressed her face close to Becca’s. ‘Not long now, darlin’. Stay awake. The car that hit you, what did it look like?’
‘Big car… black.’
‘Did you see who was driving? A man or a woman?’
Becca tried to shake her head. She grimaced in pain, the collar restricting her attempt.
‘How long, Tommy?’ Shona shouted desperately.
‘Two minutes. How’s she doing?’
Becca’s eyes were rolling back in her head, showing white. ‘Hurry, Tommy.’ Shona was on her knees, checking her daughter’s pulse and breathing. ‘Becca? Becca? Come on, come on.’ She rubbed her daughter’s good hand, hauling her back as she teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.
Tommy pulled into a chequered ambulance bay outside DRI’s Emergency Department and jumped from the cab. A man in a dark green paramedic uniform came towards him.
‘Can’t park there, pal.’
‘Aye? Well if I didnae have to do your job for you, I wouldn’t.’ He glared at the man. ‘I’m Tommy McCall, Kirkness lifeboat skipper. We’ve an RTA casualty. Head injury. Get a trolley. Now.’
They slid Becca onto the trolley when it arrived seconds later. ‘Okay, you can leave her to us,’ the doctor said, but Shona found she couldn’t uncurl her fingers. Tommy gently removed her hand.
‘Come here.’ He pulled her into a fierce hug. ‘Becca’s going to be fine. If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll be telling the doctors what to do in a minute.’
Shona was shaking, a howl gathering in her chest. It pressed against her throat, choking her breath. A plea to a god she didn’t believe in. Please don’t take my girl. Please don’t take my girl. Please don’t take my girl. Over and over, it filled her consciousness. She was spiralling down into a darkness where Becca was the only thing that mattered. She could feel Tommy’s lean body and smell his musky scent of salt and oil. She clung to his firmness to stop herself falling.
Gradually she stopped spinning, resurfacing amongst the light and noise of the hospital. No one was looking at her, she was just one drop in a sea of sorrows that washed through this place every day. She saw a woman, her battered face pale and drawn with fatigue. An old man who had fallen, his eyes roaming the ward for something solid and familiar to fix on. A crying child.
Slowly, her training and her anger began to kick in. Someone had done this to her beloved girl. She wiped the tears away with the heal of her hand. ‘You know the best bit of my job, Tommy?’ He shook his head, she continued. ‘Whoever did this, the fucker who hit my child with a two-ton car and drove off? I get to see they pay for what they’ve done.’
‘Aye.’ He took her by the shoulders, looking her in the eye. ‘You know what’s even better? You don’t have to do it on your own.’
‘I know. I know. You’re right.’ She gripped his hand. He gave her a tissue and she blew her nose. ‘Thank you.’ Then she turned away and took out her phone.
‘Murdo, I’m up at DRI.’ She briefed him on what had happened.
‘Dear God. Are you all right, boss? I’m on my way.’
‘Listen, Murdo, it’s okay. Tommy’s with me. There’s some things I need you to do.’
‘Anything.’
‘Get a team over there, it’s a crime scene. Pick up the bike. Talk to Hector McCartney who owns Mainsgill Farm. That’s a dead-end road, see if he’s had any visitors today.’
‘I will. Who would do such a thing? To drive away from an accident like that? Nobody local.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Shona replied. Thank God Becca had her new phone on her. Rob had complained bitterly about the expense, but her old one wasn’t reliable. Shona shuddered. Becca could have lain by the side of that road for hours. ‘Thing is, if the driver wasn’t going to or from the farm, then someone must have followed her up there. Becca’s had a bit of bother recently. It might not be an accident.’
‘You mean the drugs thing with the lads? Bit of tit-for-tat revenge? Surely not?’
‘Well, they may think Becca got off lightly cos her mother’s a police officer. Plus, they might have meant to scare her, but it went wrong.’ She cleared her throat. ‘There’s something else, Murdo. Becca got suspended from school last week for lamping a bully, who was excluded too. Her family might also have a grievance. And Murdo…’ Shona said. ‘You know I can’t touch this. It will have to be another officer.’
‘Hitting a young lassie on a bike? The traffic guys will be on this like a rat up a drainpipe, don’t you worry. I’ll get Ravi to work it from our side and talk to the fiscal,’ Murdo replied. ‘Anything else, boss?’
‘Can you get my car back to my house? It’s still at the scene, keys are in it. Rob is at home, but his phone is switched off
,’ she lied. ‘If you see him, get him to call me.’
‘Righto. Give Becca our love. Let me know if there’s anything else. Anything. We’re all thinking of you, boss.’
‘Thanks, Murdo.’ Shona ended the call.
‘The doc will be out for a chat as soon they’ve assessed her.’ Tommy handed her a large china mug of tea. ‘Here, drink this first.’
Shona looked at the cup, then sipped the hot, sweet tea. ‘This isn’t out of a machine.’
‘No, well, the eejit who made the fuss about parking had a change of heart. Brought these from the crew room.’
The doctor appeared an hour later and told them Becca had gone to theatre to have her broken arm set. Shona could see her afterwards. They’d be keeping her for a few days to monitor her concussion, but otherwise, he didn’t think there was anything else to worry about. She’d been lucky and wearing a helmet had probably saved her life. Overcome with relief, Shona thanked him and felt suddenly exhausted. The orange plastic chair was heavy and hard beneath her aching muscles and she realised she must look a mess. Her work trousers and white blouse were stained with mud and blood beneath an old RNLI fleece of Tommy’s.
‘After you’ve seen Becca, you should go home. I’ll take you,’ Tommy said. Shona nodded, unable to put up further resistance. He sat down next to her and patted her hand. She felt her head droop against his shoulder and fell into a light doze.
Two hours later, they were still waiting when Murdo arrived with Rob. ‘Found him in the pub, not fit to drive,’ Murdo said sternly, his mouth a hard line of disapproval.
Shona looked at the swaying, pale-faced figure before her. ‘Where were you, Rob? You’re supposed to be looking after her.’ It was all she could think of to say.
Chapter 22
As Shona sat in the hospital waiting for news, DCI Gavin Baird stalked into the CID room at Dumfries HQ. It was empty except for a slim young woman sitting at her desk with headphones on. She jumped when she saw him.
