The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  The jumper had been recognized by Kieran’s mother who thought she had knitted it. Patrick wanted more to confirm ID, commenting that when he had shown the picture of the jumper to Wilma, she had given it one glance and said, ‘Oh probably,’ in reply to his query, ‘Did you knit that?’ Thus proving to himself that Fair Isle was not singular. Lots of women knitted it, the jumper was years old and no woman would recall that individual colour scheme. The item in question could have been bought in a charity shop last week. It was not an identifying jumper and DCI Patrick was not bringing a woman over two hundred miles only for her to say, ‘That’s not my boy.’

  So Morna phoned Mulholland and left a message, asking him if he could obtain a DNA swab from the parents. But she knew, she just knew, that it was Kieran in the bed in front of her. Then she emailed Patrick with an update on the boy’s condition. She held back the fact that they had said he would have sustained brain damage, being so cold for so long with a slow bleed adding to the loss of vital oxygen.

  It was a waiting game now. And she didn’t want to mention it in case it got back to the mum. Let them enjoy their good news. Their son had been found alive. She read the email again.

  Cam finn? Cam ra?

  Camera.

  She patted him on the back of his hand. ‘I have it now.’ Before pulling out a notebook and scribbling it down. She’d call Mulholland.

  Lachlan and Patrick sat in the corner of the pub, each sipping a whisky, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

  ‘How did it go with Blackward?’

  ‘Usual shite.’

  ‘Ruby McDonald turned up eventually to take wee Finn for the duration, so the boy is over at the farm.’ Lachlan shook his head. ‘That Neil is a tosser. I knew that Morna would let down her parents one day, such a good wee girl, good at school, good career, then she goes and marries that useless muppet.’

  ‘He might be a useless bastard. He’s working a lot of hours though.’

  ‘So I noticed. But then so is she. We need to get Finn back here.’

  ‘You can make that happen, Lachlan. Morna trusts you.’

  ‘He’ll be back. Ruby’s too busy to deal with the boy. How is Morna getting on? Is she OK? I heard she was at Raigmore babysitting the victim from the Bealach?’

  ‘You heard right,’ said Patrick.

  ‘You got any idea who he is yet?’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘Somebody went to a lot of trouble to kill him, remove him and dump him. I think he’s safer where he is. There’s more to come.’

  Lachlan nodded, settling back in his seat. ‘And Abigail Haggerty?’

  Patrick nodded. ‘Oscar’s wife. George’s wife.’

  ‘Aye, her. You think that George is going to come back up here for good.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Lachlan closed his eyes and took a sip of Talisker. ‘And do you think that he will be going up to the lodge? That’s what he usually does.’

  ‘I think that will be first place he will be going.’ Patrick licked the whisky from his lips. ‘But will he go alone?’

  ‘Following his ghosts? Somebody has been phoning the harbour authority asking about the Jennifer Rhu, asking about Oscar’s drowning. It’s the talk of the town.’

  ‘People talk. Let them. I have a smart little DC asking about Jennifer Argyll. And that DC is going to talk the very clever Colin Anderson into having a look around at the Jennifer Argyll case and all that will lead to Sharon Sixsmith and Nicola Barnes. Colin Anderson is not a man who knows when to stop.’

  Lachlan let out a long slow breath. ‘Are we happy about that?’

  ‘Not bothered, let them find what they can find.’

  ‘What’s that line from the film, “fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night”.’

  They raised a glass to each other, with a sense of closure and contentment.

  Anderson was sitting on the settee, waiting for Isla to calm down. He was glad her parents had come to take the children away; one three years old, one two years, the other little more than a baby. Isla’s parents were obviously very fond of their son-in-law, a good sign in Anderson’s book; dads want good husbands for their daughters. Isla herself was red-eyed and worn out. Her dark hair looked as if she hadn’t combed it for a week. She still had some fight in her though.

  ‘So, who are you? Just another bloody cop to talk shite about my husband because he’s not here to defend himself? How dare you!’

  He had heard about the treatment Isla McCaffrey had given Diane Mathieson, so he retreated into the seat, but she didn’t move. She started crying again.

  ‘It’s quite simple, Mrs McCaffrey. Your husband is missing, my DI is missing. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence given they know each other so well.’

  ‘They were not having an affair!’ she sobbed.

  Anderson couldn’t help the smile that curled onto his lips. ‘No, I very much doubt they were. The thought had never crossed my mind. And I’m bloody sure the thought had never crossed Donnie’s mind either.’ That got her interest. She looked up and sniffed, smoothing her curls down around her face, giving her the appearance of a distressed Jane Austin heroine. ‘I am not here in any official capacity, but my friend is missing and I am worried about her …’

  She tilted her head. ‘Who are you again?’

  ‘Another bloody cop.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No offence taken, but we do need to talk.’

  ‘I’m so worried,’

  ‘So am I. Costello knew your husband and thought a lot of him professionally. She thought he was a man of high moral standards and good police instinct.’ He felt he was writing Donnie’s obituary. ‘They worked together in the case of the baby that went missing.’

  Isla’s mouth formed a perfect ‘O’ as the facts fell into place. ‘Moses.’

  He nodded.

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. ‘Your son? It was in the paper. You are that Anderson.’

  ‘Indeed, my wee grandson.’ He felt himself smile; she smiled back.

  ‘With regard to Donnie and Costello, I don’t know and am not allowed to know any more than you do, but please don’t take any of that shite from Mathieson and Bannon. I think she’s a bit power hungry and he’s under the point of her stiletto.’

  ‘I guessed that.’

  ‘Costello is out there somewhere, and she’s alive. We think. We hope. They might be together. It’s a big thing for anybody to kill two police officers. It wouldn’t happen in this country, not without what we call “noise” on the intelligence. Somebody would know and somebody would talk. People can’t keep their mouths shut.’ He looked at her reassuringly. ‘When Costello was a new recruit, about two weeks out of Tulliallan, she was called to an incident in a multi-story. A young woman had been run over by a car, deliberately. She was eight months pregnant.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Isla’s hands flew to her chest, still sensitive to feel another’s pain. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘It was. The baby survived but the mother didn’t. Costello was first on the scene. She sat on the concrete, holding that woman’s hand until the ambulance came. That baby has grown up to be a powerful lady in … well, certain circles of Glasgow society. She’s no angel but I think if she heard of anybody killing DI Costello, there would be a shockwave in the Glasgow underworld, and we’d feel it. There has been no such thing. What I’m saying is, you can’t kill two cops quietly. Not in this city.’ He kept the nagging voice to himself. He was talking about regular police work, and he doubted Costello and McCaffrey were doing something regular, otherwise it would all be logged. It was under the radar of Police Scotland, it might have been under Libby’s radar too.

  ‘And you know for definite that nothing bad has happened to him?’ she sniffled.

  ‘I’m sorry but I think something very bad has happened. That blood is too much to be, well … insignificant. But your husband and my colleague were on the side of the gods. There’s no way they were up to criminal
activity themselves …’

  ‘She was in the paper. Her brother was a murderer. That’s what it said.’

  ‘Yes I know. The daggers are out for her and that worries me even more. If there’s one thing Costello can’t come back from, it’s idle gossip. You need to tell me everything you can remember about what Donnie was talking about, thinking about. Anything you can … He must have said something to you.’

  She seemed to consider this for a moment then sighed. ‘He was talking a lot about the Abigail Haggerty case. The one where the boy was killed.’

  Anderson felt a little stab of ice in his heart. ‘Most of the country was talking about that.’

  ‘He seemed to like Costello, you know, early on when they were working together on the Braithwaite case. She was going to help him get his competencies and get into the CID. That’s what he really wanted. He was fed up of being on the outside of where he wanted to be. He had watched Costello, getting things done and making decisions, putting pieces of the puzzle together and being able to think about what was missing, he was doing all that alongside her.’

  ‘She told me that herself, he had a good nose for it.’ Anderson hoped that she wouldn’t notice his use of the past tense. ‘Would he have told you if Costello had asked him to help out unofficially?’

  She thought about the question. ‘I wouldn’t have been keen. It could have damaged his future career. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell me. I had some faith that Costello would keep him on the right side of the law.’

  ‘What do you think he was doing up at Loch Lomond on a Saturday night? Or why might his car be there?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘And you have no idea where Costello is?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘And no idea where her car is. They could have both got into her car and gone somewhere else?’

  ‘Why was there drink? And cocaine? Was she, well, into that kind of thing?’

  ‘No. And that tells me more than anything that the scene was staged. Whoever did this didn’t know Costello at all. There was somebody else there, trying to discredit them, hurt them professionally. I’m not sure who that might be?’ He left the question hanging, trying not to suggest anything to her.

  But Isla looked confused.

  ‘We will get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘It’s been three days now, are they going to drag the loch?’ she voiced an uncomfortable association of ideas. ‘Do you think my husband is at the bottom of the loch?’

  ‘I have no idea. It’s not my call to search. They won’t tell me but if I find out anything I will call you.’

  Anderson walked down the slabbed path of McCaffrey’s house. A sandpit in the front garden was closed and tarped against the weather. He guessed the bulky upright was a trampoline. He got in the car and checked his messages. He had missed a call from Mitchum. He called back straight away.

  ‘Anderson, I’ll be quick. After they found blood at the lochside I’ve been under pressure from the fiscals’ office to put a trace on Costello’s mobile.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well, its battery was put in again this morning and a text message was sent, to Archie as usual. Its activity was very brief.’

  ‘But you got it?’

  ‘We did, bounced off Fearnmore and Skye, vaguely.’

  ‘At the top of the North Coast 500, up north, up near Port MacDuff?’

  ‘And why do you say that? Specifically that?’

  Anderson was quiet.

  ‘I need some transparency here, Colin. There’s been a young man left for dead at the top of the Bealach Na Ba.’

  ‘Again North Coast 500 to Port MacDuff. George Haggerty grew up there. That’s where he went the night of the murders.’

  Anderson pulled the phone away from his ear as Mitchum erupted, thinking again about whose fingers were tapping out those texts.

  Valerie closed Costello’s laptop, lay down and closed her eyes, trying to think she didn’t trust herself to remember what she had seen with her own eyes, or more importantly what she had not seen.

  She needed to be careful.

  Costello and she had both walked round the house in Balcarres Avenue in the same way, following each other’s footsteps through that house of murder and bloodshed.

  The smell of it being cleaned recently. Costello’s instinct had led her upstairs where … where somebody had left the CD player repeating that song. ‘The Clapping Song’.

  That song reminded Valerie of Malcolm.

  She ran through the words in her mind, the words about them all going to heaven.

  That was a sick joke.

  Then George had clapped at Costello at the funeral, Valerie had been too drunk to go. She had intended to go, of course, but had fallen asleep instead of getting dressed, waking up on the sofa with her good black suit crumpled underneath her, still on its hanger.

  She could recall times in the garden at Balcarres though; she was sure, happy memories. Could she remember though, her and Malcolm, maybe Mary Jane had been there too, at the bottom of the garden? George at the back door telling them the kettle had boiled, standing in a gap at the back door, the white muslin sheet swirling around him. Then him clapping his hands together to get their attention.

  Clap clap.

  Did she actually remember that? Or did she think she did simply because it fitted her version of events.

  Archie had told her that Costello had already voiced her concerns about Malcolm’s safety in the house to some of her colleagues, telling them that he had tried to climb out his own bedroom window to get to her, his dad had interrupted that by appearing at the front door. The single foot, in his trainer, poking out the first-floor window had been quickly retracted. Costello had said the boy had been out, hiding behind the bins, shivering, sick with the cold, dressed only in a Celtic top and leggings. Malcolm had even left a message on Costello’s phone, and to give her due, Valerie thought, Costello had brought the matter to the attention of the child protection services.

  But Malcolm had slipped through.

  There was no evidence that he was a child at risk.

  Valerie thought about the minute she had stepped into George’s bedroom. Her sister’s bedroom. She wanted to see where her sister had fought for her life. The carpet was the same, except for the large hole cut out at the bottom of the bed. The mirrored doors were sparkling and spotless, the duvet was folded up at the bottom of the stripped bed.

  She had been quiet, not wanting to interrupt the silence of the ghosts.

  These people shouldn’t be ghosts, her sister, her little nephew.

  The big question was: who had killed them?

  The fascist with the lipstick had been murmuring something, ‘Yes, of course. Mr Haggerty is devastated at his loss. He has been very helpful.’

  Motive? The fascist had shrugged, standing in the doorway watching her every move.

  Valerie had shaken her head thinking that maybe her sister had misdiagnosed a patient and they, or their family, had got angry? But folk don’t kill over that. They complain to the BMA or the papers, or Facebook.

  But Costello had a good theory.

  Money.

  The life insurance Abigail carried. The life insurance Oscar had carried. The mortgage on the Balcarres Avenue house paid off. That made Valerie stop and think.

  Oscar presumed dead. The Jennifer Rhu on fire, sinking. No sign of Oscar.

  She checked her watch. She was having Costello moved at that moment. Nobody would know she was there, the strict rules on patient confidentiality would see to that. She had a fractured skull and she was scared, very scared.

  Costello had two other questions on her notes.

  One comment. Who would Abigail open the door to? What had been said in that phone call?

  Valerie tried to recall what she had been told. There had been a fight, verbal, voices raised. The nosey neighbour had called the police three times in the previous eighteen months. Each time Abigail had sent the police away,
saying it was nothing. So another episode of shouting had provoked no alarm. It seems George had left, Abigail had texted him while he was on the road then George had called back. They only had George’s word for what was said on that call. Or whose finger had pressed send on the text from Abigail’s phone. He could have been talking to anybody. It wasn’t proof that Abigail was still alive. The estimated time of death was much later, more like five or six a.m. Dead for ten hours when found. Valerie knew how easy it was to confuse a jury about time of death; the musculature of the body, the fat content, the temperature of the room, all that was a movable feast, one that she had dined on in court for the clients of the Crown.

  Back at the house Bannon had spoken, standing behind Mathieson, looking over her shoulder. ‘Valerie, your sister was very cautious; she had opened her door after one a.m. The time of death was three a.m. Cold night but the heating was on.’

  George liked the house to be cool. He didn’t like spending money on the heating. And it annoyed his chest. Abigail liked to sneak it on when he was away up north. Was there hell to pay when he came back? She closed her eyes to get her mind back on track. Was Abigail expecting somebody and she had started an argument to get him to leave? Nope, George had a call that summoned him north. So had George told her to expect somebody?

  Was that why they were both dressed? No risking going to bed because somebody was going to call.

  And who would that be? She had no faith in Mathieson getting anywhere.

  Valerie thought back to the house. She had asked to see the boy’s bedroom. The minute she stepped onto that grey carpet, she had spotted the gap on his bookcase, where his Millennium Falcon usually sat. She had asked if George had mentioned it. He hadn’t.

  But it was gone.

  Mathieson had dismissed her with a scathing look. Even Archie had shaken his head a little, worrying about a toy at a time like this. It was a big toy, nearly two-feet long. And Costello had been Googling the street map of the area, looking as if she was timing routes in and out.