The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘At this point I don’t really know what to think. I can see her getting angry and lashing out at him, nothing pre-planned, but provoked. Don’t you? I’ve read a fair bit about her. Listened when you and the others are talking about her, I think she’d lash out when she thought she was on the moral high ground.’

  Archie could only give a little nod while admitting to himself that Mathieson wasn’t too far off the mark.

  ‘And there was the incident when she broke Viktor Mulholland’s nose. One single punch. Hardly the act of a professional police officer.’ She sighed, looking round the living room, her gloved hand sitting on her hip, a stance that reminded Walker of Costello herself. ‘But you know her better. Tell me what you think happened.’

  ‘All this is complicated enough without people starting on hypotheticals.’

  ‘Where would she go, though? Any relatives? She must have somebody.’

  ‘None that I know of, but you might be better asking Colin Anderson.’

  Bannon had his hand down the back of the sofa, pulling out a few coins, a remote control, and a crumpled paperback. He looked up and raised an eyebrow, having heard the gossip and possessing enough sensitivity not to point out that it was him here, not Colin Anderson. And his presence spoke volumes.

  ‘What about intimacy?’ asked Mathieson.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Had she mentioned McCaffrey to you or any of the gang of four, in an intimate way?’

  ‘The gang of four?’

  ‘We will be talking to Costello’s colleagues, Anderson, Wyngate and Mulholland so we will know if she has mentioned something that maybe you have forgotten.’ It was Mathieson’s turn to raise an eyebrow, questioning.

  Walker answered carefully, ‘Not that she told me, but she did know McCaffrey, as a police officer.’

  ‘Off the record, do you have any ideas where she is?’

  ‘And if it’s off the record, you shouldn’t be asking. But I will answer on the record. I do not know where she is.’

  ‘But you know her and we know how well you know her. She has a good police record, mostly,’ she added, ‘she herself, but when you look back at her family, it’s all there. All there for us all to see. So you are here to make sure that we do our job properly, but that is all. Do I think she’d kill a colleague? No. But when I read about her family, about her brother? Then I can think that she has a cop’s sense of moral outrage at what happened to Abigail and Malcolm that fits in with her personality. I can see that she might have pulled a young cop like Donnie into her way of thinking … and maybe when he realized how far she was prepared to go and he said that he wasn’t … Then I can picture a scenario that fits what we have here. There could have been a fight, he might have come off worse.’

  ‘I can think as far as that. But she would not be running away. She’d be standing here shouting. And her blood was there.’

  ‘A trickle of her blood, and she is nowhere to be seen, and she has been texting you so she’s about somewhere,’ said Mathieson.

  ‘But she has gone on the run. She certainly hasn’t been back here. That’s what I’m thinking. And Donnie McCaffrey is very dead,’ added Bannon.

  Archie nodded, giving the idea some thought. It wasn’t that far away from what he was thinking himself. It was a logical chain of thought that could explain everything and nothing. It would fit the way she had handed in her notice, and left Mitchum in no doubt about what she had thought of the lack of investigative progress into the deaths of Abigail Haggerty and her son Malcolm. But if she had injured Donnie, she would have taken him to the hospital, not up to Tyndrum to die.

  He watched them in silence. Costello’s living room was still dark, they hadn’t opened the big white curtains that covered the picture window and hid the beautiful view of the Clyde. He lifted his mobile from his pocket, checking it for a message from her, nothing.

  He read a few emails from work, looking busy. He didn’t want to appear that he was watching them but he couldn’t help himself, thinking like a prosecutor. He followed them, seeing what they were seeing and trying to interpret the facts in a different way.

  Her car was missing. Her laptop was nowhere to be seen. There was an abandoned cup of tea. Had she left in a hurry?

  They went through everything and every room. He followed them out to the linen cupboards, Bannon opened the door allowing Mathieson to look in, have a good search round. Archie could see the white laundry basket on the floor, Mathieson in her haste had missed it and she nodded to Bannon to close the door which he was about to do when Bannon said, ‘What’s that?’ and picked up the bag that was lying in the laundry basket.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said as he looked in, avoiding Archie’s eyes. ‘Bloodstains. On a bath towel. Get all that bagged.’

  Mathieson picked it up, suspending it between a gloved finger and thumb, explained it to him as if he was a child. ‘Covered in McCaffrey’s blood.’

  ‘Somebody’s blood. She was bleeding too, remember?’

  ‘There’s a pair of trousers and … oh no.’ She pulled out a jacket and showed them the large slash at the back. ‘That looks superficial, that didn’t go through. She was well enough to come back here. He lost his blood, and his life at the scene.’

  ‘Well, get it tested and we will find out,’ Archie said. ‘I can put a rush on it through Matilda McQueen.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I think, as we basically have the budget from Complaints, then we will get a private lab to run the tests. Not that I suspect McQueen would be underhand in any way but we are going to aim for transparency here. It’s time for the truth, whatever that is.’

  ‘Of course. The fiscal’s office will support you in any way we can,’ Archie said. ‘And in my role of chief fiscal, my office is formally requesting a copy of that email, with the photographs attached, of course.’

  Mathieson stood up, looking straight at him, trying to figure out what he was thinking. ‘Of course, transparency in all things, Mr Walker.’

  ‘Thank you.’ This time he gave way to the relief he felt.

  Whatever mess Costello was in, she was going to have to get out of it herself.

  Walker was wound as tight as a rattlesnake. Brenda had given him a cup of coffee and he was making half-hearted attempts to amuse baby Moses, who was gurgling when he was the centre of attention and scowling when he was not.

  Anderson took a long time looking through printouts of the photographs; he placed them on the coffee table in something that approached chronological order. ‘You know, Archie, if I was the defence council, I would be asking myself exactly what these photographs show.’

  ‘They show my god-daughter is a lying little piece of shit.’

  ‘Do they? Look at the clothes, three different occasions from the look of them. Valerie is not dressed up, she has no make-up on.’

  ‘She has heels on?’

  ‘She has the shoes on that she was wearing when she was taken to the hospital, that night. She was Valerie Abernethy, the suited, Porsche driving fiscal, on her way to the Blue Neptune; she’d have been in high-heel mode.’

  ‘A woman can borrow clothes, but nobody can wear someone else’s shoes,’ added Brenda, thinking she had to give some female input.

  ‘And look, she’s never kissing him, he is kissing her. Look at this one.’ He held one out for Walker to have a better look at. ‘In that one, she has her hands up; her palms are on his chest like she is ready to push him away. And it’s all a little convenient, isn’t it, that these suddenly appear on Mathieson’s desk from an anonymous source? So maybe not a little lying piece of shit, maybe she’s being manipulated by somebody who is very good at it.’

  ‘Haggerty?’

  ‘I think so, you know what effect those pictures will have on a jury. And Mathieson has moved on them. These pics will get Valerie arrested.’

  ‘I have Kerr booked for her defence, I think she might need somebody good. I will make sure he interviews whoever took the photographs. It’s
a bit too convenient that it shows Valerie left the hospital and walked in the direction of Balcarres Avenue on the night of the murders. And she has no memory of it.’

  ‘I think Mathieson is too quick. You need to get her to look at that CCTV again, further afield. Find out where Valerie and George went. Don’t accept all this at face value.’

  Archie Walker looked defeated, he looked crumpled; a sad sight in a man who took great pride in his appearance.

  ‘I’ve always said the crime was far too controlled for an addict like Valerie.’

  ‘So get hold of Valerie, get her together with the best legal representation and get Mathieson on the back foot. There’s holes in her case a bus could get through. You are a lawyer after all. Play the game the way Mathieson plays it.’

  ‘Just one problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have no idea where Valerie is. Her stuff is in the room at my house, but her handbag has gone.’

  ‘God, it’s like that Agatha Christie book when they all disappear one by one.’

  Mathieson was cold and wet by the time she got hold of Colin Anderson in the interview room at West End Central at half six at night.

  ‘Right,’ she said banging a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. ‘Just so you know, we have found bloodstained clothing at Costello’s residence.’

  ‘With a slash in it,’ added Bannon.

  Anderson kept his face straight. ‘So a serving police officer who has worked in major cases leaves that kind of forensic evidence lying around her flat? Where did you find it?’

  ‘In her washing basket,’ answered Bannon, helpfully before Mathieson could stop him.

  ‘Her washing basket.’ Anderson threw his hands up in the air. ‘Well, you probably got her right there. I’d say that was the act of a guilty person, putting dirty washing in the washing basket. Jesus, if she had anything to do with this you’d find no evidence at all. She’d have walked down to the river and chucked it in there. It would be floating past Ireland now.’

  ‘People do things by force of habit. Even cops who should know better.’

  ‘I’ll give you that,’ agreed Anderson sweetly.

  His acquiescence unnerved Mathieson slightly, for one single beat she was put off her stride.

  ‘They knew each other; McCaffrey and Costello, so what happened to him? His wife says that Costello texted him, he went out to Inveruglass to meet her. And there was an incident that involved blood, cocaine and alcohol.’

  ‘Crap,’ said Anderson.

  Mathieson wrote that down.

  ‘Costello wouldn’t touch alcohol if you paid her.’

  ‘So he did the drinking and she drove her car, we haven’t found it yet.’

  ‘No. Let me put that another way. All evidence is open to interpretation, so I think you are mistaken in your interpretation of the evidence that has been put before you. Do you want to write that down?’

  ‘I know that, Colin.’ Bannon was back to first-name terms. His voice was soft and sympathetic which unnerved Anderson more than if he had been scathing and threatening. ‘But you can see the uncomfortable position we are in. We have no sign anybody else was there.’

  ‘You didn’t know Kieran was there, did you? You don’t know who put the tobacco tin in the wing of the camper. No, you don’t. Stop bowing to pressure and do your fucking jobs properly. I’d never jump to the conclusions that you have. Unless she was standing there with a smoking gun, covered in an obscene amount of gunshot residue, while standing next to a bleeding McCaffrey who was screaming, “Oh Costello, please don’t shoot me again”.’

  ‘She was there when the bodies were found at the house, the Haggerty house,’ said Mathieson briskly.

  ‘So was Archie Walker. They found the bodies together, full stop.’

  ‘How did she know to go there? There was no inclination, no pointers, she just decided to go round there and hey ho, a twelve-year-old boy and his mother had been stabbed to death.’

  ‘You saying that doesn’t change the facts of the case. She went round there in the company of Archie to inform the deceased about the state of her sister, a fiscal called Valerie Abernethy who is—’

  ‘Mr Walker’s god-daughter, yes we know. Who is having an affair with George Haggerty? And who we are now looking for in connection with that crime.’

  ‘Again, that’s your interpretation.’

  ‘Why did Costello go with him? With Archie to that house? Why?’

  ‘He’s a friend, and it was a police matter. Costello had derived the plan to catch the person who had killed Mary Jane Duguid, remember.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘So it subsequently turned out. And Valerie was nearly killed by Braithwaite. Why shouldn’t Costello go?’

  ‘But why with Archie, then, if it was not a family affair.’

  ‘She went because it was a family affair and she’s not family. She’s a serving police officer.’

  ‘Was, Colin, she was a serving police officer.’

  ‘She was at the time and was keeping it all above board.’

  ‘Does she do what Archie suggests? Does she go out with him? Are they having an affair?’

  ‘Well, he took me out for a pint last week, are we having an affair too?’ he snapped back.

  Bannon was doing his softly, softly thing again.

  ‘I’ve seen the pictures of that scene, they were pretty horrific. Do you think that could have pushed her over the edge and she might now be planning to take some investigation into her own hands?’

  ‘By killing a fellow police officer? No, I don’t think so.’ But that was exactly what he thought, Costello and McCaffrey, a two-man tag team. Just like Anderson and Costello had been but Anderson could always rein in Costello, he doubted McCaffrey would attempt to do that.

  ‘What do you think then, Colin? We need some help here.’

  It was a textbook ploy to get him to talk but he could see how it might be for them and, he acknowledged to himself, there was the possibility that with pressure from above they might be forced to close the case on the most obvious evidence available in the absence of Costello to give her version of events.

  ‘Well, if you don’t hear it from me you would hear it from others. It’s a popular theory but I don’t think so. She’d be here kicking and punching. I think it broke her and she has gone off to lick her wounds. I think she felt very responsible for the death of Malcolm, the boy had called her on his phone. She had alerted Children’s Services. A woman called Dali Despande had placed it on a priority list of some sort but there was no real evidence that the child was in danger. Until somebody stabbed him twelve times, of course.’

  ‘But that person was not a member of the family, so why bring Family Services into it? Surely the tragic outcome of that situation shows that Costello got it wrong, it wasn’t his dad that the boy was afraid of. Maybe it was Valerie.’

  Of course it was his dad, thought Anderson, of course it was. Whatever else had gone on in there, Malcolm Haggerty had been scared of his own dad. Colin recalled the conversation at Mary Jane’s funeral. ‘She was very suspicious of George, and wherever she is, I think she still will be.’

  ‘And this?’ Mathieson pointed to a picture of the young police officer, a death forgotten in the internecine arguments about a woman who wasn’t there.

  ‘I don’t know about that. Or him. I haven’t heard. I’ve worked with Costello for years and all I get is titbits of a lot of blood, a bit of cocaine, a lot of alcohol. If you want to give me all the relevant details, I will certainly give you my opinion. If you value it, knowing her as I do.’

  ‘We feel you might be guilty by association, if you assisted her in some way.’

  Anderson nearly laughed. ‘You have got to be kidding, look at my service record, look at hers …’

  ‘Yes, we know,’ said Bannon. ‘We know that, you and I both know that, but if this goes to court they will argue that if anybody helped Costello, it would have been you.’


  ‘You do know about Costello’s family past?’ If Mathieson was supposed to edge that question in carefully, she hadn’t made a good job of it.

  ‘Yes I do. I know her brother nearly killed her, which is how she got that scar on her forehead. And obviously I know about her brother and father. It’s all over the bloody papers.’

  ‘It’s in the public domain.’

  ‘The timing is rank.’

  ‘That doesn’t change the facts. You do see our problem,’

  ‘If you think she did that—’ he tapped his finger on the photograph – ‘then I think you are barking well up the wrong tree, she might lash out in anger but not that.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘I have no idea, has there been any movement on her credit cards? Her bank cards? Trace her phone, you’re the police you can do what you want.’

  ‘She’s taken money out from her account. The transactions started again this morning. And she brought a pay-as-you-go mobile using her credit card. She knows we’ve been tracing her calls. We will trace the CCTV cameras and then we will bring her in. And we have a White Fiat on CCTV on the A9. Just waiting confirmation.’

  Anderson knew that wasn’t true, Mathieson was playing him. They’d have confirmation on the car owner immediately, but it made him sit up. ‘Really? She’s up and moving? She bought another mobile?’

  ‘And headed north. Do you know of any friends or relatives up there?’

  Anderson smiled. ‘If she turns west off the A9, and joins the North Coast 500 route then you have a connection. She has no relatives up north, she has no relatives at all. But George Haggerty is from that part of the world.’

  Mathieson nodded. ‘We had worked that out. And you can see how it looks. I’m sorry but Costello is a suspect in this, so as with any suspect, her life, her friends her career, all of it, is under scrutiny. Until we know what happened to McCaffrey, Costello remains a person of interest.’

  ‘And the boy, the one in Raigmore? Cowan?’ Anderson directed the question to Bannon who flicked open his folder and ran a finger down an index, then flicked over a few pages. He could hear Mathieson’s fingernails tapping in impatience and got the feeling Bannon was winding her up. He would have the information Anderson wanted at the forefront of his mind.