The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

So why there?

  And found by who?

  It was reported a body was found.

  He swiped to read the report on the finding of Kieran Cowan, confirming there was a huge part of the story missing. Who had called DCI Patrick? The report said nothing and Patrick said even less. The ones that shall not be spoken of. Small men of few words, short hair and wide necks. Anderson knew who trained in places like the Bealach. Those who needed the bleakest, toughest landscape the British Isles could offer. He knew who and what they were, and he guessed that Alastair Patrick had been one of them. A small lithe Glasgow man with a chip of ice in his eyes, that man would blow your head off and would feel no compunction about doing it.

  And that took a certain kind of moral toughness.

  Anderson needed Cowan to pull through for him and tell him what happened on that hill, with the blood and the heroin and the alcohol. He had very nearly escaped.

  But what of Costello?

  He closed his eyes. The music stopped, Nesbitt woke up. A deathly silence fell on the house, just as he had made the decision to go north for some peace. Morna had been pleased of course, Brenda slightly less so.

  He opened his eyes wide, startled by the sudden thought that he was leaving his family here, while George Haggerty was still on the loose. At least Mathieson was not taking those photographs at face value and was finding difficulty in tracking the private detective agency who had any records of that assignment. Anderson wondered if it was all an elaborate set-up for George’s alibi. He was the only person who really benefitted. Valerie Abernethy was ignoring Mathieson’s calls to a meeting, which was a stupid thing to do. Archie thought she was lying drunk in a hotel room somewhere, he was torn between trying to help her, and risking being kicked in the teeth again.

  George, of course, had used his charm. Over the phone he admitted he had gone out for a walk the evening before he went up to see his dad in Port MacDuff. He had indeed popped in to see Valerie at the hospital and it was true that she had left the hospital at that time with him. The hospital was less than a mile from the house, so what was so odd about that? The other pictures did not show what they looked like. Just innocent hellos and goodbyes.

  Valerie had disappeared now.

  George said he had no idea about that.

  Anderson thought that George Haggerty was a liar. The wee shitty liar that Archie Walker had been talking about.

  His phone rang. He answered it immediately. At first he didn’t recognize the voice.

  ‘I need to show you something.’ Whoever she was sounded upset.

  ‘Sorry?’ He was slow to catch on.

  ‘It’s Isla McCaffrey. I need to show you something.’

  ‘Oh Isla, I’m so sorry about Donnie.’ He tried to think. ‘I was about to go up north tomorrow so I could pop—’

  ‘Were you? Why?’

  ‘On business. I heard about your husband.’ To his own ears it sounded beyond futile. He hadn’t known the young man. He had hardly given him a thought since he knew that Costello might have broken cover.

  ‘Can you call in here, please?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Do you still have your parents there, are you alone?’

  ‘They think I’ve lost the plot but there’s something here I need to show you. Now.’

  ‘There’s a name here.’ It was three o’clock in the morning and he was studying a single piece of paper under a light, holding it at an angle so he could read the shadows and indentations. He was also trying to ignore the footsteps of Isla’s parents in the hall. Three times they had knocked on the door, asking if everything was OK. ‘Earl somebody?’

  ‘Earl Slick, he was one of Donnie’s heroes. That has nothing to do with it, it’s that bit at the top we need to look at. I think he was on the phone to Costello and making those notes at the same time. It must have been important, the way it’s scribbled down.’

  Anderson sat down on the office chair, the exhausted young woman with red, puffy eyes sat in front of him. She explained where she got the paper from, her grief momentarily lost in her enthusiasm.

  ‘He was on the tail of these guys or something.’

  ‘On the trail of Earl Slick? Who is this Earl Slick? He has underlined that more than once.’ He could see himself taking notes on the phone, receiving a lot of information, writing it down then, as the connections were made, his pen would come back to the important point, identifying it so it did not get lost in the page of scribbles. So who was Earl Slick?’

  ‘Well, he’s most famous for being David Bowie’s sideman but—’

  Something jolted in Anderson’s mind. ‘A sideman? Define a sideman for me, Isla?’

  Her tired face creased, thinking. ‘Well, it’s a guy, a musician who always plays with another guy, usually more famous. The sideman is never a celebrity, but they are always there. Slick has been Bowie’s sideman for over twenty years and … Roger Pope with Elton and …’

  ‘A partnership that last years, one in the open, the other staying well in the shadows?’

  ‘Yes, but they are really good session musicians in their own right. They prefer to be in the background making money and making music, but never in the limelight. They just don’t want the fame.’ She stopped talking, looking at a signed picture of a spikey haired Earl Slick on the wall. ‘That was Donnie’s prized possession.’

  Anderson let her talk, thinking that George Haggerty had stopped for Nicola Barnes when her car broke down. Somebody had come back to rape her. Had Haggerty called him and told him there was a tasty wee morsel waiting for him. And settled back to give himself a good alibi, while the other man took what pleasure he wanted. And that begged the question, what did George Haggerty get in return? The murder of his wife and child?

  He blinked, confused. For some reason Oscar Duguid crossed his mind; the friend of George’s who had drowned. No body ever found.

  Anderson looked back at the paper in his hand, gratified to see what was in front of him; Donnie and Costello, two police officers had, in some way, got to the same conclusion. ‘Interesting. We need every bit of information on this. Jennifer. Jennifer? Somebody has asked me about a Jennifer but not a Jennifer Rhu.’

  Isla pointed to the computer screen. ‘That is, or was, the Jennifer Rhu.’

  ‘A yacht? Isla, Donnie would be so proud of you.’

  How far had Donnie and Costello got? Definitely suspicious of the main man and the sideman. George and A N Other. Strangers On A Train for the modern age.

  But did they have any proof? Or was Costello trying to make sense of all this. He scanned over the indented shadows on the document. NC 500 was an obvious one so his brain latched onto that; the North Coast 500. Where the victims on Morna’s list were clustered? Clustered was the wrong word. The victims had been using the same roads, because they were the only roads there. Not the evidence it appeared to be, unless it was written there for another reason that only Costello and McCaffrey knew.

  He asked Isla to find Kelvindale Bridge on Google maps.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Anderson, looking at the image.

  ‘Is that not near where the woman and the boy were killed?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by near? But yes, within twenty minutes’ walk.’

  The only people that might know how far these leads went, well, one of them was dead and the other one was missing.

  He hoped.

  And he needed Mathilda McQueen. He had to get Mathieson on board. He picked up his phone and called Bannon, asking him what CCTV they had requested from Balcarres Avenue and then told him it might be better to get the cameras around Kelvindale Bridge, out of interest. Bannon swore at him for waking him up. Then asked why.

  ‘I’d just do it if I was you.’

  ‘If you are holding back information, Anderson, Mathieson will hit and not miss.’

  ‘I’ve been mauled by worse than her. Get the CCTV and let me know if you get anything. You can keep the Brownie points.’

  By nine a.m. Anderson was p
acked and keen to start his journey north to meet the clumsy Morna and renew his acquaintance with the quiet man. The weather forecast warned of foul driving conditions but so far his plans for an early start were being thwarted at every turn. He had been summoned to McCaffrey’s post-mortem. A copper at Govan had called in to say that he might have a lead on the missing female detective. Anderson dismissed it as he had all the others. Until he saw the contents of the link: an admission report of an unidentified female, taken into the QE 2 hospital early on Monday morning.

  Over the next hour, he tried to get hold of a PC Turner, eventually tracking him down in the canteen at Govan. Turner had picked her up while on the night shift after being contacted by the Sally Army. He related the story of her injuries, her location, her lack of ID and lack of memory.

  ‘Really? No memory.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Like in the report, about 60, I’d say. Stinking with drink.’

  Anderson’s heart fell.

  ‘She has no idea who she is but drinks black tea.’

  Anderson spent the next forty minutes on the phone to the hospital, thirty-nine of them on hold, thinking. How injured she had been. Lucky to be alive.

  Was it Costello?

  The music stopped. ‘A friend had come to collect her.’

  ‘What friend? To where?’

  The hospital had no idea. She had signed herself out on the basis there would be a private package of care requested by her new consultant, as yet no request had been received.

  Anderson wondered if he was getting the runaround. ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Well, it was a woman.’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘No, try your luck with the ward but you’ll get nowhere if you are not a relative.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Costello had no relatives. So who had it been? Another twenty minutes on the phone to the ward and he got a nurse called Hannah. And Hannah had a name, Theresa Neele. He doubted that. Anderson asked Turner to look at a picture he was about attach to a text.

  He heard the phone beep. ‘No, not her.’

  Anderson’s heart fell again.

  ‘It could be her mother?’

  Anderson put down the phone. And dropped his face into his hands, he had no idea how stressed he had been. He let out a long slow breath. She was out there somewhere, under medical care. Now they knew where to look. She’d lost her memory.

  Silly cow. He wiped a tear away.

  Thank God. He needed to call Archie but the phone rang instead. He swiped it thinking it would be Turner, or Hannah, with some detail remembered.

  It was Morna returning his earlier call. He said he was stuck in Glasgow but would set off as soon as he could, and he’d like to meet straightaway. She told him to come round to the house now that she had been liberated from Kieran’s bedside. He was on the mend and would be available for interview soon.

  ‘It looks like he’s going to be OK in the long run. His parents are with him now but don’t hurry to interview him as he has retrograde amnesia.’

  Anderson smiled. ‘That’s OK.’ He then asked exactly where Port MacDuff was. The answer didn’t exactly fill him with wonder.

  ‘Port MacDuff? Think Ullapool but with slightly less charm. And more rain.’

  That was hard to imagine. He had once heard Ullapool described, with infinite sarcasm, as the entertainment capital of Western Europe.

  She had asked if he knew where Fearnmore was. ‘Where Loch Torridon meets the Sound. It looks out onto Rona.’

  The relief at knowing Costello was around somewhere had lightened his mood, tempting him to say, ‘Rona? Never met the woman,’ but held his tongue. Morna sounded very earnest, she might not have a sense of humour. ‘Port MacDuff, right on the coast. You know Applecross.’

  ‘Well, I know the road by reputation.’

  ‘Yeah, you’d better come the long way round.’ she cautioned, ‘unless you have a 4 × 4 and even then, we have snow up here already and there’s more forecast.’

  ‘Was that not where your young man was found, up on the Bealach …?’ He made a mess of saying it.

  ‘Bealach? Yes indeed.’

  Anderson saw an opportunity, ‘Who found him then? If it’s inaccessible at this time of year.’

  ‘DCI Patrick.’

  ‘Why was he there?’

  ‘You need to ask him,’ was the confusing reply, and she offered to book him a room at the Exciseman for that night. He said that would be very nice and she gave him the address. Then the line went quiet. Then she asked, well stated, ‘You’ve looked at my list, haven’t you? Do you think there’s something there? That’s why you want to come up here.’

  ‘Yes,’ he thought, but my reasons are not yours. Then he asked her slowly, what she thought had happened to Sharon Sixsmith.

  Her reply startled him. ‘You should start with Jennifer Argyll, then Nicola Barnes then think what happened to Gillian Witherspoon. They had the same injuries to their shoulders, and the other one, now that she’s dead. Patient confidentiality dies with them. They told me about the shoulder reconstruction she had.’

  ‘What dead one? Gillian?’

  ‘No, Sally Logan. Braithwaite. The one who dived off the top of the building, or was pushed, you know the one who—’

  Out of the mouths of babes. Anderson felt his throat go dry, this girl had no idea she was talking about the grandmother of Anderson’s grandchild. But she was doing what a good detective would do. He thanked her for the information, he’d explain the rest when he met her. Then he said, for curiosity, testing her, ‘Just one more question. Who was Jennifer Rhu?’

  ‘Not a who, a what. That was the boat that went on fire, killed Oscar Duguid.’ She said it with the ease of familiarity. Of course she would know, it was a small place. ‘He was a pal of George, but you’ll know that.’

  ‘Yes. I do, George Haggerty. Do you know him well?’

  ‘Friend of my husband. Why?’

  ‘Just that the name Jennifer Rhu came up, but you solved that mystery. I’ll see you later.’ He swiped his phone off.

  Morna Taverner was on the ball, he’d have to watch himself with that one. She reminded him of Costello.

  But now, he had a post-mortem to go to.

  Anderson stayed outside of the post-mortem suite, he had been late anyway. On his way into the hospital, he had flashed his card about and eventually tracked down ‘Hannah’ who was terrified she had done something wrong. It took all of Anderson’s charm to get the whole story from her. She had been trying to track down anybody who might know her patient, then she had traced a friend of Jack O’Hare. And she had been called Theresa, Theresa Neele.

  The name was vaguely familiar.

  Anderson had Googled Theresa Neele, and got Theresa Neale, the name of Agatha Christie’s husband’s mistress and the name Agatha had used when she had disappeared in 1926, claiming loss of memory.

  Sweet.

  Hannah gave a brief description, tall, long dark hair tied in a bun, well spoken. From the procurator’s fiscal office, she’d had a card.

  It was close enough for Anderson; Valerie Abernethy had taken Costello away.

  Abernethy had spun a good story, giving Hannah the impression they were going to a private clinic, but had no idea where and Anderson knew that Costello was now behind a big iron curtain called patient confidentiality. She had effectively disappeared again.

  And now so had Valerie Abernethy.

  By the time he went into the mortuary itself, the post-mortem of Donnie McCaffrey was over.

  ‘I am not repeating it all just for you,’ said O’Hare. ‘He died of a single stab wound, having suffered five but only one was fatal. Everything else was staged. The cocaine – none in his system. The alcohol – none in his system. He was a clean young man who clearly got involved in a situation. And Mathilda wants you to call her. George Haggerty was stopped for another traffic violation, speeding again.’

  ‘You w
orking for Traffic now?’

  ‘No, but good news travels,’ said the pathologist, ticking off boxes on a very long piece of paper. ‘She called as she knew you would be here. There was blood found in the boot of his car, it was deer blood so don’t get excited. But the sample picked up some orange tri-lobar fibres and that pinged with something the lab in Inverness has found. I hear you are going up there. And if you weren’t, you bloody well are now. Fibres in Haggerty’s boot match the fibres on the Bealach boy’s clothes. Not often Mathilda gets to pass on good news so I thought I’d steal her thunder.’

  ‘He had an offcut of carpet on the floor of his boot,’ Anderson remembered. ‘Orange.’

  ‘And it will be universally available, I bet. He’s giving us the runabout, Colin.’

  ‘They are giving us the runabout.’

  O’Hare’s pen paused. ‘Are you onto something?’

  ‘As you would say, a tentative yes.’

  ‘Did you call Valerie Abernethy about a woman in the QE?’

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘No, I called Archie’s house and she answered the phone. Did she not pass the message on?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Anderson thinking how marvellous it must be to work with the dead, whose capacity to think and be devious was extinct. Just how easy was that?

  TWELVE

  Anderson made good time, four hours twenty-seven minutes to Port MacDuff. He’d taken the longer but quicker route, up the A9 then across country at Inverness. The air was getting steadily fresher and colder so by the time he was eating a late lunch in Ballinluig it was freezing. By the time he drove past the police station at Port MacDuff, it was freezing and blowing a gale. He thought he might have frostbite. Despite the weather, he decided to stretch his legs after the drive and walk to Morna’s house.

  He left the car in a public space and got out, making sure his case and laptop were locked in the boot. Pulling on a thick jacket and a woollen hat, he set off along the seafront, letting the sea spray, lifted by the wind, sting his face. Morna lived in Constance House, which was set one street back from the front on Castle Terrace. He stopped to watch the ferry go out, feeling the sea air in his lungs, getting the sense of freedom and of being at one with nature, in all its power. Port MacDuff had a winter population of about two thousand, double that in the summer. The sun took that moment to come out from behind thick cloud to warm his skin. The view over the Inner Sound, the water, the low hills in the distance, dark clouds chasing after the sun, was incredible. And it was so very, very quiet. He could see the attraction of living here, why people came here to escape. No questions asked. Every second person had an English accent, most of the rest were Europeans who had reasons of their own to escape to the arse end of nowhere. Beautiful though it was.