Then off he jogged as suddenly and as jerkily as he’d appeared. A nervous lope. She burned with shame to think that such a man had terrified her. She turned away and walked on, trying to piece together what he had said. Someone had searched him. The police, presumably. For what – did he say? Whatever, they didn’t find it, because he didn’t have it. Christ, he could have given her office a phone to tell her that. They had it. Jim and Elaine Docherty. Did he actually say that? Did he name them? She couldn’t remember, but she was sure it was the Docherties – his pals, his partners – he was fingering. Something about an exhibition. And a stick. Or slick? Or fake, maybe. God knows.
But why did he come to her? The Prosecution. Well, you don’t go noising up police officers on their way home, dressed in Lycra and gesturing threateningly. Fine to do it to a woman lawyer. Maddy burned with shame. Should have kneed his groin and dragged him to the police station.
She quickened her pace turning into her own street. In a hurry not so much to phone the police, which she’d get over with straight away, but to get hold of Dan or Izzie, even Manda. Hit the town, let the bright lights burn away the memory. But the evening’s surprises weren’t over yet. Sitting on her doorstep, eyes closed like a beggar woman dozing, was Belinda Laird. She came to the moment Maddy’s heels came within earshot.
“Hi.”
“Mrs. Laird?”
“Are you okay?
“I should be asking you that.”
“You look a bit… I don’t know. Pale. Bit out of it.”
“I’m fine.”
“What are you doing here?”
Belinda stood up calmly as if squatting on a nearstranger’s doorstep at 10 PM was perfectly normal. Paul Pacchini’s mother had the ability to create a little world around herself. A simple smock on, and a haversack at her feet, but she seemed comfortable. Settled. “I’m sorry. I can’t go back to Dundee and just leave Paul here. You’re going to need me for enquiries anyway, I assume.”
“Yes, but not tonight.”
“Course not. But I’m out of touch with Glasgow. Don’t know where’s good – and very cheap to stay. Thought you might know.”
Maddy got her keys out automatically, but didn’t move past Belinda. “How did you find my address?”
“Only one M. Shannon in the West End. You looked like a West End girl to me.”
“This is highly irregular, Ms. Laird.” Maddy put on her most professional voice, but she could hear the tremor in it herself. She should tell the woman to wait outside while she phoned Division A. Amy Dalgarno could send a car round, find a place for her.
“The police won’t be very pleased with me,” Belinda said, as if reading Maddy’s thoughts. “They offered a car home, but I really can’t leave Paul here, jut like that.”
Maddy opened the door. Wanting to stay awhile in the city where your son lies dead was reasonable. The woman was New Age. Probably didn’t believe in money. Certainly wouldn’t have any. No harm in finding her a cheap hotel. And the company would be nice, for half an hour. Maybe take the edge off the need to drag Izzie or Dan out. “You’d better come in for a minute.” She opened the door and let Belinda go in before her. “It’s a rough old place out there. Never know what might happen.”
Belinda laughed. “Glaswegians love that big bad fantasy.”
Coulter pinned up on the board photographs of Paul the Kanes had given him. Next to images of his bloodied corpse it was hard to believe they were the same boy. Kelvingrove Paul looked like something out of Belsen. Thin, shaved, his body all angles and joints. Despite the clean tracksuit, he was still denuded somehow. Pennyvale Paul had thick black locks, velvety lips and warm cheeks. No snicks in his dark eyebrows, both arched as if listening to the surprising answer to a question.
He didn’t look like an obvious companion for Sy. Sy hadn’t been changed as dramatically as Paul by death. It was clearly the same boy with the unseen man that lay lifeless, just as skinny and just as anxious. Pacchini was dark-eyed and serious-looking. Too serious? A worried boy? Or just clever. One of those intelligences that realises early on there’s not a heck of a lot to grin about. Why would such a boy – product of a hippy mother, and solid, loving foster parents – run to Glasgow, meet up with the likes of Sy Kennedy? Some connection with his father’s druggie past? But why get himself shorn and snicked and trackie’d up, like a ned, a social inclusion case? What possessed him to get himself killed in a clump of rhododendrons?
“Welcome home boss.” Coulter liked the way Amy called him Boss. She crammed a lot into that little word. It was pally – a joke really. But it still gave him his place. “This him?” She leaned in close to look at Paul. Coulter sensed that she was close to tears. It happens to them all – every now and reality breaks through the professionalism, the hardened experience. A simple photograph of a real boy. A sad looking boy. “It’s as if he knew.”
WPC Dalgarno looked at another photograph, of Paul flanked by Des and Veronica Kane. “Uncle Des and Aunt Veronica?”
“Nicky, he calls her.”
“What d’you make of them?”
What did he make of them? He wasn’t sure. “Solid. Stolid. Decent. Private. Not forthcoming.”
“Deliberately so?”
“Maybe. Maybe they just don’t trust civic authorities. Had Paul tutored at home.”
Amy nodded. “Registered him with a recognised home schooling organisation.” She’d been doing her homework. They’d also previously had him registered at a primary school – in Merston?”
“Yeah. They were there for a few months. Didn’t say Paul attended school there.”
“He didn’t. The Home School network they were enrolled with back then registered its kids through local schools. They had him down as Paul Kane. They kick over their tracks do Des and Nicky, not think?”
He’d thought of nothing else in the drive up. The Kanes had shown him a piece of paper with Giorgio’s and Belinda’s signatures on it, granting them custody of the then eleven-year-old Paul, should anything happen to either of the natural parents. All done en famille. No lawyers. That kind of set-up made Coulter twitch.
Russell arrived, later than usual. He had a pair of shades in his hand, like an MI6 agent arriving at a safe haven. The effect was ruined by a wedge of hair sticking up at the back of his head. The rain had stopped, but it wasn’t sunny outside. A night out with the lads? Hiding hungover eyes. Coulter came away from the Incident Board. “Morning, John. Any word about Lennon?”
“Zilch. Strange thing, though – when we searched his place, it didn’t look like the flat of a man who’d packed for a trip. Carton of milk lying on the table, half-full. Bowl of cereal. Radio on. It’s not as if Lennon was an untidy man. Flat’s spick and span.”
“We whisked him away, remember? You been to see Charlie Dempsey?”
“Swears he knows nothing. Lennon came past the Cottars Arms when he left us. Said nothing to Charlie about disappearing. Charlie’s not the happiest of bunnies.”
Coulter laughed. “God knows how much moolah for a fancy lawyer and the client disappears up a chimney? No wonder!”
DS Russell came up to see the new pictures on the board, but he made no comment. “So, what’s your theory about Lennon doing a runner?” Coulter could see he was nervous that he’d backed the wrong horse, favouring Sign-Chronicity as the bad guys over the gardening IRA hit-man. Coulter rubbed his eyes.
“Sees his chance to disappear. Decides to take a long holiday. We’ve got customs everywhere notified?”
Russell nodded. “Goes off of his own accord?”
“Who’s going to make Ian Lennon do anything he doesn’t want to?”
Maddy, slumped at her desk, wondered if Izzie – landing gently in the office like a petal floating in on a summer breeze – assumed she’d been out on the razzle. That was her reputation, after all. Not sitting up till the wee small hours discussing the meaning of life with a faery woman from Dundee.
“Have you ever seen your own soul?” M
addy asked. Anyone else but Izzie would have baulked at the question at 8.20 in the morning. Maddy had at 2 AM with a bottle and a half inside her. “Actually no. Have you?”
“Belinda Laird has.”
Paul Pacchini’s mum had matched her glass for glass – with herb tea. About the only thing she’d had in her knapsack. They’d never got round to finding that cheap B&B. “Sitting opposite me one day,” Belinda had said. “Nothing especially auspicious about the time leading up to it. I was in a flat where I was staying. In Findhorn. I wasn’t half-asleep, or praying or anything. Someone had just left the room, and a moment later, she appeared.”
“Your soul.”
Belinda had nodded. “Exactly like me – but perfected. You know? The nose a little thinner, my skin brighter, hair shinier…” She laughed: “Imagine yourself with all the bits you don’t like straightened out, perked, touched up. It sounds vain, but it’s not what I mean. But I looked beautiful. Or rather, the fleeting glimpse I got of my soul, my soul looked beautiful.”
Belinda Laird wasn’t Maddy’s usual type – Izzie here would have been a more natural friend. But last night she’d enjoyed the woman’s company. She wondered now, back to being Assistant Senior PF Shannon, who had needed whom most last night? Belinda had needed a place to stay for nothing. Maddy had needed a calming influence. She’d been hyped up for the last week. Louis leaving, Nonno dying, a case on the go. Being assailed in a dark street by a mad jogger. She’d hardly slept for days, had been talking twenty to the dozen, rushing around madly. She recognised the signs in herself – and Belinda was a good cure. Then again, she had forgotten to report Whyte to the police. And had allowed a next-of-kin and possible witness to stay in her house.
“Did she just tell you this out of nowhere?” asked Izzie. “After identifying her son? Well, people react in strange ways.”
Maddy didn’t volunteer the information that Belinda had stayed over with her. Nor did she tell Izzie about Whyte. Why not? She wasn’t sure herself. She needed time to sort these things out in her head. And anyway, there was work to be done. “If you see my soul out there anywhere,” she smiled at Izzie, “tell it to come home.”
Izzie went off to her desk. Maddy, running through her email messages, wondered if your soul’s looks reflected, Dorian Gray-like, your inner self? Hers would be a terrifying mix. Chianti-guzzling, fat. Packy’s eyes and Rosa’s chin, the worst combinations. She phoned Sign-Chronicity. Elaine Docherty answered and Maddy explained her business. Elaine sighed on the other end of the line. “You’ll want Jim to come into your office?”
“Actually, I’ll be out and about later on today. If you want, I can pass by your office?”
“Sure.”
There was one report on her desk about a wife-beating and murder. Three more concerning Petrus. One of the victims poisoned by Petrus’s dumping had died the night before. She forwarded the messages to Manda to deal with for the time being. She phoned the hospital to see how Nonno was doing – no change. Stable, comfortable, but hadn’t woken up yet. She began an email to Louis, then scrubbed it. He was right – what was the point of conducting a long-distance relationship with little hope of any further physical contact? Her phone rang. Janet Bateman from Lochgilvie House. Darren had taken a flakey this morning. Between shouting and swearing and lashing out at staff, he had yelled Maddy’s name.
Rushing out the office, she saw Maxwell Binnie coming towards her. “Maddy – can I have a moment?”
“If you don’t mind, not right now.” And she slipped past him out through the open plan, faces staring at her. Not the best career move she’d ever made. As the door swung slowly closed on its heavy hinges, she saw Binnie’s face, pissed off.
Since they’d brought Darren Mulholland to Lochgilvie he had suffered an occasional panic attack. As if, after years of being the responsible member of the family, all the tension and fear had come to the surface. Last night he’d had his worst attack yet. David Simons, a resident social worker, had tried to restrain him. Getting worried, he called the paramedic service. When they arrived, they gave the boy a tranquilliser. Now Darren lay in his bed, eyes open and mumbling answers to any question put to him.
“The medicine should have worn off now, Darren,” Janet Bateman said softly to him. “Do you still feel drowsy?”
Bateman sat at the boy’s side, gently holding on to his hand. Maddy stood behind her – her life seemed to be pinned out these days by comatose people. Nonno, at the end of a long life? Darren at the start of probably a rather short one. Heaven knows why he’d called out her name – she seemed to be the last person he wanted to talk to now.
“What made you so anxious yesterday, Darren? Can you tell me that?”
The boy didn’t move his head, but squinted up at Bateman. Then he looked away again.
“Do you have any idea?” Maddy asked David Simons, standing at the back of the dorm. He shook his head. “He’d been out. He’s hardly been going out at all, and whenever he has, I’ve accompanied him. Just to the garden, or a walk round the block. Yesterday he asked if he could get anything from the shops for us. We didn’t really need anything, but I sent him for milk, thinking it’d do him good.”
Maddy turned back to Darren. “Did you meet anyone when you were out, Darren?” He didn’t answer, but the frown that had settled on his brow since his sister was murdered deepened for a moment. “Did you, Darren? Please tell us. It’ll help. Who?”
He closed his eyes. Whatever had caused his panic attack, and the reason he had called out for Maddy – not for his mother, or anyone else from his life back home – had subsided now. The safety of silence, learned over a life of living with junkies, and the after-effects of the tranquilliser, meant that he now barely even glanced at the woman he had called for last night. Janet turned to Maddy: “We think he might have spoken to someone. He came running back here, and began shouting and screaming.” She squeezed the boy’s hand tighter. “You know you’re safe here, Darren. You can tell me, or David, or this lady here, anything you want. Nothing bad will happen to you.”
Maddy thought that we promise children all sorts of things we can’t deliver.
Anne Kennedy looked at the photograph and shook her head. “I’d have remembered him. Good looking isn’t he? I mean, wasn’t he. Poor soul.” She handed the snap back to Coulter, who gave it to Tony Kennedy. Tony hadn’t been keen on meeting the police at his wife’s flat. In fact, he hadn’t been keen on meeting them at all. Busy day, he said. “No. Don’t know him. Sorry. Listen, I’ve got to rush.”
They had no reason to keep him back. Maybe he was dealing with his son’s murder by working furiously. He gave the photo to Russell. The man couldn’t wait to get out the house. “I’ll see you, Annie, all right?” Then, to the police: “You’s know where to find me.”
“Tony,” Anne said, holding him up at the door. “You’re remembering the funeral tomorrow?”
“Course I’m remembering. Fuck’s sake!”
Everybody had done their work on the three bodies in the morgue – the PF, the defence’s pathologists. Belinda Laird had been given the all-clear this afternoon, too. Sy, Paul and Frances could all be buried immediately.
“Is it worth trying some of Sy’s pals, Mrs Kennedy?” Coulter looked at the photo of Paul Pacchini.
“That boy’s never hung around these parts.”
Elaine Docherty looked nothing like the woman Maddy had imagined from the files and interviews she’d read, or the way Alan Coulter spoke about her. Far from being laid back and languorous, she was smartly dressed and busy at her computer. Maybe she’s what they call a man’s woman. Maddy had been accused of that herself. “How can I help you exactly, Miss…?” She nodded to a seat beside her workstation in the window bay.
“Shannon. All I really want to do is go briefly over what you’ve already told the police.”
“I understood that a man has been apprehended for the murders.”
“In compiling a case,” Maddy matched Elaine’s cur
t manner, “I need to talk to witnesses.”
Elaine turned off her computer screen and swivelled her seat round to give Maddy her full attention. “It was my husband who discovered the bodies, Miss Shanon, not me.”
“I was hoping he’d be here. You work together from home.”
“We have a project on up at Maryhill – housing association contract. I’m sorry, I should have told you on the phone Jim wouldn’t be here.”
“I’ll contact him later. I take it Mr. Whyte is still away?”
“I told the police, he goes off like this. No reason why he shouldn’t – as far as the business goes. Usually no longer than a week.”
“He’s still not contactable by mobile?”
“Martin has a mobile, but he seldom uses it.”
“Is it always work, when he goes away? We all like a little space every now and then. The three of you have been under some pressure recently.”
“Martin is very work-orientated.”
Maddy smiled and looked around the room, half-office, half-home. “I’ve just been to Lochgilvie House. I really like what you’ve done up there.”
Elaine wasn’t going to be seduced by flattery. She smiled, pulled out a flash drive in the computer and rearranged the papers on her desk. “I have no memory of Simon Kennedy. I try my best to be pleasant and open with clients in establishments like that. But not to the point of remembering their names. It’s just unfortunate that, two years later, my husband happens to discover the body of one of them. Which he reported to the police immediately.” She was still on the defensive – understandably, Maddy thought.
“Then there’s the Prison Reform Committee’
“That was ages ago. God, if you quoted every client we’ve done a small job for you could connect us to half the city. We’re good at networking. Is that a crime?”
Maddy smiled. “The police have to check every avenue.”
“But they’ve got their man.” Her voice was still even, playing with the USB she’d pulled out the computer.
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