by James Oswald
‘Chafes a bit. How am I meant to get it off?’ The man rolled down his trouser leg, trying to hide the ankle bracelet and its heavy electronic package. His tight-hemmed jeans wouldn’t easily stretch, which meant getting undressed that evening would be an interesting challenge for him.
‘You’re very funny.’ McLean sniffed the air and tried not to grimace. John Smith’s flat might have been a nice place to live, a high-floor apartment in a modern development overlooking the Firth of Forth. It must have cost a bit in rent, but the landlord would be making a loss, even if he kept the deposit. The place was grubby, the furniture stained and the carpet didn’t look like it had seen a vacuum cleaner in months. Whatever he was, Mr Smith was not house-proud. Still, this was his home, and the terms of his bail meant he’d be seeing rather more of it than he was perhaps used to. Maybe he’d use some of that time to tidy up a bit.
McLean addressed the technician who had attached the tag to Smith’s leg, now tinkering with a small black box of electronics set up by the phone. ‘We all good to go?’
‘Aye. The base station’s linked up an’ running. He moves more’n a hundred yards from here and we’ll know about it. He tries to tamper with the box or the tag we’ll know about it even quicker.’
‘A hundred yards?’ Smith pulled at his jeans, forcing the tracker down to his foot but still not managing to get the fabric over. ‘That’s a bloody joke. How’m I supposed to do my shopping? How’m I going to go to work?’
‘Thought you said you worked from home.’
‘Yeah, well. Still got to meet clients, you know.’
‘I suggest you arrange for them to come here, then. Only don’t forget to let us know they’re coming. You probably won’t get much business from them if we stop and frisk them when they leave.’
‘What? You’re going to be watching the place even with all this shit here?’ Smith threw an arm wide, indicating the black box of tricks that would monitor his every move and report it back to them, via the private company operating the system. The technician finished stashing his tools away, snapped the latches closed on his hard plastic tool case and stood up.
‘That’s me finished. I’ll leave youse to it, aye.’
McLean nodded, watched the man leave. As he closed the front door, DS Ritchie appeared from the other end of the room.
‘Place is clean, sir. Well, there’s nothing here shouldn’t be.’ She ran a finger over the back of one of the chairs clustered around a dining table piled high with empty pizza boxes and lad mags. ‘Not sure “clean” is the right word for it.’
‘This is a fucking disgrace.’ Smith had given up with trying to get his trouser leg down. Now he stalked across his living room to where Ritchie stood. ‘You can’t go rifling through my stuff. That’s personal.’
‘You’d prefer to spend the time until your trial in Saughton, Mr Smith? Only I’ve heard the inmates there don’t much like rapists. Don’t much like the English either.’ The detective sergeant stood her ground, staring the man down. McLean readied himself, not so much to go to her aid as to intervene should she decide to break Smith’s arm.
‘I think it’s time we left, Sergeant,’ he said after a moment’s silence. ‘Mr Smith will want a little time to adjust to his new circumstances.’
‘Sir.’ Ritchie nodded, stepped past Smith and joined McLean near the front door to the apartment. Smith watched, a mixture of anger and disbelief painted across his face.
‘Wait. You can’t leave me like this.’ He hopped theatrically, pulling up his tagged ankle where his jeans were rucked up his shin. ‘How’m I supposed to get undressed?’
‘That’s entirely up to you, Mr Smith,’ McLean said. ‘I’d maybe suggest you try a pair of scissors.’
‘Heard a rumour you were in the building, sir. Got a little something for you.’
McLean looked up from his desk, his old desk in his tiny old office back at his old station, to see Grumpy Bob standing in the doorway. There was no point in the detective sergeant coming in. Hardly enough room to swing a very small kitten, and no extra chairs. Some of the piles of folders and box files had been there since McLean had first been allocated the space. He had no idea what was in them, but they were like old friends now.
‘Anything interesting?’ He dropped the page he’d been squinting at back on to the pile. Amazing how so much paperwork could accumulate even when he was working for another unit in another station. Most of it seemed to be marked for the attention of a certain Detective Inspector Carter, so how it had ended up here he could only guess.
‘Just a copy of the Headland House file. You said you wanted a look. I don’t reckon the DCC will reopen it, though, no matter how much Duguid wants to.’ Grumpy Bob reached over the desk and handed McLean the folder. It was surprisingly slim; he’d have expected box loads of stuff.
‘Is that it?’
‘Pretty much. Apparently there was more, but it was lost in the records fire, back in ’ninety-five. This is all the stuff that was on the computer.’
McLean flicked open the folder, scanned the first page, then closed it again. ‘Thanks, Bob. I’ll have a look at it later.’ He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d asked to see the folder. Pure curiosity, perhaps, or the fact that it had come up, sparked a memory, an itch he just had to scratch. Or maybe it was the coincidence, an old brothel raid case coming to his attention just at the same time the new brothel raid case had gone spectacularly wrong. There were parallels. Well, not exactly parallels, more like echoes from the past.
‘Just keep it to yourself, aye?’ Grumpy Bob nodded at the plain folder, and only then did McLean notice it wasn’t an official one. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone asking how you came by it.’
‘Seriously?’ He opened the top drawer of the desk and slid the folder in. ‘Why would anyone care?’
‘Put it this way sir. I don’t often get calls from the DCC. Not on my direct line. He tends to go through my bosses’ boss, if you know what I mean.’
‘He called you on this? Why?’
‘Oh, he mentioned a couple of the other cases we’re considering, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Could tell this was the one he was really interested in. I got the impression from the conversation that someone even higher up the food chain had been bending his ear. He was very keen the case not be reopened. To be honest, I don’t think there’s enough left to reopen it anyway. Most of the folk arrested are dead or good as.’
McLean closed the desk drawer, wondered whether or not to lock it. There was something else bothering him about the whole situation, and the knowledge that something was being actively suppressed only made him more curious. ‘What was the actual unsolved crime, anyway? Not as if we didn’t catch everyone with their pants down.’
‘It was the girl,’ Grumpy Bob said. ‘The one you found in the attic. Aye, your name’s in the report, sir. Only they never found out what she was doing there, who’d abducted her or what they were planning to do with her. They never even found out who she was.’
Newhaven hadn’t changed a great deal since that day, twenty years earlier. Creeping signs of redevelopment, tidying up the ramshackle houses; a few of the worst examples of sixties architecture had been replaced with more modern housing that wasn’t really much of an improvement. The biggest change, as far as McLean could see, was that the houses that had once looked out on to the Firth of Forth now had an unrivalled view of the modern tower blocks that budded out of the reclaimed land west of Leith Docks like so many glass and concrete mushrooms. John Smith lived in one of those flats, which just about summed up the whole situation as far as he was concerned.
Headland House was still there, but it looked like
it had been converted into apartments. McLean parked across the street, listening to the tick, tick of cooling metal as his car fell silent. He really shouldn’t have been here; there were far more important things to worry about. But he couldn’t help thinking about the place, the raid that should have been the talk of the city but which fizzled away with barely a mention in the press, the unnamed little girl he’d found locked up in a cage in the attic.
What had happened to her? She’d be what, thirty now? Older? Christ, where did the years go?
He shook his head even though there was no one about to see. The folder Grumpy Bob had given him lay on the passenger seat, but he didn’t pick it up to read immediately, just sat there staring at the old building as the trees swayed in the breeze coming in off the Forth. So much going on, at work and at home. Sometimes he envied Emma. How easy it would have been to have just headed off into the wild with her, travelled the world. He had no real ties to Edinburgh any more. Just a job he was more compelled to do than actually enjoyed, a social life that revolved around takeaway food and Mrs McCutcheon’s cat. Not much to show for twenty years and more of service.
With a sigh, he took up the folder, flicked it open and scanned the pages. It was sparse, mostly photocopies of heavily redacted notebooks, a couple of witness statements. There was no mention of the girl beyond that she had been found and delivered to social services for rehousing. There were no arrest forms, no details of preparations for court. There wasn’t even any record of what had been sent to the Procurator Fiscal, let alone the outcome of any trial. McLean cast his mind back, trying to remember anything of the case at all beyond the raid and finding the young girl. He’d been selected for the fast track not long afterwards, sent up to Aberdeen and then over to Strathclyde to try and cram two years of beat work into six months. Then they’d made him a detective. At the time he’d assumed it was a reward for his diligence. Now it didn’t seem quite so innocent. What better way to get the awkward young constable out of the picture than swamp him with so much work he never had time to ask any questions?
The phone squawking away in his jacket pocket interrupted his trip down foggy memory lane. He pulled it out, expecting a call, but it was only a reminder that there was a wrap-up briefing for the brothel raid scheduled for half an hour’s time. That was something he would love to miss, but there was no getting away from it. At least they should be drawing a line under the case and hopefully moving on. He shuffled the papers back into their folder and tucked it under the passenger seat out of the way of prying eyes. No wiser for having looked at it, and good luck to Duguid if he thought there was a cold case in there to pursue. Firing the engine back into life, he took one last look at the imposing bulk of Headland House, then headed back to the station and his fate.
‘Well, I won’t say this is the happiest of briefings, but at least we can say we did our best.’
The SCU offices were almost full for a change, the collected officers involved in the brothel raid assembled for the wrap party. The mood was sombre; nobody liked a fuck-up at the best of times, and this was a spectacular one. It didn’t help that Stevie Robinson, the Deputy Chief Constable, had come down from his office to watch over proceedings. He hadn’t said anything, which probably made things worse. DCI Dexter wasn’t letting him cramp her style, though.
‘On the plus side, we’ve all still got our jobs. And it’s no’ as if we didn’t salvage something from this debacle. Bless you, John Smith.’ Dexter raised her coffee mug in a mock toast. A dozen or so other mugs were held aloft and a low murmur of ‘John Smith’ echoed around the room. It was that kind of day.
‘There’ll be an investigation into what went wrong, of course. But it’s going to be internal. No one from the complaints nosing around and making us all feel dirty.’
That got a murmur of surprised cheer out of the crowd, short lived, but there nonetheless. McLean looked out across the room of faces, some he knew well, some hardly at all.
‘But there’s no getting past the fact we fucked up. I’m no’ looking to blame anyone. We’re all in it together and all that pish. But let’s not make a habit if it, aye?’ Dexter paused a moment, as if waiting for the class to say ‘No, Miss, sorry, Miss’. They didn’t, so she continued. ‘Now there’s plenty else for us to be getting on with. Someone’s been carving his initials in the faces of working girls down on Leith Docks. Going to have to put a stop to that. And there’s been too many reports of flashers in Holyrood Park for my liking. Looks like someone’s building up to something. Let’s stop it before it starts.’
The meeting carried on in similar fashion, a collective sigh of relief at the light reprimand over the brothel raid fiasco helping to lift the mood and inject a sense of purpose. McLean admired Dexter for her ability to motivate her team; far better than Duguid’s veiled threats and temper, or Brooks’ shouting. He wasn’t so wet behind the ears as to believe it could be that easy, of course. There were always repercussions. Finally Dexter wound things up, sending them all off on their various tasks, and the room swiftly emptied. No one wanted to be stuck in there with the DCC, which was perhaps understandable. Even DS Ritchie just glanced nervously past him, then nodded at McLean before scurrying out.
‘Tony, a word.’ McLean had hung back, knowing this was coming. He was second in command, after all, and the cock-up had been squarely on his watch. He turned to where Dexter and Robinson were standing.
‘Ma’am. Sir.’
‘This has all been a bit of an embarrassment.’ The DCC bounced lightly on his heels, hands behind his back headmaster-style as he spoke. McLean had only met him a few times before; he was a Strathclyde Region man, shipped over from the west coast when all the local constabularies had merged into Police Scotland. For a Weegie copper, he wasn’t too bad by all accounts. It didn’t help to be on his wrong side, though.
‘That may be the understatement of the year, sir.’
‘Call me Stevie, please. None of this “sir” nonsense, Tony. We’re not in the army.’
McLean resisted the urge to say ‘could’ve fooled me’. It was refreshing to meet a senior officer who didn’t immediately pull rank, but he’d also seen the way the DCC stood silently at the back of the room, watching, appraising. He’d need a bit more than first names before he felt he could trust the man.
‘Thank fuck for that.’ Jo Dexter lowered the tone, as ever. ‘Never was one for uniforms. Still, we are where we are, and the important thing is to make sure we don’t get here again, right?’
McLean had an inkling of where this was going. Too much to hope that he was wrong. ‘I’m still not quite sure how we got things so spectacularly wrong. It should come up in the case review, though.’
‘Aye, about that—’ Dexter started to speak, but was interrupted by Robinson.
‘I want you to run the investigation, Tony. Shouldn’t take long. Find out where the wires got crossed. If we got the intel from a CHIS, then we need to re-evaluate using them. That sort of thing. Only keep it low key. The fewer people in the loop the better, you understand?’ He gave McLean what he no doubt thought was a friendly pat on the arm.
‘You’ll have a report on your desk by the end of the week, sir,’ McLean said, and wondered whether he could stomach the whitewash he was being asked for.
‘Call me Stevie. Please.’ The DCC smiled at him like a shark. ‘I look forward to reading it.’
21
It takes a long time for the woman from social services to arrive.
He sits quietly in a corner of the entrance hall, watching as the swarms of police, plain clothes and uniform, slowly subside. The discovery of the little girl is like a kick up the backside to what was a lacklustre effort
beforehand. Every so often he catches a snippet of conversation, angry voices as if the extra work is somehow his fault. He can see the way they look at him, but can’t understand why. It’s not as if he’s done anything wrong.
The girl smells. He has no idea when last she washed, but it’s likely weeks rather than days. Her clothes feel dirty, her hair is matted, but he can’t put her down, can’t push her away. She clings to him as if he were a rock in the middle of a raging torrent, her head buried into his shoulder. He has tried talking to her, but she won’t answer. It’s hardly surprising. Who knows what traumas she has suffered in a place like this?
‘This the wee girl, aye?’
He looks up to see a woman standing in front of him, half bending down to peer at the child. She has a friendly face, but careworn and tired. An ID card hangs from a lanyard around her neck, the photograph showing a woman with a lot less grey in her hair.
‘Social services?’ he asks, trying to gently ease the girl’s grip from around his neck.
The woman nods once. ‘You must be PC McLean. I’m Dot.’
‘Dot?’
‘Aye, just Dot.’
Something about Dot’s voice must be trustworthy, as the girl finally stops trying to burrow her head into his neck, turns round to look at her. He can see something crawling around in her hair. A spider perhaps.
‘Well, you’re a bonnie wee thing, aren’t you?’ Dot crouches down so that she is on the same eye level. ‘Bet you’re hungry, though. You look hungry.’
The girl nods, very slightly. She acts more like a toddler than a child her size, doesn’t seem to want to speak. Maybe she can’t speak, if she’s been locked up in this place all her life, used as a plaything for the sick old men they found when they raided the house. There’s a special place in hell for people like that, and he doesn’t even believe in hell.
