Still Life - Karen Pirie Series 06 (2020)

by McDermid, Val

  ‘I need to speak to Verity Foggo.’ Karen held up a hand to still the worried protest she could see coming her way. ‘She’s not in any trouble. We think she might have some information pertaining to our investigation. Where will we find her? Where is she staying?’

  He licked his lips, clearly not mollified by her words. ‘You’re not going to screw up my show tonight, are you?’

  Karen shrugged. ‘It’s just a few questions. Nothing upsetting.’

  He shifted his weight and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He thumbed through the screens and said, ‘She’s in a flat on the other side of the motorway.’ He read off the address. ‘I’m going to call her, let her know you’re on your way. I don’t want her upset and unsettled.’

  ‘That’s fine. But if she’s not there when we knock her door, we’ll be back.’ She smiled with her mouth but not her eyes. ‘You should bear in mind that police obstruction is an offence.’

  Out in the street, Jason said, ‘That was a bit harsh.’

  ‘You think? I don’t like it when people have such a shit sense of priorities. Why would a performance of a play be more important than a criminal investigation?’ As the words left her mouth, Karen heard herself and wondered when she’d become so self-important. This case was messing with more than her head.

  They found the flat in a tall sandstone tenement in a side street a few minutes’ walk from the theatre. Karen pressed the intercom button and the door release buzzed without the occupant even checking who was there. ‘How is it always the top floor?’ Jason grumbled as they toiled up the worn stone steps.

  ‘Life,’ Karen said.

  Verity Foggo stood in the doorway of the flat, face clean of make-up, hair tied up in a topknot. She wore yoga pants and a baggy cotton sweater that came almost to her knees. Even so, Karen recognised her from a drama about surrogacy that she’d watched a few months before. ‘You’ll be the police, then,’ Verity said, the warmth in her voice matched by her smile. ‘Steve told me you were on your way. Come on in.’

  They followed her into a characterless living room that had clearly been furnished in an assault on IKEA. ‘Bloody Airbnb,’ Verity said. ‘Less personality than a chain hotel. Take a seat.’

  Karen made the introductions as they settled down. Verity’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rose at the words ‘Historic Cases Unit’.

  ‘I didn’t think I was old enough to qualify as historic,’ she said. ‘What is it you want to talk to me about?’ There was something guarded about her. Karen wasn’t sure whether she genuinely had no idea why they were there or that she was already holding back. That she was a professional actor was only going to make this interview harder to read.

  ‘I believe you were recently trying to get in touch with James Auld?’

  Verity didn’t look as surprised as Karen thought she should. ‘That’s right, how did you know that?’

  ‘His sister-in-law told us you’d asked her to pass your email on to him. Did he contact you?’

  She cocked her head to one side slightly. ‘He did. Why is this a police matter?’

  ‘Why did you want to reactivate your connection to James Auld?’

  ‘What an odd turn of phrase, Chief Inspector. Look, why are you asking about him?’

  The subtle approach wasn’t getting her anywhere, Karen realised. Time for the direct approach. ‘James Auld’s body was pulled out of the Firth of Forth at the beginning of the week. He’d been brutally attacked and thrown into the sea to drown.’ A bit of poetic licence, but not much.

  Verity’s mouth fell open and she clapped her hands to the side of her face. ‘No,’ she gasped. Karen waited. ‘Oh my God. That’s awful.’ Verity took a deep breath and hugged herself. ‘Ask me anything you want, anything that could help. Oh my God, poor Jamie.’

  Karen noted the use of the family nickname. ‘Why were you so keen to be in touch with him after all those years?’

  Verity cocked her head and looked up from under her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know where to begin. If I start at the beginning, you’ll think I’m mad.’

  ‘Trust me, Verity, I’ve heard plenty of strange stories. The order doesn’t matter, as long as it makes sense to you.’

  Another deep breath. ‘I thought I’d seen a ghost.’

  35

  It wasn’t what she’d expected, but still Karen didn’t flinch. ‘Where did this happen, Verity?’

  ‘On Facebook. Except it goes back further than when I saw it this time. You know how Facebook throws out these random memories? “Five years ago you liked this picture that Fred Bloggs posted”?’

  ‘I know what you mean, yes.’

  ‘So, a few weeks ago, one of those popped up. It was a photo, and the message was, “Four years ago, you commented on your friend Megan’s post.” And I vaguely remembered it; she’d posted a link to load of photographs someone had taken of an art gallery fire in Brighton. She’d paid attention to it because she’s got a shop that sells candles and crystals and tat like that to tourists, and her shop’s just down the street from the gallery. She was having a rant about the ghouls who turned up to watch the place burn. And I’d said, yes, people loved a bit of schadenfreude and a bit of spectacle and never thought about its impact. All those works of art, up in smoke.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I suppose because I’m a creative artist myself, I felt a sort of kinship.’

  Karen’s antennae were twitching. Another reference to the gallery fire in Brighton, so hot on the heels of the earlier one. She didn’t like coincidences. Too often the links turned out to be the opposite of accidental. But she knew better than to jump all over it before Verity had told her all she could. ‘So, when this picture turned up again, you thought you’d seen a ghost?’

  Verity nodded slowly. ‘When I saw it the first time, I didn’t pay much attention to it. I think I only glanced at it on my phone. But when it reappeared, I was on my laptop and it was much clearer. And there, in the middle of the crowd, I saw him.’ Dramatic pause. ‘I saw Iain Auld. But I knew it couldn’t be him. Because he disappeared ten years ago and he’d been declared dead. I saw that in the papers.’

  ‘If Iain Auld’s picture was all over the papers and social media four years ago, I don’t understand why nobody else identified him.’

  ‘Because it wasn’t Iain as everybody else knew him. It was Iain the way he looked when we were in Twelfth Night together at Oxford. I was Viola and he was Antonio. He let his hair grow for the part. And he grew a goatee beard and a moustache. He looked quite different. Honestly, if you didn’t know it was him, you wouldn’t have recognised him,’ she said eagerly. ‘I’ve got some pictures of the production, I looked them out to show Jamie.’ She jumped up. ‘Let me get my laptop, I’ll show you.’

  Karen and Jason exchanged a startled look as Verity hurried out of the room. ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ Jason muttered.

  ‘Me neither. I’ve no idea where this is going.’

  Verity returned, opening her laptop and typing in her password. She fiddled with her keypad and keyboard, then turned it so they could both see it. A bunch of actors in approximate Elizabethan costume grinned at the camera. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is us in May 1993. In the Oxford University Dramatic Society.’ She tapped a long nail over a young woman in breeches in the centre. ‘That’s me.’ A second tap. ‘That’s Iain.’

  She was right. Karen would never have spotted Iain Auld. His hair was swept back from his forehead and fell in curls around his face, skimming his collar. The facial hair transformed the shape of his face, making it longer and narrower. ‘He does look quite different,’ she said.

  Verity took the laptop back and clicked on something. Then, triumphant, she showed them what she’d done. ‘I did this so Jamie wouldn’t think I was completely mad,’ she said.

  Karen looked at the screen. On one side, Verity had cropped Iain from the OUDS picture and enlarged him. On the other side, she’d isolated the man in the crowd outside the Brighton gallery and done the same. The resemb
lance was startling. She’d want to confirm it with River, who could calculate the proportions of the two faces and see whether they were an exact match. But to her eye, it looked like two images of the same man. Still, it was hard to swallow such an unexpected correspondence. And newspaper photos were never clear enough for certainty. ‘I can see why you thought you’d seen a ghost,’ Karen said. ‘You said you wanted to show this to Jamie. Am I right to assume he’d made contact with you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘He sent me an email the day after I spoke to Mary. Like you, he wondered why I wanted to get in touch with him, and when I explained, he got quite excited. I emailed him copies of the photographs, but he said he wanted to see the original of the Oxford photo for himself. He was living in France – but I expect you knew that?’ Karen nodded and Verity continued. ‘He came over to London a couple of weeks ago. We have Sunday and Monday off, and so I met up with him in London. I couldn’t believe the change in him. He was so grown-up, so in command of himself. He told me all about his years in the Foreign Legion and about his music.’ Her expression had become wistful and she sighed again.

  ‘When I first knew Jamie, he was such a restless soul, he wanted to travel and have adventures. Being with him was fun, it was unpredictable. But the man who came to see me was completely settled, content with his life. The only ambition he seemed to have left was to find out what happened to Iain. He got excited when he saw what I had to show him. Like me, he was convinced it was his brother. He wanted to take the Oxford photo with him, but I said no, I’d have it copied and send that to him. Sadly, I hadn’t got round to that yet.’

  Karen butted in. She’d spotted an inconsistency. ‘I thought Jamie actually took the photographs of the Oxford production? That’s what you told Mary Auld. Surely he had the negatives?’

  Verity gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘You’ve caught me out, Chief Inspector. I did tell Mary a white lie. I knew Jamie had gone on the run, but I didn’t believe he’d have broken his contact with Mary. They were such a tight-knit family. But still, I needed to come up with a plausible reason for wanting to get in touch with Jamie. And everybody thinks that actors are incredibly vain, so I thought she’d fall for a story that sounded as if all I was interested in was myself. I remembered Jamie liked to take photographs on his Olympus Trip, so I spun her a yarn about needing copies of photos Jamie had taken for my archives. I’m sorry if that was misleading.’

  ‘I understand. What was Jamie’s reaction? Did he really believe the man in the Brighton picture was his brother?’

  ‘He went very quiet.’ Verity sat back in her chair, legs folded beneath her. ‘I didn’t want to push him, so I waited. Finally, he got up and started pacing to and fro across the room. He was really quite agitated. Then he said he’d almost begun to believe his brother actually was dead, but he’d recently discovered another photograph that had made him question everything. I asked what it was, but he refused to tell me. He said he had someone else to see before he’d be able to understand what had happened but that he hoped he’d finally solve the mystery of what had become of his brother.’

  ‘And he didn’t give any indication of who that person was? Or where they were? Or what he thought they could tell him?’

  She shook her head, the very picture of regret. ‘I’ve told you all I know, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘One last thing – I don’t understand why you didn’t tell Mary Auld about your suspicions. Surely it would have been more straightforward to ask her to look at the picture?’

  Verity gave a fine representation of sympathetic innocence. ‘In case I was wrong. How could I have lived with myself if I’d built up her hopes and then had to watch them fall apart? I thought Jamie would be better able to handle the whole thing. If I was wrong …’

  Karen couldn’t be bothered pandering to her. She took out her card and handed it over. ‘Can you email me those images, please?’

  ‘Of course, I’ll do it right now.’ She unfolded her legs and grabbed the laptop.

  As she typed, Karen said, ‘And we’ll need the original of the Oxford photograph. You’ll get it back in due course, but it’s now evidence in a murder inquiry.’ Stretching it slightly, she knew, but she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. ‘Are you going back to London tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be there till Tuesday morning when I have to head up to Manchester.’ She made a moue of distaste. ‘Two months is about my limit for enjoying touring. I’ll be glad when this one is over. I’m on stage for almost the whole thing, it’s exhausting.’

  ‘Still, it must be good to be in work in your business,’ Jason piped up.

  ‘Sweet of you, but I’m never short of offers,’ Verity said, turning the beam of her charm on him. He blushed.

  Karen broke the moment. ‘I’ll arrange for someone from the Met to come round and pick up the photograph. You’ll get a receipt.’

  Verity sighed. ‘Fine. But do be careful with it. It has sentimental value.’

  Not to mention what the media might pay for it if this case was ever resolved, Karen thought. But she smiled and agreed as she got to her feet. ‘Thanks, Ms Foggo.’

  ‘Not at all, you’re very welcome,’ the actress said. ‘I’ve picked up lots of tips for the next crime drama I’m cast in.’

  There was barely enough time on the short train ride from Glasgow Queen Street to Gartcosh for Karen to message Tamsin to tell her she was on her way to the forensic department in the crime campus. In the light of what she’d learned that day, she’d decided she needed to remain in Scotland to pursue the various lines of inquiry that had emerged in the Auld brothers’ investigation. She was also conscious that she hadn’t stayed on top of the forensics in either of the cases she was working. And experience had taught her that even with the following wind of Tamsin’s support, you had to keep chasing or you’d find yourself bumped to the bottom of the queue by officers who were making the scientists’ lives a bigger misery.

  There was no point in Jason going to Stockport on a Saturday evening, The chances were good there would be nobody around at the Isherwood Studios till Monday morning. So she’d sent him home with explicit instructions to drive down to Stockport the following evening. ‘Book into a hotel, treat yourself to a decent dinner and an early night. First thing in the morning, head round to Isherwood Studios where the McAndrew car is registered. It’s all we’ve got to go on. Be discreet but try to get a lead on where “Dani” or Amanda is hanging out. Do your best to get eyes on her and when you do, keep your distance and call me. Do not approach her till I’m with you.’ She couldn’t have been clearer. And clarity was what Jason liked best. So she could shove that ingredient of their full plate to one side for now.

  Gartcosh station was as basic as it could get. Two concrete platforms separated from the rest of the world by a fence of wire mesh and concrete posts. Two primitive metal and Perspex shelters and a pair of ticket machines. The bitter westerly wind swept a few scraps of litter ahead of Karen as she set off for the distinctive black-and-white edifice of Police Scotland’s nerve centre. On a summer day, dawdling in the sunshine, it would take about eight minutes. Today, she did it in under five.

  She was still feeling chilled when she tracked down Tamsin at her desk. As she approached, Karen took out the packet of dark chocolate mint biscuits she’d picked up in the convenience store by Queen Street station. Tamsin was engrossed in what was on her screen, but as soon as Karen waved her offering in her eyeline, she swung round and snatched her prize. ‘Good move, KP,’ she said.

  Karen pulled up a chair. ‘I was passing. And I thought, “who will save me from myself and share these lovely biscuits with me?”’

  ‘You saved me a phone call. You’re on my to-do list for this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m disappointed to be so far down it.’ Tamsin grinned, showing a new gold crown on a canine tooth. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘My dad’s a big Motown fan. One of his all-time favourites sums it up – “Ball of Confusion (T
hat’s What the World Is Today)”. I’ve got a ragbag of bits and pieces where my brain should be.’

  Tamsin made a sympathetic noise. ‘It’s a shame you can’t defrag your brain like a hard drive. But you’re smart, girl, you’ll figure it out. And I have some more bits and pieces to shove into your ragbag. Who knows, maybe they’re exactly the bits you need?’

  ‘A lassie can hope. Did the DNA guys get any further with the paintings?’

  ‘I gave them a few words of encouragement.’ A wicked grin. ‘And they finally got back to me at lunchtime. Most of what they found was pretty fragmentary. Not definitive enough for the courtroom. But on two of the paintings, they did find enough to stand behind. Both samples match one lot of DNA from the van, but not the DNA from the skeleton. Does that help at all?’

  Karen ripped open the biscuits and took one. ‘It’s a negative confirmation. We know there were two people sharing the van. Now we definitely know who the skeleton isn’t. And who our prime suspect is. What about the sample Jason dropped in the other day?’

  Tamsin nodded. ‘Father and daughter. The dead woman is Thomas Gilmartin’s daughter.’

  ‘You were teasing me, not telling me that up front, weren’t you? That puts it beyond doubt, then.’

  ‘I’d say so. And I did manage to pull out a bit more from the emails that Susan Leitch trashed on her laptop. I’ll ping over the fragments I have. They might mean something to you, but don’t get overexcited. They’re pretty scant.’