Now She’s Gone: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  ‘More than I could have given you. That’s… great.’

  She glanced at her watch again, feeling stricken at having to let him go. How could this be happening? After eighteen years this great gift was being bestowed on her with the worst possible timing.

  ‘Joe, I’m so sorry to have to do this to you. It feels so shitty when we’ve only just met, but… I’m only back here from the office now because I’m catching a plane. It leaves in…’ she checked her watch, ‘an hour and forty minutes. I need to start packing, but you’re welcome to stay and talk to me while I do it. Or at least finish your tea.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Joe shrugged, but couldn’t quite mask his disappointment. ‘Are you going on holiday?’

  ‘No. No, it’s for work. I’m going to Edinburgh.’ Rachel went to the hall cupboard and pulled out her carry-on case.

  ‘Couldn’t you, like, get a later flight?’

  Oh God, thought Rachel, this is appalling. He’s waited all his life to meet me and now I’m fobbing him off. She felt tears pricking in her eyes. ‘I can’t. I’m a police officer. A detective.’

  ‘Yeah I know that.’ Joe’s tone was defensive. His shoulders had dropped. She felt an overpowering need to make the situation better. Was this maternal instinct? Rachel wondered, relishing the grim irony. She reached a hand out tentatively to comfort him, ending up landing a half-hearted pat on his forearm.

  ‘I’m so sorry about the shit timing, I really am. But I’ve got to go and interview a couple of people who’ve just been taken into custody, and they can only be held for limited time before they have to be released.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ he supplied.

  ‘Exactly. If it were anything else, of course I would get a later flight. But listen…’She fumbled for a solution to the problem. Years of having to think quickly on her feet were paying off. ‘Are you on your holidays now? I mean, not at college or anything?’

  ‘Gap year. I finished school in July.’

  ‘Would you be able to come up to Edinburgh in the next couple of days?’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Yeah, I guess so. I guess my parents would be cool with it.’

  My parents. The words sounded strange on his lips. But that’s what they were; the couple who had adopted him. His parents.

  ‘I mean, I’ve never been to Edinburgh, so that would be kind of cool.’

  ‘Okay, great,’ Rachel rummaged in her bag and pulled out the sheaf of twenty pound notes she had grabbed from the cash machine as she left the office. ‘Get yourself a train ticket, and let me know when you’re coming. But make sure your parents know exactly what’s going on: give them my number and send me theirs, just in case.’ She took the phone from his hand, texted herself the number, then added her own number to his contacts. The touch of his skin sent an electric current through her, and she could feel the tears of shock and emotional overload welling up again. She exhaled hard, trying to centre herself.

  ‘Okay cool, well I’d better leave you to it.’ Joe shrugged awkwardly and shuffled towards the door, shouldering his backpack. ‘Sorry.’

  Rachel caught him by the wrist and held him still for a second. ‘Joe… you will come? I really want you to. I want us to get to know each other. Properly.’

  A pair of eyes identical to her own looked straight back at her. ‘I will. I’ll come.’

  Fifteen

  ‘You all right love?’

  The cabby squinted at her in his rear-view mirror as his black cab rumbled over Tower Bridge.

  ‘Fine,’ said Rachel, although she was not fine. Her heart was pounding so hard that she could hear it.

  ‘Only you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  In a way, I have, she thought. The face of that tiny baby boy she had handed over eighteen years ago had haunted her ever since. She had never stopped imagining him, thinking of him growing and changing. At least he had kept his name. That was one thing that had heartened her. She had called him Joseph after her own father, Raymond Joseph Prince.

  The flight attendant also shot worried looks at her as the plane took off from London City, crouching by her armrest and asking if she needed anything. Rachel requested a whisky, and sat there for the fifty-five minutes taking slow, deliberate sips at intervals until her pulse slowed and her brain cleared a little.

  She caught another cab at the airport rank as soon as the flight landed, using her warrant card to move to the front of the queue, cursing herself for not asking someone at Gayfield Square to send a squad car for her. Now that the festival had finally come to a close, rooms were easier to find, and Janette had booked her into a four-star hotel in the Grassmarket. She flung her case into a corner of the room, sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands over her face, once again needing to slow her breathing. How on earth am I going to make this work? she wondered. Make it fit into my already crowded life.

  And then there’s his father. The idea occurred to her for the first time since Joe had appeared. What the hell am I going to say to him?

  Rachel needed to think about all of this, and yet there was no time to think about it, any of it. So she would just have to park it for now, compartmentalise. She’d managed it for eighteen years; she would just have to keep it up for a few hours longer. She wiped the smudged circles of mascara from under her eyes, pocketed her warrant card and set off to the Gayfield Square police station.

  The desk sergeant eyed her scathingly. ‘It’s you,’ he observed unhelpfully. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting Morag.’

  Rachel forced a smile. ‘If you’d be so kind.’

  Sillars arrived exhaling smoke and smelling of nicotine. She tossed a freshly extinguished butt into the bin behind the reception desk, looked up and growled. ‘You’d better follow me.’

  She led Rachel to an interview suite on the basement floor. ‘I’ll monitor from next door,’ she said without preamble, ‘and you can have my colleague DC Ben Tulloch in with you.’ She shoved a young man in Rachel’s direction. Tulloch gave Rachel a shy grin. He was long-limbed and gangly, with greased back hair and an ill-fitting shiny suit.

  The first defendant they interviewed was the woman, Iveta. She was thin, with a junkie’s complexion and badly died platinum hair.

  ‘I done nothing wrong,’ she whined, before Rachel had even started speaking. ‘I get work handing out pieces of paper, I hand them out. That is all.’

  ‘What we’re interested in,’ Rachel said clearly and slowly, ‘is where the leaflets come from.’

  Iveta shrugged. ‘I do not know this.’

  ‘Who gave them to you? When visitors are given a flyer about a festival event, it’s usually by a member of the production team who are running the event. So who gave you these?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maris get them. I don’t know where. I just give them.’ She mimed handing out leaflets to passers-by.

  ‘Who were you supposed to give them to?’ asked DC Tulloch. ‘Anyone in particular?’

  She chewed her nails. ‘To young people. Young people who want to party. Is all I know.’

  Iveta was returned to her cell while they questioned Maris Balodis. He was a stocky man of indeterminate age with skin the colour of putty, jet-black stubble and purplish circles under his eyes. Speaking or silent, his face remained devoid of expression.

  He was slightly more forthcoming about the origin of the leaflets. ‘On internet,’ he said. ‘I look for job, see this job. Many job like this in festival.’

  ‘Which website was it?’ asked Tulloch. ‘Could you give us the site address?’

  Balodis shrugged. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Is dark.’

  ‘Dark?’

  ‘Yes, you know is dark place.’

  ‘I think he’s talking about the dark web,’ Tulloch muttered to Rachel.

  ‘So you were on the dark web… why?’

  ‘I buy drugs.’ The expression didn’t change. ‘I see job when I am buying drugs.’


  ‘And how did you get onto the dark web?’

  ‘Andrei do it.’

  ‘Who’s Andrei?’

  ‘Man staying in flat.’

  ‘Do you know his full name?’ Rachel demanded. ‘Or where he is now?’

  An emotionless shrug. ‘I don’t know. I think he leave town after festival.’

  ‘So where did you pick the leaflets up from? Do you remember the name of the person who gave them to you?’

  ‘No person,’ Balodis insisted. ‘Pick up from Mail Boxes 4U. Someone put papers in the box, I go and I take them out. And is instructions, too.’

  ‘Instructions?’

  ‘They say where to stand, what time, give us photos of which kids to look out for.’

  ‘So…’ Rachel glanced at Tulloch, ‘you’re saying that you were told exactly who to target in respect of these parties? Where they would be, and at what time?’

  Balodis nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Tulloch leaned forward. ‘Can you at least remember the number of the mailbox?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I write it down. But not here. Is at my home.’

  ‘And how were you paid?’

  ‘I enter bank number online, then money goes in my bank.’

  They sent Balodis back to his cell, and went into the observation room, where Sillars was in a chair smoking an e-cigarette and watching the monitor screen, her feet dangling several inches above the floor.

  ‘What do you think?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘What do ah think?’ rasped Sillars. ‘I think it would be marvellous if we could charge the shites under the Prevention of Sexual Offences Act, but we havnae got a prayer. Not as things stand.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘I agree. Are you happy to bail them pending further investigation though? If they were recruited via the dark web, there’s something not right about this.’

  ‘Aye,’ Sillars exhaled vapour through her nose like a tiny wizened dragon. ‘Clearly. Go on then.’ She addressed DC Tulloch. ‘Stick some reporting conditions on them and maybe we’ve a hope of them not fecking off out of town.’

  ‘And are you okay if I call in one of my colleagues from the NCA’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection command?’ Rachel asked her. ‘He has a lot of expertise in these sorts of cases.’

  ‘I’m no gonnae stop you,’ Sillars growled through the vapour. ‘But you’ll still have a job making anything stick. It’s the same every year: you get all sorts going on during the festival and then everyone pisses off when it’s over. People disappear back where they came from and things get back to normal.’

  ‘Two teenagers are dead,’ Rachel reminded her sharply. ‘There’s nothing normal about that.’

  Sixteen

  Back in her hotel room, Rachel composed a short email to Giles Denton, asking if he would be able to travel up to Edinburgh to assist on the case, as Nigel Patten had suggested. She was watching her phone like an expectant parent – which in a way she was – picking it up every few minutes and staring at the screen. She wasn’t going to contact Joe, not yet. She had decided that if he wanted to spend time with her, then the initiative had to come from him.

  Eventually, after an evening run and a nondescript meal in the characterless hotel restaurant, she received a text.

  Okay if I come tomorrow? Planning to book train that arrives at 2 p.m. Joe

  She replied that this was fine, and she would meet him at the station.

  Is there somewhere I can crash?

  She was so unaccustomed to the role of parent that she hadn’t even given it a thought. Of course, he needed somewhere for the night. Or however long he was going to stay. She would cross that bridge when she got to it. It was one of so many bridges that loomed ahead.

  * * *

  Kenneth Candlish had not been exactly helpful about the parties attended by the White Crystal students, but Rachel was still hopeful that Will MacBain might be able to shed some light. Early the following morning, she borrowed a pool car from the police station and went to Campbell Road in the hope of finding him at home.

  Both the car and the minibus were parked on the driveway and the garage door was open, revealing Will in overalls, wielding an oil can. When he saw Rachel he walked slowly towards her, wiping his hands on a greasy rag.

  ‘Detective Prince. You’re back.’ He was polite, but sounded far from cheered by this development.

  ‘I am.’ It was a sunny day, but there was a sharp north-easterly wind, and Rachel pushed her hands into the pockets of her trench coat and pulled it round herself tight.

  ‘Now that your festival students have all left, I thought you might have time for a chat.’

  ‘Give me a minute to clear up.’ Will walked back into the garage, picking up tools from the floor and replacing them in a metal toolbox on a bench, returning a bottle of screen wash to a shelf on the wall. ‘I’m taking advantage of the few days’ peace and quiet to do some routine maintenance on the vehicles.’

  ‘Only a few days?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘I’m leading a Christian youth group on a walking trip in the Trossachs next week.’

  I’d rather stick pins in my eyeballs, thought Rachel. She smiled politely. ‘Great. Sounds lovely.’

  Will finished cleaning his hands with Swarfega. ‘Shall we go in and get some coffee?’

  He led Rachel into the students’ deserted ground-floor refectory. The carpet tiles, formerly studded with crumbs and smeared with melted chocolate, were now pristine, the gleaming wooden furniture smelled of lavender polish. Gone were the heaps of discarded sweaters, the charging cables and abandoned mugs of coffee.

  ‘Wow – you’d never know there’d been anyone living here,’ commented Rachel.

  ‘Our cleaning lady, Mrs Muir, is a miracle worker.’ He looked over at the carved crucifix on the wall and acknowledged this small blasphemy with a shy smile. ‘She comes in with a couple of helpers and gives the two lower floors a thorough bottoming as soon as the last group leave. Which was over the weekend. That way it’s easy to keep on top of things until the next residential course.’ He went into the adjoining kitchen and filled the kettle. ‘Hazel’s taken the children to the park, so we may as well stay down here.’

  Will made a cafetière of coffee, found the remains of a milk carton in the fridge and carried them through to the refectory, where they sat at one end of the large, empty table.

  ‘This quiet spell after the last of the festival tours has gone is always a time for reflection.’ He stared into the middle distance. ‘And obviously, this year, Emily van Meijer is very much on my mind. I understand her funeral took place last week.’

  ‘DS Brickall and I went to speak to Kenneth Candlish again before we left.’ Rachel had accepted the mug of coffee but declined the milk, which didn’t look fresh. She took a sip, wincing slightly at the bitterness. ‘We wanted to share some intelligence we’d received about both Emily and Niamh Donovan attending a party at which at least one of them was sexually assaulted. Did he speak to you about that?’

  Will kept his gaze and voice level, but some of the colour left his face. ‘He did phone me, yes.’ He fiddled with the handle of his coffee cup. ‘But like him, I know nothing about where they went, or who was behind it. How on earth could I?’

  Will made this seem more than a rhetorical question. ‘And if I had done, I would have informed the police, obviously.’ There was just a touch of defensiveness infiltrating the warm tones of his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you can see why this is so difficult. If I had known what was going on, then things might have turned out very differently.’

  Rachel looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean, Mr MacBain?’

  ‘Well knowing what happened – that Emily was the victim of sexual assault – gives us a completely different explanation as to what happened on the night of the seventh of August.’

  ‘Why does it?’ asked Rachel sternly. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  Will raised his eyebrows slightly as he lifted his coffee mug to
his mouth. ‘Surely it changes the accident theory?’

  ‘Go on.’

  He drained his mug and set it down. ‘All the students on our tours are from devout religious families. They’ve all had a conservative upbringing and been very sheltered, when compared with your average 2017 teenager.’

  Rachel nodded, although this description didn’t entirely fit with the sophisticated lifestyle Emily van Meijer had enjoyed.

  ‘The shame and embarrassment of realising what had happened to them at a party they should not have been at in the first place, the fear of what would happen if their families found out… it could well have pushed them over the edge.’

  ‘You mean suicide?’

  Will nodded gravely. ‘It makes sense now. The abnormal mood, the uncharacteristic behaviour… and young people these days are so suggestible. Not a day goes by when you don’t read in the news about a teenager killing themselves because they’ve been bullied, or feel under pressure in some way. It’s all too common.’

  Rachel nodded agreement. ‘Unfortunately it is.’

  ‘Emily had had a bit to drink, and that probably clouded her judgement. She took herself off up to the Crags, but instead of losing her footing and falling, she jumped.’

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ Rachel conceded. ‘But that wouldn’t explain the selfie stick.’

  Will shrugged. ‘Who knows.’ He rested his hands on the table in front of him. His hands were immaculately clean, and beautifully manicured, Rachel noticed.

  She took her last mouthful of coffee. ‘One more thing though… you talked about “them” being pushed over the edge. Are you suggesting that Bruno committed suicide too?’

  ‘Well, I’d say it fits, wouldn’t you?’ The defensive tone crept in again. ‘He seemed in very low spirits, and he’d also been drinking. He might well have thrown himself off the rocks, rather than tripping and falling.’

  ‘But we have no reason to believe that Bruno Martinez attended one of these grooming parties. It was actually Marie-Laure Fournier who claimed to have been to one last summer. Bruno was dead by then. He’d been dead a year.’