Now She’s Gone: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Alison James

  * * *

  Once the laptop had been put away, the boys played Rachel some of their favourite tracks. The music was so loud that it was only when she had wished them good night and stepped out into the silent street that she noticed a missed call and a voicemail from an unrecognised number.

  She played the voicemail. The recording was poor quality, due to lack of signal or background noise, or both.

  ‘Miss Prince… is Iveta… I think I need talk to you… these are very bad men involved… Scaring me very much… is called –’ she then said a name that sounded like ‘Georgie’ – ‘make threats to me. Can you meet me?’

  The message ended abruptly. Rachel tried calling back the number, but it rang out.

  She tried again several times once she had returned to her hotel, leaving her mobile under her pillow before finally switching off her light at midnight. Just after she had descended into a deep sleep, it rang. At precisely the same moment, there was a brisk knock on her door.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered the phone and the door simultaneously, admitting Brickall, dressed in a sweatshirt and joggers.

  ‘Prince,’ Sillars barked down the phone line. ‘We’ve a body, found on the West Approach Road. I think it’s one of your pet Latvians. I’m sending a panda for you and Mark.’

  ‘Oh it’s Mark now, is it?’ Rachel addressed Brickall as she hung up. ‘And I presume the only reason you’re in my room in the middle of the night is because Morag’s already told you. Before she told me. Which figures.’

  ‘Well come on then, put some fucking clothes on, you spanner!’

  Rachel was suddenly aware that she was wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and knickers. She pulled on black jeans and a grey sweatshirt, dragged a brush through her hair and followed Brickall down to the waiting car. She was tired and disorientated but he, by contrast, was bristling with energy.

  ‘We’ve gone from a double to a triple body count in a matter of hours,’ he observed as a uniformed officer drove them west out of the city, past the noisy Saturday-night partygoers.

  ‘It’s hardly cause for celebration,’ Rachel snapped. All she could see in her mind’s eye was Iveta’s cowering figure.

  He looked askance at her. ‘Who rattled your cage, Prince?’

  ‘Iveta tried to phone me, this evening. If I’d picked up, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.’

  Brickall turned and gave her a long look. His eyes glittered in the passing lights of oncoming traffic. ‘Rachel…’ Brickall never called her Rachel. It was ‘dickhead’ or ‘loser’, or occasionally ‘Boss’. ‘Fuck’s sake, you don’t know that!’ He grabbed her by the shoulders and twisted her round so that she was looking at him. ‘You don’t even know if it’s her. But if it is, you don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that if you didn’t prevent a crime then that crime was your fault.’

  She felt tears prick at the edges of her eyes. What was wrong with her, for God’s sake? Since Joe had come back into her life she was an emotional jelly.

  Reading her mind as ever, Brickall went on: ‘Now get a fucking grip, Prince. Morag already thinks we’re a pair of soft jessies; don’t give her any more ammunition.’

  The car came to a halt on the edge of a brownfield site, its hoardings announcing the imminent construction of executive apartments. A white tent had been erected, and several other squad cars were parked with their blue light bars still flashing. The site was essentially little more than a huge hole in the ground and Rachel and Brickall had to pick their way across the muddy, uneven ground in a torch beam directed by one of the uniformed police officers.

  Morag Sillars emerged through the white tarpaulin tent flaps with paper overshoes on her tiny feet. She immediately lit a cigarette, dragging on it deeply. ‘Yous two’ll want to see,’ she growled, exhaling smoke at them.

  Inside the tent, the body lay partially covered by a piece of blue plastic sheeting. A kneeling SOCO in a hooded Tyvek suit stood up and backed away to give them room.

  ‘Oh Jesus… fucking hell!’ Brickall, never one to be squeamish, flinched. The throat had been slit so wide and so deep that the head was hanging by mere tendons, amid glistening viscous burgundy clots. The pungent, ferrous smell of blood was overwhelming. The SOCO adjusted his lighting unit so that it picked out the platinum white fronds of hair. Now that her death had smoothed the pinched tension of her face, it was clear how young the girl was. Probably no more than twenty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel addressed Iveta Kovals. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Thirty-One

  The new-look Operation Honeycomb incident room at Gayfield Square had windows. It also had half a dozen desks, multiple phone lines and several computer terminals. A couple of uniformed officers had been allocated to help with administrative jobs.

  Rachel called a briefing there first thing on Monday morning, outlining the mechanics of the ethylene glycol poisoning of Bruno Martinez and Emily van Meijer. Both of whom had threatened to blow the whistle after being sexually assaulted at a party for anonymous but apparently well-connected patrons.

  ‘… A party at this address.’

  Rachel pinned up a picture of 21 Grange Loan Terrace on the new, improved whiteboard.

  ‘And then in the early hours of yesterday morning, a young Latvian woman recently seen at the property,’ she added a mugshot of Iveta Kovals, ‘was found with her throat cut. We’ve not found the knife, but there seems to have been a struggle before it was used, so forensics are hoping the recover some DNA from under the victim’s fingernails. DC Tulloch – can you chase that? She worked for the organisers of the same parties, and was about to name the person – or people – behind them. The link between Iveta and the teens appears to relate in some way to White Crystal Tours.’

  One cue, Brickall pinned up photos of Kenneth Candlish, and Will and Hazel MacBain. ‘This couple hosted the dead teenagers and their director, Kenneth Candlish, was actively associating with at least one suspected party guest, a top lawyer called Douglas Coulter.’

  Rachel added his photo.

  ‘His firm arranged the lease on this house.’ She tapped the photo of Grange Loan Terrace. ‘The problem we have at the moment is that these links are very tenuous. Too tenuous. We need to dig up more substantial evidence to make a conspiracy stand up. That’s going to be our starting point.’

  DC Tulloch raised an arm. ‘Boss?’ Sillars glowered at her own DC addressing Rachel in this manner. ‘We’ve got back the results of the forensic search on Grange Loan Terrace.’

  Rachel motioned for him to stand up and come to the front and address the room.

  ‘Okay…’ Tulloch took a deep breath. ‘The place had been very thoroughly cleaned. Professionally cleaned. So basically evidence was on the thin side… we did find a few sets of prints that the cleaner had missed, but as yet no matches on IDENT1. However, we also found hidden cameras in the bedrooms. The sort that record onto a remote device, so there were no actual recordings we could look at.’

  ‘So the pervs were filming what they got up to,’ rasped Sillars.

  Rachel’s mind flashed back to her informal tutorial from Charlie. ‘It’s likely that footage was then sold on the dark web,’ she said. ‘But we need input from our cybercrime unit to move that line of enquiry forward. My priority now is to get in and search the property where the teenagers were staying in Campbell Road.’

  ‘A Spanish special?’ Brickall used the slang for an unexpected raid. ‘Pre-dawn?’ he added hopefully.

  ‘Not sure about pre-dawn, given they have small children who would be fast asleep and potentially distressed… but early, yes. When we can be sure the whole family’s there, and unprepared.’

  * * *

  Soon after six the following morning, just as the first gold and grey streaks of sunrise were appearing on the horizon, Rachel, Brickall and DC Tulloch hammered on the door of 34 Campbell Road. There were officers in tactical gear with manual battering rams standing by, but Rachel felt strongly that a more low-k
ey approach was called for. Not only were there children present, but neither Will or Hazel MacBain were being arrested.

  A shocked Will answered the door in pyjama bottoms and a towelling dressing gown. His normally tidy hair was ruffled, and his face puffy with sleep.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The three detectives, already gloved, pushed past him and ran up the stairs, followed by PC Blair and a male constable in combat boots and stab vest.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ He followed Rachel, trying to make eye contact. ‘Please – DI Prince – stop! We haven’t done anything!’

  There was the sound of a child crying, and Hazel appeared at the entrance to the top-floor flat. She held Angus, still half asleep, over her shoulder and pressed the crying Esme against her legs. The folds of her thin nightdress accentuated the curve of her pregnant stomach.

  ‘Will – what’s going on?’ Her husband shrugged. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded, turning on Brickall with a surprising viciousness. Her pale face coloured angrily.

  ‘We’ve got a warrant to search the premises as part of our investigation into the deaths of Bruno Martinez and Emily van Meijer,’ he told her calmly, refusing to make eye contact.

  ‘But—’

  Brickall held up a gloved hand. ‘Please, you’re best off just letting us get on with it. That way we’ll be finished and out of your hair much quicker.’

  The team worked their way from room to room, opening cupboards and drawers and flicking through paperwork. A laptop, an iPad and two phones were sealed in plastic bags.

  ‘Can’t I just download some of my work stuff?’ Will grabbed desperately at his laptop as it was carried away.

  ‘Sorry sir, no.’

  ‘But when will we get these things back?’

  ‘Impossible to say.’ DC Tulloch said, without emotion. ‘When we no longer need them.’

  Rachel and Kirstie Blair were searching the MacBains’ bedroom – Blair tackling the chest of drawers while Rachel worked through the wardrobe. The clothes were ordered and hung neatly, with shoes stored in their original boxes. In Will’s case, they consisted of one pair of open sandals, one pair of black brogues and two brown pairs. Rachel removed a pair from their boxes and examined them. All perfectly smooth, and smelling of old-fashioned shoe polish. The smell triggered a memory, something important, but her brain couldn’t quite drag it up from the depths.

  As she turned over one of the shoes, a USB stick fell out. Rachel put it straight into an evidence bag, and handed it to Kirstie Blair. ‘You carry on in here, there’s something I need to check.’

  She went into the sitting room and examined the contents of the drinks cupboard. There was no port, but there was a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort. She bagged it and handed it over to the uniformed PC.

  ‘Detective Sergeant,’ she addressed Brickall. ‘Come with me a second, please.’

  He followed her down the stairs and out of the front door.

  ‘Where the fuck are you going, Prince? We’re supposed to be doing a full search.’

  ‘I want to back up a hunch,’ she told him. ‘Can you open the garage door.’

  It was locked. ‘Better not pick it with your Swiss Army knife, not this time.’ Brickall beckoned over one of the tactical officers, who forced the lock with one clean tap of his enforcer.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Isn’t it bloody obvious?’ Rachel was standing on tiptoe, feeling her way along the wooden shelf on the exposed brick wall. She found oil, screen de-icer, WD40, tins of paint. And finally, there it was. She opened the bottle and sniffed it, then offered it to Brickall to do the same.

  ‘Doesn’t smell of anything.’

  ‘Exactly. This is old-fashioned anti-freeze. Ethylene glycol.

  * * *

  Back in the incident room, Rachel debriefed the team and arranged for intelligence officers to analyse the portable devices and USB stick.

  ‘Anyone have an update on Iveta Kovals?’

  ‘I’ve got an Identification Bureau team searching for the murder weapon,’ Sillars croaked. ‘But chances are it’s been chucked in the Water of Leith or the Union Canal. The search of the scene has thrown up some shoeprints – we reckon at least a size eleven, so male – which we’re going to analyse, along with the material from under the fingernails. The victim was an itinerant worker who had no family or friends in the city, so we’ve no a lot to go on.’

  ‘Can we do some door to door around the flat she shared with Balodis?’ Brickall asked. ‘And we’ll need to either send an officer to re-interview Balodis, or get him brought over here in a prison van.’

  ‘Aye, okay,’ Sillars conceded, giving Brickall what passed as a smile.

  ‘Thanks, Morag. You’ve been fantastic.’

  Rachel thought Sillars would die of pleasure, watching the woman positively glow at his words of praise. She waited until the group round the whiteboard had dispersed and then took Brickall to one side.

  ‘Little job for you… we don’t yet know for sure that Douglas Coulter and the man with the port wine stain who tried to molest Marie-Laure are the same person. She’s back in France now, but can you organise for someone over there to show her a photo of Coulter and get a positive ID, then take a statement? There’s an Interpol office in Lyon.’ He rolled his eyes at being assigned a desk job, but she ignored him.

  Rachel asked a passing constable to fetch coffee, then sat down at one of the desks, feeling faintly overwhelmed. Her mind was scrabbling like a hamster in a wheel, trying to hold on to all the threads in the case, trying not to forget or overlook anything. And having Joe to think about – delightful though that was – only added to the sense of pressure. While she had been speaking to the team a text had come in from him.

  How’s it all going? Any chance of a chat?

  She replied, reluctantly: Will probably be stuck in the incident room until quite late. Might be able to pop out for a coffee.

  Another text arrived immediately.

  Was going to speak to you about Stuart. I think I’m ready to contact him now.

  Rachel forwarded him Stuart’s contact details, then typed.

  Go for it. But bear in mind he and Claire have just lost a child, so don’t expect too much to start with.

  As soon as she had pressed ‘Send’, she wondered whether she had been a bit insensitive. She never used to worry about things like the note struck by a text message. This was motherhood, and it was turning her into an anxious wreck.

  Another text arrived from Joe, of a sad face emoji, followed by a cow emoji, and a dagger. It took Rachel a few seconds to realise this meant the killing of a fatted calf. She laughed, relieved, and opened up her laptop. She found the copy of the file that Beth McAllister had showed her at Mail Boxes 4U. She watched the figure in the tartan Jimmy wig walk up to the post box, turn and walk back again. She paused the video and zoomed in.

  And there it was – the detail that had seemed so incongruous when she first saw it. The smart shoes: shiny lace-up brogues. Exactly like Will MacBain’s.

  Thirty-Two

  ‘So are you going to arrest someone?’

  Rachel and Joe were heading to a Thai restaurant on Castle Street, near her hotel. It was late, and she had only just managed to escape the confines of the incident room after a twenty-hour day, but she tried not to let her son see just how exhausted she was. And, as he had correctly pointed out to her, her brain would work better if she ate a proper meal.

  ‘Not just yet.’ She was aware of the need to keep case details confidential, yet she enjoyed talking about her work to Joe, who in turn seemed genuinely fascinated. ‘We’re still in the process of putting the case together, piece by piece. You never want to risk the whole thing falling apart by making an arrest too early.’ There was a distinct nip of autumn in the air, and Rachel hunched her shoulders so that her face and neck were covered by her scarf.

  ‘But it is a murder case?’ Joe persisted. ‘As well as the child ab
use stuff.’

  ‘The problem we have is that the evidence pointing to murder is all circumstantial at the moment.’

  ‘Bummer,’ said Joe. To her great delight, he then hooked his arm through hers.

  ‘Exactly. Which is why we have to be patient and just try and gather as many pieces of evidence as possible. So that if it does come to court, we can paint a convincing picture for a jury.’

  ‘I spoke to my father today… not Dad, Stuart.’

  ‘And how did that go?’ Rachel asked carefully.

  ‘Fine. Bit, like, weird.’

  ‘I’m sure it must have been.’

  ‘He was quite… formal.’

  ‘I can imagine. But give him a chance. Stuart’s a good guy, when all’s said and done. Our marriage may have been a disaster, but that was mostly down to me.’

  Joe grunted.

  ‘I still have a great deal of respect for him though… Will you see him?’

  ‘I think so. We talked about meeting for coffee or a beer first. Just the two of us. On, like, neutral territory.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Rachel leaned into Joe’s arm.

  ‘Rachel!’

  When she looked up, a tall, dark figure was approaching them pulling a wheelie case, collar turned up against the cold.

  ‘Giles… hello. You’re back,’ she added unnecessarily.

  ‘Indeed, I had a call a little while ago about some… developments.’ He looked warily in Joe’s direction. ‘And this must be your son?’

  ‘Yes, this is Joe.’

  He extended a hand. ‘Giles Denton. Good to see you.’

  ‘We’re just heading out for a meal,’ Rachel said, reluctant to prolong the encounter.

  ‘And I’m just on my way to check into the hotel. Maybe see you later.’

  To Rachel’s discomfort he gave her one of his smouldering looks topped off with a faint wink, before walking away.