by Alex Gray
Even on waking the tears were real, as was the feeling of shame that swept over him. How could he be so unmanned by a dream? It was as if somewhere in the deepest recesses of his soul his one weakness had been found out by some fiendish spirit sent to mock him. You’re claustrophobic, it seemed to taunt him, you’re scared of the dark narrow places, aren’t you?
Lorimer lay on his back, letting the images recede, grateful that other thoughts came thick and fast to obliterate this nightmare, thoughts of a small girl and her weeping mother. But even as he sank back under the duvet, he could feel the sweaty dampness on his chest, a physical sign of his continuing frailty.
CHAPTER 7
The sound of the alarm drilled into her brain, her hand already reaching to stop its noise even before she was properly awake. Maggie groaned softly, rolling back beneath the warm bedding, cuddling into her husband’s side. She hadn’t even noticed when he had come home, Maggie thought to herself. Must have been sound asleep for once. Wrapping her arms around his chest, she fitted her naked body to his, feeling a stirring as he struggled against the depths of sleep. Just a couple of minutes, she thought, no more or she’d doze off again and be late for work.
The memory came to her, hauling Maggie from slumber more effectively than any alarm: Julie Donaldson charging down the stairs away from Eric – and that expression on his face that Maggie simply could not fathom. Guilt? Fear? Or had it been a sort of puzzled disappointment? Sitting up now on the edge of their bed she tried to analyse what she had really seen. But somehow the image in Maggie’s mind kept shifting to the one of Eric’s shining face when he’d told Sandie and herself about the new baby. That was Eric as he usually was; a ‘shiny, happy person’ Sandie Carmichael called him and she was right. He was always smiling and cheerful, a fact that didn’t endear him to all of the staff. There were some at Muirpark Secondary whose blacker outlook was thrown into sharper relief by the young man’s sunny attitude and who curled a cynical lip at his Christian way of life. Maggie gave a shudder. Thank God she’d been the one to see that little incident, not one of the older, hard-bitten lot who might have read something salacious into it.
As she dressed for work, Maggie remembered that Julie Donaldson was one of Eric’s unlikely Scripture Union kids. Had she been at his summer camp? And if so, what on earth had prompted that weird outburst?
‘And, dear Father, please let us remember Nancy Fraser. Let whoever has taken her feel compassion for the little girl and her family and let her be safely returned to them. Amen.’
An echo of amens sounded around the classroom as heads lifted just in time to hear the morning bell.
‘Right. Registration. Thanks for coming and see you all at prayers tomorrow. Keep bright!’ Eric Chalmers nodded to each pupil as they filed out of his room, answering their smiles with one of his own. But when the last of them had left and the place was empty and quiet, Eric Chalmers chewed his lower lip, a caring expression clouding his features. What on earth was it like for that family? He thought of baby Ashleigh. How could anyone steal a child away from its mother like that? It didn’t bear thinking about. But they had thought about it in prayer, had interceded for their welfare, handed it over to God. Eric shook his head. There was nothing a mere schoolteacher could do but pray. Giving it over to the Lord was all he could do. That, and encourage the kids to do the same.
She hadn’t been to prayers this morning, Eric thought. No surprise there, really, after the way she’d come on to him. How did it feel to be fifteen and have a crush on your teacher? He’d tried to reason with her, but Julie wasn’t a reasonable sort of girl. The power of her rage had astonished him. He’d grabbed hold of her wrists after she’d lashed out at him, trying to subdue the passion that was at work in her. But instead of calming her down it had made things worse. Julie had begun to shout and scream and before he knew what was happening she was out of his room and flying down the stairs.
He had a few minutes’ respite before the first period began but as Eric Chalmers closed his eyes to pray that Julie Donaldson would come to her senses, the words simply wouldn’t come and he was left instead with images of her tear-streaked face and her protestations of how much she loved him, ringing in his ears.
From his classroom window Eric could see the pavement that ran around the school disappearing down to the busy main road beyond. An elderly man was walking slowly behind his little dog, a nondescript mutt that bore some passing resemblance to a terrier. He stopped to let another man pass him by, giving a friendly nod. Life was all so normal out there, Eric thought, staring at the two men.
As if the teacher’s thoughts had reached out beyond the school railings, the younger man looked up, pausing for a moment, his eyes searching for something. Eric shrugged. Maybe he’d been a Muirpark pupil in years gone by?
Then the bell rang out, breaking the spell, and the man resumed his walk as Eric turned away from the window, the moment forgotten.
The headlines screamed out from every news-stand in the city that morning. Nancy Fraser was still missing and every hour that passed suggested that it would be a tiny corpse that would be returned to her grief-stricken mother. Not that the journalists had written such a thing outright, but it was there just the same – a feeling, an unspoken thought in everyone’s mind, suggested by a turn of phrase or a memory of other, bleaker outcomes in child abduction. People read what the papers wanted to tell them. Not good news, not the hours of sheer slog that had kept many officers away from their own homes and families, trawling woods and parkland for signs of the missing girl. Nor did they have any inkling about the extent of the investigation, the masses of Internet files that had been screened to see if any similarity existed between this abduction and any others in the UK.
The vehicle that had been spotted by a neighbour’s child was a white hatchback but beyond that the description was sadly lacking. The older girl, who had been kept off school that day, had been shown picture after picture of cars similar to the one she had seen but, instead of focusing her mind, the pages and pages of images had proved confusing. Now the police were left running around, looking for other sightings of the white car, hopeful that another more reliable witness would come forward.
Kim Fraser snatched the telephone off its hook at the first ring.
‘Hello?’ The question dangled there, breathless and full of anticipation.
‘Tom Scott, the Gazette. May we—’
Kim clicked the voice into silence, tears welling up in her eyes. She’d hoped and prayed that someone would phone her with news of Nancy. Even with a ransom note, though God alone knew how a single mother on benefits could stretch to the demands of a kidnapper. That nice woman from the Police Family Liaison had told her it was highly unlikely that anyone had taken Nancy for money. But she’d also skirted over the alternatives; some dirty gang of paedophiles who wanted to film her Nancy doing horrible things . . . no, she wouldn’t let her mind go down that route. Safer to think of some other woman taking her child away; some poor soul who couldn’t have children, maybe? Nancy might be with a person like that right now, being spoiled with toys that Kim couldn’t afford to give her.
The tears flowed for real now, every memory of Nancy’s short life unfolding like a length of film: falling pregnant when she’d still been at school, leaving home and setting up here in this wee council flat with Robbie; the hollow empty feeling when he’d walked out and left them both, Nancy a mere six months old and Kim still wanting to be a teenager in love; the struggles between her parents and the social workers when all of them seemed intent on taking Nancy away from her, then these last couple of years when things had settled down and she’d been able to make this place a home for them both, even gaining a modicum of approval from her neighbours who all said what a grand mother she was and how nice she always kept her wee girl.
Now these neighbours would be asking themselves if Kim Fraser was such a good mother after all, if her child could be left playing on the pavement instead of being upstairs i
n the flat. But Kim had just gone round the back to hang out a basket of washing. She’d seen Nancy skipping through the close with the other kids – had heard the sound of their laughter – they’d wanted to watch all the bigger boys and girls walking to primary school, all shiny with excitement on their first day back.
If only Mrs Doherty hadn’t leaned out of her window and started to tell Kim about the new entry system . . . how many minutes had she spent listening to the old woman before Sally MacIlwraith had rushed out onto the green?
Kim closed her eyes, still hearing the words, ‘Nancy’s mummy! Come quick!’ The child had grabbed Kim’s hand, dragging her, bewildered, to the pavement where three other toddlers stood staring down a road that was now empty of any cars, especially a white hatchback containing her struggling daughter.
It wasn’t her fault, Kim told herself, hugging her knees to her chest. If the entry system had been fixed then the kids couldn’t have slipped out without at least one grown-up in tow. And Sally was such a sensible wee lassie, even if she was aye at the doctor’s with that chronic asthma. The papers were full of condemnation for the state of the flats; vandals had ripped the heart out of this place and the Council was fed up repairing the damage. It didn’t matter to them, did it? It was only folk like Kim Fraser, a single mum who didn’t contribute anything to the economy, who lived there. Scum, that’s what they were being called. You made a mistake when you were sixteen and spent the rest of your youth paying for it. Now they wanted to ask her – what? For her life story? Kim shook her head jerking the tears from her wet cheeks. That wouldn’t bring Nancy back, would it?
Detective Constable Annie Irvine stood aside as her colleague, John Weir, knocked on yet another door. They’d been at this all morning, along with a few uniformed officers from Cranhill police station. There was a knack to this sort of work, she knew, and her sidekick, DC Weir, just didn’t have it. Annie groaned inwardly as the door opened and a man faced them, his unshaven face and rumpled trousers testament to the probability that they’d dragged him out of bed.
‘Whitisit?’ the man mumbled as Weir showed him his warrant card.
‘Sorry to trouble you, sir.’ Weir’s upbeat expression was surely hurting his face by now, thought Irvine. ‘We’re making house-to-house inquiries about a missing toddler.’
‘Aw, richt. Thon wee lassie frae the next close?’ The man’s eyes seemed suddenly that bit less bleary. ‘Heard aboot it the morn when ah came aff ma shift, so ah did.’
Annie listened as the DC went through his usual spiel then yet another door was closed and they drifted across the landing to the next tenement flat where the tartan-backed nameplate showed the resident to be a D Lindsay. They were getting nowhere fast, Annie thought gloomily. Nobody had seen a thing.
‘Yes, oh, police?’ As soon as she caught sight of their warrant cards the elderly woman standing in the crack of doorway behind a security chain gave a simpering smile. ‘Is it about the wee girl? Come on in, will you,’ she added, sliding the chain off and opening the door wide. ‘A cup of tea?’
Annie and Weir exchanged glances and Weir shrugged. ‘Why not? Thank you, Mrs Lindsay,’ Weir added.
The old lady wagged her finger. ‘It’s Miss, Officer, not Mrs,’ she told him. ‘Never did find my Mister Right,’ she added with a schoolgirlish giggle.
Inside the flat Annie could smell the distinctive odour of lavender furniture polish, and images of her late granny’s own house with their long-forgotten memories came rushing back. They followed the old woman down the hallway and into a room so reminiscent of a bygone age that it might have come out of a Victorian film set. Annie had heard the tales about people from her granny’s day keeping their front rooms for ‘good’ but, apart from the museum in the People’s Palace, she’d never seen this for herself, until now.
‘Make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring you through the tea. Just made some scones this morning, I’m sure you’re ready for a wee break,’ Miss Lindsay rattled on, ‘then I can tell you all about poor little Nancy.’
Annie and Weir looked at one another as the old dear left the room. ‘D’you think she really has any information?’ Annie asked.
Weir shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? She strikes me as a bit of a lonely old soul. Maybe she just wants our company. Mind you, she’s not daft – keeps her chain on the door.’
‘It’s not the most salubrious area of the city,’ Annie told him drily.
While they waited for the old lady to return with their tea, she looked around the room. A front parlour, she knew, used to be kept for special occasions: visits from the clergy, Christmas and New Year celebrations. They could add a house-to-house call by CID in the twenty-first century, she thought drily. The room looked as if it hadn’t been used for years, though Miss Lindsay must have kept it well dusted for every piece of china on the mantelpiece gleamed in this subdued light. And it wasn’t just any old tat, Annie realised, crossing the room for a closer look. The little figurines arranged in ones and twos looked like Staffordshire pottery and she was willing to bet they were the real thing. It was a dismal morning, with rain mizzling down on the streets outside and only a dull light coming from the large bay windows, their heavy green velvet drapes partially obscuring the four rectangles of glass. All the furniture was dark too, adding to the general air of a room that had been preserved from a different era: an upright piano stood against one wall, a large picture of a dreary Highland glen above it, the three piece suite in its original bottle-green uncut moquette, only relieved by the beige antimacassars with their crocheted edging, one placed carefully over the back of each chair, three on the settee. Even the fireplace looked as if it had been there since the late-nineteenth century when these tenements must have been built, she mused. Brass firedogs and a beaten-brass log basket lay on either side of the empty hearth, a black hole that looked as if it hadn’t seen a proper fire in years. The policewoman glanced around the room but failed to locate a single radiator. She shivered at the thought of what this room must be like in winter. No wonder it looked like it was scarcely ever used.
‘There you are, my dears, something to warm you up.’ Miss Lindsay was suddenly there beside them and setting down a tray on a highly polished mahogany table next to the window. ‘What do you take? Milk? Sugar?’
Annie watched as the old lady lifted a silver pot, her hand steady as she poured out the tea. She might be old, the DC thought to herself, but she seemed to have all her faculties about her.
‘Nancy Fraser,’ Weir began, after Miss Lindsay had sat down to face them both, satisfied that they were each holding a tiny patterned plate with a well-buttered scone.
‘Yes, I’m so glad you came today. I just wasn’t sure what to do. I mean,’ she leaned forward confidentially, ‘you can’t just knock on the poor girl’s door and tell her what you think you’ve seen, can you?’
Annie laid down her cup, the saucer rattling faintly. ‘What do you think you saw, Miss Lindsay?’ she asked.
For a moment the old lady’s face showed a shadow of doubt as she glanced from one visitor to the other. ‘Well, you like to be sure, don’t you? I mean, it would be awful if I was wrong.’ She tailed off, her fingers grasping the handle of her teacup as if afraid that they might begin to shake. ‘I saw the wee girl being taken away in that car.’
For a moment nobody spoke, then John Weir cleared his throat and smiled encouragingly at the old lady. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell us exactly what you saw, Miss Lindsay,’ he said, then, laying down his plate, he took out his Blackberry and prepared to make notes.
‘It was the first day of school, you know,’ she told them. ‘I always like to watch the wee ones in their new uniforms walking down the road. Some of the younger children from the next close were out on the pavement watching them as well. I’d just taken a look down the street to see if any other children were coming when this car drew up.’ She paused, looking expectantly at them both.
This pause, wondered Annie, was it for drama
tic effect?
‘A woman got out, lifted Nancy up and put her in the car. Then she drove off!’ Miss Lindsay’s eyes gleamed with triumph as she leaned back, watching them intently.
Irvine could almost feel John Weir’s desire to catch her eye. Were they being given a story by an old lady who wanted some small excitement in her lonely life? Or were they actually hearing the truth from a credible witness?
‘Can you show us exactly where you were standing at the time, Miss Lindsay?’
The old lady rose to her feet and crossed to the large bay window. ‘Right here. You get the best view of the whole street from here. Come over and see for yourselves.’
She was right, Irvine thought. The view from this upstairs flat took in the entire block, from one end to the corner where it merged with the main road. Looking across at the rows of windows showing a glimpse of curtain or a pot plant on the sill reminded her of something. Then, suddenly she had it – Avril Paton’s famous painting of tenement blocks in Glasgow, Windows in the West, where you had some sort of voyeuristic insight on lots of people’s lives.
‘That’s where they all go to catch the school bus,’ Miss Lindsay told them, pointing downwards. ‘You can’t see it from here; it’s a few yards along the main road.’
‘So all the parents would be out of sight,’ Weir said, looking over the old lady’s shoulder.
‘That’s right,’ she agreed, turning to face him, her eyes bright with suppressed excitement. ‘They’d all gone by then and the wee ones were playing just at the close mouth. I could see Sally MacIlwraith with Nancy and some of the other children when the woman drove up in the car. Perhaps I was the only one to see what happened,’ she added hopefully.
‘We haven’t completed all our visits,’ Weir told her sharply.
