by Caro Ramsay
‘You might need to wash some cups.’
Sammy left to go into the little kitchen, leaving the door open.
It was Anderson’s turn to sit down. ‘So how are you feeling?’
‘Like shit. Some days are awful, others are worse.’
‘I’m sure this is not helping.’
There was the flicker of a wry smile. She made herself comfortable in her seat and pulled the duvet tighter round her, sitting like a small, vulnerable maggot. ‘So what are you going to say? You don’t know where he is, do you? He’s slipped away again, the shadow man.’ She shivered slightly. Her grey eyes looked somewhere beyond the window.
It seemed worse than any ranting or raving, as if Ruth had come to expect no better.
‘So you know that the person we found is not McAvoy.’
Ruth looked at him, then out the window again. ‘But you said it was him? Or did I misunderstand?’ She shook her head. ‘Not that it bloody matters.’
‘It was somebody with McAvoy’s ID. Somebody went out of their way to make us think that the body was McAvoy.’
‘McAvoy himself?’
‘We tried to keep it quiet but somebody told the press.’
Ruth thought about this for a moment. ‘You wanted to let him think that he had succeeded in fooling you.’ She nodded slightly. ‘Yeah, I can see him do that. He’s clever. You haven’t found him yet, have you?’
Anderson ignored the jibe. ‘The other theory is that somebody was impersonating McAvoy a bit too well, and somebody killed him, thinking that they were killing McAvoy but killing an innocent man in error.’
Ruth screwed up her eyes slightly. ‘And why would an innocent man be going about pretending to be Warren McAvoy, for the sake of the good Lord?’
Anderson thought about Lexy and the new laptop. ‘We have some ideas about that.’
She waited for him to expand but he didn’t. ‘In either case, the man who killed my beautiful boy is still out there?’
‘We think so.’
‘At least you’re honest.’
Sammy came in carrying three cups. ‘Ruth, do you have any ideas?’ She put milk and one sugar into Ruth’s cup and stirred it before handing it over.
‘About what? About somebody who might want McAvoy dead? Yeah, a few, like the phone book. McAvoy himself is a dangerous, evil man who took the piss out of us for years. Never forget that.’
Anderson thought of the shadow-faced man on the video, the way the dirty fingers had ruffled the boy’s hair, the thumb drawn down the boy’s cheek. ‘I would have trusted him with my son, the little I know of him.’
Ruth’s face seemed to light up. ‘Well, you’re a fool. What age is your son?’
‘Peter? A little older than Callum.’ He sipped at his tea, too strong for him, way too strong.
‘Than Callum would have been,’ Ruth corrected. ‘Just a boy, you have?’
‘I have a daughter too.’
‘A very talented daughter, by all accounts,’ said Sammy, smiling over the top of her cup. ‘Wants to be an artist.’
‘Tough game,’ Ruth smiled. ‘Fergus was interested in art. The Glasgow Boys.’
Sammy continued, ‘Claire works at a gallery in Glasgow on Saturdays, but she’s hopeful of getting into art school, Costello was telling me. Helena McAlpine’s.’
‘You might know her as Helena Farrell,’ said Anderson.
‘Even I’ve heard of her.’ Ruth’s face fell. ‘Good. Nice that they do something they want, not something they feel they have to.’
‘And what about Callum?’ asked Anderson. ‘What was he like?’
‘Quiet, academic. A little nervous, maybe. Cautious. He was a boy who would spend his life looking before leaping. A nice boy – deserved more, you know. He deserved a life.’
Anderson tried to change tack. ‘And you? What kind of kid were you, Ruth?’
She seemed surprised by the question. ‘Never academic; I was sporty.’
‘How are you keeping now? Do you get out at all?’
‘Not really. The neighbour’s dog came in through the back door yesterday. I was exhausted walking it back round the corner. Can’t get used to having neighbours. Found it difficult to be on my own until I started going to church.’ She placed her cup down on the coffee table and seemed to fold back into herself. ‘I found some comfort there.’
‘And how did you met Fergus?’
‘I ran my car into the back of his, strange but true,’ Ruth answered smoothly.
‘And Eoin and Fergus met at university?’ Anderson asked, noticing the delay before Ruth answered, searching for a lie.
‘Yes. Fergus got kicked out but they stayed friends. So you think McAvoy killed this person? He might be around here somewhere, watching us.’
‘Do you want protection, Ruth? The Dewars are moving, just in case.’
A small smile played on Ruth’s lips. ‘I have enough. I don’t go out. I can’t. I don’t open my door. Somebody runs me to church and brings me back. If McAvoy comes near me it will be him who needs protection.’
‘You must go out sometimes, shopping.’
‘The neighbour goes and gets for me. I’m sure some folk think she lives here, she’s in and out that much.’ She looked directly at Anderson, then her eye drifted off again. She shivered.
‘One strange question, Ruth, have you received anything weird through the post?’
‘Like what?’ she asked, but her voice quavered a little.
‘Like a tarot card on its own?’
She nodded, slowly. ‘Thought it was a sick joke. In a black envelope. Death card. I thought it was from those that said I was a witch and all that crap that started flying around.’
‘The death card doesn’t mean …’ Sammy started but was stopped by a glare from Anderson.
‘So what is that about?’
‘We don’t know. Do you still have it?’
‘Threw it in the fire; they’re not Christian.’ She looked into the fire for a long time. ‘What keeps going round in my head is that Callum saw Robbie get murdered. He was running for his life. He knew he was going to die and I know, deep in my heart, that he was calling out to me. But he died alone. How can I sleep at night, knowing that? Knowing I was sitting round that fire, eating and enjoying myself.’ She sniffed. ‘That is what I can’t live with. Can you imagine what that feels like? Knowing your son died alone, in the darkness?’
‘No, Ruth, I can’t,’ said Anderson.
‘Would you mind doing something for me?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Ruth’s hand went over her mouth. ‘It’s that I’ve always wanted to do something to mark the spot, put something there, flowers, but I’ve never made it back. I don’t want him to think that we’ve ignored him. I do pray, of course I do. But he was a child, he needs to know. Something I could leave there for him, things I have kept … A wee cross, his bear maybe. And the anniversary is coming up. I want to do it then. On Saturday.’
In the end they had taken Vik’s old Audi – not an old, old Audi, just not a brand-new one. His love of new cars had gone the way of his love of posh flats, victim of the credit crunch. He was sullen and silent most of the drive to Loch Lomond. Spend half an hour checking it out, getting some bearings was what Anderson had said. Costello had translated that as Get that sulking git out from under my feet.
Costello had tried opening up with a few of the usual conversational gambits about the case, some sarcastic comments about the weather – the nights are fair drawing in – and then she asked, ‘Why are you so friggin’ miserable all the bleeding time?’
‘Look who I work with.’
‘And are those jeans the best you could do, undercover?’
‘So what do athletic coaches dress like?’ He held down the front of his green Hollister T-shirt.
‘Not in designer jeans.’
‘They are the scruffiest things I have.’
Costello looked at the immaculate, unstained Armani jeans, the
Converse shoes and wondered, not for the first time, what kind of world Vik lived in.
‘I’ve brought my designer gym bag,’ he grumped, then continued to ignore her, rolling his eyes like a petulant teenager asked for the nineteenth time if he was wearing clean pants in case there was an accident. Only when she asked him to take the road to the west side of Loch Lomond did he speak.
‘Why up this way?’
‘To get a better perspective from the opposite bank,’ she replied, fighting with the folds of a recalcitrant map.
‘I could do with a better perspective right now,’ he muttered before turning up the radio, warnings of traffic jams on the lochside road.
Costello thought he didn’t suit being a moody git. His handsome face, with those Johnny Depp cheekbones, suited being mean, smouldering and arrogant. She’d always thought of him as two dimensional, and witnessing him sad and reflective gave a depth to his character that she didn’t want to think existed. He usually had the same depth of personality as a fried egg. She turned slightly to look at his perfect profile as he drove, elbow resting on the open window, the blue water of the loch beyond shimmering under a bright blue sky. He could have been a Hollywood pin-up on his holidays.
She asked him to pull in at the car park at Luss and offered to buy him a coffee at the takeaway stall that was well hidden behind the tourist buses. He declined with a dismissive wave of his hand. She told him to get himself down to the pier where there was a plaque that would tell them which island was which, and that would give them a good sense of the geography of the opposite coast. Rowardennan, Milarrochy Bay, Inchgarten Bay.
Most of all she wanted to get him on his own out on the pier to talk to him, or closer to the water so that she could chuck him in. Maybe even stand on his head until he confessed what was bugging him.
Mulholland watched her go and sighed with relief. A wee woman in jeans, a fleece and hillwalking boots that had never gone further than the local garden centre. Her blonde hair scraped back into a ponytail so small it was ridiculous.
He wished he liked her more. He wished he liked her full stop.
He wished they had a better relationship, like a brother and sister. Then he remembered that Costello’s own brother had tried to kill her. It was an effect she had on people.
Dot’s killing had not turned up on YouTube for public titillation. Prof O’Hare was struck by the thought that if he was relieved about that, then society was doomed. He finished off the email to Anderson, telling him the preliminary results of the latest tox screen. The victim at Riverview had been a habitual smoker of cannabis, and on the night he died he had a large cocktail of benzodiazepines and something with the chemical spike of amitriptyline. They wouldn’t know until the full toxicology tests came back, but that could take weeks. He pre-empted Anderson’s question as he typed. ‘Depending on the time of ingestion, the victim would have been drowsy and increasingly compliant. Sleepy, maybe to the extent that he lay down of his own free will. Conjecture on my part, but the findings are within the realms of reasonable speculation. He either ingested the drugs himself via overdose of prescription meds or somebody drugged him.’
O’Hare stood up and rubbed the muscle at the back of his thigh. He was sure he had ripped a hamstring while at the crime scene at Riverview. He settled back down in front of his computer with a cup of coffee. He had the DVDs of all three crime scenes and the post-mortem reports of Robert Allan Dewar and Callum Hyslop McCardle, both aged ten. He also had the photograph file of the post-mortem of four-year-old Grace Amelie Wilson. The medical histories of all three children had been delivered and were on his desk somewhere. He spent a couple of minutes shuffling things about, until he had the documentation of each child in different piles for direct comparison. Then he turned on his computer.
His colleague Jo had carried out the posts. They seemed straightforward; both boys had severe impact injuries to the cranium. In both cases the temporal bone had fractured, a free piece impacting the brain. Robbie had suffered more damage than Callum because McAvoy, the killer – the suspected killer, O’Hare reminded himself – had had more time. The forensic team had not found any evidence that pointed to McAvoy as the killer. And no evidence that he was not.
All the injuries supported the statement of the one eye witness, Jimmy, the sole survivor.
The blows had been inflicted with a blunt instrument, probably a rock picked up off the beach. He clicked the pictures on, head wound after head wound, lacerations, bald and cold, obscene in their nakedness once the hair was shaved away to leave the splits in the skull open; sable scars on nacreous flesh. Both boys had died by the same hand, probably killed by the same stone.
He looked at the pattern of the bone fragments, imagining McAvoy hitting the children. McAvoy was five feet nine inches tall. Robbie was four feet six, Callum a little shorter.
He then viewed the file on Grace – it had been deemed an accident. There was no evidence to the contrary. He clicked through the images on the DVD as he read; it all fitted a fall from the stone on to the canoe cradle.
He opened the files on the boys, reading his way through them, noticing the dates, looking for any rhythm, any pattern. He sat back then decided to go through the whole lot again.
Vik Mulholland leaned on the rails at the top of the pier, feeling the gentle breeze in his hair and watching the hypnotising darts of silver flash as the sun caught the water. It was a beautiful day. He felt like crying. He dare not turn round, scared that Costello would come back and catch a glimpse of the moisture in his eyes.
All these happy people eating ice cream and drinking coffee pissed him off.
Involuntarily, he felt his hands tighten on the rail, like his brain knew that some evil emotion was gearing up to tell him to jump. It was getting harder to ignore the cold feeling that seeped through him. In truth, it frightened him, that darkness. He had no idea why it was there or how to silence it. Everywhere he went a dark shadow followed; everywhere he went that little voice got louder. One day that shadow would swallow him up. It would consume him and the person he used to be.
He looked down into the water, still, deep, dark. In the past he had never understood why people jumped off bridges or in front of trains, but he was getting the idea now. Oblivion. And that frightened him too. Sonja had got home about three in the morning. He had feigned sleep until he heard her breathing settle into gentle snoring beside him.
A shadow fell over him. For a minute he thought the shadow of his depression was looming large and real, but it was Costello with her usual bad sense of timing. Her boots had been light on the wooden planks, as light as creeping Jesus. She had her sunglasses on. She had bought him an Orangina. Either she was in a good mood or she wanted something.
‘You thinking of jumping then?’ she said hopefully.
So she wanted something.
‘You looked at the thingy? You figured out where we are yet?’ She thrust the cold can into his hand then she leaned her back on the rail. He was glad she couldn’t look him in the eyes, or maybe she was under those glasses. She pulled the ring on a can of Diet 7Up.
He tried to unwind the fingers of his other hand from the rail; his knuckles had gone white. He had an irresistible urge to allow himself to slide under the rail away from her, into the water, never to be seen again.
‘If you’re going to be sulky and silent, can you do it in your spare time, please? This is taxpayer’s money you’re wasting, so friggin’ do some work and tell me which one of these islands is Inchgarten.’ She waited for him to answer, still looking out over the water. ‘And then think about these hotels. It was a Saturday, summer, weddings, guests out for a smoke – they would look across the water, people do. I’ve not seen any of that in the case notes; I’m wondering how thorough Bernie was with this. We might need guest lists, home addresses. Start plotting who was where when.’
‘I don’t know where I am.’ His words were breathed out on to the wind.
‘Physically or metaphorical
ly?’ She gulped down a mouthful of 7Up then belched quietly. ‘That’s better.’ A cob swan appeared from under the pier; the pen came out a few seconds later, each hopeful of a crumb. The swans quickly decided the couple on the pier were not worth bothering about and glided elegantly away to the beach, where some American tourists were eating burgers.
‘In every way,’ he muttered. The words this time floated over the top of his can of Orangina. He was happy for them not to be heard, or to be heard but ignored. Then he could say that he was right and nobody cared. The words were all the substance he had, something that floated on air and disappeared, something without form.
‘So how is it going with Sonja?’ Costello asked.
She didn’t seem to be making fun of him, but with Costello it was difficult to tell.
‘Fine. She’s great.’ He trotted out the platitudes, the expected responses, while what he really wanted to say was, she makes me miserable. She makes me feel old. Then Costello would ask why and he had no answer for that. Then she would interrogate him. He had seen the biggest hardmen fall under her interrogation. Slipping into the water and drowning quietly was looking an attractive proposition.
‘She doesn’t make you happy, though, does she?’ Costello took another noisy slurp.
‘What makes you say that?’ he snapped.
‘Because you are a miserable git when you should be swanning around complaining that you don’t get much sleep these days due to excess shagging.’
‘You were tired this morning. Was that due to Walker the stalker?’
‘That will never happen. It was O’Hare, in fact.’ She looked back out to the water.
He stayed quiet, looking down at the rippling carpet, blue on blue. Thinking that the roots of his shadow were down there and getting ready for him.
Costello walked along to the plaque which was supposed to be brass, supposed to be mounted on a wooden plinth. At the moment it was covered in rancid ice cream or something even more disgusting. She tried to keep her imagination from working too hard on that one. It certainly stank. Bits of whatever had got caught in the engraved wording; at least it made it easier to read. She started with ‘you are here’. Her eyes flicked up and down over the water, ignoring her own little niggle about the waves that slapped the stanchions of the pontoon. She didn’t like it. It make her think of dark, foggy nights, drowning under the ice. She bit her lip to stop the thoughts; she had things to do here, a job of work. She needed to get her brain in gear.
