by Lin Anderson
‘What do you mean betrayed them?’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Slater snapped. ‘Petersson was working for the Russian. His job was to establish if McNab was alive and if so, locate his current whereabouts. Petersson figured a live McNab would eventually come sniffing around you, so all he had to do was fuck you and then wait.’
Rhona ignored the barb. ‘McNab trusted Petersson.’
Slater gave a snort of derision. ‘McNab always was a stupid bastard.’
‘You believe Petersson gave him up?’
‘We know he did.’
‘Then why did you say Petersson betrayed them?’
Rhona looked from face to face, trying to read their expressions. There was something they weren’t telling her. Something important. When it struck her it seemed so obvious.
‘Petersson helped McNab escape.’ By the glances they exchanged she knew she’d struck home. ‘Petersson set him free and paid the price for it.’ It made sense. ‘That’s it? Isn’t it?’
Slater turned away, dismissing her. This was all she was going to learn, but it was something.
45
Once outside the building Rhona took out her phone to call Bill and picked up Liam’s voicemail. He had something important to tell her about Jude and wanted to meet up as soon as possible. She rang him back.
‘Liam? It’s Rhona. I’m free today, can you come into town?’
‘Whereabouts?’
She described how to get to the Central Café.
‘OK. When?’
‘I should be finished here shortly. I’ll go straight there and wait for you.’
There was a pause. ‘You’ve not found another body?’
‘Yes, but it has nothing to do with Jude,’ she said firmly.
He seemed convinced, and rang off.
Rhona knew she didn’t really have the time to deal with Liam’s latest theories on Jude’s disappearance, but she owed it to him to listen to what he had to say. She made her way back into the construction site.
‘Liam wants to meet me, something to do with Jude Evans. Can you get a lift back?’
‘No problem. How did it go up there?’
‘Slater wasn’t very co-operative.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’ Chrissy gave her a penetrating look. ‘Anything you want to tell me that I don’t already know?’
‘He thinks Petersson was working for Kalinin all along to flush out McNab.’
‘Jesus, so that’s how they knew where McNab was hiding.’
‘We don’t know it’s true.’
‘But if Petersson was working for the Russian, why would they kill him?’
‘Slater thinks Petersson betrayed them by helping McNab escape.’
Chrissy gave a low whistle. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’
It all made sense when you examined Petersson’s behaviour with the benefit of hindsight. His anxiety that Bill not alert Kalinin by pulling in Lang, the message he’d left for her with Brynja.
‘His daughter turning up must have really screwed things up,’ Chrissy said.
‘So he booked her on a plane –’
‘– before he made his move,’ Chrissy finished. Then she frowned as a seriously worrying thought occurred. ‘But that’s not the only explanation that fits.’
Rhona thought she knew what Chrissy was about to say, but she didn’t want to hear the words.
‘If McNab found out that Petersson betrayed him—’ Chrissy stuttered to a halt.
Rhona had smelt the hatred, fear and desperation in that room. Hate would have kept McNab alive through the pain and torture. If he got free by himself, wouldn’t the man who’d betrayed him have been the first one in his sights?
It hadn’t been a wise move to suggest the Central Café, but it was the first place that had sprung to mind. And maybe somewhere deep in her subconscious she’d hoped that if she sat here long enough McNab might turn up like he’d done before.
Rhona checked her mobile one more time. If he was alive and free, surely he would have let her know by now? But that had been his mistake the first time round. The clock on the mobile told her she’d been here twenty minutes. Maybe Liam had had difficulty finding the place?
Just at that moment the door opened and in he came, accompanied by a girl with a cloud of light-brown curly hair. Rhona called his name and he turned and shuffled self-consciously in her direction. Rhona, equally unsure how to play this, stood up to welcome them.
‘This is Aurora. She’s in the room next to Jude’s in halls. Aurora, this is Dr Rhona MacLeod.’
Rhona covered their mutual embarrassment by asking if they wanted coffee. Both asked for lattes, and Rhona went to place the order at the counter. When she returned they’d both taken seats on the opposite side of the table. Aurora was busily unfurling a long scarf and opening her coat.
‘It’s not Starbucks, but it’s warm, the coffee’s good and it’s close to the High Court,’ smiled Rhona.
‘It’s fine,’ Liam said, dismissing her attempts to put them at ease.
An awkward silence followed, broken by Rhona. ‘I’m glad you got in touch. I was planning to call you and bring you up to date.’
‘You’ve found something?’
‘The police have CCTV footage showing Jude leaving the Rosevale.’ Rhona stopped, suddenly realising she couldn’t mention Jason.
‘Oh,’ Liam sounded disappointed. ‘Did you pick up where she went after that?’
‘There wasn’t another sighting on Dumbarton Road, I’m afraid.’
Rhona paused expectantly; Liam had asked for this meeting, so he must have something to say.
The girl put her hand on Liam’s arm. ‘Maybe I should tell her?’
Liam nodded. ‘OK.’
Aurora took a deep breath then began. ‘The night after Jude went missing I heard noises next door. I thought it was Jude back. Later on, I remembered I’d heard a man’s voice around the same time. I assumed it was Charlie, the warden. He walks the corridors when he’s on duty. I never thought any more about it until—’
‘Until what?’
‘Until my friend Sally told me Charlie had been letting himself into her room with his key, and that’s why she’d left halls.
‘You’ve told the police all this?’
‘Jude thought Charlie was a good guy. We all did. We found it hard to believe Sally was telling the truth,’ Liam said.
Aurora continued, ‘Then I saw Jude’s laptop in the boot of Charlie’s car. I knew it was hers because she marks everything with her initials.’
Rhona nodded. ‘We found Jude’s recorder in the cinema. It was marked the same way.’
Liam looked shocked. ‘You found Jude’s recorder in the Rosevale?’
‘In the projection room.’
Liam shook his head emphatically. ‘There’s no way Jude would have left the cinema without checking she had all her equipment.’
‘Jude was obsessive about things like that,’ Aurora added, equally perturbed.
‘But what if it fell out of her pocket?’ Rhona suggested.
Liam was adamant. ‘You don’t understand, Jude had this thing. She was forever checking her bag, her pockets. She would have realised the recorder was missing before she got far and gone back for it.’
As far as Rhona was aware, the possibility that the girl had returned to the Rosevale had never been considered. Bill had said Jason had a key. Was that what their conversation had been about on the CCTV? Had Jason arranged to let Jude back in?
Liam was scrutinising her. ‘What is it?
‘DI Wilson needs to know what you said about the recorder. And about Charlie and Sally. Are you both willing to go down to the station and give a statement?’
Aurora glanced at Liam.
‘You’ll come with us?’ He was trying to disguise the anxiety in his voice.
Rhona nodded. ‘I’ll call Bill to warn him we’re on our way.’
46
Bill wasn’t sure how to
respond to the two young faces who stared earnestly back at him. The story about Charlie had caught him completely unawares. He had no idea whether the warden had been checked out, but it was something that should have happened. He had a strong feeling that he was losing his grip. Carrying too much information around in his head, absorbing none of it.
What Liam had said about Jude’s voice recorder made sense. If Jude had Asperger’s, she was obsessed with order and with her belongings. It seemed likely that if she left without her recorder she would have noticed pretty quickly and made an attempt to recover it.
Rhona was sitting quietly beside the pair. She’d insisted on a word alone with Bill before he talked to them, and her revelation about Petersson and the probable reason for his violent death had left Bill stunned. But he had to put that out of his mind, at least until after this interview.
He attempted to gather his thoughts, then asked, ‘How did Jude find out about the Rosevale?’
‘As far as I know she got all her information from websites,’ Liam replied.
‘Did she ever mention someone called Jason?’
They looked at one another, then shook their heads.
Bill addressed Liam directly. ‘Tell me about the Govan Lyceum.’
‘Ben worked out Jude’s email password and we saw she’d been in touch with a website called realcinemas. Jude had arranged to meet two men, brothers, from the site last Tuesday night at six o’clock outside the Govan Lyceum, so we got in contact with them. They told us they were coming to speak to you about it.’
Bill was less concerned with Liam’s interference than he was with what he and Ben had discovered. To reach Govan, Jude would have had to catch the subway from Partick Cross, a short walk along Dumbarton Road, yet they hadn’t located her on CCTV after the Rosevale. Initially, he’d thought she might have turned off the main road, but if she was heading for the subway, that wasn’t likely. Which left two possibilities. Either Jude had headed back and been missed by the camera near the Rosevale, or she had met someone, possibly in a car.
‘Did Jude ever mention someone called Nelson?’
‘Not to me,’ Liam said.
‘She mentioned Admiral Nelson to me once,’ Aurora broke in. ‘I thought she was talking about a pub, you know, the Admiral Nelson.’
‘What exactly did Jude say about Admiral Nelson, and when?’ said Bill. The intensity of his voice had unnerved the girl. ‘It’s OK, Aurora, just take your time and think about it.’
Aurora concentrated, her brow wrinkling. ‘She said “Admiral Nelson awaits” or something like that. I’m sorry, I wasn’t really listening.’
‘When did she say this?’
Something was dawning on Aurora. ‘Oh, God. It was that Tuesday, because I’d just heard about the party the next night. I was thinking about asking Jude along but she didn’t like crowds.’ The girl looked at him with anguished eyes. ‘I should have remembered that sooner.’
‘It was a throwaway remark. You weren’t to know it was important,’ Bill assured her.
Both of them looked exhausted, Liam in particular. The case was taking a heavy toll on Rhona’s son. Bill decided it was time to let them take a break.
‘I’ll get an officer to take you down to the canteen so you can get something to eat. Then you can both go home.’
‘What about Charlie?’ Aurora said.
‘I’ll deal with him.’
Liam threw Rhona a questioning glance.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she assured him.
Bill waited until they’d left with DC Campbell, before telling Rhona, ‘We brought in Nelson already. He denies ever having met Jude.’
‘Whoever was with her in the projection room left their footprints. We have good casts of those. And didn’t Nelson have keys at one time? Someone locked that door after Jude left.’
‘Let’s imagine Jude did go back and Jason or Nelson let her in. Could she … still be in there?’
‘You searched the place.’
‘The building’s been internally re-structured at least four times. Rooms blocked off. Parts boarded up. We could have missed something.’
‘The CCTV footage showed Jude walking away.’
‘The CCTV camera is in the side street beyond the building. What if she came to the front door?’
‘Or she was picked up before she reached the subway.’
A car matching the description of Charlie’s was parked in the courtyard behind the halls of residence. Bill told DC Campbell to wait there while he spoke to the warden.
‘And try not to look too like a policeman.’
‘I’m not that much older than the students, Sir.’
‘And you act like one of them most of the time.’
Bill walked round to the front entrance, composing himself before going in. He didn’t want Charlie suspicious before they started their chat. His demeanour seemed to work because Charlie greeted him as before with the offer of a cup of tea.
Bill settled himself in the cubicle while Charlie boiled the kettle and put a couple of tea bags into mugs.
‘So how’s the search going for the lassie?’
Bill shook his head. ‘Not so great, Charlie. That’s why I’m back.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Going over old ground again, in case we missed something.’
Charlie nodded his understanding. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for all the money in China.’ He handed Bill a mug. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’
Bill poured in plenty of milk. When he was satisfied with the temperature, he took a sip. ‘For years I never got to drink my tea until it was cold. I decided it was easier just to make it that way to start with.’
‘Aye, I can see your point.’
‘What did you do before this, Charlie?’
‘Went into the Forces straight out of school. Then an odd-job man, mainly, which helps in this place. You’d be surprised how many young folk can’t change a light bulb or mend a plug.’
They both laughed.
‘So, Detective Inspector, how can I help?’
‘I understand you weren’t on duty the night Jude disappeared.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Did you know Jude had been visiting old cinemas?’
‘Not until I went into her room with Liam.’
‘You thought she’d come home Wednesday night?’
‘The lassie next door said she’d heard her, so I phoned the laddie and he came round. That’s when we found someone had broken in.’ Charlie looked personally affronted at this.
‘You weren’t on duty on Wednesday either?’
‘I popped in for a bit.’
‘Oh?’
‘Left my mobile behind. I’d forget my head these days if it wasn’t screwed on.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Bill sympathised. ‘Did you go up to the first landing at any time on Wednesday night?’
Charlie’s eyes flickered. ‘Not that I recall. Why?’
‘One of the students thought they heard you up there.’
‘There was a party on. Most of them were drunk.’ He shook his head in despair at the antics of the young.
‘When did you come back here?’
‘I can’t remember the exact time. Fell asleep in front of the telly, and when I woke up I remembered the mobile.’
‘D’you have far to come?’
‘Twenty minutes or so by car. I’m just past Victoria Park.’
Victoria Park lay west of Partick.
‘You come along Dumbarton Road?’
‘Aye.’
None of the questions posed seemed to perturb Charlie. He was still as open faced and smiling as when Bill had first appeared. Bill decided it was time he stirred up the waters a bit.
‘Truth is, Charlie, we’ve heard an allegation about you from a Sally Murphy, who used to stay here.’
Charlie’s forehead creased in consternation. ‘What kind of allegation?’
‘That you sexually harassed her.’
/>
He looked horrified. ‘What? That’s nonsense!’
‘She says she woke up to find you in her room more than once, after you let yourself in with your pass key.’
‘I have to go into rooms now and again. It’s part of the job,’ Charlie said indignantly. ‘But not in the middle of the night, when someone’s in bed. I wouldn’t do that. She’s talking nonsense.’
‘She also says you gave her a lift one night, back to halls, and that’s when it started.’
Charlie was getting angry now. ‘The lying wee besom.’
‘So it’s a lie?’
‘Of course it’s a lie.’
‘We can clear this up, Charlie, if we take a look at your car.’
‘My car? Why?’
‘If Sally’s lying, we won’t find any trace of her in there.’
Charlie was rattled, no doubt about it. But an innocent man would be just as flustered when confronted by an accusation of sexual assault.
‘The car’s round the back.’
Bill was already on his feet. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’
Charlie followed him out to the car park where DC Campbell was busy chatting up a pretty girl. He jumped to attention when he saw Bill.
‘Open up the boot for us, Charlie.’
‘You can take it as it is. I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘Open up.’
Charlie fumbled with the lock, then lifted the lid. Bill eased him aside to take a proper look. ‘What’s in the bag, Charlie?’
‘My laptop.’
Bill slid it out and turned it over. A set of initials, partially scrubbed out, were still legible.
‘Who’s JE?’
Charlie looked puzzled. ‘I don’t know. It’s second-hand. I bought it on eBay.’
‘Know what I think, Charlie? I think this is Jude’s laptop. I think you stole it from her room the night after she disappeared.’
Charlie looked surprised and hurt. ‘I wouldn’t steal from the lassie, Detective. I told you I bought the laptop on eBay. Paid a hundred quid for it.’
‘You can prove that?’
‘I contacted a bloke who offered it for sale. He brought it here and I paid him. That’s all I know.’
Bill softened his tone. ‘We have a lot to talk about, Charlie. Are you willing to come down to the station with me?’
‘No problem, Detective Inspector. I want to find the wee lassie as much as you do.’
