Singing to the Dead

by Caro Ramsay

  He looked at Troy. ‘But it’s always open.’

  ‘We were told to go to our bed,’ said Troy, still squeezing his knee.

  Luca lifted his feet from the ground and pulled on the handle with all his weight. Then the solitary light bulb popped and died, and darkness came down like a shutter.

  The lone figure trudged up Rowanhill Road, his breath clouding the air with effort. Every lamp post he passed had a poster of Luca Scott on it. Every third one or so had a poster of Troy McEwen. The railings of Rowanhill Primary School were adorned with pictures of the missing boys in clear plastic coating, and pictures of wee Andy Ibrahim out in Pakistan. All were covered in tinsel, garlands, messages of hope and scribbled prayers. The school was non-denominational but in the corner, inside the protection of the railings, was a small nativity scene. A few flowers were scattered around, having been thrown in from the road through the railings.

  On the classroom windows, fluorescent posters announced the forthcoming fair.

  Constable Smythe quickened his pace, hurrying towards Byres Road and the subway at Hillhead. He had been drafted down from Partick Central Station the minute Partickhill had put a call out to all surrounding stations for help with the search for the missing boys. He didn’t know why, but he could guess. His DI had taken great delight in sending him on the new detail – to go out and search every bloody wheelie bin and piss-soaked alley in the West End on a freezing cold night to look for two children who would not be there.

  Smythe knew he was unpopular; he also knew he was good. He was resented because he was good. Appraisals were coming up and he could sense promotion in this, now he was away from his own squad. He walked on past the terraced houses of Crown Avenue and Crown Drive. All were within the Red Triangle, so they should have been searched already, with the exception of the properties the day shift couldn’t get access to. He stopped on the corner of Rowanhill Road and looked up, behind him, recalling the grid plan he had spent all afternoon working. It was logical to him that if no access had been gained at three p.m., they’d have more of a chance now at eight thirty. Yet here he was, walking past these houses again, and there were no cops in sight, no search team. No doubt they would be back at the station with a hot cuppa and a bacon roll.

  Smythe pulled his glove from his hand with his teeth, got his pen and notebook from his pocket and started scribbling. If need be, he’d go over the whole bloody lot on his own. He glanced at his watch and headed towards the tube station. He wanted to get home, it was his turn to bath the kids.

  Frances looked as though she had only just got home – she still had on the long woollen coat, to which the rain had attached itself in perfect droplets, and her hair was soaked, stuck flat to her head, making her long pale face look like a white shield. Vik thought she looked a little red round the eyes, as if she had been crying.

  She eyed him blankly at first and then leaned forward to kiss him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize it was so late…’

  ‘Look, Fran, if it’s too early I’ll…’ He leaned on the wall as a sign that he had no intention of going anywhere.

  ‘No. No.’ She drummed her fingers along the door jamb as if making up her mind about something. He stayed against the wall, hoping he looked relaxed but sexy, watching her eyes narrow as she frowned in concentration. She said again, ‘No, no. Come in.’

  ‘For you,’ he said, handing over the huge bouquet of flowers he was holding.

  And he got her hundred-watt smile.

  She led him into the dark hall, pulling the coat from her shoulders and dropping it over the outstretched arm of a window dresser’s dummy that stood in a recess by the door to the bathroom – the recess that would have held the cloaks of the cloakroom, its row of tiny pegs still visible behind the fedora the dummy was wearing at a perilous angle. He followed as she walked in front of him. Her jeans and jumper were both well worn, shaped to the contours of her body, and her fine-boned elbows were clearly visible through the thinning wool of the overlong sleeve. He thought about buying her one of those nice cashmeres. He jumped a little when Frances flicked something with her boot on the way past – something she didn’t want him to see. His Christmas present, he hoped.

  The dummy, bald and naked apart from the fedora, had its right hand held out at shoulder height, palm up as if expecting a tip. A tambourine dangled from its badly chipped fingers. Vik gave it a high five. Frances turned to look at him.

  ‘I guess everybody does that,’ he said sheepishly.

  ‘Who’s everybody? It’s my hall, isn’t it?’ she asked without humour. ‘Come through to the fire; I’ll take your coat.’ She ushered him into the living room.

  This was the first time he had been in her flat properly. Normally he was kept at the door or went straight into her cramped, dark bedroom. He had expected a front room out of Ikea – all feng shui and laminated floors. He could not have been more wrong; her home was old, neglected but well loved, and Frances wore it like a glove. The room was a 1950s time warp, a mass of different shades of dark red. The thick burgundy carpet, which had seen better days, had a trim of grey dust at the skirting board, and was covered in patches of pale silky hair, belonging to Yoko the Siamese cat, he presumed. As he set down the shopping bags, the wine bottles clunked noisily together, and he rested them against his foot as he slipped his arms out of the sleeves of his coat.

  She took it from him, smiling her enigmatic smile. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she said as she left the room, her heels clunking on the bare floorboards in the hall.

  He sat on the floor, warming his hands at the coal fire which was beginning to catch. It spat and crackled a little, a living thing. That explained the coat; she had been outside to get the coal that stood in a basket, still dotted with rain. Then he sat back, looking up at the ceiling. A glass amber-marbled ceiling light hung suspended on three chains. Several dead flies lay like the spent heads of matches in the bowl. On a high black mantelpiece stood two sepia photographs in oval frames; in both the couple looked old enough to be Frances’s grandparents. Her granny, a brown-eyed benign witch, had had the same long dark hair, the same perfect features. No photos of her parents, he noticed. The hearth and fireplace were covered in wine-red tiles, many broken, with white scars between the tiles and the black plaster beneath. Somehow the vinyl record collection, stacked on makeshift shelves along one wall and standing in piles on the floor, seemed completely in keeping; the pile in front of the window had a plant on top. There must be two thousand records in here, he reckoned, and only a few CDs, all with bargain-basement yellow labels. Pride of place in the room was occupied by an old Dual turntable standing on top of a shock-absorbing mat. Vik was impressed by the range of Frances’s record collection; she had lots of rare editions in multicoloured vinyl, and the black version too for sound quality. He noticed there was no DVD player; he would have to buy her one. He had already got her a DVD boxed set of Rogan’s Greatest Hits. With a bit of luck he might be able to get it signed if O’Neill was making an appearance at the Rowanhill School Fair.

  He found a vinyl copy of Tubular Bells, kept in pristine condition in a plastic envelope. He pulled it from its protective sleeve and placed it on the turntable, watching the arm drop. He leaned back against the front of the settee and closed his eyes, letting himself float away on the haunting, staccato melody.

  An hour later, he was still sitting there leaning against the settee. In the glow of half-light, the empty containers of their meal were stacked up on the floor, dirty plates beside them, and the empty bottle of red had rolled against the hearth. Frances, who had changed out of her wet things and was wearing a black towelling dressing gown, was lying on the settee behind him, long limbs half curled round him, slender fingers caressing Yoko who was purring quietly like the engine of an Aston Martin.

  Vik couldn’t quite figure out all the contradictions that were Frances. So much attention to detail, to good music, yet she lived in a flat with a Stone Age kitchen. She was an attr
active woman – a beautiful woman – who didn’t care about clothes. She was bright, well read, but didn’t work. She didn’t seem to need money. She didn’t even seem to need company apart from the cat. Yet she was a breath of fresh air.

  ‘Was this flat your mum’s?’ he asked.

  Frances half smiled, and her hand came to rest on his shoulder. One touch. So sensuous. But she didn’t answer.

  ‘So, did you buy it then?’ Vik persisted. He had known the flat was big, but he had no idea it would cover the ground floors of both sets of flats above. ‘Surely you didn’t buy somewhere this size on your own.’

  ‘I inherited it from somebody,’ she said. ‘Well, they didn’t die – can you inherit if they don’t die…?’

  ‘It’s a huge flat for one person.’

  ‘I have no one to share it with.’ And that was the end of that conversation.

  He closed his eyes again, just for a few seconds, breathing in patchouli. When he turned to look at her, she had fallen asleep.

  He shifted himself round to gaze at her, at the faint smile on her lips as she slept. Sleep had eased the pain from her face, and she looked young again. She was someone who had almost forgotten how to smile, he thought, how to laugh. That glorious smile so rarely lit up her gravely beautiful face. The flowers – he glanced at them briefly – had ignited it for a moment, and the memory of it warmed him. One day, he promised himself, one day he would know her secrets.

  He leaned over to kiss her, and her eyes opened. ‘Bed time?’ he whispered. She stroked his hair and nodded sleepily.

  He smiled back. As he got to his feet he realized that he had not thought once about the stains on the carpet, or the fact that he had touched the cat without washing his hands. And he realized too that he had not given a thought all evening to Luca Scott or Troy McEwen. He lifted Frances’s hand, caressing her fingers with his own, then slowly pulled her to her feet.

  There had been a little icon blinking at the top of her mobile phone and Lynne had pressed Playback carefully, trying not to smudge the white tip of her new French manicure. The message had been received at 7.50 p.m. Douglas’s voice was seductive but furtive, words spilling out before somebody overheard. ‘I’m sorry, love, I can’t make it tonight. Eleanor’s not feeling too grand…’

  Lynne had snapped her phone shut.

  But she was already dressed for her evening out, in a plain grey cashmere dress, a present from Douglas himself. She had twisted in the mirror; the soft wool clung to her body, giving her stick-thin figure some contours. She was elegant, colourless, almost ghost-like. She hadn’t changed one thing about herself since she had met Douglas that day in court. He had been dressed in his designer suit, she had had a black coat on. Eve had come to court from her hospital bed, still in plaster from corrective surgery, still in pain. At some point in the proceedings Eve had been sick down the side of Lynne’s coat and Douglas had witnessed it, hurrying past, embarrassed. Later, he had apologized. Over an Earl Grey.

  Douglas, Earl Grey, designer suits. There was no way she could go into her living room now and spend the evening looking at Eve squatting in her chair with her legs apart, feeding crisps and chocolate into her face as if eating were an Olympic sport, wiping her nose noisily on her sleeve and swearing at the telly.

  Lynne pulled on her long black coat, and belted it tightly. She put on her hat and tucked her blonde hair under it, wound a scarf twice round her neck and folded it tightly under her chin. Her boots were waiting ready in the hall. She slipped them on silently and then went out into the calm moonlit night.

  Across the way she could see Stella McCorkindale, Douglas’s faithful secretary, still in her kitchen, a faint shadow moving back and forth behind the blind. Their two houses had been the same at one time – well, nearly. But Stella had sold hers to be converted into two flats and had bought the top one back. It had freed up a lot of capital. Douglas had overseen it all for her and kept telling Lynne that was what she should do with her own at number 66. Except number 66 wasn’t hers. She had never exactly lied to Douglas. He had assumed the house was hers and she had never got round to telling him otherwise. The house was Eve’s. Lynne looked behind her at her old family home, set back from the road on a quieter part of the hill, and cursed her mother from the bottom of her heart.

  She walked past the park. The grass had a faint dusting of icing sugar; the rain was turning to sleet. The air was still and silent. The park was devoid now of police activity, and the tape had gone. She only hoped the abduction wouldn’t cause a dip in property values.

  She walked on, staying close to the hedge where the sleet had settled deepest, listening to the sound of her feet crunching. It was less than a ten-minute walk, though a world away socially, to Kirklee Terrace where Douglas lived. With his wife.

  The sleet drifted silently through the bare branches overhead as Kirklee Terrace came into view. Floodlights gently bathed four storeys of white sandstone in a soft hue of rich magnolia, and the three-faceted bay windows showed an array of tinsel and glitter, bright light bulbs crystallizing and kaleidoscoping behind the glass.

  It was so beautiful, so quiet up here. Lynne turned to look at the cars slowly moving up Great Western Road, at the city lights spanning out below her. She wanted to live here, more than anything. This was where she belonged. Douglas had one of these houses, Helena Farrell the artist had another, and that took serious money. And she, Lynne Calloway, was now acquainted with them both. Maybe not a world away after all.

  Lynne shivered. Thick baubles of rain were settling on her shoulders and soaking through her coat, and her woollen dress seemed very inadequate now. She paused at the sound of a car coming up the hairpin at the far end of the road, and ducked into the shadows. The Jag drew to a halt, the back door opened, and three young children spilled out on to the pavement, each with a half-opened present, the wrapping paper still attached. They ran up the steps to their front door, the smallest child, a girl wearing red boots with flashing lights, holding her present over her head in an attempt to keep dry. As the door opened Lynne caught the fragrant aroma of hot cakes, baking apples and cinnamon.

  Lynne watched the Jag as it pulled away to find a parking place, and noticed Douglas’s Audi, carrying a fine dusting of snow from some outskirt of the city. She put her hand out, wanting to stroke it, caress it, but then saw the new XK8 Jag behind it, dark blue, convertible, with a private plate. EM 022 – Eleanor Munro, she presumed. Lynne felt for the house key in her pocket and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger. She could hardly resist the temptation to scrape metal against metal.

  The message was short and unequivocal – Your dinner is in the bin. Brenda hadn’t even bothered to take the microwave Fisherman’s Pie out of its cardboard sleeve. Colin Anderson swore gently and wished he had got some chips for himself at the Hungry Gorilla. He found the late-night news on a cable channel; it showed footage of the ruins of the earthquake in Pakistan, with the inevitable makeshift tents and queues for aid. Then the news moved on to a castle in Scotland, nowhere Anderson recognized, but Rogan O’Neill was buying it. Out of interest he flicked the sound up. ‘And Glasgow’s own Rogan O’Neill is reissuing his classic single, “Tambourine Girl”, in aid of Andy’s Appeal,’ the irritatingly cheery voice announced. ‘So, if you’re stuck for that stocking filler for the lady in your life… “Tambourine Girl”. It’s Christmas, and it’s for charity…’

  ‘It’d bloody have to be,’ muttered Colin, pulling a piece of toasted cheese apart with his teeth and zap-ping the news to silence before opening the police file.

  Two minutes’ reading told him: Luca – nothing; Troy – nothing.

  Anderson’s heart sank. It was all looking a little too familiar. The vehicle patrols had all drawn a blank, the social work teams seemed content to blame each other as usual, and the area of waste ground beyond Maryhill was earmarked for a dawn search the next morning. But the boys wouldn’t have got that far on their own without being seen. So, that meant DCI Quinn was l
ooking for a body now, maybe two. Why did she not come out and say so? He glanced at the poorly photocopied images of the two boys with such similar faces, the main difference being the faint outline of Troy’s gold stud earring. Anderson knew the old DCI would have ordered colour images. Making notes, he reread the statements; all were consistent with what they already knew. Then he read again the statement from the dog walker, Mrs… he looked for the name… Moxham? She had given a statement to the uniform at the time of the door to door, and then another to Mulholland. He looked closely at the wording in Mulholland’s notes – he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. They weren’t there on the constable’s – Whittaker’s? – notes. So that meant Mrs Moxham had seen Troy as she walked out, but not when she came back. Alison McEwen was slumped on the park bench, alone. It was confirmed later in Mulholland’s report. And for all his irritating ways, Vik Mulholland was normally efficient about note-taking. Anderson was inclined to rely on him in this. So, they could now narrow down the time frame, they could enhance the CCTV, steal Lewis’s idea and do a time-relevant reconstruction, and refocus attention. Yawning, he made a mental note to phone the witness and make absolutely sure. If you want something done properly, he told himself, do it yourself.

  He read the notes contributed by Littlewood. No new paedophiles were known to be active in the area. None had been released on parole for Christmas – well, none that Littlewood and his former colleagues saw as a threat. All the known ones had been talked to, questioned as a matter of routine. None of them had been behaving suspiciously, all had alibis. Then Anderson noticed Littlewood’s chilling memo to himself, scribbled in thick black biro – Somebody new on the scene? Somebody who had come from nowhere? Anderson prayed that he was wrong. He wondered whether, if he was faced with the situation, he’d have it in him to thump the shite out of a pervert and keep thumping until they divulged something – anything. Then he remembered: that was exactly why Littlewood had been bumped down to sergeant, for beating the crap out of a suspect. And good luck to him. Colin didn’t think he would have the nerve to do it himself; his pension meant too much to him, his kids meant too much to him, to be drummed out of the force on a disciplinary charge. He looked at the pictures of his kids on the mantelpiece, Peter with his front tooth missing, Claire with her fringe blunt cut, framing her freckled face; she was like Brenda to look at, but had his own stolid persistent personality. Peter, mercurial and none too focused, looked like his father, but in character took after his mother.