Jacobson, PC Cooper, Professor Huntly, Dr Constantine, and Alice. I’d grabbed the seat next to her, on the outside. Right leg stretched out, walking stick hanging on the back of the chair in front as the duty sergeant monotoned his way through the day-to-day assignments.
‘… car thefts up fifteen percent in that area, so keep your eyes peeled. Next, shoplifting…’
I shifted in my seat. ‘Of course it wasn’t a dream, you wanted a bedtime story so I told you one.’
Alice looked up at me. ‘You did? That’s so sweet.’
‘About how the Inside Man got away.’
‘Oh.’ The smile slipped a bit. ‘Still, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it. So you really did round up all the people in blue tracksuits?’
I nodded. ‘Rhona got all nine of them. Two hours earlier and there would’ve been dozens – the whole sodding football team came down to ride on the bikes. The Super checked everyone’s stories and alibis. Nothing.’
She glanced at the front of the room.
The duty sergeant was still droning on: ‘… break-in at the halls of residence on Hudson Street…’
‘What about the train to Edinburgh?’
‘Just missed it at Arbroath, but they were waiting for it at Carnoustie. No one in a blue tracksuit. But the in-carriage security camera caught someone matching the description getting off at the first stop.’
‘… to remember, that just because they’re students it doesn’t mean you can treat them, and I quote, “like workshy sponging layabouts”. Fitzgerald, I’m looking at you…’
‘It was him, wasn’t it?’
‘We put out an appeal, got an ID, and did a dawn raid. Turned out it was a religious education teacher up to do the charity cycle.’
‘Oh.’
Professor Huntly leaned over, glowered past Dr Constantine, teeth bared around a hissing whisper. ‘Will you two shut up?’
‘… Charlie went missing sometime between half eleven last night and six this morning. He’s only five, so keep your eyes peeled. He’s run away twice before, but his mum’s still frantic. Best efforts, people.’
I stared back at Huntly until he licked his lips and looked away. Sat back in his seat.
Should think so too.
I leaned into Alice again. ‘But we searched his house anyway. Came up with a stash of child pornography and an unlicensed firearm. I think he’s on life-support now – someone cracked his head open on a washing machine in the prison laundry.’
‘… but not least: lookout request for one Eddie Barron. He’s got form for GBH and assault with a deadly, so don’t say I never warned you…’
On the other side of Alice, Dr Constantine sat up. ‘Oh-ho, here we go.’
At the front of the room, the duty sergeant brought things to a close. ‘Right, if you’re not on Operation Tigerbalm, you’re excused.’ He held up a sheet of paper with ‘HAVE YOU SEEN CHARLIE?’ in big letters above a photo of a wee dark-haired kid – sticky-out ears, a squint smile, and a face full of freckles. ‘Pick up one of these, then get your backsides out there and catch some villains.’
Half the room shuffled out, Uniform and CID moaning about being told to sod off, bragging about their weekends, or muttering dark curses about having to support Aberdeen or Dundee now the Warriors were gone. The duty sergeant marched after them, arms full of paperwork.
Detective Superintendent Ness took the floor. ‘Someone get the lights.’
A couple of clicks and gloom settled into the room. Then Ness pointed a remote at the projector mounted on the ceiling, and two photos appeared on the screen behind her. The one on the left was a painfully pale woman on the beach at Aberdeen, grinning away in a green bikini and goose pimples. The other was the same woman, curled on her side in a thicket of brambles. Her white nightgown had got caught up on their barbed-wire coils – riding up to show off the purple slash across her belly. The wound’s sides held together with crude black stitches over the distended skin.
‘Doreen Appleton, twenty-two, the Inside Man’s first victim. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary.’
Ness jabbed the remote again. Doreen Appleton was replaced by a happy brunette in a wedding dress, and the same woman lying flat on her back in a lay-by. She was dressed in a similar white nightdress to the first victim, the fabric stained with blood all across her swollen abdomen. ‘Tara McNab, twenty-four. Victim number two. Nurse at Castle Hill Infirmary. Someone called nine-nine-nine from a public phonebox a mile from where she was found…’
Click, then a hissing old-fashioned audio-tape noise, and a man’s voice filled the room, clipped and professional. ‘Emergency Services, which service do you require?’
The woman who answered sounded as if she’d been caught in the middle of a two-day bender, the words thick and slurred. Distorted. ‘A woman’s been … been dumped in a lay-by, one … one point three miles south of Shortstaine Garden Centre on the Brechin Road. She’s…’ A small catch in her voice, as if she was holding back a sob. ‘She’s not moving. If you … hurry, you can save her. She’s, very weak, possible internal bleeding… Oh God… Blood type: B-positive. Hurry, please…’
‘Hello? Can you tell me your name? Hello?’
Silence.
‘Sodding hell.’ A scrunching noise, as if the controller had put a hand over the microphone on the headset, muffling his voice. ‘Garry? You won’t believe what I’ve just—’
Ness held the remote up. ‘Ambulance crew arrived fifteen minutes later, but she was dead when they got there. Audio analysis showed that the voice on the nine-nine-nine call was hers.’
One of the Specialist Crime Division team stuck his hand up. ‘She made the call herself?’
There was a pause, then Ness pulled her brows down, bit her lips together. Closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Does anyone want to take that?’
Professor Huntly laughed. ‘How, exactly, do you imagine a woman with extensive blood loss and internal trauma managed to make a call from a public phone box, then walk a mile to the bus stop where she was found? It was obviously taped prior to her being dumped there. He drugs them, then makes them record their own SOS before he cuts them open.’
The guy from SCD put his hand down. Cleared his throat. Fidgeted. ‘Perfectly valid question…’
Ness pointed at the photo of Tara’s body. ‘Original investigation tracked down the nightdresses: all from a stall down at Heading Hollows Market. Three for a fiver. The stallholder had no idea who he’d sold them to or when.’
She pressed the remote and victim number two was replaced by a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad. Blue ink scrawled along the lines, the handwriting barely legible. ‘Two days after Tara McNab’s body turned up, this letter was delivered to Michael Slosser at the Castle News and Post. In it the writer complains about
