since with stress, unable to cope with what he had seen.
Still none of it was any of his business. He had to walk away and leave it to Mathieson and Bannon. He had his cold case rapes to work on. Mitchum had given him one more week before the file went back to the freezer.
ACC Mitchum had been very clear: Anderson’s loyalty was to the force.
Not that there was any conflict of loyalty; Costello had not been in contact for twenty-one days.
‘MONKEY HOUSE OF HORROR’.
The tabloids hadn’t been able to resist that.
Valerie Abernethy looked up at the familiar ivy-covered eaves, the two red chimneys, the big, stained-glass window all hidden from the road by the majestic monkey puzzle tree. Had it been a happy family home for her sister? The gutter press thought so. A happy family home that became a scene of slaughter.
Valerie took a deep breath, trying to calm the panic. They wanted her to walk round the room where her sister had breathed her last, shielding her son from the blade of a knife. She was aware of the investigative team hovering at the bottom of the gravel drive, pretending they were giving her a little moment to catch her private thoughts. She knew she was under scrutiny.
Well, they could stand there, out in the rain, a little longer. Valerie placed her hand on a petal of the stained-glass flower, a delicate stem with Mackintosh roses. The glass felt slightly warm to her touch, almost soft under her fingertips.
The front door was familiar and welcoming, painted claret to match the colours of the roses. The brass knocker that Malcolm used to polish managed to shine, even in this god-awful weather. The door was open. They wanted her to go in alone.
She had no idea when she was last here. Her memory had large gaps.
A lump caught her throat. This was too difficult. She tried lifting her foot to get her up the step, one stride and she’d be in the house. Nothing happened. Her leg was leaden, stuck to the red tiles. Valerie recognised that feeling, an old enemy returning.
She needed a vodka.
She closed her eyes and stepped up. She had to do this for Abigail. For Malcolm.
She was now stock-still, one foot up, one foot down and with her fingertips still resting on the glass window. There was movement behind her. Archie Walker was about to intervene and offer his assistance.
She needed to do this on her own.
Valerie turned her face up to the sky and took a deep breath. The raindrops spat at her with disgust, stinging the skin of her cheek. She didn’t think it would be as hard as this.
Did she remember that night six weeks ago? Could she remember, vaguely, walking out the hospital? Standing in the light rain in Great Western Road, watching the traffic? She was probably looking for an off licence. Then there was a smell of perfume she could recall, something familiar she recognised from Abigail’s house. Was that merely an association of ideas, her imagination filling in the blanks?
Another pause.
A rustle of impatience from the drive.
That would be the boss, a small fascist detective with hard flinty eyes. That cop was mistaken if she thought her pillar-box red lipstick distracted from the incipient Hitler moustache. Her junior officer, the big bearded bloke, kept a good four paces behind her. Like Prince Philip.
Fascist and Beardy, it was easier than remembering their names.
Valerie heard footfall behind her as the cops and Archie, here in his role as her godfather, not in his professional capacity as the chief fiscal, were walking up the gravel driveway. They were only moving because it was too wet for them to hang around outside but it still felt like harassment.
Bugger them. She would do exactly what DI Costello had done on the day she had discovered the bodies. Valerie pulled away from the front door and made to walk briskly round the house to the back garden.
She turned to confront Fascist and Beardy, wishing them away. They were standing across the path, blocking her way. Archie gave her an encouraging smile.
The rainwater ran down his face, to be cast off as he nodded his head. They were getting soaked through. Even better, Fascist had a sour look on her face, her lippy was about to run.
Valerie took a deep breath and walked in the back door, recognising immediately the stink of the forensic cleaning team, a scent she knew well from her days as a fiscal. This no longer smelled like Abigail’s house; these rooms were no longer infused with the aroma of roses, fresh coffee and George’s aftershave. She walked through the pristine utility room, the kitchen – everything neatly tidied away – to the back of the hall where her boots touched carpet for the first time. Was this where Costello had spotted the tiniest smear of blood on the wall, blood that somebody had attempted to clean?
Valerie wondered how easy that had been to wipe away; probably easier to erase it from the wall than to erase from the memory. Fascist crept up behind her, coughed in irritation.
‘Is there anything missing that you notice?’ she asked in her snippy voice. ‘We have a comprehensive list of the items that Mr Haggerty has removed and we have the crime scene photographs and . . .’ That earned her an elbow in the ribs from Archie, now standing beside her. Nobody wanted to be reminded of that.
‘Anything missing?’ confirmed Valerie, thinking that her sister’s smile was ‘missing’, the hugs from Malcolm were ‘missing’. The house was a mausoleum.
‘Anything?’
Valerie looked around, climbed the stairs to the half landing and Primavera, resplendent in coloured glass on the west-facing window. The view east was totally obliterated by the monkey puzzle tree. It was an easy escape route; this window, down to the roof of the porch, a short slither to the ground. It was reported Malcolm had tried to escape that way once after an argument with his father. This was actually an easy house to gain entry and exit without being observed; the monkey puzzle tree hid a lot. She turned to look down at her companions, then up through the balusters to the upper landing, with its expensive Persian rug on an expanse of oak flooring. And a plain magnolia wall. Valerie screwed her eyes up to concentrate on what she wasn’t seeing. On her previous visit she had stared at the gap on her nephew’s bookcase for a full minute before realising that Malcolm’s favourite Lego toy, the Millenium Falcon, was gone.
‘Well, there was a picture there, a pastel. I suppose George took that, he always liked it.’
‘What was the picture? I don’t think he has mentioned it.’ Bannon checked his iPad.
‘A painting, it was a painting. A rowing boat on a canal, under willows, weeping willows. How fitting is that?’ She turned to the other three. ‘Uncle Archie? Did you say there was music playing when you . . . found them?’
Archie nodded, teary. ‘Yes, that kid’s song, it was on repeat on the CD. It had been playing for hours. “The Clapping Song”, the one w-where . . .’Archie stuttered. ‘Where the monkey got choked and they all—’
Valerie stared at the gap on the wall. ‘They all went to heaven in a little rowing boat.’
KIERAN COWAN DROVE ALONG the loch side, through the dark night and the streaming rain. The engine of Ludwig, his 1977 Volkswagen
