Sergeant Winifred Prudence Costello.
She gestured through the doors of the station, tapping her fingertip on the face of her watch. Wyngate shrugged his shoulders at her; Mulholland was nowhere to be seen. Costello sniffled and looked up Hyndland Road. Brenda Muir was having an autumn sale, 50 per cent off. There was a dark green cocktail dress in the window, the colour of avocado skin. Who was she kidding? She never went anywhere, except work. If she wore good clothes, she looked as though she’d stolen them. She stamped her feet a little quicker, watching a piebald collie investigate a wheelie bin. She looked at its feathered tail rippling in the wind, letting her mind run. First Lynzi, now the Fulton girl. She shivered, nothing to do with the chill of the morning. The collie teased a chip paper from the bin and began to worry it, pinning it to the pavement and taking great delight in ripping the newspaper to shreds, which the wind promptly dumped in the gutter.
The rush hour had started, and cars were snaking up to the junction with the Great Western Road, amber and red lights smudging in the rain. Up there too stood the elegant four-storey terraces of Kirklee, one of the most prestigious addresses in Glasgow, a five-minute walk from the police station but socially a million miles distant. The McAlpines had lived there all their married life, in Helena’s family home.
Still no sign of Mulholland, and Costello was getting impatient. Vik Mulholland was the new kid on the block, still had to prove his worth. The old musketeers were back together again. For the last ten years their careers had crisscrossed each other’s like the weave of a hunting plaid. Costello herself had always been at this station or at Divisional HQ less than a mile away since she graduated from Tulliallan Police College. McAlpine lived at the top of the hill. Anderson had done the rounds of the division like a good detective should as he climbed the career ladder. They all knew this area like they knew their own faces, but Mulholland was a south-sider, and a posh one at that. He might just find himself a fish out of water. The thought pleased her.
The collie trotted off, a pie crust in its teeth as a prize. Costello began to pace back and forth, counting to ten before each turn. She knew this city and the people in it better than she had known her own mother, and it gave her an edge over the others. Mulholland was welcome to his designer suits and blind ambition. McAlpine had his handsome face, his aggressive genius, his electric charm and his beautiful wife; Anderson had a troubled marriage and two adorable kids . . . Costello stopped pacing, halted by a thought. Over the years she’d been aware that Anderson had a great fondness for the Boss’s wife. Not that there was anything in it – of course there wasn’t – but Costello had always wondered. Then a sudden gust of rain stung her in the face, putting an end to her romantic notions.
She gestured impatiently through the door of the station again and breathed deeply as she looked up the street, the centre of the West End, the creative heart of the city, her city. She had an instinct for the place and its people, had always felt safe in its streets. The only move she had made in her life was from the south side of the Clyde to the north. Glasgow had warmth, and the humour of hard-working people. It was an in-your-face kind of city but one with a soft centre. But now her home town was keeping a secret from her, and she didn’t like it.
Her foot came down in a puddle, and ice-cold water invaded her sock again. She had hoped she wouldn’t still feel the same about McAlpine, but she did. She reminded herself that the way she felt about McAlpine was probably the way Anderson felt about Helena. The McAlpines were a difficult couple to dislike; she was rich and successful with an easy grace that put everybody at ease; he was . . . well, he was himself, and that was enough.
The rain didn’t look like giving up, so she pulled her hood right up over her head, tucking her hair underneath in an attempt to keep it dry. The sky in the east was slipping from dark to light grey, but it wasn’t going to clear. A van pulling in to overtake on the inside went right through a puddle, and dark murky water splashed with uncanny accuracy on her cream chinos.
A black shining Beamer pulled out of Clarence Lane, stopping the traffic. Vik Mulholland leaned over to open the door for her. ‘Don’t get the upholstery wet, will you?’
‘I’ll hover in mid-air, will I?’ she said. Mulholland looked very smug in his cashmere Crombie. He always looked immaculate, one of the many things about him that annoyed Costello. She fastened her seatbelt and nodded at his expensive overcoat. ‘Sorry, did I interrupt you working as a body double for Johnny Depp? Or was it a photo shoot for Versace today?’
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ he said, smiling imperturbably. ‘So we have another one to add to our workload.’ Mulholland indicated right. The traffic always stopped for the cop cars. ‘He has a bit of a reputation, this McAlpine, but I didn’t think much of him. Seems a bit soft.’
‘You reckon? Underestimate him at your peril,’ Costello muttered, pulling her coat beneath her. ‘It should mean something to you that he’s allowed you to stay on the team. What he says goes . . . or who he says goes.’ She smiled at her own little witticism.
‘Really? So why are we doing this routine stuff? Inappropriate use of resources. This is uniform.’
‘It means he has a hunch about something.’
‘About what?’
Costello sighed. ‘The Boss isn’t happy about the body being found by somebody looking through a letterbox at three this morning. Wants to know more.’
‘Why would anybody be looking through a letterbox at three in the morning?’ asked Mulholland, smoothing his eyebrow in the mirror.
‘Exactly.’ She leaned forward, sticking a Post-it note with the address on the dashboard and turning off some operatic warbling from his CD player. ‘Take a left when you can.’ She started scribbling in her notebook. ‘I’ve phoned ahead; they’re not going out till we speak to them.’
‘But why are we doing it?’
‘Because,’ Costello said, with consummate patience, ‘it’s our job.’
‘Can I give you a hand with that?’
Helena McAlpine was trying to manoeuvre a flat wooden crate out through the front door of the house in Kirklee Terrace. ‘My God, that’s a rarity – a policeman when you need one. How are you, Colin?’ She smiled at Anderson. Her arms outstretched, leaning on My Brother in Palestine, she gave him a hug and a light kiss. Then she sideshifted a swathe of red hair from her face and smiled mischievously. ‘How was Edinburgh?’
‘Best forgotten. Do you need a hand with that?’
‘It got delivered here last night, rather than to the gallery, and I have to be there to open up.’
Anderson twisted his wrist and looked at his watch. ‘You’re supposed to open at nine?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d better get a move on, then.’
‘My lord and master has been getting in my way since he came back. Can you lift that end?’
‘This has a dent in it,’ Anderson observed, lifting the crate and carrying it easily down the steps, reassured to feel needed in these days of equality.
‘Yeah, your boss gave it a kicking when he eventually came home from the office last night. He said it was because it was blocking the hall, but I think it was more of a comment on the state of modern art. It’s only worth about twelve grand.’
Anderson automatically tightened his grip. ‘I’ll just drop it here,’
