looked round. ‘Me?’
McAlpine nodded. ‘Just to make sure Anderson, Mulholland and I are up to speed.’
‘Lynzi Traill, as I understand her...’ Costello idled, then closed her eyes as she clarified her thoughts. ‘Aged thirty-four, housewife, body found in Victoria Gardens.’ She indicated the location on the map with the point of a pencil. ‘The gardens are kept locked. Ian Livingstone’s house – he’s the boyfriend – is here, in Victoria Crescent, overlooking the gardens. The fence is too high to punt the body over without leaving traces, and she was hidden in the bushes, so her killer must have had a key. And all known keys were accounted for?’ Her voice faded on the query.
‘Yes,’ said Littlewood wearily. ‘You know we spent days on that.’
‘Yes, I do know.’ Costello paused, recalling. ‘Anyway, the distance between the two sites isn’t much. Wyngate timed it as seven minutes’ walk. Lynzi was last seen at eleven o’clock on Saturday, the 16th. Here she is, caught on a CCTV camera at Glasgow Central after a visit to the theatre with her friends.’ The spotlight moved to a grainy coloured image of a crowd of people, Lynzi Traill just visible among them, her head turned animatedly to one side. Whoever she was talking to was obscured by a much taller man. ‘They told us they were all going to travel back to Paisley Gilmour Street together. They said somebody – they assumed it was a man, but the station was busy, and they didn’t see who it was – called to Lynzi, and Lynzi disappeared off to talk to him, while they waited. A minute or two later she waved across to her friends to indicate that they should go on without her; they assumed she was getting a lift.’ Costello pointed at the peppered image. ‘This friend –’
‘Annette Rafferty?’ asked Mulholland, flicking through a sheaf of papers.
‘That’s right. Annette says she knew that Lynzi was having an affair – the only other person who did know, by all accounts – so she thought Lynzi had bumped into the boyfriend and decided to stay, and persuaded the others it was OK. But it wasn’t OK. A local resident walking her dog found Lynzi’s body in the early hours of Sunday, the 17th, chloroformed, ripped from pubis to sternum.’ Costello asked to have the spotlight moved to a picture of Traill’s wound. In black and white, the carnage was highlighted by the brightness of the flash. ‘Same injuries, same pattern as Elizabeth Jane Fulton, but not so severe. Lynzi was posed, as Elizabeth Jane was. Exactly. O’Hare says she was alive when her killer left her. He . . . just left her to die in the rhodies.’
Someone muttered, ‘Where she gave the old dear and her Westie the fright of their wee lives.’
Costello continued, ‘Lynzi would probably have had you believe she was happily married. Her parents and her sister, all her friends except for Annette, believed – or wanted to believe – that she and hubby were still together, but that she’d just moved out for a rest, because she was finding it so difficult to cope. She was living in a flat in Paisley.’ Costello tucked her hair behind her ears, a sure sign she was anxious about something. ‘Stuart Traill apparently went along with this, thinking she was having an early mid-life crisis. Their little boy, Barry, was told his mum was looking after a sick friend. Lynzi was there when the wee lad went to school in the morning; she was there when he came home. But in between times, despite telling people she was working at the charity shop and looking after a sick friend, she was having an affair. And she was totally oblivious to the fact that the neighbours were amusing themselves with her comings and goings at all hours of the day and night.’
A question was fired at her from the darkness: ‘So what were the mechanics of that?’
‘She kept her mobile phone switched off; she did a voluntary job with no pay and no regular hours; Annette may have fibbed for her . . . It’s not that difficult. Lynzi’s parents, sister, brother, the hubby’s family, they all swear they had no idea what was going on. But I can’t believe that...’ Costello ran out of steam.
‘So where is the boyfriend in all this?’ asked McAlpine, pointing at the map.
‘As I said, Ian Livingstone lives here, in Victoria Crescent. But both he and Mr Traill have been turned inside out. Clean.’
‘Are we satisfied with that?’ asked McAlpine.
‘We’ve checked them again and again,’ Costello insisted. ‘Triple-checked. Neither was alone for a minute between the time Lynzi was recorded at Glasgow Central Station and the time her body was found.’
‘And Livingstone was really upset, absolutely devastated,’ said Burns.
‘Guilty,’ muttered Littlewood.
‘Nobody could have faked that. He asked for the minister to come from next door.’ Burns shook his head. ‘They even said a prayer together.’
‘Definitely guilty, then.’
‘He’s been nothing but cooperative,’ Irvine volunteered. ‘And he seems a nice guy. Well, that’s my opinion . . . for what it’s worth.’
‘So what about the husband?’ asked Littlewood.
‘At work. He worked nights, and his shift covered both ends of the time scale.’
‘Bloody convenient. Check it again,’ McAlpine persisted. Costello sighed inwardly.
‘The son? Wee Barry?’ Littlewood again.
‘Home alone. And not for the first time.’ Costello’s tone of voice indicated exactly what she thought of that.
‘There’s that element of trust again, though, isn’t there?’ said Anderson. ‘Elizabeth Jane let someone into her flat, someone she knew and trusted. And Lynzi left Glasgow Central, at night, again with somebody she knew and trusted, but not the husband, not the boyfriend.’
McAlpine stood up, his hand on Costello’s shoulder. ‘So we keep digging. This second killing means the location is important.’ He paused and looked round the room again. ‘Lynzi lived in Paisley, but she spent a lot of time here in the West End. The boyfriend lived here. She worked in a charity shop in Byres Road, she shopped here. But the charity shop and the boyfriend are her only real connections with this area. So there must be some connection between them and Elizabeth Jane. There has to be. So we get working on Lynzi Traill’s connections in the West End. Who’s in the shop, for instance? Try to crack those alibis. And get working on Elizabeth Jane’s new-found freedom. Her flat was a recent refurb; she’d been in it for only a few months, first time she’d been away from her parents. What was she getting up to? The MO’s being circulated nationwide, and so far we have nothing that comes close. So this is on our doorstep and nowhere else. Costello, you’re coming with me for the tea-and-sympathy bit. The rest of you, get on with it.’
There was a murmur of assent, as the migration for the coffee machine started. It was going to be a long day.
It took a good two or three minutes’ discussion before Sean McTiernan got what he wanted, and by then the mid-morning queue of Saturday shoppers behind him was stretching out to the street. The menu said ‘Coffee Latte Light with Wings.’ He didn’t know what that meant.
It turned out to be bog-standard white coffee with a prong stuck in it that pulled the dark brown of the coffee through the white of the milk to form a pattern. It was, he presumed, supposed to be the Ashton Café logo. Or was there a ‘right way up’ to drink it?
He proffered a pound coin. The bored waitress with the plaits didn’t look up. Her outstretched hand
