The sixth ring cut off abruptly. A deep voice grunted an approximate hello.
‘Is that Logan Laidlaw?’ Misha said, working to keep her voice level.
‘I’ve got a kitchen and I don’t want any insurance.’ The Fife accent was still strong, the words bumping into each other with the familiar rise and fall.
‘I’m not trying to sell you anything, Mr Laidlaw. I just want to talk to you.’
‘Aye, right. And I’m the Prime Minister.’
She could sense he was on the point of ending the call. ‘I’m Mick Prentice’s daughter,’ she blurted out, strategy hopelessly holed beneath the waterline. Across the distance, she could hear the liquid wheeze of his breathing. ‘Mick Prentice from Newton of Wemyss,’ she tried.
‘I know where Mick Prentice is from. What I don’t know is what Mick Prentice has to do with me.’
‘Look, I realize the two of you might not see much of each other these days, but I’d really appreciate anything you could tell me. I really need to find him.’ Misha’s own accent slipped a few gears till she was matching his own broad tongue.
A pause. Then, with a baffled note, ‘Why are you talking to me? I haven’t seen Mick Prentice since I left Newton of Wemyss way back in 1984.’
‘OK, but even if you split up as soon as you got to Nottingham, you must have some idea of where he ended up, where he was heading for?’
‘Listen, hen, I don’t have a clue what you’re on about. What do you mean, split up as soon as we got to Nottingham?’ He sounded irritated, what little patience he had evaporating in the heat of her demands.
Misha gulped a deep breath then spoke slowly. ‘I just want to know what happened to my dad after you got to Nottingham. I need to find him.’
‘Are you wrong in the head or something, lassie? I’ve no idea what happened to your dad after I came to Nottingham, and here’s for why. I was in Nottingham and he was in Newton of Wemyss. And even when we were both in the same place, we weren’t what you would call pals.’
The words hit like a splash of cold water. Was there something wrong with Logan Laidlaw’s memory? Was he losing his grip on the past. ‘No, that’s not right,’ she said. ‘He came to Nottingham with you.’
A bark of laughter, then a gravel cough. ‘Somebody’s been winding you up, lassie,’ he wheezed. ‘Trotsky would have crossed a picket line before the Mick Prentice I knew. What makes you think he came to Nottingham?’
‘It’s not just me. Everybody thinks he went to Nottingham with you and the other men.’
‘That’s mental. Why would anybody think that? Do you not know your own family history?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Christ, lassie, your great-grandfather. Your father’s granddad. Do you not know about him?’
Misha had no idea where this was going but at least he hadn’t hung up on her as she’d earlier feared he would. ‘He was dead before I was even born. I don’t know anything about him, except that he was a miner too.’
‘Jackie Prentice,’ Laidlaw said with something approaching relish. ‘He was a strike breaker back in 1926. After it was settled, he had to be moved to a job on the surface. When your life depends on the men in your team, you don’t want to be a scab underground. Not unless everybody else is in the same boat, like with us. Christ knows why Jackie stayed in the village. He had to take the bus to Dysart to get a drink. There wasn’t a bar in any of the Wemyss villages that would serve him. So your dad and your granddad had to work twice as hard as anybody else to be accepted down the pit. No way would Mick Prentice throw that respect away. He’d sooner starve. Aye, and see you starve with him. Wherever you got your info, they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.’
‘My mother told me. It’s what everybody says in the Newton.’ The impact of his words left her feeling as if all the air had been sucked from her.
‘Well, they’re wrong. Why would anybody think that?’
‘Because the night you went to Nottingham was the last night anyone in the Newton saw him or heard from him. And because my mother occasionally gets money in the post with a Nottingham postmark.’
Laidlaw breathed heavily, a concertina wheeze in her ear. ‘By Christ, that’s wild. Well, sweetheart, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There was five of us left Newton of Wemyss that December night. But your dad wasn’t among us.’
Wednesday 27th June 2007; Glenrothes
Karen stopped at the canteen for a chicken salad sandwich on the way back to her desk. Criminals and witnesses could seldom fool Karen, but when it came to food, she could fool herself seventeen ways before breakfast. The sandwich, for example. Wholegrain bread, a swatch of wilted lettuce, a couple of slices of tomato and cucumber, and it became a health food. Never mind the butter and the mayo. In her head, the calories were cancelled by the benefits. She tucked her notebook under her arm and ripped open the plastic sandwich box as she walked.
Phil Parhatka looked up as she flopped into her chair. Not for the first time, the angle of his head reminded her that he looked like a darker, skinnier version of Matt Damon. There was the same jut of nose and jaw, the straight brows, The Bourne Identity haircut, the expression that could swing from open to guarded in a heartbeat. Just the colouring was different. Phil’s Polish ancestry was responsible for his dark hair, brown eyes and thick pale skin; his personality had contributed the tiny hole in his left earlobe, a piercing that generally accommodated a diamond stud when he was off duty. ‘How was it for you?’ he said.
‘More interesting than I expected,’ she admitted, getting up again to fetch herself a Diet Coke. Between bites and swallows, she gave him a concise précis of Misha Gibson’s story.
‘And she believes what this old geezer in Nottingham told her?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and linking his fingers behind his head.
‘I think she’s the sort of woman who generally believes what people tell her,’ Karen said.
‘She’d make a lousy copper, then. So, I take it you’ll be passing it across to Central Division to get on with?’
Karen took a chunk out of her sandwich and chewed vigorously, the muscles of her jaw and temple bulging and contracting like a stress ball under pressure. She swallowed before she’d finished chewing properly then washed the mouthful down with a swig of Diet Coke. ‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of interesting.’
Phil gave her a wary look. ‘Karen, it’s not a cold case. It’s not ours to play with.’
‘If I pass it over to Central, it’ll wither on the vine. Nobody over there’s going to bother with a case where the trail went cold twenty-two years ago.’ She refused to meet his disapproving eye. ‘You know that as well as I do. And according to Misha Gibson, her kid’s drinking in the last-chance saloon.’
‘That still doesn’t make it a cold case.’
‘Just because it wasn’t opened in 1984 doesn’t mean it’s not cold now.’ Karen waved the remains of her sandwich
