shining as normal people went about their normal evenings as they did every single day of their normal little lives.
When did she forget what that felt like?
Most of her ached. And what didn’t ache, hurt. Stung. Burned.
‘Hello? DS Chalmers? Are you there?’
She dragged in a breath, ribs squealing in protest at the movement. Her voice came out muffled and lisping. Weak. Pathetic. ‘All I ever wanted to do was help.’
A sigh came from her phone’s speaker. ‘Then come in tomorrow and help. Ellie Morton might still be out there, alive.’
She wiped her other hand across her eyes. Do not give him the satisfaction of hearing you cry! ‘Why does it always have to be so hard?’
Headlights swept around the corner, getting closer, making her squint.
The woman in the rear-view mirror was a disaster: her face covered in scrapes and fledgling bruises. A black eye. Shirt collar ripped. Jacket too. Blood smeared around her nose and mouth.
Then the car was past and she was in darkness again.
‘Because it’s about people. Nothing about people is easy.’ McRae put on one of those fake, gentle voices – pretending he cared about her. When he didn’t. No one did. ‘Come in, Lorna. We can find her. Together. We can save a wee girl’s life.’
Lorna swallowed. Blew out a breath. Blinked at the car’s roof. ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Lorna? Lorna, it’s—’
She hung up. Put her phone on the passenger seat.
Fumbled a half-dozen painkillers into her palm, swallowing them with a mouthful of Ribena. Grimacing as they clawed their way down her throat. Chased them with another mouthful.
Lorna curled forward, till her forehead rested on the steering wheel, and let the tears come. Why did everyone hate her? Why did everything go wrong? Why wasn’t—
Her phone burst into ‘The Bends’ and there was his name on the screen again: ‘BRIAN’.
She stared at it. Snarled. Picked the thing up.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Then hurled it into the passenger footwell.
Enough!
She turned the key in the ignition, scrubbed a hand across her eyes, turned on the headlights, and pulled away from the kerb.
There was going to be a reckoning, and it was going to happen right now.
‘Sure you don’t want any wine?’ Tara waggled the half-empty bottle again, making the tips of her long, dark-orange hair jiggle.
Logan gave her a pained smile. ‘Sorry the kitchen’s kind of a tip.’
That was gilding the jobbie a bit. The walls hadn’t even made it as far as the chicken pox stage – instead seventies brown-and-green wallpaper lined the room, faded so much that the pattern looked more like mould than anything else. Dark shapes lurked around the edges where he’d ripped out all the kitchen units. Sockets and switches dangled from their wiring. All the skirting removed to reveal holes in the lathe and plaster. The whole thing topped off by the decorative sculptural presence of an electric cooker straight out of the Flintstones and a battered stainless-steel sink.
Tara settled back in one of the six nonmatching chairs arranged around the rickety kitchen table and looked at him over the top of her glass. Piercing blue eyes, a bit like a wolf’s, surrounded by smokey make-up and freckles. Heart-shaped face with a strong jaw. And, let’s face it, slightly out of his league. The unattainable goddess vibe was only undermined by the big red blob of sauce on her fitted white shirt.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I boring you?’
‘No. No. Not at all.’ He took another slice of pizza from his box. Shrugged. ‘It’s just … my day’s been all errant cops and a missing child. It’s not really … you know.’
Cthulhu jumped up onto the table and plonked herself down between Logan’s ham-and-mushroom and Tara’s vegan Giardiniera with prosciutto. Stuck a leg in the air and started washing her tail.
Tara took a sip of wine. ‘Mine’s been all lockups stuffed to the rafters with counterfeit vodka and cigarettes. So I think you probably win.’
He took a bite. ‘Can’t help wondering what happened to Ellie Morton. Maybe it’s better if she isn’t still alive.’ He followed it with a mouthful of fizzy water. Stifled a burp. ‘You ever heard of something called the “Livestock Mart”?’
‘What, Thainstone?’
‘No, not Thainstone. This one’s highly illegal: supposed to be a place where you can buy and sell abducted children. Moves about the countryside so no one can find it unless they know where to look.’
‘Yeah…’ She lowered her glass. Curled her lip. ‘Not really the kind of thing we deal with in Trading Standards.’
‘Been rumours doing the rounds for years. Decades, probably. But no one’s ever—’
Cthulhu sat bolt upright on the table, staring off into the corner of the room at a large hole gnawed through the lathe and plaster.
Logan scooted forward on his chair. ‘Oh ho, here we go.’
Cthulhu thumped down from the table like a dropped washing machine and prowled across the kitchen floorboards. Hunting.
‘Mice.’ Another bite of ham-and-mushroom. ‘Rotten wee sods have eaten half the wiring and nearly all the pipe insulation.’
‘So let’s get this straight: you invited me round to your vermin-infested house to eat takeaway pizza and talk about people buying and selling kids – and you think you’re getting lucky tonight?’
He pointed at the bottle in front of her. ‘There’s more wine, if that helps?’
Tara shook her head. ‘I’m a fool to myself.’
‘Hopefully…’ A grin. ‘And what’s a few mice between friends?’
Tara shuddered. ‘I hate mice.’
Ellie hugged her knees to her chest and pulled the blankie tight. It wasn’t easy, cos the man had tied her hands together with itchy rope. She sucked a breath in around the big red ball stuck in her mouth. And she couldn’t even spit it out cos it was all buckled at the back of her head.
The buckle pulled at her hair whenever she leaned against the wall of the crate.
A wooden crate, made of bits of wood, with spaces between the bits of wood so she wouldn’t stuffocate. And she could peer out, through the gaps, into the Scary Room that was all dark and smelled of dirt and nasty things and crying.
Dirty-orange light glowed through a manky-pants window, thick with spiders’ webs and
