speakers gave a jangly ringing noise, a hiss, a click, and then Sabir’s huge grey face filled the screen. He squinted, and leaned forwards. ‘Mornin’ everyone … Bleedin’ heck: you look like crap, Doc.’
I shifted around behind Dr McDonald, until I could see myself in the little window inset into Sabir’s video feed. ‘Any news on the bookseller?’
‘They’ve got him in an interview room, acting all indignant and “I’ve never done nothin’ to no one”. Dozy get.’
I leaned in. ‘What about my searches?’
‘Ah, right …’ He grimaced. ‘I might owe you a bit of an apology on that one. Went and did a search on all twelve families and four of them didn’t come up with nothin’ recent enough to find out where they were. Nowhere Joey Public gets access to. Not without some serious IT skills, anyway.’ Sabir’s fingers clacked over the keyboard. ‘Even then: there was bugger all on Hannah Kelly’s ma and da. So I went and did a bit of a hack on the Police National Computer – told it to gizza list of everyone who’s entered search criteria for any Birthday Boy families for the last four years.’
A dialogue box popped up on Dr McDonald’s screen: ‘SABIR4TEHPOOL WANTS TO SEND YOU A FILE. ACCEPT – DECLINE.’
She clicked accept and a spreadsheet opened up in another window. A long list of names and dates.
‘I’ve sorted it by family, year, who’s done the search, and from where.’
I frowned at the names. ‘And?’
‘If youse were hoping for one person who’d done the lot, you’re stuffed. We got about sixty-two searches spread out over forty individuals, no one’s searched for all twelve families. Well, ’cept for me trying it out, and that. Otherwise the record’s eight.’
‘So no Birthday Boy.’
‘Not unless he’s about ten different people, no.’
I got Dr McDonald to scroll through the list. Most of them were from Oldcastle – Rhona’s name was on there, so was Weber, Shifty Dave, along with a chunk of CID and nearly every uniform in the place. And of the lot, Rhona was the one who’d done the most searches: a whole three. Sod.
‘Sorry, Sabir: wasted your time.’
‘Nah, don’t worry about it. We did the same thing four, five years ago when we thought the Birthday Boy might be a bizzie. Even thought we had him once – this sergeant up in Inverness – but turned out he was just a dirty paedo got his rocks off on the Birthday Boy photos. Was worth checking again.’
Henry knocked on the doorframe. ‘Ah, Alice, you’re up. Good.’ He’d changed out of his funeral suit, into a pair of flannels and a beige cardigan going bald at the elbows. He placed a litre bottle of Bells whisky on the breakfast bar. ‘Ready to get back to it?’
Dr McDonald swallowed. Pulled on a smile. ‘Super …’
‘Sabir?’ I turned the laptop around so the screen was pointing at Henry. ‘You remember Dr Forrester?’
Sabir’s face broke into a grin. ‘Doc, how you been? You’re looking—’
Henry reached forwards and closed the laptop lid, shutting him off. ‘I told you, I’m not getting involved: I’m simply helping you and Alice out. If you do that again, I’m out.’
OK … ‘Thought you might like to say hello.’
‘Hmmph.’ He opened the whisky and plucked two glasses from the draining board. Put one in front of Dr McDonald and glugged in a generous measure. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, we really need to get back to work.’
The smell of frying garlic filled the kitchen, steam from the boiling pasta turning the window opaque as the extractor fan struggled to cope.
Henry plonked himself down on one of the stools by the breakfast bar, the litre of Bells clutched in both hands. ‘You know, I rather like Alice: she’s a trooper.’
‘Still throwing up?’ I scraped langoustine tails and chunks of smoked haddock into the frying pan, gave it all a shake. My phone vibrated in my pocket – not an incoming call, a text message. The kitchen clock was pointing out ten to two. That would be Mrs Kerrigan then, wanting to know where her money was and which kneecap I’d like shattered first.
Well screw her. I left it where it was, unread.
Henry made a little harrumphing noise. ‘I’m sorry about earlier. It was … After what happened last time …’ Sigh. ‘Maybe my delightful daughter is right: I’m just a bitter selfish old man.’ A shrug. ‘Tell Sabir I’m sorry, but I can’t face it any more.’
I shredded some fresh parsley and spring onions, chucked them in, then added the double cream. ‘Did you know there’s bugger all in your cupboards, other than bottles of whisky, empties, and a packet of stale Bran Flakes?’
‘I have Bran Flakes?’
‘Had to go shopping.’ It wasn’t as if I’d had anything else to do while the pair of them banged on about stressor events and psychological trigger-points.
He unscrewed the top off the whisky and poured himself a stiff measure. ‘Didn’t know you were a domestic goddess.’
‘Used to cook with Rebecca and Katie all the time. Never really saw the point when I’m on my own …’ I tested the spaghetti. Not quite there yet. ‘So who was this policeman you lot were looking at?’
‘For the Birthday Boy? Pffffff … Now you’re asking.’ He raised the glass to his lips. ‘Glen Sinclair, I think. Or was it Strachan? Struthers? Something like that. He was a sergeant with Northern Constabulary, kept doing PNC searches on the families, so we picked him up and questioned him. Got a couple of Party Crashers to keep tabs on where he went and who he saw. Two days later he jumped off the Kessock bridge.’ A sip. ‘Long way down.’
‘It wasn’t him then.’
Henry hunched his shoulders. ‘Yet another of my spectacular failures. I’d done a revised profile and he fit perfectly, right down to volunteering to work with children.’
‘Scouts?’
‘Junior league football. After he died we went through his home computer: it was stuffed full of naked little boys. Wasn’t the Birthday Boy at all.’
I drained the spaghetti in the sink, sending a huge cloud of steam billowing up into the room. ‘Only you could make catching a paedophile sound like a bad thing.’
‘We didn’t catch him though, did we? We thought he was someone else, and he killed himself before we knew anything about his photo collection. Probably part of a ring, and we missed the chance to do something about it.’
‘Go shout on Dr McDonald: if she’s finished throwing up, it’s lunchtime.’
Henry
