The Suffering of Strangers Page 6

  It would be Klingon Kirkton all over again. And that thought made him feel sick to the stomach. If he sold the house he’d never have to work again and never have to pander to arseholes like him. Who was he kidding; he didn’t have to work now.

  Without him noticing, his life had emptied.

  What crap would he get involved in this time? He walked on, Nesbit the Staffie panting and grumping by his side, pulling on the lead whenever he scented another dog in the air. Nesbit should have been enjoying himself back at Brenda’s house on the south side, lying on Peter’s bed as his young master played some unfathomable computer game where he pitted his wits against aliens, assisted by an unseen partner who lived on the other side of the world. And ignoring his homework.

  Peter was at that really awful teenage stage, communicating by grunts and snorts. Maybe Peter was spending too long with Nesbit? Usually Colin could talk the boy round with an offer of going to Xscape or out for a pizza, but not this time. Peter had remained monosyllabic. It had been another very short phone call.

  Come to think of it, Claire had been a little quiet as well recently, not annoying him as much as she usually did. He had come to rely on her to give the big house its vibrant buzz of music and nonsense now that his own job was so boring. And why was interrupting the purvey of a funeral viewed as lifting his working life from the mundane.

  And he had admitted that to himself.

  Late the previous evening Anderson had left Claire and David his credit card number in case they wanted a Chinese takeaway, and he had watched some slow TV about a barge trip along the Kennet and Avon canal, a nice glass of red in one hand, Nesbit’s head nestling in the other. Bored or relaxed?

  He had watched two hours of that programme, seeing nothing but the front of the boat. And the water. And more bloody water.

  When was the last time he had had a good laugh? Gone out for a curry with the squad? Had a pint with some pals? Listened to Mulholland moaning about his leg, Costello sniping at Mulholland’s moaning? Wyngate trying to keep the peace and changing the subject? What had happened to Wyngate in the end? God, he couldn’t recall if his colleague had actually left the force or got divorced. When they last spoke, those looked like being the DC’s only options.

  That was bad, he’d phone him tomorrow. He might even phone Costello and get the goss on the Kissel case and any spare goss on what was going on at the fiscal’s office. He found himself smiling, yes he knew where he needed to be. Back in the buzz. If the buzz would still have him. He couldn’t thrive in this coffee culture, in pubs, going out on his own. And he was ‘on his own’.

  He walked past a beautiful three-story detached house, sitting a little high from the pavement, a crescent of a pebbled driveway cutting across the front of the two four-paned French windows and the stained-glass porch over the front door, partially obscured by a monkey puzzle tree he had always rather admired as it had seemed so at odds with the neatly trimmed row of conifers grown to cover the garage door. At the moment the door was open, a white Volvo was running, door ajar, waiting to be reversed in. The owner, a slight man in a huge woollen cardigan was bending down at the rear of the vehicle, illuminated by the security light as he examined a scratch or speck of dirt. As Colin passed he took out his handkerchief and started polishing. He looked up and caught Colin’s eye. They exchanged greetings in a very West End kind of way; too polite to ignore each other all together, but resisting any real conversation. Anderson walked on, thinking what a boring git that guy must be.

  And how quickly he himself was turning that way. It would be slippers and daytime TV next, Werther’s Originals and the Reader’s Digest.

  Whatever the ACC offered him tomorrow, he was up for it. Disturbing people’s funerals was better than this.

  There was no answer. Costello pulled the wheelie bin out a little and to the left, manoeuvring it gently from side to side, wondering how many weeks it had been since this thing was emptied. The boy sat there, on the coping stone, his tracky bottoms five inches short of his ankles, his knees up to his chin. The green of his Celtic top matched the snot streaming from his nose. He had huge doe eyes, a brown mane falling across his forehead. He looked like an angel, fallen out the dark clouds above, to land in the bed of crisp packets behind the bins.

  ‘You got a cold?’ Costello asked, trying for her smiley face.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  It had been a very long day. ‘Oh, fuck off yourself. You’re not the only one having a shite life, you wee squirt.’ She pulled the wheelie bin back over and walked into the shop, aware of a high-pitched sneeze behind her, sounding very much like a seagull in distress. In her mind’s eye she could see the forearm being used as a handkerchief.

  Kids.

  She went into the shop, buying some extra strong Applewood cheese, red onion chutney and tiger bread. She added a box of man-sized tissues with balm, paid for it all and went back out again. Pulling the wheelie bin back she saw the boy was rubbing his nose with a fist of fingers that were blue with cold. And dripping with snot.

  ‘You’ll be smiting everybody with a nose like that. Here.’ She handed him the box of tissues. He put his hand out, sniffed, and took the box, ripping off the perforated flap and pulled out a handful of hankies. His thank you was polite and automatic. He spent the next five minutes coughing and spluttering into them. At one point Costello knelt down between the bins, amongst the squashed beer cans and the used condoms, thinking that the boy was going to stop breathing. He couldn’t get a breath in between the coughing fits. He was red in the face, getting redder, tears coursing down his cheek, looking over the back of the bins with rheumy brown eyes.

  Dickens would have been proud of this urchin. Costello wondered if kids nowadays got TB. That cough had a terrible rattle about it.

  ‘Where do you live? Do you want a run home? I have my car here.’

  ‘You a paedo?’

  ‘No,’ said Costello, ‘I’m a cop.’

  From the look on his face he might have been happier if she had answered yes.

  ‘You got an issue with that?’

  He shook his head, but she knew. And he knew that she knew. Not him, but somebody close did have issues with the forces of law and order, like the sort of parent who was too stoned to know where their kid was at this time of night, hiding behind bins in a football top.

  ‘Come on then, in the car, we will get you home. You should be tucked up in bed, not skulking about. What was your name?’

  ‘Harry fucking Styles.’

  ‘Fed up with the singing then? Fair enough.’ She looked around. ‘You want to try that again?’

  His house was a surprise. He lived in Balcarres Avenue, which Costello only found out after she had driven him around for ten minutes with him only saying left, left and left, taking her round in circles. She then pulled back onto Great Western Road, turning towards the police station at Partickhill, threatening to leave him in the cells overnight for his own safety. As she took a right, she caught sight of a man walking along the pavement, a dark Staffie limping along behind him. The dog reminded her of Anderson’s little Staffie, but she was caught up in the long line of traffic before she had the chance to check and by then he had gone.

  ‘Harry’s’ house, indicated by a nod, was a beautiful detached sandstone, behind a pebbled driveway that cut across the French windows. The stained-glass porch over the front door was impressive, but not as impressive as the monkey puzzle tree in the front garden.

  ‘Is this really your house? Bit posh, innit?’ said Costello in her best cockney accent.

  ‘It’s shite,’ was the boy’s considered opinion.

  She pulled up outside and asked the sniffling Harry Fucking Styles if he wanted her to come in with him.

  The boy sneezed into his hanky and then had a good look at the contents, dark green and lumpy.

  He shook his head, but he didn’t try to get out the car.

  ‘Do you like living round here, Harry?’

  ‘Nope.’


  ‘What school do you go to, Cleveden Primary?’

  ‘I am at the high school. Glasgow High School,’ he clarified.

  Too thin, too frail, too unsubstantial. ‘You don’t look old enough to be out on your own, never mind at high school.’

  ‘I’m fucking stunted.’

  ‘You’re certainly not tall enough to be using language like that to an officer of the law. Still, no school tomorrow. Not with a cold like that.’ She sniffed. ‘You’ve probably given it to me now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, but still made no move to get out the car.

  ‘I think your dad is watching,’ said Costello, pointing to a twitching curtain behind the wide French windows.

  ‘Harry’ turned his head. ‘Yeah.’ Flat voice, no emotion.

  ‘Shall we go in then?’ She unclipped her seat belt. He did the same.

  ‘I’ll explain where you have been,’ although she had no idea why he was behind the bins.

  He sighed, a middle-aged weary sigh, like nothing she did or said would make any difference. ‘Or we can lie and say you felt faint and had to have a sit down. What about that? That would explain why you didn’t go home.’

  ‘I ran away.’

  ‘Well I guessed that. You didn’t run very far though.’

  ‘I felt fucking faint, didn’t I?’

  ‘What were you running from?’ Who were you running from? He had still made no movement to get out the car, the seat belt now entwined round his hand.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Well, you ran away and felt too poorly to go home. But why did you leave in the first place?’ She adjusted the rear-view mirror, pulling at her filthy hair, pretending not to be interested in the answer. The smell of the cheese was starting to fill the car, her stomach was rumbling.

  He turned and looked at her, every inch the vulnerable starving orphan, save the Celtic top, this season’s, expensive. And the fact he went to an exclusive private school, and he lived in the West End in a half-million pound house. But would rather sit behind a bin.

  ‘You know I am a cop, you remember that? Just in case you have sneezed out your brains. There’s all sorts pouring down your nose.’

  He nodded, slid his seat belt back and opened the door. He moved quickly, silently like a feral creature and slithered out, onto the dark tree-lined street.

  He stopped at the sound of the front door opening. The security lights came on, two beams joining to highlight him in a sphere of white light that seemed to pin him to the driveway.

  Costello got out the car, walking round the back of the vehicle while the boy remained frozen to the spot. The door was only open enough for the person behind it to look out. She couldn’t see them, or get a sense of them, the way the light was shining in her eyes.

  ‘Malcolm, you get yourself in here. Now.’

  ‘You wee liar, telling me you were Harry Styles. I wouldn’t have given you a lift if I had known,’ Costello said quietly, holding up her hand as she turned to stand with her back to the door, between the boy and the house. ‘You take that, Malcolm, that’s my card. My mobile number is on it. You keep that somewhere safe, somewhere only you know and if you want to speak to me, you call me.’

  She held the card close to her. He took it, slowly, and felt it between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Malcolm!’ The voice called again. Not particularly male or female. It had risen slightly, a little bit of impatience already giving way to anger. ‘And who the hell are you? Bringing him home in your car?’

  Malcolm took the card and slid it under his top, or wrapped a tissue round it, a sleight of hand that impressed her. He gave a little shake of his head. Was he warning her? Telling her not to do it. Begging her?

  ‘Do you want me to walk away?’ she asked quietly.

  He nodded.

  ‘Oh, no problem,’ she said loudly, turning round and smiling into the light. ‘He isn’t feeling too well and had a wee sit down on a wall outside work so I thought I’d better bring him home. No problem,’ she repeated. ‘There you go.’

  The door said nothing as Malcolm slid through the light, swallowed by the darkness beyond.

  ‘He has a right bad cold on him,’ said Costello cheerfully, from the door of her car.

  ‘Picked him up outside your work, you say? And where would that be, young lady?’

  Male, definitely male, she thought, but it was the authoritarian ‘young lady’ that did it. The tone of it. It wasn’t friendly, it was bloody sarcastic. The tone that told women that the world was too complicated for them and would they mind getting back into the kitchen where they might be of use.

  She had already turned her back to the front door of the house but it didn’t stop her. She didn’t turn around either, just threw a casual remark over her shoulder, loudly. ‘That would be Partickhill Police Station,’ she said realizing that was not technically true. ‘And it’s DI Young Lady to you.’ And after a slow count of three, she added very quietly, ‘Wank.’

  She got back into the car, leaning over enough as she tilted the mirror round in order to see the house, knowing a small figure would appear up at a bedroom window. Then she saw the outline of a head, two sticking-out ears, a white patch appearing as he pressed his forehead to the glass, what looked like a violent nod but was another sneeze. She thought she saw him wave slightly.

  She released the handbrake and let the car roll back so she could execute a U-turn, easing it to a halt as a black sports car came round the corner at speed, taking a wide sweep and disappearing up the drive and into the shadow of the monkey puzzle tree. It might have been a Porsche Panamera, but she couldn’t be sure.

  She wasn’t sure about Malcolm either. Was he such a poor wee squint or was she seeing stuff that wasn’t there because of her immersion in the Kissel case? That dad had every right to be annoyed that his boy had run off, dressed so badly for this weather.

  But that didn’t explain that look in the boy’s eyes. And she was sure about that. She had seen it so many times when she had looked in the mirror.

  FOUR

  Wednesday 11th October

  Valerie Abernethy stepped out of the shower and wrapped a plush white towel round her before walking across the upstairs hall into the spare bedroom, a casual glance out the window to make sure the Porsche was still there. They were coming to take it away next week.

  The shower had woken her up, and she had further endured a quick blast of cold to give her focus after a sleepless night. She had dropped off to a fitful sleep around midnight only to wake up an hour later as the little flicker of a flame burning in the back of her mind began to fire.

  God, she needed a drink.

  She was still mindful that she was in her sister’s house, hearing the odd snore coming from a bedroom, a slight wheeze and a fit of coughing. Standing outside Malcolm’s room and stealing a glance through the door, she recognized the Star Wars Lego; The Millennium Falcon, something from her era. She had built it with the family, when? Last Christmas? Kneeling on the floor, getting the small white bricks under her shins, it was very painful. All this family stuff was painful. Abby was a great mother and didn’t deserve the way her eldest daughter had deserted her.

  So Valerie had steered clear, she had preferred, until now, to be on her own, nice clean life, in nice little boxes. She saw Malcolm’s babylike button nose sticking over the duvet, translucent eyelids flittering with the internal drama of a bad dream, a lemon drink sat on the carpet beside the bed, a box of tissues open. Her sister was a GP and didn’t agree with cough bottles. Valerie couldn’t recall a time when her own dreams were anything other than films of children, small children, other people’s children who had been battered and burned, injured and bruised. In her dreams they always screamed. They existed in photographs, in computer files, in her cases. A name and a family incident number. The stack of files on her desk was growing by the minute. She worked fourteen-hour days to clear her backlog, only for it to get caught up on the next desk in the hierarchy.
And then it wasn’t really cleared, not really. It was moved onto another place. And they kept coming. The files got bulkier, the kids kept getting battered, the excuses got tired, the merry-go-round kept turning. Nobody getting off, nobody getting on. For years now, the children had spoken to her in her dreams, pleading that they don’t get forgotten, asking that they were not allowed to drift away.

  Now they were told to prosecute only twenty percent of cases. Everything else to be on a fixed fine. That ‘everything’ included those crimes that were gateways to violent escalation. And people wondered why she liked a tipple?

  She pulled herself away, unpeeling from the white gloss doorway, instinctively rubbing where her hand had been with the sleeve of her dressing gown, wanting to leave no trace. Why not? This was her sister’s house. She was a guest here. She had been invited. That didn’t mean she was welcome. By Abigail, yes. But not by him. Never by George. He had seemed more wound up than usual last night, if that was possible. He had been agitated as he closed the gate, locked up the house and looked out the windows for some unseen intruder.

  She walked back to the guest bedroom, where her suit for work was neatly hanging in its cover, to protect the fine wool from getting covered in Alfred’s cat hair. Her black court Louboutins in a bag wound round the neck of the hanger. After a spray of deodorant and a good covering of Jo Malone’s Wild Fig, she pulled on her fleecy leisure suit, and lifted up her trainers. She stuck the perfume in her handbag and draped her suit bag over her arm. She went downstairs. The grandmother clock on the half-landing resonated on all three floors. It had been left to both sisters in the will, Abigail had taken it. It wouldn’t have suited Valerie’s minimalist flat anyway. The striking of the clock was one of those noises she only heard when she listened for it, like the gentle burr of a child snoring; her sister when she was growing up and then her daughter, and now her son.