The Suffering of Strangers Read online

  In those days, when they were young, an argument at a chimp’s tea party wouldn’t have woken them up. Years ago Mary-Jane had dreamt about the ponies she thought she was getting for her birthday and then how she was going to be the next Adele. And Malcolm? Well, what was going on in his mind was anybody’s guess? Even though he hadn’t seemed well when he went to his bed, still sweating and shivery, Valerie had caught him reading his vintage Dandy comics at midnight, under the covers but hadn’t told his mum. Valerie used to do that too when she was a kid. He was a little livewire, a kid the word rapscallion was invented for. He was bright and rebellious, a kid with scraped knees who would have perfect false teeth after getting all his natural ones knocked out. He was always covered in bruises.

  But Mary-Jane and Malcolm were safe. Not like those victims sitting on her desk, little lives laid bare in black and white.

  She scribbled a note for Abby and left it on the telephone table in the lower hall, saying she had enjoyed her night at the theatre and scribbled her goodbye. Then added, thinking of the foul mood George had been in after Malcolm had come home, ‘Call me if you need me’.

  She thought that sounded innocent.

  As she unlocked the Porsche, the lights flashed.

  It was five past five in the morning.

  Costello had hardly slept that night. The time for sleep had passed her by the time she went to bed and she had lain awake, working through the mechanics of the abduction. The abductor had been lucky. More than that he had been organized. The one image she couldn’t get out of her head was the way James Chisholm had been leaning against the wall of the cubical in Casualty, wearing his lack of concern like a suit of armour. Detached. She wondered what a DNA test on Sholto would show.

  She got up early and made sure Mrs Craig across the hall had put her lights on. Then she logged on and checked the result of the door-to-door, nothing of much interest. She had ordered the phone records to be pulled for the mobiles and landlines of James and Roberta but she hadn’t had time to go through them yet.

  By nine a.m. she was at the Chisholm’s house, niceties over, a cup of hot tea in her hand, she had watched James’s face intently as she told him and his wife about her findings on the car seat, showing them the photos on her phone in extreme close-up. It was shockingly obvious. If anything, James was more shocked than Roberta.

  And Roberta had turned on her husband at that point; she had known it wasn’t his blanket, now it turns out it wasn’t his chair either. Why didn’t he listen to her? And then there were more tears.

  James didn’t react, this was not new.

  Costello had studied them during this little exchange. Roberta was stressed, no doubt about that. She had a pale, puffy look about her, her body still in aftershock from the birth. She was on maternity leave from a reasonable job working for NHS 24. Their bank account was veering towards the red, but they had a nice little house, a nice little life. But there was something about James, aside from his reaction at the hospital. He was either detached or sniping at his wife, removed from the horror of his son being abducted. As if it was nothing. As if he had known.

  And he had never asked, Why Sholto?

  There was a slight reaction when Costello explained that the Duster was being impounded by the forensics team and they were not to go near it, while neglecting to mention that it would have been picked up already if not for an oversight the night before.

  ‘We will run you anywhere you want to go. You do have Constable McCaffrey as your designated case officer. He’s clearing other cases so that he can be solely yours. We need to keep tabs on you, and protect you from the media. It can get unpleasant, and we do need to use the media carefully so they stay on our side. We run the case, not them,’ Costello said, following James Chisholm’s eyes to the folded newspaper thrown onto the table. ‘Sorry I’ve not seen the headlines this morning, only what was online.’

  ‘They are saying Sholto was taken by a paedophile. Is that true?’

  ‘I doubt it. He was taken by somebody who knew you and knew you well. They have been in your company if they know what car seat you use.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Roberta let out a small yelp. ‘Please no, oh please no.’ She started to cry and reached out to James who responded by shuffling along the sofa. Away from her.

  ‘We have no reports, no spike in activity about paedophiles and our boys would know. We have a whole department tracking that kind of thing.’ She hoped she sounded surer than she felt. ‘And they would not have left “Moses” as Constable McCaffrey has called him.’

  Through her tears, Roberta gave a wry smile. ‘Moses. Wee Moses.’

  ‘We are working on the theory that a woman has become fixed on Sholto, seeing him as her ideal baby, maybe emotionally rejecting Moses. So, I need you to talk through everywhere you have been in the six weeks, since Sholto was born. Your main contacts might now be with people that you only know because you have had a baby. Or it might be something simpler,’ Costello threw in. ‘Have you upset somebody recently, Mr Chisholm?’

  Roberta looked up, throwing a sharp look at her husband before pulling her wet hair from her face, trying to think rationally. Her brain had something to work through, and that was much better than doing nothing. But she shook her head. ‘No, he hasn’t, not now. He upsets nobody apart from me. He’s middle management and boring.’

  ‘You have just been promoted, though, did you step on anybody’s toes?’

  ‘My firm isn’t like that,’ he said, eyes fixed at the carpet.

  Costello let that go, the seed had been planted. ‘OK. Where did you buy the car seat?’

  ‘Mothercare.’

  ‘Which branch? And was that type recommended to you?’

  Roberta spread her hands spread out in a helpless gesture. ‘Well, at the prenatal class, and then I checked some out on the net, as you do.’

  Costello knew the women at that prenatal class had already been checked – no Down’s syndrome babies in their immediate family.

  ‘The Car Easy was on special purchase,’ said James. ‘We bought it at Mothercare. We drove down to Ayr.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘Two weeks before Sholto was born.’

  Costello wrote that down. ‘And since then, you don’t recall anybody taking special interest, asking too many questions, paying Sholto a little too much attention.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Roberta, do you …?’

  ‘Bobby, please, nobody calls me Roberta.’

  ‘Bobby, how would you feel about doing a media appeal? It would be carefully scripted by our psychologist. Nothing of authority as that might scare the person who has Sholto. We don’t want to frighten her into doing something. We would want it to be more of a “mother to mother”, with little Moses, showing how lovely little Moses is, that he’s better. An appeal from mum to mum, come and see how your baby is doing. No harm done, let’s talk. We need to get her to engage.’

  ‘Why would we risk that if there is a chance that she might harm Sholto?’ James asked, rubbing his arms, conflicted already.

  ‘The theory is that as we speak to her, everybody hears the story. It will be on the front pages of every newspaper and somebody somewhere will know the woman who had a Down’s baby, and now does not have a Down’s baby. It might be as simple as that. She cannot hide Sholto.’

  ‘What happens though if she dumps him? You read about people doing that.’ James was belligerent. ‘And you don’t really know who … who that baby is. Do you?’

  ‘We will—’ she looked him straight in the eye – ‘we will.’

  ‘Imagine feeling so awful about your own child that you take somebody else’s. I know how that poor woman must have felt, the way they cry and cry …’

  ‘Only last week you said you would have swapped Sholto,’ said James, childishly petulant.

  ‘Never!’ she yelled at her husband, arms flaying.

  ‘It wasn’t that when he was screaming the bloody place down.’<
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  Roberta shot him a look of sheer hatred and became very still. ‘I think we should do an appeal.’

  ‘I don’t,’ James said petulantly.

  ‘It’s a calculated risk, but it’s worth thinking about. It’s going to be in all the papers, all over the net so his abductor will know anyway.’

  ‘I think I need another cup of tea,’ said Roberta, getting up from the sofa.

  ‘Me too, please,’ said Costello, opening her notebook. ‘Now, if you talk me through everywhere you have been since the baby was born …’

  For over an hour they pieced together everywhere that baby had gone, everywhere the Duster had been with the car seat in place, who Roberta had spoken to, every hospital visit, every postnatal class, every antenatal class, her postnatal Pilates, her baby bouncers, the local coffee morning, the mother-and-baby group in the village. James kept getting up and going into the kitchen to collect a diary, a calendar, his phone. Her phone, the laptop. He was a very organized man. Roberta stayed on the settee and got more tearful, tiredness etched into her face. Costello looked at her notes, pages of them. She had enough to be going on with. This was only the start of the process, so she got up to leave, with Roberta saying she was going back to bed, pushing James out the way on her way to the stairs.

  James got up to see Costello out the door. ‘She’s phoned the hospital three times this morning, she’s worried about the other kid.’ He cast a glance up the stairs, making sure she was out of earshot. ‘She wants to go in and see him, but he is not our child.’

  ‘She’s thinking that if she looks after Moses then whoever has Sholto will be looking after him,’ said Costello thinking how much worse McCaffrey had made it by giving the unknown baby a name, it made him seem more vulnerable. Harry Fucking Styles could look after himself. But Malcolm was vulnerable.

  ‘But if they bought a chair the same then that is not the case, is it? They just want us to think that.’

  She was glad she was saved from answering by her phone. She was being summoned back to HQ.

  James saw the expression on her face change to a smile.

  ‘News?’ His face was pathetic in hope.

  ‘Not for you, sorry. But I think they are already moving this up the food chain.’ If she was being sent to West End Central then surely she’d be back with Colin Anderson and be able to get this case moving herself. ‘But I think we should keep the knowledge about the chair being swapped to ourselves. Cases like this attract nutters, we need to be able to weed them out.’

  James nodded.

  ‘I know we already touched on it, but can you think of any reason why somebody would want to harm you – or want revenge on you for some slight, real or imagined.’

  He was too quick to answer. ‘No.’

  ‘We have your phone records, all of them.’

  He shook his head, but his insistence was gone.

  ‘And what about other women in your life, any of them creeping around that we should know about. Before we find out.’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  She stared him down.

  ‘Do you think you will get my son back alive?’

  My son. Not our son. She paused a minute too long before answering.

  ‘OK then.’ He closed his eyes slowly and swallowed hard. ‘You had better get on with it.’

  Anderson jolted his head up at the TV news bulletin, the words Glasgow and baby abduction catching the periphery of his consciousness. Or maybe it was the mention of a team from Govan. From Govan to Waterside, he looked round to see that everybody was watching even Stuart and Bruce. Baby abduction was thankfully uncommon. The story from the newsreader, a female with a homely face, was gentle and engaging. The image changed to show the small row of shops, couple of old guys standing outside the post office, talking about the previous night’s excitement. But they were a generation that were wary of the cameras. The end of the item was a close-up of a little baby with Down’s syndrome, smiling. He wondered if the dad had a good alibi, that was crime stat rule number one. Dead baby, suspect the man who lives with the mum and you couldn’t go far wrong, He could read the subtext of the news item easily enough, hoping that the abductor wouldn’t be put off coming forward by the social media fascists who were already talking about hanging the paedophiles concerned. The image changed to a healthy wee baby, lying in a cot kicking at a flowery mobile, laughing. It was unspoken but the genetic defect was there for all to see. This was a case of broken hearts, no crime intended, just some kind of desperation. The mother needed help. It was sad all round.

  He turned his attention back to the cold case he was supposed to be reviewing in between meetings, now he had, reluctantly, put Gillian’s rape back in the file. This was a murder 25 years ago, June 1992. It sounded so long ago: 25 years.

  It had been a fine summer Sunday morning when a young man had been battered to death on the steps outside his own back door. Edward Nicol Wiley, a thirty-year-old supermarket manager with two young kids; the kind of guy who polished his Ford Escort every Saturday. Not the sort to have his skull smashed with a neighbour’s claw hammer by person or persons unknown. And for an unfathomable reason words from his old DCI floated back to him, ‘Too boring to be murdered’. Harsh, but they contained a simple truth.

  Wiley had access to money, access to a safe. Was it some kind of kidnap situation gone wrong? A bad idea drummed up in the pub after a few pints too many? Wiley was not easy to blackmail. He had been investigated to the hilt, Anderson had gleamed that much, and was squeaky clean. This was a case where the evidence would lie with the victim, not with the person or persons unknown. And Mrs Wiley was cleaner than the convent laundry, a stay at home mum who taught in the Sunday school. The senior investigating officer had considered the attack a case of mistaken identity.

  Boring men did not get their skulls battered in.

  His first task was ensuring what little forensic evidence there had been still existed. All he was looking for was a starting point like some retained material from the head of the hammer that could be subjected to a new DNA exam. He sighed. He needed to order a search of the databases for attacks where a hammer was the weapon of choice. A hammer that had been picked up in the neighbour’s garden. Handy. It was the only thing about the Wiley case that was not boring.

  That and Wiley having his brains bashed in.

  He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. A young female civilian stood behind him, her huge earrings that clanked when she moved her head were as gaudy as her perfume.

  ‘Oh hello …’ He searched for her name. ‘Vicki?’

  ‘Vivien,’ she corrected. ‘DCI Anderson, you are wanted in the meeting room.’ She smiled. ‘Again. I thought you might be able to smell the big cheese from here.’

  Not over the stink of your perfume, he thought. Her earrings clinked like Tinkerbell as she nodded her head, subtly in the direction of the corridor. Through the open blind, the one that covered the glass partition, he could see a procession of three men going through the door and taking their jackets off. He recognized the detective super among them.

  He noticed how quiet the office had become. Stuart and Bruce were standing at their desks, pretending not to look over but listening intently. ‘Am I in trouble?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said in a voice that was just husky enough to be sexy. If she had not been the same age as his daughter.

  Colin Anderson took a deep breath and knocked on the door of the interview room, fully aware of the continued scrutiny of his colleagues. A quick response told him to enter, he stepped inside.

  It was the big boss, the det super who greeted him. Four of them were seated round the table, sleeves rolled up, tucking into the coffee and biscuits.

  ‘We need a word, Colin,’ Mitchum spoke next, indicating that he should sit.

  Anderson noted the use of the first name, nodded to the others. ‘Why am I sensing that this is not good news?’

  Mitchum waved his concerns away. ‘What are you worki
ng on at the moment?’

  Anderson put his pen down, thought about the Wiley file. ‘Not much I can get my teeth into.’

  Mitchum spoke, ‘Well, you might be able to help us out. We have been forced into a corner somewhat unfortunately. As you know, we had Gillian Witherspoon pinned for a new, low-key but wide-reaching campaign. And now that she has …’

  ‘Died?’ added Colin helpfully.

  ‘We need to find somebody else quickly.’

  ‘Why?’

  They were silent for a moment.

  ‘We need to reinstate the campaign,’ said Mitchum reluctantly.

  ‘Reinstate the campaign rather than set up a specialist cold case task force to review the evidence and maybe catch the perpetrator. He’s still out there.’

  ‘God, DCI Anderson, you talk like it’s our job to solve crime!’ Mitchum allowed himself a chuckle. ‘No, not that, but we did stumble across something we found to be of interest. Something about you.’

  ‘Intriguing.’

  It was the ACC who spoke, ‘Do you remember Sally Logan?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ he lied as his mind jumped back twenty years, twenty-five years. Sally with her honey blonde hair and endless energy. The first on the trampoline, the first to skip when she thought nobody was looking. She was a delight, pissed out her brain on the dance floor while Andrew Braithwaite bopped with her, a dancing bear with a beer in his hand. Sally with her long brown legs, the scar deep on the inside of her knee. ‘I can remember I had to prove where I was at six o’clock on the morning of her rape.’ Anderson felt a little uncomfortable, they were poking into his past to a place and time that he considered his own. A life before he wore a uniform. A time before he wore a wedding ring. ‘Yes, I knew her quite well.’