Crime

shut down, removing the pervasive smell of hops from the area.

Ronnie Hamil provided his own distinctive aroma on the drive down to Fettes HQ, where you carried on the interrogation. On Wednesday morning when Britney vanished, he said he was out for a drink, then took a walk by the canal. No witnesses. All he claimed to remember was waking up this morning on the floor of a drinking acquaintance at Caplaw Court, a tower block of flats in Oxgangs, scheduled for demolition. Again the wagons were forming in a circle. But you had your doubts. The old boy was feeble. Even with the element of surprise, would he be robust enough to overpower Britney so quickly? There was nothing to link the grandfather to what Toal saw as your damaging obsession, the white van. Ronnie Hamil could drive, but he didn’t own a vehicle and no record of him recently having rented or borrowed one could be unearthed.

As well as questioning Angela Hamil, you’d got Amanda Drummond to quiz Britney’s older sister Tessa. The girl, recovered from her food poisoning, confirmed that they’d been told to avoid their grandad. — Mum says we shouldnae go near him. Says he’s no right in the heid.

You and Notman, buoyed by the news Hearts had won two–nil, extending their unbeaten run to eleven games, intensified your interrogation of Ronnie Hamil. As the booze-tainted rivulets streamed down from his face, you had a sense of him dissolving under the overhead strip lights. His vanishing and Angela’s confessing to his abuse of her would almost have been enough for Bob Toal, but there was no body. So no charges were brought against the alcoholic rapist of his own child, but he was put under twenty-four-hour surveillance. You wanted him outside, in the hope that he would take you to Britney, or her remains.

Escorting Ronnie Hamil to the front desk, you watched him shamble off into the early-evening darkness, then went back up to your office. Notman poked his head round the door. — Other news, he said glumly, and for a second you had expected to hear of the child’s body, — Romanov’s just sacked Burley.

You swivelled round in your seat. — You’re fucking jokin!

— Naw, it’s on Sky.

— But we’re top of the League and unbeaten! What the fuck is he playin at?

— Fuck knows.

You were suddenly seething. Your anger wasn’t really directed at Hearts although you were moved to gasp, — The fuckin derby next week as well.

Your football club had shot themselves in the foot again, but you felt they could now appoint anybody and it wouldn’t matter; the glory days of the late fifties and early sixties weren’t coming back. The Glaswegian sides had positioned themselves better, using bigotry to forward their interests, then getting on the right side of consumerism. But they and their fellow-travellers were welcome to it, the hollow glory by proxy. All you craved was to find a child unharmed.

The following day, two Sunday hikers, braving a cold, slashing wind and pinpricking rain, had seen something washed up on the rocks down by a stony inlet in cliffs near Coldingham. They looked down at the naked blue-grey body of a young girl. — It was like a doll, one had said. I couldn’t believe it was a child at first.

You’d been at Trudi’s Bruntsfield flat when you received the news. On the drive down the A1 you’d felt oddly calm. Then you’d looked at the dead child, the water lapping against her cold skin. — Sorry, sweetheart, you whispered under your breath as you felt your own hands freeze and numb. Part of the job you hated most was talking to the victims of sex offenders. Usually they were female, so departmental procedure and protocol often spared you this ordeal. But this child would never be able to tell you who had done this to her. Cupping your hands in front of your face, you expelled your hot breath into them. Some yards away, Britney’s school bag, with its books, had been discarded. As there was no sign of her clothes, it seemed a deliberate rather than careless act, but out of kilter with the rest of the crime.

A helicopter team retrieved the body and they took it back to the morgue. Britney hadn’t been dead for more than fourteen hours, but had been gone for over three days. The murderer had strangled her before he’d thrown her off the cliff, hoping the tides would take her out to sea. Divers combed the coast, but nothing else was recovered. Three hours later, around lunchtime on Sunday, Ronnie Hamil was formally charged with the murder of his granddaughter.

It wasn’t enough for you. The grandad reeked of old drink, he’d obviously been inebriated for days. Would he have been together enough to do all this? Other than the incongruous discarding of the books, it seemed like the work of a meticulous planner. Some traces of lubricant were present on the body, but no sperm. The murderer had used a condom. There was no blood or anything else to evidence foreign DNA, only some tape marks on her wrists and ankles. Nothing on the girl’s body could tie Britney to Ronnie. Some of his prints were found on one of the school books, but so were many others. It was plausible she’d shown it to him when he’d visited last week, as he’d claimed. Instead, it all seemed so much like the Ellis cases.

So you made a call to someone you’d met last year at a training course on the psychological profiling of sex offenders. You recalled him as a tubercular-looking man, with a slouch that indicated a terrible burden, but whose nervous eyes hinted that the invisible escape hatch of impending retirement was in his peripheral vision. Will Thornley was investigating officer on the Stacey Earnshaw case in Manchester. Unlike George Marsden, Will was decidedly a company man. He was off duty and didn’t like being interrupted at his gardening. He was so unhelpful that by the end of the call he’d completely convinced you that Ellis had absolutely nothing to do with Stacey’s murder.

The celebratory mood at Police HQ left you cold. Thankfully, Gillman wasn’t around in Fettes small lounge bar, when Notman had heartily slapped you on the back. — Well, we nailed the bastard, Ray.

— Aye, you’d agreed, — he’s certainly that, glad for the first time to be booked in for this family meal with Trudi tonight.

So you left the team to it, first biting the bullet and heading for Bob Toal’s office. Your boss offered you a Cuban cigar, which you declined. — I don’t like that look, Ray, Toal warned you. — It’s happy-camper time.

— Bob, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I’m duty-bound to tell you about the Hertfordshire and Manchester stuff, as it was part of my investigation.

— Pish on our parade, Ray, go on.

There was a frozen moment of dread between you as your eyes locked. He wanted you to stay silent. So did you. But you spoke. — I’m worried about this Ellis business. It’s not safe. It’ll blow up.

— So you want to undermine convictions that involve two police forces?

— If they’ve done the job right then they’ve nothing to worry about, you said, and even as it left your lips it sounded ridiculous to your ears.

Toal was in no mood to spare you. — I wonder what planet you’ve been on, Ray. Cause it ain’t fucking Earth.

— Ellis’s connection to the Earnshaw case is nonsense. It’s a total dustbin job. And there’s no substantial forensic evidence to tie him to Welwyn.

Toal shook his head so violently his jowls flapped, reminding you briefly of a bloodhound emerging from a river. — Did you hear him on that tape, by that wee lassie’s grave? Did ye listen? His eyes bulged. — The things he said he’d done with her?

You squirmed in recollection. — He’s a sick bastard, but he didn’t kill her. There’s nothing to link him to the white van—

— FUCK THE WHITE VAN! Toal bellowed. — Every cowboy in Britain whae’s daein a job on the side, or knocking off some tart he shouldnae be, or having a wank at passing schoolies, they’ve all got white vans! Forget it, Ray! We have our man!

You felt the paranoid tingle of humiliation after this chewing-out. Then, the first person you saw in the corridor was the grinning Gillman.

The Obelisk restaurant was an upscale two-star Michelin joint, dimly lit with copper lamps fixtured on its terracotta walls and placed on the big wooden tables. You weren’t in the best of moods when you arrived. Your mother Avril and sister Jackie had just beaten you to it, the maitre d’ fussing over their coats. Your mother greeting you in bug-eyed trepidation. — What is it? Everything okay?

— Aye, you’d dismissed her agitation. — All will be revealed.

— This is nice, she offered in relieved concession, swivelling and scanning before presenting her face for a kiss, which you dutifully delivered, with another for your tight-featured sister, who was less easily impressed by the surroundings.

— Angus can’t make it, he’s at a conference down in London, Jackie informed you. You’d nodded sombrely,