Driftnet (5 page)

Rhona sat down
at the comparison microscope to check the control hair she’d taken
from the boy’s head against the two hairs (dark and blonde) she’d
found on his body. Proving hairs to be from the same person was
tricky. Proving them to be from different people was easier.
Through the eyepiece, the two hairs side by side looked like two
sections of a tree trunk, patterned and grained. In the control
hair the bark was smooth, in the other the bark was significantly
shredded. Cuticles, cortex and medulla of the darker hair were all
significantly different. She then examined the blonde hair and was
surprised to find similar differences. At first sight, neither of
the hairs belonged to the victim. Of course, he might have picked
them up from sharing a towel, but one of them might belong to the
murderer.

Rhona felt the
shiver of pleasure she always got when the pieces of the jigsaw
began to fit together. The DNA lab could derive a profile from a
single human hair. That and the semen might be all they would need
to place a murderer at the scene of the crime.

The DNA profile
would be sent to the Scottish National Database in Dundee. If they
didn’t find a match, then it would be sent south to the National
Database. If the murderer wasn’t on either of them, they would have
to find him some other way.

It would be
difficult to pinpoint the exact time it happened. Probably there
wasn’t an exact time at all. Lots of times during that hour, as she
pored over her microscope, the thought flirted with Rhona, that
somewhere out there she had a child. A son. A boy of her own. Like
the wee boy in the museum. The wee boy with the blonde hair. But
no, she reminded herself. Her son wouldn’t be his age. Her son
wouldn’t be writing about dinosaurs in a jotter in large round
letters and running to show his teacher. Her son had done all that
years ago. That was all gone. Seventeen years of a life, somewhere.
A life she had missed. Her son was almost a man.

Rhona left the
microscope and went over to the bench where Chrissy had spread out
the photographs from the murder scene like a bizarre tablecloth.
She picked one up and stared at it. It was a close up of the welts
on the neck. The lens had caught the curve of the cheek and the
right eye. The eyelashes seemed improbably long and curled, a dark
blonde fringe above the empty stare.

The Sergeant
had said the boy looked so like her, he might have been her
brother. Maybe even her son? Rhona selected the photographs that
contained his face and placed them in a row to study them in more
detail, trying to ignore the grotesque pose, the patchwork skin,
the blank eyes. Would her son look like the boy in the photo? They
would be about the same age. He would have blonde hair, (she and
Edward were both blonde), possibly curly, like hers. He would be
tall, his eyes blue, the lashes darker than the hair. She imagined
his face. Longish. A smile like Edward’s, but true. A smile that
would shine in his eyes. Rhona pushed the photographs to one
side.

The telephone
shattered her mental image of her son’s smiling face. It broke into
fragments, then reformed, but this time it was the other face, the
one that lay on the dirty pillow, twisted sideways, the blonde hair
damp against the forehead, the blue eyes wide and cold, the neck a
welt of pain.

She made
herself lift the phone.

‘Rhona. Is that
you?’

It was Sean.
She heard her voice methodically answer his questions. Yes she was
fine. Yes she would come to the gig tonight if he really wanted her
to. Anything would be better than being left alone to think.

‘You sure
you’re okay?’ he asked again.

‘Of course, I’m
fine. I’m sorry Sean, I’ll have to go.’

‘I’ll pick you
up at five then. We can eat out.’

‘No. I can’t. I
mean, I don’t know when I’ll get finished here,’ she lied. ‘We’re
short-staffed.’

Sean sounded
disappointed and Rhona immediately felt bad. Guilt was her middle
name, she thought harshly.

‘I’ll see you
after, then,’ Sean said.

‘Right.’

She put down
the receiver.

That was the
problem, she thought. The problem with Sean. She didn’t tell him
anything. Well not anything important. What she really thought.
What she really felt. Oh, he knew her. Quite well in fact. He knew
her moods. Sean was good with moods. He could spot them from a
great distance and adjust himself accordingly. He altered his pace,
padding noiselessly about her at her worst times, making her laugh
when she was mad or sad. Unlike her, Sean was never in a mood. Or
he was always in the same one.

She should have
agreed to let him come at five. She glanced up at the clock. No. It
would have been too soon. She wasn’t ready to face him. She wasn’t
ready to face anyone yet. She couldn’t think about Sean just now.
There was too much to do. When she was working, she didn’t have
time to think about anything, except samples. Samples of other
people’s lives, other people’s mistakes, other people’s crimes.

Chrissy did not
come back all afternoon. She phoned at four o’clock to apologise
and ask if she could come in late next day.

‘I know it’s a
bad time, I wouldn’t ask but...’

Something was
obviously still wrong at home. Since Patrick moved out, Chrissy had
carried both the financial and the emotional burden of her family.
And if her father had his way, Patrick would never come back, even
to visit. But Chrissy knew that would break her mother’s heart, so
at home she was forever smoothing troubled waters.

‘It’s okay.
It’s time I did some of the work myself. I’ll see you sometime
tomorrow.’

Chrissy
murmured her thanks and hung up.

Rhona worked
until seven then tidied up the lab and left. Outside it was tipping
down. She headed for the front of the Gallery, hoping to spot a
taxi near the Kelvinhall. She put up her umbrella but within
minutes her legs and feet were soaked and drops fell heavily from
the spokes, whipping back into her face. There was one taxi at the
taxi rank and she ran for it, dodging cars. A bus, its windscreen
wipers battling with the onslaught, braked as she darted in front
of it. From the corner of her eye Rhona saw the driver’s mouth open
in a curse. Her dice with death was pointless. When she got to the
other side, the taxi had already taken off, swooping round in a
wide circle to answer a wave from behind.

Rhona swore
loudly. She was on her third staccato ‘Fuck’ when the taxi drew up
beside her and the door swung open.

‘Need a
lift?’

Rhona glared
into the cab. The taxi driver grinned out at her, as did the man in
the back. A flush began to creep up her neck. Rhona was horrified.
She hadn’t blushed since she was eighteen.

‘Sorry. I just
wanted to get home.’

The man’s smile
grew wider. ‘If you don’t mind sharing we can give the driver a
double fare.’

‘Thanks.’

He held the
door open for her while she got inside. She sat the dripping brolly
between them, then felt guilty when she noticed his wet trouser leg
and shifted it to the other side. They moved a little closer
together. She could smell him now. A mixture of damp wool and
aftershave.

‘Where to?’ he
asked.

‘Atholl
Crescent.’

‘Right.’

He leaned
forward and spoke to the driver, who seemed to find the whole thing
amusing. Rhona surreptitiously wiped her nose on her sleeve.

‘We’ll drop you
first then,’ her fellow occupant suggested, and she nodded.

They drew to a
halt at a set of lights and she took the opportunity to have a
better look at her rescuer. He was tall. She was conscious of the
length of his legs beside her. His hair was blonde, darkened by the
rain. He knew she was looking at him and he turned and
smiled.‘Water all over the road,’ the driver informed them. ‘The
gutter can’t take this amount of rain.’

‘Typical
Scottish summer,’ her companion remarked.

Rhona nodded
and leaned back against the seat. The rain was sweeping across the
Victorian facade of the university and lightening forked above the
Philosophy Tower,

‘The Hammer
House of Horror,’ her rescuer suggested mildly, following her
gaze.

‘That’s where I
work.’

‘Oh,
sorry.’

Rhona shook her
head. ‘It is the Hammer House of Horror at times,’ she said.

He inclined his
head as if he was going to ask her what she did and then seemed to
change his mind. So she volunteered the information herself. He
didn’t make a funny remark. She liked him for that.

‘So you work
with the police department?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘That’s funny.
So do I. Different area, of course. Computing.’

When the taxi
finally drew up in front of her building Rhona didn’t want to get
out. She felt relaxed sharing a taxi with a stranger, painting a
picture of her life that sounded interesting, that contained none
of the awkward bits, the bits that needed explaining.

‘Well here we
are,’ he said and leaned over to click open her door. The sleeve of
his jacket brushed against her and she smelt again the comfortable
smell of wool and aftershave. She climbed out and opened her bag,
searching for her purse but he held up his hand.

‘No. Let me. It
was on my way anyway.’

He looked at
her for a moment and their eyes held.

‘See you,’ he
said.

‘See you.’

The door
slammed behind her. She didn’t bother putting the brolly up and by
the time she crossed the pavement and got to the front door, her
hair was soaking. She rummaged in her bag again, this time for her
key, but before she could put it in the lock, the buzzer went and
the door was free.

‘Saw you from
the window,’ Sean’s voice came from the speaker.

Rhona pushed
open the door and went inside.

Chapter 6

It all sounded
too far fetched and Bill Wilson couldn’t get his head round it at
first. The woman who was talking to them seemed genuine enough, but
Bill had long experience of social workers and he didn’t like them
on principle. It wasn’t anything personal. He just got fed up with
the excuses. Excuses why people did this and didn’t do that, as if
no one was responsible for their own behaviour anymore. It seemed
people did bad things nowadays because they were unhappy as
children. Bill Wilson thought that was a load of shite. When he was
wee, children had had plenty to be miserable about, if money had
anything to do with it. Money had been the scarcest commodity on
his street, but hard graft and hard knocks hadn’t turned people
into the creeps this woman was talking about.

The course had
been going on all afternoon. When Bill got the call from the
Superintendent he said he was too busy to go and suggested he send
two of the team along instead. But the Super had said no. He had to
go himself. Something this woman was going to say might help with
the latest murder and he wanted Bill there.

The first hour
had been all the routine stuff on sexual abuse a rookie needed to
know. Bill had heard it all before. It didn’t upset him the way it
had his neighbour. He guessed Constable McPhail must have a young
child. By the end, she had a look on her face that said, ‘I just
want to go home and hold my kid.’

For the last
hour they’d moved upstairs from the conference room to a computer
lab. There were three people working in there, a woman and two men.
Bill had the feeling that if the Constable felt bad before, she was
going to feel a whole lot worse after this session.

The project had
been going for about three months, the child abuse worker
explained. It was pretty easy to find porn on the internet but it
was harder to track down where the material was coming from. Then
there were the chat rooms. Most of them were no worse or better
than the telephone chat lines advertised in a lot of newspapers.
These weren’t their main concern, either.

In the space of
seconds, the woman was saying, you could look at anything that took
your fancy. And she gave them a demo just to show them what she
said was true. The photos that appeared on the screen were high
resolution. Clear pictures of the frightened faces of children
forced into an ugly adult world they should have been protected
from.

Bill took a
look at his neighbour. Constable McPhail looked almost as
frightened and bewildered as the children in the pictures, but the
child abuse worker never flinched. She walked between the consoles,
pointing out references and web addresses, linking the patterns to
show how the threads that made up the awful net of corruption wound
straight back to Scotland.

They believed
there were three paedophile rings operating in Glasgow, she
explained. All three were separate but in contact with one another.
New technology offered a fast track to new recruitment.

Imagine a child
at the computer, she said. A quiet child, perhaps a bit of a loner.
An adolescent boy. This boy liked using the Internet. He could talk
to others with the same interests as himself, without ever having
to meet them. He could be a bit more open than usual in these
electronic conversations, a bit more adventurous. He could give
himself a new name, a new persona. It was every awkward child’s
idea of heaven. Not that different from ringing up a sex line
number, she said and there was an uneasy laugh from a couple of men
at the back. Bill didn’t join in and neither did Constable
McPhail.

It didn’t take
long for a paedophile ring to compile a list of possibilities and
then the courtship began. Much like any other courtship. Just
friendly at first, finding a mutual interest to talk about. There
were lots of chat rooms on the Internet, the woman explained, and
for good measure she showed them one.

The name of the
chat room generated some tentative laughter. Bill could see the
guys were uneasy at being reminded that 95 per cent of all sexual
abuse was perpetrated by men.