Troubled Waters (12 page)

‘Where are you going?’ the constable asked, keeping a hand on the open door, awaiting an answer.

‘Me? I’m off to see Irene and find out a bit more about our deceased, Miranda – Mandy Stimms. I’ve got no picture of her, of her character, what she was like, what to expect. At the moment, all we have is a dead, twenty-one-year-old, pregnant lesbian with a boyfriend, who worked in a Co-op shop and liked red Leicester cheese. Oh, and who probably wore size 10 underwear and had a cat.’

‘Seventeen. She was actually seventeen.’

‘What makes you think that? That’s not what the manager said. He told us that she was twenty-one.’

‘Yes, but her mother says that she’s seventeen and she ought to know. The girl probably lied about her age because of the minimum wage thing. Who can blame her? They get a pittance, it’s like slave labour . . .’

‘That’s possible. He said that she hadn’t handed in her birth certificate, maybe that was why she didn’t.’

‘Who is Irene?’

‘Her best friend in the Co-op, the one the manager mentioned.’

To the inspector’s surprise Irene was not a fellow teenager, someone with whom Miranda Stimms could laugh and giggle, go clubbing and compare notes about boyfriends, Instagram, Primark and TK Maxx. Instead, she could have been the girl’s granny, or possibly even her great-granny. She had a benign, matriarchal aura about her, and radiated a quiet but unmistakable authority. In appearance, she resembled an elderly chimpanzee, with small, deep-set brown eyes, an oddly pronounced upper jaw with a faint black moustache and a receding chin. Due to her pigeon-toes, she waddled when she walked, elbowing herself from side to side as if setting out on a long trek.

‘I knew you were coming,’ she said, on meeting Alice, ‘Mr Wilson told me about Mandy. He says we’re to use his office. I’m to take my lunch break in there.’

Once she was settled in her seat, her meal of an egg roll and a flask of soup in front of her, she looked at the policewoman as if to let her know that the interview could now start.

‘Could you tell me a bit about Miranda, what she was like, and so on?’

‘I could,’ she said, taking her time, removing the aluminium foil from around her roll. ‘A great lassie, I thought. She was a real worker, unlike some of them they take on, she never stopped. When she first came and we were unloading bakery goods together, I had to tell her to slow down. “Slow down, hen!” I says, “for pity’s sake!” You have to take your time, you see, otherwise you’ll not manage the whole shift, you’ll get tired out too soon. Others’ll get sacked, an’ all. I got her the job in the first place.’ She paused.

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Em . . .’ she hesitated, thinking, ‘at the bus stop. The bus was late, we got talking. I was going to my work, told her they were looking for staff. She jumped at it. Now, let me get a bite, eh?’

After she had swallowed a couple of mouthfuls and dabbed the ends of her lips carefully with a paper hankie, she nodded, signalling her readiness to continue.

‘Did she make other friends in the shop, among the younger ones?’

‘Not really. She was funny that way. It’s hard to describe. I never met anyone like her, like her in that way, before. I think a lot of the young ones scared her.’ She took another bite. Flour from the roll cascaded onto the surface of the desk, then was efficiently wiped up by her with another hankie.

‘Did they bully her or something?’

‘No, I don’t think so. It’s just she wasn’t like them. Sometimes I don’t think she understood what they were on about. You know about the TV programmes and suchlike. That Facebook, YouTube, computer dating,
that texting they all do all the time, chat-rooms or whatever they’re called. I don’t have a clue myself, half the time.’

‘Was she slow – I mean, mentally slow?’

‘No. She learnt everything in the job easily, really quickly. You only had to tell her once where things were supposed to go, where to put things. She picked up the till, just like that. Mr Wilson thought she was the bee’s knees.’

‘Old-fashioned, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said, starting to unscrew the stopper of her flask, ‘that’s what Jocky, my man, said when she came for her tea. He said she was more like us, you understand – out of touch, past it, you might say.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’ Alice asked. Unconsciously, her eyes were now fixed on the woman’s tomato soup as it steamed in the plastic cup of the flask.

‘You want some, hen?’ she asked. ‘I could see if I can get another cup. There’ll be some where we have our tea-break.’

‘No, but thanks. I’ll get my lunch later, back at the station.’

‘Be sure you do, then. A boyfriend? Yes, she did. She was that excited, told me all about him, couldn’t stop herself from talking about him. Fell for him, like that . . . like a duck to water. I seen him, once, just the once, nice-looking laddie and all, well-dressed. She loved him to bits. Besotted, she was.’

‘What was his name?’

‘I cannae mind,’ she replied, then, smiling, obviously pleased at her recall, she corrected herself, ‘Aye, I can. Sammy. No, silly, silly me – Hamish – that was it. A plain name, Scottish. That’s it. I thought at the time, a good
old-fashioned name, just like my man’s. Sammy was the first one. But Hamish took her off Sammy.’

‘Sorry, who was Sammy? What’s his full name?’

‘Sam Inglis. Just after she started at the shop he was after her. He’s a big, fat fellow. I don’t like him. He’s after them all, all the young ones, the lassies, every time a new one comes. I reckon he’s only got one thing on his mind. He’s always making jokes, filthy ones, but they don’t make me laugh. Miranda wasn’t like that – she was . . . proper. Yes, that’s how I’d describe her, proper. He didn’t like it when she threw him over, but he had it coming. Hamish was much more her style.’

‘Finally, and it’s an odd question to ask, I appreciate, but . . . as far as you know, she wasn’t a lesbian?’

‘A what?’

‘A lesbian?’

‘Och, away with you!’ the woman said, startled at the very suggestion. ‘I’ve just been telling you about her boyfriend, about Hamish, have I not? Whatever gave you that idea? She was proper, old-fashioned, I told you. Not like that, not at all.’

He sat outside the house in his Mazda, unwilling, despite the cold, to go in. Huge raindrops hammered on the roof, pouring down the windscreen in a never-ending flood and blurring the headlights of the oncoming cars. A light was still on in the kitchen and through the rivulets he could just make out a figure, seated, slumped forward against the window. It must be her. His eyes felt hot and gritty, an ache behind them somewhere deep inside his brain, and he rubbed them in the vain hope that it would ease. He ought, he knew, to go in and try and comfort her, but he
could not face it. He no longer had the energy. The ineffable weight, the blackness of her despair would pull him under too, disorientate him, drown him, and he had to be strong. He had to be strong enough for both of them, Lambie and him, strong enough for everyone. Otherwise they would never get back up, up to the surface, back into the light and the air.

She would have got the message by now, but there had not been space enough on the answering machine to say what he needed to say, what she needed to hear. Why hadn’t she been at home? Where on earth had she been? Panicking as always at the very sound of the strange recorded voice, he had had to gabble away like a madman, ‘Lambie, it’s me. She wasn’t there, not at that school. The Ardtean one, from my list. But don’t you worry about a thing, I’ve another to try tomorrow, OK? Now I’ve got to go. I’m off to Aberdeen for a meeting. See you tonight, late, maybe very late; I’ve got to see a few of our people on the way down, one in Brechin, one in Kelty . . .’

That had been it, all that there was room for. But he knew what its effect would have been, that amongst all the tears and snuffles, there would be wailing, then body-racking, soul-tearing sobbing. And more. Like the last time. And the time before that. But, by the look of her, she had had a support this time, one offering sweet, silent succour, one with many names in both English and Gaelic. In his absence that was the one, the only one, which could take his place.

As he opened the kitchen door, she did not stir. Her head was down, resting on the table top. Seeing her there, mouth open, face distorted, flattened against the wood, he had a sudden terrible thought. She’d done it, this time she’d actually done it. She had killed herself. But
as he ran towards her, crying out her name in his terror, he caught sight of the half-empty whisky bottle by her head and felt, first relief, and then waves of hot, scalding shame. Because, seeing the Famous Grouse label he had been pleased for a second, knowing it would have done the trick, done the job for him. Gently, taking care not to wake her, he fetched the rug from the chest, placed it over her and then, exhausted after fourteen hours on the move, went up the steep stairs to his bed. She was past comforting by him.

8

Hamish Evans’ father, Christopher, was the sole partner in a legal firm specialising in criminal defence work, with an office in Stafford Street. A brass plate on the door read ‘McBryde and Evans’ and blue and white legal-aid stickers adorned every window. No McBryde had ever been involved in any capacity in the business, but Mr Evans had added the name, his Granny’s surname, as he believed it had a streetwise ring to it, and that it made the firm sound older and more established. It gave a bit of Scots back-up to the Welsh, too, no bad thing in these times. His secretary, or slave (as, unknown to him, she introduced herself) was off at a dental appointment that morning. When Alice and DC Cairns reached the man’s premises, he was already late for court, had his black gown over one arm of his close-fitting, shiny grey suit and was searching in a filing cabinet.

‘I’m in a rush, my taxi’s outside, waiting for me,’ he said plaintively, head down, elbow deep in the drawer, pulling out each identical blue file, sighing, then dropping it back in the cabinet.

‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Alice said. They were going to have their talk.

‘Fire away,’ he replied, pulling a couple of files out, double-checking the names and murmuring to himself, ‘Thompson, Adam . . . Thompson, Colin . . . we’ve too many of those sodding Thompsons!’

‘When did you last see or speak to your son, Hamish?’

‘Eh . . .’ he said, eyes glued on the contents of another blue file, sweat now shining on his brow. ‘Eh . . . we spoke a couple of days ago.’

The phone rang but he ignored it, waiting for the reassuring click of the machine cutting in. Tutting loudly to emphasize the inconvenience of their demands, he put the file back and began rifling through the rest, pulling a few out and dropping them on the floor in his frustration, to make his point. His head, like a child’s, was disproportionately large for his little body.

‘Was it when he was still in London?’

‘Why are you asking all of this, Inspector? He’s alright, isn’t he?’

For a second he stopped his feverish activity and, file in hand, looked up, giving them his full attention.

‘As far as we know he is. We’re simply trying to trace him,’ Alice said.

‘Why? He’s not in trouble, is he?’ the distrustful, raisin eyes embedded in his red face suddenly narrowed, as if he was now on duty, protecting a client.

‘Because . . . he may have information that would be helpful to us.’

‘I get it. He’s witnessed something, eh? You just need his help?’

‘Yes, we do need his help.’ She smiled at him.

‘OK. It’s my job, eh? My line of work. It makes you suspicious – no, makes me suspicious – whatever. You lot are always suspicious, eh? He was in the airport, actually. He was killing time at Heathrow, otherwise he’d not have phoned. His mother’s always asking him to call but . . . well, he’s a young man, got better things to do with his time than call his mother. All he could think about was
seeing his girlfriend, Miranda. He seemed agitated about her.’

‘Do you know if he caught the flight?’

‘No. But he will have, he was in the airport, had work the next day. He’s bound to have. Why on earth wouldn’t he have? You see, like me, he loves his work. He’s earning a bomb, too, compared to most of his school pals. Half of them can only find work as hod-carriers or waitresses.’