Troubled Waters (25 page)

‘We don’t know. That’s the truth, Mr Stimms, but we would certainly like to find her, to talk to her.’

‘But, Inspector,’ he said, his eyes still wet, shining with new, unstoppable tears, ‘I saw her, I met someone called Anna. I can give you a description of Anna. I saw her, sat down with her when I picked up my girl. We didn’t speak much. To be honest, I didn’t want anything to do with her. You can understand that, I’m sure, but she insisted on talking to me – at me, when I was waiting for my daughter to pack her things. Miranda was helping her.’

‘What does she look like?’

He hesitated briefly, looking heavenwards, summoning an image of the girl into his mind’s eye, and then said, ‘She’d be ages with Mandy . . . Miranda, I’d guess. Five-foot five, six or more, something like that. Average, nowadays? Not too tall for a woman, and she was dark-haired, yes, I’d say dark. Not black, but more black than brown, if you know what I mean.’

‘What about her complexion?’

‘I really didn’t notice that, so I suppose it must be normal, just like you’d expect. She was smartly dressed, though, expensively. I can’t remember what she was actually
wearing but she was well turned-out, nicely dressed.’ He nodded his head several times, as if convinced of that.

‘Is that her?’ she asked, holding out the blurred photo of the girl in the hat for him to inspect.

‘That’s her!’ he replied excitedly.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Sure as can be.’

‘Did you learn anything about her, any details about her, where she came from, that kind of thing?’

‘I did, yes. Just a wee bit. I suspect that she wanted to get round me, on the right side of me or something. She kept talking while I was waiting for Diana to finish packing, prattling on like womankind do – sorry, like some women, some women, do. Sorry . . .’

‘What did you learn, Mr Stimms?’

He scratched his head, took a deep breath and said, ‘Let me think. I just wish I’d listened better. I never thought it would matter, you see. Well, she came from Perth, originally, somewhere near . . . where was it? Could it have been Scott Street? Yes, I’m sure she said her parents lived in Scott Street, somewhere near The Inch. I’m sure she boasted about a flat, too, in Dundee, I think, but don’t ask me the address.’

‘Her surname, did you happen to get her surname, do you remember that?’

‘Have you not got it?’ He sounded taken aback.

‘Not so far.’

‘I do,’ he said, quietly triumphant, ‘I do. She was a Campbell – to my shame – like my own mother.’

‘Have you any idea what her job was?’

‘Aye, she teased me, tried to charm me, asking me if I could guess it.’ He shook his head in disgust at the thought.

‘And?’

‘She worked with flowers, in a garden centre, I think.’

‘One other thing, Mr Stimms,’ Alice said, rising to go. ‘Have you heard of anyone called Hamish Evans, did you ever come across him?’

‘Yes,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, ‘my wife told me all about him. She and I didn’t speak, Miranda and me. He had his eye on Miranda, or so she told her mother, but . . . well, she was a lost cause, for any man, I mean. Anna Campbell didn’t like him, I know that. He phoned her while I was there, and she called him all the names under the sun, blasphemous things. She went outside into the hall, didn’t think I could hear, whispered it, but I heard quite enough in that matchbox of a place.’

‘What were they arguing about?’

‘My dau . . . they were arguing about Miranda.’

14

Back in her car, determined to make progress, she scrolled down her contacts until she found the pathologist’s phone number. One thing was nagging her, and it was something that she could not find out herself. As the line rang through, she looked out to sea, marvelling at the size of a low, red oil tanker which seemed to take up about a third of the horizon. A cyclist flashed past her window, making her blink as he disappeared into the distance, head hunched low over the handlebars, his back curved like a cat’s spine. Finally, a voice answered.

‘Yes.’ The tone was guarded.

‘Dr Cash?’

‘Inspector Rice, I presume. Do you never have a day off, a long lie? It’s Sunday, for Christ’s sake, the day on which God himself rested. So this had better be an emergency. There had better be bodies everywhere, and four-deep at that. And no, I don’t have the result from the Evans boy’s PM, if that’s what you’re after. It’s tomorrow. Are you coming to it?’ Dr Cash had just realised that the sickening stench she was aware of was coming from her own hand holding the phone. It was the chicken. Seconds earlier she had been massaging a bulb of garlic into the cold, clammy, pink skin of the dead bird.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the rhubarb she had stewing on the hob was about to boil over. Gesticulating
frantically to her adolescent son, she mimed ‘take the pan off!’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Alice replied. ‘I wondered, did you take any samples from Miranda Stimms’ baby, the foetus you discovered at her PM?’

‘No, Inspector, we did not. It’s not routine and her PM’s over. Nor am I going to. As I’m sure you’re aware there is an offence – theft of DNA or something. So, no, I did not take any samples from the foetus and I’m not going to now. Get it off, Davie. It’ll burn!’

‘Sorry?’

‘This is very inconvenient, you know. My lunch is getting ruined and I’ve got people coming. Guests. That’s better, Davie’s got the pan at last. Drain the excess liquid off – no, not in the sink, for pity’s sake, into that cup! Yes, the blue one.’

‘I need to know who the father of her baby was.’

‘Do you.’ It was a statement, uttered matter-of-factly and without enthusiasm, not a question.

‘Yes. It’s the missing bit of the jigsaw. I need the exact gestational age too, if possible. Before you just gave me a range. Your report’s not yet come through.’

‘I thought Hamish Evans, the body in the bay, was her boyfriend?’

‘So did, so do I. But he had mumps, his father told me, which made him infertile – it couldn’t be his. The baby. That’s why I want to know whose it was. She had a boyfriend before him. Once I know, everything may well fall into place. So, tomorrow, could you take a sample? You’ve already said that you’ll be in the mortuary.’

‘Alice,’ Dr Cash sighed, ‘my son’s busily whipping the cream into butter . . . Stop, stop! I can’t speak now, except to say one thing and one thing alone. If you want
a sample taken, I’ll need written authority from Derek Jardine, I’m not doing it without the Fiscal’s express written instruction. It’s the Human Tissue Act, or something or other. Anyway, I’m not doing it without his say so, I’m afraid. OK, got to go. I’ve got a life to lead.’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’

‘A life? I think you’ll find it is, Alice. And written instructions, too. If you’re expecting me to take a sample for analysis, anyway.’

‘If I get him to give you a call, would that do?’

‘Yes, it would. Now, I’ve got to go, my guests are arriving.’

As she drove across the city to Raeburn Place, the woman’s throwaway remark stung her, worked its way, burrowing like some evil worm into her brain. Had work become her life? If it had, it had not always been so, and the change must have taken place surreptitiously, gradually, imperceptibly, as far as she was concerned. She had been unaware of it. Certainly, when Ian was alive, and long before him, for that matter, she had had a home life, a full home life. Of late, it was true, nothing seemed as vivid, as stimulating, as important outside of work. But that was surely because she was unusually lucky – her job was interesting, often genuinely exciting. If she had been filling in forms, sweeping floors, clearing tables, then, obviously, home life would seem brighter in comparison, but only in comparison. Sod you, she said to herself, Helen Cash’s words still needling her. Her life was not empty. But, thinking about it, she could feel the muscles in her back tightening, knew what the woman was getting at. It was true she had no one, no one ‘special’, but life
was still good, fulfilling. It passed as speedily as everyone else’s did, no slower than before. And, somehow, she had achieved a sort of equilibrium, a relatively pain-free state, a state in which she no longer ached for Ian, simply at the thought of him.

At that moment, her eye was caught by the sight of a troupe of students dressed as chickens cavorting on the pavement, weaving their way down Howe Street, their collecting buckets bouncing off their feathered bellies. Christ, she thought, realising that she had driven through Granton, through Trinity and Inverleith and somehow seen nothing, operating completely on autopilot, unaware of anything that happened throughout the entire journey. Had she gone through red lights? Up one-way streets? Over pedestrian crossings? Anything was possible.

The Forensic Team were ready, assembled outside the front door of the flat in Raeburn Place, impatient to get on with their respective tasks, in their gear, all their equipment around them, tensely awaiting the signal to start. Some of them chewed gum vacantly, staring at nothing; most chatted to one another, their white breath forming clouds in the cold air. A curious neighbour on the landing, wearing a striped flannel dressing gown, stuck his head out of his door, saw the strange crew and withdrew quickly.

‘Like a big, frightened rabbit,’ one of the SOCOS said, adjusting the elastic of his green hood in an attempt to stop it cutting into his chin.

‘Have you seen yourself?’ his companion chipped in, ‘he probably thinks that the Ebola virus is loose in the place.’

Hastily donning protective clothing herself in case she needed to go into Evans’ flat, Alice stressed to them all that they must treat it as a potential crime scene. Recalling the irate weasel-thin cleaner she had encountered there on the Thursday, it seemed unlikely that this was where the stabbing had taken place – impossible if Dr McCrae’s estimate of the length of time the boy had been in the water was anything like correct. But if the doctor’s estimate was way out for any reason, since Evans had been stabbed there could still be blood everywhere, spattered on the floor, walls, ceiling and furniture. Unless it had been cleaned the place would be like a slaughterhouse, and if it all had been cleaned up by the Wednesday, the weasel almost certainly would have let them know.

‘On you go,’ she said, opening the door and watching as they filed in, their feet sticking to the paper path as if it was the yellow brick road. While they were occupied inside, she would cast her eye over the stair. Some trace of violence might still be visible. As she was examining the grey-painted walls of the landing the neighbour opened his door again.

‘What’s going on? Where’s Hamish? I took in a parcel for him, I need to give it to him. I’m always in, you see, I work at home,’ he said, coming towards her with a brown paper package in his hand. He looked anxiously, first at the closed front door of the flat opposite and then at the detective. Since his last appearance in his dressing-gown, he had thrown on a jersey and jeans. He was a tall man, towering above her though she herself was six foot. He wore glasses with dark frames and a lock of black hair fell over one of his eyes.

‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

‘Bloody hell! No one told me. What will I do with it? It might be perishable . . .’

‘When did you last see him?’ she asked.

‘When he left for London, the Thursday before last – would it be a Thursday? Yes, yes, it was. One of my choir days.’ Brows furrowed, he swept the troublesome hair out of his eyes, twice, before giving up and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose instead.

‘You never heard him return?’ she asked.

‘On Monday night, you mean? No, I was listening for him, that was when he was supposed to be coming back. I go to bed late. I’m my own master, thankfully. But he never came. I tried first thing the next morning, and the one after that, but I got nothing. I spoke to Rich, his cleaner. He said he hadn’t been back. I thought about leaving it with him but, well, you know . . . I don’t really know him, he hasn’t been coming here that long. Hamish had an old woman before. What’s in the parcel is anybody’s guess, but it could be valuable. He was always getting stuff off eBay – iPods, cameras, that kind of thing.’