Another chunk got dunked.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘That would be... oh... four and a bit weeks ago? It was a Monday, because that’s the day we like to hit the Marks and Spencer on Cannard Street, opposite the train station? You can fill your pockets with little tins of pre-mixed G and T, quicker than a startled checkout assistant can say, “Someone’s knocked over the display of Percy Pigs again!”’
So she hadn’t been too far off about the body being in that crappy tumbledown cottage for a month and a half.
The last of the soggy roll disappeared. ‘I remember he was sporting a rather swanky-looking new coat. Some child had given it to him, as a gift, just like that, out of the goodness of her little public-school heart. Doesn’t that give you hope for the future, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Ham, cheese, and pickle.’ The waitress was back with another plate, this one garnished with crisps and a couple of green leaves.
‘That would be me again, lovely Elizabeth. And please give my compliments to the chef: this chowder is simply divine.’ Kissing his grubby fingertips.
She just grunted and stomped off again.
Lucy made a note. ‘What kind of coat?’ After all, it’d be a lot easier to pick Malcolm Louden up on CCTV if they actually knew what he’d been wearing.
‘A lovely padded one, very stylish. And I’m sure, if Malky is sadly no longer with us’ — making the sign of the cross: spectacles, testicles, wallet, and watch — ‘then he would definitely want me to have it. Seeing as how we were so close?’
‘Nice try. Colour?’
‘It was what I like to call “Hemingway Burgundy”. Did you ever read The Old Man and the Sea, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Where did this altruistic gesture take place?’
Dr Rayner picked up half his sandwich and tore a big bite out of it, little curls of bright orange cheddar falling into his beard. ‘No one ever seems to read the classics any more, do they? It’s all romance and science fiction, and... crime novels.’ Imbuing that last category with nostril-flaring disdain. ‘I remember the days when—’
‘Vincent!’ She helped herself to one of his crisps. Cheese and onion. ‘Where did the kid give him the coat?’
‘All I’m saying is: what’s wrong with broadening the mind with a little Virginia Woolf every now and then? Milton, Hardy, Tolstoy, Cervantes—’
‘Where — did — she — give — him — the — coat?’
He chewed in silence for bit. Then sniffed. ‘Fine, if you want to wallow in cultural ignorance, who am I to stop you? Malky was in his usual spot, outside the train station, by the main doors. Same as every morning, regular as clockwork.’ Dr Rayner hunched his shoulders, curling over his soup and sandwich. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to eat my lunch, and philistines give me indigestion.’
‘...departure of the twelve fifteen to Dundee, from platform six.’
The announcement echoed around Oldcastle train station, coming back in distorted waves from the huge domed ceiling — the glass dirty enough to bring the midday gloom down to late-evening levels. Only half the station’s strip lights had come on, leaving the northbound platforms and most of the concourse swamped in darkness. The station’s vaulted iron framework was blistered with rust and pale dripping stalactites. Conspiratorial murmurs coming from the pigeons roosting up there, in between the anti-bird spikes. Everything wreathed in that greasy smell of hot metal mixed with grey-blue diesel fumes and the scent of mouldering bin bags.
‘Sodding freezing.’ The Dunk had his shoulders up and both hands stuffed deep in his pockets.
‘By the main entrance, you say?’ Mr Cartwright ushered them through a door marked ‘NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE’ and into a narrow corridor that stank of disinfectant.
Lucy nodded. ‘Monday: four and a half weeks ago.’
‘Pffff...’ He led the way up a long flight of stairs, big round bottom wobbling in her face as he climbed. ‘Dunno about that. Budget cutbacks mean we’ve only got about half the tapes we used to. Well, I say “tapes”... But we can see what we can see.’
At the end of the corridor lay another ‘NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE’ door, this one with a pin-code security lock. Mr Cartwright blocked it with his body, so they couldn’t spy as he clicked in the four digits, then turned the handle and waved them inside.
It was a cosy room with a row of monitors down one side and a filthy window overlooking the main concourse on the other. A portable heater sat on the end of an extension lead in the centre of the room, radiating lukewarmth at a pair of dented filing cabinets that looked as if they were given a stiff kicking on a regular basis. And, in the corner: a person-high rack of hard drives, little red and green lights winking away as they whirred.
Mr Cartwright lumbered over to a large cabinet and hauled up the roller door, revealing row after row of grey boxes about the size of a paperback book. ‘Last week’ — pointing at the top shelf. ‘Week before’ — next one down. ‘Week before that’ — down again. ‘And that’s four weeks.’
Get to the sodding point.
‘This, though’ — Mr Cartwright huffed his way down into a squat, both knees going off like starter pistols — ‘is anything older.’ He reached into the bottom shelf and scooped out an armful of grey boxes. Dumped them on the room’s only desk, in front of the monitors. ‘Don’t know if they’ll help, though. We had a stabbing here, round about then, and your lot confiscated a pile of our drives and never gave them back.’
Lucy picked one up. The grey plastic casing was littered with the tattered remains of dozens, if not hundreds, of white, lined stickers. Only one was still a hundred percent intact, with ‘09 AUG ➔ 11 AUG’ printed on it in squint Sharpie letters, above ‘CONCOURSE 3’. She put it down again. ‘Constable Fraser?’
‘Sarge.’ The Dunk went for a rummage.
‘This boy, your homeless man, he done something?’ Mr Cartwright dipped into one of the filing cabinets and came out with a partially deflated two-litre bottle of Diet Coke. ‘Only there’s a bunch of them get off the train from Dundee every morning, you hear about that?’ He took a long hard pull at the bottle, making the plastic creak and crunk.
‘Got it, Sarge.’ The Dunk held a box aloft. ‘Main entrance, seventh to the ninth.’
Mr Cartwright took it from him, cracked open the box, and pulled out the black-and-silver rectangle inside. ‘All done up in their “we’re so cold and homeless” rags. But they can afford the day-return from Dundee? Some of them have season tickets.’ He huffed a breath onto the connection strip at the end of the drive, then slotted it into a space on the rack, setting the built-in lights winking. ‘And you can see them all round town, you know, if you go out for lunch or you’re picking up some messages? Our Denise is vegan, so everything has to be such a sodding production at mealtimes. Kids, right?’
Lucy gave him the sincerest smile she could muster at short notice. ‘Kids.’
‘Exactly.’ Another swig of Diet Coke, then he thumped himself into a swivel chair that really didn’t look up to his weight. ‘What’s wrong with sausages all of a sudden? Used to love sausages, did our Denise.’ Mr Cartwright pulled over a knackered beige computer keyboard and poked at it with a single fat finger. ‘Or McNuggets? It’s not natural. Here we go.’
One of the screens stopped showing platform four and jumped to an exterior shot instead — looking down, from a height of about twenty or thirty feet, at the main entrance. The main doors were at the top of the screen, the rest of the image taken up with a big swathe of pavement, all the way to the anti-ramming bollards — installed in the wake of September the eleventh. Because apparently Al-Qaeda had a fatwa out against those Great Satanic Bastions of Western Imperialism, AKA: the concourse branches of WHSmith, Costa, and the wee kiosk that cut keys and sold lighters.