Thirty / forty years was a long time. People moved away. They died.
‘Then we’ve got no choice: hit the media with Gordon Smith’s “before” Polaroids. Someone has to know who they are.’
Upstairs, the half-arsed rendition of ‘All My Life’ sputtered to a halt. Then started again from the beginning. And the drummer was still terrible.
‘Chief Superintendent McEwan won’t like that.’
‘Tough. You’re thinking of retiring anyway: cruises, golf, gardening, and grandchildren, remember?’
‘Don’t you start. Get enough of that from my Jack.’
Henry whined on the end of his leash, wee sides shivering, tail between his legs, fur all slicked down and dripping.
‘And I thought your IT guru was supposed to get us IDs: what happened to those eight hours I paid him for?’
Good question.
The Black Bull’s monochrome frontage was sandwiched between an angling shop and a café, its olde-worlde mock-Dickensian windows looking out over the marina to the ferry terminal. As Henry and I limped over the threshold, a wall of warm air wrapped its welcoming arms around us, bringing with it the sound of laughter.
Busy in here.
Henry and I worked our way through the crowd to the small bar, where a young woman with far too many piercings and a lopsided haircut was pulling pints of Belhaven. ‘What can I get you, love?’ As if she was a Glasgow granny.
‘Looking for the book club.’
She pointed off to her left, through a narrow passageway. ‘Down there, take a right. Drink?’
‘Pot of tea. Decaf, if you’ve got it?’ Talk about painting the town beige...
‘Aye, I’ll get someone to take it through to you.’
I handed over the cash and then Henry and I squeezed through the gap at the end of the bar; past another, longer bar; and turned right, into a large-ish nook, with a tartan-carpeted floor, red bench seating, and a bunch of old folks — most of them women — sitting around seven wooden tables. The eighth was empty, so we commandeered it: me collapsing into the padded seating, Henry collapsing under the table. The pair of us looking as if we’d swum here.
Everyone else had a paperback in front of them: black cover, moody shot of a crumbly warehouse, author’s name in big yellow lettering. That would be a crime novel, then.
I stretched my right leg out, teeth gritted as the ankle moaned and clicked and complained at the top of its voice.
A large woman, going bald on top, leaned over from the next table. ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’
‘Actually, I’m not—’
‘Here you go.’ A wee tray with a small metal pot of tea, mug, bowl of sugar sachets, and a thing of milk clicked down in front of me. Packet of shortbread on the side. Then the spotty youth who’d delivered it turned and hurried from the room before anyone could order anything from him.
She leaned in again. ‘Where were we? Yes, so, you’re new and—’
‘All right, everyone, we all here?’ A smiling woman in a floaty grey top, body warmer, and council lanyard stood at the head of the room, holding the book in her hand. Blonde hair with a half-inch of grey roots on show. ‘Welcome, everyone, to the Rothesay Library Criminally Good Book Club! Who’d like to start?’
A flurry of hands.
‘Maureen?’
The woman next to me lowered her hand. ‘I don’t understand why it had to be so gory! I mean, a man who collects dead animals in a steading, it’s horrible.’
Someone else nodded. ‘It was offensive, if you ask me. Sickeningly, cynically, offensive.’
I unwrapped the two tiny shortbread biscuits and fed one to Henry under the table.
‘What about the characters? Anyone?’
‘Yes.’ Another woman, this one done up in a trouser suit with lacquered hair. ‘That lesbian police officer. She was so revolting! Always talking and swearing and scratching and digging at her underwear. I didn’t like her at alclass="underline" she ruined the whole book.’
Someone else nodded. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with female lesbians in crime fiction.’
‘Well, of course not, but there is when it’s nothing but an excuse for blasphemy and crude so-called “humour”.’
I poured my tea.
‘Can we please have a proper crime novel, next time? Like one of those nice Ann Cleeves ones.’
‘Oh, yes, I do like her books. She was lovely when she came to the crime-writing festival, too.’
And on, and on, and on they went, as I drank my decaf tea and finished the remaining biscuit.
Soon as I was done, I dug out the printout and levered myself to my foot — keeping the right one off the tartan carpet, so it wouldn’t sting so much. ‘Speaking of murder investigations,’ I flashed my expired warrant card at them, ‘do any of you recognise the people in this picture?’
The woman with the lacquered hair pursed her lips and glared at me, clearly not happy at being interrupted mid-rant about how terrible it was that anyone could enjoy a book where children got murdered.
Tough.
Welcome to the real world.
I passed the picture to Maureen. ‘Take your time, this would have been in the 1980s.’ Gave the rest of the room a bit of serious eye contact. ‘Anyone remember a young woman going missing back then?’
The librarian fiddled with her lanyard. ‘My cousin ran off with an American tourist. And there was Sheila Fraser — everyone thought her dad did her in and got rid of the body. Or Effie Parsons?’
One of the auld mannies shook his head, setting his combover bouncing. ‘Naw, that was in the seventies — having an affair with that Glaswegian artist bloke who used to come here and paint nudie women all the time.’
‘Sorry, never seen her before.’ Maureen handed the printout to the next table.
They all huddled over it, muttering away to each other.
‘All right, not Effie Parsons then.’ The librarian creased up her forehead. ‘What about Georgina Kerr? The police searched every house, bothy, shed, and outbuilding on the island, looking for her.’
The picture had nearly made it all the way around the book club.
Still, it’d been worth a try.
My phone ding-buzzed, deep in my damp pocket. When I pulled it out the screen was misted up. Had to wipe the condensation off with my shirt.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
I have 2 hide my phone! If he finds it I
don’t no what he’ll do
Please save me!!! I want 2 go home!!!
Damn.
I nodded at the book club. ‘Excuse me a minute.’
Slipped from the tartan nook, then out the back door. Into that narrow street that the waitress from lunch had pointed to. Into the drizzle too.
Quick hobble across the road, to shelter in a shop doorway. Somewhere nice and secluded to poke out a reply.
Leave your phone on, Leah — we need to
latch onto the mobile signal so we can find
out where you are and come get you.
Be brave!
SEND.
Ding-buzz.
UNKNOWN NUMBER:
I’ll try!!! But don’t no how much charge
I’ve got left
Time to give Mother a kick up the backside.
She answered on the third ring. ‘Ash? Have you—’
‘What’s happening with that warrant?’
‘Were you always this rude, because—’