‘Leah’s been in touch again: she’s going to leave her phone on so we can trace it. Now where’s that warrant?’
‘John’s trying to serve it now.’ Mother sounded as if she was deflating. ‘Of course, at this time on a Sunday evening, chances are her mobile provider won’t be—’
‘You’ve got till Leah’s phone runs out of battery to find her. Gordon Smith’s not going to let her recharge the damn thing — we’ve got one chance and that’s it!’
‘I know, I know... We’re pushing as hard as we can, Ash, we really are.’
‘Then push harder.’ I hung up. Stuffed the phone back in my pocket. Slumped against the shop’s doors, staring up at the black wooden ceiling.
Smith hadn’t hurt Leah yet, but that couldn’t last. It wasn’t as if he’d had any qualms butchering her mum, and he’d been like a grandfather to her too.
‘Erm, excuse me?’ Woman’s voice.
When I looked down, there was one of the Rothesay Library crime book club’s members. One who’d sat quietly through most of it, nursing a large glass of white wine.
‘Sorry. Erm, hi, I’m Aileen. Aileen McCaskill?’ She tried on a pained smile. Her wrinkled waterproof and creased forehead made it look as if she’d shrunk into herself over the years, thin jowly neck protruding from the cowl of a thick orange jumper like a turtle. Watery blue eyes blinking up at me in the gloom of the shop doorway. ‘Told everyone I was off for a cigarette.’ She pulled out a pack, fingers covering the graphic warning image as she opened the top and offered me one.
‘Thanks, but I don’t.’
‘Quite right too. Filthy habit.’ But she lit one anyway, sucking on it with her eyes closed, setting the tip glowing a hot orange. Then letting out a lungful of smoke in a juddery breath. Another couple of puffs. ‘I...’ She cleared her throat. Looked away, down the street, towards the square. ‘That woman in the picture. With the man? I think it might be my sister.’
She huffed out a breath, smoke-free this time. ‘Linda was... could be difficult. Oh God, could she ever.’ Aileen bit her lips together. Shook her head. Stubbed her cigarette out, even though she’d barely touched it. ‘Drinking, boys, staying out late, failing all her O levels. Broke...’ Deep breath. ‘Broke my mum’s heart when Linda left: up and walked out one morning, didn’t even say goodbye. At least, that’s what we thought.’ Aileen dug into her waterproof and produced a tatty leather wallet. Clutching it in trembling fingers. ‘Was my dad’s.’ She flipped the thing open and held it up to the greasy streetlight, revealing a faded photograph of two teenaged girls: one in pastel-green trousers; the other, pastel yellow; matching baggy grey-and-blue jumpers with the popped collars of their shirts sticking out the neckholes. Big hair.
When I looked up from the photo, Aileen was staring at me, her eyes a lot waterier than before, a lot more needy, the tip of her nose pinkening.
She pointed at the girl in green trousers. ‘That’s Linda. You see?’ She reached out and took hold of my sleeve. ‘It’s her, isn’t it? The girl in your photo, with the ugly man in the shell suit? It’s my sister...’
Had to admit, it looked a lot like the woman in the photo with a young Peter Smith.
‘When did she go missing?’
‘June twelfth, 1985. It was my seventeenth birthday...’ A small, sour laugh. ‘Always thought she’d picked the date just to spite me. It’s not my fault I was a year older, is it? That I got new stuff and she had to make do with my hand-me-downs. God, how she hated that.’ Aileen let go of my arm and wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘But she... she didn’t, did she?’ The words coming quicker and quicker. ‘She didn’t run away. If she’d run away, you wouldn’t be here, showing her photo round. It was him, wasn’t it? The man in the picture did something to her.’
Something horrible.
If it was her.
The date was about right, going by the clothes and the haircuts. And the resemblance to the young woman in the photo was undeniable. But without a body or any forensic evidence to compare? With nothing but two stills taken from mobile phone footage in a darkened basement? Impossible to know for sure.
Aileen stared up at me, her father’s wallet clutched to her chest, bottom lip wobbling as her eyes filled up again.
What was better: false hope, or certainty and closure?
That whole year when I’d thought Rebecca had run away from home, when in reality she was already long dead. Hoping she’d walk in the door one day as if nothing had ever happened. Then that first homemade birthday card landed on the doormat and I found out what had really happened to my little girl.
But Aileen deserved the truth, didn’t she? No matter how much it hurt.
I nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
Her mouth opened wide, the bottom lip curled in over her teeth as dark pink flushed her cheeks, eyes screwed tightly shut. The silent scream made her knees bend and her hands curl into claws. Then a painful breath howled into her lungs and roared out in a jagged wail.
So I opened my arms, wrapped Aileen in a hug and held her as she sobbed.
Because Helen MacNeil was right: I knew how it felt.
26
I closed the taxi door and Aileen blinked up at me from the back seat, face all puffy and streaked with mascara. Then turned to face front as the old Ford puttered away down the narrow lane, took a right at the junction, and disappeared.
Jesus.
I sagged back against the empty shop doorway, pulled out my phone, and called Franklin.
‘For God’s sake, what now? I’m going as fast as I can, but there’s three tonnes of—’
‘Our girl’s Linda McCaskilclass="underline" sixteen, went missing twelfth of June, 1985.’
Silence from the other end.
Then, ‘How did you—’
‘Old-fashioned legwork. See if there’s a misper report.’
More silence.
‘McCaskill, McCaskill, McCaskill... Here we go. Linda McCaskill.’ Some rustling, then a groan. ‘If it isn’t her, it looks a hell of a lot like her. But without a body?’
‘Yup.’ I checked my watch. ‘Five past eight. We got time to finish up and make the last ferry at nine?’
‘You are kidding, aren’t you? Have you forgotten how much paperwork it takes to turn a missing person into a murder victim? Be lucky if I’m out of here before midnight!’
True.
‘Then wrap it up; you can finish in the morning.’
‘But—’
‘We’ll have to spend the night in Rothesay anyway, so there’s no point busting your hump. Might as well grab dinner.’
But you know whose hump was worth busting?
Sabir’s.
Soon as I’d hung up, I gave the useless wee sod a call.
The sound of explosions and machineguns rattled in the background. ‘This better be important, like, I’m savin’ the werld from Nazi zombies, here.’
‘Where are my IDs?’
‘Hello, Sabir. How are you, Sabir. You’re my favourite, you are, Sabir.’
‘Oh, sorry, let me try that again. Hello, Sabir, where — are — my — sodding — IDs — you — lazy — tosser?’
‘A guy could go off you.’ The sounds of war came to an abrupt halt. ‘I’ve got web crawlers going through every Friends Reunited and LinkedIn profile on the net. Every missing persons’ database too, including a few I’m not meant to have access to an’ all. Cough, cough, GCHQ, cough, cough.’ A slurping noise. ‘See, your trouble is you know bugger all about information technology. You watch one episode of Dr Who and think you’re an expert, but I can’t search for stuff that’s never seen a computer in its puff!’