She stuffed in another prawn cracker. ‘He’d still have to be an idiot.’
The map on my phone shifted under a grease-free finger till the Black Isle filled the screen. That knobbly peninsula, just across the water from Inverness. Not really big enough to lose yourself in, if you didn’t want to be found. Assuming anyone was looking, of course.
‘Highlands and Islands have got the farm staked out, don’t they?’
Franklin paused, cracker half-in half-out of her mouth. ‘Yeah. Bound to.’ But she didn’t sound convinced.
Still... Wouldn’t hurt to check tomorrow: make sure someone was actually watching the place. But at least that was N Division’s problem, not mine.
‘OK,’ I pocketed my phone again, ‘so we hit Stirling tomorrow. How long do you need to finish up here?’
‘Could probably palm most of it off on sleazy Sergeant Campbell. I’ve got all the important bits done anyway. Even he couldn’t cock up the rest.’
‘Good. If we get the nine o’clock ferry, we can be in Stirling by eleven-ish?’
‘Doable.’ She rubbed her hands together as the starters arrived, diving straight into the ribs. And that was it as far as sensible conversation was concerned.
Too busy eating.
‘So, is your room nice?’ Alice, doing her best to sound upbeat and cheery, and not getting anywhere close.
‘You’d love it. Great view out over the sea and all the mountains in the background.’ Or at least there probably was, if you had a room at the front of the Hotel Sokoloff. I cleared a porthole in the steamed-up window, looking out over a car park and a building site. A nearly-full skip overflowing in the rain.
‘How’s Henry?’
The wee lad was curled up at the foot of the bed, making snuffling snores, paws twitching as he dreamed. His dirty-grey wet-dog stench filled every corner of the room, like a coat of horrible paint.
‘You asked me that already, remember?’
‘Yes. Right.’ A heavy breath.
‘Is everything OK?’ I pulled the curtains shut and sat down on the bed. ‘You sound all... squirrely.’
‘You didn’t see the Sunday papers? The tabloids found out that Gòrach garrottes his victims, so now they’re calling him the “Oldcastle Child-Strangler” and it’s all over the front pages and everyone on the team’s looking at me as if it’s my fault we can’t catch him and—’
‘It’s not your fault!’
‘Bear says we have to interview all the sex offenders again, but that won’t help, I mean, the profile clearly shows that Gòrach hasn’t been in trouble with the law before, or if he has it’s been for petty things like shoplifting or setting fire to the bins outside a takeaway or something minor like that, but he’s not going to be on the Sex Offenders’ Register, because this, what he’s doing, it’s been a journey for him trying to work out what his sexuality really is and how it works, and Bear’s going in the wrong direction and Toby Macmillan is going to turn up dead and strangled and it’ll all be my fault for not catching Gòrach and everyone will hate me and I’m horrible and useless at my job and why aren’t you here to help?’
Never ceased to amaze that she could do all of that in what sounded like one breath.
‘I can’t always be there, Alice. I wish I could be, but I can’t.’
Just like I wasn’t there for Rebecca. Or Katie...
The duvet whoomphed beneath me as I slumped onto it, lying flat on my back, one hand covering my face. ‘And it’s not all on you, OK? Jacobson’s the one in charge, if everything goes tits-up it’s his fault, not yours. Do what you can.’
‘Urgh...’
‘So the question is: what are you going to do?’
She made a noise like a deflating beach ball. ‘I don’t know. I want to rework the profile, but I genuinely can’t face anything stronger than Lucozade and Irn-Bru. Everything else bounces.’
‘So try doing it sober for a change. To hell with what Henry Forrester said, you’re not his minion any more, you’re a highly respected forensic psychologist who’s caught dozens of sick bastards and saved countless lives.’
‘Then why do I still feel like a total—’
‘Beating yourself up isn’t helping, OK?’
Silence.
Henry stirred at the foot of the bed, let out a huge pink yawn, then curled up and went back to snoring again.
‘Alice?’
‘You were right: what you said to Bear. I really won’t work without you. Going by the way I’m stumbling about, achieving sod all, I’m starting to think I can’t. Come back to Oldcastle. Please!’
‘You don’t need me to function, Alice, and you don’t need Henry Bloody Forrester. It’s time to drag your arse out from his shadow, stand on your own two little red trainers, and do it your way.’
She let out a long rusty whine. Then, ‘You’re right, you’re right.’
‘Of course I am.’
Twice in one day.
First time for everything.
— should auld acquaintance be forgot —
27
‘... unprecedented scenes in Holyrood as naked protestors stormed the Debating Chamber on Sunday...’
I hauled on my left sock, then worked the right one over the puckered circle of scar tissue that marked the middle of my right foot. Smiling as the room’s TV screen filled with bare-arsed people — all of whom had anti-government slogans scrawled across their chests and backs, while someone at the BBC blurred out all their naughty bits.
‘... amongst growing calls for the Justice Secretary, Mark Stalker, to resign in light of allegations he...’
Shoes next. Then shirt. Tucking it into my trousers as the photo of a small boy appeared on the screen: blond curly hair, blue eyes, chubby cheeks, cheeky smile as he mugged for the camera, clutching a guinea pig.
‘Fears are growing for missing five-year-old, Toby Macmillan, as police teams search woodland in Oldcastle. We go live, now, to Hugh Brimmond at the scene. Hugh?’
Toby and his guinea pig disappeared, replaced by a shot of a parking area in what was probably Moncuir Wood. Headlights pierced the darkness: a couple of patrol cars blocked the road, with two police Transit vans and a trio of minibuses sitting behind a cordon of blue-and-white tape. SOC-suited figures milling about, like pale grey ghosts in the middle distance, waiting for the sun to rise so they could get started.
The camera panned around until the standard BBC roving reporter was onscreen, hunched up in a padded jacket, breath clouding in the camera lights. ‘Thank you, Siobhan. Tragedy shrouds the deep dark woods here in Oldcastle...’
My phone buzzed on the bedside table, turning on the varnished wood, then the opening guitar chugs of ‘Eye of the Tiger’ burst out of the speaker. That would be Shifty, then.
I grabbed the remote and muted the TV as Hugh from the BBC launched into some bollocks about symbolism and fairy tales and children going missing in the woods.
‘Shifty?’
‘I swear to God, I’m going kill someone before this morning’s out.’
‘Going well, then.’
‘Is it buggery. I put in a request for a helicopter and thermal-imaging camera, you know what they said? They said, “Sod off, Oldcastle, we’ve only got one helicopter and Strathclyde needs it.” How the hell am I supposed to find Toby Macmillan if they don’t give me the right kit?’
I settled on the edge of the bed and ruffled Henry’s furry head. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re on telly right now.’ After all, one of those small figures in the white suits was probably him.
‘You hear that?’ There was a moment’s silence, then what sounded like the far-off pounding whirrrrrrrrr of someone trying to beat partially-set concrete with an electric whisk. ‘Sky News have got a bloody helicopter. The BBC have got a bloody helicopter. Everyone’s got a bloody helicopter except the poor sod who actually needs one: me!’
‘Well... what about drones, then? Surely someone at the university’s got a few they can lend you. Part of a research project or something?’
‘If this was America, I could shove my badge in the pilot’s face and say, “I’m commandeering this helicopter!” And if he said no, I could shoot the bastard.’
‘No luck with your sex offenders, then?’
‘Why does everything have — to — be — so — bloody — hard? Why can’t I get an easy case for a change?’
I stood and pulled on my jacket. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I’m heading down for a massive hotel-breakfast fry-up.’
‘No, it doesn’t. And we’ve been through every nonce, stott, and greasy bastard in Oldcastle already. Twice.’
‘Then stop being a dick and go talk to Alice. She thinks this guy’s not on the Sex Offenders’ Register, because he’s never done anything like this before. He’s learning as he goes.’
‘Aaaaargh... How’s that supposed to help me? Instead of a finite pool of known kiddie fiddlers, I’ve got to interview every tosser in the whole place? This isn’t... God’s sake, what now?’
It went quiet for a bit, some muffled conversation barely audible in the background.
On the screen, Hugh the roving reporter marched across the car park, to the cordon. Where Chief Superintendent McEwan and his sidekick, Inspector Samson, were standing, in full dress uniform, with clipboards out and chins up. Soon as the other news crews got there, McEwan nodded and launched into a speech. No idea what he was saying, but it’d be the usual platitudes and look-at-me-being-all-in-charge bollocks he always came out with at these things. Not worth unmuting him for, anyway.
Then, Shifty was back: ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Apparently no one can find their arse with both hands unless I’m there to show them the bloody way!’ And with that, he hung up.
Say what you like about being kicked off the force, at least it meant I didn’t have to run around after tosspots like Chief Superintendent McEwan.
‘Right,’ I pointed at Henry, ‘if you stay here, and you’re a good boy, I’ll bring you back something greasy from the breakfast buffet.’
He grinned back at me.
Little sod was going to be the size of a beach ball by the time we got home.