The splintering boom of a door being whacked off its hinges by a big red door key.
Muffled voices in the background: ‘GO, GO, GO!’
‘POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’
Whoomph, whoomph, whoomph...
‘DS Franklin, I’m DS Marland, but you can call me Colin, if you like? Good. Yes.’
‘LIVING ROOM: CLEAR!’
‘Now, the chief tells me you’re the ones who discovered the body, is that right?’ Pulling out a black police-issue notebook. ‘I’d like you to take me through the series of events, starting from how you found yourself at the warehouse, here.’
I stuck a finger in my other ear and limped away a dozen paces.
‘KITCHEN: CLEAR!’
More banging and crashing.
Whoomph, whoomph, whoomph...
Thumba-thumba-thumba-thumba...
Was that feet, thundering up a set of wooden stairs?
My phone announced an incoming text with that strange pop-ding again.
LEAH MACNEIL:
Am I going 2 have 2 go 2 prison? He
made me watch I didn’t want 2 but he
made me & it was horrible & I can’t stop
shaking
Another splintering boom — the noise tinny, because I didn’t have the phone to my ear.
‘YOU ON THE GROUND! ON THE GROUND NOW!’
A woman’s voice, high-pitched and trembling. ‘I’m on the toilet!’ Was that Leah? It sounded too old to be her, though. And the accent wasn’t right, either.
‘BEDROOM ONE: CLEAR!’
Whoomph, whoomph, whoomph...
Crashing. Something heavy hitting the floor.
‘YOU: DON’T MOVE! MOVE AND I WILL SHOOT YOU!’
A man’s voice. ‘I don’t understand, why are you—’
‘HANDS ON YOUR HEAD! KNEEL! KNEEL ON THE BLOODY FLOOR, NOW!’
They’d got him.
Then Mother’s voice, loud and clear. ‘Let me through, come on, Dougie, move your bottom, there’s a good boy.’
‘Please, I don’t know why you’re—’
‘SHUT UP! I SAID HANDS ON YOUR HEAD, BEFORE I BLOW IT OFF!’
‘All right, Keith, you can stop...’ The silence seemed to stretch for a week. Then, ‘Keith?’
‘Yes, Mother?’
‘Who the hell is this?’
Oh, for the love of Christ. I slapped my free hand over my eyes. They’d raided the wrong house.
Chaos on the other end of the phone. Lots of banging and crashing and swearing. Most of which seemed to be coming from Mother.
I left Franklin telling DS Marland how we’d entered the warehouse, and wandered away through the door to the prop store.
Along ‘JACK AND THE BEANSTALK’, past the office where Louis Williamson was scrunched up in a swivel chair, elbows on his knees, bald head in his hands, that tuft of bright-orange hair poking out between his clenched fingers.
The expensive prototype head-in-a-jar was on the desk behind him, still singing away to itself:
I stepped into the darkening afternoon. Only half three, but already the sun was nearly at the horizon, painting the clouds that hunkered there in shades of violent pink and eggshell blue. Our manky pool car had been joined by half a dozen others, and a trio of patrol cars too — their reflective livery glowing in the fading light. And a surprisingly clean Transit van, with SOC techs humping blue plastic crates from the back doors and into the warehouse.
No sign of the national press yet, but that would change soon enough.
Pop-ding.
Another text cut through the tinny shouting coming out of my phone’s speaker.
LEAH MACNEIL:
I didn’t want the boy 2 die I didn’t want
grandad 2 kill him
But I didn’t no how 2 stop him I wish
I did I really really wish I did
Henry was on his hind legs in the back of our dirty Ford Focus, nose making pale snotty smears across the glass. Happy barking as I got closer.
Mother’s voice came down the line. ‘Well this is an unmitigated cocking shambles, isn’t it?’
Then someone else — might have been DC Watt, it was certainly whiny enough. ‘It’s not my fault! This is the address the phone coordinates pointed at. Look!’
‘Have you tried next door?’
‘Give me a minute, Ash, I have to provide a modicum of encouragement and guidance to my team member here.’ She cleared her throat. ‘HOW THE HELL DID WE MANAGE TO COCK THIS UP SO BADLY?’
‘It wasn’t me!’
My thumbs poked at the screen:
The boy’s name was David Quinn, he was
only 16. He had parents and friends and a
family who loved him.
I need you to tell me where Gordon
abducted him from.
SEND.
‘Maybe... maybe, I don’t know, but... maybe they were here, but they’ve gone now?... Or something?’
‘AAAAAAAAAARGH!’
LEAH MACNEIL:
Grandad drove 2 a graveyard up by the
castle & I’m so so sorry I didn’t want
nothing 2 happen 2 David & I just want 2
die
‘Or maybe the guy’s lying and he knows Gordon Smith? Maybe he’s... an accomplice!’
‘John, you know I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you should really shut up now, before I do something you’ll regret!’
‘No, look: I’ll call her mobile. Hold on...’
The sound of some boy band burst into life in the background, getting louder.
‘It’s coming from downstairs!’
And they were off and running again.
31
Mother called me back, ten minutes later. ‘You still there, Ash?’
I hobbled on a couple of paces, Henry’s lead and my walking stick in one hand, phone in the other. ‘Just about.’ The sun was a fierce yellow smear on the horizon, the sky above turning to ink. Stars struggling to shine through as the cloud thickened and the wind picked up again.
‘We found Leah MacNeil’s mobile. It was in the householder’s jacket pocket.’
‘So Watt was right for a change. They were co-conspirators?’
‘Householder swears he doesn’t know Gordon Smith, he’s never met Gordon Smith, and he wouldn’t recognise Gordon Smith if he got in the bath with him.’ A pause. ‘Which struck me as a rather strange metaphor, but there you go.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘Says he was in Stirling for work, stopped at the petrol station this morning to fill up, and that was all he knew till we smashed his door down and caught his wife on the toilet. We checked with his work — he installs and maintains poles for pole dancing — he was at a pole-dancing-for-fitness-and-wellbeing place, which is apparently a thing now. Our hypothesis is that Smith must’ve slipped it into his pocket while he wasn’t looking.’