Driftnet Page 12

  She went back to it and fetched the can, filled it with water and stood it on the fire.

  She saw Neil top the grassy edge then duck quickly down the bank. When he saw her the troubled look left his face. He’d got a loaf and some bacon from the camp shop.

  He fetched the frying pan and settled it beside the water can.

  She watched him as he foutered about, laying the bacon carefully in strips, poking wee sticks in to build the fire; checking the water, then dropping in two teabags.

  When he handed her a mug of tea, their hands met. He stroked her fingers.

  ‘Alright?’ he said, sitting beside her. She nodded. ‘After breakfast, I’ll take you for a walk.’

  While they sat and ate in silence, the sun broke through the mist.

  After getting Neil’s things from the flat, Chrissy had gone straight to the bus station. The waiting room was empty apart from a drunk sleeping with his head twisted at sixty degrees. He was going to suffer when he woke up.

  Chrissy’s bus was at half past seven. It was empty except for a woman with two weans, who went up the back and sat with her in the middle to keep the peace. Chrissy sank into the front seat, rolled her jacket up for a cushion, and went straight to sleep. When she woke, Glasgow had gone.

  ‘Are you right then?’

  Neil had taken the dishes down to the water’s edge and washed them. He brought them back up and stacked them to dry near the fire, put on a couple of big pieces of wood and moved his refilled water can to one side. Now he was ready to go.

  ‘Come on.’

  He pulled her up, squeezing her hand, ‘We’ll head up the way. There’s a rare view.’

  The path skirted the loch for ten minutes, then they took a left up through the trees. All Chrissy could see for a while was the steep path ahead and the back of Neil’s tee-shirt, where tiny wee flies clung on, grabbing a lift up the hill. Several times he stopped and waited for her to catch him up. Then suddenly the trees were gone and the air freshened. The path moved among boulders and clumps of heather. They jumped a burn and followed the path round a curve in the hill, and there it was. The vast expanse of the loch stretched beneath them, sparkling into the distance.

  ‘Fucking magic.’ He was grinning at her. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ she said.

  ‘Aye. Fucking fantastic.’

  He pulled her down beside him and pointed round the landmarks and gave them their names. He was talking to her but his eyes were on the loch, caressing each curve of the water, each change of shoreline.

  ‘I used to come here whenever my dad threw a wobbler. I would hitch a lift up and go back when the money was done.’

  ‘I didn’t know you liked all this.’

  ‘Aye well. A tent’s a great place for a shag.’

  ‘Don’t joke about it.’ Her voice was tense.

  ‘I wasn’t joking.’

  When he kissed her, his mouth was still salty from the bacon.

  ‘D’you want to walk further up or go back down?’‘Maybe we should work out what to do,’ she said seriously.

  He shook his head, his face stubborn.

  ‘I know what I’m going to do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to take off all your clothes and I’m going to stare at you until you beg me to shag you.’

  ‘Then you’ll wait forever,’ she said.

  ‘Some things are worth waiting for.’

  On the way back down they passed two men on the track. They were kitted up with climbing boots and rucksacks.

  ‘Yahs,’ Neil muttered under his breath.

  ‘They’re just walkers like us.’

  ‘They folk think they own Scotland.’

  ‘Maybe they just like it here.’

  ‘Aye. And they’d like it a whole lot better if none of us lived here.’

  He walked off ahead. The encounter had rattled him and he didn’t want her to know. But it was too late.

  She could tell he was thinking about the men who had arrived at the flat to ‘discuss’ the little problem of some photographs. Photographs Neil had sworn he didn’t have. Photographs that could incriminate a number of prominent citizens. The same photographs Chrissy had collected and brought here with her. His safety net, Neil called them. If anything happens to me, he’d said, those photos get published. That’s why they won’t do any more than threaten me. But they came to the flat, they knocked you about, she said. And that’s why I came here, he replied. Out of sight, out of mind. I’ll go back once things blow over.

  For all his confident talk, he was very much on his guard. He had made sure he knew everyone on the site and if anyone new booked in he found out about them. They hadn’t gone to the pub in the village. Neil bought cans of beer at the camp shop and they drank them in the tent.

  ‘Awful pants he had on, eh?’ she said to make him laugh.

  ‘You were looking at his dick.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she leered at him.

  ‘Well if that’s what you want.’ He made a show of pulling down his zip and she grabbed his arm.

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘You’ve got ten minutes, then it’s coming down whether we’re at the tent or not.’

  She pushed past him and ran down the path, giggling.

  ****

  He knew she had to catch the eight o’clock bus. After they’d lain in the tent and talked and made love he stirred up the fire and cooked sausages and beans. She said she would come back next weekend.

  ‘No.’

  Chrissy felt her stomach lurch.

  ‘But…’

  ‘Things’ll have blown over. I’ll be back in Glasgow by then.’

  ‘Back to the flat?’ She was incredulous. ‘But they’ll know you’re there.’

  ‘I can’t afford to miss my regulars.’ He avoided her eyes.

  She tried to disguise her sense of horror.

  But he drew back, defensively.

  ‘Look. This is what I am,’ he said sharply.

  ‘But what about the man who tried to…’

  ‘Things got heavy. It happens sometimes.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop this Neil. It’s not only what you’re doing to yourself. I can’t get the sight of the marks on your neck out of my mind.’

  ‘It’s nothing Chrissy. They do that all the time.’ He was trying to convince her and maybe himself. ‘It’s the only way they can come.’ He turned away. ‘It’s pathetic.’

  She felt sick.

  ‘Then stop it.’

  He touched her cheek. ‘You want me all to yourself.’

  ‘I want you to be safe.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  She heard his intake of breath.

  ‘I am safe. HIV negative with money in the bank and,’ he patted the photos in his jacket pocket. ‘This is my insurance policy.’

  ‘Look Neil. You’re on a major self destruct. It’s killing me to see you like this.’

  She turned away from him and crept into the tent to get her bag. When she came back out, he behaved as if nothing had happened. He was too good at that, she thought.

  ‘Right then?’ he said.

  She nodded, feeling defeated.

  ‘You’re crazy,’she said.

  ‘You like crazy,’ he answered.

  There were people at the bus stop and they couldn’t talk. His face was a mask. Her chest hurt at the thought of leaving him. Before she climbed on the bus, they kissed hard.

  ‘I’ll phone you, right?’ he said.

  On the way home she tried to work out when it had happened. When having sex had turned into making love. For all his talk about shagging, Neil had always taken his time, fine-tuning her. She had thought cynically that was because h’d had so much practice. Now she felt sure that had nothing to do with it. No one takes such care of something that has no meaning.

  Chapter 23

  ‘We’ll have to tell Bill, Chrissy.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘But it could be t
he same man. He could kill Neil?’

  ‘Don’t!’

  Rhona had never seen Chrissy vulnerable like this before. They had both arrived at work early on Monday morning. One look at Chrissy’s ashen face and she had shunted her into the back lab and shut the door.

  ‘Bill is a decent man and a good policeman. He would protect Neil.’

  ‘No!’ Chrissy was adamant. ‘I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.’ She was close to tears. ‘I should never have told you.’

  Rhona took Chrissy’s hand in hers. ‘You were right to tell me. You were braver than me, anyway.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I’ve got a few secrets of my own. I didn’t go to Paris with Sean. I was here all the time.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Things are, well, awkward. I saw him in the Art Gallery with a woman. I asked him if he was sleeping with her.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He told me it didn’t matter if he was.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he’s…’

  ‘Well, why didn’t he just say no?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe him anyway.’

  ‘Then Edward…’

  ‘Edward?’

  So Rhona told her everything.

  ‘He asked me to keep quiet because of the by-election.’

  ‘The slimy bastard!’ ‘And he comes over so charming.’

  ‘Oh Edward’s charming,’ Rhona assured her, ‘as long as he’s getting his own way.’

  ‘I hope you told him to get fucked.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Rhona almost smiled at Chrissy’s indignation. ‘I kept thinking about it.’ She looked desperate. ‘And then there was the murder. The boy had a birthmark just like Liam’s.’

  ‘Christ! You don’t think?’

  The words came pouring out now. How both the doctor and the Sergeant had commented how the boy looked like her, and then Bill, and the birthmark being in exactly the same place.

  ‘Your own DNA, you could check it against…’

  ‘Everything’s recorded, you know that. How do I explain checking my own DNA?’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Chrissy asked.

  ‘Edward made all the arrangements at the time. I phoned him and told him I wanted to know where our son was.’

  ‘I bet he shat himself.’

  Rhona managed a laugh.

  He sent me Liam’s adopted name to prove it wasn’t the dead boy.’

  ‘If I was you, I’d tell the newspapers. They’d love a story like that.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘No you couldn’t. The same way I can’t say about Neil.’

  ‘This man who hurt him. What if he’s the killer?’

  ‘Neil says it’s all part of the game. It’s what they pay for.’

  ‘Did he say anything else about this man. What he looked like? Anything that might link him to the investigation?’

  ‘No. Only that the guy had money. When I asked him to report it Neil said the police wouldn’t believe him. They have marked him down as low life. That’s what he said.’

  Rhona spent the rest of the day concentrating on the fibres found on the jeans, while Chrissy worked on the curtain, looking particularly for traces of the previous victim.

  ‘It’s a long shot, she told Chrissy, but if the killer used the curtain in his routine, it’s a chance. If we can match the first victim’s DNA profile to the samples we’ve collected from the curtain, bingo.

  Under the microscope the fibres from the jeans turned out to be of two types. One was easily identifiable as dark blue wool. The dye would take spectrometry or chromatography to identify. The remaining fibres were also natural. The boy was wearing cotton jeans and a tee-shirt, but these fibres were silk, cultivated silk. Rhona looked up from the microscope, a picture of the killer forming in her mind.

  He had money. He liked natural fibres next to his skin. He bought silk shirts and ties; pure dark blue wool jackets or trousers. He wore expensive cologne. He could be blonde or dark. For him, sex had to be violent. How many men in Glasgow matched such a description, assuming he even lived within the city boundaries?

  ‘Rhona. I think you’d better have a look at this.’

  The large sheet of filter paper they’d covered the curtain with had a number of purple patches on it, each identifying a semen deposit.

  ‘The curtain’s had a busy time of it.’ Rhona said.

  ‘I’ll cut out the relevant bits and make extracts.’

  ‘What about old blood?’

  Chrissy pointed to two dry filter papers. Each had been activated by the reagents phenolphthalein, alcohol and hydrogen peroxide to produce a pink coloration.

  ‘The spotting was small apart from the blood stains left by Jamie Fenton’s injuries,’ said Chrissy. ‘If the violence is escalating as you suggest, the spots may have come from previous small lacerations, caused by flaying, scratching, that sort of thing.’

  ‘The curtain seems to have been important to the killer. Why did he leave it behind?’ Rhona said. ‘He must have known it might hold clues to his identity.’

  ‘Something or someone disturbed him?’

  It seemed logical. Men who kill during or after sex usually have a routine. A structure they keep to. Their victims mere commodities. More expendable than a piece of material, thought Rhona. The killer would not have left the material behind unless he had to.

  ‘Oh, and the chemical analysis came through on the paint flake I found inside the boy’s pocket. It came from layered paint, the older leaded type. Maybe he had been somewhere where old domestic paint was being stripped down?’

  ‘That could apply to any number of student flats,’ Rhona said despondently.

  ‘What about the curtain tie-back?’

  ‘Trace elements of the dead boy, flakes of skin and sopts of the victim’s blood. Nothing else.’

  ‘Without a suspect, we’re working in the dark,’ Chrissy said.

  ‘I know and I’m already getting grief about the extra time we’re spending on this case. Nobody wants to foot the bill for it.’

  ‘Does Bill know that?’

  No. And I don’t plan to tell him. He’s already got the Super on his back since the newspaper exposé. He doesn’t need to know they’re squabbling over who pays the forensic bill. Let’s just hope Bill can trace the curtain, and soon.’

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Tony didn’t seem to notice his colleagues’ preoccupation, his own mind being obviously elsewhere. At lunchtime he went off to meet his Mexican girlfriend for a walk in the park.

  Immediately he left, Chrissy began to probe again.

  ‘So, Rhona. What are you goin to do about your son?’

  ‘I’ve told Edward I’m going to find Liam.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He kept on about the by-election. He’s got a good chance. It was a safe Tory seat before the general election and nobody expected it to swing to Labour. And he’s got big backers. He mentioned Sir James Dalrymple.’

  Rhona also described how she had met Gavin and how he had helped her.

  ‘This Gavin thing. It’s not serious is it?’ asked Chrissy suddenly.

  ‘What Gavin thing?’

  ‘You haven’t slept with him?’

  ‘Chrissy!’

  ‘Just asking.’ Chrissy gave Rhona an appraising look. ‘But you’ve thought about it. Right?’

  She waited for an answer and when none came she didn’t lay off. ‘What about Sean?’

  Rhona shrugged. It was possible to put Sean out of her head when he wasn’t around. If they split up, he would survive. There were plenty others waiting to take her place.

  ‘I think you’re wrong about Sean,’ said Chrissy. ‘Okay he does like women. But the way he looks at you is different.’ Chrissy searched for words.

  ‘Well?’ said Rhona.

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way.’ Chrissy hesitated. ‘It looks to me like you don’t want anyone to come too close. L
ike you don’t trust anyone except yourself.’ She looked apologetic, but she carried on. ‘I used to think it went with the territory. You had to behave like that, to be taken seriously in this job. Maybe you take that through into your life. Or maybe it’s just the way you’re made.’

  ‘That’s great, coming from you!’

  Rhona got up and walked over to the window, her hands clenched by her side.

  ‘I know,’ said Chrissy quietly. ‘Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to be like that,’ her voice tailed off, ‘I can see you doing it too.’ She came over and stood beside Rhona. ‘Neil’s a bit like Sean. Thinks he’s God’s gift. But he makes me laugh and he doesn’t ask me for anything.’

  The phone rang in the background and Rhona dragged her thoughts back to other things.

  It was Gavin. Would she like to come round for dinner that evening? He had something to show her. Something important.

  Chapter 24

  When Rhona arrived at Gavin’s flat at eight o’clock, she got no answer from the buzzer. She stepped back from the front door and looked up at the second floor window, wondering whether she was too early. The curtains were closed on the big bay windows and the electric light was on, despite the summer evening. Gavin was there alright.

  Rhona buzzed again, and this time he answered right away.

  ‘Come on up. But be warned. I’ve just got out of the shower.’

  Rhona stepped into a hallway filled with the delicious smell of garlic, olive oil and warm French bread. Instantly her mouth began to water and she realised with a pang of guilt, that she hadn’t opened the door to such a delicious smell since Sean left. When Gavin’s voice shouted to her to come on through to the kitchen, it made the feeling worse.

  He was standing at the cooker, stirring briskly at a pot, a large bath towel tied round his middle. When she walked in, he turned and smiled, while his hand kept on stirring. He was obviously an expert cook.

  ‘The sauce needs me,’ he explained.

  ‘Can I help?’ Rhona asked, finding it hard to keep her eyes off his naked torso.

  ‘You mean so I can go and get dressed and you can stop feeling embarrassed?’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted.