Driftnet Page 3

  Bill leaned back in the old leather chair he hadn’t let them throw out when they re-furnished his office. In this chair he could think, even if the Super thought it screwed up the décor.

  He felt sure that this was no regular rent boy. He hadn’t looked streetwise, trussed up in death in that sordid little flat, and he didn’t look streetwise alive in this photo.

  Why would he have wanted a photograph like that? He thought about his own son. Sixteen years old and not half as civilised looking. Why would Robbie want such a formal picture? Maybe for an identity card?

  Bill sat up and pressed the button on his desk. After a few insistent buzzes, the door opened and DC Clarke stuck her head round.

  ‘Check the universities and colleges, Janice. Ask if any of their students have gone awol.’

  ‘You think he might have been a student stuck for cash?’

  They’d already cautioned a student newspaper for advertising jobs in a local sauna to ‘willing young female students needing extra cash’. The editor had withdrawn the advert but was unrepentant. As far as he was concerned, it was a legit way to pay for an education.

  ‘Go and see the editor of the student paper that ran the sleazy advert. See if they’ve had any requests to place adverts for willing young boys.’

  Janice raised her eyebrows in distaste.

  ‘And get Dr MacLeod on the phone for me. Maybe she’s found something that might help confirm this line of enquiry.’

  But Dr MacLeod was not available. ‘Chrissy says she left two hours ago and hasn’t come back yet. Went to meet some mysterious man with a sexy voice.’

  ‘Constable… ’

  ‘Chrissy’s words Sir, not mine. They’ll get back to us later about any results.’

  It didn’t matter what day it was or what time of day, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was always busy. This morning there was a class in from Glasgow School of Art. The students were clustered on and around the south steps leading up from the main hall, sketch pads on their knees. The grand hall was beautiful, Rhona thought, each layer a work of art in itself. A series of statues gazed over the first floor balcony; smooth white marble forms that Rhona stroked as a child. Early spring sunshine filtered through the stained glass windows, rainbows over the dark polished wood.

  A group from a primary school was weaving towards the dinosaur room. Rhona wandered after them and watched them gaze up in awe at the reconstructed skeletons. A wee blonde boy was standing apart from the others, squinting through a microscope at the fossilised remains of a mosquito, that had been trapped for eternity in tree sap turned into amber. Jurassic Park comes to Glasgow, she thought. And what did that matter, if it made the child think and ask questions?

  Rhona’s father often brought her here and as they’d wandered together through the endless rooms she’d asked him hundreds of questions. Her Dad answered every one of them. He’d made most of it up, she knew that now, but it didn’t matter because his interest and sense of wonder had been real, and he’d passed that on to her.

  She’d left Chrissy at the lab sitting at the bench with a black cloud hovering above her head. Whatever the ‘domestic’ had been, Rhona knew better than to ask. If she had, she would have got her head in her hands to play with. When she told Chrissy where she was going, Chrissy said nothing, just gave her a look borrowed from the black cloud.

  Edward, Rhona knew, would be on time and so she had arrived early to compose herself. When she was with him she always had the feeling he was trying to manipulate her, get her to do what he wanted. Even now after all these years, he could still make her feel inadequate. In court it was different. There, she was discussing facts. She could weigh them objectively, make rational decisions. Edward could not unnerve her there.

  She left the wee boy squatting below the genetic pattern of the dinosaur, writing in big pencil letters in his jotter, and headed for the café. She wanted to be sitting with her coffee when Edward arrived.

  Edward Stewart turned into the car park, cutting abruptly across the path of a battered red mini. He regretted it almost immediately when a quick glance showed the driver to be an attractive young woman. He slowed down and gave her a friendly apologetic wave, hoping to give the impression his mind had been elsewhere (which it had), and was rewarded with a dazzling smile.

  There were very few cars in the car park but he knew that didn’t mean the Gallery was empty. He could only hope there wouldn’t be a horde of noisy school kids in the café when he met Rhona. Perhaps this wasn’t the ideal venue for what he had to say.

  He pulled up and waited for a moment before he switched off, taking pleasure in the easy purr of the big engine, then he glanced in the rear view mirror. He admired his tan, the result of a fortnight in Paxos with Fiona. He smoothed back his hair, adjusted the knot on the new Italian silk tie he’d awarded himself for the Guiliano case, and gave himself a confident smile. Think positive, he told himself. That’s what gets results.

  He climbed out, pointed the remote at the car and waited for the satisfying click. He had already decided that he would tell Rhona just enough and no more; he would rely on her need for privacy and her integrity. Both, he knew from experience, were reliable.

  The main hall confirmed his worse fears. The place was swarming with primary kids studying the exhibits. He glanced at his watch. Ten twenty-five. Thirty-five minutes before this lot would descend on the café for crisps and coca cola.

  Edward spotted Rhona as soon as he entered the café and was momentarily nonplussed. It would have been a point of advantage for him to have been there first. To be able to look up on her arrival, smile, stand up. Rhona was normally late. He had assumed that.

  She was looking the other way and he paused, both to take her in and to settle his thoughts. Rhona always had that effect on him. Like setting foot on an enticing path to who knows where? He had started down that path once before and turned back when the going got too tough.

  It was then she glanced round and spotted him. The sound of her voice calling his name made his stomach spasm.

  ‘Rhona,’ he put on a bright smile and walked forward. As always, he imagined what he must look like as he approached her and made instant small adjustments to improve the picture. He brushed her cheek lightly with his lips. ‘It’s great to see you,’ he said.

  The lie was not lost on her and he immediately regretted his choice of opening remark. He tried to retrieve the situation. ‘Would you like another coffee?’

  She nodded without saying anything.

  Edward headed for the counter, annoyed to find the confidence of the tan and the silk tie evaporating. There was only one person in front of him. He was soon back at the table.

  Rhona waited for him to speak, her face expressionless. It was the look she wore when she knew he was going to ask her to do something. The look he had always striven to change, by fair means or foul. Today would be no exception.

  When the constituency secretary phoned him and offered him the candidacy, Edward felt like punching the air and shouting, ‘Ya beauty’. It was what his kids might have done. Instead he said yes, walked through to the sitting room, poured two large whiskies and gave one to Fiona. She accepted it without a word and held it high in the air. The triumph was no less hers. It was what she wanted too. Jonathan and Morag were both upstairs, but they didn’t call them down to tell them. Teenagers did not, could not, understand the significance of such an event.

  They sat together that evening, basking in mutual congratulation, refilling their whisky glasses and discussing the implications. The seat he was offered was a promising one. There was no doubt about that. There were few seats in Scotland that they would be likely to hold on to, and this was one of them. If all went well, Edward’s future was assured. He would be less involved with his law work, that was true. But he had planned ahead. He was already on a number of Company Boards and his knowledge of European law brought in consultancy work. Becoming an MP would only serve to enhance the comfortable life Edward
Stewart had created for himself.

  Rhona had waited long enough.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It was good of you to come,’ Edward began.

  ‘Cut the small talk, Edward. I’m not a future constituent. You and I both know that you wouldn’t have asked me here unless it was absolutely necessary. It must be something important.’ Rhona’s voice was rigid with emotion.

  She watched Edward’s face tense up momentarily, then readjust into something more pleasant. Whatever speech he had planned for her was being seriously rewritten.

  ‘So?’ she said.

  ‘Okay, okay. Give me a chance.’

  She waited.

  ‘I asked you to come here this morning because,’ a pause here, - an attempt at sincerity, ‘I need your help.’

  Silence, then her own incredulous voice.

  ‘You need my help?’

  She was making him squirm, and she had to admit she was enjoying it. Edward looked as though he might give up on the whole thing, then he marshalled himself.

  He reached for the sugar.

  ‘Rhona, you’re overreacting. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep in touch. After all, we were once very close.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘That wasn’t my fault.’ His voice adopted a petulant tone. ‘If you remember, you walked out on me.’

  ‘I wonder why? Oh yes, I remember. It was shortly after I came home to find you using the flat for a lunchtime fuck. Your legal secretary, wasn’t it?’

  ‘If I had to look elsewhere for affection…’ he began reproachfully.

  ‘Don’t you dare blame that on me.’ Her heart was thumping now. This was ridiculous. She was arguing about something that happened donkey’s years ago. She got up.

  ‘No, please don’t.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘You’re right of course.’ His voice was apologetic. ‘It was all my fault.’

  Rhona sat down again, emotionally exhausted. She would let Edward have his say and go.

  ‘After all, you were ill,’ he continued, searching for the right words, ‘because of the incident.’

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘I should have made allowances, but I needed…’

  ‘Sex?’

  He was annoyed. ‘Company. You would hardly speak to me, let alone… anyway that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Your sex drive?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘That’s not funny, Rhona. I am referring to the incident of course.’

  ‘The incident?’ she repeated in disbelief. The feeling of hysteria that Edward had generated in her was changing to depression. Edward couldn’t possibly mean what she thought he meant. The incident? Of course. What else would Edward call it? But she still had to ask. Had to make sure.

  ‘What incident?’

  He ignored her question, which could only mean one thing. She was right.

  He began again, his voice a little firmer this time. She found herself concentrating on his mouth, out of which that word had come.

  ‘I wanted to speak to you before the by-election,’ he was explaining.

  Rhona stared over his shoulder. The little boy from the dinosaur room was heading towards the cafe. He looked excited, clutching an open jotter in his hand. His teacher bent to look at his drawing, giving quiet words of praise.

  ‘Rhona?’ Edward’s voice was tinged with annoyance.

  ‘Why are you bringing this up now, Edward? It was seventeen years ago,’ she said looking down at her cup, not trusting herself to look at him.

  ‘You know what the press is like,’ his voice had a jocular tone now. ‘A story like that about a prospective MP,’ he laughed a little. ‘And I wouldn’t like your privacy to be violated.’

  ‘My privacy!’

  The words exploded from her and the school party at the next table fell silent, with the awkwardness of children in the vicinity of an adult argument. Edward looked uncomfortable, then pulled himself together and smiled vaguely. His discomfort, she sensed, had turned to intense irritation. She had often irritated him, she remembered. Whenever she had seemed ‘over emotional’, as he put it.

  ‘I have to get back,’ she said, standing up and looking at her watch.

  ‘Right.’ He stood up beside her and spoke firmly as if the end of the meeting had been decided by him. ‘I’ll walk through the park with you.’

  ‘No you won’t.’

  He stepped back, surprised.

  ‘Goodbye, Edward. And Edward, don’t contact me again… ever.’

  Chapter 5

  Rhona left the Gallery by the double doors hoping they would swing back and slap Edward right in his condescending face. What a wanker. She should have known better. The incident! How could Edward talk about Liam like that?

  Rhona headed towards Kelvingrove Park. At her back the children from the primary school were laughing and screaming as they came through the revolving doors. They ran down the steps and headed for their bus. Rhona turned quickly down the avenue of trees towards the river, shutting out the sound of their laughter. When she reached the bridge, she stopped, breathless. Below, the water moved sluggishly between banks of bracken. She leaned on the metal rail, watching the muddy swirl, and let herself remember.

  It was the morning they’d taken Liam away. The nurse had given her a pill to stop the milk coming through. Her nipples were painfully tender against her night dress, making dark circles in the white cotton. Liam was lying in the cot beside her, washed and changed. She reached over and touched his face. The blue-veined eyelids quivered and the small mouth began to suck at nothing. She remembered the shape of him, the long legs curled up when she wanted to change him, the folds of skin waiting to be filled. They had told her he was perfect. She wasn’t to worry about the birthmark, a strawberry shaped lump on the inside of his right leg. It would fade.When she first told Edward she was pregnant, he had been kind. He had put his arm round her and she had nestled into him, feeling his heart thumping in his chest. He was trying to work out what the hell to do next. She knew he would not want the baby. She was nineteen, he was twenty-one. He had just graduated. A law firm had already grabbed him, he was so good. He chose his words carefully. It was the beginning of their life together, he said. They weren’t ready for a baby. She had to finish her degree. Do her PhD. She thought she felt the same way. She didn’t want a baby. She wanted a career. And that’s what she got.

  Edward never even came to the hospital (it was better that way, he explained). Edward had never seen his son at all.

  Rhona could hardly bear the memory of it all. This had not happened to her for a long time. This thinking and feeling. Thinking about stuff that could never be changed. And the guilt. She shook her head and her eyes were so full of tears that the trees dissolved together, leaves into branches, branches into trunks, in a crazy kaleidoscope. This hadn’t happened for years. She had thought it would never happen again. She looked in her pocket for something to wipe her eyes. She should have stayed away from him. Well away. Even professionally their paths rarely crossed. Edward was not a criminal lawyer. Crimes of passion were not his style. They were too messy. Like having a baby at the wrong time.

  Rhona sat down on a bench and an old man looked round as if he might speak to her, so she coughed into her hankie and wiped her nose and grinned at him as he muttered something about the rain being on its way. Thank God, she thought, for the shitey Scottish fucking weather. If it rains, no one will see me cry.

  And it did. Above her the clouds rolled in, thick and grey. She watched as it speckled round her feet, felt the drops fall singly on her head, then in multiples. She got up and began to walk, holding her face up to the downpour.

  When she got back to the lab, there was a message for her on the desk. She looked guiltily at the clock above the door. Two o’clock. She must have been wandering about for at least two hours. She hung up her wet coat and went and washed her face and combed her hair, then sat down at her desk.

  Chrissy’s
message on the pad was brief. Rhona could smell annoyance in the sweep of the pen and the final period that threatened to pierce the paper. Chrissy was peeved about her disappearance ‘when there was urgent work to be done’. She had had to go over to the chemistry lab with some flakes of paint she’d found in the jacket pocket and she hadn’t had a chance to start on the semen stains. And DC Clarke had been on the phone from DI Wilson’s office looking for results.

  Rhona settled down to do the work she should have been doing instead of listening to Edward patronise her. Chrissy had meticulously entered the results from her tests in the lab notebook. The rest was in her notes. She’d examined the boy’s clothes in detail and taken samples from the collar and cuffs of his jacket for DNA purposes. Everything was standard teenage wear that could be bought in a variety of shops throughout the country and so unlikely to help them find out who he was. She had found some fibres on the jeans which still had to be analysed. She had also established the boy’s blood group from the sample taken from his arm the previous night and compared it to the large bloodstain on the bed. There was no surprise in the match. The boy was type A, as were approximately forty-two per cent of the UK population. As for semen and other blood samples on the cover, there was a lot of material still to cover. Oh, and Dr Sissons had sent round the silk cord for them to examine. He had finished with it now that he’d established the cause of death.

  Rhona sat down at the comparison microscope to check the control hair she’d taken from the boy’s head against the two hairs (dark and blonde) she’d found on his body. Proving hairs to be from the same person was tricky. Proving them to be from different people was easier. Through the eyepiece, the two hairs side by side looked like two sections of a tree trunk, patterned and grained. In the control hair the bark was smooth, in the other the bark was significantly shredded. Cuticles, cortex and medulla of the darker hair were all significantly different. She then examined the blonde hair and was surprised to find similar differences. At first sight, neither of the hairs belonged to the victim. Of course, he might have picked them up from sharing a towel, but one of them might belong to the murderer.