Copyright

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Helen Fields 2018

Cover photograph © Alamy

Cover design © www.blacksheep-uk.com

Helen Fields asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008181611

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008181628

Version 2020-10-29

Dedication

For Sollie

Changing the world one great big smile at a time. Remember this, my darling boy – there are no limits to what you can achieve. None at all. You take my breath away.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Keep Reading for a sneak peek of The Shadow Man …

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Lily’s life was very nearly over, it was just that she didn’t know it yet. He stroked the photograph of her he’d kept by his bed for the last few months. In it, she was bending over the edge of a pond, throwing bread for ducks, laughing, entirely unaware of her stunted future.

Much remained to be done before the evening, but he could allow himself a few moments with his box of treasures. He pulled the bottom drawer from his bedside table, putting his hands into the dark void beneath to grip the wooden container. He’d made it in woodwork at school – one of the few triumphs in a largely wasted period of his life – but then he’d moved around a lot, and academics had never come easily.

Sliding the lid off, he caught his breath looking at the scraps of lives contained within. A brooch, inlaid with semi-precious stones, in the shape of a sprig of heather. He remembered the back-breaking hours of gardening he’d had to do for that one, never allowed a rest to avoid the rain, yet it had been worth it in the end. Then there was the tiny silver letter opener, so well used and well loved that part of the swirling design on its handle had been worn away. A lucky coin, or so its owner had claimed, kept always in a pocket or a purse. Just went to prove there was no such thing as good luck. Finally, a tooth. More specifically a crown, dislodged in the torment and drama of those final moments when nothing had gone to plan. He liked the smoothness of its surface, the integral part it had played in the life he’d ended. Where did a body’s energy go once death was complete? He thought back to his school days once more. There had been something about energy changing form but never ceasing to exist. Not enough knowledge to have passed a science exam, but he was pleased with the tiny pearl of wisdom. He wondered if it was possible to breathe a dying person’s energy in.

Making a small space in the centre of the objects in his box, he imagined a new prize there. Its owner had taken more time to cultivate than the rest. Lily kept herself to herself, enjoyed family life, and worked hard. Soon he would have his memento of her, ready to savour among the others he’d worked so hard for.

He checked the tiny vial of cannabis oil he’d spent weeks brewing. Buying small quantities here and there rather than risking scrutiny for purchasing a massive amount in one go had been time consuming but worthwhile. Most of the process after that had been easy, snagging only when he’d tested it on himself and ended up sleeping so deeply that he’d missed work the next day. Not good. He had expenses. Such a complex calling required careful financing, and cash in hand jobs were in short supply.

Sliding the box back beneath the drawer space, he ran through the details once more in his head. His car was ready. All the lights were working – no point attracting attention from the police over something as ridiculous as a blown bulb. Everything had been handled with gloves. All his supplies. There wasn’t one item touched freely. He’d watched enough true crime television to know that these days fingerprints weren’t the issue. Skin cells could leave enough DNA to make a case against him. He didn’t want to get caught. There was so much to do. So many more people that needed his attention.

All ready. He could even afford the time for a nap. Better not to be tired given all he had to do. Not just the physical aspects. Killing was hard work. Anyone who believed a human being perished in the few seconds portrayed in TV crime dramas was an idiot. Death, more often than not, was a slow striptease of a show. There were ways it could be done fast – gunshot, explosion, massive head trauma – but hands on, it inevitably took longer. Suffocation and drowning were the real time-heavy activities, and chances were that you’d end up injured yourself. Scratches, groin kicks, broken bones. He’d had enough of that.

Lying back on his bed, he closed his eyes. The anticipation was all a part of it. Rushing to the end point was like reading the final chapter of a book first. It was the build-up, the investment in the characters, that made the pay-off so thrilling. In the past he’d struggled to find the ideal victims, and now three had come along at once. He laughed. It was a brutal choke of a noise that exploded in the air like a firecracker. It was a cruel sound, but he wasn’t a cruel man. Not unnecessarily. Only when cruelty was absolutely required.

Chapter Two

‘Hey, sweetie, let me get you another drink.’ Joe smiled at Lily as she returned from the pub toilets. Lily squeezed between a final pair of Friday night oblivion seekers, failing to notice the one staring at her backside as she turned side-on to get through. Fair enough, Joe thought. It was a body worth staring at and he wasn’t going to start a fight over something so petty.

‘Joe, it’s my turn. You don’t always have to buy,’ she said as she dropped to the seat at his side. They huddled in the limited space, raising their voices against the increasing uproar of drinkers, music and the shuffle of feet on the wooden floor.

‘Are you saving money for university?’ he asked, gathering up their empty glasses.

‘You know I am,’ she replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean …’

‘And are you going to bust your ass to become the best doctor ever?’ Joe leaned down to kiss her. The crowd of girls sharing their table rolled their eyes, tutting, jealous beneath their masks of disgust.

‘You’re crazy.’ Lily kissed him back.

‘So am I doing the world a favour by helping Miss Lily Eustis save future lives without starting her degree an extra’ – he looked at the ceiling, calculating – ‘eight pounds forty-six in debt?’

‘I give in,’ Lily laughed, kissing him again then pressing her face into his neck as she blushed.

‘Okay, you got me, I have a thing about women in white coats with stethoscopes. This is my way of secretly funding my own bizarre fetish,’ Joe said. Lily mock punched his arm as he walked away. He didn’t hear the woman staring at him whistle under her breath. He didn’t notice as the girl sitting next to them looked daggers at Lily. They were a couple lost in each other.

Getting to the bar was like climbing a mountain. Drinks spilled down backs as people moved away with their hands too full. Positions were claimed and voices raised when one customer was wrongly served before another. Requests to change the music were yelled, and complaints made that someone was locked in one of only two cubicles in the ladies’. A beer pump ran flat. Joe stood patiently, quick to smile, to forgive the toe-treaders and elbow-jabbers. He had Lily, and she was everything he’d dreamed of.

In his car was everything they needed for the perfect romantic evening. Wood, firelighters, matches, a flask of liquor to warm them up, a sleeping bag. Even the weather had been kind. It would be cold but the rain was going to stay away. He’d even been thorough enough to check out their destination a few days ago. Edinburgh would spread majestically beneath them, its lights a reflection of the stars above, clouds willing. He would, at last, have Lily all to himself, and the time to show her what she really meant to him.

* * *

It was too cold for anyone to have been outside naked. That was Mark McVeigh’s first – and most ridiculous – thought. The scene the drone camera was relaying back into his monitor was nothing like he’d imagined he might capture. The wintry frost and barren rocks, yes. A hard, blank sky with a horizon veiled in layers of fog, yes. A woman sprawled, one knee bent, one leg straight, one arm behind her head, the other slung out across the ground, no. Her long red hair was wind swept, a fluttering veil over her eyes. At her feet were the ashy remains of a fire. Abandoned at her side was a box of matches. He moved the drone closer, trying to convince himself that he might see her ribcage rise and fall. No joy. Mark directed the drone towards her face, hoping he wasn’t about to be accused of some brand of perversion, and wishing to any number of deities that his gut instinct was wrong. Being wrong right now would be good. The drone copter was out of his eye-line over a ridge. He controlled its descent, careful not to bring it down directly over the woman in case she awoke, sat up and collided with it. Closer inspection brought no relief. The drone was fitted with a decent lens, and his screen was filled with shades of blue that had nothing to do with the frost or the winter-dead heathers. The blue was her lips, her open eyes, her veins and oxygen-starved skin.

Mark sprinted, knowing it was pointless as he exerted himself, but the idea of merely walking towards the dead woman smacked of disrespect. He took the ridge on his hands and knees, the longer, gentler pathway around the edge of the hilltop out of the question. He was bleeding by the time he could see her directly, a tableau on the ground, the good people of Edinburgh waking unaware in the distance, Arthur’s Seat above them. Ignoring his skinned knees and cut hands, Mark flew down the scree slope, calling out to her as he went.

His drone was a grounded, whirring mess of plastic and metal a few metres away. He hadn’t even realised he’d thrown down the remote. The mobile in his pocket was playing a game of cat and mouse with his fingers. Then he was at her side, kneeling on the frozen ground, pressing his fingers against her neck, aware that it wasn’t possible for a body that colour to have a pulse. He ripped off his winter coat in spite of his certain knowledge that life had fled her flesh, in order to cover her nakedness. After that he called the police, giving the best description he could of their location within the mountainous landscape that stood regal over Scotland’s capital.

Close-up, Mark could see she was younger than he’d thought, the freezing night having robbed her of the blush denoting her youth. Like him, he thought, she was in that teetering abyss between teenage and adulthood. A tiny diamond in the side of her nose sparkled with the first rays of morning winter sun, off-setting the blonde highlights artfully added to her copper hair. It was all he could do to stop himself brushing the hair from her face, but then he would see her eyes more clearly and he didn’t want that. Mark stood up, peering over the ridge of the hill to check for approaching vehicles, but there was no clear view of any roads. In summer, free of corpses, it would have been a private and sheltered idyll. A waving patch of red in the scrub grass some twenty metres away caught his eye.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said. It had seemed rude not to say anything, even to a dead body. Without his coat, the cold was already setting in. He forced himself into a jog to keep warm, wondering how long the police would take to arrive, given how hard the spot was to access. His own car was a mile away at the foot of the hills, the steep slopes and rocky tracks inhospitable to anything other than four-wheel drives.

The red object turned out to be a shirt, a warm one made from heavy cotton, perfect for nights by the fire and drinking in pubs. He picked it up, looking back at the girl, assessing the rough size as a match for her, coming up positive. A couple of minutes’ walk further down the hillside he found a bra hanging off the edge of a rock, stark white, the metal fastener icy on his fingers.

Mark heard the helicopter before he saw it, the whap-whap of the rotors scaring wildlife and echoing off the rocks. The police circled, getting a location on the body and communicating the scene to the units whose blue lights became visible for the first time below. Mark carried the clothing he’d found back up the steep bank towards the girl.

A face appeared over the ridge, followed by two more. The one in the lead walked directly to Mark, holding out his hand.

‘Good morning,’ he said, his French accent clipped but still obvious. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Luc Callanach. I’m assuming it was you who called this in?’ Mark nodded. ‘Let’s get clear of the scene. How are you doing?’

‘Don’t really know,’ Mark said. ‘Better than that girl, I guess.’

Better than the girl, indeed, Callanach thought, hoping death had found her accidentally, wondering how much time he would spend staring at her face in photos on the incident room board. Did anyone ever sense it, he wondered, when they awoke on the morning they were destined to die? Did they take one extra glance in the mirror before they dashed from their homes to their jobs or studies, feeling that something in the universe had shifted? In a momentary burst of anger, he hated Scotland’s chill air, its damp and greyness. The girl had perished in the freezing cold, watching her last breaths wisp into the air. It was no way to go. A bitter, stark and lonely passing. He could only hope she had been unaware that it was coming.

Chapter Three

Five months into her promotion, Detective Chief Inspector Ava Turner was still suffering from chronic impostor syndrome. It wasn’t having so many people under her command, or the meetings she was expected to attend, nor the new office. It was simply that she no longer felt able to hang around in the incident room, drinking coffee and dissecting the day’s events, having a bit of a laugh when circumstances allowed it. What she liked even less was the pressure of balancing the public well-being with Police Scotland’s magically shrinking budgets. It felt as if the word ‘no’ had become her go-to response recently. Could they afford another expert for a certain case? No. Could the Major Investigation Team have a few more uniformed officers to help with enquiries? No. Could they trial some new software technology to filter CCTV footage? What the hell do you think the answer to that is? It wasn’t that Ava regretted taking the promotion. It was more that every step up the ladder turned her dreams of doing good and solving crimes into something that felt more like a dripping tap of disappointment.

Whilst her professional life was being lived in an increasingly public space, her private life had taken on a positively desolate quality. The women and men from MIT felt the distance between themselves and their Detective Chief Inspector was too great to invite her for their occasional trips to the pub, and Ava would have felt obliged to make an excuse even if an invitation had been extended. Her peers were too busy with children or spouses to want to socialise after work. The youngest of her rank in her mid-thirties and as yet unmarried, Ava had no such distractions. Her best friend was in the throes of a new relationship hotter than a Carolina Reaper chilli pepper and would be unavailable until either she or her latest girlfriend remembered that the rest of the world was still functioning beyond their bedroom door. The price of success, apparently, was endlessly long evenings. Ava stared at her office phone, knowing better than to want it to ring, understanding that her need to be occupied could only come at someone else’s cost.

Detective Sergeant Lively, in his late fifties and unaware of the concept of political correctness, appeared without knocking. Ava considered reminding him that announcing his intention to enter was commonly considered good manners, but was too pleased to have company to issue any sort of reprimand.

‘Did you find DI Callanach?’ Ava asked.

‘I did. We checked the men’s toilets first. He’s usually to be found not far from a mirror. Surprisingly though in this instance he was out doing some actual detective work, ma’am.’

‘Thanks for that, DS Lively. If you’ve finished your jibes you might like to tell me what case your commanding officer is attending,’ Ava said.

Lively grinned. He and Callanach didn’t have the best of relationships to begin with although more recently they’d settled for casual avoidance and occasional insults. ‘A body’s been found in the hills up at Arthur’s Seat. There’ll have to be an investigation but initial reports are that no foul play was involved. The pathologist has been to the scene. There are no obvious injuries or signs of violence. The body’s been taken for autopsy. Only outstanding matter is identification. Once the victim’s name is ascertained and the family has been informed, looks like it’ll be a straight forward case. Nothing to bother you with, I’m sure.’

‘Even so, would you ask DI Callanach to brief me once he gets back? I’d like to keep up to date with it,’ Ava said. She looked at the mug in DS Lively’s hand. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance that’s for me?’ She smiled.

Lively took a long sip. ‘Sorry ma’am, I’d have made you one, only I know that’s frowned upon these days. Wouldn’t want anyone to think you expected the rank and file to make you coffee. Flies in the face of modern policing, that does.’ He left.

Ava leaned back in her chair, cursing the adrenalin her body had generated at the mention of a new investigation. It was a sick and sad indictment on policing that they should become bored rather than delighted when they had nothing to do, but there it was. It was tragic that a soul had perished up on Arthur’s Seat, and Ava was grateful there was no suggestion of criminal involvement, but she needed something to occupy her other than signing off on the annual MIT dinner.

Some humorist had arranged for it to take place at a French restaurant this year – a sarcastic homage to DI Callanach, she imagined – his half-French half-Scottish ancestry still the butt of as many jokes as when he’d joined Police Scotland from Interpol a year earlier. Even his accent had paled into insignificance compared to the mickey-taking he’d had to endure when his squad had found out about his history as a model. Callanach had the sort of face it was hard not to stare at, and women regularly did. His dark eyes, long eyelashes, strong jaw and olive skin were never destined to fit in with the crowd, a fact Ava found constantly amusing when they socialised. Or when they used to socialise, Ava corrected herself. Since her promotion they’d played an awkward game of saying they really should do something together soon, never defining what or when.

She had one hand on her phone to call Callanach for an update as it rang in her fingers. She snatched it to her ear. ‘Turner,’ she said.

‘Goodness me, could you not answer the phone like that, please? I’d rather not have people contacting the Major Investigation Team feeling as if you’re mid-crisis before they’ve even introduced themselves. We’re not mid-crisis, are we?’ Detective Superintendent Overbeck asked.

‘No, ma’am,’ Ava said. ‘Sorry. I was just about to …’

‘Good, good. I have the shortlisted applicants for the open Detective Inspector position. I thought you should have a chance to look through them before we interview so I’ll email the list to you this afternoon. If you could let me have your thoughts some time tomorrow that would be helpful. You were invited to drinks with the City Fellows this evening but I gather you’re not attending. Why is that?’

‘Oh, that’s this evening? I’ve got a physiotherapist appointment. Didn’t want to take any time off work for it, so I arranged it in the evening. It’ll be another month if I cancel tonight,’ Ava said, glad the Superintendent was quizzing her by phone rather than in person. In spite of years watching other people lie convincingly during interviews, Ava still hadn’t honed that particular skill.

‘Fucking right you shouldn’t take time off work for a quick massage. Too late to change it now I suppose, but in future you need to remember that this is how the game’s played. Don’t miss the next one. And keep the overtime levels low again next month. We’re within budget for once, which means I’m not getting shit from the board. I’d like to keep it that way,’ Overbeck sniped.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Ava said, already talking to a dead line. She dropped Dr Ailsa Lambert, Edinburgh’s Chief Pathologist, an email asking for an update on the body at Arthur’s Seat, then allowed herself the guilty pleasure of checking what films were on at the cinema. She preferred the reruns of old classics that occasionally made the late night showings, but right now she’d settle for anything mindless with a large popcorn. Luck was with her. There was an 11pm showing of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in The West. Ava had a date with Charles Bronson, which was an improvement on another night home alone, and was close to a lottery win compared with the City Fellows’ drinks party. There was tedious, then there was being called ‘dearie’ by eighty-year-old men who felt entitled to ask you to fetch them another drink just because you happened to be a different gender to them, and who wanted to talk golf handicaps while you stood silently and looked impressed. Detective Superintendent Overbeck might have become adept at playing those promotion inducing games, but Ava was both less tolerant and less ambitious.

Her door opened again and DS Lively reappeared.

‘Would you give me a break?’ Ava sighed. ‘If you’ve come to taunt me about the coffee, can I recommend …’ She caught the look on his face. The usually sour, perpetually hard-done-by grimace was slack but his neck was drawn in tight, his throat working hard but producing no sound. DS Lively was, she realised, doing his damnedest not to cry. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘It’s DCI Begbie,’ Lively said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Ava stood up, knowing what the look on her detective sergeant’s face meant, needing to hear him say the words anyway. ‘Stop apologising, Lively, and just say it.’

‘Ma’am, I’m not sure what happened. His car’s been found. Too late to do anything. The Chief’s dead.’

Ava felt a stab of pain in her chest. She was winded, crushed, the sentiment producing a remarkable physical effect. Her former commanding officer and decades-long friend was gone.

Chapter Four

Out at Gipsy Brae recreation ground, north of the city, the wind sliced sideways. It carried away voices and notebooks, whipping hair and leaving the landscape stark. The road had been cordoned off before the entrance to the park. Ava sat in her parked car, delaying the walk to where Begbie’s vehicle was lit up in the distance. The recently retired Detective Chief Inspector George Begbie had been a policeman’s policeman. Crabby at times, long-suffering, straight to the point and a champion of victims. In all the years Ava had worked with him, she never once saw him lose sight of what mattered. Somewhere at the heart of every case, someone had been hurt or had lost something. The Chief had fought for those people with all his considerable might, ignoring the brass bearing down from above, paying no attention to the press, oblivious to the politicians. He’d been as sharp as a pin and never expected a single officer to work more hours than he himself put in.

It was Begbie who had saved Ava from the misogyny that might have cost her a career as a detective, giving her a post on the Major Investigation Team, promoting her against more obvious candidates, even suspending her not long ago while her name was cleared regarding a breach of protocol. She knew it had hurt him to do that. They had evolved from colleagues to firm friends over late nights at crime scenes and early mornings when they were short-staffed. Even as a junior officer, Begbie had never excluded her from meetings, seeing her potential. If the rest of the squad liked and admired him, Ava had loved him like a favourite uncle. One who had occasionally shouted at her and made her work three days straight without sleep but, nonetheless, he was most of the reason she’d stuck with a career in policing. She didn’t want to believe he was gone.

Ava locked her car and went on foot, wondering why George Begbie, who favoured warm pubs and comfy chairs, had chosen this barren place to say his final goodbye to the world. Staring out across the North Sea with Cramond Island to his left, Granton Harbour on the right, and nothing but vast grey skies reflected on icy water, it was a horribly bleak ending for such an oversized personality.

Ava hung back at the top of the small road that led down to the sea allowing access for caravans and maintenance trucks, now also to Begbie’s ancient Land Rover. He had parked it away from the footpaths, facing the waves. No one would voluntarily have gone close to a lone male sitting in a vehicle, especially such an intimidatingly large figure. Ava put on a white suit, shoe covers and gloves, for what little good it would do. A determination of suicide had already been made, subject to autopsy. A snake of piping had been disconnected from the car window and lay still on the grass, malevolent even now. Tenting had been erected to protect the scene – more from prying eyes than to preserve evidence – and the busy silhouettes of Scenes of Crime Officers were bustling.

Walking down the gentle grass slope, hands in pockets, Ava was mindful that the light had gone from the day and soon a full lighting rig would be required to process the scene. A young Sergeant, his uniform immaculate, face a picture of concern, walked towards her.

‘Do you have your ID on you, please?’ he said.

Ava handed it over, too tired to explain who she was.

‘Major Investigation Team?’ the officer asked. ‘I’d hardly have thought this was your territory.’

‘Sergeant, if you’ve finished telling a Detective Chief Inspector where she should be and what she should be doing, perhaps you could chase that dog walker over there off this grass. And you address me as ma’am or DCI. Now get going.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, pulling his coat up around his neck and heading off into the wind.

Ava took a deep breath. She hated rudeness, particularly the brand that grew from superiority. If Begbie had taught her nothing else in all the years he’d been her commanding officer, it was that rank came with a responsibility to be kind and to listen. She reined in her emotions.

‘Where’s Dr Lambert?’ Ava asked a passing Scenes of Crime Officer.

‘Busy elsewhere,’ the officer said, stepping around Ava to take a new pair of plastic gloves from a box. Ava took her by the arm.

‘She’s busy? The deceased is a former Detective Chief Inspector. He spent twenty years attending crimes scenes like this and now he’s not a priority? I want to know what happened here. There’s no way George Begbie committed suicide.’

The officer clenched her jaw, pulled her arm out of Ava’s grasp and took a step away.

‘A minibus skidded on a patch of ice and left the road half an hour ago, carrying eight children. Two of those are fatalities. Dr Lambert is making that the priority. If you’ll excuse me.’

‘I hadn’t heard,’ Ava said to the Scenes of Crime Officer’s back. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘DCI Turner?’ a voice said from behind her. A man stepped in offering his hand as the SOCO retreated. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Dimitri. Never had the pleasure of working with George Begbie but I understand he was well respected by his men. Why don’t we let forensics do their bit? I always feel like a spare part while they’re processing. We could wait in my car if you like.’

‘That won’t be necessary but I appreciate the offer,’ Ava said. ‘I’d like to see the body in situ, though. I take it this is your patch.’

‘I was assigned to deal with it, although it seems unlikely to be an ongoing police matter.’ He paused and looked towards Begbie’s car. ‘I’ve lost people I worked with and it’s hard. The trick is not to turn it into a crusade. As soon as you start overthinking it, you lead yourself in all the wrong directions. I’m not trying to put you off, but the best thing to do really would be to leave it to us. You can count on me to look after him, and any information you want, you only have to ask.’

Ava glanced at the Chief Inspector she’d heard of but never met in the flesh. He was so softly spoken that she’d found herself craning her neck forward to listen. Close-up, she realised his eyes were so pale a shade of blue that they were hard to look away from. His hair was white but not by virtue of his age. She guessed him to be in his mid-fifties although his face appeared sculpted from some organic material that didn’t age. Before she could respond to his suggestion, a stretcher appeared from the vicinity of the car with a body bag on it. It was carried to a waiting van for transportation to the city mortuary. Whatever assumptions had been made at the scene, there would still have to be an autopsy.

‘Let me walk you back to your car,’ Chief Inspector Dimitri said.

‘No need.’ Ava shook her head. ‘I’d like to inform George Begbie’s wife myself, if you don’t mind. I appreciate your officers will follow up and take a statement from her. But tonight … I know her. He’d have preferred it to come from a friend.’

‘I understand that,’ Dimitri said. ‘The facts, those few we have, are that a couple walking the coast path were aware of the sound of the engine, walked past to cut up to the road and noticed the hose running from the exhaust. They wrenched open a door – apparently the rear passenger side was unlocked – but by then it was too late. They called for an ambulance and police. The first responders asked for a plate check and that’s how we ID’d him. I’m afraid to say it all looks tragically standard, if you can think of it that way. There’s a bottle of whisky, empty, on the front passenger seat. The radio was playing. No signs of a struggle, broken windows or door locks.’

‘Thank you,’ Ava muttered. ‘I appreciate your kindness. My squad will be devastated. You’ll let me know what you conclude?’

‘Of course. He’s in good hands, I promise,’ Dimitri said.

Ava nodded, shoved her hands down deep into her pockets and walked away, pausing before climbing into her car to look back down towards the crashing sea, a force as destructive and brutal as the news she was about to deliver to George Begbie’s wife.

The Begbies’ house was out east of the city at Portobello, where St Mark’s Place met Argyle Crescent. A traditionally built home, with stone graduating from brown to black by years and precipitation, it stood out from its neighbours by virtue of the miniature turret rising at one side. Ava remembered the Chief joking about how his home was literally his castle, and it looked exactly like a tiny replica of one. He and his wife had loved the place, moving there a decade ago and as far as Ava knew they had been planning to remain there for the foreseeable future. A future that had been stopped firmly in its tracks. The house had been filled with warmth and laughter whenever Ava had visited in the past. This trip would mark the end of all that. It would never be the same again. Not for her, and certainly not for Glynis Begbie once Ava had delivered the dreadful news. She waited in her car a while as Mark Knopfler sang of jackals and ravens, half expecting Begbie’s wife-cum-widow to step out of her front door, a sixth sense leading her onto the street and into Ava’s path. She didn’t appear. Ava clicked off the radio, made sure her clothing was tidy, and walked the few steps up the front path to the door.

‘Ava! How lovely to see you, my darling. George didn’t warn me or I’d have baked. Honestly, that man. So distracted all the time …’

‘Glynis,’ Ava cut in. There was a second when she said nothing, that television moment as Ava always thought of it, where somehow just the physical presence of a police officer unexpectedly on the doorstep was all the omen required to trigger knowledge and grief. It didn’t come.

‘Come on in, quickly now. You’ll freeze out there. Probably just my age but I feel the cold all the time these days. Give me your coat. I’ll call George on his mobile and get him back. He’ll kick himself if he misses you.’

‘Glynis,’ Ava said again. ‘Let’s sit down.’ There it was. That fractional falter of her smile, the double blink before she responded.

‘Of course. Come into the lounge. Forgive the mess, I was just writing some cards. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of something hot?’

Ava sat down on the sofa and waited until Glynis had perched on an armchair.

‘I’m sorry to have to bring you this news, but George has been found dead in his car. The initial indications are that it was suicide.’

Glynis’ mouth slackened, her brow drew in. There was a small shake of her head. Ava had seen it too many times, that moment of defiance, the refusal to accept the news of a death. She waited for Glynis to speak. It was always a question first. Where? When? How? Most often in a suicide: Why?

‘Something was wrong,’ Glynis said, her voice a thin tremor in the air.

Ava stared at her. ‘His heart again? Had his doctor given him bad news?’

Glynis shook her head. ‘Not that George told me. As far as I knew he was recovering well. But for the last couple of weeks he’s been, I don’t know, sullen. Not like him at all.’

‘I’m sorry to ask this, but did you suspect he might be a risk to himself? Had he talked about it?’ Ava asked.

‘No. No, I’d have told someone. Where is he now?’

‘On his way to the … he’s going to Ailsa Lambert’s office. She’ll take good care of him,’ Ava said.

‘It’s too late for that, isn’t it? His dinner’s in the oven. Plenty of green veg. Nothing high in fat or sugar. He hated it, the diet since his heart attack. Still, he always cleared his plate without complaint. Before, we used to have a cream cake every Friday, as a treat, you know. Hasn’t had one for six months. I think that was the thing he missed most.’

‘Glynis, let me make some calls for you. You should have your family here.’

‘I’d like to go and see George first if you don’t mind. There’ll be an autopsy if I’m not mistaken?’

‘Yes,’ Ava whispered.

‘How did he do it?’ Glynis asked, her mouth a tightly pressed trembling line across her face.

‘Car exhaust fumes,’ Ava said. Glynis tried to rise from the chair, wobbled, took her seat again. ‘Let me get you a glass of water. Don’t try to move.’ She walked to the kitchen and began opening cupboards to find a glass when feet shuffled in behind her.

‘Would he have suffered? I want the truth, Ava. I was married to a policeman for thirty-five years. There’s no point lying to me.’

Ava ran the cold tap to make sure the water was fresh as she thought how to answer the question. George Begbie’s wife was no fool, and the detail of the cases MIT handled wouldn’t have passed her by. Such was the baggage that came with marrying a police officer.

‘Headache, nausea. He’d have felt faint. Probably there’d have been a sense of panic if he was still conscious when his body recognised it was starved of oxygen. He may have had chest pains, especially given his medical history. Possibly some sort of seizure at the end,’ Ava said. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish …’

‘Please don’t,’ Glynis said. ‘I’ll take that water now.’

Ava handed her the glass and leaned back against the kitchen cupboards rubbing her temples.

‘You said something was wrong. Can you be any more specific?’ Ava asked.

‘There were a few late night phone calls. A couple to his mobile, at least one on the landline. He never told me who they were from. Made a joke about it to distract me. Then a package was left on our doorstep once when we were out shopping. No label. I told him he should call the police. He knew he was still a target given the number of people he’d put inside. He took the package to his shed, told me it was some rubbishy free samples. I always knew when he was lying.’

‘And you think whatever it was might have been enough reason for him to have …?’ Ava broke off.

‘George hated suicides. Said it was the cruellest thing to do to another human being. If you’re right and that’s what he did, then I have no idea who the man was I’ve been living with for more than half my life. I’d like to go and see him now please.’

* * *

They arrived at Edinburgh City Mortuary half an hour later. Dr Ailsa Lambert met them at the door, greeting Glynis with a hug. Ailsa held back her own tears as she showed them into the autopsy suite. There was a body beneath a sheet on a steel table.

‘I’m sorry I can’t offer anything more appropriate than this room. Everywhere else is in use. Are you sure you’re ready to do this, Glynis? I can formally identify him. You don’t need to make this your last memory of George,’ Ailsa said.

‘I need to,’ Glynis replied, crushing a handkerchief in her hand and staring at the concealed bulk of the man she had loved for decades.

Ailsa pulled back the sheet to reveal naked head and shoulders. There was an intake of breath from Glynis. Ava reached out an arm to put around her shoulders, tempted to look away but there was no scope for cowardice when Glynis was having to be so brave. Still, it was dreadful to see. Death was never so final as when you had to stare it in the face. Ava hated the slackness of the Chief’s jaw and the way the flesh of his cheeks had rolled back towards his ears, as if his body couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be human any more. Life had literally deserted him.

‘Why is he so red?’ Glynis asked.

‘Carbon monoxide poisoning can do that after death,’ Ailsa said. ‘Can you confirm that it is George?’

‘It is,’ Glynis said. ‘Oh God, it really is.’ She turned around and walked through the door into the corridor. Ava let her go.

‘Have you had a chance to have a look at him, Ailsa? Can you give me any information?’ Ava asked.

‘I’ve had a few minutes, that’s all. It’s been a busy day,’ Ailsa said, covering Begbie’s face once again with the sheet.

‘I heard,’ Ava said. ‘I’m sorry. You must have a lot of families needing you at the moment.’

‘I do, but George was my friend. I was working with him when you were still in school. Never thought I’d be asked to perform his autopsy. But the symptoms are classic suicide by inhalation of carbon monoxide. That cherry red colour of his skin? Means he had to have breathed the gas in. If you’re looking for me to tell you someone killed him and posed him there, then I can’t. He has no injuries. He wasn’t restrained in the car. He hadn’t defended himself.’

‘Nothing?’ Ava asked. ‘Really Ailsa? You knew him better than me, and I know the Chief wouldn’t have taken this way out.’

‘You don’t know anything of the sort. People break, Ava. They get bad news, they suffer a loss, they stop working and find their lives suddenly empty. They look in the mirror one day and find they got old and that scares the hell out of them.’

‘It’s cowardly,’ Ava said. ‘It was beneath him.’

‘Suicide is the most human and lonely of acts. It’s not for you to judge him,’ Ailsa said.

There was a pause. Ava reached a hand out to the huge man beneath the sheet, drew it back again and turned to the wall.

‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, Ailsa. I just feel like I failed him somehow. I should have visited more often after his heart attack. I should have made sure he was coping. I just carried on, always too busy.’

‘When there’s a suicide the people left have a tendency to make it about themselves – what they didn’t do, or say, or remember. It’s not about you, Ava. It’s not about Glynis, or their children, or anyone else. It’s about the place George found himself in. I’m not expecting to find anything in the autopsy to be honest, although I’ll be liaising with his doctor to check any recent diagnoses. His body was unmarked except for this.’ Ailsa walked around to lift the sheet from the left side of George Begbie’s body. ‘Here, on his inner wrist – you can barely make it out now because of the reddening – but it looks like letters, albeit clumsily drawn. Capital N next to a small c. I suspect they’ve been scratched into his arm.’

‘Means nothing to me,’ Ava said. ‘N c. I’ll check it out. I’d better get Glynis home now. She’s been more stoic than I’d ever have expected, although of course she’s in shock. That combined with being the wife of a long-serving police officer. She probably spent years half-expecting that knock at the door. It’ll take a while to sink in. She’ll need to contact the rest of the family, too. Let me know, would you, when you have the full autopsy results.’

‘Of course. You should go home and get some rest, too. If days like this teach us anything, it’s that you never know what’s coming. Every moment counts.’

Chapter Five

‘I w-want to volunteer,’ the man said, his Adam’s apple working almost completely independently of the remainder of his body.

‘You know they won’t pay you, right? There aren’t any proper jobs going at the moment,’ a woman wearing clothes more usually seen at an eye-assaulting runway from London Fashion Week told him.

‘I know that. I’m not here for the money. I just really w-want to help. It’s a good thing you do here,’ he said.

‘You’ve got some alternative means of funding yourself that allows you not to have to work for money, do you?’ the woman asked, looking from his haircut down to his shoes in a manner that signalled disbelief.

‘I w-work somew-where else as w-well,’ he mumbled. ‘I just thought that a few hours a w-week might be a contribution. Even if I’m just making coffee or filing paperw-work.’

She sighed, pulling a sheet of paper from a drawer and clicking the end of a pen as she waited for him to finish the sentence.

‘I can take your name but I’m not sure there’s anything for you.’

‘That’s fine, Sian, I’ll take it from here thank you,’ another woman said, placing a gentle hand on fashion disaster’s shoulder and smiling softly. ‘Why don’t you come into my office? I’m Cordelia Muir. You are?’

‘Jeremy,’ he said, feeling the weight lift as he followed her. She was somewhere between forty and fifty although good bone structure, careful moisturising and a trim figure made it hard to guess precisely. The media had listed several different ages for her, all to be taken with a pinch of salt, but they were universally agreed on the good her charity was doing in a variety of African countries. Crystal was a clean water initiative that relied on educating communities in how to build wells, then funding them to teach their neighbouring village so that a network of safe, sustainable water systems spread like a life-giving spider web, changing lives and securing futures.

‘So, Jeremy, I have to say it’s very generous of you to offer to volunteer. Sian does our day-to-day administration and she has a fairly rigid view of the world, but she doesn’t mean any harm. I hope she didn’t put you off, but she was right to point out that we can’t pay you. We have limited resources and I make sure that as great a percentage of donations as possible reaches its intended destination. I’m not much of a one for expensive offices or endless amounts of staff.’

‘That’s w-why I’m here,’ Jeremy said, head down towards his lap. ‘I read that about you. It’s the reason I’d like to help. You seem …’ he blinked a few times, chewing his bottom lip. ‘You seem good.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘And if you’re serious about helping then I’d love to have you here. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?’

Jeremy flushed, took a deep breath, and steeled himself to make eye contact as he spoke.

‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘I like to help people.’ He spoke slowly, deliberately, every word considered. ‘I w-was fostered. Nice people. I’d like to give something back. Other times I do some gardening w-work. Not much call for that in w-winter.’

‘I guess not,’ Cordelia said softly. ‘I know what you mean about wanting to put something back. I was lucky. My parents were both Kenyan but from wealthy families. They moved me here when I was just four, at a time when racial integration was still a work in progress. My father worked in the finance sector. I was sent to a decent school, had holidays abroad, got through university without any debt. After my degree I sailed into the corporate machine, making piles of money for people who didn’t need any more than they already had. I suppose I got fed up and wanted to find more of a purpose, and here I am. Doing something to improve the lives of people in Africa felt like joining up the ends of a circle for me. You know, I think you’re going to be a real asset around here. What matters to me more than anything is working with people who have a positive attitude and the desire to do good. Why don’t you come in next week, spend a few hours getting to know what we do and where you can fit in, and if you like us we can make it more regular? In the meantime, fill in a personnel form with some details and the name of a referee if you have one.’

‘I do,’ Jeremy said, allowing himself a small smile and a nod.

‘How about I make you a coffee before you go, just so you can experience how badly I do it. Everyone here will be delighted to have someone other than me in charge of the kettle.’

She handed Jeremy a form requiring basic details – address, National Insurance number, telephone contact, next of kin for emergency purposes – and a pen, then she disappeared out to rattle cups and teaspoons around in a sink. He filled the form in quickly then glanced around Cordelia Muir’s office. A family photo took pride of place on her desk. She was with her children. An older girl and a boy, taken a little while ago judging by the changes in Cordelia. Research had told Jeremy that her daughter was away at university while her son was attending sixth form college in Edinburgh. He wondered if she would mind him picking the photograph up, watching her through the glass partition as she opened the fridge door to put a carton of milk away.

‘You have beautiful children,’ Jeremy said as she walked back in holding two mugs.

‘Thank you,’ she replied, putting the steaming liquid down in front of him, showing no concern about him holding the precious image. ‘My husband passed away a couple of years ago. He was terminally ill when we had that photo taken. My daughter has coped better than my son. Randall is only seventeen. I think boys need a man around to help them through those transitional years.’ She smiled.

‘My father died when I w-was two,’ Jeremy said, putting the photo back down on the desk. ‘He and my mother were in a coach crash. My foster parents tried their hardest but teenage years are tough. I w-wasn’t very forgiving.’

‘I’m sure you were no worse than any other teenage boy, and it must have been harder for you than most. Your parents would have been proud of you now.’ She smiled. ‘You’ve filled in the form already? Wonderful. How about you come in Monday morning? I’m starting a new project and I’d appreciate some help with it. Nothing very glamorous I’m afraid, but I’d love to have you here.’

Jeremy beamed, taking a sip of coffee with shaking hands.

‘That w-would be great,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Mrs Muir.’

‘Cordelia. First name terms only in here,’ she said. ‘I feel as if fate brought you to us, Jeremy. I’m a great believer in fate. Welcome to the team.’

* * *

DI Callanach was waiting in Ava Turner’s office at the police station. He stood as she entered.

‘Luc,’ she said. ‘What’s the news on the body at Arthur’s Seat?’

‘Nothing much yet, ma’am,’ Callanach said, sitting once she’d waved him back into his chair.

‘Could you please not call me ma’am? I mean, yes in front of other people, but not when it’s just us. You know I’m uncomfortable with it.’

‘I’m uncomfortable without it,’ he replied. ‘I heard about the Chief. I wanted to see how you’re doing and check if there’s anything I can help with.’

‘You want to get falling down drunk with me later, make sure I get home safely, hold my hair while I throw up then sit next to me all night to make sure I don’t choke?’ Ava put her head on the desk in front of her. ‘God, I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from. Does everyone know?’

‘Sergeant Lively knows,’ Luc said. ‘So it might as well have been publicly broadcast. And I will, if that’s what you need me to do.’ Ava looked confused. ‘Hold your hair and make sure you don’t choke.’

‘I’m sure you have better things to do with your evening,’ Ava said, guessing he probably didn’t. Callanach had model looks that never failed to turn heads in public, but a false rape allegation made by a coworker during his time as an Interpol agent had made him reclusive in his private life. ‘I have work to do anyway. Tell me about the girl at Arthur’s Seat.’

‘Her name’s Lily Eustis. Nineteen years of age. In a gap year before university mainly because she was working to save money for her tuition fees. She was due to begin studying medicine next September at St Andrews. Her family has been notified. Mum, dad, one sister. I responded to the call but it’s not looking like a matter for the Major Investigation Team. Initial findings are that cause of death was hypothermia.’

‘How did she get all the way up there?’ Ava asked.

‘We don’t have the answer to that yet. She doesn’t own a car, lives with her parents. Apparently, she went out last night to meet a friend at a pub, and didn’t come home. That’s unusual but not completely unknown, although the parents say that normally she’d have phoned to let them know where she was staying.’

‘Have you spoken to the friend?’ Ava asked, scribbling notes.

‘No one knows who it was. Parents suspect it was a male but they’re not certain. Her sister has been calling Lily’s friends but none of them have any further information.’

‘Let’s keep it with MIT for now. Ailsa should be doing Lily’s autopsy as a priority. Keep me updated.’

Callanach stood up. ‘Why don’t you let me drop you home later?’ he said. ‘You can leave your car here. I’ll pick you up and bring you back in tomorrow.’

‘You think I’m incapable of driving now? I’m sad, Luc, not drunk,’ Ava said. She sighed. ‘God, I’m sorry. I’m not handling this very well. It was good of you to offer but I’ll be fine, really. I have to update the squad about the Chief’s death. They’ll want what details I’ve got. Can you organise everyone into the briefing room for 3pm?’

‘I can,’ Callanach said. ‘The drone footage from Lily Eustis’ death will be available by then. I’ll organise a copy for you to see after the briefing.’

‘Good, then we can visit Ailsa at the mortuary together.’ Ava’s phone rang. Callanach made his way out. ‘Hold on, Luc,’ she called after him. ‘You’re sure?’ she asked the person at the end of the phone. ‘You checked her identification? No, don’t show her up yet. I need to talk to him first. He’s in my office. Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.’

Luc stood with his back against Ava’s door, hands in his pockets, head to one side.

‘Is it Astrid?’ he asked. ‘I knew she wouldn’t leave me alone forever but walking in here, after what she did …’

‘It’s not her,’ Ava said. She knew how hard it would have been for Luc to have faced Astrid – the woman who had set him up on a false rape charge. In many ways, seeing the woman waiting for him downstairs was going to be even worse. ‘Luc, I don’t know what’s happened. She hasn’t offered any explanation for why she’s here, but your mother is downstairs.’

Luc ran a hand through his hair, looking for words but finding none.

‘I don’t want to see her,’ he said finally, as Ava made her way around her desk to stand nearer to him.

‘I understand,’ Ava said. ‘You’ve every right to feel like that. She abandoned you when you needed her …’

‘It wasn’t just abandonment. You couldn’t possibly understand. I was accused of a rape I didn’t commit. It was devastating. I wasn’t even sure I had the strength to make it through to the trial. My mother was the one person who should have known, without question, that I didn’t do it, that no part of me was so monstrous. When she left as I was going through the trial preparations, I even started to doubt myself. There were times when I thought that maybe I had raped Astrid and just invented another reality in my own mind. How could I have been innocent when my own mother couldn’t bear to stay with me and support me through it?’

‘Luc, I’m sorry this has come as such a shock. But she’s here. Downstairs, right now. There must be a good reason why she’s come. Don’t you want to find out what that is?’

‘Not particularly,’ he replied.

‘Do you want me to go down and talk to her first?’ Ava offered.

‘She changed her mobile number,’ Luc said. ‘I phoned her, left voicemails, texts. I emailed. I wrote letters. Every silence I got in return was a nail in the coffin of our relationship. It was months, Ava. Months from when she left to when the court case collapsed and I was told I was free to go. Even if I could understand why she wasn’t able to support me before the trial, she’s had more than a year to contact me since it ended. There’s no excuse, no possible explanation for treating your own child like that.’

‘Luc, please. I lost my mother. By the time I knew she was dying it was too late to get the years back when I’d been too busy, too obsessed with myself to spend time with her. I never had the chance to forgive her for all the petty, perceived slights of growing up. I don’t want you to make the same mistake,’ Ava said.

‘Ava, this is my life, not yours. And these aren’t perceived slights. These were body blows. I’m not making any mistakes,’ he said.

‘I get it. Really, I do. But go down there and face her. If nothing else, tell her how you feel. Find an ending to it all. There’ll come a day when you need it,’ she said. Luc walked towards the door. ‘So you’ll speak with her?’

‘I’ll treat her exactly the same way she treated me,’ he said. ‘I’ll let her talk to her heart’s content. She can beg for forgiveness, tell me she needs me, whatever. Then I’ll cut her out of my life forever.’

Chapter Six

‘I can’t stay indoors any longer, Christian,’ Lily’s sister, Mina, whispered into her mobile. ‘I’m getting out of this house once my parents are both asleep. Can you meet me?’

‘Mina, your parents need you. If they wake up and find you gone, they’ll be terrified,’ he said. ‘You know I’ll come if you need me, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing for you to be going out in the middle of the night.’

‘It’s suffocating me. Lily’s room’s right next to mine. Mum insists we keep the door wide open, as if shutting it pushes her further away. But I walk past it and see something of Lily’s – a scarf, a pen, a bloody hair band for God’s sake – and it starts again. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never stop crying.’

‘All right, I’ll be there. Wait in the bus stop up the road from your house. Just do me a favour and leave your parents a note explaining that you needed a break. It’s not fair to risk them finding an empty bedroom,’ Christian said.

‘You’re right. I will. Just please come.’ She rang off.

Christian went to shower and change his clothes. He’d spent the earlier part of the evening in a dive bar that held open mic evenings with a covert smoking room at the back and now his clothes reeked of cigarettes. Mina would hate it and he wanted to be able to comfort her the way she needed. Pulling on a denim shirt and black jeans, he wrapped a scarf around his neck and grabbed a thick duffle coat. He grabbed a book on the way out, throwing it casually onto the back seat. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was one of next term’s texts for Edinburgh University’s Masters in US Literature course. Mina was always fascinated with what he was reading.

His car was the typical student vehicle. It had scraped through its most recent vehicle check, had the lowest insurance policy available and inside you could pretty much see the springs coming through the seats but it was functional and avoided breaking down, most days. Before he left his flat, he made two hot chocolates, put them in reusable takeout mugs (Mina was ever conscious of the environment), and picked up a bag of marshmallows he’d been saving. He couldn’t do much to put a smile on Mina’s face right now, but he could do that.

She was waiting for him in the rain, just her head poking out from the bus stop as Mina looked for his car. Christian pulled over and flashed his lights, wiping condensation off the inside of the passenger window so she could see it was him.

‘Hey you,’ he said, as she threw herself into the passenger seat. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Could we just drive for a while?’ Mina asked. ‘I need to feel as if I’m moving. Everything else has stopped.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘we don’t even have to talk. Where are we going?’

‘Take me as close as we can get to Arthur’s Seat,’ Mina said. ‘I have to see. I want to figure out why the hell Lily did what she did.’

Christian put a cup of hot chocolate in her hands before setting off.

‘Mina, are you sure about going to Arthur’s Seat? I’m sure Lily would have hated the thought of you hurting yourself like this.’

‘Yeah, well you never met her, so please don’t tell me what she would or wouldn’t have liked. Oh God, Christian, I’m so sorry. I don’t know where that came from.’ Mina looked away, out of the passenger window. ‘I’m not sure I even know myself any more. Shit, listen, you can drop me off if you like. I’ll understand if you just want to go home. And thank you for the hot chocolate. I don’t deserve it. Or you.’ Mina dashed an already rain-wet sleeve across her eyes.

Christian looked at her hunched shoulders, her hair that hadn’t seen a shower or a brush in the two and a half days since her sister’s body had been found, at her feet twisted in towards one another as if her body was literally trying to make itself disappear. He reached into the driver’s door compartment and retrieved the marshmallows.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘But I am going to insist that you eat at least a dozen of these. You need sugar and you need a friend. You’ll have to do more than snap at me for a second to make me desert you.’ Mina turned her face back towards his and did her best to force a smile. ‘If going up to Arthur’s Seat is what you need, then that’s what we’ll do. There are no rights or wrongs when you lose someone you love. There’s only getting through each day. Perhaps you will feel something. Let’s find out.’

They drove for fifteen minutes, the traffic less of a problem than the driving rain, until Christian parked up on Queen’s Drive as close as he could get by road to the area of Arthur’s Seat that Mina had wanted to visit. It was utterly dark, even the light pollution from the city not daring to creep up the hillside. He killed the engine and sat in silence waiting for Mina to talk.

‘What was Lily doing up there?’ Mina whispered. ‘She’d never talked about going there before. We climbed it as children, and I think she visited as part of a school trip once. But at night, in December?’

‘Did you hear any more from the police?’ Christian asked.

‘They said we’d get the preliminary autopsy findings tomorrow. No other progress, though. No one’s come forward to say they were with her. None of Lily’s friends were aware who she was with.’ She dunked a marshmallow in the hot chocolate, waited until it was half melted, then put it in her mouth. ‘This is good,’ she said. ‘Thanks for coming to get me.’

‘That’s okay,’ Christian said. ‘I wanted to help. I just didn’t know if you needed space or to be alone with your family.’

‘I need to understand how she could leave me!’ Mina blurted, pieces of marshmallow flying from her lips. She choked, leaning forward, spluttering hot chocolate across her jeans, giving up and dropping the cup into the footwell.

‘Mina,’ Christian said gently.

‘I’m sorry, I’ll clean it up,’ she sobbed, both arms clutched across her stomach, hair hanging down over her face.

‘Don’t apologise. Just come here,’ he said, sliding his left arm over her shoulders, the other hand pulling her right arm out from her body and towards him. He wrapped her in his arms, stroking her hair. ‘It’s okay to cry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Mina surrendered to the comfort, leaning her head against his chest, letting herself crumple. Christian rocked her gently as she cried, holding her safe, pressing his face into the top of her head, fighting the rushing tide of his own emotion. She was so fragile, and trying to absorb such an unbearably heavy blow. Minutes went by. Mina’s sobbing abated, replaced with the involuntary hitching of her lungs. The more she tried to hold it in, the more wracked her body became.

‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, her breath raw in her throat. ‘I’m never going to be able to let her go. It’s like Mum has died, too. She aged right in front of me. It was like gravity distorted her face into some sort of grey mask. I can’t even describe it.’ Christian let her talk. He knew better than to tell her it was going to get better. He’d lost someone he loved and there was no comfort to give when it was all so new. Mina moved back to look him full in the face, pulling her knees up to her chest. ‘I keep thinking, if she’d been ill would that have been better or worse. I could have said goodbye, held her hand. But I don’t even know if … if she was scared. I mean, God, what if she wanted to die up there? Do you think it’s possible that’s why she went up there? How do people cope with this? It’s like we’ve turned into a story about ourselves.’ She sobbed again, her face a tortured version of the carefree girl Christian usually saw. ‘They’re fucking cutting her open. That’s where she’ll be now. Lily’s lying on some metal tray somewhere, in pieces. I can’t do anything to help her. I can’t tell her I love her, I can’t tell her not to be so stupid and selfish. I think I hate her. I hate her for leaving me. How can I hate her when she’s dead? It’s like everything inside me is rotting.’

Mina threw open the door and bolted, reaching a ditch before stopping to vomit. Christian ran behind, catching her in time to stop her falling forward with the spasms of her stomach. She retched twice more before her body relaxed and allowed her to stand upright.

‘I should get you home,’ he said. ‘This isn’t helping. You’ve got to take it a day – an hour – at a time. It’ll help when the police have some answers. Come on,’ he said, one arm around her shoulders as he guided her back to the car. ‘I’ll be here, night or day, whenever you need to talk.’

‘Thank you,’ Mina rasped. ‘I’m so grateful to have you. Promise you won’t leave me. I can’t make it through this without you.’

Chapter Seven

Callanach threw his keys down and went into the kitchen, reaching instinctively for a coffee pot and fighting his desire to open the bottle of single malt he’d had in the cupboard for months. He wasn’t usually much of a spirits drinker but if ever there was cause to change that, he was entitled now.

His mother, Véronique, was sitting on the couch, coat buttoned to the chin, handbag on her lap with both hands gripping the handle as if it might fly away. Callanach stared at her silhouette against the picture window of his apartment in Albany Street, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the busy restaurants and bars of York Place, not that he went out much. He’d spent fifteen months making the apartment his own since beginning work with Police Scotland in Edinburgh. In all, it had been two years since his suspension from Interpol when a colleague had made the rape allegation that had stopped his career in its tracks. A few friends had stood by him, fewer colleagues, but what had hurt most was being abandoned by his mother. Even so, he still loved her. That was why he couldn’t let her back into his life. It was hard enough getting over the pain she’d caused him the first time. He couldn’t risk going through it all again.

He stirred the coffee, wondering if his mother still took milk in hers. She was painfully thin, that was the first thing he’d noticed. The last time he’d seen her had been in Lyon. He’d been on bail with severe restrictions on where he could go and who he could see. She’d turned up at his door with an overnight bag and a speech about how it would all turn out all right, how the allegations would vanish into thin air. Her prediction had been wrong. Even now, his world was still askew. His mother had stayed with him for two weeks, each day more tense than the one before as they’d waited for the French prosecutor to see sense, to realise it was all a vicious lie, borne of a woman’s obsession with him.

His mother had withdrawn from him, in person at first, growing quieter each day, the hope draining from her almost visibly, then she’d left and he’d heard nothing more from her. Even when Astrid Borde had decided against attending court to give evidence and a not guilty verdict had been entered, his mother still had not contacted him. It was as if he was dead to her. Callanach had grieved for the loss of her from his life. Now here she was, a ghostly, diminished version of the woman he remembered, barely able to meet his eyes, even her voice a whisper of the confident, laughing person in his memories.

‘Milk? Sugar?’ Callanach asked her in French, translating back to English in his head as if he’d never lived in France at all.

‘Neither, thank you,’ his mother responded politely.

He carried two mugs into the lounge and put them on the coffee table between them, choosing the chair opposite her, keeping a barrier between them. He took his phone from his pocket and left it on the arm of the chair. He’d left Ava to brief the squad but had agreed to meet her at the city mortuary at 10pm. That gave him just one hour, not that he was concerned. Whatever his mother had to tell him after all this time could be said in the space of sixty minutes. It wasn’t as if anything would change now.

‘I like your apartment,’ she said, sipping her coffee, holding the mug as if it were an anchor. Callanach didn’t respond. Back at the police station he’d walked down the stairs from his office to reception in a daze, convinced there had been a case of mistaken identity or that it was some stupid prank by his team who had no idea what minefield they were treading in. But there she had been. Dressed in black, her dark hair still long but streaked with grey. She had been a beauty in her youth, but now dense shadows hung under her eyes, and her mouth was turned down as if pegged to her chin. She had stared at her shoes as she’d greeted him.

‘Luc,’ she’d said. ‘Can we talk?’

‘All right, Véronique,’ he’d replied, holding the door to the street open for her, knowing he had to get her out of the station. She had no place in his new life. He didn’t want the memory of her in his office, and he couldn’t bring himself to address her as mother. She was not that any more, that had been made quite clear to him through her desertion. He had walked her to his car and they’d driven through the dwindling rush hour without sharing a word. Now here she was and he had no idea what to say to her, and no sense of what she could possibly want from him.

‘Are you staying in Edinburgh?’ he asked, glancing out of the window.

‘At the Radisson,’ she said. ‘I’ve booked in for a week.’

‘Are you in Scotland on holiday, then?’ Callanach asked.

‘No,’ she said, finally setting her bag down on the floor. ‘I’m only here to see you, Luc. I’m glad it worked out for you. Do you like Scotland?’

‘I miss France,’ he said. ‘But I’m used to it now. It rains a lot, and it took me a year to get used to the accent.’

Véronique allowed herself a half-smile at that, reaching her right hand across her left to take hold of her wedding ring. She still wore it, in spite of the decades since his father had died. Callanach had been only four years old at the time and had no more memory of him than a large man, soft voiced, always warm, constantly laughing. It was a blur.

‘When your father spoke too fast I couldn’t understand his Scottish accent, even after years together. It’s still hard coming back here,’ she said.

‘Why have you come back?’ Callanach asked.

Véronique rubbed one hand across her eyes. He waited. That wasn’t difficult. He’d waited so long already that a few more minutes was nothing.

‘I never wanted this to happen,’ she said. ‘If I could take it all back, I would.’

‘Is that it?’ Callanach asked, his voice cold and low. ‘You’ve come here to tell me you wish it had played out differently?’

‘It was complicated,’ his mother said, picking at the hem of her skirt. ‘You were so closed off, you wouldn’t talk to me about what was happening, then the medical evidence came out. And you didn’t comment when they first interviewed you …’

‘That didn’t mean I was guilty,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t just about you,’ she said, tears forming as she reached a shaky hand into her bag to find a handkerchief.

‘Who else was it about? You? Were you embarrassed of me? Exactly when was it you tried me and found me guilty? Before you even came to Lyon, or did you wait to hear my version of events before writing me off?’ He was raising his voice, keeping the words slow, making sure they impacted as hard as they could. He had waited the best part of two years to have his say and he wasn’t going to rush it now.

‘Astrid came to see me. I never found a way to tell you,’ his mother said. ‘By then you seemed not to be talking to me anyway, and I couldn’t find the words. So I left. Then there were those photos of her injuries. Someone put them in the post to me.’

‘You spoke to Astrid and never told me? Did you arrange it with her?’

‘No, no Luc, I would never have done that. She must have followed me from your apartment one day. I was going shopping and this woman stopped me in the street. She said she needed to talk to me about the case. At first I thought she was a journalist, or perhaps even someone from the prosecutor’s office. I thought I might be able to speak on your behalf, make them change their minds, so we went for coffee. We were already sitting down when she told me her name. I got up to leave but she said that if I went she would make it even worse for you. I was so concerned that I sat back down and told her I’d listen.’

‘I don’t think I want to hear this,’ Callanach said. ‘How could you have been so stupid?’

‘She seemed so calm. I couldn’t reconcile the woman you’d described with the person talking to me. She was quiet, conservatively dressed, hair tied back, no makeup. I remember thinking this can’t be her. She told me that all she wanted was to explain what had happened from her perspective, to get it out of her system. I kept thinking that maybe if I let her, she would drop the prosecution. It seemed worth ten minutes of my time.’

‘After everything I’d told you about how manipulative she was? About her obsession with me?’ Callanach asked, walking to the window, staring into black nothingness, trying not to watch his mother in the reflection.

‘All the evidence was against you. You’d told your best friend the scratches to your neck had happened at the gym. You’d told no one about Astrid attacking you. The neighbour had heard you swearing at her before walking out of her apartment. Bit by bit, the case was building against you and nothing you said was improving the situation. I just wanted to help,’ Véronique said, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking gently backwards and forwards.

‘So what happened?’ Callanach asked. ‘Because whatever you’d intended, it certainly didn’t get any better for me. Astrid didn’t drop the case until the day of the trial and even then she didn’t tell the truth and admit she’d invented it. I suffered through another four months of being regarded as a sexual predator.’

‘I know,’ Véronique stuttered. ‘I know. And I’m so sorry. If I could go back …’

‘You know what, I can’t do this,’ Luc said. ‘I thought I could, but it’s just too hard. I’m not sure what you thought would be achieved by telling me this but it certainly isn’t helping me. If you came all this way to ease your own conscience, you misjudged.’

‘It’s not that,’ Véronique said, throwing her handbag onto the couch and standing up. ‘Easing my conscience, yes. I know you have no reason to forgive me. I don’t think I could ever expect you to. But when I spoke to her it … it hurt me, Luc. She was so believable. She was like an animal that had been hit by a car, crumpled, broken. I couldn’t bear to be in the middle of it. You were so aloof and angry.’

‘What the hell would you expect from someone falsely accused?’ he asked.

‘Luc, I’m trying to explain that I’m not the best judge in those circumstances. I knew I couldn’t tell you that I’d talked with her. Then the medical report came, all about the internal injuries she had, the bruises to her body. Your skin under her nails. I didn’t know what to think. So I ran away. I knew I wasn’t the person you needed me to be and I left. There’s no good enough reason. There’s nothing I can say to make it better. But I am sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? Supposing I accept that. Say I recognise how good an actress Astrid is, how dangerous. But after that, after you’d dropped me to face the possibility of years in prison alone, you stopped emailing. You didn’t phone. When I was finally told I was free to go, I wrote to you. Even my letters were returned unopened. Was half an hour of listening to Astrid really all it took for you to abandon your child?’

‘I was a mess by then. Please believe me, I wanted to speak to you. I wanted to race back, to hold you in my arms and be the mother I should always have been, but I was ashamed. I hadn’t been strong enough. I’d let my own needs, my own feelings overwhelm me. I’d put myself before you and … how do you face your child once you’ve done that? I couldn’t. I knew I didn’t deserve you anymore.’

‘You’re right,’ Callanach said. ‘You don’t. I won’t let myself be dragged into this black hole again. I closed the door. To Astrid, to the nightmare of being arrested, to the disloyalty of my friends. To you. I won’t relive this just so you can purge your guilt. I picked myself up, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I moved country, retrained, forced myself to look in the mirror, and I’m just starting a new life. Whatever you need, whatever it is you thought I could give you, I can’t. We should go. I’ll drop you to your hotel. I have a late conference regarding an autopsy.’

‘Luc, I just need a little more time,’ his mother said, picking up her bag but keeping her feet planted between the coffee table and sofa. ‘This isn’t easy.’

‘I’m sorry but you’ve had all the time in the world,’ Callanach said. ‘I really do have to go.’ He held the door open for her, checking his mobile phone messages as he waited for her to put on her coat.

Véronique looked around the apartment. ‘There are no photos here,’ she said.

‘I had to rebuild my life without memories. There’s no point staring at images of falsehoods,’ he said, stepping outside into the corridor, holding the door open at a distance.

‘Not even of your father?’ Véronique asked. ‘He would have hated this.’

‘Do you mean he would have hated you?’ Callanach asked.

Véronique turned away, sliding fists into her pockets and hunching her shoulders. She walked briskly past Callanach and took the stairs. He caught up with her on the pavement, opening the car door for her to get in.

‘No need,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk. That’ll be easier on us both.’

‘Yes,’ Callanach replied. ‘It certainly will.’ He steeled himself and left his mother for the last time.

Chapter Eight

Ava met Callanach in the city mortuary carpark. She waited, leaning on her car, as he parked his.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Ava asked as he got out.

‘No,’ he said. ‘How did the briefing go?’

‘Everyone’s still in shock. Most of the squad worked directly with the Chief at some point. I think there’s a softly spoken consensus that retiring after his heart attack was what killed him. All those years in the thick of things and he ends up with golf club membership and on a diet he hated. Hardly a replacement for the adrenalin and single malt he was used to. Let’s go in. Ailsa has stayed late for us.’

They walked into the mortuary, the clinical, chemical smell extending just beyond its external glass doors as if issuing an olfactory ‘abandon hope’ warning. Dr Ailsa Lambert was in her office, her assistant looking tired as he drew on his coat and bade them goodnight. Ava knocked.

‘Ailsa,’ Ava said. ‘Are you ready for us?’

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’d offer you both a drink only I won’t allow alcohol on the premises. If ever I needed it though …’ she stopped herself, picking up a file labelled DCI George Begbie. ‘Let’s start with this. I’m entirely convinced that George’s cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. There are no injuries or findings inconsistent with that, internal or external. The toxicology samples will be picked up from here tomorrow and sent away for analysis but I’ve done an alcohol test on his blood. He was sober. I don’t just mean below the driving limit. I mean there was no alcohol in his blood at all. When he made the decision to take his life, he did it entirely consciously.’

‘Something must have triggered it,’ Ava said. ‘You found no other signs of illness? Nothing that would cause him to lose hope sufficiently to believe suicide was the only way out?’

‘There are no tumours, his organs – even given his heart condition – are all in reasonable order. I phoned his GP. He’d had a comprehensive check-up recently, blood tests and all. Came back clear. The notes indicate that George was in good spirits, no problems with his mood, sleeping, eating, even his cholesterol was dropping. Apparently, he was planning a surprise holiday for his wife Glynis on their anniversary. The GP has been seeing them both for years. She’s as shocked as we are,’ Ailsa said.

‘So he drove to the coast, hooked a length of hose-pipe up to the back of his car and sat there dying, knowing Glynis was cooking dinner for him. He was stone cold sober, in spite of the empty whisky bottle in his car, with no known problems. For Christ’s sake, Ailsa, it makes no sense,’ Ava said.

‘I’m aware of that,’ Ailsa said. ‘There is the matter of the markings on the inside of his left wrist.’ She clicked the screen and produced a blown-up photo of the area. ‘It’s clearer in this photograph than to the naked eye because we’ve been able to filter out some of the colour. You can see here that the capital N was formed of scratches, making three separate lines. They are quite deep violations of the epidermis, consisting of multiple scratches along each line. The small c is formed of a single curve, repeated several times in the same place.’ She clicked again and the c came up magnified. ‘You can see here that at the top part of the curve, the scratch was so deep that it had begun to draw blood. It would have taken some effort to do that without a tool or implement.’

‘Without a tool?’ Callanach asked. ‘You mean he …’

‘He used his right index finger. The scratched off particles of skin were found under the nail, sufficient to see without a microscope. Obviously, we’ve sent that for DNA testing but there’s really no doubt that he did this to himself.’

‘I have no idea what the c stands for,’ Ava said. ‘I’ve seen carbon monoxide poisoning victims before, but I don’t know much about the process before death. What sort of state would he have been in, once the car started to fill with gas?’

‘He’d have become increasingly groggy, disoriented. Concentration would have been difficult and he’d have been feeling extremely nauseous,’ Ailsa said.

‘So perhaps the letter sizing was just a symptom of his confusion,’ Ava said. ‘Perhaps they were both supposed to be capitals.’

‘You think they’re initials?’ Callanach asked. Ava nodded. ‘Anyone spring to mind?’

‘Not immediately,’ Ava said. ‘I’ll put Tripp on it in the morning.’

‘Ava,’ Ailsa said quietly. ‘There’s no evidence of a crime here. What we have is a tragedy. A desperate event for his family to endure, but my report will say that there are no suspicious circumstances.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Ava said. ‘It’s totally out of character and this thing on his arm …’

‘Could have been scratched at any time in the few hours preceding his death and might be totally unrelated. Or it could be an indicator that he wasn’t in his right mind at the time. It’s not evidence of foul play.’

‘It certainly warrants investigation,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not prepared to accept that this is a non-suspicious death.’

‘I’ve been asked to copy in Detective Superintendent Overbeck,’ Ailsa said. ‘I have no choice. Subject to the tox screen results, my preliminary findings indicate that that body should be released for burial or cremation. George’s family will suffer enough. There’s no reason to keep them waiting.’

‘Ailsa, you can keep this open a while. I know you can. I’m a Detective Chief Inspector. If I can’t decide what to investigate and what not, then …’

‘Ava,’ Callanach said. ‘You can’t ask Dr Lambert to write anything other than her honest opinion. She’s right about the Chief’s wife. Glynis needs to be allowed to grieve. Turning this into something it’s not will only make it harder for her.’

‘You’re right,’ Ava said. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Ailsa, I didn’t come here intending to pressure you. I just need to get this straight in my head. Luc, what was it that you needed to run through?’ she asked, looking away.

‘Lily Eustis. The young woman found dead near Arthur’s Seat. Do you have an update on her?’ Callanach asked, concealing his concern for Ava.

Ailsa Lambert was less concerned with how her behaviour was perceived, as ever, staring openly at Ava as Callanach spoke. ‘Right, Lily, poor girl. I’ve spoken to her parents this evening. They’re going to need more answers than I can supply, but essentially cause of death was major organ failure as a result of hypothermia. No surprise really. Out at night in December, on a hilltop in these temperatures the outcome was almost inevitable. I visited the scene, though. Someone had built a small fire. That should have kept her warm for a while.’

‘She was found naked,’ Callanach said. ‘It would have taken some fire to have kept her warm in those circumstances.’

‘The nakedness might have been a result of the hypothermia,’ Ailsa said. ‘It’s called paradoxical undressing. A person becomes disoriented with the increasing cold and begins discarding their clothing, thereby increasing the rapidity of heat loss.’

‘So she wasn’t dragged up there against her will?’ Callanach asked.

‘I can tell you that she was not assaulted, sexually or violently. There are no defensive injuries, no wounds. In fact she was a healthy young lady, good muscle tone, virtually no fat on her …’ Ailsa trailed off.

‘You sound hesitant,’ Callanach said. ‘What is it?’

‘Probably nothing,’ Ailsa replied, typing as she spoke. ‘But for argument’s sake, say I was experiencing moderate to severe stage hypothermia, enough to make me strip off my clothing and throw it down the hillside. What sort of state am I in?’

‘Agitated. Probably distressed. Frantic even,’ Callanach guessed.

‘Exactly,’ Ailsa replied, pointing to another photo on the screen. Lily Eustis lay on the ground as Callanach had first seen her, on her back, fully naked, shades of blue already darkening to black, arms out at her sides, as if she had just fallen asleep.

‘What’s your point, Ailsa?’ Ava asked.

‘She doesn’t look distressed or frantic here, does she?’ Ailsa asked. ‘She looks as if she’d decided she was a wee bit tired and wanted to take a nap. Her body isn’t folded up, twisted, scrabbling. Certainly there are no signs of terminal burrowing syndrome that can occur near death, during which she would have been curling up, seeking shelter, making herself as small as possible. There’s nothing unexpected beneath her fingernails. No dirt, no skin. There is only a single mark on her skin, about two centimetres long over her abdomen, which is the imprint of a zip.’

Callanach looked down at his own notes. ‘The log shows she was wearing zip-fastening jeans. We have them in the evidence vault.’

‘Exactly. It’s as if she was struggling with the zipper for a long time, perhaps in her confusion becoming clumsy and pressing the metal into her skin as she tried to get the jeans off. Other than that she’s exceptionally clean, as if she never experienced any trauma through the whole process of losing heat and passing away.’

‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing,’ Ava snapped. ‘Are we supposed to have wanted her to be traumatised?’

‘Of course we are,’ Ailsa said, ignoring Ava’s irritated tone. ‘The human instinct is to fight death, to run from danger. They also call terminal burrowing from hypothermia hide-or-die syndrome. Her body position, the very state of her, makes no sense to me.’ Ava sighed heavily. ‘Lily’s toxicology screen will go off tomorrow at the same time as George Begbie’s specimens. Before then I wouldn’t like to speculate.’

‘If you’re convinced Lily died of hypothermia, why run a tox screen?’ Callanach asked.

‘There was a slight odour to her stomach contents. Nothing I can be certain about, and it’s hard to tell with the variety of food and drink available, but I thought I smelled something odd on her skin too. It was fleeting. Gone as soon as she was out of the body bag. As I said, I won’t speculate now.’

‘All right,’ Callanach said. ‘Tox screen involving what?’

‘Hair, liver, bile, vitreous humour and the gastric contents, obviously. Blood and urine as standard. Some skeletal samples for good measure,’ Ailsa said. ‘That’s as far as I can take Lily’s case at the moment. Questions?’

They both shook their heads, Ava putting her coat on before Ailsa had even switched off her screen. Callanach said goodbye as Ava made her way into the corridor.

‘Ava,’ he called, catching up with her as she hustled out of the exit into the carpark. ‘You were a bit tough on Ailsa back there.’

‘I was assessing the cases,’ she said.

‘I know that, but Ailsa worked with the Chief longer than almost anyone in MIT. If she thought there was reason for suspicion, she’d be pursuing it.’

‘You finished?’ Ava asked. Callanach didn’t bother to respond. ‘Good. Now I’ve got work to do and you’ve had a difficult day. I suggest you go home. Follow up with Lily Eustis’ parents tomorrow morning. Leave an update on my desk.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Callanach replied. This time Ava didn’t bother to correct him as she climbed into her car and sped away.

Chapter Nine

Leaning against a pile of props backstage, he checked out the group of wannabes preening, flexing their necks and warming up their voices. It was pitiful really. So many young men and women clamouring to build a career in pretence. Acting was simply professional lying. He allowed himself a smile then checked a non-existent text on his phone to avoid conversation. The truth was that he would probably have been ideally suited for the part. Play-acting was, after all, a skill he had honed to perfection. He glanced over at Sean O’Cahill – youthful, brimming with enthusiasm, shimmering with nerves – who was next in line. Forcing himself to concentrate, he did what he was there to do. Sean’s height he estimated at 5’9”, and the would-be actor was slim, probably weighing no more than nine and a half stone. Those measurements were well within what he could deal with.

Taking lives was more complicated than people imagined. You didn’t just blunder in unprepared. He had to know he was capable of carrying Sean. A daily work out with dumbbells ensured that would be possible, and the exercise had the added effect of keeping his body toned and desirable. He wasn’t vain, but there was no point in false modesty. Good looks and taut muscles made life easier. Then there was fight or flight. Life was unpredictable. Better to imagine potential conflicts and prepare for them. He liked a fight though. Dominance. Exertion. But he knew when to run. The first lessons of his childhood – when to run, when to hide, when to remain silent. Staying in shape reduced the chances of capture.

Watching Sean warm up, he saw a man who prided himself on being jovial. There was a smile for everyone around him, one of those ‘what a wonderful world’ smiles too, nothing fake about it. Sean wanted to like and to be liked. That would make approaching him much easier. Manipulating him would be almost no challenge at all. A shame, really. Sean’s height and weight were the key to knowing how much sedative he would need for incapacitation. He didn’t want to kill him too quickly. That would give no satisfaction at all. Grief was best enjoyed slowly, a drip-drip-drip of emotion, and he wanted to be there to lick every tear from the face of Sean’s best beloved. There was more to do yet. Trust to be built. A fire to kindle. That made him think of Lily. He shut his eyes, willing himself not to be distracted by the memory. He studied Sean instead. There was something vital about him. Utterly intoxicating. His hands itched to hold him.

‘Sean O’Cahill?’ a young man called. Sean stepped away from the mirror and waved his hand in the air. ‘You’re up. Good to go?’

‘As I’ll ever be,’ Sean blustered, trying to enjoy the moment. ‘No audition was ever a waste.’ That was his agent’s mantra. It was all one continuous learning curve. Sometimes there would be failures, less often successes, but every time you stepped onto a stage was a step closer to where you wanted to end up. Sean wasn’t convinced that was right. He’d had plenty of days when stepping onto a stage was simply a short cut to rejection. Being an actor was hard. Not hard like being a surgeon or a soldier, he knew that, but the constant disappointments were an ointment that thinned the skin, and his felt worn through.

‘Sean, right?’ a woman called from a few rows back in the small theatre. ‘Tell us a bit about yourself.’

‘Sure, well I’m Northern Irish. I moved from Belfast to Edinburgh quite recently.’ He remembered to smile.

‘Why Edinburgh?’ the woman – he assumed she was the theatre company director – interrupted.

‘Obviously because I couldn’t afford the air fare to Los Angeles,’ Sean said. There was an immediate laugh from the group of note-takers surrounding the woman in charge, echoed from the wings where a line of other hopefuls waited to audition. ‘And because I was at The Fringe last year. I saw the production your theatre company put on and decided this was the place I wanted to be. Also tartan really suits me and in Scotland I can get away with wearing what feels like a skirt when I go shopping.’ Another laugh, bigger this time, more ready to engage with his style of humour. He began to relax.

‘How old are you, Sean?’

‘You want the age on my passport or the answer my agent tells me to give?’ He grinned.

‘Closest to the truth,’ the director said, still laughing.

‘Thirty-five if I’ve been drinking Flaming Pig, twenty-eight when I wake up without a hangover, and more like twenty-six when I’m in make-up.’

‘Okay, we have your song choice here and a monologue. If you could start with the musical piece then run straight into the acting, that’d be great,’ the director said. The pianist began to play.

‘That was really good, Sean. Where did you train?’ the director asked.

‘Ulster University,’ Sean said.

‘Well, it was great. These are open auditions so we’re seeing a lot of people. We won’t have the call back list available until Friday but we’ll be emailing the successful people and asking to see them again next week. Thank you for your time today,’ she finished.

He hadn’t been cut short. That was all he could think about as he left the stage. He’d finished his song, nods all round, and had actually enjoyed performing the monologue, which made a pleasant change from being wracked with nerves throughout. Reaching for his mobile, he began texting Bradley before picking up his coat, got halfway through writing the text then deleted the draft. It would jinx it, he was sure. There could be no self-congratulatory words at this stage. He’d have to play it down. Since they’d moved in together he’d lost track of how many time-wasting auditions he’d attended, but he had a good feeling about this one. If he got the call back, he’d talk to Bradley about it then. By that stage he’d be one of just a handful going for the job. It wouldn’t pay much, but to be part of a company, working on a show, would be the start of something real.

He smiled at the man in the doorway, presumably awaiting his turn to audition.

‘Good job out there,’ the man said.

‘Thank you.’ Sean grinned, taking in the dirty blonde hair and open smile. ‘I’m Sean.’ He held out his hand.

‘Jackson,’ the man replied, shaking it.

‘Great name, I like it. You waiting to go on?’ Sean asked as he did up his coat against the sub-zero temperatures outside.

‘Not sure there’s much point,’ the man said good-naturedly. ‘Looks like you nailed it.’

‘I very much doubt that,’ Sean said, hoping beyond hope that the stranger was right. ‘Anyway, break a leg,’ Sean said, bustling past him. The man smiled once more as he left, his eyes on Sean’s back as he exited. Nice guy, Sean thought.

Bradley was itching to phone his boyfriend Sean. They were both starting to give up hope that Sean would get work although neither wanted to be the first to voice such a negative opinion, but this audition played to Sean’s strengths. The theatre company wanted an actor who could both sing and dance, able to ‘make comedy work’ was how they’d phrased the advert, and Sean could certainly do that. He didn’t have film actor looks, and was never going to be cast as the hero, the hard man or the icy-stare bad guy. He was, however, good at improvising. He could deliver a killer punch line. And he was easy to be around. If he could show that off, then he should finally make it to call backs.

Bradley dialled Sean’s number, cutting the call off before it could connect. He didn’t want to put too much pressure on. He needed to make Sean feel good about himself, to let him know that if not this time, then one day. A decent bottle of wine, albeit within their limited budget, would be good on the way home. They could talk about the audition over dinner, brought up casually. That would be better.

Brad shut down his computer, tidied his notes and put on his coat. Life as a junior actuary was lacking the drama and thrills of the stage, but he loved it. At least it brought in a steady wage, which was nothing to be sniffed at. Sean was the sort of partner who would sit and listen to Bradley talk about his day as if it was the most important thing in the world, and for the most part Sean even managed to look convincingly interested. If there was a downside to their different careers, it was that Sean’s world was so much more dynamic that occasionally Brad felt like the boring hanger-on. Every one of Sean’s dance classes and physical training sessions was full of gorgeous muscled men with regular bookings under the sun lamp. Not that Sean ever deliberately made Brad feel insignificant, but as an entertainer Sean naturally drew people to him. Everyone they met remembered Sean’s name immediately, social media friendship invitations came flooding in. Sometimes, just sometimes, Brad thought, it would be nice if he could be the centre of attention for a change. On his way out, he washed up his coffee mug in the work kitchen sink, chiding himself for being so ungrateful. Life with Sean was wonderful. So what if Brad sometimes felt blinded by the brightness of his lover’s personality? It was a fair exchange for the moments of intimacy and sweetness. He wouldn’t change what they had – not much of it, anyway – even if he could, Brad told himself as he wrapped a scarf around his neck and set off into Edinburgh’s chill evening air.

Chapter Ten

A week had passed since Lily Eustis’ death and Callanach was no further forward in ascertaining who she’d spent the evening with before her fateful trip to Arthur’s Seat. She hadn’t been seen at any of her usual haunts. Friends had been contacted, CCTV had been checked, her mobile activity and social media were blank. A few of the numbers in her mobile contacts database were dead numbers that didn’t check out, but that was par for the course.

Ailsa had spoken with Lily’s parents again to explain the need to hold the body until the toxicology screening results were back in case further investigations were needed. Callanach had visited them, too, intruding on their terrible grief with more questions than answers, sensing the ghost they could all still see in their house. The chair Lily used to sit in to read, the way she always took the stairs two at a time, the way she sang incomprehensibly whilst cleaning her teeth. These were the little things Lily’s mother had told Callanach about. He had drunk tea, nodded, and let the words come. They might not help him resolve the questions over Lily’s death, but if it helped her mother to tell him then he would listen.

Lily’s sister Mina had sat listless on the couch, biting her nails and tugging at the few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

‘She would never have thought of going there herself,’ Mina had said. ‘Someone was with her.’

‘We’re working on that basis,’ Callanach had told her. ‘But no one’s coming forward with any information. As the Chief Pathologist explained, there are no injuries and no evidence of any crime having been committed.’

‘So that’s it?’ Lily’s father had barked from an armchair in the corner, so shrouded in darkness with all the curtains closed that Callanach could barely see him.

‘Until there’s any further forensic evidence or witness testimony, yes. It’s possible that the Procurator Fiscal will ask for a sudden death report, but the Major Investigation Team won’t play any further role. A police liaison officer will be in touch today so you know who to contact with any questions.’

No one had said anything after that. Callanach had expected outrage, some display of frustration at the least, but the family was numb with loss. Callanach had stood up quietly, said his goodbyes and made his way out. Only Mina had followed him into the hallway as he’d put his shoes back on.

‘When will we get her things back?’ Mina had asked.

‘I’ll contact the city mortuary about that for you,’ Callanach had said. ‘Anything on her body or in her pockets will be in evidence, but if it’s of no significance we can release it to you.’

‘Thank you,’ she’d whispered, opening the door for him, and closing it again before he’d had a chance to turn around and say goodbye.

Callanach had been trying to get five minutes with Ava all day. It was hard getting used to her being so elusive. The days of wandering into her office and expecting her to be available to talk theories or Police Scotland politics had disappeared with her promotion. He’d left two messages on her voicemail then been reduced to emailing her.

Eventually, late Friday afternoon, she appeared at his office door.

‘You busy?’ she asked.

‘What’s the right answer?’ he replied, closing his laptop.

‘Dim sum,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it most of the day. I think dim sum may be the only thing that will make this crappy week feel marginally less awful.’

‘Get your coat,’ Callanach said.

‘I’m not sure that’s how you’re supposed to speak to a senior officer,’ Ava said over her shoulder as she walked away. Ten minutes later they met on the street, both electing to abandon their cars for the evening in favour of alcohol. ‘I’ve called a cab,’ Ava said, ‘and booked a table at the Cantonese restaurant in Abercromby Place.’

‘You did all that while I was putting on my coat?’ Callanach asked. The cab pulled up as they were talking.

‘I might have already booked the table before I came to find you,’ Ava said as she climbed in.

‘Almost as if you knew I’d have no plans on a Friday night,’ Callanach muttered as Ava told the driver where they were going.

‘Don’t be over-sensitive,’ she said turning back to Callanach. ‘I had a shortlist of five people I was considering inviting to dinner. I figured at least one would be free.’

‘Now I wish I’d played a bit harder to get,’ Callanach laughed.

‘Date night is it?’ the cabbie interjected. ‘Me and the missus used to do that every Friday ’til I got this job. It’s not the same trying to be romantic on a Tuesday evening. You two married?’

Ava looked at Callanach, opened her mouth to answer and ended up spluttering helpless laughter instead.

‘Actually, the lady’s my boss,’ Callanach said.

‘Pretty much the same as being married then,’ the cabbie winked. Five minutes later, he pulled the cab over and they climbed out. ‘You’d make a nice looking couple though, maybe you should think about it. You two have a nice evening,’ he said, pulling away.

Ava stared after the car, hands on hips. ‘Do you ever go anywhere without people telling you how good looking you are?’ she asked.

‘That was directed at you, too,’ Callanach responded. ‘Can we please go and eat now?’

‘I wish I hadn’t tipped him,’ she said.

‘You really can’t just take it as a compliment?’ Callanach grinned.

‘What, someone thinking we’re married? If I didn’t need a drink before, I certainly do now. You’re buying, by the way, because I know how painful the next hour’s going to be with the waitresses flirting with you.’

‘I have a way to deal with that,’ Callanach said. ‘Come on. Let’s see if we can improve your mood with some saturated fat.’

‘I’ve been waiting for a man to say those words to me all my life,’ Ava said, striding past him into the restaurant, hanging her coat on a peg without waiting to be asked and taking the best table in the front window.

‘Excuse me madam, that table is laid for four. I wonder if you’d mind moving to the table at the back, please?’

Callanach watched Ava’s face change as she peered towards the back of the restaurant, checking out the smaller table between the kitchen door and the corridor to the toilets. Whilst Ava was usually the least pretentious woman he knew, tonight was probably not the time for anyone to mess with her. He stepped forward.

‘Do you mind?’ He smiled at the waitress.

She beamed at him, giving a small giggle for no particular reason. ‘Yes, sir. How can I help?’

‘It’s mine and my wife’s anniversary,’ he said, motioning towards Ava. ‘We really wanted this particular table. Could you accommodate us, do you think?’

‘I didn’t realise you were together.’ The waitress moved aside and pulled a chair out for him. ‘And yes, of course, as it’s a special occasion. Champagne, then?’ she asked.

‘Naturally,’ he replied, trying to ignore Ava sitting with her hands over her face. The waitress hustled away to fetch a bottle and the appropriate glasses.

‘You see? No one’s going to flirt with me now that I’m with my wife, celebrating – how many years is it?’ he asked.

‘If it wouldn’t hit the press in the morning, I’d think I’d prefer you to have said I’d hired you as an escort,’ Ava said, glaring at the menu. ‘I really don’t care what I eat. It all looks good.’ The waitress put glasses on the table and began pouring the champagne. ‘My husband will order for me,’ Ava simpered. ‘He’s wonderful at that!’

‘We’ll take a selection of the dim sum,’ Callanach said. ‘Whatever the chef recommends.’ As the waitress disappeared, he raised his glass. ‘To lost friends,’ he said gently. ‘How are you doing? You’ve been hard to find this week. I was worried about you.’

Ava tried to paint on a tough smile, lost the battle halfway through and looked down at her lap. ‘It hasn’t been great. I thought it was hard losing my mum last summer. Now the Chief has gone too and I feel like a fraud sitting at his desk, hearing his voice telling me to buck my ideas up and get on with it. I spent so much time with him over the years. I suppose we don’t always appreciate it, but the police force is like family. You don’t like everyone, wouldn’t choose half of them, but they’re always there, good or bad. Begbie was one of the good ones.’

She drained her glass of champagne and Callanach refilled it.

‘How’s his wife getting on? I know you were close to both her and the Chief. It must be hard watching her grieve,’ he said.

‘Glynis is one of a kind. Married to the police force as much as to one single policeman. She’s being remarkably stoic at the moment, but I’m worried how she’ll cope longer term. They completed each other, if that’s not too much of a cliché. The Chief was her whole world.’

‘How lucky that they found each other. There are a lot of people at the station asking about the funeral. What are the plans?’ Luc asked.

‘Full uniform honours, but it’s only open to close colleagues and friends,’ Ava said. ‘Glynis had another blow today. She’s been told their life insurance won’t pay out because it was a suicide with no suggestion of mental illness, not even depression or short-term psychological disturbance. She’ll have to move in with her daughter as she can’t afford the mortgage. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.’

‘I hadn’t even thought about the finances,’ Callanach said. ‘To have to deal with that on top of her husband’s death. Isn’t there anything we can do?’

‘Short of finding a decent source of income for her for the next twenty years, not really,’ Ava said. ‘There’s her share of the Chief’s pension, but it’s not enough for both the mortgage payments and to keep Glynis comfortable for the next twenty years. She was always a wife and mother, never had a career of her own, so she has no personal money to fall back on. Food! I’m starving.’ A stack of dim sum baskets were placed in the centre of their table. ‘I don’t know if it’s just me, but grief makes me eat constantly. I’ve consumed more calories in the last … oh, Luc, I’m so sorry. I haven’t even asked. What happened with your mother? I really must be losing my mind.’

‘Yup. So far you’re making a pretty inattentive wife,’ he said, tipping a pool of soy sauce onto his plate. ‘You can stop apologising. As it happens there’s not much to say. She regrets not standing by me. Apparently, Astrid got to her as well. Acted the part of victim very convincingly. My mother couldn’t see through the false evidence, so she ran. That’s all. These prawn things are good. Are you going to drink that entire bottle of champagne on your own?’

‘Don’t do that,’ Ava said.

‘Do what? You asked me out for dinner. I’m eating.’

‘Change the subject,’ Ava said. ‘I know how hard this has been for you. She didn’t explain any more than that? Why hasn’t she responded to you since you were acquitted? All those times you tried to get in touch. She must have given some sort of explanation.’

‘Not really. She kept saying it was hard for her, that she needed more time, which is bizarre in the circumstances,’ Callanach said, refilling his own glass before motioning to the waitress for another bottle.

‘That’s it?’ Ava asked. ‘After all this time, why reappear now?’ She took the new bottle from the waitress’ hands and refilled both glasses, draining hers immediately.

‘She said she wanted to explain, then she didn’t. Not in a way that made sense. Can we change the subject now, please? I liked it better when I was annoying you,’ Callanach said.

‘No, we can’t. You should talk to her again. Get to the bottom of it. If you leave it like this it’ll haunt you,’ Ava said.

‘I’m not sure there’s anything left to say. She’s at the Radisson until tomorrow, then I guess she’s going back to Monaco. It took me a long time to get used to the fact that she’d given up on me. I’m not sure I can turn back the clock.’

‘Not sure you can or not sure you want to?’ Ava asked, piling more tiny parcels of spicy prawns onto her plate. ‘Take it from me, trying to repair years of misunderstandings when you’re about to lose someone you love is a disaster. I should know – I couldn’t have made worse decisions when my mum was dying. I’d like to stop you from making similar mistakes.’

‘I’d like to think I’m able to stay rational, even when emotions are involved,’ Callanach said. ‘And I agree, you did make some terrible misjudgements in the past.’

‘Sod off, then. I’ve tried to help. If you’re just going to be rude, I’m going to eat in silence until I burst. This is good champagne.’ Ava refilled her glass again.

‘You know you’ve drunk a bottle of champagne in less than an hour, right?’

‘Save the detective skills for solving cases. Right, all the food’s gone and the alcohol supply is diminishing. I am going to the ladies’ room while you settle the bill then we’ll move this party along.’ Ava stood up, threw her napkin onto her plate and walked off clutching her mobile.

Ten minutes later a cab pulled up outside the restaurant. Ava sighed.

‘You again?’ she asked, looking through the driver’s window.

‘Did you have a nice meal? Only it didn’t take very long,’ the cabbie said.

Ava ignored him. ‘The booking office told you where we’re headed, I take it?’

‘Aye, gave me all the details. I was surprised to be seeing you both again so soon. I thought you’d be taking your time with the meal and everything. It’s a nice place, that. Did you think about what I said?’ He grinned at Callanach.

‘I’ll tip you again but only if you agree not to talk for the remainder of the journey,’ Ava said.

‘Fair enough,’ the driver agreed. ‘It’ll only be five minutes. Traffic’s light tonight.’

* * *

The taxi pulled up where the High Street met South Bridge, while Ava and Callanach were busy talking police funding.

‘This isn’t where I live,’ Callanach said.

‘I’m aware of that. It’s where your mother’s staying,’ Ava replied.

‘Not happening,’ Callanach replied calmly but firmly. ‘But I can walk home from here, so this’ll do.’ He got out, holding the door for Ava. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do, but there’s no quick solution. If the problem between my mother and me ever resolves itself, it’s going to take more than a quick chat. You can’t fix everything.’

‘I need to fix something,’ she said. ‘The Chief didn’t come and talk to me about whatever was going on with him. My own mother kept her symptoms from me for months, even though she was terminally ill. I keep thinking that maybe if we’d been closer, if I’d been a better daughter, she’d have confided in me. Maybe they could have treated the cancer before it was too late.’

‘You weren’t at fault, and this isn’t the same thing. Let me call you another cab. It’s too far for you to walk to your place from here.’

‘I’m cold,’ Ava said. ‘And I need a proper drink. At least let me buy you a single malt. The bar in here is warm and comfortable. It won’t kill you to walk through the door. I’m not ready to go home yet.’

Callanach wondered if that had been the plan all along, before she’d even walked into his office and invited him to dinner. Ava was rarely taken unawares, her brain usually ten steps ahead of everyone else’s. That was what made her such an impressive police officer. Even so, she was intruding on a deeply personal situation, but he wasn’t ready for the emptiness of his apartment yet either. His mother had never been one for bars, rarely drinking unless they were dining with friends. He wasn’t even sure she was still at the hotel. Chances were that she’d left town early.

‘One drink,’ he said. ‘Then I’m getting you home.’

‘Deal,’ Ava said, walking ahead of him through reception and turning right into the hotel bar.

They sat on stools. It was busy but not packed, the bulk of casual diners already finishing dessert or drinking coffee, their conversation a friendly hum in the background.

‘Two Laphroaigs please,’ Ava directed the barman. ‘No spoiling it with water or ice.’

‘You sure you wouldn’t prefer it straight from the bottle?’ Callanach asked.

‘You can lecture me about French wine when we’re in France. Never lecture a Scot about whisky. It’s apt to end up with a trip to get stitches.’

‘Luc?’ a voice said softly from behind them.

Callanach stared at Ava.

‘It’s no good looking daggers at me,’ Ava said. ‘It’s not as if you weren’t aware I never take no for an answer.’

‘You had no right.’ He leaned across to whisper in her ear.

‘I accept that,’ Ava said. ‘I also know that if you really hadn’t wanted to stand any chance of seeing your mother you wouldn’t have walked into this hotel with me. So say goodbye or hear her out, whichever suits you best. Just make a decision.’ She turned around. ‘Madame Callanach,’ she held out her hand, ‘I’m Ava Turner, we spoke on the phone earlier. I’ll leave you to it. I suspect I’ve already done more than enough.’

‘You certainly have,’ Callanach replied.

Ava smiled, picked up her glass and tossed back the Laphroaig. ‘Take it easy,’ she told Callanach. ‘Nice to have met you,’ she said to Véronique, slipping her coat back on before exiting.

‘I see. Your colleague didn’t tell you she’d phoned me,’ Véronique said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to trick you into seeing me.’

‘Well, I’m here now,’ Callanach said. ‘So if there’s something else you wanted to say, now would be the time.’

‘Shall we go up to my room? It’s quieter there. I’m not really sure this is the place …’

‘I’m leaving in a couple of minutes. You may not want to waste time travelling between floors. Here is fine. There’s a table by the window.’ He picked up his drink and walked away from the bar, silently cursing Ava’s inability to restrict her meddling. They sat down. ‘What was it you wanted to say?’

His mother stared out of the window. ‘I don’t know how to begin,’ she said. ‘I want to repair the damage I’ve done. I want my son back.’

‘Is there something you need to say that I haven’t already heard?’ Callanach asked. ‘Because I’m not here to repeat the conversation we had at my flat. You said you needed more time and I’m afraid it’s run out.’ He pushed his drink away across the table.

‘Luc, please,’ his mother said, reaching out to him. ‘I can’t stand the thought of losing you forever. There’ll be nothing left to live for.’

‘I felt like that too, when you left me. At least we have that in common. This is a waste of both of our time.’ He stood up. ‘Goodbye, Véronique. Safe journey home.’

‘Luc, no. There’s no easy way to tell you this. It was a long time ago, and I never talked about it. When Astrid accused you, her story brought it all back and I couldn’t cope.’ She paused, ran a shaking hand over her mouth, lowered her voice. ‘I was raped, a long time ago, but it never leaves you. I had no idea what Astrid told me would affect me so badly. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there when you needed me, but it was all too much. I know I failed you. Whatever I have to do for you to forgive me, I will.’

Chapter Eleven

‘Turner,’ Ava answered her mobile.

‘DS Lively here, ma’am. We’ve been asked to attend a road traffic accident. Your car’s at the station, so I assumed you were still around.’

‘I’m walking through the city trying to find a cab. Why’s a car accident anything to do with MIT, Sergeant?’

‘It’s a bad crash, blood in and out of the vehicle, on the A702 where the road runs through the edge of the Pentland Hills Regional Park. I’m on my way there now. Only one car remaining at the scene but tyre marks indicate that a second vehicle was involved.’

‘Still not hearing a reason for this telephone call …’

‘There’s no body, ma’am. No one at the scene at all,’ Lively said.

‘So the driver was injured and the other vehicle opted to take him to the hospital. Who’s the Inspector on duty? You don’t need me for this. I’ve been out for the evening so there’s no way I can drive to a scene, no matter what’s happened.’

‘It has to be a DCI. The car involved in the crash is registered to a man called Louis Jones. He’s known to the police but his file is marked for review by an officer of the rank of Chief Inspector or above, as directed by Chief Begbie,’ Lively said. ‘It can probably wait until tomorrow, but I thought that should be your call.’

‘I’ll be waiting at the junction of The Mile and New Street. Have a car pick me up, and make it quick, it’s bloody freezing out here,’ Ava said.

Coffee in hand, Ava was sitting at her desk twenty minutes later, staring at an envelope, the contents of which had yet to be reduced to the digital recesses of the cloud and trying to get her head straight. The food she’d consumed had soaked up a portion of the alcohol, but the room was still swimmy if she didn’t stay focused on a single point. The sealed envelope had Begbie’s confidentiality order on it, and a list of names and signatures of people who had accessed the file within the last few years. The last reader was George Begbie himself a few months earlier. Ava ran her fingers over the seal, imagining the Chief exactly where she was now, preparing to read the same sheets of paper, tapping his pen on the desk as he always did when he was impatient.

Inside was a brown cardboard file with Louis Jones’ details on the front – name, date of birth, known addresses of residence and work – and it was remarkably thin. On opening it, Ava found what she had assumed she would find: a sheet of paper with the heading ‘Registered police informant, initiated November 1997. Contact: George Begbie.’ It was the only reason she could think of for the file being confidential. What she hadn’t expected to find was her own name in the contents. She scanned that document first.

‘Louis Jones – car scrapyard owner operating known car hire scheme without documentation. Utilising vehicles previously deemed scrapped, allowing or causing false number plates to be displayed on hire vehicles. Admits hiring vehicles to Dr Reginald King, denies knowledge of intended purpose. Vehicle hired from Louis Jones used in kidnap of Detective Inspector Ava Turner. Jones assisted in providing details of King’s lock up on Causewayside. Interviewed by DI Callanach, supervised by DCI Begbie. No resulting prosecution.’

Ava closed her eyes. A dangerous psychopath, Reginald King, had pulled her from her car one night, taken her back to a concealed room in his house, and killed a teenaged girl in front of her. The teenager was one of three women who’d died at his hands. At trial he’d mounted a psychiatric defence and been remanded indefinitely for treatment. The hours in captivity had been the worst of Ava’s life, and Louis Jones had profited from lending King a vehicle, yet neither Callanach nor Begbie had so much as mentioned the man’s name to her. She turned the page, forcing herself to keep working rather than be sucked into the black mire that was her memories of what she’d witnessed. Whatever information Jones had provided to the police during his decades-old stint as Begbie’s informant must have been spectacularly valuable.

The type-print was fading on the remaining pages. Ava switched on her desk lamp and settled down. The initial page was a case summary from a prosecution dating back to 1999. The prosecution’s case was that defendants Dylan McGill and Ramon Trescoe, joint heads of a Glasgow based crime gang, had committed an impressive list of offences from theft and conspiracy, to fraud, blackmail and assault. Their targets had been almost entirely banks, using employees to provide confidential information about security systems and performing unlawful money transfers under threat of violence. On the few occasions that the employees had been sufficiently brave to have refused to comply, the outcome was assaults using tools best restricted to farming. The court case had been heavily covered in the press. Ava recalled it in spite of having been only sixteen at the time. A major Edinburgh crime gang had been taken out of action. The trial had been a Scottish spectator sport for the three months it had lasted.

The file contained witness statements, bank documents and the usual previous convictions, followed by a small selection of photos of the defendants and their victims. Dylan McGill was the tallest of the bunch, with a moustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Victorian villain, a cigarette in hand in every picture. Ramon Trescoe was dark skinned, with middle-eastern features and startling green eyes. Not someone you could mistake once you knew his identity, Ava thought. He had been photographed with several extremely attractive women, almost as if he always knew the photographer was around. There were references on file to deaths – rival gang members, henchmen who had defected, and at least one policeman – all of which were well beyond the scope of natural causes. None that had ever left a direct trail to either McGill or Trescoe though. The Procurator Fiscal had settled for putting the pair in jail for less serious offences but the result was almost as good. The sentences had been lengthy.

At the end of the file was a document signed jointly by the Procurator Fiscal and Louis Jones. Jones, Ava read, known then to his associates as Louis the Wrench, had been the provider of vehicles and other necessary hardware. Begbie, then a mere Detective Sergeant, had acquired enough information on Jones’ activities to put him away for an easy decade. Instead, Begbie had approached Jones to provide information about Ramon Trescoe’s activities, victims and movements. Begbie worked with Louis the Wrench for two years gathering intelligence. They must have been tense times, Ava thought, both for Jones and for Begbie. Trescoe and McGill weren’t the sort of people you messed with, and no one seemed to have been beyond their reach. Begbie’s relationship with Jones had ended with an agreement to keep Jones out of court under pretty much any circumstance, and landed Begbie a promotion to Detective Inspector immediately after the defendants’ final appeals had failed.

Now someone driving Louis Jones’ car was missing, although whether it was Jones himself or a random hirer remained to be seen. Ava noted down Jones’ last known address, closed the file and returned it to the envelope, which she sealed and signed, ready to be returned to confidential documents. She picked up the phone to call Callanach then put it back down. Hopefully he was still with his mother. Interrupting them now might bring any progress to an end. Not only that, but she wasn’t at all sure he would take her call at the moment anyway. She had overstepped the mark in setting him up.

Phoning DS Lively back, Ava ordered a tracker dog to the scene of the accident in case the driver had staggered away from the car dazed. Whoever it was could easily still be trekking through the parkland. If they were badly injured, the December weather was going to be the death of them. Not that Ava was sure she cared, if the driver had actually been Louis the Wrench. The thought of him breathing his last, huddled alone in the freezing cold was one she found rather satisfying. Begbie had let Jones go after a brief chat and the provision of an address for Reginald King’s lock-up, knowing Ava could die, aware that other women were already dead. It hardly seemed a balancing of the scales. Whatever Jones had done to assist the police nearly two decades earlier, Ava was certain the Procurator Fiscal could have argued it was of no application to assisting a serial killer so many years later. Begbie would have had his reasons, Ava knew that. The Chief had proved his loyalty to her on more occasions than she could list, but still it stung. It felt seedy, the deal done behind a closed door with no more than a nod and a handshake. She crushed the feelings of indignation and rising anger, reminding herself how much she’d cared about the Chief, knowing it had been reciprocated. He couldn’t have betrayed her.

Ava put a call through to DC Tripp who she’d seen loitering in the incident room.

‘Tripp, I need you to drive me to an address. Has to be an unmarked car,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Tripp replied. ‘I’ll be waiting outside. If you give me the address, I’ll leave a note as to where we’re going.’

‘Not this time,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not sure it’s even relevant to an investigation yet and the address is confidential information.’

‘Okay then,’ Tripp said. ‘Shall I bring you a takeaway coffee?’

‘No. Actually, yes. And you’ll have to be a bit less enthusiastic, Detective Constable. I have a champagne and whisky hangover approaching and anyone smiling will be in the firing line.’

‘In that case I’ll raid the biscuit tin as well, ma’am. Nothing like a few digestives to help cure crapulence,’ Tripp said.

‘Let’s make that no talking in the car at all,’ Ava said.

Chapter Twelve

Cordelia’s son, Randall Muir, set down his pride-and-joy guitar before picking up the pint of cider he’d been nursing for the last hour. He had to go easy on the alcohol if he was serious about getting up to jam with the rest of the musicians in the bar. Tonight, for the first time, he would have the confidence to go through with it. Last time he’d failed to play when nerves had got the better of him. He’d drunk far more than intended then had to perform an Olympic-style sprint to the men’s toilets to lose the contents of his stomach, before staggering home with a mouth tasting like rotting apples. His mother had pretended not to notice, presenting sympathetic eyes and changing the conversation away from what he’d been up to.

The great Cordelia Muir would not judge. She wouldn’t tell him off. Even asking where he went in the evenings was a habit she’d foregone in order to avoid another steaming row. Since his father had died, his mother had tried stepping into the breach with clumsy good intent, embarrassing Randall beyond anything he felt a teenage boy should have to endure. She attended football games when every other mother knew to stay away, shouting and clapping encouragement throughout. She phoned the parents of girls at school he admitted liking and invited their families for Sunday lunch. Cordelia had even tried talking to him about porn, only to end up lecturing him about respecting women. She’d even insisted on providing packets of condoms when he went away for a weekend with his classmates, forgetting them initially, then shoving them through a car window so everyone had seen. Cordelia Muir was all things to all people. Randall just wished she would get it through her intellectually gifted brain that she would never be his father.

His older sister had cried dutifully at their father’s funeral, all the time thanking God, Randall thought, that their precious mother hadn’t been the one taken. What Randall knew was that life would never be as good as it had been when his father was alive. There had been boys only camping trips. There had been nights staying up late watching movies his mother would never have approved of, with a few beers sneaked in for good measure even though Randall had been well underage. There had been jokes about sex instead of talk of honour and compatibility. There had been jokes, full stop. His father knew that when he was upset, he needed to be punched on the arm and made to laugh, not to sit down and express his feelings. His father had put Randall first, before all those children in Africa with whom his mother concerned herself so absolutely. Crystal, the clean water charity his mother ran, was more her baby than Randall ever had been.

Since his father had died, Randall’s guitar had become his life. His father had taught him the basic chords when he was just eight, sitting Randall on his lap and covering his son’s fingers with his own. A year later he’d given Randall a guitar for his birthday. From that moment on it had been his most treasured possession. Now Randall dreamed of joining a band, touring, hearing his first record on the radio. But the bands at his school wrote navel-gazing dirges of love and longing. They sang in mournful voices with arranged harmonies – not the sort of music that got Randall out of bed in the morning to practise chords until his fingertips bled. He wanted to explode with sound, to have it thrum through him like a raging beast. The Fret was the first place he’d found where he could stand up, plug in his amp, and jam with whoever was there.

The bar was the type of place the girls at his school would hate, with enough tattoos on show to qualify the venue as a base for a motorbike gang. Randall loved it. He didn’t have a tattoo, and never would if his mother had anything to do with it, but his new friend at The Fret had suggested a henna tattoo strategically positioned so his mother wouldn’t see it. Tonight he was ready to show it off. He’d left home sweltering in a sensible parka jacket, a V-neck sweater, and an Oxford shirt. Round the corner from the club he’d stripped off, pulling a denim jacket over a black t-shirt then shoving his good clothes into his rucksack. Guitar over his shoulder, he’d swaggered into The Fret ready to play and was rewarded for the first time with a brief nod of recognition from the doorman. Randall felt a foot taller just walking through the door.

He identified a free table at the back, furthest from the stage, set down his rucksack and guitar then made for the bar. The girl serving didn’t seem to remember him, but then Randall had never seen her smile at anyone. Her severely contracted pupils told a story of opiate abuse that Randall longed to ask her about. He wanted to know what it was like. Not from an educational pamphlet or a teacher, with their particular bias and spin, but from an actual user. Why should he be lectured on the dangers of drugs by someone who had never used them? The bar girl had a scar that ran from shoulder to her elbow, tracing a line down the back of her arm that kept Randall awake at night writing fantasies in his head.

‘What do you want?’ the barmaid asked.

‘Um, sorry, what?’ Randall said, feeling his face burning and grateful for the lack of natural light.

‘I said, what do you want? Biff, turn that fuckin’ amp down would you, my friggin’ ear drums are already bleeding!’ she yelled.

‘Vodka,’ Randall said. ‘Double, neat.’ No one had ever asked him for ID in The Fret. As long as you could pay, you were assumed to be of age. The girl slammed a full but heavily finger-marked glass down in front of him. Randall pushed his money across the bar and tried a smile, but she had already turned away. It must be tough on her, he thought, doing such a physically demanding job. The club didn’t close until 3am and she would be on her feet all that time. One day, he decided, he would stay until the very end and offer to walk her home. She should have someone to look after her.

Carrying the glass back to his table, Randall checked that no one was watching as he withdrew a Coke from his rucksack and topped up the drink. Vodka made him gag if he drank it neat but this way he could tolerate it. There was no way he was going to order anything as pathetic as a vodka and Coke from the bar, though. That wasn’t what real men drank. His father had favoured port after dinner, single malt whilst watching television, and cider on sunny afternoons when they’d stopped at a bar during a walk. His family had done a lot of hiking, and whilst Randall could have done without the endless lectures from his mother about birds or geographical formations, his father had made it fun with tales of youthful exploits. Randall remembered their last hike as if it were yesterday. If they could eat only one dessert for the remainder of their lives, what would it be, their father had asked each of them. They had argued for an hour, maybe more. His father had settled on lemon meringue pie, three puddings in one, he had argued. Light crispy pastry, hot lemon curd, and melt in the mouth meringue. Randall had made the case for plum crumble, and his father had agreed it as a close second. A week later his father had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Two years later they’d held a funeral that had marked the start of the end of Randall’s life. He hadn’t been able to eat lemon meringue pie since.

Randall spotted Christian – he of the henna tattoo suggestion – a couple of tables away, deep in conversation. He downed a large mouthful of vodka and Coke, hoping Chris would notice him without him having to do anything dorky like wave. He filled in time tuning his guitar and trying hard not to check if Chris was still there. His patience was rewarded a few minutes later.

‘Hey, dude, you’re here again. Good to see you,’ Christian said, offering knuckles as a greeting. ‘And you got the henna tat done. That’s looking good, Rand.’ Randall grinned and forced himself not to slip the t-shirt off his shoulder to show the hennaed Celtic knot off more fully. ‘Absolutely the right way to go. I bet a lot of the guys in here wish henna had been around when they were getting their ink. Some of the designs they’re wearing went out with the ark, you know?’

‘Yeah.’ Randall laughed. ‘Hey, how was your week?’ he asked. ‘I mean, did you do anything cool or anything?’ He was sounding too keen and it sucked to have to work this hard to fit in, but Christian threw a companionable arm around his shoulders and slid back against the sticky faux-leather sofa.

‘It was kind of tough, actually. A girl I know lost her sister, hypothermia. Horrible seeing someone in pain like that. Made me appreciate how lucky I am to wake up each day and do the things I love, you know?’

‘Totally,’ Randall said, kicking himself for not being able to respond with something more insightful. The coolest guy he’d ever met had just shared with him, and he’d come back with a line from a spoof teen movie. He really was a dickweed, just like the other boys at school said. ‘I lost my dad,’ he splurted. ‘A couple of years ago. At first I didn’t know how to deal with it, but now I want to express myself, you know? I don’t want to hide how I’m feeling any more.’

‘Hey, that’s rough. I had no idea. Good for you for following your dream, yeah? You going to play tonight?’ Christian asked.

‘If there are any songs I know well enough,’ Randall said. ‘What are you doing while the university is on recess?’

‘Catching up on the reading. So many books, never enough time. I’ve got a bit of casual work to keep the rent paid over the winter. You’re in luck – I just got paid. Want a drink?’ Christian asked.

‘Hey, no, let me. I’ve got plenty of …’ Randall said.

‘No way, it’s my turn to buy you one,’ Christian said. ‘Vodka, right? Unless you want an excuse to talk to Nikki?’

Randall stared at the girl filling glasses, deciding it was easier to dream from a distance. She was so far out of his league it was painful.

‘No, you’re good,’ he told Christian. ‘Vodka would be great. Thanks, man.’

Christian sauntered towards the bar in a way Randall had tried and failed to replicate. It may be only one foot in front of the other but some men made it look like the world was there only to provide a backdrop for them. Randall picked up his guitar and strummed a few notes. Tonight’s starting band was just warming up, so it was a good time to make sure his strings were tuned. It was Christian who had first persuaded him to get up and jam. Randall had been sat at his usual out-of-the-way table, and Christian had wandered over asking if he could sit down. They’d begun talking and Randall had found he could speak to Christian without feeling like a fraud. That was two months ago. Since then Christian had been at The Fret every Thursday night, and Randall wasn’t too proud to admit that he looked forward to those precious minutes of chatting before the music got too loud for it. Christian had a way of putting things that made sense – wasn’t it more embarrassing to sit there with a guitar than to just get up and have a go, wanting a tattoo was natural but try henna first in case you wanted to change the design, keeping the details of your private life from your family wasn’t disloyal if it meant you maintained your sense of who you were – and Randall was finally experiencing that precious event: his first adult friendship. Christian, he thought, was exactly the kind of person he wanted to grow up to be.

Chapter Thirteen

Callanach and his mother exited the hotel bar by mutual silent agreement. Privacy was required, if Callanach could find the voice to talk at all. His mother had been raped. He was sure that’s what she had said, yet it had taken minutes to process those few words. He’d looked around the bar. The man next to him was laughing too loudly, mouth open wider than was decent. A woman who thought she was beyond the rules was vaping in the corner. Another man was creeping his hand sideways to touch a waitress’ behind. Then he’d seen the first tear fall from his mother’s eyes and his world had begun to turn at full speed again. He’d held out his hand to take her arm, and gently pulled her towards the lifts, to her room, where he could ask all the questions he did not want to ask and hear the answers that he already knew would haunt him forever.

In her room, Véronique went to stand by the window. Laughter drifted up from the Royal Mile and Christmas lights flashed dimly in the darkness, colouring his mother’s face as she stared out. Callanach sat on a chair in the corner and waited. He’d been here a hundred times, waiting for a victim to find the words they needed to begin their story. It didn’t help to rush them. He knew his mother was doing what every rape victim had to do before starting to talk. She was breaking down the brick wall she had built inside herself.

‘How much do you want to know?’ she whispered.

‘All of it,’ he said. ‘As much as you can bear to tell me.’

Véronique nodded and wrapped her arms around herself. Her knuckles were white. She turned her back so that her face was completely hidden and began to speak.

‘I was twenty-two,’ she said. ‘Naive, I suppose. Your father and I had been married a year. He had always been so kind, such a gentle man that it never occurred to me that I could be unsafe when I went anywhere with him. Times were not easy then. Work in Scotland was hard to find. We were struggling to pay our rent. No one seemed to want to employ a young French girl, so he was supporting us both. What do you remember about him, Luc?’

Callanach had to think for a moment. His memories from when he was four, just before his father had passed, were blurred but the vision he had was of his father’s hands always held out to lift him up, or to hug him. They were strong and warm.

‘Warmth,’ Callanach said. ‘His face is less clear as I get older, but I remember his voice. And his laugh. I think every memory is of him laughing.’

‘Yes. Always laughing,’ Véronique said. ‘That was him. Even when things were hard for us, he never lost his joy. He was a good man who only wanted to see the good in others. I was a virgin before I got married. A lot of women still were back then. Your father was the only man I …’

She broke off, resting her forehead against the window, her tears mixing with a drip of condensation as she breathed against the glass.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Callanach said.

‘Yes, I do,’ Véronique said. ‘You have a right to know.’ She sank down to sit on the window sill. ‘Your father finally got a job at Edinburgh Bespoke, a furniture-making factory. Because of his experience and his manner with the other men, his employers made him foreman very quickly. We were able to move out from rented accommodation and buy a flat. We were stretching ourselves financially but it was all right. We were young and in love, and we got by. Your father was proud of himself. He was twenty-five, had a good job and we’d begun talking about starting a family. That job meant the world to him. He made every day funny, you know? He came home with stories about his colleagues, their families, little things that went wrong. He had this photo of me, taken during our first dance at the wedding, that he kept on his desk at work. He used to tell me how the other men would say that I was beautiful, that he was lucky. It was silly, vain, but I thought it was harmless.’

She broke off on a sob, one hand at her throat. Callanach wanted to put his arms around her but couldn’t. Assault victims required space, not human contact, when reliving their experiences. He knew the form, had been trained endlessly on pro-tocols and procedures. Still, none of it had prepared him for this.

‘It was the work Christmas party,’ Véronique said, hardening her voice, gulping a breath. ‘I was wearing a green dress. Your father had bought it for me especially. He wanted me to look my best. It had a swing skirt, just above the knee. I told your father it was too expensive but he insisted. The party was at the warehouse. It was decorated, there was a tree, they put on some music, made punch. It was nice for me to meet the people I’d heard so much about, I felt like I knew them already. I was dancing with your father. He was driving us home so he hadn’t had any of the punch, but I had. Just a couple of glasses, although that was enough to make me a little dizzy. I wasn’t used to spirits and I don’t know what they’d put in it, but it was stronger than I’d realised.’

As if she was still there, Véronique reached out for a glass that was sitting on top of a cabinet, opened the hotel fridge and poured sparkling water. She took a long drink and sat down on the deep window sill, legs huddled up into her chest.

‘There was a telephone call. One of the company lorries had broken down and it needed to be towed to a garage, but it was full of furniture that had to be delivered the next day. Someone had to take out another lorry and bring the goods back to the warehouse. Your father was one of the few people still sober who could drive the truck. I hadn’t wanted him to go, but there was no real option. I remember wanting to go home, but I was persuaded to stay. Mr Jenson, one of the partners, said he would look after me. I hadn’t wanted to seem antisocial.

‘As soon as your father was gone, Mr Jenson offered me a tour of the warehouse. He made me feel important, talked about how much they valued my husband, did I want to see his office, and I went. I never thought for a moment … The music was on loudly by then, very loudly. People were singing, dancing, there was a lot of alcohol. We went up to the top floor, which was deserted. I recall wondering why he was showing me, that there wasn’t anything to see. The corridors were dark and there were heavy fire doors between sections of the building. We got to the far end, as far away from the party as you could get, and Mr Jenson told me that was where his office was. He opened the door. There was another man in there, one I hadn’t spoken to but I knew that it was the firm’s other partner, Mr Western. He got up from the desk, came to shake my hand, complimented my dress. Although he didn’t say anything wrong, I remember feeling that I shouldn’t have been there. It felt strange, two men in such a small room with me.’

Callanach could picture it more clearly than he wanted. His mother – young, incredibly beautiful, too scared to put a foot wrong, to insist that she return to the party. His father’s bosses – entitled, made braver by alcohol and the knowledge that no one could hear what they were about to do. It was a scene that had been replayed through history, across decades, social classes and genders. It was about the powerful and the powerless. It was just because they could.

‘I told them I needed the bathroom and that I had to go back downstairs. They had a bit of a laugh about something, I can’t recall what, then I saw Western nod at Jenson. I think I knew when I saw that tiny movement, just how much trouble I was in. That was all it took. The fact that they had communicated with one another, excluding me. They put a …’ She broke off, panting hard, shoulders hunched, head down.

‘Maman, don’t …’ Callanach said.

‘I have to,’ she replied. ‘They put a bag over my head, something rough, then one of them held me while the other … it was fast. I thanked God for that. And it was only one of them. Then the phone rang and it was as if, I don’t know, they woke up. Like they’d forgotten where they were, or who they were. I was pushed to the floor and Western pulled the bag off my head, threw it at me, told me to clean myself up. There was some bruising on my arms – I’d struggled and they’d been forceful holding me. My hair was a mess from the bag and there was makeup running down from my eyes. I was shaking and clumsy. I think it was Jenson who got annoyed, telling me to hurry up.’

Véronique stopped, studying the empty glass she was still clutching and forcing her fingers to relax so she could put it down.

‘What did Dad do?’ Callanach asked. He needed to move the story along. It was a selfish perspective, he realised that. His mother had had the courage to relive the worst moment of her life and all he wanted was to scrub the image from his mind. He wanted to turn back the clock never to have heard it.

‘I didn’t tell him,’ Véronique said. ‘I found my shoes. They’d been kicked across the room when I’d struggled … and I wiped the tears from my face and tried to leave. Western grabbed me just as I was opening the office door. “Tell anyone,” he said, “and your husband is out of a job. We’ll tell him it was you who came to us. And we’ll tell everyone else in this city that your husband stole from us. He’ll never work again. Not so fucking high and mighty now are you, miss pretty French piece of ass?” I heard those words in my head for years. His voice. The hatred in it. I don’t know if it was the picture on your father’s desk that set them off, or the way I spoke and the fact that I was French. But they chose me. They knew what they were doing. They gambled on the fact that I would never be able to tell your father, and they were right. So I went to the ladies’ room and I cleaned myself up. I waited outside for your father for an hour in the freezing cold. I told him I was unwell and he took me home. I vomited as soon as we got back and he must have thought it was the alcohol, so that’s what I let him believe.’

‘You couldn’t tell him?’

‘Losing his job would have been the best-case scenario, Luc. Your father adored me. He’d have killed them, both of them, for hurting me that way. The thought of losing our house didn’t matter to me, we could have lived on the streets and been happy, moved to France to find work, lived with my parents. But do you think your father would have walked away? Never. He would have ended up in a prison cell and all for the sake of me needing to share my pain. I loved him too much to tell him. Worse things happen to women, Luc. That’s what I told myself. It was easier to stay quiet. Easier to bear my shame quietly, alone. Better than risking it all.’

‘So no one ever knew?’ Callanach asked. ‘You’ve carried that alone all this time?’

‘I told my mother, after your father died when we moved back to France. Your father’s death devastated me but it released me from the need to stay in this country, near those animals. I was free to take you away and start again, and I was able to stop lying to the man I loved. I’m sorry, you don’t need to hear all this.’

‘There are counsellors, Maman. Even now it might do you good to get some help,’ Callanach said.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Véronique said, smiling gently at him. ‘I don’t want it to be part of my present. It’s the past. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the strength to tell you before. Instead, I ran. Not from you, though. From the memories.’

‘I understand the trauma,’ Callanach said. ‘But you know me. You know I could never be capable of causing the harm those men did you.’

‘I do know that. Really, I do. But there’s something more,’ Véronique said. ‘If I don’t tell you now, I never will. Eight weeks after that Christmas party I discovered that I was pregnant. Your father and I had continued having a normal relationship. I knew that if I stopped being with him, he would know immediately that something was wrong.’

‘Stop,’ Callanach said. ‘Please stop. Are you telling me …’

Véronique walked over, knelt before him and took his hands in hers.

‘Luc, nothing has changed. You were the only thing that mattered. The man you have always thought of as your father, was the only father who ever had any influence in your life. He loved you so much. When you were born it was as if I lost half of him to you and I never minded, not for one second. His smile was brightest when he looked at you. He would spend hours just holding you, watching you sleep.’

Callanach stood up. ‘You should have told him,’ he said.

‘To what end?’ Véronique asked. ‘If he had known the truth, he would have been blinded by my pain. But I know that he would have loved you no less, no differently, and I have always believed that you are his son.’

‘No. Not when Astrid came to you with her lies. For a while, then, you believed something else. Is that the guilty burden you came to shift? That you thought, for however fleeting a moment, like father like son. You thought that my biological father was the man who had raped you, and that I had turned out the same. That’s why you left me,’ Callanach said, picking up his coat and shrugging it on.

‘Luc, it wasn’t that black and white. I was devastated by the past all over again. Nothing made sense to me. I ran because I couldn’t hide the pain I was feeling and you had more than enough to deal with. This conversation we’re having now, that I always knew we would have to have one day, would have been too much for you back then.’

‘It’s too much for me now!’ Callanach shouted, reaching for the door.

Véronique threw herself in the way. ‘Please, please don’t go. I know how you’re feeling, I want to help you.’

‘I’ve just been told that my life may be the result of a rape, and that the man I’ve believed all my life was my father may not be. You have no idea how I’m feeling!’

‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Véronique sobbed, collapsing into the chair, head on her knees. ‘I thought it was the right thing to do. I thought it would help you forgive me.’

Callanach pushed the door gently shut and sat on the edge of the bed facing his mother. ‘There’s nothing left to forgive,’ he said. ‘Go back to France. You have to give me some time now.’

He stood up, left quietly and made his way back down to the street. It looked the same as he had left it, yet he felt it should have been different. That it should have changed with him. Everything he thought he knew about himself might be a lie. The solid ground beneath his feet was gone. His mother was even more a victim than him, yet he hadn’t had the strength to be the man she needed, to comfort and reassure her. Callanach turned up his collar against the icy walk home, telling himself as he went that the tears streaming down his face could be blamed on the wind in his eyes.

Chapter Fourteen

The main gates to Louis Jones’ car yard were locked and bolted. Leaving DC Tripp in the car, Ava walked the perimeter of the premises looking for a way in. It turned out not to require much effort. A back gate, through which lay a short alley, had been on the receiving end of some well-applied bolt cutters, its lock on the ground in two pieces. Ava pushed the gate fully open with her elbow, pulling on gloves as she entered and switching on a torch. The lot was full of vehicles. All had seen better days, most with dents that no amount of beating would repair. The whole place was surrounded by an eight-foot-high metal fence, the inside of which had been privatised using planks of wood. Jones wouldn’t have wanted anyone noting the licence plates on his vehicles, of course. Ava wondered if any of the cars there had been driven by the man who’d abducted her. She pushed the thought aside. That wasn’t what she was there for, and dwelling on it was a shortcut to misery. What she needed to figure out now, was who had been driving the crashed car.

Along one edge of the lot was a brick building. There was only one door that she could see and it was sturdy, probably reinforced. The windows, however, were another matter. There were only two and both were smashed, the displaced shards reflecting streaks of torchlight. Louis Jones, by the look of it, was having a very bad day indeed. Ava put her head to the first window, darted the torch around, announced the police presence even though the premises seemed vacant, and jumped in. Someone before her had been kind enough to dash any remaining glass spikes from the lower edge of the window. To the left-hand side of the room was a desk, each drawer ripped open, the contents scattered across the floor. A landline phone lay on the floor beneath an upturned chair, and sad-looking posters of supercars that had once adorned the walls hung in tatters.

The place had been ransacked. The question was whether the intruders had caused such carnage to send a message, or whether they were searching for something specific. A rack of keys along the right-hand wall was untouched. It wasn’t a vehicle they were after, then. Ava glanced around for evidence of a computer, but outfits like Jones’ rarely kept their records on anything as substantial as digital files. An internal door stood ajar, nothing but blackness showing in the crack. Ava walked to it slowly, kicked it open and drew a can of pepper spray from her jacket pocket. A screech came from the back of the area and Ava ducked, sending out a jet of pepper gas, slashing the torchlight left and right across the room.

‘Police, stay where you are,’ she shouted. There was no reply. ‘There’s another officer at the front door,’ Ava lied. ‘If you attempt to leave the premises, you will be stopped with force.’ She stood up, focusing the light and her eyes on the rear of the room. Panicked fluttering and squawking filled the air.

Ava stepped forward, conscious that the ground beneath her feet had softened. Flicking the light downwards she saw that the floor was strewn with bedding. A mattress was overturned in the corner, and clothes that had once inhabited an upturned chest of drawers were everywhere. Straightening up, she noticed a large cage in the corner containing two parrots. They were staring, making her feel oddly self-conscious.

‘What sort of person keeps caged birds in this day and age?’ Ava muttered. The response was further screeching as she neared the parrots. There was a huge pile of bird seed on the floor of the cage and an empty packet on the floor. ‘Someone knew they weren’t coming back for a while, didn’t they?’ she asked the birds.

Jones had obviously been living in the back rooms. A toilet and shower were situated in a side room, separated from the bedroom by a plastic curtain. In the corner, a microwave, toaster and kettle provided cooking facilities. Ava cursed quietly as she realised she would have to arrange for the SPCA to collect the birds. Making her way back through to the front office, Ava read the scrawled handwritten notes scattered across the floor. No wonder Louis Jones was reduced to living on a mattress on the floor, if that was how he did business. She picked up the landline, plugged it back in and dialled recall for the last number that had phoned in, scribbling it down before leaving. The scene would have to be secured, by which time the driver of the crashed vehicle might have been located unharmed. Unless it really had been Louis Jones, Ava thought, in which case maybe a broken limb or two wouldn’t be such a tragedy.

She went back out to the car and climbed in next to DC Tripp.

‘Pair of parrots need taking care of,’ she said. ‘Ask the SPCA to come out in the morning. They’ve got plenty of food to keep them going until then. Have some uniforms come and secure the premises until we’ve located the owner.’

‘Is it a crime scene, ma’am?’ Tripp asked.

‘Looks like it, unless the owner decided to redecorate in a rather unconventional manner. At the moment, though, we have no burglary complainant and no grounds for doing much. I don’t know what’s going on yet and I’m not kicking off an investigation until I do.’ She dialled DS Lively’s number.

‘Haven’t found the driver yet,’ he said. ‘Do we know anything more from Jones’ file?’

‘Nothing I can share,’ Ava said. ‘Who’s in charge at the scene?’

‘Chief Inspector Dimitri. He’s getting it all packed up now, having the car towed. The dogs have been recalled.’

Ava considered the name. ‘I’ve met him. He was the officer in charge at the Chief’s suicide; he seemed very kind. Begbie would have liked him,’ Ava commented. ‘Take a note of this phone number, would you?’ She read out the last number that had called in to Jones’ landline. ‘Check it out for me. Details for my eyes only at this stage. Jones’ file is still confidential. Whatever’s happened to Louis Jones, given the way he lived, I very much doubt there’s an innocent explanation.’

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