Blood, Salt, Water (24 page)

35

Boyd had been sitting on the concrete bench for forty minutes. Each time he shut his eyes to blink, he expected the world to be different when he opened them. It never was. A dead woman found at Susan’s.

Boyd only met Roxanna once. Sanjay didn’t talk about her much and then she was history. She had kids. They were young blokes. Boyd was honestly more startled to hear that Sanjay’s ex had been in Helensburgh than that she was found dead in Susan’s house. His time in London and Helensburgh felt so separate. It was like finding a character in the wrong movie.

A grey wall opposite him. A grey floor in front of him. Heat-sapping cold under his buttocks. He leaned forward again, folding the thin mattress under his bum and sitting on that. He had been alternating for thirty minutes between sweating into the rubberised plastic and freezing his balls off on the bare concrete.

He shut his eyes. Question him. They needed to question him about a murdered woman? Lucy didn’t know how serious it was when they took him away. She thought Boyd got caught for getting a deal. He could see she blamed him.

His mother’s angry voice came into his head: Speak clearly, don’t mumble, stay calm, don’t lie. Fucking useless advice in this context.

He kept shutting his eyes and thinking about Miss Grierson. They said two women had been killed. She was the only woman he could imagine might be missing, the only woman he felt guilty about. She said she was leaving, that she didn’t belong here and he should tell them. That should be the first thing he told them. Less than twelve hours ago she stood in the doorway to her garden, watching him leave, a reassuring lack of affection and warmth in her expression as she said goodnight, see you later, formulaic phrases that promised nothing and asked for nothing.

If she was dead they would find traces of him all over her. Even if she’d taken a bath as soon as he left, bits of Boyd would be all over the kitchen and on the floor of the conservatory. He felt sick at the memory of the conservatory. Why did they do that there, on a dirty floor? The house had bedrooms. But he knew why. They did it there because it wasn’t a bedroom. Neither of them wanted intimacy. They were looking for the opposite of intimacy.

Footsteps outside the door. Locks scraping open. A stern woman. Come with me, please, sir.

They took him out of the building onto the Helensburgh street and put him in the back of a car, a shitty car. Then two uniformed police got in the front and they drove all the way to Glasgow in silence. It was horrible.

They pulled up in a shit area of that shit city. Why would anyone live there? It was so ugly. Around the back of a big building and into a walled car park topped with razor wire and cameras.

They got Boyd out and walked him up a concrete ramp, through a security door and to a sort of check-in desk. Then they handed him over to the cops there, gave them a padded brown envelope with all of Boyd’s personal belongings in and left, saying they had to go back to Helensburgh and get someone else. Who else? Susan Grierson?

A very tall female officer came and stood by him. The man behind the desk took his details and they moved him over to a big machine that photographed his fingerprints. The man looked at Boyd’s cashmere sweater and told the giantess to be careful with this one.

A joke. She was built like a tank.

Boyd only realised it was a gentle joke, not nasty, when they were around the corner on the way out to the interview rooms. Boyd wanted to go back and smile at the man, show he got it. But he couldn’t. He followed the giant sheepishly, through a stairwell, into a room with a wire mesh window on the door and a table in the middle with four chairs.

They wouldn’t be long, she said and then she left him alone. A sarcastic camera winked high in the corner of the room.

Now she was missing too.

The door flew open behind him. The people who had come to the café marched in. They introduced themselves as DI Alex Morrow (the woman) and DC Howard McGrain (the man).

‘Right, Boyd, we want to ask you about Roxanna Fuentecilla: when did you meet her?’

Boyd hesitated. ‘After the London Marathon. Three years ago.’

‘And the next time?’

‘There wasn’t a next time. That was it.’

‘Did you go for something to eat afterwards?’

‘No.’ Obviously she had never run a marathon. He wanted to tell her that you didn’t exactly feel like nipping into a Nando’s afterwards but he was scared of her.

‘When Fuentecilla came to Helensburgh, did she come to the café?’

‘You know, honestly? She might have. But if she did I didn’t recognise her. I met her that one time and I’d just run a marathon. That was it. If it wasn’t for that photo I probably wouldn’t even remember. Sanjay split up with her afterwards. She had kids and I think all he liked about her was her house. She lived in Belgravia. He thought she was rich.’

‘Was she?’

‘I guess not. I think he could have overlooked the children if she had been.’

‘Have you sold any land recently?’

‘Land?’

‘Have you?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know Frank Delahunt?’

‘No.’

‘Tell me what happened with Susan Grierson.’

He baulked at that, but he told them: I knew her growing up. She moved away for a very long time. I met her again recently. She asked for a job and worked for me for one night. After the dinner she approached me. She said she had some cocaine. She went to the café and waited for me. In the café, after, well, sort of . . .

Boyd was blushing furiously. It was one thing to do things but telling was different.

The woman seemed to have been through this before. ‘Just look at the table and say it. You’ll not be telling us anything we haven’t heard a hundred times.’

He looked at the table and said it: She gave me a blow job. Weird. How was it weird? She had a kind of bag in her mouth. She sort of hid it from me by doing that – he showed them the mouth movement and the way she swung her head away, covering her mouth with her flat hand. So that was, kind of, odd. We went back to her house. We took more coke—

‘Where was the coke, was it in a packet or an envelope of some kind?’

‘Yeah, a Waitrose bag. Freezer bag. Small size. Like that one the phone was in. I noticed it because it made me think of work. Waitrose take a lot of our custom.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Well, we went to her house and you know . . .’

‘Had sex?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In the kitchen area, sort of. Please don’t tell my wife.’

The woman looked at him for a moment, as if she was deliberating. ‘Your wife knows. She told me. She said, “I think he was out fucking some waitress.” Where is Susan Grierson now?’

He was too startled to speak. All he could think about was Lucy in the kitchen with the boys this morning, crying, hiding it from them, and how sad she must feel. He had done that. And she had known, this morning, when he stomped into the kitchen and hugged her and pulled her onto his knee. She had known. He was an arsehole.

‘Mr Fraser? Where is Susan Grierson now?’

Boyd forced himself to speak. ‘Told me she was leaving. Again. Said she didn’t belong here.’

They pushed a different photo over at him, a picture of a family in a botanical glasshouse. Roxanna was in the foreground. He hadn’t seen her for a long time, barely remembered her from then, but she was still fantastically good-looking.

‘Do you know this man?’

They pointed to a man in the background, red-trousered. The husband? Boyd looked at him for a moment. ‘I think he comes into the café. He looks like a customer. Maybe.’

‘And the woman?’

‘Well,’ he felt they were trying to trick him, ‘isn’t it Roxanna? The woman from the photo with Sanjay?’

‘Yes.’ They put it away. It felt like a dumb test of something. He was pissed off by that. The regret was ebbing away and he felt himself getting angry.

‘Look, how did you even get the photo of me and Sanjay? Did Sanjay give it to you?’

‘You put that photo up on the café website, didn’t you?’

Oh, God. They were right. He had put it up there, as a finger to Sanjay; well not really a finger but more of a goading gesture. When it was obvious he was never coming up to visit.

‘The picture we found is very low res,’ said the man. ‘We think it’s a print from the website image.’

The woman was looking at her notes and Boyd suddenly thought, Fuck this. ‘Can I go home?’

They ignored him.

She looked up. ‘What’s your relationship to Iain Fraser?’

Boyd shook his head. ‘Sorry, who?’

‘Iain Fraser. A man from Helensburgh.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘He has the same surname as you and he lives in Helensburgh.’

She didn’t know the town. Boyd explained patiently that there were two different Fraser families in Helensburgh. There had been a spit in the family a generation back. His father’s sister converted to Catholicism. Their father was a minister and Boyd’s father was a minister, and the two sides didn’t really talk to each other. Colquin and Lawnmore Frasers, they were known as. It felt odd explaining small-town family politics to a stranger in a Glasgow police station. It was more of a tea and scones conversation piece.

‘So, Iain Fraser’s your cousin?’

Cold crept over Boyd’s shoulders. He had the sensation of the ground moving under him. ‘I suppose. Technically.’

The woman’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she took it out, looked at it and left the room to take the call. They were so fucking rude! When she came back in she was agitated and in a hurry to get away.

‘That’ll be all for now, Mr Fraser. We’re going to go and talk to some people but we’d like you to stay here with us. We’ll come back to you in an hour or so. OK?’

‘Anything,’ he said, not feeling gracious at all, wanting to cause a fuss and get out. ‘Really. Anything that helps.’

They escorted him downstairs to the check-in desk and the man in the shirtsleeves. Boyd tried a smile at him, the smile he meant to give when he made the joke about the big woman being wary of him. The man smiled back pleasantly but Boyd didn’t think he remembered.

A buzzer rang behind the desk, chiming with a bell in a distant concrete corridor. The shirt-sleeved man leaned down and spoke into an intercom. What is it? Cup of tea? Sugar? Sit tight, mate, and we’ll get that to you.

It was the cousin. They’d gone back to Helensburgh for him. The Colquin Frasers, tainted by Rome, the non-elect.

36

Robin Walker had phoned Morrow: the kids were missing.

They set off for school after Morrow and McGrain left the house this morning. Robin had been waiting for them to come home at the usual time, ready to tell them the terrible news about their mother. But they didn’t come home. He called their phones but they were switched off. He called one of Martina’s friends and she said Martina hadn’t been at school today. He called the school and was told by the secretary that a phone call in the morning notified them that the kids wouldn’t be in today. As far as she could recall, the secretary said, it was a woman’s voice.

Morrow had barely lifted her hand to knock when Robin opened his front door wide. He glared at her with blood-shot eyes and staggered off into the living room. They followed him in.

She found him slumped on the couch, in front of what looked like a half pint of vodka with a tinge of orange mixer and a brown-edged quarter of lime. He was drunk.

‘Mr Walker?’

‘Fucking fucks, those fucks.’

She sat down next to him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well, now we know, don’t we?’ He slurred and lifted the drink to take a gulp. He looked at Morrow. ‘We know where they’ve gone, anyway.’

‘Who?’

‘Fucking kids.’ His breath reeked sour. He smelled as if he was sweating venom.

‘When did this happen?’

‘They set off for school. I went out for a run. Then one of
you
came, told me about . . .’ He couldn’t say it. He rolled a hand, easing himself over the bump. When he spoke again he sounded broken. ‘Waited for them, from school. I didn’t go in, too upset, I just thought –
Those kids, God, those poor kids.
And all the time I’m not thinking
my
Roxanna, you know, I’m thinking
their
mum. Their
mum.
You know?’ He’d become a stepfather just too late. He took another drink, cringing as he swallowed, not enjoying it. ‘They hadn’t been in. I checked their rooms – everything gone. Their stuff gone and their passports. Every fucking thing. Gone. Set up to look as if - fucking
arseholes
.’

‘They could have been kidnapped?’

‘Bollocks.’ He stood up unsteadily, staggered sideways two steps, corrected himself and fell forwards through the door to the hall. ‘COME!’ He roared, bouncing off a wall.

By the time they got down to Martina’s room, a matter of seconds, Robin’s mood had changed entirely and he was sitting on her bed, sobbing. All of the cupboards were open, all of the cupboards were empty. Martina had done a good job of not attracting attention though. Her sparse ornaments were untouched. Her bed was made as if she was coming back. She had even left her laptop on the desk.

Morrow looked at it. ‘Robin, what do you think happened?’

He looked at her. She could feel him trying, through sheer force of will, to sober up. He couldn’t though, because he didn’t drink often, she thought. So now he was very drunk and very shocked. ‘Vicente set her up. Murdered her. Now he’s taken the kids.’

He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand.

‘Would he do that to their mother?’

He snorted. ‘You don’t know him.’

Morrow sat next to him on the bed. ‘Neither do you.’

He thought about that. He wept and scratched his arm. He looked around the empty cupboards and the room. ‘I had a life . . .’

Thankless held up his phone. He had a call coming through on silent. Morrow nodded that he could take it and he went out to the corridor.

Walker sniffed, ‘I haven’t got the rent for this month. I’m going back to London with nothing. Gave up my job and everything to come here. Except that bookcase.’

‘A design icon,’ said Morrow.

He smiled pathetically. ‘Maria Arias set her up, didn’t she?’

Morrow half nodded. ‘But something went wrong, I think.’

‘She knew Vicente from before . . .’ He looked around the room once more and stood up. ‘I’m going to get fucking hammered.’

She stood up too. ‘Good idea.’

In the hall Thankless nodded her away from Walker. They watched him stagger off into the living room.

Thankless muttered, ‘A woman fitting Grierson’s picture was at Glasgow airport this morning. Private plane. Had two kids with her. She was travelling in the name of Abigail Gomez.