Cold Grave (36 page)

‘Put these on him,’

As Winter tied up Dunbar, Danny managed to fish his mobile out of his trouser pocket. After a few seconds, his call was answered.

‘Jered Dunbar? It’s Danny Neilson. I’ve got something for you.’

It took an hour and a half before Jered and two of his fellow travellers from the Stirling site managed to make their way to Maryhill but Sam Dunbar hadn’t stirred. Winter and Danny had managed to keep him off the snow so he didn’t freeze to death and had marched him back and forth to keep his circulation flowing as well as theirs.

They heard the gypsies coming before they saw them, the three figures finally emerging from the snow and advancing on them. Danny had his jacket zipped to his throat so they couldn’t see he was shirtless beneath it, not wanting to give any hint he was injured and he and Winter were at a distinct disadvantage.

‘What have you done to him?’ Jered demanded when he saw that his cousin was unconscious.

‘Saved his life probably,’ Danny replied.

Jered looked doubtful.

‘How do you reckon that?’

‘He was strutting round Glasgow slicing into people with that sword. He wouldn’t have lasted more than a year before someone killed him. It was prison or the grave for him — no other choices. You realise that?’

Jered pursed his lips but nodded sullenly.

‘Who was he working for?’

‘You don’t want to go there, Jered. The guy is heavy duty. He’ll be pissed enough that Sam has gone missing without you going in there and making it worse. Stay away.’

‘Okay, but tell me what you know. Why was he doing it?’

‘Money,’ Danny answered flatly. ‘He was earning big style but he also needed it to pay for his new habit.’

Jered looked confused.

‘Cocaine,’ Danny explained. ‘You’ll need to get him off it and it will be painful. I think that stuff was what made him start using the sword. He faced us down with it but he gave us the chance to back off. That’s the only reason he’s going back with you rather than inside. You understand me?’

‘Okay…’ The words stuck in Jered Dunbar’s throat. ‘Thanks. We’ll deal with him from here.’

‘Not quite so fast, Jered. We have a deal.’

Jered looked to his two companions, both shorter than Winter and Danny but one wiry with flinty eyes and the other broad and muscular. With one and a half sets of arms between them, it was going to be a struggle to take these three on the tight confines of the towpath, particularly as the good pair of arms belonged to Winter. Jered moved in close on Danny, nose to nose like they had been back in the caravan when Danny had head-butted him.

‘I don’t like you much,’ Jered told him, his accomplices now tight to his shoulder. ‘No respect. And don’t think I’ve forgotten what you done to me.’

Danny didn’t blink, just stared back at Jered, noticing how the bridge of his nose was still swollen and slightly misshapen.

‘And this is our business not yours,’ Jered continued. ‘Uncle shouldn’t have got you involved. Sam is family.’

Winter moved forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with Danny, joining in the staring contest as best he could.

‘If it was down to me, then we’d be breaking the ice on that canal and you’d be going in it. But Uncle says different.’

‘Your uncle is a wise man,’ Danny told him. ‘Just saved you from a broken neck. Where’s Bradley?’

Jered’s lip curled back as he inched closer to Danny, his head bobbing slightly as if he were making his mind up whether to butt him.

‘We don’t know yet. We’re looking and we’ll find him soon enough. You’ll have to trust us on that.’

Danny held his ground, his head against Jered’s.

‘Not good enough. Where is he?’

‘All we’re sure of is that he’s in Scotland, somewhere in the west. Uncle is a man of his word. When we know, we’ll call you.’

‘You better.’

Danny looked down at Sam Dunbar, still out cold at their feet.

‘Take your rubbish and get going back to Stirling. But Jered? I don’t give a damn if you take him to Riverside or Russia. If he comes back to Glasgow, then he goes to jail. No second chances. Understood?’

‘Pick him up,’ Jered told his mates. ‘I’ll take this sword if it’s his.’

Winter put his boot firmly over the blade of the sword. ‘No chance. That’s going nowhere. It’s done enough damage.’

Jered looked from Danny to Winter and back again before giving up the ghost.

‘Hurry up, you two. Let’s get out of this place.’

They watched the three travellers go down the towpath until they disappeared into the snow, the sound of their labours soon waning as the night swallowed them up.

Winter looked at the samurai sword at his feet and tried to figure out the best way to pick it up without inflicting further damage on the fingerprints and DNA it held on its surfaces.

‘Think that will be enough to keep Aaron Sutton happy?’ Winter asked him.

‘That and knowing the sword and its user are off the street. Anyway, it will have to be.’

‘How’s your arm?’

‘Nearly falling off.’

‘Let’s get you to hospital.’

‘Aye, whatever. Jered and his bloody uncle better not be buggering us about. Bradley is the key to all this. But something isn’t right — all those rumours about Barbie being a gypsy bride and now Bradley living as a traveller. You know how I feel about coincidences. Something’s wrong here and I just can’t see it.’

Narey was up before nine and had worked her way through a stodgy fry-up in the hotel restaurant while flicking through the newspapers. She read both a tabloid and a broadsheet but soon discovered she didn’t have much of an appetite for either. What passed for news in both of them seemed to pale beside the things that were going on in her own life.

She had been tempted to go straight over to CAHiD to see how Kirsten was getting on but knew it wouldn’t do much good for her to be standing over the professor’s shoulder while she worked. Hard as it was, she would stay away until she got the call to say that the job was done. It didn’t stop her thinking about it, mentally filling in the gaps in Barbie’s broken skull just as the computer reconstruction system was doing, seeing the girl become flesh in her mind.

There was still maybe half a day until the model was completed and there was no way she could hang about in her hotel room until then but, equally, she couldn’t venture far or do anything worthwhile in case the call came through. It was snowing again but, despite that, she decided to go for a walk — anything to take her mind off what was happening. She found herself wandering down towards the river, the silvery Tay as McGonagall put it, shining under a wet sun and looking icy cold. To her right, the rail bridge snaked out into the river and across to Fife, and across to her left, the road bridge did the same, the ends of both disappearing into misty clouds of snow.

She walked across to Discovery Point, where Captain Scott’s Antarctic exploration ship was permanently docked. It was a big tourist attraction for the area and Narey couldn’t help but think that being built to cope with winter at the South Pole was pretty handy preparation for a long winter in Dundee. The ship had been built in the city, right enough, so the people who put it together obviously knew a thing or two about surviving in a cold climate.

Her dad had taught her all about Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his Antarctic expeditions on the
Discovery
and the
Terra Nova
. She’d thrilled to his tales of the race to the Pole, of being beaten there by Amundsen and of Captain Oates saying that he was ‘going outside and may be some time’. Her dad was her own Captain Scott, her hero.

Narey instinctively reached for her mobile, feeling the need to hear his voice. She listened as it rang and rang, before finally going to voicemail but she hung up without leaving a message. She paced back and forth in front of the
Discovery
, looking up to the heavens to see the snow tumbling towards her, sticking out her tongue and catching flakes the way she had when she was little.

She phoned back and this time it was answered on the fourth ring. The voice on the other end sounded very small and a little afraid.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Dad. It’s Rachel.’

A long pause. ‘Who?’

‘It’s Rachel, Dad.’

‘I don’t know a Rachel.’

‘Yes you do. I’m your daughter.’

‘Daughter? I don’t have a daughter. Who are you? Why are you saying this?’

‘It’s okay, Dad. Don’t worry. Look, I’ll call you later. Okay?’

‘No! Don’t call me. Don’t. I don’t know you.’

He hung up on her.

She stood in front of the ship and let tears run down her face, breathing hard, telling herself she was away from him for a good reason. She was there for him. She just wasn’t
there
for him.

She wandered away from the riverside and back towards the city centre, her collar turned up fruitlessly against the snow. People were hustling past her on either side but she’d rarely felt so alone. Tony was only about ninety miles away but it felt as if he were on the other side of the world. How far away would he want to be when she told him about her planned changes for their relationship?

In the end, the call from Kirsten came much earlier than Narey had expected. The professor had been in the lab since before it was light and she phoned to say that if Narey headed over to CAHiD, then the girl would be ready by the time she got there.

The College of Life Sciences was on Dow Street, only a ten-minute walk away and she hurried straight to it. The white, six-storey building looked impressively anonymous from the street but it held one of the leading centres in its field in the country, if not the world. Narey was shown up to Kirsten’s lab, a keen surge of expectation running through her and the adrenalin taking over from the despair she’d been feeling about her dad.

‘Wow, you were quick,’ Kirsten smiled from behind her computer screen as Narey came through the door. ‘Did you run?’

‘A bit,’ Narey admitted. ‘Is she ready?’

‘Almost. You caught me out slightly but… I’m just refining the skin tone to make sure… yes, okay. I’m happy with that. Do you want to see her?’

Narey knew she had no simple, satisfactory answer to a question like that. She was aching to see the girl but she was also scared about where it might lead. Be careful what you wish for, that’s what they said. Instead, she settled for a simple unsatisfactory reply.

‘Yes.’

Kirsten grinned and beckoned her to the other side of the screen. As Narey walked round the terminal, there she was, looking back at her as if she were real. Lily. Barbie. Fully formed, three-dimensional, not living or breathing, flesh but no blood. It was incredible. In little over a day, she had been transformed from skull to face, turning on the screen in front of them, all but alive from every angle.

‘There is some guesswork, of course,’ Kirsten warned. ‘But we have some very clever software and we can be confident it’s accurate. This is how she looked.’

Narey almost unconsciously took the seat in front of the screen and just sat there, staring at the girl. She watched her revolve slowly before her, still wondering who she was but knowing they were now so much closer to finding out.

‘Can you give me an image of this that I can send to Strathclyde?’

‘Of course. One touch of a button.’

‘Great. I want to send this to my DC. She’s the one who has been going through all the missing persons data. If anyone is going to be able to put a name to the face quickly, it’s her.’

Two minutes later Narey had Julia Corrieri on the other end of the phone and they were waiting for Barbie’s face to appear on her computer screen in Stewart Street.

‘What’s happening down there today, Julia?’

‘Pretty quiet at the moment, Sarge. I’d just come in to go through these files one more time before I go over to Vancouver Road to take over guard duties at Greg Deans’ house.’

‘How is he?’

‘Scared. Scared and very annoying. He is always… Hold on. It’s here.’

There was a tense silence on both ends of the line as the image unfolded before Corrieri.

‘I know her, Sarge. She’s on my list, I’m sure of it. Her name is…’ Corrieri paused to make sure she was right. ‘Claire Channing. She’s from somewhere in the north of England. Wait a mo, let me…’

On the other end of the phone, Narey puffed out her cheeks while Corrieri shuffled through some papers. It wasn’t impatience at the DC’s actions; it was tension, pure and simple.

‘Yes,’ Corrieri confirmed jubilantly. ‘Claire Channing. Born in May 1976. She was from Whitby in North Yorkshire. Her parents, Edward and Emily Channing, reported her missing in September 1992, the year before. And yet… sorry, hang on, Sarge.’

Narey could hear Corrieri softly reading aloud and sounding as if she had repeated it to make sure she had heard herself correctly in the first place.

‘Okay, Sarge. I could be wrong. The initial missing person’s report from North Yorkshire Police is the one that has the photograph attached but there is a follow-up from 1994 after the body was found on Inchmahome. They went back to the parents just in case but were told that it definitely wasn’t her. That was the last they had on it.’

Shit. Why could nothing ever be simple, Narey thought.

‘Email me the photograph of the Channing girl, Julia. But what’s your take on it looking at her?’

‘Well, I mean… I’m sure it’s her, Sarge. The likeness is very strong. I’d say that unless Claire Channing has a twin, then it’s her.’

Within minutes, the image from the North Yorkshire file had been spirited back up the line to Dundee and popped up on the screen before Narey and Fairweather. It was stunning. Narey couldn’t help but smile at the look of satisfaction on Kirsten’s face. She and her scanner and her software had done a remarkable job.