Dead Won't Sleep (2 page)

‘Right. Okay. I’ll be there. How will I know you?’

‘I’ve got black hair and I’m wearing a light raincoat,’ Rosie said. ‘But don’t worry about me. What do you look like?’

‘I’ve got on a blue rain jacket and jeans. Ma hair’s blonde. Streaks.’

‘I’ll recognise you,’ Rosie said, confident that she would look like any other haunted Belsen victim you saw in housing schemes across the city.

The line went dead.

Chief Superintendent Gavin Fox, head of CID at Strathclyde Police, pressed the intercom buzzer on the flashing telephone on his desk.

‘Tell them to come in, Patsy.’ His voice was friendly, benign. He hoped there were no telltale signs when he’d walked through the door of his office this morning on the eighth floor of Riverdale House. Patsy had been with him so long that she could detect if there was anything on his mind. She watched him like a hawk, but he didn’t mind that. He even suspected she might have an inkling of some of the dirty little secrets in his life, but she was one of those women who just got on with her work and didn’t ask questions – the way women used to be before they got too big for their bras and started all this women’s lib shite. Now there were even women in the force telling some of the men what to do. Christ! Most of them were hairy-arsed lesbians, and he had no time for any of them. Women cops were fine, and there were times when a
woman’s touch came in handy on certain enquiries, but not on the front line. They couldn’t be trusted, with their hormones diving all over the place and getting in the way of men’s work.

Fox sat back in his chair and pushed away from his desk, turning his head to look out at the sun glistening on the River Clyde. He loved that sight. It always calmed him, watching the river flow as his mind charted a path down through the towns from Glasgow to the sea where he spent his sailing weekends on his beloved boat. But today, even the sight of the river gave his guts a little tweak. He took a deep breath and patted his stomach, toned from his rigorous fitness regime, as if to give it a warning to toughen up. He mustn’t show any weakness in front of Jack or Bill. Holding his nerve was crucial, especially now. For the last six months, all three of them had lived in dread that the body they’d fed to the fish would wash up on the beach. From the moment the kid was reported missing from the children’s home, there was a gut-wrenching inevitability that it was the girl they’d been with that night. You couldn’t have made it up.

He had managed to contain his rising panic when he took the phone call three days ago on his way to work, telling him that a naked body had been washed up at Troon. He was hoping there wouldn’t be much of her left after six months in the water, and he was relieved when forensics said they were struggling to ID her, or find any cause of death. But within two days they knew
from dental records who she was. Now, more than ever, he had to show Jack and Bill what he was made of.

‘Chaps,’ Fox said cheerily, as the door opened and Chief Inspector Jack Prentice and Superintendent Bill Mackie shuffled into the room. By the looks on their faces they were not bearing up.

‘Sit down for Christ’s sake,’ Fox said. ‘Look at the nick of the two of you. I’ve seen less guilty-looking men standing with a smoking gun in their hand. Christ almighty, gents, get a fucking grip!’

Fox was on his feet, moving from behind his desk to be closer to the pair. He was just plain Foxy now, and these were his mates of nearly thirty years. They had been together through it all, from lifting toerag house-breakers as beat cops and kicking seven shades of shit out of them in back alleys, to busting drug dealers and hired killers. They had lied for each other in the witness box to put lowlifes behind bars, and they’d never so much as turned a hair when some well-fed, port-jowled defence QC laid into them, trying to pick holes in their stories. Fuck them too! All they cared about was their fat legal aid fee to feed their champagne and cocaine lifestyle. Foxy and his mates knew what justice was and, if you wanted to take some bastard off the streets, you had to break some rules as well as legs along the way. Sure, they’d fucked up big-style now, but some cheap little junkie whore who happened to die on his boat was not about to bring them all down.

‘Right, lads. How’s it going?’ Foxy said, rubbing his hands as he sat on his desk facing them.

Silence. He looked from one to the other, his eyes resting on Jack. He didn’t look well.

‘I’m shitting myself, Foxy,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t mind telling you. From the moment we ditched that wee lassie over the edge of the boat I’ve hardly slept a wink. I knew she would turn up some day. I knew it. I feel like I’m constantly going to throw up.’ Jack looked and sounded like a condemned man.

‘Me too,’ Bill said. ‘My arse is twitching. But here’s the deal . . .’ He turned to Jack. ‘Jack. You’d better buckle down here. The bottom line is that nobody has a single thing on any of us. I mean we’re more or less above suspicion. It’s only because
we
know what we did that we’re worried. We’ll just have to tough it out.’ Bill sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. He’d been doing that better than Jack these past months.

‘Exactly, Bill,’ Foxy said. He pushed away the niggle in his stomach and kept his voice calm. ‘And anyway,’ he continued, spreading his hands out in front of him. ‘we didn’t actually do anything. The stupid wee bitch just died. I didn’t lay a hand on her. Well, apart from the shag. I mean, none of us harmed her in any way. Under normal circumstances she would have been well paid and dropped off somewhere in the morning. We didn’t kill her, she just upped and died on us. Wee fucking bitch!’ He rubbed his chin and looked at the
two of them. ‘It must have been the coke. Perhaps she’d had a lot of stuff before she arrived at the boat.’ He put his hands in his pockets and squared his shoulders. ‘Look, lads, we’ve been through all of this back to front in the last few months. We’ll deal with it. The bird’s been in the water for six months. There’s nothing on her for forensics.’

The door opened and Patsy came in carrying a tray with cups and teapot. She set it down on her boss’s table and did not make eye contact with any of them, not even when Foxy thanked her.

He watched the door closing behind her before he continued.

‘Bill,’ he said, pouring the tea into cups, knowing they were noticing his steady hands. ‘How did the press conference go this morning?’

‘The usual, Foxy,’ Bill said. ‘The only real interest is because the bird was fourteen and she was naked. And because she was that missing lassie.’ He looked away. ‘There were obvious questions from the slavering hacks. You know. Sexual assault. Rape. Murder. Big McCann from Ayr’s handling it. They only gave the basic information out at the press conference. They said forensic tests were still ongoing. Somebody asked how long she’d been in the water, but they couldn’t be accurate. I was there because the girl’s from Glasgow and we’re liaising, but I didn’t say anything. Just sat in the background.’

‘Fine,’ Foxy said. ‘They’ll be sniffing around looking for a murder because of the other whore murder last year. But this is different. They’ll never find anything. As you say, Bill, there’s nothing to link her to the night she went missing. Nothing.’ He was confident. ‘So, Bill. Any questions about how she got there? Any imaginative theories from the hacks? You know how the bastards don’t allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.’ Foxy walked towards the window with his tea in his hand.

‘No, not yet. We’ll have to wait and see how the papers handle it, but these days nobody bothers with junkies. It’s only because she was that missing kid, but we’ve suspected that since she washed up. We’ve lived with it. We’ll just need to keep going.’

They both looked at Jack.

His face turned beetroot. ‘I know, Foxy. It’s my fault. We’ve already been through all that. How the fuck was I to know she was only fourteen and from a children’s home?’ Sweat had broken out on his forehead. ‘But I was assured she was eighteen. One of her pals told me. One of the lassies we’ve used before. She said she knew her. What was I supposed to do? Ask for a passport?’

He looked pleadingly at Foxy.

‘I mean this is the biggest nightmare of my life, Foxy. Honest to Christ. I’m at home with my wife and daughter and I can’t concentrate on anything. Even at work, I feel as if I’m going around in a daze. That wee lassie. I mean
we just fucking dumped her like a piece of meat.’ Jack was on the verge of tears.

Foxy put his cup down on the desk and took a deep breath. He could see Jack was beginning to break already. If this was Jack when there was really nothing to worry about, he wouldn’t like to see him if there was any heat on. Typical Jack. In the beginning, when they were just young cops together trying to make their mark, it was always Jack who was the weakest. A big bear of a man and the best pal anybody could ever have, but when backs were to the wall you could hear the sound of bottle crashing. The first time they got paid off by big Jake Cox, Jack had been panicking in case they were caught. It had taken a few payoffs and reassurances for Jack to get fully into how you could make the system work, and still manage to do your bit to clean up the streets. Over the years, he’d become more confident about it, as long as he knew his two mates would be at his side. They would never desert each other. They’d stick together – they knew too much not to – but now was definitely not the time for Jack to develop a serious conscience.

‘Stop that now, Jack,’ Foxy snapped at him. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. It’s you and your fucking Catholic guilt. Okay, the lassie died. But she would have died anyway. Sooner or later. They all end up like that. She might not have been injecting heroin when we met her, but you can guarantee she would have been before
the year was out. And she’d have been dead by twenty–one.’

He drank from his cup and set it down on the table.

‘I mean we never abused her or anything. We didn’t hurt her. We don’t hurt any of these birds. It’s just a bit of fun. Only this time it went wrong.’ Foxy sat back down and looked straight at Jack and Bill, the way he always did when he was trying to convince them that everything would be fine.

‘Listen, Jack. Bill.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Now listen good. We’re all in this together. We’ve just got to stay strong for a few weeks and this will all blow over. Let’s keep our heads down and our chins up. ’Cos if we don’t, it’ll show and I don’t want to think what could happen if any of this gets out.’

Foxy stood, a signal for Bill and Jack to leave. They got up and shook each other’s hands. Foxy noticed that Jack’s was like a wet dishcloth.

They went out of the room and Foxy walked over to the wall next to the window and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a handsome man for his fifty years. The dark hair, flecked with grey, gave him that distinguished look of a man you could trust. He looked at the framed photograph of himself on the wall, holding an award, surrounded by police chiefs and the Lord Provost. Yes. Gavin Fox had stood tall in his uniform, and he admired the photograph of him in his black tunic. He ran his hands over the picture, caressed the blue and
red ribbons he wore that day over his breast pocket. Medals of distinction, honour. He just had a little weakness for women, but it was his secret. In twenty-five years of marriage, his wife had never suspected anything of his boat trips with the lads at the weekend. That’s how it would stay, Foxy vowed to himself. That’s how it must stay.

Few places depressed Rosie more than the East End of Glasgow. The smell of fat from greasy-spoon cafes hung in the air against the backdrop of cheap clothes shops, selling rubbish gear to kids and parents who existed in a world far removed from the designer stores in the city centre just a mile away.

For Rosie, the East End stank of poverty and failure. And every time she went there, a flood of buried childhood memories came rushing back to remind her of who she was and where she came from. Now she sat at the window, watching the drizzle cling to the grimy glass of the Grass Cafe, and closed her eyes to push away the image of the little girl trudging up the road in no hurry to go home. There was nothing to go home to. Her mum would be comatose on the couch as usual.

She could still call up that smell her mother had when she used to grab Rosie and kiss her, once she’d roused her from drunken sleep. Stale booze and fags, mixed
with the musty but potent smell of Worth perfume that had been on too long.

‘Can I get you somethin’?’ The voice broke into Rosie’s gloomy reverie. She looked up at the skinny girl in the light blue overall, her hair tied up in a neat pony tail and her eyes bright and inquiring.

‘Tea please. Just tea,’ Rosie said, smiling at her.

The girl walked smartly back to the counter and ordered the tea from the woman behind the formica, working at the deep fat fryers. They exchanged a few words then both glanced over at Rosie who looked away from them. They were probably wondering who she was. A copper? A social worker? Dressed in her raincoat and black suit, Rosie stood out from the other customers in the cafe. One woman sat eating chips and smoking a cigarette between mouthfuls. An old man with no teeth was trying to negotiate a fried-egg roll. Rosie felt a little sick as she watched him sucking the yolk. In the far corner a boy of no more than eighteen had made three attempts to pick up a mug of tea, but his hands trembled so much he couldn’t put it to his lips. Another junkie. ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’. Sure it did. Rosie smiled to herself thinking of the logo and the yellow, smiley-face icon that had been the city’s image across the world. The thing was, despite all this crap and poverty and drugs, the city still had the balls to smile at itself.

The door opened and an emaciated young woman
walked in, leading a little girl by the hand. She looked around, and her eyes rested on Rosie. Rosie hadn’t expected a kid. She moved to get up and the girl came towards her.

‘You Rosie?’ she asked. The little girl by her side smiled at her.

‘Yeah. Sit down, sit down. Thanks for coming.’ Rosie had been down this road before with drug addicts, and you needed to be in control from the moment you met them. If you were a soft touch they would dip your bag the minute your back was turned.