Driftnet (11 page)

By the time
Gavin MacLean arrived at eight o’clock, Rhona had already drunk two
gins. One while she sat in the bath and cried, the other as she got
dressed, dried her hair and repaired her face.

When the buzzer
went, she looked out of the window. Gavin was standing on the
pavement. He waved when he spotted her and she waved back. When she
emerged at street level, they both stood awkwardly for a
moment.

‘This is a bit
embarrassing,’ he said.

‘Yes, it
is.’

He was even
taller than she’d thought, his hair blonder now that it was no
longer wet, but his eyes and smile were the same.

‘You look
nice,’ he said.

‘I’m not so wet
as last time.’

They both
smiled. ‘I thought if we ate first, it would break the ice.’ He
looked faintly nervous. ‘So I booked an Italian.’

‘Fine.’

She decided as
they walked along together, that she would offer to pay half. Keep
things even between them.

‘You can pay
half,’ he said, reading her mind, ‘if it makes you feel more
comfortable.’

As they crossed
the road, he took her arm to guide her between the traffic. His
hand was big and warm and it suddenly reminded Rhona of crossing
the road with her dad.

Rhona looked at
Gavin blankly. Whatever he had said demanded an answer and she
hadn’t a clue what to say, because she hadn’t been listening to him
for the last five minutes.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s
okay.’

He poured her
some more wine and she lifted her glass and sipped it, avoiding his
eyes.

‘I have...
there’s something on my mind at the moment,’ she apologised.

‘Work?’

‘Yes,’ she
said. It seemed easier.

‘Want to talk
about it?’

‘I don’t want
to depress you.’

‘You
won’t.’

He smiled to
reassure her.

‘Well,’ she
began. ‘I’ve been working on a case recently... a boy found
murdered in a flat.’

‘The
student?’

‘Yes,’ she
looked up puzzled. ‘How did you know?’

‘I read the
papers, and watch television.’

‘Of course.’
She felt silly. Of course the whole of Scotland knew about the
murdered boy. ‘It’s just,’ she paused, ‘this one got to me a bit.
He looked like someone I know. That’s all.’

‘I see.’ He
reached over and touched her hand. ‘Shall we skip the film?’ he
said.

‘Please.’

He waved the
waiter over and asked for the bill.

‘Look. Why
don’t we go back to my place, listen to some music...’

‘I don’t want
you to think...’

‘I don’t.’

Back in his
comfortable flat drinking coffee, Rhona told him that she should be
in Paris with Sean. She didn’t say why she hadn’t gone and he
didn’t ask. Instead he told her a bit about himself. He was forty,
not married but had lived with someone for a long time, seven years
in fact.

‘I kept asking
her to marry me and she kept saying no,’ he explained, pulling a
face. ‘She had this thing about marriage. Her father was in the
Merchant Navy so he only came home every six months. Her mother
brought up the three of them on her own. When her father came back,
he ‘wanted his place’, as she put it, and her mother agreed. The
kids didn’t. Eventually her younger brother had a stand up fight
with him in the house. She always said she would never marry.’

‘So why did you
break up?’

He hesitated as
if searching for a reason. ‘We got to this place where the road
sort of ended. She got an offer of a job down south. We said we’d
keep in touch but we didn’t.’

‘I think women
and men are incompatible,’ Rhona said. ‘Different agendas.’

‘Don’t say
that.’

‘It’s true.
Maybe being gay is the answer.’

‘Maybe it
is.’

They looked at
one another and laughed.

‘I have to go,’
she said.

‘Right. I’ll
phone for a taxi.’

He went with
her to the front door. Outside the air had turned warm. Scotland
had at last remembered it was the first week in June.

‘I never asked
you how you got my home number?’ she said.

Gavin looked
embarrassed. ‘I hacked it,’ he admitted and when she looked puzzled
he went on. ‘Everyone’s on a file somewhere. I can find out just
about anything I want to know about a person from a computer, just
like you can from their bodily fluids.’

‘1984 and all
that?’

‘That’s
right.’

The taxi drew
up.

‘Can I hack in
again sometime?’ he asked.

‘Only if I can
test your bodily fluids.’ She realised what she’d said after the
words were out.

He laughed and
raised his eyebrows.

‘Any time.’

When Rhona got
back to her flat, the green message light was flashing on the
ansaphone. She pressed the play button. It was Sean. There was
background music and half way through his message, a high-pitched
giggle, then a girl saying ‘Sean’ in a pleading voice. He said he
would try again tomorrow night and reminded her of the club phone
number. Rhona wondered why he hadn’t given her the number of the
flat where he was staying. Maybe he was staying with the giggly
girl.

The second
message was from Edward, hoping she had received the envelope.

‘I sincerely
hope, Rhona, that this will be the end of the matter.’

Rhona said shit
very loudly. She went through to the bedroom, opened the envelope
and took out the two papers and looked at them again. If Gavin
MacLean could find out all about her by hacking, maybe he could
find out more about her son.

And, she
decided, Edward Stewart could get fucked.

Chapter
13

Bill Wilson had
had a sleepless night. Twice he’d gone downstairs and sat watching
a late night movie until he’d started to drop off. But as soon as
he got back into bed, he was wide awake again. Once light began to
peek through the slit in the curtains, he gave up and got up for
good. On automatic he made himself coffee and sat down at the
kitchen table.

Halfway through
his second cup he heard someone walk along the upstairs landing to
the toilet. It wasn’t Margaret’s step. He’d left her sound asleep.
Twenty years living with a policeman had trained her to ignore his
nocturnal habits.

A bedroom door
clicked shut and then there was a series of taps and a long thin
cackling whine and he realised that one of the kids was logging on
to the Internet.

If all the kids
were doing that, he thought, playing with the Internet while their
parents were asleep, it would be hellish easy to access whatever
they liked. He stood up and then sat down again. He’d already
talked to them both about it.

Jamie Fenton
had by all accounts been a good student up until two weeks before
his death. He’d been staying in a new hall of residence, Dalrymple
Hall, built with a little help from the generous Sir James
Dalrymple. Paedophiles could get at vulnerable kids through the
Internet, but the Computing Department at Glasgow assured him that
the labs were supervised to ensure no dodgy surfing, as they called
it.

Mrs Fenton had
told him Jamie couldn’t afford to buy a computer. He was on a grant
and a student loan and she couldn’t give him anything herself.
Since they divorced, her husband hadn’t given their son
anything.

When Bill
brought up the subject of sex, Mrs Fenton became agitated. Her son
was normal, she protested. He had a girlfriend in Manchester, a
nice girl that he went out with when he was home.

They’d got no
leads from his fellow students either. Jamie was a loner and spent
most of his spare time in the computer lab. He was constantly
broke. He’d been trying to borrow money to see himself through to
the end of the session. It was tough being a student now, tougher
than in his day, Bill realised.

He stood up and
rinsed his cup at the sink. The early morning sun reminded him of
his promise to Margaret to cut the grass. The paper boy skidded to
a halt on his bicycle and came whistling up the path. Bill picked
up the paper from the hall floor and spread it out on the kitchen
table. The last thing he expected was to see his investigation
blown wide open.

Helen Connelly
answered the phone.

‘Helen? It’s
Bill Wilson. Sorry to phone you this early. Is Jim about?’

‘He’s still in
bed Bill. He wasn’t in till late. Something special came in last
night. They held this morning’s edition for it.’

Bill tried not
to swear. It wasn’t Helen’s fault she had an idiot for a
husband.

‘I could waken
him if it’s important?’

‘It is.’

‘Right.’

He heard the
phone being carried up the stairs and then the sound of Jim being
shaken. His own name was mentioned then there was an ‘oh,
fuck!’

‘Morning Bill.’
A bright and cheery voice. ‘You’re up early.’

‘What the hell
do you think you’re doing running that story?’

A moment’s
silence then a throat being cleared.

‘The story’s
true.’ Connelly was standing his ground. ‘We got it from a good
source...’

‘I know it’s
true.’

‘So... what’s
the problem?’

‘The problem
is,’ Bill took a breath, ‘thanks to you these people now know we’re
on to them. And what do you think they’re doing?’ Without waiting
for an answer, he spat it out. ‘They’re covering their tracks
deleting every pornographic file from here to eternity.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all
you can say? Oh!’

‘I got a call
last night. The source was good so I put it in. It filled a
slot.’

‘It filled a
slot! There are weans out there getting their slots filled right
this minute.’ Bill’s voice shook with anger.

‘My job is to
print the truth.’

‘The truth...’
Bill paused. ‘The truth is you’ve screwed this investigation.’

When Bill
reached the office, the story had got there before him. The woman
from the university had already phoned wanting to know who had
given out confidential information painstakingly gathered over
three months. She had been incandescent, Janice said. Whatever
they’d found out was useless now.

He spread the
paper out masochistically on his desk.

Glasgow
Paedophile Ring Nets the Innocent.

Jim Connelly
could certainly write a headline.

Chapter
14

Chrissy missed
Rhona. Tony was alright but after a while you got bored by his
tales of holiday conquests and drinking sprees in Mexico,
especially if the nearest you would ever get to Mexico was the
Mexican restaurant Amigos.

The change in
the weather made her restless. The park below was full of students
lounging on the grass in the sunshine, playing music or studying
for the year end exams. It made her want to go back to when your
only worry was where the next meal was coming from and whether the
fifty per cent of the work you’d revised would appear in the exam
paper.

Neil had phoned
that morning. He hadn’t spent all her money yet, he told her, and
he had found out a wee bit about her problem. She laughed because
she couldn’t believe the money wasn’t all gone and because she was
nervous talking to him. His voice sounded younger on the phone and
he had put on a posh accent and missed out the swear words. He
asked her if she would meet him in the park when she got off for
lunch.

Chrissy looked
at the clock. It was already one o’clock and she hadn’t got much
done that morning, even less than Tony who was already away
lunching with a waitress from Amigos. He was taking this Mexican
thing seriously.

Chrissy told
reception she was going out and would be back in an hour.

Neil was
waiting for her, sitting on a bench at the bandstand. He waved two
paper pokes with a Mackays the Bakers logo on the side.

‘Scotch pies
and doughnuts,’ he said grinning.

‘Fine.’

‘And...’ he
produced the bottle from his pocket. ‘Vodka and orange. Fresh
orange, mind. None of that diluting stuff,’ and he laughed.

His skin was
brown, his eyes dark blue with black lashes. It wasn’t surprising
the old guys fancied him. Anyone would fancy him.

He munched his
way through his pie, handing Chrissy the bottle now and again after
wiping it on his sleeve. He had on a white tee-shirt and she could
see his neck had healed.

‘I’ve been away
for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘A geezer with a holiday home in
the middle of nowhere.’ A bleak look crossed his face. ‘Not that I
got a chance to view the scenery.’

Chrissy said
nothing.

‘Here.’ He took
some money out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘This is
yours.’

‘Did you find
out who sent the letter?’

‘Aye.’ He’d
started on the doughnut now and it seemed to make him thirstier
than the pie. ‘It’s fixed.’

‘How?’

‘Your brother
picked up a guy who recognised him. He thought Patrick was an easy
way to get his dope money. Patrick told him to get lost so he
thought he’d try blackmail.’ His face hardened. ‘I changed his mind
for him.’

Relief swept
over her. ‘Thanks, Neil.’

‘Right.’

He looked at
her and she suddenly wondered what it would be like if he kissed
her.

He caught her
eye and stopped eating. ‘Are you sure about that shag?’ he
asked.

‘Neil...’

‘Aye, right,’
he smiled again and stood up. ‘I’d better get back to work
then.’

‘I was going to
the cinema tonight,’ she found herself saying.

‘With your
mates?’

‘No.’

‘Look Chrissy.’
He sat down again. ‘Why don’t we just cut the crap. I’ll meet you
after work, we’ll go to my place, have a drink, go to bed and then
go to the pictures, with maybe a curry in between?’

‘Alright,’ she
said.