The Blood of Crows (4 page)

‘It was the McGregors or the O’Donnells that did it, and yet nothing ever got pinned on the Glasgow mafia,’ Costello mumbled, thinking. ‘Aye, but it was the beginning of the end for the old regime. Bet you don’t dare say that in your bloody book.’

‘And do you really think that’s likely to happen after all this time?’ asked Lorraine, her brows furrowed in concern.

‘I just hope that some good comes out of all my research, that the police reopen the case, and hopefully get to the bottom of what actually happened.’

Simone continued to witter on, explaining that her shocking theory that the family had been involved was just one of the many being explored, such as gangland activity, or the babysitter being complicit, which was why the legal action by the boy’s parents had failed to prevent publication. All Simone wanted to do was selflessly bring it to the attention of the public once again.

‘And make a few quid while you’re at it,’ Costello said to the TV as she pressed the mute button. For a while, Lorraine and the lovely Simone chatted on animatedly in silence. Then a still from a newspaper report appeared; Costello recognized Waterstone’s in Glasgow. The day before, Simone had launched her book in the very city where the kidnap had taken place. Costello couldn’t resist flicking the volume back on. The event hadn’t lasted long. Maria Marchetti, the boy’s mother, had pulled Simone off her chair at the signing. Lorraine suggested that the poor woman must be under great emotional strain. Simone nodded, graciously confirming that she would not press charges.

‘Not up to you to press charges, you silly cow,’ muttered Costello. ‘It’s up to the fiscal.’

‘… but there have been at least three cases recently of people apparently coming back from the dead, having been held captive for many years. There have been two notorious cases in Austria, and one in the States.’ Simone
paused, then said, ‘And there has never been a trace of Alessandro’s body despite the searches made at the time. He would be nearly twenty now. The babysitter, Tito Piacini, would be in his early thirties.’

Lorraine leaned forward. ‘Do you think
he
could still be alive? Surely if Tito was alive, he would come forward?’

Simone slid out from under the question. ‘All I’m saying is that the family need closure.’

‘No, they bloody don’t,’ Costello snorted, thinking about her own family. ‘Believe me, hen, you don’t want closure where your family’s concerned. You want a gun.’ She pressed the mute again and flung the remote at the TV. It missed and skidded into the skirting board.

She stretched out on the sofa, looking at the ceiling, feeling worthless.

11.10 A.M.

The car park, sandwiched in a narrow gap between the Apollo flats and the bottom of the railway embankment by Anniesland station, created the suggestion of a wind tunnel, but after days of still, balmy air even the slightest draught felt like a refreshing breeze. Anderson peeled the soaking shirt from his back; he had only been in the car for about ten minutes.

‘Can I ask something, sir?’ It was Wyngate, panting along damply in his wake. ‘Why are we really here? I mean, here, at the flats?’

It was too easy to take the piss out of him, Anderson reminded himself. But sometimes the boy did himself no
favours. As the recently retired DS John Littlewood once said, if it looked gormless and acted gormless, chances were it
was
gormless. Ambition simply wasn’t a word in Wyngate’s vocabulary, yet he was endlessly willing, and a good detective on a computer – unimaginative, almost humourless, but possessed of a dogged nerdiness that made him an invaluable part of the team. And once in a blue moon he came up with a stroke of pure genius.

‘Well, we can’t leave it,’ Anderson told him, as they headed towards the huge art deco panelled glass doors, still very much reminiscent of the building’s former incarnation as a cinema. ‘We have to have another look in light of what Fiona said this morning. We compare evidence, review the case notes –’

‘Now that the smoke has settled,’ said Wyngate, sounding as though he was still genuinely confused. He stood back a step, looking up at the sky, watching the weather. That was the difference between him and the rest of the team. Vik Mulholland would have been looking up and down the street, gauging the situation. Costello would have had her face pressed against the glass, hand cupped to block the light, a good investigative technique bordering on sheer nosiness. He wondered how she was doing.

Anderson took a bunch of labelled keys from his pocket and tried the Yale in the lock. It slid open, and they were in the red-carpeted lobby – another reminder of the building’s days as a cinema. A grand fan-shaped staircase swept up to a half-landing where it split to go left and right to the flats upstairs. On the ground floor, a narrow corridor on each side of the main lobby led to the rear of
the building, and each had three flats, two on the outer side of the corridor, and one on the inner side with a view out of the back of the building.

‘Along here, I think,’ Anderson said. A chill ran through him as he walked down the left-hand hallway. The atmosphere in the hall was almost frozen by the air con. He rattled through the keys to find the one to G2.

‘The woman, Janet Appleby, who lives in that one on the right, has been relocated to a hotel for now,’ said Wyngate, pointing to the furthest door marked G3. ‘This one, G1, was empty. And that one there, G2, was Biggart’s – well, the one he was found in.’

‘As might be indicated by the scorch marks over the door and the soot stains on the ceiling. As well as the bloody awful smell of old smoke and damp. The crime scene tape’s a bit of a giveaway too.’

‘Right,’ agreed Wyngate, not noticing the sarcasm.

Anderson nudged open the door of Biggart’s flat, having to shoulder it a little where the heat had warped the wood. Inside the door, the tiny entry hall, though it reeked of wet smoke and was filthy with ash, had been untouched by the fire itself. A small wrought-iron trestle table stood against the wall, with a neat stack of rental DVDs, packaged and obviously waiting to be returned, and a mobile phone. Anderson realized that Morrison might have been right – somebody standing here could watch the carnage in front of him. The heat and the flames would be pulled away from him by the open window, and all he had to do was retreat by stepping back into the hall where the flames had never penetrated. Anderson would never have thought of it himself. But then that wasn’t his job.

‘Tell you what, Wyngate, you have a good look and a sniff around here. And open all the windows, try to get a bit of a blast through here. Just remember to close them all properly when we leave. Look for evidence to support our theory. Or evidence to crush it.’

‘Where are you going, sir?’ the constable asked, scratching his ear.

‘I’ll be in the empty flat next door. Scream if you need me.’ Wyngate looked scared at the thought of being left alone. But Anderson asked it of Costello, Lambie and Mulholland, and Wyngate had to learn.

Anderson left his reluctant constable thinking about taking the step over the threshold, and retreated to look down the corridor. He glanced at the name beside the door of G3, thinking it might be worth having a word with J. Appleby. He walked to the end of the corridor where a fire door opened on to the path that would take him back round to where his car was parked. To his right, in a rectangle sheltered by the flats at the rear of the building, was a small formal garden. He pushed the bar; the door opened easily and swung back and forth without a squeak, which meant it was either well maintained or in constant use. Or both. His fingers touched a keyhole. A fire door for emergencies, which could be opened with a key from the outside. He fingered the lock, springing the mechanism with his thumb. It would be a lot easier to bring shopping in from the car park via this door than to carry it all the way round to the front and then back through the building. He left the door open, as the air needed to clear, and walked back down the hallway to the first flat, G1, nearest the busy street. The spare key fitted.
Not much to see – the flat was obviously unlived-in. It was barely furnished, with a sofa, a coffee table, a dining table at the window, all covered with a faint layer of silky soot. Anderson’s shirt was picking up the oily little particles; Brenda would go mad. He threw a casual glance into the bare, functional kitchen, and another glance into the first bedroom. The bed, a single, was still in its polythene cover. The insurance guys were going to love this. But the bathroom had soap and toilet roll. A towel had been discarded and dumped in the bath, and another was flung over the designer radiator. He went into the main bedroom. The bed was a bare mattress on a base, but used – definitely used. There were unsavoury stains on it. The frieze of Black Watch tartan wallpaper that ran the length of the room had been torn slightly over the bed. He looked into the en suite shower room. There had been water in the basin, and the soot had left a ring, as though someone had washed dirty hands.

Anderson gave one last look around the bedroom, aware of a puzzling little niggle. There was something he was missing. Then he saw it. Up on the ceiling there were soot stains everywhere, but also spots – dark, precise spots. He ran his eyes over the emulsioned plaster. Regular spots, in a line above the end of the bed. Then he saw another parallel row of six holes, obviously used to fix something. A plasma TV? In a flat that was apparently empty?

It was still troubling him as he locked the front door behind him and went back to the other flat, where Wyngate was standing holding his drawing of the floor plan.

‘You can see it, you know.’ Wyngate pointed out the pattern of deep burning in the right-hand corner, the arrow
effect spreading diagonally across the ceiling to the far corner, the massive charring and burning in the area where Biggart might have been trussed like a pig and left to die.

‘Easy to read once we know what we’re looking for, eh?’

‘And here, to the left of the door where we’re standing, it’s untouched by flame, so I’d say we’re looking at an arsonist with a good sense of self-preservation. As Fiona Morrison said, he left his way out clear.’

‘I suppose that kind of goes with having a successful career as an arsonist,’ said Anderson, feeling a grudging admiration for the bravery of any man, or woman, who could tie up a drug dealer, set a fire, and stand watching as flames and smoke mushroomed over their head, then calmly close the door behind them and walk away. Was that what had happened?

He turned to Wyngate. ‘Right, close the windows and lock up. And just before we go, you got any evidence bags in your car? Get those used towels from the flat next door.’

‘But G1’s not a crime scene, sir. It was only closed off due to the smoke damage.’

DI Anderson smiled indulgently at his young colleague. ‘Let’s prove it’s not a crime scene first, eh?’

11.15 A.M.

‘Have you got your black tie?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘And is it clean?’

‘Yes, dear.’

Rosie laid her head down on the pillows, which were already soaking wet with sweat. It was oppressively hot. She hoped she didn’t smell. She had been bed bound for over eight years now, since the time her eating had got seriously out of control and her legs refused to bear her huge weight. The folds of fat that weighed her down were a haven for bacteria and in this weather she needed a blanket wash at least three times a day. She looked around; Wullie had boiled the kettle and left a basin of hot water within reach on the bedside table, a clean sponge floating in it. She had a flask of fresh water, a small box of Thornton’s Continental, a cold Four Seasons pizza and some newspapers to catch up on. Being an ex-cop, she was interested to know what B Division was doing about the three drug dealers who had been shot in the car park of the Balfron Arms. But she would bet her last champagne truffle that they were doing nothing. Talking about it, but doing nothing.

Wullie was going to Tom Carruthers’ funeral. He’d keep his ear to the ground and catch up on any news. Quiet, unobtrusive Wullie was wallpaper with ears.

At that moment Wullie emerged from the living room, whipping the long tail of his black tie under the knot.

‘Wullie, have some respect. Roll down your sleeves.’

‘Too bloody hot. I’ll stick my jacket on once I get on the main road. I’ll keep off the path, keep my shoes clean. Don’t want to let the side down.’

‘Well, look smart while you pay your respects …’ Rosie kept talking while she smoothed down the sheet that covered her huge bulk. ‘Can you just pull my tray away before you go? I’m tired. I’d like a nap.’

Wullie disconnected the laptop and wheeled the trolley table back against the wall. He picked up some DVDs, checked their titles and slipped them into their red cardboard sleeves. ‘Are you done with these?’

‘Yes, you can stick them in at the post office on the way past.’

‘Aye, I’ll do that. Will you be OK? I’ll just go to the purvey for a sandwich and a quick hello, and then I’ll get the bus back.’

‘Just watch you remember to eat, and keep an eye on your blood sugars … and bring me back something nice. A surprise. Brad Pitt covered in chocolate.’

‘You need psychiatric help, love. Or a box of Quality Street as usual.’ He leaned over to kiss her, watching that his feet didn’t touch the apron of fat that was her belly; it sprawled across the bed and on to the carpet in a huge gelatinous lump. She had weighed twenty-eight stone the last time she was on her feet; God alone knew what she must weigh now. ‘Bye, love, see you later.’

1.00 P.M.

The mortuary was the coolest place Anderson had been in all week, and he felt himself relax. Jo, the pathologist’s assistant, offered Wyngate something to smear under his nose, then offered it to Anderson. Anderson shook his head.

‘Any further with Biggart?’ asked O’Hare, reading his thoughts.

‘Just can’t figure out who he would let so close, for the
length of time it took to set the fire. Why didn’t he walk out? He was a big guy, Biggart.’

‘Yes, I know. I’m about to do his PM, remember?’