The Exiled (2 page)

“I remember how it was, lad. I remember all too well. Where’s the family?”

“Along the landing, number twenty-three.”

The constable pointed down to their left. Floral tributes had already started appearing along the balcony floor and railing.

“A bloody kid is missing and they’re all acting as if she’s dead already,” Simpson said.

Grainger kept quiet. He knew the odds were against them. Chances were that the people laying the flowers were indeed right in their assumption—they were most probably looking for a body, not a child; they just hadn’t admitted it yet.

* * *

The door to number 23 hung open. A small gang of kids of various ages hung around on the small balcony as if afraid to enter. The apartment itself had too many people inside for its size, all of who seemed intent on shouting questions at the two detectives as they made their way through a cramped hallway to the main living room.

“Have you caught the bastard yet?” was the most common, and the most polite. Some of the others would have made a dockside porter blush. Fuelled by booze and anger, the mood was just as ugly as that of the crowd down in the car park. Grainger pushed through without speaking. A youth, barely out of his teens, thought it might be funny to grab at Simpson’s breasts as she went past—he almost paid for it with a broken wrist.

“Away and get your mam to put some ice on that, son,” Grainger said as he let go. “And that’s the only warning you’ll get—mess with a police officer again, and I’ll have your balls in a basket.”

The walk along the rest of the short hallway took place in silence.

* * *

The living room was quieter than the hall had been seconds before. The missing girl’s parents sat on a tattered leather sofa, staring emptily into space. A crowd of people mingled around them, most of them drinking beer straight out of the can or large measures of liquor from grubby glasses, and talking in hushed whispers while trying not to look too pleased that it wasn’t their child that had been taken.

Grainger knew this dance too.

“Right,” he said, raising his voice. “If you don’t need to be here, leave now. If you saw the child before she went missing, D.S. Simpson here will take statements in the hall. Otherwise, get out and let us do our jobs.”

The apartment emptied. Nobody stopped to speak to Simpson—Grainger hadn’t expected any would—and less than a minute after speaking he was left alone with the parents. They didn’t look to be in any mood for questions.

That makes three of us.

The wife—a small dark-haired woman in her early twenties, barely more than a child herself—surprised him by speaking first.

“Her name’s Ellie. She’s not the kid or the child. Her name’s Ellie.”

Grainger nodded.

“I’m sorry. No offense intended. Just tell me when you last saw her.”

“She was out on the landing from early this morning,” the woman said. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion as if all life had been drained from her. “I heard her singing about ten o’clock, some nonsense about a wee man. I shouted her in at half-past… and she wasn’t there. She just wasn’t there.”

The husband started to cry, softly at first, tears leaking down his cheeks, but he couldn’t contain it. He was soon sobbing, as miserable as any man Grainger had ever seen. If the wife noticed, she didn’t show it. She kept talking, but it sounded like she was relating something she’d been told rather than reliving a memory.

“I shouted and shouted. Then a mannie started yelling about a dead bird and a lot of blood and then…” She went blank, as if someone had switched her off. “And then I don’t remember.”

“So, somewhere between ten and half-past was when—”

“When? When what?” the husband shouted, suddenly animated. “What happened to my wee lassie? Where is she? And why are you here, when you should be looking for her? And…” He too went blank, his plug pulled.

This was another dance Grainger wished he didn’t know. There was little more to be learned here—not while the wound was still bleeding. He took out a business card and put it on the coffee table in front of the couple.

“We’ll have a man outside your place here until we find her. Anything you need, just ask him, or ring me.”

They didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t so much as twitch as he stood and left.

Simpson was alone in the hall, and followed him out.

“They don’t look like they had anything to do with it,” she said once she was sure they were out of earshot.

“Liars are easy to spot,” he said. “Unless they’re really good at it, and over the years I’ve met a few experts. I’m taking nothing for granted—and neither should you.”

* * *

Grainger returned to the crime scene.

The forensics team was still there, meticulously collecting and cataloging evidence. Simpson stood at his side as they watched them work, attempting to spark a conversation about what the family had told him. Grainger wasn’t really seeing or hearing—his mind raced, trying to formulate a timeline, looking for inconsistencies, wanting to make the jigsaw fit together even though he knew in his gut that there were still pieces—crucial pieces—missing. Finally he let Simpson through his filters.

“What first, boss?” she said.

“Find out who this mannie was that found the bird and the blood,” Grainger said. “We’ll need to talk to him fast. And find out if we’ve got a picture of the lass. If not, see if we can get one and get it circulated. We need to nip this in the bud before the papers get a hold of it.”

“Do you think she’s still alive?” Simpson asked.

He shook his head.

“I’m willing to bet at least some of that blood is hers. So get to it. We’ve got a killer to catch.”

Simpson left without questioning him further—she might talk too much, but she also knew when to shut up. That made her a good sergeant, especially so when one of Grainger’s moods hit him. There were days where he’d happily strangle the next person who brought him a form to sign or a request for stationery or any of the other petty crap that stopped him from doing what he did best. And Simpson knew it, acting as the buffer between him and the drudgery that came as part and parcel of modern police work.

Grainger went to look over the balcony and his spirits took another tumble—nipping the situation in the bud was no longer an option; there were three different sets of reporters in the parking area below, and one, the television crew, looked to be setting up for a long stay. He wanted a smoke, but his political instincts, such as they were, were enough for him to guess the nature of the press reports if he so much as looked like he wasn’t giving the case his full attention.

He turned his back on the circus and went back to watching the forensics team work.

2

Alan Grainger knew that he was onto a big story when he saw the detective inspector lean over the balcony and look down.

Big Brother is watching me. It’s a missing kid for sure. And they think it’s murder—there’s no other reason for John to be here.

His paper had sent him out on spec—someone heard from someone that there might be a story brewing somewhere in the Albert Flats, and that a kid might, or might not be missing. It was enough on a slow news day for Alan to be dispatched with a notebook, phone and camera. As the junior reporter on a bust city news-desk, he often got sent out only to return empty-handed having pursued a rumor to no avail. This was no rumor—he’d known that even on the way down from the city center when he was passed by both the van of the largest radio station in Scotland, and a crew from the BBC.

And now he was here there was no way to get close. And with other television crews arriving and the crowd growing ever larger and more vocal, there was little chance to get any kind of story that wasn’t going to be the same one everyone else got.

Alan had one thing on his side, but it was a big one—local knowledge. Both brothers had been born and raised only a few hundred yards away from the spot where he stood. On another day, another time, they might even have been part of the crowd, standing around waiting for news, hoping that it wasn’t anybody they knew that was in trouble. At yet other times, they, or their small gang of friends and conspirators, might even be hiding from the law—and Alan had a good idea where anyone in that situation today would go. He walked away from the crowd and out of the shadow of the block of flats, leaving part of his past behind to go in search of more of it.

He couldn’t turn around in this area without dredging up something from where he normally kept it well buried. That corner was where two older lads pelted him with stones as he cycled past, that doorstep was where John beat seven kinds of shite out of the same two lads later the same day, that lamppost was the one he’d hit on his first driving lesson. The hearse had come this way the day Mam died. Too many memories—too few of them happy ones. He put his head down and tried to keep his mind on the job.

The streets wouldn’t let him. The brothers had a rough time growing up, but no rougher than anyone else who had to live in the area—only two miles from the city center of the Athens of the North but far more than that in terms of wealth, privilege and attention. Big castles, festivals and picturesque streets were all very well, but they meant nothing in the day-to-day lives of folks down here—they might as well be on Mars. Alan knew that when he was fourteen, and knew it even better now. Time was he’d wanted to join John on the force—but that would have meant spending more time in places like this than he could handle.

As a junior reporter he mainly worked on small stories, and rarely beyond the shiny facile glamor of the town center. Today was an exception—George thought he’d been doing Alan a favor sending him to his old home turf —Alan thought of it more like a sentence.

Two left turns and a right after a hundred yards took him under the main railway line to Glasgow, where the road opened out into a warren of small business units and factories. That wasn’t why he’d come this way—his goal was right in front of the largest factory gate. The Railway Tavern was the local boozer frequented by most of the residents of the Albert Road flats when they had any money in their pockets… and was the place anyone would head for if they didn’t want to speak to the police.

Alan hadn’t been inside since his late teens, almost ten years ago—it hadn’t changed much. The carpet looked to be the same one as back then, worn thin enough to show the floorboards beneath in many places. Battered tables and chairs were dotted around the main lounge. It was a large barn of a place that would be heaving and sweating on any given weekend night or full of bingo-playing pensioners midweek. But now, on a quiet afternoon, there were only a handful of locals lined up on high stools along the length of the bar. In days gone by there would have been a cloud of smoke hanging over them, but now the air was clear, and only an open door out to what was euphemistically known as a garden showed where the hardened smokers would be lurking.

Conversation stopped as Alan walked in, and everybody turned to look at him, then just as quickly looked away and went back to their drinks.

They thought I was the police.

One of them looked a bit more startled than the others had, and he also looked away faster than the rest. Alan took the stool to the man’s left and sat at the bar.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

“Pint of heavy,” he said when the barman came over. He didn’t offer to buy a round—there was no sense in showing his hand too early. The barman looked like he might say something, that he might have recognized Alan, but his attention was called away to the other end of the bar and the moment passed.

Alan sipped at the beer and tried not to look too interested in the man beside him. He was a small, wiry man with a mop of black hair that hadn’t seen a comb in a while. Thick black eyebrows hung over deep sockets, eyes so dark as to look black in the dim light in the bar. Alan didn’t know him, or at least didn’t remember him.

That works both ways.

Whoever he was, the man was taking to the drink as if he meant it. He downed a double Scotch in one, took a large gulp of lager, and ordered another of each.

“Steady on, Frank. It’s a bit early for you,” the barman said as he passed over the drinks.

The man—Frank—laughed bitterly.

“Too early? It’s too late; it’s far too late. I’ve seen things this day I’ll never forget—there’s not enough booze in the world for that.”

“Catch a swatch of your missus in the shower, did you?” the barman replied with a laugh, but Frank wasn’t for rising to the bait.

“Just keep the whisky coming,” he said. “I’ll decide when I’ve had enough.”

Alan’s nose for a story was tingling, but there was a rhythm to these things, and he still hadn’t matched himself to the beat of the mood in the bar. He kept quiet and listened. But he was also aware of the need for urgency. If he remembered this place, he was sure John would too—it was only a matter of time before either John himself or some of his officers turned up.

To begin with, the talk along the counter was of bookies and horses—the television above the bar showed the three-thirty race from Ayr, and while it was on the bar filled with shouting and curses. Nobody won.