The Exiled (3 page)

“I knew it wasn’t my lucky day,” the barman said, and that prompted Frank to speak for the first time in a while. He’d knocked back several doubles by this time, but his speech was still clear.

“You don’t know the half of it, boy. What I saw on them stairs…”

His voice tailed away. Alan let the barman ask the question.

“Come on then, Frank. Don’t leave us in suspenders. It’s obviously got to you—you’ve been white as a sheet since you came in. What did you see?”

“That’ll cost you a wee goldie,” Frank said, smiling.

The barman shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and moved to turn away.

Alan took a chance.

“I’ll get you that nippy sweetie,” he said. “Two even, if you tell me what you saw?”

Frank turned and looked him in the eye.

I’ve moved too soon.

“Trust me, lad,” Frank said. “You don’t really want to know.”

“It’s about that row at the flats? I used to live over that way. I saw all the cops when I got here. What’s going on?”

At first he thought he had indeed made his move too soon, but the barman brought Frank a double, Alan paid for it, and another beer for himself—and Frank leaned over to speak so that only Alan could hear.

“I saw the blood,” Frank started, then immediately stopped to take a gulp of the Scotch. Alan knew better than to interrupt with another question just then, and Frank obliged by continuing. “In the shadows it looked black, like the feathers. Everywhere they were, all over the landing. The bird’s body was there on the steps too—what was left of it. It looked like somebody had stuck a firework up its arse and set it off. But that’s not the worst of it.”

Frank paused, downed his whisky, and looked expectantly at Alan. This was yet another ritual the journalist knew only too well. He motioned the barman over.

“Another for Frank, here,” he said, and made sure that Frank saw that there were plenty of notes in his wallet as he paid.

“I shouldn’t be talking like this,” Frank said. “I don’t know you from Adam.”

Alan leaned forward.

“I’m with the papers,” he said. “There’s two hundred in it for you. And your name never needs to get mentioned. I just need to know what you saw.”

He’d gauged the man right. Frank’s eyes never left the wallet.

“Money first.”

Alan slipped a wad of notes from the wallet and passed them over, taking care that no one else in the bar noticed. Frank made them disappear just as quickly, then downed the whisky fast, as if afraid it might be taken from him. Only then did he speak again.

“There were handprints—red hands—all over the place. Too wee to be anything but a kid’s.”

“And?” Alan asked. “That’s not much of a story for two hundred notes, is it?”

“There’s not much more to tell,” Frank said. “The mess of feathers was a swan, I think—too big to be a crow anyway—and it was torn to buggery with bits of it lying everywhere.”

“And the wee lassie?”

Frank went pale.

“I never saw any lass,” he said, and turned away, as if to say that the interview was now over.

“Two hundred gets me more than that, surely?” Alan said quietly. “There’s something else, isn’t there? A dead swan isn’t enough to make you turn to drink like this.”

Frank called the barman over and ordered two doubles. He paid with one of the notes he got from Alan, and passed one of the glasses over to the journalist.

“Just one thing then,” he said. “Have a drink with me first, then I’ll tell you. You’re not going to believe me anyway.”

Alan sipped at the whisky—he couldn’t afford to start in on the hard stuff this early in the day—and waited. The booze was finally starting to take its hold on his companion—Frank’s eyes had lost some of their focus and his speech slurred.

“It was when I got to the top of the stairs—that’s when I heard her.”

“The wee lassie?”

“I’m not sure. It was a wee lassie. I heard her, clear as day, but there was nobody there. I looked and I looked but there was nobody there.”

The door to the bar opened and Alan knew his interview was over. John and his sergeant stood in the doorway.

“What did you hear?” Alan asked as the detectives walked over towards them.

“She kept saying the same thing, over and over,” Frank replied before diving back into his whisky. “Help. I’m lost, Mammy.”

3

Grainger figured that Alan had got more of the story than they would. It hadn’t been a big surprise to see his young brother chasing the story—but it wasn’t something he needed to be happy about. But Alan was his own man—he’d made that plain on their last few meetings. The brothers moved in different social circles in any case. They hadn’t spoken for several months, and even then it had only been to pass the time of day. Grainger knew more about his D.S. than he did about his brother these days, and that was the way Alan seemed to want it. Any camaraderie they’d had in their youth had dissipated and faded, until brotherhood was little but a word to either of them.

Ma would be disgusted with us. We both know it. And both of us are too pigheaded to do anything about it.

It was an old wound, one that festered in long, lonely nights when he let the whisky talk. He put it to the back of his mind and focused.

Grainger remembered O’Hara just fine—a wee man that liked to think he was tough. He carried an ivory-handled flick knife and showed it off to anybody that looked remotely likely to buy him a drink. He was a blowhard of the highest order—but Grainger didn’t have him pegged as an abductor of wee lasses, and when he looked in the man’s eyes and saw the fear there, he knew there was a story to be had, maybe even a clue.

Unfortunately Frank O’Hara had started to slump even as they asked their first question. Just about the only thing he seemed to remember was the phrase he’d heard called out in an empty stairwell, and it was clear it was something he’d keep remembering for a while to come.

“Help. I’m lost, Mammy.”

Somehow it sounded more frightening coming from the mouth of a middle-aged drunk.

“Is there anything else, Frank?” Grainger said. “You know me—I’ll not be telling anybody you were speaking to us.”

But Frank was gone. He buckled from the waist and his upper body fell forward onto the bar. Grainger had to steady the man to stop him falling in a heap on the floor. The barman looked on—he didn’t offer to help. None of the other patrons so much as flinched.

It’s not as if falling over drunk is rare in these parts.

Grainger had a last look around for Alan, but the younger man had already scuttled off, and the D.I. wasn’t looking forward to seeing the papers the next morning. This case already had all the signs of being a huge media clusterfuck, and it was early days yet. He expected to be right in the middle of it sooner rather than later.

“Is there anything else, Inspector?” the barman asked.

Grainger fought down the urge to take a drink—one would lead to several and if he wasn’t careful, he’d join Frank in a stupor. Appealing as the idea was, there was a lost lassie to be thinking of. She came first.

“Maybe later,” he said to the barman, and they headed for the door. Nobody watched them leave.

“What now, boss?” Simpson asked as they went out into hazy sunshine. “Back to the scene?”

Grainger stood silent for a bit before deciding.

“No. I’ll head back to the station. I’ll need to see those forensics reports ASAP. You make sure we’ve as many officers as we can spare searching the area—every bit of waste ground, every empty flat, every rubbish skip. We need to be the ones that find the wee lass first.”

He didn’t say it—he didn’t have to, the words had been there since the call had first come in.

Dead or alive.

He watched as Simpson headed back under the archway towards the flats. The car was back there in the parking area, but Grainger needed to think, needed some space. He walked—heading along the pedestrian pathway that ran alongside the railway track, making his way back towards the city center. By taking this path it would take him an extra half an hour to reach the station, but there were questions that he knew he would be asked—questions that as yet had no answers. He needed time to think on how he was going to frame his responses, as punching the first reporter that asked a stupid question wasn’t an option he could allow himself.

Mostly he was thinking about the swan—anything that stopped him from thinking about small dead girls was welcome.

The presence of the bird’s mangled body was the thing. On every case there is one thing to focus on, an incongruity that would lead to the case breaking open and becoming understandable. The black swan was it this time, but as yet he couldn’t see why. He wished he’d asked Simpson to start a line of inquiry on the bird, and walked faster, putting more effort into it. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that refused to yield to exercise. Now it wasn’t just one missing girl he was thinking about—it was a flock of black swans.

And a girl for each of them.

* * *

The squad room was nearly empty when he got back to the station. There were only two men present, Jim—temporary secretary and general dogs-body, and Constable Wilkins, who was on office duty due to a broken leg.

“Any news?” Grainger asked, but he could see by Jim’s face that nothing had changed for the better.

“I’ve been fielding the calls, boss,” Jim said. “About a hundred so far.”

“There’ll be more,” Grainger said, and dropped into a chair. “Has the guv’nor been asking for me?”

“Not yet,” Jim replied.

“He’ll be giving me just enough rope to hang myself,” Grainger said. “That way, if I cock up, he stays squeaky clean.” He turned to make sure the D.C.I. wasn’t standing behind him. “See—I’m getting paranoid already.”

“Haven’t seen him for half an hour, boss,” Jim replied. “I think he’s in with the superintendent.”

Grainger groaned.

“That’s all I need—the golfers ganging up on me. What about forensics?”

“They called five minutes ago. You should have an e-mail.”

“Anything interesting?”

As a temp, Jim wasn’t supposed to access some of the more sensitive parts of the office system, but Grainger knew better—and Jim knew that Grainger knew. The man smiled ruefully.

“The footprints in the blood are the same size as those of the missing lass. And someone ripped a swan apart with his bare hands. That’s about it; there are no fibers, no hair and no prints. The blood work is going through but it’ll be tomorrow at the earliest before they get back to you on that.”

“In other words, sweet FA. How about witnesses—anything come in?”

“Most of the officers are still going door to door. I’ll collate the reports for you when they get back. But there have been no reported sightings. Do you want to arrange a press conference?”

“Too early—or too late—in either case, now’s not the time. I’d best read that forensics mail for myself before anything else.”

He headed for his desk. There was a bottle of Scotch in the bottom drawer he kept for emergencies—this was getting close to one.

But not yet. Not today.

It would come someday—he knew that. It came to most coppers in the end, a tipping point where the despair outweighed the good to be done. For today, the thought of a young girl needing his help was enough to keep the black dog at bay, but it was closer than it had been for quite some time, and it didn’t retreat nearly far enough for Grainger’s liking.

He tried to lose himself in busy work and opened his e-mail. But reading the short post from the forensics team didn’t clarify matters any. As Jim said—they found nothing that would be of any help. The girl had been taken and spirited off; gone into thin air. Grainger could only hope that someone had seen something—and for that he’d have to wait until all the witness statements were in. There were over a hundred flats in the block, and a hundred more houses in neighboring streets that were being canvassed. It all took time that they could scarcely afford. Every second that passed was a second closer to them finding a dead body rather than a living girl, and Grainger was only too aware of each and every moment.

He sat at his desk, drank too much coffee, and tried not to think of the Scotch in the bottom drawer. The squad room started to fill up during the afternoon as officers returned to file statements, but the telling thing was that there were no witnesses; the interview rooms sat quiet and empty. Jim, the temp, did a sterling job keeping the press at the end of the phone line rather than in Grainger’s face, but it was only a matter of time now. Darkness was coming, and with it a shit-storm.

He looked up when Simpson finally returned and rapped on the window at the side of his door. Hope died immediately when he saw her face.

“You found a body?”

“No. Worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“You’d better come and see, boss. It’s just round the corner in Haymarket Station. We’ve got another one.”