Troubled Waters (8 page)

‘When did you last see her?’ she began.

‘It’ll have been yesterday. She was supposed to be in today, but she’s not turned up. She does three four-hour shifts a week. I phoned her, then I checked with Irene, her best pal, to see if she knew where she was, but she had no idea what was going on.’

‘Has this happened with her before?’

‘No. She’s very reliable, very conscientious, actually. Mandy’s not been with us long, only about six weeks but . . . this is quite out of character. If anything she was over-worried about things, over-anxious. Sometimes I told her to relax, lighten up. She seemed old for her years. What’s she done?’

‘She hasn’t done anything. How old is she?’

‘Twenty-one – that’s what her application said, anyway. That’s all I have to go on. She didn’t have a passport and she was still looking for her birth certificate . . . she was supposed to hand it in.’

A young man barged through the door, a tray of poussins in his hands.

‘Where am I to put the wee birds, Mr Wilson?’ he asked, brandishing them in front of his boss.

‘Knock next time, Raymond, please. Beside the chickens, in the chill cabinet.’

Once the youth had left, the manager explained, apologetically, ‘He’s learning disabled. New to the job, too.’

‘Could you tell me what Miranda Stimms looks like?’

‘Aye,’ he nodded, ‘she’s a “babe”, if you get the picture. She’s dark-haired, a good figure. I thought of her like Catherine Zeta-Jones in the old days – you know, the Welsh girl that married Gordon Gecko or whatever he was called. An hourglass shape . . . a fox. He’s one of those sex addicts, I heard. Done him no good, either.’

‘I’m sorry to ask you, but could you look at this photograph,’ Alice asked, handing him one of the shots taken by Jim Scott in the temporary mortuary.

‘Jesus!’ said Mr Wilson, sitting back in his chair, blinking rapidly, dropping the photograph on his desk.

‘Is that her?’ the policewoman asked.

‘Yes. But she’s not a fox any more. What happened to her?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

5

If he set about the exercise with military precision he would find her, he told himself. He must. Lambie, so weak, so loving, was depending upon him, and, this time, he would not let her down. He paced the length of his office, thinking as he walked, rehearsing in his head the logical sequence that would inevitably occur. His phone went, distracting him, and recognising the number, he switched it off. No problem. Salesmen, he told himself, persist or get sacked. Kevin, the Cute Cards Company’s representative, would call again for sure. Not that he would be buying any more of their overpriced stationery in a hurry, not with Frankie Boyd setting up in competition to them. He’d offer a much better price, in all likelihood on far more amenable terms too.

‘Boss?’ A man’s head, topped with a halo of red hair, appeared round his door.

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve got a big order to go to Berwick, they need it yesterday. Can I get a courier?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, immediately turning his back on the man to let him know that there would be no further chat, and waiting motionless until he heard the door close once more.

He sat down on the edge of his desk and lifted his cup of tea to his lips. The police had picked her up. So she was safe. But, in this day and age, she would not be
kept in a cell or anything. No, they’d involve the Social Services, what with her being a child and everything. She was tall but still a child, anyone could see that, surely? What would they do with her – speechless, twitchy and, obviously, not normal? Lost in thought, he put down his cup untouched, and started to bite a fingernail, pulling at a ragged end. First of all, they would have to find a temporary home for her, and that would either be a children’s home, if they still existed, or, more likely, a foster home. And school, they would be bound to think about a school because education was the law. But, if she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, speak, what then? They’d not put her in a normal secondary school, would they? They couldn’t. That would be monstrous, did not bear thinking about. Imagining it, he began to sweat, could feel the moisture collecting on his brow.

No, they would opt, surely to goodness, for a special school. They’d be bound to. They’d be kinder there. Please, Lord, he prayed, help me find her, keep her safe, keep my child safe until I find her. Let me get to her first. Tears now pricking his eyes, he switched on his computer, intending to check out children’s homes and special schools in Edinburgh.

‘Boss?’ the same man’s head appeared round the door again.

‘Not now, Jake!’ he bellowed, embarrassed, turning his head away, angry that anyone should witness his weakness. Instantly, the door clicked shut and he returned his attention to the screen in front of him. Googling ‘Special Schools in Edinburgh’ brought up eleven possibilities, of which fewer than half appeared to cater for secondary school pupils. Four of them specialised in youngsters with communication difficulties, including those ‘on the
autistic spectrum’, as their websites phrased it. They were based in Drumbrae, Abbeyhill, Liberton and Bruntsfield, respectively. Deciding to start with them, he wrote their addresses and details in his pocket notebook.

Faced with the results for ‘Children’s homes in Edinburgh’, he sighed. There was such a multiplicity of choices and, feeling momentarily weighed down by the hopelessness of it all, he did not even bother to copy them down. He could hardly check them all out, watch all of them. It would take months, if it could be done at all, and Lambie would not stand for that. Last night she had taken too much whisky, two tumblers both well-nigh neat, and become argumentative, shrill and hectoring. Not like the woman he knew and had married. The woman he loved.

The phone went again and he snatched it up.

‘Yes?’ He sounded irate.

‘It’s just me,’ she said, taken aback.

‘Lambie . . .’

‘You left so early.’

‘I had to. I’ve got my work to do, I’ve got to keep things going.’

While talking to her, unseen by her, he rubbed his tired eyes with the tips of his fingers.

‘What news, how are you getting on?’

‘I’m getting on fine, my sweet. Did you speak to the school?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Tonsillitis – that worked last time.’

The door opened and Jake began to come in.

‘Get out!’ the man shouted, then realising how it would sound down the phone, he immediately added, ‘Not you, Lambie, I wasn’t talking to you. Someone came in to my
office. It’s busy here – it’s a dispatch day. We’ve orders going all over the place.’

‘But you have started looking – you are looking for her, too? I can’t lose her. I’ve got to go to the meeting, but I couldn’t bear to lose . . .’

The voice at the other end tailed away to nothing. Knowing the woman as he did, he could picture her in their kitchen, dissolving in her distress, her chin wobbling and tears starting to trickle down her cheeks. She would be biting her lip, trying and failing to stop herself from crying. Before too long she would start choking, unable to contain herself or breathe. Hysterical, enfeebled by her unhappiness.

‘Lambie, my darling, it’s alright,’ he said, his voice firm and confident. ‘Trust me. You know I
will
find her.’

Three-fifteen p.m. found him sitting in his Mazda 6 a couple of hundred yards from the low brick wall which enclosed the Cowan Lea Special School on Drum Brae Terrace. The school itself comprised an uninspired sixties building, flat-roofed and white-painted with a matching Portakabin tacked to one side. Around it was a small garden, the turf worn in parts, and dotted on the grass was the play equipment: a couple of swings, a roundabout and a slide. The only tree left on the site, a crooked Scots pine, had a circular tree-house round its trunk, a rope ladder dangling forlornly from its dark interior.

In the fifteen minutes or so that he had been parked, women had appeared from all four points of the compass and begun to congregate at the gates. Some of them were smoking, some chatting, others looking intently into the playground, ever watchful for the arrival of their own
precious offspring. A solitary man, a small girl clutching his hand, joined the female crowd, getting nods of recognition from most of them. In her free hand, the little girl held the lead of a yapping Border terrier. As a white-faced teenager, pigeon-toed, bespectacled and with a strange bullet-shaped skull hurtled out of the gates towards it, the dog began pulling on the lead, rearing up on its back legs in its determination to greet its master. Eventually it broke loose, barrelling towards the boy, its lead dragging behind it.

No other child, he noticed, left the school unaccompanied; all the rest held the hand of schoolmate or a parent. Policy, no doubt; and that was, he determined there and then, how he would do it. If she was there, he would walk in, take her hand and lead her out. Knowing her, she would not protest or demur, or attempt to attract anyone’s attention. And no foster mother would be half as sharp-eyed, half as vigilant, as him. She would be too busy gossiping and socialising with the other women in all probability to notice them leaving together, and she would not be expecting that. No, she would be looking only for a lone girl.

His phone went.

‘Boss?’

‘Aha,’ he replied, never taking his eyes off the children in the playground.

‘Dunfermline wants to know if we’ve enough stock for the next two weeks. Hughie’s away and Davie’s just left. What should I say?’

‘Tell them that we’re OK. We’re OK. Right?’

He waited a second, then abruptly ended the call. Standing on her own he had spotted a tall, blonde girl. She had her back to him, her shoulders held unnaturally
high, in a familiar way, and one arm moved every so often as if not fully under her control. He sat up, hunched over the wheel, willing her to turn round. Instinctively, he disengaged his seatbelt, opened the door, readying himself to move the minute he recognised her. His car keys were clutched in his hand, suddenly so tightly that it hurt, the metal digging into his palm. In his excitement he could hardly breathe. Let it be her. Let it be her. In less than a minute he would be beside her, hand in her hand, leading her back to the car. Then straight home to Lambie, with him triumphant and witnessing her joy.

‘Turn round,’ he ordered silently. ‘For pity’s sake turn around.’

As if they were connected, as if she had heard him and obeyed, the girl turned slowly in his direction. Seeing her, he closed his eyes. She was pregnant, her fringe had been dyed a shade of purple and she was massaging her awful, oversized belly in a circular motion with one of her hands.

‘Oh, mercy!’ he cried, his head slumping down, bowed down as if it was too heavy for his neck. Despair flooded over him, rendering him powerless, making him doubt everything, including himself. Head now in his hands, his features contorted in grief, his disappointment overpowered him, unmanned him.

A sharp knock on his window returned him to the present, and seeing an elderly woman looking in at him, her brows furrowed in concern, he wound it down.

‘I just wondered if you were OK?’ she asked, bending down slightly to get a better view of him.

‘Fine . . . thank you very much,’ he replied reassuringly, then, giving little thought to the lie, he elaborated, ‘well, I’ve a headache but I’ve taken something, it’s getting better.’

Satisfied, she smiled and set off down the street, pulling her shopping trolley behind her. As its rusted wheels rolled along the pavement they emitted a high-pitched shriek, tearing his already vulnerable nerves to shreds.

For another twenty minutes he remained sitting in his car, in the cold, now feeling stiff and uncomfortable, aware of an ache at the base of his spine. As his vigil came to an end, the stragglers departed. A thickset boy with a squint seemed unwilling to leave the playground, and had to be cajoled out of it by his mother. Shrugging her shoulders, she walked away from the gates, as if leaving him. A look of distress disfigured his large features, and he followed her, then stopped. She set off again, then halted, waiting for him to catch up. Using this method, the eccentric couple finally turned into Drum Brae Crescent and disappeared from view. Now, the playground was empty. Only a janitor and a teaching assistant remained near the school, talking, the assistant gesticulating at the litter near the front door as if ordering its removal.

He had failed. He drove back onto Drum Brae North, bringing his car to a halt by the line of bare poplars which mark the start of the descent onto the Queensferry Road. In his distress, the breathtaking view before him of the Forth and the blue hills of Fife left him cold, his eyes moving across it mechanically, blind to its beauty.

He punched her number in and waited, in vain, for her voice. After allowing himself a minute or two to collect himself, to ensure that his voice sounded strong, optimistic and confident, he pressed the redial button and began to speak into the answerphone. ‘Lambie,’ he said, ‘it’s me. She wasn’t there. But don’t you worry. She’ll be at the next one, I know she will. We’re getting closer all the time. Now, I’ll need to work late tonight, in the office.
Be back nine, maybe. Or half-nine, ten at a pinch. But I love you. You know I love you. You and . . .’ He stopped abruptly. Starting to say his daughter’s name, his voice had begun to break.