Where the Bodies are Buried (28 page)

‘That’s all behind me,’ he pleaded. ‘Has been for twelve year, since I finished my last stretch. I work at B and Q. I’m straight
noo.’

‘But you weren’t straight then. That poor wee lassie you said you were just doing your bit for, she’s spent her whole life
thinking her family abandoned her. Twenty-seven years asking herself why they would do that, torturing herself because of
what you told the polis. You were never at Bothwell services that day, were you?’

‘I was, I swear. And you’re right, there was an angle in it for me. I came forward because I thought it might turn out handy
to run up a wee bit credit with the polis. I was walking a thin line in those days.’

‘You’re talking shite, Wullie. I made up the bit about the carrycot being purple. I don’t know what colour it was, and neither
did you. Yet when I pressed you about it, you dreamed up a wee ad hoc explanation for why you remembered. Trust me, you’re
walking a much thinner line by lying to me, especially when it’s so fucking
obvious
you’re lying.’

Ingrams began walking towards him, just a couple of slow steps. Bain looked forlornly at the door and at Jasmine, though what
the hell he thought she could do was anybody’s guess.

It
was
obvious he was lying, which begged the question why he wouldn’t just admit it. The answer, Jasmine realised, was that something
scared him more than the man in his living room.

He shook his head, saying, ‘I swear, I swear, I swear,’ until it became a near-tearful whisper, a mantra of desperate supplication.

‘I believe you,’ Ingrams said, eliciting a tiny degree of relief but a greater quantity of concerned doubt. ‘Not about seeing
the Ramsays,’ he clarified. ‘You’ve been lying about that for twenty-seven years. But there’s one thing you’re not entirely
lying about. You said you’ve never asked for money to talk about this, and I believe you about that. The
papers came to you, you never went touting to them, because you never wanted to draw any scrutiny down upon your story. But
today isnae the first time you’ve been paid for telling it, is it?’

Ingrams collapsed the tripod and slowly, very deliberately began unscrewing it from the base of the camera. Jasmine couldn’t
begin to imagine what he might be planning to do with it, but Bain was clearly doing nothing but.

‘Who told you to lie, Wullie?’

‘Believe me, son,’ he said, shaking his head gravely, ‘you really don’t want to know.’

Ingrams had finally detached the tripod. He placed the camera carefully down into the bag and gripped the aluminium stand
in his right fist.

‘Believe me, I really, really do.’

Jasmine looked from Ingrams’ fist to Bain’s face, expecting to see greater panic, but instead he wore a bitter, ugly grin.
It was the vengeful smile of the beaten man who knows that whatever he is about to surrender is booby-trapped.

‘I’ll tell you who paid me,’ he sneered. ‘A right nasty, ruthless piece of work. More brutal, more greedy and more twisted
than any gangster in the city. Fallan, his name was. Detective Inspector Iain Fallan. Though I believe you referred to him
as Dad.’

Jasmine could see Bain watching them through his living-room window as they walked silently towards the Civic, perhaps reassuring
himself that they were leaving. It looked like he was on the phone. She wondered which side of the law he was calling, and
understood that they’d better get moving or they’d soon be finding out.

She set her phone back to its normal profile, from silent, and as she did so she noticed that she had a voicemail message.
She retrieved it as she walked around to the driver’s side and got into the car. It was a call for Jim, relayed from the office
phone. She felt a rising in her chest as she heard the words ‘This is a message for Jim Sharp’ preface the recording, but
her pulse fell again as it turned out to be from Scottish Gas, something about a heat-loss survey. Jim must have been getting
loft insulation or maybe a new boiler. Jasmine could feel herself threatening to choke up, like when she took calls from Mum’s
old friends who hadn’t heard, or when mail arrived for her. For some reason, a magazine subscription had been the worst, because
it spoke to something Mum had enjoyed, the life she ought still to be living.

Neither of them said anything as she started the engine and pulled away. Ingrams didn’t enquire after the phone message and
seemed reluctant even to aim any looks her way. It was hard to imagine anyone ever describing her passenger as vulnerable,
particularly given what she had just learned and witnessed, but she definitely got the impression that his defences were down.
There was something contrite and regretful about him, his face bearing very little resemblance to the snarling demon who had
just menaced Bain.

She had seldom been comfortable in his presence since they met, but for the first time it seemed like he was uncomfortable
in hers. Jasmine wasn’t having it, though. It was a small car, with no room between the front seats for an elephant.

‘So I take it we can drop the pretence that you are anyone other than Glen Fallan?’ she asked.

He still didn’t speak for a while, long enough for her to think he was either in the huff or genuinely wounded about this.

‘I used to be,’ he eventually replied, his voice low and distant, like he had dragged the words up from somewhere very deep
inside. He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

‘Did Jim know the truth about you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Shit,’ she said, gripping the steering wheel tighter as an outlet for her temper. ‘And you never said a thing.’

‘He hadn’t been in touch. I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t heard from him since last year.’

‘Why was he looking for you before?’

‘I can’t tell you. I’d be breaching Jim’s client confidentiality.’

Jasmine sighed, though she’d have preferred to scream.

‘And would it be breaching his client confidentiality to speculate as to why he had your file out? What’s your connection
with all this? Why did you drop everything to come up here with me? No more lies. Tell me the truth.’

‘I dropped everything because somebody was shooting at us. I came here with you because I want to find out why. I don’t know
what my connection is to this, but if we’re going to work it out, we need to focus on what we
do
know.’

‘What we
do
know? I don’t even know what to call you. Is it Tron? Is it Glen? What kind of a name is Tron anyway? As in the daft sci-fi
movie? As in the steeple?’

‘As in the theatre. Something … happened to me there.’

‘What?’

‘It was where I decided I didn’t want to be Glen Fallan any more. Nobody’s called me by that name for twenty years.’

‘And would you care to tell me what occasioned this epiphany?’

‘I wouldn’t say it’s germane to the matter at hand. What is more relevant is that Bain’s statement being bollocks changes
everything. Without it, the Ramsays’ last sighting is leaving the Campsieview hotel in Lennoxtown the night before.’

‘Why would the police be distorting their own investigation?’

‘
A
policeman was distorting the investigation. And if you had had the pleasure of my late father’s acquaintance, you’d appreciate
that it’s not a given he was doing it from the inside.’

‘So Bain wasn’t just goading you with that? Was your dad really a bent cop?’

‘Let’s just say his corrupt side was among his more positive attributes, and leave it at that.’

Jasmine caught a glimpse of his face as he said this, slowing the car to a halt at some traffic lights. There was no wry humour
to his expression, only a steely bitterness.

‘What is crucial,’ he went on, ‘is that my father would have known what an impact Bain’s statement would make on whoever was
conducting the inquiry. It completely altered the timeline for the Ramsays’ disappearance, not to mention the geography.’

‘Do you reckon Jim had worked this out?’

With all their cards on the table, they had pressed Bain about Jim’s investigation. Bain admitted Jim had been to the house
to talk to him, but said he had stuck to his story.

‘Bain was never going to crumble in front of Jim like he did in front of me, but if Jim was trying to deconstruct the investigation,
it must have occurred to him how much hinged upon Bain’s contribution. It shaped the entire thing to the extent that it was
responsible for creating the mythology that developed around the case. Last sighting late night at a hotel, people just shrug,
think poor bastards must be dead in a ditch, or driven their car into a canal. Last sighting broad daylight at a motorway
services, that suggests a journey. All those reports that kept the story alive down the years, people telling the papers they
may have seen the Ramsays abroad, that all stems from Bain’s lie.’

‘So there’s a good chance Jim was asking himself what the picture would have looked like without it. Why didn’t the police
ever do that?’

‘Presumably they had little else to go on, and no reason to disbelieve Bain.’

‘Apart from him being a petty crook?’

‘That may actually have made him a more credible witness. There was no angle in it for him, as far as the police were aware:
no reason why he would come forward and involve himself in this just to lie.’

‘Yet you worked it out right away, soon as you recognised his photograph in the papers.’

‘I didn’t work it out right away, I just had my suspicions, based on a more in-depth knowledge of Mr Bain’s character than
the contemporary investigators may have enjoyed.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to prejudice our wee interview, and I needed what they call a Method performance from you, to put him at ease.’

‘I know what a Method performance is. I’m better trained as an actor than as an investigator.’

‘You’re a trained actress?’

He seemed pleased by this, an undisguised delight playing across his face. Jasmine wished she could scrutinise it closer to
see whether it was actually amusement, Ingrams perhaps thinking ‘well that would explain a lot’, but she had to keep her eyes
on the road.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. As you said, we have to focus.’

‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘And you made a good point before. If my old man was looking for a stooge, he could have come up with plenty
who were more ostensibly respectable than Wullie Bain.’

‘Maybe Bain had other attributes that balanced it up,’ Jasmine suggested.

‘Aye. Like knowing his place and not being particularly inquisitive. Wullie was never the kind of person to ask too many questions
if you put money in his hand.’

‘Did you know him well back then?’

He stared ahead, evidently no keener to elaborate upon this than she had been about her abortive acting career. But then he
took a breath and answered.

‘I started off as a debt collector for a gangster called Tony McGill. I say gangster, but Tony never really had a gang. In
my experience, organised crime in Glasgow was never very organised. But representing Tony’s interests, you crossed a lot of
paths, made a lot of connections. It was like Facebook for criminals. And I never forget a face.’

He spoke this last statement not with pride or menace, but with the most bitter self-recrimination.

In the silence that followed, Jasmine felt her anger at his deception recede as she began to glimpse the true nature of what
underlay it. He had abandoned his name in an attempt to leave his former self behind, but remained burdened by Glen Fallan’s
sins. And with that in mind, she belatedly understood the act of self-sacrifice he had just committed on her behalf.

‘Bain didn’t recognise you until you forced him to. You could have kept your identity secret, but you gave it up in there
to help me.’ She
swallowed, feeling a lump rise in her throat as she often did these days whenever someone surprised her with a kindness. ‘Thank
you.’

‘I didn’t give it up in there. I knew I was giving it up when I decided to come back to Glasgow with you. It was only a matter
of time after that.’

‘Still, I appreciate it.’

‘You may want to save the thanks until you find out what else comes with the package.’

‘Why did you decide to come back here with me?’ she asked, figuring she’d chance her arm while his defences appeared to be
down.

He stared at her for a moment, his expression unreadable.

‘I’ve made a lot of enemies in my time. Left a lot of UXBs in my wake. I’ve learned to react to the warning signs whenever
one might be threatening to go off. Who was the call from?’ he added, changing the subject so conspicuously as to unambiguously
close its predecessor.

‘It was for Jim, but it was nothing. Gas Board, doing some kind of survey. I think they were trying to flog him a new boiler.’

‘Is that another number accounted for on your list, then?’

‘I forgot to check.’

‘May I?’ he asked, lifting Jasmine’s phone from where it was resting in front of the gearstick.

‘Sure.’

Ingrams reached into the back seat and retrieved the list, then thumbed his way to Jasmine’s call log.

‘Yep. There it is: outgoing call. Here’s a thing, though. Did you know Bain’s number appears on the incoming list as well
as the outgoing?’

‘I hadn’t spotted that, no. Guess he could have been returning Jim’s call or checking a missed number. It’s also possible
I duplicated it by mistake,’ she admitted. ‘I was trying to be methodical, but it’s not my natural métier.’

Just then, Jasmine’s phone rang in Ingrams’ hand.

‘Shall I?’ he asked.

‘Please.’

Ingrams answered. She heard a few neutral ‘okays’ and ‘sures’, then, more curiously, he told the caller: ‘Well, Jim is actually
out of the country at the moment. Yes, unexpectedly. But he mentioned this to me before he left, so I’ll be over first thing
tomorrow. Maxwell Road, isn’t it? Okay, see you then.’

‘Who are we seeing on Maxwell Road?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Scottish Gas. Industrial and Commercial department. Guy was trying one more time before he left for the night. He was calling
to inform Jim that the heat-loss images he enquired about are ready for him to pick up.’