Where the Bodies are Buried (4 page)

‘Delta Seven. Look, I’ve just had a very important call about another job. I’m no use on this one with the subject giving
me that funny. Can I leave this in your capable hands?’

Oh God, please, no, no.

‘Yes yes.’

She remembered the things she had told herself when Jim first took her on, barely a couple of months back. He had explained
that this wasn’t a Saturday job for pocket money, and required commitment. He knew she was hoping to find work in acting but
assured her that once she was trained up, it would be a good fallback when she was ‘resting’. He was smart that way: he wasn’t
asking her to choose, not offering a ‘real’ job to help her get over her silly ideas.

It would do to tide her over, she decided. It was money in her pocket, and it was just for now. It was better than bar work:
it paid more, and it involved a kind of acting. Valuable experience as well, good for the CV. Yeah: all the things every would-be
actor probably told themselves when they started the job they ended up doing for life.

She wondered whether this fear – that before she knew it she’d be thirty and still doing this job ‘just for now’ – was what
was causing her to screw up. Subconsciously, did she want to fail so that Jim would take the choice out of her hands?

No, she wouldn’t deliberately do anything to let Jim down. She just sucked, was all, which meant she was in an impossible
situation: landed with a job she couldn’t do but couldn’t do without.

The subject stopped again. She didn’t figure him for a window-shopper, particularly in a lane specialising largely in interior
furnishings and decidedly girlie knick-knacks, so there was a strong possibility that he was checking his six. The likelihood
was that he was on the lookout for Jim, but with his suspicion piqued, she couldn’t afford to be noticed. Without a back-up
to take over the follow, the procedure was to walk past and stop to look in another window, waiting for him to overtake again.
She kept her head down as she passed him, but in her need for reassurance that she wasn’t being noticed, she stole a glance
to see where he was looking – just as he turned to check back along the lane. Their eyes met. She kept walking, feeling her
cheeks
burn and her stomach leaden with that familiar feeling of having blown it.

Jim had this sun-yellowed cartoon on the wall of his cluttered and poky little office in Arden on the south side. It showed
a geeky-looking guy standing in his place as part of an orchestra. He was holding a cymbal in his right hand, and in a thought
bubble he was saying to himself: ‘This time I won’t screw up, I won’t screw up, I won’t screw up.’ It was only when you looked
more closely that you noticed that in his left hand he was holding nothing at all. It was captioned: ‘Roger screws up.’

That was how Jasmine felt every day on the job. It felt like the harder she tried, the more she found new ways to blunder.
Even now, as she coached herself to stay focused, as she determined not to screw up, she feared that simply by doing so she
was diverting her own attention from the fact that she was missing a cymbal.

She had to rationalise, though. Their eyes had met, but it wasn’t strictly speaking a funny. She wasn’t burned, but she was
on a yellow card. She had been noticed, so he’d recognise her if he found her looking again, but right now she was just a
girl who’d caught his eye, and he hers. He was kind of leery anyway: he probably got clocked eyeing girls every time he walked
down a street.

She crossed the lane and looked in a window of her own, her pulse rising as she waited, hoping, to see him pass in the reflection,
all the more desperate to get a result because Jim had been forced to leave it in her ‘capable’ hands.

They were running out of time and running out of chances on this particular case, and it wouldn’t only be Jim she’d be letting
down if she dropped the ball today.

‘The subject’s name is Robert Croft,’ Jim had explained to her. ‘He’s a thirty-seven-year-old plasterer from Clarkston. The
client is Hayden-Murray Solicitors on behalf of Mrs Dorothy Muldoon, a retired widow from Giffnock. In December last year,
Mrs Muldoon runs into the back of Croft’s Escort van at a roundabout in Pollokshaws. Minimal damage, she accepts it’s her
fault, expects to pay the excess on a wee bit of panel-beating and a skoosh of spray paint. Unfortunately the observant Mr
Croft has noted that Mrs Muldoon has run into him in a Lexus, and the cogs have started to turn inside his grasping wee heid.

‘Couple of weeks later, she gets a notice saying she’s being sued for
long-term loss of earnings because Mr Croft sustained an injury in the accident and can no longer wield his trowel. The letter
is from a company called Scotiaclaim.’

‘Is that the ones that have that tacky advert on the telly? The personal injury mob?’

‘Aye. And this shower would give ambulance-chasers a bad name. They advertise on daytime TV partly because it’s cheaper but
mainly because their target market is shiftless bastards who believe something’s owing to them despite sitting on their fat
arses all day when other folk are busy at work. Soon as I heard that’s who was representing him, it told me all I needed to
know. Suffice to say, Hayden-Murray are sceptical as to the veracity of Mr Croft’s claim, especially as they have learned
he has successfully made a similar claim before. Unfortunately, that’s not admissible in court, but it tells us plenty.’

‘What about doctors? Doesn’t he need a medical report?’

‘Oh, dodgy lawyers often have pals who are dodgy doctors. They can always source a diagnosis favourable to their position.
But even if Hayden-Murray are able to secure an independent examination, Croft will have been made aware – if he wasnae aware
already – of how to cite some conveniently non-specific and non-testable symptoms.’

The court date was fast approaching, and so far they had nothing. They had tailed him twice before: once being the occasion
Jasmine lost the subject in that cinema car park in Paisley. On the other, he had raised their hopes by going into a health
club: some footage of him swimming or working the weights would be all they needed. It turned out he was seeing a physiotherapist,
most likely as another witness who could testify to having treated his nebulous injury. The only plus was that up until now
he didn’t appear to be aware that he was under surveillance, though he was bound to have been informed by Scotiaclaim that
it was a possibility. As it stood, there was still a chance, albeit slim, that they could catch him doing something he shouldn’t
be.

‘It’s Last Chance Saloon now,’ Jim had confessed. ‘With a very strong possibility that he’s playing it canny and we won’t
get a thing.’

‘Do you still get paid?’

‘Aye, but it burns to see a guy like this get away with it. Plus, if you don’t get results, the lawyers will say they understand,
but the likelihood is you won’t get hired again.’

Jasmine watched Croft’s reflection pass across the window, this time
resisting the temptation to look at his face for assurance that he wasn’t looking back. She turned her head slightly, enough
to keep him in her peripheral vision until it was safe to commence walking again. She allowed him a longer lead than before,
conscious of having had that almost-funny.

‘Subject is turning left left left on to Cresswell Street.’ She kept up the commentary even though Jim was off the follow.
She was recording her progress on the bodycam, so it was partly for the benefit of the tape (or rather, memory card) and partly
just for practice.

Jasmine felt anxiety seize her as she approached the end of the pedestrianised lane, in anticipation of what she might see
– or more pertinently not see – when she turned on to Cresswell Street. It must be a documented phenomenon, she thought: the
foot-follower’s fear of the corner. It was so piercingly acute that in recent days she’d been experiencing it even when she
wasn’t on a follow, turns on busy streets becoming a Pavlovian trigger for a tightness in her chest.

When she turned this particular corner, the sight that met her truly was grounds for dismay. It wasn’t that she’d lost the
subject: Croft was visible twenty yards ahead, approaching the junction with Byres Road. It was what else she could see. Charlotte
Queen was sitting at a table outside a deli-café on Cresswell Street, she and two friends enjoying the atypically summery
weather by sipping their coffees al fresco, and she was looking Jasmine’s way. Their eyes met: only fleetingly, and at a distance,
but it was definitely reciprocal.

Croft was almost at Byres Road, a T-junction, and by some distance the busiest street in the West End. The lead she had given
him was acceptable on back streets, but very risky on a bustling main drag. Making ground was strongly advisable; allowing
him to gain any more seconds potentially calamitous. She had to hurry, but she couldn’t do anything conspicuous like run.

She increased her walking pace and locked her gaze on Croft, acting as though she had barely registered the group outside
the café. Charlotte had only glanced at her for a moment, so there was every chance that she didn’t recognise her, or didn’t
remember her out of context.

She was five yards from the table. Brisk and purposeful, come on, focused and in a hurry, mind
obviously
elsewhere,
clearly
not ignoring the brilliant but flaky, capricious and egotistical …

‘Jasmine? Jasmine Sharp?’

It felt like time stood still. Jasmine was suddenly presented, in one
precipitate moment, with making a decision that could lay down a path before her for the rest of her life.

She knew she could not stop to talk. Nor did she have time to explain, even with the utmost brevity, precisely
why
she couldn’t stop to talk. A quick ‘oh, hi’ as she walked on by would also look unacceptably dismissive when she was being
personally hailed by someone well used to having people in her thrall.

It was a stark, unavoidable choice between losing the subject, leaving Jim with nothing to give Hayden-Murray, and blanking
– in front of her friends, no less – the one person who could yet offer Jasmine an acting break.

Jasmine looked deep into herself in that moment, asking not merely what she really wanted, but what she truly believed she
could be.

She continued – walking still walking – saying nothing as she passed Charlotte’s table, so close she could smell the fumes
from their espressos, all the time keeping her eyes on the corner. There were tears forming in them by the time she had turned
right on to Byres Road. It took her a moment through the throng and the mist of tears, but she could see Croft ahead, passing
the bollards at Vinicombe Street. She picked up the pace.

‘Making ground,’ she reported, swallowing. ‘Subject walking still walking towards Great Western Road.’

This job was real. It was paying a wage. She couldn’t be a little girl any more. Mum was gone. Dreams were gone.

She kept walking.

Croft was approaching the junction of Byres and Great Western Roads, where Oran Mor looked across at the Botanics; Oran Mor,
where, when she could afford it, she spent lunchtime enjoying A Play, A Pie and A Pint for a tenner, telling herself that
one day she’d be the one on stage.

Croft glanced back before reaching the corner, just a casual look but potentially suspicious. Jasmine not only got her head
down but checked her pace and stepped out of sight behind a gangling art student toting a big black portfolio. She was already
envying him his aspirations, the fact that he still had them.

The traffic on Great Western Road bustled left and right across her path directly ahead. Another corner, another pang of anxiety
about what was around it, the dread possibilities of which had just been given a whole new depth of scope back on Cresswell
Street. Everything
was simpler now, though: she only had one thing left to lose. Around this corner, as long as she saw Croft, then she could
live with that.

Unless, of course, it was his face she saw, coming straight towards her.

Shit.

He had performed a reciprocal, doubled back: always a sure sign that the subject suspects he’s being tailed. He was looking
right at her too; an unqualified funny, which she promptly escalated into direct eye contact: as in can’t-look-away, rabbit-in-the-headlights
eye contact.

She was burned liked a vampire on a sunlounger. At noon. In the desert.

Verbal challenge coming too, by the looks of it. Oh God, what if he got violent? Jim was miles away by now.

As he opened his mouth to speak, Jasmine got in ahead of him.

‘You’re a plasterer, aren’t you?’ she blurted in her panic: the only thing she could think to say.

It set him on the back foot for a moment, but only in a manner sufficient to prompt the obvious question.

‘How do
you
know?’ he demanded.

Jesus, why not tell him it’s because she’s working for a private investigator hired by Dorothy Muldoon’s lawyers: she’d already
given him everything else. How
would
she know?

Then inspiration struck.

‘You did my auntie’s kitchen. Don’t know if you remember? It was on the south side, a wee semi. Used to be Artex on the ceiling
and you smoothed it away.’

His brow wrinkled in concentration, searching his memory as she sold him a tale from her own. She didn’t leave him to search
long.

‘I’m not stalking you or anything,’ she added with a nervous laugh. ‘It’s just, when I saw you back there, it took me a minute
to place you and then you were away. The thing is, I’ve moved into this flat with my boyfriend, up in Hyndland, and there
was this damp problem, but thank God that’s all sorted, fingers crossed.’

Suspicion was replaced on his face by confusion as she babbled away.

‘Anyway, the living room’s a state, so’s the bedroom, they both need a whole new … I don’t know what you call it.’

‘A skim,’ he prompted.

‘Yeah. A new skim. But we just can’t
get
anybody. They say they’ll
do it and then they don’t turn up. I mean, they’re quoting like a thousand pounds because it’s two big rooms, high ceilings,
and my boyfriend’s happy to pay it just to get it done, but they still end up leaving you hanging. When I realised who you
were back there, I just wondered if it was worth asking whether maybe you could do it? It would be cash in hand. Michael withdrew
it to pay this other guy who let us down.’