Devil in the Detail (Scott Cullen Mysteries) (7 page)

Elaine nodded. "I had been really worried that she was sleepwalking and had been going down the main road," she said. "It was somehow reassuring that she was taking a safe route."

"I assume that the doors to your house were all locked?" asked Cullen.

"Yes," she said. "We have a set of keys each, Charles and I. Thomas has a front door key. She still managed to get out."

"There weren't keys in the door last night, were there?" asked Cullen.

"No."

"As far as I'm aware, we haven't found a set of keys on Mandy's person."

"I can only think that the door must have been left open last night," she said.

"But it was locked this morning?"

She stopped in the path by the gate. "It was," she said.
 

Cullen hoped that Bain was having more joy with Charles Gibson. He pointed at the street beyond the gate, lined with houses that were similarly sized if not as grand as those on the Gibsons' street. An elderly couple walked slowly down the street, heading away from them. "Is that where Susan lives?" he asked.

She nodded. "Number seven."

"I wonder if you could introduce us?" asked Cullen. "If Mandy came this way, then we need to scour her likely route, including their house."

"Certainly," said Elaine, though she gave a sigh after her answer.

Cullen opened the gate and let Elaine head through. He held it open for ADC Law to catch. She smiled warmly at Cullen - he let his gaze linger a bit too long.

"Mum!"

He turned back around and saw Elaine Gibson running to a small continuation of the path that ran to the side. Cullen and Thomas Gibson gave chase. She was kneeling about twenty feet from the gate, clutching something.

"What is it?" asked Cullen.

Her eyes were streaming, her body racked with sobs. She rocked back and forth, holding something tight to her.

Thomas spoke up. "It's Mandy's favourite teddy bear."

Cullen had eventually managed to prise the teddy bear from Elaine's clutches. He had put on a pair of protective gloves, though he feared that any forensic traces would have been lost in the onslaught of rain that morning.

It was a large brown bear, very classic looking. It wasn't one of the many Disney tie-ins, but something from an earlier age. He turned the bear over and over, looking for any clues but couldn't find anything. It was just a bear.

Elaine Gibson was on her feet now, still in floods of tears. Caldwell had her arm around her shoulder, slowly patting her back. Thomas Gibson stood beside them, unsure what to do. Cullen thought that he was trying to look mature, but occasionally he caught glimpses of emotion tearing the boy's face apart.

"What shall we do?" asked Law.

Cullen realised that he was the most senior of the three officers present. While they were all Constables, he was the only fully-fledged Detective. He looked back down the lane and tried to think. A middle-aged woman opened the gate at the far end and struggled through with her dog. A million thoughts raced through his head - how had nobody seen the bear? The path looked like it was fairly well-used and it led from a populous part of the town to a park. How had nobody spotted anything? How had nobody spotted Mandy?

He took a deep breath and made a decision. "Can you take the Gibsons back home?" he asked Law. "I want to speak to someone in the Russell's house."

Law raised an eyebrow. "Got a thing going with ADC Caldwell, have you?" she asked, a grin on her face.

Cullen shook his head. "No, I don't," he said. "And don't listen to what Bain might say, either."

She smiled. "Is she not your type?"

"Something like that," he muttered.

Law bit her lip. "So you know where they live?" she asked.

"Number seven, according to Elaine Gibson."

"I'll let you get on, then," she said.

"You're okay doing this?" he asked.

"Used to be a Community Officer," she said. "Second nature to me."

*

The Russell house wasn't in the same league as the Gibsons' but it was still way out of the price bracket Cullen could ever afford, even if he made DCI. It was of inferior quality and it was clear to Cullen that corners had been cut on the route to making money. The plots were much closer together, the houses that bit smaller. There seemed to Cullen to be the same number of windows, implying the same number of rooms, but where the Gibson house was spacious, he imagined that the rooms in the Russell house would be smaller.

"Awful business," said Cath Russell.

She was a big woman. Her rich voice had a strong Highland accent, which reminded Cullen of an English teacher he had in school.
 

They sat in her conservatory, located at the back of the house, which looked across an immaculate, if small, garden - the lawn looked perfect even in winter and the mature fruit trees at the end of the garden were placed in an unusual manner, aligned in a long curve rather than the standard straight row. Cullen also noticed another conservatory - he could barely understand getting one, but having two with such a small plot just puzzled him. Even in January, the heat in the room was stifling and Cullen noticed that the radiators were on full blast.
 

"I believe that you helped Charles and Elaine Gibson hunt for Mandy this morning," he said.

"Indeed I did," she replied. "My husband, Paul, had already left for work but I helped them search for her. Poor wee soul."

"They said that Mandy had run away before and ended up here?" asked Caldwell. "Is that true?"

Cath nodded. "Indeed," she said, sitting forward and clasping her hands together. "Quite a few times. Mandy was friends with my Susan. I say friends, but poor Mandy was not particularly capable of the sort of friendship that Susan requires. She's a very bright girl, you know, very advanced for her age."

"So what sort of friendship did they have?" asked Caldwell.

"Well, because of the way that Mandy was," said Cath, taking care with her wording, "it was less a friendship and more like Mandy was a younger sister - much younger. Mandy really looked up to Susan."

"And they were in the same year at school?" asked Caldwell.

"Well, yes," said Cath. "But you must remember that Susan was in the top class for all of her subjects and that poor Mandy was in the special needs class. So really they were only in the same class for a few subjects. PE, Religious Education, that sort of thing."

"Can you explain why Mandy came here when she ran away from home?" asked Cullen.

"I've no idea."

"No idea at all?"

"All I can think is that she wanted to see Susan," said Cath. "My daughter is a very nurturing soul and Mandy must have been drawn to that. She's very much like me in that sense."

Cullen almost choked. "How many times has she come here during the night?" he asked.

"It was about once a month on average."

"And when did it start?" asked Cullen.

"Oh, now you're asking," she replied. "I would say it was probably late summer 2010."

"So eighteen months ago?" asked Cullen.

"Yes, that would be about right."

Cullen felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but he let it ring out.
 

"Had there been any trouble at home, do you know?" he asked.

She scowled. "Heavens, no," she said, her voice high and lilting. "They were very loving towards Mandy. After what happened in Edinburgh, well, it would have driven most families apart, but it seemed to make Charles and Elaine even stronger."

"Does your daughter know what has happened to Mandy?" asked Cullen.

"No, not yet," she said, biting her lip. "She's at school today. I will tell her after school but I don't want this harming her education."

Cullen glanced at Caldwell, who was virtually rolling her eyes.

"I can understand that," he said. "Would I be able to see her after school?"

She nodded. "She usually gets home at the back of four."

"Would it be possible to speak to your husband?" asked Caldwell.

Cath frowned. "As I said earlier, Paul had left for work by the time Charles came here."

"We'd still like to speak to him," he said."

She turned her lip up. "I suggest that I get him to turn up at whichever police station you are working from."

"We're based in Garleton while this case is ongoing," said Cullen.

"Then I shall send him there."

*

"Fat lot of good that was," said Caldwell as they walked back along the lane to the Gibsons' house. "Can't believe how up herself she was. My daughter this, my daughter that. I'm a very nurturing soul."

Cullen laughed. "Other than getting a corroboration of the Gibsons' story," he said, "it just made me glad to not live in a place like this."

"Yeah, but Portobello's not exactly amazing, is it?" she said.

He laughed. "I'll hopefully not be there forever."

Caldwell winked at him. "Have you and Sharon been looking?"

This again, thought Cullen. "No, we haven't," he said. Cullen himself had been looking for a flat for the previous two years, feeling continually priced out of the market - either by rising house prices or rising deposits. The market was finally stabilising but Sharon and he were getting serious. He had managed to evade questions from Caldwell for the last few months but that wouldn't stop the station gossip.

"Aren't things going well?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know," he said. "This is uncharted territory for me. I usually get up, wipe my cock on the curtains and fuck off into the night."

Caldwell stopped and laughed. "What about a roller blind?" she asked.

"No way," he said. "A boy's got to have standards." They laughed. "In all seriousness, things are going well. I'm a bit surprised, to be honest."

"What, all that stuff with that girl you were supposed to be seeing?" she asked.

Cullen closed his eyes. "We don't talk about that."

He tried to forget about that. He'd saved the life of a girl that shared a flat with his ex. It continually staggered him how messy he could make his life, but there it was. In truth, his actions had put her in danger, so saving her was the least he could do. It had made his early relationship with Sharon difficult. Even almost six months on, she still didn't quite trust him. He didn't blame her, but he tried to gain that trust at every opportunity.

"So why are you surprised?" she asked.

"Just the curtains thing, I suppose," he said. "I mean I wanted to settle down, I just didn't see it being with Sharon, that's all."

"You mean you don't see yourself settling down with her?"

He pointed a finger at her. "That's not what I meant, so this goes nowhere near her," he said. "I didn't see myself going out with her. Nothing to do with her, more with me."

"But things are fine?"

"Of course," he said. "Better than I could have hoped." He opened the gate back onto Dunpender Drive. He stepped aside and let a young mother with a buggy through. "Why are you asking?"

"Oh, no reason," she said, grinning. "It's just that... well."

"Well, what?"

"That ADC Law hasn't taken her eyes off of you."

He stopped. "Just stop it," he said. "I'm not interested."

"Okay, just passing on what I noticed," she said, a slight smirk on her face.

"Well, if that's the game you're playing," he said, "DS Lamb was taking an interest in you. Maybe he likes giants."

Caldwell shook her head. "Very funny," she said. "A lot of small rich men go in for tall girls like me."

"Yeah, I wonder what goes on in their heads," he said. "How tall is your husband?"

"Six five," she said.

"Fair enough."

Cullen checked the missed call he'd received when they were speaking to Cath Russell - predictably, it was Bain. He dialled the number and held the phone away from his ear.

"Sundance," he said, "if you see the caller display with my name on it, you fuckin' answer it, okay?"

"We were with someone."

"I don't care if you were with the fuckin' Queen, all right?" he said. "If you see my name, you fuckin' answer."

"What did you want?" asked Cullen.

"Where the fuck are you?"

"Just about back at the Gibson house."

"Right, I'll see you outside then."

"Thanks," said Cullen to a dead phone line.

Caldwell looked over at him. "That sounded like it went well," she said.

"Typical Bain," he said.

They approached the house - it seemed to Cullen that there were even more cars than when they'd left. He hoped that Anderson and the other SOCOs were going through Mandy's room with a fine tooth comb.

At the drive, Cullen recognised PC Jennifer Wallace, the Family Liaison Officer that had been with the family, standing chatting to ADC Law. They stood on the gravel outside, far enough away from the house to avoid being overheard.

"Anything been happening here?" asked Cullen.

Law shrugged. "Scene of Crime have just turned up," she said. "I handed that teddy bear over to Anderson, Bain didn't seem much interested."

Cullen was glad that he seemed to be avoiding another confrontation with Anderson. "What's Bain been up to?"

"Running around like a blue-arsed fly."

Cullen nodded. "That's what he does best," he said.
 

"They've started going door-to-door," said Law. "Bain's got Stuart out with a squadron of uniform."

"Why aren't you out with them?" asked Cullen.

"I must have missed the opportunity when I was away with you," she replied. "What do you want me to do?"

Cullen clocked a grin on Caldwell's face. His glare only seemed to worsen it. "Bain should be here any minute," he said. He looked at Wallace. "Anything to report from you?"

"I was out with his wife just there," answered Wallace. "She tore through half a deck ay fags. She's torn to shreds." She was broad shouldered, though not tall like Caldwell was. Her hair was very short and her voice coarse, as if she smoked forty a day herself.
 

"Well, you would be," said Caldwell, almost in an undertone but loud enough for Wallace to hear.