Blood, Salt, Water (8 page)

14

It was a fraught morning. Paranoid about Danny, afraid someone would phone at an inopportune time if his condition worsened, Morrow gave in and called the prison service. They told her Danny was in the Southern General acute post-surgical ward. They couldn’t tell her anything about his current condition, she’d have to phone the hospital. That probably meant he wasn’t dead.

She turned to her work for comfort but found none. The first item in her email was the trace that had been run on Fuentecilla’s mobile. It was preliminary, covering the last forty-eight hours only.

The phone had taken the motorway south, stopped at Stone in Staffs, in the Luton car park, and then went on to Mayfair in central London, arriving yesterday in the early evening. Maria and Juan Pinzón Arias lived in Mayfair. Four hours later, through the night, the phone was tracked coming back up the M1, making its way to Scotland. It was a six hour drive each way to London. It was a long time to stay angry, thought Morrow, even for Roxanna. She didn’t look angry in the ATM photo.

Fuentecilla arrived in Glasgow and, avoiding her house, passed the airport and took the Erskine Bridge across the Clyde Estuary to Argyle. At five o’clock this morning she made a call from a hillside outside Helensburgh. The call was to the landline of a Mr Frank Delahunt out in Helensburgh. Then the phone went dark.

Morrow mapped the site of the phone call. It was from a bare field on the coast road, a mile outside the town.

The second email was from DS Saunders, warning her that the Met had been notified about the missing persons call. They’d been cc’d on Fuentecilla’s phone trace, had decided to handle the Arias angle themselves. She wasn’t getting a jolly to London.

Met officers would visit Maria Pinzón Arias and her husband in their Mayfair home this morning. Met officers would be offered fancy-dan tea and, doubtless, biscuits. Meanwhile, Morrow was charged with checking out the site of the phone call. She was to stand on a rainy hillside, wading through the rain and the cow shit, looking for bodies and/or bits of telephone, and then visit Frank Delahunt.

She phoned the farmer who owned the field. David Halliday sounded old and gruff. He lived next to the field, worked the farm alone, he said. And he’d heard something: he had woken up at five o’clock yesterday morning to his dogs barking. That meant someone was there, which was rare enough because the road was a dead end. He went back to sleep but they kept barking on and off. He’d seen headlights on his ceiling. Two cars, he thought. The dogs kept on barking though. Morrow asked what that meant and he said he didn’t know, the dogs never said. Mr Halliday sounded like a bit of a laugh. Going to visit him might take the tinge off the melancholy morning.

She hung up and went into the incident room to ask McGrain about his kid’s hospital appointment. She was feeling low enough without scheduling in a morning listening to Thankless talk shit. As she walked in the room she scanned for anyone else who had been fully briefed but Thankless was all there was. He looked up hopefully at her, not yet aware that he wasn’t being flown to London for the day. He watched with open-mouthed anticipation as she spoke to McGrain across the room.

McGrain said he had to be back here by two fifteen. She was only going to Helensburgh now, she could still take McGrain but it would be a tight turnaround.

‘There’s a call, ma’am.’ DC Kerrigan, a blond woman with very jaggy teeth, handed her the phone. ‘Mr Halliday from Lurbrax Farm calling you back.’

Mr Halliday sounded out of breath. Listen, pet, he said, he’d just been out and followed one of the dogs around the back of the big shed. He found a car. It was black and big and it wasn’t his and there was no one in it.

Roxanna’s car was black.

Morrow told him to touch nothing, please keep the dogs in and she’d be there in half an hour. Scene of Crime might be called if they found a body. McGrain was out of the question. She motioned to Thankless to come. He stood up, smirking, and pulled his passport out of a drawer.

‘No, we’re not flying to London,’ she called across to him, ‘we’re driving to Helensburgh.’

The incident room enjoyed that.

It took her fifteen minutes in the car to remember why she disliked him so much: Thankless was aggravatingly declamatory. Sometimes he was right, she couldn’t insist that he wasn’t, but it was the way he said things.

She filled him in on the morning’s developments as they drove out to Helensburgh.

‘The Met’ll get the proceeds,’ he announced as they passed the Erskine Bridge. ‘Our chief hasn’t got the pull.’

She ignored that. Fuentecilla had been traced to London—

‘She’s run off with a boyfriend.’

She tried to denote her annoyance by leaving a pause, but he was undeterred.

‘Spanish woman are diff—’

‘
Fucking shut up.
You’re just
burbling
. It’s bad police work. Wait for the facts, let things become clear. Keep an open mind, for fuck’s sake.’

Thankless’s eyebrows rose high and stayed there.

Alex looked out of the side window. She’d done it again: another stranger met, another friend made. She had a bit of an anger problem. It was her problem, she reminded herself, not his problem. People were allowed to be annoying.

They drove on in silence until the sharp turn-off to Lurbrax Farm. It was on the side of a steep hill a mile before Helensburgh, overlooking the broad Clyde Estuary.

‘Here,’ said Morrow, and they took the turn.

Hedged on either side, the bumpy road led up to a cluster of run-down farm buildings set around a house. The farmhouse had ‘Yes’ referendum campaign signs in each of the high windows, white on a pale blue, propped against the inside of the glass.

Thankless nodded at them. ‘He’s got guts,’ he proclaimed. ‘It’s pretty much solid “No” voters out here.’

The problem was hers, not his. She grunted and Thankless took it to mean – really? Do elaborate, you interesting and knowledgeable man. So he did:

‘“Yes” want to shut the nuclear sub base. They’re saying the housing market’ll collapse out here. Prices are frozen now.’

A Ford Fiesta, a city car, was parked up ahead; Morrow had been told the forensic photographer would visit the scene and guessed it was hers. The fact that she was here at all was down to PINAD. Fuentecilla’s body hadn’t been found, just her car, she shouldn’t really be here at all. Thankless parked behind it and Morrow was shocked to see a ‘No thanks’ campaign sticker in her back window. It was a contentious issue. The photographer might as well have turned up wearing a football strip.

Morrow got out into a fresh shower of warm rain and pulled her coat around her, stomping up to the farmhouse.

Two dogs heralded their arrival with a chorus of unthreatening barks. An older dog, grey haired with a cataract in one eye, looked out of the open-sided barn and disappeared back into the dark. Mr Halliday came out, flanked by his milk-eyed companion. He shouted at the noisy young dogs, ‘Shut it!’

He looked older than he sounded on the phone. A weather-beaten man in his sixties or seventies, the curvature of his belly accentuated by the ribbed jumper straining over it. He looked at Morrow with a cheeky twinkle in his eye. ‘Is it you?’

‘Aye,’ smiled Morrow. ‘It that you?’

‘I suppose it is.’ He turned his attention to Thankless. ‘And who’s this one?’

Thankless smiled beneficently and held his hand out. ‘I’m DC Thankless of Police Scotland.’

Halliday showed his brown teeth, a little bit aggressively, and shook Thankless’s hand. ‘Well, son, I’m Me of Here.’

They uncoupled their hands and Halliday turned to Morrow.

‘So, I’m saying: I was asleep yesterday morning, that’s my bedroom up there’ – he pointed to a small window at the top right of the farmhouse – ‘until about five o’clock. Dogs woke me up, barking. They did it another couple of times.’

‘You didn’t get up, though?’

His hand strayed to the dog’s head. ‘The dogs always get up afore me. I was up late, watching
Breaking Bad
, have you seen it?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll tell ye what,’ he nodded solemnly, ‘certainly make ye circumspect about what ye stick your nose into.’

Argyle and Bute was one of the safest areas in the country but she could imagine Mr Halliday cowering under his covers, watching headlights stroke the artex on his ceiling: Mr Fear of Crime.

‘Not that I’ve got anything worth robbing, mind.’

‘I thought all farmers were millionaires.’

Mr Halliday huffed at that. ‘Did ye, indeed? Ye’ve been listening to
The Archers
, mibbi. I never used to worry but, you know, ye get old, you get scared.’

‘I’m not old,’ said Morrow, ‘and I’m scared all the time.’

He liked that. He pointed up to his ‘Yes’ window signs and confided, ‘There’s people about here would burn ye out for that.’

Tempers were running high, she knew that, but there was a lot of paranoia, and both sides were vying for gold in the coveted victim stakes.

‘I thought it was a blanket “No” out here.’

‘Oh, it is. It is indeed.’ He looked over her shoulder, as if ‘No’ assassins might be hiding in the hedgerows. ‘Because of the property prices.’

‘You not worried?’

He looked at her defiantly. ‘Nah! I’m not scared. Lots of them out here are though. Protecting themselves. You wouldn’t believe it. And they’re nasty. The council are a bunch of masons.They’ve let the “No” mob set up a campaign gazebo in the square. No planning permission. Nothing.’

It seemed an oddly comedic thing to object to. ‘Have you been threatened by anyone in particular?’

‘No, just in general.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘I’m retiring. I’ll say what I like. And I don’t care if I lose out personally. If Scotland can finally—’

‘No!’ Morrow held her hand up. ‘Please! No!’ She couldn’t live through another monologue about politics. Everyone in Scotland had one ready.

Mr Halliday misunderstood and nodded. ‘I know. ’Cause you’re the police. You can’t get involved.’

She let him believe that and showed him the picture of Roxanna’s face from the orchid house picture, singled out and enlarged. He didn’t recognise her.

‘What sort of car did you see pulling out?’

He stepped down into the road and pointed at the photographer’s car. ‘See that red one there? That kind. But silver.’

Hoping he couldn’t see the window sticker, she stepped back and looked. It had a distinctive indent in the side panel, like a shadow under a cheekbone. ‘You didn’t happen to get the registration number?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘Where’s the black car you found?’

Mr Halliday led them to a field and lifted the chain off the gate, walking the gate back into the yard to let them in. He led them along the fence to the back of the shed. The black Alfa Romeo 4C Morrow had been watching footage of for three weeks was blocking the entire lane by the field. It was hidden from the road and the farmhouse. She could see why Mr Halliday hadn’t found it for a day. It was in a space so small Roxanna would have had trouble climbing out of the driver’s door. They walked over to the fence to look in.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Halliday, and went back to his dogs.

No blood, no handbag, nothing out of the ordinary. Morrow pulled on a plastic glove and tried the back passenger door. It was unlocked.

The photographer was stepping cautiously over the muddy field towards them. She had already photographed inside the car, she said, and then gone uphill for wider shots of the situ, but she was on the clock and had to leave. Everything was about the numbers these days.

‘Was the car unlocked when you found it?’

‘Yeah. You might want to look in the glovebox as well.’

‘OK.’ Morrow watched her walk away before she remembered: ‘Hey – lose the “No” sticker. You’re on police business.’

The photographer rolled her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry. My car broke down, it’s my dad’s car.’

‘Well, cover the sticker up if you’re using it.’

‘I’m a “Yes” anyway,’ she said.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to know your private business. Just cover the sticker up.’

The photographer nodded and backed away.

Morrow turned her attention to the car. For a Londoner to leave their car door unlocked probably meant Roxanna had stayed nearby. It meant she intended to get back in.

Feeling suddenly very cold, Morrow told Thankless to go and check the field for phones or anything at all. He went off and she lifted her coat, stepping over the wire fence. She opened the car door, reached in and let the glovebox fall open.

A blue freezer bag with
Waitrose
printed on it. It was secured with a white wire, a bulge of white powder in the corner. The contents box hadn’t been filled out but she could guess. She bagged it up as evidence and looked at the floor for anything else. It was strange: Roxanna had driven for twelve hours, through the night, but the floor was almost sterile. There were no stray blond hairs, no pastry flakes, no single blade of grass dragged in on the sole of a shoe. It had been vacuumed.

Morrow looked at the door and the steering wheel closely, checking for fingerprints or palm smudges. Both had been wiped clean. She squinted at a residue on the door handle: alcohol wipes. She knew the sort of marks they left because they used them on the fingerprint machine at the station after someone had been brought in and charged, always aware of the danger of hep. C transmission. They had to use alcohol sanitiser a lot in their uniform days and it was rough on the hands. Morrow could still remember the raw-fingertip feel.

She shut the door carefully and phoned the station: Get a forensic tow truck out here right now and send McGrain and Kerrigan. She needed bodies to escort evidence into the station. Airtight cases fell on the basis of faulty chains of evidence. She could already hear a lawyer cross-examining Mr Halliday: And the car was left unlocked by a field for how long?

Thankless was in the field, slowly walking away from her as he scanned the ground beneath him. She walked over to him. ‘Find anything?’