Cold Grave (30 page)

She knew the silence on the other end of the phone was Addison trying to think of another reason to argue. The longer he went without saying anything, the surer she was she’d persuaded him. He was as argumentative and confrontational as they came, but she was confident he respected her judgement — even if he’d never tell her that.

‘You’d better be not just certain but fucking right,’ he finally growled. ‘Do you know how much those pencil-pushing pricks will bust my balls if I can’t justify the man-hours spend of even a single woodentop? If there’s anything I can’t stand in this world, it’s dealing with fucking accountants. They’ve got the personality of cheese but they’re vindictive bastards.’

‘I am right,’ she told him. ‘Get me a uniform out here and I’ll come straight in and tell you the lot.’

‘Fucksake. The sooner I get out from behind this desk the better. You lot are doing my head in.’

The line went dead and Narey knew that was going to be as close to agreement as she was going to get. She’d wait until the constable arrived, then go to see Addison. Obviously she wouldn’t tell him everything — just the part she felt would be enough. Addy had been round the block often enough to know that information came from all sorts of places you might not want to share with your superior officer.

As she was putting her phone back into her pocket, Narey looked up to see two women rushing to the hospital entrance. They were clearly agitated and the younger of the two was wiping tears from her eyes. As they brushed past, she saw that Winter knew who they were and raised her eyebrows at him questioningly.

‘That’s Deans’ wife and daughter,’ he told her. ‘I recognise them from the photos in their house.’

‘Poor cows,’ Narey muttered. ‘They’re in for a nasty shock about Daddy.’

‘So you’re going to tell them?’

‘Of course I am. It’s only a question of when. At the moment it gives me leverage over him so I’ll keep that while I need it.’

‘You’re all heart. What did Addy say?’ he asked her.

‘Your pal isn’t exactly happy but then he never is. He’s sending someone over to keep an eye on Deans. I’ll stay here till he arrives. What are you going to do?’

Winter looked up at the grey skies, which had a hint of pink, suggesting yet more snow could be on the way.

‘I’m going to go over to The Rock. I want to get some pics from the scene.’

Narey swore under her breath and looked at her watch.

‘Shit. You’re right. I’ll need to go there too. You go ahead. I’ll join you as soon as the cavalry arrives.’

‘Didn’t I hear you telling Addy you’d be going straight to Stewart Street?’

‘What are you, his bloody secretary? I’m going to The Rock and Addy can wait. That place is being treated like the scene of an accident but it’s a crime scene.’

Winter grinned at her and she knew he’d been winding her up.

‘Piss off,’ she laughed. Her smile quickly disappeared, however, and was replaced by a serious frown.

‘So…’ she began. ‘Our man Bradley may be living as a gypsy traveller.’

‘Didn’t see that coming. It was all I could do not to let my mouth fall open like a halfwit when Deans said it. What the hell’s going on, Rach?’

‘No idea. You’re the gypsy expert, you tell me.’

‘I can ask some of my new friends, I guess. But I already know they aren’t exactly keen on sharing things with out siders. Which reminds me: if what Deans says is right, then the “gypsy bride” rumour is a load of crap. Danny and I have been chasing this Sam Dunbar guy for nothing.’

‘Not for nothing,’ she disagreed. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence. There’s some link we’re just not seeing. It looks like we’ll need the help of your pal Tommy Baillie to find Bradley. That might mean sorting out this Dunbar character. I might need to get Addison to put someone on this.’

Winter shook his head.

‘No. The last thing that Baillie wants is the cops involved in this. If we want his help, then we have to keep them out of it.’

Narey exhaled noisily.

‘Christ. I’m being asked not to do my job a hell of a lot these days.’

‘Well…’ he hesitated, although perhaps not for as long as he should have done. ‘You are not doing your job quite a lot these days.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Rachel, you’ve been out on a limb for so long you’ll be getting splinters in your arse. You’ve been doing too much stuff that isn’t authorised and you need to watch it before you get into trouble.’

She stared hard at him but couldn’t muster up any real resentment because she knew he was right.

‘You let me worry about that. Right now, we have other things we need to bother about.’

‘Like who is Peter Bradley? Our blackmailer, our killer or the next victim?’

She shook her head.

‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter which he is. Not right now. Whichever of those things he is, we need to find him as quickly as possible.’

The Rock was surrounded by residential housing, most of it of the high-ceilinged, corniced, spacious Victorian and Edwardian variety. As such, the low, flat-roofed white pub with its beer garden spilling onto the street was an oddity for that part of the west end. Whether it was a rock, an oasis or a sore thumb rather depended on your point of view. Winter had, inevitably, had a drink in it a few times, on his own and with Addison to watch football, and he quite liked the place.

He knew the short cut to the side entrance from the Dowanhill side, the one Greg Deans had taken down from the car park on Crown Terrace wasn’t the kind of route that appealed on a dark night, particularly to women, as it wasn’t overlooked and was poorly lit.

Winter parked up above the pub and followed Deans’ route to the steps. Blue and white tape had been tied across the top to stop anyone else venturing down but there was no sign of Murray or Boyle. Winter’s heart sank as he saw the number of footprints in the snow around the car park and at the area at the top of the steps. The only bonus was the crisp snow, which meant the prints that hadn’t been trodden over stood out nice and clear. He laid down a black photo scale and photographed the footprints as best he could, cursing the number that had been crushed down by another boot, leaving patterns that were all but useless.

Photographing the prints from a regulation 90-degree angle, using a macro lens and with a 45-degree flash to avoid washing out the detail, he was still able to pick out a few good tracks. He’d photographed Deans’ shoes before leaving the hospital so he would be able to separate those from the others at the scene and it would hopefully give them something to work with. For all that though, he knew it was more in hope than expectation. Who knew how many people had walked over the area either before or after Deans was pushed.

Winter made his way to the top of the steps, seeing just how steep and narrow they were, seemingly tumbling forever into the darkness below. The winter foliage pushed in from left and right, making the descent seem even sharper. He made his way down a couple of steps at a time, stopping only to photograph likely looking prints until he reached the first landing and spied a flattened area where it seemed likely Deans had fallen. The snow was compressed but not trampled and there were a few drops of blood to the right-hand side of the landing and then again a few steps further down. It looked as if Deans had hit the level area, then continued to tumble, probably out cold by that stage and unable to stop his momentum.

The biggest pool of blood was at the bottom, just a few feet from the pub’s side door and the place where Deans had come to rest. Blood had soaked into the snow and become frozen there, capturing Winter’s attention the way blood always did. He photographed the blood spatter from every angle with his macro lens, marking out the contours of the snow compression to show where Deans had landed.

So why had the attacker not finished Deans off? Maybe he’d thought the fall would have done the trick. You could see the reasoning in that: the guy’s head was going to bounce off successive sets of concrete steps. While the blow may been cushioned by a layer of snow, there was hard ice underneath. Also, Winter thought, Deans would have made the trip to the bottom a whole lot quicker than his assailant and there was every chance that the crash of the fall would have alerted someone and brought them out from the pub. Then again, maybe Rachel was right and the push had only been a warning to Deans. Either way, Winter knew there was little he was going to be able to offer forensically to the debate — too many pairs of feet had seen to that.

He turned and looked back up the stairs to see where the attacker would have stood. It was doubtful if they could have seen from there whether Deans was alive or not. He had still been unconscious when he was discovered by customers and staff so presumably he hadn’t moved after he hit the bottom. There was every chance he’d simply been left for dead.

The voice that came from behind him seemed, not for the first time, to read his thoughts.

‘You seeing dead people again?’

‘You shouldn’t creep up on people like that, Rach.’

‘Course I should,’ she laughed drily, glancing up and down the stairway before planting a kiss on his lips. ‘It’s my job. So what have you got?’

‘Not much,’ Winter admitted. ‘Half of Glasgow seems to have been walking over the area at the top of the stairs. The blood trail suggests he hit that first landing up there and kept rolling till he ended up right here. I’ve got pics of what I can but I doubt it will do us much good.’

‘Pretty much what we expected,’ Rachel agreed. ‘Still, I do have some good news.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Things are looking up at last. I’ve just had a call from Marty Croy in Stirling. The Procurator Fiscal has given them the go ahead to exhume Barbie’s body. We’re going to dig her up in two days.’

‘Dad? Dad, are you still there?’

She hated the phone calls. Hated them for how impractical they were and how she couldn’t tell if he’d fallen asleep, switched his mobile off or forgotten how to work it. Above all, though, she hated the impersonal nature of it and the fact that it was so blindingly obvious she hadn’t taken the time to go and see him face to face.

‘Dad, just say something and let me know you can hear me.’

She always resisted the urge to be impatient with him or to raise her voice. Whatever the reason for the lack of response, it wasn’t his fault. None of it was his fault. It was that horrible, hateful disease. She spent what little free time she now had reading up on it and none of it made her any more optimistic about what was to come.

How did they treat a disease when they didn’t know how it was contracted in the first place? Nearly half a million people in the UK were affected by Alzheimer’s and yet no son or daughter or grandchild could be told for sure how they’d got it. A combination of factors was the best answer that could be offered: lifestyle; unknown environmental factors; and, most scarily, genetic inheritance. The greatest risk of all was growing old and she became irrationally angry at reading that. How the hell was her dad expected to avoid that?

She now knew about ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’ that developed in the structure of the brain, killing off brain cells and leading to the broken pathways and muddled thinking she’d seen manifested so clearly in her dad. She knew of all the medical treatments, both established and in testing. She knew there was no cure. She knew her father might have had the disease for years, with it developing silently all the while. She knew everything except what to do next.

Above all, one word kept reappearing in everything that she read. A word that she had grown to despise: progressive.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi Dad. It’s Rachel.’

The silence again. Was he trying to remember who she was? Was he upset at hearing her voice, even though he’d clearly forgotten speaking to her just a minute before? Or had he gone?

She filled the interminable quiet with guilty thoughts of her absence and dark fears of how bad it might get and how quickly. Once this case was over, she kept telling herself, she would make things right. She would take him out of the home whether he liked it or not and get him to come live with her. It would mean moving and it might mean the end of her and Tony but what was more important than looking after her dad?

‘Hello, Rachel.’

It never failed. Words of recognition melted her heart and cheered her no matter how dark and cold the day had been. It was the one advantage of speaking to him by telephone: she had the luxury of letting a happy tear streak down her face without worrying it would upset him.

‘Hi Dad. How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, love, just fine. How are you, more to the point?’

‘I’m all right, Dad. Just a wee bit worried about you.’

‘Me? No need to worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’m a bit lost just now without your mum but she’ll be back soon. Don’t you worry, love.’

‘Okay, Dad, I won’t.’

‘Good girl. Now tell me, have you done your homework? You know what your mum’s like. She’s going to give you a hard time unless it’s all up to date.’

It was her turn to be quiet. Not just because she was upset about him not knowing how old she was or that her mum was gone; but because it struck her how much better and simpler it was when all she had to worry about was getting her homework done on time.

‘It’s done, Dad. I promise.’

‘Good. You’re a good girl, Rachel. I love you, you know.’

‘I know. And I love you too, Dad.’

She wondered if he really did know how much she loved him. She didn’t say it enough and never had. Was it now too late for her to say it and be able to hope he’d remember?

‘Dad? Dad, are you still there?’

Another silence filled the line. This time it didn’t end. Rachel put down the phone.

The snow was flaking gently onto the steeple of the converted church that was Oran Mor when Narey hustled along from Hillhead subway station. Lunchtime groups were filing into the restaurants inside, some obviously dressed up for office Christmas lunches, and she could only wonder at the state the same well-attired people would be in later when Oran Mor’s neon halo lit the night sky.