The Blood of Crows (20 page)

‘And I for one am very glad you’re here,’ Rhona hurried on. ‘I mean, of course it’s all very hush-hush, but we all know. I just hope you can do something about it.’

‘I’ll do the best I can,’ Costello replied sweetly, having no idea what the woman was blethering on about but feeling intrigued.

‘Well, I hope you got some sleep last night after that terrible news.’ Rhona looked over her shoulder nervously. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to do with us.’

‘Any reason why it might be?’

‘Oh no, I’m just being silly. Anyway, have you had your breakfast?’ Rhona glanced at her watch. ‘Mr Ellis – he’s the Warden – wants to see you at twelve. He knows far more about it all than I do.’ She was one of those women who ask a question without expecting an answer. Probably nobody ever really listened to her.

‘I’ve eaten, thank you. Can you tell me who they are – the three girls walking over the lawn?’ Costello asked with her back towards them.

But Rhona stuck her head out, as unsubtle as an elephant. ‘Oh, Saskia, Keren and Victoria. They’re very beautiful, aren’t they? Funny how they gravitate towards each other. They’ll be leaving Glen Fruin this week for good.’ Rhona sighed. ‘It’s always sad when they go.’

‘Surely it’s good to get out and take on the world,’ Costello said. ‘I was desperate to leave school.’

Rhona threw her a look as if to say, ‘Well, you would be, wouldn’t you?’ But she said, ‘Saskia is going on to study in Italy. She’s actually Russian, well – half Russian, half Dutch. The Dutch being the Saskia, the Russian being the Morosova.’ She looked skyward, thinking. ‘Yes, that’s the right way round. She’s been here for four years now, perfecting her English, doing some more highers. Victoria is going back to the good old US of A and … oh, I’m not sure where Keren calls home. Dubai at the moment. She’s Irish, one of the Cork O’Learys.’

That was obviously supposed to mean something. ‘Quite a mixture,’ was all Costello said.

Costello’s eye was caught by Pettigrew, walking briskly
after a plump dark-haired girl, both moving quickly into the cover of the shrubbery. The girl was upset, crying. She threw her arm out, pushing Pettigrew away. He obviously decided not to follow, saying something too quiet for Costello to hear, but his body language was an apology in itself.

‘What about her?’ Costello interrupted, pointing.

‘Oh, Elizabeth Hamilton. Poor girl, she really shouldn’t be here. I don’t know much about her. I think she lost both parents when she was very young, and her grandfather sent her here to be looked after as much as educated, as is the way with many boarding schools now. She boards, although he lives in Glasgow. She has nothing in common with the other girls, with their ponies and parties and frocks. She can’t keep up academically, financially or socially with any degree of confidence. She just doesn’t fit in. She rarely goes home, or to stay with any of the other girls here, and there’s no pairing up at weekends. She just keeps to herself. No close friends, nobody wants her. Except she doesn’t care, so it doesn’t bother her.’

Costello felt a stab in her heart.

The girl turned and looked after Pettigrew, who was walking back up the garden, then disappeared into the rhododendrons.

‘She’ll be going down the path to the bridge. She often sits there –
smoking.
’ Rhona made it sound as though the girl was guilty of ethnic cleansing. ‘You can’t help thinking that, no matter what her home situation is, she would be much better at an ordinary state school; she gains nothing from a school like this.’

‘But if she’s from Glasgow, why doesn’t she go to a local school? Nothing to stop her. What age is she?’

‘Seventeen.’

The girl became visible again, walking along a wooden path that led to a bridge, her ungainly short steps in stark contrast to the Three Graces’ elegant glide. She disturbed a crow that cawed loudly, taking off and flying up towards the school. The girl didn’t flinch, but watched it fly away, as if she envied the bird its freedom.

12.30 P.M.

The Marchettis’ Mercedes pulled out of the car park, narrowly missing Mulholland’s Audi as it cut the corner on the way in. Anderson thought it wise to hold the door open for him. Mulholland drove like that when he was in a mood, and the mood was confirmed as he slammed the door and approached his boss.

‘I’ve got news for you. O’Hare has an ID on the body you found at Glen Fruin, and he wants to know why your mobile was turned off when he wanted to speak to you. And I would like to know when I become your answering service. So, I’m going for a coffee, DCI Anderson, before anybody else thinks I am your personal secretary.’ And with that he was gone, striding across the car park, leaving a trail of aftershave hanging in the air.

Anderson rang the pathologist’s number on his mobile,
as he followed Mulholland across the car park to sit on the low wall. If O’Hare looked out of the window he would see him.

The phone was answered and O’Hare asked him to hang on. ‘No, don’t leave it there,’ he was saying, obviously trying to keep his exasperation under control. ‘It has to go in the fridge. No, not that fridge,
that
fridge.’

Anderson could imagine some bemused young student wandering around with a body part.

‘Colin, sorry to keep you waiting. Just thought you should know that your dead body is William Andrew MacFadyean.’

Anderson waited for the next bit; it meant nothing to him so far.

‘He was run over twice, as we suspected, killed on the road then taken to one side, out of sight. You should have a word with –’

‘Matilda McQueen. Yes, I will.’

‘But what was he doing up there?’ O’Hare went on. ‘He had money on him, but no identification, no credit cards, nothing. And we have no address for him, just his DNA on file from when he was a cop – oh, yes, he’s ex-job. Based at Shawlands, Southside, never got further than constable.’

‘Ex-cop? Dead ex-cop?’ murmured Anderson, thinking of Carruthers. Dead at sixty-eight. ‘What age was he? And what year did he graduate?’

‘I know I’m good but I’m not that good.’

1.00 P.M.

After her very formal but totally uninformative meeting with Mr Ellis the Warden, Costello had spent a whole hour Rhona free. She had used the time walking once round the buildings that comprised the school – from the grandeur of the old house to the modern technology block and the games hall built into the side of the hill. It had been well done; new trees had been planted to screen the walls of the new buildings and, where possible, the old walls of the original gardens screened the paths and walkways.

It was very pretty.

She saw the Three Graces sitting on the wall above the formal garden. With their youth, beauty and assurance they were everything a man could wish for. Each was exquisite in her own way, but all three, together, would turn heads – women’s as well as men’s – wherever they went.

Costello wondered if she could get out her phone, take a covert photo and send it back to the boys at the lecture room – see if the girls were on some system somewhere. But it was not legal, she cursed silently. And anyway, there was no mobile phone signal.

Saskia moved off the wall, and the other two followed. Costello had a notion to take them down to the old station at Partickhill for an hour or so. Ten minutes in an interview room still rank with the stench of last night’s vomiting drunks might just take the edge off their lovely lives.

She thought about following them but went up to look at the old house instead. Inside the main hall, as Costello
walked up the huge stairway, feet almost bouncing on the thick red carpet, she realized she was feeling better. She smiled at a dusty portrait of some tartan-clad Jacobite that hung high above her head. If she could get some mobile reception, she would phone Anderson and find out the progress on the body in the wood.

She took in the view from an upstairs window … it would be very easy to get around unseen.

Costello returned to the garden and sat on the wall, watching the pupils come and go. The older they got, the more relaxed the dress code seemed to be from the blue-and-black tartan mix. But then, it was the second last day of term, and it was all winding down. She was deliberately eavesdropping on two boys looking forward to seeing their parents at the party on Sunday. One had a painting in the exhibition, and he would be guiding some parents round it. He was nervous and excited.

‘Oh, hello!’ It was Rhona again, popping out from behind a pillar as if she had been lying in wait. ‘I know you can’t tell me what Mr Ellis said, but I’ve found him! I thought you might want to come and see him, and do an assessment or something.’

Costello had already surmised that Rhona was off on a wrong track somewhere, but decided to go along with it, secretly enjoying the fact that there might be more than a few problem pupils kicking about the school. Rhona was adept at walking and talking, though not really saying much that made sense, just a constant stream of vagueness. They went back down to the main hall on the way to the front door. More dusty portraits of the family that had originally built the house hung on
the walls, and a huge table stood in the middle of the hall, covered with brown envelopes and a neat stack of newspapers.

They went across the gravel at the front of the house, and down the steps to the lower garden, where a few pupils were lolling around on their mid-morning break.

‘There he is,’ said Rhona, pointing.

‘OK,’ said Costello. ‘Let’s keep walking. Don’t make it obvious we’re looking at anybody.’ She followed Rhona along the creeper-hung wall below the balustrade. ‘Who am I looking at exactly?’

But even as the words left her mouth, she knew. An extremely thin young man, about sixteen or seventeen years old, was standing in the hot glare of the sun, wearing a full-length leather coat, dark glasses and black jeans. His long black hair had obviously been dyed, and he was attempting to grow a beard. He was talking to himself, reciting something that Costello couldn’t hear, probably a fluent repetition of something he’d learned. There was something about the boy that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. He didn’t seem to be quite of this world.

‘Does he do this often? Do you know what he’s saying?’ she asked.

‘I never get close enough to hear any of it, but he is talking to himself!’ Rhona looked quickly over her shoulder. ‘As you’ve probably been told, it’s this obsession with violence thing – he’s totally obsessed. And not
normal
stuff …’ She shook her head, unable to find the words.

‘Hardcore?’ offered Costello.

‘His essays are much too explicit, disturbing. He collects images of death, violence, guns, knives, you name it.’

‘Guns?’ asked Costello.

‘Especially guns,’ said Rhona. ‘Photographs, magazines, books. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, to find out if he’s a danger?’

Only to himself thought Costello, wondering what the boy might be on. But all she said was, ‘Mmm.’

‘I really think Drew Elphinstone could turn this school into a new Columbine. All these tragedies start somewhere, you know.’

It seemed an absurd statement to make, in the grounds of a grand stately home, on such a lovely sunny day, yet Costello was in no doubt that Rhona McMillan believed every word she was saying.

2.30 P.M.

Skelpie Fairbairn sat in a corner at the ABode Hotel, thinking to himself that the beer was expensive, the food was bloody expensive, and the women were far too fucking expensive. Made-up, dressed up, and stuck up, they would smile at him, maybe even exchange a few words, and then they would back away. Nothing specific, just a vague indication that they didn’t fancy him. To his left, two guys were eating a huge pile of onion rings at a posh hotel, and two burgers each. He’d tried giving them a wee smile, even tried to pass a comment when the food came: ‘You’re never going to get through that lot before closing time.’ They’d smiled politely, acknowledging his little joke,
then the closest one had slightly turned his back, striking up a quiet conversation with his pal, cutting Skelpie out swiftly and completely.

Things had not changed.

He got up, nodding goodbye to the onion-ring eaters. They didn’t acknowledge it. He walked up on to Byres Road, thinking about going back to the flat in Dumbarton Road; he was keeping to the west side of the city, north of the river, away from his previous hunting ground. It was high time he moved on, as too many people knew where he was. He hoped, when the codeword came, he’d be moved up to the Highland Glen Hotel, where he could be really anonymous.

He did fully intend to turn right towards Dumbarton Road but something made him go north, up into the Great Western Road, towards the hotel, telling himself he was just checking it out, but he recognized that twitch in his subconscious, as if something feral had been woken in him. Something had registered, something on his radar. He slowed down, taking his time. After all, he was just a guy strolling along, enjoying the weather. He scanned the pavement like a cat sensing an injured bird. Then he saw her. She was standing on her own outside the big greengrocer’s shop with its wares piled in baskets all over the pavement, highly polished fruit on one side, pristine clean vegetables on the other. A queue of customers snaked past buckets of flowers and decorative greenery, but she was leaning against a wall to one side – waiting for her mother? He guessed she’d be ten or eleven now. She was wearing jeans, and a white T-shirt with short sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and sunglasses pushed up to pin back
her short, light brown hair. Suddenly she looked up from the game she was playing on her mobile phone, as if aware of his scrutiny.

He would have known her anywhere. He whispered her name to himself.

He had served time for her. Lynda Osbourne.

But he kept walking, and found himself right up at the top of the road by the corner at the Botanics. He could see Kirklee Terrace from here, where Helena McAlpine, wife of the bastard cop, lived. He decided he could do with a walk; it would do him good.

3.00 P.M.

Lambie practised the conversation in his mind, working out each response that Mary might give. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone. She was so long in answering it, he nearly gave up.