The Night Hunter (15 page)

Billy is talking to Costello. ‘If you recall, Natalie was walking through the park on her way to a Halloween Party and had just changed into her fancy dress costume. We found a dog hair on it. It’s a familial match to the one that might have come off Lorna.’ He breathes out slowly.

‘But they’re all related in this country. Pasternak and Siberian. Like the House of Hanover. The same DNA will be all over the place.’

‘Matilda isolated some saliva. Dogs lick their own hair, the saliva is very sticky so it glues to the hair. If they get any DNA, it will be from the saliva, not the hair itself. Seemingly.’ Billy is regurgitating information but his mind is racing ahead.

Costello drums her pen on the top of her desk. ‘How big can the DNA pool of these dogs be in this country? We can have them traced, surely?’

Billy purses his lips. ‘Do you know who was Natalie’s best pal at university, the last person to see her alive?’

Costello looks blankly at Billy.

‘Mary Allison.’

‘Who?’

It is me who answers. ‘Or, as she is now, Mary Parnell.’

‘And,’ Billy adds, ‘at the time of her death, Natalie’s boyfriend was none other than Alex Parnell.’

Complete silence falls on the room. Costello and Billy both sit down, leaving me standing next to Sophie’s photograph like a teacher with nothing to say.

‘So a dog is the connection to all this. Alex Parnell runs a security company. They only use Alsatians as far as I know, but I don’t know much about him,’ says Costello.

Billy agrees. ‘And both the women were running. Police dogs are trained to chase a running target and hold them. These ones could be trained to bring someone down by the calf, hence the injury on the back of Lorna’s leg. O’Hare will check if the other woman has the same …’

‘She did.’ Costello opens her file and shows him a black and white A4. ‘But both these are cut clean with a knife. No tooth marks.’

‘So he cuts out the traceable teeth marks,’ I say, not needing to look.

Costello’s eyes dart from me to Billy and back again, but there is a flicker of excitement. She knows we’re on to something. ‘We need to identify that dog.’

‘Surely you can do that without clearing it with the boss? Or does it depend on his mood – or his missus? Is she gone then?’ Billy snorts.

‘Brenda?’ A smile flutters on Costello’s face, she relishes gossip.

‘Yeah, Brenda, redhead, face like a Brillo pad. Where is she? Left him or away on holiday or what?’

‘What has it to do with you?’

‘I’m an individual concerned for my friend’s welfare. Or a nosey wee shite who believes knowledge is power – take your pick.’

‘He’s out the family home, but they are talking. They’re sharing the kids. I think Brenda sees more of him now than she did when they lived together. But she seems happier, she’s working again. Accountant. Anything else you need to know?’

Billy says, ‘I know Helena McAlpine from way back. Nice piece of arse.’

Costello turns to me. ‘How do you put up with him?’

I am looking at the map still. Not interested in this small talk.

‘What about DS Mulholland, what’s his status?’ Billy tilts his head at the desk where Mr Cheekbones was sitting.

‘The closest relationship he’s ever had is with the mirror.’

Billy is encouraging this chit-chat, it’s not like him. He’s keen to hang around; his eyes are scanning, taking it all in. ‘I’m curious. Do you like it – the new office? Hardly all mod cons, is it?’

Costello’s fingers are now on her keyboard and she responds abstractedly, ‘Well, it has no fungus, no damp and a lack of asbestos. Look, do we know the number of the breed society or anything?’

‘Yip,’ I read her out the number that is stored in my phone.

‘Thanks,’ she says, the first time I think she’s looked at me like a human being. She writes the number down, rips the note off and hands it to a young man in a creased suit.

‘Can you action that? Use that phone down there.’

‘And what about yourself? You seeing anybody?’ Billy slides on to the side of her desk.

‘Is that an offer, Billy?’

‘No. When was the last time you were on a date?’

Costello thinks hard. ‘Yesterday. Before you ask, it was shit. Way too many teeth, like having a date with Red Rum. Except Red Rum had better table manners.’

At that moment Mr Cheekbones comes back in. He could be a model in the well-groomed but smouldering category. He glares at Billy intensely.

Costello starts on her keyboard again. ‘Mulholland, can you check this report? It’s about DNA from a single dog hair.’

His beautifully structured face looks spectacularly unimpressed. ‘A single dog hair?’ Mulholland gives me a glance of distrust as he slides his jacket from his shoulders and looks round for a chair to hang it on. ‘Why don’t I have my own desk?’

‘You might get your own coat hanger, if you’re lucky.’ Two people who do not like each other but work well together. He is pernickety and gets up her nose. The fact that she is his boss riles him. He knows that she is the better detective and that riles him even more.

The door opens, too far this time, and it catches on the carpet again. The figure behind bangs hard with his shoulder to get it to open.

‘Hi, Wyngate. Glad you could join us.’

‘Sorry, the baby was ill.’

‘Well, you have a job to do. Go through all the case files and find a low-actioned report from a Mrs Parke with an e. It’s about a dog. And Wyngate? You smell of baby sick.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Wyngate sidesteps to allow the person behind him through the door. ‘She has best practice projectile vomiting. I did try to clean it off.’

‘Well, you didn’t succeed.’ Costello then turns to me. ‘Why are you in the middle of all this, Elvie?’ she says, making a swirly pattern with her fingertip then pointing it at me. ‘Sophie, Mary, Natalie?’

‘Good question,’ Billy says out the corner of his mouth.

I am saved from answering by a gentle knock at the door. ‘I’ve … Oh, hello, Elvie, how are you?’ But her hesitation when she saw me was obvious.

It is Avril, the family liaison officer. Costello invites her to sit down and takes the memo from her. Avril regards me with concern as Costello reads the note then hands it to Mulholland, who reads it then starts scanning my face. He opens his notebook out ready. Everything has changed. We are businesslike now. All these people are higher up the food chain than the normal plod who occasionally accompanies Avril on her visits to my house.

‘You’ve found Sophie?’ I see in the corner of my eye that Billy has moved behind me; he has one hand on my shoulder ready for succour if the news is bad.

Avril shakes her head. ‘No. But we think we’ve found Mark Laidlaw.’

‘So bring him in, for God’s sake,’ says Billy.

But Costello is looking straight at me. ‘I’ll rephrase that. We’ve found Mark Laidlaw’s body.’

We are now back in the quiet investigation room. I have been given a cup of coffee. It is terrible. I need to get out of here.

‘Obviously, things have changed a wee bit. We are going to have to reprioritise. So we don’t want you to go back to your flat until we say you can. We need to examine it with a different protocol, in the light of the new circumstances.’

‘Fine by me. Mark Laidlaw has never been to my flat.’

‘As far as you are aware,’ she adds succinctly.

Mulholland is now her sidekick. He passes the A4-sized photograph to me. I look at it. I know his eyes are on me as I look. Mark’s face is super clean. Death has lent him a dignity he did not have in life. There is a black mark on his left temple.

‘That’s the man I met in the street. He was looking for Sophie. He called himself Mark Laidlaw.’

‘Did you ever actually see him with your sister?’

I shook my head.

‘When did you see him?’

‘On the eleventh of April. When that picture was taken on CCTV. I think he was on his way to see me. If you follow the cameras you’ll see me talking to him. He was asking me where Sophie was.’

‘And you were going to tell us that – when?’

‘She’s telling you now,’ said Billy. He sounds disappointed in me. But he doesn’t tell them the bigger secret.

‘I had nothing to do with his death. But I do know that he had something to do with Sophie’s disappearance. That’s what you should be concentrating on.’

‘Look, young lady, I have had you up to my back teeth. You do not control this investigation. You tell me everything, do you understand? You will tell us everything.’

The scar near Costello’s hairline is doing a little dance. I know that each of them is watching my reaction carefully. I ignore her. ‘And where was he? Is Sophie there? I think
you
should be telling
me
everything.’ I stare her out.

Costello does what most people do, she senses that the aggression is not normal. She calls for reinforcements. ‘Avril, can you join us?’ She moves along the settee.

‘Hi, Elvie, you OK?’

‘I’m fine, what have you found?’

‘As you know, we’ve recovered a body and we’re sure that it’s Mark Laidlaw. It looks like his car rolled into the reservoir; they’re searching the rest of the body of water to see if there’s anything else there.’ She curls and uncurls her fingers, her nails are still perfect.

‘What reservoir? Eaglesham? The same one where Sophie parked her car?’

Costello and Avril share a look.

‘Yes, it was,’ surrenders Costello.

‘Was it an accident?’ I ask. It seems a natural question.

‘Doubt it,’ Mulholland says.

‘But there’s no trace of my sister in the car?’

‘There is a six-day gap between him being seen last and your sister being seen last. These could be two separate incidents.’

‘That just happened to occur at the same place! Was there any sign of Sophie?’ I persist.

‘He was on his own when the car went in the water.’ Avril plays pass-the-parcel with the photographs to Mulholland, to Costello then to me.

‘She never talked about Mark to me.’ I take the pictures, place the one of Mark on top of them, and hand them back. ‘That looks like a nasty mark on his head.’

‘There might have been an earlier bump to the head that bled and he died at the wheel then went into the water. Or he might have lost consciousness and ended up in the water. Or he drove in and bumped his head. His seat belt was still fastened, the key was in the ignition. Further tests at the lab will tell us exactly how he died.’ Costello is thinking hard. ‘Either way, him and car in reservoir.’

I lift my head up at that. ‘Do you think he killed Sophie?’

‘He might have been up there looking for her,’ says Costello.

‘There’s no sign that she was there and got out?’ I ask.

‘No sign that she was in that car, full stop.’

I nod slowly, as if I’m trying to digest this.

‘His wife has not seen him since Sophie went missing. She suspected there might have been another woman and thinks that woman was Sophie. Until the full PM results come through we view them as connected but separate incidents. And Sophie might have fallen victim to the Night Hunter, as you’ve said before. That’s the theory that you and Billy Hopkirk have been working on, isn’t it?’

I feel the tears sting my eyes. ‘Sorry. I need to think about this.’ I feel the tingling twitching that I need to release. I am cornered. ‘You know, when I saw Lorna lying there, alive, I really hoped that the Night Hunter had Sophie. Then there’d be a chance that she’s alive. I know she never ran off with that bloke. You lot were thinking it, but that wasn’t Sophie’s way. I know that, because I knew her.’

‘Just look at the way she actually disappeared; it matches the way the Night Hunter takes them. That’s what got me thinking and Gillian Porter’s mum thinking. That’s what got me involved,’ says Billy.

‘OK, two heads are better than one. We need to cover all other lines of enquiry. Elvie, I need to ask you, do you know anything about Mark and Sophie? Anything about their relationship?’ Costello asks, playing the team card.

‘No, I don’t.’ That I can say with complete conviction.

It is a typical semi-detached house in Pollok near where they took down the old psych hospital. It’s the kind of place that looks posher than it is. Everything is a bit too small, everybody has their driveway at the expense of a front garden. And at the end of the driveway, just across the road, is Helmand Province.

Number thirty-nine is a very neat end-of-terrace. There is no car, of course; that’s at the bottom of a reservoir in Eaglesham. The garage floor is so clean it doesn’t look as though it was in there much either. The current occupants are a pink bike with stabilisers lying on its side and a baby stroller with a huge hood on it, white fringes dancing in the swirling wind. Billy follows the direction of my glance.

‘Why not just stick a hat on the kid? Never did me any harm.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I say as we walk along the path, under the living room window. I hear a call as the woman from next door emerges from her own front door. She looks at me, then Billy.

‘Police?’ she asks.

Billy does not answer but swings his head around in a way that could be yes, no, or releasing a crick in his neck. ‘It’s about Mark. Nice wee estate here. I remember the way it was in my youth. I was based in Pollok, back in the day.’

‘Aye, it’s changed a wee bit since then.’ She folds her arms. ‘So I heard you’ve found him then. Stupid bastard.’

Billy has stopped on the path; he’s not going as far as the front door. He isn’t engaging her in conversation but he isn’t moving on either.

‘Could I help you in some way?’ she says, with ill-disguised nosiness.

‘We’re here to speak to Rhona Laidlaw. Is she around?’

We know that she is not around. She and her kid have been taken to her mother’s house by Avril for comfort, or celebration. The opinion of both Rhona and her mother is apparently that Mark was a useless tosser.

The woman shrugs her bony shoulders, her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the sun. ‘I don’t think she’s in. I think she left with some of you lot.’

‘What were they like as neighbours?’

‘Well, you don’t like to say, do you?’ she says, dying to say.