The Sea Detective (37 page)

Detective Inspector Ryan was at home taking ‘a week off, to let the storm blow over,’ as Detective Chief Superintendent Reynolds had advised. But politicians were still clamouring for heads to roll, in particular the Justice Minister’s and the Chief Constable’s. The Daily Record’s leader column asked, ‘Does Edinburgh have the worst cops in the world?’ In the last paragraph it said, ‘The operation by the SCDEA to break up a gang of child sex traffickers contrasts with the lamentable performance of the Lothian and Borders force over the severed feet mystery. The case for amalgamation of Scotland’s eight forces into one grows stronger by the day.’

Ryan waited for the call.

It came soon after 3pm, in time for the broadcasters and their early evening news programmes. ‘David?’ DCS Reynolds sounded distant. ‘The chief is calling in an Assistant Chief Constable from Strathclyde to review your handling of the severed feet inquiry.’

Ryan put the phone down without speaking.

He rang Joan, his PA, to tell her to contact the SCDEA to withdraw his application.

‘Any letters or emails I should know about?’

‘There’s one I’ve been asked to bring to your attention.’

‘Who from?’

‘Someone called Bembo. At least that’s the name on the email address.’

Ryan hesitated. The name was familiar though he couldn’t quite place it. ‘What does it say?’

‘It says …’

Like a host revealing the result on a TV game show, Joan waited. Jamieson had coached her, the two of them laughing at the thought of Ryan’s expression.

‘It says …’

‘Get on with it woman,’ Ryan barked.

‘It says: Detective Sergeant Helen Jamieson is being seconded to the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency with immediate effect.’

Jamieson watched for Basanti’s reaction. ‘And him?’ she asked, putting down a photograph of a bald man, with a goatee and a diamond stud in his left ear. Basanti stared briefly at it before turning away, as she had done with all the other mug shots Jamieson had placed in front of her.

‘Well?’

It had become choreography; Basanti neither shaking nor nodding her head until she had looked away and Jamieson inquiring gently, ‘Well?’

Basanti nodded.

‘Do you need to look again, just to be certain?’

Jamieson asked her every time before removing the photograph and replacing it with another. Basanti’s response was always the same whether she had recognised the man or not.

‘No, I don’t need more time.’

Jamieson wanted to say ‘Are you sure? It’s important’ though she never did. There’d be an opportunity for going through the photographs again when Basanti was stronger, in a day or two. What was important now was identifying the men, as quickly as possible, alerting the local police forces, locating the suspects, mounting surveillance operations, making arrests, discovering whether there were other girls like Preeti or Basanti held captive in safe houses for abuse by known sex offenders.

For the last three days, they’d spent an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon going through the photographs and by now Jamieson thought she had an understanding of why Basanti did it this way. These men had invaded her, in the worst cases multiple times over weeks. She didn’t want to let them invade her again, even for a few seconds, even with their photographs. So she glanced at their faces for as long as she needed and no more before turning away. Jamieson wished Basanti would look again ‘just to be sure’. On the other hand, if a man had done to Jamieson what these men had done to Basanti she wouldn’t forget them either. Yes, it’d only take a glance, a second. You’d know them anywhere. However long you had to hold the memory. You wouldn’t forget; not if you wanted vengeance, which Basanti did. Not if you’d been waiting for this moment, as Basanti had. You’d remember them, until you didn’t need to remember them any more. Then you’d forget then. Then you’d want their faces out of your head, forever.

‘Are you able to tell me what he did?’ Jamieson asked.

Basanti shook her head.

There was a digital voice recorder between them on the table under the walnut tree in the garden. They sat here every day because of Basanti’s aversion to being indoors in daylight. (With the help of a psychologist she had started to walk through the house but only if the front and back doors were kept open.)

‘Would you talk into the recorder?’

Sometimes she preferred to do it this way. Jamieson would leave her on her own and Basanti would spend five, 10, 20 minutes talking into the machine. She’d call Jamieson when she’d finished. ‘Don’t listen to it now. Please,’ she’d say, always.

When Jamieson did play back Basanti’s recordings, she’d cry. They were the worst. Unspeakable. How could anyone do that to a child?

On this occasion, Basanti said, ‘Can we go for a walk, around the garden, see something pleasant?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Jamieson put the photograph face-down so Basanti couldn’t see it and said into her police radio, ‘We’re just going for a walk.’ A woman’s voice acknowledged. The security guards were all women. The detectives who came to the house to collect the Basanti’s statements, oral and written, were women. So were the psychologist and the cook. ‘No men,’ Basanti had insisted even though a woman had betrayed her at the last, on the beach. One woman, but dozens, scores of men. ‘No men it is,’ Jamieson said, imagining the expressions on the faces of the mostly male police taskforce which had been assembled to pursue Basanti’s abusers.

No men didn’t worry Jamieson.

The garden was about an acre, with a high boundary wall. Basanti chose the path which passed the lilac bushes and, as usual, she brushed her nose against the bluish purple flowers, breathing in their strong perfume. ‘What’s going to happen to me, Helen?’

Jamieson had suspected this was coming. The consul’s report on Basanti’s mother and sister had arrived that morning. Jamieson had read it first before giving it to Basanti.

‘Nothing will happen, not if you don’t want it.’

‘I can’t go home.’

‘Can’t you?’ That had been the consul’s opinion too, in a covering letter.

‘My mother and sister are living with my uncle. If I go back to them he will force me back into the
dhanda
until my father’s debts are paid.’

‘What about the man who was going to marry you?’

‘He wouldn’t want me now. I am not a virgin.’

Jamieson regretted asking. ‘Do you have any relatives here, in Britain?’

‘No.’

‘You know you can stay in this country, don’t you Basanti?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll be given a British passport, and a new identity in exchange for assisting us with the prosecutions.’ There’d be money too, but Jamieson didn’t know how much. The politicians were wrangling. The Scottish government wanted the UK Home Office to pay because most of the men who abused Basanti lived in England; but the Home Office insisted Scotland pay because that’s where Basanti had been abused.

‘Where will I live?’

Jamieson answered a different question. ‘I’m sure we could find an Indian family who would be happy to have you as a lodger.’

‘No. No Indian family.’ She was firm about it.

‘Why, Basanti?’ Jamieson held her hand.

‘They will disrespect me, for what I have done. Remember I am a Bedia.’

As the conversation carried on Jamieson recalled what she had been like at 17, with no family, lost, in lodgings, unhappy, until she’d had the nerve to broach adoption with Isobel Dalgleish. ‘We’ll sort something out. I promise.’

Basanti was now sniffing the lupins whose dusty scent she also enjoyed. If Jamieson had been locked away for as long as Basanti she would also want to smell flowers.

While she watched her, she thought of her flat which no men ever visited, of her spare room, the room she’d moved into at the age of 17, when she gained a mother, and whether history could repeat itself.

Stop it Helen.

There were five gravestones, gathered together like sheep huddling against the northerly wind. After looking at each in turn, Cal knelt at the one closest to the fjord, a grey headstone grizzled with lichen and with a curved top. He touched it and brought from his backpack the small round stone he’d collected from 14 Eilean Iasgaich, and from his wallet, the photograph of the Ardnamurchan grave which had begun his search for his grandfather 19 years before. He pushed the photograph against the gravestone and secured it there with the stone from the Sinclair croft. His head drooped and he said under his breath, ‘Known unto God’. He stayed there for the remainder of the afternoon, sometimes staring across at the jagged-edged mountains and the snow in the gullies; sometimes strolling along the shore; and sometimes kneeling among the familiar white flowers of Dryas Octopetala which had colonised this barren arctic landscape.