The Stone Gallows (35 page)

Upon being told that the blue car had been a foreign convertible, I pulled Galloway to one side and named Jason Campbell as a suspect, telling them that I had picked a fight with him without mentioning it had been at the request of a senior detective. I cast my mind back to last night's adventures in Kelvingrove Park; I'd genuinely believed I had broken Jason's arm, but maybe I had made a mistake. I racked my brain trying to remember whether or not Jason's Merc had been an automatic– difficult to drive with an arm in plaster, but not outwith the realms of possibility.

Sergeant Galloway had immediately called the details in. Since then, there had been nothing to do but wait – and like Tom Petty once said, the waiting was the hardest part.

Tension flowed through the room like the wind on a weather fore-caster's map; a mixture of poison-ivy hate and anger between Audreyand myself, dislike from me to Arnold, disdain from Arnold to me.

The separate currents of jealousy, hurt and failure were all under-pinned by our worry for Mark.

Humans are one of the few species that mate for life. I couldn't help wondering if perhaps the animals were smarter.

My phone rang. The four of us leaned forward. I checked the number on the display. ‘Joe.'

Audrey's scowl intensified. I ignored her, flipping my phone open.

‘Hi.'

Joe didn't fuck around with casual conversation. ‘Any sign?'

‘Nothing yet.'

‘Ok.' He clicked off.

No sooner had I tucked the phone back into my pocket when Audrey said, ‘Do you think you could ask him not to ring?'

Beside her, Arnold had picked up the pen again. He hadn't clicked it yet, but I could tell the bastard was just itching to. He leaned over to peer at the puzzle magazine. Carol Vorderman was on the cover, leaning on the bonnet of a brand new car, banknotes falling from the sky like rain. I could win Up To Twenty-Five Thousand Pounds Worth Of Exciting Prizes. Carol's smile was so wide and inviting and artificial it made me want to kill her as well.

Arnold yawned. The fucker. My voice dripped acid. ‘I do hope we're not keeping you up.'

‘Cameron. . . ' Audrey said, a warning tone in her voice.

‘No, it's no problem. Maybe he should go to bed. We wouldn't want him nodding off on the seventh green tomorrow.'

‘Cameron, you're not helping.'

Maybe not. But it was good to see two red spots rise on the arsehole's cheeks. I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or angry, and cared nothing either way. I'll admit it: getting a perverse thrill from buzzing the man's buttons was petty and small. That didn't stop it from feeling pretty damn good.

Then I looked at my shoes, ashamed of myself. I had nothing to feel good about. Mark was still missing.

11.9.

‘I want my mummy!'

‘Don't you want to play hide and seek any more?'

‘I want my Mummy.'

‘I'm afraid she's not here, sweetheart.'

‘Mummy! Muuummm!' Small hands bunched themselves into even
smaller fists. ‘Muuuuuummmmmmy!'

‘Shhhh'

‘Where is she? Where is she?'

‘She's hiding. Just like us.'

‘I don't want to play any more. I don't want to play. WHERE'S MY MUMMY?'

‘She's coming. She'll be here soon.'

‘Why can't she be here now?'

‘Because she's got a long way to travel. She was hiding too.'

‘I don't like this game. It's cold.'

‘Are you cold? Do you want some more of the blanket?'

‘I want my mummy.'

‘And she's coming. Here, look. Let me tuck you in.'

Mark squiggled. ‘There isn't room.'

‘There is if you lie very still.'

‘I don't want to lie still. I want to go home. I miss my bed. I miss my
posters. I miss Bart-Bart.'

‘Who's Bart-Bart?'

‘He's on a poster my bedroom wall. He's funny. Mummy always says
goodnight to him as well as me.'

‘Does your mummy ever sing you songs?'

A single shake of the head. Mummy never sang songs for anybody.

‘I could sing you a song. Would you like that?'

Mark nodded. He would like that very much.

‘Would you like a drink? I've got some Coca-Cola in little cans if you
would like.'

Coca-Cola was another thing that Mark would like very much.

‘Mummy says that I'm not allowed it. She says it's got too much sugar
in it.'

‘Then you better finish it before she gets here, then.'

Pop. Fizzle. Small amount of crushed white powder, tipped into the
can from a cone made from an envelope.

Mark pointed with his finger. ‘What's that?'

‘It's extra sugar.'

‘Cool.'

11.10.

In the living room, weather conditions had continued to deteriorate. Arnold the Prick had excused himself and gone to bed, citing an early morning triple bypass– it turned out he was a heart surgeon, not a plastic surgeon as I had once supposed. That didn't stop me thinking that the man was a complete tit. Audrey, subtle as ever, made show of wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging to him like ivy, whispering in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear that she would take strength from the knowledge that the man she loved was just few feet away. Arnold left the room with an air of smugness I associated with losing the battle but winning the war.

Stupid bastard. If he was serious about spending the rest of his life with Audrey, he better be like the Viet Cong and learn how to dig in for the long haul.

Now it was just me, her and Constable Galloway to act as a referee.

The poor woman sat there and watched us score points off each other, like a spectator to a game of tennis played with verbal hand grenades.

Audrey crossed her legs with a calculated flash of thigh to remind me of things I could no longer possess. ‘So how is Joe, then?'

‘Fine.'

‘And Becky?'

‘Fine.'

‘And the kids?'

‘They're fine too.'

‘I wonder how she puts up with him. I'd have kicked him out long ago.'

‘I know. I mean, she had the perfect excuse when he had that heart attack.'

Just over two years ago, Joe had suffered a minor cardiac ‘event'

that had been just serious enough to allow him to leave the force on a full pension. Within two months of retirement, he was bored out of his mind and persuaded Backy to allow him to open the agency. The work proved the ideal compromise: exciting enough to keep him alive but not so stressful as to kill him.

‘You've never forgiven me for that, have you?'

I decided not to answer. Her question implied that she still believed her actions were entirely reasonable.

‘One thing I've always wondered, Aud. How did you meet Arnold? Was it before or after you decided that I was unsatisfactory husband material?'

Her face twisted viciously, and even before she answered I knew I wasn't going to like what I heard. ‘We were together for six months before I left you.'

‘Six months?'

‘And before that, I had a brief fling with somebody else.'

‘Who?'

‘You didn't know them.'

Incredible. I shook my head, wondering how I could have been so blind. ‘You two. . . triple-timing bitch.'

‘Oh, don't get all self-righteous with me. You were so busy with your job that you didn't have any time with me. You practically encouraged me to have an affair.'

‘How?'

‘You told me that you didn't mind me having male friends.'

‘And you took that as encouragement?'

‘What was I supposed to think? You were so obsessed with your caseload I could have been sleeping with the entire city and you wouldn't have noticed.'

‘It sounds like you
were
sleeping with the entire city.'

She looked at me coldly. ‘Think what you like, but you drove me away. If you had given salvaging our relationship half the effort you put in to your job then we might still be together.'

‘I wasn't aware that we needed to be salvaged! I thought we were cruising along in a calm sea!'

‘Yeah, well, so was the
Titanic
, and then it hit that iceberg! That's what our relationship is like. It's drowned underneath three thousand feet of water with nothing but barnacles and camera crews from the Discovery channel to remind us of it.'

The nautical theme was becoming tiresome. ‘You encouraged me!

You pushed me to chase promotion. I told you again and again that I wanted to spend more time with you, and you just kept saying that it would be worth it in the end.'

‘I knew that you wanted to make Detective. I was just trying to make you happy.'

‘I wanted to be a father! I wanted to be a husband.
Your
husband!'

I shook my head in disbelief. ‘I can't believe you. You're twisting what happened and making yourself into the victim. You bitch. You stone cold, conniving little bitch.'

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, my mobile phone rang. We put the hostilities on hold.

11.11.

Nothing much had changed in the Maternity Annex of the Princess
Eugenie Hospital. The workload remained light, the nurses demotivated.

Despite the fact that she was sitting directly in front of the telephone, Ellen
Drysdale allowed it to ring four times before stretching over eighteen inches
of barren desk-top to answer it. Before opening her mouth, she made sure
to mark her place in the issue of Take a Break that was spread over her lap.

‘Maternity, Staff Nurse speaking.'

‘Hi. This is Joe Brown over at Estates Management.'

So what, Ellen though. Although she had never heard of him, she paid
the name no heed. She examined her fingernails. They were getting kind
of long. ‘Uh huh?'

‘There's been a security alert issued by the local police. A woman
attempted to enter the Maternity Unit of Glasgow Royal and abduct a
new-born.'

Ellen sat up in her chair, fingernails forgotten. She listened intently as
the man claiming to be Joe Brown from Estate Management continued.

‘The woman managed to obtain the access code for the unit and
sneaked in unnoticed. She failed in her attempt to abduct a child, but
there are concerns that she may try again. At police suggestion, we're
doing an immediate security audit on all the hospital's controlled entry
doors. There's going to be a memo coming round to remind people not to
give out the codes for any controlled access doors to anybody who isn't a
current member of staff.'

‘Oh. . . right.'

‘Anyhoo, that's going to take a couple of hours to organise. In the
meantime, the powers that be have asked me to do a quick check on all
the secure-access doors in the hospital, starting with Maternity.'

Her mouth was dry. ‘Uh huh.'

‘You're aware that Trust policy states that access codes need to be
changed every two months?'

She wasn't, but the second that the muppets in charge of the trust
realised that staff were beginning to understand the way the game was
played, they changed the rules. ‘That's right, yeah.'

‘According to my records, the code for your unit hasn't been altered
for the past ten months. The last registered change was made in January.

One-zero-six-six.'

She shook her head. ‘It's not that any more. It's been changed since
then.'

‘Can I ask why the alteration wasn't registered with security?'

‘I'm sorry. I thought it had been.'

‘When was it changed?'

‘I think it was August.'

‘Who's the ward manager?'

‘Sister Janice Caldwell.'

‘Can you ask her to make sure that all code-changes are registered
with Estates?'

Ellen said that she would. The man wasted no time in hanging up,
stating that he had a lot more calls to make. She placed the phone back
in its cradle and gave a sigh of relief. She'd forgotten how lucky she had
been, almost managing to wipe the memory of that night from her mind.

Some people would do anything for a baby…

Within a few minutes, she'd gone back to her magazine. Some poor
farmer's wife in Buckinghamshire had found that her husband had
augmented the pigs' diet with the chopped-up remains of her ninety-year old mother.

11.12.

The screen on my phone said
Joe
. I stood up. ‘It's the boss.'

Audrey said, ‘Tell him to fuck off.'

Ignoring her, I made my way into the kitchen, flipping the handset open as I went.

‘Hi.'

‘Any news?'

‘Nothing. Audrey sends her love.'

‘You're not going to believe this.'

‘What?'

‘Sophie Sloan.'

‘What about her?'

‘She's the one who's got Mark. I'm sure of it.'

‘Bullshit,' I said, but only because I felt like I had to say something.

I said it again, stretching it for greater effect. ‘Buullllllshit.'

‘It's not bullshit. After you left, I did some digging. Opened up quite a can of worms, I can tell you.'

I ignored the mixed metaphor. ‘Like what?'

‘I had a long chat with Ian Sloan. Get this: he freely admitted having an affair. Sophie knew all about it and didn't care.'

‘Wait a minute. . . she knew her husband was having an affair? You sure about this?'

‘I am. I spoke to the sister as well, and they're both singing from the same hymn sheet. Now, the question is, if Sophie Sloan knew that her husband was screwing around, why hire us?'