Where the Bodies are Buried (26 page)

‘Tron, that was Caroline at Galt Linklater about the Turner case. Can you go and give her a ring? The notes are out in the
car.’

Ingrams assented and got up, a sheaf of cellophane-wrapped pages still in his hand.

‘Do you mind if I hang on to these a minute?’ he asked.

Neil shook his head, barely engaged. Ingrams could have asked to borrow the microwave and got the same response.

Ingrams left the kitchen, but as he did so he gave Jasmine a stare that indicated he was only cooperating on the understanding
that this would be explained later.

The explanation was simple. Neil was clamming up because they had started skirting territory that men didn’t open up about
around other men.

‘How long have you been married?’ Jasmine asked him, once she was sure Ingrams had withdrawn outside.

‘Six years now,’ he said neutrally. He then offered a smile, like it had belatedly occurred to him that his flatness had given
something away.

‘Not all plain sailing, I’d guess,’ Jasmine ventured.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked defensively, ready to robustly rebuff any attempt to impugn the perfection of their relationship.
Jasmine had been banking on it.

‘Nothing. It’s just, I used to go out with a guy whose parents had both died when he was ten. Car accident. Utterly devastating.
I mean,
ten.
He must have felt so lost. He was brought up by his mum’s sister. I liked him, but he never really let me close, you know?
I mean, we joke about all guys being reluctant to commit, but in his case it was the real deal. It wasn’t just me. Nobody
got close, in case he lost them.’

Jasmine watched Neil’s expression soften, the defences drop and an engagement enliven his features, an eager recognition that
she was talking about something he was uniquely qualified to understand. She took it as a great compliment to her acting ability
and improv skills, given that she was completely making it up.

‘That was Anne,’ he said quietly, with a bittersweet smile. ‘Only ten times worse. She didn’t just have your standard orphan’s
abandonment issues to contend with, because it wasn’t merely about something that happened to her parents. It was something
her parents did to her. They were last seen heading southbound out of the city on the M74. Where were they going? And more
importantly, why were they going there without her? They were supposed to be picking her up around then, on the complete opposite
side of the city. Imagine having those kinds of unanswered questions in your head your whole life.’

‘You must have been pretty tenacious. I’m guessing she pushed you away a few times.’

He gave a short, dry laugh of recognition.

‘Suffice to say, I must have been the most anxious bridegroom in recorded history. I remember thinking to myself: why does
the registrar have to speak so slowly? Hurry up and make it official before she bails on me again.’

Jasmine gave him an encouraging smile.

‘We met at uni. She was at Glasgow and I was at Strathclyde and we had some mutual friends. We went out for about six months
and then she broke it off over the summer. When I say she broke it off, technically I was the one who said let’s finish this,
but she kind of engineered it: she was increasingly horrible to me until I’d had enough. We got back together a couple of
years later. She had gone out with a few guys in the meantime, one of whom I vaguely knew. He told me a very familiar tale.
So when the same thing started happening again, I called her on it.’

‘Brave move.’

‘Desperate move. I was crazy about her. Still am. It was touch-and-go for a while, kill or cure. Turned out to be cure, just.
She admitted to herself what was going on. She said it helped to externalise it; unfortunately, she’s only ever able to externalise
it in retrospect.’

‘At the time she can’t admit to herself why she’s doing it?’

‘That’s it. She gets horrible to me because part of her thinks I’m going to leave and she just wants to get it over with,
while another part wants to know I’ll never leave no matter how horrible she is.’

‘Can’t be much fun for you.’

‘Over the years we’ve got better at anticipating the triggers, but sometimes they come at you sideways. It’s a lot less fun
for Anne, so I try not to feel too sorry for myself.’

‘What triggered it this time?’

Neil paused, looking intently at her for a moment, considering and then discarding the option of denying that such a situation
was ongoing right now.

‘It’s been a slow burn. We both knew it was coming, but awareness of it isn’t like a magic talisman. Megan turning four back
in April kind of started it off. That was the age Anne was when it happened. Megan starting school was always going to be
a tough time. It’s supposed to be one of the big happy milestones as a parent, but secretly we were both dreading it. We talked
about it, though, and came up with a plan.’

‘Is this where Jim Sharp comes in?’

‘Partly. Megan was in nursery: same one as Charlie is in now. We knew that one of the bonuses of her starting at the local
primary school was that we wouldn’t have to be paying her nursery fees any more. Anne had often talked about hiring a detective
to look into the case, because the police had been worse than useless. I was against it because I thought it would just keep
the wound open indefinitely. Who knows how long you could be paying somebody, especially when they have a vested interest
in keeping the investigation going. No offence.’

‘None taken. It doesn’t work like that, though. Jim wouldn’t string anybody along.’

Jasmine almost skipped a beat, realising she’d had to check her tense and hoping it hadn’t been noticeable.

‘I know. He came recommended. Anne asked around her own law firm and a couple of others. We decided we’d spend what we had
previously been paying for Megan’s nursery fees on hiring him. Anne agreed we would give it a few weeks but not get hung up
on the whole thing. It was kind of symbolic, almost: like we were paying somebody else to worry about it so that we could
enjoy this time.’

‘But then Jim told her he would have some news for her this week.’

Neil nodded stoically. This development had clearly precipitated a whole new storm of hurt and frustration: aggravating everything
it had been supposed to salve.

‘Anne said she wouldn’t have any expectations, but hopes are something else. She stopped believing in miracles a very long
time ago, but she’s spent her whole life looking for something that would give her soul peace. She even went to see this Bain
guy a few years back, not long after Megan was born. Being a mother unleashed a whole lot of emotions for her. I don’t know
what she was hoping to get from him, but it became important to her that she have contact with the last person ever to see
her family.

‘I went with her. It was horribly awkward. Kind of embarrassing. The guy really had nothing he could tell her, but at least
he was honest about it. Unlike the psychics: we’ve had a few of those sniffing around over the years. They really are the
scum of the earth. I’m telling you this so that you understand my position. I know part of Anne is still on a quest, but it’s
my role to protect her from anyone who would exploit that.’

Making her way back along the short garden path, the box file under her arm, Jasmine felt a liberated relief at being out
of the house. On
the surface it looked like the perfect family home, inhabited by the perfect family, but there was something stifling about
the place, like Anne and Neil were fairy-tale characters gripped in temporal stasis by an evil spell. Time went on around
them, but they were trapped for ever, unable to escape this thing that held them.

She thought of her own mum and perhaps for the first time, instead of merely missing her, she felt grateful that she’d got
to have twenty years of her company, her love. She felt grateful also that she’d had the time to mourn, and appreciated as
a blessing the certainty that her mother was gone.

As she climbed into the car, Ingrams held up a small square slip of paper, like a tear-off sheet from a telephone notepad.

‘This was inside the plastic wallet next to a “twenty years on” feature from 2003. It’s William Bain’s contact details.’

Jasmine didn’t see the significance.

‘Yeah. Anne Ramsay went to see him once. He didn’t have anything to tell her. What about it?’

‘His home phone number is on your list.’

Ingrams gestured to the back seat, where she had left the handwritten sheet detailing the office phone’s incoming and outgoing
calls.

‘Jim must have spoken to him recently,’ he said.

‘Probably just retracing the initial investigation in order to be thorough. He’s not going to suddenly remember something
crucial after twenty-seven years.’

‘And yet Jim said he’d have news. Call him. Tell him you’re a reporter. Set up an interview.’

Jasmine got out her mobile and dialled the number.

‘Don’t tell him your real name,’ Ingrams added, as it began to ring at the other end.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s Sharp.’

‘Oh, of course,’ she realised.

She didn’t have time to be embarrassed, as a gravelly older male voice came on and offered a curious ‘Hello?’

‘Eh, Mr Bain? My name is Sharon James, I’m with the
Evening Times,’
she added, hoping she’d remembered correctly that it was the
Record
who had already run a recent story. ‘I’m doing a piece on the Ramsay family disappearance, and—’

‘Two hundred,’ he interrupted gruffly.

Jasmine glanced at Ingrams and remembered how irritating people could find it when you kept asking them about something they
knew little or nothing about. Bain must have become mightily pissed off over the years at receiving precisely this kind of
enquiry. She doubted this was actually the two hundredth similar request, but she could understand why he had adopted such
a posturing tone.

Then he made her feel like a rube with the clarifying addition of one single word.

‘Cash.’

‘Two hundred … pounds?’

‘I’ve been over this for you people time and again for twenty-seven year. It’s about time yous made it worth my while.’

‘Ehm … if you hold on, I’m just going to have to run this past my editor.’

She muted the phone and was about to explain to Ingrams, but he was way ahead.

‘Tell him one fifty; two hundred if he agrees to a photo.’

‘I don’t have two hundred pounds.’

‘Have you got a camera?’

‘There’s lots back at the office.’

‘Then let me worry about the money.’

Despite the size of the drugs seizure, Maraidh Morgan couldn’t complain about her robbery being made a low priority by the
police in the twenty-two hours since.

‘In terms of manpower, I’ve never seen such a response to a break-in,’ Zoe Vernon put it, leaning on Catherine’s desk.

Zoe was finishing off a banana, possibly her third, and also quite possibly Catherine’s. She had brought one along for a mid-morning
snack but couldn’t remember if she’d taken it out and put it on her desk or left it in her bag. Zoe grazed on fruit all day,
making it hard to identify any given item as being part of any specific meal. She was the kind of girl who was so fit it actually
made you tired just thinking about what kind of training regime she observed to get that way. A major bonus was that if required,
she could run down a fugitive suspect like a Kenyan hunter ran down a gazelle, but the price was that she regarded all fruit
left lying around the place – even on someone else’s desk – as windfall.

‘Bordering on the disproportionate,’ Catherine agreed.

‘I heard Cairns was going mental. Pretty embarrassing for us, I suppose. Have to be seen to make amends. We evacuate the place
and somebody walks off with, what was it, a hundred and forty grand’s worth of watches?’

‘Rolex Oysters, Ulysse Nardin, Baume and Mercier, Cartier: best of gear, as they say.’

‘Anything on the store CCTV?’

‘Baseball cap, head down at all times. There’s a partial face at one point. Cairns is passing it around. The thief brought
the power tool in a sports bag. We’re waiting to get a look at the station footage, but the theory is that he hid in the shop
next door during the evac, then nipped out their back door and in through the rear entrance to Coruscate. In and out in seconds.
Hid out around the back of the shops after that, or possibly inside one of them, and then slipped away when the punters were
allowed back in.’

‘So it was a planned job? He knew what was going to happen?’

‘Looks that way. This is the real reason Cairns has rounded up the cavalry. It didn’t just happen
on
his op, it happened because of it. This is about Cairns’ source. He said the guy was an Olympic-standard exponent of playing
both ends against the middle. Whoever he is, he set this up. He had good intel on the drugs, but he was getting his end. That’s
why he threw the word “explosive” into his message.’

‘He knew Cairns would evacuate the place.’

‘Meaning he – or more likely somebody working off his tip – would be in position at the station, ready to take advantage.
It puts Cairns in a very awkward lie. This source has proven very valuable, but how much can you let him take the piss? Nobody
likes getting played, even as the price for a haul that large.’

‘I heard they’re estimating it could be worth three million.’

‘We’ll tell the press seven,’ Catherine said, eliciting a wry smile from Zoe. ‘This wasn’t a one-off, either. Looks like they
were using the left-luggage facility as an escrow holding point. It’s a way of doing a large-scale drug deal without the risk
of anybody getting fingered handing over or receiving the merchandise. We’re guessing the wholesaler leaves the shipment there
and then supplies the locker number and combination to the buyer once payment has been received.’

‘Got you,’ Zoe said. ‘So then the buyer pitches up and walks away with the suitcase without either party having to be in the
same room at any point. Vendor could get off a train from London or wherever, make the drop, then get the next train back
again, minimum exposure.’