Benjamin shook her head. ‘I’ll always care.’ She looked at Wright. ‘Jackie, why isn’t the DI doing this? She looked angry when she was speaking to the DCC yesterday. Did she want to do this herself?’

  ‘No way. You really aren’t up to speed, are you? But there’s no reason why you should be. It happened before your time and it’s not something we talk about. Terry Coats, the father of Noele’s kid, and Griff Montell, her boyfriend at the time, were killed together. Terry was the target; Griff was unlucky enough to be there when he got it. Inez Davis, the woman we’re going to meet, she was part of it. She never admitted to pulling the trigger, but the bodies were dumped in a car outside the West End police office in Edinburgh, and Inez drove the getaway vehicle. That’s why Noele’s not here. If they met there would be a better than even chance she’d break her face. Think about all that when you meet this woman.’

  Benjamin was silent as they walked to the building. She simply nodded and showed her credentials when Wright identified them to the security officer at reception. She obeyed instructions without a word as they passed through the screening devices. She walked grim-faced alongside the DS as they were led to an interview room furnished with a table and four chairs, dull steel and green plastic.

  ‘Wait here,’ their female escort ordered curtly.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ the DS asked as they waited.

  ‘Too right I am,’ Benjamin muttered as the door opened and the prisoner was brought in, accompanied by the escort and a male officer.

  ‘If we’re not in with you,’ the man said, ‘she stays handcuffed.’

  Wright shrugged. ‘You can nail her to the fucking wall as far as I’m concerned.’

  Inez Davis, née McCullough, was little more than forty-five years old but she was not ageing well. She was a wiry woman, with hair that was somewhere between fair and grey, and her face was lined and gaunt. Her eyes were dead and disinterested, showing only a faint sign of annoyance when her handcuffs were passed through a ring on the table. She wore a navy blue sweatshirt over cotton trousers, and her shoes were white plastic Crocs. Wright wondered if they were prison issue also.

  ‘Whatever’s brought you here,’ Davis drawled as the door closed on the trio, ‘I’ve got nothing to say without my lawyer. Mind you, when he gets here I’ll have nothing to say either.’

  ‘We don’t need you to say anything,’ Benjamin said. Her voice was so cold that the DS was startled. ‘All you need to do is sit there and listen to what we’ve got to tell you. For the record, you’re not under caution and you’re not being accused of anything. That means you’re not entitled to a lawyer.’

  ‘Why am I here then?’

  ‘Ach,’ Wright chuckled, ‘we just thought we’d add a touch of boredom to your otherwise thrilling day.’

  ‘Funny cunt,’ Davis growled.

  The DS winked at her. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘When was the last time your daughter came to visit you?’ Benjamin snapped.

  ‘Next time’ll be the first.’

  The young DC smiled. ‘You see? You are talking to us.’

  ‘Ah, fuck off!’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Wright said. ‘I like your answer though, it may be the first truthful thing you’ve ever said, and that’s why we’re here. For thirty years you’ve allowed the world to believe that Cameron, Cheeky, as we all call her, was your daughter. Even more remarkably, you allowed her to believe that herself. Now she knows that she isn’t. It must have come as a bit of a shock when they told her yesterday, but I’m guessing that by now that’ll have worn off and it’ll be a relief to her.’

  Davis stared at her, coldly impassive. She tapped the side of her head. ‘Your problem. Is it stress?’ she asked. ‘Or are you on Buckfast?’

  ‘Stress, no. Buckfast no, although I do like a glass of red now and again. I’m telling you what we know and can prove, Inez. You’re not Cheeky’s mother. What do you say about that? Are you going to tell us you found her under a bush and brought her home?’

  ‘I’m going to tell you fuck all.’

  ‘Why have you been pretending for the last thirty years?’ Wright persisted

  ‘Is there any part of “fuck all” that you two morons don’t understand?’ the prisoner said, quietly. ‘Listen, I might not have too many rights in here but I’ve got some. One of them is not to be forced to listen to you lot when I’m not being accused of a crime. So you can get those screws back in here, because I’m going back to my nice wee en suite. Show’s over.’

  She stared across the table at the two detectives, until Wright, accepting the inevitable, stood and went to the door, summoning the escorts who were waiting outside. As they left, the sergeant looked at her colleague. ‘Well?’

  ‘I take it back, what I said,’ Benjamin declared, tight-lipped. ‘As far as that one’s concerned they can throw away the key. She’s a hard one, no mistake.’

  ‘Maybe,’ the DS conceded, ‘but it’s an act she’s perfected. She wasn’t expecting that and it got to her. You might not have picked it up, Tiggy, but I did.’

  They were back in their car and about to head for Perth when Wright remembered the DCC’s instruction. Without his mobile or direct landline number in her contacts, she had to go through the headquarters switchboard but he accepted her call immediately.

  ‘How did it go, Sergeant?’ McGuire asked, without preamble. ‘What did she have to say for herself?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Wright admitted. ‘We told her what we knew and she didn’t react at all. She refused to engage with us on any level above abusive.’

  ‘Did you tell her how we know?’

  ‘We didn’t get that far, sir. She insisted on going back to her cell, and we had no choice but to let here. I can go back in there now and tell her that we’ve identified Cheeky’s real mother, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get the same reaction.’

  ‘When you told her, how did she react?’

  ‘She didn’t, sir,’ the DS said. ‘She was absolutely po-faced, trying to make me feel like Laurel to her Hardy.’

  ‘I would say that was because she knew what you were going to say before you said it. Prisoners have access to newspapers and news bulletins. It’s better than even money that she saw the reports about remains being found on her dad’s estate. There’s a fair chance that she knew who they were before we did, but it’s up to us to find out how, because she’s not going to tell us.’

  Sixty-Six

  ‘God bless you, Miss Wicklow,’ John Cotter murmured, as he opened her email and began to read.

  ‘Good morning, Detective Sergeant,’ it began. ‘I apologise for not getting back to you last night but it took me longer than I thought to compile a meaningful list. My original trawl gave me more information than I needed, in that it included mother-and-baby homes. Those were a national disgrace and a stain on our country, but some were still in existence in the forty-year window that you specified. Clearly Matthew Reid would not have been a teacher in one of those. Having removed them all for the list I am left with those institutions included in an attachment to this email. Some are orphanages, some are residential schools for children with learning difficulties and some are simply boarding schools. I warn you that some of these will no longer exist. You will have to find out for yourself which those might be. If Mr Reid taught in one of them, your mission is probably impossible. Yours, Catherine Wicklow. (Miss)’

  Cotter smiled as he opened the attachment; his face fell when he saw that it contained almost fifty names. He reached for his landline and dialled the number for Almondside Children’s Care Centre, Wexford. It rang twice, before a pre-recorded voice announced, ‘This number is no longer in service.’

  ‘Fuck!’ he whispered. ‘But another one might be.’ He opened a window on his computer and keyed in a search for Almondside Children’s Care Centre. The first hit was a Wikipedia entry.

  ‘Almondside Children’s Care Centre was,’ Cotter sighed as he read the past tense, ‘a residential institution run by the Church of Ireland for children aged between five and sixteen. It closed in 1985 after allegations of abuse were upheld by a General Synod investigation.’

  The sergeant sighed, longing for a call from his cousin David. ‘On to the next,’ he moaned.

  Sixty-Seven

  ‘Inez Davis is a psychopath,’ Noele McClair murmured. ‘I went to the court when she was sentenced. She knew who I was, she made eye contact with me, but when she did she showed me nothing, not the faintest sign of empathy.’

  ‘I know,’ Mario McGuire said, sympathetically. ‘I sat in on an interview after she was arrested. It was borderline whether she was fit to plead. Finally two psychiatrists agreed that she did know the difference between right and wrong, but just didn’t give a toss. Her aunt, Goldie, Grandpa McCullough’s sister, she was much the same. I called Andy Martin earlier on. He was deputy chief in Tayside when she was still around. He told me about her: a right evil cow, apparently, as was everyone around her. He suggested that you speak to a guy called Rod Greatorix. He was a CID high-up in those days, and before. The only problem is he’ll be retired, and Andy doesn’t know where he is now.’

  ‘I do,’ the DI volunteered. ‘There was a PC on the scene on Sunday. He told someone that he was Greatorix’s nephew, and he said that his uncle was living in Portugal.’

  ‘I’ll find him for you,’ the DCC promised. ‘He’ll be drawing a pension so his contact details will be listed. You can give him a call or send him a message once you’re done with your old lady witness.’

  ‘Will do, sir. I’m there now, and it’s time so I have to go.’

  ‘Yes, okay. I’ll text you Greatorix’s contact details when I have them.’

  McClair ended the call with a touch of a device on her steering wheel and took her phone from its dashboard holder. She was parked in the street, outside Magdalena Smyth’s home, her car facing north across the river. The Tay is silvery by reputation, but that morning its waters were blue, reflecting the cloudless sky above, and the sun sparkled on windows on the Dundee side.

  She climbed the five steps that led to the small development. At their summit a plaque bore the name ‘Burghside Sheltered’. The complex was made up of a block of flats, surrounded by single-storey terraced dwellings. Mrs Smyth lived in one of those, number seventeen.

  The door opened as the detective approached, framing a small white-haired woman. ‘Mrs Smyth?’ she said. ‘I’m Detective Inspector McClair.’

  ‘Oh no,’ the doorkeeper exclaimed, laughing, ‘it’s my mother you’re looking for, no’ me. I’m Martina, Martina McGonagall, her daughter.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ McClair pleaded. ‘The sun was in my eyes,’ she lied. On closer inspection, Mrs McGonagall was in her late sixties. She ushered the DI into a hall that was wide enough to allow a wheelchair to manoeuvre, then into a rectangular sitting room with a wide window offering the same view that McClair had admired from her car.

  ‘This is the police lady, Mother.’

  At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Magdalena Smyth looked up. ‘Ah didnae think it was the milkman,’ she snapped. ‘Ah’m no’ that blind. Sit yourself doon, dear,’ she said to McClair, her tone softening. ‘Ah’ve never had a visit frae the polis before, no’ in ninety years. What have Ah done? It’s been a while since I drove, so it cannae be an unpaid parking fine. You’ll have a cup o’ tea dear.’ She frowned in the general direction of her daughter. ‘Have ye’ no’ got the kettle on, lassie?’

  ‘I was waiting, Mother,’ Martina said.

  ‘Well wait no longer.’ She turned back to McClair. ‘Now, hen,’ she continued, ‘what is it ye’re wantin’?’

  ‘Do you not want to wait until Mrs McGonagall gets back?’ the DI asked, as she switched on her recorder.

  ‘Whit for? She’ll be no help tae us.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ McClair said. ‘I want to ask you about some old neighbours of yours back in Dundee in Arbroath Wynd, the Trott family.’

  ‘Ohhhh.’ The sudden intake of breath took McClair by surprise. ‘Them! How did Ah no guess. They were awfy folk. Well,’ she paused, ‘Moses was. The son and the daughter were a’ right. We never kent the mother though. Ah don’t remember her ever bein’ there.’

  ‘What can you tell me about Moses?’

  ‘He was a shite, an absolute shite. He was loud, he’d lash out at folk for lookin’ at him the wrong way . . . he had a go at my Eck once for picking up the last copy o’ the Weekly News in the paper shop. Eck was ready for him, mind. He wis a big strong man, ma husband, and Moses maybe wasnae the bravest, for a’ the hard-man act. Of course, he was away a lot, a regular visitor tae Perth Prison. A year or two at a time.’

  ‘You mentioned his family, his children, Samuel and Naomi?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right. The daughter was the oldest, by a couple of years Ah think. They were respectable, thon two. They both had jobs. He worked on buildin’ sites; she was in an office, I think. Ah say that because she was aye well dressed. She left home, the last time Moses was away. One o’ the other neighbours thought she had a fella, but Ah never saw anyone aboot.’

  ‘And Samuel?’

  ‘He was quite a nice laddie, wis Sammy. He wis no bother, unlike his faither. It was no’ surprise, ye know when Moses kilt that wumman. When Naomi and Sammy left and he was on his own, he was like a kettle always on the boil . . . wi’ that big scar on his heid and the thing wi’ his mooth. He looked like one o’ yon Addams Family: the uncle. Mind him? Where is that lassie?’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Martina!’

  A cry drifted through from the kitchen. ‘Coming, Mother!’

  ‘Aye,’ Magdalena continued. ‘Imagine. She just went tae the door tae ask him tae turn doon the telly and he kilt her; he bashed her face in, Eck said, wi’ a wrench. Ah had a theory about Moses, ye ken, that he never really liked bein’ out the jail, so he did what he did tae get back there.’

  ‘There are people like that,’ McClair admitted.

  ‘Has he kilt somebody else?’ the old lady asked. ‘Is that wat this is aboot?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. It’s more about Naomi and Sammy. Can you recall, did they both leave home together? I have reason to believe they did.’

  ‘No, they didnae,’ Mrs Smyth insisted. ‘Definitely no’. Ah remember Sammy bein’ about after she wis gone. No’ for long, mind, but he wis.’

  ‘Do you remember her being pregnant?’

  ‘Naomi? No, Ah don’t. And Ah would Ah’m sure, although . . . now ye mention it, Ah did see a pram once, outside the hoose, but Ah thought no more of it.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘It would have been around the time Moses got out the jail; the last time, Ah mean, afore he kilt the wumman and went away for good.’ She stopped as Martina returned with a tray. It was only when she placed it on a low table and put a mug of tea into her mother’s hands that McClair realised how little Magdalena could see. She began to wonder when her sight had begun to deteriorate, and thus how reliable her information might be.

  Her unspoken question was answered immediately. ‘I can see them noo,’ the old lady said, softly. ‘An odd family; the awful, ugly faither, that lovely lassie . . . oh aye, she was a real beauty was Naomi. I wonder where she is noo . . . and that peaceable laddie Sammy. The older boy, he was different, more like his faither, but Sammy was nice.’

  ‘What older boy?’ McClair asked, taken aback.

  ‘The other yin,’ Magdalena replied. ‘Did yis no’ ken? Moses had another son.’

  Sixty-Eight

  It took far less time to work his way through Miss Wicklow’s list than Detective Sergeant Cotter had anticipated. The great majority gave him the same answer, quickly: even forty years in the past they would not have employed an unqualified teacher. Most of those that might have did not have staff records going that far back. None of the few who did a search found any record of Matthew Reid.

  The detective sergeant sighed as he hung up on his last unrewarding prospect. He was contemplating an early lunch when the door opened and Lottie Mann stepped into the small office that he had been using so that his trawl would not be disturbed by the extraneous noise of a busy squad room.

  ‘How’s it going, John?’ she asked.

  Did he hear a little sympathy in her tone, he wondered, but cast the notion aside. ‘No joy so far, ma’am,’ he admitted. ‘This source of yours, Reid’s girlfriend: are you sure she’s reliable?’

  ‘No, but I have to assume that she is,’ she said. ‘It’s the only lead we have to Reid’s early life. Maybe it’s bullshit, maybe it isn’t; we’ll only find out one way or the other by following it up as far as we can. When I say we, I mean you. Look John, I know it’s a balls-aching job, and I’m sorry you’ve drawn the short straw. I could have pulled in two or three PCs and given it to them, but this is a high-profile inquiry. We’re under scrutiny, make no mistake. I need this done by someone I can trust, and that, my friend, is you.’

  Cotter looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘You sure about that?’ he asked, quietly.

  She stared back, surprised. ‘Of course, I am. That’s a fucking stupid question. What brought it on?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he sighed, ‘with one thing and another: the Martin business for example. I was ready to lock him up and . . . I think it got personal.’

  ‘Okay, so it did. Look, John, Sir Andrew’s a dick. I know that – the whole fucking force knew it when he was chief.’

  ‘If that’s so, how did he get there?’

  ‘On merit, I think. I was in Strathclyde and he made his name in Edinburgh, but I’m told that he was a bloody good detective back then. He was number two to Bob Skinner and on the same curve that young Sauce Haddock is on now, until his private life got in the way. He got engaged to Skinner’s daughter, Alex. There was ten years between them, plus Skinner didn’t know about it at first, so things cooled between the two of them. Martin even went back to uniform for a while. When he and Alex split up, he married Karen Neville, on the rebound. He moved up to Tayside as deputy chief, then he was head of a national crime agency. When the police service was unified, and Skinner said he wanted no part of it, Martin was the obvious choice for the top job and the knighthood that went with it, but it just didn’t work. He’d gone off the rails by that time, chucked Karen and his kids and gone back to Alex. He was an emotional wreck and he probably still is, which is why Karen’s being very cautious about going back to him. That’s the story; if Andy Martin’s preying on your mind, don’t let him.’