‘Thanks, Lottie,’ he sighed, ‘but it’s more than that. There’s Skinner too, the way he shot me down at that briefing.’

  ‘That was over the top,’ Mann agreed, ‘but that’s him.’ She laughed. ‘The first time I met Skinner I tried to chuck him out of a crime scene. He was chief in Edinburgh at the time and we were in Glasgow, so technically I was right . . . however before the day was out he was my acting chief constable. But that was a while ago. Bob Skinner has absolutely no standing in the police service now. He did under Maggie Steele, but not with the new chief . . . even though they’re great friends. I suspect that friendship is the very reason McIlhenney’s distanced himself. I’m sorry, John, I should have stood up for you when that happened, but I promise you, Skinner will have forgotten all about it by now, as will everyone else in that meeting.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Cotter murmured.

  ‘You should, because it’ll have no effect on you. If he was still on the job, if he was chief, he’d rate you as highly as I do.’ She stood. ‘How much have you still got to do?’ she asked. ‘I can help if you like. I’ve got some free time.’

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ he replied, gratefully, ‘but I’m just about done.’ He told her about his encounter with Miss Wicklow, and her list. ‘That turned out to be a dead end too.’ He paused as one last possibility struck him. ‘That said, there was one school that was closed after an inquiry. I’ll see what I can find out about that, but I’m holding out no great hopes.’

  ‘No, but you’re doing it thoroughly and that’s all anyone can ask.’

  Cotter watched her leave, watched the door close behind her, reassured if not remotivated. He was about to go back to his task when his mobile sounded. ‘John,’ the caller exclaimed as he answered, ‘it’s Dave.’

  Sixty-Nine

  ‘I’ll just have a Caesar salad,’ Tiggy Benjamin said.

  ‘It’s a pizzeria,’ Jackie Wright exclaimed, scornfully. ‘You can’t just have a salad.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ McClair laughed. ‘The woman knows her own appetite. Besides, it’s a cheaper option and this is on me. Thanks,’ she said as the waiter finished taking their orders, then turned to her colleagues. ‘Inez,’ she asked. ‘How was she?’

  ‘She was everything we imagined she’d be, and more,’ the DS replied. ‘She refused to engage with us, simple as that. We told her what we had to tell her, but like the DCC said, she’d probably read the papers so it didn’t come as a surprise. She was playing with us, Noele. She’s maybe the least empathetic person I’ve ever met.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what the DCC said to me,’ the DI confirmed. ‘He called me after he’d spoken to you. He suggested that we get some background on the McCullough family, by speaking to a retired Tayside cop, Rod Greatorix. He lives in Portugal now, which reminds me . . .’ She paused and checked her phone. ‘And there it is, Mario’s messaged me his contact details.’

  ‘But not right now?’ Wright said. ‘We’re going to eat without you having an international conversation in the background?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it from the office. He’s probably having a long continental lunch anyway.’

  ‘Lucky him,’ the DS grumbled. ‘How did your interview go?’ she continued.

  McClair grinned. ‘It began with me mistaking the daughter for her ninety-year-old mother.’

  ‘That must have gone down well.’

  ‘Truth be told, poor Mrs McGonagall was so harassed that she wasn’t bothered. The old lady’s a tyrant.’

  ‘Did you learn anything useful?

  ‘Only one thing,’ the DI said, ‘but it was a bolt from the blue. Mrs Smyth was adamant that Moses Trott had a second son.’

  ‘He did?’ Wright exclaimed. ‘First we’ve heard of it. Are you sure she’s right about him?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Jackie, whether she is or she isn’t. It still needs to be checked out. That’s your priority for this afternoon. I want you to get on to the Registrar General’s Office and look for births registered with Moses Trott named as the father. Magdalena said that he was a couple of years older than Naomi; that would make him around fifty-five now. While you’re doing that, I’ll track down that Mr Greatorix and—’

  ‘Sigñore!’ The waiter’s cry interrupted her. ‘Two calzone.’ He laid down two folded pizzas before McClair and Wright, then turned to Benjamin. ‘Regretfully, madam, the chef, he says that the Caesar salad is off.’

  The DC sighed. ‘Okay, I’ll have spaghetti carbonara.’

  He shook his head.

  She looked at him, close to despair. ‘Bolognaise?’

  He nodded.

  ‘TFIF,’ Benjamin murmured.

  Seventy

  ‘Almondside Children’s Care Centre,’ DS John Cotter said.

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ the press officer replied.

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. It closed in 1985.’

  Cotter’s search for a contact in the Church of Ireland’s Dublin headquarters had begun with a call to the receptionist and had led to abortive conversations with three people, in the Safeguarding, Education and Children’s Ministry departments. None of them had any knowledge of Almondside, and none had felt they had the authority to speak to a detective sergeant from a foreign country. Finally, he had asked to be put through to the press office.

  ‘I’m only supposed to deal with media enquiries,’ Richard Bush had warned him.

  ‘So if I said I was from the Daily Record in Glasgow rather than the CID in Govan, you’d be able to speak to me?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘I’m from the Daily Record in Glasgow.’

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Almondside was a children’s centre in Wexford, in the south of Ireland, run by the Church,’ Cotter continued. ‘It was the subject of an inquiry into allegations of abuse. That’s what I know so far, from an online search. I’m assuming those allegations were upheld because the place closed after that. I’m trying to track down someone who taught in Ireland forty years ago and this is pretty much my last shot.’

  ‘I see,’ Bush said. ‘It’s not necessarily the case that the allegations were proved. The Church got out of education gradually after the war. It handed its schools over to the state, here and in the north of Ireland. You described Almondside as a children’s care centre. That suggests to me that it was a residential place. If it did have an educational function, it would have been an anachronism in the eighties. It could have closed for reasons of policy rather than as a result of a scandal. Who oversaw the inquiry, do you know?’

  ‘The General Synod.’

  ‘Our governing body. Its records go back to the foundation of the Church. ‘We’re quite open about our history, Mr Cotter. You can look at many of our old documents online. The report of that inquiry may well be accessible. Let me check. If it is, I’ll give you a link and you can download it. Hold on for a minute, please.’

  Cotter sat in silence, his phone to his ear, contemplating his conversation with Dave Christian. There was, his cousin had told him, an opening for an inspector in uniform in Sunderland. It would be advertised openly and any officer with broad experience, including CID, and who had passed the Inspector examination, as Cotter had, would be eligible.

  ‘You’d walk it, John,’ Christian had said.

  ‘That’s interesting.’ Richard Bush broke into his thoughts. ‘There is a file on the Almondside Committee of Inquiry, but it’s sealed.’

  ‘How do I get it unsealed?’ Cotter asked.

  ‘Put away your press pass, become a police officer again and make me a formal request. I’ll take it upstairs, but I don’t know how it’ll be received.’

  ‘You could tell upstairs that it relates to a murder investigation.’

  ‘That will get attention,’ Bush said.

  ‘How far up will you go?’

  ‘All the way to the archbishop, if I have to,’ the press officer promised.

  Seventy-One

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Greatorix,’ McClair said. ‘Your day will be ahead of mine with the time difference – I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’

  The retired detective laughed. ‘The cocktail hour, you mean? I’m not there yet, Inspector. There is no time difference; I’m in Portugal. In fact, I’m just off the golf course. If you had trouble getting through, that’s because my phone was switched off. This is a pleasant surprise. It’s been a long time since I heard from anyone on the job. My last call was from Andy Martin, my old boss, and he was only after any political contacts I might have. So, what’s your motivation, DI McClair?’

  ‘A man called Moses Trott.’

  ‘That animal?’ Greatorix snorted. ‘He’s not still alive, is he? Has he killed somebody else?’

  ‘No,’ she reassured him. ‘He’s still alive but he’s lost his mind, basically. He was in a care home until a couple of days ago, but last I heard it was kicking him out and back into the prison system.’

  ‘Moses was a horrible bastard,’ he snarled. ‘I made a career out of putting him away. He was a bully, a tyrant and a coward as well. I was in his house when he killed his neighbour, Mrs Good. Her skull was pulverised. It was frenzied and when he was done he went back to his chair and sat there, covered in the poor lady’s blood and brain tissue. When Robbie, my sergeant, hauled him out of there, he wasn’t so brave then. Between you and me, Robbie gave him a couple of digs, before I stopped him, and Moses nearly wet himself. They let him plead to culpable homicide too!’ Greatorix complained. ‘That was an outrage; it was murder, but some tosser in the Crown Office did a plea bargain to save the cost of a trial.’

  ‘When was he mutilated?’ McClair asked. ‘And why? All I was told was that he turned up at A and E in that state.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Obviously the hospital reported it to us when he turned up there, but no complaint was ever made. To be honest, nobody gave a shit. The only thing that bothered us was that the bastard survived.’ He paused. ‘What’s brought this all back, Inspector? Why are you looking at him? These days, I don’t keep up to date with what’s happening in Dundee.’

  Quickly but concisely, she updated him on the storm damage at Black Shield Lodge, and the surprises it had uncovered. ‘Do you remember anything about Trott’s family?’ she asked.

  ‘Not very much,’ Greatorix confessed. ‘They didn’t take after their father, thankfully, so we had no dealings with them. They were in and out of care when Moses was inside, but they seemed to survive.’

  ‘That’s the thing. They didn’t. They were the skeletons that were found in the wood. They were buried there just before it was planted, thirty years ago.’

  She heard what she thought was a whistle; the sound was distorted by the phone. ‘How did that happen, do you think?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr Greatorix. There was no talk of them disappearing in your day?’

  ‘No, but I do know that the daughter . . . what was her name again?’

  ‘Naomi.’

  ‘That’s it. She was a real beauty, that one. Aye I remember now, I did know that she’d moved out. I dropped in on Sammy . . . I was a DS then . . . to let him know that Moses was due for release. I asked where his sister was. He told me that she was living in Dundee. That’s right,’ he murmured as another memory came back. ‘Sammy said that he was just hanging around to see his father get settled in after he was released, then he’d be off too. That would be thirty years ago; he wasn’t kidding, was he? He was off.’

  ‘There’s more,’ McClair told him. ‘Do you remember Cameron McCullough, known as Grandpa?’

  ‘Of course, I do,’ he laughed. ‘There were those who believed that he was connected to every organised criminal action on our patch, and beyond that too.’

  ‘Were you among them?’

  ‘Let’s just say I remained to be convinced. Nobody ever came close to making a link, possibly because there wasn’t one. It’s all academic now of course, because he’s dead. That I did hear. It was ironic though, him marrying the mother of Bob Skinner’s son. It’s strange how life turns out.’

  ‘I think Bob would agree with that,’ the DI said. ‘He’s a neighbour of mine. His middle daughter and my son are classmates.’

  ‘Does he have any thoughts on how the young Trotts came to be buried where they were?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘He’s been making mischief in Spain for most of this week, but I’m sure he will have a theory. Any ideas will be welcome,’ she added, sincerely. ‘The remains threw up one more really big surprise. Do you remember how Grandpa McCullough got his nickname?’

  ‘Of course,’ Greatorix chuckled. ‘His daughter Inez got herself knocked up and presented him with a grandchild. She was barely sixteen when she had it; Grandpa was only thirty-six himself. That’s when he got labelled; it was a joke that stuck.’

  ‘That’s the big surprise,’ McClair revealed. ‘Inez didn’t have a baby. The DNA profiling we did on Naomi’s skeleton proves that she was Cheeky McCullough’s mother.’

  ‘Eh? Then why was Inez saying . . .’ The retired detective paused. ‘You know what I think?’ he continued. ‘She was a real attention-seeker, that kid. She’d have said anything for effect. Look, I didn’t know the McCullough set-up very well then, but I do remember that Inez spent a lot of time with her aunt. Cameron was always busy, making his fortune, and her mother, Abigail, she had mental-health and other issues. Goldie, they called the aunt. Her real name was Daphne, but only the terminally stupid called her that, because she hated it. Her brother was only ever suspected of criminal involvement and, as we’ve said, nothing was ever proved. But there was no doubt about Goldie. If I were you, I’d be looking for a connection between her and Naomi Trott. If anyone was capable of planting her under a tree and stealing her bairn, it would have been Goldie. What’s Inez saying about it?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s saying “fuck off”, if I’m quoting my colleagues accurately.’

  ‘What’s she doing now?’

  ‘Life.’

  ‘Not even her dad could save her?’ Greatorix asked.

  ‘He turned her in.’

  ‘Not before time.’

  ‘Mr Greatorix,’ McClair continued.

  ‘Rod, please.’

  ‘Noele. Did you ever hear of Moses Trott having another son as well as Sammy?’

  ‘No, I never did. He was a loner, Moses; probably because he was such an arse that nobody could stand being near him. I don’t remember him having any associates.’ He sighed. ‘Your problem with this, Noele, is that all the people involved seem to be dead. But there’s one man who was around then and still is. He was quite a celebrity in his time, a big man in Dundee. He was a politician, and went all the way to being First Minister of Scotland, until he got caught playing silly games and got booted out by his party. He worked for Grandpa for a while after that as a sort of PR fixer, until Mia came on the scene. She got rid of him but he’s still in the city somewhere. He was around in the old days too, sniffing after Goldie like he was a dog and she was on heat. His name’s Thomas Murtagh and he’s your best bet. If anyone will know what was what and who was where back in those days it’s him.’

  Seventy-Two

  ‘Please forgive me if I nod off as soon as we reach our cruising height,’ Clyde Houseman begged Paloma Aislado Craig as he strapped himself into his seat. ‘I can’t help it, I’m afraid. It goes back to my days in the armed forces.’

  ‘Weren’t you a Royal Marine?’ she asked, with a smile. ‘I thought that they sailed.’

  Skinner, seated across the aisle, thought her accent was beautiful. Raised by Scottish-born parents in Girona and educated in Catalan and Spanish, her English was smooth and rounded, with a transatlantic undertone that Xavi said had come from the American television that she had watched in every free moment since her adolescence.

  ‘Not always,’ Houseman replied. ‘Much of my career was spent abroad, in Middle East and Far East hotspots. We flew to and from those areas.’ He grinned, looking around the luxurious Gulfstream cabin. ‘Never in anything like this,’ he added. ‘On operations, we used helicopters mostly.’

  ‘Surely you could not sleep on those,’ Paloma exclaimed.

  ‘On the way back, yes, I did. It was my way of winding down. My men called me Aurora.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That was Sleeping Beauty’s name in the Disney version. Now I think about it,’ he mused, ‘it’s interesting, that a squad of Special Forces soldiers should have known that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that you served with any Spanish soldiers in those places.’

  ‘Ah but I did. In Iraq there was a brigade called the Plus Ultra, made up of troops from Spain and four Hispanic-American countries. We barely overlapped though. I was a newbie then and only went active as they were withdrawing. The socialists won an election in Spain,’ he explained, ‘and the new prime minister pulled their contingent out. There weren’t many of them, under three thousand; there were far more in Afghanistan. They took casualties too. A hundred coffins went back to Spain.’

  ‘I never knew,’ Paloma murmured. ‘My father was a journalist and I never knew.’

  ‘I imagine he sheltered you from it,’ Skinner said. ‘Dads do that. Mind you, it hasn’t worked with me. Jazz wants to be a soldier. That may change over the next few years, but . . .’