Past Lying, page 3
Karen snorted. ‘That sounds totally impractical.’
‘It’s a nightmare, is what it is. You know what the neds are like – “I’ve got the COVID, I’m going to cough my germs on you, ya cunt.” So we’re doing our best. With witness statements, if they’ve got a computer or a smartphone, we’re trying to do them on screen. Otherwise, it’s kind of take your life in your hands.’ He sighed. ‘We’re all going to get it.’
‘It’s scary,’ she acknowledged. ‘Nobody knows what’s coming at us down the line. Is this going to be the one that sees us off? Like the asteroid and the dinosaurs? Or is it just going to be a jacked-up version of the flu?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. All we can do is drink gin and try to do our jobs. Have you got plenty masks and hand sanitisers?’
She groaned. ‘Even the gin might be under threat, Jimmy. You’re not going to believe Hamish’s latest. He’s taken over a wee still in the village and he’s making heather hand sanitiser instead of gin.’ Jimmy said nothing. ‘And since he’s had to close the coffee shops here in Edinburgh, he’s talking about using his baristas to do home deliveries of the stuff.’
‘He never misses a chance.’ Jimmy’s voice was flat. She knew he was comparing Hamish to Phil. The dead man would come out on top; the dead always did. ‘So what’s this new lead you’re chasing?’
‘I’ll tell you if it comes to anything. It might be the deranged fantasy of a lockdown mind,’ she said wryly.
‘Plenty of that about. I don’t even know why we’re bothering, to be honest. The backlog in the courts was already horrendous. This is just going to make things way worse. They’re already talking about more than two years between the offence and the court appearance.’
‘That’s a helluva long time for victims and their families to wait for justice. And I can just see the defence advocates rubbing their hands in glee.’ She assumed a posh accent. ‘ “So, Mrs McPhee, do you really expect the court to believe you can recall the events of a drunken night three years ago with such accuracy?” There’s going to be a lot of free passes down the line.’
Jimmy sighed. ‘No kidding. But we just have to press on. Let me know if there’s anything I can help with.’
‘Will do.’ She ended the call, already running through her options. For the first time since COVID had curtailed their lives, Karen felt invigorated. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to be so committed to her job. That was a damn sight better than having nothing more than the next Scandi crime drama to fire her up in lockdown.
4
The one advantage of lockdown was that, apart from their daily hour of exercise, everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be. Not only that – already they welcomed anything that broke the monotony. So she wasn’t surprised when Bethan Carmichael answered her mobile on the second ring. Karen introduced herself and hastily added that there was nothing to be worried about.
The head of Archive Services didn’t seem reassured. ‘You’ll appreciate, I’m responsible for a great deal of valuable material,’ she said sternly. ‘So you’ll forgive me if I find a call from a senior police officer unsettling.’
Karen smiled. She knew that, though it wasn’t visible, it injected warmth into her voice. ‘As far as I’m aware, your archive is intact. It’s not under threat.’
‘So why are you calling?’ No thaw so far.
‘One of my team has had dealings with one of your colleagues. They’ve become pals, I suppose you’d say. Anyway—’
‘Which one of my colleagues?’ Sharpness in the tone now.
‘Meera Reddy. She’s been very helpful in our inquiries in the past, before she joined the archive team.’ Karen paused but nothing came back. ‘She called DC Murray from my unit this morning because something’s been preying on her mind. Something she came across before lockdown.’
‘Something in the archive?’ Now she had Bethan Carmichael’s attention. ‘And she came to you with this? Without consulting me?’
‘If she’s right, it’s a police matter.’ Without waiting for a response, Karen ploughed on and outlined what the Mint had told her.
‘Extraordinary,’ Carmichael said. ‘I understand now why you called me. It seems unlikely that there’s any connection between the manuscript and the disappearance of this young woman, but I suppose you have to take it seriously. Just in case.’
‘As you say, just in case. The first thing I need to do is to see this manuscript for myself.’ Karen let the request hang in the air.
‘I understand. And in normal circumstances, I’d be happy to let you do just that.’ Carmichael spoke slowly. ‘But as I’m sure you’re aware, the library is closed just now. The staff have been sent home. The only presence on our estate right now are security staff.’
Karen rolled her shoulders as if preparing for battle. ‘A photocopy would do at this point. Can Meera not go in and do that?’
‘If anyone is going in, it will be me,’ she said flatly. ‘That way I know the guidelines are not being breached.’
‘It’s a police investigation, Bethan.’ Dropping into the librarian’s first name to make it clear who was top banana in this conversation. ‘We are allowed to breach the terms of the lockdown rules if there’s no other way to pursue it. I’d be happy to do it myself, except that I don’t have a clue where to find the papers in question. I could come with you if you’re concerned about being reported in breach?’
‘I don’t understand what the urgency is here. Surely this can wait till the lockdown is lifted? The archive isn’t going anywhere. It’s not as if anything you can do at this stage will affect this young woman’s fate.’ She sounded cross.
Karen stood up and walked to the window, taking a deep breath on the way. ‘We’ve no idea when lockdown will be lifted, Bethan. Right now, all we’re seeing is rising numbers of infections, rising numbers of deaths. People not allowed to visit their loved ones in care homes or hospitals. We don’t know when we’ll have a vaccine, or even if we’ll get one. None of us likes living with that uncertainty. So imagine how it is for Lara Hardie’s family. They’ve been living with uncertainty for a year now. Uncertainty and fear. They don’t know what happened to their daughter, their sister. They don’t even know whether she’s alive or dead. And if she’s alive, that’s another argument against wasting time.’ She paused and let her words sink in.
‘It’s my job to find answers to their questions,’ she continued, her voice softening as she gazed out over the sea. ‘Chances are, it won’t be an answer that brings them anything other than more grief. But at least they’ll know what happened to their lassie. That’s why, in my job, every day counts, Bethan. That’s why I don’t want to hang about till somebody decides it’s safe for us all to come out of our houses again.’
‘Oh, fuck,’ Daisy Mortimer sighed. The boss’s number was on the phone screen and she couldn’t refuse the call. She spread her arms in a frustrated shrug. ‘I’ve got to take this, I’ll message you later.’ She ended FaceTime on her laptop and accepted Karen’s call. ‘Hi,’ she said brightly. ‘Did you forget something?’
‘No. Something’s come up. I’ll explain when I get back. Those files we brought back from the office – can you pull the Lara Hardie case and call up the online details too?’
Daisy swung her legs off the sofa and sat up. ‘Sure. Are you heading back now?’ I thought you weren’t coming back till past midnight?’
‘Yeah, well, things have changed.’ Karen chuckled. ‘You sound panicked. Are you having a party?’
Was her boss psychic? ‘No, just surprised.’
‘I’ll be with you inside the hour. It’s police business, Daisy, not a whim.’ The line went dead. Daisy cursed under her breath. She’d thought she had the flat to herself for the whole day. She’d had plans. Plans that involved someone else. Not in person, but certainly in the flesh. She opened WhatsApp on her phone and started typing.
Sorry. I know I said I had all day, and I know we had plans but it turns out I have to work. Gutted! xxx
The reply came within seconds.
Shit happens. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go off you. Having to wait makes it all the sweeter.♥
That was a relief, at least. Bloody KP Nuts, though. Why couldn’t she stick to the arrangements? Sharing with Karen was generally pretty straightforward, and Daisy loved working on the cold cases team with her and the Mint. But when she’d agreed to moving in, what she hadn’t bargained on had been starting a new relationship two days before lockdown. That was hard enough without having to dodge around someone so unpredictable. At least their bedrooms were at opposite ends of the flat. But every now and again, Daisy would have liked to have an encounter outside the hours of darkness.
She went through to Hamish Mackenzie’s spare room, its luxury a sharp contrast with her own flat. Daisy had stretched her finances to the limit to buy her place; when it came to furnishing it, she’d had to settle for an IKEA bed and sofa, with everything else coming from the monthly house clearance auction in Cowdenbeath. Staying here felt a bit like living in a hotel and the novelty had worn off.
Daisy gave herself a mental shake. Karen was mostly good company, and it was better than being stuck on her own with only the walls to talk to, like most of her friends. And there was no getting away from the fascination of poring over other officers’ old files, looking for possible cracks in the surface. Now it sounded like they had something fresh to get their teeth into.
But still . . . There was no time for a shower, so she settled for a swipe of deodorant and a tumble of her hair. Ruefully, she pulled a T-shirt over her bra, and a pair of joggers over the sexy black pants she’d chosen for the expected day’s fun.
She remembered the Lara Hardie disappearance. She’d still been working in Fife, recently promoted to sergeant and eager to prove herself. She’d watched the TV coverage, ashamed to admit to herself that she’d wished Lara had vanished from Fife so she could have worked the case. Daisy was only a few years older than the missing young woman; she remembered how it had felt to be on the brink of emerging from university into the real world of work; that exhilarating mixture of fear and desire. What could have derailed Lara’s life so thoroughly? It was hard not to believe that the student had been abducted. That she was dead. Daisy wondered what set of choices had taken Lara to the terrible convergence of her path and that of a killer? Was it simply a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or did it run deeper than that? And what had Karen found that might answer those questions? It was, now she thought about it, a more exciting prospect than a digital date.
The HCU files they’d removed were in Hamish’s office, a small room lined with filing cabinets, a utilitarian pine desk housing a Mac and a second monitor. The cardboard boxes of files were piled three high and two deep along the other wall, leaving only a narrow passage between door and desk. With a sigh, Daisy started. ‘It’ll be the last box in the last row,’ she muttered. ‘Bound to be.’
She was thrilled to be proved wrong. Second box in the second row was the jackpot. Daisy hauled it through to the living room, then rewarded herself with a couple of slices of sourdough toast dripping with butter. She was halfway through the second slice when Karen walked in.
Karen grinned. ‘Don’t drip butter on the files,’ she said as she took off her jacket and slung it over a chair.
‘What’s happened?’ Daisy wiped her fingers with a piece of kitchen towel and put her plate down. ‘Are we properly back in business?’
‘Maybe.’
‘How come?’
Daisy perched on the edge of the sofa as Karen filled her in on what Jason had learned. ‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘I mean, I know crime writers sometimes use real cases to kick-start their books, but they don’t usually map on to the reality that accurately.’
‘We don’t know yet how close the manuscript is. And it’s only part of the story. If I’m honest, I doubt it’s as much of a match as Meera seems to think. But at least we can take another pass at it. Who knows? Reading the book might shake a few ideas loose.’
‘So are we going to get our hands on the original?’
Karen gave a short bark of laughter. ‘No chance.’ She assumed a portentous accent. ‘The National Library of Scotland are the custodians of the unpublished manuscripts of one of Scotland’s most significant crime writers of his generation. It would be inappropriate to let The Vanishing of Laurel Oliver out of their custody.’
Daisy giggled. ‘Right enough. We might drip butter on it.’ Or worse, she thought with a smirk. ‘What’s the plan, then?’
‘Bethan Carmichael is going to scan it and send a digital copy to me. I’ve asked her to send me a photocopy as well, just in case there are any annotations that don’t come through clearly. She reckoned she can get it done by close of play tomorrow. So in the meantime, what I think we should do is work our way through the case papers and the online stuff.’ She pulled a face. ‘It’ll be good to have something specific to focus on. I don’t know about you, but some days it gets to bedtime and I’ve got no bloody idea what I’ve done to pass the hours.’
‘I know, it’s like my brain’s turned to mush. Is that a secret COVID symptom?’
Karen groaned. ‘I hope not. Here’s how we do this. I’ll read a statement or a report, then pass it to you, then you do the same. We both make notes as we go, then at the end, we compare what we’ve written. We’ll probably duplicate a lot of the queries, but we’ll also both come up with different takes on specific things. Does that make sense?’
Daisy had never worked an HCU case from the start and she was surprised at Karen’s style. ‘I guess. It’s not an approach I’ve come across before.’ Her expression was dubious.
‘It’s one of the luxuries of cold cases. When you’re working a live case, time’s your enemy. You don’t have the opportunity to process things at such a granular level. And with the best will in the world, inevitably stuff gets overlooked or missed. It’s nobody’s fault. But we’re the last chance saloon, so we owe it to the victims to give it all the attention we can muster.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘So you make us both a coffee while I get started.’ Karen was already reaching for the first folder in the box.
‘I’ll open the shortbread as well.’ At the start of lockdown, they’d unearthed a box containing dozens of packets of souvenir shortbread at the back of the pantry. Karen had joked that Hamish would have forgotten the existence of anything so unhealthy. Daisy had made it her mission to work her way through it as an act of kindness. Forensically unravelling a cold case was the perfect opportunity to make real inroads.
‘Careful with the crumbs,’ Karen said absently, Lara Hardie already her focus. ‘We’ll never hear the last of it if we have to hand over the case papers to the Fiscal Depute with shortbread between the pages.’
Daisy wished she could share her boss’s optimism about the ultimate fate of the file. But still, she’d give it her best shot, even if it was interfering with her first chance at a love life in months. She jumped up with genuine enthusiasm. ‘Right you are, boss. If anyone can nail this, we can.’
5
They were at the bottom of the file box when the call came through the following afternoon. Bethan Carmichael had found her mojo lurking somewhere by the photocopier. ‘DCI Pirie? I made two copies of the manuscript and I’ve put the scanned text on a memory stick. I’ll hand them over to you personally. I don’t trust internet security.’ She gave Karen directions to the back entrance of the library, off the Cowgate. ‘How long will it take you to get here?’
Karen consulted her mental map of the city. ‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’
‘I’ll wait for you outside. It’s a nice afternoon, I’ll enjoy the air.’
Karen left Daisy reading. The late afternoon sun dazzled her as she emerged from the tenement and she was glad to turn south up the steep hill of Broughton Street. It felt eerily still, pavements that usually bustled with shoppers almost empty. Those who were out and about gave each other a wide berth, even stepping into the gutter to avoid coming too close to anyone else. The bars and restaurants were shuttered; only the wholefood grocers, deemed an essential food shop, was open, a sign on the door limiting the number of customers to two at a time. The stream of traffic that usually stuttered up the hill was absent too. Karen counted only three cars, two going up and one down. She had no idea how all the wee shops and restaurants that dotted the streets around Hamish’s flat would survive the shutdown. A lot of them wouldn’t, she suspected.
Picardy Place, usually jammed in all directions because of the perennial roadworks, felt abandoned. Karen hurried across, up Leith Street to the point where the city became three-dimensional. Centuries of building wherever foundations could be set down – even when that place was a street already – had created a complex warren of streets that coexisted at different levels. The National Library’s back door was approached via the Cowgate, a road that crossed beneath George IV Bridge three storeys below the front door of the building. It inevitably reminded Karen of an Escher drawing. She wasn’t given to fancies, but she remembered that Hamish had once confessed that he’d wondered whether there were lost librarians wandering its aisles like the Flying Dutchman. She’d had to google that, and she had to admit to herself that it wasn’t such a daft idea.
