Believe No One (38 page)

‘Might've been asleep.'

She gazed at him in wonder. ‘Sir, you must be one heavy sleeper.'

He didn't answer.

‘You know what we're here for.'

Simms caught a wild look in his eye that she recognized instantly as the mad scramble of a guilty man.

‘Is this about the boy?'

‘The boy?' Hicks said.

Simms met Hicks's gaze. They understood each other perfectly.

‘I meant the murder. The lady lived over in lot thirty-three.'

‘Sharla Jane Patterson. You know her?'

‘Not really.'

‘But you know the boy,' Simms said.

‘Yeah.' He realized what he'd said and she saw a momentary panic in his eyes again. ‘No, not like that.'

‘Like what?' Hicks asked, acting the perfect foil.

‘Like what you're making out.'

The two women looked at each other as though he was a deep mystery to them.

‘That boy's a thief,' he said, on the defensive. ‘He stole beer right out of my cooler box.'

‘You don't say?' Hicks thumbed open her shirt pocket and took out her notebook, frowning and shaking her head like she wondered how standards of common decency had come to this sorry pass.

‘Yeah.' He was more confidently indignant now.

‘When you say, “the boy” …?'

‘What'd you come here on the short bus?' he said, instantly losing patience. ‘Riley
Patterson,
o' course.'

She tapped her notebook with her pen. ‘For the record,' she said, her tone flat, like she was just trying to get the facts straight. ‘So, Riley Patterson stole your beer—'

He huffed a sigh. ‘Out of my cooler.'

She wrote it down.

‘Out of your cooler in your house?' she said, her pen poised over her notebook.

‘What?' He looked stupefied for a moment. ‘No! He was
never
in my house.'

Sweat broke out on his forehead and covered his arms in a slick sheen, but he kept his right hand in place. ‘Is there something wrong with your arm, Mr Goodman?' Simms asked.

‘No.'

‘May I see?'

‘No.' He looked at Hicks as though she might rescue him.

‘Tell you what,' Hicks said. ‘Show a little cooperation, or we can have this discussion over at the sheriff's office in Westfield.'

His shoulders slumped and he looked like he was about to cry. ‘You're gonna take this all wrong,' he said, but he slid his hand away, revealing a healing cut on his left forearm.

The masked killer in the recording of Sharla Jane's murder wore a bandage on his left hand.

‘Show me your hands,' Hicks said.

He held them out, trembling, palms down, then palms up. There were no further cuts.

‘You need to explain that,' Hicks said.

‘The kid come tearing past my trailer the night he disappeared.'

‘What time of night?'

‘I don't know – it was just after dark, I guess. I was trying to
help
the boy, but the little bastard slashed me with a knife, kept running.'

‘Where?'

‘Into the woods.' He jerked his head towards the mass of green beyond the post-and-rail fence at the boundary.

‘What made you think he needed help?' Simms asked.

‘He was crying, running like the hounds a' hell was on his tail. And …' He stopped for a second, seemed to weigh up if the next piece of information would get him out of trouble or dig him a deeper hole.

‘
And,
‘ Hicks said, in a tone that said she would poke him with a sharp stick if he didn't get on with it.

‘The feller lived with his momma come running right after him.'

This was their first eyewitness confirmation that Sharla Jane's lover was the man they were hunting. Hicks said, ‘Uh-huh,' wrote it down like she knew all along.

‘And when you saw this fellow running after Riley, what'd
you
do, Mr Goodman?'

‘I had
injuries
,' he said. ‘Blood
all over
me. I went inside, fixed myself up.'

Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland
Monday, late evening, BST

Josh Brown sat in the tiny staff kitchen on the third floor of the science building, which had become his unofficial office and occasional crib. The ‘Save Suzie!' forum was abuzz. The sketch image he'd uploaded had generated hundreds of responses. Suggestions about the identity of the man in the sketch, direct messages from people asking him to telephone or email them, speculation about who had posted the image. He had replied to all of the messages via the forum or anonymously, using email addresses he created and then deleted, a burner phone for the calls. He'd spoken to people who were earnest, or crazed, or out-and-out con artists, and not one of them had information that he could use.

He closed the forum page and sipped black coffee while he read through a bundle of press clippings from the
Hawick News.
Professor Fennimore had forwarded him a sort of ‘Rough Guide to Serial Killers' compiled by the FBI behaviourist. The guide listed the kind of criminal behaviours the Task Force would be interested in for the purposes of identifying their killer. The behaviourist estimated that their man (or men) would be twenty-five to thirty-five years old. Which meant that he (or they) would be teenagers ten or twenty years ago. In the interests of thoroughness, Josh had asked the paper's archivist to send him stories going back twenty years.

There were a lot. Unlike the nationals, local papers thrived on minor details, and would report even the pettiest criminality – which suited Josh's purpose, because if their killer really had been brought up around Hawick, he would have started small.

A two-tone notification on his laptop alerted Josh to incoming email. A fresh crop of stories. He skim-read: teenaged peeping Toms, rabbit slayers and cat tormentors; a couple of fire-starters. The next item didn't seem to fit.

At the top of the page:
GIRL HURT IN WALL COLLAPSE
. Josh read on: ‘Hawick schoolgirl, Isla Bain, was critically injured by a wall collapse in the ruins of a cottage on the edge of Whitlaw Wood. Isla (thirteen) was found under rubble by dog walkers …'

He skipped to the next headline:
BRAVE TEEN LOSES BATTLE FOR LIFE.

The next, dated a week later:
ISLA – POLICE INTERVIEW SCHOOL-FRIENDS.

The final headline:
ISLA DEATH WAS MURDER.

‘Okay …' Josh read the full text. It seemed that a neighbour had seen Isla with a boy, walking in Lynn Wood, a strip of woodland that merged into Whitlaw Wood at its southerly tip. They were some distance away, and the boy, wearing a hooded jacket, was not identified. This was sixteen years ago.

The archivist had added a note: ‘The Procurator Fiscal ruled that Isla had been murdered by person or persons unknown. I had a chat with the detective who ran the investigation. Isla's wrists and feet bore ligature marks; she had been sexually assaulted – no usable DNA. She was found on the ground with her hands above her head, as if someone had held them there. The inquiry team was convinced they were looking for at least two attackers – one to hold her still, one to shift the rocks. They'd never thought it was a wall collapse – the nearest damaged section of wall was ten feet away – but they kept it quiet while they interviewed the kids, hoping they would trip themselves up, I suppose.'

Josh dialled the archivist's mobile number. It went straight to voicemail. He typed a fast email, asking for the name and phone number of the archivist's police source. Next, a call to his contact in Police Scotland. They would need to know the names of every boy on the high-school roll that year. That would have to wait until morning, when the school opened, he was told. If Isla's clothing had been kept in evidence, DNA technology had moved on in twenty years: ‘usable DNA' had been redefined by low-template DNA. They agreed to be in touch around midday the following day.

Fennimore had called him en route to Chicago – he would be hard to reach until Tuesday evening: DCI Simms would be his first point of contact. He tried Fennimore's phone anyway, but it was switched off. He scrolled through his contacts to Chief Inspector Simms, his thumb hovering over the ‘call' icon. Simms didn't trust him, and that made him nervous. It wasn't like he had anything concrete yet. It made sense to get the list of boys on the school roll, talk to the archivist's police contact, liaise with Police Scotland, rather than go in half-cocked.

What difference could a few hours make after fifteen years?

He checked his watch – 9.47 p.m., time enough to head downtown for a drink. The sun had just set. On a fine summer's day, the evening afterglow could take you almost to midnight before dropping fully into darkness, but clouds scudding in on a north-easterly crowded over the Granite City, bringing nightfall two hours early. The wind funnelled down the narrow backstreets, blowing hard, cold rain in across Aberdeen harbour from the North Sea. He turned up his jacket collar and leaned into the wind. It was a ten-minute walk down the back lanes, heading towards Market Street, and as close to the harbour as you could get without diving in. In five minutes he was in the narrow cobbled lane called Back Wynd, a row of trendy shops to his right and the grey granite wall of St Nicholas Kirk churchyard on his left.

The bar was busy, filled out with the night-time crowd: almost exclusively male, young and fit. He wove through the crowd, glad of the warmth, feeling appreciative eyes on him, enjoying the attention, confident of his own good looks. The bar staff knew him, and a nod was all it took to place his order. He peeled off his jacket and pushed his fingers through his hair. The barman handed him a towel with his glass of merlot and he took it, laughing. He rubbed the towel over his head and handed it back to the barman. A movement at the far end of the bar caught his attention. A guy had leaned forward to get a better look; Josh propped one elbow on the bar and met his eye. He was fortyish, fit-looking, dark hair, beard. Josh smiled. Flustered, the man looked away, finished his beer fast and was retreating towards the door before Josh got properly settled on his bar stool.

Pity – he was cute.

Josh ate a burger, chatted up the barman and stayed an hour, drinking one slow pint. He rented an apartment on Charlotte Street for its proximity to the university, and now he headed back to it, taking the same route he had come. There was no break in the clouds, but the rain had stopped, and the wind was at his back. A styrofoam box skittered past him, stumbling and stuttering over the stone setts, the sound echoing from the kirkyard wall like a whispered prayer. After it, a single point of sound, like a stone dropped in a pool. Low in pitch, and solid – a footfall. He slowed his pace, listening intently. It came again, the solid clump of a heel on stone, followed by the slither of shoe leather. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up; he was being shadowed, and not very competently.

He assessed his surroundings: it was eleven thirty at night, and this end of Back Wynd was deserted, the shops shuttered, the gated entrances locked; the kirkyard wall a fifteen-foot barrier on his right. He crossed the road, glancing left, saw the shadow of a man. The shadow made one misstep, then continued on, head down. Josh had already passed the two side streets that might provide an escape route. It was a hundred-yard sprint from here to Schoolhill, and more closed shops. He could turn back, take refuge in O'Neill's pub, but even if he got past his stalker, he'd have to go home sometime and he needed to know what kind of threat this guy was.

Facing a shopfront, Josh feigned interest in the window display. He kept his head low, using his peripheral vision to monitor the man's approach.

The stalker moved closer, his hard leather shoes ringing out on the stone setts, now he wasn't tiptoeing.
Taller than me,
Josh estimated, and heavier. A few more steps and he'd be alongside.

The hands, watch the hands.

As the man passed, he swerved out, giving Josh a wide berth heading up to the crossroads.

His heart hammering, Josh spun right. ‘You lost, mate?'

The man danced sideways as if he'd been prodded. ‘Sorry, what? Are you talking to me?'

East London. Definitely. Smoothed out, for sure, but it was there.

‘'Cos you seem to be following me.'

‘What? No!' Hands wide, empty.

Josh took a step nearer, recognized the guy from the bar. ‘I'll give you some advice for free: you're lost, following someone else is bad strategy. 'Cos where
they
want to go, isn't necessarily where
you
want to be.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Another step. ‘I think you do.'

‘This is bollocks.' The man turned to go.

Josh grabbed the guy's left arm, pulling him off balance, shoved his right shoulder. Using his forward momentum, he slammed the guy against the shop window.

The man struggled weakly, but Josh had his wrist in a lock, and he mashed his face against the glass until he stood still.

‘Who sent you?' he demanded.

‘No one.
Nobody
sent me.'

He tried to turn, but Josh kicked his legs wide. The shoes were fancy Italian jobs with hard leather soles. ‘If you're the best they could do, I feel insulted. I mean, who told you it was okay to wear tap shoes on a follow?'

‘I
really
don't know what you're talking about,' the man said, his voice high-pitched with fear.

‘You do
not
want to fuck with me,' Josh said, increasing the pressure, forcing him into the storefront window till the glass bowed. ‘You left the bar an hour ago, and yet here you are on the street, same time as me.'

‘I swear, I don't know—' Josh tweaked the wrist-hold and the man cried out. ‘All right! Okay … I went to O'Neill's.'