get it to her – not from here. Never mind the other fifteen.
Where the hell was I supposed to get nineteen thousand pounds from?
It was like a weight, sitting on my chest, forcing me back into the chair.
Focus on the do-able first, then worry about the rest.
Four grand by today was impossible: the ferry wouldn’t get back to Aberdeen till seven tomorrow morning. OK, I could blag a flight from Sumburgh Airport – flash my warrant card and pretend it was urgent police business – but what would be the point? Rush home so I could be in time to get my legs broken? Bugger that.
The house was a wreck, my car wasn’t worth the duct tape holding the rear bumper on, and I had nothing left to sell. Nothing: it was all gone. And shaking a few perverts and drug dealers by the ankles would only net a couple of grand tops, so how the hell was I going to get my hands on nineteen thousand pounds …?
A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. Ethan Baxter wasn’t exactly scraping along the poverty line, was he? No: Ethan drove a Mercedes; Ethan lived in a nice big house in Castleview; Ethan was due a battering anyway, why not throw in a bit of demanding money with menaces too?
Wasn’t as if the bastard didn’t deserve it. And I’m sure – given the choice of a shallow grave or making a donation – he’d jump at the chance to help out an old friend.
I’d be doing him a favour really.
Rationalization that good deserved a fresh cup of coffee.
I got as far as filling the kettle when someone banged on the front door.
‘OK, OK, I’m coming.’
More banging.
I hauled the door open.
Winter had claimed Scalloway. The rooftops were laden with thick crusts of white, the gardens nearly buried. Arnold Burges stood on the path, scuffed yellow wellingtons ankle-deep in snow, dressed in a scabby pair of orange overalls with a quilted jacket over the top and a woolly hat. His eyes were thin and dark, beard bristling.
I blocked the doorway. ‘Arnold.’
He bit his top lip, flexed his hands into fists. ‘She was alive.’ His breath hung in the cold air around his head. It stank of stale booze.
‘Did you drive here? Because—’
‘She was our little girl, and we loved her.’
‘Mr Burges, I know it’s—’
‘But Lauren’s never going to be a person in her own right, is she? She’s always going to be “Lauren Burges: the Birthday Boy’s third victim”. Like her whole childhood, all the time we had together, we were only killing time till the bastard grabbed her.’ Burges reached into his padded jacket and pulled out a red-top tabloid.
Lauren’s photo was on the front page – grinning away with a party hat perched on top of her spiky pink hair – beneath the headline, ‘BIRTHDAY BOY VICTIM’S BODY DUG UP IN OLDCASTLE.’
Bloody Oldcastle CID couldn’t keep its mouth shut if it fell in a septic tank.
‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
Burges looked away, blinking, then went back into his jacket and produced a bulging folder. He held it out. Thick snowflakes settled on the blue surface. I took it from him, put it under my arm.
‘You read that.’ He squared his shoulders, stuck his chin out. ‘You read that and you know our Lauren was real. She wasn’t just a frigging victim.’
‘You have to let the police do their job, Mr Burges. We’re going to find him, and we’re going to stop him. We’re going to make him pay for what he did to Lauren and … And the others.’ And no matter what else happened: he’d live to stand trial. The bastard would be hauled up in front of everyone, found guilty, and sent down for life. Six months tops, before someone carved his eyes out and cut off his balls in the prison laundry. Then we’d all throw a huge party.
Burges stared at me, then took a step back, nodding. ‘They sent someone round the house while I was at work yesterday, stuck a camera in Danielle’s face, wanted to know what it feels like to find out they’ve dug up your dead daughter …’
Before anyone official had even bothered to tell Burges and his wife that we’d found Lauren’s remains. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You should be.’ Burges turned, and lurched back down the path, scuffing his wellies through the snow. A scarred Berlingo van sat by the kerb, ‘CALDERS LEA AQUACULTURE LTD.’ written along the side. Benny waved at me from the driver’s seat.
I waited until Burges reached the gate. ‘I meant what I said yesterday: Henry Forrester did everything he could. It’s not his fault.’
The big man paused for a moment, then clambered into the van without a word.
It slithered away from the pavement and off into the snow.
I shuffled my chair closer to the open oven door. Not the most ecologically responsible way of heating a room, but at least now the kitchen was warm enough to sit in without getting frostbite.
Sheba creaked up from her bed in the corner and collapsed beside my chair, rolled onto her side and exposed her stomach to the warmth.
‘Dear God, when did Henry last give you a bath?’
She sighed.
I unpacked the folder Burges had given me. It was full of reports from private investigators; interview transcripts; Freedom of Information requests; statements from Lauren’s friends and family trying to piece together the last time they’d seen her alive; photos of Lauren at the beach, parties, playing in the back garden. It painted a very different picture from the official file. That one was all about facts and evidence, this one was all about Lauren Burges.
She was like Rebecca in so many ways: a nice girl, from a nice home, who got snatched from her family and tortured to death.
‘Urgh …’ A voice from the doorway.
I turned, and there was Dr McDonald: shuffling, swollen-eyed, brown curls hanging lank and greasy around her pale face.
‘You look awful.’
She winced, held up a finger. ‘Shhhh …’
‘Hungover?’
‘If you make too much noise you’ll wake him, and then I’ll have to start drinking again, and I really don’t want to start drinking again, can we not just sit in silence for a bit and then maybe it’ll all be OK and I won’t feel like throwing myself under a bus or something?’ She lowered herself onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar, then folded over until her head rested on the working surface. ‘Urgh …’
‘Hungry?’
‘Urgh …’
‘Trust me: get something in your stomach now, before Henry wakes up and cracks open that litre of Bells.’
‘Do I have to?’ She peered at me, head still resting on the countertop. ‘OK. I’ll have eggs and toast and bacon and sausages and tomato and mushrooms and chips and black pudding, and—’
‘Then you should’ve stayed at the hotel last night, instead of staggering back here with Henry to polish off the Isle of Jura, shouldn’t you?’ I stood and pulled a greasy paper bag out of the bread bin. ‘Bought a couple of sausage rolls on the way over this morning. You want them warmed in the microwave, or the oven?’
‘I want to go home.’ Music blared out of her jeans. ‘Noooo …’ She pulled a smartphone from a pocket and jabbed a finger at the display. It kept on singing. Jab, jab, jab. Dr McDonald dumped the thing on the breakfast bar and wrapped her arms around her head. ‘Make it stop …’
I picked the phone up. A photo of Detective Chief Superintendent