Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (34 page)

Scotland was home. Always. No matter what happened.

And Mum was in Scotland.

Alex turned her back on the policeman and walked away.

Investigating Alex’s disappearance and whereabouts was not Mark’s job, and he knew it. As the Family Liaison Officer, his
role was quite a different one: to support the family and keep them informed. He might not have appreciated Neville’s
dismissive
‘hand-holding, soothing noises,’ but at times that’s what it boiled down to. That, and cups of tea. Mark was very good at making tea.

‘Could I get some tea for you, Mrs. Hamilton?’ he suggested.

‘Tea.’ Jilly Hamilton rolled her eyes. ‘You could make me another gin and tonic, if you really wanted to be useful.’

Angus Hamilton also waved away his offer of tea. He was pacing: back and forth, up and down, clenching and
unclenching
his fists. ‘I just don’t know where that lass has got to,’ he muttered. ‘Does she not think we’d be worried sick?’

To Mark’s eyes, Jilly Hamilton didn’t seem worried sick: she seemed bored. While her husband paced, she examined her fingernails, as a group and singly. They were painted a deep coral pink, each one meticulously shaped to match its fellows. As far as Mark knew, neither his mother nor his sister had ever had a manicure in their lives, but he was able to recognise an expensive professional manicure when he saw one. No chips, no flaws. Perfection. Yet Jilly examined each one minutely,
pushing
gently at her cuticles, running a fingertip over each nail as though checking for any irregularity or roughness.

‘Do you like the colour?’ she said to Mark idly, stretching out both hands to show him.

‘Very nice.’

‘It’s a bit darker than I usually have. But this morning I thought, why not? If I don’t like it, I can have something
different
tomorrow.’ She held them up against the paler pink of her sweater. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they
are
too dark. Angus, sweetie, what do you think?’

Angus Hamilton made an impatient noise at the back of his throat, but said nothing. She subsided into silent contemplation of the digits in question.

Hungry. Not just hungry: she was starving. Ravenous.

Alex’s lunch had been interrupted before it happened, and so had her attempt to eat something after school. Now her stomach rumbled, reminding her that it needed feeding.

She had money in her pocket, so that wasn’t a problem.

Stopping, she looked round and saw the golden arches of McDonald’s hanging from a shop front on the other side of the street.

Unlike most girls of her age, Alex was not a frequenter of McDonald’s. She’d been to one exactly once, a long time ago. Her mother had taken her to Aberdeen on a shopping expedition, and they’d had lunch at McDonald’s. ‘I have a secret fondness for McDonald’s,’ her mother had confessed to her. ‘When I was a student in Edinburgh, I used to live on Big Macs.’

A Big Mac. That’s what she’d have: the very name reminded her of Scotland, and of her mother.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the bright, warm restaurant. It was full of people: family groups, small gangs of teenagers, a raucous children’s birthday party. She looked round self-consciously, aware of being on her own, but no one paid her any attention.

Alex got into the queue to order, reading the menu. By the time she’d reached the counter, she’d decided what to say. ‘A Big Mac Meal,’ she declared firmly.

‘What drink?’ asked the bored, acne-afflicted youth at the till.

Her mother hadn’t usually given her fizzy drinks, but when they’d gone to McDonald’s, she’d been allowed to have a Coke as a special treat with her Happy Meal. ‘Coke,’ she stated.

The youth took her ten-pound note and gave her a
handful
of change. Alex shoved the change in her pocket, and a few seconds later was presented with a tray.

‘Where should I sit?’ she asked the youth.

He looked surprised. ‘Anywhere ya want.’

Alex carried the tray to a table by the window. That way she could look out at the shoppers bustling by, or she could watch the people in the restaurant.

She stuffed a few chips into her mouth, took a slurp of the Coke, then turned her attention to the main attraction. Alex opened the yellow carton, lifted the Big Mac out, and stretching her mouth wide open, bit into it. It was heaven: never in her life had anything tasted so delicious to her. Pale orange sauce dribbled out onto her coat.

Alex scrubbed at the stain with a paper serviette. And it was then, when she noticed the bulge in her coat pocket, that she remembered the envelopes.

Neville pushed open the door of his flat and wrinkled his nose in involuntary disgust. The place stank of whiskey and misery.

The central heating was on a timer and it had been set to come on hours before, in anticipation of an earlier return, so the flat was stuffy as well. Coming in out of the cold, Neville had expected to find the warmth comforting; instead it seemed stifling. He opened a window and drew in a bracing breath of icy air. ‘That’s better,’ he muttered.

The phone. Surely she would have left a message.

There was no message.

And there was but a mere dribble of whiskey left in the bottom of the bottle.

Well, he had his Guinness. Six cans, and the off-license just round the corner in case of emergency. If he were feeling more sociable he would have gone to the pub for the real thing, on draught and freshly pulled, but the last thing he wanted right now was to be with other people. Convivial strangers, drinking buddies: he didn’t need that.

Drinking buddies. As he popped the tab on his first can and poured it with exquisite care into a glass, Neville spared a passing thought for Mark Lombardi, and not without a pang of guilt. He shouldn’t have done that to him. Not really. Mark was too nice a bloke; those wretched Hamiltons would chew him up and spit him out.

The envelopes. Alex pulled the bundle from her coat pocket and looked at them for a minute, thumbing through the stack. Her name and address were printed on each one in a neat though nondescript hand. And the stamps: they were Scottish stamps.

Most of the letters, it appeared to Alex, had never been opened, though there were a few at the bottom of the pile which had been slit across the top.

She started with that one, slipping a folded sheet of paper out of the envelope.

With a jolt that was almost physical, she recognised her mother’s handwriting. It was distinctive: bold, yet legible.

My dearest Alex
, she read, then had to stop as tears filled her eyes.

It was intolerable, Angus Hamilton said to himself. He had clearly been fobbed off with a police officer who wasn’t up to the job.

‘I’m not an investigating officer,’ DS Lombardi explained. As if that was any sort of excuse. Why hadn’t they sent a proper
detective
? The Assistant Commissioner would be hearing about this.

‘You’re a detective sergeant, are you not?’ he demanded. ‘Well, how about doing some detecting?’

‘What, exactly, is it that you want me to do?’

Angus glared at him. ‘Something. Anything. Her room, for starters. Alex’s room. Can you not search it for clues?’

‘I suppose I could take a look,’ the policeman said hesitantly.

‘Then get on with it, man.’ Angus led the way to the closed door and flung it open.

DS Lombardi spent a moment just surveying the mess within. Indicating the heaps of clothing on the floor, he said, ‘Do you know what she was wearing when she went out?’

‘My wife didn’t see her. So no. We don’t know. Her coat isn’t here, so she must’ve worn it, but apart from that, no.’

‘Is that her school uniform?’

Blazer and skirt on the floor. ‘It is,’ Angus acknowledged.

‘So she wasn’t wearing her uniform.’

‘I should think that’s bloody obvious.’

The sergeant pointed at the teddy bear in the middle of the unmade bed. ‘And she didn’t take her teddy with her.’

Angus snorted. ‘She’s twelve years old, man. Not a wee bairn. She hasn’t taken Buster out with her since she was two.’

DS Lombardi picked his way through the disaster zone that was Alex’s room. ‘That’s a nice computer,’ he said. ‘Looks pretty state-of-the-art.’

‘It’s what Alex wanted,’ Angus said smugly. ‘So I bought it for her. She fancies being a graphic designer one day.’

‘Is it all right if I touch it?’

‘As long as you don’t break it.’

The policeman pressed a key and the black screen sprang to colourful life. Superimposed on the picture—Angus recognised the Highland landscape, just outside Gartenbridge—was a log-in box.
Enter password
, it said.

‘I don’t suppose you know her password?’

Angus shook his head, scowling. ‘Now what would be the point of that?’ Was the man a blethering idiot, or was he just pretending to be one?

At least, though, this one wasn’t drooling over Jilly the way the other one had been. The DI’s eyes had been out on stalks when he’d looked at her.

Much good it would do him.