Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (42 page)

The woman at the counter in the Tourist Information centre had a lovely, warm Edinburgh accent and a smile to match. ‘Buses to Kelso?’ she said in response to Alex’s question. ‘Couldna be easier, lassie. Walk straight along this street,’ at which she pointed in the proper direction, ‘and you’ll be in Waterloo Place. The calling point for the Borders buses is right there on the street. It’s marked. There are several buses a day—I’ll give you a timetable.’ Efficiently she riffled through a file and pulled one out, handing it across the counter.

‘Do you have any idea what the fare might be?’ Alex asked, trying not to betray her apprehension.

‘For a child? Two or three pounds, I imagine.’

That was all right, then. It would even give her enough money to get something to eat before she caught the bus. Impulsively she asked, ‘Is there a McDonald’s near here?’

‘Oh, aye. Just round the corner. Right here in the Princes Mall, as a matter of fact.’ Again the woman pointed in the general direction.

Alex found the McDonald’s with no trouble. This time she knew what she wanted, without even having to look at the menu board. ‘A Big Mac Meal,’ she stated confidently, handing over
her last five-pound note. Now there was just a ten-pound note and some change in her pocket.

It was worth it, she decided when she bit into it. Her Mum’s favourite. She might even be sitting in the very seat Mum had sat in, when she ate at McDonald’s in her student days.

Neville escorted Lee Bicknell to an interview room while Cowley carried the computer to Danny in the lab.

But even by the time Cowley returned, Bicknell wasn’t ready to answer any questions. ‘I don’t have anything to say,’ he stated, after Neville had turned on the tape recorder and said the appropriate preliminary words into it. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sasha. Tell us about Sasha.’

‘I don’t know anyone called Sasha.’

Neville leaned across the table; it was time to cut the crap. ‘We have your e-mails, mate. Jack to Sasha, Sasha to Jack. She kept them all. And we have your computer. Even if you erased those e-mails, our boy Danny will find them. He’s brilliant that way.’

Bicknell remained stubborn. ‘My name is Lee, not Jack. And I don’t know any Sasha.’

‘What did you do with her?’ Cowley put in. ‘With Sasha?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What am I supposed to have done? Tell me that.’

‘You know bloody well what you’ve done,’ Neville snapped. ‘And so do we. Tell us where she is, and save us all a lot of trouble.’

He folded his hands in front of him. ‘I’m allowed to have a solicitor, aren’t I?’

‘Of course you can have a solicitor. You’re here voluntarily, anyway,’ Neville reminded him. ‘You haven’t been arrested or charged with anything. Yet.’

‘Oh, yeah. Voluntarily. Ha ha.’ Now Bicknell crossed his arms across his chest. ‘I’d like to see a solicitor before I answer any more questions.’

‘Fine.’ Neville said the appropriate words to terminate the interview. ‘Did you have one in mind, or will you need some help finding one?’

‘If you’re trying to imply that…that I’ve been arrested before, then you’re wrong.’ Bicknell’s defensiveness was becoming more pronounced by the minute. ‘I tell you, I’m an innocent man. I haven’t done anything.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Neville said. ‘Sid, could you help this gentleman? I have other things to do with my time.’

Alex finished her Big Mac with a satisfied sigh. It had tasted, she decided, even better than the English one.

She paid a quick visit to the loo, then was ready to go and catch the bus. Now that she was so close to her goal—to her mum—she was anxious that it should happen as quickly as possible. By this evening she and Mum would be together, and nothing could tear them apart again. Not Dad, and certainly not Jilly. She was almost there.

It was dark outside, and getting even colder. But it wasn’t far to the bus. She walked along Princes Street to Waterloo Place confidently.

Here was the calling point. It was, as the nice woman had said, well marked with a sign, though no one else was waiting there.

Alex stood for about a quarter of an hour, feeling the cold more intensely with each passing minute. Surely it wouldn’t be long: weren’t buses supposed to come along every ten minutes or so? She stomped her feet, clapped her hands together.

Then she remembered that the nice woman had given her a timetable.

Yes, she’d put it in her pocket.

Under the light of a nearby street lamp she opened it up. Monday to Friday? No, this was Saturday, she reminded herself.

The buses which went all the way to Kelso on a Saturday left at nine and eleven fifty-five in the morning.

She had missed the last bus by hours.

Bitter, bitter disappointment rose in her throat like bile.

Well, she told herself sternly, if she had to wait till tomorrow morning for the next bus, then she’d just have to wait. Last night she’d slept rough; she could do it again. Surely she could find a warm place in Edinburgh to spend the night—if nothing else, a secluded corner of Waverley Station. Then she’d be close by to catch the early bus tomorrow morning, and be with her mum by well before lunch-time.

She ran her finger down the timetable to the Sunday buses.

Two through buses again. But this time they were at five past three and twenty-five past five. In the afternoon.

Nearly twenty-four hours from now.

It was just too much. The tears she’d so heroically resisted till now welled up and would not be stemmed.

She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue; not finding one, she wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve. But still the tears flowed. Alex sobbed, gulped, sobbed some more. She was so close—had come so far—and now this had happened. Twenty-four more hours!

A car paused at the kerb and the window was wound down. ‘Are ye all right, lassie?’ said a man’s voice.

Unrelenting cheerfulness: it was one of the things Neville had come to appreciate about Danny Duffy—and perhaps resent a bit as well. Danny smiled through the most horrific revelations, able to take pleasure in his abilities to uncover them.

‘Some of the worst pictures I’ve ever seen, Guv,’ he said, beaming. ‘Really nasty stuff. And there aren’t just a few. There are thousands. Do you want to take a look?’

‘No, thank you.’

Danny went on, undeterred. ‘I suspected I’d find something like this when his ISP told me he had an account for the
highest
-speed broadband available. You don’t pay for that sort of speed if you’re just sending a few e-mails, Guv. It means massive downloading.’

‘Girls?’ Neville guessed, not bothering to hide his revulsion.

‘Well, yes.’ Danny nodded. ‘But the thing is, Guv, they’re very specific. From what I’ve seen, anyway. Not
little
girls. Not teenagers. Girls of that sort of in-between age. Eleven, twelve, thirteen—that kind of thing.’

‘Like Alex,’ said Neville.

‘Like Alex. Or Sasha, as he knew her.’ Danny shook his head. ‘And another thing, Guv. Alex—Sasha—isn’t the only one he’s been e-mailing, using the name of Jack. There are lots of them. Charlotte, Jennifer, Mandy, Kylie. Others.’

‘Sounds like we have enough there to lock him up for a while,’ Neville said with grim satisfaction. The trouble was, they wouldn’t lock him up for long enough. If he got himself a moderately decent lawyer, he’d be able to wriggle out of it with some minimal sentence. Maybe four years for the downloaded stuff, of which he’d only end up serving two years. The next thing they knew he’d be out, e-mailing a new crop of pre-teen girls.

For a fleeting moment, Neville fantasised about leaving Lee Bicknell alone with Angus Hamilton for five minutes.

‘Thanks, Danny,’ he added. ‘You’ve been brilliant.’

Danny’s grin was even wider than usual. ‘I can’t take that much credit for it, Guv. Honestly. I just turned the machine on and walked right in. Wouldn’t you have thought the bloke would have protected his porn with a password?’

The man smiled at Alex, his teeth flashing in the light of the street lamp as he leaned across the car to the window on the passenger side. ‘Are ye all right?’ he repeated.

He looked, she thought immediately, like her granddad. Very like him, from his sandy hair to his tweed jacket. And his voice was like Granddad’s as well. That lovely country burr.

‘The bus,’ she sobbed. ‘It won’t come till tomorrow
afternoon
.’

‘You’ve missed your bus, lassie? Where is it ye were wanting to go?’

‘Kelso. To find my mum.’ The tears just wouldn’t stop; she wiped at her face with her sleeve.

He rolled the window down further and a handkerchief appeared in his hand. ‘Here, lassie. Take this. It’s clean, I promise.’

Alex leaned over and accepted it. ‘Thank you.’

‘Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’

She
did
want to tell him, she realised. He was looking at her with such concern. Just like Granddad had done, when she’d skinned her knee.

But the words refused to come. There was only one over-riding thought in her head. ‘My mum,’ she sobbed. ‘I want my mum.’

‘Your mum’s in Kelso, ye say?’

She nodded, pressing the handkerchief to her face and finding that it carried a faint scent of pipe tobacco, a smell she’d always associated with Granddad.

‘Well, isn’t that a stroke of luck! That’s exactly where I’m going.’

‘Oh!’ she gasped.

‘Come on, lassie—what are ye waiting for?’ he said as the passenger door swung open. ‘Get in.’