Where the Bodies are Buried (12 page)

Her next task was to sit down with the telephone and make a note of the numbers. Jim’s office handset had a little colour
LCD screen that allowed you to list the last ten calls, incoming and outgoing. She started with the former, but had only written
down half the list when her endeavours were interrupted by the phone trilling into life.

Jasmine surprised herself by remembering to answer ‘Sharp Investigations?’ rather than the tentative ‘Hello?’ that she would
have managed had it been her mobile.

A woman’s voice asked if Jim was there.

‘Can you tell me who’s calling?’

‘It’s Anne Ramsay,’ the voice replied.

Jasmine felt herself stiffen, as though her senses were making themselves more alert.

‘He said he might have some news for me early in the week. I didn’t hear from him yesterday, so I’m just phoning to see if
he’s got …’

She sounded barely more optimistic than Jasmine, somebody who was used to being disappointed. Jasmine could feel those same
senses lapse as though being ordered to stand down. The caller was in the same boat as herself, someone expecting to hear
from Jim who was wondering why he hadn’t got in touch.

Nonetheless, now that she had her on the line, she should try and find out a bit about her case, as it appeared to be something
Jim had been working on without making any mention of it to Jasmine. Was
this, in fact, the case that was ‘a wee bit sensitive’ and that had thus led to Jasmine being given the day off on Friday?

‘I’m afraid Jim isn’t in the office just now.’

‘I know. It was his mobile number I was calling.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, he’s got it on divert at the moment. Can you tell me what it was regarding?’

‘It’s Anne Ramsay,’ the woman said, a little insistently. Jasmine was just slightly too late in interpreting from her tone
that this alone was supposed to answer her question.

‘Yes, but can you tell me what your case was concerning?’

This time there was little chance of Jasmine missing any nuance to her manner.

‘Christ alive, you have got to be kidding me,’ she hissed, sounding caught between anger and tears. ‘You have got to be bloody
…’

There was a brief silence, during which it sounded like her words had choked in her throat, then the line went dead. She had
hung up.

Way to go, girl, Jasmine thought. At least it proved she was becoming more autonomous in her work. Even with Jim not around
to help her, she was able to obtain the same result: Jasmine screws up.

She pushed the red button to disconnect her end of the call and went back to listing the numbers. Anne Ramsay’s was now top,
and would have automatically bumped the tenth most recent from the memory. She realised that her own diverted calls to Jim’s
mobile would have accounted for another two, and was grateful she hadn’t let it ring out every time she had tried him.

She completed her lists and set about putting names to the numbers. The incoming column was two shorter than the outgoing
because strictly speaking the handset recorded calls, not numbers, so those made from behind large company switchboards came
up as ‘number unavailable’.

The second most recent incoming call was from Galt Linklater yesterday. She saw the number twice on the outgoing list and
put the initials next to each instance. This prompted her to check Hayden-Murray’s number too, which accounted for more listings
in either column.

Once she had subtracted her call to Jim’s daughter Angela, she was left with four incoming and five outgoing numbers she still
had to identify. For what it was worth, she put them all into Google, which identified one more, another law firm that Jim
must have done some work for.

Her next task would be to cross-refer them against any numbers found in her list of recent case files. After that, if she
still had a few question marks, she’d have to just try phoning them and asking, though this really would be the last resort.
If they were up to no good, they were hardly going to cooperate. Actually, even if they were perfectly innocent, who would
let a stranger put a name to their number in this day and age, unless they were lonely and wanted to spend a lot of time talking
to double-glazing salesmen and debt consolidators.

She looked at the stack of files. Cold-calling suddenly seemed a more appealing prospect than sifting through that lot, but
at least it would keep her occupied, keep her kidding herself that she was engaged in a purpose.

She made herself a cup of tea and got busy: methodical, plodding, dull.

She was about forty minutes in when she was interrupted by the arrival of a visitor. It didn’t so much distract her from her
task as almost yank her from her chair.

He was just standing there like he had materialised halfway into the office. Jasmine shuddered and recoiled, causing the chair
to roll back on its wheels, and the visitor looked a little startled himself.

The door was hidden from where Jasmine sat at Jim’s desk, the filing cabinets and the sink partitioned off by a wall that
created a small corridor and rendered the office L-shaped. He hadn’t buzzed to be let into the building, perhaps having come
in as someone else left, and Jasmine hadn’t heard him open the office door. His progress from there must have been muted and
tentative; he gave the impression that by the time he turned the corner, he hadn’t expected to find anybody, most probably
because the place was monastically silent.

He put a hand to his chest to acknowledge his own fright, and laughed a little at their mutual shock.

‘I’m sorry, the door was open and then it was so quiet …’

‘Can I help you?’ Jasmine recovered enough to ask.

He was an older man, maybe around Jim’s age, possibly a little younger. He wore a grey suit that was smart but far from fashionable,
unbuttoned at the front so as not to encumber a protuberant stomach that had presumably been a lot smaller when the jacket
first left the tailor’s. He was tall and broad in the shoulders, a little jowly about the jawline, but surprisingly light
on his feet, as proven by his near-silent approach.

He flashed a warrant card, at which point Jasmine could have kicked herself. Jim kept going on about hiring her because cops
and ex-cops were so obvious to the trained eye. This proved her training was still in its early stages.

‘Detective Sergeant McDade,’ he said.

Jasmine felt a cold dread for a moment as she briefly considered the possibility that he was the official bearer of bad news,
but she just as quickly dismissed it. They wouldn’t send a cop to her, but to Jim’s ex-wife or to Angela. Plus, he wouldn’t
be making light of anything upon his entrance.

‘I believe you made a missing-person report? Your uncle?’

She stared blankly at him in disbelief, a little thrown that such a senior officer would be looking into it, and so soon after
her being given short (but polite) shrift at the station.

McDade seemed to interpret this as confusion.

‘You are Jasmine Sharp, aren’t you?’ he checked.

‘Yes. Sorry, I just … Sergeant Collins didn’t give me the impression that I should expect much of a response.’

McDade nodded as if to say fair enough.

‘Aye, ordinarily. But I saw the report flash up and I recognised the name. I checked, and when it turned out it was the same
Jim Sharp, I thought I’d better look into it. I worked with him, you see. Not often. Different divisions, but our paths crossed.
Sergeant Collins said you reported that it was uncharacteristic for him to drop off the radar, and from what I knew of him,
I’d concur.’

Jasmine felt a glimmer of relief that her report was being taken seriously by the professionals, diluted within a greater
volume of anxiety at this confirmation that the professionals considered it a matter they ought to be taking seriously.

McDade pulled up a chair and sat opposite, scribbling in a notebook as he got her to go over the details again for him. Every
time he asked her a question, even the clarification of a minor point, he fixed her with a penetrating stare that seemed to
look right inside her. It almost made her want to make up more dramatic details in case he concluded that she was wasting
police time. She could easily imagine suspects wilting under that gaze during interview. She wondered how many years on the
job it took to develop, while the actor in her wondered how difficult it might be to fake.

He didn’t give her any feedback, not even the occasional nod. Just
always that stare, probing, evaluating. This would not be an easy man to lie to.

‘So, is that anything to go on?’ she asked, feeling an unusually strong need for affirmation.

He made the slightest grimace, but not enough to indicate whether his sour look was because she’d given him nothing or because
what she’d given him made him fear the worst.

‘I would suspect you know more than you’re saying,’ he said, which immediately made Jasmine feel both guilty and rattled.
‘It’s okay, I don’t mean you’re being deceitful. It’s just that in cases like this, there’s often things people are reluctant
to say, maybe because they don’t want to sound daft or because they don’t think it’s relevant, or they don’t want to place
suspicion on somebody unnecessarily. But the reason those very things are on their minds is often significant. So with that
in mind, is there anything you think this could be related to? Maybe something Jim was working on, anything?’

‘I’ve been asking myself that all morning, and nothing’s leapt out. The recent files are all here, if you want to have a look.
You’d probably know better than me if there’s any names in there that ring alarm bells. It’s fairly standard stuff, though.
The only ones that stood out were a couple of missing-person cases, and they only stood out inasmuch as I wasn’t aware of
them before. The main one was for this woman Anne Ramsay. Jim gave me the day off on Friday, and I think it was because he
was working on this. He said it was sensitive. I don’t know anything about it, though.’

McDade nodded sagely, as much of a response as any of her information had elicited.

‘You know about it?’

‘Everybody knows about it who’s past a certain age. You’re a bit young yourself. Tragic story. She was effectively orphaned
when she was about four. Her parents and her baby brother disappeared one day and us polis were never able to shed any light
on the mystery. Now that she’s all grown up and presumably got the money to do so, she must have hired Jim to look into it
again. We found nothing at the time, so it’s hard to imagine it would be any easier twenty-five or so years later.’

‘She was on the phone this morning, though. She said Jim had suggested he would have some news for her early this week.’

McDade gave a small, sad laugh, simultaneously sceptical and regretful.

‘I very much doubt it was “news” news. Unless I’ve badly misread him, Jim never struck me as the type to take advantage of
someone as desperate and vulnerable as that, though there’s plenty would. They’d just keep stringing her along with titbits
until the money ran out. I’d imagine he was planning to let her down gently. That’s what I would hope, anyway.’

‘But if he wanted me out of the way on Friday, why did he tell her he’d have news this week?’

‘Maybe that wasn’t why he wanted you out of the way on Friday,’ McDade suggested. ‘Either way, it’s a dead end. What was the
other case?’

Jasmine cast a glance at the pile of folders.

‘Oh, that one I only noticed because Jim had the file out, but it’s not a live case per se. The last action on it was back
in October. Missing person. Somebody called Glen Fallan.’

This time there was an unequivocal reaction from McDade, the genuine surprise of hearing something quite unexpected.

‘You recognise the name?’ Jasmine asked rhetorically. ‘Who is he?’

‘Bad news,’ McDade replied, that slight sourness returning to his expression, as though the words themselves were bitter in
his mouth. ‘A mercilessly brutal man. Debt collector, enforcer, torturer, hit man. Ice-cold killer, and when I say that, I
mean like the ice doesn’t feel anything when it freezes you to death.’

Jasmine could actually feel cold on her neck as he spoke, a moment of chill combined with that same exhilarated sense of connection
she’d experienced the moment Anne Ramsay announced her name.

‘So he would definitely fit the bill, then,’ she suggested.

‘He might if he hadn’t been dead for twenty years.’

‘Twe … So why would someone be hiring Jim to look for him?’

‘First question I asked myself when you mentioned his name. A wee bit of the Elvis syndrome, I think. Somebody famous – or
sufficiently infamous – shuffles off and some people cannae quite believe it. He was an extraordinarily dangerous individual:
he lived by the sword and he almost certainly died by it. In this case, there was a basis for the ambiguity in that there
was never a body to bury, but that was no surprise, either to us polis or to the folk in the circles he moved in.’

‘Why not?’

‘In his world, people disappear with depressing frequency, especially back then. It muddies the waters if their bodies are
never found: no
corpse, no crime. It also means no closure for their relatives, which is particularly cruel. No opportunity to mourn. Nobody
would have been mourning Glen Fallan, though. Only heart disease has killed more men in this city, and if someone hadn’t ended
him, he might well have overtaken it.’

‘But if Jim was looking for him, wouldn’t that expose him to, you know, dangerous elements?’

‘You said yourself the last action on the case was ten months ago. To be honest, the only motive to harm Jim that I can derive
from this evidence would be envy.’

‘Envy? Of what? By whom?’

‘Retired cops and other private investigators. He appears to have cornered the market in getting paid by the day to look for
people who will never be found because they’ve been dead for decades. Nice work if you can get it.’

Presented with that impassive face and that stare, it took Jasmine a few seconds to realise McDade wasn’t serious.