Where the Bodies are Buried (27 page)

‘Depending on what stage of the transaction had been reached, this could get very messy. There’s bound to be quite a “he said,
she said” between the wholesaler and the buyer over who owes who.’

‘“Likely to prove explosive”,’ Zoe quoted, opening up another interpretation of the informant’s carefully chosen words. ‘Any
word on who the buyer was likely to be?’

Catherine thought of Frankie Callahan’s distracted calm, his controlled management of her visit, a man not wanting any complications;
a man with something major in the offing.

She could see Laura through the glass, striding towards Catherine’s office with that serious, determined look on her face.
It was good to have someone working alongside you with that level of application
and commitment to the job in hand, but if the lassie didn’t lighten up a wee bit now and again, she was going to start worrying.

Laura had spent most of the previous day diligently probing for holes in Gary Fleeting’s alibi, going at the task like it
was her predestined purpose in life. The guy had baited and patronised her with what he believed at the time to be impunity.
Instead he had just made it Laura’s sole ambition to put him away.

Laura tracked down the one-night stand, a girl called Lyndsay McLaughlin. She admitted sleeping with Fleeting, but it was
the sleeping part that was a problem for his alibi. Lyndsay said she woke around two in the afternoon, so couldn’t confirm
Fleeting’s claim not to have left until after one.

The Bay Tree was starting to show gaps in its foliage too, as far as it covered Fleeting’s evening. All the diners Laura spoke
to confirmed that they had seen him working behind the bar, but they were less certain about whether he was still there around
the time they were leaving. One did say he was fairly sure Fleeting served him during last orders, but admitted to having
had quite a few by that point. Pissed revellers did not play well in court as witnesses, no matter what they did for a living
or how posh their postcode.

Laura swept on towards Catherine’s office with an impatient sense of purpose. She looked like she had news.

‘Just the woman I wanted to see,’ Catherine hailed as Laura reached her office doorway. ‘We need to go back and ask Frankie
Callahan a few more awkward questions.’

‘I think that’s going to be a problem,’ Laura replied.

The door was answered by a hard-faced middle-aged woman in hospital blues. Jasmine pondered briefly whether William Bain would
turn out to be considerably older and more infirm than the most recent photo suggested, but then she noted the laminated badge
pinned to the woman’s chest. It was issued by Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride and identified her as ‘Margaret Bain, Maternity
Ward’.

She stepped aside to let them in but kept the door open as she pulled a light jacket off the end of the nearby banister.

‘I’m just going on shift,’ she explained. ‘I’d make yous a cuppa tea, but I’m cutting it close. He’s in the living room.’

Jasmine was about to assure her it was fine, but she was out of the door and away with all haste.

They stood in the hallway for a few moments, wondering whether Bain would appear to greet them or should they feel free to
proceed unaccompanied. Ingrams looked the place up and down, almost bashing his holdall against the wall as he turned around
in the narrow hallway. He had a camera slung around his neck, a tripod and spare lenses in the bag.

They had picked these up from the office, after which they stopped in at the Silverburn shopping centre. They grabbed a quick
bite to eat there, and Jasmine purchased a notepad and some pens in order to look more like a reporter. While they ate, Ingrams
gave her a few suggestions for what she should ask, then led her off to a men’s fashion store, where he bought a black peaked
cap.

He had pulled it down low and tight over his head just before they got out of the car at Bain’s address. Jasmine asked why
he thought it would make him look more authentically like a photographer, but she got no answer.

Ingrams had paid for the food, like he paid for the hotel, and had fronted up the cash to pay Bain too. She was as grateful
for his money as she was grateful for the assistance of someone who appeared to
know what he was doing, but what made her uncomfortable – even more than being in some scary stranger’s debt – was that she
still couldn’t work out what was in it for him. He’d claimed he wanted to know how he fitted into the picture, particularly
as the picture now involved death, attempted murder and conspiracy to destroy evidence, but he had equally insisted that his
part was tangential, that Jasmine had been the target back in Northumberland. As far as she could see, this equation didn’t
add up. It was missing a variable.

The Bains’ house was a 1950s-built ex-council semi, the kind of place that could look deceptively small on the outside but
surprisingly roomy within. In Bain’s case, the deception was reversed, largely because the place was so cluttered. There was
no empty space on any horizontal surface, every flat object accommodating a smaller one above. Stacks of magazines provided
a platform for piles of DVDs, or in some gloomier corners, piles of VHS tapes. Sun-faded cardboard boxes towered and interlocked
like brickwork along walls and beneath tables. It was quite definitely the home of somebody who never threw anything out,
and as the cash-stuffed envelope in Ingrams’ bag testified, never gave anything away either.

There was a smell of chips throughout the place too; not the enticing aroma of vinegar, but the slightly choking stale odour
that hung around after cooking. It made her wish she hadn’t eaten.

Bain sat in an armchair in front of a disproportionately large telly tuned to Sky Sports News. He turned down the volume by
way of acknowledging their arrival, but didn’t switch off the set. He looked early sixties but was possibly younger, given
that he didn’t appear to be a long-term
Men’s Health
subscriber. He was fatter than the photos had suggested, the slight jowliness of his face only hinting at the extent of his
middle-age spread. Jasmine scanned the walls and spotted a few photos among the piles of junk. No kids. Just him and the wife.
Looked like they’d lived here for decades.

‘You got the money?’ he asked.

Ingrams handed it to Jasmine as he crouched down over the bag, busying himself with the tripod. Bain barely gave him a second
look. He checked the money and saw that the full two hundred was there, then placed the envelope on top of a side table; or
more accurately on top of a folded newspaper on top of a ketchup-smeared dinner plate on top of a side table.

‘Fire away,’ he said.

‘Do you mind if I just snap a few while you talk?’ Ingrams asked, reverting to that strange, artificial-sounding accent.

Bain assented with an indifferent wave of his right hand.

‘I’ve read all the clippings,’ Jasmine began. ‘And I appreciate you’ve been over this story many times before, so I’d like
to take that all as read and approach it from another angle.’

‘Any angle you like, hen. It’s no’ gaunny make much difference because the facts are the same any way you look at them.’

‘Where were you going yourself that day?’

‘Fishing. I was heading down to a wee place I know in Galloway.’

‘Catch anything?’

‘Cannae remember. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it, in fact. See, when you’re asked a hundred times about one thing
that happened that day, you forget everything else.’

‘What did you stop at the services for?’

‘Petrol, and I nicked into the toilets at the wee café place. I was walking through the car park when I saw them with the
carrycot.’

‘How did they seem? Were they calm, agitated?’

‘Aloof,’ he responded. ‘You know, preoccupied.’

‘And you offered them help getting the carrycot into the car.’

‘Aye. They seemed to be having a bit of bother. I just asked if they were all right there and they shrugged me off. Never
really gave it much thought at the time. Folk can be a bit stressed around weans. You shouldnae take the huff.’

‘Have you a weak bladder?’ Ingrams interjected, looking at Bain through the lens of Jim’s camera.

‘Whit’s that got to do with anything?’ Bain asked.

‘From here to Bothwell services must be about twenty minutes, tops. Just wondered why you had to pee so soon.’

‘I don’t know. Probably forgot to go before I set off,’ Bain offered, aiming a disgruntled look towards Ingrams.

Jasmine was feeling pretty disgruntled towards him too. It wasn’t going to help matters if he pissed Bain off.

‘Why do you think the incident stuck in your mind?’ she asked. ‘I mean, it was a few days later before the story broke.’

‘I couldn’t say. I’d probably forgotten about it by the time I was a mile doon the motorway. Then when I read about these
folk being missing, it just kinda flashed up in my mind, total recall. I guess that’s why the polis do those reconstruction
things, isn’t it?’

Ingrams moved a little closer with the camera and asked Bain if he wouldn’t mind standing up and turning around to look out
the window for a few shots.

‘Want something a bit more interesting, you know? Looking towards the past sorta thing. If we just do a head-and-shoulders
it’ll make you look like a criminal.’

Bain laughed a little uncomfortably but posed as asked.

‘That your car, the Astra?’ Ingrams asked, indicating the silver vehicle in front of the house.

‘No, it’s the neighbours’. Margaret’s away in ours.’

‘We’re the Civic.’

Bain sat down again and Ingrams retreated back in the room, attaching the camera to the tripod.

Jasmine was about to ask her next question when Ingrams got in ahead of her.

‘You confirmed to the police that the couple were driving a green A-reg Audi 80 and that the baby’s carrycot was purple. Is
that right?’

‘Aye. Nice motor in its time, that Audi 80.’ He gave Jasmine a knowing smile as he made his bid for a point of identification.
‘Not as nice as thon Audi Quattro in that programme aboot the lassie back in time, but nice all the same.’

‘What reg is your neighbour’s Astra?’ Ingrams asked.

Bain reeled slightly in his seat. He turned his head but his chair was facing away from the window and was in any case too
low down.

‘I’ll take that as a don’t know. Let me try you with an easier one. What colour is our Civic?’

Bain squirmed for a moment then went for blue as a gambit.

‘Try red. You looked at it two minutes ago and you can’t remember. So how did you manage to recall what colour the carrycot
was from a brief encounter several days earlier?’

Bain was seething, and Jasmine feared he was about to order them out of his house. Instead he sighed and seemed to calm himself.

‘I remembered the colour because it reminded me of a toy pram my wee sister used to play with,’ he said, staring daggers at
Ingrams. ‘And my memory was a bit sharper twenty-seven year ago than it is the noo, okay? Now why don’t you just stick to
taking your photies, son, and let the wee lassie do her job.’

Jasmine gave it a moment for the tension to settle. She shot Ingrams a questioning look as he squatted behind the tripod,
but like Bain all
she got was an eyeful of lens and peaked cap. She looked at her list of questions suggested by him, all fairly neutral and
unchallenging, and wondered what he was playing at. Then it hit her that this was a script, and for his own reasons he had
only shown Jasmine her own lines.

She hit Bain with a warm and apologetic smile and ploughed on, giving the part her all now that she understood it.

‘What made you come forward?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, a lot of people would have just thought it was nothing to do with them,
maybe told themselves they hadn’t really seen what they thought they had.’

‘Sense of duty, I suppose. I’d read about the poor wee lassie that was left, and, well, you’ve got to do your bit, haven’t
you? Too many folk just look the other way these days. That’s what’s wrong with this country.’

Bain sat forward in his chair, raising a finger for emphasis.

‘I mean, just to be clear, this is the first time I’ve asked for money to talk aboot this. I’ve never gone to the papers:
they’ve always come to me.’

He folded his arms and sat back again, content that he had made his point.

Ingrams let loose a derisory snort of laughter.

‘Something funny, son?’ Bain asked, rising aggression in his voice.

‘Wee bit, yes.’

‘Well why don’t you speak up and say it to my face, instead of acting the smart cunt from behind your tripod over there?’

‘Sense of duty?’ Ingrams said, peering over the top of the camera.

When he spoke again, his accent had changed.

‘You’re the kind of guy that wouldnae let somebody else smell your farts for free if you could charge for it.’

Bain got to his feet, bristling with anger, but there was a confused caution about his face too.

‘I want the pair of you oota here. Sorry, hen,’ he told Jasmine, ‘but I’m no’ listening to this in my ain living room. And
I’ll tell you this, smart-mooth, if I was twenty years younger, I’d kick you up and doon the street like a wet tracksuit.’

Ingrams stood up from behind the tripod, rising to his full height and taking off the peaked cap so that Bain could finally
see his face properly. And that face had transformed. It was the same man, but there was a cruel, glowering darkness to his
expression that rendered Jasmine retrospectively terrified to have spent the past couple of days in his proximity.

The effect on Bain was even more dramatic. He spluttered, his breathing gone awry, and his legs seemed to buckle, causing
him to slump back down into his chair.

‘You,’ he croaked, his mouth flapping like a landed fish. ‘You’re supposed to be deid.’

‘I got better. And I reckon twenty years ago you’d have shat it from me, same as you’re shiting it now. Street-fighting was
never really your forte, any more than was helping oot the polis through your “sense of duty”. Credit fraud, sure. Bit of
reset. Moving smuggled fags by the vanload. But coming forward as a witness? Come on, Wullie, you never did
anything
without a back end for yourself.’