‘Yes, boss.’
Valentine turned to McAlister. ‘Right, Ally, you’re up.’
The DS was still looking at the fat zero in red. ‘I’m thinking there’s not much by way of solid information that I can add, but there is some.’
‘Many a mickle maks a muckle, as my old mam used to say.’
‘Yes, boss.’ He opened out the blue folder in front of him and started to engage the team. ‘Well, as you’d expect, from the door-to-door, uniform picked up a lot of stuff, some of it’s not much better than gossip, but some of it might turn out to be useful.’
From the folder McAlister removed a postcard-sized photograph of a girl in school uniform and held it up. ‘Jade Millar – from the tie you’ll gather she’s a Belmont Academy pupil.’
He put the picture on the board.
‘What year is she in, Ally?’ said DS McCormack.
‘Third year I think. Waiting on the department of education records coming over. But she’s fifteen years old, so third or fourth year seems about right.’
‘Why Belmont? Seems a bit of a schlep from Whitletts?’ said Valentine.
‘Yeah, well, the school was knocked down and rebuilt a few years ago and has some kind of mega-academy status now. They draw from all over Ayrshire.’
‘Sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me, wouldn’t want my kids mixing it with with the Ant Hill Mob … Have you spoke to her teachers, yet?’
‘No, sir. I thought you’d like to come along for that.’
‘Being a man of learning you mean?’
‘Erm, I was thinking more of you being a man with teenage daughters – you could translate for us.’
A murmur of laughter spread throughout the room.
‘Better revise your Taylor Swift lyrics, sir,’ said McCormack.
‘Christ we’re in trouble if it comes to that. Right, Ally, stick Jade up beside her brother and tell us what else you got.’
‘Yes, boss.’ McAlister flitted between board and folder for a moment and then continued his speech. ‘Right, what we have on Jade is pretty minimal, not much to report on the door-to-door. But there’s a lot more about her brother, Darry.’
‘How so?’
‘Well, Darry’s been around longer, have him at about twenty-four, twenty-five and he’s a kent face. Jade, much less so. Keeps herself to herself, quiet sort of kid, or so they say.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Yes, there’s a young lad. We have a description but no name. We have a best friend for her too, girl called Alena from school. Should have home address by now, they sound pretty inseparable.’
‘Set up a visit to Alena at home.’
‘Yeah, will do. Oh, and we have a sighting of Jade on the night, about an hour or so before everything kicked off.’
‘At the home?’
‘No, the locus, though. Neighbour spotted her across the road on her mobile. That was about a half hour before the screaming started, but she’s not been seen since.’
Valentine reached over for the red marker, grabbed it. ‘Catch!’
‘What do you want me to write up, sir?’
‘Missing teenager.’ He watched the pen’s tip mark the board. ‘And let’s get on this missing teen now. Preferably I’d like her found before the press cotton on and we have that to worry about too.’
‘Yes, boss. The mother’s still missing as well. That’s Sandra Millar. She’s forty-five and a widow.’
‘What happened to the father?’ said Valentine.
‘Natural causes by all accounts, heart attack or stroke, seems to be some disagreement on the exact cause of death amongst neighbours. He passed a few years ago now, eight years to be accurate. He was a mechanic out at Baird’s, long serving so they say and a salt-of-the-earth sort of bloke. Everything seemed to go a bit awry for them after he went.’
DI Valentine twisted round to talk to the team. ‘A deceased father and a mother with a teenage girl to raise. Living in Whitletts and not exactly living well, she hooks up with a new bloke and he ends up murdered in her kitchen. What’s the story?’
‘According to uniform the pair of them had form for rowing,’ said Donnelly. ‘Not nightly, but not far off it.’
‘But Darry had form for that too, I saw that on Agnes Gilchrist’s statement,’ said DS McCormack. ‘There was something said about it getting a lot quieter since he joined the army.’
‘So was he running amok for his mother, with no father in the home? Or, was it something more specific? Conflict with his mam’s boyfriends, perhaps? We need to find this out.’
Pencils scratched on paper pads as the DI returned his gaze to the front.
‘Thanks, boss.’ McAlister stared at the photograph of the victim. ‘Now, by all accounts, James Tulloch is a bit of a dark horse. Very few with much to say about him. There’d been words exchanged with the neighbours and none of them were on nodding terms. We believe he worked nights, somewhere in the town centre – I’m guessing maybe a bar or club – but that’s not been confirmed yet. His record is patchy enough, a lot of motoring convictions and an aggravated assault that led to a court order to avoid the family home.’
‘Not this home?’ said Valentine.
‘No. Previous address and a previous partner.’ He flipped through the file. ‘There’s more here if you want it, erm, drunken disorderly, actual bodily harm. Seems a bit of a brawler on the quiet.’
‘Pull his army record. They’ll mess you about, but ask nice and you never know. Right, if that’s your lot, Sylvia can run through what we picked up at the post-mortem.’
DS McCormack was shifting her way to the front of the crowd, holding up a page in her spiral-bound notebook as she went. When she reached the board, took over from McAlister, she pressed the page next to the photograph of Darren Millar. ‘Sir, before I detail Tulloch’s injuries, can I show you this?’
‘And what’s that?’ said Valentine. ‘Looks like you’ve been doodling.’
‘That’s my drawing of the tattoo on Tulloch’s arm, the one Wrighty identified for us.’
The significance of the find reached the DI’s face, he rose from the edge of the desk and grabbed the notepad, started to compare the drawing to a badge on Darren Millar’s beret. ‘What was it Wrighty called them?’
‘The Royal Highland Fusiliers.’
‘That’s them.’ He turned from the page to the board. ‘Bit of a coincidence Darry the lad and his mam’s boyfriend being in the same regiment.’
‘Especially with one being dead and the other being missing,’ said McCormack.
15
Grant Finnie gulped at the fresh, cold Arran air. They said it went through you, it didn’t matter how many layers of clothes you wore. He put his bag down on the pavement outside the ferry port, then snatched it up again, held tight to the handle. There was a taxi coming and the driver seemed to have spotted him, was slowing down.
‘Where can I take you?’ said the driver.
‘One of those B&Bs down the front.’
‘No shortage of those in Brodick, OK … Want to chuck that bag in the boot?’
Finnie looked to the rear of the car, shook his head. ‘No, it’s fine with me here.’
As he opened the passenger’s door, stepped inside and positioned the bulky holdall on his knees, the driver watched, patiently. ‘Ready to go?’
Finnie nodded.
‘A B&B it is.’
The drive was quiet, once Finnie had let it be known he wasn’t feeling talkative. He didn’t need the tourist spiel about trips to Goatfell and Brodick Castle, he knew the place well enough already. The cabbie was only after a tip, you could tell. The eager ones got chatty, in case you were the chatty type, but if they sussed you preferred quiet then they soon shut up. They’d concentrate on making you comfortable, heater up or window down, that kind of chat he could handle.
‘Here we go, she keeps a tidy house in there.’ The taxi driver pointed to a substantial sandstone villa with a short pebbled drive, three floors of net curtains and a large Vacancies sign hanging in the front window.