They told the young PC on the desk that they were there to meet DI Hugh McAskill. He phoned upstairs. "Be a minute," he said.
"We heard bagpipes outside," said Bunyan, leaning on the desk. "Do they pipe that music all over the whole country, then?"
The PC smiled politely. "No," he said, his dry, brisk accent making Bunyan sound like a chirpy barrow boy. "The School of Piping is just down the road. They produce very good pipers."
"I wouldn't know a good piper from a bad piper," Bunyan told Williams.
"Yes, you would," said the PC, tidying the posters on the notice board at the back. "You'd know a bad piper if you heard one. DI McAskill"-he looked behind her-"this is DI Williams and DC Bunyan from the Met."
McAskill was tall and sad-faced. He reached out his hand. "Hello," he said, shaking theirs firmly. "DI Hugh McAskill. I'm very sorry but we can't brief you just now. Bit of business. You've got the written brief?"
"Yeah, are we late?" asked Bunyan, shoving her hands into her pockets. "That's a shame."
Williams took charge. "We'll come and see you in the morning," he said. "Will you be free then?"
"Aye." McAskill looked solemn. "Come in about eight."
Williams nodded. "Good luck with that, then."
"Aye," said McAskill. "We'll see ye in the morning." And he turned and walked away through a set of double doors.
"We're all doomed," trilled Bunyan, when they got to the car. "What a misery that bloke was."
"Don't be stupid," said Williams, losing patience as he unlocked the car. "Something's happened or they'd want to get it out of the way."
He slid hip first into the still warm seat, and Bunyan climbed in next to him. "How would you know?" she said, offended at being called stupid.
Williams reached around for his seat belt and felt his tired back straining with the effort. "The only reason a DI would be too busy for a briefing at seven at night and back in at eight in the morning is if something's happened. Otherwise he'd be at home watching The Bill, wouldn't he? That's why the bloke looked so grim, he was telling us that."
"I see," said Bunyan. "Put Phil Collins back on."
Chaos was king in James Harris's living room. He had four boys under ten, all of whom were very excited about the arrival of the two visitors from London. The two older boys were jumping about on the only armchair in the room, taking turns to ride the high back like a horse. The two small boys, little more than babies, were sitting on the bare floor, playing with their plastic plates of spaghetti hoops, getting them all over their cotton trousers and in their hair. James Harris looked like a man about to crack.
"Will – ye – fuck – ing – chuck – it?" he screamed. The boys on the chair lowered their voices for a couple of minutes and then carried on.
"Mr. Harris," said Williams, noticing how soft his accent sounded by comparison, "can't you get the boys to go upstairs? We need to ask you about your wife."
Harris's response was bizarre. He opened his red eyes as wide as they would go and shook his head. "No," he murmured, but the boys on the chair had heard.
"Mum?" said the oldest one, clambering down from the chair and coming to stand by them in the doorway.
"Is Mammy coming home soon?" said his brother, coming over too.
The babies stopped throwing spaghetti at their faces and looked up. Williams couldn't believe it. The bastard hadn't told them. Bunyan opened her mouth to speak, but Williams stepped in front of her. "All right now," he said, speaking slowly and with great authority. "I've heard that you two boys are very good at drawing." He opened his notebook and ripped out two blank pages from the back. "I have two sheets of paper. One for each of you."
Williams held them above the boys' heads and they looked up at them. The longer the sheets of paper were out of their reach the more the boys were certain that drawing on these pieces of paper was the one thing they had been looking forward to for ages.
"What we need now," he said, "is for two very quiet, calm boys to tiptoe around the room and find one pen each."
They scurried away.
"Tiptoe in a calm way," ordered Williams loudly.
The babies were mesmerized. They didn't care about their dinner anymore, they wanted to do what the big boys were doing. They wanted to walk slowly around the room looking at the floor. The older boy ran back waving a Biro -
"Got mine!" he screamed.
"Calmly," emphasized Williams.
The younger boy came back clutching a purple felt-tip with a broken nib. Williams gave them the paper, laying it on the floor in front of them. "I want you both to draw a house and some children playing. Take your time. Start now."
The boys sat on the floor, leaning over their bits of paper so enthusiastically it was as if they'd never had an organized task before. Williams turned back to Harris.
"How did ye do that?" said Harris, staring at the boys. "I cannae control them at all."
"Mr. Harris," said Williams, speaking with an adult voice, "we need to speak to ye and it would be better if we were alone. Will the boys be at school tomorrow?"
"Aye."
"Good, we'll come and talk to you then."
They turned to leave but Harris put his hand across the door to stop them. "What, um"-he licked his lips-"what time will ye be coming?"
"About two? Does that suit you?"
"Aye, two's fine." He lifted his arm away. "I'll see ye then."
Williams stepped onto the concrete veranda but Bunyan was holding back. "Shouldn't we…?" She thumbed back into the room.
"What is it?" demanded Williams, losing patience.
"The boys are drawing for you," said Bunyan.
The oldest boy stood up, holding his drawing in the air, and shouted that he'd finished. He almost caused a fight by half stepping onto his brother's picture as he tried to get to the door and hand it to Bunyan. He had drawn a house with a roof and a boy standing in an upstairs window, waving out.
"That's great," said Bunyan, in the indulgent, singsong voice she spoke to her three-year-old daughter in. "He's giving us a little wave, isn't he?"
"Aye."
His little brother followed him and handed her a big purple square mess. "I colored mine in," he said.
"This is lovely," cooed Bunyan. "Look at that beautiful house. I should like to live there."
"We're off," said Williams curtly.
Bunyan had no option but to follow him, waving back to the little boys standing on the windy veranda in their pajamas. The smell of urine in the lift was disgusting.
"God," said Bunyan, looking at the drawings. "Those poor little bastards."
"Why would the man not tell his children that their mother is dead?"
"Guilt," said Bunyan, and Williams agreed with her. "Where did you learn to talk to children like that?"
"Used to be a teacher," said Williams, "before I got onto the fast track."
Bunyan thought it made sense. Williams never listened to anyone and he was a bossy bastard as well.
Chapter 25
The wind took on a shrill new vigor at the bus station, hurtling down the low streets, converging in the waiting area in front of the ticket building. The station was a solid concrete enclosure fenced in by a high brick wall. Until recently it had been a deserted corner of the town. The redevelopment had begun a few years before but already a big shopping center, a multistory carpark, and a concert hall had been built. The bus station had been upgraded too. Glass walls had been erected at every bus stop around the square, designed to prevent pedestrians from wandering about in front of the double-deckers. The ticket center had been redecorated and the renovations were reported to have cost a fortune but the bus station was still bleak. Most of the passengers were poor enough to be smokers and the new lobby was a smoke-free zone. Everyone likely to take the bus had to stand outside the brand-new structure, keeping it good for visiting dignitaries.
They waited for twenty minutes in the winding queue to buy the return ticket to London, leaving on the night bus at ten thirty. The return passage was open-ended. "But you cannae just turn up, do ye understand?" The man behind the window spoke slowly, as if he was used to dealing with children. He had tapered hairs sticking straight out of his nose, as if an insect had been about to step out of his nostril, heard a scary noise and froze.