‘I know, but that’s how it appeared to the cops who attended. It was only when the ambulance got to the hospital that the woman was identified, through a debit card she had in her purse. It took a while for the bank to come up with her details but eventually they did. Her name is Grete Regal, and the address they had for her was Shell Cottage, Garvald. The electoral roll has her living there with her partner; his name is David Gates. She went back to the bank and asked about him. All they could tell her is that he’s in the Royal Navy, ’cos that’s where his salary comes from.
‘The cottage isn’t in the village itself; it’s a few hundred yards along a country road. As soon as the victim had been identified and located, the traffic guys went back to Garvald, to her address. It was locked, but they’d taken some keys that were found on Grete.
‘It was obvious that a child lived there; the biggest clue of all was a sign on a door that read “Zena’s room”. By that time the two of them knew about our investigation, and that we were trying to identify a female child. They were smart enough to take photographs and sent them to Jackie, in the mobile command unit; this is one. It’s a framed poster above a child’s bed.’ He held up an image on his phone. ‘It’s an entry in a thing called The Urban Dictionary.’
‘“A Zena,”’ Haddock read, peering at the little screen, ‘“is a beautiful, funny, nice and caring person. Great in all aspects of life. Will kick ass if you mess with her friends! Usually very skinny and has brown eyes. Awesome tastes in music and literature. Zenas are always right.” Could the label on her jacket have been a nickname? Aw Jesus, and she was a skinny wee thing with brown eyes.’
‘Exactly,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘At that point, Jackie’s check had turned up no reports of missing children as such, but there were the usual absences, and she was thorough enough to note those for follow-up, if it was necessary. As soon as she saw that poster she went back to the note she had on Garvald Primary School. A five-year-old child, called Olivia Regal Gates, was marked absent this morning, without a notifying call from the parents.’
‘Is there a photo of her?’
‘Jackie called the head teacher. She has pics of all the kids; she’s going to scan Olivia’s and email it to her. But . . . she said that everyone at school calls her Zena. She was only asked for the names of absent children, and she gave them off the register, without thinking.’
‘Did Jackie ask if she has any siblings?’
‘Yes, and she doesn’t; she’s an only child.’
‘How about the mother?’ the DS asked. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s still in surgery; she has a fractured skull and brain swelling. However . . . Jackie spoke to the doctor who saw her in Accident and Emergency. She asked whether there were any other injuries, anything to indicate that she was hit by a car. There were none. So forget the hit-and-run theory. I’m sending the scientists out to the scene to see what they can find.’
Haddock whistled. ‘This was well planned, Sammy.’
‘It was, mate. Dean Francey knew exactly what he was doing; he, or someone else, must have studied Grete’s routine, and worked out when she and her child would be alone and at their most vulnerable.’
‘Surely there’s no “or someone else” about it, boss. There must be another person involved. Dino doesn’t strike me as a planner. And what would he do with a five year old anyway? Ransom her? Nah.’
‘Sell her?’ Pye suggested, quietly.
‘To a paedo ring? No, surely not.’
‘Like you said earlier, Sauce, no fucking assumptions. We rule nothing out. For now, everything is focused on finding Dean Francey.’
Thirteen
I have two sounding boards in my life these days, and they’re both women.
There’s Sarah, who’s my therapist almost as much as she’s my life partner. That’s true, literally. When she came back to Scotland from her spell in the US, and saw how screwed up I was, professionally as well as personally, she gave me a frank assessment, over the dinner table in Mark Greenaway’s discreet Edinburgh restaurant.
‘I’m not a fully trained psychologist,’ she said, ‘but I did study it as part of my medical degree. On top of that, any doctor who’s ever done any level of general practice has to possess a feeling for a patient’s state of mind as well as for his physical condition. Looking at you, and knowing you as well as I do, if I was asked to make a diagnosis, I would describe you as clinically depressed.’
‘You’re kidding!’ I protested. ‘I might be a grumpy sod from time to time, but depressed, no, I don’t buy that. What makes you say it?’
‘You have no barriers,’ she replied. ‘You have a job in which you see some terrible things and have tough decisions to make, some of them literally life and death. There was a time when you could put all that stuff into perspective and stow it away when you came home. When I left, you weren’t able to do that any more, you carried your whole burden everywhere, and I don’t see that you’ve gotten any better in the time I was away.’
I frowned. ‘No?’
‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Trust me, you haven’t. Bob, when your people experience extreme stress, they’re offered counselling. These days it’s automatic. Now tell me something. Have you ever had a formal counselling session?’
‘Come on,’ I chuckled. ‘You know the answer to that one. I’m not having strangers rummage about inside my head.’
‘And what a goddamn state your head’s in as a result,’ she countered.
‘What about you?’ I challenged. ‘I’m not the only one with a stressful job. You’re a bloody pathologist . . . the perfect choice of adjective, by the way. You spend your day rummaging through dead people’s once-vital organs, for fuck’s sake.’
‘I know,’ she admitted, ‘and that has got to me too, in the past. That’s one reason why I gave it up and went back to America to practise real medicine.’ She tossed her head back, clearing her thick glossy hair from her eyeline, then she smiled. ‘How was I to know that there are more horrors in the living than the dead?’
‘I’ve known that all my career,’ I retorted, casually. ‘Bad people are a damn sight easier to manage when they’re dead.’ I tapped my forehead with my middle finger. ‘One round there and they go all floppy.’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘and your predecessor as Chief of Strathclyde Police had three, right through the back of her head. I’ll bet that when you stood in that concert hall in Glasgow looking down at her, you weren’t flippant then.’
She had me there. ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ I asked.
‘Not just you: us. We should talk to each other, just us, at least once a week, about our work and the parts of it that have upset us. We should be our own counsellors. There’s nobody knows me better than you.’
‘Nor than you know me,’ I conceded. ‘Okay, if you’re really serious, let’s give it a try.’
We did, and we still do. Since I chucked the job I’ve had less to contribute, but on the day of Fort Kinnaird I had plenty, and so, once I was back in my Saltire office, and after I’d rung Mario McGuire to blag a copy of the report on the theft of the Princess Alison, I called Sarah.
‘You got a couple of minutes?’ I asked. ‘Or are you up to your elbows in mid-rummage?’
‘I’m prepping for a lecture,’ she told me, ‘but I’ve got a few minutes. What’s up? Something is, I can tell.’
‘I want to tell you how your lemon drizzle cake got smashed.’ As I spoke, the scene rushed back into my mind, and all I could see was that wee girl. My eyes moistened once more, and I had to take a moment before I could continue. Since Sarah and I started our mutual support sessions, I find that I’m much more emotional. For example, Michael Clarke’s eulogy at the Phillip Hughes funeral just tore me apart.
When I could, I talked her through the story.
‘She was just like our daughter, Sarah,’ I whispered as I finished. ‘Apart from the brown eyes, it could have been Seonaid.’