Couldn’t care less.
I took the matching saggy leather armchair. ‘You met with Dr Alice McDonald earlier today.’
‘Did I?’ A frown. ‘Suppose I did. She talks... a lot. And really quickly. How does she manage it? It’s like she never even breathes.’
‘What did you talk about?’
A loose-limbed shrug. ‘Oscar Harris, I think. How was he, did he seem upset or troubled by anything before he went missing?’ More Wotsits disappeared. ‘Course he was. Between you, me, and Sigmund, I think someone was abusing him. Only he was too scared to admit it, even to me. People think that kind of thing doesn’t happen to kids who attend a good school, but it does.’ She chewed, face sagging. ‘Poor tiny soul.’
I looked at Shifty.
He grimaced. Sucked air in through his teeth. ‘Yeah, we got a distinctly greasy vibe off... someone we interviewed, but they had an alibi for when Oscar went missing. Even so, they clammed up and set their lawyer on us.’ Not like Shifty to be so careful about not giving out any hints.
‘So did Alice say anything before she left?’
Dr Lochridge squinted at her cat for a while. Then nodded. ‘She said she liked Sigmund. Which is good, because he’s the loveliest cat in the world.’
Ann Tweedale blinked at us with bleary eyes, voice a clipped whisper. ‘No. Of course I don’t.’ Soon as we’d appeared on her doorstep, she’d hissed us to silence and escorted us into the kitchen of her tiny mid-terrace house, on Blackwall Hill, right next to the railway line. It ran on a cutting along the end of her back garden, twelve feet higher than the ground her home was built on. Be amazed if much natural light ever made its way in through the windows.
Tweedale was a sporty type, with bags under her eyes and an oversized ‘DONALD TRUMP EST UN BRANLEUR MASSIF!’ T-shirt that hung down to the knees of her penguin pyjama bottoms. Furry slippers on her feet. Curly hair yanked back in a messy comet-tail.
Shifty leaned against the worktop and folded his arms. ‘And there was nothing else?’
‘Shhhh!’ Tweedale pointed up towards the ceiling. ‘You wake Charlene up, I’ll bloody throttle you.’ She gave him a good glower. ‘Your doctor woman turned up, asked a load of questions about Lewis Talbot — all of which I’d already answered for your idiot police mates, by the way — then went away again. I helped all I could, but I was his social worker, not his mother. Lewis had a shitty life, his mum battered the hell out of him, his grandad abused her, and so on and so forth, yeah unto the tenth generation. Then some bastard throttles Lewis to death.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘And I know I shouldn’t, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t for the best.’
She must’ve clocked the expression on my face because she rolled her eyes, arms hanging loose at her sides. ‘I said “sometimes”, OK? You don’t know what it’s like down in the trenches. You police kick in their doors, seize their property, and cart off their relatives — it’s us poor sods that have to try and stitch them back together. You know what Lewis had to look forward to? Poverty and abuse and no opportunities.’ Voice getting louder and more bitter with every word. ‘They wouldn’t let me put him into care because apparently there’s bugger all left in the budget this financial year. Who’d be a bloody social worker?’
The wail of a small child boomed out through the ceiling above.
Ann Tweedale glared at me, voice back to a harsh whisper again. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’
‘So what do you think?’ Shifty took us back under the railway bridge. ‘We any nearer to catching this bastard?’
‘Don’t know.’ I checked the list again. ‘What’s closest: Ditchburn Road, or Corriemuir Place?’
‘From here?’ His top lip curled. ‘Six of one.’ He reached out and clicked on the radio, landing us halfway through a song where some popstar tosser moaned about how unfair life was.
Take a number, mate, and get to the back of the queue.
‘Your choice, then.’ I pulled out Alice’s phone and called the hospital as Shifty headed east, back towards Kingsmeath, rather than Castleview. ‘Hello? I’m calling about Alice McDonald.’
The switchboard put me through to a woman with a lisp and a Geordie accent. ‘There’s no change at the moment, pet, but it’s early days. We’ll give you a call if anything happens, and you’ve got me word on that.’
‘Thanks.’
A glance from Shifty when I put my phone away. ‘No change?’
‘No change.’ My head fell back against the rest. For some reason, there were footprints on the inside of the pool car’s roof. Not shoeprints — bare feet. ‘Tell me about this “greasy vibe” you got, when you were interviewing someone about Oscar Harris?’
‘Hmmph. His uncle’s a DJ, does club nights at Bang-dot-Bang-dot-Cheese and the House of Ultimate Ding. Bloody places these days, whatever happened to sensible names? He’s one of those... neckbeard types, you know? The ones who don’t grow a moustache to go with it.’
‘Doesn’t make him a paedo.’
We drifted down Hillside Drive, past all the peaceful side streets with their trees and working streetlights.
‘Never trust anyone who doesn’t grow a moustache to go with their beard — man or woman. It’s a sign something’s very badly wrong in their heads. And you didn’t hear the way he talked about Oscar. Like the kid was a family pet.’ Shifty put on a faux-posh Oldcastle accent, stressing the vowels in all the wrong places. ‘“Such a clever boy.”, “He’s a good boy, yes he is. Very good.” And, like I said, soon as he trotted out his alibi he lawyered up. That says “dodgy bastard” to me.’ A small smile. ‘Even if his lawyer was a total shag.’
But then Shifty always did have terrible taste in men.
Left at the roundabout, onto Blackwall Avenue, heading back towards the library.
‘Think we should put some lost-dog posters up around Glensheilth Crescent? If Alice stopped to let the wee man have a pee, he might’ve run off.’
Shifty raised one big rounded shoulder. ‘Suppose it wouldn’t hurt.’
And then we sat in silence, all the way up Blackburgh Road, over the railway bridge. Nothing but the radio to cut through the disinterested growl of the pool car’s engine. One miserable song following another.
The DJ faded down the latest parade of whining as we pulled across the central reservation, turning right across the dual carriageway and into Kingsmeath again.
‘There we go, The Mighty Beetroot and “The Day My Heart Stopped Beating”, taking us up to the news and weather. It’s twenty past midnight and you’re listening to The Witching Hour with me, Lucy Robotham, on Castlewave FM.’
I cleared my throat. ‘You know, you could come with us, if you like? When we open this hotel. Get away from...’ indicating the rows of small houses on either side of the road, ‘all this.’
‘... seventy-year-old man has died as Storm Victoria works its way up through Great Yarmouth, creating havoc with high winds and heavy rain...’
Shifty’s voice was flat as an ironing board. ‘What, and throw away my stellar career with Police Scotland?’
‘... seen up to ten centimetres of rain in the space of two hours, and now severe weather warnings are in place for northeast England, the Central Belt, and eastern Scotland...’
‘You could take people shooting? Or do murder mystery weekends, ABBA tribute nights, Eurovision parties — you like that kind of thing, don’t you?’