Murder Mile

Chapter 19

As DI Rob Brennan walked into Incident Room One his attention was drawn towards WPC Elaine Docherty. She was standing next to the coffee machine, throwing back her blonde hair and laughing loudly. It was a scene that looked out of place in the sombre setting. Beside her, DS Stevie McGuire placed a hand on her arm — they seemed to be sharing a joke, the moment looked intimate — but the vision shattered before Brennan’s eyes as McGuire spotted him coming and made a quick retreat. Brennan let his stare linger on the pair for a moment longer, he watched the WPC pick up a blue folder and press it to her white shirt front; she quickly exited the room, averting her eyes as she passed him. McGuire closed his mouth like a zipper and manoeuvred himself clumsily behind his desk.

Brennan approached. ‘Stevie,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

The room fell into hushed silence; Brennan looked around him, heads that had sprung up dropped suddenly as his eyes roved around the room. He saw at once this wasn’t the kind of conversation they should have in the open. ‘Never mind, I’ll see you later,’ he said.

‘Sir.’

As Brennan strolled through the room he felt as though he had brought in an air of anxiety; either that, or the team was unsettled. He knew they needed a break. They had been working hard, had done everything the DI had asked of them, but nothing had turned up. They needed some encouragement, a reminder that their roles were worthwhile. They were a murder squad and if that wasn’t something to be valued, Brennan didn’t know what was. He had his own troubles and wondered if he’d been neglecting the team. Was it his fault that there hadn’t been a break? Had he missed something? He checked himself; knew that wasn’t the case. Brennan had watched doubts creep in before, they didn’t carry any weight, they didn’t mean anything. They were merely reminders, prompts that kept you on track. Without the doubts, his actions — the team’s actions — went unchecked and that was something he would never allow to happen. The process was continual, non-stop. If doubts crept in, they kept them on their toes, and that was something to be welcomed.

Brennan halted himself in the middle of the room, looked around. The place was busy enough, but there was none of the adrenaline high that came of getting close to solving a case. He needed to prod them, cajole.

‘Right, listen up everyone,’ he said. ‘I know we’ve not had a break on this case yet, but we’re still in the early days.’

A chorus, ‘Sir.’

Brennan took in the team’s gaze; he had their attention, it was important to hold it. ‘You’re doing fine, no one has put a foot wrong and as long as we keep at it, keep doing what we’re doing, then we’ll get that break. That’s all it takes, I’ve seen it a million times before: a case can rest on a single scrap of information that turns everything on its head. Keep looking. Keep turning over the stones, because that’s how we’ll get this bastard.’

The team stood around, some shuffled; they were waiting for more. Brennan didn’t want to overdo it, but conceded to the call. ‘I’ve just spoken to the Sloans, they’re good people.’ He paused, drank in the team’s interest; he knew that they understood him. ‘That family deserves our best, so let’s bear that in mind.’

Heads dipped, some looked at each other, exchanged mournful expressions. Everyone in the room absorbed the import of Brennan’s words; he saw that they knew what he meant: he was proud of them. There were times on the force when he wanted to throw things, turn over filing cabinets, clear his desk; but not now. He looked at his team with such affection that the thought touched his mind like a kindness.

Immediately Brennan withdrew into himself; it wasn’t right to show his sentiments. ‘Right, that’s all. Back to work.’

The DI strode towards the whiteboard, eyed the photographs that had been stuck up of Fiona Gow and Lindsey Sloan. He stood with one hand in his trouser pocket and with the other he removed the black marker pen from the thin shelf and started to fiddle with the cap between thumb and forefinger. His mind was flitting to and fro, between the meeting with the Sloans and what he knew about the case as it stood. The Sloans had not given him much to go on, but what could he expect? They had just lost a daughter, he had felt their anguish every second he had been with them. It was painful to watch. The woman was ruined; she would never be the same again. How could she? How could anyone recover from that? What they were going through was not something you could adequately comprehend; his mind darted towards Sophie once again. She would be getting out of school soon, there would be no one to collect her from the gates because she was too old for that now. But was she? The girls on the whiteboard weren’t much older than Sophie. Brennan felt an urge to pick up his daughter, hold her in his arms and keep her safe. The urge had presented itself before; at first he had thought it was a side-effect of the job, but now he knew it was nothing to do with it. It was about being a parent, about wanting to hold on to your child for ever. He had seen that in Mrs Sloan and he knew her devastation was drawn from the realisation that she could never keep her daughter close to her, and now she would never see her again.

Brennan removed the cap from the marker as in his peripheral vision he spotted DS Stevie McGuire and DI Jim Gallagher approaching. McGuire seemed to be striding ahead of the older DI; he looked back towards him as if he wondered why he was being followed or just what Gallagher was going to ask the boss. His eyes told a story all of their own: he clearly had Gallagher down as a challenge to his position as head boy. He reached Brennan first, said, ‘Well, how did it go?’

The DI turned from the whiteboard, put a stare on Gallagher then moved his gaze towards Stevie. ‘Not well.’

‘Did you get anything?’ said Gallagher, his voice rising with an unnatural inflection.

Brennan stood before them for a minute, let them digest his manner and then turned to the board. He wrote the word ‘nightclubs’ and suffixed it with a large question mark. ‘She did the George Street scene,’ he said, his voice was matter of fact, blunt.

‘Pricey on a travel agent’s wage,’ said McGuire; he said it to the DI but was looking at Gallagher as he spoke.

‘Trainee travel agent,’ said Brennan ‘but we don’t know how much of a regular she was. Maybe she was drinking lemonade, maybe someone was buying her drinks for her…’

‘I’ll check it out,’ said Gallagher. He sounded over-eager, his vowels clipped and prim as a schoolmaster. He turned from the board, brushed past McGuire and had the receiver of a telephone raised to his ear when Brennan stopped him.

‘No, I want Stevie on that. I’ve something else for you, Jim.’

Brennan faced the board, raised the marker and drew a sharp line from the picture of Lindsey Sloan, topped it with an arrowhead and wrote the word ‘gymnastics’.

He turned to face the others.

‘What’s that all about?’ said Gallagher.

‘Just about the only thing her parents could remember her taking an interest in at school… There might have been some kind of club, some kind of social scene. I don’t know… But that’s the whole point. I want to know.’

‘She’s a wee while out the school, sir.’

‘I know that,’ Brennan’s voice rose, ‘I also know we’ve got nothing out of the group of friends she’s been associating with so far, or the old school pals we contacted. Her Facebook buddies and so on. This might be a stretch, Jim, but it’s a new line of enquiry and I’m not going to ignore it… Get on it right away and report back to me.’

‘Sir.’ Gallagher stepped aside, he sucked in his broad stomach as he eased himself round the desk and moved off to the other side of the room. He was still looking at Brennan as he sat down behind his desk, but quickly busied himself with the telephone when the DI kept a long stare on him.

McGuire had been watching the exchange of looks. He closed in on Brennan, tapped his chin with the knuckles of his right hand as he spoke, ‘I heard there was some kind of kerfuffle earlier.’

‘What?’

‘On the stairs.’

Brennan sniffed. ‘Bloody Charlie…’

‘Come again?’

‘That who you heard it from?’

McGuire made a half smile. Said nothing.

‘Oh, I get it. Look, it’s nothing for you to worry about… You’ve got more important matters to concern yourself with, laddie.’

The sergeant’s eyebrows shot up together. ‘Like what?’

‘Like what’s going on with you and Elaine Docherty?’

McGuire’s smile disappeared completely, his chin dimpled like the skin of a lemon as he replied, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Brennan let his mind skim the possibilities, could he have picked it up wrong? He was sure he hadn’t, but decided to give McGuire a break. Chances were a subtle word would be enough for them to get the message, and after all, he was hardly one to be preaching about office romance when his own affair with the force psychiatrist had cost him his marriage. ‘All right. Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Stevie.’

‘I think you must have, sir.’

Brennan let the remark slide, but tagged a warning notice to it; he didn’t like his DS lying to him. ‘But I suppose we’ll see, in time.’ He dipped his chin to his chest, smirked. ‘Right, about this Sloan girl…’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I want you to go back to her friends, get the details of all the clubs and pubs they visited when they were out on the town.’

McGuire butted in, he had a biro in his hand, raised it. ‘The night she disappeared, you mean…’

‘No, Lou and Brian have covered that. We know her movements on the night she disappeared pretty thoroughly and…’ he trailed off, his eyes glazed over as he chased a line of thought.

‘What is it?’

Brennan leaned his back on the wall, tapped the marker. ‘You can cross-reference all of this with the Fiona Gow case file.’

McGuire turned, pointed with his pen up the room. ‘Right, Collins has it just now… But what am I checking in there?’

Brennan’s voice was flat, unemotional. He was working his thoughts out on the hoof. ‘She was a hairdresser, wasn’t she… They all like a good night out. Check if she was part of the same scene too.’

‘Pubs and clubs, then?’

Brennan shook his head, ‘Pubs, clubs, names, faces… If they bought a pair of fucking dancing shoes from the same shop I want to know.’

McGuire was biting the tip of his pen now. ‘Boss, they were five years apart.’

‘I know that, Stevie, and I know the club scene changes fast but there might be something in it.’

McGuire nodded. ‘Well, we won’t know until we try.’

‘Exactly.’ Brennan eased himself off the wall, leaned past McGuire and looked down the room. ‘Who checked the last club the Sloan girl visited?’

‘Er, Collins…’

Brennan called out, ‘Collins… Come here a minute.’

Collins rose slowly, strolled down the middle of the room, eying everyone’s desktop as he went. He was chewing gum and had a cigarette behind his ear, but when he reached the whiteboard he looked attentive. He thinned eyes, took in the new additions. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘The last club the Sloan girl visited…’

‘Called The Rondo, boss.’

‘Aye, get anything on the CCTV?’

‘Not a morsel… All cheesy quavers and glow sticks.’

Brennan pounced. ‘Right, get yourself hooked up with one of the WPCs and get down there tonight. And tomorrow night. Ask about, casual like, not heavy handed.’

‘Oh, nice one. Paid to go on the piss.’ He grinned at McGuire, but as he checked Brennan’s expression, Collins backtracked, ‘I mean, not actually on the piss, but…’

‘Just remember what we’re doing here, eh?’ He paused, stared at McGuire again, but addressed Collins. ‘Why don’t you take Elaine Docherty with you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

McGuire looked away, Brennan saw him struggle to maintain his earlier indifference to the WPC; he knew for sure he’d been lied to now.

Brennan turned back to Collins, said, ‘And go over that footage again, anything that sticks out, check it!’

Collins’s answer came quickly. ‘Nothing stuck out, sir, she was with friends, dancing and that. We ID’d them all.’

‘Check again; if anyone’s looking at her funny — hoick them in.’

‘Clutching at straws isn’t it?’

Brennan fired up, waved the marker pen to emphasise his point. ‘Fucking right we’re clutching at straws. And we’ll keep clutching till we get a result.’