04-Mothers of the Disappeared (18 page)

Griggs turned from me to look at her and then back again. He said, ‘You’re trying to make a point.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Susan stepped forward. ‘I didn’t think you still had this in you,’ she said. ‘But OK, I get it. I hurt your feelings. You wanted to hurt me back …’

I shook my head. ‘It just seemed … no one comes here. No one will know we met here.’

‘You’re a bastard, McNee,’ she said. ‘You’ve always had that in you, but …’

‘This is a beautiful reunion,’ said Griggs, ‘but we’re freezing our bollocks off out here and I need to know this was about more than just petty revenge.’

I nodded. ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘It is.’

‘You’re accepting my offer?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘I have conditions.’

‘For fuck’s—’

‘Hear me out,’ I said. ‘It’s not about money or anything else. It’s that you give me some breathing space. You make these charges go away. Let me find another way to get on that old bastard’s side.’

‘How? This is time sensitive, McNee.’

‘Family’s important to him. Not just his own. The whole idea. Those pictures you showed me … he doted on that child. He thinks of himself as one of the good guys. Compartmentalizes his business decisions from his apparent ethical beliefs. I can use this case to get close to him. And then … I think I can show him that we’re on the same side.’

‘Want to tell me how?’ Griggs asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s no time. But it’s … Look, Susan, you know you can trust me. I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but my word still means something. Right?’

Maybe it was the wrong choice of words given everything that had happened between us. She looked away for a moment, and I thought I saw her lips move, but any words were lifted and carried by the wind so that no one would ever know what they were.

She turned to Griggs and said, flat, ‘It might be our best chance.’

Griggs nodded. Turned back to me. ‘OK, McNee,’ he said. ‘Fair enough. Tell me what you want. Let’s haggle for justice.’

The duty officer glared at me, but didn’t say anything as we packed up the evidence and Griggs signed the appropriate forms. I did as I’d been told and hung back. Keeping quiet because anything I could say would only cause difficulties. Griggs was bending enough rules as it was without being accused of assisting one of the most notorious pains-in-the-arse Tayside Police had ever known, on or off the job.

When we got back to my offices, Soren was chatting away to Dot like they were old friends, devouring cups of milky tea faster than she could boil the kettle. Mostly, though, she ignored him, so the friendly conversation was one sided. When I came in, she raised her head and looked at me over her reading glasses. I ushered Soren through to my office and shut the door. Thought maybe I could hear her sigh of relief from outside.

Griggs placed the computer on my desk and unwrapped it. Soren regarded him with suspicion. ‘Anything I do,’ Soren said, ‘is with your permission, right? You can’t touch me for—’

‘He’s not interested in you,’ I said.

Griggs regarded the smaller man for a moment and said, ‘Today.’

Soren grinned. His incisors were sharp and whiter than you’d expect given the junk he shoved down his gullet. He got himself set up. Laughed as he sorted the cables and attached the old machine to one of my flat-screen monitors. ‘Anyone got ten minutes while this old heap boots?’ he asked.

While he busied himself, I put the kettle on. Griggs joined me in the far corner of the office. ‘This had better be worth it for you,’ he said. ‘Because right now it feels like a big joke at my expense.’

‘I’m a man of my word.’

He nodded.

When Soren was done, Sandy and I stood back, watched the master at work. He giggled with delight at how long it took him to complete basic tasks, and I had to admit it was startling to see what had once been a state-of-the-art machine measure up to the convenience we’ve come to expect from today’s PCs. Six years was a long time in computing terms. I had assumed it would be only a difference of seconds but it was more often like minutes, the wait for any task to be completed.

The minutes stretched to hours. Dot brought us some take out and then left for the evening. For a while, I went out and read a book in the reception area.

Finally, Soren had something to tell us.

‘The images are still there. I don’t want to look at that shite and I hope you don’t either. Fucksakes, if it’s anything like what you said. … my limit’s
Two Girls One Cup
, know what I mean?’

Sadly, I did. But didn’t let on.

‘Right,’ he said after a moment or two, looking oddly disappointed, like maybe he’d expected a laugh or a moment of recognition. But he wasn’t going to get it. This was serious business. Even he could sense that. ‘So. The pictures. First glance, aye, it looks like they were downloaded from mirror sites. A glance at his internet history confirms where he went to find this nasty shite. So it all looks kosher.’

‘Sorry,’ Griggs said to me. ‘I don’t know what else you were expecting to—’

‘Hoy-oy,’ Soren said. ‘Calm the ham, man. Calm the fuckin’ ham. This shite is not what it appears to be. It’s like fuckin’
Transformers
. The good shit, I mean. None of that Michael Bay fuck-the-frame bollocks. More than meets the eye is what I’m saying. There’s code underneath. Hidden deep. Someone tried to redirect where we were looking. Because the problem we have is that these images were not downloaded to this fucking PC. They were downloaded elsewhere and transferred. Someone just tried – and did a good job, too – to make it look like the downloads originated from this wee clapped-out bugger’s IP address. If you weren’t looking for anything sus, you probably wouldn’t notice.’ He smiled and gently patted the 3.5in. floppy drive on the front of the old tower. ‘Probably the files were introduced through this little beauty.’ He did the same to the 10x CD-ROM drive. ‘Or this one. Christ, doesn’t it say something, eh? No one worries about CD speed any more. And floppys? Fucking forget it. Obsolete is not the word, man.’

Griggs said, ‘To me it’s still cutting-edge.’

Soren didn’t say anything, but curled his upper lip in something like a snarl.

‘Anyway, man, the point is that this shite was downloaded on another machine and then transferred over. And they’ve been interfered with. They look all right on the surface, but you go deeper, you can see someone’s interfered with them. If you know what you’re looking for. If you’re expecting to find someone fucking about. Which I did. Because why else would you call on me?’

‘Do you know when this happened?’

‘They were all placed on the same date, I can tell you that.’

None of this had come up before. If Jason Taylor was as good as he had claimed, surely he would have noticed that the images had been interfered with. The incriminating evidence had been the fact that some of the lesser images – those blurred snapshots of anonymous children clearly taken without consent in public places – were associated with the model number of a camera that Moorehead owned. Another fake?

Whoever did it was determined to make us think that Moorehead had downloaded these files himself. Combine with his initial silence regarding Justin Farnham, and you had all the makings of a guilty man.

‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘Clear as you can. What all of this means.’

He did. Griggs and I turned to look at each other. Despite what the added code tried to claim, the modified files – including those that included the damning evidence against Moorehead – had been placed on Moorehead’s PC several days, maybe weeks, after Justin Farnham’s body had been found. Meaning the investigation had been messed with from the start. Meaning that someone had tried their hardest to make it look like Moorehead was guilty. And, like the Keystone Cops we were, we’d fallen for it.

Hook.

Line.

Sinker.

W
hat I now knew:

1) Jason Taylor had been present during at least one of the disappearances, visiting his old friend Alex Moorehead. He hadn’t mentioned specifics, but it was plausible that he had been in the area on or around the time of Farnham’s disappearance. Which would also explain why he was so ready and able to assist in the investigation.

2) Someone had planted the images on Moorehead’s drive the day that Justin Farnham disappeared. Someone with not inconsiderable computing knowledge.

If the Grinch could see the fakery, why had Taylor missed it?

What’s two plus two?

Taylor had the skills to pull off the hack that Soren uncovered. The opportunity, too. And I still wasn’t happy with how he behaved when anyone brought up his old friend’s alleged crimes. He was oddball enough, but there was something hinky about his reaction to my approach.

Griggs gave me three more days on the case. He didn’t think that this would get me any closer to David Burns. But I knew that if I could make Burns feel I had achieved something he could not – justice for the mothers who had lost their sons – then it would go some way to smoothing my path to his inner circle. A less obvious route than the one proposed by Griggs, establishing the kind of bona-fides that would be hard to fake by any undercover officer.

But Griggs wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t convinced I was right about Taylor. And that was the least of his concerns. Nevertheless, he was giving me three days before allowing Kellen to follow her instincts on the charges against me.

Call that generous.

At least it was enough time to breathe. At the very least to come up with a new plan of action.

I called Jason Taylor, told him I had some more questions. Assured him this would be the last time we talked.

He hesitated. Said he’d talked to his mother about this, and she’d made the point that what I was doing could be seen as harassment.

I told him that this was not harassment. That I was merely looking for more background detail. That if he didn’t talk to me, it was likely other people would be coming around with questions in the next few months. With the papers already running stories about Moorehead’s death, how long would it be until someone remembered his name again?

He relented eventually. But there was still a reluctance about him. Maybe that was understandable.

Once we were done, I figured on checking Taylor’s family. Twice now he’d mentioned his mother during conversations. Maybe just because it was her birthday, but there had been an odd emphasis in the way he mentioned her that set alarm bells off in the back of my brain.

I dug deeper. With his full name, address and business details, it was easier to root further into the system, using back channels to get information on his extended family. It’s a little like researching a family tree, but the emphasis is not on reaching as far back as possible, but getting the maximum information on each person involved.

Which was why I was surprised to find my search stopping early.

Jason Taylor’s mother was dead.

Her birthday was when he said it was, but she’d been dead for thirteen years.

Thirteen years.

The number felt familiar.

Thirteen years.

I pulled up the files on the Moorehead murders. Everything I had on the project that Wemyss had been running. All the Disappeared. All the evidence – however tenuous – that linked them to the Farnham murder and to Moorehead in particular.

Thirteen years.

The first death. The first child to die. Andrew Peterson. Ten years old. Body found in the Tay maybe five or six miles from his home. It had been death by misadventure until the post-mortem ruled that the injuries which killed Andrew could not have been sustained accidentally. By the time anyone realized this, of course, the trail was cold. Andrew had been dead for a week when they found him. Any evidence destroyed by his immersion in the water and exposure to the elements.

But the dates matched with Alex Moorehead living two streets away. Had Jason Taylor called in to visit his old friend? Or was I looking too hard for something that was never there?

Still, it gave me something to work with.

I called Fife police, talked to the duty sergeant, asked if there had been any word regarding Alex Moorehead’s father. He told me, in so many words, to go fuck myself.

I put in a request with the council for more information regarding Mrs Taylor’s death. Knew that it would be put in a queue, that I probably wouldn’t get the information I was looking for until the next day.

That was fine.

It was enough to know he had lied to me, or at least tried to steer me wrong during our conversation. That could prove enough to give me an advantage, to help trip him up.

That night, I slept soundly, but when I woke up in the morning, there was a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. I had managed to knock all the pillows off the bed while I was asleep, and was wrapped up in a mess of blankets that clung to the sweat of my body.

I showered and shaved, heated up some porridge oats in the microwave and wolfed them down. The coffee helped a little, too, and an hour later when I looked at myself in the mirror, I resembled a normal human being. Vaguely.

My meeting with Taylor was at 2 p.m. It was only just past seven. I killed time running over everything that I had, ensuring there were no gaps in my logic. Today, I planned to twist the knife, to see whether I could get him to admit the secret he was hiding.

Maybe it was a leap, I admit, to think that Taylor was guilty. So far what I had was a coincidence of timing. But who else would have the means to frame Alex so completely? Not his father, certainly. And then there was the coincidence of his mother’s death timing so well with the first child to disappear. And the look in Taylor’s eyes when he had mentioned a woman who had been dead for thirteen years.

All I had were suppositions and questions. I was focused on Taylor, but other questions needed answering. This time around no one would be left uncertain about the truth, and for once, there would be no loose ends. No questions to be asked.

Just the simple truth.

If I was right in my suppositions, I still had to know two things.