Authors: Gillian Galbraith
‘He may,’ Alice said, then she turned to DC Cairns and mouthed ‘Tea’ at her, indicating the shocked woman with her eyes.
‘He may,’ she repeated, ‘but just to be on the safe side, I think you should give him a ring – see what he says. Then we’ll be able to find them both, sort everything out. Once we know where they are.’
Using her landline, Alice putting it on speakerphone, Mrs Stimms phoned her husband’s mobile number.
‘Jimmy?’
‘Yes, Lambie, my darling. How are you?’
‘Have you got her yet? Have you picked up Diana from that school?’
‘No. I’m going to go there this afternoon. I’ll try this afternoon.’
‘Why not this morning? I thought you planned to try this morning . . . at break time. You promised. I thought that was the plan?’ the woman said, sounding desperate.
‘Something came up at work, I had to do it. We have to live, don’t we! We’d have missed a massive order otherwise – thousands and thousands of pounds. Jobs in the factory would have had to go. But I’ll be there this afternoon and on the dot. Don’t worry, my darling, she’s almost home. Now, I’ve got to go – one of the other phones is ringing.’
‘Are you at work, in the office then?’
‘Yes, I am, and its pandemonium here. Got to go. There’s no one else to answer it at the moment. Give you a ring later.’
‘He’s in the office,’ Mrs Stimms said bleakly, putting the receiver down.
‘No, he’s got Diana, and he’s not there,’ Alice said, ‘I’ll show you.’
Getting Mrs Stimms to dial his office number, Alice spoke to the receptionist.
‘Could I speak to Mr Stimms, please. I understand he’s in his office this morning.’
‘Sorry,’ the woman replied, ‘he’s gone out this morning. He’ll be back sometime after three at the earliest, he thinks. If not, he’s supposed to be in the office all day tomorrow, so you could be sure to get him then.’
‘He’s definitely not in now?’
‘Yes,’ the woman replied, sounding mildly offended, ‘that’s right. I saw him leave myself earlier this morning, he’s definitely out. Do you want to speak to someone else instead?’
‘No . . .’
‘Give me the phone,’ Mrs Stimms said to Alice and, obediently, she handed it over.
‘Rhona, it’s me,’ she said, ‘Amelia Stimms. Put me on to Jimmy, please.’
‘Mrs Stimms . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was you asking. But he’s not here, honestly. He left here, I don’t know – a couple of hours ago. I don’t know where he is. He crossed his diary out, cancelled the appointment he had for this morning. He told me he wouldn’t be back in the office today. Have you not got his mobile number?’
Amelia Stimms put down the phone. When offered a cup of tea by the young constable she pushed it away,
staring, for a moment, out of the sitting room window, seeing nothing and saying nothing. She no longer sat straight-backed. Slowly, her head bowed until her chin almost rested on her chest. She closed her eyes.
‘We’ll need,’ Alice said gently, ‘a photo of him, a photo of Diana and the registration number of the car he’s in. Can you manage that?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s one other thing, too. We know he’s got Diana . . .’
‘No,
we
don’t
know
,’ Mrs Stimms replied, rousing herself one last time, and turning round to face the policewoman.
‘I do, and he hasn’t come home with her, although he could have done so. He’s lied to us about when he picked her up from Miranda’s flat, probably about the existence of Anna Campbell, probably about your daughter’s lesbianism. He’s lied to you, too. I need to know where he’s likely to take her.’
‘How do you mean, to take her? He’ll bring her back here eventually, he’s going to bring her back to me . . .’
‘No, Mrs Stimms, he isn’t. Miranda is dead. We know he saw her shortly before she died. He may have killed her. Diana may have seen him doing so, witnessed something. Miranda’s boyfriend is dead, murdered and deposited, like Miranda, in the sea. Now, please tell me where your husband would be likely to take Diana. Is there anywhere on the coast of the Forth, upstream from the bridges, that he knows well, that he goes to?’
‘One thing,’ she said in a monotone, ‘this Anna Campbell person, how do you know about her?’
‘We heard about her from your husband. He was the one to give us the details about her. Others in the tenement
in Casselbank Street had only heard her name. A few had seen her – well, someone who might have been her.’
‘Jimmy said nothing to you about our Anna? You see, that was what Miranda called Diana. Anna. When Miranda was wee she didn’t like Diana’s name, don’t know why – she called her “Anne” or sometimes “Anna”. Afterwards she used it as a pet name. It stuck. Only Miranda, no one else, called her Anna. You giving the name as Anna Louise Campbell put me off, but Jim would know, immediately, who Anna was.’
‘Where would he go?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ She was distraught.
‘Think. Diana’s life may depend upon it.’
‘This is ridiculous! He’d never kill her!’
‘Mrs Stimms,’ Alice said, looking steadily at the woman, ‘is this a gamble you want to take? He would. I don’t seem to be able to get this across to you. I’m quite sure he was responsible for Miranda’s death. We know, from you, that he was with her that night. We know that she was involved in an argument in the stair. I had thought it was with her boyfriend, Hamish. But thinking about it this minute, afresh, it will have been with him. There was no lesbian lover, no flatmate – there was just Miranda and Diana. Your husband comes to the flat to get Diana back, they fight over her and Miranda is found dead the next morning. I’m pretty sure, now, that he was involved in Hamish’s death too.’
‘This is pure fantasy!’
‘If only. Tell me this, on your return from staying with your mother on the Monday night did you notice anything different about the house – was it in a mess, for example?’
‘No, it wasn’t different at all, not in a mess. In fact, Jimmy, God bless him, had cleaned up everywhere in
the kitchen for me. Specially, as a welcome home for me. He’d cleaned it top to bottom. I had to re-do it, of course, he’s a man, can’t clean to save himself. I had to wipe down all the surfaces again and mop the floor. But it’s the thought that counts . . . I was touched, particularly as he’s always so busy at work. You’ve nothing against Jimmy – no evidence that he killed this Hamish you keep bringing up.’
‘You judge. We know that Miranda’s last phone call was to Hamish. Suppose she phoned him about her father, about his visit. Perhaps, she saw him coming from a window or something – told him, let Hamish know that her father was coming. She would know why he was coming, would not give Diana up without a fight. After all, I’m pretty sure that your Jimmy abused her from puberty onwards. Diana was thirteen, you’ve told us. Hamish, on his return from London, goes to see her. She’s not there, Diana’s not there, where would he go next?’
‘To her father’s house,’ DC Cairns said, as if the question was aimed at her.
‘Exactly. We know he caught his flight to Edinburgh. Suppose that finding no one in Miranda’s flat, he goes to see Jimmy. He’s never seen again. Then, like your daughter, Miranda, he ends up face down in the Forth. He died, not of drowning, but of knife wounds. And what you’ve just told us is that on the Monday night, Jimmy cleaned up the house.’
‘The colour of the water was . . .’ she began, then looking stricken, she added, ‘he’s got a knife. He must have used a knife. One’s gone missing, it’s missing still from the block. I never said anything to him about it, never thought he’d have anything to do with it – but he’s got a knife!’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t know! How would I know? He’s always on his travels, he sees people all the time, selling the cards, speaking to the Brothers, holding services, he’s never off the road. There are thousands of places he could be – thousands of places he could go!’
‘Is there anywhere on the coast, quite near here, anywhere that he knows well nearby on the coast of Fife or the Lothians?’
‘On the coast?’
‘Yes, somewhere very close to the sea.’
‘There is a spot, West Lothian way. It’s right on the Forth, near Hopetoun House. When the kids were little we’d all go there all the time, have a picnic. Jimmy loved it, used to go there himself sometimes, walk about, relax . . . He knows that little bit of countryside like the back of his hand. We haven’t been there for years, but . . . it’s the only place that I can think of like that, on the coast.’
‘Will you come with us? Show us exactly where it is?’
16
‘Dddaa . . . ddaa . . . ddaa . . .’
‘Dddaa . . . ddaa . . . ddaa . . .’
She sang it again and again, as if it was a lullaby and she must send herself to sleep. Familiar with the ins and outs of Bruntsfield Place, he took another quick look at her reflection in the rearview mirror, watching her mouthing it, repeating that single word obsessively, polishing it like a jewel on her tongue. It was only seven days since she had gone, but to him it felt like several lifetimes. To his tired eyes, her beauty had blossomed whilst they were apart. She must have lost weight, a good stone, and now she had an unearthly fragility, appearing more doll-like, closer to an angel than any flesh and blood girl. How had she survived in that horrid world of theirs, remained pure and innocent, untouched by the filth of the place? In a Hell on earth, somehow, she had walked through that fire and remained unscorched, unscathed, with her virtue as her only armour.
The traffic was bumper-to-bumper on Lothian Road. In the offside wing-mirror as they crawled along, he caught a glimpse of a marked police car in the nearby lane, only a couple of cars back from his own. Its blue light was flashing. He held his breath. The instant the traffic lights changed, it accelerated past him and turned right into Morrison Street. He relaxed his grip on the wheel, began to breathe normally again.
Hardly conscious where he was going, he crossed the west end of Princes Street into Charlotte Street and started heading out of the city northwards, as if pulled magnetically in that direction. The phone in his pocket rang, his nerves jangling in time with each of its piercing trills, but he ignored it; he would not speak to anyone about work, and could not bear to talk to Lambie again. Cutting through Ainslie Place, he followed the curve of the gardens into the corridor of Great Stuart Place as if tied to the car in front of him, then continued, equally blindly, onto Queensferry Road, as oblivious to the traffic whizzing past him as he was to the rest of his surroundings. In the bubble of his own consciousness, with his eyes fixed on the road ahead, the only noises which penetrated his brain were the occasional words uttered by his daughter as she practised her new skill.
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
He could make them out alright. As each one emerged, she giggled in surprise and delight, thrilled with the sounds she was forming, impressing herself with her own virtuosity. Listening to her, he realised that despite her sojourn away in an entirely unfamiliar world she had retained that strange, characteristic self-absorption, that fascination with her own internal landscape, that lack of curiosity about his and everyone else’s world. She was still like a budgie in a cage, in love with its own reflection. He had waited long enough. Now sweating profusely, desperate to see how she would react, if she would react, he said in a loud, booming voice, ‘Diana – where’s Miranda?’
In the mirror he caught it. A wide-eyed glance thrown back at him, one of undisguised fear. Time had washed
nothing from her memory. Oh, if only things had been other! Because, silent, at home with him and Lambie, everything about that night might have faded, slowly erased itself and, with his help, turned itself into a dream. It would have melted like snow on a summer’s day. And if, by chance, any busybodies from the police came before then, who would have listened to anything she had to say? Say! She did not speak like a human being. The noises she produced were still more like grunts. Most of what came from her mouth was strings of meaningless sound more likely to be found in a farmyard or a zoo than a civilised Christian home or school. At least, that had been true up until now. None of these newly recognisable syllables, newly recognisable words, had ever passed those dry lips before. So, all credit to the therapists in the special school in Bruntsfield. They had worked a miracle, and in doing so, he thought ruefully, brought about his downfall. And hers with it. When Anna Campbell proved untraceable, as she surely would, the police would scurry back to Star-bank. Once there, they would want to speak to him; and far more dangerously, to Diana. Now that she could talk, in some fashion at least, how would she respond to them, what exactly would she say? She could answer questions. Darling Lambie would have had no reason to question her, she would have been content just to put her arms tight around her, never let her go. And, dutiful wife that she was, she would have let all the sleeping dogs lie. Like she always had, like she always did.
Overcome with anxiety, he could not resist trying again.
‘Diana, where’s Miranda?’
There it was again. His answer. That look, that look of blind fear, terror even. And it was aimed at him, at the
back of his head. It was far more eloquent than any of the broken words that might spill from that pert little rosebud mouth of hers. Simply at the mention of that name, all that had happened in that cold tenement flooded back into his mind’s eye. And, plainly, the same happened to her.
Miranda standing at the top of the stairs, on the landing, shouting at him like a fishwife, threatening him with the jail. Calling him foul names, the foulest names, and all in public to boot. And there was Diana, too, cowering behind her sister, clutching her around the waist, tears streaming down her beautiful face.
‘Incestuous paedophile!’
‘Child-molester!’
‘Monster!’
He would never have touched Diana, not in that way, whatever that slut might have thought. And how dare she! He was the head of the household, and he had never done a bad thing to her either – certainly nothing that she had not wanted. Right to the end. It was all very well now to run away, pretend that she had not desired him, pretend that she had been scared, revolted, disgusted . . . but he knew better. He had always known better, from the very first. He had seen it in her eyes, read it as if it was print. But what could he do? This was a girl intent upon rewriting history, distorting things, and turning him into a villain in the process. She should remember; know her scripture, as he did. It was Eve who had tempted Adam, not the other way round. And on that Monday night, if she had not fought him, tussled with him, had simply allowed him to take his own daughter away, then he would not have had to push her, she would not have fallen. ‘Fallen’! She had fallen long ago, long ago, years ago, and now was
intent on taking him with her. Her aim was to pull him down. And that boy, her follower – insulting him, accusing him, threatening him with the police and all in his own home. In crossing his threshold he had brought the filth of the world with him, the arrogant little bastard. But now it was clean again, washed away in the blood of the Lamb.