Ian Rankin - Fleshmarket Close

‘Mr Jardine,’ she said. ‘Still got the cats, I see.’ She plucked a couple of hairs from his lapel.

He gave a short, nervous laugh, shuffling to one side so his wife could step in and shake hands with Siobhan. But instead of shaking, she squeezed Siobhan’s hand and held it quite still in her own. Her eyes were reddened, and Siobhan felt there was something the woman was hoping she’d read in them.

‘They tell us you’re a sergeant now,’ John Jardine was saying.

‘Detective sergeant, yes.’ Siobhan was still holding Alice Jardine’s stare.

‘Congratulations on that. We went to your old place first, and they told us to come here. Something about CID being reorganised...?’ He was rubbing his hands together as though washing them. Siobhan knew he was in his mid-forties, but he looked ten years older, as did his wife. Three years ago, Siobhan had suggested family therapy. If they’d taken her advice, it hadn’t worked. They were still in shock, still dazed and confused and in mourning.

‘We’ve lost one daughter,’ Alice Jardine said quietly, finally releasing her grip. ‘We don’t want to lose another... that’s why we need your help.’

Siobhan looked from wife to husband and back again. She was aware that the Desk Sergeant was watching; aware, too, of the peeling paint on the walls, the scored graffiti and Wanted posters.

‘How about a coffee?’ she said with a smile. ‘There’s a place just round the corner.’

So that was where they went. A café which doubled as a restaurant at lunchtime. A businessman was seated at one of the window tables, finishing a late meal while talking into his mobile phone and sifting through paperwork in his briefcase. Siobhan led the couple to a booth, not too near the wall-mounted speakers. It was instrumental music, background pap to fill the silence. Probably meant to be vaguely Italian. The waiter, however, was one hundred per cent local.

‘Anythin’ to eat wi’ that?’ His vowels were flat and nasal, and there was a venerable dollop of bolognese sauce on the belly of his short-sleeved white shirt. His arms were thick and showed fading tattoos of thistles and saltires.

‘Just the coffees,’ Siobhan said. ‘Unless...?’ She looked at the couple seated opposite her, but they shook their heads. The waiter headed off in the direction of the espresso machine, only to be diverted by the businessman, who also wanted something and obviously merited a level of service which an order of three coffees couldn’t hope to match. Well, it wasn’t as if Siobhan was in any great rush to return to her desk, though she wasn’t sure she was going to take much pleasure from the conversation ahead.

‘So how are things with you?’ she felt obliged to ask.

The couple looked at one another before replying. ‘Difficult,’ Mr Jardine said. ‘Things have been... difficult.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Alice Jardine leaned forward across the table. ‘It’s not Tracy. I mean, we still miss her...’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Of course we do. But it’s Ishbel we’re worried about.’

‘Worried sick,’ her husband added.

‘Because she’s gone, you see. And we don’t know why or where.’ Mrs Jardine burst into tears. Siobhan looked towards the businessman, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything other than his own existence. The waiter, however, had paused by the espresso machine. Siobhan glared at him, hoping he’d take the hint and hurry up with their drinks. John Jardine had an arm around his wife’s shoulders, and it was this which took Siobhan back three years, to an almost identical scene: the terraced house in the West Lothian village of Banehall, and John Jardine comforting his wife as best he knew how. The house was neat and tidy, a place its owners could take pride in, having used the right-to-purchase scheme to buy it from the local council. Streets of near-identical houses all around, but you could tell the ones in private ownership: new doors and windows, tidied gardens with new fencing and wrought-iron gates. At one time, Banehall had thrived on coal-mining, but that industry was long gone, and with it much of the town’s spirit. Driving down Main Street for the first time, Siobhan had been aware of boarded-up shops and For Sale signs; people moving slowly under the weight of carrier bags; kids hanging around the war memorial, aiming playful high kicks at each other.

John Jardine worked as a delivery driver; Alice was on the production line at an electronics factory on the outskirts of Livingston. Striving to do well for themselves and their two daughters. But one of those daughters had been attacked during a night out in Edinburgh. Her name was Tracy. She’d been drinking and dancing with a gang of friends. Towards the end of the evening, they’d piled into taxis to go to some party. But Tracy had been a straggler, and the address of the party had slipped her mind during the wait for a cab. The battery on her mobile was flat, so she went back inside, asked one of the lads she’d been up for a dance with if he’d lend her his. He went outside with her, started walking with her, telling her the party wasn’t that far.

Started kissing her; not taking no for an answer. Slapped her and punched her, dragged her into an alley and raped her.

All of this Siobhan had already known as she’d sat in the house in Banehall. She’d worked the case, spoken with the victim and the parents. The attacker hadn’t been hard to find: he was from Banehall himself, lived only three or four roads away, the other side of Main Street. Tracy had known him at school. His defence was fairly typical: too much drink, couldn’t remember... and she’d been willing enough anyway. Rape always made for a tough prosecution, but to Siobhan’s relief, Donald Cruikshank, known to his friends as Donny, face permanently scarred by the raking of his victim’s fingernails, had been found guilty and sentenced to five years.

Which should have been the end of Siobhan’s involvement with the family, except that a few weeks after the trial had ended had come news of Tracy’s suicide, her life ending at nineteen years of age. An overdose of pills, found in her bedroom by her sister Ishbel, four years younger than her.

Siobhan had visited the parents, all too aware that nothing she could say would change anything, but still feeling the need to say something . They had been failed, not so much by the system as by life itself. The one thing Siobhan hadn’t done — the thing she’d had to grit her teeth to stop herself doing — was visit Cruikshank in jail. She’d wanted him to feel her anger. She remembered the way Tracy had given evidence in court, her voice fading away to nothing as the phrases stuttered out; not looking at anyone; almost ashamed to be there. Unwilling to touch the bagged exhibits: her torn dress and underwear. Wiping silent tears away. The judge had been sympathetic, the defendant trying not to look shamefaced, playing the role of the real victim: wounded, a large muslin patch covering one cheek; shaking his head in disbelief, raising his eyes to heaven.

And afterwards, the verdict delivered, the jury had been allowed to hear of his previous convictions: two for assault, one for attempted rape. Donny Cruikshank was nineteen years old.

‘Bastard’s got his whole life ahead of him,’ John Jardine had told Siobhan as they left the cemetery. Alice had both arms around her surviving daughter. Ishbel was crying into her mother’s shoulder. Alice looking straight ahead, something dying behind her eyes...

The coffees came, jarring Siobhan back to the present. She waited until the waiter had gone, off to fetch the businessman’s bill.

‘So tell me what’s happened,’ she said.

John Jardine poured a sachet of sugar into his cup and started stirring. ‘Ishbel left school last year. We wanted her to go to college, get some kind of qualification. But she had her heart set on hairdressing.’