Alex Gray - Glasgow Kiss

Detective Constable Annie Irvine stood aside as her colleague, John Weir, knocked on yet another door. They’d been at this all morning, along with a few uniformed officers from Cranhill police station. There was a knack to this sort of work, she knew, and her sidekick, DC Weir, just didn’t have it. Annie groaned inwardly as the door opened and a man faced them, his unshaven face and rumpled trousers testament to the probability that they’d dragged him out of bed.

‘Whitisit?’ the man mumbled as Weir showed him his warrant card.

‘Sorry to trouble you, sir.’ Weir’s upbeat expression was surely hurting his face by now, thought Irvine. ‘We’re making house-to-house inquiries about a missing toddler.’

‘Aw, richt. Thon wee lassie frae the next close?’ The man’s eyes seemed suddenly that bit less bleary. ‘Heard aboot it the morn when ah came aff ma shift, so ah did.’

Annie listened as the DC went through his usual spiel then yet another door was closed and they drifted across the landing to the next tenement flat where the tartan-backed nameplate showed the resident to be a D Lindsay. They were getting nowhere fast, Annie thought gloomily. Nobody had seen a thing.

‘Yes, oh, police?’ As soon as she caught sight of their warrant cards the elderly woman standing in the crack of doorway behind a security chain gave a simpering smile. ‘Is it about the wee girl? Come on in, will you,’ she added, sliding the chain off and opening the door wide. ‘A cup of tea?’

Annie and Weir exchanged glances and Weir shrugged. ‘Why not? Thank you, Mrs Lindsay,’ Weir added.

The old lady wagged her finger. ‘It’s Miss, Officer, not Mrs,’ she told him. ‘Never did find my Mister Right,’ she added with a schoolgirlish giggle.

Inside the flat Annie could smell the distinctive odour of lavender furniture polish, and images of her late granny’s own house with their long-forgotten memories came rushing back. They followed the old woman down the hallway and into a room so reminiscent of a bygone age that it might have come out of a Victorian film set. Annie had heard the tales about people from her granny’s day keeping their front rooms for ‘good’ but, apart from the museum in the People’s Palace, she’d never seen this for herself, until now.

‘Make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring you through the tea. Just made some scones this morning, I’m sure you’re ready for a wee break,’ Miss Lindsay rattled on, ‘then I can tell you all about poor little Nancy.’

Annie and Weir looked at one another as the old dear left the room. ‘D’you think she really has any information?’ Annie asked.

Weir shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows? She strikes me as a bit of a lonely old soul. Maybe she just wants our company. Mind you, she’s not daft — keeps her chain on the door.’

‘It’s not the most salubrious area of the city,’ Annie told him drily.

While they waited for the old lady to return with their tea, she looked around the room. A front parlour, she knew, used to be kept for special occasions: visits from the clergy, Christmas and New Year celebrations. They could add a house-to-house call by CID in the twenty-first century, she thought drily. The room looked as if it hadn’t been used for years, though Miss Lindsay must have kept it well dusted for every piece of china on the mantelpiece gleamed in this subdued light. And it wasn’t just any old tat, Annie realised, crossing the room for a closer look. The little figurines arranged in ones and twos looked like Staffordshire pottery and she was willing to bet they were the real thing. It was a dismal morning, with rain mizzling down on the streets outside and only a dull light coming from the large bay windows, their heavy green velvet drapes partially obscuring the four rectangles of glass. All the furniture was dark too, adding to the general air of a room that had been preserved from a different era: an upright piano stood against one wall, a large picture of a dreary Highland glen above it, the three piece suite in its original bottle-green uncut moquette, only relieved by the beige antimacassars with their crocheted edging, one placed carefully over the back of each chair, three on the settee. Even the fireplace looked as if it had been there since the late-nineteenth century when these tenements must have been built, she mused. Brass firedogs and a beaten-brass log basket lay on either side of the empty hearth, a black hole that looked as if it hadn’t seen a proper fire in years. The policewoman glanced around the room but failed to locate a single radiator. She shivered at the thought of what this room must be like in winter. No wonder it looked like it was scarcely ever used.

‘There you are, my dears, something to warm you up.’ Miss Lindsay was suddenly there beside them and setting down a tray on a highly polished mahogany table next to the window. ‘What do you take? Milk? Sugar?’

Annie watched as the old lady lifted a silver pot, her hand steady as she poured out the tea. She might be old, the DC thought to herself, but she seemed to have all her faculties about her.

‘Nancy Fraser,’ Weir began, after Miss Lindsay had sat down to face them both, satisfied that they were each holding a tiny patterned plate with a well-buttered scone.

‘Yes, I’m so glad you came today. I just wasn’t sure what to do. I mean,’ she leaned forward confidentially, ‘you can’t just knock on the poor girl’s door and tell her what you think you’ve seen, can you?’

Annie laid down her cup, the saucer rattling faintly. ‘What do you think you saw, Miss Lindsay?’ she asked.

For a moment the old lady’s face showed a shadow of doubt as she glanced from one visitor to the other. ‘Well, you like to be sure , don’t you? I mean, it would be awful if I was wrong.’ She tailed off, her fingers grasping the handle of her teacup as if afraid that they might begin to shake. ‘I saw the wee girl being taken away in that car.’

For a moment nobody spoke, then John Weir cleared his throat and smiled encouragingly at the old lady. ‘Maybe you’d like to tell us exactly what you saw, Miss Lindsay,’ he said, then, laying down his plate, he took out his Blackberry and prepared to make notes.

‘It was the first day of school, you know,’ she told them. ‘I always like to watch the wee ones in their new uniforms walking down the road. Some of the younger children from the next close were out on the pavement watching them as well. I’d just taken a look down the street to see if any other children were coming when this car drew up.’ She paused, looking expectantly at them both.

This pause, wondered Annie, was it for dramatic effect?

‘A woman got out, lifted Nancy up and put her in the car. Then she drove off!’ Miss Lindsay’s eyes gleamed with triumph as she leaned back, watching them intently.

Irvine could almost feel John Weir’s desire to catch her eye. Were they being given a story by an old lady who wanted some small excitement in her lonely life? Or were they actually hearing the truth from a credible witness?

‘Can you show us exactly where you were standing at the time, Miss Lindsay?’

The old lady rose to her feet and crossed to the large bay window. ‘Right here. You get the best view of the whole street from here. Come over and see for yourselves.’

She was right, Irvine thought. The view from this upstairs flat took in the entire block, from one end to the corner where it merged with the main road. Looking across at the rows of windows showing a glimpse of curtain or a pot plant on the sill reminded her of something. Then, suddenly she had it — Avril Paton’s famous painting of tenement blocks in Glasgow, Windows in the West, where you had some sort of voyeuristic insight on lots of people’s lives.