Ken McClure - Deception

‘You got it.’

‘Ever read, The Selfish Gene ?’

‘ Touché ,’ said Steven.

‘I wasn’t trying to get at you, honest,’ said Eve. ‘I was just making the point that we are what we are and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. More coffee?’

Steven declined and said that he’d best be on his way. Eve saw him to the door and he noticed the curtains stir next door. ‘They’ll tell your parents,’ he said.

‘Mum and Dad haven’t spoken to them in fifteen years,’ replied Eve. ‘Not since Mr McNab poured weed killer on some of Dad’s leeks out back. He said it was an accident but Dad never believed him. He insisted it was to stop him getting the prize at the village show. McNab’s son won it with a giant turnip.’

‘Life can be a bitch,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I get the lab report and...’

‘If you say, thank you for last night, I’ll drop you where you stand,’ warned Eve.

Steven shrugged his shoulders. ‘See you around?’ he said.

‘You will if you want to.’

‘I want to,’ said Steven clicking shut the garden gate.

He set out for the city but slowed when he was passing the slip road to Crawhill Farm when he caught sight of DCI Brewer talking to two officers beside their patrol car. He seemed to be giving them a dressing down. Steven pulled into the side and waited until the patrol car had moved off before getting out and walking back. Brewer was about to get into his own unmarked Rover when he caught sight of Steven and waited, leaning on top of the door.

‘Trouble?’ Steven asked.

‘We let the dog slip through our fingers,’ said Brewer. ‘Or should I say, I did as I’ll be carrying the can.’

‘You’re talking about Khan?’

‘I thought the dog had been taken away for forensic examination with the two bodies but apparently not and now it’s too late. The damned thing’s been cremated.’

‘Childs and Leadbetter?’

‘Yes. Leadbetter has just told me they didn’t know what to do with it when everyone had gone so they decided just to get rid of it. They didn’t realise they were doing anything wrong.’

Steven looked at Brewer but didn’t say anything. He suspected that Childs and Leadbetter had known perfectly well that they had been destroying evidence but he was wondering about their motives. Was there something to know about Khan that they didn’t want anyone else to find out or was that just his imagination working overtime?

On the way back to the city, Steven found himself wondering about the destruction of Khan’s body. Brewer had seen it as an embarrassing loss of evidence, but little more than that. It was a technical loss, not one that would affect the outcome of his report to the Procurator Fiscal in any way. There was no doubt about how James Binnie and Thomas Rafferty had met their deaths and none at all that Khan, a vicious dog with a bad reputation, had been responsible. But if Childs and Leadbetter had seen fit to burn the body, that was worth thinking through.

He saw a parallel in the fact that these two must have been responsible for pressure being put on Sweeney at the vet school to keep quiet about the rat examination. Could they have cremated the dog for the same reason? Had they been anxious to avoid the outcome of an autopsy on Khan’s body too? Was it even conceivable that Khan been suffering from the same problem as the rat population? Had Khan been subject to some kind of poisoning too?

The more he thought about it, the more Steven saw that it made a lot of sense. Khan had by all accounts been a mean, vicious dog that had become even more aggressive over the past few months. It seemed entirely possible that he had undergone a behavioural change just like the rats. In his book, this just strengthened the link between Thomas Rafferty and the rat problem. He was impatient for the lab report to come back.

He decided to have some coffee before going shopping for bits and pieces to take down to Dumfries in the morning and something for Jenny and Sue’s kids. He thought perhaps that he might take them books this time instead of toys. He was looking forward to being away from Blackbridge, even if it was just for the weekend.

He stopped in the village of Juniper Green on the western outskirts of the city and went into the local coffee shop, asking the woman who served him for a double espresso. Almost immediately his mobile phone went off, attracting black looks and tuts from the other, exclusively female, customers. Steven smiled apologetically to the ladies of the morning and went outside to take the call.

His good humour departed as he heard a woman’s voice sobbing, ‘Steven?’

‘Hello, who is this?’

‘Steven... it’s Sue... Jenny’s missing.’

Steven felt the blood drain from his face and pins and needles run up his spine. ‘Calm down, Sue and tell me exactly what’s happened,’ he said like an automaton.

‘The three of them were playing with a ball in the park this morning. Robin kicked it into the bushes at some point and Jenny went to get it... she just didn’t come back.’

Steven had to swallow against the progressive tightening in his throat. ‘I don’t understand, Sue. What exactly do you mean, she didn’t come back?’

‘When my two went to see why she was taking so long they found the ball but there was no sign of Jenny, she’d gone, disappeared, completely vanished. They looked everywhere but there was no sign of her. They ran home and told me and I rushed up there and looked everywhere again but I couldn’t find any sign of her either so I called the police.’

The woman from the coffee shop came outside and said, ‘Your coffee’s on the table.’ Steven waved her away. ‘But how could she just disappear?’

‘I don’t know, Steven. I just don’t know,’ sobbed Sue. ‘The police are here and the men in the village are all out looking for her. Luckily it’s Saturday and they’re not all at work.’

The woman from the coffee shop appeared again and said, ‘It’s getting cold.’

Steven waved her away again and said to Sue, ‘I’m on my way.’

He took two one-pound coins from his pocket and quickly entered the shop to throw them down on the table, attracting more shakes of the head and black looks before rushing out and getting into his car. Right now, Jenny was the only thing in the world that mattered: her safety took precedence over absolutely everything else. He started heading towards town but just as far as the nearest turn off to the outer city bypass. He then raced round the dual carriageway to the Lothianburn exit of the bypass and then joined the main road leading to the southwest.

He was thankful for the power of the police vehicle he was driving when it enabled him to accelerate past slow moving traffic with comparative ease on a road that was not amenable to overtaking at the best of times. Even so, he still attracted a deal of angry horn blowing when he forced the issue on a number of occasions, causing on-coming traffic to brake or take avoiding action. After thirty miles or so he was able to leave the twisting trunk road and join the main dual carriageway south. He was topping a hundred and ten miles an hour when a police patrol car latched on to his tail and turned on its lights. Steven maintained his speed and the police car dropped away as the officers got the result of their computer check on the vehicle’s ownership.

Steven tried telling himself that there was no point in driving so fast. It wasn’t going to make any difference whether he took two hours or three to get to Glenvane. Everything that could be done was already being done but something inside him wanted to be at the spot where Jenny was last seen and wanted him to get there as quickly as possible. He needed to feel near her. Apart from that, driving fast demanded intense concentration and helped him stop lingering on the nightmare thoughts that insisted on speculating over what might have happened to Jenny.