04-Mothers of the Disappeared Read online

  ‘Why?’

  Should I tell him the truth? Would it be what he wanted to hear? What he needed to hear? How much did I tell this man? How much did he know? How much was he hiding?

  I’ve learned over the years that whether we mean to or not, we all hide things. We all have secrets. Some secrets could change our world entirely. Others were mere red herrings, things that could terrify us when kept in the deep dark corners of our mind where we preferred to hide them, but that when exposed to the harsh light of the world became merely mild embarrassments or odd non-entities that we would later struggle to explain why they held such power over us.

  Which kind of secret did a man like Taylor hold?

  ‘I’m working for a private client,’ I said, omitting the detail that I was working for several individuals. Keeping it simple, keeping it anonymous. What good would it do to even hint that I was working for the mothers of the disappeared? ‘One who has a personal interest in Mr Moorehead’s case. In particular, his motivations.’

  ‘His motivations? Christ, man, he was a monster! A fucked-up aberration of the human species. I know some people like to try and humanize monsters like Alex, but there’s no use hiding the truth.’ There was an edge to his voice that sounded almost manic, a far cry from the controlled and eloquent tones of just a few minutes earlier.

  ‘So there was nothing you can think of that might have caused him to—’

  ‘If I had seen anything like that,’ Taylor said, ‘I’d have told someone. What he did was sickening. More than sickening. He had pictures of kids – bloody kids – on his computer. He killed little boys. He … he …’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘I don’t know. He did things to them. I don’t even want to …’

  I had lost him. I knew that. We had only a few seconds left before he hung up the phone and considered the matter closed. I might have considered this to be a bad thing; a lead lost or a fuck-up to be analysed and regretted later. But it was neither of those things. What it was, was a way forward, an indication that I was on the right path.

  In the initial interviews, when Ernie mentioned Taylor’s name to Moorehead, he’d shouted at Ernie to fuck himself, started his descent into near-complete silence about the nature of his crimes.

  At the time, Ernie had assumed that Moorehead finally realized the magnitude of what he’d done.

  Reading the transcript with the benefit of years of distance, I read a fear between the lines that made me wonder if it wasn’t the idea of what he’d done that scared him, but the name that Ernie threw at him.

  They had been what you might call best friends. They should have known each other’s secrets.

  And now, Jason Taylor’s reaction told me something new. He knew more than he’d ever admitted to anyone. He knew things that would shed light on the truth behind the monster known as Alex Moorehead. He just had to tell someone about them. Get over the fear he’d been living with for the past six years, bring the truth out into the light.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  That night, I slept in fits and starts. I don’t remember good dreams. Only the bad ones ever stay with me; the dreams that threaten to kill you in your sleep, grabbing hold of the deepest, darkest places in your mind and refusing to let go until they’ve pulled out everything that’s in there.

  I was standing in the centre of the anonymous incident room that Wemyss had set up at Kirkcaldy FHQ. Alone, looking at the images on the walls and finding myself flinching every time I saw one of the boys staring out at me. There was something wrong with the images. They were no longer smiling, carefree snaps of lives lost before they had a chance to be lived. Instead, each of the boys stared out of the confines of their photographs with an unnatural and terrifying intensity. As though they were looking at the very person who had taken away their lives.

  I wanted to say, ‘It wasn’t me. There was nothing I could have done,’ but they continued to stare, and I knew that they didn’t care for my excuses.

  I should have avenged them. But I failed.

  There was a cold wind. I shivered, realized that someone had left the door open. I could walk out. But I was stuck where I was, unable to move. Because I was waiting for someone. I didn’t know who. But they were coming, I could sense it.

  I didn’t want them to come. I knew that when they arrived, they would bring the horror of death.

  I could have run. Should have run. The door was open. All it took was a moment’s decision and I could have avoided facing what I already knew was coming.

  But I couldn’t move. I just stood where I was, the eyes of the dead on me, blaming me, screaming silently for something I couldn’t understand.

  And then I became aware of whatever it was finally approaching, turning so that I faced that open door and looked out into the grey corridor beyond. The corridor was unnaturally long and empty. I sensed the visitor walking towards the door from outside, even if I couldn’t see them.

  The figure was indistinct at first, more a cloud of smoke than a person. It gathered weight as it advanced towards the door, features slowly coming into focus. It looked human.

  But I did not want to see the truth of whatever it was.

  All I wanted to do was run.

  Just as it came into focus, I woke up. Fumbling, I rolled over in bed and reached for the lamp, as though it would somehow dispel whatever lurked in the shadows of my bedroom. It was a childlike terror, and one that my adult brain would mock when it came fully awake, but one that felt urgent and so utterly real that I would do anything to dispel it.

  I lay there, awake, the bedside light harsh, yet oddly comforting. After a while the dream faded and I turned off the light. When I finally drifted off, I found myself back in the room.

  Waiting.

  The third time this happened, I couldn’t wake up. I was aware of being stuck in a dream, and somehow this made the process of waking even more difficult. As though by knowing that I could escape, somehow the very act became impossible. The smoke-like figure took on detail and form before my eyes. I couldn’t move or even make a sound to try and shock myself back to the land of the living.

  Paralysed.

  I realized, as the figure came into focus, that there was one picture missing from the wall. One boy whose face had not glared at me with a kind of pitying hatred. He was the one I feared the most, whose retribution and need for revenge was the greatest.

  Justin Farnham.

  I couldn’t look away. His eyes were filled with a violent hatred and desire for revenge. He stood perfectly still, not saying a word.

  Slowly, his skin rippled as though made of thin material, with a wind rustling underneath. Marks appeared on his skin; violent red slashes around his face. His eyes roadmapped red before haemorrhaging blood. All the while he remained perfectly still.

  Finally, I was able to ask: ‘Who did this?’

  ‘You already know.’

  His lips didn’t move. It was more like a memory of something he might have said. A child’s voice that creaked like tombstones rubbing together.

  The marks appeared on his neck, his throat opening wide, the blood dark and vibrant as it slid over his pale skin.

  I felt sick. My stomach twisted violently.

  I woke up then, and was on my feet before I even had a chance to think. Running to the bathroom. As I vomited into the bowl, I felt the bile burn inside my throat. I thought I might choke, that the vomiting might never stop. When it finally did, I spat out what had caught in my teeth and then fell back, lying on the cool of the lino floor, looking up at the lights on the ceiling.

  I couldn’t close my eyes. Every time I did, I saw Justin standing before me, his throat slit, his eyes burning at the injustice of his early death.

  You already know.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘You ever talk to Jason Taylor?’

  Wemyss was keeping his distance from me. The tension in his shoulders spoke of his desire to deck me one, but then I figured he’d have to join a long line. />
  ‘Once,’ Wemyss said. ‘That was the friend, right? The one who helped you hack Moorehead’s machine?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘He didn’t have much to say.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Beyond what he already told Bright, I mean.’

  ‘Bright and Woo—’

  ‘Oh, aye, bring that tube’s name up, why don’t you? He’s Tayside’s embarrassment, all right? And we’d prefer it all stayed that way.’

  We were talking in the lobby of Kirkcaldy FHQ. He was speaking to me on sufferance only. Mostly because I’d threatened to hang around until he came downstairs. So here we were. Maybe he figured I’d behave myself if we were in public.

  Or maybe it was so he’d behave himself. It would be easy to think of Wemyss as fat, but I had the feeling his size was as much muscle as it was bacon rolls.

  ‘So you asked Taylor the same questions as Bright?’

  ‘Anything else I should have asked?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Wemyss sighed. His shoulders slumped. ‘Fucksakes, McNee. Come out and say it, why don’t you? We all know that Wood brought Taylor in. Think I didn’t start asking myself a few questions last year? I mean, if he was dirty anyway, he might as well be guilty of a million other sins.’ Wemyss massaged his forehead with sweaty fingers, like jointed bratwurst. ‘You really are a pain in the arse. I mean, everyone warned me, but I figured you had to have something. Truth is, I don’t know if you’re deluded or if you’re stringing along these women for all their worth, giving them hope where you and I both know that there’s none.’

  ‘All this is because the charges against me were made public,’ I said. ‘Before then you had no worries trusting my gut instinct.’

  ‘I had no worries granting you a little professional courtesy,’ he said. ‘There’s a big fuck-off difference, pal.’

  ‘I talked to Taylor earlier,’ I said.

  ‘And he told you to piss off?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Look, I think there’s something worth examining here.’

  ‘You’re pissing on his grave, you know that? DI Bright, I mean. You already called his name into question … What, you’re not going to rest until you’ve dragged all the bloody polis through the dirt?’

  ‘I’m the one who cleared him,’ I said. ‘When everyone else just assumed he was one more corrupt cop.’

  ‘Aye, you cleared him. And implicated one of the finest political movers Tayside Police ever had …’

  ‘I didn’t set out after Wood,’ I said. ‘He put himself in the firing line.’

  ‘You embarrassed Tayside, you know that? The whole force is still having to tiptoe around because of what you did, and now here you are calling your old friend’s investigation methods into question?’

  ‘I think he missed something. I think we both did. Hell, I think Wood did. Look, Wood was a drug-dealing, lying bawbag, but I think even he understood what it meant to catch a child-killer. I don’t think it was sloppy work. I think—’

  ‘You think you can fix everything. Right? OK, I get it now. You’re deluded, McNee. Fucking hero complex. You’re fixating on Taylor because you know that you missed something and he’s the only lead you have left. You want to give these poor women what they’re looking for. Fine. But you’re obsessing over the point. You want to let them know that there are bogey-men out there, and that there is someone they can hate for what happened. And you’ll do anything to achieve that.’

  I didn’t say anything. Maybe because I was afraid he had a point.

  ‘Just tell them you’re off the case, McNee,’ Wemyss said. ‘Quit acting the hero. Quit looking for conspiracies. And go look after your own fucking house.’

  What made me fixate on Taylor?

  Taylor had come forward because he wanted to be a responsible citizen. Because he wasn’t as friendly with Alex as we thought. Or just because hacking into his friend’s computer gave him a challenge.

  Nothing there that would raise alarm bells. Nothing to say that Taylor wasn’t just a concerned citizen who recognized something in his friend that he had never seen before. The fact that a corrupt bastard like Wood had vouched for him didn’t tell me anything one way or the other. The official statements claimed that Taylor had done some freelance IT work for Wood in the past. Or, to put it another way, he’d helped fix Wood’s computer, once.

  But thinking about Taylor, I began to realize how Ernie must have felt about Alex Moorehead. When he found Justin’s body too quickly, too eagerly. The same way that Taylor discovered was just a little too eager to uncover that damning evidence against his friend.

  I didn’t like it. And maybe I was looking too hard for answers. Wemyss had already bought into the idea that Moorehead may have been innocent, but he was searching for the simplest explanation as to what really happened. Looking at what he knew and deciding that everything pointed towards dear old Dad being the guilty party. An assumption compounded by the old man’s sudden disappearance.

  Maybe he was right.

  Maybe I was overcomplicating the issue.

  The last few years had seen more intensity than I cared to remember. Top it off with Griggs handing DS Kellen her investigation on a plate, and I was close to burnout.

  Close to crazy?

  That evening, I sent a message around the Mothers of the Disappeared. A simple email with an attachment, asking if any of them remembered a friend of Alex’s who might have stayed with him. I sent them a picture of Taylor. But as he was now. I had been unable to discover any images of the man he would have been at each disappearance.

  I made a late dinner, a quick and easy carbonara that I still managed to spoil by overheating the eggs. I wound up with something that resembled scrambled eggs wrapped around spaghetti more than any light Italian dish.

  Just as I was finishing there was a knock at the door. Loud and heavy. Copper’s knock. I found Lindsay standing there in the hall. Still using crutches. ‘You’re not the kind of cunt that would keep an invalid standing on his doorstep, are you?’

  And no, I wasn’t. But for just a moment, I thought maybe I could be.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I had some beers in the fridge. Nothing exciting, but enough to appease casual guests. We drank straight from the bottles, Lindsay grabbing the sofa, me taking the armchair by the window.

  For a while, neither of us said anything, and then: ‘Coppers talk. You know that, right?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  He nodded, as though digesting what I’d said. Maybe trying to decide if he honestly believed a word that came out of my mouth. For all that had changed between us, there was still an air of distrust that neither of us would ever be able to fully ignore. Call it habit if you like, but it would always be there.

  Lindsay had decided he hated me from the moment we met. I’d been much the same. Our mutual loathing had lasted for years.

  So how to explain the last few months?

  Were we friends now?

  Perhaps some shared experiences can transcend the pettiness of what the pop-psychologically inclined call ‘personality clash’. Lindsay and I would never be the best of friends, but perhaps we understood each other now in ways we never could before.

  ‘I got a call from Wemyss, over at Kirkcaldy. Telling me how you were up to your old tricks. Of course, it means I’m in the shitter. Because I vouched for you.’

  ‘You think I could let something like this alone?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the chance to make sure the right guy paid for what happened to those children.’

  He was silent.

  ‘What if it was your boy?’

  More silence. Stubborn. How could he ever admit I was right?

  ‘I’d want the cocksucker castrated,’ said Lindsay. ‘But Alex Moorehead went down for this crime …’ Outside of his home, away from his family, he had reverted to the Lindsay I knew and loathed. Foul mo
uth, snap judgements, little patience. Put me on an even keel, at least.

  ‘You’d have been happy with the lie?’

  ‘If I believed it was the truth. Which I still do. You know I assisted Ernie after your little accident? Took up the slack, so to speak.’

  ‘He never mentioned it,’

  ‘Why would he? Given everything else, how would you feel if you knew I’d come along and nicked the case that was supposed to set you up for a long life at CID?’

  I slugged back a mouthful of beer.

  Wished I had something stronger.

  ‘You know that Elizabeth Farnham had a little thing for geek boy?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They slept together, her and Alex Moorehead. Three weeks before Justin vanished. She was always calling up Ernie, protesting the prick’s innocence. Once we got it out of her, I mean. I always thought, who’d want to admit they slept with a monster? In her mind there had to be a mistake.’

  ‘There was. Even Wemyss admits that.’

  ‘No,’ said Lindsay. ‘He admits the possibility. There’s a big fucking difference. That fat fuck may look like the only two things on his mind are when to eat and when to shite, but he’s sharp as a pointy stick up the arse. And he admits you might have a point, despite the fact that you’re a shitey wee arsebucket. But that doesn’t mean you’re right. Just means you might not be wrong. Besides, you’re pointing fingers at the wrong people.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I used Taylor myself. After that bang-up job he did on Moorehead’s system. And, aye, Wood’s reference helped. So don’t go thinking what I know you’re thinking. This was back when IT was small, underfunded, maybe even misunderstood. Although I hesitate to tell the geeks that, you know? I gave the arrogant twat a few calls when we were stuck. He was good, McNee. I mean bona-fide digital dick genius. Wood even offered him a full-time position when Tayside finally started properly building its IT operations and digital forensics.’

  ‘But he turned it down?’

  ‘Better money to be made in the private leisure sector. So he said.’