04-Mothers of the Disappeared Read online

  I shook my head, walked on.

  ‘Fuck you, then!’ he shouted.

  ‘Paedo!’ another yelled, no sense of what the word really meant. Or the terrors and nightmares that it would give his mother.

  No evidence of sexual assault.

  Back at the office, I read and re-read the reports concerning Justin Farnham’s death. He’d been murdered. Tortured, even. But not sexually interfered with.

  That still jarred with what we found on Moorehead’s PC. The pictures had been brutal, all with a twisted sexual element. And yet Moorehead himself showed no other signs of sexual interest in children.

  At the time it had been easy to explain his inability to carry through the act with Justin, resorting instead to the violence that existed in the second half of the equation. He wasn’t ready to cross the line between fantasy and reality, but in starting his crime he had to ensure that there were no witnesses. But in jail, he’d seen numerous counsellors and never once – aside from some vague mumbling around the issue – had he expressed or displayed that kind of pathology.

  And besides, Project Amityville later linked other, earlier, cases to Alex. The other murder providing a definite sense of a killer escalating towards sexual gratification. Given Justin’s position in the timelines of these murders, there should have been a more sexual component to the murder; a hint of escalation.

  So why the apparent disconnect between crime and killer?

  I called Bobby Soren. On his unlisted number, of course.

  Soren was also known as ‘the Grinch’, a paranoid computer hacker who saw himself as the online Banksy. He’d been arrested and fined a few times, suspected and glowered at several more but mostly no one knew who he was, because he was too damn good at covering his tracks.

  ‘Awright, McNee,’ he said when he realized it was me on the other end of the line. ‘How’s it hanging, my man? Little to the left?’

  I didn’t even bother answering. ‘Need your help, Bobby.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ he said. ‘Hugg E-bear, that’s me.’

  It was a good gag by his standards, even putting the emphasis in the right places.

  ‘How are you on history?’

  ‘I remember something from school ’bout a Schlieffen Plan, but only ’cos it sounded cool.’

  ‘I mean old computers.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘2004, 2005,’ I said. ‘Around then, anyway.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ he said. ‘Real old, then.’

  ‘Real old.’

  ‘Know how old I was then?’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Still shiteing my breeks is how old,’ he said. And laughed. ‘But, sure, I could probably still have taken apart those old bad boys and put ’em back together. Strong, faster, better.’ Bobby had a thing about TV shows from decades before he was born. Ripped them from online streams, watched them over and over. Starsky and Hutch was his favourite, but clearly he’d been watching Lee Majors in the Six Million Dollar Man lately.

  ‘You want to meet?’ I asked.

  ‘I got time,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got the good stuff.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the good stuff.’

  Soren was an odd mix of clichés. Dressed like a protonerd with ill-fitting white tracksuit and baseball cap with over-sized peak, but living the life of your typical alpha-geek, existing on an odd diet of sugared drinks and junk food.

  The good stuff, for Soren, was a multi-pack of Red Bull and several oversized bags of M&Ms.

  We met at a coffee house in the town centre. The Empire, trying to pretend like it was a slice of New York in the centre of Dundee. Maybe you could fool yourself if you didn’t look outside. Or listen to the accents.

  I ordered a black coffee. No one insisted on calling it an Americano. Soren had a Coke. Occasionally, he stroked the goodie bag I’d brought. When he noticed me looking at him, he laughed and said, ‘My preccioussss,’ in his best Gollum voice.

  ‘I looked into it,’ he said. ‘What you said. It’d be piss easy to hack into someone’s old PC and plant a trail. More so back then because people weren’t quite so sophisticated when it came to looking out for hackers’ footprints, know what I mean? Now you need to be better than the best because the cops, they all hire the best to watch out for guys like me.’

  ‘You never fancied working as a police geek?’

  ‘Fuck the man,’ he said, a little too loudly and punched his fist in the air. Several people looked round. I tried not to look back in case I found myself having to apologize for my companion’s behaviour. He leaned forward, as though sharing a deep, dark secret, voice suddenly sotto: ‘They’d never have me, anyway. Not now.’

  I couldn’t argue. A few years back, the Grinch had hacked Tayside Police’s website and replaced the homepage with an animation of a copper humping a pig. Political subtlety wasn’t really his strong point. Staying off the grid, however, was.

  ‘So it would be possible to add images to a hard drive, make it look like they’d been there a long time, maybe even redirect where they came from?’

  ‘Back then? Oh, aye. It was possible. Security being what it was, then, the hackers were always one step ahead of everyone else.’

  I thought about it for a minute. Figured the Grinch was probably now the equivalent of what Alex Moorehead had been then. So why didn’t Moorehead even float the possibility that someone had added those pictures to his drive? At the very least it would have been a good delay tactic while we investigated the possibility. Allowed him to sort his thoughts and his alibi.

  Was I clutching out in desperation, eyes closed, fingers hoping that whatever they touched would help pull me out of the dark?

  Soren said, ‘Deep in thought, man?’

  ‘Just … considering things.’

  ‘You have something you want me to take a look at?’

  ‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Wish I bloody did, though.’ If Soren could take a look, maybe he could apply over six years’ worth of experience with computers since the original hack and uncover something that whoever planted those images didn’t realize they had left behind.

  A grand plan. Except the computer was stored away in an old evidence locker somewhere. If anyone even knew where that was, it was still going to be impossible for me to get to.

  After all, I had no real friends left on the force. At least, none who would be willing to stick their neck out.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The warehouse was even more desolate than it had been eighteen months earlier. If it was dying before, there was no trace of a heartbeat now.

  An air of tragedy continued to hang over the building. Even the birds gave it a wide berth. A couple of lone gulls sat on the low wall that marked the boundaries of the long-empty industrial estate and stared at me, as though they couldn’t work out what anyone would be doing here.

  Except making a point. A childish point.

  But it was too late to change my mind. When I spoke to Griggs, this was the address I gave him. He hadn’t questioned my decision, and I wonder if he understood the significance. If he didn’t, then Susan certainly would.

  The car, when it pulled up, was a late-model BMW. An old joke about managers driving BMWs because it’s the only car they can spell skittered through my brain.

  Griggs got out of the driver’s side, regulation suit and dark military-style jacket, maybe thinking he looked like something out of The X-Files. I noticed the passenger door open as well. My breath caught in my throat. Susan got out, dressed in a dark jacket that went down to just below her knees, and dark boots that hugged her calves.

  They walked towards me. I stayed where I was. The birds scattered, steering clear of the warehouse. Like I said, they must have sensed what happened here. And maybe had an idea of what might happen now.

  When he got close enough, Griggs said, ‘You want to talk? Seeing sense, at last?’

  I looked past him to Susan. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know. Susan had always been her father’
s daughter, and she had inherited his ability to play her cards close to her chest. But some things you can’t hide. Some things are too personal to disguise. Especially from someone who knows you too well.

  Griggs turned from me to look at her and then back again. He said, ‘You’re trying to make a point.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Susan stepped forward. ‘I didn’t think you still had this in you,’ she said. ‘But OK, I get it. I hurt your feelings. You wanted to hurt me back …’

  I shook my head. ‘It just seemed … no one comes here. No one will know we met here.’

  ‘You’re a bastard, McNee,’ she said. ‘You’ve always had that in you, but …’

  ‘This is a beautiful reunion,’ said Griggs, ‘but we’re freezing our bollocks off out here and I need to know this was about more than just petty revenge.’

  I nodded. ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘It is.’

  ‘You’re accepting my offer?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘I have conditions.’

  ‘For fuck’s—’

  ‘Hear me out,’ I said. ‘It’s not about money or anything else. It’s that you give me some breathing space. You make these charges go away. Let me find another way to get on that old bastard’s side.’

  ‘How? This is time sensitive, McNee.’

  ‘Family’s important to him. Not just his own. The whole idea. Those pictures you showed me … he doted on that child. He thinks of himself as one of the good guys. Compartmentalizes his business decisions from his apparent ethical beliefs. I can use this case to get close to him. And then … I think I can show him that we’re on the same side.’

  ‘Want to tell me how?’ Griggs asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s no time. But it’s … Look, Susan, you know you can trust me. I’ve done a lot of stupid things, but my word still means something. Right?’

  Maybe it was the wrong choice of words given everything that had happened between us. She looked away for a moment, and I thought I saw her lips move, but any words were lifted and carried by the wind so that no one would ever know what they were.

  She turned to Griggs and said, flat, ‘It might be our best chance.’

  Griggs nodded. Turned back to me. ‘OK, McNee,’ he said. ‘Fair enough. Tell me what you want. Let’s haggle for justice.’

  The duty officer glared at me, but didn’t say anything as we packed up the evidence and Griggs signed the appropriate forms. I did as I’d been told and hung back. Keeping quiet because anything I could say would only cause difficulties. Griggs was bending enough rules as it was without being accused of assisting one of the most notorious pains-in-the-arse Tayside Police had ever known, on or off the job.

  When we got back to my offices, Soren was chatting away to Dot like they were old friends, devouring cups of milky tea faster than she could boil the kettle. Mostly, though, she ignored him, so the friendly conversation was one sided. When I came in, she raised her head and looked at me over her reading glasses. I ushered Soren through to my office and shut the door. Thought maybe I could hear her sigh of relief from outside.

  Griggs placed the computer on my desk and unwrapped it. Soren regarded him with suspicion. ‘Anything I do,’ Soren said, ‘is with your permission, right? You can’t touch me for—’

  ‘He’s not interested in you,’ I said.

  Griggs regarded the smaller man for a moment and said, ‘Today.’

  Soren grinned. His incisors were sharp and whiter than you’d expect given the junk he shoved down his gullet. He got himself set up. Laughed as he sorted the cables and attached the old machine to one of my flat-screen monitors. ‘Anyone got ten minutes while this old heap boots?’ he asked.

  While he busied himself, I put the kettle on. Griggs joined me in the far corner of the office. ‘This had better be worth it for you,’ he said. ‘Because right now it feels like a big joke at my expense.’

  ‘I’m a man of my word.’

  He nodded.

  When Soren was done, Sandy and I stood back, watched the master at work. He giggled with delight at how long it took him to complete basic tasks, and I had to admit it was startling to see what had once been a state-of-the-art machine measure up to the convenience we’ve come to expect from today’s PCs. Six years was a long time in computing terms. I had assumed it would be only a difference of seconds but it was more often like minutes, the wait for any task to be completed.

  The minutes stretched to hours. Dot brought us some take out and then left for the evening. For a while, I went out and read a book in the reception area.

  Finally, Soren had something to tell us.

  ‘The images are still there. I don’t want to look at that shite and I hope you don’t either. Fucksakes, if it’s anything like what you said. … my limit’s Two Girls One Cup, know what I mean?’

  Sadly, I did. But didn’t let on.

  ‘Right,’ he said after a moment or two, looking oddly disappointed, like maybe he’d expected a laugh or a moment of recognition. But he wasn’t going to get it. This was serious business. Even he could sense that. ‘So. The pictures. First glance, aye, it looks like they were downloaded from mirror sites. A glance at his internet history confirms where he went to find this nasty shite. So it all looks kosher.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Griggs said to me. ‘I don’t know what else you were expecting to—’

  ‘Hoy-oy,’ Soren said. ‘Calm the ham, man. Calm the fuckin’ ham. This shite is not what it appears to be. It’s like fuckin’ Transformers. The good shit, I mean. None of that Michael Bay fuck-the-frame bollocks. More than meets the eye is what I’m saying. There’s code underneath. Hidden deep. Someone tried to redirect where we were looking. Because the problem we have is that these images were not downloaded to this fucking PC. They were downloaded elsewhere and transferred. Someone just tried – and did a good job, too – to make it look like the downloads originated from this wee clapped-out bugger’s IP address. If you weren’t looking for anything sus, you probably wouldn’t notice.’ He smiled and gently patted the 3.5in. floppy drive on the front of the old tower. ‘Probably the files were introduced through this little beauty.’ He did the same to the 10x CD-ROM drive. ‘Or this one. Christ, doesn’t it say something, eh? No one worries about CD speed any more. And floppys? Fucking forget it. Obsolete is not the word, man.’

  Griggs said, ‘To me it’s still cutting-edge.’

  Soren didn’t say anything, but curled his upper lip in something like a snarl.

  ‘Anyway, man, the point is that this shite was downloaded on another machine and then transferred over. And they’ve been interfered with. They look all right on the surface, but you go deeper, you can see someone’s interfered with them. If you know what you’re looking for. If you’re expecting to find someone fucking about. Which I did. Because why else would you call on me?’

  ‘Do you know when this happened?’

  ‘They were all placed on the same date, I can tell you that.’

  None of this had come up before. If Jason Taylor was as good as he had claimed, surely he would have noticed that the images had been interfered with. The incriminating evidence had been the fact that some of the lesser images – those blurred snapshots of anonymous children clearly taken without consent in public places – were associated with the model number of a camera that Moorehead owned. Another fake?

  Whoever did it was determined to make us think that Moorehead had downloaded these files himself. Combine with his initial silence regarding Justin Farnham, and you had all the makings of a guilty man.

  ‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘Clear as you can. What all of this means.’

  He did. Griggs and I turned to look at each other. Despite what the added code tried to claim, the modified files – including those that included the damning evidence against Moorehead – had been placed on Moorehead’s PC several days, maybe weeks, after Justin Farnham’s body had been found. Meaning the investigation
had been messed with from the start. Meaning that someone had tried their hardest to make it look like Moorehead was guilty. And, like the Keystone Cops we were, we’d fallen for it.

  Hook.

  Line.

  Sinker.

  THIRTY

  What I now knew:

  1) Jason Taylor had been present during at least one of the disappearances, visiting his old friend Alex Moorehead. He hadn’t mentioned specifics, but it was plausible that he had been in the area on or around the time of Farnham’s disappearance. Which would also explain why he was so ready and able to assist in the investigation.

  2) Someone had planted the images on Moorehead’s drive the day that Justin Farnham disappeared. Someone with not inconsiderable computing knowledge.

  If the Grinch could see the fakery, why had Taylor missed it?

  What’s two plus two?

  Taylor had the skills to pull off the hack that Soren uncovered. The opportunity, too. And I still wasn’t happy with how he behaved when anyone brought up his old friend’s alleged crimes. He was oddball enough, but there was something hinky about his reaction to my approach.

  Griggs gave me three more days on the case. He didn’t think that this would get me any closer to David Burns. But I knew that if I could make Burns feel I had achieved something he could not – justice for the mothers who had lost their sons – then it would go some way to smoothing my path to his inner circle. A less obvious route than the one proposed by Griggs, establishing the kind of bona-fides that would be hard to fake by any undercover officer.

  But Griggs wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t convinced I was right about Taylor. And that was the least of his concerns. Nevertheless, he was giving me three days before allowing Kellen to follow her instincts on the charges against me.

  Call that generous.

  At least it was enough time to breathe. At the very least to come up with a new plan of action.

  I called Jason Taylor, told him I had some more questions. Assured him this would be the last time we talked.

  He hesitated. Said he’d talked to his mother about this, and she’d made the point that what I was doing could be seen as harassment.