Against the Clock by John Carson (best mobile ebook reader TXT) 📕

They went into the hotel bar and Harry stopped dead for a second. ‘Oh, shite.’

‘What is it?’

‘Over there. Sitting at a table on her own.’

‘Who?’ Dunbar started looking around.

‘Easy. Don’t look, for God’s sake.’

‘You shouldn’t have been all dramatic, making me look in the first place.’ Dunbar looked at Harry and shook his head. ‘Who am I not looking for?’

‘That lassie with the red hair, sitting at a table on her own. Looking down at something.’

‘It’s not one of your exes, is it?’

‘No, it’s DS Lillian O’Shea, who you met earlier today in the incident room. If Alex knew we were in here at the same time, well, let’s just say the chance of me having a second child with her would be nil, because I’d never be allowed to touch her again.’

And just at that moment, Lillian O’Shea looked up and smiled and gave a little wave, then went back to what she was doing.

‘Christ, now what?’ Harry said.

‘God, you’re like a wee laddie at the school dance who doesn’t know whether he’s going to get his end away or not. Let’s go and say hello.’

‘Crap.’

They walked over to the table.

‘Hello, Lillian,’ Harry said.

‘Oh, hello, sir. Hello, DCI Dunbar. What are you both doing in here?’

‘I’m staying here while we work this case,’ Dunbar said. ‘We just popped in for a nightcap. What about you?’

‘This is my local.’

‘Saturday night and you’re in a hotel bar with a bunch of old men instead of out on the town with your pals?’

‘It’s a long story. I just come in here for a quiet drink now and again.’

‘Get you a refill?’ Dunbar asked, pointing to her near-empty glass.

‘I don’t want to spoil your evening,’ she said, ‘but thanks anyway.’

‘You’re not spoiling anything,’ Harry said, ‘but if you want to be left alone, we won’t intrude.’

She smiled and then looked at Dunbar. ‘If you’re sure. Bacardi and Coke, please.’

‘Coming right up. Harry, you sit down and I’ll get them in. Usual?’

‘Aye, thanks.’

Harry sat down opposite Lillian and felt a twang of guilt hit him. If Alex walked in now, it would be like history repeating itself, when his former girlfriend had thought he was cheating on her. God rest her soul.

‘You come in here often?’ Harry asked. Jesus. ‘Sorry. I just meant I haven’t seen you in here before.’

She laughed. ‘I used to drink along in The Bailie, but…well, as I said, it’s a long story. I drink here now. I started coming here a few weeks ago.’

‘This isn’t my local, but I come here now and again when Jimmy comes over. I usually drink along the road at The Tap, or in Diamonds.’

‘There we go, ladies and gentlemen,’ Dunbar said, putting two glasses down on the table before going back for his own.

He sat down with a lager and they clinked glasses.

‘We had dinner along at a friend’s house,’ Dunbar said, ‘and we were chewin’ the fat over the case. A colleague said that she thought wee Alice was lured away by a man with a dug, and since it was pouring down that day, he could also have had an umbrella, which would have made it easy to shield his face.’

‘I was thinking the same,’ Lillian said. ‘We’d talked about Alice knowing her abductor, and that dog theory makes sense. If he was through in Glasgow, then he had to know the area, and if it was somebody Alice knew, he had to have been told where they were going and at what time. That’s what I think. He isn’t working alone. I’m not saying that there were two of them there waiting, although that is a possibility, but somebody might have tipped him off.’

‘Good thinking,’ Harry said.

Dunbar looked at him. ‘Alice’s dad is a mechanic for Walter Scott Travel. His boss, Mike Morton, is friends with Sandra Robertson’s dad. And Morton’s wife is a teacher at the school where Alice went and she was there on the day Alice was taken.’

‘Was this Morton woman Alice’s teacher?’ Lillian said, her Irish accent becoming more pronounced.

‘No. She was there with her own class,’ Dunbar said.

‘The investigators went through them at the time. Frank Miller and his team. Agnes Morton wasn’t a suspect,’ Harry said.

‘Now we have the wee yin back, we’re thinking about this investigation in a new light,’ said Dunbar. ‘For instance, we know that he didn’t take her and kill her, like it was thought at the time. He kept her alive for five years. And if her cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, then maybe it was an accidental death. It could be that Alice’s death and Sandra Robertson’s were unintentional.’

‘And he had to get rid of them,’ said Lillian, ‘but he couldn’t drive around with dead bodies on display in his car, so he wrapped them and put them back where he’d found them.’

‘There’s a possibility that wee Zoe Harris is still alive,’ Harry said. ‘If it’s the same guy who took her, of course. Just because she went missing on the same day, that doesn’t connect them for sure. But if he did snatch her from Burntisland and she was with the other two girls and she is dead, then there’s a good chance he’ll put her back there.’

‘I wonder why he felt the need to dump them back at the same place instead of, say, burying them in the woods,’ said Lillian.

‘I hope one day we get the chance to ask him. I’m hoping Zoe is still alive,’ Dunbar said.

‘We can only hope, Jimmy.’ Harry drank more of his lager and then got another round in.

They had a couple more, then Dunbar said he had to go and talk to his wife on FaceTime, which meant he was going to say goodnight to his dog, Scooby.

‘See you in the morning,’ he said, leaving the two of them behind.

‘I’m going to get home as well,’ Harry said.

‘I’ll walk across the road with you,’ Lillian said, finishing her drink off.

They went out