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

‘I’d like to see it,’ Harry said.

‘I’ll go and get it now,’ Keen said. He left the forensics tent.

‘Do you all have a family?’ Dr Coulter said.

All of the detectives said they had, except for Evans, who didn’t think having a mother counted.

‘I do too. A son and daughter. Please get the bastard who did this.’

‘We’re going to do everything in our power,’ Stewart said. ‘Whatever it takes.’

Keen came back with a clear evidence bag that contained the jotter. Harry pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and carefully took the book out. It was a typical school book, lined, with a cardboard cover. He gently opened it and saw crayon drawings, starting to get a little better through the pages, as if Zoe had started it after she got abducted and kept drawing in it as she got older.

‘Here, look at this,’ Harry said to Dunbar and Stewart. He showed them a page with the drawing of a family and a caption: My family. Two sisters in dresses with yellow hair, the dad with black hair and the mum with red hair.

‘Can you take photos of each page, Jimmy?’ Harry asked, passing the book over. He then took his phone out and called Frank Miller. ‘I know this is a long shot, but can you remember what colour Zoe Harris’s mother’s hair was?’

‘If I remember correctly, it was blonde.’

‘Thanks, Frank. We’re at the Zoe Harris crime scene just now. See you back at the station?’

‘I’ll be there.’

Dunbar put the book back in the bag and handed it to Keen, who left with it to give it back to forensics.

‘Zoe’s mother had blonde hair, according to Frank Miller. The woman in that drawing has red hair. Even if Mrs Harris has dyed her hair red, Zoe wouldn’t know that, and if she was drawing her own family, why wouldn’t she have drawn the mother with blonde hair?’

‘Which means it’s a man and a woman who had her, and the woman has red hair,’ Stewart said. ‘Right, let’s get back to Edinburgh. I want somebody to go and talk to the Harris family.’

‘Agreed.’

‘And I meant what I said about you driving us back, Jimmy. No offence, son,’ he said to Evans, ‘but my dug can drive better than you.’

‘You should have brought him then,’ Evans said under his breath.

‘What?’

‘I said that’s fine, sir.’

‘If I had brought him over, he’d have been switched on and bitten you right up the fucking arse. I might be daft, Sergeant, but as I told that wee caber-tossing bastard yesterday, I’m no’ fucking deef.’

At least Evans had the decency to pull a beamer as they left the forensics tent.

‘I’ll keep in touch, Matt,’ Harry said.

‘I’ll make sure you get a copy of the forensics and post-mortem reports, sir. And I’ll let you know what we find on the CCTV.’

‘Good lad.’

They walked back to Stewart’s car, the DSup promising Dunbar a few pints in the bar that night if he didn’t ‘put us under a fucking bus’. Dunbar always thought it was a good day when he didn’t have to be cut out of a car by the fire brigade and accepted the challenge.

Twenty

Marine Drive was a big rectangular loop with a grassy area separating the two halves of the road down by Silverknowes Promenade.

Abi Peterson squirmed in her seat as she looked out the back window of her dad’s car. ‘I can see it! I can see it!’ she said at the top of her voice. She pointed across to the grassy area down by the promenade itself. ‘The bouncy castle!’

Technically, this area was called Edinburgh Beach, and their annual Silverknowes Fair was in full swing. Vendors lined the promenade; there were stalls for the kids to have fun and some small fairground attractions.

‘I said we should have tried parking in the Cramond car park further along. The trouble with people is, they don’t want to walk the length of themselves,’ Colin Peterson said to his wife.

‘Och, who wants to walk along the promenade from Cramond when we can park closer?’ Nickie Peterson said. ‘Look, there’s a car coming out.’

‘Thank Christ,’ Peterson said, putting his foot down in case anybody else grabbed the space, which was unlikely since this was a one-way street. Nevertheless, he raced towards it, put his hazards on and slammed the car into reverse; God help any filthy bastard who tried to nip into the space. There was nobody else approaching and he got the small Nissan into the space without any drama.

‘There. Told you. Just listen to me from now on. I’ll keep you right.’

Nickie turned to look at her daughter and made a face, causing the eight year old to laugh out loud.

‘Aye, double-trouble when you two get together, eh?’ Peterson opened his door without looking and a van whizzed by, almost taking the door off.

‘Did you see that cock-bag?’ he said, standing there and staring as the van rounded the bend at the end of the road and went back along the lower half in the opposite direction on Marine Drive.

‘Colin! Not in front of Abi, for God’s sake.’

‘She doesn’t pay attention to what I say,’ he said, dismissing his wife. He hoped some of the other parents from the PTA would show up like they’d said they would. He could get together with some of the dads, maybe have a stroll along the promenade to Cramond, where they could have a couple of beers in the hotel, and then Nickie-fucking-Lauda, as he called his wife, could drive home. Her driving always improved when he was pished, and he thought she was the best driver in the world when he was lying down on the back seat trying not to toss his bag.

‘There’s Laura!’ Abi shouted, standing on the grass verge on the passenger side of the car. She waved at her friend, who was getting out of a car further down on the other side of the road.

Laura waved back as her mum