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

‘Mike does. He got that contract when he was starting out and he still likes to do it now.’

‘Were you doing a back shift two weeks ago on the Saturday?’ Dunbar said.

‘No. I had the weekend off and I spent it with Denise. She’ll confirm that.’ Mann fetched a piece of paper and wrote her telephone number down. ‘Call her, ask her to confirm.’

‘Do you have many guests here?’ Dunbar said, not taking his eyes off the man. ‘Apart from Denise.’

‘Sometimes we have friends round. But nobody from school. Students or otherwise. We like to have friends who aren’t teachers.’

‘Would you mind if we had a look around?’ Stewart said, ready to add his spiel about getting a warrant.

‘Not at all. Help yourselves. You have my permission to search anywhere in the house.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I just have to step outside for a moment. I have to speak to Mike and tell him I might be a wee bit late. Somebody can cover the first part of my shift.’ Mann left the room and they saw him go out into the paved yard and stand near the garage, his phone to his ear.

‘Let’s get a move on. We don’t want to go raking about in his drawers, but look for any signs of those lassies,’ Stewart said.

They split up, Harry and Dunbar going through to the bedrooms and having a look around. When they were done searching, they went back to the living room and found Evans just finishing up.

‘Fuck all,’ Stewart declared. ‘Except for three wine glasses on the wee drying rack by the sink, but that would hardly stand up in court. He might just be a lazy bastard who doesn’t wash glasses until he has a pile going. No wonder he said we could look around.’

Mann came back in, smiling. ‘Sorry about that. Mike’s going to get one of the other lads to do the first Clermiston for me.’

‘Just one thing before you go,’ Dunbar said. ‘Have you ever seen’ – a monster or a ghost – ‘anybody creeping about the yard after dark?’

Mann shook his head. ‘One driver thought he saw a ghost one night. Everybody took the piss, and he left after that. I don’t think they knew my wife was a driver there and she died. They don’t know she was also Mike’s sister.’

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Mann,’ Stewart said, and they left.

Before Dunbar reversed out of the driveway, he looked at the others. ‘Christ, he’s either very convincing or very conniving. He could have gone out and called this Denise and told her to tell us a lot of shite, confirming his story.’

‘I have an idea to see whether he was lying or not,’ Stewart said. ‘Get us back round to that yard.’

Dunbar got them back round in a minute, which was thirty seconds longer than it had taken before thanks to a white van shooting past.

‘Stirling Moss there, for God’s sake,’ Stewart complained. ‘Bloody white-van man indeed.’

The van indicated and turned into the yard, the unmarked car right behind it. They watched as it pulled up to the workshop garage where buses were fixed and a mechanic jumped out.

‘A white van with no letters on the side,’ Harry mused.

‘Penny for them,’ Stewart said.

‘Nothing. Just thinking about that van, that’s all. There was a white van down at Silverknowes when Abi was taken. The mother said a white van nearly took their door off.’

Dunbar parked in front of the office as a bus pulled out, presumably to cover Mann’s shift, or the first part of it.

They walked into the canteen and found Janice sitting with yet another cup of tea. ‘Bladder like an iron tank,’ Lillian whispered to Harry as she got up.

Stewart stood towering over Janice. ‘I’m going to ask you something and I want you to think about the answer very carefully before you speak. Bear in mind that I’m going to have a warrant for everybody here’s phone records, yours included, so I’ll know if you used your own phone to make the call. If it wasn’t your mobile phone, I’ll find out what one it was, then I’ll make your life a living hell if you lie to me and I find out.’

Janice was holding a cup up to her mouth and was taking an inordinate amount of time to sip her tea, which looked like it could double as toilet cleaner.

‘Did you make the anonymous phone call that caused Marshall Mann to be suspended from the school?’

Janice’s eyes darted back and forth for a minute before she put the cup down slowly. ‘I just wanted him to notice me, to maybe ask me out for a drink, get a bite to eat. But oh no, he threw himself at that Denise woman. How does she deserve to have all the fun?’

‘Is that a yes?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, it was me. I made it up.’

‘You don’t go round to his house for sex, do you?’ Harry said.

She shook her head. ‘No. Marshall is always a gentleman. So I lied, thinking he could spend more time here with me instead of with her. That’s why I rushed out of here yesterday when you lot came in. I thought you were here to arrest me.’

‘I could do you for obstructing a case,’ Stewart said. ‘But I won’t if you call the school back and admit to them it was a hoax.’

‘What will I tell them?’

Stewart shrugged. ‘Tell them you’re a jealous, bitter woman who should stay at home with her two cats.’

‘How did you know I have two cats?’

‘Just a guess,’ he replied. ‘Just a guess.’

Thirty-Six

‘How’s the search going for the wee lassie?’ Stewart barked, all but knocking the door off its hinges as they stormed into the incident room.

Frank Miller looked at him. ‘We’re starting to get volunteers coordinated, sir. They’re down at Silverknowes now, going to do a search for any sign of her. You know how these things go.’

‘I do that, son, unfortunately.’ Stewart looked at Evans.