Summoning the Dead (DI Bob Valentine #3)(49)

‘Clare, I’ve no time to explain just now.’

‘You better try.’

‘I’ve asked for a transfer.’ The blurted response blindsided his wife.

‘You have?’

‘With Martin and also the chief constable.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’ He leaned forward and placed a kiss on his smiling wife’s cheek. ‘But we’ll have to talk about it later. I’m not going anywhere until this case is solved. I feel close, Clare, really close.’

He headed for the living room, leaving his wife with a pinched expression on her face like she might start to whistle. He couldn’t interpret the look, but it wasn’t one he felt threatened by – they were much easier to decipher.

His father was the first to speak when Valentine opened the door, his daughters being too engrossed in Hollyoaks.

‘Hello, son. You’re early tonight.’

Valentine let his thoughts run. ‘Remember that bookies on the main street, the old one, Carson’s?’

‘Oh, aye. It’s gone now. Think it’s a Gregg’s, isn’t it?’

‘Did you know the bloke who owned it?’

‘The bookie? It was big Alan Carson. I knew him a bit, to say hello to, like. He’s buried up next to your mother.’

‘Oh . . .’

His father leaned forward in his chair. A newspaper fell from his lap on to the floor. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Just work, Dad.’ Valentine rose. ‘Did Sandy use that bookies?’

‘God no. Sandy didn’t bet – he was far too tight.’

‘What about Garry Keirns?’

‘Oh he had a line on every other day. Never won a thing, mind. He must have been big Alan’s favourite customer. He was never the luckiest.’

‘Well, his luck’s just about run out now. Thanks, Dad.’

Valentine drifted through dinner. His thoughts played tag between the past and the present. He was stuck somewhere in the middle of the two, reminiscing about his childhood in one moment and revisiting the case the next. There was a gap, something he had missed, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He knew he didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, but what he did possess was a newfound optimism.

When the doorbell rang Valentine shot from his seat at the dinner table.‘That’ll be Ally,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to love you and leave you.’

On the road to Cumnock DS McAlister started to detail the meeting he’d just had with the retired detective John Corrigan.

‘He was broken up, you know,’ said McAlister.

‘In what way?’

‘The investigation went nowhere and he knew it. He felt for the Stevensons – he got to know them quite well.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘Yeah. The other lad, though, no one mourned him.’

Valentine looked over to McAlister. He was gripping tight to the wheel. ‘Not a soul questioned the investigation. He was missing for nearly three full days before Columba’s master notified police.’

‘Three bloody days?’

‘Yes, sir. Corrigan said the boy was a ward of state, no parents to trace. But even still, you’d think someone would report him missing sooner than three days afterwards.’

‘Was that all you found out?’ said Valentine.

‘The Columba boy, Donal Welsh – there was something else Corrigan found strange.’

‘Go on.’

‘He said Healey, the master, only reported him missing after the press reported that Rory Stevenson wasn’t alone. There were multiple sightings, all of two boys.’

‘Did Corrigan question Healey?’

‘Oh, yeah, he did. Healey said he had been on leave for two days and blame shifted on to his lack of staff, lack of funding, lack of anyone giving a shit really.’

‘And Corrigan bought that?’

‘No. He didn’t at all. At least that’s what he said to me. Corrigan said he wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Trevor Healey went down five years later as a child molester.’

‘Isn’t hindsight a great thing?’ said the DI.

McAlister nodded. He flicked on the blinkers and turned the wheel. He was straightening the car as he glanced back towards the DI. ‘I’m inclined to give Corrigan the benefit of the doubt, boss. He didn’t have the evidence we have to go on.’

‘Oh come on. You’ll be telling me we didn’t know how to take fingerprints in the eighties next.’

‘He seemed genuinely moved when I told him about the mummified bodies in the barrel. He wants this bastard behind bars as much as us.’

The car drew to a halt. ‘Is this it?’

‘Elizabeth Crescent. That’s the place there.’

‘That looks like the parents coming over, sir.’

‘They have names – Colin and Marie. They’re real people, Ally, and I can think of no easy way to tell them that we reckon we’ve found the son they lost thirty-two years ago.’





32

It was Colin Stevenson that Valentine turned to first. He was a stolid-looking man, dressed sombrely in highly polished black shoes, dress trousers and a shirt, rolled up at the sleeves but buttoned at the collar, beneath a tightly knotted tie. With the swept-back hair and the easy manners he looked out of place in 2016 – he was more like a relic of 1955.