The Big Chill Page 17

  ‘No,’ Jason said. ‘It wouldn’t.’

  Dorothy sighed and switched her phone off.

  38

  JENNY

  Jenny got back in the van. She picked up the printout on the passenger seat and crossed the Sally Army off the list. That made eight homeless shelters she’d visited, but there were so many more. She put the car in gear and drove down Holyrood Road. She was heading from Cowgate to Leith, trying to skip the terrible traffic. She drove past parliament and Holyrood Palace, tourists wandering into the road to get pictures of Salisbury Crags, a taxi delivering men in suits to the parliament building, two armed guards at the entrance.

  She knew this was pointless but she had to do something. The idea of Craig being free made her skin crawl. She’d given Thomas the number Craig used to text her, but it came back with nothing. A burner that hadn’t been used again or switched on. The police checked Craig’s bankcards, Shona’s too, that was the guard’s name. Shona Middleton, who’d left a husband in Gorgie to embark on this shitshow. Anyway, neither had used their cards so how were they living? Shona had withdrawn a few hundred pounds before the escape so that would keep them going for a while. Or maybe buy them tickets to fly somewhere, but there was no sign of their passports being used at any Scottish airport. They could get to England and fly from there, or maybe hide on a ferry. Jenny couldn’t fathom it. What was the game plan?

  She tried to think like Craig. She’d known him for years, but she hadn’t really known him, the divorce and all the rest proved that. She hadn’t known a thing about the real Craig, so maybe she couldn’t get inside his head. So this is what she was doing, driving around homeless shelters she’d already visited looking for Jimmy X, with pictures of Craig and Shona, showing them to anyone. It was a long shot but it was all she had.

  She drove over Abbeyhill and down Easter Road, cut along Dalmeny Street onto Leith Walk. There was comfort in knowing a city, growing up in a place, accumulating information about how parts are linked. It gave Edinburgh a personality, made it her own. She knew this city better than the tourists traipsing up the Royal Mile, better than the rich or poor residents stuck in their ghettos. She imagined the van as a drop of blood in the city’s arteries, journeying from the heart to the outer veins, the roads less travelled.

  She drove past the old Leith Water World, now a grubby soft-play centre where she’d taken Hannah as a kid. Then Great Junction Street, where she went to a crazy house party with Craig back when they were almost kids themselves. A lot of amphetamines and a sleazy guy with a waterbed were all she could remember. Then she was on Bonnington Road driving past the medical practice where she got NHS acupuncture after Hannah was born, for a trapped nerve in her back. This wasn’t even her part of town and it was embedded in her heart.

  She was almost at the Bethany place. It was a Christian charity, not normally Craig’s bag, but maybe he was trying to throw them off.

  Her phone rang on the passenger seat. It was not a number in her contacts. Her chest tightened and she swerved into a parking space by a bin, hit the brakes. The fucking bastard. She wondered about tracing calls. She stared at the jumble of numbers like it was a code to be unscrambled. Then she picked up and answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence on the other end. The sound of breathing.

  ‘Hello?’ Jenny said again. ‘Is this you?’

  The phone glowed against her ear, heated up her hand.

  ‘Is this who?’ A woman’s voice, young.

  Jenny blinked, breathed, stared out of the window at the industrial estate across the road.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said.

  A long pause. ‘Are you Jenny Skelf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know if I should be doing this,’ the woman said.

  ‘Take your time.’

  Jenny heard a baby in the background.

  Eventually the woman spoke. ‘This is Rachel.’

  Jenny wracked her brains. ‘Who?’

  Another pause, the baby crying, hesitation down the line.

  ‘You asked about me at Women’s Aid?’

  Rachel had lost a lot of weight since the picture was taken but Jenny still recognised her easily. For a start, she was the only person in Artisan Roast who looked poor. Everyone else wore hipster shabby chic or yummy-mummy designer stuff, while Rachel was in grubby white joggers, hi-tops and a charity-shop Bill Cosby jumper. She was struggling with a young baby, trying to get a bottle into her mouth. Two women at a nearby table tutted under their breath at her and Jenny gave them a hard glare, which they ignored.

  ‘Rachel.’

  She looked up from her grappling match and nodded at the chair. ‘Sit.’

  There was only a glass of water on the table. A waitress came over and smiled pointedly and Jenny ordered a coffee for herself and a salted caramel milkshake for Rachel.

  ‘Thanks,’ Rachel said.

  Jenny studied her as she wrangled the baby. She was tall and skinny, drawn complexion, sunken eyes, distinctly skeletal. Her jumper was worn at the elbows, the joggers stained, something dark on one leg. Her trainers were worn at the heels and threadbare in the toes.

  ‘So he’s dead?’ Rachel said, settling the baby in the crook of her arm. The kid’s vest was covered in snot and dribble.

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ She had a strong working-class Edinburgh accent.

  Why did Jenny want to know? It had started as Dorothy’s obsession but Jenny had somehow taken it over. On one level it was an obvious distraction from Craig. But there was something about this now, being a real private investigator, she needed to solve things, create order in a universe where there was so little of it. To prevent the slide into chaos.

  ‘We’re doing his funeral,’ Jenny said.

  Rachel frowned. ‘I thought you were a detective?’

  ‘We do funerals too.’

  ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘It is.’

  The drinks arrived and Rachel took a long pull on her milkshake straw. The baby was oblivious, sucking up her own drink greedily. Jenny played with the teaspoon on her saucer.

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘How did he die?’

  Jenny clattered the spoon against her cup. ‘Can’t you answer a simple question?’

  ‘Can’t you?’

  Jenny raised a hand. ‘Sorry, let’s start over.’

  Another slurp of milkshake. Jenny sipped her coffee, it was too hot and she burnt the roof of her mouth. She got the picture out of her pocket, placed it on the table. It was crumpled so she smoothed it out. Rachel eventually picked it up, holding the edges like it might explode.

  ‘Christ, we were wasted.’ She looked up. ‘What happened?’

  The baby spat out the bottle and fussed, and Rachel placed her on her shoulder, listened for a burp. Jenny remembered doing the same with Hannah at that age, telescoping back in time to yesterday, it felt like. God, where does it go?

  ‘He was in a car accident,’ she said. ‘In a graveyard.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘He was being chased by a police car. He almost hit my mum.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘Was anyone else hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about Buster?’

  ‘Buster?’

  ‘His one-eyed hound.’

  Einstein.

  ‘My mum is looking after him. She wants to do the funeral for your friend but the police can’t release his body until they know who he is.’

  Rachel swallowed and rubbed a finger across the photograph. ‘James.’

  Jenny’s chest went tight. ‘What?’

  ‘James.’

  Jenny laughed and shook her head.

  ‘What’s funny about that?’ Rachel said.

  ‘My mum didn’t know what to call him, so she’s been calling him Jimmy, after my dad.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How does your
dad feel about it?’

  ‘He’s dead too.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jenny took a sip of her coffee, drinkable now. ‘So you were friends? Boyfriend and girlfriend?’

  The baby burped and sicked on Rachel’s shoulder. She wiped at it with a napkin and placed the girl in her lap, gave her a spoon to play with. She pushed her milkshake out of reach of grabbing hands. Jenny remembered that awareness, constantly on guard for danger. It never changed.

  Rachel smiled. ‘No, we were smack buddies.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘What it sounds like. We took heroin together. On the street.’

  Jenny looked around Artisan Roast, people paying several quid for hot drinks, same again for muffins and brownies, Stockbridge disposable income.

  Jenny nodded at the baby, who was sticking the spoon in her mouth. ‘So this little one isn’t his.’

  Rachel laughed. ‘James was gay.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘He used to work, you know. Gay bars and clubs. Money for blowjobs and handjobs. I did the same on the street.’

  There was a straightforwardness about Rachel that Jenny admired. She didn’t dip her voice when talking about this, wasn’t proud but wasn’t ashamed either.

  ‘Then I got pregnant with wee Zadie here,’ she said. ‘There was a guy. Not Zadie’s dad, a minder.’

  ‘A pimp.’

  ‘No one says “pimp” anymore.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He didn’t like that I was pregnant. Some guys get off on that but not many. It meant less work. He wanted me to get rid of her.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t.’

  ‘No way,’ Rachel said. She jiggled Zadie on her knee and the girl giggled, grabbed at the neck of her mum’s jumper and pulled. Rachel untangled her little fist and held it. ‘Look at her.’

  Jenny nodded, sipped coffee.

  Rachel looked round, stared at the door as if her pimp would walk in. ‘So I went to Women’s Aid. Said I needed somewhere safe, and they set me up. I got straight. Had the baby. I’ve been so fucking lucky.’

  Small acts of kindness, that’s all it took sometimes. But the opposite too, small acts of aggression, the world working against you and it could all fall apart.

  ‘What about James?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘They discourage any contact with your old world. Women’s Aid. Makes sense, whatever you’re hiding from will find you. I couldn’t stay around that life. Getting clean, fuck me, it’s not easy. You ever been addicted?’

  Jenny thought about the question. Alcohol was the obvious one, though she hesitated to use the word ‘addict’. But the truth was she couldn’t imagine a life without it, so maybe she was. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’

  Jenny drank and so did Rachel, holding her milkshake high above Zadie’s grasp.

  ‘So what can you tell me about James?’

  Rachel placed her drink down and thought about it. ‘Not a lot, it wasn’t like a real friendship. We made sure we were sorted for gear, hung out together, looked after each other if one of us was fucked.’

  Jenny tapped the table with her finger. ‘What about this picture?’

  Rachel smiled. ‘We were trying to get clean. Methadone. Not our own prescription, neither of us were registered, it’s hard to get your shit together, you know? We used stolen prescription pads and a contact. I dunno. We were trying, right? Anyway, it was James’s idea to get some fresh air.’

  ‘On methadone?’

  ‘He was strange like that. I’ve lived in this fucking city twenty-three years and never been to the castle or up Arthur’s Seat. From Wester Hailes, why the fuck would I?’

  ‘How did you end up on the street?’

  Rachel drank through her straw, cheeks sucked in. Zadie made a play for the drink so Rachel gave her the straw. Zadie sucked at it and her eyes almost popped out of her head, grin on her face.

  ‘Fuck it, eh? You only live once.’ Rachel smiled at Zadie, then held Jenny’s gaze. ‘Perv stepdad. Oldest story in the world.’

  She tapped the picture. ‘So we walked up Crow Hill.’

  ‘Crow Hill?’

  ‘That’s what he called it, the one next to Arthur’s Seat. Said he went there all the time as a kid.’

  Jenny had never heard that name before, her whole life in Edinburgh, with the hills looming over her. A secret in plain view, a name no one knows.

  ‘What’s James’s surname?’

  ‘I never knew it. Some guys called him Gentleman James, how he spoke.’

  ‘How did he speak?’

  ‘Posh Edinburgh. That’s not common on the streets.’

  Jenny bit her lip. ‘Did he ever talk about family or friends?’

  Rachel thought about the question. Zadie had gummed the straw to bits and Rachel had to extricate bits of it from her mouth while she struggled.

  ‘Not that I can think of. Like I said, it wasn’t that kind of friendship. You live in the moment, you’re just surviving.’

  ‘He must’ve said something.’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘Everyone on the street is there for a reason, not a good one. People don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Please,’ Jenny said, her fingers drumming on the table. ‘Anything you can think of might help.’

  Rachel looked out of the window at a delivery van across the road, a taxi trundling past. Then she looked around the room at the strangers they were sitting amongst. She was alone wherever she was, and being in a refuge didn’t change that.

  ‘He did mention a school. Said he hated it.’

  ‘You remember the name?’

  Rachel chewed on her cheek, screwed up her eyes. ‘I think it had “Craig” in the name.’

  Jenny got her phone out and Googled. ‘Craigmillar?’

  That was one of the roughest parts of town, you wouldn’t sound posh in Craigmillar, not if you wanted to stay alive.

  ‘No, that wasn’t it.’

  Jenny scrolled down. ‘Craighouse?’

  Rachel’s eyes lit up as Zadie tried to wriggle out of her grasp.

  ‘That’s it, Craighouse. Said it was a total shithouse.’

  A private boys’ school in the west of the city. How the hell does a Craighouse lad end up hooked on smack and living in a stolen car?

  39

  HANNAH

  Hannah stood outside Hugh’s house on Lygon Road and wondered which subject to raise first. She was here to arrange Hugh’s funeral but Wendy also intimated on the phone that she might have some detective work for the Skelfs. She rang the bell and waited. Saw a shimmer behind the engraved glass then the door opened and there was Edward Gilchrist raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, waving her to the living room, where Wendy was in an armchair with a clear drink in a shallow cocktail glass. The drink appeared to have a pickled onion in it. Edward picked up a similar glass from the coffee table.

  ‘A Gibson,’ Wendy said. ‘Fancy one?’

  Hannah looked from her to Edward. Those three huge maps along the wall drew her attention again. She spotted an island off the west coast of Greenland called Disko Island, wondered about that. She remembered something from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, about the old guy who designed Norway when they built Earth, got an award for the lovely crinkly edges.

  ‘Sure.’

  She wouldn’t normally but everything was piling on top of her and she couldn’t work out how to get out from the rubble.

  Edward fixed her a drink from an ornate wooden cabinet, dropped an onion in it and handed it over. It tasted like sour rocket fuel.

  ‘To Hugh,’ Wendy said.

  Hannah and Edward raised glasses and Hannah took a tiny sip of hers. It made her tongue numb. She wondered how many Wendy and Edward had already polished off.

  ‘You needed my help,’ Hannah said.

  Edward stood behind Wendy’s chair with his hand resting on it, the two of them like an old married couple. Hannah
thought about their relationship, the wife and lover brought together in grief, organising the funeral together. Whatever gets you through.

  Wendy glanced at Edward, who gave her a pat on the shoulder.

  ‘I think I’m being targeted,’ she said.

  Hannah pursed her lips. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Someone has been calling, asking for Hugh.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound unusual.’

  Wendy nodded. ‘A young man, by the sound of it. I didn’t recognise his voice. When I asked what it was concerning, he refused to tell me.’

  ‘Probably just trying to sell something.’

  ‘I didn’t get that impression,’ Wendy said, sipping her drink.

  ‘Did you tell him Hugh was…’

  ‘You can say “dead”, you know.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Do you know how tiresome it is to tell everyone your husband is dead? So repetitive and tedious. Then they treat you like a leper. And ask how it happened. That’s not an easy conversation.’

  Hannah drank and coughed at the blast of alcohol. ‘You didn’t seem so bothered last time I was here.’

  Wendy’s neck muscles tensed.

  Edward cleared his throat. ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’

  He was right. It was no business of Hannah’s how other people grieved. Dorothy told her often enough it was different for everyone, no right or wrong. But this business with Hugh had got to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘No, you’re right, up to a point,’ Wendy said. ‘The fact he’s gone is awful, but it’s more awful having to tell everyone over and over again, the neighbours, the newsagent, on the telephone. I’m so tired.’

  She suddenly looked it too, small and frail, swamped by that red armchair, the lean figure of Edward hovering over her. She sensed Hannah examining her, and patted Edward’s hand.

  ‘Edward has been a godsend. He understands. I don’t have to say anything.’

  Hannah nodded again. ‘So is that it, a weird phone call?’

  Wendy shook her head. ‘A young man came to the door yesterday asking for Hugh.’