Karen suppressed an irritated exhalation. Cruickshank really should know better by now. Hed been on the front desk long enough. So she needs to talk to CID, Dave.
Well, yeah. Normally, that would be my first port of call. But see, this is a bit out of the usual run of things. Which is why I thought it would be better to run it past you, see?
Get to the point. Were cold cases, Dave. We dont process fresh inquiries. Karen rolled her eyes at Phil, smirking at her obvious frustration.
Its not exactly fresh, Inspector. This guy went missing twenty-two years ago.
Karen straightened up in her chair. Twenty-two years ago? And theyve only just got round to reporting it?
Thats right. So does that make it cold, or what?
Technically, Karen knew Cruickshank should refer the woman to CID. But shed always been a sucker for anything that made people shake their heads in bemused disbelief. Long shots were what got her juices flowing. Following that instinct had brought her two promotions in three years, leapfrogging peers and making colleagues uneasy. Send her up, Dave. Ill have a word with her.
She replaced the phone and pushed back from the desk. Why the fuck would you wait twenty-two years to report a missing person? she said, more to herself than to Phil as she raided her desk for a fresh notebook and a pen.
Phil thrust his lips out like an expensive carp. Maybe shes been out of the country. Maybe she only just came back and found out this person isnt where she thought they were.
And maybe she needs us so she can get a declaration of death. Money, Phil. What it usually comes down to. Karens smile was wry. It seemed to hang in the air in her wake as if she were the Cheshire Cat. She bustled out of the squad room and headed for the lifts.
Her practised eye catalogued and classified the woman who emerged from the lift without a shred of diffidence visible. Jeans and fake-athletic hoodie from Gap. This seasons cut and colours. The shoes were leather, clean and free from scuffs, the same colour as the bag that swung from her shoulder over one hip. Her mid-brown hair was well cut in a long bob just starting to get a bit ragged along the edges. Not a doleite, then. Probably not a schemie. A nice, middle-class woman with something on her mind. Mid to late twenties, blue eyes with the pale sparkle of topaz. The barest skim of make-up. Either she wasnt trying or she already had a husband. The skin round her eyes tightened as she caught Karens appraisal.
Im Detective Inspector Pirie, she said, cutting through the potential stand-off of two women weighing each other up. Karen Pirie. She wondered what the other woman made of her - a wee fat woman crammed into a Marks and Spencer suit, mid-brown hair needing a visit to the hairdresser, might be pretty if you could see the definition of her bones under the flesh. When Karen described herself thus to her mates, they would laugh, tell her she was gorgeous, make out she was suffering from low self-esteem. She didnt think so. She had a reasonably good opinion of herself. But when she looked in the mirror, she couldnt deny what she saw. Nice eyes, though. Blue with streaks of hazel. Unusual.
Whether it was what she saw or what she heard, the woman seemed reassured. Thank goodness for that, she said. The Fife accent was clear, though the edges had been ground down either by education or absence.
Im sorry?
The woman smiled, revealing small, regular teeth like a childs first set. It means youre taking me seriously. Not fobbing me off with the junior officer who makes the tea.
I dont let my junior officers waste their time making tea, Karen said drily. I just happened to be the one who answered the phone. She half-turned, looked back and said, If youll come with me?
Karen led the way down a side corridor to a small room. A long window gave on to the car park and, in the distance, the artificially uniform green of the golf course. Four chairs upholstered in institutional grey tweed were drawn up to a round table, its cheerful cherry wood polished to a dull sheen. The only indicator of its function was the gallery of framed photographs on the wall, all shots of police officers in action. Every time she used this room, Karen wondered why the brass had chosen the sort of photos that generally appeared in the media after something very bad had happened.
The woman looked around her uncertainly as Karen pulled out a chair and gestured for her to sit down. Its not like this on the telly, she said.
Not much about Fife Constabulary is, Karen said, sitting down so that she was at ninety degrees to the woman rather than directly opposite her. The less confrontational position was usually the most productive for a witness interview.
Wheres the tape recorders? The woman sat down, not pulling her chair any closer to the table and hugging her bag in her lap.
Karen smiled. Youre confusing a witness interview with a suspect interview. Youre here to report something, not to be questioned about a crime. So you get to sit on a comfy chair and look out the window. She flipped open her pad. I believe youre here to report a missing person?
Thats right. His names -
Just a minute. I need you to back up a wee bit. For starters, whats your name?
Michelle Gibson. Thats my married name. Prentice, thats my own name. Everybody calls me Misha, though.
Right you are, Misha. I also need your address and phone number.
Misha rattled out details. Thats my mums address. Im sort of acting on her behalf, if you see what I mean?
Karen recognized the village, though not the street. Started out as one of the hamlets built by the local laird for his coal miners when the workers were as much his as the mines themselves. Ended up as commuterville for strangers with no links to the place or the past. All the same, she said, I need your details too.
Mishas brows lowered momentarily, then she gave an address in Edinburgh. It meant nothing to Karen, whose knowledge of the social geography of the capital, a mere thirty miles away, was parochially scant. And you want to report a missing person, she said.
Misha gave a sharp sniff and nodded. My dad. Mick Prentice. Well, Michael, really, if you want to be precise.
And when did your dad go missing? This, thought Karen, was where it would get interesting. If it was ever going to get interesting.
Like I told the guy downstairs, twenty-two and a half years ago. Friday 14th December 1984 was the last time we saw him. Misha Gibsons brows drew down in a defiant scowl.
Its kind of a long time to wait to report someone missing, Karen said.
Misha sighed and turned her head so she could look out of the window. We didnt think he was missing. Not as such.
Im not with you. What do you mean, not as such?
Misha turned back and met Karens steady gaze. You sound like youre from round here.
Wondering where this was going, Karen said. I grew up in Methil.
Right. So, no disrespect, but youre old enough to remember what was going on in 1984.
The miners strike?
Misha nodded. Her chin stayed high, her stare defiant. I grew up in Newton of Wemyss. My dad was a miner. Before the strike, he worked down the Lady Charlotte. Youll mind what folk used to say round here - that nobody was more militant than the Lady Charlotte pitmen. Even so, there was one night in December, nine months into the strike, when half a dozen of them disappeared. Well, I say disappeared, but everybody knew the truth. That theyd gone to Nottingham to join the blacklegs. Her face bunched in a tight frown, as if she was struggling with some physical pain. Five of them, nobody was too surprised that they went scabbing. But according to my mum, everybody was stunned that my dad had joined them. Including her. She gave Karen a look of pleading. I was too wee to remember. But everybody says he was a union man through and through. The last guy youd expect to turn blackleg. She shook her head. Still, what else was she supposed to think?
Karen understood only too well what such a defection must have meant to Misha and her mother. In the radical Fife coalfield, sympathy was reserved for those who toughed it out. Mick Prentices action would have granted his family instant pariah status. It cant have been easy for your mum, she said.
In one sense, it was dead easy, Misha said bitterly. As far as she was concerned, that was it. He was dead to her. She wanted nothing more to do with him. He sent money, but she donated it to the hardship fund. Later, when the strike was over, she handed it over to the Miners Welfare. I grew up in a house where my fathers name was never spoken.
Karen felt a lump in her chest, somewhere between sympathy and pity. He never got in touch?
Just the money. Always in used notes. Always with a Nottingham postmark.
Misha, I dont want to come across like a bitch here, but it doesnt sound to me like your dads a missing person. Karen tried to make her voice as gentle as possible.
I didnt think so either. Till I went looking for him. Take it from me, Inspector. Hes not where hes supposed to be. He never was. And I need him found.
The naked desperation in Mishas voice caught Karen by surprise. To her, that was more interesting than Mick Prentices whereabouts. How come? she said.
Tuesday 19th June 2007; Edinburgh
It had never occurred to Misha Gibson to count the number of times shed emerged from the Sick Kids with a sense of outrage that the world continued on its way in spite of what was happening inside the hospital behind her. Shed never thought to count because shed never allowed herself to believe it might be for the last time. Ever since the doctors had explained the reason for Lukes misshapen thumbs and the scatter of café-au-lait spots across his narrow back, she had nailed herself to the conviction that somehow she would help her son dodge the bullet his genes had aimed at his life expectancy. Now it looked as if that conviction had finally been tested to destruction.
Misha stood uncertain for a moment, resenting the sunshine, wanting weather as bleak as her mood. She wasnt ready to go home yet. She wanted to scream and throw things and an empty flat would tempt her to lose control and do just that. John wouldnt be home to hold her or to hold her back; hed known about her meeting with the consultant so of course work would have thrown up something insurmountable that only he could deal with.
Instead of heading up through Marchmont to their sandstone tenement, Misha cut across the busy road to the Meadows, the green lung of the southern city centre where she loved to walk with Luke. Once, when shed looked at their street on Google Earth, shed checked out the Meadows too. From space, it looked like a rugby ball fringed with trees, the criss-cross paths like laces holding the ball together. Shed smiled at the thought of her and Luke scrambling over the surface like ants. Today, there were no smiles to console Misha. Today, she had to face the fact that she might never walk here with Luke again.
She shook her head, trying to dislodge the maudlin thoughts. Coffee, thats what she needed to gather her thoughts and get things into proportion. A brisk walk across the Meadows, then down to George IV Bridge, where every shop front was a bar, a café or a restaurant these days.
Ten minutes later, Misha was tucked into a corner booth, a comforting mug of latte in front of her. It wasnt the end of the line. It couldnt be the end of the line. She wouldnt let it be the end of the line. There had to be some way to give Luke another chance.
Shed known something was wrong from the first moment shed held him. Even dazed by drugs and drained by labour, shed known. John had been in denial, refusing to set any store by their sons low birth weight and those stumpy little thumbs. But fear had clamped its cold certainty on Mishas heart. Luke was different. The only question in her mind had been how different.
The sole aspect of the situation that felt remotely like luck was that they were living in Edinburgh, a ten-minute walk from the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, an institution that regularly appeared in the miracle stories beloved of the tabloids. It didnt take long for the specialists at the Sick Kids to identify the problem. Nor to explain that there would be no miracles here.
Fanconi Anaemia. If you said it fast, it sounded like an Italian tenor or a Tuscan hill town. But the charming musicality of the words disguised their lethal message. Lurking in the DNA of both Lukes parents were recessive genes that had combined to create a rare condition that would condemn their son to a short and painful life. At some point between the ages of three and twelve, he was almost certain to develop aplastic anaemia, a breakdown of the bone marrow that would ultimately kill him unless a suitable donor could be found. The stark verdict was that without a successful bone marrow transplant, Luke would be lucky to make it into his twenties.
That information had given her a mission. She soon learned that, without siblings, Lukes best chance of a viable bone marrow transplant would come from a family member - what the doctors called a mismatched related transplant. At first, this had confused Misha. Shed read about bone marrow transplant registers and assumed their best hope was to find a perfect match there. But according to the consultant, a donation from a mismatched family member who shared some of Lukes genes had a lower risk of complications than a perfect match from a donor who wasnt part of their extended kith and kin.
Since then, Misha had been wading through the gene pool on both sides of the family, using persuasion, emotional blackmail and even the offer of reward on distant cousins and elderly aunts. It had taken time, since it had been a solo mission. John had walled himself up behind a barrier of unrealistic optimism. There would be a medical breakthrough in stem cell research. Some doctor somewhere would discover a treatment whose success didnt rely on shared genes. A perfectly matched donor would turn up on a register somewhere. John collected good stories and happy endings. He trawled the internet for cases that had proved the doctors wrong. He came up with medical miracles and apparently inexplicable cures on a weekly basis. And he drew his hope from this. He couldnt see the point of Mishas constant pursuit. He knew somehow it would be all right. His capacity for denial was Olympic.
It made her want to kill him.
Instead, shed continued to clamber through the branches of their family trees in search of the perfect candidate. Shed come to her final dead end only a week or so before todays terrible judgement. There was only one possibility left. And it was the one possibility she had prayed she wouldnt have to consider.
Before her thoughts could go any further down that particular path, a shadow fell over her. She looked up, ready to be sharp with whoever wanted to intrude on her. John, she said wearily.
I thought Id find you hereabouts. This is the third place I tried, he said, sliding into the booth, awkwardly shunting himself round till he was at right angles to her, close enough to touch if either of them had a mind to.
I wasnt ready to face an empty flat.
No, I can see that. What did they have to say? His craggy face screwed up in anxiety. Not, she thought, over the consultants verdict. He still believed his precious son was somehow invincible. What made John anxious was her reaction.