LITMIR.BIZ

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a constant fixture, curled up on the sofa, ears tucked in so he didn’t hear the rain battering against the windows. American Beauty played on the DVD, with the volume too low to hear.

      It was almost perfect yet Anderson was not at peace. He was still digesting the news that his partner for twenty years had resigned. Costello was gone. No notice. No chat. No goodbyes. She had walked into ACC Mitchum’s office unannounced, uninvited, and slapped her letter of resignation on the desk right in front of her boss.

      Just like that.

      Twenty years they had worked together, fought, made up and fallen out again, shared laughs, heartache and a few broken bones. She had always had his back. He had always had hers. At times, their thinking was polar, opposite points of the compass, balancing each other into a relationship that, while turbulent, was effective. Their track record proved that. Now she was gone. Brenda, his wife, had explained it simply. The events of the last few months had been too intense. Costello had found Archie Walker – though what the fiscal saw in his relationship with Costello, Anderson could not fathom. Anderson himself had found Baby Moses.

      Brenda said that both of them had moved on and maybe George Haggerty had been the catalyst that finally separated them.

      But then Brenda would say that. She had never really liked Costello.

      He checked his phone. He was meeting the rest of the team tomorrow for fish and chips, a long-standing arrangement. Costello had been invited. She had declined.

      Anderson could accept that she had resigned in a fit of pique, saying she could do more about Haggerty without the restriction of the badge. She thought ‘killing the bastard’ would do her more good than any counselling.

      And she had been furious when her request to form a task force to investigate the murders of Abigail and Malcolm Haggerty had been refused. The case had been transferred to Complaints and Internal Investigations in general, and DCI hatchet face Mathieson and her puppet Bannon in particular, purely for clarity and transparency. To him, and Costello, it felt they themselves were being scrutinised and judged. The first two people on the murder scene, namely DI Costello and Procurator Fiscal Archie Walker, were members of the law enforcement community. And as the fiscal’s goddaughter Valerie Abernerthy was Abigail Haggerty’s sister, the press was having a field day.

      Anderson had been a cop long enough to know that you could never predict how the deceased’s nearest and dearest would react. But he thought that George Haggerty should have been distraught with grief over the murder of his wife and son instead of talking to the media, playing on the ‘Monkey House of Horror’ crap. The case had rarely been out the papers for the last six weeks. Every day there was another tasty morsel revealed by the press. One thing they were all agreed on: the police weren’t coming out of it well. George Haggerty was the obvious suspect and he was the one man who couldn’t have done it. Even ACC Mitchum let slip that he, too, had taken a very close look at that alibi. He had personally interviewed the two police officers who had caught Haggerty speeding in his white Volvo on the A9. One obvious suspect. Police Scotland were his alibi.

      Yet, Costello had persisted that George Haggerty had killed his family.

      He looked down at the bundle of pink skin in the Moses basket. His grandson, his link with Haggerty, the one reason they kept in touch. Anderson didn’t like Haggerty, not the way his daughter Claire did. God, she had even drawn him a portrait of Baby Moses in pastel and had left it for him, signed and wrapped. Anderson wished she hadn’t bothered. There was nothing he could define, nothing he could specify, just a very intense feeling of dislike. If he himself had one tiny piece of physical evidence against Haggerty, Anderson would have brought him in and every bone in his body would have told him that he had the right bloke. Every time he was in Haggerty’s company, Anderson could sense smirking guilt.

      Anderson watched the Merlot, tipping it to the left and right. ‘He has a watertight alibi,’ he said out loud, ‘and no motive at all.’ He looked at his grandson, blowing bubbles in his basket. ‘Well, none that we have found.’ Moses ignored him but Nesbit cocked an ear. ‘George Haggerty did not kill his wife Abigail or his son Malcolm. He couldn’t have done it.’

      To his mind the best way of getting Costello back was to prove her wrong and get DCI Mathieson and her team to prove that somebody else did kill Abigail and Malcolm. Then maybe Costello could get closure and move on. And then she might come back into the fold, as it were. He could see how the lack of progress in the case might have frustrated his colleague. The killer had ghosted in and out the house, without leaving a trace. Or a trace that belonged to there because it had a right to be there. The Haggertys were not a social couple so the only ‘other’ DNA in the house belonged to Abigail’s sister, Valerie Abernethy, and she had stayed overnight only a few days before the killings. No fingerprints, no footprints but the blood spatter had left a clean zone where the killer had stood and that indicated they were slim, five foot ten or more. George was five seven.

      It had also really annoyed Costello to learn that social worker Dali Despande’s proposal to pilot a new fast-track child protection service had been side-lined, again. Looking back, Anderson thought, maybe she hadn’t been right since the Kissel case, that child being starved to death, neglected by a mother who didn’t care, let down by a failing social work system. It had taken that little boy weeks to die. Costello had sat in the court and relived every minute of the harrowing abuse. Then Malcolm? Costello had in her head that Malcolm was a vulnerable child.

      Then she had walked into that scene, a scene so awful it was reported that the crime scene photographer on duty had been off work since with stress, unable to cope with what he had seen.

      Still none of it was any of his business. He had to walk away and leave it to Mathieson and Bannon. He had his cold case rapes to work on. Mitchum had given him one more week before the file went back to the freezer.

      ACC Mitchum had been very clear: Anderson’s loyalty was to the force.

      Not that there was any conflict of loyalty; Costello had not been in contact for twenty-one days.

      ‘MONKEY HOUSE OF HORROR’.

      The tabloids hadn’t been able to resist that.

      Valerie Abernethy looked up at the familiar ivy-covered eaves, the two red chimneys, the big, stained-glass window all hidden from the road by the majestic monkey puzzle tree. Had it been a happy family home for her sister? The gutter press thought so. A happy family home that became a scene of slaughter.

      Valerie took a deep breath, trying to calm the panic. They wanted her to walk round the room where her sister had breathed her last, shielding her son from the blade of a knife. She was aware of the investigative team hovering at the bottom of the gravel drive, pretending they were giving her a little moment to catch her private thoughts. She knew she was under scrutiny.

      Well, they could stand there, out in the rain, a little longer. Valerie placed her hand on a petal of the stained-glass flower, a delicate stem with Mackintosh roses. The glass felt slightly warm to her touch, almost soft under her fingertips.

      The front door was familiar and welcoming, painted claret to match the colours of the roses. The brass knocker that Malcolm used to polish managed to shine, even in this god-awful weather. The door was open. They wanted her to go in alone.

      She had no idea when she was last here. Her memory had large gaps.

      A lump caught her throat. This was too difficult. She tried lifting her foot to get her up the step, one stride and she’d be in the house. Nothing happened. Her leg was leaden, stuck to the red tiles. Valerie recognised that feeling, an old enemy returning.

      She needed a vodka.

      She closed her eyes and stepped up. She had to do this for Abigail. For Malcolm.

      She was now stock-still, one foot up, one foot down and with her fingertips still resting on the glass window. There was movement behind her. Archie Walker was about to intervene and offer his assistance.

      She needed to do this on her own.

      Valerie turned her face up to the sky and took a deep breath. The

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