‘Have you ever been to Springburn?
He was surprised at the question. ‘Yes, sure. Quite often, I guess.’
‘Have you ever been in the Highland Fling pub?’
She looked for the reaction in his eyes, saw something but wasn’t sure what it was.
He looked to his lawyer as if expecting him to know what to say. ‘What is this about, Inspector?’ Stein demanded.
‘It’s a simple question. Has your client ever been to the Highland Fling pub? Yes or no, Mr Harkness?’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
Harkness was hedging and it clearly worried his solicitor.
‘Okay, let me try to help you. It’s on Cowlairs Road at the corner of Millarbank Street. Have you been there recently? Say, since Eloise disappeared.’
Harkness looked from her to his lawyer and back, searching for the right answer. He settled on, ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ It sounded very unsure.
‘In that case, I’m confused. Because we have evidence to place you inside the Highland Fling.’
‘It’s a pub, Inspector,’ Stein interjected. ‘By the nature of pubs, people don’t always remember being in them. And being in a pub is neither a crime nor evidence of guilt.’
‘Oh, I think your client would remember being in this one. It’s been shut for a number of years. And it’s where Eloise Gray’s body was found.’
She pulled the pin on that grenade and dropped it in Harkness’s lap to watch it explode.
He got out of his seat, standing there stupidly, unsure what to do or say. A tug on his sleeve from his lawyer sat him down again.
‘What evidence do you have, Detective Inspector?’ Stein struggled to gain a semblance of control. ‘You said you had forensic evidence for my client’s arrest.’
‘We have DNA.’
Stein’s face fell, as did his client’s. She wanted to stick the knife in deeper.
‘There was a torn piece of clothing found at the scene. We extracted DNA and it has tested as a probable match for Mr Harkness. We can place him at the scene where the body was discovered.’
Harkness looked round at them as he said it. ‘Eloise. I mean . . . I really liked her.’
He sounded punch drunk. Narey had heard it before, the voice stunned and surprised, not sure if he was up or down, not trusting his own head.
‘So why did you hit her? Why did you threaten her?’
Harkness shrugged in shame. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just happened.’
‘Why did you kill her?’
‘I didn’t.’
Narey reached into the folder in front of her and took out four A4-sized photographs. She placed them face down on the table between her and Harkness. His eyes went to them immediately and she left him time to wonder.
‘These photographs,’ she tapped the top one with her index finger, ‘are of Eloise. They show her as she was found in the Highland Fling.’
Harkness stared hard at the back of the prints.
‘Do you want to see them?’
His head nearly swung off his neck as he shook it, mouth tight and eyes fixed.
‘Are you sure?’
He was. And so was his lawyer. ‘My client said he didn’t . . .’
She tapped two fingers on the back of the photographs. Her mind’s eye seeing what was there. Eloise lit up by the harsh light of the flash gun. The shadows that she cast against the whitewashed walls behind. Her skin yellow and purple and fat and torn.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, turn over the prints and let Harkness see them. Revealing specialist knowledge that he could only know by being involved would weaken the likelihood of a conviction. Stein surely knew that. Harkness didn’t. He sat as far back as his chair would allow, his eyes stretched wide.
‘I’ll ask you again. Why did you kill her?’
The voice was small. Weak. ‘I told you. I didn’t.’
‘Do you really think a jury is going to believe that? I’m not sure even your own solicitor believes that.’
It was a cheap shot and Stein reacted angrily.
‘That’s out of order, Inspector. Don’t assume any view of my relationship with my client other than his presumed innocence. I want to speak to him alone. Nothing more will be said until I do.’
‘You do that, Mr Stein. And perhaps you should advise him of his best course of action. Co-operating with us would be in his best interest.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that, Inspector.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
Narey and Giannandrea stopped the recording and got up from the table. She paused halfway across the room, looking back to see Harkness with his head on the desk.
*
When they stood on the other side of the door, the claustrophobia of the interview room slipping away, Giannandrea turned to her with a tight, satisfied smile. ‘Tam Harkness. After all this time. That’s got to feel good.’
‘Yes, but there’s only one problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t think he killed her.’
CHAPTER 14
Their shift was meant to start at eight but Salgado pushed through the doors of the giant glass cube that was LAPD headquarters on West 1st Street just after six. The three hours’ sleep he’d had was full of thoughts of Ethan Garland and of a kid dying of thirst and starvation.
His nerves were jangling with the growing certainty that they were on to something bigger. It excited him, scared him, energised him. Sleep wasn’t an option. Sure, they’d need to put their hands up soon and get more people on the case, but he wanted it for them as long as possible, to get as deep into it before it had to become part of something they couldn’t handle alone.
This day had to get started and he wanted to get a jump on it before anyone else did. Except that when he got to his desk, O’Neill was already there.
‘You’d think you might want to make an early start on something like this,’ she chastised him without even turning to see who it was.
‘It ain’t even . . .’ He gave it up. She’d probably been there half the night.
‘How’s the kid doing?’
The monitor to her right was running the video feed. The now familiar sight of the young man slumped against the wall. It was less than twenty-four hours since they’d first set eyes on him, caged and abandoned, but they both burned with frustration at not being able to get to him.
‘Nothing much has changed from what I can see. He’s sleeping a lot, then gets restless, then frustrated and tugs at the chains till he wears himself out. Then he sleeps and repeats. He might be getting weaker, but I could just be seeing what I’m expecting to see.’
They watched the screen together, helplessly mesmerised by the lack of action, waiting for his head or hands to move, waiting for proof of life.
‘There’s a report on my desk from one of the docs, Dorothy Sinclair, and not surprisingly the prognosis isn’t good,’ she told him. ‘She says that putting a definitive timetable on it isn’t possible as there are too many unknowns. We don’t know when he last had water and how much of it he had. His body weight and level of hydration at the start of the deprivation would also be a factor, plus alcohol intake prior to the deprivation would hasten the process. However, she has listed the symptoms and progression of continued dehydration. In progression, they are darkened urine, thirst, visual disturbance, rapid heartbeat, confusion, weakness, disorientation, and finally organ failure. She says the kidneys will probably go first but progressing to heart and liver.’