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<h2>8</h2>
<p>David drove through the winter fog to the office, thinking about
the woman and trying to shake off the strange feeling of
apprehension that had hung around him since he'd awoken from the
dream. Donal Bulloch was down in London for a conference so he
reported to Scott Cruden, the inspector who worked directly to the
boss.</p>
<p>"I'll have to check with the landlord this morning and maybe
have a word with the neighbours," he said. "We still don't know who
she is, but we should get a positive line on it today."</p>
<p>Cruden thought it was time wasted on a natural causes death, but
if it had been sanctioned from higher up than his altitude, then he
declined to argue, at least for today.</p>
<p>"Quick as you can, but you can't have Lamont, not for this
morning and probably the next day or so," the inspector said,
without rancour. "She's checking out a missing person up in
Whitevale. Girl's done a runner, so it seems."</p>
<p>David shrugged nonchalantly, but he knew he was disappointed. He
told himself it was because Helen Lamont was a good partner,
someone he could rely on. An image flitted across his mind, though
not the brutal one he'd imagined in the dead woman's house. He just
got a picture of him smiling up at him she he stood with his hand
on the mantelpiece. Had he read something in her look? He shook his
head, shaking the thought away. He needed no further complications
in his life.</p>
<p>A word with the Rachman who rented out the crumbling property
and a knock on a few doors wouldn't take much time. He went to his
desk and wrote out an information request which he passed through
to records office. It was a simple file check on Thelma Quigley,
the dead woman who, it seemed had died twice. The run down of the
neighbouring tenants might make that request redundant, he knew,
but it would save time if he drew a blank.</p>
<p>Helen passed him in the corridor along with two uniformed
policemen. "Going back out?"</p>
<p>He nodded and she shrugged apologetically. "I should be back in
an hour or so. I got a missing girl in her twenties, but it's very
early days yet and it's ten to one she'll turn up, so give me a
call if you need a hand."</p>
<p>He gave her a silent okay sign with his middle finger and thumb
and went out into the cold. He did not see her watch him from
behind the glass as he walked down the steps towards the car
park.</p>
<p>The landlord was an estate agent in Miller Street beside the
canal which skirted the north side of the city and wended its way
towards the river much further down towards the firth, near Barloan
Harbour or Levenford. He was out, but his son was in the office, a
young man in a fairly well-cut suit, but with an accent rough
enough to grind glass.</p>
<p>"Old Thelma? Been there for years," he said, after David flashed
his warrant card. "Rent paid by benefit. Never bothers a soul."</p>
<p>"Have you had a look inside the place?"</p>
<p>"My old man maybe looked in once in a while, I believe. She's
quiet enough. No loud parties, no pets. No trouble. That's all you
want in this line of business."</p>
<p>The young man, somewhere in his mid twenties and with the cocky
kind of arrogance of those raised to money-grub, couldn't say
anything much more. He checked the records and confirmed that
Thelma Quigley had been a tenant for five years. That was it. She
was a name on a register and social security money in the bank and
as long as she didn't party down until the small hours, then the
landlord couldn't give a damn. David felt the swell of anger again
then forced it down. There was no point. There were a million
Thelma Quigleys in a million houses in a thousand towns. Nobody
gave a damn about anybody these days. Money talked louder than
ever.</p>
<p>Old Mrs Whalen who lived three doors down was stout and motherly
and had a face that was laced by a filigree of wrinkles. Her
husband Bob was huddled by a coal fire, still wearing a flat cap
and with an ancient army overcoat draped across his shoulders. He
coughed gratingly from deep down inside himself and hawked a gob of
something putrid into the fire where it hissed and sizzled for a
few moments. Mrs Whalen gave him a nonchalant slap on the shoulder
and told him to mind his manners while the police were in the
house.</p>
<p>"Asbestosis," she said. "Been bringing that stuff up for years,
poor old soul. I tell him he should get out in the fresh air, but
he can't walk the length of the room now."</p>
<p>Despite the gloom in the little flat where a damp patch was
curling the wallpaper down from close to the ceiling and the flat
smell of plaster that was never going to dry out, the place was
clean. The furniture was old and scarred from long use, but
polished and there was a line of photographs on the mantel that
showed the up and coming generation of Whalen grandchildren. The
old couple had lived a full life.</p>
<p>"Twenty one wee'uns and four great grandchildren. I need to rob
a bank every Christmas," she said, bending over arthritically to
pour a cup of tea. David felt a roll of weary sadness for them, old
Bob with his asbestosis filing up his lungs to drown him in his own
mucus and the little lady with the job of looking after him and the
line up of grandchildren on the mantel. He forced himself to stop
once more. It was not his fight and she was not complaining.</p>
<p>"Thelma? Oh, she kept herself to herself, you know. I only ever
saw her down at the shops and she'd say hello. Sometimes she'd hang
out the sheets. She was forever hanging them out on the line when
it was warm. That was the only time you ever saw her without the
babies?"</p>
<p>"Babies?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Oh, she always had babies. "Don't know whose they were, but she
looked after them the whole time she lived here. Real shame about
what happened to her. I heard it from Mrs Corrigan who got it down
at the post office. Amazing how word always gets around, eh?"</p>
<p>David conceded that it was. He was interested in the babies. A
bad feeling was trying to insinuate itself into his mind and he
clamped it away. He'd read all the papers on the Dennis Nilson
case, the bodies buried under floorboards and cut up and dumped
down the drain-pipes. He'd studied the Frederick West case with the
corpses in the garden and mummified in concrete.</p>
<p>There had been a smell in the flat. He tried to recall it, but
couldn't quite. If it had been the smell of a decomposing corpse, a
rotting human, he'd have known it from experience. He shook his
head absently, shaking the thought away. He wouldn't have missed
it, surely. The thought nagged at the edge of his mind.</p>
<p>"Were they her grandchildren?"</p>
<p>"Don't think so. She never had a wedding ring, though that
stands for nothing these days. Maybe she was child-minding or
something. One thing was for certain, she was always talking
baby-stuff, leaning over the pram and goo-ing and gaa-ing, the way
people talk if they want the kids to grow up doo-lally, but if you
ever went near to have a look, she'd put the cover up quick as a
flash. I always thought that was funny. Funny peculiar that is.
Most people can't wait to show a baby off, even if it isn't theirs.
And everybody puts a coin in for the baby's luck. You would never
have thought Thelma was rich enough to turn her nose up at some
extra money. She never looked as if she had two pennies to rub
together."</p>
<p>Old Mrs Whalen insisted David had a biscuit and said it was all
right if he dunked them in his tea. She acted as if he was one of
her grandchildren and when he thought about it, he probably was
young enough. Old Bob hawked again and stared at the flames, his
seemed face bracketed by long lines in leathery skin. He'd worked a
hard life, that was for sure. His hands were big and gnarled and
looked as if they'd one been strong enough to swing a pickaxe or
build ships, but his eyes were old and tired and burned out.</p>
<p>"How many babies?" David finally asked.</p>
<p>"Oh, couldn't say. I never really got a look at one, but there
must have been different ones. Maybe four, perhaps five over the
years. Sometimes you wouldn't see her for a month or so, mostly in
the summertime when it was hot. I think she must have gone away on
holiday. But then she'd be back with another one in a different
pram. That's how we could tell. Maybe that's how she paid the rent,
but she didn't act like a child minder. They've always got five or
six to look after and that's too many in my book. That's just being
greedy."</p>
<p>"Nonsense, woman," Bob finally spoke up. His voice sounded like
boots on gravel. "You had eight yourself."</p>
<p>"That's because he was a dirty-minded old <em>besom</em>," Mrs
Whalen told David with a crinkly smile of genuine mirth. "And
anyway, they were <em>my</em> babies. All steps and stairs, one
after the other with hardly a break to get my breath back, and
every one of them loved to death."</p>
<p>David snapped back, almost spilling his tea.</p>
<p><em>I take care of Baby Grumpling better than anyone could and I
love him to death. Really I do.</em></p>
<p>"It was a happy home," Mrs Whalen said, unaware that David was
recollecting the words in the diary. "That's the pleasure babies
bring and once you have one, you want another, like chocolates.
Mind you, there was no room at all swing a cat in here and never a
spare penny either, but we got by, we did and that's because they
were all loved. There was always the sound of kids in this house
until they grew up, and whenever they come to visit, it's like
being young again."</p>
<p>"Och, don't talk rubbish woman," the old man growled in a dry
wheeze. "You'll put the young fella off his tea."</p>
<p>"Never pay no heed to him," the old lady said. "He was never
home, always out earning and he loved them just the same. You
should have seen his face the first time he held one of them in his
big rough hands to know he'd have fought the world for them.</p>
<p>David got the picture. The old man turned to the fire and went
back into his memories, chest heaving like bellows, breath hissing
like a punctured tyre.</p>
<p>"But you don't know where Thelma got the babies?"</p>
<p>"No. Nobody knew where she came from herself. Around here
everybody knows something about everybody else's business, but
Thelma was different. A real mystery. Oh, she was polite enough.
Always said hello, but she'd never stop and pass the time of day.
Only ever spoke to the babies, really. I suppose she always had
somebody to listen to her."</p>
<p>She turned and gave her husband a hearty slap on the
shoulder.</p>
<p>"Not like around here, you ould bugger," she cajoled, but the
laugh was in her voice and the old man ritually ignored her.</p>
<p>The other neighbours told the same story. The woman who had
lived in the shabby little apartment had bothered no one and had
wanted to be left alone. Nobody had intruded. They all mentioned
the babies in the prams, how the woman was hardly ever seen without
a child. Apart from that, they knew nothing more.</p>
<p>Thelma Quigley was a mystery.</p>
<p>David did not tell them that she was not Thelma Quigley. Of that
he was almost certain, from what she had written in her diaries,
unless she was schizophrenic and had twin personalities. He didn't
think so.</p>
<p>But she was indeed a mystery. Almost everything about her was a
puzzle. Where she had come from, the babies she looked after,
Something else was nagging at the edge of David's thoughts and he
couldn't quite put his finger on it.</p>
<p>It was only on the way back to the station, that it struck him
quite forcibly. She hadn't been with a baby when she died. Yet
she'd spoken of a baby with her last dying breaths while the blood
drained away from her burst heart and pooled in the pit of her
belly.</p>
<p>Records had left a sheaf of papers on his desk. Among them was a
photocopy of a woman's face. Thelma Quigley smiled out from the
page and despite the grainy quality David could see the life
sparkle in the woman's eyes. She had dark hair caught up casually
on top of her head, some if it tumbling down to the left, finely
arched eyebrows and a dazzling smile that showed perfect teeth. Her
skin was clear and unblemished.</p>
<p>She looked nothing at all like the elderly woman who had
collapsed in the Waterside mall.</p>
<p>And it came as no surprise to David to read that Thelma Quigley
had been stabbed to death in a frenzied attack way back in the free
love days of the sixties. The knife had gone through jugular vain
and her windpipe, severed her carotid artery. The attacker had
plunged it so many times into her chest and belly that there was
hardly piece of skin left uncut. The file showed a set of picture
copies from the shallow grave, done in the harsh light of the
camera flashgun. The puncture wounds were twisted and shredded at
the edges, the flesh macerated and grey. She had not been found for
almost two weeks.</p>
<p>The diaries had not lied. The woman who had been living as
Thelma Quigley, who had brought babies home to he dingy little
apartment, had been somebody else entirely. David's mind was
whizzing and whirling with possibilities. Finally he shook the
jumbled thoughts away and sat down to read the report.</p>
<p><em>Thelma Margot Quigley. B. June 22 1940. Parents: John and
Louise Quigley.</em></p>
<p>The first few lines were statistics, the when's and the where's
of a girl's life printed out on the lines of an official form.
School, national insurance number. Date of birth, date of death,
estimated to the nearest two days. A bright girl who worked as a
secretary in a whisky brokerage in Edinburgh and dreamed of
becoming an actress. The words conveyed little except the cold
flesh round bare bones. The report went into detail, as police
reports do, still stark on the odd tinted sheets rolling from the
fax machine, sheets first printed from the old microfiche files in
the dead store. The killer had never been caught, David noticed,
again mentally tallying this with the hand-written words in the old
diary. The detectives had interviewed more than a thousand people,
many of them friends or boyfriends of the outgoing girl who had
been brutally and inexplicably murdered.</p>
<p>"Anything good on the go?"</p>
<p>David turned in his seat. Helen Lamont was passing by, dressed
for the cold weather in a padded coat and a beret which made her
look less than ever like a policewoman.</p>
<p>"Still on our flake-out in the mall," he conceded.</p>
<p>"Don't tell me you've got to go through old records. Maybe you
should knock on a few doors, lazy bugger." She winked and gave him
a wide smile.</p>
<p>"Done that all morning," David said, trying not to read anything
into the smile. "This whole thing just got a whole lot wierder."
One of the other detectives looked up from his desk and David
changed the subject. "How about you. Scott said you were chasing a
runner."</p>
<p>"If she really is a runner," Helen said. "I'm hoping she might
just be an overnighter with a bad case of embarrassment. She's been
missing thirty six hours, so it's a bit early to say. The Inspector
wants a bulletin printed out for all the cars."</p>
<p>Helen held up a picture of a fair-haired, intelligent looking
girl in her early twenties, not quite smiling, but close enough to
it to give the impression that she might be about to burst into
laughter. There was intelligence in the blue eyes, and the
photograph conveyed the impression of someone who was capable and
fit.</p>
<p>"Ginny Marsden. She never came home from work night before last.
Hasn't been seen since. Usual story." The curious detective got up
and strolled out of the room with a bundle of files under his arm.
Helen turned the subject back. "So what's happening with the creepy
lady?"</p>
<p>"As our brothers across the water would say, there's some weird
shit happening. Firstly, Thelma Quigley's not her real name. The
real Thelma died thirty years ago, near enough. That's what's in
here." He indicated the sprawl of papers spread across the
desk.</p>
<p>"So who the hell is she?"</p>
<p>"That's what I'm trying to find out. Fancy a trip to
Edinburgh?"</p>
<p>"Love to, but I'm tied up." Helen said, pulling her lips down in
an expression of disappointment. "I have to start moving on our
runner before the trail gets cold, just in case she hasn't done a
flit. Ask me in a couple of days and make sure you've got tickets
for anything not written by Lloyd-Webber. Then you've got a date
for definite." She gave him another wide smile and was gone before
he realised what she'd said.</p>
<p>David turned back to the old files on Thelma Quigley. He had
just bent his head and focused on the first page when the phone
rang. He thought it might be Helen, but it was June and she was far
from happy. He pulled the receiver away from his ear and listened
to the tinny squeak, unable to comprehend a syllable of the
unbroken stream. After a while she stopped and he could make out
the staccato <em>Hello? Hello?</em> He thought about simply cutting
her off and he realised that he really had to do something about
this.</p>
<p>Finally the sound began to falter and he brought the receiver
back to his ear. "Hi June," he said. "I'm fine. How was your
day?"</p>
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