Read Out of Bounds Online

Authors: Val McDermid

Out of Bounds (31 page)

‘Aye. If you don’t get on with your adoptive parents, you must be hoping for something better. And if you really love the ones that brought you up, you’d have to be worried about what hand grenades your genetic history might throw into your life. Would you want to know?’

Jason shook his head. ‘No. It’s hard enough managing one lot of relationships. Know what I mean?’

Karen nodded. ‘But I don’t know if I could resist it. If I found out I was adopted, I’d have to know everything.’

‘Aye, but you’re dead nosy, boss. In a good way,’ he added hastily.

Before Karen could react, Andrews returned carrying a fat ledger with drab green boards and tan linen binding, letters and numbers stamped on its spine. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘This is the adoption register.’ He opened it at a bookmarked page. ‘And this is the record of Ross Garvie’s adoption. Here’s his adoptive parents’ – he pointed to the Garvies’ names – ‘and here, it says they have been granted permission to
adopt Darren Paul MacBride. Date of birth there, and the registration district – Dundee, as you can see – and here’s the crucial piece of information we need. The number of the birth certificate. And there at the bottom, his adoptive name. Ross Stewart Garvie.’

Andrews closed the register and crossed to the desk, waking the computer. ‘Now I have to input that number, and bingo.’ The tapping of keys, the clicking of a mouse, the whirr of a printer. With a flourish, he presented Karen with a copy of Ross Garvie’s original birth certificate.

Only when she took the A4 sheet did she realise she’d been holding her breath. There it was. The information that should lead her to Tina McDonald’s killer. Darren Paul MacBride. Born in the Simpson Memorial Pavilion in Edinburgh. Mother’s name – Jeanette MacBride. Usual residence: 7/43 Cambus Court, EH14 3XY. ‘Wester Hailes, isn’t that?’

‘I think so, yes. It sounds like a block of high flats,’ Andrews said.

‘No mention of the father?’

Andrews pulled a wry face. ‘That’s often the way with adoptions. The father has to agree to being named if they’re not married to the mother, and mostly they don’t want to be. That’s always supposing they even know about the birth.’

‘It says here she was a nursery worker,’ Jason said. ‘Maybe we could trace her through her work if she’s not still at that address.’

At the bottom of the certificate, in a box on its own was handwritten the word, ‘Adopted.’ Karen pointed to it. ‘You write that on after the adoption?’

‘That’s right. Birth certificates are public documents. Anyone can access this and buy a copy of it. The written annotation is to prevent identity theft. You can’t use this birth certificate to obtain any other ID, such as a passport or driving licence.’

‘Is
there any way to backtrack to the adoption record? To find out where that baby ended up?’

Andrews shook his head. ‘It’s not possible. Trust me, Chief Inspector, it can’t be done.’

‘I didn’t think so. And it’s not relevant. I was just curious.’ Karen folded the sheet of paper and stood up. ‘Thanks, you’ve been really helpful.’ They walked out into sunshine lighting what Karen thought had to be one of the best views in the city. Apart from the backside of Wellington’s prancing horse, obviously. But not even that could dent her mood. Finally, they had the break they needed to claw their way ever closer to the man who had murdered a young woman who’d been guilty of nothing more than having fun with her friends. ‘One step closer to judgement day,’ she said to Jason. ‘One step closer.’

41

K
aren
loved the fizz of excitement that came hand in hand with forward movement after a case had been stalled. She’d marched down Leith Walk to the office so fast Jason had had to break into little skip steps to jink around fellow pedestrians and keep up with her. As they went, she’d issued her instructions. ‘First thing, do the obvious. Phone book. I’ll do the certificates and Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You take the electoral roll. If Jeanette MacBride isn’t on the current roll, backtrack year by year till she shows up. Take a look at county court judgements, see if she shows up there at all. We’ll see where we go from there.’

If they were very lucky, Jeanette MacBride would still be living in Wester Hailes on the edge of the city. But the chances of that were slim. If they could find out when she left, they could list who her neighbours were at that time then check forward in the records to see whether any of them were still around. It was a long shot and, if it failed, there would be other records to check. Marriages and deaths were the obvious ones, but there were other, less obvious places to look if they still hadn’t found Ross Garvie’s birth mother.

Back
at the office, energised enough not to need a coffee, Karen sent a quick text to Giorsal. Just because Tina’s murder had swept back to centre stage didn’t mean she was going to ignore the other matter that was gnawing away at the back of her mind like a rat with a chicken carcass.

Hi Gus. Never mind Noble. Whatever he says, GA’s death ties to a cold case and cold cases are mine. Can you put me together with Ian Lesley this evening? I’ll buy the pizza! Kx

She smiled. Cat firmly inserted among pigeons.

Jason was already at his computer screen, head bowed, fingers clumsy on the keys, a pair of frown lines between his eyebrows. Karen made a start on her own tasks. The first thing she did was log on to the unit’s account on the Scotland’s People website. She typed in Jeanette MacBride’s name, added a twenty-year window of possibility in the date range and chose five registration districts to start the search. She began with the ones nearest the address they already had for MacBride. There were nearly nine hundred registration districts in Scotland and if need be she’d work her way through every one till she found what she was looking for.

But the gods were smiling on her. Jeanette MacBride had been born on 27 June 1979 in Edinburgh. Her mother, Maria MacBride, unemployed and only nineteen, had been living in a flat in Portobello at the time. And as with her son, Jeanette MacBride had no father’s name listed on her birth certificate. Had that been why she’d given up her child for adoption, Karen wondered. Had her own experience of being raised by a single parent made her decide she didn’t want those social and economic difficulties visited on her own child? She wondered whether Maria MacBride was still in Edinburgh. She’d
only be fifty-six now. If all else failed, she might know where her daughter was. ‘Jeanette was from Edinburgh,’ Karen said. Jason looked up, startled.

‘What?’

‘She’ll be thirty-seven now. I’m pinging the birth certificate over to you.’

Back to her task. Google first. The dead ninety-four-year-old from Schenectady definitely wasn’t their woman. Nor was the Filipino-Australian actress, who spelled her first name differently anyway.

She moved on to Facebook and worked her way through a trio of hits, dismissing them all on the grounds of geography and age. Twitter and Instagram offered no more likely options. Either Jeanette MacBride had no interest in social media or she had married and changed her name. Or she’d fallen off the grid for any one of several reasons. She could be in jail. She could have mental health issues. She could be too poor to support a digital existence.

She could be dead.

Karen thrust that annoying thought away and searched the marriage records on Scotland’s People. No joy there. She tried Jeanette’s mother, Maria, and eventually found a marriage certificate. In 1998, she’d married a builder’s labourer called James Robertson. ‘Oh, great,’ Karen muttered. ‘Let’s hope we don’t need to fall back on Jeanette’s mother.’

‘How?’

‘She married a guy called James Robertson. Could she have picked two more common names? And he was a builder’s labourer. The most casual employment known to man.’ She sighed. ‘You having any better luck?’

Jason grunted. ‘I’m back to 2007 and she’s not there yet. Just waiting for 2006 to load.’ Silence fell again, broken only by the whisper and thump of two very different keyboard styles. But not for long. A couple of minutes later, Jason
whooped. ‘Got her. She was still living at the Wester Hailes address in 2006.’ He jabbed a finger at the screen.

‘Brilliant. Neighbours, yes?’

‘I’m already on it.’ Jason was scribbling in his notebook, listing the names of residents who lived close to Jeanette in 2006. Then laboriously he began to work his way forward through the records he’d already examined to see if any of them was still at the same address. He sucked his lower lip as he concentrated, a wet and faintly disgusting sound. Meanwhile, Karen waged a fruitless search through more marriage records to see whether she could track down Jeanette as a bride.

At last Jason pushed back in his chair and stood up. ‘I done it,’ he said. ‘I deserve an Irn Bru. I’m away to the machine to get one. Do you want anything?’

‘No. What have you got?’ Karen spread her palms in a gesture of frustration. When would the Mint learn to prioritise?

‘Two hits,’ he said on his way out the door.

Karen bustled round to his desk and looked at his notebook. A list of ten names, all scribbled out except two. Agnes McCredie and Thomas Anderson. She checked the names against the screen. Agnes was at 7/45 and Thomas at 7/40. ‘Looking good,’ she said under her breath. They were on the same floor, close to Jeanette MacBride’s flat. By the time Jason returned with his can to his lips, she already had her coat on. ‘Come on, Jason, time for a wee run out to Wester Hailes.’

By some miracle, the lift was working. But as the door closed on the grim smells of stale urine, vomit and something unidentifiable but definitely decaying, Karen almost jammed her finger on the button so she could opt for the stairs before it was too late. But just in time, she remembered what the stairs would probably be like. Used condoms, needles, cat shit in corners, dog shit on landings
and screwed-up papers drifting in the wind. No matter how hard the council – and a despairing tranche of the residents – tried to make the blocks of high flats a decent place to live, they were always fighting a losing battle.

The ridged metal walls of the lift showed faint ghosts of graffiti that council workers hadn’t quite managed to erase completely, and Karen thought she recognised a couple of gang tags. The schemies of Wester Hailes seemed to change not at all from short generation to generation. Cheap booze, cheap fags and, most insidiously, cheap drugs had cheapened life to the point where escape seemed too improbable to contemplate. For these people, the escalator that had once offered a chance to rise above the poverty of their existence was permanently broken.

The seventh floor wasn’t as bad as some Karen had seen. The blue doors were faded and dusty, but most of the paint was intact. A gallery ran round the four sides of the block and none of the windows facing on to it was boarded up. Some of them even had net curtains that were still approximately white. Agnes McCredie’s flat was one of those. Karen knocked on the door and turned to face the kitchen window where, as she expected, a corner of the net shifted and she caught the pale half-moon of a face. She smiled; winningly, she hoped.

Time passed then the door cracked open a couple of inches, held in place by a brassy chain that Karen could have snapped with one lunge of her shoulder. But at least Agnes McCredie was showing unwilling, which was often all the deterrence it took. The eye that looked into Karen’s was rheumy and faded, but queasily magnified by her glasses. ‘Who are you?’ she demanded, her voice reedy but strong.

Karen and Jason produced their ID. ‘We’re from Police Scotland.’ Karen said. ‘We’re looking for anyone who knew Jeanette MacBride. She used to live in 43.’

The
woman reared back a little. ‘Jeanette? Has she done something? That doesn’t sound like her.’

‘No, nothing like that. We’re trying to track her down, that’s all. Can we come in for a wee chat, Mrs McCredie?’

‘It’s Miss McCredie. And none of that Ms rubbish either. Jeanette hasn’t lived here in ten years. Hang on.’ The door closed, the chain rattled, the door opened wider. Agnes McCredie gestured to them to enter. ‘On the right,’ she said, pointing to the door. It looked flimsy, like everything else in the hallway. The ugly grey carpet was threadbare but clean and framed pictures of the last four popes hung on the wall. A thin smell of bacon fat hung in the air.

The living room was furnished with a three-piece suite and a coffee table that Karen reckoned dated from the seventies. A small dining table covered with a lace runner sat against the window, an upright chair on either side. A cut-glass vase with some dispiriting plastic daffodils sat defiantly in the middle. The walls featured a crucifix, a picture of Jesus weighing the Sacred Heart in his hand as if checking whether it was good enough to cook, and a print of St Francis of Assisi charming the birds and the animals. A small TV with a rabbit ear aerial completed the furnishings. Everything was spotless. Cleanliness being next to godliness, Karen thought, settling herself on the sofa. Jason joined her and Agnes McCredie sat in the armchair facing the TV screen. She was small and neat and somehow desiccated, but the smile she bestowed on them was sweet, transforming her narrow face. Somewhere south of seventy, Karen decided. Clearly the Swinging Sixties had passed her by. But then, in parts of Scotland the sixties hadn’t started till 1979.

‘Now, before I tell you anything about Jeanette, I want to know exactly why you’re here.’ She folded her hands in her lap and gave them both a direct stare.

‘We work in the Historic Cases Unit,’ Karen said. ‘We look
at what people generally call cold cases. We believe Jeanette can give us some information that would be useful to us in a case we’re working on.’

Agnes raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, Officer, that tells me absolutely nothing. I’d like some proper information.’

Karen couldn’t really blame the old woman’s nosiness. She’d have been the same. ‘Jeanette had a baby while she was living here. Did you know about that?’

‘Of course I did. I persuaded her not to have an abortion.’ She sat up straighter. ‘That boyfriend of hers was off like a scalded cat when he found out she was expecting. She was all for getting rid of the wee mite, but I helped her see its life was as sacred as hers. So she decided to have the bairn and have it adopted. But why are you asking about that now?’

Other books

Crane by Stone, Jeff
Captive but Forbidden by Lynn Raye Harris
The Greystoke Legacy by Andy Briggs
Once a Pirate by Susan Grant
The Dark Stranger by Sara Seale
Paint the Town Dead by Nancy Haddock
Fated Love by Radclyffe