Authors: Val McDermid
But now, Karen Pirie might possibly be the sort of woman who could be a friend. They were both recently single, for very different reasons. Between that and their history, there might be enough common ground to forge a friendship. So when work had thrown Detective Inspector Jimmy Hutton into her path, she’d asked about Karen Pirie.
‘Good lassie, good polis,’ he’d said. Succinct as he always
was. She liked that about Jimmy. Even though the work his unit did crossed paths with some of the hardest parts of her own job, he didn’t beat about the bush with euphemisms and jargon. When a man battered his partner, Jimmy didn’t talk about anger issues. He talked about making bad bastards’ lives hellish. Then he and his squad set about making good on those promises.
Research had shown that men who engaged in domestic violence often led lives of low-level criminality. The sort of pettiness that made them feel big but didn’t generally attract much attention from the police. Jimmy and his Murder Prevention Team took a different line. They prosecuted every tiny infringement as hard and as often as they could. She’d once overheard his response to a bully accusing the police of harassment. ‘You fuck off out of her life, and we’ll fuck off out of yours,’ he’d snarled. Sure enough, the man had packed his bags within the week.
‘Are you not simply kicking the can down the street?’ she’d asked him.
‘If every division plays the same game, they’re going to run out of street,’ Jimmy had said grimly. ‘Zero tolerance and no hiding place. That’s what we’re aiming for.’
So Giorsal had been more than willing to take Karen at Jimmy’s estimation. She’d put contacting Karen somewhere near the middle of her To Do list. One day soon, she’d promised herself. She hadn’t imagined that it would be Karen who’d make the first move. Giorsal had been sitting in the bright little cupboard of an office that was technically an interview room but which she had annexed in flagrant defiance of the department’s hot-desking policy, reading the pathologist’s report on Gabriel Abbott’s autopsy, when her landline had rung.
‘Giorsal Kennedy speaking, how can I help you?’ Just because you were a boss didn’t mean you should stop making
an effort with people. Too many senior managers answered the phone sounding like you were deliberately messing with their day simply by daring to call them.
‘Gus?’
The teenage nickname knocked Giorsal off her stride. Nobody had called her that since she went away to university in Birmingham and reinvented herself. ‘Who is this?’ Her warm tone had shifted towards caution.
‘I don’t know if you remember me from school? Karen Pirie?’
Giorsal couldn’t quite believe it. ‘I was only talking about you the other day,’ she said.
‘Snap,’ Karen said. ‘Jimmy Hutton said he’s been working with you.’
‘That’s right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It’s amazing to hear from you. My mum was saying we should get in touch now I’m back.’
‘Well, here I am, in touch,’ Karen said. She sounded a bit embarrassed, Giorsal thought.
‘That’s great. Jimmy said you were in Edinburgh these days, but maybe we could meet for a drink? Or a pizza? Or something? If you’re ever over this way?’ Shut up, girl, you’re sounding like a needy teenager.
‘I’d like that.’ Pause. ‘But I was wondering if you could spare me half an hour later today? Business rather than pleasure, I’m afraid. But we could make plans to link up in our own time.’
Disappointment burst Giorsal’s bubble. Why had she expected anything else? Karen must have her own life, her own friends. Why would Giorsal expect someone so well established on their old patch to be interested in a schoolmate tainted with the aura of failure that came with divorce? ‘Sure,’ she said, trying for breezy. ‘What can I help you with?’
‘I don’t know if Jimmy said, but I head up the Historic
Cases Unit. I could use some advice about adoption law. It’s relevant to a case that’s just come in, and I thought of you.’
‘Well, it’s not my specific area of expertise …’
‘You must know more than me.’ Karen chuckled. ‘Our dog knows more about it than me, Gus.’
Giorsal laughed. The ‘our dog knows more’ line had been the staple sarcastic put-down of their French teacher. With that single phrase, Karen had broken through Giorsal’s self-pity. ‘I’ve got a decent grasp of the subject. Are you in Edinburgh?’
‘No, I’m in Dundee right now. Can you squeeze me in later?’
‘I’ve got a meeting at three, but I’m only playing catch-up with my in-tray till then. Come on over. I can offer you a decent cup of tea or a truly terrible coffee. You know where I am?’
They sorted out the practicalities then said goodbye. Giorsal did a little dance in her chair. Fuck Victor, she could make a life on her own. Why had she ever doubted it?
K
aren
wouldn’t have minded an office in the Social Work Department in Glenrothes. Modern. Designed for what it was being used for. Big windows and car parking. Everything her office was not. ‘You sure you don’t want me along, boss?’ The Mint’s raw-boned face looked troubled. ‘I mean, this could be evidence, right?’
The requirement of the Scottish legal system for corroboration was the reason officers conducted interviews in pairs. Sometimes Karen felt as if she was attached to Jason by a judicial umbilical cord, perpetual parent to a slow learner. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s only background. I need to find out how the land lies. There’s plenty of experts we can wheel out if we need to spell it out in court.’ Karen opened the car door.
The Mint’s expression cleared, replaced by his usual bovine placidity. ‘OK. So, have I to go back to the office, then?’
She paused, one foot on the ground. Did he seriously think she would tell him to call it a day when it wasn’t even lunchtime? ‘Go through the files, make a list of the officers who worked the original inquiry and track down contact details for them.’
‘What?
All of them?’
‘Just the CID, Jason. Start with the SIO and work your way down the pyramid. We need to talk to them, find out what’s not in the paperwork. You know how it goes.’
He nodded and smiled. ‘Sure thing, boss. The names they never write down, the gossip they never nail down, the theories they never set down.’ Another of Karen’s mantras that she’d managed to instil in him.
‘Exactly. Somewhere in there, the name of Ross Garvie’s dad or his uncle is lurking. He’s been walking around for twenty years thinking he’s got clean away with what he did to Tina McDonald. And we are his worst nightmare, Jason. We are always his worst nightmare.’ Karen pushed herself out of the car and closed the door behind her. She was done with talking to the Mint. Time for grown-up conversation.
She fully expected that from Giorsal Kennedy. Gus, as she’d chosen to be known to her friends, had never been a silly wee lassie. She’d always been thoughtful. She didn’t rush into things, always considering the possible outcomes before she made her choices. Even so, in a teenage world that valued conformity masquerading as rebellion, Gus had never been short of friends. She’d definitely been more popular than Karen, who hadn’t yet learned the techniques that these days spared Jason the rough side of her tongue. Back then, Karen had refused to suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. It hadn’t made her many friends, but she and Gus had always been pals. As she walked into the social work office, Karen surprised herself with a sense of happy anticipation. It had been a while since she’d felt something so uncomplicated.
Karen had expected a secretary or an assistant, but Giorsal herself came down to meet her at the reception desk. She hadn’t changed much. Her long hair was still obviously thick even though it was tied back in a ponytail, no apparent
strands of silver in the brown yet. She was still slim to the point of skinny, though she’d filled out more in the bust. That was what child-bearing did for you, Karen thought without a shred of envy. The severe rectangular glasses were new, though. They raised Giorsal’s status, making her look like someone who took decisions and made things happen.
As the two women stepped into an awkward hug, Karen wondered what Giorsal saw. How much had she changed from that awkward overweight teenager who never seemed to know what to wear or how to style her hair? Now she was a slightly less overweight thirty-something who still stared into her wardrobe with an air of bewilderment and still never managed to make her hair look the same as it did when she walked out of the salon. She had more frown lines than Giorsal, which surprised her because she reckoned social workers were one of the few groups who were exposed to even more horrors than cops were.
‘Karen,’ Giorsal exclaimed, holding on to Karen’s shoulders and stepping back from the hug to look her up and down. ‘My God, I’d have known you anywhere.’
‘Check you out with your scary specs,’ Karen said. ‘You’re looking good.’
‘Liar. You could pack for a week’s holiday in the bags under my eyes.’ She let Karen go and waved an arm towards the stairs. ‘Come away up and we’ll have a proper blether.’
‘It’s good to see you,’ Karen said to Giorsal’s back as they climbed up to the first floor. ‘Whenever I’ve heard news of you over the years, I always felt sorry we’d lost touch.’
Giorsal gave a quick look over her shoulder. ‘I was so impressed when my mum told me you’d made DI. Serious business, that. And now DCI. Check you out, girl.’ She led the way into a small office. It was tidier than Karen could have managed. She expected to see photos of Giorsal’s kids on the desk and said so.
Giorsal
dropped into her chair, gesturing towards the two visitors’ chairs facing her. She made a wry face. ‘I don’t like to shove my good fortune in people’s faces.’ Then she straightened up and leaned forward, forearms on the desk, face sombre. ‘I heard about your man,’ she said. ‘That’s a helluva thing to get past.’
‘I’m not there yet. Nothing like there, actually.’ Karen cleared her throat. She wasn’t ready to get into this with Giorsal. She half-hoped there would be a time when she would be, but it would be a way down the road. ‘Nice office, by the way.’
Giorsal snorted. ‘Make the most of it. We’re being shunted out of here in a few weeks. The council sold the building to CISWO for buttons and we’re joining the happy band at Fife House.’
‘CISWO?’
‘The Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation.’
Karen nodded her understanding. Thirty years since Thatcher had killed off the Fife coalfield, and still the damage reverberated through the local economy and the communities who had depended on it. ‘Fair enough, I suppose,’ she said.
‘They need somewhere since the council decided to bulldoze their building to redevelop the town centre. But you didn’t come here to talk about town planning.’ She gave the engaging grin that Karen remembered, eyebrows steepling at an acute angle.
‘No. Look, Gus, I’d genuinely like to get together and have a proper catch-up, but I’ve picked up a case that I need to make some progress on, only it’s complicated and I don’t know my way through the complications and I think you probably do.’
Giorsal smiled. ‘If I can help, I will. On condition that we have a night out very soon.’
‘Deal.’
‘You
said on the phone it was about adoption law?’
Karen gave Giorsal a swift but comprehensive outline of the situation Ross Garvie’s recklessness had provoked. ‘I thought I had nothing more to do than take a buccal swab from Stewart Garvie and I’d have an overnight result.’ She shook her head. ‘I should have known better. I’ve been doing cold cases long enough to know it’s seldom that easy.’
Giorsal made a rueful noise. ‘Well, when it comes to adoption law, you’re better off here than if you were down south, that’s one good thing.’
‘How’s that?’
‘OK, first the history lesson. Scots law enshrines the principle of forced heirship. In other words, you can’t disinherit your kids. They’re legally entitled to between a third and a half of what’s called your movable estate – cash, stocks and shares, that sort of thing. Until the law changed in the 1960s, that applied to all your biological children, even if they’d been adopted. It doesn’t apply to adopted children any longer, but the laws that were put in place to make it possible for them to uncover their history stayed the same even though their inheritance rights disappeared.’
‘OK, that sort of makes sense. So what’s the score?’
‘When an adoption takes place, a new birth certificate is issued in the names of the adopted parents and the first name of their choice. And an extract of that is held on the Adoption Register. That’s held separately from the births, marriages and deaths registers that the public can access.
‘Once the adopted person turns sixteen, they have the right to access their original birth certificate. The records will either be at the Court of Session in Edinburgh or the Sheriff Court that authorised the adoption or at General Register House in Edinburgh. You write a letter to the National Records of Scotland and they’ll tell you where to go looking. Then
you rock up with photo ID and they’ll open up your original birth certificate extract.’
‘That’s all? Just the short form of the birth certificate?’
‘Yes. But that’s not the end of the story. You can go to the courts and ask for more information. You should be able to get your hands on the original petition to adopt, the report of the Court Reporter or Curator, the social work report, the circumstances of the birth mother, the reasons for the adoption, her address and where the birth took place. There might even be reports from the local authority or the adoption agency, if one was involved.’
Karen felt the warm glow that came with forward movement on a case. ‘I had no idea that adopted kids could access so much of their background.’
‘It’s a good thing, I think. Generally, the adoption records are well kept and pretty comprehensive.’
‘So, is it just the adopted person who can access the records?’
Giorsal pulled a face. ‘The general rule is that it’s only the adopted person or someone specifically authorised by them.’
‘That suggests there might be exceptions to the general rule?’ Karen wasn’t too hopeful, knowing only too well the hurdles of bureaucracy.