Free Blood, Salt, Water by Denise Mina Page B

Walker. Is it a child protection issue?’
    ‘Nah,’ said McGrain, knowing exactly what she was talking about. ‘Bosses wouldn’t let you anyway. They’ve spent too much on it.’
    He was right. Abusing stepfathers with an eye on a child often picked chaotic families, but usually with a mother they could control. Roxanna wasn’t that. Both the Met and Police Scotland had spent too much money on the case already to let Morrow blow it with a speculative social-work intervention. A request for a home visit wouldn’t make it off her desk.
    ‘She hates him,’ said McGrain. ‘He’s her stepdad. The problem is that he’s a child himself and he hates her back.’ He started the engine. ‘I’m a stepdad to three.’
    ‘Do they hate you?’
    He pulled up at the lights on the busy Great Western Road. ‘They did. At first. Their mum thought it would never pass. Your job is just not to react. It was easy for me. Mine are diamonds.’
    Morrow looked out of the window as the lights changed and they drove on.
    She didn’t think Roxanna Fuentecilla would walk away from her kids. But Morrow had to face the possibility: maybe she didn’t know her at all. Maybe all the good stuff was just projected hope.

 
    10
     
    Iain tripped downhill along streets of high hedges around big houses. He felt conspicuous, imagined householders spotting him through their windows and stopping to neighbourhood-watch him. He knew a lot of the town, but nobody from up here. The big-house people were often incomers. They kept themselves separate, above, geographically, socially, even in the elevated seating positions of their high-up cars. Iain’s only contact with them was through their cleaners, or childminders, or if he met their gardeners in the pub. Or if they approached him for a deal. Susan Grierson made sense now. She’d probably ask him to recommend a cleaner when he got back.
    He turned eastward, heading for Tommy’s mum’s. It was helping his mood, having a thing to do. Even walking was helping him keep focus, the slap of his feet on the pavement drowning out the physical sensations of the morning. He stopped at a kerb, heard a seagull in the distance and remembered the rough dock pressing hard on his knee, the warm wet of her breath on his lips. He hurried across the empty road without really looking, eager to get moving again.
    Five blocks down he arrived at Tommy’s mum’s tenement. The window frames were peeling. Someone had emptied an ashtray from their car into the gutter just outside. The entry door was propped open with a broken brick. He walked into the concrete close and the familiar smell of damp and sea and air.
    Tommy lived with his mum, Elaine Farmer, in a disabled-access flat on the ground floor. Lainey had bad knees. Iain had known her for a long time. He flicked the letter box a couple of times, the metallic clack ricocheting back from the stone walls of the close.
    He listened. A footfall. A door creak. He could imagine Elaine standing still inside, wondering.
    Finally, she called out, ‘Who’s it?’
    Iain leaned into the joist where the door would open. ‘Me, Lainey.’
    Pause.
    ‘Iain Fraser,’ he said.
    She shuffled across the hall and opened the door a crack, peering out with one eye. ‘Keep hearing you’re back.’ She opened the door to let him in.
    God, she was old. And heavy. One good thing about prison food: it was hard to get fat. She had a purple T-shirt on, too small. It was gathered around her middle. Her thin blonde hair was tangled at one side.
    Lainey had not grown into her looks. If anything she’d grown out of them and she wasn’t looking after herself. Her grey skirt was ripped at the hem where it had caught on something. Her legs were bare and her calves bulged with black veins, as if she was already full of worms. She wore slippers shaped like black and white footballs. Iain stared at them to spare himself the sight of her.
    ‘Footballs. Like ’em? Tommy got me these for Christmas.