Anna Smith: Rosie Gilmour Books 1 to 9

by Anna Smith

Genres: Mystery Anthologies & Collections; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Get all nine books in the Rosie Gilmour series in one value-for-money volume. Investigative journalist Rosie Gilmour never walks away from a story in these gritty Glasgow-set thrillers.

Investigative journalist Rosie Gilmour won't take no for an answer as she battles to find answers for those who can't fight for themselves.

She is unstoppable as she peels back layers of privilege and wealth to uncover the corruption that is deeply woven into seedy underbelly of Glasgow.

With enemies from local gangsters to child-traffickers, Gilmour puts herself in danger in her pursuit of justice. But if she's not careful, she'll be the one leaving in a body bag next.

Praise for the Rosie Gilmour Series

'Thrilling and compelling' Kimberly Chambers

'Anna Smith is the real deal' Sunday Express

'Provocative, shocking and utterly harrowing . . . grips like a vice' - Daily Record

Release date: April 6, 2023

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 3380

Sample

Glasgow, February 1998

The mobile rang and shuddered at the same time in Rosie Gilmour’s jacket pocket. She fished it out and glanced to see if she recognised the number. She didn’t.

‘Hallo.’ Rosie’s voice was sharp. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. It had been a crap morning spent at the police press conference after the body of a girl had washed up on the beach at Troon three days ago. There hadn’t been much left of her, but she’d been identified by dental records as the fourteen-year-old kid who had been reported missing from a Glasgow children’s home nearly six months before. Rosie had worked on the story at the time. No matter how many times she waded through this kind of shit, it still got to her.

She pressed the phone hard to her ear, against the racket of the Argyle Street traffic jam. She could hear the pinging sound of a call box, but nobody was talking.

‘Hallo,’ she said again, her voice slightly more receptive. Better to be friendly. It could be anyone.

‘Hallo.’ The voice on the other side finally came through. Rosie thought she detected a slight slur. Christ, she thought. Some bastard’s given my number out at the office.

‘Is that Rosie Gilmour fae the Post? The reporter?’ The voice was clearer now.

‘Yeah. This is Rosie Gilmour. Who’s this?’ Her naturally suspicious mind surfaced. Either it was a junkie looking for payment for some story they had helped on, or some saddo wanting Rosie to sort out all her problems. Rosie wished people back at the newsroom wouldn’t keep giving her mobile out to every misfit from here to Karachi.

‘You don’t know me, I don’t want to give ma name. But I want to talk to you about that lassie that got washed up in the sea.’

The voice was definitely that of a junkie. Rosie had spent enough days with the flotsam on the streets that chic, trendy Glasgow turned its back on, to recognise the familiar slur of a gauching heroin addict. But it was what they said that was important, not how they said it.

‘Yeah?’ Rosie was interested. ‘I’m involved in that story. I was at the press conference this morning. The cops are still doing tests, but it looks like she was an addict. Did you know her? Was she a friend?’ Rosie’s voice probed. She had to keep this girl on the phone.

Silence. Damn.

‘Hallo,’ Rosie said, ‘are you still there? Hallo?’ She cursed under her breath. Typical, dizzy bastard junkies. You never knew where you were with them.

Through the silence she could hear sniffs and sobs.

‘Hold on . . . Hold on . . . Sorry. I’m upset. I can’t stop greetin’,’ the girl sobbed.

‘It’s okay.’ Rosie was relieved she was still there. ‘Look, where are you? Why don’t I come and meet you? We can have a wee chat.’ Rosie’s voice was consoling. She was good at this.

‘Ah can’t get ma name in the papers, but I know stuff. I know stuff that’ll blow everything sky high. I know where Tracy was before she went missin’. I know. She was ma pal, she wisnae a junkie. No a right one. Just smoked heroin and took coke,’ the voice said, between sniffs.

Rosie was hooked in. Even if this was the voice of some broken heroin addict wanting to tell her an unprovable, unpublishable story, she had to hear it. You win some you lose some – but more often than not you got a front page out of it. And even if you didn’t, you never knew when you would need a handy contact in the gutter. The downside was that once you had made that contact and shown these people the slightest attention, they clung to you, got under your skin, and you just couldn’t help lending a sympathetic ear, and, usually, a tap of a tenner.

The Strathclyde Police press conference that morning would have written off Tracy Eadie as just another dead junkie. The only difference was that she was fourteen years old and she was naked when she washed up on the beach at Troon. And, the headline grabber: she was from a children’s home. That was the only reason it would get on the front page of the Post these days. Nobody even turned a hair now when a junkie was found up some close with a needle in their arm. Time was when it would be a splash and spread, with a parade of rent-a-quote experts wringing their hands at how awful life was in the lower depths. But now a dead junkie would barely make a few paragraphs in any newspaper. Rosie was disgusted by the shallow mindset of the tossers who set the criteria – the editors and executives, who too often replaced depressing, cutting-edge stories with showbiz crap. But that’s how it was.

She had been on the story briefly when the kid went missing from the children’s home, but, as usual, the news agenda moved on. There were rumours at the time that the kid had been working the Drag as a prostitute at night, but nobody had any concrete evidence. Junkies would tell you just about anything to get a few quid, so none of the claims that came into the Post at the time stood up. The cops and the social work department had insisted there was nothing to suggest she’d been working the streets. She was just another child from the system who went missing. She would turn up on a street some day, somewhere, homeless and drugged up.

‘Tell you what.’ Rosie spoke with more command than consolation now. ‘Meet me at the Grass Cafe off London Road in twenty minutes. We’ll talk then. No names, nobody needs to know who you are, just trust me. Okay? Don’t worry, I’ll look after you.’ Rosie knew the last words would bring the junkie running to her. Being looked after might mean a few quid – enough for a tenner bag. If nothing else made her keep the date, that would. It made Rosie feel like a dodgy salesman, but it always did the trick.

‘Right. Okay. I’ll be there. How will I know you?’

‘I’ve got black hair and I’m wearing a light raincoat,’ Rosie said. ‘But don’t worry about me. What do you look like?’

‘I’ve got on a blue rain jacket and jeans. Ma hair’s blonde. Streaks.’

‘I’ll recognise you,’ Rosie said, confident that she would look like any other haunted Belsen victim you saw in housing schemes across the city.

The line went dead.

Chief Superintendent Gavin Fox, head of CID at Strathclyde Police, pressed the intercom buzzer on the flashing telephone on his desk.

‘Tell them to come in, Patsy.’ His voice was friendly, benign. He hoped there were no telltale signs when he’d walked through the door of his office this morning on the eighth floor of Riverdale House. Patsy had been with him so long that she could detect if there was anything on his mind. She watched him like a hawk, but he didn’t mind that. He even suspected she might have an inkling of some of the dirty little secrets in his life, but she was one of those women who just got on with her work and didn’t ask questions – the way women used to be before they got too big for their bras and started all this women’s lib shite. Now there were even women in the force telling some of the men what to do. Christ! Most of them were hairy-arsed lesbians, and he had no time for any of them. Women cops were fine, and there were times when a woman’s touch came in handy on certain enquiries, but not on the front line. They couldn’t be trusted, with their hormones diving all over the place and getting in the way of men’s work.

Fox sat back in his chair and pushed away from his desk, turning his head to look out at the sun glistening on the River Clyde. He loved that sight. It always calmed him, watching the river flow as his mind charted a path down through the towns from Glasgow to the sea where he spent his sailing weekends on his beloved boat. But today, even the sight of the river gave his guts a little tweak. He took a deep breath and patted his stomach, toned from his rigorous fitness regime, as if to give it a warning to toughen up. He mustn’t show any weakness in front of Jack or Bill. Holding his nerve was crucial, especially now. For the last six months, all three of them had lived in dread that the body they’d fed to the fish would wash up on the beach. From the moment the kid was reported missing from the children’s home, there was a gut-wrenching inevitability that it was the girl they’d been with that night. You couldn’t have made it up.

He had managed to contain his rising panic when he took the phone call three days ago on his way to work, telling him that a naked body had been washed up at Troon. He was hoping there wouldn’t be much of her left after six months in the water, and he was relieved when forensics said they were struggling to ID her, or find any cause of death. But within two days they knew from dental records who she was. Now, more than ever, he had to show Jack and Bill what he was made of.

‘Chaps,’ Fox said cheerily, as the door opened and Chief Inspector Jack Prentice and Superintendent Bill Mackie shuffled into the room. By the looks on their faces they were not bearing up.

‘Sit down for Christ’s sake,’ Fox said. ‘Look at the nick of the two of you. I’ve seen less guilty-looking men standing with a smoking gun in their hand. Christ almighty, gents, get a fucking grip!’

Fox was on his feet, moving from behind his desk to be closer to the pair. He was just plain Foxy now, and these were his mates of nearly thirty years. They had been together through it all, from lifting toerag house-breakers as beat cops and kicking seven shades of shit out of them in back alleys, to busting drug dealers and hired killers. They had lied for each other in the witness box to put lowlifes behind bars, and they’d never so much as turned a hair when some well-fed, port-jowled defence QC laid into them, trying to pick holes in their stories. Fuck them too! All they cared about was their fat legal aid fee to feed their champagne and cocaine lifestyle. Foxy and his mates knew what justice was and, if you wanted to take some bastard off the streets, you had to break some rules as well as legs along the way. Sure, they’d fucked up big-style now, but some cheap little junkie whore who happened to die on his boat was not about to bring them all down.

‘Right, lads. How’s it going?’ Foxy said, rubbing his hands as he sat on his desk facing them.

Silence. He looked from one to the other, his eyes resting on Jack. He didn’t look well.

‘I’m shitting myself, Foxy,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t mind telling you. From the moment we ditched that wee lassie over the edge of the boat I’ve hardly slept a wink. I knew she would turn up some day. I knew it. I feel like I’m constantly going to throw up.’ Jack looked and sounded like a condemned man.

‘Me too,’ Bill said. ‘My arse is twitching. But here’s the deal . . .’ He turned to Jack. ‘Jack. You’d better buckle down here. The bottom line is that nobody has a single thing on any of us. I mean we’re more or less above suspicion. It’s only because we know what we did that we’re worried. We’ll just have to tough it out.’ Bill sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. He’d been doing that better than Jack these past months.

‘Exactly, Bill,’ Foxy said. He pushed away the niggle in his stomach and kept his voice calm. ‘And anyway,’ he continued, spreading his hands out in front of him. ‘we didn’t actually do anything. The stupid wee bitch just died. I didn’t lay a hand on her. Well, apart from the shag. I mean, none of us harmed her in any way. Under normal circumstances she would have been well paid and dropped off somewhere in the morning. We didn’t kill her, she just upped and died on us. Wee fucking bitch!’ He rubbed his chin and looked at the two of them. ‘It must have been the coke. Perhaps she’d had a lot of stuff before she arrived at the boat.’ He put his hands in his pockets and squared his shoulders. ‘Look, lads, we’ve been through all of this back to front in the last few months. We’ll deal with it. The bird’s been in the water for six months. There’s nothing on her for forensics.’

The door opened and Patsy came in carrying a tray with cups and teapot. She set it down on her boss’s table and did not make eye contact with any of them, not even when Foxy thanked her.

He watched the door closing behind her before he continued.

‘Bill,’ he said, pouring the tea into cups, knowing they were noticing his steady hands. ‘How did the press conference go this morning?’

‘The usual, Foxy,’ Bill said. ‘The only real interest is because the bird was fourteen and she was naked. And because she was that missing lassie.’ He looked away. ‘There were obvious questions from the slavering hacks. You know. Sexual assault. Rape. Murder. Big McCann from Ayr’s handling it. They only gave the basic information out at the press conference. They said forensic tests were still ongoing. Somebody asked how long she’d been in the water, but they couldn’t be accurate. I was there because the girl’s from Glasgow and we’re liaising, but I didn’t say anything. Just sat in the background.’

‘Fine,’ Foxy said. ‘They’ll be sniffing around looking for a murder because of the other whore murder last year. But this is different. They’ll never find anything. As you say, Bill, there’s nothing to link her to the night she went missing. Nothing.’ He was confident. ‘So, Bill. Any questions about how she got there? Any imaginative theories from the hacks? You know how the bastards don’t allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.’ Foxy walked towards the window with his tea in his hand.

‘No, not yet. We’ll have to wait and see how the papers handle it, but these days nobody bothers with junkies. It’s only because she was that missing kid, but we’ve suspected that since she washed up. We’ve lived with it. We’ll just need to keep going.’

They both looked at Jack.

His face turned beetroot. ‘I know, Foxy. It’s my fault. We’ve already been through all that. How the fuck was I to know she was only fourteen and from a children’s home?’ Sweat had broken out on his forehead. ‘But I was assured she was eighteen. One of her pals told me. One of the lassies we’ve used before. She said she knew her. What was I supposed to do? Ask for a passport?’

He looked pleadingly at Foxy.

‘I mean this is the biggest nightmare of my life, Foxy. Honest to Christ. I’m at home with my wife and daughter and I can’t concentrate on anything. Even at work, I feel as if I’m going around in a daze. That wee lassie. I mean we just fucking dumped her like a piece of meat.’ Jack was on the verge of tears.

Foxy put his cup down on the desk and took a deep breath. He could see Jack was beginning to break already. If this was Jack when there was really nothing to worry about, he wouldn’t like to see him if there was any heat on. Typical Jack. In the beginning, when they were just young cops together trying to make their mark, it was always Jack who was the weakest. A big bear of a man and the best pal anybody could ever have, but when backs were to the wall you could hear the sound of bottle crashing. The first time they got paid off by big Jake Cox, Jack had been panicking in case they were caught. It had taken a few payoffs and reassurances for Jack to get fully into how you could make the system work, and still manage to do your bit to clean up the streets. Over the years, he’d become more confident about it, as long as he knew his two mates would be at his side. They would never desert each other. They’d stick together – they knew too much not to – but now was definitely not the time for Jack to develop a serious conscience.

‘Stop that now, Jack,’ Foxy snapped at him. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. It’s you and your fucking Catholic guilt. Okay, the lassie died. But she would have died anyway. Sooner or later. They all end up like that. She might not have been injecting heroin when we met her, but you can guarantee she would have been before the year was out. And she’d have been dead by twenty–one.’

He drank from his cup and set it down on the table.

‘I mean we never abused her or anything. We didn’t hurt her. We don’t hurt any of these birds. It’s just a bit of fun. Only this time it went wrong.’ Foxy sat back down and looked straight at Jack and Bill, the way he always did when he was trying to convince them that everything would be fine.

‘Listen, Jack. Bill.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Now listen good. We’re all in this together. We’ve just got to stay strong for a few weeks and this will all blow over. Let’s keep our heads down and our chins up. ’Cos if we don’t, it’ll show and I don’t want to think what could happen if any of this gets out.’

Foxy stood, a signal for Bill and Jack to leave. They got up and shook each other’s hands. Foxy noticed that Jack’s was like a wet dishcloth.

They went out of the room and Foxy walked over to the wall next to the window and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a handsome man for his fifty years. The dark hair, flecked with grey, gave him that distinguished look of a man you could trust. He looked at the framed photograph of himself on the wall, holding an award, surrounded by police chiefs and the Lord Provost. Yes. Gavin Fox had stood tall in his uniform, and he admired the photograph of him in his black tunic. He ran his hands over the picture, caressed the blue and red ribbons he wore that day over his breast pocket. Medals of distinction, honour. He just had a little weakness for women, but it was his secret. In twenty-five years of marriage, his wife had never suspected anything of his boat trips with the lads at the weekend. That’s how it would stay, Foxy vowed to himself. That’s how it must stay.

Few places depressed Rosie more than the East End of Glasgow. The smell of fat from greasy-spoon cafes hung in the air against the backdrop of cheap clothes shops, selling rubbish gear to kids and parents who existed in a world far removed from the designer stores in the city centre just a mile away.

For Rosie, the East End stank of poverty and failure. And every time she went there, a flood of buried childhood memories came rushing back to remind her of who she was and where she came from. Now she sat at the window, watching the drizzle cling to the grimy glass of the Grass Cafe, and closed her eyes to push away the image of the little girl trudging up the road in no hurry to go home. There was nothing to go home to. Her mum would be comatose on the couch as usual.

She could still call up that smell her mother had when she used to grab Rosie and kiss her, once she’d roused her from drunken sleep. Stale booze and fags, mixed with the musty but potent smell of Worth perfume that had been on too long.

‘Can I get you somethin’?’ The voice broke into Rosie’s gloomy reverie. She looked up at the skinny girl in the light blue overall, her hair tied up in a neat pony tail and her eyes bright and inquiring.

‘Tea please. Just tea,’ Rosie said, smiling at her.

The girl walked smartly back to the counter and ordered the tea from the woman behind the formica, working at the deep fat fryers. They exchanged a few words then both glanced over at Rosie who looked away from them. They were probably wondering who she was. A copper? A social worker? Dressed in her raincoat and black suit, Rosie stood out from the other customers in the cafe. One woman sat eating chips and smoking a cigarette between mouthfuls. An old man with no teeth was trying to negotiate a fried-egg roll. Rosie felt a little sick as she watched him sucking the yolk. In the far corner a boy of no more than eighteen had made three attempts to pick up a mug of tea, but his hands trembled so much he couldn’t put it to his lips. Another junkie. ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’. Sure it did. Rosie smiled to herself thinking of the logo and the yellow, smiley-face icon that had been the city’s image across the world. The thing was, despite all this crap and poverty and drugs, the city still had the balls to smile at itself.

The door opened and an emaciated young woman walked in, leading a little girl by the hand. She looked around, and her eyes rested on Rosie. Rosie hadn’t expected a kid. She moved to get up and the girl came towards her.

‘You Rosie?’ she asked. The little girl by her side smiled at her.

‘Yeah. Sit down, sit down. Thanks for coming.’ Rosie had been down this road before with drug addicts, and you needed to be in control from the moment you met them. If you were a soft touch they would dip your bag the minute your back was turned.

Rosie said she was having some tea and asked if they wanted anything.

‘Sorry,’ Rosie said. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

‘Mags,’ the girl said. ‘And this is my wee girl, Gemma. She’s seven.’

‘Hi, Gemma,’ Rosie said, softening to the girl, who appeared well looked after for a junkie’s kid. ‘Do you want something to eat, Gemma?’

‘Can I get chips?’ the girl said, sitting on her hands, her big blue eyes looking from Rosie to her mum.

‘Chips?’ Rosie said. ‘It’s only half past ten in the morning. You can’t eat chips at this time.’

There was a silence. Gemma’s face fell. ‘I like chips,’ she murmured.

The waitress was at the table, watching the scene with her pencil and pad at the ready.

‘One plate of chips please,’ Rosie said. ‘And . . . ?’ She looked at Mags without saying her name in front of the waitress. Walls had ears around these places.

‘A strawberry milkshake,’ Mags said, pulling a pack of ten Embassy Regal from her pocket.

Rosie nodded to the waitress, who gave her a knowing look that said the milkshake was the typical junkie drink. The waitress looked as though she wondered what this well-dressed woman was doing in this company. Rosie ordered more tea for herself.

Mags lit up the cigarette and inhaled so deeply that Rosie wondered if the smoke was going to come out of her ears. Gemma sat staring at Rosie, who figured Mags must be around twenty-two. Her stick-thin figure made her look like a kid, and she wore a tight pink T-shirt, with a heart on the chest and a quote that said, ‘love is in the air . . .’ Rosie glanced at it and looked out of the window at the rain. Sure it was. The T-shirt came only halfway down Mags’s midriff. There was no stomach, just a narrow waist and a silver ring in her navel. The pervert punters liked that skinny childlike frame, and Rosie knew they paid more if the girl was younger. But despite her skinny body, Mags’s face showed the ravages of years of heroin. The pupils of her strikingly green eyes were tiny, indicating that she had recently had a hit, probably her first of the morning. At least she would be in coherent shape to talk.

‘Well, Mags,’ Rosie said softly. ‘Tell me about Tracy Eadie. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but the cops don’t seem that bothered, to be honest with you. The only thing that’s keeping them on the ball is that she was so young and from a children’s home. That’s what’ll keep it in the papers.’ Rosie knew that sounded a bit tactless, but she didn’t see the point of pulling any punches. ‘Is there anything you can tell me? Maybe I can do something. Maybe I can investigate.’ Rosie leaned forward.

‘Tracy’s deed,’ Gemma piped up, taking Rosie by surprise. ‘It was on the news.’

‘Shutit you,’ Mags snapped. ‘I told you. You can only come if you shut your mouth. I’ll no tell you again.’ Gemma put her head down, saying nothing. Rosie smiled at her, apologetically.

‘Right,’ Mags said, leaning towards Rosie. ‘Right. I’m going to tell you somethin’ about Tracy. You know the night before she went missin’? The night before she was never seen again? Well, I know where she was.’

She sniffed, her eyes darting around her.

‘She was with the polis. The main man. Top detective. Head of the CID. On his boat.’ Mags’s eyes narrowed. She drew on her fag and swallowed the smoke.

Several little explosions went off in Rosie’s head. Jesus. The boss man and a prostitute. A runaway from a children’s home, no less. Gavin Fox? Christ. It was like all your birthdays coming in one miserable morning. Prove it, she could almost hear the editor say. No chance of ever proving it, she thought. She pictured the apoplectic newspaper lawyers who pored over everything she wrote in this new litigious world we lived in. You couldn’t even imply that a man like Gavin Fox spoke to a prostitute the wrong way, far less that he spent the night with a teenage one. No chance.

Fox was Teflon man. There were plenty of rumours about his less than conventional ways, but nobody had a thing on him. He was squeaky clean, and he got results. People said he was on the take, but people had said that about detectives since the beginning of time. Proving it was a different matter.

‘Aye,’ Mags said. ‘And he wasn’t on his own. His other two mates were there an’ all. They’re high heid yins as well. Big guys. Top men.’ She sat back. ‘By the way, am I getting paid for this?’

Rosie’s heart sank. She’d heard the fantasies of prostitutes before, and sometimes they gave Oscar-winning performances, but too often they lied through what was left of their teeth. She pushed the teacup away from her and moved as though she was getting up to leave. She went into her pocket, pulled out a ten-pound note and threw it onto the table.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard enough. You phone me in tears about your dead pal, tell me a far-fetched story about a top policeman, then ask for money. Mags, do me a favour, pal. Away and find yourself some other eejit. Try the Sun. They’ll maybe believe you.’ Rosie stood up. If the girl was telling the truth she would stop her and withdraw the request for money. If she was lying, she would let Rosie go, still protesting that the story was true. There was always the chance that the girl would just let her go anyway, and even if the story was true, it was lost. Rosie took the chance.

‘Wait,’ Mags said, grabbing her arm. ‘Wait. Right. I’m sorry. I don’t mean I’m askin’ for money. Sorry about that. Sit doon, please. Please.’ She looked about to burst into tears. Gemma sat playing with her chips, watching her mum’s anguish.

Rosie sat back down.

Gradually Mags spilled out the story. She had known a cop called Jack Prentice for years. He sometimes used her and other girls. Only the ones that were quite smart looking, not the proper stanks who could hardly stand up. He introduced her to his mates a few months ago. They were both top policemen, but she only knew them as Bill and Foxy. She didn’t know who Foxy was until she was watching the news one night and his face came on the telly. He was the head of the CID. Jack used to arrange for her to go on Foxy’s boat overnight and she would have sex with the three of them. It was a yacht. It had sails. They always paid her well. It was Jack who paid her the money. And they used condoms, most of the time, but not for the blow-jobs.

Rosie glanced at Gemma but she was concentrating on the chips.

‘Sometimes I took another girl, but she’s dead now from an overdose,’ Mags went on. She sucked on the straw of the milkshake. ‘Then there was this night, about six months ago, I saw Jack was talking to wee Tracy Eadie. I knew her for about four or five months. She was in a children’s home, because her da had been passin’ her round his mates for money. Wanker. She was in that Woodbank place.’ She put her arm around Gemma and pulled her close. Her voice became a whisper.

‘Tracy was on heroin, just smokin’ it, and started to work the Drag to pay for her habit. She was only twelve when she started takin’ stuff, with the hash and the jellies. But she looked a bit older, wi’ make-up an’ that. Not old, like twenty or something.’ She half smiled. ‘She made good money because a lot of the men like young ones. The next night, after Jack was talking to her, he was on the Drag and asked me could I find this girl Tracy, and if she was all right. I told him she was. He said to ask her if she would come to the boat. I said I would, and he gave me fifteen quid.’

Mags swallowed hard and looked beyond Rosie into the distance.

‘I know she went on the boat. She told me she was goin’ when I talked to her earlier on the night. I told her it would be okay and they were all right guys. I know she went with Jack because I saw her getting into his motor. I know he drove her to Ayr to go to the boat.’ Tears came to her eyes. ‘That’s the last I saw her. She was on that boat with them. I know for a fact.’

‘How do you know for a fact, Mags?’

Mags looked at her. ‘She phoned me. She had a mobile some shoplifter gave her. She always had it. She phoned me from the boat later on that night. But I was wrecked and didn’t have my phone on. She left a message though. She sounded out of her box. Coked up or something. Said she was feelin’ sick. Said she wanted off the boat. And sayin’ the names of the guys. That kind of stuff.’

Rosie sat forward. ‘You got your mobile? Is the message still on it? Can I hear it?’ She was trying not to sound as excited as she felt. If this message was on her mobile, it was dynamite.

‘Nah,’ Mags said. ‘I’ve no got it with me. But I’ll get you it. Honest. I’m no making it up. I’ll get it, maybe tomorrow, but not now. I’ve got to graft.’ She started sniffing. ‘You see it was my fault. I shouldn’t have let her go. She was only a wee lassie.’

Rosie took a deep breath. She lifted the cup to her lips, slugged a