The Ardmore Inheritance, Rob Wyllie [best novels for students TXT] 📗

'Hi, WPC Lexy McDonald from New Gorbals,' she said, flashing her warrant card. 'I think I'm seeing a Jane Scott.'

'Yes that's right,' the receptionist said pleasantly. 'We have you on our list for Jane. Could you sign the register please?' She slid a visitors' book and a ball point pen through the slot. Lexy was expecting something altogether more hi-tech, and then she caught sight of the CCTV camera that was pointing straight at her and beaming her face onto a wall-mounted TV monitor. As she scribbled her name, the facial-recognition technology would be quietly working away in the background, cross-checking her identity to make sure everything stacked up. A few moments later, a door opened and a smartly-dressed woman in her mid-thirties stepped through to greet her, carrying a buff folder in one hand.

'Hi, I'm Jane Scott, morning-shift supervisor,' she said, extending the other hand. 'Follow me, I've booked a wee room for us.'

The door opened up into a vast open-plan office peopled by a small army of head-set equipped call-handlers housed in tiny cubicles, presumably to screen the sound of their voices from their near-neighbour, although she wondered if even with that protection they could hear anything, such was the volume of chatter filling the room.

'This is where it all happens,' Scott said. 'We get over a thousand calls a day. Twenty-four-by-seven. It's non-stop, as you can see.'

'I can imagine,' Lexy said, feigning interest. They got a lot of calls. They answered them. Big deal. She could see where they were heading, towards a glass-walled meeting room tucked in the corner of the office, and she could see they were to be joined by a third party, already installed at the head of a small table. And as she got close, she could make out the badges on his epaulette. A crown and one pip. A Chief Superintendent.

'WPC McDonald, is it? Welcome to our Govan facility. Sit down, please.' His manner made it clear who was going to be in charge of this meeting, if she hadn't already guessed.

'This is Chief Superintendent Watson,' Jane Scott said. 'He's in overall charge of our facility here.'

'So how can we help you McDonald?' he said, wearing a condescending smile. Surely this was a rhetorical question because she'd told Scott exactly what she wanted when she'd called to make the arrangements a couple of days ago. But he waited patiently for her to answer.

Young, keen, dumb, naive. That was the way to play it, not that it would be too difficult for her to pull that trick off. And in any case, WPCs just a week or two out of probation would be inconsequential pond-life to a guy like Watson.

'The DI I'm assigned to wanted me to get some incoming call records for that date I told Jane about sir.' She gave him what she hoped was a nervous smile. 'I'm afraid I don't really know why sir. He didn't really explain it very clearly sir. I'm sorry, I suppose I should have asked sir. Before I came, I mean sir.'

He smiled at her, this time with some warmth. 'Well that's all right WPC McDonald, I'm sure we can help you. And please, go easy on the sirs if you don't mind.'

Turning to Scott he asked, 'Well Jane, how did we get on with her request? Find anything?'

'Yes Chief Superintendent, I pulled the records for the period in question. We were looking for calls between around four-thirty and six-thirty. It was a fairly quiet evening by our normal standards. There were fifty-four calls so it wasn't too difficult to find the one that PC McDonald was interested in.'

Watson clasped his hands in front of him and nodded. 'Good news then.'

There was something in Scott's manner that made Lexy suspect it wasn't.

'Well yes sir, I suppose it is. Look, here it is.' She took a sheet of paper from her folder, laid it on the table facing them and pointed to a row in the list. 'It came in at seventeen forty-eight. Reported disturbance at Ardmore village, number fourteen Loch Road. That's the one, isn't it?'

'Yes, that's it,' Lexy said, wearing a perplexed expression, 'but that column there, incoming number?...'

'Yes, I'm afraid so,' Jane Scott said, giving a rueful smile. 'Number withheld.'

◆◆◆

Of course he had bloody well known, she could tell that from his smug expression. Because otherwise he wouldn't have gone through the whole elaborate charade, to pretend that his outfit was being so helpful when it was being anything but. She had little doubt that if there had been an incoming number on the records, then it would have conveniently disappeared, just like that white-board capture had. And now she would have to call DI Stewart and tell him the bad news, and she didn't expect him to be exactly over the moon, not that he would blame her of course. But that didn't take away from the fact that this was a setback, and a setback on her watch too. It was disappointing, and she didn't like to disappoint him.

And then, out of the blue, she remembered the story he had been regaling everyone with on that excellent evening up in the Lochmorehead Hotel. About a clever forensic officer called Eleanor Campbell and an even cleverer intelligence analyst from MI5 called Jayden Henry. And how they had instant access to every phone call in the whole wide world. Suddenly she felt a whole lot better.

As she picked up her phone to call DI Stewart, some part of her was annoyed with herself for not having thought of it earlier, saving herself having to be the subject of Watson's self-satisfaction. But then when she considered it again, she changed her mind. Yes, the visit had been a waste of time as far as the primary objective was concerned, but on the other hand it provided further confirmation of their suspicions. Now there could be no doubt there was a conspiracy,