Driftnet by Lin Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

were
running with water from the heavy showers. He walked at a steady
pace, planting his feet firmly as if there had to be something in
this life that was solid and believable. Just as he passed
Gilmorehill the big double doors swung open and the students poured
out, desperate to get out of the exam hall and away. Some were
talking excitedly, hysterical with the need to unburden how bad it
had been. Others couldn’t talk about it at all.
    Bill was not a
man to talk for the sake of it either. There were bits of today he
would rather forget. He headed down through the park towards the
River Kelvin. A wee girl was playing all alone on the grass. She
must have been about eight. He walked more slowly, hoping her
mother would appear, or a big sister or brother. He hesitated when
the path remained empty, wondering whether he should go over and
ask her where she lived. He sat down on a bench and waited,
suddenly conscious that he looked like a loiterer himself. A
middle-aged man sitting watching a wee lassie playing on the grass.
At last a woman came up the steep path from the river and shouted
crossly, grabbing the girl by the hand and wrenching her off. Bill
breathed a sigh of relief.
    He knew all
about this. The heightened awareness, the worry. After every murder
or violent crime it was the same. For a while he desperately wanted
to protect all the vulnerable and the innocent.
    He suddenly
realised how close he was to Rhona’s lab. He hadn’t spoken to her
since he’d warned her about the press. Now he could maybe tell her
a little more about the victim. At least they had a distinguishing
mark now.
     
     

Chapter 7
    The flat was
big and friendly. Rhona had fallen in love with it three years ago
and when she moved in, she spent the first three weeks saying out
loud, ‘I love this flat’. There had been no one there to hear her
or to think she was going mad. Just the cat, and the cat didn’t
listen to her anyway. When the woman had opened the door the night
she went to view, Rhona had known right away that this was going to
be her home. Not even the dreich Glasgow night had dampened her
enthusiasm. She had vowed to herself and the cat that she would
allow no one, no one to encroach on their living space. And she had
kept her word, until Sean.
    The early
evening light was entering the kitchen, touching the worktops with
a warm golden glow. The golden colour came, Rhona had informed the
disinterested cat, from the convent tucked behind them, its
carefully tended garden a tribute to order and faith. Tonight the
toll of the bell for worship only reminded Rhona that she had no
faith, in God or in herself, any more.
    She had come
home as soon as DI Wilson left the laboratory. There had been
something achingly sad about his pleasure in revealing the
information on the birthmark. She could feel her face freeze as he
explained that it was just a raised area on the boy’s inside right
thigh. But when he was a baby, he said, it would have been more
obvious. It might help them identify him.
    The silent
scream was still there. Seventeen years on and it was still there.
All that time. Rhona sat on the bus hearing it echo through her
brain. They stopped at a set of traffic lights for what seemed an
eternity and she actually began to shake with the effort of keeping
it in her head, until the woman beside her asked what the problem
was and whether she needed a doctor.
    As soon as she
got to the flat, she shut the door and locked it before she made
the call. She knew it would achieve nothing, but she had to make it
all the same. The hospital gave her a further number which they
said might be able to help. They warned how difficult it might be.
An adopted child could not be forced to contact a natural parent.
The adoptive parents might not agree, either.
    Grief has the
ability to strip away time. Rhona had felt it when her father died.
Looking down at his still face, it was as if her own adult life
dissolved, leaving her a wee girl again. A