Blood, Salt, Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

the hood as if they were crying.
    McGrain pressed pause and they both looked at the screen. It was hard to tell if it was the boy. They didn’t really know how tall he was and they’d never heard his voice. It sounded more like a girl but the jeans seemed boyish.
    The second file of footage showed the same action but was less in focus.
    ‘Did you ask for other cam views?’ said Morrow. ‘Maybe we can get the face?’
    ‘I know one of the guys over there, he checked the three exits in that direction. Found them leaving, hood still up. Got in a waiting taxi but we can’t read the reg.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Camera hood’s broken. It’s hanging in front of the lens.’
    Morrow nodded. ‘Typical.’
    It had to be the cake-boy. They couldn’t see his face but Roxanna had a teenage boy and a teenage boy had called them. They should go speak to the kids immediately but they couldn’t. They couldn’t do anything. They needed permission.
    ‘PINAD,’ said McGrain.
    Morrow nodded. ‘Fucking PINAD.’
    She went back to her office to await instructions, pending the chief superintendent’s office getting in and bothering to call her. She felt miserable and wanted to check the CCTV anyway, even though she knew Roxanna wasn’t on it. She wondered why she was so involved with this woman, wondered if Roxanna was filling a space in her head that Danny usually filled.
    Danny McGrath was Morrow’s half-brother. He was a well-known and feared Glasgow gangster until he was sentenced to eight years for conspiracy to commit murder. Morrow didn’t think he was funny or sweet or strangely admirable, not the way she thought about Fuentecilla, but he did preoccupy her to the same degree. Once or twice a day Danny came into her mind and Fuentecilla had started to fill those spaces. One big similarity, she realised, was her feeling of impotence about both of them. She wasn’t even allowed to brief the PINAD team on the woman’s disappearance until she had word from on high. She busied herself with duty forms and background files for other cases, waiting.
    The PINAD case began six months ago and four hundred miles away with a fishing exercise. The Met were monitoring a boozy Park Lane charity auction for money-laundering activities. It was a good place to look for ostentatious spending: rich people showing off to other rich people in a drinking environment. The Met’s curiosity was piqued when a barman and his unemployed girlfriend paid sixty-four thousand pounds for Cabinet – a Larkin & Son’s Design Icon . The PINAD incident room had a picture of it on the wall. According to the description in the auction catalogue it was handcrafted rosewood, inlaid with walnut and ebony marquetry, made by master craftsmen. Sixty-four grand’s worth of ugly wall unit, as far as Morrow was concerned.
    The Met began a minimal investigation into the couple. They found that the boyfriend, Robin Walker, worked as a barman in a private dining club in Belgravia. Roxanna Fuentecilla had no income. She had no inheritance. She had never worked.
    Robin Walker was not the children’s father. He had moved in with Roxanna Fuentecilla just over a year ago, following a whirlwind romance. Their natural father, Miguel Vicente, came from an absurdly wealthy Ecuadorian family. Three years ago he left the family home with an overnight bag and flew back home to Ecuador. A month later he married a fellow absurdly rich Ecuadorian: she had a plastic surgery ski-jump nose and a zoo in her garden. Pictured in an online society magazine, the couple were a bizarre sight for Scottish eyes: their teeth looked as if they had stolen them from a child, both had their eyebrows plucked, both had shiny, line-free skin. Vicente stopped supporting Roxanna and the kids a month after he left.
    Robin Walker was handsome, directionless and in his late twenties. He lived with his new family in a serviced flat in Belgravia. Despite their straitened circumstances, they wintered in St