Hostage to Murder by Val McDermid Page A

plan?”
    â€œWe’ll take a wee look round the pubs near where she was spotted.”
    Kevin’s face lit up at the prospect. “Sounds good to me, Michael.”
    A bus drew up and the two men boarded. It was almost empty and they had the rear area to themselves.
    â€œWe won’t be drinking, Kevin. This is an operation, not a holiday,” Michael said. His tone of voice would have signalled to anyone else that this wasn’t a subject for debate.
    Not to Kevin. He gave the cunning smile of the truly stupid. “But we’ll need to fit in, Michael. We’ll stick out like a sore thumb if we just go in and order a couple of cokes.”

    â€œThat’s why we won’t be going in and ordering any cokes, Kevin,” Michael snarled. “You’ll be going up to the bar and asking for change for the cigarette machine. Or a box of matches. Meanwhile, I’ll be taking a good look around. And if I see her, we’ll be stopping for a glass of stout. And we’ll be making it last.”
    Crestfallen, Kevin slumped in his seat, watching the unfamiliar city roll past the windows. He knew he was supposed to like Michael, for his sister’s sake, but he was a moody bastard to work with and no mistake.
    By closing time, Michael’s mood had blackened to a pitch where even Kevin realised silence was the best option. They’d explored pubs ranging from raucous student bars with loud insistent music to more traditional pubs where old men nursed their pints with the tenderness of new mothers. Michael had cast an apparently negligent but actually sharp look over hundreds of women, none of them Bernadette Dooley.
    They walked back through streets shared with drinkers heading home, the air aromatic with curry and fish suppers, to the scruffy B&B where they were inconspicuous among the transient workers and DSS claimants who made it their home. All the way back, a scowl deepened the crease between Michael’s eyebrows. Kevin had lost count of the number of pubs they’d scouted out, but his pockets were bulging with boxes of matches and loose change. And not so much as a glass of stout had passed his lips.
    Michael broke the silence as they turned on to Argyle Street. “We’ll do a school in the morning.”
    â€œEh?”
    â€œPatrick says she has a child. A child has to go to school. We’ll stake out the nearest primary to the supermarket.”
    â€œI don’t remember anything being said about a child,” Kevin complained.
    â€œI checked in when we got here. You were in the toilet. Patrick said he’d forgotten to mention she has a child.”
    â€œI never knew that. From before, like. When she was working in the shop.”
    Michael made a kissing sound of exasperation. “She didn’t have
it then. Whoever it was who spotted her in the supermarket told Patrick she had a child with her.”
    â€œMaybe it’s not old enough to be at the school,” Kevin pointed out, proud of himself for coming up with the argument. “I mean, it’s only six years since she left.”
    Michael flashed a look of surprise at Kevin. It was always a shock when he said something that wouldn’t be self-evident to a three-year-old. “Maybe not. But apart from hanging around the supermarket, we’ve got nothing else to go at. She’ll not be on the voter’s roll or in the phone book, not if she’s got any sense. So we’ll check out the primary schools on the map and we’ll be there first thing.”
    Kevin saw the prospect of a decent night’s sleep rapidly receding. “Right you are,” he sighed. “The school it is.”
    Â 
    Kevin wasn’t the only one who reckoned sleep might be elusive. Lindsay had had one of the worst evenings in living memory, and the turmoil of emotions raging through her didn’t feel as if they were going to subside any time soon. Part of her wished she’d taken