Chapter 4: Cut to Code
"Never," said Stevie at the wholesaler's. "Not that line. I'd put my house on it."
It was two minutes past eight and Lindsay had been sitting in the workshop since half six with her coat on and the cylinders in their sandwich bag on the bench in front of her, waiting for Lothian Lock & Safe to open. Euan had gone at five for an airport run. She'd heard him before he left: the doors, one after another, the cab keys off the hook, the back door, the cab pulling away, and she'd lain with her eyes open in the dark until the window went grey.
"Every pair on that range is its own code," Stevie said. "There's ten thousand-odd differs and the card's printed against the serial at the factory. You get two pairs the same, you've got a fake, and we don't sell fakes, hen, I've kids at private school." She could hear him typing. "That's from the batch that went out in September. Clean as a whistle. Is it a complaint?"
"No. Somebody opened a door with a key that shouldn't exist."
"Ach, well. You'd want to check you didn't cut one yourself and forget." He laughed. "My boss did that once. Cut a master and put it through the wash. Your Silca'll tell you, if you've got the Silca."
"I've got the Silca."
"There you are, then."
She said thanks and hung up and sat looking at the machine under its dust cover.
She hadn't cut one. She knew she hadn't; she'd known last night, with her hand flat on the dust cover. But she was a person who checked, it was the whole of what she was, and so she pulled the cover off and switched it on and waited through the little start-up hum, and went three menus down and put in her PIN, and the screen filled with a list, most recent at the top.
JOB 4418. WED 02:14. Then the profile of the blank. Then the code.
Under it, JOB 4417. TUE 18:52, and the old boy in Liberton's code, and his allotment, and the envelope with his name on it that was still on the end of the bench because she'd forgotten to post it.
She read the top line again. She took the diary out of her bag and opened it at Monday and put her finger on the six small figures in pencil in the margin and read them against the screen one at a time, the way she'd read them to a woman on the phone at eleven o'clock at night.
They were the same.
Wednesday, 02:14. She'd woken at 02:11, and the sheet beside her had been warm, and the machine underneath her had come up to speed with its long climbing whine and she'd turned over into the warm place where Euan wasn't and gone back to sleep. Ask any locksmith.
She switched it off. She put the dust cover back on and smoothed it down at the corners, slowly, so that it sat right.
Then she stood at the bench with both hands flat on it, because her legs had gone, and went through every other way it could have happened.
Someone had come into the garage at two in the morning, through a steel door with a five-lever deadlock on it or up through her own kitchen, knowing where the diary was and which page and what the numbers in the margin were, knowing how to run the machine. That shut. Someone had taken the diary out of the house and copied it and put it back, and come in another night. That shut too: the machine said Wednesday at 02:14, and she'd been lying right above it at 02:11 with her hand on the warm sheet. Euan had let somebody in. Euan had been sleepwalking. She heard herself try that one. It shut. They all shut, one after another, the way the doors in the house shut at night when he went round, and when they'd all shut there was Euan.
She went up to the kitchen. She took down the old diaries from the shelf over the bread bin, where they lived in a row in their black covers, and she opened them on the table.
2024. November. Sun 3 Nov. Lockout, Leith, 1F1. E. Rennie. £85. NDE 40 secs. And underneath, in her own pen, done later that night: nice!!
Two exclamation marks. She sat and looked at them.
His keys on the hall table, right by the door. You could see them through the letterbox. That was what she'd thought at the time: lucky, you can see them through the letterbox. Where else would you put your keys if you wanted a locksmith to see them through a letterbox. He'd found her on the council's approved list. It was a short list. On the sanctuary side there were three firms, and two of them were a man called Gary, near enough, and one was the only woman on it, and Women's Aid sent the women to the woman.
2025. Tue 14 Jan. Back door key cut for E. FREE (!!). She'd been pleased with herself about that too. He'd had the spare by the middle of January and was there four nights a week by February, and the diary had been on this table every one of those nights with his tea on the corner of it. Tue 11 Feb. Restalrig, 0/1. Carol. Door, BS mortice, nightlatch, viewer. Kitchen window FLAGGED — council no. And on the Saturday, four days later, in red: Carol's kitchen window forced. Nothing taken. Police: kids.
Nothing taken. Somebody had gone in through a back window in Restalrig, and walked through a woman's house, and looked at whatever was on her walls and her fridge, and gone again. And Carol hadn't been the one he was looking for.
Lindsay turned the pages. She'd never had to look for it before and now it was everywhere. E carried. E carried door, legend. E did the heavy end. E came, made her laugh. A woman in Craigmillar who'd made them both lentil soup and cried into hers. A girl in Muirhouse, nineteen, with twins. A retired teacher in Corstorphine whose husband had been a sheriff. She counted. Eleven. Eleven doors up eleven stairs in her fleece that didn't go round him, and at the top of every one a woman who opened the door to Lindsay and found him on the landing behind her with the heavy end, smiling, and let him in, because he was with Lindsay, and Lindsay was safe. He'd stood in eleven hallways and looked at eleven faces. He'd talked to their kids about birds.
And on Monday she'd told him she'd have to do Friday's door on her own, and he'd looked properly sorry.
She went to the sink and was sick, quietly, and ran the tap.
DS Gail Ramsay of the domestic abuse unit, who'd sat at the table that sent Lindsay Shannon's referral, picked up on the fourth ring and said, "Lindsay. Is this the Gorgie one? I saw the marker."
"I think I know who got in."
"Go on."
"I think it was my partner."
There was a short silence, the kind somebody makes when they've put their coffee down.
"Tell me," Gail said.
She told her. The diary and the margin and the code. The machine and its list and the time on it. Two in the morning, the warm sheet. Carol, the winter before last. Leith. The eleven doors. Gail let her get all the way to the end without saying anything and Lindsay could hear her writing.
"Name," Gail said.
"Euan Rennie."
"Date of birth?"
"Fourteenth of March, eighty-four." She'd bought him a telescope for it. She'd got it wrong, a telescope and not a scope, and he'd kept it anyway and put it in the spare room window, and some nights he'd stand at it looking at the Pentlands in the dark.
"You understand I can't tell you who Ms Leask's ex-partner is."
"I know."
"You could make an application under the disclosure scheme. Ask about Mr Rennie. You've the right to ask."
"How long does that take?"
"Up to forty-five days."
"Forty-five days," Lindsay said. "The door's tomorrow."
"Where is he now?"
"On the cab. He'd an airport run at five. He'll be back about four."
"Right." Gail's voice changed down a gear. "I'm going to make some calls and I'll phone you back inside the hour. Don't go home. Don't phone him. Don't text him anything you wouldn't text him on a normal Thursday. Can you do that?"
"Aye."
"And Lindsay." A pause. "Don't go home."
"It's my home," she said.
"I know it is," said Gail Ramsay, and hung up.
The text came at half two. It's me. On my own.
Shannon went to the viewer. Lindsay was on the landing with no bag, no toolbox, nothing in her hands, standing too close to the door, and her face in the fish-eye glass was the colour of the stair.
Shannon had gone to work that morning. She'd decided to at four, lying awake beside Harris with every door in the flat wedged open and the holdall packed at the foot of the bed. She'd taken him to breakfast club at quarter to eight like any other day, and at half eight the woman from the domestic abuse unit had phoned her at the press to say the school had been told and there was no safer building in the city, and she'd done her six hours and turned out the best shirts of her life. The woman with the blouses had come in. Red wine, left cuff. Shannon had nearly hugged her.
She opened the door.
Lindsay came in and didn't sit down. She stood in the hall between the open doors as if she didn't know where to put herself.
"What was his name?" she said. "Before."
"Why?"
Lindsay took her phone out of her jacket and held it up. It shook slightly. On the screen was a photograph.
A big man on the sea wall at Cramond in summer, the tide out behind him, the causeway posts marching off to the island. Binoculars round his neck. He was squinting into the sun and laughing at whoever was holding the phone, a big careful man in a T-shirt she'd never seen him in. His hair was shorter. He'd put on a bit of weight. He looked happy.
Shannon reached behind her for the edge of the door frame and held it.
"Where did you get that," she said.
"I took it. In August."
"Why have you got a photo of him?"
Lindsay put the phone away. Her hands went into her pockets and stayed there.
"Because I live with him," she said.
Shannon heard herself laugh. It came up from somewhere under her ribs and out, one bark, like the noise a seal makes, and she put her hand over her mouth to stop the next one.
The kettle was on. She didn't remember putting it on. She went into the kitchen because the kettle was there and she stood with her back to it and her palms flat on the worktop.
"Fit's he calling himself," she said.
"Euan. Euan Rennie."
"Rennie was his mum's name. Before she was married. He loved his mum. That's the one thing. He did love his mum."
"He told me she died."
"She did. Four years ago. I sent him a card." Shannon heard what she'd said and stared at the wall. "I sent him a sympathy card, from Dundee, with no address on it. Can you believe that."
Lindsay stood in the kitchen doorway. Shannon looked at her properly, a woman she'd known for four days, who'd drilled holes in her door and lined up her keys and told her every door was opened from the inside.
"You wrote my address down," Shannon said.
"Yes."
"In a book."
"Yes."
"And the number. For the key."
"Yes."
"In your kitchen."
"On the table," said Lindsay. "Every night. He put his tea on it."
Shannon picked up a mug off the draining board and for a second she meant to throw it, at the wall, at the locksmith, at the window over the back green. She put it down again. She'd only have had to clean it.
"The other women," she said. "Your other ones. Has he been in all their houses?"
"He carried their doors."
"Jesus Christ."
"Eleven of them."
"Jesus Christ." She shut her eyes. Behind them she saw him on Isa's landing, a big man with his back to the spyhole, a bag like Lindsay's. "Has he got a puffin? On his keys. A wee wooden puffin."
Lindsay didn't answer. She sat down on the kitchen floor instead, quite suddenly, with her back against the door frame.
"He waved at Harris," Shannon said. "On Tuesday. Through the school railings. Harris thought he was nice." She opened her eyes. "He went to look at him first. Before he came in. He went and had a look at him, and then he came in here and took his picture."
On the floor, Lindsay said, "I'll drive you. Right now. You and Harris. I'll get him out of school and I'll drive you to my sister's in Kirkcaldy, she's got a box room and two dogs that hate men—"
"No."
"Shannon—"
"He found me in Dundee. He found me here, through you." She didn't say it to hurt. She said it because it was the size of the thing. "He'll have known it was Edinburgh since Dundee; the transfer letter was in my kitchen drawer with the takeaway menus, and he was in that kitchen twice. Wherever I go there's somebody like you with a book. A support worker. A housing officer. A woman at the school with a form. I've run three times. Harris has been at three schools and he's six. I'm not taking him out of another one." She was surprised how steady it came. "I don't want him in another city. I want him in a cell."
"The police—"
"The police have said no sign to me in three cities."
Lindsay looked up at her from the floor.
"You built me a room," Shannon said. "Finish it."
Lindsay's phone went in her jacket. She got it out and looked at the name and answered it sitting where she was, and Shannon stood over her and heard one side of it.
"Yes. No, I'm with her. Yes." A long gap. "A breach. Right. So now you can tell me." Another. Lindsay shut her eyes. "Deed poll. August twenty twenty-four." She listened. "Two years. He told me four." She listened. "Licensed as Rennie. Since January twenty-five." A gap. "Because nobody was looking for him." Another. "He's not on the rank?" She listened. "Half six. At the house. With a warrant for the garage." She listened for a long time. "No. No, Gail. If I'm not home tonight, he'll know. You don't know him. He'll know, and he'll not be in Gilmerton at half six tomorrow morning. He'll be here." Shannon watched her listen to somebody being angry with her. "I know. I know that. Half six. Yes."
She put the phone down on the floor beside her.
"His name was Robert Duguid," she said. "He changed it by deed poll two years ago, after Dundee. He's on an order from Dundee Sheriff Court not to come near you. Going in your house was a breach. He's not on the rank and his phone's off, and she'll not chase a cab round the city. She's getting a warrant for my garage tonight, and they're coming at half six tomorrow, to mine, for the machine and the diaries and him, all at once, before he can get near any of it. There'll be a police car outside your stair all night. She wants me to stay away from home."
"And you're going home."
"Aye."
"You're going to go home and have your tea with him."
"He makes it," Lindsay said. "I'll eat it."
Shannon looked down at the top of her head, where the hair was coming out of its tie.
"He'll know," she said. "He always knows when something's wrong. He can smell it on you."
"He's never known anything about me I didn't tell him."
"That's what I thought," said Shannon.
She went and turned the kettle off, which had been boiling for a while, and got two mugs, and made them both tea, black, and sat down on the floor beside her with her back to the other side of the door frame. They drank it there, the pair of them, on the lino.
"Sit nearest the door," Shannon said, after a while. "Keep your phone in your pocket, not on the table. Let him talk. He likes to talk." She turned the mug round in her hands. "And if he asks you something he already knows the answer to, he knows."
The back door. The lock she'd have condemned. The candle on the windowsill, lit, and the radio, and the smell of fish pie, and Euan at the cooker in her old striped apron turning round with the spoon.
"There she is."
"Here I am."
"You look done in, boss."
"I am done in." She took her jacket off and hung it on the chair nearest the door, and sat on it, and kept her phone in the pocket of her jeans, where it pressed into her hip like a hand. "Long day."
"Sit. It's ten minutes. I made the pie with the eggs in it that you pretend not to like."
"I don't pretend."
"You eat all the eggs out of mine," he said, and laughed, and turned back to the oven.
She'd been in the van for an hour on Gorgie Road after she left Shannon's, not driving anywhere, and then she'd done a job in Stenhouse because it was in the diary and if she hadn't done it the woman would have phoned, and then she'd driven home slowly and sat on the drive with the engine off and watched him through the kitchen window moving about the light, and she'd thought: he looks like Euan. That was all she could think. He looks exactly like Euan.
He put the pie on the table and gave her the end with the crispy bit, the way he always did. He asked about her day. She told him about the job in Stenhouse, a woman whose son had flushed his key down the toilet to see where it went, and he laughed in the right place. He told her about his airport run, a man from Houston who'd wanted to know if the castle was real. Normal. Every bit of it was normal. She ate the egg, and it was good; it was always good.
"You were in Gorgie again yesterday," he said. "It's in the book."
She had written it up on Wednesday night before she'd taken the pins out. Gorgie 2F2. Attempted entry. Restricted fitted. She'd written attempted, and told herself it was because the police hadn't decided.
"Aye."
"Attempted entry. God." He shook his head. "Poor lassie. Did they get in?"
She looked at him across the table. He looked back, kind and worried, the way he'd looked about the woman in Morningside who was at her mother's.
If he asks you something he already knows the answer to.
"No," Lindsay said. "Tried the door and couldn't."
"Good door, then."
"It's a good door."
"Is it the restricted one now?" He was cutting his pie into squares. He always cut it into squares. "The card job."
"Card system."
"So you can't even cut her one."
"Nobody can."
He nodded slowly and put a square of pie in his mouth. "That's good," he said. "That's what you want."
In bed she lay on her side facing the wall.
She heard him downstairs. The kitchen. The living room. The loo. The door through to the garage, which he tried, and opened, and she lay and listened to the silence of him standing in it, looking at whatever there was in the garage to look at, the Silca under its cover, the door for Friday on its trolley in its plastic. Then the click. Then his feet on the stair.
She'd left the bathroom door open. She'd thought about shutting it and she hadn't been able to work out which would be stranger.
He stopped in it.
"You're heating the street," he said, quite gently, and shut it.
The bedroom was the last one. He came in and shut that too, and got in beside her, big and warm, and put his arm over her the way he always did, and she lay under it and breathed like somebody asleep.
"Here," he said into her hair. "Davie's wedding's off. The bride's done a runner."
She said nothing.
"He's raging. He's taking my Friday so he doesn't sit in the house and drink." His arm tightened a little round her, kindly. "So that's me free. I'll carry your door."