by John Carson
‘Haven’t we suffered enough?’ Shona Gibbons said.
‘Meaning what?’ Harry asked.
‘You want to keep us cooped up here. It’s intolerable. I want to go home.’
‘I can’t allow that. You all have to be formally interviewed.’
‘He’s right, love,’ Brian Gibbons said.
‘Shut up. Maybe Fenton’s right; maybe you are too old for me.’
Gibbons started to go red in the face and tried to pull her in closer, but she was having none of it.
‘Get your fucking hands off me.’ She stood up as if he were a stranger who had just tried it on with her. ‘Fenton, I want to stay with you.’ She walked across to her brother, and her husband looked at the two brothers as if weighing up his chances of taking them in a fist fight.
‘You can bunk in my room, sis. Old Brian there won’t mind. Will you, Bri?’
‘Fuck off, Fenton.’
‘Right then,’ Dunbar said, having had enough of the charades. ‘The two detective sergeants will organise the statements. You, Mr McInsh, will stay here until DCI McNeil and I get back.’
‘I know the drill,’ Muckle said. ‘Whoever finds the body is the number-one suspect. Despite what Sergeant Bollocks there says, I have run investigations before.’
The uniform looked like he wanted to ask Muckle to step outside, but Dunbar got the feeling that Muckle would have loved nothing more than to give the sergeant a good belting.
‘Nobody’s disputing that. Just make yourself available. Give my sergeant your details.’
‘You’re not just going to let him walk out of here, are you?’ the sergeant said, pointing to the big man.
‘What do you suggest I do? Tie him up? He’s not going anywhere.’ Dunbar shook his head and indicated for Harry to follow him out of the room. ‘Let’s get to the house, Harry. We can see what the pathologist has to say.’
‘Okay. You know where it is?’
There was a female uniform standing outside the house. ‘Nope. But I’m sure she knows the way.’ Dunbar called her over. ‘You know the lodge where the victim is?’
‘Yes, sir. You drive a couple of miles –’
‘You know how to drive?’ Dunbar said, dangling the car keys in front of her face like it was the first prize.
She took the keys without much further ado. ‘Andrea Simpson,’ she said after Dunbar made the introductions. Harry got in the back, not in the mood to be looking out the front window of any vehicle just yet, even one that was on the ground.
‘You know the Wolf family well?’ he asked from the back seat.
‘I’ve only been stationed here for a year, sir, but I’ve met them a couple of times. Oliver Wolf was a really nice man. I was sorry when he passed away last Christmas.’
‘Christmas?’ Dunbar said. ‘I thought it was six months ago? Which would have made it this year.’
‘I think people generalised when they said six months. It was just before Christmas.’
Seven
The ‘wee lassie pathologist’ who had come over on the plane with Dunbar and Evans had a name. Dr Debbie Comb. She was just finishing up her initial exam when Harry and Dunbar entered the house on the hill.
Uniforms were there; one of them, standing outside, nodded to the two detectives when he saw his colleague getting out from the driver’s side.
The sun was beating down, glistening off the loch in the distance.
‘Not a bad place,’ Harry said. ‘If it weren’t for the dead bloke inside, I mean.’
‘Aye, this would be right up Cathy’s street. Somewhere for Scooby to nash about in and all the peace and quiet she could handle. There’s nothing like a night out in Sauchiehall Street to make the dream stronger.’
‘I hear you. Lothian Road in Edinburgh is for the youngsters nowadays.’
‘Christ, you’re hardly a pensioner, Harry.’
‘Anybody above thirty is old, according to Chance.’
‘God help him if he calls me an old bastard.’
Harry laughed. ‘He’s been well-warned.’
Inside, members of the forensics team were walking about. ‘He’s upstairs,’ one of them said through a mask on his face.
They went upstairs and were pointed in the right direction. Debbie Comb looked like she was barely out of school, but Harry supposed she had to be in her thirties at least. She had her blonde hair tucked into the hood of the paper suit.
‘Dr Comb, this is DCI Harry McNeil from Edinburgh,’ Dunbar said.
She smiled. ‘The big feardie from Edinburgh? Pleased to meet you.’ She held out a hand for Harry to shake.
‘Big feardie?’ he said.
Debbie laughed. ‘Jimmy said your arse would probably have eaten its way through the seat by the time you landed.’
‘Did he now?’ Harry said, looking at Dunbar.
‘Just making an observation, neighbour. Plus, this lassie exaggerates.’ He held a hand up to shield his mouth. ‘And she drinks.’
‘Bloody liar,’ she said, laughing. ‘Well, we do go out drinking on a Friday after work, but it’s not as if he and Robbie have to pour me into a taxi afterwards.’
‘Not that you can remember going home, ye wee besom,’ Dunbar chided.
‘And here I was the one saying that Jimmy wouldn’t be able to handle flying in that wee plane,’ Harry said, warming to the doctor.
‘Aye, he was hanging on for dear life. I’m sure he said a couple of prayers too.’
‘Stop talking nonsense, woman, and tell us what we have here,’ Dunbar said.
The smell of decay seemed to permeate every pore in the room. They became the serious professionals that they were again.
‘It’s a strange one this,’ Debbie said. ‘I’m assuming that the hammer used to smash the wall was the murder weapon. It appears to have dust from the drywall on it, as well as blood. And the blood is over the dust, so I’m assuming that somebody was using it to smash the wall and was then disturbed. But why would the victim sit down?’
Harry knew that nothing should come as a surprise at any crime scene. ‘You had them leave it in place, I see?’ Harry asked her, nodding to the hammer on the floor.
‘I knew you would want to see everything in place. Including the victim.’ She nodded to Clive Wolf, who was still sitting in the chair. ‘I know it’s important to preserve the scene.’
Harry nodded. He knew that under normal circumstances the body would have been removed by now, but on this island it was important to have everything catalogued first.
‘Crime scene have completed the photos and video, I assume?’ Dunbar said.
‘They have. They’re just waiting for you to go over the scene,’ Debbie said.
Harry surveyed the room. He had noted that the house looked to have been built a long time ago, maybe at the turn of the previous century, but the extension had been added around the time when Murdo Wolf went missing almost thirty-five years earlier.
‘I don’t think Clive would be sitting there and watching whoever it was take chunks out of the wall with a hammer. Then waiting for death,’ he said to Dunbar.
‘Makes sense.’
‘Maybe he talked Clive into sitting down.’
‘Or,’ Debbie said, ‘there was somebody else working with the killer. Snuck up behind Clive and let him have it.’
‘That would make sense too,’ Harry conceded.
‘I wonder why they wanted an extension built on here,’ he said to Dunbar.
‘That’s something we’re going to ask them later.’
The head of the forensics team came back into the room. A woman who was in her forties. Dunbar knew this but wouldn’t have been able to tell otherwise since she was covered from head to toe in a disposable suit. She lifted her mask and smiled at them.
‘Hell of a thing, Jimmy,’ she said.
‘Lillian, this is DCI Harry McNeil from Edinburgh. Harry, Inspector Lillian Young.’
‘Hello, sir.’
‘It’s Harry. Goo
d to meet you, Lillian.’ Harry nodded to the dead man sitting in the chair. ‘If this was a game of Cluedo, I’d say this man was killed in the bedroom with the hammer. Not sure by whom yet, but if you could help us, that would be great.’
‘Correct on him being killed here,’ she replied. ‘Dr Comb and I concur on that.’
Debbie nodded. ‘Sitting in the chair. Blood spatter would indicate he was sitting when he was struck from behind.’
‘The question is,’ Dunbar said, ‘how did this little situation play out? Did he come in here, sit down and get murdered? Or was he here with somebody else who was hacking away at the wall while he looked on, then that other person attacked him for a reason that we have yet to establish?’
‘Whoever smashed the wall knew what he was looking for,’ Harry said.
Debbie had a quizzical look on her face.
‘Harry’s right,’ Dunbar said. ‘I mean, what were the chances of him breaking the wall and finding old Murdo at that exact spot? Either he knew first-hand where the old man was or he was told where to look.’
‘What about motive?’ Lillian asked.
‘Oliver Wolf died last December,’ Dunbar said. ‘The Wolf estate is a big thing to wrap up, I’m sure, but I’m no expert. The properties were divvied up between the offspring, and now they’re here having a wee hooly to give their father a send-off. Invite family and friends over for a memorial, and then the solicitor can read the will and they can go and do whatever they like with what they were left. But one of them was left this place, and somebody knew about Grandpa being buried in the wall.’
‘What happened to the plane, I wonder?’ Lillian said. ‘If the old boy was stuffed in the wall, then somebody had to have landed the plane somewhere. What if he wasn’t even on the plane?’
‘That’s what I’m having my DI, Tom Barclay, look into. I’m having him fax over reports of the original disappearance. We’ll have copies in Glasgow, since the family have their head office there and one of our stations was involved at the time. I’m sure the wee polis station here won’t have any details on it.’
‘You could always ask,’ Lillian said.
‘Oh, I will, trust me.’
Harry looked at the decomposed features of the old man peering out of the wall and he walked over to it. Although they had rotten away over the years, steps had been taken to line the space where the corpse was. It was obviously big enough to hide a corpse, but tight enough for the body to remain standing.
‘Must have been awkward trying to get the corpse to stay standing up while the plasterboard was put in place,’ Harry said.
‘Not if there were two of them,’ Lillian said. ‘One holding him up, another one nailing the board into place. That’s the logical thing to do.’
‘Remind me never to come round to your place for a drink again,’ Dunbar said.
‘You make it sound like I’m your bit on the side, Jimmy.’
He looked at the others. ‘I was referring to last Christmas when you had a wee shindig.’
‘Of course you were,’ Debbie said.
‘I was. And if you think you’re going to trip me up and get me to admit that Lillian and I are seeing each other on the sly, it isn’t going to happen.’
‘Just tell them, Jimmy. Get it over and done with.’ Lillian grinned at him.
‘See if Cathy could hear this talk now, she would take a nail gun to my personal bits. And you know how things get around. I don’t want to be paying alimony for my dug.’
Lillian laughed. ‘Take it easy, Tiger. Besides’ – she looked at the others – ‘Cathy was with him.’
‘Harry doesn’t seem convinced,’ Debbie said, smiling again.
‘Harry doesn’t care what his colleagues in the west get up to in their spare time. But you have a point, Lillian. Unless it’s somebody who’s very dexterous, there could have been two or more of them. But is there any obvious sign of death?’
Debbie walked over to the old corpse. ‘There isn’t anything obvious from the front, but as you can see, I’m only seeing the top half. I’ll be able to get a better understanding when we get him out of here and into the hospital down the road where I can examine him. I’ve been told there’s a small operating theatre which can double as the pathology suite.’
Dunbar looked at Harry. ‘He’ll be given a post-mortem by Dr Comb with a couple of the forensics team assisting, as well as one of our sergeants in there to witness. Unless you want to go?’
Just the thought of being in a makeshift mortuary made Harry shiver. He didn’t do too well in that situation. Death he could handle; watching them being cut up, not so much.
‘I’m fine with uniform being there.’
‘What sort of time of death are we looking at?’ Dunbar said. ‘For the younger man, of course.’
‘He was discovered last night around nine, which was’ – Debbie looked at her watch – ‘seventeen hours ago. I reckon he died within the last twenty-four hours, so around one or two p.m. yesterday.’
‘Right. We’ll let you get on with it, ladies. We’ll have a debriefing in the station later on.’ Dunbar looked at them. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘My team and I have a wee hotel near the harbour,’ Lillian said.
‘Me too,’ Debbie said.
‘We’ll see you all later. You have my number.’
‘So do I,’ Lillian said, grinning.
‘Don’t start.’
He walked out of the room with Harry and found the young uniform downstairs talking with her colleague.
‘You ready to go back to Wolf Lodge, sir?’ she asked.
‘We are that,’ Dunbar answered.
Harry stopped Dunbar for a moment, letting the young woman walk ahead to the car.
‘That guy Muckle McInsh said he came in here and found the body. We’re obviously going to interview him first and his little friend, Shug. I’m not saying they look old enough to have put the old man in the wall, but what if they found out where he was hidden? We have to ask ourselves why they would want to get him out of the wall. Maybe they were being paid. Then again, why not finish the job? If Clive was dead, then why didn’t they finish? Unless they were interrupted.’
Dunbar put a hand up. ‘Let me stop you there, Harry. Muckle McInsh didn’t kill Clive. I would put money on it.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘You know my DI, Tom Barclay?’
‘I’ve heard you talk about him, yes.’
‘Muckle McInsh was my DI, back in the day. He didn’t want to let on he knew me. I taught him everything I know. He left to come over to this shithole five or six years ago. Oliver Wolf made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. And Muckle’s wife was only too happy to make the move. So trust me, neighbour, if Muckle had murdered Clive, he wouldn’t have left him on display. He’s far too clever for that. But we’ll talk to him anyway, just for the record.’
Eight
‘About fucking time,’ Fenton Wolf said, standing up when the two senior detectives walked into the room.
Muckle McInsh was sitting down on a comfy chair, dozing. Sparky jumped up to his feet and started snarling when Fenton made a move towards Muckle.
‘Easy, boy,’ Muckle said.
‘Aye, you tell that fucking dog,’ Fenton said.
Muckle didn’t even open his eyes. ‘I was talking to you, arsehole.’
‘You hear the way he’s talking to me?’ Fenton spat, pointing a finger at the big man, which only served to rattle the dog even further.
‘Sit down, Mr Wolf,’ Dunbar said in a tone that wasn’t meant to be contradicted.
‘Why don’t you arrest him?’ Fenton said, standing his ground. ‘He’s the one who murdered my brother.’
Now Muckle opened his eyes. ‘Unlike you, dafty, I wouldn’t have left a trail.’
‘Mr McInsh, DCI McNeil and I would like a word,’ Dunbar said, addressing Muckle.
‘Can I bring the dog?’
‘Fine by me.’
‘We
can go over the other interviews when we come back out,’ Harry said to Alex.
She nodded. ‘What a bunch, honestly. I’m glad I’m not related to any of them.’
Harry followed Dunbar, McInsh and the German Shepherd out of the room and into what rich folks might call a library.
‘Where’s your pal?’ Harry asked. ‘Angus Kendal.’
‘He was here a minute ago. I’ll give him a call.’ Muckle did so and hung up. ‘He was away to the lavvy. He’ll be here in a minute.’
They settled down and waited for Shug. The small man appeared a moment later. ‘I held off as long as possible, but when a man’s got to go…’
‘Sit down, son,’ Dunbar said. ‘We want to know where you were twenty-four hours ago.’ He sat on a chair near the two men, who had taken a pew on a leather couch. Harry sat on a desk chair and twirled it round to face the room.
‘That’s easy,’ Muckle said. ‘Me and Shug were helping to set up the shindig for this weekend’s memorial. Over at the hotel. There were caterers setting up tables, doing all sorts of stuff. It took us hours. We were there from around nine in the morning until about six. Both of us. You can talk to the staff there. The solicitor fella asked us if we could oversee it as Oliver’s sons are a bunch of balloons. His words.’
‘No offence, pal, but we’ll have to check. Just to rule you both out.’
‘I wouldn’t expect anything less, sir. It’s what I would do,’ Muckle said. ‘But the solicitor was there too.’
Dunbar smiled at his old colleague. ‘How’s life been treating you here on the island?’
‘Pretty well. Until Oliver passed away. Me and Shug quit our jobs last night. We spoke to the solicitor a few months back, and he told us everything was going to take a while to finalise, but he asked if we could stay on as security to make sure the properties were safe. The tenants had been asked to leave and most were fine with it, and one or two gave some opinion, but they moved out. The houses have been empty ever since.’
‘Did you work in Glasgow as well?’ Harry asked Shug.
The smaller man shook his head. ‘No. I started off life in uniform on the island here. I’m from here.’