Point of no Return: A Scottish Crime Thriller (A DCI Harry McNeil Crime Thriller Book 7)

by John Carson

  ‘You could park round there and walk here over the hill back to your car?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘Aye. That’s what me and the wee fella do,’ Mortimer said. ‘Although my legs are shaking so much, I’m going to walk back round instead of going up the hill. Even if it means going past those freaks again.’

  ‘What freaks?’

  ‘Those carnival freaks. I mean, they’ve been here for years, but they just look weird. I would never trust them. As soon as I hear my boy here giving it laldy at the front window, I get my cricket bat. One of them will get a fucking smack one day, let me tell you.’

  ‘Have they ever bothered you?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Well, no, they haven’t. But there’s always somebody trying to sell religion or something. I mean, not that often on the island, but there’re always people coming here from the mainland. I don’t trust any of them.’

  ‘How well do you know the Wolf family?’

  ‘I moved here about ten years ago when I retired. My dad used to come here when he was a boy. I fell in love with the place, and the only fly in the ointment is that carnival. As long as they don’t bother me, I’ll be fine. But the Wolf family do a lot of good here. The only two who live here are Oliver and his son, Clive. Did. Since they’re both dead. God knows it wouldn’t surprise me if they pulled the hotel down and built houses on that land,’ Mortimer said.

  ‘You ever see Clive Wolf going about the town?’

  ‘Sure. You know the house he lived in with his father is here on the north island, but he was always out and about on the south island. Especially on a Saturday night, when he would go into some of the bars in town.’

  ‘Did he ever get into trouble?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘He was always mouthing off. Shouting and swearing, getting drunk, then driving home. Nobody really liked him. Up until his father died, he took care of the rental homes here on the island. He was a bad landlord, by all accounts. To be honest, I’m not surprised that somebody lamped him one. I mean, I never had any trouble with him, but I saw it for myself in the pub.’

  ‘Did he bother anybody in particular?’

  ‘I saw him and that big Irish oaf getting into it one night.’

  ‘Irish?’ Dunbar said.

  ‘Aye. Big Joe Murphy. He owns the fairground and he’s a big lad, but Wolf got in his face. I don’t even know what they were arguing about, but Wolf was drunk and he ended up clarting a table over. The polis took him home that night, I think.’

  ‘Was this recently?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Naw, it was before his father died. Before last Christmas. Murphy likes a drink, but he’s never any bother. He can certainly hold his liquor better than Clive Wolf ever could.’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ Dunbar said. ‘If you remember anything else, call the station and they’ll get in touch with us.’

  ‘Will do. Can I go now?’

  ‘Yes. But we’d like you to go to the station and make a formal statement about what you saw today.’

  The man walked away with his dog.

  ‘We’ll need to have a chat with this Irish guy, see what that was all about,’ Dunbar said.

  ‘It sounds like Clive Wolf wasn’t liked around here.’

  ‘Aye. Maybe he had a lot more enemies than we thought.’

  Thirteen

  He always hated the fairground. Or carnival. Whatever it was called. To him, it was nothing but a bunch of noises and flashing lights. The smell was the worst. It was fine if you were coming here for a night’s fun, but when you had to smell it all the time, then it became sickening.

  He stepped out from behind two rides and saw the man wandering about. He was supposed to have been in the car, but somehow it was only the woman. Well, he’d have to fix that, wouldn’t he? But not before the others. Those wankers were going to get it. This was going to be one weekend they would all remember.

  He didn’t want to rush things, though. This had to be done carefully. But this was a window of opportunity that he wasn’t going to miss. All of them in one place at the same time. It was the golden ticket.

  He stood watching the fat bastard walking about. The man was on his phone. No doubt asking somebody to come and pick him up. If he was over here, then it was a safe bet he didn’t know yet that his wife was dead. Maybe he was actually calling her, but he would be lucky if he got through to her, not because she was dead but because mobile phone service on this part of the island was patchy at best. Shite at worst.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing standing around here?’ he heard a voice say behind him.

  It was the old Irish guy, Joe Murphy. Big stature, big mouth. He thought at first the man was talking to him and was about to say something back, but then realised he was talking to the young man standing near him, smoking.

  ‘I’m just waiting to start my shift,’ the man said.

  ‘Get a foocking move on, then.’ Murphy made it sound like ‘forking move on’ with his thick accent.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fooking lazy wee bastard.’

  The big Irishman walked away and the carny walked away in the opposite direction. Then the Irishman stopped to talk to somebody.

  It was Brian Gibbons, the scrounger related to the Wolf family.

  He looked Gibbons. Maybe he would deal with this piece of shit after he’d dealt with the others. Just for fun. Why not? It would be just as easy to kill him on the sly and lay him to rest in the sea. In for a penny and all that.

  Meantime, he would wander around. Then, tonight, he would go on the hunt.

  Fourteen

  Alex and Evans were in the incident room when Dunbar and Harry got there. It looked like it probably doubled as Santa’s grotto at Christmas.

  ‘We’ve been going through all the information we’ve got,’ Evans said. ‘DI Barclay did some digging.’

  ‘As did Ronnie Vallance,’ Alex said. ‘Since some of them live in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Right,’ Harry said. ‘Well, Shona Gibbons was murdered.’ He went on to explain what they’d discovered.

  ‘Somebody’s targeting the Wolf family then,’ Alex said.

  Harry looked at the whiteboard that she had set up before they got there. ‘Let’s have a look at them individually.’ He took a ruler from a desk and tapped it against one of the photos that had been posted there. Clive Wolf, still sitting in the chair where he had died.

  ‘Give us the rundown on him,’ he said to Alex.

  ‘He and Shona were twins. Aged thirty-seven. Shona was on her second marriage, currently to Brian Gibbons. They run their own property development company in Edinburgh. Shona and Clive were born here on the island in the big house. Clive never left. He worked with his father, running the company that had been left to Oliver. Of course, the company wasn’t his for seven years, until Murdo was declared dead. No sign of him was ever found, and we now know why: he was sealed up in a wall.’

  ‘Shona left, obviously,’ Dunbar said, ‘but you said she was married twice. Who was her first husband?’

  ‘He was a financier. He died in a skiing accident fifteen years ago. They’d only been married two years at the time.’

  ‘Has anybody spoken to Gibbons yet?’ Harry said.

  ‘He got out of a taxi when we were just leaving. We took him inside and told him. When I asked him where he had been, he said he had walked to the fairground and spoke to an Irishman, Joe Murphy, who he knows.’

  ‘We’ll check that out later.’

  ‘What about Clive?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘He liked the women,’ Evans answered. ‘He was never short of a girlfriend, but he never married. He lived in the big house with his father, and Oliver died there last Christmas. Two days before Christmas.’

  ‘And nobody thought of questioning the coincidence?’

  ‘Apparently not, sir.’

  ‘What about that other pair of loud mouths?’

  ‘Zachary Wolf is in finance. He lives and works in Glasgow Divorced.’

  ‘Where was he bor
n?’ Harry asked.

  ‘They were all born here on the island, sir. They all moved away in adulthood.’

  ‘Where’s their mother?’

  ‘She died years ago,’ Alex answered.

  ‘What about the family mouthpiece?’ Dunbar said.

  ‘Fenton Wolf is a doctor. A cardiologist. Works in Glasgow. Also divorced.’

  ‘What was Oliver Wolf’s cause of death?’

  ‘Cardiac arrest.’

  Dunbar looked at him for a moment. ‘A bit ironic, isn’t it? The son is a cardiologist and his father dies of a heart attack. Anybody else feel the hairs on their neck going up?’

  ‘You think he might have been murdered too?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I’m not discounting it. Two of the Wolf family are dead. Seven months after their old man died. You know how suspicious we get, Harry.’

  ‘We can ask around and see if we can get hold of the death certificate. If not, we can have it pulled. Did he die here on the island?’

  Alex nodded. ‘At home.’

  ‘Somebody knew where old Murdo Wolf was and for some reason they were trying to get him out of that wall. To move him? Probably. But why? It has to be connected to the memorial for Oliver Wolf and the fact that the kids were being given the properties.’ Dunbar looked at Alex. ‘Did you find out what else they own here?’

  ‘Some of the land on the north island. Obviously their house and the hotel next to it, but they also owned the park where the new houses are being built. Where they found Shona. And they own the land where the carnival sits. And they once owned the hotel where we’re staying, the Laoch Lodge. But after Murdo was declared dead, it was given to the Shaw family. Murdo left it to Shaw in his will.’

  ‘Crail Shaw, the man who was his driver and assistant?’ Dunbar said.

  ‘Yes. Murdo must have thought a lot of him,’ Harry said.

  ‘We need to find out who benefits from these deaths. Like, do the remaining brothers benefit from the twins’ deaths?’

  ‘I think it goes deeper than that, Jimmy.’ Harry looked at the board. ‘I mean, they’re not stupid people, so killing their siblings in the hope of getting the property left to them would be dumb.’

  ‘We’ve both seen dumber criminals, neighbour.’

  ‘True. But these laddies are professional people. They’re not stupid.’ Harry was silent for a moment. Then: ‘One of you find out if Oliver Wolf was buried or cremated.’

  ‘I already know the answer,’ Evans said. ‘He was buried. He’s in the island’s only cemetery.’

  ‘It might be worth having him exhumed,’ Alex said.

  ‘That’s something we can consider if we have to. Meantime, we have to go and have a talk with a man called Joe Murphy.’

  Dunbar looked at his watch. ‘We should get something to eat before places start to fill up. We don’t know if those reprobates from the music festival will come down here and take up all the tables.’

  ‘They usually just drink lager and eat crisps for dinner,’ Harry said. ‘Just ask Alex. She’s the expert on living in a tent.’

  ‘Once,’ Alex said, holding a finger up. ‘One time I went to T in the Park.’

  ‘Willingly?’ Dunbar asked. ‘My laddie went there one time and had to burn his jeans when he came back home. I didn’t even want to ask.’

  ‘How about you, Robbie?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Not my scene, sir. I prefer sports myself.’

  ‘I can confirm that,’ Dunbar said. ‘In fact, he’s expecting Andy Murray round tonight for a wee game of…something.’

  Harry and Alex waited for more but nothing came.

  ‘Anyway, how about it?’ Dunbar said. ‘Hit a wee place just now, then we can talk to this guy Murphy. And we still have to talk to the Wolf brothers. And we have to find Brian Gibbons and break the news about the death of his wife.’

  ‘And ask him where he was at the time,’ Harry added.

  They left the station and found a little restaurant in the main street. ‘Tuck in, people. This is on Police Scotland,’ Dunbar said.

  Fifteen

  He stood looking down at his father’s grave. The sun was still out but a wind had got up, whipping through the trees that provided shade in the small cemetery. Mount Beacon poked its head up above the treeline, like it was being nosy.

  He heard a twig snap in the long grass.

  ‘You’re late,’ he said to his brother.

  ‘I was making sure people saw me.’

  ‘Is it done?’

  ‘It is. There’s just one problem.’

  He turned to his brother. ‘I don’t like problems, you know that.’

  ‘Problems are just roadblocks. We just work our way around them. We meet the challenge head on and deal with it.’

  ‘It’s a pity about that fucker McInsh and his dog.’

  ‘Let’s not do anything silly. McInsh would hand you your arse on a plate. I can take of the others, but I’m not going to put myself at risk. There can’t be any collateral damage. This is going to be bad enough without any extras added into the mix.’

  ‘I understand that. It’s just a pity we couldn’t rope him into this.’

  ‘It would have been easier if he didn’t have an alibi,’ his brother said.

  ‘That would have taken a lot longer to plan, and time was against us.’ He turned to look back at his father’s grave. ‘But let’s focus on the job at hand. We have this weekend and that’s it. We’re not going to get a better opportunity, so let’s stick to the plan.’

  ‘Agreed. Those officers from the mainland could be a problem.’

  ‘No, they won’t be. It’s something we planned for. Do you think they would let that daft bastard Turnbull investigate? He couldn’t investigate the froth on the top of his pint. No, it was always going to be a detective in a murder case. We just need to keep putting them off the scent.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’

  ‘No, it’s not. We’ve gone over everything. Just stay level-headed and this will be over before we know it.’

  His brother smiled. ‘I’m more than happy to take out that copper if he gets in my way.’

  He looked at him. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Any of them. All of them. I don’t care.’

  He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘Just listen to your older brother and we’ll be fine.’

  Sixteen

  The carnival’s owners were hoping that the music festival would have a knock-on effect on their takings, and they were mostly right.

  ‘Ever been to a concert, neighbour?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘Aye. We went to see Genesis in London, two thousand and seven. We went away for a long weekend. It was great.’

  ‘What about you, Alex?’ Evans said.

  ‘I hate to admit it, but I’ve only been to T in the Park. I’ve never been to a concert to see one group. What about you?’

  ‘Nothing that he would admit to,’ Dunbar said. ‘He does like Wimbledon, though.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s the difference between a carnival and a fairground?’ Evans asked, eager to change the subject.

  ‘I think a carnival is like a circus; it travels around. But a fairground is like the Pleasure Beach in Blackpool,’ Harry said. ‘This one here, the carnival joins on to the fairground for the summer.’

  ‘How do you know so much about it?’ Alex asked him.

  ‘I read a pamphlet in the hotel. And guess where Old Man Boxer gets his name from?’ Harry replied, nodding to a painted board outside a tent.

  ‘Christ, he’s a carny boxer,’ Dunbar said. ‘You can pay to fight him.’ He looked at Evans. ‘Now’s your chance to give him a good skelp.’

  ‘Really? I don’t want to hurt the old bloke.’

  A young man walked out, holding paper towels to his face. The blood had been roughly cleaned up from his face and a friend was supporting him while holding on to his shirt.

  ‘You could always go, sir,’ Evans said. ‘I mean, I would put money on you winnin
g, of course.’

  ‘Why would I want to fight cleanly?’

  ‘Roll up! Roll up! Challenge the boxer to a fight!’ a young man shouted through a megaphone. He was dressed like a ringmaster. ‘Go five rounds, win a hundred pounds!’

  Harry locked eyes with him; it was Brendan Shaw.

  ‘You, sir!’ the young man shouted. ‘Come inside. You look like a hard man. Beat the boxer, win some cash.’

  ‘Go on, Harry,’ Alex said.

  ‘Decorum, wife of mine. A senior officer can’t be seen to participate in such frivolous activity when he’s on duty.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh well, I can only try.’

  ‘You don’t need a hundred pounds that desperately.’

  ‘I don’t mean me fight him. Anyway, it’s not about the money. It’s showing that old fool that he can’t talk to anybody any way he likes.’

  ‘He must be fit, though, neighbour,’ Dunbar said. ‘Nothing a good kick in the bollocks wouldn’t take care of, but that’s not in the Queensberry rules.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there with him,’ they heard a voice say from behind them. ‘He has weighted gloves.’

  Nancy Shaw, the owner of the Laoch Lodge and Boxer’s wife, was standing watching the ringmaster touting for business.

  ‘I didn’t know your son was part of this business,’ Harry said.

  ‘That’s Jack, Brendan’s twin brother. Brendan doesn’t get involved. Jack, on the other hand, laps all of this up.’

  ‘Your husband been doing this for a long time?’ Dunbar asked.

  ‘For more years than I can remember.’ She had a light jacket on and pulled it around herself more as a cool wind came in off the sea. She looked from her son to Dunbar. ‘He didn’t always need the weights in his gloves. But the years and the drink got hold of him.’

  ‘Does Jack box as well?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Oh, no, love. Jack is good at talking but not at fighting. A wet paper bag would make a fool of him. But he has the gift of the gab, as you can see.’

  ‘Did you hear about Shona Wolf?’ Dunbar asked.