Shorter nodded. He did see.
“The children were being difficult. This was putting a strain on relations between Richard and Eleanor.”
“Had Richard’s ex-wife made any threats towards him?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. In the beginning, she threatened to refuse him access to Boris and Tania, but that never happened in the end. Things calmed down.”
“What about money?” Shorter glanced about him at the high-spec kitchen. Restoring the old building must have been costing a six-figure sum.
Holly snorted. “Eleanor did very well out of the settlement. It’s not as if she ever actually worked herself.”
Except bringing up the man’s two children, Shorter thought to himself, but didn’t say. He’d be checking out the ex-wife thoroughly. “What about in business? Your husband was one of the in-house lawyers for a large corporate bank in Glasgow?”
“That’s correct. But you’d better ask Mark about that side of Richard’s life, he works in the same department. We didn’t discuss his work much. I’m a consultant for a recruitment company based near their offices. We met at a bar that the employees of both our companies frequent. I don’t know much about what he did.” Holly’s head slumped forward onto her hands, as if the effort of the conversation had drained her of all energy.
“Okay, Mrs McGill. You need to get some rest now. Have you got relatives you can stay with?”
“My mum and dad live down near the borders. Miles away,” she mumbled dreamily.
“Well, I’d still recommend you try to get down there. You certainly don’t want to be staying here. Perhaps the Vogels will drive you, once we’ve finished talking to them?”
The woman didn’t reply. Shorter heard her breathing heavily and wondered if she’d fallen asleep. He pushed back the chair and made his way out through the backdoor, which led off a utility area, the front having been cordoned off by the tech team.
DC Ravi Stevens intercepted him before the DI could reach for his packet of cigarettes.
“We’ve got something, sir!” The young man exclaimed. “The boys were examining the skip and they found the gun! The killer must have dumped it in there as he fled the scene.”
“Good. That’s something, at least. Get it bagged up and sent back to the forensic lab ASAP.”
Stevens nodded enthusiastically.
“Oh, and can you sit in on Bell’s interview with the Vogel couple?”
“Of course, sir.” Stevens’ posture puffed up with pride.
“Good. Come and get me when you’re done.” Shorter waited until the DC was out of sight before inserting a cigarette between his lips and lighting it. He dragged deeply, feeling the sense of relief at the rush of nicotine wash over him like a wave on the beach.
Chapter 4
Present Day
The floor of the serious crime unit was unusually quiet. Dani had insisted that Alice take a few days leave. The DCI had only returned herself to catch up on the paperwork that had piled up whilst she’d been attending the course.
It was nearly five o’clock. DS Andy Calder and DC Sharon Moffett were the only officers still at their desks.
Andy glanced up as she passed. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
Dani glanced about her. “Has the DCS declared a public holiday?”
Andy chuckled. “It’s the inter-departmental five-a-side finals, ma’am. Did you not remember? Part of the new DCC’s drive to improve our fitness.”
Dani nodded in recognition. “Oh yes, I can’t imagine why it slipped my mind. Neither of you two make the team?”
Sharon leant towards her boss with a half empty box of doughnuts in her outstretched hand. “Help yourself, ma’am. Some of us needed to stay and hold the fort.”
Dani laughed. “What’s been happening in my absence?”
Andy rubbed the remains of dusted sugar from his hands. “I’ve just completed the paperwork on the Brewer’s Street car park break-ins. All the victims have their crime numbers and the CCTV stills of the suspect are on the website.”
“But no leads on who our thief actually is?”
Andy shook his head. “There’s an extra PC patrolling the area for a couple of weeks. We can only hope our friend tries again and gets caught in the act. It will be tough to resist, he’s already made off with several hundred pounds worth of tech.”
Dani sighed. “Why on earth do folk leave that kind of stuff in their cars?”
“It’s better they leave their expensive kit on their backseat than carrying it around the streets,” Sharon added. “It’s purely my opinion, but I happen to think they’re better off having the inconvenience of replacing a car window than getting knifed down an alleyway.”
“True enough,” Dani said dryly. “But it shouldn’t really be an either or.”
“In an ideal world it wouldn’t be.” Andy looked philosophical. “But the area around the car park has been targeted by developers in the last decade. Expensive new flats have shot up alongside the old, run-down estates. Brewer’s Street represents the hinterland where both worlds meet. Crime will inevitably follow, with all that conspicuous wealth on show.”
Dani wondered what they could do to make this assessment less depressingly accurate. In a big city like Glasgow, it wasn’t easy to identify an answer.
Andy washed down his final mouthful of doughnut with a swig of tea. “It’s just been routine stuff here. How was your conference, ma’am?”
Dani perched on an empty desk. “More interesting than I thought it would be. I hadn’t realised how many unsolved homicides we have on our books in Scotland. The conference focused on the five key cases of the last thirty years. In three of them, the reason the crimes remained unsolved is that the investigating teams got the wrong man initially.”
“That makes sense. If the first vital hours and days are spent looking at the wrong culprit, it’s hard to make up the ground.”
“What about the other cases?” Sharon’s interest had been piqued.
“One was of a retired couple found bludgeoned to death in their bungalow in Galloway in the late eighties. They had no immediate family and nothing was taken from the house. The investigating team had very little to go on.”
“I remember it,” Andy replied. “I’d no idea the case was still open. It must have simply fallen off the news cycle when the editors lost interest.”
“And the final investigation we re-examined was the McGill murder in Cleland in 2003.”
“The doorstep shooter,” Sharon added.
Dani raised her eyebrows.
“It’s how the press described the killer.”
“I met one of the officers on the original team. He seemed very affected by the case. It got me wondering how we would have felt if we’d never caught Gordon Alexander, or Hadley and O’Driscoll.”
Andy ran a hand through his sandy hair. This comment had hit a nerve. “But we’re not talking about a serial offender in the McGill case, are we? I always got the impression it was a professional hit.”
Dani crinkled her brow. “No, but there was another doorstep shooting in the UK, down in Cornwall. It occurred later that same year. There appears to have been none since. They caught the man responsible for the second murder and there’s no evidence of a link, but it’s an odd coincidence, don’t you think?”
Sharon nodded slowly. “Yes, it is odd. Might the second murder have been a copycat? Someone who saw the news reports of the Cleland shooting and thought it was a clever way to kill a person and avoid detection?”
“Maybe. I know there hasn’t been another murder with the same MO in the UK since, certainly not in Scotland. I checked.”
Andy was about to ask for more details on the Cleland case when the temporary peace of the serious crime floor was shattered. The lift doors opened. A group of officers emerged, arms draped across one another’s shoulders, cheering and cat-calling. In the centre of the throng, a cheap-looking metal cup was being held aloft.
“Looks like we won,” Andy hollered above the n
oise.
Dani rolled her eyes, making a point of withdrawing to her office and closing the door firmly against the clamour of the celebrations.
*
Alice was squatting on a footstool with her feet spaced wide apart on the floor. This was the most comfortable position she could find to sift through the boxes of items Fergus had designated for her perusal. He was tackling the larger tea chests, which were filled with their heavier books and ornaments.
“You’ve got a lot of stuff for a young bachelor about town,” she commented lightly. “Some of these pieces look valuable. The sum of my worldly goods amounts to a few flatpack purchases from Ikea.”
“My parents downsized their house a couple of years ago. They wanted me to have some mementos to keep. The rest went to the charity shop, or for auction.”
Alice was carefully removing the pieces of a tea set, each meticulously wrapped in tissue paper. She twisted one of the cups from out of its crinkly casing and admired the willow pattern design. “These are lovely.”
“That set is Staffordshire pottery. There are some dinner plates too, somewhere.” Fergus gazed about at the boxes which remained untouched.
“We’re going to have to start entertaining more,” Alice commented. “Otherwise, these beautiful things will go to waste.”
“We may have more time to do just that when you’re on maternity leave. No more weekend shifts for a while.”
Alice glanced at him. “I don’t think we’ll be having any weekend parties with a newborn baby at home.”
Fergus grinned. “No, you’re probably right. But these gems are for keeping. We can get a lovely old sideboard and display the china in there. We’ll make use of them for years to come, then we pass them on to the next generation.”
Alice thought that for a man in his early thirties, Fergus had some remarkably old-fashioned ideals. Deciding to change the subject she said, “I know you qualified in the criminal side of things, but what does being a corporate lawyer entail?”
Fergus rested on his haunches, rubbing his dusty palms down the ridges of his dark green cords. “Is this about the McGill case?”
“Yes. Richard McGill worked for an international bank, its offices are on York Street.”
“Well, the job description covers quite a lot of areas. McGill could have worked on mergers and acquisitions. Back before the crash in 2008, there were a fair few of those in the banking sector. He would have been preparing clients to list on the stock exchange and dealing with the minutiae of private equity funds.” Fergus waved a hand in the air. “That chap who lives with DCI Bevan, I forget his name?”
“James Irving.”
“That’s it. He could probably tell you more. Corporate law is his line of work, isn’t it?”
Alice nodded. “Yes, it is. So, is corporate law the kind of profession where a man might make enemies?”
Fergus crinkled his forehead. “To be honest, you’re far more likely to upset people in my area of the law. I help to free the type of men and women whom the general population would consider dangerous monsters. But no one’s taken a shotgun to me just yet.”
Alice shuddered, not wishing to dwell on this idea for too long. “The original investigating team looked into McGill’s work record. He was very good at his job, which meant he was excellent at making sure the bank made money without leaving themselves open to legal action. I’m sure his activities left some people worse off, but to them, I’m certain he would have been a faceless bureaucrat. I doubt he was ever in the front line.”
“There are hundreds of men like that in every financial centre across the world.”
“It certainly doesn’t provide us with a clear motive.”
“I think the man would have made more enemies through his private life. You told me he had a mistress for four years, then he married her, leaving his first wife devastated and abandoned.” Fergus ran a hand through his fringe, leaving specks of dust amongst its dark strands. “How does that terrible old expression go? - “If a man marries his mistress, it leaves a vacancy”? I can’t recall who said it now, maybe Noel Coward?”
Alice considered this, resting the china cup in her lap. “It may be an awful concept, but I suspect it’s true for certain men.” She looked at her partner quizzically. “I wonder if it was a possibility DI Shorter considered at the time of the murder?”
“That there was a new mistress?”
“I didn’t notice anything written in the reports. I suppose that means there wasn’t any evidence to suggest such a thing. The team interviewed everyone who knew McGill and there was no mention of it.”
“After fifteen years it would be difficult to find any trace of a lover now, even if there had been one.”
Alice vigorously shook her fine hair to dismiss the idea. “There wasn’t a jot of evidence relating to another woman in Richard McGill’s life, so I definitely shouldn’t let my imagination get carried away.”
“Just concentrate on what else is lurking in that box. The sight of my mother’s old napkin rings will bring you back down to earth.”
“Yes, with a bump,” Alice muttered good-naturedly, happy to continue her task.
Chapter 5
2003
The incident room at Cleland CID was small. DI Tony Shorter stared at the pile of evidence the techs had bagged up and removed from the house. The gun and the clothing of the victim and witnesses were at the lab in Fort William.
DS Colin Bell moved to stand beside him. “The uniforms have completed their search of the area around the cottage, guv. There’s no sign of the torch the wife says McGill took from the kitchen.”
Shorter creased his plump face. “Do we think the murderer took it away with him? It doesn’t make much sense if he did. He had the wherewithal to ditch the shooter quick enough.”
“Due to the recent wet weather, and the works vehicles coming up and down the track between the cottage and the road, it’s going to be impossible to identify where the killer’s vehicle was parked up.”
“Mrs McGill and the Vogels didn’t hear a car before the doorbell went. Are we sure the man didn’t approach the cottage on foot?”
Bell shrugged. “Mark Vogel didn’t venture far to look for him. It took us and the ambulance forty minutes to arrive. I suppose he could have trekked up into the hills and laid low.” He looked suddenly panicked. “Should we have called out the dog unit to search out a wider area? Or scrambled the chopper from Fort William?”
Shorter felt his stomach tighten. At least the shooter had been recovered, they didn’t have a dangerous gunman on the loose. “No,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “There wasn’t any point whilst it was still dark.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’ll call Fort William now, see if we can get the mountain rescue guys out on the hills in the next couple of hours. Our man can’t have got far before first light.”
Bell nodded curtly. He was beginning to understand why the killer had wanted to keep hold of the torch. It was five hours since the murder. He could have covered a significant distance by now.
“But we can’t rule out the possibility he came by road,” Shorter continued. “The problem is there are no ANPR cameras on the route into Cleland, and from here he could’ve headed anywhere.”
The door to the room swung open. DC Ravi Stevens entered, with a purposeful stride. “The ex-wife and children have been notified, boss. A couple of officers from the Bearsden station visited the house. They were very shocked and upset.”
“I’ll need to get down there to interview Eleanor McGill.” Shorter felt a wave of exhaustion flood his body, his limbs becoming heavy, as if his shoes were being sucked into the floor.
“Her phone records will need to be examined,” Stevens suggested. “The ex-wife is the only person we know of with a motive so far.”
“Where was she last night?” Bell asked.
“At the house in Bearsden with the kids,” Stevens replied. “But if she paid for the hit, there will be an evidence tr
ail somewhere.”
Shorter made a monumental effort to move in the direction of his office. “First things first. Let’s get a search team out into those hills.”
*
Ravi Stevens wore a communications helmet and one of the mountain rescue red jumpsuits. He’d volunteered to go up in the helicopter. Ravi loved flying. He’d grown up having regular trips to the Indian Punjab with his parents and brothers, visiting relatives and getting spoilt rotten. He associated the sensation of take-off with the promise of exotic pleasures to come, a feeling of freedom and anticipation.
The McGill case was also exhilarating to the young DC. It was the sort of murder he watched on Crime Scotland at home with his wife, but never occurred in the sleepy town of Cleland. Ravi craned his neck to survey the sweeping landscape as the chopper hovered over the Westall Hills. There was snow on the peaks and a carpet of green and yellow gorse covering the valley.
The temperature had dipped to two degrees overnight. The rescue leader informed them this was cold enough for anyone on the hills without shelter to have developed hypothermia. The team used thermal imaging cameras to examine the search area. If their suspect was still alive, his body should show up as an orangey-red heat source amongst the sea of black and green.
Ravi was simply using his eyes to scan the undulating contours of the wilderness which spread out beneath them. The area was vast. If the killer was fit and well-kitted out, he could have travelled miles. He was about to decide that the task was hopeless, when the radio in the cockpit crackled into life. Ravi could just hear the distorted voice of his boss above the roar of the engine.
The traffic division had found an abandoned van in a ditch about a mile outside of Cleland. An attempt had been made to obscure it under loose branches. It seemed like their man had travelled by road to the McGills’ cottage after all. And if he was picked up by a second vehicle, then there were others involved in the murder too. Whichever way, their search of the hills was over.
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