Morris seemed satisfied by that answer and was clearly impatient to get started. I gave my cousin a nod, and he turned on the recorder so I could make my opening introduction. I dutifully identified the people present, time, and date before turning my entire attention on Sandy.
“Mr Morris, in your earlier statement, you informed DI Foster that you, Kaj Visser, and Lenny Buchanan went out drinking together last Friday night. Would you please go over that evening with us again, in as much detail as you can recall, from the time you all met up to the time that you got home?”
“If you think it will help,” he agreed amicably. “We all finished work just after seven. The three of us usually crew the same boat, and we’d had a very busy week of it, putting in a lot of overtime doing extra runs. We were all looking forward to a night out and a couple of days off.”
“Is that usual? Working a lot of extra hours?”
“No, but we’d had some guys calling in sick. You have to be willing to work extra hours when needed, and the pay’s worth having. Anyway, Kaj headed off to his place, and Lenny and I nipped back home to shower and change and grab a bite. We have flats in the same building, Lenny and I. Kaj was already at the Mountain Dew when we got there, a few minutes before eight.”
I checked my notes. “That’s the pub down on Smith Terrace? Was that somewhere you went often?”
“We went everywhere often.” Morris pulled a face. “There aren’t many places to choose from in this town, Inspector.” With a population of only seven thousand and odd, Wick was hardly a bustling metropolis. “Anyway, the Dew was a bit dead, so we only stayed for one drink then called a taxi to take us down to The Smiddy.” The Old Smiddy was a few miles south of town in the village of Thrumster. “That’s more of a ‘character’ place, a bit posh - old wagon wheels on the walls, proper stone and all that, but it makes a nice change sometimes. Kaj sometimes gets lucky there too. Got,” he corrected himself.
“Were you all hoping to meet some friendly girls that night?”
“Not really. I mean, it did happen, sometimes, but it wasn’t the main point. Not for Lenny and me, anyway. Everyone has their own ways of letting off steam.” That all matched up with what Morris had already told DI Foster. Kaj Visser had been more actively promiscuous than his crew mates and far less interested in merely getting drunk. Plus, according to Shay, both Lenny and Sandy each had lady friends they regularly saw, if not exclusively.
The rest of Sandy Morris’ report of the evening followed the story we already knew. The three of them had stayed at the Old Smiddy for less than an hour before returning to town, another taxi ride, same driver. The driver had confirmed the bookings. He’d dropped them at Harpers at nine twenty. After checking out possible targets over a last drink with his friends, Kaj had abandoned them to try his luck with a group of three girls who were sitting drinking together and, distracted by their own conversation, Sandy and Lenny had lost track of him after that. Morris described what he could remember of the little group, which was no more than the first time he’d gone through this. When I asked him to focus his memory on the clothing they’d been wearing, I did manage to get a few new details out of him. Apparently, the ‘pretty girl in the red top’ had been checking Visser out quite obviously before he’d made his move. If they were locals, we’d find them. Visitors passing through would be harder to identify.
“Kaj could be quite the charmer,” Sandy told me. “Being generous with buying drinks for whichever group he latched onto never hurt his chances either. Quite a good-looking lad too, by the average standards.”
“Yes, I’ve seen some photos.” Visser may not have been super model material, but he’d been handsome enough to make a favourable impression and avoid instant rejection from many young women. We couldn’t help it, we humans. No matter how often we reminded ourselves that it was what was on the inside that mattered, our eyes made judgment calls for us all the time. Give them a chance or not? Was this one worth talking to, or were we just not interested? The fact that those initial judgments often turned out to be misleading didn’t change the fact that they heavily influenced the vast majority of people.
“Did Kaj ever get into any fights or serious arguments with anyone in the time you knew him?” I asked once we’d finished going over the information that Morris had already supplied.
“Nothing serious but aye, a couple of times. One of the Russian construction workers decided to try to pick a fight with him one night, back in December. He’d taken a fancy to the girl Kaj had honed in on. A couple of punches were exchanged outside, but the man was really drunk, and it didn’t get out of hand.”
The construction crews working on setting up the offshore turbines were all employed by sub-contractors, not by VOW itself. Shay had had a few words to say about the dodgy Home Office concessions on work visas for non-European employees and on the flagrant breaches of our minimum wage rules, but that was just the way the world worked. They’d probably keep extending those concessions for as long as it suited everyone. About fifteen hundred people had been needed to assemble the Vik offshore wind farm, working long shifts around the clock. It was wind conditions, not daylight, that mattered when you were hoisting heavy equipment around. Some even worked a month on, month off schedule on their assigned vessels. Maybe they preferred it that way. If you were flying home to Russia or even further, to Indonesia, then longer breaks made more sense. It wasn’t surprising that those men would want to let off some steam when they got the rare chance to come ashore. Sometimes their travel plans included a night or two in Wick.
“And the other fight?” I asked once I’d taken what details I could about the Russian, pinned down the date and learned who else had been witness to the incident. I didn’t think it would prove to be relevant, but we might find ourselves trying to identify the man.
“That wasn’t so much a fight as a necessary bit of rough handling to calm down one of the technicians. That was back in October. Look, Inspector, this is the kind of thing that might not go down too well with management, if you understand me. All the rules of conduct that apply here on land, well, the sea doesn’t care about those and nor does anyone put in a position like that when we’re out on the water.”
“Anything you tell us will remain confidential unless it turns out to be directly connected to Kaj’s death,” I assured him. “If someone on your boat was acting in a way that may have jeopardised the others and had no complaint about how the situation was handled, then I don’t see that it’s anyone else’s business.”
“Alright then,” Sandy decided after a careful study of my expression. “It was nothing really. We’d taken a group of twelve out to the farm to perform some maintenance checks on a few of the turbines. Conditions were a bit rough on the way back, but nothing the boat couldn’t handle. Anyway, one of the technicians, Anton, got a bit jittery and agitated and grabbed onto Kaj, which meant he was stuck with a giant limpet at a very bad moment. Kaj had to sock him one to wind him enough to get him into a seat out of the way, where his pals could look after him. There weren’t any hard feelings or anything, and they both apologised to each other after. You can’t let the passengers become a hindrance, not in conditions like those. Anton is usually very steady, but we all have our moments. Kaj knew what he was doing. No harm done but a bit of bruising.”
Visser would have had military training from his navy service. Better him than someone who might have accidentally injured the man. I made a note to ask about the incident when we got around to Anton Karlsson. Sandy wasn’t clear on the date, but there was a good chance Anton himself would remember it.
Apart from that, we got the same story as DI Foster had. Everyone who worked with Kaj liked and trusted him. He was a good man to have with you out there, very level headed. Safety was a big priority for all of them. The boats didn’t even go out if conditions were really bad. VOW had a helicopter based at the airport that could reach the wind farm in ten minutes if there was an emergency. It was also used to winch technicians
down onto the nacelles if the boats were being kept in harbour. The tower-top nacelles housed the generators and a lot of electrical controls and were eighty-eight metres up from the jacket platform. The jackets were sunk into the pre-installed foundation piles hammered into the seabed. A lift and a short ladder could access the lofty nacelles, but they also had a platform on top onto which a technician could be lowered from the helicopter. Before yesterday, I hadn’t appreciated the staggering size of those structures. Each individual blade on those enormous turbines was seventy-five metres long. A Boeing 747 was shorter than that.
“Do you know if Kaj did any work for anyone else when he wasn’t working on the Crew Transfer vessels?” I asked next. “Any little odd jobs here and there?”
Sandy shrugged. “Not that I know of, but he knew his way around engines. I suppose he could have picked up an odd repair job here and there if he’d wanted to.” I sensed Shay’s interest perking up a little at that. He hadn’t found anything yet himself, but that was possible. Local word-of-mouth jobs, no advertising, no electronic trail to follow. “I doubt he would have, though, unless it was just as a personal favour. Kaj put in a lot of extra shifts. His time off was for enjoying himself and resting up.”
After asking a few more questions, I thanked Sandy Morris and let him go. Next on our list was Lenny Buchanan. Two more after that, and then we’d break for a late lunch before starting on the afternoon’s batch. With a lot of the people we wanted to talk to working out at the wind farm today, we’d have to get through the rest of them tomorrow morning. At least this was a business that kept operating every day of the week, so the fact that tomorrow was a Saturday wouldn’t slow us down. I could swap Shay out for Collins, too, if that looked like the better option once we’d finished with the Europeans. My cousin would likely have plenty of other things he’d think it more useful to look into by the end of today.
Eight
Shay
Conall had arranged that all six of us would meet up for lunch at two. There was a café overlooking the harbour just on the other side of the neighbouring street that had a reputation for serving good food. I wasn’t too thrilled at the prospect of eating in a group, but as Conall wanted to check in with the other two pairs over lunch, that was what we were doing.
I liked the feel of the place as soon as we walked through the door. A lot of cafes made me feel squashed in and cramped, tables too close together, not enough air to breathe. This one was much nicer. Big windows on two of the walls made it feel light and airy, and I liked the clean, polished wooden tables and chairs too. Restful blue walls and a high white ceiling enhanced the feeling of space.
I’d called ahead and reserved us a table for six, and Conall made sure I snagged a window seat with him right by me. I set my laptop pack down against the wall under the window whilst the others seated themselves. Caitlin snagged the other window seat, and Philips ended up opposite Conall with Collins beyond him. Darren Mills plonked himself down on Conall’s right and immediately picked up a menu to peruse.
I liked Mills. He was very good at being comfortable to be around.
A chalkboard had proclaimed one of the soups of the day to be leek and potato, so I didn’t need to bother with the menu. Once our waiter had gone off again, Conall asked Caitlin for her notes, and we read through them together. Philips and Caitlin had already gone through five of the people on their list and, from the looks of things, hadn’t stumbled across anything helpful. One of their subjects had witnessed the little scuffle with the Russian in December that Sandy Morris had told us about. Apart from that, Kaj Visser appeared to have managed to avoid any similar confrontations while he’d been in Wick.
“Anything useful?” Caitlin asked when he handed her the notebook back.
“Just corroboration of what we’ve been told. None of ours, so far, have given any sign that they were holding anything back or lying.”
“We got the same impression from the people we spoke with this morning,” Philips began, then fell silent again as the waiter came back with our tray of drinks. I stirred my teapot while Conall poured us a glass of water each, and the others popped their cans and bottles of fizzy drinks. “Apparently, everyone liked Kaj Visser. He didn’t seem to get involved in any of the arguments that regularly crop up in groups like that, either. Sports, politics, personal grudges.”
“No, he appears to have been wise enough to keep his opinions to himself, whatever they were,” Conall agreed. “Nobody I’ve talked to so far could even tell me what Kaj thought of the political situation here. He listened interestedly enough but made it clear that as a visitor, he didn’t feel informed enough to comment.”
The voting figures from the Brexit Referendum were there for anyone interested enough to look at. Every single council in Scotland had returned a ‘Remain’ majority from the electorate. There hadn’t been even one little corner of the country that wanted to leave the EU. That’s a pretty definitive indication of the wishes of the people, however you want to spin it. Scotland wanted to be part of Europe a lot more than it wanted to be part of the UK. Potential future disasters, if London mismanaged things badly enough to turn rancour into violence and civil disorder, were certainly one set of scenarios that the whole mess might eventually end up degenerating into.
Personally, I found it too depressing to even think about. Nothing would happen for years yet anyway, and there were too many variables in play to predict the most likely outcomes. In Visser’s shoes, I’d have kept my mouth shut too. Better not to antagonise anyone by being seen to pick a side. The same went for sporting rivalries and other potentially contentious topics. Especially sporting rivalries.
Conall took his DCs’ notes to read through next. They’d done better than Munro’s people with the staff at the pubs they’d visited. The times all matched what Morris and Buchanan had each individually told us. Whether or not the descriptions they’d collected of the group Visser had left Harpers with were in any way accurate was another matter. If they were accurate, then two other men had joined the girls by then, and the six of them had left together. Also, we didn’t know if any of those people would actually turn out to be our culprits or whether they’d employed any means of disguise if they were. Nobody that Collins and Mills had spoken to had paid enough attention to any of them to identify them, so they probably hadn’t been regulars. Even that wasn’t certain, though. Apparently, Harpers had been heaving that night.
“Four of the Harpers staff we spoke with grew up here in Wick,” Mills told him when Conall handed the notes over to Philips to look through. “And there’s only one High School, which they all attended.” Caithness county only boasted two secondary schools, the one here and another up in Thurso. “From their ages, three of them could easily have overlapped with the people in Visser’s group if they’d gone there too.”
We were estimating ages, but from the descriptions given, it seemed probable that all the people that had left Harpers with Kaj Visser that evening had been between twenty-five and thirty or thereabouts. At thirty, I was still asked for proof of age myself annoyingly frequently, so we might be underestimating there. Those ‘If you look under 25, be prepared to show ID’ signs in shops were a bloody nuisance. Who picked that arbitrary number, anyway? I still had to carry my PASS card around with me. It was better than risking losing a passport or my driving licence, but I resented the necessity.
“That certainly increases the chances that none of our five grew up here,” Conall said. “But it doesn’t prove it. That school usually has over eight hundred students attending, and most kids don’t remember many people who weren’t in their own or their siblings’ circles.”
He was right about that. A lot of teachers and classmates left so little impression on self-absorbed youngsters that they were soon forgotten.
“Visser’s group all left Harpers together sometime around half-past eleven,” Conall pressed on. “According to the pathologist’s report, Kaj Visser died between three and four in the morning. That
gives us several hours to fill in. Which pubs and bars do you still have to check, Mills?”
“Just Camps Bar, if we’re sure about the Waterfront nightclub.” The Waterfront had an extended licence until three in the morning, but they hadn’t gone there. I’d already seen the CCTV footage from the camera on the wall near the entrance. No, if they’d stopped for a last drink anywhere else after leaving Harpers, then Camps was our best bet. It was only a short walk from Harpers, and we knew from Mills’ notes that they hadn’t called in anywhere else.
“Visser didn’t go into the Waterfront. We rechecked the footage Munro’s people collected from there last night,” Conall said decisively. “So, they leave Harpers, maybe go somewhere else for a last drink, and then what?” The pubs would all have been packed by that time on a Friday night. Even if they had made a last, quick stop somewhere, it was doubtful that any of the staff would remember seeing them.
“That depends on whether the girls decided to ditch the escorts they’d acquired or not,” Caitlin said. “If they did, then when and where? If not, then did they all split up at that point?”
“Unless the girls were sharing a house or flat, that seems likely.” Philips frowned thoughtfully as he sipped at his ginger ale. “According to our little trip out to the castle this morning, whoever took Visser there needed a good half hour from getting him into a car in town to dumping him in the sea. So the latest they could have left town was half-past three, but it’s more likely to have been earlier than that.”
Our food arrived then, interrupting the conversation. I tested my soup, added some black pepper and extra salt, and passed them over to Conall. The soup was good, better than I’d expected. The serving of cherry pie I’d ordered to follow it was even better. They’d added a whisper of chocolate to the pastry and been generous with the cream, but I couldn’t do it justice. An unexpected flash of vivid, sensory memory ambushed me as I sampled the first forkful. Cherries? For a moment, all I could taste was a blend of citrus and passionfruit and melting sweetness.
Castle Killings: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller (Deadly Highlands Book 4) Page 7