Castle Killings: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller (Deadly Highlands Book 4)

by Oliver Davies

  “Worried he’d be too much of a distraction?” I couldn’t resist teasing him a little. After all, whatever his reasons may have been, Shay had pretty much thrown out his own rule book to spend some extra time with Mads last May. He’d never done that for anyone before. Now, he just sipped calmly at his wine before bothering to respond.

  “I don’t see Jen here either, Con. You could have asked her to come and join us here for the weekend instead of putting her off again.” He put his glass down and picked up his fork, knowing full well that he didn’t need to say another word. You didn’t invite friends like that over to watch you pour nearly all of your time and energy into doing your job. Still, the fact that he’d said that was a good indication of which way he was leaning, I thought.

  My food was delicious, much better than anything we could have ordered in. We savoured our meal unhurriedly, in amicable near-silence after that. I didn’t need to say that I was glad Shay had made that call, and he didn’t need to say that he was glad I’d nudged him into making it. So that was alright then.

  Eleven

  Caitlin

  The team briefing on Thursday afternoon had gone pretty much as I’d expected it would. Conall had been his usual, efficient self, Philips had sat through the whole thing looking a little uncomfortable and out of place, and Shay might as well not have even been in the room. He’d taken a seat behind the rest of us and barely said a word. At least Simon had had the sense to take his lead from the rest of us there and leave him alone.

  The case file we’d inherited had already included Visser’s employment records from VOW, but Shay had clearly run a few searches on the man since the morning, giving us a pretty good outline of Kaj Visser’s life history. What we didn’t have was much of a personality profile on our victim. The interviews that had been conducted by the local team in Wick gave the impression of a man liked by his colleagues and valued by his employers, but, apart from that, we were in the dark. Did Kaj Visser have a short temper or make enemies easily? What was his attitude towards the women he’d had relationships with and vice versa? Was he as law abiding as he appeared to have been? What had provoked someone enough to want to kill him?

  By Friday evening, after completing the first day’s interviews, we at least had a better idea of what Visser had been like around his workmates. Pleasant, non-confrontational, supportive, good company. I’d been particularly interested in the recording of Conall’s interview with one of Visser’s regular crewmates, Lenny Buchanan.

  “Kaj wasn’t the sort to blow his own trumpet if you know what I mean. I never heard him bragging or putting anyone else down. He had this knack of reminding you of someone’s good qualities if they’d said or done something annoying. But in a neutral sort of way, not like he was sticking up for them or excusing them or anything.” He’d paused thoughtfully there. “It was a really good way of defusing tense situations and putting everyone in a better mood. I suppose the reason that we all liked Kaj was that it was impossible not to. I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to hurt him.” He’d sounded genuinely shocked and upset. Quite a few of them had, but Lenny had been considerably more articulate in expressing his thoughts than the rest of them.

  Feeling uncomfortably full after eating way too much at dinner that evening, I found myself back in the living room with only Simon Philips for company. Darren and Mike had gone upstairs to watch a film on Mike’s laptop, but I just wanted to sit and think quietly and look at a few things on my tablet while I digested. Luckily for me, Simon had his headset on and was busily scribbling notes. I really wasn’t in the mood for any more of his endless questions about Shay and Conall. It wasn’t like I could have answered most of them anyway, even if I’d wanted to.

  Brady O’Hara was dead, and I was fiercely glad about that. The world was a better, safer place without him in it. One day, maybe, I’d be able to think about my friend Jackie without the thought of what her last few hours alive had been like poisoning every memory, but it was far too soon for that now. Philips, surely, had to feel the same way. I hadn’t been in the least bit surprised to find that he was still obsessing over the case.

  We’d both attended our mandatory counselling sessions for all the good those had done, but grief and futile rage were just something that had to be worked through over time. They weren’t going to evaporate all by themselves in any hurry.

  In his lengthy, incredibly detailed statement, Shay had expressed his own view that O’Hara himself ought to be seen as a helpless victim. It was the Alter, he’d claimed, who was the real monster, conditioning his vulnerable and deeply damaged ‘puppet’ through a sadistic system of reward and punishment that must have gone on, unnoticed by the world, for years.

  I believe that I understood the whole ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ dissociative identity disorder theory well enough, but on a gut level, I just wasn’t capable of buying it. The whole one body, one brain, two entirely different personalities theory wasn’t something I could accept readily. How could anyone definitively prove it was even real in most cases? I’d heard of a lot of instances where psych patients had managed to consistently fool supposed experts. As a defence plea, on the grounds of insanity, it was rarely successful. Most jurors viewed the whole concept with a sensible amount of scepticism. And it didn’t change anything, whether it was genuine or not.

  However you looked at it, whatever form his delusions took, O’Hara was a total nutjob who enjoyed torturing and murdering people, and he’d needed to be stopped.

  I knew what a single hit from a powerful taser gun felt like. I’d been given a chance to experience it on a training course once. It had been far more physically painful and psychologically disquieting than I’d expected and totally incapacitating while it lasted. Just about every muscle in my body had felt a little sore afterwards, but, apart from that, the effects had been much shorter-lived than those of a PAVA spray. The difference was that the spray, however unpleasant, still left you with some ability to fight back.

  If an agonising muscle cramp in your calf had ever floored you, just imagine that sensation simultaneously striking every muscle in your body, and you’ll get the idea of what a taser gun can do. What multiple hits in succession might feel like was something I never wanted to discover.

  There were plenty of arguments for and against a general issuing of tasers. There was a lot to be said for having such a tool at your disposal, especially when confronting potentially violent, irrational offenders. On the other hand, like anything else, the opportunity for misuse was definitely there. Worse, it might encourage more people to illegally seek to acquire or make their own. That was a nightmare waiting to happen. With the right training, at least you stood a good chance against a knife attack. There was no defence against a taser once it had hit you. For a brief space of time, it left you as physically helpless as a newborn baby, totally at the mercy of your attacker.

  Like Jackie had been.

  I had no idea how Shay had made himself go to that house alone. I only knew why he’d done it. He’d spelt out his calculations for all the possible outcomes clearly enough, and they’d turned out to be uncannily accurate. His only major error had been in underestimating the security measures O’Hara had taken. The way that place had been remodelled and reinforced, it would have taken even a fully equipped strike team over an hour to get to O’Hara and to whatever was left of Jimmy Stewart by then.

  But how did anyone simply refuse to let fear affect them the way he had? In an emergency, in the heat of the moment, yes, alright. People did terrifying and extraordinary things every day to save the lives of others, but they didn’t sit down and cold-bloodedly calculate the risks and then go ahead and do it, anyway. I’d long since given up trying to figure out how Shay’s mind really worked. I couldn’t even tell if the experience had left him with any long-term trauma. It didn’t seem to have. In fact, I couldn’t help believing that the whole business had been a lot easier on him, in some ways, than it had been on his cousin. Conall didn’t hav
e the option of turning his emotions off at will whenever he needed to.

  As for Philips, it seemed that he couldn’t stop worrying at the case like a loose tooth, and I thought I knew why. He was wondering if Shay Keane, despite being drugged, weakened, and not in full control of his own muscles, had really misjudged that fatal strike. Personally, I didn’t believe that it had been deliberate. Shay had taken the first opportunity that offered itself, and he must have been getting desperate by then, with the time in which he could act running out. Given the condition he was in, it was a miracle he’d been able to do as well as he had.

  Simon must have finished going through the last of the interviews while I’d let my thoughts wander because he closed his notebook with a dissatisfied sigh and pulled his headset off.

  “No likely suspects among today’s batch. Not unless they’re world-class liars.”

  “At least we got some useful new information out of them.” I put aside my tablet with the article I hadn’t even started reading still on display. “For one thing, we now have a much better idea of what the girl Visser left Harpers with was wearing that night.” Both Sandy Morris and Lenny Buchanan had agreed, more or less, on those details, with some patient coaxing from Conall. That was more than Munro’s lot had managed to obtain. “Who knows? Maybe someone on Darren and Mike’s list of regular Harpers clients caught her or her friends in a photo.”

  “I hope so!” he said emphatically. “I expect we’ll be asked to spend part of tomorrow afternoon chasing that possibility up as a priority. Even if nobody in that group had anything to do with Visser’s murder, we still need to find out where and when they parted company.”

  “If they had nothing to do with it, don’t you think they’d have come forward to clear themselves by now?”

  “Not necessarily,” he disagreed. “Especially if they don’t want anything to do with the police. And what if they were just visitors passing through? The death wasn’t identified as a murder until days after the event, and a lot of people don’t pay regular attention to the news, anyway.”

  He had a point there. Tempting as it was to assume that the woman Visser’d hooked up with had lured him into a trap, she might not have had anything to do with his death. We still had three or four missing hours to fill in that night, during which Kaj Visser could have bumped into anyone.

  “I really hope you’re wrong,” I said. “It will make things a lot harder for us if Visser went off on his own after all.” It was an unwelcome thought, and I really didn’t want to spend any more of my evening thinking about work, anyway. Philips was watching me thoughtfully, and I suspected that he would be only too happy to keep hashing things over, pointless as it was. “Look, we’re off the clock now, Simon. If you don’t mind, I just want to read and unwind and start fresh tomorrow, okay?”

  “Of course, sorry. But there is just one more thing I’d like to ask before leaving you in peace, if I may.”

  “Just one?” He nodded. “Alright then, ask.”

  “You’ve spent time with Mr Keane, even trained with him, or so I hear. You must have a better idea of what he’s really like than most of us. What do you make of him?” So we were back to that again? I thought he’d meant a question about the new case.

  What did I make of Shay Keane? I supposed I couldn’t blame Philips for being concerned. I’d thought Shay might be a little dangerously unhinged myself in those first days after I’d met him. He hadn’t made any effort at all to disabuse me of that notion either, so he only had himself to thank for that.

  Well, however little he chose to reveal in face-to-face encounters with new people, surely Shay’s actions spoke for themselves? So did the way Conall felt about him, Daniel too, and they knew him better than anyone else ever had any hope of doing.

  “He’s a very private person, understandably,” I said carefully. “He might come across as a little strange, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with him. If he likes to keep to himself, I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “He’s more than a little strange, Caitlin. Doesn’t he worry you?”

  “Not in the way you’re implying, no. Look at what he risked to save Jimmy Stewart. Ask yourself what kind of a person would walk into something like that, even knowing they were the only real chance the boy had.”

  “He didn’t know that. None of us did.”

  “In your opinion,” I said pointedly. “But he was sure of it, and rightly so as it turned out. Accept the evidence, Simon. You’ve read through it enough times, listened to his statement. The truth is that Jimmy Stewart would have died horribly in that house if it wasn’t for Shay Keane. He’s not only the most intellectually gifted man I’m ever likely to meet, but he’s also probably the most empathetic one too. That’s the psychological opposite of people like Brady O’Hara. Christ! He even felt sorry for the sick bastard. I just wanted him dead.”

  “So did I,” Simon admitted. “Preferably slowly and painfully, if I’m being totally honest. It’s just that I can’t help wondering if Keane’s been lying about any of it. How would we know? It’s been nagging at me, the suspicion that he might potentially be just as dangerous.”

  “They put people like him through a much more rigorous vetting process than our new recruits get.” I offered. “He wouldn’t be allowed to work with the NCA, or with us, if there were any red flags in his psych profile.”

  “He consults for the National Crime Agency? I didn’t know that. I wish they’d tighten our screening up too, but that’s good to know.” Some of the tension seemed to leak out of him as he leaned forward and gave me an apologetic look. “I suppose I came across as a bit obsessive this morning.”

  “Just a bit. Look, we both know how grief can really mess with your head, especially when it’s still fresh. I’m not surprised you wanted to bury yourself in a distraction, but enough is enough, Simon. Shay might well seem highly eccentric, but he’s not crazy.”

  Philips held my gaze for a moment before nodding, then stared down at his clasped hands. “You tried to tell me, the first time I met him, that he was one of the good guys.”

  “I remember. You weren’t very nice to him.”

  “I was downright rude, and he responded with nothing but painful politeness. Making allowances, I suppose. I made it even worse after that, too, at O’Hara’s house. You should have seen the state he was in, Caitlin. I was worried he might hurt himself or someone else. And there was a dead body cooling on the floor too, don’t forget. We have standard procedures for restraining people that pose a high risk like that.”

  “We do, but they aren’t always necessary or appropriate, and it wasn’t your call to make.” That was one mistake I had no intention of going easy on him about.

  “I know,” he admitted unhappily. “I realised I’d fucked up the moment I tried to grab his arm. The look on his face! He couldn’t scramble back into that cell fast enough. I’m not surprised Conall lost his temper. He’d told me to keep my distance.”

  “He wasn’t at his best that day either. I think he’d been in some kind of suspended shock since Shay went missing. ‘Worried sick’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  “I can only imagine,” he agreed. “Any fool can see how much he cares about his cousin.” He shrugged unhappily. “I was very surprised to be chosen for this team after all that.”

  “Over Morgan? On a murder case? You’re kidding, right? Look, Simon, you both made excusable mistakes that day. Let it go. He has.”

  “And Mr Keane?”

  “I don’t think he has a problem with you. He just likes to be left alone so he can focus on doing his job.”

  “Oh, I got the message alright, don’t you worry.” He stood up. “And I promised I’d leave you in peace too, didn’t I? Thanks, Caitlin, you’ve been really helpful. I think I’ll go and read a bit myself before bed. Have a good night.”

  “You too, Simon.” After he’d gone, I picked up my tablet again, feeling a lot more comfortable. My stomach was settling down nicely a
nd, now that I knew what had been bothering Philips, my mental indigestion had eased up too. I was really glad that we’d had that quiet little chat.

  I found that I wasn’t in the mood for any heavy reading after all, so I bookmarked the article I’d failed to get into for later and spent the next couple of hours finishing off the historical novel I’d been reading instead. It was very engaging and served its purpose. Not a single thought about work, or real life, managed to intrude on my enjoyment. I saved the last chapter to read in bed and went out like a light within minutes of finishing it.

  Maybe it was getting away from Inverness, or perhaps it was knowing that there were people I could count on within earshot, but that was the best night’s sleep I’d had in weeks.

  Twelve

  After our leisurely dinner break, I was keen to see how Shay’s searches were going, or rather his little AI project’s searches. Shay had certainly been expanding that programme’s capabilities at an impressive rate lately. I’d had no idea how much of the simple, repetitive stuff he was letting it deal with unsupervised these days. Earlier, at the station, he’d had it look through all the digital files from Wick’s Public Space CCTV Network cameras from last Friday. Munro’s people might not have missed anything, but we’d needed to double-check the available footage. Munro himself would have probably had a fit if he’d known how easily my cousin had accessed and copied those files. Well, he’d never know, so who cared?