She glanced at her watch and realised time was running out if she was to make her meeting back in Inverness. Although she’d gathered some colour – the tent, the activity, the line of searchers – it was clear she wouldn’t glean much more, so she stepped away from the officer, glanced at Chaz as he crossed the road to find another angle and pulled out her mobile. She thumbed through the news feeds, looking for any mention of a body found on Culloden. The main headlines were about New Dawn, a group so shadowy they made MI5 look like gossips, sending suspicious packages to political leaders in Holyrood and Westminster. At this stage no one knew if they contained bombs or dangerous substances. That made her think about Dalgliesh again, for the rumour was that New Dawn were effectively the paramilitary arm of Spioraid, rumours which he managed to deny without actually condemning their actions.
So far only the BBC had anything on the murder, which came as no surprise. But the rest wouldn’t be far behind, New Dawn or no New Dawn. If she wanted to stay ahead of this story in some way, she’d need a line that was hers and hers alone. She scrolled through her contacts, found the number. It was answered on the third ring.
‘Bill, need a favour,’ she said.
There was a grunt on the other end. ‘No surprise there. But not even a hello or how are you? I thought I was supposed to be the gruff bastard.’
She smiled. She hadn’t liked former Detective Sergeant Bill Sawyer much when she’d first met him. She’d thought him not just a misogynist but also corrupt. He did have an attitude towards women, but he also had one towards men, which made him an equal opportunities offender. She had grown used to his chauvinistic tendencies, even come to accept to them. After all, it takes all sorts. They had been on opposite sides on Stoirm, but since then had come to like each other. It’s amazing how both of them being viewed with some suspicion by some very unpleasant people had acted as a bonding agent.
‘Hello, how are you?’ she said, with a smile to herself.
‘Leg hurts, thanks for asking. This bloody weather doesn’t agree with it.’
Bill Sawyer had broken his leg after being thrown from a speeding vehicle, and it had curtailed his hillwalking considerably. It had happened the same day as Chaz had had his accident. The island’s little hospital had been very busy for a short time.
‘You do know a lot of it’s in your mind, don’t you?’
‘No – I know that a lot of it’s in my leg, smart arse,’ he said. ‘And that’s no way to butter me up for a favour, by the way.’
‘Ach, Bill, I thought we were past the buttering-up stage, you and me.’
She heard him give a short laugh. ‘I don’t think we ever reached the buttering-up stage, darling. What’s on your mind?’
‘There’s been a body found up on Culloden.’
‘The battlefield?’
‘No, the children’s soft play area. Of course it’s the battlefield.’
‘Well, there’s a village too. And a luxury hotel. Not to mention the moor itself. I just needed you to be specific, that’s all. I thought it was a reporter’s job to be accurate . . .’
‘Yeah, yeah. I need a line on it.’
‘So, what do you want me to do?’
They had danced this particular jig before. She needed his help and he played hard to get. She kept her voice steady but her teeth had gritted. He could be so bloody annoying.
‘See if any of your old pals can feed you something, anything that the big boys don’t have.’
She wanted to have something that was exclusive to her – just a detail – that she could drop online right away and hopefully draw people to buy the paper at the end of the week. The TV, radio and dailies used to have the advantage over the local weeklies in that they were more immediate, but the internet was a great leveller. Now she could break a story before or at the same time as them. She just needed something unique.
‘Is it a murder, Becca?’ he asked.
‘That’s what I want to know. They’ve said nothing so far, but there’s a lot of activity. The SIO is a DCI Roach. She’s new to Inverness.’
Sawyer fell silent, trying to place the name. ‘Val Roach? A DCI, out of Perth? Tall and slim, with short, dark hair?’
Rebecca couldn’t confirm her build or hairstyle, but other details matched up. ‘You know her?’
‘Never heard of her,’ he said, and laughed.
Everyone’s a comedian, she thought. ‘So you think you can get me a line?’
‘Aye, but the question is, why should I?’
This was part of the dance. ‘Old times’ sake?’
‘Our “old times” only go back to last autumn, darling. Hardly makes us BFFs.’
‘Bill, you know you’re going to do it.’
‘I do, do I? And what makes you so sure?’
‘Because you like me. Because the stories I did about the Stoirm business helped your reputation . . .’
As a cop, years before, Sawyer had been suspected of falsifying a confession and the doubt the defence cast over it had helped a man get off a murder charge on a Not Proven, the ‘Bastard Verdict’ they called it, occupying a shadowy middle ground between guilty and not guilty. Some said that it was a jury’s way of telling the accused that they thought he did the crime but the evidence just wasn’t there. Others point out that it was a hold over from the old system of justice in Scotland, when a charge was found either proven or not proven, for guilt or innocence didn’t enter into it back then. Rebecca’s story about what happened on Stoirm suggested that the man had been responsible after all. However, she hadn’t been able to print the whole truth behind the events the previous autumn; she and Bill Sawyer both knew that. Guilty men certainly walked free. Some of the island’s secrets had to remain closed.
‘I don’t give a toss about my reputation and you know it. I’ve got my pension and a wee bit of work on the side, so the Job can stuff themselves.’
She knew this was bluster. The bit of work on the side was often investigative – he picked up a few quid from Elspeth on occasion – and Rebecca knew the stories had helped him. ‘But you’ll still get me something, right?’
He sighed. ‘I’ll ask a couple of questions, best I can do. But you don’t get anything that could impede the investigation, right?’
‘Right. Absolutely.’
‘And you don’t get anything that could only have come from one source. I’ve only got a few pals left in the Job and I don’t want them put in any compromising positions. Clear?’
‘Of course.’
There was a pause as he considered his own conditions. ‘Okay, fine. Leave it with me. But you owe me a drink. A big one. Maybe even a meal.’
‘Without a doubt. One slurpy and a Happy Meal coming up,’ she said and heard him grunt. ‘What do you think I am? The Sun?’
4
Chaz pinged his shots from his laptop to the Agency in Glasgow as they headed back to Inverness, technology being a wonderful thing. She was aware of his regular looks in the passenger side mirror, even if they were fleeting, but didn’t pass comment. He didn’t know he was doing it but she knew some part of him was looking for a vehicle he would never see again. She dropped him off at the flat he and Alan rented near her own, then drove to the Chronicle office as quickly as speed limits and traffic allowed. For decades the paper had operated out of a two-storey brown sandstone building overlooking the River Ness. However, with the closure of the onsite press in favour of outsourcing the printing – and the company printers going the way of the typesetter and the compositor and the dodo – those premises were deemed to be financially unsustainable, so they had moved the reporters and office staff to a business and retail park. A rival title also had offices nearby, but that really did not matter these days, as not many readers – or ‘end users’, as one visiting expert had called them – visited the office. Rebecca had never worked in the old premises, so she didn’t know how busy it might have been back then, had never known the excitement created when the presses were rolling or the t
hrill of holding that first printed copy. Elspeth had once told her there used to be a steady stream of people through the door to talk about stories or to book small ads, however the number-crunchers down south had decreed that the footfall wasn’t high enough to merit the overheads of the by-then virtually deserted town-centre premises. Elspeth said she’d fought the move but she’d always known she was on a loser. At least the Chronicle was still in Inverness – the same move had seen their sister papers in Elgin and Grantown uprooted from their communities to share the new space.
She climbed the stairs to the large open-plan office. She was relieved the meeting had not already begun, so there would be no wrist-slapping from Barry in her immediate future. The reporting teams and the two ‘content managers’, as sub editors were now known, were already clustered at the far end of the room, where she could see a large flat-screen TV had been positioned. The door to Barry’s office was closed, so she assumed he was in there with the new miracle maker. Behind her she could hear the advertising staff beginning to follow her up the stairs. She took off her coat, hung it on the rack behind the door and joined the other staff members.
‘What’s the story so far?’ she asked Hugh Jamieson, the oldest reporter on the team. He was tall and cadaverous and had been with the Grantown paper since the 1980s.
‘Barry has been ensconced in his office with the bloke for half an hour,’ he said. ‘There’s no blood trickling under the door, so we’re taking that as a good sign.’
‘We’re getting a project manager. That’s never a good sign.’
‘True dat,’ said Hugh.
Rebecca stared at the blank TV screen facing them. ‘We going to watch a movie?’
Hugh’s lips thinned into a grim smile. ‘I suspect a message from Big Brother. And I don’t mean the one with Davina McCall.’
‘So what’s he like, this new guy?’
Hugh shrugged. ‘Didn’t see him. I was out the back having a fag when he arrived.’ The no smoking rules meant that any staff addicted to the weed had to go outside. ‘I came back to see this telly in place and the office door closed.’
The office door opened and Barry appeared, clad in his customary denim shirt and trousers, ahead of a fresh-faced young man in a smart suit carrying a laptop. His skin was delicately tanned, but it failed to hide the ghost of teenage acne. His hair was expertly cut and if Rebecca had been able to look closely enough she was certain his fingernails would have been just as expertly manicured. It all made him appear very business-like, but he still looked about fifteen years of age.
‘Jesus,’ Hugh whispered. ‘Has he got a note from his mammy to let him out of school?’
Barry gave them all a glance, nodded at Rebecca to show he was gratified to see her there, then took a seat on the edge of the desk furthest away from them all. So the new guy was going to lead the meeting. Something told her that Barry – the editor of all the titles in the north of Scotland – being side-lined was not a good sign.
The young man attached a cable running from the rear of the TV to his laptop and placed it on the nearest desktop, the screen facing him.
He’s got a PowerPoint presentation, Rebecca realised. God help us.
He looked around at them for a brief moment, then spoke. His accent was from London, with just enough of a hint of EastEnders to show he was one of the boys. ‘Hello, and thank you all for coming along today.’
Not that we had a choice, Rebecca thought.
‘My name is Les Morgan and I have been sent by head office in London to give you all a helping hand. You might not think you need it, but circulation, as you well know, is struggling. The newspaper industry is facing its most challenging period ever. In fact, I’ve never seen a time like this in all my years in the press.’
Rebecca heard Hugh snort softly.
‘Sales are down, revenues are down, and we need to find a way to at least bolster them, if not ensure they rally. Your jobs, all our jobs, depend on it. We have to work together to make sure that these grand old titles continue to bring the news to the people of the north of Scotland and the Highlands, both in print and online, for many years to come.’
He paused – his speech was beginning to sound like a press release – and glanced at Barry. The editor’s face was impassive but he ran his fingers through his hair, which was his tell that he was on shaky ground. That was also not a good sign. Rebecca noted for the first time that Barry had visited the barber. The day before he’d been sporting his customary mullet, but now it was somewhat shorter, if still not fashionable. He had made an effort to smarten himself up. Something was most definitely in the wind.
‘Here it comes,’ Hugh whispered, as Les Morgan took a deep breath.
5
DCI Valerie Roach stared down at the body on the heather and wished she had a coffee in her hand. It was her habit to brew up the good stuff before she left home every morning and carry it with her in a thermos to consume at work, it being her experience that the muck they served in police stations was not something she wanted polluting her system, thank you very much. She was gasping for a hit, but there was no way she would bring the thermos onto a crime scene. She recalled as a child watching Columbo wander round a locus smoking his cigar and dropping ash everywhere. Or egg shells, if it was an early morning call-out. But that was fiction, this was reality. Science had taken over murder investigations. She’d been told by one retired CID officer that at one notorious murder in the sixties they’d brought recruits in to show them the body in situ, everyone – detectives, uniforms, even police cadets – traipsing across the crime scene in their size tens, contaminating evidence and leaving bootprints and who knew what else. DNA changed it all, she knew. Contact traces – the idea that everyone either left something of themselves at, or took something away from, a scene – had been around for decades, but once people realised that genetics left their fingerprints everywhere, the boffins really took over. DNA can fly from a person to a radius of five metres, apparently, hence the need for the full-body suits, lest a random follicle or skin cell drift from the investigators and screw everything up.
She really needed a caffeine fix.
She wondered if she had a problem. Did she have a caffeine monkey on her back? Should she consider kicking it cold turkey? Or – worse – drinking something green that tasted like the water brussel sprouts are boiled in?
She thrust the thoughts from her mind. She knew what her subconscious was doing: it was compensating for where she was and what she was looking at. She had been a cop for twenty years and she had seen death in many forms: peaceful, violent, young, old, premature, overdue. She’d seen blood and brains and bodily fluids and faecal matter smeared, spattered and spurted. As a uniform she’d found the body of a drug addict in a public toilet cubicle, dead from an overdose as she defecated, the syringe still jammed into her arm. She had once retrieved a head from a drainage ditch after a motorcyclist had skidded into a lorry. She had prised an infant boy from the arms of a woman who was still talking to him, still rocking him, even though the child had been dead for over a week.
Those incidents were sad. They were horrific.
But this?
This was both but it was also downright weird.
The flap to the protective tent was unzipped and DS Paul Bremner ducked inside. He was similarly dressed to her in disposable overalls, his mouth masked and his head encased in the elasticated cap, even though he was unlikely to cast any hair because he was as bald as a coot, earning him the nickname ‘Yul’ Bremner from officers old or savvy enough to have seen The Magnificent Seven. She thought about that film now. It was one of her husband’s favourites. Or rather, had been. She felt the familiar stab in her chest as she thought of Joe, but she forced it away. Concentrate on the job in hand, Roach.
‘Anything new?’ Bremner asked, his eyes on the body. He had left her forty-five minutes earlier to help co-ordinate the search teams combing the heather.
‘Confirmation just in,’ said Roach, hoping he
didn’t hear the catch in her voice. Damn it, Joe has been gone a year now. ‘Just as we thought – guy’s dead.’
Bremner nodded. ‘Aye, well. I’m not surprised.’
They remained silent for a moment as they each studied the body for perhaps the dozenth time since they’d arrived two hours before.
Roach stared at the weapon and asked, ‘You’ve never seen anything like this before, I suppose?’
‘Hell, no. You?’
She shook her head. Yup, this was just plain weird.
‘You think it’s real?’ Bremner wondered.
‘Real enough, I’d say.’
‘No, I mean, you think it’s an antique or a replica?’
Roach leaned closer. ‘Looks old, but what the hell do I know? I’m not on the Antiques Roadshow. Forensics will probably have a metallurgist give it a look-see.’
‘A metallurgist?’
‘Yes, an expert in metals and their alloys.’
‘I know what a metallurgist is, boss. I just didn’t think there’d be one on call.’
‘You can find an expert on anything these days. The internet is a wonderful thing.’
Knives, guns, hammers, baseball bats, cricket bats, car jacks, even a golf club once – a nine iron, if memory served. She’d seen them all used to take a life. But this? This was unique in her experience. Not many killers carried a full-sized claymore around with them.
But the weapon wasn’t the only thing that was weird about this case.
Bremner knelt beside the body, still careful not to touch anything until the scientific carrion had picked it clean. ‘What about the togs? You think they’re period?’
‘No idea. That’s something else for the experts to tell us.’
The Blood is Still Page 3