Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  Michie was looking a bit on edge, she thought, but not rattled. When she asked brightly if he’d had a grilling, he said, ‘No, no, very civilised. Just wanted to know the guys’ addresses and the name of the hotel where we were staying so they could check I was where I said I was and they could eliminate me from enquiries. That was all, really.

  ‘I wanted to get in touch with Niall’s sister, so I could offer her appropriate sympathy from the company, as you know, but of course they weren’t at liberty to give me her details. Still, they said they would pass on our details and invite her to make contact. So, if someone calls in this connection, put her straight through to me, all right?’

  Ailie bridled. ‘Yes of course. I’m not in the habit of screening your calls unless you ask me to.’

  ‘No, but you might start gabbling on to her about her brother. I don’t want that. Straight through, all right?’

  Ailie gave a curt nod, then went out. What was it that Michie didn’t want her to say to Niall’s sister? Then it struck her: she would be Niall’s next-of-kin, set to inherit, among other things, Niall’s shares in Curran Services. If Michie could get hold of them, he would have the majority shareholding – and suddenly the connection with Chris Brady started to make sense.

  And just how far would they go to get what they wanted?

  DCI Strang was scribbling notes to himself as he read through the reports that were coming in. He’d skipped lunch; it was after two already and after a hectic morning he needed things straight in his mind to write the press statement he’d be making this afternoon. He’d hoped to speak to DS Borthwick beforehand, but she was unavailable. It wasn’t a real problem since it was going to be short and uncontroversial, but it never did any harm to make sure she was kept on board.

  DS Taylor and DC Murray were detailed to come for a briefing at three. Murray was definitely the more useful officer and today it had looked as if she’d learnt a bit since last time. Her besetting sin had been trying to chip in with her own questions when he was conducting an interview but this morning she’d waited till afterwards and hadn’t butted in with a question that would have been unnecessary and disruptive.

  Details had come in from an interview with Bruce Michie in Aberdeen about the fishing hotel he had visited with his friends, along with their names, and he was keen to check it out after he made the statement. But if he took Murray with him this afternoon in preference to her sergeant, Taylor would definitely resent it. He didn’t want to provoke open warfare.

  He didn’t want to provoke open warfare with DI Hay either, but he was irritated that the man was being deliberately obstructive. If he could have taken Jack Lothian with him this afternoon it would have got him off the hook.

  He was still brooding on the problem when there was a tap on the door and Lothian himself appeared.

  Strang brightened. ‘Good to see you. I thought I’d lost you to DI Hay.’

  ‘I found that the problem he had called me back to deal with was very easily sorted out, so I left a message telling him and came back,’ Lothian said with professional blandness. ‘A couple of things had come in that I felt you should know about at once.

  ‘There’s a report from the Forsinard Flows visitors centre that a car had been sitting in the car park there since the previous Saturday. It’s got Niall Aitchison’s number plate.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘It’s on the A897 – that’s the road we went on to Mr Mowat’s farm this morning.’

  Strang digested that. ‘So, it’s not far from the house where Gabrielle Ross is staying?’

  Lothian looked blank. ‘Couldn’t tell you, sir. But I can find out—’

  ‘No need. We can get my team onto it this afternoon and call in some forensic help to check out the car.’

  ‘There was another thing too. Someone called David Ross contacted the incident room at the village hall to ask if you would phone him back urgently. Wouldn’t leave a message.’

  ‘Ah,’ Strang said. ‘Gabrielle’s husband. I’d better take a minute to call him now. She’s in a highly nervous state and my information is that he’s offshore, so he may be anxious about her.’ He called the number Lothian gave him.

  Ross was indeed anxious. ‘I’m gutted about Niall, of course, but it’s my wife that’s my big worry. They were very close, you know, both of them utterly devoted to my father-in-law. She’s had a bad time and she’s not well – fragile, you know? Right on the edge, frankly, and police questioning when she’s so shocked could tip her over.

  ‘OK, you’ve a job to do and Gabrielle will want to help any way she can, but I think she’ll need a lot of support. I can’t get off the rig until Thursday morning. Could questioning wait till I’ve seen how she is?’

  Strang gave an inward sigh but having seen Gabrielle he could understand the man’s concern. ‘Yes of course, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ll be wanting to interview you as well, so it would be helpful if you could make yourself available on Thursday. We can assess your wife’s situation then.’

  Ross seemed suitably grateful and Strang rang off, pulling a face. ‘Not ideal, since she’s likely to know more about Aitchison than anyone else, but driving her into a complete breakdown wouldn’t be great for PR.

  ‘Now, Taylor and Murray are coming for a briefing at three. You should be in on that and then after I’ve spoken to the media I’ll be wanting you to come with me to the hotel where Gabrielle Ross’s business partner was staying for a fishing weekend with some of his pals on the weekend when Aitchison was last seen. All right?’

  Once Lothian had gone, Strang, his problem solved, went on to prepare the press statement. Ideally it should give the impression that the police were keen to be totally frank in so far as they were able while sadly not being able to be very frank at all.

  When DC Murray got back to the incident room at the village hall, it was very quiet with just a couple of uniforms working at computers and one on a phone call. There was no sign of Taylor and the tea trolley was unattended, but there was a box with sandwiches and crisps, so she helped herself, looked dubiously at the filling, then found a free terminal and logged on.

  She’d been hoping that PC Davidson might be around, bursting with useful information, but there was no sign of him. Taylor had definitely gone one up for thinking of interviewing Mairi and Strang had slapped her down when she’d tried to claim the credit that was due to her for asking the right questions.

  She should have redeemed herself a bit, though, when they’d gone to Sinclair’s house. She had been a model of unobtrusive efficiency and hadn’t said a word, even when she’d really wanted to probe a bit about the weird stepdaughter’s background – just as well, as it turned out, since when she said that to Strang afterwards it was obvious that he knew about it already. A double bereavement, he told her. And judging by her reaction, finding out what had happened to Aitchison was going to make things even worse.

  Murray logged on to see what Taylor had managed to collate from the door-to-doors – not a lot, as far as she could see. As yet there was nothing useful, but he’d checked barely half of them. What time had he gone off for his lunch break, she wondered, as she gave a sigh and settled down to work through them.

  Still nothing. Apart from Aitchison’s neighbour, no one had seen the man since that Saturday morning. So, though they knew when his body had been placed in the empty cottage, they had no real idea when the man had been killed and the autopsy report hadn’t helped – not even a guess. And what did ‘preservative process’ mean? Embalming? There were some dead weird features to this case.

  Absorbed in her work, she didn’t notice PC Davidson’s approach until he tentatively cleared his throat just at her shoulder. She jumped and looked round. Just for a moment she didn’t recognise him; the little moustache had disappeared – a great improvement, even if it did make him look more like a teenager than ever.

  ‘Ah, Craig! Got something for me? Come on, sit down.’

  He sat down opposite her, lo
oking awkward. ‘Don’t want to get your hopes up too much – it’s not a lot, really. I was just doing house-to-house asking if anyone had seen Aitchison in the week before we found him. There was this female – she hadn’t, but all she wanted to talk about was a Pat Curran. That mean anything?’

  ‘Oh yes. He’s dead, but he won’t lie down. Go on.’

  ‘She went into a rant about the whole family. He was a conman and there’s a daughter, Gabrielle – she’s a murderer, according to my source.’

  ‘A murderer?’ Thinking of the broken creature she had seen that morning, Murray was astonished. ‘Who did she murder?’

  ‘She was so worked up by this time, she was gibbering. It was something to do with Morven Gunn.’

  He spoke the name with venom, and Murray smiled. ‘Your friend? She can’t have been the victim – she’s certainly alive and kicking.’

  ‘Oh yes, and then some. But that was about it. A male heard the woman was shouting and came to the door. He told her she’d to calm down or she’d get in trouble and said to me not to pay any attention. As he shoved her back in she said over her shoulder, “You look in the graveyard.” That was all.’

  Murray’s eyes were shining. ‘Sounds good to me. You’re a wee stotter, Craig.’

  He grinned. ‘Happy to help. And by the way, Lothian told me Gunn’s dropped the formal charge. Said your boss put her right in her place.’

  ‘He’s good at that,’ she said with feeling. ‘Thanks again, Craig.’

  ‘I’ll get my report in now,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘Er … could you hold it back for a bit? Just give me a chance to check it out and then I’ll get back to you, OK?’

  He looked a little puzzled, but said, ‘Sure,’ and went off.

  She knew she shouldn’t have done it, but she needed to convince Strang that though Taylor might outrank her she could out-think him every time. She could go to the graveyard right now, if she knew where it was. Taylor, of course, had the car keys but it could be in walking distance.

  There was no one here who looked as if they would have local knowledge. She went out into the high street and into the Spar shop, three doors along. The girl at the till tried to send her to the crematorium in Thurso, but when she insisted it was a graveyard she was looking for, an older woman came forward.

  ‘There’s one just along the road on the right, by the old Free Kirk. Can’t miss it.’ She smiled. ‘Looking for your ancestors, are you? We get a lot of folk doing that around here these days. It’s that programme about who you think you are that does it.’

  Murray didn’t correct her, only thanked her and went off to follow her instructions. She’d been right; it wasn’t hard to find. The church was boarded up, but the graveyard was still well-tended; a peaceful spot on sloping ground, very natural with the graves planted in the mossy turf with rocky outcrops and straggling trees whose tops were barbered by the prevailing wind.

  It was still today, though, still and clammy. Even the slight incline made Murray sweat under the midday sun as she walked around, checking the headstones as she went. They mostly seemed to be old graves, some leaning and even lying flat, covered with moss.

  As she looked around, a flash of colour caught her eye – pink, from a row of little rose bushes on what was obviously a more modern grave; its headstone was shiny grey granite with the lettering in gold. She bent to read it.

  ‘Gary Gunn, beloved son of Morven Gunn,’ it said, with a date of death some nine years previously.

  Murray bit her lip. Never judge someone else; you don’t know what has made them the way they are. No wonder Morven was angry and aggressive, especially if she believed her son had been murdered, as Craig’s source suggested. She stood thinking for a moment, then turned to go.

  There was litter nearby: green striped paper, torn into shreds that looked as if it had wrapped a bouquet of roses – yellow, probably, though now it was reduced to a scattered pile of browning petals and brutally broken stalks.

  Despite the heat, Murray felt a chill. It was worrying evidence of fury, of violence and, yes, of real hate.

  Where else had that hatred been directed? Morven Gunn had been totally unmoved by her brother’s death.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was almost quarter to three when DC Murray got back to the village hall, where Taylor was waiting for her with unconcealed irritation.

  ‘Where the hell were you? I was only going to wait another minute before I drove along for the briefing myself. You can explain to Strang that it’s your fault if we’re late.’ He strode out of the hall, throwing open the door and leaving it to swing back in her face.

  She hurried to catch up with him. ‘Where were you anyway when I got back here? I’ve been working on the reports you hadn’t finished and then went out for a bit of air.’

  ‘None of your business where I was,’ he snapped.

  As if she needed to ask! The beer breath just about knocked her over as she joined him in the car and they drove in hostile silence along to the Masons Arms.

  It gave Murray time to think about what she was going to do with the interesting information that had come her way. She knew what she should do: tell Strang whenever she saw him. She’d have to do a bit of fancy footwork about how the information had come to her, but the well-constructed fictions she’d been telling her mother all through her adolescent years had sharpened her wits and she could always think of something, even at short notice.

  On the other hand, knowledge was power and secretly hoarded knowledge was even more satisfying. She wanted to impress Strang to the point where he would have to ignore Taylor’s seniority; if she quietly found out a bit more about the ‘murder’ accusation against Gabrielle Ross, she could present him with a neat package of information instead of just a line that he – and even Taylor – could follow up on.

  She was having misgivings about that by the time they reached the hotel car park. Perhaps if she and Strang were working on their own this afternoon, she might be better to tell him anyway – she could say PC Davidson had happened to mention the information and that she had used her initiative and checked out the graveyard. Only he hadn’t ever been exactly keen on her using her initiative, really.

  Murray was still in two minds when she went into Strang’s office. When she heard that Lothian was to go with him to do interviews at the fishing hotel while she was stuck with Taylor checking on an abandoned car, that settled it.

  The hotel, rather coyly called the Angler’s Rest, wasn’t quite the traditional fishing hotel Strang had expected. His father, in favour of killing things in general, had taken him a couple of times to a fishing and shooting hotel on the west coast, which had been the ancestral home of the owner, fallen on hard times. Nothing much had changed since the days of Victorian hunting and shooting parties: the furnishings were shabby, the ancient curtains all but in tatters and the more modern comforts non-existent, but there were blazing fires, menus that featured roasts and school puddings, and a help-yourself bar that had an eclectic range of whiskies and an honour box. The stone-flagged hall was always littered with waders and its walls were lined with stags’ heads and glass cases with remarkably un-lifelike fish.

  The Angler’s Rest wasn’t quite like that. Its position near Halkirk, about ten miles from Thurso, was certainly ideal for access to the trout fishing at Loch Watten and Loch Calder, but it was just a grey stone villa-style house with an unappealing two-storey block extension and a white-painted conservatory on the front. The signboard featured a very large salmon leaping on a line above a very small man.

  There was no one about when they walked in. The entrance hall was a bar and presumably the counter also acted as a reception desk. There was no one visible but Lothian found a buzzer to press while Strang looked around.

  The carpet was an aggressive orangey tartan with bar stools to match. There was a wooden stand on the bar counter crammed with leaflets about boat hire, ghillies, organised fishing days and tackle shops and there were
framed angling cartoons on the beige and cream striped vinyl wallpaper. Strang had a suspicion that the fish mounted on the wall behind the bar might, if prompted, sing ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’.

  They waited, then Lothian pressed the buzzer again. When there was still no response, they walked on through the conservatory dining room and into the kitchen behind. The back door was open, and they could hear voices from the garden beyond.

  A heavily built man in rather grubby chef’s whites was sitting in the sun smoking along with another man in jeans and a grey T-shirt and a girl, who looked about eighteen, in a pink overall. She saw them first.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Police!’ and then the men turned too.

  The chef put his hands above his head. ‘It’s all right, Officer, I’ll come quietly!’ he declaimed, to laughter from the others.

  How often had he heard that one, Strang thought, wearily. ‘Thank you, sir. DCI Strang and Sergeant Lothian. Is one of you the proprietor?’

  ‘Nah!’ the chef said. ‘He’s off in the afternoon. Want me to buzz the flat?’ He picked up the mobile that was on the table beside him.

  ‘If you would.’

  As the chef turned aside to make the call, Strang said, ‘There’s a couple of questions I want to ask you too. Were any of you here the weekend before last?’

  ‘Chef was,’ the other man said. ‘I was off. Why are you wanting to know?’

  ‘Just some routine questions.’ The girl hadn’t spoken and Strang asked her directly, ‘You here?’

  She gave him a long, cool look that implied distrust. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘I understand there was a party of men staying the weekend before last. Three men on a fishing weekend?’