‘Is this a pity party for one or can anyone join in?’ asked Mhairi, making him jump and almost drop his glass. Damn, he’d forgotten she was on her way. He winced as he saw himself through her eyes, a washed-up has-been that was becoming a liability. She seemed to be swaying from side to side but then he realized that was him.
‘Seriously, Frank, I know that you’re upset but you have to get a grip. You need to accept that Laura has done her best for John but now needs to move on. It’s been nearly two years. There’s nothing more they can do for him. There’s nothing more any of us can do for him. John would be the last person who would want Laura to spend the rest of her life alone.’
‘And I haven’t been there for her? Is that what you’re trying to say?’ he snapped, thumping his beer down so hard some slopped on to the table. The barman slid a look in their direction and made a move as if to come over, but Mhairi shook her head at him.
‘I know why you’ve given her a wide berth. You were too scared that you’d be tempted to fill John’s shoes yourself.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ he scoffed.
The accusation stung, but he wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t recognize the truth in it. As if he needed to feel more guilty than he already did.
‘You’re not the only one who misses him.’ She reached out and covered his hand with hers. ‘But turning to drink isn’t the best way to honour his memory. Nor is falling down on the job that he used to take such a pride in.’
He knew she was right.
He stood up, rocking slightly on his heels.
‘Come on, let’s get out of here. I need some coffee.’ He strode away from her, pushed through the pub door and disappeared.
Mhairi thought quickly as she gathered up her stuff from the back of the chair. She could hardly take him home in this state. Yvonne Farrell would lay an egg. Best to grab some coffees from the chippy and head out of town.
As she was leaving, her head turned in the direction of raised voices at the other end of the pub. It was Aaron, Jack Kerr’s foster son. He wasn’t old enough to be in here drinking. He was sitting with that slightly dodgy young guy, Barry McLeish, from outside the court who was already well-oiled. Their eyes met. Barry lurched out of his seat and came towards her.
‘Did your sister end up in the pokie, then?’ he asked, grinning lopsidedly.
Her mind went blank then she remembered: Aaron hadn’t seen her when she visited his mum, so it might be useful to play along.
‘Six months, she got. He’s a right ballbreaker that sheriff.’
‘Fancy a drink, hen?’
‘Maybe another time,’ she said. ‘Stick your number in my phone. You never know your luck.’ She grinned, striving to look like she meant it.
Barry did as she asked then swaggered back to the table.
Mhairi flew out the door before Frank could stagger back in and blow her little scheme to smithereens. She almost collided with a burly man on his way in and muttered an apology, realizing as she swiftly walked on that it had been Joe Capaldi, Gabriel Ferrante’s office manager.
Frank was waiting around the corner by her car looking perplexed and slightly less drunk.
‘What took you so long?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
She opened her car and shoe-horned him into the passenger seat, chucking all the stuff on it haphazardly into the back. Her next port of call was the chippy on the Whitesands where she bought two fish suppers and a couple of coffees. The smell improved the air quality in her car. She really needed a new air freshener.
***
Farrell sat quietly, staring out of the window, his gaze unfathomable. Mhairi felt the first beats of a headache pound behind her eyes. As she left the town behind, she wound down the window and sucked the clean country air deep into her lungs. How she missed the scent of the open countryside in Glasgow. She drove for a few miles then parked the car at Mabie Forest. It was still light and the air was balmy, though Mhairi could smell a change in the atmosphere. It felt like a storm might be coming. They walked across the wooden bridge and along the path to a picnic bench in the shade of a giant sequoia tree beside a stream. They sat eating in companionable silence, the scent of the pine forest and the wild flowering garlic adding to the taste.
After he’d finished eating, Farrell turned to her.
‘Sorry, Mhairi. I’ve been a bit of a prat.’
‘Don’t sweat it, Frank. I know that the last two years haven’t been easy. What about getting in touch with Father Murray? You could talk to him about stuff. Religious stuff.’
‘I saw him recently. I’m not quite the man he used to know. It’s difficult.’
‘Give him some credit,’ retorted Mhairi. ‘I doubt he’ll be phased by anything you’ve got to dish up to him. What about all that prodigal son and Mary Magdalene stuff right there in the Bible?’ She said, dredging deep in her memory.
Farrell threw his head back and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You are, Mhairi McLeod.’
‘Anyway, enough about me. The grease has mopped up the alcohol. My head is back in the game. Tell me about the briefing.’
She filled him in on what he had missed and also her encounter with Barry McLeish. He looked worried.
‘I didn’t see young Aaron until I’d had a few drinks so I felt I couldn’t intervene,’ he said. ‘He must be only fifteen or so.’
‘He was only drinking a Coke or I’d have had to do something,’ said Mhairi. ‘They’d the remains of a meal on the table as well and McLeish is an adult, so technically no licensing rules were being broken. We’ve got bigger fish to fry and I didn’t want to draw attention to the fact we were coppers. It might be an idea to give Sarah Kerr a heads-up, though.’
The light had almost gone by the time they finished talking and headed back to the car. Yvonne Farrell’s neat bungalow was in darkness as Mhairi drew up beside it.
Farrell turned his head and smiled at her, the deep sadness in his eyes made her want to hold him close, but she had determined never to walk across that invisible line. He meant too much to her for that.
‘Night, Frank,’ she said.
‘Night, Mhairi. See you bright and early in the morning.’
She watched him let himself in the door, then drove away, her mood sombre. A flash of lightening lit up the sky as the first bloated drops of rain started to pelt her windscreen. A crack of thunder made her jump as the rain intensified. Hurriedly she turned her car in the direction of her temporary home.
Chapter 21
Farrell groped around blindly in the dark for his phone. It was 5.30 a.m. He grabbed it and swung his legs out of the bed in one fluid movement.
‘DS Byers,’ snapped the voice. ‘There’s been another murder.’
‘Who?’
‘Aaron Kerr, Jack Kerr’s foster son. He was found under the Buccleuch Street bridge by a dog walker. He’s been stabbed.’
‘On my way.’
The nausea that made his stomach churn had nothing to do with the amount of alcohol he had consumed last night and everything to do with the horror and guilt he felt at the possibility their failure to remove Aaron from the pub had somehow cost the lad his life. Both he and Mhairi might be caught up in this investigation. His boss would be less than impressed.
Filled with a sense of urgency, he jumped in the shower, then threw on his clothes and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the way out of the kitchen. It was already light and the dawn chorus was raucous. The storm last night had cleared the air. The morning felt fresh and teeming with life. For Jack and Sarah Kerr it would be the first day that didn’t have their cherished foster son in it. Sometimes having a ringside seat at all this suffering felt unbearable.
‘I should do you lot for breach of the peace,’ he muttered at the birds, as he slid into his old car, which was cleaner than he had left it thanks to the rain.
DS Byers was at the scene, the cordon already in place. He gave him a curt n
od. Farrell suited up and joined him on the other side, keeping his distance so that he didn’t contaminate the scene. Janet White and Phil Tait were both quietly and efficiently preparing to get to work with all the accoutrements of their trade. Even after all this time, Farrell realized, he still knew very little about them. They had always held themselves apart from the rest of the team. With a grim expression, the duty police surgeon stooped over the body which was sodden from a recent downpour. It had been left propped up against the underside of the bridge among the rubbish like it too was disposable. Police tape cordoned off the area from the few members of the public who might be around at that time of the morning. The elderly woman who had found him was sitting on a nearby bench beside the river with a small dog peering anxiously up at her, wrapped in a blanket and with a paramedic in attendance.
‘The witness stated she didn’t touch the body,’ said Byers. ‘It was clear that there was nothing to be done for the lad, so she called it in and waited for us.’
The police surgeon straightened up and came over to them.
‘Rory McAllister,’ he introduced himself to Farrell. ‘Life extinct. Believe it or not, the body is still warm.’
‘Cause of death?’ asked Farrell.
‘There’s a stab wound in his side. Beyond that, it will be up to the pathologist to determine.’
The sound of raised voices intruded on the scene echoing under the sandstone bridge.
Farrell retraced his steps to investigate. As he moved from underneath the shadow cast by the bridge, he discovered two uniforms on the edge of the outer cordon embroiled in a fierce struggle with Jack Kerr, whose eyes were red-rimmed and angry. The deserted children’s playpark on the grass beyond the cordon served as a stark reminder of what had been lost.
‘Let me through, goddammit!’ he yelled at Farrell, spittle flying from his mouth.
‘You know I can’t do that. If the scene is contaminated, the bastard who did this to Aaron could end up walking right out the court. Think about it. Do you want your last memory of Aaron to be seeing him here?’
Kerr stopped struggling and sagged at the knees as the adrenalin started to leave his system.
Farrell nodded at the two officers to release him and gently took Kerr by the arm and walked him over to a picnic bench outside the perimeter.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘What in hell’s name happened?’
‘He was stabbed. Not that long ago, either.’
Kerr half rose to his feet and stared around wildly. Farrell tugged him back down.
‘The killer’s long gone. What do you know about his movements last night? The company he was keeping?’
‘My wife, Sarah, will know more about that than I did. I tried to guide him, keep him on the straight and narrow. We fostered him from the age of ten. Maybe by then, the damage had already been done. The care system is brutal. He used to be on his computer constantly so we nagged him to get out more, see his friends. I don’t know what we were thinking. Boys are a bloody danger to themselves at that age. We should lock them in a room at fourteen and not let them out until they’re twenty-one.’
‘He was seen in the Pig and Whistle last night with a man called Barry McLeish,’ said Farrell.
‘In a pub? Was he drinking?’
‘That’s yet to be determined.’
‘Shit! There’s no way the barman should have served him,’ he snapped.
‘He’s been keeping company with a Barry McLeish. Tell me what you know about him,’ said Farrell.
‘I didn’t know he was hanging out with Aaron. He’s got a list of priors as long as my arm. Breach of the peace, burglary, reset, a bit of dealing. No violence, though. He’s Fergus Campbell’s client. You think he’s involved?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Farrell. ‘We’re going to be some time here. I suggest you get away home meantime. I’ll keep you in the loop as much as I can, I promise,’ said Farrell.
Kerr left quietly. His rage would be replaced by the type of grief that could break a man.
Farrell walked over to Mhairi McLeod who had arrived as he’d been talking to Jack Kerr. Their eyes met and he saw that she was as white as a sheet. She moved to one side with him.
‘Shit, Frank. That poor kid. We knew he was underage but we did nothing!’
‘We did nothing because I was too busy drowning my sorrows,’ said Farrell.
‘We were off-duty,’ said Mhairi.
‘I’ll mention it to Byers,’ said Farrell. ‘This is just the type of thing that would give the press a field day.’
‘Talking of the press, I saw Moira Sharkey waltzing in to the station yesterday.’
‘That’s all we need. That woman won’t rest until she has my head on a pike for something.’
‘Joe Capaldi was entering the pub just as we were leaving,’ said Mhairi. ‘I wonder who he was planning to meet there?’
‘There’s something off about that man. My antennae twitched the minute I first laid eyes on him.’
DS Byers approached. ‘SOCO will be a while yet. There’s no sign of the murder weapon, but I’ve drafted in uniforms from a number of outlying stations to search the area. DC Thomson is already at the station setting up this new investigation. Since you guys are down anyway, I’ll take all the help I can get.’
‘You might want to interview Joe Capaldi,’ said Mhairi. ‘He was in the pub at the same time as the deceased. You might also want to send a couple of constables to bring in Barry McLeish and the barman from the Pig and Whistle.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Byers.
Mhairi glanced at Farrell.
‘Because we were there too.’
‘What the hell were you doing there? It’s a total dive. Wait a minute, the dead boy was underage. Tell me you brought that to the attention of the barman?’
Mhairi bit her lip and shook her head.
‘Well that’s just peachy,’ snapped DS Byers. ‘I was going to request you be SIO on this case, but that’s out the question now you’ve placed yourself slap bang in the middle of it.’
‘It was my fault,’ said Farrell. ‘At the time the boy was sober and drinking Coke.’
‘And you weren’t, I take it?’
‘I was off-duty. I’m entitled to a life.’
Farrell noticed a big news truck edging along the Whitesands.
Byers saw it too and swore.
‘Right, I’ll wait until SOCO are finished. Are you pair fine to get back to the station and post a briefing for 8 a.m.?’
‘Yes,’ said Farrell. ‘I’ll update DCI Buchanan in Glasgow.’
‘I’ll call in Andy Moran, the civilian press officer, to deal with that lot. Now there’s been two separate murders in the area, the press will be all over us.’
Chapter 22
By the time Farrell arrived back at Loreburn Street it was bright sunlight. The golden girl of local TV news, Sophie Richardson, was setting up outside the station, but he managed to dodge her by slipping in the rear entrance.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Farrell headed straight to the MCA room, where Dave Thomson already had fresh coffee brewing. Farrell poured himself a mug and grabbed a Mars Bar from his secret stash. He put one out for Mhairi too as he heard her feet clattering up the stairs. Still looking upset, she took it from him with a nod of thanks.
DI Moore was already hanging stuff about the new case up on the walls and whiteboard. She walked over to Mhairi.
‘I gather you and DI Farrell happened to be in the Pig and Whistle last night,’ she said as if that fact was stretching her credulity to fresh bounds.
‘Yes, we went there after he popped in on Laura,’ said Mhairi.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘So you know about Byers, Frank?’
‘I do now. Anyway, that’s all water under the bridge. We saw Aaron in there, drinking a Coke with one of Fergus Campbell’s clients, a Barry McLeish. The barman didn’t seem fussed, so we left it,’ said Farrell, his matter-of-fact words belying the gu
ilt twisting his guts like origami.
‘That’s unfortunate, but you weren’t to know. If he’d been turfed out of the pub it probably wouldn’t have made a difference.’
There was an awkward pause.
Farrell approached a harassed-looking DC Thomson who was coordinating the flow of information in relation to both cases.
‘We need to post a briefing for 8 a.m.,’ said Farrell.
‘Got it, boss.’
‘I’d also like you to do some digging into Joe Capaldi, Gabriel Ferrante’s office manager. See if he has any priors. I want whatever background you can get.’
‘Jack Kerr and his pals are sure as hell unlucky,’ said DC Thomson.
‘What do you mean?’ said Farrell.
‘Well, death seems to follow them wherever they go. That girl who burned to death ten years ago. Then Fergus Campbell’s wife was murdered and now Jack Kerr’s son has met a similar fate. That only leaves Max Delaney unscathed, doesn’t it?’
‘So it would seem,’ Farrell replied. Could there really be a link between all these disparate cases?
He turned on his heel, went up to the Super’s office and tapped lightly on the door. It was still before seven, so he was pleased to find Crawford Cunningham already installed behind his desk looking like he’d been there for some time.
‘DI Farrell,’ he said in the cut-glass public school accent which sounded so alien in these parts. ‘Come in, man, come in. Another murder, eh? What’s DCI Buchanan saying about that? Is she planning to send down another MIT team or additional resources?’
‘I’m going to speak to her as soon as I’m done here, sir. I suspect she won’t be able to spare much in the way of bodies. One possibility that occurred to me is that Ronnie Stirling might be persuaded out of retirement to join us as a consultant. He’s got some serious experience in major crimes. I could also do with a couple of bright constables to boost our manpower.’
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