Blue Vengenance: A Logan Thorne DCI Scottish Detective Thriller

by Duncan Wallace

  “They won’t like that,” she replied.

  “I don’t care,” I snapped. ”Just get it done. One of our own is in trouble, and I won’t have our chance at prosecution ruined by a pack of bored mechanics who will muddy any potential DNA.”

  “Yes, sir.” Harding took her phone from her pocket and started to dial.

  I glanced at the brightly lit screen for a moment, and then froze. I leaned in closer, to Harding’s surprise, and then growled when I saw the date.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered. “It’s the third?”

  “Yes,” she replied with a frown. “Why?”

  Panic surged through my veins like an adrenaline shot. I touched the back of my damp neck and felt the hairs stand on end.

  “I didn’t realise,” I muttered.

  I ran back to the car, past my colleagues and through the crowd of onlookers. I’m sure I must have looked panicked, but I didn’t care. Only I could think about the importance of this date.

  I smacked my hip against the car and skidded to a halt. I heard DS Harding’s quick footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me, and then her hand curled on my shoulder as I tried to dig the keys out from my pocket.

  “Wait up, sir,” she said.

  “We have to go,” I retorted as I tried to shrug off her hand. “Right now!”

  My voice had grown louder, and I saw several people turn to look at us. Harding flashed a reassuring smile at the other officers and then squeezed my arm.

  “Just tell me what’s going on first,” she said in a calm voice. “I need to know. Then we’ll go straight away, I promise.”

  I sighed as I finally freed the keys and then unlocked the door. I stared at the handle for a moment and then looked at Harding.

  “The 3rd of October is the anniversary of Denise Brown’s death,” I replied. “She died three years ago today.”

  “Okay,” Harding said slowly as she considered the ramifications. “So, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking, what the fuck was Brown doing in this area?” I replied. “I couldn’t work it out when I was driving here. Then I remembered the graveyard his wife is buried in is fifteen minutes away.”

  DS Harding’s eyes widened in fear, and I felt my own heart rate pick up again.

  “Well-lll, maybe he’s there now and nothing is wrong,” she said uncertainly.

  I raised my eyebrows disbelievingly and waved an arm at the surrounding desolation.

  “Okay, and the smoking is just a coincidence, is it?” I asked.

  “Perhaps he needed a cigarette today,” she replied.

  “Right.” I said as I shook my head. “When is anything that simple? Come on.”

  I pulled open my car door and then looked at my partner, but she still looked uncertain, and she frowned as she studied the police.

  “Leave your car and let’s go,” I suggested.

  “Should we not update them?” Harding asked as she nodded towards the crime scene.

  “They know what they’re doing,” I replied. “This is all standard, even if it is Brown’s car. We’ll tell them afterwards, if we find anything. My hunch might be wrong, and so we’d still need them to search around here.”

  I slipped into the driver’s seat and then swept aside an empty bottle of water from the passenger seat so Harding could sit down. She opened the door and dropped into the passenger seat just before I turned the key and revved the engine. As I accelerated quickly out of the road, Harding moaned softly and gripped the edges of her seat.

  “Come on,” I huffed as I rolled my eyes.

  She inhaled deeply and then placed a hand over her mouth.

  “Travel sickness!” the brunette warned.

  “You can’t be a detective and get sick in a car,” I protested. “Suck it up.”

  Harding made a gagging sound but managed not to throw up in the car. I slowed for a turn and glanced at the DS. Her face was even paler than usual, and her dark eyes were mere slits. I eased up on the gas, partly out of sympathy, but I also didn’t want her to vomit all over my beloved BMW.

  My partner snapped the radio off, and we were suddenly thrown into silence. Through the cracked open window, I heard muffled music in other cars and two dogs yelping at each other on the pavement.

  “So,” Maddy asked. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I could do it, if I actually knew what you meant,” I replied.

  She cocked a sceptical, finely-drawn eyebrow in my direction.

  “How were you able to pull this date from your memory so quickly?” She asked.

  “Hey, I have excellent recollection,” I replied. “You already know this.”

  “But the anniversary of the death of your colleague’s wife?” Harding shrugged. “That’s incredibly specific. I couldn’t even tell you your birthday, sir.”

  “Shocking,” I joked. “So I shouldn’t expect a present?”

  It was a delay tactic, and my partner knew it. I felt her eyes on me, but I refused to meet her stare. Instead, I focused on the queue of Sunday shoppers who had brought traffic to a near standstill.

  “You could use the sirens,” Harding suggested.

  As a rule, I preferred to quietly arrive at a scene, rather than barge in all guns blazing, and so didn’t often turn on the sirens. But Harding had a point, and if what I feared was true, then time was a luxury we didn’t have. I flicked on sirens, and as soon as they sounded, the cars in front parted like the Red Sea.

  “But this surely is not just about your good memory,” Harding added a few minutes later. Clearly, I wasn’t off the hook just yet.

  “We’ll make a DCI out of you yet, Maddy.” I glanced sideways and registered her frustrated expression.

  “So you keep telling me,” she sighed.

  “Fine,” I relented.

  We were still five minutes from the graveyard even with the sirens, so I had enough time to explain it.

  “Did you know Brown and I came up through CID at the same time?” I asked.

  Harding shook her head, and I wasn’t surprised as neither Brown nor I hardly skipped around the station discussing our personal lives.

  “We partnered on a lot of cases and became good friends,” I began. “We were living the same life, which was all work, all of the time. Especially Brown. He was desperate for promotion and had grand ambitions of running the department one day. I didn’t want it for myself, but I knew Brown’s dream would come true.”

  “They did,” Harding agreed. “But why didn’t you want to run the department?”

  “I didn’t want it because I enjoy real police work too much,” I said. “You know how I hate paperwork and politics.”

  I risked a quick glance at the DS, and I caught her nod. I turned back to the road and considered how to explain the next part of the story.

  “I met his wife, Denise, and started to visit their house a lot,” I said. “She always insisted I didn’t eat properly on my own and boxed up the leftovers for me.”

  I smiled sadly at the memory. I remembered Denise well, her look of concentration as she sprinkled parsley on pasta, and her eyes glinting in the candlelight as she sipped deep red wine. I shook my head to brush away the memory and continued.

  “You couldn’t tell from spending time with her, but Denise was epileptic,” I mused. “Brown confided in me late one night in some bar, but he said Denise largely had her condition under control. I think the complexity of the cases we were dealing with, and the constant stress from worrying that Denise would have another seizure while on her own, was getting too much for him.”

  Harding bit her lip, and I knew she could sense the ending. The winding pavements fell away and transformed into leafy, lush fields. I noticed the edge of a sparkling lake in my peripheral vision, which meant we were almost at the graveyard, so I accelerated the car again. Harding would just have to cope.

  “I was assigned a very difficult case around three months into our friendship,” I said. “There were so many witnesses to questio
n, and I was under a lot of pressure from above to solve it, so I asked Brown for help. He agreed straight away and stayed late with me one night writing out interviews. I was grateful.”

  I gripped the steering wheel tighter as we took a tight turn, but in truth, I would have wrapped my fists tightly around the wheel even on the straightest road at that point. I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue, but I forced myself to exhale and slowly unlocked my death grip.

  “Denise suffered a seizure while we worked,” I continued. “The doctors called it a simple seizure and said it wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Denise lost control of her footing. She fell right down the stairs. A neighbour heard the thud and called an ambulance but it was too late. Denise was pronounced dead right in A&E.”

  “So…” Harding asked as she looked down at her hands. “You and Brown?”

  “We were never quite the same with each other afterwards,” I shrugged. “He acted so differently at work, and we constantly argued about how to handle cases, something that had never happened before. Then after two promotions, he started to micromanage my cases and never agreed with any of my strategies. I felt suffocated. I suppose we’d stopped trusting each other. Is that obvious to everyone?”

  “I wouldn’t say,” she mused. “I think everyone just wonders if your personalities clashed. And that maybe you wanted his job.”

  “There’s no truth to that last part,” I said honestly.

  Harding played with a lock of her hair and watched the passing hills for a moment.

  “So it’s not because you’re Glaswegian?” she asked.

  I spluttered and yanked the wheel to avoid a slow-moving van.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

  “I thought he was biased against your roots, like people are with me because I’m not Scottish,” she replied.

  “Being Glaswegian isn’t embarrassing, you know,” I laughed. “Not like Britishness is.”

  I looked over at Harding again to see she’d collapsed into giggles.

  “I can’t believe I managed a straight face there,” she finally managed to reply in a mischievous voice. “Did you believe me?”

  “Absolutely not,” I insisted. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  She shrugged and finally released her chestnut hair.

  “I suppose I’m in the wrong profession, then,” she said.

  We then lapsed into silence again, and it was several minutes before Harding had another question for me.

  “He still wore his wedding ring, didn’t he?” she asked thoughtfully. “I’m sure he told people he was married.”

  “Well, he was,” I replied in a low voice.

  We arrived at the graveyard a moment later, and I pulled into the small car lot by the offices. It was one of the larger graveyards in the city centre, and was built on a hill, much like everything in Edinburgh. The headstones stretched out into the distance, row upon row of polished stone in shades of white and grey. That was a lot of bodies.

  As we got out of the car, I saw that the grey sky had cleared up some, and the sun had edged out of the clouds. I looked around the property and noticed that an electric fence had recently been added. I wondered who they were trying to keep out, or in, and decided I’d been watching too many zombie movies lately.

  “It doesn’t look like there’s anybody here,” my DS said as she rolled her shoulders.

  “First appearances are often incorrect,” I reminded her.

  “Are we just going straight to the grave?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, because I needed to know if I was right or wrong.

  I watched my partner absorb the amount of headstones which stretched off into the horizon.

  “It’s going to take a long time to find Denise’s grave,” she noted. “Unless someone is actually here.”

  “No it won't,” I assured her as I walked towards a pair of wooden gates.

  The gates led into the graveyard proper, and as I opened one, I noticed that the boards were old, chewed up, and in desperate need of replacing. Maybe, I thought, if this case turns out well, I could come back and fix it for free. I shook my head at the insanity of creating a silent bargain with myself. I knew that wouldn’t help the situation.

  The grass was moist and mulchy under my shoes, and I remembered yesterday’s downpour. I smelt the dankness of wet leaves, and then Harding slipped on the ground and grabbed my arm to balance herself. We exchanged a small smile because it didn’t feel appropriate to laugh in the midst of a cemetery, especially given what I feared we would find at the end.

  Harding lagged behind as we climbed to the top of a steep slope, but I knew she was perfectly capable of keeping step with me. She probably thought I would want some time with my thoughts, and I had to admit, part of me did. I heard the wind whistle through the bare trees and the crunch of the dried leaves beneath my feet, and I was glad for the reminder that life still continued on.

  I felt my heart thud faster as we approached Denise’s grave. I had only been once or twice before while accompanying Brown, who had sometimes needed a companion in the early days as he stared at Denise’s name carved into the stone.

  I spotted a bunch of fresh flowers in front of the marker, tied up neatly in a red bow and realised someone had recently visited. It couldn’t have been Brown because he’d stopped taking flowers a long time ago, always too disappointed when they died.

  I wondered who had visited Denise’s grave and left the flowers. I knew Denise had a large extended family, so perhaps Brown hadn’t been the only one to visit her on this day.

  And then the wind went by in a flurry, and the flowers tumbled to the side. The sun finally shone through, and I saw that the flowers weren’t the only thing on the grave. There was a body there as well.

  I swallowed a gasp and quickened my pace, and I willed my legs to move faster. The sunlight beat into my eyes, and I wanted to swat it away like a fly.

  It was Brown. He was slumped there so peacefully, an almost-smile on his lips. Of course, it was him. I wondered if I had seen this coming and if I’d known precisely how it would end the moment I’d laid eyes on his car. I shook my head in denial, then slowed to walk the last few steps to the grave.

  I could almost believe that he was merely resting. His back was propped against the cold stone of the marker, and his head lolled onto his shoulder. Palms were turned up towards the sun, and his feet splayed out to either side. He couldn’t have been there long, but I knew that if I touched him, he would feel cold.

  Harding moaned as she appeared at my side. The sound of it sharpened my concentration, and I felt the reality of the situation reassert itself.

  “Check his pulse,” I said, even though his skin tone was enough to tell me that there was no life to be found.

  Harding’s hands trembled as she pulled on another pair of latex gloves, and I saw her take a deep breath before she knelt next to the CC. She felt the side of his neck and shook her head.

  “Nothing,” she said sadly.

  Harding stood up, and we both stared at the scene for a moment. I knew I had to call it in, but part of me wanted to grant him this one last moment of peace with his wife.

  With a sigh, I pulled out my phone and called Dispatch. I requested the coroner and a forensics team, and then provided the name of the victim. I heard the shock in the phone operator’s voice as she asked me to confirm Brown’s identity. Every local force, hospital and fire station had known of Chief Constable Brown because he had made it his business to know them. He was a local legend of sorts, and so I knew word of his death would spread quickly.

  “What can you see?” I asked Harding as I moved slowly around the grave.

  I kept an eye on the ground, to make sure I didn’t step in any footprints as I circled the area. Harding remained in her spot and cast a critical eye over the CC. I’d taught her to look for the evidence that wasn’t there, as well as what was, and she’d turned out to have a real talent for that.

  “The
re,” Harding declared as she pointed to a patch of thick brown grass.

  I followed her finger to see a small plastic pouch lying on the grass. I had seen enough of those in my time, usually confiscated from weekend revellers on Princess Street. I glanced over at Brown and tried to imagine him snorting or injecting whatever was in the baggy. I shook my head in disbelief, because I knew the CC would never have resorted to drugs.

  Harding studied the ground and then walked over the pouch slowly. She dug around in her purse for a moment, and then pulled out a pair of tweezers. She knelt down, grabbed the baggy with the tweezers, and then held it up to the sunlight.

  “Anything in it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the caramel-eyed Brit said and held the bag closer to her face. “Two small yellow pills.”

  I blinked in surprise.

  “Pills?” I asked and looked at Brown.

  “There are markings, so I should be able to find the brand easily enough,” Harding said as she pulled her phone from her bag.

  “Be quick,” I said. “We don’t have much time before the circus arrives.”

  She raised her eyebrows as she started to type, but she didn’t ask any questions.

  “It’s Valium,” she announced. “This particular strand is Diazepam.”

  I vaguely felt a puzzle piece slot into place, but I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant yet, so I motioned for Harding to keep reading.

  “It’s a nasty drug,” she continued. “It says here that doctors hardly prescribe it anymore because it’s so addictive. I wonder how many of our people are locked up because of these tiny things.”

  “Tiny,” I said. “But very powerful.”

  I looked at the spot we’d seen the bag and then at the surrounding area. The baggy wasn’t really all that close to Brown’s body, though if he’d tried to toss it away, he’d done a piss poor job of it. It was also odd that in an area filled with leaves and long grass, the bag had landed in the one spot where it would be easy to see. As if someone had wanted the bag to be found.

  Harding tiptoed back to my side, and we looked back at Brown. Anyone watching us from below would probably think we were simply waiting for him to finish his visit.

  “Are you ok, sir?” Maddy asked in a gentle voice. “I’m so sorry.”