A Deviant Breed (DCI Alec Dunbar series)

by Stephen Coill

  ‘Do you need me, gentlemen?’ Dunbar asked refusing to be drawn.

  ‘Oh, I think I can find my way around a murder room without your help,’ Molineux sneered.

  ‘And Detective Inspector Tyler?’

  ‘Well, everybody else bar the office manager and the civvies has buggered off, why not you two?’

  ‘Fine, I’m sure DS Conroy can answer any questions you might have.’ Neil Conroy looked up saucer-eyed and mouthed, ‘thank you very bloody much.’

  ‘The day I need to take advice from one of my sergeants is the day I’ll leave my crown and bath star on my desk and ride off into the sunset,’ Molineux answered without looking up from the stack of paperwork he was sifting through. He’d gladly saddle the horse for him, was Dunbar’s parting thought.

  He eyed Tyler and nodded towards the door. ‘Grab your coat, Inspector.’

  ***

  Tam Liddle struck Dunbar as the most likely person to ask about Morag English seeing as how he had taken more than a passing interest in her during that critical period in her young life. Frustratingly, having driven all that way, he did not appear to be home.

  ‘Try Lorna’s,’ a female voice from beyond a rampant Rosa Rugosa said.

  Dunbar craned his neck but could not see either over or through its tangled web of buds and vicious barbs. The shrub had taken over the rickety larch-lap fence that divided his small garden from hers and was probably the only thing holding it up.

  ‘The pub,’ Tyler explained.

  Dunbar checked his dad’s watch. It still had its original strap, and because he had a thicker wrist, he could see the mark the buckle had made when his dad used to wear it. He liked that. It was a little discoloured and scuffed in that way leather gets with years of wear. He really should get a new one but it would be like throwing a part of his father away, and the crystal was not as bad as he first thought, once he had given it a good clean. Certainly clear enough to tell the time even if a scratch did partially obscure the calendar date. No, after his dad’s day would be the time to give it a revamp, not before.

  Dunbar tapped the crystal. First orders? Liddle must have beaten the first post through the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, still unable to see who it was.

  ‘Benefit day. Always at the pub once his Giro’s been cashed. An’ ye only catch him at home after it’s spent.’

  ***

  Lorna smiled beguilingly and rearranged her undergarments self-consciously as the tall, handsome stranger in a well-tailored suit entered. Her smile faded when Tyler followed a moment later.

  ‘Will ye be wanting a drink?’ she asked sourly.

  The two detectives had spotted what they were there for. Tam Liddle had his back to them and was wearing his cruddy bunnet tipped back on his head as before.

  ‘Tea?’ Dunbar asked, looking at Tyler as he did. She nodded.

  Lorna scowled. ‘Aye, I’ll awa’ an’ tap a barrel then, shall I?’ She shuffled away muttering and ducked through a narrow doorway at the back of the bar.

  ‘Top up, Mr Liddle?’ Dunbar asked.

  Tam Liddle half turned on his seat. He looked less than pleased to see them but had never been known to turn down a free drink. He drained his nip and tapped it down on the bar close to the beer taps.

  ‘I’ll have a large yin in there when she comes back wi’ yer tea.’

  ‘Wonder if you’d mind answering a few more questions about Morag English?’

  ‘Well, I cannae see how that would do any harm but –’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Bin’ talk ‘ere-aboot that I grassed on Carsy.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Ach, ye know what. Same mon got arrested, dragged off te Edinburgh. He’s had the polis, the estate manager an’ the gamekeeper at his door playin’ war – an’ a summons too. They searched his hoose an’ sheds, took his traps an’ snares an’ what have ye. An’ all this after ye came te my hoose.’

  ‘Pure coincidence; we were conducting a search for –’

  ‘Nin o’ that matters te Carsy! He’s got it inte his heid that I told on him.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Tyler said.

  ‘Aye, that it is but, so is Carsy. Nae sae bright an’ bad tempered.’

  ‘I’ll put him straight,’ Dunbar promised.

  ‘Afore he puts me straight inte hospital, I hope.’

  ‘Before we go back to Edinburgh.’

  Tam Liddle nodded his approval. ‘Mo, ye say – what is it ye want te know?’

  ***

  It had proved something of a wasted journey. Liddle regurgitated the same old story about the gypsy road worker and the agricultural rep. The only additional snippet of information was that he had met the rep at the local farmer’s co-op once, a smooth-talking salesman according to Liddle, with slicked back hair, Ford Sierra company car and a shiny suit. He sounded more like a cliché of car salesman than a dealer in cattle feed. Tam Liddle was adamant that the man had been ‘sniffing around’ Mo for a while before she ran away. His tale rang true too, if only because of the resentment in his voice. It seemed, unrealistically or otherwise, that as far as Liddle was concerned, the sales rep had scuppered any hope he had of winning her. That and old Fraser himself had told everyone who would listen that that was who she had taken off with. But did she? Fraser English, it seems, had good reason to want to see the back of his daughter as she reached maturity. He would have had far less influence over a headstrong young woman than a tearaway teenager.

  ***

  Stacey Bernadette Brogan met them at the door, harassed and sour faced, with a baby chugging on a dummy propped on her hip and a little boy of about three or four years of age clinging to her chunky thigh. Dunbar and Tyler showed her their ID.

  ‘He’s no’ here,’ she grunted. ‘Or have ye forgot, he had te go te the Sheriff’s Court for his plea or declaration or summat.’

  ‘Actually we’re here to put the record straight, Miss Brogan.’

  ‘Straight?’

  ‘Dean was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whilst doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. We weren’t looking for him. We were looking for a much bigger fish,’ Dunbar explained.

  The bored child clamped to her leggings whinged and tugged at her fat thigh, inadvertently nipping her cellulite. ‘Arghh, that hurt!’ she squealed pushing him away. ‘Can ye nae see I’m talkin’ te someone, ye wee shit!’ she hissed. His eyes welled up. ‘Away an’ watch the telly.’ The child merely pouted sulkily and held his ground.

  ‘I just wanted your man to know that he has no grievance with Mr Liddle.’

  ‘Has he no’? Then I’ll be sure an’ tell him, when he gets back frae court.’

  ‘If I hear he’s been near that old boy –’

  ‘Ach! Take ma word frae it, there’ll be nae more o’ this. I’ve telt him. If he brings the polis te this door one more time, he’ll be oot on his arse.’

  ‘The reason we were at Tam Liddle’s house was to ask him about the English’s family and their daughter in particular,’ Tyler explained. Dunbar was not going to mention that.

  ‘Pyfff! Before my time, but I heard plenty about that wee body.’

  ‘Yes, she seems to have generated more than her fair share of tittle-tattle down the years,’ Dunbar said, turning to leave.

  ‘Nae tittle-tattle – my mam was her best friend.’ Dunbar stopped and turned.

  ‘And where would we find your mam?’ he asked.

  ‘Lives ower in Dryburgh wi’ me step-da Rory McCoist – 8 Boswell’s Close.

  ***

  Stacey’s mother, Joyce McCoist, was reluctant at first, until Tyler joined her in the kitchen and had a little woman-to-woman chat as Joyce made them a brew. When they returned, she proved no less forthcoming than Tam Liddle, but there was sadness in her voice when she spoke of Mary English, or Mary-Mo, as she remembered fondly.

  ‘From the playground rhyme, ‘Eeny-meeny-miney-moe, but we all used te sing eeny-meeny-Mary-M
o an’ we’d give her two dibs!’ she explained with a chuckle. ‘Then she’d screech an’ chase us.’

  Dunbar was impressed. Whatever Tyler had said released the floodgates.

  Joyce and Mary-Mo had been friends since primary school and Mary-Mo was wild even then; “bonny, but a bit of a heid the baw”, temperamental and highly strung but great fun, according to Joyce. Mary-Mo had started catching the eye of boys from as early as eleven years old, and even at that age she seemed to know what boys wanted, but they didnae always get it Joyce explained, quite emphatically.

  ‘Dinnae get the idea, she was the local bike an’ everyone was ridin’ her, ‘cos she wasnae! But a real prick-teaser, do ye’ ken? Loved te see the boys’ bulgin’ oot o’ their pants over her. Aye that was Mary-Mo.’

  Joyce had chuckled when some memory flashed into her head which she did not share with the two detectives. Tyler got her focussed again and blushing by teasing her with the notion that perhaps, they had both been ‘wee prick-teasers’. Looking at the woman that sat across from them now, Dunbar found that hard to imagine, but his DI was saying all the right things and it kept the witness talking.

  Mary-Mo loved to torment and tempt boys at school but preferred the company of older lads once the final bell rang. They had more money to buy her ciggies and cider. Mary-Mo rarely bothered with anyone her own age, or even a couple of years older. It was not as if she was looking for sex either, just excitement. Joyce reckoned that Mary-Mo used sex to get boys to do what she wanted, like standing up to ‘Gropin’ ol’ thunder guts’ when he inevitably turned up looking for her. That was Joyce’s nickname for him, that and a few others she would not repeat. Nobody ever did, man or boy.

  ‘Groping? She told you that he touched her?’ Dunbar had asked.

  ‘Aye, but her daddy was nae a man ye’d cross,’ Joyce stated, her face still a mask of fear after all those years. ‘An’ she made me swear I wouldnae tell anyone. An’ I’ve stuck to it till now. She wasnae happy. Ach, she acted it – but she wasnae.’

  ‘Anything more than touching?’

  Joyce shuddered then shook her head firmly. Someone to protect her from that old bastard was what she had been looking for, but she was never going to find anyone like that around the three parishes. Joyce reckoned that Mary-Mo was thirteen or fourteen when she started having sex with boys, adding that Mo was selective, rather defensively. After a little thought she concurred with herself on that point.

  Joyce had waited until she was nearly sixteen, and only did it then after Mary-Mo talked her into a blind date with the friend of the boy she was going with. The two boys were young farmers from Newtown St Boswell’s. Mary-Mo’s boyfriend had a car, an XR3 no less. Mary-Mo had sex with him in the back of the car and when they had finished she had pressed a johnny into Joyce’s hand and said, “your turn, I’ve even warmed up the seat for yis.”

  The boy Joyce had been with looked as shocked as her, then embarrassed to hell when Mary-Mo pointed to the telltale strain the fly of his jeans was under. And so, with a little more persuasion and none needed on the boy’s part, Joyce had lost her virginity and, judging by how quickly it was over, the young farmer had lost his too, she reckoned. Joyce turned crimson and recoiled.

  ‘I cannae believe I just telt ye that! Two total strangers.’ She guffawed and then regained her composure. ‘Aye, nice boy though. Stacey’s father,’ she explained. ‘My first made an honest woman o’ me – eventually!’

  She went on to tell them that the gypsy boy was in his early twenties and Mary-Mo only fourteen, maybe fifteen when they met. Joyce never believed the story of her running off with him. By then her mammy had got wind of her ways and put her on the pill. Or perhaps she had got wind of her husband’s ways, Dunbar and Tyler both thought as they shared a knowing look. The gypsy was just another that talked big but failed to live up to his own legend. Bragged about being a bare-knuckle fighter; a Gypsy champion, he reckoned.

  ‘Aye, he was too, at sprinting maybe,’ Joyce added with a chuckle. ‘He soon took off when her daddy unfastened his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves.’ As for the salesman, yes, she remembered that creep. He pestered the life out of Mary-Mo and even suggested a threesome with both of them. They both said no. In fact Mary-Mo had gone ballistic and told him to fuck off. That was why her old friend refused to believe that she had ran away with him. In fact Mary-Mo vowed she would never see “the perv” again after that.

  Several years after Mary-Mo supposedly ran away, Joyce claimed that she had received a strange letter from her. In it she said she had met a man and been all over the world, but it read more like a fantasy. A number of European countries were mentioned, America too – north and south, to name but a few places she claimed to have explored with her lover. But the details were sketchy and at times wildly inaccurate. Names of places spelt wrongly, and seasonal details that did not chime with what should have been going on a particular country at that time of year, but then, Mary-Mo had always been a bit of a fantasist.

  Joyce said that her mother reckoned she was too ashamed to show her face back there and had made it all up to impress her old mate. Joyce had grown to believe that too, but lived in hope of her childhood friend having found happiness and that she was living the high-life somewhere glamorous and exotic. Even as she said it, the expression on Joyce McCoist’s face betrayed the same fear for Mary-Mo’s fate that the two detectives silently shared. What was becoming clear to Dunbar and Tyler was that the stories of Mary-Mo English’s flight from Bentock with a mystery man were just that, pure fiction, and that something much more sinister lay behind her disappearance.

  17

  The usually phlegmatic Neil Conroy sounded somewhat rattled when he phoned Dunbar to ask what time they would be back, and Dunbar’s rather sanguine reaction did not help.

  ‘Look sir, the thing is, the Chief Super was expecting, quote: “a more proactive approach,” Conroy explained, in a hushed tone, so as not to be overheard by the others in the murder room.

  ‘Proactive!?’ Dunbar snapped in disbelief. Even the diplomatically minded DI Tyler reacted with surprise. He swung the car into the yawning mouth of a field-access and brought it grinding to a halt on the heavily rutted sub-base. Typical: his team spend days living and breathing the case only for Laurel and Hardy to blunder on to the landing, carry out a paper sift, check-off their tick-in-the-box list and presume to have an instant grasp on what needs to be done.

  ‘He’s got the SIO and 2i/c in the field, dragging our arses around the three parishes, digging up archaeological sites and exhuming bodies from graves, as well as covering this frigging countryside with search teams and dog handlers – deployments he initially refused. How much more proactive does he think we can get?’

  ‘Dinnae shoot the messenger, boss.’

  ‘Sorry, Neil – but the question stands.’

  ‘Like – arrests proactive.’

  ‘Oh aye, and who does he suggest we arrest, and on what bloody evidence? Or has he got access to a crystal ball I didnae know about?’

  ‘The Chief Super likes Archie English for it.’

  Dunbar groaned. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Not my call, boss.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  Conroy chose not to answer. Tyler thought it unfair of him to put the sergeant between him and the Detective Chief Superintendent but elected to bite her tongue.

  ‘Christ Almighty, Neil – you’re the office manager. Naebody has seen more of the evidence or knows the details o’ this case better than you, apart from me and the DI maybe. Could you not steer them in the right direction?’

  ‘And what direction would that be, sir?’ Conroy hissed angrily, still trying to keep his voice down. ‘Granted, he doesnae scream guilty at me, but have ye got a better candidate than Archie English? If ye have, I’d better get along te Specsavers, ‘cos I’ve nae found hide nae hair of him in the evidence I’ve collated so far.’

  That was the first time he had known Neil Conro
y lose his temper with him and they had worked together, on-and-off, for ten years. Both of them fell silent, neither wishing to be the next one to say the wrong word. Tyler opted to do the same, gazing uncomfortably out of the passenger window, so as not to make eye contact with him, but somebody had to say something.

  It was not DS Conroy’s fault. Was the pressure of running the murder room without an experienced DI overseeing things getting to him? That would have been Dunbar’s preferred set-up, but his brief was to give her much-needed, field experience and, as everyone knew, his DI of choice, Paul Roscoe was unavailable – “wasting his time and talent fulfilling an Acting Chief Inspector role over at D Division”. That had been how Dunbar had summarised the situation when he enquired as to the man’s availability, despite having already been told that his 2i/c would be DI Briony Tyler.

  ‘Christ, Paul!’ he’d exclaimed. ‘What the hell were you thinking? There’s nae promotion in it. This force, like all the others, has just been swallowed whole by the new mega-force. They’re going to need fewer chief inspectors from here on in.’ But it was too late. DI Roscoe had agreed and was temporarily back in uniform, twiddling his thumbs, in between pushing paper and showing solidarity with the troops by walking the beat or riding along with one of his patrols. A sheer waste of his ability and they both knew what Paul Roscoe would rather have been doing; helping DCI Alec Dunbar solve the Braur Glen case.

  ‘One of us should have stayed behind,’ Tyler eventually offered snapping him out of his musings over what might have been.

  Dunbar turned and looked at her. He hated it when a subordinate knew when he was being unreasonable but too stubborn to back down. What was worse, he knew what was behind it all. Molineux and Watt were pissed off at Moody pipping their Deputy Chief to the job as director of SCHU appointment. Were they planning to wreck his inquiry out of spite or in an effort to derail Dunbar’s appointment? He would not put such a thing past Bob Molineux but would have been disappointed if Terry Watt stooped to such a thing – but should he be? Terry Watt always took the path of least resistance and for some inexplicable reason, allowed Bob Molineux to intimidate him.