‘Coffee?’
‘Certainly.’ The young man strode away, snapping his fingers at someone lingering in the adjoining room.
A scowling Donnie Salkeld appeared in full traditional Highland dress and clutching a tumbler of malt, but his expression immediately changed when he saw Dunbar sitting on one of the leather sofas, sipping coffee from a fine bone china cup.
‘Do you no’ want something stronger, Alec?’ he boomed. His accent was richer, and thicker, broader and an octave lower than usual. Drink seemed to have that effect on him.
‘Hello, Donnie, and no thanks,’ Dunbar said, as he eyed him up and down. ‘Hired or owned?’
‘Where am I going te find anything off the peg te fit this?’ he replied, giving him a twirl and slapping his ample girth with his free hand.
‘Canny tartan – but not Salkeld?’
‘Wilson – my mother’s kith and kin.’
‘Sorry to bother you but –’
‘Ach, it’s nae bother, mon. The chairman has decided te interrupt oor reminiscences wi’ a bloody speech. Perhaps as well, his true personality remains tightly confined until lubricated by liquor,’ he added, staring at his glass like a guilty party. ‘And from the moment he starts, you spend the rest of the evening desperately seeking the cork.’ He rolled his eyes and slumped into the opposite seat. ‘Got an irritating voice too – like knackered chanter.’ Donnie took a swig of his malt and smacked his lips. ‘Satisfyingly mellow, twenty-five years in the oak and warms all the way doon – can I nae tempt yer’?’
He could, but Dunbar was not about to be. ‘I’m good,’ he replied, raising his cup.
‘You’re drinking tea –’
‘Coffee.’
‘Even worse at this time o’ night, in one o’ Edinburgh’s finest hotels, with a bar that boasts a fine selection o’ malts. That’s just plain wrong.’ Dunbar shrugged. ‘I take it you’re here about the less then happy reunion o’ the heid and arse end of the late Mr Murray?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘Heids without bodies, bodies without heids. I have a theory; maybe one o’ ye Jed-bugger boys had reintroduced heids to your annual Hand Ba’ street game.’
‘If only it was that easy, and they used the heids o’ Englishmen.’
‘Did I not read somewhere that Murray was from Norfolk.’
‘If it is the same mon – he grew up there but his family came from Peterhead.’
‘Ahh, so when are you going to bring me a whole body to dissect?’
‘He’s whole now.’
‘Aye, but ye could’ve cleaned the bugger up – wee Stella does nae mind the slicing and dicing but says she’d have took up nursing if she’d wanted to wash bodies before working on them. Never happier than when she’s having a moan.’
‘Still pissed off at you about the other day?’
Donnie frowned and shook his head. ‘She takes it all in good part – the huffing and puffing’s all an act, and she gives as good as she gets. Quite taken with your new DI though.’
‘Thought you said that Stella was in a relationship.’
‘For want o’ a better word, and mercifully, my imagination won’t take me there,’ he offered, with a knowing look. He took another slug of his malt. ‘I’ve met the other half – but it’s no’ better. Talk about the ugly face of feminism. That’s one member o’ the sisterhood who must have forgotten to take her bra off before burning it.’ Dunbar nearly spilt his drink and a couple of Americans seated across the aisle flashed disapproving looks their way. ‘Aye, it would account for the frizz that crowns her overcooked face too – sun-bed addiction. I’ve told her and Stella’s sick o’ telling her. Skin like beef jerky.’
Dunbar cocked his head in the direction of the eavesdroppers. Donnie Salkeld shuffled in his seat and swung his massive shoulders around to look, parting his colossal thighs, and in the process, exposing the truth of what a true Scot wears under his kilt. Dunbar grimaced and glanced over his shoulder, hoping nobody had just walked through the front doors. When the Americans saw the battered features that crowned the bulk filling the sofa, they immediately looked away.
‘I ken a growing tendency towards wilful over-sensitivity these days. Do you not, Alec?’ He announced for the benefit of the eavesdroppers. ‘Aye, they sit poised over their smart phones, ready take umbrage at the least little thing, so as to tweet their outrage to the world.’
‘Murray?’ Dunbar said, if only to stave off a potential diplomatic incident. The leather sofa groaned and creaked beneath his shifting weight, as he turned back to his friend. ‘Are we sure it is him?’
‘Short of the positive ID – yeah, should have that in the bag by tomorrow. I wouldn’t have come tonight but Molineux’s playing the smartarse and putting the squeeze on my enquiry, so I wanted to be out of the blocks at the gun tomorrow.’
‘Ach! I ken the last time that mon was SIO on a murder. The only thing he was capable of was straw-draw solutions to problems that required far greater thought. How the hell did he manage to rise two ranks above you?’
It was a good question, but not a conversation he was going to get drawn into. Donnie was a good friend but a liability around people he had no time for. Should he find himself in Molineux’s company at the same time, Donnie Salkeld was very likely to bring it up, and quote Dunbar.
18
He had foolishly allowed Donnie Salkeld to lure him into the function room, and just as he had anticipated, he very soon had begun to feel like the man at the bottom of a collapsed rolling maul, only instead of piling in to rake at him with their boots studs, they poured ridicule on their former Jed-Forest rival. Banter as bruising as any ruck and all good clean fun, so why had he felt like Donnie had handed him a suicide pass instead of a wine glass?
Dunbar had not let him get away with his stock – it’s all in my report – response to his questions and before Donnie sank into his cups he had pressed him to reveal key facts.
‘Can I expect a cheque for this private consultancy?’ Donnie teased.
‘A favour to a former adversary – and old friend.’
‘And where do I cash that?’ he sniped, before explaining that Kenneth Edward Murray, if indeed that is who it was, had bled to death via a vicious incision to the scrotum, that had all but removed the testes and penis, only the skin of the pubic region remained attached; a classic revenge style injury, for sexual transgression. Go for the offending organ, and should the victim not die, at least they are rendered eunuchs. Dunbar concurred. They had both seen it before. Murray had also suffered a second incision to the inner, upper thigh for good measure that severed the femoral artery.
His head, as in the cases of Wilson Farish and Fraser English, had been removed post mortem. More interesting, Donnie had detected evidence that it too had been mounted on a wooden spit before finally being buried in Braur Glen. There had been tissue damage from the incision area to the base of the skull. Dr Andy Lound had recovered fine splinters of wood from inside the neck cavity. There was also evidence of carrion activity, the eyes had not rotted away; they had been pecked out, as had some of the soft tissue from around and inside of the mouth. How long? Donnie could only speculate; a day or two – three at the most.
More troubling to Dunbar was, why the killer would take the risk of having to return to the site in order to bury the head? Every time he thought the case was taking one direction it would turn about and revisit the past, and that ancient clan blood feud. If that truly were the case, he had to catch the killer and quickly or before long the bodies might start to pile up in Braur Glen.
***
The day got off to a promising start, a post-it note on his desk top. It read: Banty says – “give him a bell.” It was written by an unfamiliar hand, and nobody in the murder room laid claim to having taken the message. Dunbar concluded that Banty must have been put through to the enquiry desk. First things first; he needed confirmation that the corpse found in Fraser English’s grave was that of Kenneth Edward Murray. Ev
ery effort they had made to trace living relatives had drawn a blank. Fortunately Neil Conroy had tracked down the last dentist Murray had registered with. The practice was in Dumfries. Rather than wait for records and X-rays to be sent back and forth from the path lab to the dental surgery, he had sent Falk and DC Donald across to Dumfries, with Stella’s impressions, first thing. They would probably be there by the time the surgery opened its doors.
Falk had also got a nickname that led to the name of owner of the finger he had found under the wiper-blade of his car. Ian ‘Pickle’ Hickson was reputed to be a man with serious gambling and drinking habits, and insufficient means to support them. As a result he tended to hang around on the periphery of Edinburgh’s underworld, but somewhat miraculously, appeared to have no previous convictions; hence his prints were not in the system. As far as Falk had been able to establish, Pickle hailed from Montrose and flitted between there and Edinburgh picking up casual work in hotels, kitchens and bars, and blowing every penny on booze and with various bookies. One of whom he had run-up substantial debts with, Billy Gibson aka Billy the Spiv, which in turn meant that it was very likely, he may have crossed Doc Monaghan’s path.
‘Good work,’ Dunbar had enthused. ‘Pass it to Divisional CID.’
‘But – ’ Falk had begun in protest.
‘Division!’ Dunbar had repeated curtly. ‘Billy Gibson wouldnae give ye the time o’ day. If! – and it’s a big if, this Pickle guy names Doc as the person responsible, you can ride along when they go to make the arrest. But I wouldnae get yer hopes up, Falk. Doc chopped his finger off te play a joke on you. Can ye imagine what’s going through the poor bugger’s head about what he can expect if he grasses Doc up? And do you doubt, for one moment, that Doc will have made it abundantly clear what the consequences would be?’
Grudging, yet accepting, Falk had scooped a set of keys from the pegs and headed for Dumfries.
After he had gone Dunbar had studied the post-it and decided he would sooner meet face to face with Banty than talk to him on the phone.
‘Going to that internet café for a chat with my biker friend. When Falk’s done at Dumfries, send him up to the NHS central records office in Glasgow. I want to know the dates that Murray was at Heathlands and the details of his sacking.’
‘Will they just hand that sort of stuff over, boss?’ Conroy asked.
‘Get on the blower, give ‘em a heads-up, and don’t take no for an answer. If you get some jobs-worth go over their head but get me that info.’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘Any problems, refer them to me. Ach! In fact, tell them I’d like a copy of the man’s personnel file, and anything else they’ve got on him, including the name or names of the women he was alleged to have assaulted that got him sacked.’ Conroy nodded and snatched up a phone. ‘Briony, come and see what The Horde do when not riding the highways.’
She flashed a puzzled expression his way as she leapt up to follow him out. ‘The Horde?’ she repeated.
Once again he found himself wondering what it was exactly she had been doing during her secondment with NCIS. Never having heard of Gordon ‘Doc’ Monoghan, he could forgive. Monaghan might be a big fish in Edinburgh’s pond, but not a name, or to use intelligence parlance, a face, cops the length and breadth of Britain would instantly recognise. However, never having heard of one of Europe’s most notorious biker gangs struck him as odd, if not downright lax.
***
Dunbar had only got one foot out of the car when Banty, looking decidedly unhappy, threw open the café door and stepped out.
‘Not here! I said gimme a bell,’ he hissed, glancing back over his shoulder. A similarly garbed woman, with even more tattoos than him, sat in the seat he had occupied on Dunbar’s previous visit. ‘Angie’s in, yeah! She don’t want the punters scared off by the ol’Bill sniffin’ around the gaff, combin’ our database an’ that.’
‘Sorry, lost in translation, and I couldn’t find your business card.’
‘Really? Fat chance of catchin’ yer serial killer then, eh?’
Dunbar eyed him coldly, as from behind he heard Tyler chuckle.
‘Tenement Tea Room, down on the corner,’ Banty continued, nodding in its direction. ‘See yer there in five.’ He added meeting Tyler’s curious gaze. ‘Nice one!’ he added, with a leery wink.
‘Who was that?’ Angie asked, as he closed the door behind him.
‘Reps, babe! I told ‘em – only by appointment,’ he lied, scooping his leather jacket off the back of a stool. ‘Nippin’ down to Amy’s for a bacon sarnie – get y’anyfin’?’ She shook her head.
Dunbar had not been in the café before. Someone had made a reasonable stab at trying to recreate an authentic period tenement hovel, along the lines of the museum on High Street, but the ubiquitous nature of health and safety regulations had intruded to spoil the effect. It struck Dunbar as a sad reflection on the city fathers’ attitude to everything. Never mind the architecture, history or aesthetics, what the public need is signage.
Bold and colourful regulatory notices, smoke alarms and a fire hydrant diluted the effect. On the walls, food hygiene certificates, various trade licenses and disclaimers were given prominence and along with those appliances every modern café requires, any sense of the past the designer had created was usurped by convenience and modernity. The tea was good though, loose leaf and mashed to perfection, and the smell of sausage and bacon sizzling away in the kitchen was proving hard to resist.
Banty skulked in. ‘Amy! You back there, darlin’? Bacon on brown wiv’ matchin’ sauce to go.’ A sing-song local voice from the kitchen acknowledged the order by repeating it. He dragged a chair from another table, spun it and sat arms folded across the back rest. ‘This yer ol’ lady then?’ he asked, his cheesy grin showing more gaps than teeth.
‘Detective Inspector Tyler, meet Banty Ansell,’ Dunbar said. Tyler nodded politely in response.
‘Prettiest pig I ever clapped eyes on – no offence, darlin’.’
‘Taken all the same,’ she replied.
Banty shrugged it off. ‘This a one-off, Chief, yeah. The ol’ lady’s bang into the code. She was Hatchet Max’s bird back when I was only an affiliate. Y’know, like coppers when they first join the filth.’
‘On probation.’
‘Yeah, yeah – same fing, innit? Had me tag but hadn’t earned me colours. Funny but, having lost Max; he got into a ruck wiv’ fackin’ Outlaws in Germany, well, it was her that wanted out’ve it! An’ yet – well she figures, if I can break the code, I can break my vows.’ He shook his head, shrugged and spread his arms. ‘So y’see, it’s a big deal, yeah?’
‘Understood.’
‘But I was finkin’, see. Any geezer that goes around choppin’ heads off an’ that, well, that’s a geezer wot’s not wired up right, yeah?’
‘Certainly not what you’d call normal behaviour,’ Dunbar concurred drily.
‘Exact-a-mundo! So I’m finkin’ – what if, in his warped fackin’ world, I’ve given him the hump over a spilt coffee, an’ he sees that as a beheadin’ offence, uh? What then, I ask meself?’
‘Self-preservation,’ Dunbar agreed.
‘Too fackin’ right, Chief. An’ gone are the days when Banty tools up – gets on his hog an’ sorts out the agg himself. Angie won’t have none of that eeva! She says, if I evva get sent down again, she’ll do one wiv the kids, an’ I’ll nevva see any of ‘em again. Can’t live by the code, which says we sort out our own agg, an’ yet, she’d go mental if she knew I was talkin’ to you guys. Bit hypocritical really, innit? So, y’see – can’t win, can I?’
‘Damned if you do, damned if you don’t – innit?’ Dunbar offered.
Banty scanned the café, nodding his agreement. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘Anyhow! I quizzed one of our regulars, yeah? An Aussie student, I call him Bonzer ‘cos it’s what Aussies say innit!? Well, I remembered Bonzer was in the day that beardy geezer spilt his coffee on the keypad. So I told him t
he bastard had nevva squared us up, an’ I wanted me money, yeah?’ He eyed them expectantly.
‘Clever,’ Dunbar encouraged.
‘Yeah, give nuffin’ away but got the goods,’ he bragged, clearly impressed with his own ingenuity. ‘Bonzer said he didn’t know the geezer but he’d seen him around the campus, but some bird Bonzer’s goin’ wiv did know him, Vaz-man she called him, some lecturer.’
‘Dr Vazquez?’ Tyler said. Her eyes lit up, but Dunbar was giving nothing away.
‘Vaz, or Vaz-man, summat like that. An’ the geezer’s one of her lecturers, which makes sense ‘cos he come over the proper clever facker wiv’ me when I tugged him over spillin’ coffee on the keyboard. Tried to bamboozle me wiv’ big words an’ that.’
They heard Amy coming through from the kitchen. Banty jumped up. ‘Vaz-man.’ He winked, tapped the side of his nose before putting his chair back where it got it from. ‘Cheers, babe – on the slate?’ he asked, patting his pockets.
‘Aye, an’ could I no’ re-roof this place with your slates, Banty Ansell.’
‘Yer’ a diamond. Square you up on pay day,’ he promised with a grin. At that he snatched up his snack and breezed out, leaving Amy shaking her head.
Dunbar and Tyler stared at each other for a moment.
‘Vaz-man – has to be Vasquez, surely?’ she asked.
‘That’s what Zoe calls him.’
Tyler gasped. ‘Explains his objections to expanding the search parameters of the site; if they hadn’t, we never would have discovered the second head.’ They drained their tea, for which Tyler insisted upon paying.
***
Things had gone smoothly enough at Dumfries. The dentist was unequivocal; they definitely had the head of Kenneth Edward Murray and therefore the body as well. A quick statement from him to that effect and the two detectives were on the road to Glasgow. That was where their progress was temporarily derailed. The records office would not play ball.
Dunbar told them to cool their heels and go for a coffee while he made a call. Apart from securing his place on SCHU, the meeting at Holyrood immediately proved to have other benefits. The Justice Minister Lawrie Minto took his call at the first time of asking and happily lent his weight to their request for information. Within the hour, Falk and DC Donald were back at the records office to collect photocopies of all that they had on the deceased former mental health auxiliary nurse. Not only that, they had a copy of his disciplinary hearing and a staff history of the place going back fifty years.
A Deviant Breed (DCI Alec Dunbar series) Page 27