Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  The text was certainly genuine. It had been sent from Damien’s phone to hers. But if I started as I should, by disbelieving everyone, Vanessa could have lied about everything she’d told Morrison’s people and had someone else send that text, once Damien’s neck had been broken. Only that made no sense. If she’d simply said nothing at all, her husband’s death would soon have been ruled accidental by the local coroner.

  No, Vanessa Price was off the suspect list, provisionally, and I was comfortable accepting the text as genuine.

  I had only two pieces of incontrovertible information to work from. One, Damien Price had ended up dead with his neck broken. Two, his death had not been the result of a random, unwitnessed accident.

  Three

  Shay finally rolled up at twenty past six, handing Da his car keys back before dropping into a boneless sprawl at my side. “Thanks for lending me the car again, Uncle Danny. I topped her up at Tesco’s for you earlier. I had some stuff to pick up in town, anyway.”

  “Thanks, son,” Da said absently, putting down the notes he’d been noodling with and bouncing up out of his chair. “Well, that’s me off then, boys. There’s supper for you both in the oven. Just turn it off at seven, mind.”

  “Grand!” Shay grinned up at him. “Off on the prowl, again, are you?”

  “Keep your nosy beak out, Seabhac.” Da tapped the side of his nose. “When a nice lady offers to feed a man, it’s rude to disappoint. I’ll be back before my Ford threatens to turn into a pumpkin.” He sauntered off whistling, and Shay made a tolerant, amused sound.

  “Sounds like he’s found one that can cook, for a change,” my cousin said lightly, knowing full well by then that Caitlin’s highest culinary ambitions extended no further than a basic fry up, half of which she usually partly burned somehow. “That’s nice.” Yes, I agreed inwardly. It was. “So? What’s this case we’re being sent off on then?”

  I pulled up the email and forwarded it to him. “Go and grab your laptop. We can still get out for a bit if you get a move on.”

  Grumbling, he heaved himself up again.

  “Want a brew? I’ll stick the kettle on.” He did so, returning with his laptop and pulling another stand around putting it on. Back with our teas, a nice, zingy lemon and ginger this time. He settled himself on the couch again and opened up his email account. I drank my tea down while he read through the little information we had.

  “If you want photo IDs on our possibles, I should just do the adult male passengers as a first priority, right?” Shay asked, putting his mug down so he could feed the list into a sorter programme. With this many names to go through, that was probably best.

  “Yeah.” I agreed, and he punched a couple of keys. Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac), the ferry company, had already given us photo IDs for the crew. A spreadsheet with the new, shorter list appeared, names, addresses, payment details and, in the case of those who were driving the vehicles on board, registration details. Shay divided that list into vehicle drivers and others with another few keystrokes.

  “I’ll send the drive-on batch through first. They’ll be quicker to find,” he told me, copying that section and switching tabs to feed them into his DVLA access. Then he went back for the rest and opened up a second search in the DVLA database for those too. “Might as well wait until those come back before we hit the passport records. You know how slow results from there can be. Most of them probably have driving licences, even if they’re riding in someone else’s car or went aboard as foot passengers.” He picked up his mug again and emptied it. “I’ll start up some checks on the Prices before we head out too. Want to load up the paddleboards and get ready?”

  “Sure.” I took his empty mug off him and went through to the kitchen. “What do you think?” I called back. “Turn the oven off and let it finish cooking when we get back, or just lower the temperature to minimum so it slow cooks?”

  “Turn it off when we leave. I don’t trust that crappy thing. The temperature control is way off.” He was probably right.

  I went out to the garage and grabbed the two inflatable paddle board packs to stick in the boot. Shay was still tapping away when I went upstairs to change. Warm evening or not, the water in Loch Duntelchaig would be chilly, and I wanted a proper dip, so I put on my wetsuit and added neoprene socks before pulling on some light summer joggers and a t-shirt. Shay stuck his head round the door as I was pulling a pair of trainers on.

  “Good idea.” He grinned, noting my wetsuit sleeves. “I could do with a swim, too.” He disappeared again, and I went back down to wait for him. He wasn’t long. “Oven,” he reminded me, and I went to turn it off and take our little individual ceramic pots out.

  Twenty minutes later, we were on the bank of Loch Duntelchaig, inflating our boards. Nobody else around either, which was an unexpected bonus. Once the boards were ready, we snapped our paddles together in unison.

  “Across and back?” I asked, fastening the tether strap to my ankle. The loch was about a mile wide here, and the water was calm today. The wind would be behind us for the return trip too.

  “Why not?” Shay snapped his fin into the fin box and got his board into the water, front end to the shore. He stepped nimbly aboard with enviable ease. The thing barely rocked. I contented myself with wading in before mounting my board and standing up. My cousin had got himself turned around by then, and we exchanged a competitive look before setting off.

  I beat him across, barely, but he left me a good fifteen feet behind on the return trip. Pretty much what we’d both expected, given the conditions. Shay was a good seven kilos lighter than I was. We messed around with the boards for a bit longer, then we took a short breather before going for a good swim. Shay soon got bored and began to flash around and under me like a playful seal, entirely in his element, covering triple the distance I did with his messing about. He’d always loved the water.

  By the time we’d both had enough, it was time to be getting back to the house anyway, so we finished deflating the boards and packed up. It was astonishing how far away in time my day at the office seemed after just an hour and a half in a beautiful, peaceful spot like this. Back at the house with the oven reheating, we both showered and dressed again.

  “Fifteen minutes more,” Shay decided after checking the little pots and removing the lids to let the top layer of cheesy potato brown a little. He went off to check on his searches while I laid the table.

  “How’s it going?” I asked when he came back. He leaned against the worktop and folded his arms.

  “Not bad,” Shay noted. “I’ve started pulling in the available CCTV footage from around Uig and Tarbert, in case we get lucky there. We’ve got photos for the first seventy-odd passengers so far, but those were the easy ones. I found out that Damien Price was in the islands last week too. Doing a round of the distilleries and trying to sign a few new ones up. He didn’t have any luck on Lewis, though. There’s a little place down near Callanish he especially liked, according to his emails to his partner, but their stuff nearly always sells out by advance orders. They weren’t interested.” I put my beer down and used the oven mitts to move the pots onto plates.

  “Which one’s yours, Shay?” I couldn’t tell.

  “Well, they’re not colour coded, so how would I know? Stick your fork in one and have a sniff.” I did so, carefully moving some potato out of the way. “Yours,” Shay declared, claiming the other plate and setting it in his place before I’d even spotted a nice chunk of beef.

  “No criminal records, either, for Damien or his wife,” Shay went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “They’re both squeaky clean, upstanding citizens. No dodgy friends, relatives or known criminal associates. I haven’t found any trace of potentially murderous rivals, business or personal, yet either. Wasn’t there a bottle of wine open? What’s your da done with it?” He rooted around in the cupboards until he found it. “Are you sticking to beer?”

  I was. He opened another cupboard and plucked himself a glass, pouring h
imself a modest ration before recorking the bottle and putting it away again.

  “What I’d like to know,” I said as he seated himself, “is how our man got on and off the ferry. They weren’t crew, and there’s a good chance they weren’t a listed passenger either, because disguise or no disguise, I think Vanessa Price would have looked at them twice when they disembarked if they had been.”

  “Maybe there are more hiding places on those ships than anyone thought of checking.” Shay shrugged. “They could have still been on board when she sailed back to Skye for all we know. Especially if they had friends among the crew.” He had a point there. I doubted they’d dived off and swum for it. Too much risk of being spotted, for one thing, even if someone had been standing by with a boat to pick them up. Plus it was stupidly risky. Shay dug around in his pot and found a chunk of chestnut mushroom. He chewed happily. “That’s really good.”

  So was mine, and I was pleased to find that I’d got some of the mushrooms too. Thank you, da!

  “The man can certainly cook,” I agreed. I did alright in the kitchen, but they were both better cooks than I was, although Shay often didn’t even bother when he was on his own. He could deal with all his nutritional needs by snacking on some of his horrible ‘healthy’ things and slurping down high protein smoothies. When I looked at him now, it was hard to believe he was going to turn thirty this summer. He was positively bursting with youthful vitality. Catching me staring, he raised an eyebrow, fixing me with his beautiful golden amber eyes.

  “What?” he asked, picking up his glass to take a mouthful of wine.

  “Your thirtieth’s coming up.” I told him, “and just look at you.”

  “Your Da still looks ten years younger than he is,” he pointed out. “So it isn’t just the diet. There’s the genetic factor too. You could be well under thirty yourself on your good days, although you seem determined to give the opposite impression on purpose most of the time.”

  With good reason. New colleagues were startled enough to meet such a youthful DCI as it was. Some of them just didn’t seem able to take me seriously until I’d proved myself. Even Caitlin had been a bit like that when we’d first met.

  “Besides,” my cousin added emphatically, “I’d rather put up with looking like this than risk all the nasty system failures that would start happening if I didn’t take care of myself properly. You need the right fats, amino acids, minerals, vitamins and a shit ton of other stuff to keep everything in good working order, especially the brain. I’d start thinking about easing up on the dead animal consumption a bit more if I were you.”

  “You’ve cut me down to once a week on red meat already!” I protested. “Well, maybe twice, now and then if I’m lucky. And you can shut up, with all the desserts you stuff down.” He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “It’s still sugar, Shay, even if it comes from honey or fruit or raw cane, so don’t even try to tell me it’s health food.”

  He sniffed but let it pass, and we applied ourselves to our dinners for a while.

  “So,” I asked, when we’d scraped out our pots, “who are you going to be when we fly over tomorrow?” He sipped at his wine, considering it.

  “Myself,” he decided. “Anderson had the right idea. I’m your cousin and an accredited civilian specialist that your department uses. I’ve got SOCO and admin experience, as well as being your ‘tech’ guy. McKinnon could more easily spare a civilian all-rounder like me than send a proper partner or a larger team out there to assist you.”

  “Keeps things simple,” I agreed. “Alright. You’ve been temporarily assigned as my PA, for the duration of the case.”

  “Just don’t expect me to call you Sir or Boss, Cuz,” he grinned, and I snorted. Perish the thought! I flicked the coffee machine on, and Shay dealt with the modest washing up while we waited for it to heat up. We drank our espressos standing, and he washed those cups too before filling us a glass of water each. One of the first things he’d done, when we’d got here, had been to fit filter systems on the taps. We headed back to the living room.

  “Fancy watching anything?” I asked. We wouldn’t be able to make any more progress on the case tonight, not until he started to get more results in.

  “Yeah, why not?” he said. “Let’s watch Whisky Galore, the 1949 one, not the new one.”

  Oh, that was a good idea. I hadn’t seen that for years. He went over to where da had shelved his DVD collection, his fingertip going straight to the right spot to pull at the top of the box and tip it out. He flicked the wall sockets on, then came back to hand me the remotes and flop down by my side.

  “They filmed this one on Barra, didn’t they?” I asked as we pushed our laptop trays out of the way. I dragged the coffee table a bit nearer so we could both put our feet up.

  “Mmm. They did. I doubt we’ll end up down there, though. Go on, hit play.”

  Da came back in time to catch the last half hour with us, and we moved over so he could take his place in the middle. He smelled fresh and soapy, and his hair was still damp. It was considerate of him to clean up at his friend’s place. He was always good about little things like that. He shook his head as the final credits rolled.

  “Only one real Scot on the whole bloody island.” He chuckled, still tickled by the fact that most of the islanders back then had been more Irish than Scottish, whether they knew it or not.

  “They left out the whole part about the Catholics from the book, too,” Shay agreed. “Mackenzie was not thrilled. It’s still entertaining, though.” He stood and stretched. “Well, I’m for bed, so goodnight to the pair of you. Don’t turn my laptop socket off, Uncle Danny. It’s got work to do tonight.” Da had a bit of a compulsion about switching everything off before he went to bed.

  “Right you are,” Da acknowledged the caution. After Shay had gone, he clapped my arm, “You’d best get on up too, son, early start tomorrow.”

  Good advice. I was more than ready to fall asleep where I was.

  “Yeah,” I made myself move. “Night, Da, thanks for the grub. Another winner.” I left him to check doors and flick switches and went up to collapse into bed. I dozed off, wondering if poor Vanessa Price would be able to get any sleep tonight.

  Four

  Our airbus wasn’t quite as quick as the seven o’clock Loganair flight would have been, but it got us to Stornoway in just under an hour, and without all the bother of checking in and hanging around waiting at the airport too. I was grateful to the Chief for arranging the transport for us. Our pilot was quick to assure us that the winds were nice and low today, so there wouldn’t be any problem landing. Besides, he’d been told to drop us off at the Coastguard Station on Battery Point in Stornoway, and that was more sheltered than the airport.

  He wasn’t wrong. When we thanked him and climbed out, the breeze from across the water, where Lews castle was nestled in its generously treed grounds, was not at all strong. Shay took in the sweep of the harbour and the picturesque waterfront from behind his large, darkly tinted sunglasses.

  “How can anyone call this an ugly place?” he asked, “It’s perfectly charming.” I had to agree with him. From here, at least, it did all look rather lovely, as it sparkled in the sunshine.

  “Just goes to show, you can’t believe everything you read. Besides, a lot of places like this have improved enormously over the last twenty years or so.” I pulled our bags from the helicopter. Shay slung his laptop pack on one shoulder and his holdall on the other as I passed them over. “I think that must be our ride.”

  I shouldered my own bags and gestured with my head to where a local patrol car had parked up in front of the blue-trimmed green and white bulk of the Coastguard Station. A tall, blond, uniformed figure waved at us from the side of the car.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Keane?” he asked as we came up to him. “Welcome to Lewis and Harris, Sir. Constable Ewan MacLeod.”

  I shook his offered hand. Ewan was a well-weathered blue-eyed blond lad in his mid-twenties. He was a
lmost as tall as our friend Liam, topping me by a good four inches, and carried considerably more bulk. He was built like a blacksmith.

  “I was told it’d just be the two of you, for now, Sir?” he said questioningly, a little puzzled. He must have been under the impression that Anderson meant to send an entire invading force of CID over from the mainland.

  “Just me and my assistant, yes, but we can always call more people in if it becomes necessary.” I gestured towards the boot, and he rushed to open it for us, flushing a deep crimson at his oversight. We dumped our holdalls in, and Shay hopped in the back. I walked round to let myself in the front passenger door.

  “The station’s only round the harbour,” Ewan told us as he climbed in, “Less than a mile, actually. We’ve booked you into a little hotel on Francis Street, just a couple of minutes’ walk from us, if you’d like to drop your bags off on our way in?”

  “No, that’s fine,” I told him, buckling my seatbelt. “I’d rather go and introduce myself to Area Commander Morrison first.”

  “As you say, Sir.” Ewan got the car running and set off. I noticed him stealing curious glances at my cousin in the rearview mirror as he took us down to Newton Street, and we began our run along the waterfront, but Shay was too busy staring interestedly out of the window to notice. Yeah, those sunglasses might disguise his eyes effectively, and the long, flopping fringe helped, when it wasn’t blowing about, but he still looked like he belonged on a Hollywood film set or a fashion magazine cover, no airbrush required.

  The drive took all of four minutes. Ewan nipped up a side street and around a corner onto Church Street before turning into a little walled car park opposite the Police station. We all climbed out again and walked across the road. Their station was a long, pebble-dashed two-storey building, the higher end pinkish and the lower end white. It had some nice, darker tiling around the stepped and ramped entry, which had a flourishing little planter by it. Three colourfully flowering hanging baskets hung from the wall below that, a couple of metres apart.