“It’s not the cars I’m worried about. I don’t see how they could have missed someone there. But the vans? They didn’t make them unload…” Yeah, someone could hide in a loaded van easily enough.
I liked it. People dramatically diving overboard might look good in films, but it was a bloody stupid way of going about things. I’d seen the vehicle manifest last night, so I ran through it in my head while we were waiting for our drinks.
“So, ignoring the cars, we’ve got two campervans and five standard-sized delivery vans to check on.” Our drinks arrived, together with a complimentary sampler plate of miniature pastries, a charming little apology. I positively beamed at our contrite waitress when I saw those, and she froze like a startled deer before fleeing again as another red tide swept up from her neck. Conall popped a baby sausage roll into his mouth before throwing his coffee down after it.
“Maybe you should complain more often.” A fleeting little smile there, but it didn’t last long. He was still feeling the after-effects of that horrible meeting. “You can look into those as soon as we get back to the station,” he told me as he cracked his water open.
I stirred my tea while I chewed up a danish bite. Not bad, but apple would have been nicer. I’d have to leave a good tip now, too. I didn’t want those silly girls paying for these out of their own, poorly paid pockets. He pulled his own phone out to check for emails and, probably, to send a message off to Caitlin, knowing him. All okay over there? Any problems with that Philips guy? He helped himself to the little pastries with ham and cheese in them while he was doing that, leaving the sweet ones for me.
When it was time for us to move, I put a twenty under the plate, and we went out to amble along the harbourfront to the ferry terminal as our ship made her approach. This was one of the bigger Caledonian MacBrayne vessels, not like the smaller inter-island boats that they used to serve the less populous areas. Over twenty thousand people lived on Lewis and Harris, and flocks of visitors boated in at this time of year, although the peak season was only just getting started. It was a nice morning for visiting the islands; clear skies, sunshine, and a day that was warming up nicely. The moderate breeze wasn’t enough to raise a goosebump either, although it was too strong for the dreaded midges to swarm, despite the mild weather. You wouldn’t catch me wandering around under those trees in the castle grounds in the evenings without repellent on. I had a little spray bottle in a pocket, just in case.
After the ship was secured, we were taken up in the lift to where the captain had his office. Captain Thomas shook our hands politely. He was more than happy to show us plans for the ferry and to explain how the onboard search had been conducted the previous afternoon. With over thirty crew under him, as well as a dozen of the local police, they’d been able to be very thorough and methodical about it. By the time he’d walked us through it, deck by deck, I think we were both satisfied that nobody could have evaded detection. He also confirmed that none of the crew had been on the vehicle deck at the time of Damien’s death and handed Conall a commendably detailed report of where each of them had been and what work they’d been performing during that period.
“No, I very much doubt anyone would have jumped or dived into the water.” Captain Thomas had seemed a bit amused by the question. “Even using crew access to the stern, that’s still quite a drop, even without the turbulence of the wake, or the sea temperature, to worry about. And they’d have been spotted for sure too, with all the people enjoying the fine weather.”
He obligingly took us to the door that Damien Price had last been seen disappearing through and down the crew stairs to the vehicle deck. There was still a temporary police barrier set up around the area. Conall and I crouched down to examine the blood spattered on the deck. That would be from the scalp wound. There hadn’t been any little yellow triangles left to mark blood spatter on the stairs themselves. He must have hit his head when he landed down here.
“Does that look like a partial handprint to you?” Conall asked, pointing out a spot a few feet away from the larger sample.
It did, so I got my phone out and carefully moved into a good position to snap a few magnified, high-res close-ups. I moved back again, stepping carefully, and showed them to him.
“So after he’d landed down here, Damien Price reached up to feel his head wound?”
“I’d say so.” Conall frowned. “Quite a trick if his neck was already broken at that point. You’ve got a couple of decent partial fingerprints there, so we can soon find out. Besides, the local forensics team may already have done that by now. I’ll check in with them from the office.”
There was nothing else there to see, so the captain took us back up to look at the outer deck areas. He was right. With crowds of people wandering around out here, spread out over the decks with outdoor access, nobody could have gone into the water without being seen. Conall’s van theory was looking likelier and likelier. He thanked the captain for his time, and we both shook his hand again and left him to get on with his busy, tightly scheduled day. There was nothing else for us here. It was time we went back to Church Street and really got cracking.
Seven
Back at the station, we settled into our little office by piling all the unwanted equipment onto one of the desks and buddying up at the cleared one, so we could see each other’s screens without constantly having to get up and move. I got my laptop talking to the scanner/printer and fed the file the captain had handed me through it.
Shay seemed fine, nothing to worry about there, although I could tell that Vanessa Price had got under his skin in a way that few people ever managed to. He was extremely good at packing that kind of unwanted baggage away, where it couldn’t distract him. Shay insisted that his memory was no better than anyone else’s. It was just that all our data retrieval and filtering systems were garbage. How were you supposed to find anything amongst millions of unlabelled files? It didn’t mean they weren’t there! I’d never bothered to argue the point. His brain just wasn’t normal, end of discussion.
Trish Morrison had helpfully sent me a useful departmental phone list with her report last night, so I pulled that up and put a call through to the local consulting pathologist’s office. Doctor Hamilton, who also worked at the Western Isles Hospital north of town, wasn’t there, but the assistant offered to forward the call to his mobile for me before I could even ask. They seemed to know who I was too, which made me wonder if Trish had sent out a general memo to warn everyone that the mainlanders were invading.
“Doctor Hamilton? Good morning, Sir. Inspector Keane here. I was wondering if you could spare me a minute?”
“Aye, I was warned you’d probably call,” a gruff, thickly accented voice answered me. “You’re a polite one, at least. Sir, is it? There’s a nice change! What can I do for you, son? And don’t ask why you haven’t got my report yet. You’ll get it when it’s ready… and if you could just leave me to get on with it, that might be sooner rather than later.”
I found myself smiling. Was Davie Baird giving lessons in how to deal with annoying, impatient inspectors or was it a universal reflex, born of exasperated experience?
“Of course, Doctor Hamilton, and I wouldn’t presume otherwise. I just wanted to ask you about a handprint found at the scene.”
“Oh, that, aye. Been to look around the ferry, have you?” He seemed to approve of my diligence, at least, from his more moderate tone. “Well, the partial prints are a match for Damien Price, if that’s what you wanted to know. So aye, he didn’t break his neck tumbling down those stairs. Someone did that for him afterwards, while he was lying there with his knee banged up and his head bleeding, the poor devil.”
“That’s all I needed to know, thank you. I’ll look forward to seeing your report in due time, Sir.”
He grunted and cut the call. Not a time-waster, that one. Shay glanced over.
“Well?” he asked.
“They were Damien Price’s own prints.” It wasn’t really any surprise, but the confirma
tion was enough to clinch a premeditated murder charge firmly.
My cousin turned back to his screen, icing over as he pieced the man’s last moments together. As a general rule, the colder Shay seemed, the angrier he was.
“Two of your vans were rentals. Want to get the constabulary looking out for them?”
“Sure, bounce them over.” He did, and I emailed them off to Trish, along with our black-and-white photo of the suspect, so she could spread the word. “What about the others?”
He just sniffed. “Two families on holiday, both with little kids, and three locals coming back after shopping trips. Besides, who’d use their own van to pull off something like that? Makes more sense to eliminate the rentals first.” He was tapping through Damien Price’s photos from the week before.
“Those are really good,” I said, getting a brief look at a few of the pictures as he zipped through them. Damien Price had an excellent eye, for an amateur.
“Mmm, he sold odd ones to magazines and things now and then. Nice hobby.”
I left Shay to it and assembled my scanned sheets into a single document to drop into the case folder before setting about writing up the morning’s activities so far. We hadn’t been formally interviewing Vanessa Price that morning, which had all been done properly yesterday, so there was no unnecessary recording or transcript to deal with. I might as well get as much as I could written up while I was waiting for Shay to find me something else to work on. My desk phone rang, and I picked it up.
“DCI Keane speaking.”
“What the hell, Conall?!” Trish Morrison exclaimed down the phone at me. “You only got here a couple of hours ago. Is this email for real?”
“I’m just writing it all up now,” I told her, “but yes, we got lucky with some footage from a CCTV camera on Skye. Mrs Price was able to make a very solid identification from it. We’re looking through various databases for photo ID now.” A brief silence.
“I think I’m beginning to understand what the Chief was hinting at,” she finally said. “And the vans?”
“None of the vans was unloaded during the passenger check, and I strongly suspect that’s how our man got on and off the ferry. At the time they were letting people off, the death was still being viewed as ‘accidental, possibly suspicious.’ It’s a shame it was all so rushed. There are still another five we may need to check on, but the two I sent the details for are both rentals.” That bumped them straight to the top of the list, as Shay had so sweetly pointed out.
“I see. Dare I ask when you two actually started working this case?” That was funny.
“Yesterday evening,” I reassured her. “Shortly after I got your email. Nobody’s that bloody fast, Trish.” Another pause.
“Right, of course not. And I’d like to think that my own team might easily have got this far... in a few more days. I note you’ve upgraded your man to a murder suspect too, but I don’t see any report in from Doctor Hamilton’s team yet?”
“No, but we did see a partial, bloody handprint at the crime scene. Doctor Hamilton was able to confirm that the prints belonged to Damien Price when I called him a few minutes ago.”
“And?” she asked impatiently. It wasn’t her case, and she hadn’t been looking into it the way we were, so it was an understandable lapse.
“And you can’t feel at your own bleeding scalp if you’ve already broken your neck falling down a flight of stairs, Trish,” I told her apologetically. “There were no bloodstains on the steps, and the physical evidence all indicates that he cracked his head when he landed.”
“Crap!” she muttered. “Of course, you can’t. Sorry, Conall, I wasn’t thinking. Great work so far, though, both of you. I can hardly wait to see what you turn up next!” She hung up.
Shay gave me a nudge. “No UK driving license for our guy in the DVLA, and nothing in the PND either. We’ll have to wait for the new searches I just set up to finish running.” He wasn’t pleased with those negative results either, I could tell. He brought Damien’s photos back up, and I got on with updating my report. After about ten minutes, I got another nudge.
“Just a sec, I’m nearly done.” I always kept these things pared down to the bare bones. No need to waste time throwing in a load of unnecessary padding.
There, done. I saved the updated file in the shared case folder and looked over to see what he’d found. Oh, that was a really nice shot. Damien had caught a very handsome common buzzard coming in to perch on a fence post, talons and tail extended and wings curving up in a graceful sweep. Shay zoomed out to show me more of the photo and brought a cluster of buildings into view in the background. Outside the nearest of those, a white van was parked up, and a man wearing a black beanie, with his face turned away from the camera, was passing a crate up to someone inside. Shay zoomed in further, and there it was, a compass tattoo showing on the inside of the wrist, below a sleeve pushed halfway up the forearm.
“Now that’s what I call decent resolution!” he said happily. “Although it’s not as well focused as the buzzard, of course. That Nikon of Price’s is a great little camera. The guy’s height and build look about right.”
“Show me the still from the petrol station and zoom right in on that tattoo in both shots, please.” He did so. Not only did they match, but there was also a small mole in exactly the same spot on both images, just to the side of the wrist. “Where is that?” I asked.
“It’s that little distillery near Callanish I mentioned yesterday. The one Mr Price liked so much. See? The label on the crate? Do you think we should pay it a visit?”
“Yes, I do,” I confirmed. “Are there any shots with a number plate for that van showing on them?”
He shook his head. “No, Price snapped a few of the buzzard coming in, but I doubt he noticed anything else at the time, and the angle’s all wrong. They were all taken from one spot. He might have stopped to snap a picture of the place on his way to his meeting and then spotted the bird.” The van didn’t have any visible signage or other distinguishing feature on it either. A pity. I picked up the phone, checked my list and punched in Ewan MacLeod’s number.
“Constable MacLeod speaking.” His cheerful voice answered on the second ring.
“Ewan, it’s DCI Keane. Can you pop along to our office, please?”
“Right away, Inspector.” Good as his word, he tapped at the door and came in half a minute later.
“Hi, Ewan,” Shay greeted him brightly.
“Mr Keane.” He nodded back before turning to look at me. “What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“We need a car, actually. How long will it take us to get to Callanish?”
“Callanish? About half an hour, maybe a bit less. Off to see the stones, are you, Sir?”
“I’d love to while we’re here, but no, we need to go and visit a little distillery near there and talk to the owner.”
He grinned broadly. “There’s only the one over that way, Sir. Angus MacLeod’s place. He’s a Harris man, no relation. Well, he’s my cousin’s father-in-law now, but not a blood relative, if you know what I mean.”
“Is that his distillery?” I asked as Shay flipped his laptop around to show Ewan the full photograph.
“Aye, that it is. And a very fine drop they produce there too.” He blinked thoughtfully. “I’d be happy to drive you over myself and introduce you. DCI Morrison did say I was to take you wherever you wanted to go, Sir. Should I just give Angus a call first and make sure he’ll be there to meet us?”
That was a good idea.
“Yes, thank you, Ewan. That would be great. Meet us out front after?”
He nodded and ducked out again. Shay got up and pulled his rather expensive jacket back on (‘But it’s hemp Con! It’ll outlast all of yours by decades!’) and tapped at his laptop before locking it. It was a really nice jacket, I had to admit, and it fitted me better than it did him. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind nicking it.
“My phone will beep if any of the searches get a hit while we’re out,” he
told me, staring regretfully at his laptop. “I don’t want to shut her down and slow those up.” He didn’t like leaving his favourite toy alone in a strange, ‘insecure’ location. “It’s all backed up anyway, if there was a fire, or a leak or anything…”
“We’re in a police station, Shay! So you really don’t need to worry about it getting stolen. Besides, Ewan gave me the key to this office earlier,” I told him, producing it.
“That’s nice,” he said, a bit condescendingly, “but that couldn’t possibly happen. Honestly, Con, you just don’t think sometimes, do you? I pity anyone who so much as touches my laptop. They won’t be able to get into it, of course, but the cameras will turn on automatically and start sending me the recordings. And it’ll make a hell of a racket if anyone tries to move it.” He snickered, tickled by the thought of that happening here. Even more reason to lock the bloody door!
I couldn’t think of any building in Stornoway that would be packed with a snoopier bunch than the people working in here. I grabbed my own jacket and ushered him out before turning the key in the lock, twice, behind us. Blaring klaxons, air raid warnings or whatever else he had set up, were not what I would consider ‘low profile.’ Who put movement trigger alarms on their bloody laptop? For a guy with an IQ so high that any attempt to put a number on it was meaningless, my cousin could be a right idiot at times.
Eight
Most of the drive over to the distillery was on a standard, two-lane country road. Lewis was a very flat island, compared to most of the others I’d visited, but there was far more greenery than I’d expected. The north end of the island was likely to be far bleaker, from what I’d heard and read, but this part was really nice, not that I’d want to live there. Despite the open spaces and the sweeping, all-round views to a far horizon, I think I’d begin to feel trapped quite quickly, especially when spells of bad weather made leaving the island practically impossible.
Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller Page 6