Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  We climbed up to Gallows Hill at a good pace, admiring the view opening out beneath us as we left the crowding trees lining the lower paths behind. Yeah, it was definitely worth seeing.

  “That’s some view,” Shay said, drinking it in as he turned slowly. The town and harbour below and to the east of us could not have been better displayed. “Awfully flat, all that land behind Stornoway, and you can even see the sea over there beyond it. That bit of coast can’t be more than a couple of miles away.” It really was picture-postcard pretty from up here. The water below was dotted with fishing boats, and the early sunshine gave everything a nice sparkle.

  I took a couple of pictures for my da, and we headed back down to find ourselves what would hopefully be a really tasty breakfast at The Crown. Neither of us was disappointed there either.

  Thirteen

  After calling in at the hotel so I could change, and to pick up our stuff, we headed over to Church Street and got set up in our pokey little office again. Shay went back to working through his list, digging into the phone, email and social media accounts he’d started on before I got up. If Jordan or Phelps reached out to anyone, my cousin had tagged as a likely contact, or vice versa, we’d soon know about it, once he had all his alerts set up.

  My cousin hadn’t been entirely honest when he told Mads Nielsen that he ‘only’ spoke seventeen languages fluently. He was also highly proficient in every important programming language, past and present. His self-designed, multi-layered platform operated on the one he’d compiled for his own exclusive use and was intelligent enough to adapt itself to interact with any system he’d taught it to recognise, translating his instructions virtually instantaneously to ensure compatibility. Shay’s platform would not run any code that he hadn’t written himself, and the only key to that was in his head. That kept changing, too, according to whatever weird, convoluted system he’d decided to use. Miss the required key out of a string, and it would simply quarantine the code, whilst tracking down its source for Shay to decide what to do about it. He’d tested that himself, from other computers. It worked just fine. Incoming information was ‘cleansed’ and translated before he even saw any of it. Da had told me once what he thought Shay could make out of selling that system, before pointing out what havoc it could wreak, in the wrong hands.

  “As a species, we’ve never yet made a useful new tool that couldn’t also be used as a weapon,” he’d said, “and that thing was built by a truly superior intelligence.” It was a good job nobody else would ever be able to use it. All his outer defence systems behaved ‘normally,’ as far as anyone trying to penetrate them was concerned. The Ids knew he was world class, but they had no idea how far ahead of their best he really was.

  I left him to it and went to fill up our water bottles and a thermos for the car. Ewan MacLeod came into the break room to make himself a drink while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, and he greeted me cheerfully.

  “Good morning, Sir. Looks like we’re in for another lovely day out there. I hear you and your cousin even managed to get up to Gress beach for a bit yesterday evening?”

  “Good morning, Ewan. We did. It was very nice. Where did you hear that?”

  “Oh, Annie MacLeod’s sister’s ex-boyfriend was in the pub with us last night. He’d been up there paddle boarding. He thought you were a couple of guys in training for a triathlon or something, but we figured it out when he mentioned the silver Golf.” Stornoway had a population of about five thousand people. What were the odds?

  “Triathlon? Hardly.” Neither my cousin nor I had the least interest in any form of competitive sports. “Ewan, do you happen to know when Angus MacLeod usually gets to the distillery in the mornings?” I asked. “I’m planning to give him a call, and the earlier, the better.” The kettle came to the boil and turned itself off. “Get your tea first. I’m just filling this up.” I waved the thermos at him.

  “Thanks.” He poured for himself, considering. “It depends on what they have planned, I’d say. Some days he could be there before eight and others not until ten.” He put the kettle back so I could fill up my thermos. “His answering machine should forward any messages you leave, though.” That was good to know. Ewan opened the fridge to get some milk out. “Not having any tea or coffee in that?” he asked, puzzled.

  “It’s for my portable espresso maker,” I said, smiling. That thing was going to travel with me everywhere. “Amazing, all the great little gadgets they can make these days!” He pulled a face.

  “It certainly is, but I can’t stand that stuff.” He finished squishing his teabag around with the spoon and binned it before adding a drop of milk to his mug and putting it away again. “You can’t beat a good cuppa. To each their own though, ey?” He tipped me a friendly nod and headed off, mug in hand.

  I topped up the kettle for the next person and went back to the office. I got Angus’s answering machine when I called, so I just left a message asking him to get back to me.

  “Want to start checking some of these accounts?” Shay asked, passing me his phone. “Jordan’s sisters both chat on Messenger quite a bit.” He’d put the elder sister, Joanie’s, up for me to start with. No green dot next to brother Brian in the contacts, so he was offline.

  I went to their chat history, which wasn’t very busy. It looked like he only checked in every few weeks. Brian sent the odd photo, when he found himself somewhere he really liked, or absolutely hated, with accompanying comments. She nagged him to call their mum more often. No mention of Cory Phelps anywhere and no messages since he’d left his last ship, Thyborøn II, in Algeciras. He’d told her that he intended to take a little break visiting friends in Cadiz before heading home. Nothing useful there.

  “How do I move to the next one?” I asked. Shay switched tabs on his laptop and hit a key, and the younger sister’s account came up. It was all pretty much the same thing there. Neither of them had heard from their brother, through here, in the past few weeks. “Nothing,” I told my cousin, and he paused to switch me to the next account on his list, an old friend of Jordan’s.

  I’d gone through a few more, without any luck, when my own phone rang. I answered after the second ring. “DCI Keane speaking.”

  “Inspector Keane,” Angus MacLeod’s unmistakable voice came through, “I got your message. Sorry, I didn’t get back to you straight away, but I had to make a few other calls first. We’re unexpectedly short-handed today, and I needed to find someone who could fill in for Aaron while he’s off sick.”

  “Aaron Whitaker called in sick this morning?”

  Shay looked over at that. Yeah, that was an interesting development.

  “Aye. He wasn’t looking too grand yesterday afternoon, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. What can I do for you, Inspector?”

  “How long has Aaron worked for you, Mr MacLeod?” I asked.

  “Over four years now. He’s a good lad too, hard worker. This is only the second time he’s been off like this… why?”

  “Our investigation has taken an unexpected turn, and I’ll be happy to explain later. But, if you don’t mind, could you just give me Mr Whitaker’s address and contact number for now? I’d like to check in with him… and please don’t contact him yourself before I get back to you.” There was a brief silence as he considered the import of that.

  “Is he in trouble?” He sounded rather dubious about the possibility of that being the case.

  “To be honest, I don’t know yet, Sir. But he could be, and the sooner we can talk to him and clear things up, the better.” I don’t think he was happy to hear me say that, but he gave me the requested information before asking me to call him back as soon as I had anything to tell him. I promised I would. Shay had already typed the address into a map search before I’d finished scribbling it down. It must have matched the one on the bank account he’d been looking at earlier. Those weren’t always current.

  “Achmore, that’s about fifteen minutes’ drive,” he told me. “Do you want to take Ewan? I�
�d rather keep working here, if you don’t mind? I’ve still got a lot of phone records to get through.”

  “No, that’s fine.” I grabbed my jacket, “Just buzz me if you find anything. You caught Aaron’s number?” I’d already taken the page I’d written on and pocketed it. He just nodded and focused on his screen again, tapping away busily.

  Ewan seemed pleased to be asked along, although he was a little tense as he settled into the front passenger seat of our borrowed Golf. Once we were on our way, retracing the route we’d taken driving to Callanish the day before, he soon relaxed a bit. I don’t think our hulking young Viking liked being a passenger, especially with an unknown driver, but my easy confidence quickly settled any anxiety he might have been feeling.

  “I must say, it’s all been very interesting around here since you and your cousin arrived, Sir,” he ventured after a few minutes. “You certainly know how to get a fire going fast. Everyone’s dead keen to be the first to spot your suspects for you, although none of us can figure out how you managed to clock them so quickly.”

  “We got lucky with Jordan,” I told him. “Herre Nielsen was able to provide us with a copy of his passport from his employee documentation. As for Phelps, he left his fingerprints for us all over the van we went to check out, and he was in the database. Never underestimate the usefulness of the PND. Plus, you must know that there are specialists I can call on for help with just about anything you could think of.” He accepted that truthful misdirection without batting an eyelid. He was aware of the resources that the NCA had at their disposal.

  “May I ask why we’re going to see Aaron Whittaker, Sir?”

  I didn’t see why not.

  “There’s a possibility that someone’s been smuggling illegal substances in imported Spanish casks for the whisky industry,” I told him. “Nothing definite as yet, but if there is anything to it, they’d certainly need people in the distilleries to handle the arriving goods for them. Aaron calling in sick today might just be a coincidence, but it does make him a person that I need to check on.”

  That surprised Ewan, but he didn’t feel comfortable enough to probe any further just then. I forgot, sometimes, how imposing a DCI could appear to be, from the perspective of an ordinary constable. “Angus won’t be happy if it turns out to be true.” He eventually said, rather soberly, “It’s an upsetting idea. Aaron? He’s always seemed like such a nice, steady chap.”

  “Do you know him well?”

  “Can’t say that I do, Sir. But I’ve met him a few times, and my cousin’s always spoken well of him.”

  I took a right turn off the main road, following the satnav’s directions, and backtracked along a gently rising road towards where Whitaker’s little cottage stood alone above Loch Acha Mòr, which lay about a kilometre to the south of it. There were a few trees down by the lochside, but nothing except short grasses and turf were growing up here, even on the leeward side of the few low hummocks of rising ground behind the house. Not even a small bush or two. It was an exposed spot, very much like I’d expected most of the island to be before we’d got here, bleak, windswept and empty. Aaron’s car wasn’t parked outside, but we went to knock at the door, anyway. No answer and no sign of life around the place.

  “I suppose he could have nipped out to pick up some flu meds, or see the doctor.” Ewan sounded doubtful. It was possible, but I didn’t think so. A nervously guilty man might have been badly spooked enough by yesterday’s visit to decide that a change of scenery might be a good idea.

  “Stay here. I’ll check around the back.” I walked down the side of the house and got my phone out to call Shay.

  “Hi, no sign of Aaron at his place and his car isn’t here.”

  “Hang on. I’ll check the ferry bookings.” A quick, first step because he already had open access to those set up. It didn’t take him long. “Nothing there. I’ll try the airport.” I waited another few minutes, checking the back door. It was locked, and the rear windows too. Shay made one of his pleased little noises. “Yeah, he’s booked himself a ticket on the twelve twenty-five flight to Edinburgh. You might want to ask Trish to send a couple of boys up there to watch out for him. His photo’s already in the file.”

  “I will, thanks.” I hung up and called Trish. Once I’d explained our vague and almost groundless suspicions, she just sighed.

  “So, basically, you have nothing, apart from the fact that he’s called in sick and is going to Edinburgh. Naughty, but hardly illegal, Conall. If you want to go and have a word with him, be my guest, but we can’t detain or arrest him without something better than that to go on.” I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear her say that, but I did have an idea.

  “You have a drugs detection dog based here, right? Could you have his constable bring him there?”

  “Her,” she corrected me. “Flex is a bitch, but yes, that I can do. They’ll meet you there in half an hour.” Alright then, we’d better get up to the airport. I walked back to where Ewan was waiting, and we got in the car.

  “What’s next, Sir?” Ewan asked.

  “The airport,” I told him. “Whitaker’s booked himself a ticket out. Hopefully, we shouldn’t have to hang around for too long before he shows up.”

  Constable Rick Jackson and his canine partner were waiting for us when we arrived. I highly doubted that Aaron Whitaker would be carrying anything to set the friendly little springer spaniel bitch off, but it would be very helpful if Flex decided his baggage was suspicious. That would give us an excuse to take him to the customs offices and ask a few questions. Constable Jackson, once he understood the situation and was satisfied that Whitaker would be allowed to board his flight if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, agreed to make that happen for me.

  I showed Rick the photo of our man, and Ewan and I went to wait in the security office, where we could keep an eye on the monitors. There was only one, long terminal building to spy on. Compared to most regional airports, Stornoway’s commercial traffic was small potatoes, but the little airport was a vital lifeline and was also home to the Search and Rescue helicopters and the Air Ambulance, as well as a few privately owned light aircraft.

  Aaron Whittaker appeared about twenty minutes later, pulling a large check-in bag and carrying a smaller one on his shoulder. He was an unremarkable-looking man, wiry, about five foot eight, with thin, receding dark hair and an easily forgettable face. Flex behaved perfectly as constable Jackson led her down the short queue at the check-in desk. I didn’t see how he managed it, but the dog, who had sniffed at and ignored every bag until then, sat down very quickly once she’d had a good nose around Whitaker’s check-in case.

  That was our cue.

  He paled as he saw us coming, and I wondered, for a moment, if he was going to bolt. Constable Jackson gave me an odd look as he carefully opened up the bag with gloved hands and began to search it. Moments later, he held up a clear zip-lock bag of bank notes.

  “She smelt the ink on them,” he told me, handing me a spare pair of gloves. “It’s very distinctive, and it’s one of the things she was trained to detect in unusually large quantities.”

  I hadn’t known she’d been trained for that too. I’d thought she was specifically a narcotics and explosives dog. Maybe she’d been working at one of the big international airports before coming here? I pulled the gloves on while Jackson patted the grinning Flex fondly before producing a favoured chew toy for her to play with, her reward for a job well done.

  “Thank you, both of you,” I told him, meaning it, as he handed me the bag and closed up the case again.

  “Would you mind just coming with us, Mr Whitaker?” I asked politely, relieving him of his shoulder bag. The looming figure of Ewan MacLeod made it clear that it was not a request he could refuse. We escorted Whitaker over to the customs offices, where a room had been put aside for our use.

  “I really don’t see why this is necessary, Inspector Keane,” he protested nervously as I parked the case and put the smaller bag on top of
it. I motioned for him to take a seat at the small table and walked around it to claim the chair opposite. “It’s not against the law to carry large amounts of cash around, and I’m not taking it out of the country.”

  Ewan placed himself against the wall by the door, scowling disgustedly at Aaron’s back as he seated himself.

  “I’d guess there was at least twenty thousand pounds in there, Mr Whitaker,” I said mildly, placing the large, clear bag on the table, “if those are all fifty-pound notes. That’s quite a lot of travelling money. I hope you can produce documentation to prove that you obtained it legally?” He didn’t know how to answer that because he couldn’t. “I thought not.”

  I leaned back, allowing myself to relax a little. “Would you like to tell me where you got it from? Or how long you’ve been working with Malcolm Locke’s people to smuggle illegal goods through Angus MacLean’s distillery?” He looked blank at the mention of Locke’s name, but the rest of it had hit home. “Perhaps neither Mr Phelps nor Mr Jordan mentioned Mr Locke to you?”

  Yes, he knew those names. His expressions were an open book. I decided he now believed I already knew far more than I actually did. Good. I’d have to make sure he kept thinking that.

  “I’d like to make a phone call, and I want a lawyer,” he said, giving me a stubborn ‘I ain’t talking’ look.

  “Certainly,” I informed him. “I can arrest you immediately if you like, after which you will be entitled to ask for a solicitor to be present when you are questioned. You may also request that a person of your choosing be informed of your whereabouts. We don’t have to allow you to make the call yourself. This isn’t America, Mr Whitaker.”

  He responded with stony silence. I just sighed and shook my head at his stupidity.

  “I thought we might have a friendly little chat first but, as you insist…” I stood up again. “Aaron Whitaker, as a police officer whose identity you have already been made aware of, I am arresting you on suspicion of engaging in the smuggling of illegal substances. You are not obliged to provide me with any information other than your name, address, place and date of birth, and nationality. You are not being officially charged at this time but may be charged after you have been formally questioned. I would strongly advise you not to resist arrest. It would only make things worse. Constable MacLeod, please cuff Mr Whitaker.”