The Time and the Place: The Pitfourie Series Book 2

by Jane Renshaw

◆◆◆

  Claire had no choice but to follow Hector out into the gallery. There was only one SOCO-suited woman there now, shining a torch on the floor near the staircase. As they emerged she looked round, and did a double take.

  ‘You can tell DCI Stewart we’ve made a start in there,’ said Hector breezily, turning the other way and striding along the gallery away from her, picture under his arm.

  Claire hurried after him.

  ‘There’s another staircase,’ he said in a low voice, opening a solid oak door at the other end of the gallery.

  This was a much narrower one, spiralling down inside a turret, glazed arrow slits in the walls giving a view of the trees and the lawn and the police vehicles parked on the drive. There was no way of talking to him – he was moving so fast that she just got glimpses of his back as he whipped round the next turn of the stair. It was almost like being in freefall, hurtling down that twisting staircase. Like being a kid again, this feeling of exhilaration, making her want to shout with –

  No no no she didn’t!

  This wasn’t what she wanted. This wasn’t anything near what she wanted.

  At the bottom of the stair, she half-fell into him and he grabbed her.

  ‘Campbell Stewart,’ he murmured, inclining his head.

  She could hear his voice, drifting down the darkened corridor, giving instructions.

  ‘Now’s your chance to turn me in.’ He held up the painting. ‘Caught red-handed with a murdered corpse one day, a stolen painting the next.’

  She’d been completely wrong about him. He didn’t hate it at all.

  He was loving it.

  ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ she managed. ‘How do we get out of here? Is there another way into the cellars other than through the hall?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how on earth –’

  ‘Confidence,’ he said, and strode away from her down the corridor.

  Oh God.

  She’d thought the clown outfit debacle had been as low as she could get. And here she was, about to be caught burgling a crime scene – the scene of a murder – as the willing accomplice of the murder suspect.

  Way to crash and burn.

  In the hall there were two people – a uniformed cop heading out of the front door, and the substantial figure of the DCI standing by the boarded-up window, wearing a SOCO suit and talking on his phone while gesturing impatiently at the uniform, who wheeled round obediently. The DCI handed him a car key and put his hand over the phone to say, ‘Tablet from my vehicle,’ and the uniform exited through the open front door.

  ‘No, sir,’ DCI Stewart was saying. ‘I’m afraid not. Yes. Yes, I’m aware... Yes, I’ve pulled them all out and we’re now concentrating a hundred per cent on the crime scene... No, sir, but I had a reasonable expectation that the House of Pitfourie – No, sir...’

  Hector walked straight past DCI Stewart with the painting. Claire kept her head down, fiddling with the zip on her SOCO suit, and half-tripped on the doormat.

  And then they were out in the cold air. She kept walking after Hector, expecting at any moment a shout, pounding feet...

  The young uniform in front of them headed for the portaloo, then hesitated, looking at the key in his hand.

  ‘I’ll get it, son,’ said Hector, tapping him on the shoulder and holding out his hand, palm up.

  What the hell was he doing?

  The young uniformed constable dropped the key into Hector’s hand with a ‘Thanks,’ barely looking at him before diving into the portaloo. Hector pressed the fob and one of the unmarked cars flashed its lights. He put the painting in the boot and opened the passenger door, reaching inside for the tablet sitting on the seat.

  ‘Well. Are you coming or not?’

  She dived into the car and yanked the door closed, pulling it out of his hand. He got in at the driver’s side and started the engine, the radio crackling to life as he did so. ‘Travelling in style,’ he said, pulling off his mask and handing her the tablet.

  ‘This is madness!’

  Hector turned the car and changed up the gears as they moved off.

  ‘We could have gone back through the cellars,’ said Claire. ‘There was no need to leave by the front door, right under Campbell Stewart’s nose! There was no need to take his car!’

  Disembodied voices on the police radio were talking about an accident on the A93.

  ‘Perhaps not.’ He handed her the SD card he’d taken from the hidden camera. ‘See if you can get into the tablet for a look at that.’

  She gave him a long look before powering up the tablet, to be confronted by a password screen.

  ‘Jasper123,’ said Hector.

  She tried it, and was in. ‘How on earth do you know that?’

  ‘Jasper’s his cat. He uses the same password across all devices, as he probably advises members of the public never to do.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’ But she didn’t expect him to elaborate, and he didn’t. She inserted the card in the slot.

  As they pulled out of the drive onto the public road, Hector lifted a hand to acknowledge the uniform at the gate, and then he put his foot down. The road was more or less clear now of snow, greyish melting heaps of it piled up to either side, but where the sun hadn’t got to it there were still stretches where the middle of the road was white.

  The picture that sprang onto the screen when she clicked on the file was a fisheye view of the hidden room, and Weber, moving from the door to the centre of the room, where he stood gazing around him with an expression of satisfaction. He patted the bronze horse proprietorially and left. The next two sequences were similar. Weber, gloating over his collection. The dates shown top left were 3 and 7 December.

  ‘Just Weber so far,’ said Claire.

  He was back on 14, 16 and 20 December, the last time with Perdita, who stood for a long time contemplating an atmospheric moonlit seascape. Then the date jumped to 24 December. Weber stumbled into the room, propelled from behind. He fell full-length on the floor, and scrambled behind one of the plinths in a vain attempt to put space between himself and the man advancing on him with a gun.

  Phil.

  She must have said something out loud, because Hector looked at her. ‘What?’

  She didn’t want to keep watching but she couldn’t look away. Phil was binding Weber’s wrists, one-handed, with twine, keeping the pistol trained on him, and now he was –

  ‘No,’ she said, as if she could stop the Phil on the screen – it really was Phil – doing what he was about to do.

  He had placed the gun carefully on the plinth holding the little dancer, and taken a length of wire from his pocket. His face was quite expressionless as he whipped the wire around Weber’s neck.

  ‘Phil,’ she said, pushing the tablet away so it slipped off her lap into the footwell, as if she could push what she had seen away, unsee it, stop it from happening. ‘It’s Phil. My handler. My –’ But she couldn’t say it.

  ‘Did Chimp work with him?’

  She just stared out at the road ahead.

  ‘Claire?’

  ‘Yes. He was Chimp’s handler too. But why – why would Phil kill Max Weber? He – he was undercover at Kinty, where Karen was living, at least that’s what he told me, he was using the alias of Baz –’

  They were turning off onto the track where they’d left Perdita’s vehicle. Hector stopped the car alongside the four-by-four and flicked on the radio. ‘What’s Phil’s full name and title? How old is he?’

  ‘DI Phil Caddick.’ She showed him, her mind on automatic pilot, how to work the radio. ‘He’s about fifty.’

  He spoke into the mike. ‘DCI Campbell Stewart.’ It was a fair imitation of the DCI. ‘All available IRV patrol vehicles and armed response unit to Moss of Kinty on the Aucharblet estate for arrest of IC1 male DI Phil Caddick, alias Baz, age approximately fifty, in connection with the murder of Max Weber.’

  ‘He’s got a gun,’ Claire hissed.

  �
��Probably in possession of a firearm.’ And he cut the feed.

  Claire just sat there as the radio buzzed with responses:

  ‘Roger that, DCI Stewart. Armed response unit notified.’

  ‘IRV 3 ETA thirty minutes.’

  ‘IRV 1 unable to attend.’

  ‘IRV 6 ETA twenty minutes... Current location Drumdargie Castle.’

  Phil.

  How could it be? She felt like all her certainties were dissolving, as if the world as she knew it had been an illusion and now it was breaking up in front of her eyes.

  She really didn’t know people at all.

  But Phil?

  Hector was reaching to switch the radio off when:

  ‘Report of abduction in progress,’ it crackled. ‘Imminent threat to life. IRV 3 and 6, can you divert to AB34 6TZ, the pond at the House of Pitfourie, by Kirkton of Inverglass. Stand by for grid reference. Abductee Karen DeCicco, seventeen-year-old IC1 female, approximately five foot seven, slim build, shoulder-length brown hair. Abductors Ade Cottingham, forty-year-old IC1 male, younger IC4 male, fifty-year-old IC1 male referred to as Baz and reported by DCI Stewart to be suspect in Max Weber murder and in possession of a firearm. Armed response unit notified –’

  Hector was out of the car and into the four-by-four, and Claire was jumping into the passenger seat.

  ‘The phone,’ Claire gulped. ‘I told Phil about the phone Karen found – the phone with the message from Chimp on it! And that I suspected she was lying about where she’d found it...’

  They shot off back down the track and onto the road.

  ‘Is there a phone in here?’ he said. ‘Have a look, would you?’

  Claire opened the cubby hole and raked through it; scrabbled in the door pocket. ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder who called it in. That she’d been abducted, I mean.’

  The trees were flashing past. Fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour... She didn’t want to distract him from the road, but she had to ask.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you, as soon as you found Weber murdered? You knew it was a cop trying to frame you for it. Only two groups of people knew you’d be there that night – your own men, and the police.’

  ‘Yes. I thought it was likely to be a rogue cop. I did briefly consider Campbell Stewart himself, but only for a millisecond. Say what you like about old Campbell – he’s as straight as they come.’

  ‘If I had told you about Phil – that he was undercover at Kinty...’ She gulped. ‘Although I don’t suppose he actually was, was he?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘It was a line he had to spin me when I found him there. Karen – what are they going to do to Karen?’

  ‘Okay. Getting hysterical isn’t going to help anyone.’

  ‘No. No. I know. I’m sorry.’ I’m sorry! Karen, I’m sorry!

  ‘And for God’s sake, don’t beat yourself up about this. How could you possibly have known what he was up to? You trusted him. You had no reason not to.’

  ‘Why would he do it? Why would Phil kill Weber?’

  ‘I imagine it’s tied up somehow with Chimp’s murder. Phil Caddick wouldn’t be the first cop to appropriate drugs from the hauls he’s involved in. My guess would be he uses his Baz persona to make a small fortune selling them on, mainly through Ade and Co. Chimp was onto him but wanted to give him a chance to explain, given they went back a bit... And Caddick took the opportunity to remove that threat. Maybe the Twat was involved somehow in the drugs operation. You think Perdita’s using again... She could have been getting the stuff through him.’

  ‘Phil and Weber fall out...’ She shook her head. Her stomach felt as if she had just dropped from a height, as if she’d physically just crashed down to earth. ‘And Phil has to eliminate him too, and you’re the perfect fall guy. If he had managed to set you up for Weber’s murder you’d have looked likely for Chimp’s too. Even if they couldn’t prove you’d killed Chimp, it would be case closed. Phil’s away and clear.’

  A silence, as Hector accelerated round a bend at a speed that in other circumstances would have made Claire yell in horror. But the vehicle was never out of control; he was making minute adjustments to the steering, like a rally driver, pushing to the limit of acceptable risk but never quite beyond it.

  ‘I always thought – his lifestyle in London, it’s way beyond what he could afford on a copper’s salary, and I always thought it was his wife Jennifer who funded it, she’s a Home Counties privately educated type. But...’

  ‘Mm,’ said Hector. ‘I’m afraid you’re probably going to have to reassess a lot of things. That business with the Bristows, for instance. Could Phil have been on their payroll?’

  ‘In which case... they’d have known all along that I was a UC.’ She watched the scenery whizz past. ‘But Phil – he’s the last person you would think could be corrupt! He’s such a gentleman. And he’s a great dad, and Jennifer obviously loves him to bits –’

  ‘Compartmentalisation.’

  She just shook her head numbly.

  ‘And I always think – don’t take this the wrong way, but I always think there isn’t a huge gulf between a cop and a criminal.’

  As they flashed past a farmhouse, powered along a straight and climbed the hill on which he’d given her a driving lesson what seemed like years ago, her mind must have been adapting to the new, terrible reality because at the top of the hill she found herself focusing, for the first time properly, on what and who they might find when they got there, and what they were going to do about it.

  50

  It was one of the hardest things Karen had ever done – make herself not react to their hands on the sleeping bag, which was tied round her like a cocoon. When they lifted her out of the van, she stayed floppy, eyes shut, but when she was lowered to the ground she lifted one eyelid just a tiny bit and saw there were in a disused, overgrown little quarry.

  Then they carried her for what seemed like miles through the trees, Ade and Jagdeep and Baz, taking turns so that two of them carried her and the other one went ahead to hold branches out of the way. And still she didn’t react – she didn’t flinch when one of them altered his grip on her legs or her torso even though she wanted to squirm and kick and bite.

  There was no path, and Jagdeep kept swearing at Baz, saying they should have gone by the path, and Baz kept saying they had to keep out of sight.

  It was obvious that Baz wasn’t an undercover policeman.

  Stupid stupid stupid.

  How could she have fallen for that? He must have been pretending they’d locked him up with her so he could pump her for information. Baz wasn’t a cop, he was the worst one – he was the one calling the shots.

  All the way through the wood she couldn’t tell where they were, but then they came out of the trees at the pond, at the boathouse, and they dumped her on the ground next to the steps.

  She had decided that her best chance was to wait until they were distracted and then somehow wriggle out of the sleeping bag – they’d wrapped twine round it, so that wasn’t going to be easy – and make a run for it. But Ade and Jagdeep were athletic. They would probably catch her.

  Well what other choice do you have?

  Stupid stupid stupid.

  But she couldn’t lose it. She had to hold it together and somehow – somehow –

  Get away from them.

  How can I?

  It felt like she was having problems breathing, but it was the opposite, she was hyperventilating, her chest was heaving up and down and she couldn’t stop it and oh God, she couldn’t let them see that, she had to pretend to be out of it, she had to pretend she’d eaten the drugged food or drunk the drugged water or whatever.

  She had to wait for her chance.

  There isn’t going to be a chance!

  These people killed Chimp.

  For some reason. They must have done.

  And Chimp wasn’t a stupid little idiot like Karen, Chimp was a grown man with his wits about him.

  Get a
grip!

  That’s what Damian would say. Damian would be focused a hundred per cent on getting away, he wouldn’t be having a panic attack and freaking out about irrelevant stuff.

  Focus.

  What are they saying?

  They were behind her so she couldn’t see them, which somehow made it worse because –

  Focus!

  ‘... make sure you don’t injure her, or at least not in a way she couldn’t have done to herself.’ That was Baz. ‘Hold her down using her clothes.’ He sounded weird. As if he was going to cry.

  ‘It’ll be fucking freezing in there.’ Ade. That bastard. ‘Look at the ice.’

  ‘Aw diddums.’ Jagdeep. ‘Just do it. You got us into this mess. Fucking paedo.’

  ‘She’s seventeen!’

  Jagdeep made a pffff noise.

  ‘Just do it,’ said Baz in a choked voice.

  Oh God oh God oh God.

  Should she try to get out now?

  Wait until they’ve untied the twine.

  Wait until you’re in the water.

  Yes!

  That was it. That was it.

  She kept her eyes closed and made her body floppy, made herself not flinch as hands moved on the sleeping bag. She could hear someone breathing right next to her ear. Was it Ade? Ade who used to nibble her earlobe and –

  Focus focus focus!

  Floppy. She had to be floppy. Heavy.

  More hands, pushing the sleeping bag down her body, and it took everything she had not to shudder, not to shiver as the cold air hit her and the hands were on her. Grasping hands. She felt herself lifted right up off the ground, hands under her arms and round her ankles, and she swung, floppy floppy floppy, between them.

  ‘Just do it!’ Jagdeep, from her feet.

  Ade must have the top half of her.

  She was jolted and there was the crunch of ice breaking and a splash and Ade swore. Her bum was suddenly freezing – it was in the water, and now Jagdeep had let her feet go and she was being pulled into the water by Ade, the freezing cold water was soaking her bottom half and she bit her lip to stop the gasp but she couldn’t help juddering with the shock of it but Ade was splashing and swearing, pulling her, he hadn’t noticed and then Baz was saying ‘Turn her over!’ and Ade had let her go, he had let her go under the arms and Karen thrashed, she thrashed her legs, she could feel there was enough water under her to swim and so she did, she kicked out and thrashed with her arms, pushing herself away through the water.