What They Knew

by Marion Todd

  ‘Afraid so. Both murders and probably by the same person.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  Clare relayed Neil Grant’s explanation.

  ‘Were they sexually assaulted?’

  ‘No, as far as Neil can tell. Admittedly both were found in water, although the first victim was only partly submerged but no traces of semen, no vaginal or anal trauma – it’s as if the killer wanted the victims subdued so he or she could strangle them easily.’

  ‘Anything to go on?’

  ‘Other than a shifty ex-husband for the second victim, nothing yet.’

  ‘Okay, it’s the usual, then Clare. Workmates, friends, social media.’

  Clare sighed. There was something that felt a bit off about these two killings. But she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  ‘Want me to come up?’ the DCI said.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ And she wasn’t. Did she want Al Gibson in the station, looking over her shoulder, taking over? Maybe better to keep him at arm’s length – at least until she’d got used to thinking of him as nothing more than her boss. ‘Al – let me put the wheels in motion. I’ll get the team together first thing tomorrow. If I need your input I’ll call again after the briefing.’

  ‘Okay, Clare. Whatever you think. You want me to rustle up some extra bodies?’

  ‘Jim’s on the case. But thanks.’

  ‘Good plan. Keep in touch, though.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘And, Clare…’

  She hesitated then said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are okay, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks, Al.’

  She put down the phone and sat, thinking. Was she okay? Was it ending things with Geoff that was on her mind? ‘I honestly don’t know any more,’ she said softly. Then she gave herself a shake and returned to making notes on her pad.

  Ingrid’s laptop

  Phone

  Social media

  School connection?

  She remembered Kathy, the receptionist at Crossford Financial. She’d struck Clare as the nosey type. ‘And thank God for the nosey ones,’ she muttered, adding Kathy’s name to the list. She might know something about Alison’s private life or even why she was in touch with her ex-husband. And there was one more thing Clare didn’t understand. She studied the list, then wrote at the bottom:

  Water

  Chapter 16

  As she drove home along the familiar roads, now largely clear of snow, Clare wondered if she’d covered everything. Jim had confirmed both Dundee and Cupar would be sending extra officers in the morning. She’d requested a SOCO team to go over Ingrid’s house in Lamond Drive and had asked for copies of her phone records. Sara had been despatched to check Ingrid’s house for a computer or laptop and to take them straight to Diane at Tech Support. As she turned into Bogward Road her headlights picked out a group of older schoolkids having a snowball fight on the road ahead. They stepped back onto both sides of the pavement, still firing their missiles across at each other. One of them hit Clare’s car and the culprit raised his hands in apology.

  Making the most of it, Clare thought. The sky, so blue earlier in the day, had clouded over now and there was rain forecast. It was as if the weather couldn’t make up its mind. She left the residential streets and switched on her full beam. The trees either side of the road which had been laden with snow that morning were dripping steadily and, once more, the channels at the sides of the road were running with snow-melt. A drain outside Daisy Cottage had been overwhelmed and flood water was gathering now across the entrance to her drive.

  Benjy was his usual excitable self, chasing his tail round and round, knocking into a side table, making the lamp that sat on it wobble ominously.

  ‘Benjy,’ Clare said, attempting the kind of stern tone that Isobel the dog trainer was trying to instil in her. Benjy stopped for a moment and looked at Clare then resumed chasing his tail. Clearly they were destined to have many more of the dreadful Sunday morning sessions. But that meant seeing Ralph and his owner so it wasn’t all bad. She wondered again if he was married, or if he had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, even. He probably had someone. All the good-looking ones did.

  In the kitchen, seized by a rare fit of domesticity, she poured some pasta into a pan and added boiling water. Then she chopped onions and peppers and sweated them in olive oil in another pan. The aroma of the onions filled the kitchen and she began to remember how much fun cooking was. She added a tin of passata, sloshing in a dash of the Chianti she had opened the other night. While this bubbled and reduced she tossed in a handful of oregano and the leftover vegetables that were languishing in the fridge.

  A quarter of an hour later it was done. She set the table and arranged the pasta on one of her best plates, with the sauce in the centre. As a finishing touch she crumbled some of her mother’s Stilton on top and stood back to admire her work. She began to understand why people on Facebook were constantly photographing their food and she took up her phone and snapped a photo.

  Just to prove I do cook, sometimes! she typed, sending the photo to her mother and sister. She poured a glass of the Chianti and sat down to enjoy her meal. It was surprisingly good and it reminded her of how much she missed home-cooked food. As she ate, her phone pinged with triumphant messages from her mother and laughing emojis from her sister.

  When she had cleared up dinner she took her wine glass through to the sitting room. She hadn’t lit the fire and, now, it seemed too much effort so she turned up the radiators and switched on the TV. Flicking through the channels she found nothing to interest her and she switched it off again. She took up her laptop and opened Facebook. She was determined not to look at Al Gibson’s page. It was time to stop obsessing about him. Whether she liked it or not, he was no more than a work colleague now.

  And then she saw a Facebook advert for Attracto, the dating site Sara and Zoe had been browsing. Clare clicked on the advert and was taken immediately to Attracto’s website. She wasn’t logged in, of course, so she couldn’t see any of the members. She sat looking at the home page and, as she did so, a pop-up appeared, offering a month’s free registration. ‘You’re too old for this, Clare,’ she told herself. But her hand hovered over the sign-up button. Alison Reid had been on Attracto too. Might she learn something useful if she joined?

  ‘Oh why the hell not?’ she said to Benjy, adding, ‘It’s research, after all.’ She took a slug of Chianti for good measure and set about creating a profile. Her first attempt at a username, CM, was rejected as too short. She tried again with CMac but this was already taken. She thought about incorporating Daisy then decided she didn’t want any clues that might lead an unwanted admirer to her front door. Finally, she settled on MercFan, a reference to her beloved Mercedes C-Class. The photo was more difficult. Like Zoe, she didn’t want anything that showed her face. She’d like to have used something arty but, frankly, she knew she wasn’t in the least arty. She scrolled through the photos on her laptop and found a favourite one of Benjy and she clicked to upload this. There were a few more questions on her preferred location, her hobbies, likes and dislikes. And then it was done. She hovered over the Go Live button and clicked. Her profile was online.

  She had meant to search for Alison Reid but, as she learned more about how Attracto worked, she became distracted from that. She found she could add men she Liked to a Favourites list, without giving them the thumbs-up, and she began trawling through profiles. There were more than fifty men in her age range so she reduced the geographical area to within fifteen miles and scrolled through the results. Four results in and she saw him: Stoneman. She could see he had lots of thumbs-up clicks and she wondered if Zoe was among them. He was seriously attractive and Clare wondered why he was unattached. Maybe in the throes of a divorce. Or perhaps the photo was an old one – photoshopped, even, to improve his appearance. She added him to her Favourites but she stopped short of clicking to say she Liked him. She didn’t want to step on Zoe’s toes, after all
. But maybe if Zoe wasn’t interested…

  As she scrolled through the photos of the men who lived around St Andrews she wondered if one of them might be the killer. Impossible to tell, of course, but it could be worth checking, depending on what they found out about Ingrid McKinnie.

  Glancing up she saw it was almost ten o’clock. She’d an early start in the morning and decided to call it a night. She whistled to Benjy who was snoozing in front of the radiator and led him sleepily to the garden for a last pee before turning out the lights and going upstairs to bed.

  Thursday, 7th January

  Chapter 17

  The incident room was a busy hum of chatter when Clare entered the following morning. The blinds were still closed against the early morning darkness, the artificial light glaring and harsh. She glanced round and saw that Cupar and Dundee had been obliging with extra staff and she threw Jim a smile of thanks. He’d pinned up photos of the two victims and Chris was helping him carry in a stack of laptops from the store room.

  ‘Morning, everyone,’ Clare said, taking up position in front of the whiteboard. ‘Thanks for turning out so early and special thanks to the folks from Cupar and Dundee stations – your help is much appreciated.’

  There was a murmur acknowledging this and Clare continued.

  ‘What we have is two similar but unusual deaths.’ She indicated the first photo. ‘Ingrid McKinnie, thirty-three years old, lived alone in Lamond Drive which is a short walk from here. Found partly submerged in the Kinness Burn in the early hours of the twenty-ninth of December. Ingrid had been out in the town that night but, so far, we don’t know where. She’d been drinking and also had Rohypnol in her system.’

  Nita, a plain-clothes officer from Cupar raised her hand. ‘Did she drown, Inspector?’

  ‘Just Clare is fine, Nita – and no. She didn’t drown. This is where it becomes a bit complicated.’ For what felt like the umpteenth time, Clare explained how pressure had been applied to Ingrid’s neck to stop her heart. ‘After that, she could be quickly and easily strangled.’

  ‘And that’s why there was minimal bruising?’ Nita asked.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’

  ‘Difficult to tell, given she’d been in the water for a good few hours but the pathologist thinks not.’

  Another officer raised her hand. ‘Janey, from Bell Street station in Dundee, boss. So the Rohypnol was used to make it easier to strangle her?’

  Clare spread her hands. ‘It’s the only reason I can think of. But I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Anything on social media?’ someone asked.

  ‘We should have that and her phone records later today,’ Clare said. ‘I’d like volunteers to go round the pubs with Ingrid’s photo. See if we can trace her movements on the twenty-eighth.’

  Three hands went up at the back of the room and Clare nodded. ‘Sara, will you organise that please?’

  Sara nodded to the three volunteers and Clare carried on.

  ‘As far as we know, Ingrid didn’t have a significant other but Chris and I are seeing the parents this morning so we’ll check that.’ She glanced at Chris and he nodded but said nothing. Clare raised an eyebrow in question but he ignored this, directing his gaze instead at the photos of the two women. Thinking back to his appointment the day before she wondered briefly if he was okay. He hadn’t been keen to talk about it. She hoped he wasn’t ill. Her thoughts were interrupted by a question from Robbie.

  ‘Where did she work, boss?’

  ‘Tradgear. An outdoorsy kind of shop. Just off South Street. Chris spoke to the manager yesterday. Not much forthcoming other than she’d recently stopped socialising with the staff.’

  She moved along to the photo of Alison and tapped it with her pen.

  ‘Alison Reid. Also thirty-three. Found dead in her bath by the next-door neighbour on Monday the fourth of January.’ She looked back round the room. ‘Again, Alison had Rohypnol and a small amount of alcohol in her system. Like Ingrid, she had bruising to the neck, suggesting the same murder method.’

  ‘Any sign of sexual assault?’ Janey asked.

  ‘The pathologist says not.’

  Nita caught Clare’s eye. ‘Could she have been put in the bath to wash away evidence of an assault?’

  Clare shrugged. ‘It’s possible, Nita. We may never know. Now, her clothes were left at the side of the bath but the SOCO report says the trousers were outside in…’

  ‘As though someone pulled them off?’ Nita said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  An older officer in an open-necked shirt raised his hand. ‘Bill, also from Bell Street in Dundee,’ he said by way of introduction.

  ‘Yes, Bill?’

  ‘Why would the killer go to the bother of undressing her and running a bath? It seems so contrived.’

  ‘I agree. Maybe the killer meant to drown Alison in the bath once she was drugged but she fought back and he or she had to strangle her. At this stage we just don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t forget the wine cork,’ Chris mumbled.

  Clare looked across at him. He seemed so subdued this morning. She made a mental note to have a chat with him before they headed out to see Ingrid’s parents. ‘Yeah, thanks Chris.’ She turned back to the assembled officers. ‘SOCO found a wine cork and a corkscrew in the kitchen but no sign of a bottle.’

  ‘Checked the fridge?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Yep. Nothing there and no glasses sitting out either. Now we could have missed it when the house was checked so we need to go over it again.’

  Janey indicated she would do this.

  ‘Thanks, Janey. Take Robbie with you – he was first on the scene so he’ll be able to fill you in.’ Clare looked down at her notepad and went on. ‘SOCO also said there was food in the oven – a dozen sausage rolls.’

  ‘Oven still on?’ Bill asked.

  Clare shook her head. ‘No. Either Alison or her guest – if she had one – must have turned it off. And I’d say a dozen sausage rolls is too much for one person.’

  ‘I’d give it a go,’ someone said but Clare ignored this.

  ‘Anything amiss at Ingrid’s house?’ Nita asked.

  ‘Not sure yet, Nita. Chris and I will go in after we’ve seen the parents.’ Clare glanced back at Janey. ‘Was there anything noted at the time, Janey?’

  ‘Not that I recall. But I’ll check the report.’

  Gillian, one of the uniformed PCs, raised her hand. ‘Boss, did the two women know each other?’

  ‘It’s possible. According to the Education Department both women attended Lamond Primary School in the town; but we don’t know if they were in the same class. They went to different secondaries so the primary school link needs to be checked.’

  ‘I’ll call the school,’ Gillian said, and Clare smiled her thanks.

  ‘Now,’ Clare went on, ‘Alison Reid has an ex-husband. Name of Miles Sharp – he’s a partner in Sharp and Lafferty, accountants in Hope Street. Alison worked there while they were married but Miles had an affair with the other partner, Cheryl Lafferty, now the new Mrs Sharp. They’ve been divorced five years but Miles admitted he and Alison met for a chat in his car on the third of December. His story is Alison was trying to rekindle their relationship. But we’ve seen an exchange of emails between them – all quite guarded – and it certainly doesn’t read that way.’

  ‘Does Cheryl Sharp know this?’ Janey asked.

  ‘He says not.’ Clare paused for a minute then said, ‘I’m not convinced Miles had anything to do with Alison’s death. And he denies knowing Ingrid McKinnie. But he’s definitely hiding something.’

  Clare scanned the room to see if there were any questions then said, ‘Okay, that’s it.’

  There were murmurs and the sound of chairs scraping back. Laptops were switched on and began humming to life.

  Clare looked round for Chris. He was chatting to Janey who was relating a story, gesturing with her hands. As Clare approached, Jane
y delivered the punchline and Chris began to laugh. And then Clare saw why he’d been hanging back at the briefing.

  ‘Bloody hell, Chris! There’s a piano somewhere, missing a set of keys. What on earth have you done to your teeth?’

  Janey snorted and Chris’s hand went to his mouth.

  ‘Just a scale and polish,’ he muttered.

  ‘Liar. You’ve had them whitened. I can feel your smile burning the backs of my eyes.’

  ‘They’re not that bad.’

  ‘They are quite white, Chris. What does Sara say?’

  ‘Not much. Suppose it’ll fade.’

  ‘In a few months! You’d better get start gargling with Pinot Noir.’

  ‘You done?’

  ‘For now. C’mon, then. Let’s see how the McKinnies are bearing up.’

  Chapter 18

  Marie and Joe McKinnie lived in Cupar, a small but busy town ten miles west of St Andrews.

  ‘Head for Tesco,’ Chris said, peering at the map on his phone. ‘Then take the left fork, signposted Ceres. After that, turn right at the primary school.’

  ‘What’s the name of the road?’ Clare said, swinging the car up and round as they crossed a bridge over the railway line.

  ‘Erm… Sandylands Road.’

  ‘Okay, thanks.’

  ‘Nice café, that,’ Chris said, as they passed a modern building with what seemed to be a full-size vintage car on the roof. ‘Plenty of parking too.’

  ‘No promises.’

  ‘I was only saying…’

  Clare hesitated then said, ‘Your teeth…’

  Chris sighed audibly. ‘Can we please change the subject?’

  ‘It’s a serious question!’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Can you eat? I mean is there anything you can’t have?’

  ‘A list as long as your arm, Clare. But basically the advice is to avoid anything that might stain the teeth for the first forty-eight hours.’

  ‘So no coffee then?’

  ‘Aye right! I’m taking it with lots of milk. And anyway… if they got a bit less white… turn here.’