Broken Ground (Karen Pirie Book 5)

by Val McDermid

  ‘What about treasure trove? Finders keepers?’ Will wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  ‘DC Murray’s right,’ Karen said. ‘You’ve got no legal claim to either of those motorbikes. And treasure trove only applies if nobody knows who the rightful owner is. Which in this case, isn’t so. Either the US Army or the MOD has first dibs on those bikes. But right now, that’s the least of my concerns. I’ve got a murder victim to identify and a killer to track down. You’ll find that’s everybody’s priority round here now.’

  Will glared mutinously at her. ‘If it hadn’t been for us taking the initiative here, nobody would have been any the wiser about your dead man. We should get some kind of recognition for that.’

  Karen struggled to keep her contempt under control. ‘Don’t pretend there was anything high-minded going on here. If Alice’s grandfather had buried a box of rocks, no way would you be mounting an expedition to find them. You were on the make, Mr Somerville. If all you’d found had been a pair of motorbikes, you’d have had it away on your toes with them, cleaned them up and flogged them to the highest bidder and told yourself you weren’t breaking any of the several laws you’d be in flagrant breach of. You don’t get a pat on the back for any of that.’

  Alice looked as if she’d been slapped. Will sat scowling at a point somewhere to the side of Karen’s head. Karen hoped she’d got everything she could from Alice Somerville. She didn’t think she’d be getting anything more now. She got to her feet. ‘Thanks for your time. An officer will—’

  Will jumped up. ‘Can we go home now? Since you won’t let us take our bike back, there’s no reason for us to hang about in this godforsaken dump.’

  The thought of never having to see Will Somerville again warmed Karen’s spirits. ‘You’ll have to wait till we’ve got your prints and DNA. But after that, you’re free to go. If this body’s the age we think it is, you’re certainly not suspects. You’d still have been at school when he was murdered.’

  Karen turned and made for the door, Jason at her heels. As they left the room, Alice called after them, ‘Good luck. I hope you find out who he is.’

  Karen stomped back to the car, head down into the gusting wind that had sprung up from the north-west. ‘Where do these people get it from, that sense of entitlement?’ she muttered as she slammed the passenger door. ‘How can that self-absorbed wee hipster’ – she made it sound like a swear word – ‘sit there with a dead man on the doorstep and bother his arse about a motorbike that doesn’t even belong to him?’

  ‘Beats me, boss. Plus, how does he think he’s going to sell it with no paperwork except a scruffy wee map?’ This wisdom from Jason, a man who’d encountered more undocumented vehicles than he cared to admit to Karen. Having a polis for a brother was a perpetual red face for his big brother Ronan. The late DS Phil Parhatka had once met Ronan at a Raith Rovers match and had sussed him out on the spot. ‘You’d do well to make sure Karen never meets your brother,’ he’d said as they’d walked down the hill from Starks Park after the final whistle. Jason had understood and obeyed. Some things, the boss didn’t have to know.

  He had no idea that she’d always known. Of course she had.

  ‘They’ve not even got their scruffy wee bit of paper any more,’ Karen said grimly. ‘That is going to be in an evidence locker till we get this killer banged up for life. Now, let’s see whether Hamish Mackenzie lives up to his coffee.’

  21

  2018 – Wester Ross

  There was a note on Hamish Mackenzie’s front door: ‘Back by 5’. Karen checked her watch. Another forty minutes. Maybe more, given the relaxed attitude country people often had towards time. ‘Let’s go and take a look at this eco-yurt we’re supposed to be staying in,’ she said.

  They drove down the track past the excavation site. Karen had moved her car earlier to sit alongside Hamish’s Toyota, and now only three vehicles remained – a police Land Rover, a white van and a Nissan 4x4. ‘That’ll be the forensic techs still at it,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe the local tackety boots boys shovelled all the peat off the body. I bet the techs are cursing them. They’ll have to go through that whole pile of muck on the off-chance that there’s some crucial piece of evidence in there.’

  ‘They’ll pay for it,’ Jason said as they passed. ‘They’ll have to guard the crime scene till the techs are done with it. I wouldn’t fancy a long night shift out here in the middle of nowhere.’

  The track fell away after another small rise to reveal a narrow glen leading to the sea. A squat circular building was perfectly placed to benefit from the sheltering shoulders of the hills on either side as well as a stunning view out to sea, complete with the distant smudge of the Isle of Lewis skyline. ‘That’ll be it, then,’ Karen said.

  Jason turned off the track on to a gravelled parking area. Curious, they stared at the eco-yurt. It had a foundation and a chimney stack of local stone. Above that, the straw bale walls had been harled and whitewashed. An array of picture windows took advantage of the view and a narrow wooden porch jutted out on the landward side. The gently sloping roof was covered in vegetation; it resembled a heather moor. Karen half-expected a brood of red grouse to come tumbling out and fix her with their beady eyes.

  ‘Shall we chance it, then?’ She headed for the door, not sure whether it would be locked. The handle turned easily and the door swung open. They walked into a bright half-moon-shaped room, with big triple-glazed windows round the outside walls. The uninterrupted view was even more spectacular than from the road. Being so close to the sea made Karen feel instantly at home, although this prospect of water and mountains was on a far grander scale than the view of the Firth of Forth and Fife from her flat.

  ‘Cool,’ Jason said, prowling round the perimeter. Handmade wooden cupboards lined the walls and a kitchen area provided a fridge, a coffee machine and a microwave. Through the window, Karen could see an outdoor cooking area with a brick oven, a barbecue grill and a picnic table all huddled under their own turf roof. The room was furnished with the kind of chairs that invited sprawling, each with its own convenient little table.

  Karen investigated the three doors in the long wall that divided the yurt. The first was a wet room complete with a contraption that identified itself as a body dryer. She eyed it with some suspicion but decided she’d give it a go. Next was a narrow single room – bed, chair, hanging rail and a low chest. A monastic cell for Jason, obviously.

  The final room was also filled with light. A king-sized bed looked out across the constantly shifting sea. To one side, a desk with two pillars of drawers. Another hanging rail and a couple of chairs completed the furnishings. Simple but sufficient, a marriage of form and function. I could live here. Then reason kicked in and she realised she’d never survive without her friends, her family, her job. The streets she walked at night. Losing Phil had taught her that you couldn’t outrun what lived inside you; you could only make accommodation with it. And for her, running away would never be the answer.

  ‘This’ll do fine,’ Karen said, returning to the living room.

  ‘There’s Wi-Fi as well,’ Jason said. ‘So it doesn’t matter that there’s no telly. One of the locals told me there’s a pub about five miles down the road where we can get some grub, so we’ll be OK.’

  By the time they returned to the croft house, the note had disappeared. Before they could knock, Hamish opened the door. ‘I heard the car,’ he said. He’d swapped his overalls for an Aran sweater, a kilt and thick socks concertinaed round the bottom of sturdy calves and his hair hung fashionably tousled to his shoulders. Definitely working the look, Karen thought.

  ‘I suppose you notice anything that disturbs the peace hereabouts,’ she said.

  He chuckled as he led them indoors. ‘It’s not that peaceful. The sheep, the birds, the wind … But yes, you do notice other people’s engines. Come away through.’

  After the clever design of the yurt, Hamish’s kitchen wasn’t as much of a surprise as it might otherwise h
ave been. Even so, Karen recognised that it must have cost a lot to look this simple. She followed her country’s politics enough to understand that subsistence farming in the Highlands was just that – subsistence. There was money on display here that didn’t come from running a flock of sheep on a Wester Ross hillside. There was something lurking behind his charm, and she needed to be very careful not to be seduced into missing what it was.

  ‘Coffee? I make a very fine cup of coffee, Chief Inspector.’

  Karen shook her head. She was already in this man’s debt for the roof over her head and she needed to maintain a little professional distance. ‘We’re fine, thanks. By the way, we checked out the yurt, which will suit us perfectly for tonight. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to finish up tomorrow and be out of your hair.’

  He waved off the suggestion. ‘Stay as long as you need to. You’ll be doing me a favour – there’s always little niggles when you bring a new property on stream.’ He grinned. ‘Like I said, you can be my snagging crew. I’m slightly anxious when things come in ahead of schedule. I can’t help wondering what corners have been cut.’

  ‘We’ll be sure to bring any complaints straight back to you. Mind if we sit down? I know you’ll have talked to the local officers, but we’ve taken over the investigation now and I need to run through it all again. Sorry about that.’ The apology was deliberately cursory.

  ‘No problem, make yourselves comfortable.’

  They sat round the breakfast bar, Jason with his notebook open and chewed biro at the ready. Hamish had no sooner settled than he was up again. ‘I need a coffee, sorry,’ he said, busying himself with buttons and knobs, disrupting any attempt at conversation with grinding and hissing.

  Karen let it wash over her. She wasn’t thrown off her stride so easily. She waited till he sat down again with a tiny cup of espresso that looked like black oil with a halo of crema round the edge. ‘So, let’s go back to the beginning. How did you first encounter the Somervilles?’

  ‘We’ve got a Facebook forum for Clashstronach. It helps people stay in touch. Not everybody who owns property hereabouts lives locally all year round, and this way they can keep their finger on the pulse. Or get tipped off if there’s an issue they need to be aware of. Young people move away but they still want to know what’s going on back home. And for everybody else, it’s an easy way of spreading the word about a party or a ceilidh. Or a funeral, even. So Alice tracked us down and posted a copy of her granddad’s map.’ He reached for a small pile of paper at the end of the breakfast bar and selected one. He placed a printout of a hand-drawn map in front of them.

  ‘That’s what she put up online?’ To Karen, it looked pretty vague. A glen, a couple of hills, a sea loch and a few structures.

  ‘Yeah. And she mentioned that the old man had been stationed at Clachtorr. That’s yon run-down old pile you’ll have passed set back from the road a few miles south. It used to be a grand hunting lodge, but the government commandeered it during the war and it never really got restored to the glory days afterwards.’

  ‘And you recognised this sketch?’ It was hard not to sound incredulous.

  ‘I did. Because I spent a big chunk of my childhood running about these hills. This was my grandparents’ croft and I had a hand in a lot of the things that have changed since this map was drawn. Even when I was wee, I was always given bits of jobs to do. So yes, I recognised the layout in relation to that arm of the sea loch and the relative position of the hills.’

  ‘That’s pretty amazing,’ Jason said. ‘Mind you, I failed geography.’

  Karen ignored him. ‘So you replied to Alice?’

  Hamish sipped his dark brew. ‘I did. I asked her why she was so interested in that particular piece of land. And she asked to email me privately. Next morning, I got an email with the story I’m sure you’ve heard already. Buried motorbikes, granddad’s treasure hunt.’ He laughed. ‘Who could resist that?’

  ‘Not you, apparently.’

  ‘Och, I thought it would be a bit of fun. And no skin off my nose if it came to nothing, Anyway, we emailed back and forth a wee bit till eventually she realised she was going to have to trust me with some more information if we were going to get anywhere. I’ll still have all the emails on my laptop, I can forward them to you if you like?’

  ‘Thanks. I’d appreciate that. If you ping them across to Constable Murray here, he can take a look at them.’ Jason nodded glumly. ‘So Alice gave you more details?’

  He produced a second map, almost identical to the first except that on this one, a faint red X appeared. Even Karen could see that it was a pretty good approximation of where the body had been unearthed. ‘X marks the spot.’ Hamish tapped the cross. ‘So we made arrangements for them to come up and we’d have ourselves a wee treasure hunt.’

  ‘You struck lucky remarkable easily,’ Karen said. ‘Anybody would think you knew where to look.’

  Hamish looked startled. Then he laughed again. It was a big, rich laugh, the sort she imagined people found hard to resist. ‘Nothing sinister, I promise you. I’m not daft, Chief Inspector. No way was I planning on spending a week poking about the peat at random. No, I borrowed Archie Macleod’s metal detector and made some preliminary investigations in the general area indicated on the map. It took me about an hour of dottering about before I found what I thought I was looking for.’

  ‘Were you not tempted to have a look?’

  He stroked his beard, eyeing Karen warily. ‘Of course I was. I’m only human. But I restrained myself. It wasn’t my treasure to dig up. All I did was stick a couple of iron stakes in the ground and mark out the area with some baler twine.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell anybody else about it?’

  ‘Not even Archie. I told him I’d heard about somebody down in Arisaig finding some guns that had been buried at the end of the war and I wanted to have a wee trip over to Clachtorr to see if I could find anything.’ His smile was rueful. ‘Archie’s going to be majorly pissed off with me. That’s going to cost me a bottle of decent malt.’

  Karen took him through the excavation. His story tallied in every detail with Alice and Will’s. ‘You’ve spent time in these parts since you were a boy, you said?’

  Hamish nodded. Again the wary eyes, the smoothing of the beard. ‘It was my second home growing up.’

  ‘Do you recognise the man whose body you found on your land?’

  It was a loaded question. But Hamish didn’t dodge the bullet. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I have never seen that man before. He’s not from round here.’

  22

  2018 – Bridge of Allan

  It takes a brisk walker a fraction under half an hour to make a circuit of Airthrey Loch, the body of water at the heart of Stirling University’s campus. The woman with the fox terrier made the circuit twice most days – once before she left for work and a second time before she went to bed. The mile and a half gave her space to focus on the day from either end. The dog ran three or four times as far as she walked, which meant that later he’d tolerate the short walk round the block which was all he ever got from the woman’s elderly mother at lunchtime.

  Airthrey Loch suited her. The path was mostly well-lit. Because of the surrounding campus, it never felt isolated. She hardly ever completed her walk without passing someone – a runner striding out; a couple intertwined in first love; a lecturer, head down, brow corrugated in thought; a gaggle of students coming back from the bar to their residences. Nobody gave her a second look, which was how she liked it.

  It had been after ten when she’d parked the car and set off. A lazy wind swept down from the hills, but she was dressed for the weather and it didn’t penetrate her soft cashmere scarf. She strode out, deep in thought, searching for a solution to a clash between two junior colleagues.

  So when the man stepped out from the cover of a thicket of rhododendrons, her chest clenched tight, startling her out of her stride. Pulse racing, she stumbled slightly before steadying herself, arms angled
in front of her body in a defensive pose.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, I didnae mean to frighten you,’ DS Gerry McCartney said.

  ‘What? You think creeping up on women in the dark is calculated to put them at ease?’ ACC Ann Markie seldom let her guard slip, but this time she sounded as furious as she felt. She dropped her hands to her side and carried on walking. McCartney had to hustle to keep up. ‘Why the cloak and dagger, Gerry?’ she demanded.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to be discreet?’ He sounded wounded.

  ‘Discreet means you don’t behave in a way that would set tongues wagging from Jedburgh to John O’Groats if anyone were to see you. Discreet means casual encounters in the course of everyday business. Not acting like you’re in an episode of some bloody Channel 4 conspiracy thriller.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘How did you know I’d be here anyway? Are you stalking me?’ She stopped dead, turned on her heel and glowered at him.

  McCartney thrust his hands into the pockets of his inadequate jacket. ‘Garvey, the head of security at the university? He was a sergeant in Falkirk.’ He scoffed. ‘Everybody knows you walk the dog out here, morning and night.’

  ‘Christ. So much for security.’ Markie marched off again. ‘So, why are you interrupting the only bit of peace I get in my day?’

  ‘You wanted to know about DCI Pirie.’

  ‘Fast work, Gerry. You’ve only been there two days. That’s no time at all to come up with the goods.’

  The next street light picked up the worried look on McCartney’s face. ‘I wouldn’t say I’ve exactly got the goods. But I thought you might appreciate an update.’

  Markie rolled her eyes. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘She’s off the reservation. She’s away up to the Highlands on River Wilde’s say-so.’

  Markie stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. ‘What? You’d better explain yourself.’

  ‘According to that ginger ninja she has working for her, Pirie got a call from Wilde saying N Division had come up with a body that was probably a cold case,’ he gabbled. ‘So Pirie dropped what she was doing and legged it across to Wester Ross. She was practically at the crime scene before she finally deigned to talk to the SIO and tell him she was swiping his case out from under him.’