Perfect Remains

by Helen Fields

  Three and a half thousand feet came and went, and he let the knowledge that he should have pulled his chute slide past him. His head was fuzzy, heavy. He wanted to be whole and alive again, not this half-man half-failure he’d become. Three thousand feet. He moved his right hand behind his back to grasp the cord, feeling it beneath his fingers, letting it go again, not wanting the free fall to end.

  Two thousand feet before he knew it, moving too fast, the earth too close, watching as the details of the ground sharpened in his focus, understanding that he was taking a risk beyond reason, aware that his face was wet.

  He didn’t want to die, there was no question. But at that moment, when nothing mattered except the sensation of freedom, when he didn’t have to face the shell he’d become nor answer the unanswerable questions of grieving relatives, he wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to live either. He entrusted his future to science and fate.

  Fifteen hundred feet. The adrenaline was making him nauseous. His head was swimming. One thousand feet. Callanach closed his eyes.

  Two seconds later, at seven hundred and fifty feet, his automatic activation device fired the reserve parachute. His head jerked up, feet swinging down towards the ground as the chute unravelled itself and caught air, no time left to steer anywhere except into the wind. If he had to survive, he didn’t want to end up with both his legs, or his spine, smashed to pieces. Then he was on the ground, the jolt an awakening as if he’d only dreamed the jump.

  ‘What happened to your main chute?’ a voice called. ‘Did it fail?’ The chief instructor was storming towards him. Callanach turned to pick up his reserve, too dazed to answer, too indifferent to care. ‘Did you lose consciousness? Are you hurt?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he muttered.

  She put a hand on his arm and inspected his pack.

  ‘You didn’t pull, did you?’ she asked. Callanach shook her hand from his arm and began to walk away. ‘I was watching,’ she said. ‘We need to discuss this.’

  ‘I’m not in the fucking mood,’ Callanach shouted.

  ‘You just trusted your life to an electronic gadget,’ she responded, catching up and stepping in front of him. ‘Did you do it for a cheap thrill or were you actually trying to kill yourself?’

  Callanach stepped around her and continued walking towards the hangar.

  ‘This isn’t just about you.’ The chief instructor wasn’t going to be ignored. ‘You put other people’s lives at risk when you don’t follow procedure. You’re experienced enough to know that. Have you ever seen the state of a body that’s hit the ground after a chute has failed?’

  ‘I’ve seen that and plenty more,’ Callanach said, ‘and I don’t need a lecture. I’m all right, no one’s hurt, my AAD opened the reserve.’

  ‘I’m banning you from this drop-zone for six months, and notifying the BPA. You can tell them your version of events if you want your insurance to remain valid. You’re not fit to be skydiving with that attitude.’

  Callanach stopped. In the distance he could see a small crowd gathering to witness his disciplining, the two men he’d jumped with staring openly, Penny looking at the ground as she listened, others wondering what all the drama was about.

  ‘I’m not fit for much at all, apparently,’ Callanach responded, turning his back. The conversation was over. He packed up his kit, retrieved his documentation with the chief instructor’s notes about his behaviour written in red pen for every other drop-zone to see. Callanach wouldn’t be skydiving again for a while. He made his way back to his car and threw himself into the driver’s seat.

  He was home an hour later, the miles a blur, his brief time at Strathallan drop-zone carved into his memory. Just one more thing he wanted to forget that he never would, he thought, dropping onto his sofa and covering his face with his arms, trying to block out the day. Trying to block out the whole of the last year, if he was honest about it.

  He’d been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since Astrid had accused him of rape, but it was one of those labels he hated. There wasn’t an article he hadn’t read, nor a website he hadn’t scoured to find a cure. He could recite the psychobabble as well as any doctor. Everything he’d found was calmly reassuring that the impotence wouldn’t be permanent, that his failure to respond to normal stimuli was a direct consequence of shock. It was an understandable reaction. His brain had assumed control of his body and was protecting him.

  He flinched as he thought how badly he’d treated Penny. He tried to remember her surname and realised he’d never even asked it. Callanach drank an ice-cold pint of water and cleared his head. After a year in denial about his affliction, it was time to either accept the way he was or admit defeat.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  At precisely nine the next morning Tripp brought a nervous-looking Liam Granger to Callanach’s office. He was in his early twenties, with no police record.

  ‘I just want to go over what you witnessed the night Jayne Magee went missing. You said in your statement you saw a man talking to himself,’ Callanach said.

  ‘That’s right. Muttering, you know, but as if he was having a conversation with someone else. That’s why I noticed it. I suppose, once I’d heard him speak, I was surprised that I didn’t see anyone walking with him. At first, I thought maybe he was on his mobile or something, but his hands were by his sides,’ Liam said.

  ‘Did you see his face?’

  ‘Sorry, only what I said already. I can’t even tell you how tall he was as I was on my bike and he was in the shadows. He had a Scottish accent though, I’d have noticed otherwise, and quite a deep voice.’

  ‘Could he have been using a hands-free kit, possibly?’ Tripp asked.

  ‘I suppose so, but it was just the way he was speaking that struck me as odd. Mumbling to himself. I’m probably not helping,’ Liam said, zipping up his jacket and shoving his hands into the pockets.

  ‘Can you remember any of the words he used?’ Callanach asked.

  Liam thought about it. ‘I heard two things. He said something about the lane, something like we’re going to the lane. And then twelve. That I heard pretty clearly. He said the number twelve.’

  That was all Callanach got from the cyclist but it was enough to get him thinking.

  ‘Is there something called The Lane or Lanes in Edinburgh?’ he asked as Tripp returned from seeing Liam out and brought a much needed caffeine reboot with him.

  ‘A nightclub, I think, and possibly a shop. Why?’

  ‘Get me some details. Not that I can see our suspect frequenting a nightclub.’

  ‘Maybe that’s where he went to search for victims?’ Tripp suggested.

  ‘Not these victims. Not unless both Elaine and Jayne had secret lives completely at odds with everything we know about them.’

  ‘I’ll check it out anyway. See if the club has membership records. Could it be an address? Number twelve, something Lane,’ Tripp said.

  ‘Possibly, but it would be an odd thing to say out loud, wouldn’t it, your own address? I’m off to Braemar with DC Salter tonight, back tomorrow evening. Keep Professor Harris off my back and let me know what’s happening.’

  ‘Got it,’ Tripp said, ‘but DS Lively will ask where you are.’

  ‘Tell him I’m working on those precious few leads he keeps pointing out that we have.’

  Callanach was climbing into the car Salter had borrowed from the pool when Ava caught him.

  ‘Luc, wait a moment would you?’ she said jogging towards him.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  Ava beckoned him away from the open car door then reached behind him to close it quietly and give them some privacy. ‘I just took a call that should have been for DCI Begbie. Luckily he wasn’t available. It was from a woman called April Grady at Strathallan airfield. Do you know her?’ Callanach glanced at DC Salter who was putting her seat belt on, then took several steps further away from the car. Ava followed him.

  ‘This isn�
�t a great time,’ Callanach said. ‘I’m just on my way to Braemar to revisit the crime scene. I need to double-check the witness views of the fire and I’d like to get there before full dark. This conversation will have to wait until I get back.’

  ‘If you make me wait, I’ll have no choice but to tell Begbie about it. I don’t want to do that. Would you talk to me, please?’ Ava kept her voice low.

  Callanach breathed out hard and clenched his jaw. What he did outside of work was no one’s business but his own. April Grady had no right discussing what had happened with anyone else.

  ‘Is it true?’ Ava asked matter-of-factly. ‘Did you deliberately not deploy your main chute?’

  ‘I got disoriented,’ Callanach replied. ‘It happens occasionally when you’re skydiving, which is why I always set the automatic device as a backup. My rig’s regularly serviced and in good working order. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You don’t have to be stupid to be suicidal.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised you were a psychiatrist,’ Callanach said.

  ‘Are you actually going to be confrontational with me? Only in the circumstances I’d think that was rather unhelpful. What do you expect me to do – treat this like it’s some sort of joke?’

  ‘I expect you to give me the benefit of the doubt instead of being influenced by what someone else, who doesn’t know me at all, thinks she saw. And I expect my private life and my work to be two different things without interference between one and the other,’ he said.

  Ava paused, ran her eyes over his face and his crossed arms, then put her own hands in her pockets. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, ‘but you’ve been under pressure, moved countries and had a major investigation land on your shoulders. You’re responsible for a team of people who need you focused. Can you promise me you’ve got this?’ she asked.

  Callanach looked her full in the eyes.

  ‘I’ve got this,’ he replied. Ava nodded, walked away, paused then came back.

  ‘I’m here if you need someone to listen. You know that by now, right?’

  ‘I don’t need a counsellor,’ Callanach repeated, hating the terseness of his own voice.

  ‘Do you need friends?’ Ava asked before retreating.

  The hills that rolled towards Braemar were as stark as Callanach’s mood. It was amazing how fast the landscape ran out of trees once the Cairngorms were in sight. There was the odd tumbledown house but farming here was plainly an exercise in futility. Signposts warned of the dangers of icy roads and steep inclines. Edinburgh wasn’t that far as the crow flew but civilisation would feel a million miles away if your car broke down in the winter months. Salter tried once or twice to make conversation, carefully avoiding any mention of the scene with DI Turner. She might not have overheard anything but Callanach knew the body language must have been pretty clear. In the end, Salter gave up, put on the radio and left him to stare out of the window. The temperature was plummeting as they rose into the foothills. The paths could be treacherous in the daylight, never mind the half dark, but he had to achieve something to keep sane.

  ‘Drive straight up to the crime scene,’ Callanach said. ‘Get as close as you can. Do you have a torch?’

  ‘In the boot,’ Salter said. ‘We won’t see much tonight though. Wouldn’t it be better to go at first light?’

  ‘We’ve two bodies,’ Callanach replied. ‘There’ll be a third unless we catch him soon and the dots aren’t joining up. Everything Professor Harris said made that clearer than ever.’

  ‘But I thought you disagreed with the profile, sir.’

  ‘I did, which is what made it so helpful. Leave the car here.’

  They got out and walked. Salter was wearing hiking boots, the sensible choice. Callanach had slipped into his only pair of smart black shoes for the occasion, chosen to replicate the shiny pair Magee’s abductor had been seen wearing. They had no tread at all and were a slippery nightmare.

  ‘Look at that, Salter,’ he said. ‘Your hiking boots have left a deep trail.’ She swung the flashlight round and it showed every detail of her footprints. He took the torch from her and tried to see his own imprints. Here and there the odd plant was downtrodden where he’d walked but the smooth, flat leather soles had left no distinguishing marks at all. The murderer might have come and gone without leaving any impression on the place.

  ‘Do you think he foresaw that, or was it blind luck?’ Salter asked.

  ‘I think he’s a man who makes his own luck,’ Callanach answered, handing back the torch. At the bothy, Callanach took out a local map and set it at his feet. He opened a digital compass application on his phone and studied the surrounding geography.

  ‘So the back of the hut is set into the rock. The view the hikers had is west of here. He can only have parked his car below and walked up. He’d never have pulled the body across the valley between us and where the hikers were,’ he said.

  ‘How did he move it, do you think?’ Salter asked.

  ‘Maybe something resembling a sledge to pull the body easily over the rough ground. I’m guessing anyone who saw him would have assumed it was sports gear or camping equipment. It’s the view the hikers had that interests me. It’s in the middle of a long-distance trail, right? One you’d have to set off from miles away to walk. The killer knew he wasn’t going to be spotted dumping the body because no one would have set off in the dark. If they did, he couldn’t have been seen anyway.’

  ‘I agree,’ Salter said, ‘but I don’t see how it helps.’

  Callanach picked up the map, traced his finger to where a red cross was situated, checked his bearings with his phone and waved for Salter to follow him. A few minutes later, tripping where the torch light failed to show all the rocks, he stopped.

  ‘This is where the dogs picked up the buried baseball bat. A few metres away was the tooth from which we got Elaine Buxton’s DNA. This land is slightly higher than the bothy and so can’t have been between the hut and his car.’

  ‘So he ran up here to bury it, and disposing of the weapon in case he got stopped on the way down. Maybe he didn’t even realise the tooth was still attached,’ Salter said, kicking the dirt at her feet as she spoke.

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you? What’s wrong with the theory?’

  ‘Just doesn’t feel right,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell you exactly why.’

  ‘For me, it’s the hikers,’ Callanach said. ‘It’s too perfect, too good. We’ve been looking in the wrong place for him, concentrating our efforts where he directed us, which was here. I think we should have been looking over there.’ He lifted his arm to point across the valley into the darkness. ‘Over here he was careful. He knew when he could come and not be seen, and he knew it because he’d walked the trail from where our two friendly hikers spotted the fire. He must have done to be sure he wouldn’t be surprised any earlier.’

  ‘What’s the other side of the valley?’ Salter asked.

  ‘That’s more helpful,’ Callanach said. ‘The hiking trail is limited. It starts at a camping ground to the north and ends up at a car park with an outdoor pursuits centre to the south. It’s long and difficult and has no obvious branches off. That’s why he chose this place. It’s also why it makes no sense to run up here and drop the murder weapon. Imagine you’ve done that much research, been that careful, found the perfect place to burn the body, walked a path that starts miles away to reconnoitre, plotted daylight and average walking speeds. You’ve rigged up a way to get the body from the car to the bothy. You’ve even soaked the body in an accelerant so that it burns at an advanced speed because you know how much time you’ve got until the first witnesses might appear.’

  ‘There’s no way he panicked and threw the weapon into the dirt,’ Salter said.

  ‘With a tooth still attached? No,’ Callanach finished. ‘He knew it would be found.’

  ‘What about the bit of scarf that escaped the fire under the rock?’ Salter asked.

  ‘I’m beyond thinking there are any mistakes,
any coincidences.’

  ‘So he’s not chaotic like Professor Harris said. What else was he wrong about, then?’

  Callanach hunched down and ran his hands through the dirt. ‘Remorse. Harris is wrong about that. This man wanted us to find the bodies. He wanted us to know these women were dead. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s posturing, maybe it’s about causing pain to the families or creating a sense of fear or panic. Perhaps he takes pleasure from the game. All I’m sure about, is that everything we’ve found so far is what he wanted us to find. The trolley at the base of the sea wall with the bag of clothes was the same. He knew the tide would wash it in. He left it like a gift for us.’

  ‘Like presenting a trophy?’ Salter asked.

  ‘Token evidence,’ Callanach said. ‘The only way to find him is to ignore what he’s leaving for us and to research his research. Come on. We’ve got some hiking to do tomorrow.’

  Salter had done them proud with the bed and breakfast booking. Breakfast was a mountain of protein on a plate and it was the first time Callanach had ever tolerated drinking tea with milk. Their first stop of the morning was the satellite police hut in Braemar. As they crossed the bridge over the freezing and fast-flowing Clunie Water, Callanach stopped to look at the old stone well balanced precariously over the river. He wondered how long it would last, built to resemble a tiny tower, withstanding the bitter winds of the Highland winters. He ran a hand over the ageing stones and stared down into the dark waters below.

  ‘You’re in a thoughtful mood today, sir. Everything all right?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Turner wasn’t answering her phone last night,’ he said quietly. He’d tried to call her three times over as many hours, wanting to make peace. ‘Have you heard from anyone at the station?’