Candles and Roses: a serial killer thriller

by Alex Walters

  He turned, wondering where it was coming from. And then he glimpsed, or thought he had, some brief movement from the corner of his eye. Something in the shadows. ‘Who’s that?’ he said, taking a stumbling half-step forward. The stones were damp underfoot, slimy from years of neglect, and he felt his feet slipping under him. He reached for some purchase, but found nothing and toppled headlong towards the grey slabs.

  As he fell, he saw someone or something moving towards him, but he was already disorientated and couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Something familiar was his last half-thought, or something unexpected. Then his skull hit the solid stone and he was lying, prone and motionless, as the slow rain continued to fall.

  ***

  ‘I may have something.’ Horton was leaning on the door of the office, watching McKay, who looked lost in his own thoughts. She’d never thought of him as a pensive man, and she could imagine he’d be chafing to take some action, make something happen.

  ‘Anything would be welcome.’

  ‘Well, don’t get your hopes too high just yet, but something interesting on Robbins.’

  He sat up straighter, all attention. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’ve been trawling through the ANPR data, hoping for some sighting of Robbins’s car between here and Manchester around the relevant dates. Not much luck with that. We picked up a couple of sightings, but only on the A9 up at this end so they don’t prove he went further south. From the movements looks like just local trips.’

  ‘When you said you had something, I was maybe expecting some good news, you know?’

  ‘Just setting the scene,’ she said. ‘So we got nowhere with that. But then we found something slightly more interesting. A sighting of his car on the A9 north of Inverness on the night before his daughter went missing—that is, the night before she first failed to show up at Gorman’s place for work.’

  ‘So? He could have been going anywhere.’

  ‘He could, but he wasn’t. This is where it gets interesting. The camera on the A9 is one of the permanent ones, but at the time there were also a couple of temporary ones on the A832 across to Avoch and Fortrose. Checking car tax and insurance at the start of the tourist season, presumably. He was picked up by both of those, so must have been heading to Fortrose or beyond.’

  McKay had found himself a new piece of gum and was chewing hard. ‘So he was in the area the night his daughter went missing?’

  ‘We don’t know for certain when she disappeared. But she wasn’t seen locally after that night.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘And there’s more.’

  ‘Think before you speak, Ginny. You really don’t want me to have reason to kiss you, do you?’

  ‘Jesus, no,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you anyway. I started thinking about him travelling to Manchester. I tracked back over the last year or so, looking for other sightings of his car. There were plenty. Tracked all the way down the A9, M90, across to the M74 and M6, all the way into Manchester. It’s a journey he’s done fairly frequently, for whatever reasons. But none of the timings tie into when our victims went missing.’

  McKay frowned. ‘You think there might be other victims?’

  ‘There may be, but that’s not my point. The point is he spent a lot of time in Manchester, whether for his business or for more dubious reasons. Maybe tracking down our victims? Who knows? But he was there a lot. I’ve also checked flights. He also made some day trips down there by air over the same period.’

  ‘Doesn’t prove anything, though, does it? We know he’s got a business office in Manchester. Could be there for countless reasons.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, slowly. ‘But what interested me was why the only times he doesn’t seem to have made a trip down there are the times our victims went missing. We know precisely when Joanne Cameron disappeared, but timings for the other two are more approximate. Even so, there’re no sightings of his car in any of the relevant periods, even though normally he’s up and down there at least every two to three weeks.’ She paused. ‘So I got Josh Carlisle to do a bit of more checking. We’d missed something.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’d been focussing on the 4x4. But Carlisle did some digging and realised there was a second vehicle.’

  ‘Which we’d missed?’

  ‘It’s not registered to Robbins personally. Josh thought to check the business. Jack Robinson Media or some such. It’s obviously a company vehicle, at least notionally, with the business shown as registered owner and keeper. A small Ford van. So we checked on that and guess what. According to the ANPR network it made a trip to Manchester that fits perfectly with the Cameron disappearance.’

  ‘Jesus,’ McKay said. ‘Anybody ever told you you’re a fucking genius, Horton?’

  ‘Many people, but never you,’ she said. ‘And, in fairness, I think it’s Josh you should be thanking.’

  ‘So what about the other dates?’

  ‘Same deal. Return trips to Manchester in both cases in the relevant periods around the disappearances. Even more interesting, we can find no other trace of the van being used outside the city centre except on those three dates.’

  McKay was on his feet. ‘Which, at the very least, means Robbins has some interesting questions to answer. Let’s go and talk to Helena. “Any sign of anything suspicious” was what she said. I think we’ve got that with knobs on.’ He was grinning widely. ‘Jesus, Ginny. Seriously, bloody well done. Really bloody well done.’

  ‘Like I say, Josh did all the hard work,’ she protested.

  McKay was already heading off down the corridor. ‘That’s all well and good,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘But there’s no way on God’s earth I’m going to kiss him.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘No sign of his car,’ McKay said. ‘Bugger.’

  Slightly to his surprise, he’d had no difficulty persuading Helena Grant to take this seriously. He’d realised, as he outlined the ANPR evidence to her, that he really had begun to lose perspective on the case. He’d somehow half-expected Grant to dismiss his arguments, tell him yet again he was obsessing over Robbins. He knew—had known for a long time—he was letting his feelings interfere with his more rational judgement, and he hadn’t the energy to disentangle what those feelings were or why they mattered.

  He was slightly startled when Grant exclaimed: ‘Jesus, Alec. You were right.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Well, it looks that way, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s still circumstantial till we’ve checked everything out. But there’s only so much you can put down to coincidence. The only times that van’s been driven to Manchester tie in with the three murders? Be interesting to hear what story he comes up with.’

  McKay nodded. ‘Though we’ve done a bit more checking. It was driven to Manchester one previous time, about nine months ago. Other than that, just a handful of sightings round Inverness.’

  ‘That might just mean there’s another victim we don’t know about.’

  ‘It might. We’ve only been back twelve months so far, but that’s all we’ve found.’

  ‘Sounds like we’ve more than enough to bring Robbins in for a chat, anyway.’

  ‘A chat under caution?’

  ‘I’d have thought so,’ Grant said. ‘A pretty bloody formal chat.’

  So here they were, standing outside Robbins’s house, with a couple of uniforms in a squad car for back up, about to issue the invitation. Grant had decided she ought to be in on this, and they’d left Horton back at the office still chasing down whatever evidence she could find. McKay might have resented any other senior officer muscling in, but he knew Grant well enough to recognise she was more concerned with being there if anything went wrong than with snatching a piece of any glory.

  For the moment, all of that looked academic. The gravelled drive was empty and the house looked unoccupied. As they approached the front door, heads bowed against the incessant rain, McKay looked up at the blank windows. It was late afternoon
, but the rain-soaked sky made it feel like evening. If Robbins had been here, some lights would be showing. He pressed the bell with no expectation of a response.

  ‘We can leave our two uniformed colleagues to alert us when he gets back,’ Grant said from behind him. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’

  ‘Aye, I know. I just want that bugger sitting on the other side of an interview table.’

  Grant had unfurled a pocket umbrella. Ducking under it, she strode along the front of the house, peering in at the windows. McKay pressed the bell again, holding it down firmly.

  ‘Alec,’ Grant said.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Come and look at this.’ Her face was pressed against the sitting-room window, a hand cupped round her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Have a look.’

  McKay reluctantly released the bell and stepped over to join her. ‘Christ. See what you mean.’

  It was difficult to make out the interior, but it was clear the place had been left in a mess. A table had been overturned, and papers and books were scattered across the carpet. Beyond them, a flat-screen computer monitor lay face down on the floor.

  ‘Some sort of struggle?’ Grant said.

  ‘You’re the senior officer,’ McKay said, ‘but I reckon this justifies us entering the house, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m happy to take responsibility for that, Alec,’ she said, ‘as long as you take responsibility for actually getting us in there.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ The window in front of them was double-glazed and looked like it might pose a challenge. McKay trudged back to the side of the house, where a passageway led to the rear garden. Its entrance was blocked by a heavy wrought-iron gate sealed with an equally substantial padlock.

  McKay gazed at it for a moment, then said: ‘Ach, bugger it.’ He grasped the wet metal with both hands, raised a foot to the horizontal iron bar in the centre of the gate, and hoisted his wiry frame over it.

  ‘Jesus, Alec,’ Grant said from behind him, ‘you’ll do yourself a mischief.’

  He was halfway over, legs straddling the top of the gate. ‘If I slip now, I’ll do myself more than a fucking mischief.’ He lifted his remaining leg over and dropped on to the path inside the gate, slipping only slightly as he landed. ‘Piece of cake,’ he said, ‘and I even managed not to end up on my arse.’

  At the rear, there was a large garden, laid mainly to lawn. As McKay stepped forward, a security light clicked on, startling him momentarily. To his immediate left, there was a rear door to the house and, further along, a pair of solid-looking French windows. With no expectation of success, he tried the door. To his surprise, the handle turned and the door opened.

  He stepped inside and found himself in the kitchen, a showpiece of granite work-surfaces and stainless steel appliances, none of them looking much used. He clicked on the lights. ‘Mr Robbins?’

  The pervading silence suggested the house was empty. He made his way through to the front door, half-expecting it to be deadlocked. But again the door opened. If he was out, Robbins hadn’t made much effort to secure the place.

  ‘That was quick,’ Grant said, as he admitted her into the hallway. ‘You’ve obviously missed your vocation as a housebreaker.’

  ‘I’d like to claim it was down to my locksmith skills,’ McKay said. ‘Actually, the back door was unlocked.’

  She followed him to the entrance to the living room, where he’d paused. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘we might want to treat this as a crime scene. Look.’

  The room was illuminated only by the gloomy daylight from the front window, but the scene was clear enough. The disturbance to the room was more severe than it had appeared from outside. The computer had been dragged from the desk, along with a stack of files and papers. A vase lay smashed in the corner by the door, among a scattering of smaller ornaments. Not wanting to touch the light-switch, McKay pulled out a small flashlight and shone it across the carpet. ‘There.’

  It was a dark stain, perhaps twenty or so centimetres across. As the beam from the torch reached it, it became clear that the stain was a deep red, darkening at the edges.

  ‘Not much question,’ Grant agreed.

  ‘There’s something else,’ McKay said. ‘Can you smell anything?’ He gestured towards the living room. ‘Stick your head in the door.’

  Frowning, she did as instructed. The frown tightened into a grimace. ‘Christ, what’s that?’

  ‘I’m no expert,’ McKay said. ‘But I reckon it might well be chloroform.’

  ‘We better check out the rest of this place.’

  It took them only a couple of minutes to search the rest of the house. Upstairs there were three bedrooms—one clearly used by Robbins himself, one set up as a guest room, and the third apparently used as an office and consulting room for Robbins’s counselling work—and a bathroom. All were empty and undisturbed.

  ‘We need to get a bulletin out on Robbins,’ Grant said. ‘You know his car reg?’

  ‘Not off the top of my head,’ McKay said. ‘But Ginny’s got all the gen.’ He pulled out his phone and dialled. Grant was already heading back out to the car to call into the FCR.

  The phone was answered almost immediately. It sounded as if Horton was on the hands-free in the car. ‘Ginny?’

  ‘Alec? Was just about to call you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Heading up to the Black Isle. With Mary Graham. There’s been a development, though no idea what it means.’

  ‘We’ve got what you might call a development here too. Before you tell me your troubles, have you got Robbins’s car reg? We need to track him down urgently.’

  ‘It’s in my notebook. Hang on. Mary—’

  He heard some background noise, presumably Mary Graham finding the notebook in Horton’s cavernous handbag. Good luck with that one, he thought, but a moment later Horton was back on the line. McKay scribbled the registration down and hurried into the rain. ‘Hang on a sec, Ginny.’ Grant was sitting in the car with the passenger door open talking urgently into the radio. She gave him the thumbs up as he handed over the details.

  The rain, which had seemed to be lessening while they’d been standing outside the house, had redoubled its force. McKay hurried back to the house, sheltering his phone inside the hood of his rainproof jacket. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said to Horton, and told her what they’d found in Robbins’s living room.

  She gave a low whistle. ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ she said. There was silence for a second, as if she were thinking through what McKay had just told her.

  ‘So where are you heading?’

  ‘The Caledonian Bar.’

  ‘I’m guessing you’re not popping in for a quick pint?’

  ‘My standards aren’t high,’ she said, ‘but they’re higher than that. No, we had a call-out. One of the regulars. Went in for his usual lunchtime pint, but no sign of Gorman. Didn’t think much of it at first. Gorman’s not the most reliable of hosts. But then a couple of others turned up, and still no sign of Gorman. Reckon they were all getting thirsty. So one of them decides to have a look for Gorman out back. Assumed he was asleep or something. Checks out Gorman’s bedroom, but no sign. Gorman’s not the type to go out for a day-trip, so they check in case he’s had an accident in the cellar or something. But they don’t find anything till they go into the yard out back—’ She paused and he heard her swear. ‘Bloody lorries. I’ve a good mind to take his bloody number. Sorry—nearly sideswiped off the Kessock Bridge.’

  ‘Gorman?’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yeah, there’s apparently a yard at the back of the pub with access to the road, where Gorman takes deliveries. No sign of Gorman there either. But what they do find is one of Gorman’s shoes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lying there in the middle of the bloody yard, like it’s fallen off his foot. So one of them talks the others into calling the police. And of course we don’t take it seriously but eventually a couple of uni
forms pop in on their way past. And find a pool of blood out back.’

  ‘Which the regulars hadn’t spotted?’

  ‘In fairness it’s pretty gloomy out there apparently, especially on a day like today. They’d just thought it was a puddle. But our colleagues were a bit sharper. Enough blood that even this bloody rain couldn’t wash it away.’

  ‘What do they reckon?’

  ‘It’s still a mystery. They did a thorough search of the place, but no other sign of him. Checked the neighbouring properties but still nothing. They were reporting him as a misper when someone was alert enough to spot we’d interviewed him so I got a call.’ She paused. ‘Don’t know if I did the right thing, but something about it set the alarm bells ringing. I persuaded them to treat the place as a crime scene, at least provisionally, so that no-one tramples over it until we’ve had chance to have a look. Like I say, I was about to call you.’

  McKay laughed. ‘You’re learning, Ginny. Forgiveness not permission. But, aye, I think you were right. I don’t know how any of this fits together, but it’s another bloody odd coincidence. Two pools of blood and two more missing people. Too many bloody coincidences. It makes me nervous.’

  He turned, still talking, to see Helena Grant standing inside the front door, signalling to him. ‘Hang on.’

  ‘Got the bulletin out on Robbins,’ she said. ‘But I also got them to check the ANPR network while we were on. Sighting of Robbins’s car on the A9 north of Inverness, late this morning. Then another sighting on a temporary camera on the A832 west of Munlochy, heading east, a few minutes later. No sign of it returning according to the latest data.’

  McKay nodded. ‘Back on the Black Isle, then.’ He spoke back into the phone: ‘I don’t know what’s going on up there, Ginny. But I want you to be bloody careful. It looks like we have another coincidence on our hands.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Mary Graham pulled up outside the Caledonian bar, not worrying about the double-yellows or being halfway up the pavement. It was barely 6pm but the rain was coming harder than ever and it felt like night had already fallen. The street ahead was deserted, except for one man under a flapping umbrella scurrying over to the fish and chip shop. The start of the bloody tourist season. Horton could imagine the families clustered miserably in their holiday lets and B&Bs, peering into the grey evening and wondering when the hell this was ever going to let up.