The Blood of Crows

by Caro Ramsay

  Anderson put a smile into his voice. ‘Yes, it’s OK, just that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. You sort it out any way you can but by five p.m. tonight we will be working out of there rather than Partick Central.’

  ‘Is that why the IT guys are getting a system up and running for us?’

  ‘Probably. Phone me if you have any problems.’ He rang off.

  A small hand-picked team all to himself, nothing too formal, nothing too traceable. But why?

  One explanation came to him as easily as an ice cream down the back of the throat. They had been a secure unit at Partickhill and all Howlett had done was to take the four or five officers he knew he could trust, the implication being that there was somebody in Partick who could not be trusted. A mole.

  Clever. If Anderson didn’t know what he was chasing, he wouldn’t go looking for what he wanted to find. He would simply find it without prejudice.

  10.40 A.M.

  They were still packing up, their colleagues watching with a mix of pleasure at seeing the back of them and a touch of envy that they were moving somewhere with double the floor space for a tenth of the staff, when the door of the incident room opened and DCI MacKellar came in. With him was a tall tanned man with grey hair and gold-rimmed glasses, in a pristine white long-sleeved white shirt and expensive linen trousers, who looked around as if he owned the place. A few of the Partick team said hello, and two older members of the CID went up and shook hands warmly. The heartfelt double-handed handshake might have been Masonic for all Anderson knew. He looked enquiringly at Lambie, but Lambie shrugged, ‘No idea.’ Mulholland scribbled something and slipped a scrap of paper to Anderson as he walked past: If his name’s Moffat then he’s God.

  So, this was the man Howlett had told him to talk to.

  Anderson went back to reading the list of injuries and identifying marks on the Bridge Boy when MacKellar tapped him on the arm.

  ‘I think congratulations are in order. Well done.’ The handshake was genuine. ‘I was kind of hoping for it myself, you know. But, well done.’

  ‘For what?’ asked Anderson. ‘All I have is a DCI position, nothing else.’

  MacKellar dropped his voice as there was an outbreak of laughter at some in-joke by Moffat. ‘You didn’t get LOCUST?’

  Anderson shook his head, then added mischievously, ‘In fact, I think we are moving out to give you more room. Make what you will of that.’

  ‘Great, ta. Nice one, Colin.’ MacKellar punched him on the arm. ‘Cheers.’

  Anderson went back to his reading, ignoring the adoring throng around Moffat. The Bridge Boy was holding on, Dr Redman had reported, but only just; he might be in need of a liver transplant. Anderson made a mental note of points to look for on the missing persons register, though one flick-through had produced no likely matches. He couldn’t help but watch Moffat from the corner of his eye, thinking about Batten’s list. Moffat had obviously lived abroad for a while, Australia from the sound of it – somebody called him ‘Crocodile Dundee’ to a hoot of laughter – and was well enough respected to be allowed to walk around the station freely. Arrangements were being made to go out for a drink.

  ‘Yeah, I’m over for a whole load of reasons, but wasn’t expecting Tommy’s funeral,’ Moffat was explaining.

  Anderson could not help listening. Lambie, who was loading files into a box with the slow deliberation of one whose concentration was elsewhere, was clearly listening as well.

  ‘And who are these guys? I think I know you,’ Moffat said to Anderson. ‘By reputation, if nothing else.’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you hear. DCI Colin Anderson,’ Anderson said, relishing the sound of his new title.

  Lambie’s head jerked up in surprise; he grinned but said nothing.

  ‘DCI Anderson? I’m glad the grapevine was to be believed.’ Moffat smiled. ‘Congratulations. You’re very well thought of by the top brass, I hear.’

  ‘More than I ever get to hear,’ said Anderson.

  ‘And you worked with an old mentor of mine, I think – Alan McAlpine.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Anderson was confused for a minute. Moffat was older than McAlpine had been by a good few years.

  ‘I was in the military before I joined the force,’ explained Moffat, as if he had read Anderson’s thoughts. ‘He showed me the ropes. Hard bastard, but fair.’ His blue eyes looked deep into Anderson’s. ‘If I can be of any assistance to you, any assistance,’ he emphasized, ‘in the next few days, just let me know. I’m not going back to Oz for another week.’

  Anderson nodded to show that he understood; a subtle invite to an off-the-record conversation passed between the two of them without any of the others noticing. ‘This is DC Mulholland, and DS Lambie.’ He waved a hand at them in introduction. ‘DC Wyngate is around somewhere. So, you moving on?’

  Moffat looked down at the paper Anderson had just been reading. His old colleagues drifted away, waving and calling that they’d see him later. ‘So, somebody did for Billy the Bastard. I’m glad I lived long enough to see that.’ Then Moffat leaned over and asked under his breath, ‘The lad with the ears – Wyngate – is he trying to track those tattoos?’

  So, he had clocked the photograph pinned to the file – the last thing to go into the box so it would be the first out. Anderson nodded.

  ‘Get him to do it quickly, then let me have a look-see; I might be able to help.’

  ‘For ID?’

  ‘I’ll tell you once I see them.’ Moffat looked closely at Anderson. ‘I do remember you, you know.’

  ‘You have the advantage of me, though I recognize you from somewhere.’

  Moffat slapped Anderson on the back. ‘Of course you do, boy, of course you do. I used to kick your arse when you were a probationer. God, that was years ago.’

  ‘Eric? Eric Moffat? I don’t recall. But then I got my arse kicked by loads of people in those days.’

  ‘Well, rumours of my death were exaggerated, as you can see – I just retired to Australia, where it’s only slightly cooler than hell.’

  ‘Must have a chat with you about that. My wife wants us to go out there.’

  ‘Nice place, can’t say a word against it.’ Moffat polished his glasses on the end of his tie before slipping them on again. ‘Look, let’s meet for a beer when there’re fewer folk about.’ He pulled a card out from his top pocket. ‘There’s my cell number, call me and we’ll have a chat. Might save you a lot of legwork.’

  Anderson looked at the card. Moffat lived in Brisbane, in Queensland. And he couldn’t say a word against it. Oh God, Anderson prayed, please don’t let him and Brenda ever meet.

  2.00 P.M.

  Anderson decided there was no point in him being there while they were connecting computers and dragging furniture around, so he left the boys to it – they knew what to do. He would go home and sit in his garden with a blank sheet of paper and try to make some connections.

  A colour print of the mocked-up image of the Bridge Boy had arrived, and Anderson was impressed. It was a good image for the appeal, he’d called in a few favours, and Bridge Boy’s face would be all over the morning editions. He was keeping a tight rein on anything going to the papers, but he needed help with this one. The boy’s fingerprints were not on record. His dental records were proving useless – so many of his teeth had been pulled out. And DNA testing would only be of use if they had a comparison. Better to put his face out there, place a guard on his bed and see what came out of the woodwork. He decided to go home and plan his strategy for the case.

  But getting out of the station proved to be difficult.

  A rather harassed-looking Lambie met him on the stairs, and pulled him back through the security door. ‘Look, can I speak to you about Carruthers? There’s a few things that don’t really add up. I’ve requested the CCTV film for the area round the flat. For the six hours before the … incident.’

  Anderson looked out of the window, watching Wyngate manhandle a box into the
boot of his car.

  ‘I’ve talked to the solicitor. You know that Carruthers put twenty grand in a bank account his wife didn’t know about, one single payment in November 1996. Well, it’s a lot more than that now with interest. Untouched, totally. The bank records show it was a win on a horse, and they were shown all the paperwork at the time. Enough to satisfy them, seemingly,’ Lambie continued in a low tone.

  ‘Except – don’t tell me – Tommy never bet on anything in his life. Seemingly may be about right.’

  ‘Once the solicitor told Mrs Carruthers, she told Costello. She really had no idea about that money. She seems almost scared of it.’

  ‘And Carruthers was a cop at that time.’

  ‘A bent cop?’

  Anderson shrugged. ‘If that money is all they find, only bent once, from the look of it. But whatever he did to earn it – could it really have been something bad enough to drive him to suicide fourteen years later? Or maybe he was murdered for it. Keep on it, keep me posted. Tell me, what do you know of ex-DCI Eric Moffat?’

  Lambie shrugged. ‘Off the record?’

  ‘Dish the dirt.’

  ‘Masonic, bit too sectarian for my liking but give him his due, he almost brought down gangland Glasgow single-handed. He took both the O’Donnells and the McGregors on and wiped the floor with them. I never worked with him for long, though. He went Down Under, probably for his own good. Is he back because of that bloody book about the Marchetti boy? I think the author gives him a roasting.’

  ‘Was he involved in that?’

  ‘Is the Pope a Catholic? That’s how he made his name.’

  4.00 P.M.

  Now, Anderson was back in his garden sipping a cup of hot strong coffee. Nesbitt was at his feet, chewing at his favourite tennis ball with loud growling noises, and Brenda was leaning against the garden fence, yattering to the neighbour about Australia, no doubt. She was standing with one hand on her hip, just where Carruthers’ body had had marks, Anderson was reminded. He had noticed them in the post mortem photographs, particularly the one that clearly showed straight, linear scrapes among the chaos of injuries caused by the fall – the tipping point, the pivot. A jump wouldn’t have caused that. He could get O’Hare to have a look at the pictures – well, pictures were all they had, as the body had been cremated.

  And another thing: Moffat comes back on the scene and Carruthers is found dead at the bottom of a block of flats. This is just after the publication of a book about the kidnap of a boy, and Moffat was in charge of that. The kidnap that made Moffat’s career – not because he solved it but because of the disruption it created in the criminal underworld.

  Was it all connected somehow, and did Howlett know? There was nothing really, thought Anderson, running through it in his mind. Apart from the timing – and, as they say in the theatre, timing is everything. Lambie really needed to look at those diaries he’d spotted in Carruthers’ flat.

  Nesbitt sneezed loudly and Anderson went back to his blank piece of paper. He made three headings: ‘Bridge Boy’, ‘Biggart’, ‘River Girl’. Then he scored them out. He wrote ‘Rusalka’ across the top, and the word ‘Russian’. ‘Biggart’ with a red line through to show he was deceased. ‘Melinda Biggart’ with a similar line. He put a ‘+’ between them, with ‘pretty boy’ in between. Anderson was sure he had torched Biggart, but he had not killed Melinda. Then he recalled Howlett saying that the ‘blood eagle’ as a method of killing was … what was the word he had used? … beloved of the Russian mafia.

  He pulled out his phone and keyed in the words ‘blood eagle’ and read that it was a method of torture and execution mentioned in Norse sagas. He scrolled down, reading the method, which involved cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, then breaking the ribs so they resembled bloodstained wings. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to think about Melinda. She had been cut down the front, a reverse blood eagle that had immediately brought the Russians to Howlett’s mind. And Rusalka was, probably, a Russian.

  He keyed in the word ‘Rusalka’, uncertain how to spell it. He was interested to know why Mulholland of all people had given the dead girl that name. Up flashed a Wikipedia article: … an opera by Antonín Dvořák … first performed in Prague in 1901 … based on Slavic fairy tales … Curious, he scrolled down to the synopsis. Rusalka was a water sprite, who fell in love with a human prince betrothed to a princess, and lost the power of speech. Wyngate was right; it was a darker, more elemental version of The Little Mermaid.

  But without Walt Disney’s happy ending.

  9.45 P.M.

  ‘Do you have some cover story for this?’ Anderson flung Costello’s small suitcase into the back seat of the Jazz, slammed the door, and got into the car. He reached across and picked up the book lying on top of her bag on her knee. Little Boy Lost by Simone Sangster. ‘And why are you reading this shite?’

  ‘It came with the job. I may as well as read it.’

  Anderson was confused.

  ‘This place was implicated as a getaway route.’ She looked at him. ‘Do you know anything?’

  ‘Obviously not, but I don’t think you’ll learn much reading that crap. The Marchettis tried to get it banned, you know. Does it mention Eric Moffat anywhere?’ He noticed Costello startle slightly.

  ‘Yes, but I’ve not got that far.’

  ‘But you do know him? What do you think?’

  ‘He dumped me from a case. The only time in my career. So, no, I don’t think much of him.’ She adjusted her short hair. ‘He’s back for Carruthers’ funeral, isn’t he?’

  Anderson pulled on to the dual carriageway, looking at the water of the Clyde, a deep sapphire blue in the late light, rhomboids of silver flashing across the top of subtle waves. He imagined them as pieces of the jigsaw, coming together and then being pulled apart. Moffat, Glen Fruin, the kidnap? He kept his voice level. ‘Did you deserve to get put off the case?’

  Costello seemed to consider her answer. ‘I was a rookie. ’93, was it? A woman had been stabbed in the NCP in Mitchell Lane. I was first on the scene, but he turned up and said I was useless. He wasn’t wrong, but it was the way he said it while this poor woman was just lying there, pregnant, on oil-stained freezing concrete. She was covered in blood. I held her hand. Her nails were bitten right down to the quick. Moffat said I was being useless and sent me on my way.’ She looked out of the window, her head against the glass. ‘It wasn’t nice.’

  ‘And what happened.’

  ‘Nothing. I was never asked to write it up. Nobody was ever charged. Not long afterwards, they had found the body of a man named Liam Flynn, decapitated with a machete, and I was told that Moffat had stopped looking for any more suspects. Some kind of street justice had been done. I was told to leave it at that.’

  ‘Was she connected, then?’

  ‘Only slightly. Pauline, part of the McGregor family but not an active one.’

  Anderson’s mind was racing ahead, looking at the facts, his brain trying to make the pieces of the jigsaw fit. ‘So, how far have you got with the book?’

  ‘It’s mostly about Sangster’s theory that the family had something to do with it. Don’t you think it’s strange to have a male babysitter? But then, the parents did know him well – he’d worked for them for some while in their restaurant. Piacini, he was called. And the normal babysitter had let them down at the last moment. It’s a crap read but the bit about Glen Fruin is interesting.’

  ‘And what happened here?’

  ‘All it says is that a car similar to one seen somewhere near the Marchettis’ flat was seen forty minutes later driving through Glen Fruin. But it’s all maybes – there was no concrete evidence. It’s a good conspiracy theory, though. That they were getting the kid out to the coast. That’s one thing about this country, we have a great coastline for hiding things.’

  That was the second time in so many days that Anderson had heard that sentiment. ‘So, the first time Piacini is left in charge, he and the child both go missing? And stay
missing? Dead or alive, they must be somewhere.’

  ‘Must be dead, otherwise they would have resurfaced. But were they brought through here to get to the coast or be dumped somewhere? The glen was home to some torpedo testing centre during the war or something, it being long and narrow and tucked out of the way. It’s not easy to kidnap a child and keep him secure somewhere. There’s all sorts of underground, hidden-away things up here.’ She sounded excited, like a child. ‘There’s a great underground tank there that they used to test the Dambusters’ bouncing bomb, then it was used for hydro-ballistic research.’

  ‘Like you’d know what that was.’

  ‘Good deposition site for a couple of dead bodies. It’s an overflow reservoir now.’

  ‘I read in the Herald recently that a lot of the older tunnels and drains are being tested for recommissioning, something to do with anti-terrorism. But that’s down at the un-posh end. You’ll be up in the seriously posh bit. You do know that there’s bugger all up there but the school? The nearest shop is six miles away.’

  ‘There’ll probably be a Harvey Nicks on site,’ Costello grunted.

  Though it was going on for ten o’clock, the light was only just starting to fade, and the midges were out in force. Anderson could smell Costello’s citronella repellent spray. ‘It’ll be a nice drive. Glen Fruin is one of the most attractive glens in Scotland, you know.’

  ‘So, not only are the kids a load of over-privileged little sods, they have a nice view as well.’

  ‘I don’t think that attitude is going to help, Costello. The term “button it” comes to mind. Just be careful. There’re not a lot of places you can run to, and you can’t drive.’

  ‘I’m only going up to have a look around, not start a revolution.’ Costello ignored him. ‘But I’ll need to use a landline; the mobile reception is patchy.’