The Blood of Crows

by Caro Ramsay

  The SOCO shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  Mulholland spoke up. ‘I’ve phoned Grey’s secretary and she said it wasn’t like him to work on a Saturday morning. But he’d made an exception “due to the sensitive nature of the meeting”. Her words.’

  ‘And it was the cleaners who discovered him?’

  ‘Yes. I had them taken up to Partick Central.’

  Anderson looked at a photo on the wall, of Grey and a fellow solicitor, taken possibly twenty years earlier. ‘Business partner?’

  ‘Napier. He’s on holiday. Haven’t contacted him yet.’

  ‘So, no sign that Mary actually made it here?’

  Mulholland shook his head. ‘Do you think this was the same person who killed David?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think we have a homicidal pensioner running around in the shape of Mary Carruthers. The Russians? Well, we know one of them – Perky – is dead. I saw him shot right in front of me. It’s Mr Pinky we’d like to get our hands on.’ He patted his constable on the arm on his way past. ‘We will catch them, Mulholland. We won’t rest until we do. No sign of Mary at home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sir!’ The shout came from the back room. ‘Can you come in here, please?’ The voice was full of panic.

  Then it was joined by another voice – not quite a squeal but a noise of shock. A young uniformed constable ran out, hand over his mouth, and gestured behind him. The back room was another office, with two desks, four chairs, two computers, a massive printer and a photocopier. The bitter chemical smell of the spray foam was very strong. In the far corner, a heavy metal door stood ajar, opening away from them. The SOCO opened it further, and it swung as if well oiled. It was a walk-in safe. Inside was a chaos of files, papers, Manila folders, storage files, CDs and box files, all tossed off the shelves, their contents allowed to spill out.

  On the far wall, the beige paint was marked by a long smear of red that widened downwards like a comet tail. Sticking out from a pile of handwritten papers, half covered by a box file, was a shoe – the sort of black patent-leather shoe an older lady might wear if she suffered from corns.

  ‘Jesus. Mary?’ He put his finger on her neck, pushing papers to the side. ‘Get an ambulance, Vik, she’s alive. Then could you do me a favour? Go out and see her sister, Rene?’ Anderson sighed, trying to remember the next bit. ‘And take some discreet protection with you. If in doubt, don’t go in. However, I think they probably have what they wanted, so you should be OK. But take no risks, even so. I presume Grey gave them the combination for the safe. And they ransacked it, either for the missing pages or another diary – or was it something to do with the money?’

  ‘And if so, the question is, did they find it?’ asked Mulholland.

  ‘It would help if we knew exactly what they were after. But what do we think happened here? They cosh Grey, bring Mary in here, ask her to look around, identify the … the diary, you think? Then they found it, closed the safe and left her to die like a dog. This safe is little more than a hermetically sealed room, and there was a great weight of paper piled on top of her. I bet there’s no trace of that diary, or the money, or the bank account. That’s why they trashed the computers. We can’t follow the money now, there’s nothing left,’ argued Anderson.

  ‘I still think it’s the diary. But whatever it is, it can’t be worth killing for.’

  Batten’s voice came from the door. ‘If life is cheap, then many things are worth killing for.’

  ‘You might be right,’ said Anderson, heading towards the door.

  Mulholland nodded. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to do exactly what Howlett has been doing all along. I’m going to flush the bastards out. I’m off to a garden party. Right into the eye of the storm.’

  2.00 P.M.

  ‘So, how are you?’

  ‘I think I’m OK,’ Costello answered, paying attention as she walked down the stone steps to the walled garden. Her feet still didn’t seem all that keen on doing what she wanted them to do. ‘So, what happened to you last night?’

  Pettigrew shrugged, annoyed. ‘One minute you were there, and the next you were gone. The Elphinstone boy has gone AWOL.’

  He sat down at one of the small tables that were being placed in a precise pattern on the lawn. Catering staff in black and white were working like a well-oiled machine, joining up tables, spreading big white tablecloths, and refreshing flower arrangements with sprayed water. The air was heavy with an oppressive sweltering heat. Costello looked up, expecting to see clouds rolling in, but the skies were clear. The hills were keeping their own counsel and simply looked green and splendid in the afternoon sun.

  ‘And what are you doing about him?’

  ‘We’re looking for him. It’s under control. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘But you sound worried.’

  ‘The one thing we are good at is security. But the school wants us to be good at PR as well.’

  It obviously was not a matter for discussion. ‘What’s going on here, all this?’ Costello asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s a sort of cheese-and-schmooze that the Warden puts on for the rich folk coming to take their little kiddies away. They look at an exhibition they have done in art, listen to a few poems. Wine and chit-chat, lots of tiny things on plates. I get a doggy bag. I have to wear black and walk the perimeter of the garden, looking like I can kill with my bare hands.’

  ‘And make sure no riff-raff crawl out from under a stone?’ She looked down towards the river. ‘Is that a helicopter landing pad?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. The military police have a fit each time something flies in and out, but it’s a ten-minute shuttle from the airport. And to these people, time is money.’

  A refrigerated van drew up in the car park, ready to open its back doors. A woman with a clipboard shouted to the driver to reverse it up to the kitchen, where the fridges were.

  Pettigrew got up and came back with a jug of cold orange juice and two glasses. ‘So – last night. I know you can’t tell me what is going on but was it the Marchetti boy you found?’

  ‘You’re right, I can’t tell you.’

  He raised his eyebrows, as if to say he’d noticed that she didn’t deny it. ‘Looks like the rumours at the time were right – they did try to get away across the glen.’

  ‘The rumour was they planned to take the kid to the coast. The fact is, he was brought here and left to die.’ Costello’s voice was bitter. ‘Makes you wonder just how much the police covered up their own incompetence.’

  ‘If it was incompetence,’ said Pettigrew.

  ‘Stop talking in fucking riddles.’

  ‘Imagine that it was all planned. Get the boy here and dispose of him. Imagine the irritation when the car was spotted driving through the glen. That was a mistake. This place may be isolated but a strange car sticks out like a nun in a brothel. Would have been better to stick him on the M8 in a traffic jam with mud-covered number plates.’

  ‘You’ve given that some thought.’

  ‘Let’s go back a bit and think of it as a military exercise that needs tactical expertise. If you were planning a bank raid, you’d never leave yourself just one escape route, would you? That white Volvo was waiting at the bridge for two reasons. As a decoy if plan A went ahead, and as a backup if plan A failed. A good decoy plan to muddy the waters of any CCTV sightings along the route. And it was that theory which, God bless her, Sangster has picked up and perpetuated.’

  Costello picked pieces of fruit pulp out of her drink with her thumb. It was the proper stuff, made from real fresh oranges. ‘So, where does MacFadyean live? Marchetti was brought up here. MacFadyean died here.’

  ‘He’s dead, so he doesn’t matter.’ Pettigrew took a sip from his glass. ‘You know Eric Moffat was in charge of the Marchetti investigation? MacFadyean worked with him a lot.’

  ‘You are so well informed, Mr Pettigrew.’

  ‘Just trying to be helpful.’

  The conv
ersation ceased. She never knew with him if she was being questioned or informed. But then, he used to be a cop as well. He was a bit younger than Carruthers and his friends, but still of an age where they might have known each other. Pettigrew was avoiding her eye. Instead, he was gazing out across the glen, watchful. The forest was as green and as dense as ever, and there was no way of knowing what activity was going on in there.

  Costello sighed. She had done her bit last night. It was up to them now. ‘Did you follow Drew?’ she asked.

  ‘For a bit. He was definitely a man with a mission. Then I got a bit concerned that you might have fallen over or knocked yourself out on a branch or something. So, I went back, but you’d gone.’ He shrugged. ‘Actually, I thought you’d got scared, given up and come back to the school.’

  ‘Really?’ She bristled at the insult.

  ‘Then I found you up on the road, but Drew is still AWOL. He has missed breakfast and lunch. I know he’s out there, holed up munching roots in a lair, thinking he’s in the SAS, the last sane man on the planet, hiding from zombies. He won’t break cover until after dark. I’m going out then to get him. I’ll take him to hospital, where he belongs, and send his fucking parents the bill. Sod the school’s reputation – I’m fed up with it.’

  ‘Good luck with that! He’s a young lad, he’s strong. He’s prepared for an attack of some kind, he could be armed to the teeth.’

  ‘Well, come with me and give me a hand – before you go back to the day job?’

  Costello felt an unsettling twinge. ‘OK. But you’ll forgive me for wanting a bit of backup with me this time – just in case I end up down another drain.’

  ‘Bring Anderson. Tell him he can join us now in the buffet.’

  3.30 P.M.

  Rene tottered around her cluttered living room, her fingers in a fist round her damp handkerchief. Her thoughts drifted from trying to make them tea, to talking about Mary as if she was still next door. She had lost her brother-in-law, her sister wasn’t here and she was still asking for ‘that nice red-haired policeman’ who had visited before. Batten just said he was otherwise engaged at the moment. And then he stretched a point by telling her that he was a doctor, here to help.

  The female police officer Mulholland had left with Rene, who was perched on the edge of a messy sofa, knew nothing, so couldn’t answer any of Rene’s questions. Just as well, Batten thought. Another uniform, an older man called Bob, was out in the Aladdin’s cave of a hall. He was going through Rene’s address book, looking for the number of her son.

  Batten hadn’t received a precise answer to his question. ‘Was the nice red-haired policeman ever in your flat, Rene?’

  Rene’s flat was on the same landing as the Carruthers’, but across the way. He went out of the open door, noting Bob’s slight shake of the head – no luck yet.

  Even before he pushed the door of the Carruthers’ flat open, he knew the place had been expertly searched. He pulled on a pair of plastic gloves, and ran his hands over the inside of the lock. A very professional job – just a light jemmy to the door, pop the lock, and pull it over when you leave, letting it jam slightly as it closes. It would take a hearty shove to open it again. He went in, noting the microscopic disturbance of everything. Oh yes, this place had been illegally searched, he could tell. The search had been recent, so maybe they hadn’t got what they wanted from the solicitor’s safe, after all. He went to the window and spent five minutes just watching the street below, checking that nobody was waiting for them out there. He would make a point of making sure that they all left together – safety in numbers. He would tell the uniform at Rene’s flat to use her radio if there were any signs of trouble. The street was hot; from up here, he could almost see the heat shimmering in the air. It was too close, too warm. It had to break soon.

  He went out into the hallway, where Bob was pacing, on his phone. He shook his head again – still no luck.

  Batten got out his own phone, considering. He wasn’t a cop, so he couldn’t really make any decisions without consulting Anderson.

  He went back into Rene’s flat to get some privacy for his call. It might prove fatal to go and stand in the middle of the car park. In Rene’s hallway, he knocked a John Menzies carrier bag off the cluttered top of a bookcase. It slithered to the ground, taking copies of the free newspaper and The People’s Friend with it. He bent down to pick it up, noting the bag contained a slim volume, A5 size. He closed his phone and looked closely. It was a journal, like the others, dated 1996. He opened it. A few pages had been hastily jammed in halfway through, older pages from another diary, from another time.

  Had Thomas Carruthers had some presentiment of danger, torn out the pages and put them in this diary, then moved it to a safe place? With the batty sister-in-law, who everybody ignored? Or had the batty sister-in-law picked up the bag, as she picked up everything else that caught her fancy in her dementia?

  Batten had a terrible image of Carruthers, near the window, being threatened, being asked to hand over the diary … and it not being there. It was a chilling thought. He had to get this back to Anderson.

  Batten thought of himself as unflappable. But his heart was thumping as he decided not to take the lift, instead going out through the fire door and down the concrete stairwell, listening for any other footfall above or below him. There was nothing. He knew he did not look like a cop. Taking either of the two uniformed cops with him would just attract attention. His best camouflage would be plain sight.

  He walked across the foyer, opened the door and looked out. His hired car was less than fifty yards away. He looked left and right, carefully scanning the garages and the area around the incident tape – all that was left to show Lambie had been this way. No cop was standing by to protect the scene. It looked quite deserted, absolutely clear. He tucked the diary in its plastic bag firmly under his arm, and got out the car keys, ready to press Open. The blue Focus was parked along here in a line of cars. It bleeped and flashed at him in greeting. Batten walked towards it smartly, not rushing, not drawing attention to himself, listening intently for any footsteps behind him or any movement between any of the cars.

  A bus passed. A man with a collie was asking it to sit before setting off across the road. A carrier bag wedged against the paving stone rustled slightly in the gentle wind. Batten glanced at it as he walked towards the Focus. Only a few more steps to go. Then, in the wing mirror of the car in front, he saw a movement – someone closing in behind him – and his heart skipped a beat. In broad daylight? There would be a wee shove, a knife, nothing to see or hear.

  But he was not a cop, he did not look like a cop, he must not act like a cop.

  He could be anybody.

  He kept walking past his car, towards the bus stop. He started whistling, not a care in the world.

  3.40 P.M.

  O’Hare liked skulls. He liked the way the bony plates fitted together, like an intricate jigsaw, so much more precise and exact than long bones that just articulated top and bottom. Flat bones – they either fitted or they didn’t. And like a missing piece in a jigsaw, a pathologist might not know what he was looking for, but he knew what shape it was. And there was always a pattern to any damage.

  Moffat and his friend were simple, their bodies shattered by the impact of a bullet at high speed and the accompanying pressure wave.

  He was looking across at Alessandro Marchetti’s skull now, on its stainless-steel platter. It was largely complete, as was the jaw – apart from a few baby teeth. He took a sip of his coffee, feeling his age, trying not to think about the bigger picture. He was unhappy – no, uncomfortable – with the case the team was working on. Anderson had nearly been killed … or had he? The first bullet would have sliced through Moffat’s brain long before the sound could register, and the second man would have been dead before he heard it. Anderson had been tied to a tree, unable to move. The sniper could easily have taken him out with a clean shot.

  But he hadn’t.

  And whoever
put Costello down the shaft wanted her to find the remains of the boy. But they also wanted her to get out, so she could report what she had found.

  O’Hare had no intention of taking the bodies of Graham Hunter and Jason Purcie from their final resting places, but Wyngate had tracked down Hunter’s post mortem file and had got the photographs from a storage facility in Inverness. O’Hare himself had obtained the photographs of Purcie, shot on duty up on the Campsie Fells, within his present jurisdiction. Jason Purcie had been shot with a .303 bullet, probably from a Lee–Enfield rifle. There was a good selection of not-so-glossy black-and-white photographs, and the striations on the bullet were clear. He texted Matilda, who no doubt would have her eye glued to a microscope in the university building across the street.

  How Hunter came to meet his fate on the hill was less clear. His body had not been found until four months after he was reported missing. O’Hare looked at the map, at where the body had been found, and the site of the higher bothy. O’Hare pondered Hunter’s erratic behaviour. Had he stumbled and fallen earlier on the way up to the bothy, maybe hit his head? The resulting slow bleed in the brain might have made him act so irrationally. Would Carruthers have recorded that in his journal? But that was nobody’s fault. If the diary was deemed so important, it must threaten to reveal something someone wanted hidden – something about the way Hunter died.

  And O’Hare only had one conclusion to come to. Hunter had been murdered.

  He put down his coffee and fiddled with the photographs of the remnants of Hunter’s skull, looking for evidence of foul play. Weeks under water, depredations by wildlife, then an old-fashioned scrub by a mortuary assistant, had left the bone fragments clean, shiny and difficult to fit. He tried moving the pictures about, using different focal lengths, different positions, but achieved nothing.