by T F Muir
‘Won’t give me time to put on my make-up.’
He chuckled and said, ‘Come as you are.’
The line died, leaving Jessie to shake off a shiver – from a frigid north wind, or from a sense of dread, she couldn’t say.
What she could say, though, was that she wouldn’t be staying over at Fiona’s.
CHAPTER 26
Tuesday morning
Despite his intention to hit the ground running, flooded roads from an overnight sleet storm delayed Gilchrist on his way to the Office. At least it hadn’t snowed, or the entire Fife coast would have needed ploughing out.
He started his briefing at 7.20 a.m., and sorted out his teams with a vengeance.
Mhairi was tasked with tracking down Butterworth Holdings, with Jackie assigned to work with her exclusively. Review of CCTV footage was paramount, particularly west in the direction of Alloa. Two teams were assigned to bank accounts, credit cards and tax filings for Robert Kerr and Kerr Roberts, working hand in hand with the Financial Investigation Unit in Glenrothes.
Next, he shoved a stick of dynamite up the IT techies’ arses, telling them they were missing a beat. There had to be a lead in SB Contracting’s website, he was sure of that – so get the hell on with it. Baxter was tasked with organising the appeal to the public; if Black wasn’t dead, then he was buying food to stay alive, so someone must have seen him. Others were to liaise with Port authorities and harbour masters on the Fife coast. Airports, too, were to be alerted, and other local police forces contacted. Until they knew more about that motorbike, Gilchrist wanted to play it safe, stop Black at source if he ever decided to make a run for it overseas.
He ended the briefing with, ‘Any questions?’ When no one responded, he clapped his hands. ‘Right, let’s get cracking. We need to find this nutcase before he harms anyone else.’
He and Jessie set off for Alloa at the back of 8.00 a.m., only to be delayed by flooding on the outskirts of St Andrews, and construction works before Guardbridge. Intermittent storms and violent downpours forced him to slow to a crawl while his wipers did what they could to clear the windscreen. But traffic was relatively light, and Jessie used the time to bring him up to speed with her visit to the morgue, finally sharing her thoughts with him on DS Wheelan.
‘Victor Maxwell knows how to pick them,’ was all Gilchrist offered.
‘Nothing back from Dainty?’ she asked.
‘It’s too soon.’
When they reached Kinross, Jessie ordered him to stop for a coffee before my tongue turns to cardboard. With the last of her latte downed, she crammed her polystyrene cup into the space between the side of her seat and the console.
‘Feeling better?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘Don’t know how they lived in the Stone Age without coffee.’
‘Who says they didn’t have coffee back then?’
‘Didn’t know Costa Coffee had been in business that long.’
Gilchrist chuckled, and drove on as his phone rang – ID Cooper.
He put it through his car’s speaker system. ‘Yes, Becky?’
‘Good morning to you, too, Andy.’
Jessie rolled her eyes, but said nothing.
‘I rushed the DNA tests as you requested. You were right, Andy. It’s Scott Black’s DNA under Kandy Lal’s fingernails.’
‘So he killed her.’
‘I’ll get the PM report to you by the end of the day.’
He thanked her, but the line was already dead.
Jessie said, ‘What side of the bed did she get out of this morning? She can say good morning, but can’t say goodbye? The bitch.’
Silent, Gilchrist drove on, boosted by the knowledge that Black had been careless in disposing of Kandy Lal’s body. Had he made his first mistake?
Or were they about to find out he’d made many others?
By the time he turned right at the roundabout and on to the A907 towards the town of Alloa, it was half-past nine already and the temperature had plunged. Ahead, in the cold mist, Alloa stood silhouetted like a fortified mound. Beyond, the Ochil Hills seemed to overlap in darkening greys and rounded peaks capped in white.
As he approached town, Gilchrist said, ‘We’re coming to where the ANPR picked up Black’s motorbike.’ He pulled his BMW off the road, killed the engine, and stepped out into a frosted Clackmannanshire morning.
The wind had stilled. Frozen mist blanketed the horizon. An articulated lorry thundered past, engine roaring, startling a cluster of starlings that fluttered to the air in waves. He walked to the front of his car and compared the scene before him with the CCTV image in his hand.
‘What are we looking for?’ Jessie said.
‘Just getting a feel for the place.’
‘Well see if you can get a feel for the weather heater, and turn it on. I’m freezing.’
‘You’re always cold.’
‘That’s because it’s always cold up here.’
‘Up here being Scotland?’
‘Up here being north of Glasgow.’
‘Here we’re mostly east.’
‘That, too.’
‘Right.’
He stared towards town.
The only CCTV image picked up on the ANPR system was the image he was holding. Somehow that warned him that Black was a formidable foe. Every move Black made, he did so to cover his tracks. CCTV cameras watched over most of Alloa’s thoroughfare. Gilchrist had confirmed they were all working, which begged the question – if this was the only CCTV image they had, and Black had not driven into town, then where the hell had he gone?
He crossed the road, Jessie behind him, and walked to a gap in the hedgerow where a pedestrian path petered off across the fields. Several hundred yards in the distance, a woman was walking the flattened trail, a Golden Labrador criss-crossing the fields with its nose to the ground. Gilchrist crouched down, ran his fingers over flattened grass.
‘OK, Tonto. What’ve you found?’
He stood. ‘Too much rain.’ He eyed the fields. Beyond, the land seemed to swell like a rising wave up to the Ochil Hills. The dog-walker changed course as she followed the path. From where he stood, it was impossible to see the path itself, but if he looked past the dog-walker, towards where she was heading, he thought he saw an opening in another hedgerow that led to a copse of trees.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and stepped onto the pathway.
Without walking boots, the path was slippery, and his feet slid out from under him a couple of times. He managed to prevent himself from falling, with quick reactions, using his hands. But Jessie seemed to be having no trouble.
‘It’s these shoes you wear,’ she said, ‘all polished with leather soles. You need a pair of these.’ She stamped the ground, leaving indents as deep as moon-prints. ‘Only five quid on eBay.’
‘You buy second-hand shoes?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Well, seeing as how you don’t need your hands, find out if Mhairi’s had any news back from Companies House.’
‘A bit early for that, isn’t it?’
He walked on, leaving her to it with her mobile to her ear. She might have no need of hands when walking, but she seemed unable to use her legs while on the phone.
Ten minutes later, he pushed through the opening in the hedgerow into a wooded area, thankful to find the ground drier there. The air seemed warmer, too, the trees acting as windbreaks. But if he thought drier ground would make it easier to find tyre tracks he was sorely mistaken. The path branched off in any number of directions, fading into the woods. He was no forensics expert, and certainly no scout, and realised he was searching for a trail that in all probability didn’t even exist.
It took Jessie a couple of minutes to reach him, her face red from the effort of trying to catch up. ‘Bloody hell, I’m knackered,’ she said.
‘Exercise is good for you.’
‘It’s all right for you, being skinny as a rake. Try walking about humphing this lot.’ She put her hands to h
er chest and heaved upwards.
‘Any luck?’ he said.
She smirked. ‘Scott Black is the nominated director of Butterworth Holdings, and his registered address is a PO Box in Alloa.’
This was news. ‘Get Mhairi on to the post office and—’
‘She’s already on it,’ Jessie interrupted. ‘But here’s the good bit. Kerr Roberts is the company secretary. And his address is in Alloa, too.’ She handed him her mobile. ‘You’re going to love this.’
A Google Maps layout with a red location arrow filled the screen. He zoomed out to get his bearings, but lost the screen. Jessie recovered it, and handed it back to him. He fiddled with the screen again, got his bearings, and stared off across an adjacent field that rose to a line of bushes, then fell away on the other side.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s over that hill.’
‘Want me to call it in?’
‘No, let’s ca’ canny, and have a look first.’
He set off, Jessie traipsing after him.
Once out of the copse, the land rose before them in a steepening slope to a rounded peak. The address they were looking for should be on the other side. If Black and Roberts and Kerr were one and the same person – and he had little reason to doubt that now – the pieces were slotting into place: the escape on the motorbike, the ride across fields to avoid being picked up by CCTV cameras in Alloa, and ending at a new address – his safe house? – to lick his wounds. Or plan his next move.
But with that logical summary came worry.
So far, his team had found nothing criminal under Black’s name, or his aliases. But for all anyone knew, the man could have a hidden cache of weapons at this address. Even so, it was too early to call it in. They would first need to ascertain whether he was there or not.
They plodded on, like a couple of hikers in line.
The going was easy at first, the grass thick and uncut, which allowed Gilchrist to stomp in his shoes for grip as the slope steepened. But what had looked like a gentle slope from the outset was turning into a steeper gradient, the closer they got to the row of bushes. Over the last few yards, Gilchrist had to grip tufts of grass to pull himself up, avoiding dormant thistles that seemed to thrive on that spot.
He reached the flattened peak, then turned to lend Jessie a hand.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘I’ve just been spiked by a thistle.’ She scrubbed the back of her hand against her jacket. ‘It’s sore.’
‘You’ll survive.’
‘I think you need to work on your bedside manner.’
‘Nearly there.’
He pushed through a thinning gap in the hedgerow into another field that plateaued for fifty yards before rearing into the Ochil Hills to their right, but rolling over and down into a small valley on their left, from which a wisp of smoke rose into the still air like a grey mast.
‘Let’s see that phone of yours again,’ he said.
Jessie pulled up Google Maps. ‘There’s only one house,’ she said. ‘So that smoke’s from the address we’re looking for—’
‘Which means Black’s in.’
‘Or someone else is.’
He frowned at her. ‘You think he’s got an accomplice?’
‘With this dickhead, nothing would surprise me.’
From where they stood, the cottage was hidden by the crown of the slope. But if they stood on the crown, they would be silhouetted against the backdrop of the Ochil Hills.
Anyone in the cottage could see them.
He looked around him, his gaze drifting down the hill, all the way back to his speck of a car parked on the edge of the road. It looked miles away. Had they really walked that far? Which made up his mind for him. They would keep moving forward.
Ahead, he noticed a hillside burn, its slopes thick with undergrowth. He pointed to it. ‘We’ll take a look from there,’ he said. ‘And stay out of sight.’
The wind shifted then, breaking the column of smoke, twisting it as if it had collapsed under its own weight. The sky had turned an angry grey that threatened snow.
‘Let’s go before the heavens open,’ Jessie said.
As they stole towards the hillside undergrowth, Gilchrist could not shift the unsettling feeling that they had missed something, that Black was always one step ahead of them.
And that they were walking into a trap.
CHAPTER 27
Before Gilchrist and Jessie reached the burn, the chimney stack came into view.
As they, eased closer, the roof deepened. Closer still, guttering appeared, followed by roughcast walls. He raised his hand to keep Jessie from stumbling on. Another few steps and they would be fully exposed before they reached their vantage point.
‘We need to keep back from the edge,’ he said.
He changed tack, turning towards the foothills, keeping the bushes as a visual barrier between them. Even so, he trod with care. Clumps of hawthorn and ferns provided cover, but other saplings – chestnut, ash, oak – had lost their leaves for the winter, and offered next to no cover at all.
He folded into a crouch, and had to sink to his knees over the final yards. From there, they had a clear view of the cottage. If Black happened to look out one of the windows, and his gaze found its way up the hill, against the backdrop of the Ochil Hills he would not notice Gilchrist and Jessie – provided they remained still.
Cold dampness seeped through Gilchrist’s trousers, sending a chill into his thighs. He heard Jessie scuffling behind him, felt the warm gush of her breath as she pulled level.
‘What’ve we got?’ she said.
‘I don’t see the motorbike.’
‘You think it’s here?’
‘See that hut?’ he said. ‘It could be in there.’
The cottage stood at the end of a narrow asphalt road that stretched off to Alloa in the distance. Closer to the town, houses stood either side of the road, but thinned out as the road rose to the foothills, until only fields, stone walls and hedgerows lined both sides. The road rose steeply over the closing quarter-mile. The hillside burn, which provided fertile banks for bushes and saplings, slipped past the back of the cottage in a deep cut that became a narrow stream which hugged one side of the road.
The cottage itself reminded Gilchrist of a smallholding constructed in the 1940s, with roughcast walls painted weather-worn white. But where smallholdings were mostly square in shape, this cottage was longer, more rectangular. Two windows at the gable end had curtains drawn. A single chimney stack sprouted two chimney pots, one of which oozed smoke. A flat-roof extension had been constructed by the back door, which he figured was a utility room. Even from where he kneeled, the extension looked in dire need of a coat or three of paint, or being ripped out altogether.
At the bottom of the slope stood the garden hut, relatively new, its wooden structure a golden varnish, and large enough to store a complete array of gardening tools, although he saw no signs of a garden, vegetable or otherwise. Interestingly, or so he thought, the hut had a small window on the rear wall. He turned his attention back to the cottage, searching for movement within. But it could be derelict for all he could see.
‘It seems awful quiet,’ Jessie said. ‘D’you think he’s here?’
‘Well, the fire’s on.’
‘Maybe he’s gone into Alloa for shopping or something.’
‘And left the fire untended?’
‘He could’ve used one of these metal cage-type thingies.’
‘A fireguard?’
‘That’s the word I was looking for.’
He’d seen too many deaths from fires started through domestic carelessness to put his trust into something as flimsy as a fireguard. When he’d renovated Fisherman’s Cottage, he tore out the original fireplace and installed a gas fire – convenient, clean, and easy to light with the click of a switch. Somehow, that thought told him that Black would not have left for town with a fireguard for safety.
‘I don’t see a car,’ Jessie said.
‘Becaus
e he’s got a motorbike.’
‘Or driven a car into town.’
‘Get hold of Mhairi,’ he said. ‘See if she’s found anything.’ While Jessie made the call, he checked his own phone for messages – two only – but neither had any bearing on his investigation. He slipped it back into his jacket as Jessie ended her call.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘The IT techies are twitching over some server details,’ she said. ‘Something to do with SB Contracting’s website.’
‘What’ve they found?’
‘She’s not sure, but they might have something by the end of the day.’ She nodded to the cottage. ‘So what are we waiting for?’
Somehow the thought that Black might be down there, barricaded inside, armed to the teeth and just itching to resist arrest, sent a tremor through him. Or perhaps he was shivering from the cold.
But Jessie was right. It was time to make a move.
‘Turn off your phone,’ he said, scanning the hillside that overlooked the cottage. He imagined he saw the makings of a worn pathway through the ferns, which ran along the face of the hill. If they took that path, it was as good a way as any to the cottage.
He pushed himself back, knees shuffling through wet grass, until he was far enough from the top of the slope to stand without being seen from the cottage. He brushed his legs, slapped off water, leaves, bits of grass, and waited for Jessie to join him.
‘Ready?’ he said.
‘What’s my hair like?’
‘This way.’
The pathway turned out to be no path at all, but a rabbit- or hare-run that zig-zagged through a cluster of wild ferns. Gilchrist trod with care along the side of the hill, conscious again of how unsuitable his shoes were, until he reached a point that overlooked both the hut and the gable end of the cottage, with its two curtained windows.
If they went down the slope at that location, no one could see them from the cottage. It also gave him the perfect opportunity to peek through the hut window.
‘It’s steep,’ he said. ‘Think you can manage?’
‘I’m all right.’ She dug her boots into the ground. ‘It’s you I’m worried about.’