Whirligig

by Andrew James Greig

  “Wait there, Lamb. We’ll be with you soon.”

  Corstorphine spotted Frankie waving from the track ahead. She climbed into the passenger seat without comment, only too aware of what might await them.

  XXV

  THURSDAY 20:24

  The forensics team had arrived from Inverness at 20:24, meeting with Corstorphine and the local locksmith outside the laird’s house. Leading a small convoy of 4x4’s, the DI drove back up the now pitch-black forest trail to the remote cold store. Now dressed in white forensic suits they watched as the locksmith bent to his work, feeding metal picks into the lock, juggling the internal mechanism in the beam of his head torch. As minutes passed he gave up the struggle to open the locked door, complaining to Corstorphine that something was jammed inside the lock.

  “Just cut the bloody door open.” Corstorphine’s patience had reached the limit. Another long day, another death and still no closer to identifying whoever was responsible. He had no great expectation that the laird’s death was some terrible accident, but they needed access to the building before working the scene.

  The locksmith fetched an angle grinder from his toolbox to slice through the deadbolt, sparks flying from the tip of the tool like a firework. As soon as the bolt was cut, the locksmith stood back to allow Corstorphine room to push the door open, releasing a putrid stench of death and faeces. It was immediately apparent nothing was alive in there. The laird had been butchered by his own dogs, his throat torn open leaving a raw, dark void in his neck from where the dogs had ripped bite-sized lumps of flesh. Muscle and sinew lay exposed like some anatomical examination performed with stone-age tools. The laird’s expression had frozen at the moment of death, a nightmarish mask that left no one in any doubt that his death had been excruciatingly painful. One leg lay stripped to the bone, tatters of flesh hanging white against the dark blood-stained tweed. Dogs and man were as stiff as cardboard, rigor mortis leaving them arranged like a grotesque tableau painted in dried blood.

  Forensics set up floodlights, with one propping the door open, and the photographer began to take shots, the surgical forensics mask covering her nose insufficient to block out the ripe odours permeating the space. She had seen murder scenes before, but not like this. Corstorphine pointed out the crisp packets and the still-functioning hourglass which she duly photographed, leaving the charnel house, relieved to take close-ups of the now disassembled door lock in the fresh air.

  “What do you make of it, sir? Could he have been locked in by accident?” Frankie looked around the blood-spattered room, working out how many days he’d been trapped in there. Her eyes avoided the laird’s body – the expression on his face would live with her forever.

  Corstorphine merely indicated the hourglass, the papal coin shining in the cold floodlit glare. “Dust the whole place for prints, especially the door lock, crisp packets and this hourglass contraption. Then bag the lot and look for any DNA. This is the same killer.”

  He felt an anger building up inside him. Three murders and still nothing to go on. It felt as if the murderer was playing a game with him now, deliberately placing clues to identify himself. Even the mode of death: snare for the gamekeeper, church bell for the minister, imprisonment for the sheriff. There was a certain poetic justice in the way the deaths had been engineered, something almost psychopathic in the attention to detail and cruelty of each.

  “Sir?” PC Lamb called him over to the lock, disassembled on a spare white forensic suit on the forest floor. “Thought you should see this.”

  Inside the lock new metal parts stood out, shining and contrasting with the original rust-coloured components. A tightly coiled spring had unwound, engaging to push the deadbolt into the locked position. A single bone was jammed against the mechanism, preventing any possibility of unlocking the latch bolt.

  “Do you think this could have caused the deadbolt to operate without requiring a key?” Corstorphine directed the question to the locksmith, who was attempting to pack his tool box whilst casting furtive glances into the building.

  “Aye, looks like it. May have been the door slamming shut that set it off. Poor bastard didn’t stand a chance of getting out. How long do you think he was in there?”

  “Thanks for your help. This is an ongoing investigation and we can’t give out any information. I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone about this in case it harms our enquiry.”

  “No, of course. Glad to be of service. I’ll be on my way. Goodnight.”

  Corstorphine watched him as he drove his 4x4 away through the trees, wondering what it must have been like for the laird locked in the cold store. Monday was the last time he had shown up on the CCTV at his house, and Margo had said he’d been at her cottage some time Monday morning. Could he have been there for four days? Frankie stood in the open doorway to the cold store, waiting for him to come back to the scene.

  “How long can you live without water, Frankie?”

  She thought for a second before replying. “I think it’s something like three days, sir. Probably less if you have nothing to eat except salted crisps.”

  She’d come to the same conclusion as he had. The crisps had been deliberately left in the building to hasten the onset of death. That wouldn’t have been a pleasant way to go, at least Oscar and the minister had died quickly. Could the murderer have deliberately chosen a painful and lingering death for the laird? And the hourglass, the red sand almost completely run through to the lower container. Had the laird made the connection between the hourglass and the time he had left to live?

  “There’s an inscription on the hourglass, sir.”

  “What have we got?”

  He entered the cold store again, crouching down to read the words carved into the side of the mahogany base – Suffer The Little Children. There was no doubt about the motive now.

  “Lamb, can you stay here until forensics have completed their job?”

  “Sir,” he acknowledged.

  “Good man. Get a lift back to town with them when they’re ready to go. We’ll arrange for an ambulance to collect the body.” Corstorphine looked doubtfully back at the track. “We may have to ask the mountain rescue team to fetch him. Frankie, you come back with me, we need to talk.” He took another roll of police tape from the back of the Land Rover. “Here, seal the place up when you’re done.”

  Corstorphine turned the police Land Rover around, headlights casting a xenon beam deep into the trees until they found the track, police tape fluorescing silver in the distance and indicating which path to take through the labyrinth forest.

  “We might have saved him if we’d only gone looking for him yesterday.” Corstorphine’s voice was bitter with self-recrimination. “Now one of the few people who knew what was going on at the orphanage is dead.”

  “It’s not your fault, sir. Nobody could have known he was locked in that building. It was a piece of luck that Lamb found him at all.”

  “Fuck!” He hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand, then had to grab the wheel in both hands to avoid driving straight into the trees. Frankie sat in silence. There was nothing she could think of saying that would be of any comfort.

  “We have to get Brian Rankin in for questioning. He’s the last one alive that we know had a connection to the orphanage.”

  “Do you think he’s in danger, sir?”

  “He might be. The notebook claimed he wasn’t involved in any abuse, is that right?”

  Frankie thought back to her conversation with the Courier’s editor. “The notebook specifically mentioned that nobody had identified him as an abuser, more as someone who covered up whatever was happening.”

  “The laird’s death is going to be all over town tomorrow. That locksmith was bursting to be the first to get the story out. Two murders are bad enough, three will bring a shitstorm of pain down on our heads.”

  “What do you suggest we do now?�
�

  Corstorphine went through his options, such as they were. “Trouble is, if this orphanage business goes as far up the tree as the Courier have suggested then we are going to have a devil of a job investigating anyone involved. The ACC has already warned me off opening the June Stevens suicide case, he’s not going to take well to my taking a retired DI with an exemplary record into custody, even if it is for his own protection.”

  The car pulled smoothly onto the road leading out of the estate, suspension no longer reacting to the ruts and rocks littering the churned-up forest track. They sat in silence, both engaged with their own thoughts. Frankie could still see the laird’s face, twisted in the agony of death. His windpipe hung loose from a torn throat, a bone showed white against the red mess of his leg. The vision in her mind was made all the more shocking by his being clothed in expensive tweeds: an upper-class zombie just waiting for animation to jerk him into unlife. The murderer had known the movements of each of his victims intimately; he knew Oscar rode his quad under that tree every day, standing in the saddle to avoid being bounced by the roots. He knew the minister had to ring the church bell himself, locked in the belfry with no possibility of escape once the timbers had been sufficiently weakened; and he knew the laird would eventually visit the cold store. Routines, habits, learned by patient observation over, what? Days, weeks, years?

  “Whoever the murderer is, sir, he must have been living in this community for quite a while to know each of the victim’s movements.”

  “And your point is, Frankie?”

  “My point is, it’s more likely that the murderer is one of us, sir. Not some newcomer who’s lived here a short while. What if our murderer is one of the abused orphans that we haven’t been able to track down?”

  “Because they don’t appear on the lists, or are going under assumed names?”

  “Oscar wasn’t listed as an orphan, but he was allegedly abused as a child.”

  “Good point. There must be people living here who have concealed the abuse, either too ashamed or embarrassed to bring it into the open.”

  “There was that one call I had, sir, following the Courier’s article about the orphanage on Wednesday, from someone who claimed he’d been abused at the orphanage. He rung off before giving a name, and the number was withheld.”

  “That’s probably the only good that’s ever going to come out of that bloody paper. Once these things are out in the open it encourages people to tell their own stories.”

  “Catharsis, sir.”

  “Aye. Lancing a big ugly boil that’s festered on this town’s backside without anyone noticing. Well, they’re bloody noticing now.”

  They entered the outskirts of the town, yellow sodium lamps surrounded by halos of mist as the evening air chilled.

  “Tomorrow’s going to be busy,” said Corstorphine. “I want that butcher brought in for questioning, first thing. Arrest him if you have to.”

  “What charge, sir?” Frankie was genuinely interested.

  “Resisting arrest.”

  Frankie’s laugh broke the tension.

  “Hamish can bring in Brian, he can wait in one of the cells until we’re ready for him.”

  “He won’t thank you for that!”

  “If he’s been covering up for that orphanage, being put in a cell might concentrate his mind,” Corstorphine responded. “Then we’d better have a chat with the Courier – they’ve been too much in the driving seat throughout this process.”

  “Do you think we’ll get anything from forensics?”

  Corstorphine shook his head. “Whoever it is, they know enough to keep each scene sterile. I don’t hold out much hope. What we need is some background on our French reporter, just in case she’s linked to this clockmaker in Toulouse.”

  “What about our man in Barlinnie?”

  “We don’t have time to see him. The best we can try for is a telephone interview.”

  The Land Rover pulled into the station car park.

  “Go home, Frankie. There’s no point in us working on tonight and we need to be fresh for tomorrow.” He climbed into his own car, watching as Frankie drove off. This could end well or end badly. Corstorphine already knew which outcome he’d choose to bet on. His wife looked at him in despair. “James, have some faith in yourself, man. You’re a better detective than all those idiots at HQ and you know it…”

  “Aye.” Corstorphine started his car, heading down roads he knew so well he could drive them with his eyes closed. “Well, we’ll see soon enough.”

  His house was the only one in the street without any welcoming lights at the windows. He sat for a while in the drive, loathe to enter a house that reminded him of loss. The building stood, in his mind, as a monument to what might have been – and every time he returned home the absence of warmth, light, laughter only served to turn the knife in his soul.

  “I really ought to move, get somewhere smaller.” He spoke the words to himself, yet he was letting his wife know that he had to move on. With the words spoken, Corstorphine turned the key in the lock, switched on the lights and TV, dialled up the heat at the thermostat and pulled the first frozen meal his hands encountered from the freezer. Tomorrow he had three murders to deal with, and still no real suspects in the frame.

  XXVI

  FRIDAY 07:43

  “Thank you for coming in, Mr Booth.” Corstorphine addressed the burly ginger-haired man facing him in the interview room, “or would you prefer if I called you William?”

  The sullen stare that William wore made it clear he had better things to do that morning than decide on how he should be addressed by the detective opposite. “Listen, I’ve got a business to run. Tell me what I’m here for and let’s get this over as quickly as possible. Friday’s one of my busiest days!”

  “Fine.” Corstorphine nodded towards Frankie, who set the recorder running and informed William that his statement was being recorded. His countenance turned from sullen to worried in a split second.

  “Why are you recording me? What do you think I’ve done?” His face turned a mottled red, either rage or guilt, Corstorphine reckoned.

  Frankie placed a bone gear onto the table top, the largest one that had been found intact in the Hanging Tree. The one identified as a cow scapula. It lay in mute reproach, cow accusing butcher.

  “What’s that?” William’s eyes narrowed as he focussed on the bone.

  “DC McKenzie has just placed Exhibit 12 in front of the witness.” Corstorphine provided the voiceover. “We were hoping you may be able to tell us.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  “Go ahead, it’s been checked for prints and DNA.” Corstorphine omitted to add that nothing had been found. There was no point in making any potential suspect feel comfortable.

  The butcher picked up the cog, turning it this way and that as he inspected it under the overhead fluorescents. “Takes some skill to carve a bone like this,” he commented.

  “You’ve carved bones, William?” Frankie asked.

  William laughed. “I’m a butcher, Frankie. The only carving I do is with a meat cleaver, but I know enough about bones splintering to tell you this wouldn’t have been easy to carve. Must have used a lathe or something to get teeth that precise.” He placed it back down on the table, looking at them defiantly.

  Corstorphine took up the slack. “Any idea what animal it was?”

  “How am I meant to know? The way it’s been carved, it could be from anything.”

  Corstorphine nodded. “What do you do with your bones, William, once you’ve taken the meat and joints off?”

  “There’s a collection every week. The waste company provides us with wheelie bins for all the waste.”

  “Where do you keep the bins?” Frankie focussed in on the specifics.

  “Side passage. There’s a locked gate to the road. We wheel the bin out for collecti
on on a Thursday.”

  “Have you noticed anyone going through your bins, or has the gate been tampered with recently?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Just answer the question, William.” Corstorphine checked his watch, he had to hurry this along.

  “No to both. Anyone destitute enough to rake through bins would check the supermarket waste. There’s nae joy to be had in a butchers bin.” He smiled as if he’d just said something amusing.

  “What were your movements two weeks ago, William? Have you been anywhere near the laird’s estate in Glen Mhor?” Corstorphine fixed him with a laser-sharp stare.

  “What, me go anywhere near his estate? You have to be joking! I’ve kept as far away from that bastard as I can – and Oscar, he’s bad news.”

  “Did you want him dead, William?” Frankie asked quietly.

  He glared at her, angry at the implied accusation. “I didn’t kill him, Frankie, if that’s where you’re going with this. Oscar…” He sat there, looking like the lost boy he was. “Oscar was a mad bastard, and he could be cruel – but he was my mate.” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “He was one of the few mates I ever had. I’d never kill him.”

  “Can you provide any evidence of your movements during the last two weeks, William? Anyone who can verify where you were, what you were doing?” Corstorphine pressed on.

  “I’ve been working in my shop every day except Sunday, from eight to six every day. I don’t take enough to pay for any help so it’s just me. Most evenings when the shop is closed, I’m sorting out the cuts, making the mince, sausages and pies. I go home most days around ten, collapse in front of the TV and then go to bed before starting the same thing all over again. Sunday is the only day I get off, and I’ve spent every Sunday for the last few months with this girl in Fort William. Do you want her number?” William spoke defiantly, issuing a challenge which Corstorphine readily accepted.